Chapter 54: Stargate 8

The banquet hall was packed with people filling the hall with sounds of conversation and laughter. Carl stood at the front of the hall, enjoying the scene as all of his students were enjoying their final party. This was the end of the third time dilation training that he had held to train up some people to help him manage the expanding empire he was building. It had been quite successful, and his students had learned a lot from being forced to teach what they had previously learned.

Most of the time he still referred to his organization as the Fire Crow Organization, since many of the Americans would likely object to building an Empire. But whether he called it a company, an organization, or a school, he was building an organization that would be in charge of the galaxy at some point in the future.

In his first time dilation, he had only had 6 students to teach, in the second he had 36. Each of his disciples had been in charge of 6 students each. And while Carl would like to have continued that trend, he felt that having 252 students at once would be too much for him to supervise properly. So he limited the numbers to only 2 new students for each teacher, which still had the numbers of new students up to 84.

But his students turned teachers had performed admirably and worked hard to bring everyone up to their own standards when they themselves had graduated.

Carl had been especially amused by the Jacks. It was always good for a laugh to see the perpetually snarky men focus their snark on each other.

Teal'c and his family, along with all the other Jaffa, seemed to feel a great sense of loyalty to Carl for the removal of the need for the Goa'uld larva in their gut. And just like the first Teal'c, the second one took to the training like a duck to water.

The Sams had found that they loved having a sister with just as brilliant of a mind as the other to work with. The first time McKay had tried to hit on the "younger" one, he was taught a lesson he wouldn't likely forget by the older one. Sam really didn't appreciate McKay's "charms".

The doubled couple of Daniels and Sha'res worked wonderful together. All four would be working with the diplomatic group, as well as working on recruiting more people into their organization.

Eventually the banquet came to an end and Carl retired for the evening with Alice and Tera. The next day they would be departing time dilation and resuming their work in the galaxy.

Robert Kinsey hated his life. He hated it with a passion.

This morning was a perfect example. He had gotten up early, too early. He then spent a half hour on the treadmill, jogging to keep his health up. He'd always meant to start exercising, but he was too busy to do it before. But now that he was practically a passenger in his body, he couldn't even decide what to do on his own, and it was torture.

Sure, it was good that he was exercising, but having no say in what he did was horrible. The fact that his current situation was basically karmic justice never occurred to the Senator.

After a healthy and foul tasting breakfast, he made the commute to work.

Today he was once more advising the President on how negotiations were going in the Senate. And he could only report that they were going excellently.

Which was a complete and utter lie! They were going horrible! There were at least 37 ways that Kinsey counted where he could pad the proposals but was unable to. It was just the smart thing to do to send some kickbacks to people that had backed him to show how much their continued support meant. But now he wasn't allowed to do it whatsoever. It was infuriating! This wasn't how business was done!

But Kinsey was forced to sit in his mind as his mouth praised the horrible negotiations and proposals. He couldn't even warn anyone about how bad of an idea it was to reach out to other governments to work together on this. Even just making the proposal had hurt his reputation and support amongst his party members.

Besides, it was totally against the plan he and the Committee had made to get rich while benefitting America. Everything should be owned and benefit the Committee, and America. But he and his fellow Committee members had been caught by a devil that enslaved them. It was torture how that devil planned to ruin them and America by inviting in foreigners!

He was even more aghast when his traitorous mouth reported to the President that the negotiations and preparations with the various factions in America would take another 6 months to 2 years, depending on how the negotiations continued until they were prepared to approach other nations. Negotiation and compromise weren't how things were done! If you wanted something done, you had to find some blackmail and hold them over the fire! Maybe threaten their family!

That was the most effective methods. If that wasn't possible, then you bribed the right people and your agendas were fast tracked. If you didn't at least do that your efforts would be dead in the water! This was such stupid doe eyed idealism at work that it made him want to vomit!

Even though he was firmly against whatever that devil was up to, he hated how incompetent that devil was making him look among his peers. He had years of experience doing things the right way among the political elite, and the methods he was now forced to utilize was making him look like a rank amateur. It was sheer torture!

Kinsey wondered just when this nightmare would end. It couldn't be soon enough for him.

After Carl pulled all his people out of the time dilation, he didn't need to direct them as to what they were to do. They had already had many meetings and briefings about what their duties were, so they got to it.

Caladan was starting to look like a very busy place as they brought their new citizens from former Goa'uld territories to populate it. Carl had already had many of the Petes establish large farms throughout the land to make sure his people would have enough food. But there would be new citizens to take over the farms from the Petes once they learned the basic rules of the FCO.

