The machine was a little rusty. Colin was inside the chamber, checking over the seals and integrity of the Faraday cage within, while a bespectacled Professor was pecking at the keyboard of the attached computer, brow furrowed and mouth curved downward. Quinn, for his part, was inspecting some circuitry on the outside, pushing through his unwell feelings with visible difficulty.
Maggie and Rembrandt watched them, unable to contribute anything of value to the restoration effort.
Maggie looked nervously at the timer, which was now at four hours and counting.
“All clear in here,” Colin called out, as he shimmied his way out of the chamber, and met Maggie’s eye. “Bit claustrophobic, huh?”
Maggie gave him a smirk. “I wouldn’t know. I was a little preoccupied with my molecules ripping apart to notice.”
Colin raised his eyebrows, conceding with a tilt of his head, before joining Quinn at the outer components.
“How’s it looking?” he asked his brother. Quinn was hesitant in replying, his expression of confusion evident.
“I, uh… I don’t know,” he said, turning away. “I knew what I was doing a minute ago, but I lost it.”
Colin’s crestfallen expression at this made Maggie’s heart break. He took a moment to compose himself, and put a hand on Quinn’s back.
“It’s alright. I’ll take over.”
Quinn nodded, and moved to the desk where Maggie and Rembrandt were sitting, joining them. He buried his head in his hands.
“I feel like an idiot,” he said, rubbing his forehead in a move that had become near-ubiquitous at this point.
“Welcome to the club, my man,” Rembrandt said, in an attempt at levity, and Quinn responded with a half-hearted chuckle.
Maggie put her arm around him. “Just a little longer. Hang in there.”
Across the room, Arturo lifted his head.
“The archaic Higgins interface has now been networked with my contemporary version, and the updated calculations for Mister Mallory’s atomic structure are being loaded. My educated guess is it will be half an hour before it’s ready.”
Colin grinned. “Great. Just a few more checks and repairs over here. Looks like Quinn already re-routed the Accelerator components back into the chamber. I’ll be done in no time.”
“I don’t even understand what he just said,” Quinn remarked to Maggie, his eyes closed.
Beside them, the Professor pulled up a seat.
“I suppose you’re wondering what became of this facility, and those who worked here,” he said, pulling his glasses off, and running a cloth over the lenses. “I’d like to know, myself. When I made it back to Earth Prime, the invasion was already ongoing, and nobody was left here.”
Maggie leaned in. “Who did work here? Did–”
“Your double, Ms. Beckett? Yes, which I’m sure you must have guessed when Higgins granted you access.” Arturo put his glasses back on. “Doctor Beckett and Sherri were quite the team in their day.”
Sherri…?
Maggie laughed. “Wait, I think I gave her that name.”
Arturo stroked his bearded chin. “It was her chosen alias when she planted roots here.”
“What were you doing down here all this time, anyway?” Rembrandt asked.
The Professor folded his arms, looking nostalgic. “In order to prevent the invasion as described in Mister Mallory’s notes, we set about combining the future technologies in such a way that would allow us to generate leaps between parallel universes, as well as through time.”
Maggie looked at the others, speechless. Rembrandt looked flustered, and Quinn’s mouth was hanging open.
“Sherri underwent intense training over many years. In her preparation, she became something of a jack-of-all-trades. We first sent her on strictly regulated slides before working her up to leaping. Over time, she built up her recall and ability to adapt to new situations. All leading up to one crucial moment.”
Quinn straightened. “You were trying to stop my double from ever handing over the sliding tech to the Kromaggs…”
He had that sly half-grin on his face that appeared at moments of inspiration; though to Maggie, it was strange seeing it on the unfamiliar face.
Arturo gave him a slow nod. “That was the idea. However… the Kromagg presence here speaks volumes about the outcome of our endeavour, doesn’t it?”
He stood, forcing a smile. “Now, might I interest anyone in some absolutely vile powdered rations? I have enough to last twelve more years, and frankly if I must live on it for that long, I shall welcome the inevitable.”
* * *
Quinn looked nervously out of the machine chamber. He couldn’t hear a thing, but could see Colin and the Professor scurrying around him, making their final checks, and Maggie and Remy off to one side, looking back at him intensely.
He gave a shaky thumbs up at them.
Hope this doesn’t hurt.
But then again, he was already at immense levels of pain. Could it get much worse?
In the profound silence, he had a moment of what might have been peace, had he not been so pained. One moment that might have spread out into two, had the machine not been activated at that point.
Oh. The pain actually can get worse. So… so much worse.
Far from just a headache now, the feeling of being torn in twain grew to encompass his entire body, as his eyes closed to block out the intense blue glow.
Sorry, he thought, though he wasn’t sure who was saying sorry to whom.
All at once, he felt like he’d just hit the drop on a rollercoaster, before he felt the back of his head smack against the chamber. And he was cold. Really cold. In fact, he felt his whole back was now against cold metal.
