FIC: Normal's Relative
Title: Normal Is Relative
Author: Cassie Morgan (
badfalcon)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Jack O'Neill, Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson and all recognisable elements of the Stargate universe are so very not mine, and remain the property of the respective copyright holders. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes and no money is being made out of it.
Thanks you: to the fantastic
charlies_dragon for her betaing, poking and cheerleading duties
Notes Written for
sg_fignewton's Time Travel Alphabet Soup.
Summary: Normal is never the term Jack would use for the doodads and thingamajigs they bring back through the Stargate. Especially when one of those doohickeys drags a future version of himself back in time.
"Oops." Sam pulled a face and winced as the machine in front of her sparked blue and made a mechanical whining sound. She slid her chair backwards and sucked two fingers into her mouth. She muttered around them, half under her breath, and moved around the table as she studiously ignored the looks she could feel both Daniel and the Colonel were shooting her.
"Oops?" O'Neill repeated and looked over her shoulder, his hand on the table. He raised an eyebrow when she looked up at him. "What do you mean 'oops', Carter?"
"I..." She trailed off and jumped as the machine sparked again. She bit her lip and tilted her head to the side, her eyes widened at the sight of the little grey wisps of smoke that had started to seep from one corner of the machine. "Shit!"
"I think she means 'oops' as in it wasn't supposed to do that," Daniel offered, and Sam could hear the laughter in his voice.
"I'm not really sure what it is supposed to do," she admitted. "Maybe this is normal activity for it?"
O'Neill snorted and leant with his hip against the edge of the table. "Right. Normal. When has anything about anything we bring back through the 'gate been normal?"
Sam looked at Daniel and shrugged; O'Neill was right, maybe normal hadn't been the right word.
"Normal's relative," Daniel pointed out, as he picked up his coffee cup and wrapped his hands around it. "Maybe it's normal for a... for a whatever it is. Although," he continued carefully, "maybe you shouldn't be poking it with a screwdriver until..."
A bright flash of light and a crack of sound that reminded Sam of a firework echoed around the room. She rubbed at her eyes and blinked rapidly as she tried to work out what had just happened.
"Until you know what it does." Daniel finished with a sigh. “Yeah.”
"... you gone completely insane, Daniel?"
"Um. Not that I'm aware of," Daniel replied as Sam realised that there was another O'Neill in front of Daniel. Sam slowly turned her head to the side; O'Neill was still leaning against Sam's desk.
"Um." She looked back at the man in front of him; a little greyer, a little older but definitely O'Neill.
"Sam?" Daniel asked, she could see the confusion on his face at the sudden appearance.
"There's..." Sam's eyes widened and she blinked rapidly. There were two O'Neills in her lab; they were circling each other, eyeing each other up and poking each other in the chest. "Daniel, there's two of them."
"Yeah, I noticed," Daniel nodded. "How... where..."
"I have no idea." Sam ran a hand threw her hair and shook her head. "An alternate universe would be my best guess. Maybe it works in the same way as the quantum mirror and it's pulled the other Colonel O'Neill through?" She sighed as she watched the two O'Neills before she moved to step between them, before one of them killed the other. "Sirs!"
"What is going on here, Colonel?" The other, older, O'Neill demanded, his eyes narrowed as he looked around the lab.
"I could ask you the same question," Colonel O'Neill, her Colonel, shot back. "Who are you and where did you come from?" There was no reply and he took a step forward. "I asked you a question!"
"General Jack O'Neill, US Air Force." He paused and looked O'Neill up and down. "But then I think you already knew that."
Sam and Daniel looked at each other; Daniel's eyebrows raised and Sam mouthing the word 'General?'. Daniel just shrugged and looked back at O'Neill.
"One minute I was here with Carter and Daniel, Carter poking at some doohickey," General O'Neill continued. "Then it started sparking and there was a flash of light and I'm here. With Carter and Daniel. And you. But the more I'm here, the more this isn't right." He crossed his arms over his chest and looked pointedly at Daniel. "Your hair, for example."
"My... hair?"
"Yes, your hair. It hasn't looked like that in years, not since the second time we dealt with Hathor."
"Hathor?" O'Neill frowned, looking between General O'Neill and Daniel.
"Egyptian Goddess of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll." He wrinkled his nose. "You used bigger words but that was about the gist of it."
"Fertility, inebriety and music," Daniel agreed. He blinked rapidly and licked his lips. "How... how did you... there's no way you would know that." He looked over at Jack, who looked as baffled as he expected.
"We've not met a Hathor," Sam shook her head.
"But that was..." He trailed off and looked even closer at Sam and Daniel, then looked over at O'Neill. He walked around each of them in turn then leaned back against Sam's desk. "What year is it?"
"What?" Sam started in surprise.
"Humour me. What year is it?"
