"Dr. McKay!" the urgency in Dorsey's voice was what Rodney noticed most, and it drew him out of his concentration enough that he could hear Carson and his medical team responding to some sort of emergency with one of their patients.

It told him all he needed to know. Sheppard, Teyla and Lorne were all on their last strike. It was now or it was not at all for them. There were so many things Rodney hadn't tried to circumvent whatever security system was preventing the new code from being accepted. It would take too much time.

"Screw it," Rodney said, and yanked out one of the crystals.

"Ah!" Zelenka squeaked.

Rodney didn't need him to elaborate. The interior of the device lit up, and Rodney squinted at the brightness of it. A low whirr sounded, and Rodney knew the device was powering up, gathering energy for a pulse. Good or bad, this was it. Rodney got to his feet and stepped back.

"Brace yourselves," Rodney advised, even though he knew doing so would be useless.

Zelenka also backed up, and positioned himself beside Rodney.

"How will we know if it worked?" Zelenka inquired, "How will we know that what happens next is not a dream?"

"Well, if everything goes to hell and it feels like it's your fault, you can bet we failed," Rodney answered.

The whirr rose to an ear-piercing whine. Faintly through the noise, Rodney thought he heard a nurse say that someone was flat-lining, but he didn't know who. A moment later, the pulse fired off, and blinding light accompanied it. Blinded and deafened, Rodney couldn't guess what had happened for several seconds... or perhaps longer, because he also could not judge time.

His hearing gradually returned, and he heard someone calling his name. It took him a moment to figure out who it was, and from which direction they were calling. When he finally did, relief flooded through him and he turned to see that Sheppard had sat up and was yelling at him.

"Rodney!" Sheppard shouted again.

"Here," Rodney answered feebly, and coughed as he inhaled some dust that the device had stirred up.

"What the hell just happened?" Sheppard demanded, sounding both annoyed and disoriented, "And how the hell did we get back here?"

"That is a long, long story," Rodney answered, "And it would probably take about forty-five minutes to tell it, give or take. More importantly, how do you feel?"

Sheppard frowned at him, "Did you just ask me how I feel?"

"I think I did," Rodney said, "Isn't that what I just asked?"

"I think it was," Sheppard replied.

"Are you planning on answering?" Rodney inquired.

"I'm thinkin' about it," Sheppard said, nodding thoughtfully, then slowly he said, "I feel... like everything is fine."

Rodney cocked his head at this odd choice of phrase, "Huh."

"I'll explain later," Sheppard promised, then began to look around.

He spotted Ronon, who was just sitting up, rubbing the back of his head.

"Ronon!" Sheppard exclaimed, loudly enough that Ronon actually winced before looking his way, "You're alive! And Teyla! Rodney," he turned back to Rodney, "What the hell happened?" looking past Rodney, he spotted Lorne, "Major!"

"Sir?" Lorne responded, adding hesitantly, "You're not gonna try to strangle me again, are you?"

"What? No," Sheppard said.

"Oh good."

"Might I suggest everybody be calm," Carson said, "An' my team and I will get ye checked out. Then we can all go home. Yes? Okay."


Aside from any bruising that had been sustained prior to their being knocked out, everybody checked out fine, and Carson was pleased to instruct them to go home. Rodney was more than happy to disable the device and leave it for future research teams to deal with. He himself wanted nothing further to do with it and if he never saw it again it would be too soon.

On the way back, there was a general exchange of stories. Everyone had experienced something at least slightly different, but all had a common theme that wasn't difficult to recognize.

Ronon explained that he had been implanted with the tracker again, only this time it could not be removed. In his dream, the Atlantis team kept trying to find him and bring him back. Later, he had simply inadvertently crossed paths with them. It had gotten a lot of people killed, but Ronon himself had 'died' only once, otherwise being able to evade capture. Ronon's belief that he was being tracked and needed to leave Atlantis explained his behavior when he'd briefly become conscious, because he hadn't at the time realized what was happening was only a dream.

