Chapter 35
Doctor Verbena Beeks, Psychiatrist for the Project, had psychoanalysed many people over Sam’s time leaping. And most of them had looked just like Sam.
The Waiting Room, which was the holding area for the people Sam switched places with in time, was often populated with a very confused person seeing a middle-aged man in the mirror, usually with a variety of their memories missing. Thus, it had been fairly important to keep them calm as best she could so they would cooperate with the questions that would allow them to find and lock onto Sam.
Of course, ever since one leap around the turn of the millennium, the room had been empty, and she hadn’t had a whole lot to do around the place. She’d certainly continued to come in to work, knowing that the mental health of Al and Sammy Jo had been getting quite worrisome, but she wasn’t able to force anyone to open up to her. And so she had merely kept herself available for these past few years, hoping in vain that someone would come and see her.
And now, it seemed, someone had.
Responding to a nervous knock on her door, Verbena opened up to see Sam looking at her with a vaguely worried look on his face.
Having seen this face time and time again over the years inhabited by leapees of all stripes—the chimpanzee had been the weirdest by far—she nonetheless wasn’t used to it having a sharp mind with all its faculties behind it. It was refreshing and a great big relief that Sam was in his own skin after all this time.
But despite this being her boss standing in her doorway, force of habit took over, and she gave him a gentle, non-threatening smile, the same as she had whenever she would pay a visit to the occupant of the Waiting Room.
“Morning Sam,” she said warmly. “Thought I might be getting a visit from you. Are you having trouble adjusting to being back, perhaps?” She stepped aside so he could enter, and closed the door as he proceeded inside.
“It’s… complicated, Verbena,” he said, sitting heavily on her couch. “I need you to promise me what I’m about to tell you won’t leave this room. No Ziggy, no Al—nobody else can know, not yet anyway.”
“Of course, Sam,” Verbena said with a worried frown. This must have been something troubling. “You know the patient confidentiality laws as well as me.”
Sam relaxed a little. “Yeah. Thank you.” He ran a hand through his hair, as Verbena took a seat in her armchair.
“Go ahead, Sam. I’m listening.”
“Well, first off…” He took a deep breath. “Do you remember yesterday, I told you that another leaper helped me get home?”
“Sure. The one from twenty-twenty something?”
“Yeah. Name of Ben. Well, turns out he leaped into Janis Calavicci at the same time as I arrived here.”
Verbena’s eyebrows shot up. “I see. Does Al know about this?”
“No,” Sam said, shaking his head. “He’s keeping it covert for now. The only ones who know are me and… Addison.”
“Sammy Jo’s daughter?” Verbena tilted her head. “Why does she know?”
“We kinda figured it out together, but that’s not important right now. The important thing is the fact that in twenty years, I work on Ben’s Project. And the older me… well, his hologram visited me this morning.”
Not knowing how to react to this, Verbena simply asked, “What did he say?”
Sam leaned back on the psychiatrist’s couch, staring at the ceiling. “Verbena… he told me to get back in the Accelerator.”
Verbena’s back stiffened. “What?! Why would he do that?”
Sam turned his head, meeting her eye. “Before Ben brought me home, I met another version of me that had been leaping for many more years. And he had seen how the people he loved suffered in his absence. He made me want to come home. But this other me, the one who was home for twenty years, is now convinced that he should have been leaping instead. So it seems like no matter what I choose, no matter what I do, I’ll regret it later.”
Boy, Verbena thought, it never was easy to be a therapist for people whose histories kept changing.
“Why would this older Sam say these things? Has something gone horribly wrong in his life?”
“That’s the thing,” Sam said, his voice husky. “He told me his life’s been great. But… it was a trade-off.” He sat up, gesturing with his hands. “You know the trolley problem, right? Do nothing, and five people die, or pull a lever and save those five, but one other person dies who wouldn’t have otherwise?”
“Sure, I’m well acquainted with the moral dilemma. What about it?”
