trans_9 | Archaeology, Natural Disasters and You [Closed]

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Archaeology, Natural Disasters and You [Closed]

The trip down revealed that Taleen was going to be of several things, none of which were pleasant. Arid, pale with a light dusting of red from the rocks, and yellow-white grass that extended in plains all the way towards far off mountains . There was a giant gash in the land near the orb landing area, which resolved itself into a massive canyon as the party drew closer. Spider webbing out across the top of the canyon were signs that a civilization had once flourished here. Traces of broken pillars and half submerged buildings, as well as what looked like a downed ship that had embedded itself in a massive building. There was no movement visible amongst the ruins now. As the dry wind blew through the stonework, it would became clear that they were walking into a mass graveyard.

Not somewhere you'd want to spend your vacation.

For some people, this was going to be a field day.

According to the scans and what little records they had, there hasn't been a sentient being around for hundreds of years. The majority of native wildlife had moved out of the area, seeking refuge. The land looked dead already. In the sky above, several specks of light twinkled in the sky, growing bigger with each passing hour. In a few days, it will be raining fire.

[Closed to Daniel, Eleventh Doctor, Sofia, Jamie, Hoshi, Howard, Billy, the Master, River Song, Cassie, Tom]

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Hey, Ancient Egyptian might not have an every day use on Earth, but it's useful to know when you have a "God" menacing you. Understanding in the first place that Ra wasn't actually commenting on how you've accumulated sand everywhere, including places you didn't know you had, that he was instead actually threatening to stamp your life out of all known history was a good starting application for a dead language.

"I... have no idea," Daniel said, fascinated, as he stared at the door. Howard might be onto something about the rain. "Maybe rainfall was more common back in the day. We'd need to take some soil samples. I've never seen anything like this door though." Not his idea of a good time either. He liked digging in the dirt, which wasn't quite the same as analyzing the dirt for traces of water. Daniel tilted his head, inspected the writing, and then the line of characters and creatures in procession above. The characters were in low-relief within a sunken outline, lit by their lights and shadows cast by the edges. The beings were tall, just like he thought, and he'd been kind of right about how they looked. Part Avian at least, but also part porcupine. Elegant faces. He studied each character, taking note of what they wore, what each carried, how they interacted with each other.

Seemed like a warrior-priest-scholar society. Usually he'd seen priest and scholar rolled into one, but this society had them divided, and all marching equally, with servants and lower tiers all around. Daniel looked from the door to the drain.

"I think the point of the exercise is to get equal amounts of water into these three drains," maybe to emphasize how the three top tiers of this society were equal, necessary to each other, compliments, despite their differences. The other drains were unmarked. "That is if they represent what I think they do."

Daniel flicked another switch. More water flowed, reluctantly at first, into another of the marked drains. He watched as some water from the first seemed to flow out. The door turned a faint green-pink under the black sheen.

Edited 2011-09-27 23:56 (UTC)

"Man, you take the soil samples. I got no interest in that stuff." He pulls a wind of bandages out of his med kit. By instinct, he doesn't want the water bubbling over to go to waste. Without even thinking too hard about it, he starts sopping up the overflow and wringing it out over the third drain, before he pauses and realizes maybe he shouldn't interfere with the processes the makers intended for it.

"You know, maybe if they taught world history classes with mysterious doors and water puzzlers, I wouldn't have ditched school so much," he says, mostly to himself. Not that it would have made a difference in the long run. The days of 'get good grades so you can go to college and get a job and have kids of your own' are as much a relic as the ruins they're in now, some detached artifact of simpler, safer times past that he'll never be able to recapture. No matter how much he wants to.

Maybe it's the emptiness of these ruins, or just that he's tired, but Howard's having trouble shaking the melancholy juju of the temple.

After Daniel plays with combination of switches a few times, the rivers flow with relative evenness to the drains. Howard keeps sopping up the overflow from the first drain, watching the door for some telltale change in color. Eventually the door shifts again to blue. Darker than ocean blue - lake blue.

There's a creaking noise like metal dragging on stone from the inside of the door. Howard looks from the door, to the drains, to Daniel. "Now what? Do we just...push on it?"

By virtue of being the adult, Daniel's become the person in charge. Howard finds that he's actually not excited to see what's behind the door anymore - maybe it's too many horror movies, maybe it's just the idea that whatever it is might disappoint him by being some old earthenware or something, but he realizes he liked it better when there was the challenge of the water puzzle than he does now that they've accomplished their task.

