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Because everybody loves cookies...
And now back to the long stories. I'm working on several different ones right now ... because I can't seem to settle down to just one. I think I'll give you the first chapter from Cyberia.
No summary, because I'd rather leave you guessing. This chapter is rather a long one, but I'm sure you wouldn't expect that from me...
Chapter One: Rebel Without a Clue
There was a wall in front of his nose.
Sheppard went cross-eyed trying to look at it. This didn't help, and moving his head back a few inches didn't improve matters except to make it less blurry. It was still a featureless gray wall, made of roughly painted concrete blocks. Definitely not an Atlantis wall.
He was standing up, and his head didn't hurt, so clearly he hadn't been slugged, drugged or shot, at least not recently. He simply had no idea where he was.
Cautiously he looked to both sides. He was standing in a short, featureless gray-painted corridor, lit with naked light bulbs that closely resembled the incandescent bulbs of Earth. One end of the hallway terminated in a door bearing a sign in an unfamiliar alien script. The other end made a sharp turn beyond which nothing could be seen. The air was dry and cool, and he could feel the thrum of some kind of machinery through his feet.
Looking down at himself, he was relieved to find that he was fully equipped for a mission, complete with sidearm and P90. The fact that he couldn't remember how he got here, or even what planet he was on, bothered him quite a bit, but at least he seemed to have gotten here under his own power -- or else he had the stupidest captors in the known universe.
Glancing back and forth between hallway and door, he decided to try the door first, if only to make sure that nothing was waiting behind it to attack him. Swinging the P90 into the ready position, he approached with caution and spent a moment glowering at the square white sign with its angular, alien letters. Rodney or Elizabeth would probably take one look at that and spout something like, "Oh, it's the Archaic Linear C script from the second dynasty of PX2-975". All he could tell was that it wasn't Ancient or Wraith.
Thinking of Rodney made him wonder just where exactly the rest of his team had gotten off to. Was he here to rescue them, perhaps? He reached for his radio, started to tap it, then hesitated. If they'd been captured, he didn't want to tip off their captors to his presence. Better to reconnoiter first, try to figure out what was going on, and hope his memory came back before he met somebody and had to decide whether or not to shoot them.
The door had a small handle on his side and he freed a hand from the P90 to give it a gentle tug, flattening himself against the wall as he did so. A draft of cold air hit him, and he saw a shaft with a set of bare metal stairs leading upward. The humming of equipment was louder here. Checking to make sure there was a handle on this side of the door -- which there was -- Sheppard climbed the stairs with his P90 at the ready. He passed two landings, each with a door, and filed them away for future reference. The stairs terminated at a large, heavy, metal-looking door with another sign in that alien script, and a small, deep-set window with frost curling around its edges. The chill in the air was stronger here, and the door, when he laid his hand against it, was almost too cold to touch.
Sheppard peered out through the window and was greeted with the sight of drifted dunes of snow, glittering under a low, pale sun. The bulk of buildings, somewhere off to his right, cast long blue shadows across the snow in front of him, but he couldn't see them from his vantage. He did make note of the thin spires of some sort of communications array, sticking up from a low bunker mostly buried in snow -- judging from the small, bundled figures he could see moving around in front of it, the snow must be at least ten feet deep out there. In the distance the snow dunes stretched out in a featureless white plain to far-off, rolling hills.
Great. Just great. He was on an ice planet. And he still didn't know what he was doing here, or where his team was.
Judging from the antenna array, his enemies (or were they allies? Damn, this sucked) possessed fairly advanced technology, which made him even more reluctant to break radio silence. But the need to find out if the others were all right overrode caution. Sheppard gave his radio a tap and spoke softly. "McKay. You there?"
No answer. He tried again. "McKay. Teyla. Ronon. Anyone?"
The radio remained quiet. Unpleasant flashbacks to being trapped in the time dilation field twitched at him. Well, either his team was cut off or he was. And since he had his weapons and freedom of movement, he would assume for the moment that they were the ones in trouble, not him, and act accordingly.