The deadline he had given his people for when they would start their operations against the Goa'uld was three months. In three months time they would attack Moloc's planets and take over.

Three months for his military students to take the various people they had recruited and forge them into a cohesive fighting unit. They had three main groups of recruits. The first group was actually the most diverse. It was any ex military member from Earth that they managed to recruit.

There were many military members from all over the Earth that were medically discharged, but if not for their physical disabilities would have remained in the military of their countries because that was the life they wanted. Quite a few of them were too beholden to their country of origin to sign up with a foreign military organization, but there were quite a few others that were happy to receive healing and training if they could go back to being active military.

The next group was the Jaffa. There were some Jaffa that were identified by Teal'c or Bra'tac that were already a part of the underground Jaffa rebellion against the Goa'uld. Others were Jaffa that were captured on Apophis' invasion Ha'taks that were persuaded to turn their loyalty to their new superiors.

About 30% of Apophis' Jaffa were fanatics that were devoted to their "god" and refused to consider joining up. Carl refused to let those fanatics go and make more trouble for him, so for the time being they were imprisoned. Carl decided to give them one chance. While his campaign against the Goa'uld was ongoing, the fanatics would have access to reports on how their gods were falling. After Carl's forces had disposed of the Goa'uld, if they were still fanatics for their gods, they would be executed.

Their previous actions and refusal to change would just lead to them becoming terrorists against his empire. Carl wouldn't allow them the chance to kill innocent people because they couldn't handle reality without trying to murder people. And he certainly wouldn't allow them to raise children and bring up a new generation of fanatics that would plague his organization.

Most of the rest of the Jaffa were simply living the life they knew. As such, it didn't matter to them who their leader was. Since Carl's forces took them captive, as far as they were concerned their new leader was Carl.

Carl did a quick character check and mind scan of each one to insure they didn't join Carl's army with ideas of sabotaging him from within. Which is how Carl found his first member of the Tok'ra, hiding among the Jaffa.

When Carl found the member of the subversive Tok'ra, who were trying to fight against the Goa'uld tyranny despite being parasite snakes themselves, he realized he had found his opportunity to send a message to the Tok'ra and offer them a place in his organization.

The story behind the Tok'ra was that their progenitor and Queen, Egeria, had been stuck on the planet of the Nox for some time while interacting with the Nox. After many years of not interacting with the arrogant and despotic Goa'uld, or having her mentality twisted by the Sarcophagus, Egeria became clear minded and came to have some amount of respect for other life forms. She believed that the tyranny and slavery of the Goa'uld was wrong. And the young Goa'uld she spawned which became the Tok'ra didn't have the arrogance and disregard for life that the regular Goa'uld did.

Her children took on the name of Tok'ra to indicate they were against Ra, who was the Supreme System Lord at the time. And they continued to fight in the shadows, seeking to topple the Goa'uld rule.

With the opportunity before him, Carl had met with the Tok'ra agent and convinced him to act as a messenger to the Tok'ra council about allying with Carl. At the very least, Carl wanted to be appraised of what missions the Tok'ra were running so his forces wouldn't accidentally be caught in their sabotage against the Goa'uld.

With such an idea, he detailed one of his students to follow the Tok'ra back to his people in his ship. Once there, he placed some stealth satellites to keep an eye on the Tok'ra and make sure their own operations didn't suffer from the actions of the Tok'ra. If the Tok'ra didn't want to ally with Carl now, at least he could avoid friendly fire incidents.

The last group of recruits was the warrior people of Cimmeria. They had a primitive and rough culture, but they loved to fight. The problem was they knew practically nothing about technology beyond blacksmithing and carpentry.

Carl's people were aware of the issues facing integrating such disparate groups with varying culture and tech knowledge into one fighting force. Even the Jaffa didn't have a very good education, despite having worked with advanced technology before. The Goa'uld Slave Lords didn't want their disposable troops to have any ideas above their station, so they never educated them beyond "push this button to do this".

While in the time dilation, Carl's science and tech people devised a device that would, over a period of a few weeks, allow everyone in Carl's army to quickly gain the language and education needed to work together. A common language and basic education would be necessary if the military was to become a unified fighting force.

The learning device was based on the idea of the how the Alteran repositories worked. But instead of forcefully downloading an entire database of information into someone's head, they created a much gentler device that would download information in digestible chunks each night in their sleep. Then, during the day, they would practice what they had learned in the night and make sure the information was available and usable.

