Murphy's First Law: "All things work toward decay."
by Fandomatic
•
Murphy's Law of Exits:
"All things are possible except slamming a revolving door."
Dr. Radek Zelenka, McKay's go-to-scientist until a scant few hours ago when he was usurped by the second McKay, sat between Ronon and Sneakers McKay at the crisis briefing and fumed at his preempted status that designated him as McKay's personal fool. It usually wasn't so annoying because, as often as his boss criticized, he also sought out his council — until today.
The first McKay had accused him of incompetence that almost killed his team. He'd implied that Zelenka wasn't even capable of taking the ZPM off-line. McKay had even gone to the extent of disconnecting the thing before he realized he'd have to climb the central tower, which made Zelenka's abnormally vindictive heart sing. Then the second McKay accused him of engineering a gate malfunction powered by the zero point module because he'd failed to interface the control crystal properly. And now, the first McKay, instead of admitting he was wrong again, shamelessly accused him of creating the perfect environment for a gate malfunction to happen because he'd done his job perfectly!
Radek cherished the small amount of joy he derived from the fact that at least McKay's complexion was burning.
Beet-red and unconsciously scratching throughout his doomsday speech, Sneakers McKay had just finished his full-blown routine of spelling out the certain death they were all about to suffer — or in this case, cease to exist — when the sudden somber atmosphere of the conference room brought the latest McKay's voice from below clearly to Radek's burning ears.
"What the hell did Radek do to the control room? … And who exactly are you? Let me up there! Er, you there, Pony-tail, where are all the lights? And what happened to the ventilation system? It's like forty degrees in here! What the hell'd Radek do? Un-plug the ZedPM?"
Zelenka immediately yearned to un-plug every McKay on Atlantis as he pushed his glasses up on his nose and conjured up an image of an innocent ZPM combined with a deadly, dangling live wire and an exceptionally large puddle of water… His eyes widened behind his lenses and his glare turned to excitement.
"The ZPM!" Radek forgot his manslaughter tendencies and turned to the beet-red McKay in inspiration. "We have ZPM!"
"The Daedalus!" both McKays chorused, instantly catching on.
Sneakers leapt energetically to his feet. "If we can get to another stargate, I know how to fix this!"
Bunnies McKay grinned crookedly at Radek just a few seconds behind and included him with, "We can fix this!"
Surprised that his simple solution to get off Atlantis could 'fix' anything, Radek's glasses slipped down his nose again and his eyes bounced between the McKays. But he couldn't fathom what his bosses were thinking.
Sheppard leaned forward along with the rest of the command staff. "You can? You can shut it down?"
"Well, no, that's impossible," Bunnies huffed.
"Use the ZPM to move the gate?" Caldwell guessed.
"Close, but no! Also impossible!" Sneakers looked disgruntled for a moment and then recovered his enthusiasm. "We power the Daedalus with the ZedPM to attain escape velocity from the anomaly! Well, a-thousand-years-into-the-future escape velocity, but that won't matter."
"We're going to need the new McKay to make this work," realized Bunnies McKay and looked at Woolsey expectantly.
"Look, it's a waste of time to send him … me … to the infirmary. I need him now," Sneakers appealed to Woolsey and scratched his neck. "We've got just under thirty-eight minutes to lift off."
"I've cleared him five times already," Jennifer verified tiredly as Woolsey wavered.
"Aye. It is getting redundant," Beckett helpfully nudged the waffling commander.
Woolsey looked briefly constipated and agreed. "Fine. But how is escaping a thousand years into the future going to fix this when we're abandoning Atlantis?"
Caldwell nodded along with Woolsey and added. "First off, the Daedalus won't hold everyone, not to mention we simply don't have the life support for that many bodies."
"Forget the Daedalus and forget Atlantis for a minute!" If possible, Sneaker's face reddened even more. "You're still not getting that there is no 'off switch' for a stargate malfunction! We are caught up in a spacetime anomaly. Look, the gate sends matter from one gate to the next and it always sends it forward approximately point three seconds into the future. Without a reference in time, you can't send matter from point A to point B because point B is constantly moving through space. You have to use time and space to precisely locate any moving body. Right now, the Atlantis stargate is losing its mooring in spacetime by looping into our past. The Wraith shaft affected the time coordinates of the stargate, which is possibly the only good news," and Sneaker McKay's crooked grin broke over his red face again.
