Exogenesis

by Sonny Whitelaw;Elizabeth Christensen

  He tossed her a humorless grin. "Let's just say that, if I lose my flight status, it won't be due to a medical condition."

  As soon as they reached the control room, Rodney and Radek went to side-by-side computer terminals, periodically grabbing hold of the edges of the table to maintain their balance. After watching for a moment, Nabu rested the exogenesis machine on a chair and stepped in. Without a word, Rodney moved aside to allow him access, a fact that John found telling. Whatever had happened between them back on Polrusso had triggered something in Rodney that John hadn't fully believed existed: humility, or at least a recognition that someone in the galaxy actually knew more than Rodney did.

  "This preliminary data suggests that the machine was not properly programmed. As yet I can find no real plan, only a series of discrete, open-ended events," Nabu determined.

  "That fits with what Carson said." At the Polrusson's questioning look, Elizabeth explained about the pods. "Ea was driven by grief," she concluded, "and convinced that our presence in Atlantis was inviting a Wraith incursion. Destroying the city seemed to be her only goal "

  "Ea andAtlas. Their story is more complicated than you know..." Nabu's voice trailed off, and a strange expression crossed his face. "To have come so far." Shaking his head in regret, he turned back to the computer. "Ea knew full well the potential of the exogenesis device, but perhaps you are correct in saying that grief clouded her mind. That haphazardness may be to our advantage. Once I deter mine her exact sequence, I can program a reversal and shutdown." He pulled up additional data, which began to flow down the screen in a familiar if still incomprehensible Ancient pattern.

  "To effect an immediate response," Nabu added, "it will be best to insert the second machine into the planet's crust at its thinnest point, so that it will quickly burrow through to the mantle and draw the required energy."

  John glanced at Rodney, but the anticipated info dump wasn't forthcoming. Elizabeth's eyes narrowed in concern. "Rodney? Any thoughts on that?"

  "Uh...yes." More evidence as to their chief scientist's state of mind. The man looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his life and then handed him the pieces. "Yes, of course. That would generally be the deepest part of the ocean, where two tectonic plates are converging. Radek?"

  "There is a trench." Already typing at a near-inhuman rate, Radek brought up a bathymetric chart on the main screen and pointed. "Depth is comparable to the Mariana Trench on Earth. The lithosphere is very thin, and there are also several hydrothermal vents here."

  Rodney was nodding his approval, which John took as a good sign. "If we release the machine into a vent, it'll have a head start"

  "Oh.... No, that is not good." Radek sat back in his chair and brought a hand to his mouth, then abruptly sat forward and began typing again. A new stream of data flowed across the screen.

  Looking over his shoulder, Rodney paled. "That's bad. Exceedingly bad."

  "Yes." Radek's voice held the sort of hushed awe that John had learned to really, really hate. Before anyone could ask for clarification, he pointed. "The ocean is rapidly transforming, but instead of remaining inert, the nanites have become... activated."

  If the expression on Rodney's face was worrying, Nabu looked positively ill. "The program is neither random nor open-ended. It was not designed to destroy Atlantis. On the contrary... Ea." The name was almost a sigh, but it held an edge of pure terror. The Polmsson pushed his chair back and stood. "This is no longer a matter of saving one world. We must leave. Now. I will program Atlas's machine on the journey."

  Confused, Elizabeth began to speak, but Nabu wasn't finished. "You have the means to return to your own galaxy through the Stargate?"

  "The necessary crystal is at the Alpha site, but we need a ZPM." The words tumbled over each other. This was definitely panicRodney, not excitement-Rodney.

  "We can't remove the ZPM from here, of course," interjected Radek, "because we need it to power the 'gate to get there-not to mention maintain the shield."

