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Chapter 10: Someone Check That Rabbit Hole
Grace and Jack were watching Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Daniel let himself in through the front door with Teal'c following closely behind.
The big Jaffa had been more than happy to come and help with decorating Grace's bedroom. It was a compliment to his sense of style that O'Neill would choose him to decide on the color and decor of his child's room.
"O'Neill, we come bearing pizza and dessert."
Jack got up from the sofa, dislodging Grace from his side. She was too focused on the the tv screen to notice, her attention on the Oompa Loompas singing and dancing around a giant Violet Beauregard.
"Ex-cellent!" He took the boxes from Teal'c and moved towards the dining room. "Thanks for coming over, T. Daniel and I had no idea where to start with Grace's room, well, except for color and it was Gracie who decided on that."
"It would be my pleasure, O'Neill," Teal's gave Jack one his rare smiles and a slight nod.
Teal'c looked over to the living room where Grace was giggling as she watched Veruca Salt being dragged into the garbage chute by squirrels.
"It's good to see that GraceO'Neill is adapting well."
"Kids you know... They bounce back pretty fast. We're just getting to know each other at the moment, all the other stuff can wait until she's more at home here."
Teal'c inclined his head. "Indeed."
"Gracie C.! It's pizza time!"
Daniel was busy setting up the table for dinner. He couldn't help but grin at Jack's drastic transformation. His friend just sounded so happy. His neglected dining table was now being used instead of his coffee table. Jack was adjusting his lifestyle to fit with Grace's. He was being a parent by instilling discipline through example.
Grace came running into the kitchen and wrapped herself around Jack's legs. "I paused the DVD, Daddy. We can watch the rest of the movie later."
"You betcha, snookums. First though, I want you to meet a good friend of mine. This is Teal'c."
Teal'c made himself less of a threat as possible. He had his arms behind his back and he bowed his body to acknowledge Grace. "It is a pleasure, GraceO'Neill."
Grace grinned at Teal'c's funny name for her. "Everyone just calls me Gracie."
"Indeed," Teal'c didn't correct himself.
Gracie looked up at her father. "He's funny, Daddy."
Jack smiled up at Teal'c. "I always thought so too."
Daniel called them over to the table and the four of them sat down to dinner of pizza and caesar salad, Gracie's favorite.
Teal'c discussed a little bit of what they'd found on PX1-313. They were convinced that the chair controlled a weapons platform just like the one they'd found on Antarctica. They would need Jack to gate over and control the chair to see exactly what else the chair could do.
"It'll have to wait until I get back. I'll need to organize something for Gracie here."
Jack was now a single father and couldn't just leave at a moment's notice. "I was thinking I could hire someone to pick her up after school and watch her until I get back in the evenings. As for lockdowns , I'll need to have a talk with Dave Dixon and ask him what he and Lainie do with their kids."
Dave's wife Lainie worked part-time as a Phlebotomist at the Academy hospital. She sometimes did overnight shifts, and when Dave was off-world someone had to look over their brood.
"SG-13 is scheduled to be back tomorrow," Daniel informed them.
"I'll give him a call then," Jack replied.
"I really like school, Daddy," Gracie suddenly said between mouthfuls of croutons.
"That's 'cause you're a smarty pants, Gracie C."
"Yep. I do special lessons with Dr. Felger and Dr. Coombs."
Fel-jer?! Jack mouthed to Daniel who just shrugged.
It was becoming clear that Jack would have a lot of things on his plate when it came to Gracie and would need as much help as he could get from his friends.
Jack had to return to his duties much earlier than he'd anticipated.
They needed his unique expertise off-world and he had to concede that he was in the same position as every other parent in the military and would have to put family second to country and planet.
Charlie and Janet had volunteered to watch over his little girl, but he didn't want to interrupt the routine that they'd established at home by moving her to the base even for just a couple of days.
He, more than anyone knew how a short mission could turn into extended one when things inevitably went FUBAR.
Salvation came in the form of early final exams and Cassie coming back from Janet's parents down south to say goodbye to her friends before going off to college.
Cassie had decided despite her grandparent's initial apprehension to join the Air Force. She wanted to continue the work that her mother had been so good at. Even before Janet's untimely death, Cassie had shown aptitude in math and sciences. She was a good student and everyone knew that she would become a fine doctor worthy of her adoptive mother.
Jack had picked her up from the airport and on the way home explained the many new things in his life. It was a testament to all things weird that had happened in the young woman's life that she'd taken in his story quite calmly and withheld her questions.
Cassandra happily volunteered to take care of Grace while he was away off-world.
Reynolds looked down at them from the control room as Jack and the rest of SG-1 assembled at the base of the Stargate's ramp. The Colonel was in charge of the SGC while the General was off-world lending his Ancient expertise.
