"Great, Adrian can come to work tomorrow dressed as Doctor Who," Simon's voice dripped with sarcasm.
Alex was perplexed by Simon's underwhelming response. He expected a little bit more enthusiasm; he even had his hand up expecting a high five, "How come you're not excited by this?"
"Imagine we get to find a rocket ship to the stars, but the then we find out: 'Oh, hey, it's also equipped with a nuclear warhead! Great….'"
Alex couldn't help but chuckle at Simon's metaphor, "I'm not sure I follow…"
"Time travel is dangerous. What would stop us from accidently erasing the human race? Or giving Hitler a victory in World War II? Or giving us season 2 of The Event?"
Alex let out a big laugh, "What, you have a time travel phobia?"
"Come on! Time travel is a dangerous business. The last thing I want to have happen is somebody going back in time stepping on a butterfly and killing my grandmother."
Alex could feel tears of amusement welling in his eyes, but he understood Simon's anxiety and didn't want to come across as belittling his fears and his mixed clichés, "It doesn't work that way. Trust me, I've done the math."
Simon shot him an annoyed look.
"You don't have to worry; it's actually safer than going to alien worlds. Anything that would happen has already happened. If for example somebody tried to go back in time to assassinate Hitler, we know it fails because Hitler was never assassinated," Simon had his back to Alex studying the console, so he couldn't tell if Simon was reassured or not.
"Are you at all familiar with the TV series Stargate SG-1?"
It seemed like a complete non-sequitur; he wasn't sure where Simon was going with it, "I'm familiar enough with its concept."
"Well basically, much like us, an alien artifact is found that allows them to travel through the universe, but only to places where another stargate is already present."
"So you are saying that this can only connect to places in space and time where an Obelisk already exists?" Simon nodded an affirmative, "I would feel better about this hypothesis if the wormhole actually opened inside that other Obelisk," Alex paused as a counter-argument occurred to him, "Then again interstellar drift might have caused its connect point to move…"
Alex became lost in thought. A tiny germ of an idea was planted in his head, but couldn't quite grasp it yet. His thoughts drifted from questions about how the console worked to how The Obelisk actually got to Earth. Simon said something that Alex only nodded absentmindedly to. He stared at the alien landscape and slowly mathematical formula was being written on what he often called his 'mental whiteboard'. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it. He also saw Simon replacing the centre emerald crystal with a black one.
"No don't!" he screamed, but it was too late. Simon slid the black crystal into the slot and almost immediately the console exploded. There was a large electrical discharge that hit Simon causing him to fly past Alex and hit the far wall; its thunderclap stunned Alex forcing him to the ground and causing his ears to ring. The sphere clouded over, its shape became erratic and then collapsed within seconds.
Alex tried to shake the cobwebs. The smell of acrid smoke filled the air while a repeating klaxon-like sound blared. Alex looked back at the console. It was blackened, most of the crystals destroyed and small tendrils of smoke wafted up. The light inside The Obelisk dimmed and turned blue.
Alex struggled to his feet and stumbled towards Simon. Much to his surprise the engineer was still alive though slipping in and out of consciousness. His hands and chest were burnt and his hair was stiff and frizzy.
"Come on buddy, let's get you out of here," Alex struggled to lift him up; he was pretty much dead weight.
"…dinosaurs…so big…bad breath…" mumbled Simon before falling back to unconsciousness.
Alex managed to get one arm of Simon's around his shoulder and then realized it would be simpler to just drag him out. As he shifted he noticed a holographic display appeared above the destroyed console. Alien script scrolled downwards and then shifted from right to left. Periodically small groupings of characters would show as bright blue and flash. Suddenly and prominently at the bottom six blue characters typed itself out and then started changing. The top character changed rapidly while second from top changed much slower. Alex could make out that it went through six iterations of characters before the next character down would change. He quickly figured that it was a countdown, and a rough calculation showed that there was ten minutes. Ten minutes to what, he could only guess, but he knew it wouldn't be something good. He decided he would have to come back later to examine it; his priority would have to be getting Simon out of here and get medical help topside.
Lt. Barrow and Sarah were at the doorway. The Lieutenant quickly lifted up Simon and placed one arm over his shoulder allowing Alex to do the same on the other side. No sooner had they cleared The Obelisk than the klaxon sound stopped. Alex paused and looked back. The door was now closed; the cables that were connected to the camera were severed cleanly. The group then moves quickly to the cage elevator. They place Simon gently in and close the gate. Sarah pushed a button and within seconds the elevator lifted up.
Alex looked around the cave and saw the workstations for the first time. All the computers were destroyed, small wisps of smoke drifted upwards from them. Fenske and Morton were standing looking stunned. Kraus still squatted over the skeleton he was trying to extract looking uncertain whether to proceed.
"What happened?" asked Sarah her voice full of alarm, "The last thing we observed was David replacing a control crystal with another one in an attempt collapse the wormhole."
"I think he used the wrong crystal and overloaded the system." Alex stared at The Obelisk. Did it look…brighter?
"Is it safe now?"
"No, I think we need to evacuate as quickly as possible. And by that, I mean everyone in the camp as well."