After spending a sleepless night on Al's fold-out bed, Albert awoke to a new day that proved to be busier than he had thought. He spent the morning in Sick Bay, undergoing the physical exam that was mandatory for all new staff members and a series of genetic tests that would prove his relation to Dr. Beckett. Other formalities included getting a picture ID and a communicator of his own. The next priority that needed to be met was for the newest addition to the Project to move into the empty rooms that had once been Sam and Donna's quarters.
Once he was finished with the red tape that had taken his entire morning, the young Beckett devoured a large lunch and immediately started for the Control Room where Al was waiting.
"Sorry it took so long to get here, Admiral," the boy apologized. "There was a long line in the cafeteria."
"Always happens," Al laughed.
"Well," Albert began as he perched himself on the vacant stool before the console. "We might as well get started. Okay, Ziggy," he continued, rapidly punching the computer's keys, "let's see the Retrieval Program."
"I'm afraid I can't show you the Retrieval Program, Mr. Beckett," Ziggy objected.
"Why not?" Albert demanded.
"That program is restricted to Senior Staff Members only," the sultry female voice sounded from within the large machine.
"Ziggy, I need to see the Retrieval Program!" Albert repeated sharply.
"I've already told you; that information is classified--"
"Ziggy!" Al barked imitating a Starfleet Officer's inflections as he laid his hand on Ziggy's sensor pad. "Access Retrieval Program! Authorization, Calavicci ID# 258!"
At Al's command, Ziggy complied and brought up the program for Albert to see. "Aye, Captain," she reacted with smugness and sarcasm.
After spending a lengthy time studying Retrieval, Albert finally spoke, breaking the near silence. "I think I know what went wrong here. Look at this, "he said, pointing out one of the complicated equations. "The program never worked because Dad musta leaped before finishing it . . . He had to know it was incomplete, so why did he try to leap?"
"I wish I knew, Albert. I was on my way here one night, and Gooshie called me on my cell phone sayin' that Sam was leaping. By the time I got there it was too late . . . Best I can tell, he did it to keep the Project from losing its government funding."
"Has anyone tried to complete the program and see if they could bring Dad back?" Albert wondered.
"The only one who could make sense of it was Dr. Beckett, and even he couldn't do anything once he started leaping. The time traveling did something to his memory; he never figured out how to bring himself back." Thinking about his best friend reminded the admiral of his last contact with the leaper. A fog of silence, guilt, denial, and emptiness rolled in and weighted the man's heart. Al's face was heated and reddened by the emotions that threatened to rob him of his composure.
"Admiral?" Albert's concern was reminiscent of his father's. "Are you okay?"
"I'm . . . I'm fine."
"I'm not so sure about that. You look like you just lost your best friend."
"That's because I did." Al swallowed hard and drew in a deep breath. His saddened eyes wanted desperately to flood with salty drops. Blinking hard to fight off the water that would cause him to lose control, Al started, "We maintained contact for five years before we lost him completely . . . Oh, God, I'll never forget the last time I saw him. You might say that that Leap was hitting very close to home for Sam. He was trying to talk to me, and . . . I thought he was losin' it. God, I can't believe the last words I said to him were 'Whatever it takes, I'm gonna getcha outta this'."
When he saw the weight of emotions force Al's head to hang and his eyes to meet his shoes, Albert felt he had to say something -- but what? "I'm sorry, Admiral. You guys were real close, weren'tcha?"
"Yeah," Al choked.
"Well gimme a few hours alone with Ziggy, and I'll see if I can fix this program. If I can get it working, we can find my father and get him back."
"Uh, Kid, it's not that easy t--"
"It's okay, I know what I'm doing," the enthusiastic youth interrupted as he plunged into his challenging task. "Trust me."
Realizing he would only go nowhere fast with the stubborn twenty-year-old, Al passed a skeptical glance his way and backed out of the room with doubt and curiosity written all over his face.
Keeping busy at Ziggy's console and submerging himself in his quest to repair the incomplete Retrieval Program had caused Albert to lose track of time. Small breaks for meals and trips to the rest room segmented his continuous work. When Al returned six hours later, he was greeted by a sight that once again sent him on a journey down memory lane. As Sam's Simon & Garfunkle CD was playing "Homeward Bound", the eager offspring and Ziggy were hard at work, dealing with complex physics problems.
Oh, my God, He's never known his ol' man, and he's acting just like him, Al thought as he gulped down the rock of nostalgia and loneliness that wanted to choke the life out of him. Maintaining himself, he asked, "So, how's it comin'?"
"Almost done," was Albert's answer. "Just a second . . ." Albert struck a few more keys and directed his question to Ziggy. "Well? How does it check out Zigster?"
"My name is Ziggy." the female hybrid computer clipped; insulted that someone mispronounced her name.
"How does everything look to you, Ziggy?"
"The program is complete, but I project only a less than 3.1 chance that Dr. Beckett will be successfully retrieved."
"If the program is complete, why such a slim margin of success!" Albert demanded, losing patience with the artificial entity.
"I can't retrieve Dr. Beckett if I don't know where or when he is. When we still had his body in the Waiting Room, I had a variety of retrieval theories to work on; but now that the body is also missing, there's nothing I can do. I would be dealing with very limited data and extremely complex problems. I would be on a continuous wild goose chase."
"So you're telling me that there's no way to find, much less retrieve him!" Albert shot back, seething in the flames of anger.
