Review Replies
Anthropos Agnostos:
Oberoth and the replicators in general are quite arrogant (probably because of the people that made them in the first place). If you recall the first time Oberoth met and spoke to AR-1, he believed that they were basically a cute amusement for the collective but not things to be taken seriously. In that regard, I don't think the Asurans views would change.
Yes, even though Rodney managed to freeze them for a few moments Oberoth was not very impressed. Combine that with the situation cloned AR-1 finds themselves in chapter 1, and I believe it is entirely reasonable that Oberoth would consider the team quite incapable of escaping and therefore wouldn't think twice of leaving Rodney alone.
Anyway, that's just my thoughts.
On an entirely unrelated note:
Did anyone else think that 3 ZPM's overloading would make a bigger explosion than the one that happened at the end of "This Mortal Coil"? I don't remember the episode in particular, but in that episode where a goa'uld spy set the ZPM to overload on Atlantis, Rodney claimed that the explosion would take out a large chunk of the planet….
Guest 64:
Thanks for the review, I saw a lot of possibilities as well, that's why I started this particular story, hope you enjoy the new chapter!
AN: Looking for a few Beta Readers for the story. If you're interested, shoot me a message.
After two more jumps with the gang in tow, John piloted his jumper slowly to the ground, Rodney landing his a few seconds later. It was a bright, early morning when both crews exited their jumpers and met up near the DHD.
John yelled, "Alright...friends" he said, motioning to the replicators, "form a perimeter. Make four groups of two and have them go North, South, East, and West. Report any sign of trouble or human presence immediately."
He lowered his voice and pointed to the nearest replicator, "You, stay by my side and relay what the others find every ten minutes."
The replicator simply nodded and stayed close, while the others went about their duties.
The team looked at each other and each cracked a smile.
Elizabeth spoke up, "Well, it looks like we escaped." She turned to Rodney and said, "And it's all thanks to our friendly neighborhood genius here."
Rodney perked up and looked smug. John quickly added, "Hey, don't encourage him."
John then got serious, "Well we're in it deep. We're cut off from support, and I really don't think we should go to Atlantis and our...other selves. We'll have to fend for ourselves for a while."
Ronon replied instantly, "Agreed."
Rodney looked confused and said, "What about letting Atlantis at least know we're alive?! I'm sure that I'm worried about my well-being!"
The other members of the group looked at each other, trying to understand what he was saying. Rodney noticed their looks and continued, "Oh come on! You know, the other me, he's probably worried sick about me!"
No one else spoke so John continued as if Rodney hadn't spoken at all, "Alright, our first priority is some shelter and some basic tools, it's time to find some rocks and smash down a few trees. Then we can make a fire for nightfall and forage for food."
Rodney's head snapped up as if he was struck by lightning, "Are you kidding me?" he asked incredulously.
John looked at him pithily and replied, "If you don't want to do the hard labor, that's fine. Just don't come begging to me when you're cold tonight."
Rodney looked confused, "Wait, what? You think I'm upset about the labor? Oh please, I was a boy scout; I'm great at making fires. What I'm saying, caveman, is stop thinking so analogue. Look around us for Pete's sake, we have REPLICATORS."
John did indeed look around, his eyes stopping briefly on replicator after replicator, he stopped after five. "Ok then Rodney, what do you recommend?"
Rodney crossed his arms and formed a superior look on his face, "I say we use them to build everything we need!" He threw his arms to his side and pointed to the closest replicator, "Think about it! This could be the biggest breakthrough since humans from Earth learned how to use the stargate in the first place."
John looked perplexed, "I thought you coded them so they couldn't replicate, Rodney."
"Well, I did, but I can change a few lines here and there. They'll be the perfect workforce, heck, with the proper materials, they could build us another ATLANTIS!"
John had to give it to him, that did sound good, but he wasn't convinced. "Is it safe?"
Rodney guffawed, "Of course it's safe! These things are like really handy dogs! They will do anything we tell them to!"
Teyla looked around discretely and finally spoke up, "Do you think you should be talking about them like that so loudly Rodney? They're all around us..."
