It was late the next afternoon that SG-1 joined Jack in the briefing room for their debriefing on the mission to P4Z-028. It had taken most of the previous afternoon to unshrink everyone in the SGC, though thankfully once someone was unshrunk they seemed to stay that way. Unfortunately, most of the base, including SG-1, started turning up in the infirmary right after dinner with headaches, vertigo, weird localized pain, and the thousand other symptoms that came from being exposed to that much electromagnetic pulse activity. Jack's ears were still ringing for absolutely no reason Brightman could identify, and it was driving him crazy

Unfortunately, not knowing why they were shrunk in the first place, or whether the whatever-it-was that caused it was still contagious, Jack couldn't lift the quarantine. And he really wanted to. So, the next day—this morning, Jack noted to himself—he'd sent SGs 1, 2, 3, 4, the EMP generator, a creative assortment of RPGs in varying yields, a Mark IV high-yield naquadria bomb, the whole archaeology department, half the science department, and enough tools to strip-mine an area the size of Connecticut back to P4Z-028 with instructions to get answers any way they needed to. Daniel had suggested that this might be overkill. Jack had told him he had Prometheus on stand-by if they needed something bigger. Sam and Teal'c had looked approving.

So, when they came back, about mid-afternoon, Jack was bursting to know what they'd found. He'd forced himself to give SG-1 two hours to put together their findings for a debriefing, and he'd been sitting in the briefing room drumming his fingers for them to get there for the past thirty minutes.

But, finally, his old teammates came strolling in. Sam, as usual was carrying folders, for everyone but Daniel. Daniel was juggling about six extra folders, some loose papers, and a mug of coffee. Teal'c carried absolutely nothing at all.

For once, as soon as Sam handed him her report, he flipped it open and began skimming the papers inside without even waiting for her to begin. He kept tabs on her progress around the room, however. The second her butt hit the chair, he spoke. "So," Jack said, observing Sam's hilariously startled look without actually looking up, "what did you find out?"

Startled or not, Sam recovered quickly. "Yesterday morning, SG-1 undertook a routine away mission to the planet designated P4Z-028…" After getting through the routine boring stuff, she finally got around to talking about what caused the shrinking. Nanites, so a machine like Brightman had said. He lost that bet, then. And when they were shut off, they dissolved. Which meant once unshrunk was unshrunk for good. Sam, being herself, went on for several more minutes after that about the time it took to "prep the host organism" for shrinking or unshrinking and "drawing power from internal electrical activity" and a thousand other things that made his eyes want to roll backwards into his head.

Finally Jack cut in and asked the question he really wanted the answer to. "So…long-term medical repercussions are…?"

"As far as we can tell, sir, none." Sam's voice was confident. Good. "The nanites were designed to reverse themselves without damaging their host."

"And just who am I to blame for our adventures in minaturization?" Jack asked.

Here, Daniel jumped in. "This planet was an outpost of the goa'uld Ravana."

"I should've known it was a goa'uld," Jack muttered.

Daniel nodded, sipping his coffee. "Ravana took his persona from the Ravana of Indian legend, the enemy of Rama. His portrayals in most contexts are universally negative."

"Clearly with good cause," Jack said.

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

Daniel smiled and continued. "We also know that he never rose to the level of system lord, or build a large army of jaffa. Instead, he intended to rely on advanced research and technology in his conquests, and was—according to our findings—doing just that when he, and several of his lesser goa'uld, began researching the shrinking technology."

Jack frowned. "So what happened to him?"

Daniel frowned thoughtfully. "Before his research was completed, another goa'uld—possibly Ra or Apophis, but the truth is we'll probably never know—destroyed the research station from orbit, killing everyone there, including Ravana. Prior to his death, in the assumption that a ground force would follow the aerial assault, Ravana set the shrinking technology to activate when the altar was touched in the hopes of crippling ground forces. But, it looks like no ground force ever bothered to come. In fact, SG-1 was probably the first group to set foot on P4Z-028 since that time." He held up his hand. "The good news there, of course, is that this technology was never shared with any other goa'uld. As far as we've been able to tell, SGC personnel are the only people in the universe who know of its existence."

