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Part 1: DK
DK had arrived at his office at IASA about an hour earlier that morning, and was studying data that had recently been returned from Mars by an unmanned probe. The phone on his desk rang, and DK picked it up distractedly. “Hello?”
There was a slight intake of breath and then a silence on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” DK asked again. There was still no answer, and he shrugged and started to hang up the receiver. As he did so, he heard a voice, and returned the receiver to his ear.
“No, no-no-no-no-no, DK, don’t hang up!” came a frantic voice that sent shivers down his spine. He shook his head, pushing unbidden remembrances away, and said cautiously, “Yes?”
“DK, uh, DK, it’s me, man. John.” The voice and the name were that of his best friend from childhood – a man he had helped send to his death four years before. “DK? Are you there?”
“I don’t know who you are, but this is a pretty poor joke.” He reached to hang up the phone once again, but something stopped him.
“DK, DK, please don’t hang up,” the familiar voice was saying. “I know I’ve got a lot of explaining to do, but not on the phone. Please. Can you do something for me?”
In a bit of a daze, DK heard himself saying, “What?”
“Does my dad still live in the same place? And is he still at IASA?” Now, that, DK thought clearly, sounded like John Crichton. His father had always been the defining factor in his life.
“Yes, to both questions,” he said, thinking he was being remarkably lucid here, considering how much his brain was whirling around. “Why?”
“DK, I’m asking you to make a really big leap of faith here. I know you must be wondering who the hell this really is, and why I’m bothering you…. I’ll explain, I promise. But can you do something for me? Can you get my dad? Call him, ask him to come with you, no questions asked? Bring him out to the house. I’ll be there, in the backyard. I need to talk to you both, privately. Please.”
“You’re asking a hell of a lot, John, if it really is you…. Your dad’s going to want explanations, you know how he is…. I haven’t talked to him since, since we stopped looking for you.” And what the hell am I doing, talking to a ghost?
“It’s important. You can do it, just tell him, I don’t know, tell him anything.”
The voice on the other end of the phone was getting agitated. DK took a deep breath. “Why don’t you just call him yourself?” he asked reasonably.
“Because,” John, or whoever it was, said softly, “I need to see him, and I want him to be able to see me from the first. And I don’t want my voice on his phone where it might be recorded by random security.”
“What is this all about?”
“Do I have to spell it out, DK? We both know if I’m who I say I am, a lot of people are going to want to talk to me. And I don’t want to talk to them.” There was a pause, and he continued, “Please, DK. Just do this one thing for me. Don’t tell anyone. Bring my dad to the house, let me talk to you both for a little while. After that, we’ll see what you need to do, okay?”
This is insane, he thought, but he heard himself saying, “I’ll try….John. I’ll try. Where can I reach you?”
“There’s nowhere you can call. Just bring my dad to the house. I’ll be in the back. Please, DK, I’m begging you, don’t tell anyone else.” And with that, he hung up.
DK sat and held the telephone receiver in his hand, listening idly to the dial tone and staring at the portrait on his desk of his wife and 2-year-old son, while his mind raced.
As he drove to Jack Crichton’s home, DK kept looking over at the man in the seat next to him. John’s father had a studied blank look on his face. DK couldn’t think of anything to say, since he was sure John didn’t want his father forewarned – and why was he thinking of the mysterious voice as John? John was dead.
“This is about John, isn’t it?” said Jack. He turned and looked at DK. “They’ve found the module.”
Careful, careful. “Sir, do you really think that if they’d found something, they’d have sent me to tell you about it?”
Neutral, but a little more relaxed, Jack said, “I suppose not.” After a few more moments, he asked, “Where are we going?”
“Your house, Sir.”
“Why?”
“In all honesty, I’m not sure. If it turns out to be nothing, you can kick my backside all the way back to IASA.”
“I’ll do that, son,” Jack said, and lapsed back into silence. After a few minutes he changed the subject. “How’s the baby?”
