It was past nine o'clock, and Sam, fascinated though he was, was distracted by his hunger. The Doctor, who continued to ply Sam with questions and evade any put to him, did not seem to realize this. They had long since left the history classroom in favour of Bill Rivers's living room, but in his determination to discover what he could about the Doctor, whose differences in leaping could mean a way home for Sam, Sam had honestly forgotten that he would need food and drink at some point. Now, his stomach was reminding him of that fact.

"Can I get you anything?" he asked the Doctor, who was frowning at the graphs again. Why he had insisted on looking at them, Sam couldn't say; he was sure the Doctor knew that he knew the graphs had been faked. Any scientist would realize it.

"Hmm? Oh, no, no, nothing for me, thanks. What do you make of this?" He pointed to a small blip on the graph.

Sam wondered why the Doctor insisted on perusing the false data, but he decided to humour him. "Interference or human error, if it doesn't correspond to anything else, but I'd have to study it in more detail to give you a better guess. I'm going to make some coffee and grab a sandwich or two; are you sure you don't want anything?"

The Doctor assured him that he didn't, but he still seemed preoccupied. By the time the coffee was ready, Sam had polished off his sandwiches, and he brought the steaming brew back into the living room to resume the discussion. He wasn't certain how long the Doctor would pursue this, especially when their progress had been minimal at best. Any man would get discouraged, and Sam had to admire his persistence, but leaping demanded constant attention to avoid being caught out, and Sam was exhausted. Not to mention the fact that he had to mark sixty-some worksheets that had been assigned to the class the day before he had leapt in, and the brief glance he had spared them had assured him that he would be spending the better part of a day writing proper explanations in the margins of the short-answer questions for some of the students. He had already covered the topics again in class, and he hoped that a reminder would be enough for the majority of them.

"What do you remember about your last leap?" the Doctor asked, studying Sam closely.

The last leap. Which one was that again? They blended together at times, and it was hard for him to sift through the pieces of memory. Wishing Al was there to refresh his memory, Sam began slowly, saying what he knew for certain. "I helped a young man on the way to fulfilling a dream. Music, I think. He wanted to play music. But that wasn't why I'd leapt in, at least not entirely. I was the young man's grandfather, and the family thought he was becoming senile. They tried to put me in an asylum. The young man saved me, with his father. They realized that I didn't need to be put away, even though it had been their original intention."

"Why would they have put you in an asylum?"

Sam strained to remember; it had been fascinating, whatever the elderly man's obsession had been. His enthusiasm had spread to Sam, according to Al, and he remembered that Al had disapproved, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. "I don't remember. It was thrilling. I remember feeling that it was a new discovery, a new chance. But I can't recall what it was."

"And you don't remember who you were?" Sam shook his head. "Or when?" Another shake. "Or if this discovery of yours was real or imagined?"

"No." Sam sighed. "It's frustrating, sometimes. And Al won't tell me, most of the time, even when I know there's something missing. It's my own rule, according to him. There are times when something will jog my memory, but usually I need Al to tell me. He has, a few times. In the beginning, mostly."

"So it's still there, you believe? It hasn't been lost?"

Sam shook his head. "There was one leap, when I leapt into an asylum, and they gave me electroshock therapy. Al said I took on the persona of a number of my leapees. It was breaking down our connection because I was slipping away. We nearly didn't get out of that mess, though I wouldn't have known. But I think it means it's all in here, what I've been through." He tapped his head. "It's the same with you, isn't it?"

"I remember where I've been," the Doctor confirmed. "Sometimes too clearly." He didn't give Sam the chance to ask for any clarification, instead pressing on. "But if you still remember everything, even if it's just on an unconscious level…."

"Yes?" Sam prompted, curious.

"Do you trust me?"

He shouldn't. He barely knew the man, but the knowledge that he was another leaper, that he had been through similar experiences, comforted Sam. Here they were now, working together so that they could leap out of here unharmed. Al would name reasons against it—they couldn't find any information on him, he didn't answer their questions, and he spewed off more nonsense than anyone had at the asylum, to name a few—but Sam did trust the Doctor. He couldn't explain why, exactly, but he did. So he nodded and asked why.

"I think something happened on your last leap that brought us together on this one, and I need to know what that is."

