Chapter 38 - Studying Up
Meredith Rodney McKay liked to think he was a genius, mostly because he was, but studying the Enterprise's reactor in operation he was left to ponder if maybe he was slightly less intelligent then he had thought, or possibly the Ancients were.
"Are you sure we're translating that right?" He asked
Doctor Kusanagi as the Japanese woman looked between the console she was working at and the information on her tablet.
"The ship has been handling the translation." She admitted in an apologetic tone. "So I cannot be certain, Doctor McKay. But I believe the problem might be that some of the elements involved in its operation just don't have comparative words in English."
"I'd gotten that when the maintenance manual mentioned a Jarantium core." Rodney returned with an annoyed sigh as he walked over and showed the woman the information he'd brought up on his own tablet. "Here, you see what I mean?"
Kusanagi studied the blueprint for a moment before shaking her head. "I'm sorry, I cannot Doctor McKay."
Of course she couldn't, Rodney thought to himself in annoyance as he flipped the tablet back around and brought up a breakdown of an
Al'kesh's reactor core that he'd kept ready for the sake of comparative power system analysis.
"See." He said, pointing out the structures in question. "The conversion coils are identical, right down to their material makeup."
Taking a minute to look between the example on his pad and the information displayed on the console, Kusanagi finally gave a somewhat confused nod of agreement. "Has it not been theorized that much Goa'uld technology was reverse engineered Ancient technology?"
"Yes." McKay confirmed, rolling his eyes slightly at her inability to see the problem with that. "But the Orbanian design we use for our reactors is twenty-three percent more efficient than that."
And he'd been expecting something similar from the Ancients, but he wasn't going to admit that out loud.
"Maybe they just never thought they needed anything more efficient?"
Doctor Collins offered as he looked up from one of the power flow monitoring stations.
"They were fighting a war." Rodney reminded him in exasperation.
"Did they know that?"
Doctor Simpson asked from over by the secondary power control system. "Eventus provided us with the last hundred years of design history for this ship class, and it was only in the last couple years of the war that they did anything more than slap a couple extra pulse weapons on the hull."
Rodney had of course noticed that, but his assumption at the time had been that the Ancients had just hit the point where they had squeezed every bit of efficiency possible out of their technology.
"Upgrades to the Explorer class hull were deemed to be of limited necessity by the Council due to the sheer degree with which they already outclassed the forces the Wraith were thought able to bring against us." A female voice spoke up from behind Rodney, making him jump in surprise as he spun around, nearly dropping the tablet he had been holding in the process.
The dark haired female form that greeted him was obviously holographic, and surprisingly tall, towering a good seven centimeters over his own impressive one hundred and eighty. She also had a somewhat Wonder Womanish physique that left him silently bemoaning the fact her real body probably looked like his grandmother right now.
"You would be head researcher Rodney, correct?" She asked as she matched his inquisitive examination with one of her own.
"Chief science and research officer." Rodney corrected as he straightened up and did his best to look as authoritative as possible. "And you would be?"
"Head engineer Silvina." She returned with a nod. "I wished to discuss the status of the Taranis facility."
Slightly disappointing, but Rodney had succeeded with less so he gave her a smile and nod. "Sure, I did some work on the systems there a couple weeks back."
"Wasn't exactly easy with the lack of spare control crystals." He went on, since it never hurt to talk yourself up in front of a woman. "But after some jury rigging I was able to get the shield there back up and running at nearly eighty percent and even streamline the power systems to help compensate for the shutdown of the geothermal taps accelerator system."
He was particularly proud of the last since it had involved modifying a number of Asgard power flow calculations to work with the bare bones Lantean systems that had been used in the repair facility.
"Then the molecular assembly units were non-operational?" Silvina inquired with a worried frown.
"The facility was heavily damaged in general." Rodney dodged to cover up the fact he had no idea whether such a system had even existed at the facility. "I was mostly focusing my efforts on those two systems since they were what the Taranians pushed for once Teyla actually explained what was going on."
"The who?" Silvina asked, tilting her head slightly in confusion.
Rodney took a moment to consider that question in the context of her reason for hunting him down in the first place, and then let out an annoyed sigh as a likely answer hit him.
"Okay, how much of Taranis did that information packet Evan sent you actually cover?"
"He provided us with a full copy of this ship's remaining logs for general review." Silvina answered as her hologram briefly flickered at a higher rate than it had previously been doing, leaving Rodney to furrow his brow in consideration at the system as a question hit. "However he and Captain Herius are currently discussing the greater contextual details of the seventy six cycles between the Aurora's loss and our people's withdrawal from this galaxy."
"Is your virtual interface running at a one to one ratio?" Rodney asked.
"Yes." Silvina confirmed, taking the switch of subjects with surprising stride. "Higher ratios were banned outside of temporal compensation events due to the potential damage that could occur when reintegrating a consciousness that had experienced a higher passage of time."
That was interesting as the
Volsinii had warned about similar risks when providing the SGC with their virtual reality technology, it made Rodney wonder whether the Volsinii system might have been descended from Ancient designs or if that was just a general compatibility problem between mind machine interfaces.
Of course, if a time differential wasn't the cause of the disruption that meant there was probably something wrong with either the Enterprise's holographic system or whatever transmission equipment Silvina was using to access it. Though given the Enterprise had just come out of a repair facility and the Aurora was almost a pile of floating junk he would bet it was the latter instead of the former.
"Okay." He continued, making a mental note to look into that later. "So long annoying story short, the Taranians are a group of humans that moved into the drydock facility a few decades back and almost blew it up by running the shield system at maximum for almost a year."
"Then they do not possess technical skill?" Silvina questioned.
"Eh." Rodney said as he made a so-so motion with one of his hands to show they had at least a little. "They were nowhere near me, but their scientists at least seemed to know their way around the general systems."
Even if they did only have a basic understanding of the written Lantean language.
"Major Lorne could probably tell you more about them." He continued with a shrug. "He took over handling things after I got what I could stabilized and returned to Atlantis to deal with an idiot who nearly set the gate room on fire."
"Very well." Silvina said as she appeared to look at something in her virtual interface that he couldn't see for a moment. "I would appreciate a detailed list of what repairs and modifications you made to the facility during your time there. If needed you can contact me using the ship's communication system."
With that her hologram vanishes, leaving Rodney to stare at the empty space in thought for a moment before letting a smile grace the corner of his lips.
"I think she likes me."
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Author's Notes: Well McKay, she at least doesn't think you're a useless primitive, so that's something. But "like" is probably too strong of a word at this point.
