AU: SG-1 hunker down in the outpost awaiting Anubis when the Ancient-infused Jack reveals something unexpected...
Chapter 23: Vitae novus… tempus reparare
Thursday, 18th March 2004 – 1700 hours New Zealand Daylight Time – Ancient Outpost – Daniel Jackson
Watching Jack behave in the same dead-eyed pattern as a few years ago wasn't any easier, despite him having forward knowledge from a time that no one here had lived through. Neither was the waiting for an impending attack. We had arrived at the Antarctic outpost 9:00am local time – give or take a few minutes – after almost 49 hours of there and back travel to a dead planet, only to discover that this place wasn't anymore Atlantis than the multitude of archaeological digs around the world claiming to be the fabled sunken city.
Another eight hours on top of those two days watching my friend alternate between sitting in the control chair, walking around the sparse foyer, walking in to and out of a small vestibule that had rows of empty glass cylinders filled with some kind of greenish viscous liquid that Teal'c had dubbed 'kolto tanks', and standing in one spot staring at nothing and no one before sitting back in the chair pulling up star map after star map, each one with a red group of dots getting closer and closer to its objective.
Us.
Fifty-seven hours – less the fifteen or so hours of broken sleep that I had managed to get – of watching my friend become less and less himself and more of… whatever he was becoming, knowing that at the end of it all, he would be put into stasis – or so Sam had told him – but only if there was enough of the man left to know what he had to do because he was the only one who could activate the pod. We had radioed through the minute the ice was broken since we weren't sure if a radio signal could travel through easily a mile of the thick continental iceshelf we were underneath. The hole left by Jack's beam allowed the ice-cold atmosphere into the room that had been warmish when we arrived. Despite the central warming firing up once the battery was installed – I wasn't going to call it central heating, there was no heat – we were still borderline freezing. Which sucked because all we could do was wait. Wait for Anubis, wait for the firefight and hope that Jack survived long enough to get us out of it.
Seven hours to go if I had read the flashing Ancient numbers on the star map correctly.
"Clavia vitae novus." Jack said out loud, making me turn and watch him move his hands and fingers in the gel pads on the hand rests of the chair. Rather than the typical red dot adorned star maps, the overhead display showed a Leonardo Da Vinci style drawing of a human body – only more technical – along with a typical image of a DNA chain. It looked like any DNA strand really – Charlie, me, Sam – well maybe not her, but then again, I wasn't a molecular biologist, so I had no hope of knowing how the Naquadah had modified her DNA. More so than the images, it was the words he said that piqued my curiosity.
"What did he say?" Charlie asked, his approach to Jack slow and careful, almost mechanical as if he was expecting something to jump out at him. If he gripped his P-90 any harder, his knuckles would turn white. Looking again, I noticed I was wrong, they were already white which would not help when the fight was upon us later.
"Key to a new life, or something like that." I replied, equally stunned. Was he trying to tell us how to save him? He closed his eyes and manipulated the chair controls on one side, the gel pad lighting up blue and then on the other side, the gel pad lighting up red.
"A new life?" Charlie repeated with a look of confusion on his face.
"Perhaps he seeks a way to free his mind." Teal'c offered. Shrugging while raising my eyebrows and blowing out a breath through my pursed lips, I approached the side of the chair and placed my hand on my friend's bicep hoping that he would know I was there.
"Jack? What do you mean? What are you trying to tell us?" I asked, fighting not to let the choking sound of pent-up tears take up residence in my voice. All that would do is make everyone else focus on the fact that these were possibly the last few hours of life for our friend and commander.
"Vitae novus… tempus reparare." He said, then started moving both hands making the gel pads turn a kind of purply-pink colour while the DNA image rotated, spun around, and moved to the centre of Jack's overhead display replacing the human body image. A sudden chill passed through my body. While I had not been there in person, I had seen what Nirrti did to those people – most notably what she did to Sam – in that clandestine lab of hers. Watching that thing concertinaing Sam's DNA open, removing parts, then closing it again only to spin it and repeat that same action multiple times all while she stood in the lit-up cylinder screaming in pain had almost been enough for me to demand that the Others let me save her. To see my friend manipulating a chain of DNA in the same manner made me realise how much knowledge he had access to, and how much power went with that knowledge. It was unthinkable that he could be like the Go'auld, even though I knew that strand did not belong to anyone of us, and I would like to think that he wasn't considering doing anything to himself.
"Daniel Jackson?"
"Yeah, I know Teal'c. I know." I replied to the large man without having to hear the rest of his question. I could feel his eyes on me, so I turned and fixed my eyes on him. "One of the first memories I retrieved after coming back was of Sam dying in that dungeon." I answered his unasked question then took in a deep breath. "Oma visits when I meditate. It seems to be the only place we can converse without her being watched by the Others." I explained to my stoic friend.
