The journal of Daniel Jackson Prime(ish) (personal) [another journal is included which is entirely scientific in nature, full of archaeological, anthropological and linguistic notes and as such is of primary interest to others in the field. This and many other journals were found at the Elysium site in 2006.]
3000 BC
Best estimate Sam could give me of the date is mid February. Call it the 15th. Is it vindication if no one knows you’re right? In any event, this place is amazing. We are trying to skim so lightly here, but I am itching to talk, to explore, to touch and breathe this that I've spent my whole life studying. There could not possibly be enough video tape in the universe. The language... even the Abydonians had drifted from it. To hear it spoken by living, breathing people, the subtle nuances of inflection... I could spend a lifetime here and it would not be enough. How many questions I could answer, traveling this world in the days when the gods walk the earth?
Sam is jumpy. Jack is impatient, and Teal’c doesn't say much, but from the twitching in his jaw I can see that it will take every ounce of self restraint he has (and no one does self-restraint like Teal’c) to avoid trying to free his brethren in this time period. But anything we touch, anything we do, jeopardizes the tremendous victories we've FINALLY won. Sam keeps worrying about butterflies, and while I don’t think the timeline is quite that sensitive, I don’t blame her. Tomorrow, we shall see Ra. Hard to imagine, it’s been so long since we killed him.
16 February 3000 BC
Well, that went well. To a point. You know, the point where we got the girl but can’t get the car. Remember what I said about living here a lifetime? Wasn't really the plan. Watching Ra kill a man, not being able to move a finger... it’s all the bad things about ascension with actually being able to die wrapped around it like a snake. Getting that ZPM, that was definitely a win. Finding the jumper surrounded by Jaffa with sand dripping off its invisibility? SO not the plan.
Sam is now very, very calm in the most frightening way. Jack is chomping at the bit to go break Jaffa heads. Teal’c says nothing, but the twitch has frozen in the “up” position and his eyes are like death. I’m torn between doing the happy dance about living in Egypt again and the crazy place where I think about the universe I knew and saved so many times unraveling into some lesser future.
1 March 3000 BC
We have finally settled into something of a pattern. I've moved in with Katep, while Sam, Jack and Teal’c have a tent nearby. We've something of a cover story, but nothing quite covers Sam’s blonde hair, our blue eyes, the fact that we ooze difference. Sam seems to be almost vibrating in her own skin with the extraordinarily tight constraints on her activities, but she restrains herself at every turn from speaking her mind. We have always depended on each other, but right now she must lean on the three of us more than she could ever be comfortable with, if only to fend off the offers from those who would buy her as a bride or a slave (not that she thinks there’s much difference, here). I've asked Katep’s wife to take Sam under her wing, god only knows how long Sam’s emergency supplies will last and I know that while she’s used to making do in a lot of ways, it will be much easier if she can at least take advantage of the local level of technology.
8 March 3000 BC
Kebi, Katep’s wife, has bustled Sam off. Katep tells me they will return in a few days. Which most likely means that Sam is being initiated into an Ancient Egyptian menstrual ritual, and I can’t wait to hear her reaction to THAT. Jack is worried, I’m actually not, for once. This feels... almost normal. Maybe normal is not the right word. Manageable.
15 March 3000 BC
Sam is back, and not telling me anything. But she does not seem traumatized, and she and Kebi seem to have become friends. Jack has calmed down, in fact, he’s as mellow as I've seen him since before we got here.
Later:
That would explain it. I've known for a long time that Jack and Sam had feelings... but knowing they have strong feelings is entirely different from seeing them neck around a campfire. Teal’c actually smiled. All I can say is *finally*. The one thing they won’t have to worry about, for a while at least, is disturbing the timeline with offspring—after the Shavadai, Sam and Janet put their heads together and after that all female personnel on offworld teams had some sort of implanted contraception of the 5-10 year variety. That was almost 8 years ago, so Sam should be good for a couple of years one way or the other.
The hardest thing about being here is that it feels like Abydos. But without Sha’re. It’s an old wound, but being here has reopened it in a way I had not thought possible. How many lifetimes must I live before it stops hurting so much? Then again, the hurt makes it real, makes her real. And the last thing I can think about is drowning my sorrows in a local woman’s embrace. Talk about causality problems.
30 March 3000 BC
They can’t keep their mouths shut. Jack throws up his hands and shouts at me, at Sam. Teal’c looks dangerous. Sam just says, “We can’t risk it!” We've stashed the video and the ZPM safely, Jack and Teal’c just want to go back to a time where they don’t have to sit on their hands in the face of daily oppression by the Jaffa and Goa’uld. This is not what we spent eight years fighting for. Jack says, “They’re just going to rise up anyway!” and Sam just shakes her head. The local villagers are paying attention, you can’t hide this sort of thing in a tent, and I know Katep and Kebi are picking up English fast.
I finally thought to ask about Teal’c’s tretonin supply. Interestingly enough, I’m not the only one who’s taken to carrying extra in my pack. Turns out that between Jack, Sam, Teal’c and me, he can probably stretch the stuff for close to two years, if he pushes every dose and shorts every dose a little. God knows Bra’tac managed to pull months out of a couple of injectors, and we've got whole vials of the stuff, each of us. Got a laugh out of that, until we realized how numbered Teal’c’s days really are. Two years seems like forever, until you realize he’s lived over a hundred, we've been together as a team for eight.
