TITLE : SG-1 JAG's the X-Files
AUTHOR : Perry Tratchett
Winter hit the District of Colombia with a vengeance, leaving the city of Washington huddling inside the security of it's blankets in a feeble attempt to keep warm. The community's embracement of the Christmas spirit was only just barely up and running despite the larger department stores overwhelming advertising campaigns and their strategic product placement of specific Christmas merchandise for well over a month already. Christmas had no significant momentum of it's own yet.
Pedestrians dodged the clones of Santa Claus that were camped on virtually every street corner, scrambling away from their bell ringing and their world weary "ho hos". The winter trade in consumer goods was not setting the world on fire, but there were more than a few people living on the streets at that time who would quite happily set some portion of it on fire. It was cold. In fact it was so cold that the doomsayers from Greenpeace had stopped decrying the decadent western societies destruction of the pristine Earth environment and the incipient global green house catastrophe and gone somewhere else to preach their message. Let's face it, arguing that the world is drowning in its own waste heat carries a lot more weight if it is conducted in an actual hot environment. Who's going to listen to that argument when you've got three jumpers on beneath your coat? It might even sound like a good idea. You could sell those people shares in Global Warming INC. Instead, Greenpeace were active in New Zealand and Australia. They might have better used their time in Southern America or South Africa, but those places are dangerous and so the Dreadlocked, nosed pierced warriors tend to avoid them. Besides the peoples of Southern Africa and America's tend not to give donations, except of the streamlined lead pellet variety. Those they give away free of charge (well, it's the free of the charge part that actually results in their being given away, rather quickly as it turns out.) So they go where the money is, and if they can actually convince the French Secret service to do something dumb like sink one of their ships then so much the better in the competition for the consumer market in charitable donations.
But we digress, interesting as that subject may be, it has little to do with snow bound, winter blighted Washington DC. Did we mention that it was cold? Yes, well the wind had teeth, and a wail like a banshee.
Many people were considering the use of chain on their car tyres (of course in their minds they were spelt tires. What sort of spelling is that? My car tires, sounds like it means that it is approaching exhaustion. And there in lies another bad pun. My car is exhausted, it runs from the engine right to the back where it sticks out and belches greenhouse gases into the atmosphere so that the globe can become a warmer and friendlier place). The car owners began searching through the cupboards and cabinets of their garages for the chains, no longer able to remember where they put them.
An increase in the numbers of traffic accidents was inevitable under new the circumstances of adverse weather. In a few cases people were unable to make it to work.
It was not the case with Colonel Sarah Mackenzie. She managed to get to work on time. It might have been a different story if she had an actual life, but that was not the case, so she has no reason to be late for work at all. She pushed through the entrance to her Washington office, waved her way airily through the military security cordon surrounding the lobby and spent a moment in the lobby while she savoured the first feel of the heating on the inflamed skin of her cheeks.
She began to feel subconscious when she realised that the security detail was already casting glances her way. Their gaze was not the sort of threatening, 'who the hell are you and what are you going to do wrong' sort of look. It was more the 'god I hate winter when a body like that gets wrapped up in layers of padding like that' kind of look. It was all part of that misogynistic male thing, sort of a 'wouldn't I like to make a baby human with that one?' kind of thing really. A sort of gut reaction, hind brain in charge of business, limbic system at the tiller repugnant reptilian behaviour that ensure that the species is continued. Recreational procreation is one thing, but the real business cares little about the personalities and interests of it's participants, it's only interested in the end goal, the perpetuation of the genome. All that other stuff, relationships with deep and meaningful engagements of the soul and such is just froth that accumulated somewhere along the way during the competition that was evolution. Of course the frothy part on the top of the genome-ic carrier that was Sarah Mackenzie sort of had this intellectualisation thing going on. She thought it had some inherent worth of it's own, and I suppose it has when it comes to the provision of the best possible environment for the raising of the next generation of human genome carriers. Sort of puts everything into perspective.
Her good nature and cheery demeanour came under threat whenever she caught them looking at her like that. It was that sort of 'thing' to her. She made the effort, placed her mouth on hold before it got the rest of her into trouble, and strutted through the lobby like she owned the place. It might be prudent to point out at this time, that the shoes she had chosen to wear, while apparently sensible in every way, still had an extravagantly tall heel, thus causing a clenching of her calf muscles and a lengthening of her leg. That always tended to draw the male eye, thus exacerbating the situation with regard to male leering behaviour, particularly when the hem of her skirt makes just the right counterpoint rhythm to her walk.
Let us consider what has caught the eye of the security desk occupants. Despite her Anglicised surname Sarah Mackenzie's physical appearance suggested her ancestry comprised at least a half part contribution from a Mediterranean rim country. Her dark hair was cut into a neat bob, her skin carried a swarthy tint, slightly more olive than most people with the sort of surname she carried. Her dark eyes were large in a face with a narrow, though full lipped, mouth. Sarah Mackenzie is not Cindy Crawford, nor is she Christie Thurlington, but neither of those women was in the lobby of the Judge Advocate General's office on that particularly nasty winter's morning, and so she was going to have to do. For the sake of fairness, it is not a bad trade. The security guys are happy with their lot. She'll do. Degrading isn't it?
