A/N - Thanks to my Tumblr friend schrodingers-rufus for helping with some of the plot details in this one! Hope you enjoy!
The Control Room at Project Quantum Leap was abuzz with excitement. On a normal day, this room would only be filled by one or two occupants, usually the head programmer Gooshie or Pulse Communications Technician Tina Martinez-O'Farrell, silent save for the smacking of Tina's gum. But today it was packed with staff, at least the staff that was privy to the knowledge of the true nature of the Project, and anxious chatter echoed off the walls. All eyes were on Sammy Jo Fuller, who stood at the massive, multicolored stack of cubes that served as the control panel. Beside her was a hopeful Donna Eleesee-Beckett, and on the other side was Admiral Al Calavicci, adorned in his full dress whites and an unlit cigar gnashed between his teeth.
If this moment weren't so important, Al would have his cigar lit and be halfway done with it by now. But it was imperative that nothing interfere with the equipment, Sammy Jo was adamant about that. Not that Al paid any attention to that particular rule any other time, but he wasn't about to take the risk now, however minimal.
He had debated for a solid half hour whether or not he should wear his whites today, but in the end he'd decided that this was a special occasion and he should pull out all the stops. Besides, when he dressed like an admiral, that evoked in others thoughts of authority and success, and they could use all the successful thoughts they could get today. Because if luck was on their side, today was the day Sam Beckett, the true Sam Beckett, was going to come home.
Sammy Jo had spent six years of sleepless nights working on the retrieval program, and so far they'd come up with nada, zip, zero, zilch. But this time, she'd been absolutely certain she'd made the correct modifications. While most of the Project had gotten ready to break out the champagne, Al remained cautiously optimistic. After all, they'd had disappointments before. But boy, what a wonderful thing it would be if the Waiting Room door opened and Sam finally stumbled out, home at last after his long detour through time. It would be a dream come true.
Sammy Jo tucked a strand of wavy brown hair behind her ear. "Moment of truth, people. Y'all ready?" she asked giddily. Although she was far from the southern town of her roots, there was no mistaking her accent. And Al thought if he squinted one eye, he could see Sam's features in her face, but only he knew that part of her heritage. She might predominantly take after her mother, but that was a Beckett grin for sure. She placed her hand over the control panel and commanded, "Ziggy, prepare the retrieval program."
"Yes, Dr. Fuller," answered the sparkling blue orb above them, Ziggy's "face" for all intents and purposes.
Sammy Jo quickly shook out her arms before replacing them in their original position, blowing out a nervous breath. Okay, Sammy Jo, think good thoughts. "Three...two...one...Time to beam him up, Scotty!" she shouted, and her hand slammed down with a flourish.
The room was still with bated breath, all eyes on the Waiting Room door. This was it. It was happening. The moment they'd been waiting for. Six long years. Lights flashing, smoke machine, triumphant choir of angels, the whole she-bang.
Or nothing at all. Someone coughed.
"...is that it?" Al finally inquired.
"Well...maybe?" Sammy Jo answered uncertainly. "I was expecting...more of a show."
"Ziggy?" Donna asked the parallel hybrid computer.
"Yesss?" she responded playfully. This was no time to be coy. Gee, who programmed that into her anyway?
"What's the status on Dr. Beckett?"
"Dr. Beckett has leaped."
Al swore he could've felt a breeze from the entire room getting the wind knocked out of their sails. Well, it looked like they'd come up with bupkis again. Sam wasn't coming home today.
Ziggy had her pride, however, and she wasn't going to be blamed for this one. Not that it mattered what humans thought anyway. "Unfortunately, the retrieval program has failed, obviously through no error of my own. It was a valiant attempt, Dr. Fuller, but I predicted a 67% chance of success."
"I must have missed something...Damn! Oh, sorry!" Sammy Jo immediately apologized to the crowd for her curse. By now, everyone was used to the sound of Al swearing like a sailor almost daily, but she still felt as if she needed to keep some decorum in front of the other staff.
Donna was absolutely heartbroken, but she kept a professional air about her as she addressed the room. "Okay, everyone. Back to work."
"I'm sorry, Donna," Sammy Jo told her, "I really thought I had it this time."
"I know you did." Donna tried to keep blame out of her words. It wasn't too hard after having her hopes shattered several times before. Right now, her focus needed to be on working on the retrieval program again, so she walked away to inspect the equipment. Sammy Jo sighed and leaned on a blue and a pink cube, resting her chin on her hands. An encouraging grip was placed on her shoulder and she glanced up at Al.
