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Distance Learning for fun and profit...

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Kiche said:
Second! Sounds freaking hilarious!
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Hilarious for us, Terrifying for everyone else. From MPPI's random snippet thread "She Summons Sea Things by the Sea Shore"

"One version of her triggered with this stupid power. She could manifest and control exactly four hundred and seventy-three grams of confetti over an area of approximately one kilometer." He chuckled for a second or two. "What a pointless ability, right?" Opening his eyes he looked darkly at them. "You know what they called her less than a year later?"

Ethan shrugged, shaking his head.

"God-Empress Papercut. She took over the city in two months. New England in only three more. The entire fucking country in another two. By the time I turned up, she ran the world." He shivered. "You don't want to know what she did to people who went up against her."
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Omake - Tying off loose ends...
  • Sidestory
    • After a number of requests, I decided I might as well tie this one off with a second part... :) After this, back to the main story, when I get a moment.​

    Danny looked fondly at his daughter's sleeping form, then quietly pulled the door to her room shut. He walked into the living area assigned to them, half a mile underground, and dropped into one of the comfortable chairs with a sigh. Putting his hands on his face and pushing his glasses up to his forehead in the same motion he leaned his head back and gently massaged his eyelids, feeling nearly as tired as the young woman next door was.

    Eventually he dropped his hands and adjusted his glasses, seeing Brendan and Angus looking at him sympathetically from the other side of the room where they'd been waiting. Both men had cups of coffee in hand and there were the remains of a meal from the base commissary on the low table between them.

    "How are you doing, Danny?" Brendan asked quietly.

    "Better. A lot better, really. Having her back safely..." He stopped with a small shudder, then went on, "Not knowing whether she was alive or dead was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Worse than Annette in a way."

    "Understandable," Angus nodded, leaning forward and putting his cup on the table. "I'd feel the same way. Any parent would. She's not my daughter but it was very difficult for me as well."

    "As it was for me," Brendan added. "I like her very much, leaving aside official concerns entirely. Trust me, there are questions being asked, and a lot of them. This should never have happened. It won't happen again."

    "No, it won't," Danny said in a hard voice. "Because Taylor will fix it."

    The other two smiled a little. "I suspect that's entirely true," Angus chuckled.

    "How is she?" Brendan asked, glancing at the hallway to the sleeping area in the self-contained VIP quarters.

    "Exhausted. Absolutely on her last legs, I think. She was running on pure adrenaline by the time she got back as far as I can see." Danny sighed once more, shaking his head. "She covered it well, but I know Taylor. She was very upset underneath. Not surprising, really. A sixteen year old girl, even one as extraordinary as my daughter, going through that… It's not something you can just ignore."

    "She did a remarkable job even for her," Angus noted with a smile. "I suspect she knows a lot more about a number of fields we don't even have a term for that we realize, based on what she said before she fell over."

    "The girl's a smart one, alright," Brendan nodded. Danny smiled proudly for a moment.

    "Her mother would have been so pleased," he murmured, the smile bittersweet. No one said anything for a few seconds, then he went on, "I don't think you'll get anything out of her for at least twelve hours. She really needs to sleep it off, and then when she's recovered, I'll see if she's in the right mindset for a debriefing. That'll only happen when she agrees." He looked at Brendan, who nodded once.

    "Understood. No one is going to pressure her. Word right from the top. We can wait to find out the exact circumstances of what happened. It's not critical right now although there are a lot of people who are very curious, of course."

    "Yeah, that much doesn't surprise me," Danny laughed. Growing serious again, he asked, "Do we know who it was yet who attacked? And why?"

    "It was CUI forces, although they're denying it and there's enough ambiguity to make it hard to definitively prove beyond doubt," Brendan replied, scowling. "We know it was them, and they know we know, but they used mercenaries from all over the world through a mass of cutouts that's going to be hell to backtrack to the original person who set it all up. Must have been working on it for months. The weapons, ships, and aircraft were all fairly old models that had been sold by major powers over the last twenty years, passed through multiple hands, and finally refurbished to modern specification somewhere we can't yet trace. We only got a handful of survivors since our response was… vigorous… and they either don't know anything or are unable to tell us what they do know. But there are a lot of people looking very hard indeed and sooner or later we'll track down the perpetrators."

    "Good." Danny's face was emotionless. "Make them pay."

    "Oh, they will, trust me on that."

    "Luckily no one on our side got more than minor injuries," Angus put in after a few seconds. Danny looked over at him. "Some broken limbs, minor cuts and bruises, the usual sort of thing caused by a few hundred people running for their lives. All the evacuation drills paid off handsomely. But the facility has quite a few damaged buildings, both from direct shelling and shrapnel, two rounds missed and landed in the city itself, badly injuring half a dozen pedestrians, and there's millions of dollars worth of damage. Quite a lot of which was from our aircraft going supersonic at low altitude."

    He smiled wryly. "Director Piggot is apparently rather upset. So is the Mayor. Not, it has to be said, with us in either case, not really. They're both livid about whoever it was and would happily join forces to cause significant problems for the perpetrators."

    "We can easily afford to pay for the damage," Danny started, only to have Brendan hold up a hand.

    "It's taken care of, Danny. Our budget is… well, it's the US GDP. The government will pay to fix anything that got damaged. We're already rebuilding the DWU facility, adding more security, and have arranged to deal with the city and the public. Gravtec itself is undamaged, the shear fields protected it completely as designed, so we're probably going to expand deployment of the system to the entire site. It was a hell of a test under fire, if nothing else." He grinned briefly as the other two chuckled.

    "Roy will be pleased," Danny commented.

    "Apparently he calmed down pretty fast when our people told him," Brendan agreed.

    "It could have been a lot worse." Danny looked at the other two after reaching out and pouring himself the last of the coffee, then settling back. He felt sick thinking about how much worse it could have been. "What were they trying to do?"

    "We're not entirely certain," Brendan shrugged. "Our best guess at the moment is simply to deny us use of Gravtec by destroying the entire site. We know that some information has leaked, that sort of thing is inevitable no matter how secure your systems are, especially these days, but it's very unlikely anyone knows very much about the truth outside a tiny number of people on our side. If it turns out that any of them passed on information, well, that will be found out sooner or later and they'll regret it. For some time."