  Nabu's gaze bored into Elizabeth. "Take all who remain in the city to this Alpha site." To Lorne and Witner, hovering in the background, he said, "You must return to Polrusso and tell my people that in her grief, Ea unleashed the final program. If we fail to contact you within three hours, go to the laboratory and remove the ZPM from the matrix." At the shock on everyone's faces, he added, "My people will not stop you. I would ask you to allow as many as are willing to come with you to your Alpha site." He turned again to Elizabeth. "From there, use the ZPM to leave this galaxy. And never, under any circumstance, should you return." He snatched up the exogenesis machine and raced up the steps to the jumper bay, his coat flapping behind him like a dark wing.

  John looked to Rodney for an explanation and found his teammate sharing a moment of silent panic with Radek.

  "Rodney?" Elizabeth asked, but she was talking to Rodney's back because he was already on Nabu's heels.

  Radek grabbed his and Rodney's respective packs and sped after him, leaving the rest of them no choice but to follow. Fortunately, Rodney had perfected the art of delivering a succinct commentary on the run. Distraught as he was, his focus grew, as always, proportionally to the magnitude of the crisis. "Ea knew everything that Carson knew. She knew how we'd respond-how I would respond. The storm, the nanites and seismic waves; all of it was aimed at getting us to abandon Atlantis."

  "She did not wish to destroy it?" Teyla asked.

  "No," Radek replied simply, struggling with the packs until John relieved him of the larger one. "Ea wanted to give the nanites access to the Stargate." He almost fell when the city heaved hard to one side.

  "Oh, God," Elizabeth breathed.

  In a cold burst of comprehension, John got the picture.

  Teyla, however, was apparently still confused. "I do not understand."

  "Me neither," Ronon put in for good measure, his boots clomping heavily on the steps.

  Without pausing, Elizabeth answered, "Ea said that our presence in Atlantis exposed `entire galaxies' to the Wraith. She also said that `Everything that should have been destroyed remains.' She wasn't talking about Atlantis; otherwise she wouldn't have entered a stasis pod with the expectation of surviving. She was talking about everything else-the entire Pegasus Galaxy!"

  Stunned, Teyla halted, only to be nearly run over by Ronon. "That's what your people call overkill, isn't it?" the Satedan said.

  "Not for an Ancient," Elizabeth countered. "They created all life in our galaxy with a machine."

  "And last year, the almighty Ascended weren't averse to letting Anubis use that same machine to wipe out all life and recreate the galaxy to his taste" Rodney called over his shoulder, his voice projected so that he could be heard over the noise of the storm.

  "As with replicators," Radek explained when they reached the jumper bay, "activated nanites can take on whatever form they've been programmed to adopt. Instead of breaking down everything, they can go into stealth mode and, once inside the city, infest the dialing computer."

  "Like Beckett's stealth virus," John said, recalling the doctor's description.

  "Yes, I believe so. His knowledge undoubtedly gave her the idea." Radek's face was pinched as he caught his breath.

  John fished the jumper's remote out of his pocket and opened the hatch. "Maybe we should conveniently forget to mention that detail to Beckett" One hyper-traumatized teammate at a time was enough.

  "At that point, the nanites could easily dial out to every Stargate in this galaxy-probably simultaneously-allowing them to destroy everything before beginning a new `life' program," Rodney added.

  "Similar to initializing a hard drive before re-booting a computer." Radek dropped his pack and pulled out his datapad.

  "This is an entire galaxy!" Lome sounded justifiably affronted. "It's a little more than a computer."

  Radek shrugged. "Perhaps a very large Petri dish?"

  "Grab every power cell you can lay your hands on," Rodney barked at Lome and the other Marines wh
o had followed them into the bay. "Load them all into Jumper One. We're going to need all the juice we can get."

  John lowered Rodney's pack, strode inside and up to the cockpit, and initiated startup procedures without even sitting down. "So we need to fly Atlas's exogenesis machine into the trench and plant it inside one of those vents in the planet's crust?" he asked, making sure he had the big picture. The details he could pick up on the way.

  "Preferably without boiling whoever does the inserting," replied Rodney. John glanced back to see him standing outside the hatch, staring at Radek. "Those vents are putting out a lot more heat than your average Jacuzzi."

  Radek looked up. "Then, of course, there are the activated nanites-"

  "And the possible consequences of interacting with a time differential."

