The Crack is Strong in This One (John/Rodney, PG-13)
Title: Four Times John and Rodney Furthered the Evolution of Mankind, and One Time They Just Changed History
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~1500
Pairings: Meretron/Sheptron with hints at Dextron/Emmatron, Thecamoeba rodnia/Thecamoeba jonia, Sheppardopteryx/Meredistrodon, On/Ro, Juán Separdo/Rodnizuma
Warnings: crack, historical inaccuracies, biological impossibilities, fun with physics, crack, general ignorance in matters of the natural sciences, incidental genderswap (kind of), crack, wild speculation on the mating habits of homo erectus, a woeful lack of porn, and crack. Also, not beta-read.
Summary: "Hi, I'm Sheptron. Wanna fuse?"
Notes: For the cliche_bingo prompt of Historical AU (bingo card to be found here). pennyplainknits suggested a prehistorical AU, and no one could quite decide which kind of crack they wanted, so I wrote all of them. That'll learn ya.
ETA: You can download this as podfic thanks to the ever-lovely pennyplainknits! ♥
ETA2: Now also available in Russian, thanks to 4ip4irgan!
~~~
Four Times John and Rodney Furthered the Evolution of Mankind, and One Time They Just Changed History
I. Just After The Big Bang
Two minutes and fifty-three seconds after the universe burst into existence, it was already a battlefield. Countless hadrons and anti-hadrons, leptons and anti-leptons had annihilated each other until near-total eradication of their kind. Blobs of antimatter lurked to do in unsuspecting photons. At this point, Meretron was just waiting for the spontaneous creation of anti-neutrons to snuff him out as well.
"Hey!" A passing proton spun to face him, grinning wildly as they tumbled through the Expansion. "Great time to be, isn't it?"
"Considering time has been in existence for, oh, a whole three minutes now, I'm going to-"
"Hold that thought." The proton dipped and swerved to avoid a charged electron. Meretron gaped as the electron zipped by, missing the proton by... well, not by much, it looked like.
"Good reaction time," he admitted grudgingly when the proton had returned to his side.
"Yeah," the proton said. "Hey, listen, have you heard of this new helium thing?"
Meretron scoffed.
"What, you mean the nucleosynthesis of protons and neutrons into atoms? Of course I've heard of that."
"It's supposed to be safer than just floating around." The proton waggled his up quarks. "You're a neutron, aren't you?"
Meretron gaped at him.
"You... are you coming on to me?"
The proton grinned right back.
"Hi, I'm Sheptron. Wanna fuse?"
"Oh my Planck, does that line work on anyone?"
"I dunno. Does it?" Sheptron waggled his up quarks again. It looked ridiculously... cute. Meretron felt his own down quarks twitch in response.
Come to think of it, helium was rumoured to be safer than simply spinning through the Expansion on one's own, especially for a baryon with no net charge like him.
"Helium is made of two pairs," Meretron said shyly.
"Yeah. My friends Dextron and Emmatron already agreed to join in." Sheptron nudged closer. Their quarks sizzled as they brushed against each other. "We're gonna make a great team."
Meretron shivered pleasantly at the thought of what it might be like, to fuse with someone.
"Yeah," he said a little dazedly, "okay."
Turned out it was awesome.
~~~
II. Swimming in the Primordial Soup
Thecamoeba rodnia sighed, mournfully digesting three bacteria in its vacuoles. It had been inexplicably restless lately, consumed by a kind of... itch... that had the fine hairs on its cell membrane quiver with nervous energy.
"Eating again?" Thecamoeba jonia rolled through their nutrient-rich habitat, its own theca messy and significantly fuller than rodnia's own scattered hairs.
Rodnia sniffed and glomped on another bacterium, drawing it into its body.
"I have to eat regularly or I'll go into hibernation," it declared, and added, "As you well know."