    "Is Taylor safe?" he asked, glancing back at the corridor to her room.

    "As safe as we can possibly arrange, yes," Brendan replied, following his eyes then looking back at him. "No one can guarantee perfect security, you know that as well as I do, but we're near enough certain that no one who didn't already know about her now does. Security will be stepped up even so. Just in case."

    "Brockton Bay must be at least fifty percent by weight secret agents by now," Angus snickered. The other two grinned.

    "Probably," Brendan agreed. "You wouldn't believe some of the people involved in keeping her, and all of the rest of you, safe."

    "Something I'm daily thankful for," Danny replied, putting his empty cup down and clasping his hands over his knee as he leaned back. "I couldn't handle losing her."

    "There are an awful lot of people making sure that never happens, Danny," Brendan assured him. "And Taylor herself is no pushover. Even without Parahuman powers. I strongly suspect anyone who tried anything with her might well find out they'd bitten off a lot more than they expected. Recent events would tend to reinforce that idea..."

    "She does carry a lot of odds and ends around with her these days and I have absolutely no idea what most of it does," Angus noted. "I expect she'll tell us when she's finished. That seems to be what normally happens."

    "True enough," Brendan smiled. "Her backpack alone probably contains the next sixty years of progress. On top of the hundred years or so she's already given us."

    Danny yawned widely, then blinked. Angus looked at his watch. "Go to bed, Danny, you've been up for thirty six hours or so by now and it's two AM. Get some sleep, and we'll pick this up tomorrow." He got up, as did Brendan.

    "Yeah, not a bad idea," Danny replied following another jaw-cracking yawn. The relaxing of the massive tension he'd been under for the last day was making him suddenly feel incredibly tired. Heaving himself out of the chair, he looked at the table, shook his head, and watched as the other two let themselves out. "Good night," he called, getting a wave back from the two men. As the door closed behind Brendan he saw the two guards outside it, standing ready in case the worst happened.

    Going into the small kitchen he drank a glass of water, then headed to his own room, pausing outside Taylor's and listening for a moment. He heard soft breathing, smiled, and disappeared into his bedroom, falling asleep the moment he pulled the covers up.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    "Shall we begin?" General Maynard, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, looked around the Pentagon meeting room. Quite a few people were present, some of them those Jack knew were for the Stargate program, some who were neutral, and a few who were vehemently against it for various reasons.

    And there were some, like Colonel Maybourne, who he didn't trust further than he could throw them.

    Looking directly at the other man, Jack watched his tiny smirk in response. He glowered a little and the smirk vanished, Maybourne paling just a touch. Satisfied, he went back to listening to Maynard, glancing at his team members, along with George, who were sitting in a line next to him. They'd all been called in for this meeting, even Teal'c, and Jack had a feeling that it was going to get a bit complex by the time everyone ran out of things to complain about.

    He resisted the urge to shake his head. None of them had been there, very few of them knew just how weird the Stargate work got on a regular basis, and pretty much all of them would second guess everything that had happened. And no doubt there would be a lot of comments that he'd have to try very hard not to be sarcastic about.

    George tended to sigh when he did that.

    Which was one of the reasons he did it, of course, but he still didn't want to really upset his friend and superior. Although he had no trouble upsetting Maybourne. Or Kinsey. In the case of the latter it was a positive bonus in his opinion. Kinsey deserved to be upset as much as could possibly be arranged…

    He had a feeling that man was going to be a big problem one day.

    The slight background chatter among some of the participants, mostly carried out in a whisper, died away as General Maynard looked around, then down at the documents in front of him. He had a laptop to one side, as did most of the people present. Raising his eyes once more, he said, "The situation is as follows. Ten days ago an apparent Foothold scenario occurred in Stargate Command..."

    "Again," Kinsey said in a low voice, making most of those present glare at him. He looked around. "What? It's true, they make a habit of..."

    "Senator Kinsey," Maynard said in a warning tone. "You are present as an observer for reasons that I personally disagree with and have no authority here. As such, please observe quietly. If your input is required it will be asked for."

    The senator shut up and looked annoyed, which immediately cheered Jack up. He got the distinct impression it had a similar effect on almost everyone else in the room.

    "As I was saying," Maynard picked up once it was clear the other man was now silent, "An apparent Foothold scenario occurred. One individual was discovered, eventually, to be holed up in a storage room near the bottom of the Cheyenne Mountain complex. This person identified herself as Taylor Hebert, and claimed to be sixteen years old. She was apparently human although there is some dispute over this fact. By the time she was located, she'd been on site for an estimated twenty plus hours, most of that time entirely unobserved. No one is certain how she arrived, or how she managed to move about the facility without tripping any alarms or being spotted by any personnel."

    He paused to take a sip of water from the glass in front of him as various people exchanged glances, quite a few of them not knowing most of this.

    "During her time in the facility she appeared to have successfully penetrated and diverted every security method present, which include but are not limited to cameras, thermal sensors, pressure pads, encrypted electronic locks, high security computer networks, physical locks of a number of types, and several special sensors unique to the Stargate site. Despite the efforts of the staff she was ultimately only discovered due to an unexpected small power drain, caused by the lights in the store room, which was found through the efforts of Captain Samantha Carter."

    He nodded to Carter, who nodded back.

    "A security response led by Colonel Jack O'Neill and his team successfully breached the room, which had been locked and the door mechanism disabled from the inside, but then discovered that the..." He paused, thought, and continued, "...young lady had access to a force field generator which she had blockaded the room with some distance inside the door. This proved sufficient to repel a shot from a Gou'ald zat'nik'tel energy weapon, a round from a 5.7mm handgun, and a point blank blast from a Jaffa staff weapon, with no visible effect other than a momentary glow."

    Once again, he paused as the assembled group looked at each other.

    "The force field mechanism was in fact one of the items she had acquired during a raid on the high security R and D lab, in which recovered alien technology is examined and assessed for practical utility, before being passed on to other agencies. I will note that the scientific team who had been studying the device for nearly two weeks following its discovery by one of the field teams had not managed to even conclude that it was a force field generator, despite significant expertise in alien technology. Moreover it was apparently not in a functional state in any case. The young woman not only repaired it to full operation using tools and parts she either had on her person or removed from the lab, but claimed to have improved and optimized the design in the process."