They would even be able to enter the virtual reality game world that Carl had set up from the World Seed so they could practice with the various lethal hardware without the risk of death.

The basic plan was to spend the first three weeks making sure everyone spoke the Alteran language and had a basic education on how to use the technology they had designed for the army.

The following two months would be training as a unit to make sure they were ready for battle. Since the first group of people already had some kind of military background, they should be able to pick everything up quickly with the enhanced learning devices.

For the time being Carl's forces would solely consist of an infantry that was modeled after the Earth forces tactics. Carl's military minded students, led by the Jacks and Teal'cs, had spent their free time in time dilation designing energy based equivalents of the Special Forces equipment. They also had designed personal shields, anti-aircraft weapons, and armored hovercraft support for fast movement and taking down well defended positions.

Carl had decided to leave them to their work. Despite his many years of fighting experience, he wasn't a particularly military minded person, and decided to leave it to those who made it their lives to do it the right way. As long as they gave him good advice and results, he was satisfied to let them fix the details the way they thought it should be.

The need to quickly train up their military personnel that led to the creation of the education device. But the use of the quick learning device was also very much needed for the regular citizens. The people they had recruited for the logistics and admin side had a large amount of knowledge they needed to learn in a hurry if they were to support the army. A hungry army wasn't going to march very far, to put it in simple terms. And they needed to learn everything needed to keep the Army well supplied in more than just food.

Even just the new citizens that chose to be simple farmers would need at least the language pack, learning on how to use communications and transportation technology, and how to use the technology to help them manage much larger farms than they were used to.

The citizens that went into the administration offices would need the language pack, computer skills, a basic education, and learning on how their organization would run at the very least.

So while the Army was being organized and trained, the rest of the new citizens were being organized and educated. The Petes that had been looking over the farms were shipped away as the new citizens took over the work. The Petes were much more needed in asteroid mining, new planet defense construction, and ship building to waste them on planting food, no matter how needed food was.

As the three month deadline approached, Carl was pleased to see from reports that everything was coming together, and they were on schedule to take over control of Moloc's planets.

Carl was sitting on the bridge of the Yamato, idly listening to the chatter of his disciples as they communicated with each other, coordinating their offensive. His ship was in orbit over the planet that Moloc was currently on. He was inspecting one of Moloc's Naquadah mining operations.

It seemed like the Goa'uld didn't particularly care about making their territory better. As long as they were able to torture some humans, it seemed to keep them happy. Here they were, posturing against other Goa'uld with their spaceships, while relying on humans to mine the metal they needed by hand. Their organization and mining was so inefficient, it was amazing they had any space ships around, really.

Carl received the final notice that everyone was ready and in position to commence the operation. Every one of Carl's students were participating in the first official operation against the Goa'uld. Even if they wouldn't be leading the military they had built, they would be in charge of some aspect of the plan, and available as back up.

Once the signal was given, the first thing they did on each of Moloc's 15 planets was to teleport the Stargate away from the planet surface, and lock them out so that a wormhole wouldn't form in them while the operation was underway.

Carl, Istha, Neith, and Mara teleported down to the area Moloc and his guards were at. While the former Priestess of Moloc and her advisors wrecked the surrounding Jaffa guards that were fanatically loyal to Moloc, Carl performed a little switcheroo on Moloc himself.

He removed Moloc from the host, sent the host up to be put in stasis so they could be evaluated later, and implanted Moloc in a blank clone, one with no mind or consciousness. While Carl held Moloc frozen with a petrificus, he placed a little helmet device on the clone body's head to scan and download all of Moloc's memories.

Once he had all that Moloc knew, he then held the pitiful Goa'uld in place and turned to see how the three ladies were handling things with the Goa'uld's guards.

Once Carl saw what they were doing, he realized the three ladies really had a lot of anger to work out of their system. Even after a couple decades away from the desperate situation they had been put in while trying to protect the young Jaffa girls from Moloc, they still had a burning hatred in them for Moloc and anyone who did his bidding.

Carl watched as the girls were literally punching holes in the Jaffa guards, yanking off limbs and heads, and generally running amok while covered in blood. The last Jaffa fell to the blood covered ground with a squelching whimper.

"Well, as promised ladies. He's all yours." Carl gestured at the Goa'uld that was still demanding they bow down before their god until Carl petrified his mouth. He unpetrified the Goa'uld and threw him to the nonexistent mercy of the ladies.

