“I thought I’d find you here..,” Zelenka’s Czechoslovakian accent was unmistakeable to the room’s single occupant.
Rodney didn’t look up from his computer screen, immersed as he was with his latest project, but made an acknowledging sound, “uh-ahuh.”
“Where is here anyway?” Zelenka asked, taking a look around, and noticing for the first time that he’d never been in this particular room on Atlantis before. At first glance the room was like many rooms on Atlantis, panels of unfamiliar instruments amongst a white and pale green décor.
Rodney was sitting on the opposite side of the room facing away from the door, he looked up from his computer screen but still didn’t look in Zelenka’s direction. He adjusted some controls on the bench panel of one of the instruments with his left hand. “It’s an abandoned Ancient astronomy lab.” He waved his right hand dismissively alongside his face, as he spoke. “It’s been missed on the surveys until now but I managed to find it...” In fact Rodney had gotten lost, whilst looking for another of the cities more out of the way laboratories, the one that had belonged to the Ancient Janus. Without a map of the city (he’d accidentally deleted it from his hard drive a week ago) it could be like an Egyptian catacomb, perhaps appropriate given the origins of the human Stargate program. “And now you have too, it seems.”
Zelenka made a note to himself: there never seemed to be any dust in these long abandoned rooms. Then he remembered why he’d come. “Yes, well it took quite some time to track you down, even using the city’s sensors, this room seems to be partially shielded.” Radek took a breath before continuing. “It’s your turn to recalibrate the power grid. You’re always skipping out on the routine tasks and I don’t think I should be filling in for you any more. There I’ve said it.” Zelenka inhaled deeply again. Despite years of working with Rodney McKay he still felt unsure of himself when addressing Rodney on such matters.
“Have there been any gate activations today?” Rodney asked matter-of-factly.
“Yes several, but you’re ignoring me.”
“Was the last one four hours ago?”
“Yes, to M6R-125” Zelenka saw his chance to seize the initiative in the conversation, “right before we powered down the ZPM for routine power maintenance. Rodney, this needs to be attended to.”
McKay finally turned around. “Ok, ok, I’ve got enough data to analyse for now anyway.” He unclipped the cable connecting his laptop to the instrument’s control crystal, replaced the access panel, and snapped the shut the screen before placing it under his arm. “Let’s get this over with.” And then, remembering how he’d found himself here to begin with, he added, “Lead on.”
~
Some time later Rodney was sitting in the corner of the mess hall working on his computer. The recalibration of the power grid had been routine work that anyone could have done. Sure, some of the settings were sensitive and needed to be monitored but otherwise the routine could be automated. He’d write the automation routine when he had something less interesting to do he decided. Outside sunlight glimmered off the water, some of it making its way through the window and there was a pleasant sea breeze. Rodney enjoyed working in the mess hall, but not for the pleasant surrounds – he could get an ocean view almost anywhere in the city, and there were lots of places quieter than here. The reason for his mess hall preference was actually one of ego; he enjoyed the fact that everyone could see him working. ‘What is the great Dr. McKay working on now?’ is what he imagined they were thinking. Of course, occasionally he was interrupted but that just gave him the opportunity to complain and he enjoyed that too.
Sheppard, in need of a bite to eat and a break from the just ended gate-room situation entered the hall. Despite the fact that there had been a fire-fight in the gate-room not ten minutes ago, he wasn’t surprised to find Rodney here. If the situation didn’t call for some feat of technical genius, McKay often just didn’t notice. He picked himself up a sort of chicken salad from the buffet and walked over to join his friend.
“Mind if I join you.” Sheppard drew out the last word, though it was more of a statement than a question. He took a seat across the table from McKay. “Looks appetising,” he said, nodding his head ever so slightly at the field ration packet lying on the table.” He was still wearing a radio headset.
“I was working, the line was long.”
Sheppard looked around, the dining hall was near empty, not surprising given that it was three in the afternoon. “Well, it is roast beef day. What are-ya-workin’ on?” his question, mixed with a sigh of relief from the situation just dealt with, became almost a drawl. He removed his headset.
“There aren’t any beef cattle in the Pegasus galaxy.”
“It’s like a cow. Well, a cross between a cow and a kangaroo really, the Athosians have taken to hunting them on the mainland.” Sheppard found it easy to equate Pegasus wildlife with Earthly wildlife on the basis of taste, his chicken salad contained no chicken for instance, yet he never thought to wonder why McKay didn’t. “You didn’t answer my question,” he stated flatly.
“I’m trying to analyse this Ancient astronomy data. It would be easier if everyone didn’t keep interrupting me,” he half paused to let the accusation sink in. Sheppard didn’t take the bait so Rodney continued, “Somehow they use the open gate as a broadband EM telescope. The equipment is switched on automatically when the gate is activated. It seems the event horizon is extremely sensitive to radio waves and the Ancients did a fair bit of science with it. Well not just the radio, all energy, but particularly the radio. Hardly surprising really, we’ve known energy travels in both directions through the gate from the beginning.”