“I was leaping around for eight years,” he said. “And every time, people’s lives were saved or made better, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, in another timeline—one with which I crossed paths—I kept going for much longer. I helped many, many more people.” He laughed bitterly. “So imagine the trolley problem where I’m the guy on the other track and I’ve got the lever. I can sacrifice my own life for those five—only in this case, it’s countless more people than that who I’d be saving. Shouldn’t I do that, Verbena? Isn’t it a no-brainer?”
Verbena stood from her seat, and took a place next to Sam. She slung an arm over his shoulders and squeezed.
“Sam, you are not responsible for some alternate universe. You have no obligation to do anything to help strangers you’ve never met.”
“But… what if I do want to save those strangers?”
“Oh Sam, I’d be surprised if you didn’t. But answer me this: when did this hologram speak to you?”
“This morning. He woke me up.”
“Are you one hundred percent sure that he was… really there?”
Sam’s eyes widened. “You don’t believe me?”
“I just want to make sure you really did see a hologram and not a… a manifestation of your anxieties surrounding coming home.”
“You think he’s some kind of… hallucination?” Sam shook his head. “No, Ben can confirm it, surely.”
“So why don’t you ask him?”
Sam looked away from her. “I didn’t want him to know I was thinking about leaving, after what he gave up to bring me back. So I haven’t told him about it.”
Sam’s eye line abruptly shifted to his left, and he let out a tired moan. “Not now…” he muttered.
“Is the other Sam… in the room with us right now?” Verbena enquired, nervously looking in the direction Sam was looking.
“Yeah, he is.” Sam stood up, addressing the ghost. “What do you want now? Do you want Verbena to think I’m losing my mind?” He listened to the silence for a moment, before continuing his tirade. “Oh, don’t go quoting Spock to me, that’s hacky.” He turned to Verbena, gesturing to the empty space. “Can you believe this guy? ‘Needs of the many.’ Tch.” He shook his head, exasperated as he turned back to the hologram, pointing a finger. “You know what else he said? ‘Live long and prosper!’ So you’re gonna have to do better than that, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” Verbena said, holding up a hand. “Stop, please… uh, both of you, I guess. Now, is there anything that can prove to me that there really is a hologram of a future Sam here?”
Sam thought a moment, and his eyes lit up as he thought of something. “I think I’ve got an idea.” He looked to the invisible Sam. “I’ll roll up an RNG.” A moment later, he nodded, and turned to Verbena’s computer on her desk. “Give me a minute,” he said, sitting down and typing.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to have Ziggy generate and store a random six-digit number, and then display it on your monitor after thirty seconds. During that time, the holographic me will query the saved value from twenty years prior on his handlink, and allow me to relay the number to you before it appears. If the number I say matches what appears on the screen, that will prove that there’s really a hologram here. There’ll be no other possible way I can know the number.”
Well, Verbena thought, that sounds pretty foolproof. Though, to be sure, she watched Sam enter the commands closely.
“Okay, the number’s been generated.” Sam’s gaze flicked across the room. A moment later, he grabbed a pen and wrote the number 718327 on his palm. He held it up, next to the monitor. “Wait for it…”
Several seconds later, the very same number popped up on the screen.
“I knew it. I knew I wasn’t losing it.” Sam was visibly relieved to see the matching number. “See, Verbena? It isn’t my subconscious anxiety manifesting. I told you.”
Blinking, Verbena wondered if she was in over her head here.
“Okay,” she said, inhaling sharply, “I guess there really is a hologram in the room with us. You’re sure it’s… you?”
“I may have missed out on seeing my own face for a few years, but I still know it when I see it.”
“Okay.” She turned to the empty space where Sam had been looking. “Hello, future Sam. Do you think we can talk this out together? The three of us?”
“He says he’d be happy to.”
“Alright. You’ll have to relay all of his contributions to our chat, but I think we can work this.” Grabbing a pen and notepad, she sat in her armchair, crossing her legs. “Okay. Sam, Future Sam… take a seat and let’s get started.”