A Taste Of Tomorrow (G)

[KernilCrash]

A Taste Of Tomorrow

Word 6.0 Printable Version

   
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First posted at Kansas on:  March 20, 2003.

Rating: G.
Category:  Bad Timing Resolution Fic.  I claim no special insight into Farscape.  This is merely one fanfic writer’s vision of a possible resolution to the ending of Season 4.  I would like to state for the record that with the exception of the beginning of Part 1 (transitioning from the ending of ‘Bad Timing’ into this story) that I dreamed up this story before anyone saw Ep 4.22.  Angel will testify that I came up with the plot idea on my own.  All I can say is that maybe I was channeling DK a little bit that day.
Disclaimer:  The characters and vision of Farscape belong to Henson, Co.  I have made no profit from their creation, and I hope they’ll have a chance to bring them out to play some more sometime very soon.
Time Frame/Spoilers:  This story takes place immediately after Ep 4.22 - ‘Bad Timing’, and contains a liberal smattering of spoilers from ‘Premiere’ right through to the end.

Beta-Reader:  Angel -- The UK Goddess of Beta-readers.  I can never repay her for the volumes of input over the past months,  or compensate her for lending me the benefit of her keen eye for typos and those pesky grammatical errors.  She kept me on track again. 

Warning:  Have Kleenex close to hand.  I kind of went straight for the tear ducts this time!

Hope you enjoy it, and more importantly … I hope this helps a bit until we get our show back.

Kernil Crash
 

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A Taste Of Tomorrow

Prologue

As a species they were almost older than time itself.  In their youth, the separate entities known as individuals had once wandered an entirely different realm than the one they inhabited now.  They’d traveled from one planet to another in ships constructed of poured and cooled metals encasing atmospheres that would safeguard the fragile solid vessels that they had called ‘bodies’.  They retained some vestiges of those bodies to this day, a reminder of everything they had been and all that they had become, but the group of energies who knew themselves simply as The Gestalt no longer required collections of solid matter in order to survive.

There had been a name for their species when they were younger.  Then they had found a new realm, the one where they now resided, and had disappeared from the universes where other beings might interrupt their evolution.  Over the eons, the label describing who they were had faded along with the knowledge that they ever shared tangible space with other species.  The few individuals who knew of their existence referred to them simply as the progenitors, and were careful not to disturb their carefully maintained realm or draw their attention.

Then came a small ripple, traveling across realms, realities, and universes alike -- the vibration transmitted through the nearly impenetrable membranes between each state of reality, and they took notice of the source.

“He received warning,” the collection of ageless mentalities agreed.  They watched with dismay as a fragment of The Gestalt sheared away, spun into random collections of charged matter, and was lost forever.  They had survived in this one condition for millennia, and were perturbed that a portion of their awareness must be diverted to adapt to the loss.  Another nearly infinitesimal vibration rocked their realm, and then another, and they were diminished yet again.

“The outcome of these disruptions must be considered,” they determined, and let their combined awareness spin out along the threads leading into the future.  They found extinction waiting for them, their realm shattered along with countless others by the increasing intensity of the shockwaves coming from a single source, and they decided that it could not be allowed to happen.  One was selected and transformed, the second of his kind to take on a mortal exterior.  He stood before them on two legs in order to be inspected, and they contemplated the limitations inherent in his predecessor’s abilities.  More was required of this one, so they expanded his abilities.  Endowed with nearly the entire knowledge of The Gestalt, he trembled for a single moment with the importance of his task, then swore himself to the survival of his makers, and was sent forth to prevent the catastrophe of termination.

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Part 1

John Crichton closed his eyes, breathed in the heady scent of everything that was Aeryn Sun, and concentrated on three things:  the sensation of her lips against his, her body pressing warm and firm against him, and the knowledge that she would have married him if they had lived longer.  He devoted one brief moment to worrying about what would become of the others, and then focused on Aeryn and everything that had happened over the last arn.  She loved him, she had agreed to marry him, and she was pregnant with his child.  The future had held so much promise.  It didn’t seem fair.

A double pang of regret tightened his throat and brought a sour bitterness to his mouth, drowning out the more pleasant taste of Aeryn Sun.  He hurt once for the loss of everything that the last arn had finally brought to him, and he hurt a second, more intense time because the next few microts would very likely see the termination of three lives instead of two.  They were a family in that brief instant, and they would die together.

“I love you,” he said.

The only thing that seemed right about his life at that moment was that Aeryn was with him, and that they loved each other.  He was enveloped in searing light and heat, the pain transmuted to something else almost before his body could register that it hurt, and then everything was gone, and he had only a split-microt to wonder at the sensation of being dead.

“This is going to work!” he said, the sense of triumph drowned out under a flood of relief.  Earth would be safe, and they had a chance of getting Pilot back to be reunited with Moya.  He braced himself in the seat of the transport pod and watched the fluctuating displays charting their course as they fled before the hungry throat of the collapsing wormhole.

“Scarrans!” Aeryn warned him.

The collision with the scarran ship was unavoidable.  There was nowhere else to go within the tight confines of the wormhole, both ships limited to the center of the undulating funnel.  He was aware of Aeryn’s body tensing next to him, tried to fling one arm up in a futile attempt to protect himself from that devastating impact … and fell over backward into a heap of snow.

Crichton scrambled onto his hands and knees, nearly lost his balance a second time, and came to his feet in a flurry of action.  Whirling around, assessing his surroundings and looking for threats, he snatched Winona from her holster and tried to make sense of what had just happened to him.

The iceberg floating in the midst of a sea of wormhole openings was unpleasantly familiar … identical to one he had stood on barely half a cycle earlier.  John swung around a second time, the pulse pistol leading the way, only to conclude that it was the very same iceberg or at least identical to the first one.

“What the frell …” he began angrily, talking to himself, then spotted the calm figure standing to one side.  Empty eyes, dark suit, but younger this time, the being he’d known as ‘Einstein’ waited for him to calm down.  “What did you do?  What happened?” John demanded.  “I died, but I didn’t.”  He thought about what he’d just experienced, and found the first memory already fading, as though it had never happened.  “Where’s Aeryn?”

“The transport pod was destroyed in the impact.  Those remaining aboard were killed,” Einstein said calmly.

“No!  We got back to Moya and reattached Pilot.  Aeryn told me …”  John shook his head and tried to remember what had happened next, the images slipping away faster than he could snatch at them.  There’d been … a boat maybe … or maybe not.  It had all been clear a microt earlier.  “I remember sitting with her somewhere.”

“You experienced an echo of what might have occurred if we had not extracted you from the moment in the wormhole,” came the enigmatic explanation.  He watched without any outward reaction as John continued to stride back and forth, pulse pistol still in his hand but hanging at his side now.

“You just claimed that everyone died on the transport pod,” John argued.  “Last time I checked, I don’t get to die twice …”  He paused, considering his statement.  “Or maybe I can, but not like this!  I die in the wormhole and then again … did I die a second time?”  He frowned, more confused with every passing moment, and jammed his weapon into the holster with a hard slap.  “What do you want this time, and what did you just do?”

“If you had remained on board your transport pod, the added mass of your body would have provided sufficient integrity to allow your craft to pass unharmed through the partially phased state of the other ship.  There would have been a different future for you and your companions.  You experienced some residual awareness of that invalid reality in the moment that you were brought here.  The memory will disappear quickly, leaving only a vague sense of what might have been lingering on something less than a subliminal or instinctual level.”  Einstein moved for the first time, taking two steps toward Crichton.

“Aeryn and Pilot are dead because you nabbed me?!” John yelled, immediately distraught.  “Get my ass back there right now, Albert!  Enough people have died because of me already.”

“There is a matter to be discussed before that can be done.”  The depthless eyes stared at him.  “You were shown what could happen if you continued to travel through wormholes.  It was expected that you would safeguard the knowledge, not continue to use it in a manner that now jeopardizes countless realms.  I have been sent to rectify the situation.”

John took several fast steps away from the other being, the fingers of his right hand returning to rest on the butt of the pulse pistol.  “I’ve been doing the best I can.  I screwed the scarrans and the Peacekeepers don’t have the technology either.  At least not so far.”

Einstein tilted his head to one side, considering the claim.  “True.  However, you use it to your own advantage …”

“Saving my home planet is not to my advantage!” John snapped.  “You can’t expect me to let the scarrans frell over my species.”

“The repercussions from what you did have been felt across dimensions that your brain cannot even comprehend.  If we allow you to return to your reality without making adjustments, the outcome will be horrific.  The ripples will become more violent as they spread, until …”

“I remember what big brother told me; you don’t have to go back over it again.”  John made a fast circuit of the flat snow-covered area that served as their meeting place.  “Let me go back and save the others, and then I’ll come back and we can work this out.  Put me back in the transport pod …”  He glared at Einstein as a different thought occurred to him.  “How did you get me out of there without bringing the others along in the first place?”

“A task of greater importance merits greater resources,” Einstein explained.  “My predecessor’s task was evaluation with either execution or education as an outcome.  This situation requires greater effort to determine a resolution, therefore I was endowed with additional capacity.”

“They gave you the Tom Mix decoder ring this time.  I’m happy for you.”  John peered over the edge of the mass of ice, examining the snarl of wormholes no more than two motras beneath where he stood.  “Aeryn and Pilot shouldn’t die because of me.  Let me go fix that, and then I’ll give you all the time you want to work this out.”

“Time is the one thing you no longer have,” Einstein refused.  “The outcome here will resolve their ultimate fate.”

Crichton turned to look at him, his expression becoming more wary as the cryptic answers combined to create a single message.  “You’re here to kill me,” he realized.
 
“Yes.”

“Damn it!”  Snow showered in all directions as John kicked at a frozen hummock, battering at it in anger.  “You have got to let me make sure the others are safe first.   Chiana’s blind, Moya needs a pilot … Aeryn … she’s pregnant.  Not both of them!  Don’t make them die because of what I’ve done.”

John turned from one side to the other, desperate to get back to his life in order to keep the others safe.  But there was no way out of his surroundings unless Einstein permitted him to leave, and he knew it.  The sense of futility began to mount, until he was on the verge of a physical explosion.  He fought it back down, and forced himself to think, searching for some argument that would give him the freedom necessary to look out for his friends.  Three fury-propelled circuits of the small iceberg did nothing to ease his frustration, but the physical outburst seemed to free a thought.  “Why bring me here?  You could have killed me without going to this trouble.”

“There is another choice,” the new Einstein offered.

“Can’t think of too many things worse than death,” John answered hesitantly.  “Why wasn’t this behind door number one?”

“You may choose permanent incarceration.”  The offer was made with no more emotional content than if he’d just announced that ice was cold.

“Permanent?” Crichton questioned.  “As in fling me in the pokey for the rest of my natural life?  Any chance of parole for good behavior?  Maybe you could commute the last few years of my sentence if I don’t touch wormholes for the next forty years.”

“Permanent,” Einstein repeated.  “It will require that you enter a wormhole of our selection.  It will be collapsed from both ends leaving a bubble spanning approximately one of your arns.”

Crichton stared at him in shock.  “And then what?”

“And that will be all that exists for eternity.  The realities realized by your absence after that moment will continue, those that include your presence will discontinue.”  Einstein stood without moving, giving John time to consider the proposition.

“Spend eternity in a single arn?  You’ve got to be kidding.”  Einstein merely stared at him.  John tried again.  “Humans can’t stand that kind of tedium.  I’ll go insane.  It would be like watching the same hour of the Three Stooges for the rest of my life.  Funny the first time, painful the hundredth, and I’ll be a blithering idiot by the thousandth.”

“The interval will be suspended from the normal laws of time,” Einstein explained, indicating a sphere with his hands.  “It is not a cage but rather an exception to the laws of time and space.  You will remember nothing of the previous or following moments, nothing of the earlier repetitions.  There will be the knowledge of what is happening in that period of time and nothing else. No past, no future.  You must chose carefully, for your existence will be only the emotions and sensations of that one portion of your life.”

Crichton stalked to the edge of the iceberg and stared into the darkness for several microts.  “This isn’t a choice!” he objected violently.  “There’s got to be another way to set this right.  If you can pluck me out of time and allow everything to correct itself, there’s got to be another way.”

“You are the critical variable.  Your presence is disruptive and must be adjusted.”

“Adjusted,” Crichton repeated sarcastically.  “You’re the ones who adjusted me!  This wouldn’t even be happening except for what you guys stuffed in my head!  Take me back to that day, and don’t do it this time around.”

“It will not change the outcome.”  Einstein continued to stand as though frozen by the cold of the ice surrounding them, empty eyes watching as Crichton strode around the small landscape, kicking at projections of ice.

“I told your big brother that I wanted this out of my head.  Get rid of it, and reset things.  I’ll take my chances without it.  We can run like scared rabbits this time around -- miss the catastrophes.”

“That will not alter the outcome sufficiently,” Einstein reiterated.  “There are only two choices.  This has been studied with great care.  We are not arbitrary in our determination.”

“Death then,” John snapped hurriedly.

“That is your choice,” the being agreed calmly.  “However, before you make that your final decision, allow me to show you the outcome.”

Galaxies spiral before his perception, thousands of solar systems spinning within the bright congregations of matter and energy.  He encompasses an area of space that his mind can scarcely comprehend, and sees all that occurs within that expanse.  Cycles flick by like microts, a fast-forward version of the future, and he struggles to catalog the events.  Wholesale slaughter of species; planets and solar systems lie shattered.  Debris spirals into curled patterns that hide the detritus of civilizations.  A single form of life stalks the universe, breeding, expanding -- destruction trailing in the wake of its expansion.  Few others survive.

“Whoa,” John muttered, staggering slightly as he returned to the limited perception of the iceberg.  “Nice trick.  How do I know if you’re telling the truth?”

“What would prove the veracity of my information?”  Einstein cocked his head to one side, puzzled by the accusation that he was lying.

“What happens to Aeryn if I let you kill me?  Will she still die in the wormhole?”

