MEMOIRS OF
BRIGADIER GENERAL JACK O’NEILL
(Retired)
Part IV
Chapter One
By Arrietty
2025
“This is taking longer than I thought it would. Maybe I should just skip the middle and go straight to the end.”
“Don’t you dare, Jack O’Neill. Get right onto it and don’t miss any of it out. Those dreams aren’t getting any less frequent.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
~*~
I was cold, stiff and my calf muscle was beginning to cramp. I quickly stood up and pressed my whole foot down flat on the ground, relieving the knots in the calf of my leg. Once the pain had subsided, I glanced around the cave. It was empty; everything was gone, except my flashlight still clutched in my hand. My pack was still on my back; the pillar was still in the centre of the cave, but all the weapons and technological stuff had disappeared.
Looking out towards the entrance of the cave, I could see that the sun was up as light streamed in through the opening. Cautiously, I stepped out into the bright sunlight. In front of me was the same large forest, but the long grass was missing. Instead was a large bustling army camp complete with jeeps, sentries and all the paraphernalia that goes with an established camp.
I heard the click of a safety catch removed a split second before the cold metal touched the back of my neck.
“You can stand quite still, mister.”
“Standing still.”
“Right on the ground, real slow.”
I started to bend my complaining knee.
“Put the weapons down first.”
I quickly held out my empty hand, and then reached into my jacket to pull out my hand gun. I made sure I used my thumb and forefinger; I didn’t want him to think I was going for my weapon to shoot him with it. He slowly worked his way around to face me. I unclipped my P-90 and deliberately lowered it to the ground alongside my hand gun. Looking up, I stared straight into the face of Lieutenant Grogan. His bottom jaw dropped, and then snapped shut.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?”
“It’s me, Grogan. O’Neill.”
“It can’t be.”
He waved his P-90 at me and gestured towards the camp. “Move.”
I nodded, “You’ll see, Grogan. It will all be explained. I didn’t realize that you had opened up a site here. It would be good, if it wasn’t for the short days and the moving forest.”
“Shut it.”
I couldn’t understand Grogan’s attitude. He knew I had gone off world to find technical stuff. My head was still groggy, so I decided to wait until we were face to face with the officer in charge.
The first person I saw as I was pushed into the tent was Daniel.
“Daniel. Did the Aztecs try to eat you too then?”
He looked up and promptly dropped the coffee cup he had been sipping from. “Jack?” Ignoring the spilled coffee that was ruining his sketches, he started to walk towards me, “We thought you were dead.” He frowned. “And Aztec’s don’t eat you, they sacrifice their victims.” He peered at me through his glasses.
“I haven’t been gone that long, have I?” I rocked back on my heels and grinned.
Daniel turned to one of the airmen that stood open-mouthed staring at me, “Get the Colonel.”
“Yes, sir.” He scuttled off through the gathering crowd that was jammed in the doorway. Word gets around quick these days.
“Hey, Sparky!” I waved my hand at Siler as he stood just inside the doorway with a dumbfounded expression on his face.
Leaning towards Grogan, I asked conspiratorially. “Have I got something growing out of my nose or something?”
“Well you sound like Jack and you certainly look like him, but you can’t be him.”
“Daniel, I am him. Okay?” This was wearing a little thin by now. Surely they had seen people come back from the dead before, one more shouldn’t surprise them. Anyway, why did they think I was dead?
Slowly the crowd moved apart, hopefully to let the colonel through, then we could get this sorted out.
The sun half-blinded me as the colonel stood in the doorway, just a shadow in the bright light. As the officer in charge moved into the tent, and when I saw who it was, my heart started to pound and my mouth went dry.
Then it hit me, the pillar with the mirrors around it. I wasn’t in my own universe; this was a different one, one where Sam was alive.
She stopped and stared for a moment, swallowed and barked out an order, “Everyone back to your duties.”
They quickly melted into the shadows, Daniel stayed with his arms across his chest hugging himself. ‘Yup, same Daniel here as well.”
Carter moved closer and stared. “Is it you?”