He stared out the window for a few more minutes, but he was too far away to make out any details of the figures in front of the bunker. Digging out a pair of small binoculars from his vest pocket, he spent a few minutes studying them. Even through the binoculars he couldn't see much; they were featureless blobs in dark parkas. The only thing he could tell for sure was that some of them were carrying guns -- he couldn't see enough to tell what kind, but he could pick out the jutting muzzles of weapons that appeared to resemble assault rifles. Genii, maybe? This could be a Genii outpost like the one he'd watched Ford's gang raid. Technically the Genii weren't enemies at the moment, not entirely, but Sheppard still didn't trust them as far as he could throw Ronon, and he wouldn't put it past them to have done something underhanded again. Something he couldn't remember.
As he turned and descended the stairs to the first landing, he tried once again to penetrate the fog clogging his memories. This wasn't amnesia exactly -- he could remember everything just fine, right up until the point where it all degenerated into a misty haze of broken fragments, and he seemed to be picking up new memories without trouble. He was pretty sure that the part of his life he couldn't remember was only the last couple of days; the last thing he remembered clearly was being on Atlantis, eating lunch in the mess hall with his team. Touching his face, he found only the lightest shadow of stubble, about a day's growth. It seemed likely that he wouldn't pause inside an enemy compound to shave, so presumably he had been here for 24 hours or less.
Wherever "here" was.
Sheppard laid his ear against the door on the first landing. Hearing nothing beyond, except for the constant thump of steadily running machinery which seemed to be ever-present here, he pushed the door open and found himself in another short corridor. It ended in another door with a small window. Sheppard approached along the wall, staying out of line of sight of anyone inside the room, then risked a glance inside. The room was deserted; he saw more gray walls, with tables along them containing boxes. It was dimly lit and drab.
Sheppard tried the door, found it locked. So much for that direction. As he started to turn away, movement from inside the room caught his attention. A door was opening.
Watching quietly from the corridor, Sheppard saw a young man enter the room. He was a total stranger, not more than about twenty or twenty-one, with close-cropped blond hair. His uniform was gray, generic military, and he held an assault rifle in his hands, like the ones the men outside had been carrying.
The young man closed the door behind him and took a cursory look around the room, poking his gun into the corners in an absent-minded sort of way. Sheppard wondered if the soldier might be searching for him, but if so, there didn't seem to be any urgency associated with it. He had more of a security-guard look to him; Sheppard got the impression that he was going through a well-rehearsed beat that he'd done a thousand times.
After checking the room, the man cast a quick glance around in a time-honored "checking for superior officers" sort of way -- Sheppard knew it well; he'd done it enough times himself -- and then took out a metal hip flask and knocked back a quick swig. He shivered, drank again, wiped his mouth and put the flask away. Sheppard held still, waiting for him to leave, but instead he came across the room towards the other door.
Dammit.
Sheppard started to withdraw quickly, but paused upon seeing the young soldier take a card from his pocket and swipe it through some sort of reader hidden from view. The door made a soft click. So, you needed a key card to get around in here. He'd better get himself one of those. Unfortunately, the only one immediately available was the one in the young soldier's hand ... and he wanted it. Needed it.
The door opened about halfway, just long enough for the erstwhile security guard to take a half-assed look down the hall, then started to shut again. Sheppard, hiding behind the door, lashed out and knocked the door against the man's body. Lunging around it to find the startled guard staggering, he knocked him flat with the butt of his P90 and gave him another blow to make sure he stayed down.
He really didn't want to kill anyone until he figured out if these people were on his side or not, so he tied up the young guard with zip ties -- never leave home without them -- and kicked the rifle out of sight under a table, noting in passing that it looked so much like an AK-47 that he half expected to see "Kalashnikov" stamped on the barrel. It was definitely not a Genii gun. He found a radio in one of the guard's pockets and stomped on it to ensure that no calls for help would be going out anytime soon.
The thought of stealing the soldier's clothes crossed his mind, but the other man's uniform looked so much like his own -- just basic grayish fatigues, no doubt used on a dozen worlds -- that he could probably pass for local about as well as he'd be able to in somebody else's ill-fitting uniform. He hunted about for the key card and picked it up off the floor.
A faint moan alerted him that the soldier was regaining consciousness. Sheppard hesitated and decided to let him wake up in the hopes of learning something about where he was. When the young man's head turned towards him, Sheppard said, "Howdy."
The soldier's eyes widened and he let loose with a quick string of words that were in an utterly unfamiliar language.
"Do you understand me?"
More babbling. By all evidence, the answer appeared to be "no".
Team Sheppard's usual luck was obviously in full swing: they appeared to have discovered the one planet in the Pegasus Galaxy where they couldn't make themselves understood. Sheppard sighed and slugged the guy again, then gagged him with a strip of his uniform.
