SCIFI.COM | Farscape: Journey Logs

It was risky business: I was spacewalking, by myself, expecting a wormhole to appear in front of me. Which it did, on schedule. It was a small wormhole, and it felt right. What could go wrong?

As Daffy Duck once said, "Ha-ha, it is to laugh."

The thing reached out and swallowed me.

I landed on an iceberg adrift in a black ocean. That's what it looked like, anyway. It was actually a no-man's land between universes; it was the real Twilight Zone, but Rod Serling didn't show — just an extradimensional alien in human form, dressed like an undertaker and talking like Albert Einstein on 'shrooms.

"Einstein" was there to execute me because of my wormhole knowledge.

Luckily, he wanted to get to know me before pulling the trigger. And, like all the other cryptic beings I've ever met because of wormholes, he lectured me.

I learned there are systems of wormholes with uncountable entrances and exits. Some connect places in the same universe and time. Others connect different universes; others, different times. Why? Because space is actually space-time, and wormholes are the interstate highways of space-time, with on-ramps, interchanges, and exits. No good road signs, though.

Einstein represented a species from a different realm (universe? dimension?) that was incompatible with ours. Since travel between these realms is unnatural and dangerous to both sides, Einstein's people modified some of their own citizens to be able to live in our realm; this new subspecies became The Ancients. The Ancients' job was to keep the realms separate and safe, and to report back to Einstein's people, their progenitors. Instead, for their own reasons, the Ancients implanted wormhole knowledge in my brain ("The Hidden Memory") then disappeared to who-knows-where ("Infinite Possibilities, Part 1: Daedalus Demands"). Once that happened, Einstein snatched Moya ("Dog With Two Bones"), hoping to meet me. I wasn't aboard then, but he'd found me now.

I couldn't give Einstein any answers. I've never really understood why the Ancients gave me wormhole knowledge. Einstein wanted me to realize just how dangerous that knowledge is. I already knew it was bad. He showed me that it was scarier than I'd ever dreamed.

He sent me to a series of alternate realities — schisms from what should be, fractured fairy tales I could cause by careless wormhole travel. A world where Aeryn broke my neck my first day on Moya. A world where Peacekeeper Captain Crichton killed his prisoner Sikozu. A world where humans were Scarran slaves. A freaky mess in which Aeryn was actually Chiana, Sikozu was Stark, D'Argo was Jool, Noranti was Rygel — it's confusing, deal with it. In that world, Crais overran Moya — blood and betrayal galore.

If I grokked Einstein right, your casual wormhole tourist doesn't know enough to cause these freak-show realities. Anyone can fly through a wormhole — but not just anyone can navigate.

Thanks to the Ancients, I can.

Einstein said I can enter complex wormhole systems and navigate myself to anything familiar. But because the correct reality that I want to reach is surrounded, in these complex systems, by a lot of similar but skewed "unrealized realities," it's mathematically possible — hell, probable — for me to screw up. Einstein told me that if I make a mistake, the thing to do is fix the first, closest thing that goes wacky, then get the hell out of there and hope for the best.

With one accident, I could destroy everything I love, and extra universes besides.

That fact scared me as few things have — to the point that I asked Einstein to kill me. Better I die than all of existence. But now that Einstein knew it was the Ancients who'd given me wormhole knowledge, his plan changed: He decided to let me live, and even hoped I'd be his people's new wormhole sheriff in our universe, keeping bad guys off the highways. (I said no.)

By this point, he and his iceberg were both weak — talking to me had exhausted him. With the little time that remained, Einstein tried to tell me how to navigate wormhole systems. It's all about sensing familiar vibes, which are the only road signs to the correct exit ramp. Sound easy? No, it isn't.

Einstein vanished. The iceberg dissolved. Now, it was up to me to find my way back through the wormhole to Moya. I plunged into the wormhole circuit, slipping through side branches everywhere. I reached out for Moya, and touched something familiar....

I went for it — and it was one hell of a wrong turn.

Or maybe the rightest turn of all.