Rodney’s parents never fought when he was small. It wasn’t till he was nine or 10 that they began to bicker, then spar, then go in for the kill: parry and thrust and tears. Rodney’s dad was away too often, his mom too controlling, the baby too shrill, Rodney’s interests too expensive.

He was never clear on the subtext and wasn’t going to find out now, what with them being dead and all. Plus he’d have to care, which he really, really didn’t. Really. But that their home, once snug and loving, had become a bloodstained battlefield was obvious to anyone: the children, the neighbours, even, on occasion, the police.

Rodney’s weren’t the only parents who yelled. The first time Rodney’d gone to Nick Santini’s after school he’d nearly been sick, sure he’d just witnessed WWIII, the death star scene from Star Wars, and the Santinis’ imminent divorce all rolled into one huge shouting match. Nick laughed at Rodney’s concern and yelled at his parents to keep it down, they were scaring the mungie-cake (at least that’s how it sounded to Rodney). The parents looked confused and embarrassed and Mr. Santini had pinched Mrs. Santini’s bottom. She’d laughed and whacked him with the wooden spoon, spraying reddish sauce across the kitchen like blood spatter.

Perhaps, Rodney speculated, if his parents had yelled from the beginning like Nick’s, he’d have been inured to it. It would have seemed normal. Not devastating. Not anxiety-producing. Not suicide-attempt-inducing. He’d liked Dr. Goldman, though. Mostly they talked about the stars and Star Trek and Star Wars. Or at least Rodney talked and Dr. G. listened. Made notes and listened. Rodney liked it when people listened to him.

Over the years Rodney hid out at Nick’s. A lot. He learned that love was love, even when the volume knob was stuck on eleven. Or if they changed in the same locker room after gym.

But the McKays weren’t the Santinis. When Rodney’s parents yelled, there was only racket and hurt and danger. Whatever love had once been there was gone, gone, gone. He studied the divorced kids, quizzing them on the whats and wherefores. They bragged of double the Christmas and birthday gifts, of playing one parent off against the other. Rodney opened the phone book to “divorce lawyers” and left it strategically on the dinner table, pleased with his subtlety and design.

The next month without TV seemed a very long time, indeed.

He gave up hockey in an attempt to appease them. Not driving him to practice lugging a shitload of goalie equipment was one less thing for them to scream about. At each other. At him. Hell, at Jeannie, who could barely stand on skates yet.

He kept up piano, learning to take himself to lessons on public transit, carefully repeating the directions: subway to Davisville station, take the Bayview bus, get off at Millwood. Don’t talk to strangers no matter what they promised you, no matter how freezing the wait for the bus. He entered as many academic contests as he could, mostly science and math, adding the small prize monies to what he earned mowing lawns, shovelling snow, even babysitting. He bought a second-hand synthesizer with his booty. He practiced for hours, playing REO Speedwagon’s greatest hits until he felt properly avenged. He neglected his homework (not that he really needed to study), volume at max, headphones a shield between him and his warring parents.

Only ill health calmed the flow of harsh words. A bout of the flu, a broken collarbone, a brush with anaphylaxis earned him temporary truces and rare hushed concern. If illness garnered their kind attention, he was certainly down with that—until a few too many suspicious injuries sent him back with Dr. G. for another round of “listening.” “Did you know,” Jeannie whispered one day, worrying bloody cuticles, “That Munchausen’s Syndrome has nothing to do with Baron Von?”

She’d been hugely advanced at five, no doubt due to the influence of her genius big brother. Later, she’d taken up with the soft sciences, so he’d lost interest and contact with her. What kind of clinical psychologist couldn’t cure her own anorexia?

But his passion for piano began to pale as he developed passion for other things: science, math, computers. Girls. Boys. He joined the appropriate clubs, rising to President or Chair, quickly squelching the “good ideas” of the morons before him. By the time he was 14 it didn’t take much more than an offhand comment from his hung-over and under-qualified teacher to dissuade him from pursuing the piano further.

“You’ll be sorry some day!” his father had yelled.

If his father had been right, to this day Rodney refused to admit it. Still, his fingering technique had translated well to the computer keyboard, and the whole “I was a misunderstood prodigy” story served him well over the years. With each repetition the story got better and he got younger, until he’d been only 12—12!—when it happened. He’d studied manipulation at the feet of masters.

He’d come to admire the way his mother could get under his father’s skin, passive-aggressively pushing, pushing, until he said things, did things he shouldn’t have, wouldn’t have. His dad was much more direct, lashing out and cutting to the quick, leaving her bleeding from the heart. It was a vicious tango, a minuet of pain: circle your partner, the sheerest of touches, a whisper of cruelty, then faster, faster, up tempo, up volume, until one or the other sucked in a breath audible from nearly every room in the house. “You bitch.” “Bastard!” A slammed door: his mother retreating to her bedroom, his dad out the door, to the car, to a bar, to another woman, perhaps.

