THE END OF BEGINNINGS

EIGHT

It was a little less than a five minute trek from the small plaza to their destination.  Daniel Jackson walked silently behind his companions.  He was too lost in his thoughts to pay attention to what they were saying.  He also wasn't that interested.  The bits and pieces he heard was excited techno-babble he hardly had any knowledge in.  The awkward physicist he had first met more than a decade ago, however, was fully invested.  Zelenka reveled in discussing science with Jonas Quinn.  Jonas was a patient soul with an intellect that easily matched Zelenka's.  The shy man from the Czech Republic appreciated Jonas' willingness to actually listen to him.  That likely meant more to him than the details of whatever topic was on their minds.
Daniel's mind was in two places at once as they arrived at a stout structure a few blocks from the pier's central tower.  The building was an oblong cone with a column of dark windows running up along its center.  Its twelve story height left it dwarfed by the majority of buildings on the pier.  Sections of its long facade were tattooed with streaks of black carbon, the scars of the battles and stresses the city-ship had endured over the last decade.
"To me," said Zelenka as they approached a wide set of curved, shallow stairs leading into the building's entrance, "this has always felt like a kind of museum or gallery."
"How do you know it wasn't," Jonas asked.
Zelenka shrugged his shoulders.  "We don't."
Dented, water-stained doors swept inward as the three men reached the top of the stairs.  The chamber revealed by the softly groaning partitions was a deathly silent and empty shell of its former glory.  The walls of the semi-circular space were dark and dingy.  Sections of the rusty floor were damp.  A charred girder lay in the smashed remains of a crystal sculpture at the atrium's center.  There was the undeniable scent of fish and salt lingering subtly in the cold and humid air around them.
"So...plan," Jonas asked as the three men stood just inside the building's entrance.
"The Ascension Lab is on the tenth floor," Zelenka said, his eyes scanning the dank walkway curving upward to his left.  "I will check the two floors above it."
"I'll take the middle floors," Jonas said quickly.
Daniel looked at the former member of SG-1 slyly.  "Right.  Bottom floors for me then."
Jonas patted Daniel on the shoulder before limping toward the curved ramps to his right.  Daniel smirked, shaking his head at the younger man.  He didn't linger in the damaged foyer as the two men disappeared through an arched doorway above him.  There wasn't much else to see, anyway.  Daniel spotted a few intact benches to his left while the ones to his right were either mostly or entirely broken.  It looked like there were other rooms on either side of the dank chamber.  Daniel chose to ignore them for now.
He walked forward through an open archway identical to the one on the balcony above him.  Dim lights flickered in narrow panels along the archway's length.  The smooth metal was heavily water-stained.  It was the same for the walls in the room beyond the decayed doorway.  Daniel paused again before walking past the arch.  He wasn't surprised to see that Zelenka may have been right.  From where he stood, Daniel felt as if he were walking into the remains of an ancient museum.
A row of hexagonal pedestals stretched to the left and right along a tall partition directly in front of him.  In the hazy light illuminating the quiet gallery, Daniel spotted the remnants of Ancient writing along the length of each stout column.  Most of it had worn away.  What was left of the narrow characters was barely a faded shadow of what they had once been.  Daniel pressed his hand lightly against the closest pedestal.  The old metal was cool and damp against his skin, like touching a car on a humid, autumn morning.  There were no subtle vibrations, no buzz of energy that might have been coursing through unseen components.  Whatever had been displayed would remain a mystery to the curious archeologist.
Daniel turned to his left.  A warm band of pink sunlight filled his eyes.  It stretched across the gallery from a jagged gash in the building's outer wall.  Daniel could hear the faint and steady crash of the tide against the long pier.  The stain of water and fire made the damaged section of the room a darker and more ominous color.  The metal floor directly beneath the razor-edged scar was bowed and broken open in several places.  Daniel sighed, peering down into the darkness under the wrecked floor.  He was beginning to doubt he was going to find anything worthwhile.
Behind him, the long facade he thought was a simple partition was revealed to be something more.  Daniel took a deep breath of the chilled air blowing into the gallery.  He put his hands on his hips and furrowed his brow.  In the center of the abandoned museum was a box; a long, rectangular box.  Daniel guessed it was at least eight feet tall and took up the entire center of the room.  He noticed a subtle decline in the floor in front of him.  It looked like a ramp leading to the blank, flat nose of the seamless structure.  There were no signs of panels, plates, or buttons of any kind to indicate controls or a door.  Daniel was confused, but he was also becoming more curious.
He walked along the outside curve of the gallery's floor, glancing at the assortment of intact and damaged pedestals to his left.  At the same time, he was studying the strange box to his right.  Its surface was smooth, though its metal skin had the same dark stains as the most of the museum around it.  Daniel noticed it subtly grew wider near its center before tapering to another, more square-shaped end.  This one almost matched the flat nose on the opposite side perfectly.  But there were details that made this end of the gallery very different.
