Gone

"Harry!" Sarah shouted, though it was useless. Harry was in orbit, and couldn't hear her. "Don't go, Harry. Come with me. Please."

"Ma'am," a woman's voice came through a speaker on the robotic vehicle. "Ma'am, he can't hear you. We will try to get him to come home, but the best way for you to help him right now is to prove to us that you are not a goa'uld."

Sarah put a hand to her head and was silent for a moment. "What do I do?"

"You're going to need to forget your modesty for a while. You can't take anything you have with you through the gate. There is a box next to the ring platform. Step down next to it, place all clothing and other apparel into it, and close the lid. Then, hold out your arms and turn for the camera. There is a hospital gown next to the box, and a piece of paper with a gate address. Once dressed, go to the DHD, and when the gate shuts down, dial that address immediately, then press the red button. Go straight through the wormhole. Do you understand all of the instructions that I have given you?"

She had flushed when she first heard the instructions. "I understand." If it meant she could go home, she'd do whatever they told her. "What about Harry?"

"An officer is speaking to him now. We are trying to bring him home. As I said, the sooner we know that you aren't a goa'uld, the better we'll be able to help Harry."

She nodded and stepped off the platform, starting to undress. The box was made from thick metal, and looked like a safe, except it seemed to lack anything that would open it, once closed. It sat on a robotic platform, identical to another that held the gown and gate address. Everything went into the box, which she shut. As she turned, the box started to make it's way to the gate, stopping immediately in front of it. She dressed and walked to the DHD.

The voice came over the speaker again. "Familiarize yourself with the buttons you will need to push. We will know if you stray from the DHD."

She looked over the symbols, and realized that they really wanted her to dial the address the second that the gate shut down. A minute later, the shimmering field disappeared, and she dialed the gate. As it activated, the vortex vaporized the box, and everything she had put in it. She took a deep breath, and walked to the gate. She hesitated.

A different voice came over the speaker. "There's really nothing to it ma'am."

She closed her eyes, and stepped through.
!

As Sam was relaying her instructions to Sarah, Jack was trying to hail the boy's ship. Or actually, Sergeant Siler was hailing the ship. For the moment, Jack was just sitting there.

"Hello?" the boy's voice came over the speaker.

"Hello," Jack responded. "My name's Colonel Jack O'Neill, I'm actually the guy who shot at you a few days ago.

"I recognize your voice," said the boy on the other end.

"So, are you waiting to see what happens?" There was always hope. The boy paused before responding.

"I'm not coming back," he said.

"We're not mad at you, you're not in any trouble," said Jack. "The only reason I attacked before, was because I thought I was attacking a goa'uld. We just want to help you."

"That's not- I'm just- I can't go home, okay?" said the boy.

Jack sighed. He was really glad that the Dursleys were facing a criminal investigation back in the UK. "I know."

"What do you mean, 'you know'?" asked Harry.

"I mean I've met your Aunt and Uncle. I know they didn't treat you well, and you wouldn't have to go back to them." Again, there was a wait before he responded.

"Exactly then, I don't really have anywhere to go anyway," said Harry.

"Kid, you were born here in the United States. Did you know that?" asked Jack.

"...No." Harry replied.

"That means that you're a citizen here too. That means that we can look out for you. You could live with a real family, one that would take care of you."

"So what? They'd just figure out what I am too, and then I'd be right were I started. I'm not going to let that happen again. Now, I didn't just stick around to make sure Sarah got through okay, and I didn't do it to chat. I want to make a trade."

"A trade?" asked Jack.

"Yeah. I'm guessing you want alien technology, and I want food, books, pencils and paper. I can give you a hand device, and I'd like the food to be fresh. And no little kids books."

Jack sighed. This wasn't going very well. "Well Harry, I can't make a trade with you right now, we don't even know if Sarah is a goa'uld or not."

"Okay, but when you do," Harry insisted.

"Then the decision is General Hammond's," said Jack. "But I think we'd all much rather you come home than anything else."

"Look, if you don't want to make a deal, I'll just go, okay?"

Sam started gesturing to him from the other side of the room. "Okay, Harry, the gate's going to shut down in a moment. We'll dial back as soon as we can determine whether or not Sarah still carries a symbiote. Will you wait?"

"...Yeah," said Harry after a moment.

"Okay, it shouldn't be too long before I contact you again," said Jack. "Hold tight."

He gave a thumbs up to Sam, who let the gate shut down.

!

Sarah stepped out on a grassy field. The sky was green. She wasn't on Earth. There were four men in front of her with large guns pointed at her. The one closest to her spoke, "Keep you hands where we can see them, and make no sudden moves. You will need to come with us."

