CHAPTER 0 (Disclaimer)
Sliders is the property of St. Clair Entertainment, the Sci-Fi Channel, Universal and Studios USA. This story is non-profit.
*Historian's note: The following takes place in 1996 (2nd Season), soon after events described in the episode 'Greatfellas' but before the events in 'The Young And The Relentless'.
CHAPTER ONE
00:02:30
Quinn looked up from reading the device in his jacket pocket. "Two minutes, thirty seconds," he whispered in Wade's ear.
His friend looked to him and wordlessly nodded her head, then leant to quietly whisper this news to their companions Professor Arturo and Rembrandt. Before them, the prosecutor's lawyer was finishing up her case.
"...and in summary," she was saying, "one can quite clearly see that the defendants are indeed guilty. This is unmistakable, given their unbelievable disregard and contempt for the law, shown in their interruption of what may have ended a war."
She seated herself, and the Sliders' lawyer stood up. It was Ross J. Kelley, and on their native version of Earth he was a shyster lawyer who exploited the law to get his customers worker's compensation. This version of him, however, had proven quite competent in defending them.
"Your honour," Kelley began, "It is quite obvious that these people had no idea what they were doing when they interfered in the nuclear launch. Their claim to originate from a parallel Universe itself cries 'insanity' - they can not be held for their actions in their current sta...."
Quinn stood. "On the contrary, your honour, we hold ourselves completely responsible." He discreetly checked the device in his pocket: 00:00:47. "We interfered with the launch against the European continent because the war this country has waged on them is morally wrong. To kill so many people is a crime against humanity!"
Arturo stood up beside him. "Not to mention the concept of using the Italian people as test subjects for the newly-invented hydrogen bomb. Such a thing happened on our own Earth and it is still remembered as one of the worst occurences in hist...."
"Mister Arturo!" the judge yelled, slamming his gavel down. "You will desist in this ridiculous story of parallel...."
Wade, now charged with the moment, jumped up and thumped the desk with her fist. "People won't stand for this! We're not alone! We're going to show them exactly how easy it is to defy your wrongful government and get away with it!"
The judge sported a hint of a grin. "How so, Miss Welles?"
"I'll tell you how so we'll get away with it," Rembrandt spoke up, as all four of them approached the bench and Quinn pulled the device out of his pocket. "By disappearing into thin air."
"Please!" Kelley hissed to them as Quinn flipped open the lid of the machine in his hand. "This isn't helping!"
Quinn glanced at him. "You're a great lawyer, Ross," he said as he extended his arm and aimed the device at the doors.
The police guards began to move in on them. The device beeped, and Quinn turned a dial on its face. A translucent beam of energy lanced from the end of it and towards the doors, dissipating and then making space appear to fold in upon itself. The air and the doors became warped and distorted, and appeared to pour into a blue point of light which grew in size to resemble a huge vortex of energy, sucking blue streaks into its glowing depths. Everything around it looked warped and liquid-like.
"I hope you'll continue to believe in our cause!" Quinn yelled to Kelley over the ensuing roar of the wormhole. Static electricity filled the courtroom, as did the faint smell of ozone.
Wade took a running jump into the vortex of liquid-light, vanishing into its depths with a flash. Arturo leaped in after her, followed by Rembrandt. Quinn held up the device in his hand, its row of six zeros glowing red, and yelled over the roar "The people cannot be oppressed forever!" Then he, too, leapt into the wormhole.
After passing into it, a flash of light met Quinn's eyes, and then he was in a twisting, rainbow-coloured tunnel, taking many twists and turns, before a point of light grew and became brighter, finally engulfing him. He emerged into reality.
He was shocked to find, the others already waiting for him in similar surprise, that they landed in the same courtroom. This itself was not out of the ordinary - since they had traveled to a parallel Universe, it would make sense for them to be in an alternate version of the court - however, the same judge, the same jury, the same lawyers and especially the same Ross J Kelley were standing watching them, mouths agape.
"Uh... did we just leave?" Quinn asked Kelley. The man nodded slowly.
"We didn't Slide?" Rembrandt summed up what they were thinking.
Quinn looked puzzlingly to the device, but before anything could be done, the courtroom doors burst open violently. Screams of a crowd could be heard outside, and an air-raid siren was sounding faintly in the distance.
