SG1: "A Constant of Stars" (repost)
reposted:
Title: A Constant Of Stars, the elongated & revised version.
fandom: SG1
written: April 2004
note: and yes, Sham is a real name - I found her name on the BBC. one of the presenters .
Please Send Feedback.
Author: Rodlox.
Summary: Jack awakes to constants; is it too much for him?
Spoilers: 1969, Message In A Bottle, and a bunch of others.
Disclaimer: I own none of the canon characters, nor am I making any money in writing or posting this story. I only own the original fictional characters (let me know if you want to borrow them), and I am writing this for the sake of writing.
Archive: Jackfic.com may.
Dedicated to: All the people who sent me feedback, helping me via their opinions; without you, the extended story you are reading right now would not have been possible.
~~~~~~
PART ONE: THROUGH TIME:
Jack O'Neill of Earth had been emplaced in this stasis by a race -- the Kaqadesku -- which were human, whose technology overshadowed even the Tollans and Orbans. In exchange for their technology, friendship, and aid, they asked only for one Earthman: Jack O'Neill. Placing the fight against the Goa'uld ahead of himself, Jack agreed, once he went through the offerer's history and technology, making sure that they were safe, that they were okay.
Jack *was*, no longer a part of the system of entropy that was the interconnected universe. O'Neill *is*, isolated, kept in stasis on one world.
Decades became centuries became millenia became eons became aeons.
The stars wheeled in the celestial vault overhead, and the seasons came and went so often that entire eras cycled through alongside the glaciers and global floodings by the sea. Through it all, Jack remained immobile and dry, kept to the same bubble of stale air that was locked to the gravity of this planet. The machines which kept the stasis working were sufficiently good at protecting themselves from the water and ice and landslides and other natural events which occured through this timespan.
Millions of years passed.
A lonely wanderer, a brown dwarf star without a solar system of its own, entered this solar system, and was ensnared by the gravity of the Sun. As it'd entered the system, though, the brown dwarf had knocked aside one of the outer planets from here -- no longer was life on the presently flooded world to be protected by a gas giant.
Further millions of years passed on, and the chaotic dance of the Sun and the brown dwarf became simply dynamic. Jack's world was not lost to the sea of interstellar space; and the oceans on the world dried up for now, being locked away as water vapor, superheated clouds and fog. An alien Venus.
Two billion years strolled through.
A pair - or perhaps more, given their size - of black holes, itty-bitty things collectively smaller than a pinprick, now entered the solar system, crumbled-ate one of the outer rocky worlds upon which there was no life, and then entered the ballet of gravity with the two suns. Centuries became millenia, and the convoluted interactions of the objects at the system's center became the workings of
intelligence.
It was not an intelligence which could communicate with humans. But then, it was not an intelligence which would have desired to communicate with humans. But then, aside from Jack, what humans remained by this time?
~~~~~
There were still stars overhead. That had not changed. The details, the shorter-lived stars, were missing; and the longer-lived ones had changed, moved, or both.
The world had cooled considerably since the stellar heat from the dwarf and Sun had been taken in by the singularities. Jack collapsed to the ground, expelling the stale air from his lungs, then taking in rich and frigid and funny-tasting air.
The plant life of this planet had not been idle during the eons that Jack had *been*. They had sprouted trees and vines and cycads and fungi and kelps and things which had no Earthly equivilent. Even the air they produced had changed, though it was still breathable to a being from Jack's era. The atmospheric suppliments had changed -- the percentage of nitrogen, among other things, was not exactly the same. It was tolerable.
To Jack, the air was a godsend. It was ambrosia, even when he started coughing.
After a while, he trusted himself to sit up by rolling over. Then, basic exercises, making sure everything still worked.
Everything worked just like it'd worked when he'd been paused.
While he sat there, once the exercises had been exercised, Jack leaned back, looking up at the stars. So many many differences up there. O'Neill, who knew more than a little about astronomy and stellar drift himself -- even if he was no Carter on the subject -- started to see just how long he had *been*. A very very long time. "Crap," he said, and stood up.
The Kaqadesku had assured Jack that the stasis could be de-activated by any sufficiently intelligent form of intelligence. That'd been part of why he'd agreed to the process: even if Carter somehow failed to deactivate the thing, surely his buddy Thor would step in and handle it. One ally against the Goa'uld, and Jack had thought it would only cost a few months, maybe a few years at most.
Therefore, unless someone had literally moved the heaven and earth around, as some sort of April Fool Joke in the right month, "So much for that thought," he grimaced.
It took a while to stand up. It wasn't from lack of urgency to return home; it was from muscles that were still adjusting to the air that his bloodstream was delivering through his body. And, once he was standing, Jack started walking.
After twenty paces, he came across a trackway. Something else had been walking here, and his instincts told him that it hadn't been too long ago -- then again, he reminded himself that he wasn't knowledgable in how to read the not-quite-sand not-quite-loam that blanketted the world now.
Jack paused a minute, looking down at the footprints impressed in the sand-loam. It wasn't human, wasn't Asgard or any other race he knew of. It was something new to him, here under these suns.
Walking away from the tracks, Jack headed to where he'd last seen the stargate, and hoped that nobody'd buried it or moved it.
After an hour, Jack found the stargate. The terrain had changed between then and now. And here was the `gate.
What was left of it.
On Edora, the stargate had been buried by meteors. Here, the stargate had been taken apart by experts, its components lying in the sand-loam, some atop, some half-buried.
A bit here, a couple pieces there, here a glyph, there a conduit...
Jack collapsed, landing on his bum, and stared at the ruins. "Ozymandias," he whispered, doing nothing more than staring at it.
PART TWO: THE IT:
He stared at it for a long while.
The suns -- Sun and dwarf -- set in a rapid dance with their singularity partners. Then, a few hours later, they rose again. Another suns-set, and it was on the next suns-rise that Jack stood up, pacing among the parts and pieces of the stargate. He'd spent the time productively: thinking, thinking, pondering, wondering.
* How to send a message home? Whom to call? How to get home? *
He deliberately avoided asking if there was an Earth left. Jack didn't doubt that there was Earth still, irregardless of whether or not that thought was for the sake of his sanity -- all his years of fighting the Goa'uld had been for Earth.
* What to eat? *
His stomach grumbled.
There was a sound behind him, a clattering as a piece of glyph fell against a torus. Jack turned as quickly as he could, and he saw it.
Jack's first thought was of an umbrella... The same thorn atop the center, from which slender ribs descended in a circle. The ribs had a webbing of skin connecting one to the other, down to where they split into tentacle legs. Black dots flecked the umbrella webbing.
The umbrella-thing started to run at Jack, surprisingly fast for something with tentacles; but then, it ran on its tentacle-tips. When it was almost on him, it sprang up, leaping at Jack. O'Neill grabbed two of its tentacles and -- it was amazingly lightweight -- spun it away from him. Hurled it towards the remains of the stargate.
As it was spinning through the air, Jack caught sight of what was under the umbrella ribs: a bulbous swelling...one that looked almost like a blind Asgard's skull. Intelligent life, thrown toward a piece of stargate tubing. CRAP! Jack thought to himself.
Impact! The bulb slammed into the naquadah tubing, and burst.
