The tunnel was already a good hundred feet into the rock wall when they hit the first pocket of the ore they needed and true excavation work began. The crews, long past the 'new' of their job, were merely quiet and dedicated as they removed the dark gray rock from the reddish brown stone and began to turn it over for refinement. Jonah and his team were well-established in their routines and patterns and they were able to work constantly, in staggered shifts, until the night crew came to relieve them.

The clang and ping of rock and iron struck together was a now-familiar sound and it faded into the background as the workers ceased to attend to it. Jonah was working with a group shuffling unusable red stone away from the workers removing the ore from the depths of the mine. After the work duties were sorted Jonah had actually very little supervisory tasks to perform. Everyone by now knew their jobs and did them without having to be told. These were, after all, men who were used to working together. Jonah became just another miner with occasional decision-making power.

An urgent shout echoed through the stone tunnel, quickly followed by a deafening roar of falling rock as the sound folded in on itself and amplified in the small confines.

Jonah was instantly on the move toward the commotion as the other workers began to react to the sound.

Jonah made his way through a cloud of dust and dirt as he neared the site of the incident. Cave-ins were not unheard of in the mine, and while so far none had been serious that could easily change.

"Carlin!" Jonah called out as the dust got too thick for him to see. Carlin had been in the general vicinity of where Jonah estimated the collapse occurred.

Workers were backing away from the source of the accident as Jonah fought their retreat. His hands made contact with bodies as he passed and he strained to recognize each face with which he crossed paths, doing a mental inventory.

"Carlin!"

"Jonah!"

Jonah jerked to a stop and looked into the dust to his left. Carlin, coughing and wiping at his eyes, emerged and was suddenly right beside Jonah. The older man reached out and grabbed his friend's arm. "What happened?"

Carlin coughed to try and clear his lungs. "We hit... hollow."

"You what? Is everyone all right?"

Carlin looked around. "I think so."

"Good... and what do you mean you 'hit hollow'?"

Carlin gestured over his shoulder. "There's a chamber of some kind and we broke into it, it brought part of the ceiling down."

Jonah, confused, nodded into the settling cloud. "Show me."

Carlin nodded and headed back into the fray. Everyone else had cleared out so Jonah and Carlin were alone as they neared what was, undeniably, a gaping black hole in the wall at the termination of the second offshoot of the main tunnel. Thera had been the one to suggest branching out to cover more area in which to hunt for the ore.

The hole was little more than three feet wide and surrounded on the ground by chunks of stone, some, Jonah noticed, with the ore embedded inside.

Carlin grabbed a lantern and was ducking into the hole before Jonah could process what he was doing.

"Carlin! Damnit, Carlin, get out of there, it might not be stable."

Carlin didn't listen, instead stood up on the other side and after a moment said in an echoing voice, "Wow. Jonah, you have to see this."

Jonah, grumbling, slipped through the hole and reached the other side. He had to agree. "Wow."

The room was just that, a room. Instead of rough, ragged stone-chiseled barriers there were actual walls, smooth and straight, sloping inward as they rose upward. At opposite ends were what looked like bracing beams and to the right a pentagonal block inset in the wall. The dimensions of the entire space were a little larger than Brenna's office although the ceiling was beyond the range of the light cast by the lantern.

Carlin started to wander toward one of the walls and Jonah stood, dumbstruck, at the sight. "What the hell is it?"

Carlin mumbled, "I don't know, but I think I've seen something like it before." The younger man was standing next to one of the light brown walls, which proved to actually be golden when the light was closer to them. And they were not unmarred gold. There were unrecognizable symbols and marks standing in relief upon the wall's surface. Carlin was squinting at the marks.

Jonah made his way to Carlin's side and frowned at the senseless designs. They were pointless to him, but the look on Carlin's face gave Jonah pause.

"Carlin?"

"It's a language."

"What? These squiggles and drawings?"

"Yeah."

Jonah scoffed, stopped and considered Carlin more seriously, then asked, "How do you know that?"

Carlin shook his head. "I don't know, but I... I know it is."

