A/N: Erm…read and review? Just realized one teensy-tiny thing I forgot to add…of course, the Go'auld still exist. Please. I mean, they are the perfect bad guys, and while I was glad us Earthlings managed to defeat em, I still want em in my story. You don't like it, you deal with it. Or don't read the story…-laughs-
Disclaimer: I've just been informed that my license to own certain things like Jack and Daniel has been revoked, so, sorry girls, no borrowing.
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Chapter One: Arriving
"Un-authorized gate activation. General O'Neill, Colonel Carter, and Doctor Jackson to the control room ASAP."
Carter set down her blue jell-o and stood up as Daniel choked on his coffee and the general up-ended his cup of red jell-o and "drank" the rest, before they all raced to the control room.
They got there as the sergeant on duty looked up at O'Neill and said in his normal frantic tones, "Sir, it's SG-1's IDC."
O'Neill nodded. "Open the iris," he commanded to the flustered man, and turned to Carter and Daniel. "That'd be Teal'c back from Chulak and his meeting with boyo and gramps."
Carter nodded, and Daniel pointed to the gate room.
"Erm…Jack…I don't think that's Teal'c…per se…"
The general spun around and saw a flustered (albeit pretty) teenage girl in BDU's look up at the glassed-in control room and glare at its occupants.
Jack looked at Carter.
Then back at the girl.
Then back at Carter.
"Shouldn't she have come through the alternate universe doohickey?"
"What? Sir? I'm not sure I understand what you mean…"
He sighed in exasperation.
"Carter, she's obviously a very younger version of you. C'mon, Danny-boy, help me out here. You can see the family resemblance, right? No?"
He looked at both of them, and Carter shook her head slowly. "Well, sir, all of the others have been identical to me, so I don't think she's from an alternate universe. That and she came through the stargate, not the quantum mirror."
Daniel, in the meantime, had gone down to the gate room and was attempting to talk to the girl while evading her increasingly hostile glances.
"Ya think we should go help him, Carter?"
She replied, sounding preoccupied, "You go, sir…these readings are very strange, I'd like a chance to look at them."
He bowed flippantly, murmured, "Carry on, Carter. I'm sure it's fascinating," rolled his eyes, and left to go join the intrepid archeologist.
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"So what you're saying," Daniel continued, as the girl was checked out in the infirmary, "is that you're from another time, right? Perhaps the past, or…"
He trailed off as the girl drawled, "I haven't said anything. You've just been making assumptions and I've been telling you whether they're right or wrong. For all your brilliance, you can be pretty dumb, you know."
O'Neill, who had been looking at her BDU jacket, remarked, "Well, unless Carter was named Morgan and was a member of the SGC at 13, then this girl ain't from the past."
Daniel stared at him.
"What?" Jack asked. "Just sayin'…"
Morgan looked miffed. "I'm 16," she replied, "Not that you'd care…"
Jack pointed to her rank insignia.
"Insubordination, Lieutenant Morgan. By the way…what's your first name?"
Dr. Fraiser pointed to O'Neill with a needle, making him involuntarily fall back a step.
"You aren't going to get any further answers from this young lady, general. She's going to have a thermometer in her mouth, then an X-ray, then an MRI. Now, do I have to threaten you, or will you leave voluntarily?"
O'Neill cast a frustrated look at his CMO, and then tugged at Daniel's sleeve.
"Let's go, space monkey. Maybe Carter will be more receptive to our questions."
Daniel shook him off.
"No, Jack, I've got work to do…I really want to piece together what I've learnt about this girl so far…you don't mind, do you?"
The general sighed melodramatically, and replied in an overly mournful tone, "I suppose…"
He left the infirmary, muttering, "Gee, you'd think being in charge came with perks like getting to order people around…"
Daniel turned back to the girl, who was evading Fraiser's penlight with a level of skill Jack would have envied, and began to question her again.
"So, you aren't from the past. You aren't from an alternate universe. We've ruled out Tok'ra, Go'auld, evil Asgard, and just about everything else. Who are you, and where are you from?"
She allowed herself an evil grin, and lisped over the thermometer, "Clathified."
He shook his head, unwilling to give up that easily.
"Okay…classified…um…oh, I know! You can tell me why you look like Carter, though, right?"
She smirked. "That'd be telling you who I am. Thorry, clathified."