"1997," O'Neill replied. He narrowed his eyes and moved to stand between Daniel and Sam, and General O'Neill. “Your turn.”
“2004. Well when you do meet her, whatever you do, don't..."
"No!" Sam and Daniel both started talking over him, until he stopped, curious expression on his face.
“Sir, you can't tell us anything that hasn't happened in our timeline yet. Even the fact that we now know we're going to meet Hathor could potentially change things. Anything you tell us could irreparably change the flow of time, leading to things that happen between now and your time being completely changed.”
“Huh.” O'Neill ran his finger over his lip. “But what if the only reason we defeat say Hathor or another Go'auld is because future me told us how?”
Daniel turned to General O'Neill. “Jack, has this...” he gestured around the lab, “happened to you before?” The General shook his head. “Then you can't tell us anything.”
“OK, OK, I get it. No telling you anything. But I do have just the one question.” He turned to Sam. "Colonel, how the hell have I travelled back in time 7 years?”
“That's what I want to know,” O'Neill replied, but the General looked past him at Sam.
“Um, Sam?” Daniel touched her arm. “I think the General means you.”
“He... what?” Sam laughed nervously but couldn't stop the smile that spread over her face. Colonel? She liked that sound of that. She looked between the O'Neills uncertainly.
“Carter?” O'Neill said gently as he leaned in closer to her and met her eyes. "He asked... Wait, or is that I? He... damn that's confusing. Have you got an answer for us, Sam?"
Sam smiled gratefully at O'Neill. “Um, I'm not entirely sure, Sir." She looked back over at the General. "You said your version of me was playing with a doohickey? Did it look anything like this?" She gestured at the machine in front of her.
General O'Neill ran his eyes over it. "Nope. It looked exactly like this one. It had been in storage for years because she couldn't figure it out but she's better with An...” he winced when Daniel interrupted him and reminded him not to tell them anything. “Right. Uh the type of technology and she wanted another look at it."
Sam nodded as her brain raced with ideas. “What was she doing to it? What was it doing?”
General O'Neill met Colonel O'Neill's eyes and shrugged. “She was poking it?” He offered, making the Colonel laugh and Sam sigh. “There were blue sparks and a sound like an engine misfiring.”
“Just like this one,” Daniel said. “Sam, was it...”
“Quite possibly. Time travel's still theoretical and I don't know anything about this type of technology but it's possible that if me and future me were both doing the same thing to the same machine at the same time it could have caused some kind of wrinkle in the fabric of time that caused General O'Neill to pass through. Although why him and not me if I was the one working on the machine I'm not sure.”
“The gene,” General O'Neill muttered, which made the other three sigh. “Oh. Right. You don't know about that yet, either. Sorry.”
“How do we get him home?”
Sam looked up and shook her head. “I have no idea, Sir.” She closed her eyes as a wave of helplessness washed over her. She exhaled slowly as she sat back down in front of the machine and stared at it.
O'Neill leaned in to her. “You'll figure it out. You are a genius, you're the smartest person I know. And future you is gonna be even smarter.”
“Thank you, Sir.” She smiled to herself and straightened up. She muttered under her breath to herself as she started to examine the machine again. What had she been doing when the General appeared? Her brow furrowed and she leaned closer, lower lip in her mouth. She flicked the same levers in the same order as before and the machine started flashing blue across the top of it, the same mechanical whirring sound started up again. "OK..."
"That's what it was doing," both O'Neill's commented which made Sam jump.
"So what now?" Colonel O'Neill prompted as he watched the little grey wisps of smoke seep from one corner again.
General O'Neill stepped closer and peered at the machine which had started to whir and flash faster. "That's definitely fami..." and there was a bright flash of light and a crack of sound that reminded Sam of a firework, echoing around the room again, and General O'Neill disappeared.
"Guess you and future you figured it out," O'Neill commented as he leant a hip against the table again. "Carter, you OK?"
"Fine, Sir. I'm not entirely sure what, or how, but..."
"You'll figure it out," O'Neill reassured her with a smile. "Just... not yet. Put it in storage til, say, 2007. I don't feel much like travelling back into my own past." Sam nodded and wondered if it came with an off switch.
"So... that just happened." Daniel shook his head. "This place is weird." Sam snorted and agreed. "I get the feeling I'm not supposed to be looking forward to meeting Hathor," he mused. "As well as being the goddess of fertility, inebriety and music she was associated with the sky, with love and is often depicted as welcoming the dead into the next life. She predates even..."
Sam laughed as she tuned Daniel out and turned her attention back to the machine in front of her. Time travel. Her mind started to race with possibilities and, as though he had read her thoughts, O'Neill said “Into storage, Carter. Area 51. At least 10 years,” even as he started to shepherd Daniel out of her lab.
"Now, General O'Neill I like the sound of," Jack said to Daniel as they walked through the door.
