(by Era Yachi)
AN: What? Ascended Rodney? Nah, that would be too predictable. And I don't believe in ghosts, sorry. This chapter might get your mind reeling, so be prepared.
Popular Mechanics
"Hi, John."
It was smiling arrogantly. Though it appeared solid and organic, it wavered as the dust in the air pierced the perfect holographic pixels of light it was composed of. The apparition lifted one hand rigidly at its side in a small wave, evidently anxious about their confrontation.
"Sorry…about the, uh…mess," it said, making a rolling gesture with a hand. It seemed to realize that Sheppard wasn't responding right away. "Why, Colonel, you look a little pale. Almost like you've seen a ghost."
John glared at it. "You're not McKay."
"Obviously," the projection scoffed.
"Then what are you?"
"Oh, how ruthless of you." It made a face. "Okay, fine. Let's play, shall we? I'm this facility's system interface. I shamelessly tapped into your brain with a few of the nanites the Ancients left behind." It lifted its hand to chest-level to indicate itself. "This fellow…er, me, Rodney McKay, just happened to be the first topical memory I ran into."
"But you're not Rodney," Sheppard said again, his temper rising.
"Again, I find myself saying—no. I'm not," Not-Rodney snapped. "I do, however, have the most recent installment of protocol technology incorporated into my organic-synthetic contact diagnostic programming. I figured it would be much easier to talk to you as someone familiar rather than introducing you to someone you don't already know."
"Oh," said Sheppard, anything but convinced. He strafed to one side, training the P90 on the hologram. "Recent, you say? As in…ten thousand years ago, or are we talking something sooner than that?"
"Ten thousand years?" Not-Rodney's brow creased and he dropped his arms to his side. "Wow, has it really been that long?" he said, pointing to nothing I particular. "I guess I've been focusing too much on the time field to really notice."
"Time field," the colonel echoed.
Not-Rodney snapped his fingers and turned to his right in one abrupt movement. Sheppard tensed, ready to open fire on the pillar machine if the hologram made any sudden advances, but he didn't seem to notice him anymore. In fact, knowing Rodney, he probably didn't care.
"I just realized something," said the hologram. "Be right back." Then he vanished. Flickered out of sight.
Sheppard eyed the empty spot in its wake for a full minute, trying to deduce just what the hell had happened to him. When he felt more confident that it wasn't going to reappear anytime soon, he edged forward, scouring the area with a long sweep of his eyes. Still nothing happened, not even when he stepped into the section directly beneath the ring.
He swung around to face an abrupt pounding sound to his left, and found himself aiming his weapon at Ronon and Teyla. Both the Satedan and Athosian looked at him strangely, with their own weapons drawn in front of them.
"Colonel, are you all right?" said Teyla, just as Zelenka crept into the room behind them. The scientist was both awed and terribly frightened by the assorted technology that surrounded them.
Sheppard slowly lowered his P90. "What are you guys doing down here? I thought I told you to stay on the ground until I gave the order."
"You were not responding," she insisted.
"We heard voices," said Ronon. "Thought you'd been captured."
The colonel twisted his face in annoyance. "Well, I'm not. Thanks for your concern. Now did either of you happen to see anything on your way down?"
Teyla shook her head, sighing heavily. "No, we saw nothing. "
Ronon just stared at him, unresponsive. Radek was too engaged in one of the wall panels to bother with an answer, which Sheppard assumed was a 'no'.
Suddenly, the apparition of McKay appeared out of nowhere, just nine o'clock from Sheppard's position. Both P90s and Ronon's blaster immediately shot towards it. A red light erupted from the end of the Satedan weapon, passed right through Not-Rodney's body and struck the panel across the room in a shower of sparks.
"Ronon, stand down!" Sheppard roared.
As for Not-Rodney, the hologram was looking at the scorched mark on the wall with derision. "What the—" it protested with Rodney's high-pitched voice, glancing between Ronon and the ill-fated shot. "That wasn't even set to stun, was it?"
For the first time Sheppard had known the man, Ronon looked utterly and completely shocked. His gun-arm went down, eyes darkening with confusion and anger simultaneously. "What the hell?" he growled.
"I know," snapped the colonel. "Just stop shooting your damn weapon every time something moves, all right? I'm still trying to figure this out myself!"
"John, what is happening?" Teyla asked, with an undertone of rage. Both she and Ronon knew that this was not McKay, and just the possibility of an imposter ignited a fire within them. All Zelenka could do was gape in awe, paralyzed in one place as the scene played itself out.