"Daniel." Charlie said suddenly, his eyes wide and staring. Following his line of vision, I found the overhead display filled with a fast-moving slide show of images. All of them were of Sam. Not Samantha, but Sam. All of them from Jack's point of view. Faster and faster they moved, conveying a depth of sadness, love lost, longing, and sometimes heart shattering pain, though how Jack had managed to inject his feelings into images, I didn't know.
"Vitae novus… tempus reparare." Jack repeated, his voice still as barren as it had been for the last two days. All at once, the pictures disappeared, replaced by a strand of… something. It was long and thin, light in colour to the point of translucency, one end slightly frayed. Zooming in closer and closer, that strand became hundreds, then thousands of cells, each cell turning into millions of what my ill-experienced mind suspected were genomes. Part of a DNA chain. Suddenly it all came together.
"Holy shit!" I breathed. "That… that was a strand of blonde hair." The sound almost a whisper as I stared at the screen, then at Jack, then at the screen now showing all those genomes dancing around each other as they grew smaller to become cells once again. Multiplying. They were multiplying at a rapid rate. Eventually, the glob of cells took shape into that of a human embryo, then a foetus and before long an infant child just like in the pictures from books on human reproduction.
"What the hell?" Charlie murmured from beside me.
"A human child." Teal'c stated from my other side with an honest to goodness look of shock on his face that I could see in my periphery.
"It's still growing." I stated the obvious when the pint-sized human continued to get larger in the face of its stunned audience. It couldn't be real, it was growing too fast, though why Jack would be running a simulation like this, I didn't know. Maybe it was his way of experiencing his planned child with Samantha since he wouldn't be there for almost half of it. Assuming we could convince her to go ahead in his absence.
"Indeed." Teal'c replied.
When there were no more words from Jack and the weird Ancient version of The Sims video game he was playing on his display was no longer captivating, we gravitated one by one to the part of the compound where our makeshift camp had been setup. I longed for something to do, something to translate. I had hoped to find some Ancient texts or tablets here, but the place was as barren of the written word as the ruins of the Great Library of Alexandria after it had burned down.
"Perhaps he seeks to grow Lieutenant Colonel Carter a new body in the kolto." Teal'c stated drily while dealing a round of Black Jack. Charlie laughed and shook his head.
"It's a computer simulation, Teal'c. Kolto tanks aren't real." I added because Charlie was still choking on his laughter. "Hit me." Teal'c pulled a face as he dealt me another card to go with my Queen of Spades and Two of Hearts. Ten of Diamonds. "Crap. Bust." I complained as I threw my hand down.
Charlie chuckled as he declined a card revealing his hand that added to twenty. "I dunno, Jackson. Those green ooze filled things in there kinda prove you wrong." He added making Teal'c nod in his direction with an approximation of a smile.
"Don't encourage him, Charlie. Jack does that enough for the team." I replied then watched the destitute looks reappear on their faces as they always did when we talked about Jack as if he weren't a vessel for the Ancient knowledge that we hoped would save our lives and our planet from destruction.
It must have been at least three hours later when something happened. Three hours of us sitting in almost silence, playing cards alternating between different games while we routinely visually checked on Jack. He was still in the same position, still watching the image of his created human – now a small child – that wasn't real or the star map with those annoyingly slow red dots of doom. He had been awake for over 50 hours without so much as a falter in his movements or his focus, his last fitful sleep being somewhere between Earth and Praclarush Taonas. Sooner or later, his human body would fail, just like mine had two years ago. I wondered if Oma were here somewhere waiting to offer him the chance to ascend like she did with me.
That thing that happened? Jack moved.
When he disconnected his hands from the gel pads and stood up, we scrambled to follow. It had become a habit to see where he was going, hoping that he would reveal a room with some insightful writings, maybe another computer with more information. Something. Anything to keep me occupied because there were only so games of Poker, or Gin Rummy I could play after we gave away playing Black Jack since that game revolved around 'Jack' and we were all too close the edge of losing our friend that we did not want a reminder in the form of something that was supposed to be entertaining.
"Jack!" I called out as I leapt to my feet and dashed after him to that same small room with Teal'c's Star Wars-esque 'kolto tanks' that I had seen him venture into and come out of several times since he arrived. When I caught up, I found him looking up with a kind of beatific smile on his face. Turning my head, I saw what it was that had piqued his interest. It would suffice to say that I was speechless though my mouth was open.
"Vitae novus…" He said again, then added, "Tempus reparare."
