THE YACULUM (pronounced Yack-You-Lum)
A transporter ring appears from the ceiling of a wide hallway, leaving a tube of light behind as it disappears into the floor below. As the light fades away, SG-1, O'Neill and Alisana appear and stand in the hallway which slowly goes dark making it impossible to see anything or anyone.
Mitchell turns on his torch which unknown to him is pointed directly at O'Neill's face.
"Hey.." shouts O'Neill as he holds his hand near his eyes while being blinded by the light from Mitchell's torch, "Watch where you point that thing." he says.
"Sorry, Sir." says Mitchell who quickly turns the torch away.
"God." mutters O'Neill.
Carter, Daniel, Vala and O'Neill get out their torches and turn them on, "Teal'c?" says O'Neill.
"O'Neill" replies Teal'c.
"Where are you?" asks O'Neill while moving his torch around looking for him.
"Here O'Neill." says Teal'c who emerges from the darkness behind them.
"Oh, there you are, stay close." says O'Neill.
They all look around using the light from their torches and it illuminates the hallway a little but not enough to see far ahead of them. They can see Alisana stood in front of them and feeling around the wall in the darkness.
"Alisana" says Carter as she approaches her, "What are you doing?" she asks.
"Looking for this." replies Alisana.
Alisana pulls a lever on the wall which makes a loud noise like two stones grinding together, then the hallway starts lighting up. Light appears on the ceiling, in strips and about 5 feet apart they come on in sequence and flood the hallway with light. Everyone stands watching the lights come on and are in awe at the size of the hallway, the lights get smaller and smaller as they continue on in to the distance.
"Wow..how big is this place?" asks Carter.
"Big. Come on let's go." says Alisana with a smile on her face and she makes like she's going to run off down the hallway.
"Aht, aht" shouts O'Neill as he lunges forward and grabs Alisana's jacket, "No you don't." he says.
"What?" asks Alisana.
"What did I say about staying with the group." says O'Neill.
Alisana lets out a breath, "Alright, ok." she says.
"Teal'c, Mitchell. Take point." orders O'Neill.
With Teal'c and Mitchell walking in front of the group, they all head off down the vast hallway. The walls are brown and stone with nothing on them, just the occasional crack but it seems sturdy and structurally in tact. Daniel is at the back of the group with Vala and he walks forward and stands next to O'Neill and Alisana.
"Hey, err...I have a question." says Daniel, "What exactly are we looking for?" he asks.
"What do you mean?" asks O'Neill.
"Well when we found out about this place we couldn't wait to get here, but what are we here for exactly?" replies Daniel.
O'Neill stops walking and looks at Daniel for a moment, "That's a good question." he says. The rest of the group sees that the others have stopped so they turn around and walk over.
Then O'Neill turns to Alisana, "What are we looking for?" he asks.
"I don't know." replies Alisana, shrugging her shoulders.
"You don't know?!" says a shocked O'Neill, "Then what may I ask are we doing here?" he asks.
"No, I mean I don't know exactly what we're looking for but there has to be something here that can help us fight the Verdain." explains Alisana in a reassuring tone.
"OK, let's keep going." says O'Neill as he looks over to Teal'c and Mitchell.
They continue walking down the vast hallway and come to a large door with some writing in the middle of it, Daniel approaches the door and takes a look.
"What's it say?" asks Vala from the back.
"I have no idea. Alisana?" says Daniel.
"It says 'Knowledge'." says Alisana, she pushes a protruding button on the door and the door slides away side ways in to the wall.
As the door opens, tiny streams of dust fall around the frame, Mitchell peers in to the dark room and as he places his foot beyond the opening, a large central light on the ceiling illuminates the whole room.
They all enter the room and look around. The room is about 500 feet across and 500 feet wide, the walls are covered with stacks of books of various size, shape and made from all manor of different materials, some are paper, some are stone and others are metallic looking.
Covering the floor of the room are hundreds of statues, monuments, and stone slabs engraved with text of many languages, at the very back of the room is a long stone table stretching the entire width of the room and laying on top are more stone slabs and and ancient repository of knowledge hangs on the wall above it.
Daniel immediately walks over to the stacks of books that line the walls and picks one up, he blows the dust off its cover and opens it. After taking a quick look at the book he places it back and opens a few more...