"Don't worry about it, kid. You tried your best."
"We'll get him next time," Sammy Jo said, assured of herself, "I'm positive. I just need to rework my calculations..." The gears in her mind already at work, she pulled a clipboard out and began scribbling down notes. No matter what anyone said about her most recent failure, she at least kept up her enthusiasm after all this time. And since she had the same smarts as her father, she was the best bet they had at getting him home.
In the meantime, there was a leap to get to, and Al wordlessly made his way to the Waiting Room to greet their newest guest. Who wasn't Sam. But he could handle it. He could handle anything. And really, he thought he'd managed to stay fairly objective concerning this latest retrieval attempt. Hadn't he? But damn if he didn't have a sinking feeling of discouragement in the pit of his stomach.
They'd get him next time. Right.
Leaping was a surreal sensation that Sam found difficult to describe to anyone who had not experienced it. Which, admittedly, meant everyone throughout history save for a select few. If he had to make an attempt to give someone the feel of what leaping was like, he'd say it was an almost spiritual experience, a weightless, out-of-body state, and yet entirely whole, feeling nothing and everything at the same time. He didn't remember what happened between leaps, but for one glorious instant, he was engulfed in heavenly light and at peace with himself.
Presently, he found himself going from being blinded by the light to being blinded by a geyser of water. Spluttering and coughing, he backed clumsily away and wiped his vision clear. He was in a public bathroom in front of a sink, a sink currently starting a small flood on the floor. So much for a spiritual experience.
In the mirror in front of him, he saw a heavyset man in his 40s, light brown skin, with a thin mustache lining his upper lip. The man frowned at him.
Sam brushed his soaking hair from his forehead and groaned at the mess, ignoring a small headache that was beginning to form behind his eyes. "Oh boy..."
"What do you think you're doing? Taking a vacation?" An angry man in a checkered button-down and huge glasses was in the doorway, staring at the sink in disgust. "Stop the leak before we need to row to get to the stalls!"
"Um, well, I..."
"Use your wrench?" The man pointed at the tool Sam just now noticed was in his hand. "Or are you too stupid to figure out how to use it?"
At this point, Sam looked down to find he was wearing a jumpsuit and came to the conclusion that he must be paid to clean up. If he lost his host's job less than five minutes into the leap, that had to be a record, one he wasn't keen on making. Time to fix that sink. "S-Sorry, sir."
Sam knelt down into the spray of water and twisted at the pipe, stopping the gushing and leaving him in a large puddle on the floor. His uniform was absolutely soaked. "Well...I fixed it," he breathed out through dripping lips.
The man gave him a haughty look. "What, do you want a medal or something? Clean this up!" Rolling his eyes and grumbling something to himself, he left Sam alone.
"You're welcome."
Traveling through time had some perks, but mopping up a public restroom was not one of them. It took a little extra effort for Sam to locate the janitor's closet and find a mop and towels, but now the bathroom floor was dry and Sam was slightly less damp. Although at least part of his sogginess now was due to perspiration, making him sticky on top of that. What an auspicious start to his leap.
The mop now put away, Sam took the opportunity to explore the rest of the building. The hallways were bare, with minimal decoration, but he noticed many posters relating to science and technology. Was he in a school? It didn't have a large student body if it was, because he hadn't seen another soul after the angry man had left the bathroom. But maybe it was after hours.
A nameplate next to one of the doors caught his eye: Dr. Richard Bergman. Wait a minute. That seemed familiar...Sam knew that name from somewhere, but he couldn't quite place it. Curiously, he opened the door.
Turning on the lights, Sam found a room split down the middle. On the one side was a desk and a filing cabinet, and on the other a separate desk with a large, clunky computer atop. His face lit up with nostalgia when he spotted the computer. Wow, that was a trip back! This model was either part of Dr. Bergman's antique collection, or this leap was dated somewhere in the early 70s.
Thank god. It was too early for disco fever.
The computer was left on, and Sam leaned for a closer look. The screen was full of calculations, but they were...wrong. This was all wrong. Sam knew exactly how to correct them, and there the errors were, staring him in the face, taunting him.
Well, surely it wouldn't drastically change history to try and fix them.
