Categories > TV > Stargate: SG-1 > We Shouldn't Keep Meeting Like This
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1999, rapidly heading away from Earth...
Captain Jack Harkness patted the bulkhead of his ship, as if to thank her for getting him out of captivity so effortlessly. He allowed himself a grin as he imagined the face of poor Colonel O'Neill as his captive suddenly vanished into thin air. Hallelujah for emergency teleports! Of course, Jack really had appreciated the shower and new clothes. The personnel in the facility, however, had been far to uptight to make the thought of an extended stay appealing. Besides, he had only just finished one con, and hadn't had the time to prepare another one, so there was no profit to be had in staying longer.
His intentions for landing in that particular spot had been simple. A hot shower, a change of clothes, and a meal. The facilities for these three luxuries were rather limited on his ship. After all the shenanigans, he still had not gotten the meal. His scanner had indicated that he had landed in a sparsely populated area within reach of a city. Obviously, that was completely wrong. He was going to have to upgrade that thing ASAP, he thought. It seemed the only way it still picked up any technology was if it was sitting right out in the open broadcasting, "I am a piece of highly advanced technology, please, come get me." -or maybe not even then. That definitely needed fixing--and soon.
But first, food. And if he did have to travel to get a decent meal, he might as well get a great one. As he recalled, thirty-third century Titan had particularly good seafood. Maybe he should try that. After all, one couldn't do decent upgrades on an empty stomach.
--
Whenever, wherever. (2001, Abydos)
Finally, a world where he spoke the language and, better yet, where they served alcohol! The only variety on Satellite 5 had been intended for cleaning. As much as Jack Harkness had wanted to get blind drunk and forget that awful sound of the TARDIS leaving, he had not wanted to drunkenly get blind. So, unfortunately, that was out.
Still, the enforced sobriety had allowed Captain Jack to eventually cobble together something that would get him off the station, possibly even back in time. Back to London, sometime in the early twenty-first century. Rose's mother and friends lived there. The Doctor was bound to take her back there. Jack had only just started to travel-well, time-travel-with the enigmatic alien who called himself the Doctor. And Rose. The pretty, lively young woman who had already been traveling with him. She seemed to have a knack for getting into trouble. Come to think of it, so did the Doctor, who seemed to save the Earth as a sort of hobby. But the mere thought of facing the future without his friends hurt and Jack was determined to find them again.
There was one hope. The Doctor had left the extrapolator behind, a handy little device they had confiscated from an alien who meant to use it as an emergency means to escape Earth. Of course, they had also planed on destroying the Earth in the process in order to generate enough power for the device to operate. It was simple enough to use. Just program the coordinates into the extrapolator, generate a large enough shockwave, and you could surf through interdimensional space to wherever you wanted, safely protected by an immensely powerful force field. This meant that Jack could travel, as long as he could generate a big enough shockwave to open a dimensional rift. Or he could use one of the old-fashioned transmat pads that were still used at some points in the station. Essentially, they opened a small portal in the space/time vortex, sending the occupant over to the pad at the receiving point. Since he was the only one left on the entire station, alive at least, Jack had scrapped several of the transmat pads and a few of the backup communications systems. He hoped that when these components were attached to the extrapolator, they would make a time ship. A laughable one compared to the Doctor's TARDIS. Then again, any time ship would be laughable compared to that miracle. Shaped on the outside like a Police Telephone Box, the inside much larger and a veritable maze of surprises. Even the Chula ship that he had sacrificed to a Nazi bomb was millions of times better than the contraption he had cobbled together. But hey, it was a vehicle capable of traveling in space and time, and that was all that mattered.
The only problem was that the extrapolator had not been designed for time travel. Oh, it worked well enough. In the space/time vortex, time was just another coordinate. Fiddling with the temporal axis did lead to the actual problem. Unless you had an extremely powerful computer, you just wouldn't know where the spatial coordinates were pointing. He'd been lucky enough to end up on a planet every single time. Even luckier that they were planets with a breathable atmosphere. For the past six jumps, however, that was all the luck Jack had had. None of the available food had been compatible with a human metabolism. And when there were people on the planet, he had not spoken the language. How he longed for his long lost universal translator.
Jack's ultimate goal was to reach planet Earth, preferably in the early twenty-first century. But after almost a week of nothing to drink but water and hardly anything to eat, the current hell-hole in which he found himself at least served something he could eat. Better still, alcohol he could /drink/. It almost seemed like heaven. Then the enormity of the haystack he was trying to find a TARDIS-shaped needle in reasserted itself before he had the chance to drink himself into a blind stupor. At the rate he was going, he probably had more chance of finding a specific grain of sand in that desert outside the city than of reuniting himself with the Doctor and Rose. No, it was definitely time to get well and truly drunk.
Within a short time, Captain Jack Harkness was well beyond his normal limit, and going strong. Getting drunk had not even been easy on the watered-down concoction that passed for beer. Strangely enough-to the inebriated Jack, anyway-the locals had left him alone. His usual advances, regardless of gender, had been met with disgust and a few hostile looks, but no further action.
