new fic (How the Other Half Lives) SG-1/Andromeda #3
Title: How the Other Half Lives
Fandoms: Stargate SG-1/Andromeda
Author: Karrenia
Claim: Stargate, general series
Words: 2,086
Prompt #07 days
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to Gekko Film Corp, Renaissance Pictures, Glasner/Wright Productions, it is not mine. Andromeda belongs to Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Productions; it is not mine. Note: Picks up shortly after where “Enigma" <"enigma"> ended.
10/100
“How the Other Half Lives” by Karen
Anticipation mixed with relief always made Colonel Jack O’Neill a wee bit anxious upon his return from a mission; sure he would still be riding high on sheer energy and determination mixed with adrenaline but there would always be exhaustion that followed closely on the heels off that energy.
He felt a real sense of responsibility for the people under his command and so, in addition to his own well-being, getting them home in one piece had to be a top priority.
O’Neill still felt a little uncertainty at what to make of the crew of the strange alien ship that they had encountered on the other side of the wormhole.
Sure, he and other members of the SG-1 team, in the years that they had been on the Star Gate Program, had more than their fair share of experiences with alternate universes, as he strolled down the metal ramp that lead from the gate iris and down to the ground floor, O’Neill made a mental note to check with the Asgard, Thor, if he had ever heard of anything to do with the Andromeda Ascendant.
Jack nodded an affable greeting to soldier, flanked by General Hammond and Doctor Fraiser, some standing, some kneeling with guns hoisted.
Jack had become an experienced campaigner so the sight of armed and heavily armored folk aiming the business end of a military issue rifle in his general direction no longer fazed him. For their parts, Major Samantha Carter, Doctor Daniel Jackson, and Carter’s father, Jacob, seemed to find the assembled armed soldiers nothing more than business as usual.
Teal’C, while Jack knew better, seemed to exhibit little in the way of emotion, squared up his shoulders the muscles underneath the fabric of his flak jack and loose cotton undershirt bunching up.
Something was clearly bothering him, but Jack figured that whatever it was could wait until they got to the post op mission briefing with General Hammond.
“There’s some one in the isolation ward just off medical bay two, that I think you should
speak with as soon as we’re done here,” Hammond said, after he’d personally welcomed back each member of SG-1 and Jacob Carter. “Aside from that, I except a full report of how the military engagement against Apophis’ fleet went, but that can wait until we clear up another matter.”
“I hate when he starts off conversations like that,” Jack muttered.
“I expect that you would, Colonel O’Neill,” Hammond replied, a slight fondly amused while still attempting to appear stern twitchy the corners of his mouth upwards.
“I aim to please,” O’Neill retuned without missing a beat.
“When you and SG-1 disappeared off the radar of all our convention tracking systems, “ Hammond added. “Let’s just say that we here back at base got worried, and when we lost communication with you, I thought to myself, worst case scenario.”
“It’s gonna be one of those weird ones, Sir,” O’Neill replied. “As you know we were in the midst of a fire fight with Anubis’s ships, the sun was about to go nova, and well, I thought that our number was up.”
“Except that it wasn’t, call it sheer luck, call deus ex machina,” Major Samantha Carter added, but either we got luck or there really is something out there in the big universe that looks after fools, madmen and space explorers, but we ended up in a parallel universe.”
Hammond sighed and shrugged his solid shoulders. “Do tell.” I hope it’s not the kind of parallel universe where we end losing to the Gou’ald and or the Star Gate Program gets shut down for lack of funding.”
“No, none of those worst-case scenarios,” Doctor Daniel Jackson said. “This one parallel dimension where the locals have never even heard of either the Stargate or the Gou’ald. It’s as if, if I may venture a theory, a parallel dimension that spun off and created its own time space continuum.”
“Sir, what Daniel is trying to say, : O’Neill added, is that we may have found a dimension that is separate and independent of any we have found thus far.”
“They did help us get home, seeing as how we were cut off any nearby star gates,” Daniel added, thinking of the sentient rock formation that claimed it to be the ancestor of the inter-galactic technology that had made it possible to travel across distant and far-flung light years possible, the Guardian of Forever, and the odd but oddly reassuring girl that had lead them towards its source. Trance Gemini, odd name for a very odd girl.
