Time Immemorial
Chapter 2: Balance of Power
July 16th
1208 Hours
John and Elizabeth strode quickly into Rodney's lab. Ford had requested their presence immediately, mentioning only the scientist's heightened state of anxiety. What that meant was anyone's guess.
"Ruined," Elizabeth spotted McKay whining to Ford. "I mean, completely and utterly ruined!"
"What's the problem, gentlemen?" Elizabeth queried.
"Humanity is the problem," McKay muttered despondently.
"McKay here thinks someone took a bunch of his stuff," the newly promoted Captain Aiden Ford answered for him.
"Not just someone," the Canadian astrophysicist corrected, holding up a finger. "Kavanagh. And not just took. Broke."
"Well, we know he was trying to conduct his own power experiments. You think this is something else?" Elizabeth asked.
"You could say that, yes," was the snarky reply. "I found several pieces of misplaced equipment from both my lab and the Power Room. One of them was this," he said holding up a small, faceted object. A small, faceted, busted object. "It was found in the hallway last night by Corporal… Corporal La-something. The cute one, with the blonde hair."
Sheppard's eyes flickered toward the blue object in Rodney's hands, recognizing it as the same piece of metal and glass that had caused his ass and the floor an unwarranted rendezvous.
Rodney caught John looking and seemed to notice him for the first time. "You! You shot my talcum powder, didn't you?"
John shrugged and folded his arms. "Sorry."
"Sorry? Do you know how important that was to this expedition?"
"I'm guessing pretty important," was the patronizing reply.
"Well... yes. Very important. And you shot it! You bunch of American, pistol-toting cowboys…."
"Look, I said I was sorry. I had a late night, and it was either that bag or Kavanagh's head."
There was a pregnant pause following John's statement. Observing the shared look of contemplation on the faces of the major and Rodney, Elizabeth knew they had both reached the same conclusion. Even Ford was smirking. And before either could suggest that, of the two, Kavanagh's head was the lesser sacrifice, Elizabeth stepped in.
"Let's turn our focus back to the present situation. Tell me more about this object, Rodney. What is it?"
"You mean what was it," Rodney corrected. "I didn't get a chance to examine it in depth before some barbarian destroyed it."
"Then what do you think it was?" Ford asked.
"Well, we know the Ancients were extremely interested in ascension, right? This little baby was another means of studying ascension, but in a more hands-on way."
"Meaning what, exactly?" John asked.
"Meaning that this device very well could have been the first step in artificially simulating ascension." Rodney paused for effect, but was met by raised eyebrows and frowns of confusion. With a sigh, he continued. "Okay, look. The only way of ascending that we know of is for one to rid oneself of corporeal form upon death. Once you die, your existence transcends into a higher plane of being, provided that you have proven yourself worthy in life. Or some mumbo-jumbo like that, anyway."
"I've always thought that was sort of inconvenient, having to die."
"Exactly. The Ancients must have felt the same way. I believe this device was a follow-up experiment to the one with the energy entity – remember, the dark shadowy creature that the Ancients were able to trap in subspace containment? Using the results from that experiment, they must have found a way to artificially induce ascension whenever the user so desires – presumably, while the user is not dead or dying. You just slap this baby on you, kind of like the Ancients' personal shield, and – presto chango! One glow-ified ascended being, coming right up. It's a temporary state, of course."
"And you know this how?" Elizabeth asked skeptically.
"Some if it is speculation on my part, but, well, as you know, I'm always right," McKay answered with a dismissive laugh. "Plus, I was able to translate a small amount of the literature that came with the device."
"And does this literature say anything about the device's operation?"
"Yeah… I, uh, sort of skipped over that chapter. I thought I'd give it a test run on myself first."
"You thought what?" Dr. Weir asked.
"Yes, I know! How exciting would that have been?" Rodney exclaimed.
"If you need me to shoot you in the leg or throw you off a balcony again, just let me know," Sheppard offered.
"I just want to know how you thought skipping out on the Ancients' instructions for this thing in favor of a full-scale human trial was even close to a good idea," Elizabeth questioned, flabbergasted.
"Come on, Elizabeth," Rodney rationalized. "You don't actually read the instructions that come with your furniture before assembling it, do you?"
"Actually—"
"Besides, it's not like I even got around to putting the device on. In the middle of the night, some cave troll decided to completely obliterate it," Rodney said sadly, looking forlornly at the object cradled in his hand. "Poor little guy. It wasn't even his time."
