Unification: The Anunnaki Unification Book 5

by Michele Briere

  The afternoon was spent at Joey and Erin’s home with some of the family who came to celebrate a birthday instead of a death. The SF brought Matthew to them and he was quietly sent to nap with Olivia until he was ready. The family got their stories and Daniel signed books. His book had hit the stands and immediately went to the top of the charts. People all over the world were clamoring for his attention. The conspiracy nuts were typing at light speed across the internet. The nuts in Sam and Daniel’s labs, those that knew more than they should, were keeping track of the theories and making bets on which of the wackos got closest to any hidden facts. So far, there was an Aussie in Sydney who seemed to have a talent for reading between the lines. He was put on a watch list.

  The day with their cousins seemed to show the children that although family will always be there for them, they couldn’t go back to the past. Their old neighborhood was no longer their home and the al'kesh flight back to Colorado Springs was bitter-sweet.

  As they settled in back home, Daniel was preoccupied with a phone call. He argued with his lab and finally ordered them to send the information to his computer. While he disappeared into his den, Matthew disappeared into his own room. Jack looked from one end of the house to the other and decided to head upstairs first. Matthew was belly-down, getting his music situated and his headphones untangled. Jack watched and then took the headphones, dangling them until they unwound and then handed them back to the boy.

  “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?” Matthew asked.

  “Yup.”

  After a moment, Jack gave Matty’s back a rub. “Want to go fishing this weekend? In the mountains, not out back. See if there’s any trout around.”

  That got a little more response and there seemed to be a small spark of interest.

  “I guess so.”

  Jack gave a nod and touched the boy’s hair. Matthew was sore inside; he’d be alright, though. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for the kids to visit their mother’s grave so soon. Opening wounds was never the first choice.

  “Should we have skipped this?” Jack asked when he went into the kitchen. Sam and Jerrie looked at him and continued to get the younger kids a snack.

  “They’ll be fine,” Jerrie told him. “Pretending the day never happened is unhealthy. Learning that life and death are equal partners is more important. Just be present for them and let them sort it out.”

  “I didn’t visit my mother’s grave until I was an adult,” Sam said, putting applesauce in front of Olivia. The baby happily stuck her fingers into the bowl, making “ap ap” sounds. “I had the idea that if I didn’t see her grave, then she really wasn’t dead. Thinking about it now, I would have liked to have spent time there, talking to her, spilling my teenager girl’s heart to her whenever I needed my Mom. Next year, ask the kids what they want to do. Maybe just Livie’s birthday would be fine. If they want to go and visit their mother, they can do that, too.”

  Daniel came into the kitchen, scowling at a piece of paper. He stopped short. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “No,” Jack shrugged. “What’s going on?”

  “This,” Daniel said, waving the paper. “That site in Orkney. The excavators must have gotten their data wrong or else decided that the readings were out of whack. It…. that….”

  They looked at Jerrie.

  “I think I left my radio on,” she said and left the room.

  Daniel began to pace the room. “Now, we know that the Ancients were the first round of humanoids on this planet. So where is all the evidence of their past here? Where are all the cities?”

  Sam also frowned as she read the paper. Jack looked over her shoulder and decided he wasn’t going to get anywhere that way.

  “This is saying Skara Brae is over….. 600,000 years old,” Sam said, looking up in astonishment. Daniel nodded hard enough for his head to almost fall off.

  “Yes, yes! And there was lots of life around, then, but there is no evidence of people in Europe until about 500,000 years ago and this was only in the form of flints and stuff. Very primitive. And if I hadn’t known better, and if I were one of the excavators and I saw that carbon dating, I would have thought something was wrong with the equipment or the formula!” They noticed Jack’s eyes.

  “There was a major greenhouse warming that occurred around that time,” Daniel said, bringing it down a little, “warming the oceans to a point where even Antarctica was green. The entire planet was balmy. There is no reason humans couldn’t have lived here.”

  “Who’s to say this was the Ancients’ original home anyway?” Sam asked. “Maybe they did come from somewhere else and live in domes which they took down when they left? Atlantis is an entire city that is capable of space travel.”

  Jack found a beer and contemplated things as he opened it and took a sip. “So… are you suggesting that this Skara Brae is a leftover from the Ancients?”

  “Uh, yes and no,” Daniel said. “First, it shows no signs of being something that belonged to the Ancients and there was no evidence of any technology, writings, or hidden stashes. Neanderthals were around early on, but they didn’t get much further than hardened tipped spears.”

  “Daniel, what are you trying to say?” Jack asked, becoming exasperated. Daniel pulled at his hair as he paced.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “According to everything we know about how people spread out across the world, there should NOT have been anyone in northern Scotland before seven thousand BCE, unless you want to count a caveman or two, and no one knows where they came from, but their left-over buildings look a little like those from Crete. Celts came to Europe about one thousand BCE and England wasn’t officially an island until about two thousand BCE, if that helps with perspective.

