Rising Above

Author's note: Shout outs to Sarah for letting me know where the University of Washington actually is.

---

“So, Doctor McKay, tell my why you think I should hire you for the needs of this facility?” asked the salt and pepper haired man with stars on his blue, uniformed shoulders. The general thumbed through McKay’s file with one hand and held his head above the table with the other hand.

Flustered the doctor replied, “Well, um I have multiple advanced degrees in science and math and a doctorate in astrophysics. At the University of Washington, I worked on several research projects, which—” General O’Neil stopped him.

“Yes, Doctor.” He waved a thick yellow folder. “We know all of that. What makes you special? What about you will make me want to hire you over all of the other more qualified people?”

Rodney McKay felt a lump in his throat. The dark-haired man swiveling in the chair next to General O’Neil made him all the more uneasy. Obviously Rodney wasn’t impressing anyone. Come on, Rodney, you have to get this job if you ever want to see your family again.

Rodney eyed the man with the wild hair, “Listen,” he began, “I am willing to do anything. I am in a real financial bind, and I am struggling to simply keep my family from starving, and if I don’t get this job, I won’t even be allowed to be in the same country as my wife and two kids.”

The general mockingly fished through a stack of files to his left. “So are a lot of the other applicants, and the US government is not a charity.”

This is going nowhere. Rodney took a deep breath and let it out. “Look, it is obvious that you don’t want me. I don’t even have a green card anymore. Before you kick me out of your mountain fortress, I want you to know that I am the most qualified scientist for this job. Making theories into actual laws of physics and practicality and, and putting those laws into practices,” You’re babbling! “is exactly what I have been trying to do since high school. Further more—” the General stopped him a second time with a wave of his hand.

The bored-looking, quiet man pushed a single file across the table and in front of McKay.

“What’s this?” he asked, opening it.

“Your US citizenship. That is of course, if you sign the confidentiality wavers,” stated the general.

Rodney had to concentrate on not letting his jaw drop. This was it. Citizenship and a government paycheck would keep his family from starving. These papers would make everything right again. “Wavers?”

“Yes, they give us the right to imprison you, fine you, or shoot you if you ever tell a single soul about anything you see or do while in our facility.”

“Shoot?”

“You can never be too careful when it comes to national security. Don’t worry; we only shoot the people who leak our secrets to the enemy. Now, telling a family member or friend what you do over a few shots of Tequila will only get you and that person a lifetime vacation in one of our military prisons until that information becomes declassified.”

“And if I refuse to sign?”

“You miss out on your citizenship and comfy job. The citizenship papers only take effect once you have signed the waver and join our project.”

For a genius, Rodney was considerably confused. “So you want me? I’m hired?”

The general looked to the quiet man. “I thought the shooting part made that clear.” The quiet man shrugged.

Rodney chose not to take that as an insult. “When do I start?”

“We’ll begin your debriefing after to have taken a moment to consider signing the waver.”

Rodney scrambled to reach for a pen. He signed and pushed the papers back. “Wait, I don’t think I understand. I had the impression that you guys didn’t want me.”

The quiet Colonel with the funny hair answered. “There’s something about you that I like.”

---

Rodney felt like crying. The debriefing had left him disenchanted to the point of heartbreak. These whacko jarheads bought a big round rock from the Egyptian government, and some crackpot hippie thought that it would take them to outer space.

“Doctor?” The long haired hippie with glasses glared at him. “Am I boring you?”

“Hmm, no . . . Um, you were saying something about aliens building the pyramids?”

“Yes, they were landing pads for their spaceships.” Rodney took a swig of his scolding hot coffee. At least the coffee was good. Not that piss water that passed for coffee in Washington.

“Thank you, Daniel. I think that’s enough of the history lesson,” said the General at the head of the briefing table.

“Sorry I’m late,” said an angelic voice from behind Rodney. He turned and saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“We just finished Daniel’s exciting lesson in Ancient Egyptian flying saucers.”

“They weren’t saucers,” retorted the hippie.

“Whatever,” said the General, but Rodney hadn’t heard a word since the angel had spoken. “Doctor Carter, meet your new assistant Doctor Rodney McKay.”

Rodney did turn his attention away from the tall, blond, blue-eyed, long-haired, big-breasted, long-legged, perfectly proportioned goddess in the blue dress when he heard the word, “assistant.” “What exactly do you mean by ‘assistant’?”

“Nice to meet you too, Dr. McKay,” she said.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. I never signed up to be an assistant,” cried Rodney.

“Yes, you did. It was in the same paragraph that said you would be paid $160,000 annually.”

Rodney hadn’t actually read the contract. A hundred and sixty . . . “Oh.”

“Don’t worry, Doctor, I don’t think any less of your manhood than I already do.”

Did she just insult him? Oh, god, she was totally hitting on him.

“Let me catch you up on wormhole theory.”

“Wow, wow, wait!” He put a finger in the air. “I wrote the book on wormhole theory,” he objected.

“Yeah, but mine was published.”

Damn it.

“The current academic thinking is that wormholes must fold space to bring two distant points closer. What we have learned is that wormholes work by accelerating time in a subspace bubble guided by a complex gravitational wave. At least that is what I haven been able to calculate from the data that we have gathered by our travel through the Stargate.”

“This is a joke, right? Kavanagh put you all up to this, didn’t he? I bet he paid you all extra for the cavity search this morning, aye?”

All eyes were on him.

