Chapter 14
The Sam at the steering wheel wrenched his eyes from the Sam in the passenger seat just long enough to make an emergency turn to a side street, coming to a stop at the gutter. He pried his trembling hands from the steering wheel and pulled the handbrake, returning his gaze to his double, hoping that he had just been seeing things.
No such luck.
“How…?” was all his lookalike passenger could say as the two of them shared a deer-in-headlights stare.
Sam reached out a finger and poked the other him, proving that he was indeed solid and not going anywhere.
“I don’t have a twin, do I?” he said, still not really comprehending why he was looking at himself.
“Uh-uh,” the other Sam said, slowly shaking his head. “Meaning we’re both…”
“Sam?” they said in unison. Together, they broke the eye contact, pinching the bridge of their noses in an almost choreographed fashion, as they tried to work out just what had transpired.
And as their minds raced, they began to think aloud, in a strange synchronised back-and-forth that seemed to prove conclusively that they were indeed the same person.
“I’ve been feeling—”
“—Sort of off? Incomplete?”
“Yeah, and Al’s been—”
“—Having problems getting through to me…”
“Which must be because Ziggy can’t—”
“—Isolate my brain wave signal, because—”
“—I leaped into two people—”
“—Simultaneously…”
“But how is that possible?”
It was as though they shared the same train of thought in this moment, but in the next, the Sam in the passenger seat said something that broke the synchronisation and left the Sam in the driver seat glaring in hot anger.
“This is incredible! Do you understand what this means?” His double grabbed at his shoulder, buzzing with excitement. “We can help twice as many people!”
“What? No!” Sam snapped, and rubbed his tired eyes. “God, no wonder I’ve been so exhausted and cranky. I’ve been spread too thin—literally! It’s—it’s like it doesn’t matter how many lives I make better, mine just keeps getting worse.”
The other Sam cocked his head, giving him a wide-eyed, puzzled look that wouldn’t have been out of place on a puppy. “What are you talking about? This is an amazing opportunity. How could you be me and not want to make a difference in peoples’ lives?”
Sam clenched his teeth. “Oh, sure. Like I did with Bobby’s wife? All I did was drive her further into the bottle!” He dragged a hand down his chin. “Have you ever thought that maybe people don’t want my help? I try to do a good thing, and all I get for my trouble is a blast of wine in my damn face. I’m sick of being the one who suffers every time I try and do the right thing.”
He shook his head, mouth twisted into a joyless smirk. “Don’t you get it? Leaping is nothing more than a slow torture, like Prometheus getting his liver devoured every day. It’s some kind of a punishment by whoever’s controlling our leaps. I don’t know what we did to tick ’em off, but they’re sitting back with some popcorn and laughing at us right now—I guarantee it.”
Hippie Sam was silent a moment, studying Sam’s face with a curious, but sad, look.
“I was wondering where my bitterness went,” he finally said. “I guess you got it all.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, well, you seemed pretty happy to see me when I got Harvey off your case.”
“You didn’t have to hit him.”
“Oh please—it was only his arm,” scoffed Sam. “I leaped in the other night with his fist flying at my face, so I think he got off pretty lightly. I certainly wanted to do worse.”
“Well, I’m glad you have a modicum of restraint.” The double shifted in his seat. “It’s Richie, by the way.”
“What?”
“He goes by Richie, not Richard.” Hippie Sam opened his mouth to say more, but hesitated.
“Okay…” Sam squinted, wondering where this was going. “Good to know, I guess.”
“But, well, everyone at the commune calls me—” he cleared his throat, “—Al.”
“I’m sorry—what?” Sam glared at his other self, incredulous. “Why?”
Hippie Sam chuckled nervously. “It’s kind of a long story, but they saw me leap in—I think it was because they were all on LSD at the time—and they decided I’m a ‘walk-in’ from another planet, and they asked me my name at the same time I thought I heard Al, and so…”
“So they thought you answered the question with Al’s name?”
Hippie Sam nodded sheepishly. “And now they think I’m here to usher in a new age for mankind.”
“That’s… that’s a new one.” Sam felt his cheeks flush with jealousy. “Jesus…”
“No, they don’t think I’m Jesus,” Hippie Sam continued, seeming to have missed that the outburst was nothing but an expression. “At least I don’t think so. Still, yes, it’s a little weird, I admit. But I’m putting the unusual situation to good use; to improve the place. We’re gonna build a classroom for the kids so they can learn to read and write!” He beamed.
“Well, isn’t that lucky for you,” Sam said, voice dripping with envy and sarcasm. His doppelgänger, however, didn’t seem to notice the tone at all.
“It really was, you know—and the people there are so cooperative and industrious,” he enthused. “You know how hippies were always written off as layabouts who just wanted to do drugs all day? Well, it’s not like that at all! Sure, they work on a different clock to the rest of society, and they do ingest pretty remarkable amounts of narcotics, but you should see the geodesic dome they built… it’s beautiful. I just know we’re gonna do amazing things. I hope I don’t leap out too soon.”
I can’t be this oblivious, can I?
“Okay,” Sam said, and started up the car again. “Well, listen—if you plan on wandering around downtown, you should get some of my clothes on. That way, if anyone recognises you, they’ll think you’re Bobby. Just remember to go along with it if they say anything to you.”
