Date: Wed, 9 Jun 93 11:23:08 EDT From: Tracy Finifter To: alt-ql-creative@cisco.com Subject: "A New Face to Reality" Part 8 Message-Id: "A New Face to Reality" by Tracy E. Finifter Part 8 Back at Tom's house, Sandy started fixing lunch while Sam helped Bingo settle into the guest room with Bingo going outside to play with the girls afterward. "You okay there, Sam?" Al asked out of nowhere. Sam jumped a little, but quickly regained his composure and took a deep, measured breath. "I'd be lying if I said yes," he admitted, walking over to close the door so as to not be intruded upon. "You never were a good liar," Al remarked. "Oh, and you did look a little out of it at the airport." "What, now you're following me?" Sam said with just a touch of bitterness. He was busy making Bingo's bed which gave him a convenient excuse not to look Al in the eye. "Hey, that's my job, if you'll remember." "Right. I'm sorry, Al. I shouldn't take this out on you." "That's okay, kid. I know it's tough, but you've been in worse scrapes before..." "This isn't exactly a 'scrape'," Sam countered, finally facing his friend. "I'm dealing with a few too many variables for my comfort here and the last thing I want to do is to screw things up worse than they were before for everyone." Al had no response. Sam went back to making the bed, an uncomfortable minute of silence falling between the men. Finally, Sam spoke again, his voice quiet. "What happens when and if I finally leap home?" he asked, thinking back to his earlier revelation. "How do I go on with the memories that I have when none of them are real anymore?" Al hesitated before answering, slightly put off by the unexpected question. "Well, Sam, we have reason to believe that when you leap back you'll remember the altered timeline and not the original." "And how do you know that?" "Uh, well, Ziggy's got a theory," Al answered, carefully avoiding the truth. "Please," Sam said with contempt, "what does that hybrid piece of junk know about this anyway? And since when do you put so much stock into what he says in the first place?" "Well, he was right when he said you'd lose your memory when you first leaped, wasn't he?" Al asked defensively. "His crowning achievement," Sam muttered sarcastically. "That still doesn't help me here and now." He walked over to the doorway and slowly pushed his fist against the wall. "I feel like a total stranger among people I should know. God Al, this is my family." "I know, kid." He desperately wished he could say more, but there was nothing left to say. "It just makes me wonder," Sam said after a while, his voice barely audible, "what I've been missing the whole time I've been leaping. My mom, my sister, all the people that I know in my own time." The last words came out through gritted teeth. Well maybe you should have thought of that before you stepped into that damned accelerator, Al wanted to say, and almost did. But Sam didn't know what the consequences were going to be, none of them did. It certainly wasn't Sam's fault that God/Fate/Time/Whatever had kept him as its servant all these years. "Dammit, Al," Sam suddenly exploded, "I could have a wife and family of my own back home and not even remember them! How do you think that makes me feel?" "Uh, you know I can't tell you anything about that," Al said, much too quickly. "I know, I know. 'Top of Ziggy's no-no list.' Don't give me that crap. I don't want to hear it." "Well then, what do you want to hear?" Al shot back, finally fed up with Sam's rummage into self-pity. "That you're missing the best years of your life? That you're literally living in the past with no way out? You may not want to hear that, Sam, but it's the truth, and there's nothing that you or I or anybody on Earth can do about that now." He paused, and grew quieter. "But you've also done more than any man has ever dreamed of. You've helped so many people and changed so many lives. And not just strangers either; you're brother wouldn't even be alive in 1980 if it weren't for Quantum Leap. You've gotten more out of life in the past five years than is possible in twenty life-times. So just think of that the next time you feel like you're 'missing out on life.'" Sam grew quiet. Al was right, which frustrated him all the more. His impossible dream had come true and even exceeded his wildest hopes. Who else could say that they've been a daring test pilot, a brilliant concert pianist, a famous actor, or any of the other identities that Sam had had over the years? From the glamorous to the mundane, Sam had done it all, and more. Yet, when he looked into his nieces' eyes, one question kept gnawing at the back of his mind, the question he now voiced to his friend. "At what price? My home? My family? And what about all the changes we could have made over the years?" From somewhere in his memory, Maggie's photograph of Al flashed in his mind. "Your freedom?" "Is that what this is about, Sam? You chewing nails over the decision I made?" Al's tone again grew defensive. "Okay, yeah, I made that choice. But it was my choice to make, Sam, and I'd make it again a hundred times if I had to." "But what was it for?" Sam responded. "What good was saving my brother's life if in my mind he's still dead?" Al didn't stick around to answer. With a press of a button, he was gone, and Sam was left once again to face his newfound family. * Tracy Finifter | "Life is what happens to you while * * finifter@gandalf.rutgers.edu | your busy making other plans." * * Douglass College, Rutgers University | - John Lennon *