To Be the Wizard: A QL/OZ Crossover
by Kathryn Lively
This Quantum Leap fan fiction places Dr. Sam Beckett in the body of OZ's Cyril O'Reily during the events of the third season of OZ. If you are familiar with the HBO series OZ, you will know that this series contains some rather adult themes and is definitely not suitable for children. I have tried not to get too explicit in this story, but there is some harsh language and I strongly recommend that this story be reserved for readers 18 and older. Please also note that this is not a slash fan fiction, meaning you will not find any explicit scenes of a homosexual nature here. Most OZ fan fiction I've found on the Net is, and you're welcome to look for it.That being said, I hope you enjoy this story. Comments are always welcome. Please note also that this story is a post "Mirror Image" tale, meaning that it takes place after Quantum Leap's final episode.
Quantum Leap is a property of Belisarius Productions and MCA/Universal. OZ is the property of HBO, Rysher Entertainment and Levinson/Fontana Pictures. No profit is made from this site.
A note about Augustus Hill: Regular viewers of OZ will know that the wheelchair-bound character Augustus Hill, played by Harold Perrineau, serves as sort of a Greek chorus for the show, serving up thought-provoking asides in between the action. I have tried to capture that same feeling in this story. Augustus's asides here are presented in the italicized blocked quotes.
Remember when you were a kid and you created a time machine out of a cardboard box your mother discarded after she got her clothes dryer? You punched the crayon buttons and squeezed your eyes shut, hoping that the next time you poked your head up through the flaps you would be in the middle of some ancient jungle surrounded by dinosaurs. Remember how you felt when you only saw your room? That's about how we feel every morning when we wake up.
* * *
EmCity, Febuary 1, 1999"My, my, my, said the spider to the fly."
Huh?
Sam opened his eyes. He was in a sparse bathroom with grey walls and an open bathing area. Slim shower heads with dull, thin necks drooped downward as if staring balefully at the tiled floor. Sam guessed that the host body he was currently occupying had just come from there. He shivered slightly, naked and wet underneath a dark coarse towel, inhaling a fading cloud of steam.
His back was turned to the gentleman speaking to him; Sam decided right away, despite the fact that he had not fully adjusted mentally to the new Leap, that he did not like the voice. Hence, the chances of him liking its owner were just as slim. The voice was sinister and deep, and its tone inflected a forboding mischief that nettled in Sam's ears. In other words, it did not sound good.
He tested his feet, deciding against drying them with the towel. He did not want to be in so awkward a position in the event he would be attacked from behind. He froze instead, fixated on the drying streaks of hard water on the shower wall.
"How they hanging, sweet meat?" the voice teased. "All nice and clean now?"
Sam turned slowly around, blinking away a strand of hair which was stuck to his right temple. The man standing before him appeared to be slightly shorter than he, with a menacing scowl that looked carved into his stony face. Sam caught a glimpse of a sink mirror to his right and stole a glance of "himself" -- a puzzled young man in his late twenties with a thick mane of dirty blond hair stared back at him.
"What?" Sam asked, for lack of anything else to say. His mind had not fully adjusted to the new Leap, and what memories he could recall in that moment were all his own, carried with him from time period to time period. He remembered Al, and silently cursed his absence. Al Calavicci -- his best friend, and his constant holographic companion on these missions -- observed each Leap from the current time, and possessed all the information Sam needed to integrate himself into the environments in which he was placed. For all his work with time, Sam knew, Al never fully had a grasp of it. He was always late.
The man rocked back on worn sneakers and plunged his hands into the pockets of his dark blue jumpsuit. Sam guessed him to either be a prisoner or a garbage man.
"Just enjoying the view," he sneered, raising an eyebrow until it nearly bent into an upside-down V. Sam looked down and discovered that the towel wrapped around his waist was slipping, heavy with water absorbed from the shower, revealing a swatch of dark brown pubic hair, nothing more.
"Excuse me," he murmured, hiking the towel up to his navel and starting toward a bench on the other side of the room on which was draped a mound of dry clothes, clothes Sam assumed were his. He was not two steps forward when his unwelcome visitor blocked his path.
"Slow down, Cyril," the stranger whispered hoarsely in a voice meant to be soothing, but one Sam regarded as mischievous, and not in a playful way. "It's been a while since we last...er, talked. Why are you in such a rush to go? Hot date tonight?"
The man gestured for Sam to sit down on the bench, palms outward. Sam noticed the roughened calluses and healed scars highlighting the man's skin, all the while trying to figure out his -- rather, Cyril's, since that apparently was his name this time -- relationship with this man and if it was in Cyril's best interest to sit down.
No.
Sam shuddered. The voice echoing in his mind did not sound like his. Cyril's? Most likely, he thought, moving toward the bench to retrieve the clothes. In most cases during a Leap, the "Swiss-cheese" effect on his mind often granted Sam a most unusual conduit into a host body: leftover memories. He did not need Cyril or Al around, however, to tell them that trouble would soon be his next guest.
No. He's a bad man. He does bad things.
"I want my clothes," Sam told the man in the most authoritative tone he could offer, still cold and wet and half-naked.
"That so?" The man tried not to look surprised at this sudden act of defiance on Sam's part, but his face quickly relaxed, and he grinned. "Well, what if I don't want you to have them?"
With that, the man bent down and swept up the clothing, anticipating a game of keep-away. What he did not expect, however, was the sudden left cross smashing into his cheek. The man, stunned by the impact of Sam's punch, slipped on the damp bathroom tile and crumpled into the bench. Sam stood over the man and watched him sink into unconciousness. Tiny droplets of water falling from his hair landed on the man's clothes.
Sam then grabbed his clothes and left the room, oblivious to the sudden chorus of catcalls and wolf whistles around him. He just wanted to get to his room, or cell -- wherever that was -- and await Al's information. The sooner he arrived, the sooner Sam could do his mission and leap into a safer place, like a minefield.
* * *
Project Quantum Leap, March 12, 2009Admiral Calavicci's detention in Project Quantum Leap's main control room had nothing to do with tardiness and everything to do with his exercising his seldom-used authority over the squabbling project crew. However, his authority was currently being drowned out by loud protests all around, leaving him with a headache and a strong desire to go home to bed, despite the fact that Sam needed him immediately, wherever and whenever he was.
The conflict at hand concerned Dr. Verbena Beeks's inability, by no fault of her own, to examine the current occupant of the Waiting Room. "How the hell are we to know if he's okay or not unless I go in there?" she wanted to know, glaring stonily at Gooshie and Tina Martinez-O'Farrell, who was staunchly supporting the former's security decision which led to the argument Al was supposed to mediate.
Supposed to, he noted to himself, yet doing a miserable job of it.
Al glanced longingly at the Imaging Chamber and yearned to dive inside headfirst, away from everyone, hoping that Sam had not leaped into a cacophonous construction site. He opened his mouth to speak, but Gooshie beat him to rebuttal.
"Believe you me, doctor, I'm more concerned for your safety than that, that man's!" Gooshie sputtered. "If what Ziggy says about this man is accurate, I'd hesitate sending in a crew of professional wrestlers in there." Tina nodded enthusiastically alongside Gooshie, as if to say so there.
"Wait, wait a minute here." Al edged in between Gooshie and Sammy Jo Fuller, the project's youngest technician, and spread the huddled team apart with one broad gesture. "Gooshie, you know I'm to be informed about everything regarding the person who leaps into Sam in the Waiting Room! Why all the secrecy?"
Gooshie appeared suddenly embarrassed, as if he had just been caught pilfering copier paper from the supply closet. "I-I know, Admiral Calavicci, and I apologize for jumping the gun on this case. I'll let Ziggy explain to you what exactly is going on, and hopefully you can understand my haste in this matter."
He nervously stepped back and pressed an orange panel on the large console behind him, which lit up at the slightest touch. "Ziggy," he called to the project's supercomputer, "we're ready for your analysis."
