The Roswell Airlift
by C. L. Kamnikar
Copyright 2001
Picture the scene:
The alien pod chamber outside of Roswell, New Mexico: spawning ground of Tess, Isabel, Michael, and Max, alien hybrids from a V-shaped stellar configuration way too far away to explain the unlikely distances involved; also hiding place of the Granolith (a funky crystal pyramid-rhomboid time-and-space-distorting power source with a name out of a Tolkien novel); location of really bad sea-green lighting and uncertain ambiance.
Everyone is there.
And by everyone we mean everyone, all the villains, all the heroes, and several bystanders who'd give their eyeteeth to be just about anywhere else, doesn't matter where, just somewhere they're not in imminent danger of death by alien psychokinesis and death rays, safe from their nefarious plots, because that's what evildoers have at times like these: nefarious plots and schemes, and no one is safe, not in Roswell, not in New Mexico, not in America, not anywhere. These plots and schemes involve the enslavement of five alien races, the deaths of millions, and possibly the destruction of Earth: standard stuff, if you're a villain, but our heroes aren't about to take this sitting down, no matter how much trouble they're in, or what cliches they're wading through.
Slow time down to the absolute minimum, examine the almost-frozen moment, and take a headcount before it all goes to hell:
Lani (Isabel's evil clone; Noo Yawk accent and attitude, ruby talons shined and sharpened to utter uselessness, but what can you do, it looks *so* damn cool to have the vamp manicure) has both hands slapped to the Granolith, a smile of wicked glee on her pretty face, the image of a vengeful villainess about to kick ass, take names, and chop heads. Or knowing Lani, rip 'em off with her claws. She has just used the Granolith to open the subspace doorway to the home planet, and---
Emperor and tyrant Khivar has stepped through the vortex. The Major Unseen-Before-Now Bad Guy looks like Ares on a wicked migraine day, only with more leather and less hair gel. He is smirking in triumph, about to obliterate his enemies and secure his kingdom forever, and has raised an arm to shoot a death-ray-paralyzo-kill-beam at Max---
Who has his well-muscled arm out in return, getting ready to repel the blast, his face stoic, his stance heroic, his hair just a little fluffed, and his mind frozen with gibbering fear--- because, let's face it, Max is just not up to this, he's really not cut out to be king, or emperor, or defender of anything, not even himself, no matter what powers his genetic designers and former life have given him; Max is a dork, and he's going up against Satan on speed. The outcome is pretty much already decided in this corner, however---
Nicholas the Brat is two steps behind Lani, his pre-adolescent baby face screwed up in vicious hatred as he holds off Isabel with a silvery power-shield while simultaneously making various lewd and crude threats about what he's going to do with her once he's back in an adult body; coming out of that face, in that whiny voice, a foot-and-a-half shorter than Isabel, it's like being threatened by Opie Taylor. Isabel is, of course, unimpressed, and steadily directing more and more golden-glowy power down at the little creep, hoping to finish him off before Lani gets the door open--- and she's winning, but Nicholas is reaching for something tucked into the back of his jeans---
Michael (scruffy-haired former general in his last life; now a scruffy-haired fry chef and emotionally repressed aspiring artist) and Maria (his human girlfriend; an aspiring singer, and nearly everyone's some-time partner-in-crime) are taking on Rath, Michael's evil clone, who ditched the Mr. T look a couple weeks ago and started impersonating Michael around Roswell. Which resulted in some confusion, and some mistakes, and some of the confused mistakes were made by Maria, and, well.... things, y'know, happened.... hormonal things, as Michael puts it.... which explains why Michael and Rath have gone past the superpowers-showdown stage and are now hitting and punching and pummeling each other like six-year-olds on the floor, knocking into Max's legs occasionally, while Maria gets in pointy-toed spike-heeled kicks to Rath as often as she can, although she sometimes misses and hits Michael. There is a lot of shouting on Michael's part, much furious screaming by Maria, and a good bit of grunting from Rath while he tries to force Michael's head into his own armpit, hoping to suffocate him. This could go on for a really long time, but---
Tess, poor lost Goldilocks Tess, who's either three alien weeks or eight human months pregnant, depending on how you look at it - either way, her stomach is enormous - is standing in glaze-eyed shock behind Max, totally unhelpful, still under Lani's mind control, which means she's out of the running for fixing any of what's happening in front of her---
Including Kyle's (All-American football hero and almost-Buddhist, but hey, piss him off and Buddha can just yuk it up elsewhere, he's gonna kick your ass) yelling and charging Nicholas just as the little twerp pulls out a gun and points it at Tess--- he may not want to date her anymore, but she's a good friend, practically his sister, and nobody gets to shoot her but him--- but since he doesn't want to, then NOBODY gets to shoot her--- except he trips over the bodies of ---
Sean DeLuca, Maria's cousin, ex-con, good-time-boy, and total liability in a fight; and Brody, multimillionaire, software genius, conduit for alien intelligences, doting father of adorable five-year-old Sydney, and all-around badly-used schmuck, both of whom were bonked on the head by Nicholas very early in the human-alien-villain festivities, but not before Brody passed along something very important to---
Liz Parker, whiz kid, bad dancer, Scully-wannabe, and possibly Max's One True Love; Liz, who started this all off by not knowing how to duck a year and a half ago; Liz, who has since learned how to hot-wire alien hardwire, and has managed to come up with the solution to the standoff; Liz, who is such a geek she couldn't throw a fastball to save her life; but luckily, she is standing next to---
Ex-Sheriff Jim Valenti (long-suffering father to Kyle, protector of aliens, truth, justice, and Roswell, New Mexico) and Amy DeLuca (*really* long-suffering mother of Maria, producer of faux-alien souvenirs, and free spirit) who duck the blast of energy that comes out of the Granolith as the door opens. As Amy pulls Liz down (girl still doesn't know how to duck, damnit), Liz hands off the pyramidal jamming device she has hot-wired in reverse to Amy, and yells---
"Throw it to Isabel!"
