John Crichton, only a few hours back on Earth, sat in a high school canteen having lunch with himself and a woman who was his wife but yet not his wife. He had a vague recollection of having come to this school for a football game, back when he was a kid. Back before he'd been shot through a wormhole to a distant part of the Universe, back before aliens had ravaged the Earth to secure supplies of pretty flowers. What was most astounding to him was that none of this was in any way a shock to him. Over the last five years the bar for what could shock or surprise him had been lifted pretty frelling high.

Apparently the high school had been chosen as a temporary base for Collins and Hobbes's small group of military and federal agents as it had extensive facilities, like this canteen, and was not identifiable from space or from any records as any sort of military threat. Plus, he guessed, because it was also only a ten minute drive from the requisitioned civil airfield where his module was parked.

"We reckon they'll be back, sooner or later, when they want something more." John's twin explained to him while toying with a bowl of ice cream.

"Or something else." The Aeryn who wasn't his wife muttered darkly between mouthfuls of chocolate cake. John noticed that she had shot both him and his twin a glance, which he now realised might mean that that something else might be him. She seemed to be enjoying her cake, despite her general gloom. He'd have to remember to take some back to Moya for his Aeryn. Then he kicked himself, remembering that she'd probably tried it when they were on their version of Earth last year, and that he'd have known that already if he hadn't behaved like a total rat bastard to her for the whole time that they had been there.

"Only if they know I'm here." His other self grunted and shrugged.

MoyaJohn couldn't help but notice that, even though he had assumed that the other him and Aeryn were a couple, he hadn't seen much physical contact between them. Actually, he hadn't really noticed any significant contact. It was almost like Aeryn was holding herself distant, like she had during his second year on Moya, when part of her had wanted to be with him but another, stronger part, could not bring herself to do so. It was all very odd, seeing as how, as he understood it, they had come to Earth together and left him... yet another him, but the equivalent of him three years ago, stranded out in the Uncharted Territories. Still, it was not his business. Things were going fine between him and his Aeryn. Well, fine by their standards. This bastard was on his own. Served him right for leaving him out there and running off with Aeryn. He felt the first twinges of a stress headache coming on just thinking about it.

"And you've no other weapons to use against them?" MoyaJohn asked and licked his fingers. He had chosen the fried chicken. The others might already have moved on to, or even finished dessert, but John was royally gorging himself on chicken, French fries, onion rings... The smell alone had gripped him with carnal desire as soon as he'd walked into the room, making him salivate like a Pavlovian dog. Aeryn was going to be furious. He was going to have to find some toothpaste later. And a brush. Maybe some mouthwash, too...

"Nothing worth squat." John's twin replied, eyeing the pile of chicken bones with a pair of arched eyebrows and an open-mouthed half-smile.

"But what about the displacement engine thing? The one you used at Dam Ba Da?" Frell, he'd never, not in his wildest dreams, imagined he'd ever be having a conversation with his, to him, dead twin, far less a conversation about what, in his own world, had killed that twin.

"We've got it all right. I brought it back, strapped to Furlow's module."

"It destroyed a Scarran Dreadnought, right? So, why not use it?"

"One shot, burnt out."

"Frell!"

"Damned straight."

"Besides, it runs on partanium. No partanium on Earth." TalynJohn explained, leaning across the table to steal an onion ring off his twin. MoyaJohn gave him a scolding stare, but otherwise let it pass.

"Maybe it could run on something else?"

"What, you reckon the Mr Fusion reactor will run on garbage?" TalynJohn mocked, gathering some of the greasy detritus of their meal into a pile as though he were hoarding valuable fuel.

"Maybe. I'll get the beer, you get the banana skin." MoyaJohn couldn't help himself from grinning. At last, someone who got his references!

"It's just a coffee machine, you know?" TalynJohn grinned back, evidently thinking much the same. "The Mr Fusion Reactor? A coffee machine with bits stuck on it."

