Futura Memoratia

Chapter 1 itinere (journey)

Hammond nodded and got up to go.  Jackson remained behind, regarding her thoughtfully.  “I’m sorry, Emily.  I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear.  You ok?”

She felt limp from the roller coaster of emotion she’d just ridden—the intense build up of so much anxiety, followed by the wave of relief that they would keep her.  

“Yeah.  I guess.  I hate going through that damn thing.  But at the same time. . . I hate missing out on the good stuff.”

“You’ll be safer here,” Jackson said with a kind smile.  It was like him to point out some positive aspect.  He was aware of her aversion to the more unpredictable missions she’d been on.

“Somewhat,” Emily rolled her eyes and forced a laugh.  “Until the next foothold situation, right?”  

She wondered, a sense of tightness squeezing in her chest, if her father had lived, what he would have thought of all this, had she been able to tell him.  He’d started out as Air Force before moving on to fly commercial.  She’d barely known him, barely remembered him, but she suspected he would’ve been let down as much as she was by this moment.

And yet, here I go again now, Emily reflected, as the blue glow of the event horizon rippled over the faces around her.  Farther than ever before.  To another galaxy.  She swallowed convulsively.  It was insane—truly, utterly insane.  She tried to quash down the panic that even the benzodiazapene she had taken couldn’t quell.

She was going to Atlantis in the Pegasus galaxy.  As far as the SGC was concerned, this was a professional decision.  One that surprised them, given her history, but the IOA had been pushing the SGC to send a linguist to Atlantis since the original expedition.  They wanted someone working on the Ancient database, to bring its contents home to Earth in a form accessible to all, particularly anything that could be used to further the interests and defense of Earth.  They wanted Jackson, but O’Neill and Landry wouldn’t allow it.  She was their second choice and they’d been pressuring her to go for years.  When Atlantis was recently lost and regained, they re-opened negotiations with her—this time offering an exorbitant pay raise.  It was the excuse she used; the timing bizarrely perfect.

No one knew that the real reason she was going was entirely personal.  Personal, emotional, utterly without logic, reason, or common sense.  She was taking a huge leap of faith that even she wasn’t sure she believed and that she dare not voice to another living soul.  She was going for one reason and one reason alone.  To meet Dr. Rodney McKay.

Emily would be among the earliest users of the Carter/McKay intergalactic bridge built between the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies.  This meant traveling in a small ship, affectionately called a puddle jumper, through gate after gate after gate across the incredible vastness of empty space that lies between galaxies.  

General Landry had the foresight to send her along with a small group of medics, bringing medical equipment and replacement personnel through.  A macro had been written by McKay and installed into the jumper’s computer that would take them through the gate on Earth and directly to the intergalactic gate bridge where they would be forwarded through the first seventeen gates sequentially without stopping or rematerializing.  They would then pause at the unfinished midway station before continuing on through the last seventeen gates, taking them directly to the Atlantis gate.

Emily hoped her reaction would be similar to what she had experienced before and not worse.  She was stubbornly refusing to wait and was going against medical advice.  The doctors thought her issue with the gate was all in her head anyway, so, predictably, their objections had been minor.  Once the decision had been made, she didn’t want to delay the transition because it would give her time to change her mind.  She knew herself well enough to know—it was now or never.  Certainty or. . . regrets.