"Certainly, Gooshie." Ziggy's pleasant, deep yet feminine voice filled the room. "Dr. Sam Beckett is now occupying one Cyril O'Reily, also known in the Oswald State Correctional Facility as Prisoner 98P284..."
Tina shuddered visibly, and Gooshie wrapped a protective arm around her. "I've heard of that place," she said. "I saw a special on Dateline about it. They call it Oz. Bad stuff happens there."
Everybody on the floor shared a similiar thought: Poor Sam.
"You are correct, Dr. Martinez," Ziggy continued coolly, her voice sounding a bit annoyed at being interrupted. "Cyril O'Reily is, in our time, serving the tenth year of a life sentence imposed upon him following a murder conviction in July, 1998." Ziggy explained that Cyril had murdered a man named Preston Nathan, the estranged husband of one Gloria Nathan, a doctor employed by Oswald. Oz also happened to be the residence of Cyril's brother Ryan, Ziggy added, with whom Cyril shared a cell in the past. Sensing more than coincidence, the people handling Cyril's case believed that Ryan was somehow involved in the hit, though Cyril kept mum throughout his trial.
Al shook his head. "Well, apparently Sam isn't there to prevent the murder, seeing as how it's already happened in his time," he said. "What time is it there, Zig?"
"February 1, 1999, in the afternoon," Ziggy answered. "Oh, and there is one more thing. Approximately three years before committing this crime, Cyril was badly injured in a street fight and suffered severe and permanent brain damage."
"How severe?" Dr. Beeks wanted to know.
"He has the mind of a five-year-old, Doctor."
Dr. Beeks glared at Gooshie, who only held up his hands. "Five-year-old or fifty-year-old, doctor, he killed a man," he pointed out. "Who's to say he won't try it again?"
"So we'll beef up security," Al grumbled. "Dr. Beeks should have access to the Waiting Room. It's not the first time Sam's leapt into a convict." To Ziggy, he said, "I'm guessing that Sam doesn't know any of this?"
"Dr. Beckett is aware that he is in some sort of detention. Cell Block 5 of Oswald is known as Emerald City; it is an experimental prison community with somewhat relaxed security."
Tina shuddered again. From what she had seen on television, the experiment appeared to be failing.
Al primed his handlink and straightened his jacket. "Then I'd better get in there before Sam arouses too much suspicion. He certainly won't be acting like he has brain damage if he doesn't know he's supposed to." He pointed the link at Gooshie. "Nobody goes into the Waiting Room without two armed guards. Dr. Beeks, keep the chat to a minimum, and guests as well. Authorized personnel only. Ziggy, feed me all the info on this leap as you get it."
"Certainly, Admiral Calavicci," Ziggy said, knowing very well there would be a problem fulfilling Al's request. Beyond what little information revealed to the project crew, Ziggy had nothing else to offer. It seemed as if all of the security in the facility was pooled into the computer grid, perhaps to keep the hackers at bay.
* * *
Time is on your side...time waits for no man...time heals all wounds, or should I say that in a place like this, time wounds all heels. You best watch out around here, too, in case somebody tries to wound something else.
* * *
Guessing that he no longer had much to hide among the small community in the prison cell block known as Emerald City, Sam stormed over to a cluster of chairs parked in front of a large muted television set and tossed his clothing on the floor. Crouching down in one of the chairs, he bent over and starting fishing through the fabric for some underwear.A black, wheelchair-bound inmate turned his attention from a volatile talk show and plucked the headphones from his head. "What's the matter?" he asked snidely. "Bloomingdale's kick you out of their dressing rooms?"
Sam huffed and slid the brown slacks up over hips. Not being one to deliver rapid-fire witty retorts -- not like Al, anyway -- he opted for an equally snide approach. If he was a prisoner this time, he decided, then Cyril O'Reily certainly must be a rough boy. "Just a peeping Tom problem, is all," he answered, zipping up the pants. "And anyway, I don't shop at Bloomie's. They turned down my credit application."
He looked up at his companion and grinned, mildly surprised to see the look of shock on the man's face.
"What?" Sam demanded. "Never seen a naked guy dress in front of you before? This is prison, isn't it?"
"Uh, yeah," the other inmate answered, then frowned. "What is up with you, O'Reily? You been faking that dumb act shit all this time?"
Sam frowned as well. Dumb act?
He was about to pry for more information when a voice boomed Cyril's name from across the common area. Sam, barechested, barefooted and clutching a white t-shirt, watched dumbfounded as another inmate approached him with large, quick strides. This man, Sam noticed, wore his dark brown hair short and his arms, finely chiseled against an olive green tank top, were covered in tattoos.
He watched this man walked right up to him and spew frustration in his face. "Cyril, you dumb fuck! What have I told you about going into the shower alone, huh? Didn't I tell you not to go wandering around by yourself?"
The black inmate to Sam's left, growing bored with the familial spat, restored the earphones to his head. "Aw, chill out, O'Reily," he barked. "I can't hear what Ricki's saying to this hoochie girl."
"Fuck you."
O'Reily. Another O'Reily in this prison, thought Sam. A brother? Cousin? He bowed his head; Cyril's thoughts were not as clear as they were earlier, and before Sam could say anything he felt a vice-like grip on his wrist.
"I can't fucking believe you came all the way here with no fucking clothes on, Cyril--"
In three seconds the grip was reversed, and now it was Sam who had the other man, only by both wrists. He glared hard into the pair of suddenly frightened eyes before him and growled.
"Don't ever do that to me again," Sam said, his voice low and iced.
"Cyril, calm down. Cyril!" The brother/cousin/whatever yelped quietly in pain, as Sam was constricting the blood flow to his hands, turning them beet red.
"Okay, okay," he relented, "I won't grab you like that again. Just let go, okay?"
Sam tilted his head back slowly, teasing the fellow with a smile and finally releasing his grip. Cyril's relative rubbed his wrists and grimaced and wondered aloud what could possibly have angered Cyril so much as to attack his own brother.
Brother, thought Sam, nodding. One mystery solved.
In the distance Sam noticed the door to the shower area burst open and his would-be molestor exit and head straight upstairs, head down and rubbing his jaw.
Both men followed Sam's gaze. The black inmate looked at Sam with awe and said, "Peeping Tom? Or should I say Peeping Vern?"
Sam nodded, unsmiling. Vern. He does bad things. "Himself."
* * *
"Sam!"Al materialized through the door of the cell shared by the O'Reily brothers. "Good. You made it safely back to Cyril's cell, er, wait." Al slapped his malfunctioning handlink and suddenly a stream of prison lingo filled its tiny screen. "Actually, Sam, this is called a 'pod.' I'll have to familiarize you with the lingo around here."
Sam lounged on Cyril's lower bunk, flipping idly through a contraband Hustler magazine given to Ryan O'Reily by one of the guards. He folded back one particularly graphic picture and flashed it in Al's direction. "I bet you have this issue," he said blandly.
Al took one look at the pornographic spread mocking Star Wars and scrunched up his face. "Sam, put that away!" he admonished. "You know Beth would kill me if she knew I was looking at stuff like that."
"Beth?"
"My wife, Sam? Remember?"
"Oh, yeah." Sam tossed the magazine on the upper bunk, forgetting momentarily a past Leap where he had restored Al's first, and thus only, marriage. The playboyish, amorous Al Calavicci of the past no longer existed, his passions now reserved for his wife of thirty-plus years.
"About time you got here," Sam said evenly.
Al sighed and clenched his fists. "I know, and I'm sorry. There was a bit of a snafu with Waiting Room access, but it's all straightened out now. Did you, uh," Al peered out of the picture window to see a few passersby look at Sam and whisper to each other, "talk to anybody since you got here?"
"I wouldn't call it talking," Sam said, then offered Al the Reader's Digest version of his brief tenure as Cyril O'Reily. Al's expressions morphed immediately from curiosity to horror.
