Originally Posted: Aug. 23rd, 2007 (LiveJournal Link)
Length/Rating: 259 words, PG, Gen
Pairing/Warnings: none
Summary: How to stay sane in the Pegasus Galaxy (aka Duck Test). Written for sga_flashfic challenge Men and Machines challenge.

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Now we ain’t stupid, no matter what you’ve heard; Marines got more brains than most front-line grunts, we just use it for common sense is all. We know just how powerful he is (on the same fuzzy level with how big’s a trillion), but most times he looks like Chuck, and walks like Chuck, and darned if he don’t sound like Chuck (even through the mess of silver and wire), so we tend to forget.

Of course times like now are a little harder to overlook. Only so much a mind can manage to hold onto, and seeing him there, melded into the control room wall like he’d sprung up full-grown from Atlantis herself, snarling and lashing out at orbital Wraith we can’t even see… well, that’s just a mite too slippery a thing for most folks.

So we leave him be, those times, and smile and nod when he starts talking in those theoretical mathmagics over chow, and look just to the left when those silver sparks chase each other ‘cross his hair. Hell, even Carson takes him fishing now and then, and if anyone knows the gritty bits of what’s going on, it’s him. But us? We’ve been here long enough to know the score. Because, you see, if you just stop starin’ like some earthborn rookie that ain’t never seen something on the far side of Clarke’s Law before, and squint… You’ll see plain as day, he’s still just Chuck.

Now quit staring and finish yer grub; you science-types got worse to worry about than him.