Dedicated to and inspired by my friend Dena and her weather problems
cycling all over the place. Like – almost half way around the world. Well
nearly.
Renamed – for some reason the powers that be did not pick up the title and I've changed a couple of things.
Weird, Weird Weather, and Weeds
(Previously entitled - 5 Seasons in One Day)
The rain poured down into a seamless grey world – the atmosphere was so heavy with water that the horizon could only be imagined, and the earth was the same colour as the unbroken clouds.
Two green tents stood alone in the wilderness.
One of them appeared to be bulging out slowly first on one side and then the other. Suddenly the bulge strained heavily out on to one side, and the ensuing collapse of the individual on the inside of the tent nearly pulled the tent pegs out of the ground.
"For God's sake Daniel could you go outside to do that!"
There was silence for a moment.
"Sorry, look sorry, I just didn't want to get all..."
Before the apology could be completed, the tent flap opened, and a stunned archaeologist was pushed out into the rain.
"... wet."
He finished.
He looked around. No one was watching.
There was, in fact, no one to watch.
He had one sock on and one sock off. Both of his feet were now wet, but that didn't matter as the rest of him was quickly catching up.
Daniel looked up into the greyness that was the sky, and took his glasses off, squinting into the strange glare. There must have been a sun up there somewhere as it was so humid. He looked back down to attend to his glasses, which had steamed up. He cleaned them with his sock, pointlessly, and put them back on.
He tried to be positive. At least he wasn't sneezing.
"aaaahhhhTCHOOOO!"
So, what was there to be positive about on this godforsaken mess of a world?
Inexplicably the rain stopped and the clouds rolled back to show a pale blue sky, that quickly became azure.
Daniel blinked.
The clouds had gone, steam started to rise from the sodden earth.
He looked down at his mismatched feet. His sock less foot started to go pink from the toes up. He was getting sun burnt.
"Jeeeeeeeeezzz"
He jumped quickly back into the tent to the surprise of a dozy Colonel.
"What the hell is the matter with you Daniel? Do you want me to throw you out again?"
"No, Jack look.. Look this is amazing."
He showed Jack his foot.
"Yes, incredible as it may seem Daniel, I have seen your toes before and they are not a pretty sight."
Daniel shut his eyes in frustration, and shook his head.
"You are not the best person in the world to wake up to either Jack, pay attention for a change to what I'm trying to show you, and listen.."
Jack didn't answer; just sat cross-legged on his bedroll, mostly dressed, chin resting in his hand, which was in turn, propped on his knee. He silently promised himself that today would be the day when Daniel may find himself reacquainted with Oma.
"This toe, no.." he paused for effect,.. "These toes are now burnt."
No reaction from his audience.
"The weather, Jack, it changed within 5 seconds. The torrential down pour you heard, you pushed me out into, stopped, and it's blazing sunshine!"
Jack was unimpressed.
"You haven't been to Seattle have you?"
"It's more than that, it's unnatural – look for yourself!"
Daniel put his other sock on, cautiously avoiding his big toe, and uncurled his hat from his pocket. Jack crawled past him, remembering his shades at the last minute, and stayed on all fours to look outside the flap
Daniel waited for Jack's reaction, but saw his body swing to one side as Carter cursed loudly from the left.
He didn't know what Jack was looking at or what had happened to Sam so shoved an impatient head out to get a better view.
Carter was face down in the now dry dirt, where she had fallen, apparently getting out of the tent. She had tripped on a root, which had appeared out of nowhere. Instinct then rolled her over on to her back, as a tree, growing faster than the weather had changed, shot up just where her left eye had been a second before.
Stunned, all three of them watched it, as it weaved in and out of the main tent pole, reaching for the light. It pushed up the tent's apex, then, when the tent fell away backwards, as the obscenely enthusiastic plant grew, it revealed a stunned, squinting, Teal'c.
Teal'c frowned. Still wrapped in his sleeping bag, he clutched it tight to his chest, as if naked.
The whole performance had taken less than ten seconds.
Jack's draw dropped. Realising that this was weird, and weird often meant dangerous, he snapped, "Boots on, out, grab your gear."
After a few moments, the team were gathered, backs together, facing the uncertain weather forecast.
Sam's hair was standing up all over the place. It was quite long – even though it was short – and it needed more attention than the 30 seconds it had since she had woken up. Plus, her nose was bloody after landing on it, and her eye looked as if it was going to be multicoloured in the next few hours.
O'Neill surveyed his team before he decided what to do next.
"Hat, Carter."
"Sir?"
