You know, I was nearly on Funhouse once... & FIC: Beneath The Sand (SGA)
Ok, so there are some advantages to having your work's roof leaking massively after eight hours of rainfall (which is continuing). I got to shimy into the roofspace with an engineer.
It's awesome. It's like a birdshit-strewn, gouge-your-eyes-out-if-you're-not-careful, demented version of an obstacle course. I kinda like it. Pitch black and you're dodging and weaving around pipes and air conditioning duct work. Although I did discover that if I want to scramble over something at chest height, I have to do a little run up and jump, rather than do what the engineer and just lever myself up. ;D
On the other hand, there was a serious reason we were in there. Water was flooding through the ceilings in several rooms, at serious risk of shorting out a lot of very expensive equipment. No fun for anyone if that happens. We were trying to do damage control with buckets and paper towels.
I've decided that I really want to play The Secret World if only because it's the same team as worked on Dreamfall (and if you haven't played that game, you really should).
Anyway. To the point of this post. I'm just reposting the SGA_Flashfic fic I did back in July. It didn't get much reaction, alas, but I kinda like it. It occurred to me I should pop it on here before I forget.
Title: Beneath The Sand
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
The act of stepping through a Stargate had an effect of cushioning the shift of one planetary environment to another. It seemed sometimes, at least to Teyla, that the act of travelling so far across space allowed the body to forget the old surroundings and accept the new without much trouble. Sometimes, however, the differences were too drastic to be easily shrugged off.
The world she now stood on had been given a rather uninspiring designation of letters and numbers by the Atlantean data miners who had uncovered this address from the Atlantis database, but a notation by the original Ancient scientists had given it a name 'Dendra'. Only inhabited worlds were ever given names, whether they were occupied by a native race or by some Ancient scientific outpost.
The truth was that they were not really sure what they were going to find. The information in the database indicated that it was one of the last worlds to be charted by the Ancients, and a Stargate had been dropped on its surface a mere two weeks before the Ancients had come under siege from the Wraith. It was marked for 'follow-up investigations' that had never taken place, and that was enough for Mr. Woolsey to authorise a trip through the gate to see what they'd find.
What they discovered was that Dendra was a harsh and unpleasant world. The gravity was higher than most Human-inhabited worlds, and the sun blazed down, unrelieved by clouds. The air was breathable, but achingly dry. Teyla carefully kept to breathing through her nose. Her first reflexive inhalation through her mouth after exiting the Gate had caused her mouth to dry out almost immediately. She wet her lips from the canteen she carried with her, and noted with amusement the others doing the same. All except Ronan, of course. She was not entirely sure whether that was just an expression of machismo on his part.
A desert stretched out in all directions, the sand a dark red in colour and the sky a deep purple. The Gate stood in the middle of a plain of hard, packed earth, and in the distance, Teyla could see mountains, though there was no snow about their peaks. Much closer, however, was a low rising collection of tents, a small village. They had to be located there for the Stargate alone. There was nothing else nearby.
"Huh," Rodney was holding his canteen in one hand, sipping from it, and a scanner was clutched in the other hand.
When he didn't expand on that utterance, John Sheppard turned his head and bestowed Rodney with a look that Teyla thought could be best described as 'vaguely impatience indulgence'. "Something interesting, Rodney?"
"Well, I'm picking up a slight energy reading. So low that it's practically nonexistent. If it weren't pretty much a wasteland here, I probably wouldn't be able to get anything from the background radiation." Rodney scowled, and poked the small tablet a few times, as if by expressing his disapproval, the energy readings would be cowed and become helpfully understandable.
"Coming from where?"
Rodney's frown deepened. "Non-localised."
Teyla had long since learnt to take that to mean 'everywhere' or, alternatively, 'no idea'.
"Maybe they know," Ronan suggested, one hand cautiously resting on his gun.
Teyla turned her head, squinting towards the tents. There was movement, though she couldn't quite make out details. No doubt their arrival through the gate had caused a certain amount of disturbance. From their height relative to the tents they stood by, she guessed they were tall, taller than the team.
"Let's go ask," John said, resting his hands on his weapon in a deceptively casual manner, after giving it a quick once over with his eyes. The others followed his lead. Look non-aggressive. Be nice.
Except, of course, for Rodney, who was still mostly engrossed with the mystery of their energy readings.
Teyla wondered what sort of people would be willing to isolate themselves in a harsh environment, clinging tightly to the Gate that was no doubt their only source of food and water. As they approached, it was very quickly apparent.
They were lizards.
They towered over the Humans by one or two feet of height, and were not clad in any sort of clothes. What would be the point, she wondered, given that it would only serve to protect them from the heat reptiles loved. There was something deep in the back of her brain that itched at the large reptiles, something primitive that told her to run up a tree and hide, but she ignored it. It was true, they rarely came across non-Humans on planets. The Wraith rarely tolerated the potential opposition of those they could not eat, and so it was strange to find something so different.
While they wore no clothes, they weren't completely unadorned. A few wore simple headbands with chips of coloured glass woven in, or feathers from birds that were certainly nowhere to be found on this desolate world. Their skin, or rather, their hide, varied in shades of red and orange, some mottled, some a solid colour. Their leader, whose rank she could only guess at from the fact he wore a more elaborate headdress than the others, was a deep dark ruby red. Their legs were jointed in a backwards fashion to a Human, like a cat's, and their arms seemed out of proportion, being far longer than their torsos, and with elongated claws on the end. Their heads pushed outwards in a small beak-like extension that only served to just mask the wickedly sharp-looking teeth.
Rodney muttered something that might have been, "Oh God, don't let them eat us."
The leader stepped forwards as their team entered the encampment (to call it a village would have been too generous - no matter how many signs there were of long-term habitation). In one hand was curled a wooden staff with white chips and glass beads tied to it. When it spoke, it was in a deep and gravelly voice, in the trader language used by most who passed through the Gates.
"We have no quarrel with you," it said. It's glassy black eyes were fixed on the group, glinting in the harsh sunlight. "The desert is open to all, but we will not abide violence here."
Teyla felt Ronan shift beside her.
John nodded sharply, but didn't smile. Teyla was glad that he'd spent some time learning what might and might not be appropriate when meeting with new people. With creatures that possessed of these sorts of teeth, smiling might have been seen as aggressive teeth-baring. "That's good, because we've got no quarrel with your either. We're just here... exploring."
Their leader seemed to relax at that, though Teyla was uncertain how she was aware of that. "Then we great you in peace, and invite you to share with us."
It gestured, a surprisingly elegant movement, and a smaller creature, indistinguishable from the larger ones (was this a female, she wondered, or perhaps they were talking to a female and the male was serving them - she had no way to know) stepped forward, a lightweight stone cup in its claws. Inside was tepid water, warmed from the air, as Teyla found when she took the cup without hesitation and sipped. Water would naturally be precious to desert dwellers, and to refuse would be rude. The others followed her lead.
