Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 59

Chapter 59 - Never Ending Issues

“I have no idea what any of this means.” Eventus muttered to himself as he studied the data being projected in front of him.

“And you’re sure you can’t match this to anything in the database?” He asked, looking over at the core interface projection.

“Negative.” The hologram returned. 

Pausing the datastream, he pointed at one specific equation in particular that he knew was the basis of several dimensional based technologies. “You can't match that to anything in the database?”

“Negative.” The hologram repeated.

Which might as well have been directly telling him the classified data from the Aurora dealt with information his people hadn't wanted to leave behind when they'd left the galaxy. 

“All right then, store the file in the council archives and end the session.”

Stepping off the platform he turned to leave.

“Update on prior request available.” The hologram announced as he was halfway to the door. 

Pausing in his step, Eventus turned back to stare oddly at the hologram. “My prior request?”

“One hundred twenty seven translocations have been recorded by the city's sensors since the request was logged.” The hologram continued. “Due to increased data availability simulations have reached a seventy three percent certainty that the Asgard translocation technology utilized by the starship Daedalus can be blocked with a jamming field calibrated to prevent accurate coordinate lock-on by the vessels targeting sensors.”

Oh right, he had forgotten about that.

“What would be the power draw to generate a jamming field of that type around high security areas of the city?”

“Point two En's” The hologram answered.

Eventus blinked, having honestly expected it to be significantly more than that.

“I guess I can't say no to that.” He mused with a shake of this head. “Update security protocols to jamming fields of the appropriate type. Set the override level to Council level and above.”

Which would give Sheppard a way to override it in the case of an emergency, a necessary sacrifice given the alternative might be the city exploding or worse.

“Security protocols updated.” The hologram stated before vanishing.

Exiting the room and heading back up to the gateroom, he had to hold back a groan when he spotted Doctor Beckett standing in front of the open doors to the transport booth.

“Oh Eventus!” Beckett began. “I was hoping to–

Eventus held up a hand to forestall whatever it was the Doctor was going to ask. “I've budgeted the next twenty-four hours for sleep and me time, so before you continue I'm going to ask, is it an emergency?”

Beckett scrunched up his face for a moment before giving an apologetic seeming nod. “It’s about the crew of the Aurora.”

Of course it was, Eventus thought to himself as he let out a tired sigh.

He motioned for Beckett to continue. “Go on.

“They're ready for us to begin bringing them over, but we cannae figure out how to hook the mobile stasis pods up to the city's data systems.”

“You can't.” Eventus admitted with a grimace, having forgotten to warn the Aurora's crew about that. “The direct interface points were almost all locked down during the war, the only one still active at this point should be the one in the control chair.”

“And there's nothing ye can do to unlock them?” Beckett asked with a frown.

“If I had my original team and a week to work at it, sure.” Eventus confirmed with a nod. “The crew from the Aurora would likely be able to do it too, if not as quickly. But that’s what I’ve heard you people call a chicken and the egg problem.”

It wasn’t really a good or bad thing, but it did mean that first teams minds would have to be asleep till they were at a point they could safely leave the stasis pods. Something he knew might be a bit stressful for them given the circumstances.

“I suppose we’re all working with a limited hand.” Beckett muttered with a shake of his head. “Sorry to bother you about it.”

Waving off his concern, Eventus stepped past the Doctor and into the transport booth. “It’s all right. Just keep in mind, for all intents and purposes I’m going to be spending the next day passed out in bed.”

With that he selected the receiving booth nearest to his quarters, letting out a sigh of relief when the only thing that met him on exit from the booth was the sound of waves up against the pier.

“Eventus?” Doctor Weir's voice echoed out from his remote interface's speaker in a tone that suggests a moderate amount of urgency. “We were contacting Earth to forward your request to the IOA, and it seems the SGC has run into a problem with those projection stones you mentioned earlier.”

“Oh for Janus's sake.” Eventus muttered as he dragged a hand down his face, unable to believe the absolutely abysmal timing on that.

“What do you mean by a problem?” He inquired, turning around and walking back to the transport booth he had just exited.

“It seems they located a compatible device in a cave filled with a number of other Ancient items.” Weir explained as he entered the booth and selected the gate room, disappearing in a flash to reappear there.

