// See previous chapter for info on the story. BTW, tiny spoiler for Chimera here.
// Chapter One was just a sample: Prepare yourself, Jack is going to have a REALLY bad day today!
Chapter Two: Breakfast Mutiny
Grumbling to himself about the *reliabilily* of foreign manufactured products (like his Sony alarm clock),
Jack got dressed and replaced his gun under the bed, putting the partially emptied clip back in his nightstand
where he had gotten it. Normally, he wouldn't have the two components this near to each other, but what with
Daniels trouble with Osiris sneaking in at night, it seemed reasonable to be prepared.
Before leaving his room, he couldn't resist going over to the appliance he had just terminated and doing a
little jig on its grave. If he was going to be out an alarm clock, he was at least going to enjoy what its
absence could do for him. Besides, it earned what it had gotten.
Strolling into his kitchen, he thought of skipping the commissary food for once and eating breakfast at
home. If he was late, he'd just say his alarm clock was broken. 'Totally truthful, Hammond can't fault me for
that,' Jack thought with a grin as he retrieved a loaf of bread from the pantry.
He placed four slices of toast in the toaster (yes, four; if he was gonna toast toast, he wanted to toast
twice as much toast as normal toasters toasted, because he loved his toast), sliding the lever down to cook the
yummy upcoming toast. He placed a pot in the coffee maker, setting the filter and pouring the grinds into the...
compartment thingy, then closed it and pressed the single button on the pedestle. Being the oh-so-mechincally-
inclined individual he was, he had opted for a coffee making machine with just ONE button: the 'make coffee'
button, as he had brilliantly labeled it.
'Now, what else? OJ!' He opened the fridge to get the carton of OJ, when-
-"YOW," he yelled as a draft of sub-Artic air poured forth to assult his nether regions. Since when did
his fridge run on liquid nitrogen? He slammed the door shut, but not before he got a view of the many frosted-
over items resting on the shelves inside. 'No OJ, then. Thawing it out will remind me too much of Antarctica.
Brrr.'
'What day is today', he thought. 'Ohh, my alarm clock knows.' He interrupted his dash to his bedroom
with a pause, then, "Doh!"
*Ping*
'Huh? What the...?' He turned to see where the pinging had happened. His four slices of toast stood
upright, untoasted in his toaster. "No, bad boys, down," he shoved them back in their slots, resetting the lever.
'Now, where was I? Oh yeah, what day is today?' He cast a glance at his front door. "AHA! The paper."
He walk outside in nothing but a T-shirt and boxers (enjoy the view ladies; it won't last long), looking
for his paper. He found it lying in a small puddle next to the front steps.
"Grrr, I'm going to kill that little mutt next door. Nobody soils Jack O'Neills newspaper and lives."
Upon picking the soaked item up, however, he found it didn't smell, it was just...wet. "Didn't rain, did it?" He
looked at the sky. Nope, not cloud one. Probably kids with squirt guns, then. Wait, squirt guns in January?
Okay, make that neighborhood punks with water balloons. *Sigh* 'Oh well, better get the mail while I'm at it.'
It was only his reflexes as an Air Force officer that saved him from walking into the spray of his new
sprinkler, which abruptly *shishishishishishishish*ed to life. "Aaah! What in the...?" The lawn-care device shut
down just as fast as it had started up. Jack looked to his paper, then the sprinkler, then the paper-and then it
clicked: paper comes early, sprinkler malfunctions, paper gets wet. 'And Daniel says the brain slows down with
age,' he thought, grinning.
Still, that didn't explain why it went off just now. Cautiously inching forward (being wet outside in
boxers during a cold January morning isn't something he was looking forward to experiencing) he put himself just
inside the sprinklers range, only to jump back as it let loose a spray of cold water at him.
"OK, why is my sprinkler system playing Duck Hunt with me?"
He tried a quick step to the left, then a few to the right, watching the sprinkler the whole time: it
seemed to track his every movement. Great, and this thing was supposed to be an *improvement* over my previous
way of watering the lawn.
He could remember how he had been persuaded to buy the damned thing: a party at Carter's had led him to
her front lawn, of all places, looking at a funky looking piece of metal with a weird dial on it. Carter had come
to see why he was interested. "Carter, there's a clock thing on your sprinkler." "Yes sir, it sets the time of
day that the sprinkler automatically goes off, and for how often and how long it does so. It's really convenient
sir, when we're off world." "Yeah, convenient...and lazy." "...Sir, the last time we came back from a mission
spending over two weeks off-world, this was all brown and dead, for the most part." "So, get a neighbor to spray
it once every day or so, is that so hard?" Feeling his job lecturing Carter was done, he promptly went out the
next day and bought a sprinkler just like hers.
