Disclaimer: Stargate SG:1 remains the property of Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Greenburg et al. No money is being made from this story. (This story is set before Daniel's "Ascension" as it is my first attempt at a Stargate story and I'm nowhere near confident with the original quartet of characters as it is, never mind trying to get a handle on Jonas Quinn).
Summary: See Part 1.
NB – This chapter contains a scene which includes the Bible, in particular the Hebrew Scriptures (a.k.a. the Old Testament). I realise this is not everyone's cup of tea, but please bear with it. I needed an ancient but easily accessible record of the Goa'uld being on Earth millennia earlier than previously believed and written in "code", and the Bible lent itself perfectly to be both plausible and detailed. Also, my BETA Shallan points out that Daniel is a book not a PDA kind of guy, but I think the scene is already long enough so am exercising artistic licence rather than extend the narrative any more as "filler" while Daniel goes and gets a Bible, brings it back, etc.
SARCOPHAGUSPart 3
CHAPTER THREE
"Say again?" Jack was aware of a certain level of antsy edge to his tone and consciously tried to moderate it; he'd had a very bad night, on top of a previously very bad night, and wasn't really in a mood to appreciate the undoubted cosmic irony – or whatever – of the fact that once again General Hammond, SG-1, Dr Fraiser and Major Paul 'Pentagon Pet' Davis were gathered in the Briefing Room at an ungodly hour.
Major Davis looked rabbit-in-the-headlights-like so Sam took pity on him. "I'm sorry Colonel, but the Math just doesn't add up. We've checked every data reading and physical sample we could get from Uhutac and not only does it not answer any questions, it throws up a whole batch of new ones. Firstly, the Uhutac city and, presumably, the rest of the planet was destroyed very approximately 65,000 years ago, which puts it in the same era as the Nemetae extinction or self-annihilation. That's actually also the reason we're not all dead. I've been working on that drone that crashed in the Gate Room – "
"Don't tell me, crystal-powered!" challenged Jack. "Y'know, the Asgard, the Nox, the Goa'uld, don't any of them ever think about turning their toys off when they've finished with them?"
"If the destruction of Uhutac was as sudden as it looked, it's unlikely anyone would have time to even think about it," commented Daniel, "besides which, we do the same on Earth – at least in Western society."
"Come again?" Since Daniel had featured heavily in Jack's nightmares of the past two nights, he was a little sharper than he intended.
Daniel shrugged. "The United States of America is responsible for over one-quarter of the annual pollution of this planet, and we contribute thousands of Therms to the Greenhouse Effect every year because ninety-five percent of Americans perpetually leave their appliances on standby – TV, VCR, DVD player, stereo system, PC, printer, kettle, et cetera. They run on electricity, so when the power runs out, the appliance dies, but if they were crystal-powered our TVs could stay on standby for thousands of years – just like the Uhutacis UAVs, except without the ability to fly or nasty weaponry."
Before Jack could retort to this subtle, typical tree-hugger-type complaint, Carter rapidly continued her interrupted explanation, "The drone in the Gate Room was almost out of power; most of its weapons didn't work. If we'd gone to Uhutac just a hundred years ago, we'd never have made it back to the Stargate alive, but now I'd bet most of the drones are on reserve power. In twenty years we could probably stroll through the gate without a qualm."
"You have a recommendation, Major?" General Hammond encouraged.
"Yes, sir. We want – need - to explore the city further, so I suggest we send some sort of agent provocateur through the gate; a MALP with weaponry for instance? We trigger the drone attacks because it won't take long to drain them of power and render them inoperative."
"Very well, we'll try it," General Hammond decided but then frowned thoughtfully. "So did the Jaffa First Prime die in the assault on the city or because of the drones?"
"Without examining the skeleton entire it's impossible for me to be definitive, General," Janet Fraiser put in, "but I'd say the drones killed him, which brings me back to the Math problem again."
"How so, Doctor?"
Janet shrugged helplessly at the General. "The Jaffa was only killed around 50,000 years ago, so whatever destroyed Uhutac, it happened a good 15,000 years before the Goa'uld got anywhere near the planet. The corollary problem to that fact is that the Jaffa is human, not Unas, but the earliest of the System Lords didn't begin to be a dominant galactic power until 30,000 years ago, and as far as we know, they didn't even find Earth until about 25,000 years ago."
"How sure are we that the Jaffa was human?" Major Davis enquired.
"I managed to retrieve enough DNA for a test," Janet responded. "The Jaffa was human and he was from Earth. I sent the sample to a colleague in England with security clearance and familial forensic profiling experience, and the results place the man as Middle or Near Eastern. In fact, there's a strong indication that one…" she checked her notes, "…Professor Mahmoud al-Fahd of the University of Riyadh is a direct descendant of that Jaffa."
"What? So…some early Goa'uld explorer got the jump on the rest of 'em by discovering Earth way before the others and swiped some slaves that were prettier than the Unas?" Jack asked.
"It's possible, sir." Carter shrugged.
"Maybe such early contact by a more primitive Goa'uld accounts for the crude, unsophisticated design on the gold emblem?" mused Daniel
"The design is neither crude, nor unsophisticated, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c contradicted flatly, wearing that troubled expression that meant something profound had happened.
Daniel did that rapid blinking thing that made him look simultaneously serious and scholarly yet also cutely big-wide-eyed and vulnerable like that fluffy baby Barn Owl Jack had rescued when he was thirteen. Looking at the emblem in confusion, Daniel asked, "It's meant to be like that?"
"Indeed," Teal'c inclined his head, reaching out one large finger to almost stroke the emblem, which lay on the table. "The System Lord whose symbol it was has always been believed to be a myth."
Jack gave a derisive snort, "Teal'c, yah mean like the First One we met on Cimmuria courtesy of Thor's Hammer was supposed to be a myth?"
"Yes, O'Neill," Teal'c as ever seemed oblivious to Jack's sarcasm and treated the statement as a serious question. "He was the first ever System Lord of the Goa'uld – the inventor of that idea. The people of the Tau'ri named him Nimrod."
There was a stunned silence as the humans looked again at the gold First Prime disc, with its apparently unimaginative, simple depiction of a tower.
"Whoa! Nimrod, as in the Tower of Babel? Nimrod as in Genesis Chapter 11?" Jack declared and then just glared as everyone shot him startled looks. "Hey, I went to Sunday School. Besides, the hottest girl in the class was Ellie Charteris who was the Reverend's daughter; I swotted on Scripture for hours just to make her smile. Ask me anything – Ten Commandments; The Beatitudes; The Gospels – go on, ask me."
"That is so, O'Neill," Teal'c responded. "Amongst the Jaffa, it was forbidden to speak of the Unas. The Goa'uld knew that if people were to see the creatures the Goa'uld had been forced to take as hosts prior to their discovery of the Tau'ri, then we would know they were not truly gods. However, when a System Lord was feeling benevolent, he or she would often boast to their Jaffa and slaves of being greater than the First Lord, and would tell us stories of Nimrod's exploits, even though none of them really believed he ever existed."
Major Davis cleared his throat nervously, "Er, I'm not a theological scholar but my grandfather was a Methodist minister, I mean, didn't Nimrod, or at least the human the bible calls Nimrod, live long before Ra?"