He took a quick glance at the key card. It had a small, grainy picture of the blond soldier, hardly recognizable-- photographic technology didn't appear to be very advanced on this world -- and more indecipherable local script. Well, better avoid ID checks, because there was no way he was passing for a twenty-something blond kid, no matter how bad the picture was. Besides, if he didn't speak the local language, he'd be screwed the first time someone tried to talk to him.
He found that the door into the room didn't have a key-card scanner, and wasn't locked. Well, that made some kind of sense. The exits were all protected, but within the facility, there was no need to protect each and every storeroom.
Onward and upward.
The door led to a more well-lit corridor with several more doors along it, some closed and some half-open. Sheppard noted that none of them had key-card scanners, but the door at the end of the hallway did. And from behind that door, he heard the sound of distant, female voices, getting louder. As the door started to open, he ducked through the first partially open door he saw, and found himself in what was obviously another storeroom. He watched through the doorway as two young women in lab coats entered, talking softly to each other in that strange, slightly harsh language. He didn't understand a word they were saying, although there was a nagging familiarity to the cadence of the language, and the feeling haunted him that he really should recognize it.
One of the women opened a door across from him in the hallway. They both ducked inside and emerged moments later, each carrying a box. One of them said something; the other blushed and laughed. They went back up the hallway and opened the door at the end. Sheppard, craning his head incautiously around the door to follow their progress, jumped back as both of the young women leaped in the air, letting out shrieks. Something dark had darted between their legs as soon as the door opened. It shot down the corridor, straight toward Sheppard, and flashed past his feet before he could see what it was, vanishing into the shadows.
Sheppard realized that he had his P90 out and was moving it wildly around the room, not sure where to point it. Outside in the corridor, he could hear a single set of footsteps tapping his way. Shit. He ducked behind the door and flattened himself against the wall. He really didn't fancy having to tie up women, especially attractive young women. He could hear one of the women call down the corridor, and the other answered in a laughing voice. Whatever had just run past his foot must not be dangerous, at least not too dangerous, because they sounded more amused than scared.
The door opened wider and Sheppard saw a hint of blond hair swishing past the doorframe as the woman leaned inside. "Eigen?" she called. "Eigen, Eigenevska, Eigen!" She sounded as if she were calling a dog, but that sinuous bit of darkness had definitely been no dog.
No answer. She was so close that Sheppard could smell her perfume, a light floral scent.
"Eigen?" the woman said again, and the other woman said something from farther up the corridor, laughing. Sheppard caught the word "Eigen" in there somewhere. It had to be either the name of the thing, or its species.
"Eigen!" With an exasperated sigh, the blond woman crouched down and held out her hand. "Eigen --" and then more words he couldn't understand. But apparently Eigen could, because something uncoiled within the shadows of the room, moving with a slow flicker. "Eigen!" the woman cried and pounced. Sheppard hastily tried to become one with the wall, for she'd just lunged into the room and if she'd looked his way, she would have easily seen him. But she was focused on Eigen, whatever it was; Sheppard could only catch a flash of fur and a glimmer of metal before she had turned away and vanished from his viewpoint back out into the hall. Both women laughed and he could hear them cooing over Eigen as their footsteps tapped away and were cut off by the closing of the door.
Sheppard slumped against the hall and let out a long sigh. What the hell had that creature been? Whatever it was, it had at least two of the inhabitants of this complex wrapped around its finger ... or around whatever appendage it had in lieu of fingers.
After giving the women a few minutes to move along, Sheppard opened the door at the end of the hall with his stolen key card and cautiously put his head around the corner. Another corridor, with more of the damn things branching off. The place was a maze, and he still didn't know its function, although he was starting to get an idea. The two women had looked like scientists, but the well-armed guards lent a military aspect to the place -- so, some sort of military research facility, perhaps?
"McKay. Teyla. Ronon." He hated to use the radio again, knowing that radio communications were known to these people, but he didn't think he could spend much time wandering around a place as obviously well-trafficked as this one without being discovered. The radio was the best way to locate his people quickly, if they were within range and still in possession of their equipment.
"McKay. Rodney. Come in. You'd better not be sulking, dammit." Rodney had a bad habit of turning his radio off when he got into a snit. But Teyla certainly didn't, and she wasn't answering either.
