"Yeah," John agreed. "Where's Carson?"

"Other side," Carson said loudly. "Let me catch my breath and we'll find a doorway."

"It's never that easy," Rodney said with some confidence. "Let's try 'stay put and we'll find you.’ It worked last time."

John stood up and helped Rodney to his feet. "Hey, another hallway. No columns, though."

"Just our luck," Rodney muttered. "Now what?"

"Huh?" John said. "What-what?"

"The plan, oh captain my captain. As much fun as it is to chase each other through these infernal hallways, we really do need a plan. Teyla and Ford aren't responding and Carson is stuck somewhere else entirely. So, what's the plan?" Rodney asked. "You're in charge, remember?"

John glared at Rodney. "And you're the genius, as you so frequently remind everyone you meet. Why don't you think up a way to get us out of here? After all, you were the one so eager to explore this temple."

"Taking the cheap shot, Major," Rodney hissed. "I'm disappointed in you. Surely you can form a more original way to blame me for all of this."

John ignored Rodney in favor of stalking down the hallway. He didn't understand exactly why he was suddenly so angry at Rodney, but nevertheless he was. The man irritated John intensely.

Rodney, unwilling to be left alone in this hostile building, followed John closely. A wall popped up behind them, and then closed a door to their left, but they soon came to a pair of doors on their right. They stood side by side, these doors, with only a narrow post separating them.

"They look like they lead to the same hallway," John murmured.

"Which one to take, then?" Rodney asked, almost rhetorically. He suspected, of course, that they went different places and one would find Carson while the other would probably kill them. Or maybe one would do both; it was hard to tell and he was getting hungry.

"I have no idea," John said, fear finally cracking his voice. "Why do I have to pick?"

"Leadership," Rodney replied.

"I don't know," John said, staring at the two doorways.

Rodney huffed angrily, gritting his teeth. "You know, I was wrong. What's disturbingly disappointing about you is your indecisiveness. Just make a decision. The lady or the tiger. The left one or the right one."

"Go to hell, Rodney," John grumbled.

"No, it's the truth. What does it say about you that your crowning achievement in tactical decision-making is killing your commanding officer?" Rodney knew he was pushing it, but John was obviously starting to buckle and Rodney had to get him to focus--even if it meant being an asshole.

As a result, Rodney didn't bother ducking the fist he knew was coming at his face. After all, he'd fully earned it with that last remark. "Ow," He murmured, wiping a couple of drops of blood off his nose. "You held back," Rodney remarked as he felt his nose. "It's not broken."

"You're a jackass," John said, grabbing Rodney's arm and yanking him through the left-hand doorway. "But not yet a complete bastard. I'm saving up for when you cross the next line."

"How generous," Rodney remarked as they started quickly down the hallway that had almost-magically appeared on their right. "Carson!" He shouted down the hall, worried that the doctor hadn't said anything in several minutes.

"Still here!" Carson called back. "Although I did find another body. Old, dried up. Wraith. Very dead," He reported. "Er, several Wraith, but they're all quite dead."

Even dead, Wraith were Wraith so John and Rodney broke into a run.

They ran hard and fast, Rodney panting slightly, until they came to a wall. "Carson?" John shouted, needing an orientation point.

"Still here, still with bodies," Carson replied. His voice was close-by, echoing almost tangibly in the hallway. "I think my hallway just became a room."

Rodney pointed left, where two doors opened into a short, dead-end hall. John led the way and there Carson was, in the right-hand room. Around him lay a large number of bodies, all very not-recent deaths.

As soon as they entered the room, Carson came to their sides. "Four Wraith, eight humans and three I can't identify but look like bipeds," He said quietly. "Been here a long while."

"Um, yeah," Rodney said, trying not to look too hard. "I wonder if the other room has this many bodies."

"Let's find out," John suggested, putting one hand on Rodney's left arm and the other on Carson's right. "And this time? No falling on opposite sides of any walls."

The room across the hall was devoid of both bodies and temporal disturbances. They took a chance and stopped traveling for a minute, to catch their breath. Rodney extracted a power bar from his vest, knowing that the trembling in his hands was only partially attributable to fright.

John studied the walls, but didn't touch them. His hands were raw from climbing, but the sting had faded to a barely-there throb. Carson checked out his own hands but saw nothing serious enough to warrant treatment he couldn't provide anyway.

Rodney finished his snack and stowed the waste before catching up to the others in their perusal. "Upon reflection, I've decided that the remark I made about Sumner?" He said quietly to John, knowing an apology would be politic--and proper.

