Humor, Week 2: The Secret Society of Stories (2/2)
Title: The Secret Society of Stories (An Utter Repudiation of Order in Outer Space) - Part II
Author: with_apostrophe
Prompt: In my youth/humor
Rating: PG
Word count: 11,000
Summary: “Ma’am. This is what I needed to show you so you’d believe it. This is... well, I don’t really know how to say this but err-This is Sheppard’s team?”
Back to Part One
~o0(*)0o~
“You wanted to change them back?” Chloe asked, her mouth and eyes huge Os of disappointed wonder.
“We needed to. Sheppard’s team was vital to Atlantis and the Pegasus Galaxy’s fight against whoever the bad guys were at the time. Besides, while there were otters on Atlantis, I wasn’t getting much else done.”
~o0(*)0o~
Six hours later a very tired off world team returned from the planet. The dejected slope of their shoulders and the lackluster grip on their guns and scanners told Carter all she needed to know before they’d even said a word. Nonetheless, she was going to do this right, and after they’d divested themselves of their combat gear they reconvened in her office.
“Well the natives weren’t too happy to see us again.” Lorne reported. “They were saying something about us being mad travelers, with wild imaginations, and wanted us to leave as soon as possible, but Corrigan persuaded them to let us through to the outpost.”
“If it can be called that.” Dr Zelenka added, “It is very small, not much more than a research lab. We managed to get it powered up quickly enough, but it doesn’t seem to work like the Ancient technology we’ve encountered before. Oh it’s definitely Ancient,” he assured her when she raised a questioning eyebrow, “but perhaps from a different era than most of the technology we’ve encountered in the Pegasus Galaxy so far. Also interference from the rocks in the area limits the range of our scans and renders our subcutaneous transmitters useless.”
“The language in the files is difficult to translate, too.” Corrigan, the archaeologist and linguist who had recently returned to Atlantis, having returned to Earth after the first difficult year in the Pegasus Galaxy. “It’s like it’s in a dialect - recognizable as the same language, but difficult to decipher nonetheless. We’ve downloaded all the information from the place, but it’s going to take me a while to translate it.”
“Very well,” Carter decided, “You all need to go and rest now, but tomorrow I want reports every four hours to see how things are progressing. Sooner if you have anything of use.” When they’d left her office she allowed herself a brief moment of despair and utter respect for everyone who’d ever commanded Atlantis or the SGC, before closing down her laptop and calling it a night herself.
~o0(*)0o~
“Calling what a night? I don’t understand.” Jamie complained.
“It’s an expression. It means “stopping what you’re doing and going to bed.”
“Ok,” he beamed at Mercedes, “So what happened the next day?”
~o0(*)0o~
It was day two when the otter jokes began. It was impossible to prevent the knowledge that Sheppard’s team had indeed been turned into otters from becoming widely known; too many people had either been in the gate room when the otters arrived, or somehow involved with the otters' care for the rumors not to spread.
Zelenka was waiting to receive his helping of oatmeal when the Marine before him in the line turned to the server and quipped, “You know, this really could be ‘otter.”
It was the start of a long and slippery slope. Very soon people were wandering around Atlantis with far away expressions on their faces as they tried to come up with new otter jokes.
“I can’t believe it’s not otter!” said one sniggering botanist to another as a cat photo changed hands.
“That otter do it!” exclaimed a nurse as she finished off some minor adjustments to the otter’s living environment.
“Let’s get otter here!” her companion responded, before both burst into fits of laughter.
When Carter heard about the new fashion in humor she tried to quash it, sending out an email that deemed the jokes insensitive toward the people who had actually suffered the indignity of being turned into animals. But there was no real stopping it.
Sanchez was not amused when one of the recipients of her Otter Care Schedule and Division of Duties emailed her back saying, “Thanks for getting all this in otter.”
However, the advent of otter jokes was not the big event of the day. Dr Eisen had been chosen to give the otters their midday meal of mollusks and fish scraps. He loaded up two buckets with the food and with a handle dangling from each arm, entered the otter environment. Within two seconds he was flat on his back with shell and white fish everywhere as four streaks of animal dashed past him and out into the hall way. Once they’d escaped they disappeared with a frightening burst of speed, their long thin bodies perfect for worming their way into nooks and crannies so small that the human inhabitants of the city hadn’t taken much notice of their presence before.
~o0(*)0o~
Mercedes stopped and laughed.
“What is it?” Jody inquired, her face screwing up with puzzlement over what could have made the old lady laugh so much.
“Oh, a memory from a few months after this. There was a time when we all lost our memories to a mutated version of kiersan fever. Ronon and Teyla saved the day because they were immune to it. Well, any way, Lorne’s team had rounded up everyone else into the Mess Hall, because that was all they could remember to do. Dr McKay knew he had to get out and find Teyla, so we helped him escape, in exactly the same way the otters did - by rushing the door all at once. We must have had a latent - that is hidden - memory of the otter’s escape that made us think of that. It’s just funny that I’ve not realized that before.” She looked at the unimpressed looks on the faces watching her. “Anyway…”
~o0(*)0o~
The search for the otters was a taxing one. No one had thought to calibrate the city’s life sign sensors to pick up otters as opposed to humans. It had been very obvious where the otters were - until they escaped. Not wanting to waste valuable time waiting, Carter ordered the Marines to start hunting the otters while she and Zelenka adjusted the sensors. The Marines hadn’t seen hide or hair of the animals, and when the sensors were ready it became obvious why. The animals had separated and worked their way into places where the ability to track them down to the closest inch was of no help, as they were completely out of reach even to the smallest human.
Teyla was running around the internal plumbing of one of the buildings on the eastern pier, John had somehow got under the floors of the control tower, and Rodney had curled up and gone to sleep on a balcony that meteor damage had made unreachable. Ronon, being a sea otter, had gone for a swim, and seemed to be having fun learning how to catch his first fish, and then chomping it down with much relish.
Carter and Sanchez were close to pulling their hair out when they saw where the otters had managed to hide, and Ronon seemed to be teasing the Marines, by getting within arm’s reach and then diving under the water, making sure he splashed them with as much water as possible. He’d then resurface mere feet away and watch the humans with eyes full of what looked like mirth. Although any of the Marines could have shot him with a stunner, Carter had banned them from doing this while Ronon was in the ocean, not wanting to accidentally drown him.
After 3 hours of attempts, only Rodney had been recaptured. Lorne had flown a jumper out to the unreachable building, but the noise of the engines had woken the animal and he’d managed to get inside the walls. However, the lure of food that Lorne that left in the center of what might once have been a reception room proved too much, and the otter was captured. Rewarded with another fresh salmon that the SGC had sent through the gate that morning, he seemed quite content to ride back to the observation room in the cage Lorne had procured from the fateful planet.
