A Sliders / Quantum Leap Crossover Fan Fic
by Ashe P. Kirk
Full Transcript (34.8K words)
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.”
“So, uh… what do you guys do for money? And clothing?”
Sam paced the hotel suite, looking down at the clothes he wore - a set of floral pajamas from Sheriff Maggie’s closet, that were several sizes too small and threatening to split at a number of seams, especially the shoulders, where they were so tight he had little freedom of movement in his arms. Not to mention the smears of dirt and blood from his experience being abducted.
He’d been stared at all the way here, even after borrowing Quinn’s jacket.
Quinn gave him a once-over, and couldn’t help but laugh. Then he scratched his head as he chose his answer to Sam’s question.
“Well, when we can’t find work, we tend to go to less legal means.”
“Less legal?” Sam pressed his lips together.
“Oh, you know, we do a little digging around to see if our doubles have bank accounts… but, in 1978, Colin and I were little kids, so…”
“I’m sure this world’s Cryin’ Man could spare some scratch,” Rembrandt’s eyes were shining with nostalgia for his glory days.
“Wait, wait. I don’t want to be taking other peoples’ money,” Sam said, indignant. “What if we’re caught? Besides, we already spent enough time locked in a jail cell.”
“It ain’t technically theft if we’re the same person, right?” Rembrandt added.
Sam looked him up and down. “You’ve aged twenty years, don’t you think someone’s gonna notice?”
Quinn laughed. “You’re quite the goody two-shoes, you know that?”
Sam chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, so I hear. I just have a strong moral compass is all.”
“So we find work,” Quinn said, shrugging. “Shouldn’t be so hard in the seventies to find cash work, right?”
“Not for a soul singer who can do a perfect impression of a chart topper,” Rembrandt said smugly.
“You know, we don’t know how things are different in this world,” Colin said, coming out of the bathroom. “For all we know, you might never have been popular.”
“Yeah, and pigs might fly,” Rembrandt said, brushing off the insult with a grin. “Let’s face it, you guys would never make it through slides without my entertainer money.”
He looked at Sam, eyes narrowed. “You might have seven doctorates, but you got any musical talent, Doc?”
Sam felt his cheeks burning. “I’m kind of a doctor of music, too.”
Rembrandt stared at him for a moment, mouth agape.
“This guy…” he said, looking at the others. “Does anyone else feel inadequate right about now?”
In response, Colin nodded heartily while Quinn shrugged, with a small cringe.
Ugh, they think I’m some kind of Superman, thought Sam. Little did they know how often things went pear-shaped on his leaps due to gaps in his knowledge.
Sam threw up his hands defensively.
“Look, maybe we can busk together or something,” he said.
“What do you play, Doc?”
“Classical piano, guitar, a little singing… maybe more. Honestly with the way my memory is, the best way to find out if I play something is to put it in my hands and see if I start making music or ear-splitting noise.”
“Okay, well, we ain’t got instruments here, but we can try some a capella. Don’t suppose you know ‘Cry Like A Man?’”
“Wait, that’s one of your songs? Sure, I know it just fine.”
Rembrandt smiled broadly at this, as if it was rare for anyone to recognise the song. He recalled Al calling him ‘One Hit Wonder.’
It must be tough to make table scraps singing on the street after being a star.
A noise from one of the beds pulled him from the conversation. Maggie, who’d been sleeping feverishly for the past couple of hours, was stirring.
He moved to her bedside, and sat on the edge of the adjacent bed.
“Hey, you feeling okay?”
“How long was I asleep?” She squinted, regaining her focus.
“Not long enough for me to change into better clothes,” he said with a self-conscious grin. She smiled sadly at him.
“My head still hurts, but my heart’s not beating out of my chest so much.”
“That’s good.”
Maggie looked at the other three, letting her eyes track from one to the other.
“It feels so strange. It’s like I don’t have any clear memories of knowing you all, but I trust you as if I did. I don’t know which part of my mind is which version of myself…”
Her gaze moved to Colin.
“I’m… sorry for the…” she gestured to her head.
“It’s alright.” Colin’s face had no hard feelings; he just seemed sad. “In the end, that head injury allowed me to–”
Maggie interrupted: “–See me and Al…” She crinkled her nose. “This is just too weird.”
“Do you remember anything about the future?” Quinn asked.
“Not much. A lot of… blue?” She tilted her head.
“That’ll be the Waiting Room, I think,” Sam guessed.
“Oh god, yeah,” Maggie said, recalling. “There was a lot of that. Waiting, I mean. I was bored out of my mind.”
“So we’ve definitely established that our Maggie is part of you,” Colin said, stroking his chin.
“I don’t like it.” Maggie brought her knees up to her chin, and hugged her legs. “Which… one of me is even talking right now?”
Sam leaned forward and grabbed her hand.
“We just need to figure out the math and we can come up with a way to undo this. Just hang in there, okay?”
Maggie nodded, though she didn’t look convinced, and she certainly didn’t look him in the eye.
“Alright,” Quinn said, standing. “Colin and I will go get us all some… uh, period appropriate clothes, and look for work while we’re at it.”
“I appreciate that,” Sam said warmly, and looked towards Rembrandt. “Shall we rehearse?”
* * *
The San Francisco of the late seventies was highly nostalgic to Quinn. Cable cars rattled along the hilly roads, while loud car engines sputtered. The smell of tobacco, mingled with exhaust fumes, drifted through the air. The faint tune of ‘MacArthur Park’ by Donna Summer could be heard, coming from someone’s radio, or perhaps record player. The cars were all shades of brown, orange, olive green, and the occasional sky blue. The people on the street wore flared jeans, sharp lapels, platform shoes, and sideburns to rival Colin’s.
“This sure brings back memories,” Quinn said, walking alongside his brother, who was much more out of his element.
“It smells funny,” Colin said, screwing up his nose.
“Yeah, you get used to it. Though the lead levels in the air and soil are actually pretty toxic.”
This prompted Colin to raise his shirt over his nose.
Quinn chuckled. “Don’t worry. I grew up in this environment, didn’t I? Just avoid eating paint chips.”
The pair came upon a department store. Quinn rummaged in his pockets, and pulled out some cash.
“Okay, I have twelve bucks. I don’t know exactly how much things cost in the 70s but I hope that will be enough for a few items of clothing.”
Colin scrounged an extra four dollar bills from his pockets, and a few quarters. Quinn headed for the door of the store, then felt Colin’s eyes on him. He turned.
“What?”
Colin’s hands were in his pockets, and his shoulders taut. He rocked on his feet.
“Quinn, have you considered that… your parents are here?”
Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Well, sure, probably. But we don’t know what kind of Earth we landed on. They’re almost certainly not my folks.”
“I’d kind of like to meet them anyway,” Colin said, mouth askew.
Quinn nodded. He guessed Colin wanted to see how Quinn had grown up, find out what he missed out on. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see his Mom and Dad, of course. It was just that, how would he approach them? What would he say? Could he tell the truth? Dare he warn his Dad about the accident in about 6 years time, and would it make a difference? But then, the thought of seeing his father alive was a pretty difficult opportunity to pass up.
“Sure, we can see them, I guess.”
“Let’s go tomorrow,” Colin suggested.
“If we have money for a cab by then, sure.”
His mind also wandered to the Professor. What was he doing with himself in 1978? Had he come to the States yet? Just when did he get his teaching position at the university here? More importantly, could he potentially assist them?
But, for now, they had a wardrobe to fill.
Maggie stood, alone, in a blue room with no doors she could see. This room held a certain familiarity, and yet felt alien all the same.
She felt a little scared, but moreover, she felt bored. This space was so empty, so devoid of any stimulation that she thought she might lose her mind. Just this piercing, endless blue.
Then, a noise. A door suddenly opened in the wall, with a silhouette lit from behind.
The figure stepped in, and Maggie’s heart jumped to her throat as she saw another version of herself, holding a colourful, flashing device in her hand.
“You need to get out of here,” said the figure, her voice full of vitriol. She was scowling.
“I can’t…” Maggie replied, gesturing around the room. “I’m trapped.”
“I didn’t invite you,” the double said. “Are you some kind of reverse Houdini?”
Now Maggie was in a jail cell. Steel bars separated her and the double.
The double tapped on her device, and spoke with a new voice: Ziggy’s voice. “There’s a ninety-three per cent chance you are going to die if you stay here.”
“So how do I leave?”
The double was no longer holding the colourful blinking device, but a timer. She passed it to Maggie through the bars.
Maggie looked down at the display. It was at zero.
Panicking, she pressed the button to activate the vortex. Nothing happened.
“No…”
She looked up at her double, but she was no longer there.
“Hey Mags,” came a voice from behind, followed by strong arms closing around her body. Maggie looked over her shoulder to see Billy, looking at her flirtatiously. “Have you been avoiding me? Is that any way to treat your husband?”
“Get off me,” Maggie said, panic rising in her chest.
Billy grabbed her wrists forcefully, and pulled on them, sending her off-balance. She fell to the ground, and hit her head on a metal surface that had not been there a second ago.
Glancing up in panic, she was startled to realise that Billy was gone, and the pressure she felt on her wrists was her own handcuffs, attached to the wall of Billy’s shed.
The world fell into darkness as she started to feel a spider crawling on her exposed leg.
“I thought I was your husband,” said a voice.
“Stephen?”
The sound of his wheelchair approached her, though she couldn’t see a thing. She felt anxiety about his presence, though she wasn’t sure why.
“Who was that man?”
“Billy… I dated him in high school.”
“And you married him?”
“Yeah, but I divorced him.”
“I thought you married me,” came yet another voice. It was Quinn.
“I… did… I think?” Maggie said, feeling altogether panicked about this situation.
How many people was she married to? Why did she only recall one divorce? And if she had three husbands, why did she feel so alone?
“Can someone get me out of these handcuffs?”
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
“You need to ask Higgins,” Uncle Sam’s voice whispered into her ear.
“Who?”
She strained to recall who or what a ‘Higgins’ could be.
“It’s the computer, you idiot,” she heard her own voice barking.
I thought the computer was called Ziggy…
Maggie was so confused. She didn’t know what she knew.
“Maggie?”
She closed her eyes.
Shut up…
“Maggie, are you okay?”
Just leave me alone.
The hand on her shoulder nudged her gently.
“Wake up, Maggie…”
Maggie reluctantly opened her eyes, and realised she was lying in a bed that smelled of cigarettes. She turned her head, and saw Uncle Sam standing over her.
“Hey,” Sam said, wearing a kind, but sad, smile.
“What time is it?” She asked, rubbing her eyes.
It was only a dream… right?
“It’s seven in the morning,” Sam said. He was dressed in more appropriate clothing now, though the straight cut trousers and Indian-style Nehru shirt appeared more sixties than seventies to her eyes.
“Where’d you get the threads? You look like John Lennon,” she said, smirking. The circular-lensed, yellow-tinted sunglasses he had perched on his nose seemed to complete the look.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he laughed. “Quinn and Colin ended up raiding a thrift store, since they were low on cash. It’s a few years out of style, but it’s a little better than women’s pyjamas.”
She nodded, and moved to sit up. As she became upright, a sharp pain sliced through her head, causing her to wince.
“This headache…” she said, holding her temple. “It started out a dull throbbing, but now it’s like getting stabbed with a knife.”
Sam looked grave. “That’s not a good sign.” He stood from his seat on the bed. “Once we get a hold of some money, I’ll go pick you up some acetaminophen…”
Although Sam was her uncle, Maggie nonetheless felt like he was fussing over her like a parent. Or maybe it was just his doctor side coming out. She kind of liked it. She’d never been close to her Dad; was this what it was like to have a loving father?
“I dunno if Tylenol will cut it,” she said.
“Hmm…” Sam looked pensive for a moment, before regarding her with a sheepish grin. “Ever smoked a joint?”
Maggie’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Uncle Sam! I thought you were a straight edge!”
Sam was looking at his feet, bashful. “Cannabis is a relatively safe pain relief, you know? Safer than store-bought painkillers in large quantities. It’s San Francisco in 1978, so I figured… probably pretty easy to find, right?”
Maggie had heard somewhere that potheads tended to have less vivid dreams, and after what she’d just been through, that sounded terrific.
Maggie grinned. “Well, you score it, and I’ll smoke it. I’ve been much more doped up than a few puffs of the magic dragon in my time. No sweat.”
She hoped he wouldn’t press her about her drug-addled experience not so long ago, and she was pleased to see that he did not. To be honest, she barely remembered it herself.
Sam rose from the bed, and stretched.
“The others are getting us some breakfast,” he explained. That was music to Maggie’s ears; she was famished.
She climbed out of bed, squinting through the feeling that gripped her head. She couldn’t help but feel this was karmic retribution for Colin’s head pain.
Dizzily, she moved towards the bathroom, leaning against the wall as she walked. Her vision was degrading the longer she was on her feet.
“Uncle Sam…” she said, gripping the door frame. He was by her side in an instant, holding her up.
“Talk to me, what’s happening?”
“I think I’m about to faint,” she said. “My vision’s blacking out…”
“Okay, it might be low blood pressure,” he said, and gently lowered her to a sitting position on the floor.
She leaned over and, remarkably quickly, felt herself return to normal.
“Okay…” she breathed. “That was scary.”
“Rest here for a moment,” Sam said, crouching in front of her. “You’ll be alright. It was just the act of standing that did it, I think. You’ll feel better after you eat.”
He looked towards the hotel room door. “Let’s hope the others are getting you something salty.”
“I feel like an invalid,” Maggie said dryly. Sam regarded her with sympathetic eyes, and sat against the wall beside her.
“I’ve met a lot of different people in my time,” he said. “Some of them had physical disabilities, some of them had intellectual disabilities, some of them had mental illness. But you know what they all had in common? They were all worth meeting, worth knowing, and worth helping. Everyone deserves people who care about them.”
Maggie nodded, leaning on his shoulder.
“My husband…” she started, then shook her head. “Not Billy; my other husband, Stephen. He was a paraplegic. He was also one of your ilk… super smart physicist.”
She felt her eyes welling with tears. “I can barely remember his face…”
Sam wrapped an arm around her.
“That could be the ‘swiss cheese’ effect from leaping, or it could be a result of this thing that happened to you. But we’ll fix it, okay? You’ll remember him again, I promise.”
“You keep saying that, but we barely even have money for food. How are you going to work this out?”
Sam looked away, thoughtful. He licked his lips.
“Quinn made that machine in a basement with scrap parts, right? One thing I’ve learned from him is that we don’t need a big government project with billions of dollars to work things out, as nice as that would be. We just need the right equations and some elbow grease.”
Maggie nodded, smiling weakly.
I hope you can do it before I’m in unbearable agony.
“I’m ready to complete my journey to the toilet,” she said with a smirk.
“Those Kro-maggots really threw off my style,” Rembrandt complained, as he looked down with disdain at the dated navy blue mod-style suit Quinn had picked out for him. “I woulda still been wearing my shimmering suits and sporting my ’stache if it weren’t for them.”
Quinn watched him, as he prepared for his day busking with Sam. The four of them that weren’t laid up in bed were downtown, among the masses. Quinn and Colin were going to watch the performance, waiting for enough change to come in to get them a cab fare, then head off to this world’s – and time’s – version of his home.
It was true that Rembrandt’s fashion choices had changed since he’d been back on Earth Prime, and subsequently held captive. He had dropped his larger-than-life outfits and bravado quite a bit, and he recalled Remy had once been quite possessive of his moustache - a trademark look for the Cryin’ Man - but it had been gone since his imprisonment. He’d also taken a lot of pride in his showy suits in the past, but he hadn’t worn any in a long while.
Quinn figured that his ideas of things going back to the way they were must have been shattered enough for him to give up on his style. And it was true, the Kromaggs had completely thrown a wrench into all of their plans to return home and resume their lives. Remy’s hope of rekindling his career was extinguished the moment those bastards invaded.
His attention moved to Sam. He’d been surprised to see the older man’s real appearance. He didn’t know what he expected, really, but it was still quite a trip to see the true face of the person who’d looked like Maggie for the previous few days, as they worked on repairing the timer. He had towered over him, though he knew that the guy behind what he called the ‘aura’ of Maggie was actually near 6 feet in height. Now, they were pretty close in height, though Quinn still had a couple inches on him.
He still hadn’t really explained the science behind his ability to travel in time, and of course Quinn wanted to know everything. He’d explained his basic theory, tying a string together and balling it up. That made enough sense, but taking the place of other people? That was the part that puzzled him.
Sam seemed, to Quinn, like some superhero, using his swiss army knife of talents and incredible compassion to leave a trail of sunshine and rainbows through time. If anyone could get him to believe in a higher power, it would be Sam Beckett.
Still, if it was a higher power dragging them all around at present, they sure weren’t making it easy.
Sam dropped a hat on the ground, and Rembrandt began the opening “ohh” to his hit song. After a moment, Sam began chimed in with an “oooh,” playing the part of the backing singers.
“My friends ask me, why I cry,” Remy crooned.
“Cry-y…” Sam sung softly, giving a wink to Quinn.
To start off the money, Quinn threw in the last of his change.
“Good luck, guys,” he said, and stepped back next to Colin, who was enjoying the performance in its own right.
“They’re both great singers,” he said, tapping his toe.
To Quinn, the only thing Sam didn’t seem to be any good at was acting like a woman. He wondered how many times he’d had to feign being one at this point.
“They’re really something,” he finally said.
Colin squinted at him. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”
Quinn went over what he’d just said in his head, and realised that to someone unfamiliar with that phrase, it really meant nothing. This kind of thing had been happening since he’d met Colin. He frequently had to remind himself that Colin had a different vocabulary.
“I think it’s short for the phrase ‘something else,’ which insinuates some level of distinction, I guess,” he explained. “So it means they stand out among others who might be compared to them. Usually it’s a phrase of admiration, though occasionally it’s meant to point out some negative qualities. Depends on the tone of voice.”
Colin nodded thoughtfully.
“Cool,” he said, borrowing the slang he’d learned from Rembrandt.
The song came to a close, leaving the performers with 6 more quarters than they’d had before. That was a start.
“Any requests?” Rembrandt asked, partly to the crowd, and partly to Quinn and Colin.
“YMCA!” Someone called.
Quinn covered his mouth to stifle a chuckle. He’d forgotten that was a pretty new song at this point in time.
Rembrandt looked at Sam to affirm that he recalled the song through his memory troubles. Sam gave a tight nod and a grin. He counted them in, and began:
“Young man,” they sang in unison.
“There’s no need to feel down…” continued Rembrandt.
The two of them seemed to just get each other’s cues without rehearsing, and Quinn admired that.
Now it really seemed that people were gathering. This had been a good prompt. As soon as the chorus started, people started dancing and clapping in time. But it wasn’t the dance that Quinn typically knew; only Rembrandt and Sam were doing it. The dance must not have existed yet, he guessed.
However, by the end of the song, the crowd had picked up on the movements. Quinn wondered if they had just introduced the dance to history.
