"Old Slides, New Friends"
The story begins right after "The Seer."

Maggie, Diana and Mallory looked on as the final vortex closed for the last time. With Rembrandt gone, the Sliders were no more, their journeys at an end... or so they thought.

Two weeks had passed since Rembrandt took the leap to his earth to stop the Kromaggs. Diana had been trying to use parts from the storage facilities to create a new timer. She used what knowledge she had of the timer, each time with no results. Maggie and Mallory offered what help they could, but it still was not enough. What were they missing? What was the key to making it all work?

Then, one day in the lab, all three were working on the timer, when from out of nowhere a familiar face appeared: the wormhole. They were startled. How and where did this come from? Then out of the blue - well, purple, in this case - a box emerged and landed no more than three feet from Maggie. The vortex immediately closed.

What was in the box? Could it be a bomb? A Kromagg trick? Or what? Maggie inspected it: the top bore the legend MAGGIE BECKETT. She slowly eased her way closer.

"Hey - careful," Mallory cautioned. "It could be anything."

She slowly reached down and picked it up, then turned around and proceeded towards Diana and Mallory. She laid the box on the table, and carefully opened the flaps. Inside she could see a smaller box and a note attached to it. The note read:

"My dear Maggie: inside, you shall find the tool needed to help on your quest. Put it to use and we shall meet at last. Sincerely, P."

Maggie pulled the smaller box from the bigger one and slowly opened it. She jumped back - inside was a timer. One that closely resembled Quinn's original, not that anyone present could have known this. Mallory and Diana both looked at each other with confusion. "Okay, that was kinda strange," deadpanned Maggie.

"What if it's for real?" Diana ventured. "This could be our way of finding Remmy. I mean, who else would know to send us a timer?" She looked up from exploring the remote's memory. "Uh, guys? There's a co-ordinate preset already programmed in."

"Great, what are we waiting for?" Maggie grabbed the timer, pointed it in the corner of the room, and opened a violet portal highlighted by flashes of lightning. "Well, here goes nothing!" Maggie shouted over the wind. One by one, the Sliders jumped through to face an unknown destination.

They each landed with a thud, one right beside each other. Mallory was the first to his feet. "Wow, what a rush."

They looked around, inspecting the surrounding area. It was a small storage-like room, with stacks of boxes against the wall. Then came a voice from the darkness: "Welcome! I've been expecting you."

Maggie had heard this voice before but couldn't place it. Then the figure stepped from the shadows and she was nearly floored. It was the Professor. But how? He had supposedly died on her world. "Just before the planet was destroyed," she remembered. "Quinn and the others saw you die."

"Well then, kindly permit me to explain. You see, many years ago, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and myself landed on a world where we thought we were home. I was kidnapped by my reprobate double and jailed in his basement. At the last minute, there was a brawl. We struggled, he ran, and... he made off with the others. Stranding me on his world, without a timer. However, thankfully he had left behind nearly complete plans for constructing one. I borrowed a decoy timer from the museum and built a new one, which I used to slide from the world. Now, if you three will follow me, I believe there's someone else who wishes to see you."

"Remmy," Maggie grinned.

They proceeded down a hallway to a very large room packed with gadgets and huge machines, like what Quinn's basement might have evolved into given a few more years. A familiar voice greeted them: "Hi. Welcome back."

"Quinn!!" Maggie exclaimed. "Is it really you?!"

"The real deal... once removed. It's kind of a long story. See, many years ago, there was a slide where the wormhole got struck by lightning, and I got split in two. The other me emerged with the others, only he was invisible for the duration of that slide. After that, he kept sliding normally. That's the Quinn you knew.

"I, meanwhile, landed here. The thing is, I lived through everything the other Quinn did. It's as if our minds were still linked somehow. My theory is that we split into new dimensions and spin off new doubles all the time, but never know it... except the lightning caused the two of us to become psychically fused, somehow. He never gave any sign that the connection was reciprocal, yet very memory, every thought he had, I shared.

"I saw the professor die, and I couldn't do anything about it. I felt my other self bury his pain over what happened to Wade. Then, about a year ago, the link was broken. After so many years living two lives at once, it felt strangely empty to only be myself again.

