Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon by 2ndary_author (backstory challenge)

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Title: Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon
Author: 2ndary_author
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: McKay, some Jeannie, Sheppard, and Zelenka
Rating: pg-13
Length: about 2,650 words
Notes: last bit contains a sort-of spoiler for Season 3's McKay and Mrs. Miller; epigraph by George F. Wills; subheading are the names and geographic coordinates of the lunar seas.  I'm not sure how well the dates and ages fit the canon timeline: some of them I just made up
Summary: The running battle that was Rodney’s childhood is equal parts sound and fury

 "Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it"

Mare Cognitum (Sea that Has Become Known) 10.0° S; 23.1° W

            Before the US government hired Rodney McKay—back when he was twenty-four, a double doctorate, more arrogant than even he can credit nowadays—they required full financial disclosure, a Level 4 background check, two independent physicals, and a psychiatric evaluation.  Then, they asked for a second psych work-up.  They called off the third halfway through and sent him to a small, tastefully-appointed office in Northwest Washington, occupied by a doctor whose degree, Rodney decided, was probably not in astrophysics.  He stayed for thirty-eight minutes before upsetting his coffee and storming out onto M street.

He walked against the crowd of people in suits and sneakers for two hours, until he began to see people dressed like he was—only cooler—and figured he must be in Georgetown.  He walked until the cold seeping up from the winter concrete had erased his toes.  He walked until he hit the river and couldn’t go any further.  After five minutes spent staring out at Virginia, he turned around and hiked back to a diner on MacArthur Boulevard, bought a cup of coffee and took the change to a payphone.  The call was answered by someone whose name does not match that on the plain white card Rodney carried in his wallet (Michael Jones, Staffing & Recruitment).  Rodney explained, with admirable calm, he thought, that he’d been offered university jobs in four Canadian provinces, six American states, and three European capitals.  “Representatives from NASA and CERN got into a fist-fight over me!” he hissed, finally, realizing that people in the diner were starting to stare.  “Hire me or don’t hire me.  But I’m not taking any more tests, and I’m not answering any more questions.” 

The person on the end of the line made a small, satisfied hum, as though he’d just finished the Sunday crossword and could now attend to Rodney's problems.  “As you like, Dr. McKay.” The shrug was practically audible. “Tomorrow morning, there’s a flight leaving Andrews for the Air Force Flight Test Center in Nevada.  Bring two bags.  Anything else you need will be provided for you there.”

“Well!  Ok, then….I mean…fine.” Rodney huffed, a little put out by the prompt agreement.  He’d wanted to argue some more.

“Enjoy your afternoon, Dr. McKay,” the man said pleasantly.  “Stay warm.”

Rodney was about to explain that Washington’s February was practically a balmy spring day for a Canadian, but then realized he’d be talking to the dial tone.  He took his empty cup back to a table by the window.  It was quite possibly the worst coffee he’d ever tasted, and he spared a moment of regret for the nice blend presently staining the expensive carpeting of an office on M Street.  Then he flagged down a waitress and demanded a refill.

            Rodney tells all of this to Kate Heightmeyer as a way of explaining why he won’t be attending any of the scheduled post-mission counseling sessions.  “So, it’s not you,” he concludes earnestly.  “Well, it’s kind of you…I mean, in the sense that your chosen profession drove me into the streets in the middle of a blinding snowstorm…” 

Kate manages to get a word in.  “I thought you said Washington winters were pathetic and barely deserving of the name?”

“I was speaking metaphorically,” Rodney waves his hands.

“Well,  metaphorically speaking, I won’t take it personally.”

“Good.”

“Ok, then.”

“Right.”

“You should know…” Something in Kate’s tone makes him turn at the door; she sounds almost apologetic. “Those tests are still in your file, government never throws anything out.  And, yeah, it seems crazy, but there are…patterns, things we look for…”

Rodney feels his jaw tighten into the sulky glower that Sheppard loves to tease him about.  “My parents never touched me.”

Kate just sighs.  “Yeah.  I know.”

