Shaking off the last vestiges of last night's uneasy rest, John crossed the balcony to where someone had thoughtfully set out benches that weren't covered in morning moisture. They were almost uncomfortably cold, but he was used to discomfort by now. The civilians bitched about Atlantis, but it was more about their situation than the city, which was rather pleasant in John's opinion. John had seen, and lived in, much worse.

Afghanistan, for example. That place, that war... it was worse in so many ways John could mention, but never did. The weather was vicious and the enemy more so. At least here, John knew who the enemy was and why they were fighting.

It wasn't that he didn't know those things back on Earth, but when the fight centered on ideology...well, there was a reason why the military wanted its soldiers to fight and not ask sticky questions. John had toed that line and hadn't asked why they were fighting. His trouble was that he asked questions about the process.

At least Dr. Weir let him ask those questions here. Even if she didn't agree with him, she let him say it and respected him for his opinion, regardless of whether it made her angry or frustrated or ecstatic. Scientists were like that--they wanted to be kept open to others' ideas, wrong though they may be.

If John hadn't gone into the military, he probably would've found his way into academia, although he might've hated it, with all the pretense. Then again, the military had its fair share and he put up with that.

It wasn't that John liked being stranded in the Pegasus Galaxy with a species of monsters coming after him, but he didn't exactly hate it either. There were bad guys, and that irked him. John thought that humans were pretty cool, and from his perspective, humans weren't like cattle and they certainly didn't make for a good supper. One thing John could say about the Wraith, though, was that they were upfront and honest about where they stood. People were food and were inferior, so they were to be collected and eaten.

That kind of simplicity made John's work much easier. If the Wraith had been cruel beasts with a surprisingly advanced culture and philosophy, he might have paused at some point and questioned whether he--or anyone else--had the right to commit genocide. That's all it was, after all. The Wraith were an enemy that would do a science fiction movie proud--truly, unequivocally evil. They could all die and no one would mourn them, or later demand compensation for their deaths. Who in the universe would care if the Wraith just disappeared? It wasn't like they held the secrets of the Ancients. They were oversized ticks with no sense of humor.

So when one died, John didn't feel any remorse; all he felt was relief that for a few minutes, the people he was sent to protect weren't in immediate danger. He could kill a Wraith and look over at Rodney and see that he'd managed to save the snarky bastard's life one more time, even if McKay never thanked him for it. Of course he did, sometimes anyway.

Other times, Dr. McKay made some backhanded comment about John's grunt status and waltzed off in a swirling cloud of fuck-you-and-your-cat, leaving John wondering why he even bothered speaking to the man.

Sure, McKay was the best conversation in the city, and he was the only person who challenged John's brain, but did he have to be so insufferably obnoxious? The man never let go of anything, which was really not what John had expected when he'd seen the Canadian flag on Rodney's jacket. Weren't Canadians supposed to be polite?

John asked that question to Rodney once, and the man's only reply was that he could tack the words 'if you please' onto the end of every sentence he spoke, and he'd still be an asshole, so to Rodney's way of thinking, his rudeness was really efficiency. Yesterday that efficiency took the form of a verbal evisceration of John's character that had left the Major's ears singed and his throat tight, not that he let Rodney know how it affected him.

John was tempted to ask him to make the effort to be nice, just for one day, so John could hear what it was like to be shown both affection and respect by someone he both liked and respected. The problem was that Rodney showed both, but never together. John found himself replying in kind, which meant that the two men often argued but never fought. Rodney usually hated what John stood for, or what John did, or what John said, but he never hated John himself.

That distinction meant more to John than he was willing to consider, which was why it bothered him so much when Rodney acted like John was a glorified bodyguard without a functional brain cell. It irked John even more when Rodney did things like that after finding out that John was nearly as smart as he was. Every time, though, they'd find their balance again--always before the next mission. They both tacitly knew that they had to work together, despite what they might say when they were back in the city.