"Shut up, Rodney," John said, mostly without heat.

Rodney continued as though John hadn't spoken. "Well, it was, perhaps...an opinion I should have kept to myself."

John just stared at Rodney's forehead.

Carson hadn't been present for what appeared to have been an uncomfortable conversation, but knowing the two men in front of him, he could well imagine what had gone on. "I take it Rodney's been expressing his usual level of breathtaking tactlessness?"

"You could say that," John confirmed.

"You're young; you'll get over it," Rodney snapped. "I wasn't wrong."

"You admit as much on a regular basis," John retorted. Carson began to wonder if he should leave before things got bloodier. If such a thing wouldn't potentially strand him in an even more dangerous situation, he'd have done it.

"Your performance improved after I made note of its lack of distinction," Rodney replied.

The sound of John's teeth grinding together spurred Carson into action. "We can't stay here. Come on."

Rodney briefly considered giving Carson one of John's trademark looks, but thought better of it. The good doctor didn't seem to be in the mood for coquettish bastardy at the moment, and it wasn't necessary anyway.

John led them out of the room and back into the hallway. As Carson had indicated, walls were shifting around them. They headed right, through a new doorway and into another hall lined with windows. “Huh,” John murmured. “This is different.” The windows ran along the left wall, while the right was composed of open doorways and shallow alcoves. Bright light flooded the space and all three men paused to take in the view.

“Different,” Rodney acknowledged. Something caught his attention, making him cock his head to one side. He listened, not able to pinpoint just what it was.

“It’s quieter here,” Carson said cautiously. “Less noise.”

Carson saying it made Rodney realize that silence was what he’d been focusing on. “The walls aren’t moving as much, are they?”

John tentatively looked back through the doorway they’d come from, peering upwards. “Well, the ceiling isn’t moving as much as it used to,” He informed them. “Whatever that means.”

“Damn, I was just getting the hang of this moving-walls stuff,” Rodney groused. “Assuming that at some point it’s going to pick up again…”

“We should go try to find Teyla and Ford now, before it does,” John decided. “Wherever they are; this place is a lot bigger inside than it should be.”

“I think it’s safe to assume this place is as far from normal as it’s possible to be,” Rodney replied as he and Carson followed John. Instead of going back the way they came, the three men walked down the window-lined corridor, peering into each room but not entering. Most of them were similar in nature; squarish and covered in carvings. A few turned out to be hallways.

John walked until he reached the corner of the hallway, which turned right. As before, this one was lined with windows on the left and doorways on the right. “That makes sense, for once,” He murmured. “Ok, should we walk the entire perimeter or take a chance on the interior again?”

“Interior,” Carson offered. “Remember, when the walls are moving, windows are something to be avoided. We never could get very close—the place doesn’t seem to want you to.”

Rodney just shrugged. “I doubt that Teyla and Ford are in one of these exterior hallways.”

John nodded and walked along the new corridor until he found an inward hallway. He led Rodney and Carson into it, still pausing to check out each doorway or branching hallway they encountered. They found bodies lying here and there, all very dead but none truly decaying. It was as though anything that died in the temple eventually dried out, but didn’t rot.

“How long does it take a body to, um…” John asked Carson, waving a hand at a very dried out corpse.

Carson grimaced. “Normally? I have no idea. I don’t think the usual rules apply, though—humidity, bacteria, temperature and the like. This place is completely random.”

“How do we know these things won’t come back to life?” Rodney asked nervously. He’d wondered that more than once since they’d run into a corpse. “I mean, Teyla’s arm healed when a backwards-moving disturbance hit her…”

“Feel free to try it out,” John said tightly, indicating a room that contained a temporal disturbance. “Just toss someone right on in.”

Carson stared disbelievingly at John, not sure if the man was being serious and not sure if he should be scared or not. “You’re joking,” He exclaimed hopefully, obviously disturbed.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Rodney said, wondering if a dried out body would be heavy but deciding it wouldn’t be that bad. “Although I don’t think we need to test it out. If someone could come back to life in here, they would have by now and we’d know it.”

John nodded. “Yeah, he’s got a point. Besides, I’m not risking a living person to test out whether we can get aged to death and brought back. We got close enough to that before.”

Carson smiled grimly and started down the hall again. “Still, we need to find the others. I don’t think they’re doing as well as we are,” He said. “You can hear too much in this place for them to be here and be moving about.”

