Disclaimer: Stargate and its characters are the properties
of many companies (Stargate Productions, MGM, Viacom, etc.) none of whom are me
and none of which I am involved with. This is pure fan-fiction.
Daniel
rubbed his sniffly, runny nose against a spot of his
dark green, polyester uniform just beside his SG-1 patch and just below his
shoulder. He paused for a moment as a tickle played in his nostrils, then
ignored it completely and turned back to one of the five chalkboards.
He'd set
them up all over his office, which was small enough already but which now felt
tight and cramped and uncomfortable to anyone who didn't think ancient alien
glyphs made beautiful wallpaper. Daniel quite liked the new ambience, which was
lucky as he hadn't found time to leave the office for more than an hour at a
time during the last thirty hours. What bit of space wasn't occupied by
chalkboards was filled with numerous volumes of translations and histories and
just about everything and anything in print that they could find on P5X-132
that hadn't been nailed down or too large to fit through the gate. His computer
terminals, most of which were hidden behind the boards which required one to duck
and crawl just to see them, glowed faintly with even more glyphs of every sort.
He had spectrographic analysis and pattern-matching programs running using
every spare cycle he had, but the language was so unlike anything they'd
encountered to date that he wasn't very hopeful to find anything of
significance. Brute force, intelligence, and ingenuity seemed to be the only
combination that would allow him to figure this out and find out what the function
of the piece of technology they'd found on the planet was. Well, that and a
whole lot of chalkboards.
Daniel
quickly scribbled something beneath one section, the smooth piece of chalk
clicking and scraping against the board without a single shiver-inspiring
squeak. He sniffled wetly as he took a step backwards and surveyed it with a critical
eye. Disparagingly he shook his head and rubbed away his attempt with the cuff
of his sleeve, not wanting to bother to take the time to locate and use one of
the erasers that had gone missing somewhere among the papers and books on his
desk.
As he
stared at the symbols on the upper right of this particular chalkboard, he felt
his eyes water. He wiggled his nose a little and sniffed again. Then he took
his eyes off the board for only a brief moment to bury his nose in the crook of
his arm. "h'TChhshhhhh!"
He bounced slightly in place at the force, then sniffed strongly and raised his
hand with his piece of chalk, touching it to the board to write again.
"Daniel?"
The chalk
jumped back almost an inch so he wouldn't make a mistake as he turned his head
and glanced over his shoulder. He could make out Sam's blond hair just above
one of the boards. He reached over and slid one of the boards so it overlapped
another. "Hey Sam. Sorry 'bout the mess." He sniffled
again, badly, and rubbed his nose into his shoulder once more.
Then his
whole body tensed up and he leaned forward a bit, pressing his nose into his
arm. "huhhh-Shhiihh! H'Schphhh!"
She narrowed
her eyes at him. "What's going on?"
"Oh!" He
perked up immediately and practically leapt over to yet another chalk board.
"If I do a transformation on this text, it almost
resembles a small bit of what we learned of the language of the Ancients. It's
a crude language in comparison, though, and its structure's all wrong. But I
think if I just figure out this bit here and apply the same phonological laws I
used when speaking with the Mihacrians..." He tapped the
end of the chalk against the blackboard as his voice trailed off. His eyes were
fixed upon the symbols, as though trying to see them in a way that would let
them just jump right out at him. He was trying so hard, in fact, that he
completely lost his train of thought.
"Daniel."
"Hmm? What?" He looked back over his shoulder, then turned his body halfway to better face her. "Sorry, Sam. Got carried away with this
stuff. I'm in Language Geek Heaven here."
She smiled.
"That's really great, Daniel. But I meant with the sneezing."
He flushed
slightly. In truth, it hadn't even been enough to register as an annoyance with
him. Not with all the other things occupying his mind at the moment. He'd
barely noticed it, really. And it wasn't as though he wasn't used to doing more
than his fair share of sneezing normally anyway.