She clicked clacked along the tiled floor to her office, impaled her key in the door and twisted it in the lock. With a herculean effort, she managed not to break the shaft of her key off in the lock. It was a close won thing, a genuine battle between her instinctive anger and her self-interest. Her door fell open; she stepped through the portal and set about preparing for the day. Her gloves sort of found their way into the pocket of her coat and she filed it on the hanger behind her door. One of her gloves fell from it's precarious position at the lip of her coat pocket and landed with a pathetic little plop on the floor. Mackenzie did not notice it's plight, being caught up in her own anger-at-the-dismissal-of-her-intellectual-worth perpetrated by the misogynist Neanderthal on the front desk.
She is not much fun at the moment, so we shall check out her surroundings. Her office was relatively palatial, old wood and heavy furniture, old leather and careful detailing. One wall was lined with book cases, weighed down by a set of tomes, gold embossed and filled with heavy reading; legal precedents. Pages and pages of lovingly crafted arguments and the resulting decisions by the umpires of life, they were the bible by which she worshipped. Sad isn't it the way we still indulge in icons and religious trappings.
Sarah Mackenzie filled a key role on the Judge Advocate General's staff. Her job was almost her life; in fact for a few years it had seemed to be the sum total of her life. It was only recently that she had managed to establish an existence outside the timber and plaster confines of the office. That had been a good thing, and long over due. Unfortunately it had involved becoming entangled with one of those man things. And now, the two of them are engaged, to be married. Most of her friends are still shaking their heads at the whole concept. You see, he is the most pathetic stereotypical machismo Australian. The truth is that those things actually exist, and some of them do have law degrees, but usually they have badly beaten up ears as a result of years spent playing Rugby Union, which the erstwhile Mr Brumby (I mean that's an outdated term for a wild horse. Who they hell would have it as a surname? But hey, it is a weird world. If you check the Sydney white pages you'll find that there are six households with that surname. It's obviously a badly chosen anglicising from another name. It was probably Brumbascowicz or something similar, a couple of generations back. Go figure.) To look at him, Brumby obviously did not play Rugby Union while he was studying at the University of Sydney. His ears just do not have the right look about them. There are no bite marks and they do not have the right 'cauliflower shape.' Brumby is so obviously and appallingly stereotypical that his presence in a room would make Mick 'Crocodile' Dundee cringe with embarrassment. (Perhaps that is untrue, his latest movie suggests even Mick Dundee has no shame). Dragging Councillor Brumby into the rarefied confines of the Washington legal fraternity and the little circle where the Ivy Leaguers practise law as a sort of pissing contest, is not quite as bad as bringing George of the Jungle home to LA, but it took a photo to pick the actual winner. In that respect Ursula and Sarah Mackenzie have a lot in common (and a lot to answer for).
Now that we have completed our critique of her love life and identified the hypocrisy of which she was guilty when selecting her mate, we can resume the story. When Sarah Mackenzie was actually working, she also acted as a barrister (educated in a good Ivy League school, at great cost). She either represented military staff, or the armed forces themselves, in a non-stop whirl of courts martial and civilian court proceedings.
Other than her choice of life mates, all the above would suggest she was a bright woman who could be expected to be aware of her surroundings. And that was normally true. She has shown great skill in avoiding the pitfalls of distraction. She rarely bumps into walls and most people would struggle to remember the last time she spilled coffee on herself. We can take it as gospel the fact that she does not normally go through her life in a daze. Except, an hour after her arrival in the office, her demeanour was unusual enough to justify some concern among the rest of the staff.
After being away from the office for a couple of days she had arrived at her normal time, and settled into her office for the morning. Then she had done something unusual. She spent quite some time drifting around the office looking totally perplexed, sipping absently from a mug filled with coffee, and staring absently into space. Several times she had to rely on the awareness and dexterity of others to avoid wearing a brand new coffee stain on her neatly pressed, but hopelessly impractical, uniform. After an hour of useless movement, she isolated herself in her office and stared into space. It was safer that way. Her hands were folded in front of her, half supporting a file that she was supposed to be reading. She placed it back on the desk and ignored it for a while, lost in what ever thoughts were consuming her.
The desk she sat behind was a heavy timber monstrosity overburdened in this instance by paper arranged into neat piles, and files that were arranged where she could fill them with paper from those same piles. Behind her head hung the framed copy of her Law Degree. It had been some time since she had even looked at it let alone admired her achievement.
She sighed heavily, straining the buttons of her blouse somewhat more than was normally the case in their precarious button type existence. The designers of the uniforms worn by the female officers in the Judge Advocate General's department of the US Military had obviously not considered the likelihood of women whose waist to bust measurements was so disparate. In some ways her anatomical arrangement explained the fascination she caused for the desk Sergeant and the security detail that worked with him. It was attention that was only welcome when it was encouraged. During her working time she made no attempt to encourage the attention, but it seemed to track her down any way.
The expression on her face reflected a sad case of bafflement and it wasn't helping her in her duties that her mood reflected her appearance. Her work was suffering, and she was uncomfortably aware of the cause of her disquiet.
