Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 86

Chapter 86 - Lunch Conversations

In the end only Shen decided to join him for lunch, something he wasn’t particularly put out about as it was only really her and Colonel Chekov who hit the point of being interesting enough that he wasn’t adverse to spending long amounts of time with them.

“Perfect?” Shen asked in confusion.

“My people didn’t really cook in the manner you’d think of it.” Eventus offered with a shrug before taking another bite of his sandwich. “Food was assembled from base molecules that were then either excited or slowed to the optimum temperature for whatever was created.”

“In theory of course you can duplicate pretty much any food using that technique.” He continued upon seeing the lack of understanding on Shen's face. “In practice however unless someone scans something in as a template, or manually constructs one molecule by molecule, what you get is basically a computer optimized version of whatever it is you're asking for.”

A look of sudden understanding flashed across Shen's face. “So what you enjoy is the uncertainty the human element brings to food.”

“Exactly.” Eventus agreed with a grin, picking up a french fry and shaking it slightly for emphasis. “Everything from the growth of the tuber, to the number of prior uses of the oil, up to the amount of seasoning put on it is a point of randomness.”

He popped the fry into his mouth.

“And that's not even counting the trace amounts of heavy metals in both the tuber and salt that the synthesizers have safeguards against duplicating.”

Shen paused with a fry halfway to her lips. “Heavy metals?”

“Trace amounts.” Eventus reassured her. “Even after a hundred years the buildup would only have minimal effects on your biological systems. And it's not like we didn't have ways to remove the buildup and reverse any damage done. But energy wise it was considered more efficient to minimize the buildup in the first place.”

And heavy metal removal was still a part of the “general health optimization” most of his people tended to go in for every couple hundred years. Not that he’d ever had to bother himself of course since his powers did pretty much the same thing.

Eyeing the fry for a moment Shen shook her head lightly before biting it in half. “I have to admit, the fact that your people have medical technology that can cure functionally everything is causing quite the stir in various circles of government.”

“Do you mean the panacea, or just in general?” Eventus inquired, because that particular treatment was probably a lot more limited than the humans realized.

“The panacea?” She repeated as her brow scrunched together in confusion.

“That’s what we called the treatment for the Ori plague.” Eventus explained, taking note of the fact Rayla had just walked in to join the commissary line. “It basically re-engineers a person's immune system to attack any sort of carbon based virus or bacterial infection. I’m a bit surprised the IOA hasn’t been briefed on it yet given we already delivered the first shipment of a hundred thousand doses to the SGC.”

“The briefing for it is likely on the agenda.” Shen admitted in a sour tone. “But we’ve been somewhat overwhelmed the last few days with all the people from Atlantis we need to meet with.”

Given everything they must have been dealing with in regards to the offer Eventus had given them, that wasn’t even remotely surprising, though it did bring up a couple questions. “Have you met with Teyla yet?” 

“That’s the representative from Athosia, right?” Shen asked, continuing when Eventus gave a nod. “We’re scheduled to meet with her on Thursday.”

“I’ll probably still be in Antartica running repair programs to get Atrokiri back into a general semblance of working order.” He returned with a sigh. “It would be a lot easier if I could use the ZPM of course since I could just attenuate the outpost’s shield to melt the ice and push out the water. But I can understand your people’s caution on that front given the destructive capabilities of the outposts drones.”

Give control of the things to someone who knew how to properly manipulate their field projectors and they could do a lot more than the humans likely suspected. But of course that was true for most of his people’s technology.

The familiar flash of a familiar form caught the corner of his eye moments before Rayla set her tray down on their table and plopped down next to him. 

Ignoring the look of bemusement on Eventus’s face at the unprompted choice of seats, the Elf offered a happy smile to Shen. “Hello, I’m Rayla.”

“Shen Xiaoyi.” The Chinese woman returned with a light smile. “But you may call me Xiaoyi.”

Eventus blinked as that dredged up a long buried memory about eastern naming conventions. And he only just avoided facepalming as the realization hit that he'd been getting the woman's first and last names mixed up the entire time he'd known her.

“Oh!” Rayla exclaimed, visibly perking up in excitement. “You're the IOA representative from China, aren't you?”

“Yes?” Xiaoyi confirmed, clearly as uncertain as Eventus himself about where Rayla was going with things.

“Eventus told me last night about the vacation you promised to take him on.” The elf continued, headless of the mental message to stop talking that Eventus was now trying to send her. “And the names of the places you have to visit sound really interesting like the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Beach, and even the Giant Stone Buddha.”

Hanging his head, Eventus silently bemoaned the fact that he had never been able to get Janus's phasecloak to work. Because disappearing through the floor was sounding more and more appealing by the minute.

“I mean.” She went on, cocking her head slightly in a way that made her braid dangle precariously off her shoulder. “I don’t know what a Buddha is, but being giant and made of stone makes it sound like something from a movie. And I’d really like to see something like that, so can I come too?”

The corner of Xiaoyi's lips twitched slightly before her eyes flicked from Rayla's ears to her silver-blond hair and she gave an apologetic shake of her head. “I'm sorry to say that would be more than a little difficult to get authorized given how much you stand out.”

“Vala was right.” Rayla muttered, pouting down at her jello bowl for a moment before taking a big bite of her sandwich. “Being as hot as we are can be a curse.”

Eventus felt his eyebrow twitch, and for a moment he wondered just what sorts of things the body swapped woman had been talking about during her time watching Rayla before deciding it was probably better he didn't know.

Glancing back at him, Xiaoyi’s eyes visibly traced over his body as the corner of her lips crept upwards into an appreciative smile. “True, but in this case it’s more that your ears and hair make you visibly stand out as something other than human.”

There were any number of ways they could explain it away of course, and that was assuming there would even be anyone around during the tour of various Chinese locations that wasn’t secretly a part of China’s government and actually in on the whole visiting alien thing. Nonetheless Eventus wasn’t going to push the issue as he really didn’t want to spend the entire time he was supposed to be relaxing and enjoying the sights wrangling an overexcited Elf experiencing her first time out in the world proper.

“Tomorrow we’re going to see Antarctica and a couple days after that we’re going to be roaming around the solar system investigating old ruins.” He pointed out to distract her from the idea. “So there will be more than enough sights for you to see before all this is over.”

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Author’s Notes: You know, I had to actually hunt down the meaning and usage of Shen Xiaoyi’s first and last names when writing the chapter with her POV in it. And I was more than a little surprised to find out the Stargate writers had actually gotten the “surname first given name second” thing right for the character. Just another thing to add to the list of weird lookups.