Surprisingly, Ronon was next to be trapped. About an hour after he’d finished eating the fish he’d caught, he crawled up a slip way and threw up, retching and gasping miserably. He almost seemed relieved when the Marines dropped a net over him, and offered them very little resistance. Back in the observation room he recovered very quickly, and was soon back to annoying Rodney, by nipping the Eurasian otter’s ears anytime it looked like he’d succeeded in settling down to sleep. Later, Keller was able to conclude that the fish he’d caught and consumed was incompatible with otter physiology.
John was the third. He lead the Marines on a merry dance around the control tower, even managing to scurry through the back of the control room, much to the amusement of Chuck and the other gate room staff. No one knew Atlantis like Colonel Sheppard did, and the Marines were beginning to despair of ever catching him. Eventually he reappeared in a hallway, right in front of Lorne’s team, and with a small shake of his head that might have been the otter equivalent of a shrug, lay down, and allowed his second in command to capture him. Sanchez postulated that he’d just got fed up with the chase.
Eight hours after the escape Teyla did a John and gave up. She’d not been quite as keen as John to make the Marines chase her, moving at a slower pace, sometimes resting (in places too important to the running of the city to dismantle) sometimes making her way slowly through pipes and conduits. The Marines gave up an hour before she appeared, as if by magic, in the observation gallery, looking down at her team members and whistling and calling to be let in.
While the Marines had been pursuing the otters, Sanchez and Zelenka made sure the hallway outside the observation room was made otter escape proof. The doors at the north end of the hall were locked and entry to the observation room area was restricted to the south doors, with a sort of airlock system put in place to ensure that the south doors and the observation room doors couldn’t both be opened simultaneously. The Marines ensured that Zelenka and Sanchez were rewarded with at least one alcoholic beverage before they turned in for the night.
~o0(*)0o~
“What’s alcolic?” Chloe asked.
“Like beer,” Jody explained, “That nasty yellow brown stuff Dad drinks.”
“And wine.” Jamie added.
“Did they want to punish you?” Chloe looked puzzled. “I tried Dad’s beer when he wasn’t looking. It’s nasty.”
“Let’s just say that your sense of taste changes as you grow up, and that alcoholic drinks, like beer or wine also have some nice effects - but only for adults. Really, only for adults. Let’s move on.” Mercedes explained, anxious to leave the subject of the joys of alcohol behind.
~o0(*)0o~
In the afternoon of day three Dr Corrigan finished his translation of the Ancient text. The basic summary was that if someone with the ATA gene activated the machine then anyone within the chamber would be turned into a lower life form. Corrigan stated that he was sure it was part of the Ancient’s studies into Ascension and that the inventor had created the machine so that the Ancients could experience the peaceful and uncomplicated lives of animals to help them with their meditation. He shook his head sadly when asked if there was any information concerning turning the animals back into their original state.
Zelenka likewise had no good news. The scans he had performed on the planet had created a perfect computerized replica of the transformation machine, but every simulation he tried resulted in unknown failure after unknown failure.
The situation seemed bleak for Sheppard’s team. Nonetheless Carter refused to think negatively, and sent all the information they had gleaned to the SGC to see if anyone there could come up with something.
The only, brief, ray of light came from Dr Eisen. Wanting to make amends for inadvertently letting the otters escape, the engineer had been working on a way that Sheppard’s team could try to communicate with them. Deciding that pictures were too open to interpretation, he created a huge keyboard, with keys the size of drink coasters, each of which would light up for a few seconds when pressed. This plugged into one of the Ancient screens that they had moved into the observation gallery.
As expected, Rodney was the first of the animals to investigate the keyboard. He sniffed around, peering at it closely before cautiously placing his paws on one of the keys. When it lit up he moved to another and another until he had spelt “we are”, but without the space. Carter, Eisen and Sanchez started to get excited at the prospect of being able to talk with Sheppard’s team, and possibly find out exactly what happened, thereby increasing their chances of reversing it. Their hopes were dashed when after a long pause (for an otter) Rodney stepped on “f” and then “s” before catching sight of his tail and becoming fascinated by it. In a sudden burst of movement, he danced wildly all over the keyboard, typing “ascbfbmijno?o” then ran off to take a plunge into the fresh water tub. A few minutes later their hope was rekindled as Teyla came over to the keyboard, but she became entranced by the play of light under her paws, typing half a page of “zxxzxzzxxzzzzxxxxzxzxz” before smelling some left over mollusk in a nearby patch of grass and abandoning the keyboard to chow down. John and Ronon showed no interest in the keyboard, and Sanchez had to conclude that the “message” that Rodney had begun to type was just a fluke, the necessary letters all being grouped together on a Qwerty keyboard. They left the keyboard in the room, as both Teyla and Rodney seemed to like playing with it, but disconnected the screen, finding the pages of gobbledy gook produced a too depressing reminder of what Sheppard’s team had lost.
On day four it was Dr Sanchez’s turn to make a mistake. Involved in the strenuous task of mucking out the otters, she unthinkingly removed her jacket and placed it on a nearby imported rock. She turned her back on the otters, who seemed to be playing some kind of rule-free game of tag and hide seek combined, and got down to business with the cleaning equipment she’d brought in. After three days of being around the animals, she’d got used to their antics and ignored the sounds of their calls and whistles mixed with the slap of their webbed paws on the smooth surface of the floor and the occasional splash as the draw of the water tub became too much for the otters to resist. Chasing Ronon away from the salt water tub, she set about draining it so she could clean out the loose earth, pebbles, pieces of vegetation, and scraps of fish that inevitably got carried or tracked into the tub every time it was used. It was about three quarters empty and Sanchez had just begun to scrape away the thin layer of detritus that clung to the sides of the tub when Dr Zelenka activated the microphone in the observation gallery.
“Mercedes, is that your jacket?” he called down to her.
Sanchez spun around just in time to see that her jacket was no longer where she’d left it. It was off in a corner where Rodney had just succeeded in his attempts at stripping off the Nehru collar. Ronon spat a scrap of science blue material that had once been part of the right hand front panel into a nearby bush, and Teyla seemed to be trying to bury herself in the fabric.
“Oh no!” Sanchez exclaimed. “Guys!” she groaned, addressing the otters, “That’s my jacket!”
“Was your jacket.” Zelenka corrected with a shrug and an apologetic smile.
“Yeah, great!” she groused.
John sidled up to her and deposited a large piece of the lining at her feet. He looked up at her with winsome eyes.
