Chapter 64 - Avalon or Bust
"I thought you said you only had one of those." McKay muttered, staring at the portable cold fusion generator on the floor of the puddle jumper as Eventus finished fusing the last of the upgraded sensor suite's data systems to the vessels primary control network.
"I did." Eventus confirmed, shutting the floor panel and spending a moment to stretch out the kinks that had formed in his neck. "But I put together a second during all the running back and forth I was doing on the Enterprise. I was just saving it to install in the planetary control outpost you dug up in Antarctica."
Mostly because he kind of doubted the governments of Earth would want to go to directly installing the ZPM, and he really wanted to use the outposts sensor and communications systems to assist in his search of the solar system.
"There wasn't really a lot left there other than the chair room and drone storage." McKay said, following behind Eventus as he walked to the cabin.
Taking a seat at the pilots station, Eventus set the puddle jumper's main computer to run an integration check on the new equipment before turning back to McKay with a questioning look in his eye. "How far down did your people get anyways? "
"Drone storage." McKay admitted, taking the seat next to Eventus. "Everything below that was flooded by meltwater from the particle drill. Surprised you didn't read about that when going through all our files."
The slightly terse way McKay said the last suggested he very much didn't approve of Eventus having done that. Which the Lantean supposed was at least a little fair given there were likely a number of private things in those records that the ego driven man never wanted seeing the light of day.
"I'm not superman you know." Eventus admitted, letting out a relieved sigh when everything came up good to go. "With everything else I have to get done I've barely had time to skim over your mission files."
"Oh." McKay muttered, pursing his lips in thought. "Then why did you say I should contact my sister?"
"Because one of my undisclosed abilities is seeing the future." Eventus lied, turning to the viewport and bringing up a video feed of the gate room to hide the barely restrained grin on his face. "And I had a vision of you losing out to her for some sort of theoretical physics award."
A brief look of worry momentarily flashed across McKay's features before he shook his head and shot Eventus a smug grin. "You almost had me there, but Jeannie's been out of the theoretical physics game since she got herself knocked up by some English Major."
"What's an English Major?" Eventus asked with a frown, having never really understood the job even before he'd spent four hundred plus years focusing on keeping people from blowing themselves up.
"They basically teach other people how to be English Majors." McKay offered after seeming to consider the question for a moment.
That didn't sound exactly right to Eventus, not the least because he'd spent enough time around McKay by now to know the man was more than a little biased against anything he didn't consider a hard science.
"So why would getting pregnant stop your sister from plumbing the unending depths of the universe's physical laws?"
"I never really asked." McKay confessed with a shrug.
Even knowing what he did about the two's relationship, that lack of care left a bit of a sour note in Eventus's mood.
"As someone who recently woke up from a ten thousand year nap to find everyone they knew dead and gone, I'm just going to say this is one of the no doubt rare cases where you're being an idiot."
Holding up a hand to forestall McKay's obvious rebuttal, Eventus continued. "I mean really, what do you have to lose? A few hours of your time? Doesn't seem like much of a loss when you could just ask Beckett to roll back your biological clock a few years."
The mental record skip as McKay's train of thought ground to a halt was all but audible.
"Wait, we can do that!?" He finally demanded.
"Yes?" Eventus confirmed, moderately confused about why McKay might think otherwise since Eventus hadn't said anything about the technology being limited to his people's use. "It won't be as effective on your people due to your less robust physiologies. But given the various times we provided such treatments to the people of this galaxy, at worst you'd be looking at a forty percent reduction in the number of years such a treatment would be able to take off."
"Of course." He continued, turning a mild glare to McKay. "Things would be a lot more available on the medical front if your people could find more people like Beckett willing to accept going through the medical course."
"Natural gene holders don't grow on trees you know." McKay groused. "Can't you just grow new people and have them do it like you did the Elf?"
Groaning slightly and hanging his head, Eventus really had to wonder why everyone now seemed to think it was just that simple to create new living thinking beings.
"Imprinting a full medical course on a new mind would have extremely negative effects on the resulting consciousness's free will." He explained in annoyance. "They'd end up building their entire personality around the knowledge, and at that point it's basically just mind control by another name."
It could also lead to things like stunted emotional growth and sociopathy, but those were really a lesser problem compared to the whole mind control issue.
McKay held up a finger. "Going back a bit, you ancients had a cure for hair loss, right? Because I was arguing with Sheppard earlier, and he seemed to think that–"
A knock on the Jumper's hull cut McKay off, and Eventus looked back to see the man in question walking in. "You two almost done in here? Cause Stargate Command gave the all clear for the gateroom like two minutes ago, and Bates will complain if we make him stand with his arm in the gate much longer."
There was of course an override that would make it so they didn't need to do that, but Eventus found them assigning people to stand with their arm in the event horizon funny enough that he wasn't planning to tell them about it unless it ever became actively detrimental.
"Everthings good to go." He confirmed with a nod. "And McKay can confirm all the Jumpers drones have been unloaded."
Which had been an understandable line in the sand for the SGC, and utterly unimportant to him given the versatility of the Jumper's field emitters could more then make up for the loss of its drone complement.
"Also." He continued with an impish grin. "McKay here was just asking me about something interesting."
The look of sudden panic on McKay's face was more than a little amusing, even though it felt a bit mean to poke at the man's insecurities like that.
"Oh?" Sheppard asked in sudden interest.
"Hey now!" McKay objected. "I was telling you that in–"
"There's nothing to be ashamed of McKay." Eventus interrupted in a patient tone. "Even my people went to extraordinary lengths at times to impress those they were romantically interested in. And all things considered, flying the Jumper back to the SGC himself isn't that outrageous of a request."
"You have to understand." McKay began trying to reassure Sheppard before Eventus even finished speaking. "I was asking to help out Dobson who was…" He trailed off, turning back to Eventus in confusion as the realization seemed set in that he hadn't been talking about the scientist's inquiry into preventing hair loss. "Wait? Pilot the Jumper?"
"Yes." Eventus returned, shooting the scientist an innocent look. "What did you think I was talking about?"
"Nothing." McKay returned all but instantly, before looking back to Sheppard with a suddenly hopeful look in his eye. "So can I?"
"No." Sheppard deadpanned, walking forward and shooing McKay out of the secondary pilot's seat. "I've sat in on your training sims, and even with the collision avoidance system in play you'd find some way to run into the wall."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Notes: Something funny I realized while writing this transitionary chapter, Moras is bald, Merlin is not. Which means he choose to unascend himself with hair.