Amy doesn't ask any silly questions, because Amy is about Action with a capital A, and she's had enough of this shit, that's her daughter in the line of fire, and she's going to do something about that, youbetcha, pilgrim.
"COVER ME!" she yells to Jim as the whine of the alien energy crackling around Max's and Khivar's hands rises to a deafening pitch; and Jim demonstrates the ask-questions-later attitude that got him into this mess last spring, and begins firing at the bad guys--- which attempt hits no one, but distracts everyone in the vicinity for the two crucial seconds needed, when Amy and Liz scream "ISABEL!"
---who turns, sees Amy lob something at her, straight and true and hard as a bullet, no sissy-throwing for Mrs. DeLuca; and Isabel catches it despite the completely and outright ridiculously minimal warning, and then she realizes what she's got in her hands---
--- and despite the immediate overwhelming attraction to Khivar, the memories of her former life trying to come back, and the fact that the guy just looks fabulous in leather, Isabel is not about to sacrifice her brother, her friends, her world, all that is just and right, the chance to be the heroine, damnit, and end this stupidity once and for all, not for some sneering poseur of a loser who got her killed in her last life, even if he does look like a god---
---so with one hand Izzy gets a good grip on the pyramid device, then she turns around to repel everything Nicholas is throwing at her, everything Khivar is throwing at Max, the energy the Granolith is still putting out, the power that Lani is trying to pull from the rift, and ---
---and---
--- and ---
- - - F L A S H ! - - -
And it's all over, just like that.
...All right, maybe not just like *that*.
~
When the dust clears, and the lights come back on, several people are missing, or dead, or disintegrated, and those who are left never do find out the whole story, or exactly what happened to all of the missing.
In reality, Isabel's last-strike overkill power-beam hit the Granolith instead of Khivar, and the massive amount of power pouring into the still-open subspace doorway reflected and shattered, hitting those closest to it with various effects.
The most noticeable effect was one charred Granolith. Nobody was going to use that sucker to go anywhere in space or time again; and nearly everyone still in the pod chamber was secretly (or openly) relieved about that.
Khivar, standing in the doorway, was sent home. Okay, the left half of him was sent home. The right half was disintegrated into its component molecules, which were strung out across subspace between Earth and the alien home planet; and when Khivar's forces received the mutilated and dead body of their leader, they were so demoralized that the rebels they'd been trying to quell right before Khivar went off on his vendetta had next-to-no problem at all in quelling them. With their oppressor's death, the populations of the five planets overthrew the dictatorship, scotched any silly ideas of setting up another monarchy, and decided to live in peaceful, fruitful anarchy for as long as they could get away with it. They'd send a message to Earth later, to let the alien podlings know they were off the hook for leading their home planets, after which they were never heard from again; except for Max and Isabel's mother, who still sent Isabel hologram postcards for her un-birthday.
Lani, being right on top of the exploding Granolith, was flung approximately two hundred and sixty years into the future, and several light years away, to a place called Sector 14, near the Epsilon Eridani sector. By a staggering turn of odds she was picked up by a passing Ranger fighter right before she would have suffocated in empty space, and taken to Babylon 5. Separated from her lover Rath, totally disconnected from her destiny, displaced in time, she survived like she always did: by stealing and seducing, vamping and violence, lies and larceny. Eventually, she joined up with the Rangers during the Shadow War, and turned her love for a good fight to good use. Saying that Lani reformed would be a stretch--- but when given better things to do, she became a slightly better person, and she figured that she could get her own planet someday without having to kill for it, since there were apparently a lot of them lying around going begging for royalty and take-charge women who knew how to get things done.
Bratty little Nicholas, the Skin who was really Uber-sadist former-Michael-murderer Nicholas in Osh'Kosh overalls, was not sent anywhere in time; he stayed right at that moment in 2001. Unfortunately for him (and fortunately for everyone else on six planets) he was transmitted approximately four thousand miles across the Earth into the path of twenty speeding cars on a South American raceway. Luckily for the sanity and emotional health of the race car drivers, the first car to him hit the 'off' switch which all Skins have on their lower back, causing him to dissipate into a puff of dust and ions. The mirage of a little boy on the race course was immediately attributed to the sun glare and too much bad orange Kool-Aid ingested by everyone present. Occasionally, Isabel would wonder what had become of him; but as the years went on, she finally decided that wherever he was, he was in no position to hurt her or anyone she cared about, and that her plans to dance on his grave would just have to wait until her next life.
Rath, who had rolled up against Max's feet, was sent approximately 500 years into the past, to the other side of the galaxy, where he was recruited by the Sebacean Peacekeepers and a had a very successful career with them until that unfortunate incident in the fire jungles of Gintara. After that, he was forced to live out his days as a hermit among the native monkeys, blowing up coconuts for amusement and avoiding PK commando squads when they passed by. And for all of that, he was actually pretty happy, since there was no one to tell him what to do anymore, and lots of time to stare into space, something at which he had lots of practice.
So much for the villains. As for our heroes....
~
"Where's Max?" Liz stood up as the haze cleared, horrified, and searched around the small area for any sign of her former boyfriend, then burst into tears. "He's dead! Noooooooo!"
Not a sign, not a shred, not a drop of blood; Max Evans had disappeared as if he'd never existed. The rest of the aliens and humans and human-hybrid types were all alive, and, miraculously, unharmed.
But not unchanged.
"Aiiiiiiiiiiieeeee!"
"Tess? What the--- what's going---"
"I'M IN LABOR, YOU STUPID JOCK!" Tess shrieked, grabbing onto a frantic Kyle's arm with all of her strength, spontaneously igniting little brushfires around the room with her thoughts. "GOD! MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP---"
"Breathe!"
