Chapter 5
Exploring Paradise Regained
The elf dressed the most formally and most upscale of all the elves present interrupted before someone else could. "I am called Narcill, and I am the new Furling Envoy-Designate to Earth" he introduced himself to SG-1.
"I am very sorry to interrupt as well as to arrive late to this mutual acquainting—I was required to attend to an aspect of this Furling outpost elsewhere.. Please do not verbally lash out at me, the proverbial 'messenger', but I feel the need to do my sometimes evil job of moderating in considering time constraints during meetings."
The Earth guests as well as their Furling hosts erupted into an uproar, appreciating Narcill's charming , engaging sense of humor.
He continued on. "So as it has passed, my superiors have proposed that since Tau'ri might have 'weekly rest days' just like we do, we could take the days to get ourselves casually acquainted with our counterparts. After all, while we are quite certain that the Ori are not able to, for at least twelve more days to the Milky Way Galaxy, both our peoples might act wisely to use the weekly rest-days to replenish our energies to fight most effectively in this upcoming battle. We shall, hopefully, soon be friends and allies in executing our mutual agenda to check the Ori from establishing a foothold anywhere outside their home galaxy, and be proceeding with our worthy endeavor." Both parties by this point in time, judging from the fact that they were living beings and had been overworked since a time they couldn't, needed to utilize their week-end. "So we thought perhaps we might take turns hosting weekend retreats in each others' respective homeworlds. If you accept, then you will choose who hosts whom first. Hopefully, we shall become quite mutually acquainted by the time our head of state, the High Consul meets with your head of state, the National President, to discuss realization of the points of our treaty for mutual aid and defense."
The ambassador paused and glanced politely and respectful, but with the characteristic warmth that Jack and SG-1 was beginning to notice these Furling elves seemed to have. He quipped, "In short, I am advocating to take a weekend vocational retreat in order to avoid taking a military retreat and succeeding in making the Ori aggressors take retreat much earlier. Please forgive my attempted witticism."
Everyone present burst into a round of laughter and cheering for the envoy's quip.
Earth ambassador-designate to the Furlings Joe Faxon nodded his head vigorously toward Narcill. "Now no one can say that we diplomats don't have a sense of humor" he quipped in turn. "And not to mention we occasionally use it to great effect."
Narcill smiled back with his lit-up eyes and nodded in amused agreement.
Colonel Mitchell thoughfully nodded his head in response. *Well, pretty slick; these folks have developed the concept of weekends just like we have" he thought with a smile. Remembering the concept from his psychology, he wondered perhaps it was an archetype among many races inhabiting the universe. It didn't really matter of course in the long run. The fact is, they felt a common ground with the elves. "They can't be anywhere near boring and humorless at this rate." He felt pretty thrilled and impressed with these new allies. Mitchell was the kind of team member who, like O'Neill, felt uncomfortable just a tiny bit suspicious about virtually personality-lacking races like the Aschen.*
After they finished the conversation, Sam, Teal'c and Mitchell finally got to go through the giant arch, which they looked very enthused about. Teal'c had been pondering what it would be like to step through that thing in between their various conversations with the Furling delegation. He had witnessed many technological wonders of advanced races in his time working with the SGC. This particular one wouldn't pale in comparison to any, at all. Besides the Sodan warriors, if any jaffa ever unceasingly tried to belittle him over having supposedly seen many and/or more sophisticated elder races' advanced technology, he could add his new friends' his transportation arch to his list of experiences.
As for Daniel, he had forgotten about and/or kept putting off his eating for the whole day AGAIN. He knew from some past experiences that he would get motion-sick from traveling in such a manner on such an unfilled stomach. So he wisely passed up the offer which Some elven personnel also decided to go through with them for moral support and to help them return back from their destination arch.
Alwin stayed behind to accompany Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson and monitor the arch trip from their departure end.
When all intended travelers lined up in a straight vertical line with hand joined, Sam Carter took the lead in stepping through. There was a display screen of a highly elegant-looking plastic right next to the arch opening which had a digitized representation of each traveler's physical body with numerical data next to it written in Furling script w/ an English translation next as well.
As soon as everyone had stepped through, the arch emitted a thin beam of the same purple light. Alwin nodded hi head slightly and said "Ta-da. I think that word is an Earth Idiom and I hope I am using it correctly . " He pointed to the object levitated in the air by the beam—it looked like a standard-SG-1 issued handgun. Like the one Sam would be carrying. Alwin smiled at noticing Jack's wide eyes. I whispered to Colonel Carter to tell her I would alert the device to recognize all projectile-baed firearms and exclude them from being transported. The screen suddenly changed to a grinning Sam.
