Chapter 23

Chulak

It started as slight fevers and malaise. Over progressive days individuals found themselves bedridden. The numbers of infected continued to rise each day. Soon cases began appearing on Dakara and Goranak. With very little medical knowledge the Free Jaffa Nation asked for the assistance of the Tauri. Advance teams from USAMRIID and the Center for Disease Control were sent.

The virus was like nothing the people of Earth had ever seen before. It had characteristics of familiar strains of hemorrhagic fever, but appeared to zero in on the symbiote and its healing abilities. Teams tracking the virus's path around the planet of Chulak found three villages relatively near one another to be the starting point of the infection. It had been hoped to find the source of the outbreak in the water, the food supply, or something recently moved from off world.

Over the course of tracking the origins of the virus on these worlds Patient Zero was discovered. With every possible source of the origin on the world of Patient Zero checked and rechecked no terrestrial cause could be found. Clearly this was a weapon. This growing outbreak had the potential to quickly become a pandemic on several worlds. The sudden appearance and migration of the virus made it clearer each moment this weapon and its delivery were weaponized. The System Lords had been hunted to near extinction, with only minor Goa'uld's remaining in hiding. This was clearly an attack, but by whom?

Destiny

After conferring at length with the Council of Five Races it had been decided that the Supergate would be constructed within a days FTL jump of the Furling constructed planet along the Destiny's previously traveled path. This change in plans had been received with a sigh of relief from those aboard the ancient vessel. The berserker drones would no longer be a concern.

During the recent weeks since news had broke they would be going home Eli and Dr. Rush had busied themselves with a new discovery since the sh.i.p.s repair. A science lab of sorts had been found in a previously inaccessible portion of the ship. The lab contained sensitive instruments to monitor and record background radiation of all space in which Destiny had traveled. The database represented the efforts of hundreds of thousands of years.

"My original theory that each fragment was a Rosetta stone of sorts hasn't worked out." said Rush.

"I've been thinking about that too. What if we're looking at this the wrong way? If each galaxy contains a unique piece of the message it would be almost impossible to gather them all in any civilizations lifetime. Instead what if this intelligence at the beginning of time left instructions to monitor a specific frequency?" asked Eli.

"And just how would you discern what that frequency is Eli?" demanded Rush.

"You won't want to listen to this, but hear me out. I've been running some numbers, and I may have an answer. What if the message fragments represent a fractal?" asked Eli.

"Fractals can be used in antennae design, or signal compression. If you were to view this information as a fractal and infer chaotic inflation theory held true we might be looking at a massive discovery. Do you understand what this means Eli?" asked Rush.

"Not really, I'm not an astrophysicist remember." reminded Eli.

"We've run across alternate realities before on several occasions in the SGC. That proved the existence of multiple iterations of our own universe in a multiverse. If this proves what I believe it might this could prove something far more exciting." said Rush with a rare sense of excitement.

"Like what?" asked Eli.

"That the big bang was not the beginning of the universe as we know it. That this universe is not the only universe. This would mean that our universe is just one of many bubble universes making space fractal on a much larger scale than imaginable, possibly larger than the observable universe!" exclaimed Rush.

Diving back into their work, the two set about analyzing the data and putting it into fractal form. Once they had an answer they would be able to reconfigure the long range sensors to search for what they now believed might be out there.