Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 32

Chapter 32 - Step Forty Two

Hermiod having beamed himself back the to the Daedalus, Eventus spent a few minutes working the extra things he now needed to get done into his already overloaded schedule before deciding these would be the last two things he added before he had a chance to take at least a week off to decompress properly.

Tapping the control crystal to open his door, Eventus took a moment to wave to the bored looking marine standing across from his door before heading down the hallway to the transport alcove.

“Sir?” The marine called out before Eventus made it more than a few steps. “Doctor Weir was hoping you could meet her in her office when you have the time.”

“Did she say what she wanted to talk about?” Eventus asked, frowning slightly as he considered the timetable he was running on.

“Something about weird things happening with the city.” He offered apologetically. 

“Weird?” Eventus repeated questioningly, the sheer number of things the word could fit, not exactly narrowing down whether it was something to be concerned about or not.

“I’ve been standing here for the past four hours.” The marine returned with a shrug. “All I’ve seen is a few curious Athosian kids who wanted to try and get a look at the Ancestor.”

That was fair, part of why Eventus had picked the apartment after all, was because it was in one of the quieter areas of the city.

“I have something I need to put on a crystal in the core interface room, but I can stop by on my way there, so tell her I'll be up in a few minutes.”

Continuing on his way, Eventus really hoped Sheppard hadn't done something unfortunate like test out the city's pulse weapons, or worse, turn off the holographic systems child safety locks. 

Thankfully a quick look out one of the windows after transporting to the central tower confirmed nothing had exploded, and he didn't see any naked holograms running around which meant they’d probably dodged that particular bullet. So with a passing wave to the people on gate room duty he made his way up to Weir's office where the woman looked to be busy going over something on her computer.

“Busy morning?” Eventus asked her as he walked in.

“You have no idea.” Weir offered with a sigh as she looked up from her laptop. “The Marines and Airmen got together and had a beach party at one of the shallows. A nurse spent two hours trapped on the ceiling of one of the quarantine bays. Hermiod disappeared from the Daedalus. People have started seeing and hearing ghosts. Doctor Donaldson and his entire team knocked themselves out while examining one of the labs and woke up purple. Major Sheppard called in sick. And General O'Neill wants me to figure out how to invite you back to Earth for coffee and donuts.”

Eventus took a moment to consider everything Weir had just said before focusing on the one that seemed most likely to require his immediate attention. “Are we talking about those jelly filled donuts Major Lorne has told me about, or the plain one's you serve in the cafeteria?”

“The SGC usually has a little of everything.” Weir answered primly as she clasped her hands together and put up an air of professionalism. “But I was hoping you might have some explanation for the ghosts given the sightings are beginning to cause a panic.”

“Atlantis is hardened against ghosts.” Eventus told her as he tried to think of what else they might be mistaking for psionic echoes, only to come up with too many different options to guess one way or another. “Are you talking about floating gas balls, indistinct humanoids, living shadow, living mist, or a softly glowing woman in white who looks like she could have been an archivist in a previous life?”

He wouldn't put it past Ganos Lal after all, the woman had loved her dramatics, and nothing he'd seen suggested ascension had changed that.

“Oddly specific.” Weir put forward as she gave him an odd look. “But those who've reported sightings describe them as transparent flickering humans speaking in Ancient.”

“Did your people find one of Janus's secret labs in the last few hours?” Eventus asked, wanting to eliminate the most dangerous options first.

“Not that I know of.” Weir said, frowning slightly at him.

“Then I can probably rule out temporal or dimensional bleed.” Eventus said, glad he wouldn’t have to deal with one of those messes. “Is there any specific area of the city where people are seeing them? Or something unique about the people in question?”

“No specific area of the city.” Weir returned. “We thought it might have been linked to the ATA gene at first since both of those who reported encounters possessed it. But then more reports came in from…

Weir stopped dead staring at something behind Eventus’s back with a very confused look on her face, and the Ancient turned to see what it was only to be left momentarily dumbfounded at the flickering image of High Councilor Moros that looked to be in the middle of glaring at Doctor Weir.

“Fifteen runtime boot for section twelve assembly.” The image voiced in ancient before winking out of existence.

“Okay.” Eventus said as he continued staring at the now empty space for a moment trying to work out what kind of system error could have caused a problem like that. “I’ll admit that’s a bit of a new one for me. It sounded somewhat like the gibberish I would expect to hear if I had an augmented reality uplink on and was experiencing the city’s virtual layer rebuild itself.”

Something the city would have automatically started doing when he had run the restoration protocol.

“But that didn’t look like a hologram.” He mused as he scratched his chin in thought. “Maybe someone left an experiment running and it’s causing virtual particle materialization due to information overflow from the rebuild.”

Eventus shook his head as he turned back to Weir, because whatever it was seemed generally harmless, and he had more important things to do then spend the rest of the day hunting that particular problem down.

“It’ll probably go away in a day or two when the city finishes bringing its data networks fully back online.” He told Weir before shooting the woman an amused grin. “And Hermiod had translocated down to my quarters to ask for some help with something.”

Leaning back in her chair, Weir seemed to contemplate his words for a moment before letting out a sigh. “I suppose Colonel Caldwell will be relieved to hear that.”

