Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Brigadier-General Jack O’Neill was bored. Really, truly, ridiculously bored. And that was a very bad thing, for reasons aside from the obvious. Anytime he got bored, unspeakably bad things happened shortly afterwards. Of course, the only solution for bored was for some problem to turn up, which he liked even less. Because any problem inevitably came along with a mountain of paperwork, and he hated paperwork. So…maybe a small problem would have only a small amount of paperwork associated with it? That was it, he’d hope for a small problem. That would be so much better than bored.

Sadly, at that moment, bored was only emphasized and punctuated by the fact that Major Paul “Pentagon-Liason-Man” Davis was sitting in his office droning on about security procedures regarding off-world life-forms. Either that or the new rule at O’Malley’s that banned anyone from the SGC from going there. Probably the first one.

“…and you do realize that the alien plant last year could have become an environmental hazard to make kudzu look positively benign? General, ‘glowing things are bad’ is not a good enough revision of the off-world safety protocols.”

Yeah, the first one. “I know.”

Davis stopped and blinked at him. “You know?”

“Yeah, that’s why I only gave you that to get you and the Joint Chiefs to leave me alone for a week or so. The first amount of time suggested to me wasn’t nearly enough to draw up suggested revisions,” Jack told him. “I’d only managed to draw up safety procedures regarding technology. Biological and human threats to security…? Whole different ball of wax.”

Davis blinked a few more times. “Oh.”

“Walter helped. And Siler. And Sam,” Jack told him. “Anyway, the new proposed safety measures are here, in this folder. Care to look?” Jack picked up said blue folder from his desk and waved it temptingly towards Major Davis. He nearly ruined the whole effect by laughing at Davis’ obvious attempts to stifle his impulse to snatch the folder from his hands. Jack could practically see Davis’ brain silently chanting that telling Jack he was behaving like an idiot was not a good way to curry favor with superior officers.

“I would very much like that, sir,” Davis finally managed.

Taking pity on the poor major, Jack laid the folder down on the other side of the desk and assumed a non-threatening and relaxed posture in his chair. Major Davis was very regulation because of his job. It wasn’t really fair to bait him.

Davis looked at the proposed new regulations and his eyebrows went up. Jack enjoyed watching this, but maintained a polite silence. Finally Davis said, “These are good, sir. The technological containment alone would make everyone at the Pentagon feel better.”

“Feel better?” Jack asked curiously.

“Um…yes, sir,” Davis said, squirming a little.

Jack opened his mouth to say something reassuring but just at that moment the SGC’s all-to-familiar klaxon burst into its irritating little song and Walter Harriman's voice came on over the PA.

“Unscheduled off-world activation,” Jack and Davis muttered in sync with Harriman. Both of them stood up and went through the Briefing Room and down the stairs into the Control Room.

“Receiving IDC, sir,” Harriman informed them. “It’s SG-1.”

“Open the iris,” Jack said. His former teammates were back about twenty minutes earlier than they had been scheduled to return and so he wasn’t particularly worried.

The iris had opened and the Stargate rippled, but Jack missed seeing his team completely for almost a full ten seconds. When he did spot them, he thought for a moment he’d gone insane.

“Do you see them down there?” Jack asked.

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Harriman nodded. The SFs in the Gate Room were standing down and staring in amazement as SG-1 picked their way down a ramp that had suddenly become very difficult for them to manage.

They had all been shrunk to about six inches tall.

“Sir!” a voice, presumably Sam’s, announced over the radio. “We’re going to be exhausted getting to the Infirmary without help.”

Jack stared at the radio receiver with a huge grin on his face. Sam sounded like a chipmunk on helium. He went for the radio at first, but then flipped over to the PA for the Gate Room, unsure if the volume on SG-1’s radios would be overpowering given their present size. It wasn’t likely, but he didn’t want to risk it. “Welcome back, SG-1. Sergeant Lyman, have your men assist SG-1 to the infirmary.”

The head of the Sfs nodded at the Control Room as he and his men assisted their shrunken comrades.

Chapter Text

Dr. Daniel Jackson was not having a good day.

The morning had been all right. He’d had great coffee. From there it had all been downhill. His knee was still sore from where he’d run it into a tree branch on their last mission. Stupid Skull Warriors. Stupid Baal. And yes, he knew perfectly well that the technical name for them was “Kul” Warriors, but as long as Jack never heard him say “Skull Warriors” he’d be fine.

Then they had left for P4Z-028. It was the standard planet. Lots of trees, a deserted temple with goa’uld markings, and not nearly enough time to do a proper archaeological survey.

Since the temple had been the only shelter on the planet and the sky was threatening rain, they’d all had their lunch next to the altar in the middle of the crumbling edifice.

Daniel was starting to feel that that had been a mistake. It hadn’t been until about fifteen minutes after the three of them had touched the altar that they’d shrunk. Fortunately, anything that they had been holding onto and/or wearing at the time had shrunk with them so they’d been able to keep all their weapons and equipment. And they hadn’t been naked, which was nice.

Getting back through the gate had been an adventure of it’s own. Just getting to the gate had been three hours of walking, walking, and more walking. Thankfully, it hadn’t been too far from the temple.

Then, they’d had to figure out how to dial the gate. In the end, Teal’c had had Daniel stand on his shoulders and then Sam climbed up on top of Daniel. It hadn’t been truly painful until she had stood on the side of his head to catch the edge of the bottom of the DHD, which was, conveniently, near-ish to the ground.

As soon as she’d gotten up, Daniel and Teal’c ran over to the gate with the GDO while Sam started dialing. At first a few random chevrons lit up, but Daniel knew they didn’t go to the address for anything. He had looked back to see Sam picking her way to the center of the Dial Home Device. When she got there, she jumped up and down on the center to clear the chevrons and then shouldered her P-90.

As Daniel had watched in disbelief, Sam set the P-90 to single-shot and had fired on each glyph in Earth’s address. It was a simple matter for he and Teal’c to avoid the vortex “splashing” out from the gate, being as small as they were, and Teal’c had resolutely stuck his staff weapon into the event horizon to hold the gate open as they waited for Sam to jump down and run over to them.

Which brought him to where he was. Sitting indian-style on Kyle Wilson’s hand, headed towards the Infirmary. He glanced behind him to see Sam and then quickly looked back forward. Sam was doing fine and his motion sickness was not helping matters. He was hesitant to talk, though, because that would give away his own very chipmunk-sounding voice. When he, Sam, and Teal’c had been talking on P4Z-028, they’d sounded like the Rescue Rangers. There was no way he’d be the first one to talk here.

As the entered the Infirmary, he got a look at Teal’c and had to smile. The jaffa was sitting on Airman Simon’s hand with his face forward and his head held high. To anyone who didn’t know him, he looked perfectly at ease, despite his reduced circumstances. But Daniel could see that slight tenseness in his grip on his staff and the extra stiffness in his posture. Teal’c was distinctly uncomfortable.

