Message-Id: <9712152003.AA14462@arctos.bowdoin.edu> Subject: "Reverse Reflection" pt 3/7 Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 15:03:02 -0500 (EST) From: "Emilie R. Karr" Title: Reverse Reflection, pt 3/? Author: Emilie Renee Karr (ekarr@bowdoin.edu) Al had returned to his rooms, strangely comforted by his conversation with Ziggy. He was contemplating returning to bed-- and Tina--when the computer's smooth voice sounded over the intercom. "Admiral, Dr. Beckett has Leaped in." Al mentally steadied himself, forced back the depression threatening him with those words, and was about to reply when Ziggy spoke again. "Admiral, I have restored the connection with Dr. Beckett." "What?!" Al shouted, then commanded, "Repeat." Mistake, he had heard the words he wanted, imagined them out of the air. "I believe you can now contact Dr. Beckett," Ziggy repeated impatiently. "What's that?" Tina demanded from the bedroom. She had been awakened by Al's cry and had heard Ziggy's next words. "Ziggy says--it's a chance--she says we can, I can--in the Imaging Chamber--" Al blurted out, frozen in place with shock for the moment. At Tina's wide-eyed stare he retrieved his composure, shouted, "Get dressed and get down to the control room ASAP!" and promptly took off himself. He met Dr. Verbena Beeks outside the control room, and Gooshie entered a second after them, Tina on his tail. Al hadn't been the only one alerted by Ziggy. He ignored them; in fact he only noticed their presence subconsciously. His entire concentration was focused on the flashing globe that was Ziggy's center, her main brain. "You said you've found a way to contact Sam." "Actually, it is more likely that Dr. Beckett found a way to connect with us." A rare admission for the egotistical computer. "His brainwaves are once again synched with my systems." "And you don't know why?" When Ziggy's reply was not immediate he went on, "Does it matter? Get me with him, now!" And he was at the Imaging Chamber door, keying it open. Then inside, the first time in a year that he had stood on the disk and waited for the other world, the other time to descend. There weren't any cobwebs, he noted, and then he was in a tornado of imagery. Ziggy's voice spoke calmly over the maelstrom. "I have not fully located Dr. Beckett, though from observation of our guest--" the Leapee, he had forgotten that person--"I can make a reasonable projection, and I did not calculate that you would appreciate any delay." Al forced his eyes to remain open, stood as ram-rod straight as an officer of his rank should, and tried not to give into nausea. At last the mad whirling slowed, spun to a halt. A sudden dipping motion of the holograms, and then he was "standing" in the body of an airplane. Passengers in seats, men in the aisles-- And one of the passengers started, and the movement drew his eye, and he saw him, clear as day, looking pale and thinner and pained somehow, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, Dr. Samuel Beckett. "Sam!" he cried, striding forward, through seats that weren't even there, through people. Even if they had been real he wouldn't have paid them any heed. Sam stared, eyes huge, and jerked up out of his seat. "Al?" he mouthed, no pronunciation, no voice, just a breath. "Sam, I'm here, we found you!" Al was feeling himself like he needed to sit down, his heart felt squeezed. Too small a ribcage to contain it, he supposed. Distantly he thought he may have heard some voice order harshly, "Sit down!" "Al, how..." Sam gasped. "For the last year we've been searching, we've tried everything, Ziggy only--I can help you!" He waved the handlink, the bright assemblage of multi-colored-lit cubes, in Sam's direction. "I'm back, you have an Observer!" Stupid words, but he didn't know what else to say, and he had to talk, speak. Because Sam wasn't. He shook his head, again and again, "Al, you shouldn't be...I needed someone but..." At Al's last words, though, he raised his head, and something almost like a smile might have crossed his face. "I can use--" he began. A sound Al knew all too well, a sound from other, older nightmares crashed into his eardrums. Machine gun, semi- automatic AK-47 his memory unerringly identified. And his heart and soul knew what had happened before his eyes physically registered Sam falling back, chest suddenly gleaming scarlet. "Sam!" he yelled. His friend, his only-just found friend, once lost but now--Sam's eyes met his for a flash too small to acknowledge and then rolled back, hazel turning white as his head crashed into the seats behind him. Al whirled, a full circle, caught a glimpse of a grim-faced man holding the weapon that had wreaked this damage, stepping forward, and then everything went grey. For the briefest moment he wondered if his mind or his body or both together was refusing to accept this, and then he realized the truth. The Imaging Chamber, the images were fading, and then they were gone, and the connection, the first connection established with Sam for a year, was severed. "NO!" Al screamed. Gooshie and the rest stared. The Admiral shouted quite a bit. He yelled under certain conditions and he even roared when it was called for, but he never screamed. The sound at least prepared them for the man charging out of the Imaging Chamber. "What happened, Ziggy, what happened to the connection?" he demanded, growled, a tone half-way normal. Even more calmly he asked, "Have we lost contact again?" The other people