"Hey, don't knock it. If I'd had a coffee machine out in the UTs these last couple of cycles, I could have managed anything."

"I'd have traded any amount of coffee not to have spent the last couple of years in a rat cage," TalynJohn responded with softly wistful bitterness.

MoyaJohn looked at TalynJohn with a new found sympathy. Things must have sucked big time for his twin, imprisoned on Earth, to have wanted to have given it all up - to have admitted to him of all people that he'd even considered giving all of it up.

"Look..." MoyaJohn paused as he struggled to find an appropriate and polite name to call himself. After a couple of microts he abandoned the attempt. "We may not have always seen eye to eye..."

"I can't say as I've even thought about you that much at all. Except these last few weeks, when I thought you'd led the Scarrans to Earth."

"Oh, for frell's sake!" MoyaJohn gritted his teeth and bit back the urge to hit himself up the side of the head. Aeryn seemed to concur. She glared at her version of John, rolled her eyes, stood and stalked off. "If anyone can make a weapon to stop the Scarrans it's us. Earth needs us to put our heads together and work this out, not to keep butting our heads!"

"Yeah, yeah. You're right." TalynJohn's eyes followed Aeryn, his hunger obviously running deeper than just a few onion rings. Aeryn was attacking a canned drink dispenser and not looking their way: John's money was on the Peacekeeper over the cola machine. The other him and Aeryn really seemed to be in a bad place.

"Of course I am." MoyaJohn paused for a moment as he decided to throw his other self a bone. "I'm you, after all."

TalynJohn puffed out a humourless laugh. "Yeah, OK."

"So, where's this displacement engine then? We ought to get to work."

'~'

"So, everything's fine, John?" Aeryn asked, drumming impatient fingers on one of Moya's control consoles.

"Yeah, there's no sign of Natira," he replied, giving her the code that he was not being held against his will and there was no need for her to come and break him out. "But I need to stay down here for a couple of days: They just need a bit of help..." John started to explain.

"I may be needing a little bit of help soon, too, John!" Aeryn interrupted, her voice firm. One of her genetic modifications, as a carrier-born front-line soldier, meant that her pregnancy was proceeding at an alarming rate by human standards: the baby would be due in a matter of days. How could John had possibly have forgotten that, she wondered? If he didn't get back up here soon, nature might just take its course without him being present.

"Officer Sun?" Colonel Collins interrupted. "We need a weapon to use against the Scarrans. We have Furlow's module from Dam Ba Da, and both of the Crichtons are going to try to get it working. But we'd like you to come down, too. Help with the work on the module or the displacement engine..."

"I am no scientist. Or tech. I'm sure I couldn't be of any help to you," Aeryn replied tersely, backed up by a nod of agreement from Chiana, who stood beside her on Moya's command deck. The Nebari girl had been present and offered support to her friend through the shocking revelation that there was another version of both Aeryn and John down on Earth, and that they had been there since the events at Dam Ba Da. That revelation had been bad enough in itself, but Aeryn didn't really want to explain her real reason for declining to help to the humans. She was adamant that she was not going to place herself and her unborn child at their mercy. However, she was also determined that, if necessary, she was ready to fly down there in her Prowler to drag her John back to Moya.

"I'm sure you could be of enormous value to our..."

"Counter proposal." Aeryn interrupted brusquely. "My ship has extensive files on the Scarrans, their tactics, their weapon systems and so forth. I am willing to share that knowledge, along with my own personal experiences of Scarrans. In return I would expect you to find John's close relatives, tell them about us, offer them the opportunity to come to Moya."

Collins did not reply straight away. Aeryn imagined she could almost hear him thinking, wondering whether John's family held any strategic value, whether agreeing to her terms might be a bad deal for him. He was a soldier, perhaps too suspicious of others for his own good. Almost certainly he was suspicious of an 'alien' such as herself. But what she had asked for was a good deal for him, he got plenty of knowledge of strategic value in exchange for nothing of much value to him, but he probably had trouble accepting it simply because it was such a good deal. Admittedly, Olivia, John's sister, was some sort of med-tech, a specialist in childbirth and so could be very useful to Aeryn in a day or two, but Collins didn't need to know that.

