Full Transcript (21.5K words)

3.1  ·  A Paradigm Shift

Sherri had gone through this many times, but it was always disorienting. The feeling of electricity, the loss of awareness of her surroundings, and then something completely different snapping into focus. Her mind blanking. Her stomach dropping as she tried to figure out where she was. The anxiety.

But, it was getting easier. Every time, a little more of her memory was retained, a little less feeling of seasickness.

Point One: What are you doing?

She found herself in the middle of drinking from a disposable coffee cup. She half choked on the liquid, and stifled her cough, as she pulled the cup from her lips. She looked down to see her free hand holding the handle of a baby stroller. Okay, she was pushing a stroller. She placed her cup into the holder that she spotted on the side.

Point Two: Is there anyone here with you? Are they expecting anything of you?

Besides the most likely inhabitant of the stroller, which she couldn’t see due to the shade, she glanced around herself to see a woman just beside her. She was looking at Sherri, amused.

She couldn’t quite pick it, but the woman, who was quite young, with short auburn hair and brown eyes, seemed vaguely familiar to her.

“You alright?” asked the woman.

Sherri breathed out. “Yeah, just went down the wrong pipe,” she said, and pulled back the shade of the stroller.

Inside, a toddler slept. A boy, somewhere between two and three years old, she guessed.

This could be trouble.

The last thing she needed was the accusing eyes of a toddler that saw an imposter instead of his Mommy. She pulled the shade forward again.

Point Three: What are your surroundings? Anything unusual? Scan for time period indicators.

She was on a sidewalk, certainly, beside a paved road. Cars passed by as normal. She studied them for a moment. The models were a mixture of eighties and nineties, with an occasional beat up seventies model. The newest car she spotted was a 1996 Ford Taurus.

Okay, so the earliest it can be is ’96.

“You coming, Steph?” The woman who’d been beside her had advanced along the pavement by a good twenty feet, and was looking back expectantly.

Point Four: Who are you?

‘Steph’ was a start. Most likely, she was called Stephanie. So she was almost certainly a woman, which she’d suspected by her feminine cut jeans and shirt, but she knew not to make any assumptions. Confirmation was key when dealing with unknown dimensions. She also noticed a wedding band on her finger.

As for the stroller, it was likely, but not definite, that this child was hers.

Married woman named Steph, with a small child. She could work with that.

She pushed the stroller, catching up to the waiting woman.

“Sorry, I was a little lost in thought.” She smiled at the woman, who gave her a quick look of concern.

“Is something wrong? You can talk to me.”

Point Five: Find your allies and draw out information.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I just had a brain fart and completely forgot what we’re doing,” Sherri said, laughing off the contrived memory lapse. “I thought I was done with the baby brain, but once in a while…”

The woman gave her a momentary squint with confusion, which shifted into worry.

“We’re just… going back to your place. And if you forgot that, it’s probably for the best that we are! I think you need to get out of the sun.”

“Yeah, I feel a little faint. Let’s go.”

She let the other woman lead her to the correct house, which was only a few blocks away. She recognised the architecture and landscape as distinctly San Francisco, which was quite the relief, since she’d spent the last twenty years living there. Less to figure out about the environment, leaving her more time to work out what she was doing here.

As they reached the stoop leading up to the Italianate terrace, Sherri’s companion, who she still hadn’t figured out the name of, helped her lift the stroller up to the door.

Sherri rummaged through her enormous handbag, looking for the front door keys, before finding them nestled under a couple of spare diapers.

She studied the bundle of keys for a moment, before picking out the most likely match to the keyhole. The door clicked open on the first attempt, and she found herself filling with pride over her good guess.

The woman with her helped her pull the stroller all the way in the door, and Sherri resumed pushing it towards what she could see was a living room, accented by a large bay window that overlooked the street.

“Better let him sleep in there a little longer,” she said, praying that the little boy wouldn’t wake up while she wasn’t alone.

She scanned the room for identifiers: photographs, bills, trinkets, and of course, mirrors.

A full-length mirror just happened to be on one wall, and she peered in, giving herself a once-over, under the guise of fixing her hair.

The woman looking back at her looked quite young; perhaps early or mid twenties. She had long blonde hair, pinned into a half ponytail. There was a light layer of makeup on her face, and her emerald eyes sparkled in the light.

It was after finally seeing her reflection that she noticed the pinboard filled with photos just inside the kitchen doorway.

Her heart caught in her chest as she recognised a man in a large portion of the photos.

We finally got a lock?

It was about damn time. This was what she’d been working up to all these years. Finally, all her training was going to pay off. Assuming they got the right one, of course…

Concealing her excitement, she casually sat down on the couch, next to the woman to whom she really needed to put a name.

“Feeling better?” asked the woman, and Sherri nodded.

“Yeah, maybe,” she said.

Point Six: Get some alone time.

She forced a yawn. “Man, I could use a nap.”

“Cory been keeping you up all hours?” the woman asked. Sherri nodded, taking note of the boy’s name. The woman smiled. “Well, that’s alright. Go, get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on the little guy.”

“Really?”

“Uh… yeah, that’s what I’m paid for, isn’t it?”

Okay, she’s either a babysitter or a nanny.

“Uh, right, right.”

She got to her feet, and strolled towards the staircase she’d spotted upon entry to this house.

She briefly looked back. “Thanks,” she said to the woman, before hurrying up the steps.

As she rounded the corner from the staircase to the upstairs hall, she jumped as a figure awaited her. The surprise turned to relief as she saw who it was.

Tall, mid-forties, brown hair with a fleck of white at the front. The small flashing device in his hand. The giddy grin on his face.

This was the man she’d first met in 1978, under the strangest of circumstances. Not quite her Uncle Sam, but an alternate version, with whom she’d forged a unique relationship over the past twenty years. The version of Doctor Sam Beckett who she called by his middle name, John.

“Sherri! Guess what?” he said, the energy of his gestures matching the excitement on his face. “I think this is it! Everything we’ve been working towards. You made it.”

Sherri passed through the hologram, and continued down the hall.

“I’ve got company downstairs, so I can’t celebrate with you right now,” she explained in a low voice, as she checked each doorway for the master bedroom. “Just tell me what I need to know.”

John drew his excited eyes away from her, and to his handlink, and he gave it a couple of taps.

“The year is… 1996. Wednesday, June twelfth, to be exact. Your name is Stephanie, you have a two-year-old son named Cory, and you’re married to our target.”

Sherri entered the bedroom, which was to the front of the house, with a continuation of the bay window from the living room below it. She closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed, as John phased through behind her.

“I already knew most of that. Who’s the babysitter? Her face is familiar to me.”

“Babysitter… let’s see…” John studied the device for another moment, which emitted a whirring sound. “Oh, you have a live-in nanny. That’s convenient. Her name is… Wade Welles.”

“How do I know that name?” Sherri wracked her brain.

“Maybe ’cause it’s in here.” He reached over to an unseen surface, and grasped an object which, upon contact with his hand, appeared to Sherri as part of the hologram. An old notebook with yellowing pages. “It’s not the same one, of course…”

Sherri tried to form a clear picture of who Wade was, but all she could recall was that she had a strong connection to the people she had met all those years ago.

“If you don’t remember, don’t worry about it,” he said, placing the book back. “The main thing is what we’re here to do. You remember that, right?”

Sherri nodded. One of many mantras she drilled into her memory for weeks, months, years, before her first leap.

“I’ve never once forgotten. It would be pretty weird if I did, right at the very moment I actually needed to remember.”

“Well, stranger things have happened,” John chuckled. “Remember that time you had to win a kickboxing tournament and you completely forgot your twelve years of training in exactly that?”

Sherri cringed. “Yeah, that was… not ideal. But my recall has increased every leap since.”

“Forgetting things must be a pain,” he said with a shrug. “I wouldn’t know.”

She glared at him, then made the decision to get back to the mission at hand.

“So anyway, you got a track on him? Where is he now?”

John’s irreverent expression gave way to intense focus, as his fingers danced over the handlink. The device was about the size of a cell phone, and had an advanced touch screen interface. A large crack was down the centre of the glass, owing to its occasional slippage from his grasp while performing dramatic gestures when he got worked up – which was often.

“He’s off-world right now, but Higgins thinks he’ll be showing up at fifteen hundred hours, give or take twenty minutes.”

Sherri glanced down at her wrist, where a watch told her it was already three. “So, now then?”

John followed her gaze. “Oh, yeah. Hold on.”

He held up the handlink, and turned in a slow circle before stopping as he faced away from the window.

“Detecting some vortex traces in this direction…” he pointed it downward, still studying the screen. “Elevation… subterranean.”

“Basement?” Sherri asked.

“Most likely,” he said, tapping on the screen. “Okay, I have a lock on the wormhole. Should be opening up here in the next three minutes.”

Sherri stood, and padded to the stairs. In an effort to avoid Wade and Cory, she tiptoed to the bottom, and made a U-turn, scanning for a door to the basement.

“Over here,” John said, having blinked himself downstairs. He pointed to a door against one of the inner walls, before phasing through the door into the room. She followed him, and shut the door behind her as she pulled on the cord dangling in front of her. The light flickered on, illuminating an extensive laboratory.

This is definitely it.

She exchanged a glance with John.

“Incoming…” he said, peering down the stairs. She waited just a few seconds, before the swirling blue vortex appeared, kicking up dust. A well-dressed man tumbled out of the gateway, and onto the floor, before standing and brushing himself off.

Sherri watched John appear beside the man. He circled him, scanning him with the handlink.

“It’s a match. This is definitely the Quinn Mallory we’ve been looking for.”

3.2  ·  Unstuck Together

“For cryin’ out loud, what were the odds of this happening again?”

The question was on all their minds as Rembrandt helped Quinn, fused with his double, to his feet, as the group prepared to slide out of Doctor Geiger’s creepy lab.

This guy had apparently somehow hijacked their wormhole, sending it to this place instead of to Quinn and Colin’s home world, while sending in one of Quinn’s alleged doubles – though he seemed nothing like Quinn at all – and caused them to merge into one very confused guy.

“Just be grateful for the upgrade on this thing,” Colin said, studying the timer in his hand. “I think the new safety protocols stabilised the wormhole enough to prevent something catastrophic when we were sliding in here…”

“How much more catastrophic can you get?” Maggie said, gesturing with her head towards Quinn, who looked like a completely different person.

What had once been a full head of loose, golden brown hair, was now mousy, and gelled to make it stick up, something their Quinn had never done, and Remy hoped would never do, as it looked pretty off. He kept thinking of a 30-year-old Bart Simpson when he looked at the guy. His blue eyes were now brown, and just every feature was off in some way. And that was to say nothing of his behaviour.

While Quinn’s speech patterns, personality and intellect shined through in short bursts, the guy they seemed stuck with the rest of the time was kind of a dope, and the mad scientist who did this had been claiming that the Q-ball they knew was destined to disappear if they didn’t act fast.

Given their experience with Maggie, Rembrandt didn’t know how this Doctor Geiger could possibly have known which one of the two was fated to remain, but then, there were a lot of things Rembrandt didn’t know. For example, where did Geiger go when Diana had shut down his magnetic field? He just sort of vanished in a way that looked pretty painful.

But, he supposed, there were other things to worry about right now than the fate of Doctor Frankenstein.

“Well, if we’re talking catastrophe, this ‘Combine’ thing was the most volatile thing I’ve ever seen,” Colin said to Maggie, gesturing around the room. “Merging a couple of Quinns would have been nothing compared to what we just averted.”

He looked down at the timer, which was in its last minute. “Anyway, we’ve gotta go.”

Maggie kept the guns in her hands pointed slightly to either side of the group of security guards and lab assistants, as she inched toward her friends. The security guard made a move to lunge, and she trained one of the pistols on him.

“Alright, let’s just continue being gentlemen here, shall we?” she said, and the large man backed away, palms open.

Rembrandt looked towards Diana Davis, the scientist who’d helped them stop Geiger’s plans… eventually, at the last minute. “We’re gonna go separate them. Are you coming?”

“You know how to do that?” she asked, incredulous.

“We ran into an almost identical situation like, two weeks ago… give or take twenty years,” Maggie explained, with a bitter laugh. “So, we just need to get back to the Earth we were on at the time, and use the machine we left there. Easy, right?”

She raised an eyebrow, giving Diana a wry smile. “Only thing is, it’s currently overrun by hostile non-human invaders who see human eyeballs as a delicacy.”

Diana’s eyes widened.

“In that case, I think I’ll take my chances with these guys,” she said, gesturing towards the security guard and scientists that were ostensibly her underlings – but importantly, they were human.

“Okay, have fun with that,” Colin said, dismissive, as he opened the wormhole. “Everyone else… let’s go. Remember, anything could be waiting for us. Keep on your toes, guys.”

The composite Quinn looked at him with a furrowed brow. “I don’t know why, but you sound really weird to me right now,” he said, as Rembrandt walked him, arm over shoulder, to the vortex.

“Oh yeah? Well, you look really weird,” Colin countered, before diving into the rippling portal.

*          *          *

The road was dusty and deserted as the sliders stumbled out of the vortex. Rembrandt had to admit that the landings were a lot smoother than they used to be, but he still managed to fall over and bang his knee – the same knee he’d cut open a while back – and it was still not entirely healed.

