Chapter 4
As Sam once again left the Imaging Chamber, he saw Ian at their desk being crowded by Magic and the woman he recalled had briefly shared the Imaging Chamber with Janis during his last leap with Ben. He somehow couldn’t recall her name, but he could recall details of her onion server. Swiss-cheese memory was strange that way.
He wandered over, listening to their conversation.
“I’m telling you, I don’t know why it’s doing that,” Ian’s voice boomed, perhaps a little defensive.
“Well, figure it out,” Magic said, his voice terse. “We need to know what’s happening in there.”
“Isn’t that what Addison’s for anyway?” Ian countered.
“You know the original project never had a video feed of the Imaging Chamber,” added the woman Sam couldn’t remember the name for. “It was all just Al. Some people didn’t even believe he witnessed all the things he said.”
Magic frowned. “Sure, and we don’t want that to happen to us, Jenn.”
Jenn, Sam repeated in his head to secure the connection between name and face.
“Well, I’ll try and get it fixed, but I have no estimates on how long it’ll take, okay?” Ian looked up, meeting Sam’s eye. “Could be here all night, you know?”
“Well, try not to take that long,” Magic said, defeated, and turned to Sam. “How’s Ben doing?”
Sam put on a casual expression. “Well, he’s perfectly fine, but we decided not to go with Ziggy’s suggestion. Ben just wasn’t… in the mood.”
“So where does that leave us?” asked Jenn. “He’s not stuck there now, is he?”
Ian raised a finger. “As much as I like to pretend Ziggy is infallible, it is not.”
Ziggy’s an ‘it’ now? Sam wondered. That would be the third set of pronouns Ziggy used since the beginning of ‘its’ lifespan.
“It makes predictions with varying accuracy,” Ian continued, “And anything below one hundred percent means there is a possibility the prediction is wrong. Ziggy gave Becky a ninety-four percent accuracy; we just have to treat this like that rare six percent. Which is really more than 1 in 20, so it’s not that rare a number.”
“So then, what are our other leads?” Magic asked, crossing his arms.
“Well, we’re working on that,” Sam said, eyeing Ian. “He’s keeping his eyes peeled for possible… problems. And so am I. But he told me to leave him for now since he’s just going home. Just… I think we should keep an eye out for sudden changes to history.”
“What makes you say that?” said Jenn.
Sam bit his lip. How could he finesse this without giving anything away? “Uh…”
“Well, who knows what Ben changed accidentally?” Ian said, covering for Sam. “You never know, we might find something to fix that way. Something that went unnoticed before Ben was added to the equation.”
“Sounds tenuous, but it’s something,” Magic muttered. “I sure hope we haven’t ruined his chances of leaping, though.” He wandered away towards what Sam assumed was his office. Jenn didn’t go anywhere, though.
“So, what are you two up to, huh?” she asked with a sly smile. “I saw Ian pull you into the Imaging Chamber before, right before the feed screwed up. You guys are keeping secrets, aren’t you?” She tilted her head, raising her eyebrows. “I haven’t told Magic… yet. But I will if you two don’t let me in on it.”
Sam looked helplessly to Ian for cues.
“It might be, uh, Turtle Time,” Ian said in a low tone.
Sam had no clue what that meant, but Jenn seemed to perk up at this.
“Okay, you have my attention,” she said, eyes narrowed.
Ian looked to Sam. “It’s really her. Should we let her in on it?”
“Is there somewhere private we can talk?” asked Sam. “With no… security monitoring?”
“You mean besides the Imaging Chamber right now?” Jenn asked playfully. “Sure—follow me.”
* * *
“Are you serious right now?” Jenn blurted out as Sam and Ian finished their explanation. She circled Sam as best she could in the cramped closet where no cameras were operating. “That’s too weird. I know Ben does this all the time to people, but to see it in action…” She shook her head. “It still boggles my mind.”
“Hey, at least a future version of you that may no longer exist hasn’t leapt into someone who went on to draw pictures of you,” Ian said. “You want to talk about mind-boggling…”
Sam glared at Ian, eyes squinted. “What…?”
