Murphy's First Law: "All things work toward decay."
by Fandomatic
•
Murphy's Law of Equivalents
"A man with one watch is certain about time. A man with two watches isn't."
Teyla Emmagan, Athosian leader, mother of Torren John, and beloved wife of Kanaan, and warrior still capable of kicking everyone's ass on Atlantis that wouldn't eat her tuttleroot soup, took a deep and stilling breath at the sight of the third painted Rodney McKay. One was quite enough. Instantly, she sensed the anger in John.
"You knew this was going to happen!" John's accusation at the two identical McKays cracked across the silent atrium and echoed back. Below, the third McKay targeted the voice and his jaw dropped as he saw his teammates with the other two McKays. Whatever he had planned to say died in his throat.
"What do you mean, he knew?" Woolsey, confused as always, was three steps behind.
"Well, I was about ninety-nine percent sure it was a gate malfunction," one of the McKays said. Teyla had to look at the sneakers to know it was their McKay.
"Malfunction?" Zelenka's angry voice rose from the back of the room.
"Yes. Yes, malfunction," McKay sneered and turned around. "I would call that a malfunction!" He pointed at the stargate.
"An obvious malfunction bordering on one hundred percent sure!" the second McKay continued with hardly a breath between them. "That makes it ninety-nine percent your fault!" He crossed his arms in unison with the first McKay.
"Ninety-nine percent?" Zelenka rose to his full unassuming height. "I am one-hundred percent sure it is not because of me! There has never been a recorded malfunction with the stargates that wasn't caused by an outside source!"
"Which we've established is the ZedPM! That's why the control crystal is so precisely interfaced to avoid just this kind of scenario from happening! And it's malfunctioning at two hundred percent already!"
"Oh, why don't you include yourself with that and make it three hundred percent!" Radek Zelenka stood up and pointed at the second McKay. "Since you have so many extra selves to berate me with, maybe I should leave all the work to you and you and the new you!" He picked up his data pad and stormed out of the control room.
Shocked, Teyla followed his exit with her eyes along with the rest of the control room staff.
"He's right. We don't need him," the second McKay said and looked at his mirror smugly. "We have me."
Teyla caught Sheppard's displeased glance and she rolled her eyes in agreement.
If it was possible, Woolsey's knitted brow knitted even tighter as his gaze centered back on his chief scientist. "What's going on with the gate, Dr. McKay?" Richard demanded.
"Essentially, our ZedPM gave the stargate the hiccups," the first McKay announced.
Slippers McKay frowned and interrupted, "Not my first choice of terminology."
"You missed that conversation," Sneakers McKay answered. "Anyway, the gate is rematerializing me at the moment I gated in the first time every thirty-eight minutes. He's my copy."
"Only thirty-eight minutes younger."
"Oh, you didn't have to bring that up. Anyway, it's me…"
"Times three!"
Both McKays looked delighted with each other. "It's a copy gate," they both chorused happily.
"Well, Xerox, do you think you can fix it?" John asked. "I hate to be the one to point this out but in twenty-four hours, there's gonna be thirty-eight more McKays running around!"
"Of course, I can fix it." Sneakers McKay looked uneasy and modified quickly. "I mean, I think we can fix it. That's why I recorded everything." He gestured uncertainly at the control room.
"But we could really use another genius."
"How about it, Woolsey, can we get the other me up here?"
"Without wasting another thirty minutes in the isolation room?"
Woolsey shook his head. "Protocol states that every returning team member gets a clean bill of health. This malfunction could be degenerating."
The second McKay looked slightly ill at this suggestion and shifted uncomfortably in his blue slippers. "Maybe I should schedule myself for a checkup in another hour."
"Teyla," John growled. The tension in his voice rolled over her.
She smiled and squeezed John's forearm reassuringly. "I will take care of the new McKay, John." John met her eyes in relief.
"Ooh," Rodney added hurriedly, "let him keep his computer and tell him I'll e-mail him."
"Oh, and make him take off his boots now," the second Rodney added after her back.
"His boots?" questioned the first McKay.
Teyla smiled as she heard the scientist continue behind her. "Yeah. Nasty blister."
Teyla Emmagan left them and hurried down the central stairs. She approached the third McKay, still in the center of the staging area and nodded to the sergeant covering him. The scientist looked extremely nervous and agitated behind the blue paint.
