Quote of the day: Meez noza batza bazic.

Question of the day: Where have all my buddies gone? Long time passing! Where have all my buddies gone? Long time ago...

Ted's question #y: Wo bist du? (Hey, he speaks German now!)

Reeses progress report: I've got the first chapter re-written! Yay! Here, you can see a special sneak preview for those who actually read this!

Whipping open my creaky, wooden front door, my smile grew to half the size of my face at the sight of an average-height woman in her forties with short, graying blonde hair. Though she wore comfortable jeans and a red blouse, the small smile on her face suggested that she wasn't completely at ease.

I stepped aside and held the door open, trying to make enough room in my small foyer for her, her son, and me. "It's so great to see you, Sally," I greeted, meaning every word; each person to show up on my doorstep was another chance to save a life, or two lives, really.

"You, too." She carefully tread up one step into my house from a small, white porch, followed by her teenage son, who wore a t-shirt of his favorite band, baggy jeans, and mud-covered tennis shoes that may have been white at some previous time.

"Matt," I said, pointing to a small, isolated den, "you can watch TV if you want." As he crept off to watch who-knew-what, I led his mother to my small office in the depths of my house. It wasn't an office, really, but a tiny bedroom with sea-foam green carpet and light pink walls left over from the previous owner's young daughter. The room held little: a white desk half the size of a card table, two simple spray-painted black chairs from the eighties, and a few photos of beautiful vistas hanging on the walls. Any passing glance at these would suggest to most viewers that I had either traveled to some of the most exotic places on earth or bough cheap photography from Wal-mart. I, however, knew the truth: I had taken those pictures with a disposable camera on some of the planets that housed Tok'ra bases as well as some of Vinnet's favorite worlds.

I crossed behind the desk and sat, suddenly self-conscious of the old, worn carpet present throughout my house. Fortunately, Sally didn't seem to notice. Were I in her position, I don't know that I would have paid any attention to the floor covering in the house of the person who said she could save my life either.

Sally sat with her back to the room's door on the single unoccupied black chair, her legs crossed. "So what's this 'procedure' you've been talking about?" she questioned.

A hint of a smile found itself back on my face. They always asked that, and it always annoyed me to no end that I couldn't describe the whole experience of blending with every ounce of detail available to me. But the Air Force had closed that option in the name of security and to prevent me from being hauled off to an insane asylum. "There's not much to it, really. When they're ready for you, I'll take you to an Air Force base, where they'll go ahead with it. It's still being tested, but so far, they've had pretty good statistics."

She broke into my pause, demanding, "Which are?"

Yeah, sure, ask me all the tough questions, I thought, looking up and to the side at a picture of Kiramaltu, as if I was trying to remember the exact numbers. "I don't know," I replied, sincerely trying to think what they might be. Something in my mind suggested that no one had ever calculated it, but the blending failed only when a symbiote was weak or in the wrong species of host. "I guess the chances of it working are close to, say, ninety-five percent."

She nodded, thinking about it. "I suppose that's not bad. To get rid of the cancer and know that I'd live to see Matt graduate, I don't think it'd be too bad at all. How much would it cost?"

Another tricky question. "In money, nothing," I said, knowing that it made the whole deal sound all the more suspicious. "But you will definitely notice the effects for the rest of your life."

"Side effects?" Sally asked, curious concern and worry bringing her eyebrows together in such a way that I thought of Spock on Star Trek.

"Sort of," I said, wincing. I wouldn't exactly call Vinnet or any other symbiote a side effect; the term described healing cancer better. Maybe getting off that subject would be a good idea. "There's no backing out when we arrive or forgetting it ever happened once it's done."

"Why?"

Well, first of all, you get a lot more knowledge. You hear voices in your head. Then you have to dedicate your life to an organization you've never heard of before, but you won't mind because you'll know that they stand against the atrocities of a ruling power in the galaxy, I answered in my head. "It's kind of a Faustian deal. You get cured, but you end up having to work with others like yourself for the rest of your life, which isn't so bad in today's economy." Except for the fact that you never get paid, but that's beside the point.

She stared down at her hands. Her silence rang in my ears, screaming that, with me here, the Tok'ra would once again have a steep, negative rate of population growth. "A job," she repeated, looking out the window behind me. "I guess that wouldn't be so bad. Do you have any details on it?"

"Well, um," I stalled as I attempted to think of anything other than long hours, no vacation time, and a rather high risk of getting shot. "You get to travel a lot," I finally told her, pointing to a photo of a tropical waterfall. "That was just outside a base on--near--a... city called Namalia." Unbeknownst to Ms. King, Namalia was actually the homeworld of my symbiote's second host before me.

