Author's Notes: Discrepancies with the QL premise (time restrictions, body switching) will be explained within the story (but not necessarily right away), and as part of the story. This alternate universe story takes place some time after Sam has jumped into Al. Seeing Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith will probably help in understanding the story, but probably is not entirely necessary. This story is being listed in QL while it is in progress, but when complete will be moved to the Star Wars category.

Sam felt the momentary disorientation at the onset of the jump. He'd experienced it so often now, he recognized each nuance of the process. The world before him vanished, and ...

Darkness engulfed him. Not the momentary darkness of transition, but a vast expanse, like the emptiness of space. It was too long. Fighting down panic, he forced himself to stay calm, to analyze the situation like the scientist he was. There might be several reasons for the total absence of light - the most logical being that he had arrived somewhere underground, in an unlit cave or mine. Only ... there would be other feelings associated with that; his other senses should tell him something, and ...

He realized then that he had no other senses. He was adrift, an intellect, an isolated ego, floating bodilessly in the ether. It was his worst nightmare, what he'd feared might happen each time he made the jump; dissociation, being lost forever in between times. If he'd had a mouth, he would have screamed; had he eyes, he would have cried. But he had neither, so he merely floated, a bubble of thought, on currents for which he had no name.

Gradually, he became aware of tiny pinpoints of light in the blackness of his surroundings; glittering dots like far-away stars. His thoughts smiled to see them even as he wondered how it was possible. Their existence was reassuring somehow, as if they wished him peace, and wanted him to know he was not so wholly alone. He relaxed a bit, drifting, wondering if his mind would be further swiss-cheesed by this experience - wondering if he'd ever get the chance to find out ...

The darkness returned like a cloud of dark matter obscuring the far-away lights, its presence no longer an innocent nothingness, but malignant, gluttonous. Soon his view of the lights would be gone, and he could do nothing to stop it; he was nothing but thought. Unless there was some way thought could be used as a tool ...

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The weight of his body rushed into him and he felt himself slammed against the ground where he sat by gravity, a leaden burden. Waves of nausea flowed through him; his ears rang, and his head felt as if it were going to explode. His eyes still squeezed tightly shut, he huddled on the cold floor where he had at last arrived, wondering for a moment why he had wanted to. He'd never felt so sick upon arrival, not even the time when he'd gone to ancient Egypt. Or had he? he wondered through the fog of pain. But the fog lifted slightly then, and he thought he understood the illness to be from his extended stay in-between. He swallowed down bile, hoping he wouldn't have to endure the same for his return trip; if so, he wasn't looking forward to it.

Collecting himself, he breathed deeply in and out, beginning a series of breathing exercises he vaguely remembered knowing, but which came back to him quickly with the practice. He felt his racing heart slow, his tensed muscles relaxed a bit, and the incessant nausea abated, though his stomach still felt tender. The headache dimmed, but didn't go away entirely, and the ringing in his ears persisted. Still, it was a marked improvement over the way he'd felt upon arrival. Only, now that he felt a bit better, there were other discomforts to notice.

His hands and feet were freezing, and he realized he could also feel the cold of the floor through the seat of his pants. He also had the taste of vomit in his mouth, which gave him pause. He hadn't actually thrown up, had he? He couldn't remember doing so. He'd been sitting in this one position since he'd gotten here, and hadn't moved.

Curiosity overcame him and, against his better judgement (since he could tell the room was well-lit through his eyelids and wasn't sure what effect the bright light might have on his still-pounding head), he cracked his eyes open. He was in a bathroom with cream-colored fixtures and peach-colored tile, sitting on the cold floor beside the john. At least he presumed it was a john; it could have been a bidet; it looked a little odd. His headache dimmed as his curiosity grew, pinging around inside his head, desperately looking for a place to hide. But he killed it entirely when he looked down, his arms still folded across his tender stomach, to see why his feet were so cold. They were bare. And the pants he had on were not his own. Then he spread his arms to inspect the rest of himself and got a bigger shock: His right hand was made of metal.

He stared at it in awe, an ugly, bony claw, articulated in imitation of the bones it was meant to replace. Oh, boy, he thought, fascinated, as he flexed it, hearing the tiny servo-motors whine. He realized that he still had a sense of the hand's existence, as he'd read many amputees claimed. Curiously, he pulled back his sleeve to see how far the appliance extended, and found it snugly fused to the end of his arm just below his elbow, a perfect fit, with no sign of irritation (nor did he feel any, he realized).

