Kavanagh snorted unattractively. “No; I’m still waiting on the linguists to finish with the final version you sent them.”

“Then get the module interface ready,” Rodney ordered. He himself was scanning through Atlantis’s mostly untranslated files looking for information on ZedPMs, now that he had a better understanding of what to look for—not that he was finding a whole lot. “And when you’re done with that, help Zelenka map the city.”

“Yes, master,” Kavanagh griped as he went to his work area. Rodney ignored the man’s attitude and resumed searching the city’s computers. Somewhere in the city there had to be a way to make ZedPMs, or at least recharge them.

Rodney was working his way through what he thought were repair protocols for a capacitor when he found it—a phrase that, if he wasn’t mistaken, referred to power production. He earmarked the section and emailed it to one of the linguists with a note that it was to be translated immediately. Then Rodney went back to his search, paying no attention to the bustle of his lab assistants.

“Rodney?”

Rodney looked up to find John leaning against the wall just beside his lab door and wondered briefly how long he’d been immersed in his work. “What?” He snapped, taking the time to glance at the clock on his computer. Five hours? Rodney was a little surprised; normally he’d have gotten hungry by now.

“Busy?” John asked mildly.

“Not that again,” Rodney groaned, shaking his head firmly. “I’ve got new toys, John; please let me play with them in peace.”

John’s laughter told Rodney he’d been kidding, which Rodney took to mean he could go back to work. Unfortunately for his plans, John wasn’t ready to let that happen. “Actually, I’ve got a question,” John continued, sauntering over to Rodney’s desk.

Rodney’s sigh was a familiar sound, one John found oddly comforting. “Is there any chance I can pawn whatever you want off on someone else?”

“Not really,” John admitted. “We were wondering if you could tell the linguists to translate the part of the city’s database that deals with weapons. Ford and the others need something to do besides teach the Athosians how to cheat at poker, and having them re-catalogue the city and actually know what they’re seeing would be useful.”

Rodney nodded and finished typing out an email to the head linguist. “I’ll ask, not that anything short of death threats will get anything done faster over there. What I really want, though, is a full schematic of that weapons satellite. If we can figure out exactly what’s wrong with it...”

“See, now that’s why I love you,” John interjected, brushing his hand across Rodney’s shoulder before bounding out the door and away from the lab. Rodney was left staring bemusedly at the wall, trying to decide if it was rude to turn off the water to the linguists’ quarters.

It was, which why, five minutes later, Rodney had not only shut off the water to their quarters, but cut off air conditioning to their lab. He’d hacked into one of their computers, only to find that instead of working on the translation as he’d asked, they were comparing Ancient and French verb tenses.

Rodney wanted that translation finished posthaste, and he didn’t mind being a little inhumane in the process. Or more than a little inhumane, he thought to himself. A lot inhumane. Completely inhumane, he ventured to think. Practically another species entirely.

When Kavanagh came by to tell Rodney his system was ready for the linguists’ translation, it was to find his superior giggling absently while tinkering with his computer.

The news could wait, Kavanagh decided. McKay was just too weird to bother at the moment.

•••

For only the third or so time since arriving in the galaxy, John found himself with an actual sit-down assignment. The vast majority of his paperwork was the kind he could do in odd, spare moments and in truth his job was one of motion—patrolling, working with people and generally going from place to place. Until now he’d not been called upon to do all that much analysis of anything Ancient. Most of the time it was all about activating some device that had caught Rodney’s attention.

His usually spare desk now held a computer, one that Rodney and some linguists had recently loaded up with files they wanted John to read and interpret. He’d been alternately intimidated and flattered by the assignment and wasn’t sure which was the proper response. Then Rodney had reminded him that he’d been pretty good at interpreting what they’d first found about the Wraith’s attack on the galaxy, even without a good working knowledge of Ancient.

So now John was sitting behind the desk he liked to forget he had, reading through strategic reports and weapons manifests. The reports, he wasn’t struggling with at all. Once he’d started cross-referencing the specific artillery, John had a pretty good grasp of how the Ancients had fought the Wraith. The manifests, too, were easy to understand: the city didn’t have much left in the way of defenses.

Again, not news to John. The chair controlling Atlantis’s defenses had told him as much; critically low on ammunition wasn’t particularly difficult to understand in any language.

