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[ ACTIVE / CLOSED ]

Who: John Sheppard, Ianto Jones & TJ!
What: ~~Florida~~ California Man introduces air-force medic to his roommate
When: Early in the month, when the new folk are waking up!
Where: Mess hall!
Warning(s): N/A

John had deferred the giant mech adventure for now -- since TJ was new and all, and it seemed like there was probably a lot of context and... general local information that might be beneficial to go over before plunging down in a time-frozen dystopia to tidy up after a dragon.

He's been evasive, which he feels a little bad about but overall he's not... quite sure he wants to open with 'oh, yeah, I was a branch of the US military which did space travel' right off the bat. It's meant to be classified, and sure he's... reasonably sure all that stuff no longer applies when Earth, New Lantea and probably all the other off-world bases have been eaten by the storm but --

But it's just such a long conversation, and people ask questions and he's tired and just wants to be normal for five minutes. So he's briefly mentioned Antarctica, Afghanistan, a vague summary of how he's flown in every continent and is currently idly going through 'my first adventure with the Natha' over a cup of tea and a plate of cheesy fries.

"So they finally beam us down to the planet," John is saying, "And this guy Voss is giving this twenty minute speech on how the Light of Thesa is a blessing or something and Thesa is a goddess who watches over them -- and I'm pretty sure the light is the teleport. But -- we're not meant to say, right? We've got to blend in. Pretend we're just local refugees even if we're all mismatched and weird. So --"

He pauses to take a sip of his drink, then something in his expression changes and he begins waving at someone behind TJ.

"Hey! There you are! TJ, this is Ianto Jones! Ianto, First Lieutenant Tamara Johansen -- Air Force. I was just giving her the delightful story of our first adventure out on the surface." Which was... definitely memorable, but John hasn't actually gone over all the more memorable bits and was probably planning to skip those. He glances back at TJ and flicks an idle smile. "Ianto's my roommate, he's in charge of telling me no. Ianto, sit!"

Apparently the 'no' part doesn't apply to things like diet choices. So Ianto should join them and eat more cheesy fries! They're in the middle of the table for a reason.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Colorado. There's no doubt in John's mind this is definitely not a coincidence. Five years ago, though? John squints, trying to turn his mind back five years, and glances over to Ianto again.

"McKay did some work for the Russians. Siberia, I think? He got around a lot before he settled."

Settled in Atlantis, that is. John turns back his attention to TJ and squints at her critically. This is like a game now, who blinks first. He sips his tea slowly.

"Five years ago? Do you know who he was working under in Colorado?"

What was five years ago for her, for that matter? Who was in charge of the SGC? Was it Hammond? Was it O'Neill? Or was it Landry by then? It's hard to guess, given the fuzziness of timeliness here.

Siberia. Ianto thinks about making a joke about him being Canadian and used to the cold, but mostly he's just bewildered by the fact that the pair of them know the same man and are therefore connected by this fact.

"Colorado," Ianto echoes, like it should mean anything to him. It doesn't really, except that he's pretty sure McKay's been spending most of his time far, far away from Colorado as of late. And Earth itself, for that matter. How long has John been on this mission, has he said? He studies John's face for any sign of recognition before turning to TJ again.

"Time works strangely in this place," he explains. "Five years ago for you might be different than what it was for me, versus what it was for John." He glances aside at the other man, before asking her, "What were you doing in Colorado, then? To have run into McKay there?"

Knowing who was in charge in Colorado five years ago and knowing who was in charge that brief moment she'd met McKay - he'd been staring at a colleague of hers - are two different questions and she hesitates a moment too long before she gives an answer that's not really an answer. Choosing to focus on Ianto's statement, she side-eyes John before focusing on his friend.

"I've heard a little bit about different times, and I've been trying to pin down what year it is here," she admits. "It was early 2011 for me and I hadn't been in Colorado since the middle of 2008. I saw McKay a few years before that. He's a funny guy. I heard he was doing something else, but I never got specifics." Not exactly.

She lifts a shoulder in an attempt to be nonchalant. Turning back to John, she asks, "So, how'd you meet him?"

John recognises a classic redirection when he sees one. He takes another sip of his drink and smiles, leans sideways toward Ianto and glances up at him.

"Is that what it's like trying to have a conversation with me?"

