Originally, neither Central nor Omega existed. Both originated as possible future end-states of Space Station Alpha, a sophisticated prototype space base with a self-programming computer complex and a habitable 'colony' shell, both contained in a long, cigar-shaped hull powered by solar panels. Alpha was intended to eventually become self-sustaining, but was built to have constant radio contact with Base. The core computer, responsible for data collection and habitat monitoring, was programmed with a set of key imperatives to maintain at all costs, given a 'starter set' of solutions for routine problems, and allowed to work out its own sub-routines to deal with situations as they arose.
Those key imperatives were, firstly, to protect and sustain the inhabitants of the station, and secondly, to gather and collate information from any available source. Originally, Alpha was home to about two hundred people and the yeast vats and hydroponic gardens needed to feed them. As part of its research projects, the station held a number of genetic, medical, and electronic laboratories on various levels. In the main archives, a near-comprehensive history of Earth was stored, along with detailed and encyclopedic information on virtually all scientific and cultural topics.
The central computer was provided with several sorts of extensions and manipulators, allowing it to carry out a number of basic tasks without human assistance. It could make external repairs, run the food vats, and adjust the external and internal sensors 'manually', if necessary. Everything was running well, and the computer's self-programs were progressing into more and more complex forms when an accident occurred. To this day, no one is wholly sure exactly what the nature of it was. Perhaps it was the magnetic backlash of a solar flare, or some sort of malfunction of a nearby experimental craft, but in either case, Alpha was swept up in it's wake, and vanished altogether, flung some nine hundred years into the past, and thousands of miles distant in space.
At the instant of Alpha's disappearance, not one, but two 'new' and dissimilar stations appeared, both well hidden and some distance from their original home planet. Each station is a possible 'future' of Alpha, one called Central, and one named Omega. The other, less likely futures of Alpha tend to converge on one of these more probable outcomes.
Or. . .