Our Legacy - Chapter 2
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters nor profit from their use - I merely toy with them for my own amusement.
Summary: A gate accident strands Jack and Sam in the year 2034, when the SGC is under the command of General Samantha Carter. But all is not as it seems, and to get home, they first need to save the world.
General Sam Carter had them escorted to the infirmary, and ordered a battery of tests to make sure they weren't clones, robots, or any other wacky brand of imposter. Tests run and blood drawn, they were then taken to a holding room, and left alone, save for the guards outside the door, for over an hour.
"What's taking so long?" Jack grumbled.
"Your guess is as good as mine sir." Sam answered.
Jack turned to her speculatively. "Except it's not, is it? She's you. Why would you put your time travelling past self in a room and ignore … yourself?"
Sam gestured uselessly. "I don't know, sir. She's a three-star general and twice my age. I'm a little out of my depth."
Jack sighed and dropped onto one of the bunk beds. After a moment he looked over at Sam, sitting at the table, and smirked. "Pretty cool to know you're going to be a three-star general one day, huh?"
Sam smiled in spite of the circumstances, ducking her head. "Yeah, it's pretty cool."
"Not at all surprising though."
"Thank you, sir." Sam said, flattered.
"So, how 'stuck' are we exactly? I mean, between the two of you, you'll figure something out, right?"
Sam frowned in consternation. "I hope so. Right now I don't have any ideas, but I would hope that in 34 years, my older self will have come across something that can help."
"Wait a second." Jack sat up, waving his hands. "She's the future you, right? So … shouldn't she have your memories of what happens now?"
Sam nodded. "Yes, I thought of that. Theoretically this happened to her thirty-four years ago in her past, and she should remember how exactly she got home. I mean, the fact that she's here in 2034 looking like an older me indicates that she must have succeeded in returning to her own time."
"I sense a 'but'."
"But … she looked surprised to see us. And when we asked her if she could send us back, she said she wouldn't know where to begin."
"Maybe she's lying."
"Why would I – she – lie about that?"
Jack huffed, frustrated. "So what's the bottom line here, Carter?"
"The bottom line is, I don't how it's possible, but it seemed like she hadn't been through this in her own timeline, and if that's the case, then she won't necessarily know how to send us home."
There was silence for a moment while they both absorbed this. "Well, crap." Jack said.
"Yes sir." Sam agreed wholeheartedly.
After three hours cooling their heels in a holding cell, when Jack had surpassed the pacing, tearing his hair out stage of impatience and had progressed into a still, sullen temper, General Carter sent for them.
They were taken to the briefing room, where they took their usual seats, and a moment later General Carter joined them, sitting in Hammond's chair. Her own chair, actually, Jack supposed.
"My apologies for keeping you waiting." She started. "Have you had any thoughts about how this might have happened?" She directed the question to her younger self.
"Well, my best guess is still that the wormhole encountered a solar flare, due to Tollana's gate not having built in safeguards against that. But, if this didn't happen to you, I'm not sure how this is even possible."
The general shrugged, clearly at a loss. "I think I'd remember travelling forward in time and meeting myself."
"Right. Except, if I have travelled forward in my own timeline, surely my future self should have my memories."
An unfamiliar expression crossed General Carter's face. "Maybe someone has interfered with the timeline. Or perhaps this is not your future."
Sam looked flummoxed. "You're suggesting we travelled both forward in time and to an alternate reality?"
Alarm bells rang in Jack's head. "Is that possible?"
"Theoretically … maybe. But it's incredibly unlikely."
"Well, I've made quite a few enemies over the years, some with impressive resourcefulness. Maybe an enemy of mine travelled back in time to interfere with your time stream. They might have been hoping that the solar flare would destroy the wormhole or its contents." General Carter suggested.
Sam nodded slowly, thinking.
"So … how does this help us get back?" Jack asked, trying to get the conversation onto more useful ground.
"It doesn't." General Carter answered. Jack waited, but she didn't elaborate.
"What, no theories, thoughts, ideas … half-baked plans?"
General Carter gave him a sharp look, and he suddenly got the chilly sensation that even though this woman had his Carter's face, he didn't know her at all.
"I can give you a lab, and whatever resources you need – within reason – to figure out how to get back to your time." She said to Sam.
She stood, and raised her eyebrows when Jack and Sam didn't immediately leap to their own feet. Jack offered her a wry smirk in apology as they belatedly stood. "Sorry. It's a lot to get used to."
"Well, hopefully you won't need to get too used to it." She said frostily, and returned to their office.
Jack stared after her for a moment and then gave his Carter a look of perplexed concern. "Does she seem … off … to you?"
Sam nodded slowly, watching her older self through the General's office window. "Maybe we caught her on a bad day."
Jack snorted. "Carter, on your worst day you're not that bad."
"Thirty-four years is a long time. Maybe something happened to change her."
"Yeah. Maybe." But Jack still couldn't shake the bad feeling in his gut. Something wasn't right, and his gut was rarely wrong.
Two hours later, Sam and Jack were situated in a science lab, Sam at the desk pouring over gate diagnostics, and the telemetry of the incoming wormhole that had spat them out thirty-four years in the future.
