Chapter Two (Present day- SGC)

"Is there any progress on the Antarctic Base?" Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter walked into the communications room.

"They've got nothing yet ma'am, still looking."

"Keep me apprised."

"Yes ma'am."

She walked to the elevator and slid her access card. The doors opened and she found Daniel, half-asleep, standing inside.

"Where are you headed?" He asked, stifling a large yawn.

"The Commissary, I need coffee, what about you?"

"Same thing, I was awake until three A.M. finishing that translation from X7N-991."

"You've been doing that a lot lately. Staying up late."

"I know, and I know I shouldn't."

"Then why do you?"

"I get carried away. C'mon, don't tell me you've never stayed up until the wee hours working on a naquadah reactor or something?"

"I'd be lying if I said I hadn't. But are you sure you aren't just avoiding going to sleep?"

"Why would I do that?" He yawned again.

"There is an outpost full of Ancient writing. I bet every time you close your eyes you think about it and you can't fall asleep."

"You're getting closer."

"You try to remember stuff about when you were ascended, just like I try to remember stuff about Jolinar."

"Bingo."

"But why do you take up the time with translations?"

"That's what I do for fun. What about the reactors you work on?"

"I just keep saying five more minutes and it turns out to be half the night."

"There, you see, everybody can get carried away."

"But Daniel, I've only done that a few times, this is, what, the third time this month?"

"Fifth."

"Please don't use that name around me."

"Sorry Sam, I thought we were past the whole betrayal thing. He wasn't human, no matter how similar he seemed."

"I know. Do you think they'll find anything in Antarctica?"

"Well, a chair, ugly architecture, and maybe a few weapons, why?"

"Do you think they'll find people down there?"

"The ZPM was dead when we got there."

"So that means the suspended animation stasis chambers probably wouldn't be working, I get it. But what if there are more like the one we put Jack in? Couldn't there be more Ancients down there?" But what if there were two ZPM's, one to run the chair and the other to run the suspended animation chambers?"

Daniel raised his eyebrow in a skeptical way. To which Sam replied

"Why do you keep doing that? You know that when you raise your eyebrow it freaks me out. Besides, only Teal'c can do it right."

"But a raise of the eyebrow is such an efficient form of disagreement."

"Yeah, back to the subject, what have they found out about the outpost?"

"Just that it's an outpost of a larger city."

"Right, anything else?"

"The organics in the architecture pre-date the Stargates."

"What?"

"The Ancients are from Earth, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"They had large ships capable of interstellar travel, but when, why, did they decide to build the Stargates?"

"I don't know Daniel. For all we know the first gate could have been an experiment gone wrong, or a fifth grade science fair project. It might not have been an intended technological advancement."

"Like airplanes, sort of."

"I don't get the connection, the Wright brothers achieved what man had been trying to do for centuries."

"Airplanes are the most efficient form of transportation...on Earth, right?"

"Yes."

"But they have also opened the door to the spread of disease."

"True."

"So, the Stargates let you go thousands of light years in a single step, but they opened the door to the Ancients plague."

"Which wiped out almost the entire Ancient race."

"Exactly."

"But the original idea was brilliant."

"We have to find some fragment of it."

"But how did they do it? The thinking is so far beyond us Daniel that we may never understand it."

"We can at least try."

"What I want to know is, why we've never found any remnant. There is nothing! There are no ships, no crystals, not even a stinkin' ray gun!"

"There is the chair though, that was pretty cool."

"Yeah, I guess it did kinda save our big pink butts from Anubis."

"Big pink butts?"

"I've been hanging around Jack too long. Remember when we were asking the Asgaard for help about the K'tau sun and Jack told them we'd saved their 'little gray butts' enough times that they owed us one... big time?"

"I guess I do." A small smile crept onto Daniel's face and he chuckled at the thought.

"We leave tomorrow for Antarctica."

"Better pack my afghan."

"Take two!" Sam yelled back