Quantum Scrambled Eggs
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Prologue
Admiral Albert Calavicci strode into the 'office' happier than he usually was, a sure sign that things were still working out in his seventh, or was it eighth, marriage and things couldn't be better. Al smiled as he sat down, 'What a wonderful day! I don't think anything could ruin it.' He thought as he pulled out several financial reports, some funding requests, and a cigar and began to go over them.
He was still smiling thirty minutes later, occasionally puffing on his smoldering cigar, when the phone rang. "Admiral Calavicci.", he answered cheerfully.
"Sergeant Brooks, sir." The voice on the other end responded, pausing before continuing "Sir, we've got a situation. There's been a civilian casualty."
"What?" The admiral asked as the cigar dropped from his mouth landing in his lap. "What happened?" The admiral asked as he grabbed at the cigar trying to retrieve it before it could burn a hole in his pants or start a fire.
"Well Sir, there was a lightning strike at the test site and a civilian was hit with some sort of a discharge." The sergeant on the other end said, pausing a bit as if trying to remember something, "Anyway, Sir, our on-site technician will be at your facility within two-hours with the detailed report for the experts."
– – – – – – – – – –
Dr. Campbell sighed, it was that time of the year again. Time to go over all the project personnel medical records and update them, and of course it had to be now that she received the medical records and reports regarding that accident a few weeks ago. She gave a cursory look over his medical history, and a slightly less cursory look at the EKG, EEG, and MRI charts reporting his current condition.
Dr. Campbell shut the folders and set them on the desk. "Well, the coma patient can wait… if I don't get these medical files done it'll be hell on my yearly evaluation." She muttered to herself as she rolled her chair over to that stack of personnel files she'd been dreading all year.
Several hours later Dr. Campbell was stifling a yawn as she was finishing up on yet another of Project Quantum Leap's 'key' personnel. Of course it didn't help that ninety percent of the people on-site were key personnel. Grabbing the last file, and arguably the most important one, she finally allowed herself a look at the clock. "One thirty?" She laughed a bit, "Well, that's what I get for procrastinating…" she lightly chided herself as she opened Dr. Samuel Becket's medical file.
She scanned over the information with a care, precision, and alertness that she'd not shown to any other the whole day. Not to say that shw didn't do her job competently, but Dr. Becket was the project's founder and creator… and with his special condition… well, everyone wanted good results on all fronts.
Some of the data in the charts seemed familiar for some reason. Like she'd looked at them recently and then discarded the information as it hadn't seemed relevant at the time. She scratched her head and chewed thoughtfully on her favorite pen as she thought about it.
Dr. Campbell blinked as she realized where she'd seen those patterns, or rather ones quite similar, just recently. "Oh… my… God…"
– – – – – – – – – –
Admiral Al Calavicci was confused, not that it was a hard state to be in when one was talking about things that were technical in nature to a genius scientist who'd invented his own time machine, so that he was confused was inevitable.
"Look Al," Sam Becket sighed again, "He shouldn't be leaping, he just can't. I built anchors into…" Sam stopped in mid-sentence as the realization hit him. It wasn't that the safeties were present, it was that they weren't.
"Al, you were testing the Accelerator in pieces to find out if any of the parts were defective, right?" Sam asked suddenly, changing demeanor so quickly his friend stood in shocked silence for a moment before replying.
"Yeah, we were having each of the components checked against the parameters in the project specifications. We sent the Displacement Unit to Los Alamos, the Gradient Control to Sandia, and the Flux Capacitor to White Sands." Al grinned with that last component, whoever had designed that part had watched Back to the Future one too many times.
Sam groaned, "Al, if it was just the Flux Capacitor that was activated then, that boy doesn't have any of the anchor that I do."
"Anchors?" Al asked with an arched eyebrow.
"Yes Al, it's what you and Ziggy to keep in contact with me, and it's also how Ziggy's memory banks aren't effected by the changes I make here in the past." Sam tried his best to explain it simply for his friend although it was quite a bit more complex than that.
"So he's going around in time and we can't tell what he's doing?" All asked trying to understand.
"No!" Sam said suddenly, almost snapping, "Well, yes, but something more important."
"What?" Al asked.
"Without those anchors he's not going just throughout our past, but everyone's..." Sam sighed and tried to think of how to explain alternate realities.