"We can stop it because we have this!" Bunnies McKay with an identical expression of glee on a much creamier complexion grabbed the carved ceremonial stick in front of him. "This is the Holy Grail — well, it's also the shaft from the Wraith, but it's also a programmable time machine when coupled with the power of a ZedPM and a stargate! I mean, this is a solar flare in a bottle!"
Sneakers continued, "We just have to get to a stargate with the Wraith shaft—"
"And the ZedPM with the Atlantis gate crystal," added Bunnies.
"And I can reprogram the shaft to send me back in time to stop myself from returning through the gate." McKay's red chin lifted triumphantly. "End of anomaly."
"You can do that?" Woolsey asked. "You can go back in time without starting this time anomaly all over again?"
McKay's answer bounced back and forth between the two McKays. "Of Course. I'll have to rewrite the Wraith program—"
"Simultaneously set up a shaft interface—"
"Calculate the escape velocity burn—"
"Assemble the portable ZedPM power socket—"
"Cobble together an interface for the Atlantis control crystal—"
Radek cut in, "And retrofit Daedalus for ZPM power socket."
"But there's six of me."
"And me!" Zelenka added a little hostilely.
"And Zelenka," Sneakers amended and scratched his neck.
Beckett frowned. "But what happens to all the buggers trapped here with all the … yous … drinking up all the coffee?"
"Caffeine headaches!" snapped McKay as Zelenka repossessed his coffee mug protectively next to him. "Weren't you listening? Since time is moving so much faster outside this anomaly, I doubt more than two hundred more cycles would pass before all this disappeared. Poof! Never happened," McKay answered. "We only have a matter of days left on Atlantis!"
Bunnies crossed his arms. "Look, the only way to stop this is to stop it from happening in the first place."
Silence greeted his statement
"I'll go." Sheppard volunteered.
"Actually, no," Sneakers grimaced and scratched the back of his hand. "Much as I'd like to let you, the shaft, being gene sensitive, is initialized only to me."
"Well, what happens to the McKay that goes back in time?" Mr. Woolsey asked.
"Ah," Sneakers lifted a red finger. "That's a, uh, paradox."
"Couldn't we send a 'paradox' ZPM back with you?" Woolsey wondered, still enchanted by his gate copier project.
"Er, good idea if we had a spare, but we kinda need it to power the actual trip through the stargate." Bunnies frowned. "But I, or one of me, could take some other Ancient items with us — me. Maybe some stuff from Janus' lab?" He rubbed his hands together thoughtfully.
"And the people that go forward in time?" Caldwell asked.
"Never happened — or never will — once I stop myself from walking through the gate." Sneakers shrugged and scratched his chin. "Anyway, we need to set up operations on the Daedalus, as fast as possible. Our window of opportunity only extends up to the next cycle — even with the power of a ZedPM. Once we gain orbit, our minutes should double as we get further from the anomaly."
"Sounds like a plan." Sheppard leaned back, folded his arms and nodded to Woolsey with a small smile. "And we get roaming with those double minutes."
•
Dr. Zelenka puffed an upward breath of air at his thinning hair in the hope of dislodging the lock from his sweating brow. The limp strand clung in place over the center of his left lense and refused to budge. As he focused on the offensive clump of hair, Radek's crossed eyes unbalanced him and he staggered into the wall with the oversized casing. Too late to correct the misstep, he careened into Colonel Sheppard behind him.
"Easy there, Radek." A hand grabbed his arm and steadied him before he could fall the rest of the way down the stairwell. "You don't want to take the shortcut," Sheppard joked and pulled him to the side of the landing. "Tanner, come take this load off Zelenka. The rest of you find something to carry."
Zelenka heard a "Yes, sir," and the heavy casing lifted from him. Relieved and able to see again, Radek swiped his brow and watched the ZPM casing depart down the stairs, manhandled by one of Sheppard's marines. Behind him, his caravan of scientists had halted on the outside of the stairs as Sheppard's marines passed on the inside and collected their burdens. The noise of their collective boots filled the narrow space with the thunder of elephants.
Not having the use of the Asgard beam was proving to be an exercise in stairs. Currently, they were in the designated 'down' stairwell. Sheppard's marines had relieved Zelenka's team of the parts for the disassembled ZPM power socket.