Not-Rodney, oblivious to the tension in the air, took one look at the panel that Ronon had inadvertently destroyed and made a hopeless sound. He shut his eyes and tilted his head back in annoyance. "Oh, I can't believe this. Do you have any idea what you just did, Ronon? That," he snapped, extending and arm towards the smoldering hole. "Which you just so gracefully rid me of, was the only thing keeping the Wraith on this planet from terrorizing this galaxy."
Teyla took a cautious step toward the hologram. "Rodney?" she said slowly.
"It's not McKay," Sheppard warned, ignoring the hologram's complaints altogether—which was easy, since it was practically his second nature to take no notice of Rodney when he started to whine. "It's a hologram. I might not understand everything it said, but I'm pretty sure it scanned my memory and made a copy of Rodney."
"That's one way of putting it," muttered the hologram, glaring at him. "Leave it to Mr. MENSA to turn a perfectly comprehensible explanation into a single redundant sentence."
"You can stop that any time," said Sheppard.
The hologram's eyes widened slightly, innocently. "What? Stop what?"
"That," snapped Sheppard. "Acting like Rodney. Not that we don't appreciate the thought or anything, but I'd much rather talk to someone else right now."
"Well, as much as I'd love to obey your every command, Colonel, I'm afraid I can't do that," the hologram bickered back, Rodney's face contorting angrily. "I'm a time machine, not a Lite Brite. I've already overwritten the last imitation in the hologram buffer. The personality comes with the picture. I guess you'll just have to deal with me."
"Look, I'm really not in the mood to get into an argument!" said Sheppard, raising his voice. "Tell us what the hell you're doing here, or I'm gonna start blowing things up!"
Not-Rodney tossed his arms in a helpless gesture and closed his eyes a moment. "Typical military philosophy," he grumbled. "Fine. See this?" he said, pointing to the assorted panels. "This is the control center to a very important time repetition generator. Actually, that would make me the control room to a very—forget it, that's not important. What's important is that the ZPM to this station is about to fail, and the next time the field loops over, the Wraith are going to wake up, and kill everyone on this planet."
Everyone stared at him, uncomprehending. Only Zelenka seemed to follow some of what was being said, and he barely thought to open his mouth before the hologram went on.
"Yes, I know what you're all thinking. Believe me, it makes sense," said McKay's projection. "Right now, you're all standing in the middle of—for the lack of your ability to understand a more complicated term—an invisible bubble. Now inside this bubble, time literally repeats itself over, and over again in a continuous loop every eight or so hours. My job," he said, again pointing to himself as though they had any doubt, "is to make sure that loop never ends, and prevent the Wraith from waking up and killing everyone."
Sheppard squinted at him, not sure if this thing had lost a few screws over the years or if it just wasn't that bright. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but…we kind of accidentally woke them up a while ago."
The hologram sighed again and slumped its shoulders impatiently. "No, Colonel. You didn't. The Wraith on this planet, at this exact moment are still dormant. The vast majority of them were caught in the time loop when it reset itself."
This time, Radek decided to interrupt before the matter became too complicated to explain. "I think I understand what this is," he said, stepping forward. "But I still do not understand…if the Wraith were sent into the past, why were Colonel Sheppard's team unaffected by the time loop?"
"Because, Radek, they had already left the field through the Stargate. It sent them forward, to your time, while the Wraith got sent backwards with everything else. Are any of you getting this?"
"Yes."
"No."
Sheppard threw a side-glance towards Zelenka, who had replied at the same time he'd denied any understanding whatsoever of the hologram's logic. He raised his eyebrows, encouraging the scientist to shed some light on the matter.
"Colonel, it is all beginning to make sense," Zelenka insisted. "When we arrived here, we believed the DHD had been fixed, when actually it had not been damaged at all. The damage caused by the Wraith during your first visit technically never happened."
"Because the time…thingy looped back eight hours, before the attack," Sheppard said slowly.
"Exactly," the scientist agreed. "Everything, aside from the…the accident, never actually happened on this planet. It is exactly as it was when you first arrived."
The colonel watched him for a few moments, a question stirring inside his mind that he itched to ask. After everything he'd been through, the possibility of time travel seemed as ordinary as gravity or the sunrise. But it didn't explain an important matter that needed addressing. He finally gave in and said, "Let's assume what you're saying is true, doc. Why isn't McKay alive then, if it never really happened?"
Sadness washed Czech's face and he looked at the hologram briefly before replying. "It did happen, Colonel. You, McKay, Ronon and Teyla were not inside the field at the time of the loop. The loop only applies to the physical space in its boundaries, but not to any specific event, such as…"
"Such as McKay dying," Sheppard finished. "Yeah, I get it."
"Why would the Ancients build such a thing?" Teyla voiced, changing the subject. They were all reminded of the tragedy now, and it was best to avoid aggravating fresh wounds.
