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�No, the hint of humility is good. I wish my Rodney could find some of that once in a while,� I said. My stomach grumbled painfully and the intense heat reminded me how long it had been since I�d had anything to drink. �I don�t suppose you�ve got any food or water on you,� I continued. Apparently stasis pods just keep you alive; for some reason I expected there to be some kind of buoying effect. Wishful thinking, I guess.
Holo-Rodney shook his head. �Hopefully you�ll be back in your time by lunch,� he said somewhat sympathetically. If there was anything Rodney McKay could relate to it was hunger. We like to tease him, but his hypoglycaemia is no joke.
�Keller really softened you, huh?� I commented, dragging my fingers through my hair, frowning when I came away with a handful of sand. Sandstorms are another thing I hate. Probably why I liked Antarctica; snow and ice melt but sand finds its way into everything and stays.
I mentally created a game plan for when I got back to Atlantis�the Atlantis where the sun isn�t about to die and there are still people inhabiting the galaxy. Water and lots of it. Then food, preferably of the turkey sandwich variety. Then a very long shower followed by what I knew was going to be a very exhausting debrief. At least, that was the plan as long as I arrived back well inside the two months after I �disappeared�. A thought that reminded me of something.
�Didn�t you say there won�t be much time to get me through the �Gate? Two hours is not little time.�
Holo-Rodney rolled his eyes. �The sand has risen, John. It�s going to be even harder to get back to the main tower than Rodney anticipated.�
�Just what this fucked up situation needs. More setbacks,� I muttered. �How much harder are we talking about here? �Cause I almost died between towers the first time around.�
I started testing out my body, knowing that there was a clock on the situation and it would be better to linger in the Control Room than in another tower. As I walked the length and breadth of the room a few times to get my legs moving again I tried to push past the aches and pains that were making me feel like I did when I was pushing ninety in that Genii cell with the then-unnamed Todd holding my fate in his life-sucking and. My feet, more than anything, were killing me, but I wasn�t going to say anything to Holo-Rodney; he�s a hologram, after all, and a hologram of one of the least sympathetic people I�d encountered in my lifetime of less than sympathetic people, and that included my emotionally stunted father and asshole of a brother who thought I only went to dad�s funeral to find out how much money I got, not to mention one ex-wife who was cheating on me for longer than she was faithful during our mistake of a marriage.
It took me a few minutes to realize that the weakness and lack of complex coordination weren�t going to magically disappear�apparently I really was as far gone as I felt�but once the reality of my situation sank in and the giant mental bomb clock began flashing behind my eyes I stopped my pacing and started walking toward the corridor that I had used to enter the stasis room what felt like half an hour earlier. It was oppressively hot, even after having shed my vest before going into the stasis pod (there was nothing in there that I could use anymore, anyway) and pushing my sleeves up high on my forearms (and regretting my decision to forego my usual black tee under my uniform when I got geared up to meet our Genii contact; the light cotton of a tee shirt would be much less stifling than the light canvas button-down uniform I was wearing) but I reminded myself that I�d been through worse (being blasted out of that super-volcano in the Orion hadn�t exactly been a stroll in Antarctica, even with the shielding) and that, as soon as I got through the �Gate I would be 7,936 light-years away from New Lantia�s soon-to-go-super-nova sun�s effects.
Holo-Rodney kept pace with me, flickering like an old TV set every few yards in a way that made me consider asking him to just meet me in the Control Room; I really didn�t need the distracting unstable image of my team-mate. I decided against making that request, though, when the desire to stop, just for a second, became overwhelming. I knew that if I didn�t keep moving the wooziness and full-bodied weakness would take over and I would never make it to the �Gate.
Frustration and anger were the only ways I could think of to give my body the much-needed adrenaline burst that would, hopefully, carry me across the sandy expanse between the tower I was in and the main Control Tower. I needed to get pissed off. More than I already was by the situation and the weight of what I had learned since being thrown into such a shitty future.