Disclaimer: How many times do I have to say it? I don't own Stargate. I don't need that kind of responsibility in my life.

A/N: So here's some utter silliness that I wrote in between working on my other stories (yes, I am still working on those series, fear not). The idea for this series might have been a little bit inspired by my recent rewatch of Warehouse 13... But I've always enjoyed the idea of Ancient technology not always behaving as it should. I hope it makes you chuckle as much as it made me when I wrote it.

Unlike my other stories, this is a series of one-shots and will be updated sporadically as I finish them.

Big thanks to the lovely StaticWarpBubble for the beta! As usual, blame me for any mistakes.

Chapter summary: Sometimes, the residents of Atlantis wish the city came with better instructions. Or, the one in which the crew learns to be careful what they wish for. Set in season one.


A is for Alfred
By Minnicoops

End of the week meetings were not John's favorite thing. Mostly because they fell on Friday afternoons, which were rarely the end of his week. Tuesday was most commonly his day off, and sometimes Wednesday if he was lucky, though even his "off" days usually involved him working in some capacity. Still, most of the civilians worked a normal week and by Friday afternoon, they had checked out mentally, meaning meetings got off track easily and therefore lasted much longer than was strictly necessary.

The one silver lining was that there were always plenty of snacks, the good kind that somehow magically appeared only on Friday afternoons and were impossible to find any other time of the week. John wasn't sure where Elizabeth was hiding her stash of Little Debbie snack cakes, but she seemed to have an endless supply and was not above using them as a bribe to get him and a couple of the other "busier" heads of departments to make time in their schedules for the meeting. Of course, the thing that had actually convinced him to attend regularly was her flat out telling him that she expected him to be there and not to schedule off world missions for Fridays.

John got that it was important for everyone to be informed of what was going on in the city, and the point of these meetings was to get on the same page about the mission schedule and the work being done in the city. Those parts he was mostly okay with, though he was still getting used to the balance between the military and civilian side of the leadership hierarchy and how that played out in determining where they went and what they did. The part of the meeting that he couldn't stand was the "professional development" portion, which was supposed to be a short presentation from one of the science teams about their work. Except, it inevitably always went longer than the allotted fifteen minutes and always left John wondering if this research was really worth the millions of tax dollars that had been pumped into sending these scientists all the way out here.

Today, McKay and Zelenka were tag-teaming the presentation, and as usual, were way too excited for a Friday afternoon. John only half listened as they began, talking over each other and arguing about details that really made no difference to anyone except them. He was just starting to doze off when something Rodney said caught his attention.

"We've decided to name him Alfred," McKay announced, beaming.

"No," Zelenka mumbled. "You decided that. I think we should call him Data. He is more similar to the android from Star Trek than the butler from Batman."

What the heck were they naming this time? John ran a hand over his face to wake himself up and squinted at the powerpoint that was projected on the wall. Looked like a bunch of gobbledy-gook to him, but he did manage to see a few words that he recognized. Hologram, instruction manual, city-wide helper.

"That doesn't make any sense," Rodney argued. "If we were going to name him after a Star Trek character it would have to be the Doctor from Voyager, but he's not a doctor. He's more like a butler. Case in point: Alfred."

"But his purpose is to give us information, which is why he is more similar to Data," Zelenka argued back.

"Data had his own place on the crew," Rodney said. "Hell, he had his own personality. This is way more similar to—"

"McKay," John interrupted, waving a hand at him to quit talking. "Who cares what we name it? Tell me again exactly what this thing does."

Rodney's eyes lit up, knowing he had everyone's full attention if John was asking him questions. "It's a helper program. Like an instruction manual for Ancient technology, but interactive so you can ask it questions." He held up the shield device that he'd accidentally trapped himself in a couple of months ago. "For example… Alfred?"

A little man dressed in Ancient garb appeared out of thin air in the middle of the room. He was short, barely five feet tall, and did have a distinct butler vibe to him. "Greetings. How may I assist you?"

Zelenka's mouth opened in outrage. "You already programmed him to respond to 'Alfred' without consulting me?"

Rodney ignored him and smiled smugly at his audience. "I would like to know the specifications of this device," he said, holding out the shield.

"That is a personal shield device. If placed upon the body and activated, it will protect the user from bodily harm."

Elizabeth quirked an interested eyebrow as Rodney continued. "And how do you disengage the device?"

"The device can be disengaged by thought once the user is no longer in danger," the hologram said. John thought his tone was rather condescending.

"Thank you, Alfred."