They were ushered into the blessed relief of the tents. The air was still dry, but it shaded them from the sun at least. They were given lumpy cushions to sit on, and took up positions in a circle, joined by the leading creature and several of its fellows.
"Gran," it said, tapping itself in the centre of the chest.
John nodded and gestured as he introduced the team in return, and asked, "I don't suppose you have any idea about an energy reading."
Gran clacked two of its claws together in what might have been the equivalent to a negative shake of the head. "There is no high technology here. We, who are Guardians, Gate-keepers, have shunned it. Once upon a time, there might have been, but that was millions of years ago, and there is nothing but the desert now."
"You sure about that?" Rodney asked, narrowing his eyes.
Gran absently turned its staff in its hands. Teyla suddenly realised that what she had taken for wood was in fact bleached bone. She found herself contemplating what sort of creature would make a bone that large, and immediately tried to forget about it.
"The desert," Gran said, "And whatever is in it."
"Mind if we have a look around?" John asked. He looked reasonably calm for all that it wasn't often that giant lizards were so friendly with them.
Gran bowed slightly, inclining his whole upper body, in a gesture of assent. "The desert is open to all. We would not, and could not, stop you from exploring it as you see fit."
"You said you're Guardians," Ronan said, "What are you guarding?"
"Those who come here, to the desert."
John frowned uneasily. "Is it dangerous here? Are there animals here or something?"
"Nothing but the desert," Gran answered.
"But why would people only come here, if there is only desert?"
Gran looked at her and took a long time thinking about her question. When he finally answered, it was in the form of a commonly known phrase amongst the inhabited worlds of the galaxy the Lanteans called Pegasus. It was a fragment of a prayer from a world long since lost, that some speculated might have been Ancestral. But it was in a language that neither John nor Rodney knew.
Ronan just grunted in recognition of the phrase. John looked at her for an explanation as she drew back, giving away her understanding. She struggled to translate it into something they would understand. The literal translation told you nothing. She drew a blank for several moments before she recalled something. It was a poem, a gift of knowledge from Elizabeth Weir as one woman leader to another, when she'd professed that she could not understand John's love of flying. The sentiment seemed to fit.
"They come..." Teyla said haltingly, "To... I suppose you could say, that they come to 'touch the face of God'."
**
One direction seemed as good a place to start as anywhere else, and so they struck out in a direct line away from the horizon of the Stargate. They wouldn't be walking nearly as far as they would normally when exploring a new planet. They would keep their distance from the Gate much smaller, and spend less time on this planet in general. The heat wasn't good for any of them, and their canteens wouldn't last forever. The sun was painfully oppressive, but Rodney was far too intrigued by his readings to complain about the environment more than once every ten minutes or so.
"I don't get it," he said, miserably plucking at the rim of the wide military-issue sun hat he was wearing, as were the rest of them (except for Ronan who, in his usual, 'not down until I'm dead' fashion had refused). "The energy readings. They're coming from all around us. But there's nothing but sand and more sand, right?"
A little distance from the Gate, the ground had loosened, going from hard packed dirt to grains that built up in drifts and dunes. Teyla's feet sank deep into the sand with every step, and she just knew she'd be picking grains of sand out of her hair for weeks. There was nothing in sight, and in spite of Rodney's occasional harrumphs of thoughtfulness, she doubted they'd find anything.
And that was when her foot came down on something a lot more solid than sand.
It was so unexpected, it nearly caused her to stumble. When she'd recovered herself, she crouched down near where she thought she'd felt something under the sand and started brushing at the grains, trying to uncover whatever lay beneath.
Pain cut through her, and she hissed, yanking her fingers away. She looked at her hand. A line of blood cut across her palm. She swore to herself as she looked at it, and it was her infrequent use of the more socially unacceptable Athosian words that drew Ronan's attention.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Fine," she said, waving away his concern with an undamaged hand. "I just cut myself. There's something under the sand."
By now Rodney and John had arrived. John took one look at her hand and started fishing in his vest for a piece of gauze, which he wrapped tightly around her hand in spite of her protests. "Only looks shallow," he said, "But I still want Keller to check you out when we get back."
She acquiesced, because it was easier than starting an argument.
"What did you find?" Rodney asked impatiently.
Teyla dug around in the sand, a little more cautiously this time, and found what she had been looking for. It was a cube, looking perfectly sized, and she might have been willing to take it as a marvellous fluke of nature, a lump of glass in a hot desert that just so happened to be perfectly shaped, if it hadn't also been left free from scouring by the sands. It was pristine, as if it had just been cut only moments earlier. When she held it up, it refracted the light, and she swore she could see shapes inside. Other than that, it looks like a perfect, empty, glass cube, admittedly one with razor sharp edges keen to slice skin.
"Huh," Rodney said, and frowned at it. "Five point two centimeters, by five point two, by five point two. That's weird."
"It's a cube," Ronan said, "That would make sense, right?"
"But it's perfect," Rodney protested, waving the Ancient scanner in Ronan's direction. "This thing scans down to the micron, and it's an absolutely perfect cube. That shouldn't be possible without some very accurate and advanced technology. Nothing you'd find on an empty desert planet."
"Is it dangerous?" John asked, staring at the cube warily as it sat in the middle of Teyla's damaged palm.
"It's just a lump of glass, or so the scanner says."
John looked thoughtful for a moment. "We'll take it back with us. Did we find anything else?" They all shook their heads. "Right. Let's get back then, before I turn stupid in this sun. I hate deserts."
**
The cube got pride of place in Rodney's lab, where he scowled at it, poked at it with instruments and scanners of both Earth and Ancestor design, and then threw up his hands in utter frustration. "I can't get anything out of it," he said, "It's just a lump of glass. Remarkably free of impurities, if the spectroscopy results are anything to go by, but it's a perfectly shaped cube with an infinitesimal electrical field. Barely enough to cause the readouts to move."
Teyla fiddled with the bandage around her hand. Keller had proclaimed her injury minor, given her a broad spectrum antibiotic in case she'd picked up anything nasty, and sent her on her way. "Is this perhaps what the Ancestors found 'interesting' about Dendra?" Her palm itched.
"No way of knowing," Rodney said, bent over a laptop. He was trying to recalibrate a laser cutter. They'd attempted to shave off a sliver of the cube for analysis, but it had remained frustratingly resistant to anything the scientists had used on it. "We either haven't found any field notes yet, or they never bothered making any. The Ancients were amazingly sloppy about their research sometimes."
Teyla smiled to herself. She wondered what Rodney would say if he knew that on some worlds, speaking in such disrespectful tones of the Ancestors would have earned a beating. They'd never travelled to those worlds, the ones that Teyla had known about had been culled long ago, but there was always the possibility they'd run across a similar society one day. "Perhaps they simply did not have time to do thorough research. The Wraith are not especially helpful in that regard."
