Daniel flew, or rather, floated above the barren landscape. A ghost, an incorporeal being, one of the Ascended. One who was not truly there, merely reliving the events, examining the memories of long past, as the Ascended could. They knew all that there was to know. All of the history of the universe.
A space ship approached the lifeless surface and made contact. The airlock opened, and out came several human figures. Ancients. Their space suits were so advanced that they were actually force fields of a sort, adjusting to the shape of the wearer. Daniel understood how they worked, of course, and could have taught the people of Earth to replicate the technology--if only he could. But he could not interfere.
The Ancients walked around, looked around, scanned the planet with their instruments. There were four of them, two men and two women. Days passed, they traveled far and wide, until finally, they met again, and discussed what they had seen. Everything was as they had thought. The planet was dead. There was nothing there to hinder their plans. They agreed that they would move on, and left.
Years later, they returned with more ships and began their work. They placed technology all around the planet, on the surface and in the orbit. It did not seem massive enough to affect anything on such a grand scale, but it was. Daniel knew that the Ancients utilized nanotechnology with great skill. With the technology in place, they sat in their newly built base and waited.
Years and years passed and Daniel watched. It did not look like fast forward to him. It seemed like the regular passage of time, yet he knew it could not be. For the Ascended, a second and a year carried but a very small difference.
Slowly, the planet began to change. The surface grew less barren, water began to flow, somehow brought to the surface from somewhere deep beneath, and freed from the ice caps at the poles. Where great plains had been, now billowed the waters of newborn oceans. Clouds formed in the sky, the cold wind ceased and the world began to grow warmer.
It was time for the Ancients to move in again, and so they did, placing even more technology, some of it intertwined with the old, though it was different. It brought life with it. Plants began to grow out of the ground, different plants in different climates. The tropical zone interested Daniel the most, and there he saw many plants that were familiar to him. The jungle of Dinoland grew before him, changing the surface of the planet forever.
The world was ready. The Ancients stepped forth for the third time. They opened the doors of their underground bases and labs, those that lead directly to the surface, and freed their creations. Their dinosaurs. Clones, one might say, but it was not exactly correct. They were not copies of each other, nor of any dinosaurs that had lived. Instead, they had been created out of dinosaur DNA, fetched through time travel from the very years before their extinction. It had been changed, modified skillfully and ever so slightly. The dinosaurs were individuals, genetically different enough from each other that they could breed without any risk of deterioration.
There were but a few dinosaurs at first, at certain places around the planet, but the Ancients did not stop at that. They stayed at their work and made more of them, of countless species to fit the different climates, to fill each ecological niche.
Even to Daniel's Ascended mind, it was amazing. Mind-boggling. He could barely believe that this was how it had been done. To him, the idea of a Noah's ark in space had felt far more likely. But this was the truth: Dinoland was indeed Jurassic Park. Only a far more advanced version that had truly worked.
With somewhat less interest, Daniel witnessed the events that took place once the creation was over. There was dispute among the Ancients--and this was not the first time, for there had been dispute before, concerning some details of the dinosaurs' genetic make up. This second time, they spoke of how they should safeguard the planet, and whether they should make it open to visitors.
In the end, they did both. They built an entrance for visitors: the stargate, right over their largest base, their control center. Connected to the base were observation domes set in numerous sites around the planet. They also built defenses--an iris over the gate to keep unwanted visitors out, and weapons powerful enough to shoot things out of the orbit, mostly meant to destroy asteroids, like the one that had destroyed the dinosaurs in the first place.
Daniel kept watching, and saw the Ancients leave. He knew it was because of the great plague sweeping over the galaxy. He was not interested in the story of those individual Ancients, not right now. He kept following what happened on Dinoland. He saw how the small predatory species known as Troodon began to evolve, and in a million years, turned into the intelligent Neotroodon.
Slowly, the Ancient safety measures began to falter. The force fields around the observation domes collapsed, and the jungle conquered what was left of the technology. The planetary defense system went dead. Not long after that, a Goa'uld arrived and took a Neotroodon as his host. Then followed the thousands of years that the dinosaurs spent as slaves of the Goa'uld.
Finally came the age when even the simplest precaution the Ancients had made, the one taking the least energy, would no longer work. That was the small force field that functioned as the gate's iris. There was nothing to stop gate travel anymore, and nothing to keep SG-1 from the planet. Daniel relived his first visit to the planet, and then the second one, the victory over the Goa'uld, and the renaissance of the Neotroodonian culture.
