Stargate Hastings
Chapter Twenty: He looks like a Knox
Heliopolis.
Bishop had only left the room with the strange pedestal, to either use the bathroom or to sleep. He would be in there with the team sent from earth, all of his waking hours. They still knew little about what the strange floating images meant but they had catalogued over one hundred and forty distinct configurations. They each had a central core, with varying amounts of smaller objects orbiting around them. If bishops suspicions were correct, then each represented an element and there were only just over fifty known to mankind. The implications of what that meant, were not lost on Bishop and was the reason he had refused to return to earth when ordered.
He had sent a message back with Jacob, when he had returned to deliver those orders, that simply stated. That if they forced him to leave, he would never use his knowledge to help them again and besides, there were plenty who could do that job. They would need their finest mind to work on this and that mind was his.
In the six weeks they had been here, they had cleared out the living quarters and were all barracked there. They had even found toilets that instead of flushing the waist material, it would completely disintegrate the matter, leaving nothing behind. They had a team taking one of them to pieces, in order to see if they could learn how it worked but it just seemed like magic to them. There were no moving parts as you would expect and that only made Bishop even more determined, to decipher this universal language.
This technology was so far ahead of them and if they did not find a way to catch up with it, all of this would be for nothing. The archives below the mansion spoke of some kind of weapon or knowledge, that was supposedly on Abydos but that was five thousand years ago and for all they knew, these gods had found the rebels there and killed them all. Bishop knew that this was too important, to leave to others.
When they would first activate the pedestal, the image was that of a singular representation of each individual element. Has they ran their hand across the illuminated button, on top of the pedestal. It would change to another image, as if turning a page in a book. In those sections they would find multiples of each character and that only convinced him even more, that what they were seeing was some kind of language. But how did you read a three dimensional sheet of paper, where would you begin.
It was because of his obsession, that he had not paid much attention to the room they were in. It had been the young girl Samantha, whose father was in charge of making this place fit for long term habitation, that had pointed out the problem they were having and a possible solution to it. As with all building projects, builders were required to work in three dimensions, length, width and height. Humanities only real way of recording their history or creating works of literature or art. Was to draw it onto a flat piece of paper but what if the paper did not need to be flat? We would develop a way of representing those works, in a completely different way to how they did now. She had also told him about cornerstones and how everything else would lead off of those, in order to build the three dimensional structure.
Young Samantha had at least given him something to look for but it was only when he realised, that he was ignoring one very important piece of information, that he made any real progress. If he was correct in his original assumption, that this device was meant to help four distinctive races, communicate with each other. Then he was seeing four different languages or four different interpretations of a completely new, universal language.
So instead of trying to see it all from one point of view, stood close to the pedestal looking up. He stood with his back against each of the walls, with the alien languages on and tried to put himself into the shoes of each race. Each angle he looked from, changed the order in which the elements were stacked or ordered. When he again approached the pedestal, he realised something. If he could just find out which element was represented by each character, then he would at least have somewhere to begin but he had no frame of reference.
In orbit above the world of Heliopolis.
Modi was the commander of the Mjolnir, the former ship of his father and the supreme commander of the Asgardian fleet, Thor. Modi's grandfather Odin, had been the Asgardian who had saved his race, when the species was ravaged by a plague, that had left them sterile. It was he who had developed the technology, that aloud them to transfer their consciences into clone bodies and was made the ruler of the entire Asgard race in perpetuity, as a result.
Thor had been given command of the most advanced ship within the fleet, the Bilskirnir. So the Mjolnir was passed on to Modi, as he was the first born of his two sons. That had been millennia ago and while the ship had been upgraded in that time, the superstructure of the vessel was still the same, as the ship his father had commanded. The Mjolnir class vessels were small in comparison to their more advanced cousins but they were just as powerful.
Before being sent to this galaxy to check on the meeting place of the four great races, that had once held dominion over three galaxies. Modi had been engaged with his races fiercest enemy, the ones who replicate but could do nothing to prevent another world, from falling to those insectoid machines. He had helped evacuate as much of the population as they could but too many were lost. The Asgard were a race of zero growth, their greatest law was one conscience, one body and that meant any that were not saved upon their death, would be dead.