"Anyway, this house where I've been living happens to belong to another Quinn who got lost out there. I figured I'd step into his life and use his equipment to catch up with the rest of you. Then one day the professor here dropped in for a visit. I'd always had some doubt about which one slid, but I never really knew. You have no idea how happy I was when he showed up. So, we put our minds together and started searching for the other Sliders. We built a sort of interdimensional remote viewing device, a wormhole camera. So far, you're the first success we've had. Of course, getting Wade out of that camp is still the top priority..."

"Wade's gone, Quinn," Maggie explained as sympathetically as she could manage. "The Kromaggs used her to trick us. She died saving our lives, and protecting your homeworld. And Remmy slid to Earth Prime to fight the Kromaggs with a virus. That's the last we saw of him..."

Quinn was silent for a moment. "We haven't been able to reach Earth Prime. It's much easier to home in on anomalous signatures."

Diana and Mallory had been silent back in the corner the whole time. "Come on, you people, this is Quinn and the Professor," called Maggie.

The two junior sliders stepped up to introduce themselves. "I think I already know Quinn pretty well," Mallory dryly added.

"Well. Now that the formalities are dispensed with, let us say we find Mr. Brown." The professor said grimly. "The question is, where do we start?"

"Well, I don't suppose the co-ordinates to his homeworld would help?" spoke up Diana.

With the timer set to the same destination as the Kromagg panel on the Seer's world, Quinn pressed a button and a large purple vortex swirled open. "I've been tinkering with the exotic matter formula," Quinn explained. "Also, the blue was getting old."

One by one each slider entered the vortex. Next stop: Earth Prime.

"Everyone okay?" solicited Quinn.

All replied (or grunted) their assent and began to examine their surroundings. They had landed in a smoothly paved alleyway. They emerged onto a street where most of the buildings showed damage from explosions. Debris lined the sidewalks, and a fire raged in the middle of the street. As the Sliders watched, a group of people flung what appeared to be a body into the fire.

A Kromagg body.

Cautiously, they drew nearer. "Hey! Excuse me, uh... what's going on here, exactly?" asked Quinn.

"Clean-up," answered one of the natives.

"What happened? Who killed the Kromaggs?"

A woman answered without taking her eyes off the burning monster. "Man named Remick, as I heard it. Went around claiming he had a virus that only hurt the Maggs. Next thing you know, they're dropping like flies." She shrugged. "Someone who was here can probably tell you more."

"Is he still alive?" Diana questioned.

"Oh, sure," said the first man. "Last I heard, he was at the outskirts helping with clean-up."

Quinn thanked them, and they left in search of further word on Rembrandt. So much damage and destruction. Rebuilding was slowly taking place, but with the economy in as miserable a shape as the infrastructure, it was a slow job.

"Remmy!" cried Maggie.

Rembrandt was among a crowd of people hauling debris out of an abandoned office building. He turned in shock at the sound of Maggie's voice. He ran up and hugged her in a tearful reunion. "Wait a minute... Professor? Q-Ball? It can't be!"

"It's us, Cryin' Man. More or less."

"Well I'll be... How did you find me?"

"With a lot of help from these two," Maggie cut in. "What happened here? Are the Maggs really gone?"

"Well," Rembrandt began, "the slide here was pretty rocky. I didn't think I was gonna make it. I landed half-conscious in an alley near an enforcement squad. But before they could take me in, they all started choking and gagging. Same thing everywhere I went. Only thing I needed was a way to deploy it worldwide.

"Anyway, I got into contact with a resistance group working out at Maggie's old army base. They managed to extract the virus from me and recreate it. The serum was placed in seven different rockets, fired into different points of the atmosphere around the world, and remote detonated. Within hours, the Kromaggs were almost extinct. They ordered an evacuation which only carried the disease to more worlds.

"And that's not even the good news. Wade may still be alive. One of our hackers found some records that say she was part of a human cloning project. They were duplicating people, trying to create an enhanced brain that could interface directly with machinery. The real Wade was moved into a prison camp on another world. I've got the co-ordinates printed out at home..."

"Home? And where might that be, Mr. Brown?"

"Well, Q-Ball's house. I kinda moved in. Figured he wouldn't mind."

And so began a new quest for our Sliders: old friends reunited, new ones introduced, and their search for a lost companion...