As the song closed out, Quinn checked the hat. It had at least quadrupled in value now, and he looked back at Colin with a thumbs up.
“Thanks guys,” he said to the singers as he grabbed enough change to pay for the fare. He stood and patted Rembrandt on the arm.
“You two are great as a duo,” he said. “Check the record stores to find out what’s flying off the shelves, and you’ll do just fine.”
Rembrandt nodded in agreement.
“Good luck with the parents,” he said, looking behind Quinn, at Colin. “What’ll you tell ’em?”
“Think the truth will be a bit much?”
“I’m gonna say yes,” Rembrandt’s eyes were dancing.
“Well in that case, I don’t know. We’ll think of something.”
* * *
As the taxi pulled up at Quinn’s house, Colin picked nervously at his fingernails, suddenly gripped by terror.
His own parents, though they died when he was young, were supposedly doubles of these parents. He couldn’t recall anything about them, but that didn’t stop him from being overcome with nerves as the prospect of meeting them crystallised.
He stepped out of the car as Quinn paid, and looked at the neighbourhood around him. A quiet street, with much less of the offensive smell characteristic of the downtown area, though it was still there, underlying the brisk fall air.
Quinn had pointed to this house, surrounded by a white picket fence. A white two-storey home with a patio in the front, garnished with a carefully manicured garden. It was the kind of home Colin could have only dreamed of as a child.
Colin stepped up off the road, and stared at the house. He sensed Quinn coming up behind him, and felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Home, sweet home,” he said. He was looking at it with poorly masked emotion.
“What are we going to tell them?” Colin asked, feeling glued to his spot.
Quinn looked unsure for a moment, but his expression cleared into resolve.
“We’re journalism students looking for human interest stories.”
Colin felt his brow furrow. “Human interest?”
“You know… interesting stories that aren’t necessarily news, but put a spotlight on someone in the community.”
Colin frowned. Quinn chuckled.
“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. Just remember, your name is Colin… uh, Firth. And mine is Jim Hall, okay?”
Colin mouthed the names, tasting them. They were bitter.
“Okay,” he conceded. “Colin ‘Firth’ it is. Why Jim Hall?”
“Uhh, it’s just a name I used with my Mom’s double once. Not such a different situation, to be honest.”
He approached the gate. It opened smoothly, and he looked back with a smirk.
“This gate’s been squeaking since I was twelve. But, I guess in 1978, I’m not twelve yet.”
He continued up the path, and climbed the stairs as Colin closed the gate behind him, and surveyed the garden.
A young golden retriever came from around the corner and bounded towards Quinn. It sniffed him for a moment, before flopping to the patio floor and rolling over.
“Bopper!” he exclaimed, and started to rub the dog’s belly. “Aw, you’re so young and energetic.”
Colin reached the top of the stairs.
“He’s cute.”
“Go on, give him a pet,” said Quinn, standing.
Colin stepped forward, and held out his hand. Bopper stood up, and gave it a sniff. His tail started to wag and he lifted his snout, awaiting a fuss.
Colin gave his face a rub, and scratched behind his ears.
“Some guard dog,” came a voice, and the brothers looked towards the door to see Michael Mallory standing with his arms folded, looking at them with slightly narrowed eyes.
Both Colin and Quinn were momentarily speechless. Colin didn’t remember much about his father, but hearing that voice knocked the breath out of him.
“Uh, sorry,” Quinn said once he found his voice again. “This little guy is a sweetie, we couldn’t resist the exposed belly.”
“He doesn’t usually do that to strangers,” said Michael, scratching his head. “Well, dogs are usually a pretty good judge of character. Who are you?”
“I’m Colin… Firth,” Colin proclaimed, and held out his hand. Michael shook it.
“And I’m Jim Hall,” Quinn added, also shaking the hand. “We’re journalism students looking for human interest stories. We heard you’ve got some kind of child prodigy for a son? We’d love to hear more about that. Quinn, right?”
At the mention of his son’s name, Michael stiffened.
“How do you know my son’s name?”
Quinn was nervous now. “Word of mouth,” he said haltingly.
Michael’s face was dark. “Not interested.”
“If you don’t want us to interview him, what about you?” Colin tried. He knew Quinn wanted him to just stand there looking pretty, but Quinn was clearly losing the battle here. “You’re a scientist, are you not?”
Quinn picked up on his cues, and pulled himself away from his floundering. “Oh yeah, we hear you build backyard rockets. Got anything in the works right now?”
Michael was looking behind them towards the street.
“Some other time, perhaps.”
He stepped back, and grabbed the handle of the door.
“You have a good day,” he said as the door shut.
Colin locked eyes with Quinn. Both were equally bewildered with what had just transpired.
“He was being… protective of me,” Quinn muttered. “But why?”
As the brothers returned to town, they stepped out of the taxi to the sounds of a keyboard in the air – playing Billy Joel, if Quinn identified it correctly – along with a voice being amplified through speakers.
“I don’t need you to worry for me, ’cause I’m alright…”
Quinn realised it was Sam’s voice.
Where did he get the equipment…?
“I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home…”
Exchanging a puzzled look with Colin, the pair followed the sound along the street, and ended up in front of a record store, whose sign told Quinn it was called ‘San Fran Disco Records’. Just outside the door, Sam and Rembrandt had a keyboard on a stand, an amp, and a couple of electric guitars in stands behind them.
Rembrandt was leaning against the wall, tapping a finger to the music. He caught sight of the brothers, and waved.
“Hey, Q-ball!” he said, a wide grin on his face, “These cats let us use their gear in exchange for a promotion between songs.”
He held out a hand, and Quinn grasped it.
“Nice goin’,” he said. “How’s business?”
“Great! I think we just need to do this maybe 3 hours a day, during the most busy times. People round here love this.”
“Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone…”
The sound of coins on coins chimed as Sam completed his rendition, along with light applause.
He stretched, turning his microphone off.
“How’d your visit go?” he asked Quinn.
“Not so good,” Quinn admitted, flickering a look to Colin.
Rembrandt switched on the microphone he’d been nursing, and began to uphold his contractual obligation.
“Ladies and gentlemen, come on in to San Fran Disco, where you’ll find the latest and greatest chart toppin’ hits!”
Sam smirked as he watched, but returned to the conversation at hand.
“Not so good, how?”
Quinn sighed, and took his own place, leaning against the brick wall. “I blew it. My Dad got suspicious as soon as I brought up the younger me. Should have chosen a different cover story.”
“Suspicious?” Sam squinted.
“Yeah… it was kind of weird, really. His eyes were watching the road. Maybe something happened to the me of this world.”
“Nonetheless,” Colin interjected, “I enjoyed what I saw of your house. And Bopper is a very lovely dog.”
Quinn gave a tight smile. “Yeah, he’s a special boy.”
Sam stroked his chin. “Sounds like something to get to the bottom of…”
Quinn raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
Sam turned away, lost in thought. Quinn scratched the back of his head, and looked at Colin, who shrugged.
“It might be nothing,” Sam continued his thought. “But, every time I ignore something like this, it ends up coming back to bite me.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I know the whole God or Time or Fate or whatever thing is pretty out there, but I can’t help but think maybe you’re here to help whatever’s going on there.”
Quinn was a little taken aback. “Wait, you’re the one who gets assignments from your divine boss or whatever, not me.”
“Well,” he began, gesturing to his chest, “I’m me, so the rulebook’s already out the window, you know?”
“So you’re going with your gut, huh?”
Sam nodded, with the ghost of a shrug. “Sometimes, my gut is more accurate than Ziggy.”
Quinn frowned.
I suppose it’s possible.
“Well, when you finish for the day, let’s plan our next moves back at the hotel.”
Sam patted Quinn on the arm. “Sure thing.”
He turned back to the instruments. “Now…”
He picked up one of the guitars, which Quinn now recognised as a four-string bass guitar. He said something in Remy’s ear, whose mouth curled into a smile. Rembrandt sat down at the keyboard, switched on the mic, and awaited Sam’s cue.
Sam played a light funk tune on the bass, nodded to him after a few bars, and Rembrandt chimed in with a breezy accompaniment, before beginning the song:
“When I wake up in the morning, love…” he sang, “and the sunlight hurts my eyes…”
Quinn couldn’t quite identify this song, but it sounded familiar. Colin was tapping his foot again, and Quinn just stood there listening to the laid back song for a while, before deciding they’d better go check up on Maggie.
“Just one look at you, and I know it’s gonna be, a lovely daaaay…”
“Lovely day, lovely day, lovely day…” Sam sang softly, under Rembrandt’s sustained note.
Quinn thought fondly about how fantastic an era of music this was, as he headed toward the Dominion, with Colin hot on his heels.
* * *
Maggie was clutching her head in pain as she heard the door of the suite opening. The searing agony came in waves, and she was smack dab in the middle of one right now.
“Hey,” she said, without looking up.
“Maggie, are you alright?” came Quinn’s voice, and she sensed him rushing over to her.
“Well, no. But hey; what else is new?” she said with a bleak sigh, her eyes tightly shut.
She felt a body sit on the side of her bed.
“There’s nothing you can do right now,” she said, in the hopes that he’d just leave her be.
“Do you need some company?” Quinn asked, his voice laced with pity.
Maggie sighed. “Ask me again when I can look you in the eye without my brain feeling like it’s gonna rip itself in two.”
Maggie buried her face in her pillow, as she felt Quinn place his hand on her lower leg.
“Well…” he said, “I’m here if you need me, okay?”
“Me too, Maggie,” came Colin’s voice from somewhere across the room.
Golly gee, that’s ever-so heartwarming, came a sarcastic voice in her head, that she assumed must have been the part of her that didn’t know these people. The part of her that did, on the other hand, was aching to hold Quinn’s hand.
This feeling prompted her to pipe up, despite her pain: “Quinn… are we… um, married?”
Quinn was silent for a moment.
“N-no…”
This was enough for her to open her eyes and look at him, in spite of the severe pain it caused.
“Then… why do I remember our wedding?”
Quinn looked towards Colin, grimacing.
“It’s a really convoluted story, but we were… sorta married? In a bubble universe. But it only exists in our memories now.”
“Oh…”
So, her real marriages, on either side of her current dual being, were to Billy Colbert and Stephen Jensen, the former of whom she divorced, and the latter was murdered by someone who she’d hunted down and seen die, if she recalled correctly.
Quinn was not her husband. Not technically. At least that matter was cleared up. More or less. No more confused dreams about her love life, right?
She closed her eyes again, and set her head down.
She felt Quinn’s hand clasping hers.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you, okay?”
She nodded, her eyes longing to open again and gaze upon Quinn, but the pain wouldn’t allow it.
“I mean it,” he continued. “Both of you. Even though one of you did some messed up things to us, you’re both Maggie, and…”
He trailed off, and Maggie wondered why.
She forced her eyes open, and saw tears on his cheeks. He was choked up.
Quinn…
Colin approached them.
“What Quinn’s trying to say is you mean a lot to him, and he’s going to do everything in his power to help you.”
He gave her a warm smile. “We all will.”
They really do care? Maggie thought, and she didn’t know which half of her had this sentiment.
She didn’t know how to respond, so she remained silent. She felt Quinn pat her hand before releasing it, and his weight on the bed lifted.
“I’ve got some equations to figure out,” he muttered, rummaging in the nightstand beside her for a pen and paper.
“Would you mind filling me in?” Colin asked him. Quinn’s rummaging ceased for a moment.
“On the equations?”
“Yeah. Maybe I can help.”
“Sure,” Quinn said, and Maggie could sense some pride in his voice. He’d definitely been spending a lot of time talking nerd stuff with Colin, though there was a big gap of progress that Colin had to fill in a short period of time. He’d been at Edison levels of technology just a handful of months ago, but he’d taken to computers at a rate that far surpassed Maggie’s knowledge.
Well, that wasn’t completely true. The part of her that was Sheriff Maggie had a decent handle on computing, though her zest for it was entirely lacking.
Regardless, Maggie knew that Quinn was proud of his brother for all the information he’d been able to absorb in such a short time, and he was not going to let that progress go to waste.
“Well, you two have at it, just don’t be too loud,” Maggie said through the squalls of pain that separated her from her surroundings. “Good luck.”
The last thing she perceived as she drifted off to another restless sleep was a warm hand squeezing her own.
“Who wants nachos?” Rembrandt called, as he and Sam entered the hotel room.
He held a series of takeout containers, which held the dish. Rembrandt had been tickled to learn it had just caught on earlier that year. Unfortunately, the offering was hardly gourmet, being more a simulation of cheese sauce slathered ballpark nachos than the more flavoursome jalapeño dish he would have preferred.
“Smells good,” remarked Colin, lifting his head up from the notes the brothers had spread all over the table.
Quinn, who was facing the other way, looked around and gave a distracted wave as he scribbled.
“Hey, have you guys been doin’ math without me?” Sam said with mock disappointment, and crossed to the table to see their work.
Rembrandt placed the food on a side table, and surveyed the scraps of paper, arranged in a way that he assumed the eggheads understood, covered in letters, numbers, and other gibberish.
He grabbed one of the polystyrene containers and cracked it open. As he ate, he noticed nobody else was getting into the food.
“Hey man, we worked hard for this food, least you could do is eat it!”
Quinn looked up, seemingly realising for the first time that it was there.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, and grabbed a container. “Easy to forget about how hungry I am when I’m neck deep in this stuff.”
The other two men took containers of their own, leaving the final one for Maggie.
Rembrandt looked over to her on the bed.
“She been like that all day?”
Colin met his eye. “More or less, since we’ve been here.”
Rembrandt reached into his pocket, and produced a small paper bag he and Sam had managed to procure from some army vets in a homeless camp.
“Well, she’ll be wanting those nachos after this,” he said to himself.
He wandered over to her bed, and gently nudged her.
“I’m awake…” she said, keeping her eyes shut. “It just hurts my head when I talk. Or open my eyes. Or move. Or hear you guys talking. I wish I had a dark room to lie in.”
“Well, maybe this’ll take the edge off,” Remy replied, opening the bag and pulling out one of the four small joints that populated it.
He placed it between her fingers, and they closed around it.
“Thanks,” she said, and opened her eyes into a pained squint. Rembrandt lit a match from one of the hotel’s branded matchbooks, and she allowed him to set the end alight.
As she took a long, desperate drag on it, Rembrandt grabbed the complimentary ash tray that sat on the coffee table near the TV, and moved it to her nightstand. She coughed out the smoke, and the jerking motion made her clutch her head.
“What is that smell?” Colin wondered aloud, causing Quinn to laugh.
“Try not to breathe in the smoke,” he said with a knowing look at Remy, patting his brother on the back.
“Remember that time you and Maggie were all drugged up?” Rembrandt asked the kid who he affectionately referred to as ‘Farm Boy.’
Colin nodded, his face sour. “Don’t tell me she’s going to be intoxicated like that again…”
“Better that than the pain she’s in right now,” Quinn said.
Rembrandt noted that Sam had been awfully quiet since he’d started looking at the notes on the table. He saw that the Doc was now making some corrections to some of the equations.
Quinn followed his gaze.
“It’s good to get some assistance,” he commented to Rembrandt.
“Sure is,” Rembrandt said, thinking about Sam’s musical help. That this one guy could ease their burdens so much was impressive, and he only hoped that the Doc himself wasn’t taking too much of that burden onto himself. The big man upstairs had really put a lot on the guy’s shoulders already.
“Say…” he said, a thought coming to him, “you think the Professor of ’78 is in a position to help, too?”
Quinn grinned.
“Way ahead of ya,” he said, and pulled a note from the coffee table. “He’s an Assistant Professor. I’m gonna go visit tomorrow.”
“Professor?” Sam was looking at them with questioning eyes.
“Quinn’s old mentor,” Rembrandt explained, “he was slidin’ with us for a while, ’til–”
“–Rickman shot him,” came Maggie’s voice. “Yeah, that’s his name. Can’t believe I forgot…”
She was sitting up in bed, looking at them through tired eyes.
“Guess it doesn’t matter now. He went ‘splat.’”
She stuck out her tongue and made an open palm gesture towards the floor.
“Feeling better already?” Sam asked, looking relieved.
She shrugged. “Enough to have my eyes open. Can you pass me the nachos?”
Rembrandt grabbed a hold of the last container, and passed it to her. She hungrily began to eat.
“That’s really good,” she said, mouth full.
Satisfied that Maggie was doing okay, Rembrandt turned back to the others to finish their discussion.
“Anyway, the Professor’s a big book-smart kind of guy.”
“He specialises in cosmology,” added Quinn. “but he’s well read in a lot of areas. And he’ll have some resources we don’t. Labs, equipment…” To this, Sam’s face lit up.
“Great! I’d like to meet him. What’s his name?”
“Maximillian Arturo,” Quinn said.
“Huh, that rings a bell,” said Sam, getting lost in thought. “Maybe I’ve read one of his papers. Wish I could remember…”
Quinn pursed his lips. “Maybe you’ve read his work on Coset Wormholes in Keller Oribifolds?”
Sam clicked his fingers and pointed as he recalled. “That’s it!”
“Oh yeah, of course. Closet wormholes in killer ribeyes,” Maggie commented with a snort, eyes still on her food. She looked up at Remy with an exaggerated gesture. “Groundbreaking stuff in the field of beefology.”
She stifled a laugh, and Rembrandt gave her a token grin. She may have been a little stoned, but it was a relief to see her in good spirits despite everything.
“Looks like we’ve got a heckler,” Quinn said, sharing an amused smirk with Sam.
“Oh jeez,” Maggie said, now no longer smiling, but looking up at them all with uncertainty, “am I being a pain? I haven’t smoked this stuff since I was in basic training. You gotta tell me if I’m getting on your nerves, okay?”
“You’re fine, Maggie,” Sam said. “You go ahead and crack as many jokes as you like. It’ll let us know you’re feeling alright.”
“Basic training?” Rembrandt tested. “Only one of you ever went there, right?”
At this, Maggie leaned her chin in her palm, looking into space.
“Huh…”
This train of thought made her go silent for a while, her brows knitted as she tried to work something out.
A moment passed as Rembrandt waited for her to come to some conclusion.
“Huh what?”
She looked up at him, startled. “What?”
“You looked like you were in deep thought.”
Maggie blinked a couple of times. “I was just thinking about those burgers at White Castle… you know they call them sliders?”
She seemed highly amused at this. Rembrandt tilted his head, confused.
“How the devil did you get to that from basic training?”
She looked at him blankly for a moment, before explaining: “Well, I was thinking about my time training at Fort Knox. We’d go up to Louisville when we had time off base, and we sometimes went to White Castle.”
She looked toward the ceiling, her jaw slack. “I wish I had a slider…”
“Next she’ll be baking cookies,” Colin muttered, referencing the last time he saw Maggie acting this loopy.
Quinn, in contrast, seemed happy to hear this meandering story.
“This is the clearest memory she’s had since we got here,” he pointed out.
“That’s a good sign, right?” Rembrandt asked.
