Competing Moons

Confronting yourself in the flesh is very daunting. Helena had not truly expected it.

Sandra and she were making dinner as the sun went down when she looked up from her vegetables…and there she was. Not the way she was at that moment , but the old Helena of more than 5 years ago…bangs parted and swept away from her face and hair curled under perfectly. That Helena looked very different. It, frankly, was a shock. She stood dead in her tracks…seemingly disoriented by her twin's presence. Sandra, more acutely aware of the danger that this other Helena represented screamed.

The trap was sprung.

Paul, David and Tanya pounced on the interloping Helena and Alan with lasers drawn. Koenig and Victor emerged from the other direction in time to calm everything down.

In a way it was great seeing Alan Carter and the Commander again, even if it wasn't their John and Alan. Paul and Kano escorted them a little bit away from geodesic huts that were the settlement's abodes…where Paul and Sandra's children were.

Paul escorted Alan down to the old Eagle pad at the edge of their agricultural fields. Kano, Tanya and Victor stayed with the Koenig and Helena from the approaching moon.

"This is the Earth, but not the world we knew," Victor explained. He went on to describe how small artifacts of a past civilization were sometimes excavated…and how this Earth lived in parallel to the Earth's that their individual moons had torn away from…but was not exactly the same.

Helena noticed her doppelganger slipping out of the hut where she had been cooking to go to another geodesic shelter. She had a good idea of what she might be going to do.

"May I go and help her?" Helena asked.

Everybody was tense and not at ease. She wasn't sure it was a good idea, but she had to do this. It was better to frame it as "help" instead of investigation. Tanya squeezed Kano's arm with apprehension as she regarded this 'wrong' version of their Helena.

"No," Kano responded. He looked toward John. "Our Helena has been through a lot..."

"I know" Helena said pausing him with her hands. "But she is looking after Regina Kesslan right now, right? I can help."

Tanya looked up at Kano pensively.

"Maybe she should, David," Tanya said. "So she can see what they are causing. What they are going to cause." The former assistant controller subconsciously ran left hand across her abdomen.

"Okay," Kano said deferring to his wife. "Okay. But you go warn Helena. See if it is okay."

"Thank you Tanya." Helena nodded to her as the woman slipped past her not touching. Helena stepped closer to John and said matter-of -factly. "You should be aware that their John and Helena were married…before he died."

It was yet another twist for Koenig.

At the edge of the farmland, where it began to give way to the curves of the Santa Maria foothills, sat a large unused square of dust. Paul and Alan arrived there. At the center of the old pad were two largish white stones side-by-side. Chiseled into one was the inscription:

"Alan Carter, Husband Astronaut, I love you wherever you are."

Several sunflowers in various stages of wilting were piled-up.

"She comes here every day," Paul said solemnly. "She loved you very much. You two were going to be the next scheduled to have children after Helena and John. We had some rough times. We recovered the soil and had a good back-up of harvests. We got good predictions of droughts and weather conditions. When those hyper-space whirlpools would erupt were harder to pinpoint. You were a good farmer."

"I've never been here before, Paul." Alan knelt down and ran his finger over his own gravestone.

"She never quite recovered from your death," Paul continued unabated. "Helena bounced back. She delved into making our communities strong. Regina kept expecting you to pop back up. With everyday her disappointment grew."

"…And now, here I am."

Helena wanted to just observe at first. She noticed how the same set up she had on Alpha had been transplanted down into this geometrically constructed hut. The power source no doubt was the residual decay battery system using recycled nuclear waste. It was ingenious.

She watched as this Earth-Helena sat at the side of a shivering Regina who was covered in a cooling blanket to cool down her brain and keep it from swelling. Regina appeared to be comatose, but the other Helena was beginning to look very unsteady.

"Please don't just stand there," she said to herself.

Moon-Helena glided into the hut softly.

"John's here, you know," she said in her usual dulcet tone.

Earth-Helena stood up.

"Not MY John." Earth-Helena swayed woozily.

Moon-Helena went out to help hold her up, but Earth-Helena steadied her own self as she held a hand out in pause.

"We cannot touch. One of us would be destroyed.'"

The words shocked. Moon Helena's eyes involuntarily began to well up with tears as she regarded the state of her future self.

"And since I am feeling the weakest…it will be me." The Earth-Helena gave a weak smile at this irony. She knew she was physically hardier than this other Helena. She didn't know why she was losing out, but it served as an important lesson. "We cannot coexist."

The others stood outside listening to Professor Bergman pontificate about the nature of the universe. He suddenly paused when he saw brown robed Earth Helena emerge from the habitation units.

She glided calmly over not saying a word. Everyone watched in stunned silence. She approached John who, for once in his very decisive life, did not seem to know what to do. He glanced over at his Moon-Helena who could only give a worried shrug.

As she approached John regarded her warmly. Suntanned skin and hair pulled back gave her different sort of beauty.

"Hello…Helena," he said pleasantly to her.

"Koenig. I was Helena Koenig," she informed him. "I know you don't know me. Not the way I know you. But 2 years ago we were going to start a family. But then you went away."

"I…I'm sorry," he began to apologize.

"Sssshhhh…" She was now close enough to gently put a much labored finger to his lips. "It's okay. You're really not my John. I know that. I know that. But…"

She turned her head into his.

"I am not worried that I am going to die today," she said softly. "I just don't want to leave these people without me."

She reached behind his neck.

"But someone has to be sacrificed." She had a satisfied smile on her face. "…And, in a way, this is a dream come true…For finally I get to say 'good-bye' to you."

She held a transfixed gaze onto his eyes.

"I love you John Koenig."

Her lips barely touched his when she collapsed in his arms.

Under Moon-Helena's guidance the Earth Alphans carried their Helena and placed her next to Regina to get cold-blanket therapy to reduce what the moon doctor diagnosed as cranial swelling.

When they re-emerged the Santa Maria settlers looked belligerent.

"You cannot come here," Paul said with a voice did not brook argument. "You're killing us."

"Look Paul," Alan said defensively. "You can't…"

"You cannot exist here," Sandra reiterated. She let her two year-old and four year-old son come out from the shelter of their white geodesic habitat. "We have families." She stood between Kano and Tanya and reached her hands to touch both of them. "We are getting stronger and bigger." Her white robed arm gestured to the small cluster of geodesic constructs, the anti-grav towers, and the cropfields all around. "You have no idea how we have struggled in the last 5 years to claw a living out of this place. We love one another. We're going to make it!"

"And we're not?" Alan was unmoved. He reached for his commlock as he looked plaintively towards John. "We've got to get Exodus moving Commander."

In a swift motion grabbed Alan's commlock hand and drew his laser on the astronaut at the same time. Kano placed the women and children behind himself as he drew his weapon too.

"Paul!" Victor placed his hands against both men to separate them. "Kano! This is not the way."

With the stand-off stabilized the professor wrung his hands together and began to postulate to John:

"There is a frame of order to this universe. This maelstrom emerges to disrupt this order…to rearrange the parts of the different cosmic continuums…but in the end like oil and water, they will not stay mixed. If forced together they WILL separate. You belong in your space and time. When those two moons meet it will cause havoc and one will be destroyed…but it will only be destroyed in this continuity. In its own continuum it will reemerge whole. Be on that moon when that transference happens, or the entities that you are and the entities that we are will be lost in a web of unresolveable conflicting and competing destinies."