Authors Note: Thanks for the good reviews, guys. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I know some things were confusing. I will try to clear them up as I go along here.

Chapter 2

Brigadier General Jonathan "Jack" O'Neill looked over his desk at the three members of his old team, who also formed the upper echelon of the SGC just below him and his best advisors as well.

"So." He said, slowly, leaning back in his chair, the spring creaking slightly as he kicked his boots up on his desk and interlaces his fingers behind his head. "Let me get this straight, Daniel. Atlantis was only one city of how many?"

Daniel Jackson fidgeted in his seat a bit, looking at his friend as he, and Samantha Carter and Teal'c, looked back at him. "Uhm, Seven." He said slowly. "Seven cities."

"And why, pray tell, did we not know about this before, Daniel?"

Carter turned in her seat to scrutinize Daniel a bit more. "Yeah Daniel." She said. "I mean, we've been studying the ancients, or what little we could, for years now. Nothing we found, even among the data that Rodney McKay sent us in his download from Atlantis itself, ever hinted at any more then one true city. Why are we just finding it out now?"

"Indeed, Daniel Jackson, why?" Teal'c added, just so he could say he was participating.

Daniel sighed and unfolded his laptop, placing it on Jack's desk. He turned it sideways so everyone could see the screen and started tapping at the keyboard.

"Actually, it was always there. Well sort of." He admitted, a bit embarrassed. "The problem is, there are so many mythical cities on erth that after a while, we began to believe that each one was just a different name for Atlantis, passed down generation through generation, culture through culture, over millennia. Some we dismissed as just fanciful story, others we just ignored completely. But now We have the proof that some of them actually existed, far earlier then any of their legends tell us, in the same time span as Atlantis itself."

Jack still looked a bit skeptical. "Okaaaaaay. But I thought Atlantis and the Atlantians were just one single civilization back then."

Before Jack could say anything else, Carter straightened up a bit. "Well no, not really sir." She told her old CO. "I mean, there is a rule in science and technology that to keep and develop a certain technical base, you need a population large enough to develop it. The single city of Atlantis, even filled full with people, wouldn't have been able to support their vast knowledge base by itself."

"Ah, yes, but they did have colonies. Those count don't they?" Jack asked.

Daniel stepped in now. "Well yes and no, Jack. I mean, They had to have enough people to send to those colonies, right? Do you think a single city on their homeworld, being Earth at the time, that was no larger then Manhattan could support such a galactic power?"

Now this was something both Jack and Teal'c understood. Supporting a power or nation or planet took resources, something that military minds could understand. "Okay, I get it now. So their civilization wasn't just some small speck of people living in a flying city over Antarctica."

Daniel smiled, happy that Jack saw the logic in the argument. "No it wasn't. And from what I found out, working with Doctor Arliss and his assistant Roger Cairns the past two weeks is that the Atlantian Civilization wasn't as homogenous as we thought. In fact, it wasn't the Atlantian civilization at all. We have to a point been mistakenly using the terms Atlantian and Ancients back and forth when that isn't quite right. The Atlantians were just one /part/ of the Ancient's world, or one faction if you will. Atlantis was the capital." He tapped the keyboard some more and the map from the Sapphire Globe of the Atlantian Ancients appeared, though now in a format compatible with their understanding and translated.

"As you can see," The archeologist said, pointing the map of Earth that wasn't quite the Earth they knew presently, "These red dots around the world represent the Seven cities of the Ancients. The Major centers of Power on Earth at the time. Around them these yellow dots, which we activated a few days after the initial discovery, are small cities and towns and centers of industry." There were dozens upon dozens of these and while they weren't as heavily packed as close as Today's cities, they did cover the entire globe.

"The Seven cities were the building block of the entire empire of the Ancients. Each one had its own slightly differing culture, though they agreed on many points, and unique importance's to the Ancients empire."

Daniel pressed a key and slowly yellow dots began to turn black and fade away. "When the plague that would finally force the Atlantians to Pegasus came, all the smaller cities and colonies in space either slowly died out or were recalled to the major population centers. When the plague threatened to finally wipe out these last bastions of Ancients Civilization they realized that they had too many eggs in one basket. So they devised the plan to send each of the remaining colonies to different galaxies, to ensure that at least one of them would survive and keep the Ancients civilization alive in some form. The ones who remained behind from each of the cities and somehow survived the plague interbred between each other and from the Seven base cities and peoples of the Ancients every other Race on earth was born."