He pointed with his P90 into the sky.
"Sun."
"Oh, Sir, yessir."
Sam struggled to find her floppy regulation sun hat whilst keeping an eye on the ground. She did not want another shock from the unexpected flora on this planet.
"Carter.. You OK?"
"Yes, thank you." She scrunched her nose up. At least it wasn't broken.
Jack checked Teal'c, who surveyed the horizon with disdain. and Daniel who was still looking suspiciously up.
"What now? We can't exactly surround the planet can we?" Daniel remarked unhelpfully.
O'Neill was trying to think of how to get back to the Stargate – 10K, without losing any member of his team to a freak thunderstorm, or man- eating tulip, by trying to understand what was going on. He hoped that they had some better ideas than he was formulating.
"Moon, Sir."
Jack looked at Carter and narrowed his eyes.
"Don't even go there Carter. Planet, moon – this mission is turning out to be one pain in the ...."
"May I suggest," Teal'c interrupted, "that we make our way cautiously to the Stargate. This moon is far too unpredictable."
Jack nodded, agreeing with Teal'c. Despite the rich mineral deposits, and odd metallic make up of the rocks near the Stargate, it needed further study before sending another manned team. The MALP had arrived at night, and information had been recorded at hourly intervals. Nothing like this had happened. He could only think that it may have something to do with their arrival.
The heat had peaked at 34deg C – Daniel had brought his gadget ridden alarm clock; essential for those off world missions – and the temperature had started to drop. There were no more surprise eruptions of greenery, just the odd looking tree that now had a tent, and half of their supplies in it's upper branches. It had slowed its growth after 5 minutes and appeared to be flowering.
As they picked up what was left, Jack glanced back.
"Daniel – didn't you eat an apple last night?"
"I did actually – it was quite a well known one from Washington called a Granny Smith. I understand it originated in Australia and..." Daniel tailed off his apple-orientated dialogue, as he knew Jack would threaten to hit him.
"Why?" he finished, disappointed.
"Because I think you dropped a pip."
The temperature continued to fall as the hour progressed. Hats were taken off, jackets were zipped, and gloves were put on. The clouds started to build.
Sam did some theorising, and decided to make some of it public.
"These fluctuations cannot be natural."
"Have you been to Minnesota?" Jack murmured from inside his hood.
Sam started to see her breath form in clouds around her mouth. Before she continued, she noticed that the Colonel's lack of a shave meant he had ice crystals forming around the bottom half of his face. She found this strangely distracting.
"Sir, Minnesota notwithstanding," she loved that word – it was up there with 'in theory'- "this is unusual and it has something to do with our arrival."
"Ya don't say." Sometimes things were obvious even to Jack.
Teal'c was being stoic, although he hated the cold, and Daniel grumbled to himself, but managed to add to the conversation.
"The planet has the potential to be verdant with life, just the seed I left, in a few minutes, it was spectacular – but what's this with the weather – what's the point – I can't see any meteorological reason for the sudden changes?"
Sam thought she knew what it was. She had seen such things before, and although it was different circumstances she could see a similarity to the strange encounter a few years before with aliens, strange harmonics, and plants that liked being talked to.
"The moon seems to have reacted to us on a biological level, as if we're an irritant, and it's doing what it can to get rid of us."
The wind started to pick up as if on cue, and Jack turned to look at Daniel.
"Irritant. Now, that I can relate to."
A sidelong glance from Daniel suggested that they would not be sharing a tent again any time soon.
"I would suggest, O'Neill, that we try to interact as little as possible with the environment."
Teal'c was experiencing discomfort with the now biting wind. He did not have a hat. His head was exposed. The tops of his ears were actually staring to look a little blue. He wished for hair sometime soon.
Thirty minutes passed, and the wind got worse. It was icy cold. The team decided to take shelter behind an outcrop of rock that glittered with ice and mica.
Without words, they huddled together, feeling that it would not last long, even though something worse may come along next. They put one of the tents that they had salvaged from the apple tree attack over the top of them to help shelter against the icy blast.
Resting as best they could, Jack felt a strange sensation on the back of his neck. The hairs were starting to rise.
Whispering, as they were in such close proximity, he queried.
"Hey, can anyone else feel that?"
Daniel couldn't help himself.
"Why, what are you doing?"
"Feeling Daniel, as in eerie, X Files stuff."
"Sir?" Sam was surprised that he may refer to anything even vaguely supernatural.
"I'm afraid I now have," he paused, "the willies." Jack said it straight- faced. At least that's how Sam imagined it, as it was nearly pitch black outside.