Airborne stuff, reminding Jack of dandelion seeds, flew out of the bulb. There wasn't any brain matter; just the seeds. Jack breathed a sigh of relief.
...And he walked over to take a closer look at it. "May as well learn what sorta things live here now," Jack said. He hoped that he could find a way to signal for someone to pick him up...was the war against the Goa'uld still going on? If it was, he wanted in on it. But if the war was finally over, as he'd hoped it'd be when he had made the deal that'd sent him here...
Then what?
"I'm not gonna be a mercenary," Jack said resolutely.
Meanwhile, 2-4-5...Second of the Fourth Drift of the Fifth Land...walked around a boulder, and saw the thoughts of 3-4-3 escaping to the skies, where they would grow and become more People. 3-4-3 had been old; many had began to wonder when - even if - 3-4-3 would go to seed at all.
And he saw The It standing in the midst of the The Disassembled. The It!
Clearly, he reasoned, if The It was no longer upon The It's platform, then there was no doubt that The Time had arrived! This was completely different from all the wars declared as `the The It has moved a fraction of a _noak_'.
2-4-5 scrambled as fast as his (though gender was inexact among his cladistic affinity) feet could carry him, hurrying to reach the halfway point between himself and The It. Once there, he rolled onto his back, exposing his tender brain.
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Jack asked himself, words that meant less than nothing to 2-4-5. "What is it?" he asked the alien.
Rolling over again, 2-4-5 walked closer - though not too too close - to The It. He felt himself in thrall to The It's inherent sacredness.
Clambering over the parts and bits, 2-4-5 was always careful not to let any naquadah or other things touch his brain. He was utterly fascinated: to be so close to The It, to be peered at by The It's own eyespots -- those are eyes, yes? much debate had raged over that too - - and to watch The It moving. A thrill raced through his body, and he for a moment feared that all of this excitement would make him go to seed prematurely.
Jack kept a wary eye on it, making sure it didn't try anything funny. So far, nothing funny; nothing but climbing all over stuff, around and around Jack. "If you're trying to make me dizzy," Jack told it, "it's not gonna work."
Though this one looked almost identical to the dandelion-seed one, Jack had a funny feeling that something was different. "Can you understand me?" He got no answer, though it stopped going in circles around him. "I don't suppose you've ever heard of a place called `Earth', have you?"
2-4-5 leaped down from the pylon torus, and scrambled away, eager to tell others of his find, of what he had met with. Then he stopped, watching The It. Though he understood nothing of the language, he heard The It ask "That a yes?" as The It began to follow him.
Jack walked with the waist-high alien. It wasn't like there was anything better to do, and he had hopes that the little guy was leading him to somebody whom could help out. Jack felt he could handle any trouble that came his way.
Night fell as they passed the platform where Jack'd spent much time and no time at the same time. Jack looked up at the stars, and recognized none of the asterisms, much less the constilations. Some of the stars, he thought, might've been the same, but they'd moved; others had gone to the great lightbulb in the sky.
Dawn wound into midday, and Jack and 2-4-5 exited the passage between two mesas, and there was the city. What Jack noticed first was how silent it all was. They were mute, an entire phyla of silent and mobile things that had once been plants. Some could call them plants still. Indeed, 2-4-5's people had waged more than one war over that very issue.
One mitigating factor was that they had no name for what they were. They were People, and considered the matter no further. They were not the Plant People, or the Umbrella People; just simply the People. Aside from The It, they knew of no other intelligences in
the universe.
And now Jack was meeting the rest of them. 2-4-5's people: these were members of various Drifts, but all of them were of the Fifth Land.
Days passed into weeks. It took a while for the People to realize that Jack was trying to talk to them: they thought that The It was blessing them and performing rituals which they tried to work into their own daily lives. Infants and children of the People, having
drifted in on the winds, landing on this Land, found themselves numbered and named, and promptly honored by being brought before The It. It took Jack a while to realize that he wasn't in a free-range zoo as the only exhibit; but rather, that he was in a palace, as the - god - king - absolute - unequivicable.
He didn't want to be a god, but he didn't have much choice: he played along only so far as he had to, and was relieved when the People tried to communicate with him.
2-4-5 was furious! Some of the younger of the People, and, disturbingly, a few of the adults, were engaging in heresy! They dared to speak to the The It, to learn the meanings of its sacred gestures.
For the first time in his life, 2-4-5 wished that there was a word in his people's language -- wholly gesturing -- which commanded someone to leave. "Silence!" he motioned at one of the heretics.
"I shall be silent when I seek immobility," was the reply, since speaking and motion were closely-related words. In some dialects, they were the same word.
"You tread upon the tacks of lack of tact. You age without seeding. You - you - you -" and his gesturing tentacles started shaking, their version of breathless stuttering.
All this was going on right in front of Jack. He didn't know an eighth of what those two were arguing about, but he wished they'd cut it out. O'Neill used one of the languages he'd been taught here, while he also, careful of the eyespots, Jack patted 2-4-5 reassuringly. "The It supports we whom are orthodox," 2-4-5 boasted to 1-9-8.
Tap-tap--taptap---tap, by Jack. "The It speaks with me," 1-9-8 retorted at 2-4-5.
Weeks turned into a month, then two and three. Five. Language lessons progressed, and the majority shifted from orthodoxy to heterodoxy: if it was good enough for The It, it was good enough for the People. 2-4-5, frustrated though he was, did not wander off: the
concept didn't exist in his biology: one stayed where they'd drifted to.
Those who interacted with Jack more than most had themselves adopted the tapping language of the eastern mountains; and, what had once been the language of the minority, spread like locusts through the vegetative civilization.
And so it was that, one day, or night - Jack hadn't looked out the window for an hour after taking a nap - he sat in on a conference of the high-ranking folks...insofar as much as any of the People held ranks: their biology kept it from becoming entrenched. Then the folks asked Jack what he wanted to do. He told them.
"And thou desires to go to - this earth place?" one attendant asked, making sure he'd heard correctly.
"Yep," Jack tapped back. He still spoke, with his voice, though mostly to himself.
"Why do you want to do that?" asked 9-9-9, a child who had not yet grown the dorsal thorn.
"It does not concern us as to the why," 2-4-5 snapped at the questioner, using gestures rather than taps. "What is desired by The It shall be done irregardless!"
"I . . ." Jack tapped. "I need to see what happened to the world I came from, find out what happened to everybody."
"We understand," said 6-8-5, a member of the People old enough to have lost her thorn; Jack was worried that she'd go to seed here in the room. "Your request shall be carried out. You seek to go yourself, or to have the People inspect it for you?" every tap slow
with both reverence and age.
"I'd like to go," Jack tapped, "though I wouldn't mind some company on the trip." He wondered how many years - if not longer - it would be before the People even had a working rocket able to enter orbit around *this* planet.
"Understanding. We shall depart for the earth, as soon as the engines warm up."
"What?"
"The engines must warm themselves," 6-2-9 said.
"You guys have a..." and tried to describe a spaceship. "?" Some concepts had needed to be filtered and explained by the seive of biology. That was why Jack was confused.
He'd had a hard enough time imparting the idea of go-carts to the People. Yet these non-nomadic & non-migratory people, a species that hadn't words for `relocate' or `exodus' or even `haul ass', had somehow built a starship?