Lacus Odii (Lake of Hatred) 19.0° N; 7.0° E

            It’s true, if that means anything.  Of course, his mother pinched him when he corrected her in public and his father, like a grade-school nun, whacked his wrists with a ruler when he dropped them during piano practice.  But they did it for his own good.  “No one likes a know-it-all,” his mother insisted, and Nicholas McKay whacked all of his students: everyone knows that poor hand positioning leads to decreased agility and mechanical tone.  Moreover, it must have been partially his fault, since Jeannie didn’t get the same treatment.  His sister didn’t talk much and, after their father declared that the four-year-old lacked “the faintest breath of talent,” she didn’t play at all.  Mostly, though, Jeannie had a knack for effortlessly saying or doing just enough to blend in.  By the time they’re teenagers, Rodney hates her for that.

Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) 32.8° N;15.6° W

            Not until after he gets on that military transport and flies out to Nevada does Rodney determine the best metaphor for his parents’ fights.  Out in the desert, you can see thunderstorms coming from miles away, spreading shadows across the flatlands.  The still, heavy air shimmered and crackled for hours.  Harmless, everyday items gave you vicious unexpected shocks. Sometimes, the shadows melted away, rain evaporating before it reached the ground, but other times, the clouds would explode, bringing flash floods and power surges.  Rodney always gets edgy when he sees heat lightening at Groom Lake, and only part of it is because the telemetry towers are the tallest structures around.  Long before the Genii, he had reasons to dislike storms.

Mare Desiderii (Sea of Dreams) no coordinates

            Suzanne Rodney met Nicholas McKay when she was nineteen and he was an adjunct professor for Music Theory and Appreciation II.  Substitute adjunct, he was quick to explain, not a professor at all, an artist doing a favor while the real professor was recovering from appendicitis. Perpetually short on time, as on money and patience, Nicholas arrived at the lecture hall nearly half an hour late, still wearing his concert attire.   Most of the students had already left—ten minute rule, and he was only an adjunct, after all—but Suzanne spent eight hours a day answering phones to pay for her degree and she wasn’t leaving until somebody showed up and taught her something.  It was worth the wait.  Professor McKay wore white tie and, by virtue of having a piano performance degree from the Conservatory, was the most educated person she had ever met.  He handed out the syllabus, talked for fifteen minutes about how under-appreciated musicians were in Toronto, and sent everybody home early.  Suzanne was carefully folding the syllabus into her notebook when he invited her for a cup of coffee.  He asked her about her degree (she hadn’t decided, it was all so wonderful, probably English literature, but, you know, she’d always had such a passion for music) and then interrupted to tell her about his poor friend who had appendicitis and had practically begged him to take the class….

Student/teacher relationships were frowned upon and, really, the department felt that Mr. McKay’s teaching evaluations were not strong enough for him to flout the rules.  Apparently no one doubted his appreciation for music, but his ability to impart the nuances of theory inspired less confidence.  Sour grapes, Suzanne knew, since Nicky had a wonderful performance career ahead of him and didn’t need their approval.  Besides, the students only disliked him because he was such a challenging professor.  She was the only one in the class getting an A, not that she’d ever say anything.  Nobody likes a know-it-all. 

By the time the spring semester ended, the university had become more insistant.  If Mr. McKay persisted in dating a student, the department regretted that there would be professional consequences.  So Suzanne did what any self-respecting nascent literature major would do when her true love was challenged: reader, she married him.

Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises) 17.0° N; 59.1° E

            They lived in Toronto, then Alberta, moved in with Suzanne’s family in Montreal for a year before going back to Toronto. Nicholas knitted together short-term university jobs, taking on private students (and a succession of mistresses) when his wife started nagging about money.  Suzanne gave birth to a boy whom she named for her favorite English poet-novelist and a girl named after the Shavian heroine, then settled down to forty-seven years of resenting her life.  The running battle that was Rodney’s childhood is equal parts sound and fury: his father would yell and his mother would throw things, and then his mother would scream and his father would throw things.  Once, his father hurled a metronome, missed his target by a mile, and hit Jeannie with the weighted wooden base.  There was a lot of blood, four stitches, and a month of relative peace.  The metronome never kept good time after that, even though Rodney took it apart and put it back together again, twice.

