Coming Soon to a Galaxy Near You! by trinityofone (Buildings and Food Challenge)
Title: Coming Soon to a Galaxy Near You!
Author: trinityofone
Category: Humor
Rating: R
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~4300 words
Summary: “You’re not the least bit disturbed by this?” John asked. Rodney shrugged. “Well, I’d have preferred a Coffee Bean, but...”
Coming Soon to a Galaxy Near You!
John Sheppard had seen a lot of strange things since coming to the Pegasus Galaxy, things so otherworldly and bizarre that they made his brain emit shrill shrieking noises, like an indignant data processor squawking, “Does not compute!” Things that forced him to take a deep breath, step back, and completely reassess his worldview--and, quite often, reach for his side arm.
This was not one of those things.
In fact, this thing was so average, so ordinary, so omnipresent that John walked right past it without even realizing that it was also very, very wrong. He and Rodney were exploring the city--their usual activity on days when the galaxy wasn’t on the verge of virtual annihilation and the fact that they were no longer teenagers forced them to take a break from all the sex--when Rodney interrupted a perfectly good argument about whether or not collectible trading cards deserved their status as less socially acceptable than baseball cards to make a sound that John wasn’t used to hearing in this context--or at all, really, outside the aforementioned sex.
“Mmmaaaahhhghh,” he said, looking over John’s shoulder and groping the air. “Um,” said John, and glanced back the way they had come. Transporter, check; empty hexagonal room that refused to do anything interesting, check; wall covered in squiggles that John took to be bad Ancient conceptual art, check; Starbucks, check; door to yet another balcony with an impossibly beautiful view, check and check. Nothing that they hadn’t seen a thousand times before; certainly nothing that’d cause Rodney to...
Wait.
John’s brain rewound a second time just as Rodney jolted out of his stupor and threw himself toward Starbucks’ open and beckoning doors. “Don’t--!” John started, but it was too late. Rodney was gripping the green and black countertop like a liferaft, staring up at the lengthy menu of food and beverage options with drool speckling his chin. The black-aproned barista gave him a bored look. She had pink streaks in her hair.
A good 98% of John’s brain was still reacting like all of this was perfectly normal, like it made total sense for him to order an espresso, settle himself in one of the just-shy-of-comfortable chairs, read the paper, and listen to the bad jazz being pumped through the speakers. However, the rogue 2% was being very loud and insistent with its protests. So, “Rodney,” he said, “just wait a second, just think about this--”
“Shut up, shut up!” said Rodney, waving the words away and nearly knocking over a display of Hint Mints in the process. “Okay,” he told the barista, who was fiddling with the silver ankh she wore around her neck, “you haven’t come out with a size bigger than Venti, have you?” And off her contemptuous look, “Never mind, just give me two Venti French roasts. Ooh! And one of those cinnamon things!”
The barista got out a pair of cups that, combined, were approximately the size of Rodney’s head; she also produced a black Sharpie. “Name?” she asked.
John grabbed Rodney’s arm. “Don’t tell her anything!” he hissed.
Rodney shook him off. “Doctor McKay,” he told the girl. “That’s big ‘M,’ little ‘C,’ big ‘K’...”
John found himself momentarily distracted from his concerns about national security and their mutual sanity. “You give coffee shop girls your surname and title?” He wasn’t even trying not to laugh.
“What?” Rodney was indignant. “In a professional working relationship...”
“You consider ordering a drink from someone to be a professional working relationship?”
Rodney folded his arms across his chest. “Colonel, I don’t think you’re showing proper respect for the job this young lady performs.”
The idea of Rodney showing respect for anyone’s job performance besides his own was so ludicrous that...but that was beside the point. “Why is there a Starbucks in Atlantis?” John felt much better for having said it. “More importantly, how is there a Starbucks in Atlantis?”
Rodney shrugged. The barista handed him a paper bag with his cinnamon twist inside and he bit off the end before John could stop him. He began to chew extravagantly.
“You’re not the least bit disturbed by this?” John asked, flabbergasted.
Rodney shrugged again. “Well, I’d have preferred a Coffee Bean, but...”
“I’m radioing Elizabeth,” John said, using his most definitive voice, expecting a protest. But; “Fine,” Rodney said, spitting crumbs, “just as long as it’s clear that that last chipotle chicken panini is mine.”
*
John decided that it’d be best to talk to Elizabeth in private. He was worried about leaving Rodney alone, but as the barista didn’t seem to be packing anything other than caffeine, he figured Rodney was more of a danger to her than she was to him. He stepped back out into the hall and turned on his com.
“There’s a what?” Elizabeth said when he explained what they’d found.
John gave a solemn nod that, while not visible to Elizabeth, still carried, he thought, a wealth of dignity and weight. “You heard me.”
“A Starbucks?” She sounded short of breath. “Here?”
“I can’t believe it myself,” John admitted.
“John,” said Elizabeth, her voice serious and steeped with concern. “Listen very carefully: I need you to find something out for me. Okay? It’s important.”
John nodded again; he gripped his gun. “I’m ready,” he told her.
He heard Elizabeth draw a deep breath. “Is it too early in the year for pumpkin spice Frappuccinos?”
*
Word of the city’s newest coffee bar/eatery/physical impossibility spread like wildfire--the napalm-induced kind. Soon there were queues stretching out into the corridor and around five of the hexagonal room’s six sides. “I blame you for this,” Rodney told him. “It could have been our little secret, but no, you had to go and radio Elizabeth!”
“You said it was fine!” John protested, which was odd, because what he’d really meant to say was: Starbucks here in the first place: Why? How? Why?
