Chapter Text
DISCLAIMER:
The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.
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Captain Samantha Carter bent over the keyboard, rechecking her calculations for the third time. She hadn't had time to run all the numbers for possible scenarios, but she was fairly sure that gating through the sun would be, in her CO's eloquent verbiage, *bad*. She was conscious of said CO waiting less than patiently on the ramp chatting to Daniel, who had inconsiderately chosen today to be on time.
"Carter?" the colonel yelled up to her impatiently.
She looked up and reached for the microphone, "Almost there, sir. At this time of year, the direct line between P2X-555 and the Earth takes us within seventy thousand miles of the sun. I have to update the computer's drift calculation to include gravitational space-time warping."
She was counting on O'Neill's eyes to glaze over for a minute while he tried to parse that, but he yelled back impatiently after only the barest pause. "We know that! Let's go."
"Yes, sir," She decided that the calulation was as good as it was going to get and told the technician to start dialing P2X-555.
As the circle started to spin, General Hammond entered the control room and raised an eyebrow, "Shouldn't you be with your team, Captain?"
Sam didn't bother to explain, just said, "Yes, sir. On my way," and plunged down the stairs. She didn't see Sergeant Siler until the last possible moment. "Oof!"
Siler had just enough time to brace himself, so instead of knocking them both down the steps, Sam cannoned into him and bounced. He reached out to steady her, "Are you all right, Captain?"
"Fine," she snapped, restraining the urge to rub the spot where she'd bruised her hip on his tool belt. "Excuse me, I've got to--"
Siler turned to let her pass, and instead of stepping by, Sam found herself rotating with him, her pocket hooked on the handle of the pliers sticking out of the tool belt. She nearly fell again, and heard a distinct 'riiip' from her pocket as she pulled free. She heard the technician announcing the fifth chevron.
"Carter?!" her CO's familiar bellow come out. "Sometime before we all die of old age would be good." Carter knew that he'd been a little touchy all week, ever since the Tok'ra had taken the Reetu boy, but it was getting a little old.
"Oh, he's in a good mood," she muttered. She ignored Siler's muttered apology and leaped to the bottom of the stairs. "Coming, sir!" She yelled back as she checked her pants. The pocket was torn, but not indecent. She rummaged through her pack to be sure that the tiny sewing/repair kit was there, then yanked it out and stuffed it into her jacket pocket and pulled the jacket low enough to conceal the damage, gritting her teeth as she jarred the stitches in her right hand. She swung the pack back on as the wormhole opened.
O'Neill said, "Ah! Done already?"
Sam muttered something noncommital, then allowed herself a small glare at his back as she pulled on her hat and she and Teal'c followed him up the ramp. 'Serve him right if he gets to P2X-555 and our heads are on backwards,' she thought childishly. She felt the familiar chill and rush of the wormhole, and stepped out into- the Gate room. What? This wasn't the tiny stone dias surrounded by trees that the MALP had showed on P2X-555. For a split second she wondered if they were coming back and she'd just blanked on the whole mission. She followed O'Neill down the ramp, looking around. The room seemed strangely empty and there was no one in the control room. Colonel O'Neill turned around and yelled, "Whoa!" The wormhole shut off and evaporated into mist- taking the stargate with it. Sam's mouth fell open. That was impossible.
"Did you see that?" O'Neill asked, just as the walls started to waver. They seemed to ripple, then the familiar Gate room melted away to reveal a different space, smaller, dingier, older. Only Sam's teammates seemed unaffected, standing in the center of the room looking bewildered.
"Uh, Jack, do you see this?" Sam looked to see Daniel pointing upward. Over them there were what looked like the nozzles of rocket engines, attached to some larger construction that vanished upward into the darkness.
"Captain Carter, where are we?" O'Neill asked.
Sam suppressed the urge to say, 'Sorry sir, I have no idea. I just got here myself.' If she wasn't careful, her CO's flippancy was going to rub off on her. "I don't know, sir. For a minute there, we were back in the Gate room." There was something naggingly familiar about this place, but Sam couldn't put her finger on it.