Quinn’s arm was still wrapped around him, and he rose to his feet with the added effort of another man’s weight.

“Okay man, you can let go of me now,” he said. Quinn obliged, and steadied himself as he glanced around.

“My god, what happened here?” he said, as he surveyed the abandoned buildings and cars.

“What, you don’t remember?” Rembrandt asked. “The Kromaggs, Q-ball. This is Earth Prime.”

Quinn rubbed his temple.

“Ease up, Remy,” Maggie interjected. “This happened to me, too. Everything got confused and jumbled around in my head.”

She placed a hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “Try not to think too hard. I know that’s hard for at least one of you in there, but it’ll make things less painful.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Quinn said with a frown, as Colin approached him from behind, running a hand over the gelled hair Quinn inherited from his double.

“I don’t think hair is meant to be this… vertical,” he commented with an irreverent smirk.

“Since when do you snark? You never used to snark…” Quinn said, knitting his brows. Rembrandt tilted his head at this comment.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “The two of you are always joshing each other like this.”

“It’s just brotherly banter,” Colin said. “I was trying to lighten the mood a little. I can stop if you really don’t like it, man.”

Quinn shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s that I feel like it shouldn’t be coming out of your mouth.”

Colin just shot him a puzzled look.

Quinn threw up his hands. “I don’t know, I can’t figure out why. Everything feels weird to me right now, so I’m probably talking crap. Let’s just get to where we’re going.”

He looked around for a moment, before grimacing. “I, uh… forget where that is.”

Rembrandt exchanged a sad glance with Maggie.

“We’re going to Cal U in San Francisco,” Colin said. “Only thing is, I have no idea where we landed. We could be anywhere in the timer radius, and every minute we’re out in the open increases our chances of being discovered. This sucks.”

Quinn stifled a laugh, causing everyone to glare at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Like I said, it just sounds weird to hear you say something ‘sucks.’ It just doesn’t fit.”

Colin shook his head, bewildered. “I swear to god, this is just how I talk. Honest.”

Quinn looked quite troubled, as he rubbed a palm to his forehead, indicating the presence of a headache.

Rembrandt looked at him with pity. Besides looking like a whole other person, his mind was clearly seriously messed up in some dramatic way. With Maggie it had been mostly memory related, but Q-ball and his double weren’t even identical to start with, let alone their personalities being anything close to one another.

It seemed the other Quinn had lived a very different life to Q-ball, and Rembrandt wondered in what real sense they even were parallel doubles, beyond the name they seemed to share. Did the rest of them have doubles that looked different? The whole thing just raised too many philosophical questions. He suddenly wished he had the Professor to ask about this. He’d always seemed to have answers, even if Remy didn’t understand half of the words that came out of his over-educated British mouth.

Maggie ignored this tangent, and began striding towards a building that looked like it had once been a shopfront and offices.

“Focus, guys,” she said. “We need to keep off the streets, and check for clues.”

She stole a quick look back at Quinn. “Stop thinking so hard, you hear me?”

“Yes ma’am,” he replied weakly, and the three of them hurried after her.

3.3  ·  Nexus Quinn

This is it.

Sherri trotted down a few steps, plastering a smile on her face, as the version of Quinn before her – which they’d designated Nexus Quinn – looked up at her with surprise.

“Steph, what are you doing in here? The basement’s off limits!” he reprimanded, his harsh tone causing Sherri to flinch out of pure reflex. She reasserted a confident posture, and descended the final few steps.

“If you want that much privacy, you may want to invest in a lock, Quinn,” she said with a light smirk, hoping that Stephanie would have this kind of relaxed attitude to her husband. She casually leaned against the banister. “Where’d you just come back from?”

His expression softened, giving way to excitement about his adventuring. A broad smile drew across his face.

“Oh man, I can’t even describe to you how cool that place was,” he said, blue eyes shining. “The technology is incredible, and the inhabitants–!”

He rushed across the room to a computer workstation. “I gotta record the coordinates, because I’m not done there by a long shot.”

Sherri had encountered a few people matching Quinn’s bio-genetic signatures during her time in training, and each were different in subtle ways. She just had to suss out this one’s quirks.

She moved her gaze to John, who was looking over Nexus Quinn’s shoulder as he typed.

“Okay, so he has advanced to the point of at least storing coordinates,” John said, typing furiously into his handlink, in a strange parallel to this Quinn’s equally furious typing on his keyboard. “We could be nearing the key date… if only we knew what that actual date was.”

Let’s hope we haven’t missed it, she found herself thinking.

Nexus Quinn spun around on his swivel chair, to face Sherri.

“This could be really lucrative for us,” he said, rubbing his hands together excitedly.

Sherri forced a smile as she studied his appearance. His hair was neatly combed and styled, he wore a smart pinstripe shirt tucked into trousers and a belt, and his shoes, though somewhat covered in dust from his journey, had clearly been recently polished.

She took mental notes. Takes pride in his appearance, quite business-minded. Possessive about his lab, seems to slide alone.

She noticed him looking at his wristwatch, the design of which struck Sherri as a mid-range Audemars Piguet.

Okay, whatever he’s doing on these other worlds is bringing in a decent paycheck.

Although the house here wasn’t a mansion, it couldn’t have been cheap to live so close to the bay. And to have a live-in nanny as well, they must have been doing pretty well. However, she wasn’t familiar with the rules of this world just yet, and the economic situation could have been dramatically different.

Not to mention, she wasn’t aware of the financial positions of Quinn’s or Stephanie’s parents in this world. They could have been funding a lot of this lifestyle, too. She’d have to get John to look into that.

“Well, that sounds great,” she said, finally replying to his comment. “When’s your next slide?”

“Same as usual,” Quinn said, distractedly flipping through a notebook. “Listen, I’ve got some stuff to do… so…”

Sherri took the hint. “Okay, okay,” she said, holding up her hands, “I’ll get out of your hair.”

She exchanged a look with John, before turning towards the door and heading up the stairs.

“See you after your shift,” Quinn called out as she passed through the door. She briefly turned back.

“Yeah… my shift,” she said, her eyes panning over the basement, cluttered with electrical gear. John was wandering around, studying everything closely. She closed the door, and leaned her forehead against it, taking a moment to breathe.

She hadn’t felt this nervous in some time, but this was such a big deal that the tense feeling in her chest was threatening to overpower her resolve.

She just needed to calm herself. Anxiety was the biggest enemy of a mission. It caused irrational thinking, paralysis, and worst of all, mistakes. She couldn’t allow it to control her right now, like it had controlled her in her old life.

I feel a wooden panel door and its brass knob. I smell a salty ocean breeze from the bay. I see the polished wooden banister of a staircase. I taste the remnants of a cappuccino in my mouth.

I hear… a screeching toddler.

She winced at the scream that pierced through her attempts to calm herself. She peered towards the living room, hidden as best she could behind the stairs, to see Wade unstrapping Cory from the stroller, and picking him up.

“There there,” Wade said, bouncing him on her hip. “What’s the matter?”

“I want Mommy…” cried the little boy, and Sherri felt her heart breaking.

She’s not here right now. Sorry, kid.

“Mommy’s having a sleep right now,” Wade said, shushing the child. “Why don’t we put on some Barney, huh?”

The crying seemed to calm down at this. As Wade crossed to the television, Sherri used the opportunity to start ascending the stairs. But upon placing her foot on the third step up, a loud creak betrayed her presence.

“Oh, did Cory wake you?” Wade asked, as Sherri attempted to appear like she was just coming down the stairs.

“No, no. Couldn’t sleep,” she muttered, training her eyes on Cory, who was now staring at her. She smiled at him, hoping her grandmotherly appearance would appease the child. “Hey, little man.”

He stared at her, wide-eyed and silent, as she approached. At least he wasn’t screaming now.

“We were just about to put this on,” Wade said, waving around a VHS tape with a purple dinosaur on it.

Sherri responded with an unconvincing grin, that may have looked more like a grimace than anything. The look made Wade giggle.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sick of it, too.”

She popped open the case, and appeared to struggle to continue one-handed.

Sherri held out a hand. “Here, let me.”

She grabbed the tape and popped it onto the VCR, which sat atop a large television presently showing a screen of static snow.

As the tape fed into the VCR, waking up the machine, its signal replaced the snow, and a well-worn tape began to play, featuring painful children’s music.

Wade sat Cory down on the floor, and his eyes were now glued to the dancing dinosaurs and their child friends.

So far, so good, Sherri thought, relaxing just a little. The child hadn’t raised any red flags yet, but she figured she had just got lucky.

She thought about Quinn’s last comment. ‘See you after your shift.’ She must have a job. But what? And when?

She turned to Wade. “My, uh, shift is soon, right?”

Wade’s eyes widened, startled. “Oh yeah! I gotta get your dinner together!”

She hurried towards the kitchen. “Sorry, I’ll have it ready in twenty minutes, okay?”

She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Sherri concerned for what this job was that she apparently had.

“You’re a nurse at Saint Francis Memorial, and you start at five,” John said, striding through the wall. Sherri gave a sigh of relief.

“Thanks,” she murmured to him. Fortunately, she had medical training that would get her through it. “While I’m gone, I’ll need you to stick around here, keep an eye on Quinn.”

John nodded. “Of course.”

As he spoke, his eyes looked past her, towards the television. He bit his lip. She turned, following his gaze, and saw that Cory was staring at the two of them.

“Oh boy,” John said, as Maggie crossed to the boy.

“Hey, Cory,” she said softly. He looked up at her in confusion.

“Where’s my Mommy?” he said, in a voice that threatened a new round of cries.

“Uh, she’s not here right now,” Sherri said. “Promise she’ll be back soon. But me and my friend here are going to be playing with you for a little while, okay? I want you to pretend I’m Mommy. Can you do that for me?”

Cory furrowed his brow as he stared at her. “You’re not Mommy.”

“I know, sweetie. But I want to play pretend with you. I’m your pretend Mommy, okay?”

Cory frowned. “Pretend Mommy…” he repeated with confusion.

John approached, kneeling on the floor.

“Hey there! My name is Sam,” he said, in as sweet a voice as Sherri had ever heard from him.

Sherri reminded herself that ‘Sam’ was his actual name, as ‘Maggie’ was hers. But she hadn’t used hers in a long time. On the other hand, he was still known as ‘Sam’ to most people, while ‘John’ was more of a nickname to him. Or, perhaps, code name. A remnant of a time when there was a need to differentiate him from her Uncle Sam, that just sort of stuck.

John gestured to the TV. “Who’s that?” he asked Cory.

“Barney,” replied the boy, in an incredulous tone, as though it were unthinkable that someone wouldn’t know.

“Barney,” John repeated, thoughtful. “I didn’t know dinosaurs could sing. Last I heard, they went rawr!”

He raised his hands, forming them into a claw-like shape, and bared his teeth as he roared. Cory laughed at his comical expression.

Sherri smiled, relieved at John’s rapport with the kid. It was always a good idea to endear oneself to small children and animals where possible.

John pulled himself to his feet again, turning to Sherri. “I gotta get back in the basement, see what our friend’s up to.”

As he raised his handlink, he gave a final look towards Cory. “Wanna see something really cool?” he asked, before tapping on the screen, and disappearing.

Cory let out an amazed squeal, and held a hand out to the space that had previously held his holographic form. His wonder turned to confusion, as he looked at Sherri.

“Where that man gone?” the child asked her.

“Sam is magic,” she explained. “He’ll be back soon, okay?”

Cory nodded. “Barney is magic,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, he’s magic, just like Barney,” she replied, patting him on the head, before spotting her reflection in the mirror once more. Stephanie’s green eyes looked back at her, and Sherri gave her a silent apology for the intrusion.

If I’m successful in my mission, then at least there’ll be a Stephanie left to forgive me.

3.4  ·  Big ’Magg on Campus

Colin hadn’t seen Earth Prime like this before. It was pretty disorienting; after spending most of his childhood and adulthood here, seeing it reduced to a wasteland was heart-wrenching.

And he certainly would never have predicted having to row across San Francisco Bay in a dinghy, in the dead of night. But, here he was, doing just that, thanks to the many bridges of the bay either being demolished or set up as Kromagg checkpoints.

They were quietly rowing along the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, having arrived from the north. Their only light was from the bridge itself, so as not to draw attention to themselves. It was pretty spooky; this inky black water beneath them, and the feeling of exposure each time they passed into the beam of a light. He was just glad the water was calm tonight.

The timer had given them about 14 hours, and it was already down to 11. But, even when they reached the university, they had no idea what they would find there; or perhaps more importantly, what they might not find.

“You sure you don’t want a turn?” Colin said to the man who apparently contained his brother.

“You’re doing such a great job, I wouldn’t think of it,” Quinn replied, stretching his arms.

“You know he’s got a headache,” Maggie chided.

“Excuses, excuses,” Colin said, as he worked the oar, next to Rembrandt who was rowing the other one. “Back home, it was all: ‘oh, Quinn can’t do the dishes tonight, he has a dissertation to write,’ and then I’d find him an hour later playing Nintendo in his boxers.”

Beside him, Rembrandt stifled a laugh.

Quinn’s irreverent expression turned serious, as he seemed to struggle with this quip.

Again… why is he having so much trouble with me?

