“Ronon?” Elizabeth asked when it was clear Teyla was finished speaking.
“They’re still Wraith,” he said. “All this means is that they’re going to keep humans as slaves rather than killing them outright. I think we ought to keep fighting them. But it’s not up to me right now.”
“Right now?”
“Right now. If I come back to Sateda at some point… then we’ll see. Cai has this idea that I ought to stand for some kind of election here. I don’t know about that. Yet.”
Elizabeth nodded, and looked up at John. “And your take on all of this?”
“For the moment, the Wraith aren’t attacking Atlantis or killing my people,” John said. “I’ll take it.”
Elizabeth took a slow breath, and then let it out. “All right. I think you’re who you say you are.”
Rodney looked at her quizzically. “I’m glad to hear it, but what did we actually do to convince you?”
“You haven’t tried to persuade me that nothing’s changed,” she said. “That was what I was most worried about when you told me about Carson. If this were an illusion, something drawn from my own mind, then I would be seeing and hearing the people I remembered. And then after I asked about Colonel Sheppard, he appeared a few minutes later.”
“It was not a coincidence,” Teyla said. “He wished to accompany the team that was looking for you, and was only prevented from doing so by the knowledge that his place was in Atlantis.” She gave him a pointed sidelong look at the last words, and he shrugged.
“I expect someone might have reminded him of that,” Elizabeth said. “And I see that. It just made me wonder. But what you’re telling me… you sound like yourselves. I can understand why you might have come to these conclusions. But a lot of what you’re saying is not exactly what I would have expected you to say. You’ve changed. People do. And given that I’ve been gone… ” She frowned. “How long have I been gone?”
“Since you died, or since the last time we saw you when we, umm… had to freeze you in space in a Replicator body?” Rodney asked.
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying that was after I died.”
“It’s complicated,” John said. “You’ve been gone for nearly three years. The last time we saw you, for some value of ‘saw’ and ‘you’ was about eighteen months ago.”
“Three years,” Elizabeth said. She took a deep breath, and then let it out again, pressing her hands to the tabletop as if to steady herself. “Okay. So what happens now?”
“I go find out why it’s taking Lorne so long to get the alpha site set up,” John said, and hoped the answer wasn’t going to be that their minor problem had turned into another unfolding catastrophe.
Lorne looked up as Radek came into the control room. “We have a problem,” Radek said shortly.
“It really is a plastic-eating bug.”
“Yes. Yes, it appears to be, according to the data that Dr. Xiao was just able to transmit.”
“Before his laptop fell apart?”
“It did do that, but he was able to relay information through the jumper. Thankfully, the materials used to construct the jumper are all metal, crystal, or silicone rather than petroleum-based plastics. Silicone plastics appear to be unaffected.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Most of the plastic used in our equipment is petroleum-based. The Ancient equipment is safe, but nearly everything made of plastic that we brought from Earth is vulnerable, as well as synthetic fabrics. Polyester is a petroleum product.”
“Wonderful.”
“Now, we are lucky that many harmful microorganisms do not pass through the Stargate. The gate’s own systems are designed to prevent some common forms of contamination from passing through.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
“Some is not all. And as people have been moving back and forth from the alpha site all day long, and we know some of their personal items are affected… ”
“It’s worse than that,” Lorne said, his stomach sinking at a sudden memory. “Harper said she was going to bring the defective gear back to Atlantis. It’s probably sitting here somewhere. And if it’s infected… ”
Radek’s expression was grim. “Where did she put it?”
They found the defective tent and water cans piled in a corner of the supply depot. The tent crumbled in Lorne’s hand as he tried to pick it up, as if made of something dry and brittle. A plastic storage container was sitting next to them, and he nudged it with his foot. It caved in easily at the slightest pressure.
“Oh, not good,” Radek said.
Chapter Nineteen
“I have to say that this is frustrating,” Elizabeth said as they waited. “I remember bits and pieces, but not enough to be sure about what happened to me.”
“It’ll come back,” Daniel said. “Most of it.” He tried to think back to the first time he had returned from being Ascended, after SG-1 had found him. “Some things I didn’t remember until something reminded me. Or until I dreamed about them.”
“Dreams,” Elizabeth said, and frowned. “I dreamed about a woman… no, that’s not right. Not a human woman. She said she had helped me Ascend.”
“It’s good that you’re starting to remember,” Daniel said. “Was she one of the Ancients?”
“You would think she would be. But I don’t think so. She didn’t look human at all. In my dream, she was warning me about… someone who was threatening her. Someone who was looking for a way to… force Ascended beings to unascend?”
She didn’t sound sure of that last, but Daniel felt his heart sink. “That’s what the Asgard just found,” he said. “A device that might be able to force Ascended beings back into physical form.”
“The Asgard,” Elizabeth said, frowning intently. “Someone show me a picture of one of the Asgard.”
Rodney brought out his tablet obligingly and pulled up a picture of one of the Asgard; Daniel thought it was Hermiod, although he had to admit that even he had trouble telling the Asgard apart until they spoke.
“I think the person I dreamed about may have been an Asgard,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head slowly. “She had hair, and… ” She opened and closed one hand, as if trying to grasp scraps of memory. “More distinct facial features. But the eyes, and the bone structure, and the height, that’s all right.”
“You think she was one of the Asgard? And that she was Ascended?”
“I think she must have been if she helped me Ascend. And if she was worried about someone having the ability to force her to unascend. She said her name was Ran.”
“That’s a Norse sea goddess,” Daniel said immediately. “Completely unsurprising as an Asgard name, because a lot of the Asgard spent some time on Earth, helping us develop as a species. They were perceived as gods by the local inhabitants, like the Goa’uld, but more benevolently. At least usually.”
“Except they weren’t Ascended,” Rodney pointed out
Daniel nodded, acknowledging that. “We’ve never heard of any of the Asgard Ascending. As far as we know, they decided that living without physical bodies wasn’t an acceptable solution to their problems.”
“They decided,” Elizabeth said. “But if one person had made another choice, they couldn’t actually have stopped her, could they? After all, it’s not like humans have gotten together and decided that it’s a good idea for all humans to Ascend.”