Chapter 2
Al Calavicci strolled out of the elevator, yawning. It was another early start; Ziggy had paged him while he was fast asleep, having a saucy dream about identical twins with matching birth marks on the small of their backs. Ziggy’s voice had leaked through to the dream, and when one of the beautiful ladies came out with her cold, detached voice, he’d been real confused in the moments before he regained consciousness.
Now, he shuffled in to the Control Room, rubbing his eyes and sipping a mug of instant coffee that tasted like mud.
“Alright folks, what’s the news?” he asked, seeing Doctor Verbena Beeks carrying a chart out of the Waiting Room. Gooshie and Donna were at the main console, conferring over something on a screen. It hadn’t looked like Gooshie had slept at all in the last night; his curly hair was wilder than usual, and he had dark circles under his eyes.
“Well, we have a guy in the Waiting Room,” Verbena said, “but he isn’t feeling so good. I got a name and date out of him—Bobby Deleon, May fifteenth, 1970—but he’s got a bad headache right now. I also had to clean up some vomit. Safe to say we’re going to need to keep an eye on him, and I wouldn’t hammer him for information right now.”
Al nodded, running a hand over his chin. “That’s too bad. Has Ziggy got a lock on Sam?”
“Yes,” Gooshie chimed in, “but it’s unusually weak.”
“Weak?” Al frowned. “Why?”
“We don’t know, but you might have some signal issues. We’re diverting extra power to the Imaging Chamber.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Al muttered, before peering upward at the shimmering blue orb that was Ziggy’s consciousness. “Hey, Ziggy! This guy Bobby—what’s his story?”
“Good morning Admiral,” Ziggy said in her haughty way as Al sipped at his caffeinated mud. “Robert Deleon resided in San Diego, California until May of 1970. Due to the draft lottery drawing his birth date, he had been awaiting assignment after several months of training. He was shipped to Vietnam on the twentieth of May, and killed in an ambush three days after arrival.”
Al nearly spat out his coffee. “Oh boy.” He shook his head, sighing. “Sam’s not gonna be happy to hear that.” He turned his gaze to Donna, who was still busily tapping at a keyboard. “You okay?”
“Who, me?” she asked, looking up from the screen, her face betraying deep concern. “Sure. It’s not his first time in Vietnam. And he’ll know the ambush is coming, right?”
“Yeah,” Al said, “I guess so.” He looked back to Ziggy. “Is that what he’s there for? To avoid gettin’ killed?”
“That is my most likely probability, at eighty-two point six percent,” Ziggy said.
“Okay,” Al said, pulling his handlink from its receptacle. “That’s good enough for me.”
With that, he headed up the ramp to the Imaging Chamber.
“However…” Ziggy added, just as he was entering the code to open the door, “due to the poor signal strength and current state of Mister Deleon, there may be unknown factors at play, Admiral. Please keep an eye out.”
Al looked back. “For what, exactly?”
“Unknown factors,” Ziggy said flatly.
“Oh, unknown factors,” Al repeated, shaking his head. “Yeah, okay. Unknown factors. Real useful. Thanks for nothin’.”
As the door slid up, Al was greeted with a rowdy bar, with ‘Come Together’ playing loudly.
He stepped into the crowded, smoky bar, spotting Sam sitting at a table in front of a half-drunk glass of beer, looking positively miserable as a voluptuous woman caressed his hair. She was sitting sideways on the chair next to his, her legs perched over his lap. This woman was clearly much more interested in Sam than he was in her.
Sam’s eyes flicked towards Al, and his face pleaded with him to rescue him from a situation that Al didn’t see any problem with whatsoever.
“Va va voom,” he said as he passed through the table to get a closer look at the girl. “Sam, I recommend taking this one home. She’s into you, big time.”
“Of course she is,” Sam said in as low a volume as he could without his voice being consumed by the ambient noise. “She’s my wife.”
“What’s that, Bobby?” the woman murmured, before taking a long drink from a wine glass.