He wished very much now that he hadn't spent any time admiring Carters sprinkler that day, because now he
couldn't get to his mailbox...unless-
He walked over to his window and yanked one of the shutters off of it. It was several feet high and a
couple feet wide: the perfect shield against his rogue lawn-watering instrument. Angling it to provide maximum
coverage against the sprinkler he dashed out to his mailbox, hearing and feeling the cold spray impact his
makeshift protective device. "Haha, man triumphs over machine again!" He got his mail, and turned to walk back
inside, shielding himself yet again with the shutter-
-when the sprinkler on the OTHER side of his lawn activated, instantly soaking him. "OHFERYCRYINOUTLOUD!"
he yelled as he ran back into the warm, heated interior of his house. Stopping in the foyer, he dropped the
soaked newspaper and semi-soaked mail onto a small table nestled against the wall. He had totally forgotten about
the identical sprinkler he had gotten as part of a buy one-get one free deal at the hardware store.
Marching into his bedroom, he cursed his rotten luck as he put on fresh, clean, and (most importantly) dry
clothes for the upcoming day. Then, he moved back into his kitchen to eat his breakfast. That was when he
smelled the smoke.
"My toast!" he ran into the small corner of the kitchen where he kept the toaster, only to find the four
slices of bread up yet again, totally untoasted. "What the...? Then, what's...?" He looked around, then saw the
smoke coming from his coffee-machine. "My coffee!"
Somehow, the filter had begun to smoke and burn. He quickly unplugged the coffee machine, then opened the
machine and frantically slapped the filter with a quickly moistened towel. In doing so, he accidently knocked the
thing a little too hard and sent it careening to the ground, shattering the item. "Aw, crap! Now how am I gonna
stay awake through Daniels presentation today?" When he didn't get a response from his broken coffee-maker, he
glared instead at the toaster, rebellious little twerp-thing. Shoving his bread into its slots again (why did
that sound somewhat wrong to him?), he depressed the handle and left a two-pound book covering the lever, so it
wouldn't pop back up before it was finally done.
'Hmm, first my clock, then the fridge, next my sprinkler...T3 didn't happen overnight, did it? SkyNet
isn't really real, right?' Turning on the small AM/FM radio he set beside the kitchen window, figuring if WW3 had
been started by a pissed off computer, it would be all over the airwaves. Instead, all he got was the country
music of a local station. Grumbling irritatedly, he flipped the seek switch several times...and each time it came
to a station playing country music! Damnit, it had to be illegal to have that many stations playing country at
this time in the morning.
He was distracted from his reverie of cursing Brookes and Dunne by a bright flash from inside his toaster.
Peeking carefully into the recesses of the device, he discoverd his toast had somehow been incinerated. "Oh, come
on, give me one break, please?!"
He could imagine the way others at Cheyenne Mountain would react to his telling them the events of this
morning: Carter would of course have responded by naming all the things that could go wrong with appliances, how
electricity worked, give him a detailed description of the Colorado Springs power grid, yadda yadda snore. Teal'c
would raise an eyebrow and suggest that perhaps he take better care of his stuff, lest it turn on him. Daniel
would just stare blankly at him before pleading to be a simple archaeologist who really knew nothing about
technology, even compared to Jack. None of them would understand what this really was.
Just then, a thought entered his mind: how likely would it be for all these electrical intruments to
malfunction like this, all in the same house within less than a half-hour of each other, in very strange ways?
One alarm clock malfunctioning, an accident. An alarm clock and his fridge, coincidence. Alarm clock, fridge,
toaster, sprinkler system, coffee maker, AND radio, he was definitely the target of an electronic conspiracy.
Acting on a hunch, he ambled over to the TV, switching it on via the remote...only to find that it remained stuck,
no matter what channel changing tactic he tried, on the Food Network. Obviously the conspirators taunting him.
"Yeah? Well, joke's on you. Jack O'Neill does NOT take this sort of thing lying down. Just wait,
whoever you are. First I'm gonna have Sam sabotage YOUR electronics into harming you. Then Teal'c's gonna bend
you in half, followed by a kickboxing session involving the four of us, starring you as the punching bag. After
that, Doc Frasier's pump you full of the biggest, most painfull needles in existence. Then, just in case you're
still ready for more after that, I'll duct-tape you to a chair and let Danny bore you to death talking about his
rocks!"
To which the saboteurs promptly responded by cutting all power to his house.
"Oohhhooo, that's it. This means war."
TBC
// Like where this is going? Trust me, it's only going to get worse ;) hehehe, evilness
// BTW, I have no idea if Sony makes alarm clocks and they're copyrighted, so don't sue me or anything
// Chapter One was just a sample: Prepare yourself, Jack is going to have a REALLY bad day today!
