'I highly doubt that they had television.' Reasoned a rather grumpy Canadian scientist, who sounded rather exasperated at a messy-haired American soldier. 'We don't even know what this does! It could be a…a…people maker….or a…torture device!'
'McKay.' The messy-haired American soldier stated, just as exasperated as the infamous Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay. 'It's a TV.' Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard was used to McKay's antics. The silly little Canadian generally blew things out of proportion like this.
…On the other hand, more than 99 per-cent of the time, the irritating man was correct.
'We don't know that!' Rodney cried out, completely irritated and wondering why he was following Sheppard to this device anyway. Sheppard was pretty dumb when it came to things like…basic human skills.
Sheppard led Rodney into his room and headed over to the wall that was now blank. His poster of some famous 'football' player was rolled neatly and held with a rubber-band on the small couch. He pressed a small button on the wall and it opened, revealing a large screen of sorts.
Rodney was busy looking around John's room. He noticed it was smaller than his own and the view wasn't as amazing since John had an eastern room and only saw sunrise. The ocean glittered outside Atlantis. He heard something click and he turned his attention back to John who was putting a disc into a tray that had slowly slid out from the wall.
'What are you doing!?' Rodney asked as he pushed Sheppard out of the way entirely and went to retrieve the disc before Sheppard uploaded any viruses to the place.
'I was gonna watch a movie.' Sheppard replied, staring the little Canadian man down. He pressed a button on the wall and the movie commenced. The movie Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard had placed in the tray was a movie about pirates. It was probably called Pirates of the Caribbean…but no one knows for sure.
Rodney, however, was a little disappointed. He had thought—no, hoped—that John had planned something different when he invited Rodney to his quarters on their free time. He watched Sheppard, expecting the pirate movie to cut in the middle of a maybe-Captain-Jack-Sparrow's sentence and change into a really bad 'Scientists Gone Wild' bad porno. It never happened. Just as Sheppard sat down, Dr. Elizabeth Weir—leader of the Atlantis Expedition—radioed in.
'Sheppard, we need you and Rodney in the main control room.' Her voice said over the radio device permanently implanted in the heads of anyone on the expedition. Sheppard sighed and stood up, paused the movie—well, he had to press lots of buttons first, but he eventually found the right button—and then turned to Rodney.
'You heard the woman.' He said and watched the Canadian. 'To the control room.' He said rather unenthusiastically. Sheppard and Rodney left, and no sooner than the door had closed, the movie began to play on its own. The scene played on as normal. The maybe-Captain-Jack-Sparrow came on to the screen, but instead of doing what he was supposed to be doing—you know, the stuff in his script-he approached the screen and held up a finger to tap it. Instead of his finger hitting glass and making an empty ting-ting sound, it went right through and he nearly fell over.
'What's this now?' he asked, closing in on the screen, eventually, he popped his head through and looked around. 'Nice digs…' he said and pulled his head back. He spastically ran back to his small row-boat—if you could call it that—and grabbed a treasure chest that maybe held the beating heart of maybe-Davy-Jones.
While maybe-Captain-Jack-Sparrow was spastically running to get the chest that maybe held the beating heart of maybe-Davy-Jones, a certain-Will-Turner had come on to the screen and observed John's quarters from his own perspective.
Jack shoved Will out of the way and clamored through the screen. Will protested before climbing through as well. Jack, however, was examining the small coffee table in Sheppard's room.
'Boys got a pretty good taste in the ladies.' He commented looking through an old Illustrated Sports: Swimsuit Edition that Sheppard had oh-so carelessly left out. Will stood behind Jack and nodded.
'What now?' Will asked.
'Let's rape, pillage, and plunder.' Jack said and grinned.
Will paused.
'But we're not Vikings.' He complained.
'Nor are we pirates.' Jack replied and smiled, stuffing the dirty magazine into the chest that held the beating heart of Davy Jones. He then thought a minute before plundering John's room. He found more dirty magazines and stowed them away with the beating heart.
Both of the pirates left Sheppard's room, Jack also maybe stole some shiny artifacts from Sheppard's room. 'We've pillaged and plundered so far.' Jack explained to his dear friend William.
'Now all that's left is rape.' He said as he skipped off down the hall with William in tow.
-x-x-x-
In the main control room, nothing completely serious was going on. Dr. Elizabeth Weir was overreacting to a simple arachnid.
Well, maybe that was a lie, because everyone knows arachnids have eight legs and are most commonly seen as spiders. This one however was about the size of a tarantula and had about four more legs.
…It was damn fast too.
'You couldn't get this guy to try to kill it?' Sheppard asked, pointing to the man who was busy working on some computer thing. Sheppard was obviously irritated that he and Rodney had been called down to the main control room.
…to kill a spider.
Weir smiled sheepishly at Sheppard as the spider stealthily left the control room and headed down the main hallways in search of sustenance.
-x-x-x-
Meanwhile, in Sheppard's room, the 'you-really-ought-to-know-something-bad-is-about-to-happen' music was emitting from the "TV" which was now closing in on the blue ocean water. The "TV" however, had a sense of humour because it was playing the movie all wrong.
The music was not right in the least. It sounded maybe like the Jaws theme…
But everyone on Atlantis had been a recluse on the lost city for so long that they probably forgot.