Einstein stared at him for more than ten microts before answering.  “It would not be necessary.  The outcome could be adjusted, but you will not consider the alternative more desirable than her immediate death.”

“Show me!” John demanded.  “And I want to know what would happen to the others.”  He swallowed hard against a lump in his throat, and braced himself for another of the fast shifts in awareness.

She stands in his empty quarters, tears streaming as she carefully pulls the ring from its case and slides it onto her finger.  Time flicks forward, events flashing by in hurried succession.  Pilot is reunited to Moya, the leviathan finds a watery place where she can heal more quickly, and Aeryn goes out upon the water in a small boat to say goodbye to the man who simply disappeared in the wormhole, his atoms dispersed before her eyes as they passed through the scarran ship.  She will grieve and go on, because she carries his daughter, and there will be a small Crichton in her life before the cycle is over.

An alien ship swings in low, a beam of energy envelopes her, and microts later the boat is filled with nothing but fragments.  D’Argo screams in anguish at the second loss of the day, and time moves forward at a greater pace, revealing what no one aboard the healing leviathan will ever know.  It was subterfuge, a trick to hide the fact that she’d been abducted.  The alien ship runs, and Aeryn Sun goes with it, no one aware that she needs to be rescued yet again.

A sebacean woman dies alone, taken apart bit by bit for study, and the fetus dies with her.  A young nebari never regains her vision, but slowly learns to wield a new type of sight, one that taps into portions of her brain that were never meant to be explored.  Without the glimmers of hope and love that were one person’s special gift, she never learns to handle the darkness of either type of vision, sinks into depression, and eventually goes insane.  They leave her alone for one arn too long, and she pours out her life into a blue lake of blood.  The luxan grieves, loses his tenuous hold on his temper one night, and gives up his life in a shabby bar when his opponents gang up to stop the warrior’s grief-driven rampage.

The leviathan wanders aimlessly with her reduced crew, and is recaptured by the Peacekeepers.  She keeps her vow that she will never wear a control collar again, and starbursts to her destruction, taking everyone aboard with her.

“Stop it!  That’s enough!  You’ve got me convinced,” John protested, brushing at the side of his head with one hand as though it would banish the horrific images.  “Shut it off.”  He made a slow journey around the outer edge of the floating platform of ice.  “Let’s have the Monte Hall summary of what’s behind door number two.  What if I chose the eternal exile route?”

“Each moment in your life has the potential for a different outcome.  I have been provided with sufficient resources to allow you to examine all options carefully before choosing.  We are not capricious.  We only seek to acquire a solution to the dilemma.”  Einstein took three measured steps to a hummock of ice, and sat down, sitting rigidly as though perched on the edge of a hard chair.

“They say you’ll get hemorrhoids doing that,” John murmured, glancing at the other being’s choice of seating.  “I can’t believe I’m actually considering this.  How do I describe what moment I’m thinking of so you can see it?”

“You need merely envision yourself in that moment.  Your knowledge of the stream of time is sufficient to begin the process.”

John considered the cycles he’d spent in the Uncharted Territories, and chose one of his favorite moments at random.  He closed his eyes and imagined the tight confines of his module, replaying in his mind the warmth of her body so close to his, and the light scent that had distracted him from what Aeryn had been trying to teach him that day.

“Personal indulgences can fracture a small crew,” she warns, looking at him over her shoulder.

“I would never tell them you scented your hair,” he says softly, leaning closer to draw in another lungful of the thought-destroying aroma.  He’s kissed her before, but the first touch of her lips is like nothing he’s ever known.  It is Aeryn making the first contact this time -- her lips soft, questing, spinning every one of his thoughts into an airy foam of confusion.

John Crichton never returns from the Royal Planet.  No one returns to Moya.  Their bodies are added to the pyres of offworld dead.  Spirited away by Scorpius before the Empress’ vengeful slaughter begins, the Regent’s still-frozen head becomes the centerpiece of a new line of Peacekeeper weaponry.  The luxans are brought to heel first, followed by the hynerians once Bishan is cowed by a demonstration of the weapon’s capacity.  A star here, a planet there, and finally the Peacekeepers are ready to face the scarrans.  But they’ve taken too long, and the scarrans have found new weapons on their own, equally as fearsome.  Four centuries of warfare later the slaughter and destruction still rolls on, migrating across the universe until the fastest ships cannot carry enough fuel to traverse the wasted expanses.

The scarrans learn how to breach the barrier to another realm first, followed within solar days by the Peacekeepers, and the holocaust continues, rolling across myriad realities.

“Oh great.  That was even worse than just killing me!  This isn’t Let’s Make A Deal, this is the intergalactic version of the Ben Hur chariot race.  There’s nothing but dead bodies and wreckage at every corner.”  He paced to one side then returned to lean against a tall outcropping of ice.  “You choose.”

Einstein turned stiffly on his icy seat, watching Crichton’s migrations.  “I cannot.  Choice enables alternative permutations.  It must be a moment that you select.”

John searched back through the cycles, his efforts disrupted by the frustration and anger over the decision he was being forced to make.  He seized on a moment similar to the first one he’d tried, but with a different type of ending.  “Try this one,” he ordered.

He sits in his module, but he’s facing backward, working at connecting new circuits into the rat’s nest of power lines leading from the biomechanoid power cells.  Aeryn is no more than four motras away, pumping out tricep extensions as if she’s just getting started.  She’s been exercising for a couple of arns, and what bothers him most is that he hasn’t been able to catch her so much as sneaking a peek at him.  She’s barely spoken to him since they got back from the planet, giving him a cold shoulder that would sink the Titanic.

He attempts a conversation anyway, hoping to break through the icy shell.  “Zhaan said the surgical reconstructors did an excellent job on your leg.  There’s no sign that it was ever broken.”  Aeryn pumps out a few more reps without responding.  “Yeah,” he adds, uncomfortable with the silence.  “I was … worried about you when you didn’t show up for the wedding.”  He trails off, knowing that she doesn’t want to discuss his short-lived marriage to Katrala, then tries one more time because he doesn’t like this silence between them.

“Anyway, I’m … I’m just glad you’re okay.”  It’s more than glad; he’s incredibly relieved that she hadn’t been permanently injured.  She could have been killed in the fall.  “And I have noticed that you’re not talking to me.”  He gives up.  She’ll have to get over it in her own way.

He hears a small sound and glances up.  Aeryn is approaching the way a frightened animal approaches a strange object, one careful step at a time, one of the small vials pinched between thumb and forefinger.  Microts tick by as he waits, as she hesitantly pulls the stopper loose, as she places a drop on his tongue, her tongue, they touch, and then they kiss.

The various streams of events flow, intermix, roil and flood through space.  He lives on forever in the moment when their lips meet, but John Crichton disappears from Moya before the kiss ever takes place, and the future is altered by that single event.  Death, destruction, slaughter of millions … this time it is the nebari who sweep across space carrying devastation with them.

“A single smooch and I screw the universe,” John complained morosely, readjusting to the sensation of being back in the present.

“Try again,” Einstein suggested phlegmatically.  “The permutations are endless.”

“They certainly seem to be readjusting well,” Aeryn observed, watching D’Argo and Chiana walk away.

“Mmm,” he agrees wordlessly, considering the mismatched pair.  “Yeah, they say you have to walk a mile in someone’s shoes to understand them.”

She gets up and wanders a short distance along the corridor.  “I certainly know what you were doing when you were in my shoes,” she accuses him.

“Give me a break,” he mutters, still mortified not at what he had done, but that he had gotten caught.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she assures him.  “You were in my shoes, I was in your pants.”  She looks back at him with a degree of devious amusement in her eyes that he’d never expected to see coming from Officer Aeryn Sun.

Crichton laughs as he relives the growing realization and utter shock at what she was suggesting and bolts after the smiling, fleeing figure.  But there’s the disembodying jolt, and he sees the consequences if he chooses this moment in which to be incarcerated.  It is worse than the previous attempts, the slaughter more widespread, and he watches as Earth burns, destroying every bit of life on his home planet.

Einstein watched unemotionally as John staggered for a moment, the possible outcome nearly exceeding his ability to keep his emotions in check.  “Again,” the transformed being ordered.  John took a deep breath, and tried another moment he could live with forever.

The storm draws closer, the rain pounding against the glass, and each bright discharge of lightning is following by the sizzling crash that means the cell is almost directly overhead.  The house is close enough to Sydney that the lights of the city cast odd myriad shadows across the walls, adding a touch of dreamlike surrealism to a moment he’s dreamt about for nearly half a cycle.  Aeryn steps out of her last piece of clothing and turns to look at him, unselfconscious in her nakedness, her stare inviting him to finish undressing.

Only two civilizations fall this time:  the beings from another realm who created the Ancients in order to watch over the fabric of time and space; and the species occupying a solitary green-blue planet they refer to as ‘Earth’.  Only two species this time, but in the process, the knowledge to control wormholes spills into the hands of three different races.  They bicker over the newfound capacity for no more than half a cycle, then form an alliance, and enslave trillions.  Misery, squalor, hunger and suffering become the norm.

“That didn’t work out so good either,” John said as the future-vision ended.  “Might be a good thing.  That particular event took more than an arn to complete and I’d hate to have it end just as …”  Einstein cocked his head, waiting for the remainder of the sentence, the featureless eyes rendering his expression unreadable.  “Never mind.”  Mildly flustered, Crichton tried again.

“Hi … my name’s John.”  The woman stares at him for a brief moment, giving him a look that he’d reserve for a particularly repulsive bug, then takes his hand.  Slammed against the wall, kneed in the gut, flung, kicked, flipped, and pinned to the floor, the prison cells spins around him, and he looks up into those blue-gray eyes for the first time.

“What is your rank and regiment?” she demands fiercely.

Destruction.  The details vary, the outcome does not.

“This is the Irwin Allen version of ‘A Wonderful Life’,” John sighed, shaking his head and slumping down to sit in the snow.  “I get the point.  Things are going to suck if I don’t do this correctly.  Show me the right moment, and I’ll take it.  Let’s get it over with.”

“You must be the one to chose,” Einstein repeated his instruction from earlier.

John dropped his head into his hands, started with that first day, and tried again, and again, and again … all without a glimmer of success.  Dozens of moments, small and large, yielded only more death.

“I’m running out of moments, Einstein.  This isn’t working the way either one of us wants.”  The empty-eyed being remained silent, offering no suggestions.  “The first wormhole,” John blurted.  “What if you take me out of the picture before I ever arrive here so none of this happens?”

A half-mad leviathan with a Pilot gone crazy from unending pain is towed through space at the end of a tether, dragged forward by three freighters.  She is empty of all but one lifeform -- the one within her womb.  They’d found the shields, broken through them, and she bears the tenth of the hybrid offspring that grow to become unstoppable weapons.  She is no more than a breeding vessel now, kept alive solely for the mutated genetics within her.  The fierce Prowler pilot is dead, lost in battle.  The hynerian gibbers in his cell, broken at last by torture.  The luxan was shot dead when he broke loose of his shackles, and the delvian is dead by her own hand, the Seek permanently abandoned.  A young nebari lies in a mind-cleansing tank on her home world, being prepared for her renewed roll in spreading The Contagion.  And in the space-black skies over an oil covered moon, a wormhole blossoms and grows, flickers, and dies out, perfectly controlled by the genius in black leather who commands a hidden Gammak Base.  Wormholes will be unleashed upon the universe within a cycle.

“Fine.  That doesn’t work either.”  Crichton flopped over backward into the snow and stared up at the unbroken darkness above the iceberg, ignoring the cold seeping into his back.  “What now?  No matter what I do, the outcome is pretty much the same.  Do I pick the lesser of all catastrophes?”

“There are many moments you have chosen not to consider,” Einstein commented.

Crichton stared at him for nearly a hundred microts, working his way through the cryptic suggestion.  “Lock myself up for eternity in a moment that I hate?” he asked, and received a dispassionate stare.  “You bastards are sick.”  He turned away, bit his lower lip and tried to think of the least painful of all the worst moments.

“What does that taste like?”  “Yesterday.”  Time spools out before him, filled with options, life, growth, the rise and fall of civilizations, but they all labor under the constant threat of the ultimate weapon.  Wormholes are wielded by more than one species, the tenuous stalemate maintained over millennia.

“I can’t do that,” John objected.  “I can’t live in that moment until forever.”

“It is not your only choice.”

Another moment was chosen, the outcomes revealed, and the fragment of his life discarded by Crichton as too unpleasant.  Then another.  And another.

“I get it,” he said morosely after more than a dozen tries.  “When things were the worst, I was always at a convergence of possibilities.  Pull me out at that juncture, and the options open up.”

He ran his thumb along his lower lip several times, and drifted through his memories.  He considered an event that had promise -- one when he came close to dying anyway -- and turned away, unable to bear the idea of living until the end of time trapped in the arn during which he’d killed Aeryn.

Then he remembered another time when he’d lost her in a different manner.

Injured, Talyn starbursts first, followed microts later by Moya.  They flee in different directions, hoping to outrun the retrieval squad long enough for the youngster to heal.  Aeryn has gone with the other one.  The copy has taken Winona, his journal, and his clothes.  The copy has taken Aeryn.  Even more painful, he has to admit that Aeryn has gone with the other John Crichton.  She has chosen to leave him behind.  D’Argo tries to reason, then joke, then console him, but his sole wish is that he was the one who got blown up and was aboard Talyn at this moment … with Aeryn.

The ribbon of potential twists and unknots, altered by the absence of a John Crichton aboard Moya.  His dead body is left behind on Kanvia, murdered by what had appeared to be Rinic Sarova.  He dies mere microts before the creature kills Rinic Pralanoth.  The dynasty is ended, the shape-shifting creature revealed for what it is, and a grieving luxan returns to Moya with the blood of his dead friend on his clothes.  The last, frantic communications between the two ships include the news that one of the Crichtons is dead, and Aeryn staggers to one side of Talyn’s bridge and sinks to her knees in shock.

