Murphy's First Law: "All things work toward decay."
by Fandomatic
•
Murphy's Law of Absolutes:
"Being dead right, won't make you any less dead."
Richard Woolsey, commander of the Atlantis expedition, cringed as he viewed his current domain from the lofty balcony overlook of the control room. 'One' Rodney McKay — no, it was the 'fifth' Rodney McKay, which could be interchangeable with 'filth' in his mind — had left those muddy left boot prints across his clean floor again.
Woolsey couldn't abide dirt.
His first call of this event went out to the clean-up detail, a military duty that fell to the most recently disciplined grunt who was getting more than his share of the grunt work in the last three hours. As he requested the work, he included the control room with the little mud crumbles distributed by McKay's drying pant legs, and then his critical eye fell on McKay's problematic footwear — or rather lack of wear in most cases. Combined with the dirt, this bothered him on a basic level that threatened to overwhelm his many conquered phobias.
Woolsey couldn't abide disorder either.
As a fussy dresser, he secretly despised the Atlantis uniform as a necessary evil that he wore with rigid discomfort as an exemplary leader. Seeing the uniform code maligned with such impunity, both soiled and in disordered stages of dress, would have made his hair stand on end — if he'd had any hair.
Instantly guilt-ridden, he glanced at the shock of black hair on his chief military officer, and quelled every instinct in his bones to interfere with the dynamic duo. Never mess with something that works. That was his job, to keep Atlantis afloat and viable — even at the expense of messy and dirty.
He consciously avoided looking at Ronon Dex.
Instead, he cued the screen on his datebook and entered the extra supplies the 'filth' McKay had brought through the gate. While the to-do list was open, he checked in the new McKay for the infirmary and noted with satisfaction that Carson Beckett was already on his way to meet him in the gate room. Protocol had not been broken yet.
Then his eye fell on his number one item to get done: a crisis conference. "Colonel Sheppard, I'm scheduling a brainstorming session in thirty minutes. We need to put all the information on the table and work toward a solution. 1700 hours, Colonel, your team, and the command staff, in the conference room." Mr. Woolsey turned to his number one choice to get things done and added, "Chuck, make sure to get some lights in there." Woolsey entered the neat little entry on his calendar with all the attendees he wanted and sent off the e-mail advisory.
McKay didn't waste time to grumble. "Well, that's going to be a huge waste of time!"
As usual, Richard could count on the colonel's support. "Just think," he told McKay, "you've got four other McKays now to pick up all that important work you're always moaning about when we go on missions or get stuck in meetings."
Sneakers McKay still looked unhappy and he muttered, "I'd rather be working on a solution than explaining the problem to people who won't be able to solve it!" He scratched his face which had bloomed a bright rosy red.
"Rodney."
The familiar warning with no bite made Woolsey smile as he turned to enlist Amelia Banks' help. "Advise Caldwell that I want him at this meeting. He can beam in from the Daedalus…" He trailed off as the solution hit him square in the face. "The Daedalus!" If it was possible, Woolsey squared his square shoulders even more as he turned back in excitement to his staff.
"The Daedalus!" Sheppard straightened, realizing where he was going with this and took a few excited steps closer.
Woolsey fairly beamed with his new plan. "We get the Daedalus to lift the gate out of here and explode it in space!" His staff gathered around Amelia's station.
"Yeah, right," McKay's caustic voice deflated what hope he had. "Already thought of that about … six years ago! It'd only work if it was an earth-mover."
"But it worked for the SGC," the Atlantis commander protested.
"I was there!" Sneakers Rodney pointed out and continued as if the next part made perfect sense to everyone since it made sense to him. "Their gate wasn't malfunctioning."
"What worked?" Ronon asked as the colonel glowered at the scientist for not presenting this tactic earlier.
Woolsey frowned and his lines on his brow doubled. "The SGC gate was about to blow up the planet so we lifted it into space and let it explode there. So why can't we do that — use the Daedalus to lift out the stargate and detonate it in space?"
