It’s all relative
by
starry eyed surprise
Author's notes: I’ve been doing some thinking… which was probably a bad idea. I have this theory about time traveling and such and I’ve tried to write it down in this fic. I’ve seen all episodes up until Moebius Part 1. I’ve haven’t heard any spoilers for the second part yet, so it’s entirely possibly that my theory will get blown to pieces very soon. So I’m writing it all down now, before that will happen.
Author's notes afer watching Moebius Part 2: whoohoo!! My theory survived!
Many thanks goes to my betareader Arrietty.
Sam was sitting alone at the bottom of a sand dune. The shadow of the dune protected her from the glaring Egyptian sun and a soft breeze was blowing the desert sand in her face. At the other side of the dune Daniel was carving hieroglyphs in the wall of a tomb. Writing a message to himself, he had said. Sam couldn’t stop thinking that it was wrong, everything was wrong. She should have never allowed them to go back in time. There are just some things you can’t control and time was one of them. But they went back in time anyway and now they were in trouble. And she didn’t even want to consider the consequences of what they did… they would be of massive, galactic proportions even.
She had tried to come up with a solution, but there was nothing she could think of that wouldn’t make things worse than they already were.
***
Jack and Teal’c arrived back at the pyramid. For the last hour, they had been scouting the area around the pyramid, because they got bored with watching Daniel carve pictures in a wall.
“So, Daniel, are you finished yet?”
“No, Jack. Carving hieroglyphs in a wall isn’t as easy as it looks. Normally, this should be the work of an artist and I am not an artist.”
“Right.”
“Are the Jaffa still guarding our… the pile of sand?”
“Oh yeah, they’re totally fascinated by it,” Jack said. “Where did Carter go?”
“Sam went for a walk half an hour ago or so. Jack, she’s been very quiet. I think something is wrong.”
“You *think* something is wrong? Daniel! We’re stuck 3000 years BC, of course there’s something wrong.”
“I know that! But I think there’s more. There’s something she isn’t telling us.” Daniel looked worried.
“Okay, I’ll go check on her. Teal’c, keep an eye on Daniel. Make sure he… doesn’t break a nail or something.”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow, but bowed his head and said, “I will, O’Neill”. Daniel just glared at Jack.
“Daniel, in which direction did she go?”
“That way.” He pointed towards the dune just outside the pyramid.
***
When Jack reached the top of the dune he saw Carter sitting a couple of feet down from him. Her head was resting on her arms that were lying on top of her knees. He cautiously approached her, not wanting to startle her. When he reached her, she still wasn’t aware of his presence, which worried him a little.
“Carter, whatcha doing?”
“Thinking,” she said without looking up.
“Wanna talk about it?”
She looked up and sighed. “We screwed up, Sir. Big time.”
Daniel was right, something was up. He could see it in her eyes. They had a desperate, hopeless look. He only saw that look when Earth was on the brink of destruction. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
“Carter?”
She looked away from him. “I should have never allowed us to go back in time. There are some things you don’t mess with and time is one of them. And now, we’re in more trouble than we’re ever been.”
“How so? I think we’re doing pretty fine, except for the fact that we’re in the year 3000 BC, of course. It might take a while for us to go back to the future, but we’ll get there. So, I don’t really see what the problem is.” Jack shrugged.
Sam got to her feet and faced her CO. She took a deep breath and started to explain.
“You don’t understand it, Sir. I don’t think we *can* go back to our future.” Jack looked confused, but she continued. “We’ve changed our past. We’re doing things that have never happened in our past. *This*” she waved her arms around her, indicating the general area they were standing in, “isn’t our past anymore! The future that is coming isn’t our future! Our future doesn’t exist anymore! *We* don’t exist anymore!”
“What?! Carter! I think it’s a fair assessment to say that we still exist. I don’t know about you, but I still feel very much alive.”
“I know. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense! All I know is that we’re not ‘home’. We’re not in our timeline anymore.”
Jack shook his head and held his hands up to stop Sam. “Carter… calm down.” He sighed. “I’m assuming that this is important.”