"This is amazing." says Daniel.
"Did you find something?" asks Vala as she makes her way over to Daniel.
Daniel holds a book in his hands and walks over to O'Neill, and walking straight passed Vala who was on her way to Daniel. Vala shrugs her shoulders, "I'm invisible." she mutters as Daniel goes passed her.
"This really is everything they knew. All their knowledge of plants, medicine, technology, space...it's unbelievable, it's going to take me decades to get through all this." says Daniel, who is clearly ecstatic at the discovery.
"Really?" says O'Neill.
"Yes. Thank you for bringing us here." replies Daniel and he looks and smile at Alisana.
"Daniel, Daniel." says O'Neill trying to calm down Daniel's excitement, "This is all..great. Unfortunately it doesn't help us right now, we need to keep moving." he says.
"Right." replies Daniel, and he places the book back where he found it.
Everyone makes their way out of the room and back in to the hallway, as Daniel is on his way out he notices a small book with Ancient text on it, the text reads 'Lantis', he picks it up and places it in his backpack as he walks out to join the group.
"Ready?" says O'Neill to Daniel, "Let's go." he says.
Once again they all set off and continue down the hallway, Vala walks next to Alisana.
"Hi, I'm Vala." says Vala.
"Hello." replies Alisana.
"Just between you and me, girl to girl. Where's the treasure?" asks Vala.
"Treasure?" replies Alisana while giving Vala a curious look.
"You know, trinkets, gems, shiny precious metals. Your people did have those right?" replies Vala.
"Errrm.." mutters Alisana, before she can say any more, Daniel grabs Vala's arm and pulls her to the back of the group.
"What are you doing?, let go of me." says Vala, not happy at being manhandled.
"Will you stop, we're not here to make you rich." says Daniel.
"Can't blame a girl for trying." replies Vala
As before, they come to another door in the hallway with something written on, "Porta" says Alisana reading the text, and she once again pushes a protruding button to open the door and it slides open.
Light illuminates the room which is the same size as the room of knowledge, as the group step through the door way they see a row of what look like Ancient consoles, and behind them they see a large circular ring suspended from the ceiling, at each side of the consoles they see a Destiny model Stargate propped up against the back wall.
"Is that a Stargate." asks Carter as she points to the circular object near the consoles and starts walking towards it.
"Yes." replies Alisana.
"That's a Stargate, It's huge." says O'Neill.
"Indeed." adds Teal'c.
The huge Stargate is circular like the others, but it contains no symbols and has only a single chevron type clamp at the top. The clamp is very wide and encompasses around two thirds of the top of the Stargate, within the clamp in a semi circle pattern are ten individual round crystals.
Looking around the room they see other unrecognisable devices and on one side of the wall is a big map of all the planets in the Milky Way and star constellations, on the other wall is map of a galaxy none of them recognise, the map is incomplete.
"This is a prototype of a Stargate, it was designed by the great scientist Amelius, his last great invention before he disappeared." explains Alisana.
"Disappeared?" asks a curious Daniel.
"It's said that when Amelius was working on the Stargate, it activated for a brief moment, but this was impossible because it was the only Stargate in existence at the time. As he was going through the data and readings taken when the Stargate activated, he discovered a signal that confused even him, he could not explain what it was or where it came from but he devoted all of his time and efforts after that to unlocking its secrets. One day he went to his lab and he never came out, he just disappeared and no one could explain where he went." says Alisana.
"This is the gate from his lab?" asks Carter.
"Yes, it was placed here after he disappeared but the Alterans used his research and continued his work to build the Stargate network in his honour." replies Alisana, "He was a great man, I wish I had met him." she says.
While the others have a look around the room and Carter inspects the Stargate consoles, Alisana is over at the wall looking at the map of the Milky Way, she suddenly remembers something.
"That's it!." shouts Alisana as she spins around to look at everyone.
"What?" asks O'Neill.
"That's what we need." says Alisana to herself while looking down and thinking.
"What?" asks O'Neill.
Alisana starts running out of the room, she turns before she gets to the door, "Come on." she shouts and waves them to follow her.
"What?!" shouts O'Neill, "Oh for crying out loud." he moans as he follows the others out.