---

5

Rodney entered the infirmary as he frequently did, with concern that bordered on mild paranoia. Rarely could he push from his brain the image of a stray airborne alien germ finding its way on to his skin, leading to a lengthy, painful deterioration of physical and mental functions, and culminating in a horrifying death, all from a skin rash.

He was not, however, prepared for what he saw on this occasion. Eleven hearty-looking men, in traditional Scottish attire and clutching bagpipes, hovered around a closed office door.

Rodney caught a medical technician's eye and the woman correctly interpreted the reason for his presence. She pointed toward the office.

"It's okay?" Rodney queried.

"As long as you're not wearing a plaid skirt and carrying an ugly musical instrument – you're allowed."

Rodney apprehensively nudged his way through the silent mass of bearded redheads. "Um…hello. Yes, 'scuse me. I just need to, um…"

He opened the door just enough to slide into the room, before closing it securely behind him. There was no sign of anyone in the small space.

"Carson?"

"I'm hidin'." The voice came from behind a tall sculpture of books. Carson rolled his chair from behind the medical volumes. "Thanks to Heaven, they're finally quiet. They want me to join their group."

Rodney stared at him blankly.

"And play the 'pipes," explained Carson, emphatically.

"It's, uh, quite the group."

"You've no idea. My father and eleven uncles."

Rodney nodded and made half an effort to look as if he understood. "Ah."

Carson sighed and stared up at McKay with wide eyes and a befuddled expression. "You'd think they'd remember how bloody awful I was with the thing. An utter idjit. All I ever managed to do with 'pipes was call ganders."

Once again, he was met with a blank stare.

"Male geese. They teased me about it all the time…my family, I mean, not the geese. They probably thought I was the tease, if ya know what I mean. Though they did utilize me quite a bit 'round the holidays. My family, that is. I must say, there's nothin' like roast goose at Christmas time."

Rodney cut him off. "Great, wonderful that your family reunion is going so well…What did the physical exams show?"

"Oh, I just sent the results to Dr. Weir." Carson rolled himself over to his desk and tapped the spacebar of his laptop to activate the screen so Rodney could see for himself. "For all intents and purposes, they're human - warts and all."

"Warts?" McKay scanned the computer document for names of infectious diseases. "They have some sort of virus?"

Carson rolled his eyes. "No. What I mean is…for example, Uncle Dugald is exactly like I remember him – eighty-two years old with a cataract in his left eye and Type 2 diabetes."

"Well, that's not much good to us." Rodney's vision drifted back to the computer screen. "You'd think the least they could do is come back cured. With information on how to do it."

Carson shrugged and nodded in casual agreement.

Rodney finally got to the real reason for his visit. "I heard Major Sheppard is here?"

Carson shook his head. "Was here earlier, left a wee bit ago." He rolled himself back behind his wall of books and mumbled, "He may have had the right idea."

"Right, thanks."

Rodney squeezed his way back out the door and through the elderly Scottish contingent.

He made his way to Sheppard's private quarters, only half-expecting to find him there. He knocked lightly.

"Major?"

Several seconds passed and he knocked again, louder. "Major Sheppard?"

Rodney couldn't help but wonder who, or what, was on the other side of the closed door. What visitors did John Sheppard have? It's not like there would be any harm in just seeing. He certainly wouldn't be able to hear what anyone was saying even if they did talk to him. He moved his hand toward the door just as a voice came from a few feet behind him.

"Help you with something?"

Rodney jerked back in surprise and he looked down the hall to see Major Sheppard approaching. Atlantis's senior military officer looked haggard and serious.

McKay stuttered a feeble cover. "Oh! I…I thought I heard..." he pointed toward the closed door, then to Sheppard. "But, you're, uh…here."

"Yeah."

"Well, I just mean…after the meeting this morning I didn't think…" McKay trailed off in response to the flat expression he received. "I was actually looking for you because I was thinking about what we were talking about the other day—using the city's satellite control segments even though we don't have satellites anymore. Your idea about trying to redirect the RSTA systems for reconnaissance and surveillance to provide a deep space defensive monitoring web was, while rather crude and simplistic, more valid than we originally thought…"

McKay stopped himself. Sheppard's countenance hadn't changed. All he'd done is stare at the scientist and blink several times.

Rodney spoke again. "Ya know, we can talk about this later if you-"

"Yeah. Let's do that."

McKay became aware of the fact that he was standing directly in front of the door, blocking the major's path. "Oh, you probably want to…"

He stepped back but Sheppard didn't make a move to open the door. There was a weary look in the brown eyes that met Rodney's blue ones. A question sprang into McKay's mind and slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it.

"Are you all right?"

Sheppard was clearly reluctant to maintain eye contact and replied quietly as he opened the door. "I've had better days."