“R-right. Thanks. Sam.”
“I should probably check on Brenda anyway,” Sam decided, imagining what desperate measures she might be taking in his absence. “She’s probably got her head in the laundry hamper, sucking on my shirt for the remnants of the red wine she threw at me last night or something.”
* * *
“Status, Ziggy?” Al asked, returning from a rest he’d desperately needed.
The team had been working themselves half to death trying to come up with an answer to the problem of the Imaging Chamber. Even with the knowledge that Sam was in two people, they still didn’t have the solution to the split signal.
Ziggy had finally pinged him about twenty minutes prior, and he’d scoffed down a meal before racing to the elevator with his shirt still half untucked. Now he was struggling with it as he approached the main console, where only Tina stood. Evidently, the others had lost their battle with fatigue and gone to bed. And he didn’t blame them. None of them had gotten nearly enough sleep in the past few days.
“I have good news, Admiral,” Ziggy said sweetly, “I have obtained a complete signal for you. You may now enter the Imaging Chamber.”
“Ziggy, I could kiss you,” he said brightly up at the orb. “Only you don’t have lips.”
“The feeling is mutual, I assure you, Admiral,” Ziggy said dispassionately.
“Well, I guess you’ll do, huh?” Al said to Tina, who smirked back at him, saying a clear ‘yes’ with her eyes. He pulled her into a sensual embrace and locked lips with her just long enough that his sense of duty to Sam emerged and dragged him off her again. He winked at her, and headed for the Imaging Chamber.
The moment he entered, he saw that he was in Bobby’s living room, where Sam sat on the couch, looking up at him without a smile.
“Al, it’s about time you got here.”
“Sam! Oh my god, you’ll never guess what we found out!” he cried. “You leaped into two people! Ain’t that a kick in the butt? Ziggy was completely stumped, and it was D—uh, the team that figured it out based on pure deduction.” He winced at how close he’d come to mentioning Donna. “But Ziggy’s finally managed to fix the hologram problem, I guess, and…”
He paused a moment, noting that Sam hadn’t reacted to his bombshell and was merely looking up at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Sam? Can you hear me?”
“Oh, I can hear you, Al,” Sam said, and looked to a spot in the room behind Al.
The sound of a throat clearing made Al spin around.
“I can hear you too,” said the other Sam, grinning. He was leaning casually against the mantle with his arms folded.
“Oh.” Al stepped back, fixing both Sams in his eye-line, and gave them a sheepish look. “No wonder Ziggy had a solid signal. And she made me think it was her doing, that no-good bucket of bolts.” He smacked his handlink. “How the hell’d did you two find each other, anyway?! I never gave away where either of you were, did I?”
The two Sams exchanged a look, and both opened their mouths to answer what they must have thought was going to be the same reply, but it wasn’t.
“Dumb luck,” said one of them.
At the same time, the other said, “Someone up there likes us.”
They then looked at one another with frowns, as if they disagreed with the other’s assessment.
“Oh boy, this is giving me the willies,” Al remarked, feeling a shiver go up his spine. “Which of you is which, anyway?”
The Sam on the couch was the first to answer. “I’m Bobby, and he’s Richie.”
“To avoid confusion,” said the Sam against the mantle, “I say I should be Sam A and he can be Sam B.”
“I told you, no!” the Sam on the couch snapped. “I don’t want to be Sam B!”
“But you’re in Bobby. B for Bobby.”
“You’re in Richie, so shouldn’t you be Sam R?”
“No, the people at the commune call me Al, so I’m Sam A.”
Al did a double take at this. “They call you Al?”
“Long story. Anyway it makes perfect sense that I’d be Sam A.”
Sam B scowled. “Only on a technicality.”
Al shook his head violently. “Okay, that’s enough. It doesn’t matter that much. Jeez, why do I feel like you two are a couple of bickering kids? What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t think we split evenly,” said Sam A, gesturing to Sam B on the couch. “He’s got all the worst parts of me, I think.”
Sam B rose to his feet angrily. “The worst parts? You mean the realist parts.” He turned to Al. “This guy has his head in the clouds, Al. You know he showed up in town with his hippie pals, doing an anti-war march down the middle of Broadway, wearing extremely conspicuous clothes, without even considering that he’s a wanted man?”
“At least I’m actually doing my job helping people,” Sam A said in a decidedly calmer manner. “This guy’s practically given up. Bobby’s wife is a pregnant alcoholic, and he doesn’t even care that she’s probably out getting drunk right now, ’cause she sure isn’t here at the house.”
Al frowned. “Pregnant?”
“I tried, okay?! I told her what could happen,” Sam B argued. “But I’m not even here for that—right Al?”
Al was busy tapping at his handlink, querying Ziggy about the apparent pregnancy.
He paled as he saw the results.
“Uh-oh.”
“What ‘uh-oh’?” asked both Sams in unison.
“Ziggy never picked up on this, ’cause she didn’t connect it to Bobby,” he said. “It happened after he already died in ’Nam, so she figured there was nothing he coulda done. Brenda miscarried, four months into the pregnancy. I guess maybe the booze might’ve had something to do with it.”
The pair of Sams exchanged a grim look.
Sam B let out a frustrated groan. “I guess we’d better go find her.”