I like it. Sounds cool. And I do some of my best writing after midnight! House is quiet and I'm alone with my thoughts.
I too liked Alia and I actually had my own theories about the "evil Leaper" and explored some of it in a "what if" story, a fanfiction based on my fanfiction, if you will, written in 1995, but takes place in October 2013! Sam is 60 and has now been home for ten years. When he encounters Alia (who is still Leaping), she looks exactly the same as when he last saw her. She tells him that she's not from an alternate or evil dimension, but from a dark future, 2043, and she was a guinea pig in an experiment conducted by a project that used stolen technology from PQL. I suggested that she might have even been a descendant of Sam and that's why they chose her as their Leaper. Anyway, it was just a theory that I had fun playing around with at the time. It was hard to imagine Sam at 60 way back in 1995... But you know, I wasn't far off!
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Saturday, October 5, 2013
By: Suzanne Smiley
Written: August 19, 1995
Revised: July 3, 2013
Creak…Creak…Creak…
Sam Beckett leaned back in the rustic porch swing of his suburban home in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The swing was old, but then so was he. Two months ago had been his sixtieth birthday.
A small wind picked up, scattering leaves around the front lawn, rustling his greying hair, which had once been brown.
It felt good, sitting on the porch, observing the neighborhood on such a cool autumn afternoon. Actually, it just felt good to be himself, to be home. It had been ten years since he’d Leaped home for good and eighteen years since he had first stepped into the accelerator, sending his secure world into oblivion...
That day, ten years ago, was August 8, 2003, the day he turned fifty. So what? Now he was sixty. After spending so many years trapped in the past, Sam had promised himself he wouldn’t reminisce too much about his own. And yet here he was, doing that exact thing.
The wind blew again, a little more harshly and a little more cold. Sam frowned and zipped his jacket up further, sliding his time weathered hands into his pockets, shivering a bit.
Well, he didn’t feel sixty. That much he could say. Of course, eight years had been lacerated from his life. Although, Sam knew he had accomplished more in those eight years that he had in these past ten.
That bothered him. He didn’t want to spend the last twenty or thirty years of his life rotting away. Sam hated to admit it, but he missed Leaping. He actually missed Leaping. He didn’t miss being away from his family and wondering if he would ever come home, but he missed the helping people part, the satisfaction he derived from a job well done... it just wasn’t the same as it used to be. Nothing ever was.
Sam frowned. Taking his hands out of his pockets, he reached for his guitar, which was propped up between its case and the porch railing.
“Damn the cold,” he mumbled as he began to strum a few chords. At first disorganized, but gradually the rhythm became more clear and focused. Sam began to sing softly, “Imagine there’s no heaven…”
Suddenly it was November 26, 1969, Thanksgiving Day. It was cool, like now. His little sister, Katie, was sitting on the porch swing next to him, on the family farm in Elk Ridge, Indiana, looking up at him expectantly.
“And John,” she’d said. “What’s John gonna do? He’s my favorite!” she added with a giggle.
Sam never told her, but he did sing her that song. “It’s easy if you try…”
It was a touching scene between him and his sister, but it had not ended well. Katie had run to their mother, crying. She was afraid that if Sam knew the future, then he must be telling the truth about Tom dying in Vietnam.
Sam stopped playing. Tom didn’t die in Vietnam. That was because in one of his Leaps, Sam had saved his brother. So, Tom Beckett didn’t die.
Tom was still living in Indiana with his wife, Angie. He’d had two kids and three grandkids because of his little brother.
It really messes with your mind...
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