The cable swung gently, and Sam’s harness twisted in response. She irritably wrenched herself back into position, grabbing Daniel’s shoulder with her free hand for balance. Startled, he fumbled the brush in his hand, but a quick moment of juggling prevented it from falling into the shaft below.

“Sorry,” Sam muttered. With no free hand to reach for her radio, she tipped her head upwards and shouted, “Teal’c, I’m shifting again!”

The cable jerked once more, then stabilized. “The weather is growing worse, Major Carter,” Teal’c’s voice floated down. “I believe it would be wise of you and Daniel Jackson to finish as quickly as possible.”

“Copy that!” Sam called back.

“Daniel Jackson would like to finish as quickly as possible, too,” Daniel said through gritted teeth. Warily, he reached forward and dabbed the brush into the crevices of the rock, freeing grit and sand. The dust and debris fell in a steady trickle, winking in the beam of Sam’s maglight before disappearing into the darkness.

“You’re doing fine,” she said encouragingly. “That’s the last part of this line. What comes next?”

“Well, you’ll have to tell me, won’t you?” He tucked the brush into the pocket of his vest, then leaned forward in his own harness to blow gently into the crevice, freeing the last bits of dust. Then he shifted back against her for a clearer look. “Okay, run your light across the line for me. Right to left, don’t forget.”

“Got it.” She aimed the strong light at the right-most glyph and slowly panned across the line as Daniel translated aloud. When he was finished, he glanced back at her, raising his brows at her questioningly.

“Go back and read that last part again,” Sam said, frowning a little.

Daniel repeated his translation. “You could try using aspect in place of attitude, if it helps,” he suggested. He let out a frustrated breath. “It would be easier if Atropus used either pure Goa’uld or pure Linear A, instead of this awful mixture of both.”

“No, no, that’s useful,” Sam said almost absently as she tried to picture the formula in her mind. “That would put us… Hm. Okay, six degrees west. And lower by three times seven –”

“Pous,” Daniel supplied.

“Right, okay. And that translates into thirty point eight four centimeters, so…” She made a rapid calculation, then took her hand off Daniel’s shoulder to trigger her radio. “Teal’c, we need to move one point four one meters to the west, and six point four eight meters down. You copy?”

“I do, Major Carter. I am activating the winch now.”

After a moment, the cables jerked and began to move, first to their left and then downwards. Sam watched the shudder that visibly traveled through Daniel’s shoulders, and she squeezed his upper arm in reassurance.

 

“This will probably be the last one,” she said. “We’ve done six, and you said there will probably be seven, right?”

“Yeah.” She was glad to hear that his voice was calm. “Well, either seven or nine. Let’s hope Atropus didn’t have her own ideas about lucky numbers that aren’t part of Greek mythology.”

They both fell silent, then, as Teal’c carefully maneuvered them into the right position. She could hear the faint thrumming of the generator that powered the winch, but the rising whistle of the wind blowing across the top of the shaft, far above their heads, was steadily growing stronger.

The radio crackled. “How’s it going, kids?” The colonel’s voice was brisk, but it carried undertones of unease and concern.

Daniel reached for his own radio to reply. “It looks like we’re getting close to the finish line, Jack,” he reported. “Hopefully, we’ve got one more line for me to translate and for Sam to calculate. Then we’ll finally get a chance to see just what Atropus was hiding from Cronus here.” And get out of this shaft. Sam could hear the unspoken addition as clearly as if Daniel had actually voiced it.

“Make it as fast as you can. That storm front is coming up in a hurry. I don’t want you two still in there when it hits.”

“Neither do I,” Daniel said fervently, just as they jerked to a stop. “Believe me, we’re working as quickly as possible. We have to take the time to do it right, though, or risk getting the combination wrong.”

“Well, I’d offer to help, Daniel, but it’s all–”

“Don’t say it, Jack. Please.” Daniel gave a long-suffering sigh. “You’re still by the door, right?”

“Yes, Daniel.” The drawl sounded amused. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where to go.”

“Jack, if you keep feeding me straight lines like that, I’ll –”

“Major Carter and Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c’s voice cut in. “You should now be placed to continue.”

Daniel’s hand dropped away from his radio, and Sam aimed her light to focus on one of the hundreds of knobs that dotted the walls of the shaft. “According to our calculations, that should be the right one. Go ahead, Daniel.”

“Right.”

She admired the steadiness of his hand as he reached out and pressed the knob inwards. She held her breath, then let it out in a whoosh at the quiet click and slight hum.

“And that makes six,” Daniel said, twisting his head to smile tremulously at her. “One more clue to puzzle out, one more knob to push, and we should finally get that door unlocked so we can get inside.”

She grinned back at him, then refocused her concentration on the wall. “Okay, so let’s get started. Left to right this time?”

“Yeah.” Daniel ran a gentle finger along the wall, clearing away the first layer of dust that had accumulated over the centuries. “And here we go.” He took out his brush and began the painstaking task of clearing out the incised glyphs so they could read what they hoped would be the last clue.

As Sam held the maglight steady for him, she wondered, yet again, exactly what they were going to find. She’d had a grand old time scanning through the data crystals they’d found on Cronus’ hatak after he’d been killed by Teal’c’s double; but the reference to Atropus’ planet, and the research lab where she’d apparently hidden something from Cronus, had been particularly intriguing. She’d studied the file carefully, copied down the Stargate glyphs, and shared the information with her teammates.

Daniel had talked a lot about Greek mythology and the Three Fates, and how that might translate into the Goa’uld who assumed Atropus’ identity. But as far as Sam was concerned, the references to “potentials in spacetime” translated into the opportunity for a real breakthrough in quantum physics. Words that Daniel translated as potentia, and theory, and infinite possibility? It fit too neatly to mean anything else. And the chance to learn something new – something that the Goa’uld themselves had probably gathered from some other race – was too tempting to be missed.

The colonel had grumbled a bit about wasting time on an abandoned planet instead of taking the hatak out for a “test drive,” as he put it. And when she had tried to explain things to him, his flippant references to her cat and Narim had compelled her to remind herself, very forcefully, that the colonel was actually her superior officer, and she couldn’t get mouthy with him even if he needed it rather badly. He had come through for her in the end, though, when the Stargate coordinates gave them a working wormhole. Once the UAV flyover had shown that there were no signs of overt danger, he had supported her request to General Hammond for a mission to P4X-701.

They had emerged onto a stone dais at the edge of a wide, wind-swept plain, with gloomy skies lowering overhead. Sam had made a face at the bad weather, hoping the rain would hold off long enough for them to see just what Atropus had managed to keep hidden from Cronus, despite the Goa’uld’s determination to take it for himself.

The research lab was easy enough to find: a towering marble door, nearly twenty feet high, set flush into the base of a small mountain about three klicks from the Gate. Getting in, however, had been another, more complicated story. There was nothing on or near the door that even suggested a way to get inside.

“C4,” announced the colonel briskly.

“No, Jack!” Daniel protested. “You’d bring the whole mountain down!”

“Even if it does not destroy the laboratory, the explosion might damage the research within,” Teal’c pointed out reasonably.

“Besides, isn’t C4 supposed to be Plan B?”

Sam suppressed a snicker at Daniel’s barb and went for the diplomatic, good junior officer suggestion. “Perhaps we should take a look around first, sir. We might find some way to open it more easily.”

They split in pairs, Teal’c and Daniel heading left while Sam and the colonel went right. They’d gone nearly a quarter of the way around the mountain’s base when Daniel’s excited voice came over the radio.

“Jack! Teal’c found a trail, and I’ve found a marker! This was definitely a path meant for Atropus’ priests. We’re headed up now.”

“Negative, Daniel,” Colonel O’Neill answered crisply. “Wait for us to get there, so we can watch your six.”

“But, Jack…!”

“Understood, O’Neill,” Teal’c said over the radio, his voice smoothly cutting over Daniel’s protests. “We will await your arrival.”

Ten minutes later, Sam and the colonel found Daniel almost dancing with impatience at the foot of the faint trail. Teal’c stood nearby with a calm expression, but the quirk to his eyebrow made his amusement plain.

“Where’s the marker, Daniel?” Sam asked.

“Here!” Daniel darted forward and ran a hand lovingly over a small stone, darker in color than the others and flecked with glints of something like mica. “See this?” His finger stabbed at one symbol, then another. “That’s Linear A, like we found on Pelops’ planet. And these –” He gestured at several other symbols, which looked the same as the first ones as far as Sam could tell. “They’re regular Goa’uld hieroglyphics. The combination is utterly bizarre, to be honest, but I think it’s manageable.”

“And it says…?” prompted the colonel.

“Well, I can’t be certain after just studying it for a few minutes, but –” Daniel ran his fingers over the faded glyphs again. “Acolytes of the divine... That should be seer, I think. Yes. Acolytes of the divine seer can witness the might of Atropus and seek wisdom at her doorway.”

“Her doorway?” Sam repeated.

“The path must lead to the key,” Teal’c observed. “Perhaps Atropus had her own device for opening the door on its own, but left a key for her priests in her absence.”

“But she knew Cronus was sniffing around, right?” Colonel O’Neill squinted up the path. “What are the chances she didn’t take the key with her to make sure Cronus didn’t ransack the place?”

“That’s always a possibility,” Daniel said, brows raised. “On the other hand, the whole point of leaving a key was to let her priests inside. She might have left it guarded, or hidden in a way that only her acolytes could decipher.”

“Would she do that?” Sam asked. “Would she let her priests, or acolytes, or whatevers, actually learn enough to figure things out? I thought the Goa’uld prefer to leave their followers ignorant.”

“Their regular followers, yes,” Daniel said promptly. “But not –” He stopped abruptly, glancing sideways at Teal’c.

“Shau’nac certainly received a better education in her position as priestess,” Teal’c said evenly, with no sign of strain. “But even if Atropus’ priests are taught only by rote and without understanding, their rites might be beyond the comprehension of the Goa’uld’s enslaved followers.”

“So we follow the yellow brick road, then?” Colonel O’Neill said, his voice just a little too brisk. The cheerfully false note made Sam suppress a wince.

“Indeed, O’Neill.” Teal’c strode forward. “I will accompany Daniel Jackson to the summit.”

“I was just going to order that!” the colonel called after the retreating pair, his face grumpy. “Uppity Jaffa,” he muttered, and gestured for Sam to go ahead. She followed the others, smothering the grin that would hardly be respectful to her senior officer.

After fifteen minutes of steady hiking, the group neared the summit. Teal’c was the first to spot the lip of the shaft: smooth, worn by years of exposure, it was clearly not a natural formation. He pointed it out to Daniel, who warily circled the gaping hole in the ground, keeping a careful distance.

“There are glyphs carved along the rim,” he muttered to himself. He edged forwards, maintaining enough of a distance that the colonel didn’t seem to feel the need to haul him back to safety by the scruff of his jacket. “Very faded.” He actually sat right down on the rocky slope in order to scoot closer, and Sam suddenly remembered that he wasn’t fond of heights. Taking off his glasses, he squinted at the symbols. “It starts… over there.” He shuffled back, stood, paced six feet to the left, and sat down again. For nearly twenty minutes, he studied the hieroglyphics, edging along the circumference of the shaft. Then he sat back and turned to look at the others.

“It’s absolute gibberish,” he said flatly. “I’m sorry, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to decipher this.”

“Good!” said the colonel heartily. “Let’s go home. First dibs on the peltak.”

“Wait a minute. Daniel, isn’t there something you can do to make the translation easier? Maybe the Tok’ra could –”

“No,” said Teal’c, his voice dangerously flat, and Sam bit her lip in consternation. Shau’nac. Tanith. The days when Teal’c had sincerely respected the Tok’ra were long gone.

“No way!” said the colonel. Sam glared at him, and he hastily added, “Well, maybe Jacob. If we really, really have to.”

“Sir,” she said, allowing her exasperation to color her tone, “this has nothing to do with my father’s status as a Tok’ra. If Daniel’s right and we can’t figure this out on our own, the Tok’ra might be our only resource for deciphering this puzzle.”

“They’re already trying to borrow our hatak,” Colonel O’Neill said plaintively. “Do we have to let them in on this, too?”

“I doubt the Tok’ra could help me with the translation, anyway,” Daniel said, his voice diplomatically soothing. “It’s not a problem of reading it, Sam. The directions Atropus left are clear enough. The problem is that it doesn’t make sense. And some of it seems to be symbols.”

“Are they not all symbols, Daniel Jackson?”

“Symbols that don’t seem to have any meaning, Teal’c,” Daniel amended. “Symbols that don’t correspond to anything I’ve seen in any kind of Goa’uld dialect, or Linear A or Linear B.”

“Maybe it’s a code,” Sam suggested, coming to squat down in the dust at Daniel’s side.

He gave her a tired smile. “I have no idea what kind of code would refer to many space in single point or angled… no, I’d made that square…a square something. Container, maybe. Or pit.”

Sam started. “Daniel, that’s quantum mathematics. Basic stuff.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“Quantum mathematics disputes the concept of a point that doesn’t occupy space. And your angled pit is probably the same thing as square well. It’s a classic problem in quantum mathematics: the particle in a box. Delta function potentials.” She scooted closer to the edge of the shaft. “Show me those symbols you were talking about, the ones that didn’t make sense. Are there any glyphs here that might mean equals or something similar? Or maybe you could –”

“Carter,” Colonel O’Neill interrupted, “would you care to explain what you’re talking about?” He had taken off his cap, and was now slapping it irritably against his leg.

“Just a moment, sir. Daniel and I might be able to work this out together.”

“Sam, I don’t understand calculus, much less quantum mathematics!”

She patted his arm reassuringly. “I’ll handle the mathematics,” she promised. “Show me the symbols. Equals?”

“Not equals, but… Hm.” Daniel, looking interested again, scanned the incised glyphs on the rim. He pointed out several to Sam, who was leaning over his shoulder by now. “This one here, and this one, see? It’s obvious, even to someone who doesn’t read hieroglyphs, that they aren’t regular symbols…”

“Obvious to you,” Sam said with an affectionate nudge. She pointed to the glyph between the two that Daniel had indicated. “And what does that one mean?”