There was silence, murmurings, the wind howled. SG1 howled. Teal'c howled. It was not a pleasant sound.
The wind died and the light returned.
Jack was uncertain as to what lay outside.
Teal'c cleared his throat. He was crouched almost in a foetal ball, but still Sam had managed to hang onto his right leg, and her head rested on his right shoulder. On his other side, resting against the rock, lay Daniel, in a similar position. Jack sat in front of him, facing him, still crouched, eyeing him suspiciously. He was not hanging onto the anchor that was Teal'c, but given Jacks expression, Teal'c did not doubt that he had huddled into some area he was not normally inclined to huddle.
Afterwards, all of them conceded that there must have been some empathic influence that affected them. No body really talked about the ten minutes they were in the dark and all elementally frightened. The debriefing was remarkably quiet on that point.
Jack stood up, and the tent stood up with him.
"Let's move on."
The terror forgotten for the moment, everyone gathered themselves together.
Daniel muttered under his breath.
"I really, I mean, really, need to pee."
"Daniel, so help me if you've been drinking anything that'll grow I'll tie you to it!"
Jack could not bear the thought of another battle with nature.
"I'll be.." Daniel couldn't really think of what to say, "I'll be quick."
A few moments later, regrouped, they started to walk away from the rock outcrop.
Behind them, unseen, a cacophony of colour erupted in bursts of enthusiasm and a new forest evolved.
Approaching the Gate, the weather had returned to what it was when they first arrived – a non-descript greyness.
The MALP was covered in an overgrowth of totally alien life forms. Some of them moved, some of them were plants, some of them looked like smaller, evolved versions of the MALP. They were just strange in a way that defied the average.
Jack shook his head, and turned away from the weirdness of it all.
"Let's just say that the locals were weird, a bit unfriendly, and unable to cope with people cooler than them."
"Sir, we may have polluted this planet beyond redemption."
"Carter – why do you always have to look on the dark side? Let's just say – we gave it something to think about."
Daniel dialled Earth, and as the vortex formed he sneezed.
Heading for home, Jack couldn't help but remark.
"I do NOT want to see what comes out of that. Will you use a goddamned tissue next time.."
The wormhole disappeared.
The horizon glittered with possibilities. Footprints started to sprout green and blue, and where they had last stood four mounds grew, and eventually formed recognizable features....
Renamed – for some reason the powers that be did not pick up the title and I've changed a couple of things.
Weird, Weird Weather, and Weeds
(Previously entitled - 5 Seasons in One Day)
The rain poured down into a seamless grey world – the atmosphere was so heavy with water that the horizon could only be imagined, and the earth was the same colour as the unbroken clouds.
Two green tents stood alone in the wilderness.
One of them appeared to be bulging out slowly first on one side and then the other. Suddenly the bulge strained heavily out on to one side, and the ensuing collapse of the individual on the inside of the tent nearly pulled the tent pegs out of the ground.
"For God's sake Daniel could you go outside to do that!"
There was silence for a moment.
"Sorry, look sorry, I just didn't want to get all..."
Before the apology could be completed, the tent flap opened, and a stunned archaeologist was pushed out into the rain.
"... wet."
He finished.
He looked around. No one was watching.
There was, in fact, no one to watch.
He had one sock on and one sock off. Both of his feet were now wet, but that didn't matter as the rest of him was quickly catching up.
Daniel looked up into the greyness that was the sky, and took his glasses off, squinting into the strange glare. There must have been a sun up there somewhere as it was so humid. He looked back down to attend to his glasses, which had steamed up. He cleaned them with his sock, pointlessly, and put them back on.
He tried to be positive. At least he wasn't sneezing.
"aaaahhhhTCHOOOO!"
So, what was there to be positive about on this godforsaken mess of a world?
Inexplicably the rain stopped and the clouds rolled back to show a pale blue sky, that quickly became azure.
Daniel blinked.
The clouds had gone, steam started to rise from the sodden earth.
He looked down at his mismatched feet. His sock less foot started to go pink from the toes up. He was getting sun burnt.
"Jeeeeeeeeezzz"
He jumped quickly back into the tent to the surprise of a dozy Colonel.
"What the hell is the matter with you Daniel? Do you want me to throw you out again?"
"No, Jack look.. Look this is amazing."
He showed Jack his foot.
"Yes, incredible as it may seem Daniel, I have seen your toes before and they are not a pretty sight."
Daniel shut his eyes in frustration, and shook his head.
"You are not the best person in the world to wake up to either Jack, pay attention for a change to what I'm trying to show you, and listen.."