"I'll assign some of Eneesh's crew," Daniel corrected. He didn't particularly want to do it either, and as team lead, there were other places on the dig that someone with his background could be. Taking a soil sample didn't require nearly that much finesse. He watched, bemused, as Howard sopped up the water. The first time could have been anyone's reaction to water slopping, but as he watched, it was almost like a compulsion. Or a habit, like he was trying to save the water. They had plenty of water as it was. And no one from this civilization was around to need this stuff. What was amazing was how this water remained flowing, not rusting or corroding the pipe system after all this time.

The archaeologist focused on the switches and working several combinations. "They do teach it," Daniel mumbled into the wall. "It's called college, work-study, and sneaking onto a dig as a helper when that doesn't pan out."

It took him some time, but eventually he got the drains equally filled. The door shifted, the layer over the door shimmering and rippling like a darker event horizon of the Stargate, crystallized forever. Daniel looked at Howard, an eyebrow raising. Of course they went in. Daniel didn't do the door just because he got a kick out of the puzzle, although granted the puzzle was interesting in itself.

"Only one way to find out," Daniel shrugged. He planted both hands on the door and pushed. His hands sunk in through the crystal like a gel, his palms pressing against solid stone after a second. He pushed. The door was heavy. Daniel strained, putting his full weight on it. After a moment, the doors began to swing open. Once they got going, the gears took over. Daniel had to pull his hands out as they swung the rest of the way, stopping before they hit the walls.

The chamber was not as large as the main one, but it was just as tall. There were no floating crystals in here, but several were inset in the walls at regular intervals. A massive mural stretched out, and it looked like someone had perhaps used this as store room. Or an alter. Artifacts littered the room, stone tablets that might have been taken from the canyon. A large table with a vaguely humanoid shape slumped against it.

Daniel approached the table slowly. He angled the light on it. Just as he thought. The mummified remains of one of the aliens. Not wrapped or chemically treated if he had to make a guess. It wasn't arranged deliberately. It was dry in here, low humidity, so that was probably it. Daniel leaned in close. There was a blast mark on its chest, and now that he looked around again, several littering the room.

Edited 2011-09-29 02:59 (UTC)

Howard doesn't make any motion to help Daniel unsolicited. He wrings out the bandages, slings them around his neck and over his shoulders so they can dry by air, and watches. "Complementary colors," he says, looking up at the orange crystals and then back at the now-blue door. "Huh."

He follows Daniel into the chamber, walking with his weight on his toes like he's about to bolt, the way he always does when he's uneasy. The first thing he notices is the mural, if only because it's beautifully colored with the crystals and what looks like thick, textured paint. Then he notices that Daniel's leaning over a body.

It's not a human body. There's some mercy in that. It's a bloodless, dessicated, intact body, nothing at all like the corpses in the trench back on Epicurea, sticky and slick with bodily fluids and decay, with whole pieces falling off under his hands when he tried to move through them. Nothing like the dismembered pieces of little kids he had to clean up at the hospital after the insect attack, who really were no more than toddler-sized sacks of blood burst all over the room. Nothing like that.

Just a dead body. He doesn't like dead bodies. He realizes with sudden clarity that he can hear the sound of his own too-fast, shallow breathing echoing in his ears. His hands are shaking and sweating. He feels like someone's got a hand wrapped around the core of his chest and is twisting and squeezing.

"Get a grip, man," he says quietly to himself, hoping Daniel can't hear him or his way-too-loud breathing. He walks up to the mural, but he can't seem to turn his back on the body. No matter what he tries, it's still there in his peripheral vision.

He hovers his hand over the mural. "Someone ransacked this place," he tells Daniel. That should be obvious enough from the blast marks, but Howard's noticing instead smaller details in the mural. Scuffs around the seams, like someone's pulled the lining out, probably some precious metal. Gouges around every third indent for the crystals, leaving empty holes. Pieces of paint chipped off geometrically, instead of by time. Drag marks going both away from and towards the door, something heavier than stone tablets. Howard recognizes it immediately because it's what he does every day during his salvage work. Pick off the good stuff, leave the rest. Whoever was last here may not have been the killers, but instead, the vultures.

"We're right, they eat meat. You don't organize a field like this unless you're trying to bring in animals. They got crystals on the outside ring of the fields and the glittering scares them off up 'til this part..." He runs his hand over the chunk of wall depicting the agriculture. "Where you can ambush from the hills without having them run back out and trample crops. The whole field doubles as crops and a giant funnel trap."