DK smiled. “He’s doing great! He’s two now, and walking and talking and getting into everything!”
“That old already.” Jack shook his head. “He must keep you and your wife busy.”
“He sure does. We wouldn’t miss it for the world, though.”
After a moment Jack commented, “John was sure a handful at that age. I imagine you were, too. Make time to enjoy his childhood.”
“We do. Every minute.”
“Good. I wish I had.”
They pulled up in the driveway of the house, and got out of the car. Jack started towards the front door, but DK led him around the side of the house to the gate for the backyard. Unconsciously, DK kept to the front, intent on seeing what was waiting for them. But Jack was right behind him as he opened the gate and they started through together.
At the back of the yard, standing in front of the gazebo, were two figures clad in long black coats, facing each other and leaning together so their foreheads touched, hands on each other’s upper arms, as if they were holding each other up. There was some kind of bag on the ground next to them. For a long moment, they didn’t move, though they must have heard the gate open. Jack started across the lawn without speaking, and DK followed a few steps behind.
The figures across the yard stood up straight, and DK could see that they were a man and a woman, both dark-haired, the woman with a tight braid down her back. Primed as his brain was by the phone call, the man certainly looked like John Crichton. Jack saw it too, and stopped, as “John” started towards him slowly.
The woman stayed where she was, as DK did, watching warily.
“Son?”
At the sound of his father’s voice, John stopped. “Dad.”
“John?”
The coated figured started moving again, and this time the two ended up staring at each other from only a few feet apart. The woman in the distance shifted her stance, giving every appearance of watching anxiously. DK was fascinated. He didn’t even see the two men make the decision to wrap each other in a bear hug, but the woman picked up the bag and started moving forward immediately when they did, to stop four or five feet back of John, hovering.
DK shifted his attention back to the father and son, and John looked over his dad’s shoulder at his friend. “Thanks for trusting me, man,” he said.
“I, uh, couldn’t take the risk. I mean, if it was you…hell, I had to see you.”
“There’s not a squad of Marines or a SWAT team preparing to move in, is there?” John asked in all apparent seriousness.
“No.” It was all he could think of to say, but apparently John believed him. DK realized that he really did believe that this was John, back from the dead somehow.
John backed off a little from his father and smiled.
Still stunned, Jack said, “Is it really you, Son? Where have you been?”
“That,” he said, including DK in the reply, “is a very long story. The short of it is, yes, it’s me. Stuff has happened, a lotta stuff, but, it’s me…. The Farscape module and I got sucked into a wormhole and ended up a long ways from here in a very bad place and couldn’t get back. I, uh, can’t stay here forever. How long I can stay depends on whether you guys think you have to turn me in…. “
DK blinked. “I knew it was a wormhole!” he said to John, letting the rest of John’s statement washed over him uncomprehended. “We never had any good readings, but it was the only thing I could think of that fit the data we did have. There wasn’t any debris….” He trailed off suddenly.
“Aw, DK,” John said softly, and moved over to hug his friend. “I’m sorry,” he said, “both of you,” he added, looking over at his dad. “I’m so sorry.” He backed away from DK, and the three men looked at each other for a moment.
Then John looked back over his shoulder and smiled at the woman with him. DK followed his gaze. She smiled for the first time, and DK found her face dazzling without the anxiety showing. John reached for her free hand and pulled her forward to stand beside him.
“Aeryn,” he said, gesturing to Jack and DK, “this is my dad, and my best friend DK.” He put his arm around her waist and continued proudly, “Guys, this is Aeryn Sun, my wife.”
“Hello,” she said in oddly accented English. She held out her hand awkwardly to Jack, who looked back and forth from John’s face to hers, and then took her hand. She shook hands solemnly, and nervously, DK thought.
Aeryn retrieved her hand and looked around the yard critically. After a moment she spoke matter-of-factly to John, but her words were incomprehensible. Jack and DK exchanged glances then. John, oblivious, said to Aeryn, “Probably a good idea.”