"Yes, I know, life-threatening condition, very stressful, a wonder you've made it this far." As always, jonia displayed a complete lack of sympathy for rodnia's many hardships in life. Instead, it hovered in place and seemed to fidget.
Rodnia turned away and stretched one pseudopod after a passing archaeon. The itch was back, humming beneath its cell membrane, and jonia was the cause. Rodnia dreamed about them sometimes, when it was curled into a microbial cyst, drifting through the habitat until it bumped into something edible. It dreamed about touching jonia, enveloping it with every pseudopod it could form to press their bodies together until there was not a theca's breadth of space between them. It dreamed about the two of them joining, melting together in glorious passion until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
They would be so great together. Inseparable. Perhaps they could even create something entirely new, unlike any amoeba that had come before them.
But all rodnia's dreams were simply that: foolish hopes that would lead to nothing. It chased them away and concentrated instead on reeling the struggling archaeon in. Behind it, jonia was still fidgeting.
"Did you ever think about, you know... reproduction?" it blurted.
The archaeon struggled free, vanishing into the depths of the habitat and rodnia choked on its own vacuole and turned back around to boggle at jonia.
Rodnia turned back around, enveloping the archaeon in a vacuole as it boggled at jonia.
"Are you... What..." It pulled itself together, waving a pseudopod in jonia's direction. "This is hardly a conversation for mealtimes, is it? Also, my chromosomes aren't ready for mitosis." It crossed two of its other pseudopods over its cell membrane.
"I, uh, was thinking more like, um." Jonia seemed to be swimming in an ocean of discomfort. "You know. Conjugation? Or... something."
Rodnia stared at jonia. Could it be... did they share the same dream?
"I..." It shivered, anticipation bringing the itch that much closer to the surface. "Perhaps we could... practice? To, uh. Get it right?"
Jonia beamed at it.
"We could do that."
And they did. A lot.
~~~
III. Jurassic Times
Tyrononsaurus Dex was a majestic creature, taller than most of his kind, standing proud in the face of the greatest danger. He was faster than most, too; a true runner if there had ever been one. He spent his days hunting down the Wraithociraptors that had killed his mother and his nest mates, leaving him the only one of their clan to survive. He also ate them; hey, he was a carnivore after all.
However self-sufficient Tyrononsaurus Dex might be, he still did not fight alone. A powerful ally lurked in the deep water just off the nearby coast, streamlined and deadly as Tyrononsaurus Dex drove another school of Wraithociraptors into the sea. He had met Plateylapterygia years ago, striking up a friendship with her that was perhaps a bit unlikely, but they both had a common goal: they wanted to see the Wraithociraptors dead.
But as well as the two of them had worked in tandem, recently they had become a quartet. Sheppardopteryx, a sleek black creature with feathered wings and sharp teeth, more often than not served as bait to lure the Wraithociraptors in, or draw them out of their nests. He was maybe the size of Tyrononsaurus Dex's forepaw, but also quick and agile and more than willing to risk his life for the greater good. The latter was much to the frustration of their oddest team member, Meredistrodon, who was even smaller than Sheppardopteryx and lived in constant fear of being eaten by something. Anything, really.
Meredistrodon had short, light-brown fur and an unending appetite for insects and tiny lizards. He also claimed to have the biggest brain in two megaforests - relative to body size, of course - and the general success rates of his plans for decimating the Wraithociraptors backed him.
Sheppardopteryx thought Meredistrodon was the best thing since the invention of flight. Meredistrodon in turn thought that Sheppardopteryx wasn't entirely stupid, which for him was practically the same sentiment.
Plateylapterygia thought the two of them were cute. Tyrononsaurus Dex just wanted to kill more Wraithociraptors, so he didn't care.
One day, they found a creature of a different kind, cowering in a newly-emptied nest of Wraithociraptors, surrounded by the bodies of its brethren. It was an ugly little thing, scrawny and covered in dark fur, its forelegs longer than its hindlegs. Meredistrodon wanted to call it a Mammal of Origins Not Known and Evidently Young. Sheppardopteryx whacked Meredistrodon over the head with a wing and named the creature "monkey." Plateylapterygia rolled her eyes but didn't disagree, so Tyrononsaurus Dex just nodded.