Sam whistled lowly at this. "That's incredible, Daniel. And it fits with what I said about the technical base as well. With so few people surviving the plague, the survivors didn't have enough of a population to support the high level of technology and over generations it was lost. Even when the Atlantian Ancients returned to Earth their population was so wiped out from this enemy that the Atlantis Expedition told us of, the Wraith, that they couldn't jumpstart the survivors civilization so they decided to ascend in stead. That's why when the Goa'uld stumbled across Earth, our ancestors were basically savages."

Jack held up his hands as if in surrender. "Okay! Alright! I get the idea." he exclaimed, then slumped a bit in his chair, sighing. "So. We what have we learned today, boys and girls? That There are, or at least were, Seven cities out there somewhere in the big ol mean universe? But do we know where exactly? Or even if they are still around? I mean, come one Daniel. We took a big enough risk on Atlantis and we KNEW they had returned to earth at some point. Nothing indicates that any of these other cities made it to where they were going or even tried to send someone back by ship or Stargate."

The three warriors, well two warriors and one warrior-scientist, looked at Daniel expectantly. The Archeologist could just shrug as he brought up another screen. "No, we don't know what their status is but we do know where they went. The Sapphire globe projected red lines, travel routes, from each city to a star map on the ceiling. I've had Sam's people go over it and They've been able to plot all the galaxies the Seven Cities went to, though we already knew which one Atlantis went to, and the nine chevron coordinates for each. And from some ancients writing I found in another chamber off the globe room I was able to translate the names of Each city and a little information about each."

Jack raised a brow at this. "What were they called?" he asked, actually curious about it.

Sitting back from his screen, Daniel took a moment to get the names straight in his head. He knew each one from various legends, but using them in a real world context was still something strange to him. "The Seven cities were Atlantis, Lemuria, Dorada, Avalon, Xanadu, Mu and Ys."

Both Sam and Jack's brows perked at some of the names. Even Teal'c seemed to recognize a few of them from what he had learned in his years among the Tauri.

"Sooooooo." Jack said, reaching into his desk and pulling out a yo-yo. A yellow one, his favorite actually. He hooked a finger into the small loop and started yo-yoing. "We know there are Seven Cities out there. We know There names and locations. We don't know their status and we have no way of even getting to them because our Only working ZPM is currently at one of the, Atlantis, along with the ship that transported it there to help defend against their little siege. And with as many people as we got stranded on Atlantis I doubt I could get the president or General Hammond at Homeworld security to put together another expedition, let alone seven. So what the hell do we do."

Daniel smiled. "Well, while you may not get an expedition force like Atlantis's, I bet you could get a small one at least."

"Daniel, we still don't have a ZPM." Carter interjected.

Daniel's smile became mischevious. "Well, that isn't quite true." He said, impishly. Jack eyes his young friend suspiciously.

"Daniel?" he asked slowly. "What are you hiding."

Daniel couldn't help it. He looked at his friend and laughed. "You know how you guys kept complaining about how we found the last ZPM right under our noses?" he asked.

"I did not complain about a ZPM being under my nose, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c said, though with a smirk instead of his old more dour straight face.

"Well yeah, true Teal'c. Anyways, I just so happen to have the locations of three ZPM's which I found among the writings."

Everyone looked at Daniel as if he had grown another head. He just pointed to a new map that had shown up on his laptop. It took at least a moment for the locations to register. It was, surprisingly, Jack who figured it out.

"They're on Mars!" he cried.

The others blinked. Daniel sat back in his chair and like Jack at the beginning of the meeting interlaced his fingers behind his head and kicked up his feet onto Jacks desk as he grinned. "Yep. Their on Mars. Under the Great Face."

Teal'c raised a brow in that way only aliens seem to be able to. "You mean the face that is on the covers of many of your worlds supermarket news tabloids?"

Daniel nodded.

"Yep. One and the same. Right under it's nose. Literally."