Chapter Two: Breakfast Mutiny
Grumbling to himself about the *reliabilily* of foreign manufactured products (like his Sony alarm clock),
Jack got dressed and replaced his gun under the bed, putting the partially emptied clip back in his nightstand
where he had gotten it. Normally, he wouldn't have the two components this near to each other, but what with
Daniels trouble with Osiris sneaking in at night, it seemed reasonable to be prepared.
Before leaving his room, he couldn't resist going over to the appliance he had just terminated and doing a
little jig on its grave. If he was going to be out an alarm clock, he was at least going to enjoy what its
absence could do for him. Besides, it earned what it had gotten.
Strolling into his kitchen, he thought of skipping the commissary food for once and eating breakfast at
home. If he was late, he'd just say his alarm clock was broken. 'Totally truthful, Hammond can't fault me for
that,' Jack thought with a grin as he retrieved a loaf of bread from the pantry.
He placed four slices of toast in the toaster (yes, four; if he was gonna toast toast, he wanted to toast
twice as much toast as normal toasters toasted, because he loved his toast), sliding the lever down to cook the
yummy upcoming toast. He placed a pot in the coffee maker, setting the filter and pouring the grinds into the...
compartment thingy, then closed it and pressed the single button on the pedestle. Being the oh-so-mechincally-
inclined individual he was, he had opted for a coffee making machine with just ONE button: the 'make coffee'
button, as he had brilliantly labeled it.
'Now, what else? OJ!' He opened the fridge to get the carton of OJ, when-
-"YOW," he yelled as a draft of sub-Artic air poured forth to assult his nether regions. Since when did
his fridge run on liquid nitrogen? He slammed the door shut, but not before he got a view of the many frosted-
over items resting on the shelves inside. 'No OJ, then. Thawing it out will remind me too much of Antarctica.
Brrr.'
'What day is today', he thought. 'Ohh, my alarm clock knows.' He interrupted his dash to his bedroom
with a pause, then, "Doh!"
*Ping*
'Huh? What the...?' He turned to see where the pinging had happened. His four slices of toast stood
upright, untoasted in his toaster. "No, bad boys, down," he shoved them back in their slots, resetting the lever.
'Now, where was I? Oh yeah, what day is today?' He cast a glance at his front door. "AHA! The paper."
He walk outside in nothing but a T-shirt and boxers (enjoy the view ladies; it won't last long), looking
for his paper. He found it lying in a small puddle next to the front steps.
"Grrr, I'm going to kill that little mutt next door. Nobody soils Jack O'Neills newspaper and lives."
Upon picking the soaked item up, however, he found it didn't smell, it was just...wet. "Didn't rain, did it?" He
looked at the sky. Nope, not cloud one. Probably kids with squirt guns, then. Wait, squirt guns in January?
Okay, make that neighborhood punks with water balloons. *Sigh* 'Oh well, better get the mail while I'm at it.'
It was only his reflexes as an Air Force officer that saved him from walking into the spray of his new
sprinkler, which abruptly *shishishishishishishish*ed to life. "Aaah! What in the...?" The lawn-care device shut
down just as fast as it had started up. Jack looked to his paper, then the sprinkler, then the paper-and then it
clicked: paper comes early, sprinkler malfunctions, paper gets wet. 'And Daniel says the brain slows down with
age,' he thought, grinning.
Still, that didn't explain why it went off just now. Cautiously inching forward (being wet outside in
boxers during a cold January morning isn't something he was looking forward to experiencing) he put himself just
inside the sprinklers range, only to jump back as it let loose a spray of cold water at him.
"OK, why is my sprinkler system playing Duck Hunt with me?"
He tried a quick step to the left, then a few to the right, watching the sprinkler the whole time: it
seemed to track his every movement. Great, and this thing was supposed to be an *improvement* over my previous
way of watering the lawn.
He could remember how he had been persuaded to buy the damned thing: a party at Carter's had led him to
her front lawn, of all places, looking at a funky looking piece of metal with a weird dial on it. Carter had come
to see why he was interested. "Carter, there's a clock thing on your sprinkler." "Yes sir, it sets the time of
day that the sprinkler automatically goes off, and for how often and how long it does so. It's really convenient
sir, when we're off world." "Yeah, convenient...and lazy." "...Sir, the last time we came back from a mission
spending over two weeks off-world, this was all brown and dead, for the most part." "So, get a neighbor to spray
it once every day or so, is that so hard?" Feeling his job lecturing Carter was done, he promptly went out the
next day and bought a sprinkler just like hers.