Not that it mattered, now that Rodney was really getting going. “And Elizabeth of course had to do the fair thing and tell people, and now I’ve lost what could’ve been an endless, wonderfully convenient supply of coffee! Sure, it’s crap coffee, but compared to the freeze-dried garbage I’ve been drinking for the past year, that’s hardly worth complaining about, not when it was right there, as opposed to behind a line of people longer than the queue for the bathrooms at Woodstock! Yesterday I was stuck in line behind Kavanagh and I had to listen to him order a drink with more adjectives than ingredients and get the barista to explain the sizing system to him four times even though any idiot knows that...”
“I could give you a blow job,” John suggested desperately. “Would you like a blow job?”
“What I’d like,” said Rodney, “is a hassle-free cup of coffee.” He thought for a moment. “But in the mean time, yes, a blow job would be fine.”
*
John gave Rodney a blow job which, when combined with certain other activities, bought him several hours of Rodney being too distracted to remember that he was mad at John. When the memory did resurface, John thought it best he remove himself from Rodney’s immediate proximity, so he went and stood in line for 45 minutes to procure two Venti black coffees and a piece of Crumbleberry Cake. He gave all three to Rodney as a peace offering, which, along with another blow job and a back rub, convinced Rodney to forgive him.
They did nothing to convince Rodney of Starbucks’ sinister designs, however.
“But...but...” John, rather ineffectually, insisted.
“Colonel, have you ever heard the expression about looking a gift horse in the mouth?” Rodney asked. “‘Cause you’re giving this one a root canal.”
“...Makes no sense!” John mumbled, for about the fortieth time.
Rodney fixed John with a level look. “Is it hurting anybody?”
John opened his mouth to remind Rodney that caffeine is a highly addictive substance. “And don’t start in again about how caffeine is a highly addictive substance!” Rodney snapped.
John’s mouth closed with an audible click.
“Is. It. Hurting. Anyone?” Rodney repeated, with what he must’ve been sure was infinite patience.
“Well,” John admitted, after an anguished mental search for anti-Starbucks evidence that produced next to nothing--John didn’t think fair trade was particularly high on Rodney’s list of political priorities. “No.”
“Then what’s the big deal?” And how wrong was it that Rodney should be more lackadaisical about this than he was?
“It’s just...” John struggled to find the right word. “...Creepy.”
He waited for Rodney to laugh at him. And Rodney did laugh--but it wasn’t the contemptuous guffaw that John had been expecting. Instead it was quiet, subdued, almost...affectionate? John blinked, once again feeling like he was seeing something familiar in a new context. Strange--but not entirely unexpected.
“Don’t worry,” Rodney said. “If you’re really that scared, I’ll hold your hand next time you have to walk by.”
Caffeine must not be so bad, John thought, later. After all, Rodney had imbibed something like 400% of the recommended dose, and still he was able to fall asleep with his head on John’s shoulder.
*
Then there were two.
Major Lorne found the second one less than a week later. It was just down the hall from the first. It was almost identical: same black countertops, same dangling cone-shaped lamps, same stacks of mermaid-seal napkins and dispensers of extra-long green straws. The barista had blue streaks in her hair and wore a pentacle, but otherwise: déjà vu all over again.
“I knew it!” John crowed when he found out--not, rather unfortunately, through official channels, but because Beckett mentioned in passing that the new one had shorter lines and better apple Danishes. “They’re evil! They’re spreading like a virus!”
“Viruses don’t generally nourish their hosts with an extensive line of delicious beverage, pastry, and sandwich options,” Carson pointed out.
“A plague!” John continued, undeterred. “A...a pox!”
Elizabeth suggested that maybe they ought to have a word in private.
“John,” she said, after firmly shutting and locking her office door, “I appreciate your concerns, but I think you should consider cutting back on the anti-Starbucks rhetoric.”
John stared at her. “You’re seriously choosing crappy coffee over free speech?”
She laid a placating hand on his arm. “Of course not. I just want you to consider the positive effects the Starbucks Experience has had on morale. Meanwhile, your negative--and frankly, paranoid--attitude is having the reverse effect. Not to mention,” she added, patting the sculpture on her desk that some of the Athosian children had made out of empty takeaway cups, “that the pumpkin spice Frappaccinos are far from crappy.”
It was her you-should-know-better voice, the one that usually made him squirm. It had the same effect now, but for entirely different reasons.
“Fine,” he said, mustering a calm, controlled stare--one that had, he hoped, a hint of martyrdom to it. “From now on I’ll keep my theories to myself. But that won’t stop me from having them! I will get to the bottom of this! The truth is out there!” he shouted, and flinging open the door, made his heroic exit from the office.
The effect was spoiled somewhat by the fact that he ran smack into Rodney. “Did you just shout, ‘The truth is out there’?” Rodney asked.
“Maybe,” John said.
“Well, you made Colonel Caldwell cry.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should do it again.”
“The truth--” John started, pulling himself up to his full height.
“On second thought,” Rodney said, clapping a hand over John’s mouth and hauling him in the direction of the living quarters, “I better get you out of here before Heightmeyer arrives with reinforcements. Armed ones.” As John started to pout, he added, “You can explain your ridiculous theories on the way.”
John grinned.
*
On the way to his room, John ended up not so much explaining his theories as promising Rodney, repeatedly, that they were less crap than they’d been the previous eighty-seven times. (Prior theories in the “Starbucks is EVIL!” campaign had included: The coffee is laced with a substance that promotes passivity, impotence, and/or a desire to drink more coffee [“Yes,” explained Rodney, “that last one’s called caffeine. And excuse me, impotence? I didn’t see you complaining five minutes ago when--”]; also, The takeaway cups contain listening devices used to monitor the daily habits of all Atlanteans with a certain beverage dependency problem, i.e., everyone, including, until recently, John [“It’s probably the dastardly, last-ditch plan of the Genii--or even the Wraith!” John declared; “You realize that doesn’t even make sense,” Rodney said, looking rather worried at this point]; and, John’s personal favorite: The coffee...it’s PEOPLE! Unsurprisingly, Rodney was having a hard time taking him seriously.)