Sarah didn't have it in her to respond verbally to any of this. She followed their directions, and was escorted to a large tent. There were two women inside with a few machines that she couldn't identify. The men all took positions in the tent: two in the doorway, and the others in the back.

"This isn't Earth," she finally said to the women.

"We want to make sure you're safe to bring back before we take you there," said the taller of the two, who Sarah finally recognized as being one of the women from the tomb.

"You already disintegrated everything I had. How can I be a danger to Earth?"

The same woman answered. "The goa'uld put bombs in the hearts of little girls, and deadly plagues in the teeth of little boys. We need to clear you of all forms of attack that they might use."

"Nothing like that happened to me," said Sarah.

"Your memories might not be your own," said the woman. "Now, my name is Doctor Frasier, and this is Freya. Please, lay down on this table for now, and we'll try to do this as quickly as possible."

She lay down, and the woman, Freya, approached her with a hand held device. The woman started waving it over her body.

"There is no symbiote within her. I can find no signs of technology within. There are metal pins in her arm, made of a titanium alloy."

"Surgical pins," said the Doctor.

"There are no toxins, infections, nothing hidden. She is as she seems."

"Very well," said the Doctor. "You men can stand down. Sarah, now we can go to Earth.

"Oh, thank goodness," said Sarah, getting off the table. They all exited the tent and made their way to the gate. One of the soldiers dialed the gate. Sarah turned to the Doctor. "Do you know anything about Harry? The woman said that when you knew that I wasn't a goa'uld, you'd be able to figure out a way to bring him back."

"I don't know what's been happening, but we planned to have an officer hail the ship through the Stargate, and try to talk him down. Knowing that you aren't infested gives him more knowledge to work with," said the Doctor.

"That's it? That's your plan?" asked Sarah indignantly. "He needs to come home, he can't just stay alone on that ship, out in the galaxy."

The gate activated. "I know it's not much, but our options are limited," said the Doctor. "We will do our best to bring him home. We hope that you'll be able to help us with that, by telling us what you know about him."

"Of course, I'll do whatever I can," said Sarah. "I just wish I knew why he didn't come down in the first place.

One of the airmen spoke up, "The Iris is open Ma'am."

"Thank you, Captain," answered the Doctor.

Freya walked through the gate, and Doctor Frasier motioned for Sarah to follow. On the other side of the gate, Sarah found herself in a large concrete room. There were numerous armed guards, and while none of them had a weapon pointed at her, they were all watching her. The gate shut down after the four soldiers walked through. Sarah was led out of the room, this time with a guard of two airmen.

She was led to a room with an obviously alien device on the table, and chair with heavy straps. She stopped in the doorway and turned to the Doctor.

"What is this?" she asked.

"As I said, we can't trust your memories. This machine will tell us if you're telling the truth, whether you know it or not."

"And the chair?" This just kept getting worse and worse.

Freya spoke up. "The technology seeks to detect za'tarcs: assassins perfect for the virtue of not knowing what they are. They are programmed for a target, and then given false memories to cover what happened to them. When uncovered, they trigger, and become violent. The chair is for our protection, and yours. The process is not painful."

"Nothing like that happened to me," protested Sarah.

"That remains to be seen," said Freya.

"Sarah," said Doctor Frasier, "you said that you'd do everything you could to help us.

"Yes," she sighed, "of course," she said, and walked forward to sit in the chair. The two other women fastened the straps around her.

Freya sat down in front of the machine, and soon a light was shining in her eyes. She blinked a few times, getting used to it.

"Where did you first go after leaving Earth?" Freya was asking the questions.

"Osiris and Isis went to a planet they called Calaissis."

"How long did it take them to get there?" asked Freya.

"Five months."

"Exactly?" the woman had seen something on her display.

"Um, twenty-one weeks, and two days."

Freya nodded. "Did you ever encounter any other ships while en rout to Calaissis?"

"No."

"What happened when you arrived at Calaissis?"

"They ringed down to the surface. They discovered that the gate was buried there. They went to the nearest town to find what information they could. The natives were hostile, so they shielded themselves. They called the ship to their position, and Isis killed a boy. Osiris pushed them back with her hand device. Then they ringed up."

"You later returned to the planet?" asked Freya.

"Yes. Harry, somehow, he forced Isis out of his body, and then he killed him," said Sarah.

"What manner of technology was involved?" asked Freya.

"There wasn't any."

"A host cannot force a symbiote out of its body. It has never occurred," Freya protested, looking irritatedly at her display.

"Well, he did," said Sarah. He said, later, that he has some sort of power inside of him."

