A/N: I'm currently enjoying a well earned break from writing my thesis as my supervisor has gone to New Zealand for a week (it's not that far, I'm in Australia). I've almost finished the next chapter for my other fic "Past Legacy" and I promise for those of you who have read it there is more to come! But anyways, I saw an old season 3 episode for the first time recently and this story idea just came to me. It's way shorter than "Past Legacy", and hopefully not completely bereft of some bits of humour (we'll see if people agree with that).

The time frame is just after "2001" from season 5. Please read and say nice things (or at least not horrible things... please say something!)

Samantha Carter found herself once again walking through the same corridor towards the locker room as she had for the past three days at precisely this time. As she rounded the final corner, she saw her CO, Jack O'Neill, approaching from the other direction.

"This is getting ridiculous." She muttered under her breath before addressing her colleague. "On your way to the mess again sir?" She kept her tone light, but knew he could see the slight anxiety in her eyes.

"Hey, Carter!" Jack was just as perplexed by their repeat meetings in this particular corridor. Unlike his 2IC, however, he thought it more fortuitous than suspect. "You betcha – feel like getting some lunch?"

"Yeah, sure…" Sam tried to force the suspicions to the back of her mind and turned about face to head towards the mess. "Colonel-"

"Hmm?" Jack looked at her amused, knowing full well that she would be making a mountain out of a mole hill concerning their coincidental meetings in the corridor.

"Sir, the most direct route from your office to the mess really isn't via this corridor – neither place is even on this floor!" Sam couldn't help it, but she had the nagging feeling that three times in a row meant coincidence could no longer explain their synchronous lunch wanderings via the locker rooms.

"Can't a man take the scenic route once in a while?" Truth be told, Jack had no idea why he had been headed to the locker room. All he knew was that he felt drawn there, only to find Carter heading in the same direction every time.

"Scenic? Sir? How much concrete can you want to see?" Sam looked around her incredulously as they walked shoulder to shoulder towards the mess hall. It was all concrete interspersed with pipes and painted numbers indicating their location – hardly interesting. "It's not as if we've got special windows like in the Ministry of Magic"

"The Ministry of what!" Jack raised his eyebrows quizzically. "Don't tell me you know something I don't… I've got higher clearance than you do!"

"In fact, sir, we've got the same clearance level. The only difference is that I actually understand everything we're allowed to see." Shesmiled at the lock of mock offense on his face. "Life's not all about the Simpsons," she sighed, realising that her reference was lost on him. "Haven't you read the Harry Potter books?"

"Is that what the Simpsons were sending up in that Halloween episode?" He grinned at her. "I beg to differ, Carter – the Simpsons are everything to me."

"Sure, fine, whatever…" Sam mumbled to herself as they walked into the lift. She tried to ignore the nagging feeling within her that they should in fact be going in the other direction, back to the locker rooms. Somehow she just felt as if she had to go there. She had to get kitted up. It was extremely strange – they were on compulsory downtime while Daniel chased up some artifact or another. They wouldn't be going through the stargate for at least a week. Teal'c had even taken the opportunity to visit his son, and wasn't due back for three days. Of course, she was taking the opportunity to attend to some experiments in her lab. With a smile, she remembered why the Colonel was stuck on base and not off fishing at his cabin. Apparently he was six months behind on his reports and General Hammond had barred him from leaving until they were done.

Jack forced himself to press the button on the inside of the lift to head to the mess hall for lunch. He strained against his subconscious desire to leap out of the lift at the last minute before the doors closed. It seemed wrong to be heading away from the locker rooms. He felt as if they needed to be kitted up, they needed to leave. But to go where? He was frowning, trying to sort out his jumbled mind, when he heard a muffled giggle coming from the other corner of the lift.

"What?" He demanded, annoyed that he had been distracted. It had seemed he was close to finding the answers to the strange coincidences of the previous days.

"Uh, nothing sir." Sam tried to look innocent, without much success. "How's the paperwork going?"

Jack groaned audibly, realising what she had been laughing about. "You have NO idea how boring it is to write these reports!" He stopped her as she tried to interrupt. "I know you have to hand in reports too, but it's different when you're the CO, they have to be more… in depth." He looked at her sideways, always a clear sign one of his trademark quips was about to follow. "I don't do deep."

Sam wasn't fooled by the lighthearted joke that came out of her friend's mouth. She knew as well as he did that mission reports could be much worse than boring. Having to recount in detail the difficult situations they'd been in – the captures, the torture, the pain of seeing those around them die – was almost worse than actually living the situations. She supposed it actually did them some good to write it all down – externalize their feelings to help deal with the stresses of their jobs – but she knew all too well that such arguments were not comforting when you had to write about things like the Tollan's fate at the hand of Tanith and whichever Goa'uld he was serving.

"You know, I don't find them any easier," she said slowly, choosing her words carefully. "I only just finished my report from our last trip to Tollana." She cast her head downwards, thinking of the horrible long-range transmission they had received from the Tollans only a couple of weeks before. By now they were probably all either dead or had been enslaved. "And I haven't even started my report on the Aschens…" she let her voice trail away, cursing herself for having brought the painful memories of the previous couple of months back to the fore.

"Yeah…" Jack also let his voice trail away into the silence that now filled the lift, not knowing what to say. "You know-"

He was interrupted by the doors opening to reveal three boisterous members of SG3 in the middle of a rambunctious conversation about some video game. They all stopped short upon seeing the base's most revered soldiers before them, looking decidedly tense.