"Yes, he did!" Having whipped out his handheld computer, which he used for back-up facts away from his beloved books as Teal'c was speaking, Daniel was now peering at the small screen intently. "The ancient Egyptian Pharaohs – the human ones – were as arrogant as their Goa'uld predecessors. They lied like rugs so it's hard to build an accurate chronology of when Egypt first rose to prominence as a World Power of the era post-Ra, but Nimrod did pre-date Egypt…"
They waited while he tapped away with his stylus and squinted at the screen. Finally Daniel said, "Genesis has the Global Flood starting on approximately…November 17th 2370 B.C., when Noah was over 500 years old. According to Genesis Nimrod was a great-grandson of Noah, through Noah's son Ham and grandson Cush. According to the bible, another of Noah's great-grandsons, Eber, was a contemporary of Nimrod. Genesis gives Eber's life span as 2303 B.C. – 1839 B.C, during which Nimrod tried to build the Tower of Babel and so God confused the languages of humanity from one universal tongue to many in order to thwart him."
"What happened to Nimrod?" General Hammond asked.
"The bible doesn't say, Nimrod just disappears from the narrative after the Tower of Babel debacle, but Jewish historical tradition has it that Nimrod invaded the land of Asshur, which belonged to Noah's grandson by his favourite son Shem, and that Nimrod was killed by Shem. Shem is believed to be the same guy as Melchizedek, priest-king of Salem, which later became Jerusalem. In Hebrew Nimrod actually means Rebel or Great Rebel – he was called a 'mighty hunter in opposition to God,' which is a pretty suicidal stance for a mere human to take when you think about it, less than a century after God had come within an inch of annihilating the planet." Daniel reeled off.
"So, Shem killed Nimrod before he could tell other Goa'uld about Earth and it took a while for the rest of them to find us?" Sam mused.
"Daaahnyhal," drawled Jack slowly, "Come on, spit it out, you'll feel better."
"What?" Daniel twitched, startled.
Jack rolled his eyes. "I know that look. It's the same look you always get when you've either just had an epiphany…or stubbed your toe."
"Yes…I can't understand why I didn't see…it's so obvious…it's all there, and I just dismissed it…" Daniel began to stammer.
"Daniel!" Jack barked. "Self-flagellate later, explain now – preferably in words of few syllables."
"Colonel!" Hammond's quiet but sharp tone told Jack he was skating close to the edge of 'too far' and Jack, feeling guilty, subsided.
Daniel ran his hand through his hair. "I've never brought it up before now because I have nothing to prove my theory but…it all goes back to the Ancients. Assuming they were from Earth, they apparently left because there was some sort of plague, but left behind other humans, which on the face of it seems decidedly uncharitable, not to say downright cowardly, but after meeting Oma Desala on Kheb…I started to think that maybe they left normal humans because they knew we were immune to the plague?"
"How do you hypothesise immunity to a plague for the non-Ancient population? They would have been too primitive to –" Janet began.
"Ah!" Daniel raised a hand. "That's it. I don't think they were. We've always viewed the Ancients as like the Asgard and the rest of the non-Ancient humans on Earth at the same time like Neanderthals. I think that the relationship was much closer to that of the Chinese and European peasants."
"Explain?" Teal'c requested.
"In 1473 Englishman William Caxton began printing books on his invention, the printing press; but Caxton reinvented the press. The Chinese had done it 1500 years earlier. In 1066, the year William the Conqueror crossed from Normandy to Britain, if a Saxon or Norman peasant wanted to read something, they had to pay a priest to do it for them. If a Chinese peasant wanted to read something he went to a bookshop and bought a book, but in ninety-percent of other ways, the European peasant and the Chinese peasant were at the same stage – it was only their technology that set them apart."
"And this relates to immunity how?" Jack asked, curious despite himself. He had to admit that though much of what Daniel usually said was incomprehensible, it was interesting, unlike Sam who was just incomprehensible.
"Maybe this plague affecting the Ancients only affected technologically advanced Earth cultures, and the more primitive societies were immune because they didn't have all the snazzy gadgets," Daniel suggested.
"That's rather far-fetched, Doctor," Hammond began.
"Excuse me, Sir, but it may not be," Janet Fraiser interjected respectfully but suddenly. "Put a native New Yorker and a Peruvian deep-jungle tribesman side by side and I guarantee the New Yorker will probably live longer, but that's not because he's necessarily healthier – in fact probably the opposite. He'll live because he's got access to broader range of nutritional minerals and advanced medical intervention; he may well be less healthy generally than the tribesman.
"How so?" Hammond didn't look convinced; Jack shared the feeling.
"There's even a 20th Century proof of the theory. Geologist Clair Patterson spent most of his life campaigning to get lead removed from gasoline after discovering that before 1923 Earth had zero atmospheric lead and post-1923 we were swimming in the stuff. An average American living now – including all of us sat here - were born with over 600 times more lead in his or her body than our grandparents who were born in 1900, or 1922; in comparison, the jungle tribesman is far healthier and that's just the start. Amongst the biggest killers of human beings are heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and AIDS," Janet reeled off.
General Hammond nodded sombrely. His long-deceased and dearly loved wife had died of ovarian cancer, dubbed all-too accurately the 'silent killer' because in many cases, by the time the woman began to experience any sort of real or persistent pain, the disease was already terminal. Their son James, the youngest of their three children, had been only twelve at the time; Emma had been fifteen, and Amelia barely twenty.
"Almost all of those illnesses are at their greatest levels in Western society and that doesn't even count the minor things. Rheumatism, arthritis, chronic allergies, asthma, eczema, migraines, hayfever, STDs, Repetitive Strain Injury…" Janet ticked off the litany on her fingers as she enumerated them. "You name the health complaints of your choice and you're ten times more likely to find them lurking in a Seattle fitness fanatic than a South American jungle tribesman. Even a human's ability to reproduce is adversely affected if he or she lives in a developed nation as opposed to a Third World country. In Western countries over the past fifty years both the quantity and quality of male sperm has dropped by nearly seventy-percent of what it was pre-World War I. If every family in the West decided they wanted to go back to the Victorian days of having ten kids per family then people owning fertility clinics would become the new Bill Gates; all of the world's fertility clinics are based in developed nations –"
Jack winced, not at what she said, but at painful memory. He and Sarah had never intended Charlie to be an only child. Indeed, they had agonised for some time before christening him with both grandfathers' names – Tyler Charles O'Neill – since their original plan to name the second son after the initially non-chosen grandfather foundered against their wish to avoid appearing to prefer one man over the other (plus a desire for the second child to be a girl).
But it had just hadn't seemed to happen. By the time Charlie reached his eighth birthday and was still an only child, they had more or less decided to ask for a referral to a fertility clinic if Sarah wasn't pregnant with, hopefully, Brianna Judith O'Neill by the time Charlie was nine. Of course, a month later Charlie had killed himself with his dad's own gun, and Jack's life went down the toilet for a very long time…He tuned back in to find that Janet was on a roll.
"…We strain our eyes looking at computer and TV screens, ruin our postures and our figures sitting at desks eight hours a day. We eat food packed full of a cocktail of chemical preservatives, fat, sugar and salt and we breathe recycled air in offices. The reason why most Americans are almost always perpetually suffering from colds is because they walk out of a refrigerated air-conditioned office into a hot parking lot and their bodies have no time to adjust from going from the North Pole to the Maldives –"
"We get it!" Jack interjected, recognising Janet's woman-on-a-soap-box demeanour. "So we have – possibly – some Ancient 'plague' that was their version of high cholesterol? Daniel, if you can tie that in with the Goa'uld coming to Earth, I'll buy you lunch and dinner."
Daniel cleared his throat. "Basically, I think the Goa'uld sent off human development at a tangent in the same way the Naqahdah meteorite led to some beings on their home world becoming the Goa'uld and those not affected by it developing at a normal rate in what are now the Unas – a primitive pre-technological society."
