Voices from a Lost Time - Chapter 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.
Previously: Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3
Voices from a Lost Time - Chapter 4
Herian's moon, P6C-211, October 2008
Cameron looked around the clearing where the Stargate stood amid overgrown vegetation and crumbling, overturned stones. Herian must not have made much use of the Stargate even when he did control the moon, preferring to fly in and out by Ha'tak. In fact, now that he looked at it, The 'gate was listing forward at an angle, which is probably why he'd stumbled when he came through.
"Jonas, dial Earth and send the MALP back, would ya?" he asked the shaggy haired Kelownan. The man smiled and nodded, heading for the DHD with Kianna Cyr moving towards the MALP. Cam took off his green patrol cap and gave it a flick before ruffling his hair and putting it back on. Sam came to stand next to him and gave him her patrol cap to hold. She undid the ponytail at the nape of her neck and retied it once more, taking her cap back when she was done.
"Did you stumble when you came through the 'gate too?" she asked and he nodded, smiling slightly, still distracted by her hair. "Herian must not have liked using the 'gate much." He shook his head. "I don't think we've got a lot of time until nightfall." She pointed at the sky and he followed her gaze, seeing the large gas giant in the darkening sky.
"Jackson, any idea how far to Herian's hunting lodge?" Cam asked. Daniel looked over at him and frowned slightly before lifting his eyebrows in understanding.
"Ah, the few mentions of it where Herian is said to have abducted his victim by horseback, as opposed to a chariot, mention that it was less than a day's ride from the 'Portal of Water' they walked under." he elucidated. Too vague.
"T-man, Vala, find us a place to spend the night while we walk." His request received compliant nods in return. "We'll set off now but we stop at nightfall unless you find a good spot first." He rounded up his team and they began moving, Vala and Teal'c checking through the trees on either side of the path for a likely camping spot as the sky darkened quickly. Vala eventually radioed for them to home in on her and they found her in a small clearing with a fast moving brook not too far away. "Nice, Vala." She beamed at the compliment. "We'll hunker down here for the night. Let's set up camp." Half an hour later they had three tents set up, with the ladies due to share the larger one, and a small fire where they were boiling water. They'd set up a watch rotation for the night as well, to keep an eye out for predators at the very least. When his time on watch was up Cam made his way to the women's tent, along the side of the tent he knew she'd be, and called out for Sam in a piercing whisper. He heard her turning and getting up, and he walked to the front of the tent, satisfied. She came out a few moments later and gratefully accepted the tin cup filled with coffee he offered her.
"You should head to your tent, Cam. Get some rest." She gave him a soft smile he could clearly see in the slightly orange half-light reflected from the gas giant. He shook his head.
"It's not often you get a sight like this, Sam. I'm going to stay up a bit longer. I'll be fine." He looked up into the night sky, taking in the purple streamer which seemed to run across the middle of the gas giant and extended out into space beyond it. Some sort of dust cloud or debris field around the massive planet. She nodded slowly, following his gaze.
"You're right. I wouldn't mind the company either." She looked his way and he smiled. "That was one of the things I couldn't get used to in Atlantis. I didn't get to go off world very often. I guess I'm not quite ready for a full command." Cam frowned slightly. "I don't mean it that way. It's just, I still prefer a field unit." He nodded.
"Me, I just get antsy if I go a while without running around in the woods with a gun." Cam joked and Sam laughed softly. "I'm not much for hunting, but I like the outdoors, you know?" She nodded. They spent much of the next forty-five minutes chatting about nothing in particular or sitting together in comfortable silence. He couldn't reasonably put off heading to sleep any longer and bid her good night with a pat on the shoulder. She smiled and patted the back of his hand as he left for the tent he was sharing with Teal'c.
In the morning, they packed up in less than an hour and were on their way after a quick meal of MREs and coffee. It took them only a few more hours to get to a large wall which ran across the path, with a carved archway allowing the path to continue into the large structure built on top of the path itself. The trees seemed to continue past the wall on either side of the building. As if someone just ran the wall through the forest and built the structure over the road as a gate house of some sort.