Whatever. He really didn't care.
But they kept the thing. After all, every great team needed a mascot.
~~~
IV. Homo Erectus
On hit Ro over head and drag Ro back to cave.
That teach Ro to ogle female. Touch better. On touch Ro best. Ro touch On best.
Female go be blonde somewhere else. On keep Ro for himself.
~~~
I. Tenochtitlan, ca. 1521
"So," Juán Separdo said as he leaned back in his golden chair, "I wasn't expacting the Huey Tlatoani to be quite so... pale. Or blond."
Rodnizuma, ruler of the Aztec Triple Alliance, waved his hand dismissively. "I am the son of Tonatiuh. The Sun," he added at Juán's blank expression. "Anyway, I wasn't expecting the conquistidas to be quite so..." he blatantly looked Juán up and down, "scrawny."
"Conquistadors," Juán said mildly.
"Yes, whatever." Rodnizuma waved his hand again. He really was surprisingly pale, and blond, and blue-eyed. He was also surprisingly alluring.
Juán shifted in his chair. Rodnizuma smirked at him.
"Say," he said, licking his lips, "are you familiar with xocolatl?"
"No," Juán said absently. Rodnizuma's lips looked all wet and shiny. "Is that a fruit?"
Rodnizuma's smirk widened. "Allow me to show you."
Later that night, sweaty and sticky and thoroughly blissed out, Juán turned to meet sleepy blue eyes and mumbled, "You know, I think our countries would be awesome together. How about reaching an agreement of mutual non-agression?"
"I'm sure we'll figure something out," Rodnizuma slurred, and reached for him again.
And that's how the United Spanish-Aztec Empire really started out.
~~~
Additional Notes: For your education, these are Teyla, Rodney and John as dinosaurs. Or not-dinosaurs, as the case may be.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~1500
Pairings: Meretron/Sheptron with hints at Dextron/Emmatron, Thecamoeba rodnia/Thecamoeba jonia, Sheppardopteryx/Meredistrodon, On/Ro, Juán Separdo/Rodnizuma
Warnings: crack, historical inaccuracies, biological impossibilities, fun with physics, crack, general ignorance in matters of the natural sciences, incidental genderswap (kind of), crack, wild speculation on the mating habits of homo erectus, a woeful lack of porn, and crack. Also, not beta-read.
Summary: "Hi, I'm Sheptron. Wanna fuse?"
Notes: For the cliche_bingo prompt of Historical AU (bingo card to be found here). pennyplainknits suggested a prehistorical AU, and no one could quite decide which kind of crack they wanted, so I wrote all of them. That'll learn ya.
ETA: You can download this as podfic thanks to the ever-lovely pennyplainknits! ♥
ETA2: Now also available in Russian, thanks to 4ip4irgan!
~~~
Four Times John and Rodney Furthered the Evolution of Mankind, and One Time They Just Changed History
I. Just After The Big Bang
Two minutes and fifty-three seconds after the universe burst into existence, it was already a battlefield. Countless hadrons and anti-hadrons, leptons and anti-leptons had annihilated each other until near-total eradication of their kind. Blobs of antimatter lurked to do in unsuspecting photons. At this point, Meretron was just waiting for the spontaneous creation of anti-neutrons to snuff him out as well.
"Hey!" A passing proton spun to face him, grinning wildly as they tumbled through the Expansion. "Great time to be, isn't it?"
"Considering time has been in existence for, oh, a whole three minutes now, I'm going to-"
"Hold that thought." The proton dipped and swerved to avoid a charged electron. Meretron gaped as the electron zipped by, missing the proton by... well, not by much, it looked like.
"Good reaction time," he admitted grudgingly when the proton had returned to his side.
