May 8, 1999
Stallion's Gate, Los Alamos, New Mexico
"I still stand firm with the theory that wherever you were when you contacted him last, he wasn't really where he thought he was, or told you he was," Donna insisted. They sat around the conference table.
"You think he was dreaming," Al said again. He had learned long ago that Donna was very difficult to argue with.
"You locked onto him. He has leaped into one of your dreams once before. The two of you are connected, through Ziggy. All of that makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is that Ziggy never knew when or where you were. Once he leaped to 1969, Ziggy locked on, however briefly. She could find him then. He was actually in San Diego. He wasn't in Pennsylvania or West Virginia or wherever you thought he was."
"Go ahead. We have your attention," Al assured her.
"The things you described were abstract, almost metaphoric. Moe Stein, who was Ziggy. Knowing things, but getting them not quite right. The bartender was also Al. The nicknames. Frank and Jimmy. He was lamenting the leaping experience. Saving people, being part of their lives, then disappearing and no one knowing. People were angry at him because he was himself and not someone they knew. Your Uncle. Did Sam know he existed in real life, Al?" she asked.
"I don't remember specifically mentioning him, but I've known Sam for 19 years. I don't remember what I may or may not have mentioned," he said.
"When we think he's bouncing around in time, maybe he's in a place like that. Where his mind is still active. Only for whatever unknown reason, now his whole body is there," she said.
"Ziggy said you could explain her theory, Donna. Can you?" he asked.
The look on her face changed as he watched. She had been discussing, almost lecturing them. Relaying factual information as such was one of her many skills as a scientist. She seemed to shrink down in her seat, her face paler, the cold comfort of factual information slowly giving way to a dread that threatened to overwhelm her. "I can. But it's really bad," she said.
"Go ahead," Al coached her.
"I'm just stating this first, for the record. I may be the quantum physics expert here, but I don't even come near to explaining things the way Sam sees them. I can't. But the accelerator works based on the principle that he is replacing someone in the past. Because within his own lifetime, everyday of his life he already exists somewhere on this plane. So on his birthday in 1953, he was in his mother's arms as a baby. Sam could not have been in the bar at the same time, in his own body."
She paused to take a drink of water, her hand shaking as she placed it back down. "But we know, because Beth told you, he did leap back to April 3, 1969 in his own body. Ziggy confirmed it. But on April 3, 1969, Sam was in high school in Elk Ridge, Indiana. In 11th grade. I don't know how it happened. It defies the laws of any quantum physics that I can explain to you.
"Everything else I'm going to say is just theoretical. But Ziggy was right, in effect. Sam would have warped time, and thus warped space, as they are both connected, by forcing himself into a time where he already existed. So the string," she made a gesture in the air to signify the circle. "When crumpled, causes the days of his life to touch. If he traverses the ball in the way he did, he creates a tangle. Not a knot, a tangle. The only way to untangle something like that is to pull the string out in exactly the same order you pushed it in."
"Meaning…?" Al asked.
"Meaning he would have to reverse what he did in 1969. Which he will never do, even if it means he can't ever get back," she said, forcing out each word like it weighed a thousand pounds.
The silence around the table was heavy like lead. Everyone looked somber. She expected strangely for people to offer condolences, because she felt inside, that Sam was lost. Irretrievable.
She hadn't quite accepted it yet, not completely, as she struggled with mathematical functions and computer calculations. After so long holding out hope, it was too final, too difficult, to acknowledge the truth.
"I know almost nothing about what you are talking about," Beth interjected. "But I'm just throwing this out there. When something gets so tangled that you can't undo the knots, you can cut through it with scissors, right? You lose some of the integrity of the pieces, but if you cut just a select few, the majority is intact. Does that sound crazy?" she added.
"I don't know," Donna said weakly. Al was used to her brain working on problems to solve. It seemed her mind had winked out of this meeting after her dire prediction.
With a wary, concerned eye Al regarded her, but said, "I think this is enough for one day. Ziggy is still scanning, which we all know is a shot in the dark. But it's all we can do for now. Dismissed."
Donna stayed seated, slumped in her chair, dazing off into the distance. Al gave his wife a concerned look, and a tilt of his head to indicate she should go to her. Beth nodded gently as Al left the room.
Beth was still walking toward her when she heard Donna said darkly, "He's gone. There isn't any way to bring him back. He's gone, lost out there, alone, for the rest of his life."
"You can't give up this easily. Not after all this time. Just because you can't conceive of a way doesn't mean there isn't one," she reasoned.
"If there is, the only one who could figure it out would be Sam. He needed six months to finish the retrieval program, but the committee thought it was too long and he didn't have enough funding because he missed the last meeting and so he just jumped before they shut it down. He needed six months. The rest of us needed six years. I'm so far behind him it would take the rest of my life to figure this out and even then…"
There was almost no inflection in her speech, Beth noted. She was in shock. Beth's first instinct was to just get her out of there, and bring her to her house. "You look exhausted. Why don't I bring you home?"