Ever since these two Quinns had been fused, he had been looking at Colin funny. And the comments about his jokes and speech patterns were baffling. It would be easy to dismiss as some unknown side effect of what had happened to him, but it was bothering him a great deal, and he wasn’t sure why.

“Hey,” Maggie said, poking Quinn in the arm, “I see that look. Stop thinking.”

“Sorry…”

*          *          *

It was an hour later when they finally reached the campus, and it didn’t look like it had been occupied for some time. While it seemed a relief that nobody was around, it was quite difficult for Colin to see the university where he’d spent five years of his life reduced to a ghost town.

“Jeez, this is bleak,” he said, moving a flashlight beam around the dark campus green, illuminating rubble and human remains.

“That’s one word for it,” Rembrandt mumbled, as he stepped carefully over a rib cage.

Colin kept a close eye on Quinn, who had gone very quiet since they’d reached the campus. He couldn’t see his face well, due to the low light, but he sensed a lot of discomfort coming from him.

A noise came from above, and Colin flipped off the flashlight as he peered upward to see a Manta Ship flying low overhead.

He’d only heard about these things, and to see one in person sent chills down his spine.

“Quick, don’t let ’em detect us!” Rembrandt hissed, and they all scrambled into the sciences building, the door of which was hanging off one hinge.

Inside, it was largely how Colin recalled it, except for the added dilapidation and blood spatter, which turned his stomach.

“Where to now?” Maggie asked. “It can’t be in the same lab as last time. Does this place have some kind of storage room, or…?”

Colin thought for a moment.

“Well, our best bet might be the Beckett wing.”

“Beckett wing?!” Rembrandt was looking at him with surprise.

Colin pointed to where Arturo’s office had once been, in 1978. Instead of the tiny office, it was the entrance to a whole new area of the building.

“Through there,” Colin said. “They built it in the eighties, I think, after Doc Beckett gave a big donation to the university. He and the Professor had a big hand in designing it, if I remember correctly.”

He turned to Quinn. “You remember, right? It’s where all our classes with him were.”

Quinn looked like a deer in headlights.

“You don’t remember…”

“There’s something not right about this,” was all Quinn said, as he cradled his forehead in his hand.

Colin frowned, but there was no time to press the issue. Instead, he headed to the entrance of the newest, most technologically modern part of the sciences building. The Beckett wing, where he’d studied engineering and physics under two brilliant intellects, was admittedly looking worse for wear, but Colin’s memories still caused great helpings of nostalgia for this place.

“Okay, I guess we fan out, search each room,” Maggie said, flipping her own flashlight on.

Colin placed a hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “You stay close to me,” he said. It wasn’t a request.

“Okay…” he replied, and allowed Colin to lead him towards the far end of the building.

As they walked, Colin watched his brother’s clouded expression. He was loathe to bring it up, in case of the physiological effects of his probing, but he just wanted to understand a little better.

“Bro, what’s going on?” he asked, as he busted open a door at the far end of the building with a kick. Inside, he shined his light upon a room full of dusty computers.

“I know my memory’s all weird right now, but something about this place is giving me the chills, and it’s not the skeletons,” Quinn admitted.

“Then what?”

“I have some memories of the sciences building. But, this part? Nothing. And I swear I’ve never had Sam Beckett as a teacher.”

Colin was silent for a moment, before being struck with an epiphany that left him breathless.

“Oh man.”

He turned, and kicked open the opposite door. Another normal classroom, with desks overturned and papers scattered under a layer of dust.

“What?” he felt Quinn’s hand pulling on his shoulder. He faced him with a grave expression.

“Well, we made a lot of choices in 1978, didn’t we?” Colin said. “Ones that changed our personal history.”

In the low light, Quinn’s pale face grew even paler.

“I think we’re coming up against the consequences of that,” continued Colin. “I don’t think Earth Prime Sam would have even come here if it weren’t for us…”

His mind began to race. “In fact, my memory of 1978 is pretty fuzzy. Just how much did we change?”

“Argh!” Quinn doubled over, clutching his head. Colin put an arm around him, steadying him.

“Damn, I shouldn’t have said that,” Colin said with a sigh.

“Guys… I found something…” Maggie’s trembling voice echoed through the corridor, and Colin walked Quinn towards her.

“Oh my god, that’s–” Rembrandt began.

Colin approached, and saw Maggie staring, wide-eyed, at a familiar-looking panel on the wall.

She glanced at each of them. “Should I… try it?”

Colin shined his light on the small, flat glass pane. “Well… there doesn’t look to be any power in this building, so I don’t think anything will happen, but…”

He stepped back, and Maggie placed her hand on it.

To everyone’s shock, the panel lit up, and a familiar voice blasted from a hidden speaker.

“Identity verified. Welcome, Ms Beckett,” the voice of Higgins barked, before the whole area of the wall opened up to reveal a well-lit stairway.

Maggie looked back for a moment at the three behind her, and then wordlessly entered the passage.

“So, uh, this just got weird, right?” Rembrandt commented, before following.

Colin looked down at Quinn, who was still clutching his temple, and relying on him for support.

“Why do I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland all of a sudden?” he mumbled.

Colin grimaced. “Down the rabbit hole…” he said, as they started down the stairs.

Behind them, the wall closed up, and Colin felt both relieved and trapped; a strange combination. The stairs went down probably fifty or sixty feet, having a turn to the right every fifteen steps or so.

Finally, they reached what seemed to be the bottom, where a small empty room awaited them.

“It can’t be a dead end,” Rembrandt whined. “I’m not walking back up all those stairs already…”

“There must be another Higgins panel in here, right?” Maggie said, feeling around the walls.

Colin’s eyes darted around what appeared to be three smooth cement walls, a floor, and a ceiling. A naked fluorescent light on the ceiling illuminated the space. No obvious signs of anything, except for a nearly imperceptible series of three small slits in a row on the ceiling, towards the back of the space. He pointed up to it.

“What do you suppose that is? A vent?”

Rembrandt stepped towards it, squinting. He flipped on his flashlight, and shined it up into the long rectangular openings.

“Huh, looks kinda like the pop filter foam on a microphone…”

“You think it’s some kind of audio?” asked Colin, and Rembrandt gave a shrug.

Maggie stiffened. “Wait… that just jogged a memory…”

She looked up to the opening. “Higgins, uh… let me in, please? Open sesame?”

“Password confirmation required,” Higgins boomed back, through what was obviously an intercom of some kind.

“Oh, crap,” Maggie said, deflated.

“Awaiting password confirmation. Alarm will sound in ten seconds.”

Colin locked anxious eyes with Maggie, and wondered if this was the end of the line.

“Awaiting password confirmation. Alarm will sound in five seconds.”

“Any bright ideas?” Rembrandt asked. Colin shook his head.

“Alarm will sound in three. Two.”

“We’re screwed,” Maggie choked out.

“Override accepted. Please wait.”

“Override?” Colin asked, raising an eyebrow.

Then, the room itself shuddered, and descended below the staircase. Evidently, it had been an elevator of some sort. After the stairs disappeared from view in favour of a set of double doors beneath, they slid open, and a man was standing before them, holding a small touch-screen device in his hand, with a large crack in the glass.

“Good heavens, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes?” Professor Arturo said with a warm smile.

3.5  ·  Father Figures

John was absorbed in reading over Nexus Quinn’s notes when his handlink vibrated and lit up with the message: ‘Incoming comms from W. Arturo.’ He answered the call distractedly.

“Hey there, Will. Something up?” he said into the handlink.

“No– uh, I mean yes, but it’s not urgent,” the mid-thirties programmer said. “Higgins was just picking up a strange anomaly… I don’t know if it’s related to anything we’re doing, but it just passed through our spacetime coordinates briefly. We got a track on it for about three minutes before the connection was severed.”

John stroked his chin. “Anomaly? You got anything more… descriptive?”

“Not really, it’s just an energy trace that didn’t fit our local signatures. But you’ll never guess where we tracked it to before losing it.”

John waited a moment, before deciding Will was waiting on a reply. “Do continue,” he said, amused.

“December second, 1978.”

“You’re kidding me…” The call had only been mildly interesting, before now. “Well, definitely update me if we detect it again.”

December 1978, when his whole life changed course. Perhaps it was a nexus point in time, or maybe it was pure chance, but it sure didn’t seem like an accident that this anomaly had bounced through there.

“We will, Doc. We have the geolocation of where it appeared, so I’ll set up a sensor there that should alert us if it passes through again.”

“Good man,” John said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

He disconnected the call, and realised that Quinn was finishing up the work he was doing. John committed as much of what he saw to memory as he could before the papers were put away and the computer was shut down, before following him out of the basement.

It was around six at night, and Wade was cleaning up a messy Cory sitting at the kitchen table, in front of a half-eaten plate of vegetables. Cory’s eyes rested on John, and he gave a small wave.

“Magic Sam!” the boy said, pointing. John scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

“Yep… that’s me. Magic… Magic Sam.”

Even though he knew the two adults in front of him couldn’t see him, he felt exposed, as they both looked in the direction of Cory’s finger.

“Magic Sam?” Quinn asked, looking at Wade, questioning. She shrugged.

“I have no idea, he’s been babbling about ‘Magic Sam’ for a couple of hours,” she said, wiping down the table. “Since he watched his Barney tape. Maybe it’s something on there.”

Quinn chuckled. “Sounds like a euphemism,” he said, eyeing her.

Wade moved close to him. “I’d like to see your Magic Sam.”

John felt his cheeks burn as he watched them get much closer than a married man and his child’s nanny ever should. Alarmed, he moved to Cory and placed a hand over the boy’s eyes.

“You don’t need to see this,” he said with a nervous laugh. “And for that matter, neither do I.”

As he watched Quinn press Wade against the kitchen bench, mid-smooch, he felt his embarrassment harden into anger.

“You two need to cool it. There’s a child right here, for Pete’s sake!” He looked down at Cory. “Is this what they get up to every time Mommy’s at work?”

In response, Cory held up his arms, gesturing his desire to be picked up. John gave him a sad look.

“Sorry Cory, Magic Sam’s too… uh, magical to pick you up,” he said, passing his arms through the bewildered boy. “Why don’t you give me a big scream, huh? Three, two, one–”

Sam yelled out at the top of his lungs, and Cory joined in. As soon as he noticed the two stop their makeout session, he cut his shout, and Cory’s faded out shortly thereafter.

“What was that about, kiddo?” Quinn asked, looking at his son with some incredulity.

“Nice work,” John said to Cory, leaning down to his level. “Whenever Daddy and Wade start doing that in front of you, you scream just like that until they stop, okay?”

Cory nodded, with a giggle.

“Well, we did get a little carried away there,” Wade said, sheepishly wiping her mouth with her hand.

Quinn gave her a wicked grin. “I guess we did.”

He turned to his son. “Say, is it bed time yet, little man?”

“He had a decent sized nap this afternoon, so he’ll be awake for a while,” Wade said, with a wistful sigh. She picked him up.

Quinn groaned. “What a pain.”

John looked at Cory, eyebrows raised. “Your Daddy’s a real piece of work, you know that?”

His gaze shifted towards Wade, as she placed the child on the living room floor. “You don’t have much in the way of positive role models ’round here, do you?”

He sighed, and sat himself on the floor.

“Well, I’ll keep you company for a while. How’s that sound?”

He held out a hand, which Cory attempted to grab, only for his hand to slip through the hologram. He found this extremely funny, and fell to the floor with giggles.

John wondered if any version of Sam Beckett across the multiverse got to have a normal family life like the one Nexus Quinn was squandering, or if they were all doomed to be isolated weirdos with no love life to speak of, like him, or lost in the sands of time, like his double from Sherri’s dimension.

Well, he figured, there were infinite possibilities. It must have happened somewhere.

*          *          *

Arturo’s eyes scanned the four sliders, lingering on Quinn for a moment longer than the others. He then reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out a familiar wand attachment. Quinn’s eyes lit up.

The spacetime distortion detector…

The Professor held out the wand, and started scanning the group.

“Kromagg cloaking has a remarkably similar signature to the leaper aura, so I adapted this old thing to detect their trickery,” he explained.

The detector gave no response until he brought it near Quinn’s fused form, when it started hammering with clicks. Arturo’s eyes popped open, and he took several steps back.

Quinn fought through a streak of pain in his head, as he stepped towards the Professor, who he knew, but was sure had died at some point.

“Professor… I…” was all he could vocalise out of the swirling, disjointed thoughts in his mind.

Arturo looked at him from under a creased brow. “Who is this gentleman?” His voice was laced with mistrust, and Quinn felt his heart ache at the lack of recognition.

“It’s me, Quinn,” he managed to say, as he let the desperation he felt in his gut bring out the words of the Quinn who knew this guy. “I was merged into a superposition of two parallel versions of myself. I think it’s the same process as what happened to Maggie, only it was an intentional act this time around.”

As pain shot through his head like a lightning strike, Maggie finished his thought.

“I hope you still have the machine, Professor. ’Cause I think Quinn’s progression is going faster than mine.”

Quinn felt the Professor’s eyes burning into him. He forced his own eyes open, and they made contact. Arturo looked troubled, but as he glared into Quinn’s eyes, his expression softened.

