ten_fwd | Arrival

He woke up to the odd sensation of not being able to feel the earth beneath him and, instead, feeling an odd vibration in the air. It was also very bright out and he found himself surprised at that because usually he rose with the sun, it's power energizing him as it broke over the horizon. Except that he was feeling energized - more so than he'd ever felt before. It was like the sun was close enough to touch and his whole body could feel it's power rushing through him. Wan took a deep breath and then let it out as he stretched and opened his eyes, a small jet of flame lazily arcing up just beyond his lips.

The oddly contented feeling he had from it was abruptly ended once he got a good look at his surroundings. He was in some sort of strangely colored room made of some sort of wood or non-stone he couldn't feel and there were brightly shining lamps that clearly burned - he could feel the heat in them - without producing flame. All around him were tables with plants on them. It was a large room, large enough to be a building all on it's own. On one side were doors and he headed toward them. It was his luck that someone opened them from the other side just as he got near. It was a human woman in strange clothing who stopped in the doorway when she saw him. Wan waved at her, but moved past to get into the hallway beyond. The room was part of a very large building. When he turned around to ask her where he was, the door was already shut. And, even more oddly, he didn't see any handles to open it. Taking his chances, he turned to left and began to wander.

A Turbo Lift

Every so often Wan dragged a hand along the wall of the long hallway he walked down. He passed many of those same doors without handles and they seemed to go on forever. Each of the doors had a strange plaque to the side of them, with symbols he didn't recognize. It was obviously a way to label them, because with a building this large, they needed to label the rooms, but he didn't understand any of the labels.

He passed many more humans dressed in those strange outfits and at this point he was certain he must have gotten himself onto some new, very foreign, Lion Turtle City that used something other than stone to build with. He still hadn't figured out how the lighting worked, or how they opened the doors. And so far all of the people walking the halls had ignored him after a cursory glance. All busy with something, some carrying strange tablets in their hands.

Wan lucked out when one of the doors near him opened up into a small room and one of the strange humans stepped out of it. Finally a door had opened! Wan ducked inside the tiny room and pressed his hands against the walls. He didn't really care what the room was for, he just wanted to get out of that endless hall. But then the floor gave a soft lurch - one he could just barely feel - and he got the sense that he was moving for some reason. When the doors next opened, there was another person there and when they got on, Wan lifted a hand to wave at them.

"Hello," he said, voice and smile bright, "I'm Wan. Do you know where I am?"

The door to Ten Forward

Wan had managed to get directed to 'Ten Forward', a gathering place of some sort. But so far, he'd gotten stuck at the door. He hadn't realized until he tried to go inside that the doors opened for him. Completely on their own. All the doors he'd passed, they could have opened for him just by him standing a little too close a little too long. Now that he realized this, he was taking the opportunity to try it out.

By going through the doors to Ten Forward over and over and over and over and over and over...

So far he hadn't noticed anything else about the place. Just that door. That fascinating door.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jonas had come to Ten Forward intending to try one of the unfamiliar teas on the list he'd gotten from his research with the ... replicators. (It's still kind of hard to remember that word means something completely different here, but they're definitely not self-replicating robots intent on overrunning the Asgard home galaxy, so they're okay.)

He's distracted from his intentions, however, when he walks into Ten Forward and selects a table only to notice a man, standing by the windows, staring avidly into space with an expression of rapt fascination on his face.

"I'm uh ..." he says, wandering over with his notebook under his arm and a friendly smile on his face, "I'm guessing you're new here."

[ I apologise for being so slow, I am terribly sorry! But here is Jonas. ]

Wan tore his eyes away from the window and looked at the man. He was still too dazed to smile properly, but he nodded with a slightly zoned out expression, "Yeah. I am."

He gave Jonas a quick glance over before continuing, "You aren't dressed like most of the humans here. Are you from a different city, too?"

[[Not a problem!]]

The man looks completely stunned. Jonas gives him a sympathetic smile. 'New' is a relative term here, but he's guessing by the way he's staring that the man is somewhere at the very very start of his stay on the Enterprise.

There are clues in what he says that would give the observant some information about where he's come here from, too. The matter of fact use of the word 'humans', like meeting people who aren't human isn't entirely new to him, but also the use of the word 'city', instead of 'world', or 'planet'. And, of course, there's the way he's looking at the stars.

