TITLE: When it happened
AUTHOR: Christian
EMAIL: lonz@d.n-r-w.de
CATEGORY: AU, Humor
SPOILERS: Point of View and some others
SEASON/SEQUEL: Season 3
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Is there a life after Stargate?
STATUS: complete
Home: Stargate Atlantis Pandora
DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. We have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the authors. Not to be archived without permission of the authors.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to Karen Cafaro for beta-reading this and making it readable for the english speaking audience. I would also like to dedicate this story to her - with her stories she woke my interest in writing more romantic and personal fanfic (If you haven't read her stories "Another Live" and "Another Live 2" yet, DO IT NOW!!!).
When it happened
"Als es passierte
stand die Sonne schon hoch am Himmel.
Der Nachmittag brachte eine Antwort, und die Erlösung.
Wieder zuhause aus der dunklen, fremden Zukunft
Wieder zuhause, denn er war nicht fortgegangen."
- Paula, Als es passierte
It all started when I watched the episode "Point of View" for the thirteenth time. Like all the twelve times before I hung in front of the TV and whispered every single word with the actors: "What does this mean to you, this twin number?" - "You got a few hours time?" - "Well, yes, okay!" - "Uh, that WAS the answer." - "Oh, ah, yes ..." - "Good night, Sir." - "Good night, Major."
Afterwards, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror trying to stare myself down. My mirror image stared back at me with equal determination, challenging me. What reality are YOU in? I held out my right hand. My mirror image did the same - with his left hand. When we touched each other, nothing happened - of course not.
When I woke up in my bed later that day, I did not know how I got there. Still tired, I stood up and looked onto my watch. I had slept for two hours. Still groggy, I staggered into the living room, and saw it at once. My Stargate collection was gone!
Had I been knocked unconcious by a burglar who stole my most precious belongings? No, impossible. I had stood in front of a mirror, which made it quite difficult to get behind me unnoticed. Besides, what kind of burglar would steal my Stargate collection and leave the first three seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation? And take my Amanda Tapping poster from the wall to replace it with a Star Trek poster? I scratched my forehead in disbelief. Something was really wrong here!
The next station was my computer. There were some notices missing that I had written on the side of the monitor, and when I saw the startup screen, I was in shock: Who the hell had replaced the SG logo with a Star Trek logo? But the worst was still to come: All files which were connected with Stargate one way or the other weren't there any more! It was as if the topic Stargate had been deleted from my computer completely. Angrily I looked around and expected some Hidden Camera-guy to step into my room any time. He would have ended at the wrong side of my fist in no time!
When I logged onto the internet I found out that even my Stargate bookmarks had been deleted. I couldn't believe it! So I had to enter manually: "http://www.stargatesg-1.com" and after some time I got the reply: "The requested URL could not be retrieved". What the ...? I reentered the adress. I got the same reply. Was the showtime server down? I sighed and entered the second adress I still had in mind: "http://pluto.spaceports.com/~amanda". Again the browser told me without mercy: "The requested URL could not be retrieved".
There was a massive headache building up slowly in my head. The bookmark for the next adress was still there: "http://www.yahoo.com". And really - this time the browser recognised the adress. I entered "Stargate" and began the search. A few seconds later I received some links. But none of them was regarding to the series or the movie. All right, the next keyword was "Stargate SG1". The answer war: "Sorry, no results were found". The same happened with the keywords "Richard Dean Anderson", "Amanda Tapping", "Michael Shanks" and "Christopher Judge". In the meantime I turned paler and paler and made myself a strong coffee - coffee did luckily still exist in this reality.
Strengthened by this I turned back to my browser and keeped bombarding it. The next keyword was really mean - I had to congratulate myself. It was "MacGyver".
"Sorry, no results were found"
The headache came back with full force. Somebody or something had completely wiped out the topic Stargate and everything regarding to it. The only thing that was left was my memory. It was almost as if I were stranded in an ...
I jumped onto my feet and run into the bathroom. There I stood in front of the mirror and shouted at my mirror image: "Let me out of this living hell at once!" I touched the mirror again and again, and if somebody had watched me in that moment, they would have put me in the mad-house without hesitation. Completely worn out and almost unable to hold back my tears any longer I sat back in front of my computer. With an aching heart I entered one last keyword: "Samantha Carter".
And one single link appeared: "Samantha Carter, Dr., MIT, astrophysic research laboratory results". With trembling hands I clicked onto the link and came to a really ugly page with no graphic layout and lots of text of which I understood only one of ten words. Now I was really crying. I had found her at last! The mirror had taken an illusion away from me and given me the reality.
That dreams should continue to be dreams I didn't realise back then. Or I just ignored the warning voice in the back of my head. It came back soon enough to haunt me even louder.
***
The taxi driver was quite surprised when I told him the address: Cheyenne Mountain Facility. But when I offered him a big tip he departed without hesitation. My heart was beating hard and I tried to control my whirling thoughs.
