bungakertas (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bungakertas) wrote2012-02-21 09:25 am
bungakertas) wrote2012-02-21 09:25 am
A Small Problem - Chapter Five
A Small Problem - Chapter Five
Disclaimer and general Author's Notes are in the first entry, which is linked at the bottom.
SG-3 pulled Major Davis up the last of the steps to the briefing room. These steps spiraled around a central column and it would have been quite easy for someone to simply fall off the back of them. This was much slower going than the other stairs, given that it was a long way back down to the control room floor. Jack had managed to make his announcement when they were only about halfway up.
"I like this place a lot better when those steps aren’t a death trap," Davis muttered, looking down the long drop to the floor.
"No kidding," Reynolds said.
They made their way across the briefing room floor to the general’s office. Then they were greeted with their next challenge. General O’Neill’s desk loomed above them like a sheer rock face.
"What I wouldn’t give for a big, long rope," Peterson said quietly.
"If we had a rope than we wouldn’t be in this situation," Bosco replied, sounding rather tetchy. Davis looked at him. Reynolds did as well. Reynolds' look, however, was more effective. Davis' career had been mostly spent behind a desk. In fact, his adventures with the SGC were some of the only exceptions to that rule. As a result, he had never developed a real knack for that instantly quelling look that so many other officers seemed to effortlessly produce.
Bosco, looking thoroughly abashed, looked at the colonel and ventured a suggestion in a much less aggravated tone. "Sir, we could try SG-1’s idea.”
"Human ladders, you mean?" Reynolds replied, apparently deciding not to pursue things beyond a glare. He eyed their target and finally said, "Chair first, and then to the desk." SG-3 moved towards the edge of the chair. "That toothpick ladder idea doesn’t sound so crazy anymore.”
After some entirely uncomfortable scrambling, the men managed to make it onto the desk. They wandered across three folders. Davis' eye caught one of them and he sighed quietly.
Reynolds glanced over. "What is it?"
"We’re going to have to overhaul the security procedures again," Davis explained, glaring at the rather innocent-looking blue folder lying on the other end of the desk. "We just finished getting them up to specs again."
SG-3 glanced at one another as they proceeded towards the large black phone on the general’s desk. Peterson finally said, "Sir, there’s only so much that security protocols can do in the first place. I doubt that any amount of revision will ever make us all totally safe—even in the SGC."
Davis glared at him. "Bite your tongue. It’s hard enough already to get the Pentagon not to certify everyone here, myself included. If they thought for one second that anyone thought anything like that, it’d be the last straw."
Peterson smiled. "Consider it bitten, sir."
SG-3 reached their objective and surveyed the mammoth telephone before them for a moment. Finally, Colonel Reynolds shrugged.
“Bosco, Daniels, you two get the handset off the cradle. Peterson, get us connected with the Pentagon. Davis, do you have any ideas how we're going to talk them into believing we're actually…us when we sound like Alvin and cronies?”
*~*~*
Hailey poked her head out of the bottom of the elevator’s card reader. "The elevator’s on it’s way, sir." She began climbing very carefully back down the cables and happily listened to the rumbling in the elevator shaft that signified movement. One more successful mission completed by Jennifer Hailey, she congratulated herself. As she climbed down, she listened to the events on the floor.
The doors opened and three very happy scientists rushed out, picking their way over the now-lethal gap between the elevator and level 22. They thanked SG-21 and began heading down the hallway towards the stairs.
"The other elevator is on level 11," Coburn said to the team. "Any ideas how we can get up there?"
"Aside from the stairs, sir?" Sergeant Wilson shook his head. "Probably not unless we can get Hailey to fix the elevator to take us there."
“No way, sir,” Hailey said from above them. Her team looked up to see her drop the last several inches to the floor.
"I’m sorry, sir," she said, handing Coburn’s knife back to him, "but I think the elevator’s going to need a new reader when we get big again. I don’t think I can repair it from here."
Coburn sighed. "Stairs it is, then. We may as well get moving. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be done."
The rest of SG-21 looked at each other in dismay and then followed their leader towards the stairs.
“Air Force Girl Barbie is on the move,” Hailey said to herself. For a second it looked like Coburn had heard her, but he didn't say anything, so she wasn't sure.
