Have a massive trivial plot twist because I feel like it.

This is also really just a chapter fragment. I have a big announcement the bottom for you guys who have stayed diligently loyal to this dribble drabble that spun out of control. Cheers and thanks for your tolerance and patience.

-Alexis-

"I just don't know what I'm supposed to feel Jen. I look at him and all I see is this young, pretty new clone but when he talks all I hear is my brother." I flopped back over the arm rest onto the lap of my long time friend and partner, doing an excellent job of taking over almost the entire folded futon we shared.

Despite the somewhat obnoxious gesture Jennifer simply scratched at my head with her long false nails before offering me another sample of what I already knew. "Well honey, that's the point of cloning somebody isn't it? To replicate them exactly as they were in a new body?"

I groaned and shielded my eyes with the crook of my arm. "Yes."

Jen nodded although I could not see it. I simply felt the movement. "He sees you as his sister?"

"Yeah, what does that have to do with-" She didn't let me finish, and I had a feeling this was going to be a one sided conversation.

"And he's still a stubborn crank that only listens to you. Yes?"

"Right, but-"

"And you still feel like you have to come to his rescue all the time don't you?"

"Jenny-"

"Alex. I don't agree with the cloning business either. Maybe Erik died. Maybe this whole thing is just a selfish way to hang onto the illusion that somebody is still there with you. But whether you agree with your mother's choice or not this person is real. Real cells, real bones, real feelings. It would be completely monstrous of you to abandon him now that you have established yourself as the sane one in all of this. Erik always needed you to look out for him. Isn't it reasonable to surmise that this clone who is in every way like him would also need you to keep his head together?"

Again I sighed but shifted my arm a bit so that look could look up at my lover. My true Fiancée. A tall lean creature with hair like midnight cropped short, skin like ivory and a countenance which reminded me of the regal gaze of lionesses. "Why do always make my doubts sound stupid as hell?"

"They're not, it's a matter of your long term happiness. If you abandon him you'll feel guilty for the rest of your life and we both know that. You put so much work into protecting Erik from your dad and from that life he led when you were both kids. If it weren't for you, Erik would never have met Harry and he'd never have scratched out an honest living. Erik would have been as crooked as your old man if you weren't around to instill real morals. In that sense you're his foundation. What would happen if you ripped that out from under him?" Jennifer's gaze had became an adamant glare. She was not about to let me feel as though my concerns were unfounded. They were very real but it seemed that Jen needed to give further analysis of the relationship I had shared with my brother. And she was right.

"I don't know. It would hurt him if I made him feel like he wasn't real. I never considered just estranging myself from him by the way. Never. I just can't get my head around the concept of his soul not having departed when he died. I can't imagine that a soul can be replicated like a body or memories." I looked at the television as I made my point.

This was a final symptom of faith. Like Jen, I had long abandoned Christianity. In part I stopped going to service as a result of how hostile the fragmented church was against the lifestyle Jen and I shared. The rest of my motivation to leave the church was hypocrisy of my father, devout Christian and racketeer. Yet, no matter how far I distanced myself from my childhood and the faith I was raised in I still feared hell and eternal damnation. I also couldn't completely abandon the concept of a soul. How could my mother not feel the same way about that?

Jen must have sensed my distress. She curled herself around me and softly kissed my eyebrow before pulling me up so that we could get comfortable and enjoy the nonsense playing out on the television. "Maybe he's borrowing Erik's soul for a little while. Maybe he has a new soul that will merge with the old one when he passes on one day. We'll never know honey. But you need to make your peace okay?"

I nodded in dubious agreement. I wasn't going to have a choice in whether or not to come to terms with Erik's situation. I knew him too well and soon I know he will be itching to go back into space. I can't let him go without some sort of closure and without making sure he knew how I felt, yet that I'd be around for him anyway.

It was a tough thing to think about, so I resolved easily to let it go for the moment and enjoy the few hours of Jen's company that I could get. I'd driven all the way out here for only one evening at home with her. I'd just needed a break from it all, so I told my mother and Erik that I had to take care of a crisis at work and wouldn't be back until the next evening. Thank god the anti-anxiety pills were helping Erik otherwise I wouldn't have left him for so long. He was still having busy and vivid dreams which could legitimately be a side effect of the drug but no more night terrors.

Finally I began to zone out into the realm of the cartoon we watched. Classics from the first decade of the millennia. We were sampling cartoons from between 1995 and 2010. My favorite was Courage the Cowardly Dog.

Jen interrupted my thoughts on the surreal textures of the background props in the show. "What?" I asked, not having heard what she said.

"How did dinner with Jack and the fam' go?" She asked without taking her eyes off the screen or pausing her hand which combed all of the fine hair of my forearm in one direction.

"Oh! Right. It was fine. Jackie's acting was flawless. I think I might have laid it on too thick. But mom was convinced and that's the important thing. He's perfectly weird enough to almost make sense for me. Eric was harder to fool but Jack's love affair with Star Trek proved to distract Erik from the parts that don't make any sense."

Jen frowned just a little. "I thought you were going to be honest with Erik."

