Tenth Gate [Video]

[forsometimenow]

Who: Jennifer Keller and you
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: N/A
When: Now

A year, huh... [Jennifer looks distant and sounds a little sad.] How... [She hesitates.] If you've been here for a while, what kinds of things do you do to cope when you're really, really missing home? Because I've been thinking about my friends back home a lot lately, and having been the only person from my world here this entire time... [She trails off, and decides to just wait for responses.]

Comments

[dancingmd]

Synthehol. It's an alcohol substitute that mimics the taste and some of the more pleasant effects of alcohol, but does not cause intoxication and isn't addictive. I've been producing some here for Crowley, for people who would like to come to the bar for socializing but don't drink alcohol, for whatever reason.

[forsometimenow]

Now THAT sounds handy. [She took another sip.] A nice way to have the social aspect of drinking without the negative effects. If the future of my world turns out to be even half as awesome, humanity's in for a great time. [She winked.]

[dancingmd]

[She laughs.] Well it's not all fun and sunshine but I think you'd like it a lot.

[forsometimenow]

True enough... but still. The idea of humans and so many others living in harmony, working together... back home, all we had were the Wraith, and they wanted to eat us most of the time.

[dancingmd]

We have an enemy like that as well... though eating us is not their goal, instead they want to assimilate us into their collective consciousness.

[She frowns.]

But I do think it is that inter-species cooperation that will save us, in the end. Humans could not face down the Borg alone.

[forsometimenow]

I agree... and we were working toward that. Assimilation into collective consciousness, though... I'm not sure if that sounds better or worse than being food. [She sipped her drink again.] The Wraith are sentient and incredibly intelligent- they can't help their biology. I was working on trying to remove their need to feed on life energy, since they otherwise have digestive systems capable of digesting normal food, but hadn't yet succeeded.

[dancingmd]

So... they're corporeal, but they need to feed on energy to survive still? I have... encountered energy beings who needed a corporeal host but that's not quite the same thing.

[forsometimenow]

[Jennifer nodded.]

They evolved from a species of bug called Iratus- and young Wraith can still eat and digest like a human does, but at some point, they become dependent on sucking energy from living beings. We still don't 100% understand the biological process yet, but needless to say, the humans of the Pegasus Galaxy lived in fear of the Wraith.

[dancingmd]

Does the energy have to come from other sapient beings? Or can they take from animals?

[forsometimenow]

It seems like they can only feed from humans. It was getting to be a huge problem for them and for us because there were many Wraith and not enough food to go around, so they'd set their sights on invading Earth. We managed to stop them, though.

[dancingmd]

[Beverly swirls her glass, staring at the liquid thoughtfully.]

Do you think they'll come back?

[forsometimenow]

Maybe- if they can figure out a method of intergalactic travel that doesn't take weeks and find Earth's precise location. Otherwise they're stuck in the Pegasus Galaxy. The one ship that DID manage to get to Earth was an anomaly.

[dancingmd]

The Pegasus Galaxy?

[Beverly raises her eyebrows, impressed.]

That's two and a half million light years away from Earth. Quite an accidental trip to make.

[forsometimenow]

[Jennifer grinned.]

I'm not entirely sure how it works, but the Wraith ship that did make it got ahold of 3 ZPMS- a very rare power source- so they were able to make the jump through hyperspace to reach the Milky Way. I think. Rodney would be able to explain it better than I could. But the chances of another Wraith hive doing the same thing are slim to none because such a jump requires an enormous amount of power due to the distance, yes. A Stargate can overcome that, but they also require a lot of power to make the jump and they're physically too small for a lot of ships to go through.

[dancingmd]

That's good...and at least you know how they got here, so you'll be better prepared in the future. I take it then, that Earth mainly depends on the Stargates, not starships?

[forsometimenow]

The Stargates are our main means of interplanetary travel, yes. We do have ships capable of making the journey, but going from the Milky Way to the Pegasus Galaxy takes 3 weeks each way. We did briefly have a waystation comprised of Stargates linking the Pegasus gates to the one on Earth that reduced travel time for a few hours, but it was dismantled after the Wraith broke in.

[dancingmd]

[Beverly... stares.]

Three weeks! That's all?

[forsometimenow]

Yeah. [Jennifer blinked, obviously puzzled by the reaction.] Uh, it does involve traveling through hyperspace... I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.

[dancingmd]

Subspace travel hasn't been yet perfected in the Federation. Or any of our neighboring powers, really. It'd take us roughly 100 years to cross the Milky Way at current warp speeds.

[forsometimenow]

Wow... [Jennifer looked impressed.] Humans did have help, of course- from a dying race called the Asgard. I don't know much about them, but I guess they gave the Stargate program a lot of that kind of technology and stuff we might never have developed otherwise.

[dancingmd]

[Beverly blinks. Jennifer is not the first person she has heard mention Asgard.]

The Asgard? Well it seems yours isn't the only universe under their influence. I have heard that name before - outside the context of ancient Earth mythology I mean.

[forsometimenow]

Ours were the "small gray guys with big heads" variety of alien. From what I remember of my "welcome to Stargate Command" introduction stuff, ancient contact with Earth led to some of early humanity's beliefs and names being spread to other alien races, who adopted them as their own, hence why they called themselves the Asgard. Our Asgard are all dead now, though.

[dancingmd]

I don't know of any species that fits that particular description. But I do know the Asgardians I have heard of from others are still very much alive, in their world.

[forsometimenow]

Hmmm... so there are some similarities and some differences between the worlds we come from. It makes sense from what the others have told me about the alternate universes they ended up in, though. Like, in one of them, Rodney and I still ended up together, but the circumstances were very different.

[dancingmd]

Mmm. It's been my personal experience with parallel universes as well.

[She grins.]

Apparently in one I get to be the captain of my own ship. Alas, I didn't get to see it myself, but I like the sound of that one.