Reconstructing Rome

By Indygodusk


Chapter 24


"Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference."

GRAHAM JOYCE


"This is an abuse of power and you know it!" Loud and unpleasant, Troy glared at her from the other side of her desk, his arms crossed and hair unusually disheveled since he'd been too busy lately to get his usual two-hundred-dollar haircut, too busy going on back-to-back missions through the gate or fixing minor problems at the research station in Antarctica.

It was good to be the boss.

Meredith didn't bother giving him more than a dismissive glance before returning to her computer screen. Just looking at him too long made her temper flare and her head hurt. "As a senior scientist, you are fully qualified to examine and retrieve the Ancient device in question. If you don't feel up to doing your job, you are of course free to quit and seek work outside of the program." She chomped hard on her ginger gum, fighting the low-level nausea that was her regular companion these days. Being pregnant sucked. "In fact, I highly encourage it."

Troy's heavy breathing filled the lab. "You won't get rid of me that easily, Meredith, but this is the last one. No more overnight missions after this. I have allies in the program and I am done with your little temper tantrum and abuses of power. When I get back we are going to talk."

"Don't count on it," she said airily, not moving her gaze from her computer screen. He didn't deserve her attention and she knew he found being ignored while talking unbearably rude because he'd complained about it often during their marriage. Ex-marriage.

Her stomach clenched hard and Meredith froze. Acid sloshed up her esophagus.

"At least look at me while I'm talking to you," Troy snapped.

When she spun her chair towards him, Troy nodded and crossed his arms. "Good, now let's—"

Meredith ignored him, reaching out to snag the trash can by his leg and yank it into her lap.

"—just—"

Breathing through her nose wasn't helping. Gut heaving, she leaned over and spewed the ginger gum and her breakfast into the garbage can. She gagged and spit again. After a minute of just breathing she finally felt stable again. Reaching for the box on her desk, she grabbed a tissue and wiped off her mouth and watering eyes.

"This sucks. You suck." Looking up to glare at Troy, she found herself alone in the room. He'd fled while she'd been distracted vomiting. "Who needs him anyway, right? Not us." Wiping the moisture from her eyes again—merely water from throwing up and not tears, she assured herself—she popped in another piece of ginger gum even though it was probably useless. Tying off the garbage bag, she put in a new one just in case and pushed the whole thing to the back corner of her desk with her foot.

Then she returned to work.

The next day, Meredith got an urgent order to report to O'Neill's office asap, so she closed her computer and went over. "Dr. Mckay, take a seat." He gestured to the chair in front of his desk. "This'll be quick." He was pecking at his keyboard with two fingers.

Cringing at his glacial typing skills, Meredith sat down and shifted from side to side and front to back, trying and failing to find a good position on the chair, which was horribly uncomfortable. Knowing O'Neill, probably on purpose. "What can I do for you, Colonel?"

"We have a gate team stuck in a foreign structure. They left their geek outside exploring and wandered inside, tripping a trap that slammed down the door, and trapped them inside. The trap seems to have used up the last of the power in the complex. Luckily they're not hurt. The geek's out of ideas to get them out and the natives have started rubbernecking so I need one of your people to get the door open." He pecked at his keyboard twice more and leaned back. "I sent you the reports on what we know about the place."

"I'll get one of my minions to go fix it." Meredith pulled up the reports on her tablet and started skimming. When she got to the pictures of the panels they'd found inside the structure before getting trapped, she zoomed in and felt her stomach drop. "This is a mess. Some other civilization has integrated their primitive tech into Ancient tech, adding and taking away parts willy-nilly. I'm surprised any of it worked." Her mind spun over her available people and their skillsets, discarding person after person. "We're going to have to splice in a generator and wade through two sets of technology just to fix it up enough to get the door open again."

Looking up at O'Neill, she bit her lip. "Can't you just blow the door down?"

He gave her a sardonic look. "I'm not the big bad wolf and that door isn't made of straw. We can't bust it open without risking killing the people inside."

The pictures were more helpful than the words in the report. What they showed wasn't good. "There's only a handful of people who could fix this mess. Is Carter available? She could do it."

O'Neill shook his head. "She's elbow deep in another mess right now. What about you?"