“Not necessarily,” Sam said, pensive, looking at the equations. He pointed at a section. “We need to collect Maggie’s biological data so we can populate the variables in this formula, but if we follow my current assumptions, it may indicate a dominance trend.”
Quinn’s smile dropped away. “Oh, I see what you mean.”
Colin chimed in: “That would suggest a return to baseline; so if she was left alone, she’d eventually stabilise, would she not?”
“Yeah, but–” Quinn began, but Rembrandt interrupted.
“Hey, brainiacs, give us some plain English, would ya?” he said, feeling quite left out.
Sam put his hands on his hips, surveying the notes, before raising his eyes to meet Rembrandt’s, and nervously running a hand through his hair.
“I think that if we don’t separate the two Maggies, one of them is going to take over the other. I don’t know which one.”
“And the one that doesn’t?” Rembrandt’s voice trembled.
“Her atoms will disperse and she’ll be gone,” Colin finished, finally grokking what Quinn had been trying to explain to him.
“Oh, boy!” Maggie proclaimed with feigned positivity, her words dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s take bets on which one of me sticks around.”
But she was met with a room of grim, sombre faces.
Her facade dropped away, too, and the five of them fell into a morbid silence.
After a minute, Maggie piped up. “Got an ETA on this process?”
“Can’t say,” Quinn replied. “We need to get samples of your cells into a lab; that may be able to give us the data we need.”
“And that brings us back to the Professor,” Maggie concluded.
“Precisely.”
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.
Maggie awoke from a wonderfully dreamless slumber, one of several short stints throughout the night, and now, day. While she seemed to be free of the nightmares, she now found her head was in splitting pain once again. She rubbed her forehead and moaned.
“Ah, welcome back, Maggie,” came Rembrandt’s voice from somewhere across the room. “You hungry?”
“Yeah.” She opened one eye and glanced around the room, before a burst of pain forced the eyelid to close again. It was enough to see that it was just the two of them in the suite.
“Where’s everyone gone?”
Rembrandt threw a bag of salted peanuts to her. “Q-ball and the Doc have gone to see the Professor, and Farm Boy’s gone to snoop on Q-ball’s parents. Just leaves me to keep you company.”
Maggie gave a weak snort, thinking about how Rembrandt hadn’t used a single actual name in that whole statement.
She clutched the peanuts, and tore open the bag, her eyes still tightly shut as she chewed on them.
“Want another… you know what?” Rembrandt suggested.
Reluctantly, she nodded. “It’s kind of embarrassing, but it’s better than being completely out of commission.”
“Would it make you feel more comfortable if we did it together? Definitely won’t be my first time.”
Maggie smiled at this. The singer’s past as a touring performer probably was the kind of environment that encouraged a lot of substance use. A little mary jane was probably small potatoes.
“Sure,” she said, in answer to his offer, and it didn’t take long for the two of them to be relaxed on their beds, surrounded by clouds of earthy smoke.
“Do you really think they’ll be able to help me before… you know…” Maggie said, having one final toke on the spent joint.
Rembrandt smoothly exhaled the puff of smoke he’d been holding in, making a large smoke ring that slowly dispersed as he spoke.
“Sure they will, Maggie. Seven-time-Doctor and Q-ball, workin’ with the Professor? That’s a dream team.”
Maggie’s head was as cloudy as the room. The only thing she remembered about the Professor was an older man with a limited vocabulary dying of a gunshot wound, but everyone seemed to be placing their faith in his help.
“What was he like? The Professor?”
Rembrandt took a little while to answer.
“Real big opinion of himself. Short temper. Called people idiots all the time.” He chuckled. “Ah, man. He was great.”
Maggie joined in on the laughter. “Oh yeah, sounds like the life of the party.”
“He was a softy, really. Just had to go past the first four or five layers of the onion. Kinda guy that did the right thing, just complained about it the whole way.”
Sounds like my Dad, at least when I was a kid.
The two of them spent a little while in silence. Maggie felt more deeply affected by the drug this time, and it was nice. The pain had dulled to something she could almost forget about, if it didn’t surge whenever she moved her head. She felt relaxed, despite knowing her possible fate.
Which me will stay, and which will go?
The two halves of her, which she had dubbed ‘Sheriff Maggie’ and ‘Slider Maggie’, did seem to be getting a little easier to distinguish than they had been. She felt one side of her feeling bitter to the core, and a kind of jealousy flared up every time she thought about Slider Maggie’s experiences. However, there was a defiance that came with the jealousy. Sheriff Maggie didn’t want to be consumed by Slider Maggie, she wanted to be Slider Maggie. It was a conflict that caused an uneasy tightness in her chest.
And then there was Uncle Sam. Her memories of him blended together to the point that she didn’t know which was which at all. In Slider Maggie’s world, she didn’t know if he was a time traveller or not. If he was, did he even know that his world was destroyed?
“I wonder if he’s still in the past, leaping from person to person, wondering why nobody in his present is contacting him?” she wondered aloud.
Rembrandt looked at her, puzzled. “What?”
She gave him a lopsided smile. “Oh, right, I forgot I was just thinking all that and not saying it.”
She rolled over to face him. “I was just thinking about the Uncle Sam from the Earth that was destroyed. What if he’s stuck in the past, and doesn’t even know that there’s no future to go back to?”
She felt her eyes welling up as she thought of how tragic that would be.
“Hey, maybe one day he’ll jump into someone who can kick Rickman’s butt before he kills all those folks.”
It was a nice thought. But that was really all it was, a thought. Maggie couldn’t find it in her to hold out hope of such things.
She stretched, and gingerly rose off the bed. To her surprise, she felt okay. Not brilliant, of course, but as okay as she had felt since she’d been in this state of fusion.
“I wanna get out of here,” she announced. Rembrandt raised a sceptical eyebrow.
“You sure you’re up to it?”
“Yeah,” she said, almost as surprised as him. “I want some sunshine. Can we go for a walk, Remy?”
Rembrandt sluggishly climbed off his bed. “Sure thing.”
He glanced at her eyes, and added: “Think we better steer clear of the fuzz, though.”
Maggie’s eyes widened, and she moved to the bathroom to see her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were noticeably bloodshot.
Great, now that was all she was going to be able to think about while they were outside.
* * *
As Sam and Quinn trekked back to the hotel, their mission a success, the two physicists talked animatedly about things that a layman observer couldn’t possibly comprehend, both enthusiastic about having someone off whom to bounce ideas.
Through it all, Quinn wondered how much of Sam’s extensive knowledge was forgotten through his damaged memory. He was pushing the limits of his own knowledge, and Sam hadn’t slowed down. With these supposed gaps in his memory, Quinn had to wonder just how vast his knowledge must have been before. He wondered if this was how Professor Arturo had felt at the moment he’d seen the chalkboard in Quinn’s basement all those years ago.
As they walked along the city sidewalk, the stimulating conversation between them was brought to an abrupt end, when Quinn spotted a familiar face hailing a cab.
“Hold that thought,” he said to Sam, and dashed off towards Michael Mallory.
“Hey!” he called out as he approached. Michael, who was standing by the cab with the door open, looked at him with a furrowed brow.
“Hey Da- uh, sir,” Quinn fumbled. “I’m glad to see you again. I want to apologise for yesterday, I don’t know what’s going on but it’s clear I made you uncomfortable.”
His father looked him over momentarily.
“I think you may have me confused for someone else,” he said curtly, and got into the cab. He shut the door and it pulled away, leaving Quinn even more confused than before.
Wait, why is he in a taxi? He has a car.
Quinn watched the cab for a moment, before making a snap decision, and hailed a cab for himself.
“Follow that guy… not too close.” he told the driver, and he mouthed ‘sorry’ towards Sam, on the street, who had watched this scene in bewilderment.
* * *
Colin skipped over the white fence, and ducked behind a bush.
Unlike the way they had approached Quinn’s childhood home the previous day, today Colin was going to try and be covert about exploring the house, and seeing if he could figure out the reason behind Quinn’s foster father’s paranoia.
He’d already seen Michael Mallory leave for work, so at least he wouldn’t run into him, but Quinn had all but guaranteed his mother would be home, so he still had to be sneaky.
He crouched and made his way to the basement hatch to the side of the house, which was secured with a padlock, as expected; nothing he couldn’t pick. He dropped to a prone position, and peered through the window just to the right of the hatch, and his heart skipped a beat when he locked eyes with a small child.
Colin crawled away from the window, alarmed. He’d already blown his cover. This wasn’t ideal. Colin ducked behind a hedge, cursing his misfortune.
Was that Quinn?
The child did bear a resemblance to his brother, certainly.
“Hello?” Came the voice of the five-year-old. Colin heard the window open. “Who are you?”
Colin sighed deeply. If he was going to get out of here before his mother noticed, he’d have to engage the boy.
He stepped out into the open, and sat on the ground. Little Quinn was at the window, looking at him with wide eyes.
“Are you the man who wants to take me away?”
Colin frowned. “No…”
“Then why are you here?”
At that moment, Bopper rounded the corner and made a frenzied beeline towards him.
“Um, I am… here to pet Bopper,” he lied, as the dog jumped on him, and began to lick his face. He rubbed the dog’s back. “Good boy…”
He gently coaxed Bopper off of himself, and stood.
“That was fun. Now, I’m going to go find that man, and um, tell him not to take you away, okay?”
Quinn looked up at him, pouting. “Mom already did, but she says I gotta stay in the basement for longer. I’m bored.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Colin said, brushing the dirt off his clothes. “Well, I have to go now.”
“Wait, what’s your name?”
“Uh… Skip,” Colin replied, recalling the name of Quinn’s childhood imaginary brother.
He crouched and slunk away from the house, feeling the young Quinn’s eyes on him as he went.
As he cleared the fence and returned to the street, he was startled to see a taxi pull up in front of him. The surprise turned to heart-pounding anxiety as he saw Michael Mallory emerge.
Colin froze as his father locked eyes with him.
And then, Michael’s eyes moved to the gate of the house, and he walked past Colin without a word. Colin watched him start to open the gate.
Huh? It was like he didn’t recognise me.
As he headed up the path to the house, Colin crouched out of sight of the door, before seeing yet another taxi pull up.
A moment later, he and Quinn were peering through bushes at Michael Mallory knocking on the door of his own house.
This was turning out to be a strange kind of day.
Quinn exchanged a troubled look with Colin, as they crouched by the fence, peering through the palings at Michael Mallory rapping on the front door of the house he owned.
First his lack of recognition, then the taxi, now this? If Quinn didn’t know any better, he’d think he was looking at a double of his father.
The pieces slowly started to connect in his mind as he watched Amanda Mallory open the door and look at Michael with trepidation.
“Are you…”
“I’m not your husband, no.”
Colin glanced back at Quinn with wide eyes.
“Why are you here?” Amanda asked, accusing.
“I just wanted to apologise for the way I spoke to you the other day,” said Michael. “I’m returning home in an hour, and I didn’t want to leave on a sour note.”
“I see…”
“When you said he’d passed away, I couldn’t believe it,” he said, emotional. “I’d thought by sending him here he’d be safe, but… I took my failure out on you, and I’m sorry.”
Quinn felt the blood draining from his face.
It can’t be, surely? No way.
He grabbed Colin’s hand tightly, barely realising he was doing it.
Missus Mallory gave Michael a tight smile.
“Well, I’m sorry we couldn’t protect him. We were devastated too…”
Colin leaned in towards Quinn, and whispered: “Young you is alive, and hiding in the basement.”
That seemed to confirm it: this was Earth Prime, and he was living in his own personal history. He suddenly felt quite unwell, as he realised the implications.
I’ve surely altered all kinds of stuff already…
The grip he had on Colin’s hand tightened.
Then it hit him, like a brick: a vague, long forgotten memory from childhood, seeing a man through the basement window, calling himself ‘Skip.’ A man that looked just like…
Oh boy.
He was so lost in this thought that he hadn’t realised the conversation at the door had concluded, the front door had closed, and Michael Mallory was already opening the front gate.
Not knowing what else to do, he stood from his crouching position and looked into the face of his birth father.
“H-hello again,” he said, with a half-hearted wave.
He sensed Colin staring up at him in alarm.
Michael looked at the two of them, one guy who’d clearly followed him from downtown, and the other who had just been caught eavesdropping.
And Michael merely served them an expression of disbelief, before turning to hurry away from the pair.
“Wait!” Quinn cried, grappling for some piece of information that would get him to turn around. “I need to talk to you about the Kromaggs!”
That most certainly did the trick. Michael stopped in his tracks, and spun around, with an alarmed look.
“What did you just say?”
Quinn sighed with relief. “You know, ugly guys with pointy teeth, like to eat human eyes, for some disgusting reason?”
Michael stepped forward, frantic. “Who are you?”
Quinn tugged on Colin’s arm, and he stood.
“We’re your sons.”
He felt Colin’s eyes burning into him, but he kept his gaze trained on his father.
Michael’s eyes narrowed. “That isn’t funny. I just found out both my sons are dead. Tell me who you really are.”
Quinn walked carefully towards him, as he explained:
“My name is Quinn Mallory, and this is my brother, Colin. Two years ago, you left your sons on two different worlds while your people were fighting a war. When you came back, mine told you I was dead, right? That’s what that conversation was about…”
Michael took a few steps back as Quinn closed in on him. Quinn stopped walking, giving him some space. He held up his hands.
“It’s complicated, but no, I wasn’t dead, and neither was Colin.”
“Please don’t go yet,” said Colin, looking at Michael with shining eyes. “We’ve spent so long looking for you.”
He flicked a glance at Quinn, before looking back. “And we may actually be in need of your help.”
Quinn reached into his jacket, pulling out the timer he’d thankfully brought with him to show to the Professor earlier.
“If you overstay your slide, we’ve got a timer with twelve days left on it… just needs a few tweaks and you can be back home by then. I already have the coordinates… I think.”
Michael stared at the timer with surprise.
“You’re a slider…”
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, right?” He grinned.
Michael narrowed his eyes. “How did you get the coordinates?”
Quinn flipped open a small compartment in the timer that he’d installed during one of the more quiet slides a while back, and two microdots fell out into his hand; the chips left for the brothers to learn of their heritage.
Finally, Michael closed the distance between them, and picked up one of the chips, studying it.
“My God.” He looked into Quinn’s eyes, searching. “It’s really you?”
Quinn gave him a bittersweet smile.
“Hey, Dad.”
* * *
Rembrandt closed his eyes as he took in the sun. The air was chilly, but the sun gave a penetrating warmth that counter-acted it. In his inebriated state, it felt wonderful.
He was lying, face-up, on the grass of Golden Gate Park, next to Maggie, who was similarly enjoying the early afternoon sun. She was licking a popsicle.
“The last time I was in San Francisco, I almost died, didn’t I?” she said without warning.
Rembrandt turned to look at her, unable to suppress his smile at the fact she was remembering things from his Maggie’s past. She was staring up towards the clouds, her eyebrows low over her eyes.
“Yeah, that’s right. When you went to Earth Prime with Q-ball for the first time, you couldn’t breathe.”
“That was weird…” she said, and chuckled a little. “The pollution’s way worse in 1978, but I’m okay this time…”
“This probably isn’t Earth Prime, but even if it was, Q-ball said your lungs adapted or something…” he said, trying to use what little explanation Quinn had given him back then.
“Doesn’t matter now,” she said, brushing off the issue. “Just wish I hadn’t ruined Quinn’s reunion with his Mom by choking like that.”
Remy was surprised at the depth of her recall on this memory. He wondered if the Maggie he knew was slowly starting to take control. Despite himself, he felt some comfort in the idea that his Maggie might be the dominant one.
“Do you remember when we first met?” he pressed, against his best judgement.
He watched her squint her eyes, struggling to access the memory. Then she looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Did you and Quinn lock me in the trunk of a car?”
Remy laughed. “I think it was Quinn and Wade that did that, but I was there, sure.”
“Wade… I mentioned her before, didn’t I?”
“You don’t remember her?”
“When I try to think of her, all I see is an angry girl giving me the stink eye,” Maggie said, with an amused snort. “She hated me, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, I guess she wasn’t real fond of you,” Rembrandt agreed. “I think she was head over heels for Quinn, and she saw you as competition.”
Suddenly, Maggie burst out with laughter.
“I literally married Quinn in a bubble universe, grew old with him, and it still wasn’t enough for him to pursue a relationship with me!”
Rembrandt’s eyes widened as he realised just how much of his Maggie’s life she was now recalling. He glanced at her, and she looked troubled, despite laughing mere seconds earlier.
She was quiet for a moment, then she spoke: “My head is killing me.”
Taking the cue, he scrambled to his feet, and helped her up.
“Let’s get you back to the hotel,” he told her. She nodded in reply, before rubbing her temples.
Sam leaned, arms folded, against the kitchenette counter in the suite, wondering where Maggie and Rembrandt could have gone.
After watching Quinn disappear into a cab in a very dramatic fashion, there wasn’t much left for him to do but come back here and prepare for the afternoon busking session. But his duet partner was nowhere to be found, and worse was that neither was Maggie, who really should not have been going anywhere in her state.
There were two new butts in the ash tray, which seemed to suggest either Maggie had been in a bad enough way to smoke them both, or maybe she and Rembrandt had lit up together. That seemed irresponsible.
He let his shoulders sag, and turned to the minibar to see what snacks might be available.
As he surveyed the selection in the fridge, which was mostly small glass bottles of soda and Reese’s Pieces, he heard a noise he was afraid he might never hear again: the Imaging Chamber door.
Completely forgetting his peckishness, he stood and spun around in the direction of the noise.
Nothing.
“Al?” Sam called out weakly. “Ya there, buddy?”
Was he just hearing things? He couldn’t say he’d ever had an auditory hallucination of that sound before, but considering how frequently he heard it, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that his brain might try to manifest it here, now that he hadn’t heard it in a few days.
But, maybe…
The detector that Quinn had built was sitting on his nightstand, and Sam grabbed it. After turning it on, he moved the wand around the room.
Towards the middle of the room, he heard the faintest clicking sound, but that was it. Still, that was more than nothing. Maybe, just maybe, Al was closing in on his location in spacetime. He prayed this was the case.
As he returned the device to where he’d found it, the door of the room swung open, revealing Quinn, Colin, and the man Quinn had approached on the street when last he’d seen him.
“Oh… hello?” Sam said, looking at the stranger. Quinn took a deep breath, and gestured to him.
“Uh, Sam, this is our Dad, Michael Mallory.” His hand moved out toward Sam as he turned to Michael. “Dad, this is Doctor Sam Beckett.”
Sam moved forward to shake the man’s hand, and looked questioningly at the brothers.
“Last I heard he wouldn’t even talk to you,” he said.
“Different father,” Colin said matter-of-factly.
“We have a lot to explain,” Quinn said.
* * *
Sam’s eyes were narrow, shaded by a tightly furrowed brow, as he worked through the information he’d just heard from Quinn and Colin. His mind raced.
“Okay, so… this really is the Earth where you grew up, Quinn?”
The four of them were sitting on the couches by the TV in the suite, with Sam alone on one, and the other three huddled on the other, Michael flanked on either side by his sons.
