"You want me to send you on a mission?" a bewildered Generally Jack O'Neill asked his son who was once again standing mindlessly in his office requesting things.
"Well…it's very important that we find this artifact apparently…and it should only take us a couple of days" Jacob shrugged, scrunching his face at the drab office and contemplating more décor tips.
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Amanda scanned the ruins of the planet expertly and managed to concentrate properly on the task at hand, even though there was a stiff marine hovering over her, looking rather upset about life in general, but probably focusing that annoyance on doctors of every educational field at the moment.
Shifu had told her the gate coordinates and what to look for, but had been vague about the item's importance. So Jacob had presently spent an hour in his father's office trying to confuse O'Neill senior with some well placed technobabble in order to convince him to let them go.
He finally got Jack aggravated enough to put them under the unmerciful watch of SG-3, and gave the two a grand total of three hours to find what they were looking for.
Amanda worked efficiently, albeit at a faster pace than she would have normally taken.
Jacob helped her by carrying her books and research in his hand while she tried to find clues in the text on the walls of the ruins. Searching for something to point them in the right direction.
"Doesn't this all seem a bit extravagant for simply getting Vala back in Daniel's good graces?" Jacob grumbled.
Amanda ran her fingers over the indentation of the as far extinct dialect while she answered, "Shifu says the artifact is also vital in saving both our father's in the future. But he didn't tell me how"
Jacob shifted the supply of reference material in his hands and relaxed into a comfortable stance.
From the intensity of what he liked to call Amanda's "Preoccupation mode", he expected to be here a while, so he racked his mind for something to do.
Searching the nearby area and finding a nice looking boulder to sit on, he promptly focused his brain on a very tasking challenge…watching his favorite archeologist being cute.
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An hour later, Amanda bounced up from where she was crouched in front of a particular wall and whipped a tablet off the stack of things Jacob was holding for her.
Her suddenly more animated motions interrupted the train of thoughts he had been vigorously concentrating on her, keeping him pleasantly entertained for the past sixty minutes.
"What'dya find" he asked as she furiously scribbled down some things he couldn't understand.
"Well, the language used on the walls seems to be a cross between German and ancient Greek…which is odd because there isn't any documented combination that the SGC has come across which relates to-"
"Amanda…" Jacob cut her off, tapping his watch.
"Oh…so, I managed to make out a rough translation and I think the artifact is buried about eleven clicks from here"
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"So you think Shifu is going to tell us why this thing is so important now?" Jacob asked a while later as he sat in one of the SGC labs studying the energy properties emitting from the compact device they had found.
"Not a chance" Amanda replied.
Jacob wrote down the energy wave equivalent and worked with a few numbers and diagrams, calculating whether or not it would be safe to tinker with so he could discover its purpose.
"Care to make a bet?"
She smiled, "Twenty bucks says we don't find out until we're seventy"
"How come I can never get you to bet that much on hockey?" he whined.
"Because football's a much better sport"
Jacob sucked in an astonished breath, "That is so sacrilegious…"
"At least football players manage to keep all their teeth intact before they turn fifty"
"My point exactly"
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After a while of fiddling with device and finding nothing useful, Jacob passed it off to Amanda so she could study the writing on it.
"Interesting" she commented once they were in her office, "The writing on here looks Ancient…I'm going to have to get my father to help."
Jacob walked over to the phone conveniently hooked on the wall and called Daniel.
The older man was there in a short while helping with the translation.
It took maybe ten seconds for Jacob to get bored, and so he wandered down to the commissary, where he found Sergeant Davis having a nice chat with Siler.
In the future time, the two men had followed Sam to the Alpha site on the claim that things would be pretty boring without SG-1 around to either cause or fend off global disaster.
Carter enjoyed the men's company when the rest of her team, including Jack, were otherwise engaged and things were going slowly on the work front. Siler had even brought her motorcycle (which she had given to him before taking the command) when he transferred, and they passed the time by improving its aspects in one area or another.
Walter had once told a young Jacob that his mother was the most self sustained General he'd ever worked for, and it was nice to be secretary to someone who didn't need to be baby sat for a change.