'I think there really is something wrong with the Goa'uld's heads.' Carl thought to himself as he watched the ladies start torturing Moloc by burning parts of him. 'I mean, even after seeing what they could do, he still tried to dominate them and tell them to worship him as a god. What an idiot. They are obviously so much stronger than him, and he still is lost in his delusion that he's their god. Is it a result of the mind warping effects of the sarcophagus?'

While the girls were having fun torturing the megalomaniac, Carl started checking over the progress report of the operation. No deaths of his own troops, thanks in great part to the personal shields each of their troops was issued with, as well as their well coordinated and trained skills.

Every Ha'tak that Moloc owned were disabled early on, and Carl's troops were finishing up the operation to capture any Jaffa on board. With that problem mostly taken care of, the commanders of his army started sending troops down to the planet surfaces to take control of the various settlements on the planets that Moloc used to own, but that were now a part of the Fire Crow Organization.

'Huh, maybe I should rename it to be the Fire Nation? Just to see if someone calling himself the Avatar would pop up at some point to oppose me?" Carl jokingly thought.

After some time of reading the reports, Carl realized that silence had fallen in his vicinity. He looked up and saw the three ladies sharing a very bloody group hug.

'Yeah, I guess ending the tyrant that you grew up with would make for an emotional moment.' Carl thought. He waved his hand in the girl's direction, using spells to clean up the blood and bodies in the vicinity, before returning to his reports.

One of the reports in particular really interested Carl. It seems his people were able to use the System Lord's technology. Which meant that his drawback of being unable to use the System Lord's technology meant it only applied to him, not all the people underneath him.

"I can work with this." Carl muttered, before issuing some commands to the Yamato to start manufacturing a Human Form Robot that would look like Moloc. It would mimic and project the sensations that the other Goa'uld felt when they were near their own kind, which was really a feeling of the resonance of the Naquadah in the blood. Carl sent up the download of Moloc's knowledge so that they could include it in the programming of the HFR.

He would have the Moloc HFR, with a posse of human "slave" HFRs and Jaffa Guard HFRs for cover to make it look to the rest of the System Lords like all was business as usual. The Moloc HFR would continue to interact with the System Lords and feed them false information while gathering what intel it could from the System Lords in preparation for taking them over.

Since Carl had Apophis in custody, he also made orders to make an Apophis HFR so they could replace the Apophis clone that had popped up shortly after Carl had captured the original.

Carl's people were limited in number and they couldn't move too fast in taking everything over without risking destabilizing all the planets out there. So he would proceed with the conquest a step at a time, stabilizing and integrating the new planets before moving on to the next territory.

'Hmm, should I set up a time dilation training to get all these people of Moloc's reeducated? It wouldn't need to be the full disciple training that I've been doing, just a technological training for a year or two. Maybe find the next batch of disciples through that. But it won't have to be just the Jaffa or human slaves in on the short education trip. I can also add many people from Earth that would love to have a large plot of their own land to work.'

Carl made some notes to remind himself to figure out the logistics after consulting his students to get their opinions. It would greatly increase the speed at which the territory was integrated.

"Thank you, Lord Carl." Carl looked up from his data pad at the sound of Ishta, Neith, and Mara thanking him in unison.

"You're welcome. I'm glad to see that monster meet his end." Carl smiled at his three students. "So, I've got some ideas on how to smoothen out taking over the territories. Tell me what you think of these ideas…" Carl went on to explain his idea for making use of HFRs and short time dilation training for some of the citizens to speed up integration.

The three ladies who were much more familiar with Jaffa and Goa'uld society gave Carl some useful ideas for how to fine tune the plan, to increase the likelihood of success, which Carl added to the plans.

"Thanks, ladies. Your input, as always, is wonderful. Now, I see reports that the fighting is all but over by now. Would you be so kind as to supervise the railroad construction and administration take over?" Carl asked, and they agreed to, but not before each of them gave Carl a big thank you kiss before running off, giggling. "Good thing Tera and Alice aren't the jealous types." Carl muttered to himself, shaking his head the girls' antics.

The railroad project that Carl had come up with and had been refined by his engineering students was basically a series of Stargates that were on their own network, separate from the network that the Ancients left behind, that would provide a means of transportation of goods and people among the planets in Carl's Empire. There were many security protocols so only authorized Stargates could access the gates.

