Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Eureka, and that includes its characters.
A/N: I really had a hard time trying to continue this. I'm sorry it took so long! Enjoy!
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Jo thought this day would never come. After months of being homeless, her house was finally ready. She had the movers install all the furniture and "trim" that she and Zoe had bought. Jo certainly made enough money in this timeline to afford it.
In the end, sleeping in her new place was tough. She had spent the last year practically living with Zane, and then with the Carters. Since she had cleared the air with Zoe, Jo had been reluctant to move out. But it was time.
She had gone grocery shopping for her new kitchen in a daze, and when she had gotten home regretted not paying more attention. Out of habit she had picked up two of Zane's favorites - feta-stuffed olives and rocky road ice cream. Maybe she could serve the former at the house warming party Zoe was throwing for her.
Work had been quiet. She felt like she was waiting for the next big crisis to hit the town. Her phone rang just as she finished putting her groceries away, and on instinct guessed the town was in danger.
"Lupo."
"Jo? Are you still here? There's something in my lab I need your help with."
"Grace. No, I'm not at GD. But I can be there in..." she checked her watch, "...about six minutes."
"Oh no," the older woman said into the phone, "I don't want you to come back here if you've already left."
"No, it's better this way. Even if it doesn't seem like a problem now, it will be better to have it resolved before it becomes one."
"Well alright then. See you soon."
Lupo shook her head and walked out to her car. She was glad for the distraction. Her mind needed something to focus on, or she might go fuzzy again like she did in the grocery store. Had someone been tailing her, she might never have noticed. That was unsafe.
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Zane felt like bouncing around like a child. He had spent the last 48 hours working on a strange theory, and he really wanted to see what someone else thought of it. Specifically Jo.
Grace was still tinkering with the mechanical schematics they had come up with on one of her multiple monitors, and seemed calm. She had just gotten off the phone with Jo, who would be arriving any minute. He tapped his pen on the desk. He put his feet up next to his computer, then took them down when he realized his socks did not match. Laundry day today. Zane even thought about making notecards to help him remember everything. Luckily Jo walked in before he found any cards to write on.
"What seems to be the problem?" she asked briskly, her data pad in hand. Probably searching for any related information to what Grace had been working on. "Trouble with the memory feedback thingies?"
Zane stifled a smile at her attempt at tech-speak. Instead, he cleared his throat. "Actually, we've made something of a breakthrough, but we're not sure what it means."
"Zane has made a breakthrough, he means. I just let him use my lab," Grace called out, her head still double-checking.
"Okay, why am I here then?" Her tone was wary, and she folded her arms across her chest in a classic defensive posture. One he knew very well, when she was getting ready to hear - and then disbelieve - whatever alibi he was about to spin for her.
"Have you ever watched Star Trek?" he asked her.
Her reply was a single raised eyebrow.
"Hear me out, Jo. There's an episode when the ship is traveling in a different type of time stream - a time loop. I can't remember if they were reliving the same day over and over, or if it was a different episode-"
Now he got both eyebrows. "You're telling me you've been having a Groundhog Day moment?"
He shook his head. "Not me personally, but one of the first clues in the show that time was wonky was that the plants had aged differently. Their internal ship censors had a specific age down to the second of every person, and it was off. They were all older than they were supposed to be - because they had been going through this time loop over and over again. Or something like that."
"Uh huh. Zane, that is science fiction. It's not real - it's just one of your TV shows."
Zane exchanged a glance with Grace who was trying very hard not to laugh. "Who do you think takes science fiction and makes it reality, JoJo? We do. Where do we get some of the greatest ideas from? From science fiction writers of the past.
"But the point is, I wondered if this held true for you and me. Well, you five and the rest of us. If I'm right, you should be intrinsically older, at the cellular level, than you should be."
"How can you measure that?"
"Remember a last year when GD was looking in to the genetic tagging? Well, we finally implemented it a few months back. It has an exact copy of what your cell date stamp was, and we know what it should be right now."
"From what I recall the decision to implement it was tabled, and it wasn't likely to go through."
Zane shrugged. "I don't know the politics you and Fargo pulled to get it done, but working together you did. And for the record, I was very opposed to the idea."
"Okay, so if my cells are older than they're supposed to be... what does that mean?"
"Well, we'd actually know more if they weren't," Grace chimed in. "If your cells are exactly the age they're supposed to be, it means this human body never skipped through time, but your mind did."