~El Fin~
Author: Cassie Morgan (
badfalcon)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Jack O'Neill, Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson and all recognisable elements of the Stargate universe are so very not mine, and remain the property of the respective copyright holders. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes and no money is being made out of it.
Thanks you: to the fantastic
charlies_dragon for her betaing, poking and cheerleading duties
Notes Written for
sg_fignewton's Time Travel Alphabet Soup.
Summary: Normal is never the term Jack would use for the doodads and thingamajigs they bring back through the Stargate. Especially when one of those doohickeys drags a future version of himself back in time.
"Oops." Sam pulled a face and winced as the machine in front of her sparked blue and made a mechanical whining sound. She slid her chair backwards and sucked two fingers into her mouth. She muttered around them, half under her breath, and moved around the table as she studiously ignored the looks she could feel both Daniel and the Colonel were shooting her.
"Oops?" O'Neill repeated and looked over her shoulder, his hand on the table. He raised an eyebrow when she looked up at him. "What do you mean 'oops', Carter?"
"I..." She trailed off and jumped as the machine sparked again. She bit her lip and tilted her head to the side, her eyes widened at the sight of the little grey wisps of smoke that had started to seep from one corner of the machine. "Shit!"
"I think she means 'oops' as in it wasn't supposed to do that," Daniel offered, and Sam could hear the laughter in his voice.
"I'm not really sure what it is supposed to do," she admitted. "Maybe this is normal activity for it?"
O'Neill snorted and leant with his hip against the edge of the table. "Right. Normal. When has anything about anything we bring back through the 'gate been normal?"
Sam looked at Daniel and shrugged; O'Neill was right, maybe normal hadn't been the right word.
"Normal's relative," Daniel pointed out, as he picked up his coffee cup and wrapped his hands around it. "Maybe it's normal for a... for a whatever it is. Although," he continued carefully, "maybe you shouldn't be poking it with a screwdriver until..."
A bright flash of light and a crack of sound that reminded Sam of a firework echoed around the room. She rubbed at her eyes and blinked rapidly as she tried to work out what had just happened.
"Until you know what it does." Daniel finished with a sigh. “Yeah.”
"... you gone completely insane, Daniel?"
"Um. Not that I'm aware of," Daniel replied as Sam realised that there was another O'Neill in front of Daniel. Sam slowly turned her head to the side; O'Neill was still leaning against Sam's desk.
"Um." She looked back at the man in front of him; a little greyer, a little older but definitely O'Neill.
"Sam?" Daniel asked, she could see the confusion on his face at the sudden appearance.
"There's..." Sam's eyes widened and she blinked rapidly. There were two O'Neills in her lab; they were circling each other, eyeing each other up and poking each other in the chest. "Daniel, there's two of them."
"Yeah, I noticed," Daniel nodded. "How... where..."
"I have no idea." Sam ran a hand threw her hair and shook her head. "An alternate universe would be my best guess. Maybe it works in the same way as the quantum mirror and it's pulled the other Colonel O'Neill through?" She sighed as she watched the two O'Neills before she moved to step between them, before one of them killed the other. "Sirs!"
"What is going on here, Colonel?" The other, older, O'Neill demanded, his eyes narrowed as he looked around the lab.
"I could ask you the same question," Colonel O'Neill, her Colonel, shot back. "Who are you and where did you come from?" There was no reply and he took a step forward. "I asked you a question!"
"General Jack O'Neill, US Air Force." He paused and looked O'Neill up and down. "But then I think you already knew that."
Sam and Daniel looked at each other; Daniel's eyebrows raised and Sam mouthing the word 'General?'. Daniel just shrugged and looked back at O'Neill.
"One minute I was here with Carter and Daniel, Carter poking at some doohickey," General O'Neill continued. "Then it started sparking and there was a flash of light and I'm here. With Carter and Daniel. And you. But the more I'm here, the more this isn't right." He crossed his arms over his chest and looked pointedly at Daniel. "Your hair, for example."
"My... hair?"
"Yes, your hair. It hasn't looked like that in years, not since the second time we dealt with Hathor."
"Hathor?" O'Neill frowned, looking between General O'Neill and Daniel.
"Egyptian Goddess of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll." He wrinkled his nose. "You used bigger words but that was about the gist of it."
"Fertility, inebriety and music," Daniel agreed. He blinked rapidly and licked his lips. "How... how did you... there's no way you would know that." He looked over at Jack, who looked as baffled as he expected.
"We've not met a Hathor," Sam shook her head.
"But that was..." He trailed off and looked even closer at Sam and Daniel, then looked over at O'Neill. He walked around each of them in turn then leaned back against Sam's desk. "What year is it?"
"What?" Sam started in surprise.
"Humour me. What year is it?"