He almost missed her, almost, being the operative word.
After all, the mission comes first and not to be jeopardized or side tracks for a certain archaeologist and linguist to satisfy his curiosity while he unraveled an enigma wrapped up in a riddle. If he had, Jack would have had his proverbial and given him the benefit of a few choice words while he was at it,” Daniel smiled at the mental image and then shoved it to the back of his mind while he turned his concentration to what was being discussed around the conference table.
Much later
In the isolation ward of the Med Lab, Doctor Janet Fraiser stood near her computer screen tracking the displays and the readouts on the screen a puzzled frown creasing the lines in her brow. It wasn’t so much difficult as it was odd. The object of her puzzlement is currently seated atop the exam table with her legs crossed in a classic mediation pattern of a lotus flower, her eyes are closed while she gently inhales and exhales.
At the moment, Janet Fraise, for a few fractions of a second, almost envies that studied clam, in a back corner of her mind, she thought “No one is that calm and relaxed unless they think they have everything under control, or worse, they don’t. Okay, doc, think, how do you want to play this?’
Trance Gemini is not entirely certain how and why she had appeared here of all places, but she figured that her older counterpart, Gold Trace had had something to do with it.
Switching places with her older and supposedly wiser self, had seemed like a good idea at the time, but then she had not really stopped to consider what might happen after that. “That’s the problem with hindsight, it gives you perfect vision when it’s too late to do anything about it,” Trance muttered aloud, attracting Dr. Fraiser’s attention.
“Good, you’re awake,” she said. “I’m just going to run a few tests, it won’t take a moment, and then we’ll need to ask you a few questions, okay?”
“Okay,” Trance nodded.
“Let’s start with your name, shall we?”
“Trance Gemini.
“Good, age and planet of origin,” You realize that I have to ask these questions as part of medical procedure, right?”
Trance nodded, “I understand, I’ve had to serve as acting medical officer aboard my own ship, when we first started out, because let’s just way we were short handed.”
“How old did you say you were?”
“I didn’t, uh, old enough to know better.” Trance is entirely certain that she wants to tell the doctor how old she is mainly because she isn’t sure of the figure herself, she is younger than her adult golden counterpart, and in a dark corner of her mind, she remembers the old man who had attempted to learn a few of her secrets by force; it’s a painful memory that she would rather not revisit, so he concentrates on answering Dr. Fraiser’s questions as best that she can.
“Whatever that means, where did you come from?” Fraiser continued, tapping the nib of the pen against the hard cardboard of her clipboard that she held in one hand.
“Another galaxy, and I seem to be a bit lost at this point,” said Trance with a tremulous little small. “ I think I got mistakenly left behind.”
Interlude
In her mind’s eye Trance can see the smoke and fire and confusion that enveloped the various decks of Beka Valentine’s ship, the Eureka Maru she can tell without having to concentrate that the crew is in a fight for their lives. The door that she came through is groaning from the stress of weapons fire and something more. Sometimes, Trance wishes that her ability to see bits and pieces of all and any perfect possible futures would simply go away. In the moments when she thinks this, Trance wonders if she and her brothers and sisters, if such they can be called that, where the living versions of the old Earth legend of Pandora’s Box, after all the bad stuff was let out of the box by mere chance and curiosity, whatever was left in the box, was hope.
“Hope?
Trance is normally a bubbly, cheerful person, and she loves her crew mates and friends aboard the Andromeda, so the thought of never seeming them again is eroding that cheerful happy personality. She doesn’t exactly know exactly where ‘here’ is, but it’s better by far when she stops to consider that she could have ended up in limbo, or back in the heart of exploding star going nova, on the other side of the dimensional barrier. “Damn,” Trance muttered, as Mr. Harper would have said, that’s how I got into this mess in the first place.”
“Trance, do you mind if I call you by your first name?” Dr. Fraiser asked, as she sat at her terminal keying in all of the raw data that she had acquired from the tests and some of her own speculations about their new visitor. “ I’m going to have t General Hammond and the SG-1 team come and continue with the questioning, if that’s all right with you.”
“That’s fine,” Trance nodded encouragingly, “We’ve met before.”
