Futura Memoratia

Chapter 1 itinere (journey)

As she sat across the table from Jackson and Hammond in the meeting, sweating nervously, she recalled with a wry twist of her mouth, how she had even closed the letter with a paragraph about how she fantasized of living in a peaceful universe with galaxies of civilizations, each with their own artifacts, ruins, and languages to explore.  

She never thought he would actually get the letter, never imagined it would ever amount to anything.  For all she knew, Jackson was teaching high school somewhere, full of regrets—and if he did by some miracle get the letter, maybe it would give him a moment of happiness to know that someone out there in his field thought his theories had merit.  It was just a way to put her thoughts to paper in a way that she could never speak aloud to her colleagues.  She thought it had been a harmless fantasy, a moment of indulgence in her own vanity.

Roughly six months after posting that letter, mere months from finishing her dissertation, she attended a professional meeting, presenting a paper on an obscure Sumerian stone tablet with some novel symbols she had deciphered.  Jackson had been in the audience and introduced himself after her talk, asking her to dinner to discuss some exciting opportunities as a contractor with the United States Air Force.  

She had surely looked like a fool.  She stuttered and sputtered and gaped at him.  There went her theory of a paunchy high school history teacher who cried in his beer over his lost career every night.  The Air Force needed polyglots and archeologists?  Huh?  It hadn’t taken much to convince her she wanted to know more.  Before she knew it, she was moving to Colorado, spending most of her waking hours deep in an underground bunker called Cheyenne Mountain, learning Ancient and other incredible languages and seeing and doing things that she could never have dreamed of.

General Hammond cleared his throat, jerking her out of her reverie.  Hammond and Jackson exchanged glances and Jackson started in, “Emily, do you know why we’ve called this meeting?”

Emily looked down at her hands for a moment, but quickly realized that was a mistake as tears started to well up.  She instantly shifted her gaze to the ceiling, willing the tears to drain away without spilling down her cheeks, mentally cursing the weakness she’d been determined not to show.  

“I’m a liability on the other side of the gate,” she said flatly.  She picked a point just over their heads to stare at.

Hammond leaned in, his hands folded on top of some files.  He looked reluctant to deliver his verdict.  “The medical team can’t seem to find any organic reason for your reaction to gate travel, so there’s apparently nothing that can be done.  We cannot dismiss the danger it poses to a team to have a member incapacitated for at least twenty minutes each time you go through.”  He looked to Dr. Jackson as though he needed help softening the blow.

“It’s surprising, considering you have a naturally expressed ATA gene.  As a direct descendent of the Ancients, we wouldn’t expect you to find gate travel difficult.  But there it is, nonetheless,” Jackson said gently.

Her worst fears confirmed, she fought down panic.  “So, I’m grounded?  What does that mean?  Do I transfer to Area 51?  Am I out of the program?”  She willed her voice to be neutral and steady.  She’d known this was coming—she just didn’t know the outcome yet.  She couldn’t imagine how she could go back to her old life after all this.  Would they let her go?  How could they, given what she knew?  

“No, no.  We need you here,” Hammond firmly assured her.  “Your expertise is invaluable.  We can’t replace you.  You’ll be permanently stationed with the archeology lab here, working with science teams on the artifacts we bring back to Earth, as well as translations, of which you know there are always plenty.  The work won’t be so different from what you’re used to.  You just won’t be going off-world anymore.”