Stargate Under the Fort - New Project

It had been a week since they found the secret trail behind the motorhome.

Bitty and Dassah went back every day after lunch. They’d climb the fort their oldest brother Ervin built, swing on the rope, and look for more treasure.

On Thursday, it rained. On Friday, the sun came back and made everything smell like warm pine.

That’s when Rowdy found it.

He was digging under the fort — because Rowdy is part dog, part barking mouse, part archaeologist — and he started sneezing.

Bitty lifted a big pile of old branches that Ervin must have stacked there years ago. Underneath was dirt. And under the dirt… metal.

“Dassah! Come look!”

Dassah dropped her pinecone collection and ran over.

They dug with sticks. With hands. With a plastic shovel Harbor left out there.

It wasn’t a box. It was a ring. A big one. As wide as Dad’s truck tire, made of gray metal with funny symbols all around the edge. It was half-buried, leaning against the roots of the spruce.

Bitty brushed off the dirt. “I know what this is.”

Dassah squinted. “What?”

“The Stargate.”

Dassah gasped. “The real one?”

Bitty nodded fast. She’d heard the stories at bedtime for years. How Go-Diddy built it for his kids years ago, back when Ervin, Memory, Mosheh, Mani, Ber, and Yoseph were little. How they’d step through and travel throughout the universe to other planets. How Mom would yell “dinner!” and they’d have to dial home fast.

“It’s the Chappa-ai,” Bitty whispered, because that sounded cooler.

They dug more. Six inches to the left, under a rock, they found the DHD — the Dial Home Device. It was a short pedestal with a round red button in the middle and all the same symbols as the ring.

Dassah poked the red button. Nothing happened.

“Do you think it still works?” Bitty asked.

Dassah looked at her, very serious. “We need Go-Diddy.”

They ran back to the house. Go-Diddy was in the garage working on his drone.

“Dad,” Bitty said, out of breath. “We found it. Under the fort.”

Go-Diddy didn’t even ask what. He just raised an eyebrow. “The gate?”

Bitty nodded.

He grinned. “No one else gets to know about it this time, right?”

“Right,” Dassah said. “Secret mission.”

That night, after everyone else went to bed, Go-Diddy grabbed his old toolbox, a string of special lights, and something from the back of the garage covered in a tarp.

“My old naquadah generator,” he whispered to the girls as they snuck back down the secret trail with flashlights. “Your brother Ervin helped me build it when he was 16. Haven’t fired it up in fifteen years.”

He plugged cables into the back of the Stargate. He wired the lights around the ring. He connected the DHD. He flipped a switch on the generator.

The whole ring hummed. The symbols lit up one by one, amber and warm. The DHD lit up too.

“It works,” Go-Diddy whispered. “It really works.”

Bitty and Dassah hugged each other and squealed silently.

Go-Diddy pulled a folded, faded piece of notebook paper out of his pocket. “Your older brothers and sisters left this. Old list of planets.”

On it, in different kid handwriting:

Bitty pointed. “Bouncing Hills!”

Dassah pointed too. “Bouncing!”

Go-Diddy laughed. “K-TAU it is.”

He showed them how to dial. Press seven symbols. Each one locked with a loud CLUNK. The ring spun.

CHEVRON ONE… ENCODED.
CHEVRON TWO… ENCODED.
…
CHEVRON SEVEN… LOCKED.

The last symbol lit. The gate roared.

And then — WHOOSH — the middle filled up. Not with fire. With water. It looked exactly like water in a swimming pool, standing straight up, rippling silver-blue.

“Wormhole established,” Go-Diddy said softly. “Just like the old days.”

Bitty’s heart was beating so fast. Dassah grabbed her hand.

“You sure?” Dad asked.

Bitty looked at him. “Lovely Law #1. We stay together.”

Dassah nodded. “We come back for dinner?”

“Thirty minutes,” Go-Diddy said, tapping his watch. “Then I dial you home. Kiss?”

They both kissed Go-Diddy on the cheeks. He kissed their foreheads.

“Be brave, my lovely ladies,” he said. “And be back.”

Hand in hand, Bitty and Dassah stepped through.

It was cold for half a second, and warm the next, like jumping into a lake in July.

They came out the other side tumbling onto soft grass. The sky was lavender. Two suns were setting, making everything pink.

The Stargate behind them shut off with a kawoosh.

In front of them were hills. And they were bouncing.

Literally. The ground went boing when you stepped.

Bitty jumped. She went ten feet up. “WHOA!”

Dassah jumped and giggled so hard she snorted.

They bounced from hill to hill, laughing, until they heard a noise.

Behind a purple bush stood an animal. It was the size of a Labrador. It had the front half of a cow — big brown eyes, floppy ears, little horns — and the back half of a pig — curly tail, pink and round.

It looked at them and said again, “Moooo-oinnnk.”

Bitty stared. “What… are you?”

Dassah whispered, “It’s a…”

Bitty grinned. “It’s a Moink.”

The Moink trotted over and sniffed Dassah’s hand. Then it flopped over for belly rubs, just like Rowdy.

“It’s half cow and half pig!” Bitty laughed. “A Moink!”

They spent twenty minutes bouncing with the Moink. It could bounce higher than both of them. It liked having its ears scratched and made a happy sound that was exactly half moo, half oink.

Dassah found a patch of berries that tasted like bubblegum. Bitty found a rock that glowed when you held it. They put both in their pockets for proof.

Then Go-Diddy’s watch beeped on Bitty’s wrist — he’d clipped it on before they left.

“Time to go,” Bitty said.

Dassah hugged the Moink. “Bye, Moink. Love others as yourself.”

The Moink moo-oinked sadly and bounced away.

They ran back to the gate. Bitty pressed the red button on the little remote Go-Diddy gave her. Back on Earth, the gate lit up. The wormhole exploded open.

They took one last look at the lavender sky, the bouncing hills, the Moink in the distance, and jumped through together.

They landed in a heap on the pine needles behind the motorhome. Go-Diddy was waiting, arms open.

The gate shut down behind them.

“Did you—” he started.

“We saw a Moink!” Dassah shouted.

“It’s half cow, half pig, and it bounces!” Bitty said, pulling the glowing rock out of her pocket.

Go-Diddy laughed so hard he had to sit down. “A Moink. That’s perfect. Your brother Ervin never found that one.”

He powered down the generator. The lights went dark. He covered the gate back up with branches.

“No one else gets to know,” he reminded them, winking. “Not yet.”

Bitty and Dassah nodded, pink-cheeked and out of breath.

As they walked back up the secret trail in the dark, Dassah whispered, “Dad, can we go again tomorrow?”

Go-Diddy put an arm around each of his lovely ladies.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll check the list. I think Ber wrote down a planet with chocolate rivers.”

Bitty gasped. “Chocolate?!”

And under the fort, under the branches, the old Stargate hummed just a little, waiting for its next dial.