Light flooded in through the attic window, highlighting the trunk he’d been searching for; the trunk containing his great grandfathers’ belongings.

Jack unbuckled the straps holding the big box closed and with a grunt managed to break what felt like a hermetic seal to throw the lid open.

The hiss as he broke the seal surprised him, but remembering the stories told about great granddaddy’s biggest friend it didn’t really surprise him that much.

Inside the trunk he could see a large number of packages; each one wrapped carefully in tissue paper. He reached for the first item sitting on top of the pile and carefully unwrapped it to reveal a white Panama style hat with an Indian beaded hatband.

The hat showed no sign of the large amount of time it had spent inside the case and giving into temptation Jack lifted it up and fitted it on to his own head. To his surprise it was a perfect fit.

Standing up, Jack moved over to an old upright mirror and studied the effect the old Panama hat had on his reflection.

"Yes!" He said, pumping his hand gleefully in the air before turning back to excavating the box.

Then, still wearing the antique, he carefully started unfolding the tissue paper that wrapped each item. As he took them from the trunk, Jack laid every article of clothing aside; the straw coloured suit with matching Indian trim to the waistcoat and even the boots were in the same condition as when they’d been packed away.

Under the clothing he found a box containing books, photographs and other miscellaneous items, the pictures looking as if they’d been taken yesterday. Not one of the books showed its age; the paper was as white as when it had been printed.

Jack examined everything carefully as he lifted it out into the autumn sunlight. When each article had been laid aside and the trunk was finally empty he climbed to his feet, reached over and picked up everything. Clutching the contents of the trunk in his arms Jack walked over to the door back into the house, then fumbling with the door handle exited the attic.

It was the one of the few nights of the year when Norad came to a standstill; the heat and noise from the annual costumed party was almost overwhelming as the entire base celebrated All Hallow’s Eve.

The Ballroom was a large room with a raised area at one end where a band was playing the usual selection of songs suitable for Halloween and the dance floor was filled with people dancing to ‘That ‘Ol Black Magic’.

Walter Davis was doing a creditable attempt at a waltz with Cassandra; the sight of a short Hercules dancing with Peter Pan wasn’t as startling an event as it could have been. Most of the attention was on the member’s of SG1 who were scattered around the room so no one even blinked when Blackbeard waltzed past with the slave girl version of Princess Leia.

Hammond caught a glimpse of O’Neill entering the room as he twirled the Princess around the dance floor; O'Neill was dressed as one of his favourite historical figures, Nicodemus Legend.

Jack O’Neill was dressed from head to toe in what appeared to be authentic clothing from the period. Nicodemus Legend had been a famous lawman from the late 19^th century and in his distinctive straw coloured suit quite a colourful figure in history.

"Hello, Jack. Nice party isn’t it!" Hammond shouted over the music and just caught O’Neill’s reply of "Ernest actually" before being whisked away by his partner in the dance.

Jack O’Neill ambled around the edges of the dance floor clutching a glass of the lethal punch provided by the Marines, made from a secret recipe passed down from Sergeant to Sergeant and only made on special occasions.

A gleam appeared in his eyes as they fastened upon a dark-haired beauty in a red flappers dress. He ambled over to her, reached out grasped her hand gently and raised it to his lips.

"Pretty Lady, you light up my life, like the stars illuminate a dark night with their glory," he said before kissing the back of her hand.

"May I introduce myself, my name is Ernest Pratt. You may know me better by my nom de plume of Nicodemus Legend and, may I say, this is indubitably the best party I’ve been to in a long time."

Janet Fraiser studied O’Neill, trying to gauge how much alcohol he’d drunk already and, catching a glimpse of the colour of his hair, proceeded to examine him carefully with her eyes.

Sam’s eyes glazed over when she heard O’Neill using large dictionary type words to woo Janet Fraiser. She knew O’Neill was all for getting into a part, but that was taking duty way too far.

As O’Neill wandered off around the room, Janet turned to Sam with wide eyes and asked the question foremost in their minds. "I don’t know who that was, but I do know that wasn’t Colonel O’Neill," she exclaimed, mystified.