Doctor Frasier spoke up, "Perhaps we should move on for the moment."

"Very well," said Freya. "What happened after Isis was ejected from the host body?"

"Well, Osiris was enraged. She started torturing Harry. But Harry grabbed her arm, and I felt it in me, his energy, for a moment. The two of us were blasted apart. Harry ran from Osiris, and she went after him. He tried to ring to the planet, but she pushed him off of the platform with her hand device. She made the mistake of stepping onto the platform herself though. Harry activated the rings, and then turned off the platform. Osiris tried to call the ship to her, but he managed to lock her out of the system."

Freya was beginning to seem disgruntled. "The host should not have had the knowledge required to do so."

"He said that he retained all of Isis' semantic memory, and fortunately, none of his episodic memory."

Freya frowned at the readout. "Were those his words, or are you translating what he said."

"Oh, the later."

Freya nodded. "That still makes no sense." She frowned then. "This is impossible."

"What is?"

"Harry Potter arrived on Oberdad a week later. He would have been traveling at maximum speed for a ship that old. How then, did he return with you in less than a week?"

"He said that he made the ship go faster," said Sarah.

"Even if he had Isis' knowledge, he could not have modified his ship to go so fast," said Freya.

"I felt the difference, when he accelerated. The inertial dampeners had a hard time keeping up," said Sarah.

Freya remained silent, so Doctor Frasier spoke up.

"Why don't you continue the story?"

"Well, Osiris wound up walking for a long time…"
!

Janet joined Jack some time later.

"What have you got?" he asked her.

"More questions than when we started. As best we can tell, Sarah isn't a Za'tarc, and all of her memories are accurate. On the other hand, none of what she remembers makes sense."

"Well maybe the machine is broken," said Jack.

"Anise says it's fine. Besides, if her memories had been tampered with, any goa'uld would have replaced them with something that made sense at least," said Sam.

"So what doesn't make sense?" asked Jack.

"Apparently, Harry has special powers that eject goa'uld symbiotes, and can make ships go far faster than they should," said Sam.

"Maybe a hok'taur then?" asked Jack.

"Descended from an ancient goa'uld experiment, maybe. You said that his relatives thought that he was 'unnatural,' but Sarah said that his power seemed new to him, that he hadn't known it existed. What if his relatives knew about it, because one of his parents had abilities?"

"Probably his mother then. Oh, I hope I don't have to go back to England again." He turned to Sergeant Siler. "Hail the ship again."

Harry's voice came over the radio, "Hello."

"Hey, Harry. It's Jack again. I was wondering if maybe you didn't want to come home because of your magic powers."

The response was fast and automatic. "There's no such thing as magic."

"Is that what you Uncle told you?" asked Jack.

"They knew... I don't know how, but they knew," said Harry, clearly troubled.

"So you turned your teachers hair blue then?" asked Jack, sounding a little amused.

"I didn't mean to," protested Harry. "But I still paid for it. That's not going to happen again, I'm free now. I'm not going to be a burden on anyone else, or let anyone have that kind of control over me again."

Jack pulled back from the microphone and growled low in his throat, before addressing the boy. "Harry, you may be different, but that doesn't make your relatives right. You don't have to expect that from everyone else, we can find you a place to fit in. What about Sarah?"

"What about her?" asked Harry.

"Well she knew that you have abilities, but she didn't treat you poorly, did she?"

"That's different," said Harry, irritation in his voice. "I saved her. She probably felt indebted."

"She probably just liked you Harry, because you're a likable guy. You can't expect everyone to hate you just because you're different."

Harry made a noise, and Jack could tell that he was getting on the kid's nerves. "Look, I'm not going to talk about this, okay? I can go right now, but I'd rather make that trade. Now, I'm guessing that you're pretty sure that I'm not a goa'uld, so you can make the deal with me. What's it going to be?"

Jack had been told that he could make the trade, if he didn't think he could get the boy home. It wasn't so much that they wanted the hand device, but that at least this way, they could see to his well being to some degree, and hope he lived to come home some day.

"I can make the deal, Harry, and we'll throw in some other stuff as well."

"Like what?" The boy sounded suspicious.

"Like a first aid kit, and a computer. We want to make sure you'll be alright."

"All right then," said Harry. "But no funny business."

"Believe me, kid, there's nothing funny about this."

!

Aboard his ship, Harry waited for the Stargate to activate again. It had been twenty minutes since Harry had spoken to the guy who had shot at him earlier. The conversation hadn't gone at all the way Harry had wanted, the man had known far too much. Hopefully though, Harry would have what he wanted soon enough, and then he could go anywhere.