Their dynamic was entirely unlike the way John and his father interacted. The more famous Sheppard didn't like or respect his son and made no effort to hide it. John gave up trying to gain that respect at some point between his sophomore and junior years in high school, and hadn't looked back. He wasn't in the military to impress his father or carry on the family tradition. He couldn't care less what his father thought of him. If he managed to single-handedly save every human being in the Pegasus Galaxy from being killed by the Wraith, his father wouldn't be impressed, and John didn't care.

John stood and returned to the mess hall, dropping off his now-empty mug. He had duty rosters to prepare and at least one guy to chew out for misappropriating supplies. It was just his good luck that Rodney showed up for breakfast before he'd made his escape. The man had the devil's own timing.

"Dr. McKay."

"Major Sheppard."

John and Rodney greeted each other curtly as they passed in the hallway outside the mess hall. Both men's formality drew no attention; by now everyone in Atlantis was used to their mercurial relationship. One day they'd be thick as thieves and the next, the air around them was Arctic. Most everyone chalked it up to them both having such strong personalities and natural leadership tendencies, despite what each said about such roles.

Then again, most people on Atlantis were completely clueless about the dynamics of Rodney and John's friendship. It was built on a firm foundation of respect, tension and disappointment that resulted in fire-and-ice unpredictability and amazingly effective teamwork--and miserable personal lives.

John and Rodney seemed to live to torture each other. They insulted, berated, belittled and argued constantly. Sometimes it was in fun, sometimes not. Only one person in the city could honestly say they came close to understanding the weird synergy of John-and-Rodney, and most days Carson Beckett would've sold his soul not to be that person.

Right now, Carson was sitting in a corner of the mess hall, watching the Major strut out as Rodney sauntered in. Yesterday's mission went well, on an official level, which meant that Carson hadn't had to patch anyone up or treat any cases of interplanetary gastroenteritis. On a personal level, the day had been just short of nuclear. Rodney returned from their trip with a pained grimace deeply etched into his face, one mirrored in reverse by John's self-satisfied smirk.

Whatever had gone on, and Carson honestly didn't want to know what it was, hadn't resolved itself overnight. Rodney, for all his jaunty air, was tense as a bowstring pulled taut. Only a blind fool would try tempting fate and tangling with the man today.

Sighing to himself, Carson stood up and gathered his tray. He made himself not look over at Rodney as he worked his way out of the mess hall and to his own lab, knowing that no matter how many times he looked, Rodney wouldn't be looking back.

Carson quickly checked on those of his staff who had begun their work and determined that his morning was as free for his own research as he'd planned. It wasn't very often such a thing occurred--which didn't surprise Carson in the least. After all, they were stranded in a far-off galaxy, and if that didn't scream 'constant medical emergencies', Carson wasn't sure what would.

Still, he'd come here to further his research, not dispense Band-Aids and lollypops. He'd tried early on to excuse himself from the day-to-day treatment of minor scrapes and bumps, but he'd been met with significant resistance. Major Sheppard pulled him aside one evening and explained that Carson had the best bedside manner of anyone on the medical staff, and given their crew's tenuous hold on sanity, he'd better keep up the general practitioner gig for the time being.

Thus, Carson split his days between genetics and itchy rashes. At least this morning he would get to run those tests he'd been planning on the Wraith DNA. He had some suspicions there, about what went into their makeup. They were eerily similar to that bug that had tried to kill the Major, and they also had a distinctly humanoid appearance. From what he'd read in the SGC files, things that had human-type forms usually had human DNA in them somewhere. It only made sense that the Wraith would share a genetic history with humans.

He wasn't as sure about whether they were related to the Ancients--well, any more than humans were. Carson knew he stood a better chance of finding signs of human DNA than Ancient DNA, if only because he had access to much more of his own species' genetic material.

Then there was the chance to parse out how much of the Wraith's DNA was human, Ancient and 'other'...which might let him find more Ancient genes in humans. Carson also had a theory about why the Major was better at communicating with the Ancient technology--John probably had more Ancient DNA than the rest of them combined.

Carson let the soft hum of machinery and the quiet, tinny whirr of his computer lull him into a haze of thought. Thoughts of his oft-troubled companions faded away, as did the bitter twinge that was his near-constant fear of death. Carson rarely got the opportunity to just immerse himself in his work like this, and he missed it so.

