Interdepartmental Memo
Interdepartmental Memo
From: Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell
To: Dr. Daniel Jackson
Hey Daniel,
Sorry for sending this the old-fashioned way but the computers are down after a situation at the mountain.
I thought I’d better head things off before you got your news from the wrong sources. You and General O’Neill are pretty tight and I figured it wouldn’t be too long before you heard about what happened (because he’ll get the official report) and I don’t want you to worry. I mean not that General O’Neill’s the wrong source but the official report doesn’t quite cover it.
Let me start by saying that everyone’s fine. Well, not fine exactly. We have a whole mountain full of people with what feels like one hell of a hangover, but for the most part, everyone’s fine. Sam, Teal’c, me, Vala, all okay. Annoyed and sick of being stuck in the mountain, but definitely okay.
So, how do I start? I know your not going to believe this. We need you back ASAP (like hurry up and finish with the dusty old books already) but I’m kind of glad you’re not here ’cause your just not going to believe this. I said that already, didn’t I? You’re going to laugh yourself silly, but I’m not sure after the couple of days I’ve had that I want to be around to hear it. Enough stalling. Here goes.
Okay, so you know Bill Lee. And you know he can be a little (how do I put this) unfocused at times. Not that Bill isn’t a nice guy, don’t get me wrong, but hey, he’s scientist and you know how scientists…. Damn! I could have worded that better. But you know you and Sam are different from a lot of the other scientists here on the base. Today Bill reminded me of that Felger guy I read about, really intelligent, but not really smart, if you know what I mean. Although Sam—Okay, I have to back up. I’ll get to Sam later. Back to Bill.
Bill and his team were doing some testing of the ventilation system, something about the movement of air through the facility in case we ever had to release some gas or other throughout the base, in case of a foothold situation or something I guess. Anyway, the plan was to see how long a gas released from the lab on level 18 would take to permeate the base. It was supposed to be a gas tagged with some kind of harmless chemical marker. There were time-coded gizmos set up on every level to measure the concentration of gas and the time the gas reached them. Pretty harmless stuff, right?
Yeah, you guessed it. Bill released the wrong gas. It was some kind hallucinogen. Trust me, it doesn’t take long for a gas to get through the whole base, after all it’s not peanut butter or anything. So within minutes we were all wandering around the base thinking we were seeing double and triple of each other. Whew, what a mess. Whatever this gas was that Bill released, it made everybody very…open to suggestion. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it, open to suggestion.
Which leads me to Sam. You’d probably guess that some machine would have a hand in this disaster. Is it poetic justice when the machine you spend most of your life with comes back to bite you in the ass, or is it just a Murphy’s Law kind of thing—you know the bread always falls butter side down—anything that can go wrong, will go wrong? Well, like I said, it was a machine that got to Sam—a computer to be exact. And Sam got to the rest of us.
She’d sent out this memo to SGC personnel about a possible attack by Ba’al. We all know he’s still out there and we all know he’s still dangerous. Sam was going to give us a briefing about it on Monday morning. That was before Bill let his happy gas loose. The meeting must have been on her mind when the gas hit. She was in the control room and put the whole base on lockdown because, according to Sam, there were these duplicate Ba’als running around the base trying to get the location of a secret weapon out of the computers. She even had Walter convinced we were being attacked by an alkesh. You laughing yet? Yeah, like you’ve never been through anything like this before. Come to think of it, we could make this into a training scenario for the new recruits. Let me know what you think.
As for me, I bought it. After all, Sam’s got more experience than anybody else on the base except you, and you weren’t here. When she said we had a situation and we were being overrun by some evil goa’uld clones, I believed it. Hey, I breathed the gas. So did everyone else on the base, even Teal’c. You get the picture. Things were kind of crazy around here for a while.
Well, I’ve got to go. Vala’s been running around the base practicing military hand signals on the SF’s and I’d better go get her before one of them strangles her with her own pigtails, or shoots her. Although it might save either one of us the trouble. After I get her straightened out—I’m thinking Teal’c can baby sit for the night because I need some fresh air—I have to stop by Walmart and pick up some more Advil for this headache. Then I promised Vala I’d run over to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get her a new bathrobe (on my credit card, naturally), and I probably should get some groceries before I go home.
Have I mentioned that I really need you back at work? I know you’re working, but work here. It’s bad enough the whole base goes nuts while you’re gone—but having to deal with Vala too…. I’m combat trained but nobody’s trained for this.
Remember, movie night’s at my place when you get back. What do you think about Little Shop of Horrors? Teal’c wants us to explain the scene in the dentist’s office. Okay, after the gas dispersed we were trying to explain to Teal’c what happy gas was, and that dentists use it to get their patients to relax…. Never mind.
Sam figures she owes us so she’s buying the beer. She’s feeling guilty or something for supposedly giving up info to Ba’al about this secret weapon in order to save Agent Barrett (who was on the base when this all went down), which we both know is silly because Sam would never do something that stupid, not unless she was under the influence of some weird drug which she was. But you’ve got to tell me when you get back, did she and Barrett ever have a thing going? Sorry, got off topic. Sam did crash the computers though. Landry’s not happy about that.
Anyway, after we’ve put back a couple of cold ones, we’ll give you the rest of the gory details. Wait till you hear Vala tell you about tricking some Jaffa into using the ring transporter so that we could ring back to Ba’al’s ship. Whew boy!
Don’t work too hard. See you in few days.
Cam
The End