"DON'T TELL ME TO ---" Tess panted breathlessly, sucked in air, then bellowed at the full stretch of her lungs, half in pain, half in horror. "OH, GOD! I HAD SEX WITH MAX! WHAT WAS I THINKING!"
"You weren't thinking, Tess, it wasn't really you! Lani brain-washed you into seducing Max, back when you were her prisoner back in New York--- looks like that wore off when she disappeared---" Isabel gabbled, grabbing Tess's other arm and helping Kyle support her as they hurried for the exit.
"Well, that explains everything," Tess snarked, then screeched again as another thought occurred to her, and she rounded on Kyle. "You think of me as your sister!? Kyle Valenti, you are a moron!"
"I couldn't help it, you were acting all different, not like you were before you took off with Max, it's not my fault!" Kyle protested, then added, "Does it help that I like you a lot better when you yell at me? You're much cooler screaming in pain than mooning over Max---"
Tess whacked him on the back of the head, then shrieked again, digging in her heels before they got to the door. "It's not gonna wait for the hospital, guys!"
"But it'll die here, the baby's allergic to the air, Max said so, you can't!"
"I can, I am, DEAL WITH IT!"
As it turned out, the baby was not allergic to the air; only Max. With him gone, Tess delivered a healthy baby boy within thirty minutes with Isabel, Amy, and Kyle's help. Liz and Maria looked on with nauseated expressions while Amy pointed out, "See? See what happens when you don't use birth control? See what happens when you fool around? Are you going to listen to me from now on, Maria Angelica DeLuca?"
"Yes, Mom. Oh, yes. You bet. Celibacy is a lifestyle I can embrace without a qualm now. No regrets here. Not when I'm looking at this, nope. Yup. Woo.... hoo." Maria staggered out of the pod chamber after fifteen minutes, slightly green, and stopped outside in the sunlight, taking deep breaths of the clean desert air.
"Are you okay?"
Maria squinted at her boyfriend, nodded, then closed her eyes before sucking in more air. "Max is lucky he's not here, boy. 'Cause if he were, I'd hate to think what Tess would set on fire if he were in the same room with her."
~
Sean and Brody staggered to their feet, a little worse for wear, just as Tess let out one last shriek and finally gave birth; with one horrified look at each other, they bolted out of the pod chamber and into the sunlight as fast as their feet could carry them, willing to forgo explanations and reassurances if it meant they wouldn't have to witness the Miracle of Birth for one second longer.
Sean never quite got over the weirdness of that afternoon in the pod chamber, but didn't let him stop him from having lots of comfort sex with Liz over the summer. She dumped him in September, when her early scores on the SAT's came back and she was offered a place at the Air Force Academy, and Sean consoled himself by taking a road trip to California when his parole period was over. His ability to weasel out of anything and charm women who should have known better landed him a job as a production assistant on "Grosse Pointe", where he proved invaluable to the producers in calming down hysterical starlets and obtaining shooting locations that no one else could, through methods his producers never thought to question too closely.
After a good bit of therapy, a lot of soul-searching, and bidding a bittersweet good-bye to Maria (who he always knew he didn't have a chance with, but hope dies hard), Brody sold the UFO Center and eventually moved to Stars Hollow with his little girl, now that she was cancer-free and her mom was going to be working in New York. They fit in much better in the little town, and Sydney loved her new babysitter Rory. Brody found the atmosphere of the place reassuring and homey, and never had a blackout or 'abduction' experience again. After a few years, he started dating a nice young lady named Natalie, who worked at CSC in New York City, along with....
"Kyle, do you think he looks like Max?" Tess asked, cuddling her son close to her. "Or more like me?"
"He looks like a squashed chimp." Kyle flinched as Isabel dope-smacked him, then added, "But a cute one. Really."
"I still can't believe I had sex with Max. And that I've got a baby to show for it," Tess marveled, shaking her head. "I'm going to kill Lani if she ever shows up again."
"Didn't you want to?" Kyle asked, stroking the fuzzy hair on the baby's head.
"Not with *him*. That was the brainwashing. And, uh, just being kinda horny." Tess looked at him from under her eyelashes. "I mean, it was sort of like being in the next room while someone has sex with someone you're not interested in, but you're getting turned on anyway... and wishing it were someone else....."
"Still doesn't sound so bad to me."
"Imagine it was your dad and Mrs. DeLuca, and you'll get the idea."
"Oh. Bleahhh."
Valenti rolled his eyes.
"So." Kyle stared at the baby, then at Tess, then back at the baby. "What are you doing Saturday night?"
"Kyle!"
"What? Gimme a break, Dad, it's not like she's really my sister or something---"
"Just because you don't have fraternal feelings for her anymore, doesn't mean I'm feeling any less paternal!" Valenti snorted. "You are not doing anything in my house, got it? Or in the SUV. Or the Jeep. Or in the eraser room at school. Or anywhere else!"
Despite Valenti's resistance to the idea, Tess and Kyle did eventually get together, moving to New York after high school graduation when Kyle was offered a basketball scholarship to NYU. Tess loved everything about New York, including her classmates Noel and Felicity (whose butt she regularly had to kick into straightening out her incredibly messed-up love life), in spite of her previous experiences in the city with Lani and Rath, and little Eddie (named after Nasedo's human alter-ego) thought it was a blast.
The alien-hybrid baby was the size of a four-year-old by the end of the year, when his growth pattern stabilized, which was great, because he was the right age to play football with Kyle by then. All of the ex-Roswellians attended Kyle and Tess's wedding four years later, and while Kyle's pro career in the NBA only lasted five years, he landed a job working at the Cable Sports Center a year later, which he loved even more than playing professionally. Tess completed her degree in psychotherapy and made new breakthroughs in the field of treatment for patients who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. They introduced Kyle's co-worker Natalie to Brody after they moved to Stars Hollow, where they'd moved so Eddie could grow up in a small town just like their hometown.
