FIC: What A Way To Thaw, by Lobelia
Jan. 19th, 2008 06:03 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
lobelia321.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sga_flashficTitle: What A Way To Thaw
Author: Lobelia;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lobelia321
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Category: Getting back into the swing of things by direct LJ-typing. Drawing on Ursula K. Le Guin's exercises in Steering the Craft. Quite cracky.
Rating: Totally G.
Spoilers: 2.05, 'Condemned'.
Length: 1,359 words.
Participants: Eldon, Rodney McKay, Radek Zelenka, original character of the amphibian class.
Warning: Mpreg (of the amphibian).
Pic of Eldon: Eldon the Olesian.
Pimp: My other two Eldon stories: here and there.
Brief: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sga_flashfic F***ing Freezing Challenge.
What A Way To Thaw
A pure substance melts at a definite temperature, called the melting point; it solidifies at the same temperature -- sometimes then called the freezing point.
(from IGCSE Physics, by T. Duncan and H. Kennett, Hodder Murray, 2002, p.150)
"What utter nonsense."
The first person
He is the first person. He is always the first person. He strides into a situation, looks around and knows it within an instant. I would have needed to ponder those words for a long time. Only then could I have reached a conclusion. But he can do thus within minutes, seconds, blinks of my eye.
"Eldon!" he called. "Come over here and bring me that liquefactor."
This I could do.
"And stop staring at me like I'm some kind of alien."
But you are, I wanted to say. You are some kind of alien.
I bent my mind in on itself, as I used to do on Olesia, and entered the brainstream. And then, of course, I saw it, too. "Certainly," I said, "the freezing point can never be identical to the boiling point."
He was bent over the device. He is a big man, with big shoulders and arms, but when he handles equipment, he does so with delicate fingers and the strange grace of a harpoonist. "And here I was thinking you were illiterate," he muttered. "Colligative amplifier!"
Yes. Yes. "Yes, Dr McKay."
How heavy all this apparatus is. How it wears on my shoulder blades.
How I love being the second person on every planet and in every new situation.
Limited third
There was an honour in serving Dr McKay, and honour was not something Eldon had experienced at great length back in the penal colony. Dr McKay did honourable things, and Dr McKay was an honourable men, and honourable men had not played much of a part in Eldon's life heretofore.
It was difficult to know when to correct an honourable and knowledgeable man. It was very difficult to know when it was an insult and when it was a necessity.
Eldon had not needed to speak out for over fifteen years. The rule had been, shut up and survive.
It was only when the plaque with its terse pronouncement on temperatures buckled under the ministrations of the liquefactor, buckled and bubbled into lung-bursting life, when it lost its solidity in a gurgling surge and when it swamped the two of them in a tidal rampage -- it was only then that Eldon spoke out.
But it was too late by then. His mouth filled with moiling water.
"Eldon, give me the--," spluttered Dr McKay, and then he too was shut up. His head bobbed up a few feet from Eldon, his mouth spewed fountains, and then Dr McKay was swept away, and Eldon drowned in the maelstrom.
Involved and omniscient
Rodney hadn't managed to articulate his command in time. And now he was spinning down into the Wonderlandesque vortex of this devilish melting eternity, with no hope in hell of reaching that molal frost coagulator. Water, or whatever it was, burbled into his eyes and mouth and ear holes.
What a stupid way to die. What a stupid, stupid way to die.
But all was not lost for the two of them.
"Eldon, give me the--", Rodney had said.
It was all that Eldon needed to hear.
Eldon tried to breathe but couldn't. He tried to swim but couldn't. So he closed his mind and twisted it into a coil and the thought was there, clear as ethanamide.
It was a struggle but he managed it. He tore and tugged at the cords of the bag. Objects fell out and banged him on the head. Devices blinked on and off and sank to a murky end. The molal frost coagulator all but hopped into Eldon's groping fist.
'Oh,' thought the amphibian lifeform as it paddled past, blinking confusedly after its long hibernal slumber.
Detached and objective
The tabescent metal shuddered and disappeared into its own molten form. Dwindling to the bottom of the aeration chamber were the two male humanoids. A detached bag with shoulder straps floated past them. The smaller of the two clutched the coagulation device and, just before he passed out, depressed the instrument's activation button.
There was a soft pop.
Within seconds, the entire undulating mass of liquid had frozen over.
A crack zig-zagged across its surface. Whiplash snapped the two scientists into place.
There they hung, suspended in frozen animation.
And would have hung in all eternity if it hadn't been for...
The second first person
...me.
For, of course, it was me who came to the rescue. I always come to the rescue. I am always coming to the rescue because I am always coming late. I am the last person on the scene. I stride into a situation, I look around, and I can gauge immediately where my colleagues have, once again and with unerring predictability, fucked up.
In the case of Z-3542 I didn't stride in, I slithered in onto the lake of ice, jutting up to the very edge of event horizon.
"Aha," I said. I hit the comm. "Sheppard? Come in."
"Radek? Everything okay down there?"