The effort she was expending in filing was more a desire to indulge in make-work, than any genuine operational necessity. She was doing it so she didn't have to think too hard about the events of the previous few days. She had just been forced to process too much too quickly, she decided and she had sprained her brain. Give it a few days rest and it should be as right as rain (whatever the hell that means? Does rain have political leanings? Is there such a thing as wrong rain? Even the grammar checker picked that trite little cliché up and wanted to correct it, but I wouldn't let it. Strike one, a blow for humanity against the oppressive Microsoft regime, attempting to dictate the use of the English language (note, not the American language, that includes phrases like Yo dude, wot's happening, and the associated body contortions that form part of the gestalt))
Oh yeah, back to the story…
The case Sarah Mackenzie had just finished was one of the most baffling incidents in her short career. No, not one of, she decided, easily the most baffling. By a long, long way. (OK, so she lacked conviction, but that is perfectly understandable. Normally it was her clients who got the convictions, so yeah, I guess lawyers always lack convictions.)
Mackenzie had only arrived back in the office that morning. After spending a few days away on a field assignment that had been so hush-hush that even her secretary had not been informed of where she was going. In fact even the office gossip had not known where she had gone and that took some doing.
Mackenzie was indulging in that time honoured psychological technique for handling traumatic or confronting experiences; she was ignoring it and trying to come to grips with the paper work that had piled up during her absence.
By indulging in this mindless activity, one that her secretary could well do both more efficiently and at much less cost, she was hiding from what she might have done, that is to say think, which might become brooding if she relaxed. The Paper Mountain (still yet to be conquered, the one true peak left in this worlds to test the skills of modern mountaineers) had loomed at her when she pushed through the door. She had pounced on it. It offered her some therapeutic activity while she came to grips with the real work of her department. So far she was losing the paperwork war, she seemed to be picking each piece up from the pile, reading it thoroughly, putting it down, forgetting what it said and picking it back up again. It was totally counterproductive obviously, but she was enjoying herself. The temptation to dump it all into a garbage bin and wait until the sender complained started to seem like a good way to handle the situation. So as therapy it was close to achieving it's desired goal.
She wouldn't do something like dumping it all in the bin of course. That was just not something that she would to that pile of paper. It was unthinkable. It would not have been 'right.' Although she wasn't conscious of her motives, the reality was that she had risen within the military ranks until she was close to the glass ceiling. The only way for her to get through it was to keep her nose spotlessly clean and butt the ceiling hard until either the ceiling, or her head (depending on the hardness of each), shattered. She had seen the latter occurrence more often than the former during her career. Many of those situations were resolved through the use of her legal expertise, and it was not a thought she entertained happily.
She faces a political and professional crisis. Admiral was her next step up the ladder. Female admirals were few and far between. Female Admirals with legal qualifications were non-existent. Career progression was probably going to require either private practice or politics. Neither offered her a great deal of potential satisfaction, being essentially a liar's contest in both cases.
The one good part was her lack of obligation to the Government any more. She could resign if she chose. They no longer owned her soul. (The mortgage had been discharged a few years back with the last payment of blood.)
She could resign anytime at all. If she chose…She was old enough now to know her own mind and what she wanted. Leaving the military was not an option…yet.
Her reflection in the glass panel of her office door caught her eye. She was an attractive woman, in a round faced, baby doll sort of way. She was somewhat past her thirtieth birthday and just starting to think about how much (or how little) make-up best suited a face that had once glowed with it's own youthful collagen filled good looks. Her face now carried a few fine lines that she could cover if she chose to, but she wondered about whether that made her look younger… Or did it make her look like she was trying to look younger (Which is not the same thing at all), and whether that was a good thing or not. In five more years that conundrum would all be decided, right at the moment, that dilemma was still real.
It was a good face, she decided. It served her well. There was still a trace of the humorous glow about the eyes that had served her as a younger woman. It now had a touch of character, overlaying the inherently even bone structure and that set her apart from the other - she hesitated to use a word like 'bubbling', with its negative connotations - girls who paraded around the office.
The door moved and her view of her own reflection was lost.
Commander Harmon Rabka appeared at her door. With a name like that, it might be expected that his appearance would suggest similar ethnic extraction to Sarah Mackenzie. Instead he appeared to be typical WASP, even featured, with that could-be-any-age look that some men can carry around between the age of twenty five and forty. His brown hair was cut neatly and short, without being cropped.
Rebka and Mackenzie were of a similar age, and yet she out-ranked him. In the scheme of things military that was an unusual circumstance suggesting that his ethnic background might actually play against his promotional prospects more completely than did her gender. Glass ceilings do not withhold on gender lines alone.
"You look distracted," he offered. He leant against the doorjamb and waved an empty coffee cup in her direction.
She looked up at him and blinked for a moment, bringing her attention back to the here and now. "You better believe it," she told him.
He invited himself into her office and seated himself around the back of one of her office visitor's chairs. "What is it? Something about that case you were working on for the last few days," he guessed.
"Yeah something like that," she seemed to consider options for a few minutes. "Listen you've got the same security clearance I have," she said suddenly. "Check out this story."