The gate activated miles below, and out of it came a man and a large RC transport. Both made their way to the ring platform, and the man started unloading the contents of the transport onto the platform. When he finished, O'Neill's voice came over the intercom.

"That's all of it, Harry, you can make the switch now."

Harry activated the rings. He had all ready placed the hand device on the platform.

"You know, Harry, you can still come down, it's not too late."

"Goodbye, Jack, maybe I'll see you around." He didn't wait for a response, and engaged the hyperdrive.
!

Between talks with Jack, Harry had thought about his options. He knew that he wanted to strike back at the goa'uld, but he knew that he was in no position to do so. His ship was far too old. Oh, he could certainly enhance all of the systems, as he had the hyperdrive, but there was only so much such a small ship could do. What he needed, he had realized, was a more powerful power source. What he needed was naquadria.

Osiris had had a spy in the ranks of the goa'uld Thanos, who had been developing the technology thousands of years ago. Harry knew what planet he would most likely find the mineral on. He only hoped that Thanos was gone from there. If the goa'uld was there, though, Harry vowed to be ready.

He set about doing everything he could to his systems. He parked the ship in the dead of space, away from everything while he went over the ship, system by system. He found that nothing on the ship did anything efficiently, and it was easy to improve on function there. Things got more interesting where the goa'uld had obviously built something stupidly. Harry pushed himself into all of the systems, and felt them as they worked. The hyperdrive wasn't the only system that went about things wrong, Harry was able to manipulate both the shields and the plasma cannons to work much better, though it required some physical manipulation of their components. By the time he finished, Harry felt that the ship could stand against an eight thousand year old mother ship, but he seriously doubted that it could last long against anything modern. He took comfort from the fact that he hadn't yet encountered naquadria yet, though he had yet to encounter much, so with luck, he'd be able to gain an advantage.

It took two days to reach the planet that Thanos had conducted his research on. Harry set the ship to drop out of hyperspace, do a scan, and immediately jump again. The scan was promising. There were no signs of active goa'uld technology. Harry set the ship to go back to the planet, and set itself in orbit. He set a more extensive scan over the planet, looking for the radiation that would indicate the presence of naquadria. He found deposits in multiple locations, as well as a small stockpile in the middle of a city. He focused on a deposit that was conveniently placed near a ring platform, and removed by a few miles from the nearest settlement.

Harry packed a bag with enough provisions for a couple of days, and included the laptop computer that he had been sent. It contained hundreds of texts, most of them fiction, but also a more than a few educational ones, that Harry supposed were what he would be learning were he still in school. The device had been modified to draw power from goa'uld power sources, and Harry had had no problem connecting it to his ship, after making sure that there was no virus on the machine.

Harry planned on going down to the planet's surface, and trekking to where the deposits came closest to the surface. With luck, he would be able to retrieve some samples of the mineral. Enough to power his ship, he hoped.

After ringing down, Harry set out in the direction his scanners had told him the naquadria was closest to the surface. As he walked, he extended his power, his 'magic' as the man had called it, out around him, hoping that it would resonate with the radioactive naquadria. He of course would have to make sure to not touch the material directly, though his healing powers would protect him from most of it's effects. It took him over a day to find a spot where the naquadria came close enough to the surface for him to be able to reach it. He found an appreciable amount of naquadria only ten feet from the surface.

He first activated his shield against the radiation. He had originally planned to use his hand device to blast down to the mineral, but he decided to practice with his magic. It made him almost giddy to name it such, though for all he knew, that was exactly what it was. It certainly didn't conform to any of the laws of the universe that he knew. It took him a while to achieve a concussive force that had an effect on the rocky ground in front of him, and much longer to achieve exactly the effect he wanted, but he started making quick progress after a few hours of working at it. He reached the vein of the mineral as the sun started to set.

He broke up the mineral out of the ground as best he could, freeing up a few pounds of it. Without touching the rocks, he levitated them into a storage box, which would block the radioactive rays. He made his way away from the spot he had been digging at, and set up camp. He didn't want to call down the ship, because he didn't want anyone to know that he had been there. He didn't know when he might need more.

He built himself a campfire that night, and continued a story he'd been reading from the laptop: Charles Dickens's Oliver. Harry hadn't been able to ignore the parallels that ran between their lives. That night, he was able to eat a cold-cut sandwich, with mayonnaise, mustard, and lettuce. Harry relished the expansion in his food options.

He took his bounty back to the ship the next day, and set the ship to hide behind one of the planet's moons. He wanted a safe place to stay while he experimented with the naquadria, and this planet seemed to lack any goa'uld activity. They were advanced though, to a point, and Harry didn't want to be spotted, if he could help it.

