[SGA] City of Your Dreams- Chapter 16
City of Your Dreams- Chapter 16
Stargate Atlantis. John/Elizabeth. PG-13. Spoilers for the latter half of season 3. 3,124 words.
“This doesn’t look like a park.” Rodney’s back to whining as he replaces the last door crystal and the door slides open, “and it definitely doesn’t smell like one.”
Elizabeth crinkles her nose. “You think after 10,000 years the smell of rotting plants would’ve dissipated.
“Yes one would think,” Rodney agrees as John sticks his head through the door cautiously.
“It looks clear.”
“What’d you expect to find an army of sleeping Wraith?”
“Rodney,” Elizabeth sighs and he stops.
She follows John in and takes a moment to look around. This definitely wasn’t what she remembered. Even if she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the room buzzing with life something didn’t feel right. “This isn’t it. There’s too many trees.”
“They could’ve replanted.”
She shakes her head and John turns to leave.
“Just like that we’re leaving?” Rodney questions and John shrugs.
“If she says this isn’t the right place than I believe her. Where to next?” He asks Elizabeth.
“Down the hall maybe,” she suggests cutting off Rodney’s snide comment with a look. “I think this was part of their botany department. This could take awhile.”
* * *
Four rooms filled with dead plants later they’d reached the last room in the hall. “If this isn’t it I don’t know what to tell you.” Elizabeth’s doubting herself as John pries the door open.
“Don’t worry about it.” He assures her, “lets see how this goes first.”
The door slides open and Elizabeth steps back in surprise, marveling at the white glistening that covers the floor. “It looks like snow.” She breathes.
“They’re flowers,” Rodney says toeing several of the blossoms.
“Don’t tell me these are those flowers Lorne was talking about.” John says leaning back against the wall by the door. Elizabeth’s forehead wrinkles and he clarifies, “the flowers that got him attacked on PXX-339.”
“Oh,” she breaths turning to stare at the white field before her, “they’re beautiful. They weren’t here last time.”
“So this is the place then?” Rodney allows himself to hope.
Elizabeth smiles. “There’s what look like tropical flowers back there,” she stops to point, “and the trees, the spot where Lana planted the box, it’s back that way.”
“Shall we go?” John moves to stand upright.
Elizabeth hesitates. “Don’t get me wrong I’m glad this is still here, but why?”
“What do you mean?”
Rodney stares at the two of them annoyed.
“This part of the city’s been flooded multiple times, it’s been without power for most of the time we’ve been here. In all of the other rooms the plants have died off, but not in here.”
“Maybe they’ve regrown since the last time the city flooded, maybe it’s all a holographic projection, maybe they really like water and actually grew better when this part of the city was under water. Does it really make a difference?”
“McKay,” John warns, but Elizabeth brushes the comment off.
“We’ll have to send the botany team down as soon as we’re done here. I’m sure they’d be able to tell us.” Elizabeth concedes before heading off further into the garden.
“Here,” Elizabeth stops in front of what reminds John of a [b-something] tree, it’s large branches grown to make perfect climbing steps. “The box should be,” she pauses for a moment before turning and kneeling down, “somewhere close to here. Be careful I don’t want to damage the tree.”
“You’re getting all weepy over trees.” Rodney looks green at the thought of the implications.
“Shut up and stop whining or I’m going to have you do all the digging,” John says as he pulls the fold up shovel from where he’d attached it to his belt.
Rodney clamps his mouth shut and steps back to watch John work. Elizabeth takes a seat against the trunk of the tree, marveling at the large assortment of flowers that had grown to cover the room. The tiny red snapdragons growing from the moss that covered several of the nearby trees were her favorite she decided as the sound of John’s shovel scrapping against pebbles in the dirt filled the room.
Elizabeth turns and laughs as she catches sight of Rodney cautiously studying several of the large orchid-like flowers further down.
“I think I’ve got something.” The sound of John’s shovel striking something solid interrupts her thoughts.
There’s a thrill of excitement that runs through her as Rodney comes over to rejoin them. “Can you see what it is?”
