FATHERS
A Jenna Carter Story

Chapter 1:

A/N: Spoiler Alert! This story deals heavily with the continuity of episode 3x04, "I Do Over". If you haven't watched that first, you should.

The beauty of a logic diamond was, Jenna Carter reflected, that they never faded. The unique crystalline matrix could store data forever, assuming you didn't break it. Older ones, like the one her father had made for her mom before she was born, couldn't contain nearly as much as the newer models with their hyper-condensed lattices, or the new compression methods, but that wasn't the point.

Back then they'd been hideously expensive, but from all she knew it had been just like him to get something this rare and special for the woman he'd loved, and eventually given his life for.

Nathan Stark. Father. Brilliance unchecked, a man who's hubris knew no bounds, and one of the finest scientists of his day.

Even today his name was legend to those in the know. The last independent head of Global Dynamics in the early 2000s, before the military had taken it over, before it had been bravely taken back by true scientists and visionaries. Talk of him engendered both cautionary tales of the necessity of principles and wild stories of the excesses mankind could achieve if only they'd look beyond ethics mired in pre-historic culture.

They still had a wing of Global Dynamics dedicated to him, but that, all of that, was not her memory.

Her mom had let her look at that diamond several times over the years. It was still treasured, still kept close to her, though not worn anymore. Jenna didn't play the message herself, anymore, but for a time in her early adolescence she had played every picosecond of that recording, again and again.

Today, she remembered every word:

"Surprise!" he says, tenderly. He's wearing his wedding tuxedo, a white silk shirt and a custom white and cream tie. His eyes are serious and intense. She can see, if she looks closely enough, where she inherited some of her features. The high cheekbones, the intense blue eyes so rare with coffee colored skin.

"I know what you're thinking," he continues with a jaunty demeanor, smirking a little, but it's self-effacing, not mean-spirited. "I can barely handle one Nathan, what am I going to do with two?"

"Well don't worry. All I've done is imprint a small part of myself onto this diamond, the way that you have imprinted yourself onto me."

"If marriage is about joining two people for eternity, then I wanted to be sure, that no matter where you are, or where I am, I will always be with you."

"I made mistakes the first time, Allie. I know that. But I promise you, this time... this time is forever."

"Allie, I will always love you, and I will never, ever leave you again." He closes with the utmost sincerity, all the love he can muster in his blazing blue eyes.

Jenna knows why her mom loved him. She can see the strong assertiveness, the passion, the intensity. He's not so different from the man she calls "dad", though Jack Carter had quickly disabused her of any such notions the first time she mentioned it. Still, she knew from how he'd talked about Nathan Stark that, for all their shared animosity (mostly, she knew, over her mom, Allison), they had still respected each other. She'd got her dad to admit it once, even!

Silently she chided herself for her woolgathering. Such thoughts on the eve what would surely become her greatest achievement rewarded nothing.

So, she turned to the rest of her lab, a concern she'd been working on for years. A well organized space, filled with the apparatuses required to push the boundaries of science. It was never a question she'd make it at Global Dynamics, and she had earned it, even if he big brother Kevin Blake could have pulled the strings to ensure it regardless. Even with the crew at Jupiter, the former Director of Space Sciences still had some pull back home. But she was her mother's daughter, brilliance, incisiveness, knowledge and grace all rolled into one, and the sheer determination to see her goals through.

It was time to make the final adjustments, and her last log.

She turned to the video log camera and addressed the machine.

"Private Log: Jenna Carter, 9:37 p.m., December 17, 2032." she began, smiling for posterity.

"Happy birthday to me." she laughed, nervous excitement evident. "I've finally put it all together. The quantum displacement tracker, the universal clock, the string detangler, and the bridge, and it works. It works!" she almost danced in her seat.

"Last night I put this culture tray into detangler and synced up the clocks, setting the dilation for the wormhole to 9:15 p.m. today, and as predicted the culture dematerialized. I'm sure no one will believe this without actually witnessing it, but the truth is it just rematerialized now thirteen minutes ago."

"I've put it through he full range of biological filter scans to compare and contrast the past data, and I'll be damned if the culture sample isn't perfectly healthy, growing at an unhindered rate, and measurably only a few minutes older than it was when it disappeared!"

"I am now attaching all relevant test data to the log." She tapped a few keys on the virtual console appending notes and other logs. Nearby screens gave rapid fire previews, as did the virtual vision indicators in her retinal implants.

"On a personal note, I believe that I have finally found the anomaly. In all the years I've been researching these equations, I have never been closer. Well, after the sample rematerialized I applied the new data through displacement tracker, and it was what I needed to begin pinpointed specific elements in time!"

"The data stream is like nothing I've ever seen before. The elements here, here, and here are some of the more interesting ones. For example, you'll note a particularly large quantum entanglement event in 1947, tying it neatly with 2010. We have another one, seeming interlaced, perhaps buried, that connects 2010 and 2006, and another one tying 2009 to 2006, all centered on Eureka."