Mare Ingenii (Sea of Ingenuity) 33.7°S;  163.5° E

            Rodney never suffered from the delusion that any of it was actually about him; his parents generally took little notice of him or Jeannie, and even less when they were busy sniping at each other.  In fact, their punishment of choice was sending him to an upstairs closet, out of the way, and telling him to think about why he was there.  No matter where they lived, there was always a cramped and drafty repository for his father’s concert clothes and the dresses his mother had worn before he was born.  The door never hung quite right and there was invariably a large gap beneath it, because in the sort of places they could afford, the carpeting had long ago given way to cold, bare boards.  Rodney would consider his sins for about five minutes (had he talked back? talked too much? asked too many questions? not practiced long/hard/well enough? corrected his teachers? lost track of time and been locked in the public library? given Jeannie nightmares by telling her about supernovas? tried to build a nuclear weapon in the garage?) and then get bored.

Sitting on the floor humming to himself, he would practice piano fingerings against the moldings or recite the multiplication table.  (Rodney’s only real memory of their first house in Alberta is the nubby texture of the wallpapers under his fingers as he worked on etudes). Jeannie would dash around the house, avoiding their parents and collecting little things to push under the door: crayon drawings; comic books; Ritz crackers; her baby blanket, the infant equivalent of a file in a cake.  She meted out their Halloween candy so it would last the whole year; to this day, an incipient hypoglycemic attack tastes like adrenaline and cheap, squashed chocolates. One time, she managed to find a tiny flashlight, but the weak yellow light just made Rodney more aware of the walls closing around him; he preferred the spacious dark. 

When they got older, Jeannie would just sit, her back against the door on one side, his on the other, and talk.  For a while, when he is nine and she is almost seven, they’re both interested in outer space, so she memorizes trivia and he pretends he doesn’t already know it.   Solid rocket boosters burn five tons of propellant per second. Because there’s no wind on the moon, Neil Armstrong’s footprints will be visible for a million years.  The Mare Desiderii is a mistake: there is no Sea of Dreams, just a collection of craters. For his ninth birthday, his aunt sends him a book from the Dow Planetarium that has glow-in-the-dark star maps.  He keeps it in the closet, on the shelf next to his mother’s unfinished novel.  Think about where we are in the solar system.

Sinus Concordiae (Bay of Harmony) 10.8° N; 43.2° E

            Rodney and Jeannie play math games, too: puzzles that Jeannie slides under the door, or number sequences where she has to guess his pattern.  Twenty years later, Rodney will find himself waiting in a freezing hangar in Siberia, idly listening in on a conversation between two well-bundled engineers.  He doesn’t know any conversational Russian—why should he?  he didn’t come here to chat—but he recognizes numbers when he hears them. 

“2047,” says the skinny one with the glasses.

“Not prime,” Rodney says, automatically, even though no one is talking to him.

The taller, bearded one shoots him a nasty look. 

“Well, it’s not!” Rodney protests, still in English.  “11 is prime, and 2047 = 2¹¹ − 1, which is a Mersenne number, I’ll grant you, but it’s divisible by…by eighty-nine and…”

“Twenty-three,” says the one with glasses, in accented English.  He grins and Rodney finds himself smiling back.

Mare Insularum (Sea of Islands) 7.5° N; 30.9° W

            Rodney skips second grade; sixth grade; tenth and eleventh in one fell swoop; the second half of his senior year.  When he is nineteen and moving out to start his second doctorate, he finds a piece of paper with a math problem crayoned onto it.  It’s one of the dozens that Jeannie stuffed under the closet door before his parents finally gave up on punishing him and just decided to ignore him altogether.  

Jeannie is in her room, on her bed, listening to music and doing the extra credit problems from a non-linear calc book she stole from his room.  Rodney doesn’t care: he’s finished with that book anyway. 

“Hey,” he says, holding up the paper, “look what I found.”   

She tugs off her headphones, glances up, then looks back at the book.  “It’s not mine,” she says quickly.  He went to high school when he was thirteen and left her behind, started staying late after classes (math club, chess club, physics Olympics), developed a taste for frozen meals and packaged jello, left her to eat family dinners alone.  They're teenagers, and she hates him for that.   

