Author's Note: I am very sorry indeed for the great time lapse between my last post and this one. I was sick…again…which is no fun, and then school got in the way, but now it is Spring Break and I hope to make up for it. A shout out to my friend Dee (cripeswolf) for staying on my butt about updating my story. Enjoy everyone!

"Who are you?"

Sam raced to think of anything to say. He knew that Carter was smart, very smart, and he couldn't think of anything he could say that could explain his behavior. "Carter, who do you think I am? I'm your superior officer, and I'm ordering you to put that gun down."

Carter's voice was authoritative and stern. "I don't believe that you're the Colonel. Where's Jack and who were you talking to?"

Al's expression reflected his feelings. "Sam, I know you want to tell her the truth, but there's no way in hell she's going to believe the story you got."

Sam looked at his friend, back at Carter and her gun aiming at his chest, and made a decision. "Al, I gotta tell her the truth, and I think after everything I've seen she of all people would believe me."

"Who are you talking to? Who sent you to impersonate an Air Force officer? Answer me!" The tone in Carter's voice told Sam that she was running out of patience.

"Look, you don't have to be afraid, I'm not here to steal secrets or anything like that. You're right, I'm not Colonel Jack O'Neil. My name is Dr. Sam Beckett, and as far as what I'm doing here and why I look like your Colonel, well, that's a little complicated."

Tying to grasp the situation, Sam's thoughts raced. "What is going on? Where did THAT come from?" A response that Jack was implanted with a Goul'd or that somehow one of the Tok'ra took him over she was almost expecting, or that possibly this was an alien being inhabiting the Colonel's body, but for the response from the imposter to sound entirely human and for him to refer to himself as a doctor led Carter to believe that this was nothing that she or her team members had ever experienced before. "Where's Jack? What have you done to him?"

"Jack is fine, he'll be back soon, I promise. Please believe me, you have nothing to fear. I am not entirely sure why I ended up here, honestly. I will tell you everything if you could just put the gun down."

"Sorry, Doctor, I can't do that. You better just start explaining."

"Okay, Carter, but what I'm about to say will sound absurd and crazy, but believe me, everything about it is the truth."

As Sam went on to explain who he was and his time travel experiment, Carter, distracted by the incredible story, started to lower her weapon. With all the incredible things that she had witnessed and experienced firsthand, it was almost outlandish to think that another branch of the government had an equally crazy and incredible experiment going on. At the mention of Al, Carter looked around to room.

"There's no one here but you and me, Doctor."

"I know you can't see him, because he's tuned into the neurons and mesons in my brain, but trust me, he's here." An idea dawned on Sam, and in his excitement he almost forget about the gun. "I even know how to prove it! I know this might sound childish, but hold up a number of fingers behind your back where I can't see them, and I can tell you what they are."

Carter thought for a moment, and decided to go along with this fiasco, if only to see if Jack was hallucinating or if something real was going on. She shifted her weapon, still drawn, to her right arm and wrapped her left arm around her back.

"Oh, great, I'm doing parlor tricks now. I see how I rank in your world." Al, somewhat offended but happy to get closer to the hot scientist, walked around to Carter's back. "It's better than being dragged to the bathroom every time I come and see you. Oh, Sam, if only you could see her beautiful firm…" As Sam gave Al an exasperated look, Al stopped and regrouped. "…fingers, nice beautiful fingers. Okay, Sam, she has three fingers up."

"You are showing three fingers."

As Carter kept switching her number, Al called out the new amount to Sam.

"Two. Now all five. Now four. Now none."

At every correct number, Carter was more and more convinced that something was occurring, and apart from the imposter reading her mind, the idea that an invisible hologram from the future could actually be looking at her back was, however incredible, almost plausible given the rest of the imposter's story. A well known quote she heard once ran through her head. "If all the other options have been exhausted, then whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be in fact the truth."

"Okay, so somehow you are either reading my mind, or you can see behind me, or there is a hologram behind me, but that doesn't prove anything, it just tells me that something is going on." What am I suppose to do now? I can't dial the Stargate because I don't have an energy source, the DHD didn't have power in it. Contact with base has failed… As Sam raced through her options, she came to a conclusion, although it wasn't one that she was very comfortable with.

"Alright, Doctor, here's the situation. We are stuck here unless we find a way out or my teammates find a way in. I think our way out of here is to go through the same way we came in. So, we are going to head back down the hallway and into that room we were in. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Carter."

Carter backed away from Sam, and Sam turned to walk back towards the room where they had been first beamed into. As he walked, he tried to communicate with his friend who walked beside him. Attempting to pull the double meaning communication he had grown accustomed to over the years, he spoke as he looked directly at Al.

"So, Carter, tell me, what kind of scientist are you."

"Just keep walking, Doctor, we're almost there." Carter didn't want to start chatting with a potential Goul'd, or even worse, a spy from NID.

Al, getting the hint, tapped the handlink a few times and started to get some information from Ziggy. "It looks like Captain Carter is an astrophysicist, and apparently a brilliant one. She worked on several prestigious projects before she ends up shy….shy?" With this Al banged the handlink several times, and after several squeals of protest from the handlink, he looked again at his screen. "Oh, at Cheyenne Mountain. Check out this cover story Sam, apparently she's working on some deep space telemetry or something. That's rich, huh? You would think the military would come up with something better than that. Hey, I wonder what our cover story is Sam…Sam?"

Not paying attention to his friend for several minutes, Sam saw his chance to maybe convince Carter what he was saying was true.

"So, Carter, what is your opinion on the existence of quarks in a subatomic plane? I personally believe that they transfer their kinetic energy to the neutrons they exist in, but I know astrophysicists usually hold a different theory."

Shocked by what Sam had said but trying not to let on, Carter slowed down but continued to walk with Sam in front of her and her gun drawn. "I don't know what you are talking about."

"Of course you do. After all, you are an astrophysicists, and that's why the Air Force would pick you to be involved in their top secret operation masquerading as deep space analysis. I bet we have even heard of each other. Do you remember a Sam Beckett, boy genius, graduated MIA in his early teens back in the 60's? My specialty was quantum physics."

As Sam said this, the room came into reach of their flashlights from the dark hallway. Trying to ignore what Sam had said, Carter did not respond to Sam, but instead using the tip of her gun tapped Sam's back to tell him to enter the room.

As they entered the golden room once more, Carter looked for a place to put the imposter.

"Alright Doctor, why don't you take a seat over in the far right hand corner."

"Carter, I can help you if you let me. I'm really just a scientist caught up in his research. We have a lot in common."

"Just sit there and let me figure this out."

As Sam sat Indian style in the corner, Carter's mind was racing with a thousand thoughts. Beckett…I remember a Dr. Beckett. He wrote the defining work on the interaction between particle waves and quarks back a few years ago. I don't remember what happened to him after that though. This can't be true; it's too wild for even our line of work. Okay Sam, just concentrate on the hieroglyphs and see if they let on where the activation switch is for the beam.

As Sam sat there and tried to think of other ways to convince Carter, Al gave an exasperated sigh and looked at Sam. "Sam, I just hope you know what you're doing."

Suddenly, a blue light shot down from the ceiling, causing Carter to dive out of its way and almost squishing Sam as he tried to break her fall as best he could.