Disclaimer: SGA - not mine, don't sue! For fan enjoyment, not profit….
AN: Thanks to everyone for their reviews. AnCa has a good point about nitrogen narcosis; for this fiction I am assuming that the Jumper automatically pressurized to some degree as they descended (although not as much as McKay did later), allowing for narcosis. I like this better than Rodney's self-diagnosis of 'hypoxia' which, while it can cause the symptoms he experienced, rarely does; it tends to cause sleepiness, confusion, slowing of thought processes, and rapid breathing. Increasing the O2 concentration in the atmosphere would help in either event. Besides, Carson could be wrong too!
Decompression - Take 2
By Kerr Avon
"Rodney, come on. Wakey, wakey!"
McKay's eyes wrenched open, an action he immediately regretted as the pounding in his head resumed with a vengeance. Shielding his face from the flashlight and squinting his eyes shut, he groaned, "Must you?" The Jumper was mostly dark, illuminated only by the light that filtered in through the windshield. Clearly several hours had passed since Beckett's initial evaluation, and gentle snoring betrayed the location of the other two shuttle occupants.
Sheppard grinned crookedly. "Yeah, I must. My shift. Time for your every-two-hour 'Carson Quiz'. If you answer all the questions correctly, you get to go back to sleep until Radek takes over!"
"Fine. Whatever." McKay inhaled slowly to quell his residual nausea. Still, he noted with satisfaction, the pain in his joints and abdomen seemed to have resolved.
"Question number one; what is your name?" Sheppard assumed a corny British accent.
McKay sighed. The vague memory of similar questioning tickled his memory, and he suspected that this was going to go on periodically all night. "Rodney McKay."
"Next: what is your quest?"
McKay cracked open one eye in surprise. "You're kidding, right?"
"Just seeing if you were paying attention. Actually, the next question is, 'Do you know where you are?'"
"In a parked Jumper on Atlantis that's been jury-rigged as a hyperbaric chamber with a little guy in my head wielding a sledgehammer to get out."
Sheppard grinned wider. "Sarcasm… good. Now how about the date?"
McKay quirked up a corner of his mouth. "Earth-calendar or Atlantean calendar?"
Sheppard resumed the cornball accent. With fake confusion, he replied, "I don't know…AHHhhhhh", and pantomimed being thrown over a cliff by an invisible force.
Even Rodney had to chuckle at that one. "You know, I wouldn't have taken you for a 'Monty Python' fan. 'Three Stooges', maybe…"
"Hey, Curly was king!"
"I was more of a 'Moe' man, myself." His eyes slid closed of their own volition. "Can I go back to sleep now?" he whined.
"Sure. Until Zelenka wakes you two hours from now." Rodney didn't need to look to know that the man was smirking, so he let himself nod off.
"Hey, you want to play Reenactment?", asked Joey languidly. It was sweltering July day, the kind of heat that even insects found oppressive. The two boys lay motionless under the shade of an old oak tree out in Joey's backyard, but they were still drenched in sweat. Rodney hated being dumped at his Grandma's for the summer; he and Jeanne didn't know anybody, and not many kids their age lived nearby. To think that he had actually been relieved to discover a boy only a year or two older had moved into the ramshackle house at the end of the block, next to the junkyard. OK, admittedly the kid was a little odd; pale skin, dark hair and eyes, always wearing too much black with chains hanging off the belt of his tattered jeans. Still, he could carry on a decent conversation and was more intelligent than most of Rodney's schoolyear acquaintances. While Joey's taste tended toward classic literature rather than hard science, at least he could understand what Rodney was talking about, and often suggested books that the younger lad would check out of the local library and subsequently devour.
"What's 'Reenactment'?" asked McKay, curiosity piqued. He turned his head to look at his friend, to find almost-black eyes staring back at him with disconcerting intensity for an eleven-year-old. Rodney gulped nervously but didn't retract the question.
Apparently satisfied by something, Joey turned to stare up at the tree branches again, hands laced behind his head. "You play 'Cowboys and Indians' when you were little?"
"Sure!" Rodney hadn't, actually, but it seemed important not to let Joey know that most other kids preferred to beat him up rather than play games.
"It's like that, only with characters out of a book. You pick a favorite story or author, then we take turns playing different people. Grown-ups do that for famous battles and stuff."
Rodney was secretly excited that Joey wanted to tech him a new game; their friendship had been a little shaky for a few days. McKay had accidentally insulted the darker boy and then kept making things worse as he tried to apologize. It had gotten to the point that Rodney was afraid Joey might never speak to him again, when suddenly this morning the other kid had appeared on his doorstep as if all were forgotten. McKay didn't want to damage their tenuous truce by refusing his pal anything. If playing some weird game kept him from being alone all summer, so be it.
"Why not?" he shrugged, sitting up. "But you'll have to teach me the ropes at first."
Joey grinned ferally, and Rodney suppressed the warning quiver in his gut. "Be glad to," answered Joey, who was on his feet in a heartbeat, offering a hand to the pudgier child. "I found a great place to play over in the dump; we could do anything there!"
He sauntered off cloaked in his 'too cool for school' attitude. Rodney, being almost half-a-head shorter, had to jog to keep up. Within minutes they were deep in the middle of the junkyard, surrounded by piles and piles of discarded refuse that stretched well over their heads. Joey clearly knew exactly where he was going, for he didn't slow up at all. As they neared their apparent destination, he began to nonchalantly discuss the game.
"Most people aren't smart enough for this; it's hard to stay in character, especially if you haven't read the book."
"So what novel did you have in mind?" Rodney panted, frantically hoping that it was one he had read; otherwise he'd have to try and bluff his way through.
Joey halted in front of a particularly huge junkpile, then turned, hands on hips. "Here we are." He gestured at a large opening that was half obscured by other refuse; McKay bent over to get a better look. "Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of a short story for starters, until you get the hang of it."
