"The ambiguous relation of genius to insanity suggests that too much intelligence may have its own handicaps -- excessive sensitivity, for example, leading to proneness to anxiety and depression or, to the extent that rational intelligence is linked to self-centered attitudes ala Aryn Rand, it may result in a species even more unfeeling and cruel than we are now."
Mihaly Cskszentimihaly, The Future of Happiness





    "Rodney, are you listening?"

    "Yes." No. There were no windows in the room. It was small and filled almost completely by a folding table and two cheap chairs. There was a mirror behind him on the wall.

    "People like you, Rodney -- extraordinary people -- need the right environment. Do you know why, Rodney?"

    She kept using his name, like it would help her remember it, like it would put him off his guard. "No." Yes.

    "So you can reach your full potential. So you can make the most of everything you have to offer."

    Rodney was terrified of reaching his full potential. He didn't want to get anywhere near it, because that implied that there was a limit, an end. Rodney wanted to reach the door, the hall, the next door, the elevator, the outside.

    "We just want to help you reach that potential, Rodney." They wanted to get paid. Rodney didn't need to spend July and August in artificially cool and contemporary office after office so that person after person could tell him that he was smarter than they were. Rodney already knew.

    "I'd like you to read this story to yourself in your head, Rodney."

    They had shifted him from one room, office building and doctor to another, assessing. The tests, Rodney knew, were insufficient. The first day, they insulted him by starting with shapes, colours, counting, the alphabet. He was willing to forgive and pretend to forget because they hadn't met him before.

    On the second day, they worked up to pitiful attempts at pattern recognition, memory tests, reading and listening comprehension.

    On the third day, they asked for more time.






    Dr. Kate Heightmeyer had shifted her definition of doctor-patient confidentiality since working on the Atlantis expedition. On paper, it was important to have a professional on the team to help the resident scientists through if it turned out that their trip to the Pegasus galaxy had been one-way. In practice, it was important that Elizabeth know if any person in Atlantis was a danger to his or her self from the mass of psychological effects a galaxy-wide war had on a person.

    "And?" Elizabeth always set aside her papers and closed her laptop when Kate came to visit. She suspected it was partly the habitual manners of a diplomat and partly natural; the kind of thing that made Dr. Weir ideal.

    "This kind of work takes time. He's brilliant and surrounded by the challenging material that he's probably always needed."

    "But...?"

    "....but he has a lot to work through. Even if this had remained a scientific expedition..."

    Dr. Weir sighed and smoothed two fingers down the top of her nose, between her eyebrows, pressing away the lines that formed there when she worried too much. "But it's not just a scientific expedition anymore, and we need him in the field."

    "Interacting with people, aliens, dealing with social issues that he doesn't know how to react to."

    "You told me he should be on a team."

    "It's good for him."





    Atlantis was the only place in the universe that terrified Rodney as much as it made him want desperately to stay. He was surrounded by wonders that tore apart his conceptions piece by piece and replaced them with the kind of casual, dawdling fancy that had struck him watching Star Trek as a kid. When he was a teenager, it had been an acceptable distraction. Pointless, but amusing. Fun. He'd never thought the stuff that happened on campy sci-fi television shows would be the focus of his job.

    "Kavanaugh thinks he has found a matter transmission device."

    "As in, 'Beam me up, Scotty'?"

    "Yes, as in, Oh dear lord, there are two of Major Sheppard now and one of them is evil." Rodney rolled his eyes at the ceiling while John leaned back in his chair, arms crossed and frowning a bit.

    "Is it feasible?"

    "He thinks so." Rodney wanted to say No, and not just because Kavanaugh was a complete moron who had somehow managed to get on the team despite rigourous screenings.

    "Well, keep an eye on his work and try to make sure we don't wind up with two of Major Sheppard," Elizabeth said, eyes laughing, and Rodney relaxed a little, smiled a little. "Dr. Zelenka, you said you had..."





    At the second parent-teacher conference of third grade, Rodney had been sent to the library to dig through the book-sale. His teacher -- he couldn't remember her name, just the awful sweaters she had worn -- had taken the time that Rodney spent digging through copies of Robert Asprin books to tell his parents that she believed he was learning disabled.

    He didn't know how the conversation had gone, couldn't imagine sitting someone down and saying, "Rodney just doesn't seem to be...." Seem to be what? Fitting in? Progressing? Interested?

    All of the above, from day one.





    Every problem Rodney faced in the Pegasus galaxy was monumental, life-changing, cosmos-shifting, and had the possible side effect of eradicating the entirety of the human race in the most vicious war the Earth would ever see.

    "Dr. McKay!"

    "Working," he snarled, waving whoever it was-- that person with the quiet shoes but he can never remember a face -- away; expressing the full extent of their complete unimportance in the face of his own work with a single hand gesture.

    "But, Dr.McKay--!"