~
"Jim, lighten up."
"Lighten up!? She just had a baby, and he wants to take her out for a burger and fries!"
"So? Seems to me that if a few more guys had that kind of attitude, the world would be in better shape."
"Amy...."
"Forget it, Valenti. You're not going to win this one." Amy's brows drew down. "And exactly how long have you known that my daughter's been dating an alien?! And when the hell were you going to tell me!?!"
"Uh...."
The subsequent argument devolved into name-calling and parenting-style criticism after about ten minutes, and went on much longer than that, finally ending in Amy dragging a protesting Maria by the arm and threatening Michael with dire bodily damage if he even *phoned* her daughter for the next six months, then barreling off in the Jetta, while Jim laid down the rules of zero-contact to Kyle and Tess (even though neither of them was really paying attention at that point).
But at least the air was finally clear.
After two weeks of stony silence, Amy forgave Jim for various things beyond his control (while holding him way accountable for the stuff that wasn't, and earning a deeply heart-felt apology from the contrite law officer) and began dating him again. Over the course of the year, they grew closer and closer, and when their respective children flew from the nest a year later, they embarked on a road trip to celebrate.
"Ooo, look, Vegas. We should stop."
"Hmph."
"What?"
"They all went to Vegas last year, and left *me* behind. Always had to be the responsible adult. They gambled and partied for an entire *weekend*, and I had to go fetch them back... Hell, I thought they'd been abducted or something. Rotten kids. I could've used a vacation right then too---"
"All the more reason to have fun on our way through."
~
Amy and Jim Valenti celebrated their wedding in the Rock of Ages Wedding Chapel on June 1, 2002, attended by twenty-five Elvis impersonators and the matinee cast of the Tropicana's topless show. (It's a long story. And not suitable for general audiences.) They had such a good time on the trip, that they just kept going, ending up in San Francisco by the end of the year. Amy opened up another souvenir shop, one catering to the New Age crowd using her old Bay Area contacts; and Jim started doing part-time detective work for a local P.I. firm.
Besides, in California, Amy could be closer to Maria.
"You ever think about having a kid?" Michael asked, about two minutes before Amy came storming out of the pod chamber.
"Oh, not *even* going there with you, Guerin."
"I'm serious."
"No, you're insane. You really think I'll get as lucky as Tess, and only have to carry the kid for four weeks? Get a grip! Until you can afford to buy me Godiva and Isotoner slippers for every day I'm a blimp, we are not even going to have this discussion." Maria studied Michael's out-thrust lip, then sighed and patted his head. "If you're very, very good? We can get a puppy together. Okay?"
"Cool."
Maria and Michael's loving, co-dependent, screwed-up and unsteady relationship resulted in eight more break-ups and reconciliations before Christmas, when Maria announced she needed a long-term break from the weirdness that was life in Roswell with Michael. Finishing out her required credits before the end of the year and turning over the half-grown puppy to her boyfriend, she packed the Jetta, kissed her mom good-bye, and pointed her car toward Los Angeles and the music business.
The Jetta broke down fifty-three miles outside of Phoenix.
~
"Stinking, stupid, pathetic, no-good hunka...." Maria kicked the tires, looked out across the deserted highway, and then screamed at the top of her lungs. "I hate the freakin' desert!"
She sighed, and squinted into the horizon. "Please, let a cop come find me. Now. Now. Now.... okay, now would be good...."
Five miles later, a zebra-painted van pulled over to pace her. "Need a lift?" the red-headed driver asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No, I do not need a lift. Do I look like I need a lift?" Maria glanced over at the lame-ess trying to pick her up, and was pleasantly surprised that the guy looked fairly normal, if somewhat on the retro-grunge side.
"You kinda do."
"Well, maybe I also look like I need to be ax-murdered and consumed by cross-dressing cannibals then. Darn. It's my hair, isn't it? I knew I should've used the other gel this morning."
"Mostly it's the limping. Although I understand some people find it comforting. Just getting into a rhythm. Going with it. I won't stop you."
Maria continued to walk for another hundred yards with the van slowly crawling along beside her before her will broke. "Are you going to just drive along next to me all the way to the next gas station?"
"See, here's the thing." The guy waited until she looked at him again, then smiled. It was a calm smile, the smile of a guy with his act together, his guitar in his case, his karma in balance, and his inner child on really good drugs. Maria responded instinctively to the smile, but still didn't move toward the van. "If I don't chaperone you to the next exit, and they find your body in another fifteen years, bones bleached out and skinless in the desert, I'm going to feel really bad about it, 'cause of bailing on you and all. And I'll probably have to make a trip to wherever your grave is to tell you about it, but I still won't be able to tell the people who find you about who you are or anything, and that'll make me feel worse. Then I'll have to spend the rest of my life helping stranded women and motorists, and fifteen years from now I'm thinking I'll probably want to settle down somewhere and maybe have a normal life, and being the protector of the highways could cut into that. So I'm just kinda bypassing the destiny thing and taking the short way out."
Maria stopped and considered this speech, especially the bypassing destiny bit, then put her hands on her hips as the van idled in front of her and the guy continued to watch her with that mellowed-out gaze. "Do you always talk this much?"
"Hardly ever."
"You swear you're not an ax-murderer. Or an alien," she added, rolling her eyes at herself. "And if you lie, I will know it and curse you to a lifetime of impotence, buster."
"No, but if I'm gonna be honest, I have tell you I'm a werewolf. So the curse part is already covered."
"I can handle that." Maria pulled open the van door and slid inside. "Maria DeLuca."
"Oz."
"As in the great and powerful?"
"I try to keep a low profile."
"Hunh. Okay... Drop me off at the Emerald City exit, there's some munchkins waiting to pick me up."