"In what way?" Major Davis asked, clearly fascinated by it all.
Concentrating intently Daniel explained, "I think that after the Ancients left Earth, for whatever reason they chose or were forced to go, the other humans co-operated with each other to learn about the technology left behind and utilise it. If we assume that until the Tower of Babel, all humans really were monolingual, there's very little they couldn't accomplish in a relatively short space of time. Unfortunately for them they were like the Americans who created the A-bomb – too busy trying to see whether they could to take a moment to think about whether they should and too arrogant to really have that much power that soon. If they never thought to give the Antarctica Stargate an iris or never learned to utilise any that the Ancients incorporated, they would have been helpless to stop undesirables following them back to Earth through it, like the Reetu followed us. That's probably how the first Goa'uld got to Earth, since we are, like Jack said, ex-directory."
"What tangent did the Goa'uld take us off at?" General Hammond enquired.
"Nationalism, for a start," Daniel shrugged. "The Goa'uld compete with one another, faction against faction. I think the Goa'uld began the separation of humanity into the nation-states we have today, and the competition just continued even after we got rid of the Goa'uld themselves. The confusing of languages at Babel would just have exacerbated that separation and the subsequent damage it's caused."
"What's wrong with being proud of being an American?" Jack stiffened in outrage, prepared to rebut another one of Daniel's anti-U.S. military speeches.
"Nothing, Jack," Daniel snapped, his tone clearly showing he was losing patience, "what I'm saying is that the lack of international co-operation caused by excessive patriotism and nationalistic fervour has hindered humanity's technological advancement way beyond the Goa'uld's wildest dreams."
Carter cleared her throat as General Hammond began to frown ominously at this perceived slur. "I think I understand what Daniel means, Sir. It's like the Prometheus – that ship is only a prototype, but it's actually way more advanced that anything even the Asgard have because it was built co-operatively by several governments using technology we back-engineered from over a dozen different cultures."
Jack snorted, "Carter, you've just said that a ship we cobbled together from a dozen different worlds' leftovers is superior to the Asgard. Don't make me laugh."
"Sir, that's my point," Carter persisted. "The Prometheus is pretty indestructible. The shields are based on Goa'uld technology, which is primarily designed to stop other Goa'uld Motherships, so the Goa'uld can't penetrate our shields, but the Asgard could. The Prometheus' weapons systems are based on Asgard and Tollan and Goa'uld technology, which means if one gets knocked out the others are still operative. The cloaking system the ship uses is Nox. We've even used technology from an unknown civilisation - what we think to be Furling technology - as a basis for gravity and life support systems even though we know nothing about them and probably wouldn't recognise a Furling if we fell over one. If the Prometheus is attacked by the Goa'uld, not all systems will be knocked out, same if the Asgard were to attack us. The Prometheus is like a mongrel dog that can pretty much run rings about pure bred types because nobody's got one thing that will disable everything the Prometheus has got."
"The Prometheus is a hybrid, a sort of mechanical bastard, which is its secret weapon." Janet Fraiser finished off Sam's earnest explanation, "It's why the illegitimate children of kings and noblemen were often more intelligent, courageous, talented and better looking than their legitimate counterparts. The king and queen or the duke and duchess were usually already blood relations to a greater rather than lesser degree, which only accentuated genetic defects; the king's peasant mistress or the duchess's stable hand provided a much-needed infusion of new DNA to reinvigorate the bloodline. It's common knowledge that at least one of France's most able and celebrated kings was not the son of the previous king."
"It's what I mean with how Earth should have been, probably would have developed after the Ancients left if the Goa'uld hadn't turned up," Daniel pointed out. "Think of the possibilities if ancient cultures had been co-operative instead of confrontational. Leonardo da Vinci came within a hair's breadth of bringing about the Industrial Revolution 250 years before an Englishman named Abraham Darby did it in the 1750s. If da Vinci had known about the blast furnace, printing press, saltpetre, etc., etc., all of which the Chinese had had for over a millennium, he would have had a viable fuel source for his heavier-than-air flying machine and we could have had manned aerial flight in 1603 instead of 1903. If the Industrial Revolution had happened in the 16th Century we could have had a man on the moon in 1769 not 1969. But everyone kept their secrets to themselves, and we ended up a fractured, mutually suspicious world torn apart by internecine wars that left us totally vulnerable to the Goa'uld. In the words of Quark from Deep Space Nine: 'You people irradiate your own planet?'"
In the face of Daniel's evident passion – and too many all-too-correct statements – Jack remained silent. He'd never been one for history – the past couldn't be changed, so why dwell on it? – but had to admit that Daniel had a valid point. All for want of communication between just two countries, China and Italy, never mind several, the moon landing had been delayed by two centuries.
"In the Book of Genesis," Teal'c stated suddenly, "it claims that this world was truly a paradise until the woman of the Tau'ri, Eve, was deceived by the Devil that is described therein –"
"As an evil snake that talked." Daniel slapped his palm against his forehead. "You see? I'm so stupid I should shoot myself. Thank you Teal'c."
"We don't expect you to be omniscient, Dr Jackson." Hammond soothed, "But isn't it a bit of a stretch to start reading Goa'uld into the Garden of Eden?"
Daniel shook his head. "In some ways I wish it were, but it fits too well, even the snake's choice of victim. Genesis claims that Adam had been around the block a time or two before Eve was created. When Hathor came to the SGC, she had a choice between Jack, me and you, General, but she focussed on me because I was the least militarily experienced and therefore most vulnerable to what she was doing. Ditto when Nirrti attacked Hanka – she left behind not a man or even a woman, but a child as her Trojan Horse. It's the same reason why human conmen target elderly pensioners and not Wall Street Bankers – the target of choice is always the least experienced person you can find."
General Hammond raised an eyebrow, "Dr Jackson, are you saying that we should start taking Genesis literally? The Garden of Eden and the global Flood; the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages? Even the life spans of the antediluvian patriarchs? The actual existence of God Himself?"
"In a way sir, yes," Daniel acknowledged. "First, we have what sounds like a Goa'uld in the Garden of Eden. When God expelled the humans from paradise, he barred the way back in by means of a barrier – a continually turning sword and two angels. Remember on Kheb when Oma Desala took Shifu – didn't her brilliant white glow remind anyone of anything?"
"And Orlan, on 636, he Ascended to save me and Colonel Reynolds from the weapon," Sam put in softly.
"The angels were Ancients, the sword some sort of energy weapon or even an iris of some kind across the road in." Major Davis straightened up as he thought about it. "It has been said that the Garden of Eden was actually a valley between two mountain ranges or an isolated plateau that could well have had only one way in or out."
"Which would make two Ancients and an energy weapon pretty effective, I'll grant you," Jack conceded, "but Nimrod. I mean, just one guy…"
"One is all it takes." Daniel countered, "A man who was crucified two thousand years ago in a backwater of the Roman Empire proved that even before you start on about Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Julius Caesar and so forth. Besides, Nimrod's job was made a lot easier by the fact that he didn't have to establish relations with a dozen different nations and learn a dozen different languages to get his little tower building project under way. Genesis says that all the earth continued to be one people with one tongue."
Major Davis cleared his throat again. "I was just thinking – Nimrod may not have had much opposition from his host. I know we think of hosts as helpless victims of Goa'uld enslavement, and most of them are, like Sha're and Tanith's host Hebron and even Apophis' host, but Hitler unfortunately wasn't that much of an anomaly – the only difference is he lived in an era where he could affect billions of people, whereas Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun could only affect thousands or hundreds. From what I remember, Genesis seems to indicate that Nimrod the human wasn't exactly that nice a guy to start off with. The Goa'uld may have lucked out and snagged a host who was already as power-crazed and psychopathic as it was."
