Archiving older fic: Prologue
Jan. 15th, 2005 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve11Write in the style of a published author challenge for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
farscapefriday, filk more than original fic, mild spoilers for Family Ties, mild spoilers for What Was Lost II:
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Prologue
Far out in a backwater galaxy in the least charted portion of the Uncharted Territories lies a large yet wholly unremarkable gas giant.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly four hundred twenty thousand metras is a small oil-covered moon, temporarily home to a cadre of mammalian-descended life forms so amazingly primitive that they still think coaxial cable is a pretty neat idea.
This moon has -- or rather, had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people were xenophobic extremists who were nevertheless born and bred on roving starships built to encounter as many alien species as possible. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most were concerned with organizing into powerful armies, then terrorizing and dominating any species they encountered in the name of keeping the peace, which was odd because generally the lesser species had no need of peacekeepers until the Peacekeepers arrived.
On this particular moon, in an example of how spectacularly wrong things had gone, the Peacekeepers were quite intent on using their coaxial cable and other sundry to develop technology that would take their ships even farther away, to encounter even more new, terrifying species and if necessary, blow their planets into tiny chunks. None of this made any of the Peacekeepers on the moon feel any safer or happier. Then one day, nearly ten thousand cycles after a temple of priests were banished to a magnetic netherworld for suggesting that people get along no matter how many legs or eyes they had, a dekka-grade tech by the name of Bixx residing in crew quarters five lurg two realized what had been going wrong all this time, and exactly how to fix it. This time it would work, and no one would have to get banished anywhere.
Sadly, however, before he could report this revelation to his supervisor, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
This is not his story.
But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.
It is also the story of a human, a human called John Crichton -- not a Peacekeeper, never encountered in the UTs, and until shortly before the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by anyone in this end of the Universe.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable human.
In fact, he was probably the most remarkable human ever to come out of the civilization on planet Earth-- of which no one had ever heard either.
Not only is he a remarkable human, but he is also a criminally successful one-- luckier than the husbands of the seven-breasted siren of Eroticon six, better looking than both heads of Intergalactic Superstar Migo Mottletreb, only as physically imposing as the fizz in a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, but packing about the same punch. In many of the seedier civilizations along the rim of the Uncharted Territories, John Crichton has supplanted the Peacekeepers as the Person they would be Least Happy to See.
But the story of this terrible, stupid day, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertiwned with this remarkable human begins very simply.
It begins with a Leviathan.
**
(Obviously snurched shamelessly from Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
farscapefriday, filk more than original fic, mild spoilers for Family Ties, mild spoilers for What Was Lost II:----------------------
Prologue
Far out in a backwater galaxy in the least charted portion of the Uncharted Territories lies a large yet wholly unremarkable gas giant.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly four hundred twenty thousand metras is a small oil-covered moon, temporarily home to a cadre of mammalian-descended life forms so amazingly primitive that they still think coaxial cable is a pretty neat idea.
This moon has -- or rather, had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people were xenophobic extremists who were nevertheless born and bred on roving starships built to encounter as many alien species as possible. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most were concerned with organizing into powerful armies, then terrorizing and dominating any species they encountered in the name of keeping the peace, which was odd because generally the lesser species had no need of peacekeepers until the Peacekeepers arrived.
On this particular moon, in an example of how spectacularly wrong things had gone, the Peacekeepers were quite intent on using their coaxial cable and other sundry to develop technology that would take their ships even farther away, to encounter even more new, terrifying species and if necessary, blow their planets into tiny chunks. None of this made any of the Peacekeepers on the moon feel any safer or happier. Then one day, nearly ten thousand cycles after a temple of priests were banished to a magnetic netherworld for suggesting that people get along no matter how many legs or eyes they had, a dekka-grade tech by the name of Bixx residing in crew quarters five lurg two realized what had been going wrong all this time, and exactly how to fix it. This time it would work, and no one would have to get banished anywhere.
Sadly, however, before he could report this revelation to his supervisor, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
This is not his story.
But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.
It is also the story of a human, a human called John Crichton -- not a Peacekeeper, never encountered in the UTs, and until shortly before the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by anyone in this end of the Universe.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable human.
In fact, he was probably the most remarkable human ever to come out of the civilization on planet Earth-- of which no one had ever heard either.
Not only is he a remarkable human, but he is also a criminally successful one-- luckier than the husbands of the seven-breasted siren of Eroticon six, better looking than both heads of Intergalactic Superstar Migo Mottletreb, only as physically imposing as the fizz in a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, but packing about the same punch. In many of the seedier civilizations along the rim of the Uncharted Territories, John Crichton has supplanted the Peacekeepers as the Person they would be Least Happy to See.
But the story of this terrible, stupid day, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertiwned with this remarkable human begins very simply.
It begins with a Leviathan.
**
(Obviously snurched shamelessly from Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
