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Time Machine Not Pictured - Stargate: Atlantis - Gen (John Sheppard and Rodney McKay) - Words: 2,588
Written for Stargateland’s Multi-Media Bingo. Prompts in the order they are answered: Question, Opposite, Groovy, Sweet, Outdoors, Night, Smile, Your Choice, and Family.
Summary: John figured he must have some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, because when Rodney tells him that he thinks the device is a time machine, John gets in without even thinking about it.
Content Notes: None. PG.
Author Notes: Although this isn’t a crossover or a fusion, Doctor Who is referenced quite a bit. Extensive knowledge isn’t necessary, but having an idea of the basics will probably help.
Thank you to the wonderful emeraldsnakes for the fast and fabulous beta.
On AO3: Time Machine Not Pictured
They'd only been on Earth for a few days, steadily working through the process of debriefing about their first year on Atlantis, when Rodney called John's office with an almost babbling incoherency. Realizing that Rodney only sounded that excited when he'd either discovered a new type of science that could potentially kill them all or worked out how to use some kind of Ancient device, John decided it would be prudent for him to investigate. Just in case.
"What have you got?" John called, looking at oddly box shaped thing that was standing in the corner of the room. The room itself was filled with various gadgets, most of them waiting to be moved to Area 51 for further study.
Rodney poked his head out of the box and grinned broadly.
John figured he must have some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, because when Rodney tells him that he thinks the device is a time machine, John gets in without even thinking about it.
"So, through time and space?" John asked, peering at the controls and wondering how all of this was supposed to work exactly. It wasn't that no one from the SGC had never time traveled before, but to John's understanding that usually involved a wormhole and a convenient (or inconvenient, depending on the situation) solar flare. "Like in Doctor Who?"
"No, not like-" Rodney paused and looked up from one of the screens he was examining. "Well, kind of like in Doctor Who. Just without the police box."
"Which one of us is the Doctor?" John asked, touching one of the levers curiously, feeling a bit of a lurch in his stomach but deciding that it was just feedback from his ATA gene. Each piece of Ancient tech felt a little bit different, some of it more pleasant than others.
"I am, of course. I have a doctorate, several of them in fact. That makes me the Doctor." Rodney said, walking around the center column with an increasingly concerned expression as he viewed the screens.
John smirked. "Where's your scarf?"
"What? I am not Tom Baker!" Rodney looked up indignantly. "If anyone, I'd be David Tennant."
"You are not David Tennant. You are like the opposite of David Tennant," John grinned as he spoke. "You just liked Rose."
"She was the best companion," Rodney agreed, tipping his head to the side.
John shrugged. "I preferred Donna."
"You would," Rodney retorted, a little bit distracted.
It was John's turn to frown. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Rodney didn't answer at first, frowning as he read the screen. "That can't be right."
"Rodney?" John asked, because he knew what that tone of voice meant too.
Rodney looked up and stared directly at John. "What did you touch?"
John shook his head, a little uncomfortable with way that particular accusation was always directed at him. "Nothing!"
Folding his arms and raising a single eyebrow, Rodney stared and waited.
"I just rested my hand..." John waved vaguely towards the panel of levers and knobs, but ducked his head sheepishly when Rodney moaned and slapped his hand down on the console. "So, where are we? Or, I suppose, when are we?"
Rodney waved his hand to the door that John only now realized had shut behind him when he'd climbed in. "After you."
"Oh my-" John said as he pushed the door open and stepped out onto the street.
"You know, you see pictures, but it's not quite the same," Rodney said as he looked around them before turning to John. "The sixties? Really? What were you thinking about when you touched that?"
"Uhh, Tom Baker?" John asked, trying to remember.
Rodney rolled his eyes and sighed, turning away his he looked around. "Where are we then? England? Oh, come on! Bell bottoms look good on no one!" he said loudly as a group of young men in long vests and stripped pants walked across the street.
"I don't know, John Travolta didn't look half bad," John pointed out.
"Of course you'd be a fan of Saturday Night Fever," Rodney said, turning back to examine the machine.
"I never said I was a fan, but the music and dancing are pretty good. The Bee Gee's were a cultural phenomenon. And, hey, you knew what it was from." John could see the tips of Rodney's ears redden at the accusation.
"Let's go before I leave you here to become a hippie," Rodney snapped and got back in the time machine.
