Firstly, I must confess to a small goof, I realized after posting part one that Sam would actually have been promoted to major by the time this is set in '99, but I can't seem to edit part one! All fixed in this bit, though. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for the reviews!
It had taken all of Mac’s willpower to convince Atticus to allow “the ring” to be taken back to the Phoenix Foundation’s research facility no 3 in the Angeles National Forest.
At the time, it had made sense that the strange artifact be studied somewhere before any governments got their hands on it.
Now, as a team of four soldiers stared him down after stepping from its flickering maw, Mac was wondering just what he’d let himself in for.
It looked like the military already had a handle on the thing, maybe they were even here to take it.
But even so, that didn’t explain how they’d gotten here.
Did they really just step out of that thing? For a moment, he was so shocked at what had happened that he actually failed to notice that the lead soldier could have been his twin, save for clothes and a hair style.
“You gotta be kidding me…”
Realization seemed to have dawned on the soldier right about the same time it had Mac.
“MacGyver? Who’s in here with us? I didn’t give security access to anyone else.” Pete Thornton broke the moment with his slightly worried plea. He was searching around the room frantically, trying to sense what his eyes could no longer tell him by sound alone.
Mac moved from the doorway to his friend’s side, knowing what was happening must be spooking his friend, given Pete’s blindness.
“It’s okay, Pete. I think…” He looked at his double, trying to rationalize what was going down, but despite normally being a thinker, he had no explanation save for that he might be dreaming.
And to be fair, that had happened before.
Yeah, cowboys and knights, not doppelgangers dressed in combats!A soldier with glasses that reminded Mac of his alter ego Dexter Fillmore edged from the back of the newly arrived group. He seemed a little uncertain, and couldn’t contain a small sneeze before speaking. “Um…my name is Daniel Jackson, and these are my friends Colonel Jack O’Neill, Major Samantha Carter, and this is um…Teal’c. We err…”
“We’d like to know exactly where the hell we are, and who you guys are?” O’Neill butted in, finishing the sentence for his stammering cohort. His tone of voice said he was annoyed, rather than inquisitive.
“You’re at one of the Phoenix Foundation’s research facilities.” Mac was careful just how much he gave away. “Name’s MacGyver and this is Pete Thornton, Director of Operations around here. Now do you mind telling us how
you got in here, and why?”
Jackson spoke up again. He looked back at the ring. “We came through the stargate…but I’m guessing by the looks on your faces you don’t know it by that name?”
Stargate… MacGyver let the word roll around in his head. He’d realized the symbols on the thing had pertained to constellations, but could this ancient relic actually be a gateway to the heavens?
Had the military already found one and been experimenting with it? Was that how these folks had got here?
“Me and my old college professor found the ring last month, in Giza on a dig. As far as we were aware, nothing like it had been discovered before. We brought it back here to be studied.”
“Sir, there was only one stargate at Giza, and that was the one discovered in 1928…at least…” Jackson was speaking to the Colonel, but his eyes said his mind was elsewhere, deducing, decrypting all the information it was taking in.
It seemed Samantha Carter was already thinking along the same lines. “At least, in our reality,” she offered, looking between MacGyver and O’Neill. “And that would also explain why…”
O’Neill winced. “Don’t say it, Carter.”
“Why you two look do alike,” she finished anyway.
“We might
look alike,” O’Neill countered, “But we don’t share a last name. Face it, he’s not me, and I’m not him, and we’re
not through the looking glass.”
“It was actually an inter-dimensional bridge like the quantum mirror we encountered…” Carter opened her mouth to continue correcting her superior, but Pete Thornton had had enough.
“I have no idea what is going on here, or what you people are talking about, but I think you owe some kind of explanation as to how you got in a secure facility, and more importantly
why?” Pete’s tone said he was not going to take anything less than the truth, and lots of it. “I suggest we all go up to the conference room here and start again, one at a time.”
Mac crossed his arms and looked at his alter ego. “You heard the man.” He waited, expecting a sassy retort from the officer.
Instead, O’Neill nodded. “Explanations are fine by me.” He finally let the weapon he was carrying hang looser in his grasp, relaxing his guard just a little.
Mac liked that. Although he’d have liked it a whole lot better if the group had given up their weapons altogether.
* * * *
The foundation’s facility no 3 was its newest build. So new, it hadn’t even existed when MacGyver had quit working for them. Some areas were actually still not finished; including the conference room they were now all entering.
The long table and two rows of rather comfortable looking leather chairs were all in place, but two of the walls were still bare, and paint cans, brushes, and other decorating items lay on a sheet on the floor in the far corner.