"Al would know," Sam volunteered. "Ziggy keeps a record of both the original history and how it is now, so that the staff at Project Quantum Leap knows what we've been doing—and the politicians."

The Doctor grimaced. "Politicians. Yes, I know the feeling. I was Lord President once…." His voice trailed off and he laughed. "Not a very good one. I was never around. Too busy running away from responsibility. But that's beside the point. Would Al tell you and, more importantly, me, what happened on your last leap? In detail, I mean, not just what you told me."

Sam hesitated. "I've already compromised the Project's security, but he'd probably still use it as an excuse not to say anything. And he's right. I shouldn't have told you. But you're another leaper, so I'd only be telling you things you already know. The names might be different, but the principles are the same." He bit his lip, wondering if now might be the time to ask the question that had been on the tip of his tongue all night.

The Doctor had access to newer technology than he did and seemed to have overcome some of the problems that Sam still faced. He couldn't tell how Swiss-cheesed the man's mind was, but the fact that everyone could see him in his own body, as opposed to being disguised by someone else's aura, was an improvement to some degree; he would not be facing the humiliation Sam felt when he leaped into an awkward situation. Making himself accepted may be more difficult, but it would be an acquired talent. The Doctor had certainly mastered it; he walked around like he owned the place.

"Does the retrieval system work correctly for you?" Sam finally asked. He had grown accustomed to leaping, and if offered the chance, he wasn't sure that he would return home immediately—he knew how much good he was doing. But more than anything, he wanted the choice. He wanted a chance to see everyone back at Project Quantum Leap, again.

That first time had been brief, and his memories of it were fleeting, broken recollections at best. He had not even been entirely himself, a thing he had long since reasoned was the cause of the dreamlike quality of the leap that made it seem more imagined than the rest. He was sure that he would return to leaping as he had before, if granted the chance for a brief reprieve back at the Project, but he would feel so much more freedom if he could return home to embrace those whom he had left behind and see firsthand the good he was doing. He knew, perhaps better than anyone else, that a small act of kindness would spread. He himself may not be able to trace the effects of his work, but he knew he had touched people and that they would reach out to touch others, rippling the effect outwards.

But Sam was disappointed. The Doctor looked quizzically at him. "What's that?"

Perhaps he did not remember. Was it a comfort? Sam forced himself to rephrase his question, saying, "Do you get to return home?"

The look on the Doctor's face answered Sam's question for him. A heavy sigh pushed weariness and troubles aside, returning the leaper's face to its usual youthful, energetic look, although it still seemed forced and pained. The response itself was filled with exaggerated light-heartedness. "Nah, but I don't want to go home, do I? Too many other things to do, places to go, people to see. No sense of adventure if I go home; I know what it's like. I'd rather explore and see the universe for what it really is." He put the graphs down and blew out a breath. "If Al won't tell me, then you'll have to, Sam, if you're willing. But you'll need to trust me."

"I do trust you," Sam said, "but as much as I may want to, I can't help you."

"Come here." The Doctor stood up, looking utterly serious. "Now, I can assure you that I don't do this often, and only when it's absolutely necessary, but I need to know for sure. If I'm right, and I'm nearly always right, I don't want to bait them."

"Bait who?" Sam asked, not moving from where he stood.

"The Anipalaxians."

"Who?"

"The Anipalaxians," the Doctor repeated. "They could have scavenged the technology for this, but if they did, it wouldn't be very accurate—which is perhaps why they latched on to you. But if it is them, they're looking for me. If they know you aren't me, you aren't in any danger. They're quite amiable to strangers. Generally a friendly bunch, actually. But I can explain later; I need to know if I'm right." He paused, then walked toward Sam and stood in front of him. "This won't hurt, but if there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a door and close it. I'll be as quick as I can. I wouldn't do this if I didn't think I needed to, and even when I do, I don't tend to poke around where I'm not wanted." And before Sam could protest, the Doctor lightly touched Sam's temples and closed his eyes.

Sam couldn't describe the sensation if he wanted to; there were no words for it. Any number of thoughts crossed the forefront of his mind at first, and then they became more specific. After a moment or two—or was it an hour or two?—Sam realized the Doctor was talking and focussed on his words.

