From: Philippa Chapman (Glastonbury, Somerset, UK.) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 15:00 +0000 Subject: Looking-glass Limbo, part 1/10 Authoress' notes: Like many people, I was intrigued by Mirror Image and absolutely devastated by the ending. This is my personal answer to how QL might end. We know that there are other good leapers out there *and* Thames. I also wanted to provide both Sam and Al with a love story. Die-hard Donna fans had better not go any further! Material in these 'episodes' contains adult-orientated material; some violence, heart- wrenching moments and erotic scenes. Please regulate yourself sensibly and *don't* read on if you're under 18. Thank-you. I have deliberately maintained the differences in spelling American and British speech. To Denise, Penny and Irene: Thank-you for your friendship. To Dean: Especially for bringing Al to life with such subtlety and obvious enjoyment. To Scott: For making me laugh and cry with you and inspiring me, especially with your singing. You're a real hero. Ma'en allwedd clo fy nghalon, cariad. LOOKING-GLASS LIMBO I finished telling Beth about Al, his love for her which had never died and his longing to come home and make a new start. Her dark brown eyes began to smile a little. "So, you were out there; with him?" "Ye..es, I guess you could say I was. He may not ever tell you about it, though. A lot of guys are going to be.....deeply affected by their experiences. I know men my father's age who still can't talk about the last World War. Just be there for him and love him, Beth. That's all he needs." "I'll try, I promise I'll try." I Leaped as soon as I left Beth's house, but this time it was different. I seemed to be tumbling over and over, stretching and contracting dizzily in space. Just when I thought I couldn't stand it any longer, I stopped dead and dropped into a slump on a sidewalk. My head throbbed painfully, my gut hurt and my feet ached. I looked around me carefully. Cars drove honking by in the sunlight, a fire hydrant dribbled half- heartedly on the kerb and I could smell hot dogs cooking somewhere nearby. The sidewalk sweated dust and garbage lay festering in half- empty trash cans. It didn't take a genius to know that I was in the slum area of an American city. But which one? I picked myself up and began to walk painfully along the street. Whoever I was, I'd had a skinful and a half pretty recently. Ohhhh, boy. "Hey, Eth, you forgot your stuff!" The New York accent was unmistakable. I turned around very gingerly, my head swimming as I did so. A filthy dirty tramp was smiling at me with about three teeth and holding up a couple of plastic carrier bags. As I automatically went back to get them, I realised that I was wearing what might have been a dress about three lifetimes ago under my coat. Oh, no; I was a bag lady. No, make that an alcoholic bag lady. As I fetched my possessions, such as they were, I caught sight of myself in the glass of the shop doorway near to where I'd been sheltering. I dropped my bags again in shock. Under the tattered hat and straggly hair a face like my own stared back at me, unshaved and clearly male, despite the dress. This was crazy; the clothes said 'woman', but the face definitely didn't. A transvestite? Well, I suppose anything's possible. I decided to keep an open mind on my gender until I knew for sure. I think the addled nature of my brain kept me from realising the full truth of my situation until much later. I managed to have a half coherent talk with Mr Three Teeth, who seemed to be in a similar state of inebriation to my host. He certainly made several remarks to the effect that I was losing my looks lately. Like he'd be in a position to judge. I found out the general direction of the nearest drop-in center and made my slow and painful way there. I don't know how I did it; my brain was about half drunk and half hung- over. I should have gone under a vehicle every time I made my way across the street with the state I was in, but I didn't. I got a lot of verbal abuse, though, including some words that'd make a sailor blush. Finally, sanctuary. The lady on duty took one look at me, sat me down and rang for a welfare doctor. He checked all my vital signs and immediately put the wheels in motion to have me admitted to hospital. One disorientating ride later, I was stomach pumped and put on a glucose drip. I felt completely wrung out, like an old wash rag. All my clothes were removed and I was put into a hospital gown. One bed-bath later, and I started to begin to feel human again. I also found out that everyone around me saw me as male. It began to look as if my transvestite guess had been correct. The welfare doctor came back to see me. "You've had a lucky escape. We couldn't find any identification on you last night, so we had to book you in as John Doe....