They came to stop on a desk and SG-1 clambered off their various transporters and nodded up to the folks who’d carried them. Daniel, Sam, and Teal’c turned around and flinched as one. They had come face to face with a syringe as long as they were tall.

“Ouch!” Daniel whispered involuntarily, flinching again at his voice.

“I hope they don’t need that for us,” Sam said.

Teal’c raised his eyebrow, gripped his staff a little harder and said nothing. Daniel started counting backwards from five to when the skin on Teal’c’s knuckles would break from the stretching.

“Wow, that would be frightening for someone your size, wouldn’t it?” Dr. Brightman noted, whisking the syringe away. “Sorry. It is an Infirmary, but we’re keeping the needles away from you this time.” She brought out a magnifying glass and a stethoscope. “I don’t think there’s really an operations protocol for examining shrunken members of the facility.”

“Not yet,” announced the last voice that Daniel wanted to hear.

He turned around to find Jack striding into the Infirmary with Paul Davis right behind him.

*~*~*

Major Davis watched as the diminished members of SG-1 shuffled around on the desk in the Infirmary. They’d all been there for a little over a quarter of an hour and the only thing the doctors had determined was that SG-1 was not suffering an illness (though hearing them cough in their tiny, high-pitched new voices was incredibly amusing). It seemed like Brightman had come to a few other conclusions on her own, but she hadn’t shared them yet. When dealing with alien biohazards, there weren’t really any guarantees.

Without any sort of preamble, Sergeant Harriman’s voice came on over the PA, climbing in pitch as it did so. “Initiating Wildfire lockdown.”

Davis frowned. O’Neill strode to the intercom, snatched it up and punched up the Control Room. After a brief moment he sing-songed, “Hellooo-oooh,” into the phone.

O’Neill turned back around. “This is a problem. I think we have to assume that this shrinking thing is sprea—oh, crap.”

The perspective in the room was changing. The ceiling was getting further away and the floor was coming closer. Davis was thanking his lucky stars that his clothes were shrinking with him, otherwise this could be embarrassing. “I would say that is an appropriate assessment, sir,” he commented, dryly.

O’Neill was nodding beside him as they arrived at their new heights. Apparently, the shrinking…whatever it was, was contagious somehow. One foot seemed to be worth about one inch so their respective heights were unchanged. But the table they’d just been looking down on, was now most decidedly up.

“Well,” O’Neill announced. “This sucks.” Then he frowned and crossed his eyes, like he was trying to fix a glare on his mouth. After all, now he sounded like a chipmunk on helium, too.

“Yes it does, sir,” Davis agreed, too irritated to laugh at the general's antics. Why did these things happen to him? He did a good job here. He managed to cajole O’Neill into doing the minimum required amount of paperwork (no mean feat) and kept the Pentagon from swooping in and locking up this whole mountain full of nutballs every other week. Why, why, why? Granted, he’d never been shrunk before, but he’d been on that ha’tak that had crashed into the ocean and then flooded. And then there was the ever-memorable occasion where he’d been taken over by aliens and ended up helping O’Neill partially undress one that looked like Janet Frasier. And the eraser episode. Oh, yes. He still owed Siler for that one. Of course, the sergeant had been discreet about it. Enlisted guys didn’t openly prank the officers, but still the lack of proof didn’t change the fact that everyone knew it was Siler who’d done it.

Brightman came strolling around the other side of the table. She’d been shrunk as well. “That’s that, I suppose. This is an interesting pickle.” She winced at her voice.

“Not quite how I would put it,” O’Neill sighed, “but accurate.”

Some very squeaky yelling came from above their heads and they all looked up to see Carter, Dr. Jackson, and Teal’c poking their heads over the edge of the table to look down at them.

“Carter?” O’Neill yelled back up. “Can you get down?”

Carter’s head disappeared and then came back over the edge. “Yes, sir. It’ll take us a moment…”

The three of them disappeared.

“Right now, I think we should get to the Control Room,” O’Neill told them. “That’s where all the reports will come in, that’s the room that’s got the easiest PA for us to use at this size, so we’ll get there first. We’re going to need to call Washington to let them know our situation, as well.”

Davis sighed. “I feel obligated to point out that, at this size, sir, the Control Room is the equivalent of several kilometers away.”

“At this size, Davis, the door is a bit of a hike,” O’Neill returned, his usual snarkiness sounding quite strange several octaves above his usual pitch. “I guess we’re going to have to start running places if we want to get anywhere.”

Davis resisted the urge to groan with only a very great act of will. He did run some every morning, but he hadn’t done a whole lot of very serious running since his training days. He doubted a lot of these folks had.

Dr. Brightman frowned. “Sir, it’s probable that everyone on the base is already infected, but we should make sure that no one has left. If this…whatever it is travels outside of the SGC, we could have a world-wide epidemic in a very short time. Apparently even physical contact is unnecessary for it to spread.”

O’Neill nodded. “Wildfire automatically locks down air ventilation with the outside world and starts up a set of scrubbers, so, with folks shrinking like this, we’ll have enough oxygen to go a long time.”

“Food, sir?” Brightman pressed.

The three of them looked at each other unhappily. There was no way that people six inches tall could open a refrigerator. Even eating an MRE would be very difficult (assuming they could get to one) and Davis knew for a fact that most of the non-perishable foodstuffs were stored in cabinets that were at head-level when he was his usual height.

“Water’s gonna be a problem, too,” O’Neill sighed.

“Well, sir, actually,” Brightman said, “there’s not a shortage of leaky plumbing on level 25. It won’t taste good, but it won’t kill us.”

“Getting there will be a challenge,” O’Neill mused, “but that's good to know.”

Davis was suddenly struck by an idea. He pulled out his cell phone and opened it up. It was on, but he had no bars. Then again, he was 21 floors underground.

Brightman looked at the phone. “That’s an interesting facet of this shrinking thing. That what we have on us shrinks as well. Could be useful.”

“Yeah. Maybe Siler is carrying something cool that will help us out of all this,” O’Neill grumbled sarcastically. Davis was sympathetic. He couldn't imagine any tools that would be particularly useful at their shrunken sizes.

“Watch your heads!” someone squeaked from above them.

The three of them looked up to see a roll of gauze about to fall down off the edge of the table. They scattered.

The roll came crashing down to the floor, and rolled off, trailing gauze behind it as it went. There was now a long trail of it leading up to the edge of the table and out of sight. SG-1 began descending down the gauze, using their field knives to cut out places for their hands and feet.

“Inventive,” O’Neill muttered.

SG-1 reached the floor and walked over to where Davis, O’Neill, and Brightman stood. A few of the others in the infirmary were just making their ways over from the far end of the room.

General O’Neill stared at Daniel. “Is that a shoe-print on your face?”

