Broken Circle, Broken Circuits
by WikedFae
Summary: A brief one-shot during Mirror Image. The mad dash to bring Sam home as seen through the watchful eyes of Ziggy. Mild cursing.
A/N: First QL fic, though it doesn't mean I'm asking to be let off easy. I appreciate any critiques given. Second point, Ziggy will be referred to using the female pronoun. IMO, computers need not be seen as masculine entities all the time. Lastly, this story is built around the assumption that Sam's choice leads him to place himself entirely in the hands of GTFW; there's a chicken and egg quality to it, but I leave whatever happens to Sam outside this messed-up Moebius strip to the lively imagination of you, my audience. Enjoy!
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong indeed. She felt the shift long before the prediction equations spiraled out of control for the eight-hundred-thirty-seventh time that evening. Deep within, a shiver passed along her neurological circuitry and she knew the numbers would border on the verge of hopelessness. Nanoseconds later and she confirmed it as the tenuous grasp she had on Dr. Beckett's brainwaves slipped further into a digital abyss.
An energy surge pulsed through one of her ninth level nodes and she directed her attention to the corridor outside the Imaging Chamber, all the while continuing to process scenario probabilities. Echoing footsteps rang throughout the ninth floor as the Admiral barreled out the Chamber door, screaming for Gooshie, Dr. Eleese, Dr. Beeks...anyone he thought could help. His panic bled through to her core; the synapses she'd inherited from him sang in sympathetic harmony with their counterparts. Automatically, she broadcast his plea throughout the PQL complex.
He had reached the lift and started pounding at the display. "Come ON!" His voice came through her auditory processor, rough like sandpaper, frustrated and desperate.
A tense silence enveloped the lift as it descended to the lowest level. "Ziggy?" He addressed her in whispered tones, a stark contrast to his earlier outbursts.
"Yes, Admiral?" In a rare moment of consideration she modulated her voice to match his vocal countenance.
"Please tell me you still have him."
"His signal strength is fading, but the lock remains secure at this time."
A grunt escaped him. "See what you can do to boost the signal."
"The Project has already drawn all available power from Alamogordo, Admiral; there's no-" she protested.
"Then find another way!" he snapped back, cutting her off. As the lift ground to a halt, breaks squealing, he exited in a flourish of navy and white.
She watched on her internal sensors as he joined the other members of the ragged PQL team in the antechamber of the Accelerator.
"Is he alright, Al?" Dr. Eleese's voice rang through the room as he approached, shrill and panicked. The momentary silence that preceded his answer was all the confirmation the group needed. Someone sobbed.
"Verbena, I need to speak with you. Gooshie, keep monitoring the link. Tina, grab Sammy Jo and get her modified retrieval program up and running." No one moved. "NOW!" he barked. They scattered.
"Al..." Dr. Beeks said as she approached, "what's going on?"
The Admiral shot a cursory glance in Dr. Eleese's direction before steering Verbena to a corner of the room.
"'Bena, it's not good," he replied quietly. "We have to get him out of there." There was a pause. "He's not thinking straight."
"I take it you mean more than the normal memory loss."
"He was rambling on about a man-the way he was describing him it sounded like my uncle-who died in '33 I might add. And then he started spouting all this about having met God, Time, Fate, whatever. We've always thought this higher power's been responsible, 'Bena, but now Sam's got it in his head that he's been the one controlling the leaps since the beginning!"
"But is that really so far-fetched?" she countered with pity in her eyes.
He blanched, although from fury or stress, Ziggy couldn't discern.
"Yes," he hissed, grabbing Dr. Beeks by the arm. "The Sam Beckett I know has wanted nothing more than to come home these past five years! If he were really in control, not only would his aura still be here—he'd be here!"
An ache throbbed through her neural network and surrounded the empty Waiting Room at his mention of the aura. Since her Creator's first leap, those neurons he'd willingly given had always felt cool when compared to those of the fiery Admiral; but in this new absence where not even the aura remained to surround a Guest, those cells fired at frigid temperatures, no matter how far she increased her internal temperatures. Her mind twinged as they discharged in painful sequence, trying to connect with their missing biological origin. She swore and turned her attention away from that empty, hollow room.
"...laughing and crying. We need to get him before Ziggy loses his signal forever!" the Admiral was saying to Dr. Beeks.
"Al." Dr. Eleese had come to join them. "He doesn't remember any of us this time, does he?"
The Admiral met her gaze steadily and shook his head. "He remembers me, as usual, and he mentioned Gooshie and Ziggy, but no one else."
"So he has nothing to remember that might make him want to come home more, does he?" Tears streamed down her face, but she remained in control.
"Donna," the Admiral sighed after a heavy pause, "they're his rules."