I was quiet for a long time, trying to find the words that wouldn't offend her. "I know. I was going to when..." I stopped. It hurt to say it how I had expected it all to happen. I had been waiting for him to come into port from his latest and longest trip into space. I was going to take him to a nice restaurant and introduce him to the love of my life. But everything changed and while he was in the limbo of death my life crawled inexorably forward. "I was going to tell him when he came home, remember? But he's so screwed up right now. I didn't think it was a good idea to put him through too much so soon."

I looked up, nervous of what I might find etched onto her features, but what I saw was only a little sadness. "I get it. Really I do but you know how I feel hon. Sorry, I can't help but feel shady already with just one person permanently out of the loop."

"My mother still has all of those connections that she did when dad was around. And I don't want to risk..." I trailed off, unwilling to verbalize the consequences of upsetting my mother.

"I know. I know. It's all about appearances to her and as long as your partner is the right gender it doesn't matter which one you choose this late in the game." Jen sighed. This part of our future had already been discussed. It was a great deal of work to hide the truth. As much as all the artifice quarreled with our morals and dignity we'd rather not call down the power of a woman who'd once been the den mother of a crime syndicate. Lydia could -in a livid moment- have Jennifer swept from the face of the earth with little more than few words to an old friend or client of her late husband. Cruel as it felt to Jennifer, my mother would have to remain in the dark for the rest of her days.

"I'm just glad you took Jackson. It makes at least some sense to take the guy our brat is going to grow up looking like." She chuckled half heartedly. That's right. Jackson would be the sperm donor. I took my sperm donor to a family dinner and passed him off as my fiancée. The next logical step was to stage a marriage and a divorce.

I felt like I was on the cusp of violating every moral foundation I knew in order to save my lover from my mother's bigoted wrath. It was all about keeping the schedule we'd had in place for insemination since weeks before my mother announced that she was going to have Erik's surrogate pulled from cryonic storage. I had only just begun to let him go but I should have known better. I needed to satiate my mother's stringent belief structure with lies so that I could be on hand for Erik. Test tube babies and this lifestyle would otherwise have created a war zone for Erik to emerge into.

"Yup. Only 62 days until I have to pretend Jack and I fumbled with the contraceptives and need to go do the paper work for a pregnancy license. Meanwhile in the land of reality you and I are just keeping our appointment at the fertility clinic with the legal work taken care of months ago." I griped, mood having plummeted. Getting that license was a bitch and I had only a four month window to put it to use.

"The appointment is two months away. Relax. It's like you keep forgetting that you're practically estranged from your mother too... I know it's been hard pretending so that you can be there for Erik without passing up this opportunity for a kid. But it's only for five or six months. Only until the Carri-"

"Don't!... Don't talk about the ship. I came all the way back home to spend time with you doing nothing so lets just do that. Please? I need to recharge before I have to think about this mess anymore."

Jennifer failed to conceal her concern with a smirk. We shared a kiss, and then an embrace before the layers between us began to come away to be discarded unto the floor around the futon.

-5:00 AM-

We both heard the ping of an urgent e-mail and stirred in the sheets. Jen gave a huff and leaned her brow into my shoulder only momentarily before getting up dragging herself out of bed to answer the message.

"It's probably for me." She muttered in a semi-aware pre-coffee state as she stood by the in wall contact hub and opened the joint mail account. I expected the screen before her to flash with stylized images and scant information which applied to whatever work she might be commissioned to do. Maybe sprites for a game or a request to donate work to one of the grassroots projects she participated in. No. It was blocks upon blocks of text and she stood still before it for a long while, features steadily hardening into a solemn expression. "It's Harry. He pulled some strings. the Carrigan just made port a full five months ahead of schedule..."

My heart dropped as I lay in bed suddenly ripped from blissful sleep into a state of unexpected panic.

Looks like all that careful planning and execution to make Jack look like the suitor was useless. I probably wouldn't have to mediate between my mother and Erik for very long at all. Certainly not months like I'd expected. With that ship of his waiting for him right now at the port it was only a matter of time before Erik broke it off with mom and went running for his real home. The Carrigan.

Erik would no doubt start pushing forward with every intention to pick up work where he left off. Although the ordeal of cohabiting with my mother and my brother was almost over I was left in the middle of cold realization. I couldn't lose him to the black heart of space again so soon.

~~~~~~~~Here's your big awesome announcement~~~~~~~~

Lets start here. A year ago on my birthday I was given Dragon Dictate. It was a wonderful gift from my husband. His heart was really in the right place and it was such a thoughtful gift. It melted my heart that he saw this cool program and thought of me and my difficulty writing, but the problem is that my Mac was SUPER out of date and Dragon Dictate requires the Lion update (Version 10.7)

I've since updated to Snow Leopard (10.6.8) But that isn't exactly what I need to run this program. Tonight I'm going to get the Lion update and install Dragon Dictate which will allow me to create massive walls of text in my word processor just by talking at my computer! How freaking cool is that?!

This is a really handy thing to a dysgraphic person who has a really hard time linking motor control (like typing and drawing) to creative thought.

So, hopefully I will be able to crank out chapters much sooner than a year in-between each like last time.

By the way this chapter here WILL with be expanded Erik and Soft Cries' points of view once I have all of my software set up and Dragon Dictate trained to my voice. It's going to be freaking EPIC! Keep an eye out for updates!