#4 in the Life's Little Problems Series
Color Outside the Lines
A Little!Danny fic by: Maj. Cliffhanger
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Part 19
Jason glanced around in curiosity as he followed Danny and Col. Carter into the secret lab. A secret lab in a secret base doing secret work on secret stuff.... It was cool to be in on it - even if only a little bit. It wasn't cool that he couldn't tell anyone about it; but then, he reasoned, it wouldn't be secret anymore if he told, so not telling anyone was ultra important - which was why his dad hadn't been able to tell them about it at all. Mom was going to be pissed when he told her the truth....
Jason knew he shouldn't say 'pissed.' 'Pissed' was a bad word. But he hadn't said it; he'd just thought it, so as long as he didn't say it no one would know. It was kind of a weird way to say someone was mad anyway. Pissed meant having gone pee, right? How could it mean being angry too?
The lab was boring. It looked like everywhere else he'd seen in this place - all gray walls and florescent lighting, walls of machines with blinky lights and big gray desks and computers ... not a whole lot else. He'd been hoping they'd see some alien machines or animals or something, but the room was pretty empty. There were a couple of laptops and some other stuff on the two tables, and one of the laptops was hooked up to a weird gray box thingie. That must be what Col. Carter said they were testing, but it wasn't very interesting. It looked kinda old but not very alien.
"Weird," he decided out loud. "We've been studying different kinds of cultures and stuff in school and that kinda reminds me of a picture of a Mayan pyramid." He turned to Danny. "Were they aliens too?"
"One of their gods was a Goa'uld," he answered simply.
"Danny!" Col. Carter protested.
"What?"
She sighed and shook her head.
"I already told him all about the Goa'uld, Sam," Danny answered her look. "He knows they impersonated various gods and kidnapped humans from Earth to use as slaves throughout the galaxy. Why shouldn't I tell him Chak was one? Jason's not going to tell anyone and no one would care if he did." He turned back to the other boy. "That was very smart by the way. You're right, it does look Mayan; but it's a lot older than that. The symbols on it are in a language we call 'Ancient' - they're another alien race that died out a long time ago. Well, they didn't really die out, they--"
"--Danny!" Carter interrupted more firmly, turning from the laptop yet again.
"Right!" He slapped his forehead dramatically. "I haven't told him about the Ancients. He doesn't need to know that." He turned to Jason and shrugged. "Sorry."
"How come you get to know so much about all this stuff?" Jason asked, not angry or anything - though it didn't seem all that fair to him - but more confused than anything. He knew what top secret meant and he knew kids weren't supposed to know that sort of stuff, so why did Danny?
"Danny's dad used to work here," Col. Carter answered quickly, turning her attention back to the note she was trying to write for Dr. Lee.
"My dad works here too," Jason pointed out, "and he never told us anything." He turned back to Danny with a frown. "I thought your dad flew jets in Iraq? Do you mean he's not lost there but on another world instead or maybe captured by the Goa'uld or something and you just can't tell anyone?"
Col. Carter suddenly looked up from her note and glanced at Danny. Danny bit his lip. Obviously Jason had caught them in a lie - so he must be right. Poor Danny. Having your father be MIA in another country was scary enough; Jason couldn't imagine how scary it must be to not even know what planet he was on!
And then he realized that his own father went to other planets on a regular basis....
"Oh, look!" Col. Carter suddenly exclaimed, changing the subject and pointing at her computer screen. "This is interesting!"
Jason glanced at the screen and frowned in further confusion. There was a weird graph and stuff on the screen that was kinda moving around, but his video games had better graphics than that.
"I'm reading an EM output that keeps fluctuating between high and low frequencies...."
"Are you just trying to distract me so I stop asking questions?" he accused her.
"No!" she answered, then winced and glanced at him. "Okay, maybe," she admitted, turning back to the laptop and typing something in. "But this really is interesting. It means the device we've been studying is interactive."
"Sam...." Danny offered with a warning note of his own.
Jason grinned. Now she was doing it - telling him stuff she wasn't supposed to!
"Yeah?" she asked distractedly, completely missing Danny's message.
Danny sighed. "I think we need to go meet Jason's mom now," he reminded her.
She nodded, still concentrating on the laptop. "Just give me a second to try and stabilize this reading and we'll go...."
Danny rolled his eyes and turned to Jason. "She does this all the time," he claimed with a shake of his head.
Then all of a sudden, there was a blinding flash of light and Jason was grabbing for Danny's arm. They'd told him that Ba'al couldn't get him or Danny while they were on the base! They had some sort of jamming technology that was supposed to make it impossible - but apparently Ba'al had figured out a way around it, 'cause--
The light died as quickly as it rose and Jason blinked his eyes open, expecting to see the inside of Ba'al's space ship again - but instead all he saw was the lab. He and Danny looked at each other, then looked at Col. Carter who was busy blinking at them too and frowning.
"We didn't do it!" Jason claimed quickly, afraid he and Danny were about to get in trouble. He should have left his hands in his pockets rather than grab at Danny, but he'd been scared and-- "Neither of us touched anything. Honest!"
* * *
Sam fought to blink away the last of the bright afterimages that were dancing in her field of vision thanks to that flash and quickly reassured the frightened Jason. "It's okay," she told him - thankful that it was. Strange; stabilizing the output frequency shouldn't have produced any kind of effect like that! She turned back to the laptop and noticed that the device they'd been studying suddenly had an orange holographic-like screen projection coming up from it. Okay.... "I think I did that...." she allowed.
"Danny and I aren't in trouble?" the boy specified.
"No, you're not in trouble," she agreed and fought to swallow a smirk - then tossed them a concerned glance. "Are you okay?" She was going to be so dead if either he or Danny manifested any side effect to that strange flash of light.