"Now all these guys are looking at me like I'm some sort of freak." Sam rose from the bunk and leaned on the window for a better view of the lower level common area. The crowd around the television set swelled, enamored by a lively show Sam could not quite make out. Odds were it was not Wall Street Week they were watching.
"I can probably shed some light on this," Al began, his head bent over his handlink, which was now scrolling yards of new data. He explained Cyril's head injury and the consequential effects on the young man's life: the brain damage, the murder of Preston Nathan, and finally Cyril's incarceration with his brother, Ryan. When Al finished speaking he glanced down once again at the handlink and his eyes widened as he read.
Sam, however, was not paying attention, watching intently the activity outside the pod. "Well, that explains why...Ryan, is it? It explains why Ryan was acting so protective of me when he escorted me back up here. He left before you showed up, didn't say where he was going."
"Uh, Sam?" Al stepped closer to his friend, so much that the tail of his metallic gray jacket flickered in and out of the window. "This guy who accosted you in the shower...can you point him out?"
"He's over there." Sam tapped the glass toward a group of shorn men in intimidating dress -- black pants and t-shirts emblazoned with Nazi epithets -- distributing mail to the tables below, with the man from the showers hovering above them and speaking with authority. "They look like white supremacists."
"That's because they are, Sam," Al said grimly. "And Shower Boy is Vern Schillinger, their unofficial leader. He was originally sent here on charges of aggravated assault and would have been released two years from this time had he not tried to bribe an officer into killing his former bunkmate. The officer recorded their conversation and Vern got ten years added on to his sentence."
Sam sighed. "Like Days of Our Lives in prison," he muttered, but Al kept talking.
"Anyway," Al continued, "Vern's not the nicest guy on the cell block, but you already know that. His history with Cyril is especially sinister." His voice faltered. "It seems Vern and some of the members of his club gave Cyril the old prison welcome, if you catch my drift."
Sam caught it immediately. He turned to Al and shook his head in disbelief. "Rape?" He's a bad man. He does bad things.
Al nodded slowly. "To make a long story short, Ryan's been looking after Cyril ever since. He's sort of a combination brother and father figure now, considering the O'Reilys' real father is a complete nozzle. Ziggy says they didn't exactly come from Ozzie Nelson's house."
Sam loped back into the lower bunk. Thinking back to the confrontation in the shower, the malicious look on Vern Schillinger's face, made him queasy. He had wondered at first if he was too hasty in assaulting the man. Now he berated himself for not responding that way sooner.
"You think that's why I'm here?" he asked. "To prevent another rape? It wouldn't be the first time we've done something like this."
"It's possible," Al said. "But if that were the case, you would have left Cyril once you socked Vern Schillinger in the jaw, right?"
"Unless he comes back." Sam lay back down and stretched. "How long does Ziggy say I have to be here?"
Al check the handlink. "Uh, she doesn't know."
"What do I have to do?"
"She doesn't know that either."
Sam looked up, exasperated. "Does Ziggy know anything?"
"Actually, yes." The handlink chirped in confirmation. "There's going to be a boxing match tomorrow night in the gym, and Ziggy says if you bet on the Muslim, you could clean up big time."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Oh, boy."
* * *
Pop quiz time, children: if you were able to go back in time to any one place, any one day, what would it be? Would you leap back to Dallas, 1963 and stop a bullet speeding toward a slow-crawling motorcade? Would you trek back to late nineteenth-century Austria and convince Hitler's mother to get an abortion? Or are you the selfish type, choosing instead to go back and fix some dumb thing you did so you wouldn't be so miserable today? Me, I'm the selfish type.
* * *
"Verbena!"Dr. Verbena Beeks, flanked by two imposing security guards, spun around in place to see Al's youngest daughter, First Lieutenant Gina Calavicci, hurrying toward her. Gina was dressed in her Navy blues -- perfectly-pressed pants with matching jacket and crisp white blouse, all the proper insignia in place -- and her low-heeled flats made a thunderous echoing clackclackclack in the hollow hallway.
"Gina! How are you?" an elated Verbena cried. An impulse to draw the young woman into a hug passed quickly when the doctor remembered she was still holding a food tray. She settled for a quick air kiss and bade Gina to follow her toward the Waiting Room.
"She has clearance, she's Al's daughter," Verbena told the guards, though it was unnecessary. Everybody at Project Quantum Leap was familiar with the Calavicci girls, all of whom interned at HQ at one time or another.
"Girl, when did you get in? Your mother said she wasn't expecting you for another week."
Gina laughed lightly and fell into step with the doctor and the guards. "I have my ways," she answered coolly. "Plus some extra leave I decided to tack onto my spring break trip."
"How are things in the Big Apple?" Everybody also knew that Gina was attending law school in New York in order to hopefully join JAG. Given the impeccable record of the second-generation Navy officer, that was a certainty.
"Not bad, not bad at all. You have to come up sometime, Verbena," she said. "You and Tina and Sammy Jo. There's so much to do. So much shopping!"
"And so little time," Verbena murmured. "Even less vacation time, as long as Dr. Beckett's still away."
"Ah." Gina was suddenly crestfallen. So long as Sam Beckett remained lost in time, her own father could not come up to visit her. Al needed to be around twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week, which explained Gina's presence at HQ. Her parents kept a small apartment on the grounds, since she and her sisters had long since moved away, and Gina had just come from visiting Beth.
"So Dad's with Sam now?"
Verbena nodded. The party came to the door of the Waiting Room and paused. "And the guy Dr. Beckett leapt into is in there. Gooshie was all panicked earlier, he thinks the guy's going to riot and kill us all."
Gina's eyes widened. "Is he a convict?" she asked, and Verbena related briefly the story of Cyril O'Reily. She swiveled her shoulder to prevent the strap of her medical bag from slipping and thereby causing her to spill Cyril's lunch. "I haven't been in there, but I think Gooshie's just making a mountain out of a molehill."
"Oh, Verbena, let me help you with that." Gina grabbed the tray and stood in front of the door, waiting to be let inside.
"Gina." Verbena was firm. "You know I can't let you inside. Your security clearance doesn't allow you this access, and besides, your father would kill me if he found out."
But Gina threw her a casual smile. "So don't tell Dad. Besides, how are you going to administer tests and feed him at the same time if these guys have to keep their hands empty?" she asked simply, and smiled up at the guards, one of whom she knew dated her older sister Maria. Both men then looked to Verbena; she was the authority in this situation, and she alone made the decisions.
Verbena sighed and punched in the room code on the panel by the sliding door. "Stay close to her," she told the guard right next to her.
They found Cyril O'Reily -- really Cyril inside the body of Sam Beckett -- in a corner of the sparse, spartan room, dressed in a gleaming white bodysuit and curled in a fetal position. He detected several sets of footsteps and jerked his head upward, a look of surprise clouding his face. Verbena thought he had been crying.
Gina caught her breath upon seeing Sam's face and suddenly understood why her father never wanted her or her sisters to enter the Waiting Room. She had only been a little girl -- what, nine or ten, she thought, unable to recall exact dates -- when Sam went into the Accelerator and disappeared. Naturally, his body was aging though he was elsewhere in time, but Gina had not expected to see the scientist's hair streaked with gray, nor his body appear slightly worn and abused from numerous body-snatching visitors, many of whom obviously could have cared less about keeping well the condition of Dr. Beckett's body. Gina noticed a healing scar on his neck, evidence of a former guest who tried to kill himself, and consequently Sam.
Still, Gina thought, Sam was handsome, and aging gracefully despite the situation. She recalled having an enormous crush on him as a schoolgirl, sketching Mrs. Gina Beckett on all of her school folders.
Cyril looked up at the four people towering over him with sad eyes, Sam's eyes. "Where am I?" he asked, his voice soft and childlike.
Verbena smiled nervously at him, hoping Gooshie's predictions would not become reality. "Cyril," she began slowly, "we've had to detain you in solitary for a short while." She introduced herself as a prison specialist and fabricated on the spot news of an outbreak in the penitentiary. Gina watched her friend's face, cool and calm from years of experience in soothing the anxieties of past "guests."
