Chapter 4 - Duet
"I'm supposed to be in the middle of my honeymoon," Rod replied.
Rodney gaped. "Honeymoon? You're married?"
"Hence the honeymoon, Einstein."
Jennifer couldn't help a slight eye roll. "Why do people use Einstein as an insult?"
"To someone of my intelligence…" Rodney began.
"You mean our intelligence," Rod reminded him. "But I wouldn't be so pretentious, and you don't have grounds to be."
"Hey, we're in danger of freezing, remember? Now is not the time," Jennifer chided.
"But... he's married!"
"And you'll never be if w-you freeze!"
"Right, right, let's get this show on the road," Rodney finally agreed.
-
"It's a nice idea, Bill, but you're coming at it from the wrong angle," Rod appraised after Nye had been given a chance to explain his math. "You've got to understand that Rodney and I have a lot more experience with this sort of thing."
Nye found this disconcerting. "You both do this reality hopping thing often?"
Rodney shook his head. "No, no, only he has, and this is only the second time. It is only the second time, right?"
Rod just nodded.
Bill Nye still seemed concerned. "You'd better not have tried targeting distant parts of our own space-time with this bridge. We can't send living things to another planet. That might screw it up!"
"No, we haven't and we never intend to try," Rodney answered truthfully.
"I still don't understand how… 'Rod' could have travelled through the bridge safely," Malcolm wondered.
"That's a secret, and not relevant," Rod quickly replied. "We need to collapse the bridge, but overloading it with the heatsink would kill us all before it could work."
"Are you sure?" Rodney queried.
"I did the math, while you were all working on other ideas."
"Then we're trapped here!" Nye lamented.
"There has to be another way," Rodney assured him.
"Excuse me," a guard interrupted. "Kramer called for you to come to the lab."
"Great, now what's gone wrong?" Rodney complained.
"Perhaps we should go and see rather than stand here and speculate," Rod suggested.
"Huh. I was just about to say the same… oh, never mind," Rodney began to say, but stopped when he saw the looks directed at him by certain other scientists.
-
"So to summarise, the communications systems have failed, which is a bad thing, and the containment field is failing, which is also a bad thing," Rod summed up.
"It is? Doesn't that mean we could escape?" Jennifer wondered.
"We might get out of the building, but we wouldn't escape the massive vortex storm caused by the icy air meeting the warm desert air," Malcolm Tunney reminded everyone.
"And the storm would block any cell phone transmission," Rodney added.
"We can ride out the storm," Kramer suggested.
Rod quickly shot down that idea. "The storm is fed by the heat-sink, which we can't shut down."
"He means the storm won't ever stop," Rodney clarified.
"Ah, but there is a window of opportunity," Rod told the others. "The containment field should be weak enough to let a cell signal through before it collapses completely."
"Why didn't I think of that?" Rodney protested.
Malcolm ignored him. "I think you're right!" He pulled up a schematic on a tablet computer and found the best place to try. "I'd better get going, it's a bit of a run from here."
Jennifer stopped him. "Wait, I'll go. You're needed here."
Malcolm shook his head. "I…"
"Come on," Jennifer insisted. She knew she was right.
"Alright, fine." He handed over the device and returned to his colleagues/guests.
"I'll radio when I get though," she promised, picking up a radio as she headed for the door
"Good luck," the worried Rodney wished her.
"You too." She hurried on her way.
"She seems like a very capable…"
"Focus, Mal," Rod interrupted, following his habit of shortening everyone's name.
"Right, so, we've established that dialling up the heat-sink is too dangerous," Bill Nye continued. "What else can we try?"
"Power, power…" Rodney mused. "The power to hold the bridge open is coming from the heat-sink, right?"
"Right," Malcolm confirmed. "It uses a small percentage of the energy being transferred to stabilise itself, so it's self sustaining."
"But it's limited, right? No matter the load, the heat-sink can only draw so much energy."
