Author's note: The original idea to this fic came from an anti-kirking discussion in the anti season 4 thread on GateWorld. Someone was talking about Smor at the same time, which is apparently the pairing Sam/Thor. I thought it sounded like an STD… I'm not quite sure it is funny.
And while I'm on it: Use condoms!
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John stood in a hidden corner of the infirmary, nervously shuffling from one foot to the other. He apprehensively licked his lips and Carson, who had been pulled into this secluded area by John, looked mildly irritated. "What is it, son?" he asked in his kind voice.
"Yeah, listen..." explained John nervously. He knew that he should probably have come to see Carson earlier, but he was just so embarrassed. "I got this problem, I've had it for a while now... it kind of stings when I..." he coughed "...urinate."
"Oh, that's probably just an urinary tract infection, nothing to worry about!" Carson tried to appease his friend. "But we'll take an urine sample and run some tests, to be on the save..."
John interrupted the Doctor: "No, actually, I also have this weird greenish-purple spots around... you know?" His cheeks went the slightest hue of pink.
Carson's face fell just a bit, because this started to sound familiar. Too familiar for his liking... This was turning into a bit of an epidemic! So far he had not spoken about it publicly, mainly to spare the patients the embarrassment, but now he was starting to doubt his decision. John was just another of about a dozen of patients that had reported to him with these symptoms in the past few months. Maybe there WAS the need to tell people why it was so important to protect themselves, because they didn't seem to do it otherwise. Awkwardness be damned. He sighed. "Have you also been feeling a bit faint and scatterbrained? I mean, have you had problems remembering really fundamental things? Partial Amnesia?"
John scratched his head guiltily. "Uhm, yeah..."
"Sorry, but I have to ask you this," Carson interrogated cautiously, "did you have unprotected intercourse off-world lately?"
John swallowed, not liking where this was going. A slight film of sweat formed on his forehead. "There was this girl, Mara, on..." he paused, "Or was that Larrin?"
Carson sighted. Again. He had feared that it would come to this. All that kirking was bound to get John back one day! "I fear this may be a bit more serious, then. We have to run some blood tests and do an urine sample to be sure, but it sounds like you might have caught Smor."
"S-smor?" John stutterd. He was unfamiliar with this term, but it sounded very nasty.
A sudden noise made John jump and he turned around to see Elizabeth entering the infirmary. "Hello, Carson," she greeted, looking tired. "I just came to pick up my medicine."
"Medicine? Are you sick?" asked John worriedly, noticing how pretty her hair was curling around her face today, just falling onto her shoulders.
"Oh, hello John! I didn't see you there," she smiled at him. "Nothing serious, I've just been suffering from an episode of bad writing."
"Oh?" asked John confused.
"The Powers That Be have difficulties to write Elizabeth in character, lately," Carson explained. "Seems like they've bitten of more then they can chew, when they created her. And because she is in the way of the plot sometimes, they make her do things that seem out of character. Sadly, this makes the audience believe she's a bit bipolar."
"That is awful!" John enraged and in his passion he moved too much, causing the Smor pustules to itch. He looked uncomfortable.
"If they keep this up I fear they might ford me," Elizabeth sighted.
"Over my dead body!" exclaimed Carson. Unfortunately, he was no visionary and could not know how right he was on this matter. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Milky May a wee fluffy bunny died a premature death out of grief because of this, along with several baby tortoises.
John made a step over to Elizabeth to comfort her by invading her personal space, but he thought better of it. After all, he didn't want to risk her becoming infected with Smor, whatever Smor was. He settled for saying: "If they ford you, I will find you!" instead.
Elizabeth smiled gratefully and walked elegantly out of the infirmary. She passed Teyla on her way out, who had been standing there, scantly dressed, the entire scene, although no-one had noticed her. "Amongst my people we would never do such a thing to a wise leader," she spoke serenely and then turned to leave. "And by the way, I'm pregnant." Then she faded back to being pretty wallpaper again. Some viewers switched channels, because so much wasted opportunity depressed them.
At this point the writer of this story recognized that she had totally drifted away from the main plot and decided to go abruptly back to the originally intended path and make her point about why using condoms, especially when having off-world sex, is so important.
