Of the Sand 3
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Chapter Three: Sand and Water
Just as Teal’c predicted, they were surrounded by desert. The room that they had woke up in seemed to be carved out from a cliff and a long set of stairs descended down to the sand. It was desolate and Jack missed his sunglasses, as it took him a while to get used to the brightness of the sun reflected back from the sand. Once his eyes did get used to the glare, he couldn’t see anything but sand and large rocks.
“Got any ideas, Danny? Teal’c?” Jack asked.
“Okay, now you’re just reaching,” Daniel muttered, but he obligingly squinted around. “We need to look for signs of life.”
“There,” Teal’c called out, pointing at the sky to the east.
Jack whirled around to look and just barely spotted the hawk flying in the distance.
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
“It’s a bird,” Vala answered.
“As well as a city,” Teal’c added.
“Really?” Jack asked, turning to Teal’c in surprise. “You can tell all of that from a bird?”
“That was not a wild animal, it moved with too much purpose for that. I believe it to be a messenger bird.” Teal’c nodded his head toward Daniel. “Were Daniel Jackson able to correctly see, I am sure that he would have said the same.”
“My vision’s not that bad,” Daniel to Jack when the older boy looked over to him. “But it seems to be the same as when I really was a kid and distances are a bit blurry.”
“Well, maybe this city will have glasses that we can get you,” Jack said as he turned back to the direction of the city. “I hope that they have sunglasses.”
“Are we going to go now?” Vala asked, almost bouncing in place in excitement.
“How far do you think the city is?” Jack asked Teal’c, trying to gage the distance himself.
“I believe it to be several clicks away, O’Neill,” Teal’c answered.
“It’s probably at least a day’s trip away,” Daniel said. “Desert travel can be a bit different than normal terrain. It’s harder walking on the sand and you should always go around the dunes, which adds more time to the journey.”
“As I recall, you can go over the dunes if you have help from a camel,” Jack teased.
Daniel rolled his eyes. “You’re still bringing that up? It’s been over a decade since that happened!”
“Ooh, is this about your first trip through the Stargate?” Vala asked, jumping up and down. He grinned. “I love that story.”
“It’s a great story,” Jack agreed.
“I would suggest that we take this trip during the night, as we are not sure if we have a source of water just yet,” Teal’c suggested.
“We need to check in with the others first, anyway,” Jack agreed.
“I think we should keep looking for a bit,” Daniel said as he knelt down in the sand. “Look at this.”
“It’s a dead plant,” Vala said. She squatted down beside Daniel. “What’s so special about it?”
“Plants don’t grow in the desert unless there’s a source of water nearby,” Daniel lectured. “We might have to search hard for it, maybe even dig, but I think we might be able to find water.”
“Great.” Jack clapped his hands together.” Now all that’s left is to find something to eat.”
“I believe that the source of water is this way,” Teal’c said, motioning to a pathway along the cliff that was covered in scraggly bushes.
“Let’s go then,” Jack said as Daniel and Vala stood up.
Teal’c led the way down the pathway, beating back the dried bushes with his staff. Daniel and Vala came next and Jack brought up the rear. The pathway wound its way up the cliff, finally ending at a large ledge. Near the base of the cliff, there was a pool of water. Jack could faintly hear the trickle of water as it flowed down the cliff side.
“Water,” Daniel called out.
Vala laughed and moved to the edge of the pond. “We found water!”
“The question is, is it safe to drink?” Jack asked.
“We do not have our usual gear,” Teal’c reminded.” That meant that they did not have any water purification tablets, which were recommended if one had to drink off world water. Usually, protocol encouraged that they eat and drink their own food rather than the local supplies.
“Our immune systems might not be fully developed,” Daniel murmured, remembering the lectures given to the teen clone of Jack.
“Let’s take a sample back to the Doc, let her figure out what to do,” Jack decided as he pulled out a dinged up goblet from his robes. He noted Daniel and Vala staring and he shrugged. “I grabbed it in case we ran into water and wanted to take some back.
