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Jack O'Neill shifted uncomfortably in the hospital bed, trying to read the page before him for the third time. It blurred and his head ached. He tossed the book at the table beside his bed, and glowered at it as it teetered onto the edge and crashed to the floor, taking Ferretti's chess set with it. Bored, bored, bored. He was tired of reading, tired of lying around with broken bones, tired of therapy. Tired of nurses in and out all night, his old reflexes jolting him awake every time he sensed the movement in the room. They told him that he'd get a walking cast and be released to recuperate at home in another week, but it sounded more like a year in purgatory.
And the place was too damned cold. He drew the blanket up to his chin and shivered. The nurse insisted that it was a comfortable seventy-two degrees, but Jack hadn't felt really warm since he had returned from his ordeal in Antarctica. He almost wished that he were back in the SGC infirmary, rather than the Air Force Academy Hospital. No windows, but at least there, he'd get more visitors. He studied the items on the floor; he'd have to get out of bed to reach them.
He had just slid his good leg over the edge when the senior nurse on the floor came in, seeking the source of the crash. She seemed to be the one who most frequently came when he called. He thought he might have intimidated the younger nurses on the ward. He hastily pulled his leg back into bed, but not quickly enough to escape her notice. She swiftly took in the book and scattered chess pieces on the floor and restored them to the table with an irritated twist to her mouth. "Are we feeling a little testy, Colonel?" She inquired.
Jack knew he was behaving badly, but as usual in this stage of convalescence was too frustrated not to respond sarcastically. "Why no, we seem to be filled with happiness and light."
The woman looked at him, obviously repressing a sharp retort. Jack felt a little guilty, he knew he was a terrible patient, but really he just wanted out of here. He'd be able to manage at home. Somehow. Her reply was forestalled by a figure at the door.
"Hey, Jack." Daniel came into the room and smiled at the nurse. He took in the woman's expression. "Hi, Nurse Richards. Is he being difficult?"
Jack was peeved. "Hello, Daniel. I'm lying right here. Can you please not talk about me in the third person?"
Richards' expression had softened at Daniel's polite enquiry. "The colonel does seem to be a little out-of-sorts," she told him, and departed. Jack was constantly astounded at how Daniel managed to melt the toughest females and yet seemed completely unaware. 'You must use this great power only for good,' he muttered.
"What?" Daniel had turned away from the departing nurse and sat down beside the bed.
"Nothing." Jack said. "What's up?" For once his teammate had come empty-handed. Probably because he hadn't yet read the books that Daniel had already plied him with over the last couple of weeks. He was pleased to see that the cut on Daniel's forehead was healed and the scar already fading. The same accident that had stranded O'Neill and Carter in Antarctica had ejected Daniel from the Stargate so fast he claimed not to remember hitting the ramp. Though possibly the loss of memory had more to do with the hours he had been unconscious following the blow to the head.
Daniel shrugged, "Not much. I've made quite a dent in the translation backlog. Sam's been playing in the lab. Teal'c has been helping me, meditating, working out. Frankly, we're all bored stiff. We'll be glad when you're out of here and we can get back to work."
Jack was perversely pleased that the rest of his team was suffering a little too. "At least you guys can take off when it gets too deadly."
Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Well, yeah, what did you think I was doing here in the middle of the afternoon?" He leaned over and retrieved an errant rook from the floor and then scooped up the rest of the pieces piled in a jumble on the board, setting them up in their proper places. "Who brought you this?"
Jack watched Daniel deftly replacing the pieces. "Ferretti. He said he'd leave it, may be I could find someone here at the hospital to play with."
"And have you?" Daniel asked.
"Nope. I've been setting out traps with pawns in them, but I haven't bagged a victim yet."
Daniel looked amused by the image. "Right. Would you like a game?"
Jack was interested. "With you? Didn't know you played, Daniel."
Daniel shrugged. "It's been a while, I'll probably be pretty rusty."
"Want me to spot you a piece?" Jack wouldn't mind a challenge today. A battle over the chessboard was a lot more engaging to his competitive instincts than reading. And he knew without vanity that he was better than most recreational players. Though he'd probably be rusty himself. He couldn't remember when he'd last played regularly with someone of his own ability.
Daniel gave him an odd look and shifted the board carefully to the table attached to the bed and shook his head, "Let's see how the first one goes. If you cream me, we can negotiate a handicap for the next one."
"Sure. Why don't you take white?" Jack was eager for the diversion. He watched Daniel advance his knight onto the board and quickly made his own returning move. The game proceeded swiftly, neither Jack nor Daniel hesitating for long. This might actually be good, he thought. Jack occasionally dragged his teammate off base and subjected him to hockey, but he was pretty sure that the pizza and beer- well, pizza and company were more of an attraction than the sport. He rather enjoyed teasing Daniel about his determined resistance to watching sports, but it would be nice to have a pastime they both actually enjoyed.