Barefoot McKay, with the naked toes, snorted very loudly from the central control consoles behind Amelia. He'd been listening. "Why does everyone point a bomb at something they don't understand?" he asked rhetorically across the room. He held up a sarcastic finger and mimicked, "Oh, I've got a great idea! I don't understand why the gate is malfunctioning and generating a time dilation field, so let's aim more energy at what we don't understand and blow it up! That should get rid of our problem!"
Instantly both of his doubles smirked.
"McKay." Sheppard's tired voice didn't have any heart in it.
Sneakers McKay crossed his arms. "Look, the time dilation field the wormhole is generating is heavy. The Daedalus simply won't be able to move it. The wormhole is looping like a magnetic coil and each loop makes the field stronger and heavier. The third McKay is working on the math computations now."
"Sir," Banks interrupted their conference taking place over her station, "Caldwell isn't responding."
Barefoot McKay behind Amelia instantly took the challenge. "On it." He fiddled with some controls which ejected a high-pitched squeal that nailed a new headache in Woolsey's brain before it cut off abruptly. "Just need to adjust for the…"
Resisting every instinct he had to run from the horrid sound, Woolsey approached McKay's station at the central console with his staff trailing.
While McKay solved the communication problem, Woolsey objected to the first McKay's explanation. "But I don't feel any heavier and there is no force pulling us into the gate."
"Well, you won't feel any slower, either," Rodney snapped. "I just said the field is heavy and moving it through our four dimensions, would be next to impossible since it's looping through our past." He examined the ceiling for a moment of dumb-down inspiration. "Look, it's like trying to move an apple seed with an ant — only the apple seed's still inside the apple."
McKay's expression dropped in sudden surprise and Woolsey looked up at the ceiling to see if his inspiration was actually visible.
"Time!" He started snapping his fingers excitedly. "The time dilation field… Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Seriously, whoa! The time dilation field!" He turned to another McKay at the next station over, "How about those calculations, Number Three?"
Sockered McKay growled without looking up, "I could use another me if I'm thinking what you're thinking."
"Oh, this is bad, bad thinking," Barefoot McKay muttered from the central control. "I-I-I'm not getting anything."
"No Caldwell?" Woolsey asked worriedly and shot Sheppard a quizzical glance to see if he understood what the McKay's were thinking. He looked as blank as Woolsey felt.
"No, not that," he clarified absently, "Sensors." And he pointed to Banks. "Er, you, uh, can try it now." He exchanged an anxious look with the other McKays.
Amelia Banks immediately spoke, "Colonel Caldwell, This is Atlantis. Please advise us of your status."
"This is Caldwell," the colonel's voice filled the room. "We've been trying to reach you. We're on the forty-fifth floor of the central tower." A slight huff escaped him. "We couldn't get a lock with our Asgard beams, so we had to take the long way up. By the way, your transporters are not working."
In the background, Banks relayed Woolsey's message as Sneakers McKay nervously straightened and stopped scratching. "Uh oh. Sensors, now the transporter beams and serious jetlag…"
"That means…" and both McKays looked at Sockered McKay with stark fear.
Sockered McKay looked up from his tablet with a horrified face that had started to splotch, "According to this, we're trapped."
Sheppard's jaw clenched. "What do you mean trapped?"
Sockered McKay gulped and blurted. "The last loop just exceeded the Daedalus' escape velocity from the time dilation field."
"We're stuck," Sneakers McKay agreed faintly with an equally appalled expression.
Woolsey's wrinkles grew wrinkles at this development. "When Caldwell gets here, we'll consider all our options," he told them firmly. There had to be another way out of this malfunction. There were five McKays on the payroll.
"I said we're stuck!" Sneakers Rodney snarled next to Sheppard with his red rash turning even redder. "What options?"
Sockered McKay picked it up. "Like the-last-meal option?"
"Maybe you'd-like-a-steak-with-those-fries option?" Barefoot McKay added.
"Rodney," the colonel's gentle reminder only redirected the tide.
Sockered McKay slammed his laptop closed and rose from his station to face them. "I don't think you realize how royally screwed we are here! This is why malfunctioning gates don't exist! They spin off into a paradox, only we were counting on the Daedalus to get us clear of the event, but it's too late now! This is the Wraith shaft we're talking about here. We're screwed! It's just a matter of when, not if!"
