Chapter Nineteen - Jacob

The sharp knock at the door caught Jacob's attention, and since he was the only one still standing, he was the one who opened the door.

Agent John Sheppard walked in, the plastic earpiece behind his ear. "The president asked me to bring you four back to the White House."

Jacob stiffened. He wasn't sure he was going to get used to this new version of his mother. The woman who was apparently more politician than scientist. That was going to take more getting used to than the fact that she'd married some guy he'd never heard of.

Grace squeezed Trevor's hand, the tears barely dry on her face.

Jacob felt a pang of guilt. It was all his fault. If he hadn't tinkered with his sister's car, they wouldn't have gone back in time to Giza. If they hadn't gone to Giza, they wouldn't have messed up the timeline.

Unexpectedly, Nicole caught his eye from across the room. She offered him a strengthening smile. A warm feeling spread in his chest, but he looked away. Now wasn't the time to indulge in a fantasy which would never come true.

They were friends. That's all they would ever be.

Grace cleared her throat. "Do you know what she wants us to do at the White House?"

Sheppard didn't blink. "That's above my pay grade, ma'am."

Jacob studied the man, his black hair sticking up almost like he had a perpetual case of bedhead. "How long until we have to be there?"

Trevor stood. "This isn't the kind of thing you get to just wait around for. The president says she needs to see you. You get in the car and go."

Sheppard turned a look of begrudging respect to Trevor. "We're ready to take you now."

Jacob's eyes drifted to his sister, who steeled herself for the experience. She took Trevor's hand as she stood. "Ready as I'll ever be."

Nicole stole his attention next. "What the hell? Might as well figure this whole thing out."

All eyes turned to Jacob, who shrugged. "Sounds like we don't get much of a choice. Might as well get it over with."

At least President Carter wasn't going to look at him like he'd screwed up again.

As they fell in line behind the secret service, he was surprised when a slender hand made its way into his. Nicole smiled up at him as they walked.

Something about that small gesture made him stand a little taller.

As they walked into the Oval Office, Nicole tensed beside him. She didn't say the word, but she didn't have to.

For all the things Jacob had already seen changed, he was perhaps the least prepared for Daniel Jackson's transformation. The archaeologist, or at least the man who had once been an archaeologist, was dressed in an expensive gray suit.

He reached out a hand to the four newcomers. "Dr. Daniel Jackson of Conspiracies and Mysteries."

Jacob shook his hand, and when he removed it again, he found a business card. Daniel Jackson, Ph.D. Host. Conspiracies and Mysteries Podcast.

Nicole looked almost sick at this version of her father. "Podcast host?"

The man grinned. "And executive producer. You must be a new listener."

Before Nicole could say anything, Jacob just offered the man a thin smile. "You could say that."

From across the room, a man who looked virtually identical to Jacob's father rolled his eyes. "Give it a rest, will ya? You're not here to get more listeners for your conspiracy theory propaganda."

Jacob stiffened as Jack O'Neill, retired USAF, walked up to him. "So, you're the kid who's got my DNA, huh? I don't see it." He pointed back at the president. "Her, on the other hand, there's no mistaking you're her kid."

Jacob swallowed, but Nicole saved him from having to answer. "You'd be surprised just how similar he is to his dad. He may look like his mom. Might even have her smarts, but he is his father's son through and through."

The words were strangely touching as Jacob looked at her. He mouthed a quick thank you.

She just squeezed his hand as her eyes darted back across the room to the alternate version of her father.

President Carter cleared her throat from where she stood, leaning against the polished wooden desk at the top of the room. "I was debating whether I wanted to have all of us in the same room or not, but I think we'll streamline this discussion if we're all in the same place."

Daniel looked up at her. "What about Catherine Langford? I was really looking forward to meeting her."

"Looking forward to interviewing her, more like," Jack murmured under his breath.

Daniel looked over at Jack. "Hey, I have to make a living. Same as anybody else."

Jack crossed his arms. "Yeah, but you're a joke. Even you can't pretend you're not."

Daniel stiffened as if he was ready to fight with the retired colonel. "Well, we can't all be highly decorated, retired, soldiers."

"Boys." Samantha Carter's voice was sharp, and the whole room quieted. "We seem to have drifted from the point. It would appear that something has changed our timeline. According to our friends here, we are the ones who are at the epicenter of the change. That's why we're all here."

Jacob shifted under the weight of Dr. Jackson's gaze.

"Who exactly are they?"

President Carter took a sharp breath as her hands gripped the edge of the desk, looking more like Jacob's mother than she had since they'd met her yesterday. Her eyes met his, and Jacob could almost see the struggle in her expression. Like she was having trouble reconciling what the DNA test told her with her own experiences.

Despite the fact that she wasn't actually his mother, Jacob couldn't stay silent. "We're your kids."

Daniel's eyes widened. "I'm sorry?"

"Well, more accurately, Jacob and I are their kids," Grace pointed at the president and at the colonel, "and Nicole is your kid."

Jacob turned an apologetic look to Nicole. "I'm sorry, Nic."