*~*~*
SG-1 entered the office ready to do battle. Daniel saw another one of the base’s civilian scientists, a woman, lying on the floor by the chair in her office doing her best to fend off the advances of a curious—and possibly hungry—cockroach from a prone position. It soon became obvious why she didn’t stand up. One leg was bent impossibly in the middle of her shin, and there was a large pool of blood around her.
Considering the amount of pain she was likely in, she was doing a passable job of battling the bug, but she was losing. The cockroach could maneuver around her much faster than she could move to defend herself. He and Sam had their guns raised as they ran closer, but couldn’t get off any shots for fear of hitting the woman.
Teal’c hit the bug like an ounce of bricks, smashing into its head with the butt end of his staff weapon. The roach fell back from its target, its legs making eerie clicking sounds on the floor, before refocusing on Teal’c and reaching out with its antennae. Sam was finally able to get off several shots and the roach fell back several more steps. Daniel moved in and seized the woman's shoulder, dragging her back from the battle, gun up and watching closely as Teal’c flipped his staff around quickly and fired at the roach.
The insect was bleeding copiously, obviously hurt, but cornered and probably hungry. Teal’c and Sam fired on it several more times, one of Teal’c’s staff blasts taking an antennae clean off, and Sam destroying an eye. When Teal’c finally hit one of the leg joints, that leg fell apart and the roach fell to the ground. It didn’t get up again, although the antennae continued to reach towards them, and the other legs moved in a sort of swimming motion that scooted the roach along the ground.
As Teal'c and Sam regrouped, Daniel turned to the woman they'd just rescued. “So, what's your name?” he asked.
“Doctor Lydia Fuentes,” she replied. Daniel nodded, and began to examine Fuentes, listening as his teammates assessed their extermination job.
"It’s not dead yet," Sam observed, watching the roach creep towards them.
Teal’c raised his staff and commenced firing upon the insect until all motion ceased.
"Now it is dead," he said blandly.
Sam smiled. The two of them came over to Daniel, who was finished checking for a concussion, and was pulling some things out of the med kit he carried. He wasn't sure he had properly appreciated until this moment the fact that all their field gear had shrunk with them.
"The bug’s dead," Sam informed them.
"Good to hear," Fuentes said. She was breathing a bit fast, and her face was somewhat paler than was probably normal, but she didn’t seem to be panicking and she had no trouble focusing on the people around her.
"So, what happened to you?" Daniel asked as he began with her leg.
"I was sitting on the edge of my chair," she said. "By the time I realized I was shrinking, it was too late and I was sliding off. I hit the ground and broke my leg and I’ve been here ever since."
"Wow. That sounds…nerve-wracking," Sam frowned, kneeling to help Daniel. The two of them carefully, but as quickly as possible, set the woman’s leg into place and began applying a splint.
"It wasn’t so bad until the bug showed up. I hate roaches," Fuentes said, wincing as Daniel touched a sore spot.
"Sorry," Daniel said, noting her wince. She smiled at him.
"Thanks, by the way," Fuentes told them. "For saving my life just now. I don’t think I could have fought that thing on my own."
"You shouldn’t have needed to," Sam said. "Why didn’t that bug shrink with the rest of us?"
For a moment everyone was silent.
Finally Fuentes said "It must only work on humans. That’s interesting.” But she sounded disturbed by the revelation.
"You know, it’s a minor miracle that we didn’t encounter any bugs while we were on P4Z-028,” Daniel said slowly.
Teal’c nodded. "These creatures tend to be much larger in a wild setting. Some of them would likely be larger than we are currently."
Sam and Dr. Fuentes exchanged an expression of mutual distaste before Sam turned back to work on her leg. After a few moments, she and Daniel finished with their work and stood.
"So, where are you off to?" Fuentes asked, sounding curious more than anything else.
SG-1 glanced at one another. There was no telling if that had been the only bug, and there was no way Fuentes would be able to fight off another one with a broken leg.
"I’ll stay here, then," Daniel suggested. "Sam and Teal’c, you two go on ahead. I wouldn’t be much help with an EMP generator anyway."
"You don’t have to do that," Dr. Fuentes told him.