"OK," replied Rodney distractedly. "What story?" The doorway opened into a shady, dark, square room of sorts; once a large, industrial wooden crate, Joey had clearly tried making it more appealing. A smaller crate had been set inside as a table, and there were two boxes to serve as chairs. On the table were a couple of cans of Coke, as well as a Snickers bar. Venturing into the blessed shade, McKay became aware of the sweat dripping down his back and sat heavily on one of the boxes and opened a Coke.
"I was thinking something by Edgar Allen Poe."
Rodney glanced up to note that his friend was still standing out in the heat. The wolfish grin from earlier had returned full force, and gave the older boy's face an evil aspect. Rodney felt his stomach do flip-flops, but he swallowed nervously and hazarded, "Oh yeah? Which one?"
His query was greeted by the slamming of a previously-unnoticed lid to the crate in his face and the sound of a board being jammed firmly against the outer latch. Black eyes glinted in at him through the cracks in the wooden slats as he replied, "Oh, I thought I'd be Montressor and you could be Fortunato." Maniacal chuckling was followed by the sound of debris being piled against the outer door.
Rodney jumped up in alarm and threw himself against the now-closed entrance. "What are you doing?" he screamed, panic-stricken. The wood shuddered slightly, but held. "What sort of 'game' is this?"
Joey's laughter took on a hysterical timbre. "Come on, genius. Surely a rich boy like you has read 'The Cask of Amontillado'?"
McKay broke into a cold sweat. Unfortunately he had read the horror story, and it had rendered him several sleepless nights. He staggered back from the weight of the words. "You can't mean …" he whispered, his mouth suddenly dry.
The eyes that peered inside sparked with anger. "This'll teach you not to make fun of somebody just because they're poor." The face disappeared to the sound of more obscuring detritus being added.
Rodney's heart fluttered in his chest as he screamed, "I told you I was sorry! That wasn't what I meant, anyway!"
"You'll be sorry, all right," hissed the older boy, as he placed one last object in front of his previous peephole. "Yell all you want; no one will hear you back here." The last statement was followed by the sound of fading footsteps, then silence.
McKay's eyes became saucers as he realized he was alone. Unlike Fortunato, there were cracks in his prison that let in both light and air, but were far too small to escape through. Panicked, he tried to calm himself by carefully examining his surroundings. The crate appeared to be made of thick wooden slats, enclosing a cube roughly eight feet in each direction. Metal bands reinforced it externally, and it was more than 3/4 covered with other refuse. He forced himself to carefully test the strength of each board as he tried not to recall the fate of Montressor's victim. When he had checked all the slats that he could easily reach, he piled the crates and boxes on top of each other to reach higher.
Two hours later, he sat cross-legged on the floor in defeat, throat raw from screaming for help. He stared blankly at the ceiling of his apparent coffin and whispered, "My God. I've been buried alive…" Tears streaked unbidden down his grimy face until he was so exhausted that he curled up into a ball and slipped into a fitful doze. From a great distance he could hear someone calling his name, but he couldn't summon the energy to answer.
"Rodney! Wake up! You're having a nightmare." Zelenka's hand was on his shoulder, shaking vigorously.
McKay's eyes snapped open as he took in a sobbing gasp. "What, where…?" he asked in confusion. He focused on the Czech scientist, and his eyes narrowed as memories flooded in.
Zelenka stared back owlishly as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "No, no," he corrected. "That is my line. I am supposed to ask you if you know who you are, where you are, and what day is it?"
"Rodney McKay," the injured man spat. "Decompressing in a Jumper after being rescued from a coffin on the bottom of the ocean."
Radek shook his head in disagreement. "No, no. You were in Jumper, not coffin."
"A Jumper that you repaired! Functionally, it was my coffin," Rodney lashed out. He was still reeling from his dream, or more accurately, memory. Funny, he hadn't thought about that whack-job kid for years. Needless to say, Joey had returned several hours later and laughingly released him, but not before Rodney had acquired a healthy dislike for enclosed spaces. The rest of that summer was spent assiduously avoiding the maniac; the next year found Joey's family having moved to parts unknown, much to Rodney's unspoken relief.
Zelenka recoiled from the accusation, wringing his hands at a loss for words. "Yes…well…"
McKay's temples pounded as his blood pressure rose, but he kept his voice low so as not to awaken the other two occupants of the hyperbaric chamber. "Well, what? Did you or did you not beg me to test your newly-repaired Jumper, which promptly crashed into the ocean and sank?"
Radek seemed to curl into himself as Rodney's furious accusations struck home. Staring intently at his own twisting hands, he mumbled, "I did figure out how to rescue you…"
"And that makes it all better?" McKay hissed, the epitome of self-righteousness.
Zelenka raised his eyes to meet Rodney's, "I also came on the rescue team."
Rodney's tone became sarcastic, "And I suppose Sheppard had nothing to do with 'convincing' you? Or was it Weir?"
The Czech's gaze dropped to his lap again, and his hands stilled. "Both, actually…" he finally admitted.
McKay's eyes slitted. "I thought as much," he spat, then flopped over to face the bulkhead. Zelenka stared at his friend's stiff back for a few minutes, then rose and shuffled quietly away with slumped shoulders.
John Sheppard, ostensibly dozing in a sleeping bag nearby, thoughtfully watched the form retreat in the darkness.
TBC……
AN: I wanted to explore Rodney's claustrophobia a little, and I love Poe! E.A.P. seemed to have a fascination about being buried alive ('Cask of Amontillado', 'Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Black Cat', etc), which immediately came to mind with Rodney's "You're not stuck in a metal casket under thousands of feet of water" statement. Hope nobody minded the artistic license too much….