"1997," O'Neill replied. He narrowed his eyes and moved to stand between Daniel and Sam, and General O'Neill. “Your turn.”
“2004. Well when you do meet her, whatever you do, don't..."
"No!" Sam and Daniel both started talking over him, until he stopped, curious expression on his face.
“Sir, you can't tell us anything that hasn't happened in our timeline yet. Even the fact that we now know we're going to meet Hathor could potentially change things. Anything you tell us could irreparably change the flow of time, leading to things that happen between now and your time being completely changed.”
“Huh.” O'Neill ran his finger over his lip. “But what if the only reason we defeat say Hathor or another Go'auld is because future me told us how?”
Daniel turned to General O'Neill. “Jack, has this...” he gestured around the lab, “happened to you before?” The General shook his head. “Then you can't tell us anything.”
“OK, OK, I get it. No telling you anything. But I do have just the one question.” He turned to Sam. "Colonel, how the hell have I travelled back in time 7 years?”
“That's what I want to know,” O'Neill replied, but the General looked past him at Sam.
“Um, Sam?” Daniel touched her arm. “I think the General means you.”
“He... what?” Sam laughed nervously but couldn't stop the smile that spread over her face. Colonel? She liked that sound of that. She looked between the O'Neills uncertainly.
“Carter?” O'Neill said gently as he leaned in closer to her and met her eyes. "He asked... Wait, or is that I? He... damn that's confusing. Have you got an answer for us, Sam?"
Sam smiled gratefully at O'Neill. “Um, I'm not entirely sure, Sir." She looked back over at the General. "You said your version of me was playing with a doohickey? Did it look anything like this?" She gestured at the machine in front of her.
General O'Neill ran his eyes over it. "Nope. It looked exactly like this one. It had been in storage for years because she couldn't figure it out but she's better with An...” he winced when Daniel interrupted him and reminded him not to tell them anything. “Right. Uh the type of technology and she wanted another look at it."
Sam nodded as her brain raced with ideas. “What was she doing to it? What was it doing?”
General O'Neill met Colonel O'Neill's eyes and shrugged. “She was poking it?” He offered, making the Colonel laugh and Sam sigh. “There were blue sparks and a sound like an engine misfiring.”
“Just like this one,” Daniel said. “Sam, was it...”
“Quite possibly. Time travel's still theoretical and I don't know anything about this type of technology but it's possible that if me and future me were both doing the same thing to the same machine at the same time it could have caused some kind of wrinkle in the fabric of time that caused General O'Neill to pass through. Although why him and not me if I was the one working on the machine I'm not sure.”
“The gene,” General O'Neill muttered, which made the other three sigh. “Oh. Right. You don't know about that yet, either. Sorry.”
“How do we get him home?”
Sam looked up and shook her head. “I have no idea, Sir.” She closed her eyes as a wave of helplessness washed over her. She exhaled slowly as she sat back down in front of the machine and stared at it.
O'Neill leaned in to her. “You'll figure it out. You are a genius, you're the smartest person I know. And future you is gonna be even smarter.”
“Thank you, Sir.” She smiled to herself and straightened up. She muttered under her breath to herself as she started to examine the machine again. What had she been doing when the General appeared? Her brow furrowed and she leaned closer, lower lip in her mouth. She flicked the same levers in the same order as before and the machine started flashing blue across the top of it, the same mechanical whirring sound started up again. "OK..."
"That's what it was doing," both O'Neill's commented which made Sam jump.
"So what now?" Colonel O'Neill prompted as he watched the little grey wisps of smoke seep from one corner again.
General O'Neill stepped closer and peered at the machine which had started to whir and flash faster. "That's definitely fami..." and there was a bright flash of light and a crack of sound that reminded Sam of a firework, echoing around the room again, and General O'Neill disappeared.
"Guess you and future you figured it out," O'Neill commented as he leant a hip against the table again. "Carter, you OK?"
"Fine, Sir. I'm not entirely sure what, or how, but..."
"You'll figure it out," O'Neill reassured her with a smile. "Just... not yet. Put it in storage til, say, 2007. I don't feel much like travelling back into my own past." Sam nodded and wondered if it came with an off switch.
"So... that just happened." Daniel shook his head. "This place is weird." Sam snorted and agreed. "I get the feeling I'm not supposed to be looking forward to meeting Hathor," he mused. "As well as being the goddess of fertility, inebriety and music she was associated with the sky, with love and is often depicted as welcoming the dead into the next life. She predates even..."
Sam laughed as she tuned Daniel out and turned her attention back to the machine in front of her. Time travel. Her mind started to race with possibilities and, as though he had read her thoughts, O'Neill said “Into storage, Carter. Area 51. At least 10 years,” even as he started to shepherd Daniel out of her lab.
"Now, General O'Neill I like the sound of," Jack said to Daniel as they walked through the door.
~El Fin~