The cords running through space untangle, recombine, are braided into a new pattern.  Aeryn Sun, forever wondering if her choice to leave the other one behind made him reckless, is more careful with the life of the remaining Crichton.  She moves faster when she goes to check the defenses, returns in time to find Furlow standing over Jack’s dying body, and kills the traitorous mechanic before she can steal the device.  There is no mad chase, no accident, no release of radiation.  The displacement engine turns itself into useless slag and the duplicate module is released on a trajectory that takes it into a sun.

The couple swears off wormholes forever.  They shun Earth, find Moya, and seek out a life together.  There comes a time when Moya chooses to bear another offspring and gives birth to a healthy, unaltered leviathan infant.  The crew grows, learns to wend a cautious path between warring factions, and accepts new members into the multi-species family.  Their descendants travel the stars for generations.  The man and woman survive hardship, fight when necessary, live for tens of cycles and grow old together.

The various realms survive.  Civilizations rise and fall, as they should.  Life goes on.

“That’s …”  John swallowed hard, trying to accept that Aeryn’s best chance for happiness lay with the other John Crichton, not with him. “That’s a pretty good outcome,” he whispered, his voice thin and weak under the burden of what he would have to do.  “Where would you have to pull me out of that mess?”

“At the moment your realities appeared to diverge on the planet,” Einstein replied.  “One end of the wormhole will close from that direction, cutting you off at that point in your own reality.  The other end will contract to a point approximately one or two arns after that.”

“No!” John yelled suddenly.  “No, no, no, no!  There has to be another way.  You cannot expect me to do this!”  He snatched his pulse pistol out of its holstered and trained it on Einstein’s forehead.  “You put me back where you found me, and give me a chance to work this out.  You could have prevented this when Einstein Sr. came calling.  Live with your decision.”

The tirade was greeted with the same unemotional stare that had met every other one of his impassioned outbursts.   The infinite eyes watched him without blinking until John finally lowered his weapon and jammed it into the holster, his shoulders slumping in resignation.  “I’m not getting off this berg alive, am I?”

“Alive, yes.  To rejoin your life … no.”

John rubbed his face with both hands, then closed his eyes for a moment.  “Cake or death.  Man, I thought I was an expert at losing, but I’ve hit the major leagues this time.  I either spend eternity knowing that Aeryn took off with the other one or else I frell over nine tenths of the universe.  This deserves the Nobel Prize for lousy choices.”  He walked to the edge of the ice platform and stared down into the swirling pattern of funnels.  “Is … Is there someway I can talk to Aeryn one more time before I do this?” he asked slowly.  “One last time?”

“It is not possible.  Transcending space in that manner would destroy this fragile construct, and render everything that we have done here irrelevant.  It could remove the potential for this single opportunity to succeed from all possible realities, unrealized or realized.”  Einstein rose to his feet and went to stand beside Crichton, waiting silently for his decision.

“What do I wear for this gig?  Could I get jeans and sneakers?  They’d be more comfortable for eternity.”  He barked a short laugh, trying to make a joke of it.

“You will emerge into the reality of that time.  The apparel is predetermined.”

“I hate the green shirt.  It scratches.”  Crichton looked around one last time, stared up into the starless black that passed for a sky, and then addressed a person who would never hear his voice again.  “Aeryn.  Wherever you are … fly safe.”  His breath came in long shuddering sighs as he fought back the despair.  “The way they’ve worked this out, I guess in a way I’ll always love you, Aeryn.  Forever.”

When he looked down, the snaking patterns of wormholes had merged into a single blue funnel undulating before his feet, beckoning to him.  “That’s the one, hunh?” he asked, hesitating.

“I regret that this is necessary,” Einstein said calmly.

“No, you don’t.  And this wouldn’t be necessary at all if some self-serving bastard hadn’t put the wormhole knowledge in my head in the first place.  The needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few.”  Crichton shook his head.  “What a load of absolute crap.”  He took a deep breath, and jumped into the wormhole feet first. 

   * * * * *

[KernilCrash]

Part 2

“Who's your daddy?!  Come on, you know who your daddy is.  Who's your daddy? … D'Argo!  Tell him who his daddy is!”  He slams Rinic Tolven down on the surface, angry that they’d been given something that would poison Talyn, and D’Argo’s deep voice sounds behind him, responding to his question as though they’d rehearsed it in advance.

“I’m your daddy!”

He doesn’t remember what has happened before this moment, but he knows that what transpires here is critical to the survival of Moya, Talyn, and everyone aboard both ships.  He’s almost out of control, because Aeryn remained behind with the copy, and he’s anxious to the point of explosion when he thinks of them together.  There’s no knowledge of how this duplication has happened, no expectation of what he’s trying to achieve, but he’s carried forward, words and actions magically provided for him as the microts march by one by one.  Tolven lies, Tolven dies by strannat impalement.  Bombardment from below, retrieval squads above, the two ships starburst in quick succession.  The other one has taken everything, Aeryn has gone with him.  He’s the guy who got left behind.

He strides around his quarters, discovering what is missing, scattering the chess pieces into clattering confusion.  “I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”  Another microt ticks by …

“Who’s your daddy?!”

Aeryn is going to leave him behind.  He slams Tolven down, hears D’Argo’s answer sounding behind him, and can only think that Aeryn is going to leave him behind.  And that he loves her.

   * *

Einstein watches as the snarling blue funnel tightens, sucks in the edges of its own vortex, and disappears into the hollow, collapsing in upon itself.  Somewhere on the other end of time and space where a reality used to exist that included John Crichton returning to Moya, the other end of the wormhole is doing the same thing, the two ends rushing toward the human trapped in the middle.  The visual disturbance winks out of existence with a final burst of light, and his artificially constructed surroundings are calm and silent.

Empty eyes consider the placid sea around the intact iceberg, seeing the possibilities that are opening up rather than the still surface, and he gauges his resources.  There is energy and potential left; he can continue the task assigned to him.  It is time to wander the crossroads and byways of realities, ensuring that their effort will achieve the desired outcome.

   * *   

“Who’s your daddy?!”  He remembers this happening before, but it doesn’t trouble him.  What troubles him is that Aeryn is going to leave him behind, and there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do about that.  He is something of a spectator as he yells angrily at Tolven, participates but devotes only a portion of his attention as the strannat kills the traitorous son, and continues to analyze the few memories that exist.

He finds something lodged deep within his own mind, hidden from rational examination but there to be found if it is the two-hundred-and-seventy-eighth time he’s raced back to Moya knowing that they have to flee the planet of Kanvia.  What he finds is a tangled bundle of interwoven equations, constantly churning to adapt to the conditions around him.  He runs toward Command as the bombardment from below begins, and analyzes the first level of symbols.  He doesn’t understand much of the information contained in the symbols, but it seems to have something to do with space, time, and movement within that malleable substance.

“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”  Another microt ticks by …

“Who’s your daddy?!”  The equations are still there, and he picks one fragment at random and begins to decipher it.  It’s something to do.

   * *

Einstein emerges into a place in the future, careful not to touch anything or even move.  If he merely observes, there will be no ripples.  But there is nothing left to observe.  There is a carpet of dense gravity points that glow warmly, the dying remnants of stars that went nova when they had consumed too much additional material.  They have been used as weapons, the stolen mass toppling their precarious balance of fuel versus fusion, and burned out in a frenzy of energy eons before the laws of physics normally would have ordained.

This is unexpected -- an unwelcome discovery.  Their calculations, their research, the permutations they explored all dictated that this would not happen.  Einstein searches for signs of the races that should inhabit this portion of space, and finds nothing.  He reaches out to touch his own species, seeking their specific signature and finds … nothing.  They are extinct; their realm has been destroyed.

His resources are failing, but there is time to explore one more reality.  This is the fourteenth that has yielded destruction, but he hopes that another will reveal a better outcome.

   * *

The first equation had been difficult, requiring that he decipher the meaning of symbols he’s never seen before in order to ponder the string’s significance.  He cracks a second.  The third and fourth come more easily, but it takes a total of six thousand, four hundred and twenty-one repetitions of his short life before he solves the fifth small mystery, and his world trembles for a microt.  He’s nearing the end, getting ready to scatter the chess pieces, and he devotes his entire attention to the emotions provided because they’re his single link to Aeryn.  He loves her, and he misses her with an intensity that makes the grief a pleasure because it is all he has left of her.

“ … he just better be taking care of her.”  Another microt ticks by …

“My name is John Crichton … Astronaut.  I was not at the refreshment house after hours.  I was not present at any bombing or explosion.  I did not have a private meeting with the beautiful Miss Sarova.  The end.  Cross my heart, smack me dead, stick a lobster on my head.”

This is new.

He pays close attention, gathering clues as to why he is standing with one of the ugliest, drippiest creatures he’s ever encountered on his head, and knows that the fifth equation’s solution and its associated shock wave are connected to this change in his ‘life’.  He has more information to work with this time, so he hopes it will take less than six thousand repetitions to solve the latest puzzle.

   * *

He comes before The Gestalt, the forty-second of his line to be known as Einstein, and stands diminished, no longer able to continue the quest.  There are an infinite number of permutations branching out from the single event that they adjusted, and they are exploring each and every one of them, looking for their future.

“Outcome,” the multitude demand of him.

“Destruction,” he reports.

“Constants,” they request.  If they find a single element that persists across all realities, then there is hope that something can be repaired.  They seek a clue to guide the search.

“None,” he says with his last breath.  “I require surcease.”

Another comes forth -- young, idealistic, transformed and ready to travel the rivers and oceans of time and space, seeking the branches that contain species survival.  He assumes the knowledge, takes into his soul everything that the previous forty-two beings known as ‘Einstein’ have learned, and pledges his life to The Gestalt.

“Go,” the new Einstein is ordered, and he resumes the search.

He wanders the alleyways, avenues, and thoroughfares, carefully mapping each twist and turn.  He finds shattered rock where once planets spun, debris where civilizations should have grown and held.  The hynerians have evolved into predators, feasting on a dwarfed race of reptiles that run from the hunters in fear.  Another turn in space and he finds a place where monstrous pale-skin quadrupeds with black eyes and the ability to foresee the future rampage through the galaxies, bending every other civilization to their mindless rule.  He rests there for twenty-six microts, puzzling how a species has reverted to walking on all fours and yet continues to conquer, finds no answers, and moves on.

   * *

“Cross my heart, smack me dead, stick a lobster on my head.”

The fifth equation is stubborn.  He has examined the rest of the tangle, looking for a different point to work on, but this one holds the key to unlocking too many others.  He sighs, watches for a microt as Talyn starbursts, lets his body turn to leave Command on its own, and goes back to his quarters while wrestling with the mathematical problem.

“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”  He always stops what he’s doing at this point, to send her his message.  He tried saying it out loud the last four hundred and six times, but his dialogue is permanently scripted for him, so he has to repeat it silently, the timing perfect after so many circuits through this moment.  ‘I’ll be back in a couple of arns, babe,’ he promises the one he has lost.  ‘I love you, Aeryn Sun,’ and then all disappears as his life starts over again.

“Cross my heart, smack me dead …”
 
   * *

A small group of ships is gathering supplies, preparing to flee another scene of conquest and death.  Known only as The Family, they are a strong, burgeoning clan that dispenses a compassionate rule to any who chose to travel with them.  Twenty-six ships travel in phalanx, protecting nine adult leviathans and four young ones.  Life and gestation goes on within and without.  Fifteen of the females living within the gentle beasts are pregnant; one of the leviathans travels without any occupants or burden of any sort as she is close to giving birth to her own infant.  The clan cares for all who come to them seeking protection and membership, provided they are willing to sacrifice in the interest of protecting the expanding community.

Einstein detects a potential for a positive outcome among the genetics of the base family -- those individuals linked together by the fragments of almost forgotten genes.  He seeks out temporary refuge among these people in order to learn more and is brought before the matriarch.

She rises slowly to her feet, standing straight and walking on her own despite her two hundred and sixty-two cycles, and comes to look at him more closely, one aged step at a time.  “I know who you are,” she accuses him, hostility apparent.  “I know you can see more than the here and now.  Look within us and see who we are and where we came from.”

He delves deep, tracing the bloodlines, and finds their beginnings.  The intricate combinations of proteins are there, buried under generations of breeding with sebaceans, but the influence of the almost forgotten genes emerges without fail every third generation to produce a crop of blue-eyed offspring who can control time, space, and destiny.  They do not meddle, they do not tempt fate; they use their special sight to find the pathways that will lead to survival, and let the rest of the universe spin into destruction around them.  There was a time recently when they exerted force, attempting to alter the inevitable outcome -- he can feel the bulge in the fabric of space where they tried -- but they stopped abruptly, and have turned their backs on that struggle.

“Help us,” he entreats, because this family can make the difference for countless others, and they have shown a willingness to participate.

She beckons to a child, one who hovers just short of becoming an adult, and he comes to stand under her arm, his blue eyes glaring at Einstein with undisguised malice.  She hugs him for a moment, affection clear in her embrace.  “This young man’s name is John,” she says, fingering his short, dark hair.  He stands relaxed beneath her slow, loving touches, comfortable with the attention from his great grandmother four times over, but without easing his obvious distaste for their visitor.

“Eight cycles ago, he went where he wasn’t supposed to before he could understand why we no longer explore those places.”  She leans her head against the youngster’s brown hair, tears brimming against wrinkled lids.  “This John discovered what you did.  We know the price John Crichton was forced to pay.  We will not help you.”

“The other one survived because of that sacrifice,” he protests.  “His choice resulted in this permutation.”

“He is John Crichton, and you gave him no other choice.  I know what moment he chose.  This young one found where he is, but could not release him.  You are cruel.  We will not help you.”  When she begins to cry, grieving for the one who still lives outside of time, he realizes that this is not her daughter.  He has come across Aeryn Sun herself, who has outlived the expected lifespan of a sebacean by dozens of years, and there is no hope of overturning her decision.

“You may stay until you are rested,” one of the older blue-eyed men invites him, showing the compassion that has made The Family a legend.  He stands to the other side of the woman, letting her lean on his arm when she tires.  “After that you must leave.”

