DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter, Stargate, Star Wars, or anything you may find in my story that in any way resembles a character, story, or plot that is owned by another person.
Harry Potter and the Alteran Gift
Chapter 9
Sunday, July 12, 1998
"Hi Ginny" said Harry.
"Hi, you are back earlier than you thought you would be aren't you?" asked Ginny.
"Yeah, Bill's expedition was a bust, they found nothing of interest." replied Harry.
"However, you won't believe what I found..." cont'd Harry.
After Harry explained to her about the items he found, the time anomaly, and then the book Bill gave him, she said:
"Well Harry, this is beginning to look like another one of your Hogwarts adventures that's for sure. I just hope there aren't any dark lords at the end of the tunnel." said Ginny.
"My, my Ginny, did I just catch you using a muggle expression?" asked Harry.
"Maybe... I think you and Hermione have begun rubbing off on me." replied Ginny.
"And oh by the way Gin, why did you have to jinx me by bringing up a you know what. You know when a witch jinxes someone it is rather more potent than the ordinary person on the street." said Harry.
"Oh ha, ha Harry. I will have you know that I've come to expect you to overcome any obstacle put in front of you so, I'm not worrying about it." replied Ginny.
"There you go again." said Harry.
"Okay, ha-ha. What do you want to talk about then?" asked Ginny.
"Well first, I haven't seen you in a week, so we have some catching up to do." Interlude for some snogging behind the wood shed.
...
"So, coming back early is actually a good thing for my plans. I can get an earlier start than expected and maybe that is a good omen." said Harry.
"Are you still working with Ron and George at WWW?" asked Harry.
"Yup, Ron doesn't suspect anything on your part either. He has mentioned that he thinks your mental for wanting to go do something that is related to learning and doesn't seem the least bit peeved that he's out of the loop on the things you're doing now." said Ginny.
"Well, that's good at least. Have you heard from Hermione at all?" asked Harry.
"Ron says he has. She just wrote to mention how her vacation was going and they are having a good time. Nothing newsworthy." replied Ginny.
"Okay, I just had an idea. Since it's Sunday and Ron isn't around and my early return home is unexpected do you think your parents would let you and I go out on a date this afternoon and maybe through dinner? If so, then we could go take a peak at the outpost today and maybe even check on the Astria Porta awhile. You could see some of this in action." said Harry.
"Really! That's great. Yeah, let me ask, that would be so cool." replied Ginny.
They rushed back into the house and both parents were sitting in the kitchen having a cuppa and reading the Daily Prophet.
"Mum, Dad! Look Harry's home early." announced Ginny.
Molly got up and gave him a huge hug and said "welcome home Harry," and Arthur stood up to greet him and said "you're home early aren't you? didn't the trip with Bill go well?" asked Arthur.
Harry told him the true boring story of how they found no leads and decided to call it early so they came home.
"Arthur, Molly? I was wondering since I am home early and have no other plans now and no one else is around, would it be okay if I took Ginny on a little impromptu lunch date, maybe some wandering and window shopping around London and then an early dinner, then home?" asked Harry.
Molly said, "That would be fine Harry" as Arthur nodded in the affirmative; "As long as you have Ginny home before dark and take good care of our little girl."
"No problem Molly, Arthur. I appreciate it." said Harry.
"Thanks, Mum. Thanks, Dad." added Ginny.
"That was pretty easy Harry, they must be getting used to you." said Ginny.
"Well they have seen me around here since I was 12." said Harry.
"Oh, you know that's not what I meant. But, I agree, I think they are rather happy with us being together." said Ginny.
Harry and Ginny leave for their "date," and promptly teleport to Grimmauld Place where they do have a quick lunch, get dressed in some cold weather gear, Harry cast warming charms, and they teleported to the Outpost.
"Are you ready Ginny?" said Harry.
"Yes, sir, let's do it." replied Ginny.
silent pop.
"Wow Harry, you're not kidding this is the middle of nowhere." said Ginny.
Harry gestured with his hand and Ginny heard ~swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh~ as the rings materialized out of thin air and just as quickly re-materialize with them in the Outpost.