One corner of Jack's mind wondered if this news was connected to the reason why the stargate had been taken apart -- nobody had ever wanted to discuss that matter with Jack.
"Yes."
~~~~~
PART THREE: EARTH:
This was Earth.
"...foreign and domestic..."
This is the same planet, accounting for the motion of plate tectonics and the evolution of life. It was not through natural processes that the atmosphere was unchanged from the early millenia of humanity, though there was no intelligent species on Earth. Fifty million years ago, there had been a few, but those were all extinct now; even their buildings had returned to the dust.
Two billion years is a long time.
That many years before Jack O'Neill's birth, his planet was home to nothing more complex than cells and slime molds. Even half that span of time, and it was still a single-celled world.
Two hundred million years before his birth, mammal-like reptiles and reptiles with both beaks and tusks in one animal dominated the ecological scene, only to be replaced by dinosaurs, who were then replaced by mammals.
Now, two billion years after Jack O'Neill's birth, life had once again changed dramatically and drastically. There were still bipedal and quadrapedal forms of life. There were still vertabrates dominating the megafauna niches. But, beyond those broad
sketches . . . .
Mammals and birds, once the usurpers of the throne of dinosaurian domination of the Earth, had themselves lost their title as ruling clades. Even those which had taken domination away from the birds and mammals, they too had been dethroned, as had the dethroners.
Given enough time, it was possible, and the Earth had had two billion years, which was more than enough for that.
Even the sharks and crocodiles, which had survived for millions of years, never graduated to their one billionth birthday. It was worms and starfish that did.
But even things like "worms", that catchall used by humans to describe the Annelids, Chaenognaths, as well as others; they had almost entirely been replaced by things that looked almost identical to them -- things descended from beetles and neotenous starfish,
for example. The "starfish" niches had been taken over by creatures which had once been worms and crabs.
The transit to Earth had been odd, even for Jack, who was used to what stargates did to people. The engines had taken a year to warm up, and five seconds to take the ship from being half-buried in the planet's bioturf, to being in orbit around Earth. The shuttle down
to the planet Earth wasn't quite so fast.
"...protect my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic..."
While they'd been in orbit, Jack had looked down, via the windows and computer screens. None of the continents were recognizable. Not a one of them even remotely resembled North America, much less Alaska or the lower 48 states -- Hawaii had likely returned to the sea, Jack figured.
Then he'd shuttled down to planetside. One step at a time, O'Neill thought to himself.
"...solemnly swear that I shall, to the best of my ability, protect my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic..."
It was more humid here, now, though they'd landed in a temperate zone. Or, what had once been a temperate zone. From what he remembered of his studies, this longitude and latitude had either been Italy or Australia.
Jack stepped onto the soil of Earth, and carried 6-8-5 out of the shuttle, then set her down gently. She'd barely survived the year, wishing and hoping that she would survive long enough to set tentacle upon The It's home. With a sigh of relief, she felt happiness and
contentment, and the last of her brain matter converted into seeds . . . and she released every seed she had. The wind carried the thought-infants away from the shuttle, which had been her hope. They were sufficiently different from anything Earthly to be passed
up by the Earth lifeforms.
Jack and 2-4-5 watched in silence and immobility.
They were standing not far from where they'd landed: atop a mesa that had risen from the tectonic forces of the continent of...the names of Jack's day no longer applied, and he knew none of the names that human geologists had given to what their thoughts on the shape of future continents would be.
So he just looked out, watching the giant things flying through the air, feeding on clouds of smaller things that had been trying to feed on other of the giant things. The whale eats the sharks that try to eat whales. Down on the pampas at the foot of the mesa, and further out as well, ran four-legged things that might have been dogs or horses long ago.
On another world, the feeling of alienation was natural to Jack. It was, he had long felt, deserved and natural.
But this was Earth.
Jack had a chill along his spine, as he asked himself 'do I really want to have a closer look?'
"Hello."
Jack jumped, turning around in mid-air.
A voice. A human voice.
A woman's voice.
One with a distinct and pronounced British accent.
Landing, "Who're you?" Jack asked the woman standing there.
Wearing blue jeans, a sarong, and flip-flops. "Sham Nevine Wesson, resident of Earth." She spread her arms out, either in a silent yawn or to symbolically include everything, "Or rather, what's become of it."
"Yeah, about that..."Jack said. "Nice place ya got here."
"Thank you."
"Where'd you come from? I mean, you weren't there a moment ago."
"You looked exactly one minute ago. I have been here for two billion years, give or take a few centuries." Her right cheek had a minor tic.
"You don't look a day over 32."
"Thank you." She narrowed her eyes, peering quizzically at him. "Who are you? And how did you survive 'til now?"
"Jack O'Neill. Colonel," he added, "in the United States Air Force." Then he added, "Stargate Program; I was attached to SG-1."
Sham rolled her eyes. "Yes. Yes. Okay," to herself.
Jack couldn't see anything about her even slightly changing, but his friend could. 2-4-5 started to figit, to back away. "Nothing to worry about," Jack said to reassure it.
Sham looked at Jack after a few minutes. "I've found references to a stargate programme," as her sarong slid and re-molded itself into an SGC uniform, "but nothing in regards to an s-g-1."
"You were just standing here," Jack said to her. Then he remembered Reese. "What are you?"
"You mean after the Asgard defeated the Replicators." Sham just blinked. "Um, the Asgard did win...didn't they?"
"In the words of one Ghira Feretti, 2042 Christian calendar," and her voice changed for the quotation, "'They couldn't, so we pulled their bacons from the oven. They even gave us a nice toaster by way of a Thank You.'"
"Didn't know the Asgard had toasters. It still around?" Jack asked.
Voice back to normal, Sham said, "I am." With a proud grin, "My body is composed of holographic and replicating technologies. My mind, originally human, has expanded with the parameters of my current storage site." She frowned during this sentance: "If only meteors and sentients didn't have such a dehabilitating effect on my body."
"Well...ya look great." And that was not soley driven by hormones, nor soley by gratitude to not being the last man in the universe.
She stared at him, not hostilely; and then she curtsied, having memories of doing that in the flesh. It was a memory she was glad to be able to use.
Another memory put to use: "Would you like to take a walk?"
Jack nodded. "Sure," suspecting the truth: she was trying to help him relax, calm, and help him adjust to the changes that'd taken place here.
As they walked -- with 2-4-5 following only a pace or two behind them, "So, did I miss much?" Jack asked.
"A few things," Sham said. "The union, in 2616 Christian callendar, of the United Kingdom Of England & Wales & Ireland & Scotland, with the United States Of America. In the year 2001 Anno Hejira, members of the Osmanli Rememberance Pact -- Republic of Turkey, newly reunified North & South Iraq, Republic of Syria, Hebraic State Of
Palestine -- place Arabia and Bosnian Imperialate under their authority. In 7002 on the Hebraic calendar, the United Nations' entire membership condemmed the actions of the Asgard in regards to the final battle against the Replicators; only the U.K. abstained,
owing to political pressure from the former U.S.A.. In -"
"Okay, okay," Jack said. "Maybe I should've asked for the Readers Digest version." He thought. "What about the Goa'uld? Did we win?"