“We’ll need to make some adjustments, but I have the bones of the machine,” he said, as his defensive posture eased.

He stepped aside, allowing the group to see the large control room beyond.

“Welcome to Project Long Jump,” he said. “We were once quite a bustling little operation, but I’m afraid I’m the only one here now.”

He headed through the room, as everyone followed, and continued to explain.

“Doctor Beckett and I created this place with a greater purpose in mind: to prevent the Kromagg invasion.”

He paused, letting his shoulders drop. “As you can plainly see, we… were not successful.”

“Professor…” Quinn said as his head vibrated, “didn’t you… um, die?”

Arturo’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I’m afraid that must have been my ill-fated double.”

He looked towards Rembrandt. “I’m sure you must remember, Mister Brown. Two versions of me grappling, and only one made it into the wormhole.”

Quinn felt his heart skip a beat. They had the wrong one?

Rembrandt’s jaw dropped. “My god. We had no clue…”

“It proved of some benefit to me,” Arturo continued. “While I regret having put my double in harm’s way, it did allow me the time and resources to return back here, using the information I had committed to memory.”

“The notebook!” Colin cried, eyes lighting up. “Do you still have that?”

Arturo nodded. “It’s been hidden away here since we built this facility.”

Colin met Quinn’s eye. “That may give us some answers,” he said.

“Well, come along,” Arturo said, beckoning to the group from a doorway. “There’s much to discuss, but I suppose the matter of Mister Mallory should come first.”

3.6  ·  Applied Physics

Shoes went flying across the terraced home’s entryway as Sherri arrived home, her feet aching. She was more than glad to be finished with the nursing shift that seemed to saddle her with the most humiliating of cleanup duties.

It was around two in the morning, and she was quite ready to sleep, but that was a privilege she had not yet earned.

“John?” She called out, scanning the darker areas of the house for signs of the observer.

Seeing nobody, she turned towards the living room, only to see John right beside her, having apparently just blinked in from another part of the house while she wasn’t looking. He wasn’t smiling this time, but looked slightly haunted.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t like these people very much,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why, what did they do?”

“So many things. In so many places.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, as he gestured towards the couch. “I’d, uh, get that steam cleaned if I were you.”

He pressed his eyes shut and grimaced, as his shoulders shuddered. “There’s a downside to a photographic memory, and I’ve just identified it.”

“So Quinn’s having an affair with Wade?” Sherri frowned.

Poor Stephanie.

John nodded. “Yeah, but I buried the lede a little.”

He began to pace, legs passing through the coffee table as he walked the length of the room, and lowered his head as he gestured. “I watched Quinn write up his notes on the world he visited, and it’s consistent with descriptions in the notebook, though they were second-hand. I think it might be the Kromagg exile world.”

Sherri’s heart jumped, and she fought to calm herself.

“Okay. Okay. That’s good news, right? That means we’re here in time.”

“Yeah. But we have to work fast.”

Sherri straightened, and turned toward the basement door.

“Okay. Meet you down there.”

As John blinked into the basement, Sherri walked briskly to the door, and was about to open it when John passed through in front of her, hands held out.

“Wait! Don’t go in. Quinn’s in there.”

Dammit.

“Hang on, how come you didn’t know that?” she whispered fiercely. “I thought you were watching him.”

She stepped away from the door. John huffed.

“Sherri, I’m not sure if I made it clear, but I didn’t want to be subjected to the X-rated adventures of an over-sexed Quinn!” he ranted. “I’m an Observer, not a voyeur.”

After taking a moment to calm himself, he added: “I’ve been keeping Cory company in the nursery.”

Sherri reminded herself of John’s history with Quinn. Their first meeting, in 1978, was of a Quinn about the same age as him. Then, in 1984, he would meet the younger, child version of Quinn, after saving his Dad’s life. As the child grew, and entered college at a young age, John had been something of a mentor figure and family friend.

It would only stand to reason that seeing this alternate Quinn engaging in unsavory activities would be a little too much to handle.

Sherri let out a breath. “Okay. Fair enough. Well, would you watch him while I sleep a while? Let me know as soon as he gets out of there.”

If only I wasn’t so beat.

She definitely would have preferred to stay alert for her chance, but that night of work had sucked her energy away.

“Yeah, no sweat,” John said in a deflated way that suggested he, too, was pretty tired.

“We’re gonna succeed,” she told him, but it was as much an attempt to convince herself as it was to reassure him. “Okay?”

John gave her a tight-lipped smile. “That’s my line, you know. Now go get some rest.”

They gave one another an incorporeal fist bump, and she headed up the stairs.

*          *          *

Sherri awoke to the feeling of Quinn getting gingerly into the bed beside her. At the end of the bed was the shadowy figure of John, holding a finger to his lips.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” he said in a low voice, as if anyone would hear him. “I just watched him copying a bunch of data to a box full of floppies. Wait for him to drift off, and get going, okay?”

She gave a tight nod in his direction, as he blinked away.

Copying data…

She had a sinking feeling that said data was the payload that was about to doom a whole lot of Earths.

She lay there, stiff and silent, for about half an hour, until she started to hear light snoring from the other side of the bed. Then she slowly pulled back her covers, and slipped out of the bed.

She tiptoed into the hall, and relaxed as she moved out of view of Quinn. But the relief didn’t last for long, as she heard a toilet flush in an illuminated bathroom by the stairs. The door swung open, and Wade stepped out, making startled eye contact with Sherri.

“Oh, hey,” she whispered, shaking her wet hands.

It’s alright, just play it cool.

Sherri nodded a greeting, and stepped past her. “My turn,” she said with a wink, and disappeared into the bathroom.

Upon closing the door, she breathed a nervous sigh. How could it be this difficult to creep through a house in the middle of the damn night?

After spending a standard amount of time in the bathroom, she flushed and peeked out of the door.

Okay, the coast is clear.

She took the opportunity to skitter to the stairs, and down them. A moment later, she was in the basement, her heart racing as if she’d never done something like this before.

John was waiting for her, and he beckoned her over.

“Here’s the disks,” he said, pointing down to a box by Quinn’s computer. “First thing, you need to corrupt the data on them.”

She opened the box, to see about twelve 3½ inch floppy disks. “Okay, what do I need to do?”

“Beckett, what are the four fundamental forces in physics?” John was using his best lecturer voice.

Sherri probed her memory banks. “Uh… gravity, strong and weak nuclear… and… uh, electromagnetism. Right?”

“Bingo.” John pointed to a cabinet across the room. “And what physicist’s home lab would be complete without a homemade electromagnet or two?”

Sherri opened the cabinet, and John pointed to a metal cube with a handle on it, and a switch on the side. It was about double the size of a lantern battery, which was, not coincidentally, about half of its bulk. Much of the rest contained some copper wire coiled tightly around something metal from top to bottom.

“That should do the trick,” John said. “Just fire it up, and pass the bottom of the coil over each disk a few times. Should scramble them up good.”

Sherri set to work, as John took ongoing readings of the strength of the electromagnetic force to make sure the battery wasn’t running out of juice. When they were done, he directed her to the computer.

“Okay, now we need to open up the chassis and do the same thing to the hard drive. It’s a shame to lose all the data on there, but the stakes are too high.”

Sherri nodded. “No going back now,” she said, as she pulled open the case, and disconnected the hard drive. She worked the electromagnet over it until John confirmed that it was bricked, and she put it all back together.

“Okay, now put it back exactly as you found it,” John said.

She stared at him.

“Okay… and how did I find it, Mister Photographic Memory?”

He looked pensive for a moment, squinting at the scene before him.

“The disks were all silver-side down, leaning towards the back of the box, except for the one on the end, which was leaning the other way.” He gestured to the computer. “And the PC case was the tiniest bit angled toward the monitor, but otherwise flush with the edge of the desk.”

“Damn I wish I had that kind of brain,” Sherri mumbled as she followed his directions.

As Sherri left the basement and headed back to bed, she wondered if she had done enough. And if so… what was she still doing here?

3.7  ·  Reminiscing

The machine was a little rusty. Colin was inside the chamber, checking over the seals and integrity of the Faraday cage within, while a bespectacled Professor was pecking at the keyboard of the attached computer, brow furrowed and mouth curved downward. Quinn, for his part, was inspecting some circuitry on the outside, pushing through his unwell feelings with visible difficulty.

Maggie and Rembrandt watched them, unable to contribute anything of value to the restoration effort.

Maggie looked nervously at the timer, which was now at four hours and counting.

“All clear in here,” Colin called out, as he shimmied his way out of the chamber, and met Maggie’s eye. “Bit claustrophobic, huh?”

Maggie gave him a smirk. “I wouldn’t know. I was a little preoccupied with my molecules ripping apart to notice.”

Colin raised his eyebrows, conceding with a tilt of his head, before joining Quinn at the outer components.

“How’s it looking?” he asked his brother. Quinn was hesitant in replying, his expression of confusion evident.

“I, uh… I don’t know,” he said, turning away. “I knew what I was doing a minute ago, but I lost it.”

Colin’s crestfallen expression at this made Maggie’s heart break. He took a moment to compose himself, and put a hand on Quinn’s back.

“It’s alright. I’ll take over.”

Quinn nodded, and moved to the desk where Maggie and Rembrandt were sitting, joining them. He buried his head in his hands.

“I feel like an idiot,” he said, rubbing his forehead in a move that had become near-ubiquitous at this point.

“Welcome to the club, my man,” Rembrandt said, in an attempt at levity, and Quinn responded with a half-hearted chuckle.

Maggie put her arm around him. “Just a little longer. Hang in there.”

Across the room, Arturo lifted his head.

“The archaic Higgins interface has now been networked with my contemporary version, and the updated calculations for Mister Mallory’s atomic structure are being loaded. My educated guess is it will be half an hour before it’s ready.”

Colin grinned. “Great. Just a few more checks and repairs over here. Looks like Quinn already re-routed the Accelerator components back into the chamber. I’ll be done in no time.”

“I don’t even understand what he just said,” Quinn remarked to Maggie, his eyes closed.

Beside them, the Professor pulled up a seat.

“I suppose you’re wondering what became of this facility, and those who worked here,” he said, pulling his glasses off, and running a cloth over the lenses. “I’d like to know, myself. When I made it back to Earth Prime, the invasion was already ongoing, and nobody was left here.”

Maggie leaned in. “Who did work here? Did–”

“Your double, Ms. Beckett? Yes, which I’m sure you must have guessed when Higgins granted you access.” Arturo put his glasses back on. “Doctor Beckett and Sherri were quite the team in their day.”

Sherri…?

Maggie laughed. “Wait, I think I gave her that name.”

Arturo stroked his bearded chin. “It was her chosen alias when she planted roots here.”

“What were you doing down here all this time, anyway?” Rembrandt asked.

The Professor folded his arms, looking nostalgic. “In order to prevent the invasion as described in Mister Mallory’s notes, we set about combining the future technologies in such a way that would allow us to generate leaps between parallel universes, as well as through time.”

Maggie looked at the others, speechless. Rembrandt looked flustered, and Quinn’s mouth was hanging open.

“Sherri underwent intense training over many years. In her preparation, she became something of a jack-of-all-trades. We first sent her on strictly regulated slides before working her up to leaping. Over time, she built up her recall and ability to adapt to new situations. All leading up to one crucial moment.”

Quinn straightened. “You were trying to stop my double from ever handing over the sliding tech to the Kromaggs…”

He had that sly half-grin on his face that appeared at moments of inspiration; though to Maggie, it was strange seeing it on the unfamiliar face.

Arturo gave him a slow nod. “That was the idea. However… the Kromagg presence here speaks volumes about the outcome of our endeavour, doesn’t it?”

He stood, forcing a smile. “Now, might I interest anyone in some absolutely vile powdered rations? I have enough to last twelve more years, and frankly if I must live on it for that long, I shall welcome the inevitable.”

*          *          *

Quinn looked nervously out of the machine chamber. He couldn’t hear a thing, but could see Colin and the Professor scurrying around him, making their final checks, and Maggie and Remy off to one side, looking back at him intensely.

He gave a shaky thumbs up at them.

Hope this doesn’t hurt.

But then again, he was already at immense levels of pain. Could it get much worse?

In the profound silence, he had a moment of what might have been peace, had he not been so pained. One moment that might have spread out into two, had the machine not been activated at that point.

Oh. The pain actually can get worse. So… so much worse.

Far from just a headache now, the feeling of being torn in twain grew to encompass his entire body, as his eyes closed to block out the intense blue glow.

Sorry, he thought, though he wasn’t sure who was saying sorry to whom.

All at once, he felt like he’d just hit the drop on a rollercoaster, before he felt the back of his head smack against the chamber. And he was cold. Really cold. In fact, he felt his whole back was now against cold metal.

His vision faded into view, and he realised that above him was no longer the mesh of the Faraday cage in front of transparent tempered glass, but a dark metal panel that made him feel like he was in a coffin. The pain evaporated from his body, and his eyes were able to focus without effort for the first time in a while.

And he wasn’t wearing any clothes.

Wait, that means they did it. I’m in the bottom chamber.

As the door at the end of the machine was thrust open, Quinn’s hands instinctively moved to cover his exposure.

“You two okay in there?” Colin’s voice called, as his head appeared at the opening.