He seemed unwilling to close himself in the room and left the door ajar while he slipped in and grabbed a small carry-all bag and the staffs he used when practicing hand-to-hand maneuvers with Teyla.

Rodney's curiosity got the better of him and he brazenly looked into the room as the soldier entered. The space seemed filled with people, various ages and races, sitting on all the available furniture. Sheppard suddenly appeared in his view.

"McKay?"

Rodney was amazed at the small crowd in the room. He rose up on his toes to see over the major's shoulder. "There must be twenty people in there."

"I know a lot of dead people," Sheppard replied, tersely. He moved into the hall and Rodney caught a glimpse of a young slim woman with long dark hair and familiar brown eyes.

"Wow, she's hot."

Sheppard didn't reply to the comment but directed a sharp question at the scientist. "You really don't have anything else you could be doing right now?"

Rodney threw his hands up in frustration. "Why aren't you spending time with them?"

"What!"

"Dr Heightmeyer said it this morning, from a psychological standpoint this is a prime opportunity for closure. You're not exactly dealing with it."

"Oh please, I don't see you having a picnic with, who was it again…grandpa, dog, cat, and goldfish? Don't talk to me about 'dealing with it'." He shut the door, distancing himself from the room. "This is how I'm dealing with it."

McKay looked from Sheppard to the door and back again. "That's healthy."

Sheppard raked his fingers through his hair and his hand unconsciously fell to rest on the butt of his 9mm. "Better than the last time."

"Ah. Well, yes…."

The major's reply reminded Rodney of what Sheppard experienced some months back when they'd believed they'd made it back to Earth. The memory of shooting a previously dead friend could not be a pleasant one.

"Now if there isn't anything else…" Sheppard sounded as drained as he looked.

"Oh, um…no."

As Sheppard stepped away, McKay looked once more at the closed door. "You're lucky, you know."

The major stopped but didn't turn around. He cocked his head slightly toward the man behind him and breathed a sharp laugh. "Rodney, I don't know who the hell taught you the definition of lucky but--"

McKay sighed loudly. "No, don't be dense…lucky you had all those people in your life." He didn't wait for a reply; turning abruptly he made his way towards the opposite end of the hallway.

---

6

Rodney arrived at the door to his quarters and hesitated just as he'd done the last five times he'd stopped there. His pause was longer this time as he stood in the hall, arguing with himself.

'This is asinine. You've stood up against creatures that could single-handedly wipe out entire races, and you're afraid of your grandfather?'

' It's not my grandfather.'

'Fine, a stereotactic optical/auditory electromagnetic representation of the man who taught you how to skip rocks.'

'God, I haven't tried to skip a rock in years.'

'That's because you're lousy at it. You never were able to skip rocks.'

'Shut up.'

Rodney abruptly silenced the voice in his head by taking a deep breath and entering the room. He addressed the 'man' there.

"You're still here."

"You finally came in."

His grandfather had answered without looking up. He was hunched over Rodney's desk, deeply engrossed in dissecting the scientist's wind-up alarm clock. A large, fluffy, gray cat was curled up on his lap, asleep. It was Butch, all right. Right down to the ragged ears, split from night fights, and the single fang that peeked out from beneath his upper lip.

'That is not your cat. This is not your grandfather. For all you know he could be restructuring that clock into a well-disguised nuclear reactor.'

The Ngaut-Ngaut may have said they were friendly, and Elizabeth and the others may believe them; Rodney, however, was leery. These 'people' said their true form was energy, yet they were incapable of manipulating it for interstellar travel. For this exploratory expedition, they'd utilized the meteor shower. From Atlantis they would continue their travels via the 'gate.

Rodney shifted his focus to the chubby, white Bull Terrier who'd been pressed up against him from the moment he'd entered the room. Rodney had tried to ignore it, unwilling to acknowledge the well-remembered devotion in this dog that he'd owned as a youth. It seemed genuinely delighted to see him. He couldn't comprehend how that could be.

He pushed aside a worn, faded red collar and scratched the nape of the dog's neck. The motion made no sound, no jangling of metal against metal to signify the presence of a license or tags. His father had refused to lay out any 'unnecessary' money.

Ever since the dog disappeared, all those years ago, Rodney had harbored a suspicion that it was due to feelings of bitterness on behalf of the animal. The dog must have been convinced he didn't love it enough to provide even a rudimentary display of caring about what happened to it.

Yet the little, stubby tail now wiggling at the opposite end of the dog didn't appear to convey those sorts of feelings at all. Rodney smiled in spite of himself and glanced again at the figure seated at his desk.