"I'm Dr. Rodney McKay, astrophysicist and foremost expert on ancient technology. Don't let the blue paint fool you. This is a temporary result from a-a-a, uh, ritual—"
"Rodney, you are among friends." Teyla smiled at him and gave him an Athosian greeting. Hesitantly, Rodney clasped her arms and touched his blue forehead to hers, leaving a blue smudge on her beautiful brow.
"Uh, sorry, you've got," he swirled his blue finger around his forehead, "blue me all over you."
Teyla took his blue arm and led him down into the lower atrium. "I am honored." She led him to two identical backpacks in the center of the floor and pointed at the pile. "This is but a formality. You need to leave your gear here along with your boots and accompany me to isolation. However, Dr. McKay would like you to keep your computer. Sergeant Klein, please take the doctor's sidearm."
Her calm, formal manner was having the effect she wanted. The high-strung scientist settled down as he shrugged out of his pack and surrendered his Beretta M9. "My team's right behind me. That would be Sheppard, Ronon and you." McKay glanced apprehensively up at the empty control room balcony. "What kind of reality is this with a big barricade and no lights? I assume you don't have a shield? And how did you pull me into your reality? Or maybe why is a better question. Do I have a twin brother? What's his name—?"
"All will be explained shortly, Rodney." Teyla calmly lined up the pack with the other two. "Please remove your vest."
Rodney's blue eyes noted her own gear that she still wore as he started unstrapping the Kevlar vest. When he finished, he tossed it on top of its twins next to the ceremonial stick. Another stick clattered as it hit the pile and settled next to the vests. Startled, McKay glanced at the sergeant that had thrown it there as Teyla thanked him.
"Now your boots, Rodney."
"What?"
"Dr. McKay wishes for you to remove your boots before you develop a blister."
"Oh." Rodney sat down and started untying the dry boot first. Teyla frowned as her eye fell on the thick smear of mud coating the back of Rodney's neck.
"Of all the stupid things that could go wrong, it all happens to me in one day," he muttered. "You know how miserable a wet boot is?" He didn't wait for a reply. "I had to walk all the way to the gate in it. I'll probably develop a nasty infected blister, or trench foot or athlete's foot, or some sort of alien Pegasus fungus. It'll probably take weeks to recover and the itching will be intolerable. I can already feel the rash developing, which means I'm probably allergic. Who knows what sorts of bacteria are loose in the cesspools of Pegasus! Do you know how uncomfortable a muddy boot can be? Every step is torture! The slime and the squishing and the wrinkled toes…"
Teyla rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. No wonder the colonel did not wish to greet his friend. He was still particularly cranky and Ronon had helped it along brilliantly. Ronon may have found a release for his demons, but Rodney remained clueless. "Rodney, do you wish for another cure?" Her tone sharpened.
"What? Do you have—" McKay broke off abruptly as the boot came off his foot. "Oh, no! Not again!" He glared at Teyla and threw the boot toward the stack of growing gear and started in on the muddied one. "I don't want any more of your kinds of cures — no thank you! It's bound to involve smelly slime being placed on parts of my anatomy that are best left unsullied and free of chaffing!"
"Did the bugs stop biting you or not?" Teyla asked reasonably.
"Yes. Yes, they did, but then…"
Teyla froze for a moment as the moment of déjà vu passed. Astonished, she watched him touch the crusty dried mud on the back of his neck as he lifted his eyes to meet hers. Recognition dawned in his eyes.
"Teyla?"
"Rodney?"
"You can't be my Teyla. She's right behind me." McKay looked back at the activated gate for his team that hadn't made it and demanded, "Where's my team?" He climbed to his feet with the boot forgotten. "What have you done with them?"
Her heart softened with the obvious worry in his voice. "This is going to sound strange. I have never heard of such a thing, but you — I mean McKay … is telling us the stargate is malfunctioning."
McKay's eyes widened and he fixed on the open gate. "My team! You mean my team isn't going to make it?"
"Your team is well and we are right here, Rodney," Teyla squeezed his arm and waited for him to look at her. "You see, you, Dr. McKay, are the result of the malfunction."
"Oh, no," Rodney sounded faint.
"We already came through the gate more than an hour ago," she gently explained as McKay stared in shock at the identical backpacks. "We do not know why, but the stargate will not shut down and you keep coming out of the event horizon every thirty-eight minutes."
"I'm a … malfunction?"
