"So that's what had you up all night. Wow!"
I started at the sound of Daniel's voice and looked up from the microscope, finding that he had appeared at the door of my lab. He was holding a steaming mug and a paper plate with a Danish, and gaping at the quantum mirror across from my lab bench. Glancing at the clock, I was surprised to see it was 0546.
"That's right, it's morning," said Daniel, smiling sympathetically as he approached me. Daniel understood about pulling all-nighters without even noticing. "I came in early today, and Sergeant Harriman told me you'd never left, so I thought I'd bring you some breakfast." He set the mug and plate down next to me.
"Thanks," I responded. But Daniel's gaze had returned to the quantum mirror. Walking quickly over to it, he began peering inside one of the open hatches in its thick, rough-hewn frame.
"How'd you get it open?" he asked excitedly.
"Alternate-Sam told me about the access panels while we were working on that power booster for her reality's Stargate." I gestured toward the tangle of wires that now hung out of an opening in the mirror's slanted top. They trailed across the floor and into the hastily constructed apparatus on my lab bench. "She also gave me some pointers on the control interface, so I was able to cobble together a crude substitute for the mirror remote."
"Weird!" exclaimed Daniel, still peering inside the open hatch. "Doesn't look like machinery in there. The whole frame of the mirror is just stuffed with… well, it looks like wads of metallic cloth." He turned back toward me with a puzzled expression. "But didn't General Hammond order that the mirror be sent to Area 51 for demolition?"
"Yes, he did. Now that we know people can dial in from multiple alternate realities, we have to acknowledge the mirror is a huge security risk. But given the new information that Alternate-Sam provided, I persuaded him we shouldn't destroy the mirror without making another attempt to understand its technology."
An amused glint came into Daniel's eyes. Eyebrows twitching, he said, "You mean you begged him to let you play with it one last time, and he caved."
I had to smile. There was some truth to Daniel's words. Savvy man that he was, General Hammond had pointedly asked how well the "other Sam" understood the mirror technology. And I'd had to admit that, despite having known about the access panels for some time, she'd only made headway on the control interface. The reality-shifting mechanism itself was so alien she couldn't make heads or tails of it. And since she was essentially me, that strongly suggested I wouldn't be able to understand it, either. But I how could I not try? I had to see the mirror's bizarre innards for myself!
Using a pair of tweezers, I held up the small piece of gray "gauze" that I had been studying. How marvelously unbelievable that this bit of material contained the potential to build bridges to other realities! To the naked eye, the weave seemed almost smooth, giving little hint of the intricate structure I had seen under the microscope. But as I slowly turned it, the "cloth" sparkled strangely. Some of the flashes were amazingly intense. I suspected the material wasn't just reflecting light, but amplifying it. How did it do that, and what did it mean?
"Is that mirror-material?" exclaimed Daniel.
"Yes. I was able to remove a few small pieces. I'm hoping General Hammond will let me keep them even if the mirror is destroyed."
Daniel looked at the swatches of mirror-material scattered on my lab bench, and then at all the wires sprouting out of the mirror's frame, and then questioningly back at me. "If it's destroyed?"
Squirming a little, I said, "Since the mirror is likely to be demolished anyway, it's not important for my analysis to be completely non-destructive." The truth was, I'd been cutting more and more corners as the night wore on. Though I'd lost track of the exact hour, I hadn't lost the sense of being under time-pressure. "I'm supposed to brief General Hammond at 0700," I told Daniel, "and if I can't report that I've got a handle on unraveling the mirror's principles of operation, he'll go ahead with the demolition."
"So," asked Daniel, "have you got a handle on it?"
"Not really," I muttered. A surge of frustration hit me. I set the swatch of mirror-material down among the other samples and threw up my hands. "Actually, not at all. I can't even begin to guess how this crazy stuff works! For one thing, the mirror seems to be operating normally despite the loss of these pieces." Turning to my jury-rigged mirror-controller, I flicked the "on" switch.
The dark surface of the mirror came to life, showing an empty corridor in the SGC. "How about that," I said. "No Jaffa in the picture. But judging by the scorches on the walls, they're somewhere nearby." Working on the mirror all night had been disturbing. I'd caught glimpses of over a hundred alternate realities, and the great majority featured Jaffa and Goa'uld stomping around inside the familiar spaces of the SGC. "It's humbling to look in that mirror and see the fate we've escaped by the skin of our teeth," I said.
Daniel nodded. "Or to step through that mirror and see, hear, touch, smell, and taste it. To actually experience what might have been…" Daniel's brow furrowed. "Isn't General Hammond being too hasty about discarding the mirror? After all, we just saved an alternate Earth from a Goa'uld invasion by putting them in touch with the Asgard." Gesturing toward my apparatus, he said, "Now that we have a way to control our mirror again, think of the possibilities. Couldn't we use it to contact some incredibly advanced and benevolent race that doesn't even exist in our reality? A race that would help us even more than the Asgard have?"