"Damn," he swore under his breath, and took off his glasses.
He breathed on them and polished them absently on his black t-shirt, all the while thinking hard on how to go about his self-applied task. He had achieved contact with all manner of races, from Unas to Tok'ra, and he had never faced the singular challenge of a teenage girl who looked alarmingly like one of his best friends who insisted everything about herself was classified.
If only he could ascend, then he could get inside her head or something…no, that was the very reason Anubis had been "sent back".
That simply wouldn't do.
Dang it, he HAD to think of something…otherwise, Jack'd decide to interrogate the girl, and while Jack was good around kids, he didn't exactly enjoy being messed around with by them.
Then, she'd get all hurt and mad and…
He turned back to her, sitting on the bed, the thermometer still in her mouth, the smirk that said I-know-what-you-want-to-know-and-I'm-not-going-to-tell-you on her face, her arms crossed defiantly, and it occurred to Daniel that maybe it would be Jack who ended up hurt and mad and…
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Carter was sitting in her lab at her ever-faithful laptop when he arrived, and he took great pleasure in watching her wide-eyed fascination in her current project.
He shifted his body to lean on her doorframe, and she said, without looking up, "Take a look at this, sir."
"Aw," he groaned as he made his way to her side, "how'd ya know it was me?"
She shrugged.
"You always used to come and sit mindlessly in my lab, even though you're usually too busy now. I just figured you had nothing to do, and Daniel was busy, so…"
He nodded sagely, and leaned over to look at the numbers on her screen.
Bad move.
He remembered that special recipe for an instant headache: Take one screen full of numbers, combine with intoxicating scent of 2IC, shake well.
Damn.
Carter was oblivious to his grimace of pain, being altogether too preoccupied with the warm breathing near her neck.
She closed her eyes, mentally scolded herself, and proceeded to tell her CO all the interesting things the numbers represented.
That is, she started.
He abruptly stood, held up a hand, and murmured, "Ahh!"
"Right, sir," she replied, and gave him the simplified version.
"It seems that the patterns in the wormhole's energy pattern that we were observing were similar to those produced by the quantum mirror, except, instead of dilating time and space, the "ripples" actually turned the wormhole inside out and made it a time machine.
"I'm not entirely sure what this means, sir, but I can tell you that it's fascinating. Particularly because the device used to create this effect seemed to have had certain recognizable energy patterns that would denote its "make", if you would have. See, here is the exact energy marker that would come from Ancient technology, more specifically; it looks similar to a DHD. Here's Tok'ra, I'm not entirely certain what device, and here's Asgard…looks a bit like their transporter array. Now, here we have…"
She stopped as the general again held up his hand, and said, "That's awful nice, Carter. What exactly are we looking at, here? Something that can be reversed? Something that can be duplicated? Something that'll kill us? Something that's gonna take over the world? Cure a disease? Make chocolate? What?"
She shook her head, her eyes wide as she looked up at him.
"I'm not entirely certain, sir, to tell you the truth. I would like to talk to that girl, though…" she trailed off.
"Morgan. Lieutenant Morgan." He supplied.
"I'd like to talk to Morgan, then, see what she can tell me, if anything."
He nodded.
"Daniel's with her now, and Doc kicked me out. Wanna go finish lunch? We were interrupted, ya know."
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir…I've got a lot of work to do. I really want to finish analyzing these patterns, and figuring out how whatever device she used works."
His shoulders slumped slightly as she reached out and took her cordless mouse from his hands.
"I'll get you some jell-o, then. Or coffee…whichever."
She smiled up at him. He was REALLY bored.
"Coffee would be nice, don't you have paperwork to do, though, sir?"
He waved his hand in an abstract manner.
"Nonsense! I need you in working order, Carter, and if coffee's what you need, I'll give up all that time doing all that amazingly fun paperwork to get you coffee."
He grinned at her, one of those special Jack O'Neill grins, and left.
She sat, staring at her screen, still feeling the after-effects of that smile.
She picked up the half-full mug of coffee by her laptop, filled it from the carafe on the edge of her desk, and went back to work.
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A/N: Sorry for the short chapter…it's about 3 and a half pages. I'll try to do five or more in the future, but this is where it ends for today.
Keep me posted on all your amazing ideas, comments, criticisms…yeah, that.
-sips coffee-
But don't ask questions. All that is classified.