“Give me a minute. There.” John smiles triumphantly as he brushes against the top surface, “it looks like some sort of box. Sort of an opaque white with silver trim around the edges, it’s going to take me a minute to finish digging it out. It looks like it’s in there pretty good.”
Elizabeth takes a minute to stand, leaning heavily on Rodney when he offers his help. “I’m going to keep looking around.”
John nods and watches for a minute as she moves to run her fingers over the bark of a nearby tree. She smiles and leans closer to study the miniature flowers, stepping back with a gleeful smile as they crackle, bending with a snap under her touch before return to their original form. Further down the garden row, there’s a pair of giant blue sunflowers and a set of smaller cactuses. “They look like prickly thimbles,” she mutter to herself.
“Hey did you see this?” Rodney comes up beside her pointing to the patch of reed looking plants to her right. “They sing and they smell absolutely heavenly.”
“Like cupcakes,” Elizabeth smiles marveling at the soft humming noise the blades are admitting. “You made them sing?”
“Watch.” Rodney leans over and blows through several of the strands stepping back to watch then brush gently past each other as they admitted quiet bell-like noises.
“They’re beautiful.”
“I’m betting they’re-“
“I got it.” John calls out interrupting them and Elizabeth smiles apologetically. “Back to work already I suppose.”
* * *
“I can’t open it,” Rodney insists again trying to shove the box back towards John who shrugged.
“I already tried.”
“Let me.” Elizabeth holds out her hands and Rodney gladly pushes the box towards her.
“There aren’t any latches.” he reminds her.
Elizabeth turns the box over in her hands a couple of times ignoring Rodney’s loud protests. “This side’s dented,” she notes.
“It has been buried for ten thousand years.” Rodney reminds her somewhat bitterly, “one of the tree’s roots must have pushed it in or something.”
“Or maybe it was always like this.” Elizabeth speculates out loud, “I don’t think it’s a box.”
“You said it was full of crystals.”
“It is.” Elizabeth’s smiling, “but I don’t think it’s what we thought it was.”
“Which is?” Rodney prods, but she ignores his question.
“I think it’s some sort of interface, or programming for something. Maybe we could find-“ Elizabeth cuts herself off as she stands, “I think I know what this goes to.”
“Where are you taking us?” Rodney’s protesting as they make their way back further into the garden.
“There should be a- ah here it is.” Elizabeth smiles, dropping down in front of a small glass pedestal. “I think this is another one of those consoles, like the one Helia activated when she returned to the city.” She clarifies when Rodney doesn’t seem to be following.
“So whoa, wait you can’t just go messing around with-“
“There.” There’s a snapping noise and the console lights up as Elizabeth snaps the crystal block into place.
“You have no idea what you’re doing you could be-“
“Things can’t get much worse than they are.” John sides with Elizabeth.
“We could blow up.” Rodney’s eyes grow wide at the thought.
“That’s not going to happen,” John assures him as Elizabeth nods in agreement.
“The nanites wouldn’t let that something like that happen,” she agrees.
“Unless this kills them all first. You did say they were freaking out.”
She shakes her head, “even if it did Lana’s still hardwired into the city’s operating system. I doubt anything’s going to be able to get in and change that as long as she’s still around.”
“There is a reason that she buried the box,” John cautions.
“Let Rodney take a look and then we’ll figure out where to go from there.” She reasons before stepping back to let the other two get a closer look at the glowing screen before her.
* * *
They’re back in the conference room. Elizabeth hadn’t wanted to leave the garden, but it’d been awhile since she’d eaten and she didn’t want to have deal with listening to Carson constantly berating her because she’d refused to eat another of John’s power bars.
“It’s a totally separate system,” Rodney’s briefing the group, “at first it glance it didn’t appear to be connected to the city’s main systems and that’s because it’s not. Although it does seem to be monitoring its current conditions, which got me thinking. Which is when I realized that the nanites were the bridge at least they were. They could’ve served as a link between the console and the city until the Ancients activated the primary systems upon their return. Zalenka was right they have been here all along.”
“So it’s not trying to kill us then.” John’s trying to get Rodney to cut to the chase.