Right after the incident with the mirror I had taken a week off and bought myself a plane ticket to Denver. I didn't buy a return ticket. I did not planed to return home. In Denver I met an old friend from the fandom - not the Stargate-fandom of course, as he seemed to be a trekki now. We talked about Kirk and Spock for a whole day, and on the next day I took the train to Colorado Springs. I had decided not to inform my friend about my plans. He wouldn't have believed me anyway.
I was planning to just show up in front of the gate at the base and ask to be brought to the Stargate Center. When Hathor tried it, it worked out well. Unfortunately, I did not posess her powers. I swallowed hard. The reporter had been run over by them. Like O'Neill, I NEVER believed in the story about the accident.
Far too quickly we had reached the entry of the Mountain Facility and I still had no plan. I paid the taxi driver and sent him back to the city. This way, there was no place left to retreat and, with a bad feeling in my gut, I stepped up to the entrance. The guard gave me a friendly greeting. "Hello, what can I do for you?"
"I have to talk with General Hammond."
The guard threw me a suspicious look: "Please identify yourself, Sir."
I didn't know what else to do, so I gave him my passport.
"German, huh? You're sure to you're at the right place here? This is a restricted military area."
"I really need to talk with the General."
"I cannot let you pass. Please go to our office in Colorado ..."
"It is about the Stargate." There I had said it. All my insides contracted and I expected to get shot any time.
"Please wait here!" the guard ordered me and whispered into his radio set. His face grew darker and darker. He would shoot me any time now.
"Sir, I have to temporarily arrest you. Please don't resist or I'll have to use force."
I did not resist. Ten minutes later I found myself in a small lonely underground cell and listened to my inner voice for the first time. What the hell had driven me to just walk in here? What should I tell them? "Hey, Guys, I've seen all the episodes. I'm your greatest fan! Is this the Stargate? May I touch it? When is the next mission scheduled? May I come with you? I won't touch anything, promise."
By the way, in what season did I land? In the third? Or already in the fourth? Did I have to take care not to change the course of events? Or was I far behind the actual happenings - I had only heard some wild rumor about the fourth season yet.
Whilst I was thinking about that, suddenly the door opened - my heart was about jumping right out of my throat - but it was just a faceless guy who introduced himself as Lieutenant Waterson and made himself comfortable at the other side of the big metal table. He placed a recorder on the table and turned it on. Then he leaned back: "Well, Mister, you tell me."
"Uh, tell you what?"
"Well, some weird fantasies of one kind or the other have led you here, haven't they? So please tell me about them! By the way, your English is pretty good, there's almost no German accent in it."
Weird fantasies? So THAT's way they wanted to handle it! I grinned fiercely. Well, either I just imagined all of this and then nothing would save me from being imprisoned in the next asylum. Or it was all real. Then I would scare the wits out of this Lieutenant.
"I know about the Stargate", I began with a dark voice.
"What is that - the Stargate?"
"A large circular ring, roughly 20 feet in diameter, made of the quartzite metal element Naquadah. Was found in Egypt in the early twentieth century and consists of two rings, one outer stationary piece, and one rotating inner ring, engraved with 39 symbols representing star constellations. With a valid glyph sequence encoded, and given a neutrino energy burst, the gate opens an artificial worm-hole to a remote Stargate. A valid code consists of seven symbols, six for the target planet's coordinates and one for the point of origin. I can write down some sequences for you. The one for Chulak for example. When the wormhole to be established gets caught near a solar flare by a nearby star, it can inadvertantly become a time machine - and then you're really in trouble."
I had to congratulate the Lieutenant for keeping up his relaxed composure. It was almost as if the whole statement hadn't touched him at all. That's why I brought in the information about the time machine - he probably didn't know about that himself. This last information made the corners of his mouth twitch for a while before he regained control over his body functions.
"That's really an interesting story. Why don't you write a book about it?"
"I would - but it would always feel like stealing someone elses intellectual property. Even though it's all real - here."
"What do you mean with ‚here'?"
"Well, in this reality." I had no reason to lie to him.
"You mean you suffer from a loss of reality?
"Kind of. I'm in fact coming from an alternate universe. You know - the mirror number." I twinkled an eye at him conspiratorialy.
The Lieutenant stood up: "All right, we'll end the first session here. I'll come back to you later." He left the room in a hurry.
Although I could not detect a camera, I was sure that in another room of the base a group of people were looking at my image on a monitor, asking themselves what this was all about. They surely wouldn't send me any more Lieutenants. Happily, I leaned back and started to sing: "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream ..."
***
Life is but a dream!
I've been here now for about four months. At first they didn't know what to do with me, but then I got assigned as a service technican to the supercomputer which controls the Stargate. I'm nothing more than an unimportant employee who dreams to step trough the Stargate one day - it has become a more realistic prospect than ever before. And I'm near to her. Samantha Carter is very different from what I had imagined her to be like. Much more real and vulnerable. Less perfect. I found out, that I like her - nothing more and nothing less. I hope she will get her Jack at last. In the meantime I became engaged to a lovely Airforce Lieutenant who's serving with SG-6. Reality has finally caught up with me.
Now everything can happen.