Sham considered, thinking, accessing. "Yes. The Goa'uld Phyla was rendered extinct in 6 Temmuz 2006 on the Turkish calendar."
"Cool."
Coldly for this sentance: "No. The Goa'uld species became extinct in 6 January 2005 Christian calendar. Their phylum took a while longer."
"I see."
"No; I saw."
Silence fell again, then they discussed various things. Jack spoke of learning the People's language. Sham spoke of the things she'd seen of Earth, Readers Digest format. Always they would go silent while they walked, then talked while walking more, repeat.
2-4-5 followed and watched them. It was a little difficult when the three of them hiked through a broad stand of something vine-flexible and -- though it was neither bamboo nor brambles, it had features of both. 2-4-5 worried about The It: The It had gone from being an inspiration-inspiring monument and silent guidance, to a student-and-teacher, to a fellow traveler through space, to...so something talking with a thing that looked only vaguely like The It did.
The eyespots of the People utilized different wavelengths of light than human eyes did -- a result of the type of stars their respective worlds orbited, as well as what their ancestral base stock had been. Each species could see what the other could not, though their visions overlapped sufficiently to allow interaction. During the engine--warm-up year, The It had remarked that the People could have been a terrific help against the -- a word had been coined -- Ree T' Oo.
2-4-5 kept watch on the other one, the one whom The It called 'Sham'. If that one made a move to attempt harm of The It, 2-4-5 knew that he would leap out and tackle it. The People had not evolved to fight, and had even fewer natural weapons than did humans, which was saying quite a bit. His mind had not yet gone to seed. Any attack to save the The It would not spread the thought-infants of 2-4-5. But, he consoled himself gladly, such action would go towards saving The It.
"I would have been content with whatever duty they -- humanity -- gave me," Sham said during one discussion. "I asked them what my mandate would be," Sham told him. "Again and again, over centuries, I asked. And so often the answer was within such narrow parameters."
"What'd they tell you?" Jack asked, wondering if it was anything he could help with. If her instructions'd come from the U.S.A. or the U.K./U.S.A. fusion, that'd apply...right? He thought it did, and couldn't see why it wouldn't.
"'Whatever you want to do' and 'We have no right to instruct you in these matters'."
* Owch * Jack thought to himself. To Sham, he gave a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and said comforting words.
~~~~~
PART FOUR: CONSIDERATIONS:
"To protect my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic," Jack said to himself, not for the first time since returning to Earth.
Jack was sitting by himself now, sitting on a boulder with nothing more than lichen-stuff next to him. 2-4-5 had gone back to the shuttle to have a bite to eat. Sham had gone - somewhere; Jack hadn't inquired as to _where_ exactly.
His feet touched the ground; it was a slouching boulder. Almost instantly, something bolted out of its burrow on one side of the boulder's base, chattering and hissing at Jack. Jack pulled up his feet, seeing the prickly-toothed maw of one of the smaller of the
quill-covered organisms which now ruled the ecosystems of Earth.
The quills had developed neither from fur or feathers, and possibly not even from scales.
The chipmunk-sized hissing thing, seeing that its ground territory was now un-intruded-upon, returned to its burrow, where it fed on roots and tubers and other underground plantstuffs. It didn't view its territory as up; only what was on its ground: anything on the
boulder - like Jack - was not a concern to the animal.
Jack smiled as he considered the not-a-chipmunk. It at least had something to do: it protected its home, its territory.
Humanity was extinct, on Earth at least. So fending off attacks from rival nations was a moot point.
There were no intelligent species here - unless the People settled here in droves - which meant that instilling American values in the sentients was equally a non-starter. And even during his time between becoming un*paused* and returning to Earth, Jack had found
that the People were simply too *Alien* for a number of the concepts his country had been founded upon.
"I'm not gonna be a mercenary," Jack repeated. "Not here, not on any world."
There were no human enemies left.
But what about other enemies? Foes that threatened more than just one nation?
O'Neill had no doubt that humanity had outlasted groups like Al-Qaida, and hoped that humanity had gone for centuries without W.M.D.s -- well, he thought, one could hope.
And other enemies? Trouble-makers belonging to other species?
Well, the Goa'uld were gone. Vanquished. Utterly annialated. So he couldn't leave Earth to fight those enemies of humanity.
The Replicators, enemies of the Asgards -- and thus via alliance, enemies of Earth -- were also no more.
Jack found himself wondering if Aris Boch's people, or even the Reetou were still around.
"To protect my country from all enemies," he repeated.
~~~~~
PART FIVE: DECISION:
2-4-5 found Jack before Sham did. And he stayed with O'Neill, watching the megafauna walking by. Though he was stricken with fear and incomprehension - his own world had nothing that was even thrice as big as the People - 2-4-5 did not abandon Jack to standing alone.
The beasts here and now, were neither sauropods nor elephant nor hornless rhinos. Their skin was tough and dry to the touch, a point shared in common with those unrelated fellow giants. Vast individual age and exposure to the weather and dust contributed as well to the dry wrinkles in the skin. But these were, again, not the beasts of Jack's era, nor of any preceeding era. Sauropods had borne long necks, rediculously so in some instances; elephants had ponderously short necks, to facilitate the trunk muscles and supporting the weight of the skull and tusks.
These were more like the whales of Jack's time: they had no necks at all; it was a smooth and unbroken line from the body to the skull. And, again like whales, and also the long-extinct bats, these creatures had sonar. But this sonar was sent in as many directions as the individual could; not simply forwards-only.
This was why Jack was in no danger: the giants that walked the Earth knew he was there, even if they did not comprehend what he was, and could avoid him with ease.
Sham found them a while later. For as quickly as the megafaunal herd was moving, it was large enough to take hours to go by completely.
"Jack?" Sham asked. It'd been so long since she'd had another person to talk to. She hoped that he didn't want to leave. She didn't want him to leave; but she also knew she couldn't stop him from leaving - an emotive and a subroutine block, installed by herself to reinforce the emotive from her human days.
She didn't relish another two billion years with nobody to talk to - she'd had supremely bad experiences with the post-human intelligences that'd evolved to fill the absense of intelligence.
2-4-5 ignored her. Sham still wasn't sure about the little alien. Then again, with agonizingly few exceptions - and those almost entirely in the first 50 million years after humanity - nothing had ever arrived on Earth...nothing but asteroids.
2-4-5 was not human; Jack knew it, and knew it damn well. He'd known it for over a People year, that the People were not human, and weren't easy substitutes for humanity. The People were multitudes, and would probably, Jack figured, last for at least a million more years.
Sham had once been human; Jack knew it now, intellectually. Intellectually, he also knew that she was more than human, but that part was easy enough to overlook. She, like him, was alone, the sole representative of an ancient species.
"I think I've made up my mind," Jack said.
Sham said nothing; she didn't know what to say. What, in her opinion, was there to say? So she said nothing, for fear of changing his mind.
Jack held out one hand, and it took Sham a few moments to remember that gesture: she placed her hand in his, palm touching palm.
Adam and Eve they weren't. There would be no repopulating of the Earth, not from them.
But they could support one another. Together, they could and would carry on.
