Loaves and Fishes

Post EMC…?

Dr. Nathan Stark looked up in annoyance. Sheriff Jack Carter was peering at the ever-changing aurora of light that was the "Miniature Big Bang' project with his big dumb honest forehead wrinkled.

"Something I can do for you, Sheriff?" Stark drawled.

Carter ignored Stark's annoyance at his presence--and the question. "Do ya think it's gonna make life?"

"What?" Of anything he'd imagined Carter asking him, this was not it.

"Well, it's the mini-Big Bang…right? So is it gonna make a tiny universe with maybe teeny life-bearing worlds?"

Stark blinked at him. Ookayy. "I don't think so."

"Or is it gonna grow and supplant this universe like on that episode of Deep Space Nine?"

Stark wondered if the sheriff had bumped his head on something recently. "I didn't take you for the Trekkie type."

Carter smiled a little sheepishly. "Nobody does. And I would prefer that Fargo never found out. It's hard enough listening to his Buffy obsession."

Stark winced involuntarily. Even he didn't dislike the goomba enough to unleash the hell that was Fargo in fanboy mode.

"So how much of this was taken from the Artifact?" Carter asked thoughtfully.

Nathan Stark did a double take. One of the top three things he found annoying about the guy was that he saw right through Stark's inscrutable façade and would unerringly focus on what was really there.

According to Carter's psyche profile, the man may have been solidly average when it came to the intelligence scores; however, his empathy and intuition scores were at the very top of the charts.

As a result he was nearly always right when it came to finding out someone's true motives.

The other two things that Stark found annoying were the sheriff's inability to keep his nose out of other peoples' (Stark's) business, and his obvious little boy crush on Alison. "How did you come to that conclusion?"

Carter shrugged. "To recreate the beginning of the universe you'd need something big to start from. Even in Eureka you can't build something from nothing."

Stark regarded Carter with what could be perceived--in the right light--as respect. How did the big lug always manage to jump to the right conclusions?

"You're right."

"What was that?" A big cheesy grin.

"I'm not saying it again." Stark rolled his eyes. "We used some of the figures the mathematicians came up with."

"I'm guessing. . . theoretical stuff that my cousin Sam would go gaga over."

Stark blinked. His cousin? Sam Carter? Couldn't be.

"Logos," said Carter, apropos of nothing.

"Logos," repeated Stark.

"It's Greek. It means 'word'."

Stark twisted around in his chair. "I know that. I'm just surprised you know that."

Ignoring that, Carter went on, "John 1:1."

"It's been a while since Sunday School."

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Carter recited. "Your obsession with the Artifact…at first I thought it was because you wanted power or knowledge at the expense of everything else."

Stark was at a loss. Not that he cared about what Carter thought about him. But did he really come off as a crazed power monger?

"That's what I thought at first," Carter said with a thoughtful frown. "But now I don't think that's what you're really looking for."

"You think I'm looking for God?" This was said flatly and with more than a little disbelief.

"Isn't everyone?" The sheriff smiled at him. "Anyway I'm not gonna get on you're back for messing with things that mortals should not know of. In this town that's pretty much a lost cause. Just be careful."

"I'll take it under advisement."

The sheriff wandered over to the door. "Oh, and one other thing."

"Yes?"

"You might even have gotten His attention. Isn't 'Let there be Light' on of His lines?"

"Yeah, well…I only plagiarize from the best."