Your Future is Their Past

Moon Base Alpha

Sometimes, when she was semi-lucid, Assistant Controller Regina Kesslann talked to Helena as if they were old friends. Which struck Helena as very odd…as they really weren't that close. Even odder, even in her most coherent moments, Regina was no longer really 'there'. Not just in the 'she's out-there' crazy sense, but in the sense that Regina truly did not believe she was on Alpha.

"Oh..thank god we have some ozone cover today," she would say. "I do hate how the uv rays wreck my skin. It does wonders for the sunflowers though…wouldn't you say Helena?"

That was as good as she got. In her worst moments she raged on and on about Alan and Commander Koenig being dead or how neither of them were visiting her even then they were 'back'. Initially, Helena could not make heads or tails of it.

But, as Alpha got back on its feet after traversing a hyperspatial vortex, it was becoming clearer that Regina's condition was related to their present course…towards what appeared to be Earth.

What should have been a joyous return to their home planet was overshadowed by two ominous problems. One was that there was no sign of life on Earth, as far as Alpha's preliminary scans could detect: No radio signals, no orbital satellites, no night lights apparent during optical observations of the dark side of Earth. The other big omen of misfortune always came when Regina went into apoplectic fits. She prophesied doom more and more often as the moon got closer to slowing and approaching what appeared to be its old orbital path around its mother globe.

In what passed for a break from business for John Koenig he stopped by Medical to get an update from Helena.

"So she thinks she is living on Earth?" John asked.

"Yes," confirmed Helena. "But that's not what makes her frenetic. It has something to do with this 'life' that she has on Earth. She believes that Alan Carter is dead...and that they were married."

"That's crazy," John remarked. "Did you show her that Alan is alive?"

"Yes. I did," she admitted with much chagrin showing. "I had Alan come down here. I thought it would calm her down. It was great at first. She was so happy. She fell into his arms and tried kissing him so much. I didn't think she would ever let him go…but she did. When Alan didn't response, she grabbed her head and cried that he was dead and that he was the 'wrong' Alan…and she stated over and over that we were all headed for destruction. She seemed so disoriented. She seemed to be crying for herself. She would say repeatedly, 'I am in the wrong time at the wrong place. I am in the wrong place at the wrong time! '"

"Her brain scans?"

"Getting worse." Helena showed him progressive scans of Regina's cerebellum. "I though I would collate the data just for a cursory analysis and Computer actually said that Regina is receiving input into her visual cortex at twice normal rate. This is causing swelling of the tissue. I may have to put Regina into an artificial coma soon to prevent permanent brain damage. I don't know what else to do."

"Well, don't put your trust too much in Computer," John advised. "Kano says he is noting 'negative degradations' in the artificial intelligence routines. And this is a very bad time for that."

John slapped his hand on a central comm post and began to stare out the window.

"What?" Helena asked.

"We are going to have to begin Exodus very soon."

"Why?"

"It looks like…in the the orbital spot we are rapidly parking into…there already exists another moon."

Helena stood transfixed.

"Another moon? A different moon?"

"No…this moon," Koenig shrugged. "Or a reasonable facsimile. Same mass, same ratio, same…same Alpha."

"So there are people over on that moon?"

"No! No transmissions. No Eagle activity. No lights. It looks abandoned from here. But we don't have time to check on that because we have to get down to THAT Earth and recon a spot to Exodus to, before this moon crashes into that moon!"

Koenig pointed furiously in the supposed direction of the opposite lunar body…seeming angry at it.

"John, why reconnaissance?" Helena asked with smiling optimism. "We have a whole world to land on and apparently it's empty…we can land anywhere."

"It gets worse," John tried to prepare her. "It looks like there's been a major cataclysm on this Earth. Lots of radiation and atmospheric damage oceanic currents have completely changed…even reversed. I don't know. Maybe…maybe the results of a total world war. It could be that an alien source devastated the surface. What ever happened…it is very thorough. According to radio mapping so far, what parts of the surface aren't subject to spotty gamma radiation is subject to heavy ultra violet damage due to sporadic reduction of tropospheric and ozone layer coverage. And then there is an ice age going on in some parts."

"My God!" Helena sat down heavily.

"Well…one good hope lies in an area on the North American continent…a region that was called Santa Maria on our maps. It looks like it might be habitable. Frequent good cloud or atmospheric coverage from the sun…and favorable winds that would blow non-contaminated air from the sea. Victor speculates that if we land there we can use the anti-grav towers to repel radioactive fogs when and if they roll in. Plants we've cultivated up here would flourish just fine. We would need all the emergency deflective geodesic domes for living quarters to protect us from low ozone layer days. Victor and Technical Section are making plans for all of that right now."

It took almost a quarter minute for Helena to remember a framed piece of canvas set up across the room next to the sleeping form of Regina. Her coffee cup crashed to the floor.

"Helena?"

Helena in an almost trance like state strode over to the partially completed painting set-up on its easel. She picked it up and showed it to John.

The landscape scene, in water colors, depicted virtually everything Koenig described. White geodesic domes spotted a woodland area with small crops growing all around and sunflowers flourishing in the margins. Distributed evenly through the pastoral scenery were a few stylized drawn lattice-work towers; a fairly faithful depiction of the very same type of anti-gravity towers that Victor had constructed to squeeze them through the crushing force of the black sun they had encountered and that still encircled the base

"John," Helena said with deadly earnestness now. "I think Regina was trying to tell us something."

"What we need to do?"

"No. What we've already done. I think all of this," she pointed to the elements of the painting. "…is already down there."

Koenig crossed his arms across his chest to consider this. It was slowly sinking in.

"Regina thinks that the Alphans from that moon have already did everything we are planning to do? Same place, same set up, same everything? That's where they went?"

"Maybe that's where they ARE," Helena corrected "I think she's seeing it all right now. She's living with THOSE Alphans. She thinks she's been living with them for 5 years."

"Well…at least that means that it is safe for us to live there too."

"No…that's exactly what she is saying can't happen…"

A chirp at Koenig side alerted him that he had an incoming communications session. He tapped at the central comm post.

"Commander," Paul's mustachioed face popped up on the monitor. "Exodus phase 1 initiating. Recon Eagle One is on pad one ready to launch."

Helena grabbed his arm tightly.

"John…under these circumstances, I think only you, Alan Carter and I should go down there."

"So, what are 'these' circumstances?" John looked at her quizzically.

"Regina seems to indicate that you and Alan are both…well… The John Koenig and the Alan Carter of those other Alphans…are both dead. That will eliminate the effects that are happening to Regina re-occurring to the recon pilots."

"And, then, why you?" he asked promptly.

"Because I'm the guinea pig."

John looked ready to begin shaking his head.

"Someone has to be, John," Helena pre-countered. "Besides, someone has to record and observe the medical effects of this…situation. I really have no other choice."

Earth II

When Victor Bergman returned to the Alpha A-1 settlement he was exhausted. He had quickly returned when Paul had informed him of Computer/Kano's observations. He knew a delicate situation could be arising soon…and he wanted to be there to deflect the tensions.

The night's strong prevailing wind from the direction of the ocean deflected the engine sounds of Recon Eagle One landing up the valley, so that no one heard them coming.