  Right, couldn't forget that. Because he'd had so much fun during their last adventure with time dilation.

  "Somebody's going to have to lean out the hatch to drop the machine," Rodney continued. "It's going to be a bit of a high-wire act."

  "I will do it," Teyla said without a moment's hesitation, earning John's respect once again. She was the most agile of them all and would have the best chance of getting it right.

  "We'll put you in a HAZMAT suit and have someone anchor you-"

  "Me," Ronon put in, his tone allowing no discussion. In spite of the situation, John had to smile. For better or worse, his team stuck together.

  Elizabeth stepped back to allow Lorne, arms loaded with power cells, into the jumper. Turning to Rodney and Radek, she said, "As soon as you're through the 'gate, I'll have everyone from the Daedalus leave for the Alpha site. Lome and Witner, you'll be on standby on Polrusso. When you get there, shut down the 'gate and redial Atlantis so that we can keep in contact and transfer the ZPM quickly if necessary." She met John's gaze. "I'll need you to leave me your access code. It won't be necessary, of course, but if you don't succeed, I'll need two codes to set the city to self-destruct."

  Radek gave her a somber look. "That will not be sufficient "

  Once again, comprehension hit them all like a slap in the face. Despite the swaying motion of the city, Elizabeth stood straighter, and nodded. "I'll remain behind at the Alpha site."

  John had always admired Elizabeth for reasons that went beyond leadership skills, because not all leaders, no matter how great, were prepared to go down with the ship. The city's self-destruct wouldn't damage the 'gate, and the crystal necessary to dial Earth would be left behind at the Alpha site after the expedition had departed. If Ea's intent had been to `reset' the Pegasus galaxy to zero, there would be nothing to prevent the active nanites from accessing Earth and who knew how many other galaxies whose addresses were secreted away in the bowels of some Ancient database.

  After a pause, during which Rodney must have racked his brain for another solution, he finally said, "To destroy the crystal, open a wormhole to anywhere and toss it into the vortex."

  There were a lot of things John wanted to say to Elizabeth in that moment-about what they were about to do, and about everything they'd done over the past two years. All the words that came to mind seemed inadequate, and so he took the coward's way out. "Saddle up, everyone. Time to leave"

  "I will come" Radek immediately stepped inside the jumper, surprising the hell out of John. "I have had less... excitement these last days"

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Rodney shook his head. "You hate playing submariner. Don't be ridiculous. I'll do it."

  "But I in fact want to go," the Czech persisted. "True, I have not yet learned to swim, but I realize that I must face my fears."

  "Oh, as opposed to me, because I obviously can't handle it?"

  "That is not what I said."

  Radek's calm tone must have tipped the balance, because Rodney snarled, "You're coddling me! I don't need to be coddled!"

  "Guys!" John was ready to put floaties on both of them. "That ZPM's not going to hold back the nanites forever. Flip a damn coin and let's get this over with." It was a gamble, he knew, but he needed Rodney to snap out of it. He turned back to the control panel.

  "I'm not flipping a coin, and I'm not arguing. I'm leaving." Rodney stepped inside and took his place in the cockpit beside John, Nabu following behind.

  "Then I will wait here with Dr. Weir," Radek called after him. "Perhaps I can improve the self-destruct."

  "Oh, so now he thinks he can blow things up better than me," Rodney sniffed.

  A little of his usual swagger had returned with that comment. It would have to do. John tossed a last look over his shoulder at Elizabeth, Radek, and Lome, as Ronon closed the hatch. "Don't start the apocalypse without us"

  ooking at our choices, I think we'll take the low road," Colonel Sheppard suggested when Jumper One emerged through the bay doors.

  Teyla had sensed only disorder, not malice, from the nanites when she and Lieutenant Corletti had taken Jumper Three into the gray goo. If her understanding was correct, that situation was now changing. The storm outside Atlantis's force field made the one that had threatened the mainland seem feeble by comparison. Black and gray fluid swirled across the energy bubble with an almost tangible intent to burst in. Bright flashes periodically erupted against the shield; lightning bolts of a sort, perhaps, arcing across the surface in spidery veins of green and purple.

