Work Text:
1997
Mission report from P3X-376, excerpt
When interviewed, locals indicated that a tall man with curly brown hair, wearing strange clothes that included a long, multi-colored scarf; and a violent female associate in leather skins arrived on their planet and helped them defeat the Goa’uld Apophis and his guards. Locals don’t know how these two strangers arrived—apparently not through the Gate—nor did they catch their full names (man introduced himself as a doctor; woman was Leela something). Locals could not explain how these two people defeated Apophis without more help. “Words and magical devices” were all they would say. Suggest SGC keeps an eye out for these two individuals, see if they would be willing to help us in the fight against the Goa’uld.
*
1998
Transcript from security camera footage, interrogation # 1998_06_23_DOCTOR_c
O’NEILL, COL. JACK: How did you find out about this place?
DOCTOR [no name provided]: Bright lights in the sky, strange readings from numerous amateurs on their telescopes, all at the same time a few months ago? Did you think nobody would notice? [pause] Look. I have no memory about who I am, where I came from, why I’m here. But I know I don’t belong here, and I think—I think you can help me.
O’NEILL: [snort] Look, mister, we’ve had more quacks and loonies showing up knocking at our front door than—than times you’ve been asked if you’re any relation to Oscar Wilde.
DOCTOR: Oh, Wilde, I met him, lovely man, very witty.
O’NEILL: Yeah…sure. Why the hell should we tell you anything?
JACKSON, DANIEL: Jack, you heard what Dr. Fraiser said about his cardiovascular system, his DNA, practically everything about him—
O’NEILL: Daniel, you’re not helping.
JACKSON: Maybe we should trust him, that’s all I’m saying.
DOCTOR: I think you should, if my opinion counts for anything.
O’NEILL: It doesn’t.
*
1969
Sam Carter was high.
“Holy Hannah,” she sighed, putting a hand out on Teal’c’s arm to steady herself in their booth; it was either that or fall over into him. “This is bad, Teal’c. This is really bad.”
“What is the matter, Captain Carter?”
“The colonel’s gonna kill me when he sees me like this,” she said sorrowfully. “Killl me. Also, I’m starving.”
“Why did you ingest that substance if you knew it would cause you trouble?” Teal’c asked.
“Because I haven’t gotten high since college,” she confessed. And then only a couple times, during an experimental phase that had also involved mixing various alcoholic beverages together. (That phase had not ended pleasantly.) “And if I’m gonna be stuck in 1969? I want to enjoy at least some of it.” It had been a moment of weakness with Michael and Jenny, while the colonel was off reconnoitering; but then, she was pretty sure O’Neill had also imbibed a little himself on the sly yesterday in the van, when he was up front in the passenger seat keeping Michael company. She leant over to poke Daniel, who was happily curled up and snoring in the other booth at their table in a Chicago diner. “At least I stayed awake long enough to get our pancakes.”
“Daniel Jackson appears not as capable of handling this substance as you,” Teal’c observed.
“Nah,” Sam said, sitting back on their side of the table and closing her eyes. “He just had a lot more than me. I think the last time he got high was in grad school. Unless it was with Skaara on Abydos.” She shook her head and stood up. “I need air. Maybe that’ll clear my senses.” She knew it probably wouldn’t, but if it gave her the semblance of some sort of control before the colonel showed up, she would be happy.
She left the diner and walked around into the alley next to it, taking deep breaths of the humid summer. Not nearly as clarifying, she thought wryly, as a cold December wind would have been. There was a big blue box at the end of the alley. She wandered toward it out of a faint sense of curiosity.
Clattering noises, and Sam turned around to find three people barreling toward her. She had a confused impression of a middle-aged man in a bowtie with sad eyes, a young man in a kilt, a girl in a startling silver catsuit. “Excuse us, so sorry, do pardon!” the older man called, the two younger people chiming in their own apologies. They sounded English, the young man in the kilt Scottish. They threw themselves into the blue box, slamming the door shut behind them, and then—
“Oh boy,” Sam said, staring in wide-eyed shock as the box made a strange elephantine noise and disappeared.