Nicole just flashed a dazzling smile at her father's look-a-like. "Hey, no skin off my nose. What do I care that my mom's probably still a goa'uld?"

Jacob flinched. He hadn't thought about Vala, except to deduce that she was probably still galavanting around the galaxy. Teal'c was likely still the First Prime of Apophis, too.

Daniel's brow furrowed. "Goa'uld?"

He looked at the president, and she shrugged as if she didn't know any more than he did.

Nicole pulled her hand out of Jacob's and turned to look at one of the displays in the office. His gaze followed her, hoping to see whatever it was that she was trying not to let show.

President Carter pressed a button on the intercom on her desk. "Send her in."

She looked at the rest of the group. "Given the fact that this is a historical matter, I've invited Dr. Sarah Gardner from the Smithsonian Institute to share her research."

She nodded to Dr. Jackson. "Her specialty is Egyptology. Same as you."

The woman with the blonde, curly ponytail walked into the room with a tablet in one hand. Then, she pressed the boxy spectacles a little higher up the bridge of her nose so she could see more clearly. "Madam President, it's an honor to meet you."

Her expression tightened when she caught sight of the other archaeologist. "Daniel..."

Jack's eyebrows tweaked upward. "Daniel?"

Daniel shot Jack a look as if to tell him not to say a word. "Sarah."

"Dr. Gardner, if you wouldn't mind." The president waved up to the screen at the front of the room.

"Oh, right. Of course." Her lilting English accent and her bright smile made Jacob wonder if Daniel Jackson was a closet anglophile in this world. Maybe he just liked women with accents and big smiles.

Sarah flipped through some notes she apparently had on her tablet. "My department was contacted about the history of the Egyptian Ring and how it tied into the Langford family history. Unfortunately, Catherine Langford passed away about ten years ago. It took some doing, but I got digital access to her journals from her daughter. They also gave me access to her father's notes on the dig he was at in Giza, 1928."

The president's blue gaze landed on Jacob in a way it didn't land on anyone else. More frequently, too. Like the woman couldn't imagine having had a child.

That sent a shudder down Jacob's spine. There were some days he was sure his mother regretted that he'd been born. Now, in a way, she had her dream come true.

"You thought that year had significance." The president's gaze didn't stray from Jacob's.

Instead of shifting under the weight of it, he just nodded. "In our timeline, it did."

Dr. Gardner looked from Jacob to the president. "Timeline?"

Trevor clasped his hands behind his back, his posture military straight. "Dr. Langford found a device in Giza. Or, at least, he should have."

Dr. Gardner apparently got the hint, and turned back to her presentation. She gave a flick of her wrist, and the image that had apparently been on her tablet appeared on the screen. "This ring was found on an archaeological dig in Giza in 1928. Paul Langford claims that he headed up the dig that found the device in his journal, but every official document out of Egyptian museums claim that the ring was found by a man named Ahmed Hassan."

Images of both men appeared on the screen.

Jacob stiffened when he recognized the image of Ahmed Hassan, or at least, when it seemed to tickle the back of his mind. If Mr. Hassan was the person Jacob was thinking of, he hadn't been much older than Jacob himself. A boy, really, in comparison with the others.

Trevor cocked his head to the side. "Egyptian museums?"

Dr. Gardner nodded as she put up a slide of a smaller device with constellations on the keys around an orange orb. "Everything at the dig site, including this device which was discovered several years later, was taken to the government and eventually made its way as a full-time exhibit at the National Egyptian Museum of History and Culture."

Jacob's eyes widened. "The what now?"

Dr. Gardner stared blankly at him. "It's just what it says it is."

Jacob didn't claim to be the biggest history nerd, but he didn't think there'd ever been such a museum in his timeline.

Grace leaned forward. "No one ever tried to press those constellations and then press the orb in the center?"

Dr. Gardner flicked her wrist again, and another photo appeared on the screen. "There was a test in 1934, but Mr. Hassan disappeared on the other side of the ring. He was never seen or heard from again. The Egyptian government seems to have shut down any other experiments."

Daniel stood, getting closer to the screen. "Go back a couple pictures."

Nicole pivoted to face her father. "What do you see?"

Daniel looked over his shoulder as if Nicole's voice was unexpected. Then, he moved back slightly, his expression disturbed the young woman. He motioned to the screen, and the coverstone of the ring. "They buried it. They overthrew Ra, and buried the ring so he couldn't come back." His fingers hovered over the photo. "The word they used was stargate. I think it's a transportation device."

He turned back to Jacob, Grace, Trevor, and even stole a glance at Nicole. "Does that mean anything to you?"

Dr. Sarah Gardner cleared her throat. "Just because you've made a fortune on peddling lies that the pyramids were landing pads for alien spacecraft doesn't mean your translation is accurate." She turned to the president. "Academics believe that this word is more metaphorical than literal. Pyramids were a way to transport the soul to the afterlife. The term stargate could merely be a depiction of this phenomenon."

The president's face was placid as if she was reserving judgment before she turned to Jacob and his companions. "You seem to know what this device does. What do you think? Literal or metaphorical stargate?"

Jack cleared his throat from across the room. "My guess is that it's literal."