    "Working," he repeated, stabbing one finger at the display and focusing on the shift and fluctuation of the pattern, "What part of that don't you understand?"

    "Dr. Kavanaugh just de-materialized something!"

    That, yes, warranted his looking away from the ancient device he had spent the morning studying. The morning and at least part of last night.

    T-minus ten days until three massive, foreign and deadly Wraith hive ships show up on the door-step and start gathering scientists and military men and diplomats into their egg-basket and stash them away for a midnight snack.

    T-minus ten days, sixteen hours until they activate the gate back to Earth, if they can find a power source, and start a whole new Wraith holiday. The equivalent of Thanksgiving, Rodney thought, and made a note to bring that up the next time Sheppard tried to get them all killed. Maybe he could ruin every not-really-turkey sandwich the man would ever eat again. The word harvest bounced around in the back of his head. This was probably how some people became xenophobic.

    "And has it re-materialized somewhere, intact?"

    "Well..." That was a no, then.

    "Tell Kavanaugh to stop wasting time and start figuring out if he can get it to de-materialize the Wraith right out of their ships and into holding cells. Tell Kavanaugh to figure out how to build enough holding cells to hold three Hive ship's worth of Wraith. Better yet, get someone else to make sure Kavanaugh doesn't kill us all with the blinding light of his sheer inanity and incompetence!"

    They leave him alone for the rest of the day.

    The device turns out to be a PVR.





    Rodney slept four and a half hours before he staggered up from the stool, back aching, and poured himself more coffee. If only, If only, his brain half-hums, and half-awake, Rodney let the probably completely useless thought drift to the foreground right beside, Good, coffee, work soon. If only, his brain said, we knew what we needed, and how it would work, and how to make it work, how it would save us.

    Which, yes, was completely stupid and irrational, and Rodney brushed the thought aside for exactly six hours, thirteen minutes and twenty-three seconds before his hand found the Gun in a pile of devices discarded by the rest of his team.

    "Why haven't we used this?" he demanded of the nearest wide-eyed incompetent hack. "This, this!" He extrapolated, gesturing widely at it to make it clear that yes, he really was talking about the gun-shaped device he was waving in the moron's face.

    "It's... it's not offensive or defensive, Dr. McKay. It appears to be recreational, or educational."

    Leave it to a team comprised of the over-paid, supposed best minds his home planet had to offer to completely ignore something potentially tide-turning.





    On the fourth day, they took Rodney to another small room nearly identical to the room from day three. The only difference was that instead of a mirror behind him, there was a window behind the analyst sitting across from him. A small, square, flat window the exact same size and shape as the mirror from day three had been. It was placed exactly at the same height off the floor and looked into a room that looked exactly like the room from day three.

    The analyst started Rodney off with a series of equations and told him there was no time limit. Rodney wasted the first forty-two and a half seconds feeling sick to his stomach.





    "I'm not paranoid."

    "I didn't say you were."

    He wanted to add that you're only paranoid if no one really is out to get you, but that's such a typical, average-intelligence response that his hands clench to stop his mouth from giving away the fact that he is, with fair regularity, as much of a moron as his staff.

    Dr. Heightmeyer stared at him during their sessions. Not rudely, or sexually, or as if he were an animal in a cage, or as if she were watching him through a two-way mirror, but just as if she were waiting for a response, waiting for Rodney to give the game away. Rodney had never been patient, never been good at holding his tongue.

    "I'm better off knowing they were watching me, anyway. I read the report. 'Makes no use of, nor shows any reliance upon, coping strategies'."

    "Is that true?"

    "I'm a genius, Dr. Heightmeyer." He even lifted his head a little, looked down his nose at her a little to emphasize just how smart he supposedly was. The long stare she gave him in return meant that he hadn't answered the question. I know, Rodney wanted to yell at her, I know already so you don't have to tell me!

    Rodney's whole life has been a coping strategy. He just didn't need to count on his fingers.





    "It's like-- it's like Trillian in Hitchhiker's Guide," was the best explanation he could come up with, "and the gun-- the--the gun."

    "The point-of-view gun?" Sheppard looks disgustingly well-rested. The only reason Rodney didn't hate him, aside from his helpful Sheppard qualities was that Rodney knew they'd probably had about the same amount of sleep.

    "How does it work?" Elizabeth leaned forward then, listening with her whole body. A meeting like this one took up precious time, especially with the city preparing for a full-out siege, and any time when he had her full attention was a sign of how important he was to the city. How important, and how useless, his brain added.

    "You fire it directly into your eyes and it sends information, ideas, schematics -- anything -- directly into your brain via a burst of light."

    "Like your compressed data burst."

    "Yes, exactly!"

    "How long do the effects last? Can you choose what information is... downloaded, for lack of a better term?" Zelenka would be bouncing in his seat if he were here, but he was working on a now probably irrelevant self-destruct plan.

    "I don't know."





    "Rodney?"