“Yes, it’s very important, Sir.”
“And I also assume that when you’re going to explain this to me, my headache is only going to get worse.”
Sam gave him a wry smile. “Most probably. I would give you some painkillers, but I’m afraid we left them back in our spaceship.”
“Right.” He touched her shoulders. “Let’s sit down, because I have a feeling this might take a while.”
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. When Jack looked over to Sam, he saw that she was frowning, obviously in deep thought over this… situation. He nudged her with his elbow.
“So… care to explain why and what is so important?”
“I’m not sure if I can explain it or figure it out. But I do know that if I can determine where we are, we might be able to find a way home.”
“Well, we’re in Egypt in the year 3000 BC, roughly estimated, of course.”
“Yes, but this never happened in our timeline. It’s not part of our past. So, it means we’re not in our timeline anymore. My best guess is that we’re stuck in some sort of alternate universe.”
“Huh? When did that happen? I’m *sure* I didn’t touch anything that looked like a mirror. And what’s with us being not in our timeline?”
“We didn’t go through a mirror, Sir. I think we *created* an alternate universe just by going to the past.”
Jack only looked more confused.
“Let me try to explain,” she continued. ”Daniel is right now writing a message to his future self. His future self will probably find that message with the tape and the ZPM. Our Daniel never found that message or the tape or ZPM. Our Daniel won’t find it in the future. It will be another Daniel.”
“What happens to our Daniel then?”
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. If we were still in our timeline, he would have changed. We would all have been changed, because our past would be different. None of us changed though, so that means our past still exists somewhere. But we’re not in our past anymore. So, we must be in another timeline.”
“And because we’re in a different timeline, you think we’re stuck in an alternate universe which we created?”
“Yes, I think so. We still exist, so I’m assuming our timeline still exists, because we’re part of it. We just need to find a way to get back.”
“But how did we create it? Because those Jaffa found our ship, of which they, by the way, have no clue it is a ship?”
“No, I think we created it just by coming here.”
“Just by coming here? Now that… sucks.”
“Yeah. I should have seen this coming.”
“How? Are you suddenly an expert on time traveling?”
“No, but it does make sense now. I just never considered all the options.”
“This actually makes sense to you? I’m impressed.”
Sam sighed. “Just look at it this way. What if you found one of your ancestors here and killed him? What do you think would happen to you?”
Jack shrugged. “Do I want to know?”
“Nothing would happen to you. Look, Daniel is changing his personal past pretty dramatically and nothing has happened to him. He doesn’t suddenly remember reading the inscriptions and watching the tape. So, you would be fine. As for the Jack O’Neill in this future, he wouldn’t exist.”
“Okay, so we’re stuck in an alternate universe. Does this mean I could have gotten away with killing Ra?”
“Well, yes. You probably could have. But I’m not sure whether it’s such a good idea, because he would only be replaced by another Goa’uld. Probably Apophis.”
“Right.” He thought for a moment. “We’ve been here for over a week now, why didn’t we, you know…” He gestured with his hands. “ How Dr. Carter went all wonky?”
“Entropic Cascade Failure. Yes, but none of us exist yet. We won’t exist until 5000 years from now. I’m thinking we’re safe.”
“So. We went to the past and now we’re in an alternate universe. And that makes sense?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Please, tell me *how*. Because I remember going to the past before and we weren’t in an alternate universe back then.”
“Yes, but we didn’t make the decision to go to the past. It was an accident and it had already happened in the past anyway. General Hammond knew about it, he had met us back in 1969. So, basically, we didn’t really have a choice in the matter. We were supposed to go back to the past.”
“Okay.” Jack exhaled slowly.
Sam explained it further. “Do you remember when we received that note from the future?” Jack nodded. “It warned us about the Ashen. Our theory is that the world in our future had been taken over by the Ashen, like their intentions were when we met them. Now, the note we received was written with a special kind of ink that hadn’t been invented yet.”
“Yeah, so I heard,” Jack commented.
