Replace Redundant Components

Centauri Road

The clues read like cryptic crossword clues, but you would have noticed that they don't have working definitions. That's because both halves are different wordplay cryptic clues to the same word! For example, Helios almost encountered | the LEM crash: HEL + MET and anagram THE LEM to get HELMET.

Once you solve the clues, you can cut out and assemble the grid to look like this:

Solving the two sentences as another set of double-cryptic clues, you get "Small change by House actor central | to | chaotic care unit": Cent + lAURIe and anagram CARE UNIT, for CENTAURI. The second sentence is "Island state called | in zero administrators": Rhode->Road, zeROADministrators, for ROAD.

Electric short identified and contained; ENIAC idle

I console distressed company crazies that lost a ring

Curse surrounds circle emanating rough cries

Helios almost encountered the LEM crash

For starters, lawyers and many bystanders don’t approve of district attorney going after baby sheep

Bottomless black tar left rodent charged

Brief regarding State resident advisor: interval of rest before and after exercise

Embedded pro understanding of R + ALT + UNDO

Wild rascal combines functional Java alternative and statistics language

Women back up as lead girl primes

Slowly, interminably consumed last morsels and others recoiled

Tacky noise on yacht? No harm

Twitch, grasping act of losing a toe playing children’s game backwards

Buddhist faith with leader lost, buried in frozen Ithaca

(5 6 2 5 5 7 2 7 4 4. 6 5 6 2 4 14.) => (8 4)