(Disclaimer: Seriously, would I be writing this if I owned it?)

10

Scientist Dr. Daniel Jackson slammed his fist down onto his desk as hard as he possibly could. Those stupid quasi-magicians had taken over the Gaza spiral! He had requested a simple expedition to excavate and examine the Gaza pyramids. The unique shape and placement of the pyramids seemed to him to be either a special alignment or a signpost of sorts. All he had wanted to do was look and analyze. However, the big-cheeses in the pentagon had repeatedly refused his requests. After a while of snooping around he had discovered that a new organization had arisen in England, claiming that some psychopathic killer was running loose attempting to take over the world. Apparently this man was too dangerous for the armed forces to take care of and the governments of the world should supply them with food, ammo, men, and money.

Daniel had inside information that Hathor, the fearful leader of the remnants of Ra's Empire, was going to blast the earth into a ball of molten rock in less than a year; but the head-honchos in the White House were ignoring him, an almost respectable archeologist with a degree, and giving all their money to a bunch of wierdos in cloaks who had just come out of hiding two years ago. At least that was what he thought for a few days. The officers had been told to withhold certain information from him, probably because they knew what his reaction would be. They were entirely right. Daniel had utilized certain sources to find out what he wanted to know, and when he had, he exploded.

Those "wizards" were even now sitting on what could be a weapon or a storehouse of technology that could save the world. The government of Egypt had been subverted, bribed, blackmailed, etc. into handing over control of the pyramids to the "wizards". To make matters worse, the "wizards" claimed that their ancestors built the pyramids; Dr. Jackson knew this wasn't true unless they were descended from an ancient space-going race of conquers.

He had begged. He had pleaded. He had threatened (for all the good that that had done him; everyone knew his political power was about nil). Nothing had worked and the wizards had stayed firmly entrenched on the site of what could be the greatest discovery in the history of the world.

It would stay that way until the world was destroyed, Daniel knew. He could start a petition, but by the time it was even processed through the courts, the year would be long up. By about fifty years.

Colonel Jack O'Neil walked into the small office and saluted Jackson.

"Daniel, General West needs you at the StarGate silo immediately. The StarGate has been acting up and we think that there might be someone or something coming through soon."

Daniel looked up, glad for this interruption. "How do you figure?"

"There've been two drones that came through over the past twenty-four hours."

"Drones? What sort of drones?"

O'Neil sighed and sat down. "You remember when we first went through the Stargate?"

"Yeah."

"You remember the robot we sent through the first time and the time before we went to Balas?"

"Yeah."

"That sort of drone. Except these ones float. The first one to come through just peaked out and darted back in. The second one came out with a poster."

"A poster?" asked Daniel smiling.

"A poster. It has writing on it, but we can't read it. Then it projected a hologram onto the floor of a man talking. The video has been looping ever since, and as far as we can tell, has been playing in different languages ever since. Now the StarGate is powering up again, and we think that there might be a live one coming through soon."

Dr. Jackson stood up. "What are we waiting for? Let's go!"

Once the pair made it to the missile silo that housed the Stargate, they were greeted by Lieutenant Ferretti, commander of the Space Marine Corps.

"Hey, Chief. Looks like we're going to have a job. The Stargate just 'kawooshed'.

The 'Kawoosh' was a remarkable side effect of the Stargate's normal operation. (see: Wikipedia entry on the Stargate) A massive swirling vortex would flash out of the front of the Stargate in a spectacular display of power. This phenomena happened just before the inter-dimensional wormhole stabilized and the portal opened. The fact that the 'kawoosh' had just 'kawooshed' proved that someone was definitely operating the Stargate at the other end.

O'Neil leaned out of the Army jeep he was currently driving.

"Are the guards in position? Are the defenses online, Ferretti?"

Ferrari waved his hand vaguely. "Yeah, yeah, Chief. We had them lil' guys fired up first sign of activity. You just get in there. Me and my men have this place under control."

After they made it through the security, Daniel and Jack headed up to the command center where Barbara Shore was waiting anxiously for them.

"Hello, Daniel, O'Neal. You've come just in time. We think that the Stargate portal is opened now. We're just waiting for something to happen."

"Where's the probe?" asked Dr. Jackson.

"We have it right over here, plugged into a computer," she said, leading them over to a computer terminal.

"You plugged it in? But that's not safe! It might have a virus! And how did you plug it into the computer in the first place? It's an alien technology!"

Barbara shrugged. "The computer isn't connected to the network. We just unplugged it from everything except for a mouse, keyboard, power, speakers, and the monitor. The probe itself gave us the plug. It went through several different connections, most of which I've never seen, before it found one that fit the computer. Now it's playing its message over and over in different languages."

Daniel looked at the screen. "I've never seen any of these before."

Something in his voice made the probe sit up. It beeped and twittered.

Jack laughed. "I think it's trying to tell you something, Daniel."

The probe stopped twittering and a message popped up on the screen.

Species: Human

Sub-species: Basic stock

Language Selection: Basic

Syntax: Basic

Accent: Coruscant standard

Message: The Rebel Alliance requests a meeting with your officials to discuss matters of Galactic Security and Welfare. Will meet with you in:

0 hours; 23 minutes; 42 seconds; 34 milliseconds

The screen blanked for a minute then a new message popped up:

Transmitting language data now. Please do not disconnect.

Signal failed

Retry

Signal failed

System check

System check passed

Hardware check

Hardware check failed for the following reasons:

Unable to connect with transmitter

Possible maladies: Transmitter broken; transmitter wet; or transmitter otherwise incapacitated.

Closing Transmission file

The file closed and the probe hummed into Stand-by mode.

Daniel looked at Barbara. "Has it done this before?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I think that the probe was activated by your voice; none of the technicians have spoken anywhere around it. It probably has some advanced language recognition program to identify our speech. From what it said, I'd have to guess that it was supposed to send confirmation and tell its masters what language we're using."

"That's what I figured too," stated the Colonel.

"What I can't understand is the part where it called us 'basic stock' humans. That's just weird. What else could we be?"

"Martians?" stated O'Neil questioningly.

Daniel just glared at him while Barbara replied, "Martians? On Earth? Not very likely."

Daniel continued as if nothing had been said. "I also couldn't understand the lingo part. We speak English, not 'basic', whatever that is."

O'Neil shrugged, unconcerned. "Whatever it means, we see in a few minutes. That ambassador should be coming through the Stargate soon. I'll tell Ferretti to fire up the defenses. Starting now, no one enters this building or leaves it."