Stuck!

Chapter Nine Sent to the Corner

Morning dawned bright and terrible on Atlantis.

"That's a very nice picture you're drawing there, Rodney."

Heightmeyer's voice oozed sincerity. McKay wasn't buying it. Art therapy, his ass. The psychologist was getting way too much enjoyment out of this exercise. Which was utterly unfair. Honestly, how was it his fault that she sat in that closet for three hours before she swallowed her pride and radioed for help?

"Can you tell me a little bit about your drawing?" Heightmeyer pressed cheerfully ahead with her child psychology spiel.

McKay shot her a sour look, set down the colored pencil and jabbed a finger at the sketch.

"This," he said, "is a diagram of one of the control panels we're going to have to reverse-engineer if we're to have the slightest prayer of getting me back into my own body before I hit puberty again."

"I see," Heightmeyer said, studying the sketch with interest. "And what about this bit you sketched over here in the corner?"

"That? That is a kitty cat." McKay sat back and crossed his arms, daring her to say anything.

Heightmeyer pursed her lips, looking thoughtful. McKay turned away to glare around at the room where he'd been banished since breakfast. It was a bright, airy place, decorated in soothing pastels and cheery primary colors rather than the usual Ancient decorating palate of white on white on white. Low shelves were cluttered with mysterious, brightly colored objects.

McKay sat at one of the low, round tables scattered around the room, in a chair perfectly scaled for a four-year-old. Heightmeyer had crammed herself into a neighboring chair, unfazed by the fact that she was sitting so close to the ground that her knees almost hit her chin.

He rolled his eyes and noticed for the first time that the stained glass windows were set in a colorful abstract pattern that looked suspiciously like...sheep. Abstract sheep cavorting merrily over abstract hills.

He should have padlocked Heightmeyer in that closet and thrown away the key. He still couldn't believe she'd shut him away in an Ancient nursery.

With a kittenish snarl, he angled his little chair away from the psychiatrist and reached for the hand-held radio that had replaced his ill-fitting headset. He paged Zelenka and launched into a detailed description of the control panel prototype. The two scientists batted ideas back and forth for a while, as McKay took notes in orange crayon. He also added a second kitty-cat to the tableau.

"Rodney? Rodney?"

"Huh?" McKay's attention jerked back from the paper and his efforts to get the stripes just right on his tabby cat. He stared at the radio, then blushed as it crackled with another worried call from Zelenka. Heightmeyer, damn her, was watching him with narrowed eyes.

"Right," he said, trying to cover his confusion. "As I was saying. I really think I should come down to the labs. I need to oversee—"

"No!" Heightmeyer and Zelenka broke in simultaneously.

McKay froze. "But—" He waved at the schematic on the drawing pad.

Kate leaned over and gently drew the paper away from him, folding it carefully to put in her pocket. "I'll make sure Dr. Zelenka gets your notes."

"I believe you have given us enough to make a good start, Rodney," Zelenka's voice crackled across the radio. "For now, you should rest. I will let your know the moment there is any progress to report."

"Rest? But I don't need rest! I need to—"

"I will call if we make progress. I promise. Now, we have much work to do. I will call if we need you. Zelenka out." And the connection was cut.

"No!" McKay stormed, hurling away the radio and its staticky platitudes. It skidded off the table and hit the floor with a crunch. McKay crossed his arms and slouched lower in his chair, fuming.

Heightmeyer reached out but Rodney swatted her hand away before it could pat him on the head.

"Dr. McKay, please understand—we're not keeping you here as punishment," she said, pulling her hands back out of smacking distance. "We thought you'd be more comfortable working in a room where you could sit comfortably on the furniture. And of course, the computers in this room are all designed with children in mind..."

"Ah yes," McKay snapped. "That explains why I can only call up programs about cavorting sheep when I try to tap into the Ancient database. But you're so right! The chairs in my lab are too tall and the chairs in my room are too soft but these chairs—" He gave his squatty blue chair a vicious kick. "Are just right. So why don't you toddle off, Goldilocks, and make me some nice porridge?"

