   Jinxauthor Mel 3/20/09 . chapter 12Honestly, this is the best piece of fanfiction I've come across in quite awhile. Even just thinking up such a complicated story and then for the most part keeping it straight with all the time phases is truly admirable, and while I do have a lot of questions I want you to know upfront that I'm truly, deeply and madly in love with this story. I hope you accept the following as helpful suggestions rather than criticism.
Chapter 1: All I wondered about in this one is why the device attached itself to Rodney rather than to John who handled it first and whose gene is stronger. (I'm assuming the scientists who found it didn't have the gene.) And I kind of kept on wondering later on because none of the characters did it for me and therefore the question was never answered. If you ever consider a revision, a small explanation or even just speculation might be nice.
Chapter 3: I must say you have a brilliant writing style and particularly this chapter is a captivating mix of thriller and horror, the latter of which I usually refrain from. About the end here I thought, 'God, this is creepy,' shuddered and considered abandoning the story. Alas, its pull was way too strong and had already securely snagged me in.
Chapter 4: Why didn't Rorkan strike Rodney after he phased back into real time? I kept wondering about this till the end of the story: if Rodney was able to affect the others physically, even bruise Jennifer, could not Rorkan too have at the very least badly hurt, maybe killed him? Or were the people in real time completely invisible to him (and Solian?) all the time, like they were later for Rodney temporarily?
Chapter 5: Do you have any idea how hard I wracked my brain to figure out just how Jennifer was able to feel pain if the touch lasted nanoseconds or no time at all? Thank you for clearing that up here with Rodney's little experiment in the hallway. You gave me quite a fright when John stepped out of the transporter without him (especially since you never mentioned them stepping *into* one) since I thought the device somehow caused a malfunction ... phew.
Chapter 6: Here's an incongruence: the gunshot. However loud, a gunshot is still just sound waves no different from voices. If it could be heard in real time after leaving the proximity of phased time, then the same would apply to voices. But that is quite impossible considering the time difference (aside from the fact it would completely spoil the story) so I suggest you remove the gunshot sound from real time. (On that note, Rodney should also never have heard his own voice's echo in previous chapters.) A bullet already in flight as it drops back into real time cannot be heard, and I'm pretty sure the sound of the impact and possibly the sparking machinery would be loud enough.
The wrapping scene in the infirmary was lovely. But was Rodney's pain his usual exaggeration, or did the fact he didn't need food actually mean his body didn't know what to do with food, and the same went for medicines? Did that anesthetic simply not work?
Chapter 7: Why did his watch show three weeks when it was (or felt like) only moments for Rodney? Isn't it supposed to run on *his* time due to proximity regardless of which phase he's currently stuck in?
The walls rippling and people vanishing, is that another phase besides speed time, frozen time or double-freeze, or is that simply an effect that one experiences after prolonged exposure?
Chapter 8: Given a pen, would Rodney be able to write a message somewhere? (There must be loose paper lying around in labs or so.) Granted that wouldn't be much help as long as time was actually 'frozen' (which I doubt, see below) but if in real time four weeks went by like in John's dream or even just one day as you suggest (again, see below) then someone was bound to discover it eventually. At the very least, it might tell them he's still around.
Chapter 9: Why doesn't the water ripple the same way as the walls of the city? Why doesn't the same effect happen to the sky? And as for that, now here's a major incongruence to contemplate:
You stated that the moons and stars never once changed from the moment Rodney was thrown out of phase in front of the lab until he was recovered on the pier. So to him, time seemed frozen in that night. On the other hand, you had Radek call John for the ammo clip and video at four a.m. that very night, the meeting with Woolsey later presumably that same day, and the recovery device operational that afternoon. With time frozen for Rodney, how did it move for them?
One solution would be that time, instead of being 'frozen', just moved really really slowly, but in that case Rodney wouldn't have seen stars in a very long time ... so I'd go with an alternative, namely that at some point, Rodney shifts into speed time to make up for the time that elapses in reality without actually experiencing it like what happened in the infirmary before.
If you *meant* the scene on the pier to cover such an event, you might want to revise (the wording in) those paragraphs. For one, the shift wouldn't have started with a headache since Rodney wouldn't have felt the effects of the recovery device until he arrived at the point in time when Radek activates it. (It never hurt him *before* a shift, only after he dropped back into real time.) Also, the change from darkness to light wouldn't happen 'abruptly', only 'rapidly' or some other synonym that still allows for the passage of time. Lastly, how much time was the line 'he was still panting and shaking when' [he was found] supposed to cover? And just exactly *how* did the others find him out there on the pier?
Chapter 10: Erm, maybe I misunderstood something, but I thought the device was supposed to anchor Rodney in real time for those four hours. If it just pulled him back once, why would it need to remain activated afterward? How does a device on Atlantis affect Rodney on a different planet anyway, or did the team bring device and ZPM with them? Even allowing for the subspace component and its radiation which the device was supposed to disrupt; if it were strong enough to reach across the galaxy, it would surely have affected the other trapped people as well. (Which also means that Janus would have had a way to get them back when it all started.)
And if it really *were* strong enough to anchor Rodney even on a different planet, how could he just have overridden that force subconsciously. Moreover, are his time-freezing skills just self-preservation to kick in without conscious effort, even the double-freeze?
On another note, how would a frozen Gate transport anything? Wouldn't that be much like the frozen doors, not reacting to what they can't sense? Because a wormhole is not just an open tunnel, you know, the event horizons are mechanisms that need time to work, to dematerialize, encode, send, receive, decode and rematerialize matter. So I would suggest that instead of having them move through it in frozen time, do it with speed time: that way they will be extremely slow compared to the others, but at least time will pass for them also. If for some reason the wormhole had been open for longer than normal (like Woolsey having it established the moment Radek activated his device and it obviously taking a while to find, get and prepare Rodney to leave) they could have frozen time to get there, then sped it up to step in, and let's just speculate that once you're nothing more than a data package no accessory of yours or radiation around you can influence time anymore.
Chapter 12: So his watch stepped at some point, but when exactly and how long had it been until then? What do you mean by 'stopped working'? Did it run out of power (Wow yeah, that would take time!) or was it damaged, and did it show the time it stopped or nothing at all? I know it's been months for Rodney at least, and it's a shame he didn't tell Sheppard even that much. I'm really curious about the real time issue, though. Oh well, itch I can't scratch. I do empathize with Sheppard on this.
All in all though, your story was very well thought out and logically structured, for which I'm really truly glad. I'm just a stickler for detail and I enjoyed this challenge very much. Stories that don't numb my brain but allow me to think while reading them are those I value most, and this one will forever be one of them. Thank you. |
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