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SGA: Cure
Title: Cure
Genre: Gen, Challenge Response
Rating: R for gore and possible horror
Words: about 925
Season/Spoilers: Beginning of Season 4 (which is now common knowledge, but, you know…)
Synopsis: It seemed like the answer to so many problems at the time.
Notes: Very late entry into the ![[info]](https://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
sga_flashfic “Men and Machines” challenge. Thank you, Amnesty 2007!
Disclaimer: I don’t own them, people with a lot of money do. I’m just borrowing them to play and making no money for this.
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It seemed like the answer to so many problems at the time. They had finally found Elizabeth, brought her back home to Atlantis to be with her friends, with her family again. Everyone knew that the nanites within her were the only thing keeping her alive, just like they knew those same nanites made her susceptible to the Replicators’ attacks.
Doctors McKay and Keller were the ones who thought of it. They put her in stasis, just to be on the safe side, and then spent the next month reworking the programming. From the base code up, they mimicked automated cell function, hacked the cipher that required the tiny little machines to replicate themselves, and finally reprogrammed them to replicate the individual cells of Elizabeth’s body.
After a frightening initiation where it seemed likely they had lost her, it worked. She was alive, she was healthy, and she was whole again.
Or so they thought.
Four months after Doctor Weir resumed limited duties, she fell ill. She had been helping to negotiate a new treaty with long-time allies that had insisted upon her presence. Unfortunately, there was rebel faction that was convinced it was the people of Atlantis who had put their homeworld, their galaxy at risk when first arrived. The new Lanteans had obviously angered the Gods and the Wraith and the Replicators were sent as retribution. The rebels believed that if they showed that they were against the Lanteans, the Gods would favor them once more and protect them.
The poison was quick acting and most of the delegation died within hours. Two sociologists and three Marines were killed by trace amounts in their food. Elizabeth had lasted the longest, writhing in agony until the supposedly inert nanites rebooted themselves and healed the damage.
The expedition was thrilled to have her back, but understandably wary of the implications. Keller took samples and McKay reexamined the code. The nearest they could tell was that the poison had contained trace amounts of a metallic compound that had reacted with the nanites. They once again appeared dormant, and Elizabeth was declared safe once more.
Then the Wraith attacked. The city took damage and all available personnel worked to protect and save the injured. When Elizabeth helped carry Keller in, there was little hope for her survival. She had sustained heavy internal damage, and there were traces of gray matter along the sickeningly deep gash across her scalp.
And then she healed.
Rodney and his team studied everything as soon as the repairs to the city were completed and, as far as they could determine, Doctor Keller had become infected with Weir’s nanites. Their programming remained the same, and they had repaired the damage and simply shut down. It seemed like a miraculous happenstance, until Rodney looked a little bit closer.
Eight other people had sustained injuries that should have left them seriously disabled, if not dead, and yet they were making remarkable recoveries. Only three of them had been in contact with Doctor Weir during the attack. He fine-tuned the sensors and took a closer look. Nearly half the Atlantis population now bore the machines in their bodies, even casual contact risking passing them from person to person.
He did the calculations, taking into account the fact that Elizabeth was kept in stasis and then in near isolation when she first returned. The results did not look promising. He wanted to present what he found, but knew the SGC would put them into lockdown if he did, closing the gate and shutting them out for good, a permanent quarantine on the city of the Ancients. He ran another sensor sweep, recalculated the results one final time, and then made the announcement.
Many were in shock, some were disgusted, and some blamed him for meddling in things he never should have deemed to touch. He tried to explain they were harmless, nothing more than a live-in band-aid, really. As he recovered from the third attempt on his life, the one he knew should have been the final one, he reached a decision: he rather liked being invulnerable.
Within days, the word spread. The few left uninfected were either cowering in fear or volunteering to join in the benefits of Restoration. Of those affected, only one tried to commit suicide, waking to realize his full potential. The military contingent was buzzing, trying to ascertain just what they were now capable of. The final step in accepting what happened was when Major Lorne was fed upon by a Wraith on a mission and returned with nothing more than a fading scar and a dead space vampire from the adventure.
The Lanteans embraced their new strength. The Daedalus visited only once more, dropping off a load of supplies and the message that two infected had made it to Earth, but had been contained. To prevent this from happening in the future, no further contact was to be made. Even without the support of the SGC, the city was able to weaken the Wraith’s hold on the galaxy down to being nothing more than a casual annoyance. There was finally a chance for peace.
Trade with the local planets grew, each culture helping to sustain another, the commodity of Restoration in high demand. The galaxy as a whole was coming together, working together, and living as one.
In the corner of a shining metallic room, far from sight, Oberoth leaned back in his chair and smiled, watching as the next generation of his children came unto its own.
~~~~~~~~~~
Feedback is always welcomed.
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(Anonymous) 2007-12-13 04:22 am (UTC)(link)Three small comments:
(1) "weary" should be "wary"
(2) "Oberon" should be "Oberoth"
(3) Is there any particular reason not to mention John Sheppard at all?
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1) Fixed
2) Fixed
Thank you! We both must have missed those.
3) I asked myself that as well, but decided he would add an almost too emotional aspect to it. I decided to keep it just with the "doctors" to try to keep a sense of detachment and add a more formal/report feel to it. To me, at least, the more formal telling of something slightly creepy makes it seem that much creepier.
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Is it evolving towards peace, or losing our humanity? (Secretly, it's Memorex.)
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