He thought about trying to pass them a message, in case they could hear him but couldn't answer. He gave up on the idea when he realized that he had no idea what to say to them, considering his cluelessness about the whole situation. "I'm coming to save you" was a pretty dumb thing to say if the rest of his team were actually all enjoying a cup of tea with their hosts and waiting for him to show up so the main course could be served; it was an equally stupid thing to say if psychotic Genii wannabes were listening on this frequency.
His head snapped up at a sudden sound. It wasn't loud, but it was disturbing because it hadn't been there a minute ago, and it was getting louder. He recognized it, after a second, as the sound of booted feet clanging on metal stairs. With all the doors and stairs, he couldn't tell where it was coming from -- in front, behind, above. But he suspected it had something to do with him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! He'd known better than to break radio silence in possibly hostile territory, and he'd gone and done it anyway. If I were my own commanding officer, I'd hang myself up by my ears for doing something that dumb.
But the damage was done. Somewhere nearby, he heard a door slam open, heard rapid voices just at the edge of hearing. Whoever these guys were, they didn't impress him as a well-disciplined commando force -- if they'd moved more quietly, they would have been able to get the drop on him with ease. On the other hand, he felt like a rat trapped in a maze; which way was safe, and which way would lead him straight into his pursuers? He could hide in a storage room and hope that they'd overlook him, but if they were really determined to find him, he'd have to fight sooner or later. On the other hand, they were less likely to look behind the keycard-locked doors, but those doors would probably lead to labs or other secure areas which would probably have people in them.
He could now tell that the clanging steps were coming from up ahead, so he went back -- through the doors with swipes of the card, through the room with the bound and unconscious soldier lying on the floor. A quick glance into the stairwell found it empty, so he trotted down the stairs -- mindful of echoes, remembering how well footsteps seemed to carry in this place. He paused at the door through which he'd come -- behind that door lay the corridor where he'd ... awakened, or what? Why the hell did he have that annoying gap in his memory, anyway?
The stairs kept going down, so he followed them to see where they led. Eventually they terminated in a large metal door, locked, with another card scanner. Sheppard hesitated, and swiped his card. The thought occurred to him an instant later that, depending on the level of their technology, they might keep track of everyone's card swipes -- and they might notice if this particular security guard strayed from his regular beat.
Too late now, though. Somewhere above him, a door opened into the stairwell with a loud metallic bang, and he wasted no time in slipping through the doorway in front of him, closing it behind him as softly as possible.
He found himself in what was obviously a lab -- and from his experience with the labs in Atlantis, he could see that this one had been either assembled in haste, or on a very limited budget; perhaps both. The walls were that same dingy cinderblock as the rest of the building, lined with rows of cheap-looking folding tables that did double duty as desk and countertops. Fat bundles of cables were strung everywhere to supply banks of computers, microscopes and other machines whose functions Sheppard could not guess. If he were to venture a guess, the overall level of technology on this world appeared roughly equivalent to Earth -- although he saw a handful of items that might be of Ancient manufacture, not to mention what he was pretty sure was a DHD dialing crystal.
The doors down here were better soundproofed than the ones upstairs, and he didn't hear the light, quick footsteps until just before the door at the far side of the room began to open. By then it was too late.
She was a lean woman in a lab coat, older than the other two women he'd seen, with a clipboard gripped in one hand and her dark hair pulled back severely from an angular face. Seeing him, she froze and watched him with wary eyes. Sheppard froze, too, unsure whether to point the gun at her or try to pretend to be local.
The question was decided for him when she opened her mouth with an annoyed expression and rattled off a stream of words in that unfamiliar language. Still, he gave it the ol' college try anyway. "Sorry, I'm new," he said, lifting his shoulder in what he hoped was a charming shrug.
"Who are you?" the woman demanded, switching -- to his relief -- to accented English. "Are you a spy?"
"Of course I'm not a spy." Sheppard wondered whether or not this was actually true at the moment. "Like I told you ... I'm new. Don't know my way around yet."
The woman snorted. "You actually expect me to believe -- Do you think I am a fool?" Her keen eyes traveled over his uniform and gun before resting on his face.
"You got me. I'm not from around here, and I'm lost. Came in out of the cold. I don't suppose you could tell me where I am?"
