Morning came early, at six am. But that was nearly twelve hours of solid sleep for the two, and that was something that had been rather unexpected. That didn't mean that Virgil still wasn't a grumpy gus that couldn't function without a bucket of hot coffee, though, because he was. Alan hadn't expected any less, if he was being honest with himself, and snickered his way through getting ready that morning.
They took turns using the bathroom facilities, taking quick showers and what have you. The uniforms were left in their duffle bags, although HEMERA took up its place on Alan's arm, only three of the little LED lights glowing green out of the six of them. That looked good; it meant that they wouldn't have to spend too much time in this world. And with a rogue government group and a bunch of twitchy military people with guns wandering around, it would probably be better for them to just…you know, leave.
Alan pulled on a blue t-shirt with an IR symbol on the front. He'd been rather amused at the merchandizing in the last world; they had their own issues with merchandizing International Rescue in their world. With IR being known as the Tracys, Tracy Industries actually had a solid hold on merchandizing them. And they did, with the proceeds going towards charity (IE disaster help and actual funding for the 'Birds themselves), but he'd been amused enough at the other world's stuff to buy it. It all looked just a little…off. Since they didn't have the actual designs and all. (Jeff and Other-Scott hadn't been all that amused, but Other-Gordon had laughed and laughed and then given Alan a couple of their official International Rescue badges, since they were so different from their own.)
His jeans were black, and he stuck with plain sneakers instead of his uniform boots.
Virgil opted for a gray t-shirt and simple blue jeans. As well as the work-boots he seemed to favor back home, since Alan had found him something incredibly similar in his shopping trip. He did, however, pull on the gray and green hoodie as well.
Once they were ready, they peeked out of their room and asked their assigned guard about breakfast. It was nearing seven at that point, so they thought it a reasonable question. They hadn't expected to be led to the base cafeteria, honestly, having thought that they'd be relegated to their room for their stay here, but they weren't complaining.
Because there was food.
And coffee.
Coffee was very, very important.
Over a hearty breakfast—and lots of that very important coffee for Virgil—they met up with Colonel O'Neill "Call me Jack or I'm throwing you back in interrogation," and Major Carter "You can all me Sam if you'd like," and their other two team members Dr. Daniel Jackson and Teal'c. Alan had been thrilled to meet a bona fide alien, and Teal'c had seemed somewhat amused with the small, excitable blond as well.
Carter had immediately tried asking Virgil about their world's tech only for Alan to laugh at her and inform her that Virgil wasn't about to talk to anyone until he'd had about three cups of coffee. Not unless there was an emergency. Virgil's grumpy glare backed him up, and Carter laughed it off. She understood the need for coffee; Daniel practically lived off the stuff.
So the conversation had turned to the differences between the two worlds. Daniel was incredibly interested in how similar their worlds were. Same histories with very little changes. Up until this time, at least, which led the two brothers to find that they were in the late 1990's, a completely different century than what they were used to.
"Are you sure you're not just time traveling?" Jack asked, frowning down at his oatmeal. "We had an issue with that once."
Virgil grunted, cutting off Alan's response. "Clockwise, Allie," he reminded his little brother. "And a very serious lack of aliens in our world," he added. He tilted his head to one side, finally setting down his mug. "What's your main fuel source?"
"Fossil fuels," Carter responded.
Virgil gave a nod. "We moved away from fossil fuels in the 1960's," he said. "Went nuclear. Since then, we've been working on other energy sources. Cleaner ones." Because nuclear was great, when it wasn't going critical. But when it did go critical it tended to take everything out with it, so other energy sources were needed.
They ended up heading for Major Carter's office/lab space. Alan peppered Teal'c with questions about his home planet, not at all bothered by the mostly monosyllabic answers he was getting in return. Virgil kept running his hand through his hair, a little annoyed that they hadn't thought to get hair gel before leaving the last world. His hair hadn't been so floppy and curly in years, since he usually kept it up in that faux-hawk. He made a mental note to ask about possibly getting some gel before leaving this world.
"How old are you, kid?" Jack asked as they rounded a corner. They didn't have the assigned guards with them at the moment, since the entirety of SG1 were escorting the two world-travelers, but that didn't keep them from being looked at oddly. They were likely the youngest people on the base at sixteen and twenty-four.