Oz took Maria into Phoenix, helped her get the Jetta towed, talked her down when she heard what the repair costs would be, and offered her a place in his new band after he heard her sing along to the Muzak in the gas station. Running From Reality had a good long run on the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego, for the next five years, and Maria coped with the weirdness of Oz's family and hometown much better than either of them expected. They both knew that their relationship was not a 'forever thing,' but Oz's steadiness helped Maria deal with her own see-saw psyche, and Maria's bubbly nature lifted what could have turned into a lycanthrope-lifestyle-induced depression for Oz. By the time of their amicable break up five years later, the band had three hit records, one of which went platinum, and Maria had a much better perspective on the word 'weird' than she'd had while waitressing at the Crashdown and juggling conspiracy theory and high school.
~
While everyone was watching (or running from) Tess giving birth in the alien pod chamber, something else happened just up the highway, although you would have had to be standing right there to not miss it.
Alex Whitman blinked back into existence.
"What the...?" He looked around him uneasily, staggered a little, then sat down on his heels. "Okay. I'm in the desert. Which one?" He frowned down at his shoes, then looked out at the scrub brush. "Forget where. Who. That's the important question. Who am I?"
As absolutely no one could have guessed, the body that was pulled out of Alex's wrecked car was not his. Having been grabbed to work on the decoding of the alien aluminum Guide to Life as a Hybrid Extraterrestrial by the few remaining Skins on the planet, the kidnappers were a little peeved that he proved so uncooperative, and quickly decided after a few days with Alex that a clone would probably be a bit more useful. After extracting the useful DNA, they placed Alex in a local null-space depository, grew a clone, downloaded a copy of his memories into it, then took it to Las Cruces and set it to work on decoding the aliens' language. Unfortunately, the clone proved just as resistant as the real Alex after about four weeks, so they decided to return it to his life with a subconscious self-destruct impulse that would kick in if he started remembering too much. The real Alex they kept in the null-space, in case they needed more help later on the decoding project.
When the Granolith explosion totaled all null-space depository systems on the North American continent (and there were some very irritated Gu'a in Chicago who filed a complaint with their local branch about losing those sixteen prisoners, as well as a couple of Time Lords in Juarez who demanded an immediate upgrade to their TARDIS), the real Alex was released into the location nearest where he'd last existed in this dimension.
Unfortunately, the memory download had pretty much scrambled his personal memories, leaving him with no idea of who he was or what he was doing in the middle of New Mexico.
This would have been quickly resolved to the deep satisfaction of all of his friends and the joy of his parents in twenty minutes when Maria and Amy passed by in the Jetta on their way back to Roswell (still arguing a blue streak), except that....
Squinting into the oncoming cloud of dust, Alex took a step backward out of the road to avoid being hit by the oncoming Miata. It stopped a few yards from him and the driver called back, "Are you okay? Did your car break down?"
"I have... no idea," Alex admitted, walking over to the convertible. "I just--- I woke up or something, right here, and I don't remember anything else. Where am I?"
"Interstate 285 South, New Mexico," the cheerful driver announced, pulling off his sunglasses. "You're about a hundred miles from Texas. I think I'd better take you into Marathon to get looked over and check in with the local police. Someone has to be looking for you, right?"
"Right." Alex knew there was a reason he shouldn't accept rides from strangers, but it was one of the many things he couldn't remember anymore. "Thanks, Mr...?"
"Jarod's fine." The guy put his sunglasses back on and gunned the motor. "Do you know that the speed limit here is 75 miles per hour, and that it's rarely monitored by the State Police during the day? And that a Miata can go 145 miles per hour without any stress on the engine?"
"I'll put it on the list of stuff I'm learning," Alex said as he fastened his seatbelt.
Since Alex Whitman had very definitely been declared dead, and Jarod's sources turned up no information on the boy he found on the desert, he concluded that it would be safest if the kid kept a low profile over the next few years. You never knew what the Centre might be involved in, and besides, the amnesiac was as brilliant as Broots when it came to computers.
Alex's memories never did come all the way back (and the ones he had about watching people come back from the dead, and hacking into FBI mainframes, made little sense) but he did, eventually, find his way back home... about fifteen years later.
Meanwhile, back in 2001....
~
"Do you think Max is dead?" Liz tearfully asked Isabel as they headed back toward Isabel's car. Valenti and Kyle were supporting Tess and the baby as they headed for the SUV, planning on hitting the local hospital for a check-up before they went home.
"No," Isabel said, her voice slow. "I think I'd feel it, I'd *know* it, if he was. But...." She looked around helplessly. "The Granolith is gone. And I wouldn't even know how to start looking for him without it. He could be *anywhere*, Liz."
"Or anywhen," Liz whispered.
"Yeah." Isabel turned and hugged Liz, who embraced her back just as fiercely. "We'll just have to figure out some way to go on..."
Diane and Phillip Evans were devastated by Max's disappearance and bewildered by Isabel's belated revelations of her and Max's alien origins, but they eventually came to accept the truth, and managed to convince Isabel that they still loved her just as much. More relieved that there was no chance that some weird adoptive parents would be showing up in the future than anything else, they were more supportive than ever of Isabel's plans to leave Roswell.
Despite missing her brother terribly, Isabel went on with her life with the renewed determination to make a difference on *this* planet. She completed her Bachelor degree in Political Science from Berkeley within three years, then applied for and landed a prestigious internship with a well-known governmental entity after graduation.
"DONNA!!!"
"What?"
"Where's the Evergreen numbers? I can't find them!"
Isabel breezed into Josh Lyman's office, dropped the numbers on his desk, then breezed back out without stopping. Josh stared for a second, furrowed his brows, then yelled again. "DONNATELLA!!"
Since this was DefCon 2, Donna actually went to the door of his office. "What? You've got the numbers."