Rodney replied, "Oh please, they're nothing more than wrenches. See, watch..." Rodney turned to the replicator near John and asked, "Hey you! Do you feel bad about the way I'm talking about you guys?"
The replicator tilted his head and replied honestly, "Of course not, we were created to help you in any way you need. We are glad to serve the purpose of our creators; it is our reason for being."
Rodney turned and looked at the other humans in his group, "See? What'd I tell ya?"
John and the others, besides Ronon, looked uncomfortable. John spoke up, "I don't know Rodney..."
Elizabeth chipped in, "If this is so safe and amazing, why didn't the other us do it on Atlantis?"
Rodney spoke, "Seriously? You guys barely agreed to use them earlier today and that's when our lives were in danger and no one was coming for us! Everyone is just so set in stone about the idea that replicators are bad that no one would ever consider it under normal circumstances back on Atlantis."
Ronon broke in, "Imagine what we could do with them on our side. Just the one of them at that Wraith research facility probably killed dozens of wraith; the wraith weapons didn't slow it down at all."
The team talked about it at length. Eventually Rodney convinced them to go with his plan for now. Teyla, John, and Elizabeth still had their reservations though, and weren't convinced.
Rodney finished typing in the changes to the replicator code on the tablet. He then waved over the nearest replicator. "Interface with this machine and download the program I just finished."
The replicator reached out with his hand towards the device. His fingers started to look like the element mercury at room temperature, and then it stuck its 'hand' into the machine. It withdrew its hand just a moment later.
Rodney said, "Alright, now push that update to your brethren on the local network only." he warned.
Rodney looked over towards the gate at the replicators standing guard, they all froze momentarily and then continued on with whatever they were doing. The replicator in front of Rodney looked into his eyes and said, "It is done."
Rodney nodded and said, "Alright then, interface with the puddle jumpers sensors and locate all veins of the metals we need and then take as many of your friends with as you necessary and start mining it."
The replicator turned on its heels and ran to the nearest jumper, it made it there in a fraction of the time a human would have been able to. As Rodney looked on, the replicator exited the jumper a minute later and watched as two dozen other replicators broke off from what they were doing and ran in seemingly all directions.
Rodney smiled to himself and said, "I really am a genius."
While John and Ronon were off looking for food, the replicators were all busy at their assigned tasks. They were a relentless work force.
Rodney pulled out a hand-held Lantean scanning device and tracked down the nearest group of replicators on mining duty. After nearly twenty minutes of walking, he arrived at the first site to see nothing at first. He checked his scanner again to make sure he was in the right place and sure enough, it showed them virtually on top of Rodney's position.
He looked down and that's when he noticed it, he could see a small line of nanite cells stretching from where a pile of what looked like rock was. From there the line went straight over small clumps of grass and around the stumps of trees to where it just disappeared in the ground. He knelt down at the point where it went underground and he could see the nanite cells passing little pebbles of material from beneath the ground back towards the slowly growing pile of what he realized must be metallic ore.
Very interesting! He thought.
Standing there, and watching in wonder, half an hour quickly passed. Rodney was startled from his daze when he heard something coming his way, and moving fast. He quickly got behind the nearest tree and waited. Just a dozen seconds past when a blur came running out from behind cover about 15 feet away. Sighing in relief he stepped from behind the tree as he recognized the obvious replicator.
He watched as the replicator dumped a rather large pile of different looking materials from a rough large bowl carved amazingly well from wood close to the original pile. Rodney spoke up, "What are these materials?"
The replicator held the now empty bowl at his side and replied, "I just brought a load of Iron ore from another mining site to compliment the Neutronium being excavated here."
Rodney looked again at the still slowly growing pile of what he now realized was the very valuable Neutronium and asked, "Why are you bringing Iron here?"
The replicator simply pointed as, off to the side, unknown to Rodney, an interesting construct was being, he didn't know any other word to use besides, 'grown' right in front of him. After just a few minutes the construct was complete and it had used about a third of the Iron ore that the replicator had brought. Rodney inspected it quickly; it had the body of a thick snake, at the front it had what looked like 8 or 9 tentacles.
