Author's Notes: This one is Lizbet's fault, because everything golf is Lizbet's fault, and because she did a great job of helping me spruce up the terminology and wisecracks contained therein-- so here, Lizbet: have a gold putter! A big #3 club for Perri, for a wicked slice at the betareading and editing. A cheer from the crowd for Dawn and Cagey, who agreed on the distance of this drive and called out their comments on the swing. And a shaker of martinis each for Dianne and Valerie, who were highly amused. Feedback would be cool. You know Tiger would do it. The First Annual Interstellar Naquadah Open "How far away is Alaris, again?" "Several billion miles." "Cool. Tiger Woods' got nothing on us." Jack checked his watch. "Whoops. Cutting it a little close here, Teal'c, I think it's---" "COLONEL O'NEILL!" "--time to go!" Teal'c hastily slung his bag over his shoulder and hurried up the ramp and through the event horizon; Jack saluted General Hammond through the glass of the Embarkation Room window before grabbing his clubs and following Teal'c. The last thing he saw before the stars-and-darkness ride of the 'Gate was the expression of open-mouthed disbelief on his CO's face, watching his second-in-command dive through the wormhole in plus-fours and matching vest. Usually, we come *back* wearing the weird clothes.... It was really all Carter's fault. If she hadn't told them there were fourteen other planets out of sync with the universal version of reality, and if she hadn't made that little chart that looked almost *exactly* like a golf course, Jack never would have had the idea in the first place. And if they got caught this time out, he was going to have to remember to mention that it was Daniel who pointed out the "no consequences" thing in the first place. But since fourteen was close enough to a regulation fifteen to make no difference to anyone but a math geek, and since it felt like it had been at least a couple months since he'd gotten to go golfing, there was no way anyone could tell him he didn't deserve this. "Ow!" Rough landing. The Stargate dumped him out on his butt, golf shoes skidding out from under him on the marble pedestal Alaris's Stargate was mounted on. Note to self: the tee box at number one is a doozy. "Are you hurt, O'Neill?" "Nah, just some bruises. We're definitely off the fairway here." Teal'c glanced around the dense tropical foliage surrounding them, then pointed off to the left with his wedge. "I believe I see your ball, O'Neill. You are most fortunate it landed to the left of those bushes." "Yeah? Why?" "Because we agreed that unnecessary disturbance of the wildlife would count as a one-stroke penalty. And the mother egress nearby might have mistaken your ball for one of her eggs." "Egress? As in, this way to the egress...? Never mind. Look, two hundred yards straight ahead from the 'Gate, like we planned, right?" "Precisely." Another reason to be golfing their way around the galaxy was the fact that golf was a game of skill. Technique. Endurance. Mastery. And Teal'c knew next to nothing about it, which meant Jack had a fighting chance at finally beating the big guy at something. Especially on this course. "Damn. Sliced it." "Perhaps you should have used the #5 wood, O'Neill." "In this kind of cover? Might as well use a featherduster." "But you sacrificed control for power, and overshot the mark." "All part of the strategy, Teal'c. We gotta be gone from here before the General can send anyone after us, remember?" "Ah. A good point." Teal'c took his second shot, sending the ball arcing over a small pond, only for the prehistoric stillness to be broken by a sharp "ow!" in the bushes. "Oops. Uh, fore!" Teal'c looked sheepish, and slanted a glance at Jack. "SG-12 is early." "Nah, I must've got the time wrong. Sorry about that, Major!" "Colonel O'Neill?" The four members of SG-12 gave them some *very* dubious looks as they trudged through the undergrowth, lugging their injured comrade back for early medical attention, just like they had a hundred times before. Except this time, Jack and Teal'c weren't waiting in the Gate Room. Major Wilkins did an outright double-take when he got a look at Teal'c's outfit. "Hey, good to see you. Don't worry, Doc Fraiser's going to be waiting for you guys on the other side of the 'Gate with a stretcher at the ready." Jack grinned nonchalantly and leaned on his club. "Oh, and could you tell General Hammond that we'll catch up with him back at the clubhouse?" "Uh, sure..." "Thanks. We'll