"Here you go Gin. Just like I said." said Harry.
"Nice Harry, very nice. Can I sit in the special chair?" asked Ginny.
"The control chair Gin." He chuckled. "Go ahead." replied Harry.
Ginny sat in the chair and the gel-sacs engaged to her hands, the headrest turned blue and a hologram came up showing what appeared to be an outline of the Outpost buried under hundreds of feet of ice.
"Good Gin. See I told you this technology will work for you too. So, what were you thinking about when you first sat down that made that image come up?" asked Harry.
"I was just thinking, 'exactly where are we?'" said Ginny.
"Great Gin, so you see how easy that was? That is essentially how easy it is to communicate with any AI or operate any technology that has a neural interface." said Harry.
"Why don't you try thinking about, where is the Terra Astria Porta?" said Harry.
Ginny thought about that and the hologram shifted to cover a wider expanse of Antarctic ice.
A/N: Obviously Stargate: SG1 episode "Solitudes" never happened and this gate is not stored at Area 51. This has ripple effects obviously on other episodes that don't happen as per canon, I will try to point those differences out as necessary, but if I don't remember to, you've been duly informed.
"Look Gin, you just found our missing Astria Porta." said Harry.
"I did?" replied Ginny?
"Yes. See that yellow blinking light a few kilometers away from the Outpost with the Terra origin symbol on it?" Harry explained that the symbol is the Alteran symbol for the point of origin for Earth or Terra identifying it as the Earth Astria Porta.
"Nice. I like this Harry. Can I get up now before I press my luck?" asked Ginny.
"Sure Hon. Go ahead. Since we now know where it is I am going to sit and get the precise geospatial coordinates from the computer and beam it here to the outpost." said Harry.
Harry sat, there is a bright flash of light over by one unused wall where Harry has chosen to station the Astria Porta, and it appeared right where he wanted.
"Man Harry, that was fast." said Ginny.
"Alteran technology doesn't mess around Gin." replied Harry.
"So Harry, that was so fast I think we're done already?" asked Ginny.
"Not really but, we can get started on setting up a power relay from the control chair Potentia to the Astria Porta so that we can try to see if we can connect to anything." said Harry.
"Harry don't forget, you don't want to dial out to Atlantis until you are ready to take that journey. Once we dial-in we are going to set in motion a draw on the city's power that we need to be ready to deal with and execute on our plan immediately." said Merlin.
"Thank you for reminding me Merlin." said Harry.
Harry explained to Ginny that they can't dial Atlantis right now but, said he does want to try one thing.
Harry made short work of running new conduit from the storage room and building a connection from the control chair power relays to the Astria Porta.
"What I'm going to do Gin, as sort of a first test of this Astria Porta and the data interface that I just set up for it to the main computer; is to initiate a low security auxiliary status check to this galaxy's Astria Porta network." said Harry.
"This will give our central computer a quick status update of all the active Astria Porta's, meaning connected to a power source, and a quick status as to their recent activity logs and briefly identify if their are any non-Alteran technology connected to them." cont'd Harry.
"This will give us some idea if some of the Astria Porta's have been annexed by any non-Alteran civilizations, just something I have become curious about since Egypt." cont'd Harry.
Harry initiated a diagnostic dialing sequence and sent the polling status request out to the network, and waited for the Astria Porta to shutdown.
"It appears to have passed its first test at least. Let's see what we found out about the other gates in the network." said Harry.
"OK, now this is interesting." said Harry.
"Merlin, you have set me on an interesting project you know?" said Harry.
"Yes, I see. Very curious." replied Merlin.
"Well Gin, from this first diagnostic test polling the active Astria Porta's in the Milky Way galaxy, we have found 396 active Porta's. It seems my work will be cut out for me in just the second phase of the project after phase 1 of recovering Atlantis is done, which namely is to identify, locate, and retrieve all surviving Alteran technology." said Harry.
"Harry do you mean you are going to remove all those gates from those planets?" asked Ginny.
