Holbrook Systems Warehouse
January 3, 2003
No sooner did Al’s sports car pull into the parking lot of the inconspicuous warehouse, than Colin burst through a door, his focus trained on the eyepiece of the Reality Lens.
Sam stepped out of the vehicle first, and received Colin’s close scrutiny, followed by Al, Donna, and Gooshie.
“Okay, you’re all clean,” he announced, as he gave a thumbs up towards the door, where Quinn emerged, followed closely by John and Alia.
Al nodded to John, who grinned back. “Hey, it’s my favourite hallucination! As garish as ever, I see.”
Al merely raised an eyebrow at this, as Sam extended a hand to his Earth Prime double, who accepted the handshake.
“Been a long time, Sam,” said John. “Well, not for you, I guess.”
After a pause, he glanced down at Sam’s arm and added: “Wow, strong handshake.”
Sam gave a snort, noting how much his double had aged into a carbon copy of himself – except that he had notably lower muscle tone throughout his body.
“I guess I have a more… physical vocation,” he said, feeling self-conscious.
As John poked a curious finger into Sam’s firm bicep, Sam’s gaze fell upon Alia’s melancholy, glistening eyes, and he felt a wave of emotion come over him.
“It’s really you…” he said, as she wrapped her arms around him. “I… never thought I’d see you again. I’m glad you’re okay.”
She gazed up at him. “Likewise.”
He felt eyes on him from behind, and he turned his head to see Donna giving Alia a terse look. Sam pulled out of the embrace, sheepish.
“So, Alia, this is my wife, Donna.” He gestured to her, then back to Alia. “Donna… this is Alia.”
“I know who she is,” Donna said, arms crossed. “How do we know we can trust her?”
“She’s got a point, Sam,” added Al. “She could still be working for… whoever the heck was leaping her before. Bizarro Ziggy and the bad guy crew.”
“That would make a sweet band name,” Colin said, elbowing Quinn.
Sam frowned at his friend. “We freed her, Al. Those days are behind her. She’s one of us.”
“Who’s to say they didn’t catch up with her?” Al said, lighting up a cigar, and waving it around, leaving trails of smoke in streaks around him. “They forced her to work for them once; they could do it again.”
John furrowed his brow. “Hey, come on. The both of us are only here now by the, uh, grace of that bartender. So…”
Sam gestured to John, while meeting Al’s eye. “Yes, exactly! She’s clearly here for a reason.”
Al took a long drag on the cigar, staring at Alia with his eyes narrowed. Alia withered under his gaze, but stepped towards him warily, pleading with her eyes.
“Look, I know you have no reason to trust me,” Alia said, voice wavering. “But I want to take down Lothos more than anyone, you know? I want nothing more than to burn that place to the ground.”
She shivered. “But it doesn’t exist yet. At least, I don’t think so. I’m actually from the year 2023.”
Silence followed, as everyone present took in this surprising information.
That isn’t so much of a shock, thought Sam. I’ve spent my life thinking fourth dimensionally.
He met the eye of John, and knew he was thinking the same thing.
It does pose questions about how she leaped as far back as ’56. She only looks thirty-something.
His mind raced at the notion that Lothos could potentially be leaping people well outside the bounds of their lifetime. Either that, or skin care technology took its own quantum leap in the ensuing twenty years.
Another car appeared on the horizon, heading their way.
“That’ll be the rest of the team,” Sam said, pointing towards it. “When they get here, we can start the debrief proper.”
He turned back to Alia. “Now, that detection device you were using to pick up on the Lothos leap signature… can I see it?”
Alia smiled, and pointed to the motorcycle parked by the door. She walked him over to it, and pried the small gadget from her handlebars.
As Sam looked down at it, he felt breath on his neck. He turned to see an excited John looking over his shoulder.
“Little close for comfort there, buddy,” he said with a nervous laugh. John took a step back, echoing his laugh.
“Sorry. Alia walked me through it a few days ago, and it’s just… really neat. I wanted to help explain it.” His face curled into a bashful grin, and his cheeks flushed. “Oh boy. Being next to you makes me feel like I’m twenty-five again.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up, and he let out a laugh.
“John, I saw what Higgins could do,” he said, with a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “You perfected retrieval. That alone is incredible, let alone having to calibrate on the fly for the parallel worlds. It’s obvious you spent every one of those twenty years well.”
John straightened his back. “Yeah, I guess I am pretty great,” he said, adjusting his shirt collar. “But you’re amazing too. Helping so many people like you do. I’ve seen what leaping is like, and frankly it was tough enough being an observer. I’m not sure I could deal with the kind of frenetic pressure you did.”
“Sure you could. You’re me, aren’t you?” Sam grinned. As the two Sams looked into one another’s eyes, Sam felt an immense kinship with his double.
“If you two are quite done inflating your collective ego,” Alia said, eyes twinkling, “maybe you can actually look at the thing you asked me to show you, huh?”
Sam and John’s gaze moved back to her, both smiling in what Sam assumed was an identical way, given her bemused expression, before they turned their attention back to her device.