Jack felt his headache start up again, particularly at the sudden, ghastly image of someone already the wrong side of psychotic, like Adolf Hitler, ending up being chosen as a host by such as Apophis, or this new guy, Anubis. "So, Goa'uld the First somehow makes it to Earth, presumably through the Antarctic Stargate, and finds human beings, a species – "
"Beauteous in form; fearless in action; wise of intellect," Teal'c reeled off with sudden poetry. He raised an eyebrow as they stared at him and said, "The words were coined by an ancient System Lord named Nebo; the Goa'uld often used such flattery upon their intended victims to make them feel especially chosen by the Gods to be the vessel of their essence."
"A species a hell of a lot prettier than the Unas," Jack ploughed on relentlessly ignoring Daniel's not-quite sotto voce comment that Nebo was an ancient Babylonian god. "He makes his way to Eden, and tells Eve…ah- ah- wait for it!" He chastised as Major Davis, Daniel and Teal'c all opened their mouths, "…that God is deceiving her and lying to her. He dangles the opportunity for her to become a goddess in her own right if she just bites the nice apple and the little twit believes him. Result: hit the road Adam & Eve and don't you come back no more, no more. Here's my problem – you're saying that some being had the power to order Ancients around, viz. the two that got lumbered with the job of guarding the gates to Paradise for a millennium until the Flood destroyed the whole kit and caboodle?"
"Why not?" Daniel shrugged with a definite attitude of provocative challenge in his tone.
"Daniel- "
"Jack. Come on, all the sentient beings that we've encountered through the Stargate and you cannot believe in an entity like that? I know we tend to view the Ancients through rose-tinted glasses because, well, we mostly likely are their younger siblings in a way, but they weren't omniscient or omnipotent. The fact that they seemingly couldn't cure some plague that ended up driving them from Earth proves that."
"So?" Jack challenged snippily.
Daniel visibly hung on to his temper. "Think about it: the Ancients, our 'Chinese peasants' turn tail and abscond due to this presumed plague so you –a passing benevolent entity – decide to stick around and make a little bit of Terra Firma nice for the locals left behind, the 'European peasants'. They're very appreciative for the work you do for them so they call you 'God'."
"Continue, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c intoned when Daniel paused for breath, that intent focus on his face indicative of his deep interest.
Daniel fidgeted nervously but went on, "Everything's going hunky dory when this little snake bastard shows up and starts messing around with the whole deal. The humans aren't up to Ancient technology levels yet but you can't let the thing access any of your technology so your only option is to co-opt a couple of Ancients and bar all humans from getting in to where the good stuff's kept…"
Jack waggled his fingers to attract attention, "But in Genesis the whole expulsion from Eden deal dragged on for centuries?" His so explain that went unsaid but clearly audible, earning him another not-hidden glower from General Hammond.
Daniel twitched in reaction, but said confidently, "Yes, but even if you get a couple of Ancients to guard the route back into Eden, all you're doing is merely delaying the inevitable. Fifteen hundred years later and the snake's managed to screw things up so bad, you have to start again. Drowning the planet has the beneficial side effect of locking that pesky Antarctic Stargate under several miles of ice out of the way of meddlers. You save the nicest people left on the planet and wipe the slate clean."
"Unfortunately, the snake makes it too?" Major Davis put in softly.
Daniel nodded, "…Or, more likely, escaped the planet for the duration of the Deluge before the Stargate was deep-frozen and returned by spaceship later – possibly the period when his little jaunt to Uhutac lost him his First Prime. Snakehead comes back, finds in 'Nimrod' a host who's as not-nice as he is, and comes up with the Tower of Babel to unify all humanity as his slaves. Since the entity – God – promised Noah he wouldn't ever deluge the world again, He comes up with an even better plan – those who can't communicate can't collaborate, so voila he makes humans multi-lingual. 'Nimrod' either flees the Earth again or else gets killed by Shem…" Daniel wound down.
Hammond turned to Teal'c. "Could just one Goa'uld have survived from Eden to Noah, especially as if I'm understanding all this correctly, the Goa'uld as a species hadn't discovered the sarcophagus technology at this point, apart from possibly the one on Earth masquerading as Nimrod?"
"It is unlikely," conceded Teal'c reluctantly, "the immense danger of such frequent changes of host –"
"No, wait." Janet Fraiser held up her hand. "Daniel, have you got Genesis on your handheld?"
"Yes?" Daniel held it out obediently.
"Dr Fraiser?" Hammond questioned.
"Teal'c, isn't it true that the Goa'uld symbiote's natural life span is actually the natural life span of the host?" she asked.
"Indeed," Teal'c inclined his head. "The Goa'uld queen requires DNA from the males of the intended host species to produce viable larvae, and their natural life span automatically becomes the life span of the resultant larvae."
"Right, Daniel, do you know how long, to the year, the gap was between Eve in the Garden of Eden to the supposed Great Flood?"
Daniel frowned. "It's stored in the handheld, the second icon along the top, the drop-down menu; go to Biblical Chronology."
Janet tapped the screen with the stylus as everyone craned to look. "Here, creation of Adam in the October of 4026 B.C., great flood began approximately 17th November 2370 B.C, which is a period of…"
"One-thousand-six-hundred-and-fifty-six-years, exactly," Sam blurted out.
"Meaning?" Jack demanded irascibly.
"Here!" clearing her throat, Janet read aloud, "Genesis 5:5: all the years of Adam amounted to 930 years."
Jack wasn't that slow. "So if Adam's natural life span was nearly a millennium and the Nimrod-Goa'uld used him as a host, it wouldn't need a sarcophagus – especially if it kept him healthy. Four-oh-two-six minus nine-three-oh leaves…Carter…?"
"The year 3096 B.C., sir…" Carter did another mental calculation, "Which was only 726 years before the flood."
"Genesis states that Methuselah lived to be 969 – he died only five months before the flood started – so in theory, the Goa'uld of Eden could have had to change host only once in the period between 4026 and 2370 B.C." Janet concluded.
"The Goa'uld would most likely have survived such a situation," Teal'c admitted.
Janet looked at General Hammond. "Sir it is possible, maybe even probable. As a scientist, I'm a sceptic on religious matters, but humans once having a naturally much longer life span than now would certainly solve the Maturity Conundrum."
"The what of which?" General Hammond imitated Daniel's baffled rapid blinking.
Janet shrugged. "All species mature at a rate that is proportional to their natural longevity. Mayflies go from birth to adulthood in fifteen minutes. The Roughy fish of New Zealand lives for two hundred years and breeds only once every sixty or seventy years. Every species that is, except for human beings. A human is capable of biological reproduction on average about the age of twelve, which is actually very bad for us, because a human being doesn't reach full sexual, mental and emotional maturity until about the age of thirty-five."
"Daniel and Carter don't look like kids to me," Jack muttered, eyeing the youngest two people in the room askance.
Janet ignored him. "In the New Testament, I forget where, St Paul refers to Timothy as a youth even though the man was about thirty-one at the time. Human biologists have always skirted the question of how St Paul knew a biological fact that we didn't discover until the 20th Century. I have to admit the one thing that always intrigued me about my own Sunday School classes were the longevity of the antediluvian patriarchs. Somewhere in Psalms I think it says that the average human life span is seventy years or eighty with special mightiness – "
"Psalm 90, verse 10, Dr Fraiser."
