Garbage In? (PG-13)

Or "What the frell was John thinking that first time down the wormhole?" After all, we know from eps including Unrealized Reality how wormhole navigation works. My apologies go to any authors who have been down a nearby road before.

Warnings and ratings: PG-13 for extensive bad language in English. I know John is a highly trained astronaut AND a gentleman, but I reckon his train of thought would have turned quite blue and I can't use FS alternatives at this point.

Settings and Spoilers: Premiere, references to UR and throughout the series…. Oh, just go watch the show before reading fanfic, it'll make your life easier.

Disclaimer: Not mine, of course. But you know that.

Word Count: 912

A silly-Friday-fic. I did wonder about posting it, but I don't think any amount of sitting on it and tinkering is going to make it great literature. No beta, only spell-checked.

Garbage In?

"Abort! Abort! Abort!" Jack's voice screamed in John's headphones. But it was already too late to heed that very well-meant advice. The flare? The wave? The…. giant blue wibbly-wobbly thing… there was no time for semantics now, John told himself... the… whatever-it-was had engulfed the Farscape module like a 20-foot high roller might swallow a novice surfer. Once John had been sucked below the surface, he knew full-well from his misspent time as a surf-dude that there was nothing that he could do but hold his breath, hang on tight and pray he made it back up to see the sun, the tropical beach or wherever he might end up. And, of course, to make sure that he didn't pass out or make a call to Ralph on the Big White Telephone on the way.

A shade to the left, a breath to the right, LETS DO THE TIME WARP…. Actually, let's not…. Space travel, yes. Time travel, no. Abso-fucking-lutely not, no, no thank you very much. No! Jeez, look at it, it's beautiful… and nauseating all at once. It's like travelling down one of those wormholes in that SciFi show. What was it called?

BANG!

Fuck! Note to self: Concentrate. Try not to hit the walls. That one must've dislodged a filling or two! Besides, it scratches the paint. Stargate… wormholes… that's it…. Aliens, the other side of the universe and all that. Turbulence going: That seems better. Now concentrate. So if it was a wormhole, I wonder if it'd be a straight spatial one. Did they have them in Babylon 5….with that kick-ass babe….. Claudia something or other..? Bit of a curve up ahead, ease over the brow…. Well, a woman like that should've had bigger eyebrows, I reckon…. And they should be Black… Nah, that was some chick from some other show... Something Warrior Princess?

Fork coming up…..

Whoa! Past it. Like I had a choice…. Shyeah, right…. Or was it left?
Wormhole. Yeah, right. Wormhole. In that case, I'd be like some sort of Buck Rogers. With some mean, hot, space-pilot. Wilma…. Hold her steady, nice'n'steady…. Space-chick…. Wilma... Long, dark hair?

Correct the tail wobble, flatten it out. With my luck with women, I'd probably hook up with some sort of fucking space-Nazi instead. No nice girls. Trim the nose angle….. What was her name? Erin. That's it. Erin….. Grey…? Throttle up! Whoa! Turbulence or what! OK, perhaps best leave the throttle the hell alone! Take things as they come!

ANOTHER FORK! Left right, up down, shoo… does it matter?

Which way, which way, WHICH FUCKING WAY? This is crackers!

Gone, done, live with it…

Yeah Grey. Grey… eyes, morally… grey….. grey skin in their somewhere? SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? FOCUS!

S'Gone. Whatever. Somewhere along the line…. Drifting now …. Not good… Try and keep her on the straight and narrow!

Hot alien babe? Babes? Sh'yeah, right. I'd get psycho-muppets, a chick who wants to pluck out my eyes, sell my brains to the highest bidder and dudes who wanna suck my brains straight out... Sippy, sippy straw. Will there be Klingons with tentacles-to-go. Oh, you betcha…..tentacles! And drug pushers and screamers and fembots and a carnivorous fucking plant and a dirty great….'

ANOTHER FORK! TOP LEFT! Not like I can go both ways. Hell, there's only one of me….. WHOA, steady, that one nearly ripped the joystick right outa my…Focus…! You wanna get home, dontcha, Johnny-boy? What's that? WHAT THE!

BANG! BANG! BANG! Went John's head against the side of the cockpit.

Ow! Was that my head on the canopy there? Close one. Without my helmet, that woulda really stung. Suck it up! Gotta have some protection, man. Makes the hurt hurt less.

You want giant space monsters… dragons…baddies with moustaches and goatees and badly hidden... agendas? HELL, NO! Focus….. Home! You wanna go HOME! Nice thoughts. Happy place! Bunnies. Big fluffy bunnies… !

As abruptly as the rollercoaster ride had begun, Farscape 1 was vomited out into normal space. Torn between the G-forces of re-entry to normal space, and simple relief that it was over, John successfully fought back the urge to do the same with his lunch.

No way you wanna blow chunks in zero-G, Johnny-boy! Besides, the Farscape's a small ship, lots of nooks and crannies. Things get… lost.

Lost.

"Oh God! I can't…" John said aloud, looking around, blinking, trying to get his eyes to focus and engage with his brain. He hit the radio switch and managed to get out, in a fairly dignified tone of voice which belied the matching turmoil in both his stomach and his head, "Canaveral? This is Farscape 1. I'm OK - repeat - I'm OK. Hey - did you guys get video through all that?" John paused, but there was no response. "Canaveral?" he added, more uncertain now. When there was still no reply, his uncertainty grew until it reached his voice. "DK? Dad? Where are you guys? Where's..?" Then his voice died as his brain began to compute the implications of the asteroid field around him.

No asteroid fields like this near Earth….. Not till out past Mars….

John's shrinking confidence suddenly took a further dive, matched by an involuntary duck of the head as the module was rocked by the close passage of several sleek, black fighter-sized space vehicles. "What the…?" he said aloud, openly apprehensive now. "Uh... Canaveral?"

Oops. Reckon you watch too much TV, Johnny… But it doesn't look like that's going to be a problem for a while…

The beginning.