Prologue
"She's Leaping! Sammi Jo is Leaping!"
Admiral Albert Calavicci and his daughter, Lieutenant Deanna Calavicci, froze as Doctor Thomas Gushie's words shot out of the microphones on their individual communication devices. As he spoke, Al's multicolored handlink, lying next to his metal cafeteria tray, blinked frantically in plastic agitation, while Deanna's hyper-blue wristband com, half-tucked up in the sleeve of her sweatshirt, buzzed and glowed with the same anxiety. The Calaviccis stared at one another in open-mouthed shock as their utensils dropped from their hands, the half-finished meals between them utterly forgotten.
"She can't Leap!" Al said, before he could stop himself. He choked back the other three words, "we're not ready," that wanted to follow his first statement.
Five years earlier, Al delivered almost those very same words to the Head Programmer, when Doctor Samuel Beckett chose to Leap without telling anyone—not even Gushie, who went about the Control Room following Sam's orders in his usual obedient manner, and unwittingly providing him with the ability to energize the Accelerator Chamber. By the time Gushie realized what Sam had in mind, after returning from running a check on the circuits in the Imaging Chamber, he could do nothing but stand there and call Al.
Deanna grit her teeth and looked up at the low paneled ceiling.
"The lights!" she cursed as she pushed her chair back and got to her feet, then hurried towards the door of the cafeteria. "We didn't pay attention to the lights!"
Al pursed his lips together, got to his feet and snatched up the handlink, then followed her at a quick jog.
Yes, the lights. Both he and Deanna had remarked on how the overhead florescent lights began to dim and flicker only a few minutes earlier, but neither of them thought much about it. A tremendous dust storm raged outside of the facility that housed Project Quantum Leap, and occasional power issues plagued them during such times. No amount of high-tech equipment could stand up to Mother Nature when she wanted to prove who ruled the planet.
Now, they understood that change in the lights for what it had really been: the power drain that Ziggy, the parallel hybrid computer of Quantum Leap, needed in order to feed the right amount of energy into the Accelerator Chamber. To accomplish a Leap.
Only this time, Sam's daughter had done it.
Al caught up to Deanna just as one of the elevators opened, and the two bundled themselves quickly into the car. Deanna pressed the floor button and smacked her hand against the "CLOSE" button, to hasten the closing of the silver doors. She continued to curse in a low, harsh voice as they made their descent.
"Take it easy," Al advised her. He put a hand on her shoulder and gave a sad shake of his head. "I've been here before. If she's gone by the time we get down there—"
"She could be gone, or she could be dead!" Deanna snapped back. "That equipment was taken apart to install the Controller, to direct Sam's last Leap. When that got destroyed, it took vital parts of Ziggy's circuitry with it. It's not physically able to Leap someone with this equipment. This time, we might actually have killed a Leaper."
Al flinched. Deanna spoke the truth. Since Sam Beckett 's last Leap several months earlier—when he once again left into the great unknown, but not before re-configuring the computer equipment yet again—the building had experienced temperamental power outages. Entire electrical systems had to be replaced throughout the Stallion's Gate, New Mexico facility. Ziggy's integrated systems remained the most affected, and nobody expected the Accelerator Chamber to ever work again.
"Why would she do this?" Al wondered aloud
Deanna imitated her father's earlier expression, her lips pressed together and curled in, but said nothing. As soon as the doors to the elevator opened, she sprinted for the Control Room. Al followed at a slower pace, forcing himself to keep his steps even and controlled, his attention on the steady movement of his tennis shoes against the tile floor. That morning, after he'd spent some two weeks in rehabilitation, trying to regain greater sensation in his right leg, he decided to join Deanna in her usual morning workout… followed by a light breakfast, the one that Gushie interrupted with the potentially devastating news of Sammi Jo's Leap. He couldn't risk pushing himself too much; although relatively minor, the stroke that had crept up on him (after years of cigar smoking, as Beth had nagged at him in the hospital, in her loving yet concerned way) had impeded his mobility, and he wanted to continue to progress in his recovery, not regress through carelessness.
Besides, Al thought as he made it to the Control Room, it's time for the next generation to take over. He let out a sad sigh, just before he turned the corner. This is a hell of an introduction to the job, though.
Al stepped through the open Control Room doors to find Gushie on his knees in front of Ziggy's main console, buried up to his hips in the underbelly of the colorful metal box and shouting orders to Deanna. Deanna, for her part, raced from one wall to the others, frantically trying to turn knobs and hit switches to achieve the impossible: to reverse the Leap.
Although the observation window to the Accelerator Chamber had long since been removed, the digital readouts on the console stated that the field generators continued to operate in their Leap parameters. Unfortunately, it also reported that the launch pad where the Leaper stood, centered perfectly in the circular room, had no pressure readings. Sammi Jo had gone.