"Yeah," the proton said. "Hey, listen, have you heard of this new helium thing?"
Meretron scoffed.
"What, you mean the nucleosynthesis of protons and neutrons into atoms? Of course I've heard of that."
"It's supposed to be safer than just floating around." The proton waggled his up quarks. "You're a neutron, aren't you?"
Meretron gaped at him.
"You... are you coming on to me?"
The proton grinned right back.
"Hi, I'm Sheptron. Wanna fuse?"
"Oh my Planck, does that line work on anyone?"
"I dunno. Does it?" Sheptron waggled his up quarks again. It looked ridiculously... cute. Meretron felt his own down quarks twitch in response.
Come to think of it, helium was rumoured to be safer than simply spinning through the Expansion on one's own, especially for a baryon with no net charge like him.
"Helium is made of two pairs," Meretron said shyly.
"Yeah. My friends Dextron and Emmatron already agreed to join in." Sheptron nudged closer. Their quarks sizzled as they brushed against each other. "We're gonna make a great team."
Meretron shivered pleasantly at the thought of what it might be like, to fuse with someone.
"Yeah," he said a little dazedly, "okay."
Turned out it was awesome.
~~~
II. Swimming in the Primordial Soup
Thecamoeba rodnia sighed, mournfully digesting three bacteria in its vacuoles. It had been inexplicably restless lately, consumed by a kind of... itch... that had the fine hairs on its cell membrane quiver with nervous energy.
"Eating again?" Thecamoeba jonia rolled through their nutrient-rich habitat, its own theca messy and significantly fuller than rodnia's own scattered hairs.
Rodnia sniffed and glomped on another bacterium, drawing it into its body.
"I have to eat regularly or I'll go into hibernation," it declared, and added, "As you well know."
"Yes, I know, life-threatening condition, very stressful, a wonder you've made it this far." As always, jonia displayed a complete lack of sympathy for rodnia's many hardships in life. Instead, it hovered in place and seemed to fidget.
Rodnia turned away and stretched one pseudopod after a passing archaeon. The itch was back, humming beneath its cell membrane, and jonia was the cause. Rodnia dreamed about them sometimes, when it was curled into a microbial cyst, drifting through the habitat until it bumped into something edible. It dreamed about touching jonia, enveloping it with every pseudopod it could form to press their bodies together until there was not a theca's breadth of space between them. It dreamed about the two of them joining, melting together in glorious passion until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
They would be so great together. Inseparable. Perhaps they could even create something entirely new, unlike any amoeba that had come before them.
But all rodnia's dreams were simply that: foolish hopes that would lead to nothing. It chased them away and concentrated instead on reeling the struggling archaeon in. Behind it, jonia was still fidgeting.
"Did you ever think about, you know... reproduction?" it blurted.
The archaeon struggled free, vanishing into the depths of the habitat and rodnia choked on its own vacuole and turned back around to boggle at jonia.
Rodnia turned back around, enveloping the archaeon in a vacuole as it boggled at jonia.
"Are you... What..." It pulled itself together, waving a pseudopod in jonia's direction. "This is hardly a conversation for mealtimes, is it? Also, my chromosomes aren't ready for mitosis." It crossed two of its other pseudopods over its cell membrane.
"I, uh, was thinking more like, um." Jonia seemed to be swimming in an ocean of discomfort. "You know. Conjugation? Or... something."
Rodnia stared at jonia. Could it be... did they share the same dream?
"I..." It shivered, anticipation bringing the itch that much closer to the surface. "Perhaps we could... practice? To, uh. Get it right?"
Jonia beamed at it.
"We could do that."
And they did. A lot.
~~~
III. Jurassic Times
Tyrononsaurus Dex was a majestic creature, taller than most of his kind, standing proud in the face of the greatest danger. He was faster than most, too; a true runner if there had ever been one. He spent his days hunting down the Wraithociraptors that had killed his mother and his nest mates, leaving him the only one of their clan to survive. He also ate them; hey, he was a carnivore after all.
