Four strangers stood near the back of the crowd watching two grieving parents bury their only child.
"The records of his captivity in Iraq show an incredibly high tolerance for pain," Dr. Olga Vucavich remarked quietly to her companions.
"What about his military record?" Talmadge asked the young man standing to his right.
"Impressive," Donovan admitted grudgingly. "I wouldn't want to take him on."
"He's a maverick," Project Backstep's disagreeable chief of security complained from where he stood slightly behind the others.
"Are we sure about this?" Dr. Mentnor asked.
"Weren't you the one who suggested someone with a strong enough reason to live might survive the backstep?" Talmadge admonished the project's lead scientist.
"Yes, but this seems..." the elderly scientist protested.
"He will want to do it," Olga predicted. "To save his son, he will take the risk."
"And we don't have the time to find another chrononaut, Isaac" Donovan interjected. "It's already been four days."
The small group watched as the small casket was slowly lowered into the ground and the mourners began to drift away.
Talmadge nodded to himself as he moved towards the couple standing over their son's grave. "Colonel O'Neill, may I speak with you alone for a moment?"
Jack turned to see a barrel chested man with a salt and pepper beard and expensive taste in clothing looking at him expectantly as he fiddled with the cigar he held in his left hand. Jack's well trained eye immediately pegged him as a spook. "Who are you?" Jack demanded angry that this man would approach him in the middle of his son's funeral.
"My name is Bradley Talmadge" the other man introduced himself. "I have a proposition for you."
"Can't it wait," Jack snapped tightening his arm around Sara's shoulder. "We just buried our son, for God's sake."
"How would you like the chance to change that?" Talmadge asked the grief-stricken father.
"Get out of here!" Jack hissed stepping away from his wife as she gasped her own outrage at the question. The menace apparent in those words and in his posture had two nearby friends jumping forward to grab Jack's arms. "Get the fuck away from me you sick son of a bitch!"
Talmadge chomped thoughtfully on his cigar as he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew an envelope and a business card which he handed to a shocked Sara O'Neill. "You're being recalled to active duty, Colonel O'Neill," he informed the enraged man. "You have twenty-four hours to report."