He stays two solar days, gathering strength and learning of the resource his species has unknowingly discarded, then continues his journey, seeking out a similar permutation where their compassion might extend to his species.

   * *

“I'm makin' like an army!” he cries the answer to D’Argo, moves to another opening in the wall and shoots.  His lungs are burning, his heart feels like it’s about to explode inside his chest, and although it’s his eighth trip through this new portion of his life, he still thinks he sounds like a lunatic.

The fifth equation finally gave way before patience, and nearly a dozen more fell into place in quick succession, creating what had felt like the San Andreas of ripples through his limited universe.  He’s gained endless days of time to run his calculations and a slew of answers, including the answer to the mystery of the other John Crichton.  Aeryn is here, fighting alongside him, although they’re at odds over something.  He’ll take the rancor because it brings with it the gentle moments when he gets to sit with his head on her shoulder.  In a couple of arns he’ll be there again, overwhelmed with guilt because he screwed up more than once, but he’ll take the bad with the good.  It’s Aeryn, after all.

The battle ends, and he diverts most of his attention to catching the equations as they fly by.  He snatches at a small fragment, examines it, sees the next logical step, then devotes all of his attention to aiming correctly as he dives through the time rift.  He adds another symbol to his understanding, and this time he knows that his life has expanded another thirty-one microts into his past.  It never moves forward.  It never expands beyond the critical moment when Aeryn leaves him behind.

The end arrives too soon.  “I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”

‘I’ll be back in a while, babe,’ he promises as always.  ‘I love you, Aeryn Sun.’  He clings to his grief for an instant in time, his single link to Aeryn, and then …

“I'm makin' like an army!”  Ninth time around, and he still thinks he’s acting like a lunatic.

   * * 

“He found what you did. We know the price he was forced to pay.  We will not help you.”

He is the seventy-sixth of his line, and stands before another version of the aged Aeryn Sun, just as each of his predecessors did.  They have found no reality that varies from this one pronouncement, no relaxing of the iron core of her distaste for his people.  He nods -- a habit they have acquired after so many visits to this moment -- and chooses not to stay.  His time is almost over, his energy expended.  The Gestalt waits to reabsorb him and to pass his knowledge on to the next.

He passes on something new this time.  Despair.  They will not survive.

   * *

He’d cracked an important calculation over the last one thousand, three hundred and sixty-two repetitions, and it has given him back another huge span of days.  He can stride forward in time again and again, reliving moments of sorrow and joy, camaraderie and grief, touch the gleaming bronze hull, shy away from the loss of Zhaan, and embrace his friends.

The loss of Aeryn arrives, he stands in his quarters, frustrated and angry, scattering the chess pieces and then wishes he could hold his breath, because he remembers where he gets to begin now.  There is no jolt as he jumps back, he is simply at the new beginning.

“Been … thinking about that thing we talked about,” he says quietly to her.  The space station is a shambles, Borlik is dead, and the children are safe.  They’re alive, and she’s unharmed.  He doesn’t remember being happier.  “About charity, and … ah … maybe …”

“Maybe you were right.  We should do nothing.”  It’s not exactly the answer he wanted to hear, but she stands close to him, and the smile suggests that not all is lost.

“What about body fluids?” he asks.  She smiles at him, and there is no way not to smile back.

“There’ll be a backlog.”

Rygel floats near to them, overhearing only the last part.  “Fluid levels?  Back log?  Is there some kind of problem?”  The hynerian is uncharacteristically concerned, perhaps shaken by … something he cannot remember yet.

“Shut up,” he snaps, and feels joy at the small bit of banter.

“What did I say?” Rygel demands, looking hurt.

“Shut up!” he says again, and Aeryn’s voice joins in perfectly with his.  He is with Aeryn, and they are in harmony.  He nearly cries with the intensity of his love for her.

He remembers fluid levels, breath-stopping desire for her, and much more -- moments that he had enjoyed, but had taken for granted.  He’d taken time for granted until it he had to fight for every additional microt.  John Crichton traverses his life again and again, nearly ecstatic with the increase in longevity, no matter that the result is always the same.  He treasures and memorizes each fleeting moment over the next fifty-one repetitions, then settles down and begins working on the next calculation.

   * *

He comes before The Gestalt, the eighty-third of his line, and stands exhausted of energy, no longer able to continue the quest.

“Outcome,” the multitude demand of him.

“Destruction, annihilation, devastation,” he reports.

“Constants,” they implore, because they still hope for a way out of the future they have made for themselves.

“None,” he says with his last breath.  “I require surcease.”

Another comes forth to continue the quest, but this one is different.  They have chosen a rebel, a rogue mentality that has repeatedly refused to follow accepted doctrine.  This one bounces with energy, ricochets off the edges of the energy state that keeps this moment confined in time and space.  He drinks in the knowledge as if it were a tonic, his excitement growing with the acquisition of each fact, and proclaims “I am not Einstein.  I chose another name.”  He searches what the first eighty-three have learned, says, “Call me Hawking,” and refuses to pledge his life to The Gestalt.  He says that truth is more important, and vows to seek out the undiscovered permutations that no one has accounted for as of yet.

The Gestalt watches him depart, experiencing something very much like humor, and then turns back to the flickering energies that represent the slow demise of their species.

   * *

“You’re alive!”  He lunges into Aeryn’s embrace, kneeling in the cold, and he’s nearly mindless with relief.

It’s his first time through this period, and he likes the feel of her arms around him, but the magnitude of his relief would have him scared to immobility if that were possible.  He has to follow time as it flows forward, but he’s hesitant this time, because he suspects that something hideous has happened, and he doesn’t look forward to finding out what it was.  His universe lurches, and wobbles, sending out the familiar ripples, and he’s afraid that on the very next circuit he’ll find out what he’s missing.

   * *

The sleeper ships arrive, four of the original ten that departed.  The passengers are stacked in careful ranks, cryogenically preserved for the centuries-long flight.  The automated systems find a suitable planet and awaken the travelers.  They find the remains of a civilization of large predators, stare in interest at carven images of a reptilian species, and set up their temporary structures in the heat of late evening.  Hawking watches with interest as what appear to be sebaceans labor in the killing heat, lingers for nearly a cycle to watch as they colonize this abandoned world.

He is still there, learning of this new species when a wormhole opens and the colonists’ descendants arrive.  A new species disembarks, centuries of fast evolution separating long-sleeping ancestors from the new breed.  The first travelers were forgotten by the time the young ones learned the secret of spanning the universe in a flash of energy.  Neither group expected to encounter the other, and both groups are equally shocked and feel threatened.  Arrogance, pride, and a need to survive set them at odds.  Fighting breaks out.  The colonists wield aged weapons, destroying several of the newer ships because they take them by surprise.  The wormhole is used, snakes out, they lose control of the destroyer.

Hawking mourns the loss and moves on.  He travels back, seeking the overlooked elements.  Charrids become a food source.  Sebaceans fall to the nebari.  A new, unknown species arrives from a different direction, leaving nothing but charred cities in its path, and all of the species unite to stop the onslaught.  The advancing fleet is herded into a single location, and the destroyer lashes out again, wielded by the scarrans this time.  Victory for the alliance, and then they begin to fight among themselves once again.

Hawking watches as they lay waste to parsecs of space, and tries again.  He turns his attention to the forbidden regions, and travels back in time to explore where none of the Einsteins dared to venture.

   * *

You are … mentally damaged!” Rygel accuses him.

“No, I’m a guy!  A guy … guys dream about this sort of thing!” he objects, and he’d faint if he could because it’s Aeryn’s voice coming out of his mouth.

Rygel and D’Argo are staring at him like he’s absolutely insane, and he’s thinking that maybe he deserves it this time.  There have been some changes to his body:  a couple of additions and a fairly critical subtraction if the way these pants fit is any indication.  Despite everything that he remembers of his future, he’s going to give this situation top billing when it comes to ‘bizarre’.

He’s been adding time in leaps and bounds lately, averaging less than five hundred repetitions between each expansion of history, and he knows what his ‘life’ is now.  Finishing an entire revolving string of the equations has revealed that he is in a time bubble, the last remnant of a collapsed wormhole.  The ripples and earthquakes restoring his past are a physical signal that occurs whenever he manages to expand that bubble outward.  The center, the location of his sphere, is fixed in place, so history terminates at the same moment every time.  If he wants to regain more of his future, he’ll have to find a way to move the sphere … and he’s learned enough to know that he can’t do that from inside it.

He can’t remember how he got here, or why, but it seems irrelevant when weighed against what he will gain if he can get out.

He’ll be able to look for Aeryn.

Except … he appears to be Aeryn right now, and there isn’t a single clue how this has happened, except that Rygel is talking like a Peacekeeper hynerian, threatening to break his legs, so he suspects that John Crichton isn’t the only person aboard Moya who’s gone through a wild metamorphosis in the unknown recent past.

Several arns and a brief residence inside the gaseous Dominar later, he has his answers.  He pays close attention to his life until he links up with the part he remembers, then turns his attention to a different mystery.  He spends the rest of the loop puzzling over a single anomaly, comparing it to the calculations he’s been solving.  The formulas all say that he shouldn’t be able to remember from one time to the next.  What he is doing is theoretically impossible.

When he slaps the strannat on his head, he knows his time is almost up, and he decides that this line of thought is self-defeating.  The important thing is the equations.  Worrying about anything else is a waste of time … an item he has come to value above all else with the exception of Aeryn.

“Cross my heart and smack me dead.  Stick a lobster on my head.”  His truncated life is almost up.  He’ll send his usual wish to Aeryn, loop back, and get to work.

“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”

‘I’ll be back in a couple of cycles, Aeryn,’ he promises, expends his last microt hoping that she’s all right wherever she is, and then he’s back where he started.

“I’m a guy!”  Well … not for the moment he isn’t.

   * *

“Outcomes,” The Gestalt demands.

“Uncertain,” Hawking reports.  He bounces from one side of the enclosure to the other, energy intact.

“Possibility of survival?” they chant, hope awakening.

“Yes.”  He has not found the direction they must take, but he has found the absence of a set of possibilities.

“There is a constant,” they surmise.

“Yes.”  One single factor is missing, and he is certain it will make the difference.

“Share it with us.”

The knowledge of eighty-three Einsteins and a single Hawking is dispersed through an entire species, flooding throughout the mentalities that have conspired to control their destiny.  They examine the evidence, and they do not like the conclusions they are forced to make.

   * *

The oil soaked moon beneath him continues to burn, the planetary-sized inferno glowing behind the thickening overcast of smoke and soot.  Something is exploding down there, creating flashes that resemble lightning, yellowish incandescence flickering beneath the clouds of pollutants.  He tumbles for a moment, the motion unfelt in the absence of gravity, but the moon makes several fast orbits from above his head to beneath his heels and around again until something about his grip on D’Argo makes it stop.

He’s done this over three hundred times, and he still gets a thrill every time the oceans ignite.  It’s not every day that someone from … somewhere he still can’t remember … gets to burn an entire planet.  It had taken more than one hundred repetitions for him to get used to what’s going to come next.  He’ll be nearly frozen solid and gasping the last of his oxygen by the time she gets to them, and it will take arns before he feels like he’s thawed out.

She’s going to come from behind him, he knows it, and wishes that he could tug on D’Argo’s arm to turn him around so he can see when the Prowler appears in the eternally night sky.  He’ll pass out right after seeing the black rapier-shadow cut across the dim light cast by the gas giant, but he’ll go out watching Aeryn come to get him, and that’s worth a bit of hypoxia any day of the cycle.

   * *

The debate rumbles throughout The Gestalt for cycle upon cycle, the elements of the plan carefully examined by every member of the combined mentality.  Dissention and uncertainty -- two long ago discarded sensations -- are rediscovered.  The potential for disaster is great, the possibility of success dangerously slim.

“There will be echoes,” they worry.  “Echoes of his unrealized futures as well as those of the valid avenues that remain open.  He has already experienced one possible future.”

“He forgot his future almost immediately when he was first removed from the stream,” Hawking confirms, calling on inherited memories of an earlier Einstein.  “There was only the most instinctive awareness of the resonance of that path.  It could serve to guide him.”

“Others may detect the echoes,” they agonize over the unknown factors.

“Unlikely,” comes the dissenting view.  “None of the species living aboard the leviathan are that perceptive.”

“Maintain the current status,” the conservative portions suggest.  “Leave everything as it is.  Perhaps we will survive.  There are futures as yet unexplored.”

“We cannot,” Hawking informs them.  “He adjusts his environment.  The outer rim threatens to infringe on the plane of a wormhole.  The bubble will rupture, and he will die in the transition.”  Hawking is their servant, but he fidgets, impatient because their time is limited and the debate is taking too long.

“Adjusts his environment,” repeats The Gestalt, marveling at the accomplishment of a single mortal being.  “But there should be no memory, therefore no ability to effect change.  There was an unexpected permutation.”

“Yes, there was,” agrees Hawking.

“He must not be placed in the moment from when he was taken,” another portion of The Gestalt interrupts, returning to the more pressing problem.

“If he is returned to that moment, it will serve no purpose,” agrees a different grouping from within the whole.  “Another moment must be chosen.  One that embodies a different outcome for all.”

The weight of a civilization swivels ponderously to contemplate the single mentality that has managed to find promise where they were unable to detect any future at all, and places their survival in his hands.  “You have found such a moment,” they theorize, hope returning at last.

“Yes.  There is a place in the stream that has potential for success,” Hawking assures them, then issues a caution.  “There must be other alterations, however.  Certain events must be adjusted.”  He leads them along the pathways he has explored, pulling aside small events, pushing others toward the middle of that path, showing them how it can be done.  The ripples are few and will die out within cycles.  Their future stretches out before them with no end in sight.  They would survive.

The decision is made almost instantaneously.  “Do it.”  Hawking is given the energy and the abilities necessary to make the changes, and he goes to set a man free.   