“Seriously,” John stressed. “I have it all figured out this time, I swear. Look, I made a list.”
He uncrumpled a yellow piece of notebook paper and consulted it, lines of deep concentration creasing his forehead. “Ahem,” he said.
The subsequent conversation went something like this:
“...laced with LSD as part of a CIA effort to reprogram...”
“Um, no.”
“...affiliated with Proctor & Gamble and Satanism...”
“Please.”
“...sleeper agents triggered by copies of The Catcher in the Rye...”
“Really. Stop.”
“...the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Knights Templar growing hemp...”
“Er.”
“...that multiply when you throw water on them!”
“You know,” said Rodney, finally, “this is disappointing to me. Not because it turns out you’re completely insane, but because apparently you can’t even bother to be creative about it. I mean, come on: would a little originality kill you?”
“Also, I think they’re spreading organically,” John said, ignoring him. “Like interstellar, corporate dandelions. That sell coffee.”
“That’s--” Rodney started. His expression changed. “Huh,” he said. Then he said, “Dammit.”
“What?”
“You were right all along,” Rodney said, heading for the door. “That’s a very annoying habit, you know, in someone who isn’t me.”
John found he was oddly flattered. Also: “I’m right?” Rodney spared him a bemused look over his shoulder; that had sounded a bit too incredulous. “Of course I’m right,” John amended. “Um. About which part?”
“Horticulture,” Rodney said, trying enigmatic on for size.
“Really? The hemp thing?” John couldn’t even remember when he’d come up with that; he probably shouldn’t have written so much of his list when he was coming down off of pain killers after the Nephrology Incident.
Rodney rolled his eyes with tidal-influencing force. “No, not ‘the hemp thing.’” He whipped around to face John, and said, in his most ominous voice, a single word surely intended to strike terror into John’s heart.
John giggled.
“What?” said Rodney, huffy chin lift and all. John added a nice wheeze-snort to his giggle repertoire. “Oh, right, laugh it up, Mr. The Gremlins at Proctor & Gamble Are Creating Hemp-Growing, Catcher in the Rye-Reading CIA Agents Via LSD-Spiked Coffee. My theory’s the ridiculous one.”
“Dandelions,” John chuckled. “Dandelions.”
*
“Actually, they’re Tragopogon dubius,” said Katie Brown, bursting with pride that somehow managed to run right over Rodney’s impatience. “Goat’s beard,” she clarified, “or rather, the Pegasus equivalent. We’re calling them Tragopogon dubious. Get it? Dubious instead of dubius because they’re not really--”
“Great, botany humor,” said Rodney; then, “You--shut up,” because John was still giggling over the Evil Dandelion Conspiracy. John shut up, but only because he didn’t want anyone to think he actually found the bad botany pun funny.
“So, yeah,” Rodney said, rocking on his heels. “We’re going to have to destroy all of it. Right now.”
Katie’s jaw dropped open. She looked like she’d been hit in the face with a pan--which, admittedly, was not dissimilar from how she usually looked, but still. “Rodney,” John hissed, “we’ve discussed asking nicely, remember?” He thought for a moment. “Also, why?”
“Because,” said Rodney, and pointed to one of the planters containing a dubious seedling.
It was a Starbucks takeaway cup.
“So?” John began, realized that he was about to start arguing against a conspiracy that had been his idea in the first place, then shrugged and went along with it. “We now have more of those lying around than we do personnel.” The words sank in and he shuddered. “Ugh. And again with the creepy.”
Rodney dismissed him with a wave; he was focused on the cup containing the innocuous little sprout. “Yes,” he said, addressing Katie, “but that one’s from Earth, isn’t it?”
Katie flashed them both a shaky little smile. “It’s a funny story, actually--the last thing I drank before I left Earth was a--”
“Thank you,” said Rodney, “but if you’ll recall, this is a funny story I’ve already heard twice”; and John really had to wonder how Rodney had maintained any sort of romantic relationship before him. Then he remembered The Toe Trick.
A few minutes later, when his vision unclouded, John found himself staring down at the crunched remains of Tragopogon dubious x starbucks. Rodney and Katie were staring at it, too--Katie wistfully, Rodney with his mouth twisted to the side in a pensive frown. “Hmm,” he said, and disappeared for a moment, returning with a blowtorch. “Stand back,” he said, which grudgingly, John did. He wanted to play with the blowtorch.
Rodney turned the plant into a nice Tragopogon flambé; then he snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, scooped up the ashes, and tossed them into the incinerator. “There,” he said, removing the gloves and chucking them into the fire as well. “Threat eliminated.”
“Let me get this straight,” John said. “She--” he pointed at Katie “--brought a Starbucks cup over from Earth, planted a space dandelion--”
“Goat’s beard,” Katie interjected, “and I thought it’d look nice on my windowsill--”
“--Planted a space dandelion,” John continued, “and they somehow, what? Cross-bred and allowed Starbucks to pollinate?”
“Well, you have to admit,” Rodney said, “Starbucks has shown a unique aptitude for that, even on Earth.”
That pesky 2% of John’s brain was still protesting that this was impossible. The remaining 98 firmly reminded it that this was Atlantis, and told it to shut up already. “Point,” John conceded. “However, I still don’t see how destroying the host sample is going to get rid of the Starbucks it’s sprouted. This isn’t The Lost Boys; you can’t kill the master plant and expect everything else to return to normal.”
“Oh, really?” said Rodney, who couldn’t have looked more shifty if he’d started whistling and twiddling his thumbs. “Darn. That’s too bad.”
“Rodney!”
“What? We got rid of the host, so it’s not going to spread anymore; I don’t see why we should have to cut off a perfectly good supply of coffee--”
Katie was quickly backing away, giving them room. “It’s unnatural!” John declared.
