SG-1 Team Fic: An Empirical Study of Entropic Principles in Complex Systems
Written for katie_m for the sg1teamficathon. Um, this is over a month late, even with the deadline extension. ~5300 words-- and this was the short idea! Many thanks to aurora_novarum for her insights into my less-than-perfect knowledge of Asgard canon, and her cheerleading, and her lovely beta skills. Also thanks to jenlev and auntiemeesh for listening to about seven different ideas for this, and for reading through parts of them. There's at least two other WIPs floating around my private lj space. I will get back to them, some day.
Title: An Empirical Study of Entropic Principles in Complex Systems.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Takes place mid season 7
Your name: eve11
Your recipient: katie_m
Request details: "An offworld story with Thor. SG-1 Among the Asgard could be fun, but if you want to go another direction with it that's fine too."
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clockworks
--
These days, no one expected gods to be invincible. Goa'uld came and went, hissing and snapping throughout their mean little lives, and they took God the Almighty with them when they died. Dealing as they did with the supernatural made flesh and generally evil, it was impossible for even the most devout SGC members not to have a crisis of faith. Everyone went through it, even if it was only the one tiny moment of weakness, a breath before stepping through the shimmering blue, when they wondered, will the next world prove me wrong?
Some could reconcile it. They kept the symbols and tokens of their childhood and thanked Providence each time they stepped back through the gate to Earth, healthy and whole.
For the rest, faith in their teammates was all they needed. Any god could go down, any enemy could be defeated if they had to be. You took your licks, sure, but you made things work in the end. Every time you went offworld, you knew your team would do everything in their power to send everyone back through that gate again, healthy and whole, and that was enough.
The latter system had worked well for Jack O'Neill, going on seven years now. Barring the occasional need for a deus ex machina, of course.
"Colonel O'Neill, the Asgard fleet welcomes you to the O'Neill-class cruiser Yngvi."
"Thor!" Jack said, dusting himself off. He did his best to appear nonchalant, which was not an easy task when one was beamed out of an unexpected and extremely lopsided firefight-- dirty, desperate and dodging staff blasts-- onto the bridge of a technologically advanced and pristinely spotless spaceship, that was also named after oneself. "What took you so long?"
The Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet glanced down at a readout on the main console, and narrowed his dark eyes. "One minute and thirteen seconds have elapsed since your distress call."
"Ah, I forgot. Advanced aliens never get sarcasm."
Jack took a quick head count. Carter was gaining her feet from a crouch where she'd been pinned by cover fire, Daniel still looked as though he was pushing buttons on the Asgard console they'd uncovered, and Teal'c was standing in the exact middle of the bridge, bleeding from a wound to the upper arm but otherwise unperturbed.
Thor, however, appeared to be growing more perturbed by the minute, if flaring nostrils was any sign of annoyance in Asgard physiology. "I was engaged in a military campaign on the planet of Kvisil," he said.
"That's, ah, that's near here, right?" Jack looked around. Carter was giving him the 'stop talking now, sir' look. Daniel's eyebrows were conveying some elaborate code, that probably meant the same thing.
"It is in the Ida galaxy," Thor said with a small sigh. His skin flushed momentarily, to a darker mottled gray, and back.
"Oh, come on, you know it was a joke," Jack said.
"Despite our victory at Hala, the Replicators still have small splinters spread across remote regions of Ida. It is vitally important that we unearth these remaining strongholds and destroy them, before they regroup to threaten the entire universe. Again."
"Don't you have humor in the Ida galaxy? Asgard . . . humor?"
Now even Teal'c was frowning at him.
"What Jack means," Daniel offered, "is thank you for the rescue."
Thor blinked. "The safety of this planet is guaranteed against the Goa'uld. We must maintain our obligation as long as we. . ."
He trailed off, suddenly looking more green than gray. He took a shallow, wheezing breath.
"Thor?" Carter asked. "Are you all right?"
With deceptive speed, the Asgard commander rearranged some stones on the console in front of him, his thin hands shaking. "It is a stage three malfunction. Total systems breach. I must go . . ."
Then his huge eyes slid closed, and his knees buckled.
"Holy--" Jack tried to get across the bridge to the console, but he wasn't fast enough. "Daniel," he pleaded as his teammate rushed toward the smaller alien, "catch him!"
Daniel got there in time to lower Thor gently to the deck, as a persistent but subtle alarm filled the bridge, almost drowning out the Asgard's words.
"must . . . go . . ."
"Go where?" Daniel asked, frantically searching his teammate's faces for some clue of what was happening, of what they could do. But he only saw his own concern, mirrored in three modes.
These days, no one expected gods to be invincible, but despite all the bravado in the world and all the signs to the contrary, no one expected them to be brittle, either.
". . . 'unna." Thor sighed the name, and stilled in Daniel's arms.
Yngvi responded by thrumming to life, blurring and stretching the stars in view.
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convection and reflection
--
"...no, no, no, damn you! That can't be right!"
A solid thump echoed from the other end of the bridge, and Teal'c turned away from his study of Yngvi's cryptic navigational chart. Major Carter stood over the console, cradling her wrist and looking down in frustration. To make matters more unpleasant, Colonel O'Neill chose that moment to check in over the comms.
"Carter, are we there yet?"
Major Carter grimaced. "No, sir."
"Do we know where we're going?"
She glanced at Teal'c, but regrettably he had nothing to offer. He shook his head silently as she answered. "No, sir."
"Do we know why it's taking so long?"
"Not yet, sir." It was the same progression of questions and answers as the last seven times that O'Neill had checked in, over the last four hours. Major Carter pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead above her eye and sighed-- a move, Teal'c realized, that she never would have taken in O'Neill's direct presence. "How is Thor?" she inquired.
"Not good. We could use some of that Asgard zip, wherever the hell we're going."
"Yes, sir. Working on it."
Teal'c frowned, but chose to remain silent as Major Carter focused her attention back to the main console with a stream of technical admonishings.
O'Neill was understating the severity of the situation. Major Carter had not seen Commander Thor's condition; she had remained on the bridge while Daniel Jackson had rushed the Asgard back to the medical bay, with O'Neill and himself sweeping the ship for any sign of danger. But before they could clear even the lower decks, Daniel Jackson had recalled them urgently. They had returned to the medical bay to find Thor encased in a stasis pod, and their teammate gravely studying the diagnostic readouts.
"It's us," he had informed them. "We're making him sick."