Rodney grunted, and then Radek Zelenka returned from retrieving a new diamond drill bit from stores, greeted her absent-mindedly and he and Rodney fell to discussing something complicated to do with crystalline molecular structures. Teyla smiled to herself at the unending enthusiasm of the scientists, and withdrew.
That night, she dreamt of unending sand, and the burning heat of the sun upon her skin, and when she woke, her lips were dry and cracked, and her palm itched intolerably.
**
She walked the city the next day in something of a daze. She paid only vague attention during briefings and conferences, and as soon as she was free to do so, she took to wandering, trying to shed the uneasy feeling that had settled inside her. She felt like there was something just on the edge of her hearing, a humming sound, no... a keening sound. The sound of perpetual vibration, like a struck tuning fork, that wouldn't fade. Her teeth ached. She kept her arms firmly folded in order to stop herself from giving into the urge to scratch her hand and worsen what should only be a minor injury.
She imagined she could hear the desert winds rushing past her, threading hot fingers through her hair.
When she found herself bent nearly double over a railing on the eastern pier, clutching the balustrade with shaking hands, the knowledge of what she had to do crystallised in her head. And really, it wouldn't be that hard to do.
**
Mr. Woolsey looked tired, but Teyla had expected that. She had deliberately made the effort to catch him at the end of a long day. He was surrounded by paperwork, working with red rimmed eyes, and he kept taking his glasses off to rub them. "Sorry, which planet?" he asked, fumbling with one hand in his desk drawer for a cloth to clean the lenses with.
"Acadex," Teyla said, with a friendly smile. "It's inhabitants are long-standing trading partners with Atlantis, and before that, the Athosians. I would like to 'show our faces' with them, make sure they're happy with the arrangements as they stand." It wasn't an uncommon request. Making visits to keep up diplomatic relations was part of her responsibilities as Athosian leader, and it was a method of dealing with other worlds that had long since been adopted by the Atlantis Expedition.
"Acadex," Woolsey muttered. "Pretty peaceful planet, isn't it?" He thought about it some more then nodded. "Ok, you're cleared to go. I'll tell the technicians to expect you first thing tomorrow?"
Teyla held up her hand. "Actually, it would need to be in the middle of the night. The time difference means that our night is their day, and I would prefer not to have to spend time sleeping in an inn, waiting for dawn."
"Fair point," Woolsey said, and smiled wryly. "Though personally, right now, I can't quite understand how someone would fore-go the prospect of a good night's sleep."
She laughed, since it was the appropriate point to do so, and took her leave.
**
That night, Teyla lurked in the lab hallways, hidden just out of sight around the corner and behind pillars. She could hear Radek and Rodney talking, just out of sight, in the lab.
"Yes, yes," Radek was saying, sounding tired and impatient, "We are agreed: it is not a piece of glass. That much is obvious, but given that we are having limited success in determining what it is exactly, perhaps we should break for the night?"
"What, and give in so easily?" Rodney's voice was partly teasing, and partly deadly serious. It seemed to vary from word to word.
"Yes, Rodney, I am a man of very weak character, and admit that I do not have your superhuman ability to research beyond the reasonable limits of Humanity. Two days we have been at this!" Teyla fought the urge to laugh at Radek's dry tone, not wanting to give away her presence. Radek continued, "Surely, you can take pity on a mere mortal such as myself and perhaps leave the next test series until the morning?"
"Fine," Rodney said, sighing heavily. "But you can buy me a coffee for sacrificing science for your adolescent need to rest."
"Rodney, the coffee here is all free."
"Then it's an IOU for the next time we're on Earth-"
Teyla drew back as Rodney and Radek left, bickering back and forth. Even after they were gone, she waited, hidden, just in case Rodney decided, at the last minute, to double back and check something or retrieve something else. Ten minutes passed, and there was no sign of him, so she ducked into the lab, not bothering to turn the lights back on. The cube was in the last place she had seen it. It wasn't especially dangerous, or valuable, and since the only people on the base were expedition personnel, Rodney obviously wasn't too worried about leaving it out in the open while an Ancient sensor array hummed over it.
She unfurled a scrap of leather that she'd taken from a pile of rags she kept in the corner of her quarters, the old nomad's habit of never throwing away what might be useful someday coming in handy. Wary of having her fingers further sliced by the cube, she dropped it over the object carefully, the gingerly lifted it up, securing the wrapping further, a double layer between her skin and the glassy surface. Even with insulation, she could feel it vibrating beneath her fingers, could almost hear it whispering: soon, soon.
She shoved the cube, wrappings and all, into one of the pockets of her jacket, and headed for the Control Room.
**
Acadex was a lush world, verdant and alive in a way that many worlds in the Pegasus galaxy were, artificially engineered by the Ancestors to provide a suitable habitat for Humans. The Atlantean scientists called the process 'terraforming', which had amused Teyla no end when she heard it. What a provincial term it was, to make the implicit assumption that their own world was the basis for all others. At that moment, however, Teyla couldn't have cared less whether Acadex was a terraformed garden, or whether it was underwater. It was irrelevant, in so far as it was a mere stopping off point on her journey.
She stumbled towards the DHD. The moment the cube had touched the event horizon, it had seemed to become energised. She felt like all the bones in her body were vibrating, and her head ached abominably. With shaking hands, she dialed up Dendra, and stumbled, half blind with the competing sensations of vibration and pain, through the sheer cold of the Gate, to the scorching heat beyond.
It had been late night on Atlantis, early morning on Acadex, and it was high noon on Dendra. If anything, the heat seemed worse than before. She stripped off her utility vest before she was even part way down the path leading from the Gate. If she'd been in a rational state of mind, perhaps she wouldn't have done such a foolish thing, but Teyla was long past caring. She paused only long enough to pull the cube and its protective packaging from the vest before abandoning it and, ignoring the small grouping of tents that were not too far away, and she struck out into the desert, following that old vibration that she knew only she could feel and hear.
She had no idea how long she walked for. The pain had eased a little since arriving in the desert, but the vibration remained, and she had to clench her jaw against her teeth chattering. She had no clear idea of a direction to head in, but she felt an indefinable pull, and couldn't help but follow it. Anything to ease the awful vibrations. She licked parched and cracked lips, and tiny part of her brain that was still functioning wondered if she wasn't about to die out here, on some foolish quest that she didn't even agree to undertake. And why was she here anyway?
The cube in her hand abruptly jerked her arm. She halted, swaying from heat and exhaustion, and stared at the little leather parcel. She wondered if she'd gone mad and was interpreting her own muscle fatigue as movement. Then the cube yanked so hard that it flew out of her hands and upwards, coming to a halt in midair at around nose-level. She blinked, the parcel hovering incongruously in the air, and thought that there was a distinct possibility she was hallucinating. She reached out and tried to take hold of the cube again, but it wasn't just hovering, it was fixed, as firmly as if it had been embedded in solid rock. She yanked as hard as she could, and only lost her footing for her trouble. Only the fact that she was still clinging onto the cube meant that she didn't fall over entirely. She was able to use it to pull herself up again, getting her feet back under her.
