Dream: Multiple Magic / Stargate AU fic
Jan. 7th, 2016 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethShe sat at the back, by the window that looked like it would actually open. The desks were a shaky half circle behind a patch of lines and rows, a teacher's desk at the front. Chalk was everywhere, and the schedules and curricula being handed out were on plain old paper in still ink. Ancient stuff for such an advanced class. But then paper was much harder to disrupt than electrons when the magic misfired.
"Okay, class, I'll trust you to do the reading at home, so for now we'll get straight to the practical. Just some warm up exercises, see what you're bringing to it, what level you're at. But remember, the final assessment has to be a group project, so you should start as you mean to go on."
Someone in full third level robes at the front snorted and spun her fingers in a complicated circle, the first few bars of a Gate college spell. "Seriously? Like there's a group here that can do that? They'd only hold me back."
The lecturer, back to her, rolled her eyes, but the student at the back was the one to speak.
"It is deadly serious. I've walked on other worlds, same as you have. Where I've been, there were dangers I'd never experienced, never even thought of before. Whole histories changed on an instant, or with a doom hanging over them. It's only four Earth's over that they've a rock coming just like killed the dinosaurs, and only days to do anything about it. I've seen it with my own eyes, stood and watched it wander their night sky, and I still don't know what to do about it. They're talking evacuation. That's of a planet just as populous as this one. And maybe they'll come to this one. Seven billion people, just arriving, overnight. What do you do when your population doubles? Or triples? We think that rock is rare, but maybe the orbital mechanics work out so it almost always hits us. Maybe we're the last lifeboat in the near alternity. How do you cope when there's three, four, five, five hundred of everyone? What's the life support capacity of one Earth anyway? And what if it's you who looks up and finally sees it. The hammer, waiting to fall. What if it's your own Earth that has to think of something, do something, right now? What would you do?" She paused for a beat, then rolled a gesture around the circle of students. "You, plural."
The Three screwed her face up but nodded. The student at the back nodded and tapped the table twice, passing the point on.
Of course, that wasn't a custom of this Earth...
***
Under a mountain in Colorado, way below the giant entry doors, five paths off world were arranged in one room, four mirrors to alternity and one giant gate to the stars. Teal'c anchored the star gate, the great distances he had travelled giving him an edge in gate magic no Earth born mage could match. For the same reasons each mirror had its own visitors standing by to power it, all matched sets of Sam Carters and Rodney McKays. Their physical proximity aspected the mana down here to make it easier, and nobody's spells resonated quite as well as an alterniteam.
Still, keeping them open when this many people passed through was a feat without parallel... on local Earths, at least.
But they had to do it, had to give Earth's population every chance, right up until the last minute.
They'd tried phasing the rogue rock, of course, but the damn thing was a moving mana dead zone. Rodney was fascinated, up until they realised the same properties would defeat any spell they cast on Earth too, at least any spell the rock got near to. And moving a whole planet out of the way, even along its own orbital track, was a feat even Merlin had never accomplished, though the necromancer Jackson told them Merlin's spirit worked hard on it even now.
That left them only the most basic plan, which was also the most complex: to transport seven billion humans, body and soul, to somewhere sufficiently else.
Under the mountain a steady stream of people poured through the portals, single file to alternate worlds, half a dozen together to the stars.
Above them the mass of humanity pressing to get in to the mountain was causing another problem, as the last minutes ticked down.
"They can't close the gates," a sergeant murmured to an engineer. The man nodded, and quickly gestured to his counterparts. Their teams looked grave and started reaching for the basic Earth magics, but their officers got matching quirked grins and reached for the second level. The grins fell off fast though, as above them around the giant gates, hundreds of voices started to scream, and were swiftly silenced.
The gate guards gaped at the sudden change, but only for an instant, before starting the blast doors down.
The five teams below kept at their work, officers rolling the effect forward while their team poured strength into them.
They all felt when the rock hit the other side of the Earth. They felt it first, as the Earth magic started to die, faster than a physical shockwave.
"Second team, seal behind," one gasped, concentration taking everything he had. It pulled at them, the silence, but it was the only chance these people had.
Living rock from the mountain swiftly reshaped to fill the caverns once carved out below.
