Just another day at Area 51

Nikki’s Page

This is a (very late) birthday present for Jayne.

Jayne arrived at the office just after 8am to find Nikki setting up the deluxe coffee maker Radek had bought for her as a present.

“Morning Jayne.” Nikki said, turning to face her. Jayne noticed she was wearing a new black tee with a slogan written in large white print.

“Physicists do it with Friction.” she quoted, one eyebrow raised. “Where on Earth did you get that?”

“Actually, it was a present from Mirth. She got you one too.” Nikki pointed to a small parcel in Jayne’s workspace. Curious, Jayne walked over to her desk and unwrapped the brown paper parcel. Inside was a red shirt with the slogan ‘Ramblers do it with their mouths.’ Jayne stared at it for a second before she got the joke and burst into laughter. She held up the shirt to show Nikki.

“Good Lord.” Nikki said when she could catch her breath. “You might want to be careful where you wear that.”

Jayne carefully folded the shirt and put it away in a desk drawer. She was definitely going to have to find a way to get back at Mirth for that.

“So what’s the plan for today?” she asked Nikki.

“I was thinking you could work on Dr Jackson’s translation program.” Nikki suggested.

Jayne did her best to stifle a groan. She grabbed a mug of steaming hot coffee and sat down at her desk. While she waited for her laptop to boot up, she grabbed Daniel’s notebook and started reading through the comments. At the other desk, Nikki started off her first batch of simulations for the day on her third best laptop.

A couple of hours later, Jayne was fed up with working on the translation program, so she decided to check the dGeek forum. Fortunately, Nikki had crawled under the table to do something technical with the rats’ nest of cables that always seemed to fill their office. Jayne launched her Firefox browser and navigated her way to the Random Chat thread.

“So how is everyone on dGeek?” Nikki asked from under the desk.

“How do you always manage to do that?” Jayne asked. Somehow, Nikki always seemed to know when she was checking out the forum instead of working.

“If you’ve got a spare moment, could you put on a new pot of coffee?” Nikki asked.

Sighing, Jayne got up to make the coffee. Working in Area 51 wasn’t as glamorous and exiting as she had thought it would be.

************************************************************************

It was close to lunchtime, when Nikki turned to Jayne and said.

“Hey Jayne, are you feeling hungry?”

“A bit, why?” Jayne asked.

“I thought you might like to take an early lunch break.”

“That would be great. Hey, are you coming?”

“Nah, I’ve got some stuff I need to prepare.”

Jayne disappeared off to the canteen to get some food, wondering what Nikki was up to.

When she got back, there was a large cardboard box on Nikki’s desk marked “Mostly Harmless”, and Nikki had a broad grin on her face.

“What’s in the box?”

“That’s what we’ll be working on this afternoon. This box has all the stuff in it that the gate teams brought back to the SGC, which nobody could get to work. They passed it on to me in case I could activate some of it with my Ancient gene. I’ve been saving it up for a quiet afternoon.”

“So does that mean I get to try and turn some of it on?” Jayne asked, reaching out to grab something from the box.

“Hey, not so fast.” said Nikki. “There’s a reason the label says mostly harmless. We don’t know if one of these things is a bomb or something.”

“Oh.” said Jayne, sounding disappointed. “So what do we do then?”

“We follow the manual.” said Nikki. “This is Radek’s ‘Guidelines on Safe handling of Ancient Devices.’ He told me that most of the precautions were added as a direct result of accidents involving Col. Sheppard and Dr. McKay.”

She put the book down on the desk in front of Jayne and opened it to a page entitled “known hazardous devices”. Then she pulled on some bright yellow rubber gloves and reached into the box.

“Why the gloves?” asked Jayne.

“So the devices won’t recognize my gene. Of course there are still a few devices that are thought activated and don’t need human contact at all, so be careful not to think ON”

“That’s like telling someone not to think about purple elephants.” Jayne muttered under her breath.

Nikki lifted out the first device, a small blue egg shape with ancient writing etched into it’s surface.

