Once I was inside I took a minute to adjust to yet another abrupt change in temperature; apparently Atlantis couldn�t�or wouldn�t�keep the cold bubble thing going once I was back inside, which was disappointing, but with the City between me and the sun I could deal with heat. Heat plus blinding light and painful sunburn-inducing rays were more problematic.
I�d expected Holo-Rodney to pop back out of where ever he went�into Atlantis� programming or whatever�the moment I was back inside, but he didn�t and I couldn�t afford to wait around for my flickering friend to reappear and it wasn�t as if I needed him to be my human-form Yellow Brick Road leading me to Oz, the Control Room, so once I�d caught my breath and freed myself from the sand that had kept falling around my feet after I�d slid into the hallway�stupid gravity�I took off at a decent jog, the solid floor beneath my feet allowing me to actually move without worrying about what I was putting my foot on sliding out from under me. The familiar sounds of my boots hitting the floor, alternating between metal grating�around the stairs�and smooth� well, whatever the Ancient version of concrete is called� other than the hunger, and the dehydration, and the fact that I hadn�t seen another person in I couldn�t even remember how long� other than those things it was just like I was on one of my runs through the City. Painfully normal and simultaneously terrifyingly jarring in it�s abnormality.
I got to the Control Room and it looked even worse than it had when I�d first come through. There was even more dust and sand covering every imaginable surface, as well as hanging thick in the air, and the fact that the entire Gatrium was made of windows made it even hotter than anywhere else I�d been in the City. One of the consoles, the one that controlled our deep space radar, had, apparently, not dealt with climate change as well as other devices because the majority of the crystal keys that were so strong they didn�t break when Chuck dropped them, as he was prone to doing while maintaining the console, had shattered, or, more accurately, exploded.
The DHD, thankfully, seemed fully operational. It lit up when I waved my hand over it, and none of the crystals looked damaged in any way. I didn�t want to risk dialling somewhere else, or even M4S-554, as a dry run because I had no way of knowing if the City had enough power for two diallings, and I still needed to know the exact moment I was to step through the wormhole from 554 to get back to my time. But, upon visual inspection, the DHD seemed to be in working order. Which was good. Everything else was pretty moot if the DHD wasn�t working. Though, I thought, maybe there was still a Jumper around that I could utilize if I needed to. Probably not, though. Even if Atlantis was abandoned, there was no way the IOA would allow Jumper technology to be abandoned with the City. Ships that could go through the �Gate? Very appealing to the IOA.
I sat down on the steps overlooking the Stargate and began checking over my GDO. It had always kinda freaked me out, having a Naqueda-enhanced battery strapped to my wrist, or in my pocket, or where ever I decided to stash my GDO while off-world, because, well, I know nothing about the stuff. I�ve been assured that it�s as safe as it can get, but, really, how reassuring is that? As safe as they can make it? Shit like that always makes me think about those drug trials some of my idiot friends signed up for in college for extra cash�there were more side effects than there were things the drugs cured, but they were always assured that the drugs were as safe as they could make them. That�s like reassuring me that two out of ten lab rats survived and went on to live a happy and healthy month and a half after the experiment was over before they dropped dead of indeterminate causes.
The power supply on my GDO was fine, no damage from being put in stasis for however long, which was another reassuring thing because, really, getting to the right time but my IDC not getting through and the shield not going down? Well, at least my death would be instantaneous that way, and I wouldn�t have to live with the knowledge that I�d somehow set a sequence of events that led to Michael and his freaks ruling the galaxy. If I was feeling in any way suicidal�which, despite some of the crap I�ve pulled, I�m not�getting my molecules smushed on the shield might have started sounding like a good alternative to going back in time and trying to make things right.
I had officially run out of things to do to keep myself busy. Without the exact time of the solar flare from Holo-Rodney and Atlantis I didn�t want to risk making another move. Being my luck I�d just end up screwing the timeline up even more than it already was. So I just sat on the stairs, waiting for something to happen. Waiting had never been my strong suit, and, with nothing but exhaustion and hunger to distract me, I was feeling decidedly unspoiled.
I fucking suck at the sit-and-wait thing.
ATLANTIS
I could tell that John was beginning to approach the point where he would fall apart. It took a lot for John to get to that point, but the solitude of being the last man, conceivably, left alive in two galaxies, of having the pressure of this time-travel mission, and of having to do everything alone, without his