Sam ignored Jack’s comment and kept talking. “It looks like it won’t ever be invented, because we think that it was made by the Ashen. And furthermore, you will never write that note, so technically it shouldn’t exist anymore. But we still have it. This means that the timeline of which it comes from must still exist. The note wouldn’t exist if the timeline didn’t exist.” Sam was quiet for a few seconds. “Damn.”
“What?”
“Erm… well, if I’m right, it’s impossible to change the past. When the future you sent us that note, he didn’t change his own past, but he did change our future. And since we still have the note… I’m thinking that Earth is still taken over by the Ashen in his future.”
“Ouch. Now there’s a good idea gone wrong.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Could it be possible at all that the fact that the note still exists, is because it’s just a piece of paper?”
“No, I don’t think so. One of the reports that were sent to us from Atlantis said that they had found a 10 000 year old Doctor Elizabeth Weir.”
“Really? I must have missed that report…” Sam threw him a look. Jack just cleared his throat and said, “Please, go on.”
“The older Doctor Weir told them how she and her team first arrived in Atlantis and that the city didn’t rise to the surface, like what happened to our team. She used one of the space ships to escape from the city, but it contained the time travel device and she ended up 10 000 years in the past.”
“Wait, you mean that she was still *alive* when they found her?”
“Yes, apparently she was put in stasis in a preservation chamber, not unlike the one we put you in on Antarctica .”
“Oh.”
“The fact is that she did successfully change the future for our Atlantis team, but she doesn’t fit in our timeline, because we have another Doctor Weir. So, she must be from an alternate reality.”
“What happened to that old Doctor Weir?”
“The preservation chamber stopped her from aging at a normal rate, but she still had aged a lot in those 10 000 years. She died a couple of days after she was found.”
“And there’s no proof that she was from an alternate reality?”
“No, she didn’t suffer from Entropic Cascade Failure and she probably wouldn’t have for a while if she were still alive. After all she was 10 000 years older than our own Doctor Weir.”
“So, do you have any ideas on how we’re going to get *out* of this alternate universe?”
“No, Sir. Not yet.”
“No…?”
“The thing is, all this is just a theory and I can’t really prove it. But it’s the only explanation that actually makes sense, in every case. And it’s important that I have the right theory, before we’re going to try to find a way home.”
“We should go and discuss this with Daniel and Teal’c. Let’s see what they have to say about it.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea.”
They got up and started climbing back up the dune.
“You know, Sir, if I’m right, there shouldn’t be a problem with us taking back the ship. And I think we might find some answers there.”
“How’s that, Carter?”
“The Ancients were the ones to build this time machine. At some point they must have realized that it was no use to try to go back in time to change the past, using that machine. So, they built a new one.”
“They built another time machine? Which one?”
“The one that made you looping through the same day a few years ago.”
“Oh yeah, how could I forget about *that*.”
Sam smiled. “Look, in that case your body didn’t get sent back in time. And that is the case in this situation. The machine just turned back time and you and Teal’c ended up with the knowledge of a couple of hours in the future. You ended up at the same spot and in the same situation you had been in before, you weren’t duplicated, for lack of a better word. That would have been a real mess.”
“No kidding.”
“I can’t even begin to understand how they made that work, but I can see why the machine wasn’t very effective. If time would have been turned back for over 100 years, you wouldn’t exist, so you couldn’t be given any knowledge of the future. And I think it would be pretty bad if you ended up as a five year old with all the knowledge you have right now.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I would definitely be the coolest kid at school.”
Sam just shook her head.
“So, how does that help us?”
“Well, the Ancients were aware of the problem we have right now. There might be some information in the database of the space ship that might help us. Or we could find a solution on one of the planets where the Ancients used to live.”
“Or I could just have my head sucked in one of those Ancient things, again.”
“We’ll see whether that’s really necessary. Let’s first talk to Daniel and Teal’c and see what they think about this.”
“Okay… Daniel! Teal’c! You have *got* to hear this!
The End
That's it!! *offers some aspirin* Want one? :)
If you liked this story or you think I missed something in my theory or you have a better one, please let me know.