May 5, 1999
Stallion's Gate, Los Alamos, New Mexico
"He….leaped." Ziggy's electronic voice was abnormal, lower pitched and distorted, like a phonograph record played on the wrong speed.
"You ok, Ziggy?" Gushie asked, hearing the strange tone.
"No, Dr, Gushman, I am not," she replied, in the same discordant sound. The panel in front of him flashed and purred, beeping in time with the colors as they flashed.
Before he even had time to start a diagnostic, he heard Verbena over the commlink. "Gushie, find Admiral Calavicci and bring him to the waiting room. Now. Something's wrong. Really wrong. I can't explain." She sounded more concerned than he could remember her sounding.
After Gushie had herded the Admiral to the waiting room as requested, he understood the reason for the panic. Dr. Beckett's body, the aura of his body, had disappeared.
}QL{
"Ziggy is sure he leaped?" Donna asked again.
"Yes," the computer replied, still in an abnormal tone.
She shook her head. "It's not possible. I know, Al, you said he leaped as himself. But that's not possible! He can't travel in time without displacing someone from the past to do so. Because he already exists at one point in time in his lifetime. There can't be two Sam Becketts in the past. It defies the Pauli Exclusion principle. It defies the laws of quantum physics."
"And yet, where is he?" Al asked.
"Ziggy has to be wrong," she insisted.
"I am not," she said defiantly.
"Even if he didn't leap to somewhere yet, his body's never disappeared out of there. You have to admit something weird is going on here," Tina added.
"How is Ziggy ever going to find him?" Dr Fuller asked, a mystified worry in her tone.
"I asked the same question," Al grumbled. His anxiousness swirled around him like an invisible storm.
"I have some ideas that I can run by the programming staff. Right now it's the best I can do," Gushie offered. "Ziggy has proposed the possibility that she may not be able to find him."
"I need something, at least a plan, in an hour," Al demanded.
}QL{
It had been a herculean effort, but against all odds, Ziggy had managed to connect Sam and Al inside the imaging chamber. How Al had known, to scan on Sam's birthday, she couldn't explain, other than the link they shared via their neurons and mesons through Ziggy. Well, the less scientific part of her thought that, despite the technical reasoning, the bond between Sam and Al was so strong that it transcended sense and rationality. And to prove her very emotional idea, that had been the very thing that located him. Al's hunch.
Ziggy's speech was still abnormal, and as Donna stood now beside Gushie, for the first time in the history of Quantum Leap, Ziggy didn't know where they were. Sam and Al were conversing, and Ziggy had blanked out. Al had known the date, August 8, 1953. Even now, when queried about the date, she swore she had no data. Sam had been wherever he was for almost five hours, before Al made contact.
Donna had been frightened many times over the course of Sam's leaping. But the frigid terror that had gotten a grip on her could not be shaken. The entire situation was eerie and unsettling, and nothing she did would make her feel better.
She heard the imaging chamber door open, but found that it seemed to echo inside her head. Now, every noise in the room, beeping, voices, all of it, echoed in a discordant cacophony that made her head ache. She felt like she was under water. Her arms and legs felt heavy. Panic reeled, when she realized she was trying to speak, but her voice made no sound that she could hear. She struggled to focus, then realized she was struggling to stay conscious.
The darkness encroached from the edges of her vision. She felt as if a hood came down over her face, the darkness won, and she dropped like a rag doll to the floor of the control room.
April 3, 1969
San Diego, California
Beth cried for a long time in front of him, and, in his emotional state, he had begun to cry too. When she had finally collected herself enough to speak, she asked, "Where is he? How do you know?"
He had told her first, that it was a long story. And it was. Start at the beginning, he advised himself. "He's a POW. The VC grabbed him after his plane was shot down in 1967."
"Oh God," she breathed, her eyes closing tightly, at the wave of horror that had overtaken her.
"How I know is a much longer story," he began cautiously. "And it's going to sound outlandish. Crazy. But I can prove to you what I'm saying is true. If you just let me finish."
She fixed curious eyes on him, holding herself tightly around the arms. "Ok," she said hesitantly.
"I'm from the future." He watched her start to turn her head to the side, regarding him sideways through slit eyes. "Please, just listen," he blurted. "I promise this will make sense when I'm done."
"I'm a quantum physicist. I built a time machine for the U.S. government, with Admiral Al Calavicci's help. I started traveling in time in 1995. Where Al is to me now is 1999. In the desert in New Mexico. The way that it works is that I can switch places with someone. I leap into what looks like their body-they occupy my body, inside the time machine."
