Title: Ad Infinitum – Chapter 7
Chapter Summary: More answers are found as the group gets closer to the Ancient base.
Chapter Rating: PG-13.
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Chapter 7/10
Jacob's POV
My feet hurt and I was not one to easily complain about physical discomfort during any mission. Hell, once at the Academy, I knew my physical, emotional and mental abilities would be pushed to the max and I was actually looking forward to it. But as it were, Uncle Cam and I had been walking around this complex for over six hours, the last three searching for something and we didn't know what it looked like.
We were on the second floor underground after finding an old staircase that was closed off to the public. The dark and danky area seemed to have been untouched by the renovations that turned the base of the old lighthouse into the fort and I picked up some readings on my equipment, stronger than the ones we'd gotten upstairs. I extended my arms to keep Cam from walking any further. "I've got something," I said and looked at the wall in front of us. We began to pat around the wall looking for anything that might help us when Cam noticed a hole in the wall a few feet down from our current position.
It was a perfectly cylindrical abscess, about 1 inch radius and 7 or 8 inches deep from what I could tell by shining my flashlight in it. I brushed the area around it and found some writings I couldn't understand.
"Daniel? We need you down here." Cam radioed in.
The distorted response came after a few seconds. "Where are you guys?"
"Two levels directly under the area where we found the map."
"Understood, we'll meet you there, over."
Three minutes later, the three-person group found us. I called Alex and Daniel over and pointed to the writings on the wall.
"It's definitely Ancient," Uncle Daniel verified.
I continued to flash my light at it and Daniel pulled out a digital camera and took pictures of it.
"Cam?" My mother's voice filtered through the radio.
"Go ahead," one colonel replied to the other.
"We found something," the disembodied voice revealed.
"Can you meet us? We're two levels below."
"Yeah, we're on our way, over."
Alex and her father were discussing the script excitedly as the rest of us waited for my parents to show up. They didn't disappoint us and soon the whole team was reunited. I noticed my mother carried something wrapped in black cloth.
As she approached us, she opened the carefully bundled package, revealing two long crystals, one clear and one black. Dad pointed to the crystals and explained, "We found these in a statue for a guy named Sudoku on the third floor."
That seemed to snap uncle Daniel from his exploration. "Serapis," he corrected him. "You took these from the statue of Serapis upstairs? That statue is over twenty-five hundred years old!" He exclaimed in indignation.
"And they look like Goa'uld crystals!" Dad argued. "Plus they were giving off some reading in the spock-meter thingy."
"Spectrometer," Mom corrected him.
"Well it looks like something Spock would've used," Dad defended himself.
Mom offered him a smile and then turned to Daniel. "What do you guys have?"
He turned to point at the wall.
Uncle Cam picked up one of the crystals and examined it. "Call me one-track minded, but it looks like this tab A might fit in that slot B," he said motioning to the cylindrical hole in the wall.
"It's worth a try." the archaeologist said as he picked up the crystal Cam had been holding and moved towards the wall.
"Why are there two?" Vala asked.
Dad interrupted before anyone could answer. "Hey Danny, I don't think that's such a good idea."
But Uncle Daniel ignored him as he slid the crystal in. Everyone in the room held their breath as the flashlights flickered and the radios picked up static for a second but then it was gone.
"Oh for crying out loud! Perhaps you should translate that stuff on the wall before sticking things where they might not belong," Dad continued to argue after five minutes of nothing else happening.
Daniel just glared at him and withdrew the crystal, handing it back to my mother.
"Why are there two crystals?" Vala asked again.
Alex shrugged. "Maybe they're two keys to two different doors," she offered.
A siren sounded above us, startling the whole group.
"I think that's the closing siren, we should leave and I'll study these symbols at the hotel." The linguist said. The team nodded in approval as we trailed out of the dark chamber.
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Alex's POV
Because of the research going around, the sleeping arrangements were reviewed for the night. Jacob and his mother were sharing a room so they could work on the crystals. My father and I shared a room so we could work on the translation and my mother had volunteered to share the room with us claiming she refused to share a room with Cam and Jack because they both snored. I had to bite back the urge to remind her that she snored more than all of them combined because she'd want to know how I was privy to that information.