Mac led Pete to the central chair that indicated he was in charge of this little chat, even if he probably didn’t feel it.
Mac instinctively sat next to him on the right, with O’Neill on the left followed by the rest of SG-1.
“Okay, so where do we start?” O’Neill opened up the proceedings, fiddling with a pencil he’d found as he spoke, as if he’d much rather been in the middle of a fire fight than a discussion like this.
Mac noted the officer’s impatience. And yet, he somehow couldn’t help but already like the man - and not just because they looked alike.
This O’Neill appeared to be his opposite in every way. He obviously didn’t mind being around firearms, he didn’t seem to think before he acted, and he definitely had a level of sarcasm that beat Mac’s into the ground.
But, underneath it all, there were alike, and Mac knew it. He’d always been a good judge of people, and he’d already gotten Jack O’Neill pegged.
Then again, if he’d been following Major Carter correctly back at the ring, or stargate, as it appeared to be called, then they should be alike, given that Carter’s suggestion seemed to be that they were the same person, in two different realities.
Did Mac even believe in parallel universes?
He tried to fathom it all, how it could work, how two separate realities might meet, what the repercussions might be…
Daniel Jackson broke his train of thought. “I um, think we should start at the beginning, Jack.”
Pete nodded. “Sounds logical to me…”
Carter cleared her throat. “Well, I guess I’m the most qualified to explain the gate, and what I think has happened.” She looked at O’Neill for clearance, and he nodded.
“The thing you call the ring, is something we call a stargate. It’s an alien technology we discovered in Giza in 1928. Our government, that is the U.S. government, spent time researching the gate, trying to figure out what it was and how to make it work. In 1994, we managed to open the gate and travel to an alien world. In the years since then, we’ve made hundreds of journeys to other planets. Today, we were trying to return from one such planet when we landed here by accident.”
“I can’t believe I spent years in the DXS and never knew about any of this.” Pete looked incredulous. “In fact, I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You’re saying the U.S. military have used one of these things to
visit other planets?”
Mac was way ahead of his old friend. He looked at Carter. “None of this has happened here, has it?”
Carter shook her head. “I don’t think so. You see, when we tried to get home, there was an electrical storm the likes I’ve never seen before. I think there was a power surge that interfered with the wormhole the gate creates from world to world, and I think that wormhole then jumped…here, to a close but alternate reality.”
The room fell silent.
Pete looked like he didn’t believe a word.
MacGyver was pinching his nose with his eyes closed, as if assimilating all the details.
And Jack O’Neill, well Jack was looking like he needed a universal translator to explain what had just been explained.
“S’cuse me,” the officer sighed. “But are you suggesting something like what happened when we got zapped off to that other earth gate in Antarctica?”
“Something like that, Sir, except we didn’t just skip to another earth gate, we skipped to another earth gate in a parallel world.” Sam explained.
“And there’s more,” Daniel Jackson added. “When we left, it was 1999, and if I’m reading that calendar correctly,” he pointed to a chart on the table, “then we’re now in 1994.”
“Oh great, so we’ve jumped across gates, we’ve jumped across universes, and we’ve jumped across time. Anything else you want to throw at me?” O’Neill glanced at Mac. “Actually, don’t answer that.”
Pete couldn’t accept it all. “This is
incredible.” He turned his head to Mac, even though he couldn’t see the trouble shooter’s expression to tell what he was thinking. “MacGyver, is this even possible?”
Mac shrugged. “It’s a little out of my field, Pete, but…I guess. I mean, how else could they have just appeared in the lab? And the constellations on that thing do seem to suggest travel to other planets.” He shot a glance to O’Neill, knowing Pete didn’t know about their other little revelation because he couldn’t see their faces.
Could we be related? Could I actually be O’Neill in another reality? And how? This was one problem that couldn’t be solved with a penknife and duct tape.
O’Neill posed the question for him. “Carter, if you and Daniel are right, and this is some kinda crazy quantum mirror thing all over again, then you’re saying he’s me, and I’m him?” The officer cringed as he said the words. “I mean, c’mon, we don’t even share a name!”
Carter shrugged. “I can’t explain that, Sir, but you’re too much alike for this to be a coincidence.”
O’Neill wasn’t convinced. “Have you seen that shirt? And
the mullet?”
Mac smiled, this Jack character was actually quite funny, and he did have to agree that while they looked alike, they didn’t share a family name. “And I don’t really do guns,” he added, expecting it to horrify the officer more.
It did.
Jack groaned. “He can’t be me, we don’t share anything, not one dang thing.”