“Oh don’t try that cute look on me,” she addressed him, “I got this nice environment made for you, got you the right food, got Ronon his salt water, I clean and wash and muck you out, schedule people so you’re tended to around the clock and you repay me by destroying my jacket! How is that fair?”
For a moment John’s eyes seemed to turn mournful and apologetic, but at that moment Sanchez’s attention was won over by some frantic squealing and struggling coming from the vicinity of the remains of her jacket. Rushing over Sanchez saw that Teyla had somehow crawled inside one of the sleeves and in her excitement, so twisted the fabric that she couldn’t get out again. Ronon and Rodney were desperately biting and pawing at the material that held their increasingly frightened and distressed friend captive, but she got no closer to being free.
Sanchez sighed, and fought her way between the struggling animals who refused to let go of the jacket. She had just got a good grip on the jacket and was attempting to hold the sleeve open so Teyla could escape when there was an almighty ripping sound as the entire sleeve detached itself from the body. Suddenly finding that her back legs had room to move, Teyla rapidly reversed her way out of where the sleeve should have joined the shoulder and ran to the other side of the room, shooting upset and reproachful looks at anyone and anything. In the mean time the otters jumped on the jacket with renewed fervor, John dragging the newly detached sleeve into the previously clean fresh water tub, and Rodney tracking pieces of material all over the place. Ronon seemed content with shredding the material into as many pieces as he could manage.
Carter had been on her way down to see the otters when they’d stolen Sanchez’s jacket. When she saw what the otters had done, she shared a look of woe with Sanchez, who had returned to the task of tub cleaning. The Colonel shook her head in disbelief as she surveyed the scene before throwing her hands up in a gesture of defeat, and declaring “What a complete and otter mess!” Sanchez turned and glared at her. Carter just shrugged before saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join em!” and bursting into laughter that sounded somewhat hysterical.
That night Carter ensured that she’d had an alcoholic beverage before she went to sleep.
The next morning after breakfast Carter decided that enough was enough. The thoughts she’d been having of setting up an otter sanctuary on the mainland were quitter’s talk, and she determined not to give in. With this is mind, she called Lorne and Zelenka to her office, ordering them to accompany her back to the planet.
By late afternoon Atlantis time, Carter was beginning to think that the otter sanctuary idea might actually not be so bad after all. The machine wouldn’t do anything for her beyond what it had done for Zelenka - turning on and displaying the limited files about its use. She hated to give in, but there truly seemed to be no way to turn Sheppard’s team back into humans. Her hopes destroyed, she tried to put forward a positive face as she arrived back in Atlantis, but her heart wasn’t in it.
She had just made it back to her office when the gate activated. A moment later Chuck radioed her and reported,
“Colonel Carter, it’s the SGC, for you.”
“Hey, Sam, how’s it going?” Daniel asked, with a smile that morphed into sympathy when he saw the tell tale signs of stress and weariness, with a little despair mixed in too. “That good, huh?”
“Well Sheppard’s team are still otters,” she said as she slumped back in her chair.
“No they’re not.” Daniel stated, peering at the screen of the laptop before him.
“What do you mean they’re not?”
“We only just got back from a mission four hours ago, so I didn’t get much of a chance to look at the files of the Ancient outpost you sent through. While Corrigan got most of the translation right, he got some of the key phrases wrong.”
“Really?” asked an exhausted Carter.
“Yes, see here,” Daniel held the laptop up to the camera so that Carter could see, “this was translated as meaning that when someone with the ATA gene activated the machine, anyone who was in the chamber would have their experiences, mind and spirit transformed into a lower life form.”
“Which we took to mean the otters,” Carter supplied.
“And you’re not entirely wrong about that,” Daniel pointed out. “But what it really says is that part of their experiences and DNA would be imprinted onto a lower life form. And it’s not part of the Ancient’s research into ascension, it’s part of their general genetic experiments. This machine was designed to create animals that were imprinted with parts of an Ancient’s experience and DNA as well as their own instincts, in the hope that they could somehow accelerate the speed of evolution.”
“Do you mean...?” Carter asked, almost dumbstruck.
“That Colonel Sheppard’s team hasn’t been transformed into otters? Yes.”
“But they understand us and respond when we talk to them. Well, sometimes they do.” Carter objected.
“It’s more likely they’re responding to tone and body language.” Daniel shrugged apologetically.
Carter shook her head in disbelief at the situation. “So where are they?”
“Well, the text goes on to explain that activating the machine causes anyone in the vicinity to be transported to a place beneath the outpost. There they're scanned for the imprinting, the animals are created, the animals are beamed back up to where the machine is, and a few minutes later, the people are too.”
“But that didn’t happen,” Carter pointed out.
“Didn’t the scans show that the outpost was out of power?”
“So the machine ran out of power and wasn’t able to transport Sheppard’s team back out! But we’ve powered up the outpost and they didn’t appear.”
“That’s because you needed to input this code.” he said, once more showing her the laptop.
Carter jumped up and was almost out of her office before she remembered that Daniel was only there by AV link and couldn’t follow her out of the room. She returned to her desk.
“I’m sorry, but have to err...” she apologized with a wry smile. “Thank you.”
“Go get ‘em.” Daniel responded. “SGC out.”
~o0(*)0o~
“No way!” Jamie exclaimed. “No way! You mean they weren’t otters after all?”
Mercedes grinned. “No, they weren’t. You can imagine how stupid we felt when Colonel Carter told us. Corrigan couldn’t look anyone in the eye for about two weeks afterwards, even when the Colonel reminded him that Daniel Jackson had somewhat of an advantage over him in the translating Ancient stakes - I mean, he’s been an Ancient and carried Merlin’s consciousness around for a while, so of course he knew more.”
Someone’s belly rumbled loudly, so juice and sandwiches were appropriated. After the last crumb had disappeared the kids resumed their previous positions.
“Are you sure you want me to continue?” Mercedes asked, and was answered by a trio of nodding heads. “Well, ok then.”
~o0(*)0o~
Back on the planet, it took about twenty minutes to re-attach a naquadah generator, punch in the right code and watch while Sheppard’s team reappeared. They were tired, dirty and thirsty after five days on only three day’s rations, but otherwise unharmed. They told tales of waking up in a small sealed metal walled underground complex, whose seamless walls afforded them no obvious way out. Scans showed that they were too far underground for blasting their way out with C4 to be an option. After two days of useless escape attempts, they had reluctantly decided to hunker down and await rescue or death by dehydration or hunger as McKay insisted when they were down to their last energy bar.
No one asked how close they had come to killing each other.
~o0(*)0o~
“Killing each other?” Chloe’s eyes were huge. “Would they really have done that?”