Daniel glared at O'Neill and Sam turned bright red. “Yes, Jack. It is a shoe print. My head really hurts and it’s only gonna get worse.”

O'Neill grinned but didn’t push his luck.

“General, we were only able to do the barest of preliminary examinations,” Brightman told him, after consulting with her nurses, “but I was leaning towards the feeling that whatever’s causing us all to shrink is not a biological agent, or at least not strictly biological. I think there’s a machine element here.”

“You’re telling me a machine shrunk us?” O’Neill asked with a bit of disbelief.

“We were on an alien planet, Jack,” Daniel returned in the exact same tone. The general gave him a dirty look.

Davis sighed. These people were crazy.

Chapter Text

Simply looking down the stairs was disheartening. And Teal’c had found himself winded merely from jogging from the Infirmary. Each stair was near to the height of O'Neill, which meant a laborious climb down each one. The Infirmary was on level twenty-one. The control room was on level twenty-eight, and O'Neill's office was on level twenty-seven.

Knowing all this, when it took fifteen minutes to get down to level twenty-two, Teal'c found himself deliberately forcing away thoughts of how long it would take to reach the control room. Many of his fellow members of the SGC were exiting the commissary towards the stairs, all of them shrunken. And though he would say nothing, Teal'c was overjoyed to see them. Talking to others would require O'Neill to refrain from humming the theme song from “Fraggle Rock” so incessantly.

Colonel Coburn and Colonel Reynolds were leading the way, discussing something.

“Sir!” Coburn greeted them as soon as he became aware of their presence. His oddly squeaky voice jarred with the baritone Teal'c had come to expect from the leader of SG-21. “We were just headed down to the Control Room.”

“We also have determined the control room to be the best immediate objective,” Teal’c replied.

“We’ve accounted for all of the members of SGs 3 and 21 along with all of the kitchen staff, Dr. Lee, and most of the archaeology department, sir,” Reynolds reported. “There were also a dozen airmen in the mess, sir.”

“The current count of weapons in our size is four sidearms, sir,” Coburn added. “There are six radios we can use, however.”

“Ugh,” O’Neill sighed. “This is going to be a long day.”

“Sir, we should check that no one is trapped in the elevators,” Brightman said.

“I was just thinking that,” O’Neill nodded. He paused for a moment. Teal'c was now familiar with O'Neill's expressions. The one he currently wore meant he was about to say something unusual and possibly ridiculous.

“We could send those twelve airmen back into the messes and tell them to get all the toothpicks that they can and bring them down to the control room.”

Teal'c smiled. O'Neill continued to behave as he always had, despite his elevation in rank.

“Toothpicks, sir?” Coburn asked, his voice curious.

“Yeah, toothpicks,” O’Neill shrugged. “Maybe we can use them to…dunno…build ladders or something.”

Coburn nodded. Colonel Carter suddenly turned to the general.

“Sir, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier. Sir, if this is a device that’s shrinking us, we ought to be able to disrupt it with an EM pulse,” Colonel Carter told him.

O’Neill frowned. “That’s never worked before. Remember Urgo?”

Teal’c did remember, and with no fondness. By their expressions, Daniel Jackson and Colonel Carter held Urgo in equal distaste. However, Colonel Carter pressed on. “It may not work in this case, either, but we should at least give it a shot.”

“There’s an EMP generator in my lab, Colonel,” Hailey spoke up quietly. She had been assigned a permanent place on SG-21 after testing her on various teams. Teal'c approved of the growth he had seen in her since. “But it’s on a desk, ma’am. You may have trouble getting to it.”

Colonel Carter nodded. “Will it knock out the whole base?”

“No, ma’am,” Hailey answered, “but it will get everything on all of level 19.”

“Alright,” O'Neill said, “SG-1, I want you to give all but one of your radios to Reynolds. They won’t transmit all the way from level 19 to level 28 anyway, so it shouldn’t be a huge handicap. Coburn, get those airmen to bring as many toothpicks as possible down to the control room. We’ll see what we can use them for when we get there. Then I want you and SG-21 to see if there’s anyone stuck in the elevators and try to get them out.

“SG-1, get up to Hailey’s lab and try the EM generator.”

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Carter said.

“Reynolds, you and SG-3 are coming with us,” O'Neill finished.

Reynolds nodded and motioned for his team to accompany him. Teal'c surrendered his radio and then joined his teammates as SG-1 began laboriously climbing the stairs, upwards this time, towards level 19.

He was beginning to feel an unreasonable amount of distaste for these stairs.

*~*~*By Reynolds' watch—miraculously still functioning despite its current, minuscule, form—it took an hour and fifteen minutes, for them to reach the control room. He, SG-3, Major Davis, and the general were greeted by the tech sergeants from their desks in some very squeaky voices. Reynolds surveyed the desks and was absolutely baffled how they'd managed to get up there in the first place. Sergeant O’Brian, who was on the floor, approached them, his usual baritone several octaves higher.

“Sir, we’ve managed to get people up on the desks,” O’Brian reported, neglecting—damn him—to report how. “We’ve made contact with the front checkpoint, no one has entered or left the base since SG-1 returned. There are currently six teams off-world. Sergeants Siler and Harriman have created an automated response to anyone transmitting an IDC to either redirect to Alpha Site, Cimmeria, or another allied planet, or remain where they are. Would you like us to rescind that, sir?”

“No,” Jack shook his head. “That was good thinking.”

“Yes, sir,” O’Brian nodded. “The iris has also been locked into the closed position, sir.”

The general nodded his thanks. “Colonel Reynolds,” O’Neill said, turning to the colonel. “Major Davis.”

“Yes, sir,” Reynolds said, coming forward.

“I want SG-3 and you, Major Davis, to get up to my office. Call Washington. Appraise them of our situation,” O’Neill ordered, “and see if you can manage to get them to leave us alone until we get all of this sorted out and everyone restored to their usual size. It’d be nice to have all hands on deck.”

“Yes, sir,” Davis agreed.

“General,” Reynolds affirmed. He turned to his team and they began to assess the staircase to O'Neill's office.

As they moved away, Reynolds heard the general say to Sergeant O'Brian. “Now. Can you get me to the PA? I need to make an announcement.”

Chapter Text

Daniel gave a tug on Sam's arms together with Teal'c, as they, finally, conquered the last step to level 19.

With sighs of relief, they all collapsed onto the floor to catch their breath for a moment.

After a few moments, Sam spoke from beside him. "When I get big again, I think I may kiss the elevator wall."

"Indeed?" Teal'c asked from Sam's other side. He sounded amused.

"I dare you," Daniel agreed with a grin.

Sam sat up and gave them both mock-glares while looking down the hallway. "Hailey’s lab is over this way." She pointed.

The three of them staggered to their feet. "How far?" Daniel asked, glaring at the aches in his shoes. Generally speaking, even most off-world missions weren't this physical.