in the room only stared the harder; they couldn't comprehend his calmness in the face of lost contact. Not when it seemed only to be blind luck that it had been however briefly restored. Al himself didn't understand; he only knew that every emotion he had had drained away when he screamed in the Imaging Chamber, that he couldn't summon anger or fear or even worry. Only a blank, flat emptiness inside. Probably better that way. Ziggy took an infinite period to respond. When she did her voice was soft, subdued. "I do not fully understand why the link was broken. There is a chance I may be able to restore it." "Did Sam's brain patterns alter again?" Again the computer's response was slow in coming. "It is a possibility," she at last admitted. "Could they be permanently unfindable? Can you find any trace of them, or are they totally gone?" Gooshie opened his mouth. "If that were true, then Dr. Beckett would be--" and stopped abruptly, swallowing. "The Leapee is still in the Waiting Room," Ziggy informed them. "I have hypothesized that should Dr. Beckett's life processes cease, than he would fade from the timestream and the original person would be drawn back to their own body and time." "Maybe he can give us an idea of what's happening," Verbena mentioned, starting to move towards the Waiting Room. "I have interviewed him already," the computer stopped her verbally. "He knows little, but I have taken all the information I need from him." "You aren't supposed to talk to the Leapee," Tina reprimanded Ziggy, but only quietly and she didn't pursue the topic. "He's still alive." Al's tone was grimly determined. "Find a way to contact him again." "Al," Verbena spoke in the silence that followed. "What happened in there?" "You found Sam?" Gooshie inquired eagerly. "I found him." Al took a deep, shuddering breath and lowered himself into one of the available programmer's seats. "He was...I saw him, it was definitely him, and he saw me, he knew me. He was...where was he, Ziggy?" Letting the computer speak, while he marshalled energy from his being's core. "September 7, 1993," the hybrid-computer obliged. "On an Air America 737 over the Atlantic Ocean, approximately a thousand miles from Paris, France. The site of the Circle of Bronze Hijacking." "Hijacking?" Tina echoed. "On September 7, 1993," Ziggy intoned, "the Circle of Bronze, a European militia group, first entered the realm of terrorist activities. They took an Air America 737 hostage and threatened to crash it into the Louvre, national French mus--" "We know what the Louvre is," Tina reminded the computer. "Obviously their mission failed, the negotiations were successful, and not only was the plane was reclaimed but the terrorists in question were captured. They're still in jail now, with the exception of one, Otto Stein, who was executed for homicide. Three Americans were killed during the course of the hijacking." "And Dr. Beckett's on that plane?" Gooshie asked, incredulous. "So my data indicates. He has Leaped into one Benjamin K. Lapier, an IBM representative from Boston, travelling to France on business. Who was on the 737 taken hostage." "Did he die in the original history?" Al asked abruptly. "It appears as if Dr. Beckett has already changed the past," Ziggy announced. "Originally, Benjamin Lapier was never even shot." Every face in the control room paled, with the exception of Al's. There was no blood left in his face to drain. And he was silent when the others' queries exploded out in random noise. "Dr. Beckett has been--" "--the one shot?" "--could it happ--" "-- how?" "He's still alive." Verbena's simple statement broke over the others, silenced them. "That's what you said, yes, Ziggy?" "Yes," the computer confirmed. "For now." Al's words were bitter, yet dead, emotionless as well. "I won't make any bets on his condition in twenty-four hours. I saw his injuries." His dark eyes raked over them, unseeing yet burning all the same. "I've seen men die before. I'm not a doctor but I know what kills. A one second glance was all I needed." He turned back to Ziggy. "You have to find him," he said. "If only long enough for a good-bye. I need to see him again." An hour later he still sat in the same chair, in nearly the same position. Around him Gooshie and Tina worked diligently with Ziggy, micro-tuning her connections and receivers to pick up the slightest hint of Sam's mind. Verbena had tried to talk with him, make him talk in return, but there wasn't enough left alive inside for him even to attempt to respond. Tina's words bubbled over his head as well, and even Gooshie's quick one-phrase reports brought nothing. He couldn't find anything to say. There weren't any words that seemed especially meaningful. The worst oaths he knew, the most terrible expletives were hopelessly inadequate to address this situation. How could it happen; after a year, how could something worse than his nightmares occur? To reach once for such a brief instant and then broken, and he hadn't even thought at that moment to say a farewell, to somehow-- Somehow what? Break a bond of friendship that stretched back for many years and wove among the years for even further than that? Good-bye and bring closure to something that wasn't supposed to end? Weren't no such words for that, either. So he was left with this emptiness. A broken ending. Unfilled place inside. Felt like-- Like coming back from living hell and finding your love in the arms of another, wearing another's