Sam had barely begun clacking at the keyboard when he heard a roar behind him. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
Uh oh. Sam whirled around to face a short, balding man with a red face. This must be Dr. Bergman. "Oh, I was, uh-" Sam stammered for an appropriate answer, but he was too embarrassed to come up with a good excuse.
"Tell him you were, uh...cleaning the keyboard, Sam."
It took everything Sam had not to jump when he heard Al's voice. He was standing to the balding man's left, plonking at the handlink and smoking a cigar.
"I was, er, cleaning...the keyboard...sir," Sam managed to get out. Even after all these leaps, he was a terrible liar. The man eyed his soggy clothes with suspicion and shoved his way past him toward the computer.
"You shouldn't be messing with things you don't understand," Dr. Bergman muttered, "That's why I specifically asked them to keep you out of my office! I don't want you messing anything up or stealing anything. You're lucky enough we give you people jobs."
"'You people'?" Sam questioned incredulously.
"Watch it, Sam," Al warned, although his acidic tone was directed at the other man, "This nozzle can get you fired, so you gotta play nice."
As Dr. Bergman read the screen, a look of astonishment flickered over his features. Sam's fixes were correct, which of course Sam knew. Yet Bergman wasn't going to give any credit to the man before him, so he put on his poker face. "I suppose I won't report you...but I want you to stay out of this office at all times. Do you understand?" He spoke the last sentence as if Sam were hard of hearing, or hadn't just been speaking English.
Sam swallowed and bit back a sarcastic retort. "I understand."
"Get out."
Sam nodded and exited the room. With a glare, Al tapped the ashes of his cigar at the rude little man before casually walking through the wall to join Sam.
"Can you believe that guy, Al?" Sam asked as he walked down the hallway, shaking his head to try and cool his usually even temper.
"Not that I want to defend the jerk-weasel," Al said, "but you were the one with the loose fingers, Mr. Nobel Prize. If a butterfly flapping its wings causes a tornado, what does fiddling with calculations do? Flood the earth? Should I start preparing an ark?"
"You missed the flood earlier," Sam muttered and jerked his thumb in the direction of the bathroom, "Changing a few little things on a computer isn't going to change history thatbadly, Al." A pause, then sheepishly, "Right?"
Al punched a few buttons on the handlink, whacked it for good measure, and raised a stern eyebrow at Sam. "Lucky for you, no. There are no significant changes in the original history yet." He took a slow drag from his cigar. At first he thought Sam might have swiss cheesed the part of his brain that contained common sense, but then he remembered that Sam was always a little spacey in that department.
Now that he knew he hadn't screwed anything up, Sam again felt justified in his irritation. "So far I've only met two people on this leap, Al, and they've both treated me like I'm a complete idiot! Did I leap into...I mean..." Slightly embarrassed, Sam searched for a polite way to ask. "Is the person I leaped into mentally handicapped?"
Blowing out a puff of smoke, Al shook his head. "No, Sam, no. You're just Puerto Rican."
"Al! Did you really just say that?"
"Put on your listening ears, Sam; I wasn't finished," chided Al, not bothering to look up from the handlink, "As I was saying, you've leaped into Miguel Rivera, age 41, and he's Puerto Rican. See, in 1973-uh, that's the year, by the way-there was still a lot of stigma against Puerto Ricans and other Latinos in the states. After World War II, there was a whole slew of them coming to New York, and that caused overpopulation in the schools for decades. And since a lot of them didn't speak English very well, they were treated like special needs students. Miguel here dropped out of school when he was 15."
"New York? So I'm in New York again?"
"Ah, no, you're in Springfield, Massachusetts," Al read from the tiny screen, jabbing his cigar at the air, "Miguel and his family moved here from New York in the 60s. A lot of Puerto Ricans spread out to the neighboring states, but there were still a lot of the same prejudices. Not to mention, I don't think I need to tell you that you work here in a janitorial capacity, not the most respected of jobs."
Sam frowned. "So is that what I'm here to do? Stop Miguel from being mistreated?"
Sam could be so naive sometimes, Al thought. Eyes hooding over, he answered, "We don't know yet, but I wouldn't bet money on it. It's gonna take more than one leaper to change the world, Sam."
"You can change one man's life," Sam pointed out. He didn't care what Al said, the world changes one person at a time, and if he could make things better for Miguel, he would. He was distracted from his visions of life-altering grandeur when he noticed Al's uniform. "Hey, why are you in your dress whites?"