   * * * * * 

[KernilCrash]

Part 3

Crichton watched the view of Moya expand in the forward portal of the transport pod.  There was no need to watch; the scene was identical to what he’d seen the previous thirty-three times through this moment.  Talyn was tucked in below his mother, the umbilicals still strung in place, using every available microt to transfer more of the filtered chromexthin to the injured gunship.  John shoved the control bar forward, his other hand instinctively running the sequences necessary to roll the pod over in preparation for docking, and diverted a majority of his attention to contemplating where he would find himself once the time loop began again.  He was dreading it.

When he’d expanded the time bubble thirty-three repetitions ago, he’d finally discovered why he hated and feared Scorpius so much, and how the neural clone had begun its life.  Bracing himself for the beginning of the loop didn’t help.  Nothing helped, and he generally lost several days of productive calculating to exhaustion and nightmares once they got back to Moya.  The urge to solve the next set of equations was nearing desperation level, but he was carrying almost too much in his head, and needed to write some of the calculations down.  There was the mathematical equivalent of a writer’s block building, and there was no way to relieve the nausea he felt when he recalled that he had less than an arn left before he hit the end of his ‘life’.

Time marched forward, and all too soon he was scattering chess pieces across the floor of his converted cell,  He snarled unhappily at D’Argo, and strained against the strictures of time, trying desperately to avoid what had to come next.  His efforts were futile.  Mind and muscle were useless when pitted against destiny.

“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her,” he said, and wasn’t even allowed to take several deep breaths to prepare himself.  Every moment of his life was prearranged -- every breath, every heartbeat … every scream.

He’d sent Aeryn the same message over tens of thousands of repetitions.  When he’d found this latest bit of his history he’d made a vow that he wouldn’t break his routine … but it was so hard to remain true to that oath in light of what lay ahead.

‘I’ll be back in a couple of cycles, babe,’ he silently promised the person who had left his life.  What he really wanted was to scream out loud for her to come release him from this nightmare of repetition; to either contract or expand his limited lifetime so that he wouldn’t have to face the same moment every time he started over.  She’d rescued him from the Gammak Base; he wanted her to rescue him from it again but in a different manner.

‘I love you, Aeryn Sun,’ he added as always, because it was his mantra, promising that maybe some day he’d find a way out of here.  And then another microt ticked by …

“Segment his mind.  As many layers as it takes,” Scorpius said from behind him.

His screams never varied.  He knew exactly when he’d draw in another breath through a raw, burning throat, and how long each screeching cry would last.  But he also knew from the previous circuits that Aeryn was safe aboard Moya; that Chiana has gotten away with the tissue sample; and that he’s going to hold out against the Chair, although in the end it won’t help Gilina survive.

They gave him a microt to catch his breath, the sizzling fury dying down to merely unbearable, and he tried with every fiber of his body not to hear the quiet slide as Niem pushed the control up to full intensity because he knew how bad it was about to get.  Scorpius moved closer, and he heard the click of …

“Can you check the environmentals?” Chiana demanded impatiently.  “The air stinks in here.”

John jumped at the sound of her voice and grabbed convulsively at the reinforcing strut arching past his shoulder, startled beyond a reasonable degree by the comment.  He’d been sitting in the midst of the squabbling group for arns, there was no reason for the nebari’s strident request to have set him off like that.

“Hey Crichton, you all right?” Chiana asked, leaning closer as he made several furtive glances around Lo’la’s cramped interior.

The subdued bickering of Noranti, Rygel and Sikozu was lost in the background as he tried to concentrate on Chiana’s simple question and sort out why he was so jumpy all of a sudden.  He straightened up from his slouched sprawl and stretched cautiously, half expecting the movement to hurt.  A muscle in the back of his shoulder cramped for a microt, the result of sitting for so long in an awkward position, but aside from an understandably numb butt, there was nothing wrong with his body that would explain why he was anticipating a backlash of pain.

John dragged his attention back to Chiana’s concerned question.  “Yeah, I’m fine Pip.  I must have dozed off.  For a moment I could have sworn I was somewhere else.”

“Wishful thinking,” she laughed.  “I could stand to be somewhere else for a few microts myself.”

“Fun traveling with …” he began, then broke off, thinking he’d just said that.

“Traveling with what?” she prompted, cocking her head to one side.

“I was going to say ‘kids’,” he answered slowly, still puzzled by the overwhelming disorientation.

Chiana’s next comment was interrupted by D’Argo’s grumbling voice.  “There she is.”  They all jostled for position, eager to see their leviathan home.  “Pilot, Moya looks beautiful,” D’Argo transmitted.

“We thank you, Ka D’Argo,” came Pilot’s pleased response.  “We are eager to have you back aboard.”

“Not as eager as we are,” John chimed in at the same time as Rygel.  Several heads turned toward him as their synchronized voices died away on a surprised note, and he shrugged, dismissing it as a coincidence.

“Open up the door, Pilot,” called Chiana.  “We’re coming in!”

“I don’t like this,” John said suddenly.  “D’Argo, there’s something wrong with Moya.  Someone’s on board.”

“All that time alone on Elack,” Rygel mocked in a growl.  “He’s gone completely fahrbot.”

“Shut up, Buckwheat,” John snapped at the still grumbling hynerian, and nearly burst out laughing.  There was no reason for the misplaced levity, only an overwhelming sense of pleasure that he could respond to the Dominar’s assessment, albeit with a rather empty comeback.  He jammed the inexplicable desire to giggle down inside his chest where it belonged and tried to concentrate on the other, equally mysterious impression –- the one that said something dangerous lay ahead.

“Very peculiar,” Noranti was mumbling repeatedly behind him.  He wasn’t sure if the old woman was referring to him or if she was picking up on what he was sensing.

“Pilot!” D’Argo called over the comms channel.  “Are you and Moya all right?”

“Yes.  We’re fine,” Pilot answered, sounding mildly annoyed by the question.

“Any unexpected visitors?” John inquired, leaning forward alongside D’Argo to get a better look.  “Got some passengers of any sort?”

There was a three-microt silence before a hesitant answer sounded over the speaker.  “No.  No … passengers, Commander Crichton.”

“That sounded wrong even to me,” Chiana admitted.  “There’s someone on board Moya, and Pilot can’t say anything without tipping them off.  Maybe … maybe it’s a trap.”

“Perhaps your Pilot …” Sikozu began with the self-important tone that suggested she was about to lecture them on the inner workings of a leviathan.

“SHUT UP!” four voices yelled at once.  The chorused bellow startled both Noranti, who had fallen asleep, and the young, arrogant kalish.

“One sure way to find out,” John said, feeling more at ease despite the growing tension in the small ship.

“Walk straight into it,” D’Argo agreed, sitting up straighter in the pilot’s seat.  Practiced fingers danced across Lo’la’s controls, activating circuits.  “Weapons are primed.”

John slid Winona out of her holster, checked the level in the chakan oil cartridge, and put the weapon away.  “Right.  I’ll take point.  Everyone else stay put until I give the word.”

The suspense inside Lo’la grew more palpable as they curved toward the motionless leviathan and felt the heavy tug of the docking web as it gripped their craft.  D’Argo began shutting down systems as they were hauled inside the hangar, ignoring Chiana’s impatient squirming in the co-pilot’s seat.

“Be ready,” John warned.  He stepped past Noranti, nearly tripped over Sikozu’s outstretched feet, caught his balance, and peered cautiously down the extended steps of the luxan ship.

“We’re right behind you, John,” D’Argo assured him, moving up behind him with his qualta rifle at the ready.

“Stay in reserve, big guy.  I’ll draw them out and when they try to fry my ass, you let them have it.”  Crichton ducked down to survey the waiting maintenance bay, then descended from the ship one careful step at a time.  The large chamber was empty.  He moved forward with Winona leading the way, sweeping the weapon from side to side, distracted by a sense that something momentous was about to happen.

Someone moved through the shadows at the doorway leading into the corridor, and he spun in that direction, nearly pulling the trigger in his haste.  She stepped into the muted light of the maintenance bay, and his stomach went soft and queasy at the sight of Aeryn walking toward him with a subdued half-smile on her face.

"Aeryn?" he asked, feeling the rightness of the moment and not believing it at the same time.  She nodded, her hair floating in sheets around her shoulders, and her smile widened.  “You’ve come back,” he said, stating the obvious.

She collapses into his arms, tears streaming down flushed cheeks, heat delirium threatening to take her away from him just as he gets her back …

“Hello, John,” she greeted him, moving closer, and he took a fast step away from her, suspecting some sort of trap.

She wears a cooling suit, the only thing keeping her alive …

“Scorpius!  Where’s Scorpius!?” he demanded, making another fast survey of the chamber.  Aeryn faltered, hesitated, and took another step toward him.  She wore her usual leather pants, knee high boots, and a black shirt identical to his.  “Who’s with you?  Where is that oversized cockroach?” he shouted, evading her outstretched hand.

“Scorpius isn’t here John,” she assured him.  The smile had disappeared, replaced by a worried frown and something more fearful, as though she were afraid for him … or of him.  “I’m alone.”

“No!  There’s …”  He shook his head, the pulse pistol wavering between Aeryn and the empty doorway leading out of the maintenance bay, and tried to remember what he thought was there.

“I came back to be with you,” she tried again.  “Everything’s going to be all right now.”

He stands in the livingroom, Livvie watching carefully as he talks to Aeryn, and his heart is close to breaking because Aeryn is crying like he’s never seen her let go ever before, and there’s something he can’t tell her …

John lowered the pistol in stages, wanting to trust Aeryn, but there was a nest of rattlers the size of Texas in his stomach and a quiet whisper of suspicion in the back of his mind insisting that disaster lay just around the corner.  He was aware of Chiana’s excited shriek behind him and D’Argo’s booming greeting, but his eyes remained riveted on Aeryn’s worried, healthy face.  “Pilot lied,” he said, inviting her to explain.

“I was in the Den when you commed.  He knew I wanted to surprise you, so he agreed not to say anything.”  Aeryn took a slow step forward, the smile and almost-tears reappearing.  “Everything is …”

His gloves chafe against the healing burns on his hands, but he barely feels the discomfort because there’s a lifeless creature lying on the deck in Command, and it means that he’s lost Aeryn.  He’d put a pulse blast into the bioloid’s head with full certainty that it wasn’t her, and yet for a single microt it had felt like he’d been shot through the heart instead.

“… going to be …”

They have Aeryn.  The scarrans have Aeryn, and they’re going to torture her …

“… everything’s going to be all right now, John,” she said.  Aeryn grasped his wavering, half-outstretched arm, and gently took Winona out of his hand.

Aeryn lies on a medical table, four vicious barbs embedded deep in her abdomen to hold her in place.  A charrid goes down, killed by weapons fire from the Rambo version of a DRD, and they run for Moya, fleeing for their lives.  He builds a nuclear bomb, and walks into a meeting between the scarrans and Mele-On Grayza in order to save the life of someone he despises.  Riots, death, Rygel spreads a plague, innocents gag out their last breaths, fissionable materials are hurtled into each other, critical mass achieved and the radiation will doom hundreds or thousands to an agonizing death.  He kills, and kills again.

“No, it won’t,” he mumbled.  Moya did the jitterbug for one microt, spun the maintenance bay around him in a slow barrel roll, and he was vaguely aware of a change in his orientation when his feet were mysteriously relieved of his body’s weight.

“John.”   Aeryn summoned him back from a fast waking nightmare.  He blinked several times, slowly regaining his senses.  He was lying on the floor, his head and shoulders in her lap, five other worried faces hanging over him.

“What happened?” he asked.  Her fingers were cool against the side of his neck, holding him securely against her so he wouldn’t slip off to one side.  Aeryn was strong and healthy, there was nothing wrong with her, and he was the one who had just passed out.

“You tell us,” Rygel demanded.  “You were on your feet, talking and acting no more sane than usual, then you keeled over as though you’d been stun-shot.”

“What did you do to him?” Chiana accused Aeryn.  “Crichton was fine all the way back here, then he just collapsed the microt you touch him.  You did something to him!”

“I didn’t do anything,” Aeryn snapped back at her attacker.  “What’s been going on?  What’s happened to John?”

“Stop it!” D’Argo bellowed into the escalating chaos, bringing the impending argument to a halt.  “John, what happened?”

Crichton sat up, allowing Aeryn to steady him for the first few microts, then reached up to take D’Argo’s hand and was levitated effortlessly onto his feet.  “I remembered … for a microt there was …”

“What?” Chiana insisted, sliding closer to place one hand on his arm.  She cocked her head, black eyes staring into blue ones as though she would find the memories displayed there.  “You remembered what?”

“I don’t know.  It was there, and it was clear and vivid, but now it’s gone.”  He turned toward Aeryn.  “You’re back.  Alone?”  The fear that she’d brought someone who was less welcome refused to dissipate.

“I’m alone … almost.  We need to talk about something that I should have told you about before I left, but that’s not why I came back.  I’m here because it’s where I want to be, and I’d like to stay if it’s all right with you.”

John looked at his companions, checking for their reactions, then slid his hand into Aeryn’s, feeling the warm pressure against his fingers that he’d missed for what felt like an eternity.  “It’s really up to Pilot and Moya,” he suggested.

“They’ve already said yes,” she told him, the calm smile reappearing.

“It’s all right with us,” D’Argo assured her.

“Are you the captain of this vessel now?” Sikozu demanded.  “You do not speak for me.  Perhaps I …”

Chiana whirled to face the newcomer, bounding across to thrust her face close to Sikozu’s.  “Yes!  He does speak for you.  D’Argo would make a great captain …”  The energetic gray form spun back toward where John and Aeryn stood together.  “What was that word you called her?” she asked.

“Sputnik,” John offered.

“If we need a captain, D’Argo would be great, Spud-nick!  And when it comes to this subject, he’s only saying what the rest of us feel!”  Chiana was yelling into the overwhelmed kalish’s face by the time she finished.  “I’m going to go say hi to Pilot.  I’ve missed Moya,” she added, and disappeared at a run.

“I wonder if there is anything worth eating in Moya’s foodstores,” Rygel said thoughtfully, and headed in the direction that Chiana had taken.

