WIP Amnesty Day
Feb. 6th, 2004 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularPlumbers working with Sawzall to replace old burned-out sump pump. In the meantime, have decided to offer up for Fic Amnesty Day my abandoned Farscape WIP.
Killed by the fact that while I knew Crichton and company were going back in time, I didn't for a second believe that they'd reach present-day Earth; by the fact that the alternate future I'd postulated got utterly Jossed; by overwork preparing for the bar; and by generalized depression.
Also because I feared the repercussions of this bit of dialogue, which I knew was going to come, but which I didn't dare set forth in the wide world at the time:
"Crichton, you have no idea how easy it would be to lead this planet into a new renaissance. I could make your Earth the envy of the entire galaxy, and all I would have to do is issue three edicts and have twelve people shot."
"So why are you telling me this, Ryg? Go back down there and demand an audience with the President and tell him what to do."
"Hmf. He's one of the people I'd have to kill."
Somehow I suspect that even Hynerians are subject to 18 U.S.C. ยง1751.
Anyway, I finished six parts before leaving it behind.
and no I'm not gonna do DVD commentary for this one
Look Up and See
Time: Future. Sometime after "Kansas". Likely to become AU after the rest of Season 4 airs.
Disclaimer: Unauthorized. Not for profit. Belongs to Henson Co. et.al.
Note: This is both a stand-alone and a part of something larger, which is still in the development phase. It began with a single image, the one at the end, and has developed from there, backwards and forwards...
* * * * * * *
The first warning came from the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn, but it wasn't much, just a single photo of something unusual skimming the edge of the ringed planet's atmosphere. If the tech on duty at Mission Control had waited one more minute to get his coffee, he would have missed it completely, and it would have been days before it turned up in the routine examinations of the backlogs.
The second warning came from NORAD's radar outposts, suddenly picking up two blips approaching Earth from the vicinity of the Moon, a direction they wouldn't normally look but for the puzzled heads-up from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Small blips, nothing like the B-movie monstrous alien threats some people feared and others laughed at, but something to look at anyway.
The third warning came from the Hubble Space Telescope, hurriedly swung away from its examination of a distant galaxy to take photos of two objects much, much closer. Those photos didn't go into an archive, but rather appeared simultaneously on the desks of seven high-ranking officials. The clearest photo of the lot showed two drastically different objects, neither one at all natural. One was all edges and angles, flashes of red on a wicked black hull. The other...
The other was impossible. The Director of IASA demanded that the second object in the photo be enhanced, zoomed in on, and it was done in less than one hundred seconds.
And seventeen seconds after that, Colonel Jack Crichton's telephone rang.
* * * * * * *
The two ships were coming down now, slowly descending into atmosphere, in a precise lead-wing formation. The black ship took the guard position, the white module in the lead, smoothly dropping towards the Cape.
They hadn't managed to get DK there yet, but Jack had rushed out to the Cape as soon as the call had come. One of the guards had a telescope, a small thing that a hobbyist would use, and Jack had borrowed the scope to try and find the two ships.
Too soon, too far away ... there.
There it was, tiny, upswept wings and all. A flash of color on the side that had to be the flag. A few bumps that hadn't been there when the module had been loaded into the space shuttle.
And the black ship was holding steady alongside it, keeping guard, it seemed.
Two F-15 interceptors fell into formation beside them, having clawed their way up to altitude, but were having trouble maintaining the formation. They finally settled for pulling up and back, to be in a position to shoot if necessary.
"What is that black thing?" the Director hissed.
"No idea," Jack whispered. He stood back from the telescope - the craft were getting too close - and picked up his binoculars. "Pretty important, probably. Maybe they've got answers."
"We'll have answers, all right," a General standing next to them said.
"No radio traffic yet," the Director said. "They're coming in cold."
"Maybe John's transmitter is down," Jack mused. "Maybe he can hear but not talk."
The radio crackled. "Farscape One, if you can hear me, rock your wings back and forth once."
Jack looked up, and yes, the module's wings waggled. The black ship mirrored the maneuver.