"Oh no, not at all Gin. I didn't mean that, but behind each one of those Porta's is the potential for something of the Alterans to be left behind. It will bear investigating at the least. And then of course is the very high likelihood of many of these Porta's being in use by other civilizations or other races." said Harry.
"I think we will need to tread carefully on a lot of this. Our technology may or may not still be the most formidable in the galaxy, as it once was; but there is just the two of us so far and even when we get started we will only have the resources of one city-ship really. We don't want to kick over any hornets nests by accident." cont'd Harry.
"Anyway, I'm sure it will be fine. We'll just take our time and do it right." cont'd Harry.
"Anyway, the most interesting thing I found is that there is another active Astria Porta on Earth." concluded Harry.
"Unbelievable." replied Ginny.
"This means that someone else besides the Alterans or Lanteans brought an Astria Porta here. I would bet all my galleons in Gringotts that this has something to do with that stuff I found in Egypt." said Harry.
"Let's see. Display geospatial coordinates of secondary Earth Porta." said Harry.
"Oh, right. OK, this figures. The yanks, would be in the middle of this like they are everything else. Hmm. Digging a little deeper here. The Porta is located one thousand meters underground in this place called Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, Colorado. in the USA. I will double down on my galleons bet that there is a government or military installation underneath that mountain." said Harry.
"Boy, I wonder what these yanks have gotten themselves into. I do not see that they have a standard dialing and control device for the Porta, yet they are using it. The computer has logged it as being connected to foreign technology. Which means the yanks have figured out a way to use the Porta with their own tech. Not bad." cont'd Harry.
"Gin, I think I have figured out where I want to scout for a place to live in the States. Whadya think?" cont'd Harry.
"Don't you think that's a bit too close to what they are doing? Why don't you set up somewhere out of the way like they are but somewhere else entirely where it is less likely they could stumble onto you?" replied Ginny.
"You have the advantage now of knowing where they are if they become a problem for you." cont'd Ginny.
"Come to think of it, you sure you want to set up in the States at all knowing this? You might be better off going to a neutral place where no one knows Harry Potter, the greatest wizard of all time -and- doesn't seem to be involved with an Astria Porta. Just in case you need to steer clear of government interference or better yet, need a government to interfere on your behalf if you become entangled with problems with the yanks?" concluded Ginny.
"Wow Ginny, you're right. I didn't know you had a mind for strategy like that." replied Harry.
"Hmm. Harry you didn't think Ron was the only chess master in the Weasley clan did you? Has he ever mentioned the only family member to ever beat him at chess? Hmm?" replied Ginny.
"Actually Gin, no he has not. But I am glad to learn about this side of you and glad to have this new blackmail material on Ron." replied Harry. They both cracked up laughing at that.
"OK Gin, I will give some thought to where I should locate to." said Harry.
"You mean *we* don't you buddy?" replied Ginny.
"Of course dear, but not until you graduate Hogwarts and I get some Weasley brothers retardant underwear." replied Harry.
"So Gin, we accomplished some good stuff today, why don't we head back home and go out to that dinner we talked about, and I can get you home on time." said Harry.
"So, Whadya think of all this?" asked Harry.
"Amazing, simply amazing the stuff you get yourself into Mr. Potter. After seeing all of this stuff and now with the yanks too and some other aliens involved here." replied Ginny.
"Yeah, this is another of your great adventures only this time it's not just the wizarding world at stake, it's the *whole* world at stake and we don't even know what we're getting into yet." cont'd Ginny.
"So, it looks like it will be fun." cont'd Ginny.
"Let's go home and have dinner and call this a night." concluded Ginny.
Before they left, Harry set up a long range transceiving protocol using ZPE spectrum communication between Merlin and the Outpost central computer and the Astria Porta. He figured he might just do some further research from home now that he has galactic level communications established; and he can keep a closer eye on the Astria Porta network.
"Merlin, lock out the Astria Porta so that no one can dial in or dial out without giving my personal access code. Also, I don't know why I didn't think of this before but do the same thing with the ring platform." said Harry.
"Done and Done" replied Merlin.
