Chapter One: A Meeting of the Minds
... In which two worlds finally collide and all heck breaks loose, as well as rampart overused jokes, italicized text, and general chaos, and some actual serious parts that include people getting big boo-boos...
... Did we mention that all heck breaks loose?
Zelenka did not like the way things were going.
Today was supposed to be the Czech's scientist's day off, and he had planned the day to be wonderfully blissful and worry-free for once. It was supposed to go something like this: sleep in a little, cheat-- erm, win stuff from other people in the chess tournament being held in the mess hall at noon, avoid Rodney altogether (the Canadian was giving him a bigger headache than usual these days), and watch the sunset before retiring back to bed.
Unfortunately, like so many cliché ironic plot twists, nothing went as planned.
Zelenka was dragged out of bed by a false alarm from one of the newer scientists on the base who had 'broken' the door to the infirmary. Zelenka had managed to convince her that she hadn't broken it and that it was merely locked. She seemed satisfied with that and, by the time Zelenka returned to his room, it was half past one in the morning. He quickly fell asleep again but was woken up by the same scientist who told him in a tiny and scared voice that she broke one of those strange glowy crystals and that the door seemed officially dead now and, oh, I'm not in really big trouble, am I?
Zelenka had fiddled with the door (one of the control crystals were broken... damn. Made the whole repairing process take a whole hour longer. Didn't they know this was his day off?) and managed to fix it, and then promptly told the girl not to dismantle anymore of those door panels. (Where was Rodney when you actually needed him?)
He then stumbled back to his room and collapsed on his bed.
Three hours later, at 8:00 AM, Major Lorne stopped by to tell him that Colonel Carter wanted to see him (oh, joy) and that he should stop by the infirmary too, since a certain someone had accidentally disabled a door (didn't he tell that girl to stop messing with the doors?!)
It turned out that Carter didn't want to see him and that Lorne had somehow misheard her. So Zelenka, finding that he couldn't fall asleep again, gloomily went to the mess hall to get some breakfast. He would let somebody else deal with the door problem.
Zelenka felt a little better after eating and decided to read until the chess tournament when that annoying girl scientist ran in, shouting eureka eureka, and then proceeding to babble about finding a new Ancient device. He followed, no, she dragged him all the way to the other side of the city, where he was fairly surprised to find that she had found a new Ancient device in an entirely new section of the city previously hidden. It seemed odd to him, but he ignored that thought and began to radio Carter to let her know about this discovery when he realized that radios did not work in this section of Atlantis.
Zelenka managed to decode some of the encryption and then headed back to get his computer (after he had strictly warned that girl not to take apart anything else while he was gone). Halfway to his room, Sheppard jumped him, asking him why the hell his radio was off and then went on to say that there was some emergency with the Stargate, and then moved on to a 'heck, didn't Rodney tell you about it' tone before finally jumping to a 'never mind Radek, get moving, will you?' kind of tone.
The Colonel seemed unusually stressed so Zelenka hurried over to the lab, where an equally cranky Rodney was waiting.
"Took you long enough," Rodney had said rather sulkily and proceeded to totally ignore him for the next hour or so.
Some day off this was turning out to be.
Zelenka sighed and pushed his glasses up. He turned to his fellow colleague (McKay, of course) and said, "Rodney, are you sure we can't just reroute power to--"
"No, no, no, no, no," Rodney answered. "We already solved the power problem. Stargate's fixed. Or, at least, it's supposed to be. But there's still something that's preventing it from creating and maintaining a stable wormhole. There's probably something wrong with the command protocol." He typed something in. The computer beeped. Zelenka returned his attention back to his own computer.
"There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. Nothing's defective, from what I can tell... huh?" Zelenka frowned. "That's odd."
"What's odd?" Rodney looked over his shoulder.
"These readings... a massive amount of power is converging on the west pier." Zelenka zoomed in on it. "That's a coincidence. It's converging at the location of that Ancient device Dr. Crosswood found."
Rodney gave him a surprised look. "Ancient device? What Ancient device?"