She frowned at the next bit. "The events in California tying '85, '55, and 2015 seem to be outliers, but I can't rule out another lab trying time travel. Whoever they were, they obviously achieved some success in the field."

"However, with all of these elements and data points, I have found the one that my dad let slip about a number of years ago. The theory's been formalized by Dr. Fargo a few years ago into, charmingly enough, the Groundhog Principle. Well with these new tools I can see no fewer than a half dozen, but only one such looping wave that appears to intersect with Eureka in 2008... the year I was conceived."

She sighed and took some time considering the next bit. "As we all know, the Wells Protocol* prohibits actual people traversing the time stream, and the tenants of the protocol are severe, to say the least. I have, however, decided to try it..."

She holds up a device so the camera can see it. "This handy little 'toy'" which looks like nothing so much as a Global Dynamics PDA from around the turn of the century with a few nonsensical bits attached to it, "is my locater and my manipulator. A compass and a map, all in one. I've managed to tie in everything from temporal dislocation to quantum particle entanglement, all using the Einstein Bridge Principle. I call it the baby bridge**, and it should allow me to open a wormhole to any point along this quantum reality's time stream, and allow me to set it's end location anywhere on the globe!"

She smiles happily, then sobers up, looking at the recorder seriously. "I know what I'm going to do is both foolish and ill considered, or so some of you would say. So here's my rebuttal in advance, my request for forgiveness and absolution instead of permission."

"Mom, I have to know. It's within my power to see him with my own eyes, to actually talk to him! I love you so much. I've learned so much from you, but beyond all the science the greatest lesson you ever taught me was courage. In the face of insurmountable dangers you never lost hope, in the face of potential heartbreak, you never gave in."

"Dad, I love you too, you know I do. I've learned so much from you, but the most important lesson is love. He loved mom so much, he deserves to at least know about me. And don't give me any of that 'he already knows' tripe, please! For all we've learned we still have no idea if how he went out let him move on." She exhales with finality.

"Big Brother" she sighs, "I sincerely hope this isn't goodbye, I still want to come out to join you guys at Jupiter sooner rather than later. I learned so much from you, and through you, about him, and I'm jealous. I know he's your step-dad, but to me he's the missing link. I've gotta know. I hope you never have to hear this."

"Big sis. I don't know what exactly to say, except, thanks. You've always been there for me. Pass on my love to the rug rats, and to uncle Lucas. I told you he was right for you!"

"Aunt Jo, without you I wouldn't know what strong meant. I hope you and Zane continue to do well."

"To all of you, uncle Doug, aunt Grace, uncle Henry, and to those I've forgotten, know that I send my deepest love and regrets that I could no longer be with you. I sincerely hope this works and none of you have to get this!"

"This is Doctor Jenna Carter, signing out."

She stood from the video recorder, ran through a quick edit with the software, and included all the data. Everything would be saved, assuming she didn't fundamentally alter reality with this stunt. If she did it right, any potential changes would be erased in the time loop, with only her signature unable to return to the present.

Setting the machine to send a copy of this latest log to the named parties, so that they'd have a farewell if she never returned, she went to the center of the lab and began syncing the baby bridge with the rest of her equipment.

Checked and rechecked, she was finally satisfied that all the numbers added up, that everything would work, and the next stop would be Eureka, 2008, 6:15 a.m. on the morning of the wedding of Allison Blake and Nathan Stark.

If it worked.

She shook her head. Of course it would work! Who was she kidding? She was Jenna Carter! Science and daring were her birthright!

The machines powered up, all indicators flicking to green, then initiated the download into the baby bridge, passing off it's power load and operations to the smaller device.

"Hi, Dad." she whispered.

She pushed the button.


Disclaimer: I don't own Eureka, it's characters, or its concepts, I'm just playing for fun and an educational experience.

Author's Note: This story's setting is all contained within the text, but for summation sake, it's set after Jenna Stark has grown up. Sometime in her past Jack and Allison married, and Jack adopted Jenna into the Carter clan. Kevin chose to retain his mother's maiden name, Blake.

I do not know how much more there is to this, I had what one of my friends calls a "plot bunny" in the middle of the day and this refused to leave me alone. I was writing about Carter, Allison, and Jenna, and the little one just demanded a voice. The continuation of the story will be an addendum to the episode 3x04 "I Do Over", but I believe I will finish up "Way of the Gun" first. It depends on how loudly Jenna demands to see Nathan.

* Thank you fellow author AllyrienDM, brilliant name for this! Read her excellent story "Everything Is Illuminated"

**Thank you Jack McDevitt and your book "Time Travelers Never Die" for inspiration into how the baby bridge should look and just what it should be capable of. Sorry, but Eureka has better toys than qPods, though.

Edited 1/8/11 to clean up some dates and a few words.