Time - by Biltong

General Hammond started his annual leave two weeks ago, but not without leaving me with a complete file of instructions, and a thorough introduction to his aide, Airman De Souza.

When we eventually strong-armed him out of here, he left with one last worried look at me, really putting a dent in my bravado.

Now absolutely certain that he didn’t trust me, I was determined to run the base like clockwork. If the Swiss can do it, than so can I. Okay, so this is the US Air Force, but still, one can try.

There were two reasons for this; one being that it was infinitely more practical than my office three floors down, and reason two being that I was a secret gate junkie. Well, I hoped that it was a secret. The large window that the briefing room sported allowed me a wonderful view of the gate room.

Day two seemed to be exactly the same as day one, although I’m sure that De Souza learned some new and interesting swearwords to try out on his mates.

Day four came and went and I can only remembering bitching twice, much to De Souza’s relief, I’m sure.

And now, two and a half weeks later, this was becoming almost second nature to me, and that was really worrying.

Serves General Hammond right, leaving me with De Souza. What else did he expect? When I inherited De Souza, I inherited an intense Latino with a buzz cut and the thickest glasses I had ever seen in my life. He was 100 percent military; a young yes man put in a starched blue uniform and told to do a job.

At first I needed him, but a week in I was daydreaming on new and interesting ways to hide his body. It was definitely time for him to have a new image.

A day later I got an almost unrecognizable aide back, a handsome dog dressed in neat but unstarched BDU’s, and sans glasses.

This new airman gained in confidence over the next two weeks, until the time came when he actually stopped me and told me that I was doing something wrong, instead of being the usual cardboard cut out. I guess that he wasn’t used to his commanding officers suddenly leaping to their feet and clapping him on his back, but damn, I was proud.

Ah what the heck. He may look different, but he is still the same person. Okay, he may think now and talk back if the situation warrants it, but he always does so with a respectful voice. And so what if he seems to have a million female admirers ? I did myself at his age, and it didn’t hurt my career at all. The fact that he also goes all gooey-eyed around Carter may be a problem though.

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When General Hammond told me that he was going on leave I was filled with fear, because I knew what it meant. I was going to have the legend as my commanding officer for a couple of weeks.

Colonel Jack O’Neill. I tried to remember what I knew of him. He was the hotshot leader of SG1, the premier first contact team of the SGC. I also knew that he was very sarcastic when necessary, and didn’t tolerate fools at all.

General Hammond looked just as worried as I felt. I wondered if it was for his base, or me.

Then the General was gone, leaving me with this lean gray haired man with dark brown eyes.

The man I could take, but the eyes disturbed me. They were steady and penetrating, as if he was trying to see into your soul and pry out all the nasty secrets buried there.

I looked at my feet a lot, the first few days, whilst trying to show a man who really wanted to be elsewhere just how General Hammond did things.

At first he screwed up a lot, and I didn’t have the courage to tell him, so I forged his signature a couple of times. I justified it by telling myself that if I hadn’t, the base would have run out of toilet paper, but really I knew that I was just a coward.

A week in things seemed to get easier. He was picking up on the small things, and I began to relax. He was also a funny conversationalist and I found myself unwinding on more than one occasion before I caught myself.

She was a goddess who I had secretly lusted after for quite some time, but I knew that I wouldn’t ordinarily have been noticed by the likes of her. Hell, I wasn’t noticed by anybody of the opposite sex at all. That was the reason why I became an aide. I went to the shorthand and typing classes so that I could meet girls. But they all flunked out and I stayed.

Working with General Hammond on the stargate program was the pinnacle of my career, I was sure. How could anything else in the world be as exciting as this?

And then Colonel O’Neill, sitting in for General Hammond, sends me to Major Carter, resident goddess and the Colonel’s second in command.

She in turn had taken me to Dr Janet Frasier in the infirmary where the rest of SG1 were found lounging around on chairs. When I entered they all straightened and looked at me with a critical air.

Two males and two females were staring at me, all of them with the same steady eyes that Colonel O’Neill had, and I couldn’t do anything about it. They were all Majors and I was but a lowly Airman.

Okay, so I know that Major Teal’c and Dr Jackson weren’t really Majors in real life, but that is how everyone thought of them.

They interacted easily with Major Ferretti and Coburn, but ordered Captain Tyler and Peterson around, so we all thought of them as Majors, even if we never called them that to their faces.

And now they were all staring at me with critical eyes and I wondered what Colonel O’Neill had ordered them to do with me.

"Hair dye." The others turned to Teal’c in surprise. He was as bald as one could get, and he was advocating hair dye?

" Maybe my friend from Chulak has an idea. For a Latino he sure has sandy colored hair."

