"Impending Doom"
By December21st
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Rating: PG
Pairing: None. Well, okay, one sentence of Sheppard/Weir, otherwise none.
Warnings: One swear word.
Summary: Response to LiveJournal's sg_challenges challenge #21 numbers (calculations optional). The future of Atlantis is bleak.
"We're all going to die," Rodney announced. Which was, Elizabeth thought, a novel way to start a staff meeting.
"Would you care to elaborate, Rodney? You've apparently been giving this a good deal of thought," Elizabeth inquired politely.
"What she means is, you look like hell, McKay," John interpreted helpfully. It was true; Rodney had that particularly haggard look he only achieved after missing at least two nights of sleep.
"Numbers don't lie. I've done all the calculations three separate times. We're doomed." And then he proceeded to tell them all exactly what was going to happen. He was right; it sounded really bad, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
"Why didn't you come to us sooner, Rodney?" asked Elizabeth.
"Oh, there's a problem with the software we use for doing these kinds of equations. It's developed a glitch; not interfacing correctly with the math coprocessor on the new laptops and the anti-piracy measures won't let us reinstall it on the old laptops, so I did the calculations by hand. I checked them three times, just to be sure. I've set everything up in the big meeting room," he explained.
They trooped en masse up to the big meeting room where Rodney had been doing his calculations, as though seeing the numbers for themselves would help make sense of certain death for themselves and all of Atlantis. Elizabeth lead them there, with John at her side making wild suggestions about possible solutions to their current crisis, each less feasible than the last. (Although one suggestion, whispered in her ear, made her blush bright red.) They were followed, like mourners in a funeral procession, by Carson, Teyla, Ronon and finally Rodney himself.
Rodney must have collected every dry erase board, chalkboard, and artist's sketchpad in Atlantis. He explained the equations – this section showed the radius of the explosion, that area featured the modified strength of the force field. The green chalkboard detailed the rate of cranial deterioration relative to exposure to the radiation, while the neon yellow dry erase board explained the fracturing of the wormhole were it used to escape. At the center of the whirlwind of numbers was a single (admittedly very large) number: 4,815,162,342. The real tragedy, Rodney explained, was that if that number were just a little larger – at least five billion – a series of chain reactions would prevent the disaster from happening, and they would all be fine.
They all looked at the offending number, willing it to change. (It didn't.) John stared at the numbers surrounding the larger number for a minute, a puzzled look on his face. He appeared to be concentrating on the numbers in front of him, intermittently touching thumb to fingertips, and fingertips to knuckles in what appeared to be a complex version of counting on his fingers. He stepped up to the number, erased the first four, and replaced it with a five.
He turned to Rodney, shrugging eloquently. "You forgot to carry the one."