The woman's eyes narrowed and she folded his arms, seeming unafraid. "I cannot believe your government would send you here without telling you where you are, and there is no way you could have gotten here on your own. What did they do, blindfold you and drop you from a plane? Clearly you cannot help but know that you are in the kray of Krasnoyarsk, and if you expect more information than that, then you are an even bigger idiot than you look."
"It's the hair that makes you say that, isn't it?" Sheppard said dolefully, while his finger remained lightly on the trigger of his P90, ready to raise it if she made a hostile move. "No matter what I do to it, it simply won't lie down. Now, you said we're in the what of where?"
She was looking at him as if she thought he was insane ... which might be the truth at this point. Slowly, not taking her eyes off him, she started to reach into a pocket of her lab coat. Sheppard's hand twitched instinctively on his P90; the muzzle jerked upward a few inches. The woman nodded very slightly, as if confirming to herself what she already knew. "Am I your hostage?" she asked.
"If that's a weapon or a radio in your pocket, then I guess you are." Resigned to the inevitable, he finished bringing up the rifle.
"Radio," she said.
"Take it out, put it on the floor and kick it over to me."
"And if I do not, you'll shoot me?" Her tone was dry and cold.
"Only in the leg," Sheppard said. "I'm a gentleman. Now kick it over here."
She did so. He bent and picked it up, looked it briefly over before slipping it in his pocket. Looked like an ordinary walkie-talkie.
"Now I suppose I should step away from the door, into the room?" Her brow arched. Sheppard got the impression that she was mocking him, in her quiet sardonic way.
"Sure, if you insist."
She did so, and proceeded to sit on a folding chair at one of the banks of computers, laying her clipboard on the table so that her hands were free. "If I'm to be a hostage, I would prefer to be a comfortable hostage," she informed him, crossing her legs.
Sheppard couldn't help liking her. He wished he knew if they were on the same side or not. "Now, you may find this hard to believe, in fact I find it hard to believe myself, but I really don't have the foggiest clue where I am. This place ... in the, er, craw of Karkaroff ..."
"Krasnoyarsk Kray," she said, looking as if she had to struggle to suppress a smile.
"Right. What is this place? I mean, what do you do here?"
The woman cocked her head on one side, studying him. "I cannot believe you do not know ... and yet, you seem sincere," she said, and after a brief hesitation in which she seemed to come to some kind of decision, she continued, "We are a research facility studying alternate power sources, for the benefit of my people."
It sounded like a rehearsed speech. "Alternate power sources, such as? Are we talking wind farms, that kind of thing ... or using vats of human clones as living batteries?"
"I'm sorry, that's classified," she said primly.
"I'm the one with the gun; I'll decide what's classified or not."
He didn't really like playing the strong-arm role, but she showed no sign of fear -- merely tilted her head. "I am not a traitor, sir."
"Fine, forget it," Sheppard said, suddenly tired. He really didn't need to know what they were doing here, after all, as long as she could point him in the direction of a Stargate. "Look, all I want to do is find three people, and then I'll be out of your hair for good. One's a short woman, dark skin, reddish hair. Name's Teyla." He watched her face, but there was not a hint of recognition; either she was a very good actor, or she wasn't involved with any sort of kidnapping scheme. Not sure whether to be relieved or even more worried, he forged ahead. "Then there's a tall guy, I mean really, really tall. Leather coat, tendency to shoot first and not bother asking questions. He's called Ronon. And another guy about my age and height, but, er, less hair. Physicist. Talks a lot, arrogant, condescending, obsessed with technology --" He trailed off at a slight smile on her lips. "What's that for?"
The smile curved a bit wider. "Physicists must be the same the world over, because you sound as if you are describing our Dr. McKay."
She spoke with half-annoyed familiarity, with an undercurrent of something approaching affection, and Sheppard could feel his jaw drop. "You know Rodney?" And what's with this OUR Dr. McKay business, he only just stopped himself from asking.
The woman's brows came together. "You are looking for Dr. McKay?" She laughed. "You actually want him? Even his own commander doesn't want him; that's why he gave Dr. McKay to us."
Now, wait a minute, I wouldn't just trade away Rodney, Sheppard's subconscious protested indignantly. Er ... I really hope I didn't, anyway. He also didn't like this gave him to us business, which made Rodney sound like a slave or a plaything. "Is he all right? If you've hurt him--"
"Hurt him?" She laughed, a sound of amazement. "Do you think that we torture him twice daily? Keep him locked in an unheated stone pit with only his computer for warmth? What sort of vicious rumors do they spread about us in your country?"
