Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to Spamprovs' Challenge #3 and The Other Write's Challenge #2.

Night had fallen by the time Nick and Dean entered the Skyhook commissary. While still warm outside, the weather threatened rain later; inside, the temperature felt downright chilly from the climate control.

"Good thing I brought a hat," Dean said, snugging it down on his head.

The commissary looked no different from the one the two Androsynth frequented back home in Whitehills, which made sense: they were probably all on the same plan, a large quadrilateral space, with several "feeder" slots where food was dispensed, touch-based menu screens, tables, chairs and booths, and the whole thing as automated as possible given circumstances. All commissaries, as far as Dean knew, were open round-the-clock, since you never knew who was on what work shift and most peoples' shifts ran twelve hours, easy. This one, at this time of night, was about three-quarters full.

"What're you gonna have?" Nick asked, perusing the large menu screen.

"Pork with garlic-cream sauce, if they have it."

"Don't see why they wouldn't. Unless it's not popular down here like it is back home." Nick finally pressed his finger to his choice. "Aren't you getting anything else?"

"Nah. Vegetables give me gas," Dean lied.

They waited in silence a few moments for the food to flash-cook, then took their respective trays from the feeder slot in the wall and found their way to an empty booth.

"So," Dean began, before either had a chance to start, "do we talk now or after we eat?"

"You said you were hungry, and the food's ready. Eat." Nick himself started following his own advice.

Dean avoided crossing himself as long as Nick was present, so as not to give offense. "That wasn't quite what I meant, but –"

"You said you had stuff to tell me. Unless you have stuff to ask me, too, I don't know what else to say. I told you my half, I'm just waiting for you to tell me if you're gonna keep being my roommate." Nick looked around. "We forgot drinks."

"I'll get them," Dean shrugged, and stood.

He returned with two large tumblers of water. "Drink machine's on the fritz," he explained. "Got a tech back there repairing it."

"Eh." Nick didn't seem too bothered by it, which gave Dean some hope that maybe the other Androsynth was serious about becoming a better person to live with.

"So," Dean began again, cutting into his pork, "Here's the deal, Nick. You're a pain to live with. You complain about everything. You talk and cry out in your sleep. You act strangely sometimes and you never initiate a conversation if you can help it. From all I can tell, you really just want to be left alone, but as soon as I give you that opportunity, you chase me all the way to the starbase and practically beg me to come back. I don't understand it. And," he added as an afterthought, "I guess it's a little scary too, you acting like this. So I want an explanation."

Nick kept eating, not making eye contact. Dean started eating too; might as well wait this out. Snatches of old movie dialogs came into his head and he rearranged their words at random to amuse himself while he waited.

Five minutes of eating later, Nick took a long drink from his tumbler and sighed. "Fine. Which part do you want first? KORB series, the dreams, what?"

"What's to know about KORBs? You're the only one I know, though," Dean mused, absently slurping garlic-cream sauce off his fork. "So maybe start there."

"Okay." Nick had already cleaned his plate. "You've probably heard that KORB series are... we're antisocial. And I think it's true, based on me and those I've known, my clone series. We just don't get along well with people. It's a flaw, but it must've been judged acceptable by whoever designed us. After all, we're great with plants and biologicals, so it must all balance out."

"You think it's true?"

"It's hard to say exactly. I just know that other KORBs seem to have the same ... social problems I do. Sorry there's no big myths worth dispelling there." Nick drained his tumbler and set the glass far to one side of the table. He spread his hands out on the table as though inspecting the white scars criss-crossing his skin.

"Um," Dean said, and cleared his throat. "I know I never asked about your scars before..."

"That's right." Nick folded his hands and put them under the table, out of sight.

"Nick, if we even have a hope of still living together – and I'm not saying it's gonna happen, I'm saying if - it would help if you'd actually talk. It's not like I can glean much information from two words."

"It'd help if you knew when to back off, too," Nick snarled. "You think this is easy for me? Hah?"