“Not equals,” Daniel said again, squinting. “I would say level, or maybe uniform.” His eyes widened. “Which is… pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?”

“This is a formula, Daniel!” Without so much as an ‘excuse me,’ Sam rummaged in the front pocket of his vest and pulled out his customary pad and pencil. She realized what she was doing and gave him a sheepish glance, but he only looked amused.

“Okay,” she said, recovering her composure. “Let’s give this symbol –” She pointed. “ – a value of K, that symbol a value of J…”

“Those aren’t the usual letters you use, are they?”

“No, but I can reassign values when I’ve gotten a little further. This is just to get us started.”

“Right. So I’ll give you the words in between…”

“…And I’ll see if it works out to a viable formula.”

“Oh, children!”

Both Sam and Daniel stopped in mid-babble and turned to look at Colonel O’Neill with surprise.

“Explain what you’re doing. Use little bitty words.” He jammed his cap back onto his head with a frustrated huff.

“Give us a minute, Jack.”

“You’ve had several already.”

“Sir,” Sam said, as patiently as possible, “we’ve just determined that I might be able to understand the symbols that Daniel can’t. He’s going to translate for me and we’ll see if we’re right or not.”

“Fine!” the colonel huffed.

Sam turned back to the intriguing problem, trying to put her CO’s annoyance out of her mind. She knew he wasn’t happy about this mission, and that he’d prefer to be either back at the base or prowling the corridors of their newly acquired hatak. But she did wish he wouldn’t take it out on them.

“Teal’c and I will keep watch,” he added, coming a step closer. He leaned over Daniel’s shoulder, evidently trying to peer down the shaft and estimate its depth. He stepped back, made a face, and glared at them both. “Both of you had better keep both feet on the ground!”

The colonel’s command, it turned out, hadn’t been all that easy to obey. Sam and Daniel had spent a quarter of an hour huddled together, trying various translations of different words and discarding those that couldn’t fit into a mathematical context. To Sam’s carefully concealed surprise, the end result had been something that actually made sense.

“As far as we can tell, sir,” she reported, “This shaft is a puzzle of sorts, created by Atropus with the expectation that only her priests could navigate it. There are hundreds of lines incised into the shaft, with a sort of knob presenting every few lines around the circumference of the shaft. The priests are directed to descend the shaft and follow the directions as given by the mathematical formulae incised into the walls of the shaft, activating the right knobs to create a combination for –”

“Whoa! Stop right there, Major.” Colonel O’Neill looked from Sam to Daniel with an expression of incredulity. “I did not just hear you suggest that the two of you climb down that thing!”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea, no,” Daniel agreed. He glanced at the shaft, then turned away hurriedly. He licked his lips, looking queasy.

“What happens if a priest has a bad headache one day and gets his fractions wrong?” the colonel asked pointedly. “Do your math problems say anything about that?”

“Not exactly,” Sam hedged.

“But we can make a fairly good guess, can’t we?” The colonel edged over to the lip of the shaft and peered downwards again. “It looks like a moot point, Major. I can see where there were rungs once upon a time, and some – ledges, I guess…”

“Platforms,” Daniel said. “It wasn’t just up or down. There was a lateral element, too.”

“Okay, platforms. Up, down, sideways. There are a few of those, but they don’t look like they’re in very good shape.” He straightened up and gave Sam a steady stare. “You’re going to have to give up on this one, Major.”

“Maybe not,” Sam said insistently. “Sir, from what Daniel translated, the priests used to climb down the rungs and move along the platforms, which were situated every couple of feet, in order to activate the right knobs. That’s no longer an option, obviously. But you’ve been making Daniel take all those practice climbs up Pike’s Peak…”

“Uh, Sam,” said Daniel, very quietly. “I really don’t think…”

“You are suggesting that we bring a winch and generator,” Teal’c observed. “We could lower you and Daniel Jackson into the shaft, adjusting the height and position as necessary.”

“Exactly!” Sam couldn’t curb her enthusiasm. “We’ve already figured out the first one. We need to start here –” She tapped the last word of the formula incised in the rim. “– and move three degrees to the east and descend the length of three times two, or six…” She trailed off and glanced inquiringly at Daniel.

“Pous,” Daniel said.

“And what are those when they’re at home?”

“It’s an ancient Greek length of measurement, Jack,” Daniel clarified. He brightened up a little. “About thirty-one centimeters. That depends on the era, of course, but based on the mythology of Cronus in regards to Atropus, I can narrow that down. Let me check my notes.” He started for his pack, which he’d dropped on the ground when he first began his translation efforts. “I’m pretty sure I’ll have the exact conversion there...”

“Let’s go back to this insane idea about the two of you lowering yourself into a deep pit that is probably lined with Goa’uld booby-traps,” suggested the colonel.

“Sir, I don’t think it’s dangerous as long as we have the right knowledge. The winch can place us at the correct spot. At that point, we have to push the knob situated at exactly that point and read the next formula , which will direct us to –”

“What about all the other lines?” demanded the colonel. “Are you going to have to sit there and translate each one? Because the hockey season starts next month, and I don’t want to still be here.”

“No, sir,” Sam said patiently. “That’s the whole point. The formula tells us exactly where we need to go in the shaft in order to push the right knob and read the next formula on the list.”

Daniel looked up from rummaging in his pack to add, “If we do this, Jack, then I’m guessing that once we hit all the right knobs, the door will either slide up on its own, or we’ll find a key of some kind hidden by the final knob.”

“How many do you think there will be, then?”

Sam hesitated and frowned. “The translations and formulae didn’t specify, sir,” she admitted. She looked at Daniel. “Is there any number that’s common in Greek mythology?”

Daniel closed his eyes, tapping at his mouth with steepled fingers as he considered. “Probably seven,” he said, opening his eyes again. “Three would be too quick and easy. Both three and seven were considered holy numbers in Ancient Greece. We’ve got Atropus directing the priests to descend in multiples of three – three times two, in this first case. If Atropus used one number, she probably used the other one as well. So I’d say seven, although nine – that’s three times three – is also a possibility.”

There was a long, uneasy silence. Sam studied her teammates’ faces. Daniel’s fingers still fiddled with his pack, and he was staring off into the distance; she couldn’t tell if it was his fear of heights, or some other emotion, that was affecting him, but she recognized his usual avoidance tactics. Teal’c’s face was as calm as always, although the gleam in his eyes suggested his anticipation at beating Cronus at his own game, even after the Goa’uld’s death. As for the colonel…

“Let’s hope for seven, then,” Colonel O’Neill finally grumbled, making his decision. “All right. Teal’c, you and I will head back to the Gate to requisition supplies. Carter, you and Daniel keep an eye on this place until we get back.”

During the hours-long delay, while the colonel had explained the situation to the general and the necessary equipment had been loaded onto a FRED, Sam and Daniel had continued to study the inscription, refining their translation and familiarizing themselves with the dialect. By the time the generator and the winch had been installed at the edge of the shaft, with the specialized equipment that would allow Teal’c to make exact calibrations, Sam had estimated that sunset was only two hours off. Colonel O’Neill had flatly refused to allow them to even consider making the attempt so close to dusk. Tomorrow, he insisted, would arrive soon enough.

They made camp at the base of the mountain, close to the frustratingly blank door to Atropus’ lab. Daniel and Sam got little eating done during supper, as they were too busy discussing the evolution of Atropus’ persona as the Fate that determined the future and the role of quantum mathematics. The colonel finally put a halt to the conversation and assigned watches for the night.

As the planet’s tiny moon struggled to peek through the intermittent rain clouds, the team prepared for what they hoped would be a quiet night. Daniel had first watch, but Sam stayed up instead of crawling into her own sleeping bag. She needed to know why he was so uneasy.

“Daniel, you’re not worried about the translations, are you?” she tried. “I told you – once we got the terminology right, the formula itself was pretty straightforward. I suppose we’ll have to spend a little time working out each individual clue, but I don’t think we’ll have any real trouble.”

He looked at her sideways for a long moment. “You know I’m not real fond of heights,” he said finally.

She bit her lip. “If you want to sit this out…?” she offered tentatively. “I could videotape the glyphs, or something, and return to the top of the shaft to let you work on it there.”

“No, that would take much too long. And if you missed something, it wouldn’t even work.” He gave a one-sided shrug. “I’m just uncomfortable about this whole mission, Sam. We don’t know what Atropus was hiding from Cronus. You’re convinced that it’s something to do with mathematics. Jack is hoping for a big honkin’ space gun, but he’s always hoping for that.” He ducked his head a little at her grin. “I have no idea what we’re going to find, Sam, but I can’t imagine it being as wonderful as you seem to think it will be.”

“Why not?” Sam challenged. “Atropus was one of the three Fates, right? And even the Greek gods were afraid of the Fates. So whatever Atropus was keeping from Cronus, it was either something powerful in its own right, or knowledge that Cronus could have applied for his own benefit. Why wouldn’t that be something good?”

Daniel shrugged. “I just can’t see anything good coming out of the stuff we learned from killing Cronus and taking over his ship.”

“How can you say that?” she demanded, taken aback. “The military intel we gained from the mothership’s data crystals alone –”

“It cost too much, Sam,” he said softly. “And I wasn’t there to help pay the price.”

Sam looked down at her hands, feeling conflicted. She knew that Colonel O’Neill was fiercely stubborn about the legitimacy of the robots’ claims to be… how had he put it in the briefing? “Real.” Daniel, on the other hand, had passionately argued on the robots’ behalf on his return to the SGC, insisting that they had been fully sentient beings who had sacrificed their lives for the others’ sakes and deserved to be properly mourned. So where did she fit in this equation? As a scientist, she intellectually considered the robots to be nothing more than incredibly sophisticated machines. And yet…

She could address Daniel’s second concern, at least. “I know you’re unhappy about how often the team has been apart,” she said, rubbing his arm gently. “I have a feeling that it’s not going to happen that much, any more. Juna was too painful without you, Daniel.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said after a moment. He tilted his head at her, raising his brows with a faint smile.

“It’s a promise,” she agreed. “Besides, someone has to remember to bring the good coffee on missions!”

He’d chuckled then, and they sat silently, companiably together for some time, until Sam finally rose and went to her sleeping bag to get some rest before her own turn at watch.

When morning arrived, as wet and blustery as the day before, the team had followed the procedure they had discussed the previous evening. Colonel O’Neill had remained at the base of the mountain, watching the sealed door and keeping in contact with the others via the radio. Teal’c had accompanied Sam and Daniel back to the summit and helped them into the sturdy harnesses the SGC had sent. Daniel hadn’t looked very happy as he straddled the lip of the shaft and prepared for that first drop into the depths; but Sam knew that he trusted Teal’c, as she did, to keep them safe.

Sam was delighted when they found one of the knobs precisely where she’d predicted it would be. Daniel carefully reached out, twiddled it, and discovered that it could be pushed firmly inwards. As he did so, they both heard a distinct click and a faint hum.

“Yes!” Sam waved a fist in triumph. “We’re on the right track!”

“Good work, Sam,” Daniel smiled back at her. His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, though. Sam realized that he must have half-hoped they would have to abort the mission.

“It’ll be fine,” she told him gently.

He gave her a more natural smile, then, and reached for the radio on his vest. “Jack, Teal’c, we’ve solved the formula on the rim correctly. We’re starting the second one now.”

As they worked on the second translation, though, it began to look as if their first success was going to be their last. No matter how many alternate translations Daniel suggested, it seemed to be complete gibberish.

“That makes no sense,” Sam said finally, shaking her head. “Daniel, are you sure?”

“No,” he admitted readily. “But this might be…” He licked his lips contemplatively. “We might be dealing with a case of boustrophedon here.”

“With what?”

“Literally, ‘as the ox turns.’ Anatolian hieroglyphics.” He traced a pattern on the wall with his finger, dragging it back and forth. “Imagine an ox, plowing a field. When it gets to the end of one row, it turns right around and plows in the opposite direction.”

Sam grinned. “So, the first clue was written from right to left. And now we should try reading it from left to right?”

“Let’s see what happens,” Daniel agreed.

They tried it. And it worked.

It had worked six times, so far. And now Daniel was ready to read the final passage to her: the one they hoped would lead to the last knob and the unlocking of the door to Atropus’ lab.

She played her light over the glyphs, concentrating hard as Daniel translated aloud for her. She repeated one part of the passage to herself more than once under her breath before she finalized her calculation.

“A bigger drop this time,” she announced. “That makes sense if it’s the last one, I guess. Two degrees east, and three times ten – that is, thirty pous down.”

“Thirty?” Daniel twisted and frowned at her. “Sam, I’m not questioning your mathematics, but… So far, we’ve increased the distance, either up or down, by one pous at a time – okay, by three pous at a time. Six down, nine down, twelve up, fifteen down, eighteen down, twenty-one down. Shouldn’t we get twenty-four now? Why would the factor suddenly jump from seven to ten?”

Sam hesitated, a fragment of something floating in her mind, just out of reach. Seven jumping to ten…

She shook her head, dismissing it. “Read it again?”

Daniel reread the formula aloud, even more slowly than before.

Sam considered the problem, then shrugged. “I agree that it’s a bit strange, Daniel, but that’s how it works out.”

“Sam, if you’re not sure…” Daniel’s unease was translating itself into nervous gestures again as he fiddled with the straps on his harness.

“I’m sure,” she insisted. “I don’t know why there’s that sudden jump in figures, but the formula reads true.”

“Maybe it’s deliberate,” Daniel said, but his voice sounded doubtful. “A way to trick any person who isn’t one of Atropus’ priests.”

“Maybe.”

A sudden boom sounded overhead. Startled, they jerked in their harnesses, setting the cables swinging. As they clutched at one another in an effort to stop from rotating, their radios crackled.

“Pack it up, kids,” said the colonel briskly. “The rain’s getting harder, and I’m seeing flashes of lightning. The generator and the winch are going to make one sweet lightning rod on the top of the mountain, and we don’t have a Stargate we need to activate at the moment.”

