7.7  ·  The Slide Home

When John and Al vanished before Tam’s eyes, they felt far calmer than they should have. They should have been panicking; Sherri certainly was.

“John?” she paced. “What happened? He needs to retrieve me. Oh my god…”

“It wasn’t just John,” said Tam, with a frown. “Al’s gone, too.”

“This isn’t happening…” Sherri gripped Tam’s arm. “How could both of them just disappear like that?”

We don’t know, but…

Something’s happening. Something on a cosmic scale. I feel it.

“We don’t exactly know, Sherri. But we’re gonna need to adapt.” They bit their thumbnail, thinking for a moment, as Sherri inspected Nexus Quinn’s timer.

Who was that voice? And what did they mean, ‘trust me?’ Trust them with what?

Surely it couldn’t have been…

God? Oh, please. If there’s a god, he abandoned us aeons ago. I don’t care what you think about your bartender friend, he ain’t a deity.

“As ill-advised as it is for a leaper to jump into a wormhole, we think it may be necessary for you to go with Tim to Earth Prime,” Tam said.

Sherri pursed her lips. “What about you?”

We need to go with her.

Why?

Higgins’s leap equations may cause us to leap at random once our quantum photon forms leave the wormhole. We need to be holding hands when that happens, so we don’t end up lost in time and separated.

Well, sounds like another adventure is afoot.

Tam smiled at Sherri. “We’ll all slide together, okay?”

Sherri’s anxious face softened. “Yeah. Okay.”

As Tam started up the power cores, and the ship headed for critical overload, Sherri opened the wormhole, and gripped Tim’s hand.

Tam took her other hand, and the three of them slid away.

*          *          *

Outskirts of Albuquerque, NM
February 9, 2003

Quinn tightened a screw in his newly configured timer, biting his lip as his nerves began to get to him. Was he ready to do this?

“Two hours in and out, right?” Colin asked, giving him a serious look. “Please promise me if the ’maggs are still around, you’ll find a nice, quiet spot to hide and wait out the time.”

“Colin, relax,” said Quinn, exuding a level of confidence he wished he actually felt. “We’ll be okay.”

Maggie completed her weapons checks, and secured her handgun in the holster on her hip. “I really don’t like that our memories haven’t changed at all.”

“Exactly why there’s no way in hell I’m going with you,” Rembrandt said with a resolute shake of his head. “If I never see another ’maggot, it’ll be too damn soon.”

“Sure do wish we had Ziggy to tell us this stuff,” said Colin with a huff.

Quinn cringed as he thought about the depressing fate of the world’s most advanced computer. Ziggy had never regained function before the Project’s power was shut down three days prior. She had been effectively pronounced dead. It had been a terrible day, especially for Al, who had stayed alone in his home, unwilling to see his and his lost friend’s dream end in such a way.

And so, the only way to actually find out if Sam and Sherri had accomplished their mission was to return to Earth Prime and see if the invasion had still happened. And given the state of their memories, Quinn was not looking forward to seeing the probable results.

He and Maggie were tapped to go and check it out, while Colin continued to monitor the sensor that he’d set up with John at the remote roadhouse where he’d emerged into 2002; the sensor made to detect the temporal anomaly that would signal the return of Al’s Place.

And so, Quinn set the coordinates to Earth Prime, and opened a wormhole. He and Maggie jumped in, holding hands, and praying that Sherri and Sam had accomplished their goals.

*          *          *

Quinn tumbled to the pavement, wishing that he’d been able to get a hold of the updated timer code that he lost when Ziggy shut down, which would have made the ride much smoother.

Maggie landed on top of him, and immediately scrambled to her feet, hands reaching for her guns. But, as the two of them surveyed the Albuquerque street, they realised that there seemed to be no need for alarm.

It looks… normal?

“You’re seeing this, right?” Maggie said, as the denizens walked by, some having stopped to stare when they witnessed the wormhole opening. Quinn nodded as he climbed to his feet, and brushed off his shirt.

“Well, let’s call home,” he said, striding towards a payphone down the street.

“Y-yeah,” Maggie agreed, following behind closely.

Quinn fed the phone some quarters, and dialled the California number to his home.

“Hello?”

“Ma…” Quinn’s heart caught in his throat. She was okay.

“Quinn? Oh, hi sweetie. What’s up?”

That’s awfully flippant for speaking to a son who’s been missing, isn’t it?

“Uh… nothing, nothing. Just wanted to, um… check in on you. See how you are.” He gripped the phone cord nervously.

“Quinn, that’s sweet. I’m just fine. But you’re gonna see me in three hours, aren’t you? Sunday night family dinner, right? Don’t tell me you forgot what day of the week it is again. You need proper weekends, honey.”

What the hell? Did I enter the wrong coordinates?

“Uh, right. Must’ve lost track. Well, I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay. I love you, Quinn.”

“Love you too, Ma. Bye…”

Feeling entirely off-kilter, Quinn grabbed the timer in his jacket pocket, and inspected the configuration.

Those are absolutely the right coordinates to Earth Prime. What the Hell?

Frantic, he dialled another number.