“What is ‘she’ doing here?” Carter demanded, upon her first glimpse of the person on the other side of the glass in the isolation ward.
“You know her?” Dr. Fraiser asked, keying open the entry way from her touch pad and letting them members of the SG-1 and General Hammond into the room.
Maybe it’s the purple skin tone, and maybe it’s the look in her eyes, a look that it’s better for him to concentrate on rather than the look in the eyes of the android AI, that had captured when they first arrived aboard the Andromeda Ascendant, that one had been eerie and very intimidating. Trance, on the other hand, well, she was interesting, and very approachable. “ Hello, Trance,” Daniel greeted her.
“Hello, Dr. Jackson,” Trance replied. “I imagine my presence here is as much as a surprise to you as it is to me.”
“What are you doing here,” O’Neill asked, and the way he phrased it made it sound more of a demand than a question.
“Cooling my heels, I believe is the proper expression,” Trance grinned. “For lack of a better explanation, that I realized is a not an adequate response, but it’s the best I can come up with at the moment.”
“Were you ever this vague with your fellow crewmates?” asked Teal’C with a frown furrowing his brow the gold sigil on his forehead given a peculiar silhouette from the effort.
“Yes, well,” Trance thought it over, “I think that given enough time, they’ve come to accept that as a part of my nature.”
“And what would that nature be?” Carter asked, curious in spite of herself, for the duration of their visit to the alternate dimension./ While she herself had not had much contact with Trance Gemini, but from the reactions of her the other SG-1 members, she knew that the girl had a lot more going on with her than met the eye.
“Chronically vague,” Trance replied, mastering a sudden urge to burst out in a fit of giggles.
“How very illuminating, and hardly helpful,” O’Neill groaned and mock-rolled his eyes.
“Look, I know she and her friends helped us leave their universe, and get back home to our own, I think it’s entirely possible that, something similar happened here,” Dr. Jackson added.
“What do you want here?” O’Neill asked.
“A little help from my friends?” Trance promptly replied and the flashed her most winsome and reassuring smile.
Jackson returned the smile. “ I think we should help her, I mean, it’s only fair, seeing as how they helped us.”
Continued in chapter 4: Hail the Conquering Hero"
can be found <"here">
***************
Fandoms: Stargate SG-1/Andromeda
Author: Karrenia
Claim: Stargate, general series
Words: 2,086
Prompt #07 days
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to Gekko Film Corp, Renaissance Pictures, Glasner/Wright Productions, it is not mine. Andromeda belongs to Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Productions; it is not mine. Note: Picks up shortly after where “Enigma" <"enigma"> ended.
10/100
“How the Other Half Lives” by Karen
Anticipation mixed with relief always made Colonel Jack O’Neill a wee bit anxious upon his return from a mission; sure he would still be riding high on sheer energy and determination mixed with adrenaline but there would always be exhaustion that followed closely on the heels off that energy.
He felt a real sense of responsibility for the people under his command and so, in addition to his own well-being, getting them home in one piece had to be a top priority.
O’Neill still felt a little uncertainty at what to make of the crew of the strange alien ship that they had encountered on the other side of the wormhole.
Sure, he and other members of the SG-1 team, in the years that they had been on the Star Gate Program, had more than their fair share of experiences with alternate universes, as he strolled down the metal ramp that lead from the gate iris and down to the ground floor, O’Neill made a mental note to check with the Asgard, Thor, if he had ever heard of anything to do with the Andromeda Ascendant.
Jack nodded an affable greeting to soldier, flanked by General Hammond and Doctor Fraiser, some standing, some kneeling with guns hoisted.
Jack had become an experienced campaigner so the sight of armed and heavily armored folk aiming the business end of a military issue rifle in his general direction no longer fazed him. For their parts, Major Samantha Carter, Doctor Daniel Jackson, and Carter’s father, Jacob, seemed to find the assembled armed soldiers nothing more than business as usual.
Teal’C, while Jack knew better, seemed to exhibit little in the way of emotion, squared up his shoulders the muscles underneath the fabric of his flak jack and loose cotton undershirt bunching up.
Something was clearly bothering him, but Jack figured that whatever it was could wait until they got to the post op mission briefing with General Hammond.
