Previously: Turns out Anna is fine without Radek since he's been offworld. What's surprising is that she misses him a little bit. There is just not enough alcohol around for Radek to drown out Rodney's insults (the "tradition" between Radek and Collins explained in chapter 21).
Chapter 45. Cheap Fun.
"Alright." Jennifer set aside everything she was working on and turned to Anna. She put her hands in her lap and stared at her seriously. "Enough of this. You've been coming here every day to work for hours and hours straight for the past week."
"What else am I supposed to do?" Anna had been about to ask Jennifer what she was doing there, then, since today was technically her day off.
"I don't know." Jennifer's smile was a little lopsided. "What do you do when Radek's here?"
"Nothing," Anna muttered. She did this, school work. She talked to Jennifer. Collins. He was still offworld with the other scientists. Sometimes Doctor Beckett, but he'd been very busy lately.
Sometimes even Elizabeth, but Anna had even less in common with her than with Jennifer. As Doctor McKay said, sometimes Doctor Beckett managed to elevate medicine to "actual science." Anna didn't know if she would go so far as to say that medicine wasn't actually science, but sociology definitely wasn't.
"I practice bantos fighting with Teyla and Ronon. Ronon's been teaching me how to throw knives and Colonel Sheppard has been teaching me how to shoot." As soon as she was proficient at that, she figured she could go offworld again. It was nice to have another motivation for her physical activity.
"I mean for fun," Jennifer said again. She grinned. "You live in the south-east pier, right?"
Anna nodded. As far as she knew, Jennifer lived there, too.
"I think there's a plaza a few floors below the crew quarters. It has an old fountain and what look like shop fronts. Have you been there?"
Probably not surprisingly to Jennifer, Anna shook her head. She hadn't done much exploring. Maybe that was something putting Radek off letting her go offworld. After all, if Anna was actually an explorer at heart, wouldn't she actually do more exploring? He might be more inclined to let her go if he was convinced it was important to her.
"Let's go. It's been mapped out, but no one's really done any real exploring down there." Jennifer slid off her chair and was out the door before Anna could form an appropriate objection.
Really, there didn't seem to be a reason not to go. There was nothing else to do and it was apparently a very slow day in the infirmary. Especially since Jennifer wasn't even supposed to be there. It was better than sitting in the infirmary, banging her head on the table over yet another impossible scenario from Doctor McKay.
"What does 'real exploring' involve?" Anna asked.
"Hopefully something a little more exciting than labeling Atlantis power conduits," Jennifer said with a smile as the transporter doors swept shut behind them. She pressed on a small yellow dot and a moment later, the doors were open again.
"That was a few days ago," Anna muttered. And she'd done just fine on that assignment. "This one is even worse." She peered out the now-open transporter door.
The city was dark, an eerie copy of itself just a few floors up. Anna waited for Jennifer to leave first. The lights turned on in response to Jennifer's exit, but it was still empty. Why the empty hallway was scary was beyond Anna's reckoning, but it was.
"How so?" Jennifer asked, looking left and right.
Anna stepped out into the deserted hallway. "It's hard to explain."
It was beyond her why Doctor McKay wanted her to explain how she would build an atomic bomb using only objects she could find at a hardware store. He said he'd been doing this since grade six. It led Anna to wonder what his school was doing to provoke a pre-teen arms race, but didn't ask.
"He picked an assignment he said should take long enough for him and his team to finish up with Project Arcturus. To keep me occupied." It was sort of patronizing.
"Will it?" Jennifer asked. She motioned to one side and led the way down a staircase like the one behind the control room.
"No." Anna didn't mean to pout. It was a boring assignment, honestly. Or maybe the average Czech hardware store was a little more interesting than their Canadian counterparts. "I'm going to be done with it in just a few days. At this rate, Elizabeth will be able to teach me the ins and outs of Symbolic Interactionism and have time to spare for Role Theory."
Jennifer laughed. "What does that even mean?"
"I don't want to explain it." It involved saying "symbolic interactionism" multiple times. It was hard enough in her first language. "I will be happy when we move on to something that makes a bit more sense."
She stopped walking when Jennifer did, and looked around.
