Confirming Carter Bk. 01 Ch. 05

She reached around and grabbed one of the headsets.

"Sam, don't," Tammy said. "Please? Not till you learn more about it."

"Huh?" Carter said looking over at her. "Oh, I wasn't going to...I'm sorry, I wouldn't do that." She held the headset out to Tammy. "Put this on. I want to see something."

Tammy took the headset and looked it over, turning it slowly in her hands. She looked back over at Sam. "This things not going to zap me is it?" She asked.

"Um...I'm not sure. I doubt it." Carter told her. "It's set to scan, and that's all it did to me."

"But you don't know for sure. Great." Tammy said as she gingerly put the headset on, moving it around till it was comfortable. "You didn't even notice that it did anything to you, so what's the wor..."

She stiffened suddenly, her eyes rolling back up in her head. She collapsed, falling to the floor, jerking and twitching.

"Tammy!" Sam screamed, dropping to her knees beside her. She gathered her up in her arms, hugging her tightly. Jennifer came over and tried to make her let her go, but Carter pushed her away roughly.

"Gotcha." Tammy whispered in Sam's ear, grinning up at her as she pulled back, looking at her.

"You were fucking with me?" Carter whispered, staring at her.

"Well, you were going to use me as guinea pig, so yeah. Turnabouts fair play."

"Don't do that again." Sam said as she helped her up. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Good." Tammy said as she put the headset back on. "We need to be careful with this stuff, at least until you figure out what they all do. You should go through and see if there are help screens, or maybe a manual built in."

Carter nodded as she looked at the panel on the machine again. "You can take that off." She said, glancing over at Tammy. "It already did you."

She scrolled through the screens, then tapped back to the first scan the machine did. She flipped back and forth between the two scans, then looked over at the equipment Keller had put by the door.

"I need a piece of equipment. It has a connector like this on it." She said, opening a door on the side of the machine, and pointing to a series of slots. "I don't know what it will look like, but it won't be that big, there's room for five of them here."

She went over and started going through the boxes piled by the door.

"There's more out by the porter." Tammy said. "Come on, Jenn. Let's go look through that."

She started for the door, but Carter stood up, a small device in her hand.

"Hold up, I think I found one."

She went over and plugged it into one of the slots, and a blue light came on over the panel. Carter tapped though a series of symbols on the panel, then pressed a button next to it. She looked down at the smaller device, and noticed that there was now a slice of yellow showing on the end of it. She reached down and pulled it out of the slot, looking at it.

"Memory card, or their equivalent. Kewl." She said as she looked over at Tammy and Jennifer. "Let's go upstairs. There's slots for these on my machine up there. I want to look at something."

Interior-Office

1630 Hours

"You said didn't have the ancient gene." She said to Tammy. "Didn't the treatment take?"

"I never got it," Tammy replied. "They did the science teams first, then the military types. They never got around to me or half a dozen of the other nurses. I think they meant to hit everyone, but then they got approval to go, and then all that stuff happened with the Wraith when we got here, I guess it got lost in the shuffle."

"Go get her a dose." Carter told Keller. "And tell Sheppard to have someone look at the records and see who never got the gene therapy. This is going to be important."

"What do you see there?" Jennifer asked. "There's something about Tammy's scan that has you excited."

"I'll tell you when you ge..."

"No, Sam. Tell me now." Keller said. "I'm pretty sure Tammy wants to know too." She said, glancing over at her. Tammy nodded. "This is a team, not the Samantha Carter show. So when you find something that's going to affect all of us, and maybe other people, you tells us. Maybe we can help."

Carter looked at her, then glanced over at Tammy. "You're right. I'm sorry, I'm just used to working alone, or telling other people what to do."

She tapped out a series of commands on her keyboard, and a large section of the wall lit up. She entered another set of commands, and an image appeared. She scrolled down through the information, stopping when a graph appeared.

"This is my scan. The graph shows where I stand in relation to other ancients in the database." She shrank the image, and brought another one up next to it. She scrolled down till both images showed the same graph. "This is Tammy."

"Are you kidding me?" Tammy said as she stepped closer, looking at her scan. "You didn't doctor this? You know, to get back at me?"

