THE END OF BEGINNINGS

TEN

       

All at once, Daniel Jackson felt completely lost.

"...be seeing you around," echoed the voice of a younger Jack O'Neill.

Daniel turned his head. Was Jack even there? Daniel's eyes were blinded by the glimmer of the stargate. Wait, Daniel thought urgently. Where am I?

"Father," shouted a voice from somewhere nearby. Daniel spun on his heels, his eyes peering into the shadows that loomed around the gate, teasing the edges of the shimmering puddle's bright light. It had sounded a like a boy. But who was he? And, where was he?

Suddenly, the silence that hugged the fading echoes of the ghostly voices vanished and gave way to a far more tremendous noise. A freight train? No. A ship, its engines roaring. Daniel turned around, again, to face the stargate. The illuminated puddle shattered open like a stained-glass window. Its crystal surface gave way to a smoking sphere that sprung unstoppably toward the spot where Daniel was standing. He flinched with a panic, trying to move, to jump away.

"Daniel..." said Jack from across the table in the conference room of the SGC.

Daniel blinked wildly, confused. He wasn't standing anymore. He was seated in one of the swiveling chairs in a room he was all too familiar with. Daniel's vision steadied and he looked up at his old friend. "Jack..."

"Noo," cried a voice, the youthful, frightened tone piercing the air. It sounded like the same voice from a moment before. It came from behind Daniel. He pivoted his chair around and stood up at once.

The view through the observation windows was all wrong. He should have been able to see the gate room. But, Daniel couldn't make out the tall, concrete walls or even the stargate itself. Instead, there was only dust. It was a thick, choking cloud that enveloped the view beyond the glass. Daniel stepped closer to the nearest window. He heard himself gasp as the fog of dirt began to quickly dissipate. He saw a scene even more familiar than the conference room. It was the setting of a nightmare he'd long tried to push to the very fringes of his memory. Daniel suddenly recognized the young voice he had heard. It was his own, ringing back to him from a horrible point in time: the death of his parents.

Suddenly, he wasn't looking at that moment through a dusty window. Daniel stood, numbly, on the sandy floor of the museum. The exhibit was hauntingly silent. He could barely hear his own racing breaths or the painful, rapid beat of his heart. There was nothing Daniel could do, nothing he could have done. He hated this place this and the vision of it. He hated the crippling weight on his soul. It wasn't the gravity of guilt he felt but that of unforgettable loss.

And then, from someplace behind him, no louder than a whisper-as if it was the very air itself speaking-Daniel heard another voice. It was a woman's. She said only one thing: "Goodbye."

Daniel turned around. He heard himself gasp again, but only barely. In the split-second that followed, he glimpsed a wall of dark water that became, suddenly, blinding. The air vibrated, followed instantly by the floor. Daniel tried to breathe, to move, to look away from the terrible wave of energy racing toward him.

With a shout, Daniel Jackson sat up. He was in bed, his chest heaving as he breathed in and out hurriedly. It took another moment, but he began to recognize the room he was in. It was the visitor's quarters that had been assigned to him on Atlantis. Nothing seemed unusual or out of place. His ears were filled with the regular silence of the cool chamber and the steady, subtle hum that hovered throughout the background of the city. Daniel sat still in the narrow bed, just listening to that near-invisible noise. His pulse was slowing back down and he was starting to breathe normally once more. The dream, the visions, whatever it was that had flooded Daniel's subconscious had been one of the most overwhelming experiences he'd had in a long time.