Jacob grabbed a bottle of water on his way over to the pair.
"Mind if I join you, fellas?" he asked.
The two men looked interestedly at Major O'Neill and nodded for him to sit down. Jacob thought about how odd it was to outrank Davis, who had made it to Captain by the time the young O'Neill had joined the Academy.
The boy searched for a conversation started and grinned slightly when he saw that the other men were looking at him in that alert way that all prominent base gossips usually did.
"You know it's weird…" he began, deciding to string them along with a few juicy details, "I mean, mom and-…that is, Sam and Jack, were always flirting and fooling around with each other when I was a kid…it's odd to see them so professional"
Walter ate up the little snippet of information with a Cheshire comparable smile, and Jacob knew the whole base would hear some elaborated truth of what he'd just mentioned before the day was out.
"Actually, they're quite friendly towards each other most of the time" Siler said. His mind seemed to wander for a minute before he produced a coy smile, "Have you ever heard of the Zay'tarc incident?" he asked Jacob.
"Or the Land of Light?" Walter added with a smirk.
Jacob frowned…he didn't like being out of the loop, "No, why?"
The men held back chuckles, "Well, if your parents didn't mention it I guess we shouldn't tell you" Davis said, although he had absolutely no intention of withholding the information.
"Tell me what?" Jacob begged. He could tell it was some good dirt, and he really wanted to know the dish on his parents.
"Well…" Siler started, and the three men settled in for a very amusing lunch hour.
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It was a few hours before Daniel and Amanda finished the translation in its entirety, and read the inscription they had come up with.
"Thos who yield the Balance are the bringers of justice to the tampering of Fate" Daniel read, glancing over at his daughter, "What do you think it means?"
Amanda thought for a moment, "Well, the writing I discovered on the ruins of the planet was in a dialect that seemed to be a hybrid of Greek and German language. We know that the Goa'uld and other species tend to emulate earth mythology, so perhaps there's a clue to figuring it out in one or another of those culture's collective legends"
Daniel agreed inwardly and the two bit their bottom lips simultaneously as they mulled over their knowledge of both civilizations.
Amanda was the first to hit on something and she headed over to the bookshelf, grabbing a hardcover that contained popular Greek myths.
She flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for and voiced her line of thinking aloud, "Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom and justice…her guidance was usually sought pertaining to matters of the court…"
Daniel nodded, "Yes…you could even say she was a "balancer" of sorts…she was a defensive warrior, yet also a fair diplomat"
Amanda read to herself while listening to her father's analogy, "I'm not sure why, but for some reason I keep remembering the story of Arachnia…"
"You mean the weaver?" Daniel asked, curious.
"Yes…according to mythology she was an extraordinary artist when it came to making tapestries…those around her believed that she had been blessed by Athena herself, who was also patron of the arts…"
"But the girl got too boastful" Daniel continued for her, "she was determined to prove that she was better than even Athena, so they had a constest, to see which one could make the most beautiful tapestry"
"And Arachnia made the mistake of choosing her theme for the tapestry as being the romantic exploits of the gods…this offended Athena, who then turned the girl into a spider…" Amanda tapered.
"Which is where we supposedly got the name for it…Arachnid, an animal doomed to weave for as long as it lived" Daniel finished.
"Yea" Amanda nodded, "If you think about it, it's a pretty good analogy for why Shifu wants Jacob and I here…metaphorically, so we can weave a better tapestry of our fates…"
She picked up the device contemplatively, "If that's correct than this is probably some sort of alteration device, or something that hinders the alteration, of fate"
Shifu appeared again, once more startling those around him. Daniel went livid at the site of the full-grown, yet still recognizable man.
"I love it when I'm right" Amanda commented with a grin, taking her friend's appearance as a sign of her correct assumptions.
Shifu bowed slightly in acknowledgement of what she had accomplished. Then he turned to Daniel.
"You must take to device and safe guard it until the time is right for it to be used" he said.
Daniel blinked, still startled by the being's presence, "Um…Okay" he agreed.
"Amanda, I will now escort you and Jacob back home" Shifu said.
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