At the moment, John was trying to sketch out a list of weapons they might be able to produce using the city’s fabrication areas, provided they could get their hands on some raw materials. It was a leap, but if he could convince Rodney the weapons were going to be effective this time...

Rodney slid past the open door to John’s office, not bothering to stop. He’d only come by to make sure John was actually working on his assignment—not that Rodney seriously doubted John would do it. Still, John had spent most of his tenure on Atlantis denying the existence of his office, desk or administrative duties and working on some translated security files pretty much required he acknowledge all three concepts. Rodney found him buried in the task, eagerly flipping between different files and scribbling notes in what would surely be incomprehensible script.

Since there was no need to prod or chide John, Rodney returned to his lab, flowing down from the ceiling and re-forming just outside the door. Once inside, Zelenka and Kavanagh pounced.

“You did that thing again, didn’t you,” Kavanagh accused, pointing one long, skinny finger at him. “That goo thing.”

Zelenka looked a little apologetic. “He fine-tuned the city’s sensors; it notes changes in your velocity...and altitude.”

Rodney glared at Kavanagh and made a mental note to undo the changes made to the city’s internal sensors. “If I recall correctly, we’re working on that generator design you unearthed, Zelenka.”

Zelenka pulled up a display of the generator. “Is really quite fascinating. Production and storage in a single unit. Not ZPM, but nothing to sniff at.”

“I sent out some grunts to look around the city and they’ve found two separate installations of these, a level above the storage bays.” Kavanagh added, pointing to some highlighted regions of the city’s blueprint. “The permanent installations lack the storage portion of the designs, but they’re also hooked into the stationary storage units we found. They need fuel—radioactive, of course—but the schematics include alterations to accommodate any of a number of isotopes.”

“Any of them easier to obtain than naquada?” Rodney inquired. “And we’re not exactly sitting on a nuclear fuel repository.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kavanagh continued, pulling up another schematic. “They had refining equipment designed and instructions input into the fabrication units,” He said. “Basically, all we need is ore, and one of these things in working order.”

Rodney examined the machine, which was designed to render pelletized nuclear fuel from mid-to-high yield ore. “And where are we supposed to find decent ore, Kavanagh?”

“Several mountains on near continent contain respectable amounts of ore, even taking into account Ancients’ mining of those areas,” Zelenka told him. “Although does not help us much with Wraith overhead.”

“This will fit in a ‘jumper,” Rodney murmured, inspecting the design. “We should build one and go back to one of those uninhabited planets to get ore. It’s easier than trading for the stuff.”

Zelenka flipped through the files they’d made during their various missions. “This one shows promise,” He told Rodney, displaying the records of one planet. “Although has that really foul-smelling swamp. Ford called place ‘Dagobah.’”

“It would be that place,” Rodney muttered to himself. “Can we build one of these refiners with the power we’ve got stored?”

“Yeah,” Kavanagh replied. “It wouldn’t drain us that much, and if we get even one of these generators online it won’t matter. A half-dozen will double the power we have now and if we can get every generator in the city fired up, dialing home won’t even cause a blip on the power grid.”

“Zelenka, write the report on this for the meeting tomorrow,” Rodney ordered, “Kavanagh, finish that analysis of the weapons satellite. I want to know why it isn’t working.”

Kavanagh had, for once, gotten something done ahead of time. “It’s damaged,” He announced. “Obvious, really; the satellite is designed with solar panels in it to provide a minimum power flow to maintain communication with the city and its computers are programmed to reset periodically to avoid loss of communication due to software glitches.”

“And that told you it’s damaged?” Rodney asked dryly.

“No, I got that from one of those files you foisted off on Major Sheppard,” Kavanagh informed him. “The Wraith got in a lucky shot. Exactly what they damaged, it doesn’t say and the only way to find out is to go up there and look around.”

“Not likely,” Rodney murmured. “Did you do another analysis of the images we got of it earlier?”

“Nothing obvious, other than some burns around one circuit panel,” Kavanagh said. “Which is the one controlling the routing of all the power in the satellite. If they’re damaged, we won’t get any information in or out, or fire the satellite.”

“And we have no way of knowing which panel it is, do we,” Rodney said to himself. “Get Grodin and start on a plan to replace the panels,” He said to Kavanagh. “And find a way to do everything from inside the satellite; we can cloak a jumper but not anyone on a spacewalk.”