"Farscape One, you are cleared down to the runway. Welcome home."
No response.
And now the two ships were gliding in to the runway, the Air Force escorts peeling off, IASA's own chase planes taking up the task of following them in. The black ship extended a set of skids and glided down to the tarmac, hovering above it as it slowed to a halt; the module dropped its tires and came in, nose flaring up, a wisp of burned rubber as the wheels touched.
The canopy raised on the black ship, and hidden out of sight, a hundred Marines aimed rifles at it.
Two ... women? ... came out of the black ship, one all in black, the other all in red. The woman in black squinted up at the sun, while the woman in red rushed over to the module. Jack was already sprinting from the visitors' gallery to the runway, jumping onto a jeep that was already rolling to get there.
He reached the ships just behind the ground crews and the quarantine team, jumped from the jeep and ran to the module. The two women were at the canopy, looking around. The woman in black - dark hair, dark eyes, a face reminiscent of an eagle's only a thousand times more beautiful - turned and saw him, and her face flashed with an expression that was familiar. Familiar, and impossible.
Recognition.
"Jack," she said, and suddenly, Jack Crichton knew that this woman knew his son, knew him like few on Earth did, because how else would she have recognized him?
"Don't ... don't," she said, frowning, then hissed, and said something to the red-haired, red-clad woman, something that sounded like a cross between backward-masked rockers' speech and the clicking language of the African bushmen.
"Don't be afraid," the redhead said.
The canopy of Farscape One opened, finally, and a cloud of steam filled the cockpit as the moist Florida air hit the cool dry air of the spacecraft.
Jack leaned in, to clear the steam away, to finally look at his son after all these years.
Then he jumped back, shouting inarticulately, flailing his arms, words having failed him.
The steam cleared, and the pilot of Farscape One slowly stood and climbed out.
"You must be the father of John Crichton," the nightmarish figure said, in English so perfect and melodious that a Shakespearean actor would have wept. "My name is Scorpius. We have much to discuss ... and, I fear, far too little time for what must be done."
* * * * * * *
Killed by the fact that while I knew Crichton and company were going back in time, I didn't for a second believe that they'd reach present-day Earth; by the fact that the alternate future I'd postulated got utterly Jossed; by overwork preparing for the bar; and by generalized depression.
Also because I feared the repercussions of this bit of dialogue, which I knew was going to come, but which I didn't dare set forth in the wide world at the time:
"Crichton, you have no idea how easy it would be to lead this planet into a new renaissance. I could make your Earth the envy of the entire galaxy, and all I would have to do is issue three edicts and have twelve people shot."
"So why are you telling me this, Ryg? Go back down there and demand an audience with the President and tell him what to do."
"Hmf. He's one of the people I'd have to kill."
Somehow I suspect that even Hynerians are subject to 18 U.S.C. ยง1751.
Anyway, I finished six parts before leaving it behind.
and no I'm not gonna do DVD commentary for this one
Look Up and See
Time: Future. Sometime after "Kansas". Likely to become AU after the rest of Season 4 airs.
Disclaimer: Unauthorized. Not for profit. Belongs to Henson Co. et.al.
Note: This is both a stand-alone and a part of something larger, which is still in the development phase. It began with a single image, the one at the end, and has developed from there, backwards and forwards...
* * * * * * *
The first warning came from the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn, but it wasn't much, just a single photo of something unusual skimming the edge of the ringed planet's atmosphere. If the tech on duty at Mission Control had waited one more minute to get his coffee, he would have missed it completely, and it would have been days before it turned up in the routine examinations of the backlogs.
The second warning came from NORAD's radar outposts, suddenly picking up two blips approaching Earth from the vicinity of the Moon, a direction they wouldn't normally look but for the puzzled heads-up from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Small blips, nothing like the B-movie monstrous alien threats some people feared and others laughed at, but something to look at anyway.
The third warning came from the Hubble Space Telescope, hurriedly swung away from its examination of a distant galaxy to take photos of two objects much, much closer. Those photos didn't go into an archive, but rather appeared simultaneously on the desks of seven high-ranking officials. The clearest photo of the lot showed two drastically different objects, neither one at all natural. One was all edges and angles, flashes of red on a wicked black hull. The other...