Sheppard rolled his eyes at the scientist's melodrama. McKay caught him again.
"You know, you might show some respect for technology every now and then, Major," Rodney charged.
"Oh, I respect it," John answered. "When it works."
"It works just fine if you know how to use it."
"Well maybe if things were designed a little better around here we wouldn't have so many problems," John said, the argument escalating.
"That's right, blame the scientists. If I didn't know better, Major, I'd say you were the one sabotaging my experiments."
"And if I didn't know any better, I'd say your precious pieces of technology were out to kill everyone!"
"Ha!" McKay scoffed. "That's rich. Name one time—"
"Last night! When—" John cut himself short, but he had already said too much. He saw McKay's face fall as the realization dawned on the man before turning red with anger.
"You didn't," the Canadian said in a low tone.
"I'm sorry, McKay," Sheppard said genuinely. "It was dark and I didn't see it laying there in the hallway before—"
"Before what? Before you stomped your size 12 treads on it?" came the pained reply.
"Before I slipped on it and it knocked me on my ass! Thanks for the concern!"
"Forgive me if I'm a little bitter toward the man who ruined not one but two of my experiments in one night! Congratulations, Major, that has to be a new high score for you!"
"Well maybe if you hadn't left your toy lying in the middle of the goddamn floor—"
"Everyone, settle down," Elizabeth intervened. "Let's all just take a deep breath. Ford, why don't you go check on Carson; see if any if the power outage last night affected the infirmary."
With a nod, the young marine dashed quickly out of the lab, thankful for the task, as mundane as it was.
Satisfied that the tiff had calmed down, Elizabeth simply looked to the two men to begin mending it. Neither of the two would so much as make eye contact with the other, though, like two bickering brothers who had just been caught by their mother. After a short silence, McKay finally spoke.
"I'm working with a devolved species, Elizabeth. Goons. It's no wonder everyone isn't walking around this place on leashes."
Elizabeth sighed. "How about we start with apologies instead of insults."
"But I already said I was sorry," protested John.
"Then say it again," Elizabeth said measuredly, restraining the urge to snap.
Now it was John's turn to sigh. Loudly. "Rodney, I'm sorry about stepping on your gadget." He turned to Elizabeth and arched his eyebrows as if to ask: There. Happy?
She nodded, accepting his feeble attempt at an apology. He had apologized once already and she didn't doubt his sincerity, but she needed to use him to make the first move before the stubborn scientist would even consider budging. She turned to Rodney expectantly.
Not to be outdone, McKay shoved his hands in his pockets and raised his chin defiantly. He merely pretended to mull over whether to grant the major his divine forgiveness. He certainly wasn't about to be the one who stooped to the level of those ingrates. "I accept your apology, Major. Furthermore, I'd like to offer my condolences on your foot..." His eyes flickered away for the briefest moment, a rare indication of sincerity. "I'm sorry that my experiments did anything to cause you personal injury."
"Don't worry about it," the military man replied. He felt suddenly guilty, so uncharacteristically earnest was the physicist's apology. "You know, if you need a hand putting that thing back together, I could maybe help out. I bet we could have it back together in an hour."
McKay held up the trampled gizmo for inspection. As if on some comedic cue, one of the blue facets left hanging by the thinnest of wires dangled one excruciatingly long second, mocking them in the inevitability of its fate, before succumbing to gravity and plummeting five feet to the ground. It crashed unceremoniously to the floor with that painful, distinctive shattering noise that could only be attributed to the demise of something fragile. McKay just stared at the fallen piece pitifully.
Sheppard felt the heat rise to his cheeks. He swallowed. "Maybe two, three hours."
Rodney nodded stiffly, forcing back an outburst. And then he just kept nodding, vigorously to himself, looking ridiculous as he tried to maintain his composure.
"You can fix it," John continued, more than a little unnerved at his volatile friend's unusual calm. "It doesn't look that bad."
"No, no," McKay finally managed to choke out. "Purely cosmetic blemishes."
"Right, see? Nothing a little duct tape can't cure."
At the mentioning of the glorified adhesive, Rodney found himself unable to keep up the façade any longer. The scientist glared hard at his friend and pointed an angry finger in his direction. He opened his mouth to berate the man, but Dr. Weir beat him to the punch.
"Why don't we all take a break, clear our heads and come back to this later?" Elizabeth offered, sensing the tension.
