[ This Bag is Catless ]
by kHo

When they go public they really, really go public, in a spectacularly horrific, wonderfully wide-open kind of way. Three wraith hives broken up in the atmosphere, bits and pieces falling through to China, to Japan, to California, to Hawaii, to Brazil. The entirety of the world then watches as news cameras take in the destruction, the smoke and ash and craters, the devastated cities.

There are fighter pilots and wraith darts colliding in the sky. America and Canada and Mexico, China and Australia, Germany and Great Britain and Iraq. The war on terror lays forgotten in the wake of the day the skies opened up and everyone fought together to bring down alien intruders. They fought for four days before the last dart was blown up just above the Taj Mahal in the dead of night.

It takes another two weeks before the last of the Wraith that made it to the ground is taken down though the rumors never die. Cameron Mitchel remarks later on Jay Leno that it's not unlike Elvis, the way the rumors persist. “That's okay, though,” Cameron says with that trademark smirk that every woman in America and half of Europe falls in love with. “Elvis was a soldier, he'll take care of 'em and be right back in Walmarts all across the South in no time.”

A wraith cruiser made it all the way to touch down in Texas and by the time the tanks and troops rolled in the locals were lighting cigars off of burning piles of wraith corpses. There's a man that becomes an unwitting spokesperson for the self-defense of Earth's soil when the news crews show up and roll on him. “God bless hunters,” he says, chewing on tobacco and propping his rifle on his hip as he grins at the camera. “Like they say, man. Don't fuck with Texas.” His name is Clint Waters and he's a 65 year old ex-marine. The movie they make out of him doesn't outsell Titanic but it does outsell Harry Potter.

Landry wants the put the best face possible on the SGC and he wants Mitchel to represent the Milky Way contingent and Sheppard to represent the Pegasus one. It's Rodney that winds up doing the most talk shows, not because he wants to be famous but because he can't stand to listen to all the people getting it wrong. Landry's pissed about this fact until Rodney gets his first sycophant stalker and realizes that in the New World, as they've taken to calling it behind closed doors, Smart is sexier than Handsome, Wholesome, and Politically Correct.

Rodney wins his first Nobel later that same year but he has to share it with Samantha Carter. Jimmy Fallon gets the first genuine laugh out of John Sheppard when he asks John if Sam and Rodney had a baby whether it would be a human or just one big giant pulsing brain. “Big giant pulsing brain,” John says, still laughing. “The size of at least two football fields and just as loud.”

The talk shows find out very quickly that there's virtually no point in booking John unless they book Rodney for the same night. John's the only one that can make Rodney shut up and Rodney's the only one that can make John actually talk.

Rodney and Daniel have an impromptu Who Can Talk Faster contest on Hardball and the only reason Rodney wins is because he's louder, and Daniel started laughing halfway through.

Sam and Lorne become regulars of Larry King.

Cameron marries his highschool sweetheart and breaks the world's heart.

Teyla and Ronon and Vala and Teal'c are annointed with near God-like status as Representatives of the Hot, Awesome, and Alien.

John's favorite tabloid headline reads John Sheppard: His Secret Wraith DNA and Other Things He Doesn't Want You to Know. None of it's true and he enjoys watching Rodney's face turn all red when Jonathon Ross asks him if John really had two dicks, one human and the other blue and scaly wraith. John grins and pretends he's going to unzip his jeans and Rodney squawks and yells “oh for God's sake, wraith don't even have dicks!”

Ross asks Rodney what he was doing to find out that little tidbit of information and John's laughing too hard to hear his answer.

Daniel writes a book titled: 101 Ways To Make The Guy that Called You a Crazy Crackpot Eat His Words. The 56th way is to die seventeen times and keep coming back to life. It's on the 2015 Bestselling Memoirs list as number 2. Number 1 was Samantha Carter's Geek's Rule and Grunts Drool... Unless You Happen to Be Both.

Carter dedicated her book to Rodney McKay, “the man who taught me that first impressions don't count for shit.” They get married in late March and are divorced by November. Her second book is also dedicated to him and says “The man who taught me that first impressions don't count for shit, unless you're Dr. Rodney McKay, in which case, they really, really do.”

They get married again three months after the second book comes out and John, whose been his best man twice now, says “Seriously, I'm not doing it again, Rodney. Get married and stay married or find another best man.”

Two years later she leaves Rodney and goes to live with Jack on his boat and giggles when Jack cheerfully points a rifle at anyone and everyone that tries to ask him a question about the SGC. It's okay though because Rodney started sleeping with John between their first and second marriage and never really stopped.

Jack and John enjoy silently fishing together in a pond with no fish and Sam and Rodney get along better now than they ever did when they were sleeping together.

Vala hosts the first intergalactic, interplanetary talk show and hardly ever lets her guests get a word in edgewise.

Teal'c and Ronon and Teyla host a reality show that puts Survivor out of business once and for all.

Rodney publishes his book about Elizabeth and is uncharacteristically unavailable for interviews when it debuts. It remains at the top of the charts for three years.

When it's all said and done nothing really changes at all. Earth reels and recooperates and bends and shifts and finds it's place again and people go right back to what they were fighting about and arguing about before aliens were real and not just something Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas made famous.

The only difference is that now when they make sci-fi movies, the science is real. Everything else stays the same.

“It's kind of a shame, really,” John says one night, ten years later. “The original Back to the Future was so much better when it was ridiculous and fun.”

“Ha,” Rodney says, pointing a finger at him. “So you admit it's ridiculous!”

Sam and Rodney argue while Jack casts his line out and nudges John's foot with his. “I still don't understand how you live with him.”

John grins and watches his float bob on the placid lake. “Yeah. Me either.”