Walking Type II Civilisation

I was in a diner, looking at a blonde across from me who was reading up on astrophysics. It turned out that she was Samantha Carter from the TV series Stargate SG-1, and she was just catching up with a little light reading.

I used my usual charm to get her to speak about ERBs and wormholes, and the formation of stable Kerr loops at each end forming the portals. She refused to give away the nature of the work she was doing, but I wrote down an equation I'd been working on and handed it to her. She was impressed enough that she invited me to the SGC.

There was an artifact that they were after - one which would allow the SGC to draw upon enough energy to open up the ninth chevron on their Stargates and open up travel to the Ancient ship Destiny from Stargate Universe.

It was me who dug it up. It looked like a black lump of obsidian, the size of a pen, which bonded with my arm, becoming a part of me. It explained that it had been constructed before the Ancients, and that it required a symbiotic connection with a living, sentient mind. The stone absorbed light from the local star; it used the planet's radiation belts to absorb radiation from solar storms, which explained why the planet did not have auroras - the particles never reached the poles.

Apparently, the locals also described how there had been a whole century with no stars in the sky - the artifact having cast a black forcefield across interplanetary distances to absorb all the energy being emitted by the star, while still allowing the star's light to shine on the planet and keep it alive.

Transformed by the artifact into what was effectively a walking Kardashev Type II civilisation, I promised the SGC that I would help them to open a stable nine-chevron gate, as soon as I'd found a star around an uninhabited planet and drawn upon its energy emissions for a year.