A/N: This chapter mostly deals with things back home in New York. I thought it would be appropriate, and a good opportunity for both humor and character/plot development: like for instance a little more fun exploring Ross' worldview. Besides that, I also thought it would be a cool challenge to try and keep things interesting without resorting to robots, aliens, spaceships, and all the other things that can only happen in science fiction. How well did I succeed? I'll let you be the judge of that.

Chapter 10: The One Where This is So Good for Ross

(I Mean, This Is Just What He Needed at This Stage in His Life, You Know?)

Central Perk: there's no coffee shop quite like it in New York City. Well, actually there are a lot of coffee shops like it in New York City. Nonetheless, no New York coffee shop can match it in that one special quality that makes Central Perk what it truly is:

Fictionality.

Mona and Ross walked through the front door. "I couldn't believe it," Ross was saying. "Here he is contending that just because they have similar bone structure, they were the evolutionary predecessors of a species that appeared thirty million years later. Seriously, how does he get this stuff published?"

Mona shrugged. "You've got me! I mean, like you said, the therosaurs are the ones with the three-toed feet and the light bones, right?"

Ross smiled, a very deliberate smile. "Theropods, but you've got the idea. Why don't you sit down, and I'll get our coffees?"

"I'm in an iced tea mood today," Mona said as she had a seat on the couch. Ross stepped up to the counter and ordered their drinks.

"Say, how is Rachel's baby coming?" Gunther asked Ross. "I haven't seen her around lately." To himself, he silently added: I wish Rachel were having my baby.

The next few seconds were extremely short for Ross. As he tried to think of a way to explain a situation he didn't know anything about to a coffeeshop guy that he didn't really know without suggesting that anything was wrong, he was painfully aware of the length of his pause to think, ever increasing in awkwardness, approaching the Critical Awkwardness Threshold.

"Oh, great, great. The baby's…" Ross tried to think of what things babies would be doing at this stage of pregnancy. He could not think of a single one. "…great. Just fantastic."

"Has it started kicking yet?"

"Maybe," Ross answered instinctively, then thought better of it. "Yes." He tried to avoid making eye contact with Gunther, who seemed a little puzzled, but not actually suspicious at this point.

"And Rachel's doing well too?" he asked.

"Oh yeah. Unbelievably well, believe me." Ross cringed inwardly at his ill-considered choice of words. He settled his eyes on his hand on the counter. "So, ah…in summary, both Rachel and the baby are doing well."

"Well," said Gunther, sensing that, so to speak, Game Called on Account of Social Discomfort, "I wish them both the best. And we'll have your drinks out to you in just a moment." He turned behind the counter, with very important coffee to attend to.

Later that evening, Ross came by Monica's apartment. "What brings you here?" she asked as she let him in.

Ross shrugged. "I just wanted to stop by. I figured maybe you'd like a little company."

"Hope it's not too much trouble to make dinner for two," he said with a smile-that-was-almost-a-laugh. The day Monica found cooking burdensome would be the day Chandler swore off sarcasm on account of the mental strain it put him through. "We could go ahead and invite Phoebe too, if you want."

Monica sighed and sat down in an armchair. "Honestly, I was just planning to order a pizza. If I have to measure one more ingredient myself today, I think I'll puke."

"Is everything okay?" Ross asked.

Monica worked up the effort for a fake grin and nodded vigorously.

"Well," Ross said, trying to think of something nice to offer—because everything was clearly not okay. He envisioned himself offering to cook: but while a halfway decent cook, he was no great shakes compared to his sister. Also, he was not exactly thrilled at the prospect of volunteering for unexpected cooking duties. "Tell you what: I'll call Phoebe and invite her over, and then I'll order us a pizza. We'll have ourselves a meal, all together, the three of us. How's that sound?"

Some twenty, maybe thirty minutes later, Phoebe had joined them at the table, where they were sitting there sharing a large pizza, half-olive, half-sausage, and breadsticks: Monica had insisted that they spring for the breadsticks. She was now putting the breadsticks away like…

…well, like Joey.

No one mentioned Joey.