“So’s your interest in bad ‘80s movies! So’s your ha--what?” Rodney snapped, as his com suddenly chirped to life.
John’s had come on, too. “I need to see both of you, right now,” Elizabeth said.
Her tone brooked no argument. “Your office?” John asked.
A rueful laugh ghosted out of the com, then abruptly cut off. John and Rodney exchanged disturbed looks. “Yeah, give that a try,” Elizabeth said, and the com shut off for good.
They rushed off toward the control tower. Stepping out of the transporter on the main level, Rodney paused. “Mmm,” he said, “is that Columbia Narino Supremo I sme--uh-oh.”
They were staring up at where Elizabeth’s office used to be. Elizabeth’s office was no longer there. Instead, there was a Starbucks.
Elizabeth appeared beside them. She did not look pleased. “Gentlemen,” she said.
“Not my fault!” Rodney said quickly. “Blame botany! Actually, that’s kind of catchy--it could be our new motto! We could write a song...”
He began to hum. Beside him, John swayed, reaching feebly for a steadying handful of Rodney’s shirt. “Oh my God,” he said, “I just remembered! I left a brownie wrapper in Jumper One!”
*
Over the next few days, John, Lorne, and a group of marines systematically hunted down and destroyed every piece of Starbucks paraphernalia in the city. Meanwhile, Rodney and Radek found themselves forced into collusion with teams from botany and chemistry, and together they invented “a kind of mutant weed-killer,” Rodney explained. “We took the basic properties of Agent Orange and--”
“Don’t tell me this,” John said. “I really don’t want to know.”
Whatever the mystery chemical’s components (and it was good thing he’d gone gay, John thought, because after this and the solar radiation incident, he was almost certainly sterile), when sprayed upon the half-dozen franchise stores that had sprouted up all over Atlantis, those altars to capitalism began, slowly, to shiver, and shrink, and fade.
“I think we’ve all learned an important lesson from this,” Elizabeth said.
“Globalization--er, intergalaticization is bad?” Rodney said.
“Don’t feed the plant?” John suggested.
Elizabeth gave them a look that implied she hoped that whatever they both had wasn’t catching. “No,” she said, “Don’t clutter up your work area with ugly sculpture.” An arm shot out and swept across her desk, sending several pieces of tribal art crashing to the floor. She glanced around her reclaimed office, looking pleased. “Much better,” she said.
John and Rodney really couldn’t argue with that. So they didn’t.
*
By the time the Daedalus returned two weeks later, the Starbucks infestation had been almost completely eradicated. Rodney’s quarters, being a veritable nexus of contamination, of course had to be vacated for the duration of the not-Agent Orange treatment, which meant that he had to share with John, which made them both very sad. Or so they told everybody. Loudly. And repeatedly.
(It actually did make John rather upset for a good portion of Day 3 of Operation: De-Starbucks-ization, when Carson wondered aloud whether it was possible, given enough exposure, for their special brand of weed to sprout within someone’s intestinal tract. John had to spend the next hour and a half reassuring Rodney that he didn’t need to get his stomach pumped.)
On the day of the Daedalus’ arrival, John took a break from, ahem, really hating sharing quarters with Rodney to visit Colonel Caldwell, intending to bring him up to speed on what had happened in his absence, and see if once again, John could make him weep like a little girl. Caldwell was re-arranging his desk when John arrived; clearly, the Colonel had not yet been made aware of Elizabeth’s new anti-clutter campaign, as he was actually adding to the mess, winding a procession of tiny plastic toys around assorted stacks of important-looking papers, across an intricate paperclip chain, and through the terrain of a potted ficus.
John cleared his throat. Caldwell glanced up; he was still looking a little ragged around the edges. The stress of the job must be getting to him, John thought, semi-gleefully. “How are things going back on Earth, sir?” he asked, betraying none of it.
The Colonel expelled a heavy breath. “Good, good,” he said, and smiled in a somewhat distracted manner that John had learned to fear. He braced himself for an over-share.
“I took a few days leave, got to visit my sister,” Caldwell said.
“That’s nice, sir,” said John, suddenly remembering several dozen other places he needed to be.
“It was my niece’s birthday,” Caldwell continued, “she’s six. Look what she gave me.”
He pointed at the line of plastic rat-people arrayed across the desk. “Happy Meal toys,” said John, inching toward the door. “Lovely.”
“For luck, she told me. Not, of course, that she knows the type of work we’re doing, or the kind of luck that’d be--”
“Doctor McKay!” John said, spotting something around a distant corner that could very well be Rodney’s elbow. “Sorry, Colonel, I have to--” He raced after the Rodney-spectre which, rather to his surprise, turned out to actually be Rodney. “Oh, thank God,” John said, at the last second pulling himself back from an inappropriate display of public affection. “Colonel Caldwell started telling me about his family, I had to escape...”
Rodney raised an eyebrow, but he gave John a manful pat on the back. “Yes, I’m sure you’ve been traumatized for life.”
“You have no idea,” John said, as, by unspoken agreement, they turned and headed back toward the living quarters. They hurried past Caldwell’s office, but just beyond the door, something made John pause. He sniffed the air. “Hey, do you smell that? Something...” It was right on the edge of his consciousness. “Salty and...greasy? French fries?”
“Nah,” said Rodney, taking his elbow and leading him away, “you’re just imagining things.”
*
The End...Or IS IT?
*
NOTES:
1. Elizabeth’s line about the Starbucks Experience is taken directly from Starbucks’ website. Italics theirs. *g*
2. terrie01’s fabulous fic has made me feel the need to clarify that while some versions of chipotle sauce do contain lemon or lime juice, Rodney has previously established that Starbucks’ does not. (Yes, I know: I probably should have taken that line out completely, but what can I say? I think the word “chipotle” is funny.)