"Jonah?" another worker's voice called from outside.

Jonah turned. "We're all right but we need to clear the rocks that fell, there's some ore we can use."

"All right," the disembodied voice returned and Jonah turned back to Carlin. The young man was still riveted on the wall marks so Jonah ambled over to the five-sided shape on the side wall. He was inclined to call it a door, it was taller than a man, but a search failed to turn up any sign of a handle or knob.

"Carlin, you have any idea what this is?"

Carlin didn't answer and Jonah sighed. "Carlin?"

Carlin looked over his shoulder at Jonah. "Huh? Oh, sorry."

"What is this?"

Carlin let one hand reach out and trail over the runes with infinite care. "Does this seem familiar to you?"

Jonah scowled but had to admit, "A little bit. Why?"

Carlin shook his head, equally bewildered.

"We better report this."

"No!" Carlin yelped.

Jonah, taken by surprise, turned sharply to Carlin. "Excuse me?"

Carlin looked around at the strange cavern almost desperately. "Just, give me some time to look at it."

"Why?"

"I don't know, but it seems important. Please, just give me some time."

Jonah, against his better judgment, nodded, "You can have until the end of the shift but after that we have to report this."

Carlin nodded and set upon the walls like a man possessed while Jonah, for lack of anything else to do, began to wander the confines of the strange room and rummage through a number of crates he discovered in the back corners.


Brenna stared at the two men standing before her desk. She hardly knew where to begin. Mostly, she was watching closely for signs of regression. She was searching for Colonel O'Neill and Doctor Jackson in Jonah and Carlin. They seemed perfectly normal but Brenna was scrutinizing them all the same.

"You should have reported this immediately," she finally reprimanded. "Why did you wait until now to tell me about this?"

Carlin glanced surreptitiously at Jonah, the latter of which who said, "I didn't think it was a good enough reason to stop mining. We'd found a pocket of ore that needed our attention and for all intents and purposes it looked like it was just a room. I made the decision it could wait."

Brenna frowned and looked closely at him but there was no hint in his expression or his manner that Jonah was trying to deceive her. Sadly, she didn't know how good Jonah/Colonel O'Neill might be at lying. Thera and Carlin probably knew, but neither was likely to side with her against Jonah.

Brenna looked down at her desk and wondered how she could present this to the administrator. If he found out that it was Jonah and Carlin who'd discovered the chamber he would probably order another memory stamp just to err on the side of caution. He was particularly paranoid when it came to SG-1. Of course, as the three were so closely entwined, that would mean Thera would have to be treated again, as well, and Brenna didn't want to see that happen. In a matter of a few months Thera would give birth and if she and Jonah were stamped it would be to a child that meant next to nothing. Even if Jonah and Thera went to one another after the stamping, as they had both times before, it would mean all the memories of the early pregnancy and the relationship that spawned the baby would be lost.

"I want that tunnel sealed; no one is to go in there on my order, understood?"

Jonah and Carlin nodded.

"And you two were the only ones that went inside?"

Carlin nodded while Jonah silently seemed to pierce Brenna with a look. She could understand how the other workers, even the ones that didn't like Jonah, could cow to his will. He was a dominating presence and, in truth, he could unsettle even Brenna. The memory stamp erased memories well enough, but personalities were harder to alter and sooner or later the true nature 'bled back' into the individual.

"Very well, then. I don't want you two discussing this with the others. Not even Thera," she looked pointedly at Jonah. Jonah, for his part, was unreadable, and it stirred a bud of concern in Brenna.

"You two can go."

Carlin, before completely turning to leave, stopped and asked, "Do you have any idea what it is?"

Jonah looked like he wanted to cuff Carlin but instead he remained otherwise impassive and the only sign he was displeased was the dance of his jaw muscles as he clenched his teeth.

"No, I don't, but even if I did it's not your concern. I'll let the administrator know about it and he'll deal with it accordingly."

Carlin seemed to question her a moment before he turned and preceded Jonah out of the office. Neither had remembered to spout off the catch-phrase branded into every worker, whether by training or stamping.

