// See previous chapter for info on the story. No spoilers here that I know of.

// The madness spreads to one of Jacks most beloved possessions

Chapter Three: Not the Truck!

Jack growled. He felt like hitting something. Experimentally, he punched the wall. The result: a hole in his wall...and sore

knuckles. Figures.

'Well, I better call the base, let them know about this.' It IS a security issue, after all. Any day when a military man can't

get his mail without being attacked by his own sprinklers is a day when security in the USA is really bad. He was halfway towards the

phone when he remembered that, as his home currently was without power, so was his phone. "Crap. Oh, my cell." 'Now, where did I leave

the little stinker?'

Jack spent the next ten minutes looking for the reclusive little electronic instrument of annoyance. He looked under his bed, in

the closets, in the pantry, in his jacket, in the den, behind his VHS collection, under his pillow, next to the toaster, and in his

medicine cabinet, yet he STILL couldn't find the blasted thing. 'So where the heck could it be?' He wondered and pondered this as he

wandered his house, till he saw it: in it's charger on the table next to the front door. "Well, of COURSE I'm not gonna look there!"

Jack snatched up the phone, pleased to see it still had about half its battery power left. Quickly, he hit the speed dial for

the base. "Pick up already. C'mon, pick up, pick up, pick up-"

Abruptly, he heard the click as the connection was made. Only instead of the officer for base security, he heard-

"Konichiwa."

'Oh crap.' "Uh, this isn't private Saunders at Cheyenne Mountain, is it?"

Rapid fire Japanese began assaulting his ears. "Didn't think so." He hit the end button on the cell. Checking to make sure it

was the RIGHT button this time, he hit the speed dial for the base again. This time he got a response from an annoyed sounding Russian

voice. 'Well, the Russians are normally testy, nothing odd there.' He tried this tactic four more times, getting responses in Spanish,

Arabic, German, and what sounded a lot like Swahili to him.

Okay, time to try another tactic. He began to dial Carter at home. 'Wait, what am I doing? She only sleeps at home two or

three times a month. She's probably crashed at her lab, again.' He hit the end button. 'Well, just gonna have to drive in and report

this, I guess.'

Jack collected his wallet, ID, jacket, keys, cell phone, and baseball cap before heading into the garage, where his beloved truck

slept every night. Grinning, he hit the electric garage door opener, hearing the mechanism pull the large door open. He was halfway

into the drivers seat when he heard-

*chinkchinkvvrrrrBOOM*

-and jerked around to glare at his garage door. Closed. He slammed the door release panel again. This time the door only got

about six inches off the ground before slamming down again. He turned to glare at the defective instrument. "Why you audacious little

stack of silicon stuffing."

For a couple of minutes, Jack struggled with the garage door opener, try to unfasten the devices grip on the door so he could

open it manually. Unfortunately, Jack had tightened the bolts holding the two things together about as tight Kinsey was with the NID.

In the end, nothing good came of it. Again, just like Kinsey with the NID.

'All right, time to use Colonel Jack O'Neill's DIY guide to fixing broken electronics. Step one: pound item into submission

with fist.' He did. End result: sore fist. "Daniel would say there's a lesson to be learned in this about using violence to solve

problems." Jack, of course, would tell Danny to shut up. 'Okay, step two: swear at it. Man I love step two, almost as much as I love

step one.' Taking a deep breath, he let out a long string of invectives and insults at the mechanism, learned from his career with the

Air Force, his years in public high school, and, mostly, his Irish mother and father. He thoroughly and vigorously cursed its lineage,

hygiene, and sexual habits before running out of breath after a minute and a half. After he got his wind back, he glanced back at the

device, just in time to see it blink its one little green light at him. 'I knew it! It's mocking me!' "Okay, fine. It's step three

for your ass." 'Step three: apply tools.' Jack saunterred over to his toolbox and extracted the item he needed. 'The hammer should do

nicely here.' He applied the tool to the garage door opener with his usual grace (i.e. none), happy to see it break apart, sparking

nicely over everything, just like he thought it would.

What he DIDN'T think would happen was the rapid acension of his garage door, catching the back of the hammer and half dragging /

half throwing him across his garage into his stack of cardboard boxes holding recyclables. "Owwww." 'Commence glaring at delinquent

garage door.'