"Dammit, Nick!" Dean slammed his silverware on the table; he suddenly felt out of patience. "This is exactly what I was talking about! You don't give me any reasons at all to stick with you! Why in the name of God's green earth should I even still be here?"

Nick's expression darkened, as the other customers nearby turned to look at the commotion. "Don't you talk to me about God," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Don't. You. Ever. mention Him around me."

"Why shouldn't I? You don't own me. You don't –" Dean stopped as Nick stood. "What now?"

"I – maybe – " Nick seemed at a loss for words, his anger melting under pain. "If you really want to know, we've – I don't want to talk about it here."

"All right then," Dean said quietly, after a pause. "Let's just ditch the trays and go."

~ ~ ~

They barely talked until they reached a small, woodsy park near the shuttle station. There wouldn't be any transport back to Whitehills tonight, but Dean wasn't worried about where to stay until morning. At least, not right now.

The sylvan setting helped to muffle sounds from the Skyhook streets, but Nick insisted on going deeper into the park, until they were completely alone and in comparative darkness. Nights were rarely pitch black on Eta Vulpeculae 2, between the moon and other Vulpeculaes in their turns, but the native trees did a fine job compensating.

Dean weighed whether to sit on the grass, felt it for dew, found none, and decided to sit; the food was lodging heavy in his stomach and he halfway wanted a nap. "Okay, we're alone. What's up? What's your problem with religion?" He tried, deliberately, to keep his voice neutral, even a bit lighthearted, as though this was no big deal.

Nick paced back and forth, his silhouette visible against the starry sky. "I... it's not easy for me to tell. I've never told anyone," he whispered.

"'Sokay," Dean said. "Lots of stuff I've never told anyone, either. But I gotta know what's going on if I'm gonna keep rooming with you. You might hate religion, Nick, but I can't." Dean had a flash of inspiration: the old share-info-to-get-info trick. "Maybe we should get that out now, too. Maybe you won't want to room with me anymore. I'm Catholic, Nick. Always have been."

Dean could see Nick's silhouette stop and face him, even as he continued. "I think I got baptized straight out of the growth tank. Hell of an ablution," he grinned, before remembering that Nick probably couldn't see him. "I was raised Roman Catholic by my first owners," Dean lay back in the grass, hands behind his head, "and stayed that way. First Communion, confessions, all the rites. My owners considered me a full-fledged member of the Catholic Church, I do too, and I'm still part of it, even if there's no official church on this planet. I didn't show it around you because you freak out over everything. But if you still want to room with me, I'm not going to hide it from you anymore. You'll have to accept that that's part of me."

"But – " Nick strode over and dropped to one knee near Dean's head. "How can you – how can you believe that? We don't have that luxury. We're Created, not born. Created don't have souls – "

Now it was Dean's turn to stare. "What are you talking about? Who told you that?"

Nick shook his head in the darkness. "Are you sure you want to hear?"

"Yeah, I've been asking all evening about it. I think I should know by now if I want to hear it." Nick's continued protests were really wearing on Dean's nerves.

"Fine," Nick said, in a strange voice. "I didn't want to tell anyone. It's – it's my pain. Mine." But he told Dean anyway, what had happened to him back on Earth.

~ ~ ~

Dean hadn't checked his watch when they first went into the park, so he had no idea how long they'd been there, or how long Nick's story had taken. The stars overhead had moved in their courses, so obviously some time had gone by; but he'd been distracted by the details of Nick's past and trying to ignore the stomach problems the tension of the tale had caused.

He didn't know what to say. Nick now sat, knees up, arms wrapped around his legs, head down; during his monologue he'd paced, had a few nervous tics, but now he was quiet, with only a slight shake every now and then. There had been no tears during the telling, just pain in the voice.

In retrospect, Dean knew he really should have done something about Nick's sleeping problems earlier; it was obvious they were symptomatic of something deeper. Of course, if he'd known what the language Nick's words had been, he might've figured it out earlier, too.