Brenna sat down heavily in her chair and worried the edge of a sheet of paper on her desk with anxious fingers. She would have to handle this carefully or the three of them would lose so much. She had to make sure she presented this discovery to Caulder with enough vagueness that the identity of the discoverers was never mentioned.


Thera paced anxiously in the small space, her and Jonah's spot, waiting for her two friends to show up. Jonah had pulled her aside five days ago and told her they needed to show her something, but it was too risky to do it right away. Thera had been consumed with curiosity but the dark sincerity in Jonah's eyes left no doubt in her mind this was a sensitive subject and they dare not jump into it without caution. She had dutifully said not a word more on the matter, taking her lead from Jonah and Carlin who obviously were hiding something.

Then, finally, last night Jonah had told her to meet them after bed-down. Thera, owing to her advancing pregnancy, was now known to frequent the lavatories in the night so she was able to slip out and steal away to the nook behind the south passage generator with some ease without arousing any suspicion. Getting out of the barracks was not as tricky as getting through the engine room, because now Thera was a unique sight to everyone in the caves with her condition visible even under the thick clothing.

Thera knew it might take Jonah and Carlin a while to make their escape but still she was getting a little nervous. And if they didn't show up soon she really would have to go pee. She absently rubbed her stomach, adopting a rhythm she reasoned would calm the baby but was in fact to settle her own nerves. In truth, with her constant pacing the baby was quite calm and possibly even asleep, perhaps lulled by her movement.

Thera heard a noise and startled, looking at once into the shadows. She let out a sigh of relief when Jonah emerged from the red-tinted darkness, slinking into the small recess that had become their private place. He set eyes upon her and offered a smile, small but relaxing all the same.

"I was starting to wonder," she whispered.

"Sorry," Jonah said and he strode over to her and kissed her briefly. "I was hanging back to make sure Carlin got clear."

As though on cue Carlin slipped into the secluded area and looked a little abashed to have 'walked in' on them with Jonah standing intimately close to Thera, one hand almost mindlessly on her stomach.

They pulled into a tight circle and Carlin beckoned for them to sit. Jonah helped Thera to the floor then sat down next to her.

"So what's this big secret you guys are keeping?" she asked, itching to know what had made Jonah and Carlin go tight-lipped.

Carlin glanced at Jonah, got a nod, then said, "When we were mining we came across a room."

"A room? In the middle of the rock?"

"Yeah. We didn't know what it was but Jonah and I searched it and we found these," Carlin reached into his shirt and pulled out two slate-gray tablets and what appeared to be a stone of matching composition.

"What are they?" Thera asked as she was handed one. It had markings on it, ones that tickled the back of Thera's mind, but it was otherwise utterly foreign to her.

"A diary of sorts."

Thera looked up at Carlin then at Jonah. His expression told her this was the first time he was hearing this, too.

Carlin took the tablet back. "When Jonah and I first found the room I thought the markings on the wall looked familiar but I couldn't place it."

"Now you can?"

Carlin frowned. "No... but I 'remembered' how to read this, anyway."

Jonah and Thera exchanged a look but listened to Carlin.

"According to these texts there was a great battle before the ice age claimed the planet. The people, our ancestors, I guess, were visited by a god of great power but they refused to bow to the divinity of the god and they were punished. The god, in these named as His Greatness Babi, Lord of the night sky, railed at the temerity of our forefathers to defy his power and as punishment made the sun to vanish and the waters to freeze."

"You got all of that from those two little things?" Jonah asked dubiously.

Carlin picked one up and, angling it so Thera and Jonah could watch, waved the stone over the top. The marks, like magic, shifted and became new scripts.

"Holy hannah," Thera remarked as she snatched the tablet back and stared at the new marks.

Carlin continued. "From what I can tell the room Jonah and I explored was actually the cargo hold of a small scout vessel that was caught in a storm caused by Babi's actions and it crashed into the ground."

"Just wait a second," Thera interjected. "You do realize you're talking about gods, right?"

