Events on the Horizon: A Stargate Sequel

Chapter 4

Eleanor

Journal number 38, finished and tucked away in the pack I decided would be my bartering entrance to the SGC. If Daniel had made it, he'd recognize me and at least allow me to come through the gate. At this point there is no telling how far along his new timeline he is, he could have found new timeline me and be living a happy life. As he should, I was supposed to be gone in this timeline. It was supposed to end and he was going to save humanity, save me from the Ancients library, help us all. Or, the idea I didn't care for but was also possible, he had moved on and was with someone else. He had every right to that as well, I selfishly didn't like it. But, with this pack of valuable information I'd still be granted acceptance through the gate to at least try and carve a new life for myself that didn't consist of me worrying about the encroaching wall of what I'd dubbed the void of time swallowing the land around me. My least favorite of all the options, Daniel didn't make it but now I could, and no one in the SGC would believe me unless I could trade these journals for a ticket back. Any of the options left me with knowing that when I jumped back, if I was able to pull this off, I would still need to beg for the help of the Asgards who were not particularly willing to help me the last time. Then by some miracle if they did help me, I would have to start a new life of my own, alone.

What I was certain of was I could not stay here. I had gone out again to try and find things from my own home and found that it had been taken over by the encroaching void. It was moving in, sinking closer and there was no telling how much longer I had. Weeks, months, not long enough for me to continue waiting idly by. I had the internal mechanism built for my single use transportation beacon back into the past. The one positive of the cancer that was the Ancients library burrowing into my brain was that I could build virtually anything but still have no concept of really what it was. Somehow, I have figured out I was an anchor here, and once I returned back to the point of origin, the device that had sucked the life out of me that I used to bring Daniel back from his grave, it should be corrected and this timeline could end completely. What I was crafting though was a single use ticket, and my calculations had to be precise. Problem with that I am not a scientist. I am not Samantha Carter, I'm not Rodney McKay, I'm not Bill Lee, I don't even have a doctorate. I'm just Eleanor Owens, once told I was a glorified human search engine. I took in a deep breath and rolled my shoulders to keep from the cramping in my neck and rewound the mixtape in my battery powered Walkman I had found when I rummaged around the office building looking for any form of entertainment to bide my time.

If I did manage to pull this off, I had found the perfect jumping site to go to. Unlike Daniel, I couldn't go directly back through this gate. However, at the time I remembered Jonas Quinn, someone who worked with SG-1 and Daniel personally, was going to be at the Alpha site just months after Daniel's initial recovery. There was no Iris at the alpha site like there was at the SGC, so if I could come through the gate, I'd demand to see Jonas and hopefully make my way back through him. I had never met Jonas, but read enough reports and heard from Daniel personally that he was trustworthy, and close to SG-1 themselves.

Crafting this device myself was taking me a projected 6 more weeks if I could find all the pieces for it. The metal has to be locally sourced, just as far as the void would allow me, and I was working on fumes. Canned food, stale black coffee, whatever I could manage to just push me along. Oftentimes I'd sit for a moment in my thoughts and think about cream again. Creamer in coffee, ice cream, it was enough to make my mouth water. Then fresh fruit and vegetables, pomegranate seeds bursting in my mouth with a flood of tart juices, the way a peeled mandarin would form a paper thin crusting on the skin if left out for an hour and when you bit into it the tension would pop, or even the sweet crisp crunch of a sugar snap pea right off the vine. I looked over at the opened can of ravioli pasta in meat sauce I had found and grimaced, shoveling a spoonful into my grumbling stomach. It wasn't that it tasted badly it's that eating canned pasta for months at a time took a toll.