•
Thirty minutes later when Teyla and the third scrubbed Rodney McKay ascended to the control room level, her McKay hurried over to the pair of McKays and plugged his tablet into a control station. Teyla continued on to join Sheppard and Dex at the overhead causeway at the rail. Below, the gate room still had a double compliment of guards with extra firepower. John seemed twice as tense as she greeted him.
Sheppard nodded at the busy McKays in the darkened control room. "How's your Rodney?"
"I did not know there were so many back ailments and foot disorders one could acquire from shoes." She saw both sets of eyes drop to Rodney's socks as he padded around the consoles with his counterparts. Identically dressed, except for their footwear, she could not tell them apart. "I fetched his last pair of clean socks and his jacket while Dr. Beckett ran some extra tests to assure him he is not suffering from a 'degenerating copy' disease."
Sheppard nodded without much surprise and eyed Richard Woolsey's office as the bald Atlantis commander picked up his tablet of bureaucracy and started toward them. "Woolsey's getting antsy." He glanced at his watch. "The Daedalus is due in sixteen hours and without contact with the SGC…" John trailed off and she knew he didn't want to say what he was thinking aloud. He was about to be outranked and Woolsey didn't like to interfere in military affairs — not that he couldn't. But Woolsey liked his methodical procedures, rank rigidity, and documentation — just like the military. Anything like malfunctioning gates didn't fit into his manual.
"McKay will think of something," Ronon spoke up. "He's always saying how smart he is. Well, now he's got three brains."
Sheppard grunted in amusement. "That's what I'm worried about. He likes his company a little too much," the colonel observed as Richard walked up to them.
Teyla surveyed the interaction of the McKays and silently agreed with Sheppard. The McKays did seem extraordinarily smug and condescending — more so than usual.
Woolsey halted before their group. "It's time for some answers from the McKays before another one gets here. He's had two and a half hours to work on the problem and examine the data." Woolsey looked down at his tablet and frowned unhappily. "I'd prefer meeting in the conference room, but the lights are out."
John clapped Woolsey on the shoulder and steered him toward the McKays. "I'm a little afraid of the dark, myself. Let's go see if McKay can shed some light on this."
As Woolsey stuttered an incoherent response, the Athosian and Satedan exchanged amused smiles and trailed after them.
The group stopped at the center console where a Rodney compared three sets of data streams on the display. Irritable, Dr. McKay looked up as everyone looked down at his tennis shoes to make sure he was the original.
He scratched the side of his neck and grumbled, "Is it that time already?"
"Five minutes to the gate anomaly," Woolsey prompted. "You said you would have something by now."
"Well, yes, yes, I do have something. I have a rash developing everywhere that blue paint—"
"Rodney." John pinched the bridge of his nose and Teyla wondered if he was trying to hide a smile or getting a headache. Maybe a little of both.
McKay rolled his eyes to the other McKay still tapping away at another station. "Well, we can't all be geniuses."
The other two doubles chuckled.
"But I do have this." He waved at the three graphs. "We pulled this off the buffer. This graph represents the first, second and third anomalies. The first thing that jumped out at me was the twenty-two second echo in them all. This faint line mimics the energy readings from the moment the event horizon engaged to the massive energy spike when I arrived, a total of twenty-two seconds. It shouldn't be there. The stargates don't produce echoes of matter. They reform matter. Near as I can tell, the power spike recycles the gate every time to reproduce this echo and unfortunately reforms the echo … which in turn keeps it open."
"So if you delete this echo, you could turn it off?" Woolsey looked encouraged.
"Theoretically," McKay snapped, "if you want to blow up the planet, good answer! But since I had the foresight to pull the ZedPM to divert just such a disaster—"
"Rodney." John folded his arms.
McKay crossed his arms and glared back at Sheppard. "Look, the buffer is already close to overloaded. The only way to reset the gate is another massive energy burst near the event horizon, which is not my first choice!"
"But this means we're in a catch twenty-two!" Woolsey pointed at the screen. "We can't turn it off because we'll blow up?"
"So far. But you're talking about geniuses working on a solution and we've only had thirty-odd minutes to diagnose the problem!"
"But is there another—" Woolsey's musings were cut short by Chuck's console beeping.
"Mr. Woolsey. We're being hailed by Colonel Caldwell." Chuck spun in his chair. "The Daedalus just popped up on our scanners. They're in geosynchronous orbit above us."
