"Sam!" Daniel Jackson moaned at his team mate, provoking an angry and impatient glare. "I think I found something important, the writing here," he gestured to the tablet he was holding, "I need to study this," catching Sam's drift as she began pulling him towards the stargate he revised what he had meant to say. "I- I think I'll bring this back to the base," he stammered as he began to cooperate with Sam, then he began to babble on about the tablet.

"It has Ancient writing here, but the words make no sense, it looks like it might have been written code..." he continued to ramble for ten minutes, when Sam pushed him through the Stargate.


Several hours later: Daniel's lab

"I can't make heads or tails of this," Daniel complained to Sam, although he knew that she wasn't listening to him from the way she was looking at the tablet he had brought back.

"Daniel, is this what the tablet says?" she asked, pointing at a paper next to the tablet.

"Yeah, why?" he didn't bother looking up from his attempt to translate the Furling writing.

"Do you have a pencil I could borrow?" Sam asked, her blue-green eyes locked on the words on the page.

"Sure, here you go," Daniel passed her a pencil, looking up as he heard Sam writing on his paper.

"Kuenoh kyn kehro," Sam muttered, reading the words on the page, "A cataclysm nears our world," she jotted this down under Daniels slightly sloppy handwriting, causing Daniel to look at her oddly, but she didn't notice, only pushing her hair behind her ear, a slightly pointed ear.

"You can understand that!" an incredulous Daniel sputtered.

"My mom used to speak something like this," Sam said, looking up from the Furling's message. "She said that history would be lost if 'our people forgot' those were her words, as if she wasn't human, it was odd, it felt right for her to say something like that," she shrugged and turned her attention back to the paper.

"Kaianta Kehrehl uht Denehl Kehtrehrl — Kaianta Kerel and Denehl Ketrerl; shyr ahl sthon sehm — put in life sleep. Auth, Denehl, shehr Kehnelh shehm — (the) syblings, Denehl, aged 105 years; uht Kaianta, shehr Kairehk shehm — and Kaianta, aged 117 years; tehmehn — younglings," she looked up, directly into Daniel's piercingly blue eyes. "How long did they live if 105 and 117 were considered young?" Sam's eyes were as big as dinner plates.

"What does the rest say?" a very shaken Daniel asked, writing down the Furling alphabet.

"Dhem tahl tuth acht nus anto neh halhdeh — to wait for our decendents, or literally 'the flesh of our children'; la, ztehn Nahaln dehcken achtch — or the others from (the) allied races; duhs Altehruns, Ahsgjard, uht Nhohx," Sam read.

"That sounded like 'Alterans, Asgard, and Nox'," Daniel noted.

"That's what it means," Sam said.

"But," Daniel said, "Who are the Alterans?"

"My guess," Sam suggested, "is the Ancients, they're obviously talking about the four races, so the Alterans must be the Ancients,"

"That makes sense," Daniel admitted before asking, "So what does the rest say? Just translate it,"

"Okay, 'Some of our people will live on and our descendents will return for Denehl and Kaianta. A number of our people went to Earth to seek the Alterans, but could not leave and so mingled...'," she trailed off, looking at Daniel, "It just stops, as if the writer didn't get to finish it, but you notice," she directed his attention to another part of the tablet, "The Furling letters go on far longer than the Ancient, I wonder what happened"