Carl viewed the old Stargate network as a security risk, where just anyone could dial up an address and arrive in his territory. So he had designed several measures to ensure the safety of his people. First would be that only certain planets in his territory would still have a Stargate on the old network. And those would be located in a heavily armed and well defended facility.

Those old network Stargates would be where his Fire Crow Organization's people could interact with the galaxy that wasn't under his control. They could use it for trade, intel gathering, infiltration, recruitment, and other such things.

One of the big things that Carl had noticed about the Stargate Network was that they were a very fast means of travel from planet to planet, but they didn't seem to be utilized to their full potential. They were only used for foot traffic by the humans and Goa'uld of the Milky Way.

Carl knew that over in the Pegasus galaxy there were ancient shuttles that could traverse the Stargates. And there were also the Wraith that had ships that could use the Stargates to go on human capturing raids.

So as a result of the poor transportation system set up, Carl and his students had designed a rail road type system to transport large amounts of people and goods through the Stargates from planet to planet. The antigravity train cars would be circular to fit through the Stargate, and run along lines from city to city on his planets, and through the Stargates to different planets.

Rune Schemes and Profound Arrays would ensure that the trains had plenty of room inside to hold passengers and bulk goods, making them an even better method of transportation around his Organization.

There would even be railways that transferred to the asteroid fields through the Stargates to where the Petes were mining the ore needed to build everything to keep his Empire growing. It was a lot easier and quicker to run the ore through a Stargate by railroad than to have a fleet of ships transport it through space.

Carl finished looking over the after battle reports and saw that things were going well. Since he wasn't needed anywhere to help his people with their jobs, he began setting up the ward schemes that would protect his new planets from the interference of the snot balls. It would take him a bit of time to set them up on each of his 15 new planets.

'Hell, even with the land that only 15 new planets give me, I bet I could grab tens, or even hundreds of millions of willing people from Earth. So many people jam packed into cities with no chance of advancing or gaining their own land. So many people would be eager to get away from the fate of being sardines in a can.' Carl put the thought in the back of his mind; he wasn't planning on plundering the Earth's population to populate his Organization just yet.

Carl had noticed that Alice was busy setting up the planetary defenses to protect against attack from space, and Tera was organizing the re-education of Molocs priests. Carl didn't have his hopes too high for those brainwashed people. But if they could handle the change in regime, they would prove useful.

After the initial efforts by all of Carl's students to conquer and stabilize their new planets, dozens of them left to go back to Earth to keep their projects running smoothly. There was something about Earth that was special in the Milky Way galaxy that attracted a lot of their effort.

The way the Earth had been able to spend thousands of years of development, isolated away from the Goa'uld influence. It had grown many different cultures and nations. And despite the many wars and infighting over the years, the current situation between nations was mostly stable. So many people had leisure time to spend on recreation and creative endeavors. As a result, there was a very rich culture and variety of entertainment available.

In addition to those reasons, many of Carl's students were from Earth originally. They had a special place in their hearts for their home planet. When someone finds something good, they like to share it with their loved ones. In the face of a wild and brutal environment in the galaxy at large, many of them cherished their home planet even more. And now that they had found something so good in the Fire Crow Organization, they had a desire to bring their home peoples in to the good thing.

It was obvious though that it would be some time before the Earth could possibly be integrated into the FCO. With the possibility of eventually joining up and benefitting from the advances and resources that Carl's organization could bring to them, Carl's students wanted to start preparing the people of Earth to accept their place in the FCO.

Carl had set down some standards and rules of how much they could interfere and aid Earth, so some of his students had taken it upon themselves to try to social engineer the attitudes of the people of Earth so they would be receptive to subordinating themselves to Carl's empire in the future.

Carl had no idea just how long that would take to adjust attitudes. It may only bear fruit the next time Carl came back to the world, because 10 years was kind of a short time to see those changes in attitude in such a large and diverse society as was prevalent on Earth.

A week after Moloc was taken down, Carl received a reply message from the Tok'ra, indicating their interest in becoming allies. Since Carl was spying on the group of freedom fighters, he knew that at this time the Tok'ra were more interested in gaining access to his technology than they were in really becoming true allies. But that was okay, they could work on their relationship slowly. Carl sent back a message with some suggested times they could meet up and talk about it.

Over the next couple of months, Carl kept an eye on Apophis' doings while his people built up and educated his new citizens. Everything didn't always go completely smoothly, since there were plenty of Jaffa that didn't like the new rule and tried to make trouble. Some of them were put in jails, while some of their crimes were such that they earned themselves the death penalty.

