SCIFI.COM | Farscape: Journey Logs

Even if we did not speak of it, we mourned the loss of Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan, and our longing to ease our pain brought us to the ruins of an old monastery. There a memorial shrine stood, commemorating the bravery of Peacekeepers — for once apparently acting in accordance with their name — who died defending Jocacean nurses from a brutal, invading Venek Horde that had laid seige to the nurses' compound.

History records — well, used to record — that Peacekeeper Sub-Officer Dacon was particularly brave; it was Dacon's heroic death that enabled the Venek commander, General Grynes, to offer the Jocaceans a truce. The idea that merciless, cruel Peacekeepers were instrumental in achieving actual peace struck all of us — except former PK commando Aeryn Sun — as something of an irony.

Crichton, Aeryn, D'Argo, Jool and Stark had gone down to visit the memorial, while I monitored repairs to Moya's condensers. On board, Chiana, Rygel and I realized something was wrong when I received a communication from the planet in the Venek language. This was perplexing, as the Veneks had abandoned the planet hundreds of cycles ago. Then I received a frantic call from Jool, who was exclaiming that the memorial had changed and was now hung with Venek banners. When we brought her aboard, she showed us a terrible wound on her arm, and she explained what had happened.

Built around a rip in time's fabric, the memorial could show visitors the monastery's famous history, if one wore a special visor. Hoping this triumph of peace would bring comfort to Stark, who especially mourned Zhaan, Crichton had urged him to look at the past. Somehow, Stark's powers interacted with the temporal rip and threw Crichton, Aeryn, D'Argo and Jool back in time, to the precise moment of the Venek attack. Within microts, Jool was shot by a flaming Venek arrow. Quickly, Stark sought out the time-tear and D'Argo pushed Jool into it, with the rest of the group planning to follow. But history had somehow been changed by their arrival, and the rift closed after Jool passed through it.

I checked computer records, which confirmed that the presence of Crichton and the others in the past was distorting our present. The planet's population was now drastically reduced, and its history files now spoke of a massive war instead of a noble truce.

Trapped in the past, the group worked to restore the timeline. When Crichton discovered that the Venek commander, General Grynes, was a prisoner in the compound, he tried to sneak him over the wall so that the general would be free to broker the truce. But just as Grynes was escaping, one of the Jocaceans, Nurse Kelsa, shot and killed him. Outside, the Veneks screamed for blood to avenge their general and announced they would attack at dawn and slaughter all within the monastery.

Crichton insisted to Aeryn and D'Argo that the timeline could still be restored if Sub-Officer Dacon sacrificed himself, as he was originally said to have done. But with the timeline so muddied, Aeryn and D'Argo were not convinced. Regardless, our friends were still trapped in the past, in a compound under seige, and expecting to perish in the morning.

Of course, on Moya, we had no way of knowing what new history was being made 500 cycles ago. We could only watch as the planet changed before our very eyes from a green, living place to one utterly dead and burning with radiation from a conflict so massive that no life whatsoever had survived. A short while later, the planet disappeared entirely.

It seemed our accidental time-travelers had reshaped history in a manner that resulted in the loss of billions of lives — very possibly starting with their own....