Daniel fumbled for his radio. “Jack, we’re on the last clue! If we stop now, we’ll have to start all over again!”

“Daniel…”

“Jack!”

“It’s getting a little too dangerous, Daniel!”

Daniel licked his lips. “I don’t want to have to do this a second time, Jack.”

A moment’s silence. Then, “Carter – how long will it take?”

“Teal’c has to get us down to the final knob, sir,” Sam reported. “Once we push it, we hope the door will open for you automatically. Then Teal’c can pull us back up, quick.”

Static crackled over the open radio for nearly half a minute. “All right,” Colonel O’Neill said at last. “But if the door doesn’t open – Carter, I’m ordering you to get out of there as soon as you press the last knob, whether or not it’s successful.”

Sam grimaced. “Yes, sir,” she said reluctantly. “Teal’c?”

“I am listening, Major Carter.”

“Move us one point six one meters to the east, and nine point two five meters downwards.”

“Please stand by.”

As they waited for Teal’c to set the precise measurements on the winch, Sam felt the first spatters of rain striking her head and shoulders. She exchanged a nervous glance with Daniel. If the rain was already penetrating this deeply into the shaft, the storm must have reached full intensity in minutes.

“Major Carter.” Teal’c’s voice carried a clear undercurrent of worry. “I estimate that your latest calculations will put you nearly at the bottom of the shaft. Are you quite certain?”

Sam made a face. “As certain as we’re going to be, Teal’c. We have to try this now, or abandon the project until some other date – which means it might not happen at all.”

“Indeed. I am activating the winch now.”

As they dropped further into the depths, Sam chewed on her lower lip, going over the calculations yet a third time in her head. It had to be ten. That was how the formula worked out. But why the jump from seven to ten…?

That niggling something nudged at her brain again, but when she tried to chase after it, it sneered and vanished.

They stopped moving. Sam aimed the light downward, then winced. Teal’c had been right; they were less than five meters from the bottom of the shaft. Forcing her mind back to the current situation, Sam focused her light at the wall in front of them. Sure enough, there was another knob right there.

“Go for it, Daniel,” she said quietly.

Daniel gave her one last look, then reached out. Sam couldn’t help but hold her breath. If she was right, then they were about to uncover the secrets locked in Atropus’ lab.

Daniel pressed the knob down hard.

Nothing happened.

He turned and stared at her, his eyes widening even further in the gloom. Every other time, they’d heard a click and a hum…

“We were wrong!” Daniel screamed into the radio. “Pull us up, Teal’c, now!”

For a long, agonizing second, nothing happened. Then there was a huge jerk, and they began to move – more rapidly than they had until now, but still much too slowly.

The whole shaft trembled. Lightning flashed above. Somewhere below their feet, something rumbled, menacing and low. A furious, monotonous stream of curses flowed from her radio; the colonel’s voice was interrupted only by his panting breaths, as he clearly raced up the mountain path to get to Teal’c and help him haul them both to safety.

Daniel’s gaze was fixed firmly upwards, oblivious to the rain splattering on his face, as if he was mentally urging the winch to move faster; but Sam pointed her maglight downwards just in time to see the northernmost bottom of the shaft crumble. Rocks tumbled onto the floor of the shaft, and then something glinted in the light, fixed into the wall…

Or not. Whatever it was shifted, and tilted, and groaned under the weight of stones shaking loose. And then it fell backwards, into the shaft –

And landed with a crash that echoed upwards, nearly deafening them both. Whatever it was, it was fixed in a frame and was nearly four meters across. Just a little too big to lie flat at the shaft’s bottom, it lay on a slight angle, the frame propped up slightly by the opposite wall. Sam could now see that the reflecting glint she’d witnessed before must have come from the frame itself; whatever lay within the frame was a deep, inky black, made of some kind of material that swallowed up the beam of her maglight as if it didn’t even exist.

Still staring downwards with fixed, horrified fascination, Sam saw the spark that ran across that dark surface, calm as black ice. The spark raced from edge to edge, leaving a trail of blue fire in its wake. Then the line of blue pooled rapidly outward, spreading across the dull surface like liquid mercury. In seconds, the frame was filled entirely with that blue glow, not quite the same as the event horizon effect of a Stargate…

There was a flash that nearly blinded her, and then Sam was staring at a sunlit sky, skewed and off-kilter, as if through a picture window. One edge showed a curve of weathered stone of a reddish color. A sparrow-like bird flitted across her vision from one side of the frame to the next, disappearing from view.

And with a sick feeling of dread, Sam suddenly knew exactly how Atropus, one of the three Fates of Greek mythology, went hand-in-hand with quantum mathematics.

“Daniel!” she shrieked, trying to be heard over the din of crashing rock, the continuous percussion of thunder, and the shrill whine of the overworked generator overhead. “It’s a quantum mirror!”

Daniel’s head jerked around, and he stared between his feet at the scene below him. He gave a choking gasp and clutched frantically at the straps of her harness.

“What happens if we fall into that?” he croaked. “From this height?”

“I don’t know!” she yelled back. “We might come out at the same speed we go through. Does kinetic energy translate through the mirror, the way it does through the Stargate?”

“How should I know?” Daniel’s eyes closed, and a massive shudder ran through him. “I don’t want to find out. I’ve gone through enough mirrors –”

Sam fumbled for her radio, knowing it was close to impossible for either Teal’c or the colonel to hear her over the noise. “Sir!” she bellowed. “Atropus was keeping a quantum mirror in her lab, and it just fell over, into the shaft! And it’s on, sir! If we fall, we’re going to end up going through it!”

“I will not allow that to happen, Major Carter!” Teal’c’s booming voice crackled over the radio, a balm in itself. “You are only ten meters from the surface of the shaft.”

Sam tilted her head upwards, squinting to look through the pouring rain. Lightning tore across the narrow path of sky overhead in almost continuous flashes, but she could just make out the dark silhouette of Teal’c’s upper body, leaning dangerously into the shaft to help guide their cables. He was only eight meters away, now…

A jagged stroke of lightning darted downward, stabbing at the generator perched so invitingly at the mountain’s peak. Teal’c’s reassuring bulk suddenly disappeared, and the stink of ozone filled the shaft.

With a scream of tortured metal, Sam’s cable suddenly went slack. She had just enough time to register that they were both dropping before the bruising force of Daniel’s fingers clamped down on her upper arms. She felt an agonizing wrench and realized with horror that while Daniel’s cable had held, hers had not.

She clutched at his shoulders and wrapped her legs around him, burying her face in his shoulder for protection as the severed end of her cable came snaking down on them both in a long, heavy coil. It narrowly missed her and tumbled into the shaft below. Risking a quick glimpse, she could just make out the severed end, lying in a sprawling loop on the surface of the mirror.

“Sam,” breathed a voice in her ear, seconds or millennia later.

She picked up her head and stared into Daniel’s face, only inches from her own. His face was white, and his eyes, blurred behind the wet lenses of his glasses, were a little too wide and fixed.

“You’ve got me,” she said gently. “I’m okay.”

“Yes. Yes. Thank you.” He closed his eyes and shuddered. She carefully adjusted her grip, feeling him cautiously do the same. “Have we moved at all? In either direction?”

“Not in the last several seconds, no.” She kept her voice level and matter-of-fact; she needed him to get past his panic. “We have to let Teal’c and the colonel know we’re all right.”

“We are, aren’t we?” His smile was shaky, but at least he was trying.

Sam hid a sigh of relief, knowing it would be much easier for the two of them to get out of this mess if they were both calm. “I think we should complain to the landlord about the leaks in the roof, but otherwise…”

Daniel actually chuckled a little at her weak attempt at humor. His face was streaked with rainwater, and his clothing was soaked, as was hers; but his hold on her was sure and strong, and she could see that he was in control of himself now. “Can you reach your radio?” he asked. “Or mine?”

Before she could try, both radios crackled at them. “Carter! Daniel! Tell me you’re both alive down there!”

Despite the situation, Sam couldn’t help the grin that quirked at her mouth at the colonel’s furious voice. Daniel’s eyes crinkled in response.

Carefully, ready to clamp back down on his shoulders if she slipped, she inched one hand down towards the radio attached to Daniel’s vest. The colonel continued to bark into the radio.

“Talk to me. Talk to me! I need to know I’m not talking to myself!”

“Sir,” Sam finally managed. “We’re both alive. We’re both okay. Daniel’s holding on to me.”

There was a long moment of silence before the colonel’s voice came again. “Daniel, how long can you hold out?”

“We’re okay, Jack.” Daniel squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “For the next couple of minutes, anyway.”

“Sir, what happened?”

“Lightning,” the colonel answered succinctly. “Took out the generator. Snapped your cable, Carter. And Daniel’s isn’t –” He cut himself off abruptly, but Sam still had that vivid, sickening memory of the way both of them had started to fall. Daniel’s cable must have been damaged, too.

“Jack, is Teal’c all right?”

“Ah, he will be.” After another pause, the colonel added, “He wasn’t struck by lightning. Just knocked out from the force of the blast. Junior will have him up and helping in just a few –”

His voice cut off again. It took another minute before he replied, but his voice was brisk and professional now, fully in control. “I’m going to have to work the winch manually. The cable is damaged, so it’s going to have to go slowly. I need to know now if that’s going to be a problem.”

“Sir, if you’ll give me a moment, I’ll fasten our harnesses together. That should make things easier for Daniel.”

Daniel nodded at her. “But she can’t do that and talk to you on the radio at the same time, Jack,” he said, aiming his voice towards the radio. “After we’re safely secured to each other, we’ll talk some more. Okay?”

“Right.” Then, after another second, “Be careful, Daniel. You and Carter both.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sam, and let go of the radio.

Another crackle of lightning struck overhead, momentarily making the dark shaft as bright as full noon. Daniel’s pale face leapt into stark relief, then faded back into the gloom of the pouring rain.

“I’ve got you,” he told her, gripping her arms just a little more tightly. “Keep your movements slow and careful, but do whatever you have to do.”

“Okay. Here goes nothing, I guess.”

Careful to avoid any abrupt movements that might jostle Daniel’s hold on her, Sam slowly reached down to the sturdy leather harness fastened over her shoulders and between her legs. First, she released the useless cable, watching as it dropped silently away from her to land in a huge, coiled heap on the mirror’s surface. Then she tried to maneuver the metal clips and clamp them to Daniel’s harness, but she found herself constricted by Daniel’s determined grip.

“Daniel,” she said gently. “You’re going to have to let go of my right arm.”

“Are you crazy?” His fingers tightened further, and Sam tried to suppress her wince at the painful hold.

“I can’t clip us together if you don’t let me move a little bit. Look, you’ve got my left arm. I’ve got your shoulder. I’ve got my legs wrapped around yours.” She kept her voice low and soothing, knowing that while he was calm, panic was still lurking beneath the surface. “We’ll be safer if you let go, Daniel.”

“I’m not letting go of you,” he said flatly. “Work around it.”

She glared at him, squirming to try and reach the elusive clips and fasten them into place. “It’s more dangerous if I can’t do this!” she snapped, feeling her own temper starting to erode.

“I am not letting go of you!”

She realized that it was too much to ask of him, and resigned herself to some acrobatic stretching and gyrations. She finally managed to clamp the metal clips to Daniel’s harness, securing them together on both sides. When she was done, the two of them were locked in an embarrassing parody of a close embrace; but at least now she wouldn’t fall, even if Daniel’s strength failed.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Doctor Jackson,” she muttered in his ear. “What would SG-4 say if they could see us now?”

He huffed a laugh back at her, and she felt a surge of relief that he was still in control.

She reached for her own radio. “We’re secured, sir,” she reported. “How’s Teal’c doing?”

“Teal’c… is still out, Major, but I think… he’ll be fine.” The colonel’s voice came through the radio in breathless gasps.

Daniel frowned. “Jack, what’s going on?”

“This… thing doesn’t… want to stay… put!”

They both felt a jerk on the cable. The only problem was that it was downwards.

Sam and Daniel, faces only inches apart, stared at one another.

“The generator and the winch are going over the edge,” Daniel said softly as they slipped another few inches downwards.

“I heard that,” the colonel snapped over the radio. “And I’m… trying to make… sure it doesn’t… happen!”

Sam swallowed hard. “Sir, stay away from the edge of the shaft. If you fall down here –”

“That’s not going… to happen, Carter.”

Daniel twisted his head to stare downwards at the mirror, shimmering nearly twenty meters below them. “Sam, would we survive a fall of fifty or sixty feet?” he asked, too quietly for the radio to pick up. The cable jerked again, and they dropped another six inches.

“Maybe,” she said, her voice equally soft. “A lot of it would depend on how kinetic energy is absorbed by the mirror.”

“And we’d go through it to the other side.”

“Yes.”

Daniel’s eyes were bleak, but calm. “He’s not going to be able to pull us out, is he?”

“He can’t lift both of us. We’ll have to climb.”

“That’s… a little more than I might be able to do, Sam.” The painful honesty in his voice made her heart ache.

“You won’t have to,” she promised. “Once my weight is off the cable, the colonel will find it easier to pull you up. And I’ll be able to help, too.”

“You might fall. You won’t have any safety line.”

“I’ve tackled harder climbs in basic training, Daniel. I’ll be okay.”

He closed his eyes, then opened then with a resigned expression. “Right.” He raised his voice enough for the radio to broadcast. “Jack, just keep the winch from going over the edge. Sam is going to climb up the cable.”

The pause before the colonel was able to reply was just a little too long for Sam’s peace of mind. “I think… might not be… enough time.”

“I’m coming up, sir,” Sam said. She licked her lips. “Daniel, just hold on. It’s going to be okay.” She didn’t wait for the colonel’s reply; he probably didn’t have a hand to spare to activate his radio. She reached out to release the metal clasps that offered the slight security of keeping her attached to Daniel’s harness. Even if she fell, the reduced weight might allow the colonel to pull Daniel up on his own…

“Sam, wait.”

“There’s no time, Daniel.” She’d worked the first clip loose.

“No, listen. Wait a minute.” Daniel was staring down at the mirror again, his eyebrows furrowed in that way that told her that his mind was racing furiously. “Sam, why isn’t your cable going through the mirror to the other side?”