3. Invaders from Mars conclusion brought to you by my realization that this story is actually a bad ‘50s horror movie. ...Or is that just what I WANT you to think? *cue ominous music*
Author: trinityofone
Category: Humor
Rating: R
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~4300 words
Summary: “You’re not the least bit disturbed by this?” John asked. Rodney shrugged. “Well, I’d have preferred a Coffee Bean, but...”
Coming Soon to a Galaxy Near You!
John Sheppard had seen a lot of strange things since coming to the Pegasus Galaxy, things so otherworldly and bizarre that they made his brain emit shrill shrieking noises, like an indignant data processor squawking, “Does not compute!” Things that forced him to take a deep breath, step back, and completely reassess his worldview--and, quite often, reach for his side arm.
This was not one of those things.
In fact, this thing was so average, so ordinary, so omnipresent that John walked right past it without even realizing that it was also very, very wrong. He and Rodney were exploring the city--their usual activity on days when the galaxy wasn’t on the verge of virtual annihilation and the fact that they were no longer teenagers forced them to take a break from all the sex--when Rodney interrupted a perfectly good argument about whether or not collectible trading cards deserved their status as less socially acceptable than baseball cards to make a sound that John wasn’t used to hearing in this context--or at all, really, outside the aforementioned sex.
“Mmmaaaahhhghh,” he said, looking over John’s shoulder and groping the air. “Um,” said John, and glanced back the way they had come. Transporter, check; empty hexagonal room that refused to do anything interesting, check; wall covered in squiggles that John took to be bad Ancient conceptual art, check; Starbucks, check; door to yet another balcony with an impossibly beautiful view, check and check. Nothing that they hadn’t seen a thousand times before; certainly nothing that’d cause Rodney to...
Wait.
John’s brain rewound a second time just as Rodney jolted out of his stupor and threw himself toward Starbucks’ open and beckoning doors. “Don’t--!” John started, but it was too late. Rodney was gripping the green and black countertop like a liferaft, staring up at the lengthy menu of food and beverage options with drool speckling his chin. The black-aproned barista gave him a bored look. She had pink streaks in her hair.
A good 98% of John’s brain was still reacting like all of this was perfectly normal, like it made total sense for him to order an espresso, settle himself in one of the just-shy-of-comfortable chairs, read the paper, and listen to the bad jazz being pumped through the speakers. However, the rogue 2% was being very loud and insistent with its protests. So, “Rodney,” he said, “just wait a second, just think about this--”
“Shut up, shut up!” said Rodney, waving the words away and nearly knocking over a display of Hint Mints in the process. “Okay,” he told the barista, who was fiddling with the silver ankh she wore around her neck, “you haven’t come out with a size bigger than Venti, have you?” And off her contemptuous look, “Never mind, just give me two Venti French roasts. Ooh! And one of those cinnamon things!”
The barista got out a pair of cups that, combined, were approximately the size of Rodney’s head; she also produced a black Sharpie. “Name?” she asked.
John grabbed Rodney’s arm. “Don’t tell her anything!” he hissed.
Rodney shook him off. “Doctor McKay,” he told the girl. “That’s big ‘M,’ little ‘C,’ big ‘K’...”
John found himself momentarily distracted from his concerns about national security and their mutual sanity. “You give coffee shop girls your surname and title?” He wasn’t even trying not to laugh.
“What?” Rodney was indignant. “In a professional working relationship...”
“You consider ordering a drink from someone to be a professional working relationship?”
Rodney folded his arms across his chest. “Colonel, I don’t think you’re showing proper respect for the job this young lady performs.”
The idea of Rodney showing respect for anyone’s job performance besides his own was so ludicrous that...but that was beside the point. “Why is there a Starbucks in Atlantis?” John felt much better for having said it. “More importantly, how is there a Starbucks in Atlantis?”
Rodney shrugged. The barista handed him a paper bag with his cinnamon twist inside and he bit off the end before John could stop him. He began to chew extravagantly.
“You’re not the least bit disturbed by this?” John asked, flabbergasted.
Rodney shrugged again. “Well, I’d have preferred a Coffee Bean, but...”
“I’m radioing Elizabeth,” John said, using his most definitive voice, expecting a protest. But; “Fine,” Rodney said, spitting crumbs, “just as long as it’s clear that that last chipotle chicken panini is mine.”
*
John decided that it’d be best to talk to Elizabeth in private. He was worried about leaving Rodney alone, but as the barista didn’t seem to be packing anything other than caffeine, he figured Rodney was more of a danger to her than she was to him. He stepped back out into the hall and turned on his com.
“There’s a what?” Elizabeth said when he explained what they’d found.
John gave a solemn nod that, while not visible to Elizabeth, still carried, he thought, a wealth of dignity and weight. “You heard me.”
“A Starbucks?” She sounded short of breath. “Here?”
“I can’t believe it myself,” John admitted.
“John,” said Elizabeth, her voice serious and steeped with concern. “Listen very carefully: I need you to find something out for me. Okay? It’s important.”
John nodded again; he gripped his gun. “I’m ready,” he told her.
He heard Elizabeth draw a deep breath. “Is it too early in the year for pumpkin spice Frappuccinos?”
*
Word of the city’s newest coffee bar/eatery/physical impossibility spread like wildfire--the napalm-induced kind. Soon there were queues stretching out into the corridor and around five of the hexagonal room’s six sides. “I blame you for this,” Rodney told him. “It could have been our little secret, but no, you had to go and radio Elizabeth!”
“You said it was fine!” John protested, which was odd, because what he’d really meant to say was: Starbucks here in the first place: Why? How? Why?
Not that it mattered, now that Rodney was really getting going. “And Elizabeth of course had to do the fair thing and tell people, and now I’ve lost what could’ve been an endless, wonderfully convenient supply of coffee! Sure, it’s crap coffee, but compared to the freeze-dried garbage I’ve been drinking for the past year, that’s hardly worth complaining about, not when it was right there, as opposed to behind a line of people longer than the queue for the bathrooms at Woodstock! Yesterday I was stuck in line behind Kavanagh and I had to listen to him order a drink with more adjectives than ingredients and get the barista to explain the sizing system to him four times even though any idiot knows that...”
