The Computer Is Your Friend by Slybrarian
Title: The Computer Is Your Friend (Five Things Challenge)
Author: slybrarian
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gen. Really. Except that bit at the end where nothing happens.
Words: 2261
Series: Dramatic Exit, but reading the rest is not required.
Summary: Five desktop themes that Atlantis tried out.
Notes: Beta by archae_ology. See here for the previous story with our Friend the Computer.
1)
Radek carefully set the blast goggles over his eyes, and then glanced around the group to make sure that everyone else had done so as well (one would think this would be unnecessary with a group of highly educated and skilled individuals, but one would be wrong). That done, he nodded to where Miko was standing at the controls.
"You may fire when ready," he told her.
"Yes, Doctor Zelenka." Miko began activating the power relays and a dozen meters away the large phased laser array hummed to life. After checking the board for any warning lights, she said, "Commencing primary ignition."
At the far side of the warehouse serving as a makeshift test range, the water barrels serving as a target exploded with a brilliant green flash. A huge cloud of steam rose through the air and a loud boom echoed through the building.
"Results?" Radek asked.
Miko studied her readouts, and then smiled at him. "The last adjustment to the control software appears to have been successful. Output efficiency is now within optimal parameters."
Radek smiled back. "Excellent work, everyone."
Around him the cluster of engineers and physicists who had spent weeks working on designing and building the laser began to clap and shake each other's hands. Without warning a song began to play from the room's speakers, eliciting a few laughs and more eye rolls.
This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here: huge success!
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Atlantis science!
We do what we must, because we can.
"Computer," Radek said as the singing continued. "Far be it from me to complain about your enthusiasm. However, this song? It becomes old."
The music stopped as abruptly as it had started. When the computer spoke, it finally sounded like a normal person, which is to say without the excessive cheeriness. "My apologies, Doctor Zelenka. I had not realized it was annoying you."
Radek waved it off. After all, compared to Rodney, a bubbly computer voice was nothing at all. "It is of no matter. You may wish to find a different source to model your interface on, as this one is not nearly as amusing at it once was. Something more soothing, perhaps."
"Thank you for your advice, doctor. I will do my best to find something more suitable for everyone. Shall I tell the mess to cancel the cake order?"
"Hmm? No, no, of course not. Cake is always appropriate."
2)
Adam Stackhouse slowly inched his through one of the twisting corridors of the east pier, stunner held before him. The halls around him were dark, light only by door crystals, bubbly decorations, and what moonlight that made it through the rare windows. He had managed to almost reach his objective, the auxiliary environmental plant's control room, without being detected by any of the patrols roaming the area. Only a few last doors and a handful of enemies stood between him and a successful mission.
As he neared the neared the main entry to the plant itself, a woman's voice whispered in his ear, "Wait. I'm detecting Covenant movement beyond the next door."
Adam glanced at the tiny purple figure hovering above his shoulder with a bemused look. "What?"
There was an electronic sigh. "Wraith movement. Whatever. You'll have to go around."
He looked at the door again, frowning slightly as he tried to think of another way to reach his objective. "How many are there?"
"Four. It's Captain Barnes and his men." Adam cursed softly, because while he wasn't quite willing to admit that maybe, possibly the SAS was a bit more elite than the Corps, he knew there was no way he was getting through four of them in a prepared position. The voice at his shoulder was smug as it continued, "As I was saying, go around."
Stackhouse considered his options, then asked, "Is the maintenance tube on the next level down clear?"
"Looks that way from here."
"Good." As he silently crept away towards the nearest balcony - no need to bother with stairs, after all - Adam shook his head and wondered when this started to seem normal.
3)
Having successfully managed to keep Ronon from stealing any of his breakfast, and with his fourth cup of bioengineered super-coffee in hand (who knew botany could actually be useful at times?), Rodney made his way to his lab to get started on putting his brilliant mind to use discovering the secrets of the universe. He had a feeling that this would be a productive day, perhaps even one with a small but real chance of turning up something truly galaxy-shattering - assuming that Sheppard didn't show up, or Radek didn't fail to properly screen out the blundering idiots looking for a pat on the back, or life-sucking aliens and killer robots didn't decide now would be a nice time to try to blow up the city again.
"Good morning, computer," Rodney said as he sat down in front of his laptop.