As Kavanagh and Zelenka were walking out, Rodney spoke again. “By the way, Kavanagh; if you ever do something like changing the sensors around again? I’ll haul your ass in front of Weir on insubordination. You could’ve endangered us all with that stunt; what if you’d managed to desensitize the system to Wraith?”

•••

"Idiots."

Carson looked up from his computer. "Who's an idiot, Rodney, or should I even ask?"

"The Ancients. They're idiots."

"How do you figure?" Carson inquired. Rodney usually had at least a moderate amount of respect for the Ancients.

"When we started translating this city, one of the things we expected to find was what the Ancients did to fight the Wraith, and why they failed at it."

Carson nodded. "I know--they're supposed to be the enlightened, advanced types."

"Yes, and John never misses an opportunity to mention how they managed to not get the job done," Rodney confirmed. "The thing is, we haven't found much of anything."

Carson frowned in confusion. "You have the map--

"Yes, and a lot of journals saying the same thing--'The Wraith hit this planet. Everyone dead. The Wraith destroyed our defenses here. Everyone dead.' By the way, 'everyone' seems to mean 'human', since we're not finding many reports of dead Ancients."

"Ah. And this makes them idiots?"

"No, what makes them idiots is that I see one of two ways that this came about. Either they didn't have what it took to get rid of the Wraith, or they purposefully didn't record what they did that worked against them."

"Are you sure?" Carson asked, by now completely ignoring his research.

"We know they were somewhat effective--after all, it wasn't like the Wraith took over instantaneously. And we also know the Ancients were big on writing things down. Do you have any idea how much of this city's databases are full of daily records of how much water got flushed down the maintenance room's toilet?"

"I see where you're coming from; they write down everything. They kept track of the fall of the galaxy. Why didn't they say what they did? Or, why didn't they do more?"

"Exactly! Anyone who can build a flying city, who can design the stargates, who can build a ZedPM... Which, by the way, they didn't include the designs or instructions for making, could defeat the Wraith."

"So they're idiots, because they fought and lost and then didn't explain how they fought and lost?" Carson said, not-quite-smirking.

Rodney rolled his eyes and slumped down in a nearby chair. "It's better than the alternative. If they're idiots, than we're chalking all this up to a monumental moment of oversight on their parts--everything is fallible in some way and here's where the Ancients fucked up. Well, I think they messed up when they let the Wraith evolve, but that's beside the point."

"What's the alternative?" Carson replied, knowing Rodney was going to say it anyway.

Rodney's slump grew more pronounced. "The Ancients weren't really trying."

That gave Carson pause. "As in, the Ancients didn't really try to stop the Wraith?"

"They didn't?" John echoed as he walked in Rodney’s lab. "Not that I wouldn't put it past them, but what makes you say that?"

Rodney took a deep breath. "Ok, it's a few dozen millennia ago. You're an Ancient, living the good life on Atlantis. You've flown your city to a quiet, isolated dwarf galaxy to escape a plague you can't seem to defeat. You get here and settle down on a really nice watery planet and seed the galaxy with human-types and sit back to watch the show. All is well in your exalted little world."

John hopped up on Rodney’s worktable, crossing his legs. "Ok, I'm in Ancient heaven. Now what?"

"You're doing your random checks of seeded worlds, making nice with the primitive humans--and as a side note, I bet it felt just great to have all those stone age people thinking you were gods--real power trip--and you come across a new species, one that evolved with your favorite genetic material. They're strong, and weird, but you don't mind. After all, it's happened before."

"I thought the Ancients were advanced beyond letting people worship them," Carson murmured.

"One word: Chaya. Anyway, you let them evolve. Hey, they might end up being the best next iteration of your favorite form," Rodney said, his voice clipped.

"So you think the Ancients let the Wraith evolve, when they could've stopped them?" John said, obviously not quite buying it.

"It's not an unreasonable hypothesis. On Earth, so-called superpower nations let dictatorships flourish because they want to wait and see if the country pulls it together on its own. Hell, those countries get in trouble for invading without a lot of proof and even more deaths," Rodney reminded them.

"So the Ancients might've let the Wraith evolve, but that might have been the right, or at least ethical, thing to do," Carson stated. "Possible, but not likely."

"I'm not finished," Rodney barked. "Because it's not just that the Ancients let the Wraith evolve. As I've said before, the Ancients possessed extremely advanced technology--more advanced than any other we've encountered. They should've been able to annihilate the Wraith. But they didn't. Why?"