When the last one passed, Sheppard and Zelenka started after his casing again. "Thanks for the help. I never thought I would be used as pack mule," he grumbled as they turned the next landing.
"Well, you know Rodney," Sheppard offered. "We're moving supplies off the Daedalus to lighten the load. Then it's back up the stairs."
"Yes. Yes, I know Rodney," Radek sighed and grumpily pushed his wild hair back from his face. "I'd like to give him an ego trip down the stairs. 'Good thinking, Radek,'" Zelenka mimicked sarcastically, "'You're in charge of the ZedPM power socket since it was your idea.'" He glanced over at Sheppard's amused expression as they quickly pumped down the next flight. "He commandeered me! What he means is, 'go get the power socket out of storage and pack the parts downstairs because that's the heaviest item on the list!' He's got everyone taking something down, except himself, and you know why?"
Sheppard guessed the small Czech really didn't want him to answer that as they turned yet another landing and hustled down another set of stairs.
"Because he is too important to work with minions! That's what he calls us! Minions. Peons. Flunkies. Peasants. Is all the same to him and it doesn't help that there are six now!" Radek took a steadying breath and grumbled. "He only assigned this so he can blame me for it later when it doesn't work. I can hear him now, 'What took you so long? All you had to do was get the ZedPM socket here!' He blames everything on me — if you hadn't noticed. And now there are six of him to find fault." He barely noticed they had reached the bottom of the stairwell.
Sheppard and Zelenka stepped out into the corridor and hurried after the line of marines moving toward the pier door. Zelenka felt the colonel's hand squeeze his shoulder briefly and he looked up in surprise as Sheppard assured, "Don't feel too singled out. Today, we're all pack mules."
Dr. Zelenka straightened in relief as the evening breeze whipped his hair around his face and instantly cooled his skin. Ahead, the Daedalus sat docked with the F-302 bay ramp open to the tarmac. Men moved in lines carrying crates purposefully from her hold. At the head of the ramp, Radek spotted one of his antagonists directing the traffic flow in a pair of bright pink bunny slippers. "Sorry, but lately I've felt this urge to vent six times as often."
"Amen," Sheppard muttered in agreement as the fresh-faced McKay waved them up.
McKay wore his uniform jacket with a '5' written inside the narrow blue yoke that identified him as AKA 'Bunnies.' The number only served to remind Zelenka that McKay-to-the-fifth-power was five times annoying.
The thought cheered him.
"Sheppard," Rodney called out and descended on them in a hurry. "I've got something else for you to do. We've got to move these F-302s out of the bay. Radek, follow me. Your ZedPM socket is already on its way to auxiliary engineering. McKay's already there starting the prep sub-routines."
"I'll talk to Caldwell," Sheppard snorted and preceded Bunnies and Radek through the bay and into the ship corridors.
"We're making good time." Rodney shoved past a second McKay in blue slippers juggling five Wraith shafts and five Ancient scanners in his hands. His face had turned a lovely shade of red that almost matched the first McKay's.
"Hey, Radek," Slippers McKay called over his shoulder as they passed. "Come down to the infirmary when you're through. We could use the help."
"Fat chance!" Rodney answered for him. "He's with me! Go practice your voodoo with Carson elsewhere!"
"Ha! Very coy, grasshopper. Grow up and maybe we'll let you play with us, too!" The older McKay's voice faded as he turned a corner out of sight.
"Anyway," Rodney continued, "we've got about twenty minutes. McKay-the-third gave us as much time as possible to plug and play. If we don't get off the ground by then, we're grounded for good." Rodney flattened against the wall to let a squad of marines pass carrying dead weight from storage and Zelenka joined him on the wall.
Ahead, Zelenka heard Colonel Caldwell's voice rise from the bridge over the tramp of feet. "Stripped down to its 'nubby nubs?' You mean to tell me the F-302s have to go…? Only 10,000 kilos? What is that, 5,000 pounds or 22 men? That's all we have power for? With a ZPM?"
The squad passed and Rodney led Zelenka past the bridge bulkhead where Sheppard had ducked inside to join Sockered McKay and Colonel Caldwell in mid-rant.
"You gotta be kidding me!" Caldwell's voice followed them down the tight passageway. "How am I going to pick twenty-two men out of — What do you mean I only have to pick ten? I can't run the Daedalus on a crew of ten!"