(Again; I knew it wouldn't be the first time they'd had to use *that* name)....Do you have a name you can give me?" I struggled against the blank space I found in my mind,"Er.....Sam. My name is Sam," I managed. Sam? Sam what? It might have been Aardvark for all I could remember. "Well, Sam, you're going to have to stay somewhere for a while until you dry out. If you weren't a man, you might have died from liver poisoning this morning. As it is, we're going to have to take real good care of you from now on, including absolutely no more alcohol, *ever*. Do I make myself clear?" "Yes, doctor; I understand. But I don't think I have anywhere to go home to." "Don't worry, Sam. When you're a little stronger, the Sally Army have agreed to take care of you for a while. And if you have family, they'll find them for you. Here's one of their officers now; John Blake, this is Sam." A tall, rather patrician-looking young man in his twenties entered the room. He had dark brown hair and hazel eyes and looked incredibly familiar. Was it his eyes, or his bearing.....I just couldn't place it. "Have we met before, Mr Blake?" "Just John will be fine, Sam. And no, I don't think so. I only moved to this city a little while ago. The only other members of the Army are my mother and sister. I have a brother, too, but Father's grooming him to look after the company, to make sure that a good portion of the profits go to charity." His voice was warm and well-spoken, my mind jumping in recognition of the tones, but without any context to put it in. .......then another face, a well-loved gravely voice echoed in my mind, and for the first time I remembered the man I had risked my future to aid. I felt as if someone had hit me, hard, in the solar plexus. The pain of loss was almost unbearable. "*Al!*" I gasped, the tears running down my face,"I saved your marriage and I lost you." John was by my side in an instant, his face full of concern, "Whoever this Al is, we'll find him, Sam. I promise we'll do our best. My mother hasn't failed to find a lost person yet." My mind jumped on his last words. "What's your mother's name, John?" "It's Laura, Laura Blake. *Have* you met her?" "I don't know.....possibly. What about your father?" "Michael Blake; he built the Blake Plaza around Mom's mission hall right before he asked her to marry him." Bingo! I had it now. "Then I did meet your father a long time ago, John. He probably won't remember me at all," "But I'm glad everything turned out well for your parents." Suddenly I felt my heart thumping strangely in my chest and hot, painful darts shot down my left arm. I gasped for breath,"Heart attack!" I managed to get out, before the pain got too bad. My legs seemed to have gone numb before the doctor got back. He put a shot of something in me, but I could tell through the increasing agony in my chest and arm that we were fighting a losing battle here. I called out for John and clung on to his arm with my left hand. "Tell Al I'm sorry.....I wanted to see him again so much.....I don't want to go yet....it hurts so much..." I saw John's eyes flicker upwards in mute appeal to the doctor, who administered a second shot. The relief from the pain was an almost instant blessing. John must have seen the relief in my eyes. "Don't be afraid. I'll stay right here until you let me go." "I just didn't think I'd die like this.....alone, in a strange city." "You're not alone, Sam." Then everything went fuzzy and dim and I suddenly felt as light as a feather. I heard the doctor's voice,"It was too much of a shock to the system, that emotional upset on top of everything else. Rest in peace, Sam." Rest in peace? I opened my eyes. I seemed to be suspended from the ceiling. Ohhh, boy; an out-of-the-body experience. I heard John quietly praying the Lord's prayer, there was the thumping of blood in my ears and I Leaped. It was hot. Hot and smelly and dark. I couldn't move, but I was being transported in some sort of truck with two other bodies, one of which was sticking a metal object in my back. "You no talk or I shoot, OK?" I felt my mouth with my tongue. Oh, God; it was covered in tape, as was what felt like most of the rest of my body. After some time bumping painfully over pot-holes, we stopped in deeper darkness. I was hauled out of the truck and carried down a couple of flights of stairs. The removal of the tape was excruciatingly painful, but the gun at my back persuaded me to suffer in silence. There was a loud interchange in a language I didn't understand, but at a guess it was based in the Middle East from their coloring. Several of my captors looked scared, despite their attempts to hide it. One of them spoke for a man who was clearly the boss in this situation. I could tell that from his relatively smart clothes and gold accessories he was wearing. "He say