"Incoming wormhole!" Leaning forward slightly, Sergeant Davis checked his monitor. "It's SG-1's signal, sir."
They were early, that couldn't be good. Frowning, General Hammond gave the command to open the iris.
"Yes sir! Opening the iris."
Hammond started for the stairs - if he was able, he liked to greet the returning teams personally. When there was trouble, and trouble was unfortunately the middle name of all members of SG-1 with middle names, he liked to be there to get a jump on solving the problem.. Moments after he reached the gateroom, three members of SG-1 walked out of the event horizon and started down the ramp.
Three? He frowned. "Colonel O'Neill!"
The colonel looked up and sketched a salute. "General Hammond, sir."
"Where is Dr. Jackson?"
"The locals wouldn't let us leave unless Daniel stayed behind as their Warlord's sex-slave."
Hammond could feel his blood pressure rising. "Tell me you're kidding, Jack."
"I'm not kidding."
"That's the third time this month!"
"Fourth, sir," Major Carter corrected stepping out from behind her team leader...
...who snorted. "Come on Carter, you can't count PC7 23R; that was more of a Daniel gets taken over by alien mind control situation."
"Yes sir; in order to become the emperor's sex-slave."
"I still think we should classify that as mind control. What do you think Teal'c?"
"I think this grows tiresome." The Jaffa handed his staff weapon to a waiting Marine and stomped from the gateroom.
Closing the distance between himself and the remaining two members of SG-1, General Hammond lowered his voice and asked, "What's wrong with Teal'c?"
Jack grinned. "Their leader was a piece. Very..."
"Very." Carter agreed,
Hammond frowned. "Male or female?"
"Hard to say. Teal'c was a little taken with... um it... but as usual, male, female or otherwise, it only had eyes for Daniel."
The general nodded a weary acknowledgement. Half the universe seemed intent on getting into Dr. Jackson's pants. And the other half hadn't met him yet. "I'll order the usual response team ready immediately."
"Incoming worm hole. It's Dr. Jackson!"
Jack checked his watch. "Forty-three minutes a new record." He raised his voice slightly. "Who had forty-three minutes in the pool?"
One of the marines standing by in the gateroom raised a hand. "I did, sir."
"Good man."
"...all I'm saying is that while myth can be considered the basis of a historical belief system ...." In direct contradiction to all wormhole physics,. Daniel's voice drifted out first. Then Daniel emerged, stumbling backwards as though forcibly propelled by someone on the other side. He was wearing a sheer white toga, golden sandals and his skin appeared to be shimmering slightly. "...it can also be considered as allegory and should not necessarily be taken as literal truth. For example, your myth of Arogath and his love for the slave Numin needs to be examined in the context of the time it occurred with special attention paid to the linguistic changes over the intervening centuries." The last three words were delivered to an empty circle. He smoothed down his toga and turned as a Marine leapt forward to wrap him in a robe. Another member of the special response team handed him a wet wipe to get the makeup off his face while a tech went to work applying a massive ring of keys to the jewel encrusted torc around his neck. The lock sprang open on the fourth try.
"These things are all so similar it gets easier every time." She held it up, twirling it between her fingers so that the gems sparkled under the fluorescent lights.. "What should I do with it, Dr. Jackson?"
He handed the kohl covered wet wipe back to the Marine. "You know, it's a fine example of a corrupted early Etruscan piece found north of Rome in 19..."
The tech's eyes started to glaze over.
Daniel sighed. "Just put it with the others."
Jack pushed himself off the wall and met Daniel at the bottom of the ramp. "What took you so long? I was beginning to get worried something had actually happened."
"Nothing ever happens. The ritual bath just had more ritual than usual."
"You smell like..."
"Orange blossoms. It's highly likely that the Goa'uld who planted that colony there brought a certain amount of flora along as there are distinct agricultural parallels between..."
"You know what I don't understand? Why don't any of these people just gag you?"
Daniel shrugged, the robe slipping off one shoulder. "Apparently it ruins the perfect pout of my mouth."
"The what?"
"I'm quoting."
"Just don't start believing your own publicity."
"Not likely. This one was vaguely human but the last two had..."
"...unidentifiable body parts."
"Yeah. I think it's pheromones."
"I think it's your ass."
"You know, Jack. I think I was actually beginning to get through to her... him... uh... it, this time."
"Like you thought you were getting through to that brother/sister king/queen act on P9H N76? The ones who dumped you back through the wormhole in 21 minutes?"
"Well, that was different. The parallels to the ancient Egyptian sibling ruling structure were just too fascinating not to be explored."
"Uh huh."
"Maybe if I started with by presenting the historical evidence supporting my views on the wrongness of a slave owning society and then moved onto the way language indicates potentially unknown social conditions."
"Maybe." Jack put his hand between Daniel's shoulder blades, enjoyed the play of muscle under his palm, and then pushed him into the infirmary and his post left-behind-as-sex-slave physical. "Maybe you should just go through the gate with a bag over your head..."
--end--