Chapter 6 - Yes, That Happened
"He turned into a woman?" John repeated to make sure he heard the two right.
"Right there in front of us." McKay confirmed as he took another bite of his mashed potatoes.
"It was quite distressing." Teyla agreed as she carefully steeped her tea. "Peter is being examined by Doctor Beckett now, but he did not seem particularly hopeful about being able to reverse it."
That wasn't very surprising, even with all the Stargate program weirdness John had read about, a sudden sex change wasn't exactly something he could recall anyone having encountered before.
He frowned as a sudden thought occurred to him. "What about the device?"
"I had Zelenka deliver it to my lab." McKay said as he moved onto the jello. "I have a theory about how it works, and if I'm right we're talking about a Nobel Prize level discovery here."
"You couldn't just ask Evan?" John inquired as he mentally prepared himself for the very real possibility that this time next week they'd be dealing with a female McKay.
"We did." Teyla admitted as she removed the tea strainer and took a sip of her drink. "However Thalia apparently wasn't known for keeping notes about her practical joke devices. And in the case of exposure, they either waited it out, or called upon the city's medical staff to reverse whatever was done."
Something about the name and context was familiar to John, and he wracked his brain for a moment before it hit him. "Thalia? As in the Greek muse of comedy?"
McKay gave him an odd look. "I don't know. Maybe? I'm not exactly up to date on post evacuation Lantean history."
"So what's your theory?" John prodded, wanting to avoid yet another surprise like the time McKay had thrown himself off the balcony.
"The flash of light got me thinking." McKay began, only to pause as he finished his jello and looked over to Shephard's own uneaten bowl.
He pointed his spoon at the bowl. "Are you going to eat that?"
"Yea." John returned in a slightly annoyed deadpan, well used to McKay's proclivities with food at this point.
"Just didn't want it going to waste." McKay defended as he set his spoon down. "Now. What was I saying? Oh right, the flash of light. Well, it reminded me of what you see with
transport rings. So I'm thinking the device briefly broke Grodin's body down the same way those do, and then immediately reassembled it in a slightly different configuration."
"And that's big because?" John asked once it became clear McKay wasn't going to expand on the subject any more than he already had.
"Because if you can alter the configuration one way, you can alter it others." McKay put forward as he wagged his finger at them. "And even if it's limited to minor genetic changes like with Grodin, the potential medical uses alone are staggering."
John wasn't sure he would consider a sex change a minor difference, but arguing that seemed like a good way to end up having to sit through a multi-hour long McKay lecture.
Teyla frowned at McKay. "Would medical uses not require a level of permanence not supported by Eventus's words that the effect should wear off?"
"Yes." McKay admitted. "But after you left to take Grodin to medical, he mentioned he had never encountered that particular device before and was basing it on his experiences with most of Thalia's other practical jokes."
And most suggested that there were some that hadn't.
"I assume you tried having Grodin put the device down and just pick it back up again?" John pressed, well aware of just how blind their scientists could be when it came to trying simple solutions.
Teyla gave a slight incline of her head that John had learned meant someone had made a well acknowledged point. "It was the first thing I suggested Peter try."
"I'm guessing it either detects some residual energy on a person from their last exposure or keeps an internal record of those it affected and then blocks them from being affected again." McKay added in.
Those sounded to John like things that could easily be linked to a timer of some kind.
"No experimenting with the device for two weeks." He ordered, mentally debating as he did whether he should have someone move it out of McKay's lab just to be on the safe side. "We'll have Grodin try it again at the end of that. And if it still doesn't do anything for him, then you can open it up to try and find out how it works."
McKay frowned, and for a moment it looked like he was going to argue before he rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. "Fine."
"Anyways." John continued as he shot the disappointed scientist a look to tell him he would absolutely be checking. "It's not like you have a lot of time to be doing that anyways since we still have our ZPM hunt to get too. Unless Evan happened to have one laying around alongside everything else?"
"He did." Teyla offered with a small amused smile. "But I believe it was mostly depleted."
"Less power than the one on
M7G-677." McKay confirmed with a grimace. "And that's not even taking into account whatever that other Ancient was doing to it."
He snapped his fingers as a look of excitement flashed over his face. "Though that reminds me, I found our new uniforms."
"Rodney, no." Teyla immediately objected, looking anything but pleased at the direction the man was going.
John looked between the pair, not entirely sure he wanted to know, but fully aware that if he didn't ask there were good odds that it would come back to bite them on the ass. "New uniforms?"
"We had to travel through several flooded portions of the city to reach the maintenance depot." Teyla explained. "To do so, Eventus provided us with aqua suits from one of the city's water based facilities."
"Think wetsuits." McKay added in smugly. "Without any of the downside of actual wetsuits, and made out of a material that I suspect is related to what Anubis used to make the undersuits of his super soldier armor."
Which, if true, placed those suits high up on the list of technology Stargate Command had wanted them to keep an eye out for.
He turned to Teyla with an inquisitive look, knowing she wouldn't have spoken out so forcefully against the idea if there hadn't been something that made the idea unpalatable. "And the problem with them?"
"It is a somewhat lengthy procedure to put them on." Teyla confessed as she refused to meet their eyes in a way that suggested there was more to it then just that. "And take them off."
He spent a moment working out how that might be a problem in field work where urgency could often be a premium before wincing slightly. "Okay, I can see the problems with that."
Especially for women, who tended to have it more than a little bit rougher than their male counterparts when it came to on the run bathroom requirements.
"So we'll shelve that idea for later." He told McKay as Teyla shot him a grateful smile.
He turned an expectant look back to McKay. "I don't suppose there was anything else important I missed?"
McKay took a moment to consider the question, and John could all but see him mentally running back over his time with the Ancient. "Nothing I can think of. Well. Other than the fact there might still be some Ancient warships around."
John felt his eyebrow twitch slightly as he took a calming breath to avoid reaching over to strangle McKay, as that was without a doubt the thing he should have brought up first.
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Author's Notes: I spent yesterday in a metaphorical bunker, so have a chapter.