"Beth, you're always mothering me. Really, I'm fine," Donna said. Was it something in her word choice, something on her face? Donna would never know later. But as she stood from the seat, she felt herself crack inside, like the ground opening up after an earthquake. It was as if her entire body was turning itself inside out. She fell on her knees, her head bowed to the floor, looking like she could be praying, if her arms weren't folded under.
No sound issued forth from her, so Beth didn't realize she was sobbing until she bent down to her side. Beth pulled her hair back from the side of her face as a low sound like howl of a wounded animal sprang from her chest. Beth tried to lift her, but her muscles were rigid like stone and she trembled all over. Beth jumped up, darting into the hallway for help. She found an MP and asked him to call the infirmary for help.
Donna had to be sedated to move. She was in the infirmary for an hour, until Al recommended Beth just take her home. It was only after Beth had driven her home, undressed her, and literally put her in bed before Donna spoke again. All she said was one heartbroken sentence. "I'm never going to see him again."
May 8, 1999
Stallion Springs, New Mexico
"Sam did this to her," Al said angrily.
"Don't you think you're being a little harsh?" Beth asked him.
"You expect me to believe that Sam didn't know what was going to happen when he did what he did?" Al asked.
"He does have memory loss, Al. There's a chance," she said in defense.
"I just think he didn't think. He can be very impulsive at times, thinking with his heart instead of his head," Al said.
"He went back there for you, damn it!" she said, raising her voice. "You listen to me, Admiral Calavicci. He did that for you. You are his best friend. Once he knew he had the power to help you, he helped you. That's what friends do."
"What about Donna? She was wiped completely out of his memory the entire time. You forget, before you were here, it was Donna and me. Holding each other together back here. Do you know how many times she cried over him? Over things that she knew had happened to him? Over pain he didn't know he was inflicting on her? And now he's gone, and she's alone. I did ask him to help me, once. But even back then, if I knew the price I was asking him to pay, I wouldn't let him do it. And I definitely wouldn't let him do this to her for my benefit. Ever."
"It's done. As much as you wish you could change it, you can't. You need to let Dr. Fuller take this over. It's hitting too close to home for Donna right now. She can't think straight. Samantha understands it in a different way, but sometimes that helps when you're stuck," she offered.
He sighed, shaking his head in agreement with her. "Until then, Donna needs help."
"She has help. She has us."
Maybe that had been what Sam had been counting on.
May 9, 1999
Stallion Springs, New Mexico
"Ziggy, who is at the door?" Donna called as she dried her hair with a towel in her bathroom.
"Dr. Fuller," Ziggy said.
Curiosity got the better of her, as she told Ziggy to let her in. It was after all, 8 o'clock in the morning. She was slightly uncomfortable in just her bathrobe, but knew if Samantha was here, there was a good reason. They never associated outside of work, and she thought with a start, this was the first time the younger woman had ever been to her house.
"I'm sorry to bother you at home, Dr. Elesee," she said, her deep southern accent tempered, but still lightly present in her voice. "But I was up all night working on a problem, and I wanted to run it by you before I tell the Admiral."
"You didn't have to come out here now, Samantha. And you don't need to run anything by me. Al wanted you to head this up. I trust your judgment," she said neutrally.
The young woman looked uncomfortable, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her jacket. Sam always did that, she thinks, as Donna sees her husband's eyes looking out at her. Samantha started, "I'm sorry if this comes out the wrong way. But I know you and I don't really get along. I mean, not like you do with everyone else. And I just wanted you to know something."
Donna felt her stomach swirl with discomfort. The way she felt had nothing to do with the girl herself, and Donna felt the stab of guilt, realizing that it was her own jealousy that had created the tension between them. Every time she looked at Samantha, she was reminded of her husband's desperate love for her mother, Abigail, in the past. Samantha had no idea about any of it, no idea that Sam was her father. "Samantha," she began, "I apologize if I've been a little frosty with you. It's just-"
"Look, Dr. Elesee, I know what it's like to feel like no one understands you. It makes you shut down a little on the inside, as a way to protect yourself. I'm sorry if it sounds presumptuous of me, but I think you understand that feeling more than you let anyone know. Working here has made be feel like at least in one place, I do belong. You're the smartest woman I've ever met. And before you list off my IQ like everyone else always does, I mean smart. You can work in a gray area and still come out the other side with options. People like me spend so much time trying to light up the gray, sometimes we never make it out the other side. I just wanted you to know that," she finished.
Donna was speechless. When she found her voice, it was the warmest it had ever been when addressing her. "Dr. Beckett thinks the way you do," she said softly. "And you're right about me, too. It never occurred to me we had so much in common. I"m sorry if I ever made you feel awkward."
