The university campus was more or less how it had been during Quinn’s time there, though with some key differences that marked the time period.
Beside him, Sam surveyed the students in their flared jeans and luxurious blow-dried hair, carrying stacks of books across the grass.
“Sure brings me back,” he mused.
“You must have spent a lot of time in a university if you have seven doctorates,” said Quinn.
Sam nodded. “Oh, yeah. Gosh, it would have been fourteen years, I guess. From age sixteen all the way to thirty.”
He gazed into the distance with a nostalgic smile.
“If you have a double on this Earth, where would he be now?” Quinn probed.
He stroked his chin. “Hmm, late ’78… I might have just finished up med school, and started my dual Engineering and Computer Science degrees at Caltech, while putting in intern hours at a teaching hospital.”
Quinn laughed. “And you were surprised at me getting a lot done in a short time.”
“It’s easy enough to study for exams when I only need to read the textbooks once,” he said with a nonchalant shrug.
“Oh, I see,” Quinn nodded. “Eidetic memory?”
So that’s it.
“It was quite the blessing,” Sam admitted. “And then, I started leaping and my memory went haywire.”
He gave a self-conscious chuckle. “You know, the first time, I couldn’t even remember my own name?”
Quinn considered this with fascination.
“If there really is some kind of higher power involved in all this, why would they do that to you?”
“You know, that’s a really good question,” Sam said. “I’ve never really had the opportunity to think about these things; not ’til I met you. It’s just been one thing after another. I can never get a break.”
“I know how that feels. Every place we go, we have to figure out the new rules and hope we don’t get into mortal danger… but we still do, anyway.”
“It’s impressive you’ve managed to survive so long.”
“Well, not all of us did,” Quinn said, the pain of regret flooding into his chest.
The two of them had reached the sciences building, and Quinn stared at it with nostalgia, before realising he didn’t know where the Professor’s office would be in 1978.
“Where to?” Sam asked him. Quinn tapped a finger to his lips thoughtfully.
“He’s far from being tenured at this point, so I don’t know what kind of dinky office he’ll be in. I guess we find a faculty member and ask ’em to point us in the right direction.”
He walked into the building, glancing around at the staircases and corridors, before spying an older man with white hair and thick-rimmed glasses, carrying a briefcase. Quinn figured it was a good bet this man was faculty.
“Excuse me,” he said to the man, “Do you work here?”
The man seemed flustered, but smiled at him. “Why, yes. How can I help you, young man?”
“I’m looking for Professor Arturo… would you know where he can be found?”
The smile on the man’s face faded. “Oh, you mean the angry British man? He’s currently in the faculty lounge, making everyone miserable.”
Quinn stifled a laugh. “Yeah, that sounds like him. Thanks.”
The man gave him a polite smile. “I hope you’re not turning in a late paper. He’ll bite your head off.”
With that, he turned away and disappeared into the crowd of students.
Quinn turned towards the doorway, where Sam was waiting, and gestured for him to follow. He looked down the hall, hoping the faculty lounge was in the same place as it had been in the 90s.
As Sam approached, he pointed. “He should be down that way. By the sounds of things, he’s not gonna be a ray of sunshine to deal with.”
He began heading down the corridor, with Sam catching up.
“Can’t wait to explain to him that we’re inter-dimensional time travellers, then,” Sam said with a bitter laugh.
“It’s gonna take some convincing, certainly. The guy has no patience for the unexplainable.”
“Then I’ll keep quiet about the higher power stuff,” Sam said, picking up on Quinn’s subtext. Quinn nodded in agreement.
The sign on the door was clear: this was indeed the faculty lounge, to Quinn’s relief. He tapped on the door nervously.
A middle-aged woman opened the door, and eyed Quinn.
“Students aren’t permitted in here,” she said in a terse voice.
“Sorry. I’m not actually a student, but I’m here to see Professor Arturo.”
The woman pondered this for a moment, before leaning towards him.
“You’ll get him out of here for a while?” she said in a low voice. Quinn nodded.
“At least ten minutes.”
“Make it twenty, if you can. I’ll get him.”
She shut the door.
“Not a well-liked guy, I guess,” Sam commented.
From behind the door Quinn could hear a booming, angry voice. Then, stomping towards the door, before it opened and Quinn came face to face with the Professor, aged in his mid-thirties, glowering at him.
“Who the devil are you, and why have you seen fit to interrupt me during my lunch hour?” he asked with a scowl.
The deep-set furrows in the face Quinn knew were mere lines at this point, and the beard Quinn had never seen him without was vacant from his chin, in favour of a moustache flanked by generous side burns.
Quinn opened his mouth to answer, but found himself pre-empted by Sam, who’d lunged forward to shake his hand.
“Professor Arturo, pleasure to meet you. I’m Doctor Sam Beckett. I’m here with my student, Quinn Mallory. We’re visiting from the Physics Department of MIT.”
Quinn stepped back to let him do his thing. He was doing better than Quinn would have done; if not for his honorific, then for his seniority over the both of them.
Arturo’s stormy expression seemed to clear as he took in Sam’s introduction.
“We have a very important matter to discuss with you,” Sam continued. “Do you have somewhere private we can talk?”
“MIT, you say?”
Sam flashed him a smile. “Professor LoNigro sends his regards.”
Arturo looked bashful, perhaps surprised to find out he was known to this other Professor.
“Well then, gentlemen, come along,” he said cheerfully, and led them down the hall to a small office that Quinn could swear had been a janitor’s closet in his time.
It was a cramped space, filled with books and papers. On the wall, a small chalkboard with some incomplete equations scribbled on it.
