Disclaimer: Andromeda belongs to Fireworks Productions and Tribune Entertainment, SG-1 belongs to MGM, Gekko Entertainment; they are not mine. The story picks up immediately after "Vanguard" in the For Want of a Nail Series.
"Enigma" by Karen
Trance wondered how she would explain how the presence of the five strangers from an alternate reality timeline would effect the outcome of the current shift in events among their own timeline. It was difficult enough knowing that Dylan Hunt who should have died over three hundred years ago when his ship became trapped on the edge of a event horizon of a black hole, should have died, but didn't affected the time stream.
Now she had five individuals representing a government from Old Earth that are no strangers to alternate dimensions wandering around with Beka trying to find a world where the it had been rumored a another quantum mirror was located.
With it they can return to their own time line. Trance has never much bothered with the scientific and fundamental laws of physics, which govern such events and spatial phenomena, she has always more of a feel your way as you go. After all it's the nature of her people. She knows that her friends and crew mates have accepted that about her, even before she underwent the abrupt change from her bubbly purple self to the more serious gold older incarnation.
Trance wanted to speak with Major Samantha Carter again, who oddly enough understands at least a little of Trance's problem is like, but Carter is a scientist and a soldier, which might limit her ability to think effectively enough outside of the box.
On the edge of the world designated as "Schroeder's End, Beka at the helm of the Eureka Maru sets down on the edge of an embankment, going through the final pre-landing checks and announcing their arrival to her passengers. Jack O'Neill, Samantha Carter and Teal'C wait at the aft air lock while Seamus Harper gear up to go out and explore the planet.
Their first glimpse of the planet is not one that encourages a great deal of excitement. The planet has no name, only a numbered designation in the galactic database, and it's big, rocky, and gray, and holding only the bare minimum of the necessary mixtures of gases to make for a breathable atmosphere. They would not have even come here if Trance had not assured them that somewhere on the surface on the planet was a way to return their guests to their proper universe.
The rocky terrain crumbled and crunched under their booted feet, strung in a ragged line of two by two, with Captain Dylan Hunt leading the way, much to the grumbling disapproval of Colonel Jack O'Neill, who would have much preferred to be the one calling the shots.
After the first half-hour after being paired with him, and having to listen to his sarcastic comments, Captain Beka Valentine finally spun on her heel. Stepping into his direct line of sight the said: "Would you like us to split off from the main group so the you boys can hash it out?"
"Beka!'
"What? It's not like we've all suddenly been struck deaf and blind, the sooner this is over the better, we've got too many chiefs and not enough Indians, as Harper would say, so let's settle this." Beka said, balling her hands into fists and planting them on her hips.
Jack looked at the furious blond woman, mouth set in a grim, determined line, the wind blowing in from a northeasterly direction tousling her and blow subtle designs through the short chin-length strands, feet spread wide apart of the hard ground.
With not much effort on his part, suddenly he remembered that they were all depending on the good graces of the crew of the Andromeda to find them a way to get back home. An unconscious moves on his part and he felt the weight of his bad mood lift from his shoulders. "All right, all right, you're in charge, Captain Hunt. I guess it only makes sense, because right now you're the one with the most knowledge of the given situation. "Lead the way."
Several hours into the march, Daniel Jackson wondered if their new friends knew exactly where they were going if they were only wandering around in circles. He turned to Sam and said: "I could have sworn we'd passed by that same patch of scraggly scrub grass a no more than half an hour ago." He raised one hand to point out a clump that poked up out of the hard-packed ground like the bristly hair of a rock troll buried underneath the surface. "I don't like this situation any more than you do, Daniel, but we will all have to be more paitent."
"I am trying to be patient, but it's not working very well," Daniel replied.
"I know," Sam smiled. "I'm still turning over and over in my mind of any possibly way that we could have missed, that no Gate exists in this universe."
"If it did, could we try and send a message back to our folks back home?"
"I have one question," Teal'C said, suddenly, "Why do they call this planet Schroeder's End?"
"It's the short version of the name," Harper answered. "What is everyone staring at, I actually did learn something about this stuff, you know. I'm not just some glorified grease monkey, thank you for much." Harper sniffed if half-hearted offended dignity and resumed telling the SG-1 team the rest of the story of how the planet got its name.
"A lot of folk, colleagues it's said, thought Schrodinger a genius, an eccentric genius, but his theories were dismissed as being too impractical."
"Figures," Jackson mutterd.
"He theorized that a kind of gateway existed, or could be created that would link alternate realties and universe together. " Harper shuffled his booted feet and kicked at a loose rock in frustration, "of course this all happened over three hundred years ago before the fall of the Commonwealth."
"What became of the good doctor?" Sam asked.
"Don't know, he got tenured, was told to behave and stop any more dangerous research into proving or disproving the existence of alternate universes, and died an old man." Harper finished, shrugging his shoulders to adjust the fall of the pack on his shoulders.
"As I said, that's all I was able to get from the ship's computer library before we set out on this crazy mission, but how the planet got named after him, I haven't the foggiest."