~~~~~~
the end?
Title: A Constant Of Stars, the elongated & revised version.
fandom: SG1
written: April 2004
note: and yes, Sham is a real name - I found her name on the BBC. one of the presenters .
Please Send Feedback.
Author: Rodlox.
Summary: Jack awakes to constants; is it too much for him?
Spoilers: 1969, Message In A Bottle, and a bunch of others.
Disclaimer: I own none of the canon characters, nor am I making any money in writing or posting this story. I only own the original fictional characters (let me know if you want to borrow them), and I am writing this for the sake of writing.
Archive: Jackfic.com may.
Dedicated to: All the people who sent me feedback, helping me via their opinions; without you, the extended story you are reading right now would not have been possible.
~~~~~~
PART ONE: THROUGH TIME:
Jack O'Neill of Earth had been emplaced in this stasis by a race -- the Kaqadesku -- which were human, whose technology overshadowed even the Tollans and Orbans. In exchange for their technology, friendship, and aid, they asked only for one Earthman: Jack O'Neill. Placing the fight against the Goa'uld ahead of himself, Jack agreed, once he went through the offerer's history and technology, making sure that they were safe, that they were okay.
Jack *was*, no longer a part of the system of entropy that was the interconnected universe. O'Neill *is*, isolated, kept in stasis on one world.
Decades became centuries became millenia became eons became aeons.
The stars wheeled in the celestial vault overhead, and the seasons came and went so often that entire eras cycled through alongside the glaciers and global floodings by the sea. Through it all, Jack remained immobile and dry, kept to the same bubble of stale air that was locked to the gravity of this planet. The machines which kept the stasis working were sufficiently good at protecting themselves from the water and ice and landslides and other natural events which occured through this timespan.
Millions of years passed.
A lonely wanderer, a brown dwarf star without a solar system of its own, entered this solar system, and was ensnared by the gravity of the Sun. As it'd entered the system, though, the brown dwarf had knocked aside one of the outer planets from here -- no longer was life on the presently flooded world to be protected by a gas giant.
Further millions of years passed on, and the chaotic dance of the Sun and the brown dwarf became simply dynamic. Jack's world was not lost to the sea of interstellar space; and the oceans on the world dried up for now, being locked away as water vapor, superheated clouds and fog. An alien Venus.
Two billion years strolled through.
A pair - or perhaps more, given their size - of black holes, itty-bitty things collectively smaller than a pinprick, now entered the solar system, crumbled-ate one of the outer rocky worlds upon which there was no life, and then entered the ballet of gravity with the two suns. Centuries became millenia, and the convoluted interactions of the objects at the system's center became the workings of
intelligence.
It was not an intelligence which could communicate with humans. But then, it was not an intelligence which would have desired to communicate with humans. But then, aside from Jack, what humans remained by this time?
~~~~~
There were still stars overhead. That had not changed. The details, the shorter-lived stars, were missing; and the longer-lived ones had changed, moved, or both.
The world had cooled considerably since the stellar heat from the dwarf and Sun had been taken in by the singularities. Jack collapsed to the ground, expelling the stale air from his lungs, then taking in rich and frigid and funny-tasting air.
The plant life of this planet had not been idle during the eons that Jack had *been*. They had sprouted trees and vines and cycads and fungi and kelps and things which had no Earthly equivilent. Even the air they produced had changed, though it was still breathable to a being from Jack's era. The atmospheric suppliments had changed -- the percentage of nitrogen, among other things, was not exactly the same. It was tolerable.
To Jack, the air was a godsend. It was ambrosia, even when he started coughing.
After a while, he trusted himself to sit up by rolling over. Then, basic exercises, making sure everything still worked.
Everything worked just like it'd worked when he'd been paused.
While he sat there, once the exercises had been exercised, Jack leaned back, looking up at the stars. So many many differences up there. O'Neill, who knew more than a little about astronomy and stellar drift himself -- even if he was no Carter on the subject -- started to see just how long he had *been*. A very very long time. "Crap," he said, and stood up.
The Kaqadesku had assured Jack that the stasis could be de-activated by any sufficiently intelligent form of intelligence. That'd been part of why he'd agreed to the process: even if Carter somehow failed to deactivate the thing, surely his buddy Thor would step in and handle it. One ally against the Goa'uld, and Jack had thought it would only cost a few months, maybe a few years at most.
Therefore, unless someone had literally moved the heaven and earth around, as some sort of April Fool Joke in the right month, "So much for that thought," he grimaced.
It took a while to stand up. It wasn't from lack of urgency to return home; it was from muscles that were still adjusting to the air that his bloodstream was delivering through his body. And, once he was standing, Jack started walking.
After twenty paces, he came across a trackway. Something else had been walking here, and his instincts told him that it hadn't been too long ago -- then again, he reminded himself that he wasn't knowledgable in how to read the not-quite-sand not-quite-loam that blanketted the world now.
Jack paused a minute, looking down at the footprints impressed in the sand-loam. It wasn't human, wasn't Asgard or any other race he knew of. It was something new to him, here under these suns.
Walking away from the tracks, Jack headed to where he'd last seen the stargate, and hoped that nobody'd buried it or moved it.
After an hour, Jack found the stargate. The terrain had changed between then and now. And here was the `gate.
What was left of it.
On Edora, the stargate had been buried by meteors. Here, the stargate had been taken apart by experts, its components lying in the sand-loam, some atop, some half-buried.
A bit here, a couple pieces there, here a glyph, there a conduit...
Jack collapsed, landing on his bum, and stared at the ruins. "Ozymandias," he whispered, doing nothing more than staring at it.
PART TWO: THE IT:
He stared at it for a long while.
The suns -- Sun and dwarf -- set in a rapid dance with their singularity partners. Then, a few hours later, they rose again. Another suns-set, and it was on the next suns-rise that Jack stood up, pacing among the parts and pieces of the stargate. He'd spent the time productively: thinking, thinking, pondering, wondering.
* How to send a message home? Whom to call? How to get home? *
He deliberately avoided asking if there was an Earth left. Jack didn't doubt that there was Earth still, irregardless of whether or not that thought was for the sake of his sanity -- all his years of fighting the Goa'uld had been for Earth.
* What to eat? *
His stomach grumbled.
There was a sound behind him, a clattering as a piece of glyph fell against a torus. Jack turned as quickly as he could, and he saw it.
Jack's first thought was of an umbrella... The same thorn atop the center, from which slender ribs descended in a circle. The ribs had a webbing of skin connecting one to the other, down to where they split into tentacle legs. Black dots flecked the umbrella webbing.
The umbrella-thing started to run at Jack, surprisingly fast for something with tentacles; but then, it ran on its tentacle-tips. When it was almost on him, it sprang up, leaping at Jack. O'Neill grabbed two of its tentacles and -- it was amazingly lightweight -- spun it away from him. Hurled it towards the remains of the stargate.
As it was spinning through the air, Jack caught sight of what was under the umbrella ribs: a bulbous swelling...one that looked almost like a blind Asgard's skull. Intelligent life, thrown toward a piece of stargate tubing. CRAP! Jack thought to himself.
Impact! The bulb slammed into the naquadah tubing, and burst.