“I could give you a blow job,” John suggested desperately. “Would you like a blow job?”
“What I’d like,” said Rodney, “is a hassle-free cup of coffee.” He thought for a moment. “But in the mean time, yes, a blow job would be fine.”
*
John gave Rodney a blow job which, when combined with certain other activities, bought him several hours of Rodney being too distracted to remember that he was mad at John. When the memory did resurface, John thought it best he remove himself from Rodney’s immediate proximity, so he went and stood in line for 45 minutes to procure two Venti black coffees and a piece of Crumbleberry Cake. He gave all three to Rodney as a peace offering, which, along with another blow job and a back rub, convinced Rodney to forgive him.
They did nothing to convince Rodney of Starbucks’ sinister designs, however.
“But...but...” John, rather ineffectually, insisted.
“Colonel, have you ever heard the expression about looking a gift horse in the mouth?” Rodney asked. “‘Cause you’re giving this one a root canal.”
“...Makes no sense!” John mumbled, for about the fortieth time.
Rodney fixed John with a level look. “Is it hurting anybody?”
John opened his mouth to remind Rodney that caffeine is a highly addictive substance. “And don’t start in again about how caffeine is a highly addictive substance!” Rodney snapped.
John’s mouth closed with an audible click.
“Is. It. Hurting. Anyone?” Rodney repeated, with what he must’ve been sure was infinite patience.
“Well,” John admitted, after an anguished mental search for anti-Starbucks evidence that produced next to nothing--John didn’t think fair trade was particularly high on Rodney’s list of political priorities. “No.”
“Then what’s the big deal?” And how wrong was it that Rodney should be more lackadaisical about this than he was?
“It’s just...” John struggled to find the right word. “...Creepy.”
He waited for Rodney to laugh at him. And Rodney did laugh--but it wasn’t the contemptuous guffaw that John had been expecting. Instead it was quiet, subdued, almost...affectionate? John blinked, once again feeling like he was seeing something familiar in a new context. Strange--but not entirely unexpected.
“Don’t worry,” Rodney said. “If you’re really that scared, I’ll hold your hand next time you have to walk by.”
Caffeine must not be so bad, John thought, later. After all, Rodney had imbibed something like 400% of the recommended dose, and still he was able to fall asleep with his head on John’s shoulder.
*
Then there were two.
Major Lorne found the second one less than a week later. It was just down the hall from the first. It was almost identical: same black countertops, same dangling cone-shaped lamps, same stacks of mermaid-seal napkins and dispensers of extra-long green straws. The barista had blue streaks in her hair and wore a pentacle, but otherwise: déjà vu all over again.
“I knew it!” John crowed when he found out--not, rather unfortunately, through official channels, but because Beckett mentioned in passing that the new one had shorter lines and better apple Danishes. “They’re evil! They’re spreading like a virus!”
“Viruses don’t generally nourish their hosts with an extensive line of delicious beverage, pastry, and sandwich options,” Carson pointed out.
“A plague!” John continued, undeterred. “A...a pox!”
Elizabeth suggested that maybe they ought to have a word in private.
“John,” she said, after firmly shutting and locking her office door, “I appreciate your concerns, but I think you should consider cutting back on the anti-Starbucks rhetoric.”
John stared at her. “You’re seriously choosing crappy coffee over free speech?”
She laid a placating hand on his arm. “Of course not. I just want you to consider the positive effects the Starbucks Experience has had on morale. Meanwhile, your negative--and frankly, paranoid--attitude is having the reverse effect. Not to mention,” she added, patting the sculpture on her desk that some of the Athosian children had made out of empty takeaway cups, “that the pumpkin spice Frappaccinos are far from crappy.”
It was her you-should-know-better voice, the one that usually made him squirm. It had the same effect now, but for entirely different reasons.
“Fine,” he said, mustering a calm, controlled stare--one that had, he hoped, a hint of martyrdom to it. “From now on I’ll keep my theories to myself. But that won’t stop me from having them! I will get to the bottom of this! The truth is out there!” he shouted, and flinging open the door, made his heroic exit from the office.
The effect was spoiled somewhat by the fact that he ran smack into Rodney. “Did you just shout, ‘The truth is out there’?” Rodney asked.
“Maybe,” John said.
“Well, you made Colonel Caldwell cry.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should do it again.”
“The truth--” John started, pulling himself up to his full height.
“On second thought,” Rodney said, clapping a hand over John’s mouth and hauling him in the direction of the living quarters, “I better get you out of here before Heightmeyer arrives with reinforcements. Armed ones.” As John started to pout, he added, “You can explain your ridiculous theories on the way.”
John grinned.
*
On the way to his room, John ended up not so much explaining his theories as promising Rodney, repeatedly, that they were less crap than they’d been the previous eighty-seven times. (Prior theories in the “Starbucks is EVIL!” campaign had included: The coffee is laced with a substance that promotes passivity, impotence, and/or a desire to drink more coffee [“Yes,” explained Rodney, “that last one’s called caffeine. And excuse me, impotence? I didn’t see you complaining five minutes ago when--”]; also, The takeaway cups contain listening devices used to monitor the daily habits of all Atlanteans with a certain beverage dependency problem, i.e., everyone, including, until recently, John [“It’s probably the dastardly, last-ditch plan of the Genii--or even the Wraith!” John declared; “You realize that doesn’t even make sense,” Rodney said, looking rather worried at this point]; and, John’s personal favorite: The coffee...it’s PEOPLE! Unsurprisingly, Rodney was having a hard time taking him seriously.)