"Bad idea." Meredith shrunk back in her seat and crossed her arms surreptitiously over her middle, fluffing the muumuu she'd taken to wearing under her lab coat. She felt the sensation of a bubble of gas moving in her intestines. She'd read that that meant that the baby was moving, but she had one more week to pretend it was only gas before she hit the deadline for when she'd promised herself to suck it up, report the pregnancy at work, and take the career consequences. "Troy—Dr. Forrester's already out there. He can gate over from his current job."

"Why can't you just go, Mckay?" O'Neill tapped his desk and raised a brow at her. "Aren't you smart enough to fix it?"

"Of course I'm smart enough to fix it." Stung, she shut down her tablet and shoved it into her bag. "That isn't the issue."

"Then what is? Because my people aren't getting any younger in there and it's your job to fix that." He stood up and looked down his nose at her.

Since looking up his nose was just as unpleasant as the chair she was sitting in, Meredith popped to her feet. Seeing his implacable expression, she started gesturing. "Okay, look, this isn't something I want getting around, but I guess I have to tell you but I don't want you gossiping about it, you hear me?" She pointed her finger at his chest threateningly.

O'Neill pursed his lips, looking unimpressed. "I'm waiting for you to make sense."

Growling under her breath, Meredith started to pace. "You probably heard that Troy and I separated, but the reason is that he sabotaged my birth control and got me pregnant to tank my career and usurp my job. I was going to report to medical next week but I guess you get to find out early, so surprise!"

"You're—" Eyes wide, his gaze jerked down to her stomach, which was bigger but mostly hidden by the muumuu.

Nodding jerkily, she swallowed. "Yeah. And I'm an anxious person already so this just adds to it by a factor of ten. I don't want to go through the stargate like this. I mean, I know other cultures do it all the time, but I'd rather not if I don't have to. So I want to send Troy, okay?"

"For crying out loud, Mckay." Looking uncomfortable, O'Neill threw up his hands. "I don't care about your relationship details but you need to tell medical about stuff like this. But fine, okay, let's go call Forrester for this one." He walked around her like she was now carrying a bomb instead of a baby and opened the door for her, a courtesy he usually ignored.

Up in the command center, O'Neill got Sgt. Siler to open a wormhole to Troy's location.

The whoosh of blue light made her feel vertigo for a moment, so she looked down and counted the buttons on the panel in front of her, reciting the function of each, until her body settled. Stupid pregnancy. This kid better be a genius like her mommy. Meredith was never doing this again (and wouldn't have done it the first time if she'd had a choice).

Sgt. Siler called through the open wormhole on the radio. The woman who answered had to go and locate Troy, who was down the valley and inside the Ancient structure. After a minute, a knock came at the door. Sgt. Siler excused himself and stepped out into the hall to deal with it, so when Troy finally got on the radio it was just her and O'Neill in the booth.

"This is Dr. Forrester."

Just hearing his voice made her fists clench.

O'Neill leaned forward towards the microphone. "This is Colonel O'Neill and Dr. Mckay. We want you to pack up and go to P4X-542. There's a team trapped in an Ancient building that needs extraction."

"If it's urgent, why can't Meredith go? Dr. Mckay should be qualified for such a situation and I'm a four-hour hike from the gate here. Besides, I'm halfway through opening a console and can't just leave it like this." Troy sounded frustrated and impatient.

Putting her hand on the console, Meredith leaned towards the microphone. "Look, Troy, you know full well why I can't go. Take some responsibility and go and get those people out."

Troy's voice went sharp. "You can't do something because you're pregnant? So you admit that I was right. Are you ready to quit working and take care of yourself and the baby then?"

Grinding her teeth, Meredith breathed through her nose. "Of course not, but this pregnancy is your fault. As this baby's sperm donor, make things easier for us and go on the mission."

"Easy? I switched out your birth control because I wanted you to get pregnant and take it easy and you thanked me by sending me on every crap mission and serving me divorce papers." His outraged voice abruptly softened, turning almost sweet. "If you want it easy, darling, then you can have it. Just take a sabbatical from your position when the baby's born, recommend me as your replacement, and withdraw the divorce. As soon as you agree, I'll grab my pack and leave."

Meredith's blood pressure skyrocketed.

Eyebrows lowering, O'Neill gave Mckay a grim, sideways look. "So you weren't exaggerating," he muttered.

