Friendly personal request: please avoid mentioning events that occur in Seasons 6 – 8 if you post a review. I have missed a lot of Season 6, most of Season 7 and haven't seen any of Season 8 at all yet.

Chapter 2 – Discussing Science

Daniel's first realisation of the Colonel rejoining the waking world was when one of his sheets of paper, riddled with notes and runes, disappeared from view. He closed his book at looked at Jack. He grimaced as he realised his decision to get some research done while sitting with him had resulted in the Colonel being half covered in stray paper.

In his muzzy, confused state, he had picked up the first thing he saw, and was now squinting at it.

"Jack?"

His head snapped around, "Daniel?"

"How're you feeling?"

"Ugh," he moaned, clutching his forehead. "like… there's a Replicator dancing around in my skull… Carter? Teal'c?"

"They're both fine. It was you we were worried about," Daniel reassured, signalling for a nurse to get Dr. Frasier. "Do you remember anything?"

"I remember a giant blue crystal, telling Carter to turn on the lights… and something about a lack of funding…"

Jack suddenly looked distant and concerned, as if remembering something else, something more significant. With alarmed eyes, he glanced down at his right hand. It was bandaged around the palm. He also appeared to wince as he lifted his arm up to inspect it.

"This arm isn't awake yet…" he muttered. "What-"

"Don't worry, Colonel," Dr. Frasier instructed in her friendly-yet-professional tone as she strolled into the infirmary. "Your hand just took a minor burn. I was more worried about you not waking up due to the electric shock."

"Electric shock?" he echoed, eyebrows raised.

"According to Major Carter, you leant on a frayed cable in the alien lab on the planet. You're lucky, sir."

Jack winced again, "Doesn't feel lucky…"

"I'm not surprised – that was a powerful charge. I'll give you something for that, sir. You know you've been out for about 20 hours."

"Sam said you did the equivalent of blow the fuse in that lab," the archaeologist smirked, retrieving his page of notes from Jack's unharmed hand. "The power stopped working altogether. I think she was disappointed, but that wasn't the highest on the list of our priorities when you were slumped over one of the computer consoles."

"Where are Carter and Teal'c?" Jack quizzed. Daniel sensed he was trying to mask embarrassment.

"Sam's working on a generator to get the alien lab working again. I'm not sure where Teal'c is. Hammond put us on standby until you recovered."

Across the room, Daniel saw Janet sigh in resignation. He guessed this was one of the things that made her job difficult: convincing or even forcing Colonel O'Neill to stay put in the infirmary. He was expecting it too – the 'I'm fine now so lets get back to work' stance so typical of Jack.

"Do you think you and Carter could use a couple of days more to do your research and stuff?" he yawned, settling back into his pillow and covering his eyes with one hand. "I don't think I could move even if you put a huge cake across the room."

Daniel and Janet slowly glanced at each other and frowned.


"Hel-lo!" Colonel bellowed as he stuck his head around the door of Carter's lab.

Carter yelped in surprise, jerking her hands away from the naquadah reactor on her lab desk.

"Sir!"

"Oops," he commented, hopping through the doorway. "Reactor… shouldn't have done that… don't want to make you blow up this level."

Sam smiled at him as he ambled around the desk to peer at her 'doohickey' as he put it. For someone who had suffered a massive electric shock only two days before, he was surprising jovial.

"You look better, sir," she stated conversationally, inwardly relieved. "I came to see you yesterday after Daniel told me you'd woken up, but you were already asleep again. Janet said you didn't try to escape as usual."

"I think sleep and painkillers was all I needed, really," he shrugged. "Still working on this generator thingy?"

"Yes, sir," she confirmed. "I need to make some more adjustments and run some simulations before we can try using the reactor with the lab back on the planet."

Jack nodded as if to say 'fair enough', "Hammond has scheduled a return mission tomorrow at 1300 – think you'll be done by then?"

"Possibly, sir."

"Well, I won't keep you. The General wants my report before the end of the day, or I'm in trouble," he waved farewell and ambled back out.

Sam couldn't help but wonder how odd the entire visit had seemed.


It was the around 1100 the following day when she saw the Colonel again, wandering into the commissary as he whistled to himself.

Jack sat casually on the seat opposite Sam, propping an elbow on the table between them and resting his head on one hand. Sam herself was displaying the female proficiency with multi-tasking; reading a report, eating commissary blue Jell-O and mumbling a distracted 'sir' at Jack. Enigmatically, Jack said nothing, instead choosing to smirk at his second in command.

Sam frowned at him – he seemed far too nonchalant and relaxed. Yet, his languid, contented expression was enough to make her chuckle in response. After nearly choking on some of her dessert (and a couple of swift pats between the shoulder blades from her CO) in her attempt to swallow and laugh at the same time, she shifted the front page of her report around for Jack to see when she caught him peering over the table at it.

"Do you EVER stop working, Carter?" he quizzed good-naturedly, raising an eyebrow.

"Contrary to popular belief, sir, yes," Sam countered with a smile, dragging the page back across the tabletop.

"Could-a fooled me, Major," he quipped, eyeing the suddenly forgotten, half-finished bowl of Jell-O by her arm. "You gonna eat the rest of that?"

The question caught her off-guard. She was well aware of Jack's fondness of sweet desserts (cake in particular), and didn't find the inquiry and underlying request rude to any real degree, but she was sure Jack usually took the option of grabbing his own bowl before joining her.