He looks over to Daniel with an excited grin threatening to break out, hoping the resident archaeology maven will agree with him that such a setup is way smart (and thus way cool). He tries his best to keep his field of vision between Daniel and the mural, not on the dead thing.

The mummification of this body was next to perfect. Daniel had seen a number of mummified remains before, but this one took the cake for best preserved. The color was somewhat faded but there were enough traces for Daniel's imagination to paint the rest of the picture. This being must have once had brilliant plumage. The skin was a little stretched over the orbit but unbroken. The mandible was a little unhinged on one side, but still attached to the rest of the skull over all. Daniel tilted the light down to look at the fingers. Three fingers. Daniel gently lifted one, noting the length of the phalanges of the middle finger. It was almost hooked.

He looked over at Howard. Did he say something? It was hard to tell. Howard was pointedly as far from the body as he could get.

"It's not going to bite, Howard," Daniel said, turning to continue studying the remains. He gingerly touched the fabric. The tiniest bit brittle, but overall, just as well preserved as the corpse. The color was even still vibrant. It reminded him of iridescent scales woven into a net. Not very warrior like. Maybe this was one of the scholar class or the priest class. He began to search for any insignias, anything that might connect back to anything they'd seen already, like the system of writing on the door lock.

Glancing over, he found Howard studying the mural. Daniel left the mummy for now and joined him. The mural was an impressive piece of work, if damaged. He looked closely at the mural, then back at the body, especially the teeth, hands, and legs. Digigrade, although it looked like the weight might have started to settle them into a more plantigrade stance given time. They'd likely easily outrun any human.

Daniel grinned. "I think you might be right. Now how do you explain the nooses in the garden?"

Edited 2011-09-29 07:09 (UTC)

Howard gets the ludicrous urge to tell Daniel "you don't know that", but he tamps it down. He flicks his right wrist to try and keep that hand from shaking so much and rolls the tip of the pencil between his teeth. He manages to temper the whine out of his voice, but not the defensiveness. "I don't care. I don't like dead bodies, okay?"

He's much happier focusing on the mural instead. "I guess...recycling? Like, okay, back home I had patches of vegetables I grew, and when I caught rats I'd break down the pieces that you can't eat and use those to keep the ground all fertile and all. Because bones are good for plants, right, and you can't waste food. So like..."

Famine. You don't learn to use every piece of an animal if you always live in plenty. And just like that, Howard feels kinship with that dead body. It's not a pleasant feeling. It makes the hair on the back of his next stand up.

"So like, same thing here, they use the fields to bring meat in. Then they use the carcasses to feed the plants. Like a big cycle. Does that make sense? I mean, I'm not just making something stupid up, right?"

"Fair enough," Daniel had to admit. Most people did have an aversion to the dead. He might not see the problem the same way, he also wasn't going to push Howard into doing something he felt uncomfortable with.

He refocused his attention back on the mural and listened to Howard. Howard continued to surprise him. Daniel was learning more and more about Howard as the dig went on, what he found wasn't' what he expected. Howard wasn't exactly saying his entire life's story, but he didn't have to. What he dropped was clue enough for Daniel to piece together. From what Daniel could see, Howard was practical and extremely concerned with efficiency. And getting to a point where he'd either use rats as fertilizer either meant he didn't like to waste anything because it was a life taken or because things were so bad off where he came from that it was a matter of survival.

It seemed rude to bring it up but Daniel was dying to know. "You know a lot about surviving in hardship," Daniel said gently. Not wanting to put him too much on the spot, he went back to Howard's hypothesis. "I don't think it's stupid. It makes sense. We should look for remains around the fields," or what was left of them, which was bone dry land. "or implements to back it up."

Howard narrows his eyes at Daniel, considering. It's not as if he's ever made a secret of the FAYZ itself (his less than scrupulous actions there being another story), but Daniel's calm, compassionate tone of voice is treading dangerously close to the patronizing 'you must have been so brave' rhetoric he usually hears. He straightens up and pulls the pencil out of his mouth. "You know Lord of the Flies?"

He glances back at the body, locked by time in a freakish death pose. Howard's never seen anyone die so cleanly. And he's never met anyone who reacts to the dead like Daniel does, with interest and not revulsion, glee or apathy. It's strange, he thinks, that one can be so fascinated with people and not with the fact of death. Like they're a textbook filled with scintillating trivia and an ambassador from the past, and not just another short life that's been snuffed.