"You could say that," Jonas agrees. "I've been here for a while though."

He pauses, but when he speaks again, his smile is as friendly as he can make it, showing the dimples in his cheeks.

"I'm Jonas."

"I'm Wan," he replies, smiling back with a broad grin. "How long have you been in this city? What city are you from?"

It's nice to get a response from somebody that's as friendly as Jonas' own greeting, if not more so. He'd kind of got a little out of the habit of expecting that serving on SG-1. Some of the people here have been friendly (John the scientist in particular), but few of them this friendly.

Most people when they've arrived, Jonas included, have been confused.

This man seems excited.

Jonas can understand that.

"A few months. I'm ... from a place called Kelowna City."

Not that he expects to be back there any time soon, but it's still his home, refuge on Earth or not.

"Never heard of it," he replied cheerfully with a shrug as one hand settled onto his hip. "But I've never heard of a lot of cities. Even most of the ones on my world I hadn't known existed until I left the city I grew up in. This place, this city between the stars... it's amazing."

Wan's voice got a little wistful and he eyes drifted back to that view, "I've never been as high as the stars before."

Jonas has to grin at the cheerful way the man admits he hasn't heard of Kelowna City. Jonas wouldn't have expected him to; until SG-1 arrived and expanded the galaxy right to their doorsteps, it had been so long since his people had visited other worlds that they hadn't known how.

"Yeah," he agrees. "I kinda know what you mean."

Jonas' horizons have expanded a lot over the past months. He remembers what it was like to stare out at the stars for the first time like that, to find out there were other worlds, to suddenly have a whole galaxy open before him instead of just one nation on one isolated planet.

"I couldn't stop smiling my first time in space."

"Yeah." He was pretty much in the same boat on that whole can't stop smiling thing.

"It's so strange, though. To not be able to feel any earth. Instead, it's just this strange vibration of the not-earth that makes up the City-Ship's walls."

It's become pretty much a running joke among the members of SG-1 that Jonas smiles, sometimes at moments they'd consider inappropriate. He can't help it: he takes joy in the marvels around him, in new experiences, in expanding his knowledge and understanding of the world around him.

He understands the feeling of strangeness, too. For him, though, that's always been a part of the appeal.

"There's a lot to get used to," he agrees, but his smile hasn't faded. "I've never spent this long in space before. I've lived in planets my whole life until now."

Wan and Jonas were very very similar in their enjoyment of discovery. He loved what he was learning right now, at this very moment. It was breathtaking and amazing and an experience he would cherish. It was also one that would eventually get old and tiring in the next few months because everything was so very out of balance on the ship. Fire was too strong, water was too weak, air was strangely 'stale' and moved unnaturally, and earth was non-existent...

But at this moment, he was enraptured with the view and with being somewhere no one on his world could go.

"But you've been in the space between the stars before, then," he said, catching onto the 'before' in his statement. Then moving on to the curiosity of having lived on 'planets', plural. "How many worlds have you lived on?"

Technically, the existence of the Stargate Program and everything to do with it is a closely guarded secret. Jonas has an unfortunate tendency to become so excited he forgets about this, even though Kelowna, too, keeps its Stargate a secret from the other nations on their world. It's simply such an amazing experience that it's hard not to talk about it.

Jonas knows the rules, of course; he's read them in quite some detail. It's simply hard not to be as caught up in this as he is, as Wan is, and not want to share his experiences. Of course, on other worlds, there's nothing preventing them talking about the Stargate network, and this man may be from any world.

Besides, when they're on a starship in the future, the idea of secrecy seems a little far from ordinary considerations.

"Yeah," he agrees. "I haven't been doing it for very long, but I've been in space a few times."

He gives a smile that borders on a chuckle.

"Just the two. I haven't been hopping around between planets or anything like that."

He does miss his home. If things had been different ... but if they had, he'd never have joined the Stargate Program, and he wouldn't change that for anything.

"Two is more than I've ever been on. The spirit world is another world, but it's also a part of my world. It sort of rests right alongside it. Or over it. It's on a different plane of existence that's connected to the material plane... Anyway, it's not the same as visiting a whole different world by traveling the space between the stars," Wan babbled on, thoroughly enchanted. "Will you tell me about those worlds?"

Arrival

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sorry for the late, life got busy

no worries, totally understood :)

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