Chapter 3

Four Alone

When Teal'c was enclosed by the light, there was a momentary, tight stretching feeling and then a split second of agonizing pain followed by darkness. It was a long time before he awoke. He was lying by the still active pedestal, and he was completely alone. His teammates, the alien scientist, and all their gear had vanished. In fact, all that remained was what Teal'c had been wearing, which luckily included his GDO.

The first move he made when he was certain that he was alone was to call for his teammates on his radio. When he received nothing but static in return, his next move was to the Stargate. It connected with no trouble, but his concern did not abate. No one was responding to his GDO code. No one seemed to be home. He hesitated, not wanting to step through and hit the iris, but he was also concerned about his missing teammates and he wanted to find help as quickly as possible. While he waited, undecided, the wormhole shut down.

He decided to wait for an hour, taking that time to search for his teammates himself. There was no trace of them, not even footprints or a single piece of equipment. He considered that the machine had been some sort of transport device, and it had sent his friends away. Or it transported them all to different realities; that could explain why the place looked almost the same but there was no trace of their visit there. In any case, he decided he had waited long enough. He dialed the gate and, after still receiving nothing from the other end, he gave up communication and just stepped through.

He didn't hit the iris. He also didn't run into the usual assortment of guns aimed towards the ramp, though at least the ramp seemed unchanged. What he faced was an empty room with minimum lighting, as though everyone had gone home for the night, but even at minimum staff Teal'c had never observed the gate room like this. Looking around suspiciously, everything felt familiar but wrong. There had never been any danger of hitting the iris; there didn't seem to be an iris installed to the gate. And the gate room was filled with items he had never noted to be there before, such as a table filled with bulky computers and papers, and scaffolding lying in a crumpled wreck near the gate. Teal'c suspected that before he came it had been standing against the gate, but the opening of the event horizon had taken care of that. Despite these very obvious signs of people, however, the place was deserted.

"Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c said, trying his radio one last time on the off chance SG1 had returned to this place, assuming it was their own reality, which Teal'c was beginning to doubt. There was still no response.

Teal'c stood in the gate room for a few minutes, suddenly at a complete loss as to where to go or what to do. He had neither Samantha Carter's knowledge of machines nor Daniel Jackson's grasp of the Ancient's language, and if it was that pedestal that had sent him wherever he was, he hadn't a clue how to make it return him and his teammates to their own reality. And if this was their reality, then where had his teammates gone, and why was everything so obviously different when he remained unchanged? Finally deciding that there was no point in returning to the planet and not wishing to stand around until he might be caught, at least not before he had more information, he finally decided to go to the surface.

He met no one on his way, but the halls were eerily familiar but off. The gateroom didn't exit where he thought it should, and it took him nearly half an hour to stumble upon an elevator. He considered searching the base, perhaps visiting the locker rooms and trying to find some regular clothing, but the strange, incongruent familiarity of the place was making him nervous. He wanted information, and if he was caught on base then it would be nearly impossible for him to escape if that turned out to be necessary. Knowing nothing of his situation or the situation his teammates might be in, he opted to leave quickly. The elevator was too obvious and he wasn't certain it wouldn't give him away if he tried it, but the familiarity of the facility served him well. He found access to a shaft and began to climb.

There were people up at ground level, but slipping past them proved to be absurdly easy. They appeared more concerned with making sure no unauthorized people got in than making sure no one got out, and he had little trouble slipping past them unseen. It helped that it was dark out; apparently he had gated back in the middle of the night. All the same, as he walked down the road away from the facility, he was still passed by a few cars. Those were his first clue as to what was going on.

They were all older models than what he normally saw driving down those roads, and out of one he heard loud music playing as several youths sang along. Between the music and the cars, he found another strange and uneasy familiarity. For the first time, he began to wonder if the device on P4X-639 hadn't sent him, not to a different reality, but to a different time.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Jack told himself for the hundredth time that he wasn't in any way betraying his parents' trust. All right, so he wasn't returning to the academy like he was supposed to. But he wasn't really eighteen, this, whatever this was, wasn't real, and as soon as he fixed it then maybe it would be like none of this had happened anyway. His priority was to find his kids, who were quite literally kids at this point, and if he had to use the money his mom meant for him to use in an emergency to do it, he would.