"Run!" a man screamed from outside the doors. He appeared, in his panic, not to notice the unworldly wormhole still open in the corner of the courtroom. "The Portuguese have launched against us!"
He continued running, and the courtroom erupted in a display of absolute and pure panic. Everyone ran outside, and the Sliders were caught up in the crowd. They managed to find each other outside the courthouse, where everybody was looking into the sky. There, descending to earth, was what looked way too much like three nuclear missiles. Before Quinn could even think, the first missile plunged to the ground across the bay.
He wanted to close his eyes but couldn't - watching instead, in amazing adrenaline-induced slow motion, as a shockwave of pure white light extended from the point of impact, the intense heat prickling Quinn's skin, and he waited for it to engulf them... before it suddenly vanished, instead to be replaced with the sunny Golden Gate Bay, a few clouds in the sky, and shoppers walking around a nearby food court.
Wade fell to her knees. Arturo collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.
"Whoa, you okay girl?" Rembrandt asked Wade as he caught her by the arm. He was still in somewhat of a daze himself.
Quinn slapped Arturo lightly on the face a few times until he noticed the Professor stirring. "Are we dead?" he asked Wade and Rembrandt.
Wade shrugged. "I dunno," she said, "I've never been dead before."
Arturo's eyes opened, and he blinked furiously. "Everything's a funny blue," he said.
"I think you were blinded a bit," Quinn said as he helped the large man up.
"Are we dead?" Arturo asked.
"Don't ask, man," Rembrandt said.
"We don't think so," Wade told him. A few people were looking at them strangely, and she just smiled to get rid of them. "Did I just imagine a nuclear explosion?" she asked through clenched teeth.
"I think not," Arturo said. "It certainly seemed real to me, I remember heat, but it was only for a short time - that was a close shave. Does anyone have any burns?"
Rembrandt looked into Arturo's face. "Your nose looks nasty," he said. Indeed, Arturo's nose was a shade of pink, like he had a bad sunburn.
The others noticed they had a few minor burns too.
"We may have radiation poisoning," Rembrandt said, remembering his field training from the short time he spent in the Navy, the enrolment into which he'd always attributed to a bad acid trip. "Let's find a hospital."
"Maybe we should find my double," Quinn offered. "My house should be near here - if it exists on this world. He could help us get to a hospital without us accidentally breaking this world's laws or something."
Arturo nodded. "Although," he mused, "it certainly feels as if we landed upon the same Earth from which we departed - even if we inexplicably just left it again."
Quinn checked the Timer, the device in his hand which told them when they would next have a window of opportunity to open an interdimensional wormhole.
"Two days guys," he said.
About ten minutes later, the Sliders assembled in Quinn's street. But the suburban Blue Jay Way they knew was now lined with the company buildings of several software companies. The address 4159 was written on a gutter in front of a building sporting a sign that said 'Digisoft'.
"Looks like he doesn't exist here," Quinn said. "Let's look in the phone book just to be sure."
They spotted a phone booth a few feet away, with a Green Pages hanging from the phone. Quinn advanced towards it and, stepping into the booth, almost completely vanished before hitting an invisible barrier and falling, now once again visible, to the ground.
"Mr. Mallory are you alright?" Arturo asked him as he got up.
"Yeah, uh... I'm fine. What did I hit?"
Arturo stepped up to the booth's door, and extended his hand to touch the public phone. "From what I can see, nothing," the Professor confessed.
Quinn extended his own hand, and the tips of his fingers became transparent, as they touched something solid.
"Q-ball, man, get it outta there!" Rembrandt said.
"Hang on Remmie," Quinn whispered.
He traced his fingers across, then up the barrier. He moved them down and across, and they hit a protrusion. It was round, and felt like a door handle. He turned it, but it would not budge.
"What is it?" Wade whispered.
Quinn shook his head and, not exactly knowing why, produced from his pocket the key to his house back on his native Earth (he always kept it just in case, and particularly for just sentimental value). Holding it tight in his fingers, he found the protrusion again, found a small slit in it, and slid the key inside. It fit, and when he turned it, the door, or whatever it was, unlocked. He turned the handle and pushed. Feeling with his hand the now empty space before him, he closed his eyes.
"Wait here," he said to the others, and stepped forward.