Struggling to get a straight answer all the time. He focuses back on TJ and settles into his chair a little deeper, amused.

"I was helping General O'Neill with something," he answers anyway, because he's still not really giving anything away but also -- if she knows the name then she probably knows what he might have been helping with. "Are we playing security clearance one-up here?"

Ianto raises his eyebrows at the question, offering John a helpless little shrug as he does. If he's asking the question, he probably knows the answer already anyway. Of course it is. In fact, he can be worse at times. At least she's answering in full sentences.

He glances between the pair of them, taking another sip of his coffee and wondering how long this is going to go on. This dodging of the truth when he's got a feeling that they both might know more about each other's jobs than they're willing to let on. He just hopes that doesn't mean anything's happened to John, in the future. Rodney 'doing something else' would lead him to believe otherwise, though.

"It seems you are, a bit," he replies. "For the record, I'm pretty sure my clearance levels would have included your lot, so you really don't need to worry about me. Assuming the pair of you do the same thing. But if you were in the same circles as Rodney McKay," he points out levelly, "who just happened to come to work on the same project as John here, then I think you both know and we might be able to stop playing twenty questions, yeah?"

He raises his coffee again, raising an eyebrow at the pair of them over the rim of his mug. There. He hasn't given away your secrets in so many words, John, but who knows how long this dance could go on and he'd rather not be dragged along as an awkward third.

As soon as John mentioned Colonel O'Neill, TJ was ready to give up. He'd said the name, which meant he was from exactly where she'd thought they were both from and that meant that, well. Ianto likely knew and... well, Ianto only confirmed it.

He just looked so amused by the whole thing and that just made her smile.

"I have to admit," she says to Ianto before anything else, "I am curious about your security levels." And then she turns to look at John. "But you're the Colonel, so no security one-up here. You're the boss. Sir." Hands spread wide, she sits back, too. "I only met him once. From there, I was transferred to the Icarus Base."

She's not sure what he's aware of regarding it's destruction or the people that went through the gate from there.

"Icarus Base!" John snaps his fingers, triumphant, and takes a victory sip of his tea. "P4X-351, right? I was out in Atlantis with McKay. You know, doing our own thing kinda -- but I did work out of the SGC for a little bit once. Kinda a long story. Anyway -- Ianto's security clearance is miniature Home-world Security, Cardiff. Kinda like -- a field operations division, it sounds like?"

He squints at Ianto questioningly, then shrugs back at TJ.

"So far as I can tell, we're all on a space station anyway so it doesn't seem like a big deal to admit things. It's probably just better to vague out the details until you're sure about people, in case the Natha wake up some bad-guys who are in the mood for revenge."

You know, The Trust, Goa'uld, any person who particularly hated the SGC or any of its affiliates. Of which... there are plenty of people.

He meets John’s questioning glance and offers him a little shrug of his own. Miniature though, really? “We’re all home-world, where I’m from. For the most part anyway,” he has to amend, because well the Doctor stealing off the odd traveler here and there should hardly count.

“Anyway that’s besides the point,” he continues. “I know something about Atlantis but what’s Icarus then?” He glances between the pair of them again. Is he allowed to talk about what you do now, John? After a lead-in like that, he hopes so, because he’s going to go on to ask, “Don’t tell me you’ve got another flying city out there somewhere.”

John may have failed to explain some of the basics of Stargate operations to Ianto so far. Like the gates themselves for example.

TJ's enemy of, well not choice, but still. It's the Lucian Alliance. They're the baddies.

When Ianto says he knows something about Atlantis, that means that John trusts him enough to tell him what he does and, as he's the de facto boss, that means that TJ can trust him, too. So, the question about Icarus isn't unexpected and TJ nods as she tosses John a quick glance for approval before smiling and nodding.

"Not a flying city. It doesn't even exist anymore, actually. There's a group, the Lucian Alliance, and the planet the base was on..." She stops there and takes a breath. "It blew up. It was volatile and the gate there, it was meant to be used to dial a nine-chevron address. That's what our scientist did instead of dialing Earth and." She shrugs and spreads her hands open. "We've spent the last two years stranded on a ship moving billions of miles away from Earth."

Unfortunately, her assumption is that if John's talking about Atlantis, he's talking about the gates, too.