“Yes and, um…No!”
“Well, you have to be one or the other. You can’t be both.”
I dragged my gaze away from Sam, “Daniel, have you heard of alternate universes?”
I heard a gasp from Sam. “How?”
“The pillar covered in mirrors back there.” I jerked my thumb in the general direction of the cave.
“We didn’t know what that was; it didn’t have any writing on it or…” She stopped and stared at me again. Now this was interesting, a Carter totally lost for words?
“So,” I said as I rubbed my hands together, “any chance of some breakfast? I’m starving.” I gave them my usual O’Neill grin that belied my true feeling of pain and confusion of seeing Sam alive.
I heard the indrawn breath from Daniel’s direction, and waited for the lecture. “Is that all you can think of Jack, food? Our world is destroyed, we are all that is left and all you can think of is yourself.”
I was shocked at Daniel’s words. “What happened?”
“First of all, Jack, Anubis came in his big ships and annihilated everything on Earth; we only just made it out of there in time.”
“Didn’t you find the Lost City?” I asked.
“No, Jack. Why do you…”
“Daniel. That is enough. We don’t know if it is really Colonel O’Neill yet,” Carter interrupted.
“Oh, yes, you are right, Sam. Sorry.” He smiled apologetically at me and started fiddling with his sketches, trying to clean up the mess.
“So, Carter, now what?” I asked. I was feeling a little annoyed, frustrated, and hungry. I looked longingly over at my pack that was sitting on one of the tables. Mariam’s homemade egg pie would still be good to eat and it wasn’t doing anyone any good stuck in there.
“You will be checked out by our medical staff. I want to know that you are who you say you are first.”
Just then, Janet Fraiser came rushing into the tent, “Is it true, Sam?” She skidded to a halt and stared at me. “Wow! Colonel, it is you!” Her face broke into a big smile. Moving over to me, she pulled out her bag of gadgets. Out came the penlight which was immediately flashed into my eyes. For the first time, I didn’t mind.
“It’s good to see you, Doc.”
She paused with what she was doing, shook her head, “That doesn’t sound like the Colonel O’Neill I know,” she glanced up at Carter.
“Well, in my world Doc Fraiser isn’t there anymore.”
“Oh,” she replied noncommittally and then continued with her test taking.
When she had finished I was led through to an established building. Everywhere I went I was under armed guard. I still got the feeling that Grogan didn’t quite trust me yet, as he still seemed to like pushing me through doors.
As I stumbled in through the doorway, I was met with four pairs of staring eyes looking out between bars. ‘Uh oh.’ This was the brig. Fortunately, they put me in a cell on my own, as these guys didn’t look like they were my friends. In fact, two of them were Jaffa and the other two; I really wasn’t quite sure as they didn’t look like Air Force personnel.
“Hey, Grogan, how about some lunch? Hey, Grogan.”
My stomach rumbled as he closed the door behind him. Oh this is just peachy, locked in with two Jaffa who looked like they would enjoy using me for a punching bag and two others that…just put it this way, I was glad they were over there and not over here.
Settling myself down on the floor, as far away as I could from my fellow inmates, I waited. This time, I did not fall asleep.
Six hours later, they came for me. It was dark outside and they had lit a large fire in the middle of the camp. It smelt like they were roasting something on the fire. What it was, I had no idea, but I hoped they were in a sharing mood.
“Colonel O’Neill.”
She was smiling at me. That had to be a good sign. “Colonel Carter,” I replied.
A look of pain flickered across her face before she spoke. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Oh, yes please,” I sat down in the chair she had pointed at.
“Daniel,” I acknowledged.
“Jack,” he looked at me suspiciously.
“So, I gather that you have found out that I am who I say I am then.”
They nodded.
“Why don’t we eat first, sir? Then we can fill each other in on what has been happening afterwards. It has been a long day.”
Not one to disagree with comments like that, I started to eat my meal. Now I knew what they had been roasting. It was lamb, nicely done too.
As soon as my stomach began to feel less hollow, I started the questions. “So… when did this happen?”
