Afraid of the outside
But, several encounters
Today have been won
Will tomorrow's headline ring
Like a shot in the dark
These are curious times. When the heart's loud beating, covers the sounds of carousels of our past times
The Curious Times – Attention System
Her patience never had been long, and after that briefing, she was even more upset. Some people were already staring in her direction and whispering. Admittedly it is weird for her to be waiting outside the conference room. But the whole thing just was horrible.
They knew! That fact alone made her angry enough to wish for their slow death, and yes that includes her dad.
To occupy her mind, she is furiously typing away on her tablet trying to learn as much as she can about the planet of doom. But she seems to be running into walls at every turn, which is not really helping with her current mood.
What the heck is taking so long?
After the general had closed the meeting, colonel Lorne had asked, make that ordered, Markus to stay behind. What for was a mystery to her. And right now, she really wants to talk to him about all this and compare notes. Despite their decidedly rocky start as teammates she respected him, and in her eyes, Markus Lorne had done nothing wrong on that exercise.
Yes, it had been an exercise!
Just when she finally has enough and pushes off the wall to barge in and give the colonel a piece of her mind the doors open, and Markus walks out, shoulders slightly hunched and he looks dejected. As if he has given up. She acts on an impulse, grabs his hand and drags him to the next small common room. She watches Markus walk out onto the balcony and prop up his feet on the railing.
Mer takes that as her cue to raid the small fridge in the corner. Usually one of the Germans keeps his beer in there and doesn't label the bottles. Gottcha!
She grabs two bottles, uses the metal tabletops to open them.
Why can't Germans use screw off caps?
Mer walks out on the balcony, sits down and offers Markus a bottle. She knows they are all off-duty for the rest of the day, but she didn't expect him to immediately take a long swig.
"So, I take it the private meeting didn't go too well?"
"You could say that. We just ran through every possible scenario on how this mess could've been prevented."
"There only is one way this whole thing could've been prevented. They knew this would happen and they sent us there anyway!"
"Not according to the colonel." Markus replies sounding rather hurt. Okay I need a different plan.
"Markus stop beating yourself up. It wasn't your fault you weren't even close to Donner when he fell."
She can see that he wants to say something, but she just moves on. "And you made the best possible decision in dialing Atlantis. He is safe now and we are home!"
"And grounded for the time being."
Huh? "Since when?"
"Since we are a man down!" comes his matter of fact response. Still Meredith feels the need to make him feel better.
"True. And now let's do something fun. Wanna watch silly old school sci-fi with me and make fun of it?" Got your attention now, did I?
"Define old school sci-fi…"
"It's a surprise. Come on." She gets up and looks at Markus expectantly. When he doesn't move a muscle, she simple grabs his hand again and drags him along to her quarters.
The twosome had a great laugh watching Wormhole X-treme and trading stories how they found out about the show. Apparently, Markus loves the show and watched it on end just to annoy his mom. Mer for her part got to watch the show to 'inform herself about earths knowledge on interplanetary travel'. And she just fell in love with the wacky concept.
Two weeks went by and Mer still couldn't make heads or tails in cracking the security layers in front of the mission reports involving MX7-77P. She is growing rather annoyed at herself and she feels stupid. She should be able to crack that code.
She is a McKay after all.
But there is one thing making her days better, well her evenings at least. During Donners recovery Markus and Tom are being drilled by non-other but colonel Lorne. That is not great for the younger Lorne's mood. But somehow after their first Wormhole X-treme session they started to watch the show together after bad days and make fun of it.
Tonight, Mer actually catches herself checking over her appearance in the mirror. It's just my idiot team leader and I still have work to do.
She shakes loose any lingering thoughts about the blue-eyed lieutenant and grabs her tablet again. After a couple of tries she manages to break through one layer of encryption and starts on the next section when her bell sounds. Groaning she gets up and swipes the door open. "Come in and sit down. I cracked the first encryption."
When she hears nothing from behind her, she turns again and looks into her dad's angry face. "Did you learn nothing in school or any of the silly shows you love to watch?"
"I have no idea what you are talking about, dad."
"Playing dumb wont work. I know you've been trying to hack into the sealed mission reports! They are sealed for a reason. And I sure hope you know why!"
"Come on, dad. The Butterfly Effect is a movie and a non-proven theory."
"You want to bet on that?" Raised eye-brows? Oh…
"Don't tell me, that you can proof that."
"I sure can. And I will. Sit." Okay better comply now… he looks serious.
Mer looks at her dad and he starts on a tale of how SG-1 traveled through time and changed the timeline twice and had the dumb luck that it worked. There is only one question left for her to ask then: "How did you decide that it had to be us?"
"We didn't decide, we knew when we met Lieutenant Lorne. He greeted us when we first arrived here."