The translation itself was slow, each symbol having two or three meanings, which made figuring out those sentences near impossible. Grammatical construction in Ancient was a pain in the ass sometimes. We were done with the first half and it simply told us where to find the crystals, so that wasn't big news and we were currently working on the second half, enjoying the silence as my mother took a shower.
"This means time and this means first light or first sun then we have key and key and exact. Next we have time and light again and there's this symbol in the middle." My father thought out loud. "Then there's key and light again and then there's key and wisdom. Then there's time and equal again. It's like it's going in circles. "
"We're assuming these are instructions, correct?" I asked him and he nodded. "So they're instructing us to do something. Key should be the crystals. Time of first light or first sun... So in the morning?" I reasoned out loud. "In the morning the keys show the exact? There are two keys and we're assuming two holes, one in the Brucchion ruins and the one we found. Maybe we can only find out which one goes where in the morning."
Dad shrugged and sighed. "Maybe. Then to use the keys, we have time light something dark... Maybe an eclipse?" He offered weakly.
Another idea popped into my head. "What if this symbol in the middle means 'meet' or 'turns'? Time light turns dark?"
"Sunset?" He asked as he adjusted his glasses.
"So when light turns dark, or at sunset... we need to do something with the crystals."
"We use the correct crystal... I think light in this sentence refers to the lighthouse and wisdom refers to the academy ruins... and then final and equal..."
"Same time?" I offered reaching the same conclusion he did. "You think the crystal today didn't work because both have to be inserted at the same time?"
He nodded.
We both sat back and sighed. Two-man translating teams were definitely easier than translating by oneself.
The phone broke the silence.
"Hello? Oh, hey, Sam," my father answered as I listened to the one side conversation. "Yeah, I think we're done with the translation. You found something with the crystals? Yeah, we'll be right there." He finally hung up the phone as we gathered up our notes and made out way to the room across the hall.
My godfather opened the door, him and Cam already present in the room. "It's a party! Where's the cake?" He quipped as he let us in. "So Carter, what is it that you found out?"
She looked up at him with a smile that said she knew something he didn't. "We were trying to figure out exactly what's going on with these crystals and they seem to be made of a slightly different constitution from the ones that the Goa'uld and the Tok'ra use. So I used an ultrasound and I couldn't detect anything different."
Uncle Jack interrupted her. "For crying out loud, is there any equipment you didn't bring with you, Carter?"
She ignored him as she continued. "Then I used the spectrometer and the same anomalies I noticed back on the fort were still present. So I had an idea... Turn the lights off, guys."
Cam did as asked, covering the room in darkness. The next sound was Jacob flicking an UV light on.
My godmother raised one of the crystals, the clear one by the looks of it, and placed it directly in front of the light. The crystals served as some kind of magnifier and transforming the light into a map. My father's eyes met mine as we both realized that the UV light must be doing what the text predicted that first light would do, which is to discern which crystal belonged where.
"It looks like the lighthouse and the map points to the area where we found the writing," my father noticed.
Jacob placed the other crystal next to it and what appeared to be a second map formed in front of us, this one completely unfamiliar.
"Should we assume that's the map of the Brachiosaurus place?" Uncle Jack asked and I had to stifle a laugh.
"Bruchhion and I think so," Dad said. "If I'm right, then there's a second point of entry in the ruins by the Temple of Serapis next to where the Modern Library is. And according to this map," he concluded, "it's right there."
Everyone stared at the dark spot on the map.
"From what we translated, we have to activate both points of entry at once with the crystals. This crystal," he pointed to the one Jacob held, "should go in the old ruins and this one," he pointed to the other, "should go to the lighthouse. And it looks like we need to activate both of them at sunset tomorrow."
"That means we need to split up," Aunt Sam reasoned.
"Ok, I'll lead one group, Carter you and Mitchell lead the other. Daniel, you and Vala are with me at the Bratwurst place and the kids go with you two back to the lighthouse." He said to the two colonels. I almost raised my voice to protest being called a kid but decided that it might sound too childish.
Our mission plan settled, the lights came back on and everyone returned to their rooms to sleep.
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