The system failure aboard Yngvi was a breach of some manner of quarantine to safeguard Asgard physiology. It was a cascade failure effecting everything that SG-1 had come into contact with, including the stasis chamber as Daniel Jackson sealed Thor inside. Everywhere he had been touched, the Asgard's papery skin was blistered and blackening. Elsewhere, irregular lumps indicated rapid growth of tumors in his internal systems. The chamber itself relied on cloned neural networks to interface with the Asgard mind-- already infected, at best it would only slow the progression of the illness.
They had no means to repair this breach. All they could do was trust that Commander Thor had time to set them on a proper course, and fly. But as the time wore on with no destination in sight, they were forced to consider the possibility that they had caused even more damage than they realized.
The minutes stretched out again, under the constant hum of Yngvi's engines and Major Carter's train of thought.
" . . . they're not remotely biological, and even if the propulsion systems were bleeding out, it would show up in the diagnostic and then-- oh."
Her surprised cry punctuated a sudden silence, drawing Teal'c's attention. When he turned around, she was staring down at the console in disbelief. She removed a field notebook and pen from her back pocket and set to work next to the main view screen, double checking a bank of figures by hand.
"Oh my god, they inverted it! How on Earth did they--? I mean, the way they account for poles in the fixed point calculation. . ." She looked up at him. "Teal'c, I've been an idiot."
Teal'c very much doubted this, but he chose again not to voice the sentiment. "You have solved the problem?"
"Look." She manouevered several stones and indicated the navigational chart. Teal'c turned to see that the chart had rearranged itself. The destination was now clear; a blinking dot in one of the twisting spiral arms of the Ida galaxy.
"The destination is a fixed point in space and time," Major Carter explained. "The ship heads for a specific geographic point and a specific arrival time at the destination relative to the future at the departure point. Usually, relativistic effects dictate that the faster the ship travels, the more time passes for observers at the destination, but not only does the kiron drive dampen those effects, it inverts them. They eat the extra time in flight--"
"--leaving the observer with the perception of near-instantaneous travel," Teal'c supplied.
"Exactly!" Major Carter exclaimed, and then stopped, suddenly, blinking at him.
"I have been reading the popular works of Stephen Hawking," Teal'c explained.
"Indeed?"
Teal'c nodded.
"You should read Feynman next." Major Carter closed her notebook and scanned the room. "You know, I've been staring this answer in the face for the past four hours. I know the universe's rules, but it never occurred to me that we weren't traveling in the blink of an eye because we couldn't."
In the contemplative silence, Teal'c was reminded of a time when he was very, very young. Even before he was aware of Goa'uld and prim'ta, of the Jaffa prison of honor, duty and sacrifice, he stood with his family in front of the chappa'ai for the first time and understood the simple fact that there were things in this world taller than his father.
"Carter, are we--"
"No, yes, and yes!" There was a brief pause, and then a penitent, "Sir," added to the end of the sentiment.
"Jeez, Carter, two out of three ain't bad, you know."
The situation was grave indeed, and did not warrant something as frivolous as a smile. Teal'c raised an eyebrow at Major Carter instead. She tapped her pen against the console in response.
"I think I can give this ship a boost," she said, gathering a set of stones.
Yngvi dropped out of hyperspace an hour later, calmly orbiting a rust orange and green planet among a cloud of artificial satellites. Most were dormant but Teal'c detected an escort of four Asgard ships-- three cruisers and a science vessel-- intercepting their position. He realized it was not an honor guard when, through the viewscreen diagnostics, he saw that the cruisers' weapons were aimed directly at them.
A communication came across the bridge in the Asgard language. Teal'c responded in Standard, and the next transmission answered in kind.
"Cruiser, you have entered protected space around Hunna. Maintain course and quarantine protocol. You will receive no further warning."
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recombination
--
Daniel didn't get to see any of Hunna as they landed. The first thing the science vessel Ekkia's commander had imparted to them, after apparently brandishing three ship's worth of weapons in their direction, was for all non-Asgard occupants of Yngvi to stay put, to keep any contagion as contained as possible. Jack had already left for the bridge by that point, and so it was just Daniel and an unconscious Thor in the medbay, with no windows and only a comms link to keep him informed.
He heard the engines slow, felt the odd settling in his stomach as the environment switched over from artificial to natural gravity, and the small jolt of some kind of airlock mechanism. From the bridge, Sam confirmed that they were docked at a platform at high altitude over a vast city, similar to those she had seen on Hala before it had been destroyed. Daniel wanted to ask for a visual feed, but Jack's voice cut over the comms at that moment. Daniel didn't catch his words though, as his skin prickled to the whine of an Asgard transport device, and he suddenly found himself with a much more up close and personal view.
"Daniel Jackson, welcome to Hunna."
Daniel blinked at the bare silver-gray room. He couldn't see who had spoken over the comms, but he recognized the voice of Ekkia's commander. Then the wall in front of him dissolved to a transparent barrier, and he found himself facing two Asgard who were manning a control console. The smaller of the two Asgard spoke again, his eyes focused on the task of moving console stones.
"Please stand by for cellular classification and neutralization."
"Neutralization?" Daniel managed. That didn't sound good.
"Correct. Please stand by."
"Um, Sif, is it?" The name had been sticking in his memory since they were first contacted; he knew it from somewhere but couldn't place it. "Can you hold on a second? What's--?"
"Do not worry. This will cause you no pain."
"Wait!" Daniel held up a hand, but it was too late.
There wasn't even a flash or a whine or any kind of warning. One moment, he was on his feet in a cramped room trying to get the Asgard to tell him what the hell was going on, and the next moment he was on his back in another new room, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what the hell had just happened.
He sat up slowly, feeling no ill effects but not quite ready to trust his well-being. It looked like he was in some kind of recovery room. Empty beds, like the one he found himself on, lined the long space, rising from the floor on low pedestals. It was darker than one might expect for a hospital, done in cool gray with a deep burnished purple accent. A low-level, persistent hum of a ventilation system cloaked the room. Diffuse lighting at eye level didn't quite make it to the corners of the high ceilings, throwing the decorative inlay that lined the top of the walls into shadow. Daniel made a quick mental note to study up on non-Greek key patterns when they got back. He wished the Asgard had thought to beam him a notebook.
A far window offered a tantalizing view of the city in the distance-- tall fin-shaped buildings emerging from a low maze of industrial construction, all of it utterly still. He started to head for the window, but a door behind him opened, and he turned to see an Asgard entering. Sif again, he realized. The doorways were large enough to dwarf any Asgard frame, but Sif appeared small and pale even for his species. He carried a small data screen in one hand.
"You must forgive our methods. We did not mean to alarm you." Sif seemed professionally courteous, if not particularly contrite. He scrutinized the data screen for a moment, pressed a button, and then looked up. "The quarantine is now under control."
