Catch you on the flip side

Author: Gillian Slater

E-mail: [email protected]

Rating: PG -13

Teaser: Carter, whilst experimenting with materials gathered from an alien world finds an ancient coin which triggers a spontaneous OBE. Problem is, she can't end it.

Disclaimer: As always, these characters do not belong to me, they are the property of the show's creators, and I'm borrowing them for my own sinister purposes...

Part One

"Oh, come on, Carter!"

"I'm sorry sir, I'm just a little…"

"Obsessed? Agoraphobic? Workaholic?"

"Well…"

"I give up. If anybody needs me, I'll be in Minnesota."

Major Sam Carter smiled at the retreating from of Colonel O'Neill. The man definitely loved his fishing. Sam, on the other hand, was entirely too enthralled by her Naquida-powered electron microscope. Both had tried repeatedly and without success to introduce the other to the delights of their respective hobbies, and they knew each other well enough to see the futility of the argument. Still, over the many months they'd been working together, the argument had become an end in itself. It just wouldn't feel right if the Colonel didn't enthuse about the size of Minnesota bass for at least a half hour.

It wasn't as though she hadn't considered it. On the contrary, not a leave of absence went by when she didn't regret once again talking herself, as well as Colonel O'Neill, out of his proposed fishing trip, and despite her assertions, it wasn't only the allure of her experiments that kept her from joining him, but that ever-vigilant inner voice of caution.

There was simply too much at stake, especially now. Now, when, however briefly, they had acknowledged that there was more than friendship between them. It had been mutually agreed upon that the truth was not to go beyond the few who witnessed the admission necessitated by a cruel Goa'uld trick. It was lucky General Hammond wasn't around to see the second wave of Zatark testing, otherwise the two of them would be reassigned by now. So, it was consigned to the realms of conveniently forgotten truths, things best left unsaid, and, Sam's military-bred caution advised her, who knew how many taboo subjects were likely to be broached during a week's vacation alone together?

Still, these sound reasons didn't stop the same feeling of regret every time the Colonel threw up his hands in despair and disappeared off in search of his fishing hat. Once, just once Carter wished she could find the courage to say, "Sure, I'd love to." She'd never visited Minnesota anyway.

Obviously, there was no chance that it would work the other way around, or at least, not for more than ten minutes. On the rare occasions that the Colonel did decide to take a general interest in Carter's experiments, a few choice scientific phrases would usually send him running for cover. If the truth were known, O'Neill's intense technophobia was more endearing than she let on.

"Something wrong?" Daniel's polite inquiry startled her from her thoughts and she turned to her teammate with a puzzled expression. "You've… been staring down that corridor for a while now, I was just wondering if there was some kind of alien that's only visible to you or… something."

"Wouldn't be the first time." Sam smiled ironically.

"So, are you off home, or…?"

"No, I'm sticking around here for a while. Experiments, you know."

Daniel gave a knowing grin. He was one of the only people she knew who understood the allure of in-depth study. She couldn't count how many times she'd looked in on his tiny office to find him engrossed in some ancient manuscript or stone tablet in need of translation.

"Well, I guess I'll see you in a week then." He paused, as though trying to contain his excitement and then finally failing. "There's a dig out near Saqqara and the head of the expedition's a friend so…"

"Have fun." Sam clapped him on the shoulder fondly and watched as he almost bounced away down the corridor.

Suddenly struck with Daniel's infectious eagerness, she headed quickly towards the lab, where her new toy sat covered with a sheet, waiting for her to unwrap it. She felt like a giddy child on Christmas morning as she plucked off the sheet and gazed at the microscope in awe, enjoying the way the light from her desk lamp glinted off its smooth steel shaft, forming a little starburst shape on the lens. Beautiful.

Tearing her eyes away from it, she went to the metal cabinet in the corner and retrieved a tray of Daniel's geological samples and artefacts taken from an earlier mission. It was more than likely that each was exactly what it appeared to be, but she reasoned that the new microscope could make even the dullest rock reveal splendour at the molecular level.

The first was easy: malachite. Not an uncommon substance by any means, but certainly uncommonly beautiful when seen at 500,000 times magnification. More rocks were examined and found to be quite unremarkable, not that this dulled Sam's enthusiasm. She was fairly certain there were enough uncatalogued specimens knocking around the lower levels of the SGC to keep her occupied for a week... Minutes gave way to hours as she picked her way through several trays of samples.

Days later, and her honeymoon period with her new microscope had come to an end, moving instead into the kind of partnership she was sure would last a lifetime. A spectacular piece of machinery, always there for her when she needed it, when a mountain of unexciting paperwork threatened to spoil her precious week's vacation away from the field.

It seemed she had barely left her lab in the past few days, and by now she was really having to hunt for interesting things to examine and document. Her search had taken her into Daniel's private cabinet, which the absent-minded archaeologist had left unlocked. She ferreted around with the utmost respect for her friend's treasures until one artefact caught her eye in particular, though she did not know why. It was a small coin covered with intricate, unrecognisable markings. Of course, it was perfectly possible that the long-dead race who had inhabited P3X-663 were civilised enough to have developed a system of currency. Nonetheless, the coin intrigued her. Under her naquida-microscope the bluish metal seemed to glow invitingly and the inscription was obviously precision-cut with a laser. Taking it from the slide, she held it close to her face and scrutinised the illegible symbols, absently wishing Daniel was around to translate them.