Like so many of them, Teyla had dreamed that the device had summoned the Wraith. The team had been attacked and overwhelmed. They were captured, but eventually escaped, with the exception of Rodney, who was killed when Teyla was unable to save him. She refused to explain exactly what had happened, but nobody pressed her on it. She and the remaining members of the team managed to return to Atlantis, only to discover that the device had been brought to the city, and it reacted to Teyla's Wraith DNA, giving away their location. Through a series of mishaps caused by Teyla, Teyla was eventually believed to be working for the Wraith, and was sent away, and later learned that Atlantis had been destroyed. She had returned to her people, only to find that she herself had been implanted with a tracking device, and had brought the Wraith right to them.

Sheppard had perhaps the strangest dream. In his, Atlantis had been invaded by the Goa'uld while he and his team were out. Major Lorne had been possessed, and Sheppard had been unable to stop him from killing Elizabeth, which explained why Sheppard had gone after Lorne the way he had when he was conscious. Sheppard's every attempt to save Atlantis had ultimately failed, resulting in death and destruction the likes of which he didn't feel up to relating for the most part. At last, in a desperate bid to try and save both the Milky Way and Pegasus Galaxies, Sheppard had purposely used the Atlantis distress signal to attract the Wraith, bringing the Goa'uld and Wraith face to face, in the hopes that they would make war on each other.

Rodney didn't share his own experience, saying only that he'd had pretty much the same sort of thing. Basically everything went to hell, and it was his fault. Lorne nodded, suggesting that he'd had the same experience as they had. Rodney knew that, of course.

"And, uh... how did it end?" Rodney asked of Sheppard.

"Oh well, it worked," Sheppard replied, "The Goa'uld and Wraith were so pissed off at each other that they went right to war, fighting over Atlantis like a couple of two-year-olds with a toy truck. Not that there was all that much left to save, what with everyone bein' dead and all."

"But it worked," Rodney persisted.

"Yeah, I guess so. Why?" Sheppard wanted to know.

"Your plan," Rodney reiterated, "worked."

"Yes, Rodney," Sheppard replied patiently, "It did. Why does that matter?"

"Because that didn't happen to me," Rodney told him, "I failed. All the way to the end."

"Oh," Sheppard said, and seemed to be at a loss for what else to say.

"I also succeeded at the end," Teyla ventured, "I created a distraction for the Wraith, while my people escaped through the Stargate to another world."

"I found a way to deactivate the tracking device," Ronon grunted.

"I blew up," Lorne said.

"Oh?" Rodney inquired, slightly worried.

"I took a Wraith ship with me," Lorne concluded with an indifferent shrug, "So I'd say it was worth it."

"Ah," Rodney nodded, though he still felt a bit puzzled.

Rodney didn't exactly count blowing up as a success, even if Lorne had taken a Wraith ship with him. But the important thing was that Lorne counted it as a success.


Rodney would have liked to call it a night, and it was clear Carson would have preferred for his patients to lie down in beds in the infirmary so they could be observed overnight, but of course Colonel Sheppard had other ideas. Specifically, he insisted that they report in to Elizabeth. Rodney couldn't blame him. Just like Rodney, Sheppard had dreamed that Elizabeth had become a casualty of war. Like Rodney, he wanted to see everyone he'd dreamed was dead, to reassure himself that they were not.

It was probable that Carson understood this, because he allowed the meeting, which turned into an informal debriefing, during which Rodney was finally able -with the support of his team, though mostly Sheppard- to explain exactly what he thought the device was for.

"You said it was made to control the Wraith," Elizabeth said at one point, "How?"

Rodney started to answer, then hesitated. He glanced at Sheppard, who looked at him oddly, probably not yet having fully grasped the difference in their situations. Sheppard had ended on success, however small. Rodney had ended on blowing up Earth itself. Still, when Sheppard gave a slight nod of encouragement, Rodney forged on.

"Failure," Rodney said finally, his voice flat, "Relentless, unending, absolute failure on a personal level. That's how."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Elizabeth told him.

Rodney faltered, not sure how to try and explain it. Sheppard stepped in for him.

"I do," Sheppard said, "At least... I think I do."

Rodney offered Sheppard a grateful look of relief, but Sheppard didn't appear to notice.

"Some Ancient got it into his head that there was a way to stop the Wraith without wiping them out," Sheppard said, "So they got all sciency and came up with the device to solve their problem. I guess somebody realized it might be dangerous, so they didn't run their experiments on Atlantis. Or maybe this particular Ancient wanted to build the device but he was outvoted so he had to put it together secretly. I mean, the Ancients were supposed to be smart. This device wasn't smart."