  Seated beside her, Nabu was looking down at the city below, his eyes shining with appreciation. Despite the tempest beyond and the absence of illumination now that the city had been powered down, it was an impressive sight, one that Teyla had never failed to admire. Its loss would indeed be tragic, for so many reasons.

  "The ocean directly beneath the city shield is still unaffected," Rodney announced from the front right seat. His eyes darted between the datapad in his hand and the electric display outside. "The nanites are beginning to absorb energy from the shield, which means even with the replacement ZPM we may run out of time."

  "How long?" Sheppard asked, angling Jumper One down toward a relatively calm patch of water between the south and west piers of the city.

  "The nanites are now operating within their own temporal field, so time isn't easily quantifiable. From our perspective, I'd say three hours is radically optimistic."

  "To drain an entire ZPM?" Sheppard didn't hide his disbelief.

  "It would not be hours from the point of view of the nanites, Colonel Sheppard," Nabu explained. "For them it would be thousands of years." He barely flinched when the jumper plunged beneath the surface of the ocean.

  "Okay, explain that," Ronon declared, voicing Teyla's thoughts as well. "How does a bunch of gray stuff have a point of view?"

  "Because each and every nanite is encased in its own individual, micro-thin temporal distortion field." Rodney's clipped explanation provided no enlightenment, but before Ronon could question further, their attention was diverted to the HUD. "We may have an even bigger problem."

  "Problems don't get bigger than this, Rodney," Sheppard said under his breath, his gaze apprehensive as he studied the display. The depth of the ocean beneath Atlantis had been reduced by some fifty meters and was becoming shallower with every moment that passed.

  "The goo in the atmosphere is converting the water from the surface down." Rodney adjusted the display to show their projected path to the submarine trench. It was not, as Teyla had hoped, simply a matter of going deeper. Instead, they would be required to negotiate a passage across hundreds of miles, traversing several shallow areas-some of which would soon be engulfed by the rapidly spreading grayness. "Don't use the external lights," Rodney warned. "We're going to need every one of those power cells and then some. At the rate the nanites are converting the ocean, our chances of getting back are looking slim."

  Sheppard continued to guide the jumper down through a darkness made absolute by the storm over Atlantis. "Well, I think all of us understood going in that this might be a one-way trip."

  Teyla had already prepared herself for that. It pained her to be separated from
her people, to risk leaving them to fend for themselves in a new galaxy if this mission failed. But she was doing this in the hope of preventing just such a possibility. She could not have lived comfortably with her people in a new land, knowing that her absence from this mission might have doomed it to failure. Nor could she have lived comfortably with the loss of the thousands of other people in this galaxy-many of whom she had come to know as friends-because she had chosen to desert them.

  She glanced around at the others in the jumper. Ronon, who carried deeper wounds than perhaps any of them truly understood, had refused to remain hunted and instead became the hunter. Colonel Sheppard, for whom the term loyalty was not a word, but an etching on his soul. And Rodney, whose loss of Turpi had revealed a lonely spirit that craved acceptance. These men were also her family, and there could be no greater honor than to die in their company. "Do you believe the nanites will attempt to stop our passage?" she asked.

  "They are not conscious in that sense." Nabu had lifted the exogenesis machine in his hands and was manipulating one end, as if he were fashioning a piece of clay. "But the time differential they are now employing will impact this ship's shield in the same way that it will Atlantis's." Under his fingers, the strange material moved across the surface, as if imbued with a life of its own. The ocher colors within changed hue, becoming yellow, then shifting to turquoise.

  "Coming up on the city shield," Sheppard stated.

  "Setting our shield to match ...now." Rodney's eyes narrowed in concentration, and he stared intently at the HUD.

  The transition was uneventful, the oceanic world outside the jumper's force field remaining dark and without apparent form. The only indication of their movement was the route track displayed on the HUD. "So if we come into contact with nanites," Sheppard asked, "that means our power will be drained faster than normal?"