"Who was that?"
"Our new intern."
"We have an intern? Since when?"
"Leo assigned her. She's very qualified. And CJ's thrilled--- she went to Berkeley, so now CJ's not the only West Coast alumni anymore."
"She's too young."
"She isn't."
"Is. Half the lobbyists are going to hit on her. I don't need the headache. Bad enough *you* date the local gomers, I'm afraid of what someone that young is going to drag back in here---"
"She can handle it."
"Tell Leo to assign her somewhere more low-profile."
"No."
"No? Who runs this office?"
"Donna!" yelled Isabel from outside the door.
"Hey!" Josh yelled back, appalled to realize that he was about to be ganged up on for the rest of the Bartlett administration.
"Josh, I already have her trained not to bring you coffee. And she's better at the computer stuff than you are, not that that's hard. And if we don't keep her, she'll be working for Toby, and she's so young... she'll pick up such bad habits from him...."
"Stop it. Okay, she can stay. But she has to bring me coffee."
Isabel breezed back in and set a cup of coffee on his desk, turned around and on her way out added, "But it's decaff. We're not contributing to your personality disorders, Mr. Lyman."
Josh stared at the door, glared at Donna, who grinned back at him and strolled out while he yelled, "That's right! Mr. Lyman! About time someone around here gave me some respect!"
Isabel's career in politics went smoothly for many years, and in 2016 she was elected as Democratic Senator from New Mexico. About a year later, she was at a fundraiser in D.C. when she ran into one of the young dot-com multimillionaires and hit it off with him immediately. The fact that he looked exactly like her long-gone high school boyfriend had only a little to do with it. Really.
(DNA testing, done at Michael's paranoid insistence, finally revealed that Al Desert was in fact Alex Whitman, but this was a fact which the Roswell 7 shared only with his parents and the Valentis. Getting a death certificate voided is a real paperwork hassle, and while Alex could've done it, one thing he'd learned after those years working with Jarod was that there are some things left better off alone.)
~
At the end of high school, Michael was left pretty much at loose ends as the few remaining members of the Roswell 7 fled to school and lives in other states and Jim and Amy started their extended road-trip, while he was still working short-order at the Crashdown. More to give himself something to do than because he actually had any confidence in his chances, he applied to art schools around the country and was thoroughly shocked to receive a scholarship to the Los Angeles Design School, among others. Half-hoping to get back together with Maria if he were living in L.A., Michael and Coyote (their shared dog, who missed Maria as much as Michael) took the Greyhound to the City of Angels two weeks before school was supposed to start.
Which was the full extent of his planning, since he hadn't applied for student housing or any of the other paperwork-encumbered measures that you're supposed to if you're going to school. Without Liz to nag him, Jim to badger him, Tess to whap him upside the head, or Isabel to give him admonishing looks, Michael completely blew off getting anything except his acceptance forms in.
So, wandering the streets of L.A. with a map to "cheap places to stay" that a bum at the bus station had gifted him with in exchange for his french fries, Michael ended up at the Hyperion Hotel as dusk was closing in.
"This can't be it." Michael squinted up at the beautiful (but really, really old--- and extremely shabby) hotel, then back down at the map. "I think we're in trouble," he muttered to Coyote, turning the piece of paper around and around. "There's got to be somewhere else near here---"
"LOOK OUT!"
Michael whirled around to see: - A black guy about his age coming around the street corner, swinging--- an axe?!
- A somewhat-geeky slightly-older guy with glasses, wearing a motorcycle helmet for some reason, right behind the first guy---
- A knockout brunette in way-too-high-heels lapping the geek and gaining on Axe Guy, shooting at something behind her with a squirtgun. A squirtgun?
- Something out of his worst nightmares, and considering his worst nightmares, that was saying something; the whatever-it-was was violent purple, scaled, going on 8' tall, and sporting a *truly* impressive set of fangs, and seemed to be intent on catching the first three as hors d'oevres. Part of Michael's mind gibbered that bad aliens were invading and he didn't even have any backup, but the rest of him was just annoyed.
"RUN!" yelled all three, obviously intent on escaping the monster-thing and not wanting to slow down to drag him along.
Michael took a step to the side and they dashed past him, and just as the trio were putting on the brakes to run back and grab him (which he appreciated, even though he thought it was dumb), Michael turned, put out his hand, and sent a blast of pure frustration and energy at the Ugly Faux-Alien Thing.
It flew back fifty feet with a smoking hole in its chest, coming to rest at the feet of a guy in a sweeping trenchcoat who looked almost impressed.
"Neat trick," the guy commented, studying the monster-corpse with a deadpan expression for a second before he loped over to Michael. The other three had reached him by now, the geek taking off the motorcycle helmet, the brunette stuffing her squirtgun in her bag, and the guy with the axe trying to look nonchalant. "Did you forget the plan?" Trenchcoat asked the other three in a too-patient voice.
"We did not forget the plan. It decided our plan was boring and uncongenial and that it had a better one!" the geek protested in a heated voice made even more geeky by a British accent and defensive expression.
"You think you could've done better getting it to the construction site, you should've turned into a bat and herded it," offered the black guy, leaning against his axe and panting a little.
"We don't do that," Trenchcoat muttered, irritated.
"Then what use are you?" the brunette demanded, and not waiting for an answer, she turned to Michael. "Hi, I know this has to look completely insane, but there's a really good explanation for what's happening here. Honest. Although, it looks to me like you've got just as much to explain---"
"Uh-hunh," Michael nodded skeptically, waiting for the kind of stories he and his friends used to tell when the alien weirdness got out of hand, and trying to prepare a good story to explain the energy blast thing for when they asked. Before that could happen, though, a familiar voice called his name from inside the hotel.
"Michael?" Shading her eyes with her hand, the small punked-out blonde stared at him in surprise. "Dude. What are you doin' in L.A.?"