"We have our own Officer Sun to tell us about Scarrans." Collins finally replied. Aeryn rolled her eyes in despair. Frell humans and their intransigence!

"I was coming to her. My understanding is that my knowledge of Scarrans would considerably exceed hers. I have had more occasions to... observe them in close quarters. But she could have already told you all that I know about the displacement engine, so I can't see how you need me down there. Anyway, I need her to fly John's relatives up to Moya if John is working on the weapon."

"We don't have a ship capable..."

"My husband's module. The one he came down in earlier. I... she knows how to fly it."

"You're asking a lot!" Collins scoffed.

"Am I? I think it's a good deal for you. Everything Pilot and I can tell you about Scarrans for people of no value to you? Why don't you think about it for an arn and let me know. I think you will come to agree, it is very generous."

'~'

The last place MoyaJohn had expected to be taken was to a car customization workshop in a light industrial zone on the outskirts of Springfield.

"We got plenty of equipment here and can get more in without raising any eyebrows, it's a good place logistically and, crucially, there's nothing in these parts of the slightest interest to the Scarrans." Lt Col Collins, still looking and sounding military in spite of the civvies he was now wearing, explained to John as they climbed out of a blacked-out SUV into the quiet, bland, concrete parking lot.

They passed through an outer office and then a workshop, which was clearly a 'front' for the real business which took place within, and then on, through a transitional area secured by armed, military guards and on into the proper workshop beyond.

"Well, pimp my ride!" MoyaJohn exclaimed, laughing and clapping his hands together. His eyes gleamed and he drew a deep breath at his first sight of Furlow's replica of his module. It was accurate in almost every detail, excepting the 'roof-rack' which he already knew had once held the displacement engine. The engine itself, which appropriately enough resembled a car's roof box, lay partially disassembled on a large workbench off to one side.

"Why'd Furlow bother painting it with IASA logos and everything?" MoyaJohn asked with a frown as he realised the extraordinary extent to which Furlow had replicated his craft.

"You know, I've never thought of that before..." TalynJohn quirked a smile. "That's a frelling good question. Maybe you can bring something new to the party after all?"

"Well, gee, thanks," MoyaJohn snarked, staring back at his twin with thinly-veiled resentment. He came to a decision - he'd come here to work, not to bitch. "C'mon, show me the flux capacitor - we gotta get this show on the road."

"Where we're going, we don't need roads," TalynJohn replied with a grin. MoyaJohn couldn't help but laugh. Perhaps they could get on after all? At least for some of the time, anyway.

'~'

"You should come." Lt Col Collins stated flatly, having called Moya for the third time that day. Aeryn cursed under her breath. She wondered if John might have somehow let slip about her pregnancy. Why else could Collins be so insistent about her coming down? "Our military infrastructure may have taken a hit, but you'd still be better off down here than on your own up there."

"I am not on my own. I have my crew." Collins didn't need to know that that crew comprised one frightened young woman who had backed out of delivering her last child, one crazy old woman who Aeryn wouldn't trust anywhere near her in a medical emergency and an oversized crustacean, who was simply too large and too immobile to be of any help in the birthing no matter how much they both might wish differently. Moya was hardly the mighty Peacekeeper Command Carrier, Zelbinion, or even the smaller Carrier, the Kalvanion, on which she had been stationed for most of her career. "Besides, neither John nor I are comfortable taking such a risk with our safety. In view of the hospitality shown to the other me..."

"Officer Sun, please... all that is in the past now. You... and... the, the other you... you're valued allies in our defence against the Scarrans."

"I'm sure...I know." Aeryn paused to collect her thoughts. She was remembering some of the views about her and her potential offspring expressed in the various R. Wilson Munro documentaries, "There are plenty of your species down there who feel otherwise. Some of them medical technicians and scientists, no doubt."