"Actually," Sam broke in, "I was going to suggest it. We don’t know if there are more bugs around, and with you incapacitated, someone needs to be here."
Fuentes looked very grateful, and so after some brief double-checking and rearranging of equipment, Sam and Teal’c set off towards Hailey’s lab and Daniel settled in to wait.
*~*~*
"Sergeant, I am Major Davis," Davis squeaked at the phone for about the twentieth time. Although they’d all initially been ecstatic over the speakerphone function on the phone—an option that Davis felt he had never fully appreciated until now—their communications with Washington were steadily making Major Davis and SG-3 insane. The first several times they’d called the Pentagon, they’d been hung up on as a prank call, but they’d finally managed to convince the person answering the phone that they weren’t going to stop calling and so had been redirected to a rather disgruntled security chief who was slowly being forced to conclude that Major Davis might indeed be himself.
"Sergeant," Davis continued, "I’ve answered every last one of your security questions, I’ve stayed on this line for a long enough time for you to trace it, and I’ve endured all sorts of verbal abuse from you and everyone else that I’ve spoken with on account of my voice. Will you please connect my call?” Into the ensuing silence he said, “You’ve followed every last protocol necessary in this case above and beyond the normal requirements. I may even put you in for a commendation for your tremendous attention to detail. But for now, I would desperately love to speak with General Hammond."
There was a moment of silence and then an audible scowl as the call was redirected and they could all hear it ringing again.
"This is getting tiresome," Reynolds sighed.
The phone was picked up. Everyone held their breath.
"Hammond," a familiar voice on the other end of the phone answered. General Hammond had been given command of the "Department of Homeworld Security," a name that always made Davis chuckle internally, and so was still peripherally involved with the SGC. Although this particular crisis was a bit on the tame side compared to some others Stargate Command had faced—the Replicator infestation only a few weeks earlier came to mind—Hammond would best understand this situation. And likely agree with O’Neill’s assessment: keep everyone away as much as possible
"General Hammond, sir," Davis said crisply and squeakily.
"Hello?" Hammond replied in a voice that was somewhere between hopelessly confused and dangerously angry.
"Sir," Davis continued, "this may be hard to believe, but this is Major Davis, calling from the SGC. There’s been some sort of contamination and all base personnel have been shrunk."
There was a pregnant pause. "Shrunk?"
"Yes, sir."
"Assuming that you are who you say you are, how tall are you exactly?" Hammond asked.
Davis waffled. He really didn’t want to say this. It was desperately embarrassing.
"We’re all around six inches, sir," Reynolds broke in. "Colonel Reynolds, sir."
After another pause Hammond said, "How do I know you are who you say you are?"
From a short distance away, Davis heard Peterson groan "Not this again!" And this time he didn't even bother glaring at the airman for his outburst. He was too happy to have the man in his corner to want to bother. After the call had connected, the rest of the team had left their superiors to deal with the brass alone and were now perusing the new security regs, though clearly they were eavesdropping. Well, he and Reynolds had eavesdropped back when they weren't on the phone, so that was fine. And it had been amusing watching them struggle to get the folder open.
Turning his attention back to General Hammond, Davis said, "Sir, we did just go through a rather lengthy process to get connected with you.”
"I suppose you must have," Hammond mused. "If you’re really who you say you are…" And here the two heard Hammond chuckle a bit. "…tell me what Colonel Reynolds said to me after I’d retrieved some crystals from an al’kesh to repair a broken cargo ship."
"Well, sir, you actually got the crystals from a cargo ship to repair an al’kesh," Colonel Reynolds told him, "and I believe I said, ‘Excellent waking up, sir.’"
Davis gave him an odd glance, but he could hear Hammond smiling on the other end of the line. "You really are you.” There was a long pause before the general said, “Do you know what shrunk you?"
"No, sir, but it spreads alarmingly fast," Davis jumped in, trying not to jump up and down in excitement at finally getting someone to take them seriously. "We don’t know if it’s airborne or travels along surfaces, but either way anyone who comes into the mountain will be our size in fifteen minutes. We’ve initiated a Wildfire lockdown, but until we discover a way to reverse the shrinking, I would suggest no physical contact with the outside. There’s no way to be sure that letting someone in won’t let the shrinking out."