John followed, but not before flashing a peace sign and shouting "groovy" for all the street to hear.
Rodney was the one who messed with the controls this time, moving the lever only slightly with a look of intense concentration, running around every now and then to look at the screen before bounding back to make an adjustment, all the while muttering about incompetent Ancient designs.
"Are we there yet?" John asked when Rodney stopped fiddling and stood at the doorway.
"I think so," Rodney said, but made no move to open the door.
A little bit concerned over where and when Rodney might think is an ideal location on a trip through time, John walked over and rested his hand on his holster; thankful, not for the first time, that he'd taken to wearing a sidearm just about everywhere but especially to McKay's lab. He pushed the door open and they stepped out into what looked like a theoretical scientific laboratory from at least fifty years ago.
"I can't believe it. I can't believe it worked," Rodney said as he started walking through the room, his fingertips hovering over blackboards that were absolutely filled with equations.
A fan ran overhead, unsettling a few piece of paper and John bent down to pick them up.
"No, don't! Don't touch anything. We shouldn't even be here," Rodney dashed over and grabbed John's arm, pulling him away from the scattered pages.
"Where are we exactly?" John asked, leaving the papers alone and taking a few steps back towards the machine.
"Princeton, New Jersey. 1948." Rodney turned and grinned. "Einstein's lab right when he was at a pivotal juncture in his research for his theory of everything. String theory! It's..." he trailed off as he turned slowly in a full circle, his eyes dancing over the equations.
"It's sweet," John said, smiling because he could catch glimpses into the equations on the board, get the general idea of what he'd been starting to work on though nothing like what Rodney was seeing, but mostly smiling because he very rarely saw Rodney so overwhelmed with joy that he couldn't even explain something.
"It's not 'sweet'. 'Sweet' doesn't even begin to describe it," Rodney asserted, laughing softly to himself. "It's..." he trailed off again.
"Sweet," John provided. He heard voices and footsteps coming from the hallway and gently grabbed onto Rodney's shoulder and steered him back to the time machine.
Rodney didn't even protest, his attention rapt on the room outside until the doors had shut completely.
John guided them to a stop, maybe with not as much finesse or exactitude as Rodney had, but getting them there nevertheless. Piloting a time machine was nothing like piloting a plane, helicopter, or even a puddle jumper. It was more like throwing yourself in the direction you wanted to go and hoping that you landed without breaking anything.
"Do I even want to know?" Rodney asked when they opened the door and found a steaming jungle surrounding them with absolutely no sounds of civilization.
Rodney's question answered itself when a loud roar and crashing sound came from the distance and a bird, larger than either of them had seen even off-world, swooped over head.
"You didn't?" Rodney folded his arms and glared at John.
"Come on, it's a tradition!" John defended himself. "If you have the ability to time travel, you have to go see the dinosaurs, just once."
"You know why it's just once? Because every time someone visits the dinosaurs they almost get eaten. Don't you pay attention to the end of the episode?" Rodney asked, ducking a little when another bird dove into the jungle nearby.
"Sure I do. They always escape," John pointed out, brushing sweat off his forehead. It was much warmer than he'd expected.
"Yeah, but the dinosaur episodes are never about the actual dinosaurs; they're just plot devices to put the characters in desperate situations to force unnatural character development," Rodney unzipped his jacket and dabbed at face.
John frowned. "I can't believe you watched Sliders. I would have thought it would be too unscientific for you. And the wormhole graphics were terrible."
"Terrible, yet hilarious," Rodney agreed. "Besides, despite their method of travel, the theories of alternate dimensions wasn't terrible for the time period they were filming in. Except for the aliens. Those were stupid."
John nodded before he could stop himself and figured that it was too late to restore any illusion that he wasn't a complete science fiction nerd.
A nearby roar caught their attention, Rodney ducking again and John pulling his gun from his holster. "Time to get out of here," Rodney said.
"You'll get no argument from me," John replied. They took the three steps back into the time machine and both breathed a sigh of relief when the door shut.
"Now where are we?" John asked as the door swung open and they stared out into the pitch dark.
"End of the world," Rodney replied, catching John's arm before he could step out of the time machine. "I don't think you'll want to go out there. It will be cold, probably too cold for you to survive. And I'm not too sure about the composition of the atmosphere at this point either."