"Don't stop on account of us boys," Jack forced a grin as he exited the lift behind Carter, who had seemed to relocate spontaneously from the lift to the corridor. "But I can tell you now that Carter here would kick all your asses at Grand Theft Auto – she's better than Teal'c!" With that comment he moved down the corridor, placing his hand on the small of Sam's back, motioning her to move ahead of him. "So, let's get some food." He said purposefully, deciding to move forward from their tense almost-conversation in the lift.

Entering the mess hall, Sam caught the eye of the young officer behind the buffet of food and gave her a smile. As they approached the array of food, the woman spoke.

"You guys are making a habit of this," she said cheerfully. "Do you have some alarm or something telling you that it's lunchtime? That's three days in a row that you're here at like 1.30 exactly!"

"Hey Jo," Jack began, cutting Sam off before she could speak. "We're just lucky I guess… wanna make sure we see you." He gave her a wink before taking his tray and heading to the table, cocking his head to the side in a motion for Sam to follow.

As they sat down, Sam was scowling at her CO, annoyed at having been cut off. As he thumped down into the seat opposite her, she cleared her throat to attract his attention.

"Sir, don't you think it's a bit weird-"

"Aaah, Carter," the tone of his voice was playfully warning her, "let's eat and then we'll get all paranoid about coincidences, k?" He smiled at her. "I know it's too much to ask just to eat and be merry…"

Sam sighed quietly and looked at the food before her, suddenly not really hungry at all. Her mind wandered as she thought about the locker rooms. She still felt as if she really should be there, and she was starting to suspect that the Colonel felt the same way. Recognising that it would probably be wise to humour Jack if she wanted him to listen to her theories on the coincidences of the past couple of days, she picked up her fork and began eating her food half-heartedly. She had only eaten a couple of bites of the salad on her plate when she noticed Jack hadn't touched his pie and was staring at her.

"Ummm, sir?" She put her fork down and looked at him expectantly.

"Ok Carter, what's your theory?" As much as Jack wanted to enjoy the pie in front of him, the nagging feeling in his mind that he should be elsewhere was too distracting.

"Well, sir, I really don't have one…" she sat back and rubbed her eyes, trying to sort out all the possibilities racing through her brain. "It's not as if we've been doing anything suspicious, but… turning up in the same place, out of both our ways, at the same time is… well… bizarre."

"Maybe it's withdrawal from gate-travel." Jack was only half-joking in this comment, but made sure he was grinning as he said it, lest Sam ridicule the idea. She smiled in response.

"On a psychological level it could be." She paused momentarily seeing the surprised look on Jack's face. "I mean, I doubt we're actually suffering some sort of medical withdrawal, but considering our jobs it's possible we miss the adventure."

"But that doesn't explain…"

"No, it doesn't explain the fact that we both turn up at the locker rooms at the same time every day." She completed his sentence immediately, sensing where he was going.

Before either of them could say anything else, the alarm sounded around the base bringing everyone in the room to attention.

"Unscheduled off-world activation," the voice boomed over the PA system. Rising simultaneously from their seats, both Sam and Jack precipitated to the control room, meeting General Hammond there just as the wormhole engaged.

"Colonel O'Neill, Major Carter," he nodded to both of them before looking back to the Stargate. "Any transmissions sergeant?" he asked. The young man sitting in front of the computer indicated that there had not been a signal. "Close the iris," the General said somewhat automatically.

"Sir," the sergeant began, "we're getting the same strange readings as we did yesterday."

"Low level electromagnetic pulses?" Sam moved closer to the computer screen, brushing past Jack to lean in over the sergeant. The sensor readings had been magnified 20 times in order to see the pulses. "It's exactly the same frequency and amplification as yesterday, sir." She spoke both to General Hammond and Colonel O'Neill. "If I hadn't studied the gate read-out after that activation and found the pulses, we wouldn't have known there was any type of electromagnetic disturbance coming through the gate."

Just as suddenly as the gate had sprung into life, it disengaged and the sergeant placed his hand on the security pad to re-open the iris. General Hammond looked to Sam expectantly, but she had no explanation to offer him.

"Why do these useless disturbances always have to happen while I'm eating?" mused Jack, more to himself than anyone else. He turned to leave the control room and return to the mess hall when a hand on his arm stopped him.

"Sir," Sam's eyes were wide with realization, her grip tight on the Colonel's arm. "You don't think this is connected do you?"

He looked at her sharply, realising what she was saying. "But we've only received these electric readings twice-" He stopped short, casting his thought back to three days ago. His eyes widened as he began to see what Sam was getting out.

"Sergeant," Sam barked in a determined voice. Pull the records from the off-world gate-activation from three days ago – it was about the same time of day as this one."

"Can I ask you both what is going on?" General Hammond looked more baffled than anything else, although there was a distinct glint of concern in his eyes.

"Just let me check this sir," Carter was working furiously at the computer terminal. "If what I suspect is true, I think we should talk about it in the briefing room."

"C'mon Carter you know what you're going to find," Jack was feeling increasingly ill-at-ease about this string of events.

"I think you'd both better fill me in." General Hammond motioned for them to climb the stairs.

TBC

A/N: Things will become a LOT clearer in the next part - I promise! Please review...