"Oh my…" I breathed, suddenly realising what it was he had been saying when he started this little task, ah experiment… hell I didn't know what to call it. There, in that tank, was a young girl, maybe 12 or 13 years old. She would be tall when she grew up, and blonde, and so very like the image of Sam Carter. If her eyes were open, I knew they would be as blue as the sky on a warm summer's day. A phrase I had heard an inebriated Jack use to describe his Major's eyes one night many years ago. It felt almost voyeuristic to be staring at the naked form of my sister by choice, especially since she was not more than a child, in every sense of the word. Considering she had grown from an infant in three hours, I figured by the time Anubis arrived, she would be a young adult. How could I tell she was still incubating? Well, the Ancient numbers flashing on the bottom centre of the pod looked similar to that on a microwave, and I was watching her change – albeit slowly – before my eyes. Hair getting longer, her face losing the soft youthfulness edging towards the defined almond shape, other things getting larger. It really was disconcerting and awe inspiring all at the same time.
"Ego deserde Asgard asordo." Jack said, then took a step forward and placed his hand over the glass where her foot was suspended in the green goop just as Charlie and Teal'c came through the open doorway.
"Daniel! What the… whoa!" Charlie started then stopped, coming to a halt both figuratively and literally just on the inside of the room entrance.
"It's Sam. It's a new life." I looked from Charlie to my friend who was still smiling, the smile he only ever used for her when he thought she wasn't looking. "You want to fix time, or at least repair it by giving more time to Sam."
"Etium. Tempus plus." He agreed, then looked at us. Charlie hadn't managed to form anymore words since the noise he made when he first stepped into the room. Teal'c merely wore his signature all-knowing grin as he appraised Jack with approval. "Dormata." Jack ordered with a jerk of his chin in the direction of our little camp.
"What about you?" I queried, giving him a solid stare. He stared back and slightly squinted his eyes the way he always did when we questioned one of his orders. For a moment, I thought my friend was back until all expression dropped from his face and he walked mechanically back to the chair, stepping up on the dais and taking his place once again with the star map overhead.
Look back to the young girl, it occurred to me that she would need us to protect her until the Asgard arrived. I turned back to Teal'c and Charlie, "Umm, just so we are on the same page here. I don't think we should say anything about her." I said motioning to the woman in the tank. "If Kinsey finds out…"
"Samantha Carter's clone shall remain between us." Teal'c interrupted, looking between Charlie and I receiving a solid nod back from Charlie.
"Won't say a word." Charlie agreed.
"Dormata!" Jack ordered again, this time from his chair, punctuating it with a command to close the door. I had to move quickly to avoid being closed inside. The mechanical sound of a lock clicking into place made it final. We would not be allowed back in there.
"Right." I muttered, "C'mon, better do as he says." I said quietly to the others. I was glad see he still had a sense of humour under the layers of Ancient download, though it wasn't the same. For the first time in forever, I found myself missing the obnoxiously dry, dumb-as-boots Colonel O'Neill and everything that went with that false persona. I missed the verbal tennis matches and him pretending he didn't understand, or didn't care, when in truth, he took it all in.
"What does 'dorcarta' mean, Daniel?" Charlie asked, trying to be like Jack. I smiled, thankful for his efforts, but it wasn't the same. I appreciated him trying though.
"Dormata." I corrected.
"Sleep. Major Kawalsky." Teal'c replied in his baritone voice.
"How the hell do you know that?" Charlie griped as we walked as a unit over to where we had laid out our sleeping bags.
"O'Neill and I spent many months trapped in a time loop." Teal'c replied as we passed the chair, taking the liberty of looking at our commander for what was likely one last time before the proverbial excrement hit the fan. The red flashing Ancient numbers signalled that we had less than four hours before the first wave arrived.
"Oh yeah. I heard about that." Charlie snickered, ignoring the turmoil that was plaguing me. "Did you really play golf through the Gate?" He asked, making me roll my eyes. If I had to listen to that story one more time, I would scream. The fact that Jack and Teal'c knew Ancient better than I did yet always managed to play dumb whenever an artefact or some ruins were found annoyed the ever-living daylights out of me. Jack's tendency to act less intelligent had rubbed off onto our stoic Jaffa over the last seven years.
"That, and when Jack said 'dormata' earlier when pointing to the pods, I said it meant sleep." I added giving Teal'c a look of borderline derision making him smile broader. Shaking my head as we arrived at our cold destination, I settled down as best I could then tucked my arm under my head as a pillow – because there was no way I was taking my jacket off – I closed my eyes hoping to get some rest before the potential end of the world.
A/N: Ancient translations have been taken from the Stargate Fandom Wiki where available, otherwise I have used Latin (unfortunately I am not Daniel Jackson).
"Clavia vitae novus" - Key to a new life
"Vitae novus… tempus reparare" - A new life... repair time.
"Ego deserde Asgard asordo" - I need/require Asgard assistance/help
"Etium. Tempus plus" - Yes. More time.