The blast doors weren't going to be enough.
As those outside looked up and saw the glow on the horizon, the screams redoubled, the echoes from the cave system drowned out by the stadium worthy crowds still under the skies. Skies that were now on fire.
The engineers kept on grimly grabbing more people, the earth rising up and swallowing them, row after row, but it was too late and too slow. The fire met them, and the backlash knocked them and their team flat.
When the mountain shook around them they fed it strength on reflex, however little they had left to give.
But it held.
Tiny and isolated, it held.
That little bubble under the rock became the last breathable air, perhaps the last atmosphere, on the planet.
Every mage felt the changes, and every mage fought not to let it shake them, their efforts still bent to the evacuation. It was more crucial than ever, their last chance, the predicted death of all magic sweeping towards them.
But it was the Jacksons who cried out in as much surprise as pain, lit up so bright they became light, and disappeared.
Everyone looked to his teams, saw them not even stutter a syllable, and grimly straightened their own backs, buoyed by their fortitude.
The human river kept flowing, though somewhere up by the blast doors there was an ever increasing gap.
Suddenly though Jackson was not the only one heading into the light. People started to stumble over abandoned piles of clothes. Glasses got crushed as their owners simply disappeared.
And yet this time there was no panic, as almost everyone was hearing the same offer.
In the gate room the spirits didn't want to nudge their elbows, so they got a glowing Jackson back instead.
"Hey, guys. I, uh, found another way out." Daniel's grin was one sided, and he couldn't quite meet Jack's eyes.
Four other Jacks just started yelling at the ceiling in varying degrees of frustration.
Daniel of this Earth wrinkled his brow in surprise, but his visiting alts came back to corporeality one by one, varying degrees of sheepish. Their team mates and partners bundled them into the uniforms they'd only briefly left behind, grumbling the while.
"Oooh! So, what, you can undo this? Like..." The local Jackson paused, the familiar look of listening to beyond about him. "Ah. I'm... wanted. Something about supervising six billion people?" He looked at his Jack, all apologetic.
"So? What are you waiting for?" Jack raised his eyebrows.
Daniel looked wounded.
"Beam me up!"
"Oh!" Daniel beamed at Jack alright, and after a moment the now familiar glow started around the general.
"Sir!" The local Carter started to object, but her husband put a hand on her arm, and she fell silent, a picture of misery.
Her husband sighed and reminded them both, "We've still got a few hundred people to get through that gate, a dozen worlds to build, and maybe a billion people who don't know naquada from nukes from a ZPM. Glowing out like that is not an option yet."
"Thousand," someone muttered, from down on the floor.
"What?"
"A few thousand people," the earth mage officers chorused. They looked at each other and nominated the local to explain. "We might have... elaborated on the plan, just at the end. They're not crushed, they're Entombed."
"Seriously? That's better? There's a mana dead zone taking half the planet by now and you wrap a few thousand people in solid rock?"
"At the least, it's merciful. At best, they're just suspended, and the juice stays flowing until we get them out again."
O'Neill - the glowing one - blipped out of the room and back again.
"He's right, people. We've got a few thousand souls locked in solid rock up there. You know you brought most of the mountain down on them?"
The whole team shrugged in unison. "We needed fifty feet of rock. And if their bubble breaks they'll wake again. Better safe than sorry."
"So we just need to dig?"
"Yeah, sure." One said, then the next took up the sentence. "If you want to do it the hard way." A third sighed and slumped back. "Just give us a minute." Fourth added, "Or two." Fifth, the local, looked around at the still slumped teams and whistled a few bars of the restorative meditation, prompting groans and rearrangement as they all got to it. He concluded, "Maybe give us twenty, but we'll do it."
Behind them the Teal'cs kept chanting, calm as ever, but if they could be said to have an expression right then it was satisfaction.
***
Okay, so, I only dreamed the first part, and the AU Stargate-by-magic fic under the cut is what I thought up to solve the problems there presented, but... these are really cool problems.
Also, if they do manage to just shift everyone one universe over? You are suddenly faced with yourself. Forget the stupid Stargate rule where you'll get the shudders, pretend there's no rule to time limit things, just, how do you suddenly cope where across the world there's around seven billion life histories shared by fourteen billion people? Because lets face it, most of us would not be good at sharing.