"But—" protested the Canadian.
"Let me rephrase: Rodney, leave it alone." Her tone indicated she hadn't been asking. "And quite frankly, I find it more than a little disturbing just how lightly you are taking this whole ascension thing. Both of you."
"Me?" John cried. "What did I do?"
"'If you need me to shoot you in the leg again'?" Elizabeth quoted.
John was silent for a beat, guilty. "That was…. I was kidding."
"Well I'm not. Ascension is something even the Ancients themselves couldn't fully comprehend, and what do we know about it? Practically nothing. We'd be lucky if we understood a tenth of what they did. I appreciate your willingness to further that knowledge, Rodney, but I want you both to understand that ascension and death are powerful things – this much we're certain of. To use such a power without fully understanding could be disastrous, not to mention irresponsible."
Dr. Weir recognized that she was coming across as the team mom yet again. She sighed. "Look, I just don't want either of you hurt because of some careless mistake. You're both far too valuable to this expedition. Let's just promise to use some common sense from here on out, all right?"
She earned small nods from McKay and Sheppard. "Good. Now let's—"
Before she could complete her sentence, the lights in the lab blinked off, plunging the three in inky blackness for several seconds, before returning to their on state. Elizabeth and John shared a look of confusion.
"Control Room, this is Sheppard," John radioed. "We lost power for a few seconds here. What's going on?"
"Major," replied the familiar voice of Peter Grodin. "We're getting several reports from your area of similar occurrences, but no abnormal readings. We're checking it out now."
"Don't tell me you broke the electricity, too," McKay challenged John.
Ignoring the scientist's jab, Elizabeth radioed back. "Just keep us posted, Peter. We're headed up to you."
"Erm, I'm sorry, but I thought we were taking a break?" Rodney protested.
And I thought Kavanagh had learned his lesson, thought John, presuming the scientist was up to no good yet again. He led the way out of the lab. A short transporter ride later, the three were in Atlantis' Control Room.
"Move," McKay instantly demanded of the poor technician manning one of the consoles. While he busied himself with buttons and readouts, Elizabeth and John made their way over to Grodin and Zelenka, whose eyes were glued to a blueprint of the City displayed on one of the monitors.
"What's the word?" asked Sheppard.
"Nothing good, I'm afraid," Zelenka answered, peeling his eyes away from the screen. "It seems this entire section of the City—" he motioned to a small portion of the City surrounding Rodney's lab "—lost power at the exactly the same, albeit brief, moment. We're not yet sure why."
"Is Dr. Kavanagh accounted for?" Elizabeth asked.
Peter frowned at the question, unaware of the weaselly scientist's exploits the prior night. "I saw him in the mess hall not ten minutes ago, why?"
"So he couldn't have caused this," Dr. Weir voiced, more so to John than any of the others.
"Oh yes he could have," McKay chimed in, "and yes he has. Just not directly. He may be stuffing his face full of delicious cafeteria casserole at the moment, but it looks like we're still feeling the effects from last night's little experiment."
"Explain."
"From what I can tell, Kavanagh tapped directly into Atlantis' primary power system in order to run his experiment last night – something only a complete idiot would do, mind you—"
"McKay," John warned. "Focus…."
"Right. Whatever travesty of an experiment he was running put tremendous strain on the system," said Rodney, pointing at data on his console's screen.
"Precisely why I asked Dr. Kavanagh to postpone his experiments until we could come up with a better plan," Elizabeth lamented.
"As you know, our naquadah generators fall well short of supplying enough power to Gate back to Earth, but they do supply an extremely finite amount of energy that Atlantis can use to power our day-to-day systems. And as you also know, that energy is non-replenishable, like a disposable AA battery. Those generators are now operating at…," his finger trailed to the number he was looking for, "approximately 35% capacity."
"What?" Elizabeth exclaimed. "He managed to drain the majority of our power in one night?"
"Hence my previous only-a-complete-idiot comment."
"Despite their enormous potential for reward," Zelenka mentioned, "many of our experiments are scaled down or tabled altogether for just this reason: they use too much power."
"So explain the outage then," John prompted.
"Simple," McKay explained. "While it's true that we had to manage our power consumption while we were near full energy capacity, we were still able to run all our equipment – but only just. Now with diminished capacity, there's no way our power generation can keep up with our demand."
"What if we shut down non-essential systems?"
