Title: Ad Infinitum – Chapter 8
Chapter Summary: What knowledge was stored in the Ancient Library of Alexandria?
Chapter Rating: PG-13.
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Chapter 8/10
Jacob's POV
We were back to the dark and danky subterranean area of the lighthouse, waiting for the second team to radio in. The first team left early to try and locate the second target, once they radioed that they'd found it, our team left for the lighthouse, everyone waiting for the sunset, which should be at 6:41 p.m. on this sweltering summer day. My watch read 6:39 when we heard my father's disembodied voice echoed.
"Team 2, this is team 1, Daniel has the crystal and we are in position, over."
"Copy that team 1, we are in position as well." My mother replied as we all looked at our watches.
Cam was the first to speak up, "I've got 1841, guys."
My mother shook her head, "I've got 1839 still."
I looked down and my watch read 6:40. "1840, guys."
Cam shrugged. "Let's go with the young man's watch then."
My mother nodded and I gave her a signal when the digits changed. "Team 1, this is team 2, do you copy?"
"Team 1, go ahead." My father's voice returned.
"On the count of three," she said with the clear crystal in hand.
"Wait wait wait!" My father screamed back. "We put it in on three or we put it in after the three?"
Waiting for his transmission to be over, my mother rolled her eyes. "We put it in on three, sir. Over."
"Copy that. On your count, Colonel." My father replied.
"One... two... three..." And my mother inserted the crystal.
The flashlights flickered again and this time a whooshing sound accompanied it but nothing else happened.
"Team 1, this is team 2, nothing happened."
"Nothing happened here either, Colonel."
"The Ancient gene!" Alex volunteered from our side.
"What?" My mother inquired.
"It's an Ancient base. Maybe someone with the Ancient gene has to activate it." She explained.
"That wasn't the case with any of the previous ancient repositories," my mother replied, unsure of what to make of Alex's suggestion.
"It's worth a try, right? What do we have to lose?" Alex bit back.
"I think she's right, Sam... I think it's worth a try." Cam pitched in.
"Even if it is, we have two crystals and only one General O'Neill."
"Well, actually--" Alex and Cam said in unison looking at me.
"--actually I have the gene too!" I interrupted them before they could say too much. My mother stared at me in surprised, "It's how I got the Ancient technology to work on the motorcycle."
My mother raised both eyebrows in surprise then pressed the talk button on the radio. "Sir, the kids just had an idea and hopefully we still have enough time. Maybe you should be the one to insert the crystal this time." She handed me the clear crystal and I took a step forward.
"Copy that, Colonel. Again, on your mark."
"One.. two... three!"
On three I inserted the crystal and the whole ground shook. I didn't realize what was going on until something hit me on the head and darkness enveloped me.
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Alex's POV
I'd closed my eyes when the ground started shaking and by the time I opened them, the room around me had completely changed. There were blocks and blocks of stone piling up around the chamber, the rubble telling us a story of destruction. But despite the bleakness of the scenery, the light from my flahlight revealed gold columns and marble floors.
"Alex, are you okay?" I heard my father's voice and I nodded before realizing he wasn't with me just five seconds ago when the ground shook. I looked around and saw both groups reunited and I freaked out when all flashlights pointed to the same position, revealing Jacob on the ground with some blood on his head.
His mother got to his side before I did and she pulled out a cloth and started applying pressure to the wound. My heart was pounding in my ears and I reached for his hand, holding it in a powerful grip without jostling him.
The rest of the group had gathered around us with looks of concern on their faces.
Aunt Sam pulled the cloth away and the cut seemed small enough not to be a threat in itself but this would probably be a concussion and his second one in a week at that. Cam handed his co-commander some water to clean the wound which she wordlessly took as she continued to care for him like the dedicated mother that I know.
I continued to hold Jacob's hand in a tight grip and suddenly I felt his fingers wriggle and try to move. I looked up and saw him trying to open his eyes. "Ow," was the only thing he said.
"Are you okay?" His mother asked and he nodded then winced again at the pain. "You shouldn't try to move."
"No, I'm fine," he protested. "Except for my hand that is," he added and I looked down at the hand I was probably bruising by now.
"Don't ever do that again!" I yelled at him, relief sinking in and replacing fear.
