A/N: Guestinator, we meet again. You still haven't created a proper account, so I still can't reply to you directly, but to you and anyone who shares your worries about Rodney "outdoing" magic, I say this: Rodney isn't outdoing magic. He's not even probing Harry's wards very well. But just the fact that Rodney has created a device that has any hope of parsing out a magical system is groundbreaking to Harry, a wizard who's spent his whole life thinking that technology just can't do that. And Rodney, of course, is just going off of his experience in interpreting (and misinterpreting) the signals the gate sends to Earth's custom-built Dialing Computer. Magic isn't getting out-done here. That's why Rodney was still wearing a dunce cap two days later.
Anyway, back to the story. I think there was a hullabaloo about a ship coming through the Stargate or something…
Harry looked out at the crowded gate room. He could almost feel the tension in the air. Months of effort, by all of these people, had led to this momentous day. With a lot of very careful and delicate work (and no small amount of help from Sam) Harry had managed to synthesize five potentia. They'd used several high-quality materials the SG teams had tracked down across a dozen worlds in the process. And today, they were gathered to witness and take part in the fruit of those labors. One of those potentia would be used to power the intergalactic wormhole to Atlantis. The city of the Ancients, the Jewel of the Alteran people. Harry was still having a hard time believing he'd actually found an alternate reality where the story wasn't just a tall tale told by a bunch of drunk muggles who might or might not have been hoodwinked by mischievous mages.
The gate began to spin. Harry's heart sped up. Technicians immediately started hammering at keyboards, and then an alarm began to sound. "Unsheduled offworld activation," one of them said into a microphone, and Harry heard his voice over the P.A. system. That didn't sound good.
Harry turned to General O'Neill, who was standing with him, Dr. Weir and Daniel Jackson while Rodney hooked up the potentia. "That's not supposed to happen, is it?" Harry asked.
Dr. Weir and General O'Neill looked quite grave. "That's what the iris is for," O'Neill said, nodding at one of the technicians, who scanned his hand on a device next to his computer, causing the Stargate's heavily reinforced iris to close. O'Neill then gave an order to evacuate the gate room as the ever-present marines in the gate room readied their weapons, alongside the marines from the Atlantis Expedition who were currently in the debarkation area.
Harry was suddenly struck with curiosity. "How does the iris actually work? Sam told me it's an incredibly strong alloy, but surely that doesn't stop everything that comes through the gate."
"It prevents anything from rematerializing on this side of the wormhole," Rodney said behind them, "It's not a matter of physical force, the metal is so close to the event horizon that anything attempting to materialize is instantly atomized."
"Really?" Harry turned to face Rodney, "what about subatomic particles?" O'Neill groaned beside him.
"Actually," Rodney said, "The Goa'uld Sokar once used a subatomic particle beam weapon in an attempt to overheat and melt the iris. The subatomic particles rematerialized just fine."
Well that was interesting. You could stop most wormhole travel with a great big chunk of metal. Harry made a mental note to investigate that further in the future. As the gate finished dialing, Harry observed the iris with interest. Then, Inter interrupted his thoughts.
Harry, I'm getting a coded message from…us. It's a third-year situation, but without any causal loops.
Oh bugger, Harry thought. I hate time travel. Everything always gets so much more complicated when time travel is involved. "Ahem. O'Neill, I think I know who's on the other side of the Stargate."
The general raised an eyebrow at him. "How?"
"I can use my mental interface as a short-ranged communicator in a pinch. I just got a message from…well, you're not going to believe this."
"Try me."
"It's me, but from a couple hours in the future. If I had to guess, something on Atlantis really doesn't go well, because I hate time travel, and I wouldn't bother with it unless I had a very good reason."
"Hang on," Daniel asked, "You're saying you went back in time?"
"Yes," Harry said, "I've done it before. Technically, the wizard on the other side of the gate isn't even a future version of me; it's me from an alternate future. But whatever alternate future he came from, this is almost definitely the point of divergence from the original timeline. It can't be a coincidence that we were just about to go to another galaxy and attempt to sort through the possible ruins of an ancient civilization at the exact moment that this...me arrived."