And as for having to choose which AU to go live in...
b u n n i e s.
"Okay, class, I'll trust you to do the reading at home, so for now we'll get straight to the practical. Just some warm up exercises, see what you're bringing to it, what level you're at. But remember, the final assessment has to be a group project, so you should start as you mean to go on."
Someone in full third level robes at the front snorted and spun her fingers in a complicated circle, the first few bars of a Gate college spell. "Seriously? Like there's a group here that can do that? They'd only hold me back."
The lecturer, back to her, rolled her eyes, but the student at the back was the one to speak.
"It is deadly serious. I've walked on other worlds, same as you have. Where I've been, there were dangers I'd never experienced, never even thought of before. Whole histories changed on an instant, or with a doom hanging over them. It's only four Earth's over that they've a rock coming just like killed the dinosaurs, and only days to do anything about it. I've seen it with my own eyes, stood and watched it wander their night sky, and I still don't know what to do about it. They're talking evacuation. That's of a planet just as populous as this one. And maybe they'll come to this one. Seven billion people, just arriving, overnight. What do you do when your population doubles? Or triples? We think that rock is rare, but maybe the orbital mechanics work out so it almost always hits us. Maybe we're the last lifeboat in the near alternity. How do you cope when there's three, four, five, five hundred of everyone? What's the life support capacity of one Earth anyway? And what if it's you who looks up and finally sees it. The hammer, waiting to fall. What if it's your own Earth that has to think of something, do something, right now? What would you do?" She paused for a beat, then rolled a gesture around the circle of students. "You, plural."
The Three screwed her face up but nodded. The student at the back nodded and tapped the table twice, passing the point on.
Of course, that wasn't a custom of this Earth...
***
Under a mountain in Colorado, way below the giant entry doors, five paths off world were arranged in one room, four mirrors to alternity and one giant gate to the stars. Teal'c anchored the star gate, the great distances he had travelled giving him an edge in gate magic no Earth born mage could match. For the same reasons each mirror had its own visitors standing by to power it, all matched sets of Sam Carters and Rodney McKays. Their physical proximity aspected the mana down here to make it easier, and nobody's spells resonated quite as well as an alterniteam.
Still, keeping them open when this many people passed through was a feat without parallel... on local Earths, at least.
But they had to do it, had to give Earth's population every chance, right up until the last minute.
They'd tried phasing the rogue rock, of course, but the damn thing was a moving mana dead zone. Rodney was fascinated, up until they realised the same properties would defeat any spell they cast on Earth too, at least any spell the rock got near to. And moving a whole planet out of the way, even along its own orbital track, was a feat even Merlin had never accomplished, though the necromancer Jackson told them Merlin's spirit worked hard on it even now.
That left them only the most basic plan, which was also the most complex: to transport seven billion humans, body and soul, to somewhere sufficiently else.
Under the mountain a steady stream of people poured through the portals, single file to alternate worlds, half a dozen together to the stars.
Above them the mass of humanity pressing to get in to the mountain was causing another problem, as the last minutes ticked down.
"They can't close the gates," a sergeant murmured to an engineer. The man nodded, and quickly gestured to his counterparts. Their teams looked grave and started reaching for the basic Earth magics, but their officers got matching quirked grins and reached for the second level. The grins fell off fast though, as above them around the giant gates, hundreds of voices started to scream, and were swiftly silenced.
The gate guards gaped at the sudden change, but only for an instant, before starting the blast doors down.
The five teams below kept at their work, officers rolling the effect forward while their team poured strength into them.
They all felt when the rock hit the other side of the Earth. They felt it first, as the Earth magic started to die, faster than a physical shockwave.
"Second team, seal behind," one gasped, concentration taking everything he had. It pulled at them, the silence, but it was the only chance these people had.
Living rock from the mountain swiftly reshaped to fill the caverns once carved out below.
The blast doors weren't going to be enough.
As those outside looked up and saw the glow on the horizon, the screams redoubled, the echoes from the cave system drowned out by the stadium worthy crowds still under the skies. Skies that were now on fire.