"I don't think 'implements' is a word in English. I think that's the ancient Egyptian peeking through," he says in kidding deadpan. He glances back out the door, wondering with sudden fear if it'll close and lock them in if the water runs out. The idea of being locked here with the body isn't exactly appealing. "I could go do that now. I don't like being around that thing."

From the look on Howard's face, it didn't take much to see that Daniel was right, that it was personal to Howard, maybe even a touchy subject and Daniel was doing everything but poking it with a stick. "Yes, I read it."

Way, way back in high school. He barely remembered it. Most of it boiled down to one of the kid's glasses evolving into a source of fire and power, then conflict between tribes when left to their own devices. Daniel did recall the children starting to kill each other before an adult figure arrived. Please tell me that's not where he's going, Daniel suddenly thought.

He almost corrected Howard, but just barely caught the trace of humor. Daniel took some notes to cover up the near miss "It wouldn't be a five minute job,"

Howard was obviously bothered by being in a room with the mummy and if Daniel was right, was looking for an out without actually saying why. Finding backup for his theory was nowhere near as pressing as the actual room, and he was sure they both knew it. Maybe he thought he had to protect his dignity. If he really bothered by the corpse, Daniel didn't see the point in trying to cover it up, although he had admitted it at the end. Daniel wasn't going to give him trouble. If Howard was uncomfortable, he was uncomfortable. There wasn't any shame in it.

"Alright. I thought I saw something off in the main chamber. We could check it out. It's closer," Daniel offered. "I wrote down the combination for the door, so we'll be able to get back into this room too. I'll see if I can get the mummy transported to Stacy later."

Edited 2011-09-30 00:48 (UTC)

"Add cannibalism and mutations, and you have the FAYZ," Howard says, confirming Daniel's fears. He puts a hard, uncaring affect on his voice because the alternative is letting fear seep in through the cracks, and despite the fact that Howard feels more fear than he ever knew a single person could carry, he knows it serves no purpose to show it regarding this. "I was thirteen when all the adults vanished. I'm fifteen now."

Fourteen months in Hell before Stacy rescued him. The first few days weren't so bad, actually, when it was just a merry chaos of no curfew and junk food and videogames until four in the morning. It only sank in after the food started rotting what, exactly, their world was like without adults. Without police officers. Without doctors. Without a fire station. Without anybody who even had the slightest clue how to grow food or run an electrical plant or establish a system of government. Without anybody who had any sort of authority when kids started murdering each other in cold blood, or starving to death, or getting eaten alive by the multitude of mutated wild animals.

Sometimes the people Howard tells don't understand the ramifications of what he's explaining, but Daniel's smart and more than that, accustomed to thinking of cultures in large groups, motivated by resources and geography and technology. If anyone's going to understand the gravity of Howard's explanation, it'd be an archaeologist, or so he hopes.

He almost sighs in relief when Daniel offers to distract him with something else he found. He's out the chamber door fairly quickly - he waits outside the doorframe for Daniel, squinting at the walls and trying to figure out what 'something' Daniel meant.

"Why didn't you point it out earlier? I mean, when we were figuring out the door? You'd think that'd be an open invitation to start pointing out all the weird stuff." His head jerks. "Why the hell do you want to keep it? God, it's dead, just let it be at peace with all the other dead stuff."

Daniel bit his lip. Howard almost wore the fact he was two years older like a badge of honor. He also didn't sound proud of it. Daniel couldn't blame him. He could figure out how it went down, drawing on everything he knew of his own studies, what he knew of people in general as a group entity within a society. The complete and utter collapse of a society, one that wasn't gradual over time, like the slow decline of Roman Empire from the height of her glory, but something that happened so fast that no government was equipped to handle. That no institution could. And if all the adult figures vanished.

Lord of the Flies was right.

Maybe one day he'd ask Howard what happened. What he experienced. Daniel could tell it was nowhere near a good time. "Two years on your own. That's where you got the eye for self-sufficiency from." Thing were falling into place. "The adults turned into the FAYZ? What is that?"

Leading the way out, he cast one last look over his shoulder. The alien remained where it was, the lone guardian of this room, possibly for hundreds of years, keeping a silent vigil over the records and left over relics and implements and records. Howard was looking at it like it was going to get up. Daniel joined him at the door frame.