He stared in confusion and started to ask, "What is that thing for?" When the new creation slithered rapidly to the point where the nanite chain disappeared into the ground. Before it got there Rodney noted another one was being built where the first one had just come to life. When the snake like replicator got to its point of egress, its tentacles started spinning rapidly, so quickly in fact that Rodney could only see what now looked like a rounded shield of metal.
The replicator tilted the center of the spinning tentacles to the ground at a 45 degree angle and lunged into the ground. In just moments it had disappeared into the darkness of the earth, creating a perfectly round, smooth slope that descended into the ground.
He didn't know how long he had been standing there when the second snake like replicator slithered by him and made another hole, right next to the first, essentially doubling the width of the tunnel. As he watched, the line of nanite cells that was at first, no more than an inch wide, grew in width until it took up the full borders of the tunnel.
Fascinated he kept watching. Ten minutes past by when he saw much larger rocks and chunks coming up the tunnel. Instead of pebble sized stones, rocks started coming up the tunnel that looked like they easily weighed hundreds of pounds.
As he stood there and watched, replicators would come by the growing pile of Neutronium and shovel large quantities of it on their finely carved wooden transport sleds and then take off in different directions. Numbly, and without much conscious thought, Rodney walked back to the small campfire his team had made.
John eventually found himself walking alongside Elizabeth through a meadow.
John said, "I hope we don't have to be by ourselves for too long, I already miss Atlantis."
Elizabeth responded, "Our 'original selves' did treat us pretty well back on that planet, I expected them to be much more suspicious and wary."
"Yeah, I'm sure they did plenty of scans with their jumper before they decided to land. I wonder if they picked up on the nanites that are still in our bodies."
Elizabeth frowned slightly, "Even if we do get rid of the nanites, and even if we convince them we're not a security risk, I'm not sure how we would be treated on Atlantis. Don't get me wrong, I think they would be nice to us. I just think that to them, we would always just be 'copies' and not our own persons."
John grunted in disappointment and they continued their leisurely stroll.
At nightfall everyone except Rodney settled down in the jumpers after their meal, trying to get some sleep. Rodney meanwhile, while constantly snacking on some fruit Ronon had found, was ordering the replicators around, getting them to construct various things. Eventually Rodney told the replicator that he had following him around a rather long list of wants and specifications. Believing it would take them some time to get everything constructed, Rodney told the replicator to wake him up when his room was ready.
By midnight there was a sprawling single story building of definite Lantean design. Rodney purposely told the replicators to keep it limited to one floor for now because he had a deep seated hate for stairs.
Rodney woke up his team members in the middle of the night. They were all sleeping in a single jumper. He led them out of the ship, everyone walking tiredly except for Ronon. (Ronon didn't believe in being tired and 'slow' while he was awake.)
Because of the teams' tiredness, he showed them directly to the living quarters that Rodney had the replicators build. John tiredly commented that it looked just like his old quarters on Atlantis, minus the Johnny Cash poster.
Rodney offered that if he let one of the replicators stick its hand in his head, they could make him an exact duplicate.
John looked at him like he was crazy and simply said, "No thanks Rodney, the only one with hands going to be in their faces is you if you recommend something so idiotic again."
After Rodney had led everyone to their quarters, he told the replicators to wake everyone up in the event of a gate dial in; he also wanted to be woken up in six hours. He made his way to his own quarters, nearly twice the size of everyone else's of course, and fell asleep on his brand new firm bed.
As the fragile humans slept, the replicators continued on at a frightening pace. Large scale mines were built, and as the collection of high technology demanding metals were collected, more and more complex things were completed. At each mine site and the main complex, transporter booths were installed, some were for personnel, others were industrial; to be used for the transportation of large amounts of material.
Before Rodney was awakened, his long list of tasks was complete. Their construction jobs done for the moment, all the replicators returned to the default behavior of defense, protecting their human creators.
AN: Looking for a few Beta Readers for the story. If you're interested, shoot me a message.