“Sure it is.  Remember?”  She still won’t look at him, so Rodney puts the paper right on top of the page she is studying.  Jeannie flips through the book, losing the sheet in a flurry of pages.  She puts the headphones back on, rolls her eyes extravagantly.  “I said it’s not mine, Mer.  I'm busy.  Leave me alone.”

Later, Rodney finds the math book back in his room.  He shakes it, hard, but there’s nothing tucked between the pages.

Mare Marginis  (Sea of the Edge) 13.3° N; 86.1° E

“Thought you were going to bed,” Sheppard says suddenly from the door, and Rodney jumps. 

“I was,” he says.  “I am, I just…you know, needed some air.  It’s been, uh, quite a week.”

Sheppard laughs, props his elbows on the balcony railing.  “You can say that again.  One McKay running around is about all I can handle.  You, and your sister, and then Rod…I thought Zelenka was gonna die.”  

Rodney sighs.  He’s too tired for this. “I’m sure there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”

The silence goes on for a beat too long, and Sheppard’s fiddling with his stupid, oversized watch, which he does when things get awkward.

“Hey, you…uhm.  Wanna talk about it?” 

Rodney knows he’s not asking about the whole quantum-double thing. This is Sheppard Taking Care of His Team, and Rodney decides to spare them both. “Oh,  I don’t know, Colonel, do you want to talk about your family life?”

For a split second, Sheppard looks—hurt? confused? Rodney can’t decide—and then he laughs again.  “Ok, fair enough.” He digs a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “I’m gonna sack out, but this came with the latest databurst: Sam Carter’s IDC, but it’s from your sister.”

Rodney smooths it out against the railing.  It’s a scanned copy of that old puzzle, flaky crayon and paper that’s twenty years old. 

“6x-(7m)? No...6x-(7mZ), right?” Sheppard says, reading over his shoulder, solving in his head.

“Yeah,” Rodney replies, absently, because that’s the answer, even though the problem is much more complicated. 

“Anyway...get some sleep,” Sheppard says finally and ducks back inside.  Atlantis dims all her beautiful lights when he leaves.  Rodney doesn’t bother to think them back on.  He worries about being forgotten, dying alone; he is afraid of thunderstorms and blood and small spaces, but he is not—never has been—afraid of the dark.  

Comments

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

Very nice. Thank you for sharing!

WP

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Thanks:)

[sholio]

That's a nice look at Rodney's childhood -- the idea of his father having been the piano teacher who destroyed his childhood aspirations is a novel one, and I like the matter-of-factness with which the story (and Rodney) deal with his childhood traumas. And meeting Zelenka in Siberia -- neat!

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

I think, for all his whining, that Rodney's fairly pragmatic about his childhood. It's over now, and he's got plenty more pressing things to complain about, like Kavanaugh and the mess hall serving lemon chicken and the astonishing paucity of blue jello.

[saffronhouse.livejournal.com]

Your writing makes me so damned happy.

Even when it's heartbreaking.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Uh...that's quite a combination there. But I'll take it! Especially since Rodney routinely breaks my heart into little tiny shards.

[tassosss.livejournal.com]

This is beautiful. I really like the style and structure of the story. It's a sad but oh so plausible backstory for Rodney.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Thanks. The structure came very late, late enough that I had to change the title to match at the last minute, so I'm glad you think it works:)

[spike21.livejournal.com]

*sniffle* I love your stuff. I love your idea of Rodney and the things invisible that make him.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you liked it! There's so much going on with Rodney that I had to pick and choose which things to focus on

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

Awww, poor Rodney! Lovely look at his childhood and upbringing. And a wonderful ending. Thank you!

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

You're welcome:)

[druidspell.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I loved that. Really, really a lot. *going to del.icio.us this story*

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

I'm glad and (hooray for del.icio.ous) now I will be famous;) It was time for me to give Rodney some attention!

[bratfarrar]

A beautiful picture - series of pictures - of how Rodney might have become who he is. I like this a lot, and will probably steal bits of it unintentionally for whatever backstory I give Rodney. (Not that I plan on writing his anytime soon, since you've done such a brilliant job of it.)