"That would just depress you," Sam sighed, starting off down the hall to the left of the stairs.

Daniel and Teal’c exchanged a scowl and followed their leader.

As they were walking Sam commented, "You know, it’s a minor miracle that we can actually breathe while we’re this small."

"Indeed?" Teal’c replied, in that tone that meant "indeed" was a question this time, as opposed to the affirmative "indeed," or the I-don’t-believe-what-you-just-said-for-a-second "indeed." Daniel fixed his eyes irritably on Teal’c for giving Sam an opening.

"The hemoglobin in our blood shouldn’t be able to cope with air molecules of this size. Technically, we should suffocate," she explained.

Daniel decided to accept that this was the case and not look into the mechanics. "Well, we’re figuring this is some sort of a machine, for the moment, right?" Daniel said. "What if whatever-it-is compensates for our small…ness?"

"That would make sense if we were dealing with nanite technology, but…," Sam trailed off, giving the men a glance.

"What would be the purpose of such technology," Teal’c supplied helpfully.

"Exactly," Sam said. "It doesn’t make us so small that we could really sneak around anywhere. But it does make us too small to really do anything effectively. And it disburses so fast that once a population is…infected—for lack of a better word—that there’s no real way to stop it. Not unless you know it’s coming."

"I believe you have just responded to your own inquiry," Teal’c informed her.

Daniel felt his blood run cold. He hadn't thought of it that way. Had SG-1 brought something back that was the precursor to an alien invasion? Again?

"It seems a most effective offensive technique,” Teal'c continued on, not seeming to notice the effect he was having on Daniel's blood pressure. “It has succeeded in crippling this base in very short order. If we were now attacked, I believe we would have a most difficult time defending this world. And if it was built as an offensive weapon, those who built it likely have a way to counteract its effects or render themselves immune."

His last comment gave Daniel pause. So he decided to weigh in. "Seems a bit…troublesome, though, as a weapon. Given how quickly it spreads, any tiny loss of containment would get your side rather than your enemies'."

"Maybe it was an experiment that was scrapped," Sam suggested.

"That is logical. I have never encountered such a phenomenon, nor have I heard of it from other jaffa," Teal’c said.

And that was a comforting comment.

They had walked all the way to the end of the hallway and around a corner on their right to look down yet another long hallway.

"Hailey’s is the fifth on our left," Sam told them.

Daniel checked his watch and frowned.

"How long did that take us?" Sam asked him curiously.

"That would just depress you," Daniel answered. They continued walking, crossing over to the other side of the hallway.

They had already passed the first doorway when they heard an odd clicking noise behind them.

SG-1 turned around and their eyes widened. Approaching them down the hallway was a cockroach, about two actual inches long. Daniel’s beretta, Sam’s P-90, and Teal’c’s staff all came up in unison, ready to fire.

*~*~*Jason Coburn surveyed his diminished team. Sergeants Baker and Wilson had just come out into the hallway from the main mess.

"The airmen have got ‘Operation Toothpick’ down to a science, sir," Baker reported.

"Okay, now for the elevators," Coburn squeaked. SG-4 jogged down the hallway towards the elevators, all trying to ignore how long it was taking them. The only break in the monotony was when General O’Neill announced over the PA to begin going to the Control Room unless you were unable to, or had other orders. When they did finally reach the elevators, they were all a bit winded.

"Now what, sir?" Wilson asked. SG-4 looked up in dismay at the small keycard device on the side of the elevator.

"I have no idea," Coburn sighed. Their keycards were as small as they were, so using them was more than slightly ridiculous.

"If I had a knife…," Hailey frowned. "I may be able to get the elevator to come to this floor and get the doors open, assuming I were inside that box."

The boys patted down pockets until Coburn managed to come up with his Swiss Army pocketknife and held it up. "Will this do?"

Hailey nodded. "That’ll be perfect, sir."

"So now we just have to get to it," Baker nodded.

Hailey looked at the large cables running up to the box. "I think this is going to have to be a one-person job, Baker. The only way up is by those cables."

Coburn frowned. "You up for this, Hailey?"

Hailey nodded. "I can do it, sir."

Coburn handed her the knife. "Get going."

Hailey began clambering up the cables headed for the elevator box.

*~*~*Sam, Teal’c, and Daniel all looked at the cockroach in disgust, hoping it didn’t approach them.

"I am beginning to find these insects even more disagreeable than I previously had," Teal’c said.

"I hate roaches," Sam agreed.

The roach scurried towards them and all three opened fire. The bug was apparently not used to high-speed projectiles and energy blasts because it quickly altered course away from the three.

"Hold fire!" Sam yelled.

"Why?" Daniel asked, complying with the order anyway.

"We have to save our ammunition. There’s only so much in our size," Sam explained.

"I believe we have severely damaged the insect," Teal’c told them. There was a trail of bug juice following the roach as it scurried into one of the offices.

Sam had a very feral look on her face watching it go. They turned and had all taken a few steps towards their goal when a very high-pitched scream issued from the office that they had just watched their injured foe enter. The first scream proceeded directly into shrill and carrying yells for help.

SG-1 readied their weapons again and ran into the office.

Chapter Text

SG-3 pulled Major Davis up the last of the steps to the briefing room. These steps spiraled around a central column and it would have been quite easy for someone to simply fall off the back of them. This was much slower going than the other stairs, given that it was a long way back down to the control room floor. Jack had managed to make his announcement when they were only about halfway up.

"I like this place a lot better when those steps aren’t a death trap," Davis muttered, looking down the long drop to the floor.

"No kidding," Reynolds said.

They made their way across the briefing room floor to the general’s office. Then they were greeted with their next challenge. General O’Neill’s desk loomed above them like a sheer rock face.

"What I wouldn’t give for a big, long rope," Peterson said quietly.

"If we had a rope than we wouldn’t be in this situation," Bosco replied, sounding rather tetchy. Davis looked at him. Reynolds did as well. Reynolds' look, however, was more effective. Davis' career had been mostly spent behind a desk. In fact, his adventures with the SGC were some of the only exceptions to that rule. As a result, he had never developed a real knack for that instantly quelling look that so many other officers seemed to effortlessly produce.

Bosco, looking thoroughly abashed, looked at the colonel and ventured a suggestion in a much less aggravated tone. "Sir, we could try SG-1’s idea.”

"Human ladders, you mean?" Reynolds replied, apparently deciding not to pursue things beyond a glare. He eyed their target and finally said, "Chair first, and then to the desk." SG-3 moved towards the edge of the chair. "That toothpick ladder idea doesn’t sound so crazy anymore.”

After some entirely uncomfortable scrambling, the men managed to make it onto the desk. They wandered across three folders. Davis' eye caught one of them and he sighed quietly.

Reynolds glanced over. "What is it?"

"We’re going to have to overhaul the security procedures again," Davis explained, glaring at the rather innocent-looking blue folder lying on the other end of the desk. "We just finished getting them up to specs again."