Suspicion rose in Zelenka's mind as he added up the twelve missing crew members. "Rodney, don't tell me I'm going on this mission."
"You're going, so don't try to weasel out of it." Bunnies McKay quickly peered about to make sure they weren't overheard. "Woolsey wants Sheppard's team, and all of me, myself and I to go. I need you and Carson and that makes twelve."
"Rodney, you don't need me. You have six McKays."
"Too true. But six geniuses coming up with the same solution is a bit redundant. I need a fresh point of view occasionally — even if it is radically reckless, idiotic, ludicrous, absurdly bizarre—"
"You had me at 'fresh,'" grumbled Radek before he could rattle off another super-sized insult.
"I was talking about Carson," Rodney smugly deflected any implied compliment and sailed arrogantly through the bulkhead door and into the auxiliary engineering room. His haughty figure was spoiled by the flopping pink bunny ears and his bare heels sticking off the back of the slippers.
Glaring after his escort, Radek muttered after his back in Czech, "How can I take you seriously with those ridiculous little girlie slippers?"
Zelenka trailed after his fearless leader and looked around the auxiliary engineering room at three more identical McKays. All of them wore their jackets with numbers and had various footwear issues. Two worked industriously at assembling and installing the portable ZedPM power socket that had a few scattered parts left around it on the floor. The third McKay sat at the central station with more parts scattered over the control panel and he attached conduits to the Atlantis control crystal tray. Bunnies McKay surveyed the amount of work already completed with satisfaction. The ZPM power socket had been designed to reassemble quickly.
The beet-red McKay with a number one written on his jacket glanced up from the half-completed unit and scathingly growled at them, "Finally! What took you so long? Hurry up…" He pointed at a coiled power conduit as Radek picked it up and inserted the end into the casing port. The sixth McKay, sporting a pair of lime green flip flops, immediately tightened the clamping head while Bunnies opened the central panel to access the Daedalus power main. Radek fed him the other end of the connection and grabbed the next conduit.
The vibration and noise of several F-302 engines powering up shook the room as the Daedalus launched its fighters in a desperate measure to save time rather than roll them out. The noise only increased as more engines joined the chaos outside.
They ignored the racket and worked quickly and desperately, fighting every second of the clock to get the ZPM power socket plugged into the Daedalus power main. When the final connection had been clamped into place, the Daedalus had grown silent as it divested itself of its fighter defenses.
"Done!" Flip-flop McKay stepped back with his wrench since there wasn't anything else to attach, except the ZPM itself.
"Done!" Bunnies announced from the open ship panel.
"Done!" Radek grinned and looked at his watch. They had four minutes to spare.
Flip-flop McKay, who had already flipped open the carrying case, lifted the ZPM from its molding and approached the open socket. His green sandals slapped his feet. He firmly pressed the ZPM into the socket and the module lit up on contact.
Radek and the McKays heaved a collective sigh of relief as Barefoot McKay announced from the main control panel, "I have a viable connection. The ZedPM is online and reading at full power."
"We're done!" Sneakers pronounced and tapped his comm. "Colonel Caldwell. We're ready to power up the Daedalus engines."
"Good job, McKay." Caldwell's voice returned. "I'll give the ground crew a minute to clear." An alarm started to blare over the ship and Kevin Mark's voice started warning the crew to take their stations and seal the hatches for lift off in two minutes.
"Well, McKay-the-third must have done his math homework," a couple of McKays chorused together.
"Funny, I was just about to say that," Flip-flop mused.
"Three down, three to go," sighed Sneakers McKay before it dawned on them that they needed to get some of their collective asses to the main engineering room.
Radek stayed to monitor the ZPM power socket with Barefoot McKay who worked intently over the Atlantis gate crystal tray and moaned about his tender feet.
The lift off and jump into hyperspace seemed routine — except for the amount of energy that drained out of the zero point module to do it. With tension between his shoulders, Radek watched the numbers scroll across his monitor and waited for the burst of distance to hit his screen. According to navigation, they were still inside Atlantis' solar system and creeping out of it at a Mercury rocket snail-pace.
"Rodney!" Zelenka turned excitedly to Barefoot McKay. "The Atlantis solar system just disappeared from our sensors!"
•
TBC
Next chapter… Law of Calculations