And so it was that although the green jungles and the blue sky looked no different, below them, everything had changed. The world that had come to be artificially and spent more than half of its existence under the control of others, was finally free.
But all of a sudden, there was a shadow over the greenness, a dark shape passing the sun in the sky. The silhouette of a Goa'uld mother ship. Anubis.
Daniel woke up.
It took him less than two seconds to figure that he was definitely not Ascended anymore. He was very much corporeal, and he felt horrible. Sick from his toes to the top of his head.
It took a lot more time for him to figure out where he was and what was going on. He was on Dinoland. He had been dreaming about Dinoland as well, about its history... He felt too sick to concentrate on it. The memories, though just a moment old, were too slippery, so far away.
He was on Dinoland, and he had saved Ghhrrwuaghr, so that he'd been poisoned, and that was why he felt so awful.
He opened his eyes to see where, exactly, he was, but it didn't help a lot. He just saw a green ceiling and a green-brown wall, and then the nausea forced him to close his eyes again. He swallowed. He really, really didn't want to throw up. He remembered vaguely that he'd already done it, several times, but he had no idea where that fit in with his dreams of Dinoland.
"Daniel?" Jack's soft voice came from somewhere above his left ear.
"Yeah," Daniel croaked. His mouth and lips felt dry, his throat sore.
"Back among the living again," Jack sounded relieved, and gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Daniel, if you ever, ever dare do something like this again, I swear I'll... You know, I've already watched you die once. I'm not going to watch it again. Hell, I'm the older one of us two. It should be the other way around."
Daniel couldn't force himself to speak again, couldn't say anything to defend himself. Sure, he'd had no intention of getting himself killed, or even nearly so--he had no idea how near he'd been, but pretty near, if it'd made Jack this sentimental. Then again, of course he had done it. He'd had the chance to save Ghhrrwuaghr, and he'd taken it. If it'd happen again, he'd do it again.
The silence told Daniel that Jack was waiting for him to speak up, too. When he didn't, Jack changed the subject completely. "Want some water?"
Daniel knew that he should. He should drink, and on some level, he was really thirsty. But he also felt really sick, and the mere thought of trying to drink made him even more so. "Not really," he said.
There was a shuffling sound at the far end of the hut. By the sound of it, several people stepped inside. Daniel opened his eyes again and turned his head towards the sound. The room spun for a moment, but then settled to reveal Sam, Leo and a Neotroodon Daniel didn't recognize.
"How's Daniel?" Sam asked.
"Awake," he answered her himself.
"Oh, that's great! How do you feel?"
"Don't even ask."
"The healer-" Sam nodded towards the dinosaur by her side "-has suggested this herbal tea of some sort that she thinks could help you recover faster, but I'm not sure about it..."
"I'll pass," Daniel said right away. Maybe later, but definitely not now.
"I think Daniel's already had his share of dino medicine. Better to stick to what we can come up with from now on," Jack said.
Daniel had no idea of what he was talking about. All he could remember was being hit, and then the horror as the feeling escaped from his limbs, from his body--he remembered falling to the ground, unable to move, to speak, even to breathe, and he had been aware of it happening for quite a while, until he had mercifully lost consciousness.
After that, he had been dreaming of Dinoland. Of the Ancients who had built Dinoland. If only he could remember more clearly. Even the things that he could remember were strange.
"Jurassic Park," he whispered, mostly to himself.
"What's that?" Jack asked instantly.
"I dreamed... No, I think I remembered something," Daniel began, and coughed to clear his throat. "This place. It really is Jurassic Park. The Ancient version."
"Daniel, you were poisoned. Twice. You've probably been hallucinating."
Twice? Daniel was about to ask what Jack meant, when Ghhrrwuaghr and Teal'c ran in. The hut was beginning to feel somewhat crowded.
"We have urgent news," Ghhrrwuaghr announced.
"Several dinosaurian patrols have met Anubis's Jaffa," Teal'c explained. "They are getting closer to us, and more importantly, nearer to the stargate. We may not have much time."
"We've got to get to the stargate!" Daniel exclaimed, and pushed himself up, to lean on his elbows. He remembered enough of his Ascended memories that he knew what they had to do. The urge to act was so strong that it did away with the worst of his nausea. "We have to get there first. There really is technology there. Like nothing we've ever seen. We've got to hurry."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Talk about exposition, or plot-dumping... I just had to get this background story out somehow, you know. That's part of why I wanted to do a part III of DinoGate. Besides, it really is important to the plot. And--Lo and behold!--for once, there was some sort of a point to the whumping! ;-)