“I think that boiling the water might work,” Daniel said. He took the goblet from Jack and started inspecting it. “And this goblet might be something used in rituals; look at the pictures engraved on it.”
“Oh, come on,” Vala huffed out as she grabbed the goblet from Daniel. She carefully skimmed the top of the water with a stick before dipping the goblet into the clear water. She handed the full goblet of water back to Daniel. “You can study the pictures later, now I want to go back and explore the room. I wonder if there is anything with a higher quantity in gold.”
“You heard the lady; let’s take this water back to the Doc,” Jack said.
They headed back down the pathway, Teal’c and Vala leading while Jack made sure that Daniel didn’t spill the water in the goblet. At the end of the pathway, it was only a short distance to the doors of the room.
Cam was there, sitting in the shade with the staff beside him. He jumped up when he saw them and raced over.
“Did you find the holy grail out there?” he asked when he saw the goblet of water.
“Nah, I found that in the room,” Jack replied.
They entered the room, finding it slightly reorganized. The boxers were resorted differently; Jack assumed that the more relevant boxes were in the front of the room, while the ones filled with truly useless trinkets were in the back. Carter was still in front of the Mirror and in her hands was the familiar odd shaped control device.
“Hey, you found it,” Daniel exclaimed. Jack reached out and snagged the goblet of water so that Daniel and Vala could race over to Sam.
“We found something, too. Doc, see what you can do with this,” Jack called out as he lifted the goblet.
“Water,” Janet exclaimed as she peered into the goblet. She took it from Jack and started to inspect it further. “It looks clean, but who knows what kind of bacteria it has and who knows what antibodies that we have, even ignoring the fact that this is alien bacteria.”
Jack left Janet to her investigating and headed over to where George was still stacking boxes. “Hello, sir.”
“Colonel, sorry,” George shook his head. “General. It still feels strange to say that when referencing you.”
“Oh, I get that from a lot of people,” Jack grinned and rocked back on his heels. “And even after all these years, it still feels slightly odd to be a General.”
“I can relate to that,” George sighed before focusing back onto Jack. “So, what’s out there?”
“Sand, a whole lot of sand,” Jack replied. “Teal’c was right, this is a different planet and it is mostly a desert. The good news is that we found a nearby water source and about a day or so away there’s a city.”
“A city?” George raised his right eyebrows in surprise and faint worry. A city was both good and bad for them right now.
“To be honest, it looks more like cliffs to me, but Teal’c said that the hawk was a city hawk and a messenger and I believe him,” Jack answered. “We’re planning to check it out at night, probably for a day trip.”
George nodded. “Travel by night, rest and investigate by day. All right, you have a go.”
“You know,” Jack reflected. “I think I missed hearing that. So, how did things go here?”
“We found more clothes, including what looks like their version of a military uniform. We also found what we think is good food, although it still needs to be tested.”
“Food?” Jack perked up.
“Military rations,” George said and Jack deflated.
“Do they look as bad as ours do?” Jack asked.
“Energy bars, it seems. The good thing is that they are more recent than anything else here,” George said.
“Yum. Did you find anything that looks like money?” Jack asked. “Because we might be able to buy food from the locals when we get to the city.”
“We’ve put aside some coins that we found,” George answered. “We have no way of telling whether they are the current currency used or not, but it’s worth checking out.”
“How’s Carter doing with the doohickey?” Jack asked, turning to the three kids.
“We found the control device, but she hasn’t been able to activate the mirror,” George frowned. “She says that it needs to be fixed. Now, as far as I know, we were never able to figure out how it really works, but the Lieutenant Colonel says that she might be able to figure it out.”
“Yeah, we did learn more about how this stuff works between the reports we got back from Atlantis and the stuff we got off of Merlin,” Jack mused.
“Atlantis? Merlin?” George repeated in surprise.