"Nope, wouldn't do that even if I knew how." Carter laughed. "According to this, you're in the top ten percent in very category, and in the top five in more than half of them." She paused, and typed for a moment. Her scan disappeared, and a document replaced it. "It says here, that they were looking for people like you. You're an anomaly. Less than one percent of the ancients were in your class."

"And what do you think the gene therapy will do?" Keller asked. "There have been negative reactions to it, not many, but I'd like to know if it's worth the risk to see if it will work on her."

"It's worth it, just so I can initialize and operate things as we find them." Tammy said. "And we use ancient gear down in the Infirmary. It sucks that I have to get someone to do my work for me."

"I was thinking that if it takes, we study that training machine, figure out how it works and what it actually does, and if Tammy wants, see what she can learn from it." Carter said looking at Tammy. "Based on what I see, She stands a better chance of succeeding than I do."

"Okay, I'll go over to the Infirmary and get it." Keller said as she turned toward the door. "I should be back in about fifteen minutes."

"We're going to go get that machine and bring it up here." Tammy said. "If we're not back before you are, you'll know where to look, okay?"

Interior-Living Room

1705 Hours

The teaching machine was sitting against the wall when Jennifer stepped from the porter. She found Carter and Tammy huddled over Sam's terminal. Sam was pointing out things as she scrolled down the page.

"We found a help file, and dumped it onto the memory card." Tammy said as she looked up at Keller. "She says it looks pretty straight forward, and she thinks she can operate it. You got that gene therapy for me?"

Keller nodded. "Got one for me too. Turns out I never got it either." She grinned, holding up a small grey case. "I looked at the database, Andi already failed. Twice. I called Sheppard, and he's going to have McKay go through and see who else got missed. He was pissed too."

"Let's do me first." Tammy said, coming around the desk. "We can get Andi up here for when we do you, once we make sure that I don't show any of those negative effects you mentioned earlier. Let's go out into the living room, so I can stretch out on a couch."

Jennifer led her out to the other room, and Tammy laid out on one of the big couches. Keller knelt beside her, and pushed her sleeve up, tied a rubber strap around her upper arm, then sprayed her arm with an antiseptic. She saw Carter's hand come over the back of the couch, taking Tammy's other hand in hers.

"It's going to be fine." Tammy said as she looked up at her. "This should have been done along time ago." She looked over at Keller. "Ready when you are, Jenn."

Keller nodded and slipped the cover off a syringe. "This works best intravenously." She said as she eased the needle into a vein, and injected a pale green liquid. She pulled the needle out and sprayed the area with antiseptic again, then released the rubber strap. "That should kick in immediately. We have anything we can test her on?"

Carter went into her office, and came back a moment later with a life signs detector. She held it up so that they could see that it was active. She handed it to Keller, and she looked at it, then turned it so they could see that the screen was dark. Jennifer looked at Tammy, then held it out to her.

The screen lit up as soon as Tammy touched it. She looked at it, then grinned up at Sam. "Is this thing telling me that there's three life signs in this room?"

"Sure is. Welcome to the ancient club, girlfriend." She grinned.

"Excellent!" Tammy said as she sat up. "Bring your new toy over here, I know you're dying to try it out."

"I don't know if tha..." Sam began.

"You read the manual, or at least the help file, and you said you could operate it, right?"

"Well, yeah. But..."

"Then roll it over here, go through the menu, and see if there's a language lesson in there somewhere." Tammy said. "I want to do it, Sam. And I don't think it will hurt me, honest."

"Jenn? What do you think?" Carter asked still looking down at Tammy.

"I think she's right. There are safeguards built into most of the ancient devices." Jennifer said. "The ones we've had trouble with, or that actually hurt someone were still in the experimental stage, or people just started playing with them before we knew what they were, or did. That machine looks like something that was in common use, there's even some wear on it."

"You're sure about this?" She said, looking down at Tammy.

Tammy nodded, and Carter went over and rolled the machine up behind the couch. She took one of the headsets off its holder, and handed it to Tammy.

"Jennifer, sit next to her, if you see anything you don't like, you pull that headset off." Sam said as she worked the controls on the machine. "Tammy, if you feel anything weird, or if it starts to hurt, you raise your hand, and I'll shut it off."

They both nodded, and Carter tapped out a string of commands on the panel as Tammy put the headset on.

"Here we go. Intro to Ancient101." She entered another command, then said, "Forty seconds...Thirty."

