--- --- Finding Hope --- ---
"Sam?"
Daniel Jackson nudged her knee gently but her eyes stared unseeingly into space. She hadn't responded at all to any of their attempts to get through to her. Teal'c was standing directly behind Daniel, both pairs of eyes fixed on the former soldier in front of them.
"Sam!"
"Samantha Carter."
Teal'c had used his most threatening voice that would have made any young Jaffa wither before his very eyes and would have woken O'Neill up from the soundest of sleep. They got no response. Samantha still gazed vacantly before her, her eyes clouded. The sparkle that had been so characteristic for her, the twinkle of intelligence, was as dead as the corpse in the ESGC morgue.
Even for Teal'c, the sight of his former comrade was rather unsettling. He had never witnessed her like this and it was something he would chose to never see again. Though he had been present during her breakdown when O'Neill had been missing so many years ago, he had never seen her weak.
"Sam!"
Daniel Jackson held her chin in a way that she had to look at both of them but, despite the fact that her eyes faced in their direction, she looked through them, burning holes in the air. For the first time since the whole incident began, he feared that they might have lost her permanently. And the fog that greeted him in her eyes did not help much to ease his discomfort.
"Sam, listen to me. Cassie ran some tests... Jack is not dead."
Just one second, Teal'c pondered whether to correct Daniel Jackson. Technically, they couldn't be sure that O'Neill was still alive. Yet, the complete lack of response from Samantha Carter made him stay silent. She did not even blink, her face showing no sign that she had heard what Daniel Jackson had told her. Once again, his friend started to call out for her, pronouncing each and every word to stress their meaning.
"Sam, this is important. Sam. Listen! Jack. Is. Not. Dead."
"Samantha Carter, do you not understand what Daniel Jackson is saying?"
Though untypical for him, Teal'c found himself becoming impatient. She needed to hear those words but she simply refused to. He was not sure, but he thought the mist in her eyes had faded for one brief moment, the first hint that she was still in there. That Samantha Carter remained in the dead hull that was once so full of life.
"Sam, he's out there. Jack is out there. He is alive. And he needs our help."
Her expression changed slightly and her eyes, although still foggy and weary, focused on Daniel Jackson. Teal'c released the breath he hadn't even noticed he was holding. Behind him, he heard Cassandra Fraiser shift. She walked around the bed and sat down on the other side, her hand stroking the older woman's shoulder softly. The dip of the bed had a direct result on Samantha and she freed her head from Daniel Jackson's grip and turned around to let her eyes rest on Cassandra.
"Jack is not dead, Sam. He's alive."
Cassandra's voice was soft as she continued trying to reach the older woman. The answer was barely audible, the voice strained and harsh, yet it rang through the room like a staff weapon's blast.
"How?"
He saw Cassandra shuddering at the sound of Samantha's voice but she soon found her equilibrium. He had seen how hard this had been on her and he had cursed himself for not coming with her in the first place. She could have needed a friend much more than Daniel Jackson.
"The results of the autopsy showed a slight abnormality in the gene sequence I couldn't explain. I thought that maybe Jack's medical history would show something helpful. After all, he's gotten snaked, killed, revived, and God knows what else during his time at the SGC. I think I found what I've been looking for. As you know, a few years ago, Jack was cloned. This clone showed an abnormality in the genetic make-up, matching that of the corpse to 100. The corpse was just a clone. It obviously never lived. I guess because of the Asgard gene protection they weren't able to clone him alive..."
Samantha's hand shot out to reach for Cassandra, hugging her closely while she sobbed into the younger woman's shoulder. A weight fell from Teal'c's broad shoulders at the image in front of him. She was back again, hopefully for good this time.
--- --- --- --- ---
"The question is where do we go from here?"
Cassie looked at them with a weird mixture of joy and worry. Her voice had been strained, asking the question she might have pondered all day.
"What do we know for sure? First: The corpse is not Jack. Second: Someone replaced Jack by this clone. Third: This someone has the ability to clone Jack in a relatively short amount of time AND possesses some kind of transportation device. Fourth: Jack could be anywhere in this galaxy, maybe even this universe."
Daniel let out a sigh as he resumed the facts and Sam found her head spinning with different possibilities, equations running through her brain. For the first time in years, she truly felt alive. He was alive. Any other option wasn't acceptable. He was alive and he needed her to help him. Maybe he was being tortured just now and he waited for Sam to get him out.
Teal'c's low rumble broke through her thoughts. "I believe we should contact the Asgard. They possess all the abilities necessary to do the things Daniel Jackson has spoken of. If it was not them who were involved in what happened to O'Neill, it is possible they will know who else holds such power."
Sam nodded at Teal'c in acknowledgement. She'd already thought about that possibility. Problem was...
Daniel interrupted, "We can't contact the Asgard, Teal'c. Jack was the only one to know how to contact them. Thor was very explicit when he disapproved of the President's decision to get rid of Jack. He'd said that the Asgard would leave our galaxy, now that the Replicators as well as the Goa'uld were no longer a threat to either them or the humans. He said that it was time for the Old to go. Only Jack knows where they are and how we can reach them."
"Daniel's right," Sam confirmed.
She watched Teal'c as the new information sank in. Finally, she tore her gaze away, her head dipping as she leaned on the counter that divided Cassie's living room from the kitchen. There went nothing. Her gaze was fixed on her shoes, her mind buzzing after such a long time in stasis. She didn't even notice the door to Cassie's living room open until she heard it squeak in its hinges.