He turned back to his father and said, “Can we go in the house? It’s pretty exposed out here.”
Jack and DK exchanged more glances. Jack nodded. “Sure, Son. If that’s what you want.”
John sighed, but Aeryn nodded in apparent satisfaction and said clearly, “Thank you.” John took her hand, and the two of them and DK followed Jack into the house.
Once inside, Jack led them to the family room, and old habits of hospitality kicked in. “Would you like something to drink?” he offered.
John brightened perceptibly at the question. “What do you have? Do you have Coke? Root beer? Any beer? Lemonade?”
Taken aback, Jack said, “Well, I’m sure there’s a fair collection of different things, why don’t you come with me to the kitchen and pick something out?”
“This is great!” he exulted. “Aeryn, what do you want? I bet he’s got Coke! You can try Coke! Or orange soda!”
Aeryn gave him a long-suffering look and said something briskly. John grinned, and she smiled and added something in a softer tone. He said, “Okay,” then leaned over and kissed her forehead and headed for the kitchen.
DK was sitting on a chair kitty-corner from Aeryn. He studied her openly, fascinated by her beauty and the odd language she spoke – and by the fact that she appeared to understand English with ease even though she didn’t seem to speak it.
It wasn’t until John was completely out of her sight that she stopped following him with her eyes, and then she looked around the room cautiously, as if something might leap out to bite her. DK himself she seemed to dismiss from her concerns, until his voice startled her.
“So, you’re John’s wife,” he said, kicking himself for stating the obvious.
“Yes,” she smiled.
“You look happy together. How long have you been married?” he asked.
Aeryn replied in what he had come to think of as her own language, though it didn’t sound like any language DK had ever heard. “I’m sorry,” she said in English, realizing he didn’t understand her.
“You understand English, don’t you,” he asked, “even though you don’t speak it.”
“Yes,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“And John doesn’t speak your language, does he?”
“No. A little.”
“But he understands you. How,” he started, “No, I’m sorry, too complicated for you to answer, right? John can tell us.”
“Yes,” she nodded seriously, and looked back towards the kitchen, from which could be heard clinking and clanking, and John’s excited voice.
“I can’t believe he’s all right,” DK heard himself saying. “I thought I’d killed him with that damned project. He was so excited about it, he worked so hard – and then he was gone.” Embarrassed, he gave a crooked smile. “But here he is, back from the dead.”
This time it was DK who glanced towards the kitchen, and Aeryn followed his gaze hopefully.
“Hey, don’t worry, he’ll be okay. His dad would fight off the hounds of hell to protect him.”
Aeryn gave him a look that he found hard to interpret, but his best guess would have been, “What ARE you talking about?”
As John and his father still hadn’t reappeared, DK continued playing twenty questions. “There are humans where you come from. Is that what John is worried about, our reaction to there being humans outside this solar system?”
“No.” She smiled wistfully and continued in her own language. The only words he understood were, “human,” “Earth” and “John.”
“You look human,” DK said slowly. “But you’re not.”
“No. Sebacean.”
“Se-bay-shun,” he tried.
“Sebacean.” Aeryn nodded, apparently indicating he was close.
At that moment, Jack and John came back in, Jack with a somewhat bemused expression on his face, and John carrying a tray covered with assorted cans and bottles.
“Aeryn, Baby, look at all this!” he enthused as he set the tray down on the coffee table in front of her. “Look, this is Coke, Dr. Pepper, um, here’s a Heineken – that’s real beer, not fellip nectar – um, this is a different beer, this is 7-Up….” He stopped when he saw that she was looking far less excited than he was.
Aeryn gestured towards the tray and said something very bluntly.
Pulled up short, John replied, “Most of them. Except for the beer. They’re soft drinks.” He popped the tab on the Coke can and handed it to her. She sipped gingerly, and made a face that said very clearly, “THIS is what you’ve been telling me about since I’ve known you?”
