Jack leaned down to tie his shoe and suddenly found himself in a room with a white ceiling, floor, and table-thing and blue-screen blue walls. He looked around frantically for a moment until he found Teal'c at his side. "What just happened?"
Teal'c seemed equally confused as he studied their surroundings. "I do not know, O'Neill."
"Ya think it has something to do with the Asgard?"
"I do not know, O'Neill."
Jack took another look around. "Place doesn't look all that Asgardy."
"Indeed." Teal'c glanced around the blue room with an eyebrow raised and a deep frown of concentration on his face. "I wonder for what purpose we have been brought here."
Sam leapt to find himself tying his shoes.
The man at the line of lockers on the opposite wall was talking to him. "So when we see the Tok'ra Ambassador, will you let me do all the talking?"
"Sure." He scanned the room to see one other person besides the one who was talking: Al, who stood looking at him with an equal amount of shock on his face.
The other man looked at Sam in amazement. "Wow, Jack, I didn't think it'd be that simple. Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing."
"Okay. Then I'll see you in the gateroom."
Just after he left, a woman appeared holding a device similar to the one Al used on a regular basis.
"Cool!" she blurted, her eyes growing wide. "I never thought I'd meet you two!" When she realized they weren't going to say anything, she started the regular routine, pointing first to Sam then Al. "You're a man named Jack O'Neill, a colonel in the Air Force, and you're some guy named Murry, I think."
"You think?" repeated Al, sounding very much like Jack.
"Deus can't find anything on him."
"Deus?"
"Ziggy Two. Now both of you supposedly work at an Air Force base that studies deep space telemetry, but why all that equipment you've got with you to study deep space telemetry?"
To answer her question, Sam shrugged. "And the date?"
"Oh, June 13, 2003, a... Friday."
"Freaky Friday," Al sighed.
"Yeah, good movie. I think it comes out a month or two from this day."
"That's nice and all, but the guy told us to meet him in the gate room. Do you know where that is?"
She frowned, prodding the device in her hands. "It doesn't say anything here. I'll be right back."
Jennifer Copeland typed in a search for "Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado." "Resorts and weather forecasts," she muttered. Tagging on "Air Force Base," she whispered the results as she scrolled through. "United States Space Command's Missile Warning Center, reserved parks, reunion, a history of blah, blah, blah, and Star Trek: Exploiting the Final Frontier. What's Star Trek in there for?"
Giving up on the search, which didn't mention anything about deep space telemetry, she glanced over at a small, one-way window into a large, blue room that was an exact replica of the old waiting room. Jennifer wandered over and listened in on the conversation inside between a graying, military man and a taller man with a golden circle on his forehead.
"Why couldn't this have happened after we met with what's-his-name?" the military man asked no one in particular.
"I do not know, O'Neill," the other replied.
"Teal'c, that was a rhetorical question."
"I see."
"His name's not Murry!" she blurted, like O'Neill, speaking to no one in particular. "This means that all our information on this place could be wrong! Dr. Beckett and Admiral Calavicca could mess everything up!"
She stood on a silver platform a few feet from the window, where her image would be projected to the inside of the waiting room.
"Whoa!" O'Neill exclaimed as the hologram appeared. "See, Teal'c, I told you they weren't Asgard."
He raised an eyebrow and looked toward Jennifer's image.
She was unsure of what to say; circumstances did not often demand that someone contact the person in the waiting room. For lack of a better idea, she blurted out the one immediate problem they had on their hands. "Could one of you tell me where the gate room is?"
"May I ask why?" the colonel replied, obviously annoyed.
She frowned. "Just tell me."
"You'll be thrown into the brig long before you get there," he explained.
"Please?"
"No." She nodded, about ready to leave, but he asked one more question. "What's going on here?"
She smiled mischievously and stepped off the holo-pad.
"What's going on here?" he repeated, shouting this time.
Teal'c cocked his head and answered stoically, providing sharp contrast to his friend's emotion. "I do not know, O'Neill."
Daniel found his teammates wandering around the halls, not quite heading toward the gateroom. "Are you okay?" he asked as he fell into step beside them.
"Yeah," replied Teal'c, "just fine."
The archeologist's eyebrows lowered. "Then why are you heading toward the elevator instead of the gateroom?"
Jack shook his head. "Forgot where I was."
Daniel nodded and led the two to the gateroom as he wondered if Teal'c had been possessed by something again. When they arrived, he jogged up to the control room where General Hammond stood. "General, is there any chance we could postpone this mission?"