“Huh. So any big finds then?”
“Well, from this morning’s activations alone I’ve detected three new pulsars and a previously undetected type of maser that someone on Earth is probably interested in. In fact, I checked the literature, the last unsuccessful search was made by McDonnell et al. at Parkes just a year or so ago,” Rodney grinned.
“Great,” intoned Sheppard from the side of his mouth, “so three long dead stars, and the remnants of another one, more recently deceased, getting together to make some radio noise. Sounds like a productive day.” He pursed his lips slightly and nodded to drive home his point. “Hey, can we use this to improve communication with off-world teams?”
“Well, probably.” Rodney made a dismissive hand gesture. He was doing great science here, discovering new interstellar objects and Sheppard, typically, just wanted improved reception on his army phone. Well, he might yet impress him. “But that’s not all. There’s a stack of data here from every gate in the Milky Way Galaxy, and as soon as I can figure out how to combine them to take account of the different activation times of the gates – I haven’t found the timestamp in the data yet – I’ll have a map of the entire galaxy; from before the Wraith war in Pegasus – long before in fact, they might even have taken this data on their way to Pegasus, before they made it here – in fact it’s better than a map, it’s really more kind of an electronic orrery.” He twisted his hand back and forward for emphasis on the ‘kind of’, “Because the EM signal from each source takes an amount of time to reach each gate proportional to its distance from the gate, I get a map of how the galaxy is evolving. That’s a pretty big discov—”
“Wait, did you say Milky Way? Why wouldn’t they do the measurement for the Pegasus galaxy if that’s where they were going?”
“I don’t know. It’s not important.”
Sheppard raised his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, if you say so.” He caught a glimpse of his watch. “Come on, it’s time for our daily meeting with Woolsey,” he said as he stood, abandoning his barely touched chicken salad.
“Another one? Didn’t we have one yesterday?”
“Yes Rodney, they’re daily meetings.”
Rodney sighed and picked up his laptop again. At some point, he thought, he might actually have to plug it in.
~
“You see: if I assume they did it all at once and dialled each gate in the order that it appears in the database and they tried to do it in the minimum amount of time I end up with a warped picture of the galaxy.”
“Interesting.” Sheppard and Rodney were on their way to the conference room. Truthfully, Sheppard could think of more stimulating conversation for the walk down the corridor but he stole a glance at the computer screen anyway. “Looks like a potato chip,” he said idly.
“Exactly, the whole galaxy is twisted and worse than that, this calibration creates spurious objects. For instance if I look at Earth’s solar system, it looks like a rouge sun, or at least one with a huge orbital period, ran through the system 26 million years ago.” McKay held the laptop so John could see the screen again.
“Nemesis?” asked Sheppard suddenly taking an interest.
“Well, clearly not; it’s an error.” he paused. “That’s a legend with almost no scientific basis,” he added.
“Almost? Wasn’t there a thing in Nature or something like that?”
“Nothing credible. And since when do you read Nature?”
“I’ve dabbled.” In fact John had once dated a girl, a paleo-archaeologist in fact, who had tried to get him in to Mensa and it was her who’d shown him the article. He’d passed the entrance exam but ultimately he found the club meetings a less appealing prospect than football games for socialising. The relationship hadn’t lasted. Sheppard’s thoughts momentarily drifted back to the girl, ‘Man, was she hot.’ He was quickly jarred out of his recollection though by his current companion.
“All this shows me is that they took the data in some other order, and I’ve combined it incorrectly.” Rodney took back the computer.
“If you say so. We’ve reached the lift.” Sheppard pushed the button to go up the central tower, toward the command centre. Rodney continued thinking about the problem. There had to be something he was overlooking.
“Hello Colonel. Hi Rodney” Jennifer said, emphasising the ‘e’ in Rodney as she joined them at the lift.
“Dr Keller,” replied Sheppard, smiling knowingly. How long was it going to take before these two finally got together?
“Oh, hi,” said Rodney, face down in the laptop again.
“What are you doing, Rodney?” asked Jennifer craning her neck to get a look at the screen.
“He’s trying to figure out how he managed to turn the galaxy into a potato chip,” answered Sheppard.
The doors to the lift slid open.
~
“Dr. McKay? Dr. McKay, are you even listening?” Woolsey’s mouth settled into a lopsided frown. He raised his eyes to the ceiling. Rodney was sitting on the other side of the hexagonal table totally consumed in whatever he was working on. As far as Woolsey could tell, the Ancients had designed this table perfectly; he really admired it as symbolic of the managerial achievements of a superior race. With three short edges and three long ones, it was perfect for accommodating anywhere up to nine people and its short and long edges allowed for the superiority of a party of people to be indicated if necessary. But most importantly, its dimensions were such that it was impossible not to pay attention to anyone sitting around it. Yet here was Dr. McKay somehow flaunting its design. “Dr. McKay, if you aren’t going to pay attention, I can hardly see any point in having these meetings.”
