San Antonio, NM
December 31, 2002
Quinn finished his second beer of the evening, and placed his feet on the opposite seat of the booth.
There was a light crowd at the tavern to ring in the new year. Quinn, Colin, Maggie, and Rembrandt sat in the corner, a spread of food and drink on the table. On the jukebox, a song by Eminem was playing.
Maggie frowned at the shoes now right beside her on the seat, and gave Quinn a bothered look. He pretended not to notice, as he popped a Dorito in his mouth.
This was the fourth New Year’s Eve they’d spent here in this tavern, which was one of the few places they could go according to the rules of the government. For any larger a place, such as Albuquerque, they were forced to apply for special permission, unless it was a medical emergency.
Colin was speaking, animatedly, to Remy about something, but Quinn hadn’t been tuned in to the conversation for a few minutes. Instead, he had been fingering the quartz crystal sewn into his jeans pocket, thinking about Sherri and John, and the mission that had brought him to this point.
Everything had been looking up, right until the whole thing with the Senator. Now Ziggy was shut down and Higgins was scattered.
Time had been on their side, but with their most vocal advocate in the Senate turning out to be some kind of spy, who knew what would happen to the Project’s funding now?
“Quinn, you have that look again.”
Quinn blinked, his gaze falling on Maggie. She had a tilted head and raised eyebrows.
“What look?”
“That deep, brooding look. You’ve been getting it all week whenever you go quiet.” She took a sip of her mulled wine.
“I’m just thinking.”
“Come on, loosen up for tonight,” she said, poking at his ankles beside her on the seat. “How many more of those beers do I need to supply you with before you relax?”
Quinn looked down at his empty glass. “Four, maybe five.”
He shrugged, figuring maybe it was for the best if he did ‘relax’ a little. He’d been wound up a great deal over all this. He’d spent Christmas writing security algorithms that he thought could be integrated into Ziggy.
“Well, I’m gonna go get you another,” she said, jumping to her feet and heading to the bar. At the jukebox, AC/DC started blasting one of their familiar riffs.
Quinn shook his head, and turned his attention to the conversation happening beside him.
“Wait, so Timmy is a doll?” Colin looked perplexed.
“Yeah,” explained Rembrandt, “but he’s brought to life with Tabitha’s witchcraft. Or, was. Kid’s dead now.”
“Wait, the character or the actor?”
“Both.”
“Really? The little guy? That’s so sad…” Colin frowned.
“Yeah, but he only looked like a little kid. Think he was 20 when he died.”
“That’s still really young to die, so I stand by my previous assessment,” Colin replied, before taking a swig of his own beer.
“You guys talking about Passions again?” Quinn asked, amused.
Rembrandt placed an embarrassed hand on his cheek. “Yeah. Stupid damn show, but I can’t stop watchin’, man. I need a new hobby.”
Quinn felt for Rembrandt, and similarly Maggie, who didn’t have a great deal to do with their lives in recent years, not with the government leash.
While Rembrandt lived and breathed soap operas and daytime television, Maggie spent her days working out and reading romance novels. It was safe to say that neither was fulfilled.
Remy’s only outlet was music, but the lack of a piano at their facility meant he could only really play when they were here at the tavern. The government had denied their requests for such ‘frivolities.’ And there was certainly no reviving his (or his double’s, as the case may be) career; not while the government had any say in the matter.
“Hopefully we won’t be stuck here much longer,” Quinn said, with an optimistic smile.
Rembrandt bit into a cracker, and chewed thoughtfully.
A jug of beer with a glass appeared in front of Quinn as Maggie returned to her seat, pushing his feet down in the process.
“Bottoms up,” she said, with a teasing grin. “I wanna see a big ol’ hangover tomorrow, got it?”
Quinn chuckled. “Only if you promise to keep up. I’m not suffering alone.”
“Deal,” said Maggie, and extended her hand. They shook, exchanging an amused look.
* * *
It was 11pm, and Colin cast an amused eye at Quinn and Maggie, drunkenly dancing near the jukebox, among a handful of other local revellers.
“Those two really let loose, huh?” Rembrandt said, following his gaze. It wasn’t that the two of them were stone cold sober; on the contrary. They had merely paced themselves, and were chilling instead of partying.
“They might be regretting this tomorrow,” Colin mused. “Still, it’s good to see Quinn having a bit of fun. He’s been… distracted lately.”
“Lot going on. It’s to be expected,” Rembrandt said, thoughtful. “He’s been carrying those burdens all this time. Now that it’s nearly crunch time, maybe it’s finally sinkin’ in just how heavy they are.”
Colin’s eyes moved down to the dissipating foam of his half-drunk beer. “Yeah, guess he’s not the only one feeling that.”
“What is this song?” Rembrandt said, suddenly distracted by the loud pop-punk coming out of the jukebox. Colin slumped against the table with a chuckle.
“I don’t think speaking the name will do it justice,” he said, producing a pen from his pocket, and scribbling the title ‘Sk8er Boi’ on a napkin. He handed it to Rembrandt, who cringed.
“Who’s picking the tracks ’round here, anyway?” he stood and looked over at the machine. Colin glanced in the same direction, to see a couple of women who were questionably of drinking age, hunched over the large CD-based jukebox, scrolling through songs.
“I’m gonna go salvage our night from bad taste,” Remy proclaimed, and headed over there, leaving Colin alone with his beverage.
As he turned his attention away from the dancing crowd, he noticed a woman coming into the tavern, a motorcycle helmet under her arm. She slowly scanned around the room, until her eyes made contact with his. Instinctively, he flicked his eyes away from her, and down at his drink.
