Samantha Bridges danced a little dance in the small cabin. Her reflection said it all. It was great enough that she didn't even mind the weird sound that happened every time she looked in a mirror.
"I'm the GD, I'm the GD," she chanted.
Kurt sighed and punched a button on the handlink. "Yes, you are. Now how about figuring out what you're supposed to do here?"
"Oooooh, hello, Clarice," Sam said. "Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes?" She giggled.
"Well," Kurt said calmly, "I guess you're going to be about as calm as the others back at the Project."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
"You know the hallway outside of the Waiting Room?"
"Yeah," Sam said.
"Right now it's sort of like an all-girl version of Lord of the Flies. No one wants to be anywhere but there. It's taking a while to get Effie to figure out where you are and what you're supposed to do, because they're all pulling each other's hair to get in there and feed grapes to Dr. Lecter."
"Well, I know where I am," Sam said. "I wrote this, remember?"
"Yep," Kurt said.
"This is Chapter 24 of Incipit Vita Nuova," Sam said proudly. "And the GD…umm…me…umm..well, one of us is building a cell for Emily."
"Yes, except the fic's been changed," Kurt said, and tapped away busily on the handlink. "Damn, the page cannot be displayed. It's down again. Anyways, Effie says there's a seventy-eight percent chance you're here to save Dr. Lecter from being killed by Emily."
"But she didn't kill him. I know she didn't."
"Well…she does now. She kills him, she gets declared not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to an institution just like her mom. Spends the rest of her life in there."
"Emmie? Nooo!"
"And…well…Mischa gets sent off to a foster home…um…you're not going to like this…," Kurt said.
"What? What happens to Mischa?"
"She…um…she gets adopted…by…," Kurt swallowed, looking distinctly uncomfortable for a hologram.
"By who?" panted Sam.
"By…well…the Chilton family. And she grows up to marry Paul Krendler's son. She has three kids with him. All boys. Paul Krendler II, Frederick Chilton Krendler, and Mason Krendler." He grinned apologetically. "Seems like little Mason is the best-looking of the bunch. Anyway, Mischa does the housewife thing until she's forty, when Krendler's son dumps her for a seventeen-year-old cocktail waitress. In order to survive, she's forced to become…"
"A prostitute? No! That can't be! My poor little Mischa!" Sam begged.
"Worse…a Pampered Chef consultant."
The scream echoed loud and long against the calm walls of the cabin. The glass of the windows and mirror trembled. When it stopped, Sam was sitting on the ground, her face almost as pale as her host's, her hands up around her mouth. Her eyes were wide with shock.
"The horror….the horror…," Sam whispered.
"Well, that's what you're here to fix," Kurt explained. "Now you have to get back to the house now. So while you're doing that, I have to check back at the Project and talk to our visitor and see what's going on." A tap of the handlink and the door opened. Kurt stepped back through it and closed the door.
The lights of the Imaging Chamber came up slowly, and Kurt proceeded down the hall to the Waiting Room. Waiting for him was a young woman in a lab coat. Her nametag read Dr. Oftruths. She was the Project's chief psychologist.
"G'day, Kurt," she said with an Australian accent. "How is Sam doing?"
"Oh, she's…all right, LoT. She wasn't terribly happy to hear about what happens to Em and Mischa. How's the Visitor?"
"Well," she allowed, "the Visitor is just fine…it's the Project staff."
"How bad is it?"
"See for yourself," she said, indicating the door beyond which Dr. Hannibal Lecter was currently being kept.
Outside the hall was a small mob of Lecterphiles, all pushing and fighting to get in the door of the Waiting Room. It took some doing to pass through the mob. Inside was an odd sight.
Sitting on the bed was what appeared to be a young woman with red hair and blue eyes, looking around the room with a slightly puzzled mean. Around her flocked a bevy of women and younger girls. If you looked closely, though, you could see another image float over the woman on the bed: that of an older man with very pale skin and maroon eyes. He tilted his head at Kurt.
"Hello," Dr. Hannibal Lecter, disguised in the aura of Samantha Bridges, said.
"Dr. Lecter," Kurt said, fighting to be heard over the din. "I suppose you're a bit confused here."
"To say the least," Dr. Lecter agreed. "I was just working on…well…some necessary home renovations….and now I'm here, with all these young women attempting to feed me grapes and run their fingers through my hair."
Dr. Lecter's lap was highly contested territory, currently occupied by Luna, who snuggled up to him as if he was a teddy bear.
"It's because we all love you so much," she cooed.
"Well, Dr. Lecter, you see, this is Project Fanfic Leap, and you've been leaped out of your fic and Samantha Bridges has taken your place. It's this weird quantum physics thing."
"Ah, I see," Dr. Lecter said. "I do know some of it…Sammie, back at the asylum, was a fan of Quantum Leap through the first season."
Kurt grimaced. "Dr. Lecter, I'm afraid you can't say that here…we might get sued."
"I see. My apologies."
"Anyway," Kurt continued, "we're trying to figure out what Sam has to do in order to fix your fic and leap back."
Dr. Lecter was distracted by Luna whispering something into his ear. He reddened briefly. "No thank you, my dear, but I prefer to eat breakfast alone."
"Okay," Kurt said calmly, "now c'mon, everyone back to work, we have to work on getting Sam out of there."
"Sam who?" sighed a few of the Lecterphiles.
"Hey, wait a minute," Luna said from her place on the doctor's lap. "This is the GD from 'Incipit Vita Nuova', right?"
"Yes," Kurt said.
"And there are all sorts of fics that have the GD in them. I mean there's a different GD in every one."
"Yes, there is," Kurt said.
"So…if we put a whole bunch of people in the Fanfic Leap Accelerator…then couldn't we leap out another GD from every story? Everyone here could have her own!"
"Theoretically, yes," Kurt hedged, knowing what was coming next.
The room erupted in chaos.
"I've got a little brother we can stick in there," Saavik offered.
"I've got two!" LadyOfTruths countered.
"Oh, not you too," Kurt groaned.
Brothers, former friends, and ex-boyfriends were all offered up as possible sacrifices to leave stranded in the worlds of fics in order to get their very own copy of the GD. Dr. Lecter simply stared around him in complete befuddlement.
"If you leap all the GD's out of the fics," Kurt pointed out, "what are we going to read?"
"If we all get our own copy of the GD," Luna countered, "what makes you think we're going to read?"
Kurt sighed and turned around to leave. "I'm going back to the Imaging Chamber," he said. "There I only have two serial killers to deal with."