Harry always worked on the naquadria from behind his shield. He began by removing the impurities from the ore. Since he had no ore refining technology on the ship, he had to figure out how to do it with magic. It was a week before he had a pure enough sample, though granted he did other things with his time as well. When he scanned the sample, the results were both impressive and daunting. There was great energy potential in the metal, yet Harry couldn't immediately see a way to counter its inherent instability.

It was by accident that Harry realized how to easily move past the problem. He had been theorizing complex systems that would try to predict and control output from the material. It was vaguely possible, but Harry figured that he was far away from achieving that. His epiphany came from the storage box he kept the naquadria in. He realized that a few particles of the naquedah in the box had become radioactive themselves, and had in fact been turned into naquadria. After more thought, Harry drew out a system in which a core of naquadria was surrounded by a naquadria/naquedah mix, surrounded by naquedah. He theorized that he could draw stable power through this. It took him three days to figure out how to achieve such a mix. In the mean time, he had finished Oliver, the Time Machine, and was now making his way through Angels and Demons. When he had his core though, he realized that he couldn't use it without frying all of his systems. No mater what, his ship wasn't built to handle the kind of energy created by his naquadria core.

Not sure of what to do, Harry started to write the code that would be needed to handle the naquadria core, and planned out the modifications that would need to be made to his ship. Eventually, he decided that he couldn't just do it all on his own. Especially when it came to acquiring the needed parts. Reluctantly, he made his way back to Oberdad. He had another proposition for the people of Earth.

!

Three days later, he had everything ready. He ringed down and dialed Earth once more, before ringing back to his ship.

"Hello," he broadcast.

"This is Stargate Command, of the United States Air Force, of Earth. Please identify yourself," came the official sounding reply.

"It's me, Harry. I was hoping to speak to Jack, or whoever's in charge."

"Please wait." A couple minutes later, a foreign voice came on the line.

"This is General George Hammond. I assume that this is Harry Potter?"

"That's right, sir," Harry answered.

"Is it too much to hope that you're ready to come back to Earth?" asked the General.

"Um, yes," Harry answered.

"Is this another trade then?" asked the General.

"Of a sort, sir. I'll give you technological knowledge, and the means of using and replicating it, and in return, you give me some materials, and a clever engineer to help me refit my ship."

"That sounds like an interesting proposition, we'll need to iron out the details, but I'd rather not keep this wormhole open for long. Perhaps we could meet in person," said the General.

"That could be possible," Harry conceded.

"We can forward you an address, and meet you there."

Harry laughed, "I'm not that thick, sir."

The man laughed as well, "You can't blame an old man for trying. Very well, I will send Colonel O'Neill and Doctor Carter through to you. You'll have to meet on the surface though."

"All right then. I will ring down as soon as the two are through the gate, and the gate has shut down."

"Very well, I'll send them through in twenty minutes," said the General.

They both ended the transmission, and the gate shut down.

Twenty-two minutes later, the gate activated, and two people walked out, before the gate shut down. Harry ringed himself down. The two turned to him.

"Hello again," he said to them. "Sorry I shot you," he said to the Doctor, for she was one of the women from Egypt.

"Oh, that's all right." She seemed surprised that he had mentioned it.

"I hope you don't mind, I'll be staying on the ring platform," said Harry.

"That's okay," said Jack, "we have no plan of abducting you."

"Well it didn't work out the last time you tried," said Harry.

"True," said Jack.

"Anyway, the reason I'm here is that I've been developing naquadria technology. Have you heard of it?"

The Doctor shook her head. "What is it?"

"It's a radioactive isotope of naquedah, found, as far as I know, on only one planet. It has incredible power potential, and it would allow you to make things smaller, or just more powerful," said Harry.

"Smaller?" asked Jack.

"My hyperdrive requires two large bricks of naquedah, but I only need a core of naquadria the size of a shooter marble. If I ever remake my hyperdrive, I could make it an eighth the size. You could power a small country out of a brief case."

That got both their attention.

"What do you want, and what are you offering?" asked Jack.

"The naquadria is too powerful for my ship, I need to overhaul the systems," said Harry. "I need the materials to do so, and I need some help doing it. In return, I will show my helper how to use the naquadria without blowing something up, and I'll give you a self-replicating sample."

"Self-replicating?" asked the Doctor.

"Naquadria makes more naquadria when it comes into prolonged contact with naquedah."

The Doctor turned to Jack. "Sir, the potential advantage this material could give us over the goa'uld far outweighs any risks that I would incur."

The man looked almost amused. "The decision is still up to the general." He turned to Harry. "What exactly do you need, and how long will it take?"

