Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 126

Chapter 126 - Be Careful What You Wish For - Part 1

They'd eaten a brisk breakfast filled with small talk and subtext that had left Eventus

Chapter 126 - Be Careful What You Wish For - Part 1

They'd eaten a brisk breakfast filled with small talk and subtext that had left Eventus with the distinct feeling that Xiaoyi was moderately jealous of Jun's looks. Something he found more than a little bemusing given last night's experiences had made it abundantly clear that the Xiaoyi took meticulous care of her own appearance.

After they had finished, Xiaoyi had asked if he could let her look around the inside of the gate ship for an earring she might have lost. A common enough occurrence for people who wore ones that didn't utilize an electrostatic bonding effect.

“I'm very sorry about this.” Xiaoyi apologized again as the ramp to the gate ship lowered. “The earrings were a gift from my mother, and I'd be absolutely crushed if it turns out I actually lost one.”

“I understand.” Eventus said, letting the subtext of the words hang for a moment before motioning that it was safe to enter the small ship. “I have a few sentimental items of my own like that back on Atlantis.”

Letting her enter before following behind, he tapped the bottom to close the hatch to save her the trouble. Waiting a few seconds for it to finish closing, Eventus turned and raised an eyebrow at the Chinese woman. “So what was it you wanted to talk about away from potentially prying ears?”

Straightening up from what she was pretending to look for her earring around the jumper seats, she shot him a look of honest surprise. “You knew?”

Giving a shrug, he walked over to sit down on one of the jumper seats across from her. “You know how powerful my personal interface is, if you were actually looking for a missing earring you could have just brought the other to me and asked me to scan for its missing twin.”

Xiaoyi blinked, and then reached a hand up to massage her temples. “Right, I completely forgot about that.”

“Oh.” Eventus returned dumbly.

“I suppose I should have expected something like this.” Xiaoyi muttered under her breath before flopping down into the seat next to her.

“You made me younger.” She stated without further preamble.

“Yes?” Eventus confirmed, not sure where the woman might be going with this. “If this is about the offer to marry me, I fully understand that was rhetorical.” He frowned. “Unless I just completely misread things there, in which case I think we should get to know each other a bit more before even considering a step like that.”

His relationship with Dea had been unfortunately hampered on that front by the fact that both of them had jobs that regularly dragged them to opposite ends of the galaxy for months on end.

“No…” Xiaoyi returned dryly. “That was me being rhetorical, like I thought your offer to have me feeling ten years younger was.”

Eventus cocked his head in confusion. “You thought I was being rhetorical?”

“Yes!” Xiaoyi exclaimed, throwing her arms up to add extra an emphasis to the word. “I didn't even know that was something you could actually do!”

Eventus didn’t even try to hide his surprise at hearing that. “Really? I thought the Atlantis expedition would have told you about that given Doctor Beckett’s performing similar procedures on the crew of the Aurora.”

“On your people.” Xiaoyi stressed. “With a machine built into your extraordinarily advanced spaceship city.”

“It works on humans too.” Eventus pointed out. “Didn't Beckett put that in this report?”

Everything about the safety and use of the healing device would have been in the knowledge download he received after all. So it was odd to think he wouldn't have added that particular bit of information to his reports.

“I even reminded Doctor McKay just last week that expedition members were free to avail themselves of the technology in that manner.” 

Though he wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the man had ‘forgotten’ to mention that to anyone else given the giant inferiority complex he had.

“As to the part where it requires a machine, those machines were made by studying people with the gift of healing. Anything they can do, we can do,” He cocked his head as he considered various technicalities around that. “at least in theory.”

Directed genetic manipulation was thankfully one of those ‘in theory’ parts. Requiring either a gift strength in the 99.9th percentile. A split gift between healing and telekinesis. Or access to one of the extraordinarily rare psionic amplifiers.

Grimacing as the idea settled in that he might have made a mistake by healing Xiaoyi like that, he looked into her eyes and offered an apologetic grin. “Did you not want to be younger?”

“No woman approaching forty doesn’t want to be ten years younger.” Xiaoyi returned dryly before letting out a sigh and slumping back against the seat. “But that’s the problem.” She grimaced. “Do you know how many people on Earth would kill for ten extra years?”

“No.” Eventus replied honestly, somewhat confused about why she thought that mattered given how close their own technology had to be to duplicating that. “But Stargate Command has the core unit for a healing array, and with access to Atlantis added to that your people are probably twenty years away at worst from being able to create a lesser version of the technology for your own use.”

Sure it would have probably taken them thousands of years to reach that point if they were starting from scratch. But they were treading a path that his people had already walked and hadn’t bothered to remove their guide markers from.

Xiaoyi took a deep breath and then clasped her hands together in her lap. “Do you understand what would happen if Doctor Weir reported that the healing devices on Atlantis could be used to reverse the age of humans?”

“Your governments would push to prioritize research into the technology so you could create your own?” Eventus guessed as he mentally ran through the most likely possibilities.

“No.” Xiaoyi began in an oddly resigned tone that suggested she had at least somewhat expected his answer. “They would spend the next twenty years fighting over access to it.”

Eventus rolled his eyes. “I extended my offer of use to the Atlantis expedition, not your governments.” He bobbed his head in personal acknowledgement of the fact that there was actually another group of humans who would be allowed to use the technology. “The only other humans who will be allowed to do so are those who immigrate to Atlantis. And the standards for that are a good deal higher than they are for getting into the expedition itself.”

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Author’s Notes: And that is literally the first time anyone has heard that he plans to allow immigration to the city. Which is going to cause all sorts of waves, especially when he puts forward the actual criteria for that.