Uncle Cam extended his arm and Jacob took his hand, standing up slowly. I saw his eyes widen in surprise as he saw his father and my parents then his eyes got even bigger as he took in our current location. "It worked!"
Gasps echoed in the room as we took in the richness around us. The ceiling looked like it was hundreds and hundreds of feet above our heads and it was adorned with paintings but our flashlights weren't strong enough for me to distinguish their true origin. The architecture seemed to be drawn from Ancient Greece, Babylon, Macedonia and Egypt, with statues and paintings all around us. It was like an archaeologist's dream come true, a true Cosmopolitan culmination of the greatest ancient civilizations on Earth. And apparently we hadn't even seen the beginning of it.
"We--we found it!" My father stuttered right before he picked my mother up and twirled her around. We thought he was done but he moved for me next, easily picking me up and spinning me on the marble floor. I think he would've continued but Aunt Sam's 'don't you dare' look stopped him.
"These must be worth a fortune!" Mom contributed as she examined one of the statues. "Do you have any idea how much one of these would go for in the black market?"
"Where are we?" My godfather inquired from the same spot he'd been standing in since we'd been-- transported? teleported? beamed? I don't know. I don't remember transport rings, that's for sure.
"This is it! It's the Library," my father replied with certainty.
"Doh. I figured that," Uncle Jack replied. "I meant, where on Earth or space or whatever?"
"If the map was correct, we should be a couple of miles off the peninsula, under the Mediterranean Sea." My father offered.
"Oh."
I started walking, letting my hands trail along the statues lined up in this chamber, the group following close together. "This seems like a Great Hall of sorts," I said as I noticed the rooms that surrounded the square area we were in.
The first room revealed materials to make papyrus as well as rolls and rolls of ready papyrus, ink for paintings and writing and air-tight capsules.
"This is amazing," my father said. "Do you have any idea how much paper and ink cost back then? There were always shortages--" He unrolled one of the rolls and saw it was blank. A second roll revealed the same thing. "They're all blank."
"Maybe we should check out the other rooms, Danny," Uncle Jack offered since he didn't quite care about ancient paper.
We walked into the second room and there were walls and desks. The papyrus found here were definitely not blank but half filled with writings and drawings.
Aunt Sam was particularly drawn to one of them as she gasped, "Sir, this is amazing!" She exclaimed. "Thi-- this can't be correct," she pointed to a papyrus filled with pictures of animals and followed by numbers. Her finger pointed to a man-shaped figure, "Homo Sapiens then 23 dash 23," next she moved to a picture of a horse "Equus caballus, 32 dash 32," then a mouse "Mus musculusm, 20 dash 20."
"So?" Uncle Jack asked with a frown. "I thought the Greeks started this whole greek naming thing with living organisms."
"Not just their name, sir. I think this is a chromosome count for every species of the animal kingdom at the time - at least two millennia before we discovered the chromosome. This is like a genome project of the ancient Earth."
"Oh." Uncle Jack said simply. "Big stuff."
Dad cleared his throat a few feet behind us. "Not just big, Jack. Huge... Sam you might want to see this," he said as he picked up another piece of drawing. We looked at a sequence of drawings of our solar system, the first one sans Pluto and with a planet orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Mars and the last of the drawings showing our current solar system.
"Oh my god," Aunt Sam gasped as she examined the long sequence of drawings. "If these drawings are correct, it's saying that the planet that we always suspected that had orbited between Mars and Jupiter did in fact exist... and somehow that planet broke down into two major pieces and several smaller pieces. The major pieces, driven by the gravitational forces of Jupiter and the Sun created an eccentric orbit that continued to increase in radius until it became what we now know as Pluto and Charon."
Cameron shook his head a little, trying to take in all the information thrown at him. "So, if we knew all this back when this place was open for business, how come we had to discover all that stuff again later?"
"This never made it to the surface," Dad reasoned. "I think that the people were getting this information from down here, transcribing it to paper and taking it to the surface. These are unfinished which tells us that whoever vacated this place, did so in a hurry."
The group exchanged worried glances.
The ground shook around us again but the ceiling above us held steady. "Then let's finish taking a look at the place and let's get out of here as soon as possible, shall we?" Uncle Jack proposed.
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