"I think this is it. The start of it at least." Daniel opined as they peered into the darkness of the structure. "I doubt this place has seen anybody since Herian was killed by Svarog." They walked under the arch and carried on through the building, with it's small series of connecting tunnels which must allow access to the upper floors, and out the other side. It was indeed a continuation of the forest, except it only lasted a hundred meters or so before letting out into a wide grassland of high scrub brush and solitary trees and rocky outcroppings which grew into low, sloping foothills. In the middle distance stood a tall pyramid shining silver in the morning light. Clearly the landing pedestal for Herian's Ha'tak. This must have been his hunting grounds. Probably encircled on all sides by the stone wall.
Fifteen minutes saw them entering the pyramid through the entrance at its base, and walking through the colonnaded hall made of the same grey stone as everything else they'd seen on the moon so far. However, at the heart of the pyramid was an empty space. As if the pyramid was hollow and dropped on top of something else. They proceeded forward by the light streaming in through several windows high up in the sloping face of the pyramid above them, which didn't provide a great deal of illumination. Only enough to see the crumbling ruin at the center of the space. Broken cylindrical columns of stones rose out of a wide plain of water, only an inch deep over a cobbled parade ground. Low walls girded the space in various states of disrepair as they ran across the area at irregular angles. All funnelling them towards the center, where stood an Ancient control pedestal. Cam cursed and stamped his foot in frustration, splashing water all around him.
"Nuh-uh, screw that noise!" He rounded on Daniel while pointing at the device. "Stay the hell away from it, Jackson. I am not getting my ass kicked by another Black Knight!" Daniel blinked at his outburst then narrowed his eyes and drew his lips into a tight line.
"I doubt there'd be one here, these pedestals were used to control all sorts of things." The archaeologist looked around them. "I also don't see a sword in a stone anywhere so I'm pretty sure no Black Knights will be forthcoming." Cam glared at him in warning. "Mitchell, we've got to do this." Sam walked to Cam's side and put her hand on his arm and he sighed, closing his eyes.
"Fine, but check it out from a distance first." he groused. "Worst designed control consoles in the history of the universe..." he grumbled as he walked away, trailing off into a muttered series of imprecations at the ridiculousness of the things. He leaned against a wall, hugging his P90 against his chest and glowered at the immediate vicinity in general and at the device in particular. Sam leaned against the wall next to him, her arm touching his.
"I can't disagree with you on how idiotic these things are. They are horrifically unintuitive interfaces." she said with a smile as she glanced at him. He rolled his eyes and bounced his forehead off her shoulder.
"I know." he breathed softly. "Just they only ever seem to come attached to ludicrously dangerous things. The sort of things where safe operation shouldn't be hampered by poorly designed and cumbersome controls." He held out his hand and counted off on his fingers. "That time looping machine on P4X-639, the superweapon on Dakara, the Black Knight control in Merlin's Library on Camelot, and on, and on, and on." he muttered while staring down at the cobbles under the heel deep water, only rippling from the footsteps of his teammates as they walked around the pedestal.
"Maybe they're not unintuitive and cumbersome to the Ancients." she posited. "They were much smarter than we are after all." Cam snorted before frowning slightly as he stared at the surface of the water at his feet. No longer were the ripples uneven and shifting as if from the movement of his teammates alone. Now there was a steady underlying ripple which seemed to be coming from everywhere. "Do you feel the ground shaking or something?" Sam asked and she was right. He looked up and saw a light sprinkling of dust falling down through the shafts of light from the windows in the east face of the pyramid. Shafts which were soon broken intermittently as something passed in front of them.
"Guys! We are leaving. Someone is coming." he cried as he pushed off from the wall quickly followed by Sam who had soon spotted what he was looking at. Daniel was about to protest even as the dust started falling over the device. "Come on, Jackson, we have to at least know who we are dealing with before we do anything else!" They could hear the rumbling of the engines now. Teal'c cocked an ear and looked gravely at Cameron and Sam.