John and Rodney joined him, John taking the lead again. Nothing looked remotely familiar; the walls and doorways had moved far too much for them to have any real landmarks. It was hubris to expect that they’d just trip over Ford and Teyla in one of the side rooms, and John didn’t want to calculate the odds of finding them at all given the many depressing variables he’d have to factor into the equation.

“John,” Rodney murmured, reaching out to stop his leader. “I think we just found them.”

Not for the first time, John wondered if Teyla had been right about the temple being attuned to their minds. Just when he thought they’d never find their teammates, Rodney was pointing into a small chamber—except Rodney’s face was pasty and his eyes were wide and scared.

“Oh no,” Carson whispered dejectedly as he saw Ford and Teyla. They stood frozen in the center of the room, still as statues. All around them rippled one of the temple’s temporal disturbances—one of the stationary ones instead of the spontaneously appearing type that seemed to stalk along the hallways.

Rodney peered at the young people in front of him. They looked so alive, like they might start talking or breathing at any minute. “It’s not moving,” He muttered, fascinated.

“Kinda obvious,” John replied shortly. “How do we get them out of that?”

“No,” Rodney said, scowling at John. “Inside it. Time isn’t moving. They’re not just frozen in place; they’re frozen in time.”

Carson took a step closer, looking carefully at Teyla and Ford. “You’re sure? Is it killing them?”

Rodney shook his head. “Considering just how much I know about temporal distortions…My guess is that this one is time dilation.”

“Moving super slow,” John translated. “Forward or backwards?”

“Does it matter?” Rodney asked in reply. “They’re frozen in time right now. Again, taking a huge leap with no empirical evidence, I’m thinking they’re not dead. I’m not entirely sure they’re alive either, though.”

“And we’ve no way of getting rid of that field,” Carson remarked. A thought occurred to him and he reached into a pocket of his vest. Inside was a small pad of paper and a pen he’d stuck inside on the off chance it might come in handy.

“Leaving them a note?” Rodney inquired dryly. “How thoughtful of you.”

“Drawing a map,” Carson replied curtly. “Now that the place has stopped moving about.”

John and Rodney shared a look, each knowing that it was not only a good idea, but one they should’ve thought of earlier. “What scale are you using?”

“Depends,” Carson said. “How long was that first window-hallway?”

The three men crouched on the floor and quickly worked out a key and scale for the map system. The temple was far too complicated to fit on one small piece of paper, so Carson began to construct an atlas. They wrote in symbols for where Teyla and Ford were, as well as the locations of chambers, hallways and corpses.

“You know,” Rodney murmured as he checked out the incomplete map. “Extrapolating from the available data…”

“This place is fucking huge,” John said. “Ok, leave a note for them,” He continued, looking sadly at Ford and Teyla. “We’re gonna find a way out of here.”

Once again they began down empty hallways, John leading cautiously. This time, however, Carson focused on the map, marking down hallways and rooms as they passed. After a few minutes, Rodney, having found a pen in his own vest, confiscated a few pieces of paper and began jotting down the symbols on the wall.

"Huh, this is different," John said as he stepped into one room. "It's a triangle."

Carson and Rodney joined him in the room, which indeed only had three walls. "Equilateral triangle, to be exact," Rodney added as he ran his hands over the carved walls. "The door bisects one wall exactly, not that it matters." The script on the wall began to move and they all jumped back, fully expecting the walls to start shifting again. They didn't, however; the carvings simply flowed and shifted in fascinating eddies.

"Well, it's a landmark," Carson murmured, scribbling on a piece of paper that they'd found a triangular room with moving script. He rubbed his forehead, suddenly feeling a little dizzy. He'd not had food or water for god-only-knew how long, but he hadn't thought it long enough to actually cause symptoms.

John began to speak, but to Carson, his voice sounded muddy. "I don't feel so--

Rodney ducked just in time to avoid a gobbet of pitch, its serpentine flames almost-singing his exoderm. He flowed around the rocky terrain, sliding around stones and rubble until he'd crested the hill and began to descend. Friendly territory lay just across the gap, if only he could reach it.

The barest flash of light was the only warning Rodney got as searing pain blasted through his body. He split himself open, flowing around the projectile and then re-formed after it fell to the ground. Behind him stood the one who'd thrown it, already formed and on the attack. Vicious, sharp claws swiped at his midsection and Rodney flew backwards, changing form in mid-air until he found one more suited to face this particular enemy.

Then he went on the offensive.