She jumped out of the chair. "This is crazy! You-" Sam could tell he frightened her. "He's an admiral?"
What a weird thing to fixate on, he thought. But a flash of memory came at him, and he started speaking. He stuttered, since his brain was moving faster than his mouth could interpret. "I know. Al told me before he had thought anyone above the rank of lieutenant was a horse's ass." He watched her mouth drop open, saw her shiver slightly. "But he was a semi-retired Rear Admiral when I met him in 1980."
She stood still, listening. "The past three days, I had switched places in time with Jake Rawlins, the police officer that stopped you at the marina and changed your flat." Her head tilted, her cheeks lost their color. He moved toward her, touched her elbow gently. "Just sit," he said softly. She looked down at his hand on her arm for several beats too long before she moved to sit back down.
"I came back, gave you a bouquet of calla lilies. Took you out for tacos and beer. I called you a cheap date, and you got offended. Afterward, we came back here and you told me about Andy. Who'd died earlier from septicemia caused by a pseudomonas infection. And you broke down, and I held you." With each word he spoke, he saw her eyes widen in disbelief.
She covered her mouth with her hand, visibly shaken. "The way you speak...your mannerisms. You're exactly like he was," she said in wonder.
"Because I was him," Sam stressed. He felt his eyes start to burn. "I ran out of here so fast, after I'd promised to take you to Mexico, because I saw Al's picture on your mantel."
"What?" she asked, so utterly dumbfounded, it was the only word she could choke out.
"I was here to save my partner's life. That's kind of what I do. Travel around in time and fix things that went wrong before. Save people," he said humbly. "God sort of took over...once I leaped in, so to speak."
"I don't understand," she said slowly.
"I know, I know. I don't always, really, either. And that part isn't important. What is important, what I told you, is that Al works with me. He helps me. He's my best friend. And he tried to get me to get you to not...forget him, when I leaped here. For you, that was a few hours ago. Three years have gone by for me since then. But he was breaking the rules. Trying to get me to change things in his own life, which we are not supposed to do. I wanted to help him, but I didn't. I couldn't-" Sam choked on the last words, swiping at the tears that coursed down his cheeks.
Her attention was rapt, but she was confused, still. "This is me. What I look like," he said, gesturing to his body. "This time, I came here on purpose. As myself. In my past, Al's past, you married that lawyer who you kept running into, two months from now. Al was rescued and repatriated in 1973. After he'd lost you."
"1973?" she gasped. "Six years?" She was horrified, almost nauseous.
Crying, Sam continued. "He was here, as a hologram, while I was Jake Rawlins. Which meant he could see and hear you, but you couldn't see or hear him."
She burst into tears again, thinking about dancing in the dark alone to her and Al's song. She had felt him then, she was certain. She had even spoken his name out loud, the sensation was so strong. She had attributed it to his ghost, or his spirit, visiting her somehow. "I knew he was here…" she forced out. Then she dissolved into tears again. "I thought it was his ghost or something."
Sam stood, walked to her chair, and put his arms around her. She rested her head against his shoulder. There was something familiar in the way he held her. "You were Jake, weren't you?" she said, affirming to herself that she believed what he was saying. "Everything you said is true. It's unbelievable, but it's true."
Eventually, he stepped back and sat again. He smiled, so gently, relieved that he had at last gotten through to her.
"What am I supposed to do? How can I help him?" she asked earnestly.
The one time he had gone back, to 1997, that he could at last remember, now that he was leaping as himself, he had poured through Ziggy's database, absorbing as much information about the world he had been changing as he could. Donna had been patient, after waiting three years to see him again, and-Oh, Donna. The thought of her nearly drove him down on his knees.
Beth seemed to notice. "Are you all right?" she asked.
No, he thought, but it didn't matter any more.
He pushed the pain aside, the aching hole inside him when he thought about his wife. "In 1971," he began, punctuating each word so she would remember, "The Pulitzer Prize for photojournalism will be posthumously awarded to a woman named Maggie Dawson. The winning photograph is a close up of Al's face. He was being relocated by the VC, and she was traveling with a squad of Navy Seals who were trying to rescue him. The mission failed, and Maggie was killed. On April 8, 1970.
"When Life magazine is published next year, Al's picture will be on the cover."