Without skipping a beat, Al had an impish grin plastered on. "Well, Sam, I have date later with a sweet little lady named Belinda...and the only thing she loves more than a man in uniform is a man out of uniform, if you catch my drift." He waggled his eyebrows and Sam lifted his hand like a big, red stop sign.
"I get the picture, Al, thanks."
"Ooh, I didn't even tell you about her sister-"
"Al, let's leave some mystery between us," Sam pleaded, to which Al responded with a devil-may-care shrug. "What is this place anyway?" Sam asked as he took another look around.
"This place? Oh, this is the Howell Scientific Institute," Al provided, sauntering down the hall and inspecting the posters, "They focus on several branches, but their specialty is computers." Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he regarded the empty hallway with a fond look. "Boy, this takes me back...reminds me of late nights at MIT."
"I went to MIT, didn't I?" Sam asked, his feet squishing as he took a few steps in his friend's direction.
"You sure did, Sam, when you were 16," Al confirmed, "In fact, if you go about a hundred miles thattaway, give or take," he waved to his right, "You'll be able to visit your old dorm! That's where you spent two years with your nose stuck in a book, while other kids your age were getting adults to buy beer for them or becoming familiar with the back seat of a car. I'm pretty sure you were looking up what fun was in the dictionary." He chuckled to himself. He was always the one who found his own jokes the most hilarious.
Sam gave him a scalding glare, which Al would have ignored regardless of being distracted by a leggy woman passing by. He craned his head to admire her assets. "That brings back some fond memories too..."
Initially annoyed, Sam quickly brightened as he was struck with a sudden recollection. "Janice..."
Al spun excitedly to face him, a big, stupid grin on his face. "Jan? You remember Jan? Ohoho, Jan With the Cans! Gee, Sam, that's one I hadn't thought about in a while..."
Sam pursed his lips at the disparaging nickname. "Yeah, I remember Janice," he emphasized her proper name, "I met her when you took me to that awful pool hall."
"Right," Al continued, "and you acted like you had a stick up your rear the whole time. You get ready to leave, and Jan follows you out and propositions you for a little roll in the hay. Little do you know, she's actually a hooker!"
"I was mortified," Sam recalled, "And there you are in the door, laughing at me..."
"Well I can't bail you out all the time, kid..."
"But you did!" Sam grinned as he remembered. "A policeman showed up, and you came over claiming to be Janice's father. You said...you said your wife was seriously ill and it would break her heart if her daughter got arrested, and you managed to talk him into letting us off the hook."
Beaming, Al simply shrugged. "Well you had a reputation to protect, you know. Can you imagine what a field day the papers would have? I can just see the headlines now: World Famous Choir Boy Sam Beckett Found in Arms of Lady of the Night."
Despite himself, Sam joined in Al's laughter. "Well you saved Janice too. She was someone'sdaughter, after all."
"Good old Jan..." Al smirked through the cigar between his teeth as he reminisced.
Normally, Sam would be the first person to say that the truth is always the best course of action, but in that case, he'd make an exception. Regardless of what he thought of Janice's profession, he didn't feel like she needed to be arrested for it. And truthfully, well, he didn't much care to take a tour of a police station either, especially when it had been a misunderstanding on his part. Funnily enough, he noted to himself, nothing this wild ever happened to him before he met Al. But when he was in trouble, his friend had stuck his neck out for him. These days, Al was still getting Sam out of sticky situations, albeit as a far less tangible presence. The more things change, the more they stay the same. That wasn't why this memory was so important to Sam though.
"That's when I knew."
"Knew what?" Al asked as he was pocketing the handlink.
Sam's eyes crinkled with his lopsided grin. "That I could trust you with anything. That's when I decided I would tell you about my string theory."
Taken aback, Al felt suddenly very humbled. "You never told me that, Sam," he said quietly.
Although Al loved to be the life of the party, when it came to attention of a personal nature he always wanted to divert things away from himself. Sam knew that, so he circled around his holographic friend, hands clasped behind him. "That's also why I never went back to a pool hall with you. Besides, you were too good."
Grateful for the segue out of cornball territory, Al slipped back into his comfort zone. "I can't help it if I was trained by the best. I had to do Black Magic proud, and the first rule of pool is, there's no holding back."
"Maybe I'll play you another game sometime," Sam challenged, "now that I've got more experience. Unless...you're afraid you've gotten rusty." His eyes slid nonchalantly to the side.