"No, no, not even close. Maybe if we had caught it when we were still at 60-70% capacity, but any effort on our part to stop the hemorrhaging now will just be too little, too late. Nevertheless, the City is automatically initiating rolling blackouts to stem the blood loss by forcing the temporary shutdown of entire areas."
Elizabeth had a disquieting thought. "And these blackouts—"
"Will only get worse, yes," McKay answered, anticipating her question. "As we inevitably drain more and more of our remaining energy, the City will increase the frequency and duration of the blackouts as a last-ditch effort." He looked up and around the room. "I'm actually surprised one hasn't—"
Karma seemed to be mocking him that day, for the lights and consoles instantly darkened in the Control and Gate Rooms. The dozen or so occupants froze and looked to the lights warily. Several seconds later, all of the electronics resumed their functions. The eyes turned to McKay.
Before John could mock the scientist's knack for poor timing, Elizabeth intervened. "There's nothing we can do to stop this?"
Rodney huffed. "Yeah. Find me another power source."
"What about backup power, the secondary system?" John asked.
"The secondary power system was never intended to support citywide operations for any extended period of time. It's currently set up to power our radios, and that's it. The majority of it is being preserved for an emergency."
"Pretty soon, I think this might qualify," muttered the pilot.
"Well no kidding – thanks for that keen observation, Major," McKay snapped.
"All right, settle," Dr. Weir cautioned. "We're not in any immediate danger. The worse thing that could happen is that our lights and air scrubbers shut down and we have to light some candles and open a few windows."
McKay looked outside, eyed the impending storm, and looked decidedly displeased with that outcome.
"Can we tie in the secondary power system to the City's functions?" Elizabeth wondered.
"We could, but it would get sucked dry almost instantaneously. So I say again: find me another power source."
"Well, until then," Elizabeth sighed, "we'll just have to settle for shutting down all non-critical systems."
"Didn't you hear what I just said?" McKay exclaimed. "That won't be enough. It'll buy us – what – maybe an extra hour of life."
"That's something. Radek, I'd like you to start taking care of it," Elizabeth decided. The Czech scientist scurried off and began his task. "How much time do we have before we're completely out of power, anyway?" she asked.
McKay exhaled, looked at his display, and threw his hands up. "I don't know. Twelve hours?
Fourteen?"
"We should think about sending a team out to scout for power sources," John suggested quietly to Elizabeth.
Dr. Weir nodded, but in her heart she knew that wouldn't work. She was pretty sure John knew it, too. Since the Stargate consumed an exorbitant amount of power, their searches would be limited to their home planet. And while they hadn't scouted the entire continent yet, their searches thus far had not yielded promising results.
"Our offworld teams will have to wait just a little longer for their daily status reports," she thought aloud, hating to leave the two away teams stranded without information. "In the meantime, Peter, I'd like you to contact Corporal Kirkland and his team on the mainland and inform them of the situation."
Peter nodded, but he was looking elsewhere with his hand to his radio's earpiece. "There's no need, Dr. Weir," Peter said, turning around to her. "The corporal just contacted us."
"Oh?" Elizabeth said, surprised. Her look only matched Grodin's, who was equally as stunned by whatever he had heard over the radio.
"Something wrong?" John asked, worried about his team members who had been dropped off only two days ago on a geological expedition.
"No, Major, not at all," replied Grodin. "Kirkland actually has some good news, given our present situation."
"It's about time," Rodney mumbled. "So spit it out; what's the news?"
Grodin met Dr. Weir's curious gaze. "They've made contact with someone claiming to be part of a people indigenous to the mainland. Better still: they seemed pretty advanced."
Frowning, Elizabeth questioned the timing. It was almost too good to be true. "How advanced?"
The British man shrugged. "Details were spotty, but the corporal reported observing some pretty advanced weaponry, electronically powered. But they've exhibited no sign of hostility toward his team."
Elizabeth thought it over. They were in the beginnings of what could prove to be a dire situation, eventually. The problem wasn't going to solve itself, and if they pushed it off it would only get worse. With no foreseeable alternatives this could be an option worth investigating. She looked to John. He had unconsciously placed himself where she always tended to find him: at her shoulder, supportive.
Noticing her questioning look, Sheppard shrugged. "That's good enough for me. Let's go meet the neighbors."
"Peter, you're in charge while we're gone," Elizabeth called, excitement carrying her feet forward. "We'll be back in a few hours."
John followed, and felt obliged to add, "And no parties!"
TBC