AN: So in case you were wondering... uh... the last 58 chapters have pretty much been set up for the next sequence of events

Lattice set

Sam runs in hot through the Gate from PX7-357, to be greeted by… herself… "Oh boy." She says under her breath.

Cameron asks, "What the hell is going on here?" His accent thickening as it tended to do when he was freaking out a little internally. She and Cam crouch at the ready, her blue tiger stripe BDUs shedding dust and soil on the ramp.

Hank tiredly explains the short version and tells them to go to the infirmary. "Yup." Cameron says agreeably when they are heading down the hall to the elevator. "Gonna be a long day." He mutters. "Lots of paperwork."

"You like paperwork." Sam reminds him.

"I lied." Cam says as they wait on the elevator under the watchful eye of an SF.

So far there are only two other SG-1 teams and this reality seems superficially like their own. Sam is careful not to say much though because there could be significant differences. She was glad she'd stopped breast feeding Jake when she went back to active duty. She really didn't want to have to explain to the other two Sams that she had what they wanted if she could avoid it. The Sam of this reality didn't have the incriminating pale mark her finger sported when her wedding band was on her tag chain.

And then things got even weirder as the spatial tear routed more and more SG-1 units to this reality. Landry re-routes most of them to Alpha Base but a few come in hot like they did. This reality calls it Alpha Site not Alpha Base like hers. Minor change compared to others she had noted. She wore her hair longer than the Sam of this reality. Only about an inch and a half but it was a difference.

Carolyn clears them as another group marches in. "This is like a Fantasia broom." She mutters.

"Pardon?" Cam asks her.

Sam waves her hand. "The Disney movie from when we were little. Mickey Mouse animates a broom but when things get out of control he tries to chop it up to kill it and all he manages to do is make a lot more of the same broom." Cam gives her a kind of blank look. "Okay, you know how fractals work, don't you, Cam?"

"Uh... sort of?"

Sam rolls her eyes but smiles. She misses Jack already. He'd nod absently whether he knew or not then go look it up later. "Each time a different choice is made a new reality branches off. Some will have similar results and they will run parallel or identically even though they go in different directions after a while and some will go off on a wild tangent being completely different like choosing to go into the Air Force or not."

"Okay… I think I follow." Cam told her with his eyebrows lowered, clearly trying to process the concept.

"All right, so in all these cases unlike the other times we've dealt with alternate realities, I joined the Air Force or its equivalent. So these would all be a single grouping of realities. But because I've made different choices each time depending on my reasoning at the time…"

"You ah... did stuff other Sams didn't do."

"Exactly." She agreed.

"You know this is why Landry's head hurts all the time, right?" Cam asked her.

Sam grinned.

"Major Carter?" An SF asked her. His patch says AF. Apparently they hadn't changed the designation here

"That's me." Sam agreed.

"Major Carter... er… our Major Carter would like you to join her and Dr. Lee in her lab."

Sam shrugged. "It's what I'd do to try to figure this out." She tells Cam who gives her a concerned look. "It's all right, Cam, Daniel Teal'c and I have been through this before. I'll put my head together with the other Sams and we'll all go home before the entropic cascade sets in."

"Entrop— "

"Let's go." Daniel cuts Cam off before he can spend half an hour trying to puzzle out how and what that is. "I'll explain it later."

Cam gives Sam a concerned look but follows Daniel to the lounge they are being directed to.

Sam heads for her lab. "Vala would love this." She mutters to herself with a chuckle and walks in to be greeted by Bill and the other Sams.

As the afternoon wears on… about a dozen different SG-1 teams coming in hot that they can't reroute to Alpha join them. The Sams head for the lab to work together while Cam hangs out with his counterparts. Sam isn't honesty sure what Daniel and Teal'c do. She gets a little concerned though when a team shows up with Janet… and Martouf. The Daniel of this world takes it hard. Perhaps more had happened between them than had with her own Daniel and Janet.

Sam did what she could to avoid Martouf. He'd made her uncomfortable with his aggressive friendliness just like Orlin's infatuation had. But perhaps it was because she had a child to protect giving her a different perspective on male attention. A couple of the other Sams had the same reaction and she started to idly wonder if she'd been mad enough at West that sleeping with Jack randomly had been… a trend. Sam giggled to herself. Oh admit it, he's ridiculously hot. If he hadn't been your CO, you would have jumped him in any reality.

Later that evening, she found herself in a bunk room with the other Sams. Landry's reasoning was not having to deal with privacy issues for them on base. One of the Sams… about the fifth or sixth one sat on her bunk next to her. "Hey." She said.

"Hey."

"So ah… when did you…" she asks quietly as she gestures discreetly at Sam's ring finger.

"A few days before I left for Groom Lake. You?" She asked noting the same pale mark that matched her own.

"Same. We ah… thought it might be a good idea given the situation."

Sam grinned a little. "Boy or girl?"

The other Sam grinned back. "Girl. You?"

"Which time?"

"What?" The other Sam's eyes went wide.

Sam chuckled a little. "What did you do the night West dismissed you from the program?"

"Went home and threw darts at his head while I drank wine."

"So did I." said another Sam to them as she sat down on the other side of Sam. "Why? What did you do?"

