February 6, 1956
Dr. Sam Beckett looks at the white packed snow shone by the flashlight, picking at it with an ice axe.
"Okay, Sam," says Al. "Ziggy now says you can dig up."
And so the leaper con tin ues to pick at the snow, white clumps falling on.
"You suire this is the way?" asks another man.
"It has to be the way," replies the quantuim physicist. He keeps digging and digging with an ice pick. He can breifly recall winters at Elk Ridge, though he had never experienced a winter as severe back there, or in any of his leaps during the last five years of his time.
Sam feels the ice pick push through the snow.
"I see ligt!" exclaims another man.
Sam pushes through the hole, and soon emerges out into the daylight. He reaches down, pulluing up the other tqwo men with his gloved hand.
He then looks at Al, who is wearing shorts, a Hawaiian-style T-shirt, and sandals, a sharp contrast to the snowscape of the slopes of the Grand Teton Mountains in Wyoming.
"It's not over yet," says the observer. "You need to maker your way to a fire station. Just three miles from here."
"Let's go!" Sam yells to the leapee's two companions.
And so the quantum leaper trudges through the deep snow, heard to walk on even with his snowshoes. He can still recall the days ghe spent deep beneath the snow, when he and the leapee's two friends got vaught in an avalanche. Fortunately, they managed to find themselves in a "cave" made by the snow. Unfortunately, in the original history, they were never found.
Each step Sam takes in the snow brings them closer and closer to changing the fate of the three men. He feels hungery, as they had finished their last can of beans just thirty-six hours ago.
"I wish tyou can send us some food," he says to Al.
"And why not wish for a hot tub while we're at it," says another man.
"that's the fire station!" yells Al.
Sam can see the wooden structure, about two stories in height. Parked next to it is a fire truck that looks like it was made sometime in the mid-1940's. The sight of the fire station- of civilization- adrenalizes the three men. Lactic acid burning in their legs, sweating under the heavy coats, they keep pushing.
"Help!" yells one of the men. "Is anyone there?"
They see someone come out, a man in a heavy coat, with an emblem on his shoulder.
"We were trapped in the avalanche a few miles from here," says Sam. "We...dug ourselves out."
ooooooo
"You clearly are not dressed for the weather, Al," says Sam, sipping some hot chocolate brought by Grand Teton National Park rangers. The taste was soothing and comforting, no doubt due to the fact that he spent three days trapped iunder a rocky ledge blocked by snow from the avalanche.
"I set the imaging chamber thermostat to eighty," says Al, still dressed in his Hawaiian-style shirt and shorts. He sips on a pina colada. "I wish we could actually take pictures of the holograms. Beth and the girls would be surprised to see a picture of me at the Grand Tetons in winter, wearing this."
He sees the leapee's other two companions sitting on a bechn, covered in b lankets and drinking hot cocoa.
The leaper walks to the fire truck. He had not seen his mirror image.
Looking at the right-side rear vbiew mirror of the truck, he sees an ordinary-looking man, not too remarakble.
"What happens to him?" he asks the observer.
"You gave him forty more years of life, Sam," says Al.
A blue glow, invisible to the natives of 1956, surrounds Sam, and he leaps out.
After leaping in, Sam feels much warmer. Moving his limbs, he feels resistance.
Something light hits him in the head; the quantum physicist looks and it is a large ball. He looks around and finds himself in a huge swimming pool with a whole bunch of boys, all teenagers. He then gets a splahs of water on his face.
"Oh boy," he says.