"If you're
sick, you should go home," she said concernedly. "I know you want to get this
done, and you're by far the most qualified person here to be working on it. And
I totally get your commitment to it, I do." She reached over and patted his
shoulder-- the dry one. "But you've got to take care of yourself, too. You're no
good to us in bed for two weeks with a bad cold because you didn't do anything
about it early on."
Daniel,
whose eyes had strayed back to the chalkboards while she talked, snapped back
to Sam in a moment. "I don't have a cold," he insisted. Then he found he had to
sniffle badly, and turned his head to do so repeatedly until his runny nose was
in check again. Sam was looking at him skeptically. "Honestly. I'm not sick.
It's this." He held up the chalk, his eyes nearly going cross-eyed to look at
it right in front of his face. "They must have bought a new brand of chalk
because the dust's really doing a number on me." He sniffed again, then rubbed
his nose against his uniform sleeve again, realizing that the little bit of
soreness he felt probably equated to a bit of redness. Add that to an unkempt
and fatigued appearance given how little sleep he'd allowed himself since their
return and Daniel could completely understand how Sam had jumped right to the
sick conclusion.
Her tone
seemed much less serious and she seemed much more upbeat when she spoke again,
now understanding. "Maybe you should go get a little fresh air," she suggested.
Spotting the cuff of his sleeve he'd been using as an eraser so that it was
caked with yellow chalk dust, she frowned. "And maybe get a fresh change of clothes."
He nodded
albeit half-heartedly. He was so close he could just feel it. All he needed was
to make that one little connection. And if he left now there was no telling
when that might happen. It was going to take far more than a little sneezing to
drag him away from the translation.
"heey-ahhhh..." His face quickly fell, and he raised
his arm bending it over his nose and mouth as he held the breath in, hoping the
sneeze would hold off a few extra seconds so he wouldn't sneeze on a chalkboard
and be horrified at the result. "hehhhh-IHSchhhhhhh!" He snuffled and rubbed his nose into
his arm quickly, then he pushed his glasses back up
his nose and into place.
Daniel
wanted badly to return to the work, but he caught Sam looking concerned and
suspicious again. He cracked a smile for her benefit. "Did you know
Proto-Altaic has no attested form for the word 'sneeze'?"
She smiled
back immediately and shook her head with a pitying sort of laugh. "I won't even
pretend to understand that joke, Daniel."
He shrugged.
"Like I said: language geek. I blow my nose and get
manuscript dust." He sniffled. "And chalk dust."
She
chuckled again. "I'll go by the lab and see if I can't find a spare Kleenex box
for you," she offered, apparently resigned to the fact that he wasn't about to
leave his post any time soon, even though he'd sidestepped that issue.
"Thanks,"
he said brightly, his head moving slightly back. He could see the symbols he'd
been concentrating on out of the corner of his eye, and if he just moved a
little more, he could completely make them out.
She just
smiled and shook her head. "And I'll scare up an equipment request form for
you, too. Whiteboards would at least help with part of the problem."
"Thanks," he
said again, his head slowly turning back to the board, feeling safe to give it
more attention as Sam made her retreat from the room. Then, as she slipped out
between the chalkboards and he was once again completely surrounded, he called
out. "Sam!"
Her
footsteps halted several steps from the door. Then they swiveled around and she
squatted down, bending her neck so she could just look under one of the boards
at him.
"Maybe we
could round up the others for lunch today? If I stay in here too long with this
dust, I'll get too congested to pronounce things properly and throw myself off
track."
It was a
lame excuse, of course, but she seemed glad to hear it. "I'll see what Colonel
O'Neill and Teal'c are up to." And, before he could
ask, she added, "And whether Teal'c might be able to
stop by and see if he recognizes any of your symbols."
Daniel
smiled brightly. "That would be great." When he was confident she was
definitely on her way out, he turned his full attention back on the section. He
hesitated a moment, sniffling into his shoulder, then he began scribbling on
the board again.