“What?” Sam blinked at the non sequitur, then twisted her own neck so she could stare downwards. Daniel was right. The severed cable lay in twists and coils on the surface of the mirror. While it had slid along the slanted surface to pile up on the northern side, it was clearly touching an active quantum mirror – and it wasn’t going through.

Neither was the rain, she noticed. The downpour of the last several minutes was enough to cause an actual puddle that trickled over the edge of the canted frame.

“Non-organic material doesn’t go through?” she hazarded. “Or non-sentient, maybe?”

“Maybe it’s not working,” Daniel said, sounding almost hopeful. “Maybe this is a different kind of quantum mirror that only shows what’s on the other side, but doesn’t allow transfers.”

“Or maybe only a person can actually go through,” Sam said thoughtfully. The cable jerked badly, and they dropped by nearly a foot.

“But I’m guessing that anything attached to us would go through with us.”

“Like the cable still attached to us,” Sam said slowly. “And…”

“And the generator,” Daniel finished. “And if it lands on us, it’ll kill us.”

Sam bit her lip, staring down at the mirror as they dropped another several inches before jarring to a halt. “But if we disconnect the cable from the harnesses, we would fall through, and the generator wouldn’t.”

“Sam, falling into another universe is not on my list of things to do today!”

“Daniel, we have to.” She jerked her head back up to stare directly into his panicked face. “We have to release the cable and let ourselves go.”

“Sam, we can’t! How will we get back? The mirror turned itself on because it was damaged, right? What if it turns itself off?”

They slid a little further down, and they didn’t need the radio any more to hear the sound of the colonel’s furious cursing. “Maybe we’ll find a controller on the other side,” Sam said. “I’m sorry, Daniel, but I’d rather risk being trapped than be sure of being crushed.”

“No.” He looked agonized. “I’m not going through the mirror again. We’re not getting separated from Jack and Teal’c.”

She flinched, remembering their conversation the night before. “If I do it myself, the colonel might be able to pull you up, and then the three of you could –”

He glared at her, suddenly obviously furious, and reached out, reclipping the clasp that she’d loosened. “We’re doing this together, Sam. It’s better than being dead.”

“Daniel…”

Daniel activated his radio. “Jack, stop trying to haul us up. Let us down.”

The colonel didn’t reply via radio, but they could hear his voice, faintly. “Are you nuts?”

“Trust me, Jack.” Daniel’s face was miserable, but his voice stayed determined.

The infuriated howl drifted clearly down the shaft, despite the storm: “Dammit, Daniel!”

“Sir, we have to go through the mirror until things calm down here!” Sam shouted hurriedly into the radio. “We’ll stay right by the mirror and wait until the storm dies down and we can figure out a way to get safely back. But if we fall from this height, it could kill us, so let us down!”

“Do it, Jack, please!” Daniel yelled. “If that generator falls before we go through the mirror, we’re dead!”

Colonel O’Neill’s enraged bellow, distorted by the storm, was still distinct. “You two had better stay alive, or I’ll kill you both myse-”

They dropped suddenly downwards – much too rapidly for it to be a controlled descent. Even as Sam jerked her head upwards in horror to see the huge bulk of the generator toppling over the edge of the shaft, she was conscious of Daniel fumbling with the release to the cable that was their former lifeline…

Then they were falling, feet first, into a puddle of clear blue sky on the bottom of a shaft within a mountain.

And then they weren’t there.

***

 

“Well,” Daniel said after a long moment. He craned his neck to look upwards, brushing his hair away from his face as he tracked a flurry of birds spiraling into the air. “This is… unexpected.”

The center of the building’s winding corridors – “The center of the maze,” Daniel had quipped when they’d started navigating the building early that morning; “Watch out for the Minotaur!” – was actually an open-air arena, the ground covered with yellowing grass and pale blue wildflowers. About eighty feet in diameter, his mind supplied automatically. Make that eighty-one feet and four inches. It was empty and quiet, with nothing to indicate its purpose.

“Explains why the building was so big, though,” Sam said absently, also tilting her head to glance up at the cloudless sky above. “So what do you think?”

Daniel pursed his lips. “Jack would have suggested hockey. In the winter, anyway.”

“He would,” Sam agreed. “The local equivalent of soccer, maybe?”

“How about Quidditch?”

Sam rolled her eyes at him. “I told you I never read that book.” She took several steps forward. Dew left her shoes slightly wet as she scuffed her way through the tall grass. “I’m not so sure this place was for entertainment, actually. No seats, no stage.”

“There is that, though,” Daniel pointed out, waving at the wall to their right.

He watched as Sam turned to look at what had caught his interest. Mounted on the wall near the doorway was a huge black display panel, some twelve feet wide and eight feet high. Eleven feet, seven and a half inches wide. Eight feet high exactly, the annoying part of his brain clarified.

“We could take in some movies,” Sam murmured, her eyes bright with interest.

“Oh, yeah, like I’m going to listen to you complain about Men in Black again.”

She stuck out her tongue at him. “You liked Star Wars: Special Edition!”

“Greedo shot first,” Daniel said, a little sullenly. He ignored the all-too-common spike of wistfulness as he approached the black panel and ran a tentative finger down its surface. Smooth. Cool to the touch. Its blackness seemed almost tangible, swallowing up all light.

“It’s a blackboard,” he decided. He waved an arm expansively, gesturing at the open space around them. “They must have had classes in here.”

“Oh, yes?” Sam looked amused. “Was this the local university?”

He eyed the panel speculatively. “How long do you think it would take you to fill this with equations? Five minutes? Three?” He patted the black surface. “Go on, Sam. Calculate the speed of dark for me.”

“Oh, I would,” she said sweetly, “but since all you do all day is play in the dirt, I don’t think you’d understand it.”

“Ah, come on. Archeology rocks.”

“Of course it does,” Sam nodded, straight-faced. “You went to college to learn how to dig ditches.”

“I’ve seen your lab. You’re out to prove the second law of thermodynamics, aren’t you?”

“Archeologists do it in the dirt.” Sam dug the toe of her shoe into the ground for emphasis.

“What happens in the field stays in the field,” Daniel agreed solemnly. “Astrophysicists, on the other hand, do it periodically.”

“Don’t mess with the astrophysicist, Daniel,” Sam warned, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I know what the M stands for.”

Daniel snickered and held up his hands in defeat. “Okay, okay, I’ll surrender.”

Sam gave him a friendly poke, then stepped closer to the black panel. “It does look a bit like a high-tech blackboard, doesn’t it?” she mused. “I’m not getting any energy readings, though. How would it be powered?”

Daniel moved to the utilitarian frame and tried to pry a finger underneath. “It’s fastened to the wall pretty tightly,” he said. “Bolted in, or the local equivalent, maybe.”

“I’m going to go back to the outside hall and see if I can find anything in the wall,” Sam decided. “How about you?”

“I think I’ll leave our futuristic blackboard to you, so – Oh. Maybe I won’t.” He had just spotted the neat glyphs engraved into the wall below the mirror’s frame. “Interesting. Take a look, Sam.”

She squatted next to him, peering closely. “That’s – that’s the same writing you found on Argos, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Linear A.” He sat back on his heels and frowned.

“Can you figure it out?”

Daniel quirked a smile at her. “I can try. Or pretend, even.” He huffed a half-laugh. “I’ve got a lot more experience than anyone else on Earth, anyway. Teal’c and I worked on that tablet of Pelops’ together.” No matter how quickly he could translate these days, he still needed points of data. A single tablet, even one with multiple screens, just wasn’t enough. If only there had been time to learn more…

She squeezed his shoulder, then stood up. “Okay. You work on the writing; I’ll try to dig up some wiring. An hour?”

“Enough for a start,” Daniel said absently, already absorbed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Right.” Sam disappeared through the doorway, leaving Daniel alone with only the faint sounds of birdsong to keep him company.

“Let’s see, now… Lessons,” he murmured. “Lessons of what? This is time, or possibly frame of time. Timeframe. Hours? Days? Years? Hm.”

He worked in silence for a while, then stood up, stretching more out of habit than necessity as he considered his progress. All jokes aside, his translations did suggest that the black panel was actually some kind of learning tool. Whether it was some kind of high-tech blackboard was another question entirely.

He traced an aimless pattern on the black surface, then jerked his hand back when he realized he’d been drawing Earth’s point of origin. He winced. It had been a long time since he’d done that; he was glad Sam wasn’t there to see.

Then he wished Sam was there, because something was happening.

It seemed instantaneous. One moment, the panel was as black and flat as ever; the next, it suddenly had light and depth, as if a dark curtain had suddenly been flung open to reveal what lay behind.

It was a view screen, he decided as he consciously closed his mouth. Or… a window?

A window to where? Not to the other side of the wall, where he and Sam had both walked. He darted sideways to the door, and leaned into the silent hallway beyond. Sam had moved elsewhere; there was nothing there but dimly-lit walls of reddish stone.

He went back to – the window, he decided. A window to Somewhere Else. It showed walls of dark stone and tumbled rubble – and, oddly enough, water. It seemed to spatter directly onto the window, driven horizontal by some intense force.

But it wasn’t coming through.

Nothing was coming through, except the picture, Daniel realized after another moment. Neither sound, nor wind, nor the water and rubble piling up on the other side.

Daniel moved a little closer, peering through the window that slashed a gaping hole to Somewhere Else. He fought the temptation to reach out with a curious finger and poke at the puddle of water slowly forming at the right-hand edge. Gravity seemed to be twisted on its axis.

“Sam,” he radioed. “Can you get back here quick?”

Sam’s reply was cheerful. “Quick, or ‘quick-er’?”

Daniel leapt back as something dark thumped soundlessly onto the windowpane. It slid sideways, much as the water did, coming to a stop in long loops and coils.

He gulped a little. “Let’s make that quicker. It’s gone from interesting to weird.”

“Is that an archeological term you haven’t told me about yet, or –”

“I mean it, Sam,” he interrupted. “I don’t like this.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, “I’m on my way. Don’t touch anything until I get there.”

“Spoilsport,” he muttered, but his heart wasn’t it. This was edging past weird into creepy.

Sam arrived in less than a minute, her eyes widening at the sight of the window to Somewhere Else. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him sideways, so they were angled to the window instead of directly in front of it.

“What’s wrong?”

“Standard military procedure, Daniel,” she said kindly. “Don’t stand where you might be a target.”

“Oh. Right.” Daniel frowned a little. “Except nothing seems to come through. I watched that – ” He pointed at the loops of something that looked oddly like a regular metal cable. “– land on the surface of the window. It didn’t come through. Neither does the water, though I’ve been watching it hit the other side and–”

“Why are you calling it a ‘window’?” Sam interrupted.

“What else are you going to call it?”

“That’s a good – Daniel, look out!”

Sam’s fist wrenched at the collar of his thin shirt and yanked him down hard. Daniel, too surprised to brace himself, found himself sprawled on the ground, watching as something rushed towards the surface of the window.

It won’t go through, he assured himself. Just like everything else on that side, it won’t come through.

“It” was a dark mass, growing larger as it neared the window. Daniel winced in anticipation of the silent smash against the panel –

And there was a soundless sizzle of energy, and a flash –

And the object came sailing though the window as if it there was no barrier there at all.

Daniel whipped around to trace the trajectory of the… people, his brain finally registered. Two people, holding each other tightly. Or possibly tied to each other. He couldn’t quite tell.

The speed of their entry caused them to fly nearly halfway across the arena before they finally crashed to the ground in a mass of flailing limbs. They rolled over once, twice, and finally came to an ungainly halt.

For half a dozen heartbeats, there was only silence. Then Daniel heard a muffled, “Ow.”

Well. They were alive, at least. Daniel rose smoothly to his feet, making sure he stayed out of the line of any other possible visitors from Somewhere Else. He started forward, ready to offer his assistance.

Then he heard a second voice.

“That’s it? ‘Ow?’”

Three words. But he knew that voice, recognized the lilt in the words, and it was all too easy for him to identify it as affectionate exasperation because he knew that person.

He swiveled to stare at Sam, who looked equally as shocked. Their gazes locked as silent communication passed rapidly between them.

“That – that was my voice, Daniel.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I thought so, too.”

“How can this be possible?”

“I have no idea.”

“Ouch, then? I’m going to have bruises on my bruises, and so will you.” There was a grunt, and a sudden flurry of limbs. “You do realize we’re still fastened together, right?”

Daniel swallowed, hard. “Sam, that’s my voice. Those two people must be us. Somehow.”

“That window. It has to lead to something.”

“Or somewhere. Maybe they’ll know?”

“Can you unfasten the clips? Either side would do.”

“I’m not even sure which hand is mine at the moment, Sam.”

“They don’t just sound like us, Sam. They sound like us.”

“Yeah. I noticed.”

The two people in the grass rolled first in one direction, then the other. “Ow! Sam…”

“Daniel, that is your hand, and it is not in the right place at the moment!”

“Sorry.”

The tangled pair on the ground stopped moving.

“So, we’re just going to lie here for the time being?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“There might be people around,” said the man with Daniel’s voice, sounding hopeful. “Maybe they can help us.”

There was a sudden flailing of arms and legs again. “Or there might be enemies around here – what were you going to say? ‘Hello, we’re peaceful explorers from another dimension’?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

Despite the bizarre reference to “another dimension,” Daniel and Sam exchanged bemused glances and silent nods, and started towards the squirming bodies.

“Daniel, hold still! Just don’t move, okay? I’ll figure out how to do this –”

“Excuse me,” Daniel called, coming to a halt about ten feet away. Nine feet, eleven inches. Shut up, brain. He held his hands up, displaying open palms. “Maybe I can help?”

The two people on the ground went still.

“Ah, hello?” It was the man who sounded like Daniel. And now, from closer up, Daniel realized that he looked a lot like him, too. His soaked hair was shorter than Daniel’s own, which was decidedly odd; he hadn’t worn his hair that short since his early teens. And the man had glasses, Daniel noted with a sudden pang of nostalgia. And –

Daniel took three long strides forward, and stared.