"Yes, so? What's your point?"

"Carlin... gods are well and good for religion but they don't show up and visit people."

"Well... maybe they're not really gods."

"So they're... what?" Jonah asked.

Carlin shrugged. "I don't know, impostors, aliens, my point is–"

"Aliens? Carlin, I think you're night sick if you believe that aliens came from some galaxy far, far away and–"

"Besides," Thera interrupted, "this could be some religious text with no more truth to it than... well, it could just be spiritual fiction."

"If it's merely religion then why don't we still have some semblance of faith? Times of great struggle are ripe fields for the growth of religion but we have none. Don't you find that odd? If this text was truly just a relic from a religious movement why has none of it survived into us, even this story of Babi eating the sun?"

"Eating, oh now he's eating it."

Carlin frowned at Jonah. "It's the literal translation of the text, but why couldn't it be an exaggeration of true events?"

"Oh, because it's nuts?"

Thera held up her hand. "What else does it say?"

Carlin relented. "It says that Lord Babi caused an eruption of great power in the land and the people would suffer for all time for their blasphemy. The interesting thing, this is told from the point of view of the two followers trapped in the ship that crashed."

"We didn't see any corpses," Jonah pointed out.

Carlin frowned. "Um... the more I think about it the more I think that that door led to the control room... I'll bet if we'd been able to get inside we'd have found the bodies.

"Anyway, this tells the account of the two acolytes, something called 'Jaffa' who served Babi when the planet was attacked. They knew they were entombed in a dying world but they continued to chronicle their devotion and unwavering belief in their all-powerful god."

"Carlin, this is the most ridiculous, out-there..."

"Jonah... it makes some sense."

"What?!"

Thera winced and ventured tentatively. "I mean, the explanation given by these texts for our planet's condition tracks."

Jonah blinked. "Whatever Carlin's got, it's contagious."

"Think about it. Gods aside, if something with enough destructive force impacted the planet it could have created a cloud of dust and debris so massive that it would block out the sun, what could plausibly look like 'eating it'. In a matter of days all plant life would die, not long afterward animal life, and without the heat of the sun the planet's temperature would drop and you'd get–"

"An ice age," Carlin finished the thought.

Thera nodded as she handed the tablet back to Carlin.

Jonah sighed and rubbed his face. "Okay, suspending reality and soundness of mind for a second, what does that have to do with us now?"

Carlin frowned at that and returned, "It's fascinating."

Jonah groaned and threw up his hands. "Great, we risk getting busted because he thinks this fairy tale crap is fascinating."

Carlin looked offended and narrowed his eyes petulantly at Jonah.

"You have to admit, Carlin," Thera said gently, "the idea that there is something out there that could do that much damage on a planetary scale is really far-fetched.

"What if this is metaphorical for an asteroid collision?"

"If that's true why would there be written record of it? If what you said about the series of events after an asteroid hit of that size is true then wouldn't any intelligent life be a little too worried about impending death to write it down? Why bother if they were smart enough to know all life would be wiped out on their planet? And what about these tablets or the ship? There's nothing nearly that advanced down here, even Jonah has to admit that."

Thera looked at Jonah and he nodded reluctantly.

"The question we should really ask," Thera said after a pause as she looked directly at Carlin, "is how can you read this?" she gestured toward the tablets.

Carlin looked down at the stone tablets. "I don't have an answer for that. I just looked at them and it came to me. I could understand the writing, but I don't know how and that kind of scares me. Either way you look at it, if you believe this is from a god-like race or if it's from our ancient history, I shouldn't know it."

All three fell silent until finally Jonah said, "We've been away too long; we better go back before we're caught."

Carlin assented and tucked the tablets back under his clothing then stood. Jonah got to his feet then helped Thera up. Carlin stole away first and for a brief time Thera and Jonah were alone. His arm came around her waist and she looked up at him.

They didn't say anything but their eyes spoke the same message. They were both more affected by the tablets and the discovery of the ship than anyone would be to average archaeological debris or baseless mythology.