"Rusty?" echoed Al defensively, "Oho, you're on, Sam. You'd better be ready to get your butt whooped in a few decades!"
"Oh yeah? We'll see who-"
"Oh my god!" Both man and hologram turned to see a Puerto Rican woman rushing toward Sam. She had a slight frame and a heart-shaped face, with lines around her eyes that either came from smiling or worry. Currently, it was from worry. "What happened to your uniform, Miguel? You're all wet!"
Sam stuttered as the woman fussed over him and began speaking in Spanish. As she ran her hands over him, his look over her shoulder begged for Al to give him a clue.
"Ay dios mio...muy caliente..." Drooling onto his dress uniform, Al shamelessly let his eyes drift behind her. Sam cleared his throat loudly. "Hm? Oh, you wanna know who she is? Uh..." Taking the handlink out of his pocket, he read the screen, shook it, and ignored the beeps of protest. "This is your wife...Gabriela Rivera, and you've been married for 17 years. Lucky dog..."
Sam pursed his lips at him, which Gabriela mistook as annoyance at her. She slapped his shoulder. "Don't give me that look! You know we can't afford to buy another uniform; you have to take care of this one."
"Sorry, it's just water!" Sam explained, rubbing his shoulder, "Really. There was an accident in the bathroom, but it's fixed now." He flashed one of those Beckett grins that made any woman melt, and Gabriela lightened up. "Wh-What are you doing here?"
The woman looked at Sam as if he'd just spoken in an alien language. "What do you mean, what am I doing here? I'm picking you up, like I do every day."
"Oh, of course!" Rubbing the back of his neck nervously, Sam tried to play it off. "I don't know what I was thinking! It's just been a long day."
Speaking over Gabriela's reply, Al keyed in the sequence for the Imaging Chamber door. "Listen Sam, I'm gonna see if I can speed up Ziggy's prediction on this leap's objective. Try not to have too much fun without me..." Giving Gabriela another appreciative eyeful, he stepped back into the light and left 1973 with a clunk-shoom.
Well, Sam had plenty to talk about with his new wife. Er, he knew her name at least.
The drive back home was not as awkward as Sam would have thought. Gabriela had a warm, open personality, but Sam could also see within her a dignified reserve. She was happy to tell him about her day waiting tables, but she was also content to drive in silence and simply enjoy the company of who she thought was her husband. There was an inherent trust there that they didn't need long conversation to communicate, and Sam thought Miguel was lucky to have her.
Their loud, but trusty, old pickup truck pulled up to the house, and Sam was shocked by the state of it. Whereas Gabriela was secure and full of life, their home was the polar opposite, flimsy and run down, with boards in the windows and grass overgrown in the yard. This didn't look like a place anyone should be living in, much less two people.
Make that three. Shortly after they stepped inside, a boy of about 15 squeezed his way past them and made a beeline across the living room.
"Ay! Joseph!" Gabriela shouted to get his attention, "I've made stew for dinner. Aren't you going to join us?" She smiled, hoping to tempt him.
Joseph just gave her a sour look. "I already ate." Ducking his head, his entered his bedroom and shut the door.
Discouraged, Gabriela shook her head and sighed. "I don't know what we're going to do with him."
"Maybe I should go talk to him?" Sam tried, although he knew nothing about this child, who he could only assume was his son, who he'd only just now learned the name of.
"No, let him be by himself," Gabriela said, "He'll come out when he's hungry. Now, I know you are, so get changed and we'll eat." She grinned and headed toward the small kitchen.
Wonderful. Now if only Sam knew where his bedroom was.
There were things Sam could not remember due to the process of leaping, but one thing he knew now was that he loved sancocho stew.
"This is great!" he praised as he took another bite of chicken. His wife was a combination of confused and flattered.
"It's not as if I haven't made it for you before."
"Oh, well...it's extra delicious tonight." He grinned, and she returned the sentiment.
Sam swallowed another spoonful and a comforting warmth slid down his throat and into his stomach. It reminded him of his home in Elk Ridge, Indiana, of his mother cooking for him, of family.
Speaking of, his thoughts drifted back to Joseph. Maybe he was here to fix their relationship with their son, and he wondered what the problem was. Now he just had to find a way to ask about it without sounding clueless.
"I tell ya, Joseph is really missing out," Sam said cheerfully, "Maybe I should go get him?" He started to get up, but Gabriela stopped him.