•••

Breakfast was its usual, uninspiring sameness so Rodney picked up a selection of power bars and poured himself a cup of whatever was passing for coffee at the moment. When the day's offerings didn't meet Rodney's admittedly institutional standards, things were getting really bad.

Rodney ignored the tables of grumpy, drowsy scientists and went directly to his lab. He felt a frisson of annoyance that Dr. Zelenka was already there, but he bit back a comment and sat down at his desk. He'd assigned Zelenka the task of figuring out how to operate what appeared to be a deep-space scanner, a task he'd have loved to have done himself. When they located the scanner, Rodney had been forced to admit to himself that he just didn't have time to do it, not with all his other projects. Zelenka was the obvious choice, and a far better one than a half-wit like Kavanagh.

It came as no surprise, then, that Zelenka was in bright and early, preparing to turn on the scanner and try to make it work. If it had been Rodney, he'd have stayed up all night and already had the initial scans run. Rodney refused to let himself be eaten by envy, though, no matter how much he wanted to be the one playing with such a tantalizing new toy. He had all these other ones, including a now-disassembled Wraith stunner. He wanted to design a smaller weapon than the bulky stunner, but without sacrificing effective firepower. A weapon small enough to conceal, or even carry long distances without becoming a burden, would be a considerable advantage for them. If he could get the thing to where it didn't consume much power, all the better. Perhaps a weapon powered by kinetic energy, recharged as its user went about the normal motions of walking and the like. No one had ever designed tech based on kinetic energy that held that kind of power, but with all the Ancient machinery around him...

He could almost see it now; a sleek, featherweight weapon clasped on the forearm, controlled by the Ancient's interface. It would be keyed to operate for authorized users only, firing a variable-strength blast.

It was the kind of weapon the Major was born for. Sleek, esoteric and very effective. If only Rodney could design the thing to frustrate the hell out of its users without rendering said user vulnerable. John Sheppard as a pocket-sized killing machine.

Rodney knew he'd be sorely tempted to test the weapon out on John's head. Or other parts of him, truth be told. After their last mission, Rodney felt at least somewhat justified. How John managed to make his perfectly reasonable request to not piss off the locals into some sort of onerous task, Rodney had no idea. Sheppard sniped and bitched like Rodney had asked him to translate War and Peace into pig Latin. When the locals had turned out to be laid back, friendly, and difficult to offend, John's behavior had gotten downright vicious. Rodney still winced at the things John had said, and couldn't help but wonder why they'd been at each other's throats like they'd been. Most times their arguments were tempered by humor, but this incident held none of that mediation whatsoever.

And then there was what he'd shouted back. The fact that he'd definitely bested John in terms of the quality and vituperativeness of his insults brought Rodney no joy. Then Rodney hit a nerve and John's face hardened, freezing into an expression Rodney could only describe as 'military standard issue'. Rodney knew what he'd done, what he'd said.

Bringing up John's military history was never a good idea. Rodney had access to more of John's personnel files than the Major realized. Rodney opened them up one night when John pissed him off; afterwards he wished he hadn't. Even having an understanding of what ghosts haunted the man, Rodney couldn't help poking and prodding at tender subjects.

Being an ass wasn't necessarily the best way to deal with people, but it worked for Rodney. No one liked him, but that meant that Rodney could predict their behavior towards him with a high degree of confidence. Rodney honestly didn't care enough about the people around him to bother wanting them to like him. He'd so perfected his act that it was now effortless; he pissed people off by insulting them and they went off and did exactly what he wanted them to do.

Rodney's friends were the rare exceptions to the process. He mostly spared Carson the worst of it; their sparring was more out of fun than anything serious. Carson, though, was a friend. Rodney knew this. John, Rodney wasn't so sure about and that's what kept Rodney thinking about the entire nasty ordeal. Rodney thought John was his friend, but it confused him.

Rodney hated being confused.