After a few rings, a booming, agitated voice answered. “What? If this is a blasted telemarketer, I–”

“Professor!”

He’s alive.

“Uh, Mister Mallory?” the voice had lost its irritable edge, and was more curious than anything. “What can I do for you?”

Quinn met Maggie’s eye through the glass of the phone booth. He tried to convey his panic to her, but she didn’t quite understand, cocking her head to one side.

“Professor, are you… did we…”

“Oh, do spit it out, would you? I haven’t got all day, not even for you.”

Quinn dragged a hand over his mouth. “Okay, okay, I’m having a weird day, so I guess I’ll start with this: is Project Long Jump still going?”

There was silence on the line.

“Profess–”

“How do you know about that?”

“So I have got the right coordinates…? That’s even more confusing. Listen, can we talk?”

Arturo was silent again for a moment, before continuing. “Where are you right now? This number you’re calling from… 505…?”

Quinn grimaced. “I’m in Albuquerque.”

“I beg your pardon! Albuquerque?” Arturo let out a breath. “Well then, you’d better just speak with me now, I suppose.”

“Thanks.” Quinn leaned against the phone booth wall, relaxing a little. The Professor was alive, and the project still existed. That meant, at the very least, that the 1978 visit had still occurred, which was consistent with John’s memories.

It was unlikely, Quinn figured, that Arturo would remember their last encounter, in the abandoned facility. After all, that version of him had almost certainly perished.

But where had this second version of Quinn come from? Who else had spawned an inexplicable double?

“Do you… remember the notes I left you back in ’78?”

“…Yes…” Arturo’s voice was trembling now. “So, that was you. I had wondered if that version of you had been… erased. I think I might have an inkling as to what occurred, now. But, I’m afraid you may not like it.”

“Oh, I bet I won’t.” Quinn gritted his teeth. “Go on, then. Lay it on me.”

“Just a moment, I need to switch to the bedroom line lest my wife overhear. Don’t hang up.”

A click, then a tone, and Quinn shifted on his feet, as he beckoned to Maggie. She squeezed into the booth with him, and he held the phone between them.

“The Professor remembers us,” he whispered, “but my Mom thought I was some other version of myself.”

“What?”

Quinn held up a finger as the Professor picked up his bedroom phone. “Are you there, Mister Mallory?”

“Yeah, still here. You, uh… have a wife?”

“Yes, but I’d rather not waste time speaking on that matter when we have a much more important thing to discuss, if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“As you predicted in your notes, a Mister Mallory and Ms Beckett returned to this world some months after Miss Welles and Mister Brown. But, as no invasion took place, they remained here to resume their lives as normal. I believe you to be a divergence that has branched away from this Earth due to a paradox.”

“Wait, so we’ve become our own doubles?!” Maggie asked, looking at Quinn with panic.

“Yes, it seems so, Ms Beckett.” agreed Arturo.

Quinn felt his life slipping away. “But… we worked so hard to get our lives back…”

Someone else got our happy ending…?

“What about Colin?”

“According to my records, John had been working towards empowering him to slide after you. But it seems both vanished at points in 1998 and haven’t been seen since.” Arturo’s voice broke. “I’m terribly sorry, Quinn. My son was also a casualty of these disappearances.”

“Did Sherri ever return?”

“No, nobody seems to know where anyone went; not even Higgins.”

“Wait, Higgins is still running?”

“That he is. From the activity logs, it seems he was in an unresponsive state for several months before finally resolving, with a hefty update to the timelines of known Kromagg-occupied worlds. The changes brought about in that mission must have been exceptionally far-reaching.”

“That must have been what happened to Ziggy…”

“Well, would that you were in San Francisco presently, Mister Mallory; we could discuss this all evening.”

“I do have one piece of good news for you, Professor,” said Quinn. “Both Colin and John are alive and safe. At least, the versions of them I know.”

“That’s marvellous to hear. Can I expect to hear from John?”

“Count on that some day, but I couldn’t tell you when. We’re working on finding your son and Al. Long story, but we’re on their trail.”

“Is there anything I can do to assist?”

Quinn thought for a moment. “Well, all I know is that they were last seen trapped in a temporal anomaly that was bouncing around in time. Higgins first detected it, but it’s been in and out of worlds. It may be under the control of this bartender that – uh, this sounds out-there, doesn’t it?”

“I stopped being surprised by strange phenomena a long time ago, Mister Mallory. I shall review the Higgins logs for this anomaly.”

“Please don’t try and check it out, okay? It already swallowed up three people as far as we know, and only spat one back out.”

“Why, then, do I suspect you intend to go after it?”

“Well, you got me there.”

As he chuckled, Quinn noticed that Maggie was staring at something outside of the phone booth. He followed her eye-line, and almost dropped the phone when he saw that a wormhole had opened up in the exact place the two of them had appeared minutes before.

“Uh, Professor, can I call you back?”

Out of the swirling blue vortex tumbled two filthy, exhausted people: people Quinn had never seen in his life, but given the sewn-up eyes of the old woman, he had a pretty good guess as to who they might be.