She held onto the brick wall next to her for a moment, staring hard at the empty space where a blue box had been just a moment ago. And then she shook her head, straightened up, dusted down her jacket, and turned back to the diner entrance.
“Pancakes,” she said decisively, “the only thing that will solve this is pancakes.”
*
2000
Unpublished article by Dr. Daniel Jackson, PhD
Illustration 6. Close-up of left-hand figures from previous illustration, found in a wall painting in building 35a at townhall site on P5X-894. First figure wears colorful clothes of non-matching patterns; next to him is a young woman in a revealing outfit. Both appear human, or at least humanoid. As noted in the above illustration, these two seem to be arguing with the ruling council; later illustrations in the set suggest they won their argument and the council prepared their people for the coming invasion. Is this perhaps a myth, such as that related to the dream-interpreting Joseph of the multi-colored coat in the Bible?
*
2001
“Teal’c!” O’Neill yelled from across the bridge of an abandoned spaceship that had been overrun by Replicators. “Cover fire for Carter, now!”
The former First Prime obliged him. It was a futile effort, he knew, unless some form of backup arrived; but what was the point in living if not to fight for the hope of another day?
Major Carter was working at the ship controls, carefully but quickly, in an attempt to divert power from the Replicators and destroy them; Daniel Jackson was next to O’Neill, also firing his weapon. And then the viewscreen behind Major Carter flickered into life, and a tall, pale man with white hair and what Teal’c recognized as a velvet smoking jacket appeared. He was standing at a many-sided console in the middle of a white room.
“Give me two minutes,” he snapped, apparently at them, “and I should be able to disrupt the signal holding these Replicators of yours together.”
“Not to sound ungrateful or anything,” O’Neill called over the sound of his, Daniel Jackson’s, and Teal’c’s gunfire, “and if you can actually stop them, you really will have our undying gratitude and all that, but who the hell are you?”
“A friend,” said the other man, working feverishly at his controls in a manner eerily similar to Major Carter’s. “You get yourselves into the most terrible trouble, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” O’Neill hollered.
And then suddenly every Replicator on the bridge disintegrated. Major Carter jumped up from her hunched position over the controls and whirled on the viewscreen. “How did you do that?” she demanded. She almost sounded angry, or indignant. “How did you do that?”
The man on the screen turned away from his console to come closer to the screen. He smiled at them all—a trifle smugly, Teal’c thought privately, and he heard O’Neill mutter from across the room, “Jimi Hendrix wannabe.”
“Sonic vibrations,” the man said. “Quite simple, really; I applied the theory behind my sonic screwdriver on a larger scale.”
He grinned again. “And you’re welcome,” he said, just before turning and hitting a control that made the viewscreen go dark.
*
2002
“I can’t believe how much they refuse to see,” Jonas repeated to himself, striding back and forth through a small strip of grass on a planet in a galaxy far, far away from either home he had made for himself. “They refuse to understand how much danger they’re in, or to put aside their petty squabbles—”
He stopped, glanced over at the other man, sighed. He sat down on the ground and pulled up a blade of grass to finger. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, with a wry smile and a glance up at the only other person within eyesight. “I don’t even know you, and here I am lecturing you about an entire world’s problems…”
“That’s quite alright,” the young man, with too-long blond hair and pale blue eyes, smiled amiably. He wore a sweater with red stripes along the v-neck, a beige coat over that, striped trousers, a green vegetable on his coat lapel. Jonas had found him on this hill while scouting the terrain, standing at the top and staring distantly into nothing, and somehow he had found himself sitting down in the grass with the man, talking.
Jonas was fairly sure if this was a first-contact situation, he was going about it all wrong.
“I know how foolish and blind those we know best can be. I also know what it’s like to abandon my home planet in favor of other possibilities,” the other man said softly, with a direct look of those pale blue eyes.