I cringed as they all nodded soberly, even Dr Jackson, who also had sandy colored hair. Okay he was an Anglo with lighter colored skin, but still.

" And contacts. He needs contact lenses." Dr Frasier turned to Dr Jackson. " That is also something that you should consider as well, Danny."

Dr Jackson smiled fondly back at the small doctor, making me wonder if there was something going on there that no one knew about.

" Please Janet. Can you just imagine Jack’s face if I told him to hold up because I had lost a contact lens? Imagine me crawling through mud, Jaffa staff weapon fire snarling above my head, looking for said contact? If I survived, he would kill me himself."

They all laughed, and despite myself I smiled. I had gotten to know the man that they were referring to over the last week, and patience would never be his virtue.

" No Janet," Dr Jackson continued. " Contacts are high maintenance, something that I have no time for."

I could see that they all agreed with Teal’c, and despite my nervousness, I was intrigued. I came from a dirt-poor ghetto family. That was why I joined the Air Force in the first place, to get away from the streets before the streets claimed me for good, and consequentially had never had any sort of money. Contact lenses cost good money, and so the idea had never crossed my mind, until now.

I felt Teal’c’s eyes on me and I quailed. He was a big mysterious alien and he frightened me to death.

The Goddess looked incredulous. " Are you telling me that you have no down time?"

" No maam. When I am finished for the day with the General or the Colonel, I still have reports to finish and filing to do."

Dr Jackson sounded furious. " This stops now. Jack will just have to understand."

I leapt to the Colonel’s defense. Despite knowing him for only a week, I defended him against his own team.

" Nevertheless. Go with the Major and get sorted out, and I’ll see to your exercise time."

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There is activity in the Gate room. SG7 are due in, and coincidentally, SG4 are going out. It’s all due to the particular planet you see, there is no point in sending a SG unit to a planet at 03H00 in the morning, the local population just wouldn’t appreciate it.

I threw down my pen and stretched again, prompting De Souza to raise one dark brown eyebrow at me.

" Oh yeah." I looked at my watch, 17H00. " It’s been a long day. And now it is definitely time to call it a night."

" For you maybe sir. Daniel and I would consider this still early.There’s still plenty of time left to go and exercise."

I nodded sagely, figuring that I may as well kill myself now, before the General returns and does it for me.

I raised an eyebrow, Teal’c like, and regarded my friend mildly. I had long ago learnt to stay calm around an irate Dr Jackson, because it I didn’t, nasty things happened, usually to me.

I threw down a mysterious file, and leaned back with a groan. " As it is, I realized he needed help and sent him to you in the first place."

Actually it was to Carter, but I knew that she would rope in the rest of SG1 as well, and probably Dr Frasier too, if I knew my team at all.

" Well, he doesn’t." My friend absent-mindedly poured himself a cup of coffee, probably the twentieth cup of the day already. " When he's finished for the day with you, he goes down to records and files everything away. This can take hours, especially if something needs to be cross-indexed. And then, when it is finished, it’s too late in the evening to do anything but sleep."

" Why does De Souza have to file everything away? Where are the two record clerks that the US Air Force employs?"

I could see that Daniel hadn’t thought of that. But I knew for a fact that we paid two people down in records, I had seen the papers.

If De Souza was doing the filing himself then they were either pretty, or lazy and pulling rank.

The first indication that we were getting close was the beat of loud music, a blatant disregard for the regulations. Annoyed, I pulled Daniel into the nearest empty office.

Daniel, thank goodness didn’t argue as I spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. Then, reinforcements on their way, we followed the noise to the records office.

I found a large room, brilliantly lit with filing cabinets everywhere you would wish to look. I also found a ‘Boom Box’ sitting on a counter and two bored sergeants playing poker. I was worse than I thought. This was a blatant breach of two regulations, not just one.

" Hey, what the…" They rose together. Two worse specimens of military life I have yet to see.

They were large sallow individuals, with pock marked faces and narrow mouths. The only real difference was in skin color. One was a rat faced white man and the other was a grayish looking African American.

" Buddy, you had better have a real good reason for that," AA said, swaggering towards me threateningly.

" Huh?" The man and his companion plainly had no idea who I was, filling me with a sense of glee. Call me masochistic if you like, but I was going to have great fun taking these two creatures down.

You see, all my life I had bucked the chain of command, but I had never broken any regulation, not once. Orders were to be followed. I may not have liked them, but I never disobeyed. The same applied to regulations. They were there for a reason, even if that reason was usually hard to fathom.

The thought of these loathsome creatures sitting down here, tapping their feet to illegal noise and pulling rank on my tired aide because they were too busy playing cards to help made me see red.

" Yeah, who are you?" Rat face joined his companion and stared at me belligerently.

I was pleased to see Daniel leaning next to the door, looking on at my antics with an amused expression.