O'Neill walked to one side of the room, trying to get a better look up and said, "You know, this looks suspiciously like the butt end of a Titan missile."
An intercom blared and Sam jumped. "Standing by for test burn in T-minus 20 seconds." Sam's eyes widened and she exchanged an alarmed look with Daniel and the colonel. They could hear the whine of something starting up.
Teal'c gave the three of them a puzzled look. "What is a 'test burn?' " he asked.
"Just what it sounds like," O'Neill shot back as he and Sam hastily vacated the area under the engines. Not that that was going to help them. They appeared to be in the bottom of a missile silo, and it would immediately fill up with superheated gases and flame as soon as the engine fired. "Any ideas here?" O'Neill demanded as he ran to the bay door and started pounding and yelling "Abort!"
Sam looked desperately for a door control or intercom, while Daniel ran to check the doors on the other side of the room. Teal'c was still on the launch pad, but Sam didn't try to get him to move. They were all toast if they didn't get out of here. The intercom announced, "Fifteen seconds."
O'Neill was pounding on a control box, still yelling for them to abort. The intercom squawked again. "Standing by for ignition." Sam went to see if there was anything on O'Neill's panel that they could affect. Anything that could alert the control room that there were people down here.
The intercom had reached the final countdown. At five seconds, Carter and O'Neill flattened against the wall in the vain hope that their clothes and packs would shield them from the fire to come. There was steam drifting down and they could hear the engines begin to hiss. At three seconds, they heard the zing of a zatnickatel behind them. The intercom finished the countdown, "Two... one... Ignition."
There was complete silence. Sam turned around to see Teal'c standing below the missile with his zat still pointed upward. Daniel was cautiously lifting his head across the room, then he got to his feet and joined them. They all three stared at Teal'c. O'Neill asked, "How'd you know that would work?"
Teal'c replied with his usual superb calm, "I did not."
The bay doors behind O'Neill slid open and three soldiers ran into the room pointing guns at them. 'Just like home,' Sam thought in confusion. Even the uniforms looked familiar. Her father had worn something very like them when she was a child. She suddenly realized why this place was naggingly familiar and gulped. But that would mean-- this was crazy-- if it was true--
"Hands on your heads! Get on your knees!" the soldier screamed at them and SG-1 obeyed. Sam tried to think through the implications of her theory through a haze of disbelief.
The sergeant's chevrons were still quite recognizable. "Who are you and how did you get into this facility?"
"What facility?" Sam was pretty sure O'Neill didn't have to feign confusion.
"Answer the question," the sergeant snapped.
Sam abruptly realized that she couldn't let that happen. "Sir, don't say anything. This is the Gate room."
The sergeant turned his attention to her, "Shut up!"
O'Neill's expression was still bewildered. Sam said urgently, "Sir, we're still in Cheyenne Mountain."
The sergeant said, "The next person who shoots his mouth off gets this, is that clear?" He waved the gun threateningly at them.
The intercom crackled. "Take them to the holding room."
The sergeant glanced up, "Yes, sir."
O'Neill seemed to be regaining his equilibrium, "No, take me to your C.O."
The soldier promptly swung the butt end of the gun at his face, and he went down. Sam lowered her hands to try and catch him, but was immediately forced to raise them again as the sergeant raised the gun in her direction. They were escorted in the direction of the holding room and with every step Sam was more convinced of where they were. The fixtures looked antiquated and Sam tried to guess how far back in time they had traveled. Sixties, sometime, was her best guess, though it could be as early as the fifties, when the silo had been first built, or as late as the mid-seventies.