First, there was no gash in the outside wall.  There were no signs of charring or evidence of weapons fire being unleashed here.  The water stains were still there, but then, they were everywhere on this level of the building.  Second, the flat end of the long box was decorated with an etching of a pair of ships.  One was a long, narrow vessel with a square bow and a large, vertical ring surrounding its center.  Daniel had no idea what the craft was or what era it was supposed to have existed.  Next to it, slightly larger and more prominent, was the shape of the very city-ship he was standing on.  Daniel marveled at the ornateness of the engraving until, that is, he stepped closer to the third most obvious difference to this end of the museum.
In front of the shallow ramp leading to the etched panel was a meter wide console.  It would have been interesting to the archeologist no matter what just because it was there and was covered in Ancient writing.  Most of the words engraved into the surface were flowery and very nondescript.  They spoke of the importance of exploration. There was a summary of the long journey the ancient people had taken to get to Atlantis and its original place in the small galaxy.  But when Daniel touched the seemingly lifeless dais, something small inside of it turned on.  In an instant after his fingertip had grazed the ancient lettering, new words appeared.  These were written in red and were floating a dozen inches above the awakened kiosk.
"From humble beginnings," Daniel said softly, reading the holographic phrase out loud.  He stared at the glowing letters.  The simple statement was strangely familiar to him.  It was equally intriguing and confusing, especially since it wasn't written in Ancient.
As his brain scanned through the vast catalogue of information within itself, Daniel examined the mysterious console further.  It didn't take him long to recognize a device he had encountered numerous times during his journeys through the cosmos.  It was teardrop-shaped and smaller than his palm.  It was slightly cool against the skin of his hand.  Its raised, rounded surface was extremely smooth.  It seemed to roll ever so slightly as he flexed the muscles in his palm and tensed his fingers.  It was an Ancient cursor, a page turner for digital texts and tomes.
New phrases appeared then disappeared under the first.  Daniel read these out loud as well as they flickered into existence.  "...to the conquerers of worlds...to the vastness of infinity...to the builders of worlds...to grand ends.  No, wait," he said to himself.  He pressed his hand harder against the right side of the page turner.  "This one.  Of course."
Daniel beheld the completed sentence hovering just above the kiosk.  From humble beginnings, to the builders of worlds.  Suddenly, small locks clicked free.  Motors that hadn't moved in centuries began to rumble.  Air burped and hissed around the flat ends of the box.  The etched panel and its blank twin were doors that slid slowly out of sight into the floor.  Daniel watched, stunned.  Small lights shone down on a partition just inside the now open chamber.  Another ship Daniel didn't recognize was etched into the newly revealed panel.  The vessel had a spherical bow at the head of a narrow body that was attached to a large, round stern.
Daniel pursed the corners of his lips then tapped the small receiver in his right ear.  "Hey guys, I'm pretty sure I just found something," he said into the tiny microphone extending down from the earpiece.
"What?  Seriously," asked Jonas.
"Is it the missing server bank," Zelenka asked.
"I'm not sure.  It might be," Daniel responded.
He was already walking down the ramp when the voices of the other two men rang through the receiver.  He was staring briefly at the engraved drawing of the unknown ship when he responded to their questions.  He saw the warm glow of more lights appear from either side of the inner panel before him.  Daniel slowly craned his head past the closet edge of the metal wall.  The chamber behind it stretched away to the opposite end of the box it was within.  The floor was a little deeper than the base of the ramp and the rest of the gallery.  A strange cluster of technology at its center was the only thing in the room.
"Umm, yeah," Daniel said over the radio link in his ear.  "So it looks like it could be a server bank."
"Really?  That's great," Jonas said loudly.
"Where are you," Zelenka asked.
Daniel straightened his body and stepped around the etched inner panel.  "Still on the first floor, in the gallery behind the entrance we used.  I'm...in a box."
"A box," asked Zelenka.  "With the server?"
"If that's what this is," Daniel replied, walking to the center of the chamber.  Narrow racks of bright crystals and tight bundles of glowing, fibrous cables reflected off Daniel's glasses.  There were half a dozen extremely flat plates of dark glass mounted around the cluster.  The dim displays suddenly blinked, turning on.  Cool, blue light poured off each flawless pane.  Immediately, the familiar database display filled the Ancient monitors.
"Hello, Dr. Jackson," said a pleasant voice that filled the chamber.
Daniel blinked slightly, startled.  He glanced at the dark ceiling above him, then around to his left and right, before finally looking at the technology in front of him.  "Umm, hello."
"There's no need to be alarmed.  I am Seegan.  You're looking for the Destiny.  I want to help you find it."