Fluid Circulation, by Rokeon

[rokeon.livejournal.com]

Title: Fluid Circulation
Author: rokeon
Rating: G
Notes: It needs to be editied again, or possibly just taken out and shot. But- deadline. *glares at sentence structure*
Summary: It's like a puppy with a ticking clock



John knows some of the others have been having trouble sleeping. Not many- the scientists tend to work until they drop, and basic training taught the military contingent to crash at any opportunity. But Dr. Beckett mentioned a few people that needed sleeping pills, their circadian rhythms disrupted by the length of the days or the stress of being so far from home. He honestly expected to be one of them; Antarctica had his internal clock screwed up for weeks after he reported for duty and found out that the sun had already set for the winter.

Whatever his expectations, though, insomnia hasn't been a problem here. More like the opposite, because once he gets back to his quarters at night he's been falling asleep before he gets past one page of War and Peace. It's playing havoc with his reading schedule.

He thinks he might know why. Sometimes, when he's lying in bed and everything else is silent, John thinks the city has a heartbeat. It's a soft, steady pulse on the edge of his awareness, something just as much felt as heard, but it's so faint that he's not entirely sure it's more than his imagination.

He asked McKay during the first week and got a very concise explanation about fluid circulation, power conduits, and how if he couldn't find anything to shoot there were still any number of things to do with himself that would be more productive than wasting the time of the only person in Pegasus and possibly the rest of the universe who possessed the intelligence required to comprehend the Ancient technology on which all of their lives were depending. Tempting as it was to hang around and be annoying, especially after an invitation like that, he took the hint and decided to check in with the security teams. Three hours later he'd cleared another hall of rooms for living quarters, inadvertently activated something with a lot of flashing lights that they'd eventually decided was medical equipment and therefore Beckett's problem, given the okay on their future mess hall, and promised a couple of the Athosian kids two extra bedtime stories if they'd run a fresh pot of coffee down to the cranky man in the big lab. All of which was an excellent distraction, so he forgot about whatever it was for the rest of the day.

It started creeping back into his mind as he changed out of his uniform that night, the same quiet rhythm as before. A hum and a pause, a hum and a pause. McKay's probably right; he probably just lucked into Atlantis' version of the room next to the ice machine. But part of him doesn't think so, and it's the same part that felt more at home the first moment he sat in a jumper than it had in any cockpit back on Earth.

Atlantis was built by the Ancients, and it was more than just a city: it was their ship, their sanctuary, and their lifeboat to a new galaxy. It's the most advanced technology the SGC has even found a suggestion of in all their years of exploring. Not only is John pretty sure that it has good soundproofing, he's pretty sure it has something else.

Fluid circulation and power conduits. Heartbeats. McKay was talking about drinking water and electricity, but John can't help thinking about blood. Atlantis is more than just a city, after all, and the part of him that knows it is the same part that translates one beat into trust, the next into safe, and the one after that into home.