Carson startled John by sticking a needle into his arm. "Smor is a sexually transmitted disease that is native to the Pegasus Galaxy. You are not the first one, I'm afraid. I fear I can't put this off any longer, we have to elucidate the expedition members about it. Do you mind if I take a picture of the rash? Of course your face will be made irrecognisable."
After he had finished drawing the blood-sample, Carson handed John, who was stunned into silence by the prospect of having his privates shown to the entire expedition, a plastic cup for urine samples and send him off to the loo.
At this point we will skip ahead a bit, because we really don't want to follow John into the bathroom. silences fangirls who disagree on this matter" The man's got Smor, for gods sake!!!
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Two Days later
There was impatient murmuring in the mess hall, while the entire expedition was waiting for the meeting to begin. In the far end of the hall a beamer was set up. (That's a projector to you, but it was actually set up by one of the German scientists, and Germans call it a beamer, which is so much cooler than projector. End of discussion!)
Radek Zelenka was currently trying to set up a laptop, swearing in Czech, because they could interface alien technology with earth technology, but Microsoft had not figured out the whole Plug-and-play thing, yet.
Teyla was watching the scientist with slight amusement in her eyes. "Maybe you should plug the cable in on both ends?" she suggested, after she had watched Radek struggle for a while. Indeed, the cable had not been plugged into the beamer, only into the computer. (The German scientist, who had set the beamer up, was fired a few days after this incident and everybody went back to calling the beamer projector.)
Five minutes later, only ten minutes behind schedule, Carson began to start his PowerPoint Presentation. Unfortunately, his microphone was not turned on, yet, which is the reason why nobody ever got to hear the first two minutes of his talk. Eventually, Teal'c spoke up to alert Carson to this problem.
"I'm Ronon." said Teal'c in a deep voice.
"What?" asked the writer in confusion.
"I'm Ronon, not Teal'c," repeated Teal'c.
"Oh, yeah, whatever!" the writer replied in exasperation.
Ronon looked like he was about to hit the writer. To the displeasure of the audience, he didn't.
Carson turned on his microphone with a loud 'pop' that made everyone temporarily deaf. "All right, can everybody hear me now?"
A resounding "yes" was the answer. (Go and figure out yourselves how they were able to hear him when they were temporarily deaf, I cannot be bothered with such details.)
"Great!" Carson looked around searchingly. "Now, does anyone happen to have a laser pointer?"
After these few technical problems had been solved, Carson resumed his speech. "As I was saying, we have encountered several cases of a new disease recently. While it is curable, it has turned out to be quite nasty and persistent, so Elizabeth and I felt the need to address this matter."
"Who is Elizabeth?" asked Rodney.
Carson opened his mouth to ask Rodney how he could forget the woman whom he wrote a 500 pages long book about, but then he realized that Rodney must have been infected with Smor, too, and suffer from temporary, selective amnesia. Rodney did not actually have sex off-world, but got the disease from Katie Brown, who had received the disease from a fern... don't ask!
So, instead of answering Rodneys question, Carson continued unperturbed. "The symptoms of Smor are those of a persistent urinary tract infection. Furthermore the patients often suffer from amentia, amnesia and a greenish-violet rash around their genitalia." On this cue he switched the slides and a huge picture (and we all know from that earlier conversation whom it was of), illustrating the symptom mentioned last, appeared on screen, surprising the unsuspecting audience.
A collective "Ewwwww!" could be heard. John took offence to this.
"Now, this has not been addressed before, because of the somewhat delicate nature of this disease as it is an STD, but we felt it necessary to make it known to you, to impress upon you, how important it is to use a condom, when you're having sex off-world, even more so than under normal circumstances. While Smor is treatable, it must not be taken lightly!" Carson switched the slide again and an ancient drawing was shown. "Smor existed already when the Ancients lived in the Pegasus Galaxy and they researched it... When untreated, Smor can have severe long-term effects..."
Half an hour later one of the young Marines fell off a chair, snoring. Carson figured that he should come to an end. "Anyway," he said, "If you have the desperate need for senseless off-world kirking, use condoms, for god's sake!!!!!"
-THE END-
Appendix: After John had been cured, he finally asked Elizabeth out for a date and never went kirking again. (Hey, I'm a Sparky shipper, after all. What do you expect?)