“There’s some one in the isolation ward just off medical bay two, that I think you should
speak with as soon as we’re done here,” Hammond said, after he’d personally welcomed back each member of SG-1 and Jacob Carter. “Aside from that, I except a full report of how the military engagement against Apophis’ fleet went, but that can wait until we clear up another matter.”
“I hate when he starts off conversations like that,” Jack muttered.
“I expect that you would, Colonel O’Neill,” Hammond replied, a slight fondly amused while still attempting to appear stern twitchy the corners of his mouth upwards.
“I aim to please,” O’Neill retuned without missing a beat.
“When you and SG-1 disappeared off the radar of all our convention tracking systems, “ Hammond added. “Let’s just say that we here back at base got worried, and when we lost communication with you, I thought to myself, worst case scenario.”
“It’s gonna be one of those weird ones, Sir,” O’Neill replied. “As you know we were in the midst of a fire fight with Anubis’s ships, the sun was about to go nova, and well, I thought that our number was up.”
“Except that it wasn’t, call it sheer luck, call deus ex machina,” Major Samantha Carter added, but either we got luck or there really is something out there in the big universe that looks after fools, madmen and space explorers, but we ended up in a parallel universe.”
Hammond sighed and shrugged his solid shoulders. “Do tell.” I hope it’s not the kind of parallel universe where we end losing to the Gou’ald and or the Star Gate Program gets shut down for lack of funding.”
“No, none of those worst-case scenarios,” Doctor Daniel Jackson said. “This one parallel dimension where the locals have never even heard of either the Stargate or the Gou’ald. It’s as if, if I may venture a theory, a parallel dimension that spun off and created its own time space continuum.”
“Sir, what Daniel is trying to say, : O’Neill added, is that we may have found a dimension that is separate and independent of any we have found thus far.”
“They did help us get home, seeing as how we were cut off any nearby star gates,” Daniel added, thinking of the sentient rock formation that claimed it to be the ancestor of the inter-galactic technology that had made it possible to travel across distant and far-flung light years possible, the Guardian of Forever, and the odd but oddly reassuring girl that had lead them towards its source. Trance Gemini, odd name for a very odd girl.
He almost missed her, almost, being the operative word.
After all, the mission comes first and not to be jeopardized or side tracks for a certain archaeologist and linguist to satisfy his curiosity while he unraveled an enigma wrapped up in a riddle. If he had, Jack would have had his proverbial and given him the benefit of a few choice words while he was at it,” Daniel smiled at the mental image and then shoved it to the back of his mind while he turned his concentration to what was being discussed around the conference table.
Much later
In the isolation ward of the Med Lab, Doctor Janet Fraiser stood near her computer screen tracking the displays and the readouts on the screen a puzzled frown creasing the lines in her brow. It wasn’t so much difficult as it was odd. The object of her puzzlement is currently seated atop the exam table with her legs crossed in a classic mediation pattern of a lotus flower, her eyes are closed while she gently inhales and exhales.
At the moment, Janet Fraise, for a few fractions of a second, almost envies that studied clam, in a back corner of her mind, she thought “No one is that calm and relaxed unless they think they have everything under control, or worse, they don’t. Okay, doc, think, how do you want to play this?’
Trance Gemini is not entirely certain how and why she had appeared here of all places, but she figured that her older counterpart, Gold Trace had had something to do with it.
Switching places with her older and supposedly wiser self, had seemed like a good idea at the time, but then she had not really stopped to consider what might happen after that. “That’s the problem with hindsight, it gives you perfect vision when it’s too late to do anything about it,” Trance muttered aloud, attracting Dr. Fraiser’s attention.
“Good, you’re awake,” she said. “I’m just going to run a few tests, it won’t take a moment, and then we’ll need to ask you a few questions, okay?”
“Okay,” Trance nodded.
“Let’s start with your name, shall we?”
“Trance Gemini.
“Good, age and planet of origin,” You realize that I have to ask these questions as part of medical procedure, right?”
Trance nodded, “I understand, I’ve had to serve as acting medical officer aboard my own ship, when we first started out, because let’s just way we were short handed.”
“How old did you say you were?”