Samantha smiled softly. "I remember Dr. Beckett saving my mother's life. And when he did that, he saved mine too. Funny how I didn't know that when it happened, but that's time travel I guess. And now he needs my help. I think it's only fair to do whatever I can."
Donna smiled a genuine smile, then motioned for Samantha to sit. "Tell me," Donna said.
"It started with a theory I started to develop based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle," she said. Donna listened with rapt attention.
"The way Ziggy works is by scanning for Dr. Beckett's neurons throughout time, right? And then she can calculate her probability matrices based on the information at hand. But whatever the situation in the past may be, we don't know in effect what the real problem would ever have been had Dr. Beckett not leaped in. He already has disrupted what we're trying to observe."
Donna's brain took over, working the idea into her concept of understanding. Samantha kept talking. "The best example of this is when Dr. Beckett leaped into Jesse Tyler. Ziggy said he was there to keep the old woman from being killed on the railroad track. Now, I know there weren't any records that showed if Jesse died in the accident too. But Dr. Beckett sat at the counter, when Jesse wouldn't have. Everything that transpired after that was caused by that initial incident. The burning cross, the car accident, getting himself arrested. Melny wouldn't have been on the railroad tracks if Dr. Beckett hadn't replaced Jesse. Ziggy was postulating on an altered state."
"Oh my God," Donna breathed, dumbfounded that she had never thought to think of any of Sam's leaps from that perspective. "Charlie McKenzie wouldn't have left Machiko at the train station, Michelle wouldn't have been in Central Park alone if her mother hadn't seen Sam reading, Tamlyn wouldn't have been the next victim if the killer hadn't gotten jealous of her relationship with Dylan."
Samantha just nodded, harder and faster as Donna talked. "Exactly!" she exclaimed. "We think Ziggy has all the altered timelines in her database, but they aren't there until she locks on to Dr. Beckett. So she has no record of what really happened before Dr. Beckett altered their states."
"So Dr. Beckett may be putting things right that he made wrong by interfering with the past in the first place?" she asked.
"It could be, but I don't think it's really that bad. It doesn't happen all the time. But when it does, it complicates the retrieval matrix. And now that, as you put it, tangled up the path through his life, we may never be able to lock onto him again. But Mrs. Calavicci had a good point," she said. "Sometimes it takes someone unfamiliar with the problem to get a fresh perspective, when we've been crunching these numbers for five years and wondering why nothing works."
"About cutting the string, you mean?" she asked.
"Yes. If there was a way for us to disrupt the string, cut it, he could never leap back to the days before it. Say we can find a way to cut it at 1979. He would never go back past 1979. And if we can cut it closer and closer, we can narrow it down to the point where he is only in one place, and we can retrieve him. We just have to have one positive neuron lock and then have Ziggy start quantum tracking. I've tested that before, and I know it works. The problem has always been us not being able to find him. Warping the space time continuum actually made retrieving him easier, according to this plan."
By the time Dr. Fuller had finished speaking, Donna was feeling hope surge inside her like a wildfire. The desperation of the past few days had vanished. She jumped from the couch. "I need to get ready," she said. "I'll see you there in about an hour. Tell Al what you told me. And then tell him Gushie has to start a nano search. It's going to take a long time, so the sooner he starts the better." Just as she was about to disappear into her bedroom, she called to Samantha, "Thank you."
At the younger woman's confusion, Donna added, "For giving me a reason to hope again."
August 22, 1999
Stallion's Gate, Los Alamos, New Mexico
"March 23, 1989. That was where Ziggy found him, after continuous nanosearch for almost three months. The quantum tracking worked, from everything we could measure. The modifications we made to the nuclear accelerator also tested correctly. I don't have a legitimate explanation as to why we couldn't retrieve him," Samantha said with utter defeat.
"So what you're telling me is that Dr. Beckett can only leap between March 23, 1989 and...some unknown date in the future where he dies," Al said.
"Dr. Fuller thinks, although there is no way to test her hypothesis, the failure is that the quantum tracking should have gone backwards and forwards in time, and it only went backwards. We should have been able to pull him back from that day in 1989," Donna added. 'But it sent him forward, into the future, because the track on the other side malfunctioned. The knot, that is the advent of Quantum Leap, acts much like an event horizon. Mrs. Calavicci was correct, although the quantum physics reason behind it is much more complex, and not really pertinent or relevant right now."
"Thank you for that," Al scoffed, not in the mood to hear complex scientific theories explained. "Can you fix it, try again?" Al asked.
Al watched them exchange worried glances. Donna was the one who answered. "We can. But we have to do another nano search. And now we have a much narrower margin where this will work."
"Why?" Al asked.
"Because if he has gone beyond today, August 22, 1999, he won't be trapped in the past anymore. Cutting the string beyond the knot, May 12, 1989, removes the Project from the tracking matrix. He'll be trapped in the future. With absolutely no way to bring him back," Samantha said gravely.