"They're early," Ronon grunted.
"Perhaps Larrin's group did not require our assistance," Teyla suggested as Sheppard straightened with her name.
"There's no way he could have made it back here since their last check in," John pointed out. "That's a twelve-hour trip."
"Put them on screen," Richard ordered and the group turned to the large screen behind them and Caldwell's imaged fuzzed on it.
Caldwell's voice sounded like a high-pitched little girl's. "Mr. Wool — — lost — — and — — to — — past sixteen—" The screen jumped and fuzzed erratically.
"Can't we get a better connection?" Woolsey complained.
"Already working on it," a McKay answered. The connection cleared and Caldwell's face stopped fading in and out. "Hmm, that's strange," he muttered.
"Colonel Caldwell, welcome to Atlantis. You're a day early. We didn't expect you until tomorrow," Woolsey greeted.
"What are you talking about?" His voice had cleared of the distortion. "We lost contact with you sixteen hours ago and we're right on schedule! We were worried something had happened." Colonel Caldwell looked annoyed that no one was maimed.
Woolsey tapped on his tablet of bureaucracy and corrected him politely. "You're not scheduled for a check in until 1800 hours. That's in two hours."
"That was yesterday. It's 1000! We've been trying to contact you for the past sixteen hours!"
"Oh, no!" the Rodneys chorused faintly.
Caldwell's eyes turned to the multiple McKays and he blinked, muttering, "Am I seeing double, or is that a problem with my screen?"
"There's nothing wrong with your screen," Sheppard hiked his hands on his hips. "You should beam in, sir. You're not going to want to miss this."
"Yes," Rodney agreed, suddenly agitated. "Yes. They need to land and they need to land now!"
"I'm coming down. Caldwell out."
While a vertical light filled the empty balcony as Colonel Steven Caldwell beamed in and hurried over to join them, Teyla glanced uneasily at her team leader. John looked like he wanted to strangle one of the Rodneys. She knew that look. John thought Rodney was holding something back, too.
"Woolsey, Colonel," Caldwell nodded to Sheppard and the Atlantis Commander.
"Colonel," John greeted.
"McKay?" Steven uneasily surveyed the three McKays working over the ancient consoles. "What's going on?"
While the men explained their situation to Caldwell, Teyla focused on the McKays. Rodney kept shooting his counterparts uneasy looks as the pair of McKays put their heads together and whispered in panic. All three looked extremely ill.
She was about to confront them when Chuck's announcement pre-empted her.
"Five!"
For an instant, she could have heard a pin drop before the entire command group hurriedly shuffled over to the balcony along with Sneakers McKay. She joined them as Chuck continued counting down in the background.
"I thought stargates couldn't malfunction, doctor." Caldwell surveyed the barricade and defenses approvingly.
"Well, that's obviously wrong!" McKay snapped and scratched the growing red spot on his cheek again.
"McKay!" John warned.
"Mark!" Chuck finished.
McKay responded by lifting his chin. "Look, when exposed to energy, the stargates react in different ways. I think our ZedPM powered the error. If I hadn't disconnected it, we would have blown up with the second power surge."
"How is that possible?" Sheppard asked. "If the ZPM is disconnected, how did the gate get another power surge?"
McKay gulped and his eyes darted from Caldwell to Sheppard. "Because of the Daedalus' discrepancy in time, I think the gate is generating a time-dilation field."
"Colonel Sheppard's IDC!" Amelia called out.
John stared at him in horror and the silence grew thicker between them.
"This is Sheppard," the recorded voice reverberated through the atrium. "Nobody shoot. We're coming through with a harmless Smurf."
"A time-dilation field?" John crossed his arms.
"And … mark!" a McKay shouted as the fourth McKay walked out of the event horizon with his blue face and ceremonial stick. "Fourth energy spike!"
Clomp. SQUISH! Clomp. SQUISH!
Teyla ignored the fourth painted McKay along with most of the Atlantis crew and centered her attention on Rodney. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Dr. McKay, explain this time-dilation field!"
Rodney's face pinched. "I'm not really sure, but the wormhole might be looping time which is slowing our forward progress in time."
"Don't shoot the Smurf!" McKay's voice echoed from the staging area.
John's voice cracked slightly, "Well, isn't that just the icing on the cake."
•
TBC
Next chapter…Law of Possession