Origin Obscure
"Man, the whole system's screwed up since Colonel O'Neill messed with it," Steve said as he stared at the monitor, watching the diagnostic for any change and occasionally glancing at the clock. At this time of night they were the only people in the SGC's control room, the stargate in front of them having been taken offline until the dialling computer was fully restored.
"Meaning of life stuff my ass, doesn't change the fact that we've got to pull double shifts to fix all this. Too bad he didn't keep the knowledge of the Ancients long enough to undo everything he did. Try it again," Bill muttered from underneath the console.
"Yeah, that fixed it," Steve called wearily as he saw the diagnostic update.
"You're sure that we've disabled the iris lockout he put in place?"
"We have uninstalled, reinstalled, rerouted and patched this system to hell and back. Iris control is now showing as active, the system's registering the hardware this time and diagnostic's showing nothing but green lights."
"Yeah but, you're sure?"
Sighing, Steve tapped the necessary command sequence into the computer. In the embarkation room directly ahead of him twenty titanium blades surged out of the recess behind the stargate's inner track and converged with a loud metallic scraping noise.
"Okay, you're sure."
Steve simply nodded.
"Well," Bill said, sighing, "we've been here fifteen hours so far, it's nearly midnight and I'm not getting paid remotely enough for this crap."
"How did the pitch go again? 'You know, the US Air Force has a top secret project that could really benefit from having a couple of highly regarded MIT educated software engineers on its staff'. Total crap – we're nothing more than glorified tech support," Steve moaned.
"I picked this over a job offer from Microsoft!" Bill complained.
Steve nodded wistfully in response, then picked up his clipboard. "So, full iris control is finally restored, we can check that off the list. What else – we're pretty sure we've dealt with that whole eighth chevron sub-routine crap?"
"Yep, I've disabled it for now but copied the code to a secure terminal so we can clean it up and properly integrate it with the dialling computer operating system at a later date… not that I can see us using that again any time soon with power requirements like that," Bill said, closing the panel on the underside of the console and yawning.
"Okay, and all the pre-programmed routine crap he entered?" Steve said, rubbing his prickling eyes.
"Oh that's definitely gone," Bill said as he sat down next to Steve and gazed at the monitor.
"Okay, cool. So, all we have to do now is make sure all these gate addresses he entered are properly logged… where the hell did he even get them from?" Steve asked.
"I'd rather not say," Bill muttered.
"Sweet Jesus, how many did he add?" Steve said, despairing as he scanned through the seemingly endless list. "We're still going to be sifting this when the morning shift arrives. You know, you'd think if it was that important to get this straightened out that Captain Carter and Lieutenant Simmons would have stayed behind to help, or they'd at least have put a few more guys on this detail."
"Oh man, look at this – they're all mixed in with the existing addresses, no filenames and no metadata. Seriously, would it have killed him to put them all in a separate directory or at least name them properly?" Bill asked, staring at the scrolling list of files.
"Given what all that knowledge was doing to his brain, who knows? Okay, let's think – the addresses from the Abydos Cartouche have to be recalculated to adjust for stellar drift, right?" Steve said.
Bill clicked his fingers as he grasped what Steve was getting at.
"Right, plus they arrive in batches and the next batch isn't due to be downloaded until six in the morning tomorrow!"
"So for now all we have to do is find every gate address file added to the system today, stick them in a new directory and batch rename them," Steve said triumphantly. He shuffled closer to the keyboard in front of him and typed for a few seconds before facing Bill. "Okay, they're all moved. So, what should we rename them?"
"Hmm. Typically the filename is something like this," Bill said, indicating the last recognised address the system had dialled. The filename read STRGT_ADD_ABY_CART_P9Q_281.
"Okay, cool, so… what the hell do we call these addresses? Oh wait, let me try this," Steve said, smirking as he typed. "Damn, the file name has a thirty-two character limit."
Bill looked over. Steve had typed STRGT_ADD_WEIRD_THING_ON_WALL_OF before the system refused to allow him to add anything else.
"Heh, wait – I've got a better idea," Bill said.
"…extensive testing has confirmed that the dialling computer has been restored to full function, and we should be able to upgrade it with the eighth chevron sub-routine and planetary distance algorithm provided by, ah, Colonel O'Neill in the near future, but for today we've cleared all the crucial tasks," said Steve, hoping the dark circles under his and Bill's eyes were driving home just how much time and work the pair had put into yesterday's assignment. Even Daniel, sat next to Carter on the other side of the table, wasn't getting between them and their coffee.
"That's good to hear. Good work gentlemen," Hammond said, getting out of his chair and heading to his office. Bill and Steve smiled at the compliment, neither of them visibly reacting to the way all their hard work seemed to be trivialised and dismissed.
"I do have one question though," asked Carter from across the table after Hammond had left, her skin still showing patches of angry red as a result of the sunburn acquired from P9Q-281's second sun. "I took a look at the new directory of gate addresses to determine how many Colonel O'Neill added. I noticed the filenames for all the new addresses the Colonel entered all start with STRGT_ADD_POOCONA… what's POOCONA mean?"
Still smiling, Bill and Steve froze as they stared fixedly at Carter. To her side Daniel started to smile faintly, staring at the pad he had been making random notes on throughout the briefing.
"Oh, that," Bill said, swallowing nervously and talking slowly. "Well… you see, what happened was… at the time we weren't sure quite where the new addresses came from, so we couldn't put that into the gate address file names at the time. We can change the names at any time, it's not a problem."
"Yes, I get that, but what does it mean?"
"It means… uh…" Steve began, staring at the table.
"Uh Sam, I think," Daniel said coolly, leaning forward, "that POOCONA is an acronym meaning Planetary Origin Obscure - Cartouche Origin Not Authenticated. Did I get that right?"
"Yes!" Bill and Steve said almost simultaneously, now staring gratefully at Daniel.
"Huh," Carter said, confused but satisfied. As she left, Bill and Steve slowly got up from their seats at the briefing room table and started toward the steps down to the control room. Daniel approached them and spoke quietly.
"It's probably best we don't tell her it really stands for Pulled Out Of Colonel O'Neill's –"
"As I'm sure you can imagine we've got quite a lot of work to do, so we'd best get back to it Doctor Jackson, but, uh… thank you," Bill said. Steve nodded furiously and gratefully, following his colleague.
Grinning, Daniel headed towards his laboratory.