Ah, the Lucian Alliance. John nods, frowning as he tries to recall what he knows about them. What might motivate them to... blow up a planet entirely.

He squints at her, pressing his lips together.

"They had a lot of Naquadria there," he says finally, half glancing between TJ and Ianto. "That's pretty explosive. How many did they manage to evacuate?"

Maybe everyone, but John isn't expecting that. It's why he asks how many instead. He can feel Ianto's curiosity welling up beside him and shoots him an idly quelling look -- yes, he knows you have a hundred questions Ianto. They'll get there.

Edited (when you click the wrong icon somehow and the mood is super wrong) 2018-08-13 21:17 (UTC)

A gate with a nine-chevron address. Dialing? Naquadria... He tries to sort through what he can understand at least. That the base blew up -- the planet it was on blew up -- was blown up by some group known as the Lucian Alliance? And now she and whatever survivors are now stranded on a ship that seems to be moving in the wrong direction.

He catches that look from John and shoots him a look in return. Listen, he really doesn't want to interrupt this important information exchange between the pair of you either but. Throw him a line. You're not even explaining the things you're saying now.

Restraining himself as best he can, Ianto takes another sip of his coffee before asking, "Was there some particular reason that this Lucian Alliance was targeting you, then, or...?"

"By dialing the gate." She does her best to explain the basics without throwing a certain someone under the bus too much, no matter how she feels about the situation. "Rush, the guy in charge of trying to dial the ninth chevron, was told to dial Earth and he didn't. He decided to take the one chance he had to dial the address he had and..."

TJ trails off and looks at Ianto. "They wanted control of the planet and the gate that was on it. Dialing that address would have given them control of the ship we ended up on and, eventually, they found a way onto it from another entrance point. They tried to take it over with someone from the SGC's help."

She doesn't want to talk about it, really, and so she goes back to John's last question. "Around eighty of us made it to the ship. The Destiny. It was an Ancient ship." And then, because she honestly doesn't know how much Ianto knows, she clarifies. "The aliens, not the time frame."

"The stuff my gene works on," John adds, "Like the little scanner." Then he turns to squint at TJ. "Guess it must have been a pretty special ship if the Lucian Alliance went to all that trouble. Did you have a carrier with you? To get it working, I mean. Or someone who had been given the gene therapy?"

Since presumably on an Ancient ship you'd... need someone with the gene to be able to get into the systems and take control? Unless it was, weirdly, all activated already? John has been on mostly-abandoned ancient ships before, even if they were nothing like Destiny he's still picturing it like that. Like the Aurora or something. Brightly lit, with cryo-chambers maybe. If they'd been dialled into some bigger version of that with it's own gate then... well, presumably they'd be aiming to take control and grind it to a halt so they could re-synchronise the gate and dial back, right? Or at least turn it around and begin making jumps to somewhere they could dial back from.

The Ancients. Right. Ianto understands that John's ability isn't supposed to work on more all the technology that it does. Ancient technology. A carrier? That must be what they call John, then. He's doing his best to follow along but all this talk of dialing gates and chevrons has his head spinning. At least he can deduce that it must be -- some method of traveling? Getting the address right, she had said after all. Dialing the address. Ending up on a ship.

"Must be pretty big ship then too, to fit eighty people on board," he hazards, glancing aside at John. Looking to him for assistance. What is a gate, anyway? He really should have asked more questions about the logistics of John's research mission than he has, come to think of it.

"Actually," she tells Ianto, eyes widening, "the ship could have comfortably held another hundred or more people. It was huge. There were parts of it we never got to explore because they were damaged. The hull was open to space and the shields were down. That kind of thing."

Taking a breath, she tips her head to the side and contemplates John. "You're a carrier of the ATA gene?" Shaking her head, she takes a drink from her cup. "The ship worked as soon as we started touching things, really. It didn't matter who or what, though I'm guessing that most of the people that were known carriers of the gene had already been shipped off to, uh." She glances at Ianto before looking back at John. "With you guys. With us, it didn't matter. We had to survive with what we could get through the gate - people, supplies, anything we could get our hands on - while the Lucian Alliance was attacking. We had six minutes."

She lifts her shoulders and sighs. "We lost a lot of personnel before we got on board and lost a few more over the last year and a half. Now this. I'm not sure what's next."

