"Good evening. I am your host, R Wilson Munroe and tonight on Alien Visitation we will be asking – and answering – some of the most intriguing questions yet raised by the words and deeds of the crew of Moya during their stay on Earth. Questions such as: what caused the terrible destruction at Jack Crichton's house on Christmas eve; who murdered IASA scientists Douglas and Laura Knox and Secret Service Agent Jim Cook; and what was the dark secret at the heart of the crew of Moya that our government did not want us to hear? And, of course, what was the true nature of the relationship between Commander John Crichton and the Sebacean Peacekeeper Officer Aeryn Sun? Were they, as many have suggested, lovers?"
John looked up from the TV as Aeryn walked into their family quarters aboard Moya, their precocious ten month old son, D'Argo, toddling beside her, while her new, but rapidly growing, baby-bump preceded her by a couple of denches. John registered their arrival and swiftly flicked off the TV. John was ever ready with the remote these days lest D'Argo see or hear something unsuitable for his young eyes and ears. Aeryn, on the other hand, did not seem to regard anything as unsuitable for their son. It was just one of those little cultural differences they had to work through. He'd been brought up in a loving family, she'd been brought up in a brutal military crèche. At least she no longer argued with him about child rearing. Indeed, she seemed to have conceded that, as he knew considerably more about bringing up infants as anything other than child-soldiers than she did, then they should follow what seemed right and normal to him in such matters.
The TV was one of the many presents from home which Aeryn had acquired for John during their brief, disastrous visit to Earth the previous year, one of the key things which made his life in this distant part of the Universe, surrounded by alien people and alien artefacts, just a little less difficult to cope with. Aeryn had long since told him about Yondaloo's revelation, that Sebaceans were genetically modified humans, taken from Earth tens of thousands of years ago to serve as soldiers for the Eidelons. But regardless of that John found that the cultural differences between them could still be quite alienating.
He noticed that she arched a questioning eyebrow at his decision to turn off the TV. He tried to ignore her unspoken enquiry. The last thing he wanted was to risk D'Argo seeing something unsuitable. Well, that was the last thing he wanted after seeing a pregnant Aeryn fly into a hormone-fuelled rage at the sight of Munroe's lurid speculations about John's relationship with his almost-but-not-quite-human wife.
"Was that a new transmission?" Aeryn asked, lowering herself carefully onto the couch alongside John, her eyes never leaving D'Argo as he toddled over to his favourite toy Prowler in the far corner of the room. The couch was local, rather than Earth-sourced, but its provenance was far from obvious: Once John and Aeryn had started living together she had happily indulged his desire to seek out a few 'home comforts' with which to furnish their shared quarters. It had even been her who had discovered the all-American-looking couch on a planet-side resupply trip a few monens earlier, barely batting an eyelid when John had teased her about it, saying she only liked it because it was finished in black leather.
"Yup." John responded to her question, never taking his eyes off of the now-blank TV screen or his hand off of the remote. "Pilot picked it up earlier. Along with another Twilight movie and an Alien prequel... "
"And?"
"Truly awful. I don't know why they bothered." He tossed the remote control out of Aeryn's reach. She rolled her eyes at him and sighed.
"I was talking about the documentary," she explained evenly, displaying some of her relatively new-found reserves of patience. She hefted herself up enough to retrieve the remote from the stack of books and videotapes in front of the TV. John intercepted D'Argo and the toy Prowler in mid flight, pulling them onto his lap for protection - a human-Sebacean shield should his ex-soldier, ex-assassin wife change her mind and feel that his flippancy merited punishment. Not that he didn't secretly like it, just a little, when she did.
"What did they say this time?" she asked, jabbing the remote at the screen and restarting the show. He'd lost this one and he knew it. He'd just have to hang onto the hope that she didn't see anything which might cause her to fly off the handle.
As if to answer her question, the arrogant, humourless face of Dr Edith Anderson filled the screen. John winced in anticipation of what his wife and son might be about to hear. Throughout Munroe's Alien Visitation broadcasts Dr Anderson had maintained an unequalled track record in providing offensive, derogatory and inflammatory sound bites. She didn't disappoint this time.
"If John Crichton has truly... mated... and aligned himself with an alien from such an aggressive, intolerant and militaristic species, how could any human in their right mind ever really trust him again?" The camera cut to a head-and-shoulders view of Munroe, who smiled knowingly at the camera, giving an almost imperceptible nod of agreement.
"Nothing the sprout needs to hear." John growled, angry at what was being said on the TV rather than at Aeryn or his child. He snatched the remote back from her and pressed pause. She glared at him menacingly, what John had long since regarded as Peacekeeper Look Number One, or 'don't frell with me Erpman, I could pin you to the deck in a microt.'
"We can watch it this evening if you really want." He nodded his chin at D'Argo to indicate their infant son as the excuse for his reticence. She blinked at him, her face remaining blank of emotions. Poker games in the Peacekeeper Officers' mess must have been extraordinary affairs. He shifted uneasily under her stare, his leather trousers squeaking as they rubbed against the leather couch. Even his trousers sounded nervous. "There's plenty more bits like that. It's educational."