" Colonel Jack O’Neill." I may not wear my rank or name badge on my BDU’s, but I sure as hell had my unit flashes on my sleeves if they cared to look. Surely these people weren’t that much out of the loop?

" Really." I heard Simons and the MP’s arrive with a clatter. I smiled sweetly at them, " and you are now under arrest".

I gestured to the two men and Simons went to work. I had never seen her in action before, and very efficient she was. The men were in restraints within seconds, and roughly dragged out from behind the counter.

We heard them protesting all the way down the corridor in wheedling pleading voices before being hauled into the lift. The doors closing and cutting them off came as a great relief.

My aide was still missing, lost along with the remaining members of SG1, but I had Daniel, and I wasn’t going to let him go easily. You see, I still had a base to run, despite major changes to some personnel, and Danny boy could type.

Somehow we staggered through to 17H00, but not without my new aide giving me dirty looks each hour or so. I replied by feeding him coffee, a lot of coffee, and eventually had to steer a totally jazzed but happy friend back down to his office.

There is something that I take for granted, although I really shouldn’t, the closeness of SG1. If I am stuck on base, then they will stay as well. If I can go home, then they will go home too. The same applies to anybody injured and in the infirmary. We don’t go anywhere until they have been released. So, I escorted my jazzed out friend back to his office and tried very hard to put him to bed, although, with that much coffee in his system I doubted that I succeeded. I should be ashamed at myself.

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I couldn’t believe what a difference one bottle of hair dye could do to a person. I looked in the mirror and almost didn’t recognize myself.

We had to go to the Academy Hospital in Colorado Springs for that, and even then it should have taken two days. But Dr Frasier and Major Carter used Colonel O’Neill’s rank shamelessly, something I’m sure that the Colonel never did.

Repeated sayings like, ‘ The Colonel wants his aide back by this evening, so hustle, and ‘ The Colonel wants the best contact lenses there are because what this aide works on is ultra top secret and he better see what he is doing,’ got assorted Captains jumping.

All I had to do was sit there like a stuffed dummy and answer questions where appropriate. This was unbelievable. The two female Majors used the military for all it was worth, and I walked out of the hospital at 17H00 or so, with my glasses in my pocket and feeling like a new man. I could have kissed them if I was allowed to. I actually got up the courage to tell them so on the way home, and they laughed all the way back.

I used to pride myself on my fitness, living on the streets did that to you, but I had been neglecting my body for the past year because of my commitment to the General, so when Teal’c took me in hand, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The gym was empty, apart from Dr Jackson, who nodded my way in approval. He looked awful, and I gathered up my courage and spoke to him.

" Pablo. Why are you still a lowly Airman if you take on that sort of workload each day?"

I shrugged. " You go out and save the world, I stay here and run the base." I drew myself up, figuring that they wouldn’t kill me after all the work that they had done on me today. " I consider my job to be just as important as yours."

" For you maybe. For me it is. If it wasn’t, I would be applying for a spot on a SG team."

" I have skills that this base needs. I can’t fire a C 90 and hit a target, but I take shorthand know the ins and outs of data capturing. For me, seeing things I do come to pass is just as exciting as anything that anybody else does."

Teal’c nodded, seemingly satisfied, although I wasn’t sure as his face was as impassive as ever.

" Tonight we will start with Nigo’ah’ot." He looked apologetically at Dr Jackson who nodded shakily.

" Hey, I don’t mind, after doing Pablo’s work today I could do with an easier lesson."

He looked pleased at my calling him that, although I was pretty sure that one should do so anyway.

" Nigo’ah’ot is the thirteenth discipline, or exercise if you prefer, of a Jaffa training ritual. There are three hundred and twelve disciplines to master before one can become a true Jaffa."

With that we changed into more appropriate clothing, and he proceeded to demolish me. It was a strange combination of karate, judo, and something else. All I really knew was that when the hour was up, all I wanted to do was crawl off and die.

Daniel was breathing just as hard as I was, but he looked unwell as we walked in, so he had an excuse. Master Teal’c wasn’t even sweating.

" Tomorrow we will do Nigo’ah’se, the fourteenth discipline. If Dr Jackson wants, he may join the advanced morning class."

Dr Jackson looked horrified. " And watch you try to kill your students? I think not."

"Pablo, there are two morning sessions. Session two is for advanced students, of which I am definitely not one, and two evening sessions for novices."

Dr Jackson looked at me in a mock-horrified expression. " Don’t ask Pablo. Don’t even mention it…aargh." He clutched his heart and fell to his knees.

I tried to hide my shock. I had seen the reports, and I swear that Teal’c was the only Jaffa on the base.