SG-3 glanced at one another as they proceeded towards the large black phone on the general’s desk. Peterson finally said, "Sir, there’s only so much that security protocols can do in the first place. I doubt that any amount of revision will ever make us all totally safe—even in the SGC."

Davis glared at him. "Bite your tongue. It’s hard enough already to get the Pentagon not to certify everyone here, myself included. If they thought for one second that anyone thought anything like that, it’d be the last straw."

Peterson smiled. "Consider it bitten, sir."

SG-3 reached their objective and surveyed the mammoth telephone before them for a moment. Finally, Colonel Reynolds shrugged.

“Bosco, Daniels, you two get the handset off the cradle. Peterson, get us connected with the Pentagon. Davis, do you have any ideas how we're going to talk them into believing we're actually…us when we sound like Alvin and cronies?”

*~*~*

Hailey poked her head out of the bottom of the elevator’s card reader. "The elevator’s on it’s way, sir." She began climbing very carefully back down the cables and happily listened to the rumbling in the elevator shaft that signified movement. One more successful mission completed by Jennifer Hailey, she congratulated herself. As she climbed down, she listened to the events on the floor.

The doors opened and three very happy scientists rushed out, picking their way over the now-lethal gap between the elevator and level 22. They thanked SG-21 and began heading down the hallway towards the stairs.

"The other elevator is on level 11," Coburn said to the team. "Any ideas how we can get up there?"

"Aside from the stairs, sir?" Sergeant Wilson shook his head. "Probably not unless we can get Hailey to fix the elevator to take us there."

“No way, sir,” Hailey said from above them. Her team looked up to see her drop the last several inches to the floor.

"I’m sorry, sir," she said, handing Coburn’s knife back to him, "but I think the elevator’s going to need a new reader when we get big again. I don’t think I can repair it from here."

Coburn sighed. "Stairs it is, then. We may as well get moving. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be done."

The rest of SG-21 looked at each other in dismay and then followed their leader towards the stairs.

“Air Force Girl Barbie is on the move,” Hailey said to herself. For a second it looked like Coburn had heard her, but he didn't say anything, so she wasn't sure.

*~*~*

SG-1 entered the office ready to do battle. Daniel saw another one of the base’s civilian scientists, a woman, lying on the floor by the chair in her office doing her best to fend off the advances of a curious—and possibly hungry—cockroach from a prone position. It soon became obvious why she didn’t stand up. One leg was bent impossibly in the middle of her shin, and there was a large pool of blood around her.

Considering the amount of pain she was likely in, she was doing a passable job of battling the bug, but she was losing. The cockroach could maneuver around her much faster than she could move to defend herself. He and Sam had their guns raised as they ran closer, but couldn’t get off any shots for fear of hitting the woman.

Teal’c hit the bug like an ounce of bricks, smashing into its head with the butt end of his staff weapon. The roach fell back from its target, its legs making eerie clicking sounds on the floor, before refocusing on Teal’c and reaching out with its antennae. Sam was finally able to get off several shots and the roach fell back several more steps. Daniel moved in and seized the woman's shoulder, dragging her back from the battle, gun up and watching closely as Teal’c flipped his staff around quickly and fired at the roach.

The insect was bleeding copiously, obviously hurt, but cornered and probably hungry. Teal’c and Sam fired on it several more times, one of Teal’c’s staff blasts taking an antennae clean off, and Sam destroying an eye. When Teal’c finally hit one of the leg joints, that leg fell apart and the roach fell to the ground. It didn’t get up again, although the antennae continued to reach towards them, and the other legs moved in a sort of swimming motion that scooted the roach along the ground.

As Teal'c and Sam regrouped, Daniel turned to the woman they'd just rescued. “So, what's your name?” he asked.

“Doctor Lydia Fuentes,” she replied. Daniel nodded, and began to examine Fuentes, listening as his teammates assessed their extermination job.

"It’s not dead yet," Sam observed, watching the roach creep towards them.

Teal’c raised his staff and commenced firing upon the insect until all motion ceased.

"Now it is dead," he said blandly.

Sam smiled. The two of them came over to Daniel, who was finished checking for a concussion, and was pulling some things out of the med kit he carried. He wasn't sure he had properly appreciated until this moment the fact that all their field gear had shrunk with them.

"The bug’s dead," Sam informed them.

"Good to hear," Fuentes said. She was breathing a bit fast, and her face was somewhat paler than was probably normal, but she didn’t seem to be panicking and she had no trouble focusing on the people around her.

"So, what happened to you?" Daniel asked as he began with her leg.

"I was sitting on the edge of my chair," she said. "By the time I realized I was shrinking, it was too late and I was sliding off. I hit the ground and broke my leg and I’ve been here ever since."

"Wow. That sounds…nerve-wracking," Sam frowned, kneeling to help Daniel. The two of them carefully, but as quickly as possible, set the woman’s leg into place and began applying a splint.

"It wasn’t so bad until the bug showed up. I hate roaches," Fuentes said, wincing as Daniel touched a sore spot.

"Sorry," Daniel said, noting her wince. She smiled at him.

"Thanks, by the way," Fuentes told them. "For saving my life just now. I don’t think I could have fought that thing on my own."

"You shouldn’t have needed to," Sam said. "Why didn’t that bug shrink with the rest of us?"

For a moment everyone was silent.

Finally Fuentes said "It must only work on humans. That’s interesting.” But she sounded disturbed by the revelation.

"You know, it’s a minor miracle that we didn’t encounter any bugs while we were on P4Z-028,” Daniel said slowly.

Teal’c nodded. "These creatures tend to be much larger in a wild setting. Some of them would likely be larger than we are currently."

Sam and Dr. Fuentes exchanged an expression of mutual distaste before Sam turned back to work on her leg. After a few moments, she and Daniel finished with their work and stood.

"So, where are you off to?" Fuentes asked, sounding curious more than anything else.

SG-1 glanced at one another. There was no telling if that had been the only bug, and there was no way Fuentes would be able to fight off another one with a broken leg.

"I’ll stay here, then," Daniel suggested. "Sam and Teal’c, you two go on ahead. I wouldn’t be much help with an EMP generator anyway."

"You don’t have to do that," Dr. Fuentes told him.

"Actually," Sam broke in, "I was going to suggest it. We don’t know if there are more bugs around, and with you incapacitated, someone needs to be here."

Fuentes looked very grateful, and so after some brief double-checking and rearranging of equipment, Sam and Teal’c set off towards Hailey’s lab and Daniel settled in to wait.

*~*~*

"Sergeant, I am Major Davis," Davis squeaked at the phone for about the twentieth time. Although they’d all initially been ecstatic over the speakerphone function on the phone—an option that Davis felt he had never fully appreciated until now—their communications with Washington were steadily making Major Davis and SG-3 insane. The first several times they’d called the Pentagon, they’d been hung up on as a prank call, but they’d finally managed to convince the person answering the phone that they weren’t going to stop calling and so had been redirected to a rather disgruntled security chief who was slowly being forced to conclude that Major Davis might indeed be himself.