"Of course not." Glaring at O'Neill in lieu of Troy on the other side of the galaxy, she huffed and wrenched the microphone to her lips to growl, "You manipulative little gremlin, I'm not agreeing to anything. Do your job and get going."

Troy's tone became clipped. "If you aren't going to be reasonable, Meredith, and if you value your position over fixing our relationship, then you can make your bed and lie in it. You want to be the job? Then go and be the job, since you're useless at anything involving actual human emotion."

"You're the one who destroyed our relationship so you could get ahead at work, not me!" She was so mad she could barely see the blue-white glow of the active stargate through the window.

"Doctors!" O'Neill barked, reminding them of his presence. "This isn't Divorce Court on TV. You can fight later. Right now, I need one of you to go and save my people."

Troy cleared his throat. "Of course, Colonel. You heard the man, Meredith. Stop being useless and Do. Your. Job."

"Fine." Chest heaving, fingers shaking, and rage and fear see-sawing along her spine, Meredith gave a curt nod. "Fine. Stay there and rot. Mckay out." Leaning forward, she stabbed the button to hang up the radio and then typed in the sequence to disengage the stargate. "Fine."

O'Neill frowned at her. "You sure you're up to this?"

"Of course, I'm a genius. I'm sure I can figure out that door without too much difficulty." Standing up, she shoved her still shaking hands into her pockets. "But if I decide to corner him in a dark alley when the two of us get back to Earth, I hope you'll agree to look the other way."

Huffing once, O'Neill grimaced. "I won't look away. I'll join you in the alley and help you teach him a lesson. What a piece of work…." Shaking his head, he trailed off and joined her at the door.

As they left the room, Meredith thought about what she'd just agreed to do and scrubbed a hand over her face. She'd only been through the gate less than a handful of times and not for anything even remotely dangerous. "How do you want me to do this?" At least her voice sounded in control instead of on the verge of panic.

"Grab whatever supplies you might need and then suit up in the locker room. I'll requisition a uniform for you. A team will be coming along for protection, so just focus on doing your job and they'll do theirs." They reached the elevator and he punched the button, keeping his eyes on the doors straight ahead. "Do you want me to send a doctor along? I can, though gate travel should be safe for—ya' know." He gestured at her middle awkwardly.

Rolling her eyes in scorn to keep from screaming at the unfairness of the universe and soon-to-be ex-husbands, Meredith made herself scoff. "No thanks. I know how the gate technology works and it should be safe. I am the resident expert, after all. Genius here! I'll go and rescue your people from their stupidity on my own, but you'll owe me one for this. They should've known better than to ignore their so-called geek and go wandering in abandoned structures like pimply boy scouts."

O'Neill snorted, following along until a stern-faced captain came trotting up to join them. His darkly tanned skin and the slant of his dark eyes made her think he had Polynesian ancestry. "Mckay, this is Captain Mena. His team will take care of you and get you to the trapped team. Do what he says."

Transferring his stern look to Mena, O'Neill ordered, "Captain, I want to see her back here without so much as a scratch, understood?"

Captain Mena saluted. "Yessir!"

"Good." As O'Neill walked past Meredith, he touched her arm fleetingly. "Be careful, thanks, and good luck."

Lifting her chin, she curved her lips up confidently. "Who needs luck when you have skill? I'll see you soon. This shouldn't take too long."

The next few hours passed quickly.

Meredith changed into an off-world uniform that bit in at her rounding waist—so much so that she had to secure the top pants button with a rubber band, which was luckily hidden by the utility vest that went on top. She and a group of Marines then went through the gate, met the waiting Dr. James who'd been left outside, and trudged up to the Ancient structure, settling in to work.

The structure had a large antechamber with a central door flanked by two large openings high on the wall that must've been windows at some point. The place seemed more like an Ancient trading outpost than a science lab, explaining why the technology didn't require the Ancient gene sequence to operate and how another civilization had managed to integrate their tech into it, though their tech felt like preschoolers with building blocks in comparison to the Ancients' elegant construction.

Captain Mena kept to her like a second shadow, keeping back with a stern glare the group of locals who hung around watching her take apart the mysterious machinery in the abandoned building above their village.