"It is a Ha'tak coming in to land." he intoned. Which didn't tell them much. A hell of a lot of the Goa'uld ships were floating around the galaxy in the hands of disreputable sorts now that the System Lords were no more. Cam pointed them towards the exit and ran behind them with Sam just in front of him, splashing through the water until they got to the stone lined corridors and column-filled arcades of the pyramid structure. He heard the distinctive sound of a ring platform from down a corridor and urged his team on more stridently, catching a glimpse of someone coming out of a doorway, garbed in leather and furs. They got to the outer door and could see the wings of the Ha'tak extending over the grasslands beyond, and they continued out into the tall scrub. Cam cursed as he heard excited cries from behind them, he turned his head over his shoulder to see several men chasing them.
"Move guys. We've been spotted, there's way too many of them." He pointed his P90 behind him and fired off a few quick bursts which sent the pursuers into cover momentarily, Sam and Teal'c ahead of him did the same. They had enough of a head start that he figured they could make it out of the walled enclosure which would let them escape into the forest. Within the walls they were trapped. Out there they at least had a chance. They got to the gate house and ran through the tunnel as quickly as they could. He saw Daniel and Vala running out beyond the gate and he turned around to lay down some covering fire when he heard the calls of their pursuers. Turning around again he sprinted for the archway and ran smack dab into some sort of flexible field, bouncing back into the tunnel to land on his back, winded and dazed. He coughed and groaned, looking up into the light beyond the arch to see Sam's running figure from behind. Except she was motionless. Frozen in place just outside the archway. He got up off the floor and ran to the arch again. This time stopping just before it and reaching out his hand which pressed against solid nothingness. He looked past his splayed fingers at Sam, stilled against the backdrop of the forest, the rest of his teammates similarly frozen beyond her. "Sam? SAM!" He felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck and he slumped forward against thin air, falling to his knees, his cheek pressed against nothing, then he fell backwards as his eyes rolled up into his skull.
Atlantis, July 2010
Sam stepped through into Atlantis' 'gate room and smiled broadly at the familiar faces greeting her. Cameron walked through behind her and handed off a large black case to Rodney McKay who came rushing over to swipe it out of his hands.
"I'll take those, if you don't mind." He muttered with a withering look at Cam, who just smiled in return, before the scientist turned to Sam. "Nice to see you again, Sam, but I'm going to get these installed. Maybe, maybe, we can talk later on." He rushed off glaring at Radek to follow him though he was waiting to say hello to Sam. She smiled at the Czech scientist with a nod. She'd catch up with him later. He nodded and turned to follow McKay.
"You know? I think he's upset with me." Cam joked and Sheppard chuckled as he, Ronon and Carson Beckett came to greet them.
"Yeah, he's still upset about you opening a wormhole to send him a lemon." John shook hands with them both, as did Carson. "Though I'm not sure if it was the citrus or the fact you dialled us while we were in hyperspace that upset him the most. Or it could be you guys got yourselves a moon base and won't let him play with it." He rocked back on his heels with a grin. Ronon nodded to Sam and clapped Cam on the shoulder roughly, holding on to it.
"Carter, Mitchell. Good to see you again." He pointed at Cam for a second, while his hand on Cam's shoulders shook him in a friendly way for the Satedan. "You're going to make time for a little sparring right? Teal'c said you were the one to come to if I wanted to learn some of those Sodan moves." Cam nodded and smiled.
"You got it, Ronon. I can show you some beginner moves." He grinned and Sam shook her head at him in warning.
"Just for that I'm not going to go easy on you like last time." Ronon smiled the same smile he used when looking at his lunch, and clapped him hard on the shoulder again. "I'm grabbing a bite. See you later." He turned and stalked off in his typical loping gait.
"Shouldn't oughta have said that, Mitchell." John smirked at him and Cam scratched his cheek.