She stared at it suspiciously, then pulled the leather wrapping off. It came away freely, leaving the cube stuck in the air.
Well, she thought, Now what?
There was a whistling noise that she'd at first thought was the wind, but she realised, as she stood and concentrated, that no wind was blowing. It was, in fact, surrealistically still. What was making that whistling, rushing sound then?
Thppt.
Teyla whirled at the sound, but at first didn't see anything. Then she caught the merest glint of light reflecting off a solid surface, and she realised that, several meters away, there was another cube. Identical to the first, hovering in midair. This was closer to the ground, and trying to move it with a booted foot produced no better results than before.
Thppt. Thppt.
Two more, irregularly spaced, and at a different height. That noise again, and there was another cube, directly over her head. Every time there was that little sound, the whistling terminated. They were moving, she realised. That whistling sound was movement, and the thppt noise was them halting. She squinted against the harsh sunlight, staring out into the desert, and she thought she might drive herself half blind before she finally saw it. There, in the distance. Not just one or two cubes, but dozens, hundreds of them, were rising from the sand by no means that Teyla could see, and moving through the air, towards her. She could only catch glimpses of them when the sun reflected off their surfaces, and no matter which way she looked, all she could see were approaching cubes.
Instinct kicked in, and Teyla did the only reasonable thing possible: she attempted to make a run for it.
It was virtually impossible to get decent footing in the heavy, loose sand that made up the part of the desert Teyla had walked into. It was exhausting, and even if she hadn't already been depleted from a long walk across the desert with little rest and no water. She stumbled, her legs feeling leaden and unwieldy, and crumpled to the sand. By the time she'd managed to haul herself back to her feet, the way was blocked by a solid, uneven wall of cubes. She turned blindly in a new direction, but that way was blocked too. No matter which way she turned, she was trapped, surrounding by a shifting, living prism that changed its arrangement in response to her movements. The sounds of 'thppt' were gone now, but she was sure that more cubes were arriving.
She reached out, trying to feel a way out of her transparent cage, but then her sleeve snagged on the corner of one of the cubes, and before she could jerk her arm away, it felt like it was pressed into a vice. Panic welled up in her throat as she realised that the cubes were closing in around her, pinning her in place, and then she gasped as her left leg was enfolded, then the right. The sensation of her bones vibrating was unbearable, and then she felt solidity forming around her chest. She wondered if she was about to die, choked to death in the middle of a glass coffin.
And then, as the startlingly cool glass pressed around her face, everything... slowed down.
**
She wasn't on a desert planet in some far flung part of the Pegasus galaxy. Perhaps some piece of her was there, but the rest of her was spread out, thinned, reaching out across the stars and the spaces between them. She was on worlds familiar and alien, and had always been there. She saw Humans, Wraith, and creatures she had only heard rumours about.
And then she was even further away. Parts of her were scattered in far flung galaxies, connected through tenuous threads but there nonetheless. She saw crystalline spiders the size of dogs that were experts at microelectronics. She saw spindly grey beings she recognised as Asgard. She saw reptilian bipeds sunning themselves on a mountaintop, and an aquan race holding a conference on artistic developments in sculpture over the last three hundred years. Three galaxies away, she was aware of a planet where the dominant form of life were sentient snowflakes, who lived for only a few hours before melting away, individual components in a massive planet-wide brain that drifted in the clouds and solved abstract mathematical problems. In the clouds of a yellow-hued gas giant, she watched giant floating creatures tell jokes with movements of their tentacles. On a world whose atmosphere was choking and uninhabitable by organic life, poisoned from an ancient war, she watched as machines, abandoned by their makers, started to take the first tentative steps towards true sentience and self determination. She saw a planet that she realised was Earth, Humans laughing, loving, and crying.
They whispered to her: We are everywhere. We record. We are the Watchers. We await our Creators return.
For one brief, blinding moment, Teyla Emmagan knew everything.
**
When Teyla came back to herself, she felt tired, sore, and, more importantly, very small.
After a few groggy moments, she realised that she should be feeling much worse, or possibly much more dead. While her mouth felt gritty, it didn't feel as parched as it should have, and she was cradled on soft padding, and in the shade. She opened her eyes carefully, and saw a large toothy lizard hovering over her. For some reason, this did not disturb her as much as it did last time she had met them.
"Gran?" she said, her voice cracking before she was even halfway through the address, the remainder coming out in a hoarse whisper.
Gran sat back on its haunches, and offered what might have been a gentle expression. It had a small bowl in its claws. "Ah good," it said, "You are not entirely lost to us. Hardier folk have endured less and not come out so well. You are a remarkable mammal, Teyla Emmagan." It pulled a small green bud out of the bowl, a piece of a plant that he held out. "Please bite down on this, and suck on it as much as you have the strength to. I will give you proper liquids when I am sure you will not expel it."
It released a slightly sweet liquid as Teyla gingerly crushed it with her teeth, soothing her parched tongue and throat.
There was some harsh guttural snarls and hisses from outside the tent, and Teyla nearly leapt in fright, but Gran rested a heavy hand on her shoulder, keeping her in place. "The Stargate has just activated," it relayed. "I'm sure that it is your friends. No doubt they will be here shortly."
Gran was absolutely correct. It was a matter of mere minutes before John, Rodney and Ronan, all looking anxious and unhappy, were all standing in the tent. With them was Doctor Keller, who took one look at her and immediately set to examining her, asking questions, shining lights in her eyes, and then hooking up an IV of re-hydration fluids and making noises about returning to Atlantis as soon as possible.
"I don't understand," Rodney was saying, sounding distressed. "It was just a cube of glass. How could it have made Teyla try to kill herself in the desert?"
Gran snorted, fiddling with one of the feathers on his headdress. "Your friend has a cut on her hand. To facilitate communion, the Watchers release crystalline spores, a parasite that latches onto a host's immune system and causes sympathetic resonance. It compels the host to return to the point of infection, and allows the Watchers to interface with the host nervous system."
The Humans were staring at him. Gran snorted. "I wasn't always a desert dweller. Once, I was a neurologist."
"Will she be okay?" Keller asked, fussing over the IV line.
"Without the cube you took to resonate with, the spores will denature in her bloodstream and be passed out normally." Gran looked at Teyla, eyes burning into hers. "What else do you take with you?"
Teyla fought the urge to shrink away, and thought of that all-encompassing knowledge, that serene certainty that there was nothing out of her realm of experience. "It's fading so fast," she admitted. "Just... the All. And... the knowledge that they're there, hidden deep under the surfaces of a million worlds. Watching."
Gran nodded, sitting down on the ground, legs folding in an arrangement that was odd to look at. "When you think about it," it said, eyes half-lidded. "It's either very comforting, or extremely disconcerting."
