Chapter 1
It was all Madison's fault, thought Rodney. And then he changed his mind, not because laying the blame on a small child wasn't well within his moral framework, but because it was simply much more satisfying, and also easily justifiable, to blame his sister. It was Jeannie's fault; the blame rested, quite firmly, squarely and naturally, on her shoulders.
Deciding to spend his very few, very precious days' leave selflessly fulfilling his familial obligations, Rodney had found himself babysitting a bug-ridden Madison, the husband (What was his name? Kaleb?), being out of town at a conference (Did English professors even have those? What for? Inventing new words?) and Jeannie herself flitting off to deal with a friend's existential crisis or divorce or something.
Sheppard had tagged along, (sensibly avoiding his relatives), and so, the two of them had sat, for what seemed like days, one either side of a sniffing, sneezing, infectious child, being forcibly subjected to endless Winnie-the-Pooh videos. And yes, he did mean VHS tapes, which somehow added insult to injury. To heap additional insult onto said injury, John claimed to have had 'a good time', which Rodney could well believe. He had monopolised the large bowl of mixed Funyuns and Cheetos, mechanically and rhythmically feeding them into his face, eyes glazed as if he were mesmerized, his expression an accurate and childlike reflection of the ridiculous on-screen activities of the imbecilic yellow bear. The Funyun/Cheeto combo, Rodney reflected, was a good one, though; Madison's snack mix of choice, allowable only when sick and/or Daddy was out of town. Not that Rodney had got anything like his fair share, but at least he knew his niece's tastebuds hadn't been entirely deadened by endless tofurkey unpleasantness.
Jeannie's fault, then Jeannie's fault that Rodney, minding his own business, getting on with the day-to-day, vitally important work of a not-internationally-renowned-for-a-very-good-reason-thank-you-very-much astrophysicist, had become suddenly aware that, though the lab was over-populated by the exact number of scientists that did not answer to the name of Meredith Rodney McKay, Phd, Phd, to wit, Radek Zelenka and Miko Kusanagi, there was none of the usual back-and-forth of twittering inanity that passed for conversation between them. There was, in fact, a significant and all-too-interested silence. A listening silence, as intense as if a deep space antenna was directed and aimed entirely at his particular location in the vastness of the galaxy. And as soon as this focussed regard impinged on Rodney's consciousness, he became aware that his lips had been moving, were indeed moving still and that the muttered sounds being emitted were unquestionably worthy of scrutiny. Not because of the value of their scientific innovation to the mass of humanity and associated allied species, but, simply, embarrassingly, not to say catastrophically, because, Rodney realised, he'd been singing; under his breath, in a mumbling kind of style, but nevertheless, recognisably singing. Had he been humming the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth? Declaiming Wagnerian leitmotifs? Even mumbling that song listing all the elements? (He'd given rather a fine performance of that song once at grad school, accompanying himself on the piano and making up an extra verse for all the elements recently discovered. In fact, he realised, another verse was long overdue.) The answer to all of his questions was: sadly, no. The music, if one could call it that, being reproduced by a rebel faction of his eclectic memory, was a catchy, bouncy, irritatingly, cloyingly sweet little ditty: the theme tune to the Disney version of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Zelenka's face wore an arrested, not to say, startled expression.
"What is that you are singing, Rodney?"
"Nothing! I mean, I wasn't! Singing? Me? Don't be ridiculous!"
"But, yes, Rodney, certainly you were singing. Wasn't he?" Zelenka turned to Kusanagi, whose eyes were even larger and rounder behind her large, round lenses than Rodney ever recalled seeing them before; not that he recalled much about her at all, other than her extremely moderate competence. Although, strangely, something was tapping irritatingly at a small trapdoor in his mind.
Miko refused to commit. One corner of her mouth was threatening to rise into a very slight, tremulous smile; Rodney narrowed his eyes at her and she lowered hers and shook her head slightly.