His vision faded into view, and he realised that above him was no longer the mesh of the Faraday cage in front of transparent tempered glass, but a dark metal panel that made him feel like he was in a coffin. The pain evaporated from his body, and his eyes were able to focus without effort for the first time in a while.
And he wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Wait, that means they did it. I’m in the bottom chamber.
As the door at the end of the machine was thrust open, Quinn’s hands instinctively moved to cover his exposure.
“You two okay in there?” Colin’s voice called, as his head appeared at the opening.
“I feel like someone just ripped out my guts, but otherwise I’m good,” came a voice from above.
That must be the other Quinn. Wait, which one am I again?
His face screwed up for a moment as he probed his newly blanked-out mind for memories. Finding a near empty void that he certainly hoped would be temporary, he finally answered Colin.
“I’m okay, but… I, uh, need clothes.”
The upper Quinn was the first to be helped out, and Quinn could see it was the one with spiked hair. He was pretty sure that was the one who Doctor Geiger was experimenting on, which meant he, in all his nakedness, must have been the smart one. If only he could remember a little more than that.
Colin threw some kind of grey jumpsuit at him that made him think of a janitor’s uniform.
“Welcome back, bro,” he said, relief written on his face. “You had me pretty worried, not gonna lie.”
His speech still sounds wrong.
He pulled on the jumpsuit as best he could in the cramped space, before crawling out ungracefully. As he climbed to his feet, he zipped up the front, and looked around the room at each emotional face.
Okay. What do I know about these people?
“Listen,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I don’t know what that thing did, but I’m blanking on a few things right now.”
The Professor regarded him with a contemplative stare. “The leaping element of the process may have interfered with your memory, which is a known effect of the Accelerator. I suspect it will be temporary. Anywhere between a minute and a day, if Sherri’s data is applicable to your situation.”
As Quinn listened to the verbose English affect, a string of memories surged into his mind, taking the breath out of his lungs.
“Oh my god,” he murmured, and pulled him into a hug. “Professor, I missed you… and your over-stuffed vocabulary.”
The grouchy older man was stiff at first, but after a moment, he reciprocated. “A minute it is,” he said, bewildered.
As he looked over Arturo’s shoulder, his eyes fell on Rembrandt, a man who’d travelled with him longer than anyone else. He hesitantly pulled away from the Professor and approached the singer.
“How you doing, Cryin’ Man?” he said with a grin. He held a hand up to Remy, who grasped it, and pulled him in with a pat on the back.
“A lot better now,” Remy replied. “Good to see your face again, Q-ball.”
He moved on to Maggie. “Had you worried, didn’t I?”
“Nah!” She gave a dismissive gesture, before running a hand over her glistening eyes, smearing tears across her face. “Well okay, maybe a little.”
She wrapped her arms around him, and he squeezed his eyes shut as memories continued to flow through his head.
He finally looked up at the two remaining men: the other Quinn, and his brother.
First, he held a hand out to the man he’d been combined with. They shook, and he watched his double look him up and down in appraisal.
“Nice to meet you, uh, properly?” the other Quinn said.
“Likewise,” Quinn said, feeling altogether uncomfortable with the interaction.
“Remy and I decided we’re going to call you ‘Mallory,’ okay?” Maggie said to the double. He looked back with a furrowed brow.
“Why do I have to have the nickname?” He pouted.
“Because to all of us, he’s Quinn,” she said.
Quinn gave him a shrug. “We’re a democracy,” he said sheepishly, “so ‘Mallory’ it is. Sorry.”
Mallory frowned, and plodded to a bench in the corner of the room, where he sat down and proceeded to stare at the wall.
Finally, Quinn met Colin’s eye, but the memories coming to him regarding his little brother just weren’t making sense.
“Colin, I…” he scratched his head. “When did we first meet again?”
Colin frowned. “Our birth Dad brought me to live with you in 1979.”
So that explains one memory, but it sure doesn’t explain the other one.
“So why do I have a distinct memory of us meeting when you were an adult? And you were wearing old timey clothes.”
Colin’s brows knitted. “How distinct are we talking?”
“It’s crystal clear in my head. And yet I also remember waking up one day as a kid, and meeting my new brother.”
He crossed his arms. “What is going on…?”
“You kept talking before about how my speech patterns sounded weird,” Colin said, dragging a hand down his chin. Quinn nodded.
“Gentlemen,” Arturo interjected. “I may be able to clear this matter up.”
As Quinn and Colin looked at him expectantly, an ear-splitting alarm began to sound, and a light on the wall began to flash.
“Blast it all!” Arturo cried, balling his hands into fists. “Already?!”
“What is it?” Quinn asked, frantic.
“I suspected that the Kromaggs would detect the energy surge from the machine use, but it seems they’ve been more expedient than anticipated.”
He looked at them with regretful eyes. “I doubt it will be long before they find this place now.”