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Bread Mountain Dreams
Or, The Time When Rodney Dreamt They Were All Two-Dimensional Paper Things* and Spent the Whole Time Scaling the Ridiculously High Cliffs and Obnoxiously Rough Terrain of Bread Mountains
by Fish Echo
PG-13 for cursing. ~1400 words. May contain nuts. Spoilers for my brain being weird but not the show.
Companion Recipe: Harvest Bread
Podfic version: mp3 of both the story and the recipe (read by juniperphoenix).
~~~
"You said 'C'mon, Rodney, it's not that far! . . . It's for a good cause . . . There might be a ZPM, Rodney! . . . It's just a short walk, Rodney!' Well, I'M CALLING YOU ON YOUR LIES, SHEPPARD! This cliff, this sheer cliff face is hardly 'a walk in the park', now is it? Hmmm?" Rodney was not enjoying this "short, easy walk." Hmphf. Lies.
"C'mon, McKay, it's not that bad," John wheedled. "Ronon's even strung up the ropes."
Rodney glared.
"How strong was that energy signature again?" John tempted.
"Okay, fine. But if I fall and die I'm haunting your ass from now until the end of time!"
"Deal."
He hauled himself up the cliff, scrambled across badly broken ground, scaled another cliff, and stumbled over more incredibly difficult ground. Situation normal for off-world missions in the Pegasus Galaxy.
Then Rodney caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Or rather, he didn't. When Sheppard reached into his vest pocket for his sunglasses, his arm disappeared.
Had there been some tingling a while back? He remembered feeling slightly odd, but he'd assumed it was repressed rage at the layout of Cliffy-Planet-Of-Hate. "Did you initialise some Ancient flower press reality machine, Colonel Touches-Alien-Artifacts-Without-Protection?"
"What are you talking about?" John's smirk had morphed into slight concern, but his body hadn't morphed at all-- he was still entirely two-dimensional.
"You! We! Us! We're all two-dimensional right now!"
"Oh hey, we are. Cool." John was clearly enjoying twisting his arms to see what he looked like in two dimensions, whereas Ronon was busy checking that all his knives were safe. Teyla just looked Teyla-ish.
"This is not cool! This is the opposite of cool! This is a disaster! Who knows what will happen?!"
"I am not going to turn into a butterfly, McKay," stated Ronon.
"What? Why would you? Oh no, there was some sort of psychological effect also and . . . "
"I am neither a butterfly dreaming I'm a man, nor a man dreaming I'm a butterfly. I am you dreaming one of your teammates. If you make me a butterfly, the real me will exact revenge." Ronon glared.
"How is that even possible? And wait, what, dreaming?"
"Don't ask, don't tell."
"I hate my life. No wait, I hate you all. Especially cavemen with odd ideas of philosophy."
"Rodney," Teyla cut in, "I do not think this discussion is useful. Or fruitful. Also, why am I carrying a trout instead of my P-90?"
"You are two-dimensional! How can you be carrying anything?"
"I agree with Ronon, Rodney. You are dreaming this."
"You're all nuts! There must have been some crazy alien artifact . . . "
Teyla interrupted, "We are walking on bread, Rodney. This is indicative of something, certainly. And it appears to be the harvest bread of Twarlinain of which you are so fond."
Rodney paused. The ground was rather bread-like. . . how odd. He broke off a small piece of the ground and nibbled at it. Oh, was Teyla still talking? Perhaps something odd had happened to reality, she normally wasn't so chatty.
". . . although this seems to be the traditional version." She smiled. That couldn't be a good sign. . .
"And why is that smile-worthy?" Rodney asked around the clump of bread in his mouth.
"Well, it merely confirms Ronon's hypothesis. If this were reality, you would be having an allergic reaction right now."
"AAaAAAaaaAAAh! Get it off of me!" The bread bits quite possibly reached supersonic speeds as Rodney spit them out.
"I'm rubber, you're glue, what you say bounces off of me and sticks to you," Ronon taunted. The Marines clearly were disseminating useful bits of Earth culture. But given that Ronon's dissemination of Pegasusian culture (or Satedan, specifically) seemed to consist in large part of beating you mercilessly into the mat, Rodney supposed this was part of some long-run plot on the Marines' part to get back at Ronon.