Jack didn't answer; just sat cross-legged on his bedroll, mostly dressed, chin resting in his hand, which was in turn, propped on his knee. He silently promised himself that today would be the day when Daniel may find himself reacquainted with Oma.
"This toe, no.." he paused for effect,.. "These toes are now burnt."
No reaction from his audience.
"The weather, Jack, it changed within 5 seconds. The torrential down pour you heard, you pushed me out into, stopped, and it's blazing sunshine!"
Jack was unimpressed.
"You haven't been to Seattle have you?"
"It's more than that, it's unnatural – look for yourself!"
Daniel put his other sock on, cautiously avoiding his big toe, and uncurled his hat from his pocket. Jack crawled past him, remembering his shades at the last minute, and stayed on all fours to look outside the flap
Daniel waited for Jack's reaction, but saw his body swing to one side as Carter cursed loudly from the left.
He didn't know what Jack was looking at or what had happened to Sam so shoved an impatient head out to get a better view.
Carter was face down in the now dry dirt, where she had fallen, apparently getting out of the tent. She had tripped on a root, which had appeared out of nowhere. Instinct then rolled her over on to her back, as a tree, growing faster than the weather had changed, shot up just where her left eye had been a second before.
Stunned, all three of them watched it, as it weaved in and out of the main tent pole, reaching for the light. It pushed up the tent's apex, then, when the tent fell away backwards, as the obscenely enthusiastic plant grew, it revealed a stunned, squinting, Teal'c.
Teal'c frowned. Still wrapped in his sleeping bag, he clutched it tight to his chest, as if naked.
The whole performance had taken less than ten seconds.
Jack's draw dropped. Realising that this was weird, and weird often meant dangerous, he snapped, "Boots on, out, grab your gear."
After a few moments, the team were gathered, backs together, facing the uncertain weather forecast.
Sam's hair was standing up all over the place. It was quite long – even though it was short – and it needed more attention than the 30 seconds it had since she had woken up. Plus, her nose was bloody after landing on it, and her eye looked as if it was going to be multicoloured in the next few hours.
O'Neill surveyed his team before he decided what to do next.
"Hat, Carter."
"Sir?"
He pointed with his P90 into the sky.
"Sun."
"Oh, Sir, yessir."
Sam struggled to find her floppy regulation sun hat whilst keeping an eye on the ground. She did not want another shock from the unexpected flora on this planet.
"Carter.. You OK?"
"Yes, thank you." She scrunched her nose up. At least it wasn't broken.
Jack checked Teal'c, who surveyed the horizon with disdain. and Daniel who was still looking suspiciously up.
"What now? We can't exactly surround the planet can we?" Daniel remarked unhelpfully.
O'Neill was trying to think of how to get back to the Stargate – 10K, without losing any member of his team to a freak thunderstorm, or man- eating tulip, by trying to understand what was going on. He hoped that they had some better ideas than he was formulating.
"Moon, Sir."
Jack looked at Carter and narrowed his eyes.
"Don't even go there Carter. Planet, moon – this mission is turning out to be one pain in the ...."
"May I suggest," Teal'c interrupted, "that we make our way cautiously to the Stargate. This moon is far too unpredictable."
Jack nodded, agreeing with Teal'c. Despite the rich mineral deposits, and odd metallic make up of the rocks near the Stargate, it needed further study before sending another manned team. The MALP had arrived at night, and information had been recorded at hourly intervals. Nothing like this had happened. He could only think that it may have something to do with their arrival.
The heat had peaked at 34deg C – Daniel had brought his gadget ridden alarm clock; essential for those off world missions – and the temperature had started to drop. There were no more surprise eruptions of greenery, just the odd looking tree that now had a tent, and half of their supplies in it's upper branches. It had slowed its growth after 5 minutes and appeared to be flowering.
As they picked up what was left, Jack glanced back.
"Daniel – didn't you eat an apple last night?"
"I did actually – it was quite a well known one from Washington called a Granny Smith. I understand it originated in Australia and..." Daniel tailed off his apple-orientated dialogue, as he knew Jack would threaten to hit him.
"Why?" he finished, disappointed.
"Because I think you dropped a pip."
The temperature continued to fall as the hour progressed. Hats were taken off, jackets were zipped, and gloves were put on. The clouds started to build.
Sam did some theorising, and decided to make some of it public.
"These fluctuations cannot be natural."
"Have you been to Minnesota?" Jack murmured from inside his hood.