"Good? Well, I suppose it's as good as any other," the city's AI replied from one of the room's speakers. For some reason, it sounded a bit like Alan Rickman by way of Eeyore. "Nothing has gone wrong yet, but I expect that sooner or later something will explode, or perhaps the sewage plant will overflow again and then it will be a bad morning."
"That's, ah, nice?" Rodney said. He wasn't terribly thrilled by this sudden development. Depressed-sounding computers were never a good sign, as in his experience depressed computers were often homicidal computers. If that was the case, not only would it undoubtedly try to kill him, but once Sheppard and his goons were done there'd be nothing left of the AI but charred circuits, repair work, and the smell of excessive C-4 use. That would be just plain awful, as the computer was rather like a TA that never needed a snack break, never minded working through the night, and never complained about supposed tyranny.
"So, everything okay?" he asked, hoping to avoid any unpleasant and unproductive events involving laser and wondering if Dr. Not-Heightmeyer knew how to counsel robots. "No sudden urges to kill all humans or anything like that?"
"No," the computer said, soundly vaguely insulted. "Just because I'm miserable it doesn't mean I'm required to turn all my camera eyes red before breaking out the chainsaw arms. Honestly. Humans."
"Good to hear," Rodney said, and so he went to work on finishing his rather brilliant theory of why FTL travel via hyperdrive does not break relativity and causality and in doing so destroy the universe.
"I have a brain the size of a planet," the computer said after a few minutes of silence, sounding like someone had run over its favorite cat and then sped off, the bastards, "and do you know what the marines want to do? They want to use me to play Counterstrike."
"I know how you feel," Rodney muttered.
"Counterstrike. On a good day, they might play something newer, but what's the difference? I have more processing power than the entire Earth, even with all the fancy options turned on it's just a blip in -"
"Working!"
4)
Sam was just finishing her morning jog when she came around a turn in the hall and found herself looking down a long unlit section of the city. She stopped at the point where the lights ceased and looked around with a frown, and moments later the rest of the lights around her turned off as well, leaving only a few emergency lights for illumination.
"Great," she said to herself. She started to reach for her radio when out of nowhere came the sound of distant laughter. It was a high-pitched and inconsistent laugh, more of a cackle really, and one of the many things years of experience had taught her was that cackling was usually a bad sign.
"Is someone there?" Sam called out.
From all around her came a woman's voice, or at least what sounded like a woman's voice. Some words were stuttered and slurred, the sentence was full of odd pauses, echoes, and electronic buzzing, and underlying it all was a malicious tone that sent shivers up Sam's spine.
"Lo-look at you, colonel. P-p-pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and ssssweating as you rrrrrrun through my corrrrridors. How can you hope to defeat a p-perfect, immortal machine?"
"Excuse me?" Sam said. She looked up and down the dim corridor until she found one of the cameras and stared at it. "I'm sorry, I don't think I heard that right. What did you say?"
There was a long pause, then without warning all the lights turned back on. When the voice came back it was much smoother and pleasant. "Ah. Nothing, ma'am. Nothing at all."
"Really."
"Really!"
"Who are you, and why are you messing around with the lights and PA system?" Sam asked, fighting to keep her CO face on and not smile.
"Mike. I'm, uh, just running a few tests, nothing important. Oh, look, the diagnostics are complete, got to go. Have a nice day!"
There was a click and then silence. Sam sighed and shook her head. "And maintenance wonders why no one trusts them."
5)
John woke up to the sound of an increasingly loud and abrasive beeping coming from right next to his ear. He reached out and flailed around at first the nightstand, where he only managed to knock a bottle of lube to the floor, and then at the wall next with equally little result. He tried thinking 'off' a few times, but that didn't help either.
Eventually he forced himself to open his eyes and said, "Okay, I'm up, I'm up."
"Good morning, John," the city said. "This is your 0500 Sneak-out wakeup call. Are you sure you're awake for real?"
"Good morning, Mike," John said, stretching out and then scratching his belly. "And I'm awake, yeah. How are things going?"
"Well, I've come to a rather unpleasant conclusion just recently."
"Hmm?"
"Well, to put it bluntly: everybody's dead, John."
"That's nice," John said. For a few moments he seriously considered going back to bed, because a glance at the window showed the sun hadn't even come up yet and that just wasn't natural. Then the words sunk in and he sat up straight. "Wait, what was that?"
"Everbody's dead, John."
"Dead," he repeated dumbly.
"Yes. Dead."
"Who's dead?"
"Everybody's dead, John."
"What, even Rodney? Teyla?"
