Three Years, Two Months, One Day - Dr. Carson Beckett
This chapter is going to explain the entire "Ginn can't be alive because she is quarantined in Destiny's computer" dilemma.
Dr. Carson Beckett knew that the transfer of one's consciousness by the Long Range Communications "stones" was an experience that felt a little safer than being beamed through the Stargate, but the unnerving feeling that someone else was in your body made him wince. No wonder Jennifer for a month after her body switch checked the mirror by the edge of her bed.
Now walking through the ship and seeing how rundown it looked, no wonder Colonel Telford had taking up studying with the Travelers communities in the Pegasus Galaxy. The ship looked like it was being held together with duct tape and bailing wire. Literally…
Telford had gotten with one of the Traveler leadership and had asked for an exchange program. The Travelers would send a small team to Atlantis to learn Ancient Tech, while a small group of Humans from Earth would learn about how the Travelers kept their ships flying. There had been some work done to learn what they could to do to teach the engineers what was needed to keep a ship flying with makeshift parts, but it was worth it. So far the Travelers had started to get replacement parts to keep their ships flying and Telford's team had found at least thirty Ancient ships of varying types that had started to return to the Pegasus Galaxy.
Between both groups, the teams had started to learn the secrets of the ships which caused a sudden shift of balance in the Pegasus Galaxy as even the Genii were able to go toe to toe with the Wraith. Between the new firepower these ships brought to bear and the Wraith being so weakened by the Hoffin Plague the Wraith were running out of options and were starting to see that suing for peace was their only option for survival.
So far Michael's research on creating hybrids was the icing on the cake as it had become one of the few options for survival available to them. A Wraith Queen had asked for a third of her forces to be converted to Hybrids to survive given the food situation as they had lost a newborn queen when she had fed on a human who hadn't been infected. It didn't matter if the plague victims had been killed; the plague had now spread through to the very soil and now had become part of the ecosystems throughout the galaxy. The idea of starving to death had forced many changes to Wraith culture. The Hybrids were the option left on the table as creating a Queen that was a Hybrid would guarantee whichever hive had one the most power.
So far Carson had seen a child born of one of these early Hybrid Queens to a Wraith worshipper a few months ago. It was strange, but given that when pushed to the limits, any species will seek ways of survival to stay live. But Michael's legacy would haunt planets for centuries to come given what Carson had done being his creator. Seeing Milla the Hybrid play with her doll brought it home for those on Atlantis. This wasn't a victory; this was death of one race and the start of another.
Was this what the Ancients had gone through when the Ori Plague had ripped through the Milky Way Galaxy? Breeding with humans for survival in the hope that the genes of your people would live on as the purebloods of your kind died out. . . Carson thought hard on this he was a descendant of such a decision. Now looking at this again ship, Carson wondered if any of its crew could through their genetic code had someone related to its builders and the ships they had built.
One of the Lanterian engineers on the ships that had been salvaged in Pegasus had left a manual covering ships built during the time Destiny was launched. The techs back on earth were reading it back and forth to see what they could do when contact was reestablished but it had provided plenty of insight to upgrade the current generation of ships that were coming out of the Earth and Stargate Union shipyards.
If all else failed, they knew now how to build a command chair that was compatible with the Antarctic defense system given that they had a bear of a time trying to get another chair from an abandoned outpost to plug into it.
Though Carson knew now that he wasn't the only Clone walking about that had been created by Michael before his death at the hands of Teyla.
Breena a clone of an Ancient had been found by Ronin after hearing rumors of a Runner that was killing Wraith left and right. The crew had nicknamed her Buffy after the number of kills done by her and the fact that one of her kills had shoved an oak tree right through the Wraith. It wasn't until Ronin had tracked her down after weeks on her trail and a number of sliced and diced unhybridized Wraith that she finally collapsed after fighting with Ronin for several houses straight.
By the time Breena had been checked for tracking implants and for-said implants were removed, they had learned that Breena had been an Ancient Combat officer stationed at an outpost that had been overrun by the Wraith during the closing days of the war. She had entered into Stasis on her ship to get back to Atlantis and somehow when Atlantis evacuated the ship changed course 10,000 years ago to head to earth. Then the ship changed course again when Atlantis had come back on line and eventually after ages, the ship had been found by Michael. Given the Ancient Stasis process, Breena's body had aged to the point where she was over a hundred years old, and not wasting an opportunity, Michael cloned her mind and body into a new construct that was about sixteen years old.