"You know how he gets after school," she said, "Let him have some time to work it out on his own."
"Well sometimes, these things don't...just work out. Without some guidance, I mean." Sam tried to dance around specifics.
"Children are children, Miguel," Gabriela sighed, "We cannot change how their parents raised them. I'll be happy so long as Joseph graduates, and focuses outside of those who want to be hurtful."
"He's being bullied at school?" Sam frowned, forgetting he was supposed to be aware of this already. Gabriela, however, didn't seem to notice as she started taking empty dishes to the sink. Automatically, Sam began to assist.
"Only for now," she said as Sam handed her a bowl, "Joseph will feel better when he gets older. Just so long as we raise him right." Nodding sagely, she turned on the faucet.
A hot, satisfying stream of water cascaded down upon Sam and he closed his eyes in content. As much as he enjoyed dinner, it was no small relief to finally be rid of the grime from the day. Not to mention, he was getting another headache, and a long, warm shower was just what he needed to relieve the tension.
Over the course of leaping, Sam had come to view bathrooms as a sort of safe haven. It was the one place he was certain he could talk to Al in private (much to his friend's endless complaining), but also one of the few places he could simply be Sam Beckett. There was no front, no illusion, there was simply him, his thoughts, and a brief respite from duty.
Horrifyingly, a pair of arms snaked around his torso. Screaming in surprise, Sam turned around to see Gabriela stepping into the shower with him. Not that she was an unattractive woman, in fact she was gorgeous, but the sight of her naked form in front of him sent Sam into a state of mortified panic. Suds slid from his hair into his eyes, causing him to yell out in pain.
"Miguel!" Gabriela exclaimed, reaching for him, "Are you okay?"
Sam pulled away instinctually as she came into blurry view through his burning eyes. "NO! I mean yes! You just, uh, s-surprised me, is all! I-I-I wasn't expecting you, in here, and..."
Gabriela grinned flirtatiously. "Well, I thought you and I could have some time alone..."
Alarm bells began to ring in Sam's head. This wasn't his wife, and he had no business being naked with her in the shower. He awkwardly avoided looking at her breasts, which only made her confused. "Um, uh, er, um..." This lineup of stuttering lasted a solid thirty seconds, but to Sam it seemed like an eternity.
"Is everything alright?"
"Yeah, everything is-You know what? I'm just really, er, tired, and-Oh! And I have a headache! A-And I just want to go to bed soon." Sam hoped this was a good enough excuse. Plus, the bit about the headache was true, so he wasn't being a complete liar. When she didn't respond quickly enough, he rapidly added, "I-If that's okay with you, heh."
Gabriela looked disappointed, and not any less bewildered, but she chose to trust in her husband. "Alright...I'll keep the bed warm for you then." Staring longingly at him through her long lashes, she kissed him on the cheek, slipped on a robe, and left.
"That was the least sexy shower foreplay I've seen since Psycho."
Jumping, Sam turned to see Al standing in the bathroom, adorned in a sparkling black and red jacket, his mouth slanted in piteous disbelief. "A headache, Sam? Really?" Before Sam could come up with a retort, he had stuck his head through the wall to watch Gabriela. "I don't understand you sometimes. How could you pass on a knockout like that?"
"Al!" Sam admonished him, his ears growing hot, "She's not my wife!" Al's dubious flexibility concerning relationships was one of the few things about his friend Sam couldn't quite wrap his mind around.
Al pulled his head back and waved him off. "So? She doesn't know that." He glanced down in amusement, and Sam, realizing he was still naked, flushed red with embarrassment. As he was scrambling to cover himself with a towel, Al rolled his eyes. "It's nothing I haven't seen before, Sam."
Thankfully, those were leaps Sam was hazy on at the moment. Narrowing his eyes at Al, he hissed through his teeth, "Is there a reason you're here, Al?"
"Ah, yes," Al responded absentmindedly. Yet he must not have been in a terrible hurry, because he stuck his head through the wall to become a ghostly peeping tom again.
"Al. I mean, in here."
Pulling back into the bathroom, Al was met with a look that said to either speak up or get the hell out of there. "Right. I'll meet you in the living room." Smirking, he pressed a few handlink buttons and popped out.