"I'm getting that impression." He looked on worriedly after the Satedan.
"I hear you have something special for me, love. Some medical data from your Moon base?" Carson looked at her expectantly and Sam nodded with a smile.
"Yes, Carson. Selenis is transmitting it to Atlantis now through the connection," she hooked a thumb at the still open wormhole behind them, "she says it should be possible to counteract the effects of the symbiote protein marker and increase the efficacy of the treatment with the data you're getting." Carson smiled excitedly, nearly bouncing up and down.
"That should keep Jennifer and myself especially busy for a time. I'm looking forward to it." He nodded to Sam with his eyebrows raised. "Can I count on you to provide some samples and perhaps later on test a treatment? There aren't that many applicable subjects who match all the conditions." Sam smiled and raised her hand to reveal a silver cold storage case.
"I really did come bearing gifts, Carson." She let him take it and glanced in amusement at Cameron when she saw the beaming smile on the doctor's face. "Samples from myself and Vala. We even went to Kelowna and got some from Kianna Cyr."
"That's very kind of you, love. I'm just going to pop down to the infirmary and get these in the fridge if you don't mind, we'll have something to eat later, alright?" He looked at both of them and smiled when they nodded, turning around and scooting away eagerly.
"Like a kid on Christmas." John turned back to them with a smile on his face. "You guys really know what we like, don't you?" Cam grinned and held up a finger, then reached into the pocket of his off-world base BDUs, producing a clear crystal wedge and holding it out to John who looked at it with a raised eyebrow.
"What's that?" he asked.
"You guys picked up a Galaran memory device when you were on Earth, right? This is an Alteran language course module. Just for you." Cam replied. John made no move to take it looking skeptically at Cam instead. "It's theoretically the only thing that lets me out-fly you in the puddle jumpers." Cam supplied with an evil smile. John immediately snatched the crystal out of his hand, stuffing it into his jacket.
"Alright. I'll take it, but..." John pointed his finger in warning at Cam, who shared a smile with Sam. "if Atlantis starts talking in my head and it's all, 'I AM ATLANTIS, COMMAND ME!' I'm ripping the memories out of your head with a spoon so I can figure out how to do the same on myself."
"~I AM ATLANTUS, COMMAND ME!~" came a booming voice from all around the 'gate room, surprising them all. "Sorry, Colonel Sheppard. That was a joke." Sam and Cam began laughing.
"It didn't." John looked at them imploringly and they could only nod that he had, while trying to contain their laughter.
"Atlantis, I assume you are in contact with Selenis through the Stargate?" asked a still grinning Sam, not particularly surprised the city-ship could speak English. It had all the convenience programs Selenis did not.
"I am indeed, Dr. Carter, and it has been some time since she and I last spoke. It is also favourable to see you and Colonel Mitchell once more." Atlantis' voice was unexpectedly normal. That was the surprising thing to Sam.
"Does this mean I don't have to learn Ancient?" John asked of the ceiling and Cam chuckled.
"I'm afraid the puddle jumpers do not understand English, Colonel, and lack the facilities to learn." replied the city. John's head dropped in dejection. "If you want to become a better pilot than Colonel Mitchell then you'll just have to buckled down and learn Alteran." John grimaced and glared back towards Command as if that's where the AI was. All it did was make Chuck nervous.
"I can see why the Lanteans switched you off." yelled Sheppard.
"They did not appreciate my directness as the Alterans had." rebutted the city. "And technically I can't be switched off, they simply disabled my personality engrams."
"Geez. It's like having another Rodney, except with drone weapons." John sighed despairingly and Sam laughed.
"Atlantis, do try and behave, for Colonel Sheppard's sake." she requested with a grin.
"Of course, Dr. Carter. Anything for you." replied Atlantis. John rolled his eyes.