"Sergeant," Davis continued, "I’ve answered every last one of your security questions, I’ve stayed on this line for a long enough time for you to trace it, and I’ve endured all sorts of verbal abuse from you and everyone else that I’ve spoken with on account of my voice. Will you please connect my call?” Into the ensuing silence he said, “You’ve followed every last protocol necessary in this case above and beyond the normal requirements. I may even put you in for a commendation for your tremendous attention to detail. But for now, I would desperately love to speak with General Hammond."

There was a moment of silence and then an audible scowl as the call was redirected and they could all hear it ringing again.

"This is getting tiresome," Reynolds sighed.

The phone was picked up. Everyone held their breath.

"Hammond," a familiar voice on the other end of the phone answered. General Hammond had been given command of the "Department of Homeworld Security," a name that always made Davis chuckle internally, and so was still peripherally involved with the SGC. Although this particular crisis was a bit on the tame side compared to some others Stargate Command had faced—the Replicator infestation only a few weeks earlier came to mind—Hammond would best understand this situation. And likely agree with O’Neill’s assessment: keep everyone away as much as possible

"General Hammond, sir," Davis said crisply and squeakily.

"Hello?" Hammond replied in a voice that was somewhere between hopelessly confused and dangerously angry.

"Sir," Davis continued, "this may be hard to believe, but this is Major Davis, calling from the SGC. There’s been some sort of contamination and all base personnel have been shrunk."

There was a pregnant pause. "Shrunk?"

"Yes, sir."

"Assuming that you are who you say you are, how tall are you exactly?" Hammond asked.

Davis waffled. He really didn’t want to say this. It was desperately embarrassing.

"We’re all around six inches, sir," Reynolds broke in. "Colonel Reynolds, sir."

After another pause Hammond said, "How do I know you are who you say you are?"

From a short distance away, Davis heard Peterson groan "Not this again!" And this time he didn't even bother glaring at the airman for his outburst. He was too happy to have the man in his corner to want to bother. After the call had connected, the rest of the team had left their superiors to deal with the brass alone and were now perusing the new security regs, though clearly they were eavesdropping. Well, he and Reynolds had eavesdropped back when they weren't on the phone, so that was fine. And it had been amusing watching them struggle to get the folder open.

Turning his attention back to General Hammond, Davis said, "Sir, we did just go through a rather lengthy process to get connected with you.”

"I suppose you must have," Hammond mused. "If you’re really who you say you are…" And here the two heard Hammond chuckle a bit. "…tell me what Colonel Reynolds said to me after I’d retrieved some crystals from an al’kesh to repair a broken cargo ship."

"Well, sir, you actually got the crystals from a cargo ship to repair an al’kesh," Colonel Reynolds told him, "and I believe I said, ‘Excellent waking up, sir.’"

Davis gave him an odd glance, but he could hear Hammond smiling on the other end of the line. "You really are you.” There was a long pause before the general said, “Do you know what shrunk you?"

"No, sir, but it spreads alarmingly fast," Davis jumped in, trying not to jump up and down in excitement at finally getting someone to take them seriously. "We don’t know if it’s airborne or travels along surfaces, but either way anyone who comes into the mountain will be our size in fifteen minutes. We’ve initiated a Wildfire lockdown, but until we discover a way to reverse the shrinking, I would suggest no physical contact with the outside. There’s no way to be sure that letting someone in won’t let the shrinking out."

"I see," Hammond said neutrally, digesting this information.

"Sir, General O’Neill also requests that, due to the difficulty inherent in contacting the outside, the SGC be allowed to cut communications to a minimum," Reynolds added.

"I don’t feel good about leaving you all to sort this out without help," Hammond told them. "If we can’t send people in, the least we can do is keep updated in order to try and help with a solution."

"Sir, it took an entire team of people just to get to this phone," Reynolds informed him. "The technical staff has had to resort to gymnastics and heavy usage of the ‘backspace’ key to get any typing done. My team and Major Davis all had a very difficult time getting up the stairs to this level, and that was before we had to get onto the desk to use the phone. Communication at this size is not very feasible."

"All right. If we haven’t heard from the SGC in three days exactly from right now, we’ll begin trying to get in touch with you," Hammond sighed. "Has anyone discovered a way to reverse the process?"

"Colonel Carter suggested an EMP, sir," Reynolds told him. "She and SG-1 are trying to get to an EMP generator right now."

"Very well. Three days. Good luck," Hammond finished.

"Thank you, sir," chorused Davis and Reynolds before giving each other looks.

Hammond hung up.

The other members of SG-3 joined them.

"‘Excellent waking up, sir?’" Davis asked.

"I was about to have to give him mouth to mouth," Reynolds replied.

Chapter Text

Sam and Teal’c lay on the desk and concentrated on breathing for a few moments. It had been an effort of Herculean proportions to get both of them onto the desk, most of the effort being on Sam’s part. Teal’c could lift her easily. The reverse was far from true.

Sam watched from her prone position as Teal’c wandered across Hailey’s desk, glancing curiously at her computer before making a disdainful noise.

“What?” Sam asked.

“I am intensely disappointed in Hailey’s taste in music,” Teal’c answered, indicating the playlist that was open on her screen. It was filled with an inordinate amount of techno and pop.

“Ha!” Sam laughed. “Says the man who subsists on a musical diet of non-stop Ricky Martin and Barry Manilow.”

Teal’c glanced at her. “They are both important icons of your culture.”

Sam shook her head. “Where did Daniel and I go wrong with you, Teal’c?”

“I believe it was when you allowed me contact with O’Neill,” he replied, striding over to stand above her head. He looked down and offered her a hand up.

Sam took it and he pulled her to her feet. She looked around and saw, on the far side of the desk, the EMP generator. She went over to it, and after some struggling with the controls, turned it on and persuaded the machine to begin building a charge.

She moved to sit with her legs dangling off of the desk and sighed deeply.

Teal’c joined her. “Colonel Carter?”

“If this doesn’t work, Teal’c,” she sighed, “I don’t know what to try next. We’re too small to use a lab or any equipment. I’m…I’m completely out of ideas.”

“Then we shall return to P4Z-028 and examine the temple further. Perhaps we will discover something there that will aid us. Or perhaps Daniel Jackson will be able to read something there that we did not previously see,” Teal’c suggested, sounding completely unflapped. “Or we will call the tok’ra or Asgard and ask their advice.”

Sam stared at him.

Teal’c smiled. “This enemy, too, we shall defeat.”

