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How could such a small thing be so traumatizing? But that's exactly what he felt, traumatized. The small innocent looking device was currently in Rodney’s hand as he pressed the button, over and over again. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, now that he’d become numb to each and every horror displayed on the wall before them, John snatched the devise from Rodney’s hand.
“Hey!” Rodney turned and made a futile attempt to recapture the device.
John held it out to his left, beyond Rodney’s grasp. “Just stop it Rodney. We don’t need to see any more of this.”
“What? Of course we do!” Rodney sputtered. “We need to see if we ever figure it out!” He made another lunge for the device, but John easily evaded Rodney’s grabby hands.
“No.” John waggled the device, still outside of Rodney’s reach, “This won’t show us a solution!” he said.
“But… but, you don’t know that.” Rodney protested.
“Rodney! This isn’t going to show anything even remotely helpful.” All John wanted to do with the stupid device was to hurl it at the nearest wall and watch it shatter into a million pieces, then stomp on those pieces and scatter them across the cosmos so Rodney couldn’t ever repair it.
“They’re alternate universes; the probability of one of them having the same problem is very high. It’s worth taking a look!” Rodney had given up trying to recapture the device and now stood with his hand on his hips, his chin up, giving John the patented ‘You are being a Moron’ glare.
“Rodney - Penguins!” John covered his eyes with his free hand and tried to banish the images from his mind.
“Oh, grow up Colonel. They are not us, and I for one find knowing about potential transforming accent equipment – before we activate it – quite helpful. Now, gimmy that remote. I was getting closer to a universe that was paralleling ours.” Rodney snapped his finger and held out his hand for the device.
“Penguins, Rodney! We were penguins!!”
“You should tell him about the cookies.” Radek said from a safe distance across the room.
“Shut up Zelenka, you are not helping!”
“Cookies?!”