Sliders is the property of St. Clair Entertainment, the Sci-Fi Channel, Universal and Studios USA. This story is non-profit.
*Historian's note: The following takes place in 1996 (2nd Season), soon after events described in the episode 'Greatfellas' but before the events in 'The Young And The Relentless'.
CHAPTER ONE
00:02:30
Quinn looked up from reading the device in his jacket pocket. "Two minutes, thirty seconds," he whispered in Wade's ear.
His friend looked to him and wordlessly nodded her head, then leant to quietly whisper this news to their companions Professor Arturo and Rembrandt. Before them, the prosecutor's lawyer was finishing up her case.
"...and in summary," she was saying, "one can quite clearly see that the defendants are indeed guilty. This is unmistakable, given their unbelievable disregard and contempt for the law, shown in their interruption of what may have ended a war."
She seated herself, and the Sliders' lawyer stood up. It was Ross J. Kelley, and on their native version of Earth he was a shyster lawyer who exploited the law to get his customers worker's compensation. This version of him, however, had proven quite competent in defending them.
"Your honour," Kelley began, "It is quite obvious that these people had no idea what they were doing when they interfered in the nuclear launch. Their claim to originate from a parallel Universe itself cries 'insanity' - they can not be held for their actions in their current sta...."
Quinn stood. "On the contrary, your honour, we hold ourselves completely responsible." He discreetly checked the device in his pocket: 00:00:47. "We interfered with the launch against the European continent because the war this country has waged on them is morally wrong. To kill so many people is a crime against humanity!"
Arturo stood up beside him. "Not to mention the concept of using the Italian people as test subjects for the newly-invented hydrogen bomb. Such a thing happened on our own Earth and it is still remembered as one of the worst occurences in hist...."
"Mister Arturo!" the judge yelled, slamming his gavel down. "You will desist in this ridiculous story of parallel...."
Wade, now charged with the moment, jumped up and thumped the desk with her fist. "People won't stand for this! We're not alone! We're going to show them exactly how easy it is to defy your wrongful government and get away with it!"
The judge sported a hint of a grin. "How so, Miss Welles?"
"I'll tell you how so we'll get away with it," Rembrandt spoke up, as all four of them approached the bench and Quinn pulled the device out of his pocket. "By disappearing into thin air."
"Please!" Kelley hissed to them as Quinn flipped open the lid of the machine in his hand. "This isn't helping!"
Quinn glanced at him. "You're a great lawyer, Ross," he said as he extended his arm and aimed the device at the doors.
The police guards began to move in on them. The device beeped, and Quinn turned a dial on its face. A translucent beam of energy lanced from the end of it and towards the doors, dissipating and then making space appear to fold in upon itself. The air and the doors became warped and distorted, and appeared to pour into a blue point of light which grew in size to resemble a huge vortex of energy, sucking blue streaks into its glowing depths. Everything around it looked warped and liquid-like.
"I hope you'll continue to believe in our cause!" Quinn yelled to Kelley over the ensuing roar of the wormhole. Static electricity filled the courtroom, as did the faint smell of ozone.
Wade took a running jump into the vortex of liquid-light, vanishing into its depths with a flash. Arturo leaped in after her, followed by Rembrandt. Quinn held up the device in his hand, its row of six zeros glowing red, and yelled over the roar "The people cannot be oppressed forever!" Then he, too, leapt into the wormhole.
After passing into it, a flash of light met Quinn's eyes, and then he was in a twisting, rainbow-coloured tunnel, taking many twists and turns, before a point of light grew and became brighter, finally engulfing him. He emerged into reality.
He was shocked to find, the others already waiting for him in similar surprise, that they landed in the same courtroom. This itself was not out of the ordinary - since they had traveled to a parallel Universe, it would make sense for them to be in an alternate version of the court - however, the same judge, the same jury, the same lawyers and especially the same Ross J Kelley were standing watching them, mouths agape.
"Uh... did we just leave?" Quinn asked Kelley. The man nodded slowly.
"We didn't Slide?" Rembrandt summed up what they were thinking.
Quinn looked puzzlingly to the device, but before anything could be done, the courtroom doors burst open violently. Screams of a crowd could be heard outside, and an air-raid siren was sounding faintly in the distance.
