Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 177

Chapter 177 - Janus’s Return - Part 3

After spending the night as Janus's jailer, Eventus had quickly come to realize that he had made a grave mistake in bringing the scientist back around so many hours before the Asuran's would be ready for the two of them to head down to their world.

Because it meant spending time with Janus, and the scientists was almost everything Eventus had disliked about his people’s general attitude rolled into a single package.

“You just let her die!?” Janus growled, glaring at Eventus from the other side of the circular white table Thor had beamed into the impromptu holding cell for them

“I didn't let anything happen.” Eventus snapped. “If I had delayed going into stasis to hook up the backup generator the Wraith would have detected it and might not have left. If I had confronted Elizabeth about being left behind, she would have delayed putting the city into standby mode in hopes of tricking me into helping her.”

And they both knew it had been far too close a call on the power front as it was.

“So I did the one thing I knew for sure wouldn't imbalance the math and set a secondary command string that was supposed to trigger my restoration when hers began. Only Rodney McKay was competent enough to shut both of our restorations down while he was trying to keep the city's shield from failing.”

“Ah yes,” Janus rolled his eyes. “The neurotic human genius.”

“For all you're criticizing me about not saving her, what about you? Eventus pressed. “You had a time ship, the sheer number of ways you could have used that to rescue Elizabeth boggles the mind.”

Janus grimaced. “It is not that simple. Changing time without changing the flow of events requires an immense amount of calculation that scales exponentially the closer one is to their temporal point of origin.”

“Oh please,” Eventus muttered, all but radiating disbelief at the scientist’s words. “We both know that time is fixed enough by higher dimensional perception that changing the greater flow of events should require purposeful attempts to do so.”

“That's what I thought at first too.” Janus grudgingly acknowledged. “However many of the test changes I made rippled out far beyond what should have been the perception correction point.”

“Then how did the humans do it?” Eventus asked, narrowing his eyes at the scientist in challenge. “Daniel Jackson went back in time, married your sister, had multiple children at least one of which went on to lead a historically relevant life, with the only paradoxical change being fish in a pond that didn't formerly have fish in it.”

“I don't know…” Janus grumbled, looking distinctly like he had swallowed a lemon at the admittance. “The ripples Daniels original group created should have made it impossible for their divergent selves to even be born.”

“Well there you go.” Eventus grinned at having got one over on the man. “There's obviously a fault in your theories somewhere, so just like me you weren't willing to chance the risks of saving Elizabeth.”

He let out a sigh, drumming his fingers on the table as he considered the other problem they would have faced. “Even if we had, there would have been the constant risk of temporal cascade failure with two of them running around that close to each other.”

Janus narrowed his eyes. “You accessed the council's restricted files on time travel.”

“I accessed the council's restricted files on everything I could.” Eventus confirmed dryly. “Though now that we're on that particular subject, where's the high security archive?”

“Shambhala,” Janus began as a contemplative look flashed across his face.. “Or at least, that's where I last saw it. However if Moros truly did descend as part of some plan to challenge them Ori I expect he would have relocated it to somewhere more secure.”

“Shambhala?” Eventus repeated questioningly, only knowing recalling that particular name from his recent dive into human mythology.

“It was one of the outposts we reactivated after returning to Earth.” Janus said. “Most of those who decided to focus on ascension retreated there.”

“There were more than Olympus?” Eventus asked with a frown, pretty sure the humans wouldn’t be too happy to hear about that given how many political problems even just the named location had been causing them. 

“We were able to reactivate seven in total.” Janus confirmed with a nod before his eyes flicked to the pendant barely visible under Eventus’s collar. “I take it Olympus is where you recovered Lucina’s pendant?”

“Sort of,” Eventus admitted, not surprised the scientist had so quickly been able to identify his own work. “Rayla found it in a disguised storage vault which had originally been at one of Olympus’s secondary translocation stations.” 

He held up a hand to forestall Janus’s obvious followup. “Olympus itself was destroyed by Hathor overloading the geothermal tap, and while Lucina managed to escape to the secondary station, she ended up getting caught in the ashfall of the volcano’s eruption where her parents helped her ascend after she accepted the inevitable of her end.”

Alternate timeline Daniel Jackson following in Oma Desala’s footsteps hadn’t exactly been much of a surprise. Though it had been interesting to discover the man had reached a point in his personnel journey where he could actually toe the line of the other ascended’s rules.

Janus let out a breath. “That is a relief to hear.” He seemed to notice Eventus’s somewhat skeptical stare. “I did care about her, but my work was much too important to delay given the way the Goa’uld had begun to spread out into the greater galaxy.”

“If it helps, the humans mostly defeated them.” Eventus offered.

A confused look flashed across Janus’s features. “The humans? How? The few things Daniel Jackson let slip made it sound like some outside force defeated them.”

“Did you ever meet Samantha Carter?” Eventus asked, the question having nagged at him since he’d learned that the alternate timeline Daniel Jackson had been involved with his people.

“Yes,” Janus nodded. “Brilliant woman, married to a rather odd man named Jack who seemed to dislike me for some reason.

“O’Neill has good instincts.” Eventus returned dryly, unsurprised that the other version of the General had been able to sense Janus’s growing immorality. “But anyways, there was this whole thing with a self replicating swarm duplicating Samantha Carter’s mental pattern, and it went on to wipe out–”

The reappearance of Thor’s hologram cut Eventus off, and the Asgard glanced between them for a moment before giving a nod of greeting. “The Asuran’s have confirmed you are cleared to return to the surface with the same arrival stipulations as before.”

“All right,” Eventus confirmed, grimacing slightly at the thought of having to go through the walk with Janus in tow. “Did you manage to get the restraint put together?”

Thor nodded, gesturing to the table where with a flash of light a band of solid silvery metal appeared. “The precise submolecular makeup of the blueprint you provided was somewhat difficult for our synthesizer to assemble, but we managed to produce a working example that should be able to suppress Janus’s psychokinetic abilities.”

“That’s something of a relief at least.” Eventus muttered, turning back to the now glaring scientist with a grin on his face. 

“All right, leg on the table.”

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Author’s Notes: Sorry Janus, there’s no way Eventus is going to let you run around Asuran world without a psionic suppressor on if he can help it.