Teyla, really, couldn't help but agree.
-End
It's awesome. It's like a birdshit-strewn, gouge-your-eyes-out-if-you're-not-careful, demented version of an obstacle course. I kinda like it. Pitch black and you're dodging and weaving around pipes and air conditioning duct work. Although I did discover that if I want to scramble over something at chest height, I have to do a little run up and jump, rather than do what the engineer and just lever myself up. ;D
On the other hand, there was a serious reason we were in there. Water was flooding through the ceilings in several rooms, at serious risk of shorting out a lot of very expensive equipment. No fun for anyone if that happens. We were trying to do damage control with buckets and paper towels.
I've decided that I really want to play The Secret World if only because it's the same team as worked on Dreamfall (and if you haven't played that game, you really should).
Anyway. To the point of this post. I'm just reposting the SGA_Flashfic fic I did back in July. It didn't get much reaction, alas, but I kinda like it. It occurred to me I should pop it on here before I forget.
Title: Beneath The Sand
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
The act of stepping through a Stargate had an effect of cushioning the shift of one planetary environment to another. It seemed sometimes, at least to Teyla, that the act of travelling so far across space allowed the body to forget the old surroundings and accept the new without much trouble. Sometimes, however, the differences were too drastic to be easily shrugged off.
The world she now stood on had been given a rather uninspiring designation of letters and numbers by the Atlantean data miners who had uncovered this address from the Atlantis database, but a notation by the original Ancient scientists had given it a name 'Dendra'. Only inhabited worlds were ever given names, whether they were occupied by a native race or by some Ancient scientific outpost.
The truth was that they were not really sure what they were going to find. The information in the database indicated that it was one of the last worlds to be charted by the Ancients, and a Stargate had been dropped on its surface a mere two weeks before the Ancients had come under siege from the Wraith. It was marked for 'follow-up investigations' that had never taken place, and that was enough for Mr. Woolsey to authorise a trip through the gate to see what they'd find.
What they discovered was that Dendra was a harsh and unpleasant world. The gravity was higher than most Human-inhabited worlds, and the sun blazed down, unrelieved by clouds. The air was breathable, but achingly dry. Teyla carefully kept to breathing through her nose. Her first reflexive inhalation through her mouth after exiting the Gate had caused her mouth to dry out almost immediately. She wet her lips from the canteen she carried with her, and noted with amusement the others doing the same. All except Ronan, of course. She was not entirely sure whether that was just an expression of machismo on his part.
A desert stretched out in all directions, the sand a dark red in colour and the sky a deep purple. The Gate stood in the middle of a plain of hard, packed earth, and in the distance, Teyla could see mountains, though there was no snow about their peaks. Much closer, however, was a low rising collection of tents, a small village. They had to be located there for the Stargate alone. There was nothing else nearby.
"Huh," Rodney was holding his canteen in one hand, sipping from it, and a scanner was clutched in the other hand.
When he didn't expand on that utterance, John Sheppard turned his head and bestowed Rodney with a look that Teyla thought could be best described as 'vaguely impatience indulgence'. "Something interesting, Rodney?"
"Well, I'm picking up a slight energy reading. So low that it's practically nonexistent. If it weren't pretty much a wasteland here, I probably wouldn't be able to get anything from the background radiation." Rodney scowled, and poked the small tablet a few times, as if by expressing his disapproval, the energy readings would be cowed and become helpfully understandable.
"Coming from where?"
Rodney's frown deepened. "Non-localised."
Teyla had long since learnt to take that to mean 'everywhere' or, alternatively, 'no idea'.
"Maybe they know," Ronan suggested, one hand cautiously resting on his gun.
Teyla turned her head, squinting towards the tents. There was movement, though she couldn't quite make out details. No doubt their arrival through the gate had caused a certain amount of disturbance. From their height relative to the tents they stood by, she guessed they were tall, taller than the team.
"Let's go ask," John said, resting his hands on his weapon in a deceptively casual manner, after giving it a quick once over with his eyes. The others followed his lead. Look non-aggressive. Be nice.
Except, of course, for Rodney, who was still mostly engrossed with the mystery of their energy readings.
Teyla wondered what sort of people would be willing to isolate themselves in a harsh environment, clinging tightly to the Gate that was no doubt their only source of food and water. As they approached, it was very quickly apparent.
They were lizards.
They towered over the Humans by one or two feet of height, and were not clad in any sort of clothes. What would be the point, she wondered, given that it would only serve to protect them from the heat reptiles loved. There was something deep in the back of her brain that itched at the large reptiles, something primitive that told her to run up a tree and hide, but she ignored it. It was true, they rarely came across non-Humans on planets. The Wraith rarely tolerated the potential opposition of those they could not eat, and so it was strange to find something so different.
While they wore no clothes, they weren't completely unadorned. A few wore simple headbands with chips of coloured glass woven in, or feathers from birds that were certainly nowhere to be found on this desolate world. Their skin, or rather, their hide, varied in shades of red and orange, some mottled, some a solid colour. Their leader, whose rank she could only guess at from the fact he wore a more elaborate headdress than the others, was a deep dark ruby red. Their legs were jointed in a backwards fashion to a Human, like a cat's, and their arms seemed out of proportion, being far longer than their torsos, and with elongated claws on the end. Their heads pushed outwards in a small beak-like extension that only served to just mask the wickedly sharp-looking teeth.
Rodney muttered something that might have been, "Oh God, don't let them eat us."
The leader stepped forwards as their team entered the encampment (to call it a village would have been too generous - no matter how many signs there were of long-term habitation). In one hand was curled a wooden staff with white chips and glass beads tied to it. When it spoke, it was in a deep and gravelly voice, in the trader language used by most who passed through the Gates.
"We have no quarrel with you," it said. It's glassy black eyes were fixed on the group, glinting in the harsh sunlight. "The desert is open to all, but we will not abide violence here."
Teyla felt Ronan shift beside her.
John nodded sharply, but didn't smile. Teyla was glad that he'd spent some time learning what might and might not be appropriate when meeting with new people. With creatures that possessed of these sorts of teeth, smiling might have been seen as aggressive teeth-baring. "That's good, because we've got no quarrel with your either. We're just here... exploring."
Their leader seemed to relax at that, though Teyla was uncertain how she was aware of that. "Then we great you in peace, and invite you to share with us."
It gestured, a surprisingly elegant movement, and a smaller creature, indistinguishable from the larger ones (was this a female, she wondered, or perhaps they were talking to a female and the male was serving them - she had no way to know) stepped forward, a lightweight stone cup in its claws. Inside was tepid water, warmed from the air, as Teyla found when she took the cup without hesitation and sipped. Water would naturally be precious to desert dwellers, and to refuse would be rude. The others followed her lead.