Tera's efforts to help build up the administration part of the government was shifted over to building up the Judicial part of the government, while Dan and Suan worked on the police and peacekeeping inside their territory.

The Jacks and Teal'cs were working hard with their people to keep recruiting for the army and keep them trained and out of trouble in preparation for the next operation against a System Lord.

Meanwhile Carl had several groups of his people traveling from planet to planet, dropping off stealth satellites to add to their basic knowledge of what was happening in their galaxy.

It was in the middle of September that Carl received a report that his students had found the planet Pangar.

Carl wrapped up what he was doing and made his way to the planet on the Yamato. According to his memories of the show, that was the planet that the Tok'ra Queen Egeria had been imprisoned on by Ra as punishment for rebelling against him.

Years later the people of Pangar had found Egeria imprisoned in a canopic jar. While experimenting on Egeria, they found that they could use any offspring that she produced to manufacture a drug they called Tretonin. The drug they created would basically do the same thing for the people what a larval Goa'uld would inside the Jaffa pouch. It would replace the person's immune system, healing any illness and preventing them from getting sick.

So while the drug was amazing in that it could cure nearly any sickness or disease, there was a downside. Once someone used the drug, similar to a Goa'uld larva in a Jaffa, it replaced their own immune system and they would forever be dependent on the drug. If they ever stopped taking the drug their immune system wouldn't start back up again, and they would be completely open any diseases. They would soon catch any sickness or disease they were exposed to and would die from having no defense against it.

Carl arrived in orbit over Pangar. It was a decently technologically advanced planet, somewhat similar to Earth's development. Which meant that it wasn't long before the Yamato's computer was able to breach all the fire walls and find the information on Egeria.

After reading the reports, Carl found that they had only discovered Egeria a couple years ago. While they had begun experimenting on her, they had not gotten so far as to start manufacturing the drug Tretonin for mass consumption yet. Carl was relieved that the mess wasn't too big yet.

If it was a few years later, then nearly all the population of Pangar would have been hooked on the Tretonin drug before they found out the side effects. If that had happened, Carl would have had to work harder to clean up the mess.

Carl didn't want to bother with negotiations with the people of Pangar to convince them to give him the Tok'ra queen, so he simply beamed up Egeria and any spawn she had created. He then made sure that there were no records in the paper files or computers about the "experiments" the scientists had done on Egeria.

While Carl had enjoyed the Star Trek shows, he thought the Prime Directive they followed was bullshit. The idea that they shouldn't interfere with a developing society for fear that they would negatively impact them was an elitist idea that showed how little they respected the decision making and agency of those people.

Besides which, they lived in a galaxy where they were in danger from the Goa'uld finding them and enslaving them. So Carl didn't have any issues with interfering with their stupid torture of Egeria disguised as science.

Once Egeria was on board, he had her inserted into a blank clone body and made sure to heal her up to perfect health once more while keeping her unconscious until the treatment was complete.

He then moved her to the medical bay on board his ship, and woke her up. Carl wasn't too surprised when she woke with a violent start, since the last thing she remembered was being without a host and being tortured by the Pangar scientists.

"Hello there. Are you doing okay now? Not feeling any pains?" Carl asked.

The new blond body of Egeria sat up and focused on Carl for a moment, her eyes glowing. She looked down at hers new body, perplexed. "How do I have a host again? But it doesn't have a consciousness. Strange." She muttered so low that if Carl's hearing weren't as good as it was, he would not have heard her.

"Well, I used a clone body so you wouldn't have to share with another person. Not too many people want to share space with someone else in their own body." Carl commented, bringing her attention back to him.

"Who are you? Why am I here? Am I a prisoner?" She asked, almost demanded answers.

"I'm Carl Edwards. Who are you?" Carl replied in a polite tone.

"What do you want from me?" She demanded.

Carl didn't answer this time and simply stared levelly at her while waiting for her to answer him. If she wasn't going to exchange answers, then Carl wasn't going to answer either. She started getting frustrated that Carl wasn't answering her questions.

"Answer me!" She demanded.

"Hmm, that's not how this is going to work." Carl mildly stated. "I answered one of your questions. I'm Carl Edwards. Now, you answer one of my questions. We'll take turns, see? Now, how about answering my question. Who are you?"

She scowled at him, but eventually gave in. "I am Egeria." She proudly stated. "Now, what do you want with me?" She immediately asked.

