Chapter 16 – Contact

"Daniel will be having the time of his life with all the archaeologists who thought he'd flipped back when." mused Jack as they walked along the corridor to their friend's laboratory. "You know, when he claimed that extra-terrestrials were responsible for the pyramids."

"Not all of them." replied Sam. "There are still people who don't believe that men walked on the moon in 1969, despite the evidence." She glanced across at Jack, who had started rubbing his temples in a motion she knew so well – the one that signified one of his oncoming headaches. "Are you starting to feel bad?" she asked, a note of concern in her voice.

"Ah, yes, if I'm honest." he said. "It just started a few moments ago when we arrived on this level. But the headaches don't usually start this quickly. Daniel's bound to have a pot of coffee on. I'll take some pain-killers when we get there."

They walked in to the familiar office to find it in an unusual state of neatness, with Daniel finishing the task of re-stacking books and manuscripts back onto the shelves. He looked round briefly as his visitors entered.

"Hey, guys! Glad you made it." he greeted them. "Let me guess. They've agreed to lay off the two of you if you give them interviews and photo-opportunities today, right?" Seeing their nods of agreement, he continued, "So, as the only remaining SGC member from the original SG-1, what can I show you since you left?"

"Where's the coffee?" said Sam. Daniel gestured towards the far corner and Sam walked over to pour cups for herself and Jack, noticing that Daniel already had a nearly-full mug on his desk. She handed one to her husband and watched him detach two tablets from a strip and throw them into his mouth with practised ease.

"What's up, Jack?" asked Daniel. "Are you still getting those pains? I thought they'd go away after the Asgard cleaned you up again."

"Uh, yes." grunted Jack, looking around his friend's home-from-home. Although Daniel had obviously tried to make the room look presentable for the TV tour, it still conjured up the image in Jack's mind of an absent-minded wizard's den. Even though the military demanded its customary thoroughness for filing, indexing and crating everything, somehow over the years of his membership of the SGC, Daniel had defied the system and was really the only person who could rapidly locate any given item in the room. During the year he had been 'absent', Jonas Quinn had started out on an attempt to bring order to this treasury, but had abandoned it after a few months when his natural curiosity for anything and everything had side-tracked him into investigating those same subjects.

Sam was looking around at the contents of the shelves and recalled Jack's comment during that time. 'Jonas is like a bloodhound with too many scent trails to follow,' he had said, 'whereas you, Carter, are the Saluki that can't stop investigating and gnawing at every bone you come across.' Sam had been ready with an indignant reply, but had been shocked into silence by Teal'c's immediate response of 'Indeed, O'Neill. A complementary arrangement, do you not think?' Sam had bridled at the comment at first, but afterwards had felt oddly amused and pleased at being compared to such a fine, elegant animal – but not before she'd compared Jack to every type of mutt, cross-breed and stray that she could think of. In fact, the game of matching people with dogs that she'd started with the children at General Hammond's house a few days previously had stemmed from those original comments, and she smiled when she remembered the first sight she'd had of Jack and Sam 2 together.

Her reverie was interrupted by Jack's voice. He was staring, no..... squinting at something on the end of a shelf to her right. "Daniel, what's that thing over there with the fuzzy glow around it?" he said, pointing in that direction.

"Er, where, Jack?" replied Daniel. "I can't see anything glowing, can you, Sam?"

"No." she replied. "Where do you mean, Jack?"

"That blue thing that looks like an outsized computer mouse." he replied. He got up and started to walk towards it, but his face screwed up in pain before he was half-way there and he stopped, his hand moving involuntarily to his forehead.

"This item, you mean?" said Daniel, picking it up. He walked towards them holding it in his right hand, but was surprised to see Jack stumbling backwards in an effort to keep his distance from the object. Daniel stopped, exchanging glances between Jack and the blue ovoid in his hand. He stepped back a few paces and noticed the relief on Jack's face.

"We don't know what it is yet." Daniel continued. "It was found a few weeks ago in the ruins of where the Ancients' library used to be. We haven't been able to translate the inlaid hieroglyphics yet, though. Can you still see a glow around it?"