After the first couple of hours, the spectators got even larger when a group of four traders came through the gate and joined the rubbernecking, pulling out playing cards and bags of nuts that smelled like candied pecans to snack on. It made her hungry. The watchers showed a rudimentary grasp of engineering as they took bets on what she was doing or would do next. If she didn't need her hands to be completely clean as she pulled apart the hundreds of filaments in the walls, she'd have demanded a bag for herself as a pay-per-view fee.

One of the traders, in particular, kept catching her eye. Moving in as close as Captain Mena would let him, the exotically handsome and distinguished-looking man watched her with a steady intensity. When she switched from patching the corroded gears, valves, and hydraulics to confidently dive into the hundreds of delicate wire filaments connected to a lattice of Ancient crystals, he jumped forward, only stopped by Captain Mena's firm hand on his chest shoving him back.

Stumbling into his friends, he grabbed the nearest one's arm and shook it vigorously. "She understands the God machines!"

After that, whenever she glanced up from her work he'd catch her eyes and grin, a look of appreciation and even, dare she think it, desire on his face. It made her want to show off even more than usual. He seemed intelligent, explaining in impressed tones to his companions as they chomped nuts what she was doing with the secondary hydraulics system, which had been added by some idiot at some point in the past. He sounded lost but even more admiring and excited when she spliced together the Earth generator and the Ancient equipment. It also helped that he was easy on the eyes, with thick black hair trailing past the high collar of his tunic, golden skin, magnetic dark eyes, and a plush bottom lip that looked soft and inviting inside the frame of his neatly trimmed mustache and beard.

After the stress of recent months, soft and inviting was exactly what her life needed.

It was the first time she'd found a man attractive since her marriage to Troy imploded. Not that she'd ever see the handsome trader again after she got the door open and returned to Earth, but it was fun letting a small thread of her consciousness contemplate giving him a private moment to fully express his admiration of her talents while the rest of her brain worked on the problem of combining into a working whole the technological components from three vastly different civilizations.

After soldering a small bit of wire, she raised her aching eyes and blinked around the room. The light had gone dim. Cracking her sore back, Meredith looked at the nearest Marine. "Did you somehow not notice the big bright ball in the sky disappearing? Sun go down, room go dark? If you want me to keep working you need to get some electrical lights set up." Her bladder chose that moment to shoot out an S.O.S. and she stood up "You have until I get back."

Striding to the exit with Captain Mena as a shadow, she practically ran down the hill to the bathroom. It wasn't like she'd been drinking much, but her bladder had become much more demanding as her belly grew larger, forcing her to take more frequent breaks. The pregnancy was already impacting her work. She tried not to think about what she'd have to put up with after the birth. She knew she'd have to do research and face facts on that, but only in the final trimester when it became unavoidable.

When she finished using the primitive toilet and cleaned her hands, Captain Mena tossed her a lemon PowerBar. "Eat something, Doc."

Recoiling, she let the yellow bar hit her chest and fall to the ground instead of catching it, sending the man a scathing glare. "Do you want me to swell up and die! Causing that trapped team to die? Because I'm allergic to lemon!" She stomped back to her worksite.

Mena easily caught up to her, a muscle ticking in his jaw. He held out another bar, brown this time. "Sorry, Dr. Mckay, I didn't know, but you should still eat something. How about chocolate?"

"I'll take it." Ripping the bar open, she crammed half into her mouth and gave him a thumbs-up without looking over. She really was hungry. Her belly growled, demanding more sacrifices. She took another bite. After taking a swig of water from her canteen to wash it down, she looked around at the electrical lights the rest of Mena's team had now strung up around the room she'd been working in and frowned.

The handsome trader had disappeared along with most of his friends. The one trader that had stayed perked up at seeing her return, but she didn't care about him. All of the townspeople who'd been watching had taken off too, probably going home for dinner or getting bored because their small minds couldn't understand her awesomeness.

Yawning, she closed her eyes for just a second. Behind her eyes everything was white. The other lights surrounded her and watched, a part of her but not her. One of the lights fought the meld and tried to pull her out, tried to get himself out. He failed.

Opening her eyes, she found Dr. James standing only a couple of feet away staring at her with hands clasped beneath her chin like a wide-eyed orphan outside a bakery window. It was creepy. "What?" Meredith took a step back.