“As in the lost city of and the round table?” Jack asked. “Yep.”
“You’ve got to give me a better debriefing,” George said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“So, what other things have you found?” Jack asked, looking around at the boxes.
“We’ve found more clothes and dishes that we can eat out of and a lot of useless items,” George answered. “I’m no archaeologist, but I believe that this was a religious site that the military later took over.”
“Oh?” Jack tried to raise his eyebrow and failed.
“The boxes where we found the military clothing, the food, and other supplies are newer than the boxes containing candles and the like,” George answered.
“Sounds like a good theory. I’m sure that Danny and Jonas will agree with you after they get a chance to fully look the place over.” Jack rolled his eyes. “It would probably set Daniel off on a rant.”
“Are you taking him with you?” George asked, glancing over at Daniel.”
“If he’s up for it and I can tear him away from this place. I was also hoping to take Teal’c and Cam along,” Jack replied.
“I’m sure that the rest of us can hold down the fort while you’re gone,” George said. “I would feel better if I had a gun in my hands rather than a staff, but I’m not completely useless with it.”
“Of course not.” Jack grinned. He knew that George still had plenty of fight in him, even with his mental age. “We’ll leave at dusk, then.”
Jack gave George a nod before wandering over to where the ‘kids’ were gathered in front of the Mirror. Although Jack had always referred to them as kids before, now they truly looked the part. Sam, Daniel, Jonas, and Vala appeared to be on the lower range of ages that they had ended up as. Jack crouched down next to Daniel and Vala and poked at the tablet that Daniel was holding.
Daniel swatted at Jack’s hand. “Quit that, I’m trying to read it.”
“What’s it say?” Jack asked as he turned to inspect the gold platter that Vala had.
“It’s a strange mixture of Arabic and Japanese, or at least their versions of the language,” Daniel said. “It’s a description of some kind of ritual involving demons.”
“Goa’uld?” Jack asked. The parasitic aliens usually set themselves up as gods, but they had run into a few who used other fearsome terms to describe themselves. And then there was Ba’al, but Jack never liked to think about Ba’al.
“It’s hard to say. They don’t say anything about these Bjuu being from the stars or the heavens, but they do stay that they are demons,” Daniel replied.
“Huh, interesting,” Jack commented before turning to Sam. “Hammond said that this thing was broken?”
“Yes sir. It doesn’t activate, no matter which direction I turn the control device, but I’m hopeful that I can actually fix it,” Sam replied. She picked up the control device. “I did actually find something interesting that you’re going to want to listen to.”
“Oh?” Jack asked.
“Look at this control device, notice anything different about it compared to the control device in our universe?” Sam asked as she handed the control device to Jack.
Jack stared at it, but nothing jumped out at him. “It’s a different shade of purple?” he hazard a guess.
“The symbols on the control device go in a different direction than the control device in our universe,” Sam corrected. “Now, Daniel didn’t see any differences in the control device that he first went to and the control device that Doctor Carter and Major Kawalski had did have a slightly different order. Now, at the time we figured it to be a slight deviation in design because of the alternate world, but what if we were wrong?”
“Carter?” Jack asked, motioning for her to go on.
“As I’ve said, we’ve only ever explored the worlds closest to ours. What if these symbols indicate more than what universe we are at, what if these symbols told us the direction of the universe?” Sam asked.
“Like, if we turn left we’ll eventually make it to the next alternate universe?” Jack quipped.
“More like this universe comes before that universe, sir,” Sam answered, still waiting for his reaction.
“And all of this would mean?” Jack prompted.
“Since we only recognize some of the symbols, I would guess that we are quite far from our universe,” Sam answered. She hesitated before plunging on. “Sir, I don’t think that we’ll easily be able to get back home, even if I could fix the mirror. We would either have to jump through universes in our direction or our universe would have to connect here.”
“Could we make it home with universe jumping?” Jack asked. “We won’t get horribly lost, will we?”