"Dr. Jackson, if we're going to make another ship like Prometheus, we're going to need the weapons-grade naquada that the Tok'ra can provide. We told the Tok'ra High Council that we are going to be there, and I intend to keep that appointment."
"Jack and Teal'c are acting strange, especially Teal'c."
Hammond glanced down into the gateroom, where Teal'c was staring at the Stargate and Jack and Sam were locked in a conversation. The major excused herself and joined Daniel and Hammond."Sir, Colonel O'Neill just asked me how the gate works and understood the answer!" Various eyes from around the room turned to her in shock.
The general thought for a moment. "We'll take them to the infirmary, but you two still have to go to the Tok'ra base."They watched as Hammond ordered a couple of guards to escort half of SG-1 to the infirmary.
A thought occurred to Carter. "Sir, what if Jack and Teal'c switched bodies again?"
"I thought you said that couldn't happen."
She frowned. "I did, but if someone engineered a device without that one- time-only feature, it could still be used on them."Hammond nodded.
Daniel's brows furrowed. "Sam, why would Teal'c ask you about how the Stargate works? He understood the first time."She pursed her lips slightly and nodded as they all rejected the theory.
The general turned to Davis. "Dial the gate." Major Carter and Dr. Jackson hurried back down to the embarkation room, dwelling on what might have happened to their teammates.
Jack studied his surroundings. Finally, he saw what he sought: a tiny, dark seam just about the right size for a door. "Teal'c," he began in his most diplomatic tone of voice, "you think you could manually open this door?"
Teal'c raised an eyebrow, looking from his friend to the faint rectangle on the wall. "Indeed, the possibility may exist, O'Neill, though I am uncertain as to my ability to do so."
The colonel shrugged and moved aside, allowing the Jaffa a closer examination. "Hey, you've spun a 'gate; this can't be much harder."
"Indeed, it can." Then Jaffa then proceeded to apply pressure on one side of the door with his shoulder. Upon the use of a different technique involving inertia and intermittent applications of force, the same hologram from before appeared inside the tall, blue space.
She held her head in her hands and didn't actually look straight at the two. "Will you please not do that?"
Teal'c stopped his work of trying to break free. O'Neill cocked his head at her, the same as he had done to many misunderstanding Asgard councils. "Why?" the colonel questioned as if he were speaking to some pompous Goa'uld. "You put us in this little blue box and expect us to shut up and be happy?"
The hologram finally turned her hazel eyes to the colonel. "Well, um, yes. Most people are."
"Then can you tell us what's going on here?"
She smirked. "If you'll tell me all about yourselves."
Grinning back, he answered, "Deal."
An expectant silence fell about the room as Jack and Jennifer began an impromptu staring contest. After a couple more seconds, both suggested, "You go first."
Jennifer sighed. "Okay, just over an hour ago, you two appeared, having been bumped out of your place in the space-time continuum by a pair of time-travelers. Your turn."
O'Neill stared for a moment, his eyes narrowing. He leaned over to Teal'c. "Carter'll figure it out." The colonel then smiled back at the hologram, apparently quite proud of what he was about to say. "We're technically diplomats at the moment."
Jennifer's brow wrinkled. "Diplomats to where?"
He shrugged and smiled as if he were about to answer. "I'm not gonna tell you."
The colonel glanced to his companion, who informed her, "Colonel O'Neill believes that you possess additional knowledge."
"Maybe," she replied mischievously, "but I really can't tell you."
Jack grinned, the mostly sarcastic expression pulling his lips halfway to his ears. "Then we understand each other."
"Wait, no but if you don't tell me, you'll... you'll make yourself look like a fool," Jennifer pleaded.
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "I do not see how withholding the identity of our allies would make us appear foolish.".
The heavy door slammed shut, leaving Al and Sam alone in the brig after visiting the infirmary.
"What'd I do?" Al asked innocently.
"You weren't acting like Teal'c," answered Jennifer as she stepped out from behind him into the empty space on the other side of the bars.
"Who's Teal'c?"
"You."
"I thought you said I was Murry."
She shrugged. "We were wrong. Even so, Deus can't find anything on any 'Teal'c.'"
Al glanced to Sam then back to Jennifer. "Shouldn't Ziggy Two be better? Even my Ziggy could do that!"
Her eyes gleamed with hurt pride. "Maybe. But I don't think Teal'c's human. Basically, just act stoic, don't use contractions, and call almost everyone by their rank and last name." She turned around. "And you need to act like Al."
"What?!"