Worldgate SG-N: General Concerns [Episode 143043]

General O'Neil strode from his office, and looked down through the window at the Stargate, nodding as he saw the iris slide into place and the familiar shimmering patterns of light illuminate the wall behind the gate. Then he stared as the pattern of light changed, developing a pulsing rhythm he had never seen from the gate before. He pivoted and charged down the stairway.

"What's going on!" He called as he entered the main control room.

"We don't know sir, a wormhole established a connection, but it's not behaving like a regular wormhole."

Jack looked through the window to the Stargate. "Has anything tried to come through?"

"No detected impacts, but we are receiving a radio signal."

Jack nodded his head. "Radio's good, let's hear it."

"Yes sir." A moment later a voice started speaking through the loudspeakers.

Jack blinked and looked around the control room. "Does anyone have any idea what their saying, or at least what language their talking in?"

"Sounds like Japanese, but . . . if it is they're offering to shave their butts or something."

Jack looked at the speaker, "Let's hope that's not what they're saying." He glanced around the room, and saw Daniel Jackson walking up the stairs. "Perfect timing." He pointed to the loudspeaker. "What are they saying?"

Daniel listened a moment, "Well, it sounds like a variant of Japanese."

"Got that, what are they saying?"

"Jack, it's not a precise match to anything I know, but perhaps if I could hold a conversation with them . . ."

---

In the lab in the Fire Countries capital, the cheers had faded, but there was a clear mood of celebration in the control room.

"Sir!" a technician called, his hand on the earpiece of his headset. "I'm getting a response!"

"First contact!" one of the other techs squealed excitedly.

"What are they saying?" the project chief asked as he leaned on the back of the chair.

". . . I'm not sure, it sounds like their . . . declaring their contempt for blue rubber."

As the project chief stared, Kakashi walked up and casually pulled off the technicians headset. "If you don't mind, I've had some experience with odd dialects and such."

"Thank you, Master Kakashi." The project chief turned to one of the younger workers near the back of the room. "Find that language expert and bring him here!"

---

Jack stood looking at the Stargate, then glanced back at Daniel who continued to alternate between listening silently, and talking in a slow precise voice into the headset. "I don't suppose we can speed things up if we could arrange visual communication." Jack commented simply.

Daniel glanced upward, and put his hand over the mouthpiece briefly. "Actually I suggested that, but it seems they'll need time to set that up."

"So, you've figured out how to talk with them?"

"Not perfectly," he raised a finger, spoke a few words into the headpiece then turned to Jack. "From what I can tell, they call their home country the Burning Nation, or something like that, and the one I've been talking to is . . . Well, he's apparently been hired from the Hidden by Leaf Shadow Town, I'll need a little more time to properly figure it out."

Jack looked back at Daniel. "See if you can find out why their wormhole looks so weird."

---

"So, it's like that Mirror thing?" Jack asked, his eyes briefly flicking toward Samantha Carter.

"Not exactly," Daniel responded, glancing down to the folders lying on the briefing table. "The Quantum Mirror causes transitions between alternate levels of quantum reality, they were using the gate to . . . tunnel to alternate fundaments." He looked at Jack.

" . . . Which means?" Jack responded.

Colonel Carter made a gesture with her hand. "It means that the Quantum Mirror allows you to access different versions of this universe. If you had a time machine and could go far back enough, there's a moment when all the realities the quantum mirror accesses were the same. It's like the way all the branches of a tree can trace back to a single trunk. That's not the case here. The universe contacting us is completely separate from our own, sort of jumping from one tree to another."

"Ok, and are we talking about a few trees or . . ."

"Forest." Daniel interjected. "They discovered how to gate between universes after studying a series artifacts of the Ancients. I helped them translate the documents that came with them, and they say that our address was the home of the ancients who traveled to the 'infinite myriad' universes, building gates as they went. ."

"Cool." General O'Neil commented simply. "So, can we drop by and visit them?"

"Not yet," Carter responded, flipping open her notebook. "Their nine symbol universe address system was apparently designed using a completely different mathematical model. Instead of using a cube, it uses a combination of three triangles to pinpoint . . ." looking at Jack she trailed off. "We'll figure it out."