Disclaimer – I own nothing contained with this story.

Teaser – Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim Yamazaki walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Pairings – pre-Jack/AI!OrganicComputer!Nate

A/N – I hated the way the writers handled the Kim situation. She was a weak personality in Ship Happens, but I had assumed that was because they were going to let her grow and explore the concepts of humanity and the definition of what makes a person unique. Instead they copped out in the next episode and killed her off. It was like they didn't know what to do with her once she showed up so they scrapped what had the potential to be a truly amazing storyline. Kim could have done so much... and now we'll never know. Well, I'm going to redux the next episode and make it a sequel to this one, only I'm going to fix the mistake of killing off the organic computer-person and have my Nate live.

Please enjoy.

Uncomfortable: A 'Ship Happens' Redux

Chapter One – In Which Nathan Stark is Technically Still Dead

Jack was fairly certain he should have asked Tess to watch the meteor shower with him, but it hadn't felt right. Not that this was the first time Jack had purposely overlooked an opportunity to go out with someone lately. It wasn't like he was biding his time and waiting for Allison. He still loved her, but his feelings had been muted by time, friendship, and the fact that she wasn't really what he was looking for anymore.

The truth was, Jack had felt as though he'd been in a holding pattern since Nathan Stark had died. It had been Stark's wedding day to Allison and the day had been put in a loop because a scientist who didn't want to be fired tried to prove his experiment worked and was useful. Though Jack had actually kissed Allison in one of the loops, he dreamed sometimes that he'd kissed Nathan instead.

He never said anything about those dreams and, when Allison announced she was pregnant with Nathan's baby, Jack was glad he hadn't. They were likely his subconscious' way of telling him he wished that there'd been a way to stop the loops without losing Stark, but he doubted anyone else would interpret his dreams that way and there was no way Jack wanted Allison to think that he'd been secretly lusting after Nathan all the times he'd told her that remarrying Nathan might not be such a good idea.

Not that Nathan hadn't been handsome enough to lust over. Jack was comfortable enough with himself that he had never felt the need to deny that he was bi and, after his marriage with Abby was over, he'd told Zoe. (Albeit, the conversation with Zoe had been rather awkward and he'd wound up relating one of his college romances with a chemistry major, but he'd never felt the need to hide that part of himself from his daughter.) So there had been a few times when Jack had found himself distracted by how sexy Stark had been. Nathan's personality hadn't really been all that bad either; Jack had grown to respect Stark and consider him a friend. What had stopped Jack from being more than attracted to Stark was the fact that the man simply wouldn't, or couldn't, let Jack in as more than a 'frienemy'.

Yet despite all of that, Jack had simply shut down some part of himself when Stark died and no amount of introspection could lead him to understand what or why.

Henry's spaceship was making noises.

"Hey! Do you hear that?" Jack yelled, turning to where Henry and Allison sat at the computer stations a few yards away.

"What?" Henry asked as he stood up.

"The..." what was its name again? "It's making noise." The Columbus... now he remembered.

Denial flickered across Henry's face. "Jack, I told you, it's powered down." As if in defiance, the noise from the ship grew louder.

"A protocol has been initiated to open the door," Tess countered, looking worried.

"Initiated? From where?" Allison had moved to stand beside Tess, who laced one of her gloved hands with Allison's encouragingly.

"From there," Tess gestured at the ship with her free hand as a circular panel began opening on the underside of the ship.

"Okay, I need security here right now!" Allison's command snapped the GD guards out of their stunned staring at the ship and into action. They raced forward to form a protective barrier between the ship and the onlookers.

Once the hatch fully opened, a pod-like structure dropped down from the ship and opened up to reveal a human figure concealed in a white fog. The person, clearly a man, collapsed on the ground. Allison told the guards to stand down as Henry investigated the person, but Jack knew who it was before Henry announced the name.

Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Nathan Stark... was alive?

-=-=-=

Allison was determinedly looking anywhere but Nathan's doppelganger. "Well, he is dehydrated and his electrolyte count is down... probably the result of plasma field exposure after landing. Otherwise, he's fine."

"Henry, you said this was an unmanned mission, right?" Tess interjected, staring at Henry even as she stayed glued to Allison's side in support.

"Absolutely, yeah..." Henry's eyes were glued to the figure on the other side of the glass.

"But the DNA matches Nathan Stark." Tess glanced over and bit her lip as a sad expression entered her eyes.

"Nathan's dead," Allison muttered resolutely.

"Besides, twenty years ago, Stark would have been in college, right?" Jack added.

"He was my intern on this project." Henry shrugged. "I did the bulk of the work with Kim, but Nathan was my most promising student, so I included him on some of the work to see how he'd do in a top-secret work environment."

"His cellular structure isn't human," Allison's voice returned to her 'work' tone. "That's not Nathan."