That left him briefly wondering if Hermiod had set the situation up to alarm them on purpose as he vaguely remembered the Asgard being less than happy about the assignment.

“Sorry I couldn’t be more help with the problem.” He put forward with a shrug. “But I have a half dozen things I still need to get done before heading out to recover the Aurora and Navis in a few hours.”

“Though that reminds me.” He continued as he shot a hopeful look to the expedition leader. “I really could use Sheppard and McKay’s help with the recovery efforts.”

He wasn’t exaggerating about that either, they were probably going to need to tow the Aurora to Taranis given how badly damaged it was. While getting the Navis back to the Lantea system would require either the same, or someone willing to sit in an environmental suit for the few days it would take the vessels slower hyperdrive to make the journey.

“Major Sheppard is currently down with something.” Weir reminded him, smiling slightly in a way that suggested there was more to that story then she was letting on. “However Doctor McKay has indicated he would be willing to come along on the recovery mission. Though he was rather hoping there would be room to bring his team with?”

Eventus pretended to consider the question for a moment while internally doing a cheer since more help on recovery missions was never a bad thing. 

“The Explorer class usually had a crew of three hundred, so I suppose it wouldn’t be a problem for a few more on top of Major Lorne’s team.”

“I’ll tell Doctor McKay.” Weir returned with a nod. “They should be on board and ready to go in three or four hours assuming nothing comes up.”

“I probably won’t be heading out for another six hours at least.” Eventus admitted as he considered the check he wanted to run on bio-lab forteen before heading out. “Eight if Doctor Beckett finds someone willing to take me up on my offer.”

“About that.” Weir put forward in a suddenly cautious tone. “While I'll admit the thought of gaining access to your peoples medical knowledge is very tempting. There must be a less risky way to do it than to utilize a device which may not even be compatible with our physiology.”

“Of course there is.” Eventus said, seeing no reason to lie about something so obvious. “But do any of us have the years it would likely take one of your medical specialists to learn how to operate something as generally simple as even just a cellular regeneration field?”

“The calibration for something like that needs to be carried out mentally in real time if you want to do anything particularly complex.”

It was honestly impressive the Goa'uld had been able to engineer everything they had out of a portable field unit that was even less user friendly to people without the interface gene then the fixed units in the city. But Eventus supposed they wouldn't have been as generally successful as they were if they didn't have at least some scientific ability.

“Which is especially relevant now.” He continued, somewhat annoyed that Doctor Weir was being so reasonably cautious about the offer. “Because without people able to run that particular medical system, any survivors on the Aurora are likely to be all but moribund.”

Assuming the ship's medical officers survived, they wouldn't even be able to use the stasis pods neural interface to do it themselves without Eventus jury rigging a connection between Atlantis's normally isolated medical systems and the city's virtual layer. Not a particular simple task either given the various safeties he would need to work around to do it.

“I thought it might be something like that when Doctor Beckett mentioned the ability to reverse aging.” Weir confessed as she reached over and closed her still open laptop. “Which is part of why I am so hesitant to accept Doctor Beckett's request to make the attempt.”

Taken in context Eventus could see how Weir might have thought he was pushing a moderately risky procedure for expediency's sake. However there had been more than one reason he had dangled the offer in front of Doctor Beckett instead of asking Doctor Weir directly.

“There would be no risk to Doctor Beckett.” He explained, letting out a tired sigh and shuffling slightly in place. “He possesses a naturally active expression of the interface gene. Which means his brain would have formed the necessary neural structures needed to accept the amount of information that would be needed to become medically proficient.”

“But there would be a risk to others.” Weir said as she leaned forward slightly and gave him an expectant look.

“It depends on the amount of information.” Eventus confessed, biting back his minor annoyance since he knew she was just looking out for the wellbeing of her people. “For this in specific? There would be a small amount of risk for people who had the gene artificially activated, a moderate amount of risk for people with an inactive gene, and a high risk to people without any form of the gene at all.”

“Mind you.” He continued with a slight head tilt of acknowledgement. “If your people are anything like ours there would likely be one in a million outliers who don’t possess the gene and would be fine. But the statistical likelihood of that is self evident.”

With the risk itself being that their brain wouldn’t be able to handle the amount of information and basically begin shutting down, not dissimilar to what he remembered nearly happening to O’Neil the two times he’d downloaded an entire database into his brain.

“That’s not even remotely reassuring.” Weir said as she let out a sigh. “And my recommendation to Doctor Beckett would have reflected that, except the IOA have already overruled me on the issue.”

Considering just what that likely meant, Eventus could see why she had been all but digging for something she could use to shoot down the idea. But Doctor Beckett was a likeable enough man that Eventus wouldn’t have put forward the suggestion if he thought there was any risk to him from it. 

“If you want to immigrate to Atlantis, we’re currently accepting new citizenship applications.” He offered with a quirk lipped grin. 

“Tempting.” Weir returned with a light laugh as a defeated look briefly flashed across her features. “But I’ll have to pass.”

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Author’s Notes: I didn’t mean for the last 3 chapters to get so large… In this case however I just couldn’t find a good end point, till I did. So enjoy the chapter.