    "I don't know." Day twenty-three of the summer vacation between grades three and four found Rodney more fed-up with the incessant testing of his intelligence than anything else. Rodney had read articles that argued about peak periods for learning with the human life-span. There had been points about language-aquisition being best in the first few years, about how boys and girls did better at math at different ages because of puberty, hormones, iron levels. At what age vocabulary levels off and is unlikely to increase by any great means, when new ideas don't stick as well, creativity drops off and experience takes over, where the human brain's ability to absorb, adapt to and apply new information becomes so pitiful that it's almost pointless to even try anymore.

    Rodney thought they were wasting precious time. His precious time.

    "I think you do know, Rodney. Please answer the question."

    "I don't know," he ground out, sliding down against the cheap plastic chair. The man across the table from him sighed and moved on to the next question, and the next.

    On day twenty-four, they told his parents he should take a day off.


   


    If his pre-adolescent years after the testing had been the springtime of Rodney's brain, Atlantis was going to have his summer years. That was what Rodney had told himself when he signed with Stargate Command and volunteered his services. His brain was exceptional, so far beyond average that he was sure that average drop-off points didn't apply to him.

    Rodney's brain ran like someone had cast haste on it repeatedly, or equipped it with speed-enhancing accesories. He imagined that he was the Thief in role-playing games. High speed, high intelligence, leadership qualities, and a dark edge that makes him more appealing than the Black Mage but less boringly good than the Knight.

    When he got to Atlantis, Rodney realized that he had only ever been a pawn. Maybe one of those Small Town Exposition characters who passes on some hint about how to get to the secret entrance to the Temple but really knows nothing about how it works. Necessary. Key. Ultimately useless.

    This was not summer, the long months of warmth, progress, planting and sowing of crops. This was not the season of endless days and slow nights with more than time enough to solve every problem two galaxies could throw at him.

    This was the autumn of Rodney's intelligence, and Rodney would do almost anything to not reach his potential.





    Two days after running test after test on the gun and a pair of lab mice with no recognizable effects, the silent, deafening countdown ticking away in the back of Rodney's head hands him an ultimatum.

    His ego helped mount the charge.






    For all the times that Rodney had called his team an assembly of hacks, his brain had shot the words right back at him. Rodney had spent years playing 'I'm rubber, You're glue', except that their roles had quickly reversed. His team learned to ignore pointless criticism and listen only to the corrections, suggestions Rodney made. His brain had started compiling the insults.

    Moron, stupid, useless, Do You Have a Death Wish Or Are You Just Trying To Kill Me?

    The device was possibly deadly, probably dangerous and he still had no idea what any side-effects might be, how long the effects would last, what information might hit his brain. He didn't even know if it would actually harm him because his brain worked differently from the Ancients'.

    The bit that tips the tide is his brain saying, the only reason it wouldn't work is because you're too stupid for the information to stick.

    "Hey, Rodney, figure it out yet?"





    "You can't limit yourself, Rodney. There's no such thing." What he's really saying is, 'Put it down, please, put it down, don't do this, please, don't, don't, don't--', "The only thing that limited you on Earth was what we had available. But we're on Atlantis," 'please, please, I'll do anything, say anything, just please--', "There's nothing holding you back here. Think of all the things you've discovered already--"

    "Re-discovered," Rodney interrupts. He's only pausing, listening to John because it's the polite thing to do, the kind of thing friends do. He's feeling a little extra Canadian just then.

    "You made sense of them when no one else could! And you found solutions to problems that have nothing to do with figuring out Ancient technology. You're already the best there is. The best there ever was." 'Please, please, please--'

    "I can be better," Rodney says, and pulls the trigger.



    Rodney had figured it out quickly but denied it as truth to save his ego. He really was the most important person on the expedition, but not because he could re-define space time, or prove every Nobel Peace Prize winner in the field of physics to be both obsolete and incorrect. He was important because he could figure out how to make use of the things the Ancients had discovered and put them to use in the primitive, post-war way that was typical of his generation. His every effort to date had been childish, clumsy, and insufficient.

    He needed a better knowledge base. He needed to work knowing already how they worked, how the universe was really constructed. He needed to be like the Ancients.

    When he had the same knowledge they did, then he'd know if he really was bright, or if he was just a hack, stumbling over their footsteps. Rodney needed to know that there was no such thing as reaching his potential.




    He pulls the trigger and pulls the trigger and pulls the trigger and pulls the trigger. Over and over and over, light flooding his pupils, bursts of information shot straight through to his brain, triggering synapses to fire repeatedly. Rodney imagines his brain under an MRI, lighting up like fireworks on the first of July. And while his finger mashes the trigger repeatedly and John tries to tackle him to the ground, to move his arm, pull the gun from his hand, Rodney wonders why his brain isn't kicking in with images of what it would look like right now if it were under the machine that is an Ancient Not-MRI-But-Better.

    Instead, he finds darkness.