•••

Radek Zelenka looked at the results of the deep-space scan he'd just finished running and debated starting the procedure over from scratch for a third time. Perhaps he'd done something wrong--pushed the wrong button or entered the wrong parameters. After all, no one could be completely sure they had the right translations for all those Ancient words. He knew he'd be more comfortable if they'd translated some of it in Czech, but they hadn't and he was stuck mentally translating their inexact English into his more familiar tongue.

A really bad, cold feeling told him it wouldn't matter how many times he ran the deep space scan, he'd see the same thing: Wraith hive ships on a path to Atlantis. They were still a long distance away--many solar systems, in fact. At the rate they were traveling, however, they could be to Atlantis in as little as two weeks.

"Dr. McKay?" Radek said softly, hoping his voice wasn't trembling the way it felt like it was. "I think you should take a look at this."

Much to his chagrin, Major Sheppard walked in at just that moment. "Take a look at what?" He asked, coming over to stand beside the Czech. Radek saw Rodney join them and took several steps back.

"I finished testing the deep-space scanner we found," Radek began, wringing his hands.

John squinted at the screen. "Is that a planet, or a moon?" He inquired, pointing at a small blob on the flickering projection.

"An asteroid, actually," Radek informed him. "That's not what I wanted you to look at, though."

"I'd hope not," Rodney affirmed, scowling. "Since asteroids, while fascinating, aren't particularly, well... fascinating."

"It's this," Radek murmured, returning to the console so he could move the display over some. The Major's asteroid disappeared from view and was replaced by the crackling but still distinct picture of several Wraith hive ships. "They're coming here. I ran the scan twice. They'll arrive in two weeks."

The silence in the lab was so complete that Radek swore he could hear the ocean sliding around the outer hull of the city.

"Two weeks?" Rodney whispered, staring at the image of Wraith hive ships. "We are so fucked." There was no way they could do shit to prepare for the arrival of those ships in just two weeks. Visions of his body as a dried out, withered husk flashed in Rodney's mind, prompting him to wish he'd never been born. The moment passed, but his terror stayed put, firmly entrenched by a lifetime's worth of preferring to be alive rather than dead.

John couldn't tear his eyes away from the picture either. It was like standing in front of a train that was headed straight for him. Gripping yet very, very bad. "Definitely not good," He agreed quietly, unable to argue with Rodney's evaluation of the image. John imagined facing something as big as a hive ship with just a puddle jumper and decided that even David had faced better odds than that. It occurred to him that David never made sarcastic remarks when he was facing down disgustingly bad odds, either. Then again, David didn't have a sidekick like Rodney. If anyone had asked Rodney, John was the sidekick. John was pretty sure that sidekicks were the shorter ones, though. Yeah. Shorter.

"At least we agree on that," Rodney remarked, but it was without his usual bite.

John finally looked at the scientist. "That is something," He commented. "Well...I was wondering what we were planning on doing next." He couldn't help but enjoy the way Rodney's face twisted between disbelief and anger at the comment. "I mean, things were getting a little comfortable around here."

"You're insane," Rodney said in a very heartfelt voice. "We're about to die and you're insane." They were all going to die. It was going to be painful and ugly and he understood that it was the plight of most humans to live short, ugly, brutish lives but he was sort of hoping his would at least measure up to the average Canadian short, ugly, brutish life and he'd get to experience grey hair and presbyopia. It would appear, however, that he was going to get to die a very ugly and extremely painful death at a regrettably young age. Even worse, he was going to be joined in it by John Sheppard. If Rodney McKay believed in karma, he'd be wondering whose puppy he kicked in a former life.

"Oh, I'm panicking on the inside," John said mildly, pissing Rodney off by bringing him back to the present. "I'm just leaving the histrionics to you. You're much, much better at them." Neither man noticed Dr. Zelenka retreating from the room to go find Dr. Weir. The Czech hoped they finished venting before their leader called a formal meeting to calmly discuss their collective impending doom.

Rodney chuckled grimly. "I think Zelenka just went to get Dr. Weir. She's going to want to meet to discuss this." And oh, that was better; nothing like Dr. Weir to bring a man back to the present.