    Maynard stopped and waited for the slight buzz of conversation to die away, taking a few more sips of water. When it was quiet again, he continued, "She also produced a full technical description of what the device was, how it functioned, what had been wrong with it, and how she'd altered it, along with schematics of the unit. Apparently hand drawn on the spot. Having done this, she proceeded to spend no more than a few hours building, from scratch and using parts from some of the other items she'd made off with as well as standard components, a very small but functional wormhole generator. In other words, she built a stargate."

    He looked around the room as everyone stared at him, aside from the SG people. Even Kinsey seemed lost for words.

    "This young woman build, out of spare parts, a working stargate. In at most eighteen hours."

    Turning the page in front of him, he looked down, then up again. "We'll come back to that and the report of Captain Carter and her people later. It should also be noted that, as apparently a side effect of her construction, she also created a working method to recharge, or reset, the device known as a Zero Point Module. For those unfamiliar with the term, again we'll come back to it later. She used it as a power source for her miniature gate unit."

    Jack looked at Maybourne, who'd gone pale again. Almost amused he returned his attention to the General.

    "When Miss Hebert was discovered, she was waiting for her own computer to finish calculations that she required to return to her home. She had a brief but non-hostile conversation with both SG-1 and General George Hammond, in which she apologized for her presence, claiming it was entirely accidental, noted that she'd been forced to borrow a number of things from the high security lab to construct a method to go home, and in payment for the inconvenience would leave documentation behind on how the ZPM recharging device as well as the force field unit worked, and information on how she'd beaten the various security methods. Her overall demeanor was described by the witnesses as friendly and cheerful although all of them also noted that she appeared to be very tired and close to collapse from stress."

    He shook his head a little wonderingly. "If she is indeed only sixteen, that's not entirely unexpected," he added somewhat less formally.

    In Jack's view, the girl had been on her last legs, when he'd gone over the encounter afterwards. She'd projected an air of confidence and clearly did know exactly what she was doing, but he'd bet his last year's salary she'd been right on the point of falling over, just as Maynard had stated. It made him rather uncomfortable, seeing someone so young like that. At the time he'd been operating on the basis of dealing with a severe and unexpected security threat but now he found himself rather more sympathetic to her than he'd originally been.

    After all, in her position, what real choice had she had other than what she'd done? God knew he and his own people had done things considerably more invasive when in a tight spot. It was practically their reason for existing in some ways. Unlike them, she hadn't damaged anything and had given far more back than she'd taken.

    Sam was still in shock at the contents of those notes…

    "In the end the young woman finished her calculations, successfully activated the wormhole generator, and contacted her own people. A few minutes later she vanished in an apparent teleport, presumably through the small gate. Subsequently the device partially self-destructed, burning out all the processing hardware and wiping any trace of coordinates or programming. The ZPM reverted to standby, and examination showed it was approximately at fifty percent of total capacity. The recharging unit shut down in the process but was undamaged. A few minutes later the force field generator also turned itself off exactly as she'd said would happen and the base personnel were able to access the room."

    He turned the page again. The room was entirely silent, to the point Jack could hear the paper rustle.

    "Captain Carter collected the documentation and remaining hardware for examination. A full security sweep of the room showed that Miss Hebert had tapped into the base computer network and camera system and had also built a monitoring station for the latter from spare computer parts found in the store room, presumably to keep watch on our people's movements for her own security. She claimed to have broken into the base records at some point during all this and apparently accessed an unknown number of documents and reports in the process." He almost smiled for a second. "By her own account she found the field team reports entertaining."

    Shaking his head a little, he carried on, "A bucket containing human waste was also discovered in one corner of the room, having been used as an expedient relief station. Analysis of the contents and genetic sequencing of DNA samples found show that she was indeed human, with minor genetic drift within the margin of error in most cases. No sign of the Ancient gene was noted. The conclusion of the biologists is that she was fully human and from a variant universe to ours, as she had claimed."

    Closing that folder and opening another one, he scanned the first page, then looked up. "Following this, a very thorough inspection of the entire facility was undertaken, which stopped operations for four days. Ultimately her presumed point of arrival was narrowed down to one of the main air induction vents four floors above the stargate room, where the indications are that she essentially appeared out of thin air based on the dust and trace indicators. She then proceeded to move through the base in the positive pressure ventilation ducting, unseen and unheard for reasons not understood."

    He closed the second folder and folded his hands in front of him. "This event is entirely unlike any Foothold situation previously experienced, or considered. A non-hostile, highly technologically able visitor accidentally invaded one of, if not the, most secure locations on the planet, spent some time wandering around unchallenged, accessed anything she wanted to without trouble, and then… went home. Doing no damage and leaving documentation of incalculable value behind apparently due to feeling it was the polite thing to do." Scanning their faces, he shook his head. "This is unprecedented and leaves us with many questions. Hopefully we can ask some of them today and come up with some answers."

    "What we should be doing is closing the entire project down before something really goes wrong," Kinsey immediately said, scowling. "This is typical of the sort of thing that constantly goes on with those people! What next? Alien demons or something? We can't just keep playing with fire like this..."

    "Senator," Maynard said severely. "You have been warned once. Please refrain from yet again pushing that particular line of thought. We're all well aware of your concerns but this is neither the time or place to air them."

    "On the contrary I think it's exactly the time and place," Kinsey snapped.

    Jack looked at Hammond, then sighed. George shrugged very slightly.

    "No, it isn't, we have more important things to go over right now than that, Senator," Maynard replied in an even but clearly not happy voice. "If you can't remain civil I'll have you removed."

    The other man subsided but looked very annoyed.

    After decorum had been reestablished, Maynard waited to see if Kinsey would go off again, then appearing mildly relieved turned back to the room at large. "Captain Carter. As our lead expert in alien technology, perhaps you could begin with your findings having studied the recovered materials?"

    Sam sat to attention alertly, opening her laptop and glancing at it. "Of course, sir." She cleared her throat.