"This one is all you," John said, holding his hands up.

"The Ancients put humans out there to evolve, to develop into their own species. They wanted this form to go through its renaissance and become just like they did. No species can do that if they've always got someone stronger, smarter and faster watching out for them. Take us, for example. The sekoy'e went about it a little differently, and maybe not in as good a way, but they did essentially the same thing. They wanted their form to live on--not as an identical species, but as a template for a new one. So they set up their machine and they made us, and when they did, they gave us just enough information to survive and understand what they did to us. They didn't tell us everything they knew, and they didn't give us all the information they had. We can be pretty sure they were a lot better with these forms than we are, but we don't have that information and we may never get it."

"Ok, the Ancients didn't want to spoon-feed humans because in doing so they'd stop evolving?"

Rodney shrugged. "Adversity breeds advancement. A species works to survive. If you're living in paradise, why do anything to change your situation? And on a more bitter note, the Ancients could leave whenever they wanted--and they did, if I'm not mistaken. They went to Earth, tooled around our old galaxy for a while, and ascended. They left Atlantis here because they misjudged the Wraith and by the time they got around to leaving, they couldn’t handle the Wraith's numbers.

"We've seen for ourselves that a species doesn't have to be benevolent to be advanced. The Goa'uld are evil. The sekoy'e, while not evil, were fucked up in their own special way. The Ancients? I think they got to the point where they disconnected from humans as well as from their own values and meaning in life. In short, they confused nonattachment with detachment and stopped caring. They let go--and they left humans to find a way to survive the Wraith. If humans here didn't, then there were other galaxies with humans to carry on the legacy. And if humans in this galaxy did survive the Wraith, they'd be that much stronger for it. It makes them cruel, but it doesn't make them evil."

John and Carson were quiet for a long time. Finally Carson looked over at Rodney, but his eyes were more tired than they'd been in a long while. "I hate admitting it, but I like this alternative better than the one where the Ancients were idiots."

John nodded silently. He was ever a skeptic, so Rodney figured he'd hear John's side eventually. "Of course, all this conjecture is pointless, since it doesn't solve anything. It doesn't matter what motivated the Ancients; we're still left in the same situation we were in before."

"One question, though," Carson said to Rodney. "Why wouldn't they leave information on ZedPMs?"

"That's the part that makes me hate Ancients," Rodney muttered, scowling. "Fucking exalted, ascended bastards.”

John and Carson shrugged helplessly. “Lunch?” John offered by way of changing the subject.

“Sure,” Rodney grumbled. Carson nodded in agreement and as such the topic was dropped, at least for the moment.

•••

Carson fiddled with his pen, nibbling on the cap and tapping it against a precious pad of paper. He’d written up the report for Dr. Weir on Wraith genetics, as well as the one on sekoy’e. Each had been properly researched, thorough without getting mired down in detail and perfectly acceptable as far as medical research reports went. The Wraith report would probably get read with a moderate level of interest and a marked desire to find something inside that would give them a working advantage over their foe. The sekoy’e report, on the other hand, would probably put any reader to sleep and leave those who managed to stay awake scratching their heads in confusion.

“Carson?” Dr. Salas stood in the doorway, peering in curiously. “Did you get a chance to take a look at those liver enzymes I ran on the Athosian children?”

“Hmm?” Carson hummed, breaking himself out of his mental reverie to look over at his colleague. “Briefly, yes. It’s an interesting finding, particularly given the fact that their parents don’t show elevated bilirubin. Perhaps it is dietary in nature?”

“It did cross my mind,” She said dryly, smirking enough to tell Carson that had been in the part of her report that he hadn’t read yet. “I see you’re still working on your side project.”

“The one you find mystifying boring?” He commented, scowling at the report he’d shoved onto the corner of his desk. The only reason Carson understood it was because he wrote the thing, which gave him precious little advantage over all the people who couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. He’d been honestly curious about what had been done to him, and doing the research and analyzing the results had been therapeutic; the more he stared at the lovely, complex twist of his own genetic material the less he was bothered by the way it had gotten the way it was. It wasn’t that act of violence, though, that had Carson so twisted.

