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I MAY BE GONE SOME TIME…
by Bethany and Simon Bleaken
Daniel Jackson sat, studying hard… This is ridiculous! He thought to himself. He had been pouring over this book, found in his recent dig at Keb, guided by the hand of Oma DeSala, for week after week until he could no longer keep track. I could do with a fellow student of history to help me, or something… Probably several aspirin…Jonas Quinn would have been a good choice to help me with this book, maybe then Jack’d be a bit easier to live with these days…The Russians had been pressurising the SGC after they’d given the Cheyenne Mountain Complex their Stargate. They were demanding that a Russian be made a member of SG1. My God! Daniel Jackson had turned a page in his book. Oh, my God!
“Daniel, you must see what you’re saying!” Sam Carter blurted.
“This means that, well, I’m not sure…” Dr. Janet Frasier admitted.
“I’ll contact the base near Murdoch.” General George Hammond added, referring to the Base that had been set up there four years ago, after Jack and Sam’s little vacation at the ice hotel on the Glacier where Earth’s second Stargate had been discovered.
“Damn!” Jack O’Neill cursed.
“What?” Daniel asked.
“Looks like I’ll be going down to the shopping precinct again!” He replied.
“Why?” Daniel inquired.
“He has to buy more video cassettes.” Teal’c explained.
“Again, …why?” Daniel reiterated.
“Because he’s run out of tapes to record The Simpsons.” Major Sam Carter brought an end to the conversation.
“Major Carter, General Hammond!” Syler came running in.
“What is it this time, Syler?” Jack O’Neill was still disgruntled about missing The Simpsons once again.
“I’ve been monitoring our internet connection to the Base near Murdoch…” Syler stated excitedly.
“They’ve found something!” Daniel Jackson jumped up with the momentum of his realisation. He darted for the door. “Where? When?…”
Jack O’Neill exchanged astonished glances with the rest of those still assembled around the Briefing Room table. “What?”
“This is amazing! It’s unbelievable…” Dr. Daniel Jackson bantered, as he flew through the air with the rest of SG1, and Dr. Janet Frasier, in a Galaxy Aircraft.
“Why?” Jack asked, in his usual tone.
“Sir, if they’ve found here what Daniel’s book says they should… It changes the face of the way we thought this world works!” Sam Carter shone with the prospect of discovery.
“And why is that?” Jack was perplexed again.
“Because Dr. Michaels says the ice tells her it’s been guarding its quarry from before time, as we know it, began…” Sam explained patiently, as she had so many, many times before.
“So, the ice speaks now, does it?” Jack asked sarcastically.
“Not quite, sir, I admit, but Dr. Michaels and her team have been testing it extensively.” Sam told the group.
“This means we could be the descendants of The Ancients!” Daniel Jackson said happily.
“Maybe…” Dr. Frasier threw in. “Or that The Ancients left this ice maiden with us, perhaps…”
“Or that a group of The Ancients settled here on Earth.” Daniel began to realise.
“Daniel Jackson’s book tells of a woman frozen in time… Frozen here with the Tauri…” Teal’c mused, almost to himself.
“Where did The Ancients come into this conversation?” Jack asked tiredly.
“Oma DeSala’s race… They’re the Ancients!” Daniel rejoiced.
“How’d ya figure that one?” Jack asked genuinely.
“I was getting nowhere with that book…” Daniel let it be known.
“Then you had an epiphany…?” Jack questioned incredulously.
“Then I turned the page… Simple as that!… And all this kicked off…!” Dr. Jackson beamed.
“And… Why do we think this woman is a member of The Ancients?” Jack asked again.
“Because it says so in the book!” Daniel enthusiastically explained.
“How???” Jack underlined.
“Here… Look! I have copies made of the text.” Daniel pulled out several laminated sheets from his pack.
“Aw, for CRYING out LOUD!!!” Jack mourned. “You brought them with you?”
“See… Here! Read that…” Daniel turned his own copy of the text outward toward his captive audience.
Everyone paused for sometime…
“Oh, brother…!” Jack said distractedly.
“So, this text, and your translation,” Dr. Janet Frasier paused. “says that, well, basically, The Ancients got split into two groups… And one group, Oma DeSala’s,… metamorphosed…” She paused again.
“Or evolved…” Daniel interjected.
“into super natural beings…” Frasier continued. “While the others…”
“Took a bit more time?” Jack tried helping her to help him make sense of the fantastic.
“Yes…” She began again, nodding his way. “And this second group took a member of their clan, freezing her, to ensure their survival somehow… But it says that whoever is Appointed, “ She paused from her glance down at the text, looked at Daniel, “to find this survivor, they will open the door to her reunion with all her people…”
“I got that down…” Jack O’Neill concluded.
Trudging through the blitz and blizzarding snow, to the huge doorway that was the entrance to the four year old ice palace Complex, Jack O’Neill, who had just opened up a frequency to the radio receiver inside the building, alerting the scientists’ of SG1’s imminent arrival, asked another question into the mouthpiece of his radio “Everyone intact after that parachute jump?”
