Disclaimer : Stargate Atlantis and all articles of the Stargate franchise are owned by MGM. I own very little.
Chapter Four
Teyla looked down at the sparkling event horizon of the stargate from the cockpit of the jumper.
"Major Lorne and his teams are preparing to come through now," said Woolsey. "Good luck."
Three jumpers emerged in procession and the wormhole closed behind them.
"Colonel Sheppard," she said into the radio. "Major Lorne has come through the gate with three jumpers and fifteen marines."
"Good," he replied. "Leave one jumper circling the gate, keep a wormhole open to Atlantis. The rest of you get to the village and start moving people out. We'll meet you there."
One of Lorne's jumpers cloaked and began circling the gate. The others moved into formation and set out for the village.
"How many villagers are we looking at moving, Teyla?" asked Lorne over the radio.
"One hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred."
"Okay," he said. "We're going to need a few round trips. We'll get the most vulnerable into the jumpers first. I want you to take ten marines and lead the rest of the people out of the village. Lead them away from the Wraith, we'll swing back from the gate and pick more up once the first group are safely back."
"Understood."
The gate lay in a clearing of the dense forest Teyla had earlier trekked through. The jumpers were able to take a much more direct path over it, and the valley was soon in sight, bathed in the watery light of the setting sun.
"We've got Darts ahead," said Miller. "Thirty of them. Heading for the village from orbit."
"Cloak your jumpers," said Lorne. "We'll do our best to get there first but I have strict orders not to engage in risky clashes."
The trio of jumpers cloaked and accelerated, the dense vegetation below them buffeted in their wake. As they followed the contours of the terrain down into the valley the scene unfolded before them.
Where once there had been a rustic village there now lay a gleaming city. A translucent blue dome hovered over it. Dozens of darts descended in a wide cone around it.
Metallic streaks arced upward from the ground and explosions flared against the darkening sky. Several more Darts hurtled into the dome and exploded on impact.
"Teyla, what am I looking at?" said Lorne.
"I do not know what has happened here," she said.
"Set the jumpers down a couple of kilometres from that shield," his voice continued across the radio. "Colonel Sheppard is going to want to know if it's possible to get through on foot."
By the time they had disembarked and started the short trek to the shield the scene had got even more surreal overhead. A second wave of darts had arrived and started blasting at the shield without apparent effect, while more of their number were decimated by salvoes of missiles.
As they approached the blue wall the remaining Darts abandoned their futile attack and broke off in the direction of their fallen Hive.
Lorne tossed a stone at the shield and saw it rebound. He gently pushed against it with his hand, it didn't yield at all.
"I don't see any way through this," he said.
Teyla pressed her radio. "Colonel Sheppard," she said. "We've found an energy shield in place around the village. We are unable to pass through it. Or at least, there's a shield around where the village used to be. Something strange has occurred."
***
"Trials? What trials? Who are you?" queried McKay, perplexed.
"I am the Assessor. My purpose is to determine if your race is worthy of the bequest."
"This conversation would go a lot quicker if you explained what you were talking about. What bequest?"
"The trials begin."
"Brilliant," he groaned, throwing his hands up in frustration.
"Any idea what he's talking about?" he asked Elworth.
The Elder looked completely bewildered at current events and merely shook his head.
"I don't suppose you would know why our communications aren't working, would you?" he asked the Assessor.
"The area has been isolated."
Show me, he thought. A flat panel slid down from the ceiling and showed an overhead map of the area. McKay frowned as he recognised a shield around them. Radio waves wouldn't penetrate it he realised, nor would solid matter. He concentrated on shutting the shield off.
"That is not permitted," said the Assessor. "The trials must be completed in isolation."
"You're really not helping," he snapped.
"Consider a stallion racing a mule," it said. "If the mule starts thirty ells ahead of the stallion, it must take some time to reach the point the mule started at. By then the mule has moved on. The stallion must take some more time to catch up to where the mule moved on to but by then it has moved a little further again. How does the stallion ever pass the mule?"
"Why would a stallion race a mule?" asked Elworth.
"Ignore it," said McKay. "It's an old paradox. It assumes units of time are infinitely divisible. Doesn't matter either way, convergent series theorems let us solve any real world problem like that."