"As a matter of unsurprising fact," I said, "not." I peered into the ice. "We have a situation here."
"What, Radek? What? What kind of situation?"
"The Gatebound area appears to have frozen over. The matter..." I strafed the ice with my thermal detector. "...appears first to have liquefied, and then solidified again, within a very brief span of time."
"Zelenka!" (I do wish they wouldn't yell down the comm all the time. It does not make the sound quality any more precise.) "What the fuck is going on down there? What kind of a fucking situation is this?"
"A fucking freezing situation," I replied, and switched off the comm.
I always switch off the comm when shove comes to push. Laymen will always attempt to interfere in scientific endeavours, thereby fucking them up even more than...
Well, to be very honest: even more than the non-layman Rodney McKay manages to fuck them up.
Observer
Rudolph the amphibian shivered at the edge of the ice. He couldn't run away because his tail was trapped in the frozen waste.
He observed the two-legged creature with the round things on his nose walking out of the big round gate-thingy, falling over, sliding around, making sounds. He saw the creature staring through the glassy ice at the other two creatures, trapped below.
The two trapped creatures formed a strange pattern of legs and whatever else they were made of, feelers or something.
Rudolph the amphibian considered gnawing his own tail off and running free.
The walking-around creature did odd things. It pulled on something, and a big orange boat-like object popped into existence with a huffing noise. Then the creature pulled out a sort of stick, and then everything went whoosh and sploosh, the ice melted, and Rudolph's tail was freed!
Hooray!
The water whirled and swirled. Wonderful!
The two-legged creatures made loud noises and climbed into the orange boat-thingy but Rudolph the amphibian cared not. He felt the first stirrings of babes within his soft belly.
At the bottom of the lake, he could spy a big bag-like shelter. Perfect for his future brood!
Happy the alien amphibian.
Three years later
"And that, my dear grandchildren," said Rudolph, "is how your parents were born. What a to-do that was! If it hadn't been for that metal slab melting, I would still be hibernating in a water-less world. Tell you what, though, my tail nearly well froze off when all that water turned into ice.
Don't know what became of those weirdo creatures. Never saw them again.
Never cared. Good night, sleep tight."
THE END
19 January 2008
Author: Lobelia;
lobelia321Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Category: Getting back into the swing of things by direct LJ-typing. Drawing on Ursula K. Le Guin's exercises in Steering the Craft. Quite cracky.
Rating: Totally G.
Spoilers: 2.05, 'Condemned'.
Length: 1,359 words.
Participants: Eldon, Rodney McKay, Radek Zelenka, original character of the amphibian class.
Warning: Mpreg (of the amphibian).
Pic of Eldon: Eldon the Olesian.
Pimp: My other two Eldon stories: here and there.
Brief: Written for the
sga_flashfic F***ing Freezing Challenge.What A Way To Thaw
A pure substance melts at a definite temperature, called the melting point; it solidifies at the same temperature -- sometimes then called the freezing point.
(from IGCSE Physics, by T. Duncan and H. Kennett, Hodder Murray, 2002, p.150)
"What utter nonsense."
The first person
He is the first person. He is always the first person. He strides into a situation, looks around and knows it within an instant. I would have needed to ponder those words for a long time. Only then could I have reached a conclusion. But he can do thus within minutes, seconds, blinks of my eye.
"Eldon!" he called. "Come over here and bring me that liquefactor."
This I could do.
"And stop staring at me like I'm some kind of alien."
But you are, I wanted to say. You are some kind of alien.
I bent my mind in on itself, as I used to do on Olesia, and entered the brainstream. And then, of course, I saw it, too. "Certainly," I said, "the freezing point can never be identical to the boiling point."
He was bent over the device. He is a big man, with big shoulders and arms, but when he handles equipment, he does so with delicate fingers and the strange grace of a harpoonist. "And here I was thinking you were illiterate," he muttered. "Colligative amplifier!"
Yes. Yes. "Yes, Dr McKay."
How heavy all this apparatus is. How it wears on my shoulder blades.
How I love being the second person on every planet and in every new situation.
Limited third
There was an honour in serving Dr McKay, and honour was not something Eldon had experienced at great length back in the penal colony. Dr McKay did honourable things, and Dr McKay was an honourable men, and honourable men had not played much of a part in Eldon's life heretofore.
It was difficult to know when to correct an honourable and knowledgeable man. It was very difficult to know when it was an insult and when it was a necessity.
Eldon had not needed to speak out for over fifteen years. The rule had been, shut up and survive.
It was only when the plaque with its terse pronouncement on temperatures buckled under the ministrations of the liquefactor, buckled and bubbled into lung-bursting life, when it lost its solidity in a gurgling surge and when it swamped the two of them in a tidal rampage -- it was only then that Eldon spoke out.
But it was too late by then. His mouth filled with moiling water.
"Eldon, give me the--," spluttered Dr McKay, and then he too was shut up. His head bobbed up a few feet from Eldon, his mouth spewed fountains, and then Dr McKay was swept away, and Eldon drowned in the maelstrom.