“Pray-tell, what brings you to me, of all people?” Arturo asked, as he sat at his desk, lacing his fingers.
Quinn exchanged a glance with Sam.
“Look, what we’re about to tell you is going to sound implausible at best, so before we do that…”
He approached the chalkboard, assessed the work, and picked up the chalk.
“Here’s a freebie for you,” he said, completing the algorithms. “Gesture of good faith.”
He turned back around to see Arturo’s jaw hanging open.
“How did you… I’ve been grappling with that for weeks!”
“You would have got it eventually… I read it in one of your books,” he said with an enigmatic smile.
“I haven’t published any books…”
“Not yet,” Quinn shrugged.
Sam chimed in: “A few years back, Professor LoNigro and I developed a theory of… time travel.”
Arturo’s eyes narrowed. “Pardon me?”
“The theory proved sound when I managed to build a functioning time machine, which was first tested in 1995.”
“Nineteen ninety… what?” The Professor was struggling with this greatly.
Quinn placed down the chalk, and stepped toward the desk.
“That was also around the time I crossed the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky Bridge, after I accidentally opened a gateway to a parallel Earth.” He leaned in towards Arturo. “You went in there, with me, Professor.”
Arturo stared for a moment, a mixture of confusion and anger on his face, before unexpectedly coming out with a nervous laugh.
“Alright, you’ve had your fun, hazing the green Assistant Professor. Jolly good. Now, what are you really doing here?”
“Look, I wish we were joking,” Quinn said. “But we’re kind of stuck, and we need your help.”
What can I say to earn his trust?
“Listen,” he finally said, sitting on the one spare chair in the room, and pulling it up against the desk, “I doubt I’m in my home dimension right now, but the Professor I knew used to be married to a woman named Kristina, who passed away of a brain aneurysm in her twenties. And, one of his earliest memories is of his mother’s body being pulled off him after his aunt’s house was bombed in the second World War.”
Quinn could see the colour drain from Arturo’s face, as he stared, unblinking, back at him.
“How could you possibly know about that?” His eyes glistened and his voice wavered.
“You told me,” Quinn explained, and took a breath before continuing.
“There’s someone I care about whose life hangs in the balance right now, and…” he stopped for a moment, feeling his throat constrict. Sam picked up the slack.
“Quinn isn’t really my student; he’s yours. Just… not yet. You taught him most of what he knows.”
Arturo was silent, studying Quinn’s face. Quinn smiled weakly back at him.
“I’m happy to explain my theory, if you don’t believe time travel is possible,” added Sam.
“I daresay you’d better,” Arturo said, after a deep breath.
* * *
An hour later, Sam, Quinn, and the Professor were in an empty lecture hall, with two chalkboards filled with equations.
Sam had gone through his string theory, gave a heavily redacted explanation of Project Quantum Leap, and then let Quinn explain his own discoveries. Finally, they’d finished up with their current predicament.
Sam’s photographic memory had served them well, with him being able to fully write up the sea of scrap paper they’d been looking at the night before.
“So, that’s more or less what we’re dealing with,” Sam said, finishing his extremely long-winded explanation, and waited for Arturo’s reaction. The Professor stared at the chalkboard for a while, before finally turning to Quinn.
“Why do you think I can help you with this? I’m hardly at the forefront of physics. I’m no more than an assistant.”
Quinn scratched the back of his head.
“Because you’re one of the smartest and most resourceful people I know. I once saw you make penicillin out of trash!”
Sam raised an impressed eyebrow at this.
Quinn continued: “I know all of this is far-fetched…”
“Yes, well,” Arturo gestured to the chalkboards, “If it were a mere prank, it would have to be the most elaborate and scientifically sound prank I’ve ever seen.”
He pressed his lips together as he considered all of this.
“We’re stranded and our only income source is street performance right now,” Sam said. “We need access to a lab so that we can run some tests and fill some blanks in the equations. And we may need certain parts and equipment.”
Arturo finally folded his arms.
“Very well. Doctor Beckett, Mister Mallory, I’ll help you. On one condition.”
“Name it,” Quinn said, mouth curling upward.
Arturo gave a sly smirk. “This ‘sliding’ machine you described. I’d like the plans to build one.”
Sam met Quinn’s unsure eyes. Quinn seemed to want Sam’s input on the matter, but all he could do was shrug.
“What… what if I just helped you along with all the theories I already know you’re going to figure out,” Quinn suggested.
“Now, how would that leave me in any better a situation?”
“On the off chance this is your home world,” Sam said to Quinn, “sharing that kind of detail could impact the timeline in a way that undoes some key events in your personal history. If you grow up in a world where the machine’s already been invented, you might never build it yourself, which in turn may affect your presence here. I’d tread carefully.”
Arturo seemed to take this in thoughtfully.
“Hmm, yes, I see how that might create a paradox.” He squinted, looking at Sam. “Then again, you claim to change history on a regular basis.”
Sam gave a conceding gesture. “True, but I usually have the help of a computer that’s constantly monitoring changes to the timeline, and calculating the odds of anything going wrong.”
“Coming to see me at all was a risky move,” Arturo added. “There are now a number of things I will need to act surprised about in my future.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. We’re low on options,” said Quinn.
Arturo threw up his hands, defeated.
“Fine. Meet me in my office tomorrow afternoon at 3 o’clock sharp.” His eyes flicked toward the ceiling. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what a day.”
Sam breathed a sigh of relief, and watched Quinn give the Professor an unrestrained hug, laughing.
“I knew you were one of the nice Arturos,” Quinn said, causing Arturo to give Sam a puzzled glance as he was squeezed.