Seems you guys actually want to read this =) Here's another chapter for being so dang awesome and reviewing!

To My Reviers w/o an account:

Kate - I don't actually explore Sam's experience with Fifth in this story. This focuses more on Jack, how he attempts to move on from his feelings for Sam, and how that affects his relationship with the rest of SG-1, with Daniel in particular. The whole Fifth and RepliCarter is something I explore in my other fanfic, Plausible Deniability, if that's a sort of story you'd like to read. A bit of a warning though: It's over 100K words at the moment, so it's not something you can just dip into ;-)

Kahuna - You do make my evenings! Insightful reviews are like manna from heaven. And YEP, this is my 'Carter must suffer for hurting O'Neill' fic. LOL! BTW, I've posted the Outtake for PD if you haven't already read it.

CHAPTER 2: Lost in Irony

The 'old' Jack O'Neill had never been that interested in gadgets and blinking things. He had a cell phone, a cd player in his truck, no computer at home and his Gameboy was a relic of the 80s. He left it to Carter and even Daniel to play with the 'neat' new toys consumers seemed so eager to devour these days.

But for some unknown reason - known only to the Asgard - the little grays had found it necessary to play around with his cloned brain and make a few tweaks. In Jack's opinion, he was now brain damaged. Off his rocker. No longer in possession of ones faculty. One fry short of a... Oh, hey, neat!

Jack's brain quickly shifted into fascinated mode as he watched the animated 3D shapes rotating and merging from one form to another on his cell phone. He'd hacked it this morning during a briefing with SG-13. Dave Dixon had fallen asleep during Balinsky's fascinating account of Menoan culture on P6X-229, and Jack had pretended to be making notes on his computer, nodding at all the right places, grunting at others, Balinsky completely oblivious to his audience's inattention too busy clicking away on the projector.

He'd had no idea what compelled him to click on the little icon of some kind of bull on his applications dock, or what made him learn and install the program on the machine in the first place, but he'd had the image of the shapes in his head and his fingers did the walking. He'd written the simple program that demonstrated trig and fixed-point arithmetic and sent the program to his cell phone. The result fascinated him.

It was just a few shapes merging and rotating. A neat phone screen saver. But to Jack it represented something else. It showed him a new part of himself that hadn't been there before and it scared him a little.

Carter was the brains of the base. He was the muscle. He was far from stupid before, but he never fooled himself into thinking that he'd ever understand the words that came out of Carter's mouth completely. Her intelligence was just too out there. They'd traipsed around the galaxy going head to head with more advanced societies and Carter still proved that she could out think the best of them.

Now he found himself more than capable of understanding her. Ever since he'd been cloned he'd started to notice that he was definitely different. Better everything physically. He could hear the birds in the morning like they'd been amplified. Food tasted better, probably because this body had never tasted tobacco. He saw things better at night, not even realizing he'd forgotten to turn his headlights until another car had flashed him.

The downside was, he couldn't tell anyone. Since Janet was gone, he couldn't trust anyone in the infirmary to keep his little secret.

So, he had to play it dumb as always, although this time around it was far more difficult. There had been a few times where he'd wanted to contribute something and he was about to open his mouth to tell Carter and had to quickly shut his mouth. He wasn't supposed to know that stuff and Carter would know it.

There would be questions he wasn't prepared to answer and didn't want the damned NID sniffing around the SGC making claims that he was a liability. No way in hell. He could just see the NID demanding that he step down because he'd been 'influenced' by alien allies; or even worse, demand that he be subjected to 'tests'. No freaking way was he gonna be a lab rat.

Jack was roused from his dark thoughts by a knock on his office door. He opened the top drawer in his desk, dropped the cell phone in and quickly closed it. "Come in!"

Daniel poked his head in. "Hey, Jack."

"Daniel!" He pushed away from behind the desk and stood up, still not feeling all that comfortable talking to Daniel in that position. "Get in here."

Daniel looked around, frowning suspiciously at Jack. He shrugged as if deciding it was safe enough and sat down in one of the chairs. Jack propped himself up on the edge of his desk and stared questioningly at the archaeologist.

"Oui?"

"I need to contact Langara."

"Pourquoi?"

"I need to talk to Jonas about the rubbings I sent him from P3X-666. I've finally found the time go over the last of them, including copies of the ones I asked Jonas to help with and I think I've found something big."

"Something big?" Jack repeated, adding quote marks with his fingers.

"It mentions a city. Obviously not Atlantis since we've... kinda... found it, but another outpost, a much larger one in our own galaxy. I also found this," He handed Jack his notepad.