The two people lying on the ground, trussed together, were wearing BDUs. The clothing was dripping wet, and he could see silver puddles forming in the grass, but they were unquestionably the same kind of BDUs that he and Sam had worn for nearly a year. And now he could see the shoulder patches: SG-1.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, gaping. He sensed Sam coming up alongside him, and knew that she’d seen the BDUs as well. A sudden wave of homesickness swept through him at the sight.

And wasn’t that just ridiculous?

“Hello?” the Daniel lying on the ground tried again. “I’m – I’m Daniel Jackson, and this is Major Carter. We could use a little help, if you…” His voice trailed off, and Daniel knew that he had properly focused on their faces for the first time.

“Major Carter?” Sam repeated blankly.

“Oh, here we go,” said the Sam lying on the ground, her voice equally flat. “Not again. Daniel, they’re –”

“You’re us,” Daniel told them, his voice absurdly calm. “At least, you seem to be.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve had any experience with the quantum mirror before?” his doppelganger said. “It would be really helpful if you had.”

“Quantum mirror?” Daniel turned and stared at the window, still shimmering. He noticed, with some alarm, that something else had hit the other side of the mirror. Fortunately, it hadn’t come through; it looked like a kind of motor, or perhaps some other piece of heavy machinery.

“Quantum mirror?” Sam repeated, and Daniel could tell, from the change in her voice and the shift of her posture, that she was intrigued. “How does that work, exactly?”

“It’s not my field of expertise, of course, but –”

“Daniel,” interrupted the Sam – the major? – lying on the floor. “Maybe I can explain it to… Sam. After we get this harness off, okay?”

“Oh! Oh, right, of course.” The short-haired Daniel on the ground twisted his neck to look at them hopefully. “Could you help us unfasten this harness, please? It’s a little awkward to do ourselves.”

Daniel started, then stepped forward. “Yes, of course. Let me see.” He knelt in the grass and focused on the harnesses. They’d been clipped together on both sides, and he could see why it was awkward for two people lying down to unfasten them. He reached out and fiddled with the metal clip closest to him, unfastening it easily. He reached across the tangled bodies to get the other one…

And then stopped, frozen. Staring.

The Daniel on the ground – SG-1 Daniel? – was trying to be helpful by twisting out of his way. Daniel could see that the man had badly scraped the knuckles of both hands during the awkward landing. Both hands, and a small scrape on his left cheek, were… bleeding.

Bleeding.

“Sam,” he whispered, too shocked to remember to communicate via their inner radios. “Sam. They’re human.”

“They’re what?”

“Look.” Daniel, moving carefully and precisely, unbuckled the second clip and helped… himself to his feet. Sam did the same for… herself.

“Thank you,” said SG-1 Daniel, a little breathlessly. He unbuckled the soaked, heavy leather straps and tugged the harness over his head, throwing it to the ground with an expression of relief. The other Sam did the same.

Daniel watched, bemused, as SG-1 Daniel squinted at him through the blurred, wet lenses of his glasses. The man swiped his hands futilely against the dripping fabric of his trouser legs, then winced, looking down at the scraped and bleeding knuckles. “Ow. Sam, have you got any antiseptic wipes? Never mind; I should have some in my vest.” He started fumbling through his vest pockets.

The other Sam, meanwhile, was smiling tentatively at his own Sam. “Major Sam Carter,” she introduced herself again. “You’re, uh, Doctor Carter? Your hair doesn’t look long enough for –” She cut herself off, her expression a little chagrined, and tried again. “Sorry. Doctor Carter?”

“Um. Technically, yes. I usually go by Captain Carter, though,” Sam answered, looking as dazed as Daniel felt at the sight of the blood oozing sluggishly from those scraped knuckles. “Uh, what was that you were saying about a quantum mirror?”

“Oh. Well, come over here, and I’ll explain. I don’t suppose you’ve found a colorful remote-control device, have you…?”

Daniel watched Major Sam lead his Sam back to the window – the quantum mirror? – talking rapidly as they went.

“I’ll explain later, Daniel,” he heard Sam reassure him. “Talk to the other… you and see if you can find out what’s going on.”

Daniel sent back a quick acknowledgement and turned to his – human – double. SG-1 Daniel had managed to wipe his glasses dry on something before locating his antiseptic wipes, and he was now absently dabbing at his hands while he looked around the arena with interest.

“Is this a temporal thing, then?” SG-1 Daniel asked. “Because I haven’t worn my hair like that in two years. Of course, it wasn’t my idea to get it cut, so maybe that just didn’t happen to you.”

“Temporal?” Daniel’s brows rose. “As far as I know, you and, ah, Major Sam just fell through a window from Somewhere Else. You haven’t exactly explained where that somewhere is. Are you saying you’ve traveled from my future to get here? Because I don’t see how that’s possible.” Because you’re human, and you’re bleeding. You can’t be a future me.

SG-1 Daniel’s brows rose too, in a kind of unconscious mimicry. “Huh. Four years on SG-1, and you still think there’s such a thing as impossible?”

A very real pain shot through Daniel at the apparently innocent question. “I haven’t been part of SG-1 for three years, now,” he said quietly.

SG-1 Daniel stopped dabbing at his hands and stared at him. “But you’re here. Off-world.”

“Yes.”

Daniel watched the man’s gaze dart to his non-descript clothing – the thin, light shirt and dark trousers, the simple shoes in place of sturdy boots, the absence of any supplies or weapons – then back to his face. “And you’re no longer part of SG-1.”

“No.”

Daniel saw a kind of wild hope rise in SG-1 Daniel’s face. He took a second to wonder, a little insanely, if his own emotions and reactions were just as transparent, or if it was only because this human Daniel was himself that he was able to read him so easily.

“Have you – did you get your Sha’re back?”

Daniel closed his eyes. Slowly.

“No,” he whispered. “But I hope someone else helped her when I couldn’t.”

He opened his eyes and stared at SG-1 Daniel, whose own expression mirrored his anguish and regret. The silence was broken only by the murmur of voices behind them, as the two Sams settled earnestly into their discussion.

“Let’s start again,” SG-1 Daniel said finally.

***

Ten minutes later, all four of them sat together on the grass in front of the window to Somewhere Else – no, the quantum mirror. It was still working, although more rubble had piled onto the other side and the rain, as far as they could tell, showed no sign of slacking.

Daniel observed that while he and Sam sat side-by-side, and SG-1 Daniel sprawled comfortably across from them, Major Sam was sitting just behind her Daniel, her posture erect and her body language wary. Watching his six.

“So, there are an infinite number of universes out there,” Daniel summed up, “and there’s something called a quantum mirror that allows movement between the universes. And you and you,” he nodded first at Major Sam and then at her Daniel, “were on a mission with SG-1,” it can’t be, it’s not fair, SG-1, Jack and Teal’c! “And you found one of these mirrors, which activated itself. And several crises happened all at once, and you came through the mirror to our side until it’s safe to go back.”

“Right,” the human versions of themselves said simultaneously. Then Major Sam added thoughtfully, “Daniel translated a marker left by Atropus that referred to ‘seeking wisdom at her gateway.’ Since we were trying to find a way into the lab, we all just assumed that ‘gateway’ referred to the locked door.”

“Only it meant the mirror,” SG-1 Daniel finished, his expression rueful. He pulled up a flower by its roots, sniffed it, and tossed it aside. No sign of allergies, Daniel noted. Either this Daniel had never suffered from them, or his Janet Fraiser had put him on a proper regimen of antihistamines.

He wanted to whap himself over the head for the sudden, ridiculous pang of loss that shot through him at that thought. He couldn’t possibly miss sneezing, could he?

“Do you think the activation of the mirror was the booby-trap?” he asked, consciously forcing his mind back to the subject at hand.

“It would be a pretty quick way of getting rid of any trespassers,” Sam suggested, but Major Sam shook her head.

“I think something went wrong. The shaft actually collapsed, and it seemed entirely accidental that the mirror activated. If that was the real booby-trap, Atropus would have needed to go to an awful lot of trouble to reset things for the next person who tried to break into the lab.”

“Your files suggested it was thousands of years since Cronus overthrew Atropus, right?” Daniel asked. “And you said that the shaft itself was in bad shape?”

“Rungs and platforms crumbling away,” SG-1 Daniel nodded. He was plucking at the grass now. “You’re probably right. Whatever trap was there was in bad shape, and it backfired on us.”

“Huh,” Major Sam said, seemingly apropos of nothing. “Ten equals eight.”

“What?” SG-1 Daniel squinted at her.

“Ten equals eight,” she repeated. “Remember the colonel and the Ancient’s repository? How he wrote out that formula for calculating stellar drift on the blackboard? I couldn’t understand any of it until he added a note: ten equals eight. The Ancients used a numerical system of base eight, not base ten.”

“And Atropus was basing her formulae on Ancient mathematics?” SG-1 Daniel sat up a little straighter, abandoning the current mangled patch of grass. “Because of the mirror? I thought we’d never determined that the quantum mirrors were built by the Ancients.”

“Maybe Atropus did know,” Major Sam said, shrugging. “Or it was a guess. Maybe the mirrors were made by the Ancients. Maybe it was the Nox…”

“Or the Furlings?”

Major Sam chuckled. “Who knows? Don’t ask me how Atropus even knew about the Ancients and base eight.”

“So that’s why it jumped from seven to ten.”

“Exactly! It was eight, but I read it as ten, so –”

“Excuse me,” Daniel finally interrupted.

The two humans stopped their incomprehensible back-and-forth chatter and focused on him. “Yes?” SG-1 Daniel asked politely.

“What are you talking about? About the only thing I understood in there was the Nox.”

Major Sam and SG-1 Daniel glanced at each other, then at Daniel and Sam.

“You know,” Major Sam said carefully, “there’s obviously a difference in our timeline and yours. Maybe we should try to narrow it down.”

“He married Sha’re,” SG-1 Daniel mentioned, staring down at his own hands. He started stabbing aimlessly at the grass again.

Daniel swallowed. “You – you asked me before if I’d saved her…?”

SG-1 Daniel looked up. “My Sha’re… died,” he said simply. “About eighteen months ago.” He gave a weak chuckle. “Well. Eighteen months, one week, four days. She’s free, now. At peace.”

Major Sam reached out and squeezed his arm.

“I don’t know what happened to my Sha’re,” Daniel said, trying to keep his voice steady. “As far as I know, she’s still Amaunet’s host.” And now there’s no one to search for her and get her back.

“Maybe we should try Abydos again,” Sam quietly suggested via their internal radio. “Maybe Hammond found some way to save her before it all went down.”

Daniel nodded mutely, and Sam, bless her, briskly changed the subject. “Okay, look,” she said. “Let’s go through events, all right?” She reached out and touched SG-1 Daniel’s hand, tracing the scraped knuckles with a gentle fingertip. “I take it you didn’t go to P3X-989.”

The human versions of them suddenly stilled.

“P3X-989,” Major Sam repeated slowly. It was easy to see that she was stalling for time.

“Comtraya?” Daniel prompted, watching her carefully.

“Comtraya,” SG-1 Daniel repeated. “Oh. Harlan. You’re…”

“Not human?” Sam suggested, her eyes a little sad.

“Don’t say that,” SG-1 Daniel snapped. “Don’t ever say that!”

Sam sat back, blinking. She was clearly as startled as Daniel at the vehement reaction.

Major Sam made calming motions with her hands. “Okay, hold on a second. You went through to P3X-989 and met Harlan…?”

“Yes. Harlan thought he was doing us a favor and made us ‘bet-ter.’” Sam was matching her counterpart’s matter-of-fact tone, and Daniel could tell that she was using it as a defense against their own intense pain over the subject. “He transferred our consciousnesses into android bodies and – and destroyed the originals.” She scrutinized the two guests. “I’m assuming that while you met Harlan, that didn’t actually happen to you, since you’re – well, flesh and blood.”

SG-1 Daniel opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

“We went back to Earth before we realized what had happened,” Sam continued. “Janet Frasier discovered the change, and General Hammond had us confined to base.”

“But we couldn’t survive away from P3X-989,” Daniel said, picking up the thread of the story. “At least, not then. We nearly ran out of – battery power, I guess you might say. Hammond sent us back to the planet alone, just in time to save us from shutting down entirely.”

“That’s when we found out that we couldn’t leave. And there was an… accident.” Sam blinked hard, and Daniel knew she was trying to hold back tears. It still hit him hard sometimes, too. “Harlan hadn’t realized that Teal’c’s symbiote was a separate consciousness, and he merged their minds together. Teal’c went – he went crazy. Harlan had to destroy him after he k-killed the colonel. Harlan tried to fix the colonel afterwards, but there was nothing he could do.”

She rose to her feet then, turning away from the others and taking several compulsive steps toward the doorway. Daniel could read grief in the slump of her shoulders, and he wanted to go after her – not just talk via internal radio, but offer physical comfort. But Major Sam squeezed SG-1 Daniel’s arm again – not in reassurance this time, but as a warning. The human Daniel’s mouth, once again open to speak, closed without saying a word.

“Listen, you don’t have to talk about this,” Major Sam said, her voice a little too loud. “I can see it’s uncomfortable. Maybe Daniel and I can search through the building and see if we can find the mirror’s controller…”

“We would probably recognize it more easily than you,” SG-1 Daniel said in agreement, but Daniel’s intimate knowledge of his own tones of voice made it easy to recognize that the man was reluctant to follow Major Sam’s lead.

The two of them were hiding something.

“Sam,” Daniel coaxed, “come back. I think we need to get these two to open up a little.”

Sam turned her head back to him and offered a pained smile. She returned to the group, sitting down a little closer to Daniel this time. He reached out and put his arm around her shoulder, offering what support he could. He felt relieved when Sam reached up a hand to grip his fingers in her own.

“We dialed Earth to explain what happened,” Sam told the humans, her voice remarkably steady. “General Hammond sent a coded message back. After that, well… There wasn’t any going back to Earth anymore.”

“I don’t understand,” SG-1 Daniel said. Major Sam openly glared at him, but he stared pointedly back at her before turning to Sam and Daniel. “What was the message? Can you tell us what happened?”