“I didn’t, uh, old enough to know better.” Trance is entirely certain that she wants to tell the doctor how old she is mainly because she isn’t sure of the figure herself, she is younger than her adult golden counterpart, and in a dark corner of her mind, she remembers the old man who had attempted to learn a few of her secrets by force; it’s a painful memory that she would rather not revisit, so he concentrates on answering Dr. Fraiser’s questions as best that she can.
“Whatever that means, where did you come from?” Fraiser continued, tapping the nib of the pen against the hard cardboard of her clipboard that she held in one hand.
“Another galaxy, and I seem to be a bit lost at this point,” said Trance with a tremulous little small. “ I think I got mistakenly left behind.”
Interlude
In her mind’s eye Trance can see the smoke and fire and confusion that enveloped the various decks of Beka Valentine’s ship, the Eureka Maru she can tell without having to concentrate that the crew is in a fight for their lives. The door that she came through is groaning from the stress of weapons fire and something more. Sometimes, Trance wishes that her ability to see bits and pieces of all and any perfect possible futures would simply go away. In the moments when she thinks this, Trance wonders if she and her brothers and sisters, if such they can be called that, where the living versions of the old Earth legend of Pandora’s Box, after all the bad stuff was let out of the box by mere chance and curiosity, whatever was left in the box, was hope.
“Hope?
Trance is normally a bubbly, cheerful person, and she loves her crew mates and friends aboard the Andromeda, so the thought of never seeming them again is eroding that cheerful happy personality. She doesn’t exactly know exactly where ‘here’ is, but it’s better by far when she stops to consider that she could have ended up in limbo, or back in the heart of exploding star going nova, on the other side of the dimensional barrier. “Damn,” Trance muttered, as Mr. Harper would have said, that’s how I got into this mess in the first place.”
“Trance, do you mind if I call you by your first name?” Dr. Fraiser asked, as she sat at her terminal keying in all of the raw data that she had acquired from the tests and some of her own speculations about their new visitor. “ I’m going to have t General Hammond and the SG-1 team come and continue with the questioning, if that’s all right with you.”
“That’s fine,” Trance nodded encouragingly, “We’ve met before.”
“What is ‘she’ doing here?” Carter demanded, upon her first glimpse of the person on the other side of the glass in the isolation ward.
“You know her?” Dr. Fraiser asked, keying open the entry way from her touch pad and letting them members of the SG-1 and General Hammond into the room.
Maybe it’s the purple skin tone, and maybe it’s the look in her eyes, a look that it’s better for him to concentrate on rather than the look in the eyes of the android AI, that had captured when they first arrived aboard the Andromeda Ascendant, that one had been eerie and very intimidating. Trance, on the other hand, well, she was interesting, and very approachable. “ Hello, Trance,” Daniel greeted her.
“Hello, Dr. Jackson,” Trance replied. “I imagine my presence here is as much as a surprise to you as it is to me.”
“What are you doing here,” O’Neill asked, and the way he phrased it made it sound more of a demand than a question.
“Cooling my heels, I believe is the proper expression,” Trance grinned. “For lack of a better explanation, that I realized is a not an adequate response, but it’s the best I can come up with at the moment.”
“Were you ever this vague with your fellow crewmates?” asked Teal’C with a frown furrowing his brow the gold sigil on his forehead given a peculiar silhouette from the effort.
“Yes, well,” Trance thought it over, “I think that given enough time, they’ve come to accept that as a part of my nature.”
“And what would that nature be?” Carter asked, curious in spite of herself, for the duration of their visit to the alternate dimension./ While she herself had not had much contact with Trance Gemini, but from the reactions of her the other SG-1 members, she knew that the girl had a lot more going on with her than met the eye.
“Chronically vague,” Trance replied, mastering a sudden urge to burst out in a fit of giggles.
“How very illuminating, and hardly helpful,” O’Neill groaned and mock-rolled his eyes.
“Look, I know she and her friends helped us leave their universe, and get back home to our own, I think it’s entirely possible that, something similar happened here,” Dr. Jackson added.
“What do you want here?” O’Neill asked.
“A little help from my friends?” Trance promptly replied and the flashed her most winsome and reassuring smile.
Jackson returned the smile. “ I think we should help her, I mean, it’s only fair, seeing as how they helped us.”
Continued in chapter 4: Hail the Conquering Hero"
can be found <"here">
***************