you wrong man. How you change places?" The gun prodded me into speech. "I don't know. I can't remember anything much before this morning." My mouth was dry and stale. My questioner struck me across the face, hard, several times. I calculated the odds of taking them on and getting out of here alive. Not good; there were five of them and I was beginning to ache all over. The one with the gun pulled me to my feet and held me there while two of the others gave me further punishment for not giving them the answer they wanted. Of course they were careful not to do any permanent damage, just inflict a good deal of pain. "What is *your* name?" My mind reeled. "Al....my name is Al.....Albert Thomas Beckett." I knew it wasn't quite right, it was simply the most familiar name that came to mind. They stopped beating me then, picked me up and dumped me in a cell. Another figure crawled out of the darkness. "Oh, my God, they've hurt you. My name's Roger Johnson, I was over here covering the fighting. Let me see if I can help you, mate." English, definitely English. Gentle hands probed my body; a damp cloth was pressed carefully on my tender places. "I'm Al....I can't remember much else." "That's okay, Al. It wouldn't surprise me if the bastards have left you a little punch-drunk." "Where am I?" "Don't know the answer to that one exactly. We're in the hands of the Arabs; dawn alarm call and everything." I didn't quite understand his black humor at the time, but I soon did over the next few days. A loud- speakered call to prayer every morning is undoubtedly wonderful to a Muslim, but not when you're locked up in a dark cell most of the day. Roger was kind, supportive with flashes of the often black humor that I began to appreciate. He drip-fed me the story of his life, but left me alone when I needed silence. From what I could see in the gloom, he had fairish hair and grey eyes. I never saw my reflection, so I'll never know who Roger saw. Appearances didn't really matter in that place, not at first. It was a few days later that I found out why my captives had asked me such strange questions. Roger had been listening at the door as quietly as a mouse for some time. "Al...it seems that there's some problem about your identity. One of them insists he was transferring another guy called Cy Palmer - I've heard of him, he's an aid worker from the states. When you turned up, it really freaked them out. They think you're an American James Bond. And Cy Palmer's dead; oh, what a terrible crying shame, God rest his soul. So, unless you *are* a spy, they can't account for you. Oh, no......oh, God....Al, this is terrible.." "Please, tell me the worst." "I don't know how to put this, Al, so I'll be brief. They plan to take you out and shoot you tomorrow morning." "Oh, God; Roger, I can't cope with this." "You know I'm here. If there's any message you want sending home, I'll make sure it gets there. Try to keep your chin up and don't let the bastards get you down." He came across the cell and we hugged, not for the first time, but probably the last. He drew apart, then suddenly, in the darkness, his face changed. His hair grew black and curly and his skin darkened to a rich mahogany. His eyes - his now brown eyes flashed with recognition in the semi-darkness. "Well look here at what I've just found in the darkness," his teeth flashed in a feral grin,"It's our old adversary, old goody goody Doctor Samuel Beckett, and he's all mine to play with." "Who the hell are you?" I managed to spit out. "You don't need to know my name, mister righteous; only that I'm after revenge for Alia and Zoey. And believe me, before this night is out, I'm gonna get it." I did my best, but I was weakened by a poor diet and the thorough beating I'd received. It took him an hour to pin me helpless to the floor, now naked and bleeding. My yells for help did no good and my assailant knew it. "They've all gone home for the night, *cup cake*. Lothos told me they go home every night, so we're quite alone. And now I'm going to *have* you." He sat on my back and reached his hand down, and.....I can't even think about what he did with his hand, but it hurt so much that I thought I was going to die. Then he eased himself down and around, and I knew what was coming next, but I just tried to blot it out of my mind. He was on the verge of accomplishing his designs and I could feel his hot breath on my back as he leant over me, when...I Leaped. And so I travelled on. Sometimes I remembered Al the Bartender warning me that the Leaps would get worse, realising that he had been proved right. I became one of the starving millions in Africa, a young girl bleeding to death after the birth of her child amongst the sewer children of Brazil, one of the Untouchables, an AIDS victim, someone riddled with Cancer....so many lonely hurting people whose