"How did I not see that, the first time?" she asked, wiping away at her tears.
He sighed. "It didn't happen the first time. Not like that. The first time, there was no picture. And my brother died, trying to rescue him, when the mission failed." It took all Sam's might not to break completely down. "Al helped me save my brother's life. Because now my brother is alive. But Al spent three extra years in Vietnam because of it. I came here to help him."
She half-smiled, though tears still streamed down her face. "You were his friend. There weren't that many people Al got close to, you know, after how hard his life had been. But once you were important, there was nothing he wouldn't do, if you needed him."
"There wasn't anyone, or anything, that was more important to him than you," Sam said intensely. Her smile tilted at the corner. "Maybe he didn't tell you that. Maybe he didn't realize it, until it was too late, and he was fighting for his life every day, but he knew. Because the thought of seeing you again was the only thing keeping him alive. Even for six years."
Her face crumpled as she cried again. "But I wasn't there, was I?"
"Not the first time. But you can be now. God gave him a second chance."
"How can I help him?" she asked again.
"Once that issue of Life is published, call your Senator. Tell him that the man in the photograph is your husband. The government knew back then. They wouldn't have sent the Seals to rescue him if they hadn't. I'm sure they must have some idea. They can change his status from missing in action to prisoner of war. Every American POW was...will be...released from Vietnam on February 12, 1973."
"But you can't tell, right now, if doing that will change anything, right?" she asked.
"Time traveling erases some of my memory. And I can't remember things I change until I go back to my present. So no, I can't know if any of that will shorten his time as a prisoner. Or if you choose to wait or not."
She leaned forward in the chair, gently rocking herself back and forth, absorbing everything he had told her. "I tried to be hopeful. Before. Think that soon I would get word that he was alive. But the months turned into years. I really felt, inside, that he was dead. But I know, I know now," she stressed, locking eyes with Sam, "that he's alive. And I don't care how long it takes. I'll get him back. And I'll wait for him. Even six years if I have to."
Sam smiled through his tears, imagining he heard his friend's voice, as he had so many times through the years. You did it, Sam.
And he leaped.
May 6, 1999
Stallion Springs, New Mexico
"Donna, it's Beth," Donna heard, muffled, through the door into her home. Donna had heard the doorbell, but she was afraid to stand and answer it. She was still a little dizzy after her vertigo attack, an attack the doctors had not been able to explain. Her ears were fine, her sinuses were fine, her vision was fine.
"Ziggy, open the door," Donna called, seated on the floor in front of her couch, worried that if she sat on the cushions, she could fall off. She felt that unsteady. Lying down made the room spin, with the sensation of looking down a kaleidoscope.
The door creaked open, and the older woman slowly entered the room. "I just came to check on you."
"I'm dizzy. Really dizzy. Still." She pressed her fingers over the bridge of her nose. "But the doctors said nothing's wrong." Wasn't that good news? She thought. She had delivered the words like bad news.
Donna looked dreadful. She was shaking, pale, and green around the gills, as Al would say. Beth could sense how close the younger woman was to hysteria, and the fact that she was struggling with a gargantuan effort to not completely melt down. "Al had Gushie hustle me out of there like there was a gas leak. He knew how worried I was and he didn't even talk to me before he went home."
Donna saw only sympathy in Beth's eyes, a warm familiar comfort to which she had grown accustomed. Beth understood exactly how Donna felt, like no one else ever could. "He came straight home."
"Sam changed something huge, didn't he?" Donna asked, her voice shaking with fear. "That's why I'm so dizzy. Al must have almost passed out. Ziggy gets crazy when that happens."
There was no reason left to not tell her the truth. The thought of Al and his state of mind by the time he had returned home, Beth knew, Donna's wellbeing had been dislocated in his mind. "You're right. At least what I know about." Beth's eyes began to glisten with tears. "Sam left the bar and leaped himself to San Diego in April of 1969."
"Al found him?" she asked, sitting forward too quickly and clutching at her temples as the room spun like a calliope.
Beth shook her head no.
"How can he leap without Al? He needs Al, Beth. I'm so scared." She was openly crying.
Beth rushed to her, kneeling beside her on the floor. "I know you are. But I know my husband. He will never give up until he finds Sam. Never."
Thoughts flashed through Donna's mind. "How does Ziggy know when Al can't find him?"
"Ziggy didn't know. I did," she admitted.