"I see," Hammond said neutrally, digesting this information.
"Sir, General O’Neill also requests that, due to the difficulty inherent in contacting the outside, the SGC be allowed to cut communications to a minimum," Reynolds added.
"I don’t feel good about leaving you all to sort this out without help," Hammond told them. "If we can’t send people in, the least we can do is keep updated in order to try and help with a solution."
"Sir, it took an entire team of people just to get to this phone," Reynolds informed him. "The technical staff has had to resort to gymnastics and heavy usage of the ‘backspace’ key to get any typing done. My team and Major Davis all had a very difficult time getting up the stairs to this level, and that was before we had to get onto the desk to use the phone. Communication at this size is not very feasible."
"All right. If we haven’t heard from the SGC in three days exactly from right now, we’ll begin trying to get in touch with you," Hammond sighed. "Has anyone discovered a way to reverse the process?"
"Colonel Carter suggested an EMP, sir," Reynolds told him. "She and SG-1 are trying to get to an EMP generator right now."
"Very well. Three days. Good luck," Hammond finished.
"Thank you, sir," chorused Davis and Reynolds before giving each other looks.
Hammond hung up.
The other members of SG-3 joined them.
"‘Excellent waking up, sir?’" Davis asked.
"I was about to have to give him mouth to mouth," Reynolds replied.
*~*~*
Author's Notes: I did some research for the roach-fighting scene in this chapter. On the off chance that anyone actually cares, cockroaches are omnivorous so it isn't outside the realm of possibility that they might care to munch on a human if they got the chance. They don't tend to be aggressive enough to want to attack humans that are awake, though. If you're asleep, all bets are off, and there are some that live in the US with large enough mouthparts to bite people, but they aren't likely to be able to break the skin. Open sores or wounds may attract attention, however. Given that our poor scientist is only six inches tall and with a broken leg, I figure this isn't so much of a logical leap. See Mom! Writing fanfiction is fun and educational!
Chapter One - A Little Bored
Chapter Two - In The Infirmary
Chapter Three - Down In Fraggle Rock
Chapter Four - Working Out The Bugs
Chapter Six - You Can't Always Get What You Want...
Chapter Seven - Research For Its Own Sake
Disclaimer and general Author's Notes are in the first entry, which is linked at the bottom.
SG-3 pulled Major Davis up the last of the steps to the briefing room. These steps spiraled around a central column and it would have been quite easy for someone to simply fall off the back of them. This was much slower going than the other stairs, given that it was a long way back down to the control room floor. Jack had managed to make his announcement when they were only about halfway up.
"I like this place a lot better when those steps aren’t a death trap," Davis muttered, looking down the long drop to the floor.
"No kidding," Reynolds said.
They made their way across the briefing room floor to the general’s office. Then they were greeted with their next challenge. General O’Neill’s desk loomed above them like a sheer rock face.
"What I wouldn’t give for a big, long rope," Peterson said quietly.
"If we had a rope than we wouldn’t be in this situation," Bosco replied, sounding rather tetchy. Davis looked at him. Reynolds did as well. Reynolds' look, however, was more effective. Davis' career had been mostly spent behind a desk. In fact, his adventures with the SGC were some of the only exceptions to that rule. As a result, he had never developed a real knack for that instantly quelling look that so many other officers seemed to effortlessly produce.
Bosco, looking thoroughly abashed, looked at the colonel and ventured a suggestion in a much less aggravated tone. "Sir, we could try SG-1’s idea.”
"Human ladders, you mean?" Reynolds replied, apparently deciding not to pursue things beyond a glare. He eyed their target and finally said, "Chair first, and then to the desk." SG-3 moved towards the edge of the chair. "That toothpick ladder idea doesn’t sound so crazy anymore.”
After some entirely uncomfortable scrambling, the men managed to make it onto the desk. They wandered across three folders. Davis' eye caught one of them and he sighed quietly.
Reynolds glanced over. "What is it?"
"We’re going to have to overhaul the security procedures again," Davis explained, glaring at the rather innocent-looking blue folder lying on the other end of the desk. "We just finished getting them up to specs again."