Jack was bored. There was really very little he could contribute to the exercise, and he wasn't being trusted to roam freely around the base. He was lounging back in a chair, fiddling with a paperclip, trying very hard not to disturb his 2IC as she worked.
He was more than a little relieved when a third person appeared in the doorway, breaking the silence. It was a tall young woman in a black pant-suit and a lab coat, with her long blonde hair pulled back in a braid which fell over her shoulder. She stared at them both for a moment with an expression of amazement.
"Hello." Jack offered when the staring started to freak him out.
Sam looked up from the flat, desk-mounted computer and noticed the young woman with a puzzled frown.
"Hi. I hear you've got yourselves a bit displaced in time, and wondered if you'd like some help." She offered with a nervous smile.
"You're a physicist?" Sam asked, standing.
"I am."
"Well I could certainly use any help you can give." Sam said ruefully. "I'm Major Samantha Carter."
"Major." The woman shook Sam's hand with a smile. "I'm Beth."
"Just 'Beth'?" Jack asked.
"And you must be Colonel Jack O'Neill." Beth said, turning to Jack and shaking his hand too. "You'll have to forgive me for staring, it's just not everyday that you meet time travellers."
"Inadvertent time travellers, I assure you." Jack said. "We were just trying to get home as usual."
Beth nodded, and went to look at the gate diagnostics on Sam's work station. "General Carter said you were attempting a straight-forward journey back from Tollana to Earth, in the year 2000?"
"That's right. There was no sign of any unusual gate activity on our end prior to travelling, but then of course Tollana's gate is unusual in and of itself, not being of Ancient manufacture." Sam said.
"You think that might be the source of the problem?"
"We know that time travel can occur if a wormhole passes too close to a sun emitting a solar flare." Sam said. "It happened once to us when we travelled from the SGC's gate. On that occasion we didn't reach our destination planet at all, but were bounced back through to the SGC, in 1969."
"Right. But when you used General Hammond's date and time of another solar flare to travel forward again, you overshot and ended up in the SGC in 2049, at which point Cassie had to send you back." Beth said.
Sam's jaw dropped a little in surprise.
Beth shrugged self-consciously. "I read the report."
"Anyway," Sam continued, "my point is on that occasion we were using Earth's dialling computer to make the connection. We theorised that the Ancient-built DHDs compensate for the risk of solar flare by blocking dangerous connections. The risk only exists for a short window of time anyway, due to the relative positioning of the two planets with the gates in relation to other massive celestial bodies. I'm thinking that, much like our own dialling computer at the time of our previous … mishap, the Tollan gate doesn't have those safeguards."
Beth nodded. "It's a good theory."
"Unfortunately it doesn't offer up much by way of ideas to get us home." Sam said with a sigh.
"No." Beth took a deep breath. "But I might be able to help you with that."
Jack perked up immediately. "Oh?"
Beth looked visibly nervous. "It's a little … sensitive. I can't discuss it openly here."
Jack met Sam's eyes, eyebrows raised. "Really."
"I'll try and visit you tonight during the night shift. I'll explain everything then." She took a few quick steps towards the door, before turning suddenly and giving Jack an intense, unreadable look. She smiled resignedly. "I'll see you tonight."
And then she was gone.
Jack shared a look of bafflement with Sam. "What the hell is going on here?"
That evening, after a quick meal in the commissary during which Jack and Sam garnered many curious stares, they were shown to guest quarters. It was very similar to the VIP rooms in their own SGC.
Right down to the solitary double bed.
"Ah, where's my room?" Jack called to the retreating back of the airman who'd shown them into the room. The airman gave him a weird look. "We assumed you'd want to share, sir."
Jack eyebrows flew into his hairline. "You did?"
He felt Sam's hand on his arm suddenly, and she stepped close enough to whisper to him. "Sir, we should actually stay together, if Beth's going to come and find us during the night."
He shook his head, trying to clear some of the bewilderment he'd been feeling almost constantly since landing in this bizarre future, and gestured to the airman. "Sharing is fine. That'll be all, airman."
The door shut behind them, and Jack waited a moment before opening it a fraction and peeking out. An airman at the end of the hall stirred on seeing him, and Jack raised a hand in apology before closing the door again.
"One guard out in the hall, but the door's not locked. You think this 'Beth' girl can manage the guard?"
"I hope so." Sam said. "I'd really like to hear what she's got to say."
"You know, there is nothing about this situation that isn't weird." Jack said in frustration. "We randomly travel thirty years into the future …"
"Thirty-four." Sam corrected automatically.
"Right, thirty-four years. Your future self doesn't offer a single idea on how it happened or how to fix it, nor does she offer to help you figure it out, and frankly she wasn't acting like you at all. This 'Beth' character – who avoids giving her full name – offers help but says she can only do it in secret, all cloak-and-dagger in the middle of the night. And that guard out there assumed we'd prefer to share. What the hell?"
"It's pretty weird." Sam agreed, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "That's why I want to talk to Beth later, hopefully she can give us some answers."
Jack huffed in dissatisfaction with the whole situation. "We should sleep in shifts, in case Beth turns up. I'll take first watch, you get some shut eye."
"Yes sir."
He settled himself into the room's easy chair while Carter took herself off to the bathroom.
'We assumed you'd want to share', the airman had said. What the hell did that mean?