13 May 3000 BC
Sam has confided in me that she does not think that we can ever go back. That our footprints in this time have been too big, and that even if we do manage to get the jumper, heading into the future we will only find ourselves to be already there. She calls it a “time clone” phenomenon, and like most of what Sam says, the parts that are actually understandable by those who are not physics geeks are very compelling. She seems almost afraid to tell Jack this. Apparently the minute you go backwards in time and change something, you simply can never quite return to the future you left. Even when we “came back” from 1969, the only reason we didn't find ourselves already there is that in each timeline we interacted in, we simply were not there after we left because we didn't change things enough in the past to make us not have to go. She said that timelines must be forgiving to a point, but by burying the ZPM, we created a paradox, and while the timeline doesn't seem to be editing us out to fix itself, the chances are that no matter what, if we go back there will be two sets of SG1. Or so Sam explains. She’s worried about entropic cascade failure if we do go back.
I tell her to tell me in Egyptian and I might understand it better. She just rolls her eyes and talks about the multiverse. I believe her. Ultimately we are trying to create a timeline in which SG-1 exists basically as we existed, plus a ZPM, minus having to go back in time. Hopefully what we've left will be enough. Thinking about how many lifetimes we may have lived by this point, given all the time travel, just makes me tired. In the face of this realization from her, today was the first day in close to two weeks that she and Jack did not get into a shouting match. She quit calling him “sir” a while ago, although when she’s mad it slips out. If we did not bury the ZPM in the tomb, then most future time loops would tend to come back to get it, and we could go forward, but if we don’t bury it in the tomb, we don’t know if it will get there at all. Ultimately the ZPM is worth our lives if it can be in the right place at the right time, and SG-1 will have saved the world once again. Only we won’t even know it. They won’t know it. Whatever.
Later:
Okay, that I didn't need to know. Kebi and Katep kicked me out of the tent after Jack and Sam apparently “made up”. Noisily. Those crazy kids.
15 May 3000 BC
Doubletake of all doubletakes when Kebi and her friends mobbed Sam this afternoon, swept her away to the women’s tent, and then returned with a dark haired, dark skinned Sam. Unfortunately it makes her eyes stand out all the more, but if she keeps them downcast it’s not so bad. Damn, that must be hard on her. It’s antithetical to everything she is.
February 2999 BC
I've lost track of the days. It’s hard to focus on calendars when everything is on “Ra’s Time” and it will never matter anyway. The weather and sun are about where they were when we got here last year. Jack is still adamant that we will return. Sam doesn't argue with him, but looks sad whenever he says it. Teal’c supports Jack. I don’t not support him, but I don’t feel the urgency he does. They have been going out to villages in the area for many months now, and I am worried that they will run into piety that will get them in trouble. Katep is worried, too. Jack picked up Egyptian surprisingly fast, and has never asked me to go with him to translate. Teal’c, of course, already being fluent in Goa’uld, had an even easier time of it. The two of them are a potent team, but they are pushing for a rebellion as soon as possible, and are taking a lot of risks to make it happen.
Autumn, 2999 BC
They failed. Jack and Teal’c got caught, someone pointed to Sam, and the Jaffa just killed them. Shot them like rabid dogs for blasphemy. I don’t know why I’m alive. I’d just as soon not be. I've lost everything I ever cared about, except Egypt, only now, I don’t even know if I have that, as a failed rebellion MUST change things. I’m not even sure how someone would commit suicide with a zat gun, but I often wonder if I should. I will stay alive until Ra leaves, or until someone shows up trying to fix things, and reevaluate then. We will never be able to know if our efforts paid off. That is probably what hurts the most. It is a small, mocking gift that I did not have to watch them die. It is a huge curse that I had to see them dead, had to be the one to make them vanish, I will never forget the look on Sam’s face as long as I live. Jack and Teal’c just looked pissed. But Sam... I can’t write anymore. I’m not sure I’ll ever put pen to this journal again. What more is there to say?
Spring, 2995 BC
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Hysterically sobbing laughter is probably about right, although I've been sticking mostly with the whole “stupefied stare” thing when I stop to think about it.
Jack, Sam and Teal’c are back. Only they’re different. Sam is hesitant and insecure and geekier than can possibly be believed. Jack-without-Stargate obviously spent way too much time in Minnesota and not talking to people, because he’s all folksy aphorisms and distrust. Teal’c seems stunned and is quieter than I remember him being, only I think he was that way when we first got him from Chulak, back when he was living the shock of giving up his family and everything he knew on the off chance our backwards race might be able to help him. This Teal’c has a little more reason to be here, with an actual promise that his people will be freed if he joins the Tau’ri. But what Sam hadn't formulated was that idea that no matter what sacrifices we make now, no matter how this whole time travel thing works, these bodies of ours, this consciousness will never be able to simply live out that life we are struggling so hard to make possible. A bitter, but not impossible pill to swallow.
I keep looking at them and seeing my friends but then Sam scrunches up her face, Jack says “You betcha” and Teal’c... No, Teal’c scans pretty much the same, but oh god, Teal’c and I had finally reached that place where we understood each other, and this Teal’c does not know me as anyone but the person he shot for being a spy. Anyway, they break that momentary spell where my friends are with me and it will all be okay and it opens the wound all over again. It is good that the emotional wellspring does not run dry, because my soul feels exsanguinated.