"Thank you, Teal'c. The thing is, it's detrimental not beneficial for a species to take half it's life span to reach fully mature adulthood, and humans are the only species we've ever encountered that has that problem," Janet explained. "Now, if humans at one time naturally had a life span that measured in centuries rather than decades, 35 years instantly becomes irrelevant. What's more, it meant the Goa'uld didn't need the sarcophagus in the way they do now. With a lifetime of only 70 or 80 years, when the host gets to about 50, the Goa'uld has to start using a sarcophagus every 5 years or so minimum in order to maintain the host's body, but if the host naturally lives to 900, there is no need to resort to a sarcophagus until you reach the 700s or even 800s."
"Genesis states that before the Flood, the Earth had some sort of global water canopy high in the atmosphere. It presumably made the entire planet temperate enough for Antarctica to be a flourishing sub-tropical landmass. After the flood, the human life span began to plummet, maybe the canopy kept out harmful solar emissions?" Daniel began to speculate.
"But what did that mean in real terms for the Nimrod-Goa'uld on Earth?" General Hammond persisted.
"Well, for a start, sir, a lot less violence." Janet explained, "Remember, the sarcophagus is an enormous factor in how evil the Goa'uld now are; indeed as we now know it is actually the single main factor that made them that way. A human with a life span of a century can use a sarcophagus maybe a dozen or so times in his or her life and suffer little adverse effect so long as they leave a big enough gap between usage, but the sarcophagus was designed to be used by a species with a much greater mass and a totally different physiology than the Goa'uld."
Jack curled his lip. "Doesn't seem to have bothered the snakes that much, considering they rule oh, half the known galaxy."
"Actually Colonel, it has bothered them, a great deal," Janet contradicted. "Let me illustrate: a human – especially a healthy human – using the sarcophagus regularly is like someone who smokes marijuana – it can take weeks or even months for the damage to begin to show, depending on how frequently they use it or how long a gap they leave between each fix. But for a Goa'uld the first time they use the sarcophagus to them it's like crack cocaine – instantly addictive, instantly massive in damage. The sarcophagus will heal a Goa'uld and it will even resurrect them just like any other living creature you put in one, but it pretty much messes up everything else. Daniel's excavations have shown that the Goa'uld are related to the Unas by a common ancestor, so even without the sarcophagus they would probably be an aggressive, dominant species, but," she paused a beat for emphasis, "it is their addicted, constant use of the sarcophagus that drives that aggression to psychopathic extreme in the Goa'uld. If Nimrod back in 2370 B.C. or whatever didn't have access to one and indeed, had never used one, he may have been just a bad apple amongst the Goa'uld, but he wouldn't have been the out-and-out nut jobs that the sarcophagus turned Ra, Apophis, Heru-Ur, Sokar, Cronos, Osiris, Isis, et cetera, into."
"Dr Jackson, is there any chance that Nimrod could still be on Earth, hiding somewhere like Hathor and Seth, or even imprisoned in stasis like Isis and Osiris were?" General Hammond asked.
"Anything's possible, but it's not likely," Daniel reassured him. "From what Teal'c's said, Goa'uld tradition has it that Nimrod has been dead for eons; I'd imagine that the Semitic tradition of Shem having killed Nimrod would be right – he probably got the man and the symbiote. The bible speaks of Shem being not only Noah's favourite son but also the priest-king of God; so that 'benevolent entity' may have favoured him with weaponry advanced enough to kill Nimrod. Noah, Shem and the immediate family may even have been Ancients themselves, to be honest, or at least have strong reserves of Ancient blood in their veins."
"The Nephilim," said Major Davis suddenly, making them turn towards him. He flushed as Jack raised both eyebrows sardonically. "Sorry, thinking aloud. According to Genesis some 'angels' intermarried with normal humans and produced the Nephilim, er…"
"'The mighty ones who were of old,'" Teal'c quoted, looking as if he relished the description, "'the men of fame.'"
"…Yes." Major Davis' face went an even deeper shade of beetroot. "I may be completely wrong but that sounds to me pretty much like a description of a whole bunch of Harsesis children, or at least rather the Ancient-human version of the Goa'uld-human hybrids."
Sam cleared her throat hesitantly as she had silently indicated to Janet to borrow Daniel's handheld and read quickly through the text. "General, I think Noah and his family had to have access to some pretty advanced knowledge. Even with the instructions 'God' gave him for building the ark, I doubt the man woke up one morning with a neat architectural blueprint in his head. To build the Flood Ark of Genesis you would need knowledge of three-dimensional design, load-bearing walls and barometric pressure differentials on a massive scale, plus thousands of other things I can think of on spec. At the very least, the family must have had some conversations with the Angels-stroke-Ancients guarding the way into Eden to get some insight."
"Next you'll be telling me they used power-tools to build the thing," muttered Jack, but not as under his breath as he'd thought.
Sam nodded. "Actually Colonel, maybe they did. After all there's the lighting issue."
"Lighting?" Hammond queried in confusion.
Carter nodded and gestured at the handheld. "Janet's Sunday School favourite was the ages of the pre-Flood people, mine was the mechanics of it all. For instance, as described in Genesis, Noah was basically building a giant shoe box with a lid – a roof. So it would have been very dark inside. Plus he built the ark out of wood, coated it with tar, and filled it first with straw and then methane producing animals. I don't about you, but I wouldn't have taken a naked flame anywhere near it. If Noah was some caveman hick using wall-torches for light, how did he and his family survive for…" she checked the handheld… "over a year inside the world's worst firetrap without burning it down around them?"
"Okay, okay." Jack raised a hand. "I've got to admit, General, that it all sounds pretty, well, plausible but then again, surely it could all just be our wishful interpretation. I mean come on, if Eve was targeted by a Goa'uld, why didn't Genesis just come right out and say so?"
"Because Moses knew it wouldn't have meant anything to his readers," Daniel replied flatly. "For example, how did you get to be an Air Force Colonel, Jack?"
There was a momentary but intensely charged silence as Jack and Daniel locked eyes down the length of the table; even being wilfully obtuse Jack could feel the sting of the barb in the question, but the way General Hammond merely sat next to him at the head of the table without intervening indicated that the General wasn't pleased with Jack's current attitude and was willing to allow Daniel some leeway.
"I worked my way up the ranks, from when I joined out of High School." Jack struggled to keep his tone neutral.
However, having metaphorically bared his teeth, Daniel seemed content to let it drop. "Exactly. When you signed up the sergeant didn't just toss you an MP5 and say: "'Have fun!'" - or at least I sincerely hope not. It took time and training. Likewise Sam didn't just wake up one morning and dive easily into the Tao of Physics without learning about the basics such as Pi or E mc2 first and I'm sure Teal'c didn't magically go from being the new kid on the block to First Prime in a day."
"How does that relate to the way Genesis was written, Dr Jackson?" Major Davis, possibly seeking to ease the simmering tension between Jack and Daniel, hastened to ask.
"The same principle applies to the writing of The Pentateuch, the first five Biblical books, which is basically a human history from 4026 B.C. to the founding of the Israelite nation in 1473 B.C. Moses was raised in the Pharaoh's household, educated in as Genesis puts it, 'all the wisdom of the Egyptians' to the extent that he became powerful in 'words and deeds'. It is tradition that Moses was the Egyptian prince who led a great military campaign into Ethiopia some time between 1573 to 1553 B.C." Daniel explained, "Basically, Moses, had what equated to the best higher education the world had to offer at the time -"
"Ah hah!" Jack cut in, determined to keep Daniel out of 'lecture mode'. "But the rest of the Jews were high school dropouts?"