Dr. James was the geek who'd been left outside while her team tromped into a trap. She seemed soft, overly anxious, and a little too eager to please, so much so that Meredith had stopped letting her help after the first half-hour because the woman agreed to do everything Meredith asked of her even when she didn't know how to do it, creating new and annoying problems to fix in the process. Her team leaving her outside collecting samples while they went in alone made a lot more sense after having met her. Meredith wanted to get away from the woman too.

"How much longer do you think this is going to take? I'd like to update my team through the radio." Dr. James had a very breathy voice. Meredith found it really annoying.

"I'm close, probably not more than an hour as long as nothing else goes wrong." Meredith's stomach lurched unhappily, informing her it didn't like the chocolate power bar anymore. Turning her face away, she swallowed hard and stuffed the last piece into her pocket. Her stomach gurgled and settled.

Meredith returned to the exposed machinery, which now resembled an eviscerated robot from a horror movie with the metal ribs of hydraulics above and the milky-white cords of bundled ancient filaments pulled out below like a spill of intestines. John would mockingly scold her for torturing poor Bishop, but as long as there wasn't any Alien queen trapped behind the doors with their space marines she wasn't too worried.

Once power was restored to the room, the filaments should have a pale blue glow.

That's what she needed to focus on, and not what John would theoretically say if he was theoretically here instead of doing hot yoga with his hot wife or flying helicopters in the Middle East having forgotten all about Rome. John didn't need or want their friendship anymore, didn't need or want Meredith. For a genius, she sure was dumb when it came to men. They never prioritized staying with her. Their career, comfort, and other relationships always came first. Always.

Handsome trader came back into the room with twice as many friends as before, distracting her from things she shouldn't be thinking about. The large group of traders seemed to make Sgt. Mena unhappy, but Meredith sent them and handsome trader a welcoming smile. She didn't mind having an audience to her greatness. Handsome trader tossed his hair over his shoulder and smiled back toothily. It was a little intense, but maybe he'd developed a crush on her.

Splicing the final wire in less than an hour later, she turned to the Earth generator, took a deep breath, and turned it on. The hum built slowly. Meredith watched the energy readings on her tablet. When the connection held steady and the wires in the walls turned from milky white to translucent blue as predicted, she grinned. The resistance on one of the hydraulics looked a little high, so she pulled out her third and last can of lubricant and greased the area again, leaving the can out in case she needed it again.

She ran the system through a test. The readings hovered on the edge of yellow, but it only needed to work long enough to get the door up and the team out. Everyone just needed to move fast.

"Here we go," she told everyone. Activating her radio's all-call channel to include the team trapped inside, she started typing commands. "I've powered up the area to open the door. Wait five seconds before going through to make sure it doesn't immediately slam shut on one of you. If it stays up, immediately start running through since those ancient hydraulics won't last more than a minute at most. That means sixty seconds. Understand?"

The team leader inside instantly responded. "Yes, ma'am, wilco."

"You only got them a minute?" Dr. James stared at Meredith with dismay. "That's all you can do? I thought you were the best?!"

"I am the best!" Meredith scowled and felt a vein in her temple throb. "Did you see what I had to work with? You couldn't even get the wall panel open without me. A full minute is a miracle." Huffing she turned her back. "Here we go, initiating the program in three-two-one-go."

The gears and hydraulics inside the wall began turning with a loud squeal, even with the two and a half cans of industrial-grade lubricant she'd cleaned and coated them with. The door cracked away from the wall. With a spurt of panic, she saw the third gear on the lower left developing a hairline crack. Before she could get too wound up about that, one of the ancient crystals flashed a bright, painful white. Blinking away the afterimages, she saw it develop a shadow and turn cloudy.

The readings on her tablet spiked and the door ground to a stop with only a few inches of gap. Pressing her lips tight, Meredith typed in a new string of code, rerouting power, forcing the other crystals to take the extra load, knowing that if even one more of them went out the doors would slam shut again and make the next repair even longer and more difficult, if not impossible.

But that didn't matter because this was going to work! Meredith would make it work. Failure wasn't an option when lives and her reputation were at stake. She finished typing in the new program and hit execute.

The door started moving again with the wheeze of an overweight asthmatic forced to take the stairs, revealing the three waiting Marines leaning forward on the tip of their toes. The big one in the back stood almost a full head above the rest with the body of a rhino. The gap widened to about a foot wide and stalled again, the whining pitch of the machinery stabbing at Meredith's ears. Power readings arched into the red.