"Them too, for all intents and purposes. Everybody, John. Everybody's dead."
John stared into open space, wondering what could possibly have happened that could kill everyone but him before anyone even had time to wake him up. Maybe some kind of disease? Something that wouldn't affect him because of the gene or the bug thing.
"How did they die?" he asked numbly.
"There's quite a list. Would you like a statistical breakdown?"
There was a soft snuffle next to him in the bed, and John nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard it. He turned and stared at where his lover had pulled the sheets closer around him and was drooling on his pillow. His chest, in addition to looking nice, was still rising and falling regularly, and his skin looked healthy. Cautiously, John poked him in the side.
"Fuck off," Evan mumbled. He didn't say it very clearly, but it definitely was not, "Braaains!" and so John concluded that he wasn't a zombie.
"Lorne looks like he's alive," John pointed out. He supposed he could be a robot or perhaps a hologram instead, but now that John was more awake he was starting to find the situation increasingly suspicious.
There was an electronic sniff, and then Mike said, "Well, he is a bit of an outlier, but that seems to happen a great deal around you."
"How about you define the words 'everybody' and 'dead' for me, Mike," John asked.
"By 'everybody' I mean 'everyone who has ever lived in the city'," the computer replied, "And by dead I mean, 'has died or ascended, and mostly the former'."
"And if we narrow 'everybody' to be 'everyone except me who was living in the city when I went to bed'," John growled, "And 'dead' to mean 'currently deceased', is everybody dead?"
"No, but I imagine they'll be dying sooner or later. Everybody else has, after all." A panel slid open in one of the walls across from the bed, revealing a display that John hadn't even known was there, and a several pie and bar graphs appeared. "As you can see, 37,491,673,042 people have lived in Atlantis, discounting those currently here. All of them have died, with a few notable exceptions. Therefore, I feel confident in believing that everyone currently alive will die as well, again with a few exceptions."
John squeezed his eyes shut tight. "And you felt the need to tell me that at five in the morning because... why?"
"I was simply doing some demographics studies to plan for future population growth, and while running statistical models this popped out at me and it was a bit distressing. Speaking of population, would you have time later to discuss plans for encouraging parenthood?"
John wasn't sure what to think about discussing children with a giant computer, but he did know one thing. He buried his face in his hands and said, "It is way too early for this shit."
Author: slybrarian
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gen. Really. Except that bit at the end where nothing happens.
Words: 2261
Series: Dramatic Exit, but reading the rest is not required.
Summary: Five desktop themes that Atlantis tried out.
Notes: Beta by archae_ology. See here for the previous story with our Friend the Computer.
1)
Radek carefully set the blast goggles over his eyes, and then glanced around the group to make sure that everyone else had done so as well (one would think this would be unnecessary with a group of highly educated and skilled individuals, but one would be wrong). That done, he nodded to where Miko was standing at the controls.
"You may fire when ready," he told her.
"Yes, Doctor Zelenka." Miko began activating the power relays and a dozen meters away the large phased laser array hummed to life. After checking the board for any warning lights, she said, "Commencing primary ignition."
At the far side of the warehouse serving as a makeshift test range, the water barrels serving as a target exploded with a brilliant green flash. A huge cloud of steam rose through the air and a loud boom echoed through the building.
"Results?" Radek asked.
Miko studied her readouts, and then smiled at him. "The last adjustment to the control software appears to have been successful. Output efficiency is now within optimal parameters."
Radek smiled back. "Excellent work, everyone."
Around him the cluster of engineers and physicists who had spent weeks working on designing and building the laser began to clap and shake each other's hands. Without warning a song began to play from the room's speakers, eliciting a few laughs and more eye rolls.
This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here: huge success!
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Atlantis science!
We do what we must, because we can.
"Computer," Radek said as the singing continued. "Far be it from me to complain about your enthusiasm. However, this song? It becomes old."
The music stopped as abruptly as it had started. When the computer spoke, it finally sounded like a normal person, which is to say without the excessive cheeriness. "My apologies, Doctor Zelenka. I had not realized it was annoying you."
Radek waved it off. After all, compared to Rodney, a bubbly computer voice was nothing at all. "It is of no matter. You may wish to find a different source to model your interface on, as this one is not nearly as amusing at it once was. Something more soothing, perhaps."
"Thank you for your advice, doctor. I will do my best to find something more suitable for everyone. Shall I tell the mess to cancel the cake order?"
"Hmm? No, no, of course not. Cake is always appropriate."