"Well, now that that's settled," Daniel said, "maybe you can tell me where I am?"
"This is the Hunna cloning facility," Sif answered. "When Hala was destroyed by the Replicators, we remitted emergency quarantine cases here, until we could equip our labs on Orilla to handle them safely."
"It doesn't seem to get much use." Daniel surveyed the empty room, and the silent view beyond the window. He knew a derelict city when he saw one, even from a distance.
"That is one of the reasons why we chose it. Hunna is an old settlement. There are a few who still live here, but the current Asgard population has little need for these outlying worlds, and the inhabitants will soon be joining in the migration to our new home on Orilla."
Worlds, Sif had said casually, without even a blink. Daniel didn't ask how many were empty. But the stark landscape caught his gaze again, and he wondered, briefly, how much time had passed between the failure of the Asgard's reproductive capabilities and their discovery of sustainable cloning techniques. Even a few decades were enough to cause harm; he was sure Sam could've told him some specific formulas if she were here.
"Where's the rest of my team?" he asked instead. "Did they go through-- what exactly did you do to me, anyway?"
"You were the only one to have physical contact with Supreme Commander Thor after his immune system failed," Sif explained. "We had to assure that all cell mutations triggered in his system were destroyed, including any on your person. They would not be harmful to you, but could wreak havoc on the Asgard population if transferred among our kind."
Daniel sat down on the edge of the nearest bed, keeping eye contact with the small alien. "But Thor's-- I mean, his entire body was failing. If you had to destroy any sign of mutation . . . He's all right, isn't he?"
"We were unable to repair his physical form, but we salvaged his consciousness for transfer to a new body."
He let out a breath of relief. "It's lucky he was able to make it back here in time."
The Asgard scientist frowned, much as Asgard ever frowned. "Luck played no part in it. Thor brought this upon himself. He has been very foolish."
"Wait, now. Thor was fulfilling your obligation to the protected planets in our galaxy when his ship malfunctioned." Daniel noted Sif's deepening frown and a soft sigh as he spoke, but he continued anyway. He wasn't sure how well the Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet could be defended by a mere human scientist against the vast disapproval he saw in Sif's stance, but he figured he owed it to Thor to at least try. "You can't blame him for that, can you?"
"A ship's quarantine field is only one safeguard against biological contamination and genetic cascade failure. Thor's systems failed because he did not give his mind time to acclimate to a new clone body when we last transferred his consciousness. He does not maintain proper cloning schedules. He does not keep a neural archive. He knows the limits of our physiology, but he chooses to ignore them." Sif checked another readout on his data screen, before straightening up to his full height and meeting Daniel's eyes, resolute. "I would suspect his increasing contact with willful Tau'ri was to blame, but in truth, he has long been stubborn and reckless."
"Sounds like my kind of guy."
Both Daniel and Sif turned toward the new voice. Jack strode purposefully through the doorway toward them, outpacing his Asgard escort and eyeing Daniel with relief. "You're sprung, by the way," he said as Daniel rose to greet him. "About time, too."
"What?" Daniel gave his wrist a good stare before remembering he'd left his watch back on P3X-845. "It can't be more than five minutes since they beamed me out."
"Interesting." Sif looked Daniel up and down from head to toe before communing with his data screen again, ignoring Jack's glare.
"It's been almost three hours," Jack said.
"What?" Daniel asked, alarmed. "Did they--?"
"I don't know what they did, and apparently you don't, either" Jack said. He indicated the door with a tilt of his head. "Come on. I was going to pay Thor a visit, but I think I'd rather get out of here before these guys decide we look too much like guinea pigs."
Daniel lifted his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose and looking again at Asgard and human. Oddly, he felt the need to apologize, but he wasn't sure to whom. Jack was understandably suspicious after his encounter with Loki. For his part, Sif was unfazed by Jack's allegations, but Daniel couldn't tell if it was because they were unfounded, or because he didn't catch the tension from the humans in the room, or because the clinical Asgard saw nothing wrong with whatever he'd done. He simply looked up at them, blinking those blank eyes in an unreadable expression.
"Thor is likely at the spaceport already," was all he said.
This got Jack's attention, despite himself. "In orbit? Where we docked after the quarantine platform? Already?"
"He follows his ship. He gives himself no time to recover."
The ventilation system shut off, deepening the silence. Maybe it was that, or the light or the angle, or the barest hint of regret in his frame. But despite his stature, for the first time, Sif seemed too small for this room.
The moment was broken as Sif panned his scanner to the bed that Daniel had vacated. Jack turned to go, gesturing for Daniel to follow, but the mood had finally jarred something loose from his brain. He stopped, gaining Sif's attention.
"I just remembered," he said. "In the stories on Earth about the Aesir, Sif is Thor's wife."
"Daniel--" Jack warned.
"Wife?" Sif asked, and Daniel was suddenly acutely aware of the asexual little body in front of him.
"Right," he stammered. "In a married couple-- uh, a man and a woman who pledge to spend their lives together, the man is called the husband, and the woman is called the wife. In the Eddas, Thor and Sif are husband and wife."
"Oh." Sif straightened, as though unsure what to do with this information. "How . . . provincial."
It seemed the Asgard was content to leave the exchange at that, turning to the data screen again. But the thought had percolated, and Daniel's curiosity wouldn't let him set it aside.
"I'm sorry, I hate to bring up a possible sensitive subject, but is it true?"
"Daniel!"
Sif set the scanner aside. "I do not know."
"I'm sorry?" Daniel stammered, caught off guard by the answer.
"I do not remember," Sif explained. "Perhaps you may find the information in an archive."
"But, you've known Thor for centuries, haven't you? You must have some kind of memory of it all. Important events, milestones--"
"Daniel Jackson." Sif's tone was impatient, but polite. "Do you recall all of the games you ever played as a child?"
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flight mechanics
--
To get to Hunna's spaceport, they took a point-to-point transport from the surface to the port's low orbit receiving room. Daniel peeled off to read some buttons for Carter, under Teal'c's watchful eye and a strict order not to touch anything. Jack took a twenty-minute elevator ride, sandwiched among the giant cylindrical beams along the outer edge of the main docking bay, up to the observation platform. Though the bay itself was a collection of bare, functional modules, the platform's interior reminded Jack of an avant garde Earth airport, only built on a massive scale.