Sam turned to look at Trance and ask her, but she had a look on her face that either meant she was in deep thought, merely physically present, but her mind far away.
The others seemed content to leave her undisturbed, so Sam wondered if she should say anything. The debate became a moot point when she realized the terrain was gradually sloping downward, and the light in the sky above began to from a dull slate gray to a faint purple, and the first stars glimmered, pinpricks of light in configurations that she had never seen before. Sam looked up and was startled when Trance suddenly broke her self-imposed silence:
"We've arrived," Trance whispered, breaking the sudden, hushed awkward silence.
"Exactly where is here?" Doctor Jackson asked, taking his glasses off and rubbing the grit and dirt from them as best he could with the hem of his shirt.
"Why not ask the entity yourself?" Trance replied, in a very reasonable tone, as if it were the most natural thing to do.
"Indeed," a deep male voice echoed the source of the voice difficult to isolate from the sound of the wind.
In front of them stood a pair of marble pillars, and between those pillars, a boulder with its center hollowed out to form a kind of natural doorway stood on end. Swirling in the center of the gaping hole was much like staring into the swirling eddies of an ocean, constantly moving, constantly changing. As Daniel Jackson moved closer, with Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill and Teal'C brought up the rear, Daniel realized that the images were not just a blur of color and motion, they were actual scenes of places at the same time familiar and unfamiliar; it was a disorienting sensation..
"What are you machine or living being?" Beka asked.
"I am neither a machine, nor a sentient being, by the terms that you know. I, merely, " the voice paused, as if thinking over the question or its response, or both, then it replied. "I am."
"Welcome, travelers, I am the Guardian of Forever," the deep voice that had responded to Trance's initial question intoned. "What brings you here, though you should be aware, long ago, longer than any of you can possibly imagine, a great Race went through me to another Age."
"Could it be?" Carter whispered. "Maybe this is where the Ancients started from!"
"I think that's stretching things a bit, Carter," Jack O'Neill replied. "Still, it would be an awfully big coincidence, if it were true." If this thing is for real, and we've not all been played for fools, then you're certain we can just ask this ah, "guardian' to show us the way home, back to our own universe, right?"
"Essentially, that is correct, Colonel O'Neill."
"Lovely, a quantum mirror, but this one has a personality." I could do without the personal touch," he muttered under his breath.
"So, we just ask it to find the proper coordinates for our universe, and we step through the doorway?" Sam asked.
"More or less" Trance shrugged.
"I feel so much better now," Jack sighed. "Somehow, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
For long moments they weighed the pros and cons of using this alien piece of technology to get home, the entity began to sift through various images at is disposal, somehow knowing how to tailor them to its present visitors, showing the mountain that was Cheyenne Mountain base, home of the Star Gate Command, people that they knew, some living, some dead. The transition between events and times moved as fluidly as the cascading rush of a waterfall plunging down a steep cliff. It was too dizzying to watch and make resembled a logical coherent whole, Daniel thought, while trying to follow the shifts made his head hurt, and took his attention off the images long enough to put his glasses back on.
The liquid images were backlit with a faint tinge of purple and silver, like a matte black frame of a painted canvas.
"What the hell, we've come this far, I say we go for it," Jack finally decided. "I'm not making it order, folks, so it's up to you if you want to go through with it."
"We're with you, Sir," Sam replied immediately.
"Ditto," Doctor Jackson added and Teal'c merely nodded his acknowledgement.
"Before we go, I just have one question, when we get back, will anyone on the other side be aware that we were gone, or that any changes took place?" Sam asked.
"Doubtful, but the probability does exist." Trance answered. "There is no such thing as a perfect possible future, or in your case," she shrugged, and offered the SG-1 team members a faint smile, 'a perfect, possible past. Although, sometimes I do wish that it were.
"Huh?" Daniel said, unable for the moment, to come up with anything more coherent. Not for the for the first time since he'd met the woman known only as Trance Gemini, she had managed to utterly flummox him with her contradictions, on the surface seem to make perfect sense to her. However, her crewmembers didn't seem to mind, or had learned how to take them in stride.
"Great, just great, well then if we're all decided, let's do this." Jack sighed.
"For the record, thank you for getting us this far, we would never have known about this without your help," Carter said, turning to face Captain Hunt and his crew.
"You are welcome." Dylan smiled.
Jack stepped forward, shoulders hunched as if unconsciously expecting a blow or some kind of protective force field that would hinder any forward movement or intrusion through the doorway, he was only a little disappointed when he encountered little or no resistance from the Guardian.
'This was very different', to his way of thinking, 'from stepping through the wormhole created by a star gate.' He had one foot at the threshold of the doorway when he swiveled his head around and turned to look back at the crew of the Andromeda. "Thanks, for everything." With that he turned around and stepped through the gateway the others only a short step behind him, and then everything disappeared in a breathy but surprisingly little heat and light.
Continued in part 3: How the Other Half Lives