"Seen a lot, haven't you? And, oh, here it is. Self-illuminated elliptical orb, roughly fifteen metres on the long axis and ten on the short, hovering ten to twenty metres above the ground. I'd put it at about seventeen metres, myself, give or take fifteen inches or so. Ooh, and they're a bit showy with the lights, aren't they? Those aren't really necessary. That's the second appearance, then, while you were there? And they tried to take you, but you leapt out. Well, they would've been friendly with Ol' Max Stoddard; they wouldn't have a quarrel with him. Did you see any detail on the ship?"

It continued on, but Sam couldn't say for how long. He tore himself further away from the flood and stumbled on, trying to find his footing. And then, just as suddenly, he was hit by a new flood of emotions. Clear, precise pictures flitted across his vision. A classroom, students dressed in smart uniforms. It was a physics classroom, as announced by the letters scrawled across the board, but not his own. The students were bright, one in particular, but this was only an impression; as clear as everything was, Sam could not comprehend anything spoken, as if he were living in a dream and the conversation drifted away the minute he awoke. He was suddenly fearful of going any further, though he couldn't explain why. He still felt an innate curiosity.

A split second later, Sam was jolted back to reality. He could not recall, for a moment, precisely what had happened. Like a dream, he was only left with impressions. He risked a glance at the Doctor. The man was muttering to himself, already marking things down on paper, but he seemed to have felt Sam's eyes on his back. He looked up and offered a smile. "I had a feeling you'd try to wander. I'm more careful these days about the memories I'll push to the surface when I do that. I can't close everything off, but I can choose the less alarming ones to be glimpsed by the more curious ones like yourself. I thought you might feel at home in a physics classroom, seeing as you're not simply playing the role of a physics teacher.

"But, yes, Anipalaxians. They'll have trailed you here. See these odd little blurps? There is a pattern to them; thick of me not to realize it immediately. It's a bit of background radiation, more or less. The energy given off isn't constant, but it is consistent. If you scale the time down to femtoseconds, and then look at the amount of energy released, you'll see it's equal to the amount of energy drawn in precisely nine-point-three-oh-four femtoseconds after it was released. Then, if you correlate that to the energy conversion within the next hour—fifty-four-point-three-one-nine minutes, actually, if it's averaged—you would see that you can predict the time of the next conversion, and through that next conversion, the next release and intake of the energy, allowing you to track them, because the traces would still be weaker the further away the ship is; the radiation, for lack of a better word, would be dispersed.

"The Anipalaxians are an efficient species, one of the best this side of the Medusa Cascade, but to see all their careful work destroyed must have—" The Doctor broke off. "But they didn't have that technology; they would have had to reverse manufacture scraps of material to even begin implementing that sort, let alone use it to propel themselves this far. I'm surprised they aren't tearing the Vortex to shreds; it's bound to be unstable—they wouldn't have been able to uncover the right formulas, not yet, anyway, and the energy signature shows a weakness in the conversion rate. But they wouldn't have reason to even…. Unless they felt their neutrality was violated…."

Sam's mind rarely failed him, the Swiss-cheesed effect aside, but it was a struggle to recover from the first strange experience and then follow everything that came out of the Doctor's mouth. He did recall his last leap, now, better than before; the memory had been dragged to the surface of his mind. The 'how' he was still at odds about; even his meeting with—what was her name? Taylyn? Tamlyn? Talyn?—that astonishing psychic woman, whoever she was, had not prepared him for that, not even the surprise that she had seen him as he really was. But the recent memory reminded him of his earnest desire to prove to the world that aliens truly did exist. Yet that was all it was to him—a desire to prove their existence. The Doctor had not suspected their existence; he had suspected their involvement. It stood to reason, then, that he had encountered something before, like Sam had on his previous leap. The fact that the Doctor knew the race of aliens simply by studying the outward workings of their ship….

First things first. Mathematics, physics. Concrete laws with which Sam was familiar and felt sure in defending. "You're still talking about your graphs as if they're real." He decided not to argue the scale regarding time just yet.

"Well, they are real," the Doctor answered, not looking up. "Just because you don't have the technology, doesn't mean I don't. I thought you lot were supposed to be an open-minded bunch."

"But you can't measure energy just as energy," Sam protested. "Not when taking into account conversion. Even if it were possible, you wouldn't have a useful graph. Energy is constant."

"Nuclear reactions," was the only answer Sam received.

