Chapter 16
Well, that’s definitely not Joey’s camera, Ben thought as he squinted, adjusting to the sudden daylight. He was no longer kneeling on the floor, but sitting in a chair facing an old fashioned film camera. On a table in front of him sat a microphone, and beyond the camera stood a man in a lab coat, clipboard in hand.
It hadn’t felt like he’d leapt, but there was really no other explanation, was there? So much for bringing Sam home.
The man behind the camera, obviously some sort of doctor, was looking at him expectantly.
“Well?”
Ben grimaced. “Uh. Well what?”
The man scribbled something down before answering. “Well—state your name.”
Oh, we’re off to a great start on this one, he thought. And it looks like another old hospital. Just my luck.
“My name…” he mumbled, filling in for time. “Well, you must already know that…”
The Doctor frowned, jotting down more on his clipboard. “Mister Beiderman, just answer the questions, would you? We’ve been through this enough times.”
Ben’s eyes widened at the name. Beiderman—like what was written on the floor? Oh, what is the deal here?
“Now, shall we try again? Please state your name.”
Ben cleared his throat. “Uh… Sam Beiderman?”
“Good,” the doctor said, continuing to write.
So it was true, then. He’d somehow gone from discovering this patient’s scribblings to leaping right into him. How the hell did that happen?
“And what’s the current year, Mister Beiderman?”
Come on, give me a break.
Ben looked around for context clues. The camera had to be from some time in the mid-20th century, but he didn’t know enough about vintage cinematography to know for sure. The doctor’s clothes weren’t much help. Lab coat, shirt and tie, black trousers.
“Uh… nineteen… fifty…” he studied the doctor’s face for confirmation. So far, no alarm bells. “…ff-five?”
The doctor took another note, keeping a poker face.
“And what’s your wife’s name?”
Well, he sure wasn’t gonna be able to guess that.
“Is this really necessary?”
The doctor adjusted the glasses on his nose. “Yes, Mister Beiderman. Please… answer the question.”
Ben was lost for words. His mouth hovered open for a moment, before he closed it and shook his head. “Okay, you got me. I forget.” He threw his hands up in defeat, giving the doctor a sheepish look.
The doctor pressed his lips together, and scrawled some more notes.
“Mister Beiderman, do you remember where you are?”
“Havenwell… right?”
The doctor nodded. “And what’s my name?” he put a hand over his ID badge.
Ugh. If only he’d managed to read it before. Ben wasn’t representing Sam Beiderman’s mental health very well, was he?
“Doctor…” he said slowly, and then said the first thing that came to his mind. “Song?”
Smooth move, you idiot. Ben winced.
The doctor’s brows met, and he made another extensive note, before turning and opening the door behind him, leaning out and saying something to a nurse. The woman glanced at Ben, meeting his eyes and frowning. She nodded, and entered the room with the doctor.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mister Beiderman,” the doctor said. “That’ll be all for now. Nurse Chatam will escort you to the sitting room. We’ll start up again after lunch.”
He stopped the camera, as the nurse moved to Ben’s side of the table.
“I hear you’re having a bad day,” she said, offering a look of pity.
“Oh, believe me—you have no idea,” Ben replied drily.
* * *
“Ian, what the hell’s going on?” Addison cried as she stormed out of the Imaging Chamber, with Janis close behind.
Ian adjusted their cat ears, a perplexed look on their face. “That’s a great question, and one that I’d be more than happy to answer—if I knew such a thing.” They gestured to their computer screen. “The readings are all over the place!”
Janis studied the screen, brow furrowed. “Oh my god, why are there three sets of temporal coordinates?”
“I don’t know!” Ian said. “It’s like there’s three different time periods layered in the one spacial temporal point. I don’t understand how this is possible.”
“And that’s why the hologram failed?” Addison asked.
“Almost certainly,” Ian replied. “And if you ask me,” they added quietly, “that’s some classic ghost shenanigans.”
“Uh, you guys?” Jenn said, approaching from Magic’s office. “We just found something.”
She held her phone out, showing an old black-and-white film of a tired-looking man with dark, shaggy hair.
“What is this?”
“This is an old film of Sam Beiderman from 1956. Magic’s been watching them to find out more about the guy.” She started the video, which was just a stationary shot of the man speaking into a microphone, eyes looking off to one side. “Seems after Sam leapt out of him, he was stuck in that hospital for a long time for monitoring and observation. Treated like a lab rat, and it drove him over the edge. Ended up taking his own life after getting his hands on a razor in 1962.”
She took a deep breath, shaking her head in pity, and turned up the volume.
An off-screen voice: “Do you know the current date and time, Mister Beiderman?”
“Sure I do. I believe it’s October third, 1956, and—” the man’s dark eyes pointedly shifted to the barrel of the camera, “—it’s Turtle Time.”