Harry took Ginny home and before she went into the house he let her know that he is going to get started with the Atlantis project tomorrow morning to take advantage of the extra time he has. He'll worry more about what the yanks are doing with this other Porta after sorting out Atlantis.
"So Gin, I will be gone for probably two weeks. I will be back for my birthday even if I don't finish in time so don't worry." said Harry.
"Oh Harry, I am kind of nervous for you. This is real big, you traveling through that thing to another planet in another galaxy and you've never done anything like it before." said Ginny.
"You think it's perfectly safe, I know you do. But still you've never done it before and there could be surprises waiting for you on the other side that you're not ready for." cont'd Ginny.
"Please be careful, please be safe. If anything happens to you out there we won't even find out back here will we?" concluded Ginny.
"Whew, you're right Gin. I guess we need to have some contingency. I tell you what. If for some reason you *do not* hear from me by lets say the day after my birthday, just to leave some wiggle room for error, then what you should do is go to the yanks in Cheyenne Mountain. Tell them what you know and how you found out through me. You don't have to tell them you're a witch, that would just get you into more trouble here." said Harry.
"Actually, now that I think about it, a safer way for you to go about it is to contact Kingsley, since he is the Minister for Magic he has official government contacts, contacts that also understand and adhere to the secrecy of the wizarding world." cont'd Harry.
"So, he can get the right information passed along without putting you at personal risk or risk of you breaking the international statue of secrecy, or at least not without Kingsley's permission." cont'd Harry.
"But, if you tell them the secret of the outpost and the Astria Porta and show them how to use the control chair and all of that they will have to believe you and possibly they can even launch a rescue mission." cont'd Harry.
"I suspect the possibility of getting their hands on Atlantis not to mention everything at the Outpost will be enough to entice them to do something." concluded Harry.
"Okay, Harry but what about the unbreakable vow?" said Ginny.
"I have that covered Gin." Harry pulled out his wand and gave a conditional release of the vow if he does not return home from the trip to Atlantis within 24 hours of his next Birthday. He didn't bother to remind her that if he died she would be automatically released from the vow.
"Also, Ginny, here is my secret code to the dialing computer and transportation rings at the Outpost. You and they would need that. Since they have their own Porta they should be able to dial into mine and just go right on through." said Harry.
"Oh, if all this happens, remember to tell them to swap the point of origin on their gate temporarily to any other origin point currently not in use in the network. They will then be able to dial my Porta using Earth as the destination." cont'd Harry.
"They won't be able to dial back to their Porta from mine the same way though, they will need alternate transportation back and then they would reset their Porta for normal use. The system is actually not designed for two Porta's to operate at the same time at the same origin address unless you have a more advanced Lantean dialing computer which can do that." cont'd Harry.
"My Porta is actually Earth's primary designated in the network. As long as mine remains locked down as it is now, there's will work fine. That's one of the reasons I left it locked down when we left." cont'd Harry.
"Every time I use my Porta they could detect that something is going on if they are paying attention but, they shouldn't be able to figure out what; at least not until they learn of the presence of my Porta here on Earth anyway." cont'd Harry.
"Anyway, I digress from the long boring technical explanation. But, if you do need to go down this path of contingency you will need to tell them all that." cont'd Harry.
"Having said all that..." cont'd Harry.
"I think everything will be OK, Gin. At least I'm sure I'll make it back alright, even if I really can't get Atlantis to fly home. We will have enough power to dial the Astria Porta back to Earth if I need to." cont'd Harry.
"So, you OK now?" concluded Harry.
"Yeah, Harry, at least I have a plan of something I can do to help if it looks like something went wrong. I'm going to miss you and I will be scared for you. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep well while you are gone so please come back as soon as possible and if you find any way to communicate with me sooner, please do." replied Ginny.
"Hmm. Gin, you gave me an idea. Well, you see... ah, never mind, I don't have any of this stuff here on Earth right now. But, no that won't work. Well, what I was going to say is that if you could make it to the Outpost yourself some time, you could use the chair and we could communicate." said Harry.