Heightmeyer threw up her hands, extricated herself from her chair with a grunt, and left.

The door snicked shut behind her. It was a half door, so that anyone tall could peer over the top to check on him, but it effectively locked anyone four feet tall or shorter inside the room. McKay eyed the exit, trying to decide whether it was worth his time to try to override the room's child-proof locks—that is, if he could reach them (they were on the outside of the door). On the other hand, this was his first real chance to get some work done without someone hovering over him, fighting the urge to pinch his cheeks. Why did adults always want to pinch children's cheeks? He'd never wanted to pinch a child's cheeks...hell, he didn't even like touching the things. God knows what nasty germs and viruses they were carrying around. He also didn't understand why adults always treated children like they were idiots. He never did. He didn't have patience for children because they asked too many questions, and it got on his nerves. Children were annoying. But he'd never talk to a child like it was stupid, as he saw most adults do. And now they were doing it to him, even knowing that it was him they were talking to. Damn it.

With a sigh, McKay pulled a fresh sheet of paper out of the stack and doodled a few lines of a formula that might or might not act as a polymer to reconnect the shattered crystal, but found his attention wandering.

His heels drummed against the chair legs as he squirmed restlessly. He'd forgotten the raw energy that came with childhood. He felt like he could run laps around Atlantis. He wanted to run laps around Atlantis.

He hadn't been this wired since...well, since Ford and his merry band of pinheads got him hooked on Wraith enzyme. Except this wasn't a drug. This was Teyla's life force he could feel buzzing along his nerve endings.

Horrified by that thought, he bounced out of the chair and jittered over to the shelves, looking for something to keep himself occupied.

He waved a hand over a brightly colored cube and jumped back as a side panel popped open, disgorging a small avalanche of artifacts. On top of the pile was a bright silver cylinder — a toy puddle jumper, rendered perfectly to scale. It flashed to life under his touch and slowly levitated until it was hovering in front of his nose.

McKay bit back an undignified squeal and glanced toward the toy pile, looking for the remote control. The little jumper zipped off and dive-bombed the pile, acting on his whim. McKay blinked, then thought about the other side of the room. The puddle jumper rocketed away to a far corner. He tried visualizing loop-de-loops, and danced in delight as the tiny craft went soaring and corkscrewing around the playroom.

What other wonders did the Ancients stash in their toy chests? He dived toward the pile, with the puddle jumper in hot pursuit. Either his control over his artificial gene was getting better, or the toys were a lot less finicky than most Ancient devices.

In short order, he had the contents of the chest sorted into three piles. One for objects of redeeming scientific value or overwhelming coolness—the puddle jumper hovered proudly over this stack. The discard pile was considerably larger, cluttered with baubles and noisemakers and at least one Ancient tea party set.

He reached toward the third pile—toys of unknown function or indeterminate purpose. He rolled one jewel-like object back and forth between his pudgy fingers. It looked a bit like his old personal shield, done in hues of hot pink and red. He thought hard at the device, then pocketed it with a shrug when it refused to light up.

He turned back to the nearly empty toy chest and fished out a stuffed animal. It was gray-green and fluffy and looked a bit like a cross between a praying mantis and a yak. McKay chucked the thing onto the discard pile with a shudder. Hadn't the Ancients ever heard of a teddy bear?

There was a flash and a sudden pulse of heat from the device in his pocket...and McKay found himself staring into the beady button eyes of a stuffed brown bear that had materialized out of nowhere on the floor beside him.

McKay poked the bear. It seemed solid enough. He picked it up, grimacing as if he expected the thing to come to life and try to eat his face. The bear just flopped endearingly, stitched mouth curved in an insipid smile.

Slowly, he pulled the Ancient gadget out of his pocket and thought, very carefully, about a nice turkey sandwich.

Turkey on soft Wonderbread with extra Miracle Whip materialized in a puff of displaced air.

McKay stared at the sandwich. He stared at the glowing pink gizmo. A wide, speculative smile spread across his face.

[{O}]

A/N: The cow continues to moo. She sounds discontent. Leave me reviews and I shall read them to her during the milking.