Catching the word "base," she questioned with distaste tingeing her voice, "So it's with the army?"

"Well, I guess you could say that," I replied, trying for all the many worlds--and many Tok'ra--to make her like it.

She stared straight at me. "Is it or isn't it?"

"It isn't," I answered, but it's similar, martial. If it helps, you wouldn't be around the typical army type." Not that I had any problem with them. After all, Jack at least had a sense of humor and an ongoing Wizard of Oz theme.

Sally nodded, still taking it into consideration, despite her dislikes. "What's the procedure itself like?"

I sighed, leaning back in my chair. Back to the easy hard questions. "It's not so bad, I don't think." My eyes wondered out of focus, remembering back to eighth grade, the most memorable year of my childhood. "It hurts at first then it's all gone. I heard from one guy that he experience a black-out and a bit of a headache, but he seemed happy with his decision." I really hadn't blacked-out so much as I had fallen into a sort of meditation kind of thing, and I hadn't suffered a headache. I attributed this to the fact that Vinnet had been well-rested and hadn't needed to cure any ailments.

Sally paused a moment. "Will I be anesthetized?"

"No, but then again, it takes only a few minutes." I had retained no concept of time during my blending; I knew it could take less than a minute in perfect circumstances or half an hour in less than perfect circumstances, when the symbiote had to heal its host.

She bit her lip. "Exactly what will they do?"

"What do you mean?"

Taking a deep breath, she asked, "What are they going to do, inject me with some anti-cancer agent?" She gulped at the though, apparently as thrilled with the idea of needles as the colonel.

Since I couldn't very well tell her we were going to put an alien in the back of her neck, I shrugged and thought about it, belatedly realizing I shouldn't need so much time to recall that information. "Something like that."

If looks were daggers, I was glad to be a Tok'ra; as far as her stare went, I wasn't so sure it wasn't lethal. "Sarah?" she scolded, her voice as menacingly sharp as her stare.

I sighed, stalling just long enough to collect the beginnings of an earlier idea. "Uh, about six months ago, an Air Force major was visiting South America and became injured. Anyway, she happened to come across this leech with healing properties. Um, ever since she brought it back to the US, the Air Force has been exploring its medicinal usages, including curing cancer. Problem is, it's really rare."

She studied my face for a moment, worrying me that she might not buy it. Finally, she gave an approving nod. "I guess I'll think about it and talk it over with Matt."

I stood, shook hands with her, and led her to the door, picking up Matt on the way past the den, where he had befriended my dog. "If you have any questions at all, just ask," I reminded her. "Even if I can't answer them for you immediately, I'll see if I can find an answer from someone else."

Sally paused on the porch and turned around, a somewhat contemplative look covering her face. I drew in a deep breath, preparing for the toughest question yet. "Why leeches?"

I laughed, thankful for an easy one. "God put them here for a reason!" I answered, catching a rather lost glance from Matt. Sally smiled as well, and we said our farewells. Then the two Kings walked to their car to return to their daily lives.

With them out of the house, I carefully closed the door and leaned back on it. That went well, I thought, besides the whole bit with the Stargate and Tok'ra so wrapped up in governmental secrecy here on earth that I have to lie to get people to save their own lives.

The ringing of my phone cut my following sigh somewhat shorter than it would have been otherwise. Stepping over my dog, who had accompanied us to the door, I ran around the corner back into my office to snatch the portable black phone from its cradle. "Hello? This is Sarah Anderson. How can I help you?"

"Hi, honey!" came a cheerful male voice from the other side.

"Dad." I thought then of Major Carter and her father. Unlike me, Sam could tell her dad almost anything she wanted; Jacob had clearance. I, however, wasn't allowed to tell my family anything about my job or where I went so often. Everyone at the SGC already thought of me as a security risk; I had absolutely no reason to prove them right. "What's up?"

I could almost see him grinning. "Just wondering what you're up to. That's all."

Should've known. "I just talked to Ms. King again. I don't know if she'll go for it."

"What is 'it' again?" he questioned. He'd asked me countless times, and I always sighed and gave him the same answer.

True to past exchanges, I heaved a sigh and rolled my eyes. "A medical procedure that can cure almost any illness."

"And why was it never on the front page of the newspaper?" The same question after the same answer, over and over--we'd had this conversation before.