Airborne stuff, reminding Jack of dandelion seeds, flew out of the bulb. There wasn't any brain matter; just the seeds. Jack breathed a sigh of relief.
...And he walked over to take a closer look at it. "May as well learn what sorta things live here now," Jack said. He hoped that he could find a way to signal for someone to pick him up...was the war against the Goa'uld still going on? If it was, he wanted in on it. But if the war was finally over, as he'd hoped it'd be when he had made the deal that'd sent him here...
Then what?
"I'm not gonna be a mercenary," Jack said resolutely.
Meanwhile, 2-4-5...Second of the Fourth Drift of the Fifth Land...walked around a boulder, and saw the thoughts of 3-4-3 escaping to the skies, where they would grow and become more People. 3-4-3 had been old; many had began to wonder when - even if - 3-4-3 would go to seed at all.
And he saw The It standing in the midst of the The Disassembled. The It!
Clearly, he reasoned, if The It was no longer upon The It's platform, then there was no doubt that The Time had arrived! This was completely different from all the wars declared as `the The It has moved a fraction of a _noak_'.
2-4-5 scrambled as fast as his (though gender was inexact among his cladistic affinity) feet could carry him, hurrying to reach the halfway point between himself and The It. Once there, he rolled onto his back, exposing his tender brain.
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Jack asked himself, words that meant less than nothing to 2-4-5. "What is it?" he asked the alien.
Rolling over again, 2-4-5 walked closer - though not too too close - to The It. He felt himself in thrall to The It's inherent sacredness.
Clambering over the parts and bits, 2-4-5 was always careful not to let any naquadah or other things touch his brain. He was utterly fascinated: to be so close to The It, to be peered at by The It's own eyespots -- those are eyes, yes? much debate had raged over that too - - and to watch The It moving. A thrill raced through his body, and he for a moment feared that all of this excitement would make him go to seed prematurely.
Jack kept a wary eye on it, making sure it didn't try anything funny. So far, nothing funny; nothing but climbing all over stuff, around and around Jack. "If you're trying to make me dizzy," Jack told it, "it's not gonna work."
Though this one looked almost identical to the dandelion-seed one, Jack had a funny feeling that something was different. "Can you understand me?" He got no answer, though it stopped going in circles around him. "I don't suppose you've ever heard of a place called `Earth', have you?"
2-4-5 leaped down from the pylon torus, and scrambled away, eager to tell others of his find, of what he had met with. Then he stopped, watching The It. Though he understood nothing of the language, he heard The It ask "That a yes?" as The It began to follow him.
Jack walked with the waist-high alien. It wasn't like there was anything better to do, and he had hopes that the little guy was leading him to somebody whom could help out. Jack felt he could handle any trouble that came his way.
Night fell as they passed the platform where Jack'd spent much time and no time at the same time. Jack looked up at the stars, and recognized none of the asterisms, much less the constilations. Some of the stars, he thought, might've been the same, but they'd moved; others had gone to the great lightbulb in the sky.
Dawn wound into midday, and Jack and 2-4-5 exited the passage between two mesas, and there was the city. What Jack noticed first was how silent it all was. They were mute, an entire phyla of silent and mobile things that had once been plants. Some could call them plants still. Indeed, 2-4-5's people had waged more than one war over that very issue.
One mitigating factor was that they had no name for what they were. They were People, and considered the matter no further. They were not the Plant People, or the Umbrella People; just simply the People. Aside from The It, they knew of no other intelligences in
the universe.
And now Jack was meeting the rest of them. 2-4-5's people: these were members of various Drifts, but all of them were of the Fifth Land.
Days passed into weeks. It took a while for the People to realize that Jack was trying to talk to them: they thought that The It was blessing them and performing rituals which they tried to work into their own daily lives. Infants and children of the People, having
drifted in on the winds, landing on this Land, found themselves numbered and named, and promptly honored by being brought before The It. It took Jack a while to realize that he wasn't in a free-range zoo as the only exhibit; but rather, that he was in a palace, as the - god - king - absolute - unequivicable.
He didn't want to be a god, but he didn't have much choice: he played along only so far as he had to, and was relieved when the People tried to communicate with him.
2-4-5 was furious! Some of the younger of the People, and, disturbingly, a few of the adults, were engaging in heresy! They dared to speak to the The It, to learn the meanings of its sacred gestures.
For the first time in his life, 2-4-5 wished that there was a word in his people's language -- wholly gesturing -- which commanded someone to leave. "Silence!" he motioned at one of the heretics.
"I shall be silent when I seek immobility," was the reply, since speaking and motion were closely-related words. In some dialects, they were the same word.
"You tread upon the tacks of lack of tact. You age without seeding. You - you - you -" and his gesturing tentacles started shaking, their version of breathless stuttering.
All this was going on right in front of Jack. He didn't know an eighth of what those two were arguing about, but he wished they'd cut it out. O'Neill used one of the languages he'd been taught here, while he also, careful of the eyespots, Jack patted 2-4-5 reassuringly. "The It supports we whom are orthodox," 2-4-5 boasted to 1-9-8.
Tap-tap--taptap---tap, by Jack. "The It speaks with me," 1-9-8 retorted at 2-4-5.
Weeks turned into a month, then two and three. Five. Language lessons progressed, and the majority shifted from orthodoxy to heterodoxy: if it was good enough for The It, it was good enough for the People. 2-4-5, frustrated though he was, did not wander off: the
concept didn't exist in his biology: one stayed where they'd drifted to.
Those who interacted with Jack more than most had themselves adopted the tapping language of the eastern mountains; and, what had once been the language of the minority, spread like locusts through the vegetative civilization.
And so it was that, one day, or night - Jack hadn't looked out the window for an hour after taking a nap - he sat in on a conference of the high-ranking folks...insofar as much as any of the People held ranks: their biology kept it from becoming entrenched. Then the folks asked Jack what he wanted to do. He told them.
"And thou desires to go to - this earth place?" one attendant asked, making sure he'd heard correctly.
"Yep," Jack tapped back. He still spoke, with his voice, though mostly to himself.
"Why do you want to do that?" asked 9-9-9, a child who had not yet grown the dorsal thorn.
"It does not concern us as to the why," 2-4-5 snapped at the questioner, using gestures rather than taps. "What is desired by The It shall be done irregardless!"
"I . . ." Jack tapped. "I need to see what happened to the world I came from, find out what happened to everybody."
"We understand," said 6-8-5, a member of the People old enough to have lost her thorn; Jack was worried that she'd go to seed here in the room. "Your request shall be carried out. You seek to go yourself, or to have the People inspect it for you?" every tap slow
with both reverence and age.
"I'd like to go," Jack tapped, "though I wouldn't mind some company on the trip." He wondered how many years - if not longer - it would be before the People even had a working rocket able to enter orbit around *this* planet.
"Understanding. We shall depart for the earth, as soon as the engines warm up."
"What?"
"The engines must warm themselves," 6-2-9 said.
"You guys have a..." and tried to describe a spaceship. "?" Some concepts had needed to be filtered and explained by the seive of biology. That was why Jack was confused.
He'd had a hard enough time imparting the idea of go-carts to the People. Yet these non-nomadic & non-migratory people, a species that hadn't words for `relocate' or `exodus' or even `haul ass', had somehow built a starship?