They were ushered into the blessed relief of the tents. The air was still dry, but it shaded them from the sun at least. They were given lumpy cushions to sit on, and took up positions in a circle, joined by the leading creature and several of its fellows.
"Gran," it said, tapping itself in the centre of the chest.
John nodded and gestured as he introduced the team in return, and asked, "I don't suppose you have any idea about an energy reading."
Gran clacked two of its claws together in what might have been the equivalent to a negative shake of the head. "There is no high technology here. We, who are Guardians, Gate-keepers, have shunned it. Once upon a time, there might have been, but that was millions of years ago, and there is nothing but the desert now."
"You sure about that?" Rodney asked, narrowing his eyes.
Gran absently turned its staff in its hands. Teyla suddenly realised that what she had taken for wood was in fact bleached bone. She found herself contemplating what sort of creature would make a bone that large, and immediately tried to forget about it.
"The desert," Gran said, "And whatever is in it."
"Mind if we have a look around?" John asked. He looked reasonably calm for all that it wasn't often that giant lizards were so friendly with them.
Gran bowed slightly, inclining his whole upper body, in a gesture of assent. "The desert is open to all. We would not, and could not, stop you from exploring it as you see fit."
"You said you're Guardians," Ronan said, "What are you guarding?"
"Those who come here, to the desert."
John frowned uneasily. "Is it dangerous here? Are there animals here or something?"
"Nothing but the desert," Gran answered.
"But why would people only come here, if there is only desert?"
Gran looked at her and took a long time thinking about her question. When he finally answered, it was in the form of a commonly known phrase amongst the inhabited worlds of the galaxy the Lanteans called Pegasus. It was a fragment of a prayer from a world long since lost, that some speculated might have been Ancestral. But it was in a language that neither John nor Rodney knew.
Ronan just grunted in recognition of the phrase. John looked at her for an explanation as she drew back, giving away her understanding. She struggled to translate it into something they would understand. The literal translation told you nothing. She drew a blank for several moments before she recalled something. It was a poem, a gift of knowledge from Elizabeth Weir as one woman leader to another, when she'd professed that she could not understand John's love of flying. The sentiment seemed to fit.
"They come..." Teyla said haltingly, "To... I suppose you could say, that they come to 'touch the face of God'."
**
One direction seemed as good a place to start as anywhere else, and so they struck out in a direct line away from the horizon of the Stargate. They wouldn't be walking nearly as far as they would normally when exploring a new planet. They would keep their distance from the Gate much smaller, and spend less time on this planet in general. The heat wasn't good for any of them, and their canteens wouldn't last forever. The sun was painfully oppressive, but Rodney was far too intrigued by his readings to complain about the environment more than once every ten minutes or so.
"I don't get it," he said, miserably plucking at the rim of the wide military-issue sun hat he was wearing, as were the rest of them (except for Ronan who, in his usual, 'not down until I'm dead' fashion had refused). "The energy readings. They're coming from all around us. But there's nothing but sand and more sand, right?"
A little distance from the Gate, the ground had loosened, going from hard packed dirt to grains that built up in drifts and dunes. Teyla's feet sank deep into the sand with every step, and she just knew she'd be picking grains of sand out of her hair for weeks. There was nothing in sight, and in spite of Rodney's occasional harrumphs of thoughtfulness, she doubted they'd find anything.
And that was when her foot came down on something a lot more solid than sand.
It was so unexpected, it nearly caused her to stumble. When she'd recovered herself, she crouched down near where she thought she'd felt something under the sand and started brushing at the grains, trying to uncover whatever lay beneath.
Pain cut through her, and she hissed, yanking her fingers away. She looked at her hand. A line of blood cut across her palm. She swore to herself as she looked at it, and it was her infrequent use of the more socially unacceptable Athosian words that drew Ronan's attention.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Fine," she said, waving away his concern with an undamaged hand. "I just cut myself. There's something under the sand."
By now Rodney and John had arrived. John took one look at her hand and started fishing in his vest for a piece of gauze, which he wrapped tightly around her hand in spite of her protests. "Only looks shallow," he said, "But I still want Keller to check you out when we get back."
She acquiesced, because it was easier than starting an argument.
"What did you find?" Rodney asked impatiently.
Teyla dug around in the sand, a little more cautiously this time, and found what she had been looking for. It was a cube, looking perfectly sized, and she might have been willing to take it as a marvellous fluke of nature, a lump of glass in a hot desert that just so happened to be perfectly shaped, if it hadn't also been left free from scouring by the sands. It was pristine, as if it had just been cut only moments earlier. When she held it up, it refracted the light, and she swore she could see shapes inside. Other than that, it looks like a perfect, empty, glass cube, admittedly one with razor sharp edges keen to slice skin.
"Huh," Rodney said, and frowned at it. "Five point two centimeters, by five point two, by five point two. That's weird."
"It's a cube," Ronan said, "That would make sense, right?"
"But it's perfect," Rodney protested, waving the Ancient scanner in Ronan's direction. "This thing scans down to the micron, and it's an absolutely perfect cube. That shouldn't be possible without some very accurate and advanced technology. Nothing you'd find on an empty desert planet."
"Is it dangerous?" John asked, staring at the cube warily as it sat in the middle of Teyla's damaged palm.
"It's just a lump of glass, or so the scanner says."
John looked thoughtful for a moment. "We'll take it back with us. Did we find anything else?" They all shook their heads. "Right. Let's get back then, before I turn stupid in this sun. I hate deserts."
**
The cube got pride of place in Rodney's lab, where he scowled at it, poked at it with instruments and scanners of both Earth and Ancestor design, and then threw up his hands in utter frustration. "I can't get anything out of it," he said, "It's just a lump of glass. Remarkably free of impurities, if the spectroscopy results are anything to go by, but it's a perfectly shaped cube with an infinitesimal electrical field. Barely enough to cause the readouts to move."
Teyla fiddled with the bandage around her hand. Keller had proclaimed her injury minor, given her a broad spectrum antibiotic in case she'd picked up anything nasty, and sent her on her way. "Is this perhaps what the Ancestors found 'interesting' about Dendra?" Her palm itched.
"No way of knowing," Rodney said, bent over a laptop. He was trying to recalibrate a laser cutter. They'd attempted to shave off a sliver of the cube for analysis, but it had remained frustratingly resistant to anything the scientists had used on it. "We either haven't found any field notes yet, or they never bothered making any. The Ancients were amazingly sloppy about their research sometimes."
Teyla smiled to herself. She wondered what Rodney would say if he knew that on some worlds, speaking in such disrespectful tones of the Ancestors would have earned a beating. They'd never travelled to those worlds, the ones that Teyla had known about had been culled long ago, but there was always the possibility they'd run across a similar society one day. "Perhaps they simply did not have time to do thorough research. The Wraith are not especially helpful in that regard."
