It was not a good day.
"I am here almost a month. I have access to transcripts. Can't rewatch episodes. Can't do anything," Barbara's voice could be heard behind the closed room the SGC gave her as her own place at the base. After the team had arrived after their kidnapping, they all took a few days to rest before returning to the base. During that time Barbara was only required to check in with Dr. Fraiser as before and then during the day she was left for her own devices. She was not given any new documents to translate so she didn't have any required work to do. And she was pacing inside her room. Dr. Jackson still didn't talk about the plans to take her and Teal'c out to see a bit of outside or if he did Barbara didn't know if he had had any success.
"What is the point? I have some of the information… why I don't just give it to them? So, they can abuse it? They are the military.
"But they can save so many more. Can't they?
"How do I wake up? I am sleeping. Right? Dr. Fraiser results shown that I am asleep. I don't feel asleep. I can't wake myself up. I can't force any change just by my thought… I don't have any special powers.
"What am I doing? How do I wake up?
"Nothing works. Falling asleep didn't work. And still doesn't work. Reading doesn't work. I have retyped already the whole 3rd season and hid the documents on the flash drive that I smuggled out of Daniel's office. Blinking – tried. Didn't work.
"'Say, how screwed are you'? Ha-ha, indeed."
Arrival of Jacob Carter went without any fanfares. He arrived at SGC just a few days after SG-1 were rescued from Hathor and was met by the committee made of General Hammond and the SG-1.
"We need your help."
"You need our help? With what?" Sam couldn't help but ask.
"Let's just call it a Goa'uld hunt," replied the human turned Tok'ra. The whole group then had relocated to the briefing room where Jacob soon explained that the Tok'ra had 'lost' the System Lord Seth and had suspicions that the Goa'uld was hiding on the Earth.
"All right, we'll be cutting to the chase on this one. You want us to help you find this snake-head, who, if he's here at all, would be hiding in one of…six billion people on Earth?" clarified O'Neill
"Yes," was the positive replay of Jacob Carter.
"How do you know he's still alive?" Sam
"He's alive if he has a sarcophagus," interjected Daniel.
"Or if he changes hosts every four hundred years or so," added Jacob.
"But if he were here, why wouldn't he have tried to get at the Stargate sometime between when it was buried and now? Or, why wouldn't he try to take over the Earth, like Ra did?" Hammond
"Seth had a hefty price on his head…he tried to overthrow Ra. Now, the System Lords wanted him dead, as did the Tok'ra. We believe if he's still here, it's because he's using Earth as a place to hide out. He wishes to remain hidden among you," replied Jacob.
"Kinda gives needle in a haystack a whole new meaning," murmured O'Neill shaking his head.
"Remember, Setesh is a Goa'uld," said Daniel after a bit.
"As a Goa'uld, he will never lose his thirst for power," continued Teal'c
„And they do have a pretty common MO for getting that power," Daniel added on.
„False religion," confirmed Teal'c.
„Which shrinks the proverbial haystack considerably. Let me do some homework, see if I can track him through archaeological and historical record," finished Daniel.
„What can you tell me about this girl? Barbara was her name?" asked Jacob as he and Sam went towards Daniel's lab.
„Not much, except that the feat she managed by arriving her is most likely impossible to replicate from her side and from our side. We can't even find a way for her to get back home. She has been here for long. I am surprised she doesn't have a cabin-fever," explained Sam. It was getting to her that she couldn't help the young reality traveler any more than she already did: her experiments led nowhere. Research into Barbara's technology also didn't provide any insight.
"Will you be asking Barbara for help on this case?" asked Jacob as
"We might be asking for help if we don't manage to find the information ourselves, but as she mentioned many times before we always figure out the situations, we find ourselves in. So, we really will have to see."
The Father-Daughter duo soon arrived at Daniel's office where O'Neill and Teal'c were already waiting for team to hear whatever information Daniel had managed to find.
"So, what's the bad news?" started Jacob instead of greeting.
"On the contrary, we have good news," replied Teal'c.
