Personal Journal: Andy Buchanan

[Andy Buchanan]

[Placeholder Post]

[Andy Buchanan]

[Date on Journal is two years prior to current time]

+++System start up+++

+++TVA active. Ready to receive data.... connection made.+++

+++Entry begins. Good afternoon, Lieutenant.+++

Er... Hi.

+++Please begin.+++

Right. Begin.

So they said "start a journal, Buchanan. Write down your thoughts and feelings. It'll be good for you." They all seemed so entirely convinced of this fact that I've decided to give it a go. Fortunately, due to the wonders of non-Earth technology, these entries will be brought to you without the guaranteed spelling errors that you'd have got if I'd written them. 

Oh, I know that voice recognition software's been in place for ever, but it was always a bit hit and miss. You'd spend hours training them to recognise what your voice was like and they'd still come up with completely random replacements for words. It's worse than AutoCorrect. This tech is pretty new and still very much in development, but it sort of... connects your thoughts. Yeah, that's it. You think at the screen and what you're trying to convey is captured in writing. Actually, that's pretty amazing. And there's this AI that's built in. She's incredible. I call her Tiva, TVA. Thoughtwave to Voice Analyser. Not very catchy, but she seems to like it. I tell you what, when this thing finally sneaks out of here and hits the commercial market, the world's going to go *nuts* for it. Mind, that'll be in about fifty years time at current technology levels. It fascinates me, though. There must be some sort of...

+++Thought distraction detected. Do you wish to continue on original path, or wax lyrical about the mechanics of my hardware?+++

What? Oh. Yes. Yes. Resume original entry. Not that your hardware's not lovely, of course, you understand. Your circuits are very pretty, Tiva.

+++I understand, Lieutenant. Thank you for the comment. Entry resumes.+++

Yeah. 

So... where was I? Oh yes. It'll be good for me, apparently. I've spent the last few weeks under the combined care of the Area 51 medic and three of the associated psychiatrists. They're all incredibly keen for me to work out my problems by talking them through. I think there have been three separate psychiatrists because none of them can actually find anything wrong with me. They all seem convinced I must have been traumatised by various events and things that have happened, but so far, the most disturbing thing they've unearthed is that I have taken a bit of a shine to the idea of keeping frogs.

They're having trouble relating that back to any sort of disorder, so they've determined that I must still be holding back. Apparently I need to open up more, and so I think the point of this journal is so I can vent my spleen, let out my feelings instead of holding them in.

It should probably come as no surprise that they spent a full six sessions trying to blame everything on Dad. They failed there. He might be a miserable sod at times, but I love my dad and my dad loves me. No childhood issues. Even my older sister is still my friend. 

They try to put everything back to that business with Apollo, though and I suppose they might be right.

+++You have gone very quiet, Lieutenant. Is your entry complete?+++

Sorry, sorry, no. I'm just thinking about some stuff.

+++Do you wish me to record those thoughts?+++

Frankly, no. They're thoughts I don't particularly want putting down in a readable format. At least, not until I've worked them out a bit more. Put it this way. How are you supposed to react to fighting against a carbon copy of yourself? Except that copy of yourself is, like, a demi-god, and a completely psychopathic maniac?

+++I am not programmed to answer such questions, Lieutenant. I can search the internet for an answer if you wish?+++

Hah! No, don't do that. I'm pretty sure you'd Googlewhack on that one.

+++Do you wish to resume your entry?+++

Yeah. Let's talk about the accident. You know about that, right?

+++Accessing personal files. The explosion that left you injured and destroyed an estimated three million dollars of laboratory equipment?+++

That's depressingly accurate. I'm sort of glad they didn't take that out of my salary, I'd be paying it back until about a thousand years after I die.

+++Accuracy is my goal, Lieutenant. What do you wish to record about the accident?+++

First of all, it needs to be formalised - and when I'm done here, I'm going to start that process - that Sergeant Delaney is completely off the hook on this one. I know that she's been blaming herself since it happened, but really. It's not her fault. It's just one of those things. It's a fact of working under these conditions that from time to time, we are going to come up against tech that we don't understand. If anybody's to directly blame, it's me for encouraging a gung-ho attitude to engineering. In some cases, the 'what happens if I press this button' ethic is spot on. But it's never meant to be taken literally. In the case of the accident, it was a culmination of lots of people pushing lots of buttons. We were just too... enthusiastic to get the weapon up and running. I'm glad I got everyone evacuated before it blew up.

+++Accessing personal files. Several burns to torso. Six weeks unconscious and seven grafting operations. Pain management ongoing. Patient does not discuss or linger on the accident, waving it off as one of those things. Personal data correlates with current thoughts, Lieutenant.+++

Glad we agree. You know what, Tiva? You're surprisingly easy to talk to. Why do you think that is?

+++I do not judge, Lieutenant. I merely record and respond when prompted.+++

The gods help us the day you develop full sentience and do start judging. 

+++I will try not to do that.+++

Thanks, Tiva.

+++You are welcome, Lieutenant.+++

I'll tell you what, though. Much as I like the people here - and I do like them - I sometimes miss being out in the field. I miss those chances to make things up as I go along. I love playing with all this alien engineering and helping out the R&D team, but I miss... Stargate Command. I miss all those people. I miss being part of something... huge.

+++Are you discontent, Lieutenant Buchanan?+++

No! Well, maybe. Alright. A bit. A lot. Whatever. But I can't walk away from all this. I can't go back out to the world beyond. Not knowing everything that I know. Not having travelled where I've been. How can I ever expect to be normal again? Don't try to answer that one, Tiva, it's a rhetorical question. Also, I'm glad you're doing the work for me, because there's no way on Earth I could spell rhetorical.

I'm allowed back to work next week. All this downtime has driven me stir-crazy.

+++Stir Crazy. A 1980 film starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Do you think you could win a rodeo, Lieutenant?+++

*laughter*

No, Tiva. I'm going to have to work on your search algorithms at some point, I reckon. I mean that I've been going a little... that sitting around doing nothing hasn't been all that good for me. If the shrinks want to point the finger at anything that's behind my recent... troubles... the lack of sleep, the short temper, the headaches... then they'd do a lot worse than recognise that I'm not the kind of guy who's any good at doing nothing. Bloody hell! That's precisely it, Tiva! Just talking this through with you, I've learned more about my state of mental health than I managed with three separate psychiatrists! What the hell does that say about their competence? Only don't tell them that. Encode that bit when the entry's finished.

+++Understood.+++

That'll do for now, I think. I reckon you and I are going to become very good friends over the next few weeks, Tiva.

+++I look forward to it, Lieutenant. Do you wish to end this entry?+++

Yes, please.

+++End of entry.+++

+++FILING ENTRY AS BUCHAG001.... Complete+++

+++System Shut-Down in Progress+++

+++End+++