Author's Note: Sorry again for taking such a long time to post again, but school is finally over for a few weeks, so I can get back to doing what I want to do. Kudos again to my friend DeAnna for staying on my butt and making me finish this story.

As Teal'c stood with his weapon drawn, Al walked into an unusual situation. Stopping just short of running into Teal'c, Al's surprised expression mixed with Teal'cs determined grimace ensured that the situation had made another turn for the strange and unusual.

Teal'c was the first to regain his composure. "CaptainCarter, DanielJackson!"

"Sam…" yelled Al in his unique, almost whining way. "Sam, what is going on! Can this big lug see me? Hey, He-Man, can you see me?" As Al waved his arms around, it was apparent from Teal'c's confusion that something was visible. As Daniel and Carter rounded the corner and entered the hallway, Teal'c zat gun was raised and pointed at Al.

"Teal'c, what's going on?" Carter asked as she reached for her weapon.

Teal'c, weapon raised, addressed his friend. "CaptainCarter, do you not see the man standing in front of me?"

Carter and Daniel, confused, moved closer to Teal'c. As Carter answered, Sam moved out of the way of the group, edging along the wall towards Al. Several thoughts ran through his mind. "Why can Teal'c see Al? Can he hear Al? Maybe this can finally prove to them my story."

Teal'c, in the meantime, was still conversing with his friends. "DanielJackson, do you not see the man standing before me in the strange clothes?"

Daniel peered into the space before Teal'c and then into the darkness that was present a few feet beyond the range of their flashlights. "I don't see anything Teal'c. What exactly do you see?"

"There is a man standing in front of me, holding a cigar and what appears to be a communication device."

Al, a little annoyed and worried that Teal'c could see him, tried to get Teal'c to answer his question. "Hey, big guy, can you hear me? Hello?" Al turned and looked at Sam. "Sam, I don't think he can hear me. Why can he see me?"

"Doctor, are you responsible for what Teal'c is talking about? Is your friend here?"

Sam, torn between responding to both of the questions, addressed Carter first. "Yes, Carter, my friend is here and standing in front of Teal'c. I don't know why he can see Al, but apparently he can't hear him. I am who I say I am, Carter, please believe me."

Daniel and Carter, still unsure about their visitor, looked at each other.

"Doctor, let me and Daniel try to get us all back to base first before anything else. You said you could read hieroglyphs, right? Well, why don't you and Teal'c come back with us and we can all take separate sections of the room." "At least if he's telling the truth, he could always help us get back faster. And if he isn't, at least this way we all can keep a closer eye on him, especially considering the fact that something is around that neither Daniel or I can see, and since there's nothing we have found that could give him any more information than he already knows…"

Usually Carter would be convinced of Sam's sincerity by now, but the abduction of Colonel O'Neill was something too close to her heart to let her start trusting who she considered his captor just yet, no matter what her brain told her.

Teal'c, not quite yet convinced that Al wasn't standing in front of him, took his zat gun and waived it through Al.

"Hey, pal, watch it, or I'll…I'll…I'll sick some holographic dogs on ya!" Al started punching instructions into the handlink while he hollered to whoever could hear him. "Gooshie, I don't want this big lug to see me. See if you can modify the signal. I don't care if Ziggy's already compensating for the shift; tell her to compensate some more."

With that, Al's image flickered and fuzzed for a moment, and then stabilized. Teal'c, watching the image, was again alarmed when Al disappeared. "CaptainCarter, the man had disappeared."

"Doctor?"

"Um…my friend had to go back to help stabilize the signal." Still wanting to talk to Al, but not wanting to alarm any of them if he had any bad news, Sam kept Al's recalibrated image to himself.

"Okay Doctor, why don't you take the far back wall. Daniel and I will continue to work on the opposite walls. We're looking for another trigger mechanism like the one that brought us here."

The group turned and walked back into the hieroglyphs room, and as Sam walked to the back wall, Teal'c took his position right next to the hallway door, directly across from Sam. Al, by know attuned to what Sam was thinking almost before he thought it, went and stood next to Sam while he started to translate the text on the wall. Keeping his voice low, and trying to act like he was muttering to himself, Sam spoke. "Al, can you tell me anything new about why I'm here?"

Al, still typing into the handlink and holding his cigar, tried to access Ziggy's interface. "Last time I talked to Ziggy, she said that she was still trying to access the records on Major O'Neill and his team, but she believes that this shift thing, whatever put you here, that the only way to get back is through the same technology, and that you are probably here because the original mission didn't succeed. Ziggy says that it's an 86.9 probability that you are here to do that. Beyond that, she doesn't know how you got shifted or anything else yet. I tried talking to our visitor in the Waiting Room, and besides the fact that he likes coffee and The Simpsons, I got nothing. He is definitely hard core military, though, I can tell."

"Al, I'm only getting every other word of these hieroglyphs, and it could take forever to find a trigger device. See if you can scan the walls into her database and tell her compare them to any known hieroglyphic writings and note any discrepancies in spelling or writing technique. In the meantime, I guess that I can't do anything else but try to get them to trust me."

With this, Al increased his abuse of the handlink, and after a few seconds a red beam shot out from the handlink, broadening into a wide, narrow band. As the light fell across the walls of the room, Al passed it in an orderly fashion across the entire room, moving to get scans of the parts that were blocked by the other people in the room. When he came to stand next to Carter, he couldn't help but glance at her rear end as she stooped next to her section of the wall. Knowing that his friend couldn't respond to him, Al took advantage of the situation, like many times before. "If only she could see me…Sam, why is it that blonds never pick me up?"

Sam shot a quick, unapproving glance at Al, completing the almost predictable interaction that kept him sane during his Leaps. As Al completed the scan, he went back to Sam's wall section.

"Let's see, according to Ziggy, the section in front of Dr. Jackson…"

"Sam, I think I found what we're looking for." As Daniel looked over at Carter, it was obvious that he had discovered the exit switch. Carter, Teal'c, and Sam all headed towards Daniel's position, but with a stern look from Teal'c, Sam stopped and stayed against the far wall.

"See Sam, this word here has the owl repeated in the wrong place. It shouldn't be there. I bet that's the trigger device."

Carter, happy that they could finally get back to a familiar place so that they could deal with the Doctor, looked at Teal'c. "Okay, let's gather everything we have here and stand in the center of the room. Doctor, you can come stand next to Teal'c. I'll push the symbol, and as soon as the beaming device shows, I'll jump into it."

Daniel and Teal'c gathered their belongings and stood in the center of the room. Sam, caught up in the quickness of the events, had little time to wonder about what was about to happen as he took his place directly in front of Teal'c.

"We're ready whenever you are Sam."

Carter readied herself to jump into the beam. "One…Two…Three!"