“Try some more,” John encouraged. “You’ll like it! There isn’t a place on the planet where they don’t drink Coca Cola!”
She made a droll remark in what DK now thought of as Sebacean, and drank some more. John continued to hand her cans and bottles, taking sips himself, while Jack and DK watched. John seemed completely caught up in sharing the beverages with his wife, though occasionally he would turn to DK and say something about how much he’d missed things from home.
Finally Jack interrupted. “John, you said you can’t stay. I don’t understand. You’re home now…”
John closed his eyes briefly and sighed. He stopped playing with the drinks, and sat down next to Aeryn again, holding her hand in his lap.
“Dad, I’m not stupid, I know I should march right in to IASA and announce I’m back. They’ll examine me, debrief me – and they’ll never let me out again. I have a home out there, Dad, and friends….I’ve changed so much. So much has happened to me. I’ve seen so much ugliness, and so much beauty. I can’t stay on a planet that doesn’t even have space travel – and I can’t ask Aeryn to stay. I’ve already cost her too much.” He turned and looked at her.
She smiled, but Jack and DK were shocked to see tears appear in her eyes.
“A lot has happened,” John repeated. “I’ve been away from Earth for four cycles – years – in the hell hole of the universe. If the IASA goons ever get a chance to do a physical, they’d lock me up and throw away the key, never mind what they’d do to Aeryn.”
“Son, I think you saw too many science fiction movies as a kid. We don’t dissect people at IASA,” Jack said soothingly.
Privately, DK wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t contradict John’s father.
“Maybe. You’ve probably noticed Aeryn and I can understand each other, and she can understand you. That’s translator microbes. They colonize the base of your brain and translate for you. That’s just for starters.”
John paused for a moment, and Aeryn leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Besides that,” he continued, “I’ve had…a….a brain injury, I’ve got alien brain tissue in my head just so I can talk. I’ve got some memory loss. But I’m me. I’m not brainwashed, I’m not a clone, a copy, a twin, a shape shifter, or a robot… But, they’d never trust me. Hell, I don’t even know if you will….”
Once again, DK ended up searching Jack’s face for a clue as to what to do. Jack was keeping that neutral expression again. “What do you want us to do, John?” DK asked.
“I have some stuff for both of you. Tapes, a kind of diary. All the info I have on what happened to the Farscape I module. As much information as I’ve collected on wormholes. And some information about some really bad guys out there who might be coming this way eventually. I can give you guys this stuff now, and we” – and here he looked over at Aeryn again – “can leave. You can turn it over to the proper authorities, and say we overpowered you, or ran off before you could stop us. Or, hell, say you came home and found the stuff sitting on the front porch. At least this time I know that you guys know I’m okay, and we got to say goodbye.”
Jack was beginning to look rebellious, and DK felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach.
John ran his hand through his hair, took a breath, and started again. “Or, if you’re willing to take the risk of being found out, Aeryn and I can stay for a little while, we can catch up in more detail. You guys,” he said, looking wistfully from his dad to Aeryn, “can get to know each other a little better. Maybe I can see the girls somehow…. have a pizza…. some chocolate…. Hell, maybe even watch ‘Star Wars.’”
“I got the DVD’s for you,” Jack said softly.
John grinned at Aeryn, who suddenly had the look of someone who had just had a revelation. “What do you think?” he asked her.
Her reply this time had some recognizable words in it.
“Did she say ‘Yoda’?” Jack asked.
“And ‘Dagobah,’” DK confirmed.
John laughed. “Yeah, well, I did what I could to keep Home alive….”
Jack looked dismayed, though exactly what had upset him, DK wasn’t sure. He threw a glance at DK, and then said to John, “Give us a minute, okay?”
“Sure, Dad.”
Jack and DK moved off towards the kitchen and spoke in low tones.
“Where did he come from, DK?”
“I swear, I don’t know any more than you do, Sir. He called me on the phone just before I called you, begged me to bring you here. I didn’t know what to think, but I really couldn’t just hang up and take the chance it really was him.”
