SGA: Of Mermaids And Atlanteans Prologue/4
SUMMARY: AU. Heading to another galaxy is only the beginning of the story. John Sheppard is the military whipping boy, an outcast among outcasts -- until the fateful day he sees a mermaid outside their domed city and everything changes. Written for the sgareversebang 2016 drawing by mific, seen here.
Long time ago, so the story goes, a philosopher named Plato wrote of a civilisation called Atlantis. He said it was very advanced, very prosperous. But, because of the wickedness of her people, the gods sent a great deluge, and the entire city sank beneath the waves in a single night.
From that day until this, wise men and fools alike have searched for this mythical land. Theories abound: It's in the Atlantic Ocean. It's in the Bahamas. It's a metaphor. It's the home of mermaids. It's a storyteller's description of a massive volcanic eruption from this island - no, from that island --- or maybe from that one over there. It's a domed city beneath the waves.
Somehow, people never considered the idea that perhaps each and every one of these might contain a tiny kernel of truth. That the entire story might be a race memory of a powerful long-past event. It's not an idea without precedent - every culture on Earth has a Flood story, for example - but it's one that people tend to dismiss as "unlikely".
It's somehow more comforting to the human psyche to be willfully blind rather than to poke at the race memory and see what they will find.
What they would find if they poked this one --- was the memory of a war.
Millennia before Plato set pen to parchment, a great war was fought in space. Seven great cities, snowflake shaped and domed, fought against powerful enemies --- and lost.
Four of the massive sister cities were destroyed, down to the memory of their names. The three that prevailed - Lemuria, Mur, and Atlantis - were emptied and hidden away on watery worlds, their surviving inhabitants sent through wormholes to many words, to begin again in safety.
Yet, the memory of the great city survived, changed through the passing of time to a place on Earth. Civilisations rose and fell, technology fell backward and advanced again and slowly, history became legend. And somehow, defying the odds, Atlantis survived in collective memory as the other two were steadily forgotten.
Many thousands of light-years away, in another galaxy altogether, the domed city that inspired the legend lay. Empty and dark, it rested many miles beneath the ocean on a world with two moons.
The city bore silent witness as a civilisation began to grow up around it. Over thousands of years, that world's humans learned to survive beneath the waves. First, mechanically assisted, then genetically enhanced - and finally, born with the ability.
Slowly, the memory of ever living on the surface faded. The water dwellers forgot they were once just like the air breathers, and mistrust slowly developed.
But then - one fateful day - legends became reality and galaxies united.
On to Chapter One
Long time ago, so the story goes, a philosopher named Plato wrote of a civilisation called Atlantis. He said it was very advanced, very prosperous. But, because of the wickedness of her people, the gods sent a great deluge, and the entire city sank beneath the waves in a single night.
From that day until this, wise men and fools alike have searched for this mythical land. Theories abound: It's in the Atlantic Ocean. It's in the Bahamas. It's a metaphor. It's the home of mermaids. It's a storyteller's description of a massive volcanic eruption from this island - no, from that island --- or maybe from that one over there. It's a domed city beneath the waves.
Somehow, people never considered the idea that perhaps each and every one of these might contain a tiny kernel of truth. That the entire story might be a race memory of a powerful long-past event. It's not an idea without precedent - every culture on Earth has a Flood story, for example - but it's one that people tend to dismiss as "unlikely".
It's somehow more comforting to the human psyche to be willfully blind rather than to poke at the race memory and see what they will find.
What they would find if they poked this one --- was the memory of a war.
Millennia before Plato set pen to parchment, a great war was fought in space. Seven great cities, snowflake shaped and domed, fought against powerful enemies --- and lost.
Four of the massive sister cities were destroyed, down to the memory of their names. The three that prevailed - Lemuria, Mur, and Atlantis - were emptied and hidden away on watery worlds, their surviving inhabitants sent through wormholes to many words, to begin again in safety.
Yet, the memory of the great city survived, changed through the passing of time to a place on Earth. Civilisations rose and fell, technology fell backward and advanced again and slowly, history became legend. And somehow, defying the odds, Atlantis survived in collective memory as the other two were steadily forgotten.
Many thousands of light-years away, in another galaxy altogether, the domed city that inspired the legend lay. Empty and dark, it rested many miles beneath the ocean on a world with two moons.
The city bore silent witness as a civilisation began to grow up around it. Over thousands of years, that world's humans learned to survive beneath the waves. First, mechanically assisted, then genetically enhanced - and finally, born with the ability.
Slowly, the memory of ever living on the surface faded. The water dwellers forgot they were once just like the air breathers, and mistrust slowly developed.
But then - one fateful day - legends became reality and galaxies united.
On to Chapter One