The law had been made to keep the illusion of the soul, with multiple copies making a mockery of that theological assumption. Although the ancients and the Furling's had in a sense, proved that assumption correct. The Asgard had gone a step further than them and proved that the soul was more than just a persons knowledge. The Asgard did not see themselves as soulless but they did know that the millennia of cloning that their bodies have been subject to, would prevent them ever joining their former allies on the next plain of existence and would one day be the end of his entire race.
Ten millennia ago the Asgard had fought a civil war against members of their race, that had broken the law of a single copy and also a law that predates the Asgard as they are now today. They had experimented on a less evolved species. Those honourless fools had used methods, that even the etins or the Gau'auld as they call themselves, would not be able to think of. The Vanir they called themselves but to the rest of the Asgard, they had no name. They were out there somewhere but the Asgard had long gave up the hunt for them.
He had been despatched to the place the four races had used, to make a record of the knowledge that all four were willing to share. There was no technological knowledge stored on this world, only the purest form of knowledge of them all. Everything that the four races knew, about the universe around them. Given enough time, if anyone could actually decipher what it all meant. They would eventually make technological advancements but in truth it would do more for their spiritual advancement.
That was why Modi could not understand, why they had sent such a valuable ship and its crew to investigate. That was until the Mjolnir's science officer and Modi's brother Magni, had came to report in. "Commander there is a ninety five point three two percent chance, that the humans down on the planet are from Midgard and I do believe they have repaired the damage that our people did to the Stargate platform". When they had ran the etins off of this world and in the process made its surface all but lifeless, they had rigged the Stargate platform, in order to send it to the bottom of the ocean. There was still plenty of life in the oceans of this planet but that life would never be able to adapt to live on the land again.
"Show me". Modi ordered. Asgard sensors are very good but even they have their limitations. They could pick out individual life signs and even distinguish that persons species. If they had the required individuals planet of origin, in their ships computer. They could even tell from which of the many worlds in this galaxy, that they came from. Fortunately the one building left standing on the planet, had surveillance systems that had laid dormant for millennia.
The systems were those left behind by the ancients, the greatest civilisation to ever wonder the stars and had only been activated because someone, in fact some several people had possessed a certain gene. One of those people was in the chamber with the repository of knowledge and he looked very unusual, even for a human. Magni commented, "I find this human most intriguing brother. He as no idea what he is looking at but I do believe given time, he will decipher what it all means. He is just missing a few pieces of the puzzle, his planets scientists are close to that level of understanding, a decade away, two perhaps but he does already understand what they are. He simply needs a way to identify them individually".
"I do not understand why we have been sent to deal with this matter, the knowledge down there can not hurt them. It is the reason we allowed the etins to keep it for a time, to see if the knowledge they learned would enlighten them. Any single Asgard vessel could handle this and this place is their legacy anyway dam it. We should be on the front lines with father". Asgardians while being an evolved race, could be quick to anger if they felt slighted or worse, useless.
"They are all falling back brother, the more ships we throw at them, the more they take control of. Their numbers are still small compared to ours but in a century, we will be overrun. We have no way to fight them and the more we try, the stronger they become. The new strategy is containment and you are too eager for vengeance against these creatures, for you to be of any use in that task brother". Magni and Modi had been purposefully put together aboard the Mjolnir by their father.
Modi was a brilliant tactician, who many believed equal to their father but he had always been too quick to join a fight. Magni had always been able to keep his brothers baser instincts under control. If Magni was honest with himself, he felt the same way as his brother. Their people had numbered close to a trillion before the Replicators, they were now getting closer to half a trillion but the ruling council of which their grandfather sat at the head, was right to change their strategy and it was at their own fathers behest.
"I still see no reason to be here, we are forbidden from interacting with these people and as I have already said. This place is as much their legacy, as it is ours". Modi knew that he had a job to do and he would do it. Besides his brother seemed fascinated by the strange human, with the wild hair. He just reminded Modi of the Knox a little, he respected the Knox but a small part of him saw them as cowards.
Magni shook his head, as he said "We are always fighting lately brother, it will be good to do some research for once".
Modi let out a laugh or what passes for one on Asgard and then replied, "Maybe it is you who reminds me of the Knox brother and not him". Maybe his brother was right, they had been in too many battles just lately and seen too many fall, never to rise again. If these people are from Midgard, then that is indeed an interesting development.
They would watch but they would not interfere, unless Modi did what he was famous for among the Asgard. Modi did not break rules, he bent them or reshaped them but he never broke them. That was why he had always been his uncle Loki's favourite.