A flat floor bisected a long irregular dome tinged in purples and greens, like the inside of a hot air balloon filled half-way on a field, buffeted by air currents and frozen in place. Eccentric oval windows-- some of them fifteen feet high and twice as wide-- tesselated the length and breadth of the wall looking out over the space dock. They stretched away to the left and right, so that the far edges of the dome were barely visible in those directions. In front of this giant display were scattered collections of five or six white seats, their straight rows arranged at all angles to the windows and to each other. Though haphazardly strewn, they all merged flawlessly into the floor as though grown there.
Yngvi loomed in view, piecewise gray and cobalt beyond a flank of windows off to the left. Silhouetted in front of the ship’s bow, Thor was the only other living presence on the platform. Jack joined him, taking a seat at the end of a row running almost parallel to the window. Thor acknowledged his presence with a terse greeting, but continued surveying the tiny arcs of light in the dock that signaled Yngvi's automated repairs. The Asgard commander looked well, and Jack wasn't quite prepared for the flood of relief this realization gave him.
"It's nice to see you on your feet," he said.
Thor turned. "These seats are uncomfortable, so I am standing. I do not see why this gives you pleasure."
"No," Jack backpedaled. "I mean, I'm glad to see--" he stopped, noting a slight turn of Thor's head and a crinkling under his eyes. "You're messing with me, aren't you?"
Thor's mouth stretched thinly out in answer, his eyes warm.
"Asgard humor?" Jack supplied.
"Asgard humor, yes."
"Not bad. You know, for a beginner."
"Of all things, I will continue to learn," the Asgard said. It sounded like a mantra, as though, were Jack a fellow skinny gray alien, he would know the line that came next and diligently recite it. Instead there was just a space of silence, and then a bright flash turned their attention to the window, followed by a blue glow from Yngvi's aft section.
A clipped voice emerged into the air. Thor nodded, and had a short conversation with the voice in the unintelligible Asgard tongue. Jack didn't understand the words but he saw Thor's small shoulders relax, a sure sign his ship was up and running, and ready to go.
"I must return to Kvisil," Thor said when the communication ended.
"No rest for the wicked?"
Thor blinked, but the remark was lost on him. "Sif will arrive shortly to escort SG-1 back to Earth aboard Ekkia."
"Great," Jack said. "Tell him, on the ride home I want no covert DNA scans, no secret lab experiments, and absolutely no kidnapping."
Thor frowned, holding Jack's gaze for an uncomfortable few seconds, before answering. "Unlike Loki, Sif would never desire to further our knowledge at that cost. Any haste or precaution in dealing with my illness was solely due to necessity."
"You're vouching for him?"
"We have known each other for over a thousand years. We may disagree, at times, but Sif is a competent and ethical scientist."
Truthfully, Jack figured as much. It was hardly a resounding endorsement, but Jack understood the sentiment. As much as he would be reluctant to admit it, he trusted Thor's assessment when it came to his fellow Asgard. When it came to Thor's assessment about his own well-being, well, that was a different story.
"About that 'competent' part," he offered. "Sif said you should give yourself some time, to recover--"
"I can recover on Yngvi," Thor said quickly, his eyes narrowed.
Jack raised an eyebrow, then leaned back in the seat. "Suit yourself. But you won't be much good against the Replicators if you catch another bug and have to leg it all the way back here."
Thor dismissed this idea with a small puff of breath that seemed to be the Asgard equivalent of a cantankerous 'pshaw'. "I have undergone the cloning process twenty-two times, and I am familiar with the risks. I have no wish to--" he paused, tilting his head and scanning the platform, as though seeing it for the first time. "That is to say, there is no need to linger, here."
It was the weariness in those last words, the huge emptiness that swallowed them up without so much as an echo, that got to Jack. Of course, he couldn't really comprehend the magnitude of it. Like everything else on Hunna, the loss here was realized in massive proportions, and traced a swath of millennia in its wake. But in Jack's mind it stubbornly kept scaling down-- to a still and silent bedroom, with a rumpled bedspread, errant socks strewn about on the floor, and Little League trophies propping up rows of slender books.
"I think I know what you mean," he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. God, by the time he'd stopped running from that room, he was on Abydos, and even that wasn't far enough.
When he looked up again, Thor was watching him curiously. But neither of them offered anything further. The silence stretched and Jack sighed. He stood, waving a hand toward the window and the ship beyond.
"Take care of yourself out there. Don't go giving my cruiser class a bad name."
"Yourself as well," Thor said. His mouth thinned into that strange Asgard smile. "I do not have time to make a habit of rescuing SG-1."
"Oh, that was a good one," Jack said, watching as the smile, as well as the rest of the newly minted Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet, disappeared in a flash of transporter light.
He turned around, expecting to be alone on the platform, but instead saw Carter and Daniel heading his way, on one of those meandering scientist trajectories that changed with each interesting artifact or feature they came across. Teal'c held back by the entry way, surveying the space before crossing to join Jack at the window, just as Sam and Daniel finished their circuit.
". . . it's got to be older than that," Daniel explained, his tone hushed but adamant in the still space. "The chairs are proportioned for almost human standards, and collected in numbers for typical social groups, which in the vast majority of cases is a family unit. When was the last time the Asgard had family units?"
Carter's eyes tracked the walls and ceiling. "But the polymers are pristine, not even faded around the light structures. They don't have the resources to maintain luxuries like this. So, we're talking perfect preservation across thousands of years."
"It's not so far-fetched, Sam. Look at this architecture; it's playful, inventive, young--"
"Egalitarian," Teal'c offered, halting the conversation and drawing both sets of blue eyes to him in unison. Jack chuckled at the mild flummoxing of the Wonder Twins, but Teal'c merely raised an eyebrow, and continued.
"A Goa'uld space this large would always have a throne or altar. But here, there is no focal point. There is no way to force all eyes to a single man, nor even to a single ship or point in the docking bay. It is like no 'observation platform' I have ever seen."
"I think the design details have a lot to do with acoustics, too," Sam said. "Did you notice how the sound stays pocketed around you, even in this large of a space?"
"Yeah, I did," Jack said quietly. "It must have been great for crowds."
There were no crowds now. Now, the effect gave the place an otherworldly warmth, a hungry echo of a distant, bustling past. It struck the rest of his team then, too, all at once. That notion of scale, that impression, not of child-sized aliens scattered across the surface of a relic, but of people. Thousands and thousands of them, filling this space, living thousands and thousands of lives.
"God, can you imagine . . .?" Sam left the rest unsaid, sweeping her gaze across the empty platform.
Jack turned to study the docking bay again. Yngvi was powering up, her aft glow radiating heat, distorting line after crisp line along her frame until it deepened to a brilliant crimson that turned everyone's heads. With perfect acceleration, she sped soundlessly out into the black, to disappear in the psychedelic flash of a hyperspace portal.