"Run!" a man screamed from outside the doors. He appeared, in his panic, not to notice the unworldly wormhole still open in the corner of the courtroom. "The Portuguese have launched against us!"
He continued running, and the courtroom erupted in a display of absolute and pure panic. Everyone ran outside, and the Sliders were caught up in the crowd. They managed to find each other outside the courthouse, where everybody was looking into the sky. There, descending to earth, was what looked way too much like three nuclear missiles. Before Quinn could even think, the first missile plunged to the ground across the bay.
He wanted to close his eyes but couldn't - watching instead, in amazing adrenaline-induced slow motion, as a shockwave of pure white light extended from the point of impact, the intense heat prickling Quinn's skin, and he waited for it to engulf them... before it suddenly vanished, instead to be replaced with the sunny Golden Gate Bay, a few clouds in the sky, and shoppers walking around a nearby food court.
Wade fell to her knees. Arturo collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.
"Whoa, you okay girl?" Rembrandt asked Wade as he caught her by the arm. He was still in somewhat of a daze himself.
Quinn slapped Arturo lightly on the face a few times until he noticed the Professor stirring. "Are we dead?" he asked Wade and Rembrandt.
Wade shrugged. "I dunno," she said, "I've never been dead before."
Arturo's eyes opened, and he blinked furiously. "Everything's a funny blue," he said.
"I think you were blinded a bit," Quinn said as he helped the large man up.
"Are we dead?" Arturo asked.
"Don't ask, man," Rembrandt said.
"We don't think so," Wade told him. A few people were looking at them strangely, and she just smiled to get rid of them. "Did I just imagine a nuclear explosion?" she asked through clenched teeth.
"I think not," Arturo said. "It certainly seemed real to me, I remember heat, but it was only for a short time - that was a close shave. Does anyone have any burns?"
Rembrandt looked into Arturo's face. "Your nose looks nasty," he said. Indeed, Arturo's nose was a shade of pink, like he had a bad sunburn.
The others noticed they had a few minor burns too.
"We may have radiation poisoning," Rembrandt said, remembering his field training from the short time he spent in the Navy, the enrolment into which he'd always attributed to a bad acid trip. "Let's find a hospital."
"Maybe we should find my double," Quinn offered. "My house should be near here - if it exists on this world. He could help us get to a hospital without us accidentally breaking this world's laws or something."
Arturo nodded. "Although," he mused, "it certainly feels as if we landed upon the same Earth from which we departed - even if we inexplicably just left it again."
Quinn checked the Timer, the device in his hand which told them when they would next have a window of opportunity to open an interdimensional wormhole.
"Two days guys," he said.
About ten minutes later, the Sliders assembled in Quinn's street. But the suburban Blue Jay Way they knew was now lined with the company buildings of several software companies. The address 4159 was written on a gutter in front of a building sporting a sign that said 'Digisoft'.
"Looks like he doesn't exist here," Quinn said. "Let's look in the phone book just to be sure."
They spotted a phone booth a few feet away, with a Green Pages hanging from the phone. Quinn advanced towards it and, stepping into the booth, almost completely vanished before hitting an invisible barrier and falling, now once again visible, to the ground.
"Mr. Mallory are you alright?" Arturo asked him as he got up.
"Yeah, uh... I'm fine. What did I hit?"
Arturo stepped up to the booth's door, and extended his hand to touch the public phone. "From what I can see, nothing," the Professor confessed.
Quinn extended his own hand, and the tips of his fingers became transparent, as they touched something solid.
"Q-ball, man, get it outta there!" Rembrandt said.
"Hang on Remmie," Quinn whispered.
He traced his fingers across, then up the barrier. He moved them down and across, and they hit a protrusion. It was round, and felt like a door handle. He turned it, but it would not budge.
"What is it?" Wade whispered.
Quinn shook his head and, not exactly knowing why, produced from his pocket the key to his house back on his native Earth (he always kept it just in case, and particularly for just sentimental value). Holding it tight in his fingers, he found the protrusion again, found a small slit in it, and slid the key inside. It fit, and when he turned it, the door, or whatever it was, unlocked. He turned the handle and pushed. Feeling with his hand the now empty space before him, he closed his eyes.
"Wait here," he said to the others, and stepped forward.