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With a simple command I allowed the door to unlock and urged Atlantis to open it. She did so, vehemently chastising me for being, like John said, a bitchy hologram to the best friend of my creator.
�Thank you,� John said, moving out the door. He activated his radio as he started running toward the central spire. �Earth and the Milky Way. Start talking.�
�The Trust managed to get one of their guys elected after President Hayes� first term was up. O�Neill and Landry and the rest of the SGC old guard tried to keep the standard operating procedure in place but they were bound by military chain of command.�
�The new President gives a direct order and they have to follow or face Court Marshall,� John said, and I imagined that he was nodding. �What about the civilians? Didn�t they fight it?�
�Sure. At first. But then civilian placement got slashed, slowly at first, then all at once when his second term was coming to an end. Not that it mattered; the Trust got another one of their guys into the Oval in the next election, and the next, and the next.�
John rolled his eyes. �Gotta love the American electorate.� He glanced over at me. �What happened to everyone?�
After quickly scrolling through my data stores I determined who at the SGC John had known best, both from his time stationed at the SGC and from Atlantis� interactions with the SGC. �Doctor Jackson was the first to get booted. Fortunately he had enough friends in different countries around the world and they got together and got him to Atlantis where he was largely untouchable, but others weren�t so lucky. Bill Lee lost his apartment, the partial custody of his kids he shared with his ex, most of his work was discredited, far too easily since most of the exposure he had to the scientific community involved showing alien advances that futzed out two seconds in to give the SGC some cover on Earth. Doctor Carolyn Lam had her medical licence revoked, officially for the placebo she created to combat the Prior Plague, though everyone knew it was because she�s Landry�s kid and it was easier to get at her than him. Vala Mal Doran, the alien thief that was part of SG-1, was locked up at Area 51 to be tested on, despite the fact that there was nothing about the Goa�uld that needed to be learned, let alone that could be learned from a former host like Vala. Teal�c had already shifted his focus to the free Jaffa, but the Jaffa were no longer considered allies of Earth by that time so no one really knows what happened to him.�
�Give me names,� John growled.
�That�s not what this is about,� I said regretfully. �Hopefully you�ll be able to change enough by saving Teyla that the ripples will reach all facets of life.�
�So you�re saying that the guy running against Hayes is in the Trust�s pocket?� John tried.
�Not necessarily. The Truth gained a lot of ground when things in Pegasus started going to hell. You get back and save Teyla and the guy running against Hayes might just be your average power hungry politician hedging answers on gay rights and taxes,� I said, shrugging my shoulders helplessly. I really did wish I could give John names, that I could tell him who the major players in the Trust were, but between losing Jen and spending two decades creating new mathematics to turn back time with solar flares, Rodney didn�t have as much inside information as he might have otherwise garnered. But there was no way I was going to tell John that. He was angry enough as it was; if he found out that I couldn�t tell him because Rodney hadn�t paid attention he was liable to kill McKay the moment he got back to 2007 for not paying attention to something as important as global politics.
Apparently John was willing to let that go�either that or he knew there wasn�t time to dwell on what he couldn�t get answered easily�because he didn�t fight me on that like I�d expected him to. Perhaps my programming was slightly flawed, as that wasn�t the first time John had gone against what I anticipated. �What happened to the military members of the SGC?� he asked.