Catch you on the flip side

Author: Gillian Slater

Teaser: Carter, whilst experimenting with materials gathered from an alien world finds an ancient coin which triggers a spontaneous OBE. Problem is, she can't end it.

Disclaimer: As always, these characters do not belong to me, they are the property of the show's creators, and I'm borrowing them for my own sinister purposes...

Author's Note: Sorry these final chapters have taken so long to complete, almost a year in fact! After finishing my degree I decided to travel the world... It took a while! Anyway, here, at last, is the completed story. Enjoy!

Part Seven

Janet swept into the Gate Room within a half-minute of hearing General Hammond's barked command, racing up the approach ramp to pry Daniel and Teal'c away from their writhing comrades.

Stretchers at the ready behind her, she checked their vitals. Pulses racing and breathing shallow, they'd be going into shock at any moment. Both had clamped their hands vice-like over their ears in an obvious attempt to shut out some sound inaudible to everyone else.

Dammit, the doctor cursed silently, I knew this would come back to bite us! "Let's get them into ICU, now!"

- - - -

"I'm having to increase the dose every hour to keep them sedated," the doctor reported, her concern reflected back at her from the eyes of General Hammond, "And the levels are already getting dangerous."

George took a deep, clearing breath. Why did SG-1 always get themselves into these goddamn situations? He turned to the remaining half of the team, standing so quietly by their friends' bedsides, eyes fixed on him for a decision. He turned back to Dr. Frasier.

"How much longer?"

"Three hours, tops, before they hit the morphine ceiling. After that, they'll start hearing the... voices again."

Teal'c, who had been resolutely silent since O'Neill and Carter fell victim to the strange affliction, turned to Dr. Frasier, his memory suddenly jogged.

"Long ago, Jafa suffered from a similar condition; the Kela'ran--"

"Err... It means 'disquiet mind'" Daniel interjected helpfully before Teal'c continued.

"-- Many warriors were driven mad by the collective memory of the Goa'uld - the voices of millions. This is why Kelnor'rem was first developed, to put them in a meditative state where they were no longer troubled by the information."

He looked at the faces of his suffering human friends, their faces slightly twisted despite the sedation.

"General Hammond, may I suggest that I assist Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter into a Kelnor'rem state?"

The General seized upon the idea immediately. "It's definitely worth a try." He stole a glance at Doctor Frasier, who nodded her approval, "You have a 'go' Teal'c. It'll buy us some time at least. In the meantime," he turned to Dr. Jackson, "I want to know everything there is to know about that coin. You've got three hours."

- - - -

It was a good job Daniel had a large desk, as every square inch of it was covered in stone tablet rubbings, computer printouts, ancient scrolls of yellowing parchment, reference books of Latin, cuneiform and his own little Goa'uld dictionary, which he vaguely hoped would one day see it's way into print.

Also before him was Sam's electron microscope, and the alien coin which had an almost luminous quality to its metallic blue surface.

He'd been back to P3X-663 briefly, but his foray only confirmed his own thoroughness as an archaeologist. Every shred of evidence that there was ever a culture on the planet was already documented, all the artefacts already labelled. All that information was spread before him, a puzzle.

Daniel took his eyes from the microscope, blinking. He'd always been more of a magnifying-glass man himself. The civilization who had existed on the planet were deeply religious, so far as his translation of their spidery pictographic writings could tell, and their currency was not for economic use, but ceremonial...

I'm on to something here.

- - - -

"These people believed every coin was imbued with some kind of spirit, or life of its own," Daniel told the General and Dr. Frasier, "Only their religious leaders were permitted to handle them... The carvings have accounts of priests in trances communing with the spirits, speaking with, err, The Voices."

The General thanked Daniel with a nod and turned to Frasier. "Doctor, have you got anything more from the coin?" She nodded.

"Yeah, my analysis ties in with Daniel's findings: the metal seems to have been intentionally combined with another element which has mind-altering properties. The problem is we have no way of knowing whether the effects are permanent, or what would prevent them." She looked back at the monitor on which rotated a Bohr diagram of the metal's molecular structure.

"General, I don't think, given the level of technology this civilisation had, that they could've made these coins themselves."

"The Ancients?" Hammond suggested.

"Looks that way," replied Daniel, "Or another race on a par with them."

- - - -

The ICU was in near-darkness, punctuated only by the guttering flames of tiny candles. Tendrils of smoke curled from the incense-sticks placed around the room.

Sam and Jack reclined almost upright in their beds, with Teal'c sat cross-legged on a table between them. The Jafa felt strangely calm in the face of what was to be not only his first Kelnor'rem in almost a year, but also his first attempt at including two semi-conscious Tau'ri into the ritual.

He began his mantra, having explained slowly and clearly to his colleagues that they were to follow the chant, at least in their minds if they could not do so aloud. After a time they would fall silent, to allow the emptiness into their minds and wipe away the cries of voices from eons ago. The Goa'uld, Teal'c knew, were not always such an amoral race, and what had cried in his mind before he lost his symbiote, was the collective guilt of the First Ones, begging forgiveness for themselves and their descendants - a haunting din which the ritual of Kelnor'rem was created to obliterate, and which deafened the Jafa slaves to the truth about their 'gods'.

The screaming people had not shut up, Jack noticed, but their voices blurred a little after each dose of morphine. It was wearing off again, and the volume was rising steadily. He tried to focus his mind, to tune into the soothing alien words Teal'c repeated beside him. In his mind he also felt Carter's struggle to concentrate. She was managing to say the Jafa mantra to herself, but they were both of them outnumbered by the hundreds, perhaps thousands of long-dead supplicants, all of whom seemed to want the same thing as Jack and Sam did:- peace.

End of Part Seven

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