The Uttermost Secrets of Time and Space by Zinnith (Death Challenge)

One minute it’s ohmygodwe’reallgoingtodie, the next there’s only silence. Rodney looks up from his keyboard to find himself alone. The almost finished program is still glaring at him from the screen. It will only take a few more keystrokes and the city will be saved.

He pushes the laptop away and stands up, looking around. A moment ago, everything was shaking, alarms were blaring and people were running around and shouting. Now, it’s quiet. There’s not a living soul in sight. Even the ever present background hum of Atlantis is gone.

“Hello?” Rodney tries.

When he and Zelenka tried to calculate all possible outcomes of the latest Armageddon, this was definitely not on the list. He knows he should be panicking, but for some reason he seems to be strangely detatched from the part of himself that usually handles the panic.

Meredith Rodney McKay?

“What?” Rodney spins around.

And finds himself face to face... or, rather, face to chest, with a looming figure in a black robe. Where the face should be is a grinning skull, a warm blue glow shining from the empty hollows of its eyes. It has all the markings of a ghost, save for the fact that instead of being incorporeal, it looks inexplicably more solid than the surroundings.

Come to think of it, Rodney doesn’t feel very solid himself. When he looks down he can vaguely make out the pattern of the floor under his feet. Through his feet. That should be unsettling. Instead, it’s almost kind of fascinating. He wiggles his toes, or at least the place where his brain tells him his toes should be.  

“Oh,” he says. “Oh!” and then, when the realisation dawns, “No! It’s not fair, I was so close!”

I’m afraid ‘close’ doesn’t count.

“But... but, I don’t have time for this!”

If you see it from another perspective, you have all the time in the world.

Rodney turns around again, to the laptop with the taunting program. He reaches out a hand to press a key, but his finger sinks right through the keyboard. He turns back to Death. “Can’t I just finish this first? I... I won’t give you any trouble, just... let me finish it, okay? I need to save them.”

Death just looks at him, the not-eyes seemingly looking right through him, stripping away everything that used to be important. In that moment, he knows. “They’re dead, aren’t they? I failed them. They’re all dead and it’s my fault.”

You were very close, Death says, encouragingly. 

“Well, close doesn’t count, didn’t you just say that? Can I at least have a little consistency here? They were counting on me! Did you see them too? Were they angry?”

There’s a thoughtful expression hovering around the vincinity of Death’s face. There was something about a turkey sandwich.

Rodney sighs and sits down on the floor. He should be sinking through it the same way his finger went through the keyboard, but for some reason he doesn’t[1]. “Was it painful? Please tell me it wasn’t painful. I would hate to have died a painful death.”

Death hesitates. It was quick, he says finally.

“Well,” Rodney says. “I guess I’ll have to take what I can get.”

The thought of the rest of the expedition passing this way is less horrifying than it should be. He supposes it’s because the part of him that used to be horrified is not there anymore but disintegrated with the rest of the city. But then again, that’s just a theory. He should have taken some time to read up on things like this, but it was all boring spiritual stuff and besides, he was too busy dealing with real science. 

“I’m not very good at this,” he admits. “This whole being dead thing, I mean. What happens now, am I supposed to go into the light or become a ghost or what? And if I become a ghost, am I allowed to haunt whoever I want? Because there’s this guy back on Earth called Kavanagh and I wouldn’t mind giving him a good scare.”

Death doesn’t sigh, but the air around him kind of does. For a moment there, Rodney is a little bit reminded of Teyla and the way she used to roll her eyes. “So what do you do around here anyway?” he asks to get his mind off Teyla and Ronon and John. “Oh, and while I remember, there’s this thing I’ve been working on for a while, the Unified Field Theory, but I, uh, I never quite managed to piece it together, could you...”

Do you really want to know?

Rodney ponders this for a moment. “No,” he says then. “I don’t think I do.”

Was there anything else? Death asks. I’m afraid I’m on a schedule.

“Yes!” Rodney stands up again. “What happens now? What do I...what do I do? I mean, I’m not religious or anything and I don’t really believe in heaven and hell and purgatory and those kind of things. Do I get reborn or go into Nirvana or what? I don’t know what I would like to happen. What would you like to happen? Not that it’s much of an issue for you being, you know, Death.”

I like cats, Death says, after some thought.

“Oh,” Rodney says. “Me too.”

Death smiles. Being a skeleton, it looks wildly bizarre and a bit creepy.

“So,” Rodney says. “Is there anywhere in particular I have to go or can I just, um, sort of hang around for a while? Ease into this whole being dead thing?”

Why don’t you find out? Death says. Then he sticks a bony hand into his robe and pulls out an hourglass filled with fine white sand that’s slowly running out into nothing. Oh, dear. I’m running late.

“Well, for some reason I don’t think the other guy will mind,” Rodney says. 

Death gives him an impatient look.

“Never mind. So, um, see you around?”

No.[2]

With that, Death is gone and Rodney is standing alone in the empty city. The walls and the floors are fading away around him, getting transparent and thin. Curiously, he takes a step out into the dark nothingness. He should be scared, would be scared if he was still alive, but it’s not like there’s anything that could possibly hurt him now. The worst thing imaginable already happened. He closes his eyes.    

There are stars everywhere.