"Stargate-Crossed" - Part Three

 

Part Three

            “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me!” An incredulous Jack O’Neil berated. “Parallel universes?! Gimme a break!”

            “It’s all true, mate,” Maureen told him, smiling with her arms folded. “Don’t get me started on how I’ve met three other blokes who look just like you. One of ‘em even tried to kill me!”

            O’Neil glimpsed over at Jackson, who had the biggest grin on his face. “You absolutely love this, don’t ya?”

            “Are you kidding?” Jackson scoffed. “To find out that not only do other planets exist and the pyramids were built on them, but also that there are parallel universes…this is the best day of my life!”

            “Well, I’m glad to hear that, Daniel,” Jack patronized. “But, in case you’ve forgotten, we’re all stuck here, because you can’t dial the Stargate and get us back home!” It was a harsh reminder to Jackson, who nonetheless maintained a positive attitude.

            “That pyramid we arrived in lacked the cover stone with the proper coordinates for a return trip,” the Doctor noted. “I’d hoped there would be one – it would’ve made things so much easier.”

            “That was my hope as well before we got here,” Jackson coincided.

            “I have a better exit strategy,” said Maureen, who quickly became the center of everyone’s attention, including the Doctor. Between the presence of her future mentor/friend and her commitment in keeping him from discovering who and what she was, she diverted the attention over to the one person who practically welcomed it. “And by ‘I’, I mean ‘Craig’.”

            Craig stiffened at the utterance of his own name. “What? Me?”

            “Yes, you,” Maureen verified. “Don’t you remember Neas’s gift to you? That sonic-powered crystal you can summon his TARDIS with? Like the one you have at the top of your staff right now?”

            It took Craig a moment to follow her clues, not until she uttered them in verbatim.

            “Oh, yeah!” he joyously beamed in recollection.

            “Wait, that’s what your staff crystal’s been this whole time?!” a surprised Kelsey exclaimed. “It’s a real space crystal?!”

            “Space crystal,” J.P. muttered, virtually mesmerized by the artifact embedded at the head of Craig’s staff, which – until that very second – he had always given a passing thought to.

            “Sorry I couldn’t tell you guys about it before,” Craig said. “But wait ‘til you see what it can do!” He proceeded in aiming the staff towards one unoccupied space of the desert region and concentrating as hard as he could. Nothing happened, which made Craig wonder if he was following Neas’s directions correctly.

            While all eyes were on Craig and his staff, Maureen reached into her coat pocket to retrieve her sonic screwdriver. She discreetly pointed it at the staff crystal. It was actually sonic-powered, but not in the way Neas led Craig to believe when he gifted it to the boy. The crystal could only be powered by a sonic device, much like the Gallifreyan tool Maureen had in hand.

            With the press of a button, she activated the crystal on Craig’s staff, which glowed congruently with the tip of Maureen’s sonic. Craig was overjoyed to see it working; everyone else (especially J.P. and Kelsey) were mesmerized by the otherworldly power of the staff. They were even more amazed once the tall, black rectangular shape of Neas’s Type-Z TARDIS began to materialize at the spot where Craig aimed.

            “It’s working! It’s working!” Craig cheered.

            O’Neil removed his sunshades to get a better look at the bizarre scene unfolding in front of him. “What is that?!”

            “That, Colonel, is our way off this sandbox of a planet,” a hopeful Dwonch said.

            “The sound that it makes…and the way it materializes out of thin air,” Jo observed. “It’s a lot like your TARDIS, Doctor.”

            The Doctor’s focus on the tall, black rectangular (and translucent) structure flared in recognition. “So it would appear, Jo.”

            Maureen began to suspect something when her TARDIS struggled to fully materialize. She kept her hold on the sonic for as long as she could, just as Craig did with his staff. Unfortunately, she lost her hold on the ship, and it vanished back into the dimensional plane from whence it came.

            What seemed like a huge prospect for returning everyone to their respective times and dimensions was now a huge loss. Craig couldn’t believe that he failed his friends and the grown-ups. He looked on his staff, specifically its crystal head, wondering where he might’ve gone wrong.