    "The notebook that Taylor Hebert left us is the single most important scientific document ever seen," she said after a few seconds.

    The blonde woman paused, and after a few more moments, Maynard said, "Perhaps you could expand on that?"

    "Sorry, sir. I'm still trying to come to grips with it..." She shook her head. "I hold by that statement. Miss Hebert left us equations, theoretical work, examples, diagrams, and notes that not only explain several items of alien technology to a level that their own creators might not know, as astounding as that is, but also outline the essential work behind a unified field theory, the holy grail of physics." Carter swallowed dryly. "With just that one notebook, we can crack antigravity, force fields, energy weapons, and half a dozen other immediately useful technologies within a decade. The ZPM recharging device draws its energy from, as far as I can tell, what could be described as the quantum foam underlying the structure of the universe itself. It's theoretically an unlimited source of energy, making fusion entirely redundant."

    No one said a word.

    She went on, "As far as I'm able to determine she used the ZPM as a capacitor to generate an enormous pulse of energy to create the wormhole her device used to contact her own people. The power source the device used is not something she made at the time, it's clearly a mass produced, or at least non-prototype, hardware assembly that she must have had with her when she arrived. The technology used is recognizably similar to what we use but decades more advanced, well past anything we're capable of directly duplicating. However the operation of the unit is something we can, eventually, copy. Perhaps a few years, less if we put enough resources into it."

    "I see, I think," Maynard finally replied. Several of the others were holding urgent conversations in whispers by now. "What of the wormhole device?"

    "The microgate is mostly intact, but the driving software and computer elements are completely destroyed," Sam responded. "I'm fairly sure we can use it as a template to construct a larger version, something closer to an existing gate, although again we will have to put in a lot of work on the software and control side of things. Even with what we have, though, it's definitely more efficient than the Ancient design, and bypasses a number of shortcomings in the normal gates." She shook her head wonderingly. "I have no idea how she worked it all out that fast but she pulled off a miracle. Several of them."

    "How large could you build a gate based on this technology?" Maybourne asked. She looked at him, visibly to Jack hiding her distaste for the man, and answered professionally, "I believe we could make a gate considerably larger than the standard variant, given time and funding. Perhaps as much as five or six times the size."

    Maybourne nodded thoughtfully, making Jack watch him with suspicion. He was up to something, but then he was always up to something.

    "Thank you, Captain," the man replied, making some notes on a pad in front of him.

    Turning back to Maynard, Carter added, "While technically this was a Foothold situation, sir, I personally believe that Miss Hebert did us a favor of a magnitude it's difficult to state. I would love to talk to her. She's..." His friend and colleague shrugged. "Brilliant beyond words."

    "I see," the General replied. "Unfortunately that seems unlikely to happen, unless you can work out how to contact her people?"

    "She deliberately wiped any data that would allow that from the device as she left, sir," Sam said regretfully. "There are probably an infinity of parallel worlds. Finding her again would be impossible."

    The next five hours were filled with much discussion and arguing about what had happened, how it had happened, why it had happened, how to stop it happening again, who was to blame for it happening in the first place, who could take credit for the discoveries following it happening, telling Colonel Maybourne that the NID couldn't confiscate everything that had resulted from it happening, ejecting Senator Kinsey who proved unable to shut up about it happening, ejecting him again when he didn't take the hint, and many other very tedious things. Jack forced himself to stay awake the entire time although he was pretty sure that Daniel had been snoring at one point, and even Teal'c seemed to be practically comatose.

    "This is why I hate desk jobs," he murmured to George without moving his lips. He heard a very faint chuckle in response, although the older man didn't look away from the proceedings. "Give me a field operation any day. I'd rather be running from hostiles than sitting here having my ass go numb."

    In the end, everyone seemed run out of things to complain about. Or demand. The consensus was that it was an event that couldn't have been reasonably predicted and was hopefully a one off.

    "I think we should stop there," Maynard finally said, having called for quiet. "There seems to be no purpose in rehashing this indefinitely. This situation has shown us a number of deficiencies in our security, and solutions to them will be implemented immediately. While we most likely can't prevent the exact same situation arising again, based on what we now know, at least we will be able to detect it much sooner if it does."

    He looked around and no one seemed to disagree.

    "A research group will be set up to investigate the ramifications of the acquired data, with an eye towards creating functional hardware for a number of ongoing projects as fast as possible. Area 51 will take on the primary responsibility for this, with input from the scientific personnel from the Stargate program."

    Again, there were no dissenters. Maybourne looked annoyingly pleased. Jack sighed inaudibly. Him being pleased was probably not ideal.

    "We will also open discussions with some of our allies about certain aspects of the new data, pending approval by the President." Maynard wrote a few lines, then nodded. "General Hammond, it's my opinion that you and your people did the best they could under novel circumstances and no blame falls on you for this situation. I will pass this opinion on to the President personally."

    "Thank you, sir," George replied calmly, although Jack could see a small amount of tension go out of the other man.

    "We'll have a followup meeting in thirty days, on the sixteenth of next month, to discuss how things are proceeding. But for now, I think we're done. Thank you all for attending."

    Closing his laptop and his notebook, then putting them along with a stack of folders into his briefcase, General Maynard stood up. Everyone else was doing pretty much the same thing. Jack massaged his legs and groaned. "Ow," he muttered. "I hate sitting in these chairs. Why can't they use a nice deck chair or something?"

    Daniel, who was finishing the last of his water having talked for nearly twenty minutes straight on the subject of parallel world languages and the implications thereof, a subject that had damn near sent Jack into a coma, chuckled.

    "Indeed, O'Neill," Teal'c commented, nodding. "They are most uncomfortable."

    "Damn right they are. Come on, guys, I need a drink." He headed for the door, relieved to get out of the place. The Pentagon wasn't his favorite location by a long way. "All this because of some genius teenager from another world," he said as they left the room. "Even for us that's bizarre."

    No one seemed to disagree.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Emily looked out at the city, seeing signs everywhere of ongoing repair work. The fucking military had done nearly as good a job as Shatterbird could manage on the windows across a large part of Brockton Bay. Going supersonic at thousand feet was hard on the surroundings, and had nearly given her a heart attack.

