milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"A bar in my office!"

Jack O'Neill glances around Milliways as he steps through, pleased, and heads straight for Bar.

"Well, you don't get that every day, even when you want it. Jack and Coke, please-- no, wait ... paperwork. Orange juice, please."

Helpfully, Bar provides a glass of orange juice and a stack of forms very much like the ones on Jack's desk that he was about to go fill out.

"...I wasn't asking for paperwork..."

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Jim is dealing with his own paperwork - an archaic term, since no one's used paper in centuries - but one that's stuck around. And then he hears the newest arrival, and looks up. He thinks he knows the uniform, and the bureaucracy that comes with it.

"No one ever asks for it, but sometimes you get stuck." Not that the Bar has ever given him paperwork. Yet.

"That is the story of my life," Jack grumbles with a glance at the other man; he takes a large gulp of orange juice (and attempts to pretend it's a screwdriver).

A moment later, he looks back again, suddenly bright. "Kirk! --I remember you."

Jim looks suddenly nervous. Once, he was held prisoner for a brief time in an United States Air Force base in Omaha. Was this man there? Will he to explain all over again what he was doing there?

"You have me at a disadvantage," he says calmly.

"--aw, sorry -- met you here once, but I know that means ... pretty much nothing in this place." He throws a glare at Bar, then leans over and holds out a hand. "General Jack O'Neill, Air Force, twenty-first century, yadda yadda yadda."

Jim takes O'Neill's hand. "Yes, you're right about that. If you say you met me, there's a chance it was a Jim Kirk from a parallel timeline." Something that bothers him a bit, but is the way of the Bar.

"But we never met in your time, I take it? You wouldn't know a John Christopher?"

"Ah, parallel timelines," Jack says wryly. "Yes, I have a passing familiarity with those.

"--not in my time, no." He shakes his head quickly in an attempt to be slightly less shifty. "And I can't say the name's familiar. Relative of yours?"

"No, just someone I knew in the Air Force, at one time." Time to get a little more sense of the general's world. "What year are you from?"

Jack nods thoughtfully, then smiles. "2004. We've got space travel, but not a lot of fancy ships for going further than our own solar system yet."

"And if I ask you who Jackson Roykirk or Khan Noonian Sigh were, you won't know them?" Jim is smiling, since he's more comfortable with people who aren't from his timeline.

Jack bites his lip briefly, then shakes his head.

"You might've mentioned them in passing last time," he lies vaguely, just to cover all his bases. (He's hardly a nerd, but it's hard not to recognise the name Khan.) "But if y'asked for full biographies, I'd ask for a passing grade for being able to spell my own name correctly."

"One L or two?" Jim asks to be a little witty. "If they were from your timeline, you would know at least one of those names. The latter was a would-be conqueror, and the former was an innovative spacecraft designer. A man in your line of work would know a good deal of one of the other.

"So I can safely tell you that the one time I met anyone in the USAF, it was 1969, and that was Captain Christopher. I even made an unscheduled trip to an air base in Omaha."

"That part does get tricky sometimes," with a grin. "Yep, they're definitely not from my timeline. For innovative spacecraft designs, we just steal from alien races."

He tilts his head a little. "1969, huh? No kidding. I liked that year so much I saw it twice. What took you there?"

Jim raises both eyebrows. "Another time traveler...welcome to the club." Though an Air Force that steals tech from other worlds is also interesting.

"My ship inadvertently traveled back in time. It wasn't a planned voyage, and to make mattes worse, Captain Christopher's plane took film of the ship. We did manage to get home without corrupting our own timeline, thankfully, but it was a close call. I was also in 1967, as part of a classified mission. But I didn't have a chance to explore either time.

"And what brought you to 1969?"

"Ooh, do I get a t-shirt?"

He grins and raises his orange juice in a salute. "Similar situation, I guess -- a little unscheduled time travel on an otherwise regular mission. Thankfully we didn't have much tech to corrupt the timeline, though we did run into our commanding officer as a lieutenant. That was fun."

"That's something I've been spared. Though I'm older than a good deal of the people I report to.