“Seriously,” John stressed. “I have it all figured out this time, I swear. Look, I made a list.”
He uncrumpled a yellow piece of notebook paper and consulted it, lines of deep concentration creasing his forehead. “Ahem,” he said.
The subsequent conversation went something like this:
“...laced with LSD as part of a CIA effort to reprogram...”
“Um, no.”
“...affiliated with Proctor & Gamble and Satanism...”
“Please.”
“...sleeper agents triggered by copies of The Catcher in the Rye...”
“Really. Stop.”
“...the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Knights Templar growing hemp...”
“Er.”
“...that multiply when you throw water on them!”
“You know,” said Rodney, finally, “this is disappointing to me. Not because it turns out you’re completely insane, but because apparently you can’t even bother to be creative about it. I mean, come on: would a little originality kill you?”
“Also, I think they’re spreading organically,” John said, ignoring him. “Like interstellar, corporate dandelions. That sell coffee.”
“That’s--” Rodney started. His expression changed. “Huh,” he said. Then he said, “Dammit.”
“What?”
“You were right all along,” Rodney said, heading for the door. “That’s a very annoying habit, you know, in someone who isn’t me.”
John found he was oddly flattered. Also: “I’m right?” Rodney spared him a bemused look over his shoulder; that had sounded a bit too incredulous. “Of course I’m right,” John amended. “Um. About which part?”
“Horticulture,” Rodney said, trying enigmatic on for size.
“Really? The hemp thing?” John couldn’t even remember when he’d come up with that; he probably shouldn’t have written so much of his list when he was coming down off of pain killers after the Nephrology Incident.
Rodney rolled his eyes with tidal-influencing force. “No, not ‘the hemp thing.’” He whipped around to face John, and said, in his most ominous voice, a single word surely intended to strike terror into John’s heart.
John giggled.
“What?” said Rodney, huffy chin lift and all. John added a nice wheeze-snort to his giggle repertoire. “Oh, right, laugh it up, Mr. The Gremlins at Proctor & Gamble Are Creating Hemp-Growing, Catcher in the Rye-Reading CIA Agents Via LSD-Spiked Coffee. My theory’s the ridiculous one.”
“Dandelions,” John chuckled. “Dandelions.”
*
“Actually, they’re Tragopogon dubius,” said Katie Brown, bursting with pride that somehow managed to run right over Rodney’s impatience. “Goat’s beard,” she clarified, “or rather, the Pegasus equivalent. We’re calling them Tragopogon dubious. Get it? Dubious instead of dubius because they’re not really--”
“Great, botany humor,” said Rodney; then, “You--shut up,” because John was still giggling over the Evil Dandelion Conspiracy. John shut up, but only because he didn’t want anyone to think he actually found the bad botany pun funny.
“So, yeah,” Rodney said, rocking on his heels. “We’re going to have to destroy all of it. Right now.”
Katie’s jaw dropped open. She looked like she’d been hit in the face with a pan--which, admittedly, was not dissimilar from how she usually looked, but still. “Rodney,” John hissed, “we’ve discussed asking nicely, remember?” He thought for a moment. “Also, why?”
“Because,” said Rodney, and pointed to one of the planters containing a dubious seedling.
It was a Starbucks takeaway cup.
“So?” John began, realized that he was about to start arguing against a conspiracy that had been his idea in the first place, then shrugged and went along with it. “We now have more of those lying around than we do personnel.” The words sank in and he shuddered. “Ugh. And again with the creepy.”
Rodney dismissed him with a wave; he was focused on the cup containing the innocuous little sprout. “Yes,” he said, addressing Katie, “but that one’s from Earth, isn’t it?”
Katie flashed them both a shaky little smile. “It’s a funny story, actually--the last thing I drank before I left Earth was a--”
“Thank you,” said Rodney, “but if you’ll recall, this is a funny story I’ve already heard twice”; and John really had to wonder how Rodney had maintained any sort of romantic relationship before him. Then he remembered The Toe Trick.
A few minutes later, when his vision unclouded, John found himself staring down at the crunched remains of Tragopogon dubious x starbucks. Rodney and Katie were staring at it, too--Katie wistfully, Rodney with his mouth twisted to the side in a pensive frown. “Hmm,” he said, and disappeared for a moment, returning with a blowtorch. “Stand back,” he said, which grudgingly, John did. He wanted to play with the blowtorch.
Rodney turned the plant into a nice Tragopogon flambé; then he snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, scooped up the ashes, and tossed them into the incinerator. “There,” he said, removing the gloves and chucking them into the fire as well. “Threat eliminated.”
“Let me get this straight,” John said. “She--” he pointed at Katie “--brought a Starbucks cup over from Earth, planted a space dandelion--”
“Goat’s beard,” Katie interjected, “and I thought it’d look nice on my windowsill--”
“--Planted a space dandelion,” John continued, “and they somehow, what? Cross-bred and allowed Starbucks to pollinate?”
“Well, you have to admit,” Rodney said, “Starbucks has shown a unique aptitude for that, even on Earth.”
That pesky 2% of John’s brain was still protesting that this was impossible. The remaining 98 firmly reminded it that this was Atlantis, and told it to shut up already. “Point,” John conceded. “However, I still don’t see how destroying the host sample is going to get rid of the Starbucks it’s sprouted. This isn’t The Lost Boys; you can’t kill the master plant and expect everything else to return to normal.”
“Oh, really?” said Rodney, who couldn’t have looked more shifty if he’d started whistling and twiddling his thumbs. “Darn. That’s too bad.”
“Rodney!”
“What? We got rid of the host, so it’s not going to spread anymore; I don’t see why we should have to cut off a perfectly good supply of coffee--”
Katie was quickly backing away, giving them room. “It’s unnatural!” John declared.
“So’s your interest in bad ‘80s movies! So’s your ha--what?” Rodney snapped, as his com suddenly chirped to life.