•••

The rhythm of set-load-light-release was almost hypnotic and Carson was fully immersed in it. He reached for another barrel of hot, molten pitch and began ladling it into the trebuchet. Fire was waved over the pitch and it ignited, flames racing over the sticky surface. Carson counted, waiting, those at the controls impatient to fire the machine and send their enemies fleeing.

Behind him an over-eager young thing bumbled and slid into him, making Carson suddenly take form. It was habit more than anything; he didn't have the time to waste deciding whether someone was friend or foe and thus the close contact was irritating. He swept one arm backwards, knocking his irritant off-balance. "Step away or I'll launch you next," Carson growled before signaling his assistants. The release mechanism was engaged and Carson watched, fascinated, as black-and-gold flew, spitting, into fading daylight.

Once the machine was being reset, Carson took a moment to look out onto the battlefield. He could just see a few warriors that had been hit by flying pitch, their bodies flashing and smoking as they tried to escape the pain. His own people rushed them, rending them limb from limb as soon as they took a defensive form. They were winning today, driving away the invaders, but for how long?

•••

Water. John welcomed its familiar touch and chose to ignore the fact that it was stagnant and filthy with runoff from the battlefield, preferring to revel in the way it cooled his wounds and hid him from sight. He hated the machinery and the weapons; war was fought with the hands. After all, he knew who his enemies were; he knew them by touch and sight and smell. Projectiles hit without prejudice, burning and crushing everyone equally.

He'd nearly had one of them caught when his own side had fired yet again, raining torment upon him. Instead of striking a death blow to his enemy, John found himself running alongside him, diving for cover as they found themselves in the direct path of liquid fire.

John didn't know where the other had gone, only that he was alone in this dirty, isolated bit of swamp. Someone else had been here before, and had died no less, fouling the water with bitter defeat, but he didn’t care. He just wanted sanctuary and time to heal.

•••

Rodney was pretty sure the irritating buzz in his head was the universe giving him the Bronx cheer. It was at that precise moment he realized that god didn't have to exist in order to hate one Rodney McKay and want him dead. His mind was suddenly flooded with images of nuns kicking him in the shins and fuck, he wasn't in a position where he could appreciate the humor of it all.

"Did you catch the number of that bus?" John muttered, his voice scratchy. "Because, ow."

Carson opened his eyes, seeing only dust and shadows. Face down on a dirty floor wasn't how he last remembered being, so he pushed himself up and looked around for the others. John was crumpled in one corner of the room, while Rodney was sprawled near the doorway. They looked like he felt--as though run through a meat grinder. "I think I hallucinated something," He said quietly, looking down at himself. "I was a..."

"Bird?" Rodney suggested. "I was, for a bit anyway. Then I was something else, and there was this flamey stuff that hurt and someone really wanted me dead."

John nodded in agreement, which made him crack his head on the wall. "Ow again and yeah, flaming black stuff but the shapeshifting bit was cool, as was the fighting...sort of, anyway...and we all saw the same thing?"

"I wasn't fighting," Carson replied as he attempted to stand. Rodney wasn't really moving and that worried Carson a little. John had managed to find his feet and was approaching the doorway as well.

"Um, you weren't?" Rodney queried. "Different scene?" He let Carson mess around with his eyes and take his pulse, and didn't object when he was handed a power bar.

Carson shook his head. "I was in charge of that flying black stuff," He admitted. "Medieval warfare, really. But not human."

"So, shared hallucinations," Rodney muttered, sitting up and reaching for his pen and paper. "John and I were fighting, Carson was running the--

"It looked like a trebuchet," Carson supplied helpfully. "But smaller."

"Nice detail," John commented. "The wall carvings aren't moving anymore."

Rodney looked up at the walls and then noticed that the room didn't feel the same. "Um...is anyone else..."

"Chilly? Damp? Freaked out?" John tried. "Temporal disturbance?" Even as he said it, John knew that wasn't what it was. The feeling was wrong--slower and if possible more unpleasant, like being deep in a watery cavern.

"What triggered that?" Carson asked, helping Rodney stand up. "The script started moving when Rodney touched it and then I got dizzy, and then the movie started."

Rodney thought for a moment. "Yeah, that's what happened--but we've been touching the walls ever since we got here. Why would this start now?"

"Why did they stop shifting?" John asked rhetorically. "Look, I don't think we should stay in this room. It feels hinky."

"Hinky?" Rodney remarked amusedly. "Very accurate, actually. Hinky. Anyway, you're right. This isn't getting us out of here."