            It didn’t help for him to hear Colonel O’Neil’s men mocking him behind his back:

            “What a crock!”

            “Kid doesn’t even know what he’s doing!”

            “Some toy was gonna get us home? Unbelievable.”

            Their words hurt more than the thought of failing all of them. Tears streaming down his eyes, he ran away from the group. Kelsey and J.P. tried to call him back, but he was already halfway up the nearest ridge.

            Maureen attempted to go after him, until the Doctor stepped in and offered, “I’ll go and get him.” She was grateful for his chivalry, which this Doctor appeared to be chockful of.

            Running across sand was harder than the Doctor imagined, but he toughened through it for the sake of bringing back a 9-year-old boy who he still couldn’t fathom how he ended up in this whole mess. Craig was only a few feet in front of the Doctor as they both climbed the massive ridge.

            “Craig!” he called to the boy. “Come back! Please!”

            Craig heard him but didn’t bother to stop for him. He reached the peak of the ridge and started making his way down the other side. He underestimated how steep it was, tumbling the rest of the way and getting sand all over his clothes and in his eyes. He could barely see anything in front of him.

            And then the world shifted right underneath him and he felt himself tumbling across a hard, metallic floor. The desert heat no longer bore down on him; instead, he was in a nice, air-conditioned space. He still had grains of sand in his eyes, making it impossible to see where he was.

            “Someone owes me a Dave & Buster’s gift card for this,” he heard a gruff-sounding voice say, followed by a loud, disgusting belch.

            “W-Who’s there?” Craig asked, wiping the sand grains out of his eyes to no avail.

            “If you’re expecting me to say ‘Someone who loves you’, this ain’t that kind of story, Franklin.”

            “My name’s Craig!”

            “Yeah, and I don’t care. All we want is that lame staff.”

            Craig never let up his grip on his staff that thankfully made it with him to wherever it was that he ended up. Only now, this gruff-voiced stranger tried to take it from him, but Craig’s grip remained. “No! It’s mine!”

            He engaged in a tug-of-war over the staff with the stranger when another voice (one that Craig recognized) yelled to the stranger, “Rick! You leave him alone right now!” It was Rania, a kind woman who Craig first met in the creek when she got caught in a trap he, Kelsey, and J.P. set outside their clubhouse.

            The stranger named “Rick” let go of Craig’s staff, though Craig hadn’t anticipated the action, falling back on his butt. He again tried to cleanse his eyes, only able to make out two adult shapes in his blurred vision – one was tall and white, the other was black and green (Rania’s signature colors).

            “What’s the matter with you?!” Rania asked Rick. “He’s only 9 years old!”

            “Hey, I thought we were on the doomsday clock here,” Rick argued. “Get the Byzinium crystal from the black kid and bring it back to contain the Cyberium!”

            “Did you really just refer to him as ‘the black kid’?!” Rania fumed. “He has a name, and it’s ‘Craig’!”

            “That’s what I told him!” Craig griped.

            Reminded of his presence there, Rania immediately tended to him. “Aw, Craig, sweetheart. I am so sorry we had to bring you here like this.”

            “Where is ‘here’?” Craig inquired. “I can’t see.”

            “Bless your sweet heart,” Rania said, momentarily leaving Craig’s side to retrieve something to help in his dilemma. “Here. Tilt your head back and keep your eyes open for just a sec.” Craig did as she instructed and, not a second after, his eyes were flushed with cool water. It made his body jolt for a fleeting moment, due to its ice-cold temperature and the unexpectedness of it all. Regardless, it was the remedy Craig needed, as his vision returned entirely. Rania’s gorgeous, smiling face, filled with love and warmth, was the first thing Craig’s saw.

            Craig remembered Rania being a Time Lord just like Neas. In fact, she was what they called a “regeneration” of Neas’s father, Aznavorian. It explained why she was so incredibly paternal (or maternal, in this case), having spent years being a parent to Neas. Craig began to feel safe, knowing that she was there inside of her very own TARDIS, a Type-X model not so different from Neas’s Type-Z. He was so glad to see her that he gave her a big hug.