"Can you be sure it's really you?" O'Neill asked.
"I have ways of coding my messages. Among other things, the message itself references the first bootstrap paradox I was a part of, so that I know roughly what I'm dealing with. It's my standard warning that I'm about to be neck-deep in time travel."
"Wait," Rodney said, "you actually created a bootstrap paradox? How did you get everything right the second time through?"
"Bootstrap paradoxes have actually proven to be stable," Sam spoke up, "SG-1 participated in one a few years ago."
Harry raised an eyebrow at that, and McKay was clearly quite surprised, but the wizard decided to pre-empt any further discussion. "It seems like time travel isn't quite as unfamiliar to you as I would have thought. But in any case, may I invite this future me through? I can vouch for him, he'll cause no harm."
O'Neill stared at Harry thoughtfully for nearly a minute. Then, clearly coming to a decision, he picked up the P.A. microphone and addressed the gate room. "Marines, stand ready, but hold your fire. We're opening the iris; it appears that a friendly wants to come through." Then he turned to Harry. "If this goes south, it's on you and you'd better help us deal with it," the general stated simply.
Harry nodded. That was fair. The technician scanned his hand again, and the iris opened. Harry sent a "clear to proceed" message through Inter.
And then, quite suddenly, the wormhole spat out a large, silver craft. It barely looked small enough to fit through the gate, and it was shaped cylindrically, as though it was designed to be as big as was practical while still fitting through a Stargate. More than that, Harry could actually feel the neural link the ship had with his future self. It was almost alive, and as it hung motionless in the air, Harry couldn't help but be impressed.
"Now that," Harry said aloud, "has some serious potential."
…
John Sheppard lowered his gun a fraction, awed at the ease with which the silver craft defied gravity. Then, without any outward indication of thrust, the craft began to rotate, a rear door sliding open. And without even letting his craft touch the ground, the pilot jumped out, gliding gently down the two meter drop to the ground as though gravity was more of a guideline than an actual rule. But even weirder, Sheppard recognized the pilot.
"Harry?"
The wizard's gaze turned to John, and in those eyes Sheppard saw the trauma that only recent, fresh death could cause.
"Harry, what happened? I thought you were still on Earth."
The wizard sighed. "I am, Sheppard. And I would have stayed here for approximately another 23 minutes before departing to the lost city of Atlantis. After arriving, the city's shields fell, and everyone drowned. I…tried to save them. But I was too late, and the potentia sockets were too far from the gate."
The door to the debarkation room opened, and revealed…Harry? What the hell was going on here?
"How bad was it?" The newly arrived Harry asked the one from the ship.
"Horrible," the one from the jumper answered. "We were all on Atlantis before we realized the power was failing, and the city is underwater. The city is on its last legs, and unless it gets fresh potentia as soon as you arrive, your own explorations will cause the lights to come on and drain what little power the city was using to power its shields." The wizard gestured to his ship, "This gate-ship was modified by one of the Atlantean scientists to travel through time. After…after everyone drowned, I found this ship's hanger, and there's an automatic system that can dial the gate inside the ship. So…I used the ship to travel back in time with the potentia we'd brought over, pulled out one of the city's nearly depleted potentia, and replaced it with our full one. Then I just flew this gate-ship through to Earth. Thanks for letting me through, by the way."
"Hang on," Colonel Sumner interrupted, "are you saying you're from the future?"
"He's telling the truth," said the Harry who hadn't come from the gate-ship. "How else do you explain both of us standing in the same room?"
"Can you guide a team with full potentias through Atlantis in time to prevent…what happened to you?" General O'Neill asked. Sheppard hadn't even noticed him enter the room.
Gate-ship Harry shook his head. "No. I'm not sticking around in this timeline." He stared deeply into the other Harry's eyes for a second, and then gestured to his ship. The ship floated down and hovered just over his head. "I've given your timeline's Harry what he needs to know. Once he's on Atlantis, he can apparate straight to the room where the potentia are and replace them. I only came back to warn you. The rest will be up to you. This isn't my timeline, and I've already failed to solve this problem."