"Hey general!" she said. "This machine is absolutely incredible! Did you know we just travelled three whole planets away to a counterpart arch? And also, if you noticed, when I went through, the effect touched the three companions right next to me before they even stepped up to the energy emission."
"Wow! Holy smokes, people! I 'd say this fine contraption has abilities this are really close to Ancient tech's abilities or actually further ahead!" O'Neill remarked.
"And that is not all,O'Neill," Teal'c remarked with a highly-satisfied grin. Alwin's brilliant aides also attempted to explain to us how we could set this arch we are in front of to dial your stargate over there, and transport us through there instead of to your arch." "I shall see you presently", he said as he headed straight for the arch opening." "We must maintain our schedule to rendezvous with Thor this evening for rest and relaxation and mutual acquaintance."
Daniel crosed his arms firmly and moved his upper and lower teeth while rolling his tongue around. "Well, looks like they can give the Alterrans a run for their money, or come pretty close at the very least w/ this beam-right-through-stargate ability. I wonder if our friends had developed this technology around the time the ancients had it? "
Jack half-grinned confidently. "Hell yeah," he said. "I found too many of those Ancients to be overconfident. Might as well call those ones the 'Arrogants'. This word does have four letters in common with 'Ancients' after all," he snickered and put out his empty hands. "In any event, even if the Furling natural scientitsts and engineers had just caught up to Merlin and Morgana's level of beaming technology, it's still pretty damn impressive. Merlin and Morgan probably made that thing in the medieval ages around King Arthur's time right? So theFurlings responsible for developing this tech concept developed it only a few hundred years afterwards. But, even so, the Furling nation'still developed tranport beams much faster than teh Ancient non-ring ones we've seen in our experiences. THAT counts for a lot. Why don't we consult our friend Alwin here? "
Alwin had been looking on and listening to to their conversation and smiled. "I am sorry for accidentally eavesdropping on your conversation, General O'Neill and Dr. Jackson."
"Oh, don't be silly, Alwin. Uh, what I mean is you did no harm doing something that wasn't your fault ; so don't feel bad about it. Oh, and feel free to call me Jack by he way. I'm not such a formal person."
"Like everything Jack just said, Alwin. We were talking up a storm, after all" Daniel addded. "You can call me Daniel by the way. All my friends do."
"I will do so, jack and Daniel. Now, if I may answer your very good question, we just developed the actual concept of transport-beaming matter through an active Stargate five hundred years ago. The Alterans preceded us by quite a while."
"So about three hundred years after the Ancients developed theirs", Daniel said to Alwin and O'Neill. "Still, not too shabby by the standards of the Four Great Races Alliance in anyway, really.
"Well, I doubt the Ancients have any device that can transport you to the nearest planet from here THAT fast according to the English digitized manual I saw for the arch device. At that speed, a traveller would probably feel like the planet just zoomed into their space, and not that they zoomed into its space."
"Quite right, Jack. I'm delightfully suspecting you have a strong science background which I was unaware of before," the elven science officer deduced.
"Uh, not quite" Jack said. "I mean, I studied science sufficiently for a layperson to have a fair understanding of a tiny few advanced science concepts."
"Although Jack's made quite a few advanced-knowledge deductions that most of the rest of us, have missed. Oh, and when we take in the fact that his brain was advanced enough to subconcsciously understand and apply the basic technological concepts in the Ancients' Knowledge Repository, he's really a lot brighter than he admits to being. He just doen't like having to use his brain to think about scientific concepts," Daniel said for Jack.
"Why, thank you for speaking up for me, Jackson!" O'Neill said a bit resentfully.
"I guess you're welcome, O'Neill" Daniel retorted.