"To study and learn from, Howard," Daniel said quietly. "Archaeology isn't about grave robbing or running off with treasure. It's about learning from the past. When the meteors destroy all this, it will take with it any sign of this civilization, forever. Everything they ever were? Gone. The only way they live on in a way is through us."

The door closed gently behind them as soon as they stepped free of the threshold. Daniel checked to make sure he had the notes, just in case. Satisfied they were there, he made his way towards one of the other walls. He tapped it with a knuckle. The wall didn't look too noticeably different to most people. It stuck out like a sore thumb to Daniel.

"Here. Looks like a false wall, different builders who tried to match the rest. You can tell with how it's joined and the discoloration."

Edited 2011-09-30 05:30 (UTC)

"F-A-Y-Z. I came up with it. 'Fallout Alley Youth Zone', since Perdido Beach used to get called Fallout Alley after the meteor hit the nuclear plant. Long story. There was a big electric wall up around about twenty miles, so that was where we stayed." There's a little bit of pride in his voice there, that his name for the place was so easily adopted. Flesh-eating worms, zombies in the basement, you miss your mom and you haven't had anything to eat but old ketchup packets and grasshoppers all day? Buck up, it's just a FAYZ.

Howard visibly relaxes once the door's closed. His hands go from trembling to a slight twitch and the tension pulls out of his shoulders. Even knowing it's still there on the other side, waiting in silence for Daniel to come back for it, is better than actually having to look at it. He gives Daniel a look that can clearly be read as gratitude and a little bit of sheepishness.

He does listen to what Daniel says, nodding slightly, although the idea of taking the body back still bothers him. He gets the ridiculous thought that the body should be left here not just because it's creepy, but because why should it be dragged away from everything it ever knew, all its culture and life, to stay in a jar somewhere in Stacy's underbelly? How completely...lonely.

But of course, that's the good thing about the dead. They don't much care if you take them places.

"Alright. Just make sure it don't stink up the trunk, I guess."

He follows Daniel to the section of wall, although honestly his eyes aren't trained enough to see much of a difference. He notices the discoloration when Daniel points it out, but not the difference in joinings. Moving past Daniel, he presses his ear to it, then taps the pencil, hard, against the surface.

"It doesn't sound hollow," he says, dubious. "How much younger you think it is?"

So they mutated or something? Howard's answer filled in some gaps but not quite, like, "So what happened to the adults?"

Getting the door between him and body seemed to have done Howard some good, because he got enough second wind back to get sarcastic about the body. Daniel frowned at him, disapproval written all over his face at how Howard was describing treating the mummy. It wasn't a bag of groceries you dumped into your car. It used to be a living person.

The archaeologist waited Howard out as he inspected the false wall. The stone wall wasn't that much different from the others, in that the stone blocks were just as solid as the other. It wasn't like a false plaster wall. Daniel's eyes roamed. He didn't see any hints of anything to open it, no writing, no triggers or switches. Nothing. It made sense. Someone had gone to great lengths to hide this. It wasn't meant to be opened. Daniel got the feeling this was going to require some good, old fashioned carefully applied brute force. The kind that required some delicacy and supervision, not the "slap-C4, depress-trigger" brute force Jack liked.

"It's probably a sealed off chamber. They usually are," Daniel switched on one of the comm channels. A few of Eneesh's crew could get this open, easily. He'd have to supervise, but he was confident that with instruction, they could open it without damaging too much. "I'd say it dates around the battle site." Daniel ducked his head towards his wrist and the speaker. "Captain Eneesh? Do you have any spare crew or equipment to remove sections of a wall? No explosives."

Edited 2011-09-30 07:03 (UTC)

"They just disappeared one day. Poof. My science teacher vanished into thin air halfway into a sentence about the scientific method. We never found out why." Which means that, for the rest of his life, Howard's never going to be sure if it'll happen again. Some small nagging fear in the back of his head is always expecting to wake up one morning or turn a corner too quickly and find himself alone. "When you turn fifteen you get tempted to leave the FAYZ by this hallucination, and you can choose to stay or disappear with it. I always kind of figured the same thing happened to the adults, and they just didn't think we were worth sticking around for."

There's a deep and familiar bitterness when he says that, but anger is comforting to him. Anger is easier to cope with than sorrow, and with no conviction that there's a god to rage at, Howard finds absentee parents to be the next best substitute.