“And this is your birth father, who left you–” he pointed at Quinn, “–here as a child to protect you from a war, while leaving you–” he pointed at Colin, “–on a different Earth? Using the same technology you–” he pointed back to Quinn, “–would go on to independently invent completely by accident?”
Sam bit his lip. “Have I got all that straight?”
Quinn had an expression that, to Sam, read as somewhere between sheepish and amused. “Pretty much,” was all he said.
Michael was sitting there, in silent awe of his sons.
Sam leaned back in his seat, looking Quinn in the eye. “Seems awful coincidental, wouldn’t you say?”
Quinn narrowed his eyes.
“Yeah, a real blessing,” he said slowly. “Except for the fact I may have sabotaged my own future by messing around in the past like this.”
Sam stroked his chin. “It may not have changed so much, if you’re still here. But I sure wish I had Ziggy around to tell us…”
Michael leaned forward, and put his face in his hands.
“This is certainly a predicament,” he said. “I set out to bring home my boys, and instead I find adult versions of them who never knew me. Does this mean I must now let all those years go by, knowing they’re alive and well, but never bringing them home, so that they still grow up to be the same people I’ve met now?”
“I wouldn’t give up my childhood for the world,” Quinn said, with a sad look at his father. “I’m sorry.”
Michael took his hand. “Then I’ll respect your wishes.”
Quinn smiled. “At least you know we’re alive, and we’re going to find you one day, right?”
Colin shifted uncomfortably.
“My childhood was not so nice,” he said in a morose tone. “Nor my adulthood, for that matter. Why did you put me on that primitive world?”
Michael’s face buried further into his hands.
“At the time, we had no control of the worlds we would end up in, so we took you both to the first two politically and ecologically stable ones with living doubles of your mother and I that we found.”
Quinn interjected: “And you split us up, because…”
“Your mother and I each kept the coordinates to one of you. As you can see, I had yours, Quinn. That way if one of us ever had them coaxed out of us through some mind game or another, we couldn’t give them both up and at least one of you would be safe.”
“The parents you put me with had died by the time you came to collect me,” Colin said, “and I languished in an orphanage. I grew up to be shunned for inventing technologies which I later discovered were commonplace on most other Earths.”
“I’m sorry, son. Elizabeth and I… we made a real mess of things, didn’t we?”
“It’s not too late to change things,” Sam said, causing all three men to look at him.
Sam looked pointedly at Michael. “Little Colin’s still in that orphanage, waiting for you.”
A wave of incredulity passed over the family. Quinn was the first to react.
“What happened to creating a paradox? If Colin’s not where he was when I found him…”
“When I first started leaping, my brother had died in Vietnam. Now, he has a daughter named Maggie. Big changes can happen, if they’re meant to. I’ve found that the universe is largely, well… self-correcting.”
“So all that talk in front of the Professor earlier?” Quinn was looking at him, searching.
“That’s the rational endpoint, but…” He looked up at the ceiling. “Sometimes… we have to trust that we’re doing the right thing. Even if Ziggy disagrees.”
I’m talking like some sort of preacher, he thought with distaste.
‘You just gotta have faith’ was never a satisfactory answer when he went to church as a kid, but it seemed like the words he lived by, these days.
Colin stood, looking troubled.
Michael looked up at him. “I’ll let you make the final decision on this, Colin. It’s your life.”
He nodded with uncertainty, and laid back on his bed, apparently deep in thought.
As Sam was trying to think of what to say next, Rembrandt burst into the suite, a pale Maggie holding on to him tightly.
“Gotta get this girl to bed,” he said in lieu of greeting, as he helped her get to her bedside.
Maggie’s red eyes were barely open, as she let herself fall onto the bed, before burying her head under a pillow.
Rembrandt turned back towards them, and Sam watched his similarly bloodshot eyes stop dead on Michael.
“Mister M?” he said, startled.
“Remy, it’s our birth Dad,” Quinn told him excitedly.
The rest of the conversation went unnoticed by Sam as he approached Maggie.
“Are you alright?” he asked her, taking a hold of her hand. She squeezed it, and moved the pillow so that her mouth was uncovered.
“I… I was fine, but I don’t know. We were just reminiscing, having a nice time, and then boom, pain comes back with a vengeance.”
“Reminiscing…” Sam frowned. “What about?”
“How I first met Remy, and… ow!” She winced.
Sam was silent for a moment, piecing together the evidence.
“So it hurts the most when you try to dredge up memories? Is that it?”
“I don’t know…”
From what Sam had observed, Maggie had seemed to be in the highest spirits when she was just relaxing and letting thoughts and memories pop into her head, instead of seeking them out. That might have been an added benefit to the medicinal marijuana; lending her the ability to be more passive about her thoughts. Though, it clearly hadn’t been entirely reliable in that regard.
Sam patted her hand. “Okay, I want you to try something for me… don’t think too hard about anything. Don’t chase memories, just let your mind wander wherever.”
He saw Maggie nod under the pillow.
“Okay.” Her hand felt around for him, and she grasped his arm. “I love you, Uncle.”
Sam felt his heart melt, and he gave her a warm pat on the shoulder. “I love you too.”
He looked over towards the others, and his heart warmed even more to see Quinn leaning on his father, as they watched TV together.
“Sorry I’m late,” Al said as he strode into the Imaging Chamber, eyes studying the handlink. “It was a kick in the butt trying to find you, Sam. Ziggy nearly fried herself running through models with the timer data, and…”
Al trailed off as he looked up and realised he was in the middle of a crowded lecture hall, making eye contact with an extremely startled, extremely young Sam Beckett.
“Oh boy…”
This had never happened during leaps; Ziggy had always been able to zero in on the right Sam’s brainwaves, even though there was a younger version of him in the past. But since this parallel world nonsense got mixed up with leaping, nothing had been going their way.
The younger Sam, aged somewhere in his twenties, was rubbing his eyes, and glancing around the hall, trying to figure out if he was the only one to see this apparition. The other students, and lecturer, who was droning on about something called ‘Transmission Control Protocol,’ had definitely not picked up on Al’s entrance, though with his loud electric blue patterned shirt and yellow trousers, Al would have to assume that all eyes would have been on him if they had indeed been able to see him.
He raised a finger to his lips as he maintained eye contact with Sam, whose face conveyed mounting alarm.
“Sorry to freak you out, kid. Nobody else can see me. Pretend I’m not here and for the love of Ziggy, don’t make a scene.”
Al knew such a request was futile. Knowing Sam, he’d draw attention to himself no matter what.
Sam tugged on the sleeve of the student sitting next to him, a guy who looked some years younger than him.
“Hey, I don’t suppose you see a guy standing right there?” he whispered, pointing towards Al.
The classmate followed his finger, and then looked back at him.
“No…” he whispered back, giving him a funny look. “You drop acid before class, man?”
“Just tell him you did!” Al barked. “I told you not to make a scene.”
“Uh… yeah, I guess… I guess I did,” Sam said. The classmate gave him a smile that Al thought looked like he was impressed.
“Square Sam’s letting his hair down? Right on, man. Seize the day.”
The kid leaned in further. “Don’t let the Prof catch on, whatever you do.”
Sam smiled awkwardly, and returned his eyes to Al as his expression turned grave and his face began to pale.
“Listen, kid,” Al said, “I’m going to walk through that wall now; just letting you know so you don’t freak out. Hopefully this is the last you’ll have to see of my mug for at least five or six years, but if it’s not, I apologise.”
He walked to the nearest wall, and passed through it, feeling the younger Sam’s eyes burning into him until he got all the way through. He found himself outside, standing on a sunny patch of grass.
He breathed, then yelled into the chamber at the top of his lungs: “Ziggy, centre me on the right Sam for Pete’s sake!”
“I’m sorry Admiral, but I’m afraid that isn’t possible,” Ziggy’s smooth, sultry voice echoed.
“And why the hell not?!” Al was seething now.
“Unfortunately, you appear to be connected to the brain waves of the alternate universe Sam Beckett, which is not something I’m currently able to alter due to the remote nature of the parallel universe. This has left your focal location at the alternate Sam Beckett, currently in Los Angeles, too far from our Doctor Beckett’s geographic location for me to centre you on him. My sincerest apologies, Admiral.”
Ziggy’s ‘sincerest apologies’ tended not to have any sincerity at all.
Oh, for the love of…
“So I’m stuck with the half-baked version of Sam for now?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Do you have any data on our Sam’s whereabouts?”
“I do, Al.”
Al stiffened at her using his first name. He’d told her to just use their short form names for brevity some time ago, but it still somehow felt weird.
“Which is?”
“The anachronistic appearance of an AI-controlled, late 1990s vehicle in 1978 was what allowed me to zero-in on the correct date. I cross-referenced this with hotel records and found a Doctor Sam Beckett staying at the Dominion Hotel of downtown San Francisco, along with four others.”
“Okay, so I just have to gain the trust of half-baked Sam and get him to call the hotel.”
“It may be prudent to convince this alternate to travel to San Francisco so that I’m able to centre you on the correct Doctor Beckett.”
Al raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re not worried that’ll mess up history?”
“Preserving the history of a parallel world in which I do not reside is outside my parameters. I’m frankly unconcerned with what happens in such a timeline. Furthermore, I cannot reliably calculate odds for a universe not my own.”
Damn, that’s cold, Al thought. Then again, having an unrestrained Ziggy was a little exciting, in an anxiety-ridden sort of way.
Al moved towards the entrance of the lecture hall, where he awaited Half-Baked’s eventual departure. This proved fruitful after about 20 minutes of waiting.
Students poured out of the double doors, and soon enough the youthful Sam exited, his eyes on his feet, and a hefty stack of textbooks nestled in his arms. He didn’t look to be in the mood for more chitchat from Al, but he was going to get some anyway.
“Hey there, Sam. Sorry to butt in again, but I’ve got a favour to ask.”
Sam gave a harrowing glance at him, and returned his gaze to the floor, doing his best to pretend he hadn’t seen him.
“That’s okay, kid,” Al said, walking beside him, his body passing through the crowds of students. “It’s a good idea to act like I’m not here. Let’s go somewhere a little more private.”
Sam veered away from the thoroughfare, and ducked behind a building to a secluded part of the campus.
Atta boy.
He leaned against the brick wall, and slid down it until he was sitting on the grass.
“Okay,” he muttered, “I’m having some kind of psychotic break, right? Katy told me I was gonna go nuts if I took on this triple workload, but…”
Al looked on with pity.
“Aw, jeez, Sam. I’m sorry to put you in this position.” He sat down beside the nervous kid. “You may be relieved to know that I’m not a hallucination.”
“Sounds like something a hallucination would say.”
“Well, there’s not a lot I can do to prove I’m not, but how’s this: There’s a man staying in the Dominion Hotel in San Francisco who has the exact same name as you. Call the hotel and leave him your number, along with the name Al. That’s me, by the way.”
Half-Baked Sam squinted at him with suspicion.
“Trust me,” Al continued, “you’ll get a call back. And all will be revealed.”
He bit his lip. “I hope.”
“So who is this Professor?” asked Michael, as he followed Quinn, Colin, and Sam across the campus green. Colin looked back at him with a shrug.
“In about fifteen years, he’ll be teaching me physics,” Quinn said. “He’s a brilliant guy. Abrasive, but brilliant.”
Colin had never met Professor Arturo, either. He’d heard the odd story from the others, but he felt quite alienated when he came up in conversation. He wondered why they never used his first name, opting to call him by his title, or occasionally his surname. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever been told the man’s given name at all, come to think of it.
Colin had to admit to himself that his head was elsewhere today. After the opportunity to rewrite his history had come up, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
If he agreed, where would that leave him? He would surely be a completely different person; would that new version of him be better off? And how would that affect Quinn? The thought of all those ripples caused by the decision put on his shoulders really shook him.
He supposed he had some time to think about it, now that his father was sticking around for a while. He’d watched Michael as he’d nervously let his timer elapse, just an hour after meeting them. It had been pretty brave; it showed how much he truly cared about them, which was something of a question mark up to now for Colin, who’d felt a little abandoned.
And now, he was going to help them with Maggie, who he’d only seen lying on the bed, occasionally moaning in pain.
But the elephant in the room still hadn’t been addressed: that of how his people won the war. And, if that method could be used here on Earth Prime, when it would inevitably be needed.
It still remained to be seen, too, whether they’d be able to return to their own time. If only Sam was in contact with Al and his team in the future, they might have a clue.
So many unanswered questions.
By the time Colin came out of his train of thought, he realised he’d followed the group all the way into a building without even noticing.
He nearly bumped into Quinn as he stopped at a door, and knocked.
The door creaked open, revealing a man with a broad face and a withering glare. The handset of a telephone was pressed to his face by his shoulder, with the curled cord extending back to the desk behind him.
He gestured for them all to come in, and turned, returning to his desk as he barked into the telephone.
“No, William, that girl is a blistering idiot, and frankly I do not care whether her house has a bloody tennis court, I don’t want you seeing her.” He slammed his hand on the desk. “I’m your father, and you’ll do as I say until such time as you move out of my house.”
A few seconds passed of bewildered silence. “William! So help me, I will ground you until your hair is grey.”
A tone came from the phone, as Arturo gave a frustrated sigh, and slammed the phone onto the cradle.
He composed himself, and looked up at the four who were squeezed tightly into this snug room.
“Was that your son?” Quinn asked.
Arturo narrowed his eyes, giving Quinn a pointed look of warning. Quinn shut his mouth, but Sam picked up where he left off.
“Do you always speak like that to your own child?” He said, matching Arturo’s glower. Arturo stood from his seat, but still found himself towered over by the men he faced.
“How I raise my boy is none of your damned business!”
“If you don’t want to lose him, maybe it is,” Quinn muttered quietly, avoiding eye contact.
Perhaps it was the height factor, or the fact that this Professor was younger than the grumpy older man that had been described to Colin in the past, or the fact that Quinn was speaking from his knowledge of the future, but he said no more on the issue.
“Gentlemen, I, uh… see you’ve multiplied,” he said, with a raised eyebrow and a look towards Michael and Colin.
Quinn gestured towards them. “This is my brother Colin and my father, Michael Mallory. But, not the one from this Earth.”
Arturo stood, looking confused, and extended a hand to Michael.
“Don’t think about it too hard,” Michael said to him, and shook his hand.
Arturo didn’t shake Colin’s hand.
“Will these two be of any use?” he asked, glancing at Quinn and Sam. Quinn gave a proud nod.
“You might be surprised.”
As the only one in the room with no formal education, Colin felt like the odd man out. But Quinn had always placed a great deal of faith in him, which gave his confidence a boost.
All the same, there were significant gaps in his knowledge that left him lagging behind at times. He sure wished there’d been universities like this one on ‘Amish World.’
“Very well,” Arturo said, “I suppose I’ll find out. I’ve secured us a lab between five AM and midday daily, and Lecture Theatre E between three and eight PM. I will need to be in and out based on my teaching schedule, but I’ll give you keys. I trust this will be sufficient?”
“It’ll have to be,” said Quinn, looking pensive.
Sam let out a sigh. “I’ll have to tell Rembrandt he’s gonna be a solo act from now on.”
* * *
The sound of melodic humming filled the hotel room, as Maggie roused from yet another uneasy sleep.
She felt some déjà vu as she opened her eyes to only Rembrandt again. He was looking in the mirror, combing his hair and humming a tune that sounded familiar, but she wasn’t sure.
Don’t try to recall, she reminded herself.
Since Sam’s advice, she had indeed been feeling better. Even now, she was able to open her eyes without the searing levels of pain she’d felt before, even without the help of the weed.
It wasn’t perfect, of course. Sometimes she couldn’t help her train of thought pushing the limits of her readily accessible memories, and she’d be rewarded with a fresh reminder of its agony.
It was a strange tightrope she was walking. As though, by actively trying to fish for memories from one part of herself, it was somehow hastening the process of one overtaking the other, and causing the other side to fight to remain. At least, that was her theory of what was happening.
So, she had to swim in the shallow end of her mind, where the two sides of her mingled without conflict. Uncle Sam seemed to be a safe person to think about. The early years of her life, too - they seemed quite similar to one another. The antipathy towards her father was a common thread.
She couldn’t pursue memories about any of the sliders further back than their first encounter with Sheriff Maggie, which made it hard to listen to their conversations.
Finally, she spoke up.
“What time is it?”
He looked away from the mirror at her. “Nearly four in the afternoon. The eggheads are all at the university, so I’m the sole breadwinner tonight.”
“I wish I could come watch. Put my mind off everything.”
He looked at her sadly, but gave her a half-hearted grin, seemingly in an attempt to put her at ease.
“Well, you keep improvin’ like this and maybe the Doc will see fit to give you a day pass.”
“I don’t think I’m really going to improve, so much as stave off the inevitable,” she replied bleakly. “The best I can do is not help it along.”
The sound of the phone ringing made Maggie jump, and subsequently clutch her newly pounding head.
Rembrandt picked up. “Uh, hello?”
As the spots in Maggie’s vision cleared, she saw Rembrandt’s look of surprise.
“Did you say Al?”
He snatched up a notepad and pen and scribbled a phone number.
“Uh, th-thanks,” he said, before hanging up, and looking at Maggie, shaken. He handed her the notepad.
“If Sam gets back before me, make sure he gets this, okay?”
She peered down at it, and was surprised at what she saw.
SAM - ??? AL ???
WANTS A CALL BACK
555-2329 EXT. 443
Sam sat on the bed in his dorm room, his head buried in the various notes his professor had written on the subject of DOS. There was conspicuously no comprehensive manual for Apple DOS 3.1, to everyone’s chagrin. However, his attention was definitely not on the documentation. Instead, he was trying very hard to ignore the old guy in strange clothes that was sitting in an invisible chair across the room.
But, they both knew his efforts were in vain.
It was bad enough that this ‘Al’ guy was here, but his roommate Jay was also present, strumming aimlessly on his electric guitar, which was in desperate need of tuning. The discordant notes were making him want to throw the instrument out the window.
“I can’t believe you’re putting up with this,” the incorporeal man commented. “My ears are gonna bleed if this guy keeps it up.”
Well then, why don’t you leave?
“You want me to tune that?” he finally said to the 21-year-old.
Jay’s hazel eyes looked him over. “I didn’t know you played. When did you get time to learn guitar with all your hundreds of degrees?”
Sam blinked in surprise. He’d been here for a few months now; had he really not brought out his guitar in all that time? Well, he’d been pretty busy.
“One of my doctorates was in music,” he said with a smirk. “I played piano at Carnegie Hall when I was nineteen, and I’ve been playing guitar since I was a kid. Pass it over, would you.”
He held out his hand. Jay passed the guitar to him, and he began tuning it by ear.
“Jeez, leave it to you to even be a nerd in music,” Jay teased. “Know any tunes written after the 19th century?”
The man Jay couldn’t see cackled. “Give him a good one Sam, wipe the smile off his face.”
If you’re not a product of my own mind, then why do you seem to know everything about me?