“I feel like someone just ripped out my guts, but otherwise I’m good,” came a voice from above.

That must be the other Quinn. Wait, which one am I again?

His face screwed up for a moment as he probed his newly blanked-out mind for memories. Finding a near empty void that he certainly hoped would be temporary, he finally answered Colin.

“I’m okay, but… I, uh, need clothes.”

The upper Quinn was the first to be helped out, and Quinn could see it was the one with spiked hair. He was pretty sure that was the one who Doctor Geiger was experimenting on, which meant he, in all his nakedness, must have been the smart one. If only he could remember a little more than that.

Colin threw some kind of grey jumpsuit at him that made him think of a janitor’s uniform.

“Welcome back, bro,” he said, relief written on his face. “You had me pretty worried, not gonna lie.”

His speech still sounds wrong.

He pulled on the jumpsuit as best he could in the cramped space, before crawling out ungracefully. As he climbed to his feet, he zipped up the front, and looked around the room at each emotional face.

Okay. What do I know about these people?

“Listen,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I don’t know what that thing did, but I’m blanking on a few things right now.”

The Professor regarded him with a contemplative stare. “The leaping element of the process may have interfered with your memory, which is a known effect of the Accelerator. I suspect it will be temporary. Anywhere between a minute and a day, if Sherri’s data is applicable to your situation.”

As Quinn listened to the verbose English affect, a string of memories surged into his mind, taking the breath out of his lungs.

“Oh my god,” he murmured, and pulled him into a hug. “Professor, I missed you… and your over-stuffed vocabulary.”

The grouchy older man was stiff at first, but after a moment, he reciprocated. “A minute it is,” he said, bewildered.

As he looked over Arturo’s shoulder, his eyes fell on Rembrandt, a man who’d travelled with him longer than anyone else. He hesitantly pulled away from the Professor and approached the singer.

“How you doing, Cryin’ Man?” he said with a grin. He held a hand up to Remy, who grasped it, and pulled him in with a pat on the back.

“A lot better now,” Remy replied. “Good to see your face again, Q-ball.”

He moved on to Maggie. “Had you worried, didn’t I?”

“Nah!” She gave a dismissive gesture, before running a hand over her glistening eyes, smearing tears across her face. “Well okay, maybe a little.”

She wrapped her arms around him, and he squeezed his eyes shut as memories continued to flow through his head.

He finally looked up at the two remaining men: the other Quinn, and his brother.

First, he held a hand out to the man he’d been combined with. They shook, and he watched his double look him up and down in appraisal.

“Nice to meet you, uh, properly?” the other Quinn said.

“Likewise,” Quinn said, feeling altogether uncomfortable with the interaction.

“Remy and I decided we’re going to call you ‘Mallory,’ okay?” Maggie said to the double. He looked back with a furrowed brow.

“Why do I have to have the nickname?” He pouted.

“Because to all of us, he’s Quinn,” she said.

Quinn gave him a shrug. “We’re a democracy,” he said sheepishly, “so ‘Mallory’ it is. Sorry.”

Mallory frowned, and plodded to a bench in the corner of the room, where he sat down and proceeded to stare at the wall.

Finally, Quinn met Colin’s eye, but the memories coming to him regarding his little brother just weren’t making sense.

“Colin, I…” he scratched his head. “When did we first meet again?”

Colin frowned. “Our birth Dad brought me to live with you in 1979.”

So that explains one memory, but it sure doesn’t explain the other one.

“So why do I have a distinct memory of us meeting when you were an adult? And you were wearing old timey clothes.”

Colin’s brows knitted. “How distinct are we talking?”

“It’s crystal clear in my head. And yet I also remember waking up one day as a kid, and meeting my new brother.”

He crossed his arms. “What is going on…?”

“You kept talking before about how my speech patterns sounded weird,” Colin said, dragging a hand down his chin. Quinn nodded.

“Gentlemen,” Arturo interjected. “I may be able to clear this matter up.”

As Quinn and Colin looked at him expectantly, an ear-splitting alarm began to sound, and a light on the wall began to flash.

“Blast it all!” Arturo cried, balling his hands into fists. “Already?!”

“What is it?” Quinn asked, frantic.

“I suspected that the Kromaggs would detect the energy surge from the machine use, but it seems they’ve been more expedient than anticipated.”

He looked at them with regretful eyes. “I doubt it will be long before they find this place now.”

3.8  ·  Marital Tension

The clinking of knives and forks on plates was the only sound for a while.

It was eight thirty in the morning, and Sherri was pretending this wasn’t one of the most awkward breakfasts of her life. At the kitchen table, across from her, sat Wade and Quinn, each eating their eggs on toast with a practised nonchalance. Beside her, Cory was grabbing fists of scrambled eggs, and putting about a quarter of it in his mouth, while the rest dropped to various places on the table and floor. Sherri chewed on her eggs, deep in thought, as she evaded the eyes of the adulterers.

John hadn’t shown up yet, and she figured he was getting some sleep. But she hoped he’d come back soon; her continued presence in this house threw up major red flags, and there must have been more left to do.

The problem with this whole leap was the lack of knowledge regarding the details of Nexus Quinn’s actions leading up to the destruction of their world. With a historical record being sparse and virtually inaccessible for Higgins, combined with Quinn’s secretive movements, there was so little data to go on.

If wiping the drives hasn’t fulfilled my mission, then there could be backups somewhere.

She’d have to stay close to Quinn today.

Quinn stood, and moved to the coffee machine. He held up the pot, which had just finished brewing.

“Coffee, anybody?”

“Please,” Wade said, turning her head towards him.

“Black, please,” Sherri said, through a mouthful of toast.

“Really?” Quinn said, eyebrows raised. “I thought you hated it without creamer…”

She gave a dramatic shrug, moving her eyes to meet Wade’s. “I’m in the mood for something that gives it to me straight, you know? The naked, bitter reality. Even if it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

Wade had grown pale. Sherri winked, and brought a forkful of egg to her mouth.

Quinn poured the coffees, appearing mystified. “That’s, uh… poetic, Steph.”

He presented her black coffee with one eyebrow lowered, before sitting back in front of his meal.

Sherri sipped at it, relieved to be getting some caffeine into her tired system. She stared down into the dark brew.

“Magic Sam!” Cory’s delighted squeal almost made Sherri spill her coffee, and she glanced at him. He was pointing his egg-covered finger into the living room. John leaned into her line of vision, and beckoned.

“Magic Sam again?” Quinn shook his head, and looked to Sherri. “Who the heck is he talking about?”

“I think he’s just got an imaginary friend,” she said. “Lots of small children invent playmates that give them attention they might feel deprived of.”

She took a sip of her coffee, as two surprised faces looked back at her.

“I, uh… was assisting a child psychiatrist last night,” she explained, before turning to Cory.

“Hey, you wanna get down?”

Cory nodded.

“Okay, but we gotta get you cleaned up first.”

“I want Mommy to,” he said, giving her puppy dog eyes.

Sherri grabbed a tub of wipes from a shelf on the wall, pulling a couple out. “Okay, I’ll clean you up, sweetie…”

Please don’t say it…

“Not Pretend Mommy, real Mommy.”

Damn. Just push through it…

“Real Mommy at your service,” she said shakily, and started wiping his hands off.

Cory let out an ear-bleeding scream. “I want real Mommy,” he wailed. Sherri felt the eyes of Quinn and Wade on her, as John sidled up to Cory.

“Hey little man,” he said, “there’s no need to cry. I’m here, buddy! Remember I sang you to sleep last night?”

Cory continued his cries, and it seemed even ‘Magic Sam’ was powerless to stop him.

“Real Mommy?” Wade said, looking at Sherri with a screwed up face. “What’s got into his head now?”

Sherri shook her head. “I don’t know. Why don’t you try? Maybe he’ll respond to you… stepping into my role. You do it so well.”

As Wade bit her lip at the wording, John gave a low whistle.

“Boy, that’s manipulative, Sherri,” he remarked, fighting a grin. “Getting her off your scent by distracting her with her own guilty conscience… I have to admit, I’m impressed. But, also appalled.”

Sherri met his eye, and she could tell he was more amused than anything.

I’m not proud of it. But then again, spending my life as a professional impostor is hardly an ethically sound vocation to begin with.

As Wade started to wipe down the screaming child, Sherri collected the plates and brought them to the sink, before bringing her coffee mug into the living room.

John followed, and she sat at the bay window, silently sipping her coffee as she let him gesticulate.

“I scanned all through the basement for hidden storage disks, but there was nothing detected. That doesn’t mean there was nothing there, but Higgins couldn’t find it.

“I’ve been speaking with Stephanie back in the facility, but she hasn’t been at all cooperative. Thinks we’re some shady government types trying to steal Quinn’s technology, so she’s given up nothing on that front. I did find out that she knows about the affair, and she’s been actively ignoring it for Cory’s sake.”

She knows? The plot thickens…

Sherri wasn’t sure what would have been worse: being oblivious, or bearing the burden of knowing that your husband is unfaithful and staying quiet about it. Either way, it was a cruel fate.

John shook his head. “I don’t think this situation is helping Cory at all, personally. But I guess that’s beside the point.”

Quinn strode into the room from the kitchen, giving Sherri a tight nod. “I’m gonna head down to work.”

Sherri forced a smile. “Okie doke! Do some deals and make us rich, okay?” she said, the words tasting bitter in her mouth.

Quinn’s eyes twinkled as he headed in the direction of the basement, giving her a thumbs up. “Prepare the monocles and top hats for my triumphant return.”

As he turned away from her, Sherri gave John a nervous look. He nodded, picking up on her silent message.

“I’ll go shadow him. If he has backups somewhere, he’ll be reaching for them any minute now.”

He tapped on his handlink, and left her alone in the room.

*          *          *

John waited at the bottom of the basement stairs as Nexus Quinn sat down in front of his computer, and switched it on, fiddling with his timer as it began to boot up.

“Where do you keep that timer, anyway?” John wondered, as he realised that it may have had internal storage. Quinn had just been holding it as he’d blinked in here. He wondered if he kept it on his person at all times, or if there was a specific hiding spot where he kept it.

“What the…” Quinn mumbled, as he noticed a disk error on the computer. “Well, shit.”

He flipped open the box of floppies, and attempted to boot off one.

“Sorry, kid,” John said, as the computer refused to recognise the disk.

Quinn cursed a few more times, at an ever-increasing volume.

“You kiss your babysitter with that mouth?” John remarked.

Quinn ran a frustrated hand through his hair, causing it to fall out of its neatly styled place, and stood, moving around to the various devices in the basement and inspecting them. John figured he must be checking for signs of damage or sabotage on them.

“No, we didn’t trash the rest of your stuff,” John said. “But, we will if it comes to that. Sorry.”

“What happened?” Quinn said under his breath, as sweat beaded on his forehead.

John, despite himself, felt bad for Quinn. After all, this poor guy had no idea what he was doing was going to cause a far-reaching catastrophe, beginning with his own home. That the inhuman creatures with whom he wished to barter were merely waiting for their opportunity to genocide and subjugate the Homo sapiens species across the multiverse.

Maybe he could be reasoned with, if we told him the truth.

John dismissed the thought. That was the last resort. There was too much risk involved with Sherri unmasking herself as a stranger who had infiltrated his home in the guise of his wife. That kind of thing tended to cause a lot more mistrust, and compromise the mission.

Sherri’s first training missions had her surreptitiously replacing her doubles, and assimilating into their lives for short periods of time, just to see if she could handle the situation. A few times, at the beginning, her deception was discovered, and it never went well.

From their years of experience together as leaper and observer, he could count on one hand the number of times when Sherri revealing her identity was the right move, and it was nearly always when all other options were exhausted.

Still, the temptation was always there. Always the voice in the back of his head saying: ‘what if this time it’s the right choice?’ The constant struggle between hard data and gut feelings. He seemed to recall a similar conflict within the Sam he’d met in 1978.

Looking frazzled, Quinn headed up the stairs. John transported his projection to the living room, where Sherri and Wade were reading to Cory.

“Sherri, heads up…” he said, and she looked up at him. They exchanged looks, and John gestured to Quinn, who was now coming into the room.

“Something’s scrambled my magnetic storage,” he announced to the room, in a grave tone.

“Magnetic–? You mean, your hard drive?” Wade asked.

“Hard drive and floppy disks.”

Sherri put on her best concerned face. “Oh no! All your work!”

Quinn bowed his head. “It is a setback, but I haven’t lost my data. I can restore using the quartz storage system I acquired a few months ago. But I’ll need to pick up new disks.”

John gestured wildly to Sherri. “Quartz! Are you kidding me? I gotta find out how that works.”

Quinn pursed his lips. “But I really need to figure out what happened. Some of my equipment might be on the fritz. Last thing I need is something going wrong.”

Behind Quinn, Sherri noted John’s pacing form as he grappled with the idea of crystal data storage.

His mind will be on that for a while, I’m sure.

“Want me to pop down to Doppler for you?” Wade suggested. “I still know some of the guys there. Might be able to talk them into a discount, as long as Hurley’s not around to yell at them about it.”

Quinn smirked. “Sure, just don’t let them talk you into an extended warranty.”

“I would never,” she said, feigning being wounded.

“Anything I can do to help?” Sherri asked.

