[repost] Amara (1/5) [resectioned]
-title- Amara (1/5)
-rating/warnings- Suitable for general audiences. This is a modified form of part of the " Amara (1/3)" earlier posted to sga_flashfic.
-spoilers- "Hide and Seek," "38 Minutes."
-characters- Ford, Sheppard, Rodney, Teyla, Miko
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
Amara
(1/5)
The first time they went to Amara, everyone noticed how short the days were.
"So it's probably actually smaller than most of the places we've been," Ford said, "but since it's spinning so fast the gravity feels like Earth-normal."
"Did you sleep through every unit on gravitation in every science class ever?" McKay demanded. "Rotation only matters when you're on the inside, otherwise you're back to mass and square of the distance -- "
"McKay," Sheppard said, irritated.
"It is said that an Amaran day is a winter's morn and a summer's night," Teyla broke in hastily.
"You can tell that saying came from a planet with seasons," Sheppard agreed.
"Does your world have seasons, then?" Teyla asked.
The other three assured her that yes, it did, and that Atlantis's world (name currently pending, given that Ford wasn't allowed to name anything, Sheppard was thinking of revoking McKay's naming privileges as well, McKay was threatening to do the same right back, and the rest of the city's population's nomenclative rights remained in similar tension) had seasons as well, although it was a bit hard to tell given that the city of Atlantis was parked in a latitude comparable to the Caribbean, or at most Puerto Vallarta.
"And the mainland settlement isn't that far north," Sheppard pointed out. "If you get nearer to the poles the seasons start getting bigger and bigger -- in Antarctica where we were, there were days when the sun never rose in winter and daylight hours to match in summer."
"This is known to us," Teyla agreed. "While the Ring was not so far south, our winter sun shone far more briefly that the one of our new home ever does."
"Yeah, that was a pretty short day when we visited," Ford agreed. "It lasted what, three, four hours tops?"
"No wonder the kids were running around in the dark," Sheppard agreed. "It wasn't that cold, though. No snow on the ground or anything."
"You must go to the mountains or the land of winter's evernight for snow to lie on the ground rather than melt upon it," Teyla said reasonably.
"Uh... not where we're from, you don't."
"Earth must be significantly colder than Athos," McKay said thoughtfully. "Farther from the sun, or a different composition of upper atmosphere, or something."
"Probably a good thing the shadow wound up there, then," Ford decided. "I bet it made its way to the equator and is chowing down on sunlight like there's no tomorrow. Teyla? Am I upsetting you?"
"First of all," McKay steamrollered over any response Teyla might make, "what's this 'we' business? And second, let me put it at something approaching your reading level, Lieutenant; home is supposed to look just like it did the last time you were there, not just like ground zero of the climactic battle of a sizable war."
"Hey!" Ford snapped. "My hometown -- at least, the place I was living during high school -- fell into the ground a few years ago. I do know what it's like to lose a past."
"Well -- "
Fortunately, at that point they ran into their first actual Amarans, and everyone had to put on their best manners with more or less success while Teyla made nice with her formal business acquaintances and demonstrated that the Athosians were not reduced to beggary.
The first time they came back from Amara, most of the time immediately after was spent reassuring people that yes, the Amarans were willing to trade thread and herbal soaps and something that wasn't yet corn on the cob but wasn't really grain any more either in return for comparative anthropology and portraits of some of the oligarchs. All in all, it was preferable to the stupid jokes some of the Atlanteans were making over the results of Ford's helpful attempt to translate surnames; it wasn't as if any of them had been at all responsible for the fact that the Amarans named the Ancestor they held responsible for building and teaching them their technological innovations "Keii," and as the prevailing opinion on Amara seemed to be that walking around calling oneself "son of Keii" was tacky rather than outright blasphemous the wilder speculations of some of Hard Sciences were completely unjustified.
Fortunately, they got distracted when AR-1 discovered that the round room full of padded benches that might be beds or beds that might be backless sofas was the Ancient planetarium. Sheppard had it show what the night sky would look like if Atlantis didn't glow like a Tiffany lamp, and then what it had looked like in Antarctica, and then what it had looked like in his hometown when he was a boy.
Then he thought for a while, and told it to show what it would look like from the Gate area on Athos.
It turned out not to be that hard to set up planetarium programs to spool at the punch of a button rather than having to mentally control them the entire time -- even Kusanagi could not always be ready to drop what she was doing in order to work the planetarium, no matter how deep her love of stars ran, and everyone else had run out of patience long before. "Athosian Skies" was the first program she and Sheppard set up; nobody was really surprised when it became a popular stop for those Athosians visiting the city for one reason or another, or indeed a cause for such visits in the first place.
Most of them were surprised, a little, that Teyla watched it as seldom as she did. Sheppard thought he understood: after determining that the Ancient planetarium could, he'd never asked for the skies of his own youth either.