"Very good, Dr. McKay," said the Assessor.
"Oh give me a break," he shot back. "What is this? Lesson time at Akademia?"
"The trials begin."
McKay shook his head and turned his thoughts towards the city itself, reasoning he might as well learn as much as he could about it if they were stuck inside the shield for the time being. His gaze roamed the display in front of him, zooming and panning synchronously with the probing of his mind. It truly was, he reflected, astonishingly sophisticated technology.
Halfway through examining the underground architecture of the city he noticed Elworth was staring in considerable confusion as the Assessor waved at the floor and brightly coloured translucent balls, each about the size of a basketball, appeared.
"How should these be arranged to achieve the most densely packed formation?" said the Assessor.
"Sphere stacking? Kepler's conjecture?" McKay scoffed. "That one's not even hard, shopkeepers worked it out centuries ago."
"Can you prove it?"
"If I had enough time. I've got better things to do," he said, returning his attention to the city schematic.
There were no sign of the missile launchers. He knew there was one in the fields just outside the village but he couldn't see any trace of it.
"Dr. McKay," said Elworth. "Why is this projection, as you say, posing these conundrums?"
"I'm starting to think we've activated a holographic quiz master," he said. "It probably bored its makers to death."
"I do not understand," said Elworth.
"Oh, er, sorry. I'm not really sure. Hard to tell if it's even working properly.." he trailed off, waving a hand at the Assessor which had had turned toward him and apparently got stuck and stood immobile between them.
"Have you discovered what has happened here?"
"Hardly," he said, sighing. "I've barely scratched the surface."
"Is there a barber among your people?" said the Assessor, suddenly springing back into life.
"Yes," said Elworth. "We learned of specialisation and trade from the learning device. I encourage my people to develop different skills."
"If that barber shaves all, and only, the men in the village that do not shave themselves, does he shave himself?"
"Pardon me?"
"It's another paradox," said McKay, frowning slightly. "Proved flaws in early set theory. It's a more recent problem than the others."
A flash on the semi-transparent panel drew his attention. It had reverted to the overhead view and black triangles were swarming around the area marked by the shield. As he focused on one, the map view was replaced by a live picture as if from a satellite. In the fading light he could just make out the Wraith Dart.
"Oh great," he muttered.
The Dart abruptly exploded. McKay quickly resumed his search for the source of the missiles.
"Genius," he murmured.
"What is it?" asked Elworth.
"I couldn't find the missiles when I looked before," he said, indicating the empty underground schematic he had previously been studying. "Because they really weren't there, they come from deep underground. Look!"
A silver thread appeared on the screen, working its way upwards to the surface.
"It's clever," he enthused. "They don't launch from any one point so nothing can target them from orbit. Unless someone blew the planet itself apart, they wouldn't be able to disable the weapons. Unless the power source was depleted, whatever that is."
"A man leaves a village on his twentieth birthday," said the Assessor. "He returns in 10 years but is only twenty-five years of age. How is this possible?"
"It is not," said Elworth.
"The man spent the 10 years travelling at close to the speed of light," snapped McKay.
"We should go back," he said to Elworth. "I need to try to get in contact with Sheppard. Maybe we can go to the edge of the shield and relay a message somehow. You should tell your people what is happening."
"What is happening?"
"Apparently," he said with an uneasy glance at the Assessor. "We're being tested."
They made their way out of the tower and down the ramp. The Assessor followed.
"For a complex number z greater than one, what is the real part of the non trivial roots of the function given by summing one over n to the power z from 1 to infinity?"
"Does this speech make sense to you, Dr. McKay?" asked Elworth in a low tone.
"Yes," he said. "But I can't answer that one. It's one of the last great unsolved problems of pure math."
"The trials begin. You stand before two doors," said the Assessor. "One leads to freedom and is guarded by a jailer who always tells the truth-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ask one of them which door the other would say he is guarding, I've read classical logic problems too. This is your test? What's next? If a stupid question is asked and nobody is there to hear it, is it still a stupid question?"
"I do not understand."
"There's a surprise," McKay muttered as he kept walking. "Who built this place anyway?"