“Well you never could be sure with those guys, but no, I don’t think so. You have to remember that they were close, really close, like family, and as you know, no matter how much you love your family, you still feel like killing them sometimes.”
“Tell me about it,” muttered Jody.
“Anyway!” Mercedes cut across the comment before either of Jody’s siblings picked up on it. “Let’s go on.”
~o0(*)0o~
“You thought we were otters!” Sheppard exclaimed, his voice rising a few pitches as it tended to when he was excited. He looked around at his team in bewilderment, before moving his gaze over to where Carter, Zelenka, Keller, Lorne and Sanchez were huddled at the opposite end of the observation gallery, deliberately distancing themselves from Sheppard’s team.
When they’d been fed and re-hydrated, and confirmed as otherwise healthy by Dr Keller, Carter had finally decided to give in to their demands to know just why it had taken five days to rescue them. Sure that showing and telling would be more effective than just a briefing; Carter had chosen their current location.
“Why would you think such a thing?” McKay demanded.
Those not on Sheppard’s team looked at each other sheepishly, each beginning to say something and then deciding against it.
“Sam!” McKay insisted.
“We found them in a room with no tracks leading out of it and McKay’s laptop connected to some Ancient equipment.” Lorne jumped in.
“The DNA tests showed some correlation that you just wouldn’t expect normally between human individuals and animals.” Keller interjected.
“And then there was the way they behave.” Carter added.
Sanchez nodded enthusiastically, “And the way they look.”
“I do not look like an -“ Teyla paused, looking at Sheppard to provide the word.
“Otter,” he supplied.
“Well, no,” Sanchez explained, “but you see, the one in the corner has got ruffled fur on his head, and that one there is smaller and the only female, and the largest one has the...” she trailed off, her hands making indeterminate movements in the vicinity of her head that could have meant anything. Ronon caught her eye, and raised an amused eyebrow at her.
“But no tattoo,” he pointed out, with a grin.
Carter smiled wearily, “It was only when Daniel re-translated the files pertaining to the machine that did this to you that realized what a huge mistake we had made.”
Sheppard shook his head and leant on the gallery guardrail. He peered down and raised one eyebrow. “I still don’t understand how you could all believe that we were otters, but I have to admit, that one down there eating all the food really does remind me of McKay.”
“Hey! I’m hypoglycemic!” McKay protested, glaring at Sheppard.
“Do we know why we turned into otters?” Teyla queried, “I mean, why otters instead of some other animal?”
Carter shrugged apologetically. “Daniel asked the same question as it happens, and we’re no closer to finding out why now than we were then.”
“Ask Rodney,” Sheppard prompted with more than a hint of mischief in his voice and expression, “he was the one who activated the machine after all.”
“I did not activate the machine!” McKay protested.
“Well I didn’t go anywhere near it and Ronon and Teyla don’t have the gene, so it must have been you.”
“It was an accident!”
“Still means you activated it, and that you have some kind of weird otter obsession that we didn’t know about.”
“I do not have a weird otter obsession!” McKay sniffed. “I bought a wildlife documentary to give to Katie, but hadn’t had the opportunity to give it to her. I found it the evening before the mission and decided to watch it. There was a bit in it about otters. It was very relaxing.” He shifted uncomfortably, “It’s possible I might have been thinking about it while I was working on the machine.”
“Good to know an unknown and potentially fatal machine has your full attention,” Sheppard parried.
“I am capable of doing more than one thing at a time, Colonel One-Track-Mind,” McKay retorted.
“Ok, well I think we can call this briefing to an end,” Carter hurriedly interjected, choosing to stop the famous Sheppard - McKay verbal tennis before it got out of hand. “I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
“So, I guess you can tell us where otters live then, Rodney?” Sheppard teased as they exited the observation gallery.
“Well actually, otters live in a variety of environ-“ he began lecturing, before his face fell. “Wait, there’s a punch line, right?”
“Otter space!” Sheppard provided for him, disappearing down the corridor before McKay could catch up with him.
“Otter space,” McKay muttered to himself. “I’m never going to hear the end of it!”
~o0(*)0o~
“And that’s it. The. End.” Mercedes announced. She was immediately greeted by a chorus of disappointed “Awws”.
“But that can’t be the end!” Jody complained, “I mean, what happened to the otters?”
“Well, we thought it wouldn’t be unfair to release them back onto the planet they’d come from. They weren’t indigenous - that means that otters didn’t originally come from there- so we didn’t know whether they’d be able to survive. Colonel Carter considered a zoo - there’s one right on Cheyenne Mountain - but in the end we didn’t think it would work, Ronon’s otter certainly wouldn’t have wanted to stay in captivity, and Sheppard and Teyla were pretty sure theirs wouldn’t want to either. We were never sure exactly how much human intelligence they were given, but they certainly knew enough to get annoyed at having someone fussing over them, and to orchestrate an escape attempt so we wanted to give them the most opportunities to control their own lives that we could. We found a nature reserve on the coast of New England where a river met the sea so both the fresh and salt-water otters could survive and released them there. They were tagged electronically and it seems they spent most of the rest of their days within about a mile of each other. They may have been different species of otter, but I guess they picked up something strong about being a family from Sheppard’s team.”
At that point Mercedes’ door chime announced the arrival of the kid’s mum, and promises made on all sides that they would be able to come back soon.
EPILOGUE:
Later that evening Mercedes’ door chime sounded again. When she opened it she wasn’t surprised to see her old friend Chuck standing there.
“So, you were quite the hit with my grandchildren,” he remarked after declining her offers of a seat and some tea.
“Well there was a while there when I thought it would go the other way.” Mercedes replied, grimacing at the memory of the troubles she’d had earlier in the afternoon.
“And I hear your book make an appearance? The otter story?” Chuck asked, as leaned against the lintel for support, one hand resting on the elegant cane he’d been using to get around for the past eleven years.
“It did. There are now three fully sworn in members of the Secret Stories Society.”
“Even Jody? Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandchildren, but Jody’s a typical teenager and could try the patience of a saint.”
“Even Jody,” Mercedes answered with a smile, “She got so bored that even hearing about our antics when we were young was better than nothing.”
“Well I’m glad to hear that we topped “nothing” in the interest stakes. But what I’ll be interested to see is whether they manage to keep it secret or not. I reckon I still have a few years left in me, and you and Teyla seem to be aging backwards, so they’ll need to keep it quiet a little longer.”
“Oh they will. They take after their parents and grandparents after all.”
“Well I must be going. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“Old timer’s lunch on Tuesday, with Teyla, as usual?” Mercedes enquired.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he replied before making an ambling exit.