“I could make everyone a very nice stew,” Noranti added.  “I’m sure there will be something worthwhile left in storage.  I have some torafu root, and I believe there should be some velneckian cabbage left.”  She grabbed Sikozu’s arm and towed her out of the maintenance bay, still muttering recipes.

“Chiana’s right, you know,” John suggested to D’Argo.  “You’d make a good captain, D.  There are times when we could use a single person making decisions instead of our usual every-which-way-but-loose method.”

D’Argo smiled down his nose at Crichton, obviously pleased by the show of confidence from his friends.  “We’ve gotten along without a captain for more than three cycles, John.  Voting has worked well enough so far.”  He reached out to place a hand on Aeryn’s shoulder, welcoming her back with a touch, then strode quickly out of the maintenance bay, leaving the couple alone.

“Hey,” John said awkwardly, not sure where to start.

“Hey,” she mimicked, having learned the response long ago.  “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you.  It feels like you’ve been gone for millennia.”  ‘I’ll be back in a while, babe. I love you, Aeryn Sun.’  He stumbled although they were standing still, and she caught his arm to steady him.  “You want to talk?”

“Yes, I do,” Aeryn assured him.  “We need to talk a lot, but most of it can wait.  You’re still having trouble standing up; there’s something wrong.  I remember how to use the medical scanner, let me try to find out what’s doing this.”

“No, I’m fine.”  He wasn’t fine -- he was better than fine.  Aeryn was back, he was on Moya, he was home, and there was a chance they might be able to work things out this time.  There were people chasing them again, but they were used to that.  He was lightheaded and disoriented, but Aeryn always seemed to do that to him anyway.  There were things that he would need to tell her about, things like what had happened to him on Arnessk, but that suddenly seemed minor.  The disconcerted feeling that had started aboard Lo’la was fading, to be replaced by a compounding explosion of joy.  Aeryn was back, and not much else mattered.

“I’m good,” he assured her.  “What about you?  How you doin’?”

Aeryn moved closer, raising her head in tentative stages until her lips brushed lightly against his, inviting a kiss.  Gently at first, rediscovering the soft surfaces, then more demanding as they renewed their knowledge of each other, he kissed her, pulling her tight against his body.  “Wow,” he gasped at last, pulling away.  “You seem pretty good too.”

“I’m pregnant,” she told him without preamble.  “It’s probably John Crichton’s.”

Aeryn had just told him the one thing he’d wanted to hear coming from her lips, and in that moment he no longer cared that she had left without telling him of the pregnancy.  There would probably come a time when he would confess that he already knew, but that admission didn’t belong in this time and place.  There was something else that did matter to him though, because it would tell him more about why she had come back and whether he could trust her with his heart.

“His?” he asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“John Crichton’s,” she repeated.  “That’s why I came back.  It doesn’t matter which one of you, because I finally learned that there is only one John Crichton, and I love you.”

Dance, sing, jump around the maintenance bay like a lunatic, swing from rafters, scream at the top of his lungs, howl at every moon that they passed over the next cycle –- he considered each of those courses of action as the excitement left him dizzy and breathless, discarded them all, laughed into the side of her neck as he hugged Aeryn tight, then settled on kissing her until they both ran out of breath.

“I love you too,” he said on a sigh, and reconsidered the scream at the top of his lungs possibility.  It was beginning to feel like a necessity, along with swinging from the rafters and howling at the moon. 
 
* * * * *

John sat on the edge of the strategy table, swinging his dangling feet, and stared out at the slowly changing starfield.  Aeryn paused at the doorway for a moment in order to watch him, then entered Command, setting her feet down more firmly so that he would hear her coming and not be surprised.

“Hey,” he greeted her with a smile.

“Hey,” she returned automatically.  “Are you all right?  You’ve been quieter than usual lately.”  John patted the table next to his hip, inviting her to join him, and she hopped up into place.

They’d spent a lot of time in that particular spot over the past few days, sitting in companionable silence when someone else was in Command, and talking when they were alone.  There was nearly a cycle of their lives to catch up on, and they’d barely scratched the surface.  He’d started with the easy moments, describing his solitary life aboard Elack.  Aeryn had countered with her life among the renegade group of ex-Peacekeepers, describing her training and the types of bases she had lived on, and withholding all the most critical details.  Ten solar days ago, he’d ventured a little deeper, recounting most of their experience on Arnessk without getting into the details of his interrogation at the hands of Commandant Grayza.

“Scorpius isn’t dead,” Aeryn had argued when he finished.

He’d shaken his head, explaining, “Sputnik says he was still alive when they buried him, but there was no way for him to get out of there.  That hole was a motra and a half deep, Aeryn.  Even Scorp can’t shove himself out from under that much dirt.”

“He found me when I was on my way back here,” she’d confessed at that point. 

John had launched himself off the strategy table in one huge bound, backing away from her with another of the illogical bursts of apprehension that were becoming less frequent as the days slid by.

“What did he do to you?” he’d asked fearfully.  The idea of a ‘neural harness’ had popped into his mind as he’d waited for her answer, although he didn’t remember where he’d heard of it before.  “Is … he may have put a chip …”

“Nothing!  I swear to you, John.”  Aeryn had pursued him as he slowly retreated across Command, reaching out to him as he back away.  “He wanted asylum aboard Moya, but I wouldn’t agree to it.  I tried to kill him.  He was too strong for me, but I shot him and then I ran.”

Then she’d told him the rest of the story.  How she’d been preparing for a mission with several others of her group, and had suddenly, for no particular reason, decided to exercise her right to decline any operation that she didn’t like; how she’d packed her gear into her Prowler and set out toward Arnessk to track down the leviathan and her dispersed crew, but had run into the half-breed on a commerce station five solar days into her trip.  He’d asked for asylum, she’d declined, and he’d tried to take her captive to use her as a bargaining chip.  She’d managed to shoot him twice, injuring him badly enough that she could fight him off, retrieved the pulse pistol that he’d batted out of her hand, and bolted for the Prowler.

“At no time did he ever get a chance to put anything inside my head,” she’d assured John at the end.  “But he’s definitely alive, although he’s been stripped of his command and there are wanted beacons out for his capture as well as ours.”

He’d learned more about her life with the assassins from that conversation than during all the others put together, and he had not overlooked the trust she was placing in him by revealing some of the details about the group she’d joined.  That night, lying in the dark of his quarters with Aeryn beside him, he’d trusted her with the worst part of his time without her, trying to repay the faith she had placed in him.  She’d listened without speaking as he told her about his interrogation on Arnessk, her body quivering with fury at times, then she’d made love to him slowly and gently, avoiding the one touch that he’d told her he could no longer endure.

Aeryn nudged him, bumping him hard with her shoulder to get his attention.  “Something’s troubling you,” she suggested, bringing him back to his surroundings.

“It’s nothing I can put my finger on,” he said slowly, shaking his head the slightest bit.  “The others told you I cracked the wormhole equations …”  He left the sentence unfinished, making it neither a question nor a statement, inviting her response.

“Yes.  That new one, Sikozu, mentioned it several days ago … right before Chiana knocked her out.”

“Same thing as usual?”  The kalish newcomer had been decked by Chiana three times in the fifteen days since they’d returned to Moya -- the altercations triggered in every instance by Sikozu’s proprietary attitude toward Moya.

“Yes,” Aeryn said with a quiet laugh.  “She found her trying to override Pilot’s controls, told her to ‘frell off trying to take over’, and when Sikozu refused to stop what she was doing, Chiana resorted to a more physical form of debate.”

John nodded, a smile lingering in place, then returned to gazing out the forward view portal.  “Something inside my head has changed somehow, but it doesn’t seem to be related to solving wormholes.”

He remembers a not-memory, a wisp of recall that he doesn’t deserve to have, an instinct that doesn’t deserve to be felt.  Forces and influences converge around this leviathan, each rope of possibilities tugging it in different directions to achieve diverse outcomes.  No one person can comprehend where each of those hawsers will lead, but he feels the vibrations, the resonances that travel back along their fibers, and can sense which ones hum with disasters and grief.

“Not anything like a …” she said hurriedly, instantly concerned for him.

“Not a chip.  No, don’t worry.  Nothing like that.”  John rubbed the side of his head for a moment, trying to decipher what he was experiencing.  “Does the term déjà vu translate into anything for you?”

He hadn’t caught her at it, but he was certain she’d been teaching herself more English since she’d been back.  The mangled terms had been showing up with increasing frequency.  He’d nearly spit out a mouthful of his breakfast in a burst of laughter three days ago at one of her mistakes.  She’d tried to ask him about the ‘pens’ he’d manufactured to write in his journal once the writing implements from the command carrier had run dry, and had come up with a piece of male anatomy instead.  He’d explained the difference to her in private that evening.

“E stands for …” he prompts.

“Elevator,” Aeryn chimes in as he finishes writing ‘Hi There’ on a bomb.

“Damn,” he exclaimed as the image flicked by too fast to be captured.

“It happened again, didn’t it?”  John nodded.  Aeryn caught his hand and pulled it away from the side of his head as he began scrubbing at his skull even harder.  “That’s not helping,” she scolded him gently.  “I don’t know what that other thing you mentioned is, and if you don’t stop that, you’ll wear a hole in the side of your head.”

“Very funny,” he responded, and looped an arm around her waist.  “Déjà vu is when you get a sense that you’ve experienced something before that you couldn’t possibly have experienced, and it feels like you’re going through it a second time.  There are a bunch of theories about how one side of the brain receives signals before the other, and other psychobabble junk, but it’s just a phenomenon that doesn’t exist.”

“You think what’s been happening to you is this … dey-sha view?” she pronounced carefully.

“Something like it, only worse.”  John pulled at an earlobe for a few moments, still puzzling out his own reaction.  “Where are we headed right now?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I’m not exactly sure.  Avoiding the hokothian ship we detected took us a long way off our original course.  The last time I saw D’Argo, our new captain was headed toward the Den to talk to Pilot about finding our way back toward that wormhole you mentioned.”

Moya is in pain, her corridors clogged with runaway growth, the atmosphere thick with acid fumes.  They find a solution, but not before Pilot is overrun by the plant, and Moya drifts undirected through space, grieving for the loss of her partner.

“NO!” John barked abruptly.  “Pilot!”  He jumped down from his perch on the table and hurried toward the nav console.

“Yes, Commander Crichton,” came the usual calm reply.

“If it’s okay with our fearless leader Captain D’Argo, don’t move another motra!  How far are we from that wormhole?”  He punched up one display after another in quick succession, trying to get a fix on their position relative to the destination they’d chosen two solar days earlier.

“At least several arns of travel.  We have come to a halt,” Pilot reported.

“I thought you wanted to do some more calculations to make sure you could predict its appearance, John,” D’Argo’s voice joined in over the comms.  “To make sure you really did understand how the wormholes function.”

“Not anymore.  I’ve got a bad feeling about this one, D.  Pick another direction.”  Aeryn slid off the table and came to stand beside him, frowning at his nearly frantic demands.

“What is it?  What do you know?” she asked.

“I don’t know anything, Aeryn,” he replied, his voice rising with frustration.  “What I feel is that we shouldn’t head in that direction.  This is what I was trying to explain.  There’s no knowledge, only an intuition.”

“There is another option,” D’Argo’s voice broke in to his anxious explanation.  “Pilot was suggesting a new direction, one that would take us away from Peacekeeper territory, but it means --”

“Tormented Space,” John and Aeryn chimed together.

She took a quick step away from him, looking both shocked and cautious.  “How do you know about that area of space?  You can’t know.”

Aeryn … scarrans.  More heartache and anguish than one person can hold.  A litany of horror, pain, death, and mistakes.

“Must have heard about it from someone at some point,” he answered, starting to rub his head again.  “I think we ought to stay out of there,” John mumbled.  He swayed as the impact of an unknown memory left him mildly disoriented and unsteady on his feet.

“D’Argo?” Aeryn called loudly, then spoke more quietly to John.  “It’s happening again, isn’t it?  That thing we were just talking about.”  He nodded and hung on to the console for balance.

“I heard him, Aeryn,” D’Argo answered.  “What do you think?”

“I trust John’s instincts,” she said without hesitation.  “If he says stay away from Tormented Space, then I think we ought to go somewhere else.”  She took the one step necessary to return to John’s side, steadying him and pulling his hand down from the repetitive grinding that had begun above his ear.  “Which way?  Where do we go?”

An extended family.  Blue-eyed offspring.  A small armada full of friends, a multitude of species, laughing and fighting their way through the eons, exploring deep space.  A strong-willed, soft-hearted matriarch, carrying on for over one hundred cycles after her shorter-lived mate has lived out his life, providing gentle guidance and help to whoever asks it of her … without fail.  Luxans, sebaceans, nebari, hynerians, kalish … the community grows and swells until eons hence they return as a civilization, and watch over the newly evolved cultures who have sprung up where once sebaceans and scarrans bickered, fought and destroyed.

“John?”  Aeryn was holding his head and shoulders in her lap while the rest of his body shuddered from an impact with the floor.

“Did I do it again?”  He’d fallen over, that much was obvious, but he couldn’t remember anything of the intervening moments.

“Yes, you collapsed the same as that first day we all came back.  What happened?”  She helped him sit up.

“I don’t remember anything.  You asked which way to go, and then I was lying here.”  He made another attempt to get up, and she got to her feet along with him, steadying him until he could lean against one of the consoles.  “That way,” he pointed.  “Along the boundary of Peacekeeper space, stay the frell away from the nebari, and slide along the outer edge of the empty quadrant until we get to the far end of this galaxy.  There are areas out there that no one cares about controlling.  We can run and dodge and find a place where there are no wanted beacons or posses after us.”

“D’Argo?  Pilot?” Aeryn asked quietly over the comms.

“Agreed,” came the decision from the Den.

   * * * * *

“Unforeseen,” The Gestalt rumbled, examining the data delivered by Hawking’s successor.

“Fascinating,” the being known as Newton exclaimed happily.  Survival wasn’t guaranteed, but it was appearing in more and more of the routes into their future.