“It’s not like you’re overly worried,” Dr. Salas told him as she flipped through the report. “At least, you don’t seem overly bothered.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Carson murmured, even though it wasn’t all that inaccurate, “I’m more concerned about the Wraith, to be honest.” The fact was, he didn’t particularly care that it had been done to him. He’d panicked at first, and had suffered several bouts of angst, anger and despair at what had become of him, but on the whole he’d gotten over it rather fast. Too fast, in his opinion. John and Rodney, too, had adapted quickly both in terms of understanding their new selves and accepting their new identities. Carson wasn’t ready to verbally admit that to anyone else, though. It was just too personal.

“We’re all concerned about the Wraith,” Dr. Salas murmured as she studied Carson’s strangely morose expression. “But this is pretty big, too. At the very least think of what we could learn about genetic manipulation, and damn that sounded callous, didn’t it?”

“Not really,” Carson reassured her. “Why do you think I’m so interested in it? The possible applications are limitless,” He continued. “The transition is so seamless; you can barely tell any manipulation’s even been done.”

“Actually, I was referring to not being empathetic enough about what you’re going through,” Dr. Salas corrected him, “Despite the fact that you’re rather steadfast in your refusal to be upset.”

And didn’t that get at the heart of things? Carson wanted to pitch a fit about feeling the way he felt, but he knew he’d feel like an idiot because he wasn’t all that upset about being sekoy’e. It worried him a lot that he was so content in it, and happy to be stuck in this galaxy which suddenly felt so much more like home than Earth did. Even thinking of traveling to that planet made Carson feel uneasy, as though walking through the ‘gate to Cheyenne Mountain would bring the universe crashing down about his ears.

Carson sighed and turned to face Dr. Salas. “I don’t have the energy to be upset about my lot in life, you know, and besides there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Yes, but it’s normal to be upset right now,” She pressed, almost urgently. “Everything you knew has changed, Carson. Doesn’t that worry you?”

It didn’t, not that he said such a thing out loud. It was feelings like that, ones Carson knew he shouldn’t be feeling, that kept him pinned in his lab, staring at reports and scans as though their graphic displays would unlock the secrets of a long-dead race. They’d changed his DNA in ways he couldn’t reverse and had for good measure stuck all sorts of things into his head. He wasn’t such a fool he didn’t realize that lack of panic was rooted in what they’d done, and his apathy towards returning to Earth likewise could easily be attributed to the change. Thinking things like that made Carson wonder if Rodney was working on issues relating to getting back to Earth purely out of inertia or the simple challenge to do something insanely difficult. If Carson, the most homesick of the three of them, no longer gave a tinker’s damn about seeing Earth again...

Carson’s sigh was half-hearted; he didn’t really feel like having this discussion with anyone, much less Dr. Salas. She had just enough of the earth-mother thing going on that she couldn’t help but try to nurture her coworkers and Carson wasn’t in the mood. “It worries me, yes; is that what you want to hear? I’ve got my own ways of getting through it, though, and I suppose you’d like me to apologize for those ways not involving public displays of anger and irrationality.”

His outburst didn’t seem to surprise Dr. Salas, but he suspected she’d been trying to get a rise out of him. If she thought it was a sign of progress, and as such got her away from him, all the better. “I’m not judging your coping methods,” She told him, “I just wanted to make sure you were coping.”

“I’m coping fine; I simply prefer doing so privately.” With that, he turned back towards his desk and let her figure out she was no longer welcome. Being rude wasn’t his normal manner but Carson was rather abruptly on edge; if he kept talking he would probably say something he’d really regret.

She left a moment later and once the door slid shut Carson let out the breath he’d been holding. He felt stupid and irrational; he never irately snapped at his staff, at least not outside of emergency situations. They all kept staring at him, waiting for him to crack or explode or turn green and purple or something. Dr. Salas had been the first to come up and ask him when he was going to break down, but Carson was sure they were all waiting for it to happen.

How was he supposed to tell him it wasn’t going to, because he’d been programmed not to go insane after the transition, or that Earth wasn’t really on his mind anymore? Carson cared about the Wraith, but that was due to their immanent threat to his and the city’s well-being.

Even thinking about Earth confused Carson. He told himself he didn’t care about the planet, but he did want to see Earth again; he wanted to taste the frigid ocean and compare it to Atlantis’s waters. He wanted to test whether smog was as offensive to his base forms as it was when he was a human. Carson wanted to watch a baseball game now that he and John had compared cricket and baseball, with Rodney’s opus on hockey mixed in at various times.

