Chapter 3

Having doctor Brennan across from his desk proved to be a two-sided affair for Daniel. Being earth-bound until the project was ready he spent the days in his office, doing research. He had cleared the opposite side of his desk for her laptop and when she wasn't working in the lab with Sam Noli sat there clicking away, tapping pencils on the desk, eating crunchy things and humming. Soon she started peeking over to his side, asking about things in his books, revealing she was a bit of a language junkie herself. This Daniel enjoyed, because as opposed to his team members Noli didn't get that blank stare when he got into rambling about something interesting. Instead she listened with genuine interest and got him to tell her about dialects, alphabets and alien races.

"I'm more of a modernist", she said, "never learned much of the classic languages. But they're the mother of everything, the key. I love recognizing roots, seeing how vastly separate things are really connected."

"I know what you mean", said Daniel, and he really did. The notion of everything being connected - not just languages - was something he'd always had, even before his ascension. They journey he'd made had only made it that much more obvious. He liked that she seemed to have that same notion, though it obviously could not be as tangible as his.

"And the smale foweles machen melodyen", said Noli into her screen, smiling. The pronounciation sounded north european, but Daniel couldn't immediately make it out. He squinted his eyes and asked what it was.

"Canterbury tales, buddy", said Noli and wiggled her eyebrows at him. "English."

"Ah." Daniel chuckled and got back to work.

A week went by, filled with work for some and boredom for others. Jack unsuccessfully tried to speed things up by loitering around the lab with Teal'c and occasionally making appearances in Daniel's office. He couldn't quite get a grip on this doctor Brennan, this professor, who seemed every bit as brainy as Carter but explained things in ways he actually understood.

He was in the lab, picking up things and playing with them while Carter was taking them away from him and putting them back when he accidentally asked: "So what's so interesting about this planet's energy.. thing anyway?" He secretly winced when Carter started talking about new methods of analysis. His ears tuned out but his eyes stayed on her - she sure was pretty when she got that glow in her face from talking about things like that. He quickly scorned himself for eyeing his second-in-command. Then he noticed she had stopped talking and was exchanging giggles with doctor Brennan. She in her turn started talking.

"All matter, on the smallest level, the tiniest bits that make up molecules - emits energy. That's the same as saying it's moving, because on that level movement is energy. So essentially, everything vibrates. Rocks. People. The floor. Planets. Everything has its own frequency that it vibrates on; it's like everything in the world is humming."

Alright. Humming. He could see that. That's kinda cool. Carter filled in:

"This planet is emmitting something we haven't been able to identify yet, it could be an unknown form of radiation, or a new element, like naquadah. Plus, this apparatus we're building to help us analyse it we'll be able to use on things we already know about, by extracting frequency patterns unique for certain elements." Doctor Brennan added:

"We're kinda hoping we'll be able to point it at things and go 'Hey! That's gold', or something."

Jack looked at them sideways. "That'd be cool... And useful."

Doctor Brennan looked enthusiastic. "Wouldn't it though? Imagine if we could develop a kind of radar for biological matter. Scan people, if you will. Of course, that's way ahead in the future." At this idea, even Jack felt enthusiasm rising. He supposed it would mean an easy way to tell humans apart from goa'ulds. A look at Carter's beamingly hopeful face told him that's what she was thinking too.

"Well", he said. "Sounds like I should leave you two to it then. Build that... radar."

He left them, wondering what it was with the professor chick that didn't seem quite right. Was it just that she did the same work as Carter, but talked about it in a different way? Was it the unorthodox t-shirts that made it difficult to take her seriously? Or was she hiding something? Whatever that would be... Both Carter and Daniel had some reservations about her, even though he couldn't quite grasp what it was she did that bothered Carter. Something about touching her stuff, or something. At the same time she seemed very likable. In any case the gut feeling he had had about her from the first day was apparently shared by the others. He decided to keep keeping his eyes open.

A/N

Apart from the highly dubious physics in this story, which I think we should just accept and ignore, what do you think? Anything ooc? Am I right about Daniel? So many questions, so little money (to buy dvd's).