Sam started to see her breath form in clouds around her mouth. Before she continued, she noticed that the Colonel's lack of a shave meant he had ice crystals forming around the bottom half of his face. She found this strangely distracting.
"Sir, Minnesota notwithstanding," she loved that word – it was up there with 'in theory'- "this is unusual and it has something to do with our arrival."
"Ya don't say." Sometimes things were obvious even to Jack.
Teal'c was being stoic, although he hated the cold, and Daniel grumbled to himself, but managed to add to the conversation.
"The planet has the potential to be verdant with life, just the seed I left, in a few minutes, it was spectacular – but what's this with the weather – what's the point – I can't see any meteorological reason for the sudden changes?"
Sam thought she knew what it was. She had seen such things before, and although it was different circumstances she could see a similarity to the strange encounter a few years before with aliens, strange harmonics, and plants that liked being talked to.
"The moon seems to have reacted to us on a biological level, as if we're an irritant, and it's doing what it can to get rid of us."
The wind started to pick up as if on cue, and Jack turned to look at Daniel.
"Irritant. Now, that I can relate to."
A sidelong glance from Daniel suggested that they would not be sharing a tent again any time soon.
"I would suggest, O'Neill, that we try to interact as little as possible with the environment."
Teal'c was experiencing discomfort with the now biting wind. He did not have a hat. His head was exposed. The tops of his ears were actually staring to look a little blue. He wished for hair sometime soon.
Thirty minutes passed, and the wind got worse. It was icy cold. The team decided to take shelter behind an outcrop of rock that glittered with ice and mica.
Without words, they huddled together, feeling that it would not last long, even though something worse may come along next. They put one of the tents that they had salvaged from the apple tree attack over the top of them to help shelter against the icy blast.
Resting as best they could, Jack felt a strange sensation on the back of his neck. The hairs were starting to rise.
Whispering, as they were in such close proximity, he queried.
"Hey, can anyone else feel that?"
Daniel couldn't help himself.
"Why, what are you doing?"
"Feeling Daniel, as in eerie, X Files stuff."
"Sir?" Sam was surprised that he may refer to anything even vaguely supernatural.
"I'm afraid I now have," he paused, "the willies." Jack said it straight- faced. At least that's how Sam imagined it, as it was nearly pitch black outside.
There was silence, murmurings, the wind howled. SG1 howled. Teal'c howled. It was not a pleasant sound.
The wind died and the light returned.
Jack was uncertain as to what lay outside.
Teal'c cleared his throat. He was crouched almost in a foetal ball, but still Sam had managed to hang onto his right leg, and her head rested on his right shoulder. On his other side, resting against the rock, lay Daniel, in a similar position. Jack sat in front of him, facing him, still crouched, eyeing him suspiciously. He was not hanging onto the anchor that was Teal'c, but given Jacks expression, Teal'c did not doubt that he had huddled into some area he was not normally inclined to huddle.
Afterwards, all of them conceded that there must have been some empathic influence that affected them. No body really talked about the ten minutes they were in the dark and all elementally frightened. The debriefing was remarkably quiet on that point.
Jack stood up, and the tent stood up with him.
"Let's move on."
The terror forgotten for the moment, everyone gathered themselves together.
Daniel muttered under his breath.
"I really, I mean, really, need to pee."
"Daniel, so help me if you've been drinking anything that'll grow I'll tie you to it!"
Jack could not bear the thought of another battle with nature.
"I'll be.." Daniel couldn't really think of what to say, "I'll be quick."
A few moments later, regrouped, they started to walk away from the rock outcrop.
Behind them, unseen, a cacophony of colour erupted in bursts of enthusiasm and a new forest evolved.
Approaching the Gate, the weather had returned to what it was when they first arrived – a non-descript greyness.
The MALP was covered in an overgrowth of totally alien life forms. Some of them moved, some of them were plants, some of them looked like smaller, evolved versions of the MALP. They were just strange in a way that defied the average.
Jack shook his head, and turned away from the weirdness of it all.
"Let's just say that the locals were weird, a bit unfriendly, and unable to cope with people cooler than them."
"Sir, we may have polluted this planet beyond redemption."
"Carter – why do you always have to look on the dark side? Let's just say – we gave it something to think about."
Daniel dialled Earth, and as the vortex formed he sneezed.
Heading for home, Jack couldn't help but remark.
"I do NOT want to see what comes out of that. Will you use a goddamned tissue next time.."
The wormhole disappeared.
The horizon glittered with possibilities. Footprints started to sprout green and blue, and where they had last stood four mounds grew, and eventually formed recognizable features....