"Ava?" Michael blinked, looked from her to the surrounding Four Musketeers, then back to Tess's not-at-all-evil clone. "Do you know these guys?"
"Uh, yeah, I'm stayin' here, Angel's puttin' me up while I work on gettin' my G.E.D.---"
"I think the explanations are going to be a lot shorter than you thought," Michael told the brunette.
After everything was sorted out (and Michael was not at all surprised to find out that there were *real* monsters in the world; he'd always known that reality was screwier than any 'normal' person admitted) Angel reluctantly offered Michael a room at the Hyperion until he could find something better. As the weeks went by, and Michael kept offering back-up to the crew of Angel Investigations on their cases (mostly to keep Ava out of it, despite her strenuous protests and active circumvention of his protective instincts), everyone kind of forgot that he'd planned on finding somewhere else to live. Besides, it made Ava happy to have him there.
Ava had ended up an L.A. right after she left Roswell, and had fallen in with the crowd at the Hyperion Hotel after a few weeks on the streets and a string of ugly murders had almost lead to the AI crew's mistaking her for a demon. Once that was sorted out, Cordelia had taken the girl under her wing, determined to give her some self-confidence. And fashion sense.
"And of course he's related to you. I mean, my God, look at that hair," Cordy sniffed after Ava finished explaining who Michael was. "Elvis much?"
"It's better than the last time I saw him," Ava commented. "Gel was a huge deal."
"And the clothes! Although at least he hasn't pierced anything."
"I miss my rings."
"Too bad, 'cause they made you look like a heroin addict. And we had a deal. I help with the English homework, and you give up the grunge."
"I know, I know."
Michael and Maria didn't get back together the next time they met (which had to do with demons in Sunnydale), or the time after that (when he designed the cover for the band's newest album), or the time after that (when Maria arranged to regularly visit Coyote at least once a month); but three months after her break-up with Oz, Maria called Michael for lunch, and they had hot dogs on the Venice Beach boardwalk, and then continued to meet every week, then twice a week, then four times a week.... and within a year after the breakup, they were engaged.
And six months after that, they were married, just as if they'd never been apart, but better; because if they'd never been apart, they would've gotten divorced in six months. Being friends-but-definitely-not-together for five years had allowed Michael to find his own talents as an artist, Maria to find her voice, both of them to find and label their insecurities for what they were, and thus be able to take the other calling them on them when they surfaced. It let Michael realize that families were made and found, not just destined or made-to-order; let Maria take credit for her own impulsive recklessness instead of blaming it on Michael; and let both of them grow up enough, basically, to know that their happiness didn't depend on each other, but was enhanced by being together.
~
Of them all, Liz was naturally the most devastated when Max couldn't be found. She felt guilt that she hadn't thrown him the MacGyver'd blocking device instead of Isabel (even though she'd known Isabel would handle it better). Then she obsessed about putting the Granolith back together. Sadly, after many hours playing 3-D puzzle-grid with the Granolith's remains, she finally had to give up on the idea, since at least a third of the thing was powder, and the rest had been sent out into space, or time, or maybe just back to the Big Bang. Whatever: using it to find Max was not going to happen.
Depression over her inability to save Max and frustrated romantic longing led her straight into Sean's all-too-willing arms, adding another layer of guilt onto her already tortured psyche.
Until, one night that summer, as she was staying up very, very late with Maria (for one of their less-frequent Girls Night's now that Maria and Michael were back together, at least temporarily), she caught an old rerun of 7th Heaven and had an epiphany.
"Oh. My. God. Who is that?" Liz leaned into the TV screen, practically hypnotizing herself with the shiny-bright pixels. "That guy looks exactly like Max."
"It's Jason Behr, will you lean back? You're blocking my view." Maria rapped her best friend on the head with an ice-cream spoon. "Don't you remember him? You had the world's worst crush on him sophomore year."
"No, I don't remember." Liz shook her head and scrambled back. "Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Wait, wait, I do remember--- he dies in this, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, and you cried, because he was going to Heaven---"
"Oh, *wow*." Liz dropped her spoon into the Chunky Monkey, and rolled her eyes back up into her head. "Oh, it all makes *sense* now...."
Liz had never quite gotten why, exactly, she'd fallen for Max; okay, there was the saving her life thing, which was great. And he was smart. A nice guy. But a lot of the time she'd felt like she was the one doing all the work, angsting over the meaning of things, worrying about the alien stuff--- and as an aspiring med student, she'd known that the biology angle of their relationship could come with some pitfalls --- and frankly, half the guilt she'd been feeling that summer had been over not missing Max at all.
When you got right down to it, Max didn't have that much of a personality to miss. She'd been too afraid to tell anyone how she was feeling for fear they'd think she was brainwashed or angry about him sleeping with Tess or extremely shallow or in denial, but having this long-lost crush come back to haunt her put it all in perspective. She'd been terminally in love with Jason Behr that year, and Max had looked enough like him that, later, she'd transferred all that budding adolescent hormonal obsession to him. Sure she cared about him --- as a friend, and someone who'd needed her help --- but the sparkly-glittery Destiny-gilded epic-romance that she'd painted onto their relationship had faded as soon as she was sure he was really gone.
Relieved, and feeling sadder but wiser, Liz moved on with her life, accepting a spot at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs the next year, entering their medical program, graduating with high honors in six years and serving with distinction in the former Czechoslovakia (something which amused all of the Roswellians when they were told about it) a year later. Her efforts with refugee relief and civilian emergency care earned her a spot at one of the most prestigious and dangerous postings available in the Armed Forces: Cheyenne Mountain, and what was known outside the complex as Project Blue Book. The irony of this posting was even stronger than her last one, but Liz was forced to keep that particular joke to herself for about three more years....