“He found my notes and gave them to you to mess with me. Well, guess what . . . you just screwed up the joke because the subspace bubble cannot exist in our dimension. You would need a cold fusion reaction from an atom that doesn’t even exist on the periodic table. Yeah, it had to be Kavanagh because he would be the only idiot with a PhD in Astrophysic-Engineering who wouldn’t realize that.” He inhaled.

“Naquadah,” said Carter, calmly.

“What?”

“Naquadah is the element not on the official periodic table. The Stargate is made almost entirely out of it. We have never seen this element anywhere else on the planet.”

“Oh, so that automatically means that aliens built the pyramids,” said Rodney, sarcastically.

“No, no, no! I went over this. The Egyptian people built them for the aliens who made themselves kings –”

“Daniel, let it go,” said the General.

“General, may we just show him the ‘gate when SG-4 returns from Abydos? We’re wasting our time explaining this to him.”

“Alright, I’m getting bored and when I get bored, I get hungry. Let’s get lunch. Doctor McKay, I’ll release the mission reports for you to read this evening.”

---

Rodney was escorted by the dark haired Colonel to the mess hall. He stood behind the Colonel and watched as he stepped in the line for food. Rodney felt like he was standing in the free food line in Washington again, like he had done everyday for six years.

They quickly picked up their trays and grabbed plate and mugs. The Colonel filled his mug with coffee, and Rodney did the same. Two cups in one day; this was a treat. Maybe working for idiots wasn’t so bad. The Colonel put a pile of potatoes, carrots, and corn on his plate. Rodney did the same. Then the Colonel added four slices of turkey, drizzled in gravy to the plate.

Rodney didn’t know what to do. Normally you had to have a special identification card to get meat in the food lines. Rodney stood, staring at the turkey while the Colonel moved onto condiments, utensils, and napkins.

“The turkey doesn’t bite, Doctor.”

“Um, am I, um allowed to get meat here?”

“Ah, yeah. Why wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, nothing, never mind.” Rodney piled the meat onto his plate. He grabbed a fork and joined the Colonel at a table.

“So, how do you like Colorado?” asked the Colonel.

Rodney usually hated to talk while he had food in front of him, but he humored the Colonel. “I can’t remember the last time I had so much food on my plate. You guys have no idea how lucky you are down here.”

“I didn’t know it was that bad in Washington.” The colonel picked and poked at his carrots.

“It's nothing compared to the dump Canada has become. And it’s not just Washington. Oregon Montana and Idaho are all suffering from the strain and Canadian illegals. Black Market thugs and politicians have their thumbs on all the goods coming in and out of those states. The prices have gone up so high that good, hardworking people are struggling to feed their families.” He neglected to volunteer in that he was one of them it. “I almost a heart attack when I saw the price a gallon of milk advertised at a gas station.”

“Huh.”

“So how about you? What’s your story?”

The colonel swallowed his corn and took a swig from his glass of water. “Story? I don’t know. I guess I don’t really have one.”

Rodney was already done with his turkey and was scoping thick gravy with his fork. Of course you have a story. I did you get into this project? Why are you in the military?”

“Um, well, I’ve and a test pilot for most of my career. I stayed in Nevada through the conflict with Yugoslavia. So did General O’Neil. You know, the bigwigs in the government and don’t want anyone to know how close we came to surrendering to President Korwitz. Anyway, O’Neil and I worked on building the AFF Bomber. That little beauty won the war – I mean conflict. We got our choice of any project after that. It also doesn’t hurt that we own ten percent of the shares of Skunkworks stock.”

Rodney almost dropped his fork. “You own Skunkworks stock? You have to be millionaires. You’re in great grandkids wouldn’t have to work a day in their lives!”

“Actually, most of our profits go into finding this project. We had to buy Cheyenne Mountain from the army just to have the appropriate facilities to do our work.”

“You own the mountain!?”

“No, the general owns the mountain. I am in charge of equipment and staff. I sign everyone’s paychecks.”

“Oh, well, thanks for the job."

“You’re welcome.” The colonel nibbled on his turkey. He saw that McKay was about to lick his plate and was looking longingly at the colonel’s turkey. “There is desert if you want.”

Rodney was out of his chair before he finished his sentence. His view of the glass refrigerator was initially hidden behind the stack of coffee mugs and glasses. Inside was shelf after shelf of pies, cakes, pastries, fruit and cream, and a rainbow of jello flavors. He considered taking both the blueberry pie and the blue jello with whipped cream, but he did not want to look like a pig in front of the colonel. He decided on the blue berry pie when a voice stopped him.

“The pie isn’t that sweet this week.” It was little miss fancy pants herself. “But the jello is always good.” She reached around him, and he breathed in her heavenly scent.

She took the blue jello and returned to her table. Apparently, it was the last blue jello. Well, there were others. Green-lime, no he was allergic to citrus. Orange, no, yellow, no. Damn her. He took the blueberry pie and went to the table.

The Colonel had pushed his plate away and was sipping at his coffee.

Rodney had two bites of the pie in his mouth before retaking his seat. “I’m not,” he moved the pie around in his mouth, “keeping you from anything, am I?”

“No.”

“It’s just that you look so bored.”

“Nope, just thinking.” He gulped more coffee.

“About what?” Sweet or not, that was good pie. He resigned to savor the last piece of crust and to let it dissolve in his mouth.

The colonel swigged the rest of his coffee and stood. “I was just thinking about what you would look like naked.”

The blueberry pie caught in Rodney’s throat, and he choked.

The colonel walked away.