"That doesn't look like work," Daniel says, looking up from the linguistics journal he's making nasty notes in the margins of.

Cammie's sitting crosslegged and barefoot next to him on the couch, balancing the laptop on her knees. "It's not," she says, absently; she's busy conquering Persia at the moment. "It's Sunday, Daniel. Sabbath. Day of rest. And computer games."

"I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the manuscript of Exodus I read."

She looks up from the screen and flashes him a grin. "That bit was lost in a supposed third-century redaction. Haven't you read Athanasius's denunciations of the Playstation Heresy?"

It isn't often she can actually crack him up, but she cherishes it when she can.

*

"That's not possible."

"It's a video game, Daniel." Cammie's perfected the "don't be silly, Daniel" inflection by now; she suspects it's gonna annoy the ever-loving shit out of him, the day he recognizes it for what it is. "Realism is not a selling point."

"Babylonian civilization died out thousands of years before the United States even existed! And ... what is that?"

"That," Cammie says, tapping the keyboard, "is my musketmen kicking the crap out of that Japanese archer. Who is pretty much the last unit they have left to defend with."

Daniel shuts his mouth and watches as she claims Kyoto. "...Okay, I may have missed something," he finally says, "but did the Babylonians just conquer the Japanese?"

"Right in one," Cammie says. "Wait until you see the Babylonians building the Manhattan Project. That'll really break your brain."

*

"...So why are you learning that tech next?"

"Makes coal show up on the map," Cammie says, carefully hiding her smile. "I need to know if I'm going to have to trade for it, or if I've got some of it in my territory."

"So there are luxury resources and strategic resources. Okay. Got it. So after that, you're going for Medicine, so you can build the hospitals and make your cities grow again, right?"

Aw, hell with it. She can't help but grin at him. It took her a few months, but she's finally figured out that the way to get Daniel Jackson's attention is to pretend to be ignoring him while doing something else. It's a good thing she had plenty of practice with Aunt Aggie's fussy old cat. "Here," she says. "Lemme just start a new game so you can watch from the beginning. Makes more sense that way."

"Oh," he says, quickly, pushing his glasses up his nose, "you don't have to do that. I'm sure you don't need me hanging over your shoulder and asking questions while you're trying to relax."

"It's fine," she says, saving her game and starting up a new one. "Here. I'll even let us be the Egyptians."

*

She leaves the install CD on his desk for him when she finally gets around to going home. She will, of course, swear up and down that of course she had no idea it was his birthday.

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