"Actually we only had like two carriers to begin with and apparently I was the prettiest or something, so things liked me better. We stole one or two more later, so if that was all of them then sorry about that. I only have so many hands to make things light up with."

He takes a deep breath, squints around the table, at TJ then sideways at Ianto.

"Got a pencil and paper?"

This seems like a pencil and paper sort of situation.

Ianto meets John's eyes with a questioning expression that also seems to say oh ye of little faith before he sets down his coffee and reaches into the light jacket that he's wearing to produce a small notebook and, yes, a pencil.

He hands both over, quirking an eyebrow at the other man in curiosity before he reaches for another fry. Pretty sure that there's nothing incriminating in this particular book for John to come across as he flips to find a fresh page, at least.

"Really, it didn't matter. The ship worked fine without you. Them." Though, it might have worked better with someone who was a natural with it. There was really no way to tell.

Watching Ianto's reaction, TJ gets the impression that he's been told some things, but not others, and she feels bad that she's jumped in with a giant part of her life story without backstory to go along with it. It's the expression on the man's face that causes her to grin again, the way he tells Colonel Sheppard without words that his question is, well. If not stupid, then something he shouldn't need to ask.

"What are we writing down?" 'We' as a group, obviously.

"We're having a quick lesson on gate addressing."

John flips open the notebook at the back to the last blank page, begins sketching out two concentric circles.

"So, you know how in Cardiff you have your rift that things go in and out of. Well, the Ancients liked to build big things and that didn't just stop at big fancy ships. They built a network of devices that you could basically use to connect to each other with a wormhole, kinda like your rift only imagine you can direct it to spit you out somewhere specific every time you use it. So, we refer to these things as Stargates because the addressing system works with star constellations. You dial an address, it locks and opens a passage for you, then it closes behind you and you have to dial home when you want to head back."

He begins quickly drawing all the constellations around the circle, and nine lock points.

"But, how does addressing work? You don't need the gene to use these, just to know where you're going. Think of it like your zip code going into a GPS. There are six constellations you pick, then a seventh is the last one you plug in which says where you're coming from. It kinda finalises the address. It's spacially like a cube --"

He flips over another page and begins roughly drawing one, then drawing six dots and joining them in criss-crossing lines.

"Where all these lines cross is your destination, and then the seventh tells you the direction you're coming in."

John draws a seventh dot, then connects it through into the centre.

"But getting the order is important. Six symbols? You've got seven hundred and twenty possible permutations of the address, so random dialling doesn't get you far. It's better if you know where you're going. Especially since, what, there's thirty eight symbols on a Milky Way gate and one point of origin? That's nearly two billion possible address, divided by seven hundred and twenty is like -- over two and a half million plausible addresses. There's thirty six symbols on a Pegasus gate, and one is a point of origin, so that's like -- over one and a half million possible working addresses give or take."

He squints a second, calculating, then flips back to the gate picture.

"Anyway, the six plus point of origin rule keeps you within the same galaxy. If you want to jump further out, for example from the Milky Way to the Pegasus Galaxy where Atlantis is, you need an extra symbol to help it make the distance calculation before you put in the point of origin. Now, a nine symbol address is what TJ says they dialled. There are enough lock points on all the gates for that, but we've never had a nine symbol address before. So! If eight symbols adjusts to dial another galaxy, what's the ninth do? Another distance adjustment? A longer jump? We weren't part of that project, though I think I remember McKay complaining about it once, so honestly -- I don't know."

But maybe TJ can explain that better. He glances at Ianto to make sure his brain hasn't melted, then up at TJ curiously.

Ianto sits forward to watch John draw and to listen to his explanation. Picking his coffee up again to have something to do with his hands so that he's not just quietly gaping instead. It's not so much the gates themselves that catch him up, really. It's John's explanation. He's never really done this sort of instructional affair in front of Ianto before and he's -- impressed. Has he really just done those equations in his head in the moment? Does he really understand these gates as well as he sounds like he does? All this talk of constellations and -- space as a cube. It is a little difficult to wrap your head around, and John's always so. Not that Ianto doesn't think he has it in him, it's just that between all the Deadpool jokes and pop culture references, this math lesson he's just spouted is something else, and it's very...

He takes a long, slow sip of his coffee to give himself time to collect his thoughts.