"This isn't the hole," he said, now worried with the confused looks on the faces of his visitors. "We get sent to the hole when we're in trouble."
"You're not in trouble, Cyril," Verbena said, who was trying her best not to look intimidated when Cyril's glance darted toward her. "This is a special place, uh, for special circumstances."
Cyril nodded, appearing to accept that excuse and Verbena let out a quiet sigh. Suddenly, however, he sat up with a start, his breathing suddenly quickening into near hyperventilation.
"Where's Ryan?" he asked. "Is Ryan sick? Am I sick?"
"Ryan is fine," Verbena assured him, though in truth she had no idea what was happening in Cyril's present time or if Dr. Beckett had contacted the other O'Reily brother yet. "He's been put in a quarantine as well, like you, and once we're certain nobody else will be getting sick we'll have you and Ryan back together again."
"Ryan can't stay here with me?" Cyril asked. "If we're both not sick, why can't we stay in the same room?"
Verbena faltered at this question. For someone with the mind of a five-year-old, Cyril was certainly inquisitive, and Verbena, childless herself, had not expected an interrogation. She hemmed for a short while while the guards stood mute next to her, offering nothing.
"We don't want to take any risks of infection, Cyril."
This came from Gina, who was now kneeling next to the patient and setting down the tray. "But don't you worry," she added, "because we have some great doctors in this area who will take care of everything. All you have to do is eat your lunch and Dr. Beeks here is going to check your vital signs."
Cyril smiled softly. "Okay," he whispered, and Gina involuntarily took a step backward. Sam Beckett truly was a handsome man, she thought, but bits and pieces of Cyril O'Reily were slowing becoming visible to her, and she could not decide if it was Sam's looks or Cyril's voice that was suddenly making her quiver inside.
* * *
If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do...is get a fucking patent on that thing and get rich.
* * *
Dinner was uneventful for Sam, who chose not to rise Ryan O'Reily's ire any more than he had since his arrival at Emerald City. He instead sat quietly next to Cyril's brother, concentrating on the exchanges between Ryan and other inmates whose names Sam tried to match to the various hardened faces around him.There was Tobias Beecher, the recovering alcoholic with a neatly-trimmed beard who fixed his gaze on his meal, stabbing his fork into limp carrots and green beans with restrained anger.
There was Miguel Alverez, a young Hispanic with a handsome face framed with two large scars running down his cheeks. Sam watched him shovel down his dinner without a second thought to it. He wondered if Miguel believed that the quicker he ate, the greater the chance he would not have to hold the food's bland flavor.
Then there was Bob Rebadowe, a balding man wrapped in a Mr. Rogers sweater, returning Sam's stare with equal curiosity. He looked like somebody's grandfather, and Sam made a mental note to ask Al, when the hologram returned from dinner himself, what was the old man's crime.
He was about to choke down a forkful overboiled baby carrots himself when the old man leaned across the table and whispered in an eerie voice. "You don't look right."
Sam, unable to speak through a mouthful of orange mush, raised an eyebrow.
"Knock it off, Rebadowe," warned Ryan, not looking up from his own meal.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sam asked the old man upon swallowing, trying to sound irritated despite the worried squeak in his voice.
But Rebadowe, clearly shaken by the sudden dark gleam in Ryan's eyes, only bowed his head and resumed eating, pretending to eavesdrop on the two prisoners to his left. Not another word was spoken until the plates were cleared and everyone was released to their pods for the five o'clock lockdown.
* * *
At ten o'clock, an unseen CO shouted, "Lights out!" Emerald City went black.Ryan, clearly exhausted from a day's worth of activities not shared with Sam, had flopped onto the upper bunk upon entering the pod for lockdown. His lights were long since out when the lights in the O'Reily pod extinguished along with the others in Oswald. Sam, having spent the last five hours sitting on Cyril's cot pondering his mission, stood and stretched his sore muscles.
Cautiously he tiptoed to the glass wall of his pod and studied the darkness before him. Behind him he heard Ryan shift uncomfortably in his cot and mutter a woman's name ("Gloria...Glory...," the muffled whine filled the room), and Sam unconciously kept his breathing shallow and quiet so as not to wake him. He did not even fog the glass in front of his face as he peered, eyes squinted, at the other pods looking for signs of life.
The closest light source available emanated from a console on a riser in the middle of Emerald City's common area. A female CO -- dirty blond hair, mid-to-late thirties, exhausted expression -- sat with her head turned away from Sam, skimming a tattered romance novel as nearly a hundred hardened criminals slept around her. Sam let a sad smile curl his lips, amused with such a literary choice, if dime-store romance could be considered "literary" at all.
Cyril... Sam thought to himself, shifting his weight from foot to foot. What do I have to do to help you? I'm a little late in preventing your handicap...of course, considering what I know about your life beforehand, who's to say it was supposed to have been prevented? Maybe I'm not here to help you at all, anyway.
He turned back to a now snoring Ryan. Sam did not need Al around to know that Ryan was quite the mixer at Oswald, always jittery and making conversation with clenched fists and darting eyes. Such was the kind of persona that could get a guy killed, and just from observing Ryan today Sam realized that Ryan did not have many friends at Emerald City. Following the incident in the shower, both he and Ryan managed to steer clear of Schillinger and his cronies, but there was no escaping their dagger-sharps glares. If looks could kill the place would be littered with bodies, his and Ryan's included.
Sam let his gaze turn to a pod across from the O'Reily's and his mouth fell open. He was not the only inmate with insomnia tonight, as Bob Rebadowe too was standing in the dark, separated by several feet and a glass wall, staring dolefully back at Sam. Sam squeaked out a barely audible gasp just as Al appeared at his side.
"Sam, you're up. Great," Al stated the obvious, squinted in the dark for a better look at his friend, then pressed a button on the handlink. Instantly a glowing light, visible only to leaper and the hologram, erupted from the device and filled the O'Reily pod.
"That's better," Al muttered. "I'm sorry I'm late, Sam," he continued, babbling in a normal tone of voice. "Gina's in town for the week, and I guess I let things go a little too long, you know? It's been a while since I'd seen her, and man, Sam, you wouldn't believe how much she's grown since you saw her last!"
Sam, however, was still staring at Bob Rebadowe, his eyes growing larger. "Uh, huh," he whispered, oblivious to the hologram's pacing and grand gestures.
Al waved the light around the pod, illuminating Ryan's sleeping face and bare chest. "First Lieutenant Gina Calavicci," the hologram proclaimed. "Four As and B this term, too, Sam. I tell ya, friend, she is going to kick some major butt when she gets to JA--"
"Al, he can see you," Sam interrupted brusquely. Behind them coarse bedsheets rustled.
Al turned back to Sam and approached the glass. The light from the handlink reflected a white glare that nearly blinded the hologram, so he dimmed its volume. "What? Who can see me? Ryan's out to lunch here."
Al followed the direction of Sam's forefinger, which was pointing to Bob Rebadowe's pod. There, the old inmate stared back at them with an expression of surprise that rivaled Sam's. Both watched with shock as Rebadowe held up two fingers, indicating that he could see two strangers in the O'Reily pod now.
"Oh, boy," Al griped.
"Now what?" Sam muttered.
"Ignore him," said Al. "Maybe he'll go back to sleep, and in the morning you can tell him he's having a stroke or something."
"I don't think--" Sam began, then stopped as Ryan suddenly bolted upward.
Ryan regarded his brother with bleary vision and a menacing scowl. "Cyril, what the fuck?" he gurgled as his legs swung downward from the bed. He hit the floor on the balls of his bare feet and started toward Sam.