“It is John, isn’t it?”
“You think so, don’t you? He’s your son.”
“And you were a lot closer to him than I was.”
Both men stopped and looked over to where John was sitting next to Aeryn, one arm around her shoulder, hand playing with wisps of her hair that had escaped the braid, the other hand in her lap, playing with her fingers. His gaze, however, swept the room, lingering on family pictures here and there.
DK shrugged. “He adores her, that’s for sure. If some alien race was going to send us a spy, I don’t think there’d be any point in inventing an alien wife…. Leave it to John to find a soulmate even when he’s lost halfway across the universe.” He looked at Jack again. “Yes, I think it’s him. There’s probably no way to tell for sure without medical tests, but he seems dead set against that. Maybe if you spend some time with him, get him to relax….”
Jack made up his mind. “I’m not doing anything that will betray him. I’ve got my son back at least for a little while, and I want him here as long as I can have him. What about you?”
DK agonized for a long moment. John had been his best friend – his only friend, often enough – for most of his life. When the Farscape I had vanished in a flash of blue, he’d been devastated, especially since he blamed himself. But…. “I can’t betray him any more than you can. Wherever he’s been, it looks like he’s been through hell. But I don’t think I can take the risk of being found out. Heather and Joey….”
“I understand.”
DK nodded, and the two moved back across the room. John and Aeryn looked up expectantly.
Jack took a deep breath and said, “I won’t deny that you seem different from when we lost you…. But….my heart says that you’re my son John. And I really don’t want to let you go again so soon after just finding out you’re alive. I’d lie to the President of the United States if I had to, to keep you here a little longer.” He looked over at DK and then back to John and Aeryn. “I’m an old Hero whose son just came back from the dead – even if they were inclined to give me grief, I can call in enough favors with the government or the media or whatever I need, that I’ll be okay if they find out that I didn’t tell. You can stay here for as long as you’re willing. I’ll call in sick. They owe me.”
John gave Aeryn an “I told you so” look.
“But I have a family now, John,” DK said reluctantly. “A wife and a little boy.”
“All right! Congratulations, my man!” John slapped him on the back. “What’re their names?”
“My wife’s name is Heather, and our son is Joey. He’s two, and quite a handful.”
“Well, he’s your son, that explains it!” John said jokingly, and Aeryn gave him a pointed look that DK didn’t miss.
“Do you have children?” DK asked her. He immediately regretted the question. After all, she was an alien. Hell, he didn’t even know if they could have sex!
But, Aeryn only replied, “No,” with the ghost of a smile, and then added something in Sebacean.
“Not yet,” John translated quietly. “We know we can have healthy kids though. When the time is right.” He looked at Aeryn again and grinned. “That’s the story of our relationship! ‘When the time is right’!”
Looking at DK, Aeryn spoke urgently to John.
“She’s right, DK,” John said, for all the world as if they’d all been able to understand her. “We have no right to endanger you – your family needs you. You should go now before someone notices you aren’t at work.”
Reluctant to leave, DK asked curiously, “How do you know I won’t tell someone?”
“You’re my best friend,” John whispered. “And besides, if Aeryn trusts you, believe me, I trust you.”
“I should go, I guess. Can you get back to IASA for your car, Sir?” DK asked, looking at John’s father.
“I’ll figure something out.”
“DK, maybe you can come by later, while we’re here. We could catch up on old times….”
“I don’t think so,” DK said quietly. “If I do come, Heather’s going to know something’s up. I can’t bring her into this. The more people that know, the more chances for them to tell someone else. I don’t think you need to have anyone looking for you….”
John flashed him a grateful look and reached out to hug him again. “You don’t know how good it is to see you,” he said.
“You too.” DK smiled at Aeryn, who gave him a blinding smile in return. “I gotta run. Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” said John.
DK let himself out the front door. He could hear John talking to his father as he left….