"But how….?" Donna gasped. "Wait….April 1969 in San Diego? Didn't Sam leap there before? Why am I having so much trouble focusing on it?"
Beth was crying too, holding onto Donna's shoulders. "He leaped back there to tell me Al was alive. That he was a POW. That I should wait for him."
All the color drained from Donna's face. Beth gripped her shoulders tighter, holding her steady. "My God…" Donna croaked, her throat dry as sandpaper.
"There was a different past. Before. Where I didn't." Beth's face went slack, her eyes burning as she added. "Wait, I mean,"
The enormity of Beth's words and what they meant slammed into Donna like a tidal wave. "The entire project...both projects...every minute of my life after I met Al. It was all different, until today." She spoke as if she were in a trance. She had trouble focusing her eyes on Beth's face when she said. "But I don't remember. Neither should you. Why…."
"I don't remember it changing. I remember talking to Sam. And now I remember thinking he looked familiar when Al introduced him to me before, but, I guess...history changed somewhere. The wrinkle under the carpet smoothed out to shake all the things in my life around."
Donna smiled inwardly at the reference to something Al had said to her, a long time ago, about how he dealt on the go with pliable memories and alternate timelines simultaneously occupying his mind. "Mine too, I guess," she added.
Donna felt a chill, felt the hair on her arms rise underneath tiny, pinpoint arrows of flesh. "Al...he was different. He was...married...many times. And he dressed….differently. I feel like I had a vivid dream like that. But it wasn't really a dream, was it? How do I know that?"
Beth just pulled Donna close to her, unable to comprehend the reality Donna was describing. "I felt my whole life I knew exactly what happened that day, when I found out. Until Al asked me to describe it to him. I had a giant hole in my memory. Until I realized it was Sam. Fifteen years older in 1969 than he was the day I met him in 1980."
Donna wept heavily, her heart breaking inside her, as Beth rocked her back on forth, her own tears streaming and splashing onto her arms. "He's gone. He leaped out of 1969. Ziggy still can't find him. But Al knows, Donna. He knows what Sam did. What Sam gave up, to help him."
"Sam spent his whole life...wishing he could change the past," she said, her voice distorted from her sobbing. "Regretting what happened to his father. He couldn't admit that was all Quantum Leap, and physics and everything else was all about. About his father. Or why, when he met Al, they were such fast friends, even though they were so different. Deep down, Sam loved Al. Like he would a father."
"Al knew that, Donna. Sam was the son he never had. He even told me that once, when he was frazzled from living with five women in his house. That's why you have to believe, if anyone can find him, and bring him home, it's Al."
"I know, Beth. I know he will," she said, touching Beth's arm affectionately. She looked up at the woman who held her. "I can't believe that before yesterday, I didn't know who you were. That all of this never happened."
"You knew who I was. You babysat our daughters when they were babies." Beth tried to sound confident, knowing with certainty that what she said was the truth. But shaken to the core, also, knowing that even things she knew for certain were not necessarily so. At least, not any more.
"I'm going to go to sleep, and when I wake up, I'll forget this. This will all feel normal. It always does. You will too," Donna said, the dark premonition troubling. "Al's always the only one who remembers," she muttered to herself.
Beth knew that, had heard Al retell twisted histories after Sam's leaping. But her stomach fluttered inside her, as she realized, this time, it was different. For whatever reason, Al was different. Not quite as bad as Donna and her, but not his usual Ziggy-fied self either. Somewhere in between. Would Al's memories of this start to fade?
Please, God, don't let Al forget what Sam did.
May 7, 1999
Stallion's Gate, Los Alamos, New Mexico
Al went into his office the second he arrived, deadly focused, and locked the door. He turned off the broadcast link for Ziggy, so that only Al could hear her.
"Ziggy, we need to talk. Seriously talk," Al said tightly.
"I am always serious, Admiral," Ziggy quipped.
"No, Ziggy, I mean this. Do you hear my voice? This is what Beth calls my Admiral voice," he growled. "I don't usually take this tone with you. But it's time."
Clicks and whirs, gentle warbling, but no sharp retort. "I need some answers, Ziggy. I know you know what happened. And for some reason, I can't sort it out like I usually do. You're going to tell me what happened."
"Situations like this are beyond my capacity, Admiral."
"No, Ziggy," he barked. "I know you have your ego, and you don't have guilt or remorse. But I know you have something that I need. Something Sam gave you, because it was the best part of him." He sighed. "Compassion, Ziggy."