Rodney grunted, and then Radek Zelenka returned from retrieving a new diamond drill bit from stores, greeted her absent-mindedly and he and Rodney fell to discussing something complicated to do with crystalline molecular structures. Teyla smiled to herself at the unending enthusiasm of the scientists, and withdrew.
That night, she dreamt of unending sand, and the burning heat of the sun upon her skin, and when she woke, her lips were dry and cracked, and her palm itched intolerably.
**
She walked the city the next day in something of a daze. She paid only vague attention during briefings and conferences, and as soon as she was free to do so, she took to wandering, trying to shed the uneasy feeling that had settled inside her. She felt like there was something just on the edge of her hearing, a humming sound, no... a keening sound. The sound of perpetual vibration, like a struck tuning fork, that wouldn't fade. Her teeth ached. She kept her arms firmly folded in order to stop herself from giving into the urge to scratch her hand and worsen what should only be a minor injury.
She imagined she could hear the desert winds rushing past her, threading hot fingers through her hair.
When she found herself bent nearly double over a railing on the eastern pier, clutching the balustrade with shaking hands, the knowledge of what she had to do crystallised in her head. And really, it wouldn't be that hard to do.
**
Mr. Woolsey looked tired, but Teyla had expected that. She had deliberately made the effort to catch him at the end of a long day. He was surrounded by paperwork, working with red rimmed eyes, and he kept taking his glasses off to rub them. "Sorry, which planet?" he asked, fumbling with one hand in his desk drawer for a cloth to clean the lenses with.
"Acadex," Teyla said, with a friendly smile. "It's inhabitants are long-standing trading partners with Atlantis, and before that, the Athosians. I would like to 'show our faces' with them, make sure they're happy with the arrangements as they stand." It wasn't an uncommon request. Making visits to keep up diplomatic relations was part of her responsibilities as Athosian leader, and it was a method of dealing with other worlds that had long since been adopted by the Atlantis Expedition.
"Acadex," Woolsey muttered. "Pretty peaceful planet, isn't it?" He thought about it some more then nodded. "Ok, you're cleared to go. I'll tell the technicians to expect you first thing tomorrow?"
Teyla held up her hand. "Actually, it would need to be in the middle of the night. The time difference means that our night is their day, and I would prefer not to have to spend time sleeping in an inn, waiting for dawn."
"Fair point," Woolsey said, and smiled wryly. "Though personally, right now, I can't quite understand how someone would fore-go the prospect of a good night's sleep."
She laughed, since it was the appropriate point to do so, and took her leave.
**
That night, Teyla lurked in the lab hallways, hidden just out of sight around the corner and behind pillars. She could hear Radek and Rodney talking, just out of sight, in the lab.
"Yes, yes," Radek was saying, sounding tired and impatient, "We are agreed: it is not a piece of glass. That much is obvious, but given that we are having limited success in determining what it is exactly, perhaps we should break for the night?"
"What, and give in so easily?" Rodney's voice was partly teasing, and partly deadly serious. It seemed to vary from word to word.
"Yes, Rodney, I am a man of very weak character, and admit that I do not have your superhuman ability to research beyond the reasonable limits of Humanity. Two days we have been at this!" Teyla fought the urge to laugh at Radek's dry tone, not wanting to give away her presence. Radek continued, "Surely, you can take pity on a mere mortal such as myself and perhaps leave the next test series until the morning?"
"Fine," Rodney said, sighing heavily. "But you can buy me a coffee for sacrificing science for your adolescent need to rest."
"Rodney, the coffee here is all free."
"Then it's an IOU for the next time we're on Earth-"
Teyla drew back as Rodney and Radek left, bickering back and forth. Even after they were gone, she waited, hidden, just in case Rodney decided, at the last minute, to double back and check something or retrieve something else. Ten minutes passed, and there was no sign of him, so she ducked into the lab, not bothering to turn the lights back on. The cube was in the last place she had seen it. It wasn't especially dangerous, or valuable, and since the only people on the base were expedition personnel, Rodney obviously wasn't too worried about leaving it out in the open while an Ancient sensor array hummed over it.
She unfurled a scrap of leather that she'd taken from a pile of rags she kept in the corner of her quarters, the old nomad's habit of never throwing away what might be useful someday coming in handy. Wary of having her fingers further sliced by the cube, she dropped it over the object carefully, the gingerly lifted it up, securing the wrapping further, a double layer between her skin and the glassy surface. Even with insulation, she could feel it vibrating beneath her fingers, could almost hear it whispering: soon, soon.
She shoved the cube, wrappings and all, into one of the pockets of her jacket, and headed for the Control Room.
**
Acadex was a lush world, verdant and alive in a way that many worlds in the Pegasus galaxy were, artificially engineered by the Ancestors to provide a suitable habitat for Humans. The Atlantean scientists called the process 'terraforming', which had amused Teyla no end when she heard it. What a provincial term it was, to make the implicit assumption that their own world was the basis for all others. At that moment, however, Teyla couldn't have cared less whether Acadex was a terraformed garden, or whether it was underwater. It was irrelevant, in so far as it was a mere stopping off point on her journey.
She stumbled towards the DHD. The moment the cube had touched the event horizon, it had seemed to become energised. She felt like all the bones in her body were vibrating, and her head ached abominably. With shaking hands, she dialed up Dendra, and stumbled, half blind with the competing sensations of vibration and pain, through the sheer cold of the Gate, to the scorching heat beyond.
It had been late night on Atlantis, early morning on Acadex, and it was high noon on Dendra. If anything, the heat seemed worse than before. She stripped off her utility vest before she was even part way down the path leading from the Gate. If she'd been in a rational state of mind, perhaps she wouldn't have done such a foolish thing, but Teyla was long past caring. She paused only long enough to pull the cube and its protective packaging from the vest before abandoning it and, ignoring the small grouping of tents that were not too far away, and she struck out into the desert, following that old vibration that she knew only she could feel and hear.
She had no idea how long she walked for. The pain had eased a little since arriving in the desert, but the vibration remained, and she had to clench her jaw against her teeth chattering. She had no clear idea of a direction to head in, but she felt an indefinable pull, and couldn't help but follow it. Anything to ease the awful vibrations. She licked parched and cracked lips, and tiny part of her brain that was still functioning wondered if she wasn't about to die out here, on some foolish quest that she didn't even agree to undertake. And why was she here anyway?
The cube in her hand abruptly jerked her arm. She halted, swaying from heat and exhaustion, and stared at the little leather parcel. She wondered if she'd gone mad and was interpreting her own muscle fatigue as movement. Then the cube yanked so hard that it flew out of her hands and upwards, coming to a halt in midair at around nose-level. She blinked, the parcel hovering incongruously in the air, and thought that there was a distinct possibility she was hallucinating. She reached out and tried to take hold of the cube again, but it wasn't just hovering, it was fixed, as firmly as if it had been embedded in solid rock. She yanked as hard as she could, and only lost her footing for her trouble. Only the fact that she was still clinging onto the cube meant that she didn't fall over entirely. She was able to use it to pull herself up again, getting her feet back under her.