She nodded. Lately, Teal'c seemed to have a confidence he had never displayed, even despite the fact that he'd never been precisely unsure of himself. Though, Sam had to admit, if she had lived her life as a slave to a false god, and then quit, and then fought him, and then started a massive slave rebellion, and then won, and then beat a whole bunch of his false god friends into the bargain, all in less than ten years, she'd feel pretty confident, too. Go figure.

They waited for the charge to build up together. The EMP machine began to emit a high pitched whine, that seemed to circle around the room as it rose in pitch and fell in volume. Finally, when the whine was high-pitched enough that it was starting to give them a headache, but so quiet Sam was starting to feel it more than hear it, she went over to the machine and pushed a button.

The lights went out. Hailey’s computer died. Everything electric suddenly went quiet and dead.

Even before the emergency lighting powered up, Sam knew it hadn’t worked. They were still tiny. She made a disappointed face into the darkness, but cleared it up as soon as Teal’c could see her. If he was going to be so irrepressibly optimistic, then there was no way she was going to seem anything less than totally hopeful.

Sam looked at the generator in a vaguely disappointed manner and said, “Well, that’s that, I suppose.”

“Indeed,” Teal’c agreed. Sam couldn't help but think he did sound at least the tiniest bit disappointed, as well. Selfishly, that made her feel a bit better.

They climbed down from Hailey’s desk, and began making their way back to Daniel, to give him the bad news.

Of course, they didn’t need to say anything. As soon as the electricity had died but they'd remained shrunk, Daniel and Fuentes had known it didn't work. They just gave them understanding and disappointed looks.

“What next?” Daniel asked curiously.

“Well, Teal’c and I will go report to General O’Neill and…I’m not sure. I’m not quite certain what our next step is,” Sam sighed.

“Call the Asgard and hope they’re at home, I suppose,” Daniel shrugged.

“The tok’ra also may be able to help,” Teal’c said.

“I hope it doesn’t come to asking them,” Daniel sighed. “They’d probably get Anise to work on it.”

That name made Sam feel a bit weird. Queasy and stretched.

“She is distasteful,” Teal’c agreed.

Ugh. Why was Anise suddenly making her feel so sick? Damn tok'ra irritating her when she wasn't even on the planet.

“Well, I suppose we’d better—Ow!” Sam broke off in pain as the side of her head, slammed roughly into the slight overhang of Dr. Fuentes’s desk. She reached up to rub her head irritably, glaring at the offending desk. “What on—” Then, suddenly, the weird dizzy feeling and the fact that she had just slammed into the side of the desk connected to the rest of her mind.

“We’re big again!” she exclaimed cheerfully.

She stared at her hands, the desk, and the fact that she, Teal’c, Daniel, Dr. Fuentes, and Dr. Fuentes’ broken leg were all squished up against the side of the desk in an incredibly uncomfortable manner.

The reverie was broken and three people who could move instantly did so. Dr. Fuentes reordered herself to sit more comfortably on the floor.

“I think we should assume we were immediately re-contaminated with the shrinking device as soon as we resumed normal size,” Sam said.

“Then we must quickly get the EMP generator and move it to the level 28, where we may cure as many people as possible,” Teal’c said.

“If we don’t get back in time,” Daniel said to Dr. Fuentes, handing her his Beretta, “be sure you look first before you shoot.”

She nodded, taking the gun. “Got it.”

The three members of SG-1 raced into Hailey’s lab, grabbed the EMP generator, and then took it to the elevator as quickly as they could with such a bulky and heavy piece of equipment.

*~*~*

Major Davis and SG-3 were just finishing their report to General O'Neill in the control room when SG-1 managed to get that stupid EMP generator down to level 28. Then, a regular-sized Daniel Jackson—who was watching where he put his feet so carefully that it looked like his eyes were almost crossing—poked his head into the control room and explained what they were about to do and how long it would take to have effect. And as soon as he did, Davis recognized a problem. After going to all the trouble to get everyone together for ease of communication, they were being blasted—there went the lights, so he hoped Jackson wouldn't move just yet—with something that would unshrink them all in about fifteen minutes.

With somewhere upwards of a hundred and seventy-five people already in the control room.

And more on the way.

So space was about to be at something of a premium.

Fortunately, General O'Neill was just as quick on the uptake. He went swarming up the toothpick ladder Siler's guys had built (Davis hated to admit it, but that really had been a good idea) to the desk and sprinted over to the button for the PA. Thankfully, several of the heftiest marines had pulled the microphone down to his head level earlier, so that at least wasn't a problem. Then they all watched him for an awkward moment, waiting for the emergency power to kick in.

And there it went. Jackson assessed the low lighting for a moment, fished in one of his many pockets, and pulled out a flashlight, which he shone on his feet as he left.

The general stood on the PA button and turned his face to the microphone. “All right, people,” O'Neill said, in his tiny, tinny voice, “SG-1 has just brought the EMP down to level 28 and turned it on for us. According to their findings, it takes about fifteen minutes for someone to unshrink after the shrinking stuff has been knocked out. Given the number of people currently in the control room, that leaves us with not a great deal of space. So, those of you not yet on level 28, remain where you are. We'll be coming to get you as soon as we can. Those of you who are on level 28, do not—I repeat, do not—make for the control room. Remain where you are. Those of you who are in the Control Room, clear the area unless you are here as part of a regular duty shift. And try and spread out as much as you can. I don't want to turn big again with someone standing on my head.”

Half the extra techs, several SG teams, a whole battery of scientists, and most of the archaeology department all began making their way toward the hallway.

Major Davis began to go with them when Sergeant Harriman suddenly grabbed his jacket.

“Sorry, sir,” Harriman said, releasing him. “The general was making hand gestures for you to stay here.”

Davis had always felt that Harriman was a master of sarcastic politeness. 'The general was making hand gestures.' Of course, when he looked up to see O'Neill, he was doing just that as he climbed down.

“All right then,” he shrugged. If the general was making hand gestures, then he would be happy to stay here. Obviously.

They stood watching O'Neill climb down. By the time he joined them, Harriman was practically hopping from foot to foot trying not to say something or another.

“Out with it!” Jack finally ordered him, strolling up.

“Well, sir,” Harriman finally said, “are we sure this will work? Or stay working?”

“No. But it's the best we've got for now,” Jack said.

Harriman did not look very reassured. Davis did not feel very reassured. They both continued, unreassured, for the next fifteen minutes, at which time Harriman looked flat-out astonished when he found himself sliding off his feet as he suddenly grew taller again.

Well, Davis thought, as he smothered laughter and helped the sergeant to stand, given that Harriman put up with stuff like this on a regular basis, a little sarcastic politeness was hardly an unearned privilege.