Carl smiled at her in amusement. "I don't really want anything from you. I've got some offers for you, but that's up to you whether to accept them or not. So, how are you feeling, Egeria? Any pains, or not feeling fully linked up with your clone body?"

She scowled at him. "That's more than one question. I'm feeling fine. Where are we?"

"Fine, fine. Rules Lawyer." Carl chuckled. "We're in my space ship in orbit over the planet Pangar. Now, how's your new body?"

"It is…good. No problems. Am I not a prisoner here? You are not acting like a jailor."

"You got me. You're not a prisoner. I found you where those scientists were torturing you. I've heard of Egeria of the Tok'ra, and felt that being tortured or imprisoned wasn't a fate you deserved. So, I got you out. Did you want anything to eat or drink? Or some time to relax and come to grips with being free?

"Some food would be nice." Egeria was a bit confused. In her experience, no one except the Nox had ever treated her with kindness. She kept expecting a trap of some sorts.

Carl picked up on that thought, and realized that she probably hadn't even known much peace in her time. It would take some effort to get her to trust him.

"Okay, follow me to the mess hall. We'll soon have some delicious grub ready for you." Carl said as he led the way along the hall. He knew it would probably take some time to build some trust. He wouldn't mind offering the Tok'ra a place in his organization. And with his technology he could offer them either a host body, or transfer of their consciousness to a body so they won't be a parasite anymore. It should be a very attractive offer for the Tok'ra, especially with the return of their Queen as a show of good will on his part.

Over the next couple of weeks, Carl introduced Egeria to his students so she could get to know his people and what they were doing. After the first bit of awkwardness, she soon came to realize that Carl and his students were incredibly strong people. They could probably pose as Gods like the Goa'uld did, but do a better job than the Goa'uld ever did. They had much better technology as well as personal strength and abilities.

Egeria found it inspiring that instead of posing as gods, they were working to build a decent society with as much freedom for each civilian as they could. Even though Egeria wasn't a human, the phrase "it restored her belief in humanity" applied in the situation.

Carl had set up a computer for Egeria to learn some of the history of the Galaxy that happened while she was imprisoned. He also made sure she had access to the movies and T.V. shows that Carl had in his database. He wanted to make sure she could relax and not always have to work or study. Carl thought it might help her come down from the high stress life she had always lived.

All of Carl's recorded movies, T.V. shows, games, and data had been uploaded to his organization's computer for "study". And by this point Carl had replaced all the original computers he had in his warehouse with the more advanced tech they had developed in conjunction with magic and profound energy.

Even with the space expansion charms he had previously used on the various storage units and computers, they had still taken a lot of room in his Warehouse. But now with the incredibly advanced technology he had gained from the database, Carl had replaced all the equipment. There was now a lot more room available in his warehouse because of the upgrades.

All his data and records were transferred over to a computer that only took up the space of a closet. He had recreated the Pokemon management computer storage to ensure that it was as advanced as it could be. Some of his students that studied biology were very intrigued by the records and readings he had of the pokemon, and they were nearly as sad as he was that he couldn't release them from their Pokeballs.

Meanwhile all his storage units for the various items that his Farms produced had been replaced by containers that were a combination of technology, space expansion charms, and spatial rings. As a result, the storage boxes that were stacked on the shelves took up very little room while maximizing the storage space.

As a result of introducing Egeria around and letting her get to know his people, when Carl finally got word back from the Tok'ra about when they could meet him, Carl knew that his biggest proponent would be Egeria herself. Which mean that the Tok'ra were likely to join his Empire.

From the intelligence that Carl had gathered on the Tok'ra, they didn't have the capability to build their own space ships. They were hunted by the Goa'uld and could only rely on the Gate System and stealing what little they could from the Goa'uld. They were in a tight spot where they couldn't even regularly find hosts for their members because of their policy that any host had to be willing.

And trustworthy humans that wouldn't sell them out and be willing to share space in their body were few and far between.

Carl arrived at the meeting place with Egeria, the two Daniels, and Tera to begin talks with the Tok'ra.

Carl just sat back and let his students do their job of talking with and negotiating what kind of relationship they would have with the Tok'ra. It was their specialty and it wouldn't let them shine if Carl always preempted them.

At first the Tok'ra were quite arrogant and demanding, which amused Carl since they really had nothing much that Carl wanted. He was mostly offering them a place since he recognized they had been trying to work hard against the Goa'uld, and he wanted to reward them. And also because he wanted their efforts directed in a more constructive avenue than blowing up assets that Carl was going to take over some time in the future.