"In comparison, yes, exactly right," Daniel admitted, though he looked rather too surprised at Jack's ability to be that insightful, "Although it certainly wasn't as big a gap as the Chinese versus European peasants. We know the Israelites as they called themselves then had some level of literacy before they entered Egypt in the 1660s B.C. because they already had prophecies requiring mathematical knowledge and were recording the tribal genealogies. But they were like college Freshmen to Moses' Dean of the University."
Sam looked sceptical. "But would Moses have had access to information regarding what the Goa'uld and the Ancients really were?"
"I'd say definitely," Daniel claimed. "The Egyptians were the first World Power probably because they overthrew Ra, which in turn triggered humans driving most of the other Goa'uld from Earth, and as Royalty, Moses would have had complete access to the archives and historical documents beyond the reach of the general populace that are now gone. Virtually every historian of antiquity lists several books that now non-existent. The Bible itself mentions at least two – the 'Book of the Wars of Jehovah' and the 'Book of Jashar' – neither of which outlasted the burning of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 607 B.C. Like I tried to explain when Amaroqah's mate held me captive, the sheer amount of knowledge that has been lost is colossal, and we have no idea how many of the earliest written texts explicitly or implicitly mentioned the Goa'uld or the Ancients or the Stargate. Over two thirds of Egypt's literary heritage was destroyed when Thebes was sacked in 664 B.C. It's estimated that half a million texts were lost when the Romans burned Carthage and over a million at least when the Patriarch Cyril instigated the murder of Hypatia and the burning of the Library of Alexandria -"
Jack opened his mouth, but forbore to comment when Daniel abruptly seemed to start listening to himself and took a deep breath and visibly reined in his indignant rant against the ancient barbarians who had the idiocy to wilfully destroy knowledge.
Janet Fraiser hastily stepped in. "If I may, Daniel, Moses may also have had verbal accounts to link with what he learned at 'university' for want of a better word. According to the dates on Daniel's handheld, Moses was born only 64 years after the death of the Egyptian Prime Minister Joseph, who was his great-great-uncle. According to biblical tradition, Shem outlived many of his own descendents including Eber the King of Ebla, well into Abraham's life time. He had first hand knowledge of the Ancients and the Goa'uld and I can't see him not bothering to mention to his family to watch out for people with glowing eyes."
Daniel nodded, acknowledging her idea as he went on in a more moderate tone, "Moses needed a way to convey his knowledge to his Hebrew people in a manner they understood. If he'd just translated the original and probably very verbose wording it would be like me handing Jack one of Sam's quantum physics textbooks and expecting him to understand it enough to brief NASA scientists the next day. There was also the fact that the Israelites wouldn't want to be hauling about tonnes of books as they headed for the Promised Land. Moses had to make his narrative simple but concise, which is probably why he tells us that Noah built the Ark, but doesn't mention how he lit the interior; but Moses also had to make his writing clear enough leave as many clues as possible to what he was really trying to say. A few verses in Genesis about an 'evil talking serpent' was just right for the Israelites' level of literacy while at the same time being sufficient to make anyone with any real knowledge of the Goa'uld go: whoa!"
"It is possible that Moses' knowledge of the Goa'uld was shared and continued by a small number of individuals within the Israelite nation for many centuries," Major Davis, encouraged by how well his comments had been received, dared to venture. "For instance, Revelation was written in 96 A.D. by St. John, the last Apostle, just over 1500 years after Moses wrote Genesis. My grandfather's favourite scripture was Revelation 12: 7-9, where war broke out in heaven, and 'down the…original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan…was hurled…to Earth'. If you assume John knew that the serpent in Eden was a Goa'uld, those verses seem to be a warning to those 'in the know' that there were still some Goa'uld on earth masquerading as humans."
"Seth and Hathor," Teal'c stated, "and also Osiris and Isis imprisoned in the stasis jars and maybe other Goa'uld we do not yet know of still hiding on this world."
"There are other examples too," Daniel expanded. "Saint John again said that we should not be like Cain who originated with the wicked one and who murdered his brother, righteous Abel. John's statement that Cain originated with the Devil may have been a clue that Cain was the Goa'uld's previous host before it jumped to Nimrod. Then there's the book of Ezekiel – for a long time some scholars have seriously considered that the Divine Chariot described in Ezekiel Chapters 1 and 2 is actually a space ship. The four wheels that could turn in any direction could be trying to indicate Stargates. In Ezekiel Chapters 41-43 God takes Ezekiel in vision to a great temple and has him measure it – but it's far too huge for any structure on Earth –"
"But it may fit the giant pyramid where your grandfather Dr Ballard is studying the Mayan aliens?" Sam suggested.
"Exactly. To be honest, the most worrying portion of Ezekiel is Chapter 28 verses 13-17," Daniel winced, "because although the condemnation is superficially addressed to the King of Tyre, God is poetically addressing the Devil. According to those verses, Satan was originally a faithful angel who was the Cherub in charge of the Garden of Eden, assigned to protect and care for Adam & Eve…"
Tapping on his handheld with the stylus, Daniel brought up the relevant passage and clearing his throat self-consciously, read out: 'You were full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. In the Garden of God you used to be. Every precious stone was your covering, ruby, topaz and jasper; chysolite, onyx and jade; sapphire, turquoise and emerald…You were the anointed cherub…on the holy mountain of God you proved to be. In the midst of fiery stones you walked about. You were faultless from your being created until the day unrighteousness was found in you…you began to sin. And I put you as profane out of the mountain of God…your heart became haughty because of your beauty. You brought your wisdom to ruin on account of your beaming splendour.'"
For a moment even Jack was silenced by the forceful imagery of the passage.
Sam admitted hesitantly, "The description of glittering jewels and walking about in the midst of fiery stones does seem to suggest the glowing corona of an Ascended Ancient…"
"Which is why it worries me now I look at it afresh with the Goa'uld-in-Eden idea," Daniel admitted. "If those verses aren't warning that an Ascended Ancient was taken over by a Goa'uld as a host I'll…go fishing with Jack for a year…and the idea that a Goa'uld can overcome the will of an Ascended Ancient, even if only temporarily and for short periods of time, is something that quite frankly scares the hell out of me."
Resolutely ignoring Daniel's comment, Jack said to Hammond, "I have to admit, Sir, it would explain how the snake got to Eve so easily. Those verses clearly imply that the Goa'uld was able to control the Ancient to such an extent that the God-entity and other Ancients didn't realise they'd been infiltrated until it was far too late – the damage had been done."
"The Goa'uld had jumped host, probably to Adam," Daniel hypothesised. "The Bible always squarely blames Adam for mankind's fall, not Eve, because it says that while the Devil tricked Eve, Adam was wilfully disobedientwhich would be another clue he was a host. If nobody at the time fully grasped what was going on, all the Goa'uld would have to do would be to lie low in Adam until it was safe enough or desperate enough to risk moving to another host, like Cain. Genesis says that after Cain murdered Abel, God banished him to "the land of Fugitiveness" or Nod, which was uninhabited. Genesis Chapter 4, verse 13 or 14 somewhere says that Cain would become a wanderer on the Earth. If we take Nod as the Ancients' by-then abandoned home nation, namely what we now call Antarctica, it's probable that Cain made his way to the Stargate and was sensible enough to stick close enough by it to escape when God brought the Great Flood a millennium or so later."
"How long did Cain live?" Hammond asked.