Chapter Text

It was late the next afternoon that SG-1 joined Jack in the briefing room for their debriefing on the mission to P4z-028. It had taken most of the previous afternoon to unshrink everyone in the SGC, though thankfully once someone was unshrunk they seemed to stay that way. Unfortunately, most of the base, including SG-1, started turning up in the infirmary right after dinner with headaches, vertigo, weird localized pain, and the thousand other symptoms that came from being exposed to that much electromagnetic pulse activity. Jack's ears were still ringing for absolutely no reason Brightman could identify, and it was driving him crazy

Unfortunately, not knowing why they were shrunk in the first place, or whether the whatever-it-was that caused it was still contagious, Jack couldn't lift the quarantine. And he really wanted to. So, the next day—this morning, Jack noted to himself—he'd sent SGs 1, 2, 3, 4, the EMP generator, a creative assortment of RPGs in varying yields, a Mark IV high-yield naquadria bomb, the whole archaeology department, half the science department, and enough tools to strip-mine an area the size of Connecticut back to P4Z-028 with instructions to get answers any way they needed to. Daniel had suggested that this might be overkill. Jack had told him he had Prometheus on stand-by if they needed something bigger. Sam and Teal'c had looked approving.

So, when they came back, about mid-afternoon, Jack was bursting to know what they'd found. He'd forced himself to give SG-1 two hours to put together their findings for a debriefing, and he'd been sitting in the briefing room drumming his fingers for them to get there for the past thirty minutes.

But, finally, his old teammates came strolling in. Sam, as usual was carrying folders, for everyone but Daniel. Daniel was juggling about six extra folders, some loose papers, and a mug of coffee. Teal'c carried absolutely nothing at all.

For once, as soon as Sam handed him her report, he flipped it open and began skimming the papers inside without even waiting for her to begin. He kept tabs on her progress around the room, however. The second her butt hit the chair, he spoke. “So,” Jack said, observing Sam's hilariously startled look without actually looking up, “what did you find out?”

Startled or not, Sam recovered quickly. “Yesterday morning, SG-1 undertook a routine away mission to the planet designated P4Z-028…” After getting through the routine boring stuff, she finally got around to talking about what caused the shrinking. Nanites, so a machine like Brightman had said. He lost that bet, then. And when they were shut off, they dissolved. Which meant once unshrunk was unshrunk for good. Sam, being herself, went on for several more minutes after that about the time it took to “prep the host organism” for shrinking or unshrinking and “drawing power from internal electrical activity” and a thousand other things that made his eyes want to roll backwards into his head.

Finally Jack cut in and asked the question he really wanted the answer to. “So…long-term medical repercussions are…?”

“As far as we can tell, sir, none.” Sam's voice was confident. Good. “The nanites were designed to reverse themselves without damaging their host.”

“And just who am I to blame for our adventures in minaturization?” Jack asked.

Here, Daniel jumped in. “This planet was an outpost of the goa'uld Ravana.”

“I should've known it was a goa'uld,” Jack muttered.

Daniel nodded, sipping his coffee. “Ravana took his persona from the Ravana of Indian legend, the enemy of Rama. His portrayals in most contexts are universally negative.”

“Clearly with good cause,” Jack said.

“Indeed,” Teal'c agreed.

Daniel smiled and continued. “We also know that he never rose to the level of system lord, or build a large army of jaffa. Instead, he intended to rely on advanced research and technology in his conquests, and was—according to our findings—doing just that when he, and several of his lesser goa'uld, began researching the shrinking technology.”

Jack frowned. “So what happened to him?”

Daniel frowned thoughtfully. “Before his research was completed, another goa'uld—possibly Ra or Apophis, but the truth is we'll probably never know—destroyed the research station from orbit, killing everyone there, including Ravana. Prior to his death, in the assumption that a ground force would follow the aerial assault, Ravana set the shrinking technology to activate when the altar was touched in the hopes of crippling ground forces. But, it looks like no ground force ever bothered to come. In fact, SG-1 was probably the first group to set foot on P4Z-028 since that time.” He held up his hand. “The good news there, of course, is that this technology was never shared with any other goa'uld. As far as we've been able to tell, SGC personnel are the only people in the universe who know of its existence.”

“That news is of limited goodness,” Jack pointed out, holding up a tiny set of notes Dr. Lee had made while he was little and then not been hanging onto when he'd been unshrunk. Daniel affected a hurt expression that Jack had stopped believing a long time ago. There was a long moment where Jack scowled at the folder in front of him before he finally said, “Why would anyone, even a goa'uld, build a machine that does something so annoying?”

Sam and Daniel exchanged a look. “From what we were able to determine, sir,” Sam said, “Ravana was experimenting with a number of different ideas, including this one, with the goal of figuring out how to use them at some future date. I don't think he'd determined any practical applications. That's probably why it was so easy to reverse. After all, if he's testing it on his own scientists, he'd have to have a way to unshrink them.”

“'Easy to reverse,'” Daniel repeated, managing to make his next sip of coffee sarcastic.

Sam made a face. “Well…relatively speaking.”

“The records also spoke of difficulties in containing the nanites,” Teal'c put in. “It is probable that Ravana was unable to prevent incidentally affecting more than his intended targets. We believe he was even shrunk himself at least once.”

“What I wouldn't give to hear a goa'uld with that squeaky voice…,” Jack mused. He heaved a sigh, thinking. “State of affairs on P4Z-etcetera?”

“The temple—Ravana's research laboratory—is…well…we dismantled it, Jack,” Daniel said. He looked slightly sheepish.

“Dismantled?” Jack repeated. Not that he cared, but Daniel was usually the first to object to that sort of thing.

“Very scientifically,” Daniel said, “of course.”

“Of course.” Jack was unable to entirely contain a smirk. So Daniel had indulged in his own, geeky, version of overkill.

“We could build you an exact replica if you like,” Daniel offered innocently.

“No thanks,” Jack returned. He swung his seat around to face Sam.

“As far as we can tell, the shrinking nanites were the only active technology there,” she said, “The notes did refer to several other experiments, but we believe they were either destroyed or have broken down over time,” she said.

“And when can we release the quarantine?” Jack asked.

“The nanites are all dead, sir,” Sam said. “In all probability they were all dead when we finished unshrinking the base.”

Jack nodded. He thought for a moment. Finally, he said, “Okay. Designate P4Z-028 as a hostile world, lock it out of the dialing computer, refer any requests as to why we would do that to these reports.” He tapped his folder. “Release the quarantine, tell everyone who is not on a duty shift that I am ordering them to get out of the mountain and go home. SG-1's next mission is in three days. I'll phone you when to show up. Go away.”

His former teammates shared grins, and then bolted out of the briefing room to carry out his orders. Distant cheers could be heard from the control room.

Feeling well pleased with himself, Jack strolled into his office to see Major Paul Davis sitting in front of his desk. On his desk there was an enormous stack of folders. On the top of the stack was a familiar-looking blue folder labeled “Safety Procedures for Retrieval and/or Containment of Off-World Specimens.”

“Sir,” Major Davis said, “I need to talk to you about some housekeeping.”

Jack nodded with a sigh. And he took it all back. Small problems sucked.