When Jack emerged from the small alien ship, there were several men waiting for him a short distance away. One of the men stepped forward to take the bag D'Argo had given him away from Jack. In a hushed tone, Jack warned the man, "Try to take this away from me, and I'll break your hand."
"That won't be necessary, Colonel" a voice from behind the crowd of watching IASA personnel said. Within moments the crowd had parted revealing the President surrounded by his protective detail. Behind them, a line of cars had been parked. As Devlin came forward, Jack was aware that more than a few of the agents looked a little wild-eyed at their protectee being so close to him so soon after leaving an alien ship. Their eyes got even wilder when the President stepped forward and shook his hand. "Your transmission has been going out world-wide," Devlin informed Jack. "I'm having a conference room set up. I can understand that you'd prefer to look through your son's things in private first, but..."
Jack nodded. There was no choice now. The feeding frenzy had already begun, and nothing would stop it now. If they didn't do this publicly the claims of a cover-up would start immediately. The claims would still be made. It would just take the conspiracy nuts longer to form their wacko theories. Jack didn't doubt there would also be those that would claim it was all an elaborate hoax just as they claimed the moon landings had been faked. Better to put the best foot forward they could. Jack allowed himself to be ushered through the once familiar corridors of IASA headquarters to the same conference room in which he'd sat to compose himself after John's accident in the Farscape. Then too, it had been necessary to face the public much sooner than he himself would have preferred.
As soon as Jack placed the bag on the oblong conference table in front of him, President Devlin nodded to IASA Director Aaron Bergen. "Mr. President," the man greeted the President solemnly before turning to Jack himself. "Jack, I'm so sorry about John," Aaron consoled his friend awkwardly. They had worked more than two decades together at NASA and been friends once, but the final incident report on the Farscape accident had ended that. Bergen had been made IASA Director largely due to that report and his role as one of the lead incident investigators. "You were right," Aaron admitted. "Our findings were obviously wrong."
Jack nodded absently not in the mood to play the 'I told you so' game. "Let's find out what did happen," he suggested. It took him a few seconds to figure out the closure on the bag. Inside Jack found more of the small recording devices as well as several bound notebooks and the micro-cassette recorder that John had taken with him on the Farscape. "Most everything's dated," Jack announced as he rummaged through the jumble of items. Finally he located the first micro-cassette and inserted it into the tiny tape recorder. Jack could tell someone, probably John, had modified it at some point to use a power source other than the AA batteries that had obviously long ago gone dead.
"Sir," a hesitant voice interjected before he could press the button that would play the tape. "If you could set it on the table there," a young man Jack didn't recognize asked as he pointed to the microphone placed in the center of the table. He nodded as he did as the young man requested and placed the recorder in front of the microphone. Moments after he'd pressed the play button the sound of his son's voice filled the room telling them how wrong Spielberg and Roddenberry had gotten it.
As he listened, Jack searched through the rest of the bag. One of the IASA flunkies looked for a moment like he would protest, but a glare from the President forced him to subside. Jack was careful with the items nevertheless. He took them out one at a time stacking them in order on the table in front of him, first the tapes, then the alien recording devices. The bound paper journals came next followed by a smaller bag with a note secured to it. The bag intrigued him because though the note was written in English, the handwriting was not his son's. He noted that several of the later journals appeared to have been written in the same handwriting. From the writing in those journals it was not difficult to follow the progress of the writer as he or she learned to write in the Earth language. Jack cursed the fact that he didn't have his reading glasses with him as he squinted to read the note on the bag.
John,
Someday we'll find our way to Earth.
When we do, here's something to give your father.
All my love,
Aeryn
Jack picked at the knotted cord that closed the small bag aware that there were now several cameras trained on him and that most of the world was watching, but he didn't really give a damn. As he'd been searching the bag, John's voice on the tape had been describing the companions he'd fallen in with. There was no doubt in his mind that the Aeryn that had written the note was the woman he'd seen lying in his son's arms, his son's wife. Finally, the knots came free, and Jack carefully upended the bag into his hands causing a small gem to fall free. Jack felt the bitter sting of disappointment as he held the gem in the palm of his hand.
"Jesus, would you get a look at that!" a woman whispered. "Is it a diamond? It must be worth a fortune!"
Jack had no interest in jewels however much they might be worth. He wanted some connection with his son! A moment later he was startled to realize he held just that as a hologram appeared in the air above his hand. "Their wedding," he breathed staring at the group with his son and the woman at the center. The two lovers both (oddly enough to Jack) wearing black faced each other. The alien D'Argo stood to John's right and a gray skinned female with short spiky gray hair stood to Aeryn's left. A blue skinned alien garbed all in blue stood in front of the lovers with a hand pressed to each one's temple. There was more in the small cloth bag, Jack realized. As he placed the gem down on the table, the hologram disappeared much to the disappointment of his watchers. Jack reached in and pulled another gem from the bag, and a moment later a new hologram appeared to hover over his hand. This one showed a very pale Aeryn asleep with her head on John's shoulder. The image of John in the hologram slept as well. His cheek rested on the top of his wife's head, and his arms were wrapped around her and the bundle she held. Jack couldn't help but wonder which of his grandchildren slept in his or her mother's arms. One by one he pulled a total of five of the holographic gems from the small cloth bag. All the while, John's voice spewing from the tape recorder on the table told a very different picture than the holographic images. Jack knew he wasn't the only one wondering which one was the truth. Hours later, long after the tapes had ended and they'd switched to the alien recording devices, Jack realized they were both true. Life didn't stop during the bad times, you simply learned to appreciate the good moments all the more.