“Good, they’re all boring anyway.” It was the first thing Ronon had said during the meeting. Mostly he’d just been counting the number of vertical lights set into the wood panelling.
Woolsey was unamused. “Ronon, you don’t have to be here. You’re not part of the command structure. Why are you here anyway?” he asked.
Ronon shrugged. “I was bored... Everyone else was here.”
Woolsey took his hand and placed it over his face. He started massaging his forehead. “Dr. McKay,” he tried again, “has the recalibration of the city’s power conduits been completed successfully?”
Zelenka answered for him. “Yes, everything was completed...” he eyed Rodney, “slightly behind schedule.” For some reason sniping was less stressful than direct confrontation. It seemed to come automatically too, something Radek wasn’t too pleased with. He wasn’t usually one for that type of banter but McKay seemed to bring it out in him. He was about to apologise but then he noticed that Rodney seemed oblivious. What he was working on must have been very interesting for him to not have noticed an insult.
Woolsey sighed, conceding defeat. “Thank you, Dr. Zelenka. Well then, I guess we can conclude this meeting.” He picked up his notes, squared them off neatly using the table, placed them in a crisp manila folder, which in turn he stacked neatly on top of his own laptop, before picking up both laptop and folder and departing the room. The other members of the command staff followed behind him.
“When things get blown up, where do we get the replacement wood from?” Ronon asked Sheppard as the walked through the exit. Sheppard opened his mouth to reply but Radek didn’t hear the response. Instead of going with the others, he lingered in the doorway. Rodney was still seated.
“Rodney, are you still looking at that astronomical data? Why don’t you let me take a look at it?”
Rodney looked up briefly, distractedly he said, “So you can have your name on the paper too? I don’t think so.”
“Paper? Rodney, the Stargate program is secret, we can’t publish any papers.”
“Not yet, but when it’s declassified I have near sixty articles ready to go,” he was talking more excitedly now. “You’ve got to be prepared you know. Don’t tell me you haven’t been doing the same thing, I know Coleman was at one point.”
“Wait a second, I’ve worked on many different projects with you; shouldn’t I have been consulted as an author.”
“Author? Don’t worry I’ve thanked you appropriately in the acknowledgements.”
“Acknowledgements? Rodney—” Radek shook his head, trying to derail the conversation before it ran full steam into the end of the line. “It doesn’t even matter, I don’t care about any hypothetical papers. Just tell me what the problem is. I won’t take any credit.”
“Really? Ok, take a look at this.” McKay spun the computer around to face Radek. Quite a feat given the presence of rubber feet on their latest machines.
He looked. “The data for every gate has the same timestamp. So?”
“Well, all the data couldn’t have been taken at the same time, all the gates would have had to have been opened simultaneously.”
“Really? I guess they would have.” Radek looked confused.
“Wait, that’s it!” Rodney clicked his fingers excitedly.
“What?”
“Well don’t you see? That’s why they had to observe the Milky Way Galaxy and not the Pegasus Galaxy. It would have taken a huge amount of energy to connect all the gates in this galaxy simultaneously because that would require connecting in every direction at once, 4 pi steradian, subspace is just like any other Euclidian geometry in that respect. The viewing angle would have been too wide to justify observing this galaxy but the Milky Way is a long way away, that’s a smaller arc angle of the sky, essentially you’d only need the amount of energy required to connect to the furthest gate in the Milky Way Galaxy. That’s a piece of cake for a ZPM! All the other activation signals could be encoded in the one long distance call.”
“Of course, but that’s incredible, what if something were to go through the gate, does there end up being multiple copies of it? And how are the signals deconvoluted at the Atlantis gate?” Radek was thinking of the possibilities but Rodney was already recalibrating the data.
After a few minutes Zelenka realised he was talking to himself and he looked across at Rodney, who was simply blinking at the screen. Sometimes it was just impossible to carry out a conversation with Rodney McKay, thought Radek, before wondering if it wasn’t partly his fault.
“The twist is gone,” he was saying. “But that’s impossible.”
“What is? The deconvolution? No, I think that’s only a technical issue, it should be able to be resolved with sufficient time and computing power...”
But Rodney was mumbling to himself, “Sheppard was right. I’m never going to live this down.” His shoulders slumped. “Man.”
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” he asked, confused.
“Nemesis is still here.”
“Well, I know we fight sometimes, but I hardly think I’m your Nemesis,” Radek responded, completely missing the point.
Fin.
“Maybe Michael, but he’s dead, and he was really more Sheppard’s nemesis anyway. I know, Todd. Todd could be your nemesis: he’s a Wraith scientist so that makes sense, but you guys seem to get along ok, that’s not really nemesis-like behaviour...”
“Radek, I’m talking about the star.”
“Oh, ok. I know we’ve had some trouble with the sun here, what with the solar flares but I don’t think a star can be your nemesis, I think the definition requires a person.”
It was McKay’s turn to sigh.