Radek shrugged, as if dismissing the matter, and continued with his work; Rodney was not deceived. That retentive mind would be squirreling away an audio-perfect recording of the illustrious Chief Science Officer of the Ancient city of Atlantis singing the theme tune to Winnie-the-Pooh while working on… what the hell was this stupid thing, anyway? He'd been tinkering with it for an hour with no results forthcoming. Maybe it'd respond if Sheppard fluttered his eyelashes at it. Anyway, yes, Radek. Rodney glanced up from the recalcitrant device; his second-in-command's expression was impassive, but not for nothing had Zelenka been born and bred in a politically unstable climate. The man had a poker-face worthy of the high stakes tables at Caesar's Palace; on the inside he was turning cartwheels, bouncing off inflatable ZPMs with unalloyed glee, replaying to himself the words 'Tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff,' exactly as they had, quite astoundingly no doubt, emerged from Rodney's lips, because one thing was for sure – if Rodney was reproducing lyrics, no matter now puerile, he was reproducing them accurately.
He poked the device-thing with a probe, to no avail, and glanced up again. For a single, mortifying second, Rodney found his eyes locked with Miko's. She looked away, blushing furiously, but for a moment he'd surprised an expression that he'd never seen before on her face: tentative hope. If Rodney had been a very different man, he might have thought 'sweetly' tentative hope, but he wasn't, so he didn't. He unhooked the device from its tangled network of sensors, untangled them, connected them a different way and tapped at his keyboard to insist on their sensing something different and preferably useful, and all the while his mind worked furiously, determined to grind Kusanagi's hopeful expression 'exceeding small' between the hard granite millstones of his mind. Hope. Hope for what? What right had she to hope, in a lab under the control of Meredith Rodney etc. etc.? If he hadn't considered the old 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here' to be somewhat hackneyed, it would have been emblazoned in foot-high letters at regular intervals throughout the whole lab complex, so that his minions should better understand their lowly place in his grand scheme.
Then the little mental trapdoor opened and a crucial piece of information slithered forth, which had meant nothing up until this moment, not even registering as worthy of his notice. Rodney recalled that he had been working, very late indeed, so late that it counted as early, although he hadn't known what the time was and wouldn't have been interested if he had. Suddenly finding himself in need of another pair of hands and getting no response from Zelenka, he had radioed Miko, who had arrived, just when he was about to explode with frustrated brilliance and, as far as Rodney recalled, had done as he'd directed, with the minimum of stupidity. However, the crucial piece of information that he now recalled, that little nugget of truth that might give a hint as to the reason for that hopeful expression, was this: Miko Kusanagi had been wearing Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas.
The device, Rodney observed, was emitting a low-level energy reading; nothing dangerous, no harmful radiation or anything like that. It was a simple cylinder with various different-sized ports down one side, which had yielded precisely nothing when probed. One end had unscrewed revealing a matrix of small crystals, which had been similarly unforthcoming, no matter how much Rodney coaxed and cajoled them. Maybe it was time for a snack? Get the little grey cells firing on all cylinders again? And then, as a new piece of information occurred to Rodney, the subroutine in his mind that had been busily processing, spat forth a series of results, like a snaking line of paper from an old fashioned tape read-out. Rodney wished he really did have a tangible, paper print-out; he could shred it, or burn it, or shred it then burn it.
Up to now, Miko Kusanagi had existed only on the periphery of Rodney's increasingly stretched awareness. On some level he had recognised that she had conceived something of a regard for him; an admiration, maybe even what one might call a 'crush'. Which, in the fairly limited way he had given the matter consideration, he'd taken as his due; after all, what female, or indeed male, scientist wouldn't admire such a role model of towering intellect, and, he liked to think, physical attractiveness? Fortunately for Rodney, he thought, with hastily-suppressed self-doubt, few of them chose to act on their impulses. It would have been distracting; and inconvenient. So really, he was lucky. Realising he'd already allowed the issue to distract him, Rodney ran to catch up with his train of thought and jumped aboard, determined to ride it to its destination, no matter how outrageous. He had set off on this train because he was hungry (he was still hungry) and his mind had revealed the fact that whenever he was working in a lab where a certain Japanese scientist was also working, he had only to bark impatiently once or twice for a snack to appear, suddenly and discreetly, at his elbow, to be instantly and unthinkingly devoured. Rodney now took the time to think about these mysteriously materialising snacks: honey sandwiches, every one. Miko Kusanagi, she of the Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas and a crush on the CSO so large that she could barely speak in his presence, had been sneakily and underhandedly feeding him honey sandwiches. And then, when his active, twenty-things-at-once mind had betrayed him by employing spare processing capacity to recall the unfortunately archived Winnie-the-Pooh audio file, Miko had input his solecism into her apparently fluffy, Disneyfied mind and had produced a result in the form of hope. Probably not even in respectable binary code.