Harry pulled out a floppy disk and tossed it to the man. "It might take five days; a week. Everything I need is on that floppy. And thanks for the computer by the way; I never would have thought of asking for it. Oh, you'll also want to bring a- hasmat? Yeah, a hasmat suit. The naquadria gives off very harmful radiation."

"What about you?" asked Jack.

"I have a shield," said Harry dismissively, "and I retained my symbiote's healing abilities."

"That really doesn't make any sense," said the Doctor.

"Apparently, it's magic," said Harry, giving a look to Jack.

With that, he ringed up to his ship and waited. It was almost half an hour later that the Stargate activated again, and his ship was hailed.

"Give us three days to get the materials ready," was the reply.

"Okay," said Harry, "but no funny business."

Three days then, and Harry would be able to start his retrofit. He'd also have a companion for a short while, and that was good.
!

"Major, tell me about this naquadria," said General Hammond.

Sam was again in the briefing room answering questions. "Well, sir, we don't know if the substance actually exists. I don't know if it could even occur naturally. Hypothetically though, if it does exist, I think it could do everything he promised."

"And be exactly as dangerous," said General Hammond. "Colonel, in your opinion, will the boy use the technology if we don't help him?"

"As I understand it, sir," said the Colonel, "he already has the technology. If we don't do this, he'll find another way to fix up his ship. He's doing his best to be independent, proposing a trade instead of asking for help. At the least, Sam might spot if he's going to do something he shouldn't."

"What is he asking for, exactly?" asked General Hammond.

Sam answered. "One hundred ninety-six pounds of trinium, in fifty-two specific pieces, one hundred and twelve pounds of high carbon steel, in twenty-one specific pieces. He also suggests that I bring a container capable of transporting highly radioactive substances."

"And what specifically could this do for us?" asked the General.

"Well, sir, this is exactly the edge we need for the X-302 program," said Sam. "If it does what's promised, it could enable us to equip them with hyperspace window generators, maybe even shields. A couple years down the line, and we'd be able to power our own ships."

The general nodded. "Then you have a go, Major. Have the parts fabricated, and take anything with you that you might need."

"Yes sir."

"And remember," said the General, "it is still our goal to have that boy come back to Earth. Do not alienate him, but see what you can do."

!

Three days and four hours later, the gate activated again. This time, Doctor Carter came alone, with two RC transports tethered to one another. She led them to the ring platform, and Harry ringed down to help her.

"Hello Doctor," said Harry. "I see your government has agreed."

"Harry, good to see you," said the Doctor, "and it's your government too, you know."

"I suppose." He eyed her weapons. "Do you guys go anywhere not armed to the teeth?"

"You've got a hand device and a zat," the Doctor pointed out.

"Fair enough, but no-" Harry started.

"Funny business, got it."

Harry started levitating boxes onto the ring platform.

"Harry, how are you doing that, exactly?" asked the Doctor.

"Magic, remember?" asked Harry, giving her a cheeky grin that wasn't quite genuine.

She smiled, "Seriously though, what sort of technology is it?"

He shook his head, "No technology, just power. And you were rather obvious, by the way."

"Excuse me?"

"Making Oliver and David Copperfield the first two choices on that digital library. I get it, orphans who find loving family. I'm still not going back to Earth."

"It was worth a shot."

"I'll be right back," he said, and stepped onto the ring platform, going to the ship to clear the platform before returning to the Doctor. He repeated the process three more times before it was just himself and the Doctor ringing up. She had already sent the transports back through the gate.

"Do you have to check in at all?" he asked her.

"Every two days."

Harry thought about it and nodded. "That should work. I'm going to land on the other side of the planet. We'll have to work in stages, if we want to make those semi-daily phone calls."

"Why the other side of the planet?" asked the Doctor.

"It isn't populated, as best as I can tell," said Harry. "If something goes wrong, I'd rather not destroy a civilization."

"Makes sense," said the Doctor. "Should we go now then?"

"We're already there," said Harry with a shake of his head.

"Excuse me?" asked the Doctor.

"We've landed," said the Doctor. "Would you like to get started now?"

"When did we land?" asked the Doctor.

"Just now," said Harry.

"How? We were in orbit, you never touched a control."

Harry just smiled and beckoned her out to the control room. Indeed, the windows showed that the ship was landed. Harry held up his hand device. Harry had to admit, he got a guilty pleasure from flummoxing the woman.

"I have rather good control of the ship through this."

"How good?"

"Very good. Shall we get started, Doctor?"

She shook her head. "No time like the present, I suppose. And it's Major."

"I thought you were a Doctor," said Harry, confused.

"I am, but it's rank before salutation. The General didn't want you to be uneasy about meeting two soldiers, before."