After a few seconds, Jack felt the door had been sufficiently glared at for its misconduct, so he collected himself and got into

his truck. Keys, ignition, turn, and...

...nothing.

'They didn't. They couldn't possibly be THAT stupid.' He tried turning the key again, only to hear the engine struggle to life,

falling silent a moment later. "No, no no no no no no no, they did NOT mess with my truck."

Throwing open the door, Jack stalked forward to the front of his truck and raised the hood. Nothing...seemed out of place. But

then, he worked in a profession where he met aliens on a daily basis, so seeing past appearances was a necessary talent for someone in

his position. Amazing, then, that he had survived 7 years of Gate travel without said talent.

Securing the hood with the little metal bar thingie, he began an examination of his car battery. 'I didn't know it was that

color. I thought I had a red battery.'

THe sudden blaring of his horn jared him from his reverie about the colors of batteries and how they may change color over time.

"Mother of..." After a moment, the car alarm also kicked in, as well as the lights and windshield wipers. 'It a freaking fourth of July

for my car!'

Jack ran to the trucks door and tried to open it, only to find that the lock had engaged. "Oh for the love of Pete!" 'Now how

was he supposed to...wait, the window!' The passengers side window was partially rolled down. Running to the other side, trying not to

let the psycho automobile scare him. A toaster was one thing, a fridge another, but such a large machine capable of reaching very high

speeds being sabotaged to make his life a living hell could do so in many gruesome ways. Funny that he didn't think about how it could

do so with the windows as he tried to crawl through the small opening the partially rolled down window offered. When that proved to be

too small, he grabbed hold of the window and pulled down, forcing the pane down a few inches...right before it inexplicably decided to

bolt upwards and smash his fingers between it and the metal.

Five minutes later, ears ringing from the continued blaring of the horn and car alarm and fingers black and blue from the power

windows from Hell, Jack finally gave in. Going back to the front of the truck, he disconnected the battery. All activity from the nutso

vehicle immediately ceased.

Jack gritted his teeth with enough force to crumple steel plates. "I will kill people now. Many, many people will die by my

hand on this day."

"Excuse me, sir?"

Jack stepped to the side so he could see around his truck, glowering at the new arrival standing in front of his garage: a cop.

'Wonderful, the first sacrifice has arrived.' It had been a while since he'd talked to any sort of law enforcement officer in a

situation where he wasn't in trouble. Therefore, all that came to mind to say to the man in blue in front of him was, "Hey."

The officer nodded and took a step forward into Jacks garage. "Car trouble?"

'Little boy genius, aren't you kid?' "What gave you that idea?"

"The car alarm going off."

'Doh' "...Yes, obvious in retrospect." Must have been why I didn't hear him drive up, and why he drove up in the first place.

The officer gestured to Jacks truck. "What seems to be the matter with it?"

'Well, it's suffering from the same thing as every other device I own that runs on electricity. Namely that they've all been

sabotaged to malfunction in the most annoying, inconveniencing way possible, ALL AT ONCE!' "Nothing, just takes a while to get started

some mornings."

The young police officer nodded his head in understanding. "Well, best of luck then."

"Hopefully I won't need it." Jack grinned at the cop as the blue uniformed man made his way back to the cruiser he had parked in

Jack's driveway. As the sound of the retreating car, Jack went back to his usual regimen for fixing machines: glaring, swearing, and

pounding with fists. That lasted only another ten minutes, after which he became bored. 'Great, now what am I gonna do?'

*Ding dong*

'Huh? Now my DOORBELL is joining in the fun? Great, if this isn't over soon, I'm gonna move to Russia! They're too poor to

have electronics everywhere over there.' Then he heard the chime come again, twice in rapid succession, followed by a few knocks on his

front door. There was actually someone there. 'It better not be that cop again. I'd rather not be jailed for assaulting a law

enforcement officer.'

Wondering just who the heck would be at his house this early on a Thursday, O'Neill made his way to his front door. "What?" he

practically yelled as he swung open the heavy mahogohny wood door. After a moment, he recognized the figure. "Thank God! A friendly

face."

On Jacks front doorstep, Daniel Jackson regarded his friend with a wary expression, letting out a sigh of resignation in the

process. "Whatever it is, it's gonna be bad. I can tell."

TBC

// Next time, Enter the Space Monkey

// Review. Oh, the magic word: NOW!...Please? Don't make my grovel, my knees don't like it.