SG-3 glanced at one another as they proceeded towards the large black phone on the general’s desk. Peterson finally said, "Sir, there’s only so much that security protocols can do in the first place. I doubt that any amount of revision will ever make us all totally safe—even in the SGC."
Davis glared at him. "Bite your tongue. It’s hard enough already to get the Pentagon not to certify everyone here, myself included. If they thought for one second that anyone thought anything like that, it’d be the last straw."
Peterson smiled. "Consider it bitten, sir."
SG-3 reached their objective and surveyed the mammoth telephone before them for a moment. Finally, Colonel Reynolds shrugged.
“Bosco, Daniels, you two get the handset off the cradle. Peterson, get us connected with the Pentagon. Davis, do you have any ideas how we're going to talk them into believing we're actually…us when we sound like Alvin and cronies?”
Hailey poked her head out of the bottom of the elevator’s card reader. "The elevator’s on it’s way, sir." She began climbing very carefully back down the cables and happily listened to the rumbling in the elevator shaft that signified movement. One more successful mission completed by Jennifer Hailey, she congratulated herself. As she climbed down, she listened to the events on the floor.
The doors opened and three very happy scientists rushed out, picking their way over the now-lethal gap between the elevator and level 22. They thanked SG-21 and began heading down the hallway towards the stairs.
"The other elevator is on level 11," Coburn said to the team. "Any ideas how we can get up there?"
"Aside from the stairs, sir?" Sergeant Wilson shook his head. "Probably not unless we can get Hailey to fix the elevator to take us there."
“No way, sir,” Hailey said from above them. Her team looked up to see her drop the last several inches to the floor.
"I’m sorry, sir," she said, handing Coburn’s knife back to him, "but I think the elevator’s going to need a new reader when we get big again. I don’t think I can repair it from here."
Coburn sighed. "Stairs it is, then. We may as well get moving. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be done."
The rest of SG-21 looked at each other in dismay and then followed their leader towards the stairs.
“Air Force Girl Barbie is on the move,” Hailey said to herself. For a second it looked like Coburn had heard her, but he didn't say anything, so she wasn't sure.
SG-1 entered the office ready to do battle. Daniel saw another one of the base’s civilian scientists, a woman, lying on the floor by the chair in her office doing her best to fend off the advances of a curious—and possibly hungry—cockroach from a prone position. It soon became obvious why she didn’t stand up. One leg was bent impossibly in the middle of her shin, and there was a large pool of blood around her.
Considering the amount of pain she was likely in, she was doing a passable job of battling the bug, but she was losing. The cockroach could maneuver around her much faster than she could move to defend herself. He and Sam had their guns raised as they ran closer, but couldn’t get off any shots for fear of hitting the woman.
Teal’c hit the bug like an ounce of bricks, smashing into its head with the butt end of his staff weapon. The roach fell back from its target, its legs making eerie clicking sounds on the floor, before refocusing on Teal’c and reaching out with its antennae. Sam was finally able to get off several shots and the roach fell back several more steps. Daniel moved in and seized the woman's shoulder, dragging her back from the battle, gun up and watching closely as Teal’c flipped his staff around quickly and fired at the roach.
The insect was bleeding copiously, obviously hurt, but cornered and probably hungry. Teal’c and Sam fired on it several more times, one of Teal’c’s staff blasts taking an antennae clean off, and Sam destroying an eye. When Teal’c finally hit one of the leg joints, that leg fell apart and the roach fell to the ground. It didn’t get up again, although the antennae continued to reach towards them, and the other legs moved in a sort of swimming motion that scooted the roach along the ground.
As Teal'c and Sam regrouped, Daniel turned to the woman they'd just rescued. “So, what's your name?” he asked.
“Doctor Lydia Fuentes,” she replied. Daniel nodded, and began to examine Fuentes, listening as his teammates assessed their extermination job.
"It’s not dead yet," Sam observed, watching the roach creep towards them.
Teal’c raised his staff and commenced firing upon the insect until all motion ceased.
"Now it is dead," he said blandly.
Sam smiled. The two of them came over to Daniel, who was finished checking for a concussion, and was pulling some things out of the med kit he carried. He wasn't sure he had properly appreciated until this moment the fact that all their field gear had shrunk with them.
"The bug’s dead," Sam informed them.
