SCIFI.COM | Farscape: Journey Logs

Once upon a time, John Crichton and his amazingly great friends rescued the brave Aeryn Sun from the clutches of the evil Scarrans. The Scarrans imprisoned John's arch-nemesis Scorpius. John and Aeryn kissed; Aeryn's healthy, unborn baby waited for its birthday, the good ship Moya flew onward, and its crew lived happily ever—

I wish.

As I slept by Aeryn's side, Harvey woke up. Scorpius hadn't really removed his neural clone from my head, he'd just tweaked its programming. This new-and-improved Harvey 2.0 had stolen the wormhole equations from my mind and transmitted them to his boss. So Scorpius had my wormhole knowledge, after all. And the Scarrans had Scorpius.

What choice did we have? My friends and I flew to Katratzi, the Scarran base. To pass the time, I put together a miniature Manhattan Project, fused it with my keen fashion sense, and created the latest must-have accessory: a wearable nuke.

When I flashed my pret à porter plutonium powderkeg, the Scarrans very courteously invited me to join the negotiations between Grayza and Scarran Emperor Staleek. With the bomb wired to detonate if I suffered any physical or emotional distress, I finally got some frelling respect.

I gotta tell ya ... after four cycles of having my ass kicked from one end of the Uncharted Territories to the other, even this variety of grudging, irate, "just-until-we-disarm-you" respect felt damn good. Sing it, Aretha! R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that's what this bomb means to me....

The Scarrans and Peacekeepers were now vying to buy my wormhole knowledge. Grayza offered me Boardwalk and a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Staleek, a savvier customer, asked to see the merchandise in action.

Meanwhile, working under the radar, D'Argo and Rygel made nice with the station's contingent of Charrids, while Sikozu won over Katratzi's Kalish administrators. The Charrids and Kalish detested each other. If we could incite them to riot, that would cover our escape with Scorpius. We even had Chiana checking out alternative escape routes. We're getting good at this kind of thing.

Still, time (tick-tock) wasn't our friend. Noranti had learned that Scorpius was locked into a Scarran-style Aurora Chair. He could break any minute. Plus the PKs and the Scarrans were searching for ways to disarm my bomb. Staleek, especially, wanted my blood, because my free-sample wormhole ate the minions he'd sent to observe it (never mind that he was the moron who ordered them to dive in when I told them not to). Tick-tock....

I wasn't the only impatient one. The Scarran Minister Ahkna let me and Aeryn visit Scorpy in the dungeons. As we expected, it was a trap: Ahkna slammed me with her heat ray. Apparently, she didn't believe I'd let the bomb go off. I convinced her otherwise. (Would I really have let the nuke blow? Fair question. If I survive, I'll ponder it in my memoirs.)

Meanwhile, Sikozu had discovered that, deep underground, the Scarrans had a "secret cave." Only one elevator went down there, and only the Charrids had the security codes to that elevator — or so they thought. With the help of a member of the Kalish resistance, Sikozu now had them, too.

Aeryn and I went to check it out. When the doors opened, we discovered that the secret cave was — I just love this — a flower garden. It was full of the Scarrans' favorite crystherium flowers (a.k.a. birds-of-paradise, those tropical spiky things). One of 'em was even a big-ass Stanley plant. I'll never understand Scarrans.

When Aeryn and I were discovered in the garden, we claimed we'd ended up there by accident. The Scarrans yelled at the Charrids for leaving the Great Glass Elevator unlocked. The Charrids accused the Kalish of screwing them over. The Kalish denied everything, like true bureaucrats.

And presto — we had our riot.

Now we just had to break Scorpius out and escape undetected through the violence, without my heart rate climbing high enough to set off the nuke (premature detonation is never pretty). Plenty of things could go wrong, and I only knew about some of them.

Someday — not today, but someday — I'll write the words, "We lived happily ever after," and they'll be true. "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight...."

I wish.