trans_9 | Old Earth secrets (Open)

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Old Earth secrets (Open)

Truth be told, he'd avoided the Sensoriums for the most part. Maybe he just didn't fully trust Stacy yet, or maybe he just wasn't thrilled with the possibilities of what the stories he'd heard about them might amount to. Still, the Media Library wasn't quite his taste (It was hard to kick back and relax in the middle of unknown territory) and strange, vaguely creepy surroundings or no, without any open hostilities, he eventually ended up pretty damn bored.

Bored enough, apparently, to explore the Sensoriums.

Once he'd decided on actually going, he had to come up with something for it to do. Despite the urge to go home, to Stargate Command, or get advice from a virtual Sam, he kept those secrets to himself. He also chose not to fly. His boredom would not be the downfall of Earth or its secrets.

Unless its secrets included basketball. He was willing to share basketball. Even if it was really just a replica of his highschool gym and a team of old friends he'd long ago lost contact with. Okay. So there were one or two in there who were never his friends at all, but if he was going to play fantasy basketball anyway, he figured the identity of a few key players would only serve mediocre sci-fi movie plots, rather than Earth dominating ones.

Creepy or not, imaginary or not, it did feel good to be playing a game again. Even if it was the biggest team he'd actually played with and against. He still had veto power with the rules.

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Meluly has never played basketball.

Soccer, yes; rugby, occasionally; but basketball she's never done more than vaguely watch on broadcast, confused by the rules but entertained by the frenetic quality to it.

So, now--having poked her head in to check if the room was empty--she's watching again, lips pursed a little as she tries to follow the game.

There's definitely something different about playing with a full team (and a few of those fantasy players), and the thrill of the new experience helped to smooth over any misgivings he had about the whole thing. It felt real, at least, and that helped prevent him from speculating whether the computer ws juts letting him win. He was, after all, fair enough to give both teams some spectacular players.

It was half-time, and his team--less himself than his teammates--were currently leading the game, when he noticed he was being watched by someone he hadn't...summoned up. He paused, taking the short break in activity to wander over toward the unfamiliar stranger.

"Did you want a shot at the room?" He wasn't entirely certain how many there were, or how the whole thing worked. He'd yet to commit enough to asking around about it.

"Nah," Luly says, waving a tattooed hand vaguely. "Kind've fun watching y'all play." Her accent is interesting—mildly Indian, almost, though it doesn't seem to quite match up to the Earthly language.

Her red eyes look past Mitchell, then back at him. "And it lets me try and figure out the rules."

Cameron wondered briefly whether she were actually speaking his language, and that was why her words held an accent, whether her language was just that far from his own, or whether Stacy just liked mixing things up. In the end, it didn't really matter.

"There's room for more, if you want to try a more hands-on approach to figuring 'em out."

"Nah." Luly gestures a vague dismissal. "Feel more like watching right now. You're pretty good." Whether she's referring to Cameron or just to his team isn't entirely clear. She grins.

Whichever she happened to be referring to, he did assemble the team anyway, so he could take the compliment for what it was, without worrying too hard about the specifics.

Cameron gave a small smile and a nod, before offering a hand out to the woman. "Th'name's Cam. Glad to be illustrating the rules."

"First lieutenant Meluly, NEG army, special operations deployment," she says, somehow transforming the unwieldy string of words into a single flowing phrase.

She shakes his hand. Her grip is firm—not disproportionately so, but definitely solid.

Its a nice flow. He kind of liked whatever accent it was that she had. Of course, he didn't recognize anything she said. Clearly they were from separate worlds. Probably separate galaxies.

She had a good handshake, too. "Good to meet you, Lieutenant."

"You too." Luly smiles again, thinking she recognizes something in his stance , and the way he defaulted to 'Lieutenant' instead of her name—

"You military? ...Police?" Her face twists a little, ready to bounce into an apology if she has it wrong.

He doesn't mind in the least when people recognize his general career. He's proud of it, even if most of it was as classified as it could possibly get. It's especially nice, now that he was robbed of his identifications.

"Yeah, military." He nodded, smiling, "Air Force. Colonel."

"Oh, wingnut," Luly says with a smirk. It's a friendly tone, though. "I've done a couple of air-drops, but I mostly just dogface keterektu." She's momentarily forgotten that anybody else on the ship is very unlikely to know the bits of her native language that have moved into military slang on her world.

Wingnut. That was something of a new term, but he had a hunch of what it meant. He also had a suspicion about what the rest of it meant, but he wasn't willing to wager on that one.