Sam finished up his tuning, and gave the guitar a few strums in various chords, before launching into the opening riff of Purple Haze.
After a moment of filling the room with the wailing Hendrix song, he abruptly stopped playing and handed the guitar back to a bewildered Jay.
“Does that answer your question?” he gave a cocky smirk as he listened to his invisible cheerleader applaud.
“You’re just full of surprises,” Jay said, marvelling. “I thought all you were good for was burying your head in a book.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty swamped,” he said, giving a pointed look at the apparition across the room. “Don’t have time for much messing around right now.”
The man… ‘Al’ (Sam was loathe to use the name he’d supplied, as if giving him a name made him more legitimate; more real), held up his hands defensively.
“Hey kid, I’m trying to make myself scarce, but I wanna be here when you get that phone call.”
There isn’t going to be a phone call.
He returned to his reading, and his mind started absently conceptualising ways to improve the efficiency of a personal computer’s central processing unit.
But these thoughts were interrupted when the dorm room’s phone started ringing.
He exchanged a glance with Al, who gave him a smug look, and put down the documents. But it was Jay who reached the phone first.
“Hello, you’ve reached Jay’s love nest,” he said, putting on his most studly voice. Sam gave him a sour look. Sure, most phone calls they got were girls looking for him, but sometimes Sam’s family called.
“Nah man, I think you’ve got the wrong number. Ain’t no Al here.”
Sam flung himself off his bed and snatched the phone away.
“Hello?” he said, eyes wide.
“Uh… is this Al?”
The voice was awfully familiar.
“No, but, he told me to leave you his name.” Sam met Al’s eye, alarmed. So maybe this guy wasn’t as imaginary as he’d thought. Al just puffed on a cigar, which thankfully didn’t seem to be dispersing any corporeal smoke into the room.
“Oh… ohh… I see. This number you left. It’s Caltech, isn’t it? What’s your name?”
The man spoke carefully, seeming to know more than he let on.
“Sam Beckett…” Sam replied, recalling that the guy he’d left the message for was supposed to have the same name.
“I was afraid that was the case,” said the man. “Is… is Al with you right now?”
“I’m not sure I’d put it that way,” Sam replied, watching Al walk up to him and place his ear inside the phone handset.
“Oh. Yeah. He’s not technically with you. You’ve probably seen him phase through walls and the like, huh?”
“Sam, can you hear me?” Al called out.
“Al? Oh, thank god, I can hear you! What in the world happened? How’d you end up in my old dorm?”
Al groaned. “Ziggy flubbed the lock-on process because she only had a sixty second wormhole window to find you, or some baloney, and I got homed in on your double instead of you. He’s about as unhappy about it as I am, Sam.”
Sam looked at Al with a befuddled squint.
“Oh, I know that look,” Al said. “Yes, you’re currently on the phone to the older version of you. Surprise! Your time travel theory worked.”
“What?” Sam felt weak at the knees, and sat down on his bed. “I knew I was on to something, but I… are you serious?”
“Must be a lot to take in,” the older Sam said. “Sorry to dump all this on you when you’re already overwhelmed with your studies. In a few months, DOS 3.2 will have a real manual, by the way.”
“How did you…” Sam swallowed as he tried to process this information.
If he’s me, he must remember…
“Oh boy…”
“Get used to saying that,” said his older version, with a chuckle.
“I have night shift at the hospital in an hour…” Sam said weakly.
Al shouted into the phone: “Sam, I can’t get Ziggy to centre on you unless the younger you takes a vacay in Frisco.”
Sam looked up at him. “Wait, what?”
“That’s the favour I told you I needed.” Al gave him a forced smile. “How’d you like to go on a road trip with me? Take some time off from your workload and find yourself… in a more literal sense than the expression usually implies.”
Sam spent a moment in silence as he tried to figure out ways this could not be happening. Right now, a dream was the most likely candidate. One very strange, long dream.
“Al,” came the older Sam’s voice, “is he freaking out?”
“Of course I am,” Sam replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. Behind Al, Jay was looking at him with a worried expression. Sam held the handset against his chest.
“Would you mind giving me some privacy?”
Jay stood. “Sure… I don’t know who you’re talking to, but you look like you’re having an existential crisis over there. Good luck?”
He grabbed his wallet and headed out of the room. Sam breathed out, and returned the phone to his ear.
“Say, was that Jay Lindell?” the Sam on the other end of the phone mused. “I think he’s gonna drop out next semester. You might be able to convince him not to, though. Try hiding his guitar so he doesn’t waste his time thinking he’s gonna be a rockstar. Believe me, he’s better off in IT.”
“Okay, just slow down,” Sam pleaded. “What’s all this about San Francisco…?”
“Al’s presence is linked to my mesons and neurons, and by extension, yours,” the Sam on the phone explained. “He keeps me in communication with the future by appearing as a hologram. But something got a little cross-wired along the way and he ended up tethered to you instead of me.”
Al continued the explanation: “I can only go a few miles from my central point, which is you. So I need you to go to San Francisco, so I can talk to the right version of you.”
“And you expect me to what, up and leave all my obligations?”
“Don’t you want to find out more about your future?” the Sam on the phone tempted. “I’m working on something pretty major right now. Bet you’d love to hear all about it.”
Sam fell back onto the pile of papers spread out on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, curling the phone cord between his fingers.
“Let’s assume I went. Wouldn’t messing with my studies change the future? I have something like eight papers to turn in before Christmas break, and a practical engineering project.”
“Piece of cake. Should have all the resources you need here, and you can pick my brain if you need help.”
Sam pursed his lips.
“Can… can you call me back tomorrow? I need to make sure I’m not dreaming all of this.”
“Sure thing,” the older Sam said. “Same time tomorrow? Make sure to have an answer for me. I really need Al’s assistance to help get back to my, uh… just let me know, okay?”
“Okay…”
Sam hung up the phone, and stared at Al for a moment, who tapped his cigar, letting ash fall, which disappeared before it hit the floor.
“You’re still stuck with me for a while, but I’ll leave you be for tonight,” he said with a wink, and tapped on the weird flashing thing in his palm. “See ya round, kid.”
A Star Trek style door slid open behind him, suspended in the middle of the room, and filled with white light – which had been what initially caught Sam’s eye when Al had first appeared in the lecture hall – and he stepped through the doorway, giving a quick wave before the door shut, and he was gone, along with any trace of the mystery door.
Sam looked at the clock, and realised, as his head began to swim, that he’d better head to the hospital.
Quinn sipped his black coffee, thinking about how much he wished he had a pair of glasses. His eyes were not getting any younger. As soon as they got tired, he had to strain to keep focus; and he was pretty darn tired.
He stared at the display on the timer. Nine days left, give or take. There was never enough.
The data extracted from Maggie’s cell samples had been sufficient to populate the formulas, and it was looking pretty bleak. They had at most a week to separate the Maggies before the process became irreversible.
Sam’s provision of his time travel equations were incomplete thanks to his patchy memory, and apparently he had a whole thing with his younger double needing to travel here so Al could show up; the whole thing was a mess.
Meanwhile, the combined knowledge of Michael and himself gave them a pretty good picture of the vortex equations, but there was a significant downgrade in computer tech to bring up the timer code. And that was where he was at now: sitting at one of the world’s most sophisticated computer terminals outside of the military, and it was still taking forever to load. He wondered bitterly whether it would take as long to load as Sam had taken to type the whole thing up. Assuming he didn’t crash the thing.
“How’s it going?”
Quinn looked up mid eye-rub to see his father looking on.
“I feel like the timer’s going to run down to zero before this old thing loads,” he whined.
Michael chuckled. “Old thing? I thought you said it was state of the art.”
“For the seventies, sure.” He stood from his seat. There was no point in watching this take its sweet time. He turned to Michael, straightening his back.
“Listen, I’ve been avoiding this, but… I need to know.”
Michael picked up on the grave tone. “Know what?”
Quinn pressed his lips together. “How did your world stop them?”
“The Kromaggs, you mean?”
Quinn nodded. Michael thought for a moment.
“How do you know about them?”
“We’ve run into them a bunch of times. And they’re going to invade this world in about twenty years. It’s… gonna be bad.”
Quinn evaded his father’s eyes, fearing he’d start losing his cool. He felt a hand on his arm.
“Not all of them are irredeemable monsters, you know. We actually managed to come to a truce.”
“You did?” Quinn certainly didn’t expect that.
Michael looked down, regretfully. “We came up with a weapon, called the Voraton device, but its use would have meant certain doom for all of us. So now, it’s… our trump card, I suppose.”
So it’s like a nuclear deterrent. It sounded like a pretty tense situation.
“So why are they invading all these worlds in my time?” Quinn rubbed his forehead, and began to pace, trying to get a handle on all of this.
“I didn’t know they were! Maybe the truce gets broken some time in the future. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Part of our truce was that all who disagreed would migrate to another Earth. Probably ninety per cent of Kromaggs were sent away, and I set up what I called a ‘Slide Cage’ to prevent anyone from returning without the proper backdoor access. But I wasn’t aware they had sliding tech.”
Quinn clenched his teeth as he tried to put everything together. His double, the one who he had met so long ago, had claimed to have given them that technology.
“I’ve been to the Slide Cage,” he said simply, avoiding the shame associated with his double. “I’m not sure what you expected that place to be, but it was a warzone until I managed to get everyone out of it. Almost everyone.”
“What? How?”
“I was able to reverse engineer the data from the microdots to work out the backdoor. You know, you could easily redesign it not to capture, but to deflect like a mirror. You just need to–”
“I thought I’d… made it comfortable,” Michael cut in, looking crestfallen.
Quinn sighed. His Dad was a brilliant engineer and scientist, but he didn’t have a great deal of foresight. Then again, Quinn was little better in that department, jumping into a vortex without knowing what he was doing all those years ago.
“You made Purgatory,” Quinn said, with a grim look. Michael nodded sadly.
“You’ll have to explain your idea to me, then.”
“Sure,” he said, taking a final swig of his coffee.
But that won’t stop the other me dooming the multiverse.
If there was anything he wished he could go back and stop, it was that Quinn. But he just didn’t see any way to influence that Quinn, even now that he was in a position to change things.
“Come on,” he said to his father, heading out of the computer lab, “I’ll draw you a diagram.”
* * *
Around eight at night, Sam was in the lecture theater, with a yawning Quinn sitting on one of the student seats scribbling something on the half-desk. Sam was in the front of the room, double checking some calculations on the chalkboard, when Al’s face popped in right through the chalk scribblings, making Sam jump backward in surprise.
“Oh, for the love of…” he cried, and struggled to regain his composure. “Listen, Al, I’m glad to see you, but can you just use a door? One day I’m gonna drop dead of heart failure.”
“Hi to you, too, Sam,” Al said, nonchalantly puffing his cigar. “Your half-baked self just got off the Greyhound.”
He turned around to the chalkboards. “Sorry to interrupt, uh, whatever all this is.”
Quinn had approached him now. “Al’s here?”
Sam nodded. “And I gotta go meet myself at the bus depot. You know where it is?”
“Of course,” Quinn confirmed. “Let’s go.”
Twenty minutes of walking through the dark streets, and the two of them, along with the hologram, had arrived at the bus station.
Sam peered at the face of his mid-twenties double, and it almost felt like looking in a mirror; but the smoother skin, the lack of deep set lines, and the full brown head of hair, the style of which reminded him of the Bee Gees, made the whole experience surreal.
Similarly, the younger him was glaring back with a mixture of recognition and fear, presumably put off by the signs of aging.
Sam waved at the kid awkwardly.
“Hey there,” he said, and trailed off, not really knowing what else to say.
The younger Sam nodded a greeting, his eyes wide and lips speechless.
“I’m Quinn,” the slider broke the silence, and held out his hand. Sam took it and they shook their greetings.
The young Sam seemed to relax more looking away from Sam and towards Quinn, and Sam looked between them, thinking how close they must be in age.
“We’ve got some fun things to discuss,” Quinn said with a grin. “Do you want to go get something to eat?”
“Sure,” young Sam replied.
Al met Sam’s eye as Quinn led the young Sam away. He looked worried.
“Ziggy has no opinions on messing up the timeline of this world, you know. She said it’s ‘outside her parameters.’ For all she cares, as long as she gets you and your niece back to our Earth, this place can take a jump.”
Sam frowned.
“I’m pretty sure Quinn has a few opinions on the matter, because we’re on his home world, and we’re quite sure he’s already changed some things.”
“Oh boy,” Al’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ll have to talk to Gooshie…”
“If Ziggy won’t help preserve the future here, then I’ll have to follow my instincts,” Sam said, his jaw set.
Al laughed. “Sure, when has that ever gone wrong?”
* * *
Colin wandered, absent-minded, through the busy evening streets. He wasn’t sure what day of the week it was; he never really paid attention to that. His timekeeping was dictated by the timer. But it seemed like it must have been a Friday or Saturday night.
He didn’t know where he was going. He just needed a little alone time, to think about his choices.
He’d spent a lot of his life on his own. Then, after Quinn found him, he’d spent almost no time alone at all. It was quite a change. While his life on Amish World had been plagued by intense loneliness, there were times he craved solitude, and he appreciated the small windows of time he had to himself.
And now, although the streets were bustling, he was certainly alone.
The chilly early December air caused a shiver in his shoulders, and he finally decided he’d better go inside. He chose the nearest dive bar, and went inside.
That’s odd.
Although the streets outside were full of bodies, this place was empty, save for one bartender, who glanced over at him, and nodded a greeting.
Colin looked back outside, as people walked past the glass doors. On the glass, a sign, which Colin saw as inverted: ‘Al’s Place.’
He looked back at the bartender, a somewhat stout man with greying hair and moustache.
“Can I get you a drink, son?”
Colin took another glance around the dive. He’d wanted time alone, but this place was deserted. All except this bartender who was smiling at him jovially. For a minute, he just stood there as the man looked at him expectantly.
He asked if I want a drink, I’d better answer.
“Sure, uh, whatever you think I’d like,” he said, and furrowed his brow when he realised he said that.
The bartender looked thoughtful for a moment, before starting to mix something up.
“Is it always this quiet in here?” Colin asked, thinking there must be some reason nobody was coming in here. The bartender gave an unconcerned shrug.
“You should see it on the fourth of July,” he said.
“Why? What’s on the fourth of July?” Colin asked, taking a seat on a barstool. The bar smelled of old beer and tobacco, though there was no actual smoke in the air.
The man tilted his head. “Not from around here, are you?”
Colin placed his elbows on the bar, and planted his chin in his hands.
“I’m from, uh, Canada,” he said, using the same old excuse the sliders made every time this kind of thing came up. It rang hollow, and he got the impression the bartender didn’t believe it. And yet, he didn’t press the issue.
“You looked a little lost when you came in here,” he said, placing a little paper umbrella in a highball glass, and placing the strong-smelling beverage in front of him. It looked just like a drink he’d ordered a long time ago, just after sliding for the first time. He picked up the red umbrella and studied it.
“In case you need to protect your drink from the elements,” the bartender joked, and Colin met his eye with a glare, as he realised this man was using the same phrasing he’d used the first time he encountered a decorative umbrella.
The bartender didn’t react to Colin’s surprise, and just resumed polishing glasses.
“So, you in town for long?”
Colin sipped from his glass, and somehow wasn’t shocked to find it tasted just the same as that first time.
“I’m here for about nine more days.”
“Heading home for Christmas?”
Colin swirled the cocktail in his hand.
“I don’t really have a home,” he admitted. “I just… travel, here and there. With my brother, and a couple of friends.”
“Ah, I hear the nomad lifestyle is all the rage these days.” He looked back at a framed photo of a Kombi van on the wall behind the bar. It was parked at a beach, and the roof rack was loaded with some large surf boards.
“Did you rope your brother into it or did he rope you?” He had amusement in his eyes.
“He roped me,” Colin said truthfully. “It was quite unexpected, and I had no time to prepare. People are probably wondering whatever happened to me, I suppose.”
The bartender stroked his chin for a moment. “But you still left?”
“Yes, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, you could say. And I wanted to get to know my brother.”
“You didn’t know him before?”
“No, we’d just met.” Colin downed the remainder of the drink, and put the paper umbrella in his pocket. He didn’t know why, but it felt significant.
“You didn’t grow up with your own brother, huh? That’s a shame.”
Colin eyed the man, who’d so easily managed to drill down to exactly what was bothering him in just a few pointed questions.
“I grew up alone in… a remote community that stifled my natural talents and interests.”
The bartender took his empty glass.
“That explains why you don’t know what the fourth of July is, I assume. Another?”
Colin bit his lip. “No thanks. How much do I owe you for that?”
“Tell you what,” said the bartender, “I’m feeling generous. I’ll fix you up another if you’ll stay and talk a while longer. On the house.”
“Forgive me,” Colin said, puzzled, “but how exactly does this place turn a profit if you’re giving free drinks to your only customer?”
The bartender just flashed him a wink, and continued making the second drink without answering the question.
“So, your brother shows up out of nowhere and whisks you away with no notice, and now you’re just travelling to parts unknown? Is that right?”
“That’s exactly right,” Colin said, with a hint of melancholy. “He’s trying to catch me up on everything I missed out on, but I missed… a lot.”
“You wish you could have grown up together?” The man placed the second drink on the counter, and Colin took a sip.
“I wish a lot of things.”
The bartender nodded sympathetically. “Nothing wrong with wishing once in a while. Never know if they might come true.”
Colin laughed. “What if my wish coming true would cause a ripple effect that completely changed the makeup of my neurons? I would be a completely different person. And who knows what other repercussions it would have to the people around me and my past actions?”
The bartender looked at him with surprise. “Most people don’t think that critically about mere wishes.”
“Most people don’t have a real chance to make their most improbable wishes come true…” Colin took another sip of the drink. What was in this thing, that he was talking so freely?
“Even then, I think most people would still jump at the chance, rather than talk themselves out of it.” The bartender smiled. “But, you’re not like most people, are you?”
“You’re not like most bartenders,” Colin countered, as he squinted at the man, as if to try and see what was really under that bartender costume.
“I’m just here to lend a sympathetic ear,” he said. “That’s the number one task when you’re working a bar, you know.”
“Who are you, anyway?” Colin said, sure now that this strange little man knew far more than he was letting on.
“The name’s Al,” he said, frowning, and pointing to the sign on the door. “I was sure you’d read my sign, thought you would have put two and two together. You seem pretty switched on.”
Colin shook his head, but said no more as he took another sip of his drink.
Al the bartender stretched, and leaned against the bar. “You don’t think you deserve good things happening to you, do you?”
Colin shot him a glare. “What makes you say that?”
“Rationalising away that wish of yours, finding reasons it couldn’t work out for you. I think you must have been put down all your life for things you did trying to make things better, and you came to believe what they said.”
Colin was no longer having a nice conversation. It seemed like this Al was invading his mind and trying to pry information out of him, like what he’d heard Kromaggs do.
He suddenly felt very uneasy about the things he’d said here.