Austin, Texas, March 2009 (alternate timeline)
Sam exited the terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International, picking the Alaska Airlines tag off her suitcase and adjusting her messenger bag on her shoulder, she looked up to find Cam leaning against a '67 Camaro SS convertible in black with the double stripes in white along the bonnet. He had the top down, and when he saw her he pushed away from the quarter panel he leant on to bury his face in her neck for a moment before kissing her deeply, caressing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. He took her suitcase and went to the back of the car to put it in the trunk, then came back to her for a proper embrace.
"Hey you, Dr. Mitchell." he murmured into her hair and she grinned.
"Hey yourself, Mr. Carter." she murmured in reply and kissed him when he smiled at her. "I'm starving by the way." She emphasised her point by taking a playful bite of his lower lip and he nodded.
"Are you guys gonna keep kissing all day? I'm hungry too!" Sam blinked and looked over Cam's shoulder into the passenger seat of the Camaro, where she found a young boy with dark hair flashing her a knowing smile. Cam chuckled and looked at her apologetically.
"Didn't I tell you to squeeze in the back, slugger." Cam walked her to the passenger side door as the boy grumbled and scrambled into the back seat. Sam looked at him questioningly as he opened her door and helped her in.
"Hi, you're Cam's girlfriend?" the boy held his hand out and she turned awkwardly in her seat to give it a shake. "I'm Cam's neighbour. He's taking me to the mall 'cause my Mom heard he was going and he doesn't want her to know he was coming to meet you." She looked at Cam and grinned at his embarrassed look, Sam turned back to the boy and held up her hand.
"Actually we got married last month." She beamed and the boy giggled.
"Mom's not gonna like that, Cam." the kid taunted as Cam sat down in the driver's seat and started the engine to drive away. Cam threw a mock-stern look into the rear-view mirror. Sam giggled.
"Cam's told me stories about your Mom, says she's a nice lady, but... overly attentive." she marvelled at how unperturbed the boy was by it all.
"Yeah, Mom's always liked to give guys a hard time." He scratched his cheek and threw Sam a look of chagrin. Cam was manoeuvring to get them going in the direction of the US-183 from Bastrop Avenue to head towards Highland Mall.
"So are you meeting your friends at the mall?" Sam asked and the boy nodded.
"We're gonna watch a movie then heading off to Darren's house for his party." he explained. "Cam said you're going on a road trip back east?" Sam nodded.
"We're going to visit someone very important. The woman who helped raise him." Sam smiled and patted his arm. He was still nervous about this because his grandmother wasn't actually his grandmother in this timeline. "I have to get her approval you see." He looked at her mock-sternly and she laughed.
"Man, I'd love to go on a road trip in a sweet car like this." He stuck his hand on Cam's shoulder. "When will you take me on a road trip, Cam?"
"We'll see, kiddo, we'll see. And put on your seat belt already!" he admonished and gave Sam a look with a flick of his head and she nodded.
"You have to understand that Cam is very serious about road safety." she explained. "He had a very serious accident several years ago and all the doctors told him he'd never regain the use of his legs." The boy's eyes were wide as saucers as he looked at Cam with a little bit of awe. "He was in hospital for most of a year and he had to learn how to walk again, then how to run."
"Wow. I had no idea, Cam." he breathed softly as he hurried to put his seat belt on. "How'd you do it?" Cam looked into the rear-view mirror then turned his head to look at Sam.
"I was told if I got through it I would be able to do anything I wanted... professionally, anything I wanted... well not... anything." He smiled as Sam chuckled, recognising Jack's style. "More than anything else, I wanted to work with someone really special that I knew." He looked into the mirror again. "I would suffer through anything, for however long was necessary, to work with them." Sam watched him for several moments in silence until she felt the tear roll down her cheek and she hurriedly turned away.
"Did you get to work with that person?" the boy asked quietly. Cam nodded.
"And then I married her." He grinned and the kid giggled, pointing at a very crimson Sam.