Daniel shook his head. "The bible doesn't say. In fact, it never mentions him after Genesis Chapter…4, I think. But Cain left with a wife, and had a son Enoch who was born in this land of Nod, so there were new potential hosts for the Goa'uld I presume was in Cain. In fact, Genesis mentions Cain's great-great-great-grandson, Lamech specifically not only because Lamech was the world's first polygamist but because he composed a poem for his two wives, in which he confesses to murdering an unnamed youth who hit him in a fight, making him the world's second wilful murderer, so possibly Cain had died and Lamech was the new host."
Major Davis added nervously, "Lamech's three sons were Jabal who founded livestock farming, Jubal apparently was the world's first musician and Tubal-cain was the world's first blacksmith. That could be Moses' way of trying to warn that the Goa'uld was showing Cain's family how to access at least some of the Antarctica Stargate technology, probably enough for whoever was the host to flee through the Stargate when the Flood began. I think the bible specifically names Lamech's daughter, Niamh, or Naaman or Naamah, which is very rare, but gives us no other details about her. Maybe Moses listed her because she was the host by the time of the flood."
"Whatever the details, the most likely scenario is that's how the Goa'uld escaped Earth for the duration of the deluge, then came back a century or so after everything had quietened down and infested Nimrod." Daniel rounded off, "Other Goa'uld still trapped in Unas hosts may have looked at pretty Naamah or whoever and followed her back to Earth that time, leading to Ra and so on."
"Very well," General Hammond looked around the table soberly. "For the next two weeks I can allow us to make Nemetae and Uhutac the top priority. Major Davis, you'll co-ordinate SG-2, 3, 5 and 8 as they explore Nemetae and Uhutac. Colonel O'Neill, you will oversee Sergeant Siler and the tech teams and make sure that we secure any weaponry that the Goa'uld may return to try and appropriate. Major Carter and Dr Fraiser, you'll deal with the engineering and medical investigations, Dr Jackson, please translate as much as you can as fast as you can. Dismissed…Colonel, a word in my office, please?"
"Sir…" they chorused, pushing back chairs and gathering up papers hastily.
As the others dispersed, Jack followed General Hammond into the latter's office and closed the door, turning to face Hammond as the General took his seat behind his desk. "Sir…"
Hammond raised one eyebrow in a probably deliberate imitation of Teal'c. "Colonel, I don't remember uttering the words 'at ease'."
Instantly Jack stiffened in a parade-ground rigid stance. George Hammond had a reserved demeanour and a quietly-spoken manner, along with an almost unheard of courtesy in suffixing orders with 'please' and always remembering to thank his subordinates for their efforts, in stark contrast to some brass with I-am-god delusions. However, Jack wasn't fooled by the fact that his superior had phrased his rebuke in such a way instead of bellowing and yelling. Hammond and very sharp teeth when he chose to use them, and had no compunction about exercising his considerable authority even though he chose to give his people plenty of room to manoeuvre; besides, Jack was already feeling the stings of increasing guilt, having crossed his own internal line of acceptable behaviour, never mind anyone else's.
"Would you care to explain your attitude in that briefing, Colonel O'Neill?" Hammond's tone was sharp. "You were deliberately trying to antagonise Dr Jackson and that is the most unprofessional attitude I have ever seen. Halfway through I was seriously considering reducing you back to Major."
"No excuse, sir," Jack confessed.
"So you were just having a bad day?" challenged Hammond.
"Bad…days, sir," Jack admitted. "I've been feeling…out of sorts for a few days, I haven't been sleeping well. I know I should apologise to Daniel."
Hammond frowned, but Jack recognised the expression of concern rather than anger in the General's eyes, especially when Hammond said with much less hostility in his tone, "If that's you out of sorts, I'd hate to see downright cranky."
"Sir," Jack risked a quick smile. "I…felt a little a dizzy while we exploring the major city on Ca- Nemetae…but then I was fine. However, over the past few days I've been getting these headaches and feeling really edgy. Maybe I picked up something, I don't know…Maybe having Dr Fraiser check me over would be a good idea…" he admitted reluctantly.
Hammond raised both eyebrows at this offer. "I agree. Report to the infirmary immediately and have her check."
"Thank you, sir."
"And Jack…whatever she finds, I also expect an immediate attitude adjustment, do I make myself clear?"
"Yes sir!" Jack left Hammond's office as fast as he could knowing he'd got off lightly in comparison to what the General could have done to him…Major O'Neill…ye-ouch!
Any lingering hope Jack had that his bad attitude hadn't been that obvious withered as he entered the base infirmary and Dr Fraiser watched him approach with a frosty expression and pebble-hard brown eyes that seemed to gleam with the threat of imminent assault with a scalpel or forcible colonic irrigation. "Colonel."
Ouch, not Jack or even an O'Neill; time to make nice with the lady who could cause him a world of hurt, literally. "I asked General Hammond if you could run a few tests for me."
For a moment he savoured her pole-axed expression at Jack O'Neill entering her lair voluntarily and it not being the end of the world before she recovered. "You're feeling ill?"
"Not really…kinda…sorta…" Jack wavered between negation and confession.
"Sit on the bed. What are your symptoms?" Long used to the macho idiocy that made the human male apparently determined to insist that a severed limb was a minor cut and hacking up a lung was a bit of a sniffle, Janet rapped out her orders briskly and in a no-nonsense voice.
Relating his momentary dizziness on Nemetae, Jack explained his headaches and mood swings and finished with his nightmares of the previous two nights. When she pressed for details, he kept it short, just explaining how on each occasion he'd been trapped in a sarcophagus.
As she went off to get needles and other nasty medical implements, Jack tried to relax; he'd no intention of going into explicit detail over the last two nights' nightmares. He'd been in a sarcophagus all right, but he hadn't been trapped there.
Jack blew out a breath wearily. Back in the Gulf War… had it been 1991 or later? - the memories all tended to blur after a while and anyway paled into insignificance in comparison to the Stargate project – he'd been second-in-command of a mission ambushed near Basra. The whole situation had nearly been as blown as the mission the Gamekeeper had accessed from his memory.
Insurgents had attacked the two-truck convoy with Kalashnikovs and mortars and small shoulder-mounted rockets, but surprise had been their only advantage with their equipment, Russian cast-offs, being about reliable as the weather report. Nevertheless, Jack's squad had lost two men. Henson had taken a direct hit to the head in the fire fight, but Majchzruk…Jack remembered crawling rapidly over to the kid as bullets whizzed overhead like angry wasps…Barely twenty-one, the kid was Matinee idol handsome but saved by a sincere, friendly personality who bore the nickname 'Madge' in good humour…he'd been lying flat on his back, unmoving just off at the side of the road with his eyes closed…
Jack swallowed at the memory. He'd expected to see a big bruise on the kid's noggin to explain why he was taking a nap in a fire fight, but there quite literally hadn't been a mark on him…not even a dirt scuff. With the insurgents suicidally persistent and improving their aim, Jack had grabbed Madge to haul him to the safety of the truck…but there had been nothing behind Madge's face, like those old Spaghetti Western movie-set façades where you walked around the frontage and found just an empty lot. Poor bastard's head had been blown away, leaving literally just his face, an unmarked, perfectly preserved mask. The white bone of Majchzruk's spine had been stark against the blood soaking Jack's hands, the shredded flesh and sinew of his back side as mangled as his front was unblemished…
"Colonel!"
Jack jumped and winced as Janet Fraiser peered at him anxiously, her earlier ire receding. "You really do look tired."
"Tell me about it." Jack managed without much of his usual wisecracking tone.
She went off again and he closed his eyes wearily. That not-happy memory had featured heavily in his nightmares over the past few nights. The first night he'd been in a sarcophagus, not trapped but cocooned. Lying in total darkness growing strong; feeling the vitality and power infusing his body with a wellbeing beyond the mere physical: confidence; power; determination.