Al looked back at Rebadowe's pod. "Hey, Sam, I'll be right back." With that, he pushed a button and disappeared, leaving Sam to face Ryan's wrath alone. One look at Ryan, however, told Sam that Cyril was likely accustomed to enduring his brother's wrath. Perhaps, Sam thought, that was a factor in this Leap. Maybe Cyril needed to gain some independence, and Sam was the one charged with making that happen.
"Go back to bed, Ryan," he hissed. "I'm not bothering you."
Ryan stopped dead in mid-step and just stared at Sam. He had not expected that, Sam noticed, but for Cyril the sudden quiet outburst did not appear to help. Ryan now looked angrier than ever.
"What did you say to me, brother?" Ryan demanded, his voice rising.
Sam said nothing and turned his gaze back toward the common area when an odd movement caught the corner of his eye. There was Al, unmistakeable in his lemon yellow jacket and matching pants, carrying on a conversation with Bob Rebadowe!
"Oh, great," he muttered, too enrapt with the scene across the building to catch Ryan before he seized Sam by the arm.
Ryan jerked Sam back toward the bunks and threw Sam onto Cyril's cot, but not without some strain on his part. With the other hand Ryan pinned down Sam's thigh and he leaned forward until the two were touching foreheads. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" he said hoarsely. "What gives you the right to talk to me like that? After all I've done for you, busting my ass to keep you safe from that Nazi fuck and his friends?"
"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be here, Ryan," Sam shot back, unaware of the rising volume of his voice. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't need protection from anybody, because I'd still have a brain that works and I would have used it to tell you that killing Preston Nathan was wrong!"
Ryan suddenly loosened his grip on Sam and stumbled backyard, staring with a frightened expression, as if Sam had just exploded in front of him. In a way, though, Sam realized, he had. Al had warned him not to say too much to anyone, as Cyril's disability did not allow for a massive vocabulary.
Now here he was, wide awake well past the appointed time in a maximum security prison, breaking yet another rule. How was he going to fix this, Sam wondered, knowing full well Cyril would return to OZ just as he had left, and with no memory of the Leap at that. Cyril, I'm sorry. I'm messing this up for you...
"Who are you?" Ryan wanted to know, his face whiter than milk.
Sam frowned. "What?"
Ryan's chest heaved as he leaned against the cool concrete wall opposite the bunks. Droplets of sweat were forming on the man's forehead. "Shit, I haven't done any drugs today, so this is not a fucking hallucination!" He pointed at Sam. "You look like Cyril and talk like him, but you ain't my brother. Cyril's slow, he can't talk the way you do, he can't reason. He can't do anything!"
A foreign noise rattled from outside. Sam turned his head to notice that the lady CO was no longer at the console.
"Ryan," Sam whispered, trying to calm his cellmate. "Someone'll hear. Be quiet."
Ryan whimpered, his chest still heaving.
"I'm your brother, I'm Cyril," Sam continued. "This isn't a trick, you just have to trust me and believe me when I say that I may be slow, but I'm not completely useless. Okay?"
New fire flickered in Ryan's eyes, and Sam's face fell. Not okay.
"You working for those Nazi fucks, are ya?" Ryan seethed. "What did you do to my brother? What, did you get some kind of plastic surgery and come in here to fuck with me? What did you do to Cyril?"
Ryan lunged for Sam's throat, knocking the both of them back on Cyril's cot. Sam struggled under the weight of Ryan's lean body push him away, but the vice grip around his neck was closing off the blood flow to his head, and Sam quickly began to feel dizzy. Had not the female CO arrived with two fellow guards in tow, Sam wondered if Ryan would have broken his neck right there in the pod.
* * *
When the smoke cleared, Ryan and Sam were relegated to individual cells in an undesirable section of Oswald known as "The Hole" for the rest of the night. Gooshie, having trouble centering on Sam during the melee in the O'Reily pod, pinpointed the doctor's location after several mistries. Al appeared in a dank cell to discover Sam naked and crouched in a corner next to an empty bucket to be used as a toilet.Al shuddered upon fully seeing Sam's new accommodations. "Sam, this place is a pit!"
"Rhymes with 'pit', it's a hole, actually," Sam retorted, drily.
"How'd you end up here?"
Sam waved the question away. "Long story. Do me a favor, would you, and find Ryan? I have a bad feeling something's wrong with him, and he could be the reason I'm here, not Cyril."
Al shrugged, keeping the opinion that Ryan O'Reily hardly seemed to need anyone's help to himself, and disappeared with a push of a button. He returned to Sam's confines minutes later, looking more distraught.
"Sam," Al gasped, "Ryan doesn't look so good, he's all green and sweaty! Ziggy thinks he may be having a bad reaction to drugs."
Sam snorted. "Ryan told me he was clean."
"Trust me, Sam, he's far from it. He's raving like a loon, something about Schillinger killing Cyril and replacing him with..." Al's voice trailed away and the hologram looked up at his friend with worry. "You don't think --?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't think so," he interrupted. "He sees only Cyril, I'm sure, but whatever drugs he's on compounded by my behavior..." Sam caught his breath, his heart now pounding. "What about Rebadowe?"
Al's handlink chirped in response, and the hologram extracted the device from an inside coat pocket. "Ah, yes, my new friend," Al replied grimly, studying the tiny data screen. "Bob Rebadowe, AKA Prisoner 65R814: convicted in September of 1965 for strangling a hooker. Get this, Sam, he was sentenced to death and was actually sitting the chair just before a electrical storm hit that blacked out the entire city. They had just thrown the switch, too."
Sam swallowed hard. "I'm guessing since he's still here..."
Al nodded in kind. "He survived a bolt to the noggin when the juice went dead, pardon the pun, and just before his execution could be rescheduled the state government ruled against capital punishment. Rebadowe's sentence was commuted to life, and there hasn't been another execution in OZ until last year."
"So that explains how Rebadowe can see me," Sam concluded. "Whatever shock he got from the chair must have altered his brainwaves."
"Oh, he can't see you, Sam," Al said matter-of-factly, ignoring the look of shock on the doctor's face. "He sees me, though, and hears me just fine, too. But when I brought it up he said he could see Cyril but knew it wasn't him."
"And how, pray tell, did he know?"
Al made a face. "Said God told him. Apparently he's been conversing with the Big Guy since the chair incident." Al punctuated this revelation by twirling a finger around his right ear.
Sam did not smile, however. Considering his past adventures, anything was possible. Maybe God really did speak to Bob Rebadowe, and if that were the case, perhaps God dropped a few names when speaking to the old man.
"He thinks you're here to help him, by the way," Al added. "Then again, I imagine if all the prisoners could see us, they'd say the same thing."
"You know what I'd really like to do?" Sam asked aloud, not necessarily to Al. "If I could find a way to help Cyril and Ryan so they would not even have to be here. If only I had leaped earlier in time..."
Al moved closer to his friend, worried that Sam's voice might carry too far so as to ignite the temper of the guard pacing outside. "What do you mean, Sam?"
Sam whirled around suddenly. "In the original history, you told me that Cyril's current state is the result of a blow to the head which happened in a fight. Now, the only reason Ryan is here is because he blames himself for Cyril's brain damage and he went nuts."
Al verified the facts again through his handlink. He was convinced Ryan would have ended up in Oswald regardless of Cyril's condition, but held his tongue. "Yeah, so?"
"So," Sam paced the room, oblivious to his own nudity and unaware of Al's discomfort, "if Cyril hadn't been attacked, Ryan wouldn't have done anything so rash and they would be free today, right?" He leaned over the handlink. "What does Ziggy say about that?"
After posing the theory to Ziggy, a sharp chirp erupted from the handlink. "Well," Al cleared his throat, "Ziggy says there's a seventy-two percent chance that had Cyril avoided that attack, Ryan could have avoided the arrest that landed him here. Consquently, chances are greater he never would have met Gloria Nathan, hence he would not have had Cyril kill Preston..."
"Which means we could save four lives," Sam finished the sentence with a grin.