“We are fairly sure that the symbols on the control device are for specific universes and, with what we’ve just learned about direction, we should be able to get to our world.” Sam paused and smiled. “I think I remember the symbol for our universe.”
“You think?” Jack raised his eyebrows. He really didn’t want to take that big of a chance off of ‘I think.’
“Close enough that I should be able to recognize it when it appears on the control device.” Sam shrugged. “Something more is that I’m not sure how Entropic Cascade Failure will affect us. From what I remember, this universe was on the far end of the control device, which means that it is drastically changed from our universe. We might not even exist in this universe.”
“Which will mean?” Jack trailed off.
“The theories suggest that, since we are in a universe farther from our originating universe, the Entropic Cascade Failure would have a higher impact, as the elements between the two worlds are out of sync. But then, we really haven’t been this far away from our own universe, so we might not be affected at all,” Sam answered. “Given how we didn’t spontaneously combust when first entering this universe, we stand a decent chance of the latter happening.”
“But we’ll have to wait to be sure,” Janet said as she approached the group. She focused in on Jack. “I’ll need a fire to boil the water.”
“I’ll help,” Vala volunteered, putting her gold to the side.
“Outside,” Jack said as he steered her to the door. They didn’t need Vala to be playing with fire in an enclosed space. Plus, he really didn’t know if the room was ventilated or not.
Cam followed them outside and helped Jack build up a fire in a shallow alcove near the door. They used the dried bits of bushes as kindling to create a small fire, which is all they really wanted. Jack didn’t want to advertise their presence until they had gotten a hold on the new world.
They used a copper pot to boil the water from the goblet, so that they could trek back up the pathway to get another cup of water. Once the water reached a rolling boil, they took it off of the fire and brought it back inside the room to cool down. While they waited for the water to cool, Janet had each of them test their reactions to the ration bars that they had found, just to be sure that no one was allergic to the contents. Fairly sure that they weren’t going to die from the off world food, they sat down and ate.
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Chapter 4
Chapter Three: Sand and Water
Just as Teal’c predicted, they were surrounded by desert. The room that they had woke up in seemed to be carved out from a cliff and a long set of stairs descended down to the sand. It was desolate and Jack missed his sunglasses, as it took him a while to get used to the brightness of the sun reflected back from the sand. Once his eyes did get used to the glare, he couldn’t see anything but sand and large rocks.
“Got any ideas, Danny? Teal’c?” Jack asked.
“Okay, now you’re just reaching,” Daniel muttered, but he obligingly squinted around. “We need to look for signs of life.”
“There,” Teal’c called out, pointing at the sky to the east.
Jack whirled around to look and just barely spotted the hawk flying in the distance.
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
“It’s a bird,” Vala answered.
“As well as a city,” Teal’c added.
“Really?” Jack asked, turning to Teal’c in surprise. “You can tell all of that from a bird?”
“That was not a wild animal, it moved with too much purpose for that. I believe it to be a messenger bird.” Teal’c nodded his head toward Daniel. “Were Daniel Jackson able to correctly see, I am sure that he would have said the same.”
“My vision’s not that bad,” Daniel to Jack when the older boy looked over to him. “But it seems to be the same as when I really was a kid and distances are a bit blurry.”
“Well, maybe this city will have glasses that we can get you,” Jack said as he turned back to the direction of the city. “I hope that they have sunglasses.”
“Are we going to go now?” Vala asked, almost bouncing in place in excitement.
“How far do you think the city is?” Jack asked Teal’c, trying to gage the distance himself.
“I believe it to be several clicks away, O’Neill,” Teal’c answered.
“It’s probably at least a day’s trip away,” Daniel said. “Desert travel can be a bit different than normal terrain. It’s harder walking on the sand and you should always go around the dunes, which adds more time to the journey.”
“As I recall, you can go over the dunes if you have help from a camel,” Jack teased.
Daniel rolled his eyes. “You’re still bringing that up? It’s been over a decade since that happened!”