"Picked up a guy at a dive bar and balled his brains out." Sam said with an amused shrug.

The other two Sams looked at each other then at her. "You're kidding?" The first Sam said.

"Wait, you got knocked up from a one night stand?" The other demanded.

"Okay, not my finest moment but it really changed how I looked at things. For instance, I'm not having a crisis of faith over Martouf." Sam told them both.

"Yah me neither. He's a nice guy and all but…" Her voice trailed off.

"Exactly." The other Sam said. "Why is the Sam of this reality so hung up on him still?"

"My guess is things are a little up in the air with you know who." Sam said, wishing she had a beer to drink to punctuate that remark.

"Who? Jack?" one of the other Sams asked.

"Who else?" Sam number two asked.

"Well you might have meant Rodney." The Sam who was divorced from him said from another bed.

"Gross. What were you thinking?"

She shrugged. "That Jack was a dick for not apologizing about Laira." She said. "Took him a while to realize that was a requirement."

One of the other Sams laughed. "Did you try punching him?"

"I have an idea. Let's figure out where each timeline is grouped."

There was a collective round of agreement.

"We don't tell the Sam of this reality any of this. She needs to figure this out on her own." One of the other Sams said in reference to their relationships with Jack in particular.

All the Sams nodded in agreement.

Sam looked around at the nodding women. Taking a deep breath, she starts. "Okay…Let's start with the easy stuff. How many of you slept with Jack?"

Every hand goes up and she chuckles. "All right, this is gonna be a little harder than I thought. I kind of wish they had let all the teams come through so we'd have a better baseline." She pauses as she mentally reviews her own actions. "Okay, how many of you went to a bar when West fired you and you unknowingly slept with Jack?"

She's met with several shocked looks but two other hands raised in slow slight shamefulness as well as her own. "How many of you did it but with some other guy?"

One hand raises as the owner ducks her head.

"Please tell me it wasn't Rodney." The one who'd been married to him said cringing.

"Sorry. Random Marine." She said to the laughter of the others.

"Okay, so that's the first divergence for us. Some of us had anger sex. Subset… How many of you got pregnant that night?"

One of the Sams raised her hand and wiggled her fingers with an embarrassed smile.

"Boy or girl?"

"Girl, you?"

"Same." Sam says.

"Wait…" One of the Sams says… "Is… Is her name Grace by any chance?"

Sam gave that Sam a sharp look. "Yes. Why?"

Several Sams look at each other then look at Sam. "Who did you see on the Prometheus? Besides the guys and your dad?"

"Charlie." Sam says, confused.

"I saw Grace." Several other Sams nod in agreement. "And if you had her from a one night stand with Jack before he left for Abydos the first time… she'd have been exactly the age of the Grace I saw." The other Sams who didn't sleep with Jack also nodded in agreement.

"I wish we could contact Theta Base." One of the Sams says.

"It's Alpha here." Another reminds her and several Sams nod.

"Well we definitely need to not talk to this reality's Sam about this, that's for sure." One of the Sams that had drunk sex with Jack before his first Gate trip.

"Why not?" Another asked.

"Something's wrong. She's hitting on Martouf… or rather he's flirting with her and she's not turning him down flat." The Sam that brought it up says. Several Sams nod in agreement.

"Something needs to be done about that. I wish he'd come." One of them said but she had a sad smile that made the other Sams exchange a look.

"When did you lose him?"

She bit her lip and looked away. "Thor wasn't fast enough. They lost him on the table right after Teal'c and Daniel rescued me from Fifth. We got to say goodbye and… that was it." She said sadly.

One of the Sams hugged her. Several looked at each other then at her and in unison said, "Don't marry Pete."

She blinked at them and burst into tears. "I don't know how to tell him no. He's so sweet about it all…"

"Nah, that's an act." The other Sam that had a daughter from a one night stand with Jack said and put her arm around the now crying Sam. "He's really not a good guy. He fakes it really good but Auntie Alice and Grace both saw right through him."

"She's Marge in my reality."

There are nods on either side.

"Anyone besides me decide we saw their daughters?" One of the Sams asks.

"So why did those of us with daughters that age see Charlie?"

"Because in some realities Charlie is still alive." One replies, "Though that doesn't explain why he's still the age he was when Jack lost him."

"Unless it was the Unity reminding us who was waiting for us on the other side. The cloud was intragalactic." One hypothesizes.

"You know, after what happened with the mirror… I think I understand why Jack doesn't want in on this even though he's always claimed more of us would be his wet dream."

Several Sams giggle. They all nod knowingly. For the handful in the room who had lost him, seeing him would hurt and he knew that.

"I just want those of you who lost him to know… he really did love you that much. Don't settle." Sam says. "He's an incredible father and I'm really glad Dad gave us both a push." She smiled softly… "Kerry too."

"Wait Kerry… the agent?" one asked her.

"Apparently In my reality, she was the one who told him not to let me leave his house when I came over one last time to try to get through to him that this was it… he needed to tell me how he felt or he was going to lose me."

"Wow, all she did for me was tell him he had issues." One Sam said.

"I got one better… she hooked up with Pete after I dumped him in my reality." She laughs. "It didn't last. She reads people well."

"Yikes." One of the Sams says and they all chuckle.