Jenn paused the video with a flourish.
Addison looked up at Jenn. “What the hell…”
“It has to be Ben, right?”
“Who is this Beiderman guy?” asked Janis.
“Sam leapt into him a long time ago, and had a mental break due to shock treatment,” explained Jenn.
Janis ran a hand through her hair. “What if—and bear with me here, because it’s just a hypothesis—Ben and Sam somehow got caught up in a temporal flux point of sorts due to the leap that already happened there once, and somehow that interacted with the fact there were two leapers there, and thrust them both into points on this guy’s timeline?”
Addison’s eyes moved to Jenn and Ian, and they had just as blank expressions on their faces as she felt she must have.
“I wish Ben was here. He’d understand me,” Janis said, shaking her head. She crossed her arms. “Just pretend I said a ghost did it.”
“You got it,” Jenn said with a shrug.
“Listen—just get me everything you have on that leap,” Janis said. “I want to know all the variables.”
“Coming right up,” said Ian.
Addison watched silently as Janis took charge. She really did know her stuff, didn’t she? And she’d had her reasons for keeping her distance when Martinez was out there.
Of course, she was still upset that she hadn’t been let in on it. Hadn’t been trusted to help orchestrate her own salvation. By Ben, by Janis… and even by the future Ian.
But, maybe it was time to let bygones be bygones. Janis was a valuable asset. They didn’t need to be besties, but she supposed she could live with them being allies. Especially now, while she couldn’t contact Ben.
I hope you’re alright, Ben, she thought, sighing.
* * *
“Good morning, Sam,” Doctor Masters said brightly as Nurse Chatam let go of her tight grip on Sam’s wrist, allowing him to enter the small room. “You look focused today. That’s great.”
Sam took in the plain room, a table in the centre and a two-way mirror set into one wall and a window in another. He’d been here before, he knew. He didn’t have an intact memory of what had gone on during that time—shock treatment was well known for causing memory loss—but he knew some of it had occurred here.
As he passed the mirror, he paused, realising he’d never seen Sam Beiderman before. He took a moment to study the face of the man who he took a high-voltage electric shock for so long ago—dark, matted hair streaked with grey, a five o’clock shadow, sunken brown eyes with dark circles underneath. He wondered how this disheveled man had looked when he’d first been admitted for his depression so long ago.
On the table, a radio sat, playing ‘The Loco-Motion’ by Little Eva at a low volume, its telescopic metal aerial pointed to the window.
Then it must be the sixties, Sam thought. That meant, if all of this was real… then Sam Beiderman had been here a long time now.
Doctor Masters showed him to a chair, and Sam sat down, clasping his hands together on the table.
“Doctor,” he greeted, giving the man a nod. “Listen… I’ve gotta ask, am I ever going to get out of this place?”
Doctor Masters gave him a pitying look. “Oh, if only you were this well every day, that might be possible. I’m sorry, but you’re a very sick man, Sam.” He opened his folder of papers, pulling out a page.
“It’s been years since I—uh, thought I was other people, right?” Sam asked. “How can things be worse now than then?”
Doctor Masters looked troubled, and peered down at his sheet of paper. “Sam, your fractured personalities never went away, not entirely. Surely you remember that?”
“Wait, what?” Sam bit his lip. “Oh my god,” he whispered. Had his leap here completely ruined Sam Beiderman’s life? He looked Doctor Masters in the eye. “What… personalities?”
The doctor waited a moment, appearing to be deciding whether to divulge the information. Finally, he took a breath and continued.
“After the numerous personalities that first emerged, we shocked you again at your behest, and you seemed to return to your original personality—for a time. But after a while, two other personalities came out from time to time, though one of them was only short-lived.”
“And they were?”
“Your secondary personality is a man named Sam Beckett,” Doctor Masters said. “Claims to be a time traveller from the future. We asked him to tell us about the future, but he said his memory is like ‘swiss cheese’ and he doesn’t remember.”
Sam swallowed.
“And the second I believe called himself ‘Ben Song,’ though he was particularly paranoid about divulging information, so we didn’t get much out of him. We found he had written his name on the floor of your room, though.”
Under the padding…
“I asked him why he did it, and he said it was ‘for posterity.’ Wouldn’t elaborate further.”
Doctor Masters leaned forward, eyeing Sam. “So, who am I talking to today? Because Sam Beiderman knows all this already, and he hasn’t looked me directly in the eye for three years. You remind me of Beckett, but if you’re him, then you’ve forgotten a few things.”
Sam took a deep breath. What could he say? Apparently, his own name was already taken.
“That—that doesn’t matter. You can call me whatever you need to, okay?”
“Fascinating,” Doctor Masters murmured, writing down something on his notepad with gusto.
“I think all of this is my fault,” he said, shoulders drooping.
And I don’t know how, but I need to make it right.