Chapter Six: The Science Project

"Samantha..."

Samantha Carter ignored the voice. Her blue eyes focused on the texts in front of her, scribbling down notes as she tried to grapple with the ideas presented in the college textbooks.

A hand touched her shoulder, effectively stealing her attention from her studies. "Sam."

Sam sighed as she looked up at her teacher. "I need more time."

Mrs. Young sat across from her with a small sigh. "Well, maybe if I knew what you were trying to do—"

Sam stiffened. "It's just a theory."

Mrs. Young's lips lifted in a small half-smile. "You and I both know that you wouldn't be here at almost six o'clock every night after school for the last two weeks if you didn't have plans to use your research for something more concrete than just a scientific theory."

Sam played with the pencil in her hand.

Mrs. Young just tapped the textbook. "You're a brilliant physicist, Samantha, but you're still a student. Maybe I can help."

Sam chewed on the inside of her cheek before she pushed her notebook toward the physics teacher. "I'm studying the theories of quantum mechanics."

Mrs. Young's eyebrows shot up as she studied the diagrams and scribbled notes Sam had taken over the last several weeks. "Quantum mechanics. Why?"

Sam swallowed and looked down at her lap, letting silence answer the question for her.

Mrs. Young's expression seemed to acknowledge she'd figured out the reason for the change. "Time travel. You want to go back in time and save your mother."

Sam looked away.

Mrs. Young set the notebooks back on the desk. Then, sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. "It's tempting. I have to admit that. Being able to go back in time to warn my husband about the mission that took his leg would be high on my list if this technology were available."

Sam shifted.

"Unfortunately, I'm not sure that time travel would work the way you suspect it would."

Sam looked up at her teacher. "Why not?"

Mrs. Young almost chuckled. "You don't read science fiction, do you?"

Sam shook her head. "My brother thinks I'm enough of a nerd because I want to do this for real. If I were to read what people think we could one day be able to do, I think he'd disown me."

Mrs. Young's expression was amused, but Sam was only half-joking. Ever since the argument her dad and brother had the night of her Mom's funeral, there had been a tentative truce between Sam and her brother. And virtually no discussion between Mark and Dad except for the briefest, most necessary updates.

If anything were to change even the smallest degree, it could shift the balance of everything back to the chaos that had reigned directly after the funeral.

Sam could end up even more alone than she already felt.

"Well, if you had been familiar with science fiction and stories about time travel, you would likely have come up against the concept of the grandfather paradox."

Sam frowned. "The grandfather paradox?"

Her teacher nodded. "The theory starts as a story. What if you went back in time and murdered your grandfather? Then, your father would never have been born, and it would cause a whole chain of events that would eventually lead to you wiping yourself from existence."

Sam sighed. "At which point, you wouldn't be able to go back in time in the first place, and you couldn't have murdered your own grandfather."

"Precisely."

Sam dropped her pencil on the table in frustration. "Well, that's fiction. What's to say that's what would actually happen if we got time travel technology?"

Mrs. Young put a hand on Sam's. "I have no doubt that you are going to accomplish things in the field of physics that I can't even dream of, but are you really suggesting that you'll be able to crack time travel? And if, by some miracle, you actually did... What would be the reason you studied quantum physics in the first place?"

Sam swallowed. "To save my mother."

"And if you managed to save your mother, and you lost all memory of having lost her in the first place—?"

"I wouldn't actually grow up to invent time travel because I wouldn't have sufficient motivation to do so."

Mrs. Young held up her hands in surrender. "The grandfather paradox."

Sam chewed on her cuticle as she contemplated the parameters of the paradox. "That's assuming that what I do in this timeline doesn't just create a copy of the original timeline."

Mrs. Young just offered Sam a sad smile. "In which case, it wouldn't really be your mother coming back, would it?"

Sam's heart sank. "No. I guess not."

There was a long moment before Sam started to pack up her notebooks. "I'm sorry. I guess I wasted your time."

Mrs. Young helped clear the textbooks from the table. "You didn't waste my time. I've never been more on top of my grading."

Sam tried to muster a tiny half-smile at the joke.

Apparently, her teacher caught the melancholy because she sat on the edge of one of the desks and faced Sam. Mrs. Young's expression grew serious again. "All joking aside, Samantha, I think that all this time you've spent here chasing down this theory just proves that you have what it takes to be a cutting-edge researcher. You're dedicated. Passionate. Detailed. Organized. More than that, you're willing to look at unusual ways to solve real-world problems. That's going to help you in your career."

Sam's eyes moistened. "But it's not going to bring back my mother."

Mrs. Young shook her head, though her expression was compassionate. She seemed to hesitate before she spoke again. "I'm guessing that if you've been spending all this time at school, things aren't that great at home."

Sam zipped her backpack up, growing quieter with each gentle press into her personal life. "I told my dad I was working on a science project."

When Mrs. Young didn't respond to Sam's white lie, she cleared her throat. "Don't worry. I'll come up with something that will impress my dad when the district science fair comes around. He won't notice."

Mrs. Young sighed. "That's not what I was worried about, Sam."

Sam crossed her arms as she met her teacher's gaze. "Then, what?"

Mrs. Young studied Sam's face in a way that made Sam almost remember the way her mother would look at her when she had missed some vital lesson that gave away her youth and inexperience. Sam felt small and foolish.

"Sam, your focus on your scientific goals is an incredible asset, but I can't help but worry that if you're using your work to try to avoid difficult situations at home now, you might be creating a habit that will be very hard to undo. Especially when there are going to be so many people who are going to try to take advantage of that singular minded focus because it furthers their own agenda... Regardless of the toll it will take on you."

"You think I should have some fun."

Mrs. Young shrugged as she shifted the textbooks in her hands. "Wouldn't be a terrible idea."

Sam waved toward her notes. "I know it sounds crazy, but even though I was doing this because I wanted to save my mom, it was actually kind of fun. It's insane how much we don't actually know about how the universe works. The idea that I could be even just a single step in better understanding the universe, how can that not be exciting?"

Mrs. Young nodded. "Like I said, you've clearly found your passion. Just be sure that you're not so focused on figuring out how the world works that you lose sight of why it matters. That's all I ask."

Sam's mind tried to wrap itself around that turn of phrase. Just be sure that you're not so focused on figuring out how the world works that you lose sight of why it matters.

She wasn't sure she could quite understand what her teacher meant. But something in her seemed almost to know that this was one of those times when her mom would have told her that being brave in scientific inquiry was one thing, but that bravery was bigger than that.

At some point, Sam needed to really figure out what her mom had really meant by the word brave. It seemed to be an idea that grew increasingly complex the older she became.

"Are you going to be okay getting home?"

Sam offered her teacher a distracted smile. "Yeah. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."


Inspiration:

I'm not entirely sure where this chapter came from. It was not in my original outline, but I really love it. Obviously, the idea that Sam was dedicated to science as a kid wouldn't come as a surprise to any of us, but the amount of self-restraint she had whenever the team was faced with time travel seemed to indicate a personal vow of some kind. Like she'd already faced the possibility of using time travel to solve a problem and decided that it wouldn't work in her interests. Besides, since the grandfather paradox technically came through science fiction writers, I played with the idea that she might not have been exposed to it in her official physics courses.

And if I were to walk you through a list of the episodes that show that Sam's a bit of a workaholic... Well, we'd be here for a while. But it gave me an interesting way to wrap up the vignettes. Eventually.

Enjoy!