Jack ventured to move a knight into the line of fire. Daniel took the bait, and traded a bishop for it. Jack was rather pleased as the game progressed. Daniel actually could play reasonably well, he thought. They'd each captured a few pieces, but neither had a material advantage. Then Daniel made a move that looked frankly dumb. "You sure you want to do that?" Jack asked his younger friend.
Daniel looked at him in surprise, then returned his gaze to the board, blue eyes intent behind his glasses. He'd been giving the game the same intensity of attention that he would to a difficult translation. After studying the pieces for another minute, he looked up. "Yeah, I think so."
Jack shook his head. "O-kaaay." He captured the exposed bishop and looked back at Daniel. He was pretty sure he could mate in three or four moves after that blunder.
Daniel advanced a pawn. "Check."
Jack's smug assurance melted away. "Shit." He looked down at the pieces and retraced the last several moves in his mind. Okay, Daniel wasn't the one who had blundered here, that was clear. Jack moved his king to get out of check.
"Check." Daniel made his next move and looked at him with an expression of mild interest. If he was gloating, he was concealing it well.
Jack suppressed a curse. He could see how this was going to end, but he again made the move the game required. Of course that left Daniel with a perfectly obvious counter.
"Checkmate."
Jack met his friend's eyes. "Ouch, teach me to not take an opponent seriously! Can I have a rematch? And no, I don't think I need to spot you anything."
Daniel smiled. "Sure."
Jack set up the board this time. The second game proceeded a little more slowly but Jack made a mistake that he spotted a minute too late. "Damn."
Daniel studied the board and looked at him quizzically. "Want to take it back?"
Jack shook his head. "Not after I moved it." But the second game ended swiftly, the hole he left in his defenses proving fatal. "Today is obviously not my day." He griped, replacing the pieces in their starting positions.
Daniel suggested. "That's probably enough for now anyway."
Jack looked at him, his competitive instincts piqued. "Now, you're not going to leave without letting me have one final chance at revenge, are you?"
"You'll probably play better when you're less medicated," Daniel suggested with obvious tact.
Jack glared at him, stung by the somewhat justified implication that he was playing poorly. "I'm not medicated now, damn it."
"Oops." Daniel looked apologetic. "When you're less tired, then."
Jack said in a deliberately provoking tone, "I think you're just chicken." This was actually the best entertainment that had come along since he had stopped sleeping twenty
-three hours out of twenty-four and he was loathe to stop.
Daniel shook his head. "On the evidence, Jack, I have nothing to be afraid of. If you really want to play again, sure."
This time Jack took white. The game had slowed considerably, as they considered each move carefully. Right up until the end of the game, when Daniel said, "Checkmate," for the third time. Jack stared at the board in disbelief. Daniel had set a clever trap, and he hadn't seen it coming at all. Jack retraced the play of the game in his mind and it slowly dawned on him that he hadn't made any obvious errors. Daniel was just a better player. Possibly even a lot better player. 'Duh. What part of 'genius' did you not understand?' He looked at his teammate in surprised respect. Daniel was wearing a small smile. "Shall I spot you a piece for the next one?" he offered.
Jack stared at Daniel a moment, and then couldn't help but grin back. "Hell, no. I can see I'm gonna get the chance to improve my game if I keep playing with you. Where'd you learn to play chess?"
Daniel replaced the pieces on the board and said absently. "My dad taught me the moves when I was a kid. And I played in school now and then. Y'know, chess club is one of those geek things."
"Did you compete?" Jack wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't. Daniel was possibly the most non-competitive person he'd ever known. Chess club- now that wasn't too surprising.
"Some." Daniel shrugged. "Nothing especially distinguished. I play better without the clock."
"Doesn't everyone?" Jack looked at his friend suspiciously. "How not especially distinguished are we talking here?"
Daniel was still looking at the chessboard. "I got to regional levels a couple of times when I was thirteen or fourteen. I stopped playing except for fun when I got to college. To be really good would have taken a lot of practice time that I preferred to spend on other things."
Stopped when he got to college- that was when he was sixteen, right? Jack shook his head. 'To be really good'- in Daniel's lexicon, that was probably grandmaster. He already knew that Daniel didn't set low standards for himself. "Yet another talent. Who knew?"
Daniel looked at him a little curiously. "Why is it so surprising that I play a decent game of chess?"
Jack had to think about that one for a minute. "Well. It's a strategy game. Not exactly your sort of thing, Daniel. Chess kind of goes with the math gene. I mean, I'd expect Carter to be a whiz at chess. Archaeology is more, uh, squishy."
Now Daniel was showing a hint of annoyance. "Archaeology is a science, Jack, just as much as physics. Anyway, chess doesn't go with the math gene, per se. It's a pattern-matching thing."