"She's smiling, and her pulse is steady, color is good too." Keller said.

"Ten seconds...Done." Carter said as she pushed the machine aside and leaned over the back of the couch.

Tammy turned and looked up at her. She spoke, but neither of them understood what she said.

"What did you say? Tammy?" Jennifer said, shaking her leg. "Say something else."

"She's speaking ancient. But I don't speak it, I can just read and write it.

"Get me a pen and a piece of paper, and I'll tell you." Tammy grinned.

Sam went back into her office, and was back a moment later. She handed Tammy a pad and a pen, and Tammy wrote out a line of symbols, paused for a moment, then added a line under it. She handed the pad back to Sam.

Carter laughed, then looked over at Jennifer, holding the pad up so she could see it. "She wrote 'I love you'," She said, moving her finger over the top line.

"What's the other line say?" Keller asked

"That's personal." Carter said, blushing slightly. She looked down at Tammy, watching her take the headset off. "And I'd love to." She said softly.

"Sex. I knew it." Jennifer pouted as she stood up. She turned and headed for the kitchen. "You two are doing it every time I turn around, Andi's boffing Wilkins, why can't I find someone to boink me? I mean, I'm cute. I'm good in..." Her voice trailed of as she went down the hall, and into the kitchen.

"We gotta get her laid. Soon." Tammy laughed. She stood up and stretched, then looked at Carter. "Let's go get something to drink, it feels like that machine sucked all the water out of me."

"I wanna hear about Andi and Wilkins," Carter said as she took Tammy's hand and headed for the kitchen. "She just doesn't seem like his type."

Interior-Kitchen

1835 Hours

"So Sgt. Wilkins likes milf's, huh?" Tammy said as Samuels walked into the kitchen.

Sam and Jennifer giggled, and Sam hit Tammy on the arm. "You weren't supposed to say anything!" She laughed.

"What? How di..." Andi said, her face coloring as she looked at the three women giggling like schoolgirls around the table. "You." She said, looking at Jennifer. "Who have you been talking to? And what did they say?"

"Nothing really," Jennifer grinned. "I heard a few of your boys talking in the Infirmary, and it seems that whenever you take them food, you and the sergeant disappear, and when you come back...well, it's pretty obvious what they think." She looked up at Andi. "And last night, when you mentioned his name, your eyes kind of glazed over."

"Really?" Sam asked. "I didn't notice that."

"That's because I am a trained medical professional, and know to look for little things like that." Keller said smugly. "Now come on," She said, grabbing Andi's hand and pulling her down into a chair. "Fess up. I want to hear everything!"

Andi pushed her away and stood up, going to the fridge and getting a bottle of orange juice, then a glass from the cabinet. "We're just friends, Jennifer," She said as she poured a glass. "Okay, okay. Friends with benefits. It's nothing serious. We just, you know, like each other."

She came back over to the table and sat down, looking at each of them. When her eyes returned to Keller, she leaned forward. "Jennifer, you are not going to believe this." She said slowly.

Keller leaned forward eagerly. "Yeah?"

"But you really have to get laid. Soon." Samuels grinned, then sat back and looked over at Sam and Tammy.

"Just tell him, Jennifer." Tammy said. "I doubt if he'll say no, he's a guy for god's sake. And he's probably interested too!"

"Enough about my sex life, and Jennifer's lack of one." Samuels said as she leaned forward, resting her arms on the table. She looked at Carter, then glanced at Tammy. "What kind of mischief have you been up to today."

"Let's see." Carter said lightly. She leaned back in her chair and started ticking things off on her fingers. "I did a test on my STM bridge, and ran the building off of it for a few hours. Jenn talked to Sheppard, and we're on for a meeting with the IOA tomorrow. We got some of the ancient medical gear, or at least the stuff that wasn't bolted down, it's in one of the suites down on thirty-one." She paused, looking back and forth between Tammy and Jennifer. "Anything else?"

"You forgot to mention that we activated my ancient gene." Tammy said.

"And you left out the part where you taught her ancient with that machine we found."

"So I'd have to say nothing out of the ordinary, Andi." Carter grinned. She looked around the table. "Who's cooking tonight? Jenn, you any good in the kitchen?"

"Useless. My favorite thing to make for dinner is reservations."