The stunned silence was broken by Sheppard. "Then I guess you'll just have to figure out how to un-plug it."
•
After the McKay doomsday pep talk, Mr. Woolsey retreated to his office to put his life and Atlantis in order. He left Sheppard to deal with the McKays' quitter-talk while he made sure the rest of Atlantis ran smoothly.
His office was hot, stuffy and dark, and only lit by the light of his computer screen. He briefly considered taking off his jacket, noticing that Sheppard had stripped to his tee shirt under the tac vest, but he couldn't shed his formality or his habits so easily.
Woolsey found strength and clarity in the activity of rearranging his calendar and to-do lists. It gave him purpose when the probable outcome of their fate rested with leaving something that worked alone. But the Atlantis team was missing a crucial cog in the wheel, which he intended to right first.
He called Zelenka as he checked off 'get Zelenka back' on his to-do list. It pleasantly surprised him that the Czech was already working on the Wraith shaft with Slippers McKay down in McKay's lab. The professionalism of his staff continually astonished him.
The next item on his list concerned Sheppard and a pressing need for military safety protocols, which could wait until after this crisis.
He quickly entered the growing list of problems to the growing list of things to fix and then turned to something more inspirational, his wish list. He added 'gate duplicator' under 'new McKay budget' and stared at the two with a quiet moment of revelation.
For a moment, he wondered how many needed items would fit into one puddle jumper and if he would feel too guilty to include his personal stash of brandy and Cuban cigars. Surely, with a little incentive, McKay could make a gate duplicator work — if he could fix this one.
It was reason enough to comm Sheppard in for a consultation.
"Mr. Woolsey," the colonel greeted a few minutes later.
"Colonel."
Still in full gear but not packing the P90 anymore, Sheppard flopped into a seat with a sigh of relief and darted an escapist-look toward the control room. "What a day."
"Hopefully not our last." Woolsey didn't know if the escapist-look was aimed at the McKays or his office.
"Yeah, about that, McKay'll think of something." Sheppard rubbed his chin.
"Hmm. Four McKays working simultaneously on gate diagnostics, the Wraith … shaft," he squirmed, not liking the new term, "time dilation theory and gate-time theory, which I'm told could be interchangeable with gate malfunction theory. With so many McKays arriving…, how am I going to explain this ballooning budget expense to the IOA?"
Sheppard blinked and just stared. He swallowed and nodded carefully. "Hmm."
"You know, Colonel, this 'gate duplicator' could diffuse some of those costs — juggle the budget, so to speak — so our supply costs could be redirected toward staffing costs." He paused dramatically.
"Let me guess. You want to shuffle a few of the new McKays onto your pet project."
Woolsey smiled. "This would be a revolutionary technology. Just think … our ZPM shortage would be over and so would our blown budget."
Sheppard smiled back. "While we're at it, let's open an Atlantis bar."
Woolsey's smile faded. "You're not taking this seriously. Coming in over-budget will shut down Atlantis faster than the Wraith ever had a hope of doing!"
"I was serious." He crossed his arms. "Don't take this the wrong way, but let's just get through this gate crisis first."
"Of course," Woolsey conceded and turned to the safety of new protocols. "I was merely bringing up future issues, which brings me to the subject of military helmets. Lieutenant Cole sustained a head injury that could have been avoided had he worn a helmet."
The colonel's eyes widened incredulously. "A Wraith snuck up behind him and clubbed him over the head with his stunner!"
"And, had he worn a helmet," Woolsey made his case, "his injury would not have been as severe. I think we should consider helmets mandatory equipment off-world."
Sheppard gaped at him and his hands came down and gripped the chair arms. "If he wore a helmet, the Wraith would have stunned him and dragged him off for supper! But since he didn't wear a helmet, Cole went down, rolled over and shot the Wraith full of nice little holes. That kid has a hard head."
"There are far too many head injuries cropping up to ignore, Colonel. Not having helmets readily available is just reckless. Last week, you yourself could have used one right here when the gate blew up."
