"Every time I adjust the volume up, it launches Lotus 1-2-3," Sheppard said, gesturing in disbelief at the new laptop computer that he'd been assigned, "and if I try to turn the volume down, it starts a new spreadsheet!"
"Have you tried rebooting it?" Holland asked, poorly hiding a laugh.
"I did. It decided to reset itself to Cantonese. I don't speak Cantonese, Holland. I had to get one of the guys from cryptolinguistics to fix it. Do you know when they're going to let me live this down? Never, the answer is never." He'd be lucky if the entire base didn't know by morning.
"It could be worse," Holland offered, though he failed to offer a suggestion as to how.
"Really? Because when I insert a floppy disk, it tells me I've got mail. I don't even have an email address set up on this laptop." He didn't even have it plugged into the internet- he had enough issues without getting a virus on top of things. "And Clippy shows up whenever I open WordPerfect."
"But Clippy belongs to…" Holland trailed off as Sheppard swung the computer around, revealing Clippy hovering beside the green edge of WordPerfect's start-up menu. "Do you even have Microsoft Word on here?"
"I don't know? Maybe? It seems to have everything else on it." Whoever had set up the computer had loaded at least three different spreadsheet softwares onto the hard drive, despite the fact that he had yet to need even one. Holland was poking at the keys now, and while Sheppard couldn't see what was on the screen, Holland's face was giving him a pretty good idea of what he thought of it.
"Does your spacebar always fail to work?" Holland asked, tapping at seemingly random keys.
"No, it works if you hold down the eject button at the same time." That had been an interesting discovery, not least because he had actually been trying to power off the machine at the time.
"The eject button? What kind of situations are they expecting with these computers?" Holland managed a serious enough tone, but Sheppard could see the way the corner of his mouth was pulling up at his own joke.
"I hear the safety briefing will be on Thursday," Sheppard said, going for the same tone Holland had used.
"Only one?" Holland asked, raising an eyebrow. "Last Thursday we had five."
"Just wait until they find out what the Paint program's been doing- we'll be lucky if the briefing ends before the war does."
"Oh, god," Holland says, pushing the laptop back towards Sheppard, "What else could possibly be wrong with your computer?"
"Opening paint erases the floppy disk."
"How?!" Holland asked, reaching for the computer manual that Sheppard had left laying nearby. Sheppard has read it, not that it had done him any good. "What's next? Does it explode when you charge it? Has it prank called your neighbors yet?"
"None of that yet, but it only charges if you leave the lights on in whatever room it's in. And it won't turn on if it's within ten feet of a refrigerator."
Holland just stared at him, mouth hanging slightly open.
"...Yet?" Holland said finally. "As in, those things are still on the table?"
"It started playing the Australian National Anthem when I opened the calculator, so I'm not putting anything past it yet." That had been an interesting discovery, thankfully made in his own room, and not where anyone else could hear it.
"You need a new computer, babe," Holland said, voice somewhere between exasperation and resignation.
"Yeah, but this one has character. And nobody is going to steal a laptop that shrieks when you open it."
"It… shrieks?" Holland ws looking at the laptop in question with an expression that had one past confusion and straight into flat disbelief.
"I think it's a problem with the speakers." Any time he opened the laptop, the speakers let out a loud, high-pitched whine for about 20 seconds. It was annoying at first, but at least he'd know if someone was trying to break into his computer.
Not that they would have much trouble- his password was still the default password, because changing the password had crashed the computer all three times he'd tried.
"I don't even know how to respond to that, Sheppard." Holland said, stepping back slightly.
"I don't think it's going to bite."
"You don't know that."
"It doesn't have a mouth, Holland."
That didn't stop Holland from eyeing the laptop suspiciously, nor did it stop him from picking up a pencil from somewhere, and poking the eraser at the hinges of the laptop as if it might actually bite.
"Have you considered that this laptop might be an attempt by the enemy at demoralizing the troops? Because I've been in its presence all of five minutes and I would quite like to throw it out the door on our next flight."
"I'm thinking it's probably Toshiba at fault for this particular headache, though if it actually explodes I'll reconsider." Though, if it exploded, at least it would stop telling him he'd entered an 'invalid command line prompt' whenever he pressed the '7' key.
As if on command, the laptop screen went blank, and a curl of smoke started to rise from the keyboard. Holland stood and stepped away quickly, stopping beside Sheppard, and for a second they both watched as the computer seemed to melt in on itself, the bottom of the screen warping into a rainbow of oily-looking colours. Sheppard couldn't find it in himself to be particularly surprised at the development.
Then Holland grabbed the fire extinguisher from where it was mounted on the wall, and a moment later the laptop was painted white by the fire-retardant powder.
"You really need a new laptop, Sheppard," Holland said, after the stream of powder from the extinguisher finished petering out.
"I can see that, yes. You can add 'laptop demolition' to your resume now." It was probably for the best. At least now he had a valid excuse to go back to submitting his after action reports on paper for a while.
"You think I can file this as an enemy kill?" Holland asked.
"You've certainly got proof of its demise," Sheppard said, looking at the destroyed wreck of plastic sitting on the table. There was a small sticker with the brand's logo in the box the laptop had come in; he was considering sticking it to Holland's hemet before their next mission.
"We should probably go get you a new laptop now."
"And there's that headache again." Cryptolinguistics would be content to mock him for his computer troubles, but supply might actually murder him once they saw the state of the computer he'd been issued.
Somehow, one of the indicator lights was still blinking, sadly and irregularly as the powder settled into the laptop's internal electronics.
Holland clapped him on the shoulder, doing a very bad job at hiding his smirk at what IT was going to say when they walked in with that mess in their hands. The indicator gave one final, stuttering blink, before fading into the same blank whiteness of its other powder-coated brethren.