"What do you mean?" Jack asked, and then suppressed a flinch as he could see Daniel going into lecture mode.
"Well, the top chess playing computers do it by brute force. They extrapolate each move with all the possible consequences of the move, and pick one that leads to a winning end condition. Humans tend to play by pattern-matching- getting to know the pattern of where pieces move and intuiting more or less advantageous strategies. Really, the surprising thing isn't that computers play chess well. The surprising thing is that they are only barely as good as the best human players."
"So what?" Jack was feeling one of those so-I'm-sure-you-know-what-this-means moments coming on.
"So a guy with a good visual memory and training in spotting patterns- like I do in linguistics- is going to be a good candidate for having an aptitude for chess." Daniel explained patiently.
And a guy with a near photographic memory and a phenomenal gift for languages who liked chess was going to be good enough to clean his clock on a regular basis. Jack got it. "So what you're saying is the same thing that lets you look at a bunch of scratches on a wall and say, 'Ahah, minimum' is what makes you good at chess?"
"Minoan." Daniel translated his mispronunciation without apparent effort. "Yes, basically. And it also explains why you're good at it."
"Uh, me?" Jack was briefly non-plussed. "What?"
Daniel was looking at him impatiently. "Well, yeah. Pattern-matching and visual memory. Of course, it’s a different application." Jack put on the clueless look he usually turned on when Daniel or Carter was babbling.
"Jack, you're the one who can take one look at a hillside and remember where every piece of cover is or find your way back through a forest full of trees, rocks and streams that you've only seen once. Or look at a bunch of natives and instantly know they're likely to be aggressive while I'm still trying to spit out my peaceful explorer speech-"
Jack was stunned speechless. Daniel never failed to thank him for pulling him out of the way of disaster, even followed orders promptly when they were actually under fire. However, Jack had never imagined him holding up his soldier's skills as something to respect and admire. But surely that was what he saw in the candid look that Daniel was giving him as he finished.
"-so the abilities that make you very good at military stuff are the same underlying aptitudes that are needed for strategy games. Anyway," Daniel continued with a mischievous look. "It's really only fair."
"What's only fair?"
"You may win all the card games but I'll beat you at chess."
Jack's eyes narrowed. Okay, the kid was getting cocky. "We'll see about that."
#
Jack slid the chessboard into the bag concealing the books along with the other debris he had accumulated during his hospital stay and deftly sandwiched the bag handle between his hand and his crutch rather than wait for Daniel to get it. Amazing how much crap he'd accumulated here. Jack wondered what was taking him so long. He was more than ready to be out of here.
The chess had been unexpectedly diverting. Okay, he'd always liked the game, but losing to Daniel had stung his pride and made him more than usually determined to win. He'd gotten Carter to bring him a book of chess problems, which he had studied. Daniel had been by nearly every evening to let him test his skill. To the colonel's chagrin, he still hadn't managed to win a game, though he had once forced Daniel to sacrifice his queen and settle for a stalemate.
O'Neill used the crutches with the ease of much practice as he got up. Wasn't as though he hadn't had done this before. As he reached the door, he could hear Daniel's voice in the hall. From behind the door he caught a glimpse of Nurse Richards and one of the others handing Daniel a gift-wrapped package.
"Um, that's really very nice. Jack's right-" Daniel said awkwardly, looking at Jack standing unseen in the doorway behind her.
"No, this is for you." The nurse was still holding out the package.
Jack made a goofy gesture behind her back and mouthed, "I think she likes you."
"But- " Daniel objected, starting to blush.
"No, really, Dr. Jackson." The nurse said earnestly. "You keeping him occupied with chess the last week was a godsend. He's been almost tolerable. When he wasn't playing with you, he was reading about chess or playing games against himself."
"Um, he was?" Jack winced. He'd hid the books when Daniel had come by, not wanting him to see how competitive Jack had gotten about this.
But the woman was going on. "You don't understand, Dr. Jackson. This isn't a going-away gift for the Colonel. It's a thank-you-for-taking-him-away gift from the staff."
Daniel's involuntary chuckle was drowned out by Jack's indignant exclamation. "Hey!"
The two nurses jumped like they'd been shot, muttered something that might have been apologies and backed away hurriedly.
Daniel took the bag from Jack and they turned toward the exit. "So, you've been really getting into the chess?"
Jack replied, "Well, it's not like they had ESPN in the room. In fact, wait, they didn't have TV at all in the room."
Daniel gave him an innocent look. "So you're going to just drop chess and go back to watching hockey, then."
"I didn't say that." Jack looked at him suspiciously. "I'd still be up for a game now and then."
"I'd like that." Daniel told him.
'Yeah, 'cause you win. At the moment.' "How about Friday?" Jack said, and when Daniel nodded, he continued. "Right after the hockey game."