The other was impossible. The Director of IASA demanded that the second object in the photo be enhanced, zoomed in on, and it was done in less than one hundred seconds.
And seventeen seconds after that, Colonel Jack Crichton's telephone rang.
* * * * * * *
The two ships were coming down now, slowly descending into atmosphere, in a precise lead-wing formation. The black ship took the guard position, the white module in the lead, smoothly dropping towards the Cape.
They hadn't managed to get DK there yet, but Jack had rushed out to the Cape as soon as the call had come. One of the guards had a telescope, a small thing that a hobbyist would use, and Jack had borrowed the scope to try and find the two ships.
Too soon, too far away ... there.
There it was, tiny, upswept wings and all. A flash of color on the side that had to be the flag. A few bumps that hadn't been there when the module had been loaded into the space shuttle.
And the black ship was holding steady alongside it, keeping guard, it seemed.
Two F-15 interceptors fell into formation beside them, having clawed their way up to altitude, but were having trouble maintaining the formation. They finally settled for pulling up and back, to be in a position to shoot if necessary.
"What is that black thing?" the Director hissed.
"No idea," Jack whispered. He stood back from the telescope - the craft were getting too close - and picked up his binoculars. "Pretty important, probably. Maybe they've got answers."
"We'll have answers, all right," a General standing next to them said.
"No radio traffic yet," the Director said. "They're coming in cold."
"Maybe John's transmitter is down," Jack mused. "Maybe he can hear but not talk."
The radio crackled. "Farscape One, if you can hear me, rock your wings back and forth once."
Jack looked up, and yes, the module's wings waggled. The black ship mirrored the maneuver.
"Farscape One, you are cleared down to the runway. Welcome home."
No response.
And now the two ships were gliding in to the runway, the Air Force escorts peeling off, IASA's own chase planes taking up the task of following them in. The black ship extended a set of skids and glided down to the tarmac, hovering above it as it slowed to a halt; the module dropped its tires and came in, nose flaring up, a wisp of burned rubber as the wheels touched.
The canopy raised on the black ship, and hidden out of sight, a hundred Marines aimed rifles at it.
Two ... women? ... came out of the black ship, one all in black, the other all in red. The woman in black squinted up at the sun, while the woman in red rushed over to the module. Jack was already sprinting from the visitors' gallery to the runway, jumping onto a jeep that was already rolling to get there.
He reached the ships just behind the ground crews and the quarantine team, jumped from the jeep and ran to the module. The two women were at the canopy, looking around. The woman in black - dark hair, dark eyes, a face reminiscent of an eagle's only a thousand times more beautiful - turned and saw him, and her face flashed with an expression that was familiar. Familiar, and impossible.
Recognition.
"Jack," she said, and suddenly, Jack Crichton knew that this woman knew his son, knew him like few on Earth did, because how else would she have recognized him?
"Don't ... don't," she said, frowning, then hissed, and said something to the red-haired, red-clad woman, something that sounded like a cross between backward-masked rockers' speech and the clicking language of the African bushmen.
"Don't be afraid," the redhead said.
The canopy of Farscape One opened, finally, and a cloud of steam filled the cockpit as the moist Florida air hit the cool dry air of the spacecraft.
Jack leaned in, to clear the steam away, to finally look at his son after all these years.
Then he jumped back, shouting inarticulately, flailing his arms, words having failed him.
The steam cleared, and the pilot of Farscape One slowly stood and climbed out.
"You must be the father of John Crichton," the nightmarish figure said, in English so perfect and melodious that a Shakespearean actor would have wept. "My name is Scorpius. We have much to discuss ... and, I fear, far too little time for what must be done."
* * * * * * *
no subject
Date: 2004-02-06 02:24 pm (UTC)Ask and ye shall receive.
Date: 2004-02-06 02:54 pm (UTC)I had a plan. They were going to save the Earth. I just got too wrapped up in other things to finish - and quite frankly, there have been days when I wonder if Earth is worth saving...