Al, however, was not grinning. In fact, he was downright baffled. "Sound great in theory, Sam, but aren't you forgetting that you're standing butt naked in a hole and that we've leaped too late in time to prevent this chain of events? Surely you're not proposing that Gooshie drag the accelerator cross-country so you can leap again from here? I don't think the warden would take too kindly to that."
"Say that again, Al."
"What? The part about being butt naked, or --"
"The accelerator, Al," Sam interrupted, struggling to keep his train of thought. "It's still active in 1999, right?"
Al rolled his eyes. "Well, of course, Sam. We're all at HQ monitoring one of your Leaps right now. It's not like we have lives beyond this."
"You've got the e-mail working, too?"
"Oh, yeah. It's the best thing for Beth to keep track of the girls, what with long distance fees going through the roof."
"Terrific." Sam eased to one wall and crouched. "All I have to do is get out of here and get to the library so I can send Gooshie some e-mail. Hopefully by morning I'll have figured out a way to alter the system to make it possible."
"Er," Al faltered, "make what possible?"
Sam looked up and smiled. "A way for me to control where and when I leap. I just hope I can get it done before another bad thing happens around here."
Al looked down at his handlink and gasped. "I hope you can get it done in the next two days, too, Sam. Ziggy says here that's when Ryan has another bad drug episode and hangs himself in his pod."
* * *
Charles Buxton once said, "You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it." I'm guessing old Charlie must've been thinking of us when he said that, 'cause that's one thing we know how to make well in OZ, it's all we got. What we do with time here is another thing entirely. Some of us put it to constructive use, while others just waste it, and that just pisses me off. Think of all the starving children in the Third World who don't have as much time as we do.
* * *
When Al arrived back at the Calavicci apartment close to midnight to find his wife, his daughter, and Sam's wife Donna congregated around the kitchen table with coffee and cookies, he said nothing. He was bone tired, yet he found enough strength to kiss each woman on the cheek and announce his retirement for the night. "No need to break up the party on my account," he added. "I could probably sleep through a nuclear blast, I'm so tired."Donna, nevertheless, stood and stretched. "Oh, that's okay, Al. I should be getting off to bed myself," she said, and Al could not help but detect a twinge of sadness in his friend's voice. He reasoned Donna likely had not slept well at well since Sam entered the Accelerator. Sam's side of the bed had not been occupied in years, and Al, suddenly sympathetic of Donna's situation, shuddered. He could not imagine Beth no longer at his side at night.
"How's the Leap going?" Donna asked absently. Translation: Please tell me my husband isn't being raped and beaten repeatedly to the point of death.
"Hm, oh, Sam's fine, just fine," Al murmured, informing the ladies of Sam's current solitary confinement but omitting details of the Hole's appearance. "He's working on a new theory we're going to test tomorrow. He seems to think there's a way he can control the Leaps from now on."
Donna's eyes lit up at this. "That's a good thing, though," she said, reflecting the small smile given to her from Beth. "If he can control the Leaps from where he is, maybe that's just one step in stopping them altogether and coming home." She yawned again, louder this time, and inched toward the door. "Goodnight, everyone."
"Goodnight," chorused the Calaviccis wearily.
"Mom, I'll get the dishes," Gina added hastily, snatching the cup and saucer from her mother's hand. "You and Dad go on to bed. I'll see you early in the morning."
Beth, mildly surprised to see her own flesh and blood take a sudden interest in cleaning -- as the four Calavicci girls were known to have had messy rooms growing up -- concluded aloud that the Navy obviously succeeded where she had failed. "I used to have to bribe you with extra Little Debbie snacks in your lunch just to sort your own laundry," Beth exclaimed.
Beth gathered up the empty cups and saucers in one arm and grabbed the open box of cookies. "Who says I sort my laundry? Besides, I work, I can buy all the Little Debbies I want now."
"I wouldn't let your superiors know that," called Al from the bedroom. "Else, you'll be the only JAG doing extra push-ups in the morning."
"Good night, people!" grinned Gina, urging her mother to join her husband with a peck on the cheek. "Remember, we're getting up early to go shopping."
"I won't forget, we'll get up with your father," Beth said, finally retiring for the night, but not before she craned her neck back to her daughter. "Oh, Gina?"
"Yeah, Mom?" Gina stuffed a butter cookie in her mouth.
Beth lowered her voice. "Try to keep out of the Waiting Room. You don't want to be the only JAG grounded by her father, either."
Gina watched her mother close the bedroom door behind her, and nearly swallowed the cookie whole.
* * *
"Checkmate," declared Ziggy with a gleeful tone, displaying on the computer monitor a series of miniature figures dancing amid Ziggy's remaining chess pieces in victory as multi-colored showered them from an unseen computer-generated heaven."Bah!" uttered a disgusted Gina, who glanced at her watch. One in the morning, and she was nowhere close to feeling sleepy. Project Quantum Leap's supercomputer detected the young woman's tense demeanor. "Shall I set up for a rematch, Lieutenant?"
"That's alright, Zig, I should be getting to bed, even though I'm not sleepy."
"If you like, Lieutenant," Ziggy offered, "I can arrange for Dr. Beeks's intern to deliver a sedative from our medical supply."
"No thanks, Zig, and call me Gina, please? You did before."
"You weren't a lieutenant before...Gina." Ziggy's tone lightened. "I don't mind, either, waking up Brian in the middle of the night, considering how much he bothers me during the day with trivial nonsense."
Gina laughed at the computer's candor, still amazed with how Dr. Beckett was able to design and create such an entity -- not human, yet eerily similar to a former English professor Gina had in college. Ziggy was witty and sharp, and for a computer she certainly seemed to understand the human condition better than most people Gina had known. She concluded that Dr. Beckett must certainly be the most intelligent person ever to live, having created Ziggy.
If only his mind could be returned to its full capacity, instead of being muddled with memories of other people during leaps, Gina thought, Sam could think of a way to leap home for good.
"Oh, dear."
Gina snapped to attention and asked Ziggy, "What? What's wrong?"
"It's the top of the hour, and I was just performing my timed security scan of all the buildings," Ziggy explained, "when I checked into the Waiting Room and noticed Dr. Beckett crying."
Gina sat up straight. "Crying? You mean Cyril was crying. Show me."
In seconds, the computerized chessboard was replaced onscreen with an aerial view of the Waiting Room, as provided by a corner security camera. True to Ziggy's observation, Cyril O'Reily -- in Dr. Sam Beckett's body -- was curled in a fetal position on the floor and sobbing like a child. Gina could feel her heart break inside her.
"Zig, this is terrible! We can't leave him in there all night like that. He's scared."
"I know," Ziggy sighed. "Normally I would page Dr. Beeks in such a case, but Cyril O'Reily seems rather unreceptive to her. During dinner when she tried to check his pulse he was fussy with her to the point of screaming."
Screaming for his brother, no doubt, Gina thought to herself. "So what do we do? He's a human being, for crying out loud."
"Well, there's always Brian..." Ziggy began.
But Gina was already out the door before the computer could finish the suggestion. Tracking the young woman through the network of cameras placed throughout the Quantum Leap compound, Ziggy concluded Gina was heading straight for the Waiting Room herself to deal with Cyril O'Reily.
Of course, Ziggy did not need to spy through the cameras to realize that. "Just like the Admiral," the computer muttered. "Never satisfied until everything is done firsthand."
"I hope you realize, Lieutenant," said Ziggy as Gina arrived at the sealed Waiting Room door, "that I'm breaking several rules in allowing you access to this room again."
Gina looked up at the security camera above the door and smiled. "Why, Ziggy, there really is a heart beating underneath all those wires and chips. You don't have to worry about anything, you keep the place running. They can't do anything to you."
"No...Gina. Dr. Beckett keeps this place running. I'm only concerned for his safety. He'll need his body back when he gets home," Ziggy replied as the door slid open to reveal said body doubled over in misery. "I can give you thirty minutes, that's the most security tape I can lose without Gooshie getting suspicious."