"Of course. When crises are imminent, call a meeting," John snarked, He shook his head briefly and wished he had somewhere to go that wouldn't remind him of fateful quarters and laid-back Air Force Generals. California. Yeah, that's it. John wanted to be in California right now. Or maybe Idaho, so long as no one in Idaho was pasty grey and wanted to feed off his life-energy.

The sound of Dr. Weir's voice, strident and prickly with panic, brought both John and Rodney to attention. "After you," John murmured, stepping to one side. Rodney silently left the lab for the meeting room, John a few steps behind.

Dr. Weir looked suitably scared shitless, her posture rigid. Thin, delicate lady-hands clasped a pen like letting go might bring about the end of the world, and John wondered about her stamina for this kind of thing. The thought was fleeting; in all the months they'd been over here, Dr. Weir had proven that her spine was solid steel. He'd put her up against any CO he'd ever served. He liked her better, too. John's initial estimation of this situation was still that they were all going to die, but the probability that they would survive--though still infinitesimal--was better with her in charge than with anyone else he could think of. Well, besides O'Neill, but he wasn't here.

John walked around the table and slid into his appointed chair, grateful that Dr. Weir had called a meeting of only the most 'relevant and critical staff' instead of letting the entire crew in on the action. He'd been in enough meetings where all the scientists showed up, and it wasn't pretty. They had a habit of standing in this weird, choir-like formation and he always expected them to start chanting or humming in harmony with whatever Dr. McKay was whining about.

This blessedly private meeting was just himself, Weir, McKay, and Zelenka--all the people who knew about the hive ships and no one else.

"Ok," Dr. Weir began, looking as grim as everyone felt. "We know from the scan that there are three hive ships coming to Atlantis."

"And the question is, what are we going to do about it?" McKay interjected. "I mean, besides panic and die painfully."

"Rodney, please focus," Dr. Weir said firmly, her mouth tight. "We need to outline our options here. What can we do to prepare, what are our resources, where can we plan for contingencies..."

John watched as Rodney wound up for the first round of invectives and hysteria. He'd be willing to bet the term 'ZedPM' showed up at least three times before Rodney stopped for air. He wasn't entirely wrong.

"First off, we could find a fully-charged ZedPM to power the city. Failing that, we could find a partially charged ZedPM and 'gate back to Earth. If that doesn't work, we can always abandon the city and hope we pick a world the Wraith don't visit for a few years," Rodney stated, his hands already dancing over a keyboard.

"Rodney," Dr. Weir said again, "This is serious. We've spent almost every day since we arrived in Atlantis looking for a ZPM."

"And now we have a damned good reason to look harder," He retorted. John watched, amused, as Dr. Zelenka motioned with his hands and said something John thought implied Rodney's head was inserted in his ass. Or maybe that they hadn't looked on the right worlds for ZPMs. John wasn't sure, since he wasn't listening all that well.

"Seriously, we need to find a ZPM," Rodney insisted. "Surely we can use the city's databases more efficiently to narrow our search patterns..."

For a moment, John let Rodney's voice fade into a melodious yet oddly annoying murmur--not distinct enough to be forming words yet not quite soft enough to ignore completely. After a couple of minutes, he refocused on the conversation while he let his mind wander a little, pretty sure that his presence in the meeting was no longer the least bit relevant, except to point out where their plans contained massive, fatal flaws of the logistic sort. McKay, Zelenka and Weir were arguing about which systems in the galaxy were most likely to have a ZPM hidden somewhere and John was glad he wasn't being required to make any more comments. They wouldn't like what he thought about their ideas, and no matter how often it happened, John disliked being brushed off as an idiot.

For one thing, the whole Easter-egg-hunt for ZPMs was fucking frustrating. Pegasus might be a dwarf galaxy, but it was still really, really big and from the looks of things, the Ancients didn't leave a ZPM on every 'gate planet. And what were they thinking, that their descendents would want to play kiddie games some 10,000 years after they skipped town? Then again, maybe there was a reason why the Ancients didn't leave ZPMs around like Twinkie wrappers. Oh, wait, there was a reason, a big and important 'this thing can blow up a planet' reason. So yeah, it would be cool to find one, but the probability had to be infinitesimal--at best.