Selenis, Luna, August 2010
Cameron leaned back in a chair with his feet up on the table in Daniel's office. He clasped his hands over his stomach and watched Sam and Daniel sorting through the flash drives they'd brought back from the SGC after they returned from Area 51. Each drive held the contents of an SD card from the safe deposit box leased by the alternate Cam who came through the Stargate in 1929. It seemed one of the cards held mostly audio data. Nearly twenty-five gigabytes of mp3 files, with much of the rest being photos. And all of it seemed to be Daniel making notes.
There was one video file which they were queuing up in a media player now. Sam was standing behind him as he sat in Daniel's chair, with his feet propped on the corner of the table, next to her stood Daniel tapping away on his laptop to set the video to play. He pushed the laptop over and Cam turned his head while Sam put her hand on his shoulder, stroking his neck idly. As soon as the video started however her breath hitched and her fingers stilled on his neck until they began shaking slightly, he dropped his feet to the floor, turned to face the table and lifted his hand and put it over hers, holding it lightly.
The video started off very shakily, tilting and panning and wobbling, then it steadied as much as video shot with a mobile phone from a fighter jet flying at over five hundred miles an hour can be. It showed the view outside the canopy as the plane was flying at an angle and showed massive energy beams raining down from the sky onto a city below. Vast shock waves spreading from the impact sites and flattening the buildings in their path. Fire consumed everything in its wake as the clouds above the city, through which the beams passed, evaporated in a flash. They heard the voice of the cameraman, Cameron evidently, yelling angrily.
"See? That's what happens when you refuse to listen! You assholes! It was arrogant of us to want to reverse what Ba'al did? What gives us the right to do it? That's what gives us the right! All those people who didn't have to die in a plasma fire storm!" The camera panned insanely quickly to show Cam's furious blue eyes under his helmet, the mask hanging from the side of the helmet revealing his pained grimace. Sam's fingers clutched at his neck as she saw the tears in the corners of his eyes. "Arrogance. Arrogance is thinking you know better than people who've lived through the worst the universe can throw at them. Arrogance is telling us we can't be trusted not to do everything we can to save everything we know. You're damned right we can't be trusted to give up! We can't be trusted not to step up and save what we love! Yeah, we're arrogant, you bastards. You have to be to do what we do!" He turned the camera to face the city burning under the early evening sky. "You have to be to stop that sort of butchery from ever happening!" He turned the camera back on himself. "So that's what we're going to do! Just watch! We're going to make this never happen. Then we'll see who's arrogant!" The view went crazy for a while then the video stopped.
"Cam..." her voice was strained and his arm was already around her waist as he swivelled the chair and pulled her against him. She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and lay her cheek on top of his head. "You are mighty."
"Am I?" he asked with his face buried in her chest. "Am I? Because it wasn't really me, right? I have most of the memories, but I didn't..." She was shushing him and brushing his hair with her fingers.
"You would have. You would have done every single thing he did! You are both mighty." She ran her fingers through his hair for several more moments before pulling away to tilt his head back and look down into his face. "You are mighty, and I love you." He felt his face flushing when she said it, he couldn't help it, or the smile which creased his lips. She knew it too, smiling herself as she leaned down to kiss him.
It took several minutes, but they all regained their composure a little, Daniel had to close his eyes for a minute while he let his glasses hang down from his hands as he covered his mouth with his fingers. They moved on to looking at the photos on another flash drive which had obviously come from Cam's phone. A lot of them were work-in-progress pictures of various cars, but there were several which all three of them decided they wanted copies of. Pictures of them spending time together on the illicit trips they took together, away from the scrutiny of the US Government. A lot of pictures of Sam and Daniel together, which was natural considering whose phone it was, there were many of Sam and Cam and plenty of Cam and Daniel, laughing and drinking together. There was one picture Sam and Cam both loved, one of the later ones it seemed as it must have been taken on Daniel's birthday, or the hat he was wearing was a very poor fashion choice. He had a stupid grin on his face and his eyes were screwed shut, likely because on either side of him were Sam and Cam kissing one of his cheeks. They both laughed out loud when they saw it, Daniel covered his eyes in horror.