When they got back out into the hallway, they found that the moving script wasn't an isolated incident. All along the hallways, script flowed as though alive. John set a quick pace and Rodney followed Carson closely to make sure the man didn't fall behind or get lost as he made notes as his eyes flitted between the hallway and his map.

Carson felt Rodney's hand on his shoulder, pulling him to a stop. "What?" He hummed, glancing up at John in front of him. "Oh dear."

John was stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring blankly at the sight before them. "Up, or down?" He asked, pointing at the stairwell that split the hall. The left side went upwards, while the right descended. Rodney walked around John and Carson so he could peer down and then up.

"When did this place get a second story?" He inquired. "And where, exactly, is it, and does it look like a police box?"

"Maybe they're like those doorways we went through earlier," John suggested. "Not really up or down, just..."

Behind them, Carson grumbled something about TARDIS. "And how exactly am I supposed to note a stair that takes us neither up nor down but might be both or something else altogether, and most certainly doesn’t serve high tea?"

"We could go back the other way," Rodney suggested. "But my vote is down."

"Why down?" John asked, curious. He personally was beyond caring; he suspected it didn't matter which way they went.

"Path of least resistance," Rodney replied. "Well?"

Carson shrugged in acquiescence, so John led them down the stairwell, stepping carefully along the short, wide stairs. They descended several hundred stairs; Carson lost count somewhere past eighty-seven as they went farther and faster, his attention better spent trying not to trip over himself. John's theory that the stairs didn't really go down or up was reinforced by the fact that he didn't feel like he'd done any climbing down despite all the stairs they'd traversed.

They didn't immediately notice the end of the stairwell because the stairs gradually grew more shallow and wide until they blended into the floor of a hallway. Like all the others, this one was carved with moving script. "I was right," John remarked, pointing upwards. "See? We're on the same floor as before."

"You don't know that," Rodney said, annoyed. "We might've actually gone upstairs for all we know. The fact that the ceiling looks the same as it did before means nothing."

Carson wasn't paying attention to their argument, though; his attention was caught by the almost-hypnotic swirling script surrounding him. He was so focused on them that he didn't notice the first glimmer of dizziness until he was sliding to the floor, his vision dimming.

"You're just--" John stopped arguing when he saw Carson begin to fall, stepping around Rodney to try to catch the doctor. Rodney was there as well, kneeling to cushion Carson's body as it lay unmoving, on the floor. "What the hell?"

Rodney would've told John that they were about to endure another hallucination--except he was already falling into a tingling, dark well.

"Did you read the news?"

Carson turned towards the voice at his office door. "What news?" He asked, relieved that someone was interrupting him from the massive pile of work on his desk. That it was Rodney made the interruption that much better.

Rodney leaned against the doorway, looking very serious. "They think they've found a space ship near the moon!"

"Again?" Carson replied, rolling his eyes. It occurred to him then that he didn't know how he knew this person was Rodney; it certainly didn't look like him. He just knew it, like he knew he was himself even though he wasn't speaking with his own voice. Or his own language--yet he understood every word.

"No, really this time," Rodney continued, fairly bouncing now. "Come on, you need a break. I've got a copy of the release in my office."

Carson followed Rodney down the hall, amused and confused by the way the man was acting--utterly unlike himself. Then again, this person wasn't really Rodney at all. "You know it's just another asteroid, right? Or better yet, a badly calibrated sensor," He told Rodney, who laughed back at him. Despite his host's words, Carson could tell it was a little bit excited at the prospect of extraterrestrial life. They must not have had the Stargate, or had it kept secret the way Earth used to have theirs.

"What, you really think there's never going to be a space ship out there?" Rodney inquired as they reached his small, windowless office. "I mean, there's no way we're the only ones--and besides, in a decade, we'll be out there too. Maybe less"

The idea of traveling in space made Carson laugh, although he wasn't sure why--he knew that space travel was very possible. Then again, nothing was making sense, from the very un-coffeelike, tart beverage he was drinking to the not-Rodneylike person who was Rodney, who was currently changing forms in a way that had Carson's memory doing funny things. First he was liquid and opalescent and then he was powdery, almost glittery and hovering in the air. Then Rodney assumed his previous, solid form.