And no sooner had the thought entered her brain than the coin seemed to heat up in her hand. She would have dropped it, except that she was inexplicably no longer connected to her body.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Looking down on herself from somewhere above, her first panicked thought was that whatever the coin had done to her had been fatal. Pulled from her earthly form, she would no doubt be winging her way to the unknown hereafter in no time. As if in confirmation of her fears she rose higher, through the very rock of the Cheyenne Mountain complex and soared above it.

The entity that was Sam Carter flew over the surrounding countryside, gradually gaining speed, reaching the coast and leaving the continent of her birth. Soaring out over the sea, Sam began to redress her all-consuming fears of death. This wasn't so bad, after all. It was quite kind of God to give her a tour of her planet before she left it, and it was truly breathtaking. She'd flown plenty of helicopter and jet-plane missions in her career, but nothing compared to this.

As what she could only describe as her soul neared the African continent, she began to slow down and sink lower, confusing her still further. Heaven's in Egypt?

In a flash of inspiration, then, the answer came to her, and was all at once relieving and frightening. All this had started when, holding the alien coin, she had thought of Daniel. Somehow the artefact had sent her mind off to find him at his archaeological dig in Saqqara. She wasn't dead after all, a piece of knowledge which was immensely satisfying to her. However, her mind was separated from her body, which was obviously still back at the SGC holding that damned coin.

She was just a few hundred feet up now, and gliding over Egypt's sandy terrain towards the famous step-pyramids which dominated the horizon impressively. Beyond the pyramids she could make out a number of tents with galabia-clad natives scurrying to and fro between them.

Finally her vision fell on a small desk planted just outside the largest tent. Daniel sat with his back to the floating Sam, deeply absorbed in the papyrus scrolls unfurled across the desk. Another man approached him, then, and the two of them scrutinised the parchments together.

Daniel!? Sam called in his general direction, but her voice sounded only in her own mind. Great. She'd come all the way to Egypt in some kind of astral projection and she couldn't even talk to her friend. Somehow she manoeuvred her way around the front of the desk and floated directly before him, looking intently into his eyes. He looked up from his parchment suddenly and shuddered.

"Y'alright?" asked the man next to him. Daniel's expression seemed somewhat distant as he replied.

"Yeah, I… I think someone just walked over my grave."

"Ugh, I hate that. Happens all the time. Could be the curse, you never know…" A grin of skeptical amusement passed between them.

"Yeah, right. Err, could you give me a minute? I have to… call someone."

The man nodded amicably and strode off towards another tent. Reaching into his jacket, Daniel brought out his mobile and scrolled through the numbers. Sam watched in amazement as he dialled her number and listened, obviously to no avail. It infuriated her to know that back in the lab her phone was ringing insistently while she was disembodied out here. Still, she was pleased to have affected some reaction in her friend.

After about fifteen rings, Daniel hit cancel and pocketed his phone, his eyebrows drawn into a frown. He brooded for a minute or two on the subject, then shook himself purposefully from his confusion and focused once more on his task.

Sam considered trying the distraction trick on him again, but quickly decided against it, after all, there was no way she could tell him anything in this state. No, she needed to get back to her body, for as liberating an experience as it had been, freeing her mind from all constraints of the physical world, it was also more than a little disconcerting that she was not the pilot on this particular flight.

Once again she felt herself begin to rise up and move away from the dig area, climbing into the cloudless stratosphere over North Africa.

Sam wondered if she could, in fact, control this bizarre out-of-body experience by directing her thoughts towards a specific location. Experimentally, she formed a picture of Cheyenne Mountain in her mind and felt a glow of satisfaction when her consciousness began to move out over the ocean in the right direction.

Speeding over the vast Atlantic, Sam was sure she could smell the salty air and feel the wind in her face, even though her face was, in fact, some 30 floors underground in the SGC. She imagined her body sitting there, entranced by the alien artefact in her hand. She would have some very choice things to say to that coin when she got back.

Sam's efficient mind began to catalogue the things she would do once returned to her rightful plane of existence. Putting the coin into an extremely secure safe would have to be the first, and no doubt Janet would want to check her over to ensure that no damage had come to SG-1's second in command whilst she was… sitting immobile at a desk.

Descending through the dense rock of the compound, Sam flew through the corridors like a spectre, only to find herself not in the lab, but in the infirmary, where Janet was typing up her reports. Of course, Janet. Sam had casually thought of Dr. Frasier and so her anonymous tour-guide had obligingly delivered her to the person in question.

A little peeved at the misdirection, Sam made a mental note not to think unduly of any of her acquaintances, a caution which unfortunately fell on deaf ears almost as soon as it was formed, for in trying not to think of anyone in particular, the image of Colonel O'Neill's face leaped unbidden to her mind's eye. Her consciousness literally went through the roof.

I guess I'm going to see Minnesota after all.

End of Part One