Merchant of Memphis

TITLE: Merchant Of Memphis
AUTHOR: Anthony Docimo
EMAIL: keenir@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: Sam and Jack, angst?
SPOILERS: Seth, The Enemy Within, Fire And Water, Enigma, Solitudes, Brief Candle, Within The Serpent's Grasp, Devil In The Dark, Tok'ra II, Into The Fire, Tin Man & Cold Lazarus {implied}.
SEASON / SEQUEL:
RATING: PG
CONTENT WARNINGS: None
SUMMARY: SG-1 lets someone pick their minds
STATUS: Complete
ARCHIVE: Heliopolis
DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. We have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the authors. Not to be archived without permission of the authors.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Px89762:

"Okay campers," Jack O'Neill said once they'd come through the stargate. "Stay close, and don't pick fights."

"Yesssir," Daniel Jackson said absentmindedly, his gaze already caught up with his surroundings.

True to what they'd been told, it was a marketplace, where wares from a dozen - or more - worlds were gathered and sold. What they hadn't been told, was that humans were not the _only _ visitors here! The most common, true enough...but not the only ones.

"What's this?" Jack asked at the nearer of the stalls.

The man in charge of that stall looked Jack up and down.

Teal'C took a glance at it. "It is for scratching the inside of one's pouch."

"Oh," and promptly put it down. "Gag gift for Maybourne?" he asked, as he walked away.

After a few minutes of window-shopping, and nearly running over a family of small armored chimpanzees, they came upon a small tent with a creature outside that they all recognized by now: a Setesh!

Once they were close enough to talk to it - or, at least to the translators that the non-humans and some humans had around their necks ....

Daniel sneezed.

The setesh jerked it's upper body away. And it's long nose inflated. A flurry of sounds came out of the holes between the three ears. The translator around it's neck said only, "Dripping sister-killer!"

He-it promptly then turned to O'Neill. "Buy, sell, trade?"

"That depends," Jack responded. "What'cha selling?"

The setesh's arm jerked up to the boldly-written sign. After a few silent moments, it filled in, "Memories."

To Teal'C, "Jaffa, tel navoe, sheba kree?"

"No." To his teammates, Teal'C explained, "It wished to know if I would like the memories of a goa'uld."

"Ekh. Ensz, sheba, nae goa'uld." Which, this time, exited the translators, "No. Your gods, not the goa'ulds."

"They are one and the same," Teal'C informed it, like someone on Earth informing someone else that they'd lost a relative in combat. O'Neill knew that tone...he knew it far too well! "The false gods are slowly being overthrown."

"Are you part of this resistance?" the Setesh asked, its interest piqued.

"That depends," Jack interrupted. "What's it to you?"

"Memories like that, great value! Also, more easily spread."

"For the right price, right?" Sam asked.

The Setesh wiggled it's ears, which the translator said as "yes yes yes yes!"

Carter turned to Jack. "Sir, don't you think it's worth a try?"

**

Daniel and Teal'C were waiting outside. Well, technically, Daniel was. Teal'C was watching the whole process, as the setesh prepared the memory machines. It had taken a few minutes for Jack to be reassured that they wouldn't actually be losing any memories...more like copying a tape.

For that reason, or maybe some other, Jack thought of his extant clone. And now....now, as he closed his eyes, he awaited the process.

"I can't wait four hundred years like you can."

Wait a - That was Daniel! Part of his de-briefing, after they'd all thought him dead, had him telling of his conversation with that Babylon fish-man.

"Oh my god: he was a goa'uld! He killed her!" Jackson again.

"Yes, I'm here," a soft voice told him, as darkness swept away all visual clues.

He didn't need any. He knew instinctively that they were in that glacier, in Antarctica.

A warm feeling against his lips. One that he hadn't felt since his wife -

"Whoops!" Daniel again? Wait a minute!

"Either way, I will be leaving." Now that, that sounded more like - Could it be?....Narim? One of the people they'd sent to the Nox world.

"The very young do not always do as they are told." Unquestionably a Nox.

Seeing something before his eyes that he didn't remember seeing: yellow gloves, disintegrating.

"Holy Hannah!" Since when did I ever say that? Uh-Oh!

**

For Samantha Carter, life was much the same.

First thing, unsurprisingly, was General Hammond talking. "I'd like to know what you know of the goa'uld and jaffa."

"I am Omac. My world is called Tollan."

"I - I talk to my plants, okay?" she heard herself admitting to the rest of the team.

"Well then, why'm I the only one affected?" she heard herself say to Daniel, Teal'C, and - Sam!

"What difference does it make? You're just gonna blow up with the other ship anyway!" Daniel said, right in my face, as he lay bleeding aboard Klorel's - Skaara's - spaceship.

"The glowing-eye-people destroyed our world," she heard the anatomically--poorly-made 'Charlie' tell her - or rather, tell O'Neill.

"What do you know of the goa'uld?" she recalled Selmak-Sirrush asking.

"Well, you're the first one I've met," was her dad's reply.

"He's dead, sir," she heard from herself.

"Then why do I keep expecting him to step through that door?"

**

Then, abruptly, it ended. Senses felt deprived of information. The body just wanted to curl up. To sleep.

Then an inhuman hand opened one eye. The flood of light, and thus information, prodded the body to movement.

First item of business, swat away the thing around the eye!

But, by now, it was several feet away, waiting patiently for Carter to get up.

She stretched, flexing muscles that felt as weary as they did when Hathor's cronies'd woken her up 'in the future.'

The Setesh waited patiently, leading her back out to her team when she was able to stand and balance.

"Those weren't of our fight against the System Lords," O'Neill said angrily.

"Neither were mine," Carter said, nodding her head. "You lied to us!" to the Setesh in charge.

"Not lied," the Setesh insisted. "Ja okla treme'olkanaglah."

"It says that it was working towards a showing of the influence, of the emotions, that our conflict with the goa'uld have brought up," Teal'C explained.

"Showing the human side of war," Jack realized as the translation.

A second Setesh brought to Teal'C a bag that jingled slightly. "Your tokens and credits, for such high-quality memories!"

"Humane," the Setesh insisted to Jack's accusation. "Not Human! Jaffa, sel noko trabka!"

Several Jaffa came from a side flap in the tent, and stood between SG1 and the Setesh untill after the team was walking away.

Back towards the stargate.

"You breathe _one_ word of this," Carter murmured threateningly to O'Neill, "And so help me..."