Jack could feel the anticipation in his bones. The last time he'd been off-world he was still a Colonel and SG-1 was his. Now SG-1 belonged to Carter and the dynamic was slightly off. He could easily take command as he was the ranking officer, but in reality, he was just tagging along Carter's mission. They needed him for one particular task and that was the only reason he was even allowed to go on this mission.
He was Hammond now and the previous General rarely made it off the base. Jack still felt that he was ill-equipped to fill the General's very shiny shoes.
The gate swooshed open and settled into stable event horizon. Jack looked over to Carter and nodded for her to give the order.
"Let's move out!" Carter said formally.
She took point and the rest of the team followed with Jack bringing up the rear.
The heat of the deserted planet hit him like a punch in the face. The atmosphere felt thinner much like being on top of a mountain back on Earth. Red dust blew all around them forcing the group to don their goggles or face blindness.
Carter signaled for them to head towards the makeshift base inside the ancient structure.
He was the last one inside and the moment he stepped into the building, something strange started to occur.
"Whoah, what's that?" Daniel had frozen on the spot and was looking apprehensively at the now flickering walls.
Jack stepped further into the building and more lights started to flicker on. He thought about playing dumb for a moment, but he was anxious to get the mission over with and get back to his daughter.
"It's probably recognizing my Ancient gene just like in Antarctica. The ZPM has been removed and the building is trying to draw residual power from somewhere, most likely a generator of some kind."
They were all looking at him slightly aghast.
Daniel was the first to speak. "I guess that makes sense. Sam?"
"That would've been my guess too."
The scientists who were on site all came running at once through the large corridor that lead deeper into the structure. All were talking at once and they all stopped at the sight of SG-1 and General O'Neill.
Dr. Lee emerged from the gaggle of scientists and went up to the newcomers. "General O'Neill! Thank god you're here. We've been asking for you for the past few days. We knew the moment you arrived- The walls!"
"Started flickering," Jack concluded once again this time with a smirk.
Dr. Lee sometimes reminded him of an over eager groundhog.
"I'd like to get started right away, if you don't mind." He started guiding Jack towards the corridor and Jack had no choice but to follow the enthusiastic scientist. "We need you to sit in the Ancient chair and see what sort of goodies it controls."
SG-1 trailed after them in varying degrees of amusement. They were all familiar with O'Neill's lack of patience with scientific types.
They arrived in the main chamber housing a familiar looking Ancient seat with crystals of different colours strewn around it. Floodlights were in each corner of the room powered by the portable naquadah generator.
Jack felt a familiarity with the place and he wondered if that had anything to do with his downloading the database into his brain or if it had to do with the Asgard improving the capacity of his noggin.
He recognized the circuitry that Dr Lee and his team had been working on. The team had done a good job in jury rigging the chair to work with the naquadah generator. The floor and chair itself was aglow with power and all Jack had to do was sit down and see what the machine controlled.
He made himself comfortable and felt the seat recline back as he shifted his hands on the gel like controls.
A series of fast moving projections appeared above them. Jack scanned and processed the rapid influx of information, his eyes moving from side to side.
Sam watched him in shock as he apparently absorbed the vast amount of data streaming from the ceiling. The room had fallen silent and all of them watched the General intently. They couldn't understand what was happening. She herself was afraid that something had gone wrong and the Ancient chair had done something to O'Neill.
She still remembered the last time he'd messed around with Ancient tech. The memories and feelings of losing him were still too fresh and she wasn't convinced that she ever really got him back.
The chair suddenly lurched forward and Jack nimbly pushed himself off the Ancient platform.
"Right!" Jack clapped his hands together and addressed Dr Lee. "It's pretty much your run of the mill Ancient outpost. Much more stripped down than the one on Earth, defensive-wise. This was their equivalent of a retreat, if you could call a giant, humongous structure a holiday house-"
"Are you okay, Jack?" Daniel was giving off concerned vibes. Jack had handled the whole reading Ancient thing a bit too blasé in his opinion.
"Daniel?"
"Jack."
"What, Daniel?"
"You read Ancient?"
Jack gave him an odd look. "What of it?"
"Uh, did you always read Ancient? Since when, if you don't mind me asking?"
Jack went over to a table and picked up the first liftable thing on it and started fiddling. "Ah, you know, that time with the um, the groundhog day thingy."
"Sir," Carter finally piped up. "You weren't just reading Ancient, you practically absorbed all the information from the database. Are you sure you're okay?"
He replaced his new found toy on the bench and turned to look at Carter. "I'm fine, Colonel. Like I said, I managed to pick up more Ancient than I thought."
They clearly wanted to ask him more questions, but Jack had walked out of the room.
"That was strange," Daniel said staring after Jack's departing form.
"Indeed," Teal'c acknowledged.