All the same, it had been much harder than he had thought it would be, just to get on the bus and wave goodbye to his mom. His dad wasn't there; Jack had forgotten why at this point but he knew it would be strange to ask something he definitely should know, so he didn't. Instead he hugged his mom goodbye and got on the bus. Even without feeling like he was somehow lying to her, he felt strangely reluctant to leave. It was nice visiting home again back when he still had his own room and seeing his mom looking so young and energetic. Deciding he'd make it up to her by visiting soon in his proper time, he shook it off.

He waited until the bus's first stop, and then he left it to hitch a ride going in practically the opposite direction, intending to make his way to New York. Once he changed out of the uniform that marked him as military, it wasn't too hard to find a group of kids around his own apparent age to ride with. That was a strange experience in itself; they all saw him as one of them, a teenager of all things, when inside he felt like he was closer to fifty. Between the weirdness of being an adult in a teenager's body, the vague guilt that he wasn't on his way to the academy like his mom thought, and the urgent need to find out what had happened and even more importantly to find his teammates, Jack felt regrettably too turmoiled to really enjoy the trip back in time like he normally would. He spent the night with the kids and then went off on his own for a bit, trying to find an address, or even better a phone number, for Daniel or Carter.

"Look," Jack said, after arguing with a woman on the phone through nearly a dollar's worth in change, "You can ask Daniel if you want to, just tell him a Jack O'Neill called, and he'll tell you he knows me. It's not like I'm some pedophile stalker here!" At which point the woman hanged up. So much for getting an address for Daniel; though at least the woman had indirectly confirmed that there was a Daniel Jackson in foster care in New York City. If he could get there, he could probably do some more concrete digging into records and find him. In the meantime, he began his search for Carter. This was both more difficult and less difficult. It was more difficult because he didn't even know what state she would be in, let alone what city was most likely. But it was less difficult because he had her parents' names to go by, and if they were in the phone book he would find them. It took him making calls through eight different states and around twenty dollars worth of change on calls to the wrong Carters, before he was finally answered by a woman.

"I'd like to speak to Samantha Carter," Jack said, his voice still polite but tired. He waited for the inevitable answer that no one by that name lived there, when the woman said, "Just a moment," and then away from the phone he heard her calling, "Sammy, you have a phone call. I think it's one of your friends from school!" A few seconds later, there was a very young, hesitant voice at the other end saying, "Yes?"

"Carter?" Jack asked, blinking dumbly to have actually gotten through. The girl was silent for a moment and Jack was afraid it was the wrong number after all, except even if it was he would expect the kid to say something.

"Who is this?" she said at last.

"Jack O'Neill," Jack answered, suddenly hyper aware of how young and different his own voice sounded. And what if this was the right Samantha, but she didn't remember him? What if he was the only one who remembered the future? But all of his doubts were cast aside with Sam's next words.

"Colonel? Oh thank God," she said, "It isn't just me."

"Not just you," Jack agreed, feeling greatly relieved that it wasn't just him, "Though I'd love to know what 'it' is."

"I have a few theories," Sam answered, "But at the moment I'm not certain of anything."

"All I know is that one second I was on PX-whatever fighting with Mickey, and the next second I was back home. Way back home." Sam was silent again, this time while she tried to work out what Jack had just said.

"Malikai," she finally said, working out the 'Mickey' reference, "That was the scientist Daniel was so excited to meet with. Have you managed to contact Daniel, sir?"

"Not yet," Jack answered, "But I'm on my way to find him. I'm headed to New York."

"He would be eight, wouldn't he, sir?" Sam asked, frowning with concern.

"Yeah, I know," Jack answered, and then, "You're in Colorado, right? How weird is that? I should have kept going to the Academy; I could have met up with you first."

"No, no, I think you should try to find Daniel," she answered, "I'm kind of busy here anyway. I have some ideas that might help us. And…and I think…Daniel never said, but I really think the best thing is for you to find him."

"Right," Jack answered. He didn't like the situation at all; his team was too spread out, Teal'c probably not even on the same planet, and he had no idea how to fix it except to continue trying what he was doing. He talked to Sam another thirty minutes but they finally settled on a plan which was basically what they were already doing. Jack would go to New York and find Daniel, Sam would explore her theories and Jack would call each day to keep them connected. Jack finally hung up the phone feeling greatly relieved. He had found one of his teammates, she was ok, and he wasn't the only one stuck in the wrong time. Now if only he could find Daniel in just as good of shape, everything would be going good. Somehow, he doubted they would be so lucky.