One corner of Jack's mind wondered if this news was connected to the reason why the stargate had been taken apart -- nobody had ever wanted to discuss that matter with Jack.
"Yes."
~~~~~
PART THREE: EARTH:
This was Earth.
"...foreign and domestic..."
This is the same planet, accounting for the motion of plate tectonics and the evolution of life. It was not through natural processes that the atmosphere was unchanged from the early millenia of humanity, though there was no intelligent species on Earth. Fifty million years ago, there had been a few, but those were all extinct now; even their buildings had returned to the dust.
Two billion years is a long time.
That many years before Jack O'Neill's birth, his planet was home to nothing more complex than cells and slime molds. Even half that span of time, and it was still a single-celled world.
Two hundred million years before his birth, mammal-like reptiles and reptiles with both beaks and tusks in one animal dominated the ecological scene, only to be replaced by dinosaurs, who were then replaced by mammals.
Now, two billion years after Jack O'Neill's birth, life had once again changed dramatically and drastically. There were still bipedal and quadrapedal forms of life. There were still vertabrates dominating the megafauna niches. But, beyond those broad
sketches . . . .
Mammals and birds, once the usurpers of the throne of dinosaurian domination of the Earth, had themselves lost their title as ruling clades. Even those which had taken domination away from the birds and mammals, they too had been dethroned, as had the dethroners.
Given enough time, it was possible, and the Earth had had two billion years, which was more than enough for that.
Even the sharks and crocodiles, which had survived for millions of years, never graduated to their one billionth birthday. It was worms and starfish that did.
But even things like "worms", that catchall used by humans to describe the Annelids, Chaenognaths, as well as others; they had almost entirely been replaced by things that looked almost identical to them -- things descended from beetles and neotenous starfish,
for example. The "starfish" niches had been taken over by creatures which had once been worms and crabs.
The transit to Earth had been odd, even for Jack, who was used to what stargates did to people. The engines had taken a year to warm up, and five seconds to take the ship from being half-buried in the planet's bioturf, to being in orbit around Earth. The shuttle down
to the planet Earth wasn't quite so fast.
"...protect my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic..."
While they'd been in orbit, Jack had looked down, via the windows and computer screens. None of the continents were recognizable. Not a one of them even remotely resembled North America, much less Alaska or the lower 48 states -- Hawaii had likely returned to the sea, Jack figured.
Then he'd shuttled down to planetside. One step at a time, O'Neill thought to himself.
"...solemnly swear that I shall, to the best of my ability, protect my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic..."
It was more humid here, now, though they'd landed in a temperate zone. Or, what had once been a temperate zone. From what he remembered of his studies, this longitude and latitude had either been Italy or Australia.
Jack stepped onto the soil of Earth, and carried 6-8-5 out of the shuttle, then set her down gently. She'd barely survived the year, wishing and hoping that she would survive long enough to set tentacle upon The It's home. With a sigh of relief, she felt happiness and
contentment, and the last of her brain matter converted into seeds . . . and she released every seed she had. The wind carried the thought-infants away from the shuttle, which had been her hope. They were sufficiently different from anything Earthly to be passed
up by the Earth lifeforms.
Jack and 2-4-5 watched in silence and immobility.
They were standing not far from where they'd landed: atop a mesa that had risen from the tectonic forces of the continent of...the names of Jack's day no longer applied, and he knew none of the names that human geologists had given to what their thoughts on the shape of future continents would be.
So he just looked out, watching the giant things flying through the air, feeding on clouds of smaller things that had been trying to feed on other of the giant things. The whale eats the sharks that try to eat whales. Down on the pampas at the foot of the mesa, and further out as well, ran four-legged things that might have been dogs or horses long ago.
On another world, the feeling of alienation was natural to Jack. It was, he had long felt, deserved and natural.
But this was Earth.
Jack had a chill along his spine, as he asked himself 'do I really want to have a closer look?'
"Hello."
Jack jumped, turning around in mid-air.
A voice. A human voice.
A woman's voice.
One with a distinct and pronounced British accent.
Landing, "Who're you?" Jack asked the woman standing there.
Wearing blue jeans, a sarong, and flip-flops. "Sham Nevine Wesson, resident of Earth." She spread her arms out, either in a silent yawn or to symbolically include everything, "Or rather, what's become of it."
"Yeah, about that..."Jack said. "Nice place ya got here."
"Thank you."
"Where'd you come from? I mean, you weren't there a moment ago."
"You looked exactly one minute ago. I have been here for two billion years, give or take a few centuries." Her right cheek had a minor tic.
"You don't look a day over 32."
"Thank you." She narrowed her eyes, peering quizzically at him. "Who are you? And how did you survive 'til now?"
"Jack O'Neill. Colonel," he added, "in the United States Air Force." Then he added, "Stargate Program; I was attached to SG-1."
Sham rolled her eyes. "Yes. Yes. Okay," to herself.
Jack couldn't see anything about her even slightly changing, but his friend could. 2-4-5 started to figit, to back away. "Nothing to worry about," Jack said to reassure it.
Sham looked at Jack after a few minutes. "I've found references to a stargate programme," as her sarong slid and re-molded itself into an SGC uniform, "but nothing in regards to an s-g-1."
"You were just standing here," Jack said to her. Then he remembered Reese. "What are you?"
"You mean after the Asgard defeated the Replicators." Sham just blinked. "Um, the Asgard did win...didn't they?"
"In the words of one Ghira Feretti, 2042 Christian calendar," and her voice changed for the quotation, "'They couldn't, so we pulled their bacons from the oven. They even gave us a nice toaster by way of a Thank You.'"
"Didn't know the Asgard had toasters. It still around?" Jack asked.
Voice back to normal, Sham said, "I am." With a proud grin, "My body is composed of holographic and replicating technologies. My mind, originally human, has expanded with the parameters of my current storage site." She frowned during this sentance: "If only meteors and sentients didn't have such a dehabilitating effect on my body."
"Well...ya look great." And that was not soley driven by hormones, nor soley by gratitude to not being the last man in the universe.
She stared at him, not hostilely; and then she curtsied, having memories of doing that in the flesh. It was a memory she was glad to be able to use.
Another memory put to use: "Would you like to take a walk?"
Jack nodded. "Sure," suspecting the truth: she was trying to help him relax, calm, and help him adjust to the changes that'd taken place here.
As they walked -- with 2-4-5 following only a pace or two behind them, "So, did I miss much?" Jack asked.
"A few things," Sham said. "The union, in 2616 Christian callendar, of the United Kingdom Of England & Wales & Ireland & Scotland, with the United States Of America. In the year 2001 Anno Hejira, members of the Osmanli Rememberance Pact -- Republic of Turkey, newly reunified North & South Iraq, Republic of Syria, Hebraic State Of
Palestine -- place Arabia and Bosnian Imperialate under their authority. In 7002 on the Hebraic calendar, the United Nations' entire membership condemmed the actions of the Asgard in regards to the final battle against the Replicators; only the U.K. abstained,
owing to political pressure from the former U.S.A.. In -"
"Okay, okay," Jack said. "Maybe I should've asked for the Readers Digest version." He thought. "What about the Goa'uld? Did we win?"