"The point is," Rodney interrupted, having regained some of his nerve, "The device was supposed to target the Wraith, but obviously something went wrong."

"You've already told us that," Elizabeth reminded Rodney patiently.

"Well I'm sorry, but there really isn't that much more to tell," Rodney replied, "When the device goes off, the pulse knocks out anyone in range, and drops them into a dream or hallucinatory state. Obviously if it worked perfectly, the subject wouldn't be able to wake up until the program was complete."

Rodney paused, glancing at the others. Sheppard and Ronon looked a little sheepish, Lorne was silently rubbing the bruise across his throat. Their expressions said as clearly as words that obviously the device didn't work perfectly on that front either. Rodney turned back to Elizabeth.

"The idea was to make the Wraith experience intense, repeated failure that they were individually almost entirely responsible for. It didn't matter if it was because they forgot a key detail of a plan, fumbled with their weapon and got somebody killed, failed to come up with a workable solution to a problem..." Rodney shook his head, "Just so long as it was their fault. As the subject started to come unraveled mentally, the failures got bigger, had greater consequences, until there was nothing left for them to destroy. Once the program ran its course, they woke up."

"Clearly that part wasna workin' correctly either," Carson pointed out.

"Actually, that's the one thing that did work. Kind of," Rodney said.

"How so?" Carson inquired.

Sheppard fielded that one, "The problem was with us. We didn't follow the program."

Rodney resumed his explanation when Sheppard fell silent, "Look, we," he gestured around the table, "we see failure as a setback, not an end state. Now, that's very easy to say, but much harder to live, especially over and over and over, without any successful breakthroughs to counter it, until you don't even feel like getting out of bed in the morning. We do that. We are -all of us- used to failing more often than we succeed. Me, I'm a scientist, a researcher, an inventor. Even as brilliant as I am... I fail nine times out of ten. An inability to make progress, a prototype malfunction-"

"Blowing up a solar system..." Sheppard muttered, causing Rodney to glare at him.

"Failure," Rodney continued, looking past Sheppard at Teyla, then back at Elizabeth, "Teyla. She's the leader of her people but, up until we came along, she had no defense against the Wraith. She failed to protect her people. Again and again. Ronon," here he gestured down the table to Ronon, "his entire people were wiped out despite his best efforts. Sheppard-"

"We get the picture!" Sheppard snapped.

Rodney gave Sheppard an unapologetic look before continuing, "We are all used to failing. We are used to death and destruction being a result of that failure. The reason we continue at all is that we know it doesn't matter how many times we've failed. All that matters is that we keep trying, until we eventually do succeed. So the fail-safe kicked in."

"Fail-safe?" Elizabeth asked, "What fail-safe?"

"In the event that the device was unable to achieve the desired result, there was a fail-safe," Rodney answered, "Since we would not accept absolute failure as an option, it tried to kill us."

"By stopping our hearts," Sheppard supplied helpfully.

"It couldn't break us, so it tried to destroy us. In layman's terms, it downloaded a program into our brains that told us we were going to die, so we did," Rodney said, "But after three tries with me, it ran out of backup scenarios. It basically crashed and failed to reboot. The device was never programmed to account for a doctor standing by, trying to keep the subject alive."

"So Sheppard and the others might have woken up regardless," Elizabeth summarized.

"Maybe," Rodney said, "But we couldn't take that chance. Especially..." he faltered again, swallowed with some difficulty, then went on, "Especially not knowing what it would do to them."

When Rodney looked at his team again, he saw recognition in Sheppard's eyes. Now Sheppard knew what had happened. It took him only an instant to put it all together, and to understand what had happened to Rodney, and what Rodney had done. Sheppard was smart like that.

"You changed the program," Sheppard said, "You told it to let us succeed, and then wake us up."

"To put it extremely crudely, yes," Rodney grudgingly agreed, then returned his attention to Elizabeth "Look, it was possible Carson wouldn't have been able to keep them all alive if nothing was done anyway. They could have died."

"But that's not why you did it," Sheppard persisted.