The engineers kept on grimly grabbing more people, the earth rising up and swallowing them, row after row, but it was too late and too slow. The fire met them, and the backlash knocked them and their team flat.
When the mountain shook around them they fed it strength on reflex, however little they had left to give.
But it held.
Tiny and isolated, it held.
That little bubble under the rock became the last breathable air, perhaps the last atmosphere, on the planet.
Every mage felt the changes, and every mage fought not to let it shake them, their efforts still bent to the evacuation. It was more crucial than ever, their last chance, the predicted death of all magic sweeping towards them.
But it was the Jacksons who cried out in as much surprise as pain, lit up so bright they became light, and disappeared.
Everyone looked to his teams, saw them not even stutter a syllable, and grimly straightened their own backs, buoyed by their fortitude.
The human river kept flowing, though somewhere up by the blast doors there was an ever increasing gap.
Suddenly though Jackson was not the only one heading into the light. People started to stumble over abandoned piles of clothes. Glasses got crushed as their owners simply disappeared.
And yet this time there was no panic, as almost everyone was hearing the same offer.
In the gate room the spirits didn't want to nudge their elbows, so they got a glowing Jackson back instead.
"Hey, guys. I, uh, found another way out." Daniel's grin was one sided, and he couldn't quite meet Jack's eyes.
Four other Jacks just started yelling at the ceiling in varying degrees of frustration.
Daniel of this Earth wrinkled his brow in surprise, but his visiting alts came back to corporeality one by one, varying degrees of sheepish. Their team mates and partners bundled them into the uniforms they'd only briefly left behind, grumbling the while.
"Oooh! So, what, you can undo this? Like..." The local Jackson paused, the familiar look of listening to beyond about him. "Ah. I'm... wanted. Something about supervising six billion people?" He looked at his Jack, all apologetic.
"So? What are you waiting for?" Jack raised his eyebrows.
Daniel looked wounded.
"Beam me up!"
"Oh!" Daniel beamed at Jack alright, and after a moment the now familiar glow started around the general.
"Sir!" The local Carter started to object, but her husband put a hand on her arm, and she fell silent, a picture of misery.
Her husband sighed and reminded them both, "We've still got a few hundred people to get through that gate, a dozen worlds to build, and maybe a billion people who don't know naquada from nukes from a ZPM. Glowing out like that is not an option yet."
"Thousand," someone muttered, from down on the floor.
"What?"
"A few thousand people," the earth mage officers chorused. They looked at each other and nominated the local to explain. "We might have... elaborated on the plan, just at the end. They're not crushed, they're Entombed."
"Seriously? That's better? There's a mana dead zone taking half the planet by now and you wrap a few thousand people in solid rock?"
"At the least, it's merciful. At best, they're just suspended, and the juice stays flowing until we get them out again."
O'Neill - the glowing one - blipped out of the room and back again.
"He's right, people. We've got a few thousand souls locked in solid rock up there. You know you brought most of the mountain down on them?"
The whole team shrugged in unison. "We needed fifty feet of rock. And if their bubble breaks they'll wake again. Better safe than sorry."
"So we just need to dig?"
"Yeah, sure." One said, then the next took up the sentence. "If you want to do it the hard way." A third sighed and slumped back. "Just give us a minute." Fourth added, "Or two." Fifth, the local, looked around at the still slumped teams and whistled a few bars of the restorative meditation, prompting groans and rearrangement as they all got to it. He concluded, "Maybe give us twenty, but we'll do it."
Behind them the Teal'cs kept chanting, calm as ever, but if they could be said to have an expression right then it was satisfaction.
***
Okay, so, I only dreamed the first part, and the AU Stargate-by-magic fic under the cut is what I thought up to solve the problems there presented, but... these are really cool problems.
Also, if they do manage to just shift everyone one universe over? You are suddenly faced with yourself. Forget the stupid Stargate rule where you'll get the shudders, pretend there's no rule to time limit things, just, how do you suddenly cope where across the world there's around seven billion life histories shared by fourteen billion people? Because lets face it, most of us would not be good at sharing.
And as for having to choose which AU to go live in...
b u n n i e s.