    She turned back to the others in her office. "I hope no one else has the bright idea to attack Gravtec, or the DWU," she commented as she sat down with a grunt. "I'm pretty sure they're entirely out of fucks to give by now. And have probably installed even more over the top defense than they already had. How the hell did the military sneak four complete Phalanx CIWS units into that goddamn place?"

    Renick shook his head. "We don't know. I would assume in pieces, at night, under very tight security, but it's still impressive. And terrifying. Who knows what else they've got?"

    "They certainly had some cutting edge fighter aircraft hidden in various locations," Armsmaster added. "Including several F-201 VTOL interceptors, which as far as I was aware hadn't reached the operational level yet. They're not due to be deployed for another three years. We also know that there were two Los Angeles class attack submarines patrolling twenty kilometers off the coast in close proximity to Brockton Bay which immediately headed to intercept the assailant forces. Multiple cruise missiles with thermobaric warheads were used on the attacking ships. My information is that there were only five survivors of an estimated force of just under two hundred mercenaries. All the vessels were sunk and all the aircraft shot down."

    He shrugged. "It was impressively efficient and very thorough. The military is very obviously serious about protecting Gravtec and the surrounding facilities."

    Emily scowled. "Yeah. And the mere presence of that place attracted the attack to begin with. We're damn lucky no one died. It could have been much, much worse."

    "Indeed, but then we can't say with assurance that the city couldn't come under attack from any one of a number of possible threats," the Tinker replied. "Regardless of Gravtec being here or not, we could have the Slaughterhouse Nine visit, or the Teeth, or even an Endbringer. Nowhere is safe against certain threats. But I suggest that the presence of a defensive force of this magnitude makes the city, on the whole, safer than it might otherwise be."

    "Gang attacks are at an all time low," Renick added with a small smile. "They'd already dropped dramatically months ago, but after the other day, they fell off a cliff. No one sane seems to want to push their luck right now."

    "Small mercy, but I'll take it," Emily sighed. "We have enough problems despite that. Fine, it's not our jurisdiction, or our problem. Make sure all our people know that the Docks are off limits, and to be very polite if they see the Army or whoever the hell it really is behind that damn place. We stay out of their playground and with any luck they'll stay out of ours."

    "I don't think anyone will argue about that," Renick commented. She gave him a gimlet-eyed look.

    "We've got Parahumans. Don't make promises you can't keep," she sighed. Armsmaster opened his mouth, then shut it again without saying anything. Inwardly almost amused, she heaved herself to her feet. "I've got a dialysis session now. Dismissed."

    Both men nodded and left her office. She picked up her phone and put it in her pocket, looked out the window at the distant DWU yard, shook her head, and went to deal with her medical issues.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Taylor looked up as Brendan came into the room, smiling at him. He smiled back. "The President has agreed."

    "Great!" she chirped happily, spinning her chair around. "I feel bad about those guys. Helping them is a good thing."

    "You downloaded enough data to convince him and the Joint Chiefs," the man said as he sat down near her, Angus and Danny following him in talking to each other, then also sitting. "Their world is pretty different to ours in lots of ways, but it's obvious they've got problems nearly as bad as we do. Worse, in a few places. Alien attacks..." He shook his head in wonder. "That's not something I'd have expected."

    "Not all aliens are hostile," she grinned. "Probably."

    "Maybe one day we'll find out. I suppose this probably proves that they at least exist," he laughed. "In any case, we've got permission to do what you suggested, and we'll see where it takes us."

    "Wonderful," the girl smiled.

    "How long will it take you to build the hardware?" he asked curiously. She reached out and tapped a key on her keyboard, one of the enormous screens changing to show a series of technical drawings surrounding a live camera image in the middle.

    It showed a toroidal machine sitting on a stand on one of the isolated and armored experimental test chambers that had been built over the last few months as they outgrew their existing facilities.

    "About that long," she snickered. He looked at the screen, as did her father and Angus, then sighed.

    "When did you actually finish it?" he inquired.

    "Two weeks ago. I was bored."

    "Of course you were," he mumbled. "You were bored of inventing the future so you build a machine to access parallel worlds."

    "I'd finished my homework and I was waiting for some calculations to finish, so I thought, why not?" she explained, waving a hand airily. "Everything I needed was in stock. It's not that hard, really, I've already done it once before. This one is a lot neater and more reliable though. And I made the rest of the stuff we'll need, just in case. I was sure you'd talk them into it."

    "You, my dear girl, are impossible," he chuckled. Her father looked fondly at her as Angus shook his head a little.

    "I try," Taylor grinned. "So when do we want to do it?"

    They started making plans, and phone calls.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    "Captain Carter to gate control immediately!"

    Sam looked up at the announcement over the intercom, puzzled. No one was due to leave or return through the gate in the next six hours. The usual problems were at a low ebb right now for whatever reason and she'd been taking the opportunity to study the Hebert Papers again. Every time she read through the documents she got new insights, and was slowly coming to grips with the new physics described in them. Even for her, it was hard work, but she was determined to fully understand the theories.

    Locking her computer she stood, then headed for the control room, Jack falling in beside her a couple of minutes later. Daniel saw them go past his own lab and curiously followed. Entering the room filled with computers she approached Sergeant Harriman, who was staring at his console with a confused expression.

    "What's the problem, Walter?" she asked as she stopped next to him. Daniel and Jack stood behind her and listened.

    The sergeant pointed at the screen, which was showing a waveform she'd never seen before. "The gate power is fluctuating in a weird way, but I have no idea why," he explained. "It's like it's building up to opening a wormhole, but not in the usual manner. It's storing a lot of energy in the capacitors for some reason. And there's some sort of data link going on in the control channel, but I've never seen anything like it before."

    She leaned over the monitors and studied them. He was right, the monitoring software showed that the gate itself was doing something without them commanding it, and as far as she could see, not because other gate was trying to connect either. Gesturing, she got him to jump up and then sat in his chair, pulling the keyboard closer and starting some diagnostics running on the thing.

    "Is someone attacking us again?" Jack asked in a tone of irritation.