"Um--" Daniel raised a hand, but Jack interrupted him, drawing his team's eyes out the ancient platform window to a small speck in the starlight beyond the dock, growing bigger and brighter as it approached.
"It's okay, we've got another ride coming. Might as well have a seat and enjoy the view."
Title: An Empirical Study of Entropic Principles in Complex Systems.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Takes place mid season 7
Your name: eve11
Your recipient: katie_m
Request details: "An offworld story with Thor. SG-1 Among the Asgard could be fun, but if you want to go another direction with it that's fine too."
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clockworks
--
These days, no one expected gods to be invincible. Goa'uld came and went, hissing and snapping throughout their mean little lives, and they took God the Almighty with them when they died. Dealing as they did with the supernatural made flesh and generally evil, it was impossible for even the most devout SGC members not to have a crisis of faith. Everyone went through it, even if it was only the one tiny moment of weakness, a breath before stepping through the shimmering blue, when they wondered, will the next world prove me wrong?
Some could reconcile it. They kept the symbols and tokens of their childhood and thanked Providence each time they stepped back through the gate to Earth, healthy and whole.
For the rest, faith in their teammates was all they needed. Any god could go down, any enemy could be defeated if they had to be. You took your licks, sure, but you made things work in the end. Every time you went offworld, you knew your team would do everything in their power to send everyone back through that gate again, healthy and whole, and that was enough.
The latter system had worked well for Jack O'Neill, going on seven years now. Barring the occasional need for a deus ex machina, of course.
"Colonel O'Neill, the Asgard fleet welcomes you to the O'Neill-class cruiser Yngvi."
"Thor!" Jack said, dusting himself off. He did his best to appear nonchalant, which was not an easy task when one was beamed out of an unexpected and extremely lopsided firefight-- dirty, desperate and dodging staff blasts-- onto the bridge of a technologically advanced and pristinely spotless spaceship, that was also named after oneself. "What took you so long?"
The Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet glanced down at a readout on the main console, and narrowed his dark eyes. "One minute and thirteen seconds have elapsed since your distress call."
"Ah, I forgot. Advanced aliens never get sarcasm."
Jack took a quick head count. Carter was gaining her feet from a crouch where she'd been pinned by cover fire, Daniel still looked as though he was pushing buttons on the Asgard console they'd uncovered, and Teal'c was standing in the exact middle of the bridge, bleeding from a wound to the upper arm but otherwise unperturbed.
Thor, however, appeared to be growing more perturbed by the minute, if flaring nostrils was any sign of annoyance in Asgard physiology. "I was engaged in a military campaign on the planet of Kvisil," he said.
"That's, ah, that's near here, right?" Jack looked around. Carter was giving him the 'stop talking now, sir' look. Daniel's eyebrows were conveying some elaborate code, that probably meant the same thing.
"It is in the Ida galaxy," Thor said with a small sigh. His skin flushed momentarily, to a darker mottled gray, and back.
"Oh, come on, you know it was a joke," Jack said.
"Despite our victory at Hala, the Replicators still have small splinters spread across remote regions of Ida. It is vitally important that we unearth these remaining strongholds and destroy them, before they regroup to threaten the entire universe. Again."
"Don't you have humor in the Ida galaxy? Asgard . . . humor?"
Now even Teal'c was frowning at him.
"What Jack means," Daniel offered, "is thank you for the rescue."
Thor blinked. "The safety of this planet is guaranteed against the Goa'uld. We must maintain our obligation as long as we. . ."
He trailed off, suddenly looking more green than gray. He took a shallow, wheezing breath.
"Thor?" Carter asked. "Are you all right?"
With deceptive speed, the Asgard commander rearranged some stones on the console in front of him, his thin hands shaking. "It is a stage three malfunction. Total systems breach. I must go . . ."
Then his huge eyes slid closed, and his knees buckled.
"Holy--" Jack tried to get across the bridge to the console, but he wasn't fast enough. "Daniel," he pleaded as his teammate rushed toward the smaller alien, "catch him!"
Daniel got there in time to lower Thor gently to the deck, as a persistent but subtle alarm filled the bridge, almost drowning out the Asgard's words.
"must . . . go . . ."
"Go where?" Daniel asked, frantically searching his teammate's faces for some clue of what was happening, of what they could do. But he only saw his own concern, mirrored in three modes.
These days, no one expected gods to be invincible, but despite all the bravado in the world and all the signs to the contrary, no one expected them to be brittle, either.
". . . 'unna." Thor sighed the name, and stilled in Daniel's arms.
Yngvi responded by thrumming to life, blurring and stretching the stars in view.
--------
convection and reflection
--
"...no, no, no, damn you! That can't be right!"
A solid thump echoed from the other end of the bridge, and Teal'c turned away from his study of Yngvi's cryptic navigational chart. Major Carter stood over the console, cradling her wrist and looking down in frustration. To make matters more unpleasant, Colonel O'Neill chose that moment to check in over the comms.
"Carter, are we there yet?"
Major Carter grimaced. "No, sir."
"Do we know where we're going?"
She glanced at Teal'c, but regrettably he had nothing to offer. He shook his head silently as she answered. "No, sir."
"Do we know why it's taking so long?"
"Not yet, sir." It was the same progression of questions and answers as the last seven times that O'Neill had checked in, over the last four hours. Major Carter pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead above her eye and sighed-- a move, Teal'c realized, that she never would have taken in O'Neill's direct presence. "How is Thor?" she inquired.
"Not good. We could use some of that Asgard zip, wherever the hell we're going."
"Yes, sir. Working on it."
Teal'c frowned, but chose to remain silent as Major Carter focused her attention back to the main console with a stream of technical admonishings.
O'Neill was understating the severity of the situation. Major Carter had not seen Commander Thor's condition; she had remained on the bridge while Daniel Jackson had rushed the Asgard back to the medical bay, with O'Neill and himself sweeping the ship for any sign of danger. But before they could clear even the lower decks, Daniel Jackson had recalled them urgently. They had returned to the medical bay to find Thor encased in a stasis pod, and their teammate gravely studying the diagnostic readouts.
"It's us," he had informed them. "We're making him sick."
The system failure aboard Yngvi was a breach of some manner of quarantine to safeguard Asgard physiology. It was a cascade failure effecting everything that SG-1 had come into contact with, including the stasis chamber as Daniel Jackson sealed Thor inside. Everywhere he had been touched, the Asgard's papery skin was blistered and blackening. Elsewhere, irregular lumps indicated rapid growth of tumors in his internal systems. The chamber itself relied on cloned neural networks to interface with the Asgard mind-- already infected, at best it would only slow the progression of the illness.