"You'd be treated with the greatest respect, and provided with the utmost security for your protection." Collins insisted. Aeryn wasn't buying any of it.

"No. I will come down if and when we feel it is safe." Aeryn was pretty sure she had no wish to gain further first-hand experience of what the humans meant by 'the utmost security.' The fact that the humans had kept her doppelganger imprisoned for two cycles told her that they could be quite ruthlessly efficient in that regard, when they put their minds to it. "Now, what about the other matter? Have you located any of John Crichton's family yet?"

Collins sighed, as though accepting defeat, even if only temporarily. "We have one so far. Olivia Crichton." Aeryn rubbed her bump with one hand and smiled. That was excellent news: John's sister could come in rather useful in a couple of days' time. The humans had probably thought she would be a less valuable asset than Jack Crichton and so would be a better exchange for them - how wrong they were.

'~'

Although they seemed to be making good progress on the displacement engine, the two Johns were driving Aeryn to distraction with their constant bickering. What the frell was his problem? Why did he find himself so frelling irritating: not that she didn't, right now, but…? It was just like she remembered, back on Moya two, no, three cycles ago, before circumstances had split them up and sent them on their different paths. Circumstances. Such a funny word to describe those events: They had split up in order to try to evade the Peacekeeper retrieval squad led by her own murderous mother. Then she had finally given her heart to one of them only to end up as a prisoner on his home planet…

The raised voice of one of the two Johns snapped her out of her reverie. They were still at it! Did he ever stop talking!?

"Anyway, what are you complaining about? In my reality I've spent a couple of years locked in a cage, with the occasional anal probe for light entertainment. And in your reality I died. And Aeryn: it doesn't look like I'm my Aeryn's favourite person right now whereas you got to marry her!" She glared at them. Didn't he... they realise that she was right here, within earshot? It seemed not! Nothing seemed to matter to either of them when they got going with one of their arguments. Frell them both!

MoyaJohn shook his head. "Would you rather be out there, with Scorpius and the Scarrans, like your version of me?" It was giving Aeryn a headache. She wasn't sure how much more of this she could stand.

"Now you're just being picky."

"You started it."

"Picky, picky, picky!"

Aeryn decided she needed what John would call 'some air'. She slammed the hunk of metal she had been cleaning and checking down onto the workbench in front of her and stormed off towards the entrance. She checked over her shoulder one last time as she reached the door. Her eyes confirmed what her ears had already told her. Neither John paused for a moment in their bickering, not even noticing her departure. The pair of fekkiks!

As she passed through the heavy, swinging doors, into the auto bodyshop, she was so overcome with fury at both versions of John Crichton that she almost charged headlong into Collins, who had evidently been about to enter the secret part of the workshop through the same route.

"Sorry," Aeryn blustered, about to sidestep him. "If you're looking for Crichton, the stupid drannit is in there, arguing with himself!"

"Actually, umm," Collins scratched his head and bit his lip. He gave a little half smile, as though uncertain about how to raise something. It was a most uncharacteristic display from him. "It was you I was looking for."

Aeryn frowned and quizzed him to explain with a single shake of her head.

"Umm, you can fly the module, right? The original one?" Aeryn nodded, cautiously, wondering where the frell this might be leading.

"Why... why do you ask?" she ventured. The sound of one of the Johns screaming at the other one wafted through the door. She barely stifled a groan. Collins chuckled.

"Got a job for you." She glared at him and he held up his hands placatingly, reminding her of how John had often used the same gesture in his first few monens aboard Moya. "It's all cool, no hidden agenda - we just need someone taken up to Moya and we've no other ships and no one else that can fly the module. Besides, it'll get you away from those two for a few hours," Collins arched an eyebrow and cracked a grin as a loud crash sounded from next door. Somewhat surprised at herself, she nodded and grinned back.