It wasn’t long before Rodney exported the McKay warfare techniques to school. He got his way, but lost most friendships. He didn’t care that they didn’t like him (mostly), but he wanted their respect. Respect was important; his father had beaten that one thing into him, if nothing else. He added a layer of humour to his sarcasm so whoever wasn’t the object of his tirade could admire his devastating wit, feel relieved to be off the hook. Rodney imagined himself Canada’s answer to Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker, in one scathing, pimpled prodigy.

When he was 15 and dying to lose his virginity he found that respect wasn’t enough to earn him a date, so he learned to further temper his temper. He studied the popular kids from afar, and aped selected behaviours. There was a long period of weirdness while he tried on various traits, before he finally settled into the personality he’d more or less wear for the rest of his life.

He was aloof in an independent rather than unpopular way: he could, he told himself, have gone to their parties, he just chose not to. He added a level of encouragement to his superiority, doling out praise sparingly, making people want to earn his respect, his approval. He was tall and broad-shouldered and good-looking, despite his oddly slanting mouth. He was, academically, North Toronto Collegiate’s golden boy. He made the Honour Roll, won chess tournaments and the Kiwanis music festival. Occasionally he even deigned to help this pretty girl or that cute boy with their homework, let them try out his new Apple LISA.

He didn’t need much, or indeed any, encouragement to join things, volunteer his opinion, take command.

He managed his first kiss by manoeuvring a game of Spin the Bottle at a party he’d invited himself to. He’d hoped to get Tommy Walker, but ended up with Typhoid Bingham instead. A month later, mono-free, he cornered Tommy in the change room and got exactly what he wanted from the all-Canadian quarterback.

Later he had April Bingham as well. He was nothing if not thorough.

Rodney loved a challenge, transfiguring the ordinary into the extraordinary with the power of his mind. Whatever and whomever he focussed his formidable attention upon became his… sooner or later. He studied human sexuality with no less fervour than the new scientific advancements that leapt to reality from his beloved science fiction.

The finest universities in the world came to woo him. He played them off against one another until the grants and scholarships took on astronomical proportions. University of Toronto had a stellar astrophysics program, but he’d have gone to Lakehead before he’d have lived at home one more nanosecond.

He went south, from the true north strong and free to the land of opportunity.

At 16, another country might as well be another galaxy. The natives were jarring and entitled, two traits he’d thought to have a monopoly on. He was just another face in the quad, shockingly not the golden boy anymore amid shining stars from around the world. For the first time in his life Rodney had to work at academics, at friendship, do his own laundry. He wouldn’t have joined a frat if they’d begged him, not that anyone did.

Naïve and brilliant, cute and bisexual: a predator’s dream. Women played him, men abused him. Professors muzzled him.

Hazing, harassment, homophobia: rejection of all kinds ate at his confidence until he learned that women were scary and men were dangerous. And also? Vice versa. His studies began to consume all of his time and attention. Degree piled on degree. He learned that he could stand out among standouts, but his abrasiveness and brilliance alienated. In school, in work, in life: Berkeley, Caltech, MIT. Colorado, Siberia, Antarctica. A rolling series of cafeterias, book or Blackberry balanced on his tray, until eating alone almost seemed normal again.

Rodney was used to being just left of popular, so it was with gratification and satisfaction that he finally crossed the cafeteria to assume his rightful place at the cool table, welcomed at last by the popular kids. That the cafeteria was now a mess hall and the cool kids were the senior officers and department heads of the Atlantis expedition seemed exactly right to a man who’d buried his head in science fiction from the moment he was able to read. (Which was, for the record, at age three.)

It seemed right somehow that Rodney’d had to come to another galaxy to find the respect and admiration—the friendship—that was long overdue. These were the best and the brightest of all of Goddamn Earth. Finally, finally, he was among his peers. These were people he could admire and respect right back. He’d hand-picked almost the entire science team. Best. In. The. World. Best in two galaxies. Literally.

He plunked his tray on the long table, grabbing a seat between Elizabeth and Carson.

“Good afternoon, Dr. McKay.”

“Hey, Rawd-ney.”

A grunt from Ronon.

Rodney smiled. “Peers.” He rolled the word around in his sizeable brain, feeling charitable. His smile widened when, hidden by the table, a foot brushed against his with intent, stroking his ankle with military precision.

“Let me tell you what the science morons did today. Not you, Radek, of course. Oh, and you’ll notice there’s no more blue Jell-O.”

He took a large bite of grilled sandbird panini, and began to entertain his peers with his charm and wit.