They had no means to repair this breach. All they could do was trust that Commander Thor had time to set them on a proper course, and fly. But as the time wore on with no destination in sight, they were forced to consider the possibility that they had caused even more damage than they realized.
The minutes stretched out again, under the constant hum of Yngvi's engines and Major Carter's train of thought.
" . . . they're not remotely biological, and even if the propulsion systems were bleeding out, it would show up in the diagnostic and then-- oh."
Her surprised cry punctuated a sudden silence, drawing Teal'c's attention. When he turned around, she was staring down at the console in disbelief. She removed a field notebook and pen from her back pocket and set to work next to the main view screen, double checking a bank of figures by hand.
"Oh my god, they inverted it! How on Earth did they--? I mean, the way they account for poles in the fixed point calculation. . ." She looked up at him. "Teal'c, I've been an idiot."
Teal'c very much doubted this, but he chose again not to voice the sentiment. "You have solved the problem?"
"Look." She manouevered several stones and indicated the navigational chart. Teal'c turned to see that the chart had rearranged itself. The destination was now clear; a blinking dot in one of the twisting spiral arms of the Ida galaxy.
"The destination is a fixed point in space and time," Major Carter explained. "The ship heads for a specific geographic point and a specific arrival time at the destination relative to the future at the departure point. Usually, relativistic effects dictate that the faster the ship travels, the more time passes for observers at the destination, but not only does the kiron drive dampen those effects, it inverts them. They eat the extra time in flight--"
"--leaving the observer with the perception of near-instantaneous travel," Teal'c supplied.
"Exactly!" Major Carter exclaimed, and then stopped, suddenly, blinking at him.
"I have been reading the popular works of Stephen Hawking," Teal'c explained.
"Indeed?"
Teal'c nodded.
"You should read Feynman next." Major Carter closed her notebook and scanned the room. "You know, I've been staring this answer in the face for the past four hours. I know the universe's rules, but it never occurred to me that we weren't traveling in the blink of an eye because we couldn't."
In the contemplative silence, Teal'c was reminded of a time when he was very, very young. Even before he was aware of Goa'uld and prim'ta, of the Jaffa prison of honor, duty and sacrifice, he stood with his family in front of the chappa'ai for the first time and understood the simple fact that there were things in this world taller than his father.
"Carter, are we--"
"No, yes, and yes!" There was a brief pause, and then a penitent, "Sir," added to the end of the sentiment.
"Jeez, Carter, two out of three ain't bad, you know."
The situation was grave indeed, and did not warrant something as frivolous as a smile. Teal'c raised an eyebrow at Major Carter instead. She tapped her pen against the console in response.
"I think I can give this ship a boost," she said, gathering a set of stones.
Yngvi dropped out of hyperspace an hour later, calmly orbiting a rust orange and green planet among a cloud of artificial satellites. Most were dormant but Teal'c detected an escort of four Asgard ships-- three cruisers and a science vessel-- intercepting their position. He realized it was not an honor guard when, through the viewscreen diagnostics, he saw that the cruisers' weapons were aimed directly at them.
A communication came across the bridge in the Asgard language. Teal'c responded in Standard, and the next transmission answered in kind.
"Cruiser, you have entered protected space around Hunna. Maintain course and quarantine protocol. You will receive no further warning."
--------
recombination
--
Daniel didn't get to see any of Hunna as they landed. The first thing the science vessel Ekkia's commander had imparted to them, after apparently brandishing three ship's worth of weapons in their direction, was for all non-Asgard occupants of Yngvi to stay put, to keep any contagion as contained as possible. Jack had already left for the bridge by that point, and so it was just Daniel and an unconscious Thor in the medbay, with no windows and only a comms link to keep him informed.
He heard the engines slow, felt the odd settling in his stomach as the environment switched over from artificial to natural gravity, and the small jolt of some kind of airlock mechanism. From the bridge, Sam confirmed that they were docked at a platform at high altitude over a vast city, similar to those she had seen on Hala before it had been destroyed. Daniel wanted to ask for a visual feed, but Jack's voice cut over the comms at that moment. Daniel didn't catch his words though, as his skin prickled to the whine of an Asgard transport device, and he suddenly found himself with a much more up close and personal view.
"Daniel Jackson, welcome to Hunna."
Daniel blinked at the bare silver-gray room. He couldn't see who had spoken over the comms, but he recognized the voice of Ekkia's commander. Then the wall in front of him dissolved to a transparent barrier, and he found himself facing two Asgard who were manning a control console. The smaller of the two Asgard spoke again, his eyes focused on the task of moving console stones.
"Please stand by for cellular classification and neutralization."
"Neutralization?" Daniel managed. That didn't sound good.
"Correct. Please stand by."
"Um, Sif, is it?" The name had been sticking in his memory since they were first contacted; he knew it from somewhere but couldn't place it. "Can you hold on a second? What's--?"
"Do not worry. This will cause you no pain."
"Wait!" Daniel held up a hand, but it was too late.
There wasn't even a flash or a whine or any kind of warning. One moment, he was on his feet in a cramped room trying to get the Asgard to tell him what the hell was going on, and the next moment he was on his back in another new room, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what the hell had just happened.
He sat up slowly, feeling no ill effects but not quite ready to trust his well-being. It looked like he was in some kind of recovery room. Empty beds, like the one he found himself on, lined the long space, rising from the floor on low pedestals. It was darker than one might expect for a hospital, done in cool gray with a deep burnished purple accent. A low-level, persistent hum of a ventilation system cloaked the room. Diffuse lighting at eye level didn't quite make it to the corners of the high ceilings, throwing the decorative inlay that lined the top of the walls into shadow. Daniel made a quick mental note to study up on non-Greek key patterns when they got back. He wished the Asgard had thought to beam him a notebook.
A far window offered a tantalizing view of the city in the distance-- tall fin-shaped buildings emerging from a low maze of industrial construction, all of it utterly still. He started to head for the window, but a door behind him opened, and he turned to see an Asgard entering. Sif again, he realized. The doorways were large enough to dwarf any Asgard frame, but Sif appeared small and pale even for his species. He carried a small data screen in one hand.
"You must forgive our methods. We did not mean to alarm you." Sif seemed professionally courteous, if not particularly contrite. He scrutinized the data screen for a moment, pressed a button, and then looked up. "The quarantine is now under control."
"Well, now that that's settled," Daniel said, "maybe you can tell me where I am?"
"This is the Hunna cloning facility," Sif answered. "When Hala was destroyed by the Replicators, we remitted emergency quarantine cases here, until we could equip our labs on Orilla to handle them safely."