Jason and Danny glanced at each other and then nodded in unison.
"What is it?" Jason asked, turning back to the device and suddenly finding something interesting in the lab.
The symbols were in Ancient. She glanced at Danny who was frowning up at it. "Can you read it?" she asked.
He offered an uncertain wince. "A little, but it's an older dialect," he decided. "I can probably figure it out, but I'm going to need some of the books in my office."
"'Your' office?" Jason repeated.
"His dad's office," Sam hastily corrected Danny. "He used to come here all the time with him, so it's like it's his office too, you know?" She pasted a smile in place and prayed the boy would accept that - only she knew he wouldn't. Jason frowned up at her in a mixture of confusion and disbelief. He was way too smart not to start to put two and two together here.
Definitely not good, she decided. She needed to get him over to the Mess Hall and his mother.
"Just let me finish this note for Bill--" She reached to pick up her pen again only to have her hand pass right through it - and the table beneath!
Oh, no....
"Bill!" Danny suddenly piped up behind her. Sam turned to see the scientist in question entering the lab, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee and a parfait dish of blue Jello. "Sam was just looking for you."
Bill did not look up as he quickly made his way to the nearest laptop and set the tray down. He removed the bowl of Jello and one of the coffee cups and turned to where Sam stood beside the other laptop - but gave no sign he saw her. With a frown, he noted the half-finished note and moved forward to set the coffee and Jello aside so he could pick it up at the same time Danny moved to to intercept him. "Bill?"
Sam knew exactly what was going to happen. "Danny! Look--"
Bill walked right through him.
"--out...." She winced.
"Whoa!" Jason exclaimed in surprise even as Danny shuddered and spun around to face the man who was now behind him. Jason immediately reached out to tap Danny's shoulder, seeing if his hand would pass through him too - only to discover he was solid. Danny frowned and tapped him back. Jason grinned and tapped him again, a little harder - and suddenly the two boys were in a playful shoving match!
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Sam quickly stepped forward to intervene, grabbing an arm of each and pulling them apart before one of them could manage to hurt the other. What was it with boys and wrestling? "Enough of that!"
They went limp in her grasp and rolled their eyes. Yeah, well, they might not have intended to hurt each other but that didn't keep accidents from happening. She gave them each a warning glare and then turned her attention back to the problem at hand.
Bill had picked up the note and was scratching his head. "'Variable EM output indicates interactivity. Recommend--'" He lowered the note and glanced around in confusion before frowning down at the laptop connected to the device. "What variable output?" he asked.
Sam followed his gaze to where the reading from the device now displayed a constant and steady energy reading.
"Hey! Dr. Lee?" Jason called and even tried jumping up and down. "Are you Dr. Lee? Woo-whoo! Hello?"
"Not again...." Danny sighed, closing his eyes and frowning up at heaven.
"He can't hear you, Jason," Sam stated the obvious for the other little boy. "And he can't see you either."
"Why not?" Jason asked even as he noted the other man about to leave and purposely moved to stand in his way.
"Jason! Don't--"
Too late. Bill walked right though him too.
"Oh, wow!" Jason exclaimed, offering the experience a weird little shimmy as he recovered. "Did you see that? That felt weird! What happened?"
"He walked through you," Danny answered simply.
"We're out of phase," Sam explained and sighed as she frowned at the device. "By initiating it, I must have triggered some sort of localized effect."
"Local meaning us," Danny translated.
Jason had marched over to one of the tables and now tried to slap it, only to have his hand pass right through. "Cool!"
"No," Danny corrected him. "Not cool. I've had this happen to me before and it's not cool at all."
"Why not?"
Sam ignored the question. "We need to find a way to reverse--" Her hands passed through the keyboard of her laptop without effect. She hadn't been thinking before attempting to reverse the algorithm that got them in this fix. She sighed, realizing she couldn't even hit the desk top beside it in frustration!
"We're stuck like this," Danny answered. "No one can see or hear us and we can't touch anything, so no drinking or eating - 'though we probably won't need to."
Sam blinked in surprise. "Why not?"
He shrugged. "I didn't need to last time."
"So how did you get unstuck last time?" Jason asked. "I still say this is kinda cool. It's almost like we're ghosts or something!"
Danny looked to Sam. "I don't remember."
"You got your grandfather Nick to-- That's it!" she exclaimed.
"What?" both boys asked in surprise.
"You're grandfather Nick was able to help you communicate with us because he'd been through a similar experience several years before."
"When he discovered the crystal skull in Belize!" Danny remembered.
"I thought you didn't have any other family?" Jason noted, confused.
"I don't," Danny answered. "Nick went to live with the aliens who helped me get unstuck."
"Nick?"
"He didn't like being called 'grandpa.'"
"Oh." Jason blinked. "So he's not on Earth?"
"No," Sam answered for Danny, "but we have someone here who might be just as good for our needs."
"Who?" they asked in unison.
"Gen. O'Neill," Sam answered with a grin.
"Did he go 'out of phase' before too?" Jason asked even as Danny offered the idea a frown.
Sam nodded. "It was an accident very similar to this one," she claimed, excited by the realization. "We were trying to remove a cloaking generator from a Goa'uld--" She decided to censor herself at the last moment. "Never mind. Just ... something similar happened to him; and because Nick was able to see Daniel; well then, I'm thinking Jack will be able to see us!"
Danny was still frowning, clearly skeptical - but Sam refused to let him dissuade her. It wasn't like they had anything to lose! "Come on," she told the boys, taking them by the hands - it was a good thing they could at least touch each other, she thought. "Let's go find him!"
The three of them gave the closed lab door only a momentary hesitation, then - grinning - they walked right through it and went in search of the one person Sam hoped might be able to help them.