Jonas looked down again, quickly. He had shredded his blade of grass; he dropped the bits to the ground. “Did you ever go back?” he asked after a moment. “Go—home?”
“I have,” the other man said, shifting his legs so he now sat cross-legged. “More than once, even. I never stay, of course; one planet is far too confining. And those who think they know you best, who remember you when you were so young and still going to school—well. They do rather think they have some claim over you, don’t they?”
“Don’t they?” Jonas shot back. “To my people, it looks like I turned my back on them. Left them, betrayed my heritage.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Of course not!”
“Well, then,” said the young man, “why does it matter what they think? You can’t control that, you know. You can only control your own thoughts and actions.”
They sat, and argued some more, and Jonas searched his soul. And eventually Colonel O’Neill radioed in, demanding to know where the hell Jonas had got to, the rest of the team were back at the Gate and ready to go, and the young man laughed and stood up, brushing off his striped trousers. “It sounds like your friends are waiting,” he said in amusement, “and one should rarely leave one’s friends waiting. They might not stay.”
Jonas looked sheepish and stood up as well, holding out his hand to shake the other man’s. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry I—sometimes I can talk to Teal’c or Sam, but sometimes—”
The other man shook his hand vigorously and then took a hat out of his coat pocket, unrolling it to put it on. “Good luck, Jonas Quinn,” he said and, with another pleasant smile, turned and walked away.
“Wait, I never even—” Jonas ran after him, down the hill, but there was nobody there, nothing but trees and grass and a very strange, echoing sound.
“Huh,” said Jonas Quinn, bemused.
*
2003
Footage from a Goa’uld laboratory, grainy and staticky on Carter’s tiny laptop screen.
A man, tall and thin and pale and wearing a brown suit—and sneakers of all things. “I used to have so much mercy,” he was stating. “I’m not sure anymore that people--things like you deserve mercy.”
“How exactly do you think you can stop me?” Black smear in an elaborate robe; only Anubis would look like that.
The man in the suit nodded behind the Goa’uld-slash-Ancient. “You shouldn’t have underestimated my friend Martha,” he said. “It’s amazing what she can do with chemicals; she’s going to be a doctor, you know.” Something about the man’s face shifted—it was hard to tell on the image, as it faded in and out of color and focus, but he seemed to stiffen. “If any of your people want to survive, I suggest they leave now.”
The sound of Anubis roaring, and then blackout.
Jack blinked his eyes away from the screen, then looked around the rubble of the lab in which his team stood. Carter disconnected her laptop from a piece of Goa’uld tech; Daniel began poking around. Teal’c met Jack’s gaze.
“One less thing for us to have to deal with,” the colonel said with a shrug.
*
2004
“Daniel!” Jack is yelling over the phone line before Daniel can even say hello. “Carter still with you? I need you both back at the mountain, ASAP.”
“Jack?” Daniel glances at Sam, gestures for her to restart her car. She’s dropping him off at the car dealer; his car has been in all day for repairs, but apparently it’s going to have to wait a little longer for him to pick it up. “What the hell is going on?”
“There’s a box, Daniel. In my control room.”
Daniel blinks a lot. “Does it hold bread?” he asks eventually.
“Not.funny.Daniel,” the general grounds out, and Daniel rolls his eyes while Sam throws him a strange look. “It’s big, and it’s blue, and it just suddenly appeared 15 seconds ago and now—what the hell!”
“Jack!” All Daniel hears are crashes, and Jack demanding that somebody tell him who the hell he is, and other muffled noises, but Jack has apparently put the phone down or stepped away from it because nothing is very distinct. Sam keeps glancing at him, worried, even as she navigates the Colorado Springs rush hour traffic. “Jack, what the hell is going on over there? Jack!”