"One, two, three, four—" Meredith counted out loud even as her fingers typed in new commands. She couldn't risk opening the door any wider without breaking something. They'd have to make do. She locked the current door settings into a holding pattern. Glancing over, she saw that the crack in the third gear had grown, moving towards the interlocking tooth holding the door open. The readings on her tablet jumped to the edge of yellow and red. "Five! Go! Go!"

"Strip!" the trapped team's leader called after evaluating the narrow gap. The Marines slid out of their packs and vests, using up precious seconds. Sucking in, the first Marine began squeezing out of the door. He got through with only a little trouble but then the second one got stuck.

"This is taking too long," Meredith called, checking the countdown.

Two of Mena's Marines jumped forward, grabbing the trapped man's arm and leg and yanking hard until he slipped out, ripping his shirt and scraping red welts across his chest in the process. Meredith winced, but better hurt than dead.

The readings on her tablet jumped into the red and the Earth generator began making unhappy crackling noises. "Go faster! Faster!" Meredith yelled. The door groaned and narrowed by an inch.

She felt herself start to hyperventilate as the final Marine—the rhinoceros—tried to go through and instantly got stuck. The crack on the third cog had reached the tooth and she could see the metal starting to bend. If it snapped, the Marine would be crushed to death right in front of her, but there was nothing more Meredith could do. She was powerless.

Noticing Captain Mena standing taut as a violin bow by her side, Meredith pointed at the rhino and cried, "Help him!"

Mena jolted, looking at her wildly before glancing down and snatching up the bottle of lubricant at Meredith's elbow. He ran forward with the bottle extended and began spraying down the trapped Marine's chest and back as soon as he got close enough. The rest of the men pulled frantically at arms and legs.

Beneath the terrified cries of the trapped Marine and the shouting of everyone else she couldn't hear the gear snap, but she saw it break into three pieces with crystal clear clarity.

Expecting a spray of blood and viscera as the Marine was crushed, she instead saw the handsome trader lunge past, pull a thin piece of metal out of his pocket, and jam it in next to the gear before it could shift more than a few millimeters. It slowly bent. He pulled out a second piece of metal and jammed that in too in a different place, exactly where it would do the most good. Her mind hiccuped when she categorized the metal as of Ancient make and not iron or steel like she'd expected based on the trader's clothing.

The big Marine finally popped free just in time. A second later the first metal shim snapped—revealing Ancient internal circuitry—followed closely by the second. Crystals overloaded with pops and clouding and gears and hydraulics cracked. The door slammed shut, locks automatically clunking into place. Steam and the scent of scorched lubricant clouded the air. That door wasn't opening again anytime soon.

The rhino lay twisted on his side with one foot hanging in midair from where the door still had hold of his boot laces. Blood and lubricant coated his hairy chest, his shirt hung off one shoulder, and the waist of his pants was twisted and ripped. The other soldiers sprawled around him like knocked-over bowling pins. With a loud sob, the rhino dropped his head onto the shoulder of his nearest rescuer, threw an arm around his neck, and started to bawl.

Everyone was laughing and shouting and Meredith was so, so relieved. Typing a few quick commands, she shut down the Earth generator and any systems that hadn't already broken. She'd done it.

Abruptly feeling lightheaded, she sagged sideways and found herself caught in the strong arms of handsome trader. He pulled her firmly against his body. Beaming up at him, she patted his chest. "I did it! I saved them!"

"Yes, just as you will save us." Eyes as sharp and opaque as obsidian, the handsome trader pulled her back towards the exit. Something sharp pricked the side of her neck.

"Ow!" She tried and failed to jerk away. The grip around her waist tightened and he forced her arms down by her sides. Their pace quickened and her toes dragged helplessly across the floor. The group of traders surrounded Meredith, hiding the celebrating Marines from her sight.

"Stop! What are you doing? Let me go-oh…." The world turned woozy. "Help!" she gasped as the man and his friends dragged her away into the night. The stars smeared into spaghetti noodles overhead. She was released for a second only to be slung over a shoulder. It dug into her stomach. A distant corner of her mind felt panic that they'd hurt the baby, that they'd take her somewhere and kill her, but soon coherent thought slid through her fingers and scattered like ball bearings. Through slitted eyelids she saw the bright, white-blue wash of an open stargate and then everything went dark.