“I hope you’re right, Sir,” Carter looked gravely serious. “Because there’s something else.”
“Now
what?” Both Jack and MacGyver chimed at the same time.
“If this really is another reality, and you two really are versions of the same person, then we could be looking at temporal entropic cascade failure.”
“Gesundheit!” Jack snarked, meaning he hadn’t a clue what the scientist had just said.
“It basically means that you can’t have two versions of the same person in one reality.” Carter simplified.
“Or else one of us gets sick?” Jack asked, his brow furrowing.
“Specifically you, Sir, as you’re the version that doesn’t belong here. If you stay too long, you could die.”
“How long?”
Carter shrugged. “No one knows for sure. The effects are determined by just how close the two realities are. But I’d say two, maybe three days tops going from experience.”
Silence fell on the room.
Eventually, Pete spoke up. “Listen, I can’t even begin to understand half of what’s been discussed here. But, if you’re telling the truth, that means you’re a U.S. military unit that needs help, and I’m not about to deny that help. You have the full means of the Phoenix Foundation at your disposal to get you home.”
Jack shook his head. “No disrespect, but it took the air force years to fathom out the gate and to get it to work. You guys don’t have that kind of manpower and resources, and we only have what, three days?”
“Maybe we should call in the military from this universe?” Sam agreed.
Mac wasn’t so sure. “Look guys, I don’t know about your world, but governments around here tend to want to grab new technologies and exploit them. Especially when they find its
alien technology. If we involve the military and tell them what this thing is, they’re gonna be more interested in its potential than getting you home.”
Jack rubbed at his brow as if he was getting a headache. “I hate to say it, but he’s right. We all know what the government was like with the gate, and when we first brought Teal’c back with us. They didn’t care about rights, or doing the right thing, just what worked for them.”
“So where does that leave us?” Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose as if it would give him extra wisdom, but his expression suggested he wasn’t feeling very wise at that point.
“Let the foundation help,” Pete offered again.
“And what exactly do you have that can get us through the gate in just three days? Your gate isn’t even set up, and we don’t even know what caused the malfunction for sure.” Jack stood up and walked over to the only window in the room, his hands behind his back officer style.
He pulled off his green ball cap and ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
“We have MacGyver,” Pete answered somewhat proudly. “And believe me, if anyone can jury rig that thing to work and figure out how to get you back home, he can.”
O’Neill spun back around and stared at his double.
Everyone in the room fell silent again, waiting and wondering what decision the officer would make.
After a moment, he smirked. “Okay, I’ll buy it. But can he ditch the flower power shirt? That thing is giving me a headache…”
A huge unspoken sense of relief seemed to wash across the room, and everyone in the group relaxed just a little.
All except Teal’c, who seemed perplexed by Jack’s request. “I see nothing wrong with the shirt. I would be honoured to wear such a garment,” he mumbled somberly.
* * * *
MacGyver wasn’t sure what he’d let himself in for. It was all well and good Pete singing his praises, but astrophysics wasn’t exactly one of his specialities, and neither was alien technology.
So far, he’d spent forty minutes with Daniel and Major Carter just trying to get to grips with how the gate worked, and if they could dial it from this end.
It seemed Mac’s universe did have one advantage over its counterpart, and that was that their gate had a DHD. That meant they wouldn’t need to jury rig one via a computer system or try and dial the thing manually.
“So, you guys can just dial home once we figure out how to get enough power to this thing?” Mac asked, hoping the answer was yes.
It wasn’t.
Carter shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that. We have to recreate the storm exactly to try and cause the inter-dimensional bridge again. And we can’t just dial home, either. Both your gate and ours share the same address.”
“It would be like dialing your own phone number,” Daniel pointed out from a previous experience. “So, we’d need to dial a different world, then dial home from there. Except, I’m not even sure we could recreate the storm on another world and that scenario work, either…”
“How about simply reversing the trip you made here?” MacGyver theorized. “We recreate the storm conditions, reverse the co ordinates back to the planet and universe you came from, then you could dial home from there.”
“Except…” Jack had been listening and had now apparently decided he had some input. And it wasn’t good. “We can’t go back there because there’s a whole army of Jaffa waiting to kick out butts.”
Mac looked surprised and confused. “Jaffa?”
“Oops,” Jack grimaced. “I guess we accidentally forgot to mention that there are bad guys called Goa’uld on some of the planets we visit, and their soldiers are called Jaffa. To cut a long and very fun story short, our world has enemies you guys haven’t met yet.”