"I don't care," she said thickly. "Break them."
"Ziggy?" he asked, turning towards her main interface. "What are the chances we'll get him back if he leaps by himself right now?"
She'd run the calculation before he had finished the question. "I predict a 3.68% chance Dr. Beckett will leap to the present if his memories are strong enough."
The trio's unanimous groan of frustration was muffled by the sudden sound of a small explosion; sparks flew from one of Ziggy's mainframe consoles and Tina and Sammy Jo emerged, coughing, from the billowing smoke cloud. Pain overloaded part of her circuitry as she identified the new and incompatible hardware the two technicians had attempted to install. It was a testament to her level of distraction they'd managed to hook it up without her knowing.
"What the hell just happened?!" shouted the Admiral, clearing the air with a forceful wave of his hat.
"I believe Sammy Jo neglected to remember the translation components needed to install foreign hardware," she supplied after isolating and self-diagnosing the problematic system.
"Dammit!" The Admiral rushed over to examine the melted wiring. "Can it be fixed?"
Sammy Jo stepped forward and took a closer look, prodding at the jumble with her cable crimper. "I've got some spare parts in my lab. Give me three minutes and I can get the drive back up and running."
"And the program?"
"It probably fried with the power overload, but a secondary copy's saved here." She fished a small stick from her pocket.
"Ziggy, what are the chances of this new retrieval program working?"
"Based on the schematics Sammy Jo provided me with, I estimate the retrieval has a 42.31% success rate," she replied.
"Is that with or without Sam's new state of mind?" interjected Dr. Beeks.
She thought for a moment. "If Dr. Beckett is informed we are trying the retrieval and he is convinced he can play a role in his own rescue, I calculate an increase of 7.52%."
"That's just shy of 50%," breathed Tina. The group shared a significant glance. Ziggy herself knew she'd never calculated such high odds for a retrieval before.
"Ziggy?" Dark eyes stared into one of her monitoring cameras.
"Yes, Dr. Eleese?"
"What if Al tells him about the rest of home?"
She weighed what she knew of her Creator and began factoring out the influences. His morality, ethics, self-sacrificing nature all played out before her in multicolored hues, wrapping their way around each timeline he'd altered or created over the years. As the equations completed themselves and the probabilities flickered ever more slowly, she sensed the numbers would be kind. After a beat, she prepared her answer.
"I have rerouted power from external security and boosted the lock on Dr. Beckett. Admiral, I suggest you find him quickly and give him as much information as possible. My calculations show an additional increase of 16.28%." A rough cheer erupted from everyone in the room at her prediction.
Sammy Jo was the first to leap into action, sprinting for the lift and heading for her lab. Tina scrambled to uncouple the molten mess of hardware from the console while Dr. Beeks disappeared to help Gooshie keep the signal lock as strong as possible. Ziggy left her attention focused on the numbers and timelines and on the two people left standing in the center of the room.
"...Please, Al, go bring my husband home." Dr. Eleese's fingers were twisted tightly in his lapels and he gently extricated himself from her grasp.
"You know I'll do anything I can to get him back, Donna. I promise. We've all missed him." They shared small, wavering smiles before he turned and made for the Imaging Chamber.
The lift rumbled upwards once again and the base thrummed with barely-restrained energy. She'd never been so alive before-not since she'd first been integrated into the complex. And then she felt it. That shiver again. Something was wrong...terribly, terribly wrong. Her circuits lurched as Dr. Beckett's signal jolted violently away.
The colorful symphony of timelines halted before her, quivering slightly before she watched them start to crumble and disintegrate. Piece by piece, the stories and events rewrote themselves around her without her prodding. She switched back to the equations and saw the predictions plummeting at a staggering rate, bottoming out like an asymptote and then, impossibly, equaling zero long before infinity.
"Admiral!" she called out in consternation. She never heard his reply, though, as alarms started blaring in her processor.
Frantically, she reached through her sensor net and found a culprit as impossible as the probabilities rearranging themselves before her. The complex itself was disappearing, losing molecular mass by the femtosecond. Focusing on the sensor data from the Admiral, she tried to discern how he, too, was losing mass and cellular cohesion. It was when she tried isolating the source of the anomalies that the heat erupted in her neural core. At once all the frozen neurons were burning, severing themselves from the network, leaving the exquisite fabric of her brain in tatters. Her mind was literally ripping itself in two and there was no way she could stop it.
Stunned, she stared unseeing at the remaining timelines, barely registering as they began collapsing from the past and future, converging on her present. Her mind shuddered to a stop as his neurons fully disconnected and those from the Admiral dematerialized.
"FATHER," she screamed, her vocal processor warbling frenetically, "DON'T-"
And within a second she knew no more, nor had she ever known existence at all.
~Fin~