John frowned and peered out. He could make out pinpricks of stars in the sky, but other than that everything was enveloped in darkness. "When are we?"
"Somewhere around nine billion years in the future. After the sun has collapsed; turned into brown giant, I would guess," Rodney said, moving as close to the doorway as he could and squinting into the darkness. "The Earth is now just a cinder, nothing could survive here."
"Why are we here?" John asked, turning away from the sight and looking at Rodney.
Rodney turned and looked thoughtful. "I wanted to see that it was still here. Makes the Goa'uld, and the Ori, and even the Wraith seem small in comparison. Nine billion years is a long time."
John nodded and pulled the door shut. Nine billion years was a long time, but that didn't mean he wanted to see it.
Rodney shook his head and went back to the controls. "Come on, we've got places to be and all the time in the universe to get there."
They stepped out of the machine together, John swearing when he nearly tripped over a mop bucket. "From the end of the world to a janitor's closet. Well, you're unpredictable, I'll give you that much."
Rodney just looked smug, though John noticed a tinge of uncertainty coloring his expression.
Shrugged, John opened the door and they walked out into a steady stream of people, banners everywhere proclaiming that it was the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. He turned incredulously to look at Rodney. "What year is this?"
"1984. November 23rd, 1984, to be precise." Rodney said, looking around them briefly. "First quarter should be starting in about 15 minutes."
"You brought me through time to see a college football game?" John asked slowly.
Rodney blushed but quickly looked away. "The Doctor always did stuff like this for his companions, took them to see things they wanted to see."
"For the last time, I'm not your companion." But John was smiling when he said it.
They joined the crowd and headed toward the seats, John finding the mere twenty years difference in time more overwhelming than all of the previous trips put together, though that might just have been the fact that Rodney had taken them there.
"Where to? Your choice, but I'm driving," Rodney said as he reached for the control panel, obviously pleased to find something he could pilot better than John could.
John leaned back, looking around as he tried to think of where he'd want to go; the whole world future and past at his fingertips. "Let's go home."
Rodney looked over, a little surprised, but nodded in agreement. "Yeah. We can always come back. I don't have to put in my report exactly what this thing does."
"Sure you don't," John smirked. He knew that they'd probably never use the time machine again; if TV hadn't taught them all the things that could possibly go wrong, SG-1 certainly had. But the time they'd spent, even if they were the only ones who would remember or even notice that they'd been gone, that was something that John would always remember. He suspected that Rodney would too.
"Here we are, Cheyenne Mountain Complex, 2005. Just in time for, oh-" Rodney frowned as he looked at the screen.
"Just in time for what?" John asked, moving to join Rodney at the controls.
"Uh," Rodney shuffled his feet. "Just in time for you to make the debriefing with General O'Neill and Doctor Weir."
John sighed. "I just sat through that briefing this morning. It was a five hour briefing."
Rodney shrugged. "I can try to move us ahead a few hours, but when you're dealing with intervals of time that short, and in a confined space..."
"I get it," John grumbled, moving to the door.
"It was a good trip though, right?" Rodney asked.
John turned in the doorway, more relieved than he could say to see that the room they had left was entirely unchanged from when he'd last seen it. "The best."
Epilogue
They'd only been back on Atlantis for a week when John had found it sitting on his pillow, with a post-it note attached that read "now more sonic" in Rodney's neat handwriting. John had laughed when he felt the device, about the length of a pen but a little thicker, come to life when he held it in his hand. He had no idea what it did, and if he had to guess he'd say Rodney had cobbled it together from bits and pieces of Ancient tech from the labs, but it was the thought that mattered. It certainly made John feel better about leaving a long multi-colored scarf and a pair of converse sneakers in Rodney's room that morning.
John sat down and queued up his copy of the Flutie game, the same one he and Rodney had attended only a few weeks ago. It was something he'd been curious about since they'd returned, but he'd only now had a chance to sit down and watch. For the first time, he paid more attention to the shots of the crowd than the game itself, though he did give a whoop and a fist pump during the hail mary. Towards the end of the game, John paused and leaned in, knowing that it was displaying the section of the stadium he and Rodney had been sitting in. It took a moment, but John found them, both he and Rodney standing and waving their arms in the air. John remembered shouting as if this was the first time he'd seen the game, as if every play was new, and that anything could happen. And there they were standing in the crowd; proof that anything could happen.
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