When she was alone again, Dr Mercedes Sanchez sat on her window seat, and recalling her decades of memories, gazed up at the two waxing moons and felt her heart become otterly full.
Author: with_apostrophe
Prompt: In my youth/humor
Rating: PG
Word count: 11,000
Summary: “Ma’am. This is what I needed to show you so you’d believe it. This is... well, I don’t really know how to say this but err-This is Sheppard’s team?”
Back to Part One
~o0(*)0o~
“You wanted to change them back?” Chloe asked, her mouth and eyes huge Os of disappointed wonder.
“We needed to. Sheppard’s team was vital to Atlantis and the Pegasus Galaxy’s fight against whoever the bad guys were at the time. Besides, while there were otters on Atlantis, I wasn’t getting much else done.”
~o0(*)0o~
Six hours later a very tired off world team returned from the planet. The dejected slope of their shoulders and the lackluster grip on their guns and scanners told Carter all she needed to know before they’d even said a word. Nonetheless, she was going to do this right, and after they’d divested themselves of their combat gear they reconvened in her office.
“Well the natives weren’t too happy to see us again.” Lorne reported. “They were saying something about us being mad travelers, with wild imaginations, and wanted us to leave as soon as possible, but Corrigan persuaded them to let us through to the outpost.”
“If it can be called that.” Dr Zelenka added, “It is very small, not much more than a research lab. We managed to get it powered up quickly enough, but it doesn’t seem to work like the Ancient technology we’ve encountered before. Oh it’s definitely Ancient,” he assured her when she raised a questioning eyebrow, “but perhaps from a different era than most of the technology we’ve encountered in the Pegasus Galaxy so far. Also interference from the rocks in the area limits the range of our scans and renders our subcutaneous transmitters useless.”
“The language in the files is difficult to translate, too.” Corrigan, the archaeologist and linguist who had recently returned to Atlantis, having returned to Earth after the first difficult year in the Pegasus Galaxy. “It’s like it’s in a dialect - recognizable as the same language, but difficult to decipher nonetheless. We’ve downloaded all the information from the place, but it’s going to take me a while to translate it.”
“Very well,” Carter decided, “You all need to go and rest now, but tomorrow I want reports every four hours to see how things are progressing. Sooner if you have anything of use.” When they’d left her office she allowed herself a brief moment of despair and utter respect for everyone who’d ever commanded Atlantis or the SGC, before closing down her laptop and calling it a night herself.
~o0(*)0o~
“Calling what a night? I don’t understand.” Jamie complained.
“It’s an expression. It means “stopping what you’re doing and going to bed.”
“Ok,” he beamed at Mercedes, “So what happened the next day?”
~o0(*)0o~
It was day two when the otter jokes began. It was impossible to prevent the knowledge that Sheppard’s team had indeed been turned into otters from becoming widely known; too many people had either been in the gate room when the otters arrived, or somehow involved with the otters' care for the rumors not to spread.
Zelenka was waiting to receive his helping of oatmeal when the Marine before him in the line turned to the server and quipped, “You know, this really could be ‘otter.”
It was the start of a long and slippery slope. Very soon people were wandering around Atlantis with far away expressions on their faces as they tried to come up with new otter jokes.
“I can’t believe it’s not otter!” said one sniggering botanist to another as a cat photo changed hands.
“That otter do it!” exclaimed a nurse as she finished off some minor adjustments to the otter’s living environment.
“Let’s get otter here!” her companion responded, before both burst into fits of laughter.
When Carter heard about the new fashion in humor she tried to quash it, sending out an email that deemed the jokes insensitive toward the people who had actually suffered the indignity of being turned into animals. But there was no real stopping it.
Sanchez was not amused when one of the recipients of her Otter Care Schedule and Division of Duties emailed her back saying, “Thanks for getting all this in otter.”
However, the advent of otter jokes was not the big event of the day. Dr Eisen had been chosen to give the otters their midday meal of mollusks and fish scraps. He loaded up two buckets with the food and with a handle dangling from each arm, entered the otter environment. Within two seconds he was flat on his back with shell and white fish everywhere as four streaks of animal dashed past him and out into the hall way. Once they’d escaped they disappeared with a frightening burst of speed, their long thin bodies perfect for worming their way into nooks and crannies so small that the human inhabitants of the city hadn’t taken much notice of their presence before.
~o0(*)0o~
Mercedes stopped and laughed.
“What is it?” Jody inquired, her face screwing up with puzzlement over what could have made the old lady laugh so much.
“Oh, a memory from a few months after this. There was a time when we all lost our memories to a mutated version of kiersan fever. Ronon and Teyla saved the day because they were immune to it. Well, any way, Lorne’s team had rounded up everyone else into the Mess Hall, because that was all they could remember to do. Dr McKay knew he had to get out and find Teyla, so we helped him escape, in exactly the same way the otters did - by rushing the door all at once. We must have had a latent - that is hidden - memory of the otter’s escape that made us think of that. It’s just funny that I’ve not realized that before.” She looked at the unimpressed looks on the faces watching her. “Anyway…”
~o0(*)0o~
The search for the otters was a taxing one. No one had thought to calibrate the city’s life sign sensors to pick up otters as opposed to humans. It had been very obvious where the otters were - until they escaped. Not wanting to waste valuable time waiting, Carter ordered the Marines to start hunting the otters while she and Zelenka adjusted the sensors. The Marines hadn’t seen hide or hair of the animals, and when the sensors were ready it became obvious why. The animals had separated and worked their way into places where the ability to track them down to the closest inch was of no help, as they were completely out of reach even to the smallest human.
Teyla was running around the internal plumbing of one of the buildings on the eastern pier, John had somehow got under the floors of the control tower, and Rodney had curled up and gone to sleep on a balcony that meteor damage had made unreachable. Ronon, being a sea otter, had gone for a swim, and seemed to be having fun learning how to catch his first fish, and then chomping it down with much relish.
Carter and Sanchez were close to pulling their hair out when they saw where the otters had managed to hide, and Ronon seemed to be teasing the Marines, by getting within arm’s reach and then diving under the water, making sure he splashed them with as much water as possible. He’d then resurface mere feet away and watch the humans with eyes full of what looked like mirth. Although any of the Marines could have shot him with a stunner, Carter had banned them from doing this while Ronon was in the ocean, not wanting to accidentally drown him.
After 3 hours of attempts, only Rodney had been recaptured. Lorne had flown a jumper out to the unreachable building, but the noise of the engines had woken the animal and he’d managed to get inside the walls. However, the lure of food that Lorne that left in the center of what might once have been a reception room proved too much, and the otter was captured. Rewarded with another fresh salmon that the SGC had sent through the gate that morning, he seemed quite content to ride back to the observation room in the cage Lorne had procured from the fateful planet.