ring, crying because you came back too late. Second time around and he still hadn't found a single word for it. But this was completely different. Wife, best friend, same magnitude but different loss. And this loss was death, the finale, the end. Worse than the other. Worse because he had been there, and instead of stopping it-- Lapier hadn't been shot before. Sam changed that. But how? Al knew, knew exactly why. Because Lapier hadn't stood before, hadn't disobeyed a terrorist with a machine gun, hadn't not heard the man's orders because Lapier hadn't a long-lost friend waving and smirking in the corner of his eyes, distracting him. An Observer who hadn't observed when it was most crucial that he do so. No matter how he recalled it he couldn't make an excuse. No matter how he thought of it words couldn't apply. And Ziggy broke into his thoughts. "I may have found a temporary connection." Everyone was instantly attentive--even Al. The computer went on, "It is a tentative solution, but the probability of success is fairly high. I have been implementing it for the last 32.71 minutes--" "Without telling us?" Gooshie murmured piteously. "--and I believe I am close to the correct calibration," Ziggy continued, ignoring the programmer. "If you would enter the Imaging Chamber, Admiral..." Al complied instantly, disregarding the protests his joints made over movement after being locked for so long. On the silver disk again, and this time the holograms took no time to focus. They were dim, however; obviously not real. But solid at least in that they didn't flicker and weren't obscured by static. Like being inside a high-quality TV set, instead of a false reality. The setting was same as before, an airplane. This time Al saw clearly, standing directly in front of him, the terrorists which were presumably the reason Sam had Leaped to begin with. All men, looking brooding and fierce, and armed in a way that no airport security would have ever allowed. They must have bribed someone, he briefly conjectured. Then his attention moved to the tight cluster of passengers, hostages now. All in the aisle, and gathered around one center. Some watched their enemies but others were focused on what they surrounded. Al moved forward, through them, and found the object of their attention, knowing what--who--it must be. Of course it was. Sam. Lying on his back, eyes closed, and two people diligently working over him. The man was holding a red-stained cloth--looked like a towel--to his chest. The woman was taking his pulse. "How is he?" muttered the man, almost as if he was speaking Al's silent queries aloud. "I don't know," snapped the woman. She was young, pretty, and at another time the figure revealed by her tight jeans would have held Al's gaze. Not now; he spared her barely a glance before kneeling and trying to tell visually how Sam was doing. She mattered to him only in that she was clearly working to save his friend's life. "How's his pulse at least?" the man hissed back. "Slow, and low pressure," the woman answered. Al listened intently. "Sorry for snapping," she continued, brushing her dark hair back from her eyes. "This is nerve-racking, I'm not equipped to handle this. I'm no doctor, just an EMT." "I've had only basic first-aid training," the man said, "so you're a step up from me." "What do you mean, there's no doctor here?" Al shouted, fully aware that no one could hear him but needing to vent his emotions in some way. The woman almost sounded like she was answering him. "Damn shame there isn't a single MD on board." "Damn shame any of us are on board," replied the man, shooting a glance at their guards, who seemed to be doing their best at ignoring their hostages, especially the one they had shot. Only just terrorists, Al recalled Ziggy's report, and probably not used to having killed people. Possibly killed. Maybe only injured. Al tried to see how truly terrible it was but couldn't, not when the wounds were covered by the towel and the two helpers were in the way. If they were working than he was still alive. For how much longer? "Is he going to make it?" asked a new voice, and another woman joined the EMT and her fist-aid-educated assistant. "We don't know," the man answered quietly. "Not if we can help it," the other woman asserted. "I'm not going to let anybody die if I can help it." "It would be awful," agreed the new woman, speaking low-voiced. "Not only just because--but he's alone here, no one even knows his name. He might have a family, friends, but none of them are here." "I'm here," the younger woman said. "And I might not know his name and maybe I'm not related or a friend--but he's not alone. And he's not going to die." "Sam, you most certainly are not alone!" Al supported her. "And listen to her on the other stuff too. You hear me, Beckett? Don't die out here, not on this Leap--we just restored contact and if we did that then maybe we can bring you back--but you gotta hang in there long enough for us to make this all definite." He didn't know if Sam could hear him, not unconscious as he was. And he didn't get a chance to see if Sam responded, because before he could even finish his final sentence, the images blurred, became still dimmer, and then they were gone, and the tenuous connection was once again rended. End part 3 Part 4 is a-comin', promise (though so are midterms...so be patient)! if you care to encourage me (a big huge THANK YOU and XXX & OOO to everyone who has :) e-mail ekarr@bowdoin.edu