"Sixteen," Alan answered easily enough, slipping into the office behind Carter and eyeballing all the machinery there. It looked older, out of date, but still odd. Like, alien odd.
"You let a sixteen-year-old fly to other planets?" Jack asked, turning on Virgil and sounding utterly flabbergasted.
"Let is a strong word," Virgil mumbled, rolling his eyes.
"Hey!" Alan called. "I passed the training. I beat Dad's record. And you said yourself that no one can fly Three like I can."
"Cause no one can fly Three like you can," Virgil responded calmly. He turned back to the Colonel and shrugged. "Kid's a natural. Granted, we didn't expect him to pass so early, but hey, he was motivated."
"Motivated," Jack deadpanned.
"Sprout loves rockets," Virgil said, just as deadpan. "His first word was 'vroom', so we knew he'd either love going fast or vacuuming. Unfortunately for us, it was the first."
"I feel like you're picking on me," Alan grumbled, poking at something on Carter's desk, only to get his hand smacked. "Is that your computer?" he asked, pointing at the large boxy thing. "Looks weird."
"And how do computers look in your world?" Carter asked back, sounding a little frustrated. Because she had the top-of-the-line equipment here; most of the world hadn't seen computers like the ones she used. Alan spouted off a fast description of their computers but mentioned how they were more likely to use tablets or holograms to do work, since they were more portable, which led into an even longer discussion that Virgil took the more technical parts of.
Alan knew numbers and coding almost as well as John did. Technical fiddly bits though? Yeah, that was Virgil's skill set.
"You mentioned a Terrorist War," Jack threw in, during a quiet lull as Daniel and Carter were busy jotting down some information.
"Not to you," Virgil said with a frown.
Jack rolled his eyes. "You knew we were monitoring you."
Virgil shrugged. Yeah, they had known that. It wasn't like they'd hidden the cameras in the interrogation room, after all. "I'm not military. I was in college during those wars."
"But you mentioned a Scott as being in the Air Force?" Jack pushed.
Alan looked up, frowning. "Yeah? Scott's our oldest brother," he said. "He was Air Force. He fought in the wars. We still don't know much about them."
"He doesn't talk about it," Virgil said very pointedly. Jack eyed him for a moment and then dropped it.
"What level of schooling do you have?" Carter asked, setting her pen down.
"Masters in Mechanical Engineering," Virgil rattled off. "Minor in Art History."
"Art History?" Carter asked, sounding a little disgusted. "Why?" Apparently, she wasn't impressed with that kind of degree.
"I like art," Virgil said with a sharp grin. "Alan's still in high school. Kind of."
At the odd looks he was getting for that, Alan gave a shrug. "Dual enrollment through MIT, computer science. Plus, I'm hoping to get home in time for finals." He frowned, making a bit of a face. "Who thought that I'd ever be hoping to do schoolwork?" he muttered to himself.
"What about your brother?" Daniel asked, tilting his head to one side. MIT was a great school here and he was slightly intrigued as to how it held up in their own world.
"Which one?" Alan asked, poking at an alien looking machine. By the way Carter seemed to shrug it off, Virgil figured it was okay to play with.
"Uh…" Jack blinked at him. He knew, a little, about the family of these two. But he didn't know what the television show had gotten different from their own world. "All of them?"
"Scott's got a business degree. Associates, I think," Virgil mumbled, stretching a little. They'd been sitting at the desk discussing tech for a while. He glanced around and was a bit startled to see that Teal'c had disappeared.
"Johnny, Virgil's twin, has like a bazillion degrees," Alan said.
Virgil rolled his eyes. "He has, like, three."
Alan gave him such a deadpan stare that Virgil cracked and grinned and shook his head. "Johnny has a PhD in Linguistics. A PhD in astronomy. A Masters in communications. And a Masters in computer science, I think. There might be more. He's…a nerd." He didn't mention the fact that he was just as nerdy. They all were, honestly.
"And he's your twin?" Daniel asked, sounding impressed. "So the same age as you?" Because Virgil didn't look any older than twenty-five, if that.
Virgil huffed. "Yeah. Guy doesn't know when to stop, I swear," he grumbled.
"And Gordon has a doctorate in Marine Biology," Alan finished nonchalantly. "Our sister doesn't do the college thing, though," he said with a shrug. Kayo hadn't ever shown any interest in higher education, and no one pushed her on it. In fact, no one had pushed anyone on anything.