Surprisingly, Ronon was next to be trapped. About an hour after he’d finished eating the fish he’d caught, he crawled up a slip way and threw up, retching and gasping miserably. He almost seemed relieved when the Marines dropped a net over him, and offered them very little resistance. Back in the observation room he recovered very quickly, and was soon back to annoying Rodney, by nipping the Eurasian otter’s ears anytime it looked like he’d succeeded in settling down to sleep. Later, Keller was able to conclude that the fish he’d caught and consumed was incompatible with otter physiology.
John was the third. He lead the Marines on a merry dance around the control tower, even managing to scurry through the back of the control room, much to the amusement of Chuck and the other gate room staff. No one knew Atlantis like Colonel Sheppard did, and the Marines were beginning to despair of ever catching him. Eventually he reappeared in a hallway, right in front of Lorne’s team, and with a small shake of his head that might have been the otter equivalent of a shrug, lay down, and allowed his second in command to capture him. Sanchez postulated that he’d just got fed up with the chase.
Eight hours after the escape Teyla did a John and gave up. She’d not been quite as keen as John to make the Marines chase her, moving at a slower pace, sometimes resting (in places too important to the running of the city to dismantle) sometimes making her way slowly through pipes and conduits. The Marines gave up an hour before she appeared, as if by magic, in the observation gallery, looking down at her team members and whistling and calling to be let in.
While the Marines had been pursuing the otters, Sanchez and Zelenka made sure the hallway outside the observation room was made otter escape proof. The doors at the north end of the hall were locked and entry to the observation room area was restricted to the south doors, with a sort of airlock system put in place to ensure that the south doors and the observation room doors couldn’t both be opened simultaneously. The Marines ensured that Zelenka and Sanchez were rewarded with at least one alcoholic beverage before they turned in for the night.
~o0(*)0o~
“What’s alcolic?” Chloe asked.
“Like beer,” Jody explained, “That nasty yellow brown stuff Dad drinks.”
“And wine.” Jamie added.
“Did they want to punish you?” Chloe looked puzzled. “I tried Dad’s beer when he wasn’t looking. It’s nasty.”
“Let’s just say that your sense of taste changes as you grow up, and that alcoholic drinks, like beer or wine also have some nice effects - but only for adults. Really, only for adults. Let’s move on.” Mercedes explained, anxious to leave the subject of the joys of alcohol behind.
~o0(*)0o~
In the afternoon of day three Dr Corrigan finished his translation of the Ancient text. The basic summary was that if someone with the ATA gene activated the machine then anyone within the chamber would be turned into a lower life form. Corrigan stated that he was sure it was part of the Ancient’s studies into Ascension and that the inventor had created the machine so that the Ancients could experience the peaceful and uncomplicated lives of animals to help them with their meditation. He shook his head sadly when asked if there was any information concerning turning the animals back into their original state.
Zelenka likewise had no good news. The scans he had performed on the planet had created a perfect computerized replica of the transformation machine, but every simulation he tried resulted in unknown failure after unknown failure.
The situation seemed bleak for Sheppard’s team. Nonetheless Carter refused to think negatively, and sent all the information they had gleaned to the SGC to see if anyone there could come up with something.
The only, brief, ray of light came from Dr Eisen. Wanting to make amends for inadvertently letting the otters escape, the engineer had been working on a way that Sheppard’s team could try to communicate with them. Deciding that pictures were too open to interpretation, he created a huge keyboard, with keys the size of drink coasters, each of which would light up for a few seconds when pressed. This plugged into one of the Ancient screens that they had moved into the observation gallery.
As expected, Rodney was the first of the animals to investigate the keyboard. He sniffed around, peering at it closely before cautiously placing his paws on one of the keys. When it lit up he moved to another and another until he had spelt “we are”, but without the space. Carter, Eisen and Sanchez started to get excited at the prospect of being able to talk with Sheppard’s team, and possibly find out exactly what happened, thereby increasing their chances of reversing it. Their hopes were dashed when after a long pause (for an otter) Rodney stepped on “f” and then “s” before catching sight of his tail and becoming fascinated by it. In a sudden burst of movement, he danced wildly all over the keyboard, typing “ascbfbmijno?o” then ran off to take a plunge into the fresh water tub. A few minutes later their hope was rekindled as Teyla came over to the keyboard, but she became entranced by the play of light under her paws, typing half a page of “zxxzxzzxxzzzzxxxxzxzxz” before smelling some left over mollusk in a nearby patch of grass and abandoning the keyboard to chow down. John and Ronon showed no interest in the keyboard, and Sanchez had to conclude that the “message” that Rodney had begun to type was just a fluke, the necessary letters all being grouped together on a Qwerty keyboard. They left the keyboard in the room, as both Teyla and Rodney seemed to like playing with it, but disconnected the screen, finding the pages of gobbledy gook produced a too depressing reminder of what Sheppard’s team had lost.
On day four it was Dr Sanchez’s turn to make a mistake. Involved in the strenuous task of mucking out the otters, she unthinkingly removed her jacket and placed it on a nearby imported rock. She turned her back on the otters, who seemed to be playing some kind of rule-free game of tag and hide seek combined, and got down to business with the cleaning equipment she’d brought in. After three days of being around the animals, she’d got used to their antics and ignored the sounds of their calls and whistles mixed with the slap of their webbed paws on the smooth surface of the floor and the occasional splash as the draw of the water tub became too much for the otters to resist. Chasing Ronon away from the salt water tub, she set about draining it so she could clean out the loose earth, pebbles, pieces of vegetation, and scraps of fish that inevitably got carried or tracked into the tub every time it was used. It was about three quarters empty and Sanchez had just begun to scrape away the thin layer of detritus that clung to the sides of the tub when Dr Zelenka activated the microphone in the observation gallery.
“Mercedes, is that your jacket?” he called down to her.
Sanchez spun around just in time to see that her jacket was no longer where she’d left it. It was off in a corner where Rodney had just succeeded in his attempts at stripping off the Nehru collar. Ronon spat a scrap of science blue material that had once been part of the right hand front panel into a nearby bush, and Teyla seemed to be trying to bury herself in the fabric.
“Oh no!” Sanchez exclaimed. “Guys!” she groaned, addressing the otters, “That’s my jacket!”
“Was your jacket.” Zelenka corrected with a shrug and an apologetic smile.
“Yeah, great!” she groused.
John sidled up to her and deposited a large piece of the lining at her feet. He looked up at her with winsome eyes.
“Oh don’t try that cute look on me,” she addressed him, “I got this nice environment made for you, got you the right food, got Ronon his salt water, I clean and wash and muck you out, schedule people so you’re tended to around the clock and you repay me by destroying my jacket! How is that fair?”