Daniel and Sam glanced at each other.

“Do you want me to do this?”

“No. I will.” Sam licked her lips, then raised her chin and addressed the humans. “Did you ever meet the Tollan?”

“Yes, of course,” Major Sam said. “We rescued a group of them from Tollan, not long before…” Her voice trailed off.

“Not long before P3X-989?” Daniel finished for her. “Yeah. So did we.”

Major Sam looked a little wistful. “Was it the same group of people?”

SG-1 Daniel snorted a little. “I think Sam wants to know if you had a Narim, too.”

Daniel hid a grin as he glanced sideways at Sam in time to see her flush a little. He was glad to see she was shifting her focus to better memories. “Oh, did your Narim have a thing for your Sam?” he asked brightly.

Major Sam jerked back a little. “Narim did not have a thing for me,” she muttered.

“That little gadget of his said otherwise,” SG-1 Daniel countered, his eyes lit with the same spark of mischief that Daniel felt himself. “And then, of course, when I walked in on you in the control room…”

“Okay, okay!” Major Sam rose to her feet and glowered down at her snickering Daniel. “I’m going to go hunt for the controller. The mirror has stayed on so far, but there’s no guarantee if won’t close at any moment, and then we’ll lose our universe.”

“We didn’t see anything like what you described,” Sam pointed out mildly, disentangling herself from Daniel’s arm and rising to her feet as well. “But I can help you search.”

“Great!” Major Sam said heartily, and Daniel felt a frisson of unease. Once again, he had the distinct feeling that their human doppelgangers were keeping something back.

“Wait a minute,” SG-1 Daniel protested. He deliberately settled back into the grass, shifting to a spot where the ground hadn’t absorbed the dampness of his clothing. He seemed to be making a pointed statement about his intention to stay right where he was. “Sam, I want to hear this…”

“Don’t you also want to get back home?” Major Sam demanded.

“Yes,” SG-1 Daniel said. “But you don’t think there’s a controller here, any more than I do.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to look,” Sam suggested, her expression uncomfortable.

Daniel could see that his Sam, like her doppelganger, didn’t want to talk. To be honest, he didn’t care that much for the topic himself. But it was clear that SG-1 Daniel was anxious to discuss the matter, and he couldn’t help wondering if further conversation might reveal whatever it was the humans weren’t telling them.

“So your Tollan were the same as ours.” He watched both Sams stop halfway to the doorway. “Did you also run into a smarmy little weasel named Maybourne?”

“Oh, yeah.” SG-1 Daniel tore up an entire clump of grass and shredded them viciously. After a moment, he added in a flat voice, “He wanted to keep the Tollan on Earth to exploit them. We managed to get in touch with the Nox, and Lya came and got them off-world.”

“The same thing happened with us,” Daniel nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched both Sams. The two of them glanced uneasily at each other, as if unsure whether to stay or go. “Did you get into trouble?”

SG-1 Daniel frowned, thinking. “We must have,” he said doubtfully. He raised his voice. “Did we get into trouble, Sam?”

Major Sam rolled her eyes. Sam rolled her eyes right back. Both Daniels exchanged grins. Apparently, the ability of Daniels to annoy Sams was a multi-dimensional trait.

“Yes, Daniel. We got into trouble,” Major Sam said, returning to the pair sitting on the ground. “I don’t suppose you remember that you and Teal’c almost got shot?”

“Lya made sure nothing happened,” SG-1 Daniel protested.

“Actually, I was talking about afterwards,” Daniel said. “In our universe, things got a little ugly in the aftermath.”

“Colonel O’Neill was issued a reprimand,” Major Sam admitted. “I had a censure placed on my file, too.”

“Really?” SG-1 Daniel sat up, surprised. “You never told me.”

“There wasn’t much point.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” SG-1 Daniel complained. “You didn’t do anything, technically. It was Teal’c and me who were in the Gateroom, not you.”

Sam came back to the group then, looking a little interested. “You didn’t mess up the programming in the control room computers so the Gate couldn’t be shut down?” she asked Major Sam.

“I did,” Major Sam replied, a little puzzled. “They couldn’t prove it, but they suspected enough…”

“Oh.” Sam sat down wearily by Daniel’s side again. “In our universe, they did manage to prove that I’d done some reprogramming. They couldn’t prove that I’d actually committed sabotage, but it left us in a very precarious position. General Hammond couldn’t shield us from everything.”

“Maybourne tried to rough me up outside the mountain,” Daniel remembered. “He said he was glad to get at me away from the security cameras.” At the alarmed expressions on Major Sam and SG-1 Daniel’s face, he hastily added, “But Sam was with me, so I was fine.”

“Nobody messes with Daniel when I’m around,” Sam muttered. Daniel gave her a nudge of reassurance, then subsided. Silence fell as the foursome gloomily remembered those days when the euphoria over the Tollan's escape had died away, leaving them to pick up the pieces in an atmosphere of suspicion and resentment.

“So,” SG-1 Daniel said finally. “What do the Tollan have to do with the situation with Harlan? You said something about a coded message from General Hammond?”

Sam’s pinched expression told Daniel that she regretted mentioning it in the first place. Major Sam seemed reluctant to continue the conversation, too. And Daniel wasn’t all too certain that he wanted to discuss it himself.

But there was still that question of what Major Sam and her Daniel were not telling them.

“This is worth it,” he told Sam. “I have to know what this other Daniel is keeping back.”

“All right,” Sam finally replied. “But you do it, Daniel. I… I can’t.”

“It’ll be okay, Sam. I promise.” Daniel hoped it was a promise he would be able to keep.

Aloud, he said, “The thing with the Tollan happened about two months before P3X-989. We’d gone on only one mission before that –”

“Antarctica?” Major Sam asked, grimacing. “The colonel suffered a broken leg and internal bleeding?”

“Yeah,” Daniel said with a wince of his own, remembering how Jack and Sam had almost died. “Anyway, the point is – well, we’d made a lot of people angry. People who thought that we’d robbed Earth of the chance to get hold of really advanced technology, rather than stopping our government from acting no better than the Goa’uld themselves.”

SG-1 Daniel had gone white. “They wanted to… examine you?” he whispered.

“General Hammond’s message begged us to bury the Stargate on P3X-989 and never try to come back to Earth,” Sam said levelly. “Maybourne had received clearance to start by taking one of us apart – to literally see what made us tick.”

“So we buried the Stargate,” Daniel finished. “And we left it like that for quite a while.”

Major Sam and her Daniel looked at each other.

It struck Daniel, as he watched them, that they were communicating every bit as much as he and Sam did when they spoke via their internal radios.

“So what made you unbury the gate?” Major Sam finally asked. She waved vaguely at the grass and the small birds wheeling overhead. “I mean, this obviously isn’t P3X-989.”

“Actually, it is,” Sam corrected her.

“It is?” Major Sam and her Daniel asked simultaneously. Major Sam added, her voice incredulous, “but Harlan told – Harlan said that the surface of his world was uninhabitable!”

“Harlan,” Daniel said, suddenly too weary to question her change of verbs, although he did make a note to ask her about it later. “Harlan – our Harlan, anyway – was in charge of building maintenance when he was created. Science isn’t exactly his strong suit.”

“Eleven thousand years ago, the planet’s surface was uninhabitable,” Sam clarified. “Some kind of catastrophe quadrupled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cut the amount of oxygen to barely ten percent of the norm. The last of Harlan’s companions died about two thousand years after that. In the millennia since then, the planet’s atmosphere recovered.” She, too, sounded incredibly tired, weighed down by the sheer futility of what they’d endured. “By the time Harlan changed us into androids, the planet’s surface had long since been restored. There’s little need to work on the plant, except maintaining our power source, so… Daniel and I get away sometimes, to go exploring…”

She stopped, regarding their human counterparts with something that Daniel uneasily identified as something between jealousy and resentment. “Looks like we picked the right time to do it,” she added bitterly. She stood up. “You two will be all right here, won’t you? Daniel and I had better get going, before our power levels run too low.”

Daniel hastily rose and put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve got plenty of time left, Sam,” he said, his voice quiet and calm. “It hasn’t even been half a day yet.”

She glared at him, but Daniel gazed steadily back. She pulled away from his light grip and stalked over to the mirror, glaring at the rain still dancing on the other side of its surface and essentially ignoring the others.

Daniel sighed a little, then turned away, choosing to give her time. He sat back down with their doppelgangers, trying to ignore the little stab of grief at the sight of Major Sam drinking from her canteen. Three years since he’d last tasted food or drink…

Major Sam swallowed a last gulp of water and hung her canteen back on her belt. She got up, less gracefully than Sam and Daniel could manage, and frowned down at her Daniel.

“Stop making them talk about things they don’t want to talk about,” she said pointedly.

“Because you don’t want to talk about things they ought to hear?” SG-1 Daniel countered.

At that, Sam – who apparently had been listening to the conversation, despite the eloquent statement of her ramrod back – swiveled to face them, pacing forward to stare down at SG-1 Daniel. “What is it you think we ought to hear?” she demanded.

“Let’s calm down,” Daniel said hastily. He reached up a hand and tugged Sam back down onto the grass. Major Sam, looking more frustrated than ever, sat back down as well with a noisily expelled breath, although she seemed to deliberately choose a spot a little further away than before.

“Harlan said something about a few of the ‘others’ committing suicide, of sorts, by walking beyond the reach of the power source in the plant,” SG-1 Daniel said slowly. “I take it that’s not a problem any more?”

Daniel wasn’t sure if this was more evasion, but he chose to answer the question. “Sam did a lot of tinkering. The first was a kind of – mini-MALP, I guess. That was for me, really.” He gave Sam a sad smile, and she reached across and rubbed his shoulder, her own distress clearly forgotten in her desire to help him with his.

“Why?” Major Sam asked, despite her apparent determination not to take part in the conversation.

Daniel swallowed. “Eight months after we came to P3X-989, it was one Abydos year to the day from when Sha’re and Skaara were taken by Apophis. We couldn’t leave the planet for any real length of time, but we knew we could survive for forty-five minutes or so. With our enhanced bodies, that would have been enough time to get to Nagada and back. I needed… I had to let Kasuf know what was happening. Even if I couldn’t keep my promise, he still deserved to know.”

SG-1 Daniel’s fingers dug into the grass. He seemed to be biting his lip in an effort to stop himself from speaking. Daniel eyed him, wondering how the history of that bleak anniversary had gone on the other side of the mirror.

“We needed to make sure the Stargate on Abydos wasn’t buried before we tried to go through,” Sam said. “So I put together – well, as Daniel said, it was a mini-MALP. We could toss it through the Gate and get information relayed back. We didn’t need much; just a visual to confirm that the mini-MALP had safely made it through. It worked.”

“General Hammond is a good man,” Daniel said quietly. “Jack must have told him about the promise I made before we left Abydos, because our mini-MALP showed us that a regular MALP had arrived on Abydos as well. I guess the general knew I couldn’t keep my promise on my own, so he did the next best thing, by sending someone to Abydos to let Kasuf know. After that –” He shrugged. “There was no point in going myself and forcing Kasuf to see what I’d become.”

SG-1 Daniel was slowly shaking his head. “It’s not –” he started, then stopped. Major Sam had slashed an urgent hand downwards.

“You can’t, Daniel,” she said urgently. “Never mind false hopes. It might not be the same here and all you’ll be doing is destroying the last bits of identity they have –”

“And if it were you,” her Daniel said, his voice sharp, “If you had to choose between ignorance and painful knowledge, what would you prefer?”

“It’s not that, Daniel. You see they’re okay. How could it possibly help…?”

“I don’t care.” SG-1 Daniel’s voice had dropped – not only in volume, but by several dozen degrees. He was leaning close to Major Sam, his entire body trembling. “They are real people and they deserve to know.”

Daniel blinked. He hadn’t used that tone of voice himself since he’d confronted Maybourne on that day outside the mountain, lashing out at him for his treatment of other sentient beings.

Silence stretched between them all, an uneasy ribbon that frayed and whined under pressure. Then Major Sam took a deep breath, placed a gentle hand on her Daniel’s shoulder, and spoke.

“The same thing happened to us in our universe,” she said. “The subsequent chain of events is clearly different, but considering the similarities, you might be mistaken in your assumptions.”

Sam and Daniel looked at each other, then back at their guests.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked carefully.

“We did meet Harlan,” the human Daniel said. “And he did make androids of us.”

“But, but…” Daniel couldn’t stop himself from stammering. “But you’re human. We saw you bleed. Our Harlan said there was no way to change us back.”

“He didn’t change us back,” Major Sam said, her voice very gentle now. “I don’t know what happened here. We might be wrong. But in our universe, Harlan didn’t transfer us. He made copies.”

Daniel jerked back, feeling those three words jolt into his spine like a physical blow. All those questions he’d struggled with over the years, wrestling his doubts into submission or quiet acceptance, came rising out of the depths of this new uncertainty, laughing and jeering at his very sense of identity.

Was their sense of self built on a fallacy, a mockery of life that had no real life of its own?

I might be the real Daniel Jackson.

I might not.

And if there really are two of us – or were two of us – where does that leave me now?

He turned his head slowly, feeling as if he was operating in gravity several times greater than the norm, to gaze at the stricken face of his closest friend. “Sam?”

Stuttering silence for a moment, then: “Daniel. Daniel. This can’t be. I’m not – she’s not – I have to be real. Daniel. I might still be alive. Does that – what does that make… Am I real? Make them go away Daniel I can’t Daniel…”

Daniel, shaking visibly, reached out and embraced Sam very, very carefully. She buried her face in his shoulder, and said nothing at all.

Major Sam and SG-1 Daniel – the humans, the real ones, the originals who had robbed them of what little peace of mind they still possessed – had gotten to their feet and moved away. Giving them space. Time to grieve, Daniel wondered bleakly? Or time to think?

Or time to hope?

***

 

Hours later, all four of them sat together again in front of the shimmering mirror, considering.