    "I'm… not sure," Sam replied after a few seconds, busy with her work. "If it's an attack it's not like anything anyone has tried before. Walter's right, there's a hell of a lot of energy building in the gate circuits and it's still increasing. And it's not coming from our end."

    She frowned, opening another terminal and quickly writing a small program to test something. The results didn't make sense.

    "Weird. It's not coming from the normal sort of control channel, either. The gate network uses a hyperspace command link to set up the initial connection then piggybacks the main data path on the wormhole itself, but this is coming from somewhere else."

    "Where?" he asked suspiciously. She looked over her shoulder, seeing that General Hammond had joined them as well.

    "I don't know," she finally said, looking back at the screen. The complex waveform the equipment was detecting was growing more powerful and getting ridiculously involved. "But it's sending a program into the gate computer."

    "Can you stop it?" The question came from General Hammond. She tried a few commands, then shook her head uneasily.

    "No. It's bypassing all our own controls. The gate is being directly commanded by something."

    "It's gotta be the Gou'ald," Jack complained. "It's always the Gou'ald."

    He had a point, she mused as she watched helplessly. Nothing she tried did anything helpful at all.

    Harriman, who'd evicted one of the other gate techs and taken his place, said, "Something's happening!"

    "I see it," she replied, watching the data converge rapidly. "Raise the shutter, just in case."

    A rumble sounded as the shielding metal barrier rose over the window to the gate below them. Everyone looked at the screens showing views from cameras in the gate room.

    Moments later there was a subsonic thump that sounded oddly familiar, the room shook gently, and the instruments showed a massive discharge from the gate. Then the readings settled down to a saner level although nothing like what it would normally be during a wormhole operation.

    "Stable wormhole achieved," Harriman commented. "The other end is… not registering."

    He looked at Sam, who returned the gaze, then they both peered at the camera view. "Is it me or is that an odd color?" she remarked, inspecting the monitor closely.

    "It's… more purple than it should be," Daniel said after a second or two.

    "Yeah." Jack nodded thoughtfully. The light reflecting off the rear wall from the back of the gate was definitely not the usual silvery cyan, being more of a light lavender.

    "There's no ID code being transmitted," Walter said, looking down at the terminal in front of him. "But we're getting some sort of signal through the wormhole. It's nothing like anything in the database."

    With no warning there was a bright momentary flash of light in the middle of the gate room at the bottom of the ramp. When the screen cleared, they could see a small machine floating in mid air about a meter and a half off the floor. It appeared to be a faceted spheroid some ten centimeters across, metallic, and shiny. The thing sat there without moving while they stared at it.

    "Carter, what the hell is that?" Jack asked slowly.

    She shrugged, feeling bewildered. "I have no idea." Turning to the console she studied the instrumentation. "The scans don't show any explosives, toxins, or biologicals. The energy output is very large, but it's doesn't look like a weapon. In fact, it reminds me of..."

    Sam suddenly realized why that sound had been familiar.

    "Oh, god. It's her."

    "Who?" Daniel looked puzzled, but Jack and General Hammond looked at each other and simultaneously sighed faintly.

    "Her. The Hebert girl." Sam pointed at one of the monitors. "The energy profile is almost identical to some of the technology we found when she left. More powerful, but very similar."

    Everyone looked at each other. Eventually Hammond stepped forward. "Lower the shield," he said.

    Walter glanced at him, nodded, and prodded a control. The blast shield slowly rumbled down again. Everyone peered through the window at the floating device.

    A couple of second later, it projected a three dimensional grid of glowing lines that formed a cube around it, then that collapsed almost instantly and changed shape. They suddenly found themselves looking at a man wearing a military uniform, or at least a projection of someone meeting that description.

    The new arrival looked around, then up at the window. He waved.

    Sam stared, before checking her console. "It's a hologram, but it's the best hologram I've ever even heard of," she said in awe. "It looks totally real. That device is projecting it."

    "Impressive," Daniel said, looking fascinated.

    Hammond picked up the desk microphone that connected to the gate room speakers and pressed the talk switch. "This is General George Hammond, commanding this facility. Identify yourself."

    The projected man, who looked about sixty, with close cropped white hair and a genial smile on his angular face, replied "My apologies for the intrusion, General. I'm Brigadier General Doctor Brendan Calhoun, DARPA, Earth Bet. I've been authorized by our President to come here to discuss a number of things that may be of interest to you and your people."

    Sam, after a long moment, turned to Hammond, as did everyone else. The older man thought hard for some seconds, looking at Jack who shrugged. Then he toggled the mic again. "I believe we can arrange that, General."

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Daniel listened to a recent history of another world with disbelief. Superheroes and supervillains, Parahumans, strange abilities and technology, giant monsters from the sea or the bowels of the earth… It sounded like something a science fiction author would come up with after getting somewhat drunk. Yet apparently this version of Earth existed somewhere in the universe, which seemed to be considerably more complicated than he'd realized. Probably more so than even the Ancients had known, he suspected.

    "The last thirty years have totally changed our world," Doctor Calhoun, as he seemed to prefer his academic title, explained. The projection was so real it was hard to believe it wasn't an actual human sitting there in the briefing room. It could even interact with real objects using some sort of gravity control. "Millions have died all across the planet just from Endbringer attacks. Millions more from hostile Parahumans. Countries have ceased to exist or been completely changed compared to what they used to be, or what they probably are here. But we keep going, and are somehow managing to stay functional, although it's not easy sometimes. A lot of places are basically complete anarchy these days."

    He shrugged a little. "The US, and Canada, and much of western Europe, along with Australia and some parts of South America and Russia, are dealing reasonably well with the situation. Most of the rest is somewhere between not good and very, very bad. On the other hand, we don't have hostile aliens attacking us, so it could always be worse." He smiled for a moment.

    "In around a year or so, though, we've seen light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks to one utterly extraordinary teenager, we've got a level of hope we haven't seen for many years. And with a bit of luck we may manage to recover from the problems we've had for so long."

    "So not all your people are like Taylor?" Sam asked.