"So how are things with Mona?" Phoebe asked, after swallowing a mouthful of pizza.

"Going great!" said Ross. "She's so much fun, and she's just an amazingly…I don't know what to call it. She's so enthusiastic about all the things I'm interested in. Paleontology, archaeology, history…I mean, she may not be the most knowledgeable about science, but when we were talking at the coffee shop today, she actually wanted to know more about bipedal saurischians. How often does that happen?"

"Ross, your nerd is showing," Monica remarked.

Ross looked sheepishly at his pizza slice. It randomly occurred to him that all of them were basically eating slabs. "Well, yeah. But it's so great to know somebody who just likes me for who I am. You know, being in a relationship where there's no baggage or history…"

Unlike his past on-and-off relationship with Rachel, his good friend who was currently missing, with his baby growing inside of her.

No one mentioned Rachel.

"Oh, everyone's got issues," Monica said. "It just takes time for them to surface."

"Of course," Ross agreed.

"Not that I'm not glad for you," Monica added.

"Me too," agreed Phoebe, "it's always so great when there's a fresh and new relationship before the issues surface and everything gets shot to hell." She paused. "Oh…sorry."

Ross laughed nervously. "Why so, ah, why so doom-and-gloom, Phoebs?"

Phoebe shook her head as she grabbed another slice of pizza, separating the strands of cheese that bound it to its brothers and sisters in the pizza box. "No, no. I'm sure you'll work through your issues."

Ross was in a relationship with a cute, sweet young woman whom he liked and who liked him. Ross' sister was married to Chandler, and they each had their share of issues, but they had managed to work through every catastrophe and every argument—but everything was shot to hell anyway, because now he had disappeared without a trace and Monica missed him horribly.

No one mentioned Chandler.

"Joey? Hey, wait up! Joey!"

Leo Contadino turned around to see if the exclamations were directed at him. Leo had a thick mustache and thick eyebrows, a square-shaped face, dark hair, and a sturdy build that was just a touch on the short side. His face was decidedly unlike any soap opera star's, character killed off or otherwise, but from the back, he looked fairly similar to Joey Tribbiani.

As he turned, he found himself facing a woman with long black hair, blue-gray eyes, and what was rapidly becoming a look of disappointment on her face. "Where have you…" she began, but trailed off, not finishing the sentence.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Were you calling for someone else?"

"Yes," she explained, "but I thought you were him."

"Well, my name's Leo, not Joey," he told her. "Sorry to disappoint."

"Oh, it's nothing." The woman shrugged, then readjusted her purse's strap. "Sorry to trouble you."

Monica blushed ferociously as she walked away from Leo Contadino. At least she hadn't mistaken anyone for Chandler, which would have been a considerably more embarrassing experience as she found herself embracing a complete stranger.

She drew her coat tightly around her body. He was missing, and she missed him.

After his last class the next day, Ross went to see "Ocean's Eleven" with Mona. The movie had been her choice, and while Ross often had difficulty suspending his disbelief in order to enjoy movies like this, for some reason he had been able to ignore the little inconsistencies and just enjoy the action. Perhaps this was due to the central plot element of a heist. It would be extremely cool to be part of a heist, Ross imagined; certainly much more cool than owning a monkey.

"Say, Ross," Mona asked him, changing the subject as they left the movie theater, "why did you decide to go into paleontology?"

"Well, first of all, dinosaurs are just really cool," Ross said, with a half-embarrassed smile. "But seriously, it's the discovery involved. The idea of unearthing the secrets of ancient prehistory always appealed to me; I mean, here are human beings finding out stuff about creatures that lived millions of years before human beings existed! I wanted to be a part of that."

"That's really neat," Mona said. Out of anyone else's mouth it would have sound like "just being polite," but one of the strange characteristics that Ross was learning about her was that when she said things like that, she actually meant them.

She paused. "But…well…it's not like other sciences, where they're all the time coming up with technology to benefit society. It's mostly just finding out stuff about extinct things. Do you think it ever has practical applications?"

"Wow." Ross laughed. "Tough question."

Mona gave him a friendly smile. "Well, didn't mean to put you on the spot or anything."