"Pardon?" Sam queried with a raised eyebrow she’d borrowed from Teal’c.

"That wasn’t Jack O’Neill," Janet stated with some force.

"Okay Ladies, what’s wrong?" Hammond said, leaning back against the bar as a 1920’s Flapper and Calamity Jane approached him with serious expressions on their faces.

"General, have you noticed anything weird about Colonel O’Neill?" Sam asked, nudging her kepi further back on her head.

"Not anything especially, other than he’s very mellow tonight," Hammond replied, putting his drink down on the bar.

"General Hammond, sir, you know we’re not the type to be paranoid, but if we didn’t know better we’d say that that isn’t Colonel O’Neill!" Janet imparted with a serious expression.

"Explain," Hammond asked, starting to feel concern.

"For one thing, you know how the Colonel tends to cultivate a dumb attitude," Carter said as she fiddled with the bullwhip hanging from her belt.

"Yes," Hammond agreed with a smile.

"Well, he’s using an extreme number of long words and all in the right places," Sam said in exasperation.

"He may well be acting the part," the General suggested, trying to calm her down.

"Yes, sir, he could be, but would he dye his hair, have plastic surgery and grow a moustache in a couple of hours?" Fraiser said, stressing her concern.

"Pardon?" Hammond said as he started to experience a feeling of alarm

"This man is younger than the Colonel by at least ten years," the Doctor said, pressing the gravity of the situation.

"Stage makeup?" Hammond said, attempting to introduce a touch of sanity into the proceedings.

"No, sir, I would have noticed anything like that and it was the first thing I looked for," Fraiser said, shaking her head.

Hammond looked around and catching the eyes of Teal’c and Daniel nodded toward where the Colonel was standing beside the door.

Ernest Pratt spotted the five people walking towards him and backed slowly out of the doorway into the corridor beyond. He walked halfway down the passage, stopped and turned to face them. He’d wondered how long it would take them to notice that he wasn’t who they’d thought he was.

Legend stood facing Blackbeard the Pirate with a Jaffa Jedi Master, Indiana Jones, Calamity Jane and a 1920’s Flapper spread out into a semi-circle in front of him

"General, what’s going on?" Daniel queried, pushing his glasses up his nose with one hand and hitching his satchel back onto his shoulder with the other.

"Indeed, General Hammond, I too wish to know what has occurred," Teal’c said, looming over the proceedings.

"Gentlemen, this is not Jack O’Neill!" Hammond stated firmly.

The combined stares of SG1 and company fastened themselves on to the interloper and started to note small differences between the man in front of them and their team leader.

Ernest gave a twitch as the amalgamated glares hit him with some force and felt his grasp on the world start to slip at the same time. "Tell my great grandson to empty the trunk," Legend said as he started to fade away.

The members of the SGC stood there in shock as the man they’d been about to interrogate vanished before their eyes. Sound from the party seemed far away and remote as they took in the empty corridor in front of them, the apparition fading away having thrown their worlds slightly off kilter.

Slowly sound returned to its normal level, with the addition of faint yelling in the background.

Jolted out of the frozen state they were in by the almost familiar voice in the distance, they drifted down the passageway toward the elevator.

The red light flashing on and off outside told them that someone was trapped inside and from the sound of the voice and some of the words it seemed that Colonel Jack O’Neill had been stuck in the elevator for quite some time.

The thud of many feet echoed up the stairwell into the attic and the door was thrown open. A hand reached inside and flicked the light switch to the on position.

Jack O'Neill, General Hammond and the other members of SG1 staggered into the room, thankful that Janet had decided to remain behind on the base with Cassie. Otherwise Jack's attic would have been uncomfortably cramped.

The trunk sat in the centre of the cone of light thrown down by the bulb above and an air of mystery seemed to hover around the large box. "There's the trunk, but I emptied it before heading for the base," O'Neill protested.

"Colonel, your great grandfather seemed to think you'd missed something," Hammond said, breathing hard from running up the stairs.

"Is it my imagination or is it deeper on the outside than it is on the inside?" Daniel interrupted before Jack could say anything further.

