Author's Note – I'm leaving this story as Complete because I'm not really convinced it needs more but this chapter sort of wrote itself once I'd posted the other chapter.

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General Hammond sat with his elbows on the desk in front of him, head resting on his hands, mulling over the conversation he'd just had with his Commander in Chief.

It hadn't been one of the better ones he'd had with the man. In fact, if he were being completely honest with himself, he'd probably have to include it amongst the worst. The President had eventually accepted that this whole thing appeared to have been prompted by nothing more than two of his senior officers poking a little fun at the rest of the base while under the influence of alien technology but that didn't mean he'd made it easy for Hammond either. The General had been given a right earful on exactly how fine a line the Air Force walked with this project and how much of the taxpayers money went into funding it, etc, etc. The President had also finished up with a reminder that he was still under intense pressure to step up the 'Civilian Oversight' on the Stargate Project. As though Hammond ever needed a reminder that the NID would love to get their hands on the Stargate.

Hammond sighed to himself before straightening in his chair and doing his best to resume some semblance of the mantle of command. He reached for the other phone on the desk in front of him, the one that rang automatically on Harriman's desk in the Control Room.

'Yes, General?'

'Walter, let Security know they can stand down; I'm taking the base off alert as of right now. Let top-side know as well.'

'Yes, Sir.' Walter tried not to make the surprise too obvious. 'Um, Sir, does this mean you know what the audio sensors were picking up yesterday?'

Still feeling too angry and obscurely let down to be evasive, even in defence of two of his favourite people on the base, the General replied with a curt affirmative. 'Yes, Walter, I do. It was Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter.'

'Oh.' Walter put some quiet thought into that and just as he knew the General was about to hang up, he finally risked the question. 'What were they doing, General?'

The silence on the other end of the phone strung out again but this time it was suddenly charged. Without knowing exactly why, if Walter could have rewound the conversation and withdrawn the question he knew, with absolute certainty, he would have.

'Sergeant?'

Despite being 40 feet and one floor away, Sergeant Harriman stood from his chair and came to attention. 'Yes, Sir?'

'Are you still working on those audio anomalies?'

'Yes, Sir.'

'Well don't stop. I'll be down momentarily.'

Walter barely had time to return the handset to its cradle when he heard the clattering footsteps of his CO coming down the metal stairwell from the Briefing Room.

'Sergeant?' Hammond had sprinted down so fast he was out of breath, 'What exactly did Major Carter tell you to do to the recordings from yesterday?'

Walter was a man used to thinking on his feet and searched his recollection of the conversation he'd had with the blonde Major for clues to what the General might be thinking. 'She asked me to clean up the sound quality as far as possible, Sir, then isolate by frequency and cross-reference for commonality between the six events we've detected.'

'So. She didn't say anything to you about varying the speed at all?'

'Well …'

'Go on, Son, spit it out.'

'Well, Sir, she did say that if I had a request to slow the recording down, I should do it by increments of ten percent to make sure we didn't miss anything.' Still puzzled, the sergeant looked to Hammond for further instruction. 'Would you like me to do that, General?'

'Hmmmmm' Rapidly coming to the conclusion that he'd been hoodwinked, the General glared at Harriman for a few seconds before remembering this wasn't the person, or indeed persons, he was actually imagining suffering a long, lingering and excruciatingly painful death. Recovering himself, he placed a reassuring hand on the younger man's shoulder, 'Sorry, Son. I know this isn't your fault.'

Realising at that moment too, that the noise level in the Control Room had dropped as the other personnel slowly ceased their activities in preference for watching what was unfolding between the General and Sergeant Harriman, Hammond shot a harassed glance around the room 'Don't you people have anything better to be getting on with?'

Turning back to Walter, he continued more quietly. 'Sergeant, if we wanted to turn a quarter of a second of recording into, say, five minutes, …' the older man found himself blushing at exactly what was going through his mind ' … no, make that ten. What sort of factor would we need to slow it down by?'

Walter did a couple of quick calculations in his head. 'I think we'd have to slow it by a factor of roughly two and a half thousand, Sir.'

'Can you do that?'

Inputting a few instructions on the keyboard in front of him, Walter watched the wavelength frequencies showing on his monitor flatten dramatically. 'It's looking a lot more reasonable now, Sir. Do you want to hear it?'

Still with half an eye on the others in the room, who had remained conspicuously quiet, despite his earlier instruction, the General decided that, if suspicions were correct, this might not be something he wanted to share with the whole base just yet. 'Do the same for each event, put it on a disk and bring it straight up to me, Sergeant. I'll listen to it in my office.'

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Thanks for reading (and apologies if my maths is completely screwy - I had to seek external advice on turning the tape into ten minutes and I'm not convinced it's right myself!). If you loved/hated/want me to stop/want me to keep going with this story, please review and let me know.