Ross shook his head. "Not a problem. Actually, the methods developed by paleontologists to date layers of rock have practical application in the petroleum industry—since petroleum is formed from the decayed remains of prehistoric small marine animals and algae." The sheer number of geeky science words in Ross' statement proved to be too much for even Mona, who stifled a yawn. "Far and away, the easiest way of dating a rock stratum is by dating the fossils contained in it, and that information is…" Ross noticed Mona's abortive yawn. "Really, really boring. But useful to petroleum engineers!"

Mona's yawn turned unexpectedly into a laugh, a cute half-muffled sound somewhere between a giggle and a chuckle.

Ross grinned and shrugged. "Besides, I think people should have the opportunity to do what they really enjoy for a living, whether it's studying the evolution of prehistoric life or whatever else. People should have the chance to pursue their dreams, the things they're really passionate about."

"That's really idealistic of you, Ross," Mona said quietly. A breeze blew, and she brushed a strand of hair from her face.

Back aboard the Luigi's, Rachel, Chandler, and Joey sat in silvery chairs floating with no visible means of support, about a foot off the ground, shaped like giant cushioned contact lenses. The seats were arranged around a translucent table shaped like a circle that really wanted to be a scalene triangle, on top of which was a holoprojector. Tiny shimmering figures projected into the space above the table exchanged dramatic dialogue, translated into English. "Up," Joey said, and his chair began to rise. "Down," he commanded it, and it returned to its original elevation. "Up. Down."

"Joey, I'm trying to watch the thing here," Chandler said. "Could you please knock it off?"

"Dude, you can watch stuff back at home," Joey said. "But this chair hovers in midair, and you can give it voice commands. You don't get this opportunity every day!" He addressed the chair, in a dramatic tone strikingly similar to his Dr. Drake Ramoray voice. "Rotate two." The chair began to spin at a lazy pace.

"Well, maybe we're not in the mood to play with chairs right now," Chandler said, a little snippily.

"Yeah, could you not do the rotate thing?" Rachel asked. "Just looking at it makes me dizzy, and I don't think that synthetic pork chop is agreeing with me."

"Stop rotate," Joey commanded. "Tilt back thirty." The chair reclined backward, leaving Joey staring up at the ceiling. "Up."

"Ohh, I'm so sore," Rachel moaned. "I don't want to move a muscle."

"Oh, I didn't know that scientists had reclassified the tongue as a bone," Chandler quipped. "Do you mind? I can't hear the show!"

"What's your problem?" Rachel asked, sitting up straight. "Oof. Okay, now look: you're not the only one with cabin fever, you know." Chandler was silent. "Whereas I believe there's only one of us carrying around another human being inside of them, all day long. So if anyone has a right to be cranky here, it should be me. And do you hear me being cranky? Do you?"

"No," Joey very seriously told the ceiling.

"Eh, you're right," Chandler muttered. "Sorry, Rach." He gripped the edges of his seat. "I'm gonna go see if Lorz has dropped us out of hyperspace yet. With any luck, it'll only be a few more hours before we're at that Milliways place he talked about." He told the holoprojector to turn off and left the room, leaving only Joey and Rachel together.

Rachel sighed and leaned back in her chair, resting her hands on her belly.

"Down," said Joey. The chair lowered to floor level again, leaving the two of them staring at the ceiling together. He looked over at her face: her soft skin, the smooth contours of her chin and jaw, her silvery-blue eyes. She saw him looking at her, looked back over, and smiled.

Melt? Joey's heart was beyond melting. It nearly evaporated.

"Tired, huh?" he asked.

"Yeah," she replied.

He smiled back, but inside he was scowling. Scowling at himself for being so powerless to turn off this stupid, hopeless attraction, but at the same time scowling because it hurt so damn much, wanting to tell her how beautiful that smile was, to kiss that mouth, but not being able to. It was pretty much the first time he'd ever wanted something beyond just sex with a woman. Of course he wanted the sex, too, but more than just that.

Oh, the sex. The you-need-sex. The you-and-I sex.

Sometimes the things that don't exist are the most painful things in the universe.