"But that's not—"

"Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared, correct? Therefore energy and matter are different forms of the same thing—they can be converted back and forth. If energy is converted to matter, or matter converted to energy, and I am simply measuring the generic energy conversions in its form of heat, light, kinetic, potential, what have you, then I can end up with a feasibly useful graph, and it has proven useful because, as I already said, if I scale back the time of the energy conversions, I can find the pattern and use it to track the Anipalaxians."

It wasn't worth arguing. Sam had a feeling that, even though he knew he was right and that he had years of science behind him, he couldn't win. The Doctor would, likely as not, twist his words. "These…Aniplaxans?"

"Anipalaxians."

"These Anipalaxians of yours. Who are they?"

"Anipalaxian is who they are. You're human. You occupy Sol 3, or Earth. An Anipalaxian inhabited Palaxia Minor, formerly Anipalax 5 under the United Palaxian Agreement, which was dissolved when the Unipalaxians revolted by claiming illegally allocated resources within the system. But generally the Palaxians were peaceful, the Anipalaxians most of all. They remained neutral in the majority of the wars, like your Switzerland.

"But the Palaxian planets were…. They were robbed of their resources during the War. They became ruined, but not desolate. They were still inhabitable, at least until the end came. The backlash tore apart thousands of planets, but it would have been millions otherwise. If…. There would have been no life left there, or even here, or anywhere else for that matter, save one race. It had to be done. I didn't stop to think what had happened once it was over. It was over, and they were gone. That's all that I could think about." Sam had the distinct feeling the Doctor was talking about a different 'they' than the Anipalaxians or the other race he'd talked about but neglected to name, but felt the story was interesting enough not to interrupt.

After a long pause, the Doctor continued. "The Anipalaxians would have demanded compensation, I expect, and if they'd filed a complaint with the Shadow Proclamation, it probably would have been approved. But even if they didn't do it the official way, they've come for it, demanding it from the only one they feel should pay." He sighed. "It should have just been added on top of the other charges; list's bound to be ten times longer than I am now."

Sam laughed. The Doctor had had practice, he could tell. Sam himself could spin a tale well enough, and Al was quite good, particularly after he'd had a couple, if Sam recalled correctly, but neither measured up to the Doctor. He'd even managed to keep a straight face through to the end, and Sam had to admit that he'd nearly believed the Doctor, if only for a moment. He had been privileged enough to glimpse an extraterrestrial spaceship in his last leap—even Al would admit it now—but the idea of being able to name them was laughable. The story, with its history and its emotion, had seemed so real, but ending it on the note of humour allowed Sam to realize exactly what the Doctor was saying. First the graphs, then the Anipalaxians—the man was an experienced joker.

And yet even as he concluded this, Sam began questioning himself. The Doctor's ideas were bizarre, but they were complex, and while they didn't sound practiced, exactly, he delivered his spiels with confidence. This, coupled with the off-the-cuff spontaneity of the speech, made Sam rethink his initial reaction. He wasn't sure how the Doctor had pulled the fragmented memory of his last leap to the surface of his mind, and a small part of him was almost afraid of asking. The Doctor had never denied being a leaper, but he certainly had not admitted it.

"Oh, I've been so thick!" The exclamation brought Sam back to reality. The Doctor had a wild look in his eyes again, and he looked as if he'd been pulling at his hair with both hands. When he removed them, his hair stayed in its newest messy position. "That's why your Ziggy said history changed with that first real conversation of ours! It led to this! Now that I've figured it out, I should be able to prevent it from happening. The Anipalaxians would've just been looking for disturbances in the Time Vortex, but without the proper calibration, they latched on to the wrong traveller—you. They would have picked up Max Stoddard, thinking they had me, because they thought you were me. You escaped them, but they were able to tail you here. You were brought here because, in your so-called original history, the innocent Bill Rivers was murdered in my name."

"That's not right," Sam interjected. "You took the bullet for him; you would have died instead."

The Doctor was shaking his head. "They might have recorded that, but if luck was on my side, and usually it is, I would have survived that, one way or another. It's not the first time I've been faced with a gun. Bloody painful, being shot, but it's the anaesthetic that kills you. But, that's neither here nor there. Point is, that's not what initially happened, if you read between the lines. The intended victim was Bill Rivers, was it not? You leapt into Bill Rivers. That's why he was marked as the victim. But me, that still wouldn't have drawn me into the equation, but I'm here, aren't I? So why am I here? Because Bill Rivers was never supposed to be marked as a victim, and you were never supposed to be here to mark him as that victim."