Their doppelgangers had left them alone for nearly an hour (fifty-three minutes, whispered that hated part of his ‘bet-ter’ brain), ostensibly to search the building for a control to the mirror. They’d finally returned to the arena, empty-handed and out of options; but from the hesitancy and awkwardness in their body language, it was clear that their real purpose had been to give Sam and Daniel time to themselves. The respite had given them enough time to process the implications, even if they hadn’t yet managed to sort through their feelings; and when the humans settled back into the grass, Daniel was more than ready to talk.

Sam had suggested twice, almost half-heartedly, that they should leave because their power levels were dropping, but Daniel had simply stayed right where he was, asking question after question. Major Sam and SG-1 Daniel weren’t hedging any more; with the – awful? hopeful? rejuvenating? excruciating? – big revelation finally out in the open, they seemed to have no further reason to avoid relating their history in detail.

They’d walked slowly, carefully, through the events of the past four years, taking their time to get all the facts straight. As far as all four of them could tell, nothing significant was different until they met Harlan. In the other universe, Harlan had destroyed Teal’c before Jack was too badly damaged. In the other universe, Harlan had made copies of SG-1, and he’d been able to make a second copy of Teal’c before the – the real SG-1 went back to Earth.

In the other universe, all their android counterparts were dead.

The humans’ clothing had long since dried in the sun. The rain on the other side had stopped.

“Skaara’s alive?” Daniel asked again.

“Yes,” SG-1 Daniel said, his smile genuine. “Thanks to the Tollan and the Tok’ra, Skaara is back on Abydos.”

“And there are good Goa’uld out there? And Dad is one of them?” Sam couldn’t seem to wrap her mind around the concept. Daniel had to admit that he was having a lot of trouble with it himself.

“Dad’s doing fine,” Major Sam assured her.

Daniel sat back, his mind whirling as possibilities were assessed and analyzed, either filed or discarded. His ability to think so much faster than he could when he was still in his human body – before he was copied from his human body? – was something that still tripped him up on occasion. “Let’s say you’re right,” he mused aloud. “Suppose that in our universe, the real SG-1 also safely made it back to Earth…”

“You’re every bit as real as they are,” said SG-1 Daniel, his voice firm.

“Okay. Yes. Thank you.” Daniel waved that detail away. He’d panic about his renewed identity crisis later, when he had time. “If that’s the case, it’s reasonable to assume that events continued to more or less parallel those in your universe, right?”

“Not necessarily.” This time, it was his Sam and Major Sam who spoke simultaneously. “That’s the definition of infinite, Daniel,” Sam continued. “Every single choice or decision we make changes the pattern of events. That means there’s essentially a universe that includes every possible decision any person has ever made.”

“Okay, that may be,” Daniel conceded, “but infinite possibilities would also imply that there are universes out there that are almost identical, right?”

“And ours and yours seem to have run parallel to each other for a long time,” SG-1 Daniel agreed. “I’m not quite sure where that leaves us, though.”

“Well, for one thing,” Sam said, sobering, “our Earth is gone… or, at least the Stargate has been buried.” She stood up convulsively, and Daniel heard the mutter over their internal link: “I can’t talk about this anymore. I just can’t. Daniel, let’s get out of here and –”

“What?” Once again, the human Sam and Daniel had spoken simultaneously, their expressions equally appalled.

Daniel tugged gently at Sam’s ankle, and she reluctantly sat down again as he explained, with a quiet kind of pain, what they knew about Earth’s fate.

“Sam didn’t leave her tinkering to mini-MALPs. She managed to increase our capacity to store power. We can survive for just over a day out of range of the power plant, even off-world. When we realized that we could actually leave P3X-989 in relative safety, we both agreed that we should try and contact Earth first.”

“The Stargate wouldn’t engage,” Sam said bleakly. “We tried dialing other planets, and those worked just fine. But Earth didn’t.”

“We tried for weeks,” Daniel added. “We kept telling ourselves that maybe we’d dialed in just as someone was dialing out, or that there was some technical glitch on Earth’s end… But after nearly a month, we had to stop kidding ourselves. Earth is either lost…” He gulped. “…or they’ve buried the Gate. And with Earth gone, well, we just stopped trying. There didn’t seem to be much point in trying for anywhere else.”

Their human counterparts sat silently for a while, their faces showing their distress. Then Major Sam straightened.

“Wait a minute. When did this happen, exactly?”

Sam and Daniel exchanged glances, surprised. “About eight months ago,” Daniel answered. “Why?”

“Eight months,” Major Sam repeated. She turned to her Daniel. “Wasn’t that about the time we went through that time loop…?”

“Malakai,” SG-1 Daniel said, nodding in agreement. “That’s an unhappy bit of irony for you.”

“We were out of touch with the regular Stargate network for over three months, at the very least.”

“Didn’t you say it might have been longer? The Tok’ra don’t exactly try to get hold of us on a regular basis.”

“Right. So with that kind of timing…” Major Sam looked at Sam and Daniel. “I’m not trying to get your hopes up, but we had a crisis on our Earth, during the same timeframe as your attempt to reach your Earth. Our planet was caught up in a subspace bubble that caused an accidental time loop, together with fourteen other planets in the Stargate system. Anyone trying to dial into Earth during that time, besides those planets caught in the subspace bubble, couldn’t get a lock.”

“So you’re saying that our Earth might actually still be there?” Daniel tried to squelch the rising hope.

“It might,” SG-1 Daniel said firmly. “You deserve to know that the possibility exists.”

“And where does that leave us?” Sam’s voice was almost plaintive.

Nobody seemed to have the answer to that, and the conversation lagged. After a while, the other Sam and Daniel rose to their feet and, murmuring excuses, walked several paces away. Daniel watched their quiet argument for several minutes, wondering vaguely if it would be worth it to employ his “bet-ter” hearing to eavesdrop.

“Daniel?”

He turned to look at Sam. “I don’t know, Sam. I want to believe they’re right.”

“Even if it means that we’re not really ourselves?”

“I think we are ourselves, Sam. This other Daniel certainly seems to think so.”

“I’m not so sure that Major Sam does.” There was a pointed bitterness in her emphasis of her human counterpart’s rank.

Daniel bit his lip. He, too, had been a little uncertain about Major Sam’s feelings on the subject.

“Daniel… I’ve taken our bodies apart and put us back together. I removed our power cores and replaced them. I fitted us with internal radios to help us communicate. How can I think back on all the – the tinkering I’ve done, and imagine that we’re real?”

“Doctors perform surgery on human beings, Sam. You just performed mechanical surgery on us.”

“Doctors can’t open up their own chests to watch their hearts beat.”

“So we’ve got it bet-ter?”

Sam gave him a twisted, miserable smile.

“It’s part of who you are,” he pointed out, as gently as he could. “Sam, you’ve always been immersed in the hard sciences, even when you had to break the rules to fit and put them back together again with Silly String theory...”

“Oh, very funny.” She quirked another smile at him – a real one, this time – and he was glad to see that her melancholy was lifting.

“But I – that is, both that Daniel and myself – we’re social scientists. I think that gives us a little flexibility in our thinking here, more than Major Sam.”

“‘Major Sam’?” Sam’s smile broadened. “Cute, Daniel.”

Daniel shrugged, trying not to flush. “Yeah, well... Look. We think, we feel, we reason. We have an instinct for self-preservation. I’d say that we’re alive.”

“I want to believe that, Daniel.” Sam glanced down at her hands, then back at him. “I really, really want to believe.”

“I think that we can, Sam. And – I think that we should.”

“Look!”

Daniel turned to see what Major Sam and her Daniel were staring at. The view on the other side of the mirror had changed. The rubble had been cleared away, the coiled cables were gone, and the generator was slowly moving, as if something was dragging it to the side.

“It seems like our ticket home might be available sooner than we thought.” Major Sam hurried to the mirror, but stopped short of touching it. She moved to the left and tried to squint sideways. “It’s hard to tell at this angle, but I think they’ve wrapped a chain around the generator and they’re pulling it – Huh. I’m not sure where they’re pulling it to, actually.”

SG-1 Daniel stood behind her, squinting over her shoulder. “Maybe they found a way to get into Atropus’ lab,” he suggested. “It looks like they’re working from inside the tunnel where the mirror used to be stored – the one that broke open into the shaft when we set off the broken booby-trap.”

“Do you think they can raise the mirror back to the vertical?”

SG-1 Daniel snorted. “I’m sure not going to try and make a high jump to stop from falling back in!”

“It’s all right, Daniel,” Major Sam said, patting his arm in a soothing manner that seemed deliberately patronizing. “I’d catch you.”

He whacked her on the shoulder, and she ducked away, grinning.

Daniel blinked. It was so exactly what he and Sam would say and do to each other in similar circumstances. Surely they weren’t just a Xerox of their former selves? Even if the original SG-1 in this universe had survived, that didn’t mean that the two of them were any less alive and real.

Did it?

They watched the slow progress as the generator edged off the mirror for several minutes, but it seemed clear that it would take some time. After a while, Sam and Major Sam retreated to discuss something that was indecipherable to Daniel, even after all these months of Sam’s patient instruction. He took a little petty comfort in knowing that Sam hadn’t gotten too far in linguistics, either.

Something was bothering SG-1 Daniel, though – something to do with him and Sam, Daniel decided, watching the man’s face. He was staring fixedly at the mirror, his hand advancing and retreating within inches of its surface, licking his lips and muttering something under his breath in turns.

Daniel came to stand at his side. “What is it?” he asked quietly.

SG-1 Daniel started, then relaxed and turned to look at him directly. “I’m sorry. I’m thinking too much. Jack –” He stopped, wincing, then finished quietly, “Jack tells me that all the time.”

“I’m glad your Jack is alive and well,” Daniel said, completely sincere.

SG-1 Daniel swallowed hard, and nodded.

“So you were thinking…?” Daniel prompted.

“About you and your Sam,” SG-1 Daniel admitted. “And this.” He waved at the quantum mirror. The view of the generator was nearly eclipsed now, and they could make out movement beyond.

“You’re wondering if we can go through by ourselves, aren’t you?” Daniel asked suddenly. “You’re wondering if the mirror would read us as sentient beings or not.” They’d discussed this before, when Major Sam had explained how they’d escaped getting crushed.

“Yes!” SG-1 Daniel burst out, and Daniel was taken aback by the sudden undercurrent of fury. “That stupid piece of junk has no right to judge what’s alive and what isn’t. And I don’t want you to touch it, or your Sam to touch it, because if it doesn’t let you through you’ll always wonder and it can’t judge for you!”

“The mirror might very well accept the passage of any sentient being, whether it’s organic or not,” Daniel said mildly.

“And if the key is flesh and blood, rather than self-awareness?” SG-1 Daniel demanded. He made an abortive movement with his foot, and Daniel realized, with a touch of morbid amusement, that the man had actually intended to kick the mirror out of frustration before he realized how stupid that would be.

“Then the key is faulty,” Daniel replied. It felt oddly satisfying to argue about this.

SG-1 Daniel’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, it would be,” he agreed dully. He lifted his head then, and Daniel saw that he was still angry. “But please. Don’t touch it. I don’t want to find out. I don’t want that doubt to exist.”

“This from the man who argued that we’d rather know than live in blissful ignorance?”

SG-1 Daniel gave a twisted, rueful smile. “You have the right to knowledge. I have the right to avoid knowing how an ancient – or possibly Ancient – piece of technology defines life.”

Daniel didn’t quite understand the play on words, and he wanted to question his doppelganger further; but the sight in the mirror drove all other topics out of his mind. Fresh chains snaked across the surface of the mirror and the view on the other side was slowly changing, and now he could see –

“They’re pulling it up!” Major Sam exclaimed.

And now he could see the figures on the other side more clearly, no longer distorted by the skewed perspective. There were six people there – two women and four men, all wearing SG team BDUs. One was focused on the fresh generator hauling up the chains, but the others stood steadfastly in place, their weapons aimed at the mirror. Two women and three of the men were unfamiliar, but standing right in front of the mirror, eyes intense and anxious, was –

“Teal’c!” Sam darted forward, her own eyes alight with a kind of joyful wonder. “Teal’c, he’s –”

“No!” SG-1 Daniel grabbed at her shoulder. “Don’t touch the mirror, don’t do it!”

Sam rounded on him, taken aback. “Why?” she demanded. Daniel saw the emotions play across her face, and hoped things weren’t going to turn ugly here. “That’s Teal’c! I just want –”

“It’s not a good idea,” Major Sam said, her voice diplomatic. “I’m sorry, Sam, but if you go barging through, looking just different enough from me so that SG-3 recognizes that you’re not me…” Her voice trailed off.

“Oh. You’re right, I guess.” Sam’s face was crestfallen for a moment, then brightened again. “But we can go through together.” She nodded, clearly pleased with her simple solution. “Then there won’t be a danger.”

Daniel looked at the human version of himself, at the anguished eyes that couldn’t quite mask his anxiety. He looked at Major Sam, who seemed equally troubled, although he couldn’t quite tell why. And he looked at his Sam, who, like himself, longed to touch Teal’c just once and know that somewhere, somehow, Teal’c was alive and well.

“Maybe Teal’c can join us on this side,” he said quietly.

SG-1 Daniel leapt on this suggestion with what seemed to be overwhelming relief. He moved forward to stand right in front of the mirror and made encouraging, sweeping gestures. Major Sam stepped to his side and employed the more traditional military hand signals, clearly asking Teal’c to come and join them.

Teal’c turned his head and spoke to someone out of their range of vision, then looked back and nodded. Major Sam and her Daniel stepped back to make room, and Teal’c touched the mirror on his side.

There was that soundless sizzle, and Teal’c was suddenly there.

“Teal’c!” Sam flung herself forward, throwing her arms around the startled man and hugging him tightly. “Oh, Teal’c, I’ve missed you!”

“Indeed, Samantha Carter,” Teal’c rumbled. He gently embraced her in return. “It is good to see that both you and Daniel Jackson are well in this universe.”

Daniel stepped forward, his face unashamedly wet. “Tek ma’te, Teal’c,” he said quietly. He reached out to grasp Teal’c’s forearm.