~
"General, I need to inform you that we've got the weirdest anomaly I've ever seen coming through the 'gate, sir." Colonel Samantha Carter frowned at the instrument readings, then back at the wildly fluctuating event horizon in the Embarkation room, and shook her head grimly.
"Do you think we might have hit another black hole?"
"It's too soon to say--- I'd like to monitor it for a little while, sir --- whoa. What's that?"
"What's what?" Brigadier General Jack O'Neill leaned over his second-in-command's shoulder and grimaced at the computer. Why hadn't she ever put little post-it's on it, so he could know what the readings said? Fifteen years they'd been working together, and she still couldn't give him the short version.
"That spike--- sir, with the amount of energy this thing is putting out, I think we need to stabilize it now with equal input from one of the naquadah reactors. Otherwise, it's going to blow out our 'gate pretty damn fast."
"So you want to fit it with a new surge protector?"
"Uh--- yes, sir. Got it in one." Well, close enough. And it wasn't good manners to correct your live-in guy and superior officer in front of the entire Control Room.
"Cool. Hook it up, get it mellowed out, then run one of your diagnostic thingies to make sure it didn't screw anything up before SG-12 comes back."
"Will do, sir."
It was in the middle of stabilizing the wormhole that the event horizon burped up a teenager.
~
"Medic!"
"What've we got?" Dr. Parker asked as she rushed into the Embarkation Room with the orderlies and a stretcher.
"Looks human, maybe about seventeen or eighteen, and at the very least, he knocked his head on the ramp when he did the six-pointer out of the wormhole," one of the Marines informed her. "He was *inside* the anomaly."
"Max?" Liz asked in shock, kneeling next to him as she took his vitals, the competent physician momentarily overcome by the overjoyed teenager that lived in back of her brain. "It can't be...."
"You know him?" General O'Neill asked over the intercom. "How the hell is that possible?"
"Uh, that's a really long story, sir...."
~
"Max? Max, can you hear me?"
Max slowly opened his eyes, then smiled with dopey relief when Liz's face came into focus. "You're okay."
"Yeah, I am Max. Everyone's okay." Liz smiled nervously at him. "But, well, there's a couple things I have to explain... and some bad news."
"As long as we're together---"
"Uh, that's part of the bad news."
~
In typical teenage fashion, Max took the news that his long-term exposure to the wormhole had left him with a lingering form of radiation poisoning somewhat better than the news that he'd been stuck in the hole for eleven years, and that Liz had broken up with him in the interim.
"This is about Tess, isn't it?" He demanded. "You're still mad that I had sex with her."
Liz could feel the scarlet creeping up her cheeks, and determinedly avoided the eyes of everyone else in the room when she replied. "No, Max. Honestly. I'm okay with that, we're good friends now, and she and Kyle and Eddie are even coming out to visit me over Memorial Day. It's just been way too long, and now you're too young for me, and I'm sort of seeing someone, and..." She took a deep breath. "Could you focus on the important stuff for just a minute, please?"
"Fine," Max sulked, staring at the ceiling.
Liz rolled her eyes and wondered why she'd never pulled an Isabel and dope-smacked him while they were dating. "Max, you're going to die unless we can repair the damage to your body. And we don't have the technology to do that. But there's these people called the Tok'ra, see, and they--- uh, they've got a way to do it. But the downside is kind of--- strange...."
~
Max's new symbiote, Hermes, was a huge help in forcing Max to adjust to the fact that Liz wasn't interested anymore, and was *extremely* involved with Captain Simmons of SG-6.
So, whining at her that she promised to love you forever is supposedly attractive on your home planet?
I am not whining.
Oy, boychik, listen up: you whine. I'm in your body, I can hear what you sound like from in here, never mind out there. This is not a chick-grabber, trust me, kiddo.
How could she do this to me?
Because she thought you were a thousand itty-bitty smashed atoms, and she's not a masochist. Get over it. There's lots of women in the galaxy---
But I want Liz!
Yah, well, she don't want you, buhbie. It's a tough break, but there it is. Me, I think she finds me alluring, but she's involved, and I don't want to break up a love that's working, so let it go. Be a mensch, suck it up--- and watch me get that redhead to buy us a soda. All right?
*snort*
Hey, I could go to other bodies, if you think you can get her to buy you one on your own. I don't *have* to be here, Maxie boy, so show some respect for your elders...
~
Max put in many useful and happy years as a Tok'ra working with the SGC, and eventually visited his home planet, where it gave him great happiness to discover that they burned Khivar in effigy every New Year's Eve. He was less thrilled to find that barely anyone there even remembered his name, since his previous incarnations' rule had been burned from the history books, and the possibility that he'd come back had been almost entirely forgotten.
Still, he got to visit with his long-lost relatives, and being reunited with his friends and adopted parents in Roswell was compensation enough for getting stuck in a wormhole for a decade. He did not, however, appreciate Isabel's gloating that she was now *officially* the oldest child, and deserved the attendant respect, but he soon settled into the role of pesky younger brother much more easily than he handled being the Hope of Billions back in 2001.
And they all lived happily ever after.
(... And if it didn't happen *exactly* like that, then it should have.)
*~*
Author's Notes:
I liked the characters. I liked the show. I didn't like how the end of second season treated them. And sometimes accepting one person's version of reality means you can't change it. So I happily built a condo in Denial. Given what I've heard about third season Roswell, I'm glad I did. They deserved better than the lameness that they're being subjected to at this point.
With thanks to Dee, Val, Perri, Lizbet, Tina & Abby for giggling. And in memory of other airlifts that saved people from truly harsh conditions.
Other universes invaded, in order:
Babylon 5, Farscape, Grosse Pointe, Gilmore Girls, Felicity, Sports Night, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, minor First Wave and Dr. Who references, the Pretender, The West Wing, Angel, 7th Heaven, and Stargate SG-1.