MASH 4077th
Ouijongbu, Korea
June 6, 1952
"Thanks, um … Sparky," Sam told the person on the other line before disconnecting the phone. He'd seen plenty of odd-looking telephones during his life and during the duration of his Leaps, but he couldn't seem to figure out the one that sat on Radar O'Reilly's desk. The receiver was placed into what looked like a bag. On top of that, there were all these buttons to keep track of. He had almost bungled a telegram, and typed up the daily report in duplicate instead of the required triplicate. How does Radar do it? He wondered. I'd better take a crash course in Army clerk work before I ruin that man's career. He quickly scanned over the machinery. His photographic memory would recall the placement of each button – now he just needed Al to explain what those buttons meant.
As if on cue, the Imaging Chamber door whooshed open and Admiral Calavicci stepped into 1952.
"I say it was Mrs. Plum in the foyer with the candle," Sam droned.
"Professor Plum," Al corrected. He floated over to Radar's desk and peered over the physicist's shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to learn how to do Radar's job before he doesn't have any job left," Sam replied. He turned to his friend. "Where were you? It's been over five hours."
"Talking to the kid in the Waiting Room." At Sam's look of distrust, Al continued. "All right – we were playing poker."
"Just you and Radar?" He mentally recited the pattern of knobs on the machine against the wall.
"Me, Radar, Verbena, and Erin." Al pulled out a fresh cigar from his breast pocket. "I tell you, Sam," he said as he lit the stogie, "he's pretty good." He inhaled and sighed in content. "Nothing like a good cigar."
Dr. Beckett wrinkled his nose. Even though the stench of the holographic cigar didn't affect him, he could swear he smelled something. "How could you smoke those things?" he asked. "They stink – and they put you at greater risk for lung cancer."
"You can't smell it from where you are," Al said between puffs.
"I've smoked these beauties for over twenty-five years," a voice said in a mid-Western drawl. Leaper and observer looked up to see Colonel Sherman Potter standing in the doorway, his own cigar in hand. "The smell doesn't affect me."
"You're creating a tar factory inside your body," Sam informed the colonel.
Al pointed his cigar toward the leaper. "This isn't the time, Sam," he warned.
"How's Captain Pierce?" Sam asked his – Radar's superior.
"We finally got him to settle down," the colonel told him. "He's being quarantined in the V.I.P. tent."
"That's a smart move," Al said.
"What's his temperature?"
"104 degrees." The older man shook his head. "He's completely delirious – kept calling me 'General Steele' and insisted he wouldn't let me ship the four-oh-double seven to the front lines."
At Sam's confused look, Al consulted the hand link for information. "General Bartford Hamilton Steele visited the unit a few months before Colonel Potter arrived," he recited. "He was called a five-star crack …" he pounded the device, causing it to emit a high-pitched wail. "…Five-star crackpot," he corrected. "He wanted to move the entire unit directly into the line of fire. He also reprimanded Hawkeye Pierce for sending a chopper with recovering patients to Seoul."
"Why?" Sam asked.
Colonel Potter answered, thinking he was the one being addressed. "Same reason Hunnicutt looks like Bigfoot – he's outta his head with fever."
"The nozzle wanted to oversee the move," Al finished.
"Did you finish the daily report?" the colonel asked.
Sam handed the papers to him. "Yes – in triplicate."
"Radar, I don't understand it," Potter started to say. "You of all people should know that the Army likes things done in threes."
"I guess I'm a little worried about Captain Pierce."
"Major Winchester is keeping watch. You just get a good night's rest and let the doctors worry about Pierce," he ordered.
Sam waited until the colonel exited Radar's office before turning back to his observer. "What did you find out about that nurse?" he asked, referring to the girl he'd collided with earlier.
"Nurse?" Al asked. Finally, it clicked. "Oh, yeah – Leah Brighton, otherwise known as 'Baby'. She's having some trouble with a Major Theodore Davis."
"The officer we saw her with?"
"Radar thinks there's something bothering her, but she won't tell him anything. He's guessing Davis, too. He's the C.O. of the unit they treated a few days before you leaped in here."
"What does Ziggy say?"
Al rattled the hand link. "Tomorrow night – or tonight if you consider that it's after midnight already – Nurse Brighton fatally stabs Major Davis in the kitchen."
"She looks so young," Sam whispered.
"She's barely eighteen – she lied about her age to be able to enlist."
"Do you know why she … she did it?" He stuck his head out the door and looked around for Radar's sleeping quarters.
Al picked up on his friend's actions. "Your bed is in here." He gestured to the cot against the wall. "Well, somebody's gotta answer those 2 a.m. phone calls." He flicked some ashes from the tip of his cigar. "And no, Ziggy hasn't been able to come up with any reasons," he said in response to Sam's question. "She's found guilty of the murder, confesses, and is sent to the gas chamber."
Sam cringed. He vaguely remembered a Leap in which a young Al "Bingo" Calavicci perished in the gas chamber. I caused him to be killed, he thought mournfully. One look at the man in the plum fedora reminded him that he had also fixed the situation.
"You'd better hit the sack," Al advised. "You'll be getting some casualties between two and five in the morning. The people here need all the sleep they can get."