However self-sufficient Tyrononsaurus Dex might be, he still did not fight alone. A powerful ally lurked in the deep water just off the nearby coast, streamlined and deadly as Tyrononsaurus Dex drove another school of Wraithociraptors into the sea. He had met Plateylapterygia years ago, striking up a friendship with her that was perhaps a bit unlikely, but they both had a common goal: they wanted to see the Wraithociraptors dead.
But as well as the two of them had worked in tandem, recently they had become a quartet. Sheppardopteryx, a sleek black creature with feathered wings and sharp teeth, more often than not served as bait to lure the Wraithociraptors in, or draw them out of their nests. He was maybe the size of Tyrononsaurus Dex's forepaw, but also quick and agile and more than willing to risk his life for the greater good. The latter was much to the frustration of their oddest team member, Meredistrodon, who was even smaller than Sheppardopteryx and lived in constant fear of being eaten by something. Anything, really.
Meredistrodon had short, light-brown fur and an unending appetite for insects and tiny lizards. He also claimed to have the biggest brain in two megaforests - relative to body size, of course - and the general success rates of his plans for decimating the Wraithociraptors backed him.
Sheppardopteryx thought Meredistrodon was the best thing since the invention of flight. Meredistrodon in turn thought that Sheppardopteryx wasn't entirely stupid, which for him was practically the same sentiment.
Plateylapterygia thought the two of them were cute. Tyrononsaurus Dex just wanted to kill more Wraithociraptors, so he didn't care.
One day, they found a creature of a different kind, cowering in a newly-emptied nest of Wraithociraptors, surrounded by the bodies of its brethren. It was an ugly little thing, scrawny and covered in dark fur, its forelegs longer than its hindlegs. Meredistrodon wanted to call it a Mammal of Origins Not Known and Evidently Young. Sheppardopteryx whacked Meredistrodon over the head with a wing and named the creature "monkey." Plateylapterygia rolled her eyes but didn't disagree, so Tyrononsaurus Dex just nodded.
Whatever. He really didn't care.
But they kept the thing. After all, every great team needed a mascot.
~~~
IV. Homo Erectus
On hit Ro over head and drag Ro back to cave.
That teach Ro to ogle female. Touch better. On touch Ro best. Ro touch On best.
Female go be blonde somewhere else. On keep Ro for himself.
~~~
I. Tenochtitlan, ca. 1521
"So," Juán Separdo said as he leaned back in his golden chair, "I wasn't expacting the Huey Tlatoani to be quite so... pale. Or blond."
Rodnizuma, ruler of the Aztec Triple Alliance, waved his hand dismissively. "I am the son of Tonatiuh. The Sun," he added at Juán's blank expression. "Anyway, I wasn't expecting the conquistidas to be quite so..." he blatantly looked Juán up and down, "scrawny."
"Conquistadors," Juán said mildly.
"Yes, whatever." Rodnizuma waved his hand again. He really was surprisingly pale, and blond, and blue-eyed. He was also surprisingly alluring.
Juán shifted in his chair. Rodnizuma smirked at him.
"Say," he said, licking his lips, "are you familiar with xocolatl?"
"No," Juán said absently. Rodnizuma's lips looked all wet and shiny. "Is that a fruit?"
Rodnizuma's smirk widened. "Allow me to show you."
Later that night, sweaty and sticky and thoroughly blissed out, Juán turned to meet sleepy blue eyes and mumbled, "You know, I think our countries would be awesome together. How about reaching an agreement of mutual non-agression?"
"I'm sure we'll figure something out," Rodnizuma slurred, and reached for him again.
And that's how the United Spanish-Aztec Empire really started out.
~~~
Additional Notes: For your education, these are Teyla, Rodney and John as dinosaurs. Or not-dinosaurs, as the case may be.