"Not entirely," Rodney admitted, looking sidelong at Sheppard, "No."

Sheppard nodded thoughtfully, and sat back in his chair. Rodney knew he wasn't done, but he was tabling it for now. But Rodney knew the man was like a bulldog, refusing to let go of something once he latched onto it. He'd never drop this now that he had hold of it.

"What I don't get," Sheppard said, choosing to change the subject, "is why the device was active in the first place. It's obviously a piece of crap, and a dangerous one at that."

"The Ancient who designed it didn't realize that in time," Rodney said, "He activated the device, thinking it was safe, that it would only target Wraith. The pulse went off, and dropped everyone in range, including the Ancients themselves, and any humans on the planet."

"It killed them?" Elizabeth asked.

"Not all of them," Rodney replied, "Not directly anyway."

"Probably some of them died like we would have if not for Dr. Beckett," Sheppard said.

"They were the lucky ones," Rodney added, "See, the others ran through the program as intended. But once the device convinced them that they were a failure at everything, they came out of it and were too discouraged to do anything. Essentially, accepting that they were complete failures who could never do anything right made them suicidal, except they couldn't even convince themselves to jump off a cliff. They just sat or lay wherever they were without doing anything, until they died a slow, painful, depressing and ultimately pointless death."

"Dear Lord," Carson whispered.

"That's why the device can't work," Rodney concluded, "Either it can't convince the subject to accept what a complete failure they are and has to kill them, or else it succeeds and the subject sits around doing nothing until they die. The fact that no Ancients came to see what happens suggests either that they didn't know about the device in the first place, or else regarded it as too dangerous to ever approach."

"It was folly to think it would do anything different," Carson said, "It wasna just built to break the will of its victims, but to break their spirit as well. Even had it worked on the Wraith as intended, they canna survive on anything but humans that we know of. Unless there was a second step to the plan we dinna know about, any Wraith that stopped feeding on humans would ultimately starve to death."

"Like I said," Rodney repeated, "The device doesn't work. And it can't."

Rodney exhaled loudly and sat back in his chair, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the migraine that seemed to be set on coming in.

"So you don't think there's any reason to go back and study the device," Elizabeth said.

Without looking up, Rodney answered, "I would love to never see that thing again."

"I also would prefer not to see the device again," Teyla concurred, with a sympathetic look at Rodney, who didn't notice because he still had his eyes closed, "Whatever value studying it may potentially have, it has already done much damage, and I see no reason to risk allowing it to do more."

"What she said," Sheppard put in, "Look, I'm all for studying Ancient technology to help us develop new ways to fight the Wraith, but that thing's just plain evil."

"If we're taking a vote," Ronon spoke for the first time since the debriefing started, "I say we blow it up, so nobody else can get hurt by it."

Sheppard snapped his fingers and pointed at Ronon, signaling hearty agreement with that plan.

Elizabeth seemed moderately surprised by the apparently unanimous agreement that the device should be avoided and/or destroyed. But she had so recently had a not entirely dissimilar experience when she was infected the nanites that attempted to take her over by convincing her that Atlantis was only a dream and that she was actually insane. She could understand wanting to destroy something like that.

"Very well," Elizabeth said, "Figure out a safe way to dismantle or destroy the device, and we'll do it."

"If that concludes the meeting," Carson said, "May I take my patients to the infirmary for observation?"

"Only if you have a bed I can fall into and sleep in for a week," Rodney mumbled, still working on trying to fend off his headache.

"Aye," Carson told him, "There's plenty o' beds to go 'round."

"Oh good," Rodney said.

"I'm pretty sure we're all fine," Sheppard said, "Little groggy maybe."

"Son, ye were all very nearly dead," Carson reminded him, "And ye woulda been if not fer myself and my team. So dinna argue with me. Ye're goin' to the infirmary to be observed overnight."

"Yes, Mom," Sheppard retorted, then offered Carson a good-natured smile.

Carson, who'd had a long, frustrating and exhausting day, still managed to smile back.

As they were leaving, Elizabeth stood up and said to them, "I'm glad that you're alright."

"And we're equally delighted that you're alright," Sheppard replied cheerfully.

"Good night, Colonel," Elizabeth said.

"G'night," Sheppard returned.