just play through, if you don't mind." Somewhere underneath all his justifications, Jack was aware that this little foray was a last-ditch attempt to keep himself and Teal'c from losing it, big-time. One more way to fight the mind-numbing sameness of life as they now knew it, no matter how crazy the method. On the other hand, it *was* just the sort of course that you'd be able to use to out-brag every other hacker at Pebble Beach. Not that anyone would ever believe them, even if the project was ever eventually declassified. "Ready?" "I am totaling up my score. One moment." Teal'c frowned at his card, then shook his head. "Seven strokes. Very unsatisfactory." "Hey, I got eight. I think maybe we underestimated this hole. Call it par six instead of five." "Colonel O'Neill, according to the Rules of Golf, par five is the highest --" "Yeah, and have those old geezers in Scotland ever played through a wormhole? I didn't think so. Par six." Teal'c's face cleared and he nodded calmly. "Very well. It is your turn, O'Neill." "Fire up the Gate, and we're gone." Carter hadn't suspected a thing when he'd asked for the coordinates and MALP summaries of the fourteen worlds that were being influenced by P3X439. The woman may be a genius, but sneaky she is not. Hmm. She probably needed a vacation, too, even if she didn't know it. All that science, the same thing over and over, had to be frying her brain. Yup. They'd definitely have to bring her along next time. Tell her it's research, and we won't even have to talk her into it. The only problem would be finding another set of clubs and golf gear. Well, he'd deal with that later. He'd kitted them out this time, hadn't he? And right now, he had a match to win, and the second hole to conquer on R7W892. A blast of hot air met them on the other side of the Gate, along with the sight of a significantly less cluttered fairway than the one on Alaris. "Oh, mannnn...." "A sand trap." Teal'c donned his sunglasses, then looked mournfully at Jack. "A very large sand trap." "Got that right. But call it a bunker, okay, Teal'c? You don't wanna sound like a duffer in front of the crowd," he said, gesturing at a few tiny zebra lizards slithering under the cover of the nearby lava rocks. Acres of white-and-black sand stretched in front of them in all directions, in a landscape of salt and pepper tinted very slightly gold by the bright orange sun overhead. Jack grimaced, looking around. "Okay, where the hell's my ball?" "108 yards in that direction," Teal'c said, pointing to the right. "How did you---" "I obtained a 'ball-tracker' from Major Kovachek prior to departure." Teal'c's smile was almost a smirk, as he tilted the small rectangular device in his hand so Jack could see it. "Both of our balls have small radio transceivers embedded within them." "Sweet. What made you think of that?" "Captain Collins commented at great length on the difficulty of retrieving his property at the driving range. I did not wish to waste any time searching when we had several holes to play." "Smart man. I think you're gonna need a driver on this stuff...." If he'd been stuck in this by himself, he would've killed someone by now. Daniel, probably. Possibly General Hammond. Possibly himself. Having Teal'c along for the ride at least gave him someone to turn to and yell, "Am I crazy? Am I? AM I?! WELL?!" every once in a while when the repetitions got really bad. The fact that Teal'c would just raise an eyebrow half the time didn't make it any worse. At least he could never be totally sure which eyebrow it was going to be when he asked. "O'Neill, has it occurred to you that what we are doing would be regarded as completely inexplicable by the Ancients who built the time machine, as well as these Stargates?" "Yeah. Maybe." Jack squinted at the event horizon, and lined up his putt through the Gate to R2X124. "Still, you gotta figure--- any buncha guys who could put together a set-up like this would probably have to run some kinda competition through the 'gates to see how it all hooked up. Just once. Just so they could say they did it." Teal'c cocked his head, considering. "Perhaps. A marathon through the operational Stargates, to see which route would be the fastest, would seem to be called for." "You can do that on your own time, man. I'm not playing any kinda Phone Home Frenzy if I can help it. Too much like the real thing. Fore!" ~ Much later (after golfing through a national park, a minor local war zone, someone's board room, a traffic