The scene was now just the surface of the ocean which darkened as a large shape swam beneath.
-x-x-x-
Jack and Will had finally found their way to the mess hall. Before they barged in through the doors they held a mini-conference, such as the ones football players held before they enacted a play.
The two finished and burst through the doors and into the mess hall. No one paid them any attention as they tried to assume the bad-ass look from the doorway.
Jack sighed and watched the scientists as they chatted idly about how gross the food on Atlantis was.
'We're here to rape your women!' Jack declared. Now he had the attention he had been looking for when he and Will had burst in. There was silence until one man stood up.
'Have you pillaged and plundered yet?' he asked. All eyes were on this man. Whispers traveled around the mess hall as all the scientists unanimously agreed that this man was probably not even a scientist qualified to be on this expedition.
Jack held up the dirty magazines and some rather expensive Earth artifacts that he had pillaged and plundered from John's room.
'Yes!' He declared, melodramatically.
There was another paused.
'You don't look like Vikings!' accused a woman from the back. The whispers started. Nope, she was definitely one of the qualified scientists. Jack gave a disappointed sigh.
-x-x-x-
'Well, he could have.' Weir said in reference to the man who could have killed the spider—that completely was roaming Atlantis now, by the way—but didn't. 'But he suggested that I call you two down here because he likes to see Rodney squirm because he told me that Rodney dislikes spiders.'
Sheppard turned to look at Rodney who smiled. He was standing on a chair, hopefully away from the spider.
One of the other men at the controls looked up and was about to make the most of his few seconds of fame…then the scene changed.
-x-x-x-
In Sheppard's quarters, the TV device was leaking Kraken. The room was filled and just before the rest of the tentacles could fit into the room, the windows in John's room exploded and the Kraken went flying out to sea.
-x-x-x-
Everyone heard the small explosion. The city shook as if from a small earthquake then it stopped.
'What's going on?' Weir demanded of the man who was about to make the most of his few seconds of fame earlier.
'Security breech.' He said, pressing buttons so that the consoles would show up on the big screen for everyone to see. He quickly clicked out of his porn and put the overview map of Atlantis on the big screen.
'Where?' Weir asked, examining the overview map.
'…Sheppard's quarters…' the man said zooming in on a pulsating dot in one of the towers.
'…I'd like to breech his quarters…' Rodney said from the back of the room. Everyone turned and looked at him, giving him odd stares—and a lopsided grin from Sheppard.
'I just said that out loud…didn't I?' he asked finally becoming aware of the awkward stares. Everyone in the room nodded in unison.
'…Shit.'
-x-x-x-
In the mess hall, Jack Sparrow and Will Turner were trying to convince the highly-qualified-scientists that pirates did, indeed, rape, pillage, and plunder.
'Everyone knows you stole the idea from the Vikings!' cried one of the scientists. The whispers traveled around in idle conversation about the mystery meat of the day, the cold coffee and Atlantis' poor excuse of chili.
Jack rolled his eyes and felt that explosion mentioned earlier. He turned to Will.
'Did we turn off the time-warpy-portal thingy?' he asked, looking down at Will. Jack was standing on a table now, trying to keep the scientists under control and Will was merely standing on the floor wondering why he even followed Jack through to this place.
'Sorry…did you say something?' Will asked, looking up at Jack.
'I asked if we turned off the time-warpy-portal thingy.' Jack graciously repeated.
'Oh…no.' Will replied. 'I thought you did.'
-x-x-x-
The spider that had been in the control room much earlier was now stealthily making it's way to the infirmary to torment the patients who had come down with anything from common colds to off-world diseases.
The spider also had a thing for the doctor.
Carson Beckett was a doctor.
Not just any doctor; a Scottish doctor. Everyone's favorite doctor. He took care of people. Not just any kind of people; sick people…injured people…those…unwell…people.
The spider—which had four extra legs so it really can't be called a spider—crawled on the floor towards the bed of a patient with messy hair who had gotten a spontaneous bloody nose.
'Do you have any allergies to anything you are working with?' Carson asked.
The messy haired patient shook his head. Carson went through all the medical reasons as to why the spontaneous bleeding from the nasal cavity might have happened. The patient always answered no to any of the questions asked.
Carson sighed before examining his patient closely.
'Have you been snorting cocaine?' he finally asked.
'Maybe…' his patient answered. The messy-haired man on the table was rocking lightly and following shapes and colors with his eyes.
'Radek…' Carson sighed. 'It's not good for you.' He touched Radek's hand in a 'comforting' manner. 'I'm going to have to confiscate it, son.' He said.
Radek looked from Carson's hand up to his face.
'…Are you secretly a homosexual?' Radek asked.
'No, but I like to think I'm a pirate.' Carson replied and smiled.
At that moment, however, Jack Sparrow and William Turner were slowly being rioted down the hall.
'I wasn't really going to rape your women!' Jack announced to the crowd of angry feminist scientists. Something had probably gone very wrong in the mess hall. 'He was.' Jack said and pointed to Will. Those words had barely left Jack's lips before he turned and started running. The angry mob of feminist scientists turned their glare to Will.
'I'm…gonna go…now.' Will said before taking off after his supposed friend, Jack.