Jack spotted two men entering the tavern. One had the look of a typical local, which meant he looked vaguely Middle-Eastern. Strange how those designations held, even in Jack's original time, when people of all descriptions lived pretty much wherever they wanted. He was older than most of the regulars, though. The other man was younger, with uncharacteristically light hair, the locals all being dark. The older man spotted Jack, indicating him to the younger man, who looked over at the intoxicated Captain. Well, how about that? Jack thought happily. /I've become a tourist attraction/. He stood up as best he could, grinned and waved. Even in his drunken state, Jack realized that the younger man looked out of place. What was it? Well, he would soon find out as the man in question had spotted him and was coming over. Ah,yes. The newcomer not only had lighter hair, his facial structure was completely different. More Western, another definition that had long lost any basis in fact. Also, his robes didn't have nearly so much sand and dust on them as those of the people around him. When he finally came close enough, Jack smiled again and introduced himself
"Hello, Captain Jack Harkness. Nice to meet you," he slurred, holding out a hand to the newcomer.
The other man slowly took the extended hand, but did not return the smile. Instead, he gave Jack a confused look. After a few seconds of silence, he seemed to remember that he was still holding Jack's hand, and had not introduced himself.
"Oh, uh, Daniel Jackson."
Jack wrapped his arm around Daniel's shoulder, feeling the man flinch slightly. Was he that shy? His slowness in introducing himself did seem to indicate that.
"Well, Daniel, you don't look like you belong here any more than I do. So, why don't you let one outsider buy another outsider a drink? And then we'll take it from there."
"You're drunk already, Captain," Daniel rejoined. "I don't think you need more."
Not so shy then, Jack observed. "It's not about getting me drunk, Goldilocks." Jack tried to grin engagingly, without much success. "I know I'm drunk. This is about you. So, what'll you have? Beer? Or beer?" This time he succeeded in grinning, albeit less than engagingly.
Daniel gingerly extricated himself from the shoulder hold that seemed on the verge of becoming a bear hug. "That's not such a good idea, Captain. You've really had enough."
"There's no such thing."
Instead of answering that remark, Daniel nodded to two people who had taken up a position behind Jack. Suddenly, they were standing uncomfortably close, even for Jack, and an alarm went off in his head.
"I think you'd better come with me, Captain." Daniel's voice had suddenly taken on an authoritative edge. "I know some people who would definitely be interested to see you."
"What?" Jack was trying to answer the alarm in his alcohol numbed brain.
The men who were behind him were suddenly beside him and had taken him by the arms. The next thing he knew, he was being gently but resolutely removed from the tavern. "Hey, I can take 'no' for an answer, you know? You just had to say."
Jack's only reply was silence.
1999, rapidly heading away from Earth...
Captain Jack Harkness patted the bulkhead of his ship, as if to thank her for getting him out of captivity so effortlessly. He allowed himself a grin as he imagined the face of poor Colonel O'Neill as his captive suddenly vanished into thin air. Hallelujah for emergency teleports! Of course, Jack really had appreciated the shower and new clothes. The personnel in the facility, however, had been far to uptight to make the thought of an extended stay appealing. Besides, he had only just finished one con, and hadn't had the time to prepare another one, so there was no profit to be had in staying longer.
His intentions for landing in that particular spot had been simple. A hot shower, a change of clothes, and a meal. The facilities for these three luxuries were rather limited on his ship. After all the shenanigans, he still had not gotten the meal. His scanner had indicated that he had landed in a sparsely populated area within reach of a city. Obviously, that was completely wrong. He was going to have to upgrade that thing ASAP, he thought. It seemed the only way it still picked up any technology was if it was sitting right out in the open broadcasting, "I am a piece of highly advanced technology, please, come get me." -or maybe not even then. That definitely needed fixing--and soon.
But first, food. And if he did have to travel to get a decent meal, he might as well get a great one. As he recalled, thirty-third century Titan had particularly good seafood. Maybe he should try that. After all, one couldn't do decent upgrades on an empty stomach.
--
Whenever, wherever. (2001, Abydos)
Finally, a world where he spoke the language and, better yet, where they served alcohol! The only variety on Satellite 5 had been intended for cleaning. As much as Jack Harkness had wanted to get blind drunk and forget that awful sound of the TARDIS leaving, he had not wanted to drunkenly get blind. So, unfortunately, that was out.
Still, the enforced sobriety had allowed Captain Jack to eventually cobble together something that would get him off the station, possibly even back in time. Back to London, sometime in the early twenty-first century. Rose's mother and friends lived there. The Doctor was bound to take her back there. Jack had only just started to travel-well, time-travel-with the enigmatic alien who called himself the Doctor. And Rose. The pretty, lively young woman who had already been traveling with him. She seemed to have a knack for getting into trouble. Come to think of it, so did the Doctor, who seemed to save the Earth as a sort of hobby. But the mere thought of facing the future without his friends hurt and Jack was determined to find them again.
