TEN

It was several days before the group got back together to discuss what they had discovered. Bill wanted to make sure everyone had time to thoroughly check everything out so there would be no mistakes. Jeremy checked out perfectly healthy. Apparently his trip through time did not have any substantial side effects. At least, not this single trip. Sam knew that over a long period of time he would most likely experience the same cellular degradation that he, Tony, and Doug were exhibiting.

When they did gather Samantha insisted they gather in the main control room. By now even Sam was intimately familiar with it. There was a large television screen on the back wall that they could put anything in the computer up on so everyone could see it clearly. As they gathered at the control console, Samantha took a seat at the keyboard.

"Well, as you're all aware, Jeremy seems to have weathered his trip through time relatively unscathed," said Bill.

"I told you I was okay," said Jeremy.

"We needed to make sure. And as I'm all sure you're also aware, all of the equipment seems to have worked exactly as predicted. Everything is in tip top order and there are no unexpected glitches. People, it looks like we finally have a working time travel machine that will allow us to move through time without losing the travelers."

"Voyagers," said Jeremy.

"I'm sorry?" questioned Bill.

"Voyagers," repeated Jeremy. "Like I said, we have to call them something. Might as well call them voyagers. The essentially make voyages into time."

"Yes, well, whatever we call them, it seems we can now complete the experiments that Tony and Sam started all those years ago. We can send people through time to observe things that happened in the past and maybe even correct a few things along the way. You should all be very proud of the work you've accomplished here."

"So why are we meeting here?" questioned Sam. "You could have told us all this in the conference room. Why did we all have to come down here?"

"Samantha," said Bill, "you insisted we all meet here. Care to fill us in on why you wanted to meet down here?"

Samantha began typing on the keyboard. In a moment the screen on the back wall brought up the now familiar colored lines that represented the various time lines they had explained to Sam when he had first arrived. Only the representation was different this time. The red and blue lines seemed to be unchanged. The green line, however, was filled with small red "dots" along it.

"As you are all aware," said Samantha, "the green line represents the original time line. The time line that we're supposed to be in. The line itself hasn't changed at all. Nor is it going to."

"What are the red dots?" questioned Sam.

"Those could be a problem. Each red dot indicates a point in time along the original timeline that has been altered. A place where something either didn't occur that was supposed to or something that did occur that wasn't supposed to. In effect it is where the original timeline has been changed from what it's supposed to be."

"There are hundreds of red dots," said Tony. "Are you saying that each of those dots is a point in time that someone would have to go to and correct a change?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," said Samantha. "We have the Omni; a working time travel device. With it we can send anyone to any point in time. The problem is there are just too many points that have changed for one person to effectively correct them all. In addition we only know that Jeremy can travel through time without being affected. We can't know if that will be true for anyone else. Anyone we send into the timeline could effectively cease to exist until all of those alterations are corrected."

"And we're pretty sure that even Jeremy will eventually begin to suffer the cellular degradation that Tony, Sam, and I all exhibit," said Doug. "Which means that after a while even he will have to stop travelling in time. And probably long before he's had a chance to correct any significant amount of the changes."

"So we solved the problem of possibly ending history as we knew it only to be faced with the problem of never being able to leave the complex ever," said Bill. "We're all still trapped here unless we want to take the chance of simply ceasing to exist."

"That's about the size of it," said Samantha. "We can build more Omnis. We've got enough parts to build just about as many as we need. The problem is we don't have enough people to use them. Even assuming it would take a minimal amount of time to correct each individual change it could take decades – or longer – to eventually correct them all. And with the limited number of people we have we may never be able to correct them all."

"How many people would be needed for something like this?" asked Bill.

"I'm not really sure. Right now we can only program the Omni for a limited time span. Whoever uses it can only go to points in time between those two dates. If they wanted to go to an earlier or later date the Omni would have to be reprogrammed for those dates. And we couldn't risk sending ANYONE to the near past, say the last 20 or 30 years. If they appear in a time after they were born they might not have been born and they'd simply cease to exist once they appear there. Even Sam, Tony, and Doug would be in danger of that."

"So we have a way to correct the changes to the timeline but we can't use it," said Bill. "And I can't even ask for volunteers. I wouldn't feel right risking someone's life like that even if they were aware of the risks."

"At least we've been able to keep history from being obliterated," said Doug. "We've accomplished that much."

"But we have virtually no way to set things right," said Tony. "No way to correct the changes that were made because of our mistakes. That doesn't seem right. We should be able to find a way to correct everything."

"I agree with Tony," said Sam. "Project: Quantum Leap was designed to correct mistakes that had once gone wrong. Now I find that it's just made matters worse. That even more mistakes have been made. We need to find a way to correct the problems."

"What about using people who are living in the current timeline?" questioned Jeremy. "Someone who wouldn't be at risk of ceasing to exist when we make corrections?"

"What do you mean?" Bill asked.

"What kinds of records do we have from the correct timeline?" Jeremy asked Samantha. "Thinks like birth records, death records, that kind of stuff?"

"It's hardly exhaustive. But we have everything that used to be on what was called the Internet at the time. There are thousands of records most of which are stored in Ziggy's memory banks."

"That's quite correct," replied Ziggy. "While I'm sure many records were lost or just never put on the Internet I still contain a great deal of information that was on the Internet before the accident that changed the timeline."

"So those records would be of people who are supposed to exist in the correct timeline," said Jeremy.

"I suppose," said Samantha.