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

No! Write Rodney! More Rodney love! Rodney, rodney, rodney! By which I mean, thanks for the comment. I'm glad you liked it and you should take whatever bits you can use.

[ratcreature]

I liked this.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

haha...good:)

[ozsaur.livejournal.com]

Yes. Just, yes. Thank you for writing this.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I wanted kind of a trade-off at the end: Rodney's backstory makes him Rodney, and that's good and bad. I kept going back to edit those last four sentences...

[skeddy-kat.livejournal.com]

The ending made the story perfect.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And about the ending(I'm not fishing, really): do you mean the writing or the plotting?

[rinsbane.livejournal.com]

I love all the tie-ins and tie-togethers. It's such a beautifully symmetrical fic.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

I love fics where all the little pieces come together; even nicer when some of those little pieces come from canon. That's what I was going for here: glad you think it worked!

[(Anonymous)]

I really enjoyed reading this. My favorite section was Mare Ingenii for too many reasons to count.

I don't think I understand the ending, though.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

That's my favorite part, too! Everything else (except the very first section, which was part of a subplot that died young) was kind of written just to fit Mare Ingenii.

I'm getting lots of comments about the ending, and I'm not sure whether people mean the actual events--what is this paper?--or the writing--it is light, it is dark?

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Oh, so very beautiful. Felt very real. Thanks.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it! Thanks for commenting:)

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

very cool, the making of all of Rodney's fears and foibles and his relationship with Jeannie, and his parents...

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

I love Jeannie and want to see a lot more of her. Sadly, that probably won't happen outside my head, so I have to do what I can! Thanks for commenting.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, this was a beautiful story. It feels real, &the ending is just perfect.
♥

[cupidsbow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he and Shep both must have had totally screwy childhoods. This is a really interesting take. Thank you.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

I wrote my Sheppard backstory for another challenge, and I haven't really thought too much about his childhood. I might have to, though, with all the good stories going up for *this* challenge. In my mind, though, Sheppard has a pretty normal childhood for a military brat (2/3 travel, 1/3 rebellion), but it gets twisted by his own damn stoicism and a tendency to see things as black or white. It's Rodney who escapes from the asylum, as it were.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Wow. Really lovely work.

*mems*

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[dossier.livejournal.com]

You know, for all the travails, and flailings and hyperbole, I generally find that Rodney's a reasonably centered individual (at least on Atlantis!). this lovely, innovative glimpse into his childhood gives us a sense of how normal he is, compared to how psychotic he might have been. Truly wonderful, and I adore the moon's cartography, I've always thought that for astrophysicists and scientists, those who named them were particularly poetic, and you do them justice.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Obviously, some of Rodney's reactions are exaggerated for effect, but when you really think about it, the danger is real. Lemon is deadly! Asteroids are bad! Soul-sucking aliens are a genuine threat! And pretending that bleeding headwound is just a scratch gets you nowhere, Major! So I imagine a childhood where he's may not be outright, physically abused, but he's certainly got no one looking out for him or encouraging him. That would certainly make me a little over-cautious, not to say arrogant. The lunar maria were just too good to pass up! Thanks for commenting.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bettina_/]

This was really great, I liked that.

[mangst.livejournal.com]

This was a beautiful character study. Very poetic. I loved all the little details-the halloween candy, the feel of wallpaper under his fingers. The comparison of his parents fights to desert storms was my favorite. I could feel what the tension must have been like waiting for the eventual tempest. Beautiful writing.

[2ndary-author.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think little kids have lots of sense memories like that, so I wanted to write some in. Glad you liked it!

[accidentalfan.livejournal.com]

Beautiful story. Thanks for sharing.

[leesa_perrie]

Just loved ALL of it. Well written, love the snippets of his life, the way Jeannie kept the paper, everything! I think the last lines are perfect - all the things he worries about/is afraid of, but not the dark! Nice touch.

And that his dad was the piano teacher was really good too.

Review

[(Anonymous)]

Despite loose ends, this is beautiful. Or maybe because of them...

--Silverthreads