Disclaimer: I have no claim whatsoever to these characters or the situations they find themselves in.

Rated a soft PG for language.

Notes: written for teh_bug as part of the spring 2008 Mensa_AU fic exchange. As such, it owes much to the SGA S3 episode "McKay and Mrs. Miller," written by Martin Gero and Carl Binder.

Prompt: What does a "tear in the universe" look like? What does it do? How do you decide to send one of your people off into the unknown?

Dear Alyce

by Helen W.

Dear Alyce,

Happy birthday to my favorite niece!

I hope being ten is as wonderful for you as it was for me.

Wow, double digits! But I bet you're thinking that that's special only because we use a - how did you say it - "a base-ten counting system, because we have ten fingers and thumbs." I remember your words because I work with a lot of scientists and engineers who think the same way and tell me the same sorts of things all the time. And I grin and think, "I have a little niece who could give you a run for your money!"

Of course, I do enjoy the people I work with here, and the work we're doing here, trying to build bridges with the peoples of this galaxy like we have with those of the Milky Way. It's an exciting time to be alive, and I love that I get to be in the middle of it, doing work which (I hope!) matters.

But I hate that this takes me so far from you and your brothers; and your dad and mom too, of course. I can hardly wait until I come visit next month; and I'm hoping that the regulations change soon so that you can come visit me here. I can't promise anything, but maybe before your next birthday??

Anyway, turning ten is special because you're special. Don't you ever forget that.

Your loving aunt,

Elizab

"Elizabeth, we have a problem."

"Good afternoon, John." Elizabeth minimized her email; she wanted to give everything her usual quick read-through in a bit, especially the message to her brother's daughter. It was so hard to write to children without talking down to them, she'd always found.

"Good afternoon, Elizabeth. How are you today, Elizabeth. And if you have a moment, you might want to check out the brand new hole in the sky."

- - - - - - - -

Dear Alyce,

Just a quick note, to wish you happy birthday, because I'd never forgive myself if I missed your tenth.

Things are rather tense hereÉ I don't know what sort of news you've been hearing (and I know nobody can keep anything from YOU, so I certainly won't try), but please don't worry, and please tell your parents not to worry.

In fact, show them this message, I don't really have much time for personal email right now.

We have wonderful people here, working very hard. And Pegasus is very far from Earth.

I hope to have more to say later, but for now, I remain,

Your loving aun

"Elizabeth, we have a plan!"

Rod and John together, beaming in the doorway. Elizabeth knew they'd come up with something.

- - - - - - -

Dear Alyce,

Happy birthday.

It's been a hard day here, and I've got a very tough decision to make, so please think kind thoughts in my direction, okay, kid?

Remember when I told you that I went into international relations and diplomacy because I wanted to help people make the right choices, and you asked how I knew what the right choice was? And I said that the rightness of a choice came down to the fruits it would bear. Would the end result be freedom and liberty and peace? And you'd have none if it; you said that someone was always going to be hurt, or else things wouldn't be in the state they were in in the first place.

Okay, not your wording exactly, but it was a good question. The truth was, back then, in the kind of work I was doing, there usually was a bad guy, and the question was, was lessening his power going to be worth the resulting chaos (rarely good, sometimes necessary). So I learned how to talk to brutal men (and sometimes women), to appeal to their humanity, and help them see alternatives to being brutes. And I was pretty good at it.

The decision I have today - in some ways, it's a more human-scale decisionÉ I'm putting this poorly, I'll have to edit this. EDIT BEFORE SENDING, LIZ! I have to send someoneÉ Sometimes, it comes down to sacrifice. In any war, there are sacrifices; and almost always the person ordering the sacrifice has lived a lot more of his or her life than the person making it. This argument was actually part of my bag of tricks when I worked on Earth - it helped people see that they weren't just killing The Other, they were hurting people devoted to them.

Back to my decision REMEMBER TO EDIT! I don't know how they're describing this on Earth, but when you look up, there's a scar in the sky, blue turning to grey and bending up into a nothingÉ I can't make my eyes look directly at it, just like they won't look at a sun, but it photographs black. From every direction matter is being pulled slowly into this gap and snuffed out of existence. Right now, the only real visible sign of this pull is a few wispy clouds radiating out like spokes on a wheel.