He gives Daniel a look that conveys something to the effect of 'bite me, Daniel, you're the one who wants to drag it around space poking at it'. Of course it used to be a living person. It'd bother Howard a lot less if it were a bag of groceries.

He takes a seat and wraps his arms around his legs as he watches Daniel work on the wall. If Daniel insists there's a secret chamber, he guesses there must be, although between the normal-looking block of stone and Daniel Howard expects he can learn more from observing the archaeologist. He's starting to paint a picture in his mind, of Daniel not only going on digs but directing them. Something about the way Daniel knows what he wants from Eneesh before Eneesh even answers the communicator speaks of someone who is not only comfortable in these scenarios but comfortable calling the shots.

In a perfect portrayal of teenage-boyness, Howard whines, "awww, no explosives?" in his best disappointed voice while they wait for Eneesh's answer.

Edited 2011-09-30 14:22 (UTC)

Captain Eneesh's voice was clear as day. "I can send you some of my crew to deal with it. They'll be with you shortly. You will have Ninety through Ninety Seven."

Curt as always, the bug signed off, leaving Daniel and Howard to wait for their new helpers.

Most of the authority figures gone, and those that reached a certain age could choose to abandon ship. Talk about the ultimate betrayal for a kid.

Unwilling to admit Howard was right, that the adults figured the children weren't worth it, as the only possibility, Daniel thought on the ring transports. Probably not what Howard had in mind, but the basic technology as he understood it was there. Maybe something more instantaneous and with less warning, "beaming", as Sam and Jack liked to call it, could be a possibility. "Maybe they were teleported out," Daniel offered. "They may not have had a choice. Or they could've been coerced."

Eneesh came on just then, crisp and curt. She didn't argue or ask what he found, she trusted he had found something worth the extra hands. Er, claws. Now all they had to do was wait. Daniel thought an archaeologist could get spoiled on this treatment. He was going to miss her efficiency. She didn't leave much room to tell her thanks, but hopefully she knew it. Or maybe they didn't care or have time for gratitude. Sometimes it was hard to tell with her and her crew.

He turned the communicator speaker off and regarded the wall. Unfortunately they were going to have to damage the blocks, but there wasn't any way to avoid it. Maybe they could keep the hole reasonably small. Meanwhile, it seemed like boredom caught up to Howard, or at least he was hoping for something a little more spectacular. Removing a piece of chalk, he began to mark the edge of the false wall, and then the proposed area to take down.

"No, sorry," Daniel snorted after a second, the tiniest smile directed towards the wall. "You just reminded me of a Colonel I know, by the way."

Edited 2011-10-01 01:22 (UTC)

Howard shakes his head and looks away when Daniel offers that explanation. He's heard it before, from other people whenever Howard posits his theory of abandonment, but the problem is that Howard wants to believe they were left behind. He'd rather assume the absolute worst of his parents than grapple with the idea that when they vanished, he lost something worth losing. He hunches up his shoulders and brings his knees tighter to his chest, a nonverbal cue that he's done talking about it and done listening to Daniel try and lighten it.

Knowing Eneesh and her creepy alien crew is about to arrive, Howard finds himself with a hand in his pocket, running his thumb over the folded-up pocketknife he keeps there. It's silly, he knows - Eneesh is there to help and he has no reason to doubt her intentions, and a knife isn't much protection against something bigger than you, in a group that outnumbers you - but it brings him a little bit of comfort.

He looks back at the closed door behind them and thinks about the mummy in there. He wonders if they were scared when they died. The way the body had fallen doesn't look like a heroic sacrifice or a peaceful death. He wonders if they sat in wait, listening to people outside figuring out the puzzle door, deciding between trying to escape, fight back, or surrender.

He runs his free hand over the goosebumps on his forearm and sucks on the tip of the pencil, waiting quietly.

It took them nearly two hours to get the wall down. For some reason Eneesh's assigned crew kept insisting that they could make the job go by faster if they could use their Agkth-ttt. Agkth-ttt, it turned out, was a form of what was essentially vomit-spit. Ninety-Two went to some very graphic detail about how it was produced, something Daniel was now thinking he'd been better off not knowing. It was also as strong as acid. Daniel thanked them but turned them down firmly. The crew chittered around him, several checking to make sure he did in fact have the hat that said he really was the leader on his head, but eventually listened to his directions and began removing the wall block by block.

The last stone came down. Enough for even one of them to get inside. The air that drifted out felt old, stale, but considering how the outside was, it was only a fraction worse.

Daniel ducked his head in a fraction and peered around the corner. Dust, disturbed by the removal, drifted down, landing in his hair and nose. Daniel's nose twitched. He paused, waiting for the sneeze to pass, and thankfully, it did. The archaeologist remained where he was. As much as he wanted to rush in, he'd seen plenty of injuries happen because something gave way or someone didn't look first. He cautiously put his left arm through instead, shining the flashlight around and angling himself to look down the tunnel, upwards, downwards, all sides.

Looked like a short tunnel that angled downwards and, his light caught a glint of yellow-orange, a mid-sized room with a mildly reflective coating. No pits, nothing concealed he could see, no weak walls. He didn't smell anything funny, no faint traces. Not even the smell of decay. Daniel consulted the scanners. It didn't look like they had to worry about unleashing any flammable gases. Just a roughly carved out tunnel leading down into a room.

Daniel lit a flare and tossed it in. Nothing happened.

"Looks safe," Daniel called back. Ducking his head. He scooted in, butt first. "I'll go first."

His boots hit solid ground. There was something so off about the rough construction of the place. The floor was rock, covered with a lot of sand. It felt more like Abydos, how the sand got everywhere, even inside the depths of the structures. Flashlight in hand, Daniel carefully made his way downwards until the tunnel opened into the chamber.

The room was golden. Extremely golden, and had it been fully lit, it might've been blinding. Daniel barely noticed the hieroglyphs on the wall. He'd jerked to a stop instead, eyes on the large mass in the center of the room.

That couldn't be..

It was. It was a Goa'uld sarcophagus.

Edited 2011-10-01 04:56 (UTC)

Howard's uncharacteristically quiet while Eneesh's crew works, if only because they give him a terrible case of the heebie-jeebies. They don't look enough like the giant child-eating bugs back in the FAYZ to send him running for the hills, but they do make him uneasy, and he can tell Daniel's doing a fine enough job detailing their job on his own. The crew seems polite enough to him, and he thinks this may be the only scenario where being 5'3 is considered a boon. Mostly Howard scribbles notes and doodles in his notepad, including a fairly accurate rendition of the main chamber (although the sense of perspective is so awkward it'd make Escher queasy).

"I got no problem with that," Howard says, letting Daniel go on ahead. After listening a few moments in case Daniel gives him a sudden order to stay out, or go get help or a rope, he slides in too.

His jaw drops a little as he sees all the gold in the room. It's not as if gold is all that useful where he's from, but still, whomever made this room was completely loaded. The second thing he notices is that the writing looks like an entirely different style than the rest of the temple.

The third thing he notices is that Daniel is suddenly no pleasure, all tension, staring at the large contraption in the center of the room. And that scares him. He keeps Daniel's between him and the whatever-it-is, craning his neck curiously.

"You seen one of these before," he says, stating the obvious. "What is that?"

Daniel heard Howard come in, but this time, he ignored him. He went up to the sarcophagus instead, lightly touching one of the decorations with his hand. It was real. He could see some differences at a glance, but overall, it was just about right. The excessive amount of gold and the hieroglyphs were something of a dead giveaway.

"Goa'uld sarcophagus."

He was pretty sure of it. He shouldn't be able to read the writing, but at a glance, Daniel could skim most of it. There was only one way to find out. Daniel made as if to get his Beretta out. Then he remembered that he'd left weapons behind. "Stay where you are."

If something was in here, Daniel wanted Howard to have a fighting chance. Daniel zeroed in on one section and pressed something. A rumble followed, and then the sarcophagus began to split, the outer shielding coming down with a grating noise that reverberated through the small room. Daniel could see it again, standing next to the one on Ra's ship, folding up like a mechanical flower. His chest gave a phantom twinge.

The inner section started to open. Daniel waited, fists clenched. He leaned over just a little. He couldn't see, but it looked like there wasn't anyth- The lid abruptly stalled, the device along with it. It was still on, he could feel and hear the humming, but something was wrong with it. Was it damaged?

"Gesundheit," Howard mouths. Neither of those words mean the slightest thing to him, but the certainty and seriousness in Daniel's voice speaks volumes. Howard doesn't move, except to slip one hand into his jacket pocket and wrap it around the handle of his knife. Everything about the way Daniel moves screams that danger's just around the corner.