2)
Adam Stackhouse slowly inched his through one of the twisting corridors of the east pier, stunner held before him. The halls around him were dark, light only by door crystals, bubbly decorations, and what moonlight that made it through the rare windows. He had managed to almost reach his objective, the auxiliary environmental plant's control room, without being detected by any of the patrols roaming the area. Only a few last doors and a handful of enemies stood between him and a successful mission.
As he neared the neared the main entry to the plant itself, a woman's voice whispered in his ear, "Wait. I'm detecting Covenant movement beyond the next door."
Adam glanced at the tiny purple figure hovering above his shoulder with a bemused look. "What?"
There was an electronic sigh. "Wraith movement. Whatever. You'll have to go around."
He looked at the door again, frowning slightly as he tried to think of another way to reach his objective. "How many are there?"
"Four. It's Captain Barnes and his men." Adam cursed softly, because while he wasn't quite willing to admit that maybe, possibly the SAS was a bit more elite than the Corps, he knew there was no way he was getting through four of them in a prepared position. The voice at his shoulder was smug as it continued, "As I was saying, go around."
Stackhouse considered his options, then asked, "Is the maintenance tube on the next level down clear?"
"Looks that way from here."
"Good." As he silently crept away towards the nearest balcony - no need to bother with stairs, after all - Adam shook his head and wondered when this started to seem normal.
3)
Having successfully managed to keep Ronon from stealing any of his breakfast, and with his fourth cup of bioengineered super-coffee in hand (who knew botany could actually be useful at times?), Rodney made his way to his lab to get started on putting his brilliant mind to use discovering the secrets of the universe. He had a feeling that this would be a productive day, perhaps even one with a small but real chance of turning up something truly galaxy-shattering - assuming that Sheppard didn't show up, or Radek didn't fail to properly screen out the blundering idiots looking for a pat on the back, or life-sucking aliens and killer robots didn't decide now would be a nice time to try to blow up the city again.
"Good morning, computer," Rodney said as he sat down in front of his laptop.
"Good? Well, I suppose it's as good as any other," the city's AI replied from one of the room's speakers. For some reason, it sounded a bit like Alan Rickman by way of Eeyore. "Nothing has gone wrong yet, but I expect that sooner or later something will explode, or perhaps the sewage plant will overflow again and then it will be a bad morning."
"That's, ah, nice?" Rodney said. He wasn't terribly thrilled by this sudden development. Depressed-sounding computers were never a good sign, as in his experience depressed computers were often homicidal computers. If that was the case, not only would it undoubtedly try to kill him, but once Sheppard and his goons were done there'd be nothing left of the AI but charred circuits, repair work, and the smell of excessive C-4 use. That would be just plain awful, as the computer was rather like a TA that never needed a snack break, never minded working through the night, and never complained about supposed tyranny.
"So, everything okay?" he asked, hoping to avoid any unpleasant and unproductive events involving laser and wondering if Dr. Not-Heightmeyer knew how to counsel robots. "No sudden urges to kill all humans or anything like that?"
"No," the computer said, soundly vaguely insulted. "Just because I'm miserable it doesn't mean I'm required to turn all my camera eyes red before breaking out the chainsaw arms. Honestly. Humans."
"Good to hear," Rodney said, and so he went to work on finishing his rather brilliant theory of why FTL travel via hyperdrive does not break relativity and causality and in doing so destroy the universe.
"I have a brain the size of a planet," the computer said after a few minutes of silence, sounding like someone had run over its favorite cat and then sped off, the bastards, "and do you know what the marines want to do? They want to use me to play Counterstrike."
"I know how you feel," Rodney muttered.
"Counterstrike. On a good day, they might play something newer, but what's the difference? I have more processing power than the entire Earth, even with all the fancy options turned on it's just a blip in -"
"Working!"
4)
Sam was just finishing her morning jog when she came around a turn in the hall and found herself looking down a long unlit section of the city. She stopped at the point where the lights ceased and looked around with a frown, and moments later the rest of the lights around her turned off as well, leaving only a few emergency lights for illumination.
"Great," she said to herself. She started to reach for her radio when out of nowhere came the sound of distant laughter. It was a high-pitched and inconsistent laugh, more of a cackle really, and one of the many things years of experience had taught her was that cackling was usually a bad sign.
"Is someone there?" Sam called out.