"I see," said Harry, giving her a mini-glare before changing the subject. "Anyway, I suppose you'll want to examine the naquadria first?"

An hour later, Harry was wondering just which of the two of them was the child. The Major, Sam, was like a kid in a candy store, soaking in everything he told her. She had brought her own scanning equipment, and had examined the material herself, after donning the proper protection. After a while though, Harry was impatient to start on his ship's overhaul. He promised her another floppy with all of the documents he had written up on the material. Fortunately, she was looking forward to working with all of his systems. He explained what they were doing.

"The ships systems are capable of handling the energy I'll be feeding them. They can take a lot of energy, because goa'uld systems are prone to power surges, and they don't want their delicate systems to be fried. It's the power conduits that are the weak link; they will fry if I try to put through the power I want to. Now, were I knowledgeable of the current goa'uld society, I would probably be able to acquire higher capacity conduits, but that is currently beyond me. What I want to do is shore them up; that's what the trinium is for, it doesn't channel the same energy that the crystals do, it reflects it. What I'm hoping is that it will help direct the energy more efficiently, and thus not overload the conduits."

"So then why don't the goa'uld do this as a matter of course?"

Harry shrugged. "The goa'uld are uncreative scavengers. They barely understand the technology they use. Sometimes they do innovate, like my personal shield, but mostly they just get by."

"And you?" asked Sam.

"It's a few things really," said Harry.

"Oh?"

"I have the elastic mind of a nine-year-old, I have the combined knowledge of two goa'uld, and I can feel the technology I'm working with intimately. My power lets me be a part of everything in this ship."

By the gleam in her eye, Harry could tell that he shouldn't have brought up his power.
!

The work went by like clockwork, though still slowed by the need for precision. They worked on non-essential systems first so that Sam could be taken to make her first and second check-in. The results of their work were promising, though Harry had yet to make the transition to naquadria.

Sam was the most inquisitive person that Harry had ever met. The only time she wasn't asking questions about goa'uld technology, naquadria, or his power was at meals. Like Sarah, she didn't talk business over meals. "Meals are precious," she had said, "when you actually get to sit down and eat, that's when you have time to relax." Of course, even meals didn't stop her from having 'Earth's nice,' conversations. Harry liked to think that it meant she cared.

Three days in, Harry had an idea when they ringed aboard. It was five o'clock in the morning by the planet's twenty-six hour day when Sam found him in the ring room. Over and over, the rings were coming up out of the floor, dematerializing and rematerializing a pen that Harry had placed in the middle. Harry was watching it with an almost vacant expression on his face.

"Harry," she said after a minute of watching this, "what are you doing?"

He looked up at her in surprise. He had been too unaware of his surroundings to hear her approach. "Oh. Hi."

"Good morning," she said.

"I, um, I think I can do this." Harry had had the idea shortly after he had given up pacing in his room. He had been watching the rings for almost an hour.

A mental command stopped the rings, and he clarified: "I think that I can do what the rings do, without any technology."

She didn't say anything for a minute, puzzling out how he could do that. "I don't understand. Do you think you can act as a conduit for the energy?"

Harry gave a rare smile, and before she could object, he focused on the pen. He didn't quite know how the process worked as Isis hadn't understood the technology, but more importantly, his mind had been in the ring platform while it had been working, and he had pushed out his energy, his Force, to feel the energy that took apart, and reassembled mater. He could do this. With his mind, Harry directed his energy to break down the pen, and to shoot it to a point just in front of him. A line of energy joined the two points momentarily, before the pen popped back into existence in front of him.

Harry's smile turned into a grin. "I did it!" he cried, jumping up.

For a moment, Sam was too stunned to say anything. "Wow." She looked at Harry. "That's incredible. How did you…" She shook her head. "Holly Hanah, that's incredible."

Harry nodded. "I knew I could do it." He bent down to pick up the pen, examining it. "I think I could do myself."

Sam's eyes widened. "Wait, what? Harry-" But before she could object, Harry had already focused inward, filling himself with the energy. Sam could only watch, as he disappeared. A line of golden light appeared, connecting Harry's former position to a point on the other side of the room, where Harry appeared. Harry looked around himself, and ran his hands around his body as though making sure he was still whole.

"Yes! That was amazing!" He was actually jumping up and down, suddenly hyper from his success. He turned to Sam. "Did you see that? I transported myself."

Sam walked over to him, looking at Harry as though she were trying to make sure that he was whole herself, and that he wasn't just going to fall down dead. Assured that he was whole, she addressed him. "Harry, that was incredible. But you can't just do that."