Leave it to Daniel to focus on the potential up-side of any situation. "If that were possible, then it would also be possible we'd run into some unimaginably monstrous race even worse than the Goa'uld," I pointed out. "But, actually, though quantum theory does posit infinite alternate realities, the mirror can't possibly reach more than a tiny fraction of them. For the mirror to establish a link between two realities, there has to be a quantum mirror on the other side, too. That means the other reality has to be enough like ours to include the chain of events that led to the quantum mirror being built. And there apparently needs to be a degree of spatial co-location between the two mirrors, in addition to the temporal co-location. That's what Alternate-Sam believed. And I think she was right, because I've been flipping through realities all night and I've yet to see one that looks as if it's not Earth. So I don't think the mirror can reach realities in which its counterpart isn't located in the same spatial neighborhood. On the same planet, at least."
Daniel pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. "I see what you're saying." Then he cocked his head thoughtfully. "So anything we see in this mirror would be an alternate Earth?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "And it would have to be an alternate Earth that has a quantum mirror on it."
Daniel looked at me, eyes alight with that passionate curiosity I understood so well. "Wonder what the limits are?" he mused. "How 'alternate' could things get, and still result in a quantum mirror arriving on Earth?"
We smiled at one other. The question was intriguing. "Guess it won't hurt to take a peek," I said. Turning to my mirror-controller, I slid every lever to the "maximum difference" setting. "Okay. That should do it." I looked up eagerly, curious to see what strange vista might be revealed. But the quantum mirror's trapezoidal frame held only darkness.
"Why isn't it working, Sam?" asked Daniel, sounding crestfallen.
I glanced at my readouts. "It is working. It must just be dark on the other side."
Daniel went and stood so close to the mirror that his nose was practically touching it. He even cupped his hands around his eyes, like someone trying to look out into the night through the window of a lighted room.
"Careful, Daniel!" I exclaimed. "Don't touch the mirror!"
"Are you kidding? I'm the one who accidentally fell 'Through the Looking Glass' the first time, remember? There's no way I'd make that mistake again." His words were muffled, because he still had his face right up against the mirror with his hands cupped around it. The edges of his hands seemed to be about a millimeter away from the surface.
I slid off my chair and came around the lab bench. He was making me nervous.
"I see something, Sam! There's a little red light over there. No, it's gone now. Wait, there it is again! It's blinking."
Before I knew it, I found myself doing the same thing as Daniel – standing right in front of the mirror, trying to peer into the darkness on the other side. And then I saw it, too. "Yes! You're right, Daniel. There was a small light over…" My words broke off when a strange tingle flashed through my body. With disorienting suddenness, I found myself standing in the dark.
"Sam!" Daniel's agitated voice came out of the darkness beside me. "You touched the mirror!"
"I did not!" I protested. "Besides, if I touched the mirror, how come you're here, too?"
"You're the physicist; you tell me."
Daniel's voice had acquired a sharp edge, as it often did when he was tense. I ignored him. The analytical part of my brain was racing through possibilities. It always kicked into high-gear when faced with the unexpected, insulating me from the distractions of emotion. Putting out my hands, I touched Daniel on my left. On my right, I encountered shelving crowded with unfamiliar objects – which certainly didn't exist in my lab. So that eliminated any dim hope that maybe the lights had just gone out at the SGC. In front of me, in the same relative position as before, I could feel the smooth, cool surface of the quantum mirror. Smooth, cool, and dark.
Oh, no. Pushing down my rising anxiety, I said, "I don't think either of us touched the mirror. It's possible that removing material from the inner mechanism created a small instability in the mirror's reality-shifting field. If the field expanded outward for a split-second, right when we were standing so close…" I wanted to kick myself. I should have realized the danger.
"Okay," said Daniel. "That explains how we got here. But I can feel the quantum mirror right in front of me, so why can't we see your lab? Why have we lost the connection?"
"Evidently," I said, "the passage of objects through an unstable field caused the mirror to… turn off."
There was a pregnant pause. And then Daniel said, "Sam, you didn't break the quantum mirror, did you?"
Daniel had voiced my fear. There was a distinct possibility that our passage through the weakened field had broken our mirror. And if that were the case, then no matter what we did with the mirror on this side, we'd never be able to get back to our own particular reality.
Absurdly, what came into my head was that old superstition that breaking a mirror would give you seven years of bad luck. If you got seven years for breaking a regular mirror, how much bad luck did you get for breaking a quantum mirror?