“But then again, I’m just a bartender,” Al continued. “You can take my advice with a grain of salt.”
Colin had no idea what that meant.
“I just want you to know that no matter what you choose, whatever changes, you’ll still be the same guy in here.” He placed a hand on his heart.
Colin, despite his suspicions, finished off the drink, and stood.
“Thanks for the chat,” Al said with what appeared to be a genuine smile, though Colin was on edge. “If there’s one thing better than closing a big tab, it’s a stimulating conversation with an interesting patron.”
Colin turned away.
“Y-yeah,” he said. “Thanks for the free drinks.”
As he opened the door to leave, Al called out. “Say ‘hi’ to Sam for me.”
Colin stopped dead in his tracks as the door shut behind him, and he swung around to ask the guy what he meant by that, but he was now looking into a bar with all the lights off, and a chain with a padlock on the door where there definitely hadn’t been one just a second ago.
Quinn stretched as he peered around at the now way over-populated hotel suite. Bodies reclined on the beds, and couches. The only one who was missing was Colin. But he was a big boy, and it wasn’t that late.
Maggie sat up in her bed, but she had an eye mask over her face, in an attempt to keep out the overhead light that seemed to cause her some pain.
His Dad was watching Saturday Night Live, along with Rembrandt and the two Sams.
“This show’s going to keep going for at least another fifteen years,” Sam told his younger double. Quinn looked at the TV to see Walter Matthau in a bee costume, and immediately lost interest.
“It’s extremely hit or miss,” he said with a wry smile, and the young Sam – who they’d decided would be referred to as ‘John,’ his middle name, to avoid confusion – looked back at him with a smile and a raised eyebrow, that suggested he agreed.
He and Sam then looked to an empty part of the room, reminding Quinn that there was yet another person here that he couldn’t see.
“Oh, apparently it’s still going in 2002,” Sam said. “And, still just as hit or miss, Al says.”
Rembrandt sighed. “Not on this world it ain’t.”
John stared at him for a moment. “What do you mean, ‘this world?’”
“What, they haven’t told you what’s going on yet?” Rembrandt glanced at Sam and Quinn with surprise.
“We wanted to ease him into it,” Quinn explained. “He did just get here like two hours ago, and he’s already had to process a few things.”
“Well, ease away,” said John.
“Okay, so, while you were inventing time travel,” Quinn began, rubbing the back of his neck, “I was inventing interdimensional travel.”
John tilted his head with surprise. “You’re kidding?”
Sam continued: “And I’m actually not so much the future you as a parallel you. But… also from the future.”
“Wait, wait,” John said, “Al mentioned something to do with a ‘wormhole’ when I was on the phone to you. Are you telling me that was the–”
Quinn and Sam joined him, in unison, as he said: “Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky Bridge.”
“Yeah,” Quinn confirmed. “There’s a lot to explain, and you’re welcome to join us in the lab tomorrow.”
John’s eyes shone with excitement. “Suddenly, writing a paper about the technology behind dial-up bulletin board systems seems insignificant.”
“Yeah, the computer tech of this time period is a serious time sink,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “Everything is so clunky and slow.”
“Um, fellas?” came a quiet voice that Quinn hadn’t heard all evening. He turned towards Maggie, who had her hand raised. Along with the eye mask, she looked pretty weird to Quinn, causing him to stifle a laugh.
“Why don’t you just use Higgins?”
Quinn felt his breath catch, and he met Sam’s eye, who looked just as stunned. Why did it take someone at death’s door to remind them of the obvious?
“Why didn’t we think of that?” Sam said, slapping himself in the forehead. “Higgins is far more sophisticated than anything from 1978.”
“What’s a Higgins?” John asked.
Quinn thought for a moment. “You know Knight Rider? No, wait, that’s from the eighties…”
“Uh… how about HAL 9000,” supplied Sam with an amused snort. “But without the bloodlust.”
“What did we do with the car?” Quinn asked. He merely recalled Rembrandt driving it to the hotel on the day of their arrival, and dropping them off to bring Maggie in.
“It’s in a quiet street with a tarp strapped to it,” Rembrandt said. “Covered it as best I could.”
Quinn nodded. “Alright, I’ll definitely be cannibalising it tomorrow.”
He turned towards the bathroom, thinking about brushing his teeth, but turned the other way as the door of the suite opened, to reveal a pale-looking Colin.
“You alright, bro?”
Colin looked at him with the expression he’d last seen when his brother had thought he’d seen a ghost.
“Um. I don’t know. Maybe.” His gaze moved to Sam, who was rising from the couch with some concern. “Do… do you know some bartender called Al?”
Quinn watched Sam’s expression instantly flick from mild concern to frantic astonishment. Sam crossed to Colin, and pushed him back out the door.
“Give us a minute,” he muttered, and they were gone.
* * *
Sam closed the door and began to pace the hall as Colin watched him silently, his eyes wide. First thing, Sam figured, was making sure they were on the same page.
“Can you describe him? Where was he? What did he tell you?” he asked.
“Middle aged, portly, has a moustache,” Colin said. “Unnervingly easy to talk to. I found him in a bar, but…”
“And he mentioned me?” Sam’s head was swimming.
“He said to tell you ‘hi.’”
Colin was still looking very out of sorts. What advice had the guy given him to cause this reaction?
“What bar?”
“It was called ‘Al’s Place.’ But it was so strange, nobody was in there, and when I left, it was like it had been closed all along. I thought I’d imagined the whole thing, but…”
He pulled a red paper umbrella from his pocket, and turned it over in his hand. “It couldn’t have been just my imagination, right?”
“No, he’s… he’s real, alright,” Sam said, leaning against the wall, and dragging a hand over his mouth.
“Who is he? I got the feeling he knew more than he let on. Is he a time traveller too?”
“I don’t know what he is, exactly,” Sam said, coming short of pinning the label of ‘God’ onto the man. “But whatever he told you, it was important. I only ever met him the one time, and he helped me make an important decision. If he spoke to you, it was probably to help you decide something big, too.”
Colin’s anxiety seemed to melt into a pensive look into space.
“My father left me with a decision, if you remember,” he said, after taking a few drawn out breaths.
Sam nodded. “Your younger self in the orphanage.”
“But I’ve been unable to get past the unpredictable effects any change will have on my life, and that of everyone else.”
“And that’s what he was talking about with you?”
“He didn’t say much of substance. But, he did say that I’d be the same in here,” Colin said, pointing to the left side of his chest. He sighed.
“I’m a lot more worried about up here, though.” He tapped his temple. “What are we, but the sum of our thoughts and experiences? Would I cease to be, as you see me? Would any of this have happened to me?”
Sam patted him on the arm. “It’s a big deal, I know.”
He leaned in, as the memories of the decision he’d made at the version of Al’s Place in 1953 crystallised in his mind, as if Al the Bartender had reached into his brain and unlocked them in the last twenty minutes. “But, you know, sometimes…”
He looked down the hall, wistful. “Sometimes, deep down, far beyond the rational part of your mind, you just know the right thing to do. You feel it. And maybe you have to sacrifice something to do it, but you never regret it.”
He straightened, breaking the tension with a shrug. “I know, I know. Not very sciencey. But I think that was maybe the point of that visit you got.”
Colin gave him a slow nod, as he absorbed Sam’s words.
“Thanks,” he murmured. “I’ll take all of this under advisement.”
Al paced, as John watched him with confusion.
Bartender called Al.
That was the strangest leap Sam had ever had, and the last time Al had seen him before he leaped away, he was making all kinds of nutso statements about a bartender maybe being God.
It couldn’t be that guy, though. Could it? The guy would have to be in his seventies or eighties by now, if it was him.
Al watched Colin return to the suite, while Sam lingered at the door, making pointed eye contact, then flicked his eyeline out the door, and back. Al nodded in understanding, and pressed a button on the handlink, blinking himself from his position beside the couch, to the hall.
Sam closed the door once again, and his serious expression had turned into a smug grin.
“You thought I was going off the rails,” he said, pointing an accusing finger, “but he showed up again. Here, tonight.”
Al shifted uncomfortably, as Sam laughed; that same laugh that had unnerved him so much, back in the 1953 mining town.
“Sam…” Al said in a warning tone, but he couldn’t come up with a useful counter to Sam’s manic energy.
“Don’t you get it? This proves we’re here for a reason. Maybe several reasons.” He gave a relieved sigh, as if his burdens had just lost their crushing weight.
“How do you know it was the same guy?” Al asked, trying to inject a little doubt into the strange situation.
“Middle aged, moustache, tending a bar called Al’s Place? Al, it’s the same guy. I feel it in my gut.” Sam leaned against the wall, and let himself slide to the floor, just as John had done some days before at Caltech. He looked up at Al.
“As soon as I started talking to Colin, I remembered everything about that leap, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. Then, he became more subdued, and patted the floor beside him.
“Sit. I need to talk to you.”
Al was glad he’d settled a bit, but the new tone unnerved him just as much, if he was being honest. He obliged Sam’s request, sitting on the floor; but the wall, being a hologram to him, provided no back rest, so he had to support himself with an arm.
“What’s eating you, pal?”
“That bartender gave me a choice, and it was both the hardest and easiest decision I’ve ever made.” Sam was looking at him with a bittersweet smile.
Al felt he maybe knew where this was going, but opted to play his cards close to his chest.
“Go on…”
“I could have gone home, right then. But there was something I had to do.”
He could have gone home? That was a new piece of the puzzle. Al kept his best poker face, knowing there was more.
“It’s about Beth…” Sam said, and appeared to struggle to form his next words. Al gave him a smile.
“I know, Sam.”
Sam stiffened. “You do?”
He raised an eyebrow, chuckling. “A mysterious stranger appears to my wife like some kind of angel and you think I wouldn’t connect the dots eventually?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Sam’s cheeks were flushing.
Al shifted positions, allowing the arm that had been supporting him some rest.
“Not to mention, I had some residual memories that prompted me to get a full report out of Ziggy.”
He puffed his cigar, thinking about the shards of memories of ogling women, and one-night-stands, that plagued him, even now. Every time he saw Tina, he had a clear image of what she looked like under those skimpy clothes, even though there was no time he actually should have seen her that way.
“Imagine my jaw hitting the floor when I found out I’d been married five times in the old timeline,” he said with a snort. “I’m grateful for what you did.”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” Sam said. “I didn’t even remember what I did until tonight, but I’m relieved I finally got a chance to talk to you about it.”
“And you’re telling me you gave up your chance to go home to keep my marriage intact?” Al eyed him, incredulous.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Sam smiled at him. “You deserved a chance at happiness.”
“In exchange for yours?”
“One thing that bartender told me, back then, is that I’m only doing this as long as I want to.” Sam gazed into Al’s eyes. “Every time I leap now, I ask myself: would I rather go home, or help someone else? The answer’s always the same.”
Al broke from his eye contact, and looked up at the ceiling. He couldn’t argue with that. Sam was the ultimate helper. He could scarcely think of a more appropriate person to be doing this job. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t pretty beat up about this. Didn’t Sam deserve a life of his own?
He felt he’d better tell Donna about this conversation.
“But, there’s something else he said to me,” Sam continued. “He said that I can take a ‘sabbatical.’ I’m still not sure what he had in mind, but once I get back to my correct Earth, maybe it would be a good time for that.”
He gave his eyes a rub. “I’m burning the candle at both ends right now. Could really use a break.”
Al perked up. “You mean you might come home?”
“I don’t know. Maybe home, maybe something I don’t expect. God or Fate or Time is fickle that way. But, however it presents, it won’t be permanent.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” Al said, with a grin.
* * *
Maggie experienced the next few days as an amorphous blur, only catching the day of the week, or time, in snippets of conversation that went on around her, as she languished in the hotel room. She spent most of her time in bed, only getting up for pressing needs such as the bathroom and water. She felt useless, and frustrated with her position in all this.
While most of the work went on at the university, she had been hearing bits and pieces after they returned, and it seemed like they were making progress.
Of course, it was entirely possible they were reserving their negativity for times when she wasn’t listening.
For the most part, she had been able to maintain a level of equilibrium with regards to her symptoms, but it was getting progressively worse, slowly but surely.
They hadn’t told her how long she had. She figured they didn’t want her panicking, which could have caused a worsening of the condition. But not knowing also had its challenges. Would she just wake up one morning and find one half of her gone? And would that be horrifying, or a relief, to whichever one of her remained?
Then, one chilly afternoon, John stayed behind when the others left. The younger Sam had barely had a chance to talk to her, and she wondered what he was doing, past the eye mask that blinded her to the room.
“Catching up on your papers?” she asked him, not knowing why else he’d be sticking around in here.
She heard his footfalls arrive at her bedside.
“Nah, I’m working on them on campus. I actually wanted to speak with you…”
“I’m not much of a conversationalist right now,” she said, with a wry smile.
“I know. And I’m told you can’t really access your memories right now, either. So feel free to kick me out of here any time.”
She felt him place something in her hand – the last joint from the stash.
“If you want me to light it, let me know.”
She smirked. “You think I’ll need this? What are you planning to talk about?”
“My brother died in Vietnam, and I hear you’re his… um, daughter…” He sounded unsure, and his voice was unsteady.
“I’m the daughter of a version of your brother,” Maggie explained. “Well, two versions, I guess. But they weren’t much different from one another.”
“Y-yeah, I know,” John stammered. “I just wanted to ask what he’s like.”
Maggie raised the joint. “Oh Lordy, light me up,” she said with a nervous sigh.
She heard the match strike, and a moment later the end of the joint was smouldering.
“That bad?” John asked nervously.
Maggie breathed in the smoke, and held it as long as her lungs would allow, before coughing it out.
“Let’s just say if my Dad saw me smoking this thing, he’d blow a fuse.”
John was silent for a little while, allowing her time to feel the effects of the drug. She was so used to her Uncle’s confidence, that hearing more or less the same voice being so uncertain was strange. And the fact he was quite a bit younger than her was not something she could get used to. It didn’t help that she’d had this eye mask on, and so hadn’t seen the young face he must have.
As the pressure on her head eased, she dared a peek out of the mask, and saw the young Sam, rubbing his hands with anxiety. He looked just as she remembered from her childhood, when he would visit during the summer. She felt like she was ten again.
“Oh, that is a weird feeling,” she said, as she pulled the mask up to sit on the top of her head.
She took another drag, as he sat down on the edge of the adjacent bed. He was looking at her with intense sadness.
“He was a real strict father,” Maggie said, continuing on from the original question. “But he loved you and Grandma a lot. Which made it all the more difficult that he didn’t show me any affection, when he showed it with his other family so freely. He had me addressing him as ‘Sir’ as long as I can remember.”
She wanted to tell him about the later years of her life with her father, but the timeline divergence wasn’t going to allow her to explore those memories.
“The service must have really changed him,” John observed. “Do you… have any good memories with him?”
Maggie thought for a time. “I guess the further back it goes, the warmer he was. I suppose there might be some good times where I can’t access the memories right now. I know he was a great brother to you.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset you with my less-than-ideal upbringing.”
“That’s okay,” John said weakly. He stood from the bed, and wandered across to the couch, leaning on the back.
“I’ve been studying the calculations,” he said, and turned his gaze down on his fidgeting hands. “They suggest you only have two more days.”
Maggie felt her chest tighten. Two days was so soon. “Have they figured out how to help me?”
Sam seemed to brighten. “Yes, they’re building it right now,” he said, sheer excitement seeming to override his anxious demeanour.
“The equations they’ve all figured out, and that computer in the future giving the time travel data, I’ve never seen anything like it. You couldn’t be in better hands, I think.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment, and added: “I hope that doesn’t sound self-centred, considering one of the people working on it is the other… me. It’s just been a mind-blowing week, and…”
Maggie smiled at the enthusiasm.
“That computer system built into your car; I’ve been learning so much about the future of technology, and AI. Just the CPU alone is incredible, at least to me.” He was gesturing wildly. “And that timer. God, it’s so much to process, but I just want to know everything.”
“Take it easy,” Maggie said, smiling at the exuberant mid-twenties guy, who reminded her, presently, of Quinn. “So you really think they’re gonna do it all in time? Separate me, then get everyone back to their rightful time and world?”
“Absolutely,” John said, but it wasn’t said in as certain a way as Maggie would have liked.
Quinn wiped his brow, as he finished tightening the final cap nut on the machine. They didn’t have a name for this device, it was just ‘The Machine.’ It wasn’t like it would have much function once it was used, though he figured it might be a good idea to store it in case something like this ever happened again. But, what were the odds of that?
He surveyed their collective effort. The bulk of it was a seven foot long chamber, four feet in height, and divided in two, and two feet wide, capped by a door at one end, and a number of coils and circuit boards at the other.
The idea was to open a wormhole at the top of the chamber into the same dimension, with the exit displaced two feet down, and using the Quantum Leap Accelerator tech provided by Sam and Ziggy to leap one of the Maggies through, pulling her into the bottom half of the chamber. That was the theory, anyway.
They’d gone over the calculations time and time again, each trying to find potential problems, and it all seemed sound. But seeing it built and real made Quinn’s stomach turn over. They were really going to shut Maggie into this thing and turn it on, weren’t they?
“Mister Mallory! How goes it?” came the markedly cheerful voice of Professor Arturo. Quinn rubbed a rag over his hands, clearing off the grease as he gave the Professor a troubled smile.
“Well, it’s built. Just gotta be tested…”
“Wonderful! I shall look forward to seeing one of these wormholes.” Arturo put an approving hand on his shoulder, and Quinn couldn’t help but feel reassured. The older Arturo had become something of a father figure during their travels, and this validation brought him right back; especially knowing how hard it was to get a kind word out of the Professor at all.
As Arturo assessed the machine, a grin crept onto his face. His eyes twinkled as he walked around it.
“This project has renewed my faith in the future of our species,” he quipped. “I can’t say I’ve felt quite this giddy since I was a boy.”
Quinn watched him studying each bolt, each panel, each control.
“Marvellous,” he murmured, and rubbed his hands together. “May I do the honours?”
Quinn held up a finger. “Hang on, before you fire it up…”
He crossed to a table, and grabbed his trusty spacetime distortion detector. He turned it on, and held up the wand. It hummed faintly.
“Okay, give it some juice.”
Arturo moved to the main controls, and checked the computer panel built in, before tapping on the keyboard.
“I’ll try it at ten per cent initially,” he said, before pulling the main lever.
The machine hummed with electricity, and a weak undulating blue light filled the chamber. Immediately, the detector began to click, and Quinn brought the wand close. The clicks were strong, stable, and evenly paced.
“Okay, great,” Quinn said. “Try fifty per cent power.”
The Professor typed at the computer, and the light grew, along with the pace of the clicks on the detector.
“Okay, looking good,” Quinn said, feeling much better about his odds of saving both Maggies now. “Alright, we’ll get everyone in the room to see the hundred per cent test. I’m sure Sam’ll want to be here for that.”
Arturo powered down the device.
“Before you do…” he said, pursing his lips. “My initial purpose for coming in here was to have a short tête-à-tête with you.”