Harry wasn't quite sure what she was talking about. "But I just did."

She shook her head. "That's not what I mean. I mean don't do that, again."

"But why not?" asked Harry. "It works."

"No, don't try something dangerous like that again, without making sure that you won't get hurt," said Sam, frantic energy in her voice. "Harry, what if you hadn't been able to dematerialize yourself? I mean, really, it should have been impossible. How could you direct yourself while you weren't anything but energy?" Her eyes drifted upward, the way they did when she was pondering something. "I suppose you may have just answered the mind/brain question, but still. You could have died trying that."

Harry was a little confused. "But I didn't die." Why was she making a big deal out of this, he was fine. He was better than fine.

She shook her. "That's hardly the point. You can't just jump into something like that. I'm sure that you thought things through, and you realized, somehow, that you'd be able to follow the transportation through, but you couldn't have really known it. Harry terrible things happen to even the most brilliant of scientists when they cut corners and take unnecessary risks. I don't want that to happen to you too."

Harry wasn't feeling so great anymore. "But I'm really okay, I knew that I could keep my mind independent of my body." He protested, though he knew that she was right.

She shook her head and said, "You treat regular technology and your power differently, but you shouldn't."

"What do you mean?" asked Harry.

"I mean, you planned everything out for you ship's retro-fit. You wrote the code in advance, you're taking precautions with the naquadria, and you're letting me check your calculations and theories. You're playing it safe. You need to do that when you try new things with your power. I understand that some of these things come to you instinctually, but Harry, you just disassembled yourself. Please, take more caution when doing something like that. Think it out; write it out. Talk to someone else about it. I'd really rather you didn't die, Harry."

Here Harry became embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I know you need me to get back to the stargate."

Sam rolled her eyes. "I also happen to like you, Harry, and I'd rather you outlive me."

Harry looked up in surprise. "Oh. Er, thanks."

She shook her head. "Come on, lets get something to eat, and then maybe you can tell me about what you just did."

"Okay Sam."
!

As the days wore on, Sam became more confrontational in her efforts to talk Harry into going back to Earth. Finally, she asked him a question as they worked on an exterior power conduit.

"Harry, exactly what are you going to do when we're done?"

He shrugged. "You'll go back to Earth with the naquadria, I'll go my own way."

"I mean after that. You keep on saying that you can't go to Earth, that there's nowhere that you fit in there. But where do you fit here?"

Harry grimaced. "I never said that I fit here. I just fit better out here. On Earth, I'm not a kid, I'm not an adult, so what business do I have living among any of them."

"Don't say that Harry. Maybe you can't be easily classified, but there's still a kid in you, I've seen it."

He scoffed. "What kid has killed, what kid can reign destruction on the people around him without trying?"

"They exist, Harry," she said quietly, "maybe not where we come from, but in Africa, South America, there are child soldiers. It's a blight on our world, but it happens. They aren't given a choice, and they are forced to do terrible things. And sometimes they're rescued, sometimes they get to heal and have real lives. And no, they're not really kids anymore, not completely. But it's still a part of them, and it's still a part of you."

"I- I know that, Sam. But I'm still stuck in the middle. Besides, you want to know what I'm going to do now? I'm going to be a scourge on the goa'uld. They've had their hold on this galaxy for far too long, and I'm going to do what I can to tear them down."

"All on your own?" asked Sam.

"I've always been alone," he said defensively.

"So what am I doing here?" asked Sam.

"I needed a little help fixing up my ship," said Harry.

"You could have done all of this on your own, Harry. All you really needed were the pieces."

Harry sighed. "Yeah, okay, it's been nice having you here," he admitted. "I liked having someone to talk to." He stopped and considered her. "You know," he said, "you could come with me."

"With you?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Harry, warming up to the idea. "Send the naquadria and your notes through the gate, and travel with me. We could discover so much together."

She smiled at him. "I wish I could, Harry. I mean, that's really sweet of you, if I could split myself in two and send one to Earth and keep one with you, I'd do it. But I'd do more good on Earth."

"It was just a though," said Harry, though it was more.

"A nice one," said Sam. "You could come to Earth with me. Be that scourge from Earth, work with us to fight the goa'uld."

He smiled wide. "I spent a month in space, and gave you a scientific breakthrough. Just wait until I get back out there; you'll be seeing me around, Sam. I won't just forget Earth."

"I hope I do see you again," said Sam, a little sadly.
!

Sam left the next day. Harry had turned on the naquadria reactor in orbit, and everything worked as he hoped. She kissed him on the cheek before ringing down to the stargate. Over the years to come, Harry would remember the days he spent with her as some of the best he had ever had. They were also the calm before the storm.