Outside the holding room, they were forced to shed their packs and equipment vests, and patted down for weapons. Sam watched with some amusement as the pile grew. Two MP-5s, four zats, four sidearms. Teal'c's staff, which they examined suspiciously but did not discover how to activate. Four combat knives. Another smaller knife that O'Neill carried in his boot. When the sergeant found that, he insisted on searching all four of them over again. Sam's small toolkit was taken. Daniel's pockets yielded a small multipurpose tool that Sam had seen him use in the field, his tape recorder, two regulation powerbars and one very non-regulation bag of peanut M&Ms. Daniel watched them confiscated mournfully, then met Sam's amused gaze and mouthed, "I was going to share." The sergeant fortunately missed this, as he prodded the powerbars in their shiny metallic wrappers suspiciously. Then they were shown into the room while their gear was loaded on a wheeled table and taken away.
As soon as they were alone, Sam inspected the cell to verify her first impression that no cameras had been installed here yet. "I don't think we're being monitored, sir."
"What's going on?" O'Neill demanded. "Why didn't you want me to say anything? Isn't this some alternate reality, like the one Daniel wandered into?"
"We're not in an alternate reality, sir," Sam said. "We've traveled in time."
#
Lieutenant George Hammond examined the peculiar assortment of equipment curiously. Some of the items' functions were clear. The semiautomatics were not a model he'd ever seen before, but they were clearly pistols. The automatic rifles were an even less familiar design, but they were also clearly weapons. The radios - he pressed the side button to confirm their function with a squawk of static- were smaller than the new transistor receivers that were just coming out and clearly advanced beyond anything available in the USA. Then there were gadgets the intruders had worn strapped to their wrists, covered with numbered buttons. He had no idea what those were. And those smooth, contoured devices... He picked one up and turned it over in his hand. Those looked more like rayguns from Star Trek than anything he'd ever seen before. They were made of some slick material that wasn't metal, but wasn't anything he was familiar with either. It was surprisingly heavy in his hands.
The Sergeant said, "The Major wants all this stowed for transport, sir."
Hammond held up the strange device, "What is it?"
He replied, "My orders are to forget I ever saw it, sir, so I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
Hammond supposed he couldn't fault the sergeant for that. That the intruders had gotten so far into the mountain without being detected was likely to be a career-ending error for Major Thornbird, and it wasn't going to do anyone else any good either. "Thank you, sergeant."
Hammond examined the guns carefully. There was something weird here. Why wouldn't spies have come in carrying American weapons and wearing Air Force uniforms? And how on Earth had they made it all the way to the bottom of the missile silo without getting caught?
He shook his head. Whatever their mysterious reasons, he wasn't going to know. He packed the strange items into chests, checking that everything was there, then locked the cases. He was commanding the escort squad that was taking the four intruders down to Petersen to be taken wherever they sent spies these days. Once he turned them over with their strange gear, they would be made to disappear. He'd never find out why they were here or see them again.
#
Sam ripped the last of the identification off her jacket and collected Daniel's and Teal'c's patches, feeling thankful that they were velcroed and they hadn't had to try and tear them off with their teeth. She tucked them into her pocket, feeling the forgotten sewing kit still tucked away there. Or cut them with the miniscule and almost useless scissors that came with the kit. It must have been too small for them to notice when they searched her. She sat down at the table opposite Teal'c. O'Neill was sitting on the bottom bunk wincing as Daniel wiped the blood from his brow with a tissue. "Ow! Enough already." Daniel shrugged, threw away the tissue and leaned against the bunkbed.
O'Neill turned to Carter, "Run that by me again?" he asked.
Sam said, "I'm fairly certain that we've traveled back in time, roughly about thirty years. For a second or two, I think we were in both time-frames simultaneously, which is why the Stargate seemed to be there one minute and was gone the next."
"Little bump in the calculations, Captain?" O'Neill seemed annoyed, but then he probably had a stinker of a headache.
Sam decided to cut him some slack, "I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what to say."
"Well, I'll tell you what. Get us back home and we'll say it never happened."