And while the Daniel Jacksons always seemed more concerned with learning about what the people they were negotiating with were like and what they needed, Carl didn't think it was a bad way to be. The only way to create a rock solid relationship was if both sides benefitted and were helped by the alliance. So having Daniel showing concern for the other side could only engender good feelings.

If Carl brought someone to the negotiations that had a character like Kinsey, who would only take and not reciprocally give any benefits, then their relationship would be short and volatile. Which was not what Carl wanted.

As the meeting progressed Carl enjoyed watching the arrogance drain from the Tok'ra when they found out that the blonde woman was their Queen, Egeria. The return of their long lost Queen was a huge shock to them. The negotiations were immediately put on hold so they could throw a celebration, which was enjoyable. It was good seeing family reunited after so many years.

The next day when things settled down, Egeria told them about what she had learned of Carl and his work on Moloc's planets, the FCOs goals, and what they offered the Tok'ra. Carl didn't feel very guilty about spying on their private meeting, although he did wonder if he was starting to gain voyeur like tendencies. It did kind of feel like he was watching a drama…

Where was his popcorn again?

After a week of talks, and Carl's people proving they had the technology to back up their offers, the Tok'ra agreed to join Carl's Empire.

Somewhat of a surprise to Carl was that all the Tok'ra present desired to have their consciousness transferred into their own human body. Carl expected at least a few to choose to stay as they were, since they were used to it. But apparently the psychological effect of having a conscience and being too similar to the evil Goa'uld was a bigger weight on them than Carl thought.

In addition to all the Tok'ra at their base joining Carl on the Yamato, he sent the Daniels out in their ships with some Tok'ra guides to extract all their deep cover agents around the galaxy, since they could do it sneakily and safely with Carl's ships.

Over the next week as the various Tok'ra were waking up as genuine humans for the first time, and Carl saw their joy over no longer being monsters, he decided that he would include most of them in the next Time Dilation Basic Training. Most of them would make good additions to the intelligence, military, and science divisions with their long lives and rich life experiences.

In other news, a huge storm was happening on Earth.

When Fire Crow Industries first announced their release of a virtual reality simulation game, there was a little bit of excitement only in small circles of the industry. No one really believed that there could be much of an advancement in the tech in such a short time.

So while some enthusiasts were excited at the news of someone trying to improve the technology, most people thought it was all just hype and generally ignored it.

They were able to ignore it for several weeks, until the actual unveiling and release of the technology. That's when they saw just how perfect and immersive the technology was. Diving into the virtual reality felt like being transported to a whole new world. If they didn't have their HUD in front of their eyes, they wouldn't have believed they were in a video game.

The game that FCI released was a simple Hack and Slash game, very similar to the Sword Art Online game that was released in another world in a different time.

Once the reality and ability of the technology was known, there was a huge commotion as everyone and their dog tried to get a hold of a copy. Even people who usually had no interest in video games found their interest peaked.

After only a few weeks, FCI subsequently released a few more game packs. Instead of having separate games, they made the virtual world into a single galaxy that the users could explore. Each planet would have a different game or theme.

Some planets would be magic based worlds. Some would be technology based worlds. Some would be hack and slash games. Some would be strategy games. The possibilities seemed even more boundless than the real world.

FCI already knew how crazy some people would get over the game world, so they built in restrictions to limit how many hours someone could remain online in a day. This feature brought a lot of criticism from the game enthusiasts who were furious their gaming time was curtailed, but FCI held to their decision.

The introduction of such an advanced virtual reality system was already going to be disruptive to Earth's society as it was. There was no sense in letting people stay in the game until their real bodies died and invite more criticism.

As a result of the virtual reality game galaxy becoming the main mode of entertainment in a few short months, Carl's people were able to gather plenty of information about various skilled people that they wanted to recruit.

Those with the highest skills and that seemed like decent people were soon approached and recruited to FCI. After a trial period those skilled personnel were introduced to the real galaxy situation and transferred over to the FCO, the parent organization of the FCI.

While the virtual reality games had excited them, the existence in real life of the tech they saw in the game, as well as the magical abilities, excited them beyond all reason. They had no reason to reject the recruitment offers.

As a result of the storm of excitement for the virtual reality tech, FCI had its pick of the cream of the crop of the people on Earth. Carl's Organization was growing and expanding, getting stronger day by day.