A Taste Of Tomorrow - 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 into 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’.

He scattered the chess pieces across the floor of his converted cell, 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 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 moments 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
t-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 barely aware of a change in his position when his feet were mysteriously relieved of
the weight of his body.

“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 even if he’s in two places at once, 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 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.  He’d shoved 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.

“Nothing!  I swear to you, John.”  Aeryn had come toward him, pursuing his slow retreat across Command.  “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 refuge, 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 during 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.”  

                                                                           * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Part 2                                                                                                                                                                                                 Part 4
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