Chapter Four

"Why do we hurry?" asked Teal'c as they walked briskly down the hallway. "I have not seen a structure like this before," he added looking about in wonder at the curving hallways.

"You remember how I said that you were on my team? Well, the rest of our team was also... turned into children as you were, though as of--" Jack flicked the cover off his watch to check the time "--15 minutes ago, they hadn't regained consciousness yet."

A sudden thought occurred to him. "Teal'c?"

The boy looked up from gazing in wonder at Jack's watch and straightened, responding to the snap of authority automatically. "Colonel Jack O'Neill?"

Jack was impressed he'd remembered his name, but then he knew Teal'c had a mind like a steel trap. "Jack will be enough. Do not let either Daniel or Carter have your zat. If they've lost their adult memories too, they won't recognize it as a weapon. They may think it's a toy and try to play with it. That would be bad."

Teal'c looked surprised, "How can they not have seen any zat'nik'itel before? They are common Jaffa weapons."

"Er, that's where it gets very complicated," replied Jack vaguely, thinking as fast as he could. He knew Bra'tec hadn't initiated Teal'c into his Goa'uld-Are-Not-Gods thinking until adulthood, but Teal'c had been happy to hear of Cronus's death at his own hands... but murdering a boy's father in front of his eyes would tend to have that effect. Still, was he ready to hear that all the Goa'uld were evil parasites, rather than gods?

At that moment they reached the little alcove where Jack had stashed Daniel and Carter, which was an effective distraction. He noticed that the wind was no longer audible, so hopefully the storm was dying down.

They hadn't arrived any too soon, because Carter was already stirring, rolling her head from side to side, shifting her limbs and making her little not-quite-ready-to-wake-up grimaces, familiar from hundreds of overnight missions. Jack was heartened to see them; since they implied the absence of severe brain damage.

He knelt by her side, "Carter?" he asked softly. She grimaced harder and scrubbed her face with her hand, but didn't open her eyes.

Teal'c also knelt beside the two sleepers, examining them closely. "They are siblings?" he asked.

Jack choked back a laugh. "No, but they act like it sometimes." He could understand Teal'c's confusion. In their common blonde fairness, their features softened by extreme youth, they could pass for brother and sister.

Apparently they were disturbing Carter's beauty sleep. With a scowl of irritation she rolled back over to face them and slitted her blue eyes open.

Carter had big eyes as an adult. Now they were huge against her smaller face when she opened them wide with shock as she sat bolt upright and screamed piercingly in terror and outrage. She tried to scramble away from Teal'c and O'Neill, bumping Daniel before fetching up against the hallway wall.

Well, at least Daniel reacted to this; he pulled up the space blanket over his face and rolled up into the tightest ball he could--a familiar Daniel-response to being disturbed before he was good and ready to wake up. At his current size, he was able to pull up into an amazingly small space.

His movement attracted Carter's attention just as she was pulling in her breath to scream again, and caused her to abort the impulse as she stared at him in amazement and Carter's trademark curiosity. There was something reassuring about a peacefully slumbering, obviously unalarmed kid younger than her that was a remarkably effective antidote to blind panic.

Or at least it was so for Carter because she didn't scream again, to Jack's relief. Man, was she able to hit a high pitch at this size! "Who are you!?" she demanded instead, defiance mixed with fear. "How did I get here!?" She glared at the two of them. "Have you kidnapped me? You won't get away with it! My daddy is Major Jacob Carter, and he's in the United States Air Force, and he'll catch you! So you'd better take me back NOW!" Her voice wavered a little on this last bit, but she recovered herself quickly and squared her jaw to stare at both of them with undaunted spirit.

Aww, Carter. Well, it wasn't like he had any high hopes of her not being affected by the same loss of memory that affected Teal'c, though it would have been good to have his 2IC's backup in this situation.

He repeated the same drill he had with Teal'c, explaining the situation, pointing to her adult-sized uniform which matched his, with Teal'c putting in his part to endorse Jack's story. Of course, with her he could add more Earth-related detail, including the fact that he knew her father, and that her father had reached the rank of general, and was now working with some of Earth's alien allies. Teal'c absorbed this additional information with interest, obviously adding it to his budding knowledge about his current situation.

As Carter listened, her pugnacious attitude faded as she applied her already-ferociously logical mind to evaluate the available evidence for herself, and reluctantly accepted his story. She wasn't at all happy about it, though, and why should she be? While intellectually she might be able to grasp what was going on, emotionally she was a little girl who wanted her mama and daddy. Her lower lip quivered with suppressed emotion.

Evidently all this exposition was too much for even Daniel to sleep through, because he uncurled himself and sat up midway through the explanation, his tousled hair standing nearly straight up on his head, a look of sleepy confusion on his face. He was staring at them and his surroundings in bemusement, but at least he wasn't screaming or threatening Jack with a deadly weapon and/or Jacob Carter's ire. Jack wasn't sure if this was because he'd overheard enough of their explanation to Carter to soothe his anxiety, or if he wasn't alert enough to have really grasped his change in circumstances yet. With a just-awakened Daniel, it could be hard to tell.

Still, it seemed wise to go over it again, just in case. This time he had both Teal'c's and Carter's interjections. Explaining it to someone else seemed to help both of them grasp it better themselves, and gave them a feeling of power over the situation, so Jack let them take the lead in the briefing.