All whining aside, John was more than a little upset that they were chasing ZPMs in the first place. Yeah, he knew he was probably the least qualified person to evaluate the whole scenario, but there *had* to be a better, or at least more realistic, way to power Atlantis than ZPMs. From what he'd picked up, they were just really powerful batteries. Now, that's a good thing and a bad thing, in John's opinion. The good side is that ZPMs are portable, and powerful, and they can either power a little bit of stuff for a long time or a lot of stuff for a little while. That's all well and good, but...

ZPMs couldn't be the AA battery of the universe, now could they? Nooooo. They were like those odd-sized camera batteries that no one ever has. One of John's exes left a flashlight in his apartment once that was a great flashlight--very powerful, very handy, very ran-on-the-most-fucking-annoyingly-expensive-and-unusual-batteries-known-to-man-on-earth. He'd thrown the fucker away, not long after realizing that the flashlight needed 40 bucks in hard-to-find-batteries in order to work. Riiiight. That flashlight with its stupid batteries was a pointless piece of garbage and ZPMs were starting to resemble just such a scenario.

So that's what a ZPM was like. John figured that there had to be a better way to make all that power, without resorting to a nuclear reactor. After all, they had a city full of Ancient tech and wisdom, the self-proclaimed smartest person in two galaxies, and a lot of other yahoos who seem pretty clever on their own. They had to be able to come up with something else.

They could at least devote a little time to that, couldn't they? After all, if they could come up with a single way to make a fraction of the power the ZPMs create, they could probably power up the shields, and wouldn't that be perfect?

But noooo, they had to sit around frittering away their naquadah generators and hoping that some non-psycho civilization was hiding a ZPM.

So John wasn't listening to anybody, because everybody around him was obsessed with archaic hearing-aid batteries and the dead guys in dresses who hid them.

Fucking scientists.

"Care to share your opinion, Major?"

John blinked and tried to look like he was paying attention to Dr. Weir. "My opinion?" He murmured, pointedly ignoring the way Rodney was sneering at him. Fucking scientists.

"Yes, your opinion on likely locations for ZedPMs, provided you actually possess the capacity to formulate one," Rodney said, disdain practically dripping off his voice. "Don't feel burdened to participate, however. We can certainly understand how this conversation can be so very taxing on your type."

John knew it was just Rodney's usual spiel and that he shouldn't take it personally. Rodney insulted everyone in his own adorable, misanthropic way. There were times, though, when it was just too much. "Actually I was just thinking about ZPMs, Dr. McKay," John ground out, smiling grimly. It was more of a baring of the teeth than a smile, but Rodney didn't even flinch.

"Oh?" Dr. Weir intoned, looking suitably interested.

"Yeah," John continued, staring at Rodney. "I think it's a waste of time." When both Rodney and Elizabeth started to protest, he raised his hand to stop them. "Hear me out, ok? You can skip the part where you say I don't know shit from shinola about ZPMs, astrophysics, Ancient technology and all sorts of other things that Stargate Command tells you that you know a lot more about than I do. What I think is a waste of time is this search. Yes, ZPMs are a great source of energy. In fact, they're the most compact power source I've ever seen and I'm sure the technology behind them is light years beyond my comprehension.

"They're also almost nonexistent and they don't recharge, to the best of our current knowledge. The probability of us finding a fully, or even usably, charged ZPM in this galaxy is minuscule. Do the statistics; we're more likely to win the lottery--even though we can't buy tickets because we're stuck in a dead city in another galaxy. Even if you factor out all the planets that have never been inhabitable, the numbers are bad. By the way, you shouldn't count those planets out; the Ancients put 'gates on them, and said Ancients had the ability to visit without dying from lack of proper atmosphere thanks to the 'jumpers. Regardless, this is a bad deal, a big waste of time and manpower."

John sat back and waited for the explosion. He didn't have to wait long.