"A gate address," Jack quickly recognized the six symbols as one that didn't appear on the Abydos cartouche or one of the addresses that he'd entered whilst he'd carried the ancient download. Another gift of the Asgard: Eidetic memory.

"He's had these rubbings for months, he should be done translating them by now. I want to know why he hasn't contacted us."

"You think something's gone wrong?" Jack speculated.

"Baal's already sent one Goa'uld spy to Kelowna. We can't discount anything."

Daniel was in his lab prepping the rest of his kit for the upcoming mission to PX1 313, the planet where they hoped was an Ancient outpost. Jack had contacted the Kelownan council in order to speak to Jonas Quinn. They were informed that Jonas had taken a trip to the Stargate and had not returned. The Council woman went as far as to inform General O'Neill that if they found Mr. Quinn to inform that he no longer had a position to return to.

Jonas' disappearance supported Daniel's suspicion that Jonas had indeed finished translating the rubbings and was either coerced or for some unknown reason, had gone to the planet fully cognizant.

The latter disturbed Daniel more. What would compel the young man to just abandon everything, not leave a note or even mention to anyone what he was going to do? Did it have anything to do with the tension Daniel and everyone else in the Control Room had sensed from the Kelownan Council? Jonas had abandoned his home world once, had he done it again for similarly good reasons?

Daniel gave up speculating and zipped up his pack, happy with its contents. Jack always complained about over packing and despite Daniel's constant reminder that they needed those things, Jack still ribbed him about it. Now that Sam was his new CO - Man, it was weird thinking of her that way! - he was still careful to only pack the essentials.

Of course, he wasn't so sure now if they were going to have Sam for that much longer. Sure, she'd always put her career first in the past, but her acceptance of Pete's ring made Daniel think that it was the beginning of the end of SG-1.

It started with Jack's promotion and now with Sam getting married, he was sure the team was set to break up. Daniel kinda got the feeling that Pete wasn't too happy with Sam's job and the moment they tied the knot, he'd be demanding kids and that meant no more gate travel for Sam. Knowing Sam, she wouldn't risk gate travel, leaving a child of hers motherless. Young Sam had been through that and the older Sam Carter wouldn't let it happen to her own child. She'd probably still work in the labs, but she might as well just be Doctor Carter (Shanahan?) because in effect, Lieutenant Colonel Carter The Soldier, would be gone.

Which was ironic really.

Sam had 'Gotten a life' only because she believed that she couldn't have the man she was in love with, only to end up out of the field, stuck inside a lab and all the reasons she wasn't with Jack gone. It was a damned Greek tragedy and Daniel was forced to watch it unfold.

He'd tried speaking to Jack about it, told him the reasons why he should stop this train wreck that was about to happen, but Jack had recited his tired old mantra: "She's my subordinate" "Her career is important to her" "I would never ask her to give up what she's worked so hard for".

"Well, Jack. Pete's not as noble as you. He would ask her to give it all up for him and she'll do it out of guilt instead of the right reasons." He'd said to his friend.

Jack O'Neill being the obstinate fool that he was, didn't want to hear it. He respected Sam's decisions and if they turned out to be wrong, then he would always be there to support her. Jack was noble alright, and stupid.

If it had been Sha're, he wouldn't have let her go so easily. He knew that Jack loved Sam just as much as Daniel loved his wife, but Jack's love had always been tainted with feelings of dishonor and the forbidden. Jack was above all else honorable and whilst he broke a lot of rules, he would never break that one rule that kept him and Sam apart. It was unselfish, self-sacrificing, so Jack O'Neill.

Jack was a good man and Daniel was sad that Sam hadn't been willing to wait for his friend, like Jack would always wait for her.

Jack wandered into Daniel's lab and found the younger man staring off into space. It seemed that Jonas' disappearance had upset Daniel more than Jack had realized.

He knocked on the open door. "Daniel, you okay?"

Daniel quickly turned to him and took a deep breath, his thoughts miles or is it light years away?

He saw Daniel remove his glasses and massage the space between his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah. Just fine. What can I do for you Jack?" Daniel saw what he was wearing and looked at his watch. "It's only five. You're already leaving?"

Jack picked up one of Daniel's 'Rocks' and started playing with it. "I've decided to take my own advice and get a life, Spacemonkey. You game?"

Chapter 3 is almost ready to post. Let me know what you think of this so far. Reviews are wonderful incentives to write fic instead, of say, doing laundry, exercising, feeding my ravenous kids...