As the sarcophagus opens, Howard wonders what the hell he just got himself into and how he can get back out of it. He cringes as the device starts to open, trying to convince himself that Daniel's not the suicidal type and thus wouldn't open what looks like a high-tech alien coffin if it's going to kill them both.

Although it would be awesome if Daniel could bother explaining any of this to the freaked-out teenager who's already seen enough crazy nightmare fuel in his life. Howard's not a believer that the unknown is scarier than anything the world can throw at you, but it's certainly not a comfortable thing to be facing.

He looks between the device and Daniel, noting the flick of confusion. Whatever it is, it's not doing what Daniel expected of it. "What's wrong with it?"

Daniel stepped back up to the sarcophagus. This wasn't right. It might not be the fastest device, but when he saw one work, it was smooth. Like a cover stone or a tomb shutting without humans trying to push it. He prodded the control. It didn't prompt the lid further. The doors shifted slightly then fell back to where they were a second ago.

"I don't think it's jammed," Daniel muttered under his breath. Jamming implied that it was blocked by a means that could be removed. They didn't really build these things to break when a pencil or quarter fell in. No matter what he thought of the Goa'uld, he'd hoped at least that a more technologically advanced race got past that point.

Malfunctioning maybe. Damaged felt better. He peered inside what was open. So far, he didn't see any arms or legs. No body. Daniel went to unload his pack and caught sight of Howard's legs. Oh yeah, he was still here. He began to rummage through it, looking for something he could use to feel around the sarcophagus without putting his arm in. Maybe it was broken, but why risk taking his hand off. Besides, he'd met his quota for that when he'd worked at the door switches. "It's supposed to open fully. I don't suppose you have a stick or anything I can use."

Howard shakes his head. He presumes Daniel means something longer than the three-inch blade, and anyway, he isn't willing to part with that. He thinks he saw some things that might work back up in the crack he came into the main chamber through, though, and without a word he darts back up the tunnel and out of Daniel's sight.

He's right. There are some twisted spars of what feel like metal a little ways into the crack, and in the dark it surprises Howard a bit that he didn't nearly impale himself on one of them fumbling and twisting his way around. They're thin, almost brittle, and when he puts his shoulder into twisting one it snaps off. He checks the length - longer than his arm - and breaks off another for himself.

When he gets back to the main chamber he seriously considers not going back to give Daniel the spar. After all, the first chamber had a mummy in it, and this one has something that might be supremely dangerous but busted in it. Not to mention that Daniel still hasn't told him what it really is or why he should care.

But some better part of his nature tells him to go back down there, and so he does. He walks up next to Daniel, still keeping as much distance as he can from the sarcophagus, and puts the spar in his hand.

As soon as Howard's footsteps retreated behind him, Daniel roamed the perimeter of the sarcophagus, quickly inspecting the writing, looking for any markings or any indication this was going to blow up in their face. Nothing. No eye of Ra either or any variation of it. He returned to where he'd just been standing and tried to look inside. The flashlight was helping but not really. The gap was wide enough to put his shoulder in. A hand easily. About as open as a bear trap. He'd never seen any of these close on someone, but it was just better for everyone not to tempt fate. They needed more flares. Lanterns. He felt Howard disturb the silence and air when he returned, then something metal was pressed into his hand.

Huh. What Howard came up with looked a lot like a metal spar. Some things did fall in line with his own universe. Similar but not quite the same.He wasn't going to complain, it would do the job. Daniel gingerly slid the spar into the gap and probed around the interior. He half expected it to bump into a body or something else any moment.

"Empty." Daniel announced. He carefully drew the spar out, taking care not to scratch it against the device, and dropped it on the sand.

Howard breathes a sigh of relief and relaxes about half a centimeter. "Oh, good. I thought it'd be full of space scarabs and a mummified Brendan Frasier or something."

Howard picks up the spar when Daniel drops it and leans it against a wall of the chamber. It also gives him an excuse to get a little further away from the thing, which Daniel has imbued with a pretty powerful sense of foreboding, even empty. He turns on his flashlight too, and curls it in the crook of his neck and shoulder so he can keep his hands free as he examines the hieroglyphics on the wall. They look Egyptian, of all things, but Howard's pretty certain his world history class never covered King Tut colonizing different galaxies.

"So, uh. You going to explain what a Gold Sarcophagus is or do I have to google it?"

Archaeology, Natural Disasters and You [Closed]

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

Re: Daniel Jackson || Sub Temple B

skip forward to wall coming down?

Yep!

Re: Yep!

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