hurt I shared for a little while. Then, one day, I came to and it was entirely different. I was warm, comfortable and, thank God, free of pain. I opened my eyes and saw....whiteness. Snow? No, it didn't feel like snow. I sat up slowly. For a moment I thought I was in a padded cell because there was whiteness all around me. I looked down at myself. I was wearing a Fermi suit and I seemed to be in my own body. Those certainly looked like my own hands and feet. I gingerly examined my body - no cuts, no bruises; if anything I was perfectly healthy. It didn't take me long to reason that I might be dead and this might be Heaven...or possibly Nirvana, since I seemed to be alone. I slept for a long time in that place and gradually all my mental scars healed and faded. I felt neither hunger nor thirst in that peaceful place. Yes, if a place could be called Peace and Healing, then this was it. Then, after an immeasurable length of time, it could have been hours, days, years; I looked up and there was someone else standing there. A woman, in a Fermi suit like mine. She walked towards me, smiling nervously. As I stood up to greet her. the first thing I noticed about her was her intense blue eyes and her crooked smile, then I took in brown hair and a face that was striking and memorable rather than possessing a classical beauty. She stopped nervously some distance away. "Samuel Beckett? You *are* Doctor Samuel Beckett?" At last, at long last, someone who knew the real me. I smiled with genuine pleasure. "Yes, I'm Sam Beckett. But I'm sure I've never met *you* before." Her eyes narrowed uncertainly and I could see her hands trembling. "Forgive me......there's an evil Leaper I've encountered who managed to make himself look just like you until I touched him." She approached very tentatively; I stretched out my hands towards her. Her fingertips touched the palms of my hands. For a long moment she looked searchingly into my face, then I saw her relax visibly. "Thank goodness, it is true. I'm sorry I doubted you before. I'm Doctor Viola Whitelaw, from Bath in England." "It's OK, I've encountered evil Leapers myself," I shivered and grimaced involuntarily. The pain of the memory had been washed away by the peace in this place, but I couldn't forget. I managed to break into a reassuring smile for Viola, "An English Time-travel project? I thought I was the first." "You were, Doctor Beckett. We started up in.....oh, bother, these holes in my memory......" her head turned suddenly to the left,"Yes, alright, Bea. Thank-you for your halfpenny-worth. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have picked a sassy red-head as a hologram." The grin spread across my face from ear to ear. "Tell me about it!" "Yes, we know you lost contact with your project and your hologram. Scherzo is hopeful that we may be able to align both your timelines. We'll do our damnedest to get them back for you. And my home time is 2001, by the way." "SCHERZO?!" "Yes, well I sang a lot while constructing him and Bea named him to get her own back." I shook my head, this was getting way too weird. One day I was going to ask, but another question was more pressing. "But how did you find me? And where *is* this place?" "It became obvious very quickly to Scherzo that there must have been another Leaper. He detected anomalies in the past, several of which seemed to be related to a Samuel Beckett, based in America. Scherzo did some probably illegal rooting around and got into the FBI records. The evil Leaper, who calls himself Thames of all things, confirmed it." I saw her face go white as she mentioned him. Anger flared inside me. "If he hurt you, I'll kill him." "I don't want to talk about it." Her voice became suddenly clipped and far too calm. The bastard, the utter bastard. I took a deep breath and very carefully phrased my next words, speaking as gently as possible. "You were telling me how you found me." "Yes, yes....that's right.......Anyway, when you Leaped as yourself over and over again, Scherzo got a 'lock' on you," she registered the surprise on my face, but carried on,"You always took the place of people who were either dead or dying. *This* is a pocket in Null space. I came here once.....a little while ago. It wasn't difficult for Scherzo to find it again. And, yes, Bea; I'm sure I'm OK now. If Thames turns up again I'll know the difference next time." I took a while to register what she had said. All the pieces fell together in my mind; I *had* been apparently Leaping myself through Time; that's why there had been confusion over my real identity, it made sense of the male bag lady and even the nightmare in the Middle East. Whoever or whatever Al the bartender had been, he had been right. "But why are you here?" A brilliant smile flashed across Viola's face. "That's easy. We've come to take you home."