She compared the item to the list of known hazardous devices on the list. Then she put it down on the bench and scanned it with a small hand held device, which looked for energy signatures.

“Well, it looks OK. Do you want to give it a try?” she asked, offering the device to Jayne.

Jayne cautiously took the small device, holding so that the ancient script was right way up. The top of the device opened up like a flower and it projected a bright picture onto the ceiling. The picture rotated and the device played a soothing sound.

“Ahh, that must be a children’s nightlight.” Nikki suggested.

“Did you know that?” Jayne asked, suspiciously.

“Well yeah.” Nikki replied. “I read the inscription on the side.”

“So the whole thing with the scanner and the book?”

“Is still good practice when testing ancient devices. Remember that time Rodney nearly got himself ascended, or lab with the nanite virus?”

The second item Nikki handed to Jayne didn’t appear to do anything, even when Jayne thought “On” at it really hard. She handed it back to Nikki, who couldn’t turn it on either. Nikki concluded it must be broken. The third item Nikki pulled out of the box looked a little like a drinking bottle, but when Nikki looked it up in Radek’s manual it turned out to be a charging unit. Nikki carefully labeled it and placed it in the spare parts box. The next two items were not even Ancient technology, but some sort of Goa’uld copies. Nikki threw them in the rubbish bin.

It was getting late in the afternoon when Nikki picked out a small, shiny black cube, with no obvious markings or buttons. It didn’t look like anything in Radek’s book, but it seemed to have an interesting power signature.

“That’s odd.” Nikki said. “I’ve not seen anything like this before.”

“Is it dangerous?” Jayne asked.

“I don’t think so. The power signature is all wrong for a weapon. If anything it reminds me of the Asgard beaming technology.”

“Ooh, do you think it’s a personal teleporter?” Jayne asked, hopefully. She reached out for the cube with grabby hands.

“Hey, careful, I don’t know if it’s………” Nikki said, as Jayne placed her hand on the device. There was a burst of bright light and she materialized in the canteen.

Well that was different. Jayne thought to herself. She noticed that she was standing right by the cake counter, so she grabbed a chocolate muffin.

“Jayne, what happened to you?” Nikki said in her left ear. For a moment Jayne thought her friend had teleported too, until she remembered that she was wearing an ear bud radio.

“I’m fine Nikki. I just teleported to the canteen.”

“Let me guess, right by the cakes?” asked Nikki. “I guess it is time for a break. I don’t suppose you could grab us something and meet me back in the lab?”

**********************************************************************

By the time Jayne had walked back to the lab with a big tray of snacks, Nikki had packed away the “Mostly Harmless” box and was studying the cube, with a large mug of coffee in her hand.

“Chocolate muffin?” Jayne offered, holding out the tray of cakes.

“Thanks.” Nikki said. “This doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you, though. That was a really dangerous thing to do. This thing could have teleported you anywhere or it could have gone wrong and vaporized you.”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that.” Jayne told her. “I’m really sorry Nikki.”

“Just don’t do it again.”

“So, any thoughts on how this works?” Jayne asked.

“Not yet. I don’t suppose you know why it took you to the canteen?”

“Well I might have been thinking that I was really hungry.” Jayne suggested, tentatively.

“That figures.” Nikki said. “So does it take you where you asked to go, or where it thinks you need to be?”

“We could test it some more.” Jayne offered, hopefully.

“Maybe, but we need to plan our tests carefully, so you don’t end up materialized in the middle of a wall.” Nikki pointed out.

“OK mum, I’ll play nice.” Jayne agreed.

In the end they only carried out a few tests, with Jayne jumping to various locations around area 51, before Nikki caught Jayne yawning.

“Well, that’s enough testing for one day.” Nikki said.

Jayne glanced at the clock and realized it was 18:30.

“I guess it is getting late.” she said. “Can we do this again tomorrow?”

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” Nikki told her, smiling.

As Jayne packed up her things and got ready to go home, she thought to herself how lucky she was to have a Job at Area 51.

The End.

The messages on the T-shirts were inspired by something Mirth posted on dGeek