There was one hope. The Doctor had left the extrapolator behind, a handy little device they had confiscated from an alien who meant to use it as an emergency means to escape Earth. Of course, they had also planed on destroying the Earth in the process in order to generate enough power for the device to operate. It was simple enough to use. Just program the coordinates into the extrapolator, generate a large enough shockwave, and you could surf through interdimensional space to wherever you wanted, safely protected by an immensely powerful force field. This meant that Jack could travel, as long as he could generate a big enough shockwave to open a dimensional rift. Or he could use one of the old-fashioned transmat pads that were still used at some points in the station. Essentially, they opened a small portal in the space/time vortex, sending the occupant over to the pad at the receiving point. Since he was the only one left on the entire station, alive at least, Jack had scrapped several of the transmat pads and a few of the backup communications systems. He hoped that when these components were attached to the extrapolator, they would make a time ship. A laughable one compared to the Doctor's TARDIS. Then again, any time ship would be laughable compared to that miracle. Shaped on the outside like a Police Telephone Box, the inside much larger and a veritable maze of surprises. Even the Chula ship that he had sacrificed to a Nazi bomb was millions of times better than the contraption he had cobbled together. But hey, it was a vehicle capable of traveling in space and time, and that was all that mattered.
The only problem was that the extrapolator had not been designed for time travel. Oh, it worked well enough. In the space/time vortex, time was just another coordinate. Fiddling with the temporal axis did lead to the actual problem. Unless you had an extremely powerful computer, you just wouldn't know where the spatial coordinates were pointing. He'd been lucky enough to end up on a planet every single time. Even luckier that they were planets with a breathable atmosphere. For the past six jumps, however, that was all the luck Jack had had. None of the available food had been compatible with a human metabolism. And when there were people on the planet, he had not spoken the language. How he longed for his long lost universal translator.
Jack's ultimate goal was to reach planet Earth, preferably in the early twenty-first century. But after almost a week of nothing to drink but water and hardly anything to eat, the current hell-hole in which he found himself at least served something he could eat. Better still, alcohol he could /drink/. It almost seemed like heaven. Then the enormity of the haystack he was trying to find a TARDIS-shaped needle in reasserted itself before he had the chance to drink himself into a blind stupor. At the rate he was going, he probably had more chance of finding a specific grain of sand in that desert outside the city than of reuniting himself with the Doctor and Rose. No, it was definitely time to get well and truly drunk.
Within a short time, Captain Jack Harkness was well beyond his normal limit, and going strong. Getting drunk had not even been easy on the watered-down concoction that passed for beer. Strangely enough-to the inebriated Jack, anyway-the locals had left him alone. His usual advances, regardless of gender, had been met with disgust and a few hostile looks, but no further action.
Jack spotted two men entering the tavern. One had the look of a typical local, which meant he looked vaguely Middle-Eastern. Strange how those designations held, even in Jack's original time, when people of all descriptions lived pretty much wherever they wanted. He was older than most of the regulars, though. The other man was younger, with uncharacteristically light hair, the locals all being dark. The older man spotted Jack, indicating him to the younger man, who looked over at the intoxicated Captain. Well, how about that? Jack thought happily. /I've become a tourist attraction/. He stood up as best he could, grinned and waved. Even in his drunken state, Jack realized that the younger man looked out of place. What was it? Well, he would soon find out as the man in question had spotted him and was coming over. Ah,yes. The newcomer not only had lighter hair, his facial structure was completely different. More Western, another definition that had long lost any basis in fact. Also, his robes didn't have nearly so much sand and dust on them as those of the people around him. When he finally came close enough, Jack smiled again and introduced himself
"Hello, Captain Jack Harkness. Nice to meet you," he slurred, holding out a hand to the newcomer.
The other man slowly took the extended hand, but did not return the smile. Instead, he gave Jack a confused look. After a few seconds of silence, he seemed to remember that he was still holding Jack's hand, and had not introduced himself.
"Oh, uh, Daniel Jackson."
Jack wrapped his arm around Daniel's shoulder, feeling the man flinch slightly. Was he that shy? His slowness in introducing himself did seem to indicate that.
"Well, Daniel, you don't look like you belong here any more than I do. So, why don't you let one outsider buy another outsider a drink? And then we'll take it from there."
"You're drunk already, Captain," Daniel rejoined. "I don't think you need more."
Not so shy then, Jack observed. "It's not about getting me drunk, Goldilocks." Jack tried to grin engagingly, without much success. "I know I'm drunk. This is about you. So, what'll you have? Beer? Or beer?" This time he succeeded in grinning, albeit less than engagingly.
Daniel gingerly extricated himself from the shoulder hold that seemed on the verge of becoming a bear hug. "That's not such a good idea, Captain. You've really had enough."
"There's no such thing."
Instead of answering that remark, Daniel nodded to two people who had taken up a position behind Jack. Suddenly, they were standing uncomfortably close, even for Jack, and an alarm went off in his head.
"I think you'd better come with me, Captain." Daniel's voice had suddenly taken on an authoritative edge. "I know some people who would definitely be interested to see you."
"What?" Jack was trying to answer the alarm in his alcohol numbed brain.
The men who were behind him were suddenly beside him and had taken him by the arms. The next thing he knew, he was being gently but resolutely removed from the tavern. "Hey, I can take 'no' for an answer, you know? You just had to say."
Jack's only reply was silence.
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