Then again, we might not have to worry about years of bad luck. If this reality contained living counterparts of Daniel and myself, we'd start to suffer from entropic cascade failure within a couple of days. I wasn't sure how long it would take for the effect to kill us, but it wouldn't be very long. Probably no more than another couple of days. How unlucky was that?
Get a grip, Sam. What would the Colonel say? As soon I thought of the Colonel, I felt calmer. I knew exactly what he'd say.
"Our mirror isn't broken, Daniel. Start looking for this mirror's remote."
"You mean feeling for it," he said.
Soon, we were both stumbling around in the dark, bumping into shelves and passing our hands frantically over a clutter of objects. We appeared to be in some sort of storage room. Daniel's little blinking light turned out to be attached to an unidentifiable apparatus. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I became able to make out a few outlines by the little light's intermittent glow, but it was too dim to see any details.
"Hey," said Daniel, "I found the door."
"Don't open it! We're not here to explore. Our goal is to get back to our own reality as quickly as possible. We need to find the remote for this mirror, and it's most likely stored in here, too."
"If they have a remote. After all, we don't." After this unhelpful comment, I heard some clicking and rattling coming from Daniel's direction, and then, "Damn. I found the light switch, but it doesn't work. And the door's locked."
I should have known he'd try the door no matter what I said. I loved Daniel like a brother; but, like a brother, he could be a little annoying at times.
"Daniel," I said, "we need to be more systematic about this. The mirror remote has a very distinctive shape, so I'm sure we'll be able to recognize it. We just have to go through every shelf and examine every object, one by one. Why don't I search this half of the room, while you search the other?" Daniel agreed, and we began the tedious business of methodically searching the shelves by touch alone. We'd only been at it for about five minutes when there was a sudden noise. I instinctively ducked behind some shelving just as hinges creaked and the room was flooded with light.
A man stood framed in the open doorway, holding a kerosene lantern. Judging by the shocked expression on his face, we hadn't ducked fast enough. He'd seen us.
"Don't be afraid," called Daniel. "We come in peace."
The door slammed shut, and I heard the lock turning. A few seconds after that, an alarm began to clamor.
"Guess he didn't believe me," said Daniel.
"I can't blame him. If I discovered that strangers had materialized inside a locked storeroom, I'd sound the alarm, too."
"Did you notice the clothes he was wearing?" asked Daniel. "They looked hand-made. Pre-industrial. I wonder what that means?"
"I think we're going to find out. Whether we like it or not."
Soon, I heard the trample of many boots. The door burst open.
"Don't shoot! We're unarmed!" I cried, showing myself and putting my hands in the air.
Daniel did the same and repeated, "We come in peace!" I couldn't help imagining the look that would have gotten from the Colonel.
"Come out with your hands on your heads," someone barked.
We complied, and found ourselves standing in a dimly lit corridor, surrounded by about two-dozen men in strange uniforms. They were armed with a motley collection of weapons. Some had zats, some had staff weapons, and others had pistols. Curiously, all the pistols seemed to be older models. But the real kicker was that the soldiers had swords slung from their belts, too.
Even though the zats and staff weapons proved the Goa'uld had been here, I felt reassured. The soldiers weren't Jaffa, and the Goa'uld rarely let mere humans use their weapons. That strongly suggested these people weren't currently under Goa'uld rule.
"Who are you?" demanded one of the soldiers. Judging by his golden epaulets, he was in charge. "How did you get inside the fortress?"
The fortress? Shifting my attention from the soldiers to our surroundings, I realized with a start that we were inside the SGC. It was amazing how different it looked by the unsteady light of a kerosene lantern.
No, wait – it wasn't just the lighting that was out-of-date. To be sure, our Cheyenne Mountain had some ancient equipment in it. I'd run across stuff that had probably been in place since the early sixties, when the installation was first built. But as I studied the worn switch boxes and conduits on the walls here, I got the impression that everything was several decades old, and some of it was clearly not in working order. Even the colored stripes on the floor were nearly scuffed-out.
I was struck by a dizzying sense of unreality. This was the same corridor I'd walked down nearly every working day of my life – and yet, it wasn't. It was supposed to be part of a high-tech installation, but in the wavering shadows cast by the lantern, it felt more like the hallway of some medieval castle. And I was standing in it with my hands on top of my head, being menaced by men armed with zats and swords.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I tried to re-orient myself. This was my first time through the quantum mirror. Being immersed in an alternate reality felt very different from just looking into the mirror and seeing one. I'd been through the Stargate many times, of course, but that hadn't prepared me for this. The Stargate merely took you to another planet; it didn't drop you down the rabbit-hole.