"But I had a body when we went back to 1947. It wasn't just my mind that went there."
"We know," Zane replied. "But when Jack came back the second time, from saving Allison, his old self and new self merged. His clothes even changed to represent the one who was returning from time travel to the present. It looks like the arriving version of you takes precedence, or the one with more memories."
"And the ring..." Jo mused softly. "Why didn't the two of him merge when he went back into 1947 for the second time?"
Zane blinked for a few moments. That was not something he had considered. On one hand he was impressed with Lupo for asking it, and on the other he wanted to fire back a witty retort to wipe the smug look off her face.
Luckily Grace had an answer. "We're not sure, but we think it has to do with the fact that they never physically overlapped, and maybe something to do with the receiver."
"It may also be that it you cannot overlap like that when going back in the past, but you can in the future. We're not really sure." He flashed Jo one of his best smiles. "But good thinking, JoJo."
It may have been his imagination, but he thought he saw her blush. She probably realized she was blushing too, and so she tried to cover up her embarrassment with a question to Grace.
"So... you want to know if the body itself was altered? I don't understand why."
Zane decided to answer this one. "Because if the body itself was never replaced, then memories from other timelines might still be locked away in the pathways."
"Meaning I could retrieve memories from the old Jo?"
"When you all got here, your bodies merged with the other versions of yourself. The different versions melded into one. But what happened to the other versions of us?" He pointed to Grace and himself.
"Our theory is that all of the timelines that have existed and no longer do are still trapped up here in our pathways," he continued, tapping his temple. "And if they are, I think we may have a way to access them."
"So what do you need from me?"
Zane motioned with flourish to the DNA mapper behind him they had "borrowed" from Central Security. "Step right up."
"You're sure this thing works now?" Jo asked suspiciously.
"Of course. You forced me onto it yourself not too long ago."
"Probably made keeping track of you a lot easier," she muttered, but not soft enough that is escaped his hearing. He smiled a little and waited until she was on the platform before beginning the scan.
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"I really think this is something we need to tell everyone else about," Jo said, stepping off of the platform. The machine still gave her the creeps. Despite that, when she got back to her office she was going to figure out how to integrate the tracking into her next security rounds.
Zane looked up from the control panel and winked at her. It did funny things inside her rib cage, and she resented it. And yet... he was going to an awful lot of trouble for her. Jo wondered if Zoe may have been right, that eventually this Zane would come to care for her as her Zane had. Or maybe he already did. She had to wonder if she was rejecting purely out of spite and resentment of the fact that he did not remember her.
"Exactly the same," Zane declared, smiling up at her. "Your DNA is a perfect match, down to the cellular date stamp."
"So where do we go from here?"
"No where." Jo, Zane and Grace turned to find Henry in the doorway.
"Henry?" Even his wife was surprised to see him there.
"You can't continue with this project," Henry repeated, serious and stoic.
"And why not?" A little bit of the old rebellious Zane peeked through, but Joe did not mind because he voiced the question they all wanted to know.
"It's too dangerous. Who knows how many times the time travel protocols have been violated. Who knows how many timelines are out there. If you try to access the memories stored in your neural pathways, you might uncover any of those memories. We have no way to target the right ones."
He looked over at his wife with an apologetic expression on his face. "I'm sorry, Grace. I took a look at your schematics last night after you went to bed. Brilliant, really, but dangerous."
From the look on Grace's face, Jo thought she was going to have to step into the middle of a domestic squabble just to protect GD employees and equipment. "We will discuss this at home!" she hissed at Henry, and turned on her heel and stormed out, lab coat flapping as she exited.
"Henry's probably right," Jo sighed. "Who knows what kind of traumatic experiences might be recalled. For all we know there have been hundreds of time lines."
"I would have done it."
Jo looked at Zane, perplexed. "What do you mean? Used the device?"
He nodded. "I would have done it. For you." He shrugged, putting his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Tight jeans. He rocked a little back and forth on his heels, avoiding her eyes at first, then finally meeting them. "You know, so you could have your Zane back."
She was speechless. He would be willing to risk everything, including his job and sanity, just to return her Zane to her?
"Give me a chance, JoJo. I'll use this device, or work twice as hard on the machine. But would you give me a chance? This Zane?"
"I gave you two years of chances," she whispered, although what she really wanted to say was yes.
"One more." Zane moved close to her, grabbing ahold of her hands where they hung stiffly at her sides. "One more chance, JoJo."
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