Sham considered, thinking, accessing. "Yes. The Goa'uld Phyla was rendered extinct in 6 Temmuz 2006 on the Turkish calendar."
"Cool."
Coldly for this sentance: "No. The Goa'uld species became extinct in 6 January 2005 Christian calendar. Their phylum took a while longer."
"I see."
"No; I saw."
Silence fell again, then they discussed various things. Jack spoke of learning the People's language. Sham spoke of the things she'd seen of Earth, Readers Digest format. Always they would go silent while they walked, then talked while walking more, repeat.
2-4-5 followed and watched them. It was a little difficult when the three of them hiked through a broad stand of something vine-flexible and -- though it was neither bamboo nor brambles, it had features of both. 2-4-5 worried about The It: The It had gone from being an inspiration-inspiring monument and silent guidance, to a student-and-teacher, to a fellow traveler through space, to...so something talking with a thing that looked only vaguely like The It did.
The eyespots of the People utilized different wavelengths of light than human eyes did -- a result of the type of stars their respective worlds orbited, as well as what their ancestral base stock had been. Each species could see what the other could not, though their visions overlapped sufficiently to allow interaction. During the engine--warm-up year, The It had remarked that the People could have been a terrific help against the -- a word had been coined -- Ree T' Oo.
2-4-5 kept watch on the other one, the one whom The It called 'Sham'. If that one made a move to attempt harm of The It, 2-4-5 knew that he would leap out and tackle it. The People had not evolved to fight, and had even fewer natural weapons than did humans, which was saying quite a bit. His mind had not yet gone to seed. Any attack to save the The It would not spread the thought-infants of 2-4-5. But, he consoled himself gladly, such action would go towards saving The It.
"I would have been content with whatever duty they -- humanity -- gave me," Sham said during one discussion. "I asked them what my mandate would be," Sham told him. "Again and again, over centuries, I asked. And so often the answer was within such narrow parameters."
"What'd they tell you?" Jack asked, wondering if it was anything he could help with. If her instructions'd come from the U.S.A. or the U.K./U.S.A. fusion, that'd apply...right? He thought it did, and couldn't see why it wouldn't.
"'Whatever you want to do' and 'We have no right to instruct you in these matters'."
* Owch * Jack thought to himself. To Sham, he gave a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and said comforting words.
~~~~~
PART FOUR: CONSIDERATIONS:
"To protect my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic," Jack said to himself, not for the first time since returning to Earth.
Jack was sitting by himself now, sitting on a boulder with nothing more than lichen-stuff next to him. 2-4-5 had gone back to the shuttle to have a bite to eat. Sham had gone - somewhere; Jack hadn't inquired as to _where_ exactly.
His feet touched the ground; it was a slouching boulder. Almost instantly, something bolted out of its burrow on one side of the boulder's base, chattering and hissing at Jack. Jack pulled up his feet, seeing the prickly-toothed maw of one of the smaller of the
quill-covered organisms which now ruled the ecosystems of Earth.
The quills had developed neither from fur or feathers, and possibly not even from scales.
The chipmunk-sized hissing thing, seeing that its ground territory was now un-intruded-upon, returned to its burrow, where it fed on roots and tubers and other underground plantstuffs. It didn't view its territory as up; only what was on its ground: anything on the
boulder - like Jack - was not a concern to the animal.
Jack smiled as he considered the not-a-chipmunk. It at least had something to do: it protected its home, its territory.
Humanity was extinct, on Earth at least. So fending off attacks from rival nations was a moot point.
There were no intelligent species here - unless the People settled here in droves - which meant that instilling American values in the sentients was equally a non-starter. And even during his time between becoming un*paused* and returning to Earth, Jack had found
that the People were simply too *Alien* for a number of the concepts his country had been founded upon.
"I'm not gonna be a mercenary," Jack repeated. "Not here, not on any world."
There were no human enemies left.
But what about other enemies? Foes that threatened more than just one nation?
O'Neill had no doubt that humanity had outlasted groups like Al-Qaida, and hoped that humanity had gone for centuries without W.M.D.s -- well, he thought, one could hope.
And other enemies? Trouble-makers belonging to other species?
Well, the Goa'uld were gone. Vanquished. Utterly annialated. So he couldn't leave Earth to fight those enemies of humanity.
The Replicators, enemies of the Asgards -- and thus via alliance, enemies of Earth -- were also no more.
Jack found himself wondering if Aris Boch's people, or even the Reetou were still around.
"To protect my country from all enemies," he repeated.
~~~~~
PART FIVE: DECISION:
2-4-5 found Jack before Sham did. And he stayed with O'Neill, watching the megafauna walking by. Though he was stricken with fear and incomprehension - his own world had nothing that was even thrice as big as the People - 2-4-5 did not abandon Jack to standing alone.
The beasts here and now, were neither sauropods nor elephant nor hornless rhinos. Their skin was tough and dry to the touch, a point shared in common with those unrelated fellow giants. Vast individual age and exposure to the weather and dust contributed as well to the dry wrinkles in the skin. But these were, again, not the beasts of Jack's era, nor of any preceeding era. Sauropods had borne long necks, rediculously so in some instances; elephants had ponderously short necks, to facilitate the trunk muscles and supporting the weight of the skull and tusks.
These were more like the whales of Jack's time: they had no necks at all; it was a smooth and unbroken line from the body to the skull. And, again like whales, and also the long-extinct bats, these creatures had sonar. But this sonar was sent in as many directions as the individual could; not simply forwards-only.
This was why Jack was in no danger: the giants that walked the Earth knew he was there, even if they did not comprehend what he was, and could avoid him with ease.
Sham found them a while later. For as quickly as the megafaunal herd was moving, it was large enough to take hours to go by completely.
"Jack?" Sham asked. It'd been so long since she'd had another person to talk to. She hoped that he didn't want to leave. She didn't want him to leave; but she also knew she couldn't stop him from leaving - an emotive and a subroutine block, installed by herself to reinforce the emotive from her human days.
She didn't relish another two billion years with nobody to talk to - she'd had supremely bad experiences with the post-human intelligences that'd evolved to fill the absense of intelligence.
2-4-5 ignored her. Sham still wasn't sure about the little alien. Then again, with agonizingly few exceptions - and those almost entirely in the first 50 million years after humanity - nothing had ever arrived on Earth...nothing but asteroids.
2-4-5 was not human; Jack knew it, and knew it damn well. He'd known it for over a People year, that the People were not human, and weren't easy substitutes for humanity. The People were multitudes, and would probably, Jack figured, last for at least a million more years.
Sham had once been human; Jack knew it now, intellectually. Intellectually, he also knew that she was more than human, but that part was easy enough to overlook. She, like him, was alone, the sole representative of an ancient species.
"I think I've made up my mind," Jack said.
Sham said nothing; she didn't know what to say. What, in her opinion, was there to say? So she said nothing, for fear of changing his mind.
Jack held out one hand, and it took Sham a few moments to remember that gesture: she placed her hand in his, palm touching palm.
Adam and Eve they weren't. There would be no repopulating of the Earth, not from them.
But they could support one another. Together, they could and would carry on.
~~~~~~
the end?