"I did a timeline Boolean search for religion, cult, Set, Setesh, Setec, Set…" Daniel started listing all the names Seth was known as but he was interrupted by O'Neill and quickly continued to explain his findings. "And here's what I found. It appears there's been a cult of Setesh throughout history, in one form or another, since around 1000 BC."
Daniel had on the screen of his computer a picture of the Set animal.
"Setesh was represented by animal that was either fictitious or now extinct. Most likely the former, rather than the latter, since anthropologists haven't discovered any fossils to point to a species like this ever existing."
"Because the creature represents Setesh, the helmets of the Setesh guard have continued to be a source of many jokes among the Jaffa," added Teal'c.
"Jaffa jokes? Let's hear one of them," clearly interested requested O'Neill.
"I shall attempt to translate one, O'Neill. A Serpent Guard, a Horus Guard and a Setesh Guard meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The Serpent Guard's eyes glow! The Horus Guard's beak glistens! The Setesh Guard's…nose drips," the Jaffa quickly obliged and broke into deep laughs as he told the joke. The rest of the room didn't feel the humor and just looked a bit disturbed as they heard the Jaffa laugh at the joke.
"Ok, after Set was supposedly killed in ancient Egypt along with all his minions, a similar god showed up in Greece called Typhon. Similar back stories and remains, another fictitious animal representation. In one of Typhon's last legends, he killed three hundred followers and then disappeared from Greece. Now at that point, he seemed to vanish from recorded history altogether," Daniel scrolls through the information he had compiled as he explains the result. Soon he stops on a more recent looking picture. "Until I found this. A new cult arose in England early 1800s, strangely enough near the location of Stonehenge. The cult had an enigmatic leader named Seth. They were constantly under attack by the Christians, then, and this is the important part, Seth's worshippers, all of them, were found dead, having slit their own throats. But Seth's body was never found."
"Guy liked to leave a lot of dead bodies behind," O'Neill couldn't help but comment.
"Did you lose the scent there?" asked Sam. They were so close to finding this Goa'uld.
"I thought so, until, on a whim, I did a search on the US Government classified net, in case the CIA had a record of…something, somewhere. And guess what came up on the ATF page? A cult whose leader is named Seth, just North of Seattle. The ATF are investigating him now because they've become so heavily armed and fortified. This guy has about fifty followers, who are all apparently ready to die for him."
"You mean to say you actually found this guy?" wondered Jacob, the reason for the search. It took Daniel several hours to find it all.
"How do we know he's our Goa'uld?" asked Sam.
Daniel didn't waste any time and opened the report he had opened previously. He started reading from it," Deprogrammed ex members of the cult describe Seth as having magical powers and the ability to heal. They also claim he's murdered several members in front of the others. And here's the best part…several independent reports have stated that the cult leader can make his own eyes glow."
Colonel Makepeace was officially enjoying his vacation day. He was supposed to meet with some of his acquaintances over a beer in local pub. Unofficially he had a meeting with Colonel Maybourne.
Makepeace didn't have to wait for long and soon both the men were sitting in a corner booth, each with a beer and small plate of beer munchies between the two.
"Barbara still remains at the base. I know that Dr. Jackson tries to organize some kind of educational trips for her and for the Jaffa," explained Makepeace the Barbara situation to his fellow military man. "But I can say that the brat does have some valid information. She, as of the latest meeting, had retyped information for this year and some of the next."
"Robert," replied Maybourne after a small pause. "You previously mentioned that the girl has some device that hasn't run out of battery and has connection to the information. The girl is valuable, but I understand that the piece of technology is more valuable, don't you think so?"
"Indeed, Harry," Makepeace was quick to reply, making a small accent on Maybourne's nickname. "But I once tried to read over her shoulder into the device. Let's just say that maybe the archeologist will be able to read it. It is all written in the same Ancient language. The girl claims to be hearing herself speak in English, even though every single word that comes out of her mouth is in the Ancient Gibberish."
"Making it almost the perfect defense for the device. One can't be without the other."
"We can try to grab the USB flash drive she has on herself. That's where she keeps the retyped information."
"But why settle for a piece of cake, when we can have it whole?"