            “Aww,” Rania gushed, stroking Craig’s low-cropped, curly black hair. “It’s good to see you, too, sweetheart.”

            “Ugh! Gimme a break with all this ‘touchy-feely’ Cartoon Network crap.”

            When Craig heard that gruff, obnoxious voice again, he glanced out from where he buried his face against Rania’s abdomen, spotting a tall, lanky old man with spiky grey-blue hair and a unibrow. He wore a white lab coat and had some sort of green spill on his mouth. He was revolting for Craig to look at, a stark contrast to the beauty of Rania. “Who is that?” he asked Rania of her aged companion.

            Rania barely wanted to acknowledge the old man. After a heavy sigh, she told Craig, “That is a friend of Neas’s. His name is Rick Sanchez.”

            “Why bother making *uuurp!* pointless introductions?” Rick said. “We’re just gonna erase every memory Franklin here has of us.”

            “You’re gonna erase my memories?!” the mortified Craig cried.

            “No, we’re going to do no such a thing,” Rania reassured him. She then glared at Rick and roared, “Can you at least try to show a little compassion?!”

            “Right, right, because he’s nine years old and blah-blah-Stop-The-Bullying whatever,” Rick dismissively blathered. “How ‘bout we just cut to the chase and tell him why we whisked him away from his playground dimension and into our nightmare scenario.”

            “You didn’t take me out of my dimension,” Craig said. “I was already out of my dimension.”

            This news astounded Rania. “You mean you’re already on a journey with Neas?”

            “Not really,” Craig clarified. “Just some weird British lady who seems to know a lot about his TARDIS.”

            Rick’s ears tickled at the description Craig gave. “Did your big, puffy lips just say ‘British lady’?” A creepy smirk slithered upon his wrinkled face. “And here I thought this trip was gonna be boring! Her name’s Maureen and she’s another regeneration of your pride and joy, Aznavorian.”

            “She’s Neas?!” a flabbergasted Craig reiterated. “How can that be?!”

            “The same way this sexy Lebanese brunette in the tight pants you’re so clingy with used to be an old white dude like me,” Rick told Craig.

            “Miss Rania?”  Craig spoke with deep concern in his voice. “What did you guys mean when you said ‘nightmare scenario’? Is there something really bad coming and that’s why you need my staff?”

            Rania glared at Rick, wishing he hadn’t been so blunt.

            Rick, however, treated their dire situation exactly how it was. “One way or another, you’re gonna have to tell him,” Rick advised her. “His world could be the next one they tear apart.”

            “Who’s ‘they’?” Craig asked.

            Rania sighed. She didn’t want to get Craig involved any further. But, with no other choice, she went to the control console of her TARDIS and pulled a lever that opened the door leading out of it. Craig looked out into the dark, apocalyptic setting outside, no longer in the hot alien desert planet where he was before. Beyond the horizon, he could see large flying ships and the top halves of massive tanks that rolled by, firing lasers.

            Nothing was more unsettling to Craig than the robotic parts and human remains littered all over the scorched earth. “What happened here? Is this…my future?” he questioned.

            “No, sweetie…it’s one of multiple futures,” Rania told him. “This is what Neas and I have been dealing with lately – an endless conflict that has been spreading through the infinite D.C. like wildfire. He’s fought it before in a previous regeneration, and he thought it was all over before now. He calls it ‘The Cyber War’.”

            Suddenly, a spotlight shined down from above, cascading over the region of the wasteland occupied by Rania’s TARDIS and drawing that much more attention to it. Rania, Craig, and Rick could hardly see where the light came from. Searching past it, Rania made out an alien spacecraft, immense in size and shaped like a pyramid.

            “That doesn’t belong here,” she discerned right before she was struck by a penetrating migraine that brought her down to her knees. She reactively grasped the sides of her head and groaned.

            “Miss Rania!” Craig yelled. “What’s wrong?”

            The migraine swiftly subsided, permitting Rania to look upwards to the alien pyramid in the sky. “It’s him,” she rasped. “It’s Brainiac.”