"That doesn't make any sense," Sam protested, but he had the distinct feeling the Doctor wasn't listening to him.

"I wasn't intending to come here, you know, but the TARDIS is a temperamental old girl; she set herself on course and no amount of persuasion could dissuade her. Must be losing my touch; I can usually talk my way out of anything. But then she presented me with these facts. Facts and figures, lovely facts and figures, can't be changed except by one little tweak, and then—wham!" The Doctor's sudden exclamation and accompanying hand motions caused Sam to jump, and the Doctor seemed to make an effort to restrain his excitement as he continued. "'What was' shifted to 'what can be' to become 'what is', splintering off into multitudes of dimensions. And I could feel every one of them. I don't know how I missed it, really. Then again, Torchwood. They were at it for months while I was away."

"I beg your pardon?"

This time the Doctor seemed to notice Sam again. "You leap into different situations to fix things, right? And what happens to the original history, as you call it? It changes. It gets shoved into a parallel world. There's billions upon billions of them out there, stacked up against each other. You can't travel to them, not any more, at least not if everything's stable, but you can create one. And you do. You do it every time you leap, change something, and leap again. Splintering, shifting…. Fortunately most of these things are in flux, because you'd be stuck if you found yourself trying to change a fixed point. You can't change fixed points, even if it means sacrifice." The Doctor stopped.

After a moment of silence, Sam encouraged him to continue. The theory was captivating to the quantum physicist. Even if it was an elaborate story, a thing Sam wanted to believe but was strongly beginning to doubt, it was simply astounding. To Sam's disappointment, however, the Doctor ceased his explanation of dimensions and alternate realities, although his reference to shifting had called to mind the word used in a similar way when he had talked about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The Doctor resumed the thread of his initial explanation: why he was there. "I'm here to do what I always do—nudge history back onto its intended course. I'm the only one to do it because I am, unintentionally, the one who set it off on the wrong course. Well, not directly. Well…." He shook his head. "Point is, the Anipalaxians are after me, and I'm here to confront them, thereby saving both you and Mr. Rivers. History did not intend for you to die here in my name, and the TARDIS, bless her, knew that, so she took me here. I'm changing history and fulfilling it at the same time."

"But then why am I here, if not to save you?" Sam asked. "I always leap for a reason, so something needs to be fixed."

"You've told me what I needed to know," the Doctor offered. "In that sense, you've saved me. It would've been nasty getting pounced on unexpectedly. I always like to know what I'm dealing with."

Sam shook his head. "That's not reason enough. Normally, Ziggy would have a projection by now, but…." It was his turn to shrug. "The original history's in flux now, I suppose because of you, and she can't get any data. If I don't do whatever I'm intended to, I'm never going to leap out of here. I was supposed to save you, but now those circumstances have changed and, if you're to be believed, that's not even going to happen. If you stop it, you won't need saving, and I'll be stuck. Besides, if information was enough, I would have leaped already."

"I suppose you're right," the Doctor mused. "Well, then, you'll just have to wing it, like me!"

Like him. Was Sam like him? The Doctor had admitted to being a time traveller, and Sam had only seen that as possible if the man were a leaper, but Sam was collecting evidence that this was not so, unless their projects were radically different. Al had protested the point, but chances were he believed that was the explanation as well. The Doctor had spoken of a TARDIS, which Sam assumed was the equivalent to Ziggy at first, but Ziggy did not send Sam through time—she merely tracked him and helped him along the way. The Doctor's TARDIS appeared to be the vehicle, so to speak, that sent him on his travels.

"Who are you?" Sam finally asked, repeating an earlier question.

The Doctor looked at him quizzically. "The Doctor, of course. I explained that to you."

"But you haven't explained anything," Sam argued. "Al's right; you either evade every question I put to you or you spout nonsense. You haven't confirmed or denied anything. You've let me make my own assumptions, but you've never corrected me."

"I'd correct you if you tried to act on an incorrect assumption," the Doctor reasoned. "There, then. No harm done!"