"Because it's available to only a limited number of people--say ten a month--at most!" I explained, thinking what kind of catastrophe it would be if ten hosts died in a single month.

"Why?"

"Dad!" I nearly screamed into the receiver, tired of the game and not particularly eager to resort to the leech excuse again since Vinnet had expressed her indignity at being compared to a leech. "You know I can't answer that!" I almost considered putting Vinnet on the phone; she had to be better at this than I was. However, her voice was just otherworldly enough for him to get suspicious.

"Yes," he pleaded, almost certainly with puppy-dog eyes, "I know that's what you say, but you can tell me."

"No." By that time, I was rubbing my face with my free hand, as if it was a magic lamp that could make all my problems disappear. "You wouldn't let me keep this job."

"Of course I would if it's what you really want to do," he purred.

"If you someday become terminally ill, maybe I'll be able to tell you what I do if you agree to the procedure. For now, I'm going to take Garshie for a walk. I'll e-mail you. Bye." Catching a single indistinguishable syllable of his reply, I jammed the "talk" button and dropped the phone back in the charger. I didn't usually hang up on people, but sometime I got truly fed up with all the secrecy and hush-hush. Maybe it was a shared emotion from Vinnet's frustration with being allowed to speak only occasionally. But to a Tok'ra host, attributing an emotion to one or the other really wasn't practical since both experienced it the same.

Standing, I drifted from my office back to the door, wondering if there was even more of a path worn into the carpet from today's pacing. As I pulled a leash from a key hook by the door, Garshaw, my three-year-old husky mix, happily ran up to me, overjoyed at the suggestion of going for a walk. I'd gotten him for my twenty-first birthday, and Vinnet had named him after a previous leader of the Tok'ra. I'd had no objections as long as his full name could be Imperial Trainee Garshaw Houndini Anderson, after my first dog, Imperial Trainee Theodore Houndini Anderson.

Just as I told Dad, I hooked the leash to Garshie's collar and led him around the neighbor hood. Other than getting dragged forward or having to goad him to keep moving, our somewhat leisurely pace, combined with the fresh autumn air and gentle breeze, allowed me to relax considerably.

About halfway around our circular route, my cell phone began beeping out "Across the Star." I stopped by a green plastic mailbox, earning me a questioning glance from Garshie, and fumbled the small gray and silver contraption out of my pocket. Pressing the button with the green phone, I answered, "Hello?"

"Sarah," Sally's slightly distorted voice responded. I heard a slight gulping noise as if she wasn't entirely certain about what she was about to say. "I'm calling to tell you my decision about the procedure."

My eyebrows rose, though I knew she couldn't see. "That was quick," I said, prompting a short, half-hearted burst of laughter from Sally. Expecting her to enlighten me, I waited a few seconds, finally asking, "Yes?"

She remained quiet for a couple more seconds. "Um, I'll do it, I guess. Whenever you're ready for me."

I silently cheered at her response, most likely giving the neighbors quite a show. "Okay!" I chirped. "When they have an opening, I'll call and pick you up."

"Thanks. Bye."

Disconnecting the call and shoving the cell phone back into my pocket, I smiled down at my husky mix and continued walking, thinking how lucky I was that I didn't completely scare Sally with the whole leech cover story.

The sun had begun to sink, streaking the sky with pinks and reds by the time we returned. As I walked in, I noticed that the flashing red light of the answering machine intermittently illuminated the living room, beckoning someone to hear its tales. After releasing one happy Garshaw, I jagged over and jabbed the round button marked "play." If my gut feeling was right, I'd have no time to waste.

Sure enough, Jacob's voice wound out of the speaker, its grave tone causing goosebumps to rise on my arms. "Sarah, there was an attack. Six people were hurt pretty bad. We need you back at the base as soon as possible."

He said little but told me every detail I required to do my job and justify my pleasurable life on Earth. Though I wondered who had attacked the base, how they found it, and if I'd met any of the injured, I knew standing around and dwelling on it was an idle waste of precious time. I ran into my office to check a list of possible hosts who lived near my Colorado home and called six of them whose illnesses had not progressed beyond a tired symbiote's ability to repair. I carefully explained to them--again, but not for the last time--that there was no backing out once we reached our destination. Next, I left a message on my dad's answering machine, asking him to take care of Garshie and saying only that I had to go on another business trip.

Since I couldn't think of anything more to take care of, I hurried into the garage and hopped into my blue SUV. The garage door had barely begun to close as I peeled away, my mind plotting the fastest route between my house, the hose of the six I had called, and the nearby Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base.