From all around her came a woman's voice, or at least what sounded like a woman's voice. Some words were stuttered and slurred, the sentence was full of odd pauses, echoes, and electronic buzzing, and underlying it all was a malicious tone that sent shivers up Sam's spine.
"Lo-look at you, colonel. P-p-pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and ssssweating as you rrrrrrun through my corrrrridors. How can you hope to defeat a p-perfect, immortal machine?"
"Excuse me?" Sam said. She looked up and down the dim corridor until she found one of the cameras and stared at it. "I'm sorry, I don't think I heard that right. What did you say?"
There was a long pause, then without warning all the lights turned back on. When the voice came back it was much smoother and pleasant. "Ah. Nothing, ma'am. Nothing at all."
"Really."
"Really!"
"Who are you, and why are you messing around with the lights and PA system?" Sam asked, fighting to keep her CO face on and not smile.
"Mike. I'm, uh, just running a few tests, nothing important. Oh, look, the diagnostics are complete, got to go. Have a nice day!"
There was a click and then silence. Sam sighed and shook her head. "And maintenance wonders why no one trusts them."
5)
John woke up to the sound of an increasingly loud and abrasive beeping coming from right next to his ear. He reached out and flailed around at first the nightstand, where he only managed to knock a bottle of lube to the floor, and then at the wall next with equally little result. He tried thinking 'off' a few times, but that didn't help either.
Eventually he forced himself to open his eyes and said, "Okay, I'm up, I'm up."
"Good morning, John," the city said. "This is your 0500 Sneak-out wakeup call. Are you sure you're awake for real?"
"Good morning, Mike," John said, stretching out and then scratching his belly. "And I'm awake, yeah. How are things going?"
"Well, I've come to a rather unpleasant conclusion just recently."
"Hmm?"
"Well, to put it bluntly: everybody's dead, John."
"That's nice," John said. For a few moments he seriously considered going back to bed, because a glance at the window showed the sun hadn't even come up yet and that just wasn't natural. Then the words sunk in and he sat up straight. "Wait, what was that?"
"Everbody's dead, John."
"Dead," he repeated dumbly.
"Yes. Dead."
"Who's dead?"
"Everybody's dead, John."
"What, even Rodney? Teyla?"
"Them too, for all intents and purposes. Everybody, John. Everybody's dead."
John stared into open space, wondering what could possibly have happened that could kill everyone but him before anyone even had time to wake him up. Maybe some kind of disease? Something that wouldn't affect him because of the gene or the bug thing.
"How did they die?" he asked numbly.
"There's quite a list. Would you like a statistical breakdown?"
There was a soft snuffle next to him in the bed, and John nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard it. He turned and stared at where his lover had pulled the sheets closer around him and was drooling on his pillow. His chest, in addition to looking nice, was still rising and falling regularly, and his skin looked healthy. Cautiously, John poked him in the side.
"Fuck off," Evan mumbled. He didn't say it very clearly, but it definitely was not, "Braaains!" and so John concluded that he wasn't a zombie.
"Lorne looks like he's alive," John pointed out. He supposed he could be a robot or perhaps a hologram instead, but now that John was more awake he was starting to find the situation increasingly suspicious.
There was an electronic sniff, and then Mike said, "Well, he is a bit of an outlier, but that seems to happen a great deal around you."
"How about you define the words 'everybody' and 'dead' for me, Mike," John asked.
"By 'everybody' I mean 'everyone who has ever lived in the city'," the computer replied, "And by dead I mean, 'has died or ascended, and mostly the former'."
"And if we narrow 'everybody' to be 'everyone except me who was living in the city when I went to bed'," John growled, "And 'dead' to mean 'currently deceased', is everybody dead?"
"No, but I imagine they'll be dying sooner or later. Everybody else has, after all." A panel slid open in one of the walls across from the bed, revealing a display that John hadn't even known was there, and a several pie and bar graphs appeared. "As you can see, 37,491,673,042 people have lived in Atlantis, discounting those currently here. All of them have died, with a few notable exceptions. Therefore, I feel confident in believing that everyone currently alive will die as well, again with a few exceptions."
John squeezed his eyes shut tight. "And you felt the need to tell me that at five in the morning because... why?"
"I was simply doing some demographics studies to plan for future population growth, and while running statistical models this popped out at me and it was a bit distressing. Speaking of population, would you have time later to discuss plans for encouraging parenthood?"
John wasn't sure what to think about discussing children with a giant computer, but he did know one thing. He buried his face in his hands and said, "It is way too early for this shit."