Sam cut him off before he could change the subject—again. "You said you were a time traveller, but you never admitted that you were a leaper. You asked me to explain my theory of time travel. Now kindly explain yours."

The Doctor hesitated, reaching to rub the back of his head. "Well," he said finally, "not to bore you with the details—"

"I'd happily hear them," Sam said truthfully. He tried to keep the excitement from his tone; if he got carried away, the Doctor would take them off on some tangent as he had before, and Sam would forget his original question.

"Well, you wouldn't understand them, not really." The Doctor held up a hand to cut off Sam's objections. "My technology is more advanced than yours. You've realized that and accepted it."

"The United States can't be that far behind Britain," Sam reasoned, "and I'm going to be leaping for a while, likely as not, so a cursory explanation shouldn't endanger the future by giving me knowledge I'm not supposed to have. I'm in no position to use it. I could relay things to Al, yes, if I intended to betray your trust, but you don't have to tell me everything. I explained the basics to you, so you can explain the basics to me."

The Doctor still seemed reluctant. "There's just one teensy little problem," he said at length. Sam waited, but the Doctor did not elaborate, so he asked the Doctor to explain it. Again, the man took his time in answering. He did not launch into an explanation, which is what Sam had almost expected, but rather remained as ambiguous as before. "You don't have all the pieces to the puzzle. Neither do I, for that matter. But without them, you can't see the whole picture."

"And—?"

"You leap within your own lifetime, yes?"

"Of course," Sam answered, wondering why the Doctor was stressing points they'd already discussed, albeit not at length.

"I don't." The questions threatened to burst forth, but Sam contained them as the Doctor continued, "Your theory works—you're proof of that—but it also restricts you. You can't get around those restrictions, and frankly I'm glad, because I'd have a lot more work ahead of me if you lot were capable of that. I am rather impressed that you managed to test your hypothesis in the first place and that you could take care of most of the variables. Missing an important one would have killed you in an instant, tearing you apart immediately—if you were lucky.

"From what I understand," the Doctor said carefully, "you don't pass directly through the Time Vortex; you merely hitch a ride, nicking just the tiniest bit of it, enough to register a disturbance, but the process alone is taxing on your body. Time travel without a capsule is horrible; I speak from experience. The only reason your body is intact when you aren't fully submerging yourself and releasing yourself to Time's raging storm is because you managed to combine your vortex-nicking machine—ingeniously, I might add—with a primitive matter teleportation device. You're taking a risk every time you leap that you won't be assembled exactly as you were before, which may be why you experience that melding of personalities with those you displace."

"I didn't tell you about that," Sam said, astounded.

The Doctor shrugged. "Surface thoughts. I don't tend to pay that much attention to them, but that one was interesting. Anyway, my point is, you are restricted within a set time period, and I am not. Unless you say that I can travel freely because, by the very act of doing so and appearing in a particular time period, I am making that time part of one I pass through in my own lifetime, then you cannot apply your principle to me.

"Yours is a linear restriction, a result of that linear concept of time that you all have, where you try to shove it into days and hours and minutes and seconds and years to be catalogued and counted off and whatnot. You restrict it, so when you try to pass through it, you restrict yourself by your own misconception, and you can only leap within your linear lifetime. Travelling within your own past is a safeguard. You know where you've been, and the things you've learned in the future can help. But while you can theoretically leap into your own future, you are endangering yourself. It would be a blind leap for you; you would have no knowledge of the world around you, no idea of the precise variables that went into creating it as it exactly was.

"The problem with future travelling when simply nicking the Vortex is that you are more likely to end up in a parallel world. Yes, I know, I'd said travel between them is more or less impossible. In truth, it is, and what you are doing isn't precisely travelling between them. The thing about the futuristic parallel worlds is that they keep shifting, squeezing each other out of the way. If you leapt into the future now, you'd leap into the most probable one that you'd later experience. If circumstances changed that, the future you'd seen would change. The worlds would shift, and that future would no longer exist in your world. You know better than anyone that events are not scripted in stone—well, except the fixed points. But for your purpose, the idea of leaping to fix what went wrong in the past, a future leap is pointless, since from your perspective, it has yet to happen." The Doctor paused. "Well, that's how I understand it, considering what I've gleaned from you."