"Good to hear," Fuentes said. She was breathing a bit fast, and her face was somewhat paler than was probably normal, but she didn’t seem to be panicking and she had no trouble focusing on the people around her.
"So, what happened to you?" Daniel asked as he began with her leg.
"I was sitting on the edge of my chair," she said. "By the time I realized I was shrinking, it was too late and I was sliding off. I hit the ground and broke my leg and I’ve been here ever since."
"Wow. That sounds…nerve-wracking," Sam frowned, kneeling to help Daniel. The two of them carefully, but as quickly as possible, set the woman’s leg into place and began applying a splint.
"It wasn’t so bad until the bug showed up. I hate roaches," Fuentes said, wincing as Daniel touched a sore spot.
"Sorry," Daniel said, noting her wince. She smiled at him.
"Thanks, by the way," Fuentes told them. "For saving my life just now. I don’t think I could have fought that thing on my own."
"You shouldn’t have needed to," Sam said. "Why didn’t that bug shrink with the rest of us?"
For a moment everyone was silent.
Finally Fuentes said "It must only work on humans. That’s interesting.” But she sounded disturbed by the revelation.
"You know, it’s a minor miracle that we didn’t encounter any bugs while we were on P4Z-028,” Daniel said slowly.
Teal’c nodded. "These creatures tend to be much larger in a wild setting. Some of them would likely be larger than we are currently."
Sam and Dr. Fuentes exchanged an expression of mutual distaste before Sam turned back to work on her leg. After a few moments, she and Daniel finished with their work and stood.
"So, where are you off to?" Fuentes asked, sounding curious more than anything else.
SG-1 glanced at one another. There was no telling if that had been the only bug, and there was no way Fuentes would be able to fight off another one with a broken leg.
"I’ll stay here, then," Daniel suggested. "Sam and Teal’c, you two go on ahead. I wouldn’t be much help with an EMP generator anyway."
"You don’t have to do that," Dr. Fuentes told him.
"Actually," Sam broke in, "I was going to suggest it. We don’t know if there are more bugs around, and with you incapacitated, someone needs to be here."
Fuentes looked very grateful, and so after some brief double-checking and rearranging of equipment, Sam and Teal’c set off towards Hailey’s lab and Daniel settled in to wait.
"Sergeant, I am Major Davis," Davis squeaked at the phone for about the twentieth time. Although they’d all initially been ecstatic over the speakerphone function on the phone—an option that Davis felt he had never fully appreciated until now—their communications with Washington were steadily making Major Davis and SG-3 insane. The first several times they’d called the Pentagon, they’d been hung up on as a prank call, but they’d finally managed to convince the person answering the phone that they weren’t going to stop calling and so had been redirected to a rather disgruntled security chief who was slowly being forced to conclude that Major Davis might indeed be himself.
"Sergeant," Davis continued, "I’ve answered every last one of your security questions, I’ve stayed on this line for a long enough time for you to trace it, and I’ve endured all sorts of verbal abuse from you and everyone else that I’ve spoken with on account of my voice. Will you please connect my call?” Into the ensuing silence he said, “You’ve followed every last protocol necessary in this case above and beyond the normal requirements. I may even put you in for a commendation for your tremendous attention to detail. But for now, I would desperately love to speak with General Hammond."
There was a moment of silence and then an audible scowl as the call was redirected and they could all hear it ringing again.
"This is getting tiresome," Reynolds sighed.
The phone was picked up. Everyone held their breath.
"Hammond," a familiar voice on the other end of the phone answered. General Hammond had been given command of the "Department of Homeworld Security," a name that always made Davis chuckle internally, and so was still peripherally involved with the SGC. Although this particular crisis was a bit on the tame side compared to some others Stargate Command had faced—the Replicator infestation only a few weeks earlier came to mind—Hammond would best understand this situation. And likely agree with O’Neill’s assessment: keep everyone away as much as possible
"General Hammond, sir," Davis said crisply and squeakily.
"Hello?" Hammond replied in a voice that was somewhere between hopelessly confused and dangerously angry.
"Sir," Davis continued, "this may be hard to believe, but this is Major Davis, calling from the SGC. There’s been some sort of contamination and all base personnel have been shrunk."
