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Space/Time-Coordinates: (September 12nd 2005 [4:30 pm] -Leslie Winkle's lab )

Howard is up on a ladder adjusting a vent. Leslie is in the room giving directions. Whiteboards covered in equations cover the walls. A complicated array of lasers, prisms and detectors is underneath the vent set up on a table.

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"A little to the left." Leslie winkle said.

It was my fourth project of the day after lunch and the list was taking a while to burn through.

Kripke's laser was a easy fix. The power coupler solder point was half melted causing the laser to sputter. Seemed like there was some issue with the air conditioning. Some rooms were freezing cold, and others way too hot.

"Now?" I asked.

"Almost there." She moved a bit further behind me.

I was stretched out on a short aluminum ladder adjusting the air vent. Apparently the cold air from the vent was playing havoc with atmospheric distortion causing any laser experiments to be off, as the beam needed to be unwavering.

"You know, I don't think any amount of me adjusting the vents will help." I absently said, thinking about what to do, knowing about the existence of aliens. Maybe. Maybe wormhole extreme was just a tv show and Stargate didn't exist.

Because Honesty?

That reality would be terrifying.

Aliens could attack the planet at any moment. The gate could go critical and explode taking half the planet with it. Dangerous viruses and replicator robots could overthrow everything Terminator Skynet style.

And while I was -maybe- altered genetically into a Lantean Ancient, the potential to be ascended didn't mean I was one.

It looked like my genetic code was altered. But to what? I was taller, stronger, and smarter. Logic dictated that it had to be something special. Something extraordinary. In the Stargate universe, Ancient ascension was the pinnacle powerup. And I was powered up.

But only slightly.

My cells were still the same. I looked, breathed, and acted like normal. Swapping out the nucleus only had a cumulative effect after many hundreds of cell divisions.

Seven years.

That's how long it took for all the cells in a human body to replace itself.

Right now I was only slightly above average. My tech ideas only a result of being a huge nerd and gifted with vastly more processing power than I was used to.

I needed to find some way to survive and thrive until the Ancient cells would overtake a majority of my body.

Anywhere between three to five years before my full potential became evident.

What I'd give for a goa'uld sarcophagus….That could power me up in no time.

At the same time, I wanted to stay as far away from the goa'uld as possible.

Far, far away.

"How's this?" I said, having finished bending the vent planes so cold air would blow off the experimental area.

"Eeeeehhhhh. Getting there bucko." Leslie said looking at the board. "Try it a little more over to the left."

"Let me see what the distortion pattern is first." I got off the ladder and looked at the table.

A helium oxygen laser was shining a beam towards a series of refractors and prisms. The beam was split and combined at multiple stages of its journey before heading off into a series of detectors. Looking close to the table I could see there was a heat haze as cold air from the vent fell onto the table.

Being denser than the surrounding hot Californian September air, it caused ripples and waves to appear in the path of the beam.

"Well," Leslie said, "at least it's progress."

"Really?" I said. "Because it looks like it just made it worse."

Instead of a single column of cold air affecting the laser at the discharge site, it was a myriad of smaller points all through the table.

"Would you be okay with me getting a airplane exhaust hood and having all the cold air blow into the office?" I asked. "The only other option I can think of would be getting the university to turn this vent off."

Leslie thought about it for a moment, tapping her chin with her index finger idly.

"Mmm.. I suppose so, but only if you can weld it to the grate." She said. "I'd rather not have it fall onto the prisms or leak air."

"Alright," I said heading towards the door, "I'll be back in a bit with a Epoxy and some aluminum sheeting for the vent."

I wandered over to my office and got all the necessary equipment while still pondering what to do.

Let's run with the assumption that Stargate is real. I wouldn't be thrown into another reality for a elaborate Being to play a tv show worthy prank. It would be better to assume everything was real roughly accurate to what I remember the tv shows portraying. What could I do?

There's no way I could show up at Cheyenne mountain and tell general Hammond everything the Stargate program should be doing.

I'd get jailed instantly.

Not to mention what other people would want if I revealed future knowledge….. not it be far safer to go for a Machiavellian approach and NEVER under any circumstance say anything.

What I needed was some way to get my ideas to the people on Stargate command without outing myself as the source, I thought heading back to Leslie's lab.

"Here they are," I said grunting hefting the tools onto a small side table. "I swear there's something wrong with the lasers in the whole department today."

Let's see…. all the tools, check. Materials to weld, check. Only thing left to do is turn the air off while I worked so liquid epoxy wouldn't spatter everywhere. I turned to the corner of the room where the thermostat was and saw Leslie ignoring me, focused on a whiteboard instead.

She was doodling equations on several boards, spanning the side of the room. Completely engrossed in her work. I walked over closer and snuck a peek over her shoulder.

Part of Hindenburg's uncertainty principle here, light refraction and quantum information retention there, Einstein's general relativity…

"Is that part of a equation for making a quasi quantum optical computer system?" I asked startling Leslie.

"Jesus!" She jumped a bit in the air started and threw a marker at me. "Make a bit more noise coming into the room next time!"

Past Howard was a dick to Leslie, my memories supplied. Always hitting on her at every opportunity, blatant sexual harassment, and the occasional snide remark.

No wonder she didn't like me.

To be honest, most of my relationships were this way. I'd have to change things drastically soon if I was to live a life not being ostracized. I had to start taking steps making it up to people soon. Leslie Winkle was actually a pretty cool person. Plus, I needed more people to hang out with than just the guys.