"Our Rift is a naturally occurring, unpredictable phenomenon," he points out, just in case that hadn't been clear from the start. "We got ourselves into a lot of trouble when we went mucking about, trying to use it for our own purposes." He glances up at John. "But I've heard of other devices that do the same thing. Roughly. Jack had one, he. A vortex manipulator, he called it. I think it worked using the same idea, dialing in an address. Using numbers, though, on his wrist strap. I'm not quite sure, it didn't work anymore..."

Like Ianto, TJ has leaned into the conversation and, as John goes on, she becomes impressed. She's gone through different gates on different missions on many different occasions and she's heard the basics several times before. Everyone who gets assigned to the SGC has either heard it in person (thank you, Daniel), or by instructional video (from Daniel), but the way John just... rattled it off? Wow.

"Yeah, I mean. Colonel Sheppard's right." What can she add to that? "Dialing the ninth chevron required a lot of power, which is why they built Icarus where they did." Explosive planet. "They weren't sure they'd be able to dial it, even after the sequencing was put together. I don't know all details, but it took months and something about a code hidden in a video game-"

That's how Eli ended up with them, she knew that much.

When Ianto talks about the Rift, she gives him her own curious look. "So, do you guys just walk into it like." She points to the drawings John's made. "If you don't know where you're going or what's happening, how can you control it?"

John glances between the two of them as he leans back from the drawing and, after a hesitant second, frowns a little uncomfortably before focusing on Ianto. It's a little weird having such close, focused attention on himself explaining something from both of them. John's usually not the explainer, and he feels oddly like a fraud.

"Even dialling Pegasus required extra power," he adds, and mulls over the thought. A nine-chevron address, and something about a... code in a video game? The additional power requirement was probably huge, especially if they were using Icarus Base. Still -- the question to Ianto has John turning toward him -- closing his notebook and sliding it back to him with his pencil.

"That will now self-destruct in five seconds," he adds softly, and twitches a smile before leaning back with his tea to let Ianto take over.

Ianto quirks an eyebrow at John's comment, along with the hint of a smile of his own and carefully, pointedly, tucks the little notebook back into his pocket. Nice try, John, but he's definitely saving that little Stargate sketch to study more carefully later, hopefully when John isn't watching although the pair of them being roommates, who can say for certain.

"Ehm," he says, trying to field TJ's question in the best way he can. "Well, technically we just monitor the Rift. It does a lot of spitting things out, from other places, other times." He glances at the pair of them warily. Technically, the rest of this is classified, even by Torchwood standards, but he doesn't really see the harm in sharing, considering. "And it sucks things up and sends them away." Sometimes it takes people. He's nearly said as much to John before, but he's not certain the other man's really understood what it meant before.

"Like I said, we can't really control it. We can't really even predict it. We just sort of..." He shrugs. "Deal with the fallout, I suppose." He glances aside at the pair of them. "The only time we tried to do anything specifically it sort of. Fractured time itself, a little. Which we fixed," he corrects quickly, "but I'm not sure it's really meant to be. Used. Not in the way that your gates are, anyway."

Observing the byplay between the two men, TJ keeps her tiny smile to herself as much as she can before clearing her throat lightly and focusing on what Ianto has to say. While it doesn't sound like the Rift he's describing is the same as the Stargate system in most ways, she hears a few similarities - namely that most things go one way - and nods along to indicate that she's listening and understand the words that are coming out of his mouth.

Clearly, the things he's saying aren't supposed to be shared with just anyone, but if he's keeping the notebook with Colonel Sheppard's sketch, TJ figures it doesn't hurt if he talks about his day job from back home.

"So, when you say it sucks things up and sends them away, are you talking like... out of thin air?" She throws a glance at John to make sure he's following, too, before adding, "Because you said the one time you tried to do something specific you fractured time. What does that mean, exactly?"

It made sense that they weren't necessarily from the same place, but Earth was Earth and TJ was curious what this meant for Ianto and the people he knew.

John shrugs at the glance, looks over to Ianto and gestures for him to take the floor. He's done enough talking for a while, he can step back.

"If it helps," he adds, "I've broken lots of things in my time. McKay once destroyed a solar system. Uninhabited."

He takes a sip of his tea calmly, flashes Ianto a casual smile. So, you know, fracturing time a bit might sound bad but... on the SGC scale of things, probably not the worst thing that has happened.

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