For a moment John’s eyes seemed to turn mournful and apologetic, but at that moment Sanchez’s attention was won over by some frantic squealing and struggling coming from the vicinity of the remains of her jacket. Rushing over Sanchez saw that Teyla had somehow crawled inside one of the sleeves and in her excitement, so twisted the fabric that she couldn’t get out again. Ronon and Rodney were desperately biting and pawing at the material that held their increasingly frightened and distressed friend captive, but she got no closer to being free.
Sanchez sighed, and fought her way between the struggling animals who refused to let go of the jacket. She had just got a good grip on the jacket and was attempting to hold the sleeve open so Teyla could escape when there was an almighty ripping sound as the entire sleeve detached itself from the body. Suddenly finding that her back legs had room to move, Teyla rapidly reversed her way out of where the sleeve should have joined the shoulder and ran to the other side of the room, shooting upset and reproachful looks at anyone and anything. In the mean time the otters jumped on the jacket with renewed fervor, John dragging the newly detached sleeve into the previously clean fresh water tub, and Rodney tracking pieces of material all over the place. Ronon seemed content with shredding the material into as many pieces as he could manage.
Carter had been on her way down to see the otters when they’d stolen Sanchez’s jacket. When she saw what the otters had done, she shared a look of woe with Sanchez, who had returned to the task of tub cleaning. The Colonel shook her head in disbelief as she surveyed the scene before throwing her hands up in a gesture of defeat, and declaring “What a complete and otter mess!” Sanchez turned and glared at her. Carter just shrugged before saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join em!” and bursting into laughter that sounded somewhat hysterical.
That night Carter ensured that she’d had an alcoholic beverage before she went to sleep.
The next morning after breakfast Carter decided that enough was enough. The thoughts she’d been having of setting up an otter sanctuary on the mainland were quitter’s talk, and she determined not to give in. With this is mind, she called Lorne and Zelenka to her office, ordering them to accompany her back to the planet.
By late afternoon Atlantis time, Carter was beginning to think that the otter sanctuary idea might actually not be so bad after all. The machine wouldn’t do anything for her beyond what it had done for Zelenka - turning on and displaying the limited files about its use. She hated to give in, but there truly seemed to be no way to turn Sheppard’s team back into humans. Her hopes destroyed, she tried to put forward a positive face as she arrived back in Atlantis, but her heart wasn’t in it.
She had just made it back to her office when the gate activated. A moment later Chuck radioed her and reported,
“Colonel Carter, it’s the SGC, for you.”
“Hey, Sam, how’s it going?” Daniel asked, with a smile that morphed into sympathy when he saw the tell tale signs of stress and weariness, with a little despair mixed in too. “That good, huh?”
“Well Sheppard’s team are still otters,” she said as she slumped back in her chair.
“No they’re not.” Daniel stated, peering at the screen of the laptop before him.
“What do you mean they’re not?”
“We only just got back from a mission four hours ago, so I didn’t get much of a chance to look at the files of the Ancient outpost you sent through. While Corrigan got most of the translation right, he got some of the key phrases wrong.”
“Really?” asked an exhausted Carter.
“Yes, see here,” Daniel held the laptop up to the camera so that Carter could see, “this was translated as meaning that when someone with the ATA gene activated the machine, anyone who was in the chamber would have their experiences, mind and spirit transformed into a lower life form.”
“Which we took to mean the otters,” Carter supplied.
“And you’re not entirely wrong about that,” Daniel pointed out. “But what it really says is that part of their experiences and DNA would be imprinted onto a lower life form. And it’s not part of the Ancient’s research into ascension, it’s part of their general genetic experiments. This machine was designed to create animals that were imprinted with parts of an Ancient’s experience and DNA as well as their own instincts, in the hope that they could somehow accelerate the speed of evolution.”
“Do you mean...?” Carter asked, almost dumbstruck.
“That Colonel Sheppard’s team hasn’t been transformed into otters? Yes.”
“But they understand us and respond when we talk to them. Well, sometimes they do.” Carter objected.
“It’s more likely they’re responding to tone and body language.” Daniel shrugged apologetically.
Carter shook her head in disbelief at the situation. “So where are they?”
“Well, the text goes on to explain that activating the machine causes anyone in the vicinity to be transported to a place beneath the outpost. There they're scanned for the imprinting, the animals are created, the animals are beamed back up to where the machine is, and a few minutes later, the people are too.”
“But that didn’t happen,” Carter pointed out.
“Didn’t the scans show that the outpost was out of power?”
“So the machine ran out of power and wasn’t able to transport Sheppard’s team back out! But we’ve powered up the outpost and they didn’t appear.”
“That’s because you needed to input this code.” he said, once more showing her the laptop.
Carter jumped up and was almost out of her office before she remembered that Daniel was only there by AV link and couldn’t follow her out of the room. She returned to her desk.
“I’m sorry, but have to err...” she apologized with a wry smile. “Thank you.”
“Go get ‘em.” Daniel responded. “SGC out.”
~o0(*)0o~
“No way!” Jamie exclaimed. “No way! You mean they weren’t otters after all?”
Mercedes grinned. “No, they weren’t. You can imagine how stupid we felt when Colonel Carter told us. Corrigan couldn’t look anyone in the eye for about two weeks afterwards, even when the Colonel reminded him that Daniel Jackson had somewhat of an advantage over him in the translating Ancient stakes - I mean, he’s been an Ancient and carried Merlin’s consciousness around for a while, so of course he knew more.”
Someone’s belly rumbled loudly, so juice and sandwiches were appropriated. After the last crumb had disappeared the kids resumed their previous positions.
“Are you sure you want me to continue?” Mercedes asked, and was answered by a trio of nodding heads. “Well, ok then.”
~o0(*)0o~
Back on the planet, it took about twenty minutes to re-attach a naquadah generator, punch in the right code and watch while Sheppard’s team reappeared. They were tired, dirty and thirsty after five days on only three day’s rations, but otherwise unharmed. They told tales of waking up in a small sealed metal walled underground complex, whose seamless walls afforded them no obvious way out. Scans showed that they were too far underground for blasting their way out with C4 to be an option. After two days of useless escape attempts, they had reluctantly decided to hunker down and await rescue or death by dehydration or hunger as McKay insisted when they were down to their last energy bar.
No one asked how close they had come to killing each other.
~o0(*)0o~
“Killing each other?” Chloe’s eyes were huge. “Would they really have done that?”
“Well you never could be sure with those guys, but no, I don’t think so. You have to remember that they were close, really close, like family, and as you know, no matter how much you love your family, you still feel like killing them sometimes.”