-rating/warnings- Suitable for general audiences. This is a modified form of part of the " Amara (1/3)" earlier posted to sga_flashfic.
-spoilers- "Hide and Seek," "38 Minutes."
-characters- Ford, Sheppard, Rodney, Teyla, Miko
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
Amara
(1/5)
The first time they went to Amara, everyone noticed how short the days were.
"So it's probably actually smaller than most of the places we've been," Ford said, "but since it's spinning so fast the gravity feels like Earth-normal."
"Did you sleep through every unit on gravitation in every science class ever?" McKay demanded. "Rotation only matters when you're on the inside, otherwise you're back to mass and square of the distance -- "
"McKay," Sheppard said, irritated.
"It is said that an Amaran day is a winter's morn and a summer's night," Teyla broke in hastily.
"You can tell that saying came from a planet with seasons," Sheppard agreed.
"Does your world have seasons, then?" Teyla asked.
The other three assured her that yes, it did, and that Atlantis's world (name currently pending, given that Ford wasn't allowed to name anything, Sheppard was thinking of revoking McKay's naming privileges as well, McKay was threatening to do the same right back, and the rest of the city's population's nomenclative rights remained in similar tension) had seasons as well, although it was a bit hard to tell given that the city of Atlantis was parked in a latitude comparable to the Caribbean, or at most Puerto Vallarta.
"And the mainland settlement isn't that far north," Sheppard pointed out. "If you get nearer to the poles the seasons start getting bigger and bigger -- in Antarctica where we were, there were days when the sun never rose in winter and daylight hours to match in summer."
"This is known to us," Teyla agreed. "While the Ring was not so far south, our winter sun shone far more briefly that the one of our new home ever does."
"Yeah, that was a pretty short day when we visited," Ford agreed. "It lasted what, three, four hours tops?"
"No wonder the kids were running around in the dark," Sheppard agreed. "It wasn't that cold, though. No snow on the ground or anything."
"You must go to the mountains or the land of winter's evernight for snow to lie on the ground rather than melt upon it," Teyla said reasonably.
"Uh... not where we're from, you don't."
"Earth must be significantly colder than Athos," McKay said thoughtfully. "Farther from the sun, or a different composition of upper atmosphere, or something."
"Probably a good thing the shadow wound up there, then," Ford decided. "I bet it made its way to the equator and is chowing down on sunlight like there's no tomorrow. Teyla? Am I upsetting you?"
"First of all," McKay steamrollered over any response Teyla might make, "what's this 'we' business? And second, let me put it at something approaching your reading level, Lieutenant; home is supposed to look just like it did the last time you were there, not just like ground zero of the climactic battle of a sizable war."
"Hey!" Ford snapped. "My hometown -- at least, the place I was living during high school -- fell into the ground a few years ago. I do know what it's like to lose a past."
"Well -- "
Fortunately, at that point they ran into their first actual Amarans, and everyone had to put on their best manners with more or less success while Teyla made nice with her formal business acquaintances and demonstrated that the Athosians were not reduced to beggary.
The first time they came back from Amara, most of the time immediately after was spent reassuring people that yes, the Amarans were willing to trade thread and herbal soaps and something that wasn't yet corn on the cob but wasn't really grain any more either in return for comparative anthropology and portraits of some of the oligarchs. All in all, it was preferable to the stupid jokes some of the Atlanteans were making over the results of Ford's helpful attempt to translate surnames; it wasn't as if any of them had been at all responsible for the fact that the Amarans named the Ancestor they held responsible for building and teaching them their technological innovations "Keii," and as the prevailing opinion on Amara seemed to be that walking around calling oneself "son of Keii" was tacky rather than outright blasphemous the wilder speculations of some of Hard Sciences were completely unjustified.
Fortunately, they got distracted when AR-1 discovered that the round room full of padded benches that might be beds or beds that might be backless sofas was the Ancient planetarium. Sheppard had it show what the night sky would look like if Atlantis didn't glow like a Tiffany lamp, and then what it had looked like in Antarctica, and then what it had looked like in his hometown when he was a boy.
Then he thought for a while, and told it to show what it would look like from the Gate area on Athos.
It turned out not to be that hard to set up planetarium programs to spool at the punch of a button rather than having to mentally control them the entire time -- even Kusanagi could not always be ready to drop what she was doing in order to work the planetarium, no matter how deep her love of stars ran, and everyone else had run out of patience long before. "Athosian Skies" was the first program she and Sheppard set up; nobody was really surprised when it became a popular stop for those Athosians visiting the city for one reason or another, or indeed a cause for such visits in the first place.
Most of them were surprised, a little, that Teyla watched it as seldom as she did. Sheppard thought he understood: after determining that the Ancient planetarium could, he'd never asked for the skies of his own youth either.