It was beautiful. Or, at least, she could imagine it was beautiful at one time. The fountain was empty, but with the way the light filtered in through golden glass above their heads and bounced off of mirrors in the fountain's basin, it was easy to imagine this once was a wonderful place. Anna tried to imagine the Ancients, walking from here to there. Sitting on the edge of the fountain while they debated their next great invention.
Openings in the walls looked like shop fronts, facing a bank of windows looking out at one of Atlantis's bays.
Jennifer went into one of the doorways. "I wonder what these things are."
"The Ancients left the city in a hurry, didn't they?" Anna asked, joining Jennifer as she peered into a box. Inside were a bunch of square crystals, all the exact same size and color.
Jennifer slid one out and turned it in her hand. "Yeah, I think so."
"Looks like someone already brought one back to look at," Anna said, pointing out another empty space.
Every box they checked was the same story. Multiples of some strange item, but missing at least one. In a short time, they sat on the edge of the fountain with a hoard of treasures set out in front of them. They would make nice decorations, but Anna got the feeling they were for something else. Maybe something else more important.
Of course, they could have been looking at boxes of soap. The Ancients had to take showers, too. Obviously, since their living quarters were equipped with bathrooms like any good living space.
"That was fun," Anna admitted, even though she wasn't sure why.
Jennifer laughed and picked up a metallic pink spiral. "Gotta love some good, cheap fun."
#
"Why are you still here?" Rodney wondered.
Radek grinned behind his computer screen. Colonel Sheppard had been hovering over Rodney's shoulder for the last five hours straight. He took a small break to get a cup of coffee, but since he didn't bring Rodney one, that only made it worse.
"I'm incredibly interested in what you have going on here, McKay." Colonel Sheppard made a show of taking a huge gulp of coffee. He was everything but incredibly interested. "You said this was earth-shaking. I want to see what earth-shaking is."
"Okay, I did not actually use the term 'earth-shaking.'" Rodney sighed in exasperation. "It's going to take us a lot of time, especially if Radek keeps having problems with decimal places." With that he threw a glower in Radek's direction.
"Why do you drag me into this?" Radek objected.
"I'm on the edge of my seat. Can't wait to see this high-energy physics thing." Colonel Sheppard settled himself in a nearby chair, just behind Rodney. He grinned sarcastically when Rodney glared at him for half a second. Rodney was quick to get back to work.
Colonel Sheppard looked to Radek. "How's it going for you, Radek?"
"Nothing new since Rodney's Ancient typo." Radek didn't get the desired scowl from Rodney, but he knew he'd struck a nerve anyway when Rodney's clacking keyboard became just a bit louder. "Well, we've determined that it wasn't a typo."
"Oh, good," Sheppard said.
Radek wasn't about to challenge Sheppard's knowledge of energy weapons again. Not after Colonel Sheppard had effectively put Rodney in his place earlier. Radek was impressed, and not just because Rodney had seemed so deflated. Colonel Sheppard was smarter than he looked. Radek already knew that, of course. It lent some certain credence to the idea that Colonel Sheppard might have been Mensa-level intelligence.
Radek glanced toward Sheppard. "You're welcome to observe over here if you wish."
Sheppard shook his head, frowning. "No, thanks. I'm fine right here."
"Of course, you are—Collins!" Rodney snapped in the air over his head.
Collins glanced up placidly from a crystal control panel on the other side of the room.
"Could you go check up on the access hatch? I powered it up a few minutes ago and I'm getting weird power fluctuations."
"Weird like how?" Collins asked. He tapped the crystal panel back into its wall and made his way to Rodney's computer.
"Random spikes. Do I have to explain everything to you?"
Radek decided not to point out that Rodney had explained precious little. He might as well have said, it's doing a thing it shouldn't be doing. Of course, they'd solved problems and saved cities on less.
All the same, Collins nodded. "You got it." He went to the access hatch and pulled the door open to the white hallway. "Mind giving me a hand, Zelenka?"
"Sure."
Radek left his computer to continue its monitoring and joined Collins in the access tube, pulling the door shut behind him.