"Now hang on a minute-" Sumner tried to say, but Gate-ship Harry ignored him and twirled in a circle, his hands outstretched. Strange shapes drew themselves in the air in a sphere around the wizard and his ship.
"Everyone, stand back!" the Harry outside the bubble ordered. "He's about to jump to another universe!"
"Can you stop him?" General O'Neill asked.
The strange symbols began to move around, and new symbols were added as the Harry inside the bubble waved his hands around in an increasingly chaotic, and yet somehow orderly manner. A loud hum began to vibrate the floor, setting John's teeth on edge.
"Probably not!" Harry shouted over the hum, "At least not without causing a massive magical surge! That kind of magic might blow up in our faces, or it might turn us all into daisies!"
General O'Neill muttered something to himself, then shouted, "Withdraw to the hallway and close the blast doors!"
Harry, however, stayed behind. "That shouldn't be necessary!" he shouted over the growing hum, "I'll stay here and make sure the ritual doesn't get out of hand."
John silently wished him luck as he followed the marines out of the gate room. General O'Neill closed the door behind him, and the hum quieted to more acceptable levels.
"Sir," John asked, "What in the hell was that?"
General O'Neill gave him a long look. "That, Major, is an excellent question."
The humming grew progressively louder, even through the door, and John started to hear a rushing sound, like wind. Then, quite suddenly, the noise stopped. A crack like gunfire sounded in the hallway, and John turned reflexively turned, aiming his gun at the sound, but saw that it was just Harry.
"The danger has passed," the wizard said. "That ritual isn't really dangerous anymore; I've honed it to simplicity over the course of my life." Harry glanced at the marines and John, who still had their guns trained on him. "And I'm sorry about the apparition. I know it can be a bit startling the first time you see it."
"You can say that again," the General O'Neill said.
Dr. Weir stepped out of the control room. "Harry? What just happened?"
The wizard glanced around at the marines, and the hallway they were standing in. "Quite a bit, actually," he said, "Let's continue this in the briefing room."
…
Harry looked at the people gathered in the briefing room. Dr. Weir was there, obviously, as was General O'Neill. Colonel Sumner, who would be the commanding officer of the military forces in Atlantis, was also present. But more interesting to Harry was the fact that Dr. Jackson and Sam were also there. Apparently these two were so well-respected that they got to weigh in on mission briefings that didn't directly concern them.
"Well," Harry said, gathering his thoughts, "we're here to talk about what just happened. And from what I can discern from the memories that my future self shared, we might not have a lot of time to discuss it. But, to summarize as briefly as possible, in the alternate timeline my future self came from, we sent an expedition to Atlantis. The MALP read breathable atmosphere, and showed a solid structure with no hint of the ruins we theorized might be all that was left. So we all went through the gate, and started to explore the city that we've been dreaming of visiting for months now." Harry paused; struggling through the memory of what had come next.
"Then," he continued, "Rodney noticed that the city's power was failing, and that Atlantis was underwater. Apparently the stories about Atlantis sinking beneath the waves are true, after a fashion. And for 10 million years, the city shield preserved the city, keeping the water out. But the potentia that power the city were just about ready to fail, and by exploring the city and activating various systems that had been shut down automatically to conserve power, we doomed both the city and ourselves." Harry paused, mentally separating himself from the experience. "Or rather, they doomed themselves. Sorry, it's a bit disorienting sorting through someone else's memories."
"Why didn't you…he…why didn't they use the potentia you took with you?" Sam asked.
Harry smiled wryly. "We tried. Unfortunately, the city's blueprints aren't in the Database I recovered from O'Neill's head, and by the time they'd realized the shield was failing, the water had practically flooded the whole city. They tried to spread out and find the room where the city's potentia were stored, but that just meant that they all drowned separately. I…or rather, my counterpart…he tried to save them once he realized what was going on, but he didn't get back in time. He only survived because it's actually pretty trivial to cast a spell that provides limitless oxygen underwater. But the rest of the expedition…they didn't make it."