    He shook his head with a smile. "Oh, definitely not. She's one of a kind. Probably at the utter fringes of intelligence and ability it's possible for a human to have, in fact. She doesn't have any Parahuman abilities, it's all her own brain. Her IQ is beyond measurement as far as medical science is concerned. And to our enormous good fortune she's also a stable and happy girl who wants to invent things, fix the world, and help people. Considering what might have happened if she'd decided to be a villain..." He seemed to shiver for a second. "Powers or not, she'd be hideously dangerous if she was of that mindset, believe me."

    "And your version of DARPA is backing her." General Hammond looked thoughtful, as well as interested. During the recounting of 'Earth Bet's' history since the early eighties, he along with all of them had also looked horrified.

    "Pretty much the entirety of the US government is backing her, General," Calhoun replied evenly. "She's the single most important person in the country. Probably the world. And our hope to survive."

    "A lot of pressure to put on someone so young," Jack remarked, not sounding pleased.

    "I know. But then it's something she wanted, and still wants, and everything is set up to minimize that pressure," their visitor sighed. "Believe me, I know. I like the girl, she and her father are friends as well as colleagues, and I don't want to see anything bad happen to either of them. On the other hand they live in a city that's been damn near an active war zone in the recent past. People on my world are used to pressure for good or ill. We give her whatever she wants, let her work on whatever she decides to, and reap the rewards. She's got a strong work ethic and is very thorough in documenting everything, so we just wait for the next miracle and pass it on to the relevant people to continue. Half the US technical and scientific groups are currently designing things based on her work."

    He smiled slightly again. "She's as protected as we can arrange, she's got friends, a social life, and a loving father. All things considered it could be much worse, and without her it probably would be. We'll have to wait and see how it turns out but so far things seem to be working well. With the occasional minor issue, of course."

    "An attack by a foreign power, you mean," Hammond said.

    "Quite. Resulting, through a chain of unlikely coincidences, in her unexpected arrival here." Calhoun shook his head. "Of all the people that could have happened to, it's somehow not a surprise to me it would be her. And of all the people it could have happened to, I can't think of one who could have handled it better. Even if she did do it in her own style."

    "She left an impression," Hammond remarked dryly.

    "She tends to." Calhoun's voice was as dry. Both Generals exchanged a look of understanding.

    "In any case, during her time here, her curiosity led her to acquire a certain amount of information which told us quite a lot about your own problems. My apologies for the security breach, by the way."

    Hammond made a motion with his hand, and Calhoun continued. "You seem to have different, but equal problems with hostile forces. We may be able to help with aspects of that issue. And it's hoped that in return we may learn things that will be of aid to us. Taylor reported that she'd left a number of pieces of equipment behind along with documentation on both them and some of the hardware she… borrowed… while she was here. I suspect that you've already learned quite a lot from that as it is."

    Everyone looked at Sam, who nodded. She looked like she could barely believe what she'd been hearing but suddenly seemed eager.

    "God, yes. Just that one notebook will revolutionize physics," she replied.

    "I assume you wouldn't be averse to more information along those lines?" Calhoun asked knowingly.

    Sam's eyes widened.

    "I think the answer is 'Yes please,'" Jack commented.

    "We thought that might be the case," Calhoun smiled. "I'm authorized to divulge certain patents and technical documentation that will allow you to produce gravitational reference frame regenerators, gravitational shear fields, and other similar technology. We can also provide optical and acoustic stealth generator details, data on a room temperature superconductor that can be mass produced at low cost, and a number of other things."

    Sam had almost stopped breathing, Daniel noticed.

    "And in return you want… what?" Jack queried.

    Calhoun looked at him.

    "Information on your world, the aliens you've encountered, interesting technology, that type of data. Who knows, we might have similar hostiles in our universe. And even if we don't, such information could well help deal with our problems. It's certainly worth the effort of arranging. We'd consider it a mutually beneficial arrangement and I think your government would do the same."

    General Hammond gazed thoughtfully at the visitor for a while, then glanced at the others. Daniel thought it was an offer that they should jump at. Sam clearly felt the same, not surprisingly. Teal'c, who had been sitting silently and listening carefully, nodded slowly. Jack was looking mildly suspicious but also appeared to be considering the offer.

    "I don't have the authority to make that decision," Hammond finally said. Calhoun nodded.

    "We didn't expect you to. Obviously you'll have to report it back to your own government, and there's no real hurry. The sooner the better, I suspect, but that's up to you. We've made the offer, and we'll wait for an answer."

    "How can we contact you, one way or the other?"

    Calhoun waved a hand over the table and there was another flash of light. A device that looked a little like a phone appeared there, but it seemed to be entirely a single display. Next to it was a box. "Neat trick, isn't it?" he smiled, seeming amused, as they stared. "That girl is unbelievable. And designed her own teleporter after her experiences with the Tinker one, which she wasn't pleased about… Anyway, that will allow you to contact us along with this projection beacon. The box has documentation in it on how it works and that sort of thing. Just call when you've made up your mind. We'll be waiting."

    He seemed to look off to the side. "Before we finish this, Taylor wanted to say something. Hang on, please." He waved, and suddenly disappeared. The small device that remained floated above the chair as they exchanged looks.

    Thirty seconds passed, then a familiar figure was sitting there. "Hi," Taylor said, looking around and seeming a little nervous. "It's me again."

    "So I see, Miss Hebert," Hammond replied with a small smile. "How are you?"

    "I'm good, thanks. I was glad to get home," the girl replied, smiling back and visibly settling down when no one shouted at her. "I wanted to tell you guys again that I'm really sorry about everything that happened. I didn't think I had any other real choice, though, under the circumstances. I couldn't risk someone deciding I should end up in jail, or vivisected, or shot or something."

    "I think all things considered we can forgive you," the general chuckled. "You did a good job under a lot of stress from what I saw. It confused us, but we were able to fix a lot of problems we didn't know about as a result, and if it had been someone hostile who'd ended up in that air vent, it could have been much worse."

    "You wouldn't find it so easy to sneak around if it happened again," Jack commented.

    She looked at him and grinned. "Is that a challenge?"

    "No." Jack sighed. "No, it isn't. Please don't break into our secret base again, kid."

    "I'll be good," she promised, making Sam laugh and Teal'c look somewhat amused in his own subtle manner.