  “Now. Supposedly, the Ancients left because of some sort of disease that swept through the galaxy. I think you got a dose of it when I was Ascended.” Jack nodded and grimaced. He also remembered what happened while he was still with Kanan and the Tok'ra; he went on a mission and was captured by Baal who tortured him to death, literally, and then would use a sarcophagus to heal him, only to torture him again. Jack had been ready to die, but Daniel visited him in spirit form while Ascended. He was angry with Daniel, then, actually hated him, for not helping him out of the situation. Daniel kept telling him to trust. Soon after, Sam, Teal'c, and Jonas discovered Baal's planet, and rescued him. Jack never told Daniel about it. If Daniel remembered, one day, then they would talk about it.

  “We didn’t figure out what it was, but the Tok’ra cured it,” Sam commented.

  “A nasty cure,” Jack said. “I don’t recommend it on a regular basis.”

  Daniel waited for them. “Okay, so what if a few of the Ancients remained behind?” he suggested. “I’m guessing that they didn’t start off as an entire society of equal classes, I’m sure they worked up to it just like we are doing. Remember that they weren’t Ascending yet. What if they left behind a few, shall we say, unwanted individuals? Look, I know that we think that the Ancients evolved here on this planet, but where is there any documentation that says that? How do we know they didn’t come here from someplace else and just settle in? Enki messed with us, or we wouldn’t be here. So how could the Ancients have evolved here long before the dinosaurs? It doesn’t make sense. I think this assumption about the Ancients evolving here is wrong.”

  “Forget the Ancients’ evolution, what about that building in Scotland?” Jack asked, waving his arms for Daniel’s attention.

  “I’m not sure, Jack,” Daniel said. “That place is dating from the middle Paleolithic and it shouldn’t be.”

  “What about….” Sam looked at the ceiling, thinking hard. “Look, that hopper we just got rid of…. the very existence of it doesn’t make sense, either, right? What if… okay, this is completely out of the ball park, but what if the owners of that ship hid themselves in time? What if they sent themselves backward to a point where no one would find them and whatever they were doing? What if the Ancients did evo
lve here, but in another timeline and somehow ended up in our timeline?”

  “Wouldn’t that mess with our present?” Jack asked. They had certainly had their own share of time jumping. Sam shook her head.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “A small group of people would probably have died out within a couple of generations.”

  “Look, we’ve been told that the Ancients were running from a virus,” Daniel said, speaking excitedly at the ceiling. “What if that virus wasn’t started in this timeline but in their original timeline, and during their run, they ended up here? What if...”

  Sam's face was on fire with an inner light. "What if...! They are from the future, not the past?! What if.... OH MY GOD! What if WE are the Ancients!!!"

  “Alright, alright!” Jack called out, waving his arms. “This is all a little too convoluted for me; run it by Asgard and Furling brains and the Atlantis computers. Get me proof. Without anything else to go by, I’m not down with it.”

  In the morning, Daniel sent a flurry of messages to Kalam, Orilla, and Atlantis. McKay decided that Daniel had finally fallen off his rock. McKay also wanted to know who really came up with the schematics for the ZPMs because it sure as hell wasn’t O’Neill.

  “Just query the computers, Rodney,” Daniel sighed. He was exhausted, having been awake all night contemplating the possibility of humans, primates tinkered with by Enki in the past, and becoming the Ancients in the future, who then went to the past to hide themselves from something unknown that frightened even them. The complex dynamics were hurting his head.

  The phone rang and he looked daggers at it before answering. “Mrs. Herbert. What did my daughter do now? Oh. Let him spin; it’s his way of dealing with feelings. It’s the first anniversary of his mother’s death, so give him a little space. He should be ready in about an hour.”

  “Davy?”

  Daniel jumped. “Jack. Wear a bell or something, please? Yes, Davy.”

  Jack went into Daniel’s office and looked at the photos on the walls. Mostly pictures of their family, handfasting pictures from Kelowna and from their recent, more private renewal which was just immediate family and dinner. A few new pictures of his cousin and their family. Jack didn’t remember Daniel having many pictures when they were at the SGC. One or two of the team, one of Sha’re. He stared at a picture of the two of them puckering up playfully at each other, and smiled.

  “Yeah, Mrs. A keeps making an effort to ignore that one when she cleans,” Daniel said, seeing which of the pictures Jack stopped at. Jack glanced at him. “She’s harmless. I’m happy so she’s happy. It’ll be a another generation or two before the planet gets beyond all the puritanical nonsense. At least she isn’t out to build a pyre with us and she does like you.”

  “I know she does,” Jack said, patting his stomach. “Between her and Abigail, I’m fighting a losing battle.” He leaned over and pecked Daniel on the mouth.

  “You know that alternate timeline of ours where we spent it in Egypt?” Jack asked, sitting on the edge of the desk. “There were four of us and we haven’t found any anomalies from it, have we?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed,” Daniel said. “If there were, I probably wouldn’t recognize it anyway, so I’m not going to stress over it. Between us and the Celts, it might explain that odd blue-eyed Egyptian or Arab that shows up, though. Other than that, I don’t think there’s anything.”

  Jack thought about it and nodded. “And those other us’s that we’ve met. If one of us weren’t alive, the other could have lived their life out here, right?”

  “Yes,” Daniel nodded.