Sheppard's astonishment made his voice almost squeak, "You want me to wear a helmet?"
Woolsey smoothed his ill-fitting jacket front. Sheppard wasn't as receptive of his suggestion as he'd thought, but he pressed on relentlessly, "We have safety issues to consider and a safety record to protect. Any kind of head gear would check these rising numbers."
Sheppard looked ready to swallow his tongue as his hazel eyes shot to Woolsey's balding plate and lingered there. "Any kind of head gear?" he repeated, struggling to keep a straight face.
"Well, OSHA-approved, of course — Oh, there's Colonel Caldwell," Woolsey silently heaved a sigh of relief and closed the file on his tablet. No, he wouldn't be opening that subject up for discussion any time soon. The threat of bringing his lack of hair into the discussion had effectively killed his enthusiasm for helmets. As Sheppard watched with a bit of amusement left on his face, Woolsey practically ran out of his own office before he could say the dreaded 'toupee' word.
•
Woolsey admired his contribution to Atlantis, the great table in the conference room. The wood glowed under the six torch lamps scattered around the room. It was hot now but a few open balconies were bleeding away the afternoon heat from the tower with the onset of evening. Woolsey opted to leave the conference room doors open in favor of air circulation as Caldwell, Beckett, Sheppard, Ronon, Zelenka and McKay joined him. They could clearly hear the noise from the control room and the atrium below.
Mr. Woolsey noticed that Teyla was missing from the group so he asked Sheppard about her. He answered vaguely that she was occupied but would try to make it.
Ronon bluntly supplied, "She's breast-feeding Torren."
Rodney snapped. "Oh, well, thank you very much for that imagery, Ronon!" Sneakers McKay set down his laptop and refreshed the screen. "Now I won't be able to look at her without thinking about—" he gestured helplessly and snapped his mouth shut as Keller walked into the room with the fifth McKay carrying the fated Wraith shaft.
Woolsey's eyes caught the bright pink bunny slippers on the new McKay. The backless slippers didn't quite fit under McKay's heels but the perky bunny ears flopped provocatively.
"He's wearing your bunnies!" McKay accused McKay and gaped at Keller.
Dr. Keller frowned at his red face. "Of course he is, Rodney. You don't have any more footwear. Have you been putting on that cream regularly?"
While he squirmed, Woolsey quickly tried to get the meeting started and cleared his throat. "As you know, in five minutes, we're about to gain another McKay. We need a solution now." He waited for some of them to sit down.
Sneakers McKay tried to sit next to Keller, but Ronon and Bunnies McKay already claimed those seats. Looking like he'd lost in musical chairs, Sneakers reclaimed his laptop and moved next to Radek Zelenka.
Meanwhile Woolsey continued and had to compare skin tones to pick out the elder red scientist, whose red color glowed all the way up to his shirt sleeves. "McKay, er, the original McKay, would you care to explain the malfunctioning gate." Both physicists were in their shirtsleeves now and barren of labels. Only Woolsey stubbornly wore his uniform jacket.
McKay, in the spotlight and ready to vent, spotted Zelenka next to him. "The malfunction was the unforeseen and direct result of a vicious Wraith attack that was partially nullified by my quick thinking to disengage the ZedPM. Don't let it go to your head," he glared at Zelenka, "but this attack was dependant on proper gate installation, because had it not been functioning with the ZedPM correctly, none of this would have happened."
Zelenka choked and slammed down his metal coffee mug. "Oh, now you blame me for installing gate correctly? You initialized it and brought it home, Rodney!"
McKay looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Yes, and if you had been less competent, we wouldn't be in this predicament now, would we?"
"Well, I accept your apology."
"I wasn't apologizing," McKay denied. "This meeting is a gigantic waste of my time because we don't have any time. From the moment I stepped through the gate, we were doomed to witness that moment till we ceased to exist!" The head scientist looked quite upset.
"Rodney," Sheppard interjected gently. "It's not your fault."
"I've doomed us. There's no escape. We're all going to spin off in a paradox so you might as—"
"Rodney!" Sheppard tried again.