Carter stayed quiet; she wasn’t eating much I noticed. She made eye contact with Janet, who had joined us half way through our meal. Realizing I wasn’t going to get much information from that direction, I tried Daniel.
“Daniel?”
He put down his knife and fork and started to speak.
“Everything began to go wrong after you were killed. Well the other you, I mean our you. Oh you know what I mean.” I nodded, mainly to stop Daniel stammering and put myself out of my misery. “Soon after that, Anubis arrived with his ships. They just decimated our planet. General Hammond tried to take him out with the Prometheus. He nearly did too, but it just wasn’t big enough.”
“Did he ram Anubis’ ship?”
“Yes, how did you know that? Did he do it in your world?”
“No he didn’t, but he was in the process of doing it when Anubis was stopped.”
“Stopped! How?”
“No, Daniel, you first. I will tell you my side after.”
Carter and Fraiser were still sitting quietly, they hadn’t said a word.
“There isn’t much more to tell really. General Hammond blew up part of the ship and the Prometheus of course. Anubis then systematically destroyed all the main cities on Earth. We set the self-destruct and made it out only just in time. We have been here ever since. From what we have gleaned from a few scattered Tok’ra and other allies, Anubis has totally enslaved the rest of the population. The Beta site has been compromised; we don’t know how or why yet. We don’t know what has happened to the Alpha site, we sent through the GDO and they won’t acknowledge us or open the iris.
“Yes, we had a similar problem regarding the Beta site; we still don’t know who the mole was either. It had to be someone in the SGC, no one else knew the address.”
“So, Colonel, what happened in your world?’
I turned to face Carter, and then sadly looked at Fraiser. “I assume that Senior Airman Wells didn’t survive then.”
Fraiser frowned and then nodded. “No he didn’t; he died on the field. I couldn’t go off world. There was an emergency at the SGC I had to deal with. Why? What happened?”
“Well… you came. You saved him, but you were hit and were killed.”
“Oh.” She looked thoughtful. “Our colonel died on that mission, but obviously you didn’t in your world.”
“No, but I was injured.”
“Who stopped Anubis in your world?”
I turned to Carter and replied, “I did.”
She smiled without it reaching her eyes. “So that is the difference then. If you had survived that skirmish, our world would be safe.”
“Yes, I suppose you are right.”
I looked right into her eyes; they were sad, tired and troubled.
Daniel broke our concentration. “Why are you here, I mean on this planet on your own?”
Turning to Daniel, I looked at him for a moment then returned my gaze to Carter and replied, “Just over six months ago, I retired from running the SGC. I’ve been on a fishing expedition, you know for technical stuff. Things that would make Doctor Lee happy.”
“What about me?” Carter asked very quietly.
I swallowed; I really didn’t know how to answer this one, “You were killed on PX 239 ten months ago.”
She nodded, and then got up from the table. “Excuse me. Daniel, will you show the Colonel where he can sleep? Thank you.” She walked quickly out of the tent.
It wasn’t until I got to where I was to bunk down that I asked Daniel where Teal’c was.
“We don’t know, Jack. The last we heard, he went to get Rya’c and Ishta just before Anubis attacked. They aren’t on Ishta’s planet anymore, in fact no one is there.” His voice trailed off tiredly.
“Here, Jack you can have this bunk. Siler is up there, and Jones and Harriman have those two.”
I looked at the cramped quarters, but then I wouldn’t be staying, so it didn’t matter for just a couple of nights.
“Daniel.”
“Yes, Jack.”
“Where are all the doohickeys that were in the cave?”
“They are all on Earth; I think Area 51 has them, I mean did have them.” He picked up a pile of blankets and dumped them on my bunk. The dust floated up and swirled in the lamplight. I watched it mesmerized as the words sunk home. The doohickey to get me home was still in my alternate reality where I had dropped it and now this one was in Area 51 – totally unreachable. I was not going back after all.
~*~
Over the next several days, I found out that the camp had about 325 occupants. Most of them were military personnel with a smattering of scientists. No children, no wives and husbands. It was hard on everyone here as they had all left someone special behind on Earth. They had no idea if they were alive or dead, or if they were now Goa’ulds. Life was feeling pretty hopeless for all of them.
