Ick..... I had a lot of studying to do that's why the chapters have been a little slow, but here it is!!! Thank you for your kind words, btw!!!
"So colonel, what is this?"
Jack shrugged nonchalantly. "It's pretty cool whatever it is."
"Jack, are you telling me you don't know what it is and you brought it back to Earth?" Hammond asked worried.
"Sir, it's not dangerous at all. The light being emitted only seems to be phosphorescent, nothing else."
"See," Jack stated his point. Hammond looked pointedly at his 2IC.
"Dr. Jackson?"
"As you can tell, there are no writings of any kind on the cube, but the cave was another story." Daniel pressed a button for the SmartBoard and a glowing picture appeared. Even Hammond was awed and he couldn't have cared less for ancient texts. But no, this was incredible and beautiful. The cavern where the cube was discovered was covered in brilliantly painted depictions of life and a beautiful flowing language, with a couple pictographs here and there. The colors didn't seem to be thousands maybe even hundreds of thousand years old, in fact they seemed like they had been painted yesterday. This was pure art.
"That's pretty impressive, Dr. Jackson," Hammond wowed.
"Jack thought so too." Hammond was impressed.
"So then you could imagine my reaction to finding this cave," Daniel continued. Jack remembered perfectly well. Daniel had been as jumpy and annoying as a five-year-old. "But despite all of our efforts, the language one: means very little to us, but familiar, and two: the part we can get mentions nothing of a glowing blue cube, which they would have done in the pictographs." Daniel now alerted their attention to these pictures.
"So the device is perfectly harmless?"
"From what we can tell, yes sir," Sam answered happily. Oh wait, one last thing to tell the general…
"Oh yes, general? This cube showed us the past, our happiest memories of the past, when we touched it" Jack intoned.
"Oh?" The general looked intrigued, but wary.
"It seems to no longer be active General Hammond. For this, I am truly sorry."
"No need Teal'c. It wasn't your doing." Hammond looked scared, but elated at the same time. Jack figured only Hammond could pull that emotion off successfully.
Hammond brought the debriefing to a close. "SG-1, tomorrow at 13 hundred hours, you will be going back to the planet to find out exactly what the object is meant to do and if there are any side effects to your past." Jack smiled at that one and faked a sneeze.
"Sorry sir, I'm allergic to my past." Daniel and Sam smirked, but poor Teal'c was left in the dark. Hammond scowled and continued.
"Before you go, I'm sorry to say, SG-1, that you can't go home tonight. We might need you to figure out the machine you brought back from the planet. But, by all means, make yourselves comfortable in the VIP quarters… again, I'm truly sorry…"
Jack looked down; he had been looking forward to sleeping in his own bed tonight. Ah well, orders are orders. As the team walked out, Hammond noticed all of their clothing seemed to fit baggier than before, but that appearance was probably just because the team was so weary from the recent journey. It had taken a lot out of them – the hypothetical straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.
The team walked down the corridors together and loaded into the elevator. They all headed for the showers and locker rooms, then for the V.I.P. quarters. Sam split off to her locker room after bidding them all a good night. As Jack and Daniel walked together, with Teal'c only one step behind them, Daniel asked a rather random question – even for him.
"Jack have you been dying your hair again?"
"No, why?"
"I don't know, it just seems like that your hair isn't as gray as it was before the trip… maybe it's just the light…" Jack threw him the oddest look, as did Teal'c. The archeologist stopped and looked at them both.
"Never mind both of you." He made a disgusted sound and walked ahead of them. Jack and Teal'c shared expressions and followed Daniel into the locker room.
After drowning all the fish in the ocean, Jack stepped out of the blissfully long, hot shower to find cold air fall upon his skin. Discarding the BDU's for a set of 'on-the-base-PJ's' he happened to have lying around, he trotted off to the VIP rooms. He received many strange looks from those passing by him, shocked to see the colonel in PJ's and slippers. He didn't care, but he almost never wore this stuff – not even at home. But tonight, he wanted to lie down and feel all the tension melt away. When Jack plopped into bed, he did just that, lie very still and let the tension melt away. All muscles relaxed, this was going to be a good night.
What's the worst that could happen now? Jack's having a nice slumber, nothing ominous about that, is there?