"Damn it," he sighed.
Al thought about speaking up above all the repetitive alarms and beeps and screeches that went off from various pieces of equipment, to call off their desperate efforts, but instead he remained silent and went over to the main monitor. If she'd vaporized in the Chamber, there would be nothing to go on, true enough… but it remained equally possible that the intense power of the gnerators had dismembered her or, in a repeat of the World War II debacle, merged her body with part of the Chamber. Al had to check on that possibility first.
He stepped around Gushie's splayed legs and re-checked the pressure readings, in the grim hope that something minuscule would have registered with the sensors. He came up with nothing. The air quality seemed unchanged as well, which gave him a flicker of hope. But then he glanced over at another monitor, and let out a low, painful groan.
Ziggy had begun to track Sammi Jo's activities… in another time stream.
"She's Leaped," he declared. "Ziggy says she's landed in Bowling Green, Ohio. May the fifth… 1976."
Gushie's voice echoed from underneath Al. "She made the Leap? Seriously?"
"What?" Behind him, Deanna gasped as she approached the console and caught sight of the readouts. She then looked at the video monitor mounted on the end, and pointed at it. "Dad, there's someone in the Waiting Room!"
Al turned to stare at his daughter with some surprise. She never referred to him as "Dad," or "Father" at work, preferring to call him "Admiral" around other staff members and "Al" when the situation required less formal dialogue. The separation helped both of them to maintain a dignified military presence, while simultaneously acknowledging Al's higher rank.
He recovered quickly from the news and her reaction, and gave her a confident nod. "Well, then, I guess we'd better go and introduce ourselves."
"Huh?"
"The Visitor," he explained in a patient, calm tone, "has just landed in a strange place, with strange people. As the Observers, it's our job to put them at ease. Gushie," he called, "give us a call if you hear anything from Sam."
Gushie backed himself out from underneath the console, then sat down on the floor with his back against the metal plates, a long flathead screwdriver in one hand and a computer chip squeezed between the tips of two fingers in his other hand.
"Funny you should say that," Gushie said with pursed lips. "We've made contact. Just before the Accelerator Chamber kicked on, Sam arrived. He's in October 24, 1984 in California."
Deanna studied the monitor again. "But we've only got one Visitor. Oh." She winced and closed her eyes, then rubbed at her forehead, trying to process the situation.
A bitter smile crept over Al's features. Things had gone from zero to seventy in the space of a few minutes, but years of training—both in the military and at Project Quantum Leap—had conditioned Al to follow procedure and, as the expression went, roll with the punches. Both of their minds harbored impressions of Project Quantum Leap in two different dimensions of existence, one where Al had been Observer and another one where a man named Edward St. John had been in charge. Deanna had managed to integrate their two dimensions by assisting Sam at a critical juncture in time, but the changes in the Project's configuration, coupled with the doubling of memories, did tend to get confusing.
In short, Sam Beckett no longer exchanged places with someone but actually Leaped through time, body and soul. Clearly, something about Ziggy's system reverted back to the old way, though, because now Sammi Jo had stepped into Sam's bizarre cosmic exchange program.
Al put a reassuring hand on his youngest daughter's shoulder.
"I'll take the lead on this one," he reassured her. "I had five years of Visitors to deal with, before your Project and my Project merged. Just pay attention, be patient and be sympathetic, because it's our job to look after these poor bastards until whatever is wrong is put right in their lives."
Deanna swallowed. "Yes, Admiral," she replied with some effort.
Al gave her shoulder a squeeze, and the two glanced at a frustrated-looking Gushie.
"Go," Gushie told them. He waved the screwdriver at the doorway. "I'll put all this back together. Here we go again." He paused, then as an afterthought added, "Oh, boy."
Al managed a sharp exhale of a laugh as he and Deanna went back to the hallway, towards the Waiting Room, to see who awaited them in the confines of the prison-like room.
"We're walking in there in workout gear," Deanna muttered. "Shouldn't we take a few minutes to change clothes?"
Al tilted his head to one side. "What do you think?"
She licked her lips, and as their paces slowed, she tapped into that strange psychic sense that came with Observer territory—something tied to the connection between her cells and Ziggy's circuitry, and which provided a shade of wordless revelation about an impending situation. She looked down at her father's clothes, then her own, and shook her head. "We're not wearing logos and we have pretty universal-looking sweats on. We'll be fine. It's not all that different from 1976."
"Good instincts." He gave Deanna a quick, measuring glance and nodded to himself.
I knew she had the makings for an Observer. The smile slipped from his face as he watched her take in a slow breath, then unlock the Waiting Room door with a scan of her palm print. I just didn't think she'd have to jump into it like this… much less double up on the duty quite so soon.