Part Five: Hubris Meets Its Match
When Leslie Steward was the Mitre Fellow for Biology at Tokyo University, she received a yukata as a gift from a gentleman friend with whom she shared an apartment. A yukata is a traditional Japanese cotton housecoat. Leslie's was floor-length, creamy white, with pink and red blossoms printed on it. She loved it to death. Her Japanese boyfriend thought the garment went well with her large blue eyes and long, dark-brown hair, even if it was rather baggy on her slender build.
"Steward! Steward, wake up! It's Rodney McKay. Stew-ard!"
Leslie bolted upright in her bed. A crazy person was pounding on her door. No, wait… Dr. McKay. Huh. Right the first time. A crazy person was pounding on her door.
"Steward, get your ass out of bed!"
She grabbed her beloved yukata, slid it on quickly as she had done many thousands of times before—having worked her fellowship during early 1990s—and answered the door. There stood Dr. Rodney McKay, out of breath, sweating and red faced. He stared at her for a second, then swept his hands over his hair, an awkward gesture of greeting.
"Come with me," he said, waving her forward.
"Where…"
"Don't ask questions. Just come."
Still shaking off the dregs of sleep, Leslie could not imagine why the physicist needed her. She knew nothing of his research, and he was almost completely uninvolved with hers. Steward was presently studying the Ceanorhabditis elegans nematode, a spunky little Mainland creature bestowed with the ability to smell the presence of Wraith enzyme. McKay had shown no interest in this project. Weeks had passed since she had last seen the man, which certainly beat having him breathing down her neck all the time.
"Dr. McKay…"
"Do…not…'doctor'…me!" He was running, now, pulling Leslie along. She lifted the hem of her yukata to free her legs for long strides, bare feet slapping against the hallway's hard flooring.
"Can't someone else help you?" she panted, barely getting her own words out.
"No one. You're the last. You and Lorne. But he's military, useless with the science stuff."
"The last?"
He stopped and Leslie slid to a halt beside him. She pulled her disheveled robe more tightly about her and watched him expectantly.
"We…" he paused, breathless, oblivious to Steward's clothing issues. "We're the… only ones left…in the city. Everyone else is vanished… just, pffft! Gone!"
"Gone?"
"Why do you insist on repeating everything I'm telling you? Yes, they're gone. Must I draw you a schematic?"
She stared at Rodney McKay--who didn't care about her nematode research--and decided that he wasn't her type.
He began speaking again, this time slowing it up for the uninitiated one who accompanied him.
"I was working in my lab on a power booster to amplify the sensitivity of our long-range sensors. Burning the midnight oil as usual, because—what a surprise—no one else can keep this place from imploding. Bryson came in. You know him? Little squirrelly guy out of MIT? Did you know he's polydactyl? Six toes on each foot. But that's not the point. He was fooling around with some sort of device. Pushed a button or something and…he's gone. And everyone else is gone, as well, except the three of us. And…what is wrong with your face?"
In panic, Steward drew her hands over her cheeks.
"What? Am I…" she imagined all sorts of horrible things. Her face was her best asset, after her legs. And also the hair. And her intimate knowledge of shiatsu massage…
"You're frowning. Stop frowning. We're meeting up with Lorne in the control room." With that, he continued on his way, not yet running but working his way up to it again.
"How did you find me?"
McKay patted his jacket pocket. "Life signs detector."
Steward nodded to his back. Their destination was only a short distance away and she could see Lorne trying to work with the crystals of the consoles that arched around him like so many glowing pipe organs.
Entering the control room, the biologist noted the blinking lights and laptop computers with their indecipherable readouts. Obviously McKay was deluding himself. The ATA gene had dissolved in her system, and been excreted as so much useless waste. Even initialized equipment responded to her sluggishly. Bad luck, bad genes, she really couldn't tell.
Atlantis's Chief Science Officer rubbed his hands together purposefully. "Okay, people, we're going to have to work together to figure this thing out. Got it?"
Leslie nodded again, trying to look halfway intelligent. McKay must have noticed her befuddlement.
"Steward, are you with me on this?"
"I'm not familiar with your type of science, Doctor."
"Yes, yes, I know that you're more proficient with the squishy stuff. However, I need someone who has more than a simple medulla oblongata inside their cranium," he said, impatiently blinking towards Lorne. The Marine looked uncertain about the specifics but seemed completely aware that he'd been insulted. "Now, you do what I say when I say it and we might all get to bed by morning. Questions?"
"No," she lied, completely confused but willing to go the distance. Besides, Lorne was there and he was adorable. She looked down at herself, at her lovely yukata and chilly bare feet. It was all rather funny, actually, like those dreams where you're naked at work. This time, she practically was.