Ziggy was silent. Al thought for a long time Ziggy was just ignoring him. He felt the handlink whir alive, chirping gently. He watched the screen, page by page, as the feed began to scroll.
It started in 1969, he saw, as document after document flashed by from Ziggy's alternate database. A death certificate issued from the U.S. navy, with Al's name on it. A marriage license with Beth's name, and a man named Dirk, dated 1 month after the date on the death certificate.
He wasn't dizzy, he told himself, as he stumbled backward onto the sofa. Not dizzy. Just suddenly not able to stand. He blinked hard, straining to focus as the feed continued. Over 25 different legal documents all relating to Al declaring himself alive once he returned in 1973. A decree of divorce, with Al and Beth's name, dated 3 months after the newspaper article written about his repatriation. Promotion documentation, to Lieutenant Commander backdated to 1968, then another to Commander, dated 1973. Captain in 1976. Admiral in 1980. A marriage license from 1976 to a woman named Edina, a divorce decree dated 1980. A marriage license from 1981 to a woman named Ruth, a divorce decree dated 1988. A marriage license from 1989 to a woman named Sharon, a divorce decree dated 1992. A marriage license from 1993 to a woman named Maxine, and a divorce decree dated 1995.
He nearly dropped the handlink, nauseated. Still more information flashed and flashed, hurting his eyes with the brightness of it. The last thing Ziggy showed him was a photograph, taken at the initiation of PQL. He scanned the photo. He felt his skin crawl as his eyes twitched to the real photo, what he thought of as the real photo, on his desk. The desk photo showed Sam in the center, one arm protectively wrapped around Donna's waist, the other draped across Al's shoulders. Beth peeked over Al's shoulder, resting her chin against him. Next to Beth was Dr. Beeks, then Dr. Fuller, then Gushie with his arms around his wife, Tina.
Looking back at Ziggy's screen, he scrutinized the other photo. Dr. Beeks was there, and Dr. Fuller and Dr. Gushman. Sam was there, and to his right he could see himself. He did a double take. What the hell was he wearing? It looked like a royal purple jacket with alligator skin patterned lapels, a purple cravat with small pink diamonds covering it, with a teal green shirt and pale green trousers. He tilted the handlink back, noticing his shoes in the picture were golden. Hanging onto him, with her hand tucked into Al's back pocket was Tina, Gushie's wife. Beth and Donna were absent.
"Admiral?" Ziggy called into the silence.
"Was Tina number six?" he asked, marveling at the strange sound of his voice. For once, Ziggy stayed silent.
What she did say, she said after another long silence. "Compassion, to me, was not showing you this, Admiral. Do you understand?"
"I do, Ziggy," he said softly. "But what about Sam?"
"Dr. Beckett erased the timeline you read about. When he leaped out of the bar."
Al closed his eyes, unaware that tears had accumulated in the corners, wetting the dark circles under his eyes. "If you knew he leaped to 1969, why didn't you tell us?"
"He was there so briefly, by the time I locked on, he had already leaped again," Ziggy said.
"But you found him!" Al exclaimed.
"Dr. Beckett directed himself to 1969. I felt his intention. I have never felt anything akin to that before. He didn't have the same intention when he leaped out," she said.
"Sam said the bartender told him he's been leaping himself. All along," Al muttered.
"At least in this circumstance, it would appear, the bartender was correct."
"But you have no idea, no inkling at all, where Sam is now?" he asked.
Ziggy remained silent.
"Ziggy?" Al asked, alarmed at the silence.
"I have been trying, Admiral. I have a hypothesis as to why I have been unsuccessful, but I was reluctant to put it forth."
"Why, Ziggy?" he asked.
"Because I believe Dr. Beckett damaged the fabric of time, by duplicating his presence in 1969."
"What the hell does that mean?" he asked.
"Dr. Elesee can explain it to you, Admiral. It is rather complicated. It would explain the weakness of his presence in our link. It has never been so weak," Ziggy almost sighed.
"He's never leaped in his own body before," Al said. "What if that's causing it?"
"I sensed him in 1969. And then lost him. He remained within his own body," Ziggy argued.
He paused, and the silence stretched. It startled him when Ziggy spoke again. "There is another issue I believe I need to discuss with you, Admiral."
"Go ahead," he said testily.
"I assume you are aware of the amount of deviated timeline information Dr. Elesee has been able to retain," she said.
"Yes," he said warily.