"I want to see him," Sheppard said, keeping his P90 fixed on her face.
She snorted another laugh. "Torture him. Unbelievable." One slim hand went out in his direction. "I will need my radio, if you want me to call your, er, 'friend'."
Sheppard hesitated, then reluctantly handed it back to her. She took it, still grinning, and keyed the button while keeping her eyes on him. Sheppard realized immediately that he might have made a mistake when she began speaking rapidly in that language he didn't understand. He recognized "McKay" a couple of times, and then she laid the radio down on the table behind her. "He will be down shortly. Would you care to have a seat?"
"I'd rather stand."
"Suit yourself." She settled herself more comfortably on the chair.
"You're awfully blase about being held at gunpoint. This happen to you often?"
The woman snorted. "If you tell your children bedtime stories at home about my people torturing our captive scientists, how do you think we treat each other? Let's just say I grew up during a difficult time for my country, and leave it at that."
"And your country is called, er, Karsko -- uh, Kroska --"
"Krasnoyarsk Kray?" she said in disbelief. "Is that a serious question? It is true what they say, that you are utterly ignorant of geography outside your own country, aren't you?"
"Me, specifically? I've been around."
"If that's so, then I cannot believe that you don't know the name of the largest country in the world."
Sheppard shrugged. "I'm not from this world. What can I say."
"You're not from ..." Her eyes narrowed. "Did you come through the Stargate? Did Hammond send you here?"
Sheppard registered two important points. One: she'd called it the Stargate, not the Ring of the Ancestors ... which tended to imply extensive contact with Earth. Two: her information was a little out of date. She knew about the Stargate program -- which implied a remarkable level of military intelligence for an off-planet government -- but none of it was recent, since she didn't know that Hammond was no longer in charge of the SGC.
"Yes," he said.
"That is truly amazing." She looked him up and down. "You look perfectly ordinary, except perhaps for the ears. Although I know of the existence of numerous inhabited planets, I have not met an actual, alien human before. How interesting. What do you think of our world?"
"It's cold. Mine's warmer."
She burst into laughter. "It is only cold at this time of year, I assure you. No matter what the Americans may have told you about us, Russia does have a summer."
And with that statement, his whole worldview of where he was and what was going on quietly tilted sideways under him. "Er ... did you say Russia?"
She had opened her mouth to answer when there were rapid footsteps outside the door and the sound of raised voices. A deep voice speaking English with a heavy accent -- which did sound rather Russian, come to think of it -- was saying, "... seemed to know you, Doctor."
"And this was important enough to interrupt me in the lab -- why?" There was no mistaking that peevish voice. "Do you utter clods expect me to drop what I'm doing every time you catch yourselves an American spy? Need I remind you I'm Canadian? It may be on the same continent, but it is a different country, you know --"
The door opened to admit two armed soldiers, who immediately froze and raised their rifles to point at Sheppard. Rodney McKay, still in full rant mode, pushed impatiently past them, ignoring the glares the soldiers directed towards him when he jostled them.
"All right, where is he, Svetlana? If this is so important, then let's see this American who claims to know me."
He broke off, seeing Sheppard, and folded his arms over his chest in a pose Sheppard automatically recognized as his defensive, "I hate all of you people" posture. Glaring with thinly disguised hostility -- and not a hint of recognition -- he demanded, "Well? They said you asked for me by name. Who the hell are you and what are you doing here? Did Hammond send you to fuck up my life even more?"
Sheppard just stared, not so much at the words and tone -- having Rodney yell at him was hardly a new experience -- but more at the sight of Rodney himself. This wasn't McKay. Well, it was, but it wasn't Atlantis's McKay. This was a younger model. He was thinner, lighter, less muscular, with longer hair that fell over his forehead and made him appear even younger than he was ... which, from looking at him, was probably about thirty-two or thirty-three.
Based what little he knew of Rodney's life before Atlantis, Sheppard realized that in addition to having just discovered where he was, he also knew when he was, if not exactly how.
2002 hadn't been a good year for him, and it wasn't looking as if it would improve on the second go-around, either.
And there's your cookie ...
Looking up Siberian place names made me laugh, because they really do sound like they're on another world. Who could blame Sheppard for jumping to conclusions.