"Well," said Jeremy, "what about this? Say, I go back to 1990. I locate someone and bring them back here. We fill them in on what's happened and train them to go back and correct things that were altered. There's got to be a lot of people who would like to do something like that. We could even concentrate on getting people who disappeared and were never seen again. That way we wouldn't be worried about upsetting the timeline by taking them before they died."

"Just locating those people could be a major undertaking," said Bill. "Even assuming we could. And there's no telling how long it would take to find them."

"Maybe not," said Sam. "Ziggy. Would it be possible to download the content from the Internet from the altered timeline?"

"Theoretically it should be possible," replied Ziggy. "It would require going into the altered timeline and setting up a download link from a computer in that timeline. Then I could download the contents to a specified hard drive. It would give us a fairly accurate account of events that have occurred in the altered timeline."

"Jeremy might have something here," said Sam. "We send him back to some point in the altered timeline where the Internet is in full swing. Then he sets up the download link with Ziggy who downloads the information from that Internet. Then it would be a simple matter of having Ziggy cross-reference that information with the information from the correct timeline. She should be able to locate the people we need fairly quickly. Then we just have to send Jeremy back to contact those people and see if he can convince them to come help us."

"Do you have any idea how he's going to sound to those people?" Bill asked. "Time travel was the subject of science fiction in those days. Even today it might still be considered that way. All of the experiments in it have been highly classified by the government."

"But what if we could find some people like that?" Jeremy asked. "It would mean we could get others to help us. We wouldn't have to rely on just me or risk anyone else from the complex. Think about it. Ziggy would simply have to cross-reference death certificates with a list of people who had vanished without a trace. Find someone who had a death certificate in, say, 1995 but who had been listed as missing and never heard from again in 1980. If they were never heard from again there shouldn't be a death certificate on them in 1995. It might also explain why they suddenly disappeared. Maybe it was because we brought them here to help us."

"Would Ziggy even have enough hard drive space to hold that much information?" Tony asked. "With all the information already in her memory banks would she have enough room to add that much more? What I've learned about the Internet there was a lot of information on the Internet. More than even I could even begin to imagine."

"Without knowing how much information is involved," said Ziggy, "even I could not answer that question. But Dr. Newman has a point. It is possible even my memory banks would not be sufficient to hold all the information."

"We wouldn't need it all," said Sam. "We would only need to concentrate on certain information. Mostly birth and death records. Ziggy can then sift through the rest of the information and look only for information on people who went missing. She could come up with a list of people like Jeremy suggested. People who disappeared and weren't ever heard from again."

"We might not have to rely on Ziggy's memory banks," said Jeremy. "We could set up a sort of dedicated server. Separate from Ziggy but with her having access to it. We can download the information from the altered Internet to it. Then she just has to sort through the information and she can even delete whatever information isn't necessary. If she's only looking for birth and death records, and records of people who disappeared, a great deal of the information wouldn't be needed."

"What do you think, Bill?" Doug asked. "It sounds like something that just might have a shot. We could conceivably get enough people to correct all the changes in the timeline without risking anyone in the complex."

"More than that," said Sam. "With the information from the altered Internet we could also cross-reference it with the people in the complex. Maybe be able to pinpoint those who wouldn't be at risk if they should leave the complex."

"How long would it take to get everything set up?" Bill asked. "To get extra Omni's built and have the dedicated server ready to download the information?"

"A couple of weeks maybe," said Stuart. "At least for the Omni's. That would all depend on what time frame their programmed for. I can build them relatively quickly. But someone else will have to program them. And it will take time to prepare the guide books for the travelers to use so they'll know what's been changed."

"I can have the server set up in a few days," said Jeremy. "We already have everything we need here. And we'll have everything in place for the Voyagers to be ready once they're trained."

"You're bound and determined to call them Voyagers, aren't you?" Bill asked, a slight smile on his face.

"Why not? Like I said, we have to call them something. Voyagers sounds so much more exotic than time travelers. Besides, like Sam said, I'm the first one to travel in time and come back voluntarily. Doesn't that mean I get to name them? Kind of like discovering a new species or something."

"Well," said Bill, "assuming we can find people who are willing to be Voyagers, it sounds like we have a good shot at this. And from the sounds of it, it appears that everyone thinks this is a good idea. Okay. It seems this is the best chance we have. Let's get started on getting everything ready right away. The sooner we can implement the plan the sooner we can begin to correct the timeline."

As the rest of the group filed out of the room, Bill pulled Sam off to one side.

"You know, before we retrieved you, I thought the human race was headed for extinction," said Bill. "Now, not only have we saved the human race, we seem to have a very good chance at repairing the changes to the timeline and correcting everything that's gone wrong. I'm actually optimistic for the first time in a very long time."

"Well, it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a while to locate the people we need and then some time to train them properly. And we'll have to figure out some way to weed out the ones who are unsuitable. But I think we have a good start. I guess we can only wait and see what the future brings."

"You're right. There's really only one problem I have with all this."

"What's that?"

"Voyagers?" said Bill. "Do we really have to call them that?"

"Well, Jeremy is right. He was the first one. And he's been a big help on this whole project. Like he said, we have to call them something. I suppose it's the least we can do for everything he's done for us. And for humanity as a whole."

"I suppose you're right. I just wish he wasn't so set on it."

"Well, look at it this way," said Sam. "Maybe after a while he'll get tired of it and want to change it to something else."

"Yeah, I'm going to hold my breath on that one."

Sam just chuckled as he and Bill headed out of the room.

The End

Additional Disclaimer: "Voyagers" and all related characters and events are the property of the NBC Network, except for those characters specifically created for this story.