"Or get us back before we left and it won't happen." Sam looked at Daniel, who was looking fascinated. "Well, think about it. We're the first people in human history to go back in time, well, for all we know. If we could figure out how to do this again, just think of what we could do. We could actually visit Babylon, we could - we could see the Great Wall of China being built."
"Or prevent regrettable events in your history from ever occurring," Teal'c suggested.
Sam was horrified, "No! That's exactly what we *can't* do."
"Why not?" the colonel asked.
"Because of the grandfather paradox."
O'Neill gave her a blank look.
"If you went back fifty years and murdered your own grandfather, your own father would have never been born," Sam explained.
" So you're saying that if we change our own past--" Daniel said.
Sam nodded, thankful for Daniel's quick comprehension. " We could change our world in ways that we can't possibly imagine. We might even cease to exist, along with everything and everyone we know."
Teal'c said, "I myself have no part in the history of your world."
Carter was already shaking her head. "But, when they find out about the Goa'uld threat, they might have second thoughts about opening the Stargate in the first place. In which case, we never meet... and you're back to being First Prime of Apophis."
The Jaffa's eyes widened, "I see."
Daniel suggested, "So... we don't tell them about the Goa'uld."
Sam could see what they had to do, but not how they were going to manage it. She shook her head despairingly, "How do we explain the larval Goa'uld that Teal'c is carrying? Our advanced weapons, our GDO's?"
O'Neill asked, "Correct me if I'm wrong, Captain, but - haven't we altered history already just by being here?"
Probably, but there was no way to help that. She replied, "We have to concentrate on damage control. At the very least, destroy our advanced weapons and technology."
"That's gonna be a little tough," O'Neill pointed out.
"We also cannot tell anyone anything," she held up her SG-1 patch, "about who we are or where we're from."
O'Neill frowned, "This is a top secret facility. Anonymity does not go over big here."
Sam was fully aware that that was going to cause them some problems, but even so-- She said seriously, "We cannot tell them we're from the future, sir. Even if it means--" The click of the door lock warned her to break off and they turned to see two armed guards with another unarmed soldier.
The soldier said something to Daniel in another language-- Russian? She wondered, and Daniel answered automatically, "Nyet."
O'Neill winced and said in a weary tone, "Daniel?"
Daniel turned as if they were offworld and he was translating the native lingo, and said, "He just asked if we were Soviet spies. I just..." he stopped short, looking embarrassed.
O'Neill gave him a speaking look and he flushed.
The soldier said to O'Neill, "Come with me."
O'Neill rose readily, "Sure. You bet." He shot Daniel another glance as he walked out the door, "Nyet?"
The soldiers escorted O'Neill away and the door was relocked as Daniel folded his arms across the top bunk and hid his burning face against them. After a couple of moments of silence, Sam said, "Well, look on the bright side, Daniel. At least you've got them looking firmly in the wrong direction."
"That's going to be extremely comforting when we're all shot as spies." Daniel said, his voice muffled.
"Since we have just appeared without explanation in a top secret facility and we cannot tell them who we are or how we got here, that seems likely in any case," Teal'c said gravely.
Daniel raised his head and looked at him. "Thank you, Teal'c, that makes me feel much better."
Teal'c ignored the implied sarcasm and said, "You are welcome, DanielJackson."
"We have to be careful," Sam said. "We can't tell them our names."
Daniel sighed and came to sit with them at the table. "Why not? I mean we're all just kids now. There's no way they can connect us with our other selves."
"But our names could wind up in a security report that could turn up later," Sam said. "And that could change our history."
"Isn't that impossible?" Daniel said. "I mean, if we had been mentioned in a report and someone had found out and say asked us about it, wouldn't we already remember it happening?"
"I don't know," Sam had to admit. "There are a lot of theories, but this is the first I've heard that anyone could test them. Maybe this is how we get alternate universes."
Daniel blinked, "So the aliens who built the quantum mirror might only have alternate realities to visit because we traveled in time?"
"Or someone else has," she gave him bewildered shrug. "I have no idea."