“Ooh, is this about your first trip through the Stargate?” Vala asked, jumping up and down. He grinned. “I love that story.”
“It’s a great story,” Jack agreed.
“I would suggest that we take this trip during the night, as we are not sure if we have a source of water just yet,” Teal’c suggested.
“We need to check in with the others first, anyway,” Jack agreed.
“I think we should keep looking for a bit,” Daniel said as he knelt down in the sand. “Look at this.”
“It’s a dead plant,” Vala said. She squatted down beside Daniel. “What’s so special about it?”
“Plants don’t grow in the desert unless there’s a source of water nearby,” Daniel lectured. “We might have to search hard for it, maybe even dig, but I think we might be able to find water.”
“Great.” Jack clapped his hands together.” Now all that’s left is to find something to eat.”
“I believe that the source of water is this way,” Teal’c said, motioning to a pathway along the cliff that was covered in scraggly bushes.
“Let’s go then,” Jack said as Daniel and Vala stood up.
Teal’c led the way down the pathway, beating back the dried bushes with his staff. Daniel and Vala came next and Jack brought up the rear. The pathway wound its way up the cliff, finally ending at a large ledge. Near the base of the cliff, there was a pool of water. Jack could faintly hear the trickle of water as it flowed down the cliff side.
“Water,” Daniel called out.
Vala laughed and moved to the edge of the pond. “We found water!”
“The question is, is it safe to drink?” Jack asked.
“We do not have our usual gear,” Teal’c reminded.” That meant that they did not have any water purification tablets, which were recommended if one had to drink off world water. Usually, protocol encouraged that they eat and drink their own food rather than the local supplies.
“Our immune systems might not be fully developed,” Daniel murmured, remembering the lectures given to the teen clone of Jack.
“Let’s take a sample back to the Doc, let her figure out what to do,” Jack decided as he pulled out a dinged up goblet from his robes. He noted Daniel and Vala staring and he shrugged. “I grabbed it in case we ran into water and wanted to take some back.
“I think that boiling the water might work,” Daniel said. He took the goblet from Jack and started inspecting it. “And this goblet might be something used in rituals; look at the pictures engraved on it.”
“Oh, come on,” Vala huffed out as she grabbed the goblet from Daniel. She carefully skimmed the top of the water with a stick before dipping the goblet into the clear water. She handed the full goblet of water back to Daniel. “You can study the pictures later, now I want to go back and explore the room. I wonder if there is anything with a higher quantity in gold.”
“You heard the lady; let’s take this water back to the Doc,” Jack said.
They headed back down the pathway, Teal’c and Vala leading while Jack made sure that Daniel didn’t spill the water in the goblet. At the end of the pathway, it was only a short distance to the doors of the room.
Cam was there, sitting in the shade with the staff beside him. He jumped up when he saw them and raced over.
“Did you find the holy grail out there?” he asked when he saw the goblet of water.
“Nah, I found that in the room,” Jack replied.
They entered the room, finding it slightly reorganized. The boxers were resorted differently; Jack assumed that the more relevant boxes were in the front of the room, while the ones filled with truly useless trinkets were in the back. Carter was still in front of the Mirror and in her hands was the familiar odd shaped control device.
“Hey, you found it,” Daniel exclaimed. Jack reached out and snagged the goblet of water so that Daniel and Vala could race over to Sam.
“We found something, too. Doc, see what you can do with this,” Jack called out as he lifted the goblet.
“Water,” Janet exclaimed as she peered into the goblet. She took it from Jack and started to inspect it further. “It looks clean, but who knows what kind of bacteria it has and who knows what antibodies that we have, even ignoring the fact that this is alien bacteria.”
Jack left Janet to her investigating and headed over to where George was still stacking boxes. “Hello, sir.”
“Colonel, sorry,” George shook his head. “General. It still feels strange to say that when referencing you.”