"She inadvertently let it slip to me that this has always been a problem for her, since the very beginning," Ziggy said.
"She has? Why didn't she ever say anything to me about it?" he asked.
"I do not know, precisely, but Dr. Elesee is quite independent and private when it comes to things of this nature," Ziggy said. "The severity of the situation at hand has forced me to postulate a hypothesis."
When Ziggy wasn't forthcoming, Al offered, "Well? What is it? Spit it out!"
"It is genetic field transference."
"Ziggy, how is that possible?" he asked.
"The same way it was possible before. Genetic markers in common with Dr. Beckett. Or you, Admiral. His great-grandfather. His daughter."
Frustrated, he said, "Dr. Elesee doesn't have any genetic markers in common with Dr. Beckett."
Ziggy paused, and Al actually wondered if she was being dramatic on purpose. "But she had the potential. If she and Dr. Beckett had conceived a child."
Al was glad he was sitting down already. "Ziggy…." he started, but didn't know what else to say. "So what the hell are we supposed to do now?" Al asked gruffly.
"I believe a private conversation with Dr. Elesee is in order. In terms of the other problem, I do not know," she keened. "What I do know is that Dr. Beckett's death, regardless of when it occurs, is a fixed point in time. Dr. Beckett built this apparatus, and me, to move himself along the string of his life. We must reach the point before the ends meet."
}QL{
"What's the matter, Al? I hate it when you can't sit still. It makes me nervous," Donna said, after she had assured him she felt better.
"I...uh...I have to ask you something. That I wish to God I didn't. Ziggy has a theory." At her furrowed brow, he continued. "I would have asked Verbena. Only she doesn't know about the Ziggy-fied brains. And I'm not supposed to tell her."
"What theory?" she asked.
"It's about your vertigo. Your memories. The ones that don't make sense."
"What does she think is wrong with me?" she asked.
He starred pacing again, puffing his cigar as he did so. "She thinks it's DNA field transference again. Dr. Fuller has had some minor reactions before, but Verbena's always been able to explain them away without raising her suspicions at all."
She turned and walked back to her sofa, overcome with a horrible sense of dread at where this conversation was going to go. "Remember what you told me, after the conference with Wietzman, when you were talking to Verbena?"
She nodded stiffly, wincing as if she were in pain.
"The test was negative. You were never pregnant," he explained.
She attempted to answer her, but her voice stuck. She cleared her throat. "That wasn't what I said to you. I told you the test was negative. That I wasn't pregnant." She sucked in a huge, shuddering breath. "Then."
His mind put the pieces together, without him having to ask her very much more. He felt his heart break a little on the inside, realizing how long she had carried this around without sharing it. "Did Sam know?" Al asked, his voice husky.
She nodded negatively. "I think it happened the night before he leaped," she said softly.
"When did you…" He couldn't say it out loud.
She sniffled, wiped her face gently. "The night we tried to pull him back, the night he caused the blackout in 1965." She sat up taller, clearing her throat. "I was five weeks along, I think."
His sorrow softened his face. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"
"I couldn't. I just bottled it up. I didn't think it was fair that I would be telling everyone else, when my husband didn't know."
"You could have told Beth. You know she would have helped you," he said compassionately.
"I know. But she wasn't there. At least, not the first time," she looked up at Al. "This is insane. How do you live like this? With no idea what's real anymore?"
"Your brain will catch up, I promise. Your link is weaker, so they should fade. He just changed a lot of things all at once." He sat beside her. "Ziggy thought you had to have some of Sam's DNA inside of you, for that to happen."
"I haven't been pregnant for five years, and I still experience this. His DNA isn't inside me anymore," she said angrily.
He sighed heavily, let out the breath like it was causing him pain. "Ziggy scans for DNA. But the connection is brain waves. Ziggy picked up the baby's brain waves," he finished softly.
The shock of his words hit her chest like a brick. "Oh, God," she moaned. Being so early, and losing her child, although painful both physically and emotionally, had been easier to recover from. Only slightly easier. Her hopes and dreams had crashed as well, but she had recovered. Hearing him talk about the baby's thoughts, part of who she or he would have been, made the loss feel new. This baby that lived in her mind and heart, who was part of her and part of him.
She only realized she was shaking when she felt Al's arm around her shoulders. "Beth knows, Donna. I had to tell her because I needed a medical explanation. The hormonal changes, however brief they were, altered your brain waves, however a minuscule amount. But enough for Ziggy to tell. I'm so sorry," he finished softly.