“Unpredicted outcome,” the energy of the species judged.

“An unexpected permutation,” their creation agreed, giving them a thumbs-up gesture that he had learned after observing the human for several cycles.  This one wore jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers, contemplated eternity and the universe from behind blue eyes, adapting with every successive generation to resemble the being that most interested The Gestalt.

“What was the unexpected permutation?” the progenitors inquired, still puzzled by the success of replacing a single individual in the time stream.

“Neither one would let go of the other.  We had not envisioned an intangible factor of that nature linking John Crichton’s enclosure to the life of Aeryn Sun.  Even with him in suspension, it became an anchor, distorting everything that touched it.  In time, the stress of that anchor would have destroyed the fabric of space, even if wormholes had not.”  Newton spun around, intending to return to his task of monitoring the fabric of space-time.

“This defies logic,” the multitude proclaimed, summoning him back.  “He was cut off from her, from all that he knew.  What permutation allowed such a bond?”

Newton shook his head, using the new gesture he’d learned to admonish the species that had created him, gave them the answer that they could not divine on their own, and departed.

“Love.”

   * * * * *

[KernilCrash]

Part 4

John yawned and stretched, hearing the resulting muted crackle as much through his bones as through his ears.  He unstrapped his pulse pistol and hung it on the rack in the corner of his cell, then slowly pulled his shirt off, pausing halfway through as though stuck in the garment before yanking it the rest of the way over his head.  He tossed the shirt into the growing heap of dirty clothes piling up in one corner of his chamber, then flopped down face first onto his bed with a long groan.

The day was supposed to have been an easy one, consisting of nothing more than a run to pick up some supplies, but their usual luck had prevailed.  They’d spread out through the merchandizing sector of a moderate sized town, seeking various supplies, and everything had progressed smoothly until a slave trader had climbed onto an auction platform towing a young delvian female.  John had spotted D’Argo and Aeryn watching the proceedings from different spots around the market area, had watched the bidding begin with a sharp pang of anger, and had turned his back on an event he couldn’t prevent.  A microt later he’d heard Rygel’s angry snarl, and had turned to find a riot already underway.

If he’d had to guess ahead of time, he would have predicted that it would be Chiana who would have started the melee, not the diminutive Dominar.  The delvian, it turned out, was barely full grown, a mere child.  She’d been traded from one owner to the next for more than five cycles in a slow journey away from where she’d been abducted.  Kept on the brink of starvation in order to make her docile, deliberately deprived of sunlight, she was thin, covered in oozing sores, and her hair had been cut down to a fuzzy ruff that scarcely covered her scalp.  During the flight back to Moya, Rygel had admitted that he had somehow managed to see something of Zhaan in the pathetic creature, and he’d flown his throne sled up onto the auctioning stage, hurled several foul epithets at the slaver, and tried to take the youngster into his own custody without bothering to bid on her.

John had seen Rygel’s head zig-zagging above the mob, making his way out of the chaos that he’d started, and had assumed from the erratic course he was flying that the hynerian had the delvian girl in tow.  He bolted in the direction where he’d last seen Aeryn, muscling his way through the crowd, and nearly ran into her coming the other way looking for him.  What had been a placid marketplace microts earlier was now a jammed-packed battleground filled with brawling individuals who seemed to be fighting for the fun of it.  Aeryn linked an arm through his so they wouldn’t get separated, and they began fighting their way toward where they’d left the transport pod.

“How the frell did this start?” she yelled over the noise.

“Well …”  John stopped long enough to duck a wild punch from what looked like a well-muscled ostrich with arms instead of wings.  “Two guys punched each other, then each of them punched two guys more, then those four …”

“Shut up, Crichton,” she demanded, but not without humor.  Aeryn kicked the ostrich-man between the legs, stepped over the squirming suffering creature, and led the way toward an exit from the market sector.  From four or five motras away they could see D’Argo standing head and shoulders above the crowd, and battered and shoved their way to link up with him and Chiana.  It was at that point that the bickering inhabitants stopped their fighting long enough to decide that the companions of the hynerian must be at fault for the riot, and a microt later they were running for their lives with more than a hundred angry townspeople pursuing them.

With Chiana leading the way, they dodged through a gap between two of the buildings ringing the open-air market, and fled through one trash clogged alleyway after another, trying to make their way toward where they’d left the transport pod.  They were within shouting distance of their goal when they rounded a corner to face a wall too high for any one of them to climb over on their own. 

“Quick!” John yelled, cupping his hands in front of him.  One strong heave boosted Aeryn high enough for her to catch the top of the wall while D’Argo came close to tossing Chiana clear over the barricade.  The two men turned and stared at each other, both of them trapped on the wrong side with the crowd approaching fast.  D’Argo cupped his hands, ready to fling John upward next.

“You first, then pull me up,” John ordered.  “Even with three of us pulling, we’ll never be able to get you up there.”  He braced his back against the wall and pointed to his upper leg, indicating where D’Argo should step first. 

“Aeryn!” he yelled, intending to ask for covering fire as the first of the incensed mob poured around the corner at the end of the alley.  Before he could finish his desperate cry, Aeryn and Chiana, both perched on top of the wall, opened up with their weapons, driving the crowd back. 

D’Argo took a running start toward Crichton, and went up his friend in two bludgeoning steps.  One foot smashed against John’s thigh, the next landed on his shoulder nearly driving him to his knees, and the crushing weight was gone.  He turned to find D’Argo’s hand reaching back for him, just out of reach.  Two fast steps and a leap, his hand slapped into D’Argo’s, and it felt like he’d been snatched off the ground by an over-stretched elastic band.  Three microts later they were all standing on the far side of the wall, panting and disheveled, but safe.  The rest of the retreat was hasty but uneventful by comparison.  Rygel, who had made his way uneventfully out of the disturbance he’d started, was waiting with the pod’s engines already running, the young delvian cowering in a corner as the four crewmates tumbled noisily into the cockpit. 

What should have been an uneventful afternoon of shopping had turned into another exercise in danger, confusion and near disaster.

John was yanked out of his reverie by the sound of the heavy doors of the converted cell swinging shut with their distinctive metallic grinding.  He lifted his head, watching with a visceral swell of pleasure as Aeryn flipped the curtains into place with an easy flick of the shimmering fabric and turned toward where he lay on the bed.  She detoured to hang her pulse pistol next to Winona then came to sit next to him, slowly unfastening her boots one buckle at a time, sometimes fumbling for several microts in order to release what should have been an easily opened clasp.

“How’s our new addition to the ship’s roster?” John mumbled, continuing to lie facedown.  “Still out on the terrace getting sunlight?”

“Yes.  Moya is going to stay in orbit around the system’s primary for another twelve arns.  Pilot has her angled so the terrace isn’t in direct sunlight -- we think that would be too much after so many cycles without enough solar exposure.  She’s scared half to death, eating everything Rygel takes to her, and she refuses to talk.”

John watched with amusement as Aeryn pitched her heavy footwear into a corner, followed by her socks and shirt.  She normally positioned everything neatly, squared to the shelves running along the wall, militarily precise even when undressing.  The fact that she’d adopted his method of discarding apparel meant that she was as tired as he felt.  “Give her time,” he said.

“Are you going to get undressed, or do you plan to sleep like that?” Aeryn asked.

“In a microt.  I’m trying to find enough energy to take off my boots.”

“You’re going to bruise,” she observed, leaning over his back to run her fingers across one of his shoulders.  “It’s a perfect footprint.”

“D’Argo’s heavy,” he answered, and sat up with a quiet grunt.  “Really heavy.”  John unlaced his boots and heaved them into the corner to join Aeryn’s.  She was sitting on the side of the bed, as motionless as he’d been a moment earlier.

“Are you going to get undressed, or do you plan to sleep like that?” he asked, mimicking Aeryn’s question.

“Like this,” she answered tiredly, and let herself tip over onto the bed.

John grabbed her ankles and swung her legs up onto the mattress, then unfastened her belt and zipper.

“What are you doing?” she asked, peering down at him suspiciously.  Whenever he began removing her clothes, it always led to something requiring exertion and she was too tired tonight.

“Hang on,” he said.  John grabbed the bottoms of her pants, and tugged the heavy leather off in a series of jerks, nearly pulling her off the bed in the process.  His pants followed hers into the corner, then he slid into bed alongside her and pulled the covers over both of them.

“What should we do about our visitor?” Aeryn asked.

“Let her stay until she wants to leave, same as everyone else,” he sighed, rolling onto his stomach.  John propped his head on his forearm and gazed at Aeryn as she stared up at the ceiling.  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered after several moments of quiet.

“If we take in every pathetic lifeform we come across, Moya will fill up.”  She reached across and tugged at his hair, staring into his eyes with an intensity that matched his.  “She’s not Zhaan.”

“I know she’s not Zhaan,” he snapped at her too loudly.  Aeryn started to pull her hand away and he caught it, trying to apologize with a small squeeze.  “That isn’t why I think she should have the opportunity to stay.  Our luck has to be some of the worst in the entire universe, but we have managed to haul our asses out of almost every disaster we’ve created over the past few cycles.  There are a lot of people out here who do a whole lot worse.”

“You want to turn Moya into a floating sanctuary, delivering every downtrodden soul from misery?” she mocked.  John released her hand and turned his back on her without answering.  “That came out wrong,” Aeryn said, trying to draw closer to him.  “It was supposed to be a joke.”

John shrugged beneath the hand she’d put on his shoulder, refusing to turn toward her.  “It’s okay.  I knew you didn’t mean it.  Problem is … that’s sort of what I wish we could do.  This isn’t an ark, and I know we can’t fill Moya up with two of every species, but she’s got room to spare.  We have room to …”  He shrugged again and didn’t bother finishing his explanation.

“Not all delvians are priests.  Their soldiers are fearsome, and you already know what happens if they begin to starve.”

“Which is why I though we’d put Sparky in charge of the sprout until we figure out what type of person she’s going to blossom into,” he laughed.  “If she decides she needs meat, we’ll hear his screams and know it’s gone all wrong as usual.”

“The next miserable, cowed, pathetic being we bring on board could turn out to be a bounty hunter or an assassin,” she warned, leaning her chin on his shoulder.  “We know from the wanted beacons that High Command has tripled the bounty for you and me.  Until we get out of Peacekeeper space, there are going to be plenty of hunters willing to risk their lives for that kind of wealth.”

“Grayza seems to be taking things rather personally,” John mused.

A brush with a Peacekeeper force a quarter cycle earlier had resulted in the discovery that Lo’la’s weaponry could take out a Vigilante class destroyer.  John had provided the bait for a trap by positioning the module where the destroyer would find it without becoming suspicious and then deliberately discharged every power cell so it appeared he’d been cut off from Moya by a malfunction.  It had worked, luring the Peacekeepers into range of D’Argo’s cloaked ship, but there hadn’t been a backup plan or a route for escape.  If their plan hadn’t worked, John would have been captured.

D’Argo had been almost as anxious as Aeryn over the horrible risk Crichton was taking, and he’d funneled every last bit of power into the single blast.  The Vigilante had simply vanished, transformed into a short-lived haze of energy and unassociated molecules, and Lo’la had been turned into a cold, airless container.  Moya had emerged from where she was hiding behind a planet, kept safe from the destroyer’s immobilizer pulse, and had snared first the powerless module and then Lo’la.  The two men were cold, mildly oxygen-starved, and unharmed, and they’d all rejoiced when they’d tapped into a Peacekeeper communication reporting that Commandant Mele-On Grayza was being transported back to High Command to face disciplinary action for her losses over the preceding cycle.

“How’d she get off so easily?” John asked disgustedly.

Twenty solar days ago, they’d found out that Grayza had returned to her command carrier, her position restored albeit with a minder in the form of Captain Braca, who had been given extraordinary command privileges to override her orders if he felt it necessary.  The rumors they’d heard indicated that the shared power was creating chaos and dissention aboard the carrier, but it hadn’t stopped the Peacekeepers from looking for the fugitives or increasing the rewards to a staggering sum that was attracting every bounty hunter in the Uncharted Territories.
 
“Probably frelled every officer at High Command,” Aeryn proposed drowsily.

“Mmmm,” he agreed, the conversation giving way before the first floating sensation of sleep.

Aeryn snuggled in against his back, a warm, soft presence that conformed to his body from shoulders to knees, and he struggled back to full waking awareness to reflect on how much he liked the warm swirl of her breathing against his shoulder, and the drifting tickle where her hair brushed across his skin.  She kissed the back of his neck, her lips soft against a point at the base of his skull, and he waited for what he knew would come next.   A moment later her fingers were there, slowly stroking one small point to the left of his spine, repeating a sequence that had played itself out several times over the last two days.

“Does it hurt?” she asked for what he thought might be the twentieth time since she’d stabbed him.  Her thumb rubbed carefully across the healing puncture, then her fingers returned to stroke his neck to either side of it.  John submitted willingly to her nearly obsessive petting, well aware that it was Aeryn’s way of dealing with the stress she’d been under when she’d created the wound.  He reached behind him, found one of her hands, and pulled her arm around him in an embrace.

“Stop feeling guilty about this,” he urged, kissing her knuckles.  Aeryn’s fingers brushed through the hair behind his ear, stroking his skull, then began their slow migration back to the point near his spine.  He waited through another round of the gentle petting, then tried again.  “You did exactly what I wanted.  It was perfect.”

She’d removed Harvey two days earlier, and it had been every bit as excruciating as when the chip had been put in there, beginning the clone’s cohabitation of his mind.

It had taken Aeryn nearly forty solar days before she’d even admitted that she had the device.  Scorpius had tried to use the promise of the silvery spike to convince her to give him asylum aboard Moya, but she’d been suspicious of his assurances and had turned him down.  In the midst of her desperate battle with the stronger, faster half-breed, she’d grabbed at the shining handle hoping for a weapon, and had hung on to it when she’d realized what she’d plucked away from his grasp.