“Uhu…” Daniel replied.
“Sure.” Sam assured.
“Just.” Janet Frasier affirmed.
“Teal’c?” Jack awaited confirmation from the Jaffa warrior.
“I do not see why another form of descent has yet to be invented.” He commented.
“Wow!” Daniel Jackson was astounded.
“Double wow…” Jack agreed dryly.
“When do we thaw her?…” Daniel eagerly asked Michaels, a fellow Doctor, of the medicines and sciences both, one of the Ice Palace’s staff.
“We’re ready to begin!” The young woman, of perhaps a quarter Native American origin, joyously announced.
“The scanners have detected some kind of dormant disease or abnormality…” Dr. Frasier stated, as she sat in conference with all but one of the other members of SG1, with whom she spent more and more time of late. “We had to sedate her to scan her, and now that we have, we are detecting this… oddity.”
“But you say she is healing it herself?” Sam Carter.
“We are detecting that as well, yes…” Dr. Frasier affirmed.
“Do we all have this… bug, or is it just some kind of cold virus…?” Jack asked… He noted the others reacting to his terminology. “The kid’s been on ice long enough to leave anyone wanting a flu jab!”
“I am afraid to say that we will all succumb to it, yes, sir…” Frasier wearily admitted.
“Great!” Jack O’Neill rolled his eyes.
“But if she can heal herself, will she not be able to heal each of you as well?” Teal’c observed.
"If she has the energy…” Daniel Jackson entered the committee gathering. “Irisa is very weak from her hibernation.”
“Irisa?” O’Neill quoted.
“Michaels and I finally agreed on a name…” Daniel recalled.
“What does it mean?” Sam asked interestedly.
“Rainbow… Messenger of the Gods.” Daniel furthered.
“May the Gods smile upon us…” Jack O’Neill thought aloud, as he got up from his chair.
“Hello,” Daniel smiled warmly. “Irisa, we have a favour to ask of you…” He ventured.
The girl nodded.
“I hope that you can understand me…” Daniel started again.
“Yes.” The girl replied, faltering a little.
“Doctor Michaels, do you know which lady she is?” He asked.
Irisa smiled. “Yes.”
“Good. Well, Doctor Michaels is not very well… She has contracted what you have… But we know that you can heal yourself, could you heal her? Heal all of us???” Daniel pleaded their case.
“Yes, Daniel…” Irisa confirmed.
Daniel helped her stand, and took her hand solidly in his own. He guided her to the Infirmary.
Irisa went around the beds of the sick, healing, like some kind of angel. Doctor Michaels, then O’Neill, and each of the others’ whom had not yet come down with the virus. She grew visibly tired. She stumbled. Daniel and Teal’c managed to catch her, an arm each.
“It’s okay now, Irisa… Thank you.” Daniel touched his heart. “Thank you from all of us.” He and Teal’c helped Irisa onto a hospital bed, and allowed her to rest.
Irisa looked at Teal’c. Reached out her hand, palm down, in the healing fashion…
“You do not have to heal me, Irisa,” He paused in his explanation. “My symbiote is my immune system, and I have been partaking in Kel’nor’eem…”
Daniel Jackson fell asleep in his chair, at the bedside of the Ancient girl, Irisa. He felt her squeeze his hand. He looked into her eyes, so peaceful and accepting. She did not say a word, but with those beautiful eyes, she guided his own to the Light that surrounded her.
“Oma DeSala…” Daniel realised with wonder.
“Oh, my God!” Dr. Frasier had by now seen the Light.
“Aww, my lord…!” Jack O’Neill stated from his own sickbed.
"The Ancients have come to collect their lost daughter…” Teal’c felt hushed.
“Look!” Sam Carter said in awe, touching Dr. Michaels on the arm, pointing her to what they could all see.
“Thank you, Daniel, for returning me…” Irisa held his hand for a brief moment.
Daniel Jackson was speechless. He caressed the hand of an angel.
“We are returning someone to you as well…” OmaDeSala’s voice called from the light, as she coalesced before them all. “Dr. Quinn is coming home to you all, and he will take his place among you now. He will remain solely with you all…”
Then, before them, from the light, in a shower akin to the most magical of golden Christmassy glitter or fairy dust, but somehow more real and ethereal than even that special image, Dr. Jonas Quinn materialised.
“Jonas?” Daniel was stunned.
“Hello, Dr. Jackson… Oma DeSala told me that your people need me.” Quinn tried to explain. “When it was clear I would not survive the radiation in the form I now have been restored to, Oma DeSala saved me as she offered to save you…”
“I guess he beats a Russian…” O’Neill quietly piped up from his hospital bed in the corner.
“I must go now, Daniel…” Irisa held a hand up to Daniel’s cheek. “Farewell…” She told him, before she seemed to gather in golden light and warmth, and went to join the Light of Oma DeSala…
THE END