She stared at it suspiciously, then pulled the leather wrapping off. It came away freely, leaving the cube stuck in the air.
Well, she thought, Now what?
There was a whistling noise that she'd at first thought was the wind, but she realised, as she stood and concentrated, that no wind was blowing. It was, in fact, surrealistically still. What was making that whistling, rushing sound then?
Thppt.
Teyla whirled at the sound, but at first didn't see anything. Then she caught the merest glint of light reflecting off a solid surface, and she realised that, several meters away, there was another cube. Identical to the first, hovering in midair. This was closer to the ground, and trying to move it with a booted foot produced no better results than before.
Thppt. Thppt.
Two more, irregularly spaced, and at a different height. That noise again, and there was another cube, directly over her head. Every time there was that little sound, the whistling terminated. They were moving, she realised. That whistling sound was movement, and the thppt noise was them halting. She squinted against the harsh sunlight, staring out into the desert, and she thought she might drive herself half blind before she finally saw it. There, in the distance. Not just one or two cubes, but dozens, hundreds of them, were rising from the sand by no means that Teyla could see, and moving through the air, towards her. She could only catch glimpses of them when the sun reflected off their surfaces, and no matter which way she looked, all she could see were approaching cubes.
Instinct kicked in, and Teyla did the only reasonable thing possible: she attempted to make a run for it.
It was virtually impossible to get decent footing in the heavy, loose sand that made up the part of the desert Teyla had walked into. It was exhausting, and even if she hadn't already been depleted from a long walk across the desert with little rest and no water. She stumbled, her legs feeling leaden and unwieldy, and crumpled to the sand. By the time she'd managed to haul herself back to her feet, the way was blocked by a solid, uneven wall of cubes. She turned blindly in a new direction, but that way was blocked too. No matter which way she turned, she was trapped, surrounding by a shifting, living prism that changed its arrangement in response to her movements. The sounds of 'thppt' were gone now, but she was sure that more cubes were arriving.
She reached out, trying to feel a way out of her transparent cage, but then her sleeve snagged on the corner of one of the cubes, and before she could jerk her arm away, it felt like it was pressed into a vice. Panic welled up in her throat as she realised that the cubes were closing in around her, pinning her in place, and then she gasped as her left leg was enfolded, then the right. The sensation of her bones vibrating was unbearable, and then she felt solidity forming around her chest. She wondered if she was about to die, choked to death in the middle of a glass coffin.
And then, as the startlingly cool glass pressed around her face, everything... slowed down.
**
She wasn't on a desert planet in some far flung part of the Pegasus galaxy. Perhaps some piece of her was there, but the rest of her was spread out, thinned, reaching out across the stars and the spaces between them. She was on worlds familiar and alien, and had always been there. She saw Humans, Wraith, and creatures she had only heard rumours about.
And then she was even further away. Parts of her were scattered in far flung galaxies, connected through tenuous threads but there nonetheless. She saw crystalline spiders the size of dogs that were experts at microelectronics. She saw spindly grey beings she recognised as Asgard. She saw reptilian bipeds sunning themselves on a mountaintop, and an aquan race holding a conference on artistic developments in sculpture over the last three hundred years. Three galaxies away, she was aware of a planet where the dominant form of life were sentient snowflakes, who lived for only a few hours before melting away, individual components in a massive planet-wide brain that drifted in the clouds and solved abstract mathematical problems. In the clouds of a yellow-hued gas giant, she watched giant floating creatures tell jokes with movements of their tentacles. On a world whose atmosphere was choking and uninhabitable by organic life, poisoned from an ancient war, she watched as machines, abandoned by their makers, started to take the first tentative steps towards true sentience and self determination. She saw a planet that she realised was Earth, Humans laughing, loving, and crying.
They whispered to her: We are everywhere. We record. We are the Watchers. We await our Creators return.
For one brief, blinding moment, Teyla Emmagan knew everything.
**
When Teyla came back to herself, she felt tired, sore, and, more importantly, very small.
After a few groggy moments, she realised that she should be feeling much worse, or possibly much more dead. While her mouth felt gritty, it didn't feel as parched as it should have, and she was cradled on soft padding, and in the shade. She opened her eyes carefully, and saw a large toothy lizard hovering over her. For some reason, this did not disturb her as much as it did last time she had met them.
"Gran?" she said, her voice cracking before she was even halfway through the address, the remainder coming out in a hoarse whisper.
Gran sat back on its haunches, and offered what might have been a gentle expression. It had a small bowl in its claws. "Ah good," it said, "You are not entirely lost to us. Hardier folk have endured less and not come out so well. You are a remarkable mammal, Teyla Emmagan." It pulled a small green bud out of the bowl, a piece of a plant that he held out. "Please bite down on this, and suck on it as much as you have the strength to. I will give you proper liquids when I am sure you will not expel it."
It released a slightly sweet liquid as Teyla gingerly crushed it with her teeth, soothing her parched tongue and throat.
There was some harsh guttural snarls and hisses from outside the tent, and Teyla nearly leapt in fright, but Gran rested a heavy hand on her shoulder, keeping her in place. "The Stargate has just activated," it relayed. "I'm sure that it is your friends. No doubt they will be here shortly."
Gran was absolutely correct. It was a matter of mere minutes before John, Rodney and Ronan, all looking anxious and unhappy, were all standing in the tent. With them was Doctor Keller, who took one look at her and immediately set to examining her, asking questions, shining lights in her eyes, and then hooking up an IV of re-hydration fluids and making noises about returning to Atlantis as soon as possible.
"I don't understand," Rodney was saying, sounding distressed. "It was just a cube of glass. How could it have made Teyla try to kill herself in the desert?"
Gran snorted, fiddling with one of the feathers on his headdress. "Your friend has a cut on her hand. To facilitate communion, the Watchers release crystalline spores, a parasite that latches onto a host's immune system and causes sympathetic resonance. It compels the host to return to the point of infection, and allows the Watchers to interface with the host nervous system."
The Humans were staring at him. Gran snorted. "I wasn't always a desert dweller. Once, I was a neurologist."
"Will she be okay?" Keller asked, fussing over the IV line.
"Without the cube you took to resonate with, the spores will denature in her bloodstream and be passed out normally." Gran looked at Teyla, eyes burning into hers. "What else do you take with you?"
Teyla fought the urge to shrink away, and thought of that all-encompassing knowledge, that serene certainty that there was nothing out of her realm of experience. "It's fading so fast," she admitted. "Just... the All. And... the knowledge that they're there, hidden deep under the surfaces of a million worlds. Watching."
Gran nodded, sitting down on the ground, legs folding in an arrangement that was odd to look at. "When you think about it," it said, eyes half-lidded. "It's either very comforting, or extremely disconcerting."
Teyla, really, couldn't help but agree.
-End