Nonetheless, his peripheral vision told him she was coming toward him.
“Excuse me,” she said as she reached the booth, “This is going to sound weird, but have you noticed anybody around here acting… strangely recently? Out of character?”
Colin furrowed his brow. “I… no, I don’t think so. W-why?”
The woman shook her head silently, and moved on to another table.
Who is that?
He stood, and was about to pursue her, but something else caught his eye first: a man entering the tavern who Colin was pretty sure was supposed to be in Hawaii.
“Hey…?” he called across the room, catching the attention of Sam, whose eyes, upon spotting Colin, shot wider than he’d ever seen them.
Sam picked up his pace and closed the distance between them.
“Oh my god, Colin? I can’t believe it…”
Colin bit his lip. “I thought you were visiting your family? Is something wrong?”
A look of cautious confusion passed over Sam’s face. “My family?” Then something seemed to dawn on him. “Wait, did the other me find his way back?! That’s great!”
It seemed to Colin like this conversation wasn’t quite progressing in a normal fashion. “Okay, wait, let’s rewind,” he said. “Are you telling me you’re a different Doc Beckett?”
The Sam in front of him nodded. “Yeah… are you the Colin that grew up on Earth Prime?”
No way…
“I… I am. So does that mean you’re…”
Doc Beckett… or ‘John,’ as they’d dubbed him more recently, nodded, before drawing Colin into a hug.
“Wait, you know this guy?”
Colin broke away from the embrace to see the woman from before staring at the two of them. John was nodding to her.
“I thought you said this wasn’t your Earth?” she asked him.
“It’s not, but this is my former student, Colin. He’s one of the sliders I told you about.” He turned to Colin. “But I don’t know how you managed to join your brother in the end; I didn’t finish rebuilding Quinn’s machine for you before I got caught up in… long story.”
“Yeah, I know,” Colin lamented. “You gave me quite the basis, though. I managed to finish it myself. Eventually.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, and spotted Maggie and Quinn, absorbed in their dancing, with Rembrandt looking down at the jukebox behind them, tapping buttons. His mouth drifted open, and rose into a smile after a moment.
“She looks so young,” he murmured, and an old memory triggered in Colin, of Doc Beckett’s ‘cousin’ at the diner.
Sherri… she was Sheriff Maggie in her forties.
He thought about the convoluted, twisted timelines of their lives, and had to cringe. What a mess.
“How did you end up here?” he asked.
“I could ask the same of you, but somehow I think maybe it’s for the same reason,” John said, smiling enigmatically.
He gestured to the woman.
“This is Alia. I think she… knows the other me. You said he’s visiting family?”
“Hawaii,” Colin confirmed. John pursed his lips.
“Don’t suppose you have a number for him?”
Colin bobbed his head towards Quinn. “He’ll have it.”
Even after all this, Quinn hadn’t noticed John’s presence. He and Maggie were off in their own little world.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
Colin watched John tap Quinn on the shoulder, and the look of dazed confusion pass over both his and Maggie’s faces, until John explained, at which point Quinn let out an excited cry. He and Maggie both wrapped their arms around John with drunken abandon, faces beaming.
Colin turned to the woman, ‘Alia,’ and extended a hand.
“So you’re from his Earth, huh?” she asked, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake.
“I am,” Colin said, studying her face. “And you say you know Sam?”
“I do,” she replied, uneasy. “I also don’t know who to trust around here, so you’ll have to bear with me.”
“There’s a bit of that going around,” Colin muttered.
“Oh?”
Colin gave her a tight-lipped smirk. “Classified. Sorry.”
Alia snorted. “Of course. I’m sure Sam will fill me in if he thinks it’s safe to.”
“Want a drink?” Colin suggested. She shook her head.
“I like to keep a clear head,” she said simply.
* * *
The warm orange glow of the bonfire reflected off the surface of Sam’s Piña Colada as he reclined on the beach blanket, looking up at the clear night sky.
He pointed up at one of the larger points of light in the sky.
“That’ll be Saturn, right there,” he said to Donna, whose head was nestled under his arm. “If you look real close you can make out the shape of the rings.”
“I don’t have good enough eyes for that,” she replied, with a laugh. “And you probably don’t either.”
Sam grinned. “Yeah, okay. You’re right. I just see a dot. But our imagination can fill in the rest.”
He looked up at it, wistful. “A mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”
“That’s beautiful,” came the voice of Katie, who had wandered up behind him, aiming a camera at him and Donna. Sam squinted as it flashed.
“It’s a quote from Carl Sagan,” said Donna, breaking the poetic illusion.
“Of course it is,” Katie said, grinning, as she sat beside them. She held up her watch. “Midnight’s in just a minute.”
Sam nodded, sitting up. He looked through the flames of the fire to Al and Beth, who were whispering to each other, with broad smiles on their faces.
Beth noticed him looking, and pointed, saying something to her husband. He turned his head, and gave a quick wave back at Sam, before the two of them stood, and joined them on the blanket.
Sam’s mother, and Katie’s husband joined them from behind. As the midnight fireworks began, accompanied by the crashing waves of the Pacific, they all watched together on one large beach blanket.
I could get used to this, he thought, before catching himself.
I can’t get used to this. There’s still work to be done.
No sooner did those thoughts pass through his head, than the cell phone in his pocket began to vibrate.
And when he scrambled away from his loving family to answer, he became weak at the knees when he heard his own voice on the other end.