The fifth Rodney surprisingly spoke up. "What he's trying to say is that if you all left on the Daedalus when it got here, there was a slight chance you would have escaped into the future. Probably three or four years into the future, but you'd have made it."
"Is that true, Rodney?" Keller's wide eyes met his guilty ones.
Red-faced Rodney glared back at his peachy copy. "Yes. But it was actually impossible to calculate the correct model until the effects were measurable, which was thirty minutes too late, I might add."
The new McKay explained loftily. "There was no way for him to know until the Daedalus landed and he had more than one temporal computation to work with." Their mistake wasn't his mistake.
"Know what?" John glowered. "Just give us the highlights."
Sneakers McKay took a breath and gathered his scathing anger. "The highlights are… Time is slowing to a crawl due to a paradox created by the malfunction and will continue to slow until we are screwed! It's beginning to affect the Asgard beaming technology, our sensors and our communications. We are cut off from the outside world and pretty soon we'll be cut off from communications with the outer piers! We can't reset the gate to dial out. We can't move the gate due to the time dilation field the wormhole is generating, and we can't even achieve escape velocity with the Daedalus now because we're too slow in comparison to how quickly time is speeding up for the rest of the universe!"
"Dr. McKay, is there any good news?" Woolsey ventured tentatively, wondering if he should strike that 'gate duplicator' off his wish list.
"Yes," the first McKay snarled. "Our paradox will allow you to witness the end of the universe in a matter of days. And, well, I would have won the Nobel Prize for proving my theory that malfunctioning gates don't exist because they spin off into a time paradox!"
"Maybe if you stuck to the facts, we could come up with a plan of action…" Caldwell prodded impatiently.
"Understanding how you're going to die won't change the fact that we're all going to die!"
"Rodney!"
Bunnies McKay generously intervened. "Let me take this." At McKay's simmering glare, the last McKay put his Wraith stick on the table. "McKay erroneously compared our time loop to a magnetic coil, with each loop in time making the time dilation field stronger and heavier, based on the echo being reformed each time in the gate. But the cork screw was a simplified model—"
"Oh, please! You would have come to the same conclusion!" Sneakers McKay snapped and the fifth McKay returned his glare.
Sneakers crossed his red arms and took up the lecture. "When I compared the gate to an apple seed inside the core of an apple, I realized our wormhole is shaped like a slinky, but curved because it's coiled around a single, twenty-two second event in our past. As the past curves our progressive loops around this single event, each coil of the slinky is actually overlapping a portion of the same event, creating the echo we're seeing in the buffer and slowing our experience of time. The Wraith shaft didn't really transmit the echo of matter, it locked our stargate's time coordinates in the past which created the echo."
Bunnies McKay nodded and added, "Even though we disengaged the ZedPM, it was too late to stop the time loop since it draws its power from the original moment I, or we, stepped through the gate."
As if on cue, Amanda's voice drifted into the room announcing Sheppard's IDC code. Bunnies McKay hesitated, having never heard the arrival of a McKay yet.
"Having the power creates our current paradox or malfunction. If I had stepped through any other gate, the object wouldn't have been able to draw enough power to generate this anomaly. Because of the ZedPM, our days are numbered."
"This is Sheppard. Nobody shoot. We're coming through with a harmless Smurf."
And the fifth McKay shot Sheppard a murderous glare as Woolsey prodded the sudden silence, "Well, how long do we have?"
"A matter of days, but that is irrelevant," he retorted.
Bunnies McKay leaned forward. "Long before the wormhole collides with itself and the gate buffer overloads with a double dose of energy, time outside our paradox will have sped up so much that we won't be able to get off so much as a distress signal."
"Right now," Sneakers McKay snarled and stabbed a red finger toward the open doors to the atrium below, "We're wasting valuable time in a race against time, because each time the gate loops, the effect is multiplied!"
"What the hell did Radek do to the control room?" they heard the sixth McKay demand.
Dr. Zelenka's nostrils flared and he glared at his bosses.
•
TBC
Next chapter…Law of Exits