“Belay that, Daniel,” Jack’s voice abruptly sounds over the line again, and he seems tired and annoyed. “You and Carter don’t need to come back after all.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody stepped out of the blue box.” The general sounds unnaturally calm now. “A small Scottish man, who took off his hat, apologized profusely for interrupting, and immediately went back into the box. And then it disappeared again.”
“…oh.” Daniel puts his hand over his cell phone and tells Sam, “A large blue box just appeared and disappeared in the control room. Have you heard of anything like that?”
Sam’s eyes are wide, and she slowly shakes her head. “Noooo,” she says, “though—well, a disappearing blue box does sound familiar, but why…”
Daniel uncovers the phone. “Maybe it’s somehow related to Thor? Or Loki? From what you’ve described, it seems similar to beaming technology,” he says for both Sam’s and Jack’s ears.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jack doesn’t sound very interested now. “Daniel?”
“Yeah, Jack?”
“Remind me tomorrow that I need to take some vacation time.”
*
2005
SG-1 hovered at the back of the crowd, wearing heavy cloaks, hoods over their faces. They had been on the planet for only an hour or so, gathering intel. They’d heard from a Tok’ra ally about the Ori Prior who had shown up on P7X-659.
They hadn’t heard about the other stranger who’d also shown up.
“It’s your sort that makes me sick!” the man in the black leather jacket was raging in the center of the crowd that had formed at the village well. The Prior stood still, his staff pointed upward, a distantly amused smirk on his face. The man stalked right up into the Prior’s face, wiping the smirk away as he stepped back hastily in surprise. “Fanatics only get everyone killed!”
Sam and Daniel blinked under their cloaks, Teal’c’s eyebrow shot up to his hairline. Mitchell turned to Sam and muttered, “Think we could get that guy on our side?”
The stranger in black leather didn’t kill the Prior. But he did manage to run him off the planet without causing any further damage to those who lived there, and SG-1 never did find out his name or where he came from.
*
2006
“Oh no.” Vala pushed her chair back from the conference table so hard she almost flew out the window into the Gate room. “No, no, no.”
“What?” Daniel stared at her like she had grown an extra limb. “What’s the matter with this guy?”
“The locals call him a wizard,” Sam said, with a little smile. “Maybe because of his white hair?”
“Or maybe the walking stick,” Cam added, smiling back at her. He sobered abruptly. “Crap, he’s not some other version of Merlin or something, is he?”
“He’s no wizard,” Vala said, standing up with her arms folded in front of her. They all looked at her, away from the image on the screen of an older man with white hair in what most of the team considered old-fashioned clothes. He had three people with him, a teenage girl and two adults, the man in a cardigan and the woman with classic 1960s hair. The SGC had heard about the group through their contacts on one of their trading partners’ planets; the group had arrived on the planet a couple weeks ago and showed some signs of staying for a while longer. Their contacts had mentioned the group to the SGC because they were so…odd. “But he is most definitely a mean old man.”
“In what capacity have you had contact with this man, Vala Mal Doran?” Teal’c asked.
Daniel had his eyes narrowed. “What did you try to steal from him?” he specified.
“Nothing!” Vala glared at Daniel in righteous indignation. He glared back. She rolled her eyes and flopped back into her chair again, rolling it back to the table to join the rest of the team. “He caught me trying to steal something from somebody else.”
Sam and Mitchell exchanged glances. Teal’c’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t really look surprised. Daniel sighed. “So what did he do to you?” he asked their teammate.
“He whacked my hand with that cane,” Vala muttered, rubbing at her knuckles. Daniel muffled a snort. “What?!” She kicked at him under the table but missed; he’d been prepared for the move. “It hurt!”
*
1927
“Doctor Langford!” said the garrulous young man with the strange hair and startling bowtie who categorically refused to leave the professor alone. The young man leant in the doorway of Langford’s study and grinned, ducking his head to the side. Langford sighed heavily and waited for the man to continue; there was no point in attempting to hush him, as the professor had already found to his irritation. “Professor Langford, I happen to know the most perfect excavation site for your next dig in Egypt…”