They weren’t the only ones; I was feeling pretty down myself. I would have thought the fact that Carter was alive would make me feel good, but it didn’t. She just didn’t seem to be the Carter that I had known; it was as though the life had been knocked out of her.
After two weeks of not much happening, I decided to make some changes. I didn’t bother informing them of my correct rank and they seemed to have missed that I had said I had been running things. I had no proof anyway, and I still outranked everyone on this base as a full Colonel even if I was officially retired.
Finally, I managed to get Carter by myself, with no Daniel hovering around.
We were walking towards the forest, which still gave me the creeps and apparently I wasn’t the only one as everyone avoided it.
“Carter, we can’t stay here indefinitely. We need to find the Tok’ra and get some help.”
“I know, sir, but I have no idea where they are now.”
“I think I do. They have a hideout that they were using just before I left the SGC. Your Dad told me, I don’t think he was meant to, but he did. Maybe they are there in this universe too.”
She nodded. A few moments later she started to speak, then stopped. After the third time she tried, I took the bull by the horns.
“For crying out loud, Carter, just say it,” I had stopped and pulled her around by her shoulders looking directly into her face. She didn’t speak, just looked at me as her eyes filled with tears. I had seen that look before, just after I had been shot on PX whatever. I quickly pulled her into a hug and held her close, her body shaking with sobs.
Foreign feelings flowed through me as I held her, it was not the same. Not the same as when I had held her before. This was not my Sam; she didn’t fill that gaping hole that tormented me day and night. Closing my eyes to the pain this knowledge caused me, I stood and held her. I didn’t know what could be worse, being in a world where there was no Sam or being in a world where I had no feelings for Sam.
Eventually she let go, blowing her nose she gave her usual unladylike sniff and then smiled up at me, “I’m sorry about that, sir. I just…” she sniffed again and turned to look into the forest depths.
It was silent, apart from her sniffing; no birds or animals could be heard. This was a strange planet. “Carter, have you noticed that there isn’t any wildlife on this planet?”
She spun around surprised at my subject of discussion, “Yes, I have wondered about that, but I think there is something in that forest. Something that isn’t good.”
I nodded. I was still puzzled about the sun too. It was a perfectly normal twenty-four hour day here, the sun came up and went down roughly the same time each day and the forest seemed to stay where is should. Nothing like the planet in my old universe. Deciding to let that go, I broached the subject of finding the Tok’ra again.
“Carter, if I give you the coordinates, will you send a team through the Stargate to find the Tok’ra?”
She turned looked at me and nodded, “Yes, we need to do something.”
We started back down the small hill towards camp, but just before we reached it she stopped me by grabbing my arm, “Sir?”
“Yes, Carter.”
“You aren’t him are you?”
I smiled softly and shook my head, “No, Sam, I am not him, and you aren’t her either.” She looked sad for a moment, and then she smiled.
“Where are those coordinates, Colonel?” I smiled in return before we continued on towards camp, walking swiftly through the ankle length grass. This was going to be good, our old team was going on a mission. All we needed now was Teal’c.
~*~
It didn’t take long to organize. The camp started to feel different, everyone was bustling about. The few sheep that they had penned in a small yard not far from the camp even seemed to be happier.
Daniel and I started our usual arguing, Carter still snickered at my jokes and Grogan still treated me with disdain, but I really didn’t care that much. I did make sure he didn’t come with us on the mission though.
Carter, Daniel, and I left Major Turtleton in charge of the camp in our absence. He was a good officer and had everything under control. Carter had told me that he had been a tremendous support to her while they had been there. I was pleased, he seemed a good man, but I had never met him before in my world so I had to rely on Carter’s recommendation.
The journey back to the Stargate was easy going. The rough dirt track led all the way to the DHD. I quickly punched in the coordinates to the Tok’ra planet. I just hoped that they had gone there in this alternate universe and hadn’t moved on.
