CheekyChi's Chiana & Farscape Fiction

Who Is Who and What Is What?

John Crichton

John Crichton as a recently alienated human; John in a look he wore an awful lot; and John as a bed bug (caps from un4scene and Farscapecaps.com).

An inherently good hearted man, John's adventures put him through a wringer that hardened him in many ways and set hope against misery, in bed with obsession.

Son of a famous Astronaut, John Crichton was initially occupied with pursuing his way of trying to follow his father's foot steps. Astronauts no longer made trail-blazing trips to the moon as his father had done. Instead there was more focus on specialized scientific experiments. John eventually found a niche as something of a hybrid between an Astronaut of the past and a research scientist by becoming test pilot for a project which he helped to conceive and engineer, named Farscape One. This experimental use of gravity worked, and accidentally launched him into a wormhole, flinging him alone deep into space, where he quickly became ensnared in assorted scary adventures involving aliens. He also fell in love with literally the first human looking woman he laid eyes on out there, a soldier from a militant people called PeaceKeepers, Aeryn Sun.

This phenomena that sent him out there, a wormhole, became a life-consuming matter. Aliens of one species implanted information in his subconscious to allow him to use wormholes to return home while aliens of other species began hunting him and putting him through torture and all kinds of hell to get knowledge of wormholes from him. Hop skip and jump several years and a somewhat changed John has evaded enemies, had a child (D'Argo Sun Crichton) with Aeryn (and at least two more with other women) and tried to start a new life with his family. Failing the latter and for various reasons, he eventually chooses to strand himself back on Earth, manipulating time and events via wormhole in the process. Another alien woman who cared for him out there, Chiana, manages to turn up on Earth as well. Where he thought he could find a relatively satisfactory end is where our story begins....

Chiana

Chiana: as John first saw her; with John on an earlier Earth encounter; dancing in a vision of John's (caps by Paul Hilling, EI and un4scene).

The wily, mercurial and exuberant Chiana is an undeliberated individualist and is as colorful within as she is monochromed without.

Chiana's species, Nebari, possess technology vastly beyond anything John knew and differ in various physical traits including large black eyes with superior sight, being gray skinned, having blue blood and being radiation proof. Other things that may or may not be unique to Chiana include being able to leap much farther and having some odd intermittent abilities like prescience. Unfortunately Nebari became a very scary people. Their brand of scary is extreme and hypocritically intolerant conformity, which forced the non-conforming Chiana and her brother, Nerri, into a life with various illegal angles on the run from her people. Her brother has become a leading figure in a Nebari underground called the resistance, whereas most Nebari seem to be conforming to the prevailing order which is simply called The Establishment.

At a couple of points officials of The Establishment have caught up with Chiana. The first time was when she was caught for some reason and extricated by the Establishment (my guess is that nobody is going to deny a Nebari request for extradition). But on the way back she ran into another ship, Moya and her passenger John Crichton. She escaped and remained on Moya. Some agents later tried capturing her aboard Moya, but she managed to escape capture again with thanks to those aboard Moya and a member of the Nebari resistance. Strangely enough not a hint of Nebari, yin or yang, crossed paths with her in the ensuing years. What she did live through was every bit as weird, harrowing and varied as what John has lived through even when their paths weren't crossed, and although she is an extremely resilient and adaptive survivor she is damaged goods in many senses.

Although she was attached and apparently attracted to John, he was completely absorbed by Aeryn, eventually marrying her and having a child. In the meantime Chiana was involved with others including a protracted, ill matched and ill fated relationship with John's buddy D'Argo and his son, Jothee. In the time after John married Aeryn, they separated for some time and she had a variety of adventures and encounters. After John's relationship with Aeryn went south, she reunited with him only for him to maintain some distance and eventually leave her to return to Earth. Still she felt compelled to go to Earth even if that stranded her in what could easily be a very dangerous situation. John probably wonders why, beyond the point she loved him, which she'd repeatedly told him, and not entirely without reason. It wouldn't be unlike her and her life so far if there was more to it than either of them have chosen to discuss. The underlying fact remains: she really, really cares for the poor human.

Jack Crichton

Jack Crichton (caps from un4scene and Farscapecaps.com)

Jack Crichton was a famous, trail-blazing, moon-walking astronaut and hero to millions, but when he saw him, John just called him dad.

A good hearted man who seemed to have it all, if there was a hero for his time it was Jack. He had a comfortably successful life with a wife, son and daughters beyond his extended family, he was good looking, healthy, articulate, well positioned socially and in his high-profile and highly respected career he seemed to attract friends as readily as John and Chiana seemed to amass enemies. What was more, he had a strong hope for mankind's future and the courage to play a role in shaping that future despite rigorous dedication and personal risk.

That isn't to say his life was a cloudless paradise, however. Women came at him from all directions and some indiscretions, swept under the rug with wink in his man's world, likely occurred from time to time. All too soon his beloved wife died from a terrible illness, before his children had fully grown, and his son at least became a stew of idolisation and resentments.