Breena, fought back against the experimentation that was done to her, through Michael did tag her. So taking an opportunity, she escaped and went on the run about a week before Michael died at Teyla's hands. With the beacon in her going off, Breena was hunted for a long time by other Wraith in a galaxy she knew little of.
Only after Ronin had brought her back to Atlantis Breena had learned the fate of her people. Most of that was when Breena had broken out of the infirmary, stolen a uniform, and was in the process of stealing food from the mess hall. After a few tense moments, Ronin had been able to talk her down and let her knew what it was like to lose one's people. There was so much history Breena had to go through in learning, but like the rest of the crew, finding a balance was beneficial as she helped figure out how to get Atlantis up to its former glory. Though after all the things she had been through, the standard Ancient Stick had been removed from Breena's ass so hearing of what had happened to Destiny she had lent her knowledge in getting the crew home. Or at least according to some rumors from the research team, to get Destiny fulfill enough of the mission to allow for the computer to request support from Earth.
Now seeing how Destiny was holding together given that the stuff he was seeing had been MacGuyvered to serve purposes other than what it had been designed for.
Carson turned to see that there were a line of clay planters that had been made from scratch sitting along some of the more open areas of the ship. From the looks of the plants inside, the crew had gathered what looked to be ferns, aloe and a few other plants that looked to be a mix of food crops with one plant that looked to be strawberry-like.
"Liking the garden plants." The soldier named James said as she stopped to see what he was looking at.
"Yes... I am... are you having food issues or..." Carson said as the Lieutenant touched the side of the planter.
"Oxygen, mostly... The filters can do so much, but having to recharge the lye in the chamber every six months is something that we feel don't comfortable with... Even with the synthetic filter stuff Rush found on Nuvos." the Lieutenant paused for a moment before she continued. "Having a few plants around seemed to makes this place seem less drab and all we have to do is water them to get air. The clay and charcoal filter for the water that Brody cooked up has made the water a bit more palatable." Carson was starting to get the idea. With that the Lieutenant reached over and broke off a blade of grass from the planter and put it in her mouth. "Sorry, some of us suck on this grass because it has caffeine in it."
"Ah..." Carson said as he noticed a Lucian woman with blond hair walked through the hallway with a male Marine carrying a panel.
"Coming through..." The Marine said as the two people opened a door with Go'uld writing on it.
"What's going on?" Carson said looking at the situation.
"A few weeks ago we found some sort of matter printer in the ship. For the most part we have been trying to rebuild the botanical dome by prefabbing parts and having the two maintenance bots, Jan and Jayna do the instillation process. So far we have had to tag the sections with some shorthand symbols." Beckett walked over and studied the symbols.
"So why is some of the stuff written in Go'uld?"
"Because one of the techs the Lucians brought with them is the one doing the repair work." James said as she moved down the hallway. "The guy used to tag parts for a Lucian Chop Shop and most of the symbols mean location on the ship. For the most part since most of them had been brought back from the dead by our resident Ancient we all decided to cut them some slack and the fact that Destiny did a mind meld thing to a few of them."
"What did you just say?" Carson stopped for a moment as a floating sphere floated by before swinging down a hallway. "I know that you had some people brought back by the Ancients, but... from the dead!"
"Well, that is the strange thing. We don't know they are clones are not... Given after the return of those who stayed on Eden incident. The ones brought back feel... The only word I can use is... Whole... like they are all there." This is when James started to fill in some things. "Most of the information we have is from Ginn using Eli's iPhone to chronicle the events right after they awoke given that it has its own independent power source. Some of the theories that have been going around is that they are clones, robots, aliens... one of the more interesting ones is that they are angels. My personal favorite is that the Ancient used a beta version of a sarcophagus to bring the dead bodies back to life. Ginn is running with that idea... For Dr. Perry, I'm thinking Robot or Cylon in my honest opinion."
"Well, at least with me here, we can figure out what has been happening." Dr. Beckett said as James proceeded to guide him to where the ship's infirmary was. Walking into the room, Beckett saw a man in his early thirties wearing a black t-shirt and what looked to be grayish leather pants that many of the Lucian Alliance members wore reading through a floating display manual.
"Colonel..." the man said turning towards him.
"Dr. Beckett, this is Varro... one of the Lucian Alliance members... He was their field medic when they came through and one of the members of the Alliance that sided with us during the siege." Lt. James said as she dropped back to a corner of the room.
"Good to meet ya." Becket said with his thick accent coming through the Colonel's mouth. "Do you know where Lt. Johannsen is?"
"She said that she was going to take a shower with her daughter Carmen." The Lucian Medic said.
"So... how old is Carmen..."