“Tell me about it,” muttered Jody.
“Anyway!” Mercedes cut across the comment before either of Jody’s siblings picked up on it. “Let’s go on.”
~o0(*)0o~
“You thought we were otters!” Sheppard exclaimed, his voice rising a few pitches as it tended to when he was excited. He looked around at his team in bewilderment, before moving his gaze over to where Carter, Zelenka, Keller, Lorne and Sanchez were huddled at the opposite end of the observation gallery, deliberately distancing themselves from Sheppard’s team.
When they’d been fed and re-hydrated, and confirmed as otherwise healthy by Dr Keller, Carter had finally decided to give in to their demands to know just why it had taken five days to rescue them. Sure that showing and telling would be more effective than just a briefing; Carter had chosen their current location.
“Why would you think such a thing?” McKay demanded.
Those not on Sheppard’s team looked at each other sheepishly, each beginning to say something and then deciding against it.
“Sam!” McKay insisted.
“We found them in a room with no tracks leading out of it and McKay’s laptop connected to some Ancient equipment.” Lorne jumped in.
“The DNA tests showed some correlation that you just wouldn’t expect normally between human individuals and animals.” Keller interjected.
“And then there was the way they behave.” Carter added.
Sanchez nodded enthusiastically, “And the way they look.”
“I do not look like an -“ Teyla paused, looking at Sheppard to provide the word.
“Otter,” he supplied.
“Well, no,” Sanchez explained, “but you see, the one in the corner has got ruffled fur on his head, and that one there is smaller and the only female, and the largest one has the...” she trailed off, her hands making indeterminate movements in the vicinity of her head that could have meant anything. Ronon caught her eye, and raised an amused eyebrow at her.
“But no tattoo,” he pointed out, with a grin.
Carter smiled wearily, “It was only when Daniel re-translated the files pertaining to the machine that did this to you that realized what a huge mistake we had made.”
Sheppard shook his head and leant on the gallery guardrail. He peered down and raised one eyebrow. “I still don’t understand how you could all believe that we were otters, but I have to admit, that one down there eating all the food really does remind me of McKay.”
“Hey! I’m hypoglycemic!” McKay protested, glaring at Sheppard.
“Do we know why we turned into otters?” Teyla queried, “I mean, why otters instead of some other animal?”
Carter shrugged apologetically. “Daniel asked the same question as it happens, and we’re no closer to finding out why now than we were then.”
“Ask Rodney,” Sheppard prompted with more than a hint of mischief in his voice and expression, “he was the one who activated the machine after all.”
“I did not activate the machine!” McKay protested.
“Well I didn’t go anywhere near it and Ronon and Teyla don’t have the gene, so it must have been you.”
“It was an accident!”
“Still means you activated it, and that you have some kind of weird otter obsession that we didn’t know about.”
“I do not have a weird otter obsession!” McKay sniffed. “I bought a wildlife documentary to give to Katie, but hadn’t had the opportunity to give it to her. I found it the evening before the mission and decided to watch it. There was a bit in it about otters. It was very relaxing.” He shifted uncomfortably, “It’s possible I might have been thinking about it while I was working on the machine.”
“Good to know an unknown and potentially fatal machine has your full attention,” Sheppard parried.
“I am capable of doing more than one thing at a time, Colonel One-Track-Mind,” McKay retorted.
“Ok, well I think we can call this briefing to an end,” Carter hurriedly interjected, choosing to stop the famous Sheppard - McKay verbal tennis before it got out of hand. “I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
“So, I guess you can tell us where otters live then, Rodney?” Sheppard teased as they exited the observation gallery.
“Well actually, otters live in a variety of environ-“ he began lecturing, before his face fell. “Wait, there’s a punch line, right?”
“Otter space!” Sheppard provided for him, disappearing down the corridor before McKay could catch up with him.
“Otter space,” McKay muttered to himself. “I’m never going to hear the end of it!”
~o0(*)0o~
“And that’s it. The. End.” Mercedes announced. She was immediately greeted by a chorus of disappointed “Awws”.
“But that can’t be the end!” Jody complained, “I mean, what happened to the otters?”
“Well, we thought it wouldn’t be unfair to release them back onto the planet they’d come from. They weren’t indigenous - that means that otters didn’t originally come from there- so we didn’t know whether they’d be able to survive. Colonel Carter considered a zoo - there’s one right on Cheyenne Mountain - but in the end we didn’t think it would work, Ronon’s otter certainly wouldn’t have wanted to stay in captivity, and Sheppard and Teyla were pretty sure theirs wouldn’t want to either. We were never sure exactly how much human intelligence they were given, but they certainly knew enough to get annoyed at having someone fussing over them, and to orchestrate an escape attempt so we wanted to give them the most opportunities to control their own lives that we could. We found a nature reserve on the coast of New England where a river met the sea so both the fresh and salt-water otters could survive and released them there. They were tagged electronically and it seems they spent most of the rest of their days within about a mile of each other. They may have been different species of otter, but I guess they picked up something strong about being a family from Sheppard’s team.”
At that point Mercedes’ door chime announced the arrival of the kid’s mum, and promises made on all sides that they would be able to come back soon.
EPILOGUE:
Later that evening Mercedes’ door chime sounded again. When she opened it she wasn’t surprised to see her old friend Chuck standing there.
“So, you were quite the hit with my grandchildren,” he remarked after declining her offers of a seat and some tea.
“Well there was a while there when I thought it would go the other way.” Mercedes replied, grimacing at the memory of the troubles she’d had earlier in the afternoon.
“And I hear your book make an appearance? The otter story?” Chuck asked, as leaned against the lintel for support, one hand resting on the elegant cane he’d been using to get around for the past eleven years.
“It did. There are now three fully sworn in members of the Secret Stories Society.”
“Even Jody? Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandchildren, but Jody’s a typical teenager and could try the patience of a saint.”
“Even Jody,” Mercedes answered with a smile, “She got so bored that even hearing about our antics when we were young was better than nothing.”
“Well I’m glad to hear that we topped “nothing” in the interest stakes. But what I’ll be interested to see is whether they manage to keep it secret or not. I reckon I still have a few years left in me, and you and Teyla seem to be aging backwards, so they’ll need to keep it quiet a little longer.”
“Oh they will. They take after their parents and grandparents after all.”
“Well I must be going. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“Old timer’s lunch on Tuesday, with Teyla, as usual?” Mercedes enquired.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he replied before making an ambling exit.
When she was alone again, Dr Mercedes Sanchez sat on her window seat, and recalling her decades of memories, gazed up at the two waxing moons and felt her heart become otterly full.