"I might be a Sphere, Rodney. Have you thought of that?" Teyla was now twirling the fish in a lazily violent manner. "I could be a Guide to you. Or I could slap you with this trout. Now, how about listening while I explain the concept of peaceful interactions to you?"
"You know, I hated this book," Rodney interrupted before Teyla could go on about the wonders of being a Hypersphere or something. "Hate hate! Also, I bet that damn Great Circle was an Ancient. It would be just like them. . . "
Rodney rolled over and fell out of bed. Ouch. Stupid beds. He looked around. Where was his team? Why hadn't they woken him up? Was that breakfast he smelled? They were probably eating all the food.
He dazedly made his way outside, rubbing the top of his head, and plopped down gracelessly next to Sheppard. He poured himself a cup of local morning tea. Grumble, grumble, wasn't coffee. He'd sell his left kidney for a bag of coffee as big as he was. Well, he wouldn't, because organ donation would involve medical voodoo. But he'd sell Radek's, no wait, he was useful, no, he'd sell Kavanagh's left kidney for a bag of beans! And not even the good kind! Hmmmm, that had potentia- oooh, burning!
"Hey, buddy, I don't think you're supposed to pour boiling water on yourself." Spiky hair. Hmphf.
"I do not believe Rodney is fully awake yet, John." Crazy trout lady.
The yeti chuckled.
"Shut up, drinking now." Mmmm. Delightful liquid-possibly-containing-caffeine-the-life-giver. Mmmm.
Wait a moment, what was that familiar smell?
"Gaaaah! Get that crazy bread away from me!" Rodney jumped up and pointed an accusing finger at one of the locals who was bringing over another loaf of what he now noticed the rest of his team was eating.
John looked at him like he was weird, Teyla had on her serene He is my friend and teammate and I shall put up with his (goodness, there are many) quirks face, and Ronon said, "If you don't want it, I'm taking your share." The grandmotherly lady bringing the bread over had a look on her face he couldn't bother to decipher, but was now holding the bread a bit away from the group.
"My companion means no insult to your food," Teyla began. Crazy stick lady, what did she know! He totally did mean it!
"Oh, don't worry yourself, it's quite obvious he hasn't woken up yet. He reminds me of my youngest, Samuh was the same way." Crazy old local lady was now placing the bread down on the table. . . scowl.
"I demand something that won't kill me!"
"Certainly, dearie." Don't pat me on the head, don't don't don't, yes! Walking away.
"Rodney, why are you so worried? The bread is perfectly fine. You ate it yesterday with no problems," Teyla gave him a small frown.
"Was too a problem-- he ate some of mine." Ronon glared up at him from his plate.
"Ronon. You stabbed him with your fork. I am certain that the matter is now closed." Teyla's arched eyebrow very clearly stated that if there were any such similar breakfast incidents this morning, there would be dire consequences. Dire.
"mmmrumblrlbh." Busy drinking not-coffee. Wantcoffee.
"C'mon, Rodney, you know there isn't any marmble fruit in this! You've described your allergies very extensively every single time we've come to this planet and there's no way they're bumping off the guy who's single-handedly redesigning their aqueduct system." John was now looking a bit concerned. "Remember? They even checked all the plants you were suspicious of with Carson. There is no way this is death-bread."
Hmm, he vaguely remembered that. But deadly bread?
". . . butterfly?. . . "
"What about butterflies?" John was becoming increasingly confused by this conversation.
"Nothing! Don't let Ronon stab me! It was a dream!"
"You did not appear to be sleeping well last night. It is why we let you sleep longer," Teyla soothed.
"Of course I wasn't sleeping well! We had to scale these damn bread mountain things in search of a ZPM that we never even got close to! And then we became two-dimensional and you had a trout."
They blinked at him.
"I want coffee," he groaned.
___________
*Like some bizarre cross between Flatlands** and Little House on the Prairie: Paper Doll Edition***
**Which was completely overrated.
***At least it was more Little House on the Prairie (which is to say, homemade and crappy) and less The Ancients were Strangely Evil (which is to say, like a horror movie with bad special effects, which is to say, like most of their life.)
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