"It is my pleasure," the hologram responded before flickering out.

"You said this thing works everywhere?" John asked, leaning forward on his elbows.

Zelenka, who was still shooting irritated glances at Rodney, nodded. "Yes. Unlike the other hologram in the map room, this one seems to have the capability to appear anywhere in the city."

"Very nice, gentlemen," Elizabeth said. "Seems like this will be a helpful tool in learning how to use the technology we still haven't figured out."

Both McKay and Zelenka puffed out their chests, looking very pleased with themselves.

John eyed them suspiciously, not as taken with the hologram as everyone else seemed to be. He knew how this worked. Often, when those two got excited about a new Ancient doodad, they overlooked some important feature making it not as great as it appeared to be. If this hologram was so amazing, why hadn't it been on from the start? "Are we sure there aren't going to be any weird, I dunno, glitches or anything? Sometimes Ancient tech is a little..." He made a face to show how much he trusted it.

"I promise, Sheppard," Rodney told him with a grin, "Alfred is going to change life as we know it on Atlantis."

"We'll just see about that," John mumbled under his breath as the meeting moved on to the status of the ongoing maintenance projects throughout the city, which would inevitably be the same as last week's update.


Rodney was checking his email as he was walking back to his office from lunch, head buried in his tablet, when he suddenly found himself being yanked out of the hallway and into a tiny dark room. He let out a yelp of surprise, nearly dropping his tablet as his hands went up to protect his head.

"Rodney!" a voice hissed next to his ear. "Calm down, it's me."

Rodney squinted at the dark shape standing far too close to him and identified the spikey hair. "Sheppard?" he squawked. "What are you doing?"

"We need to talk," Sheppard said conspiratorially.

"And we couldn't do that in one of the hundreds of well lit rooms Atlantis has to offer like normal people instead of in here like a couple of drug dealers?" Rodney asked indignantly.

Sheppard hushed him. "No, he might be listening."

Rodney couldn't quite see his face in the dark space, but he could hear the paranoia in his friend's voice. "What are you talking about?" he hissed.

"Alfred," Sheppard whispered, as if that explained it.

This brought Rodney up short. "Are we seriously hiding from a hologram right now?" he whisper-yelled. "In a—what even is this? A closet?"

"Shh!" Sheppard insisted, poking his head out of the doorway and looking around. "He has ears everywhere."

Rodney wrenched himself out of Sheppard's grasp and made to leave. "This is ridiculous."

Sheppard put up an arm to block the doorway. "No, just hear me out. That thing is evil. He's like Hal. I swear he's out to get me."

"Hal?"

"Yeah, you know, the killer computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey."

"I know who Hal is. I'm just surprised that you've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey."

"McKay!"

"Sorry," Rodney said, shaking his head. "I know, I know. It seems we didn't fully understand the programming before we activated him. I thought he was only supposed to pop up when we asked him to, but there's all kinds of subroutines that activate him when he senses someone needs his help. That doesn't make him evil, though—just annoying. Clippy would be a better analogy than Hal."

"Clippy?" Now it was Sheppard's turn to be confused.

"Yeah, you know. The little paperclip in Microsoft Word that used to pop up to give you unsolicited advice to help 'improve' your document. I swear that thing never shut up. They eventually killed it off because everyone hated it so much."

"Then, yes. He's like Clippy," Sheppard said. "And you need to kill him off."

"Yeah, I know. You didn't have to drag me into a dark closet to tell me that. I'm working on it."

"Well, work faster."

"Sheppard—"

"The thing keeps showing up in my bathroom, McKay. Trying to explain how to use the shower. While I'm in the shower!"

Rodney held up a hand to stop him before he went into any more details. "I know. He's been showing up everywhere, irritating everyone. He popped up in the mess hall this morning to lecture me for eating a donut." Alfred had pointed out that Rodney was severely lacking in the essential vitamins and minerals provided by fruits and vegetables and had suggested if he continued to eat the way he was he would significantly shorten his life expectancy. "But it's not so easy. There isn't a simple switch to turn him off. He's wired into the essential functions of the city, and once he's activated, he can't be turned off without potentially turning off something important. I have to manually go in and cancel out every command that he's programmed to react to, and whenever I think I've gotten them all, I find out there's another one."

"See?" Sheppard said. "I told you he's evil!"

"Not evil, he just has complex programming. I'll get them all eventually."

"Better make it soon, because I don't know how much more of this I can handle," Sheppard growled. "I've been looking over my shoulder for two weeks now, waiting for that thing to pop up. He's making me crazy."