There had been no guarantee that it would work as promised though, and she’d agonized over telling John about it for days.  They’d examined it together, spending arns in the maintenance bay trying to determine if it would perform as promised, and had been stymied by its circuitry.  It had taken another quarter cycle before they had come across a technician who could analyze the spike’s inner workings.  The expert had declared it a neural interface of some sort that was designed to interact with an extremely specific pattern –- but not destroy it.  At their request, he’d altered the device, swearing by all twelve of his deities that it would randomize only the targeted pattern and not the patient’s entire psyche when he was done.  They’d paid him for his efforts, returned to Moya, and placed the spike on a shelf, unwilling to risk injuring John.

That had changed six days earlier when the clone, in a fit of paranoia over his possible eradication, had stopped John’s breathing for almost one hundred microts.  They’d decided then that he’d have to be destroyed, no matter what the risk.

They’d tried to use it four times, and the clone had exerted the same control over John’s physiology that had allowed him to alter his energy signature aboard Scorpius’ command carrier.  Each time Aeryn got close to him with the spike in her hand, John went into respiratory arrest, struggling vainly for air with muscles that were under someone else’s control.  She’d finally told him that they would have to learn to live with Harvey, the spike had disappeared from his quarters, and Harvey had stopped interfering with the function of his body.

The night before last, Aeryn had commed John from the Den, asking him to come examine some bit of circuitry on one of Pilot’s displays.  The entire crew had been there when he’d arrived, which should have been a clue, but he hadn’t suspected a thing … and neither had the clone.

Aeryn had been perched on the consoles to the right of Pilot, and had asked him to take a look at something inside the station.  When he’d leaned across from the outside to look where she was pointing, everyone, including Pilot, had pounced on him, pinning him in place face down across the control surfaces.  In one swift, flashing move, Aeryn had driven the spike into the base of his skull, retaining the worst job for herself.

It had hurt like hell … and Harvey was gone.

“You did good,” he assured her again.  “We couldn’t discuss it ahead of time, and I couldn’t even think about you doing it that way, but that’s exactly what I wanted.  It was the only way to sneak up on the bastard.”

“It didn’t feel like sneaking up on the clone,” she whispered, her voice suddenly thick.  “It felt like attacking you without warning and driving something into your brain.  We all wanted to warn you first …”

“ … and you couldn’t because then Harvey would have been ready for it.”  Her fingers were stroking his neck again, slowly massaging the base of his skull as though she could smooth away the damage.  “I know I was screaming bloody murder, but that’s because you surprised me.  It was perfect, Aeryn.”  He rolled over and pulled her onto his chest, rubbing her back in long, languorous sweeps.

“We thought if everyone was there, you’d know that we …” she began an explanation that he’d already heard seven or eight times.  He’d bellowed and fought back for one instant after the unexpected attack, but the choice to have everyone tackle him had been the right one.  He’d realized almost instantaneously that if they were all involved, that it was probably something that needed doing, and he’d had a split-microt of relief before the initial panic had turned into blinding agony as the spike did its job.

“Aeryn,” John stopped her before she could explain it again.  He swept several loose tendrils of hair away from her face and tucked them behind her ear.  “Harvey’s gone, you’re here, it worked, I’m fine.”  He stifled her next comment with a kiss.  “You can skewer me in the head any day of the week, gorgeous.”

“You like getting skewered?” she asked, relaxing for the first time since she’d done it.

“Actually …” he murmured, kissing the underside of her throat.  “I like doing the skewering, if you know what I mean.”

“I do know what you mean,” she laughed.  “And speaking of skewering, that reminds me …”  Aeryn grasped his head in both hands and thumped it firmly into the pillows, interrupting a slow migration of kisses that seemed to be headed down her chest.  “You know Chiana and D’Argo have …”

“Yes, I know,” he answered before she could finish.  “I saw him sneaking into her quarters six nights ago.  He’s a lot calmer and more balanced these days.  It’s helping Chiana get over what happened to her.  I’m glad they made up.  They’re good together.”  John looked up at her with a grin on his face.

“What?” Aeryn asked, puzzled by his expression.

“We’re good together,” he answered, rubbing her back as though he couldn’t get enough of the touch of her.  Aeryn lowered herself into the warmth of his embrace.  They lay quietly for some time, the gentle rumbles of Moya the only sound in the chamber.

“Lumpy,” Aeryn commented at last, easing off him.

“Not exactly a featherweight blanket yourself,” he observed, shifting to one side of the bed.  They shuffled around until she was curled on her side, John tucked in close behind her with his arms around her.

He took a deeper breath, sighed, and then asked, “So what do you want to do about the suspended animation tadpole?  Do we wait for nature to let junior start growing, or is there somewhere other than a command carrier where we can jump start his progress?” 

“Her,” Aeryn said firmly.

“John Junior,” he countered.

“She’s going to have a tough time growing up with a name like that.”  She kicked his shin lightly with her heel, and twisted around to watch his reaction.

He laughed into the side of her neck, his breath warm against her skin, then leaned around her to give her a light kiss.  “Fine.  It’s a ‘her’.  Answer the question.”

Aeryn turned away from him, and spent several moments getting comfortable inside his arms again.  The silence continued for so long he raised himself up on one elbow to see if she’d fallen asleep.  She was frowning, staring into the gloom of the darkened chamber.

“You don’t want to release the stasis,” he said with certainty.

“Is this a good time to do this, John?  Life hasn’t been easy this last cycle.  My ability to fight will be compromised during the pregnancy; you know everyone on board will begin concentrating more on protecting me than on doing whatever is necessary to survive.  We’re short on food again, Moya’s tired.  We’re being chased.  It will be an incredibly dangerous life for a small child.”  She turned to look up at him.  “Is this a good idea?”

“How long do we have to make up our minds?”

“I don’t know.  Anywhere from a few days to several cycles.  I’m fairly sure I know when this happened, but I can’t be absolutely certain without a test.”  She reached up to finger a rogue tuft of hair that was standing straight up on his head.  “And I want to be sure it’s yours.”

“His?”  It was out before he could stop himself.  He knew without any lingering doubt that Aeryn didn’t consider him a copy, but the occasional stray thought of the other John Crichton bothered him in ways he couldn’t begin to explain even to himself.

“John Crichton’s.  There’s no difference as far as I’m …”  She stopped and frowned.

Her mind and will remain strong, but her body is giving away before time.  Her great-grandson sits to her right, steadying her when the pain in her chest becomes most severe, and supporting her failing muscles when she tires.  It is her last day; she is sure of it.  She sits at the table in Command aboard the aging leviathan named Moya, with her family around her.  The ships of The Family range out around them, already grieving for the impending loss of the second half of the pair that gave this community life.

“John,” she calls to the latest of her descendants to wear that name.  He is not yet thirty cycles old, a grandson several times removed, and looks so much like her long-departed love on the day that she met him that she nearly breaks down in tears.  “Sit by me for a while.”

“Yes, Gran,” he says, tears streaking down his cheeks.  He slides into place on the other side of her, and hugs her carefully.

“Don’t cry, young one.  It’s my time.  He’s waiting for me.”  Her family has gathered aboard Moya to be with her.  She is surrounded by the evidence that she was loved by the most special of individuals, dark brown hair and blue eyes scattered throughout the assembled group.  John has been with her every single moment since he passed on, his genes close to hand as she tried to continue his traditions of compassion and fighting to keep every one of the group safe, whether they be family or friends.

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your old quarters?” her great-grandson asks.  “We made it up for you the way it used to be.”  Moya is not ancient, but she is aging.  There is always a small contingent aboard her to keep her company, for she enjoys the presence of others, but she is no longer required to carry any more than the smallest burden.  There are other, younger ships that are both pleased and proud to transport the community.

“No, this is good,” she answers.  “This is where it should happen.  I like it here.”

There are two Talyns in this fleet.  There is her great-grandson who sits beside her, a strong, capable man who was the first of the blue-eyed descendents to inherit the generation-skipping genes that contain the knowledge of wormholes; and there is the massive leviathan hovering protectively to the treblin side of Moya, the first of the crop of youngsters born to their original gentle host.

“Yes, Gran,” he replies, his smile no stronger than the young John’s.

This is where her love had chosen to end his life, sitting in Command watching the stars wheel slowly around him, looking into the darkness of space with the same active, inquiring mind that had brought him to her in the beginning.  Some careful tinkering by various diagnosans and other medical specialists had given John some extra time, but his one hundred and eighteen cycles hadn’t been enough to match her own longevity.  The day had come when she’d held him as she was being held now, and watched him slip away.  Alert and cheerful to the end, he’d smiled and called her the radiant Aeryn Sun with his last breath.  She’ll follow him in the same manner, with their progeny all around her.

Heavy footsteps hammer in the corridor, heralding the one person who has stayed with her through all the changes.  Sikozu and Noranti had departed early on -- one to pursue a mysterious mission she’d never described, the other one taking her leave muttering of a purpose that was no longer required.  They’d said goodbye to Rygel next.  He’d eventually resumed his throne after a group seeking reforms had assassinated his cousin, Bishan.  The Dominar had grown into a corpulent but benevolent tyrant who was adored by his subjects.  Ruling from behind a pile of marjoules, he’d sneered at the concept of democracy, and had dispensed a compassionate but firm autocratic rule, rarely speaking of the experiences that had taught him about compassion.  Chiana had eventually taken her leave of them as well, disappearing into nebari space to join the resistance, trading one life of chaos and danger for another, always seeking out the thrills and excitement.

“Aeryn!” D’Argo exclaims, hurrying in.  Fully one fifth of the small fleet’s population is luxan.  One tankta’d straggler after another joined on after their territories fell to the scarrans, finding refuge and welcome.  The luxans are exuberant fighters, devoting heart and soul, if not always reason, to the safety of the migrating group.

“D’Argo,” she greets him warmly, gesturing for him to join her.  Talyn slides out of the way, letting Aeryn’s old friend take his place, and she sits much as John had sat on his last day.  She has D’Argo to her right, a look-alike of John Crichton to her left, and she is happy.

“It’s too soon,” her long-time comrade protests.  “Don’t go, Aeryn.”

“I have missed him every single solar day since he died,” she says.  “I never believed in an afterlife when I was young, but I believe I’ll see him again very soon.  I want to be with him, D’Argo.”

He nods, unable to speak, and hugs her carefully, mindful of her cycles.  He swallows hard, and tries anyway, his voice rasping and cracking with the strain of holding back the unshed tears.  “Say hello to that upper reasoning deficient excuse for a lifeform,” he whispers roughly.  “Tell him I miss him.”

“I will.”  She turns toward the clamshell next, and calls toward the person whose DNA she still carries after all these cycles, their special bond unbroken by the passage of time or the birth of each successive generation.  “Pilot?”

“Yes, Officer Sun,” his aging voice returns the same reply as always.

“Thank you both.  For everything.”

She thanks him for all the years that he and his huge partner have provided them with a home and watched over them; for the good moments as well as the bad; and for those first few days after John’s death when they’d let her drift aimlessly through Moya’s corridors with no one else aboard to disturb her meanderings through her memories.  There had been laughter and joy, and incredible sorrow during the cycles they’d lived within these burnished golden walls, and she had revisited every one of them in the days that she’d spent wandering up and down the tiers, working her grief out in her own way.

Then, as now, she’d been surrounded by the mental reminders of their life together -- the birth of their first child; the cruel death of three of their grandchildren during an unprovoked attack by an unidentified alien ship; life, death, laughter, anger, times of plenty, moments of near starvation.  She had willingly faced it all because John was by her side.  Losing him a second time had been no easier for the cycles they had spent together.  The first had gone too soon.  The second had spent his life with her, and she’d discovered that the loss was more intense despite the peaceful circumstances of his death.

 “Thank you,” she repeats to Pilot and Moya, because aside from D’Argo, they are the only ones who have been here right from the beginning, and they know better than anyone else what type of life it has been.

“Thank you, Aeryn.  Moya and I … love you.  Find peace.”

“I believe I will,” she answers.  “Goodbye.”

She hugs the young John, feeling his sobs through that contact, then turns to look at D’Argo one last time.  “The first day we met, he said I could be more.”

“He was right -- you are,” he assures her.  “John was always so proud of you.”

She smiles, looks one last time at friends and family, and then she lets go, satisfied that this group will survive and grow without her to watch over them.  And she can feel him waiting for her.

“Change your mind about it being a girl?” John asked.  He sat up straighter, watching with concern as her expression eased from a frown to an anxious look of uncertainty.  “Aeryn?  What’s the matter?”

“I had one of those strange flashes you used to talk about when we first came back aboard Moya.”  She shook her head.  “That is the weirdest sensation.  Just for a microt … I could have sworn.”

“You’re crying,” he worried.

Aeryn let out a huge sigh, laughed, and wiped away the streams of tears.  “I don’t know what happened.  I don’t like that déjà vu thing of yours though.  That’s eerie.  It’s like … it’s like getting a quick taste of what tomorrow will bring, but not enough to know for sure.”

“What triggered it?”  He started to get up, concerned by her tears, and she pulled him down.  John subsided slowly, still worried by the emotional outburst.  Aeryn rolled onto her back to she could look up at him, concentrating on the elusive moment that had disappeared faster than it had played out in her mind.

“I don’t remember.  It was exactly the way you described it.  It’s there, leaves you shaking, and then it’s completely gone.  I can see why you were glad when they stopped.”  She tugged at his hand, trying to get him to lie down beside her again, but he stayed where he was, sitting alongside her slowly fingering the loose strands of her hair away from her face.

“Let’s take this junior thing one step at a time,” she suggested, returning to their discussion.  “A diagnosan can do the tests for us.  Let’s find out how long we have, and make sure who the father is, then we can go from there.  Will that do?”

“That’ll do,” John agreed.  He leaned down, placed his lips against the smooth skin of her belly, and growled to the life waiting within her.  “Who’s your daddy?”

“We have time,” Aeryn said on a laugh, scrubbing her fingers through his hair until it stood on end all over.  “Lots of time.”

   * * * * *


Thanks for reading,

Kernil Crash

Purveyor of Hallucinations