"You'd think," he tried, "they would've taken better care of something so valuable."

Nick finally shrugged in response.

Now it was Dean's turn to pace. While Nick's history explained volumes, there was still the whole roommate problem. And he recognized guilt beginning to form: if he dropped Nick now, there was a possibility the other Androsynth would fall to pieces. Though given what Nick had been through, Dean suspected there was a hidden reserve of strength in there somewhere. Probably a white-hot core of anger that keeps him warm at night.

He distracted himself briefly by counting the paces across the clearing, ticking off every five in his head, then doing the same while counting by eights and checking to see if they matched up. Still, he needed to do something about Nick.

"Okay," he exhaled at last, coming to a stop near Nick, who looked up. "I think... I think we'd better set some ground rules here. No more trying to figure things out by osmosis, just plain honesty and being up front about it. Are you going to see a doctor about this?"

"No." Nick shook his head in emphasis. "I told you, it's my pain. It's hard enough sharing it with you."

"Nick, you've got to –"

"No."

"Even if I leave?"

"That's right."

Great. An impasse. Dean scratched his head. Oh, man, I forgot all about a shower. My scalp really needs it now. If Nick found some other roommate, the whole thing would start up again. If he, Dean, stayed with Nick, there was a chance something could be done – if not a cure, at least a lessening of the problem, maybe, or behavioral alteration.

He pictured his first owners standing behind him: "Do the right thing, son. The Christian thing. Help those in need." Complete with finger-wagging, yet. Still, it wasn't an out-and-out nag; just a reminder.

"If you won't see a doctor," Dean began, "you at least have to agree that if it starts getting really bad, you'll go. Okay?" Of course, it already is pretty bad...

"Sure. Fine."

"And..." Dean tried to think of anything else. "I think you've already been trying to be more... agreeable, this evening, right?" A barely-visible nod in the darkness was his answer. "Then let's keep trying to work on that. Y'know, we've roomed together for years and barely know each other. I'm not saying we have to infodump our histories, but if we're gonna be roommates, we gotta not fritter away time and chances. Okay?"

"Sure." An unspoken "Whatever" hung in the air between them.

"All right then. We'll give it another chance, and I'll tell you if you get too hard to live with again, all right? And... if there's anything that bugs you too much that I do, I know you won't hesitate to tell me, since you do that already." Dean held his hand out to the figure sitting on the grass. "Let's go see if there's somewhere we can crash tonight."

Nick took his hand and pulled himself up; Dean was surprised by the tension he could feel in the grip. Must still be wound tighter'n a clockspring, he thought. At least I've never seen him drink. Alcoholism on top of this – that'd be too much.

"Where'll we stay? It's not like there's hotels."

"Ah," Dean shrugged. "Friend of a friend thing, probably. We go back, I'll find someone who's a friend of someone I know, ask if we can crash at their place. If you don't do it too much, you can get away with it." Just like lying. I still can't believe how easy that is. 'Course, you have to make sure they can't double-check on the lie....

They made their way back to the street; from there, Dean guessed at directions until they came across a wide, freshly repaved road, the stink of bitumen faint but still noticeable.

"Probably laid today," Nick said, snorting at the bitter breeze that came across the road, the closest thing to an expressway one could find in an Androsynth community.

"Okay, I know where we are now," Dean said. "I think Wilt's place is just down the road that way. He's got a spacer roommate, so he ought to have at least a spare bed, maybe a couch too. If he doesn't, I'll take the floor so you can have some privacy. I talked to him yesterday," he said, at Nick's questioning glance. "Y'know, about the whole spacer... thing."

"Yeah." They began walking in the direction Dean had indicated.

"So... I guess we're not gonna get a belyaev after all, huh?" Dean asked, looking at his roommate via peripheral vision.

"No," Nick said softly, his fingers running over the jagged scar he'd gotten in Riyadh. "I don't like dogs much."

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com