Quinn gave a knowing nod. “Let me guess: you want to talk about the future, and how to stop things from messing up because you know too much.” He had been planning on making time for this, too.
“Most astute, Mister Mallory.”
“That is really the big question mark in all this,” Quinn admitted. “And I know that if we use Sam – uh, Doctor Beckett – as an example, we know that some things can be changed, but it’s never as outrageous as the last couple of weeks have been. There’s going to have to be a balance between making sure the timeline brings me back to this moment, and helping my friends and family.”
“Yes, you’ve saddled me with quite a burden,” Arturo mused. “If you have the time in the next few days, perhaps you might like to write me a list of notes. Things that must happen in the future, unavoidable things, and things I am able to alter. If that cockamamie computer in the future I’ve been hearing about can assist with that, it would be all the better.”
“I’ll talk to Sam,” Quinn said, rubbing his chin.
Yes, he could certainly write up notes. As long as they didn’t get into the wrong hands. One thing he knew for sure, however, was that Professor Maximillian Arturo would never be the same, after all of this.
“Thank you, my boy,” Arturo said with a jovial smile, and turned away. “I’ll fetch our colleagues.”
Quinn, realising the other thing he wanted to talk about, grabbed his arm. “Wait…”
Arturo looked back at his uneasy face.
“About your son…”
Arturo’s cheerful expression faded. “What happens to him?”
“I don’t know; that’s the problem,” Quinn said. “All I know is that you had one, and he wasn’t in your life any longer when I knew you. I just don’t want you to… push him away, you know? If you don’t have to.”
Quinn kicked the floor with his shoe.
“I don’t know what happened between the two of you: you never talked about it. In fact, you never even told me his name. I don’t know if I can fix anything just by telling you this, but I thought you should know.”
Arturo’s eyes were unfocused, as he considered Quinn’s words. Quinn was glad to see him taking it seriously, knowing it seemed to be a touchy subject.
“I see. Very well. I shall think more on this later.” He headed for the door, considerably less spirited than he had been.
Quinn figured that was as much as he could ask for. Now that he knew the potential future, it was up to him. A lot would be up to him, wouldn’t it?
* * *
“Hey Maggie, it’s time.”
Rembrandt gave her a big smile as Maggie pulled the eye mask up. She squinted in the light, and Remy took her hand, helping her up. She was so pale, and there were dark rings around her eyes. He wondered what kind of funky stuff was happening in her body at that moment.
“I’m so nervous, I feel like I might throw up,” she remarked, to Rembrandt’s disdain.
“Well, try to avoid my shoes, if you don’t mind,” he said, trying to keep the mood light. She responded with a ghost of a smile.
He escorted her to the door, where the two Sams were waiting to play paramedic. They each took an arm over their even-height shoulders, and walked her down the hall.
As the taxi drove them to the university, in the silence of the early morning hours, Maggie rested her head on her uncle’s chest, looking sicker by the minute. Rembrandt wondered if it was the nerves, or whatever crazy thing was going on inside.
“How you doing there, Maggie?” he asked, voice shaking.
“I’m conscious,” she muttered. “That’s about all I’ve got going for me right now.”
Sam gently brushed hair off her face.
“We’re almost there,” he said. “You’re gonna be just fine, I promise. Don’t you go giving up, okay? Either one of you, in there.”
John watched with wide, terrified eyes, and Rembrandt wondered how much experience he had with patients at this point. He noticed he was keeping a firm grip on her hand, and he wondered if it was for her comfort, or his.
Quinn met them at the rear of the sciences building, with a stretcher. Maggie was loaded onto it, and the Sams carried her the rest of the way. Rembrandt followed them, after paying the fare, and finally witnessed the machine that they’d all been talking about.
He gave a low whistle at the thing, though he had no idea what he was looking at. The first clue came when they opened one end and slid Maggie in like she was a pizza going in an oven.
He glanced at Colin, who was standing by, holding the detector thing Quinn had built.
“She safe in there, Farm Boy?”
Colin shrugged. “Just as safe as she is outside it, at this point.”
Rembrandt didn’t find that very comforting.
Quinn and the Professor were standing by the controls, looking grave, and Michael Mallory was peering into the ‘oven’ at Maggie, who had both hands clutched around her temples and eyes, and wore a tight grimace.
Rembrandt approached the other side.
“Hang in there, Maggie!” He called out.
“Sorry man, I don’t think she can hear,” Quinn said, as he typed on a keyboard.
There was a moment of eerie calm, as everyone present, save for Maggie, exchanged looks in silence.
“We gonna do this?” Quinn asked, his eyes on Sam, whose attention was on another part of the room.
“Hang on, Al’s getting the final go-ahead from Ziggy,” he said.
After a few seconds, he turned to Quinn. “Go for it.”
Quinn tapped a command into the computer, and nodded to the Professor, who pulled the lever.
Inside the ‘oven,’ Maggie was drowned out by a bright blue, which lit up the room. Everyone looked away from the light, and Rembrandt’s eyes moved back to Quinn, who was concentrating on the computer screen intensely.
Quinn gestured to the Professor, and he brought the lever back to its ‘off’ position.
As the light subsided, Rembrandt could see two figures, one where there had just been an empty space before.
“It worked…” came the weak voice of John, as Sam rushed over to the machine, and pulled open the door.
He pulled out the Maggie on the top first, onto a waiting bed that had been adjusted to the correct height. She was unconscious, and he took her pulse.
John brought a lower bed to retrieve the second Maggie, and started by throwing a blanket in over her. That’s when Rembrandt realised that the Maggie on the bottom level was entirely unclothed. Now that he saw it, it seemed entirely obvious that there was only one set of clothes on her, but he hadn’t thought of it up to this point.
With both Maggies on beds, it was obvious to everyone that both were out for the count. But was that good or bad? Rembrandt looked at the faces around him in an effort to find a clue.
Sam, ever the professional doctor, was fussing over the pair, checking vital signs. His remarkably neutral expression could only be described as ‘concentrating hard.’
John, on the other hand, looked stressed, and was taking cues from Sam for what to do.
Colin looked about as bewildered as Rembrandt felt, but he approached each Maggie and ran the wand of the detector over them. At each Maggie’s feet, there was no response, but as he reached their heads, it was clicking like mad.
Rembrandt turned his attention to Quinn, who was rushing over after seeing this response from the detector.
“Why is it doing that?!”
Sam looked up at him. “Watch this…”
He opened one Maggie’s right eye, and John did the same on the other Maggie.
Sam shined a light in her eye, and the pupil shrunk in response. Then he nodded towards the other Maggie, whose pupil had become similarly small.
“Same response, as if she had the light shone in her eye, too…” John said shakily.
“What does that mean?” Rembrandt asked.
“Strong distortion was detected in the region of the brain,” Quinn murmured, looking deep in thought.
“We’ll need to run some more tests, but you’re on to something; I believe it’s neurological,” Sam said. “I think their brains might still be… entangled, somehow. Behaving as one.”
“Can we fix it?” Rembrandt’s heart was pounding.
Sam looked at him, brow deeply furrowed. “I don’t know. At 1978 levels of neuroscience technology… I just don’t know.”
What… what just happened?
There had been a flash of blue, that much Maggie remembered. But she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she had been doing before that. But now, she seemed to be emerging from the Ladies Room of a diner, with slightly dripping hands.
As the door behind her swung shut, she wiped her hands on her… jeans. Jeans and a blouse with blue floral embroidery over the chest. She knew these clothes.
When was I wearing this outfit before?
A brief image of the inside of a jail cell flashed in her mind, but she couldn’t connect it to anything.
She looked across the vacant diner, and saw another figure, standing just inside the entrance, illuminated from behind by sunlight. Another woman, in a law enforcement uniform.
“Oh, boy…” said Sheriff Maggie as the two locked eyes.
A flood of information entered Maggie’s head as she recognised her double. The slide. The leap. The fusion. The god-awful headache. And the machine.
Uncle Sam and Quinn were trying to…
She ran across the otherwise empty room, towards Sheriff Maggie, whose hands grappled for a wall as she threatened to fall over in her confusion.
“Did they separate us?” Maggie asked, frantic. She gingerly raised a hand and touched her double on the shoulder, trying to decide if she was real.
“I don’t know, we seem pretty separate to me,” Sheriff Maggie said, as she narrowed her eyes. “But where the hell are we?”
Maggie turned around, taking in the environment. “It just looks like some diner, but I don’t know how we could have got here. It might not be… reality. Maybe it’s another dream?”
“Maybe they made a mistake, and we… leaped.”
They stared at one another for a moment, letting the implications dawn on them.
* * *
Sam stared daggers at Al as he smacked the side of his handlink for the seventh time.
“What’s taking so long?” Sam demanded. He stole a glance at his younger double, who seemed to be in a state of shock.
He’s actually got a reason to freeze under pressure, unlike Ziggy.
Al said something in Italian that must have been a curse.
“Sorry, Sam. Ziggy’s taking her sweet damn time correcting for the parallel universe’s minuscule difference in… temporary…”
He squinted at the handlink. “Temporal… constants.”
Sam rubbed his forehead. “This wasn’t meant to happen. All of our checking, and double checking, and triple checking, and it still went wrong.”
Al gave him a sympathetic look. “I know, Sam, but even Ziggy can’t account for every variable there could be. That’s why the retrieval program never worked.”
“That never worked because…” Sam trailed off, looking downward, as he thought of the reasons why he thought it never worked.
Because it wasn’t meant to.
Because the higher power that was doing all this, whether Al the Bartender, or something else, didn’t want him to go home. Because he chose to keep going.
The handlink squawked, and Al studied the readouts.
“Oh, come on Ziggy, you bucket of bolts!” he cried in sheer frustration. “She says there ‘should have been’ a clean separation, and has zero theories on why they still seem to be sharing a mind. Cazzo!”
Sam felt his tense shoulders sag in defeat.
Even Ziggy can’t account for every variable. The words echoed through his mind.
The only other variable he could think of was, once again, fate. Was there anything they could do now, or was it all up to the big guy upstairs? Or maybe, it was up to the Maggies themselves.
He turned to John, who was still staring into space. “Let’s keep them comfortable…” he said.
He would keep thinking.
* * *
“If we leaped, why are we in our regular clothes?” Maggie said, gesturing to Sheriff Maggie’s uniform. “Shouldn’t we be in some random peoples’ clothes?”
Sheriff Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know how it’s meant to work. Should we find a mirror, or-?”
Behind the diner’s counter, a door creaked open. Both Maggies turned their attention to it, and watched a man emerge: tall, slim, and all too familiar.
“Colin?”
This version of Colin wore an apron around his waist, and a hair net on his head. He looked preoccupied, but glanced up at the mention of his name. He looked at the two Maggies without recognition.
“Whoa,” he said as he looked between the identical Maggies. “I’m seeing double. Can I help you ladies?”
Maggie approached the counter, cautious. It wasn’t like she hadn’t met a double of Colin before, but this whole situation was just too surreal.
She felt Sheriff Maggie following closely behind her, and as she leaned on the counter, her ‘twin’ sat on a stool. She checked her pockets for money, and found a twenty dollar bill.
Might as well go with it, right?
“Uh, sure. Can I get a black coffee, please,” she said, and looked over at Sheriff Maggie, waving the money. “Want anything?”
Sheriff Maggie raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Make it two,” she mumbled.
Colin nodded, and grabbed a coffee pot from the warmer, effortlessly pouring the cups of coffee. Not that it was hard to pour coffee into a cup, but Maggie observed a kind of familiarity with the placement of everything behind the counter that suggested he’d worked here for some time. He presented the cups in front of both Maggies.
“So… twins, huh?” he commented, before closing his eyes with a cringe. “Wow, that sounded really dumb, didn’t it? Of course you’re twins, you look exactly the same. And I bet people always make stupid remarks like that to you.”
His cheeks were pink, and Maggie chuckled at this Colin, whose speech patterns were quite a lot different to the one she knew. “Sure, I guess,” she lied.
Maggie felt the need to probe more out of this Colin, if only to help her gauge what the hell was happening to her.
This was a distinct Colin double to the one she’d encountered on the world where he was the son of a TV exec, and acted absolutely nothing like ‘Farm Boy’ Colin. This one was more of a regular guy, but he did remind her in some ways of the Colin she knew.
“So, how did you know my name?” he asked, as he started refilling the coffee maker.
Maggie’s mind raced to find an excuse that wouldn’t be off-putting, but Sheriff Maggie seemed already prepared to answer. She placed her coffee cup in its saucer, and leaned forward.
“Our friend told us you worked here. Name’s Quinn.”
Maggie shot her double a glare, and Sheriff Maggie just shrugged.
“You knew my brother?” Colin said, surprised.
Past tense…
“Knew?” Maggie asked. “What happened to him?”
Colin shut the top of the coffee machine, and turned to them. He looked troubled.
“Quinn disappeared a few months ago.” His eyes moved to his hands, as he grabbed a rag and started wiping the counter. “Didn’t you hear?”
This conversation wasn’t answering Maggie’s questions, but raising further ones. Still, now she was invested.
“He did? Do you know anything about what could have happened?”
Colin’s face fell. “Yeah, I know what happened. But you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He focused his attention on his cleaning.
“Try me,” Maggie pressed.
Colin shook his head. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“My name’s Maggie. Maggie Beckett. And this is my… sister… Sherri.”
Sheriff Maggie shot her a dirty look, and Maggie returned it with a surreptitious wink.
“Beckett, huh?” Colin looked up at her. “Any relation to Doctor Beckett at Cal U?”
Maggie nearly choked on her coffee.
“Yeah, he’s our uncle,” Sheriff Maggie said, and Maggie wished she wouldn’t keep bluffing on assumptions. Was it some Sheriff interrogation thing she was doing, or what?
“Oh, is that how you met Quinn?” Colin said. “Doctor B taught both of us, but I never got quite as chummy with him as Quinn did.”
This was an interesting twist. Maggie had to wonder what would have caused this universe’s Uncle Sam to start teaching at Quinn’s university; assuming this was a parallel universe, rather than some kind of dream, or pocket dimension.
What he said next surprised her even more.
“He saved my Dad from being hit by a car when I was a kid. He was Quinn’s hero.” Colin smiled as he recalled.
Well, that definitely sounded like something he’d do, assuming he’d had such foreknowledge. Maggie felt her stomach filling with butterflies as she thought about it.
“Did Professor Arturo teach you, too?” Sheriff Maggie probed.
“Yeah, he taught Quinn advanced physics.” Colin said, and a faraway look moved over his face. “He and Quinn both…”
“Jumped into the wormhole?” Sheriff Maggie finished. Colin’s eyes went wide as they focused on her.
Stop talking!
“How did you…” Colin’s voice shook.
Sheriff Maggie sipped her coffee, maintaining uncomfortable eye contact with Colin. Now it was Maggie’s turn to think fast.
“Quinn mentioned something about wormholes to us the last time we saw him. Sherri here was making a leap of logic.”
Colin threw his rag to the sink, and sighed. “Well, good guess.”
“You didn’t go with?” Sheriff Maggie continued.
Colin leaned against the frame of the door he’d come from, folding his arms. “No, I was terrified. And can you blame me? He never came back. None of them did.”
Colin had tears glistening in his eyes now.
“I’d like to think they’re still out there, somewhere.”
Maggie smiled at him. “They are, I promise.”
She looked at Sheriff Maggie, who was silently sipping her coffee, looking pensive. Then she looked back at Colin, whose eyes were studying her, questioning.
Maggie didn’t know why, but she had a gut feeling there was something she had to do here. Maybe this was some kind of leap, after all.
“Have you talked to my uncle about what happened?”
Colin shook his head. “He went on leave after it happened. I haven’t seen him at all.”
Sheriff Maggie slid her empty cup and saucer toward him. “He’s the only one who’ll be able to help you find Quinn.”
As Colin opened his mouth to respond, the door of the diner jingled, and an older woman, aged somewhere in her forties, walked in. A woman whose features were unmistakable. Maggie was rendered speechless as the woman gave the three of them a broad smile.
“Ah, girls, I was hoping you’d be here,” she said, patting the Maggies on the shoulders in an all-too-familiar fashion. She leaned over to whisper in Sheriff Maggie’s ear, who went ghostly white as she conveyed whatever the message was.
Okay, surely this has to be a dream, now.
The woman looked up at Colin with a smile. “Can I get a black coffee?”
The woman, who looked just like an older version of Maggie, now approached her, and leaned to whisper in her ear.
“Just pretend I’m your Mom,” was all she said.
There was an awkward, deafening silence in the diner, broken only by the clink of the older Maggie’s coffee cup on her saucer as she placed it down.
Colin was trying to act busy, but kept glancing at the woman’s face, while Sheriff Maggie seemed to be deep in troubled thought. Maggie was similarly speechless; she really wanted to say something, but she just didn’t know what. What was the appropriate thing to say in a situation as ridiculous as this?
This is a dream. This is a dream. This is—
Finally, the older woman broke the silence.
“So, Sherri…”
She knows the name I just made up before she arrived…? Maggie tried to mask her reaction, and by the looks of Sheriff Maggie, so did she.
“That uniform really doesn’t suit you, you know?” The older Maggie leaned in, and fiddled with the Sheriff’s star on her chest.
‘Sherri’ pulled away. “I’m aware, Mom,” she deadpanned, with a heavy sardonic quality to the last word.
Maggie grasped a train of thought to vocalise.
“We were… just looking to get Colin here in touch with our uncle,” she said to her faux-mother. “Would you know anything about his whereabouts?”
There had to have been a reason this woman had appeared in this way, and she could only guess it was in some kind of relation to the conversation at hand when she came in.
The older Maggie turned to her, flashing her a smile. “Yes, I would.”
She looked at Colin. “Would you have a pen and paper? I can write his number for you.”
Colin straightened from the counter he was wiping down, and his face was lit up. “Really?”
He grabbed the notepad and pen stuffed into his apron, and handed them to the woman.
“Thanks… this means a lot,” he said. Maggie smiled as she watched him rocking on his feet with excitement. She didn’t know what kind of weird reality this was, but she felt that this version of Colin deserved a break.
As the older version of her handed him the note, she said, “I think he’ll be expecting your call.”
He looked at her with a tilted head for a moment, before scurrying away to the back room with the slip of paper.
With Colin gone for the moment, Maggie whipped her head around to the older woman.
“What’s going on here?” she demanded.
Older Maggie stood from her stool, stepping back from the counter. She held up her hands defensively.
“Sorry to intrude on your together time,” she said. “But I’m here to help the two of you.”
“Who are you?” Maggie asked weakly, hoping she’d elaborate further than what Maggie had already deduced.
“I’m a possibility,” Older Maggie replied. She pointed towards the door, where Colin’s back could be seen as he spoke on the phone. “So is he.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Sheriff Maggie asked.
Older Maggie sighed. “It means you’re all at a crossroads, and there are decisions you need to make right now. But first and foremost…”
She stepped towards Sheriff Maggie, and took one of her hands, squeezing it between both of hers. “You need to let go of… her.”