For a few moments, he sat on the bathroom floor and considered his options. He was in the future, no doubt about that, he thought, the hand itself was living proof. Prosthetic science was woefully far behind, having produced no viable new products in the past fifty years. On a positive note, he was glad to see that such advancements would be made during his lifetime. But the other fact he now knew, he was less able to categorize: Obviously, he was no longer in his own body, but instead in the person he'd come to help, a man of roughly the same size, shape, and weight as himself, but definitely not him. Study of the left hand - the good hand - told him that; the fingers were not his. And the man had callouses, as one who does manual labor, though his nails were well-manicured. He was also very sick, not with a physical ailment (Sam had recovered too quickly upon arrival for it to be that), but with an enormous emotional burden, which was of great concern to Sam, because if Sam were in his body, then he could be almost certain the man was in Sam's. The thought of the stress his body would be under from its guest was enough to light a fire under him to get started, hoping he'd be able to tackle the problem quickly and go home (to his own body, at least, if not in time).

He pushed himself to a standing position and walked over to the mirror, still in place over the sink (he marveled at the ubiquitousness of mirrors and sinks together, even far into the future). Looking back at him was a young man (quite young, he thought, somewhere in his early twenties, perhaps) with piercing red-rimmed eyes in a chalk-white face.

"Okay," he whispered to his reflection, "Let's get you out of your fix. You're so young; hopefully it's not nearly as bad as you think."

He stared down at the faucet, realized it must be motion-sensitive, and waved his left hand under it. After a second, it obliged him, and he cupped the water to his mouth to try to wash out the taste. Thinking there must be a medicine cabinet (or some equivalent), he glanced around, but saw nothing that suggested itself.

He'd just grabbed a towel to dry his face when he heard the music. The ringing in his ears had dimmed to a dull background noise, though it never really faded completely. But now, superimposed upon it, he heard the tinkling, like far away chimes in the wind, though he knew this also was inside his own head; not a real noise in the outer world. Though it got no louder, it slowly intensified, and he was reminded suddenly of the tiny pinpoints of light that he had seen without needing his eyes, and of the peace and companionship he'd felt from them.

A soft rap sounded at the door, and a woman's voice called, "Ani?"

Momentarily nonplused, he stammered, "I ... um ..." and the door opened.

She stood in the doorway and stared at him, eyes huge in a heart-shaped face, hair a cascade of long dark curls, shoulders bare of the blue-green froth of nightgown that spilled to the floor from a ribbon at her throat, in the last trimester of pregnancy.

"Did it happen again?" she asked in concern, reaching to hold him.

Instinctively, he put his hand to his mouth, knowing that his breath would smell like his tongue tasted. She drew back, alarmed.

"You were sick?" she asked. He didn't answer. "Oh, Ani," she cried, a small crease forming between her eyebrows as she put her arms around him and held him close. At a loss for anything else to do, he returned her embrace, feeling the baby move inside her where she pressed up against him, hearing the soft, soothing tinkle of the far-away chimes ...

They were coming from her, not from far away. Not audibly, no, he'd understood that from the beginning, but were a subliminal vibration that resounded inside his head (inside his heart).

"Are you ..." he began, "are you wearing something musical?"

She looked up at him, perplexed.

"No," she said. "Why? Do you hear something?"

"I thought ..." he started to say, then decided better of it. He didn't know anything about these people yet. Best to be safe. "Never mind. It's not important."

It might have been the worst thing he could have said.

"Anakin!" she exclaimed, and he was surprised to see tears well in her eyes. "Don't ... don't do this. You can't ... you can't just hold everything inside; it's what's making you sick." One tear overflowed and spilled down her cheek. He wiped it away, stroking her back, wanting to reassure her, but remained silent in the hope she was about to bring up something important. He felt like a louse for doing it, especially when she didn't continue.

Finally, he said, "Should we get back to bed?"

For a moment, she didn't move, then, finally, with a last squeeze, she acquiesced, and led him from the bathroom out into a short gallery with curved windows on each side. He looked out ...

... and stopped, transfixed by the sight. He stood in a penthouse apartment in a vast city, but not like one he'd ever seen. Traffic slewed past, not only from the street (which he was not sure he could even see), but from multiple levels above. Headlights described white ribbons on the walls of buildings, otherworldly spires with a fantastical quality that was reminiscent of art deco and ultramodern at the same time, come together as neither ...

"Ani?"

The worry in her tone was more evident now than before. He ripped his eyes from the futuristic scene and saw raw fear in her face as she stared at him. He'd acted stupidly, he thought; he'd have to be more careful.

"I'm okay," he told her, watching the acceptance of his comment in her face as he followed her obediently to the bedroom, which, fortunately, was outfitted with an ordinary looking bed. As he climbed into it beside her, his last thought before he fell asleep was that Anakin's wife had all the signs of a woman who knew beyond a doubt there was something dreadfully wrong with her husband, but couldn't bear to face it. Sam hoped he had come here to put that right.