"I take it the theory that it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and erase all doubt isn't one you follow," Rodney spat. "Or has your oh-so-brilliant mind thought up another way to power Atlantis and keep us from becoming some pasty monster's next dinner?"

John shrugged and let himself smile slightly. "Find a new power source."

Drs. Zelenka and McKay laughed in unison, even as Dr. Weir's face flitted between incredulity and shock. "A new power source? Oh, why didn't I think of that?" Rodney said, gasping through his laughter. "Silly me! Let's see, I'm sure I have a revolutionary new piece of technology here in my back pocket! Oh, wait, I do. It's called a naquadah generator and it's not enough. We need ZedPMs."

John waved off Dr. Weir, who was less than impressed with his taking command of the conversation. "You asked my opinion, so don't get insulted when I give it to you. The way I see it, you're wasting a lot of time here playing around. Yes, it's neat trying to figure out what everything here does, and yes some of it is important. Finding a new power source, or developing one, is more important. I'm not saying you have to start from scratch. You could combine the Ancient tech in the city with what we find out in the galaxy. Not all of the civilizations we run into are stone-age, you know.

"It's not like you're being asked to build a power plant or something, Rodney. You'd think that between your nearly-perfect brain and your team of almost as brilliant scientist buddies, you could come up with an alternate way of running this city, or of producing at least enough power to turn the shields on."

"And where, pray tell, are we supposed to find the raw materials to do this? Did General O'Neill hide something useful in between all those boxes of bullets, or are we supposed to use paperclips and sugar cubes?" Rodney shot back, glaring at John. "Don't you think we've tried?"

"Not really, no," John replied evenly. "I know you well enough to know that if you'd really put your mind to this, you'd have found something by now. After all, you're the smartest person in the galaxy."

"Major," Elizabeth started, her voice brittle, "I'm sure Dr. McKay is doing everything he can to find a way to power the city. In the meantime, you are going to lead missions to locate the items we need to keep Atlantis functioning, and that includes ZPMs. Is that understood?"

"Understood," John muttered, hating it when civilians tried to exert authority like they were military. It never worked and they just ended up sounding constipated.

The rest of the meeting was uneventful; John was completely ignored save for when he pointed out that the planet they were looking at was a gas giant. Zelenka nearly threw a cup of coffee substitute at him for the comment, which made John smirk at him. Scientists were so touchy when you infringed on their territory. It wasn't like they were the only ones who could read their own clearly labeled maps. The more he stared at Rodney's work, the more he understood astrophysics. After all, it was mostly applied mathematics.

It wasn't until they'd been dismissed that Rodney cornered him for the confrontation John had been expecting ever since he'd opened his mouth earlier. "What the fuck was that?" Rodney hissed, using his bulk to corral John into a corner.

"What was what?" John said, looking about as innocent as a viper. "You asked me--

"We asked you which planets were most likely choices to have a ZedPM on them," Rodney spat. The heat from his body radiated onto John, warming the skin on his forearms. The comfort that brought was slightly disarming, particularly given the mood of the source. "Not what kind of asinine things roam freely in the festering cesspool of your frontal lobes when you're not actively focused on shooting something."

"McKay?" John said, his voice lilting questioningly. "How long have you actually spent researching a new power source?"

Rodney's eyes twitched to the right briefly. "It doesn't matter; we don't have time for me to sit around theorizing, no matter how much personal joy it would bring me to develop a completely new power source. It would take years, if not decades. It probably took the Ancients longer than that to design ZedPMs."

"We don't know that," John replied quietly, still pushed back into a corner. "For all we know, they borrowed the technology from someone else, someone even older than they were. And I'm not saying you need to revolutionize power production. Aren't there windmills around here, or solar cells, or something?"

"Windmills?" Rodney barely kept his jaw from dropping. "Granted, you do have Quixotic tendencies, but that really is too much, Major." Rodney took a step back and spun on one heel, stomping off towards his lab. John watched him go, fairly confident that Dr. McKay would be thinking long and hard about alternative power sources for the city.

In the meantime, both of them were going to go visit another boring, primitive culture and try to find a 10,000 year old battery.