“So if you go back where you came from, you’d be killed, and if we recreate the storm here and send you to another planet first, there’s a good chance the inter-dimensional shift won’t happen and you’d be stuck in this reality, just on another planet?” Mac put a hand to his head. “Sheesh, and I thought I was having a bad day.”
Sam licked her lips. “Okay, so how about we focus on one problem at a time?” She looked at Mac. “If you can get the gate to full power, Daniel and I can be working on how to copy the storm’s effects exactly. If we can get that far, then we can worry about how we’re going to proceed next.”
“Sounds good. I’ll need to make some calls to get the amount of power we’re going to need redirected to the labs. Pete, you up for giving me a hand with the phone?”
Pete nodded. “You bet.”
“Um, there’s just one thing?” Daniel glanced at Sam over his glasses and then the rest of the group. “Something I noticed when I was trying to dial out on PX97-554 was that the DHD had this strange blue glow dancing over the symbols, like um…some kind of weird charge. How are we even going to begin to recreate that, when we don’t know what it was? How many storms do we know that create cobalt blue energy like that?”
Mac wasn’t about to give in at the first hurdle. “We search for types of energy that give off a blue aura?”
“Oh joy, Google to the rescue.” Jack was playing with the pencil again, suggesting the tech talk was getting to him.
Mac was just as confused. “Google?”
“I don’t think it actually exists yet, Jack…” Sam intervened.
Jack rolled his eyes and opened his mouth, obviously intent on a sarcastic reply. Instead, he snapped his mouth shut again as the room began to suddenly shake. He looked pointedly at MacGyver. “You guys expecting an earthquake?”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Sir, the gate in this reality has no dampers to stop the vibrations when it opens!”
“Aww crap!” Jack was on his feet in a second and heading for the door, rifle slung ready over his shoulder. Cap back firmly on his head.
Mac was close behind as were the rest of SG-1.
As they reached the stairs that overlooked the lab, they all stopped dead.
The stargate had three chevrons already locked into place, with more following as they watched, transfixed.
Beneath them, the stairs moved with the grumbling of the huge circle.
“This gate doesn’t have an iris!” Jack’s face contorted as he realized what was happening.
“Those Jaffa you mentioned, they’re coming through, right?” Mac scowled. “Can’t we shut it down from this side?”
Daniel shook his head. “Not once a wormhole has been established their end.”
Jack checked the clip in his rifle, then checked his sidearm. “Time for plan B, kids. We might not belong in this reality, but we’re sure gonna try and defend it.” He looked at Daniel and Carter. “You guys take the left, Teal’c and me will take the right.”
“But, Sir, our weapons are useless against their new cloaks,” Carter looked helplessly on as the gate locked and the wormhole burst from the giant ring’s center.
Jack nodded. “I know that, but you got any better ideas?” He flicked off his safety and jogged down the remaining steps with Teal’c following in his wake.
There were several crates with other artifacts from the dig in, and O’Neill took position behind the two largest.
Mac watched from the stairs for a second, taking note of who was positioned where in relation to the gate, and the bad guys.
His eyes narrowed and he slid lithely down the rest of the steps.
Jack noticed. “Are you nuts?” He took out his forty-five and offered it up. “Here at least you can feel like you’re defending yourself.”
“I won’t need it.” Mac shook his head and continued dashing across the lab until he vanished behind more crates.
O’Neill was tempted to comment, but his train of thought was suddenly taken by the swishing sound of three figures walking through the ebbing wormhole.
It was the lead Jaffa and two of his cohorts.
For the moment, they weren’t invisible, but the two minions still wore their headgear.
Around them, the strange blue static charge flickered and sparked as they entered from the other reality.
The first prime looked around, apparently intrigued that he wasn’t in Stargate command.
He raised a hand and his companions began to sweep the room.
It was only a matter of time before SG-1 was discovered.
And then, then all hell broke loose.
O’Neill moved first, stepping from behind his cover just far enough to let off a burst of shells from his weapon. They bounced helplessly off the cloaks of his enemy, but in turn kept the Jaffa distracted enough not to notice where MacGyver was.
Teal’c joined in the fray, trying his hand with his staff weapon, but that too simply made an aura appear around the Jaffa as the energy dissipated.
The Jaffa, in turn, returned fire from their improved staffs, causing sections of the phoenix lab’s walls to disintegrate into powder.
Another blast hit home close to the crate Carter was using to dodge behind, and that too was turned to blackened hot ash.
The major dived for new cover and narrowly missed incoming from another shot.
Daniel grabbed her by the utility vest and yanked her to safety just as the wall next to them exploded in a pile of rubble, taking out the foundation’s computer network with it.