Sam was nodding, reasoning that many of the concepts and hypotheses were the same. The Doctor was clearly a genius, likely with the same photographic memory that Sam himself had made use of time and again. If the man had studied time and the physics surrounding it from an early age, and then experienced a project similar to Sam's, it stood to reason that he would have formed a concept of time that was not quite fathomable to anyone else. Sam repeatedly had the impression that the Doctor treated time as another element, invisible as air, steadfast as earth, fluid as water, and dangerous as fire. In some ways, it was hard to tell whether the man was astoundingly brilliant or simply mad. Sam smirked, knowing which option Al would choose. In his opinion, the Doctor had had a few loose screws from the beginning—and he hadn't even heard their latest conversation.

Sam hadn't noticed that the Doctor was talking again. "I'm not sure where the Anipalaxians are going to be hiding out while they're here. They wouldn't blend in; just because they have two arms and two legs and one head and no tail doesn't mean they could pass for human. They're not shape shifters or even as skilled in illusion as Carrionites." He frowned.

"How do you know all this?" Sam queried, still not entirely sure that he could believe the Doctor spoke from a wealth of knowledge as opposed to an overly vivid imagination.

"I've met them before," came the reply. "A long time ago. They won't recognize me, but I'll know them."

Sam debated asking if the Doctor meant that although he leapt—travelled—with his own body now, without a guise, that he had once adopted the aura of someone else, just as Sam himself did. It was a change of topic, however, and Sam wasn't sure he wanted to relinquish the other one quite yet. "Have you encountered many aliens, then?" He posed the question rather hesitantly, wondering if where—and when—the Doctor came from, the idea of aliens was accepted as a truth.

"Oh, loads of times," the Doctor answered. "More often than not, really. Travel with them quite frequently. You lot make such great companions."

Sam was astounded by how easily the Doctor spoke of aliens, and then he realized what the man had said. "I didn't mean foreigners," Sam said slowly, thinking that surely that was what the Doctor meant, "but extraterrestrials."

The Doctor looked up at him. "Oh, yeah, I know." It was spoken lightly. A grin spread across the man's face as he added, "Fascinating creatures, humans—ingenuity, emotion, creativity, the whole nine yards."

There was no doubt about it; the longer Sam spent with the Doctor, the odder the man appeared to be. Reasoning that finding out a bit of his background would be helpful to understanding the other man, Sam asked, "Where did you grow up? Where's your family?" The Doctor didn't answer. Wondering if the man had perhaps not heard him, Sam repeated his questions, albeit phrased a bit differently. When no answer was forthcoming, he said, "Do you remember?" It was possible the Doctor did not; Sam himself had forgotten his brother, Tom, for a time.

"I spent some time with my granddaughter in London," was the response at last. "We lived there for a time."

"Your granddaughter?" Sam was truly surprised. "She must have been very young. Where did you live?"

Another hesitation, then a shrug. "76 Totter's Lane."

Sam tried not to grin at the victory. He had an address. Ziggy could run that, and then perhaps they would be able to find some information on the Doctor. "How long were you there for?" he asked casually, hoping to find out a bit more.

"Long enough." It was a deliberately vague reply. "But if you're trying to get information out of me, you might as well be direct about it. I'm not going to tell you anything I don't want you to know. Well, I suppose I've let things slip once or twice. Well, a few times. Well, more often than not. But it's never anything useful, not on its own." The Doctor straightened up. "Right, then. Nothing more for me to do here now; it's not time for twenty questions." He started gathering the papers together. Sam moved to help, but the Doctor waved him off, mumbling something about orderly messes.

"I can meet you tomorrow," Sam suggested as the Doctor started folding like papers together and stuffing them into his pockets. "We can figure out how to deal with these Anipalaxians of yours."

"I just need to do a quick check to make sure they are Anipalaxians," the Doctor said, shoving the last wad of papers into his pocket. How they all fit in there, Sam couldn't say; from the looks of it, the Doctor didn't even have anything in his pockets. "You may have a photographic memory, Sam-I-Am, but you don't know what you're looking for. It looks like an Anipalaxian ship, but if it's just one that was scavenged by, say, the Byzilites, then it's a whole new ball game. Byzilites are a bit nastier—not your average after-dinner company sort, more in with the six impossible things before breakfast. They're a scavenging race, haunting battlegrounds, but most have them have been driven out. The survivors, as far as I know, are living just out of range of the crossfire between the Sontarans and the Rutans. One of the best places to be, if you're one of that sort. Those wars have gone on for millennia now."