"There is one way to return Dr. Beckett to the present, but I wouldn't recommend it," Ziggy said. "If someone else were to leap back into the past, he or she might encounter Dr. Beckett and would be able to bring him home via simo-leap; however, since there is no way to find Dr. Beckett, there is no way to prove this theory."
"Simo-leap?" Albert wanted to know more. "How could anyone return him to the present by simo-leaping with him?"
"Simply by holding onto him," Ziggy answered in a vocal tone as if to say, 'I shouldn't have to tell you that'. "It once worked when Dr Beckett had to simo-leap with another time traveler named Alia. In order to leap Dr. Beckett home, you would have to have a firm hold of him at the time of your leap-out."
"Hold it Albert," Al finally found a chance to enter the conversation. "You can't think of leaping after him. To do that, you'd have to know where and when he is; and if we knew that, we'da brought him back by now."
"Heather Calavicci . . ." Albert summoned via his com-bracelet. "Heather, if you can hear me, I need you to meet me in Neurology in ten minutes."
"I'll be there," Heather's voice came from the bracelet.
"If you'll excuse me, Admiral, I've got a lotta work to do."
"What the hell do you think you're doing!" Al demanded, unable to believe what he was hearing. "Didn't I just tell you that we need to know how to find him before we tried the simo-leap! All that would happen is you might be lost in time like your dad, and I'm not about to stand by and lose another Beckett to the Space/Time Continuum."
"I wouldn't be lost; Heather will be my Observer, just like you were for Dad. Anyway, the Retrieval Program is fixed now, so there should be no problem."
"You don't even know where to look."
"I can travel to any day within my own lifetime, right? Well I'll have to start from the beginning and work my way forward."
"Do you realize that's 7,304 days, and that's not including the nine months you spend in Donna's womb? You also have to consider the fact that he could be just about anywhere? He's leaped all over the country and sometimes abroad. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack."
After a brief pause, Albert shot a serious look at the admiral and slowly said, "Standing around and arguing sure as hell won't help my dad, but my leaping after him just might do the trick." Albert again activated his communicator to call Sammy Jo to duty.
Stubborn stubborn stubborn, Al silently snarled to himself.
Rearranging the experiment to work around Albert and Heather's brain waves was a procedure that seemed to take less time than anticipated. Having no choice in the matter, Al reluctantly showed his youngest daughter how to operate the hand-link that had been in his possession since Sam's first leap. He gave her the quickie course in "Observer 101" and assured her that he would be with Sammy Jo and would be able to monitor everything that went on at her end.
Albert was soon ready to take his first leap. Dressed in a white protective suit, he entered the Control Room and had one last question for Ziggy.
"Ziggy, can you predict what Sam Beckett might look like at age . . . "Albert quickly figured how old his father would be, "He'll be sixty-seven next month."
"According to his genetic programming," Ziggy explained, "there is an 83.6 chance that Dr. Beckett would be completely gray and show more lines on his face. He may or may not have gained any weight, and looking at his dental records, I believe he would still have his original teeth. Dr. Beckett was always well known for taking excellent care of himself."
Albert took a minute to study the picture that Ziggy just printed. Like his father, Albert Beckett had a high IQ and a photographic memory. When every detail of the print-out portrait was engraved into the boy's mind, he proceeded to see if everything was ready for his first leap.
"Uh, Albert, are ya sure you wanna go through this?" Al still had reservations about allowing this Sam Beckett wannabe to talk him into taking such a dangerous risk.
"How many times do I have to tell ya, Admiral, my mind's made up. It's the past or bust."
A new worry served as a potential weapon for the elderly advisor. "What happens when you get there and you find that your memory's been Swiss-cheesed like Sam's was? How wouldja remember why you leaped in the first place? Chances are you might not even remember your own name, much less your father's. Kid, you wouldn't be able to do whatcha set out to do in the first place."
"When I was working on the Retrieval Program, I found out why Dad may have lost his memory. Ziggy had some sort o' malfunction that caused a minor power surge . . . and that power surge may have hit him the second he leaped out. Anyway, I ran a diagnostic on the Accelerator and its connection to Ziggy, and I was able to find and remedy the problem."
"Admiral, I can assure you with 98.4 accuracy that young Mr. Beckett will not suffer any adverse effects from the Accelerator or any other phases during the Leap Process," Ziggy confirmed.
"And if you don't come back," Al continued to seek some sort of excuse, "what am I supposed to tell Donna . . . that her only son is following in his father's footsteps and is now living in the fourth dimension?"
"Admiral Calavicci, I do believe you're paranoid," Ziggy pointed out. "You wouldn't have all that white hair if you didn't worry so much."
"Well, if you weren't just a sophisticated pile of circuits . . . if you were a real person, you'd know it's hell to have to stand here and find yourself about to relive the worst nightmare of your life!" Al argued, waving his fist in the air.
"I'm sure Mr. Beckett will be just fine," Ziggy shot back, determined to drive the point home. "Anyway, if he wants to leap and winds up lost in time, that's his problem to deal with. He's aware of the risks."
Shaking his head, Al threw his arms up and allowed them to fall limply to his sides. What could he do to stop a parallel hybrid computer with a big ego and a stubborn brainiac from achieving their much desired goal? After all, there was a tiny voice inside of him that reminded him how much he missed his dearest friend and that it would be a dream come true if Albert could successfully return Sam before Al would slip out of the state of existence and into the world of nothingness known as death.