“I said, uh, I have to go to the bathroom,” Sam said into her ear, before gently lifting her legs off his and rotating them to the floor.
He rose from his seat, and gestured to Al with his head towards the signage for the restrooms. Al followed him, still sipping at his mug of coffee.
“Listen, Sam,” he said as he watched his friend weave through the crowd, while he simply phased through the people, “I suggest you enjoy yourself for now, because—”
“—Because I’m about to go to Vietnam?” Sam finished as he entered the head. He turned to look at Al with a deep frown.
Al winced. “So you already know.”
“I don’t think I can do this again, Al.”
He had the kind of fear in his eyes that Al rarely saw; way more than Al would have expected, if he was being honest. Like an animal in a trap.
“What do you mean you can’t do it again?”
Sam moved to the sink, and ran some water, splashing his face as he studied his reflection—a young man with a square jaw and dirty blond hair and a sharp widow’s peak. He looked exactly as anxious as Sam.
“When… when I recall the last time,” he said, staring at the water gurgling down the drain, “all I can think about is how even with Ziggy helping, people died. And it easily could have been me, you know? I don’t wanna go through that again, especially for a lost cause like this stupid war.” He pounded the heel of his hand on the edge of the sink.
Al studied Sam’s face a moment, trying to understand why he would already be this terrified. Had the leap saving his brother at the expense of Maggie Dawson given him PTSD?
“Well, let me give you Ziggy’s data, and we can circle back to that, okay Sam?”
Sam nodded, turning off the tap. “Okay. Yeah. What’s Ziggy got for me?”
“Well,” he said, punching at the handlink, which wasn’t easy while he had a coffee mug in his hand, “you are Robert Deleon, though you go by—”
“Bobby,” Sam interrupted.
“Right,” Al agreed. “Bobby. Today is May fifteenth and you’re due to ship out on the twentieth. There are no glaring problems for you to solve until you get to ’Nam, from what we’ve been able to figure out so far, but it’s only three days in once you’re there that Bobby’s gonna be killed.”
Sam let out a shuddering breath. “How?”
“Well, he was on his way to base when he and his platoon were ambushed,” Al read from the handlink. “He got shot in the heart and died almost instantly. Another couple were injured, but they managed to get away.”
Al looked up from the handlink, finding Sam white as a sheet. “You okay, Sam?”
Sam’s fear soured to anger. “No, I’m not okay! Do you know that when I leaped in, I was seconds from being sucker punched in the face? And then I find out I’m going to a war zone, and now you tell me I’m gonna die!”
“Well, that’s what we’re here to stop, Sam. We’ve done this lots of times. It’s no different just ’cause it’s a little more dangerous than usual.”
“Humph. ‘Lots of times,’” Sam muttered. “Yeah—too many. One of these leaps, I’m gonna run out of luck and die. Probably this one.”
Al lowered the handlink, watching his friend’s unusually pessimistic rant with worry. “Are you feeling okay, Sam?”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “What I’m feeling is out of control of my life. Al, how long have I been doing this now?”
“Uh, I guess it’d be about four years now.”
“Four. Years.” Sam said, slapping his hand on the sink on each word. “At what point do I come to terms with the fact I’m never getting back home? I’m just gonna keep doing this until one day, I’ll fail to prevent my own death, and… then I guess God or Time or Fate will have to find some new sucker to take my place.”
Al wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Sam reach such a low point. And what could he say? He wasn’t wrong. It didn’t seem like the ‘Big Cheese’ had been doing him many favours of late. Anyone else would have had this kind of breakdown long ago.
Al closed in on Sam, resisting the urge to wrap an arm around him—doing so wouldn’t exactly have been any use, since his holographic arm would have just slipped right through Sam’s body.
“Hey…” he murmured. “Look, why don’t you go on home and get some sleep? Things’ll seem better in the morning.”
Sam snorted. “Sure they will—never mind that it’ll be one day closer to being shot.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “So, where exactly do I live?”