“No, at least not directly,” Rodney agrees, “but that’s not the most interesting part. This console seems to be the main hub of several new sets of sensors.” Rodney says somewhat gleefully. “We haven’t figured out exactly what they do but I can tell you that they’ve been operational for the last several months.”
“I thought you said the console wasn’t connected to the main systems.” Elizabeth rubs a hand over her eyes tiredly.
“It’s not. Like I said before,” Rodney’s not happy about having to repeat himself, “the Ancients must have activated the main program. After that the console wasn’t much good to them. They’ve probably got another larger console that has a much greater functionality somewhere in the city, we just haven’t located it yet.”
“What about one of the ones I found?” John swivels in his chair to level his gaze with Rodney’s.
“You mean the ones Dr. Pearson found inventorying the room you showed him,” the scientist replies, “I haven’t gotten a chance to look at them, although I doubt vary much they’re going to be of any use in this case.”
“What about the ones in the East Pier, the ones I had people working on when we got back.”
Rodney shakes his head, “we haven’t got anything yet, but we’ve got people on it.”
Elizabeth smiles trying to hide her disappointment. It’s been a long couple of days. “So what do we do now?”
“Let me get back to work,” Rodney suggests, “I’ll let you know when I have something.”
“Sounds good to me,” John answers for her as the two men stand.
“Great,” she agrees quietly catching Teyla’s concerned look out of the corner of her eye. “I’ll be in my quarters resting.”
* * *
It takes Rodney the better part of a day to come up with anything concrete. Which Elizabeth was thankful for in a way she realizes. She’d gotten several hours on interrupted sleep and she had been able to stop by the mess several times for food. Not to mention John had gotten one of the scientists to give her back her network status. She’d been quietly finishing up some paperwork from the couch in her quarters when she’d gotten the call from John saying Rodney had found something.
“It was one of the consoles Dr. Pearson inventoried,” Rodney admitted somewhat begrudgedly as John smirked ‘I told you so’. “We haven’t been able to decipher all of the console’s functionalities from what we can, it looks like it’s at least in part tracking gene concentrations within the city. Here.” Rodney pushes a couple of buttons on the tablet and the screen behind them lights up with what looks like a life signs detector, only, Elizabeth notes quickly, all of the dots, yellow and blue, are of different intensities and there seems to be two different color varieties. “The color denotes gender, or rather,” Rodney looks rather uncomfortable, “based on Lana’s notes we tracked down in one of the consoles on the East Pier, it illustrates mode of gene transition.”
“So gender.” John repeats.
“Yes, yes,” Rodney seems to have recovered, “and the color intensity and dot size correlates with the extent of presentation of the gene. Take this conference room- Elizabeth I think you’re orange.”
“I can see that Rodney.” She peers at the screen for a minute before placing a hand over her stomach.
John’s watching both Elizabeth and the screen confused, “did the Ancients use a different color wheel because I’m failing to see how you get orange from yellow and blue.”
“Maybe they use different colors to show the strongest gene carriers.”
“Than why isn’t John purple or brown?”
“They used different colors for children.” Zelanka explains as he slides into a seat by the door.
“Do they use different colors for,” Elizabeth swallows the word before managing to get it out, “pregnant or-?”
Zelanka shakes his head and she feels a tiny thrill at the possibility, “not as far as we can tell.”
“I’m-“ Elizabeth falls silent for a moment, “can I assume red’s for the girls?”
Radek nods and Elizabeth smiles thoughtfully, before turning to beam at John who looked confused. “I thought we were supposed to find that out at the ultrasound.” John sounds somewhat disappointed.
“I like this better,” Elizabeth decides, “less icy cold goop.”
John joins in with her laughter.
“From what we’ve been able to learn it’s pretty safe to say that we were right.” Radek says drawing the couple back into the conversation.
“The city’s protecting you, Elizabeth.” Rodney reintegrates.
“But I’m safe now,” Elizabeth looks confused, “the Replicators or anyone else for that matter aren’t anywhere to be found and we’re still floating around in space.”