Since his historic missions, life has thrown him plenty of curves. When the space program changed, his career passed him by. Jack found himself a widower in a virtual unintended early retirement and pretty much nothing else on his horizon but the occasional publicity job talking about the past. Despite their uneasy relationship, Jack was extremely proud of John's accomplishments, telling his son on the fateful day of his Farscape One launch that he admired his son's endeavors and that while he couldn't be the hero he was seen as, John would be his own kind of hero.

Circumstances changed again somewhat when John returned.

Douglas Knox aka Doug aka DK

Douglas Knox (cap from un4scene)

Douggie (couldn't resist *g*) was John Crichton's partner-in-crime on the Farscape One Project, the testing of a theory to use Earth's gravity to gain velocity. As we know, John knows, Bob knows, and Douglas and the rest of Earth doesn't, the "some sort of energy wave" the experiment created shot test pilot John through a wormhole and into Farscape. To people back on Earth, John was caught in a freak phenomena and as a result, lost some power and control, piloting the module down somewhere in the great Australian Outback, resulting in the loss of the remains of the module but not, remarkably enough, John.

As a longtime friend of John's, Doug is called DK by John and Doug by most others. They went through schooling together and even lived in the same flat in Sydney while working at the IASA facility there as fellow itinerant geeks. Doug and John don't share the same lifestyles in many ways, including Doug's "liking men" as Bob sensed, and John was certainly suited to being a test pilot and astronaut where Doug is certainly not, being more of "the brain" of the project (which isn't to say John was lacking or didn't know what was what). Doug is more "generation X" and even uses the word "dude" like a punctuation sometimes. He loves space sciences, physics, pizza, computers, a good party, Star Wars, in fact about any scifi flick, puzzles and other cool stuff, dude.

The Cabin

Built in a mixture of Adirondack, National Park and Craftsman styles sometime in the 1920's, the quaint, somewhat rough-hewn cabin was bought by John's grandfather and passed down to Jack, along with the surrounding 50 acres. Serving as the family vacation home, its setting in the woods a few miles from a small town and bordering National Park land offers solitude and tranquility as well as hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities. Going west from town, one drives a winding two-lane highway to an inconspicuous driveway marked with the address and a plain white mailbox. A good mile south along a dirt driveway and the driveway ends at a clearing on the crest of a hill.

To the left is first the mostly enclosed, rough double-car sized carport, behind which is a more substantial workshop. The workshop has a generator for times when the power is out. Further along is the cabin itself, maybe 1,000 square feet, made of wood logs which used to be a rusty brown but are now in need of paint. Its hardwood floor is raised off the ground enough to allow crawl space. There's a roomy front porch with an overhang and rickety wooden steps. Behind a sizable multi-piece bay window and a rough hewn wooden door is a slightly shallow but wide living room, extending to the left side wall where there's a side door to the cabin, leading to the detached carport and workshop. Furniture is made of wood branches complete with bark and quilted padding. Behind the living room is a narrow but long bathroom, complete with tin shower and tub. Taking up the small remainder of the left side of the cabin is a small extra room used as a store room for fishing supplies, hunting gear, extra stocks of supplies and so on. It used to be a tiny office and store closet for preserves. On the right of the entrance is the large kitchen, walled from the living room up to a door facing the bathroom door across a narrow hallway. The old kitchen is surprisingly spacious and has tons of hand made wood cabinet space, a reminder that a resident might want to stock up with loads of food during a winter stay, in case weather turned nasty for a while. There's long, narrow windows but no microwave. Behind the kitchen taking up the remainder of the right side of the cabin is a comfortable bedroom with a closet. The bedroom has one window that looks out behind the cabin.

Across from the cabin is a rough but sizable woodshed. Further down the hill along the driveway is a tiny shed for the well and pump. Down the hill the other way are more hills and a nice river. Behind the cabin, the hill gently joins with a higher hill, leading up to a smallish mountain. somewhere on the slopes near the cabin, to the south, is a small, abandoned cabin, probably from prospecting days. It's in ruin. As far as they know, there's nothing else on the property but lots of woods, hills, creeks and rivers. The forest is overall more broad leaf and hard wood than pinion, thick and lush for most of the property. Trees shade the cabin part of the day. All in all, a little hard in winters but a fine place for sport, recreation, peace of mind, country living and of course hiding aliens.

Moya

The Good Ship Moya (caps from un4scene)

Moya is one of a species of living, self-aware beings which also happen to be semi-mechanical and function as ships for carrying people and cargo. Whales of space, with lots of Jonahs aboard. Evidently they feel most fulfilled when they're of use to passengers and appreciate the company. But they also have some life of their own, being able to reproduce somehow and females bear new baby ships. Aww. Anyway, John became a Jonah living aboard what turned out to be a long-suffering Moya for the better (and sometimes worse) parts of several years. For a good portion of that, Chiana was also aboard.

The GTO

1965 Pontiac GTO (pics from ultimateGTO)

John's red GTO is one of a few classics he was collecting before The Incident, which also included a red '66 Mustang. Since returning, not having his old passion for many things, he sold them all except for the GTO. He managed to keep some, if not passion, then inability to give it up. It was an almost mint restoration and remains so despite being in occasional use. Bob does things like check the oil, and has come to like it. Truth is she might know more about it than John, but he'd never know it never mind admit it.

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this section authored with the help of ExquisiteIrony