Title: Schrödinger's Cat
Author: Apocalypse
Fandom: Stargate: SG1
Disclaimer: Not mine at all, really, more's the pity…
Warnings: AU. Sadly ... Oh,
and WIP.
Pairing: Sam Carter/Narim
Rating: Er … I have no idea where
this is going, so I'll blanket it as PG-13 and it'll probably stay there unless
there's call for a sex scene (unlikely).
Summary: Have we seen the corpse? I don't think we've
seen the corpse.
Author's Note: Hey, folks! My first Stargate fic. And it's het. Weird, huh?
Schrödinger's Cat
So if you put a cat into a box … you won't know whether or not the cat is alive or dead until you open the box. Which means that while the cat is in the box, it exists in a state of flux – a state which contains both possible futures, one which contains a live cat and one which contains a dead one.
What this theory fails to include is that if you put a cat into a box, and you open the box and the cat has survived, the cat that leaps out of the box at your face with its claws out and its hackles up is going to be in no mood for explanations regarding the importance of scientific experimentation to the understanding of unexplained phenomena.
Chapter One: Landing
Even traveling near or past the speed of light, the distance between solar systems with habitable worlds is incredibly, mind-bogglingly far. As a matter of fact, any planetary system with a sun with a suitable gravitational field to draw in planets, asteroid belts, comets and other spatial debris … is probably going to be pretty far from any other star whose planets can support life.
Therefore, when your planet is basically obliterated, it takes an extraordinary amount of luck to find another inhabited planet within a traversable distance.
However, sometimes it's possible to make your own luck.
The tiny ship that sped at superlight speed away from what was left of the planet that had birthed it had only two life-forms as occupants. There would have been more, but the others had been destroyed during the escape.
One of the occupants was human … more or less. His people had another name, but then again, he was probably the only one of his people to have survived the attentions of the Go'auld.
There was only one anchor left in his universe and he knew that at all costs he had to find it. He'd been seeking it now for quite some time.
He'd wept for his home, for his friends, for his people. He'd grieved quietly for them as he sped away into the vastness of the universe. And then, because the only way to survive in this life is to live it, he'd made steps to move on, always traveling towards the nearest inhabited planetary system, aware that it would take at least a year to get there even at this speed. There had been better ships, better engines, on the world … but beggars could not be choosers. Better ways to travel, ways that did not involve a ship strong enough to escape the planetary atmosphere, let alone the gravitational pull of the solar system … but he had taken what he could find and he had gotten out.
That this was an act that some might consider cowardly crossed his mind once or twice, but there was self-preservation to be considered … and there was justice to be sought for. Whether he sought justice or vengeance he was not sure, but he knew where he was going and he was certain they would be glad to have him, glad to help him find whatever he sought.
He hoped that she would be glad to see him, too … even as he dared not hope it.
The other occupant was not human, and it was hungry. They had both been hungry for some time now.
The pilot took a deep breath and then he let it out. It wasn't that breathing was any special effort, but when you'd been alone in space with no one but your pet cat for a year and a half, having left behind almost everything you had been close to or cared about, sometimes you have to remember to breathe.
Almost everything. But not all, oh, no, not all. Not the most important thing. That was waiting for him … somewhere …
She was waiting for him, even if she didn't know it yet.
"All right," he said to the cat. "Planetary approach. You'd better come here."
The cat looked at him for a moment, as though trying to decide whether or not it was beneath its dignity to comply with the request.
"I'm not sure how equipped we are for reentry," he said warningly, holding out his arms. "You're going to be much safer in my lap, Schrödinger."
The cat hesitated for just a moment longer before leaping onto his lap.
The pilot keyed in the code for planetary reentry and leaned back in his seat, preparing himself physically for the enormous amount of stress the ship would take as it shot through the atmosphere. If the heat-shielding technology held out, they would probably survive. If it didn't, they'd be incinerated. There was nothing to be done either way; he had to have faith in the technological know-how of his people's scientists and the capacity of his people's engineers to create a ship with a heat-shield that wouldn't malfunction at a critical moment. That was all he could do.
But somehow he felt that he owed them that confidence.
The cat was nowhere near as sanguine about this. It kept kneading his chest with its claws out. The pain was only minor discomfort, though, really. He had never really had the heart to punish the cat when it misbehaved. It had been a gift … from her.
The little ship banked steeply and, without much warning, sped downwards into the pull of the planet's gravity. He couldn't tell whether or not it was his imagination, but he thought he felt the temperature rising. Everything seemed to be shaking as they shot downwards and Schrödinger was clearly not pleased with the situation, flattened as he was against his owner's stomach by the pressures of gravity.
"Hooooooold oooooooonnnn," the pilot managed, as the presets kicked in and the ship's rear thrusters began to pull against the planetary gravity – nowhere near enough to turn it around or stop it but enough to begin to slow the hurtling descent towards the planet surface.
A slight miscalculation had landed them in the center square of a small population center. Either they would kill him, he reasoned, or they wouldn't. But there was certainly no point staying in here.
Feeling haggard and looking worse than he felt, the lone survivor of a grand and sophisticated race, he stepped – or staggered – out of his spacecraft and onto the neat cobblestones of the square, holding his pet cat tightly in his arms.
"Hello," he said gravely, to the scattered and all clearly astonished onlookers. "I come in peace."
Sometimes things become clichés for a reason.