A somber silence fell across the room. Harry tried not to remember his counterpart swimming past the corpses of Dr. Weir and Colonel Sumner, among many others, but the memories were still quite fresh, even though they weren't technically his.
Eventually, Dr. Weir broke the silence. "Do you think we can stop that from happening again?"
"Yes," Harry replied, "my counterpart explored the city quite thoroughly after…after it flooded. Everything was dead, and none of the doors opened easily, but he was determined to find…well, anything that would make it all worth it. He had hoped to find a way to finally get back to my original universe, if we explored a city built by the Alteran people. In his explorations, he did eventually find the room where the potentia were stored, as well as a hanger with several of the gate-ships like the one he flew here. And, rather curiously, one of those ships had a built-in time machine. So he decided that, even if his expedition had failed, he'd do his part to help us out. It's not much, in the vastness of the multiverse, but I definitely appreciate the gesture."
"Yes," agreed Dr. Weir, "I think we all do. To think that we nearly died…"
"But that won't happen again, will it?" O'Neill asked, fixing Harry with a pointed stare.
"No," Harry said, "it won't. If I go through the gate first, I can apparate three potentia directly to the room where the city's potentia are kept, and replace the drained potentia with fresh ones. The only reason my counterpart couldn't was because I can only apparate to places I've either been to, or can clearly picture in my head."
O'Neill frowned. "Why three? Isn't one powerful enough to power…I don't know, at least a whole country?"
Harry smiled. O'Neill's lack of technical expertise aside, he had a good point. "A single potentia would probably be able to power every single country on Earth, actually, and for several years without stopping. But what you're forgetting is just how advanced the Alterans were. Their city's shield held the crushing pressure of several hundred meters of water off of an area that's nearly 20 kilometers in diameter. The power involved in maintaining such a shield…well, it would dwarf the Earth's yearly power consumption by quite a bit. So yes, it's best to use three potentia, rather than just one. We might technically be able to use one safely, but I'd rather not risk it, all things considered."
O'Neill still looked reluctant. "We only have five of these things, total. Are you sure it's worth using three of them to power this city?"
"Jack!" Dr. Jackson exclaimed, "This is Atlantis! The city of the Ancients that we've been looking for all this time! You can't be saying that we shouldn't go!"
Harry raised an eyebrow. O'Neill let Dr. Jackson call him Jack? Harry hadn't been under the impression that the General let himself get that close to anyone, let alone an archeologist.
"Daniel," O'Neill said patiently, as though they'd had this argument before, "you aren't going regardless. I need you here. And all I'm saying is that it seems a little…excessive. These potentia things are incredibly powerful, and Harry's asking us for three of them!"
Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, please, General O'Neill. You can't still be concerned that I'm trying to steal Earth's potentia, can you? I helped you make those potentia. If I'd wanted to steal one, I'd already be long gone." Harry noticed Dr. Weir's expression go a bit flat, as though she was hiding her reaction to his words.
"I'm not saying that…" O'Neill said. "I'm just saying…what was I saying?" he turned to Sam.
"You were saying that three potentia is a bit much, sir." Sam dutifully reported, unfazed by O'Neill's apparent absent-mindedness. "But it might not be. It takes at least five of our most powerful power generators just provide minimal to power a small Alteran outpost, or one potentia for full power. Three potentia might just be what it takes to power a whole Alteran city."
O'Neill considered that. "Oh," he said, "well, in that case, I guess you should take three of them. You wouldn't want the city shields failing again."
Harry blinked. It was that simple? In order to change O'Neill's mind you just had to…convince Sam and Dr. Jackson? He'd have to keep that in mind. "I'll go get the potentia, then. Unless anyone else had questions?" He glanced over at Colonel Sumner, who had remained quiet through the briefing, but the man didn't seem to have anything to say. "Right, then. Rodney should be done hooking the Stargate up to a potentia by now, and as we've discovered, the clock is ticking. With your permission, General, may I use the gate to go to Atlantis as soon as I collect the potentia?"
