�Yeah, I�ve got a good handle on that concept,� John said.
�Good,� Sam said before she went on to explain more about the fighter jets that John would soon be training on.
As he watched the highway speed by John thought about the events of the days since arriving on Earth. The first few days were just what he had predicted�invasive and intense physical by the SGC doctor, several painstaking eighteen hour days of steady debriefings, and then Elizabeth left for DC to do the politicking thing, Carson left for Scotland to visit with his mother, and Rodney holing himself up in the lab that had been made available for his use. The only thing that was any different from what he had anticipated was that he had found one of his oldest friends at the SGC and had spent most of his time with her and her team rather than bored and alone.
�If you don�t mind my asking, sir, what is Atlantis like?� asked the young Sergeant who had been tasked with driving John to Peterson Air Force Base then bringing the SGC car back to the mountain.
On Atlantis, unless dealing with official situations, rank tended to more or less simply fall away, an environment that John and Elizabeth had fostered and, to differing degrees, revelled in. Sure, neither one of them was hesitant to pull rank when necessary, but, for the most part, the only designations that seemed to matter were military or scientist, and even those classifications tended to fall by the wayside under certain circumstances. Since returning to Earth, however, John had been thrust back into an existence of ranks and protocols that had been drilled into him and every other military type from day one. The problem with rank, at least in John�s opinion, was that it tended to make situations that should be relatively casual and painless�for example, a car ride that is approximately fourteen and a half kilometres long through some very picturesque terrain�into an awkward and tense reality.
�Atlantis is� crazy,� John said, chuckling. �On one hand there are the Wraith and the Genii and various sympathizers. But on the other hand� it�s Atlantis. The Lost City of the Ancients.� He shrugged. �It is home,� he said, unable to accurately describe what Atlantis was like.
John and the Sergeant chatted through the ride to Patterson. The Sergeant, it turned out, was an avid football fan, especially at the college level, so John soon found himself more or less up to date on his favourite game. It hadn�t been a very good year for her favourite teams, but he�d already known that from the few moments he�d cut away from life at the SGC to check the internet for the general overview of the season he�d missed.
The Sergeant had a bit of a lead foot, John noted, because the trip between Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson, which took about an hour when taking all the variables�traffic, construction, other man-made and natural obstacles�was over in less than forty minutes, and not because traffic was light. The good thing was that John was certainly not going to miss his hop�he shuddered to think what Landry would do to him if he missed the transport�but the bad thing was that he had over forty minutes to waste before he had to even think about starting to head for a seat on the hulking C-17 that was being checked over on by a crew when he arrived.
So, as he often did when he was bored, John turned to Elizabeth for help in keeping his mind occupied.
Of course, on Atlantis, all he really had to do was go to her office, or maybe the Mess, perch himself on the edge of her desk or sit across the table from her, and strike up a conversation. A continent apart�not to mention a galaxy away from the familiar metal-and-glass city that they called home�turning to Elizabeth was a little more difficult, and generally required a phone line.
Fortunately John had a phone and the knowledge that Elizabeth didn�t have any meetings that day, a vote in the House taking the attention of most of the people she needed to meet with.
It didn�t escape John�s notice that Elizabeth�s cell phone was the first number in his speed-dial�a concept he had had to adjust to after a year on Atlantis, eighteen months in Antarctica, and two years being stationed anywhere except the United States. Of course, he rationalized, he had a limited number of people that he talked to, and even fewer that he wanted to talk to, at least on Earth, and Elizabeth was the only person who wasn�t easily accessible by simply wandering the halls of the SGC or dialling the proper extension and leaving a message. Before he�d left the SGC he had had Sam program in any other numbers he would need while in Nevada�her numbers, Daniel�s numbers, any number that Teal�c could be reached at, Rodney�s extension, Carson�s numbers in Scotland, all the numbers he would need for the SGC, and, he was surprised to note, the numbers of a few of their old Academy buddies that Sam, apparently, had handy while she had been messing with his phone. Sam had put herself in as the second speed-dial designation, then the main SGC switchboard (which was answered by someone who didn�t have the clearance to know who she was connecting calls to) was put in as the third. The rest were left empty, which was fine with John. It was just as easy to scroll through the phone book�it wasn�t like it was full of names and numbers�to find the number he needed.