John’s had come on, too. “I need to see both of you, right now,” Elizabeth said.
Her tone brooked no argument. “Your office?” John asked.
A rueful laugh ghosted out of the com, then abruptly cut off. John and Rodney exchanged disturbed looks. “Yeah, give that a try,” Elizabeth said, and the com shut off for good.
They rushed off toward the control tower. Stepping out of the transporter on the main level, Rodney paused. “Mmm,” he said, “is that Columbia Narino Supremo I sme--uh-oh.”
They were staring up at where Elizabeth’s office used to be. Elizabeth’s office was no longer there. Instead, there was a Starbucks.
Elizabeth appeared beside them. She did not look pleased. “Gentlemen,” she said.
“Not my fault!” Rodney said quickly. “Blame botany! Actually, that’s kind of catchy--it could be our new motto! We could write a song...”
He began to hum. Beside him, John swayed, reaching feebly for a steadying handful of Rodney’s shirt. “Oh my God,” he said, “I just remembered! I left a brownie wrapper in Jumper One!”
*
Over the next few days, John, Lorne, and a group of marines systematically hunted down and destroyed every piece of Starbucks paraphernalia in the city. Meanwhile, Rodney and Radek found themselves forced into collusion with teams from botany and chemistry, and together they invented “a kind of mutant weed-killer,” Rodney explained. “We took the basic properties of Agent Orange and--”
“Don’t tell me this,” John said. “I really don’t want to know.”
Whatever the mystery chemical’s components (and it was good thing he’d gone gay, John thought, because after this and the solar radiation incident, he was almost certainly sterile), when sprayed upon the half-dozen franchise stores that had sprouted up all over Atlantis, those altars to capitalism began, slowly, to shiver, and shrink, and fade.
“I think we’ve all learned an important lesson from this,” Elizabeth said.
“Globalization--er, intergalaticization is bad?” Rodney said.
“Don’t feed the plant?” John suggested.
Elizabeth gave them a look that implied she hoped that whatever they both had wasn’t catching. “No,” she said, “Don’t clutter up your work area with ugly sculpture.” An arm shot out and swept across her desk, sending several pieces of tribal art crashing to the floor. She glanced around her reclaimed office, looking pleased. “Much better,” she said.
John and Rodney really couldn’t argue with that. So they didn’t.
*
By the time the Daedalus returned two weeks later, the Starbucks infestation had been almost completely eradicated. Rodney’s quarters, being a veritable nexus of contamination, of course had to be vacated for the duration of the not-Agent Orange treatment, which meant that he had to share with John, which made them both very sad. Or so they told everybody. Loudly. And repeatedly.
(It actually did make John rather upset for a good portion of Day 3 of Operation: De-Starbucks-ization, when Carson wondered aloud whether it was possible, given enough exposure, for their special brand of weed to sprout within someone’s intestinal tract. John had to spend the next hour and a half reassuring Rodney that he didn’t need to get his stomach pumped.)
On the day of the Daedalus’ arrival, John took a break from, ahem, really hating sharing quarters with Rodney to visit Colonel Caldwell, intending to bring him up to speed on what had happened in his absence, and see if once again, John could make him weep like a little girl. Caldwell was re-arranging his desk when John arrived; clearly, the Colonel had not yet been made aware of Elizabeth’s new anti-clutter campaign, as he was actually adding to the mess, winding a procession of tiny plastic toys around assorted stacks of important-looking papers, across an intricate paperclip chain, and through the terrain of a potted ficus.
John cleared his throat. Caldwell glanced up; he was still looking a little ragged around the edges. The stress of the job must be getting to him, John thought, semi-gleefully. “How are things going back on Earth, sir?” he asked, betraying none of it.
The Colonel expelled a heavy breath. “Good, good,” he said, and smiled in a somewhat distracted manner that John had learned to fear. He braced himself for an over-share.
“I took a few days leave, got to visit my sister,” Caldwell said.
“That’s nice, sir,” said John, suddenly remembering several dozen other places he needed to be.
“It was my niece’s birthday,” Caldwell continued, “she’s six. Look what she gave me.”
He pointed at the line of plastic rat-people arrayed across the desk. “Happy Meal toys,” said John, inching toward the door. “Lovely.”
“For luck, she told me. Not, of course, that she knows the type of work we’re doing, or the kind of luck that’d be--”
“Doctor McKay!” John said, spotting something around a distant corner that could very well be Rodney’s elbow. “Sorry, Colonel, I have to--” He raced after the Rodney-spectre which, rather to his surprise, turned out to actually be Rodney. “Oh, thank God,” John said, at the last second pulling himself back from an inappropriate display of public affection. “Colonel Caldwell started telling me about his family, I had to escape...”
Rodney raised an eyebrow, but he gave John a manful pat on the back. “Yes, I’m sure you’ve been traumatized for life.”
“You have no idea,” John said, as, by unspoken agreement, they turned and headed back toward the living quarters. They hurried past Caldwell’s office, but just beyond the door, something made John pause. He sniffed the air. “Hey, do you smell that? Something...” It was right on the edge of his consciousness. “Salty and...greasy? French fries?”
“Nah,” said Rodney, taking his elbow and leading him away, “you’re just imagining things.”
*
The End...Or IS IT?
*
NOTES:
1. Elizabeth’s line about the Starbucks Experience is taken directly from Starbucks’ website. Italics theirs. *g*
2. terrie01’s fabulous fic has made me feel the need to clarify that while some versions of chipotle sauce do contain lemon or lime juice, Rodney has previously established that Starbucks’ does not. (Yes, I know: I probably should have taken that line out completely, but what can I say? I think the word “chipotle” is funny.)
3. Invaders from Mars conclusion brought to you by my realization that this story is actually a bad ‘50s horror movie. ...Or is that just what I WANT you to think? *cue ominous music*