Involved and omniscient
Rodney hadn't managed to articulate his command in time. And now he was spinning down into the Wonderlandesque vortex of this devilish melting eternity, with no hope in hell of reaching that molal frost coagulator. Water, or whatever it was, burbled into his eyes and mouth and ear holes.
What a stupid way to die. What a stupid, stupid way to die.
But all was not lost for the two of them.
"Eldon, give me the--", Rodney had said.
It was all that Eldon needed to hear.
Eldon tried to breathe but couldn't. He tried to swim but couldn't. So he closed his mind and twisted it into a coil and the thought was there, clear as ethanamide.
It was a struggle but he managed it. He tore and tugged at the cords of the bag. Objects fell out and banged him on the head. Devices blinked on and off and sank to a murky end. The molal frost coagulator all but hopped into Eldon's groping fist.
'Oh,' thought the amphibian lifeform as it paddled past, blinking confusedly after its long hibernal slumber.
Detached and objective
The tabescent metal shuddered and disappeared into its own molten form. Dwindling to the bottom of the aeration chamber were the two male humanoids. A detached bag with shoulder straps floated past them. The smaller of the two clutched the coagulation device and, just before he passed out, depressed the instrument's activation button.
There was a soft pop.
Within seconds, the entire undulating mass of liquid had frozen over.
A crack zig-zagged across its surface. Whiplash snapped the two scientists into place.
There they hung, suspended in frozen animation.
And would have hung in all eternity if it hadn't been for...
The second first person
...me.
For, of course, it was me who came to the rescue. I always come to the rescue. I am always coming to the rescue because I am always coming late. I am the last person on the scene. I stride into a situation, I look around, and I can gauge immediately where my colleagues have, once again and with unerring predictability, fucked up.
In the case of Z-3542 I didn't stride in, I slithered in onto the lake of ice, jutting up to the very edge of event horizon.
"Aha," I said. I hit the comm. "Sheppard? Come in."
"Radek? Everything okay down there?"
"As a matter of unsurprising fact," I said, "not." I peered into the ice. "We have a situation here."
"What, Radek? What? What kind of situation?"
"The Gatebound area appears to have frozen over. The matter..." I strafed the ice with my thermal detector. "...appears first to have liquefied, and then solidified again, within a very brief span of time."
"Zelenka!" (I do wish they wouldn't yell down the comm all the time. It does not make the sound quality any more precise.) "What the fuck is going on down there? What kind of a fucking situation is this?"
"A fucking freezing situation," I replied, and switched off the comm.
I always switch off the comm when shove comes to push. Laymen will always attempt to interfere in scientific endeavours, thereby fucking them up even more than...
Well, to be very honest: even more than the non-layman Rodney McKay manages to fuck them up.
Observer
Rudolph the amphibian shivered at the edge of the ice. He couldn't run away because his tail was trapped in the frozen waste.
He observed the two-legged creature with the round things on his nose walking out of the big round gate-thingy, falling over, sliding around, making sounds. He saw the creature staring through the glassy ice at the other two creatures, trapped below.
The two trapped creatures formed a strange pattern of legs and whatever else they were made of, feelers or something.
Rudolph the amphibian considered gnawing his own tail off and running free.
The walking-around creature did odd things. It pulled on something, and a big orange boat-like object popped into existence with a huffing noise. Then the creature pulled out a sort of stick, and then everything went whoosh and sploosh, the ice melted, and Rudolph's tail was freed!
Hooray!
The water whirled and swirled. Wonderful!
The two-legged creatures made loud noises and climbed into the orange boat-thingy but Rudolph the amphibian cared not. He felt the first stirrings of babes within his soft belly.
At the bottom of the lake, he could spy a big bag-like shelter. Perfect for his future brood!
Happy the alien amphibian.
Three years later
"And that, my dear grandchildren," said Rudolph, "is how your parents were born. What a to-do that was! If it hadn't been for that metal slab melting, I would still be hibernating in a water-less world. Tell you what, though, my tail nearly well froze off when all that water turned into ice.
Don't know what became of those weirdo creatures. Never saw them again.
Never cared. Good night, sleep tight."
THE END
19 January 2008
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 09:51 pm (UTC)insanityunique style! *hugs*(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 11:23 pm (UTC)Yes, isn't it amazing? I wrote summat!
How are you anyway?? I've been away from this place so long!
It feels good to have posted. But you know, it was a bit hard, like flexing muscles that hadn't been exercised in a long while and were rather stiff.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 11:28 pm (UTC)Love Rudolph - can I have a pet amphibian, please?!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-20 06:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-21 01:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-22 07:19 pm (UTC):-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-22 07:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-25 05:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-27 08:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-01 05:28 pm (UTC)Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-01 05:29 pm (UTC)When can I visit your wondrous town?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-01 05:45 pm (UTC)You must come to Ippers! When would you like to come? I'm going down to Dorset the first week in April, but I've decided not to go for the whole week, so I do have Monday 31st March to Thursday 3rd April free, should you be able to manage any of those dates... Or a weekend, before or after that?