Wasting not even a second to thank Ziggy, Gina rushed over to Cyril, then slowly approached when she notice his body quaking.
Cyril darted upward; Gina noticed Dr. Beckett's eyes were ringed red and wet with tears. "I-I don't want to be here anymore," he whispered.
Gina carefully reached out and patted Cyril's shoulder. "I know you don't, but my hands are tied. We're going to get you back to OZ as soon as we can."
Cyril, however, was not interested in promises he believed to be empty, and his chest heaved with more passionate misery. "I want Ryan," he wailed. "Why can't I see Ryan?"
With that, Gina drew the frightened visitor into a motherly embrace, crushing Cyril's face against her shoulder and shushing him as if he were a baby. There they sat for the next thirty minutes, the Naval officer's arms wrapped around a convicted murderer as she rocked him gently until he fell asleep, whispering his brother's name.
* * *
Contrary to the situation in the Waiting Room, Sam's eyes were dry as the door to the Hole opened and a balding, serious man stepped inside. He was holding a folded shirt and pair of pants, which were unceremoniously tossed to the floor at Sam's feet. "I'm surprised to see you haven't been crying, Cyril," the man said, though his voice sounded as if he could care if Cyril had spent the night screaming in agony. "Looks like you're starting to get used to the place."Sam said nothing and reached down for the clothes, not meeting the man's eyes as he dressed. This person was Tim McManus, and according to Al he managed day-to-day operations at Emerald City. He also had a particular loathing for the O'Reily brothers, Al warned, as Tim and Preston Nathan's estranged wife were once romantically involved. Not that Tim wanted to see Preston dead, of course, but he saw how the man's death was torturing Gloria, and that made Tim McManus angry. When McManus was angry, everybody else at OZ was miserable. Nobody was spared his wrath, least of all an inmate who could not do anything for himself.
"Where's Ryan?" Sam asked.
An impatient Tim folded his arms. "We're keeping him in the Hole for another day. Your brother," he added, stressing the word brother as if it were a profanity, "wasn't twenty minutes out when he tried to assault Sister Peter Marie."
"Ryan didn't mean it," Sam said, trying to sound as simple as possible so as not to arouse Tim's suspicions. "He was on drugs. He's sick."
"He's sick, all right," Tim spat, then turned a heel and exited. He nodded to a guard. "Get 'im back to EmCity. He's on his own."
Sam stayed quiet as the guard led him through the darkened hallway, glancing only from side to side at the other closed doors in the Hole, wondering which one concealed Ryan O'Reily from the rest of the world. At least in the Hole Ryan was safe, Sam concluded. Ryan likely could not commit suicide there, and if the calculations Sam marked in his mind from last night would work, Ryan would not have to worry about EmCity altogether following the Leap.
He caught the eye of Augustus Hill as he and his guard escort parted ways, and nodded politely. He and Tobias Beecher were lounging in front of the television, sedated and sullen. Beecher motioned Sam closer to him.
"You missed breakfast, pal," he whispered in Sam's ear, palming a biscuit. "Don't let anyone catch you with it."
Surprised with this gesture, Sam mumbled his thanks and started toward the computer lab when Augustus stopped him with a look.
"They were out of grape, this is all I could get," he said, producing a strawberry jam packet from his glove. Sam smiled again and took his leave.
Al was waiting for him inside the lab, and so was Bob Rebadowe. Al shot the doctor an apologetic look that said, "Hey, he followed me here."
Rebadowe allowed Sam access to the computer station where he sitting, rather eagerly, Sam noticed. "Are you going to do it?" Rebadowe demanded of Sam. "Are you going to get me out of here? It's why you're here, right?"
Mouse in hand, Sam steered the onscreen pointer to the browser menu, not saying a word.
"Sam," Al began, "I tried telling him you were here to help the O'Reilys, but he won't listen to me. He won't even accept that you'll leap out of here regardless of whether or not your mission is successful."
Rebadowe, however, did not care to hear Al's caveats. "I'm not a bad person, mister," he pleaded to Sam, shaking his shoulder. "I made a stupid mistake thirty-odd years ago...the rest of my life has been nothing but 'what ifs.' What if I hadn't gone into that bar? What if I hadn't had that fight with my fiancee?"
He snatched an empty chair from another station and seated himself next to Sam, whose attention was still transfixed on the computer screen. Rebadowe marveled with the speed of Sam's fingers as he typed a complicated e-mail message full of equations and words he could not pronounce. "I have a son I never saw grow up," Rebadowe added, "and a grandson who's dying. I missed their lives; I don't want to miss anything more."
Al sighed. "Look, buddy, there's no guarantee --"
Sam cut off the hologram in mid-sentence. "Do this for me," he ordered Rebadowe. "There are other people here, basically good people, who did stupid things?"
Rebadowe thought a moment, then nodded. "A few. Then again, OZ is not without its shares of monsters."
Sam cocked his head toward Al. "Give him a list of people whom you think need help. Put your name at the top of the list. I'll see what I can do."
"But no guarantees," stressed Al.
Rebadowe complied uneasily, unaware that as he gave Al the requested information, Sam was incorporating the same names into his e-mail to Gooshie.
Sam stopped a second. "Schillinger?" he asked in reference to one of the names. "You're putting him on the list?"
Rebadowe sighed. "It sounds crazy, but his boys are in a bad way. Vern may be a complete jerk, but he loves his family, and he's constantly beating himself up for not being there." Rebadowe swallowed. "I know how that feels."
Al nodded in kind. "So do we." On a lark, he checked Schillinger's history and discovered that one of his sons would eventually die in OZ.
When he finished with the list of names, Rebadowe regarded the strangers -- the shorter man in the bright suit and the man who looked like Cyril O'Reily but was not -- with a sad smile. "God told me He would send help. I never thought it would be you."
"You never thought it would be Cyril?" Sam asked, glancing only momentarily away from the computer.
"I guess." With that, the old man left the lab.
Sam paused, proofing his message for errors before continuing. Though the Internet service system at OZ appeared by Sam's standards to be archaic, he was not able to hack into the project's computer and alert Gooshie directly. Ziggy was much too adept in foiling breaches of security, leaving Sam to apply for an account with a free e-mail service and hope Gooshie checked his mail often. He had coded an introductory message with information known only to Quantum Leap personnel, hoping Gooshie would take the bait. He was still proofing his instructions to be sent in a second mail when a loud ping emitted from the monitor speakers.
"Sam!" Al called excitedly. "It's from Gooshie!" Indeed it was. Gooshie of 1999 was standing by for Sam's data; all the doctor has to do was push a button.
However, Sam could not even do a simple thing as that without a headache, and this particular headache was named Vern.
"Dr. Hawking, I presume?" Vern said with a sneer as two of his Aryan cronies lingered behind and sniggered. He had Sam by the wrist.
"Not today," Sam barked, wrestling free of Vern's grasp. "I'm busy."
"Busy, huh? Trolling for online porn? Chatting it up on retard.com?" Vern pushed aside his mail cart and circled the lab station, eyeing the cords dripping from the monitor. "You know, the information superhighway can be a dangerous place, Cyril. I don't know if I should be letting you use it. You just might become roadkill."
Sam noticed Vern's hand drifting toward a cluster of cords with the intention of yanking them from the monitor, thereby erasing every bit of information typed. Sam felt a pang in his heart; with his faltering memory, he was unsure he could remember everything and type a replacement message.
The computer beeped again. Gooshie was waiting.
"Sam," Al warned. "He's gonna unplug everything. Do something!"
Sam did. In a flash, he leapt forward and took Vern by the throat, squeezing tightly. The other Aryans remained rooted in position, shocked with such behavior coming from a normally complacent inmate.
"Just for that," Sam seethed. "I might just let your boys rot."
Vern frowned suddenly, his face reddening. "What?" he croaked. "What do you know about my boys?"