It was just like before, like the last time, with the fighting and the--

All of a sudden Carson came back to his senses They weren't here, not really. This wasn't actually happening--it was another hallucination, or whatever it was, but it wasn't real. That was why he was sitting, sort of, with a person he swore was Rodney, drinking things he didn't understand why he liked. This wasn't him. He tried to set the cup down, but his body didn't respond. Concerned, Carson then attempted to ask Rodney if he was ok, or even aware of what was going on with them.

"So this news?" Carson murmured, looking around. "You have a copy?" His host wanted to read the news report, although it seemed to be masking its excitement with faint boredom and impatience.

Rodney sort of slid across his desk and unearthed a filmy, plasticky sheet which he then handed to Carson. Carson took it, unnerved by the fact that he'd meant to ask Rodney if he was alright, and hadn't intended to take the sheet from the man at all. He tried to stand, but that didn't work. Nothing did, not making faces or breathing differently or shifting the blasted alien form he was in.

Instead, he found himself reading a news briefing about a possible space ship in orbit just beyond their moon. It was, according to the report, very large--bigger than their biggest oceangoing vessel. Carson's host mentally compared the prospective size of the thing by imagining several large boats hovering in space next to what was probably a satellite. The image was absurd and amusing and Carson wished he could share it with Rodney, but he didn't bother trying. After all, he wasn't in control here.

"Hey!"

Carson looked up from the sheet to find someone new at the door to Rodney-not-Rodney's office. Something twinged in his mind and he went with it, letting the feeling spin and settle into the realization that this was John. "Aren't you supposed to be writing a memo about tpthalomidium waste?" John asked Carson as he slid through the doorway.

"News and mikji are both more important," Rodney declared. "You have read the news, correct?"

John, who wasn't John but still was, slid into the office and perched on Rodney's desk. "Yeah, the council voted to reduce our dependence on something or another," John replied. "I thought you hated politics." Carson watched John's host reach for a cup of whatever they were drinking, ignoring Rodney's host's glare. Some things, it appeared, remained constant no matter who the players were, or what forms they inhabited.

Rodney plucked the news sheet away from Carson and thrust it at John. "No, no, no! They found a space ship! A real one!"

John smirked and accepted the news sheet. "Again? What is this, the fourth or fifth asteroid they've mislabeled in the past two years? It's not going to be anything, you know. They never are."

"Exactly," Carson muttered. "But each one gets me a cup of fresh mikji and a break from memos," He mused. "It never fails."

•••

John thought that maybe the strangest thing he'd ever felt was the sensation of flowing along the floor--or maybe it was how he was sitting on top of Rodney's desk, sort of melted around the front edge and hanging in mid-air. Then there was the way he knew that Rodney and Carson were the two people in front of him, when they didn't look like...

Well, the fact that how they looked wasn't freaking him out reinforced the idea that he was just an observer in whatever strange play they were in. He didn't know what they were talking about, not really. Stuff came to him just as the body he was in was saying it, but without background information most of it was meaningless.

"Besides, what are the chances?" He asked sort-of-Rodney. "Yeah, we're here, but the odds of another planet having intelligent life..." Inside the body he was trapped in, John was thrashing madly, laughing his ass off. He wished he could make this body do something and he thought he felt a twitch--a smirk, maybe, on what passed for a face on his body. He did know that it could change forms, so maybe if he could get it to change into something...

John tried again, but no matter how hard he exerted his will, his body just sat there, bullshitting with Carson and Rodney about some space ship. His host was, by all appearances, quite a skeptic. John could relate, though; before getting the assignment to fly a certain General to a top-secret location in Antarctica, John was pretty certain his species wouldn't set foot outside their home solar system within his lifetime. A few months and a galaxy later, John was a lot more open-minded about possibility.

"They could bring us enlightenment," Rodney said haughtily. "Something we're sadly lacking right now." And somehow, John wasn't surprised Rodney got to inhabit the body of a starry-eyed dreamer with a bit of a bite.

John and Carson groaned in unison. "And what if they want to kill us?" Carson asked Rodney. "Or blow up the planet?"

"Why would anyone travel any distance just to blow up a planet, or kill people?" Rodney shot back. "What a magnificent waste of resources." When they got out of this scene, John was definitely asking Rodney if he'd found a way to actually influence his host.

"Speaking of which," John murmured, setting the news sheet down beside him, "We're currently wasting our beloved government's precious resources. With that in mind..."

"Yes, yes," Carson agreed, setting down his now-empty cup. "Back to work, lest this glorious infrastructure deconstruct itself into chaos."

John and Carson exited Rodney's office, leaving its occupant grumbling about chaos and aliens and which was less likely to occur before lunch.