"Yes, and as Rod calculated for us, it's not enough to overload the bridge quickly enough for us to survive the freeze lightning."
"You know, 'freeze lightning' is a pretty bad name," Nye commented.
"Don't look at me, they thought of it," Malcolm replied, gesturing to the two McKays.
Rod looked a little annoyed, and Rodney was about to glare, but instead he used the silence to continue his idea before someone stole it. "We can't overload the bridge, but we could try to starve the generator of the energy it needs to hold the bridge open."
"Stall it out, you mean?" Rod asked.
"Exactly."
Malcolm shook his head. "That would take an insane amount of power! Technically it's possible, but the heat-sink could never do it."
"No, but it's not the only thing that uses power."
"Of course, we open a second bridge!" Rod exclaimed.
Rodney nodded. "That's where I was heading."
"Isn't one bridge enough trouble?"
Rodney shook his head. "The device is rigged to power a single bridge. If we try creating a second one…"
"It overwhelms the system and fails!" Malcolm realised.
"Rodney, can you hear me?" everyone heard through the radio.
Rodney grabbed it and replied. "I'm here. What's happening, Jennifer?"
"I can't get through. I almost did, but the signal dropped out too soon."
"Keep trying, it should work eventually."
"I'd love to… but the phone is a little soaked. I kind of slipped on some ice and dropped it."
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, just a bit cold. The jacket's helping, thanks."
"Any time. Uh, you should get back here."
"I'm already on the way. Any luck shutting that thing down?"
"I, uh, we've come up with a workable plan. We're just about to make it work."
"That's great! But be careful."
"You too." Rodney set the radio down. "Let's do this!"
Rod held up a hand. "There's one slight problem."
"Oh? Now what?"
"Not what, who. Me. I need to get back to my reality before you shut the bridge down."
"And how do you plan to do that?"
"The same way I did before," Rod admitted.
"In case you hadn't noticed, we're out of radio contact with the outside world."
"If we wait for the field to weaken further, then we might be able to contact…"
"No, the risk is too high. We'll shut it down and sort you out later."
"Can you guarantee that?"
"Uh, I'm sure we'll find a way," Rodney tried to assure his counterpart. "If we reconfigure the system not to dump any heat in your reality, and fix it so we can shut it off, we should be able to…"
"I'm reading another power surge!" Malcolm interrupted.
"Another?" Rod echoed.
"The same thing happened just before you arrived."
Rodney gasped. "You mean…"
Malcolm pointed at Rod. "Someone else has come from his reality."
"Everybody freeze!" commanded a familiar voice.
"We're already doing that," Bill Nye answered. "Whoa!" He hadn't expected to see a woman wearing a tight black outfit, combat boots, and armed with an assault rifle.
"Jen! This must be plan B," Rod greeted her.
"Actually it's plan C, as in C4," Jen replied with a wide grin. "Colonel Carter beefed up the transmitters in the homing beacons so we can be extracted from the other side on my signal."
"C4?! You can't do that!" Rodney protested.
"Can, and have. Everyone, move away from Doctor Rod. I'd prefer not to shoot anyone, but I will if you make me," Jen warned.
"What did you just call him?" Rodney asked.
"This really isn't necessary, Lieutenant. We've found a way to shut down the bridge without explosives," Rod said as Rodney was finishing.
"That's not good enough. It's been decided at the highest level that we can't risk this happening again," Jen replied.
"What's going on?" asked Jennifer as she walked back into the lab from her trip to the other side of the facility. She immediately found herself staring past a lethal weapon into her own face.
"You!" yelled Jen, whose face had turned white, and not from the cold. "You're supposed to be dead! But this time, I'll make sure of it!" she shrieked.
-
Notes:
Sorry about the long wait! I kinda got busy with other stuff. Actually, I wrote a bit over three quarters of this just now.
I hope you like the length. And I had lots of new ideas towards the end of it to make it more different from the original.
Again, I've incorporated an actual Bill Nye quote. And the title has a double meaning which won't be apparent until the next chapter.