"And we don't have a t-shirt, but we could institute a secret handshake." Both t-shirts and Masonic rites last to be made fun of.

"I'm guessing that you don't have the standard duties of most Air Force officers."

"And a secret knock," Jack suggests with mock excitement, "for getting into secret meetings!

"Yeah, I wouldn't say my job is standard. Time travel, interplanetary exploration if I've got my big words right, and parallel universes, all par for the course. Although--" He gives the forms still on Bar a disgusted look. "--it does have the standard amount of paperwork, especially since they put me in charge of it all."

"Ow. As I said, I know the feeling. It comes with the uniform. You can save the world, and they still expcet you to fill out a supply requisition in triplicate. And for me, that makes no sense at all since we haven't used paper in my lifetime." He's joking. Partially.

"Man, I hope that never happens in my lifetime." Jack shakes his head. "I'm terrible with computers. I'd be e-mailing top secret documents to my dog or something."

Jack doesn't actually own a dog, but if he did, he would. Somehow.

"E-mail...yes, that was something used in your time. We don't call it that, but it's probably something similar." If far more advanced, and using subspace communications. "I'm not great with computers, either. In fact, some would say I have a thing against them. I get I still prefer the human element." He also prefers computers than don't take over planets, or ships. Or try to kill anyone they consider inferior.

Jack is totally down with that. Damn replicators.

"At least when humans screw up, you've got someone else to blame." He smiles wryly. "Can't put a computer on punishment detail."

"No, but you can pull the lug on a computer without a hearing. But it's also usually the case that when there is a computer glitch, it was some human's error in the first place." He says this with a bit of weariness in his voice.

Sooraya just blinks at that last remark, from her seat nearby.

"Do people ever?" Most of the people she knows, confronted with a choice between electrocution and paperwork, would ask Bar for the location of the nearest socket.

"I bet some people do," Jack says with a sigh, putting the forms face-down and picking up his orange juice. "Maybourne probably does, the bastard, to throw 'em off the scent."

"Your superior? Or arch-enemy?" she asks with a wry smile.

"That second one, yeah," he says, waving a hand vaguely. "He's the Joker, I'm Batman. Except I don't have a cape."

She laughs sympathetically, shaking her head. " Most people just look silly in those. Or like they're wearing a tent."

"Pardon me. I'm Sooraya Qadir, from Earth in 2006. Nice to meet you, sir."

"That's why Batman has Robin," Jack says wisely. "To make himself look less silly in comparison."

He offers a casual salute and a smile. "Jack O'Neill, 2004, also Earth. Colorado, to be exact, and a pleasure to meet you, too."

"Superman, on the other hand..." Sooraya bows slightly, returning the smile.
Then she eyes the stack of paperwork. Picking one up, she starts folding it into what looks ominously like a paper airplane.

"Oh, but he could kill you just by lookin' at you. No one laughs at Superman!"

Jack eyes the folding -- he sees what she did there. With a look that could be interpreted as a challenge, he, too, picks up a form and starts folding.

"This is true," she agrees, winking.

" oh boy. And now she's half folding, half looking around for patrons to target.

"O'Neill. I did not expect you here."

The huge black jaffa walks up behind Jack, and stands, stock-still, at ease.

"Didn't expect me in a bar?"

Jack turns to give Teal'c a cynical look.

"You don't know me very well at all, do you, T?"

"I was under the impression I knew you very well, O'Neill." He blinks once, then sits next to Jack at the bar. "However, I do not recall you ever taking paperwork outside of your office."

"No," Jack agrees, pointing at Teal'c for emphasis. "No. Because no one in their right mind would do that, now, would they?"

He lets this stand on its own merit for a moment before waving a frustrated hand at Bar.

"Women. But at least I got my juice."

"Then I am to assume you are currently thinking with your left brain?" Teal'c blinks slowly and cocks his head to the side. Dr. Frasier has talked to him a little about the human mind, after all...

"...yes, Teal'c. That's one way to put it."

Jack taps the left side of his head, takes a sip of his orange juice, and then pointedly deposits the glass on top of the pile of forms.

"But I've changed my mind. Literally, I suppose. No paperwork in the bar."

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