There was a slight pause as the Doctor frowned. "The Kikilakqic are another possibility, actually. I haven't come across any as of yet. Friendly by reputation, true, but I've had some bad allergies in my time. There were some gases in the Praxis range that would've given me a particularly bad time, had I ever run into them, and parts of Kilyaric are rumoured to be positively polluted with them. Mind, I was prepared, just in case. Not that I admitted it to myself that I'd needed it, but I do think it fit, in a bit of a peculiar way. I just wouldn't have been me without that stick of celery, decorative or indicative of gas or otherwise." And before Sam could think to ask anything, the Doctor was out the door and halfway down the street.

Sam's first thought was to follow him. He couldn't tell how much of what the Doctor said was actually the truth, though the last bit seemed to be a bit of a stretch, and figuring out where he was going would explain a few things. The man had to live somewhere, after all, and if what he brought with him to the school was a taste of what floated around his home, however temporary it might be, the things inside it would be of great interest. But, like anyone else, he did deserve his privacy. And by the time Sam had finished debating his morals, the Doctor was long gone.

"Sam? Hello? Anyone home?"

"Al!" Sam jumped. "How long have you been here?"

"Long enough to see you daydreaming for at least five minutes. I wouldn't mind so much if I knew you were thinking about something worth thinking about, like one of those secretaries at the school with her beautiful set of great, big—"

"Al!" Sam shook his head. "Does Ziggy have any information?"

"Well, we've been running all the data again, and she says that there's a 63.7 percent chance that you're here to save Dr. John Smith's life."

"What? I thought she said that history changed."

"It did…more or less. He's not shot when trying to save you this time. He just turns up dead, without a mark on him, a short distance from the train station. Clothes were in tatters, but he didn't have any new wounds. They never did an autopsy because the body disappeared the next morning, and it was never recovered."

"When was this?"

"Tonight. It's estimated that he was killed early in the morning of the tenth."

Sam glanced at the clock and groaned. "That doesn't give me much time, Al. I was just starting to figure him out. I got an address out of him—76 Totter's Lane. Have Ziggy run that, will you? I don't have a date, but he said he lived with his granddaughter, so it would be recent—for you. I've got to see if I can track him down." Sam grabbed his coat, then stopped and looked at Al, who was dutifully punching the address into the handlink. "Do you know where he's staying?"

Al shook his head. "We don't have very much information on him at all."

"Well, go to him and see where he is, and then come back and tell me. I can't waste time looking all over the place for him."

Al nodded, understanding, and called, "Gooshie, centre me on John," before punching the appropriate button on the handlink. Unlike he'd been expecting, however, there was no whirlwind as the holographic images around him rearranged themselves into a display of new surroundings. "Gooshie? What's going on?" Al frowned. "Whaddaya mean you can't get a lock on him? Search the entire country; heck, even search the entire century if you have to—just get me there!" Another pause. "Damn it, Gooshie! We've been feeding Ziggy all we can on this guy—how can she not have enough information for a lock?" A brief moment, then, "Well, try it anyway!" Angrily, Al punched the handlink again, and this time his surroundings dissolved into a whirl of colour.


A/N First off, a tip of the hat to Rebecca, my first reviewer. Now, on to defending myself. For one, I know in the DW episode The Girl in the Fireplace, it was said that the Doctor walked among Reinette's memories. Well, I'm pretending it's different for everyone, or at least different for a genius whose mind has been Swiss-cheesed from leaping around in time. With QL, I honestly cannot remember which episode it was that mentioned the sort of things that Sam can recall about his leaps, so I took literary liberties with that. Secondly, I haven't read any QL or DW books, so if anything I put down contradicts them, please overlook it. If it really irks you, you can tell me, and I'll consider changing it, providing if I can make it work. And if anything doesn't make sense (at least by the end of the story), meaning I've missed something, or anything along those lines, I'll be happy to fix it if someone informs me, because chances are, I won't notice myself. As for any random references I stick in this story, such as to Dr. Seuss or Alice in Wonderland, kindly note that it is merely a reference and that the works belong to their respective creators.