As she said the last word, her head turned and she locked eyes with Maggie.
Sheriff Maggie wrenched her hand away. “What do you mean ‘let go’ of her? I don’t even like her.”
She doesn’t like me?
Older Maggie shook her head.
“You two currently have a sort of mental connection right now, preventing you from being properly separated.”
“You mean this is a dream?” Maggie asked.
I knew it!
The older Maggie gave a noncommital tilt of her head. “Yes and no. The procedure kind of put your mind into a limbo state in spacetime. It fed on temporal flux points close to you when the accelerator activated, and created this construct that exists in your shared consciousness…”
She chuckled at the bewildered faces staring back at her. “Okay, let’s call it a dream. But that’s not entirely adequate.”
“And what does this have to do with me?” Sheriff Maggie said, her flat voice cutting through the friendly tone of the older Maggie.
“You’re the reason the procedure hasn’t completed,” Older Maggie explained. “You don’t want to leave the memories behind, do you? Of the life you never got to live.”
“Shut up,” Sheriff Maggie said, rising from her seat.
Maggie could tell she’d hit a nerve.
Older Maggie pressed on: “You feel like your life never started, and you’re jealous of all her adventures. You don’t want to face the reality of who you really are.”
“Stop…” Sheriff Maggie pleaded.
Maggie didn’t even know what to say. She thought about all the internal conflict as they shared a body, the envy that flared up at memories of her life, in spite of all its tragic, devastating events.
“My world is gone…” she whispered, and she felt Sheriff Maggie’s eyes flick to her. “Everything I had is gone, and you’re jealous of that?”
She set her jaw, and made eye contact with Sheriff Maggie. “Where do you get off?”
Maggie balled her fists, and a second later, Sheriff Maggie was keeled over the counter, clutching her jaw in pain.
“Stop!” the older Maggie grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back, and Maggie glared at her.
“This won’t help,” the older Maggie said, pleading with her eyes. “Just let me talk to her. Trust me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I used to be her,” she said, lowering her eyes.
Maggie fell into silence, and stepped back, as the older Maggie – the older Sheriff Maggie, apparently – moved to assist her younger self.
“Listen to me,” she said, helping the punch-drunk Sheriff to a seated position on the stool. “It’s not too late to make your life just how you want it. You’re not Sheriff Maggie. This stupid badge isn’t who you are, and you can forge whatever new path you want, okay?”
“I can’t do anything right,” lamented Sheriff Maggie, as she rubbed her mouth.
Her future self wrapped her in a comforting embrace, and rocked her.
“You can, and you will. Believe me. You’re going to do amazing things. Stuff that will make you totally forget about your double’s accomplishments.”
She glanced at Maggie. “No offense.”
Maggie gave a weak smile.
Older Maggie pulled away from the hug, and assessed Sheriff Maggie’s red and swelling jaw.
“Don’t worry about that. Your physical body is undamaged,” she said with a wink, before turning towards Maggie.
“You should go,” Older Maggie said, gesturing towards the exit. “Everyone’s waiting.”
Maggie nodded, bewildered, and walked to the doors, before turning around to see Sheriff Maggie looking at her with moist eyes, and the older Maggie filling with a shimmering blue light, and vanishing.
Dream. It’s a dream. Wasn’t it?
She shook her head, and left the diner, into the blinding sun.
She blinked rapidly as her eyes filled with light, and she brought her hands to her eyes to shield them, only to knock a small flashlight from the hands of Uncle Sam, who cried out in surprise.
She was lying on a bed, her body covered in a blanket.
“Oh… oh!” she scrambled to a sitting position, as Sam stepped backwards, a smile forming on his face.
“You’re okay!”
He pulled her into a tight hug.
What a weird dream… she thought, feeling her grasp on what she was just doing slipping away from her memory.
She looked around her, and saw her double stirring from her own apparent sleep, with a very relieved younger Sam greeting her with a warm smile.
“Welcome back…” John said. “Now, uh… which of you is which?”
Sam pumped air into the cuff on Maggie’s upper left arm, as she yawned. She had admitted to being the Maggie who’d chained him up in a shed not so long ago, and he thought owning up to it must have taken some level of courage.
But right now, that wasn’t important. He got his niece back.
He came through again, Sam thought. Al the Bartender, or whoever, had finished what the combined brain power of all those here couldn’t.
“How many more tests?” she asked with a frown. Sam took a moment to read the analog gauge attached to the cuff before answering.
“That’s it. You’re good to go,” he said, confirming that her blood pressure was in the normal range. He pulled off the cuff and stepped away from the bed, allowing her to rise to her feet.
“Thanks.” She smiled at him.
“So, you feel like yourself, right?” he asked. “Any residual memories or feelings from the other you?”
Sam knew, from unfortunate experience, that one of the potential leap effects could involve psycho-synergy, but in this special case, it had been entirely complete, with both minds not only combined, but fully synchronised. While God or Time or Fate’s influence clearly untangled the minds, Sam wasn’t sure to what extent that might be.
Maggie thought for a moment.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t think so, but I feel different. Lighter.”
Sam felt her hand gingerly grasp his.
“I want to stay here,” she said.
Sam looked into her serious, sad eyes, and he couldn’t say he didn’t think this might be a possibility. After all, she willingly chose to leave her old life for the unknown.
Sam could hardly argue against that without being a hypocrite.
“Here, as in this world, or here as in 1978?” he asked.
“Both,” she said. “I think this is where I’m supposed to be. Helping him.”
She gazed across the room, towards the bed where John was taking care of the other Maggie.
Sam looked at the young double as he listened to Slider Maggie’s heartbeat through his stethoscope, and wondered what she could mean. He re-established eye contact with Maggie, and looked at her, puzzled. She rubbed her forehead as she formed her next words.
“I think I… met my future self,” she said, hesitant. “I know I was in a coma, but it felt like more than a dream. I think I have things I need to do here. In the coming years.”
Sam wondered just what she had seen during her time unconscious; what experiences had changed her in this way. But he knew better than to deny something profound.
Sam leaned towards her, giving her a knowing smile. “Whatever experience you had, trust in that.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “Thanks, Uncle Sam.”
Sam reciprocated the hug, and they both knew it was one of the last ones they’d have together.
* * *
The sun was already beginning to rise when the group arrived back at the Dominion Hotel, with yet one more body to fit into the room. With only Rembrandt earning any cash, money was spread far too thin to get a second suite, so it was getting somewhat intimate.
Quinn had retreated to the stairwell, in an effort to have a breather, and was deep in thought when the sound of the door echoed off the concrete.
“I thought you would want to spend some time with Maggie,” Colin said, sitting on the step beside him.
“Nothing I’d like more,” he replied truthfully, “but there’s so much on my mind right now, I just needed a moment to think.”
“I understand,” Colin said as he cradled his chin over his high knees.
“I’ve got all these notes I have to write for the Professor, so that our timeline doesn’t get screwy. And I still have to figure out how to get us all back to our time.”
He sighed deeply. “And I want to make sure Maggie’s doing okay after all this.”
He turned to his brother. “But also… I know you’ve had a lot on your mind, too. Talk to me.”
Colin gave him a weak smile, and finally asked the question Quinn had been expecting from him for some time now.
“Do you think I should get our father to retrieve me as a child?”
Quinn threw his arm over his brother’s shoulder. “What I think doesn’t matter, bro.”
“But it does,” Colin said, meeting his eye. “Your opinion is more important than anyone’s. Because… maybe he could take me to grow up with you.”
Quinn felt a fluttering in his stomach. All this time, he was thinking about Colin growing up with their birth parents, but it seemed Colin was on an entirely different page.
“That would change things a lot…” he said anxiously.
“I know, and that’s what I’ve been wrestling with all this time,” he explained. “But I just want to know your opinion, Quinn.”
Quinn’s mind raced, and it took him some time to form an answer.
“With all that’s happened lately, all this talk of higher powers…” he began, feeling the butterflies in his stomach raging, “and, uh, certainly against my better judgement…”
He gave his brother a mischievous smile.
“I say go for it.”
* * *
As afternoon arrived, the gaggle of displaced travellers gathered in the lecture hall, with Professor Arturo standing at the front, as if he was about to give a lecture.
John sat, ever the student, at a half-desk, pen poised over a notepad, and a flamboyantly-dressed hologram sat casually in the front row, smoking.
How can I go back to my normal life after all this?
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Arturo’s voice boomed. “Well done on last night’s accomplishments, but there remains the matter of your time displacement. Have we any ideas?”
John grinned. He’d been thinking about this for days.
He saw Sam about to speak, and pre-empted him: “I think it may be a matter of recreating the temporal conditions of the vortex by sending an Accelerator charge through it with my double as the focal point.”
He blushed as Sam grinned at him, approving.
“We’ll need an anchor to 1999 to make sure we don’t end up in a random year of my lifetime,” Sam added.
“What kind of anchor?” Quinn asked.
After a moment of pensive silence, the little machine that Al carried – which John had learned was called a ‘handlink’ – made a chirping and whirring sound. Al studied the device for a moment, as the two Sams looked on in anticipation.
“Well, how ’bout that,” Al said, “Ziggy’s finally come through for us.”
He stood from his seat and turned to Sam. “She says that she can provide a lock-on point in 1999 using data from your last leap, and draw the wormhole to it using the retrieval algorithms. But we have to get the timing exactly right.”
John and Sam exchanged an excited look, and there was a moment of tension as they had a nonverbal argument with their eyes, deciding which of them would announce the news to everyone else.
But, John conceded, Ziggy was not his computer, and Al was not his buddy. So, he bowed to Sam, who stood and relayed the message, to everyone’s relief.
John scanned the people in the room, none of whom he’d met until so very recently. A man who was apparently a former member of a singing group that had a hit a few years back, but advanced in age. Two brothers from the future and their father, from a parallel universe. Two identical women who were genetically his own nieces, from universes where his brother was alive. A cantankerous cosmology Professor, who’d coped with this bizarre situation remarkably well, considering he’d just been approached out of the blue by time travellers.
And then, there was the other him; from another universe and near twenty-five years in the future. Someone who was everything he wanted to be, and yet… he didn’t want to get trapped in time.
I’ve got a head start, though. I know all the major calculations now. What if…
He was pulled out of his thoughts by Michael Mallory clearing his throat.
“This all sounds terrific, but I still need to return to my home. ”
“Yes, that’s been a sticky wicket,” Arturo said, “and something I’ve been mulling over.”
He looked pointedly at Quinn. “Mister Mallory, I daresay you may need to make good on my initial request after all.”
Quinn folded his arms. “Well, I am trusting you with literally every other secret. But you have to promise you’ll keep it under wraps.”
“Of course. Besides, I will not be able to operate it without the timer, which I won’t have.”
“What request?” Michael asked, looking back and forth at the two.
“If you remain behind after the time-displaced individuals leave,” Arturo told Michael, “We can construct a sliding device as per your son’s schematics, which should allow you to return home.”
Michael nodded. “More delays… but, that’s acceptable.”
John shot to his feet. “Let me help!”
For so long, he’d been floating along, learning all there was to know about different topics, collecting degree after degree, but never quite knowing where he would wash up. But now, it felt like he was exactly where he needed to be.
Arturo’s eyes lit up, and he clasped his hands together excitedly.
“My boy, if your older version is any indication, you shall be a welcome addition to the team.”
“One hour, people!”
Quinn placed down the timer as he did a final check on the machine, which had been altered to transmit a charge of Accelerator energy in a focused beam, rather than contain it within the chamber like it had done with Maggie.
Everyone was gathered in the lab, and there was a palpable nervous tension in the air.
Quinn reached into a backpack he’d brought with him, and pulled out a thick notebook. This thing had been keeping him awake all hours of the night, and he was glad to be done with it.
“Professor…” he waved it in the air, catching Arturo’s attention, who gave a smile of recognition.
“Ah, I was wondering when you’d finish those notes,” he said, approaching Quinn.
“This should have everything you need,” he said. “Future events, schematics, equations, coordinates to important worlds – that I had available, anyway. You’ve already got the timer code on hard disk, which will let you replicate the functionality of mine. But there’s also a few personal things in here that I want you to take on board.”
Arturo nodded, as he flipped through the pages, full to the brim with writing.
“There’s information about the invasion I told you about,” he continued. “And you’re actually going to meet the person who allowed it to happen. Only, I don’t think you’re going to be able to prevent it, even with the knowledge I’ve put in here.”
Arturo looked up at him grimly. “I see.”
Quinn placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I want you to know that if you can’t make any of the changes I’ve requested, I won’t hold it against you. I know you’ll do everything you can, and that’s all I can ask for.”
Arturo looked as though he was burdened by the weight of the world, and Quinn felt absolutely miserable about doing this to him. The least he could do was absolve him of any failures that might happen.
“Oh… also…” Quinn flipped to the back of the notebook. “Here are a few companies you may want to buy shares in… might make your life a little easier.”
Arturo’s gaze shifted back down to the pages.
“Hmm… Micro-Soft? The computer company?” he stroked his chin. “Thank you, Mister Mallory.”
He closed the book. “I shall guard this compendium with my very life.”
Quinn smiled, knowing that he was telling the truth, and turned his attention to his father, who was finishing up a conversation with Colin.
“Dad…”
Michael met his eye, and stepped towards him, looking spooked.
“Are you aware of what Colin just requested of me?” he asked, a little pale in the face. Quinn nodded.
“Yes, and I’m on board,” he said, and changed the subject, not wanting to complicate his feelings with logic.
“Listen, I want you to know you’re our next stop in our journey. As soon as we get back to 1999, we’re coming to find you.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Michael replied, with a wry grimace. “In, uh… twenty-one years time…”
“Just a couple decades,” Quinn said, shrugging as nonchalantly as he could. “No sweat, right?”
Michael drew Quinn into a hug. “I’m proud of you,” he whispered. As the familial embrace went on, Quinn beckoned to Colin, who joined in.
“Love ya, Dad,” Quinn said. “And thanks for sticking around to help us out.”
“Pleasure was all mine,” Michael said, as the three finally broke out of the hug.
* * *
“Twenty minutes!”
Rembrandt watched the people around him: families, friends, colleagues. Then there was him, the odd man out. The one here who didn’t choose to go on this journey in the first place, who had no expertise, and only the bonds of camaraderie and friendship that he had been forced to forge after being unwillingly swept up in Q-ball’s science experiment.
He’d thought numerous times, during his time here in the past, of contacting his young self, warning him of his ill-fated drive through a San Fran street. But, he would have never believed it anyway.
He’d even entertained the idea of staying here in the past, finding steady work as a musician, living out his life through decades he’d already experienced one time around. It was his home world, after all. He could just stay, forget about sliding.
But… it just didn’t sit right with him. Not after everything that he’d been through. What he knew was to come.
And besides, he’d said it himself: his singing voice was sometimes the only thing that could get them money to survive during slides. He couldn’t remove that element from the equation and risk the people he loved maybe dying without his help.
“How you doing, Remy?” Maggie had sidled up to him. His Maggie, he assumed.
“Me? I’m good,” he said, raising an eyebrow. People didn’t ask that of him very often. “I’m sure gonna miss my favourite decade, though. What about you, girl? Any more headaches?”
She gave him a broad shrug. “Nope! But, I can’t wait to get back to a time when the smell of cigarettes isn’t detectable in literally every room.”
She grinned. “And other miscellaneous herbal aromas.”
Rembrandt’s eyes wandered to the other Maggie, who was in what looked like deep discussion with the mid-twenties Sam Beckett.
“Any idea why she’s stickin’ around here?”
Maggie pursed her lips, appearing to be struggling to recall something. “I’m not sure. But she seems at peace about it.”
“A little different from the Maggie that cuffed me into her car two weeks ago,” Rembrandt mused. “What happened in that coma, anyway?”
Maggie tilted her head. “I think I had a dream where Colin served me coffee? That’s all I can remember.”
Rembrandt gave her a funny look. “Musta been good coffee,” was all he could think to say in response.
Across the room, Sam was inspecting the machine, writing notes on a clipboard. But now he put it down, as he met Rembrandt’s eye. He strolled over, looking amiable.
“Cryin’ Man, it’s been a pleasure,” he said, extending a hand. Rembrandt shook vigorously.
“Feeling’s mutual, my man,” he said. “Never seen a white man play funk guitar so well.”
Sam smiled. “You take care of yourself,” he said.
“You too,” Remy replied, “and I mean it. Don’t wear yourself out. You work way too hard, man.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, I guess I do. Well, I’ll just have to see if my, uh, request for leave is granted.”
Rembrandt didn’t know what he meant by that.
* * *
“Three minutes, everyone! In position!” Quinn’s call brought everyone out of their conversations, and Sam watched the room turn from irreverent goodbyes to determined concentration.
He turned to Al, who was standing nervously at the side of the machine, looking down at the handlink.
“Ziggy’s ready, right? No more delays for temporal constants?”
Al slapped the side of the handlink. “Ready. I’ve just gotta push this button at the exact moment the Accelerator starts up.” He pointed to a blue area of the flashing device.
“Are you telling me I have to rely on your reflexes to make this work?” Sam said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Who taught you to quick-draw a gun, huh?”
Well, he has a point there.
“Okay, okay. Well, just stay focused.”
A hush fell over the room. Sam glanced around the lab, meeting everyone’s eye as he scanned, a silent goodbye. He didn’t know what would happen to him after this. In all probability, he’d resume leaping.
“Everyone… it’s been wild,” he said to the room. “And thank you. I guess this is goodbye.”
A solemn expression passed over the faces of everyone in the room. His niece gave him a nod through tearful eyes.
“Three, two, one,” Quinn extended the timer, and the wormhole burst open. He nodded to Arturo by the machine.
Sam watched Al’s eyes, focused intently on the lever as Arturo pulled down. Right as it hit the ‘on’ position, his finger came down on the handlink.
From the machine came a beam of blue, right into the centre of the vortex.
Sam nodded, and jumped in.
He had to assume that the others had followed, but the tunnel-like environment of the vortex faded from his vision, and he found himself hitting a hard floor, looking upward at a blue ceiling.
“Ow,” he said, rubbing his sore elbow as he climbed to his feet. He looked down at himself.
Is this my Fermi suit?
He glanced around, a feeling of shock descending on him.
“Oh my god, this is the Waiting Room…”
I’m home?
A voice came from behind. “Oh snap, the retrieval worked!”
Who is that?
Sam turned, and saw the door open, with a figure in the doorway. A tall man was looking through some kind of high tech eyeglass-looking device. He then folded it up and nodded. That’s when Sam got a good look at his face.
“Welcome back, Doc,” said the man, who then leaned out of the door and yelled: “Hey, everyone!”
“Wait…” Sam said, confused. “Colin…? How did you…”
Colin winked. “Haven’t seen you in a few years. Gonna have to catch you up.”
Why is he talking like that?
His concerns about Colin were put aside as Al appeared in the doorway, poorly hiding his excitement behind a smug facade.
“Ready for that sabbatical, Sam?”