Gordon had never stepped foot on college grounds. His degree was actually an honorary one from Duke University. They hadn't even cared that Gordon had only had his GED at the time, having dropped out of High School to join WASP. Gordon got great pleasure out of being called Dr. Tracy, and the other brothers humored him on it, because he had put in the work to earn that degree, honorary or not.
John collected college degrees like candy because he actually enjoyed writing thesis papers. He called it relaxing. The fact that everyone seemed to love his discoveries was a bonus.
Scott had gotten his Associates and never really looked back. He hadn't had time, honestly, what with suddenly being thrust into the role of caregiver, CEO and Commander of International Rescue all at once at the tender age of twenty. And that was while dealing with crippling PTSD.
Virgil was really the only one to do college the conventional way, and even then, he'd gotten his Masters at pretty much the same time as his Bachelors. He'd sped through the programs, mostly so he could join International Rescue faster and get back home to his brothers.
Alan still hadn't made up his mind as to whether or not he was going to physically go to college. His brothers were all kind of hoping he'd take the initiative to take some time away from International Rescue for a few years to earn his degree and all, but they weren't pushing him either way. He was halfway to his associates in computer science already as it was.
"Alright," Jack said with a huff. "Enough shop talk. Let's get lunch and then we can stop off at the gym and let you guys get some energy out."
"What, like puppies?" Alan asked, practically bouncing to the door. "Hate to break it to ya, but we ain't puppies, man."
"He's a puppy," Virgil mumbled, rolling his eyes as he watched his little brother practically skip down the hall. "Gym would be nice though."
"Sir, I was hoping they could let me see some of their coding after lunch," Carter spoke up, sounding a little disappointed. Daniel, being dragged out of the office by Jack to make sure he actually ate something, was back to questioning Alan. This time it was about his role as 'Communications Specialist' backup for an international program. How did it work? How many languages did they speak? What translation programs did they use?
Yada. Yada. Yada.
"I don't have much to do with coding," Virgil admitted. "That's John and Al's purview." He took a couple quick steps forward, grabbing Alan's collar and yanking him away from a startled looking airman. "Hey, Sprout. Carter wants to know about our coding."
"Yeah, sure," Alan shrugged. "I have a few thumb drives in my baldric." Because it was always good to have a few bits and pieces of code on hand during rescues, if only to let EOS have better access to other people's systems without having to hack remotely. And there was no way that Alan was going to let anyone touch HEMERA right now. "I don't know if they'll be compatible with their tech, though."
"Would you be able to help design a translation code for us?" Daniel asked eagerly, pushing his glasses up his nose. "All the ones we have don't work for what we need them for." He turned to Jack excitedly. "Jack! They have a code that can translate any language on Earth in real time!" He was incredibly excited by that prospect and was hoping it could be adapted to alien languages as well.
"Trying to put yourself out of a job, Danny?" Jack asked with an amused smile.
"He wouldn't," Virgil countered absently, eyeing Alan sternly. The boy seemed to keep trying to wander off, wanting to explore more of this underground maze. "Everyone likes talking to an actual human more than they do a computer. We literally just use the translators for the languages John can't speak."
"And how many languages is that?" Carter asked, intrigued. She'd picked up that all the brothers in the family were smart (geniuses, really), but that this 'John' was probably the most intellectually minded. Alan and Virgil had snickered over her seeming 'crush' on the absent brother and had promised to not mention Brains. Otherwise, she may demand to go back to their world with them just to meet the man.
"Twenty-two?" Alan asked, glancing back at Virgil.
"Three. He finally learned Farsi," Virgil said with a wry grin.
"Huh. Hadn't considered that one," Alan huffed. He turned back to Daniel. "If you have examples of the alien languages then, yeah, we can program them in. But to make it learn more on the spot, you'd have to have a learning program, and that can be a little dicey."
"Dicey?" Jack asked, not liking the sound of that.
"Learning programs have a tendency to go sentient," Alan explained, just as they entered the cafeteria. They paused the conversation long enough to grab their food and find a table. Once everyone was seated, Carter asked for more of an explanation about sentient codes. Because artificial intelligence was something that hadn't even been explored outside of science fiction, and sentient codes weren't even feasible on any scale at this time.