"Heh, heh" Alwin chimed in. "You remind me a bit of myself, Jack" he said. "You see, it wan't that I was incompetent, when it came to me thinking and acting militarily. I just didn't enjoy it and so I never tried very hard. But when I attended the undergraduate program I did, I needed to pass a handgun operation test, but procrastinated practicing for a while." "I finally practiced studiously the days immediately before the mandatory firearms exam. At the time, we were being attacked by a group of enemies called the Chr'alls, which Terrans might now as the Trolls and some of the galaxy might know as the Der'kal. Our National Gov Executor For National Military Defense Affairs and Executor For Erudition of the Executory Grand Compnent convinced all three chambers of our Legislatory Grand Component of the importance of even academic students learning to defend themelves. It therefore passed a law which required all college students wishing to graduate be atoble to pass. After all, the Ch'rall enjoyed infiltrating our world and employing suicide-attacks to wear us down. I procrastinated for my firearms usage demonstration test until I realized the day loomed right ahead of me. To compensate for my lack of this basic soldiering and law-enforcing and thus graduate w/o spending my entire summertime, I managed to cram sufficiently gun-practicing into entire Furling day-units of unceaing concentrated preparing. When I finally got down to the day before I would receive my diploma for my hard-earned academic achievements, I passed he test rather splendidly. The drill instructor even told me he felt I could enlist in the Craft-Borne Boarding Corps. Of course, I declined to pursue that endeavor,a sI had planned out a lifetime career practicing scientific discovery."
"Yes, you really do remind me of me in your quite apocryphal story" the talent-concealing Jack O'Neill replied.
"Yes, we remind each other of each other in that respect" the science officer said. "Knowing you have only a minimal interest in science, I apologize that I cannot entertain you so skillfully." "You strike me as a more of a person who enjoys supervising and doing safety-providing and physical excercises and physical prowess-games." " In that case, you would probably like to speak to Tertiary-General Lekilis. He has been occupied with a pressing concern and so could not be present at th ebeginning of this rendez-vous. He is your direct counterpart and his military rank is the exact equivalent of yours."
"Makes sense, O'Neill said said.
Just then, Sam Carter tapped her CO on he shoulder from behind. She caused him to jump 3 inches upwards into the air.
When he had landed back on the ground, Jack complained. "Ah, Carter!" "Why'd you do that?" "And why'd I just jump ten feet upwards in response?"
"She did'nt wish to rudely interrupt your lively conversations. I have learned much from them," a 6'2" elf dresed in what looked like the elven equivalent of a BDU stepped forward. "Although regrettably, she startled you significantly." "I am the up-to-the-present absentee Tertiary General who will be your counterpart and direct liasion for our great endeavor" he said. "And do no worry about looking foolish from what you just did." "It's a natural reaction, epecially from a soldier who has refelexes like that."
Jack realized that according to the potential speed of thus amazing giant arch, Sam would have been late. He was so engrossed in the conversation at the moment he hadn't realized he would havde arived maybe 30 minutes ago "How long were you standing there behind me? You should've arrived back at this planet about 29.9 minutes ago, acording to the schematics "
"Oh, 28.9 whole minutes sir. Quite close. And I have an inkling that you comprehend the nerdy sciences much more than you let on. Clearly, you do. After all, when you deduced the proces by which Cassie was pychokinetically moving the chess pieces employing magnetism in the process." ow Jack's Sam took the opportunity to blow Jack's horn.
"Dope! I blew my cover, I guess! Really hoping to not do that!" he exclaimed in jesting .
He then turned to Lekilis just as Sam was about to introduce him personally. "Forgive my rudeness. You must be Tertiary General Lekilis. Jack O'Neill, Major General", United States Air Force Stargate Command Center director " he said, extending his hand for the Furling elven equivalent of a handshake, a diagnol hand-clasp.
"Non percieved " the general officerl responded with an amiable chuckle. He diagnolly- clasped O'Neill's hand firmly and resolutely in an expression of solidarity. Then he extended his hand in the Earth way and shook O'Neill's hand as a sign that he also respected the customs of his new friends. "I am indeed Lekiiis, I lead a Furling division mixed-type infantry forces. It's an honor to be making your acquaintance." he said. "Any individual that the Asgard regard so highly and consider such a close friend is a positive contributor to the universe, in my book." "And I heard you are the only Terran so far who has been able to interface their brain with the Ancient Knowledge Repository. Extraordinarily impressive."
Joe Faxon came through the gate, saying that all SGC personnel and their counterparts would head back to Earth for a weekend retreat. He also said the Asgard had contacted General Hammond at Homeworld Command saying they would like to join the retreat. Freyr, Thor, and Sif, Kvasir of the Asgard would be the ones coming along if they were allowed to.
"Professionally and on a personal level, I have no objection at all. In fact, I've been trying to get my old friend Thor to come so we could go fishing since ages ago." O'Neill said excitedly.
"Sif-Thor' wife, isn't she? He must've found a way to revive her. They've solved their genetic degradation problem that well?" Jackson added his deduction.
The old SG crew was going to be having their weekend fun after all, with . And needless to say because of their old and new friends joining, it was going to be extraordinarily exciting!