The knowledge that I couldn’t return to my universe was firmly shoved to the back of my mind, it wouldn’t do me any good chewing it over and worrying about it. What’s done is done.
It was strange as I didn’t flinch this time stepping through the Stargate. If there was an iris on the other side, I wouldn’t know about it. So why worry? Daniel and Carter looked a little nervous, but when they saw me step through the wormhole without hesitation, they quickly followed behind.
~*~
As soon as we stepped out on the sandy planet, we were surrounded by Tok’ra. The unmistakable click and whir of the zats as they were primed was a complete give away.
Looking around the group, I recognized one of them. “Telcan, hi there.” I waved a hand, “Is Jacob around by any chance?” I smiled. By then Carter and Daniel had arrived and were both waiting quietly.
Telcan frowned, “I do not know who you are.”
Realizing that I had met Telcan after the incident on PX whatever, I then tried a different tack. “Hi, I am General O’Neill of the Tau’ri; please will you take me and my colleagues to see Selmac?” Both Carter and Daniel’s heads spun around and stared at me. Kicking myself mentally for my faux pas, I ignored them.
“Come, this way. Pass over your weapons.”
I quickly removed my weapons and handed them to Telcan, Daniel and Carter following suit. I was still getting funny looks from Carter, but continued to ignore her. Now was not the time to explain.
As we were led along the underground tunnels of the Tok’ra, I saw many faces that I hadn’t seen before. This was definitely a bit different. It was hard to believe the changes that had come about because different people had died that day.
As soon as we walked into the conference room, there was a cry of joy behind me. “Dad!” Carter whisked past me straight into the arms of Jacob.
Jacob held her tight while he looked at me. ‘Now I have a question, why is it that Jacob spends most of his time frowning when he looks at me?”
“Jack?” Still holding onto his daughter, he reached out a hand and prodded me in the shoulder. “Is that you?”
“Here we go again. Yes, Jacob, ‘tis me. Carter’ll explain it all.” Our weapons were returned to us on Jacob’s command and Carter then explained in her usual technobabble how I came to be here, and that I wasn’t really me, but was.
Jacob and his cronies were surprised at what Carter was saying, and they couldn’t help all coming and having a good look at me. When Anise turned up, that was when I nearly lost it.
“Keep her away from me.” I jumped up from the table and stabbed a finger in her direction.
“Why, Jack?”
“Because, Daniel, if it wasn’t for her, Sam would still be alive.”
The room went very quiet, as everyone either stared at me or Anise. Anise spoke quietly and clearly. “Whatever my counterpart did in your world has nothing to do with me in this one.”
I quickly sat down, rubbed my hands over my face, and looked up at her, “I apologize.” I then forced my anger down and waited to see what would happen next.
“Apology accepted.” She turned and left the room.
I relaxed.
Jacob sat down opposite me at the table. “Jack, we are glad you guys have come. Apart from now knowing that Sam is safe of course.” He grinned. “We believe Teal’c and the rebel Jaffa are in trouble. We received intel that a large group with a small band of Tok’ra were trapped on a planet.”
I was surprised. “You mean the Tok’ra and the Jaffa are still working together?”
“Yes, Jack, we always have. Don’t they in your universe?”
That was it. That was another big difference, it wasn’t just that different people were killed, but these guys. They were the key too. Feeling totally confused I decided to leave the thinking alone and listened as Jacob continued to talk.
“They are holed up in caves underground on Begarnish.”
Carter leaned forward. “Where’s that?”
Jacob touched something on a consol and a hologram of a solar system appeared before us. “We are here.” He pointed to a small planet near the sun. “And Begarnish is here.” His finger traveled right across the system to the outer edge, stopping on the furthest planet from the sun.
“A cold planet then.”
“Yes, Sam it is. I don’t think they will last much longer with the limited supplies they have.”
“Why can’t they leave?” I asked.
“That is where Baal is hiding out,” he answered. “We have to get past his defenses first.”
A small tickle of excitement traveled its way up my insides. Not only had I found out Baal’s hideout, but I would get the chance for some form of revenge.
~*~
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