Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate Atlantis or any of the characters, no profit is being made… blah blah blah.

Description: McKay asks for Sheppard to activate an Ancient machine, things don't go to plan, but what if the other expedition memebers don't get told? Atlantis, we have a problem! Bad description... sorry about that.

A/N: Yeah, I know this has probably been done before, but I'm hoping people will still read…

A couple of my own characters are mentioned in this, people from SGA-8 and SGA-13, if you want to use them in your own story, please ask my permission first! :)

CHAPTER ONE: THE WRONG BUTTON

Sheppard stared doubtfully at the machine resting on McKay's lab table.

"You want me too activate it, but you don't know what it does, is that a good idea?" he questioned.

"Of course it is, how else am I supposed to find out what it does?" asked McKay impatiently. "Go on, use your supergene, I don't have all day you know, Zelenka and his science team have asked me to help them with another piece of Ancient tech."

Sheppard shrugged. "Okay, but if it blows up Atlantis then I get to blame you."

"What? Don't be ridiculous, it won't blow up Atlantis…I hope," muttered McKay.

Sheppard rolled his eyes and pressed the button that McKay had told him should give it power. The machine started humming to itself, then it began to glow.

Alright then," commented Sheppard. "I guess a lot of Ancient things glow…"

The humming sound got louder and the glowing got incredibly bright.

"McKay…" said Sheppard.

"Errm… maybe I told you to press the wrong button?" suggested McKay, backing away from the machine.

"Uh huh…" replied Sheppard, also backing away.

The machine's humming stopped abruptly, McKay and Sheppard looked at each other. The machine let off a pulse of bright white light, knocking them both unconscious.

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When Sheppard woke up he found himself lying flat on his back looking up at the ceiling. He groaned and sat up. He heard another groan of to his left and looked around…and froze.

He was looking at himself.

Sheppard jumped to his feet, looking down at his hands, sure enough, there was no black wristband. He ran a hand through his hair, it was much shorter then it should have been.

"Ohhhh no," he complained… in McKay's voice.

He saw himself look up from the floor and then jump to his feet. "W-what?! But…?!"

Sheppard glared at him. "Get back to that machine, and fix this, right now!"

McKay stared, then also looked down at his hands. "Um… this is bad…"

"You're telling me?! I swear, if you don't fix this, then I will…" began Sheppard.

Sheppard and McKay's radios activated, cutting him off.

"Colonel Sheppard and Doctor McKay, please report your status."

Sheppard opened his mouth (or rather McKay's mouth) to answer that they had a problem when McKay cut across him.

"We're fine, why?"

Sheppard turned angrily to McKay and muttered, "We are NOT fine."

McKay waved him quiet.

"Really?" asked Carter. "We just detected an energy spike from McKay's lab, I was told you were both in there."

"Err… yeah we are… I just turned on the machine McKay's working on. McKay's got it under control," McKay replied, not liking talking about himself in third person.

"Okay then," said Carter. "I'll leave you to it. Carter out."

Sheppard glared at McKay. "Why did you say we're fine?!"

"They don't need to know anything's happened, I'll just switch us back and everything will be fine," McKay told him nervously.

"McKay! They need to know something's happening. Besides, what will you do if you can't fix it?" demanded Sheppard angrily.

"I will fix it," McKay snapped. "Anyway, I had a bet with Zelenka that I'd get this machine working without problems."

"Well I think there's been problems!" retorted Sheppard.

"Obviously," agreed McKay. "But Zelenka doesn't need to know that, and you know as well as I do that if Carter or Keller find out we'll we down in the infirmary having litres of blood removed from us via syringe!"

McKay was working as he talked.

Sheppard frowned thoughtfully. "You have a point there. Okay, get the damn machine to fix this."

"Uh…that could be difficult," McKay replied, looking up from his readings.

"Why's that?" asked Sheppard struggling to keep his annoyance under control. "You said you could fix it!"

"Errm…it seems this machine builds up power before it works… and it's just discharged. It needs time to build up enough power to work again." McKay glanced at Sheppard's watch. "I told Zelenka I'd help him with that piece of Ancient tech, that could be a problem."

"Okay, so you can't fix this right now. I'm gonna go brief Carter on what's happening," Sheppard told him.

"Wait! They don't need to know anything's happened, look, this won't take too long to power up, a day tops. We can pretend to be each other for that long, we're not going off world or anything," pleaded McKay.

Sheppard thought about it. "I guess it means avoiding having Keller take out litres of blood to run tests. Alright, a day tops. What do I do about Zelenka?"

McKay shrugged. "Just go and pretend you know what you're doing."

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Sheppard stared blankly at the list of information that needed deciphering Zelenka had handed him on a laptop and silently cursed McKay for getting him into it.

He opened a solitaire game on the laptop, deciding it was better than what Zelenka had given him.