* * *
“So,” said Sammy Jo, “the Reality Lens has picked up no distortion?”
The team was assembled in the front company warehouse, among the dummy crates. It was agreed upon as neutral ground that had a degree of separation away from the most sensitive areas, in case there really had been an impostor among them.
Quinn, Colin, Rembrandt, and Maggie stood on one side. On the other stood Sam, Al, Donna, Gooshie, Tina, and Verbena. Between them stood Sammy Jo, Alia, and John – who was eyeing Sam’s companions with curiosity.
Quinn gave an affirmative nod. “Everyone’s themselves.”
“At least everyone we’ve managed to get in front of us,” Colin added. “Senator Grady notwithstanding.”
Sam stroked his chin. “And you haven’t found your Higgins crystal, Quinn?”
Quinn let out a breath.
I should have found a different place to stash the thing. Somewhere nobody could get to it.
“There was a clean cut in my jeans exactly where the crystal was sewn into them. Someone took it deliberately on New Year’s.”
“And who was with you on New Year’s?” Donna asked, glaring at Alia.
“Lots of people came and went to the tavern that night,” Maggie said, glumly cradling her chin, and meeting Quinn’s eye. “I’m sorry, Quinn, this is my fault. I shouldn’t have encouraged you to drink like that.”
Quinn shook his head. “It was my choice. You’re not to blame.”
“Look, forget about playing the blame game,” John interjected. “This is our biggest red flag that there really is a traitor. Whoever took the crystal, that’s who we can blame. We just need to figure out who it could have been, right?”
“And how the heck do we do that?” asked Rembrandt.
“We keep checking people with the Reality Lens to start with,” said Colin. “Everyone in town.”
“And Grady,” added Al. “We gotta find that little weasel. I just know he’s got something to do with all this.”
“Word is that he’s home in Virginia for the holidays,” said Sammy Jo. “I did some digging and he was, in fact, staying in a motel in San Antonio at the time of the leap detection.”
“If it was him, would that mean someone leaped out of him then?” Quinn asked.
“Not necessarily,” said Alia. “But if he was snooping around, then it seems likely. However…”
“You should have detected a leap in some time before that, right?” Sam finished.
Alia nodded. “Yes, unless whoever leaped into the guy was in there for years, dating back to before I built the detector.”
“This is a head trip,” said Rembrandt. “So the Grady we all knew and trusted coulda been some leaper all the time we knew him?”
“That’s one possibility,” Alia confirmed. “Otherwise, it could have been someone else leaping in, maybe even to assist him.”
Quinn felt his mind racing as he tried to make sense of all these data points.
“If whoever stole my crystal was a leaper working with Grady, then they must have seen you at the tavern, right?” he asked Alia. “They know you’re here.”
Alia looked down at her hands, fidgeting nervously. “Yeah.”
“You could be in danger, then.”
“Yeah.”
“They probably want revenge on you, huh?”
Alia glared at him. “What are you getting at?”
Quinn ran a hand through his hair. “Do you think they’d be able to resist the chance to get their hands on you?”
“We’re not using Alia as bait, Quinn,” Sam chided.
Alia tapped a finger to her lip. “Well, he may be onto something.”
She made eye contact with Quinn. “Did you have something in mind?”
“Not yet,” Quinn admitted, “but let me think about it.”
After a moment of silent consideration, Colin piped up to change the subject.
“Listen, Doc,” he said to John, “Since we’re all here, maybe it’s time to explain what happened with Sherri. All we know is you tried to stop the Kromaggs from getting the sliding tech, but it didn’t work, and then the Professor got back to Earth Prime to find an empty facility.”
“The Professor’s alive?” John’s jaw dropped.
Quinn winced. “He… he was.”
John slowly closed his mouth again. “I see.”
“All the more reason to finish what Sherri started,” Maggie said, banging a fist on the crate against which she leaned.
“Okay,” John said. “Let me explain what happened.”
He took a few steps into the middle of the group, his gaze wandering from face to face around him.
“Sherri leaped into the wife of Quinn’s double. The year was 1996, and at first it all seemed like things were going to plan. Quinn – who we were calling ‘Nexus Quinn’ due to his pivotal role on countless Earths – had just returned from his first encounter with the Kromaggs.
“He seemed really excited about their technology, and it seemed that they hid their intentions from him incredibly well. I think they had offered him an exchange of technology. He wanted his hands on their biotech ships and anti-gravity engines, and they wanted his sliding tech.”
Quinn huffed. “Yeah, so he gave it up and the minute they got it, they turned on him and invaded his Earth, right?”
“Well, yes, but…” John hesitated, shaking his head. “I’ll get to that.”
Animatedly, John continued to recount the tale of Sherri’s final two leaps.
“So, we had to make a decision: try to squeeze out a window that may have been distorted too small due to the leap aura, or sneak through a public lobby. But then, Sherri’s buddy Tim shows up out of nowhere, wanting to come too. That dropped the odds of escape to the teens, but we pressed on.”