"Okay, then... what's going on?" Jack asked. He looked over at the pseudo-Nathan and, for a moment, his blue eyes met Nathan's green ones. What was it that made someone a person, anyway?

"Well, look... that ship has been traveling through deep space for twenty years. That's twenty years of cosmic rays and primordial particle radiation. Who knows what could have happened?" Tess sounded excited at the idea, but was clearly trying to clamp down on her enthusiasm for Allison's sake.

"The biological mainframe..." Henry sounded tired. "It should be able to tell us what occurred on the trip."

"What's an..." Jack started to ask about the biological mainframe, but Allison jumped in with an explanation.

"It's an organic computer, based on neural net architecture, like the human brain. Instead of circuits and wires, it can process information using living cells. It can modify its structure to solve any problem its presented."

"Great." Jack tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Really, there had to be a catalogue somewhere in the town that kept track of all these things. If he could just look through it, maybe he wouldn't always feel so behind on every subject. "How long to, uh, boot it up?"

"Yeah," Zane finally spoke up from where he'd been standing, staring at Stark through the glass. "You might want to go to plan B. I tapped into the ship using my own organic rig, and the on-board computer is completely fried. There's nothing left."

"I'm what's left." For the first time, Nathan spoke. His voice was the same as Jack remembered. The words 'see you around, Jack' playing cruelly in the back of his mind all these months had ensured that Jack remembered clearly the combination of rough and smooth that made up Nathan's voice.

Allison flinched as she turned around to face Nathan.

"I'm what's left," Nathan repeated.

Shaking, Allison fled the room, Tess on her heels.

Jack took a few steps forward, confident that Nathan was listening to them since he'd already answered a question for them. "The..." he was going to say real, but then wondered just what it was that made one person more 'real' than the next. "The original Nathan Stark died a few months ago. His death was hard on her."

"They were... close?" Nathan guessed. Then his eyes narrowed and he tried again before anyone could correct him. "They were married. She's pregnant. The baby is his, isn't it?"

"That's correct," Henry answered.

Nathan let out a frustrated sigh and ran a hand through his hair, a startlingly familiar gesture. "The mainframe should have used the other DNA. There was a skin cell from Kim Yamazaki that was also viable for use. Her presence would have been less painful..."

"Kim is dead, too," Jack interrupted. "If the choices were just Stark and her, then there was really no way to avoid causing someone pain."

"I was looking forward to meeting my creators," Nathan muttered softly, his eyes shutting briefly.

"Well, you've still got me," Henry responded, giving Nathan a smile.

"That is true, Dr. Deacon."

"Please, call me Henry."

Nathan tilted his head to the side curiously. "Very well, Henry. But... what am I to be called? I am not Nathan Stark and..."

"You'd like a name of your own," Jack filled in. "You don't want to be seen as taking a dead man's place."

"Precisely."

Henry shook his head. "I... I don't know. I've never been very good at picking names."

"Um... how about Justin?" Zane asked. "That was the name of one of my best friends as a kid."

But Nathan was already shaking his head negatively.

"George? Robert? Harry? Fred?" Zane kept listing out names and Nathan kept vetoing. "Just agree on one already. Do you have to be so picky?"

"This is the name I'll be going by for the rest of my life. I would prefer it to be something significant to me and not something random or arbitrary." Nathan rolled his eyes at Zane, as though the younger scientist should have already realized this.

"Nate." Jack held up his hand before Nathan could agree or disagree. "It's a nickname for Nathan and Stark never went by nicknames. The name would be easy for people who knew Stark to remember and associate with you, but would still reinforce the fact that you aren't him, at least subtly anyway."

Zane pouted, though he looked a little impressed by Jack's reasoning. Henry nodded in agreement, a smile on his face as he observed, "Nathan hated it when anyone called him Nate, but I think he'd appreciate the irony if you were to choose to go by it."

"I like it," Nate said, making it clear that was his name now. "I know Henry's name, but what are yours?"

"I'm Zane Donovan," Zane chirped, bouncing a little in excitement at seeing just how human Nate really was. Though created by a computer and not normal by any standards, Nate was still curious to learn and establish himself as a unique individual.

"I'm Jack Carter, the town Sheriff." Jack gave them all a wave and stepped back a little towards the exit. "I'm going to check on Allison and then head over to the office. All of the appliances used in the plasma whatever have been gather there and Jo and I have the unpleasant duty of returning it all."

"Sheriff." Nate's voice gave Jack a pause. "Thanks... for my name."

"No problem." Grinning at Henry and Zane, he added, "I'll be back later to pester you all on how everything's going." Turning to the door, Jack took a few steps and was almost out of the room when something made his face grow pale and his footsteps falter a moment.

"I guess I'll see you around, Jack..."

A/N - I know, I'm mean to poor Jack. Muahahaha...

See ya next update.