Zelenka's computer beeped and Zelenka looked up.

"Perfect! Rodney, how close are you to getting deciphering done?"

"Um…" replied Sheppard quickly minimising his solitaire game to look at the still encrypted information. "Nearly done."

"Good," said Zelenka, taking some more readings on the Ancient device.

Sheppard squinted at the Ancient writing and started pressing random keys, hoping he wasn't screwing up the information too badly. Languages had never been his strong point.

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McKay looked at Sheppard's unfinished Performance Evaluations in Sheppard's barely used office, remembering the time he and Sheppard had discussed Performance Evaluations with Weir in Weir's office. Sheppard had given everyone excellent and above average.

McKay decided that if he was going to pretend to be Sheppard he'd have to do things Sheppard's way. McKay started to fill it in.

Major Evan Lorne – excellent

Lieutenant George Mills – above average

Captain Lance Harris – excellent

Sergeant Amy West – above average

Major Mickey Johnson – excellent

Lieutenant Jay Young – above average

Corporal Chris Newcorn – excellent

Captain Scott Powers – above average

McKay was happy at just how easy it all was… until Major Lorne turned up at the door

"Sir, good to see you doing some work." There was amusement in Lorne's tone.

McKay panicked at actually having to pretend to be Sheppard talking to him.

"Yeah?" Act like Sheppard! Act like Sheppard! "I figured I had to get it done sometime."

Lorne grinned. "Well Ronon's got a message for you…"

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Ronon walked into the mess hall to find McKay and Sheppard sitting down at the most remote far away table possible. For whatever reason McKay was yelling his head offat Sheppard, who didn't look a whole lot happier. Ronon walked up to them.

"Hi, guys," he greeted.

They stopped arguing immediately, which was sort of strange.

"Hi Ronon," replied McKay.

"Oh, um… hi," fumbled Sheppard and McKay sent him a particularly nasty glare.

"What were you yelling about?" asked Ronon, interested only because when McKay really started yelling like that it meant he was in a really bad mood and would usually complain to anyone who came near.

"Nothing," said Sheppard quickly.

McKay rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded less then nice under his breath. "We were arguing about my apparent incompetence in fixing the Ancient device. The Colonel dared to say Zelenka is smarter then me. And because I'm a stupid arrogant idiot I started yelling at him."

Ronon stared. Had McKay really just said that? Ronon found it possibly even more surprising that Sheppard now looked fuming with anger.

"Well I can't fly puddle jumpers properly!" retorted Sheppard, magically losing his American accent.

Ronon felt his mouth fall open.

"Colonel Carter and Zelenka are both at least ten times smarter then I, Meredith R. McKay!" yelled McKay loudly, causing half the mess hall to stare at him in shock.

"You take that back!" shouted Sheppard, making the other half of the mess turn to see what all the noise was about.

Ronon continued to stare at them both. "Are you guys feeling alright?"

"Yes, we're fine, why wouldn't we be?" Sheppard asked before hurrying off before Ronon could answer.

McKay just sighed and walked off in the opposite direction.

Teyla walked up to Ronon.

Ronon turned to her. "What d'you think of that?"

"I think… I believe that was one of the strangest conversations I have ever heard them have," admitted Teyla.

"I think there's something wrong with them," replied Ronon. "Do you think Carter needs to know?"

"I do not think we should inform Colonel Carter of this until we are sure something is wrong," answered Teyla.

"Yeah, you're right," agreed Ronon. "I don't really know her anyway."

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Sheppard knew Ronon now knew something was wrong but he didn't really care. He hated being stuck in Zelenka's lab doing nothing.

He re-entered Zelenka's lab and Zelenka came up to him.

"Rodney, what did you do to Ancient writing?" he demanded.

"Um… nothing," replied Sheppard

"You must've done something," Zelenka told him. "Because the first line now reads; FLUTEJ PMTU ACTI PLATY BDUM TUD DEDET RITA! Do not tell me it is meant to say that, because I will not believe you!"

"Oh," answered Sheppard, realising that his random key tapping had actually done something. "That. Err… that was a test to see how good at translating you are."

"I still do not believe you," grumbled Zelenka.

"Too bad. It's true," Sheppard informed him. "I was worried you were getting rusty."

Zelenka swore in Czech. "Fix it!"

"What?" asked Sheppard.

"Whatever you did. Fix it!" complained Zelenka.

"Errm…" began Sheppard. "Uh… that was part of the test. You fix it."

Zelenka glared at him and then spoke rapidly in angry Czech.

A/N: well, there's the first chapter of that, finally. i've been working on this story for ages . now because most of this is written from Sheppard and McKay's third person POV i think it starts to get confusing it parts... please tell me if it gets too bad! reviews and constuctive critsism (did i spell that right?) are very welcome! infact they'll probably make me update quicker.