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"I don't have time to send it to Apple, so I was hoping you could have a look at it, see if it's something you could fix here?"
He smiled at her and --
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-- laughed.
The woman raised an eyebrow.
"Okay," she said, reaching for her iPod. "Maybe not."
"No no, I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I was just...you know, I saw this show last night, and I had a flashback to a funny part and..."
Lame. He winced but, amazingly, she seemed to buy it.
She let him take the iPod, saying, "I know I should probably just replace it with a newer model, but it's been through some pretty crazy things with me. I'm kind of attached to it."
"Why don't you leave this with me," he said. "Come back at maybe 2:30, and I'll see what I can do."
After she left, Chuck shook his head. The government thought this woman worked on a super-secret extra-galactic military base with aliens?
Geez. The more time he spent with Casey, the more he thought the law enforcement arm of the government was staffed by psychos; this just clinched it.
*
When she came back, though, the flashes he got weren't just of memos. This time there were people with glowing eyes and snakes in their heads, and walking, talking little gray men. Spaceships, with transporters; freaking SPACE BATTLES.
He gaped, stupified, desperate to leap over the counter and beg her to tell him more because aliens and intergalactic travel! Were real! Morgan would shit! Not that Chuck could tell him but if he could Morgan would totally shit!
He stammered out an apology for not being able to fix the iPod -- bad battery -- and managed to not shout "ALIENS? REALLY?" at her, not even once.
When she left he stared out the door after her, mentally flipping through all of the images associated with her in the Intersect. He really, really hated what having that stuff stuck in his head had done to his life but this -- knowing that Trek and Star Wars and BSG weren't entirely fiction? Totally made it worthwhile.
"Who was that?" Morgan said, leaning against the desk.
"Princess Leia."
"Um. Okay." Morgan turned and tried to catch sight of her, but she'd already disappeared. "Did she have buns on her head? I didn't see any buns."
"No. She's on a diplomatic mission to Pegasus."
"Don't you mean Alderaan?"
"Nope."
*
"O'Neill. Whatcha got for me?"
Elizabeth tucked the cell against her shoulder and stowed her iPod. "If his reaction to me was any indication, he's got all kinds of information about the Stargate program in his head."
"Ah, hell," Jack said. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," she said. "Chuck Bartowski has the worst poker face of anyone I've ever met. Worse than Rodney and Carson put together."
Jack sighed expressively. "Okay. I'll have people weed out the info in the new Intersect and make sure we monitor those damn busybodies a little better this time."
Elizabeth slid into the car, marveling again at the strange mediocrity of it. She'd only been away from Earth for a year, but everything that used to be normal still felt so odd.
"I read through the file you sent over, Jack, and there's no way the CIA will let this boy live with all of that information in his head. But he's extremely intelligent, and he's done some impressive things in the past months. His hobbies certainly indicate --"
"That he's a geek," Jack said. "Come on, Elizabeth, I already let you have Sheppard, now you want some shmuck who works for the Dork Pack --"
"Nerd Herd."
"Whatever. I'm just saying, what's next? A pony?"
"You've read his file too, Jack," she said. "And the new Intersect is almost ready."
"All right, all right. As a matter of fact, I may already have submitted some paperwork."
"Oh really?"
"Did you think I was going to send you out to meet some nice young kid and then let the CIA whack him? You'd've had my ass, Doctor."
Elizabeth laughed. "You're right about that."
He grumbled, and then said, "Don't you have a plane to catch? Some stuff you need to be doing in Colorado maybe?"
She started the car, smiling. "I'm on my way. Keep me informed?"
"I'll even let you have dibs."
"Deal," she said. "Thanks, Jack."
*