"It doesn't seem to get much use." Daniel surveyed the empty room, and the silent view beyond the window. He knew a derelict city when he saw one, even from a distance.
"That is one of the reasons why we chose it. Hunna is an old settlement. There are a few who still live here, but the current Asgard population has little need for these outlying worlds, and the inhabitants will soon be joining in the migration to our new home on Orilla."
Worlds, Sif had said casually, without even a blink. Daniel didn't ask how many were empty. But the stark landscape caught his gaze again, and he wondered, briefly, how much time had passed between the failure of the Asgard's reproductive capabilities and their discovery of sustainable cloning techniques. Even a few decades were enough to cause harm; he was sure Sam could've told him some specific formulas if she were here.
"Where's the rest of my team?" he asked instead. "Did they go through-- what exactly did you do to me, anyway?"
"You were the only one to have physical contact with Supreme Commander Thor after his immune system failed," Sif explained. "We had to assure that all cell mutations triggered in his system were destroyed, including any on your person. They would not be harmful to you, but could wreak havoc on the Asgard population if transferred among our kind."
Daniel sat down on the edge of the nearest bed, keeping eye contact with the small alien. "But Thor's-- I mean, his entire body was failing. If you had to destroy any sign of mutation . . . He's all right, isn't he?"
"We were unable to repair his physical form, but we salvaged his consciousness for transfer to a new body."
He let out a breath of relief. "It's lucky he was able to make it back here in time."
The Asgard scientist frowned, much as Asgard ever frowned. "Luck played no part in it. Thor brought this upon himself. He has been very foolish."
"Wait, now. Thor was fulfilling your obligation to the protected planets in our galaxy when his ship malfunctioned." Daniel noted Sif's deepening frown and a soft sigh as he spoke, but he continued anyway. He wasn't sure how well the Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet could be defended by a mere human scientist against the vast disapproval he saw in Sif's stance, but he figured he owed it to Thor to at least try. "You can't blame him for that, can you?"
"A ship's quarantine field is only one safeguard against biological contamination and genetic cascade failure. Thor's systems failed because he did not give his mind time to acclimate to a new clone body when we last transferred his consciousness. He does not maintain proper cloning schedules. He does not keep a neural archive. He knows the limits of our physiology, but he chooses to ignore them." Sif checked another readout on his data screen, before straightening up to his full height and meeting Daniel's eyes, resolute. "I would suspect his increasing contact with willful Tau'ri was to blame, but in truth, he has long been stubborn and reckless."
"Sounds like my kind of guy."
Both Daniel and Sif turned toward the new voice. Jack strode purposefully through the doorway toward them, outpacing his Asgard escort and eyeing Daniel with relief. "You're sprung, by the way," he said as Daniel rose to greet him. "About time, too."
"What?" Daniel gave his wrist a good stare before remembering he'd left his watch back on P3X-845. "It can't be more than five minutes since they beamed me out."
"Interesting." Sif looked Daniel up and down from head to toe before communing with his data screen again, ignoring Jack's glare.
"It's been almost three hours," Jack said.
"What?" Daniel asked, alarmed. "Did they--?"
"I don't know what they did, and apparently you don't, either" Jack said. He indicated the door with a tilt of his head. "Come on. I was going to pay Thor a visit, but I think I'd rather get out of here before these guys decide we look too much like guinea pigs."
Daniel lifted his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose and looking again at Asgard and human. Oddly, he felt the need to apologize, but he wasn't sure to whom. Jack was understandably suspicious after his encounter with Loki. For his part, Sif was unfazed by Jack's allegations, but Daniel couldn't tell if it was because they were unfounded, or because he didn't catch the tension from the humans in the room, or because the clinical Asgard saw nothing wrong with whatever he'd done. He simply looked up at them, blinking those blank eyes in an unreadable expression.
"Thor is likely at the spaceport already," was all he said.
This got Jack's attention, despite himself. "In orbit? Where we docked after the quarantine platform? Already?"
"He follows his ship. He gives himself no time to recover."
The ventilation system shut off, deepening the silence. Maybe it was that, or the light or the angle, or the barest hint of regret in his frame. But despite his stature, for the first time, Sif seemed too small for this room.
The moment was broken as Sif panned his scanner to the bed that Daniel had vacated. Jack turned to go, gesturing for Daniel to follow, but the mood had finally jarred something loose from his brain. He stopped, gaining Sif's attention.
"I just remembered," he said. "In the stories on Earth about the Aesir, Sif is Thor's wife."
"Daniel--" Jack warned.
"Wife?" Sif asked, and Daniel was suddenly acutely aware of the asexual little body in front of him.
"Right," he stammered. "In a married couple-- uh, a man and a woman who pledge to spend their lives together, the man is called the husband, and the woman is called the wife. In the Eddas, Thor and Sif are husband and wife."
"Oh." Sif straightened, as though unsure what to do with this information. "How . . . provincial."
It seemed the Asgard was content to leave the exchange at that, turning to the data screen again. But the thought had percolated, and Daniel's curiosity wouldn't let him set it aside.
"I'm sorry, I hate to bring up a possible sensitive subject, but is it true?"
"Daniel!"
Sif set the scanner aside. "I do not know."
"I'm sorry?" Daniel stammered, caught off guard by the answer.
"I do not remember," Sif explained. "Perhaps you may find the information in an archive."
"But, you've known Thor for centuries, haven't you? You must have some kind of memory of it all. Important events, milestones--"
"Daniel Jackson." Sif's tone was impatient, but polite. "Do you recall all of the games you ever played as a child?"
--------
flight mechanics
--
To get to Hunna's spaceport, they took a point-to-point transport from the surface to the port's low orbit receiving room. Daniel peeled off to read some buttons for Carter, under Teal'c's watchful eye and a strict order not to touch anything. Jack took a twenty-minute elevator ride, sandwiched among the giant cylindrical beams along the outer edge of the main docking bay, up to the observation platform. Though the bay itself was a collection of bare, functional modules, the platform's interior reminded Jack of an avant garde Earth airport, only built on a massive scale.
A flat floor bisected a long irregular dome tinged in purples and greens, like the inside of a hot air balloon filled half-way on a field, buffeted by air currents and frozen in place. Eccentric oval windows-- some of them fifteen feet high and twice as wide-- tesselated the length and breadth of the wall looking out over the space dock. They stretched away to the left and right, so that the far edges of the dome were barely visible in those directions. In front of this giant display were scattered collections of five or six white seats, their straight rows arranged at all angles to the windows and to each other. Though haphazardly strewn, they all merged flawlessly into the floor as though grown there.