“I just want to say I told you so.” Eventus offered as he walked out of the booth, completely unsurprised to see the still active Stargate as he made the short jaunt to the control room where Doctor Weir was hunched over a control station that was displaying a video feed on the other end of which seemed was the recognizable form of Jack O’Neill.

“So what did you find? And what did you do with what you found that’s reached the point you needed to get my help about it.” He asked as he came up behind the woman.

“Eventus.” Weir greeted him, clearly surprised that he’d showed up so quickly if the perplexed look on her face was any indicator. “This is General O’Neill.”

The man on the other side of the screen looked pretty much as he remembered, with the moderate exception that appeared a good decade younger then he recalled Richard Dean Anderson looking at this point in the timeline.

“How ya doing?” O’Neill asked, giving an idle wave.

“It was supposed to be my day off.” Eventus drolled.

“Ah, yeah.” O’Neill nodded in understanding. “I know how that goes.”

“If you’ll forgive me for saying so.” Eventus offered with a slight frown. “You’re a lot younger than I thought you would be given the rank.”

“It was a bonus with the Goa’uld torture.” O’Neill returned with a somewhat glib grin. “Though I gotta say you certainly have me beat. In your four hundreds and you barely look a day over thirty. When we have time you gotta give Carter your skin care routine.”

“Eh.” Eventus returned with a shrug. “If any of you want to come visit sometime I can set you up with a rejuvenation treatment, it’ll take the years right off.”

“Back to the emergency at hand however, do you have a picture or video of the device you’re having trouble with?”

O’Neill looked over at someone off screen. “Walter? You still got the– Ah, thanks.”  Turning back to the camera, he held up a Polaroid photo of an instantly recognizable device.

“Daniel thought it was a communications device of some kind.” He continued, waving the pictured back and forth a little in front of the camera. “He figured your people left it behind as a way to contact survivors who didn’t decide to pull the whole ascension thing. Was gonna have Doctor Weir ask you about it the next time she called in, but Daniel’s new girlfriend jumped the gun, he followed, and now they’re both in coma’s.”

“Well, I can confirm that it is a device for facilitating communication.” Eventus verified with a nod. “It was mainly used by consenting couples to help with the rigours of long distance relationships, and those looking to spice up their sex lives.”

General O’Neill had a grin on his face that suggested he was never going to let Daniel live that particular bit of information down, while emotions in the Atlantis gate room seemed to run the gamut from horrified to intrigued.

“So how do we shut it down?” O’Neill finally asked.

“If their bodies are comatose that suggests the receiving stones on the other side of the connection are operating without a focusing array.” Eventus explained as he dredged up what technical memories he could of the device.

“The focusing array is the device in the picture.” He clarified at O’Neill’s questioning look. “They’re what allows a two way link to be formed in cases when the distances involved would be too far for the projection stones themselves to handle it.”

The stones on their own were pretty much limited to planetary distances, with a single focusing array able to somewhat compensate up to general galaxy spanning ranges, anything intergalactic however would require a pair of focusing array’s working together.

“Even with that however they should be able to just touch the receiving stone and think it to shut off the link. If they can’t do that however, there should be an emergency override on the focusing array that can manually disconnect them.”

“Emergency overrides are good.” O’Neill offered just a tad sarcastically. “So how would we go about using that?”

“Squeeze together the wing like silvery things under the large glowing crystal then while doing that use your other hand to put your fingers in the finger sized indentations below the stone you wish to remove and push them like buttons. If the person who’s stone you removed doesn’t immediately wake up, don’t worry. That just means they’re close enough to the other person that the single stone is attempting to compensate, in which case just removing the other should cause them to wake up.”

“Always good when things are simple like that.” O’Neill said, motioning to someone off screen. “Just to be sure though, Daniel won’t be looking at any side effects from using the emergency override?”

Cocking his head, Eventus pursed his lips as he mentally went over the technology in question before shaking his head. “There are certain issues that can pop up if multiple instances of similar technology are in use. But as far as I know you people don’t have anything that would even remotely qualify, so it should be fine.”

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

Author’s Notes: Next chapter, we switch over to the SGC to see the aftermath of this while Eventus passess out in his bed and dreams of purple sheep.