Daniel had suddenly appeared looking down at him, dressed, bizarrely, like Skaara had been when he was Klorel's host; he had proceeded to scold Jack like mom used to when she caught him sneaking out of his bedroom window at night to go drag racing…then Daniel had pulled out a .45 and shot Jack straight between the eyes – the point at which Jack had sat bolt upright gasping for breath and sweating.
The next night had been worse. This time Jack had been hurrying towards the sarcophagus, gold and gleaming and welcoming, knowing it would fill him with strength and energy. Suddenly Daniel was in the way again, this time dressed in his usual fatigues, but with a blue top over green pants unlike SG-1's usual either all-blue or all-green fatigues. Once again he began to tell Jack how wicked and evil he was for using the sarcophagus and suddenly a C4 detonator with a timer appeared in his hand that he turned to place on the sarcophagus. With irritation, Jack shot him dead and then had to shove the corpse aside with his boot to climb inside. He settled down, desperate to feel the revitalising power and high provided by the sarcophagus, when suddenly Daniel was standing over him again lecturing, but this time…this time most of Daniel's head was a gory, bloody mess, just like Madge's had been.
Hands in pockets, Jack O'Neill wondered down the corridor heading for the Commissary. Today was a good day for pie; it was usually cherry or pecan. He didn't rush, enjoying the sensation of not having to travel at breakneck speed for once.
Coming back to find O'Neill spaced-out again had been sufficient for Dr Fraiser to order four days of complete rest away from the GC, and she'd upped it to five when Jack had accepted her order with gratitude rather than protest. Technically he had still been on call as Nemetae was still an "active" mission, so he couldn't go to his cabin in Minnesota, but Jack found the back porch of his house in Colorado Springs had sufficed. Days of watching the curling and the hockey, nights of star-gazing and above all not one single nightmare had improved his outlook no end.
Not even having a progress briefing this morning by the research scientists had traumatised him. Jack had been braced for a full onslaught but to his pleased surprise the scientist delivering the briefing had been Area 51's own Dr Rex Amoa. Daniel and Sam were both geniuses, but tended to get carried away by their own enthusiasm. Put the pair in a room with a similar range of IQs and they started gibbering like Gibraltar monkeys, instantly incomprehensible to anyone who's IQ came in at under-190.
Doc Rex was possibly even more stupendously brainy but had one vastly important character virtue. A huge, jovial African-American by birth and nationality, Amoa had spent his formative years in French Senegal, and thus spoke with sonorous melody – slowly. After every other sentence, he would trail off in a lengthy pause to contemplate briefly whatever revelation his brilliant brain had cooked up in the interim. This of course allowed the less mentally agile members of the audience to work out more or less what he was going on about before he restarted; they might not be on the same page, but Jack had opened the same book at least. As his Irish mother would have put it, Amoa talked like he was being billed by the verb.
According to Doc Rex, it was a 'good news & we're getting there' scenario. An irreparably-damaged MALP had been sacrificed and as Carter hoped, had indeed negated the threat of the Uhutaci defence drones. Testing of the Jaffa's full skeleton had verified his age and humanity and examination of both Nemetae and Utuhac had shown technology that had the scientific types and the Pentagon practically drooling. The Nemetae and the Uhutacis had reached a greater level of technological advancement than even the Asgard, millennia before the little grey guys – had their civilisations not been wiped out the possibilities were incredible.
That brought the situation to the getting there bit. Sorting out what had gone wrong, and how Nimrod fitted into the mix was proving elusive. According to Professor Amoa, most primary deities and belief systems in the world could be traced back to a very small group of individuals, giving credence to the idea that most of modern humanity sprang from a very small gene pool, such as the few survivors of an Ancient plague – or a global deluge. Thus the Babylonians had called Nimrod Marduk, the Sumerians Tammuz, the Caananites had called him Moloch and the Phoenicians Baal and so forth.
But these were all secondary embellishments to the original. The oldest and most accurate descriptions of Nimrod came from Jewish culture, wherein lay the problems. Most ancient Near and Middle Eastern cultures such as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, etc., make modern-day graffiti artists look like second-rate wannabes. Not so the Jews or as called in ancient times, Israelites. They had not adorned the walls of their cities with descriptive texts or images, nor had they gone in for ostentatious statuary of prominent citizens.
Like Dr Amoa had said, the Jews had had plenty of art and culture, the difficulty was in how they had recorded it. Originally a large clan, the Israelites had emerged from two centuries of life in Egypt with a sense of national identity in 1513 B.C., under the leadership of the famed Moses. They had then wondered around the Near East for half a century before settling in the Fertile Crescent of Palestine.
The Egyptians, despite or because of their Goa'uld influence, were pretty smart. Smart enough to take the sweat out of writing caused by chipping letters into bits of stone by instead inventing the world's first paper out of Papyrus reeds. For the Jews leaving Egypt, papyrus was perfect. Simple to make, light to carry and easier to transport in bulk than massive stone stele or even smaller stone tablets, papyrus scrolls had been ideal for a nomadic, frequently moving, but literate nation.
Unfortunately, as Jack now knew, once the Israelites had done their walls of Jericho deal and settled into the Promised Land, they hadn't changed that MO. Instead of statuary and ostentatious tombs recounting their wonderfulness, the Israelite culture had focussed exclusively on writing and music; Israelite musicians were the Elvis Presley of their era. Normally a culture that believed so strongly in the written account would have sent archaeologists into paroxysms of adoration, except for the fact that the Israelites routinely used papyrus and then other forms of scroll, not stone or even wood. In short, acutely vulnerable to fire, flood, vermin, deliberate damage or just the deterioration of inexorable time.
Daniel was currently using every source he could beg or coerce but was apparently having a hard time of it. Osiris, the Goa'uld formerly known as Sarah Gardner, was still out there somewhere plotting mayhem, though Steve Rayner had recovered sufficiently and was now normally based at either the Alpha or Beta sites, having figured enough out to be immune to cover stories.
At the briefing with Professor Amoa, Rayner had explained that Daniel had ended his 'public' career as a figure of ridicule and then apparently disappeared into thin air rather than joining the circuit of usually vociferous fringe lunatics. Daniel's reappearance in Chicago following the death of Dr Jordan and the subsequent sudden deaths of two people plus the disappearance of Dr Jackson (again) along with both Dr Jordan's assistants Dr Gardner and Dr Rayner had set tongues wagging. When Dr Jackson telephoned eminent professors, even assuming they'd accept the call from an 'out-where-the-buses-don't-run crackpot', they would react with surprise and suspicion when Daniel, whose area of expertise was primarily Egyptology, started asking detailed questions about a historical figure in Judaism.
Jack knew what talking to pen-pushers and bean-counters was like; bruised heads and brick walls sprang to mind. Indeed, he winced as he reached the corridor intersection just outside Daniel's lab and overheard Daniel talking loudly.
"I don't care! I just don't care…" crash…slam… "Like I'd trust Jack after that stupid stunt he pulled with the Tollan? He was happy to sell out to bunch of extraterrestrial Nazis…"
What? Jack stopped dead in outraged shock at this vitriolic character assassination.
Slam…whack…thud…"He killed Reese like she was animal…suppose we should be grateful he didn't take a dislike to Loren, else we'd all have been killed by the Light…good job there aren't any Nemetae children left around for him to massacre –"
Abruptly engulfed in a scalding wave of anger, Jack's rational mind shut down as he sprang forward in a fury at his target.
To be continued…
© 2005 C D Stewart