Quinn paused for a moment, thinking. “Actually, yeah.”

He turned to Wade. “When you go, could you take Cory with you? Stephanie’s going to assist me in the basement.”

3.9  ·  Just a Normal Friday

Colin followed the Professor through a large room of servers, with Quinn close at his heels.

“This place is a maze,” he mused, as they weaved through the steel racks, each lit up with rows of blue and green lights that flashed as the drives and processors were accessed, presumably by the Higgins mainframe.

“It’s daunting at first sight, certainly,” Arturo said. “But it’s laid out in a logical, well-labelled fashion. Like a library, in a way.”

“How do you expect us to take all of this with us?” Quinn asked.

“All of this is merely processing power and redundancy,” he explained. “The core Higgins modules are stored on a series of quartz crystals at the heart of the facility.”

“Quartz crystals?” Colin glanced at Quinn, who shrugged.

Arturo led them into a circular room, with about twenty finger-sized crystals set into receptacles around the perimeter of the room, illuminated from behind with blue light. A series of lasers on robotic arms intermittently moved over them, injecting red beams into the transparent hexagonal minerals.

“Yes, apparently Doctor Beckett integrated some quite advanced technology in my absence. He did leave me an extensive manual, however, which I will now pass on to you.”

“We’re really going to abandon this place?” Colin said, as he marvelled at the unbelievable advancements.

“I’m afraid it can’t be helped now,” the Professor lamented. “Higgins detected a Manta Ship scanning the location of the energy surge for geological anomalies, and a vast cavern six stories under a university in an earthquake-prone city is sure to raise their suspicions.”

Well, when you put it that way…

“It does seem like an odd choice,” Quinn said, looking upwards at the ceiling. “Weren’t you worried this place could cave in?”

Arturo nodded. “Yes, which is why approximately eighty per cent of Higgins’s early iterations involved complex geological data collection and modelling. He predicted the strata we built in would be structurally sound until at least 2029.”

He grinned, looking towards the centre of the room, where a dome protruded from the ceiling that blinked with multicoloured lights. “The marvellous thing actually predicted the earthquake of 1989, corroborating with the notes you left me. It allowed us to significantly mitigate the death toll, and allowed us some cover with the government to operate as an independent geological survey and earthquake detection system.”

Quinn grinned, his eyes shining with excitement. “This place blows me away,” he said, patting his one-time mentor on the shoulder.

“Yes, well, as much as I’d like to take the credit, it was a team effort,” he said with a modest shrug.

Colin wanted to share in the wonder, but all he could think about was the fact that this amazing place was now doomed because of them.

“But enough accolades and self-congratulations,” Arturo continued. “I brought you here because there is still a chance to complete the mission that went awry, as long as you can escape here with the Higgins data.”

“Even if we take all this data, what’ll we do with it?” Colin asked, closely eyeing one of the crystals as a laser shone into it. He watched as the beam entered the crystal and began to move around within, in an intricate circuit board pattern, apparently writing data into the stone.

Arturo placed a hand on a panel, and his voice boomed. “Higgins, switch to secondary storage and eject crystalline components. Administrative authorisation: FP-454-029B.”

After a short hesitation from the computer, he added: “Post-haste, Higgins.”

“Ejecting data crystals,” Higgins said in his flat, mechanical tone. The robotic arms lifted away, and, one by one, the blue light behind each of the crystals went out, before the crystal popped out of its recess.

Arturo reached under a panel, pulling out a briefcase. He opened it up to reveal a numbered series of padded compartments. He walked around the room, taking a crystal and placing it carefully into its corresponding place.

“As I understand it, these crystals were a late stage implementation, and specifically designed so that our data could be taken with us in the event of an evacuation,” he said, as he closed the case. “Why they were left behind is part of the greater mystery of what occurred here, but now I’m relieved they were.”

He handed the case to Quinn.

“This briefcase is equipped with a series of compact discs that contain Doctor Beckett’s detailed manual on the use of this method of storage,” he said.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Colin prodded.

Quinn looked down at the briefcase. “Well, what other place do we know has technology that has the chance of matching this?”

Colin let out a breath as it dawned on him. “That place where Maggie went in the future?”

“Yeah,” confirmed Quinn. “I think he called it Project Quantum Leap.”

“So we need to get back to the other Doc Beckett’s home turf, then,” Colin murmured, as his mind started to put things into place.

He had to admit that the thought of seeing that place excited him.

As they began to head out of the core, Colin felt the ground beneath him rumble, and his heart jumped.

“Uh, you said this strata was sound, right?” he said, looking at Arturo with wide eyes.

“That’s no earthquake,” the Professor replied, looking sadly at the little handheld device he’d been keeping in his pocket. “Our belligerent friends above have begun exploratory drilling. Higgins estimates twenty minutes until they breach the facility.”

“Well, shit,” Quinn muttered.

The Professor turned towards a door across from where they’d entered. “One moment,” he said, holding up a finger as he entered the room.

After exactly one moment, by Colin’s measure, the man returned, holding Quinn’s notebook, which was now yellowed and well-used. But the notebook wasn’t the only thing in his hands.

Arturo held out the contents of his hands to Colin. One notebook, and one small metal box with a latch. Upon taking them, Colin turned the box over, studying it.

“What’s this?”

“Fascinating,” mused Arturo. “You don’t recall giving me that in 1978, Mister Mallory?”

Colin narrowed his eyes. “No. You’re sure I did?”

Arturo scratched his chin, regarding Colin with an enigmatic smile. “Changing one’s own history is an interesting thing, isn’t it?”

He gestured to the items Colin held. “These keepsakes have remained unchanged even as history was rewritten. Higgins has theories as to why, but I shall spare you the lecture. They are a window into a past that no longer exists, and I suspect they’ll contain some answers for your altered memories.”

He headed back the way they’d come, gesturing for the brothers to follow. “Come, I’ll show you and your friends to the evacuation chamber.”

*          *          *

Quinn Mallory felt unwelcome.

It hadn’t been his fault that he had been the hapless guinea pig of a mad scientist and blended with someone else. He didn’t know squat about all this science stuff, which the other guy with his name seemed to, to a degree that rivalled Diana, and maybe even Doctor Geiger himself.

He was just a normal dude who only got caught up in all this because of a spinal injury that left him paralysed, until he was approached by Geiger and miraculously healed with technology he would never understand in a million years.

And now he was in another world with some enemy he’d never heard of bearing down on him, among people who would rather he not be here, and wouldn’t even call him by his name.

Mallory.

Sure, some people were referred to by their surname, and it was fine. But Mallory was a girl’s name. They could have chosen anything else, but no.

He was sitting, arms crossed, and hunched over. He supposed he looked like he was sulking, and that’s because he was.

The wordy man everyone called the Professor had taken the other Quinn and his brother further into the labs, leaving him with the gun lady, whose name was Maggie, and the singer, whose name was the same as a Dutch painter he’d heard of.

While he’d been fused, he’d felt an affinity towards these people, but now he just felt like he was among strangers.

I just want to go home.

In his periphery, he sensed Rembrandt approaching him.

“What do you want?” he asked bluntly.

“Just wanted to see if you were doing okay,” he said, taking a seat beside him on the bench.

“Besides being in a crazy post-apocalyptic wasteland? Yeah I’m doing great.” He raised a cynical eyebrow.

“Yeah, it’s a lot to handle, huh?” He chuckled, and leaned back against the wall. “I never asked to be on this ride, either.”

Mallory’s guarded facade faltered at this. “You didn’t?”

“I was just driving past Q-ball’s house when my whole Caddy got pulled into that portal. And when I eventually got back to my home world, the damn maggots invaded three months later. So I know how you feel, man. Just a pawn in someone else’s chess game.”

Mallory frowned. “If Quinn did all this to you, why are you friends with the guy?”

“Oh, I wasn’t his biggest fan for a good while. But in the end, he was just a kid who made a mistake, and I think he beat himself up plenty without me joining in. And it’s hard to stay mad at someone with as good a heart as Q-ball. Maybe he’s motivated by his guilt, but he’s done a lotta good, helped a lot of people.”

Mallory processed this for a while. This group really did seem tight, even if it was borne of necessity.

A great rumble shook the room, and Mallory instinctively gripped his seat. The sound of metal creaking echoed off the walls.

“What the hell was that?” he cried.

“I’m thinkin’ it’s our cue to mosey on out of this death trap,” Rembrandt said, making eye contact with Maggie across the room.

“I’m not going to argue with that,” Mallory said, standing. “Where are the others?”

“They’ll be here,” Maggie said. “Just be ready to leave.”

Mallory looked up at the high ceilings. A crisscross of reinforced girders, supported by steel pillars. Thoughts of them crumpling and crashing down filled his mind, and he felt sick to his stomach.

“Let’s go, people!” Quinn’s voice boomed into the room, and Mallory merely caught his arm beckoning, as it continued past the doorway.

The three of them followed, joining the three men, through a winding corridor. Mallory noted that Quinn was now carrying a black briefcase, and Colin had an old book.

Finally, they stopped at a large door. The Professor placed his hand on a panel, and it slid open to reveal a shallow room, no deeper than six feet.

“This is the evacuation chamber,” he explained. “Higgins will open up a wormhole against the far wall that should send you to a safe location on the surface.”

“Should…?” Quinn said, biting his lip.

“Well, we must trust that the focus beacon for the other end of the vortex is still operational,” he said, looking down at the little computer in his hand. “We are still receiving a signal from it, so I wouldn’t be too concerned.”

“What happens if it’s not working right?” Mallory’s voice wavered.

Arturo stroked his beard. “Best not to think about that.”

He exchanged a look with Quinn that Mallory couldn’t read.

Why do I get the feeling this is just a normal Friday for these guys?

“Higgins, execute evacuation procedure B92,” the Professor commanded.

“Evacuation gateway opening in three, two, one. Evacuation gateway engaging.”

Before them, the back wall of the room was replaced with a swirling blue, and another terrifying rumble began to shake the facility.

“Go now!” the Professor shouted.

Everyone else seemed to hesitate, so Mallory took the initiative, and jumped in.

Just a normal Friday, he thought as he was thrust through the tunnel, his stomach turning.

And then he was out, falling onto a dusty wooden floor. He pulled himself to his feet, leaning on what appeared to be a church pew. For a moment, he took in his surroundings. It was certainly a church; long abandoned, but largely untouched by the chaotic environment that other places he’d seen here seemed to have. It would almost be peaceful if he didn’t think about why he was here.

Behind him, he heard more bodies tumbling to the ground. Rembrandt was the first to sidle up to him.

“Well, thank you Jesus,” Rembrandt said, staring at the stained glass image of the religious figure behind the pulpit.

“Where are we now?” Maggie asked, joining them.

“Can’t be far, right?” said Rembrandt. “That was the shortest slide we’ve ever had.”

“I think I recognise this place,” Colin said, his arms still laden with the old notebook and some kind of box. “Then again, all churches look the same to me.”

“No, you’re right,” Quinn said, studying the architecture. “Our second cousin Gareth got married in this church. We’re in Los Altos.”

Mallory turned back, watching the vortex close. He furrowed his brow as he realised there was someone missing.

“Hey, didn’t the Professor follow you?”

He turned back to the others. Quinn’s head was bowed.

“No,” Quinn said shakily.

“But why?”

“Because he had to set the self-destruct. Can’t let the ’maggs get their hands on time travel.”

“What?!” Maggie was looking at him with wild eyes.

“Can’t he come through here after he does that, same as us?” Rembrandt asked, frantic.

“He will… if the Kromaggs don’t get there first,” Colin said.

Maggie produced the timer from her pocket.

“Well, we have one hour and thirty-six minutes,” she said, voice breaking. “So let’s wait right here and hope he shows up.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Mallory probed.

Quinn clutched the briefcase with both hands. “Then we finish his life’s work.”

3.10  ·  Tools of the Trade

“Can I get a quarter-inch flat-head, please?”

Sherri listlessly scanned the rack of screwdrivers, and plucked out the requested size. She handed it to Nexus Quinn, who was lying face up on the floor of the basement, head underneath one of the many large coils that were arranged along the wall. He unscrewed a hatch, and pointed a handheld device at it. The device was small, and had a numeric LCD screen similar to a timer, at which he was squinting.

“What is that thing?” she asked him.

He poked his head out, looking at her. “It’s just an EMF meter. I’m checking for possible leaks of electromagnetic energy that could have fried my drives. If it was one of my components that caused this, it could do damage to a lot more than some floppy disks if I don’t fix it.”

Sherri nodded, as he closed up the hatch, and shimmied along to the next coil. She looked across the room at John, who was captivated by the crystal storage device that Quinn had placed on the desk in preparation for the data restoration. It was a small machine with a single quartz crystal inside, and a series of lasers pointing towards it from several directions.

John had his handlink out and was scanning it from every angle; his enthusiastic demeanour was like a kid in a candy store.

“Steph, can you pass me a half inch spanner, please?”

Sherri selected the spanner. His hand was outstretched to receive it, though his meter device was already occupying it, so she carefully placed it on the floor beside. He grabbed it with the ends of his fingers.

“Thanks.”

After a moment of clanging, he slid along to the next coil, repeating his work.