Sam and Daniel started to probe the trunk seeking to find it's secret with Teal'c examining it from the sidelines.

"Tell me of your ancestor, O'Neill," Teal'c requested.

"Well, from what I remember, all he wanted was to be left alone. Then the Legend business started and he ended up doing good and foiling plots," O'Neill said, trying to remember what he'd been told by his grandmother.

"Anything else? Because we need some sort of clue to help us open the bottom of this box!" Daniel said, looking up from where he was kneeling beside the trunk.

"Well, his greatest friend was an inventor named Janos Bartok, who according to the stories, provided my great granddaddy with some of his inventions and also helped him on some of his adventures," Jack said thoughtfully.

Carter had continued to study the trunk and, leaning almost inside, spotted a small patch of what appeared to be red glass near the bottom of the trunk. A shiver of excitement ran through her as she identified the object and, if Bartok had been this far ahead of his time, connecting it to all sorts of possibilities. "I know how to open it" Sam said, the sheer enormity of the discovery almost making her stutter.

"What is it then?" O'Neill said, leaning forward to peer into the trunk.

"It's an infra red sensor," she said, grinning insanely.

"Pardon?" Hammond and Daniel chorused together.

Teal'c's eyebrows rose in tandem whilst O'Neill simply gave expression to his disbelief by letting his jaw drop and taking on the appearance of a startled fish.

"It's similar to a remote control for your television or video, a little more primitive but that's what it is!" Carter enthused.

"So, what you're saying is to open it we need a remote control?" Daniel queried, trying to get things straight in his mind.

"No, what we need is the remote control," Sam stressed waving her hands around.

O'Neill looked thoughtful and scrambled up off of the box he'd ended up sitting on and almost skidded through the doorway back into the main house. The rapid thud of feet pelting down the stairs let them follow his movements through the house and back again, this time clutching the box he'd found in the bottom of the trunk.

"Check in here," Jack said breathlessly, thrusting the box into Sam's arms before sinking back into a sitting position.

Carter peered into the box and started to fish out items, starting with the photograph albums and the books, to finally bring out an object that looked like a flat box the size of two paperback books one on top of the other with a switch on the top.

She reached into the trunk and angled the strange contraption toward the little red square, then flicked the switch on top.

A loud clunk announced the opening of the secret compartment within the trunk and all those present gathered around to see what had been concealed inside for so long.

Jack reached down inside the trunk and started to lift out piles of blueprints and plans for Janos Bartoks' inventions and, handing them over to Sam, reached back inside for an envelope he'd just spotted.

A shiver ran down their spines as they read what had been written on the envelope 130 years ago; the envelope was simply addressed to 'Jack O'Neill'.

O'Neill carefully opened the letter and started to read the message left in the trunk so long ago.

Jack lowered the letter and looked around at General Hammond and the other members of SG1.

"Anyone else just felt a shiver just run up their spine?" he said softly in shock.

"How?" Daniel mumbled running his hands through his hair.

"There may be an answer among this lot," Sam replied, looking up at Daniel from the large bundle of plans and blueprints she had clutched in her hot little hands.

The General reached down and picked up a thin book that Carter had dropped to the floorboards as the bundle overflowed out of control. Hammond flicked through the pages of the diary trying to read what was written; he sighed, realising that yet again he was trying to read something in a foreign language; at least this time it wasn't in Go'auld.

"Dr. Jackson, I suggest you try looking for your answers in this," he said, passing the book to him.

Daniel flicked through the pages reading a few words every other page and muttering to himself. He found some of the answers he'd asked about and also further questions raised by those answers.

Movement in his peripheral vision forced him to glance up and he discovered O'Neill peering over his shoulder from less than six inches away, as the other members of SG1 edged closer trying to see the pages.

"Well, what did Great Great Uncle Janos have to say in his book?" O'Neill said, looking into Daniel's crossed eyes.

Daniel forced his eye's to focus on Jack; the closeness was throwing out the prescription of his glasses and he thought that maybe it was time to go to the opticians again.

