2.1  ·  A Little Caca

As the squad car careened into the open wormhole, Quinn could have sworn he could feel the body beside him emanating a crackling electric charge. He tried to look over at Sam, who was wearing the face of his close companion and one-time wife, Maggie, but his vision filled with blue. A blue that seemed to fill up the car entirely, drowning out everything.

This was not normal.

And then with a mighty bounce, the car landed on an asphalt road, and drove onward onto a decidedly vintage-looking street.

In the driver’s seat, Sheriff Maggie Beckett – niece of Doctor Sam Beckett, the time traveller – gasped, and slammed her foot on the brake. The car screeched to a stop, and Maggie’s expression was that of someone who just awoke from a nightmare.

“What… what did I do?” she muttered to herself, before glancing into the rear view mirror to Quinn’s right. Quinn followed her gaze, and there beside him was no longer the image of his companion, but of a total stranger.

He was tall, brown hair, a streak of grey at the front. Flat, strong eyebrows casting his green eyes in shadow, and a prominent Roman nose.

Is this Sam’s real face?

“Uncle Sam…” Maggie said shakily, squinting into the mirror, “I don’t think you’re me any more.”

Sam’s attention was drawn to the mirror, and he leaned forward to see his reflection.

“Oh boy…” he said as he studied his face.

Quinn’s eyes darted to Maggie, who was commanding the car to open the doors, along with Rembrandt’s handcuffs.

Guess she got what she wanted, and now she’s done with us. Well, good riddance.

Quinn slid out of the back seat, and stood, stretching his arms. He caught Rembrandt’s eye, who had stood, but was leaning back into the car to retrieve the timer.

Strangely, she gave it up without protest.

“Let’s go,” he told Rembrandt and Colin, and the three of them started walking away.

Quinn noted that given his knowledge of his home town, they were almost certainly in San Francisco, but the area seemed very dated. Maggie’s high tech squad car stuck out like a sore thumb among the 70s style cars parked on the side of the road.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen this sort of thing before in his travels, but knowing that he was with a time traveller, it made him anxious to see what the date was today. Just in case.

He heard footsteps pounding behind him.

“Wait!”

The trio all looked back to see Maggie sprinting towards them, with Sam struggling to catch up. She puffed as she reached them.

“Please… let me come with you…”

Quinn could see a kind of fear in her eyes that she hadn’t had up to this point. Maybe her choice to leave her whole life and world behind was finally sinking in. He stiffened, and folded his arms.

“Why should we help you after all you’ve done?”

For a second, he could have sworn he was looking into his Maggie’s eyes. They were glistening with tears, and her face was flushed.

And then, she said: “Because I don’t want to be left behind like Wade…”

At that, Quinn felt the rest of the world fall away, and he became certain that this wasn’t just the woman who’d given Colin head trauma and kidnapped a man. He watched her break eye contact in confusion, and look at her feet.

“I… don’t know why I said that…”

I think I do…

Oh, but he hoped it wasn’t true.

The models he’d been playing with in his head ever since Remy had floated the idea of taking both Maggies in the wormhole. If something had destabilised the vortex enough, it was entirely possible that close proximity could cause some horrible fusion of some sort, as the duplicate atoms attempted to reconstitute into one being, sharing the same space.

If something like ‘leaping’ had occurred within the vortex, for example. He wasn’t so sure of Sam’s time theories, but…

Sam reached Maggie from behind, and she let herself fall onto him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, to which she shook her head in response.

“My head hurts and my heart is beating a mile a minute…”

Quinn didn’t know if this was an effect of what had happened or just a reaction she was having to potentially having a second mind coexisting within her, but his heart was breaking, and he couldn’t keep up his tough guy facade any longer.

“Come on…” he said, pulling her arm over his shoulder. He spotted a bus stop, and brought her to the seat, where she flopped.

“What’s happening to me?” she said, and Quinn could hear the panic in her voice.

“I have a theory…” he said with an anxious waver, “and I hope I’m wrong.”

The little spacetime distortion meter he’d built was still strapped onto his body, which was a blessing. He grabbed the wand attachment, and switched on the device, before waving it over Maggie.

The clicks were doing double-time compared to what they sounded like when he waved it over Sam or Al.

“Well that’s discouraging…”

Quinn looked towards Sam, who was looking back with knowing eyes – it was clear that they both suspected something like this.

His worst suspicions were unfortunately proving to be a likely explanation. He was dealing with something really volatile. He desperately hoped it could be undone.

“What? What is it?” Maggie was looking up at him with wild eyes.

Quinn breathed out heavily as he sat down beside her. He frowned. Time to break the news, but could he do it without giving her even worse panic?

“The only way you could have known about Wade is if… some part of you is the Maggie we know.”

Sam stepped forward, taking her hand.

“She… may be occupying the same body as you.”

Maggie looked down at her hand, being cradled by her uncle’s gentle grip.

“Oh…”

“I’m sorry, but what’s goin’ on, Q-ball?” Rembrandt interjected, looking frantic. He locked eyes with Sam. “Did you just say she’s both Maggies?”

Sam nodded grimly.

“We’ll need to go over the science, but if I’m here as myself, and she’s saying things only the other Maggie knows, then obviously something’s gone…” He cringed. “A little caca?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Quinn added.

“I must have started leaping long enough to draw Maggie back, but since I was already in the vortex going the wrong direction, it must have prevented me from leaving, while Maggie was sucked in with us.”

“And with the other Maggie in there, she was naturally drawn to her matching atomic structure…” Quinn said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was such a bad day. “And now they’re both trying to occupy the same space at once.”

Colin finally spoke up. “Uh, isn’t atomic fusion kind of bad? In the context of a person, I mean.”

Quinn looked at his brother. “Yes. Yes it is.”

“Am I gonna die?” Maggie said, finally looking up from her hands.

“We’re not going to let that happen,” replied Sam, with a level of resolve Quinn wished he had.

“Not to add insult to injury,” Rembrandt said, standing at a San Francisco Chronicle newspaper vending machine further down the street, “but I don’t think this is 1999.”

He fed a couple of dimes into the machine, and pulled out a paper. He held it up for the rest to see.

City Hall Murders

MOSCONE, MILK SLAIN
-- DAN WHITE IS HELD

“The George Moscone and Harvey Milk assassination,” Sam said softly. “It must be ’78.”

Sam was, perhaps, the least gripped by terror of all of them.

“How the devil did we go back in time?” Rembrandt said, voice shaking. He pointed at Sam. “You’re the time traveller, right? How’d this happen?!”

Sam shook his head. “God, I wish I could just ask Ziggy right about now,” he said, frustrated. “She’d have all the answers.”

Quinn bit his lip. “Your hologram can’t reach you here?”

“I’d say the chances of that are astronomical, unless…”

“Unless?”

“Well, Ziggy does have all your timer data. Maybe she and the others could manage to track us with it, even pinpoint a timeline to target. But it’s a long shot, and it could take them days or weeks.”

Rembrandt had returned from his trip to the news dispenser, and Quinn raided his pocket for the timer.

“Well, looks like we may have weeks. Two to be exact.”

He held up the timer to Sam, revealing to him that it was counting down from 14 days, 8 hours, 21 minutes and 48 seconds.

Sam looked at him, tense.

“So, I’m not perceived as someone else, we have two weeks in a strange place, and I have no idea if I’m here to help anybody, besides the obvious predicament.” He scratched the back of his head. “Where do we go?”

“Welcome to the sliding experience, I guess,” Quinn said sagely. “Let’s get Maggie to the Dominion – it’s the hotel round here we always stay at. We’ll figure out what to do from there.”