While Al waited for the Prudent Prince to make his reappearance, his mouth creased in a frown as he inspected Sam's new digs. "Jeez, what a dive. I've seen homeless people living in better conditions." Come to think of it, he'd been one of those people. Briefly, he recalled the days of his youth when he'd run away from the orphanage and had to fend for himself. Some of his best and worst childhood memories came from those runaway attempts.
A quiet, raspy meow came from below him. At his feet sat a scrappy gray cat with crooked whiskers and long, unkempt fur. He thought cats were supposed to be able to take care of themselves, but this one could do with a good groomer. The animal had definitely seen better days.
Al wasn't much of a cat person. They always acted like you had to prove yourself to them, and they got their fur on expensive new suits. He had once had a fling with a woman who owned six cats, and by the time he'd collected his clothes from the floor in the morning he'd come away looking like a colorful Cousin It.
The mangy cat before him made an attempt to swipe at the wingtips of his fire engine red shoes. Although he was holographic and almost thirty years in the future, it was the principle of it that insulted him.
"Hey, you'd better watch it, furball," Al warned in a low voice, "These shoes cost more than you're worth."
"What's the matter, Al? Are you being bullied?"
Sam had a humored grin on his face as he sat down on the creaky couch, and the cat eagerly hopped onto his lap and started kneading at his ugly green robe. As Sam began to stroke him under the chin, the feline eagerly leaned into his large, comforting hand, evidently deciding that this human was okay by him. "Hey, he kind of looks like you," Sam noted to Al with a smirk.
Al narrowed his eyes at him and gave a humorless laugh. Smart ass. Sam's observation was cemented, however, when the cat gave another gravelly meow and stared at Al through half-closed eyes, an eerie imitation of the admiral's current expression. Clearing his throat, Al turned away and pretended not to notice.
"What do we call you, anyway?" Sam asked, freeing the cat's tag from the long fur around his neck. "'Schroder'?" he read.
"Doesn't look like a Schroder. More like a...Box Wetter or...Rug Replacement..." Al eyed the cat with distaste as he puffed on his cigar.
"Huh. Sounds kind of like Schrodinger," Sam commented with amusement.
"Who?"
"Oh come on, Schrodinger's cat?" Sam said, as if the connection were obvious. Al gave him a blank stare. "A cat is locked in a steel box with hydrocyanic acid, and if it leaks then the cat is killed?" Evidently, that didn't jog Al's memory, and Sam tried to explain further. "You know, superposition. Since we can't know the condition of the cat until the box is opened, we have to assume it's alive and dead, until the observation creates the outcome."
At this, Al scratched his temple in bafflement. "Huh? Why the hell would this Schrodinger guy want to put his cat in a steel chamber?"
Sometimes, Sam forgot that other people weren't in his head. Much of his life had been spent several steps in front of the people around him, a frustrating issue which usually resulted in having to slow down to let everyone else catch up. "The cat isn't real, Al. It's an example meant to simplify a principle of quantum physics."
"That doesn't seem simple at all," Al griped, more confused than ever.
"Never mind," Sam sighed, resigned to being the lone person to understand his reference. He scratched at Schroder's ears and the feline purred happily.
"Oh! Sam, we, uh, found out what you need to do to leap," Al said, suddenly remembering why he'd come here in the first place.
"What've you got?"
"Ziggy calculates there's an 82% chance you're here to help do. Do?" He smacked the handlink. "Doctor. Oh! Doctor. Doctor Richard Bergman, the slimeball you met earlier, and a..." He smacked the handlink and squinted at the small lettering. "...Dr. Charles Gregory. He's-"
"I know who that is!" Sam said with a thrill. He closed his eyes, pulling at a fuzzy memory, "Wait, hang on, I remember, he...he worked with microchips, didn't he?"
"That's right, Sam, and-"
"And, and he had a theory about mixing microchips with organic material!" Sam blurted out eagerly, standing up. A miffed Schroder fell unceremoniously to the floor. "His ideas were the foundation of my work on Ziggy. He inspired me to use living tissue-our tissue-to create a new type of computer, one that could use human reasoning! He was brilliant!"
"Why don't you just tell it then?" Al complained dryly, but Sam was too enthused to pay him any attention.
"Gosh, Al, I would've loved to work with him, but he..." Sam frowned. "Something happened to him." He couldn't remember what, but he knew it was something awful.
Nodding solemnly, Al filled in the blanks. "Yeah, something happened to him. Three days from now, on April 3rd, 1973, he gets killed in a fire at the Howell Scientific Institute."