“Oh, I get that from a lot of people,” Jack grinned and rocked back on his heels. “And even after all these years, it still feels slightly odd to be a General.”
“I can relate to that,” George sighed before focusing back onto Jack. “So, what’s out there?”
“Sand, a whole lot of sand,” Jack replied. “Teal’c was right, this is a different planet and it is mostly a desert. The good news is that we found a nearby water source and about a day or so away there’s a city.”
“A city?” George raised his right eyebrows in surprise and faint worry. A city was both good and bad for them right now.
“To be honest, it looks more like cliffs to me, but Teal’c said that the hawk was a city hawk and a messenger and I believe him,” Jack answered. “We’re planning to check it out at night, probably for a day trip.”
George nodded. “Travel by night, rest and investigate by day. All right, you have a go.”
“You know,” Jack reflected. “I think I missed hearing that. So, how did things go here?”
“We found more clothes, including what looks like their version of a military uniform. We also found what we think is good food, although it still needs to be tested.”
“Food?” Jack perked up.
“Military rations,” George said and Jack deflated.
“Do they look as bad as ours do?” Jack asked.
“Energy bars, it seems. The good thing is that they are more recent than anything else here,” George said.
“Yum. Did you find anything that looks like money?” Jack asked. “Because we might be able to buy food from the locals when we get to the city.”
“We’ve put aside some coins that we found,” George answered. “We have no way of telling whether they are the current currency used or not, but it’s worth checking out.”
“How’s Carter doing with the doohickey?” Jack asked, turning to the three kids.
“We found the control device, but she hasn’t been able to activate the mirror,” George frowned. “She says that it needs to be fixed. Now, as far as I know, we were never able to figure out how it really works, but the Lieutenant Colonel says that she might be able to figure it out.”
“Yeah, we did learn more about how this stuff works between the reports we got back from Atlantis and the stuff we got off of Merlin,” Jack mused.
“Atlantis? Merlin?” George repeated in surprise.
“As in the lost city of and the round table?” Jack asked. “Yep.”
“You’ve got to give me a better debriefing,” George said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“So, what other things have you found?” Jack asked, looking around at the boxes.
“We’ve found more clothes and dishes that we can eat out of and a lot of useless items,” George answered. “I’m no archaeologist, but I believe that this was a religious site that the military later took over.”
“Oh?” Jack tried to raise his eyebrow and failed.
“The boxes where we found the military clothing, the food, and other supplies are newer than the boxes containing candles and the like,” George answered.
“Sounds like a good theory. I’m sure that Danny and Jonas will agree with you after they get a chance to fully look the place over.” Jack rolled his eyes. “It would probably set Daniel off on a rant.”
“Are you taking him with you?” George asked, glancing over at Daniel.”
“If he’s up for it and I can tear him away from this place. I was also hoping to take Teal’c and Cam along,” Jack replied.
“I’m sure that the rest of us can hold down the fort while you’re gone,” George said. “I would feel better if I had a gun in my hands rather than a staff, but I’m not completely useless with it.”
“Of course not.” Jack grinned. He knew that George still had plenty of fight in him, even with his mental age. “We’ll leave at dusk, then.”
Jack gave George a nod before wandering over to where the ‘kids’ were gathered in front of the Mirror. Although Jack had always referred to them as kids before, now they truly looked the part. Sam, Daniel, Jonas, and Vala appeared to be on the lower range of ages that they had ended up as. Jack crouched down next to Daniel and Vala and poked at the tablet that Daniel was holding.
Daniel swatted at Jack’s hand. “Quit that, I’m trying to read it.”
“What’s it say?” Jack asked as he turned to inspect the gold platter that Vala had.
“It’s a strange mixture of Arabic and Japanese, or at least their versions of the language,” Daniel said. “It’s a description of some kind of ritual involving demons.”
“Goa’uld?” Jack asked. The parasitic aliens usually set themselves up as gods, but they had run into a few who used other fearsome terms to describe themselves. And then there was Ba’al, but Jack never liked to think about Ba’al.