"What? Uh… no, be my guest," Sam replied, pushing the bowl towards him.

As Jack dug into the rest of the blue substance, Sam focused on her report again, putting the Colonel's eccentricity to having an unusually good day, despite the bandage wrapped around his right palm.

"How's the hand, sir?"

"Fine, thanks," her CO mumbled between bites.

Within a minute, Jack had finished off the Jell-O, and sat back in his chair as he muttered 'nice' to himself. Sam regarded him in puzzlement as she realised he had turned up, presumably to see her, but not made any mention of it. She was positive he hadn't just had a whim to politely steal her dessert.

"Did you… actually want something, sir?" she queried.

"Uh… yeah," he nodded quickly. "This alien lab we just short-circuited or drained or something… why can't we just hook up a naquadah generator and press the 'on' switch?"

"Well, sir," she began, brightening up, in her element, "from what I was able to see from the way the technology is constructed, the power systems for the lab are partly crystal-based and partly based on a semi-conductor element I haven't seen before. I'm guessing that since this new element is a lot like silicon, it'll act much the same way - it means it's similar to our technology. However, the crystal-based parts are more like Goa'uld technology. The combination of the two means it's not completely compatible with our generator, so I need to jury-rig it with parts of Goa'uld technology we've recovered. Otherwise it might explode."

"Right…" he responded thoughtfully. "You said this new element is like silicon, but it's not actually silicon."

"Yeah," Sam confirmed.

"That might mean it acts completely differently. I mean, neon and sodium are 10 and 11 in the periodic table. Neon is an inert gas and sodium is a metal that burns in water. Are you sure that's not the case here? I wouldn't want to take the chance, especially with some new alien element no-one's tested yet. Didn't you blow up an entire sub-level of the mountain when we first found the naquadah in Cassie?"

"That's true, but from what I've learned by looking at the technology, the builders made the power systems using this element in a way that expects it to act like silicon. For example, it…"

Sam trailed off with a stark and sudden epiphany.

She looked straight at Jack, who furrowed his brow in puzzlement.

"For example… what?" he urged, waving his hand about expectantly.

"We're discussing science," she stated, stunned.

"Huh?"

"Are you feeling OK, Colonel?"

"Yes, of course!" he dismissed the question with exasperation. "What's up with you all of a sudden, Carter?"

"What's up with me?" Sam tensed with indignation. "With all due respect, sir, it's you who hasn't been yourself. You've been far more casual than usual since we got back from the planet; you didn't really complain about being in infirmary; you tend not to track me down to finish off my dessert for me; and you've just let me explain something scientific to you!"

Jack only cemented her argument by holding up his hands submissively, rather than retort with a warning about insubordination. Sam felt a cold wash of nervousness sweep over her.

"And you were listening… you talked back to me scientifically…"

The equally nervous expression Jack suddenly adopted told her she had him cornered. Behind his eyes was the sudden glimmer of realisation of some catastrophic mistake in whatever plan he had formed in his head. Sam swallowed, muscles tensed as she leaned onto the tabletop and spoke her suspicion.

"You're not Colonel O'Neill."

He glanced around the commissary, almost conspiratorially, before leaning forward himself. He looked almost apologetic.

"Not really, no."

Instinctively, she slowly backed off until the backrest of the chair stopped her leaning any further away. Jack – or whoever he now was – had mirrored the action, just as slowly to avoid unnecessary, threatening movement that might startle her after such a revelation.

There wasn't much to say to that. What could you say to a superior officer who had just admitted he is not himself?

"So what do we do now?" he asked, defeatist.

"What do you mean?" she replied guardedly.

"Well, you know about me now. If I just let you wander off, there'll be a security team chasing after me within five minutes. Then again, I can't do anything here – we're in a room full of people."

He pointed at her.

"What about you? Technically, you're supposed to report this – an intruder – but how do you know if I'll follow and try to stop you by any means necessary once you're in an empty corridor? Sure, there are cameras, but security can't watch every screen every second, and it could be an hour or so before you're missed. If you don't report it, I could easily escape off-base."

Sam remained silent, digesting the not-O'Neill hypotheses-babbling. He shrugged nonchalantly.

"We can't just sit at this table forever either."

"No, we can't," she answered hollowly.

Sam stood, and began to walk for the door. She wasn't quite sure what she was going to do, but then again neither did he. All of his talk of possible situations stemming from that revelation was based heavily on 'ifs'. If she was actually reported him… if he was willing to stop her attempts… if the security on duty happened to glance away a moment should she be attacked…

As a scientist, she knew conjecture could be useful, but dangerously inaccurate. He was just as in the dark as she was. She heard his chair scrape against the floor – no doubt he intended to keep a keen eye on her. In his position, Sam was sure she wouldn't have wanted such volatile information to go wandering around unchecked.

After leaving the commissary, Sam immediately turned the corner and stopped, turning about. She pressed herself against the wall, ignoring the puzzled look of a passing technician. The Colonel's familiar footsteps approached, boots heavy on the concrete floor. As his head peered around the corner, she swung a fist up at him.


"Come in," Hammond commanded, putting his pen down and sighing. There was enough paperwork in the SGC without interruptions.

He was immediately set on edge by the confused-yet-concerned look on Davis' face as he opened the door to his office.

"Something wrong, Davis?"

"Uh… there's just been a call from the commissary, General. They reported that Major Carter has been apprehended for attacking Colonel O'Neill, sir."