He wished very much now that he hadn't spent any time admiring Carters sprinkler that day, because now he
couldn't get to his mailbox...unless-
He walked over to his window and yanked one of the shutters off of it. It was several feet high and a
couple feet wide: the perfect shield against his rogue lawn-watering instrument. Angling it to provide maximum
coverage against the sprinkler he dashed out to his mailbox, hearing and feeling the cold spray impact his
makeshift protective device. "Haha, man triumphs over machine again!" He got his mail, and turned to walk back
inside, shielding himself yet again with the shutter-
-when the sprinkler on the OTHER side of his lawn activated, instantly soaking him. "OHFERYCRYINOUTLOUD!"
he yelled as he ran back into the warm, heated interior of his house. Stopping in the foyer, he dropped the
soaked newspaper and semi-soaked mail onto a small table nestled against the wall. He had totally forgotten about
the identical sprinkler he had gotten as part of a buy one-get one free deal at the hardware store.
Marching into his bedroom, he cursed his rotten luck as he put on fresh, clean, and (most importantly) dry
clothes for the upcoming day. Then, he moved back into his kitchen to eat his breakfast. That was when he
smelled the smoke.
"My toast!" he ran into the small corner of the kitchen where he kept the toaster, only to find the four
slices of bread up yet again, totally untoasted. "What the...? Then, what's...?" He looked around, then saw the
smoke coming from his coffee-machine. "My coffee!"
Somehow, the filter had begun to smoke and burn. He quickly unplugged the coffee machine, then opened the
machine and frantically slapped the filter with a quickly moistened towel. In doing so, he accidently knocked the
thing a little too hard and sent it careening to the ground, shattering the item. "Aw, crap! Now how am I gonna
stay awake through Daniels presentation today?" When he didn't get a response from his broken coffee-maker, he
glared instead at the toaster, rebellious little twerp-thing. Shoving his bread into its slots again (why did
that sound somewhat wrong to him?), he depressed the handle and left a two-pound book covering the lever, so it
wouldn't pop back up before it was finally done.
'Hmm, first my clock, then the fridge, next my sprinkler...T3 didn't happen overnight, did it? SkyNet
isn't really real, right?' Turning on the small AM/FM radio he set beside the kitchen window, figuring if WW3 had
been started by a pissed off computer, it would be all over the airwaves. Instead, all he got was the country
music of a local station. Grumbling irritatedly, he flipped the seek switch several times...and each time it came
to a station playing country music! Damnit, it had to be illegal to have that many stations playing country at
this time in the morning.
He was distracted from his reverie of cursing Brookes and Dunne by a bright flash from inside his toaster.
Peeking carefully into the recesses of the device, he discoverd his toast had somehow been incinerated. "Oh, come
on, give me one break, please?!"
He could imagine the way others at Cheyenne Mountain would react to his telling them the events of this
morning: Carter would of course have responded by naming all the things that could go wrong with appliances, how
electricity worked, give him a detailed description of the Colorado Springs power grid, yadda yadda snore. Teal'c
would raise an eyebrow and suggest that perhaps he take better care of his stuff, lest it turn on him. Daniel
would just stare blankly at him before pleading to be a simple archaeologist who really knew nothing about
technology, even compared to Jack. None of them would understand what this really was.
Just then, a thought entered his mind: how likely would it be for all these electrical intruments to
malfunction like this, all in the same house within less than a half-hour of each other, in very strange ways?
One alarm clock malfunctioning, an accident. An alarm clock and his fridge, coincidence. Alarm clock, fridge,
toaster, sprinkler system, coffee maker, AND radio, he was definitely the target of an electronic conspiracy.
Acting on a hunch, he ambled over to the TV, switching it on via the remote...only to find that it remained stuck,
no matter what channel changing tactic he tried, on the Food Network. Obviously the conspirators taunting him.
"Yeah? Well, joke's on you. Jack O'Neill does NOT take this sort of thing lying down. Just wait,
whoever you are. First I'm gonna have Sam sabotage YOUR electronics into harming you. Then Teal'c's gonna bend
you in half, followed by a kickboxing session involving the four of us, starring you as the punching bag. After
that, Doc Frasier's pump you full of the biggest, most painfull needles in existence. Then, just in case you're
still ready for more after that, I'll duct-tape you to a chair and let Danny bore you to death talking about his
rocks!"
To which the saboteurs promptly responded by cutting all power to his house.
"Oohhhooo, that's it. This means war."
TBC
// Like where this is going? Trust me, it's only going to get worse ;) hehehe, evilness
// BTW, I have no idea if Sony makes alarm clocks and they're copyrighted, so don't sue me or anything