“Are they trying to blast there way out?” Daniel asked the major as she emptied a clip at the advancing Jaffa.
“I don’t know,” she offered breathlessly. “Maybe…”
A new noise broke any further conjecture.
It even stopped the Jaffa and their leader in their tracks.
It was a metallic screeching like fingernails down a blackboard, and it was coming from the far lab wall – the wall that in fact was more of a gigantic door similar to what you’d find on an aircraft hanger or movie studio.
And this door was slowly, grudgingly opening.
The first prime’s eyes locked on to the new exit, and he appeared to survey the outside world, deciding if he should take his men straight out, or bother to exterminate O’Neill and his crew first.
After a second, he seemingly chose the former.
With one word and a hand gesture, the two Jaffa suddenly faded, their forms shimmering and fluctuating for just a heartbeat before melting into nothing at all as their cloaks invisibility option became active and they exited the lab.
The lead Jaffa looked back at SG-1, smirked, then activated his own cloak, disappearing into the Angeles forest sun as bullets bounced off of him and landed spent on the ground.
O’Neill appeared from his cover, his annoyed face returning with a vengeance. “Well, that went well.” He sighed. “Now they’re out in the open and have access to this reality. And it won’t know what’s hit it.”
MacGyver appeared from nowhere. “They won’t get the chance,” he intervened. “We can stop them before they reach any sign of civilization.”
Jack grimaced. “Ya think? ‘Cause from where I was just standing, we can’t stop them doing squat, and now you’ve let them out the building!”
“Um…I think they would have blasted their way out pretty quickly, Jack.” Daniel offered as he stowed his sidearm.
“And killed you along with any chance this reality has,” Mac concluded. “By letting them out, I diffused the situation and we all live to fight another day. I know this area like the back of my hand; I used to take survival classes for the foundation here. I can find them again, trust me.”
Jack scowled. “
Fight another day?” He asked somewhat sarcastically. “You won’t even use a gun to defend yourself, how the heck are we going to stop three super Jaffa with you leading us into the woods?”
Mac ignored the jibe and started jogging back up the now crumbling staircase. “Quickly, I hope,” he answered. “I have a hockey game to watch later…” And with that he vanished into the upper corridor near the conference room.
Jack’s mouth opened, but he apparently had no suitable retort. He turned, focusing on the rest of SG-1. “Okay, if we’re doing this, I’ll take Teal’c with me and…uh,
him. Major Carter, you and Daniel stay here and focus on getting us home. If we’re not back in twenty-four hours, and you can get outta here, go. If not, destroy the gate so no more of those things can get through.”
Carter nodded. “Yes, Sir but…”
“No buts.”
Mac reappeared as the Colonel finished giving his orders. He had a backpack in his right hand, and a can of paint in the other. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he began storing the can in the pack, along with another he’d apparently already secured.
“Great,” Jack teased. “We’re going to decorate them to death.”
Mac smirked, almost cryptically. “Something like that,” he teased back. “But for now, let’s get on their trail.” He grabbed his brown leather jacket from where it amazingly still dangled on a hook, despite all the carnage that had gone down. And then pulled the pack over his shoulders and headed for the open hanger door.
Jack and Teal’c followed, only pausing, weapons quickly drawn into a tactical pose when a figure appeared outside the exit.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” The man wore a security uniform and looked positively terrified.
Mac waved for O’Neill and Teal’c to stand down. “Relax, it’s just Eric. He’s gatehouse security at weekends.”
Eric looked thankful that he hadn’t been shot and nodded towards what was left of his booth. “You won’t believe what just happened, Sir. I’m afraid there isn’t much left of the gatehouse, or any of the cars in the lot. I tried to call for the police, anybody, but they seem to have taken out the phone lines too.”
“Jeez, there goes calling the cavalry then.” Jack inhaled as if he might actually have considered it.
Mac nodded to Eric. “It’s alright, we know what’s happening. Just go inside and look after Pete Thornton. He’s in the conference room.”
Eric tipped his cap, apparently appreciating being sent out of the way. Before anyone could say more, he’d scooted off at breakneck speed.
“Okay, what say we get moving?” Mac raised a brow at his companions, and then turned, already making for the edge of the nearby trees.
“I’d feel a whole lot better if we actually had a plan before we engage the enemy.” Jack pointed out as he followed, with Teal’c bringing up the rear.
Mac smiled as he headed deeper into the foliage, stopping ever minute or so to track their invisible foe. “Who says I don’t..?” He muttered softly.
TBC…