"He's making everyone crazy, not just you," Rodney agreed. "I promise, I'll get rid of him. You just have to be a little patient."

The look on Sheppard's face said exactly how he felt about being patient, but he dropped his arm and moved out of the closet. "Just get it done," he repeated, throwing a paranoid glance down the hall before stalking away.


"Well, I figured out why Alfred was so annoying," McKay announced at the next Friday afternoon meeting.

"Excuse me," Zelenka said. "You figured it out?"

McKay rolled his eyes. "Fine," he amended. "It was a joint effort."

"I believe I was the one who—"

"Gentlemen," Elizabeth interrupted, giving the two scientists a sharp look before the argument dissolved this conversation further. "Please, enlighten us."

Zelenka at least had the decency to look bashful for arguing about who should be credited with the discovery, leaving McKay to continue his explanation. "Alfred was designed to be an educational tool for children."

"Like... a teacher?" Sheppard asked.

"More like a nanny. It was supposed to teach them the basics of the city and all the other stuff the Ancients were too busy to teach their own kids."

"Apparently, the Ancients employed this use of technology often, as seen with the hologram in the map room," Zelenka added. "However, Alfred was designed to be much more interactive and to be used with younger children. Imagine all the tasks a small child would need assistance with, like using the restroom, getting dressed, learning to interact with others…" He blushed as he mentioned the last bit, again embarrassed because Alfred had popped up on more than one occasion to break up an argument between him and McKay.

"If this was a program designed for little kids, how come he was appearing to us?" Sheppard asked. "Last time I checked, none of us are kids."

"Uh, well," Rodney said, and then cleared his throat. "We may have bypassed some of the initial settings to, uh, get him to work."

There wasn't one person in the meeting who wasn't glaring at McKay.

"But you turned him off now, right?" Elizabeth asked. She had been more irritated with the complaints about Alfred than with the hologram itself, but was ready to be done with it nonetheless.

"We believe we finally tracked down all the commands that made him pop up, yes," Rodney said. "He shouldn't be bothering us anymore."

"Thank God," Sheppard muttered, picking the chocolate shell off his Swiss Cake Roll. "If he popped up one more time to tell me not to..." He suddenly noticed everyone was looking at him and trailed off. "So I guess Mary Poppins would have been a more accurate name, huh?" he said quickly, shifting the conversation back to the hologram.

Rodney sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. "Fine. Go ahead and say it."

"Say what?" Sheppard asked, feigning innocence as he glanced around at the rest of the staff in the meeting. Everyone's eyes were going back and forth between the two men. "Oh, you mean, 'I told you so?'" He grinned smugly. "Because I did."

"Let's just be glad the problem is fixed and move on," Elizabeth said, both to rescue the two embarrassed scientists and keep the meeting moving before another argument broke out. "If there's nothing else…?"

"Uh, well, there is one more thing," Zelenka stuttered. "As you know, part of the problem in removing Alfred was that he was tied in to so many of the main systems in Atlantis…"

"Yes?" Elizabeth drawled, prompting him to continue.

"It-it seems that, in removing him, we've also accidentally… Unintentionally—"

"We deleted part of the Ancient database," Rodney blurted out.

Everyone stared at him in shock. "You did what?" Elizabeth asked.

"Just a small part!" Rodney defended. "A fraction, really. Mostly children's stories and songs." He dropped his gaze and mumbled quickly, "And just a tiny bit about how to use some of the devices in the labs."

"Rodney!" Elizabeth chastised, shooting him a stern look.

"It was just the smallest little bit, I swear," Rodney said quickly. "Nothing of vital importance. We'll be fine."

She continued to frown at him severely, but eventually sighed and shook her head. Nothing to be done about it right now. They would have to look into it later. "All right. Now, if you're finished, we need to move on with the rest of our meeting so we can all get out of here and enjoy our weekend."

"For those of us who get a weekend," Sheppard grumbled quietly, stuffing more Swiss Cake Roll in his mouth.

Elizabeth's eyes rolled to the ceiling and she took a breath to get her annoyance under control. On second thought, maybe a holographic nanny wasn't the worst thing ever. Half her staff acted like children anyway. Funny how Alfred hadn't bothered her all that much, and, in fact, had actually given her a break from the constant supervision these men required.

Taking another deep breath, she pushed the thought out of her mind and refocused on the meeting topic. "Doctor Ishihara, I believe you are doing our presentation today?"


So... What do you think? Should I do the entire alphabet? Leave me a review and let me know!