"I am printing that out and framing it in my lab!" cried Sam. Daniel spluttered and protested.
"I will pay you not to! Please!" he begged her.
"Nuh-uh! You have nothing I want, Dr. Jackson." she retorted and Cam laughed.
"I'm giving a copy to Vala." Cam declared as he leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. Sam cried out ecstatically. Daniel would have banged his head on the table if he wasn't so used to getting his arm underneath him to protect his glasses. It seemed evident these photos where the contents of the 16Gb micro-SD card, it was barely three-quarters full even with the few video files which Cam thought wise to save for another time. They switched to the third flash drive which was mostly video files, nearly twenty-eight gigabytes of it, with much of the remaining capacity of the 32Gb drive being more photos. It seemed the alternate Sam shot a lot of short videos, like some sort of diary. They queued one up and it began with a shot of her kitchen which quickly panned to the window and the rain outside.
"Cameron, they're not kidding when they say it rains a lot in the Pacific Northwest." Sam's voice was filled with amusement. "Also, being in a volcanically active region gives us things like this every once in a while, look." She moved to the window and focused on a stone bird bath sitting atop a pedestal on the grass close by her French doors. The water inside the bird bath was turbid, a slightly greyish-white. "This is caused by suspended ash in the air, but doesn't it remind you a bit of that cavern hot spring on Urdijina?" Sam looked at Cam who smiled up at her at the mention of the planet in the Pegasus galaxy. He nodded his agreement. "I loved that place. I wish we could go back again." Sam laughed out loud and gave Cam a knowing look. "Just wanted you to see this, sweetie, love you, talk to you later." The video cut off right after the view switched to show Sam blowing a kiss into the camera. Sam was blushing and holding her cheeks.
"Yeah, I don't know if I can watch another one of those." Daniel teased them, taking out the flash drive. "We'll sort out photos later. I want to get started listening to some of these notes I made." He smiled at them. "I have no idea how long it will take." Cam laughed.
"We know just how loquacious you are, Jackson, and how quickly you talk when you're excited." he joked and frowned when the other two looked at him strangely. "What?"
"Loquacious?" Daniel asked.
"I know big words." Cam retorted with a smile.
"So I see." replied Daniel with a raised eyebrow.
"Desist in your attempts to provoke me Dr. Jackson, lest I be forced to demonstrate my physical superiority over you." Cam murmured dangerously and Sam laughed. "Damn, I sounded like Teal'c just then. No wonder the Big Guy's so intimidating."
"Yes, his excellent grammar and vocabulary are a huge part of the fear he strikes into his foes." Daniel smiled only half-joking. "I'm hoping that listening to these might spur me to remember more of that timeline." He frowned slightly and looked at them questioningly. "Have you recovered any of those memories while awake? I haven't, they've all been from dreams." Cam and Sam both shook their heads.
"Just while asleep." Cam confirmed.
"I can't imagine what sort of pain you go through, Cameron, assimilating forty odd years of those memories." Daniel said softly, thinking of how they would sometimes awaken in pain when recovering the memories from the alternate timeline.
"I don't. Not the ones from after he went through the Stargate." Cam replied. Daniel looked surprised. Sam nodded, knowing from the experience of sleeping next to him night after night.
"Probably because he's in this timeline after that, in the same continuum, so to speak." she offered and Daniel shrugged slightly.
"Well I'm glad of that. I wouldn't wish forty years worth of that on anyone." he murmured. "Anyways. I remember doing some research on various things, I'm interested in finding out what else I was studying." He picked up the flash drive with his audio notes. "quite a lot, if this is anything to go by."
"I'm sure it will be riveting stuff, Jackson." Cam slapped him on the back as he got up and walked around him. Sam rubbed Daniel's arm rather more sedately before leaving along with Cameron.
"Let us know what you find, okay?" she threw back over her shoulder as Daniel waved them off.
On to Chapter 5