JANUS: A Lantean scientist who lived some 10,000 years ago
in the city of Atlantis. Janus was a curious and creative scientist,
who proved himself to be one of the most brilliant and prolific minds among the ancient civilization
that spanned many galaxies. Janus is the inventor of a time
drive, a unique component that allows a Puddle Jumper to travel through time.
And when Elizabeth Weir used the drive to travel to the city from the future,
it was Janus who helped her to survive and to preserve the legacy of the Ancient city.
The Lantean scientist Janus was a member of the Ancients – a race once known as the Alterans.
He lived millions of years after the Ancients built the city of Atlantis and migrated from Earth to
the Pegasus Galaxy, but before they learned to ascend to a noncorporeal plane of existence.
Indeed, Janus was a part of the final generation of Lanteans to dwell in Atlantis,
during the Wraith’s first great siege upon the city. Over many years his
people fought a losing battle against the Wraith. The final siege itself lasted for many years, and
eventually the inhabitants chose to submerge the city beneath the ocean and evacuate through the
Stargate. Some 10,000 years later the expedition from Earth would find Atlantis in this state.
Janus was a highly intelligent scientist and inventor.
By personality he was curious and compassionate, soft-spoken but firm in his convictions.
While he was one of the city’s lead scientists, Janus was also something of a renegade.
He sometimes worked in secret to develop his own controversial new technologies. And despite the
stern warnings of his leaders, he was willing to defy their orders to pursue his goals –
not for power or prestige, but because he believed his inventions could make the universe better.
During his years in Atlantis Janus maintained a secret laboratory,
hidden even from the council, where he worked on a variety of new and unauthorized technologies.
Some of these were left incomplete, along with an encrypted database of his research that would
provide a treasure trove to future generations. Among the controversial technologies Janus
developed here was the Attero device. When activated at a remote station with a large
power generator, the technology disrupts subspace itself – flooding it with static
in order to destabilize hyperspace travel. Any target ship attempting to enter hyperspace
while the device is active, anywhere in the galaxy, is immediately destroyed.
But because the Attero device targets only the subspace frequencies used by Wraith hyperdrives,
only enemy ships would be at risk. The Wraith fleet would be effectively grounded,
only able to travel between planets at sub-light speeds.
Janus tested the technology for three days, and then shut down the project
due to unforeseen side effects. Because the Stargates also make use of subspace,
the radiation created by the device causes a massive power build-up within a gate
connected to an active wormhole – enough to cause the Stargate itself to explode.
With millions of lives at stake across the Pegasus Galaxy,
Janus shut down the project. The Attero device would not be the Lanteans’ salvation after all.
As Janus and the Lanteans prepared to evacuate the city permanently,
Dr. Elizabeth Weir appeared in their midst – using Janus’ own time-travel technology to arrive in a
Puddle Jumper from 10,000 years in the future. Janus befriended her, happy to learn that the
Ancients’ own descendents from Earth would one day rediscover the city. Though he was condemned
by the Lantean council for defying their order not to pursue time travel technology, Janus sought to
convince them to help Dr. Weir return home and save the city from its inevitable destruction.
This was the generation of Melia, a member of the Lantean council.
It was the generation of Moros, a fellow council member who himself would ascend
some time after relocating to Earth – eventually retaking corporeal form as the legendary Merlin.
And it was the generation of Ganos Lal, a fellow ascended Ancient who would be sent to pursue
Merlin and thwart his efforts to create a new weapon – and who took on the name Morgan Le Fay.
When the council of Atlantis forbade any further use of the time ship following Weir’s arrival,
Janus assisted Elizabeth with a new plan to try and save the city. She was put into stasis,
to be automatically awakened every few thousand years to rotate the three Zero
Point Modules powering the city’s shields. Should the power reached critical levels,
he also programmed the city to release from the ocean floor and rise to the surface.
Though Janus was forced to abandon his home, he helped to ensure that
Atlantis would survive the next time the expedition from Earth discovered it.
After Janus and the last surviving Ancients traveled through the Stargate to Earth,
they spread out to various worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy. Some may have believed
this to be the twilight of their species. But there is evidence that Janus continued
his scientific and technological endeavors. This included time-travel technology,
despite the wishes of the council that once governed Atlantis.
On the planet where the Tok’ra resettled the former Colonel and retired criminal Harry
Maybourne, SG-1 found signs that an Ancient had once visited this world – an Ancient with the
ability to travel through time. They found old ruins with a tablet inscribed in the
Ancients’ language, chronicling the planet’s past, present, and its future history.
After searching the surrounding area they discovered one of the most advanced pieces
of Ancient technology ever discovered: a Puddle Jumper, very much like the ships in Atlantis,
but augmented with a unique drive that allows it to be piloted backward and forward through time.
Was Janus the inventor of this time ship, too? While we do not know for certain,
this seems likely. Before saying goodbye Janus collected his research notes, telling
Elizabeth that he intended to build another time ship – though he knew the council would
be watching him closely. He evidently succeeded. The time ship was left behind on the planet long
ago, but Janus’ own fate remains a mystery. He may have completed his work
and died of old age millennia ago. He may have built more than one ship,
and settled elsewhere on the timeline. Or perhaps Janus himself learned to ascend
beyond the material plane, giving up his scientific endeavors for more
metaphysical pursuits – making him one of the “Others” who still exists to this day.
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