We are assuming (hoping, more accurately) that there are beings - maybe even beings we can communicate with, maybe even humans, not so different from us - from another universe behind everything. That for some reason these beings are dumping exotic particles (don't ask my how they're any different from the sort of particle one meets at a neighbor's backyard barbecue) into our sky.

My science staff thinks that these beings may be doing experiments very much in line with some mathematical models Rod McKay constructed as part of his research into producing zero-point energy. (Have you learned any high energy physics yet? I forget what fourth grade is like; and you *are* in the gifted track, your father often reminds me.) We have theorized that those creating the particles don't mean to be causing anyone else any difficulties, and will be mortified to learn the effect their experiment is having on our universe.

We've aimed messages through the rift, to no effect - not really surprising. Now some of my best people - my best friends - think that, if one of them goes through the rift in the sky, they will essentially walk out the other side and be able convince those responsible to stop. This is not as crazy as it sounds, because we have portable force field generators that can protect the wearer from just about anything, including a fall from the upper atmosphere, extreme heat, extreme cold - it will even propel someone up through several kilometers of water fast enough to keep them from suffocating, holding its shape under high pressure and trapping in a bit of breathable air even. And of course the same whatever-it-is that lets the peoples of the Milky Way who have traveled through the stargate understand each other holds in Pegasus, so maybe it will work in other universes as well.

When they - when John, Rod, Radek, and Miko - presented their plan to me, I put in a call to Marshall Sumner so we could decide which of the marines to send through. Before Marsh had even gotten to my office, though, the physicists had made a strong argument that it had to be one of them - someone who could speak physics, who could even invent a new language for physics, or jump into someone else's if need be.

So they've convinced me it has to be a skilled physicist, preferably one who can hold his own in a fight. Essentially, either John or Rod. There are pros and

"Elizabeth, we'd like you to be our witness."

John and Rod. Each holding what looked like a piece of a drinking straw.

"It's the only way," Rod continued.

Well, Elizabeth would concede that it was certainly *a* way. "Why straws? If it's down to just the two of you, why not toss a coin?"

"We, uh, don't have one," said John. "Do you?"

"Well, no."

"Cashless Society Syndrome," said Rod. "Someone should do a paper."

"I'm not even sure I'm going to let you do this."

"Let's just decide who's going through," said John. "In case things deteriorate quickly."

That seemed prudent.

Elizabeth took both men's straws, then turned her back and adjusted her grip so that the straws' tops were even and their bottoms were hidden from view. "You know, by straw, one usually means stiff hay," she said.

"Really?" both men asked together.

"Really." She turned back around. "Ready, gentlemen?"

- - - - - - -

Dear Alyce,

Happy tenth birthday.

It's been a terrible day here, and I've been a terrible leader. I put a decision that should have been mine, and mine alone, into the hands of people who'd latched onto a particular solution.

And they implemented it, electing an early sacrifice over seeing whether predictions of future problems would actually come to pass.

But by some stroke of luck, or genius, the sacrifice seems to have done what

"Elizabeth?"

"Teyla. Hello."

"You have been in here too long. Will you walk with me?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "The hole has stopped growing, but I don't want to be anywhere but here if it starts again. I'll close the door and nap on the sofa if I need to."

Teyla nodded. "I wanted to thank you. As a citizen of this galaxy - I know you could have evacuated Atlantis and left us to our fate, but you did not."

Elizabeth blinked hard and looked down at her screen. So many people, here, there, everywhere. "Running might not have saved us."

"None-the-less," said Teyla. "You are choosing to be brave."

"That's not what it feels like."

- - - - - - - -

Dear Alyce,

Will you live to see eleven? I just don't know.

Just a few hours ago, we thought we'd won. We thought Rod had done it, but whatever is attacking us has renewed its assault, and what was before a slowly-expanding sponge has become a rapacious Hoover (EDIT BEFORE SENDING, LIZ!).

We're now sending messages to our enemies and friends alike: