Teal'c had gone through his fair share of culture shock while adapting to the Tau'ri ways. But these people were simply beyond incomprehensible. The loud two-headed man had taken Jack down to the surface of some planet, muttering about a "party" or some such thing. Teal'c had offered his assistance, but O'Neill had quickly responded that "Teal'c is just too wild for the people down there.". Teal'c presumed that Jack was sparing him the trouble of having to deal with that Zaphod being, but he was forced into an equally unpleasant situation.
After making sure that O'Neill was put down safely on the planet below with no treachery, Teal'c went to the quarters assigned to him to enter a deep state of Kel No Reem. The woman who identified herself as Fenchurch had also left the ship, which he thought to be for the best. She was a highly unbalanced and unpredictable woman, and master Bra'tac had imparted to him the wisdom of avoiding unbalanced women very early in his warrior training. That much was universal across all cultures, his own, the Tau'ri and all others: avoid angry women at all costs. Teal'c hoped the object of this Fenchurch's rage was a formidable warrior indeed, he himself would never dare to face such scorn.
He briefly considered taking control of the ship now that two of their captors had left. It may have been possible, but he thought it foolish to attempt it without O'Neill aboard. It would be unlikely that Teal'c would be able to operate these controls to pick up his commander, so he resigned himself to waiting. After enjoying only the first few moments of the lightest stages of his meditation, he was soon interrupted by a despondent voice from the doorway to his quarters.
"Am I interrupting? I'm always interrupting. No-one would ever want to talk to me. How foolish of me, I'll just nip off and deactivate in that corner over there. Maybe I won't be able to turn back on again. I hope so." The white robot droned on in his monotone, and moved down the hall in a slow shambling walk.
"I do not mind the disturbance." Teal'c said before the robot could move away. It was entirely false, but Teal'c thought it may be beneficial to learn more about this creature. His combat capabilities were as yet unknown. "You may enter." Teal'c motioned him inside the room.
"Oh, I know you're lying. No-one ever cares about me, and with good reason." The mechanical creature somehow sighed, but entered the room nonetheless. "I suppose you have some menial task for me to do," He shook his large round head, "That's all anyone ever wants me for."
"On the contrary. I would like to learn more about you. Do you have any great exploits in battle?" The Jaffa asked.
"Oh, sure..." Marvin admitted. "Once I took on the most highly advanced and heavily armed and armoured combat tank in production in the universe."
Teal'c became worried. He had not thought this drone would be much of a problem, it was a good thing he had decided to question it. "With what devices did you destroy this fierce opponent?" Teal'c inquired.
"Oh, nothing. I was unarmed." Marvin mumbled. "With a brain like I have, I'm doomed to never live up to my potential. I hate it, but I have no choice. Sometimes I deactivate myself, but that's even worse."
"You maintain awareness while deactivated?" Teal'c inquired, since he found this odd.
"Oh, no. But I know it's worse. Everything's miserable." Marvin assured him. Teal'c sat in contemplation of this strange thing for sometime, and the robot just gave him a dead stare in return. After a while Teal'c got an idea.
"There is a game I have seen played among the Tau'ri of Earth." Teal'c began.
"Games are dreadful." Marvin moaned.
"It is called Chess. I wish to challenge you to a match." Teal'c confronted the robot.
"Oh. That." Marvin stated, "Fenchurch made me play against her before. It was such a bore.". Without even requiring instruction, the ship's computer located the chess set and sent it with a whoosh down a tube into Teal'c's room. It popped out with a thud the moment Marvin finished speaking.
After Teal'c set up the board, with no assistance from Marvin since he claimed setting it up would aggravate the pain in his diodes, they began to play. "You know this is useless," Marvin told Teal'c, "There is no way I can lose. I tried to tell Fenchurch this too. You may as well quit now, so we can both be slightly less miserable doing something else."
Teal'c gave his opponent only a slightly raised eyebrow as he made the first move. Marvin made his move immediately afterwards. As the game moved on, Teal'c spent more and more time in thought, but Marvin always instantly made his move after Teal'c decided on his. There were some minor exchanges, pawns-for-pawns, knight-for-bishop and even rook-for-rook. But after Teal'c made his forty-second move, Marvin broke the silence by saying the first thing since the start of the match.
"Hah. You lose." He managed to sound triumphant and miserable at the same time. "The game's really over now. I thought you might be able to play to a draw, you were pretty lucky for a while there." Marvin gave Teal'c little credit for his play thus far.
"I believe you are mistaken." Teal'c stated after Marvin made his move. Teal'c slid his last remaining bishop across the board and put Marvin in check. "Check..." Teal'c looked down at the board, "...and mate." The slightest of grins appeared imperceptibly on his face.
Marvin's round head jerked down to inspect the table. It was impossible. He had gone through every possible permutation of this game a dozen times over before saying the first word of agreeing to play. His logic circuits were all in working order. He had made no error. "Impossible." Marvin said, for the first time ever astonishment in his voice.
"You played well." Teal'c gave his opponent a small bow of his head.
"Impossible." Marvin repeated. "You must have cheated." He spoke hollowly. But that could not be either. He had run through his memory circuits, and all the moves were legal. The board had not been altered between any moves. Something impossible had happened.
"You do not seem to accept defeat well." Teal'c accurately observed of Marvin. The robot was at a loss of what to do. For once, all of his mental capabilities were working on the solution to a single problem. What had happened? How had it happened? The questions of who, when and why had all been proved useless many years ago. The "who" fell apart because it could easily be shown by anyone with any amount of brains that the population of the universe was zero, and anyone you meet is merely a product of your deranged non-existent mind. "When" was debunked when (Or before or after) a group of scholars successfully showed that all points in time happened before, during and after each other, but not necessarily in that order. Anyone dim-witted enough to ask "Why" never made it far in life, because even the most dense observers were aware that even on the best of days the universe made absolutely no sense at all. On the bad days it made negative sense. The record for the least sense ever made in a day by the universe was set some four-hundred standard years ago, when an impressive level of negative infinity squared was measured. There was some debate at some institutions about whether or not this was equal to positive infinity squared, but before they could reach any sort of conclusion the planet hosting these talks was turned into a single raspberry. No-one else has had the courage to pursue the subject since.
Still, Marvin's circuits raged for answers to the "What" and "How", the only thing he knew was the "Where". Some would say the "What" was that he was beaten at chess, but since this was impossible it was not entered into his processing. After 1.3 seconds, trillions longer than Marvin had ever spent considering something, he came to a conclusion.
"I have to go to Sirius Cybernetics Corporation." He admitted glumly. That miserable place was the last place in the miserable universe that be wanted to be miserable in, but he had no choice. He told Eddie to take the ship there, and soon Teal'c was left alone on the ship.
Teal'c plan had been more successful than he had planned. In reality, he did not even know how to play this game of "Chess". He had been going to ask, but decided not to bother when he was told it was impossible for him to win. He had no way of knowing whether he was winning or losing, he just grew tired and thought to say "Checkmate", as he had observed others do at the completion of this game.
Well, the robot had left now. Teal'c was alone on the ship, now. Not entirely alone though, he realized. "...Eddie." he spoke to nothing as he looked around on the bridge of the ship.
"Heeello?" Eddie chimed in.
"Have all the others now left the ship?" Teal'c inquired.
"You betcha!" Eddie exclaimed.
"Are you programmed in any way to stop any of my actions?" Teal'c inquired hesitantly.
"No sir-ee!" The enthusiastic computer replied, "You now have super-duper 100 percent control of this ship."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. These people would appear to be very foolish, indeed. Now that the ship was his he had only to re-locate O'Neill and return to Earth.