Sam yawned in agreement. "See if you can find anything else on Nurse Brighton." He looked under the cot for Radar's pajamas. "A teddy bear?" he asked incredulously as he pulled the worn-out stuffed animal from its hiding place.
The admiral shrugged. "Everybody has their own protection against the insanity," he told the leaper. He pressed a button on the hand link and vanished, leaving Sam alone with the teddy bear.
* * *
To the average person, the area that housed the Imaging Chamber appeared to be a large warehouse with seemingly bland and endless white walls. There was no furniture or wall hangings. Sometimes, during a particularly difficult Leap, Al would have a chair or a cot brought in, but that was it as far as the room's décor was concerned. Leaper and observer were linked via their mesons and neurons, enabling Sam to see and hear Al in the form of a hologram. When the I.C. was activated, the vast warehouse would suddenly be filled with the world of a past era.
"Gooshie, center me on Baby!" he ordered the chief programmer.
After nearly seven years of his life spent in the Imaging Chamber, there were some things that Al would never get entirely used to. For starters, the swirling vortex of five decades of images that surrounded him when the I.C. was brought online always made him feel nauseous. At times he would forget the fact that everything he saw was simply a holographic image to him. Like right now, for instance. Finding himself with his stomach in the middle of a night guard's rifle was enough to give him the heebie-jeebies. He quickly got a hold of himself and walked through the guard.
"I thought I told you to center me on Nurse Brighton," he grumbled.
The hand link blipped. He took it out of his pocket and read the message. "Nurse Brighton is in the shower," Ziggy informed him.
Bushy eyebrows shot up in confusion. "What's she doing taking a shower in the middle of the night?" he asked. He shook his head and floated through the wall of the Nurses' Showers.
Baby was pinned inside one of the stalls while Davis planted a hard kiss on her mouth. "Leave me alone!" she hissed. She tried to kick him, push him away, but he just laughed and kissed her again.
"Get the hell away from her, you nozzle!" Al roared. He tried to swing a punch at the major, but his arm went through the man's head.
Davis used one hand to trap her and the other to grab her robe. "You know you want this," he sneered.
"Gooshie, center me on Sam!" Within two seconds, he was back in Radar's office. "Sam!" he shouted. The leaper was gently snoring. Damnit, Sam! How could you even think of sleeping at a time like this? He leaned over his friend. "Sam, wake up!" he yelled.
Sam opened his eyes and rubbed his ear. "Please don't scream in my ear like that, Al."
The hologram motioned for Sam to get moving. "That nozzle's trying to rape Baby!" he informed him.
By now, the quantum physicist was fully awake. "Where are they?" he inquired.
"He's got her trapped in a shower stall."
Sam threw on a robe and Radar's glasses and ran out the door, not bothering to put any shoes on. Al floated along next to him shouted for him to hurry.
"Go stay with Baby," Sam ordered.
Al repositioned himself into the Nurses' Showers. "Help is on its way, kid," he informed the young nurse.
By this time, Baby had given up fighting and lay like a statue while the major kissed her.
"You should be ashamed of yourself, you nozzle," Al snarled. "You're lucky I'm just a hologram. If Sam doesn't murder you – I sure as hell will." When it came to watching women undress or eavesdropping on a private conversation, being a hologram had its advantages. But right now, he wanted to physically attack the nozzle, not float through his body. "Sam, where the hell are you?"
Suddenly, Baby's eyes widened and she glanced straight ahead. Davis was too busy fumbling with the buttons on her nightgown to notice the expression on the nurse's face or the hand that came crashing onto his shoulder.
Al let out a deep breath. "Finally!"
Sam roughly yanked the major's arm and pulled him onto his feet. Nurse Brighton took this opportunity to crawl between their feet and escape from the showers. The officer's mouth dropped open when he realized his attacker was nothing more than the tiny company clerk. Sam wasted no time in punching him in the jaw. Davis swung back, but Sam moved his head out of the way.
"Sam, watch your left!" Al shouted.
Sam blocked the officer with what he and Al referred to as a flying noodle-kick.
The observer mimicked the leaper's actions and yelled obscenities at the nozzle.
"What in Sam's hill is going on in here?" a familiar voice shouted.
All three men turned to the door, where an apparently angry and half-asleep Colonel Potter stood. B.J., Klinger, and Margaret were behind him. Davis held Sam in a headlock.
"Flip him over!" Al instructed.
Sam complied and flipped the officer onto his back. B.J. grabbed Major Davis and Klinger grabbed Sam, but the two men continued to throw punches at each other.
"Take it easy, kid," Klinger said.
Margaret surveyed the damage they had done to the shower tent. "Who the hell do you think you are?" she demanded to know. "You'll pay for this."
Colonel Potter approached the two foes. "Will someone please tell me what in tarnation is going on here?"
Davis answered first. "This corporal punched me!" He glared at Sam. "You'd better pray I don't press charges."
"That nozzle tried to rape a nurse," Al shot back.
The group looked at Sam in disbelief. Al couldn't blame them – he couldn't picture someone like Radar fighting like that. B.J. and Margaret examined their wounds.
"Contusion under the left eye, cut lip, possible swelling," Sam informed the medical staff. He nodded his head in Davis's direction. "Broken nose, black eye, minor concussion."
"Corporal, let the doctor do his job," the colonel snapped. He eyed the fighters. "I want you boys to report to my office in ten minutes."