Sam glared at the other three men left in the room. Dr Lee and the other scientists had gone after Jack. "Am I the only one who thinks that whole thing was nuts?" she pointed at the Ancient platform. "General O'Neill managed to go through a massive amount of information in just under five minutes. That's not normal! We have to do something."
For once it was Daniel who was calm and collected. "I'm sure Jack will tell us in his own time. He's been through a lot of stuff lately and I have to say this isn't the first strange thing he's done since he's return from the, the-"
"The dead, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c supplied.
"You know, I really don't like that word. His mind never really died, I mean by all accounts you could say I died, but really I ascended-"
"Daniel!" Sam shouted to stop the flood of words coming from the archaeologist's mouth. She really wasn't in the mood for all his existential meanderings. She was really worried about Jack, but had no idea how talk to him. "What other strange things?"
"What?"
Sam rolled her eyes. "What other strange things has the General done?"
"Well, for instance, I didn't realize he knew how to debug the dialling computer."
Jonas and Teal'c looked at each other, both raising their eyebrows.
"At the time, I figured he probably picked it up from you, but in hindsight it seems a bit strange that he would even be interested enough to learn it."
"Daniel, do you even know what level of programming know how is necessary to even fix the simplest thing on the dialling computer?"
Daniel frowned at her. "No. Not really."
"Only me, Dr. Lee and a handful of scientists and top level technicians are trained to fix glitches in the dialling program. It's not something you just pick up looking over someone's shoulder."
"Oh."
"I guess we shouldn't be too worried then," Jonas kindly pointed out. Everyone suddenly stared at him as if he was nuts. "Think about it. It means this Ancient chair didn't do anything to him. The incident described by Dr. Jackson happened back at the SGC and the General has never set foot on this planet before today."
Teal'c canted his head. "A good point, Jonas Quinn."
A loud piercing sound suddenly penetrated the room and shouts erupted from the corridors of the outpost.
Sam was the first one out of the room followed by the three men. Teal'c took the rear, his staff weapon at the ready.
Dr. Lee was the first of the scientist they encountered, wildly gesticulating at whatever it was that was making the noise.
"It's alright, it's alright. I think the General managed to trip an alarm of some sort. He says he can turn it off!" Lee told them completely confident in O'Neill's ability.
Sam looked back at Daniel, Teal'c and Jonas, aghast. "I think I might go and help the General-"
The alarm cut out right then, plunging them into the familiar hum of the outpost.
"No need, Carter. It's done."
Jack slipped out of a crawlspace close to the floor by Dr. Lee's feet.
"Sir?" Sam was confounded. Was she the only one concerned at what was going on here? The General wasn't equipped to deal with these sort of matters. Now, all of a sudden, Dr. Lee and Daniel were treating him like he did all these things everyday. She had an overwhelming need to check that she was still in her own reality and with all the things that had gone on the past few days, she was quite open to the idea, if only she could go back to before things had gotten complicated.
"Whoah! I didn't get to see that room!" Jonas interjected.
Sam realized that she'd been woolgathering for far too long and that the rest of her team had managed to open the door that had set off the alarms.
O'Neill's increasingly bizarre behavior had been forgotten by the rest of the men and they'd gone past Sam into the now opened Ancient room.
"It looks like some kind of lab," Daniel muttered to no one in particular.
As much as she wanted to pursue her own line of inquiry, Sam couldn't help her own curiosity. She followed them in and couldn't help but gawp at her surroundings.
They'd somehow stumbled into a treasure trove of technology. The many benches that were interspersed around the lab each held all kinds of machines. It had been left like the occupant had stepped out for some coffee and somehow had failed to return.
"Cool," she heard someone say.
She turned from her perusal of the goodies laid out in front of them and looked over to the General who had found a seat and was about to make himself comfortable.
"Ah, sir, I don't think that's wise."
General O'Neill grinned at her. "Relax, Carter. I don't think this one's like the other chair."
It did look similar, though. Sam thought worriedly.
O'Neill sat down and placed his hands in the gel like control panel on the arm rests. No holographic images appeared, but the machines around them did start to power up.
"I think it's working now," he told them. "The system just needed authorization."
Sam eyed him wearily. "And you know the codes?"
O'Neill shrugged as if she was asking a simple question. "My genes are the codes."
He jumped off the chair and Sam expected the machines to immediately turn off without O'Neill's presence, but much to her surprise, they remained running.
"Okay, boys and girls. Don't say I don't let you play off world. This room alone should keep amused for a few days at least."
Dr. Lee looked about to burst with excitement.
Jonas was grinning from ear to ear, eyes shining with glee.
Daniel was already picking up a journal that had been left open on the table.
Teal'c looked in wonder at all of it.
Sam's eyes remained trained on the General.
For those ardent S/J shippers, fair warning that the next few chapters aren't going to be pretty. Reviews are always welcome =)