Rodney's interpretation of Miko's crush on him as stemming from the rightful admiration of his vast intellectual superiority underwent a sudden paradigm shift. It wasn't his mind she admired, it was some kind of image she'd formed of him as her own personal incarnation of that imbecilic bear. For Miko, Meredith Rodney McKay, Phd, Phd, the object of her attraction, was the embodiment of her ideal; the tubby, cubby, willy, nilly, silly (how he wished he didn't know those words), idiotic old Winnie-the-Pooh.
'A bear of very little brain', thought Rodney, bitterly, once more ripping the sensors off the unresponsive artifact. Not even 'smarter than the average bear'. At least Yogi knew a thing or two about life; how to outwit park rangers and obtain 'pic-er-nic baskets' and so on. Winnie-the-Pooh was so stupid he got honey jars stuck on his head and fell down his own heffalump trap. And the company he kept didn't bear thinking about either; the timid and unresourceful Piglet and the moronically exuberant Tigger. Rodney felt a certain degree of empathy with Eeyore, the chronically pissed-off-beyond-belief donkey. And Kanga; he'd never been fooled by her mawkishly sentimental act. That marsupial momma could seriously kick some ass if she felt like it, and Rodney though she must feel like it pretty often, having to live in close proximity to that parcel of fluff-brained idiots.
A heavy weight landed on Rodney's workbench suddenly, making it creak. The weight sat, swinging its legs.
"Whatcha doin', McKay?"
Rodney gritted his teeth.
"Working," he said, repressively.
"This?" asked John, picking up the cylinder. "Looks a bit like a Thermos. With extra bits," he added, attempting to poke his finger into the ports. "What does it do?"
"Nothing, as far as I can tell."
"Oh." John frowned and glared at the device. "Hmm… It's not exactly willing, is it?" He frowned again, his brows scrunching together, his lower lip stuck out slightly. Then his expression lightened. "There you go!" he said, handing the device back to Rodney. It looked just the same; no glowing, no flashing, no humming, nothing.
"Where do I go?" responded Rodney. "It's not doing anything!"
John gave a casually baffled grunt and shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever it does, it's doing it now. Anyhow, it's lunchtime, Rodney. Comin'?"
"No!" Rodney replied. "If it's doing something I need to know what that something is!"
"Oh, well, see you later, then. Radek? Miko? Lunch?"
"Ah, yes, Colonel Sheppard, we will accompany you!" replied Zelenka, enthusiastically.
Rodney, bent over the device, heard some kind of squeak that he took to be Miko's agreement. They all left. He sighed and rested his head on one hand, imagining the hilarity that would shortly rise to the lofty ceiling of the mess hall. Sheppard would, no doubt, tease him mercilessly. Rodney rubbed his eyes, still leaning with his head close to the cylinder, which seemed to have taken on a strangely hazy sheen. He blinked, but the sheen remained. If John became too insufferable he'd sic Teyla onto him; she'd sort him out in pretty short order. Winnie-the-Pooh, indeed, thought Rodney, scornfully, his mind feeling oddly sluggish. The device taunted him with its smug passivity; he poked at its exposed crystals in retaliation and a swirl of colours danced before his eyes, yellow and red, orange and black, round and round. Rodney blinked, slowly and deliberately, then picked up the cylinder in both hands and held it close to his face.
"Wha-? What're you…?" he asked it. Then he slithered off his stool onto the floor, still clutching the cylinder, sat in a slumped heap briefly, and then crumpled up, unconscious, the Ancient artifact sliding from his lax fingers and clattering to rest next to his slackly parted lips.