I opened my eyes and looked at Daniel, remembering his comments about stepping "Through the Looking Glass." The lantern light painted his face in chiaroscuro contrasts. For a second, he seemed as distant as one of those long-dead people who gaze out at you from Old Masters portraits. Then he gave me a small, empathic smile, and I immediately felt more anchored. I knew that smile. Daniel was really here, and really Daniel. He and I might be only half the team, but we knew how to feed off each other's strengths. I smiled back at him.
Daniel fixed his attention on the man with the epaulets and said, "I'm sorry if we've alarmed you. We didn't mean to trespass. My name is Dr. Daniel Jackson, and this is my colleague, Major Samantha Carter. We're peaceful explorers who came here by accident, through the quantum mirror in your storeroom." He jerked his elbow toward the door of the storeroom, since his hands had to stay on his head. "All we really want is to get back to our own world as quickly as possible."
Daniel's voice had acquired that special sincerity it always got when he was making first contact with a strange culture. And this one was definitely very strange. I was glad he was here to exercise his expertise.
But Daniel's anthropological instincts had failed this time, because the man with the epaulets looked even more hostile than before. "Do you think we're stupid?" he asked, lip curling in disgust. "There's no chappa'ai in that storeroom."
"They're spies, Captain," cried one of the other men. "Or perhaps assassins! They're here to kill the King!" At this suggestion, a visible wave of anger swept through the soldiers. Bodies tensed, grips tightened on weapons, and expressions grew even harder.
"No!" said Daniel. "We mean no harm to any of you!" His earnest blue gaze flicked over the crowd, meeting the eyes of several of the common soldiers before returning to the leader. "You're right, sir, there's no chappa'ai in that room. But there's another device that's also a portal to other worlds. It looks like a large mirror, with a thick, stone frame. Um, perhaps you could consult with whoever's responsible for the equipment in that storeroom. Perhaps they would know of it."
Maybe I'd spent too much time around the Colonel, but that seemed overly optimistic to me. I didn't think these people knew what the quantum mirror did. Actually, I was beginning to suspect no one here would know the first thing about quantum mechanics.
"It's true," said a voice from the back of the crowd. It was the man who'd discovered Daniel and myself in the storeroom. He was still holding the lantern. "There is a device such as they describe. But no one has ever come through it, as if it were a chappa'ai."
"Then we must be the first to visit you," Daniel quickly asserted. "Though our visit was unintentional. As I said, we came through by accident. We bear no ill will toward your King. We know nothing about him."
Daniel had apparently said the wrong thing again, because another wave of anger moved through the crowd. "Now they insult the King," muttered one of soldiers.
"You pretend to know nothing of the man who forced Ra to leave Earth?" demanded the Captain, his voice full of outrage. "The man who freed the entire world from the evil yoke of the Goa'uld?"
"I meant no insult!" exclaimed Daniel. "I am only an ignorant stranger in your world. If I have given offense in my ignorance, I apologize with all my heart. For now that I know of his deeds, it is clear to me that your King is a very great man."
This seemed to mollify the soldiers. I decided to speak up. "We don't belong here," I said. "We need to get back to our own world. Please, could you help us? I promise you, once we get back through the quantum mirror, no one from our world will ever bother you again."
"Unless your King desires otherwise," added Daniel. "Our world is different, but we do know some things about the Goa'uld. And the Goa'uld's enemies. We might know things that could help you."
I winced a little. If the Colonel were here, he'd probably think that was too much information. But I understood where Daniel was coming from. We'd just helped save an alternate Earth from a Goa'uld invasion. This alternate Earth had already freed itself from a Goa'uld regime – much as the Ancient Egyptians had. Apparently, in this reality, Ra had been kicked off the Earth twice. But he'd obviously left it in sorry shape. He'd knocked these people back into the Middle Ages. It was natural to want to help them.
The Captain frowned. "Could what they say be true?" he asked the man with lantern. "Could that storeroom contain a doorway to other worlds?"
"I don't know, sir," the man replied. "I do little more than clean in there. Only Councilor Cray would know such things."
The Captain turned back toward us. "I've a mind to let Councilor Cray examine you," he warned. "He was a scientist in the Before-Time. You couldn't get anything past him." He watched us carefully, apparently waiting for signs of nervousness.
"The Before-Time," said Daniel, savoring the odd phrase. "That means the time before the Goa'uld invaded, doesn't it?"
The Captain looked disgusted again. "Of course that's what it means."
Daniel and I exchanged hopeful glances.
"We would be honored to meet with Councilor Cray," said Daniel.
"Yes," I agreed. "We would very much like to speak with him." Maybe there was someone here who knew about quantum mechanics, after all.
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