The 'man' before him looked exactly like his grandfather. Rodney's mind drifted and he recalled the many times after school when he walked quickly to his grandparents' Tudor-style home. By that time, his grandfather had long-since retired from the postal service and he spent his days tinkering. His basement workshop was scattered with odds and ends. Any combination of which was undoubtedly destined to become the next great invention.

Rodney would sit with his grandfather, offering suggestions on how to get the latest project to function; and accepting advice on how to survive in school when you had few friends and an IQ higher than most of your teachers. And when it was time for Rodney to head home, his grandfather would occasionally relate to him the story of the Mountie and the squirrel.

"The squirrel always made it to the sugar shack first."

Rodney was snapped back to the present at the sound of his grandfather's voice. He shook his head and dropped down onto his bed. From his night stand, he pulled a small bag of jerky and slipped a few pieces to the dog, while continuing to pet it. "That story never did make any sense."

Grandfather McKay chuckled. "It was supposed to keep you humble. You would come from school upset that the teacher had said something incorrect, but wouldn't listen to you…"

Rodney's head shot up and he asked in a worried tone, "Wait, can you read my mind?"

He tried to clear his thoughts, think only of simple things—the color blue, the number 128, noncommutative chiral gauge theories on the lattice with manifest star-gauge invariance—but he found them all too basic.

His grandfather sat upright, pushed the clock away, and smiled. "You aren't going to give this up, are you? Ask your questions."

Rodney slipped into a familiar dialogue as the Bull Terrier at his feet oozed its way up onto his lap. "I've been giving this some thought. Why these forms? Why not come as you are? If you're able to pull memories from our consciousness, aren't you able to import your own impressions? Electromagnetic telepathy? Oh! And about nine months ago we met a…group of beings that I believe are very similar to you, pure energy. Do you have a 'homeworld'? Are you completely dependant on piggybacking for interplanetary travel? How old is your race?"

The questions poured from him like stream-of-consciousness realizations. He pointed to the goldfish swimming lazily in a large round bowl on one corner of his desk.

"Why a fish?" A slight, sarcastic laugh escaped. "Don't tell me someone actually chose to be my fish. You have to admit, that's pretty pathetic. I mean, you guys get stuck with an eccentric Canadian grandfather, a mangy cat, a dog who never wanted to be with me in the first place and a goldfish. You got the short end of the stick, lemme tell you. You should have hooked up with Dr. Beckett or Major Sheppard; they have people. I didn't even warrant a visit from--"

He caught himself and stopped abruptly.

Grandfather McKay prompted him gently. "From who?"

Rodney lifted the Bull Terrier off his lap and stood. "Ya know, this is absurd. I don't know who or what you are but you aren't--"

"Your parents?"

Rodney stared at the man seated with the large gray cat on his lap. "What?"

His grandfather pulled the disassembled alarm clock towards himself and began tinkering again. "You were going to say that you didn't even warrant a visit from your mother and father, no?"

The dog on Rodney's bed whined and stretched out a paw towards him. The scientist dropped back down onto the mattress and the Bull Terrier quickly snuggled up again to receive more attention.

"Well, there is that." Rodney stared at the guts of the clock. "What are you doing?"

"It was running slow."

"I know. It's on my list of things to fix."

"Now you'll have time for more important things." His grandfather glanced up and smiled mischievously.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, I got it. It won't be slow anymore. Time for more important things."

Grandfather McKay focused once again on the clock. "Let's see….We decided to take these forms so you would be more accessible to us. And us to you. We're interested in learning and exploring. Can't very well do that if we scare the wits and wickets out of everybody, eh? And yes, we are able to transfer our memories as well."

"Of course," interrupted Rodney, "you're energy, and since the brain is based on electromagnetic impulses it would be a viable theory that memories could be transferred just like audio or video images are."

The older man seemed quite used to the scattered focus of the scientist. He merely continued with his explanations. "We have a world that is our home, but it's been a long shin and a month since we've seen it."

Rodney smiled at the expression that he hadn't heard in several years.

"We left it to explore, but this traveling between planets didn't go as smoothly as we'd hoped. We may be energy, but we're not a lot of it. And let me tell you, it takes a lot to break through atmosphere, eh." He looked at Rodney with a sincere expression. "You say you met another group, like us? I think we'd like to hear about that."

He abruptly switched back to his list of answers.

"In the case of your friends, it took more people to define them." He paused, and attempted to explain. "To create the men they have become."

Rodney shook his head. "I'm a brilliant astrophysicist because of an ex-postal worker, a dog, a cat, and a fish?"

The elderly spirit lay down the small screwdriver he held and settled his glasses more securely up on the bridge of his nose. "Your memories of your parents are clouded…."

McKay leaned back on his bed and breathed a laugh. "Yeah, well, who doesn't have parental issues?"