"Why do you think Sheppard is here?" Collins wondered as he looked into the top-level crystal control panel on the right side of the hallway.
Radek joined him at the far end of the hallway, opening the lower crystal hatch. "Boredom?"
"That always goes well," Collins muttered. He poked one of the crystals with a needle meant to register power levels. "But, I guess, if McKay is bugging Sheppard about his relative lack of IQ, then he'll leave us alone, right?"
Radek sniffed. "Unlikely." He tapped into the Ancient version of a multimeter and touched the needle to the control crystals. Might as well get comfortable, he thought. There were about twenty crystals in this single panel.
"Do you think this thing is as big a deal as McKay does?" Collins asked.
Radek shrugged. In honesty, he didn't know. In some way, he hoped that it was. But if that were true, that meant they were about to get in way over their heads. But they were in another galaxy, and that was the name of the game.
"I hope so," he said finally. "It would mean a sure defense against the Wraith."
"I saw the debris in orbit," Collins mumbled. "But I saw the debris down here, too."
Radek sighed. "Yes." He paused. "Honestly, I'm just glad to be away from Atlantis for a few days."
He didn't know why he'd said that out loud. Collins might ask what Radek meant by that, and he'd be forced to pick one of two undesirable explanations. Anna was easy, but he didn't want to talk about her. If he could just figure out how to talk to people like a regular human being, it would work out.
And then there was Elizabeth. Doctor Weir.
That was more nothing than it was something, though it occupied a significant amount of thought sometimes… He couldn't admit to that, though.
Anna, it was.
Collins smirked. "Anna being a typical teenager?"
Radek hesitated. That wasn't what he meant at all. But it was a fair guess. "More I am a typical incompetent father."
"She's seemed a little more moody than usual," Collins said. "Could be hormones."
"That is a convenient excuse," Radek said. And one Radek wasn't interested in taking at the moment. Maybe sometime in the future, when he'd exhausted all other avenues. He wasn't there yet. "It will be good for us to have a few days away."
Collins nodded. "Didn't mean to pry."
Radek pulled a crystal from his panel and handed it up to Collins. "Is that our culprit? It's diverting power from the central matrix and… I don't remember it being here yesterday."
Collins turned it over as he inspected it, glancing at the empty slot in the panel below. "Looks like it." He tapped his hatch closed and crouched next to Radek on the floor. "Who was the last one to touch this panel?" He sounded annoyed.
"I haven't been in here since yesterday," Radek said. He didn't say anything about where he'd seen Rodney this morning. Along with a bunch of others, of course, but it was nice to blame Rodney for something every now and again, even if it wasn't actually his fault.
It was never Rodney's fault. That's what made it even more infuriating.
"I swear, I'll wring his neck." Collins switched a few crystal pieces and shut the hatch.
Radek grinned. "Not if I get to him first." More than once Radek swore to be Rodney's demise… of course, that was usually in a language no one but he understood.
Collins sighed. He was not in the mood.
Radek opened the door to the control room so Collins could go through.
"It's stabilized," Rodney said as soon as they came from the access tube. "Good work."
Collins went back to whatever he was working on before. Radek was just glad Collins was their resident crystal expert. He didn't want to spend the foreseeable months lying on the floor switching control crystals around.
"I told you I knew those control panels backwards and forwards," Collins said testily. "It's basically the chair interface without the—"
"Yes, yes, yes," Rodney interrupted. "You're hereby the go-to access tube technician."
"Oh, thanks."
Radek wondered if everyone else missed Collins's mostly-concealed sarcasm.
"You're welcome," Rodney mumbled as he got back to work. He suddenly glanced up at Radek. "Oh, and I checked your math there." He snapped his fingers toward a tablet Radek laid aside several hours ago. "I've seen more impressive work from my sister's husband."
Radek sighed, rolled his eyes, and looked at Collins. "Congratulations on your promotion," he said. "I will buy you a drink."
A/N: It's a Tuesday, yes.
It's March 21st, Radek's name day. Some places I read say Name Days are widely celebrated, other places say that lots of people don't observe them. I think it's a neat concept to have a set day to celebrate a person.
Next time: Damnit, Sheppard, stop using words no one understands.