  “So if the Ancients were from another Earth timeline, and they somehow came into this timeline, all those thousands of years ago, we really wouldn’t be able to tell what timeline or even what time in history they came from.”

  “Not if they took their cities with them,” Daniel said, “just like they took Atlantis.” He knew Jack would catch up, given the time he had to contemplate it.

  “And when they came back, they came to stay so they lived as the locals do,” Jack continued.

  “Correct,” Daniel said. “And I think they may have been surprised at the growth of humans, considering that they thought we were going to die out. So they contributed a little, just bits and pieces, enough for the locals to figure it out for themselves, which would explain those sudden leaps throughout early history.”

  “And this was after the Goa’uld left?”

  “We think so,” Daniel said. “None of the Ancient weapons had the Goa’uld in mind. Humans were advanced enough for the Ancients to blend into society by then and there weren’t enough of them left to create a social structure of their own. Not without some serious inbreeding. Jack, this is something you may want to meditate on. There’s no reason the history shouldn’t be in your head, not if everything else Ancient is.”

  Jack nodded thoughtfully again and walked slowly from the room. Daniel was next to him a moment later. “Sam emailed. The latest ship is ready for a name.” They went to the HomeSec gate room, and walked into Area 51.

  The deck was where the ships were built. Most of their section of the desert had a hollowed out underground complex for the large ships, instead of subjecting workers to the temperatures of the desert floor. They found Sam with her head inside a box of wires on the side of a ship. Jack looked into the box from over her shoulder, listening to her mumbling to herself. Sam straightened and jumped when she bumped into him.

  “Jack! Don’t do that!”

  “Whatcha doin’?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know.

  “Trying to find a short in the wires,” she said. “It’s been driving us crazy. Hi, Daniel.” He pecked her cheek. “Want to throw a name into the hat for this ship?”

  “What’s it for?” Daniel asked, taking a step back to look at the thing.

  “Science vessel,” she said. “We also have two of the new classes over there.” She pointed across the three miles of space toward the other ships being built.

  “How about the Hawking?” he suggested. Sam was stunned.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” she asked. “Shame on me. I’ll invite him over, see if he wants a tour.”

  “Colonel Carter!” someone shouted. Sam looked over at her crew. One of the men pointed to the new 304 skeleton towering over them. “How about Cuchulainn?”

  Jack looked at Daniel. “Champion of the Red Branch,” Daniel said. “Court of Ulster. Cuchulainn was the son of Lugh, the sun god, his grandmother was of the sidech, one of the fairy folk. Cuchulainn’s acts were mostly done during the winter, which makes him a champion of the dark. Or over the dark. His name was actually Setanta. He wrestled a savage dog when he was a child, saving a lot of people gathered for a banquet, and took the dog’s place as the shepherd watcher until a new dog was raised for the job. Cathbad the Druid changed his name to Cu Culann. Culann’s Dog. He’s the Celtic version of Hercules.”

  Jack looked at the ship. “Is this a good thing?” he asked.

  “It’s a very good thing,” Daniel said.

  “Okay,” Jack agreed.

  “Cuchulainn it is!” Sam informed the crew. They gave a cheer and went back to work. Someone quickly scribbled the name on a piece of sheeting and hung it on the ship’s hull.

  “The science vessel is the Hawking,” Sam informed her crew. Another name tag was made and applied.

  “How about the third ship?” Daniel asked, looking out at the second 304 skeleton. “What is it? Exploration?”

  “Yes, it is,” Sam said with a nod.

  “Hmmmmm….. Galileo?” he suggested. Sam thought about it and gave it a thumbs up. Each of the yards named the ships they built, with Sam having the final okay. It was run by Jack, but he usually left it to Sam and her people. Sam knew his guidelines and he didn’t need to do her job.

  Sam called out the new name and the crew was a merry crew. A few of the more superstitious of the lot felt that the ships should have names so that the energy of the na
me went into the ship while it was being built. Start them off with a good personality and intent, they said. Daniel looked at his watch.

  “Oooh, I need to go,” he said. “I have class in an hour. Seventeen shiny young faces to temp to the Force. I’ll see you tonight.” He kissed them both and ran to security, the new home for the arch.

  “He’s running everywhere,” Jack informed Sam. “This is your fault.”

  Once Jack returned home a few hours later, he drove up just as Jerrie was returning from picking the kids up from school. Katie took his arm and steered him away.

  “Need to talk,” she said.

  “Okay.” Jack took them around back to their new deck overlooking the pond. Katie was a little nervous about something.

  “I might be sleeping with Josh this weekend,” she told him. Jack sat down.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I won’t lock you up, but at the same time I’d like to remind you about the MSATs.”

  “I know,” she said, leaning against the railing and looking at the ducks. “I want to do this. I think I love him. If love is this ringing in my ears and this weird feeling in my stomach. And you should know that he won’t be around for long; he signed up with the Marines. He wants to get into the SGC. I know long distance relationships don’t work, so I want this part of him before he leaves.”

  Jack leaned forward, dangling his hands between his knees and looking at the deck as he thought about it. A quick poke told him that Katie was indeed feeling love. A passionate, womanly love. She wasn’t a little girl anymore.