There was a pregnant pause. "Shrunk?"
"Yes, sir."
"Assuming that you are who you say you are, how tall are you exactly?" Hammond asked.
Davis waffled. He really didn’t want to say this. It was desperately embarrassing.
"We’re all around six inches, sir," Reynolds broke in. "Colonel Reynolds, sir."
After another pause Hammond said, "How do I know you are who you say you are?"
From a short distance away, Davis heard Peterson groan "Not this again!" And this time he didn't even bother glaring at the airman for his outburst. He was too happy to have the man in his corner to want to bother. After the call had connected, the rest of the team had left their superiors to deal with the brass alone and were now perusing the new security regs, though clearly they were eavesdropping. Well, he and Reynolds had eavesdropped back when they weren't on the phone, so that was fine. And it had been amusing watching them struggle to get the folder open.
Turning his attention back to General Hammond, Davis said, "Sir, we did just go through a rather lengthy process to get connected with you.”
"I suppose you must have," Hammond mused. "If you’re really who you say you are…" And here the two heard Hammond chuckle a bit. "…tell me what Colonel Reynolds said to me after I’d retrieved some crystals from an al’kesh to repair a broken cargo ship."
"Well, sir, you actually got the crystals from a cargo ship to repair an al’kesh," Colonel Reynolds told him, "and I believe I said, ‘Excellent waking up, sir.’"
Davis gave him an odd glance, but he could hear Hammond smiling on the other end of the line. "You really are you.” There was a long pause before the general said, “Do you know what shrunk you?"
"No, sir, but it spreads alarmingly fast," Davis jumped in, trying not to jump up and down in excitement at finally getting someone to take them seriously. "We don’t know if it’s airborne or travels along surfaces, but either way anyone who comes into the mountain will be our size in fifteen minutes. We’ve initiated a Wildfire lockdown, but until we discover a way to reverse the shrinking, I would suggest no physical contact with the outside. There’s no way to be sure that letting someone in won’t let the shrinking out."
"I see," Hammond said neutrally, digesting this information.
"Sir, General O’Neill also requests that, due to the difficulty inherent in contacting the outside, the SGC be allowed to cut communications to a minimum," Reynolds added.
"I don’t feel good about leaving you all to sort this out without help," Hammond told them. "If we can’t send people in, the least we can do is keep updated in order to try and help with a solution."
"Sir, it took an entire team of people just to get to this phone," Reynolds informed him. "The technical staff has had to resort to gymnastics and heavy usage of the ‘backspace’ key to get any typing done. My team and Major Davis all had a very difficult time getting up the stairs to this level, and that was before we had to get onto the desk to use the phone. Communication at this size is not very feasible."
"All right. If we haven’t heard from the SGC in three days exactly from right now, we’ll begin trying to get in touch with you," Hammond sighed. "Has anyone discovered a way to reverse the process?"
"Colonel Carter suggested an EMP, sir," Reynolds told him. "She and SG-1 are trying to get to an EMP generator right now."
"Very well. Three days. Good luck," Hammond finished.
"Thank you, sir," chorused Davis and Reynolds before giving each other looks.
Hammond hung up.
The other members of SG-3 joined them.
"‘Excellent waking up, sir?’" Davis asked.
"I was about to have to give him mouth to mouth," Reynolds replied.
Author's Notes: I did some research for the roach-fighting scene in this chapter. On the off chance that anyone actually cares, cockroaches are omnivorous so it isn't outside the realm of possibility that they might care to munch on a human if they got the chance. They don't tend to be aggressive enough to want to attack humans that are awake, though. If you're asleep, all bets are off, and there are some that live in the US with large enough mouthparts to bite people, but they aren't likely to be able to break the skin. Open sores or wounds may attract attention, however. Given that our poor scientist is only six inches tall and with a broken leg, I figure this isn't so much of a logical leap. See Mom! Writing fanfiction is fun and educational!
Chapter One - A Little Bored
Chapter Two - In The Infirmary
Chapter Three - Down In Fraggle Rock
Chapter Four - Working Out The Bugs
Chapter Six - You Can't Always Get What You Want...
Chapter Seven - Research For Its Own Sake
no subject
Now that is the Teal'c we know and love. :)
Onwards!