"Sorry Leslie." I said. "I'll make more noise next time." Turning to the whiteboards I looked closer at her equations. As far as I could see everything was right….well mostly. Despite not knowing mathematics to such a great degree my gaze kept gravitating towards one small section of the board. The lower right quadrant looked… off for some reason. Wrong. But I couldn't picture how.

"Hey," I said gesturing at the collection of whiteboards as a whole, "What is this?"

Leslie looked at me.

Must be odd for Howard not to make everything a innuendo and hit on her. Carefully guarded she began talking. "You're mostly right," she said gesturing at the board, "This is just a idea I had a few weeks ago that i'm working on. I had a idea of how to make a optical computer chip that uses laser pulses to transmit information, but i'm running into a issue of having the logic circuits transmit electric pulses. WIthout that its not going to work. The information is just flowing faster than the transmitters can tolerate."

Huh, so that's what it was. Lets see, the laser would blink rapidly in binary, thousands of blinks per second with each light pulse carrying gigabytes of potential information. It went into a prism splitter which split the beam in half causing each to go through a series of Logic gates. Then the beams combined and the waves and crests either combined synergistically or canceled each other out. Theoretically, if this worked as intended then using one beam of light you could calculate multiple variables simultaneously. Essentially a crystal computer.

Just like the Lanteans.

However - the speed of light was way faster than any electric gate could ever hope to keep up with. While the logic of this idea was sound, technology would be centuries behind catching up to a working prototype.

"What if you replaced the gate with more prisms?" I asked.

"Wouldn't work." Leslie shook her head dismissively. "Id have to have the prisms set up the exact nanoscale needed for solving whatever equation was being calculated, and at that point why even bother?"

"Good point." I said.

We both stared at the equation whiteboard glumly.

"Well!" I suddenly said turning around to the pile of epoxy and metal I had stashed in the side of the room. " I should probably get to this." Moving over I started mixing the epoxy concentration needed to adhere a ninety degree elbow bend onto the vent. "Good luck with that."

"Wait that's it?" Leslie asked looking at me strangely.

"What's it?"

"You know," she began. "you hit on me creepily, I reject you and call you names. You try to say something with some sort of innuendo and I turn it right back into a insult."

Leslie was looking at me with her head tilted and shoulders raised. A single arched brow and bunched up forehead showed the unease she felt. Confusion. Nothing verbal, but her body language was screaming 'Who the fuck is this person?'.

"Oh yeah." I said climbing the short ladder one handed, the other carrying the elbow bend. "Turns out being in a coma and experiencing some traumatic shit firsthand changes you as a person-" Getting on top of the ladder I pushed the bottom of the vent bend into place to hold it. Id have to stay here for a couple minutes anyway, so might as well patch things up with Leslie.

"- And I thought that announcing i'm a new me was just so cheesy, and such a old trope, not to mention it would get annoying after a while, that I just should start acting normal and let people draw their own conclusions instead."

"Huh." Leslie said. "I never would have expected it."

"Thanks I guess." I said. " Since can't tell if you mean that genuinely or as a compliment i'll take it as the latter."

"Of course it's the second one dumbass." Leslie said, body language suddenly back to her norm. Right. It would still take a while to bring things to normalicy. I was alright with that.

"Okay well," I got off the ladder and dusted my hands off, " text me if it starts acting up again alright?"

"Suuuuuuuuure thing dumbass." Leslie said turning back to her boards. " I'll be sure to do that."

Ouch. The sarcasm stung.

But, as I was gathering my tools up ready to take them back to my office, I noticed Leslie taking her phone out. She went into her contacts and started milling about. And right before I was willing to call it quits and get out of the office, I saw she selected my number, and changed my name from 'Creep' to 'Howard'.

Not much, but it's a start.


Getting out of the lab I walked to my office and thought - that's it. I knew how I could help Stargate Command.

And with putting myself in minimal risk.

I was thrown into the life of a nerd, geek, scientist, and astroengineer.

Well, what would a nerd and scientist do when presented with a problem and needing to get a solution out to a large variety of people?

That's right.

Write a Paper.

I was going to binge watch Wormhole Extreme.

Find out all the flaws and everything single piece of scientific criteria mentioned.

And then write a very detailed paper crossed with a technical manual on how exactly to set up the Bases, operate the SG teams, and deal with tech this world had ever seen.

Oh i'd be hard for sure, I'd have to convince the guys to go along with this and write their own papers to as a smokescreen to keep me under the cover. But if i did this right - this world would be more prepared for the threat of Goa'uld, Replicators, Ori, Wraith, and who knows what else.

I was giddy with anticipation. This could actually work. The world could be safe. Id never get put in the line of fire. Who knows how many SG personnel teams could be saved? How much new invaluable tech could be acquired and introduced? I could even throw in updated designs for airships that could fight the Goa'uld better- ways the Stargate could be made even more secure.

Why, I could change the entire way the Stargate Program was operated on from the comfort of my living room. It would be a long and complicated series of operations, but the results would be so satisfying….

But first.

I had a solid season of TV to binge watch.

And three other stubborn nerds I had to convince to do this with me.

Joy.


Authors note:


Let me know what you think about Howards actions. A slowish chapter, but laying the foundation for things to be built upon. Hope you like Howard patching things up with people he's wronged in the past.

As always, please leave reviews.