"It's nothing, really, from the data I've managed to gather. It seems like a type of long-range sensors, only it's for alternate dimensions." Zelenka raised his eyebrows at Rodney, who was smirking. "What's so funny?"
"Excuse me, but, are you saying the Ancients built sensors for alternate dimensions?"
"Yes, I did Rodney."
"Well, what good does it do them?" Rodney scoffed. Oh brother, he had that look in his eye. "There's, theoretically, an infinite amount of alternate dimensions out there; to track what's going on in all of them is basically, how do you say it, impossible." He finished his last sentence with a flourish of his hands. Zelenka sighed for the billionth time today.
"Yes, I know, but they weren't trying to scan all the dimensions at once," Zelenka said. "From what I can tell, they were focusing on a single dimension at a time, and, well, this is a guess, they were also trying to invent a way to get there."
The look of scorn on Rodney's face faded to revelation. "Ascension!" he exclaimed. "I mean, if they could figure out how to actually move between dimensions, then it's possible that they could move up to the higher plane of the Ascended without all the meditation and stuff!"
Radek was genuinely impressed. "I've never thought of it that way. Erm, but they couldn't exactly gain the same immortality or powers as the Ascended Ancients though, right?"
"You know, I'm not really sure about that," Rodney said, more to himself than Zelenka. "Maybe we could try it out sometime..."
"Anyway," Zelenka said, "back to the subject at hand--"
"Rodney?" Zelenka's radio crackled to life. Zelenka gave Rodney a confused look.
"Oh, I, er, turned mine off," Rodney said. He turned the said radio on. "Here, Sheppard."
"That's nice to hear," John said, his voice distorted over the radio. There was no mistaking the tiredness in his voice though; he was emotionally spent, having had his nerves stretched tight all day. Zelenka gave yet another sigh. He could well sympathize with the Colonel.
"Well, how's it going up there? Everything's all right and such?" Rodney asked.
"It depends on what you mean by 'all right,'" John said. "We got this weird transmission, but the scanners aren't picking up any ships nearby which is really... weird. By the way, will you mind shutting down the gate? It won't close to any of our commands."
The remark caught both of them off-guard. "Uh, Sheppard," Rodney began, "do you mean the gate is on?"
"Yeah, it turned on by itself. Nothing's come through it, and when we sent a MALP through we just got empty space. Why, is it supposed to stay off?"
Zelenka hesitated before answering. "Colonel, we cut off all power to the Stargate a few minutes ago to clean up the gate's programs."
No response.
"Sheppard?" Rodney ventured. "John, are you there?"
No response.
"Radio's dead," Zelenka said rather unnecessarily. He checked the computer. "Subspace and radio communications... all dead."
"Thank you, Mr. Morbid," Rodney said sarcastically. "I think we figured that out ourselves."
Zelenka felt a headache coming on. "It's probably a small--"
"-- glitch," Rodney finished for him. "That's what this 'little' Stargate problem started out as, and now..."
"Ohmigosh!" The doors slid open as a petite woman ran in. Zelenka inwardly cringed. Oh God, running into this woman was the last thing Radek wanted right now. His headache went from a dull throb to the uncomfortable sensation of having his brains stabbed by a sharp nail.
"I'm so sorry if I'm interrupting something," the woman said in a breathless voice, "but there's something really important I need you to see Dr. Zelenka, because, like, you're the nicest person on this base. Actually, you're the only person who'll really listen to me." Rodney shot Zelenka an irritated look.
"Who's this?" Rodney spoke slowly, as though he was talking to a little kid.
"Erm, Doctor Lily Crosswood, Doctor Rodney McKay. Rodney--" Zelenka was cut off by Rodney.
"Nice to meet you and all, Lily, but the science geek fangirl club is over there," Rodney said, pointing out the window. Crosswood looked puzzled.
"Uh, Rodney," Zelenka said. "Doctor Crosswood is the one who found the Ancient device. I told you, remember?" The look on Rodney's face was pure gold.
"Are you serious?!" Rodney exclaimed.
