Identity
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
"What time is it?" Sara groaned as the alarm went off. She rolled over and put a pillow over her head to try to block out the annoying beeps and hoped to get another hour or two of much needed sleep.
"Time for my new assignment. You know I have to go in early today for an orientation and all the paperwork. They also told me I'd be getting another physical too so no breakfast for me this morning." Jack looked over at his wife's form as he walked the short distance to turn off the clock. He'd deliberately put it far enough away that he'd have to get out of bed to turn the clock off. He couldn't afford to be late and make a bad impression on his first day. "Go back to bed honey," he said as he pulled the pillow off her head to give her a kiss on the cheeks. "Who knows, maybe they'll let us out early and I can take you to a nice dinner tonight to celebrate."
He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Not bad he thought as he took in his reflection. A little gray in his hair but that was to be expected. He wasn't getting any younger but he wasn't sure why the Pentagon decided to put him and his team out to pasture. His commanding officer wasn't sure either and had tried to find out why he was losing one of his best squads but he just hit a brick wall at the Pentagon. Probably some desk weenie at the Pentagon entered something wrong somewhere and he'll try to get him back. Might as well take this as a brief vacation back in the states his CO said. Jack took care of his business in the bathroom and gave his sleeping wife another kiss on the cheeks before he got into his car for the drive to his new assignment.
The drive was uneventful. He scanned his surroundings as a matter of habit. As he approached the checkpoint he double checked his assignment orders and made sure his paperwork was in order. Unlike the rest of his team, he was going to be here a day before they arrived to get a heads up and to make sure all the members of his squad would be up to the assignment.
"Morning sir" said the young guard at the checkpoint. "Can I see some identification?" Lieutenant Stan Adams said. He looked at the man's identification and looked at the uniform of the man in the car and checked the list of names on his clipboard. "Sir, give me a minute while I check on something." As he walked back to his station he signaled the captain and the other four soldiers that something was wrong.
"What's up Stan? The guy didn't check out?" the Captain gave a little chuckle. When Stan got closer he quietly said "What's wrong?" He saw Stan's warning signal and saw his fellow guards moving into a covering position each scanning their surroundings based on Stan's warning.
"Hey Chuck. Listen, I know I'm new here but there's something odd going on." This was Stan's second week on the job and he heard some stories about the odd occurrences. "The guy's identification says he's Colonel Jonathan O'Neil. But he's wearing a Marine uniform, not an Air Force uniform. And that's not the right rank, is it? Also, I thought General O'Neill has two l's not one."
"Wait, let me see those documents." Captain Chuck Tanner wanted a look at the identification and orders. The picture in the ID was the guy in the car and the ID definitely said he was Colonel Jack O'Neil. And that he was in the Marines. There was also a Colonel Jack O'Neil in the list of scheduled visitors. That was odd since the General has been a General for over a year now. He had scanned the list of visitors when he got on duty and thought the desk jockeys had just written the wrong rank since they also spelled his name wrong. Now he thought someone might be trying to infiltrate the SGC. It wasn't the first time that happened but it was the first time on his watch that he knew of anyway.
Tanner picked up the phone at his booth and called his watch commander with a summary of what just happened and that something was up so he should put the base on higher alert. He then walked over to the car with Lt. Adams behind him. As he got to side of the car, he said. "Sir, please get out of the car and follow us."
Jack had noticed the warning signal of the guards. They were alert for this early in the morning which was both reassuring and a little scary. It was a mountain for Pete's sake. Not like there was anything important with his new assignment, Deep Space Radar Telemetry. When he heard the order, he decided it was best to just roll with the situation rather than wonder what the heck was going on. For all he knew, this was just some practical joke they played on newbies.
Jack got out of the car and made sure his hands were far away from his side arm. He didn't want to get shot by the overzealous guards. Besides, it just wasn't something he wanted to happen on his first day at his new assignment. That wouldn't make a good impression on the guards he would deal with on a daily basis.
He was getting bored. It had been a few hours since his incident at the gate and he was sitting in a detention room waiting. The door finally opened and a General walked in and looked me up and down a moment before a smile crept onto his face. "Colonel O'Neil? Heck of a first day you're having."
"Sir!" I said as I stood up and saluted.
"At ease, Colonel. You can take your seat." The General said as he took a seat across from me.
"Thank you sir. May I ask why I'm in a detention room? It's not the type of welcoming committee I was expecting on my first day." I said.
"There was a little mix up. Someone at the Pentagon thought it would be funny for you to be assigned to the mountain. I'm sure you know General Jonathan 'Jack' O'Neill, of the Air Force?"
The General in front of me just told me what I suspected. It was another case of mistaken identity. I was being confused with my namesake. Our paths crossed quite a bit in the past though not much in the last decade. We were about the same age and we were usually promoted within a year or two from each other. I was promoted to Captain about a year before he was but we both promoted to Major in the same year. He was actually promoted a few months before me. He then got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and then Colonel quickly, no doubt from black ops he was involved with if the rumors were true. When I got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel he had retired and then unretired. Last I heard he got promoted to a General and was now a desk weenie at the Pentagon. "Damn it! He told me he'd get me back for that last prank I played on him." Sarah and I played jokes against the other Jack and Sara. It was a friendly rivalry ever since we discovered the similarities in our names and our ranks. But that stopped when their son Charlie died and Jack retired. We lost track of each other after that though sometimes we still got the wrongly forwarded letter or email.
"Yeah, General O'Neill always did have a weird sense of humor." I nodded at that remark by the General. "But he's in overall command of a department in the Pentagon that has jurisdiction over our facility. And if he didn't think you and your team were well qualified to be here, you wouldn't be here. This may not look like a front line facility, but you need to know that you and your team are vital to the defense of this country and all the people on the planet."
"The planet?" I smirked. "Are you also part of the joke Jack's playing on me? This is getting less funny by the second General."
"It's not a joke Colonel. Let's get you out of this detention room and we'll give you a presentation in the conference room. I'll show you something that will blow your mind." The General said as he got up from the table and knocked on the door to get the guards outside to open the door.
"Remind me to pay back Jack for this someday, sir." I was already thinking of various ways to get back at him. Maybe send him a boxed set of the Simpsons but instead of the Simpsons, have some PBS Masterpiece Theater shows instead. He'll be horrified at that.
"Good luck with that." The General said as we waited for the elevator. "That reminds me. I better let everyone on base know that you're here officially and that there are two Jack O'Neill's in the military. One with one "l" in O'Neil and the other with two "l's" in O'Neill. Otherwise, everyone will think you are a really bad intruder or something and you'll be locked up faster than you can say space monkey by the guards."
"By the way, those guards did a good job. I did not like being held in detention for a few hours, but I'm glad they take their jobs seriously. And if I had been an intruder, they got me before I could see much of anything other than the gate and the way to the detention area." Had to give those guys credit for being on alert. Even after I had threatened to pull rank, they did what they had to do and had treated me with more respect than I would have given a potential intruder.
"We try to have the best of the best here. It's one of the reasons why you and your men were selected. If Jack, General O'Neill, did not think you were good enough, you wouldn't be here." The General said as we headed to the conference room. "Come on, let me show you the real reason why you and your men are assigned to NORAD. Oh, and be prepared for all the doubletakes you'll get when you introduce yourself." He chuckled as he said this and I groaned knowing I was going to be the butt of jokes for a while here.
"Well, Colonel O'Neil. Welcome to Stargate Command."