"That news is of limited goodness," Jack pointed out, holding up a tiny set of notes Dr. Lee had made while he was little and then not been hanging onto when he'd been unshrunk. Daniel affected a hurt expression that Jack had stopped believing a long time ago. There was a long moment where Jack scowled at the folder in front of him before he finally said, "Why would anyone, even a goa'uld, build a machine that does something so annoying?"

Sam and Daniel exchanged a look. "From what we were able to determine, sir," Sam said, "Ravana was experimenting with a number of different ideas, including this one, with the goal of figuring out how to use them at some future date. I don't think he'd determined any practical applications. That's probably why it was so easy to reverse. After all, if he's testing it on his own scientists, he'd have to have a way to unshrink them."

"'Easy to reverse,'" Daniel repeated, managing to make his next sip of coffee sarcastic.

Sam made a face. "Well…relatively speaking."

"The records also spoke of difficulties in containing the nanites," Teal'c put in. "It is probable that Ravana was unable to prevent incidentally affecting more than his intended targets. We believe he was even shrunk himself at least once."

"What I wouldn't give to hear a goa'uld with that squeaky voice…," Jack mused. He heaved a sigh, thinking. "State of affairs on P4Z-etcetera?"

"The temple—Ravana's research laboratory—is…well…we dismantled it, Jack," Daniel said. He looked slightly sheepish.

"Dismantled?" Jack repeated. Not that he cared, but Daniel was usually the first to object to that sort of thing.

"Very scientifically," Daniel said, "of course."

"Of course." Jack was unable to entirely contain a smirk. So Daniel had indulged in his own, geeky, version of overkill.

"We could build you an exact replica if you like," Daniel offered innocently.

"No thanks," Jack returned. He swung his seat around to face Sam.

"As far as we can tell, the shrinking nanites were the only active technology there," she said, "The notes did refer to several other experiments, but we believe they were either destroyed or have broken down over time," she said.

"And when can we release the quarantine?" Jack asked.

"The nanites are all dead, sir," Sam said. "In all probability they were all dead when we finished unshrinking the base."

Jack nodded. He thought for a moment. Finally, he said, "Okay. Designate P4Z-028 as a hostile world, lock it out of the dialing computer, refer any requests as to why we would do that to these reports." He tapped his folder. "Release the quarantine, tell everyone who is not on a duty shift that I am ordering them to get out of the mountain and go home. SG-1's next mission is in three days. I'll phone you when to show up. Go away."

His former teammates shared grins, and then bolted out of the briefing room to carry out his orders. Distant cheers could be heard from the control room.

Feeling well pleased with himself, Jack strolled into his office to see Major Paul Davis sitting in front of his desk. On his desk there was an enormous stack of folders. On the top of the stack was a familiar-looking blue folder labeled "Safety Procedures for Retrieval and/or Containment of Off-World Specimens."

"Sir," Major Davis said, "I need to talk to you about some housekeeping."

Jack nodded with a sigh. And he took it all back. Small problems sucked.

Author's Notes: Whoo-hoo. For the first time since 2005, I have no WIPs posted anywhere! Hooray! This would've been up this morning, but FF.N's document manager got snippy with me and I had to wait for it to unsnarl itself.

Believe it or not, the ending to this story has not changed from the time I first envisioned it. Right down to making Ravana a goa'uld and having him be an inventory sort.

In the story of Rama—which occupies a similar place in Asian (think Philippines and India Asia, not Japan and Korea Asia) cultures as King Arthur does in Western ones—Ravana is both the big bad and something of a trickster, though he's just flat-out nasty a lot, too. That being the case, I felt that trying to be technologically ahead of the other goa'uld would be a nasty-tricksterish route for him to take. Though, while I was doing some double-checking before writing this ending, I noticed a push on Wikipedia to portray Ravana as not-that-bad-and-actually-sort-of-balanced-between-good-and-evil. Whether there are any groups of actual people who view Rama that way, I don't know. But in several years of growing up in an Asian country, the Ravana-as-not-such-a-bad-guy was a view I never encountered anywhere.

For the moment, this is all I got. I'm working on some other fanfics, but I'm always working on other fanfics and so there's no way to know when I'll be ready to post them. Sorry. :)