"Yes," O'Neill said, "by all means. And hurry up about it too! We wouldn't want you to end up going for another swim, would we?"
Harry smirked at O'Neill's terrible humor, but just nodded in acknowledgement before apparating directly to his laboratory in Antarctica, where three of the potentia he'd helped make were being stored. There were few places more secure than the seventh continent, after all, if only because it was so hard to get to. Well, hard to get to unless you were an immortal wizard who'd spend centuries learning how to apparate across entire planets. Then it wasn't quite so secure.
Gathering the three potentia into his expanded sleeve, the wizard took one last look at his lab. He probably wouldn't be seeing it again, now that he was going off to Atlantis.
"Farewell, then," he said aloud.
Turning on his heel, Harry apparated once more, this time to the SGC gate control room. The reaction to his arrival was…amusing, as the technician in charge of watching the Stargate and all its monitoring systems spilled coffee all over himself in shock.
"What the hell!" the man exclaimed, "Where'd you come from? I thought you were in the briefing room?"
"Sorry about that," Harry said, cleaning the man's uniform with a wave of his hand, "the meeting is over, and it's been decided that I need to get to Atlantis as soon as possible."
"What? Why?" asked a familiar voice behind Harry. The wizard turned to see Rodney standing next to a glowing potentia.
"Oh, good," Harry said, "you got that all hooked up. And I guess you didn't hear, but the reason a version of me from the future came through the Stargate was to warn us that our expedition was doomed unless I get fresh potentia to the city as soon as possible. The city's power has lasted 10 million years, which is pretty impressive, but it's about to fail, and it's also under several hundred meters of ocean with nothing but an energy shield holding back the water."
"Oh." Rodney said. "Well…good luck then."
Harry smiled. "You aren't going to offer to help me with this one?"
"You don't need my help, you can teleport and shoot lasers out of your hands!"
"Those aren't lasers, Rodney, they're stinging jinxes."
"They're bright emissions that cause pain on impact! That's close enough to a laser for me!"
Harry smirked. "Well, this has been a great chat, as usual, Rodney. But I really do need to hurry. Is the potentia fully connected?"
Rodney glanced back at the glowing crystalline structure, held aloft by several wires and bits of metal. "It should be. I guess we won't know until we dial the gate."
Harry nodded. "That's good enough for me." He turned to the technician. "Siler, wasn't it? Dial us up." The technician started, probably surprised that Harry remembered his name. The two had only worked together briefly on creating the potentia, after all, but Harry sort of cheated when it came to remembering things.
"A-All right, Mr. Potter," the technician stuttered.
Harry smiled casually at the man. "Please, just call me Harry. Hearing someone call me Mr. Potter just makes me feel like I'm back in school."
"Er…right," Siler said, sitting at his station and scanning his palm. Then, after a few key-presses on the keyboard, the Stargate began to spin, the chevrons lighting up one by one.
"Well," Harry said, "Don't wait up for me. I'll be in touch, whether I get the city back online or not. Now that I know to expect a flood, I definitely won't be caught off guard."
As Harry stepped into the gate room, the eighth chevron locked into place, and the massive vortex of energy erupted forth, only to collapse back into a stable, intergalactic wormhole.
Harry idly wondered whether an intergalactic wormhole would be more or less pleasant than an intragalactic wormhole. Only one way to find out. He stepped through the event horizon, and instantly felt himself being compressed into information, just as he had been before. Remarkably, the journey felt no longer than an intragalactic trip, but his thoughts were interrupted as he was spat out into a dark, open room. Without hesitating, he pictured the potentia room and turned on his heel. In his counterpart's memories, just walking around the room had turned on lights, and it had been less than 5 minutes before flooding reached the highest levels of the city.
Upon his arrival, the lights in the potentia room came on, allowing him a good look at what it was supposed to look like, without a watery sheen refracting his wandlight. The architecture was…unique. Incredibly angular, with flares and grooves everywhere. It was blocky, but with enough slants that it didn't grate on the eyes like a purely utilitarian design would. But he would have time to admire the structure of the city later. Summoning the potentia out of his sleeve, he set them on the floor and laid a hand on the pedestal which held three glowing potentia, feeding it enough power to communicate with it.
Emergency: power failure imminent, the system warned him, Evacuate immediately or user will perish.
I have three potentia, and intend to avert the power failure, he told the system, please eject the current potentia one at a time.
He felt the system pause in disbelief, and run some sort of scan over him, then the room. Potentia: confirmed. Ejecting spent cells. One of the potentia went dark, then raised out of the pedestal. Harry quickly replaced it. The process then repeated itself two more times, and he laid his hand on the pedestal again, reaching out to the system.
Is that better? He asked it.
Full power restored. Reactivating life support and nonessential systems, it replied, before the tone…changed. Maintain current location. A blue shimmer ran down the walls of the room, and Harry started to feel like he was being corralled.
What? Why? Harry asked, confused.
"Because I have a questions for you, traveler," a female voice said behind him. Turning, he saw a woman in white robes standing in the doorway. A faint, golden glow radiated off of her, though her features were fairly standard human fare, with curly brown hair and hazel eyes. The door behind her was now shut, even though Harry was pretty sure it had been open when he'd arrived.
"Right," Harry said. "And I assume you don't want me to leave until I give you satisfactory answers, do you?"
The woman tilted her chin in acknowledgement. "How did you discover the location of this city, traveler?"
"Well, first, my name is Harry. And the stellar coordinates for this city's address in your wormhole system were stored in an old Alteran database in…what people of Earth call the Milky Way galaxy."
"You are from Earth?" The woman asked doubtfully.
Harry shrugged. "Technically. What do you know about Earth?"
"You are not of Earth," the woman stated confidently, "the people of that planet have not had sufficient time to evolve to your current form. And you lack certain…traits which make your presence in this city quite alarming, to say nothing of your abilities."
Harry smirked. "Yeah, I get that a lot. I'm a bit of an anomaly, and I'm not exactly from around here, if you catch my drift."
The woman pressed on, unphased. "You have stated that you are 'technically' from Earth, so I would not assume that you are from 'around here.' Explain yourself."
Harry sighed. It looked like this one lacked a sense of humor. "I'm from Earth, but not the Earth you're thinking of. I'm originally from an alternate universe where life on Earth developed…differently. My people developed a gift we called magic at the dawn of civilization, and remained a statistical minority of the population for all of the 6,000 years of recorded history. My magic works...similarly to the circuitry in your more complicated technology, and I suspect that has to do with similar laws of reality between our two universes, though your peoples' methods of harnessing magic appears to differ somewhat from mine."
The woman tilted her head in consideration, and Harry could practically feel her sizing him up. "That would explain a great deal. Your mind does not even properly feel Alteran, yet you possess the gifts of the Alteran people."
"My mind?" Harry asked. "How would you know what my…oh. You're the city's artificial intelligence, aren't you?"
The woman nodded. "I am called Lantis. What is your purpose here, Traveler Harry?"
Harry shrugged. "Exploration, tinkering, maybe figuring out how your advanced wormhole targeting works in greater detail. And I suppose I'm also here to make sure that the Atlantis Expedition doesn't end in utter disaster."
Lantis arched an eyebrow. "The 'Atlantis' Expedition? Explain."
"Well, it's complicated," Harry said, considering just how much he should tell the artificial intelligence that currently had him locked in a small room for interrogation. He decided to go with the simple version. "You see, I'm not from this reality, but I'm working with an organization that is. They've been seeking this city for some time for their own purposes, and when I found that out I decided to join their little 'Atlantis Expedition' at the soonest possible opportunity."
"And what exactly does this organization intend to do once they arrive?" Lantis asked pointedly.
Harry grinned sheepishly. "Well…look, you have to understand something. These people, they're quite primitive by your standards, at least technologically speaking. They only discovered hyperspace a few years ago, and they didn't even properly figure out how to work an Astria Porta much more than a few years before that. Not only that, but they're currently embroiled in an ongoing conflict with a race of parasites that can remove their species' free will by crawling up inside their heads, and that species, the Goa'uld, seem to be getting help from someone with connections to the Alterans of old. So…while a vast majority of the expedition is civilian scientists and researchers, they're also hoping to find ways to improve their position in the conflict with the Goa'uld."
Lantis frowned. "They seek the secrets of this city in order to wage war? I may be a mere custodian, but I will not allow such a thing!"
Harry sighed internally, but didn't let his frustration show. He'd been expecting something like this, if he encountered any Alteran remnants. "Look, give them a break. They may be looking for ways to help them win a war, but that's not their only purpose. It is a purpose most dear to their hearts, but a mere hundred planetary rotations ago they fought off a warlord bent on wiping all life off of their planet using overwhelming force they couldn't have hoped to match. If they hadn't discovered the Alteran outpost frozen in their southern ice cap and used its drones to defend themselves, their entire people would now be nothing more than a memory. Martyrs, perhaps, whose names would be shouted from the lips of resistance fighters all across the galaxy, but a memory nonetheless. They don't have any real off-world colonies, and their only means of evacuation is an Astria Porta, so they could only evacuate at most several hundred out of their population of nearly seven billion souls. They aren't some petty, warmongering primitives. They're actually quite a sophisticated civilization, once you take the time to get to know them, with a rich and varied culture. One which, as it happens, is well-represented by the Atlantis Expedition. There aren't representatives from every nation, or even from most nations among their number, but the expedition isn't really big enough for that to be feasible."
Lantis narrowed her eyes, and Harry felt as though she was trying to scan his very soul. Realizing that she very well might be doing something of the sort, he eased up on his occlumency and allowed the truth of his words to come to the forefront of his mind.
"These…people," she said eventually, "I will allow them into the great City of Atlantis. But I am doing so on your word alone, and you can be sure that I will be monitoring the situation closely that your words are true. Much harm can come to careless explorers in this city, and I will not have primitive tinkering bring down the vaunted reputation of those who created me."
Harry smiled. "Thank you, Lantis. These people may seem primitive and blundering to you, but they have great potential. If they didn't, they would have perished many times by now."
"Words are cheap, Traveler Harry. If you truly mean what you say, bring these people here and show me the truth of your words."
Harry smirked. "Reading my mind wasn't enough for you?"
"It was not," Lantis stated. "You clearly believe what you say, and you do not seem to be a fool, but the last time residents of this city attempted to elevate a lower species, they created an enemy so powerful and virulent that they were forced from this galaxy altogether, their only option to flee back to a plague-infested Earth where those who did not ascend beyond this plane died a slow and painful death."
Harry blinked. That was quite a bit to take in, but he decided he'd question the AI later. "I suppose I can't offer absolute certainty that such things won't happen again, but I seriously doubt that the people in charge of this expedition would allow themselves or those subordinate to them to become what you fear so much.
"Now, if I might take my leave, I need to take the news back to Earth that this city is safe to explore, and that this timeline won't see them all killed in a catastrophic flood." Harry took no small amount of pleasure from the shocked look on Lantis's face as he apparated up to the control room where the Stargate was located and quickly dialed Earth's address, as well as the relevant point of origin and extragalactic marker symbols. Pausing briefly to admire just how quickly this Stargate could dial an address compared to the one on Earth, he quickly conjured a patronus to let the SGC know to open the iris before hurrying through the event horizon. Lantis shouted something at him as he stepped through the wormhole, but he didn't stop to find out what it was.
He didn't doubt that he would pay dearly for his moment of fun when he returned, but really now. If the AI was going to make dramatic proclamations doom, he felt compelled to respond in kind.
A/N: Well, there's another chapter, done and done. I really am sorry that these are taking so long now, but life is being a bit draining at the moment, and getting the creative juices to flow feels a bit like trying to wring milk from a rock most of the time. I hope you all enjoyed the chapter despite the wait!
Best of wishes,
~feauxen