Yngvi loomed in view, piecewise gray and cobalt beyond a flank of windows off to the left. Silhouetted in front of the ship’s bow, Thor was the only other living presence on the platform. Jack joined him, taking a seat at the end of a row running almost parallel to the window. Thor acknowledged his presence with a terse greeting, but continued surveying the tiny arcs of light in the dock that signaled Yngvi's automated repairs. The Asgard commander looked well, and Jack wasn't quite prepared for the flood of relief this realization gave him.
"It's nice to see you on your feet," he said.
Thor turned. "These seats are uncomfortable, so I am standing. I do not see why this gives you pleasure."
"No," Jack backpedaled. "I mean, I'm glad to see--" he stopped, noting a slight turn of Thor's head and a crinkling under his eyes. "You're messing with me, aren't you?"
Thor's mouth stretched thinly out in answer, his eyes warm.
"Asgard humor?" Jack supplied.
"Asgard humor, yes."
"Not bad. You know, for a beginner."
"Of all things, I will continue to learn," the Asgard said. It sounded like a mantra, as though, were Jack a fellow skinny gray alien, he would know the line that came next and diligently recite it. Instead there was just a space of silence, and then a bright flash turned their attention to the window, followed by a blue glow from Yngvi's aft section.
A clipped voice emerged into the air. Thor nodded, and had a short conversation with the voice in the unintelligible Asgard tongue. Jack didn't understand the words but he saw Thor's small shoulders relax, a sure sign his ship was up and running, and ready to go.
"I must return to Kvisil," Thor said when the communication ended.
"No rest for the wicked?"
Thor blinked, but the remark was lost on him. "Sif will arrive shortly to escort SG-1 back to Earth aboard Ekkia."
"Great," Jack said. "Tell him, on the ride home I want no covert DNA scans, no secret lab experiments, and absolutely no kidnapping."
Thor frowned, holding Jack's gaze for an uncomfortable few seconds, before answering. "Unlike Loki, Sif would never desire to further our knowledge at that cost. Any haste or precaution in dealing with my illness was solely due to necessity."
"You're vouching for him?"
"We have known each other for over a thousand years. We may disagree, at times, but Sif is a competent and ethical scientist."
Truthfully, Jack figured as much. It was hardly a resounding endorsement, but Jack understood the sentiment. As much as he would be reluctant to admit it, he trusted Thor's assessment when it came to his fellow Asgard. When it came to Thor's assessment about his own well-being, well, that was a different story.
"About that 'competent' part," he offered. "Sif said you should give yourself some time, to recover--"
"I can recover on Yngvi," Thor said quickly, his eyes narrowed.
Jack raised an eyebrow, then leaned back in the seat. "Suit yourself. But you won't be much good against the Replicators if you catch another bug and have to leg it all the way back here."
Thor dismissed this idea with a small puff of breath that seemed to be the Asgard equivalent of a cantankerous 'pshaw'. "I have undergone the cloning process twenty-two times, and I am familiar with the risks. I have no wish to--" he paused, tilting his head and scanning the platform, as though seeing it for the first time. "That is to say, there is no need to linger, here."
It was the weariness in those last words, the huge emptiness that swallowed them up without so much as an echo, that got to Jack. Of course, he couldn't really comprehend the magnitude of it. Like everything else on Hunna, the loss here was realized in massive proportions, and traced a swath of millennia in its wake. But in Jack's mind it stubbornly kept scaling down-- to a still and silent bedroom, with a rumpled bedspread, errant socks strewn about on the floor, and Little League trophies propping up rows of slender books.
"I think I know what you mean," he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. God, by the time he'd stopped running from that room, he was on Abydos, and even that wasn't far enough.
When he looked up again, Thor was watching him curiously. But neither of them offered anything further. The silence stretched and Jack sighed. He stood, waving a hand toward the window and the ship beyond.
"Take care of yourself out there. Don't go giving my cruiser class a bad name."
"Yourself as well," Thor said. His mouth thinned into that strange Asgard smile. "I do not have time to make a habit of rescuing SG-1."
"Oh, that was a good one," Jack said, watching as the smile, as well as the rest of the newly minted Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet, disappeared in a flash of transporter light.
He turned around, expecting to be alone on the platform, but instead saw Carter and Daniel heading his way, on one of those meandering scientist trajectories that changed with each interesting artifact or feature they came across. Teal'c held back by the entry way, surveying the space before crossing to join Jack at the window, just as Sam and Daniel finished their circuit.
". . . it's got to be older than that," Daniel explained, his tone hushed but adamant in the still space. "The chairs are proportioned for almost human standards, and collected in numbers for typical social groups, which in the vast majority of cases is a family unit. When was the last time the Asgard had family units?"
Carter's eyes tracked the walls and ceiling. "But the polymers are pristine, not even faded around the light structures. They don't have the resources to maintain luxuries like this. So, we're talking perfect preservation across thousands of years."
"It's not so far-fetched, Sam. Look at this architecture; it's playful, inventive, young--"
"Egalitarian," Teal'c offered, halting the conversation and drawing both sets of blue eyes to him in unison. Jack chuckled at the mild flummoxing of the Wonder Twins, but Teal'c merely raised an eyebrow, and continued.
"A Goa'uld space this large would always have a throne or altar. But here, there is no focal point. There is no way to force all eyes to a single man, nor even to a single ship or point in the docking bay. It is like no 'observation platform' I have ever seen."
"I think the design details have a lot to do with acoustics, too," Sam said. "Did you notice how the sound stays pocketed around you, even in this large of a space?"
"Yeah, I did," Jack said quietly. "It must have been great for crowds."
There were no crowds now. Now, the effect gave the place an otherworldly warmth, a hungry echo of a distant, bustling past. It struck the rest of his team then, too, all at once. That notion of scale, that impression, not of child-sized aliens scattered across the surface of a relic, but of people. Thousands and thousands of them, filling this space, living thousands and thousands of lives.
"God, can you imagine . . .?" Sam left the rest unsaid, sweeping her gaze across the empty platform.
Jack turned to study the docking bay again. Yngvi was powering up, her aft glow radiating heat, distorting line after crisp line along her frame until it deepened to a brilliant crimson that turned everyone's heads. With perfect acceleration, she sped soundlessly out into the black, to disappear in the psychedelic flash of a hyperspace portal.
"Um--" Daniel raised a hand, but Jack interrupted him, drawing his team's eyes out the ancient platform window to a small speck in the starlight beyond the dock, growing bigger and brighter as it approached.
"It's okay, we've got another ride coming. Might as well have a seat and enjoy the view."