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Sheppard had imbibed as much of the Xervian Harvest Tea (a beverage remarkable similar to Earth's Long Island Tea) as McKay had, but he wasn't drunk. Not quite, and he was becoming more sober by the minute. “You did what?” Sheppard demanded of the hapless scientist.
“It was just a simple request. They had a piece of broken tech, and they asked me if I could fix it.” McKay hung his head, shuffling his feet and looking toward the floor.
“It never occurred to you that maybe you should do a little research before you fix something called a reincarnation machine? Or, maybe ask somebody? Me? Woolsey? Anybody?”
“They didn't exactly say it was a reincarnation machine. They described it as a way of contacting the dead, and of gaining the knowledge of the father of their people. I thought it was some sort of database, or possibly a hologram – we've seen those before. Maybe something got lost in translation, but I certainly didn't expect it to pop out a freshly minted version of some king from a couple hundred years ago!”
Sheppard's head was beginning to throb. He wasn't sure if it was the beginnings of a hangover, the increasingly loud music and celebrations coming from the village where the harvest festival had turned into – well, whatever sort of party you had to honor a sacred elder returned from the dead – or from the knowledge of just how much fun he'd have filling out the mission report. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. No, he wasn't about to do it. This was one mission report that would be McKay's problem.
“There's a bright side to this.” McKay interrupted his thoughts.
“Do tell. And exactly what would that be?” Sheppard had had a bad feeling when McKay disappeared from the festival, and it had only gotten worse when McKay and the young man who, it turned out, was the reborn father of the Xervian people - had paraded into town leading a small but rambunctious entourage. In the ensuing excitement, he'd dragged McKay away so they could talk. He couldn't imagine what the bright side to any of that might be.
“I brought back their leader from the dead.” McKay grinned the silly grin of someone who was still more than a little intoxicated. “If I'm to understand correctly, according to Xervian custom, that makes us gods.”
They were gods. Wonderful. That undoubtedly meant at least another ten pages of paperwork. Sheppard groaned. He would never bring McKay along to a harvest festival again. Absolutely never.