district that reminded Jack of downtown London, another one of those ever-present evergreen forests, and a festival straight out of a Hawaiian Elvis movie, while arguing half the time over whether they should play through the center of the course where the time anomaly originated, or just play the SGC twice to get the regulation fifteenth hole, and still managing to stay one step ahead of any teams Hammond may have sent through).... "Damn. I thought this was the hole near the beach." "It may be that it is." "Yeah, well, hard to tell, huh?" Illania's night sky didn't look very different from Earth's, except that there was no visible moon at all. Jack thought Carter had mentioned a stationary satellite in orbit, but it must've been on the other side of the planet, because the only visible light came from the stars shining above. "Would've put these on before we went through the 'Gate if I'd known," Jack grumbled, fishing out his night-vision goggles out of his bag. "Is that tracker still working?" "It is functioning adequately. However, your ball appears to have encountered some resistance," Teal'c answered, pointing his club toward where Jack's ball was caught in a tangle of thorny vines. The green-black light of infrared didn't make the stuff look very appealing. "Damnit." He squatted down and stuck his hand in the underbrush, but couldn't seem to reach the ball. Standing, he used his club as a machete for a couple seconds, stood back to evaluate his work, then watched one of the vines slither away with the ball firmly twined in its leafy grasp. "... the hell?" "O'Neill." "Hang on, something just---" "The vegetation appears to have eaten my ball." "Oh." Jack turned around and saw Teal'c pointing the ballfinder at the point where the perky-looking strands of vine took a sharp turn into the ground. The bemused expression on his face and the way the undergrowth quivered like a flower bed with the hiccups seemed to confirm that the flora on this planet was a little more hyperactive than usual. "Okaaay.... Let's try this again." Jack got a new ball out of the bag, dropped it on the ground and swung, tracking the ball's progress as it flew over the shrubbery in front of them, then began dropping downward through the branches of a nearby tree toward an open patch of grass. It never made it. One of the shiny green-black branches unfurled around the golf ball, caught it, then closed up with an almost-audible snap of twigs. "Hmmmmm." "O'Neill, we do not have a large enough supply of golf balls to continue losing them in this fashion. I suggest discontinuing the game at this hole." Jack blinked then pushed his goggles up on his forehead. "Aw, c'mon, we can't quit now! There's a bar at the next hole; at least, that's what it looks like on the MALP's. We *have* to keep going." "You are only saying this because you are winning." "Hey. Am I suggesting you want to quit just because you're losing?" Okay, winning *might* have been part of why he didn't want to quit, but... Teal'c crossed his arms, beetled his brows, and snorted; Jack's tone became wheedling. "Okay, I'll tell you what -- if we finish the game, winner gets to kiss Carter." "Did you not intend to do that already?" "Well... yeah. So?" Jack wasn't sure, but he didn't think he'd ever seen Teal'c actually roll his eyes in disgust before. This little break to play the sport of kings was leading the Jaffa into all sorts of emotional displays. Heck, I think it's good for him. "Okay, ummm.... Winner gets to skip Daniel's next language lesson?" "We had agreed upon that already, O'Neill." Teal'c eyes narrowed in thought, then his mouth creased into a pleased smile. "The winner will wield the Z2000 Super-Soaker during the waterfight in our next repetition of the day at the SGC." "You're kidding." "I am not." "Whoa... All right. You keep playing, and if you win, I'll hand it over. But only if you promise to nail Daniel in his office with it. And maybe General Hammond, too." "Agreed. That would be... cool." Jack did a double-take, then took one last whack at the vegetation with his club before shouldering his bag. "Cool? Teal'c, you continue to evolve into a galactic, maybe even an Earth-level cosmopolitan. Golf, slang... pretty soon, you'll understand about hockey." Teal'c flicked an eyebrow at him, but his satisfied smile remained unchanged. "Dial us outta here, m'man. I hear a Scotch on the rocks calling our names on TZ3499." ~ Feedback to Chris   Back to Stargate SG-1 Fanfic / Back to the Chaos Horizon