"The trials-"
"-begin. So I've heard."
"You aren't answering my questions," he mused. "That means either you can't answer them or you're choosing not to. This place is so obviously full of neural interfaces that I can't believe you're having trouble interpreting what I'm saying to you."
McKay stopped and snapped his fingers excitedly. Elworth looked on curiously as the scientist turned to face the Assessor.
"You were created to test people. Whoever built this place wanted to be sure its technology wouldn't fall into unsuitable or unprepared hands. This is like the Asgard tests SG1 ran into on P3X-97. That means you're almost certainly much smarter than you're pretending to be and you don't give a damn about which door leads to freedom."
A fleeting look that might have been a smile passed over its weathered face as McKay bristled in front of it.
"You are correct, Dr. McKay. Your willingness to question what appears to be beyond your understanding does you credit."
"Well, thanks."
The pride at impressing a construct of a vastly advanced race was instantly tempered as he realised that everything he said and did was being measured for suitability and there had been no mention of what happened to failed applicants. With another uneasy glance at the Assessor, McKay walked back through the gates. He was more than a little glad when the hologram stopped inside the city walls, apparently having reached the boundary of its projection area.
***
"Colonel Sheppard." Teyla's voice called over the radio. "We've found an energy shield in place around the village. We are unable to pass through it. Or at least, there's a shield around where the village used to be. Something strange has occurred."
Sheppard paused, fired several rounds over his shoulder and continued running.
"We see it too," he responded.
Beside him Ronon scrambled down the hill and swung behind a boulder to lay down covering fire for him as the Wraith pursued. Two of the Wraith fell to his pistol but several more sprung up in their place, hurdling the tumbling bodies.
"We could use a hand here," he said, panting as he rushed down the hill. "We've got Wraith after us on foot and Darts not far behind that."
Sheppard joined Ronon behind the rocky outcrop. Beyond it the landscape was flat and offered no cover. To their right the shield was a blue shimmer against the night sky. A far-away glow lit the walls of a new-grown city.
The Darts had overtaken them as they made for the village, only to be stopped by the shield. Several of them had plowed straight into it and exploded on impact. The rest had hung back and began to circle around. Two of them had set down ground troops and Sheppard and Ronon had to retreat.
The Wraith were spreading out, attempting to surround their position. Sheppard was more concerned with the Darts, the billiard-table terrain meant they'd be easy targets for culling beams. As he and Ronon fired at the scurrying figures, the tell-tale whine signalled the incoming ships.
They never arrived. Drones shot overhead and intercepted them as they came over the brow of the hill. More drones rained down on the ground in front of them to screen their retreat. A jumper appeared on the ground behind them and they gratefully sprinted inside.
"Colonel, we've got to get back to Atlantis," said Lorne. "Wraith are crawling all around the gate, they know we have cloaked jumpers nearby and if they start firing blind we're going to be hard pushed to get through."
"Did you get McKay and Keller?"
"No, sir. The shield goes all around the valley, no way to get to them."
"We do not leave our people behind."
"We don't have any way of getting to them, sir. The longer we stay here the more we risk more casualties. We have to fall back and come up with a rescue plan."
Sheppard grimaced in frustration. "Did you radio them?"
"We tried. Shield seems to be blocking communications too."
"Dammit!"
Sheppard looked pensively back across the darkened valley toward the isolated doctors.
"Sir?"
"Fine," he sighed. "Fall back."
Author's Note : Firstly, sincere thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed this story. I hope you are enjoying it.
Second, this chapter ruined my plan to post a new chapter every Saturday because I just wasn't happy with it. I rewrote most of it but I'm still not completely happy. So if you have found this installment less interesting than the previous chapters, try to stick with it because there are better things to come.
Anyway! As always I am very keen to hear what people think, especially if you have a suggestion as to what I could have done better or indeed if you thought something was particularly good.
A few notes on some of the references in this chapter for anyone who is interested. Akademia was the site of Plato's school from which the word academy originates. The problems posed by the Assessor are in order of appearance :
Zeno's first paradox.
Kepler's conjecture.
Barber paradox.
Twin paradox.
Riemann hypothesis .