Rodney studied his tablet and scowled mightily. Behind him the wreckage from the explosion was meticulously laid out on a grid to reconstruct the blast.
"These results don't make any sense without an additional catalyst." He snapped at the tablet. "Okay so then there had to be something, was it destroyed?" He muttered to himself then roughly tapped on the tablet. "That would...that would mean..." He said frantically and tapped his headset. "Sheppard? Where are you? Stay there I'll come to you and find out where Max and the other one – okay good."
Rodney hurried through the city to meet John at Ops with Carter, as he moved he continued working on the tablet.
"Rodney what the hell?" John asked clearly irritated.
"I figured it out, the explosion, or explosions."
His audience waited patiently. "Okay we know that the two explosions were triggered by Max's proximity, right? Wrong, it wasn't her proximity it was her energy."
"I know there's a point you're circling around and eventually – " John prodded.
"We know that the Ancients created the Wraith when they were screwing around with immortality. I think Max's people were another attempt, a different experiment."
"How does that explain the energy?"
"I'm getting to that, we know that Carthis apparently creates artificial immortals right?"
"That's what happened to Jarod, but he came out wrong, he was like a wild animal." Carter confirmed.
"Right exactly, something went wrong because he was an adult." They stared at Rodney. "Think about it, Max said all her people are foundlings, orphaned babies and young children right? Because whatever is done to them doesn't work on an adult's physiology."
"Wait, then how come Methos was able to do what he did? And how does this explain exploding puddlejumpers?" John asked.
"Well what use is an army of immortals if you have to raise them for 18 years before they're any good? We don't know how far back the immortals go but assume the wraith were their first experiment with immortality and the Asurans were the first with weaponized people then the immortals were the second for both. We also know they were, to put it mildly, gun-shy after their first screw up."
"You think the Quickening energy triggered a failsafe?" Carter asked.
"Why haven't we seen it before?"
"We never had many immortals working with the SGC, as far as we know they're limited to Earth and the Ancients only returned to the Milky Way after failing to stop the Wraith in Pegasus, by then they had probably shifted priorities." Rodney said smugly.
"So wait, let me just get this straight, out loud. The Ancients fled the Milky Way to Pegasus where they seeded planets with humans and Stargates. They then accidentally-on-purpose created the Wraith when they got scared Ascension wouldn't work out. When that went south hard they created a second species, the Asurans, to be footsoldiers in their war against the Wraith only they screw that up too so then, what, they try again only this time they screw up and create a species that can only gain those powers as very young children and can only be triggered by violent death. Fearing their first and second fuck ups will be echoed in the third they try to build in safeguards to prevent them from using their technology?" John finished.
"Okay but Rodney assuming this is at all accurate, why haven't we seen this kind of reaction to Max before now?" Carter asked.
"We have, the wraith that tried to feed on her are the reaction. I think the quickening of the immortals is based on the weapon the Ancients originally created to wipe out the wraith before they screwed that up and they escaped to be nightmare fuel for thousands of years."
"Hang on, we need Carson to fact check some of this." John said and took a moment to request the doctor's presence.
Carson arrived, got caught up and considered the theory for a long moment. "I can't think of any hard reason it couldn't be true, if it is, it all happened so long ago and there has been so much genetic drift among all the species involved, well, not the Asurans of course…it might be true."
"Oh it is, trust me on that, it answers everything including why the puddlejumpers reacted so violently. Another catalyst wasn't necessary the quickening energy itself created a feedback loop that caused the detonation of the existing components." Rodney said smugly.
"Okay, that leaves two big questions." John sighed. "Why are immortals still being created and who explains this to Max and Methos?"