“See?” Ian said to Jenn, “it’s even confusing to the guy who invented time travel!”
Jenn stifled a laugh. “Yes, okay, you win the bananas time travel sweepstakes, Ian.” She turned to Sam. “Anyway, what are you doing here, Sam? Is one of us about to be hit by a train or something?”
Sam offered her a shrug. “I’m still figuring that out,” he said. “I’m thinking my leaping into Addison may have something to do with Ben’s leap, given that she’s his hologram.”
“Well, as long as you are here,” Ian said, reaching into their jacket, “Janis and I have been working on a little something and we need you as a guinea pig.” They leaned in close, pulling out a very familiar object.
“The old handlink,” Sam said with wonder, taking it and inspecting it. “Except it’s been… altered…?”
Ian nodded. “Just a few configurations based on your quantum data and it’ll be fully converted into a detection system for leapers.”
Sam couldn’t help but smile, an impressed laugh escaping his throat. “That’s brilliant!”
“You can thank Janis and Donna when we get back to their apartment.”
Sam looked up from the handlink at this. “Donna’s here?!” he said breathlessly. He paused, then added: “Where is here, anyway? New Mexico?”
“We’re in LA,” Ian said.
Sam was about to ask whose bright idea it was to build a potentially volatile nuclear-powered Quantum Accelerator in the second-most populated city in America, but Jenn cut in.
“Hang on, did you say Donna?” she asked. “Donna Elesee-Beckett?”
Ian nodded.
“How long has she been on the mainland?”
“About six months. She’s been… sequestered. For security purposes.”
Sam brushed a tear from his eye. “I can’t believe it… after all this time. The letters, the phone calls from afar over years and years. I-I’m finally gonna see her…” He let out a strained laugh. “She won’t see me though. Not really.”
“It’ll be enough,” Ian reassured him. “She’s looking forward to it. Even if you do look like Addison.” They turned to Jenn. “So anyway, I may have messed up the monitoring for the Imaging Chamber on purpose, so that Sam and Ben could talk freely. And it may be the reason I’ll be ‘stumped’ on how to fix it for a little while longer. Can you help stall Magic?”
“Why can’t we just tell him?” Jenn asked. “He really would love to see you, Sam. You know he promised Al he’d bring you home, and now here you are.”
Ian grabbed the handlink from Sam and waved it around. “Just let me configure this and then we’ll be able to let anyone in on it who needs to know. I’ll be ‘working late’ when everyone else has gone home, ostensibly to fix the Imaging Chamber, so that’ll be an ideal time to get the readings done. I’ll need some support from Ziggy.”
Jenn nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll stall Magic for today, and turn some of the security cams off so you can do your configuration thing. But tomorrow, you’d better have that doodad working, because Magic is gonna get suspicious with all this sneaking around. Hell, he’s probably wondering where we all are right now.”
“Okay, deal,” Ian said, stuffing the handlink back into their jacket and turning to Sam. “I don’t wanna be a pain, but those schematics are still in my desk just waiting to be signed.”
Sam smirked. “If you pull this off, I’ll gladly sign them.”
Ian grinned. “Couple o’ geniuses working together? What can go wrong?”
* * *
As Sam waited for Magic and the staff to finish up for the evening, he began searching through Addison’s phone, a standard thing for him to do when he leaped these days. Especially from the 2010s, people kept their whole lives on phones, he’d long since learned. So it was good recon to get to know someone through their phone.
It was true that he already had some help for his goals, but it was a habit that continued, even knowing that he was probably here to help Ben in some way.
Addison’s phone was full of photos of her and Ben together, throughout their dating and up to their engagement party. The photos stopped abruptly after a picture of the couple kissing. It was rather heartbreaking.
Then, something in Addison’s texts caught his eye.
Please call me? This is Mom.
I heard about Ben.
It was from an unsaved number, and there was a draft reply from a year ago that hadn’t been sent.
The draft read: I don’t need your pity.
Sam stared at it for a long moment. Maybe this leap wasn’t just about Ben after all.