Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 29

Chapter 29 - Overtime Work

“Try checking the tertiary control systems for an incomplete looking program that appears to dead end in the control chair.” McKay told Zelenka as John approached the control room console the two were hovering over. 

“That’s nearly a quarter of the city’s tertiary programs Rodney.” Zelenka returned in a tone that suggested he had been trying to get the man to realize that for some time. 

“Yes.” Rodney began in a tone that threaded the line between patient and annoyed. “But when I say dead end I mean completely dead end. Like the drones.”

“But drone control also interfaces with a number of secondary city systems.” Zelenka pointed out in clear exasperation at McKay’s less than helpful description.

McKay rolled his eyes before tapping on the screen of one of the half dozen laptops they had open in front of them. “Only when it’s already been initialized. Prior to that it was a completely dead end program whose only access point was the control chair.”

“Bad time?” John interrupted, knowing when things got like that both of the pair were rapidly reaching the point they needed to take a break.

“No.” McKay admitted with a sigh as he pushed back his chair and took a moment to stretch. “We’re just trying to locate and bring online the city’s maintenance drones.”

“Assuming the city even has those.” Zelenka muttered in annoyance as he began typing something on one of the laptops.

“Yes, well, let’s assume it does.” McKay snapped in annoyance before turning to John. “So what problem has Atlantis’s illustrious new Councilor decided to drop at my foot today?”

“Funny.” John deadpanned, having already steeled himself for the numerous jokes he knew were coming. “But there's a couple things.”

“Starting with the big one though, is there any chance the city's alive?” He continued before quickly clarifying since long experience had taught him that was sometimes needed with McKay so he wouldn’t just think someone was being dumb. “Not like you and me of course, but in the artificial intelligence sense?”

“No.” McKay immediately refused.

“Well.” Zelenka added in uncertainly as he looked up from the laptop. “There have been a few odd occurrences.”

“Those were just the city's adaptive systems at work.” McKay corrected in a tone that suggested they'd had this same argument a number of times before.

“What brought this up?” The scientist continued, crossing his arms and focusing on John. 

“Evan said the hologram room was a direct pathway to the city’s virtual intelligence.” John put forward, still unsure just what that was.

“Told you.” Zelenka put forward smugly.

“You only guessed that it was more than just a holographic projection system.” McKay shot back as he turned a quick glare to the smugly grinning man. “But that wasn’t particularly hard to figure out given how insanely high the power draw was compared to our own attempts to duplicate Asgard holographic systems.”

McKay focused back on him with a frown. “But you’re sure he said the city’s virtual intelligence?”

“Yeah.” John confirmed with a nod, having made a mental note of it due to how close it sounded to artificial intelligence.

“Then probably no.” McKay said.

“Probably?” John repeated in concern, because there was a significant difference between that and the man's earlier answer.

“If the city's digital infrastructure is governed by a virtual intelligence.” McKay began.

“Which would fit with what we've been seeing since plugging in the ZPM.” Zelenka added in, still sounding moderately smug about the whole issue.

“Then the best I can give you is a probably no.” McKay continued, not deigning to five Zelenka's not so subtle bragging a further response. “The basic idea of virtual intelligence is something that can mimic the behavior of a sentient being without actually being self aware.”

“That sounds like a really fine line.” John muttered as he considered just what that might mean for them.

McKay shrugged. “Hence the probably.”

Which meant it would probably be safest to work under the assumption that the city was alive until they knew for sure it wasn't. But that did put them in a bit of an awkward position given the other thing he needed to talk to McKay about.

“Either way.” John began, really hoping what he was about to ask was actually doable. “I'm going to need your teams to figure out a way to keep the city from digging into our computers.” 

The supremely annoyed look McKay gave him at that request wasn't in any way reassuring. “Is there anything else utterly impossible you'd like done? Because the only way to prevent that entirely would be to completely disconnect our computers from Atlantis's systems.”

“And even that may not work given the city's wireless capabilities.” Zelenka interjected, sounding moderately apologetic about voicing the possibility.

“Okay.” John said with a frown as he switched tracks. “We'll move on to plan C then and do it old school, anything classified goes on paper.”

The two exchanged a brief look of distinct uncomfortableness that very much didn't reassure him about the validity of that idea.

“Rodney.” He warned, narrowing his eyes in suspicion at the scientist. “Is there something I should know?”

“The city has internal sensors.” McKay offered after a moment.

“Extremely detailed internal sensors.” Zelenka followed up. “With a fidelity high enough that it should be relatively simple for the city to record anything actually written out inside of it.”

“I have a team working to figure out if the privacy mode for personal living spaces actually shuts those off or just flags the recordings as private.” McKay added with a grimace.

John hadn't known the internal sensors could do more than track lifesigns, so that was moderately concerning on several levels. Not the least of which was because now he had to worry about several hundred people who might accidentally or purposefully dig up sensor recordings of various other people in compromising positions.

“Please tell me I’m not going to have to write up a PSA about the dangers of sex in the city?” He all but begged, as that was very much one peril of command he’d been rather hoping to avoid.

“Might be for the best.” Zelenka admitted. “We’ve found what looks like a modesty filter that’s supposed to apply in those situations. But it’s a bit touchy.”

“Touchy how?” John asked cautiously, desperately hoping this question wouldn’t go into uncomfortably awkward territory.

“Anything that could be mistaken as one person trying to attack another deactivates it.” McKay clarified with a grimace.

John sighed and rubbed his forehead. “And this is the first I’m hearing about this, why?”

“It was in the updated safety guideline memory I released this morning.” McKay said with a slightly put upon look. “Would have done it earlier, but the internal sensors only came online once we plugged in the ZPM. And that was when Grodin was able to confirm that they operated similarly to the ones we saw in action on Taranis.”

“Glad to see they’re getting back to work at least.” John offered somewhat lamely.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author’s Notes: This chapter didn’t originally exist. I was about 75% done with a different one when I realized there are two additional scenes I wanted to insert into the time between Eventus going to sleep and waking up. So that chapter is moved back to 31 and instead you get this and the next chapter which should be a longer than average John and Teyla scene.