Daniel listened intently as the other two explained, and Teal'c and Carter both gently helped him rearrange his cocooning clothing to show him the SG1 unit patch on the arm of the jacket that matched Carter and Jack's, Teal'c's jacket having been abandoned with the rest of his oversized gear in the planetorium. Or rather Teal'c and "Sammi Carter" explained the situation to him--the "I" on the end was to show she was "not a boy" she informed the others emphatically. Jack's role was reduced to giving a little friendly wave when Teal'c punctiliously presented him as "Colonel Jack O'Neill". Sammi added the clarifying detail that he was "in the Air Force, like my Daddy."

After all this was through, Daniel sat silently for a few minutes, obviously processing all this. Well, it was a lot to take in. Apparently Teal'c and Sammi agreed, because they didn't say anything while he pondered.

Then a look of wonder spread over his face. "You mean," he gasped, "I'm in the future? I've been transported into the future and like kids in books, I'm having an adventure?"

Teal'c seemed nonplussed by this reaction; science fiction evidently wasn't a big part of a Jaffa childhood, though the adult Teal'c relished it. Sammi looked taken aback at first, then thoughtful. Slowly, a big grin spread over her face. Apparently, the child-Sammi found "having an adventure in time travel" far more exciting (and less scary) than "being ripped away from your home and family and dumped into the ill-fitting remnants of an adult life you can't remember."

So Daniel and Sammi began jabbering about various fictional kids who'd had adventures in time travel, space travel, or visits to various magical lands. The Narnia series... the Green Knowe books... Mushroom Planet? The one time they'd been to something that could be called a mushroom planet neither Carter nor Daniel had shown any particular enthusiasm for it... The Wizard of Oz; Ha! He'd known Daniel was faking! No wait, they seemed to be talking about the book. There was more than one book? He hadn't known that... The Adventures of Jonny Quest: Now that was a cool show. Sammi and Daniel must have seen it in syndication... Cricket Magazine? That was odd, neither Daniel nor Carter had ever mentioned a childhood interest in entomology before...

Poor Teal'c, frowning in incomprehension, seemed to feel pretty left out of the conversation. It seemed to be veering now more toward science fiction and fantasy they liked than the topic they'd started out with, though that wasn't so unusual for one of the Wonder Twins conversations. Apparently concluding (correctly) that there wasn't going to be a pause in the conversation any time soon, he turned to Jack and asked, "They are both of this... Earth? I have never heard of such a world."

"Well, actually, you may have heard of it as the world of the Tau'ri." Jack explained. He tried to remember exactly what else Teal'c had said about it, but that had been a long time ago and there had been so much going on then. Getting the Stargate program up and running, getting Daniel situated and declared legally alive, protecting Teal'c from being imprisoned or dissected, poor Kawalsky's tragedy...

Teal'c's eyes widened. "The Tau'ri? The First World? The world where all humans and Jaffa first came from? But that is... Is that not a myth of the superstitious and unenlightened?" he asked in startlement.

"Nope, no myth," said Jack, trying to come up with the best way to answer this. Was this part of the Goa'uld-as-gods divinity show, and could contradicting this lead to Teal'c denouncing them as heretics who must be slain in the name of the gods? He still had that damn zat, and there were now two smaller kids in the line of fire.

But his gut feeling remained that absolute honesty was the best policy with Teal'c. That and trust in Teal'c's basic goodness and fair-mindedness; Jack didn't believe that he would ever harm the two smaller children. The compassion he'd showed while reassuring the frightened Sammi, the gentleness with which he had handled Daniel while he'd maneuvered Daniel's jacket around to show him the SG1 team patch--both argued against it.

Still, it was best to say as little as he could get away with. "Just... something that once was lost, but now is found. Bra'tac was pleased enough about it, though he did say some uncomplimentary things about my fighting abilities. Still, he took them back after I knocked him down in one bout."

"You defeated Master Bra'tac?" gasped Teal'c.

Jeeze, it might be more threatening to Teal'c's world view to dethrone his hero than overturn his religion! Still, complete honesty, he reminded himself. On which note, he explained, "Nah, I just took him in one bout. He got me on the next one. AND he's gained several years since you remember him. But he did grudgingly admit that I was worthy of working with his favorite student, which was what I was really after then." He gave Teal'c a self-deprecating smile.

Teal'c looked surprised, "Bra'tac actually stated I was his favorite student?"

"Well, um..." Actually Jack wasn't sure exactly when he'd said that, or if for that matter, he'd ever said it outright. But over the years, Jack had come to know on a level deeper than mere knowledge, that Bra'tac considered Teal'c the son of his heart. Though he wasn't sure he should say that to a boy who'd lost his father a few months ago.

But he had to say something quick, Teal'c's face was starting to fall. "By the time I met the two of you, Teal'c, you were a grown-up and a skilled warrior. You mostly address each other as 'Old Friend'."

Teal'c's eyes grew huge and the corners of his lips turned up and slowly grew into the widest smile he'd seen yet on the boy's face. Apparently to Teal'c the news that his revered teacher now considered him an "Old Friend" had fully as much coolness factor as Sammi and Daniel attributed to being on an adventure in the future.

Which reminded him... he clapped his hands and called, "Kids!", interrupting Sammi and Daniel's animated discussion of "Alexander Key". Jack wasn't sure if that was the name of a character, an author, or some kind of key the heroes had to find in order to save the universe from the Blue Meanies. "We need to start thinking about how to get you back to the SGC... uh, our base. Now, first we need to figure out something for you to wear..."