“Get this stupid infomercial off,” Maggie barked at Colin, who was nursing the TV remote.
Colin glanced at her, scratching under his head bandage. “But look at the way those knives are gliding through the tomatoes!”
It wasn’t that he needed a set of chef’s knives, but he was impressed with their engineering all the same. He could watch this fellow slice vegetables all night long.
Maggie put her face in her hands. “Surely there’s something better on.”
“At one in the morning?” Quinn challenged, eyebrows raised.
All four of them were up late due to their messed up sleep the day before. Colin was the most rested, of course, and he felt great. Even his head wasn’t pounding any longer.
Colin smoothly threw the remote to Maggie. “Why don’t you find something, then.”
She picked it up with a crinkle of her nose, and started flipping through the channels.
After a minute, she settled on an old Star Trek original series rerun.
“At least Captain Kirk isn’t trying to sell us anything,” she said, setting down the remote.
“Only the hope of a better tomorrow,” Rembrandt said wistfully, beside her.
Colin leaned back against the head of the couch, and bumped a little harder against the headrest than he’d intended.
Ow, I shouldn’t have done that.
As the throbbing waves moved over his head, with each wave came a split second of… something. A voice?
He squinted, and looked around. Nothing.
Trying not to raise attention to himself, he brought his hand behind his head and applied a little pressure to his wound, and listened.
“Hey!”
Okay, that was definitely a voice. A gruff, male voice, not unlike…
He pressed harder, and a surge of pain flooded the back of his head. Colin winced, but kept up the pressure.
“Can you hear me? Sam’s in trouble!”
He turned around, and as the pain subsided he caught the vague impression of Al, wearing a bright red shirt and fedora, and then it faded from view. Colin felt his heart catch in his chest. He’d thought Al was long gone.
Alarmed, he rose from his seat. The others looked up at him curiously.
“Uhh, I’m just gonna go to the bathroom,” he lied, and hurried down the hall.
Closing the bathroom door, he breathed for a moment.
Okay.
Last time he had seen Al, it had not been a hallucination, and he had a way to verify that fact. But now there was no Sam to tell him he wasn’t just seeing and hearing things.
Colin moved to the mirror, and undid the bandage, only to wrap it back around his head as tightly as he could.
It was highly unpleasant, but, as if summoned, Al’s ghostly shape passed through the wall and into the bathroom. Colin looked at him, anxious.
“What are you still doing here?” He spoke low and seriously.
“The Maggie you have in there isn’t the one you think.” Al’s voice was soft and distorted, but he could make out the words. “Sam’s still here, and he’s in trouble!”
Colin felt his face drain of colour. “What? So the Maggie in there is…”
“She’s the one who clocked you on the dome!” Al mimed swinging a baseball bat, and Colin blinked as he imagined the invisible weapon striking his head.
Colin drew a sharp breath. “Where is Sam now?”
Al moved to respond, but suddenly, Colin couldn’t hear his voice.
“Wait…” he said, and pushed into his wound with his fingers. It hurt, but Al’s audibility did not return. And, in fact, Al’s figure faded out to nothing.
“Al… ugh,” Colin said, “I can’t see or hear you any longer. If you answered me, it didn’t get through.”
Colin paced, frustrated that his brain would choose right this moment to return to health.
If only there was a way to verify Al was really here. He stopped.
Of course…
“Al, if you’re still here, don’t move. I’m going to try something.”
He left the bathroom, and wandered back into the living room as casually as he could muster.
Walking behind the couch, where Maggie and Rembrandt sat together, he passed to an armchair where Quinn was sitting.
Hoping Maggie wasn’t sensing his nervous energy, he tapped his brother on the shoulder, and beckoned him toward the kitchen, eyes wide and jaw set.
Quinn met his eye, and immediately picked up on Colin’s silent signals. He got up quietly and followed his brother into the kitchen.
As he entered, Colin spun around with a finger to his lips.
“What is it?” Quinn whispered.
“Grab that detector you built and meet me in the bathroom. But do not let Maggie see what you’re doing. Don’t trust her.”
Quinn, trusting his brother, was entirely willing to follow this plan, and nodded, grabbing the machine from the table.