“Perhaps the program is malfunctioning.” Teyla suggests.
“That’s unlikely,” Radek sighs, “from what we can tell, the program as a whole is running, without any errors that we can detect.”
“Maybe you’re not safe, at least maybe it still thinks you’re not.” John offers quietly, “I wasn’t exactly acting on good faith earlier. I wanted to send you back to Earth, and I would’ve done pretty much anything to assure that that happened. Only problem is the city can’t protect you there, like it couldn’t protect you on New Athos.”
Elizabeth’s confused, trying to ask him to clarify the last part when Rodney cuts in, “Great we’ve got an overprotective city trying to save you from being dumped by the baby’s daddy.”
“Rodney this isn’t a soap opera,” John sighs annoyed, the tips of his ears reddening as he realizes that he and Elizabeth aren’t the only two in the room.
“Well it might as well be.” Rodney grumbles darkly as Elizabeth brushes the comment off.
“So how do we tell it that you’re not going to ship me back?”
“I thought you were enjoying our little flight.” John struggles to regain his sense of humor.
Elizabeth frowns, “I’ve been nauseated the whole time, I feel like I’m perpetually seasick, and every time we jump into hyperspace, or the city starts thinking about it, I’m pretty sure my head’s going to explode.”
“Some great job it’s doing protecting you.” Rodney’s rolling his eyes at the city.
“Could we focus please,” Carson cuts in and the three of them settle down into silence.
“What’s next?” Elizabeth asks.
* * *
“We have got to find a way to convince the city that you are in fact safe and that it will be able to protect you.” Teyla recaps helpfully.
“That’s assuming we’re right about this.” Rodney mutters.
“We’ve learned nothing to suggest otherwise,” Radek’s looking rather pleased with something.
“I’m being held hostage by the city,” Elizabeth sighs, “that’s something new.”
“Fight back.” Ronon finally speaks up for the first time that morning and Elizabeth starts. She’d forgotten he’d been in the room.
“We’ve already seen what the city will do when it think it’s threatened, I don’t want to be the one to find out what it does when it actually is.” John doesn’t look amused with the current situation.
“Lana doesn’t like you,” Elizabeth sighs, “maybe if we could change her mind about you.”
“What do you want me to do about it? It’s not like I could send you back now regardless of what the SGC said. The city had probably lock you in a stasis pod or something till they changed their mind.”
Elizabeth shakes her head. “I don’t think she’d believe that, apparently she’s a bit jilted. She used to like you a lot-“ Elizabeth pauses to smirk, “and now she’s telling me to let you know that she thinks you’re a disgrace to the evolution of their form and she- never mind.” Elizabeth cuts herself off looking somewhat amused. “Lets just say she’s pissed at you.”
John sighs. Radek stares at the ceiling and Elizabeth watches Rodney with a furrow in her brow. “Rodney what are you doing?” she finally asks when Rodney starts looking a pale.
He lets out a breath with a rush of air, “that didn’t do any good,” he mumbles to himself and Elizabeth laughs, reaching over to place a hand on his arm.
“Holding your breath never does.”
Kate’s looking thoughtful as she watches them all and for a minute Elizabeth wishes she knew what was going on inside the other woman’s head.
“Elizabeth is it possible that Lana’s not the only one harboring ill feelings towards John?” Kate asks as Elizabeth looks taken aback.
“I-“
“Of course,” John answers for her, “but I don’t see what that has to do with any of this.”
“Lana needs an act of good faith,” Kate pauses waiting until John nods in agreement, “something that she can understand, which based on what Elizabeth’s told me, it’s going to be pretty hard to convince her directly.”
“But you can use me to get to her,” Elizabeth sighs when she picks up on where this is going.
Kate nods, “eventual reconciliation would be a priority regardless of the current situation-“
“They seem to be getting along fine,” Rodney cuts in.
“We haven’t even-“ John takes a look around the room and swallows, “maybe we should pick this up someplace else.”
“I think it’s about time we break for lunch,” Elizabeth agrees, “then I want you all back to work. We need to know as much about the city’s new systems as possible.”