“This thing is amazing…” she heard John mumble. “The data is carved into the crystal in microscopic detail. It can’t be erased, so that makes it perfect for long term storage… and this one quartz point, alone, has tens of terabytes of storage capacity. Incredible. I wonder if he’s got the schematics somewhere.”

“Can you pass me some needle-nose pliers, Steph?”

Sherri fought the urge to sigh, and leaned over to hand him the pliers.

“Here,” she said, placing them in his hand.

“Oh, here, put this back too…” he said, using his other hand to thrust the screwdriver at her. The pointed end went right into her hand, and she cried out.

“Oh, jeez, sorry!” Quinn said, crawling out from his position. “Are you okay?”

Sherri sucked on her new wound. “Well, it hurts, but it’s nothing serious,” she said. “Just… watch what you’re doing, Quinn.”

Quinn stood, and took her hand, looking at the puncture, which was beginning to ooze blood.

“Ugh. I’m such a jerk,” he said. “Come on, I’ll patch you up.”

He led her upstairs, and brought her into the kitchen, where he got a first aid kit out of the drawer.

Gingerly, he started cleaning her cut with an alcohol swab.

“Sorry,” he said. “I get a bit carried away when I’m focused on my work. Forget to notice things right in front of me.”

Sherri raised an eyebrow, and thought about what else that might apply to.

“We don’t get much time together, do we?” she asked. “Just the two of us, I mean.”

He looked up at her with an unreadable expression. “I guess not.”

“Seems like you and Wade get more time together than us,” she continued. He dropped his gaze back to her hand, and grabbed a band-aid, peeling it open.

“Do we? I guess I’m working so much I didn’t notice,” he lied, as he put the bandage on her.

Sherri kept a poker face. “I think she had a crush on you when you used to work together at the computer store.”

He looked up, studying her face. She wasn’t sure what was going on in his head, but his energy had changed, and it put her on edge.

“Yeah, maybe. But, I was already involved with you, so she knew to keep her distance.” His words came out slow and deliberate.

Sherri rubbed her hand, breaking eye contact. She felt like he was playing chess and she was playing checkers.

“I’m sure she did.”

He stood. “Why don’t you take a break? I’ll go finish up.”

And with that, he hurried out of the room, leaving Sherri with a nervous feeling.

*          *          *

John was intensely frustrated that he couldn’t touch this storage device. He just wanted to open it up and figure it out. If he could integrate it into Higgins, it would improve efficiency by a substantial margin. He thought he had the gist of how it worked, but without at least some schematics, it would take him a lot of trial and error to build his own.

As he tried to stick his head into the middle of the device, in the hopes to see some of the circuitry, he realised Quinn was returning from upstairs. He glanced up, seeing that Sherri wasn’t with him.

Curious, he watched Quinn bend over, picking up the tools that had been left on the floor.

He looked at the screwdriver’s tip for a moment, before moving to his desk and rifling through a drawer. He pulled out some tweezers, and plucked off the stray fleck of Sherri’s skin that clung to the tool.

John looked at him, a sinking feeling descending upon his stomach. “What are you doing…?”

Quinn inserted the sample into a small vial, and placed it under a lamp with a concentrated beam.

That’s more than just a lamp…

As the sample was illuminated, a small LCD display on the size produced a string of text that John couldn’t interpret.

“Huh…” Quinn said, biting his lip. Then he began to squint, as if he was looking at a bright light. He turned away, rubbing his eyes. “What… what is that?”

John stepped back, and quickly tapped at his handlink, re-centring himself at Sherri in the kitchen, who was sipping a glass of water. She looked up at his frantic face, and her eyes grew wide.

“Is something wrong?”

“Sherri, I think he’s on to you.” John put a nervous hand on his head, gripping his hair with his fingers.

“On to me? What do you mean? How?”

“He didn’t stab you with that flat-head by accident. He did it to get a… a sample of your cells. I don’t know what data he’s getting from it, but it’s clear he knows something’s off with you. When he was looking at your sample, he had a physiological reaction consistent with the Sensory Aura Paradox.”

Sherri had first described that phenomenon to him long ago, causing him to study it somewhat, and provide it with a name. The Quinn he had met in 1978 had first identified the SAP in a simple experiment that pierced the illusion of the Leaper Aura. It caused a visceral reaction to the brain attempting to parse contradictory stimuli, most often visual in nature.

“Oh boy,” Sherri sighed, standing. “So, I guess Plan B is go.”

“Yeah.” John nodded gravely. “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Plan B?”

“Oh, I know…” Sherri gave him a sad look, as she opened the kitchen drawer and put the first aid kit back in its place.

“I hate it too,” she said, pulling out a claw hammer.

3.11  ·  Answers

As the sliders reclined across the church pews, Quinn looked down at the notebook he’d filled up in 1978. Colin sat beside him, holding the little metal box that neither of them recognised.

“What do you remember writing in there?” Colin asked him.

Quinn tried to think back to what had only been a week ago at most, to his understanding, but it was frighteningly out of focus. Certainly, he recalled building the machine with Sam, and the Professor, and his Dad, and the other Sam. And Colin?

Yeah, he was there.

But the memories tapered off into a distorted mess as he tried to drill down into them.

“I know I wrote a whole lot of technical stuff in the front half,” he said, scratching his head. “The personal stuff though? Drawing a blank.”

He opened up the notebook, and flipped through the equations, diagrams, and instructions on the sliding machine. Nothing unusual there that stood out.

But when he hit the back end, the words surprised him.

“Dad died…”

He felt his head swim as he remembered a fractured memory of his Dad’s funeral, pressing against contradictory memories of his Dad being alive and well after that point.

Colin’s mouth curved upward. “In 1984, Doc Beckett pulled him out of the path of a car. That’s how we first met him. I guess that’s what happened in the new timeline, anyway.”

Quinn let out a laugh, as he pieced together the new memories. Memories in which he grew up with Sam Beckett as a personal hero, and then as a teacher.

This is wild.

He flipped through more pages. No more tragedies ensued that he could see, just page after page of things that needed to happen to set him on the path to the current point. Then, he reached the part about the Professor’s death, and he felt his heart ache as he realised that the Arturo of Earth Prime couldn’t have prevented the death of his double. And now…

He continued paging through the notebook, until he hit the end, and felt a wave of confusion.

“There’s nothing in here about you…” he said to Colin, feeling cold. “He… he said there would be answers…”

Colin looked pensive. “Maybe it’s in here?” he said, holding up the box.

Quinn watched him twist the latch, and open it.

A cocktail umbrella?

Indeed, sitting solitary in the box was a single red paper umbrella; the kind that was used to decorate tropical cocktails.

A memory fired off in Quinn’s mind:

The memory made him smile, despite everything. He controlled the reaction, and looked up at Colin, who had a faraway look.

Yeah. I definitely remember him being confused by everyday stuff, like flushing toilets. Why would that be?

“Why in the world would you put that in a box for safe keeping?” Quinn asked.

Colin picked it up, and tried to avoid breaking apart the paper that had become brittle with age. He turned it over in his hands for a minute, brows knitted and face draining of colour.

And then, out of nowhere, he started laughing.

Quinn raised his eyebrows. “You alright, man?”

“I remember!” Colin, through his laughs, placed the umbrella back in the box, and on the pew beside him, before throwing his arms around a bewildered Quinn.

“It all makes sense now,” said Colin, squeezing Quinn to an uncomfortable point. “Originally, I never grew up with you at all.”

He finally let go, and pulled back, revealing tears in his eyes. “I asked our birth father to bring the young me to live with you.”

Quinn blinked. “You remembered all that from an umbrella?”

Quinn felt like all his confusion was finally starting to sort itself out. It must have been something to do with his fusion that had fractured his memory and allowed the old timeline to resurface.

“It wasn’t just any umbrella,” Colin said, and turned his gaze towards the stained glass Jesus. “But I’m… not sure I can accurately describe just what happened to me when I acquired it.”

He pursed his lips as he tried to form words. “I… met this weird guy who knew a frightening amount about me, and Doc– I mean, Sam – told me he was some… I dunno, supernatural entity, for lack of a better term. The whole thing was nuts, but it was pivotal in my decision. And that umbrella is the only thing that proves it really happened to me.”

More ‘higher power’ stuff?

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, and Quinn felt like a veil had been lifted. His relief was palpable. He wasn’t going crazy, his mind wasn’t playing tricks. He just had to reconcile conflicting timelines. It wasn’t so different to his bubble universe lifetime. Just another layer of memories to add to his ever-expanding collection. As long as he knew what the current correct version of his memory was, he’d be alright.

It occurred to him that if they managed to succeed in stopping the Kromagg invasion, all of this could be purged from their memories, too. He gripped the notebook in his hand tightly; it was a vital document.

“I think you made the right choice, Colin.”

“Me too,” Colin agreed. “I don’t remember my original life, but I do remember how worried I was about that decision. And when I finally asked you about it, you said ‘go for it.’”

I remember that, too…

“Thanks, man,” he said.

Quinn gave him a light punch in the arm. “You weren’t a bad addition to the family, all things considered. For example, those times you did the dishes just so I could play Nintendo in my boxers. Truly selfless.”

Colin reciprocated the arm punch. “You just had to ruin a touching moment, huh?”

“Tell you what,” Quinn said, “next time we play, I’ll be Luigi and you can be Mario.”

As Colin gave him an amused eye roll, Quinn couldn’t help but smile, as he realised this kind of silly sibling banter wouldn’t have been possible before. It warmed his heart to think about all the fun times that one change had brought the two of them.

As his mind drifted to the hazy circumstances that led to Colin joining him in his sliding when he knew he had not been there in the beginning, someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He turned to find Maggie’s gaunt face, as she held the timer aloft.

Nine minutes remained.

“He’s… not coming, is he?” she said, her voice breaking.

Quinn felt his heart sink. “No.”

“He put his trust in us to finish what they started,” Colin said, leaning back to meet Maggie’s eye. “If we can prevent the invasion, we can undo all the deaths that have happened since.”

Quinn nodded, swallowing hard. “Including his.”

Maggie blinked back tears. “Yeah, you’re right. We have to do this.”

She handed Quinn the timer. “Can you get us back there?”

Quinn nodded, and began to program the timer with the coordinates to the world where they had first met Sam.

“One problem, though,” he said, as he pressed buttons. “We’ll have to stay there a while. Way longer than the timer will give us.”

Silence fell over the group.

“So, anyone who wants off the ride…” Quinn said, “I guess that will be your last chance; at least for a bit.”

The sound of a throat being cleared came from across the room, and they turned to Mallory, whose hand was raised.

“I’d like to go home, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Quinn gave him an understanding nod. “Alright. When we get there, I’ll set the timer to get you home, and I guess that’ll be the last we use of this thing.”

The group gathered under the stained glass window, as the timer reached zero, and Quinn opened a wormhole for the penultimate time.

3.12  ·  Plan B

Plan B was on: to bust up the timer, and all of Nexus Quinn’s stuff. The destruction of all his ingenuity. John’s least favourite option, but it would get the job done.

As Sherri headed for the basement door, John centred himself on Quinn, who was sitting on his desk chair, holding his timer tightly. He was doing surprisingly little for someone who had just discovered something alarming, but his face definitely showed it.

“I know you can’t hear me,” John said, “but I’m sorry.”

Atop the stairs, there was a thump on the door.

John watched Quinn’s gaze fall on it as the knob turned back and forth. The door wasn’t opening.

Oh no, he locked it! So much for Plan B?

The muffled voice of Sherri came from the other side of the door: “Quinn?”

Quinn stood from his seat, and moved to the base of the staircase.

“You told me to invest in a lock, right?” he called back, smirking.

“Why’d you lock me out, Quinn?” she probed.

“Because I don’t think you’re who you say you are.” He walked up a few steps. “You’re… not from here, are you?”

John moved his position to the top of the stairs, and leaned to the other side of the door. Sherri stood there, hammer in hand, ready to bust through the door.

“He has his timer with him,” he told her. “We need to talk him down before he runs off through a wormhole.”

She lowered the hammer, cursing under her breath.

“No, I’m not,” she confessed. John moved back to the basement side of the door to see Quinn’s reaction.

He had taken a seat on a step, and looked troubled, but he still wore a smirk on his face.

“I knew it! After my drives were wiped, I knew something was going on, and there were several inconsistencies that raised a red flag for me.

“So I tested you: Stephanie and I were never dating when I worked with Wade, but you seemed to accept the premise. Then, my analysis of your skin cells confirmed a foreign origin. You’re a double.”

He clasped his hands together. “So, the question is: where is my wife?”

“She’s safe…”

“Not good enough. Where is she?”

“She’s back on my world.”

Quinn frowned, and John poked his head through the door back at Sherri.

Last resort…

“I guess we need to tell him the truth.”

He pulled back into the basement as Sherri began to speak.

“Quinn, I’ve come here because you’re about to make a terrible mistake. I’m… from the future.”

Quinn stared at the door, and let out a nervous laugh.

“Yeah, okay. That’s a new one.”

“I’m telling you the truth. Those people you’ve been planning to give your sliding tech to… they’re Kromaggs, aren’t they?”

John watched Quinn mull over her words with narrowed eyes.

Sherri continued: “Whatever they’ve promised you, whatever they said to you, it’s all lies. The first thing they’re gonna do when they get that tech is come here and kill your family.”