"Did you say she used an ancient machine on Tammy?" Samuels asked Jennifer. "And you let them? I can understand Sam, or even Tammy doing something wreckless like that, but you dressed me down and wanted to fire me for flying by the seat of my pants. It sounds like you forgot to put yours on!"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Andi." Tammy said lightly.

"You know what I meant, and I'll get to you in a minute." She looked around the table, but before she could say anything else. Sam spoke up.

"I read the manual, Andi." She said. "Well, the help files actually. I had a pretty good idea what it would do, and how to operate it."

"I told her to do it, after we activated my ancient gene." Tammy added. "You need to see the initial scans the machine did. Once you do, you'll understand why."

"And I gave Tammy the gene therapy once we heard that she'd never gotten it." Jennifer said. "And I need you to give it to me later, I never got it either."

"We didn't just grab a machine, and go, 'hey, what's this do?'" Sam said.

"Actually, that's exactly what you did, Sam. You just didn't ask the question out loud." Tammy said. "We had just finished moving all that gear over here, and Sam was telling us what the different machines were, apparently they're labeled. She picked up a headset from the teaching machine, because she thought it was turned off, and put it on, just to see how it felt I guess. And it scanned her."

She got up and filled her glass from the tap. "I told her that the machine had gone active, and she looked at the readout on it. Then she scanned me, and got all excited." She sat back down and looked at Samuels.

"We weren't being wreckless, Andi. Once we knew what it was, and part of what it did, we brought it up here and checked it out. Sam spent almost an hour going over the manual, then once we knew that the gene therapy had taken, I decided to go for it."

She looked at Sam and smiled, then looked over at Jennifer before she looked back at Andi.

"I can read, write and speak ancient now. I think it was worth the risk."

"You got lucky." Samuels said. "But you're probably right. I would have done the same thing in your place." She paused, looking at Tammy. "You can really speak ancient?"

Tammy nodded. "Reading and writing it will come in handier, no one else around here speaks it." She glanced over at Carter and grinned.

"She thinks she's so smart now. Look at me, I'm ancient girl." Sam said in a mock huff. "Don't forget who got there first girlfriend. If I couldn't read it, you wouldn't be talking it."

"Go ahead, have your fun, but all of you know that you got lucky." Samuels said. "Can I suggest we hold off using any more of those devices and machines until Tammy and Sam can go through them, and read the manuals, help files, or whatever? They may look benign, but we don't know what they may do on an individual basis. And I'm talking about both the machines, and to the people involved."

"I don't think that's a bad idea." Keller added. "We can use the time to monitor Tammy for any unexpected side effects."

"And how are we supposed to know what counts as an unexpected side effect?" Tammy asked.

"Growing another head would be bad, I bet." Carter pitched in, earning her a glare from Keller.

"Nah, then I'd be twice as smart as you." Tammy told her. She turned back to Keller. "Seriously, Jenn. What would you suggest I look out for, and don't say 'anything', I hate it when people do that."

"I really don't know what to tell you Tammy. But I think the place to start is in the ancient's medical database. They probably had some problems with some of these machines when they were used on the general population. Some of them had to have had some kind of negative side effects, and there should be some documentation."

"Or their research files. They tested them somehow, or on someone, that might be a good place to look too." Andi offered. "Now that there are two of you that can read them, it should go half as fast."

"I'm going to need my own terminal up here." Tammy said to Carter. "We ca..."She stopped, and turned, looking at Andi. "You made a funny. Did you hear her?" she asked Carter. "Two of us can get it done half as fast..."

"I heard her. She boned us." She looked at Tammy. "What do you think we should do about that?"

Andi was on her feet heading for the door before Sam finished speaking, and was moving at a run by the time they got to the doorway. By the time they got to the end of the hall, the porter doors were closing in front of her. She smiled and waved at them.

"There's always tomorrow!" Tammy yelled. "And I'm coded to open your door." She said to herself as they turned back toward the kitchen.

Interior-Office

2050 Hours

"I've got the outline for my proposed department finished, but I'm not sure what to do about the compensation package. I'm sure they'll ask for that up front." Carter said to Tammy.

Tammy was standing across the room, in front of her own terminal. They had moved two more of the ancient computers up into Carter's office from suites on one of the lower floors. There was a diagram of one of the ancient medical devices on the wall screen in front of her, and she was skimming through it quickly.