She continued staring at him inscrutably for a painful handful of microts before nodding in acquiescence. John allowed the now wriggling D'Argo to slip out of his arms and renew his play. At least they could both be grateful that their son had seemed to pay no attention to the odious views expressed in the documentary nor had he made the connection that the people on the TV might have been talking about his parents.
"Perhaps you should put a different recording in?" Aeryn ventured. He recognised that she was probably trying in her own, stumbling, emotionally underdeveloped way to reach out and make peace between them.
"I hear there's a great new romcom over on the SciFi channel?" John tried to lighten the mood. "Three cookie gals and three hunky guys move into adjacent apartments? Makes a change from wrestling shows, anyway..."
"What the frell are you talking about, John?" Aeryn paused just long enough for John's crest to fall. Why did he persist in trying to crack jokes about Earth culture, he wondered? He must just be a slow learner. "We can't get the SciFi channel out here..." she nudged him with her elbow, grinned and arched an eyebrow at him.
"Oh, ha ha..." John replied, but his smile belied his words. Secretly he was chuffed that Aeryn had grown so much from the repressed and dour Peacekeeper that she had once been and relieved that she was still in a good mood, despite the views that she had just witnessed being expressed on the TV. The realisation that she must also have watched the SciFi channel on Earth, without him, soon chased his smile away.
"Do you want to visit?" she asked. Her voice was gentle, encouraging, in no way negative about the idea. Perhaps it was a trick of the translator microbes? They still threw him the odd curve-ball from time to time. "Earth?" She rubbed his hand and smiled softly at him, cocking her head as she waited for an answer. Seemed like she was serious: His very own sweet little domestic assassin. Perhaps she could get a slot on daytime TV? It would have to be something like giving advice on exterminating household vermin, though - baking and sewing and stuff like that were hardly her things. For the briefest instant he wondered what she'd look like in a twinset and pearls.
"You've just seen that dren and you still want to visit?" The question only half surprised him. He knew that she had made friends on Earth - his younger sister, particularly - and that she knew how much Earth, family and friends meant to him. But still, she had hardly been made to feel welcome by everyone there, either at the time of their visit last year or, so it could be seen from the documentaries, since they had left. The authorities had been a mix of suspicious, manipulative and demanding. Many others they had encountered or heard the views of were merely hostile.
"John, remember, I've been on Earth. I know what your TV can be like. And I also know I have friends there, people who liked me. Like your sister."
"You know we can't... I closed the wormhole." He had finally closed the wormhole to Earth the previous year, to protect the planet from a Scarran attack and had told anyone who asked that there was now no way to get there that didn't involve decades of conventional interstellar travel.
"From every point of entry, a wormhole branches into multiple paths," Aeryn recited as though it was something she had heard many times before. "Destination - is the key."
"You've been paying attention?" John teased. He hoped she was the only one who had, because she was dangerously close to uncovering an uncomfortable truth. She frowned at him, causing him a moment of worry that he had overstepped the mark, before she dispelled his worries by punching him gently on the arm.
"So wormholes can connect all places and times, right?" Aeryn persisted. Frell. She really did seem to be worrying her way towards the truth.
"Well, sort of..." John conceded. "Every destination is surrounded by similar unrealized realities..."
"So can you or can you not find your way back to Earth?" Aeryn demanded. Damn his jirl: she could always be relied on to boil things right down to the black and white (and red) and then go in for the kill.
"Mm... yeah," John conceded quietly. It wasn't that he didn't want to go home. Or rather, to Earth and his dad and sisters and pizza and beer and football and movies, he corrected himself. Home was Moya now, Moya and Aeryn and their family. It was more that he was scared to. Scared of what deadly critters might follow him, scared of having the deaths of more people that he loved on his conscience. Scared of what people might say or do now there was no way to dodge the relationship between him and Aeryn, no hiding from the fact that they had one half-breed kid running around and another well on the way. John Crichton had grown up in Tennessee. He'd seen how his fellow homo sapiens could react to stuff as mundane as mixed-ethnicity human couplings, even partners from the wrong side of the tracks or with the wrong surname. Frell, wait till they get a load of us, he thought with a mix of sadness and worry.
"Then we should go." Aeryn stated flatly, breaking his train of thought. "I know you're scared, John, but there's nothing we can't overcome together." She touched his cheek with her fingertips and smiled one of her full-wattage smiles. All of John Crichton's objections melted.
She leant in to kiss him. He suspected she had intended a kiss on the cheek or forehead, but within a couple of microts their lips were locked. Good job they already had a room. And a pair of baby sitters, in Chiana and Noranti, permanently on call.
Not that she seemed interested in taking him to bed. His lips occupied, he waved a hand frantically as she began to push him down onto the sofa, trying to alert her to the need to summon one of those babysitters for their son before things got too out of hand. His reluctance to make out in front of their kid was just another of those little cultural differences, he supposed.