“It’s hard to say. They don’t say anything about these Bjuu being from the stars or the heavens, but they do stay that they are demons,” Daniel replied.
“Huh, interesting,” Jack commented before turning to Sam. “Hammond said that this thing was broken?”
“Yes sir. It doesn’t activate, no matter which direction I turn the control device, but I’m hopeful that I can actually fix it,” Sam replied. She picked up the control device. “I did actually find something interesting that you’re going to want to listen to.”
“Oh?” Jack asked.
“Look at this control device, notice anything different about it compared to the control device in our universe?” Sam asked as she handed the control device to Jack.
Jack stared at it, but nothing jumped out at him. “It’s a different shade of purple?” he hazard a guess.
“The symbols on the control device go in a different direction than the control device in our universe,” Sam corrected. “Now, Daniel didn’t see any differences in the control device that he first went to and the control device that Doctor Carter and Major Kawalski had did have a slightly different order. Now, at the time we figured it to be a slight deviation in design because of the alternate world, but what if we were wrong?”
“Carter?” Jack asked, motioning for her to go on.
“As I’ve said, we’ve only ever explored the worlds closest to ours. What if these symbols indicate more than what universe we are at, what if these symbols told us the direction of the universe?” Sam asked.
“Like, if we turn left we’ll eventually make it to the next alternate universe?” Jack quipped.
“More like this universe comes before that universe, sir,” Sam answered, still waiting for his reaction.
“And all of this would mean?” Jack prompted.
“Since we only recognize some of the symbols, I would guess that we are quite far from our universe,” Sam answered. She hesitated before plunging on. “Sir, I don’t think that we’ll easily be able to get back home, even if I could fix the mirror. We would either have to jump through universes in our direction or our universe would have to connect here.”
“Could we make it home with universe jumping?” Jack asked. “We won’t get horribly lost, will we?”
“We are fairly sure that the symbols on the control device are for specific universes and, with what we’ve just learned about direction, we should be able to get to our world.” Sam paused and smiled. “I think I remember the symbol for our universe.”
“You think?” Jack raised his eyebrows. He really didn’t want to take that big of a chance off of ‘I think.’
“Close enough that I should be able to recognize it when it appears on the control device.” Sam shrugged. “Something more is that I’m not sure how Entropic Cascade Failure will affect us. From what I remember, this universe was on the far end of the control device, which means that it is drastically changed from our universe. We might not even exist in this universe.”
“Which will mean?” Jack trailed off.
“The theories suggest that, since we are in a universe farther from our originating universe, the Entropic Cascade Failure would have a higher impact, as the elements between the two worlds are out of sync. But then, we really haven’t been this far away from our own universe, so we might not be affected at all,” Sam answered. “Given how we didn’t spontaneously combust when first entering this universe, we stand a decent chance of the latter happening.”
“But we’ll have to wait to be sure,” Janet said as she approached the group. She focused in on Jack. “I’ll need a fire to boil the water.”
“I’ll help,” Vala volunteered, putting her gold to the side.
“Outside,” Jack said as he steered her to the door. They didn’t need Vala to be playing with fire in an enclosed space. Plus, he really didn’t know if the room was ventilated or not.
Cam followed them outside and helped Jack build up a fire in a shallow alcove near the door. They used the dried bits of bushes as kindling to create a small fire, which is all they really wanted. Jack didn’t want to advertise their presence until they had gotten a hold on the new world.
They used a copper pot to boil the water from the goblet, so that they could trek back up the pathway to get another cup of water. Once the water reached a rolling boil, they took it off of the fire and brought it back inside the room to cool down. While they waited for the water to cool, Janet had each of them test their reactions to the ration bars that they had found, just to be sure that no one was allergic to the contents. Fairly sure that they weren’t going to die from the off world food, they sat down and ate.
.
Chapter 4