    The girl looked around. "I hope we can meet again sometime. Probably not in person, they get nervous if I go places they can't surround me with agents they think I don't know about," she said with a smile. "But this is pretty good as an alternative. Doctor Jackson, one day I'd like to talk to you for a while. I read some of your research on alien languages and it's really neat. I'm interested in linguistics too. And Captain Carter, what I read about your own research is also something I'd like to talk about at some point."

    Daniel, somewhat shocked that someone actually wanted to discuss his field with every sign of meaning it, nodded. "I think that would be something I'd enjoy, Miss Hebert."

    "Me too," Sam added with enormous understatement, if he was any judge.

    Taylor smiled again, then looked at Teal'c and Jack. "And you guys are really cool. I still think you should make a TV show about all the things you do."

    Teal'c seemed approving and inclined his head. "Indeed," he said, making Jack stare at him then rub his forehead like it hurt.

    "Anyway, I need to go, your gate is close to the limit of power handling and I don't want to damage it," the virtual girl said, looking around at them. "The beacon will go into standby when I leave, you can just stick it somewhere out of the way until you need it again. There's a special program in your gate now, dial the sequence that's in the manual, then use the phone, and you can call us." She pointed at the box on the table. "Brendan says thanks for listening. See you guys around, maybe." She waved, then blinked out of existence. Moments later the hovering device floated over the table, sank onto it, and turned itself off, two little green lights on it going out.

    No one said anything for some time.

    "Cheerful kid, isn't she?" Jack finally commented. "Is it me or has today been even stranger than it usually is?"

    "I believe that you are not alone in this supposition," Teal'c replied, picking the device up and inspecting it, then putting it back.

    "I suppose I'd better start making phone calls again," General Hammond said, standing up. He pointed at the various things on the table. "Make sure those are stored somewhere secure, and limit access to the five of us."

    "Yes, sir," Sam replied, gathering everything up.

    "Oh, god, you know what this means, don't you, Carter?" Jack said morosely as they left the room.

    "What?" Sam asked.

    "More meetings," Jack whined. "I hate meetings. My ass goes numb."

    Daniel looked at Teal'c, who shrugged a tiny amount.

    Then he wandered back to his own lab, thinking about the various oddities surrounding the last hour, and hearing Jack complaining about meetings until he was out of earshot.

    That part at least was entirely normal.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    The next few years were very different to how they had been heading.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • I suspect the Ori are going to be absolutely HOWLING in outraged fury if/when they decide to poke their noses in the Milky Way galaxy.

    Hmmm, I wonder if someone gets the bright Idea to gift Taylor with Ascension notes? The thought of her actually blinking, before muttering about 'Doing It Right' and proceeding to do so is HIGHLY amusing!!
     
    Iceflame55 said:
    I suspect the Ori are going to be absolutely HOWLING in outraged fury if/when they decide to poke their noses in the Milky Way galaxy.

    Hmmm, I wonder if someone gets the bright Idea to gift Taylor with Ascension notes? The thought of her actually blinking, before muttering about 'Doing It Right' and proceeding to do so is HIGHLY amusing!!
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    dear lord, yes.... this would be hilarious
     
    I'm more interested in when anu(s)bis sends out his kull troops - and Vicky promptly arrives and beats the ugly out of them.
     
    "Hey Dad I'm going to go talk to Uncle Jack and his friends again."
    "Just don't break causality again this time dear."
    "Hey! It's not my fault that black holes and hyper space physics react so strangely around each other."
     
    I could see Daniel being the only person that Taylor shares her little personal project with. That anyone else is actually interested in what he does make his day.

    Jack's ass is going to be very numb after all the meetings for a full week or so. I can see them easily approving of the tech transfer. They'll mostly be passing data back and forth. The first care packages will be something that would have caused the entire SGC to shut down earlier. Their mission of gathering off world alien tech isn't needed anymore. They now just need to spread the new physics and toys and presto they'll have a scifi civ anywhere from a few months to 5 years.

    I'm wondering what SGC's DARPA will be calling Taylor and all her tech goodies. The Norn of Future Tech?

    Oddly, I can easily see this being a side adventure of the main plot. It would be Taylor's first actually field experience. Other than Gravtech being attacked and the entire city's defenses being upgraded afterward, no one outside a limited few would know who the real target likely was. That would also be an excuse for an entire covert war as well.

    Doesn't matter if they didn't catch them redhanded. Those intel agencies are pissed and ready to start tearing into other governments and such. It would be funny if the intel counter-attack somehow causes the fall of the CUI.
     
    I suspect some Ascended somewhere are already howling. Because their little math showing maximum genius of unenchanced human turned out completely false
     
    mp3.1415player said:
    Carter added, "While technically this was a Foothold situation, sir, I personally believe that Miss Hebert did us a favor of a magnitude it's difficult to state. I would love to talk to her. She's..." His friend and colleague shrugged. "Brilliant beyond words."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    You know they've got her name and her DNA. They could see if there's a local-to-Stargate Taylor Hebert. Might be interesting to see what she's like.
     
    I know you're not likely to do so mppi, but this is fodder for a really good crossover fic. At the same time though, it also works like some of the side stories that you've got going for Taylor Varga.

    Where do you get all of your ideas? It can't just be from your Discord server. You need to slow down; you're making the rest of us amateur authors look bad.

    I'm kidding about the last;)
     
    Thanks for the part two. While it's probably a good spot to finish, I would have loved to see Taylor bounce off of some of the more arrogant characters and leave them knocked down a Peggle board or two. Oh hi Rodney.
     
    You kidding? Rodney is likely to be too engrosed with studying the New Physics and feeling like a child compared to Her intelect to even consider going to a different galaxy or being an arrogent jerk.
     
    Loved it.
    Would be great if Taylor eventually learns then EXCEEDS all the teaching on that alien PBS. Have her reaching the point where she is teaching them.
    Taylor expressed interest in maybe learning about medicine and such... Would be hilarious if she accidentally solved the Asgards problems. Hears about Ascension, figures out how to do it, then figures out it is a very bad idea. Like, either a downgrade, getting stuck, or massively limiting onesself.
     
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