The president almost scowled as she looked at him. "Oh, and why's that?"

"Why else would a special ops colonel and a conspiracy theorist work with a rocket scientist?"

"Theoretical astrophysicist," Grace corrected, absently.

The man who had become their father in another timeline just raised an eyebrow as he studied Grace. "Right, and that's different from a rocket scientist how?"

President Carter stood and took a step closer to the group. "That's not important right now, Colonel. Still, you make a compelling argument, especially since I believe I heard that the three of us worked with an alien. His name was Teak?"

"Teal'c." All four of them corrected her, almost in unison.

"T-E-A-L-Apostrophe-C."

The president raised an eyebrow as if to make a mental note of the spelling to help in the future.

"These goa'uld you were talking about? Are they aliens, too?" Daniel asked as he looked at Nicole.

She nodded. "Parasites that wrap around the brainstem and take control of their hosts. Like a separate personality that controls the body."

Jack studied Nicole. "And Teal'c is one of these goa'uld?"

"No." Jacob's response was quick, faster than he'd expected. "He's Jaffa. The slave army of the goa'uld. They worshipped the goa'uld as their gods."

Grace cleared her throat. "Well, they probably still worship the goa'uld as their gods."

"Excuse me?"

Trevor nodded. "SG-1 never existed, so the system lords were probably never overthrown."

President Carter's brow furrowed. "System lords?"

Grace waved her hand to grab everyone's attention. "I think we're straying away from the main topic here. In 1928, something changed. In our timeline, Paul Langford was afforded the credit of finding the stargate, and it ended up in the hands of the US government. Catherine Langford, who believed in her father's research, was the champion for getting the ring studied. Captain Samantha Carter's team studied the gate for two years before Dr. Daniel Jackson was able to make it work. Colonel Jack O'Neill took a team through the gate to a planet called Abydos."

Trevor picked up where she left off. "They sent a Mark III nuclear warhead up to Ra's ship. That started a war between Earth and the goa'uld that ended nearly ten years later. The demise of the system lords ended an oppression in the Milky Way galaxy that had been going on for millennia. One that the ancient Egyptians had managed to overthrow early enough in Earth's history that by the time the goa'uld came back, we were able to defeat them."

Jacob eyed the woman who should have been his mother. "Teal'c's people were just one of many peoples who are still living as slaves because we changed history."

President Samantha Carter shifted. "I'm taking that under consideration, Jacob."

The look she leveled at him was the same look he used to get from his mother when he was younger and would ask to play basketball before his homework was through. Still, this woman wasn't his mother. She may be the president of the United States, but she wasn't his mother. "Yeah, well, before you give us some crap about how you're only responsible for the people of this timeline—"

She raised an eyebrow as if she wasn't used to this kind of attitude from anyone in the Oval Office.

Jacob didn't let that stop him. "Just remember that you have a chance to really change things. My mom always said that the future was what we make of it, and she has done a hell of a lot more to change things for the better than you ever will in this office if you turn your back on the rest of the galaxy."

It was a little embarrassing when he realized that his eyes were moistening with the beginning of tears.

Grace gave him a smile like she understood what he was going through. Like the way he'd tried to comfort her in the tent back in Giza when she and Trevor had that big fight about revealing who she was.

"I get that in another timeline, she's your mom, kid, but right now, she's the president. You should give her a little more respect."

The president eyed Jack as if she hadn't expected that statement. "What? Like your suggestion that my husband's the one pulling the strings?"

The atmosphere of the whole room grew tense.

Jack sighed as he turned back to her. "I didn't mean to say that's how it really was. I just suggested some people might assume that's how it was based on how things went with your election. All due respect, Madam President, but there's a very big difference between those two things."

Dr. Sarah Gardner cleared her throat. "Forgive me for the interruption, but Catherine Langford wrote extensively about why she was against the space program. This idea of alien life infiltrating earth was certainly one of her concerns."

Grace's head snapped up. "It was?"

"Did she give any indication why she felt that way?"

Dr. Gardner's eyes scanned something on her tablet. "It appeared that four visitors arrived at her father's dig. One of them was ill. Maybe injured. It's unclear. While she was recovering, the young Catherine Langford was apparently doing something, but she overheard a conversation. This visitor admitted to being an alien, that she was afraid of how people would respond. Shortly afterward, there was an uprising in the camp, and the artifact was taken by the Egyptian government. It appears that Dr. Langford always believed that the alien visitors had somehow been responsible for that."

"We didn't even know there was an uprising."

Dr. Gardner's eyebrow shot up. "You—you were the visitors?"

Jacob was quick to come to his sister's defense. "We're not aliens, if that's what you think."

The president's gaze fell to Grace.

Jacob remembered his DNA test. Nausea churned in his stomach. If Grace's DNA had been tested—

He waited for the president to call his sister out in front of the group. The presidential blonde caught Jacob's expression, then gave a tiny shake of her head. Like a little nonverbal answer to his question.

For the first time since he'd come to this alternate timeline, there was a flicker of hope in his chest. Maybe the president wasn't so different from his mom after all... And maybe that wasn't such a bad thing after all.