Pre-Thirty Eight Minutes. I always wondered what exactly made Rodney pick Zelenka out of a crowd of blue-shirts especially in a room occupied by the likes of Kavanagh and Grodin. Probably not this. But I gave it my best shot.
Prelude
What did he have to do for some competency around here?
"Yes, I guess that would work perfectly if you wanted to kill the jumper pilot." Rodney turned on Kavanagh with a disdainful glare that even he couldn't miss.
Kavanagh laughed derisively, but looked back at his tablet. That would keep him out of the conversation for at least the next few minutes. That would give Rodney time to think. Not that this was urgent. It wasn't. But it could become urgent. Better to work on it while they were all in the same room.
Or maybe not. Rodney could feel the average IQ in the conference room dropping as people arrived.
Rodney looked around the room. Heading an entire department of scientists, while it came with his level of intelligence, was not something he was practiced at. He almost missed his little room all to himself at Area 51.
There were dimwits everywhere, perhaps especially at Area 51. At least in the Pegasus Galaxy there was an abnormally high number of abnormally accomplished people. That didn't mean they were smart, though. It just meant they got things done.
He couldn't ignore it anymore. The two scientists—one of them Czech and the other French who was apparently trilingual at least—had been talking between themselves in a language no one else knew. Moreau and… what was that guy's name? Was he ever going to remember it?
"Something you'd like to share with the class, Moreau?" he asked.
Moreau looked up, eyes wide like a deer in the headlights.
The one whose name escaped him spoke up. "I've been working on mapping the control pathways in puddle jumper two," he said. He took another moment to converse Moreau.
"Single pathways are difficult to isolate," Moreau finished, apparently translating.
"That's it?"
"Our understanding of the puddle jumper's systems is still limited," the other one said. "It's trial and error. And the redundancy is… well, irritating?" He checked with Moreau, again, in Czech. It was getting annoying. "Yes."
"Well, I'd hate to be the one trapped out in space with a malfunctioning jumper," McKay said. It should have worked, right? There was access to almost every single system in the puddle jumper—or maybe every last one, he didn't know—from the rear compartment. On the other hand, as he recently learned quite well, Ancient technology had a mental component.
If they could bypass that by using control crystals, what would be the point?
"Trapped out in space in the rear compartment with no pilot?" Grodin asked. He sounded skeptical.
"The city tried to drown us when we first got here." McKay thought he needed no further explanation and moved along. "Alright, well, Moreau and friends actually came prepared. Can you translate that for the rest of us?" Rodney indicated the Czech schematic.
The two of them looked at each other. Between them, it might just take all their English skills. The one not-Moreau seemed to be better at English, though. Give Moreau a break, though, he was translating between his secondary and tertiary languages.
That meant that this work on the control pathways was mostly the Czech's.
Everyone looked at each other.
"Well?" Rodney asked them all.
Everyone immediately went to look. Rodney sighed.
#
What did he have to do for some respect around here?
At least he wasn't generally hated. Generally ignored was better than being Kavanagh. But then sometimes Kavanagh had some good points. If it came down to it, Radek decided that he would stand by his opinions if it meant he would be hated. Of course, he never had it any other way. It was what got him here.
Here. What was so good about here? It was an exciting opportunity, one he couldn't turn down.
Radek sighed heavily and leaned over the schematic. "Decompression." That was the right word, wasn't it?
Moreau offered a diagram in English for Radek to check.
"Not now," Radek said in Czech.
"Are you going to wait for Doctor McKay to start yelling again?" he asked.
Radek chuckled. "Let him." He was smart, but he was abrasive and arrogant. Radek was sure he still had no idea what his name was even though Radek had introduced himself no less than five times. "If he's yelling, it means he needs us to do something."
"Or telling us to get out of the way."
Radek understood that sentiment, too. "Please, stop talking."
Moreau fell silent and gave his diagram to Grodin. They talked about it in hushed tones before turning to talk to other scientists. Let them talk. It seemed like what most of them were best at. A few of them were more interested in doing things. Talk about it later.
Or not. That would be better.
Radek gathered his tablet and assorted wires and tried to duck out of the conference room unobtrusively. There was one good thing about being Doctor Zelenka. No one seemed to notice he'd left.
Radek made it to the jumper bay with little interference. It was a guaranteed quiet spot. He considered that inexplicable. Why hadn't every scientist on Atlantis rushed the bay as soon as the alien flying contraptions had been discovered? Of course, everyone thought they were interesting. Everybody agreed they merited further investigation.
Radek was the only one who'd adopted them. He thought about bringing a pillow and setting up residence in Jumper 2 for the foreseeable future.
"Hello, darling," he said to the jumper in his native tongue. Machines didn't need translation.
It was a waste of time to translate everything for everyone else, especially since he wasn't even sure they'd gotten it right. He spent most of his time in here rechecking everything he thought he knew, only for half of it to turn out wrong.
Doctor McKay was right about one thing, though. With the increasing amount they were using these puddle jumpers, it was only a matter of time before things went catastrophically wrong.
Radek would be prepared.