Before Sam could answer, however, the other Aryans finally realized the trouble and dove toward Sam, trying to pry him away from Vern. The computer station shook and Al could only watch helplessly as Sam's e-mail remained unsent, the onscreen pointer poised on the send button.
He dashed through the glass wall of the computer lab to where Rebadowe was sitting with Tobias and Augustus. "Rebadowe!" he hollered. "Sam's in trouble. I need you to send the e-mail now or it won't go through!"
Rebadowe, distraught with the prospect of rotting in EmCity for the rest of the life and knowing that message could prove his salvation, leapt from his molded plastic chair. Tobias, only briefly distracted by the sudden movement, happened to glance past Rebadowe to see Vern and Cyril locked in combat. He was in the lab before Rebadowe arrived, diving into the fray.
"Oh, jeez," Al whined as Tobias's fist met the chin of one of the Aryans, snapping his head backward. "You think you guys could move it to the corner? We don't need to be knocking over the computer."
As if Sam had heard him, Al exhaled in relief when he noticed Sam lunge into Vern and push him further backward. By now several guards had entered the scene and immediately began peeling away bodies from the fracas. One shouted an order to take everyone to the Hole.
Thankfully, nobody noticed Rebadowe, hunched over and wheezing as he slid into the chair by the computer and navigated the mouse with shaking fingers. He clicked the send button to relay Sam's message to Gooshie, and instantaneously the doctor leapt out of OZ and into a whirlwind mission.
* * *
Between Sam's equations and Gooshie's ingenuity, succeeding Leaps were not only simpler to pinpoint in terms of problem-solving, but Al could make himself accessible to Sam more quickly and provide the pertinent information further in advance. Such was the case when Sam discovered himself once again in the body of Cyril O'Reily, pre-accident.He was driving, with his brother Ryan riding shotgun, his arm hanging out the open window. They were heading toward the funeral home where the fight that would damage Cyril's brain was destined to occur, but thanks to Al's sudden appearance in the back seat of the O'Reily's car Sam was able to swerve in another direction.
"The fuck are you doing?" Ryan shouted. "You were supposed to turn left!"
Sam remained stone-faced. "I changed my mind."
"You changed your...what the fuck?" Ryan sputtered in disbelief. "We have to do this, Cyril. I have to see her!"
"I don't have to do anything," Sam shot back. "You want to see this chick so badly, you can get out and walk. Somehow the prospect of walking into a den of thugs and taking the risk of getting killed so you can get some is not high on my 'to-do' list."
Sam screeched to a halt alongside the curb of an access road. Ryan glanced out the window to discover that they were parked in front of a Navy recruitment office.
"What?" he cocked his head toward the building. "You want to join the Navy now?"
Sam smiled. "Why not?" With those two words, Sam leaped. He would learn from Ziggy later that because Cyril's injury was avoided, the young man did indeed join the Navy to get away from his dysfunctional family life. What would surprise Sam and everyone else at HQ was the fact that Ryan, missing his brother, followed suit. Hence, Preston Nathan would live, as would everybody else in OZ whose death was attributed to Ryan O'Reily.
Sam, however, was not finished with the inmates of OZ.
As a litigation attorney named George Fisher, he stopped a drunken Tobias Beecher from getting in his car, thereby preventing the accident that claimed the life of a young girl. Sam drove Tobias home and convinced his wife to get Tobias into AA, which she did. Ziggy's last report declared Sam's actions not only produced a sober, more productive Tobias Beecher but also prevented the suicide of his wife. They are currently expecting their third child.
As Augustus Hill, Sam elected to let himself be arrested quietly during the raid which resulted in the murder of a police officer and Augustus's disability. What knowledge of the law Sam retained in his memory came into play as he was able to make a reasonable plea for Augustus which included drug rehabilitation and community service instead of prison. Augustus is currently gainfully employed, a father, and walking.
As Poet, a talented but troubled ex-con recently paroled from OZ, Sam immediately checked himself into a drug rehabilitation clinic despite the fact he had to cancel the booksigning where Poet killed a man (in the original history, according to Al). Now drug-free, Poet continues to write; though poetry does not make him a rich man, he does earn a college scholarship and is scheduled to graduate in two years.
As Vern Schillinger, Sam calmly retrieved the two Schillinger boys from the drug dealer originally beaten within an inch of his life, rounded them into the truck and drove away. This leap proved to be quite difficult as Sam resorted to tough love to straighten out the two boys. Eventually, Ziggy would announce later, both Schillingers would embrace sobriety and learn trades that would guarantee employment, and their father would put his anti-drug stance to good use as a volunteer. As for curbing Vern's Aryan beliefs and attitude, well, even a doctor with nine degrees can only do so much.
As a young Muslim named Muhammed Jabar, Sam strongly convinced a volatile Kareem Said to find another method of protest besides the arson he had planned to commit. It took much talking and praying, but Sam was able to wear down the outspoken Said and steer him away from the physical heat of fire to the fire within his heart, which was unleashed through the media. Said is currently a frequent guest on numerous talk shows, speaking out on religious freedom and prison reform, among other topics.
As a bartender in 1965, Sam refused Bob Rebadowe a refill on Scotch. "I think you've had enough, pal."
"Sez you," Rebadowe slurred, sliding off of his stool and wobbling toward the men's room. Al immediately filled the space he left behind.
"Sam, here she comes," Al said anxiously as a voluptuous brunette in a tight red dress sauntered into the bar, making a beeline for Sam. In the original history, Rebadowe would return to his stool and the two would strike up a conversation, then leave together. Her undressed, lifeless body would be found in a hotel room two block away in the early evening.
The brunette smiled and asked politely for a glass of white wine. "Sure," Sam complied, "but I should tell you something..." He brushed a forefinger against his top row of teeth to indicate that the woman had lipstick on hers.
"Oh, thank you." The woman got the hint and retreated to the ladies' room, missing Rebadowe by seconds. When she emerged, she caught the eyes of another solider and joined his table, with Sam and Al watching.
"That's it, Sam," Al said happily. "Nothing happens to her, but Rebadowe dries out on a street corner somewhere. He doesn't die, though, but he gets an awful hangover, and he and his fiancee patch things up."
"He doesn't go to OZ?" Sam wanted to know.
"Nope." Al held the handlink up to Sam for verification. "Everyone who originally wound up there that you helped are on the straight and narrow, Sam. It's a good thing Gooshie was able to apply your new theories to the project so you could control the past few Leaps, huh?"
Sam nodded, idly wiping a glass from the bar.
"So, uh," Al continued, "you think you've figured out a way to get home?"
The look on Sam's face, however, was evasive. "Perhaps," he said finally, but before he could expand the bright blue light synonymous with his leaping exploded and Sam was gone; Al immediately left 1965 to find out where, and when.
* * *
No sooner than had Gina burst through the door of her New York apartment, luggage in hand, did her roommate Diana approach with a worried expression. "Don't get mad, Gina," she started.Gina, too exhausted from the four-hour flight home from New Mexico to argue, simply dropped her belongings and flopped down on the living room sofa. "Get mad about what?" she asked. "Doesn't look like there's been a fire."
Diana wrung her hands. "No, everything's fine here. It's just that I have a date tonight..."
"That's a good thing, though."
"Yeah," Diana nodded, giggling as she normally did when she was nervous. "But he has a brother, you see, and I couldn't find anyone else..."
Gina sat up straight. "You didn't."
"I know you just got home," Diana said in a pleading voice, "but I really like this guy. They're Navy, too, and anyway it's just a movie. You can doze off there if it's gets too boring for you."
Gina sighed. She hated surprises, and blind dates even more. Diana, however, was painfully shy, and any time she was able to go out on a date was a rare occasion. Tired as she was, Gina did not have to heart to spoil this chance for her friend. "Okay," she relented. "How much nap time do I have before they get here? I'm not changing clothes, either."
Diana's smile was wide and grateful. "Don't worry. It's casual all the way, and they'll be here in two hours. My guy's name is Ryan O'Reily. His brother is Cyril."