"Ke...tereku?"

"...ah, sorry," Luly says with a sheepish smile, and her eyes glaze with the loss-of-attention of somebody trying to process something they don't normally think about. "It's, um, 'steel shoes'... Infantry mecha." She gives him a little thumbs-up. "Sorry. The idioms are kind of hard to come up with a good translation for, and that's still missing a lot of context."

He understood the feeling. It was one he often experienced when dealing with Vala and Earth matters. The explanation somewhat made sense. Enough to go along with it, at least.

Cameron gave a small nod. "Guess we should count ourselves lucky it translates as much as it does."

"Well, Humans and Nazzadi think alike... mostly," Luly says with a grin and a shrug. "Not that I'll ever understand you peoples' attitudes on some things, but at least we can mostly make sense to each other. Usually. Sometimes."

Lam wasn't going to stop, really, but passing by, she did catch sight of Mitchell and she did stop before wandering in to tuck herself onto the sidelines and watch. She'd peered in on when Mitchell, Teal'c, and Jackson played before, but she'd never actually stayed to watch.

Today, she did.

He was doing pretty well, actually, and the only thing that could make it better were if it were his current friends playing alongside him, rather than past ones he'd almost forgotten the faces of. He couldn't say 'if it were real', because even if he could be playing with the same teammates he was now, it didn't feel any less real here than it would have anyway.

That fact was only creepy when there was a lull in action. Somewhere around halftime, he noticed a familiar face he was certain he wouldn't have asked Stacy to put into the game (because that'd have been a special sort of creepy). She didn't appear to be in any hurry, so, rather than try to monkey with the program, he waited until actual half-time to go and investigate. He might have slacked a bit with distraction, but his extra special teammates more than made up for it.

The cool factor made up for any lessening of a challenge their presence on his team made

"I think this place can whip up some noise makers if you need 'em, Doctor." Probably a crowd, too. He wasn't sure if that'd be an improvement or not.

"I'm okay without noisemakers," Lam said, lounging with her head tilted slightly. "That's a good pack to play with, if you were going to choose," she gestured to his teammates, her eyes and suppressed grin containing the mirth.

"I was just passing by and figured I'd stop and watch since I don't have any shifts today," she murmured. "I didn't much want to interrupt, but here I am nonetheless."

He grinned at her rejection of the noisemakers. It didn't surprise him in the least. Dr. Lam was always a very quiet person--sometimes so much so that he thought she needed to learn to be a bit louder. Of course, one would hardly suspect that if they'd seen the good doctor's ferocity in the infirmary.

He planted a hand on the wall nearby her, grinning then both at his own amusement and hers. "There's room for one more in the pack, if you're interested."

"Couldn't hurt," Lam said with a soft smile. "I'm fairly rusty, but I think I can manage not to get trampled." Humor lit her face as she shifted and angled a glance at him. "How are you doing, Colonel? I keep meaning to ask, then never do. I've been stuck in the Medical Bay trying to figure out how to train myself how to use the...implements in there. I..."

She shrugged.

"I need to stick closer to home," she said, the smile somewhat embarrassed.

He shrugged slightly, smiling. Vala and Sam managed not to get trampled, and Vala was more petite than Doctor Lam. She was also more vicious, but he was certain the Sensorium would go easy on her.

He reached over, then, and squeezed her shoulder. "I'm pretty sure we're sticking as close to home as we can, Doctor."

Her fingers brushed his knuckles and she smiled just a little. It was difficult to think of anything being close to home these days, but she had Mitchell and that helped. It would probably help her mood if she saw more of him instead of trying to drown herself in work--that only held the stress at bay for so long as it was--but habits were hard to shake.

"Trying to at least," Lam said quietly.

Habits always were, and it was a trait of those who worked in Stargate Command to drown themselves in their work. Generally because everyone there was only there because they truly loved what they did. Without that, they still tried to drown themselves in whatever they had.

It was never as good as home.

"Stop trying, Doctor." He grinned, and tugged her out toward the court. "Pick a team."

"This is going to be a disaster," Lam murmured, but found a spot on the team and felt like an idiot. Her battlefield was medicine, not...basketball. Yoga? Maybe. Well, new things. She'd think of it like learning a new language or new technique. That'd help.

Right?

"If disasters were never worth doing anyway, there'd never be any done, Doctor." Yup. That didn't make a whole lot of sense, but really. It was the encouraging tone that probably counted, anyway.

He'd try and make sure the doctor didn't get hurt, at least.

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Old Earth secrets (Open)

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