Dr Jackson answered for him. " Only one. Kinda". He reached up a hand and I pulled him to his feet. "The early session is reserved for Teal’c and Colonel O’Neill." "And", he thumped me kindly in the chest, " if you know what’s really good for you, you will never go there, ever".

Teal’c again ignored Dr Jackson. " You are welcome to watch, De Souza. Session one is at 04H00."

I swallowed, trying to decline politely. 04H00 in the morning didn’t figure in my life. Luckily Dr Jackson sprang to my defense.

‘ Sorry Teal’c, but this boys day starts later than that, as does mine." With that he steered me into the showers.

I was actually getting to like this man, and we chatted amiably whilst washing the sweat from the session from our bodies. The problem came when I stepped out, put on my contacts, and tried to find my clothes. Instead of my usual blue uniform, all I found was a black tee shirt and an olive green base uniform. There were two piles of clothes and the other pile was obviously Dr Jackson’s.

" What’s the problem Pablo?" He was a bit too innocent. I gritted my teeth, and started to dress.

Surprisingly, I felt much more comfortable in the BDU’s than I did in my usual uniform. The problem was with the shirt.

Daniel just smiled and pulled on his boots. " Yes or no. Are you currently under Colonel O’Neill’s direct command?"

I was aware of the admiring glances I was getting on my way back to my room, but I wasn’t sure if it was the new image or the SG1 flashes on my sleeves. Whatever it was, I didn’t mind at all.

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I’m going to be sorry to lose Pablo. The General is due in today, and Pablo and I made a pact to get the last of the trivial things out of the way before breakfast.

Before we started work this morning I put a letter of recommendation for a promotion on General Hammond’s desk.

Pablo De Souza is too valuable to be an airman; I want to jump him straight past senior airman to staff sergeant, but my recommendation all depends on General Hammond and the powers that be.

" The personnel requisition forms? Sir, they were filed two days ago. And by the way, thank you for all that you have done for me in the last few weeks. Even the new records clerks were your idea, so thanks. They are both very pretty, even if they do outrank me."

At the moment they do. I kept that thought to myself. Good grief is the poor man blushing? Do something quick.

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For a moment I thought that I was still at NORAD, that maybe I had gotten off on the wrong floor, but no, I could recognize some of the personnel.

Where was the chaos? I had been half expecting a frantic phone call for the entire three weeks, but eventually relaxed, figuring that if I didn’t hear about it on the news, than everything was okay.

My office was dark and silent, apart from a very visible envelope sitting squarely on top of my blotter.

A helpful sergeant pointed out that Colonel O’Neill was to be found in the briefing room, so that’s where I proceeded, and upon hearing voices I stopped.

It was very rare indeed that anyone could sneak up on Colonel O’Neill, and I relished this illicit chance. Okay, I was actually hidden by the partially ajar door, but still, it was nice to hear him unguarded.

His rapport with my ghost of an aide gave me an idea, so I sucked in my chest and strode confidently inside. What I saw made me miss a step.

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Colonel O’Neill raised his eyebrows and tried to look innocent. " Nothing sir. We have all the work right up to date, so you can relax on your first day back, and…"

" Colonel O’Neill," Hammond thundered, just what the heck have you done to my aide?"

" I gave him to Captain Carter to sort out." O’Neill’s intense eyes met the General’s.

" Sir, someone that dull should have a chance at life. I inherited him from you, and decided to change his life for the better. Three weeks was plenty of time for that. What we have now is a happy airman with a lot of female admirers who just happens to still be your efficient aide."

" No longer Colonel. You seem to have changed him into your aide. I was outside the briefing room door for a while before I entered, and I no longer recognize the man as my aide. That man is a stranger, so I will be requesting a new aide immediately."

" However. Your aide can stay." He smiled at his second in command’s flabbergasted expression.

" You took a mouse and turned it into a lion, complete with SG1 flashes, to boot. In the process you turned him into a stranger. So, it is only fair that you keep him."

" Maybe now you can get all your reports done on time. Hell, I’ve got a better idea, make him SG1’s aide. That way maybe I can get Dr Jackson’s reports on time as well."

" I was away for three weeks, that’s all. In those three weeks I gave you time enough to prove to me that you can run this base, and time enough to find yourself an aide. All in all a most productive use of time management, don’t you agree?"

I just read Time and I have to say I loved it. Your outsiders
perspective on SG-1 was excellent. I also like the way DeSusa enjoyed
his job. I would love to see more of him and his perspective. Keep up
the good work.

Bisq
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I love your character Pablo De Souza! How many stories have you written with him in (I've only read 2 - 'Time and 'Fire' - which were both great.) Are you planning on writing anymore with him in (coz I love the interaction with Jack and how with him in we get to see leader-Jack). If not then PLEASE do!!!!