"Well, it's in turn of the century Hungarian and there are a lot of words that don't seem to translate, but basically what he did was to cross something that sounds like time travel with what seems to be astral travel…" Daniel replied. Taking a step sideways he tried to put a little distance between himself and O'Neill, attempting not to stand on Teal'c's feet as a result of the move.

As Daniel spoke, Carter had dumped the entire armload of plans on top of a nearby packing case and proceeded to scrutinise every item carefully, trying to find anything that looked even a smidgen like a time machine.

"There doesn't seem to be anything here that could have any connection with time travel," she said, turning to address the others in the loft.

"That's because, according to this entry, Janos Bartok destroyed all of the blueprints for this invention. He say's it was too tempting for all concerned and much too dangerous to just leave around anywhere," Daniel said after reading the next part of the diary.

"Here, here!" O'Neill said quietly, thinking of the havoc a time machine could make in his quiet little world.

"But it does provide information on what Jack's Great Grandfather actually discovered and what he told Bartok," Daniel exclaimed, glancing up at General Hammond.

"Perhaps if you tell us what's in the book?" Hammond rumbled, envisaging the security leak to end all security leaks.

"Yeah, Daniel, don't prolong the suspense, just tell us," O'Neill chivvied, nudging Daniel with his elbow as he bounced on the spot with impatience.

"Okay, it say's that opening the trunk was the method of activation… did you notice anything weird?" Daniel asked Jack, peering at him over the tops of his glasses.

"Yeah, it hissed at me… like when you open a bottle of beer," O'Neill said thoughtfully.

"That mean's there was a vacuum inside and when you opened it, some sort of signal went out," Sam commented, her brow creased in thought.

"Well, apparently that gave them a point in space and time to aim for, when your Great-" Daniel managed to get out before being interrupted.

"For heaven's sake call him Ernest before you run out of Great's!" O'Neill exclaimed running his hands through his hair in exasperation.

"As I was saying, the equipment Bartok used was focused on this point in time and when Ernest arrived everyone thought he was Jack, so he got a ride up to the Mountain and entered the SGC with some of the military personnel," Daniel said, flipping through the pages eagerly.

Hammond started to glower, mentally starting to plan having a few words with the gate guards about security.

"And, according to this, he even reached the Gate-room and found out about the Go'auld from Jacob, which is why Janos Bartok secreted so many of his ideas in the trunk," Daniel looked up from the diary, his eyes glinting with excitement. "Apparently, Ernest said that our enemy made a rattlesnake look like a silk worm or Genghis Khan like a petty thief by comparison and he took it to heart then started to pack away a few ideas that we might have a use for," Daniel said, enthusing over the story.

"Danieljackson, you must tell me more of this Genghis Khan. Could he have been a Go'auld?" Teal'c commented, his eyebrow raised in command.

As O'Neill leaned back against the sloping attic roof and looked out of the window, listening to Daniel try to explain about the leader of the Horde, he pondered over what they'd just been told. The book seemed to answer all their questions, but a niggling feeling burrowed its way into his brain, a feeling that something was missing.

"That's all very well, but there's one question I have that needs an answer!" Jack said turning away from the window.

"Just one, Jack? You're slipping!" Hammond remarked, trying to conceal his smile behind Blackbeards' beard.

"Yeah, well, if Carter and Great Great Uncle Janos were right, Great Grandpappy homed in on the signal from the trunk, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars… correct?" O'Neill said as the feeling in his brain converted into a large itch.

"Yes sir, that's how it would have happened. Why?" Carter said curiously.

"Well, how did he know I was his Great Grandson?" O'Neill said, starting to look disturbed again.

Carter looked thoughtful, trying to think of an answer to his question and just ended up shaking her head. "No idea, sir, I'd have to examine the book carefully before I could even hazard a guess!" she replied, mystified.

Daniel raised his eyes to the ceiling and just shook his head. "I can make a guess," he said smiling impishly.

"And what's that, Daniel?" Jack replied reading, Daniel’s expression with dread.

"It's All Hallow's Eve, a time when traditionally the walls between worlds are at their thinnest and ghosts walk among us," Daniel smirked, finally having the last word. "Happy Halloween, Jack!"

The End