"Yes, of course I can!" replied Jack irritably. "It's brighter than it was on the shelf."

Sam walked over to inspect the object at close quarters. "Do you know anything at all about what it does, Daniel?" she asked, taking it from his hand. She turned it over to see that the underside was concave, with a fine pattern of hexagons embedded into the otherwise smooth metal. Flipping it back over, she ran her fingers over the surface and could feel, but not quite see, small indentations that seemed to match exactly the pattern of her outstretched fingertips. She was further surprised to feel that with her fingers spread thus, the device attached itself gently to her and she could hold it quite comfortably with one hand.

"Be careful, Sam." said Jack. "It's just stopped glowing. Funny, the pain in my head's just disappeared too."

Sam glanced at him with concern, and pulled the object away from her right hand. Immediately Jack winced again and stepped away. She quickly replaced her fingers onto the back of the convex surface, and saw Jack relax. "Feel OK again?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah. I think so." he replied.

"Tell me if you start to feel anything." Sam continued. "I'm going to walk towards you, but I'll stop if anything happens, OK? I won't let go of it again near you." She saw him nod in reply, and slowly stepped towards him. They were both relieved that he showed no reaction even when she was standing right in front of him.

"Sam, can you feel anything?" asked Daniel, fascinated by the events.

"A slight tingling sensation in my hand, but otherwise, no." said Sam. "Jack, if you're OK with it, I'm going to place this against your head. The underside looks to have about the same radius of curvature."

"Well, I'm not so sure." replied Jack hesitantly. "Oh, what the hell. Are you sure it matches my head and not some other part of my anatomy?" He paused as Sam rolled her eyes. "If it cures the headaches it'll be worth the risk. But if it turns me into your obedient unthinking love-slave, I demand a minimum number of sessions per week."

Sam smiled. "Idiot!" she said gently. Slowly she moved her hand towards his head until the faintest contact had been established. The sensations that instantly flowed through both of their minds and bodies would take weeks for them to understand and master. But to Daniel, it merely seemed as though the two were standing together, lost to the outside world as they stared into each other's eyes. After a few seconds Sam removed the object from Jack's head, but they continued to stare at each other for a while longer.

"Guys! Are you OK?" said Daniel, moving towards them.

"Yes thanks, Daniel." said Sam. "Jack, why don't you take the elevator up to the next level while I find a way to store the Inducton safely."

"Good idea." said Jack, touching her arm affectionately, then turning on his heel and walking smartly down the corridor.

"Sam?" said Daniel, interrupting her gaze. "What happened? Are you OK?"

"Oh yes, Daniel." she smiled back at him. "Very much so." She pulled the device away from her fingers and handed it back to him. "The Asgard told us that they had downloaded the Ancients' Library from Jack's mind, didn't they? Jack's been thinking that they left a few remnants of information there and that's why he keeps getting these dreams and headaches. But they were a little economical with the truth, as it turns out."

"In what way?"

"It's mostly still there, Daniel. They put a block in Jack's subconscious mind to stop him being incapacitated by information overload. His side-effects are the minimum they could get away with for the time being. When I touched Jack's head, it was like being tapped into an indexing computer set up for a library search. I only had to think of, oh, 'keywords', as it were, and I was kind of receiving the data back almost instantly. The device is called an 'Inducton' and it's several thousand years old. It's triggered only by the proximity of someone or something carrying the Ancients' data classification system."

"Why, that's terrific, Sam. Now we'll be able to......"

"No!" she responded vehemently. "Don't you see, it will put Jack exactly in the place he doesn't want to be – a trapped animal being used by anyone who wants to extract information from him. I'm not going to let that happen to him. Anyway, that's only one scary aspect – the other one affects me just as much."

"How?"

"I said that the device was several thousand years old. Yet it is uniquely coded to match the physical form of my hand, down to fingerprint detail level, and also to my DNA patterns. Explain that to me, Daniel, because frankly I'm scared."

XXXXXXXXXXXX