“Give it a sec before you go after me, so it’s not as suspicious.”
He turned and left the kitchen, and headed toward the bathroom once more, sneaking behind Maggie and hoping she wasn’t going to spot him. She didn’t, thankfully, and he awaited his brother in the bathroom once more.
“Al,” he whispered, “stay with me… I’m getting Quinn on board to help.”
Then, he heard Maggie out in the living room.
“Hey, whatcha doing?” She asked what Colin assumed to be Quinn.
“Oh, you know. Think I’ll go round the house and see if there’s any residual distortion from the leap.”
Maggie didn’t say anything more, so Colin hoped she was satisfied with that response.
And then Quinn joined him in the bathroom.
“What’s this about, man?” He whispered.
“Did Sam tell you what happened to me earlier?”
Quinn looked at him blankly. A wave of surprise spread over Colin. He would have thought that was worth mentioning. Then again, Sam and Quinn had had other things on their mind.
“Okay, well, never mind that, just turn that thing on, okay?”
Quinn looked at him, puzzled, and then did as he asked, switching on the spacetime distortion detector.
Immediately it started clicking slowly, and Colin grabbed the wand and waved it where he’d last seen Al. Click-click-click-click. He brought it away, and the noise subsided. He couldn’t afford Maggie hearing.
“Al is there,” Colin explained.
Quinn was looking at him silently, stunned. His eyebrows were so high he thought they’d disappear under his hair.
“Okay, you’ve got my attention, bro. What’s goin’ on?”
“I think Maggie isn’t… our Maggie. It’s the double. And she’s done something with Sam.”
Quinn paced the small room. “For Sam’s hologram, which is linked to his brain waves, to still be present here, then he must still be here. And the Maggie out there isn’t reacting to the detector, because…”
He locked eyes with Colin. “Shoot. You’re right.”
“My concussion somehow caused me to be able to see and hear Al, but as I’m recovering, that ability has faded. I got enough from him to know that Sam’s in trouble somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
He made two fists in frustration.
“Hit me again. Same spot.”
Quinn looked at Colin with incredulity. “I’m not doing that.”
“It’s the only way.”
He turned around and ripped off the bandage. “Do it.”
He closed his eyes and braced for impact. But all he felt was Quinn’s hand on his shoulder.
“Bro. I’m not putting you back in hospital. There must be some other way, Colin. We just need to think.”
Colin turned back around, sighing.
“Okay, okay. I’d better get out of here before Maggie starts asking questions.”
* * *
Maggie stood in the shower, eyes shut, letting the spray pound down on her. The water running over her was so hot that it almost scalded her. She’d turned up the heat like this on purpose… at least being pelted by skin-meltingly hot water was some stimulation, unlike the mind-numbing nothing she experienced most of the time in this place. She was just so bored. She was tired of all this blue. She felt like that guy from that song.
“Maggie, pardon the interruption, but I need your attention at your earliest convenience.” The booming woman’s voice came at her from all sides.
Maggie’s eyes popped open at Ziggy’s comment, and she suddenly felt very naked.
She slid the tempered glass door aside and grabbed a towel with one hand, while turning off the shower with the other. Did computers care about naked people? Did Ziggy see her, or Sam’s, naked body?
Why was this bothering her so much? Surely Ziggy was unfazed by some human nudity. She was a machine, not a person. A snarky, petty machine, but a machine all the same.
“H-hey there Ziggy,” she said to the computer in the walls, “is it ‘annoy the prisoner’ time already?”
Wrapping the towel around her body, she stepped out of the shower recess.
“I’ve been observing something of a predicament on Doctor Beckett’s leap. I calculate with 79.91 per cent certainty that, with your help, the problem will be rectified.”
Maggie started rubbing her hair with another towel. “What’s in it for me?”
“With your help, there’s a 62.3 per cent probability that Sam will leap out and you’ll be returned to your friends before their timer reaches zero. This probability ticks down by 0.13 per cent for each second you wait to accept my request. It’s now 61.91 per cent.”
Maggie was stunned into immobility for just a moment, and then grabbed her jumpsuit, quickly putting it on.
“What do you need from me?”