"He had a device. Looked like a stone. I found it one day and got curious. I, ahh, kinda took it apart to see how it works. It uses Jack's DNA to send a... well, I'm not sure about that…I think it somehow sends a long-distance message by bending space."
The blonde head shot up as the unfamiliar voice pierced the room, her eyes scanning the fourteen-year-old boy.
"You mean you actually understood what you were looking at?"
Jeremy nodded shyly in her direction, answering her question. The first hint of a blush colored his face under Sam's penetrating look. She couldn't believe it. It had taken her weeks to find out just how that Asgard device worked and she held a PhD.
"Do you have any idea whether there's some margin in the DNA sample?"
Daniel's voice distracted her from her wondering, bringing her down to the matter at hand. If the DNA sample didn't have to match 100, they could probably ask the clone...
"When Jack found out about me taking it apart, he asked me what I'd learned. I told him and he said I was right about it. I asked him some questions and he explained that the DNA had to match his completely. He'd said that he'd wanted that as an act of precaution. I didn't understand why he had been so explicit about it but he said he didn't want to explain it."
...for help. Jack had been aware of the chance that the clone might use the device. Damn. She'd always thought that he was much smarter than he let on but he'd been so pretty good at acting that she sometimes forgot about the master degree she knew he had to have. That guy hadn't made Brigadier General for nothing. He wouldn't have been to the Academy if he was as dense as he wanted people to believe, either.
"That means, in order to find Jack, we need to have Jack?"
Cassie's voice was somewhat shrill as she sat back on the couch, burying her face in her hands. Frustration and despair were palpable in her, mirroring Sam's emotions. She could only too well imagine what was going on in Cass.
The small voice in Sam's head screamed at her to think faster. She had to come up with something. She had to. It was a matter of do or die. How could she survive losing him again? She'd seen what all those regrets had made of her throughout the last week and she would do everything to cancel those regrets, to do all the things she'd always been too scared to do. Now that she knew the alternative, she found that some strained nerves weren't that bad.
--- --- --- --- ---
Jeremy stood back as Carter paced nervously the vicinity of the living room. He'd seen her shock as he'd told her about the device. Jack had told him about how smart she was and Jeremy was flattened that he'd been able to make her gape at him. From the look on her face, he figured it must have taken her some time to find out how the device works. Well, on Jeremy's part, it had taken him the better part of four months but he wouldn't tell her that. Out of the blue, Daniel's voice broke through the rustle of pacing feet.
"So... if we need to have Jack in order to find him, why don't we get Jack?"
Carter stopped and turned around to look at Daniel, who was sitting next to Cass on the couch, the confusion that crossed Carter's face contrasting with the smug expression Daniel wore.
"Sam, what about that alternate reality thing?"
She took some time to think about what Daniel had just said and then shook her head.
"If we still had the quantum mirror, maybe, but it's been destroyed. How are we supposed to reach another reality without it? I can't see it, Daniel."
Quantum mirror? Alternate reality? It took Jeremy only a couple of seconds to figure out that they had to be talking about the 'multiple universe theory'. Everett, as well as some other physicists had theorized a lot about it but none of that could have been proven. It was just a theory… wasn't it? Daniel's words implied otherwise.
Jeremy racked his brain to find knowledge about anything called quantum mirror but he came up with empty hands. He knew a quantum was the smallest discrete quantity of some physical property that a system can possess. And he knew that quantum mechanics dealt with predicting not only a possibility of an action but all possibilities emerging, as well as the chances for each variation to become reality. But he had no idea how to connect that knowledge with the image of a mirror.
"Is there no other way to travel to an alternate reality?"
Teal'c's voice penetrated the boy's brain as his mind was reeling with the new information. If these people were to be believed, alternate realities were a fact; they were true. And you were able to visit them by using a device called a quantum mirror. From what Jeremy knew about quantum mechanics and the multiple universe theory, this mirror had to… "create a kind of wormhole to connect the two different planes."
"What?"
Carter's sharp voice pulled him out of his inner dialogue. He looked up somewhat blankly.
"What did you just say, Jeremy?" She repeated more gently.
He hadn't even been aware that he'd said anything aloud. Blushing once again, he repeated his thoughts for all to hear. He'd never told anyone about his theories apart from Jack and he had to fight down the fear swelling in him. After all, Sam Carter held a PhD in astrophysics and, for all he knew, she was THE expert when it came to dealing with wormholes and quantum mechanics.
"All theories about alternate realities that I know involve some kind of wormhole. But then, most of them, like Feynman and his 'sum-over histories' involve traveling back in time through a wormhole. It would make sense that this thing you're talking about, the quantum mirror, uses technology to create a wormhole similar to the Stargate to connect those parallel planes of reality."
His green eyes were fixed on the floor, afraid to look up to see he'd made an absolute fool of himself. Her shoes entered his field of vision and, hesitantly, he looked up to see a radiant smile meeting his eyes. Yeah, he'd made such a fool of himself. He'd known it. Steeling himself for the laughter that was about to burst over him, he lost his balance for a minute when she pulled him in a hug, kissing him on the cheek.
"Daniel, I need to get access to the Gate. And I need some of my old staff. Could you arrange that? Teal'c, do you still do your Kel'no'reem?"