"He's totally serious right now," Crosswood said. "But anyway, like I said before, there's something really important Dr. Zelenka needs to see regarding the ADS."
Zelenka stared at her. "ADS?"
"Ancient Dimension Scanner," Crosswood said rather proudly. "I just came up with it now. Let's go!" Crosswood marched out of the room. Rodney muttered something under his breath.
Zelenka rubbed his forehead. "Why don't you check it out, Rodney? It might be the cause for the wormhole problem." He began to leave.
"Me? Why, where are you going?"
Zelenka sighed (the billionth and one time today). "I'm heading down to the infirmary for some aspirin. My head is killing me."
Arthur wasn't sure what had just happened.
If his sense of time was right, he had been peacefully living his life on Kirkkit only twenty minutes ago. His mind began to wildly spin at the thought. It took Ford approximately five minutes to explain what the heck was going on, another five to convince himself he wasn't going insane, and then another five to realize that Ford was yelling at him for breaking the dimensional hyperdrive.
Oops.
Big oops, to be exact.
And now, as Arthur had silently counted, they had been falling toward the magnificent city below them for about five minutes. He thought they would've hit those sharp looking towers or the hard stone ground by now, but, not being in a hurry to speed up his own death, dismissed the thought.
"I told you not to touch anything, Arthur," Ford growled. He crossed his legs and folded his arms across his chest rather huffily. Arthur blinked, puzzled.
"It was a big red button," Arthur said defensively.
"Red usually means 'don't push,'" Ford answered tartly.
"Then why do you make them?" Arthur said. It was Ford's turn to blink.
"Umm..."
They were now a mile or so from the ground. Ford said, "Look, that's not the zarking case. You blew up my ship! We can't get to the DOE without a ship!"
"I don't want to meet the DOE," Arthur said. "I just want a cup of real tea." A thought suddenly crossed his mind. "Shouldn't gravity be kicking in now?"
As soon as those words left his mouth they began to plummet at an extremely fast speed.
"Arthur--!" Ford got that far in his angry cry before hitting the ground.
"Bloody--!" Arthur managed to scream before landing on top of Ford. Ford 'oomphed' in a disgruntled tone.
Arthur was too busy squishing Ford to say anything.
"Arthur," Ford said at length. "I am going to kill you one day."
"You won't need to," a dry voice said from behind. Arthur turned around and found himself staring at the barrel of a very intimidating gun.
Major Lorne had managed to have a perfectly normal day until two men dropped out of the sky in front of him. But other than that, everything was perfectly fine.
Lorne studied them with a keen eye. They seemed completely ordinary, though one of them was wearing a bathrobe and the other was holding a dirty towel. They didn't seem like Replicators: if that was the case, they would've twisted his neck already. They were definitely not Wraith either, unless the Wraith had figured out a new type of plastic surgery. So, Lorne drew to the conclusion that they were some freaky aliens who enjoyed dropping out of the sky in front of people who were taking nice walks, though not in those words.
Lorne glanced up. No sign of a ship.
"If you're wondering," the one wearing the bathrobe said, "I exploded our ship. By accident."
"'Our' ship?" the one with the towel said testily.
"Get up," Lorne said, cocking his gun to make his point. The bathrobe man slowly stood up. The towel man stayed down.
"I think I like the ground better," the towel man muttered. "It's all nice and cool, and it has a real nice feel to it too..."
"I said to get up," Lorne snapped. "Now."
The bathrobe man gave his friend a worried look. "Ford," he whispered urgently. "I think you should do what he says."
"Well, I don't think I should do what he says," the towel man, which Lorne supposed was Ford, grumbled. Still, Ford stumbled to his feet and held up his hands. "There, Earthman, you happy now?"
"That's better," Lorne said. He tapped his radio. "Colonel Carter?"
Nothing. Not even the hiss of static. Lorne frowned and tapped his radio again. "Colonel Carter, do you read?"
"I think it's broken," Ford said in a matter-of-factly way.
Lorne ignored him and nodded his head down the hallway. "You're coming with me."
"Whatever you say," Ford said, slowly following him. "You're the man."