"You know, I can't tell you how many times Sam and I talked about where we would go if we traveled in time. For him, it was always about his brother. Or his father. I guess I never really knew. Right now, I'd say that night. To stop him from leaping. Only if I did, all of this would reset," she said, her voice squeaking as she cried. "I would have left him and ran away. For God's Sake, I half remember doing that! So then I tell myself to the party. Change tables, get up and go to the bathroom. So we just never meet. I leave Star Bright and move on. Oh God, would that have saved me so much pain," she said bitterly.
After a pregnant pause, she said, "But I can't, Al." She looked at him, imploring him to understand what she meant. "He loved me. I was important to him. He made me happier than I have ever been. Even if it was only for a little while. I can't give that back."
Unable to hide the emotion from her, he added, "Don't be so quick with the past tense. You are important to him. He loves you. No matter what."
}QL{
Al was dreaming.
He was trapped, chained, unable to move from the spot...But it didn't make sense. Did he know he was dreaming? The sense of wrongness permeated.
He should have been in the jungle, cloying heat, the smell of the swamp….but he wasn't. There was an ocean breeze in calm, gentle twilight from a beautiful day. He wasn't in a cage….he stood under a tree.
But despite the scene, he knew he was trapped. Standing watch under a tree. His hands and legs were free, but he couldn't move, no better than he would have been able to had roots sprouted from his feet and anchored him to the spot.
No one harmed him-no beatings, no injuries, no starvation or trauma. But he knew, still, standing here, he was being tortured. Because he could feel it. Something he needed, could not live without, was within his reach, and yet, too far away. Farther than he could ever reach from here. Like starving in front of a banquet, with his hands tied behind his back.
A shrill of fear, desperation and dread. The need to leave, run. But he was also trapped there, rooted to the spot, for the same reason.
He needed to stay...he needed to go...he needed...her.
And she was no longer his.
She looked like she still may have been, here, from where he stood. But she wasn't. On this day, inside the house he stood before, she had given up. Truly stopped hoping he was still alive, accepting the awful truth that her husband was dead, despite his standing with the U.S. Navy. And he was trapped, a ghost in her house, talking to her without her hearing. Watching her, unable to touch her.
Wasn't he in the jungle? His unconscious brain equated torture with Vietnam. Hopelessness and despair happened in Vietnam.
Why then, was he here?
This was worse, he heard a voice tell him in his dream, a voice so familiar it nagged at him, but a voice that had no face.
This never happened, he told the voice, defiant.
Thanks to Dr. Beckett, the voice told him.
The idea rolled over him like a bulldozer, and he woke, shaking in the darkness.
He put his hand against his chest, the remnants of a gnawing ache echoing behind his breastbone. Was he having a heart attack? Was that what it felt like? He thought with a start. He glanced down at the form of his wife, asleep next to him in their bed. And the gnawing bloomed into a flood of emotion, stealing his breath. He touched his cheek, awing that his hand came away wet with his own tears.
"Al," he heard, Beth's voice groggy in the darkness. "Are you all right?"
He felt her spring awake, her hand gentle against his back. So many memories surfaced quickly, waking screaming in the middle of the night, shaking, the fear of his captivity and his post traumatic stress overwhelming him. And Beth's arms, her gentle loving touch, calming as best she could as he worked his demons into a manageable place, over and over again. He would have died in Vietnam, without the hope of returning to her. He would have died after coming home, and finding she had moved on with her life. Died on the inside, he knew, remembering the horrific feed Ziggy had shown him.
He reached for her, wrapping his arm around her. "Just a bad dream," he said. "Not the usual ones, honey," he added, kissing her temple. She lingered in his embrace, not completely reassured.
"Tell me about it," she asked, having listened over the years to recount after recount of nightmares.
"It was some of that...stuff Ziggy showed me is all," he said dismissively, though she felt him shiver slightly at the memory. Al had told her everything when he returned, as heartbreaking as it had been to retell.
"Because you're worried that Ziggy is right."
"Ziggy said something strange, that I can't let go of. I don't know how to interpret it. And of course, she didn't elaborate," Al sighed in frustration. He saw her eyes, focused on his face in the darkness, wordlessly asking for the explanation. Quoting Ziggy, he added, "We have to find Sam before he reached the end of the string."