"You are very much like both your mother and father. You have a great capacity for compassion and caring, Roddy, the problem is you only show it when no one is around. You cleaned that fish's bowl every other day whether it needed it or not."

Rodney didn't look up, but only focused more intently on the dog lying happily with its head on his lap. "That's not caring, that's a minor obsessive/compulsive disorder."

"You put up at least 50 signs and searched the streets for weeks when that dog disappeared."

"Yeah…well…."

"And you'd have to have a pretty soft spot to take in a cat like this." He ran a hand down the feline's back. It squeaked a bit, but remained asleep. "Unconditional love, my boy."

McKay shifted uncomfortably.

"Strong memories, good or bad, are what shape us and our behaviors. The times you spent in that dusty basement of mine are still very vivid."

He tapped his own chest with one finger. "Someone recognized long ago that you're smart, if not a bit neurotic, and that you can rise to be an incredibly great man, Roddy." Grandfather McKay nodded with pride. "Because of me you went on to become a scientist. Quite a motivating force for you, eh?"

Rodney was still hesitant to look up, but he smiled and nodded. His grandfather spoke again.

"Look at me, getting misty eyed. Haven't done this since '02 when those damn Norwegians stole our boys' Gold in Salt Lake City. Martin has some kind of curse on him, I tell you. Aw, the Devil in a ditch, what the hell do Norwegians know about curling, anyway?"

Rodney grinned, how many times had he listened to his grandfather hurl odd curses at the television during games? It was not easy to see the individual before him as a being from another galaxy. "How long can you stay? You must have an enormous amount of knowledge you can share with us."

"We can't stay long, I'm afraid. It's draining for us to take these forms. Maybe several more hours. The last time we were here was over ten thousand years ago. It's not always—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, ten thous…That means you would have been here when…There were people here at that time, right? Did you interact with them also? Do you—"

He winked at Rodney. "No more questions. After all…we're Canadians." He picked up the small screwdriver, refitted the clock's round, metal backing plate and searched for one of the tiny screws he'd situated at one corner of the desk.

The scientist threw his hands in the air. "Ya know, you always said that; what does that mean, exactly?"

"No, idea. It was what your grandmother would say to me after she thought I had done something wrong. 'I don't know why I should be surprised,' she would say, 'you're Canadian.' She was from Detroit, originally. You'd think she would have thanked me for taking her away from that place." He dropped a screw into a slot and tightened it down.

---

7

Teyla's short staff struck John's unprotected midsection and drove the air from his lungs. The heel of her left foot caught him behind the right knee and he collapsed onto the floor, breathing heavily.

"Shit!" The major slapped an open palm hard against the mat.

Teyla offered a hand of assistance but was not surprised when her friend didn't acknowledge it. She brought herself down to his level, kneeling on the mat with her legs tucked underneath her.

"Your mind is not here," she stated.

Sheppard remained hunched over, his forehead resting on the floor, and breathed a harsh laugh. "Now what gave you that impression? Don't you usually kick my butt?"

"Yes," she replied with a slight grin, "but not usually so easily, so many times in a row."

Sheppard rolled his head just enough to shoot her a dirty look. Teyla gently pulled his staff from his grip and John pushed himself up into a sitting position that matched hers.

"You are here because you do not wish to face those who visit you?" It was more of a statement than a question. She shook her head and showed a bittersweet smile. "I would feel delighted and blessed if those who had gone on before me came back to visit."

"Yeah, well, I suspect you were on better speaking terms with anybody who might be coming back to visit you. And anyway, they aren't really them, they're…imposters, aliens."

"I have seen some of your people interacting with their own visitors. It seems to be beneficial for them."

"What can I say? Rodney called it—I'm not 'dealing with it'." He rose and crossed to pull a towel from his bag. He rubbed it roughly down his face, as if there was more than just sweat that he wished to wipe away.

Teyla stood and began gathering up her own equipment. "Your people are very advanced; I have learned much from them. Yet the one thing I do not comprehend is your fear of death and your unwillingness to accept it. It is part of the cycle of being, just as birth. You do not mourn the coming of the cold season."

"Hell, no," interrupted Sheppard, "that's the start of 'boarding season. You can't compare winter and death. Death does not have a half-pipe."

Teyla looked at him quizzically but he waved her off. "Nevermind. Look, I appreciate what you're saying, but you don't understand. Those…people in there," he motioned in the vague direction of where his quarters were, "there wasn't any of that closure stuff. I can't face them, even if they aren't the real thing. There're a lot of things that I never got to explain or say."

Teyla hitched her bag up onto her shoulder and, in a matter-of-fact tone, she asked, "Then why do you not say it now?"

She tossed Sheppard his staff and walked from the room, leaving the major to contemplate the simplicity of her suggestion.