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"Hey, Radek! Where's Rodney gotten to?" John asked as he breezed into the main physics lab.
Zelenka didn't look up from the simulation scrolling across the screen of his laptop. "He is engaged in Very Important, Do Not Disturb, Inner Sanctum activities," he said, waving vaguely at the door to one of McKay's "private" labs. "He said not to bother him unless we are under attack."
John sat back and considered his options carefully. When McKay was in the grip of scientific ecstasy, it was often best not to disturb him, except in the case of direst emergency. On the other hand, McKay liked going to the market on PX6-490 (or Marrakesh, as they had taken to calling it). He often found much-needed spare crystals for the Ancient equipment there, and the vendors he bought them from knew McKay by name and saved them for him.
John was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. If he interrupted McKay in the middle of his UberImportant project, he'd hear about it, but if McKay had wanted to go to Marrakesh and they went without him, John would hear about it too. There was no help for it, John just had to brave the lion in his den and ask.
"I'm going in," John informed Zelenka, hitching up his belt and straightening his spine.
"You are a far braver man than I am, Colonel," Zelenka muttered to his laptop.
When he strode through the inner doorway, John stopped short as soon as the door slid shut behind him. "Oh my god, Rodney, where did you get that thing?"
He looked up…and up….
It looked like an Ancient machine of some sort, although admittedly one John had never seen before. It was huge and purple and Rodney was utterly entranced by it. He never even acknowledged John's presence. He was leaning in close to the wire-filigree surface at one end, squinting at some detail and gently manipulating one of the hair-thin wires with a pair of tweezers.
John crept close and leaned in to peer over Rodney's shoulder, careful not to jostle him. "What is it?" he murmured.
"AAAAHHH!" Rodney cried, slamming backwards into John, knocking them both over onto the floor. They flailed around for a brief while, until they managed to disentangle themselves. John got up and offered a hand to Rodney.
"You nearly gave me a heart attack!" Rodney accused, but nevertheless accepted John's help off the floor.
"Sorry," John said. "I came to tell you we're going to PX6-490 and find out if you wanna come. What the heck is that thing?" He waved at the huge purple monstrosity.
"It's for Teyla," Rodney said distractedly, as he picked up his tweezers from where they'd fallen on the ground. Then he whirled and pointed at John. "Waitwaitwait! You said you were going to Marrakesh?"
"Uh huh." John nodded. "You wanna go?"
"Yes, yes. But you've got to wait until I'm done here. I can test this out on Marrakesh. What a great idea! That would be a perfect place to start to look." Rodney looked pleased with himself.
"What are you talking about, Rodney? What does this thing have to do with Marrakesh? Listen, I'm not taking anything potentially explosive to the Market, do you understand me?" John put his hands on his hips.
"No! Nothing's going to explode." Rodney put his tweezers down on a little tray with some other tools and rubbed his hands together. "Look. This thing," he waved at the big purple machine. "This thing is for Teyla. I found it in the database, and it was fairly easy to locate physically once I knew what I was looking for."
John's brow furrowed with suspicion. "Where did you find it? Physically."
"Um...." Rodney's eyes looked shifty. "The abandoned section in one of the East quadrant labs."
"Rodney!" John folded his arms and proceeded to glower. "You know better than that! No one's supposed to go exploring in the abandoned sections of the city by themselves. There are too many dangerous--"
"It was fine, really," Rodney insisted. "Lorne assigned me an escort. And I knew precisely what I was looking for and had a good idea of where it could be found."
John arched an eyebrow. "Okay, so will you finally tell me what it is that you found?"
"Like I said, it's for Teyla." Rodney started to fidget, not meeting John's eyes. "She saved all our butts on the Wraith cloning facility--she saved my life--and she endangered her own mind and life and that of her unborn child to do it."
"We already talked about that, and Teyla agreed--" began John.
"No, no, I wasn't going to launch into a discussion about taking Teyla into combat situations. I was just--- Just. You know how I'm trying to be better with people?" Rodney asked plaintively.
John pressed his lips together to squelch a smile and nodded.
Rodney nodded back. "I'm trying-- I'm trying to be grateful. Teyla does so much for us, all the time, and we take her for granted. What have we done to help her find her people?"
"Mission priorities mean we can't just drop everything to go on a quest for the Athosians, Rodney. You know that," John said. "We keep an eye out as best we can. We help her gather intel. This trip to PX6-490 is partly so that Teyla can do some asking around at the Market and--"
Rodney nodded rapidly and reached out a hand toward the big purple machine, halting just a couple of centimeters from its surface to caress the air around it. "Yes, but I thought--I thought, what am I doing? Specifically, I mean. I decided I could spend some of my down time looking through the database to see if I could find a more efficient way of searching for the Athosians."
Sheppard looked up at the wall of purple and silver filigree. "And this is it?"
Rodney grimaced. "Well, it's better than nothing. It's one of the more esoteric things the Ancients were working on before they evacuated Atlantis. The project was just dropped, but all the notes were there, and very clear. They had gotten as far as building a prototype. I just finished it. And I think it will work."
"What does it do, Rodney?" John walked around the thing, at a respectful distance, peering at it carefully.
"I wish Carson was still with us," Rodney said softly. "This was more his field. He would have loved this thing. Essentially, it indicates genetic similarities in subjects." He indicated a protrusion at one end of the device. "You insert a cell sample from your base subject here," he said, then moved across the room to another part of the machine. "Then you insert a cell sample from your test subject here, and the device can immediately correlate genetic similarities, even provide a display with the mapping sequence of specific genes and--"
"And I seriously doubt even Ronon could lug that thing around the Market at Marrakesh, Rodney," John said, looking confused. This, sadly, had become normal over the last few days. "Besides, what good would it do Teyla?"
"Oh, there's a remote unit that can compare samples against a particular base subject and can tell you if certain specific parameters are a close match." McKay waved to a smaller purple thing lying on a lab bench in the corner of the room. "And…well…I suppose I thought that all the Athosians would be related to a certain extent. And that finding genetically similar people might provide some leads?" Rodney's face twisted. "At least she'd find some long-lost relatives?" He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. "I know. It's really lame. It's just the best thing I could find in the database."
John patted him on the shoulder. "Buck up, Buddy. Let's wait to hear what Teyla has to say. She might think it's useful."
~~~
John was there later, when Rodney awkwardly and long-windedly explained the device and its function to Teyla, Ronon, Dr. Keller, and Colonel Carter. "…and I thought we could input your cell sample now and calibrate the device so that when we visit PX6-490, we could bring along the remote unit and—"
Teyla looked at the item dubiously, then turned to Rodney.
One multi-national scientific and military expedition to another galaxy--more billions of dollars than John had realized could be hidden in a Defense budget. A few hours of time and work from one of Earth's premier astrophysicists and Defense contractors—probably several hundred thousand dollars. The look on Rodney's face when Teyla kissed him?
Priceless, John thought with satisfaction.