“Daniel Jackson.” Teal’c nodded gravely in acknowledgment, and the warmth in his eyes said more than the broadest grin. They didn’t speak further; it was enough just to stand there with Teal’c again, after three years of mourning his tragic, senseless death.

“Where’s Jack?” Daniel finally asked. He’d hoped to see them both, although this precious stolen moment with Teal’c was enough to make him almost giddy with the mixed sensations of absolute joy and utter grief.

“O’Neill is back at the SGC,” Teal’c gravely replied, including all four of them in his explanation. “He has not yet recovered completely from his effort to prevent the generator from falling into the shaft.”

SG-1 Daniel’s head came up sharply at Teal’c’s words. “Will he be all right?” he demanded.

“He will be well enough for our mission to the Tok’ra in two days’ time, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c assured him. His eyes gleamed again, this time with amusement. “He has been quite vocal in his insistence upon that. Fortunately for O’Neill, Doctor Frasier agrees.”

“What happened, exactly?” Daniel asked curiously. Instead of the wave of homesickness or jealousy he’d expected, he felt only a distinct satisfaction at the discussion. It was astonishingly easy to relax back into the comfortable banter his own team had enjoyed. Maybe he’d regret it later, but for now, he reveled in every moment.

“When the generator fell, O’Neill landed quite heavily against the lip of the shaft.”

Sam and Daniel looked at each other. “His knee,” they chorused.

“His knee,” Teal’c agreed, echoed by Major Sam and SG-1 Daniel at the same time.

Daniel couldn’t help it; he laughed. His skin might be synthetic, but for the first time it years, it was a comfortable fit.

***

Sam and Daniel stood side-by-side next to Colonel O’Neill’s infirmary bed, grinning down at their commanding officer. Teal’c stood at the foot of the bed, watching all three of them with that absolutely inscrutable face that meant he was silently laughing.

Colonel O’Neill squinted up at them, his eyes narrowing at their cheerful expressions. “You look amazingly upbeat for two people who fell though a snakehead’s vanity mirror and got stuck with yourselves for nine hours,” he said sourly.

“Oh, we had fun, sir,” Sam said brightly. “We had a lovely conversation with ourselves.”

“Our robot selves,” Daniel added, sitting down in the chair next to the bed and leaning a comfortable elbow on the colonel’s mattress.

“They seemed quite pleasant,” Teal’c agreed blandly.

The colonel groaned and thumped his head back against his pillow. “It’s bad enough there have to be alternate mes running around all over the universes,” he complained. “Do there have to be alternate robot us’s, too?”

Sam winced a little. “Actually, sir, your robot self was dead. So was Robot Teal’c.” She nodded apologetically at Teal’c, who graced her with a solemn nod of acknowledgement in return.

“…Oh.” Colonel O’Neill frowned at this. “And you’re so happy about this – why?” he demanded.

“Not about that part, Jack,” Daniel assured him. “But they’d been cut off from Earth for three years. I think they might choose to make contact, and that can only be a good thing.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Because they don’t deserve to be alone?” Daniel’s voice was still light, but Sam recognized the undercurrent of menace that lurked just around the corner of the conversation. The colonel evidently sensed it as well, because he hastily changed the subject.

“So, you two are back in the right universe. What happened in the lab? Have you made your report to General Hammond yet?”

“Yes, sir,” Sam replied, slipping into formal mode. “There was very little that we could use from a military or tactical standpoint, but we were able to retrieve quite a bit of information about the quantum mirror itself.”

“The quantum mirror that we destroyed two years ago?” the colonel asked pointedly. “And that’s useful how, exactly?”

“Well, Jack, there’s obviously more than one mirror,” Daniel said reasonably. “And getting hold of Atropus’ data crystals will keep Sam’s division busy for years to come.”

“Wait a second.” Colonel O’Neill held up a hand, frowning. “I still don’t understand how you managed to get in when the two of you messed up the knob thingies.”

“It was very simple, O’Neill,” Teal’c cut in, smoothly interrupting Daniel’s protest before it could be launched. “Once the thunderstorm had ceased, I requisitioned a second winch and generator and the assistance of SG-3. Colonel Reynolds lowered me into the shaft until I was directly above the quantum mirror –”

“Are you crazy?” the colonel demanded.

Teal’c merely cocked an eyebrow at him. “From there,” he continued, unperturbed, “it was relatively simple to maneuver myself through the broken wall of the shaft into the laboratory itself. I made my way to the entrance of the laboratory and found a simple locking mechanism, which I released to open the door.”

“Huh.” The colonel blinked at the prosaic solution. “And the only things in there were the snakehead’s research on the mirror?”

“It’ll take quite a while to go through the data crystals, sir,” Sam offered. “There might be information on other subjects as well.”

“No space guns?”

“No, Jack,” Daniel said patiently. “No space guns.” He grinned at the colonel. “On the other hand, your big honkin’ spaceship has big honkin’ space guns, so the month isn’t a total loss, right?”

“I guess,” the colonel sighed, staring moodily at his wrapped knee. “This knee’s gonna complicate things, though.”

“I understand that Doctor Fraiser plans to release you in time for our mission to destroy Tanith, O’Neill. Is that not the case?”

“Oh, it is.” The colonel avoided comment on the way Teal’c chose to categorize their mission to move the Tok’ra to a new base. “But it’s still a pain in the… mitka.”

“I thought it was the knee, sir,” Sam said before she could stop herself. Teal’c’s face became even more expressionless, which for him was the equivalent of outright sniggering.

Colonel O’Neill glared at her, then at Teal’c, and then at Daniel, who wasn’t even trying to hide his smile. “Explain something to me,” he groused. “You two fall through a quantum mirror and come back here without a scratch. Laughing Boy here –” He pointed an accusing finger at Teal’c, who raised both brows this time and didn’t bother to refute the charge, “– gets hit by lightning, and keeps right on ticking…”

“I was not, in fact, struck by lightning,” Teal’c said calmly. “I was merely temporarily stunned by being in close proximity to a lightning blast.”

The colonel’s voice rose to override this. “And I’m the one stuck in the infirmary with Midget Mengele as my –”

“You were saying, Colonel?”

Four heads whipped around to stare at Janet Fraiser, who had the uncanny ability to move silently when it suited her, despite her non-regulation heels. Teal’c bowed his head in greeting; Daniel sat up a little straighter in his chair, his hand covering his mouth to hide his smirk; and Colonel O’Neill pasted a weak smile on his face, his mind clearly racing in an attempt to salvage the situation. Hiding a grin of her own, Sam murmured something noncommittal and escaped the infirmary.

She wandered back toward her lab, glad to be walking the clean, sterile halls of the SGC instead of sitting in a patch of grass and flowers on the other side of the mirror. She wondered, with a shiver of unease, how much her robot double would have given for the chance to be doing the same.

“Sam?”

She turned at the sound of Daniel’s voice, stopping to wait for him as he strode toward her, his face alight with warmth.

“You doing okay?” He seemed to be studying her face carefully..

“Yeah.” She eyed him. “Looks like you are, too.” That tense undercurrent of unhappiness, which had dogged him from the moment he learned about their doubles’ deaths, was gone. She remembered that final exchange he’d had with Robot Daniel on the other side of the mirror, and she understood how much it had meant to him to be able to offer that other Daniel a tangible token of hope.

“Has anyone complained about the loss of equipment?” she asked.

Daniel gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Considering everything else that got lost on the mission? No one is asking any questions.” His mouth quirked into a conspiratorial grin. “Besides, Daniel Jackson still has possession of it. It’s just a different Daniel, that’s all.”

“Just a different Daniel,” she repeated thoughtfully. “I guess so.”

“Anyway, Janet kicked us all out of the infirmary, so I thought I’d join you and see what goodies we got from Atropus’ secret lair.” He waggled his eyebrows at her for emphasis.

She chuckled. “Sounds good to me. Come on.”

She fell easily into comfortable conversation with him as the two of them walked to her lab, making straight for her computer to access the data they’d copied from Atropus’ lab. But her mind kept circling back to Daniel’s passionate defense of their counterparts, and wondering just where she stood after the day’s experiences.

“Daniel,” she said suddenly, interrupting him mid-flow. “After what happened today…”

“Yes, Sam?”

The colonel had always asserted that the robots were machines, nothing more. Even after the robots in their universe had… Died? Deactivated? Even then, despite a softening in his attitude, he still insisted that they hadn’t truly been alive.

Daniel had been furious at the time. She’d wondered, at that chaotic debriefing after Juna, if his anger was truly over the robots’ fate, or a thin mask for his terror at not being there when they were all so close to death. Now, after watching that final exchange between Daniel and his robotic counterpart, she was no longer in any doubt.

“I was thinking about Teal’c,” she said, circling around the subject. “I remember your report about what Teal’c said in that other reality, when we were trying to help the SGA contact the Asgard.”

She’d been a little taken aback, at the time, to read of his calm, almost ruthless assessment, at the precise definitions of self that allowed Teal’c to fire on his doppelganger without even blinking.

“After he shot the other Teal’c? ‘Ours is the only reality of consequence,’” Daniel quoted. He tipped his head down, glancing at her over the frames of his glasses. “It’s the way his mind works, Sam. It doesn’t have to mean anything else.”

Her gaze slanted away from him. He’d understood her oblique reference, all right. Like her, he seemed to assume that in Teal’c’s cool mind of black-and-white, friend-or-foe, he considered himself to be the only Teal’c of consequence in their own reality, too.

“So where does that leave you?” he prompted gently, drawing her to look back at him.

Where did that leave her? The scientist who marveled at the workings of an android far beyond their capability to reverse-engineer, the astrophysicist who thought in numbers and absolutes? How was she to think of their robot doubles now – those they’d handed to Harlan in this universe for burial, and those they’d left with a glimmer of hope in a dimension just a few heartbeats away?

“I think…” she started, then stopped.

She couldn’t understand the robots, she knew. She couldn’t define them, categorize them, classify them as real or not.

She never would be able to, either.

With a sudden lightening of her heart, she realized that she rather liked it that way. Difficult challenges were good things, after all.

“I think it’s time for chocolate,” she announced. Opening a drawer, she drew out two Snickers bars from her private stash. She handed one to Daniel and saluted him with the other. “To absent friends,” she said, a wealth of meaning in her eyes.

He took the proffered candy bar gravely, and saluted her in return. “To absent Sams and Daniels,” he agreed, and tore the wrapper open.

***

Stars were appearing in the sky, and the moons were rising, when Sam and Daniel returned to the power plant, some six hours before their power reserves would drop to dangerous levels. They greeted Harlan, then went to their resting area for some privacy. They sat down and simply looked at each other for several minutes.

“We have a decision to make,” Sam said, finally breaking the silence. “Major Sam and I spent a lot of time discussing the Air Force side of things. Daniel, if that Presidential order for our… dissection was never revoked, we could find ourselves literally under the microscope.”

“An argument for our sentience wouldn’t help?”

“I’m honestly not sure which way would be worse, Daniel – if we really are the original SG-1, or if we’re not.”

He gave her a level stare. “But you do agree that we’re fully sentient – fully real – whether or not events here were the same as events there. Don’t you?”

For three long, agonizing heartbeats, Sam didn’t answer. Then she straightened her shoulders, and returned his steady gaze. “Yes,” she said simply. “I do.”

He breathed again. “I’m glad,” he told her.

Quiet descended again, until Sam returned to the burning topic of the moment. “So. Do we want to try to make contact again?”

“I agree it’s a risk.” Daniel shifted restlessly. “But the other Daniel pointed out that if everything in both universes is the same, except for Jack and Teal’c surviving and our discovery of the switch at the very beginning, then Juna is now suffering under Cronus’ rule, and the SGC has no idea.”

“The SGC would want to know about Cronus’ movements,” Sam said, considering.

“And maybe they can help liberate the people of Juna again.”

Sam smiled at him. “Yes. There’s that, too.”

“Well.” Daniel shifted again. “I gave me – I mean, I gave myself…” Sam had started snickering at his fumbling attempts at coherency, and he picked up one of his spare shirts and lobbed it at her. She caught it and primly started folding it with military precision.

“Okay.” Daniel took a deep breath and tried again. “The other Daniel gave me something. Two things. He thought we might want to use them.”

He pulled the two items out of his pocket, and saw Sam’s eyes widen with surprise. The first was a folded slip of paper, but it was the second object that made her gasp and drop his shirt.

A radio.

“We can try to dial Earth again.” Daniel licked his lips. “There won’t be any visual, of course, but we can at least communicate via the radio. Find out if anyone is home. And this –” He unfolded the paper and showed Sam the symbols that SG-1 Daniel had hurriedly scribbled down right before his departure. “The SGC in their universe established something they called the ‘Alpha Site,’ although the other me did add that a different universe called it the ‘Beta Site.’ That’s… probably not very important.”

“No,” Sam agreed, her voice almost dream-like. “So if we can’t get through to Earth, we can try the Alpha Site instead?”

“If we want.”

If we want.

They didn’t need their internal radios to communicate. The look in each other’s eyes was more than enough.

As one, they rose and made their way to the section that housed the Stargate. It was dark here now, as they slowly continued to shut down everything in the plant that wasn’t either directly connected to the power source or used for their living quarters. That didn’t matter, though. Thanks to Harlan, they had no trouble seeing in the dark.

But now, there was a glimmer of light. And no matter the outcome, Daniel knew he was glad they’d come this far.

He stood in front of the DHD, Sam at his side. His fingers skimmed lightly over the glyphs, then poised over the first one for Earth. He hesitated and turned Sam, raising his brows questioningly.

She nodded, her smile a little shaky. “Do it,” she said.

Daniel pressed down hard on that first glyph, seeing it light up. With his gaze fully focused on the DHD, he heard the first chevron on the Stargate lock into place.

Auriga.

Cetus.

Centaurus.

Cancer.

Scutum.

Eridanus.

He hesitated once more at the point of origin, looking up at Sam. She nodded again, her smile no longer tremulous and her eyes bright and clear.

He hit the final glyph. The seventh chevron lit.

Sam’s hand squeezed his shoulder, and he reached out to press the central globe.

end