Quinn looked up at the door, incredulous. “And why would they do that?”

“Because they hate humans. They’re only buttering you up because they want your tech.”

Quinn shook his head, standing up from the step and heading further into the basement. He moved to the crystal storage device, and hit a button on the side, ejecting the quartz point.

“You’re losing him,” John called out, frantic, as he watched Quinn place the crystal in his pocket.

“Quinn, please. There’s so much at stake here!” Sherri cried.

“And I suppose kidnapping my wife, assuming her identity, and sabotaging my stuff was all because you really, really want to help me, right?” he scoffed.

He held out the timer.

“Mayday!” John shouted. “He’s gonna bail!”

“Quinn, you can’t trust them! Hundreds of worlds are at stake here! Yours, mine, and so many others! Please… let me in, and let’s talk it out, okay?”

But it was too late. The wormhole opened, as Sherri pounded on the door handle with the hammer, before kicking at the door.

John watched Quinn disappear into the vortex. Thinking fast, he held up his handlink, and scanned the wormhole for its destination.

Sherri kept kicking until the door finally burst open. She sprinted for the vortex, but it closed, leaving her sprawled over the desk behind it.

“No!” She slammed her fist on the desk. “That self-absorbed, unreasonable, two-timing asshole!”

Yeah, that about sums it up.

She and John shared a moment of defeat. John looked down at the handlink, sighing.

“I’ve traced the wormhole,” he said, “but because he had the only means to go off-world from here, we’re gonna have to leap you there. So we’ll need to perform a retrieval and then send you back out after we’ve regrouped.”

Sherri cursed. “Fine. Let’s get going.”

He hesitated, his eyes shifting to the device that had held the crystal.

Would be a pity to let that go…

“Just, do me one small favour before we pull you out. Open that thing up for me, would you?”

*          *          *

The air was peaceful and fresh on Sam Beckett’s home world. It helped that they had landed somewhere outside a city, Rembrandt figured.

“So, where’d we end up this time?”

All around them grew rows and rows of trees. Remy didn’t recognise what kind of tree, but it was definitely some kind of farm, given the layout.

“I think it’s an almond farm,” Maggie said, as she studied the foliage. “Guess that means we’re in the sticks. What a pain.”

“How we doing for money, Remy?” Q-ball asked, as he held the timer out, studying it.

Rembrandt felt around in his pockets. “Ain’t got much.”

Maggie groaned. “The sooner we can contact those guys in New Mexico, the better. If I have to work another waitressing job, I may go postal.”

“About that…” Colin said, “how are we gonna contact them?”

Quinn stroked his chin. “Well, if I remember correctly, Sam called them from Sheriff Maggie’s place. If we can find the phone records, we may be able to get that number.”

Rembrandt grinned. It was good to have the old Q-ball back with his fast-moving brain.

The corners of Quinn’s mouth turned up. “Hey, Maggie…”

Maggie frowned. “Not liking that look on your face, Quinn.”

He held up his hands defensively. “I have a good idea, honest! We show up, heralding the miraculous return of Madera County Sheriff Maggie Beckett…”

He put an arm over her shoulder, and used the other to gesture dramatically. “First of all, they’ll have to drop those murder charges against Billy, and we might have easy access to those records, right?”

Maggie’s shoulders slumped. “Look, if I’m gonna do this I don’t want to waste a single second playing small town cop, okay? You saw how the other me handled that.”

Quinn chuckled. “I have a feeling once we get through to that secret government project and tell ’em what we know about it, they will want to whisk us away pretty fast.”

Rembrandt turned his attention to Mallory, who was standing apart from the group.

“Q-ball, what’s the clock say?”

Quinn held the timer up. “Five minutes.”

Rembrandt nodded, and approached the fifth slider, who was scuffing his shoe in the soil. “Hear that? You’ll be home in a few minutes!”

Mallory looked up, and gave him a weak smile. “Great. Thanks.”

“Cheer up, my man. I thought you wanted to go home?”

Mallory shrugged. “Yeah, I do.”

He kicked into the dirt again. “Just, now that I know all this stuff is out there, it’s gonna be a little difficult to just… go back, and forget about it.”

Quinn appeared beside Rembrandt.

“Well, in case we don’t do what we came here to do, maybe you can tell Diana everything about the Kromagg threat. And… this might help.”

He held the timer out to Mallory, who stared at it for a moment, then up at Quinn.

“Why would you give me that?” he asked, incredulous.

Quinn shrugged. “Look, it’ll be nothing but a paperweight if it stays here. It only operates from the coordinates of the last world it opened a wormhole to. So, it’s better off going with you.”

He took hold of Mallory’s hand and forced the timer into his palm.

“Take it,” he reiterated. “Let Diana tinker with it; she seems to understand the underlying physics.”

Mallory gingerly held the device up, studying it closely.

“You’ve definitely set it to take me home, right?”

Quinn chuckled, and nodded. “Just try not to collide with another me on your way back, okay?”

Rembrandt placed a hand on his shoulder, as the timer ticked down.

“It’s been real, man. If Doctor Frankenstein ever shows up again, give him a kick in the shins, will you?”

Mallory snorted. “That’s a promise.”

Colin and Maggie closed in, now. Colin reached to Mallory’s head and messed up his hair, causing Mallory to furrow his brow in protest, but Rembrandt could tell he was hiding a smile.

“Lose the hair gel, you look like a dork,” was Colin’s short-but-sweet parting advice, followed by a wink. Rembrandt couldn’t have put it better.

Mallory raised an eyebrow. “You know what? Just for that, I’m keeping this hair style.”

Maggie gave him a light hug. “Sorry for the girl’s name,” she said.

“Honestly, it’s starting to grow on me,” Mallory admitted.

Quinn held out a hand, and Mallory shook it. “I wish I could say our time together was pleasant, but…”

“Yeah,” Mallory finished, and held the timer up, with a nervous expression. “Which button do I press again?”

Quinn pointed to the correct button, and gave a sad sigh, as it touched down on zero, and Mallory pressed it.

“Take good care of the ol’ thing, okay?” he said, backing away as the vortex sprang to life.

Mallory nodded, and waved, before finally stepping into the gateway and disappearing, as fallen leaves swirled around them all.

As it closed up, Rembrandt felt suddenly empty, as he realised what they’d just given up.

He felt Q-ball’s hand on his shoulder.

“So I guess we really are stuck here, huh?” Remy said.

“If we do this right, I promise you’ll make it home, and the Kromaggs will be a distant memory.”

Despite everything, after being strung along by Q-ball, time after time, led around by the promise to get him home; somehow, this time, Rembrandt believed him.

Interquel:

The Return of Sheriff Beckett

As the Greyhound pulled into the Madera bus station, Maggie felt her stomach drop. She was wearing large sunglasses to mask her identity, but they were only a temporary solution.

The others had filled her in on everything that had gone on here a few weeks back, while she was nursing her boredom in the Waiting Room – getting on Al’s nerves, if she remembered correctly.

To her surprise, she seemed to remember the broad strokes of Sam’s actions, which came to her as Quinn described them. Treating Colin’s head wound, driving the Higgins patrol car, being handcuffed in Billy’s shed, and even some fragments of typing code for endless hours on a computer in Sheriff Maggie’s kitchen, though she had no idea what any of it meant.

It was a strange feeling, remembering those actions, because she knew it had not been her. It gave her the creeps. It made her wonder if there could be other people out there leaping, who had much looser morals than Uncle Sam. It had definitely been the right choice to destroy the facility and prevent the Kromaggs from knowing about such things, she decided.

The taxi ride from the bus station to the Sheriff’s headquarters was quiet, and Maggie realised that all three of her friends had some unhappy memories of this town, too; Colin in particular, who’d been clocked over the head by someone who looked just like her. The mood was decidedly apprehensive.

And finally, there they were: standing before the building, with Maggie shrinking into the taller men around her.

“What do I even say?” she asked nobody in particular.

“You could just burst on in and say ‘the Sheriff’s back in town, boys’ while giving finger guns,” suggested Colin, prompting Maggie to raise an eyebrow.

“Any useful suggestions?”

“Look, it’s like I said,” Quinn explained, “just go in and say you were held captive by unknown assailants.”

Maggie frowned. “I hate that. They’re going to be so suspicious.”

She shifted on her feet as her mind went over scenarios of the acting Sheriff putting her in an interrogation room.

Rembrandt stroked his chin. “What if you just tell ’em you had a breakdown? That is kinda what happened to the real Sheriff.”

Maggie pursed her lips. “Well, I’ve gotta say, I hate that option the least.”

“Whichever one you choose, someone’s eventually gonna notice us… uh, loitering,” Colin said, glancing around nervously.

“Yeah,” Maggie agreed, and steeled herself. “Let’s get this over with.”

She marched into the headquarters, as the others waited just outside the doors.

Inside, a man Maggie didn’t recognise sat behind a desk, reading a newspaper, feet hitched up on the desk. He looked around age 40, with jet black hair flecked with grey, and a thin moustache. He was dressed in a brown uniform, similar to the one Maggie recalled Sam wearing. He glanced up at her, and his eyes widened with surprise, as he brought his feet down.

“Sheriff Beckett?! Oh my Lord, I thought you were dead!” he cried.

Maggie smiled at him, uneasy. It seemed like this guy knew the other version of her. But who was he? What was his position? Was he the acting Sheriff? She didn’t see a star, but there was a shield badge on his chest. Deputy, then? As she recalled, Higgins had been the ‘partner’ of Sheriff Maggie. She didn’t have any memories of this guy via Sam at all.

“Rumours of my death were, um, greatly exaggerated,” she said, with a sheepish look.

The man hurried over to her, and drew her into an uncomfortable hug.

“What happened to you, Ma’am?”

‘Ma’am?’ Okay, so he isn’t overly familiar. Good.

Maggie pulled herself from the show of affection. “Well, I… I lost it. Just had to go spend time away from my life, so I went off-grid. Sorry I didn’t tell anybody.”

The deputy gave her an anxious look. “Ma’am, we’ve gotta let everyone know. There’s an ongoing investigation into your disappearance.”

Maggie cringed. The last thing she needed was all the attention.

“Listen–” she started, and peered down at his uniform, spotting a name tag. “–Phil, can I ask a huge favour?”

She put an arm around him, leaning in. “Before you go telling everyone I’m back, I really need a copy of my house’s phone records from the last few days before I left. It’s really important.”

She ran a hand over his chest, hoping the vibes she had been picking up were accurate. “Please, Phil? For me?”

He was stiff under her sensual movements, but she could feel his heart rate picking up. He cleared his throat.

“Uh, yeah, I’ll see what I can do, Ma’am.”

“Just call me Maggie, okay?” she said, hoping to ingratiate herself to him further.

Phil headed for the Sheriff’s office, with Maggie following.

“So you’re deputy now?” she said, trying to get a grasp on what might have happened these past few weeks.

“Yeah,” Phil confirmed. “Captain Brigham took over as Acting Sheriff in your absence, M-Maggie. He appointed me deputy.”

He looked back at her, as he opened the door of the office. “There’s a new Higgins car being ordered, but now that you’re back I guess we won’t need it, right?”

“Uh, about that…” she said, rubbing her nose. “Higgins is gone.”

He squinted at her. “What do you mean ‘gone?’”

Maggie bit her lip, allowing him to progress further into the office. As he started rifling through a filing cabinet, she shifted from foot to foot in the doorway.

“I, um, smashed it up. It’s scrap metal,” she lied. There was no delicate way to say it was swallowed up by a portal to a parallel world, so this was the best she could do.

He stared at her, jaw slack. “That thing was worth a hundred grand!”

She grimaced. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I’ll accept whatever punishments are owed.”

Hoping I’ll be out of here before that time comes.

Phil pulled out a folder filled with papers. “We already collected the phone records in our missing persons investigation, let me just find ’em for you.”

He rifled through the loose pages. “What do you need these for, anyway?”

Maggie thought fast, trying to find a good reason. “Oh, I just got a creepy phone call, and I want to see if it was a number I recognise.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, cursing herself for coming up with such a flimsy explanation.

Phil pulled out a page, and eyed her. “I’ll make a copy,” he said, and Maggie could detect he was put off by this whole interaction.

Don’t worry, I don’t plan on sticking around. Just forget I was ever here.

Phil escorted her out of the office, and he headed for the photocopier, which was at the back of the main room of the headquarters, where his desk was.

“Where’s Brigham now?” she asked, looking at the front windows of the headquarters. She couldn’t see the others out there, but that was largely the point of where they had chosen to stand.

“Over at the city PD, as usual,” Phil said bitterly. “Just leaves me here to do the Sheriff stuff half the time.”

The photocopier hummed, and he pulled out the page, handing it to her.

“Thanks, Phil,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek. She could see them starting to turn pink. “You’re a good guy.”

She turned to leave.

“Wait!” Phil said. “What do I tell the Captain?”

“Just say I swung by for a talk, and I’ll be awaiting his visit at home.”

She left the headquarters, hands clamped around the precious sheet of paper, and let out a breath as the door closed behind her.

Her friends were to her left, and she met Quinn’s gaze. “Got it. Let’s go find a payphone. Steer clear of Sheriff Maggie’s house, okay?”

End of Part 3