Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 103

Chapter 103 - Just Another Tuesday - Part 3

The unimaginably named Myriad Station had been designed with the express purpose of punching temporary holes between dimensional layers. And according to the records Eventus had found in the computer system, it had accomplished that task flawlessly until the plague had hit. At which point the hundreds of isolated scientists manning the station had been functionally stuck as one of only a few groups the High Council at the time had known with absolute certainty weren't infected.

“That can't say what I think it does.” Daniel muttered as he stared at a particular line of text on the screen.

“Let's see.” Eventus murmured as he read over the line in question. “Safe behind our protections we continued our work, until fortyseven orbits had passed and all that is disappeared, leaving us to float alone in nothingness.” 

“That's what I thought it said.” Daniel admitted with a frown. “But how does all that is disappear?”

“No idea.” Eventus admitted honestly. “But fortyseven orbits of the station would equate to nine hundred and forty days after the lockdown began. So when I get back to Atlantis I can check over the historical records to see if anything notable occurred around that date.”

“So what happened after that?” Vala asked, staring at Daniel with clear interest in her eyes.

“Er.” Daniel hesitated.

“Go ahead.” Eventus said, mildly interested to hear how the Archeologist would translate the rest of the log.

Daniel sighed, turning back to the screen before continuing to narrate the log. “Our communications returned nothing. Our sensors showed nothing. And we dared not use our sole vessel to exit our protections for fear that they were the only thing keeping back whatever had happened.”

“This may sound like a stupid question.” Mitchell suddenly put forward. “But if everything disappeared and the station was left floating in a void, then how come we found it right where it's supposed to be?”

“It might not be our station.” Eventus offered as he considered the question. “Thin the dimensional boundaries enough in an area of space and things can fall though. So in theory it's possible this station originally existed in a temporal offshoot dimension, slipped into the boundary layer because of dimensional weakening, before somehow ending up here.”

It was unlikely in the extreme, but the only other thing he could think of that might cause such an effect was something temporarily removing a small chunk of the…

“Oh.” He muttered, feeling momentarily like an idiot for having missed it. “It must have been the timeloop machine.”

Mitchell snapped his fingers. “P4X-639! General O'Neill's mission report about that was a real trip.”

“The station probably has a subspace isolation field as part of its stabilization setup.” Eventus explained as the puzzle pieces fit themselves together. “So when the subspace bubble formed it wasn't able to encapsulate the station and basically left it floating in a chunk of completely empty space.”

Honestly, there had probably been hundreds of various escalating after effects from that machine's activation. He was just glad he hadn't been one of the ones who had to clean it up.

“I have no idea what any of that means.” Vala interjected, sounding inordinately proud about the declaration for reasons Eventus couldn't particularly place.

“Right, well.” Daniel continued awkwardly. “To summarize the rest, it seems they eventually enacted some sort of emergency protocol and tried to use the station to do… Something… At which point the log ends.

“Transit the gulf between spaces.” Eventus put forward. “With the subspace bubble overlaying their area of space Hyperspace travel would have been impossible. So when the “escape and rebuild” protocol was activated by the station head their only option would have been to use the station to form a temporary bridge into a temporal offshoot dimension where all this stuff wasn’t going on and take their transport through it.”

There probably hadn’t been nearly as many temporal offshoot dimensions back then as there were now given the complexities of their formation usually required certain specific types of time travel as an initiator. But Eventus supposed it had probably seemed like a better idea at the time than just sitting there hoping whatever had happened undid itself.

“They left behind the log so if anyone ever found the station they’d know what happened. However from the looks of things, when the bubble was collapsed and everything returned to the universe proper, everyone was so busy with the plague they basically just forgot about the place. So it sat here abandoned for millions of years gathering a nice thick coating of interstellar debris while its systems slowly decayed from the constant activity of keeping certain protective functions active.”

“So, mystery solved?” Mitchell asked hopefully.

“The minor mystery of what happened to its crew at least.” Eventus confirmed as he brought up the available system controls and began the slow process of overriding the lockdown.

“Do we really have to destroy this place?” Daniel asked, casting an almost forlorn look at the other displays. “It looked like there was a lot more in the station's database than just the log we read.”

Eventus momentarily debated lying to the Archeologist before remembering that he’d already admitted to them that leaving the place intact was an option. “I’ll leave that decision up to your people.”

A few key presses and he brought up a cutout of the station on one of the secondary monitors, and with a few more a large number of red dots moving about in various isolated areas of the interior were added in. “But internal sensors are confirming that there’s dangerous lifeforms in the locked down sections of the station.”

He gave a self acknowledging nod. “And if you do decide to keep it, I’m still going to eject the interior focusing rings into the sun for disposal.”

“We’re definitely going to have to kick the can upwards on that question.” Mitchell said as he studied the map. “But before I call it in I was wondering, is there any chance you could just use those glowy drones to clean the place out?”

Eventus blinked, not having really considered that option given how outside the norm it was for his old team's standard way of doing things. “Ah, well, I suppose technically yes? The flight system on Ascalon type attack drones can maneuver through almost any type of internal space the drone can fit through. However it would take a lot of micromanaging on the controller’s part since the automated guidance systems weren’t really designed with that sort of internal use in mind.”

“All right.” Mitchell confirmed as he pulled off his radio. “Let’s see what the brass has to say then.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author’s Notes: Times like this Eventus really wishes he could track down where the weapon testing facility that was developing minidrones was. Unfortunately however that was a project whose stargate address wasn't directly recorded anywhere outside of the minds of the high council.