Or maybe he didn’t, because all those things sounded nice, but to Carson they sounded nice in the same way that thinking about vacationing on Capri sounded nice; if he ever got there he’d probably like it but not going wasn’t about to leave a gaping hole in his existence. The chance of never returning to Earth shouldn’t have been comparable to maybe or maybe not visiting a pleasantly warm island, but that’s how Carson felt.

Feeling that way in turn made Carson feel very strange indeed. He pushed away from his desk, dropping the pen on top of the paper pad, and walked slowly out of the lab, directing himself towards the piers. Maybe a little exercise would get his mind back on track.

The pier was empty, which surprised Carson given the pleasantness of the day—at least, until he remembered the translation that was sending the entire city into a tizzy. Gone were the days of painstakingly deciphering Ancient words and symbols, which was probably for the better. Still Carson suspected he’d miss that part of being in Atlantis; there was a sense of excitement and anticipation in the wait for Rodney or one of the linguists to decide whether a sign said ‘Danger Big Gun’ or ‘Public Restrooms to the Left’. All too soon the sexy mystery of the Ancient language would be gone and in its place would be English and eventually any other language they cared to use. A small, spiteful bit of Carson’s mind hoped one of their first discoveries was a translation module that automatically did what they were doing manually now, something that could’ve done all the translations so many months ago, before the Wraith were overhead and Earth was nowhere at all.

Carson walked the length of the pier, pausing briefly at the very edge before simply sliding off and into the water. He liked letting himself flow across the surface and indulged in that activity for a few minutes before forming himself back up. When he was finished, a small paper boat was left bobbing along, drifting around the pier as muted swells danced around aimlessly.

When water began seeping into the paper he’d made himself into, Carson let it happen without interference, idly noting how the water cooled him down in opposition to how the sun warmed his surface. Before long he was sodden, no longer dancing lightly on the water’s surface but rather sinking ever so slightly. Like a dinghy with a tiny leak, Carson sank lower and lower, until finally his soggy self was completely underwater. His folds and creases softened and spread out until, had anyone been looking, all that was left was a single sheet of The London Times dated 17 May 1998, fluttering slowly as it went under the pier.

John and Rodney were about to call head for the control room and do a city-wide search for Carson when the doctor finally walked through the door to his quarters, looking utterly exhausted and not a little lost. “Where the fuck have you been?” Rodney growled, glaring at Carson’s tired face. “You missed dinner.”

“I ate,” Carson murmured, frowning slightly. “Must’ve lost track of time. Went swimming. Sleepy now.”

Rodney opened his mouth to verbally flay Carson when John silently warned him to stop. “It’s time we got to bed anyway,” John said mildly. He stepped back from Carson and gestured toward the bed, an expectant look on his face. Yes, he had questions as to where and what Carson had been doing for the latter half of the day, but they could wait. If something serious was bothering the man, he and Rodney would know as soon as they lay down together.

All John felt, however, once they were pressed together on the bed, was a sense of soul-deep exhaustion, the kind he himself felt after staring too long at a cup of cold coffee. Carson had probably been pondering the nature of existence to ill effect, not that John didn’t do such things himself. He could feel Rodney on the far side of the bed, still worried and a tiny bit irate but mostly sleepy and relieved.

“Where was he?” Rodney whispered once Carson was asleep. “All day! No one’s seen him since lunch, John.”

John rubbed his cheek against the pillow and willed his foot to stop itching. “Swimming, Rodney. He went swimming. Said it himself,” He hissed back. “Maybe he needed some thinking space, so just let it go for now.”

Rodney still didn’t feel all that worked up, despite the way he was talking so John let himself wander closer to unconsciousness. He knew that neither he nor Rodney would let go of whatever had bothered Carson but at the same time, they had to be careful. Unlike them, Carson was isolated and in a way insulated from the day to day dealings of Wraith and the like. John worried occasionally that Carson was letting himself be cast adrift, locked up in a lab that wasn’t in the trenches like Rodney’s.

After all, the only thing keeping himself and Rodney in tune with the rest of the city was being forced to think up and then enact schemes to protect it. It could’ve been something else entirely, though; maybe someone fucked up one of Carson’s experiments and he got depressed about doing it all over again. Regardless, John was too willing to let relief gentle him to sleep to force more thought on the subject before morning.

Whatever it was, they could deal with it tomorrow; that is, unless it dealt with itself whilst they slept.