Four Heads are Better than One
Gail Overton runs a fingertip down the list of queries popping up on the screen in front of her. Nothing untoward. No one is searching for space giants or alien wheels or spinning giant discs or crash sites, giant craters... She feels like she should pinch herself, a real UFO, real off world civilisations… it's all real…. All the things she has spent the best part of twenty years debunking are real and now she's trying to cover it up.
Across the room from her, Agnes Dale and Cameron 'Knotty' Galbraith are studying maps. Looking for possible sites for the rest of the chariot or even the resting place of the giantess herself.
'Any luck over there?' Gail asks, as the General snores softly at her feet.
'No, sorry. I can't even begin to think where to start to look for a giant space chariot.'
'Well, we know where it's not, it's not under any manmade structure on the planet. All the ancient pyramids around the globe have been thoroughly researched. Seems we have hit a wall.' Knotty shakes his head.
'A wall. That's it!' Agnes suddenly leaps up from her seat. 'What would you build to keep giants in?'
'…A wall?' Knotty asks, perplexed by Agnes's sudden question.
'A prison… wait.. walls strong enough to keep a prisoner in...' As Agnes talks she types a search request into her computer browser, on the display screen on the office a wall an image appears.
A huge stone gateway topped by a carved lintel depicting two lionesses and a column. The flanking walls are of enormous stone blocks, carved and fitted together without mortar. 'This is The Lion Gate at Mycenae, a Bronze Age structure. Legend says it was built by the giant Cyclops but what if it was built for a giant instead.' Agnes pulls up a map of the gate's location. 'It's here, in Greece.'
Something connects the image of the map with a thought in Gail's mind. 'You know about impact craters, you know, meteors and the dinosaurs… does that area of the Mediterranean look like something huge might have impacted over it and created all those little islands?' She walks over to the screen and draws an imaginary circle around the Aegean Sea.
'Greek Key.' Knotty announces as he runs through his mind for all the information on Greek knots and patterns he has, 'The original Greek Key pattern, or Meander is based on the meanders of a river and signifies a labyrinth. While not technically a knot, the mythological labyrinth was built to imprison the Minotaur. The pattern of the labyrinth, showing a route out, is quite literally an ancient key to an ancient prison.'
'Hey, wait a minute… I'm getting a lot of seismic activity being reported… on lots on chat rooms. Minor tremors being recorded… are we getting any of this here?' The room they are in is on the mezzanine floor of SGC:UK, the base buried underground in the heart of Wiltshire. In the large atrium below there is a sudden flurry of activity and as Gail watches through the window, the flurry of activity changes to a full scale alert. 'I think they are…' But she gets no further as Commander Jack O'Neill comes bounding in. 'We are getting seismic readings all over the place! Anyone found a location for the rest of the chariot and for the Giantess yet? Because all hell is going to shake loose soon!'
'Where's the epicentre?' Agnes asks.
'Not there!' Jack points to the map of the Mediterranean on the screen. 'Come on, we'll be better off in the ops room, where all the action is! Come on General, shake a leg!'
The quake is over as quickly as it had begun and by the time Agnes has reached the atrium, her ankle slowing her down, the epicentre has been pinpointed and a team getting ready to investigate. Jack O'Neill decides to travel with the away team to the epicentre.
'Silbury Hill?' Agnes stares at the projected landscape image hovering over their heads in the atrium. 'Is it still standing? It's a manmade structure, Neolithic but isn't a burial chamber. Could the rest of the chariot be under it?' But her questions are left unanswered as Jack and the team head out to the tunnel leading out to the helicopter pad.
Jack and the away team jump from the helicopter as it hovers as close to Silbury Hill as it can before it circles back round searching for a landing spot. The hill, normally a neat, steep sided and perfectly round shape is a higgledy-piggledy ruin, as though someone has shaken a moulded green jelly into pieces. Protruding from the top of the wrecked hill is the unmistakable dull glow of a giant disc. Another wheel!
'We need to contain the disc & control this site!' Jack shouts. 'Let's get a perimeter road diversion up, far enough out so the hill isn't visible. Send confirmation of a road closure due to landslip to the local news channels! We'll need some rope or chains to tether this disc to the spot, before we can bury & seal it in place again!' Jack & the team spring into action as this new wheel, slowly jerks & shudders, trying to spin, half buried in the ground.
In the heart of the woods surrounding the gate pool, a quiet creature is decorating the trees with silver braids, loop after loop, turning the glade into winter wonderland of shining garlands. All around, small spiders are gathering and watching the Master Spinner at work, marvelling at her spinning skills, some adding their own webs, others examining the fine silversilk with their many eyes and legs.
In the atrium at SG:UK, Gail is watching the scene via one of the camera feeds placed near the pool. For a moment she can barely register what she is seeing, a giant spider emerging from the pool with armfuls of… weblike material… it occurs to her she should let someone know that the Gate is open and giant spiders are arriving from space. 'Has… is anyone else seeing this?' she asks. Almost to herself. Knotty, working on a nearby desk, looks up. 'Seen what?'
'That!' Gail waves a hand at the screen & the image expands into the space above the desks.
'Wow! Now that is a large beastie! I guess that is the Spinner they met on Maere. We should go and meet her. Look at all that silversilk!' Knotty beams at Gail. The day just keeps getting weirder.