"Codes are completely capable of going sentient," Alan said with a shrug. He glanced at Virgil, who rolled his eyes and waved him on. They'd be leaving this world within the next day or two, so it wasn't like they could do much damage. If anything, they were helping to advance a more primitive world. Wormholes or not. "Especially if you've directly told the program that it's supposed to learn. Even setting parameters for that learning means that the code will just find ways to work around them."
"How so?" Jack asked with narrowed eyes.
Alan chewed on his sandwich thoughtfully for a moment, trying to figure out how to word his answer. "John built a learning program once. He used a game-code base and wanted it to learn how to play different board games. It was a project he did out of boredom." He shrugged lightly. "Johnny discarded it when it didn't seem to be turning out the way he wanted." He paused to take a drink, glancing at his arm brace, where the three lights silently glowed. Still only three. Huh. It didn't seem to recharge at an even rate.
"And?" Carter asked.
"And once free, that code learned more than just the rules of board games. It learned enough to start being scared of the world around it and it went on the offensive." He shrugged. "EOS nearly killed both John and myself before he talked her down. She's now an integral part of International Rescue and a member of our family. She's John's daughter."
"EOS," Daniel murmured thoughtfully. "Greek goddess of the dawn." He paused, frowning. "You called your machine HEMERA. Which is the Greek goddess of the day."
Alan shrugged yet again, grinning impishly. "I can be petty," he admitted. "Also, the coding for the machine had to made very specifically to get it to do what we wanted. And it has to learn with every world we go to. It wouldn't have worked otherwise."
"So, you purposefully created a sentient AI," Carter murmured with a frown. There were moral implications of creating sentient computer programs that she didn't even want to begin thinking about.
Alan shook his head. "No," he said carefully. "I purposefully created a learning code, knowing that the possibility of it going sentient was there."
"We learned from what happened with EOS," Virgil interjected. "All code is now carefully looked after. And if it has any chance of going sentient, we more or less baby it." They hadn't actually written any learning codes since EOS, other than HEMERA. John was strictly banned from coding without supervision, and that rule had fallen onto Alan as well. They had all figured that one EOS was enough. Until this situation, that is.
"So it doesn't get scared?" Daniel asked.
Virgil nodded. "Yeah, so it doesn't get scared."
"Are AI common in your world, then?" Jack asked, shoving a fry in his mouth.
"Nope," Alan said, popping the 'p'. "You don't see them anywhere outside of IR. Not sentient ones, at least. You can get really simple AI in things like Roombas or whatever."
"What's a Roomba?" Carter asked.
"A little AI vacuum," Alan said with a smile. "Very simple intelligence. Can't learn. Aren't sentient." He paused, frowning darkly at his brother. "Unless you have meddling big brothers."
Virgil gave him an utterly innocent look. "What?" he asked, his tone buttery-smooth and honey sweet. "I don't do coding."
"No but you bribed John somehow, I know you did," Alan muttered.
"I thought you liked Earnhardt," Virgil said, still displaying complete innocence.
"I do," Alan said, still glaring. "But Virge, our Roombas don't need personalities. And I know they can fly because of you. John wouldn't have thought of that."
"You made your vacuums fly?" Jack asked, sounding both aghast and amused all in one. He couldn't even begin to imagine a flying vacuum.
Virgil dropped the innocent act and gave a wry grin. "We were bored?" That was, of course, when the rule that it had to be someone other than Virgil supervising John's coding had been made.
"I'd say drunk, but we don't have any alcohol on the island," Alan grumbled, rolling his eyes. Since they were always on duty with International Rescue, they hadn't seen the point in having alcohol in stock. They never had time to drink it, and Alan was too young anyway. "Never leave the twins without supervision."
"Funny how you say that when we constantly refer to you and Gordon as the Terror Twins," Virgil retorted.
Alan shrugged again. "Yeah? Don't leave us without supervision either." He turned back to Daniel and Carter. "Let me grab my baldric after lunch and the after that trip to the gym we can look into coding you a language program. If we can work through the different tech issues."
"Leave that to us," Virgil said, pointing between himself and Carter. "I'm sure we can cobble something together.
Note: The timeline for SG1 is very ambiguous. I had the idea to stick it in the year 1999, but I don't like where that lines up with the show itself. So I just…never actually mentioned specifics. Just be aware that it's been about a decade since I last watched Stargate SG1 (my favorite sci-fi. My introduction to sci-fi, actually.) So loves to all of you!