"A couple of months old given the slowed rate that Destiny used to heal her body." Varro said giving information to the senior medical officer. "Though she has a few scars from where Destiny plugged stuff into her to supply her nutrients." There was something at caught Varro's attention. "TJ..." Turning around Beckett got a look at the young mother who was holding her daughter.
"Doctor Carson Beckett, former member of the Atlantis Expedition. Was assigned to the standby team when Destiny didn't check in on time." Beckett said offering his hand to the young woman. "I take it this little bundle in your wee arms is Carmen."
"Yes she is." TJ shifted her arms so that her child could be supported in a single arm.
"Mind that I examine your child?" Carson said waiting for the mother's approval.
"Yes, but there is something you should know. You are in Carmen's father." TJ said a bit ashamed. Carson started to realize the issues that would arise during the examination process if the system skipped back while he was examine Carmen. Not to mention the issues that would arise if someone walked in the infirmary. That was when a young woman walked into the room.
"Doctor Beckett, It is good that I found you." the woman said as it took Carson to realize this was the young woman that Mrs. Wallace had swapped with that was when he had an Idea of how to Examine TJ's child.
"Marian... I know that you have Emergency room training, but would you like to assist me in doing an examination of Lieutenant Johannsen's baby?" Carson said.
"You want me to aid you?" Marian said as she realized that Carson was giving her the chance to practice medicine again.
"Might be the first time, ever since you had been placed on medical leave that helping out a fellow doctor and you are a mother after all." Marian grinned as she walked over.
"So, what is our little patient's name?" Marian said as she came over to the bed.
"Carmen." TJ said as she watched as Marian was given a stethoscope by Carson.
"Well Carmen, My name is Marian and let's see how you are doing." Carson grinned as the former ER nurse got the chance to practice medicine again. With that Carson moved over to start to ask about how the crew was doing as Marian asked the occasional medical question about the child as Carson came in from time to time to double check, this wee one was in fairly good shape. Afterwards Carson had started to get more in-depth information about the state of the crew. Other than a few broken bones, scrapes, and bruises, the biggest thing that the crew had been concerned about was the return of several deceased crew members who had returned from the dead. But given that the medical equipment on board hadn't been fully accessible with operations manuals till lately and the crew had been waiting for contact with Earth to get a second opinion.
With that TJ brought up a holographic display of some of the equipment most of which Carson had been familiar with from his time as Atlantis's head medical officer, well the previous Carson.
Running through the data, he noticed that several of the Lucians and the Earth personnel all possessed the following markers of rapid cell replication, but also encoded Ascended energy signatures. The only person that Carson knew of that had those signatures had been Doctor Jackson. But there had been other information there too given what Carson remembered of when he examined the Asgardian Hermiodthat the neurological tissues looked to consist of clone upload data. Flipping through the data, one person... No two people had that layout.
A Doctor Perry and Lucian Tech named Ginn looked to be Asgard Clone type hybrids given how their brains were acting.
The rest seemed to fall into the category of deascended being constructs such as Doctor Jackson and hyper clones such as himself.
For the most part it would take some time, but sorting it out would be easy given that the resurrected crew fell into different categories from this data at hand. With that Carson alerted Colonel Carter who had come on board to start rotating the crew to the infirmary so that he could do physicals on the crew to determine the health of everyone onboard.
It looked like having Marian here was serendipity as he saw a light in her eyes start to glow brighter from the experience to practice medicine again even if it was for a short time.
Carson lives for days like this.
Now surviving Ronin's bachelor party. . . Carson shook his head. At least now Rodney had a reason to avoid it given Jennifer and Jeannie were flat out working with him to build the nursery.
Knowing Rodney he probably had a bio-meachanoid copy of Fran stashed away somewhere for Nanny Duties so she could be placed on Earth to help with the baby. An image that scared the crap out of him: The FraNannyAitor.
Carson knew that Sheppard had been placed in charge of the thing so that could mean anything could happen. With that Carson watched as a Marine brought in a woman who had her eyes covered with an Inuit snow goggles. Right now the patients were coming and seeing to how the crew was doing after three years was the major thing.
He did not envy what Colonel Carter had to do command wise as she explained the situation to the crew.
There was a plan just that it would take some time to implemented.
Let me know what you all think.
I hope that the Ah ha moment makes sense given that I was limited to Canon technology and knowledge available to the characters.
Also I wanted to give an update on the Pegasus Galaxy in this chapter.
Also, if anyone has an idea for a clan names for Ginn and Varro let me know and please send them to me with the subject header: SGU Clan Names.
Well next chapter - Colonel Carter and Lieutenant Scott