"Good question," said the hologram, snorting his contempt. "Don't bother asking me. It's not like they shared the details of my existence with me before they were all brutally murdered. I fact, I doubt they ever counted on me ever becoming self-aware. I guess that goes to show how stupid organic beings can really be, you know?"
"Wait a minute—brutally murdered?" said John. "Would you mind telling us why?"
"Hmmm," Not-Rodney hummed. "Not entirely sure. A bunch of men in uniform suddenly burst in and starting shooting everyone. It's a miracle they didn't damage any of my vital systems with those primitive little pellets of theirs or we wouldn't even be having this conversation."
Ronon, Teyla and Sheppard exchanged knowing looks. "The Genii?" Teyla suggested mildly, and they both nodded. It wasn't a surprise that the Genii had shown up and destroyed what was probably a perfectly balanced way of life.
"The people here," Ronon said, looking at the corpses. "They're not Ancients?"
"Who, them?" said the mildly offended hologram. "Of course they're not Ancients. No one lives for ten thousand years, except maybe the Wraith, and it's not exactly like the Ancients were offering them a job. No, they're villagers. Every fifty years or so, new people arrive and take over. That is, they did…until these Genii guys showed up and shot them all. I hope they got stuck in the loop, those arrogant little bastards."
Sheppard listened intently, and for the most part, understood. "Here's a question—"
"Colonel, contrary to the real Dr. McKay, I'm not willing to answer each and every question that comes to your vastly inferior brain," the hologram informed him impatiently. "I lured the four of you here because I could really use your help."
"Help?" said Zelenka, blinking his confusion. He adjusted his glasses. "What can be possibly do to help you?"
"It's rather simple, really," said the hologram smugly. "I just need you to find a way to kill me."
That produced a cold, calculating silence. Eventually, Sheppard reacted. "What?"
"Me," said Not-Rodney, clearly thinking they hadn't heard him the first time. "As in me, the Ancient's interface, not 'me', Rodney McKay. Because that's not really…me."
"Yeah, we got that part," said Sheppard bluntly. "Why do you want to be killed, exactly?"
"Well, it's not like I want to be killed," said the hologram with an annoying whine. "Trust me, if I had any other options, I'd choose life, thank you. But seeing as the ZPM powering this entire station is almost completely depleted, options are short in stock. If the loop stops working, and the Wraith wake up, then thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people will die as a result of my failure. But if you somehow rig my system to overload, then the explosion will destroy anything within a three hundred kilometer radius of this spot, including the hive ship."
Sheppard regarded him for a few moments, which obviously made the hologram feel uncomfortable. He shifted in one spot, eyes darting towards the colonel. "What?"
"Are you sure you're not McKay?" said Sheppard.
"No, Colonel, I'm not. April Fools, it's really me, Rodney! I thought it might be fun to pretend I'm a ten-thousand-year old time machine, so the joke's on you. Yes, I'm sure I'm not McKay! What kind of stupid question is that?" Not-Rodney snapped.
"Okay, okay," the colonel conceded. "Take it easy! Geez, I get it—it was a dumb question. Tell us about this…plan or whatever it is of yours."
"Colonel," Zelenka suddenly interrupted, stiffening. "Oh my God, I just realized…"
"Oh, this should be interesting," said the hologram, crossing his arms. "What is it, Radek?"
"The last loop," the scientist wanted to know. "When was it?"
Not-Rodney turned to face him, scowling. "About seven hours ago. Why? The loops don't affect this spot in particular You're perfectly safe. Of course, you might have a little trouble getting back to the 'gate, seeing as you can't physically enter the time field from outside its boundaries."
"What?" Sheppard exclaimed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"No, no, no," Zelenka said quickly. "Colonel, we're not the ones we should be worrying about. It is Dr. Beckett and the others—they are no doubt already through the 'gate and searching for us. If they are caught in time loop before they return to Atlantis they will simply…no longer exist."
"We must warn them before that happens," said Teyla, disturbed by the idea that someone could blink out of existence in that way. "Can we not contact them with our radios?"
"Radio waves cannot be carried through a time dilation. We know this already," the scientist explained earnestly. "We essentially have no way to warn them before the loop happens."
"And 'no', before anyone decides to ask, I can't stop the loop from, well, looping," Not-Rodney announced. "The Ancients love fail-safes. Fact of life."
"Radek, what exactly are you trying to say here?" demanded Sheppard, completely ignoring the hologram and its negativity. "We can't do a damn thing to prevent this from happening?"
"I am saying," said Zelenka. "That if we do not do something, Carson and the other members of his team will be erased from the universe itself."
AN: Told you so.