"End of the string? As in string theory?" she asked, knowing only generics about Sam's time travel theories. "Ziggy's a quantum physicist now?" she asked.
"Sam couldn't get Ziggy to work without including the database with his scientific theories in them. It's a little counterintuitive, but it makes sense," Al said. "I've heard Sam explain that theory so many times I tune it out now. But when Sam leaped back to help Moe Stein, Moe explained the theory to Sam. Only it was slightly different. Almost like the precursor. He said something like if you tie the beginning and the end together, you have a continuous loop, and if you could travel fast enough, you could go back to the beginning of your life."
Beth had heard the same variation multiple times. But she had never heard Moe Stein's take on time travel. Perky, now that the conversation had evaporated her drowsiness, she felt her mind turning it over. "Al," she asked, "forgive me if this sounds stupid. But...building PQL, the accelerator and all that, didn't put any kind of knot in the string, did it?"
His whole face crunched in consternation. "I'm not sure I get you."
"Every time Sam leaps, he leaps into his past. 1987 was the closest leap to him starting to build PQL in 1989. I guess I just assumed that the initiating event would have acted like a knot on his string. A way to protect him from erasing PQL from existence. But he didn't consciously do anything like that, when he built it, right?" she asked.
"What are you getting at?" he asked, his mind unable to fathom more.
"What if Sam is in his future?" she asked.
"Sam can't leap into the future," Al denounced. "Ziggy said something about him damaging the fabric of time. I don't know how that works here, either."
"Before you found Sam in that bar, you told me Gushie scanned all the way to the end of the 21st century. I didn't even know Ziggy had that capability. But she does, doesn't she?" she asked.
"Scanning for Sam's neurons and mesons? Yes, she does. Sam programmed it beyond his life by 50 years as a fail safe, although he never explained why. Especially considering that he didn't load any data from the past a year before his birth. But Sam was frightened of the future. He wanted to travel backwards in time, not forwards. He never wanted to know the future."
"Only in his lifetime. But his life didn't end in 1995. Sam could live to be a hundred. Which means he can leap anytime until almost 2053. He hadn't before. But what's to say he hasn't now?"
"Sam told me the bartender told him he was the one leaping himself. Sam didn't believe it, not at all, and yet what did he do? Leaped himself back to you the second after I left him sitting on that bench," Al said. He rubbed his face, scratching at the scruff on his cheeks.
"But, Al, if he really was in control, even subconsciously, then of course he wouldn't have leaped beyond what he knew. He was too frightened of it. And if he never really believed that he was ever in control, he could have flung himself anywhere into his future. And if Ziggy is right and he somehow damaged space-time..."
It was a brilliant observation. Simple, yet something fresh eyes were needed to propose. "Sam and I had the conversation once, right before he started writing the retrieval program. He had an emergency plan in case he did leap to a point beyond QPL. It's top secret in here. I don't think even Donna knows it exists. If he doesn't exist in the future, because he's been trapped in the past, there's no one to replace. He wouldn't be duplicated in the future. So he would leap as himself. The future is malleable. Ziggy can't track it, because it hasn't happened yet." Al grabbed her, kissed her cheek. "I think you might be onto something. Only the whole God, Fate, Time, or Whoever theory doesn't work. How can he affect the future when it isn't determined yet?"
"I don't know, Al, but I'm sure there are people who can try and figure it out," she assured him.
He jumped out of bed, flipping on the light. "Al, it's the middle of the night. You're going to wake up Mary," she scolded.
"I can't sleep now! I have to tell Gushie to start scanning in the future. I knew it was Sam's birthday, when he leaped as himself. If I hadn't, we never would have found him. It's statistically impossible for all those days, without having a clue as to where to start."
"Al, Gushie's asleep. Everyone's asleep. Two more hours won't make any difference to Sam. But you're going to feel like hell with three hours of sleep tomorrow."
He was wound up, antsy. "It's gonna take forever to find him. I don't want to wait," he told her.
"Al, I know you don't feel your age, but you aren't 30 any more. You can't help Sam at all if you can't function."
"I've spent my entire life keeping other people up at night. Until I met Sam," he lamented.
He saw the crooked grin in the darkness, watched her cross her arms across the pale pink gauze of her nightgown. "Maybe a little exercise, you know, to wear you out a little?" She bit her lower lip, patting the bed next to her.
He dozed off not long after, feeling hopeful.
Not the first time, he thought. Hopelessness, he understood, had no place in this life any more.