"But the problem is that you would need a separate way to Antarctica on your own to get close enough for it to be in your apparation range and you haven't even gone for you license yet. No, it's way too unsafe. Well, anyway if things do look crazy that's another idea for you. And I never did teach you how to summon the rings with your wand, which is possible by the way if I show you how. If the yanks are using a Porta I assume they know how to work rings too." cont'd Harry.
"I wish I had another PNA right now, then I could set up a relay for you through the Outpost and we could stay in contact. That's what I was trying to figure out earlier. I just don't have what I would need to make something like that yet. I promise getting you your own PNA will be one of my first priorities after I see that Atlantis is safe and ship-shape, then we won't have this communication problem again when I'm away off-world." cont'd Harry.
"Sigh. Okay, Harry. I understand and look you gave me a couple good ideas to work with if something goes wrong. I know you need to see this through. I can see the determination burning in your eyes. I wouldn't hold you back even if I could." replied Ginny.
They exchanged one last giant hug that neither wanted to let go of then Ginny finally let go and said, "Goodbye Harry, please be safe. I will miss you. Go home now and get a good rest for tomorrow. I love you." Harry replied back, "I love you too Gin and I will. See you in a couple weeks." silent pop
...
Meanwhile, back at Stargate Command...
"Captain Carter!" called out Sgt. Siler.
"Yes, Sgt. what is it?" said Carter.
"Ma'am a few minutes ago the dialing computer detected a brief anomaly in its connection to the Stargate." cont'd Siler.
"What happened, Sgt.?" cont'd Carter.
"It appeared to the computer that it received a momentary feedback from the control circuit on the stargate and at the same time the power on the stargate appeared visually to fluctuate." cont'd Siler.
"Explain the visual bit Sgt." cont'd Carter.
"Well, ma'am. The lights that are usually on surrounding each of the chevrons dimmed a little bit and went right back to normal. This would be at the same time the computer detected the control circuit feedback." cont'd Siler.
"Have you run diagnostics?" cont'd Carter.
"Yes, ma'am, everything came back clean, it appears that for whatever it was it's gone, the stargate is fully operational." cont'd Siler.
"OK, get with engineering and have them run a deeper diagnostic and hypothesize potential causes for this." cont'd Carter.
"Also maintain a monitor on this if it happens again and if it re-occurs maintain a tracking algorithm to determine any patterns, such as timing or event causality." concluded Carter.
"Yes, ma'am." replied Siler.
...
A few minutes later in General Hammond's office, along with Colonel O'Neill.
"Captain, what else can you tell us about this anomaly that occurred with the gate this afternoon?" asked Hammond.
"Nothing yet sir, we have engaged full tracking protocols in case it re-occurs and we have engineering performing deeper diagnostics and searching for hypothesis as to how it could happen." replied Carter.
"Very good Captain," said Hammond.
"Sam," uhm, I mean Captain Carter, do you have any theories of your own yet?" asked Col. O'Neill.
"No Colonel, not really. The only thing I can think of is that if it isn't merely a technical fault in our wiring or dialing computer, which engineering should isolate soon if that is the case; then the first thing I would suspect is somehow this is an affect caused by another gate dialing our gate and having an error on their end or perhaps terminating the connection just before it completed the sequencing of an event horizon authorization handshake, but either one of those then leads to some external causality that I have no information to identify." replied Carter.
"So, in other words you don't know?" the Colonel asked.
"That's right." Sam answered, while you couldn't miss the General rolling his eyes at the Colonel.
"Very well, Captain, Colonel. Keep working on it and inform me of any developments. Dismissed." said Hammond.
"Yes sir." said Carter and O'Neill.
...
Back at Grimmauld Place.
"Merlin, I think we have a good plan set in motion for tomorrow. It almost seems a waste to wait since nothing I need to do this exists on Earth. I need to go to Atlantis to do anything. But, Ginny's right, I should get a good night's sleep and then get started in the morning." said Harry.
"G'night (yawn), Merlin." said Harry.
"Goodnight, Harry." replied Merlin.
