Quantum Leap: The Virtual Seasons // The Eleventh Season Archives

In May of 2006, Admiral Al Calavicci attends the test phase of General Hawkins new anti-terrorist project in Washington D.C. called Project Liberty, a time travel experiment based on Sam’s that would be used to prevent terrorism. Also attending the demonstration are Tom Beckett and his son J.T., along with David Watkins, the grandson of a man Sam had once leaped into. At first the demonstration proceeds smoothly but near the end, four soldiers are killed by quantum energy due to a recurring glitch in Omega, the project’s main computer.

Meanwhile, Sam is Reginald van Halstrom, a young man gifted with the ability to astral project. For the leaper, it is September of 2001 and he is part of an experiment at the Williams Science Institute in Plainfield, New Jersey. The objective: to determine whether or not metaphysical and parapsychic sciences, such as astral projection and ESP, could be used to aid the military. While at the Institute, Sam is shocked to find a Colonel Hawkins there to help supervise the experiment. Another surprise finds the leaper in the form of a psychic that warns him that Hawkins will be the cause of Armageddon in the future.

When Al finally arrives, he tells Sam that he is there to stop a project under development by a Dr. Qasim and his partner Mustafa, both of whom were present in Hope Springs, 1985, when Sam witnessed the evil Dr. Braden selling his secrets of time travel to them. If the two are not stopped, their funding money and project materials will be smuggled to the al Qaeda terrorist network. Sam manages to destroy the lab and Dr. Qasim’s work, but in the process, Colonel Hawkins is injured, and Qasim and Mustafa are killed. Above all else, Sam witnesses the death of Dr. Garner by seeing Al walk into Garner’s body, control it, and take a bullet meant for Sam. Just as the laboratory is destroyed in an explosion, Sam manages to get out of the building and collapses to the ground…

PROLOGUE

The air contained a hint of chilliness in it as the unseasonable winds blustered their way through the city of Hope Springs, Virginia. Shivering slightly in her jeans and short-sleeved shirt, Paige Arlyss helped her mother Dianne remove the bags of groceries from the trunk of the car. Spring was still debating on whether or not it wanted to hit high gear as the early evening temperature dropped enough to be annoying to those without a light jacket once the sun disappeared.

Except for the occasional wind gust or occasional car moving up or down the neighborhood, it was a quiet night. The stars were out, the constellations easily recognizable in the evening sky. To Paige, these things were unimportant. In her mind, she wanted a challenge, something to stimulate her creative intellect. Ever since the computer virus had come into her life recently, she craved another enigma to unravel. Unfortunately, fate was about to deny her this.

“Any more bags left?” Paige asked her mother, looking inside the back seat of the car for anything she might have missed.

As Dianne slammed the trunk of the car, the serene stillness of the evening was ripped asunder by a near deafening blast that shattered the windows on their car, the house, the neighbors’ houses, and knocked the women roughly to the ground.

Car alarms that had immediately started to wail just as suddenly all stopped. People from all different houses rushed outside to find what was going on, some of them screaming out of fear and panic or confusion.

“What’s happening?” Paige’s voice quaked as she got back to her feet, not even aware of the groceries she crushed in the wake of her fall or the trickles of blood coming from her ears and nose.

“I don’t know,” Dianne replied, her voice full of fear and panic. She, too, was bleeding in the same manner as her daughter.

Neither woman would get a chance to inquire further as a blinding flash of light erupted from very far away down the right side of the street, throwing them and all the people outside to the ground in pain and agony. The white-hot glow had burned their optic nerves before anyone had known what hit them. Screaming, all anyone could do was yell for his or her salvation as a wave of heat and fire engulfed the entire area, burning them all alive to a crisp.

The force of the wave swept through quickly, flicking bodies and objects like automobiles aside like leaves in a tornado. Houses burst apart like twigs and scattered in all directions. Before long it was over, the wave had passed and nothing was left alive, not on this particular street or within the town of Hope Springs itself. The entire city was now flattened; a smoking cinder as ash and soot fell to the ground in what looked like a blizzard on a photograph negative. The precipitation continued to fall for hours.

When Sam came to, he found himself lying in a hospital bed. Disorientation hit him as the events of the last eight hours flooded through him. Not surprised that Al was standing nearby, Sam whispered, “I must be here for smoke inhalation. Was I projecting again?”

Al looked at his friend with concern. “You almost leaped out. Somehow you stopped yourself, and it’s a good thing you did.”

“You can’t leap to another assignment yet. There is more you must do now.”

Before Sam could ask another question, the door to the Imaging Chamber opened up and Al Calavicci walked through, dressed in his military whites. “Thank god, it finally worked. I’m in, Dom!” the second Al yelled back through the holographic door.

Blinking, Sam sat upright in bed as he saw the double set of Al’s looking back at him.

“You ok, Sam?” the new Al inquired. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost…” His voice trailed off as he followed Sam’s gaze and saw his twin standing on the other side of the room. “Saaaam…what the hell is going on here?”

“You tell me, Al,” Sam said. “I thought the Al on this leap was funny. He talked differently, he never used a handlink, and he never used the Imaging Chamber door. I’ve had this happen before. It’s déjà vu, just like I’ve felt over the last few recent leaps.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Sam?” The new Al hit a few buttons on his multi-colored handlink. “This other me, whatever it is, is not real. Ziggy gets no reading from him at all. Whoever’s been with you on this leap, it wasn’t me. I just got back from Washington D.C. an hour ago. We’ve had no way of contacting you until just a minute ago.”

“Gentleman,” began the imposter, “I believe my guise is no longer needed, now that Sam has changed what he needed to.” The image of the fake Al shimmered, and was then replaced by that of a younger Dr. Garner, in his forties, dressed in normal clothes and a lab coat over top. Without mistake, he was now the spitting image of himself from 1959.

“That can’t be you, doctor,” gasped Sam. “I watched you die. How could you be Al?”

“You did indeed watch my sacrifice,” Garner explained as he looked upward. “The Lord works in mysterious ways, Sam.”

Understanding dawned on Sam. “You’re working for the Bartender, aren’t you?”

Before Garner could explain further, everyone turned as Al’s handlink let off a long series of high-pitched squeals. “Oh, my god!” exhaled the Admiral as he staggered backward seconds later, his voice quaking as the handlink nearly fell from his hand. The leaper had never seen his friend so pale.

Gaining his composure as best as he could, Al gravely turned to his best friend, finding it hard to speak and breathe. “Sam, Ziggy just monitored a live breaking news report. Twenty minutes ago from my present time, a massive nuclear explosion occurred right outside of Hope Springs, Virginia.”

Garner remained silent as Sam jumped out of bed, reached into a closet and began putting on his clothes. “Hope Springs?! That’s Hawkins’ project! How bad is it?”

“Bad enough. There’s more, Sam. The nuclear blast was powerful enough to cause damage to the capital region. Counting the aftermath of the radiation that will fall on the survivors of the civilian population, Ziggy calculates a 100% probability that Washington D.C. will be a total disaster area by nightfall.”

Closing his eyes in horror, Sam sank back upon the bed. “Ohhh, boy!”

PART ONE

The energy seemed to have drained out of Sam after Al had recited Ziggy’s information. The leaper, perched upon the edge of the bed, stared downward into the floor, his mind lost in thought, the warning from the psychic Johnny Smith fresh in his memory. Somewhere else in his mind, he knew he had seen images of nuclear destruction somewhere before and could only imagine how horrible the recent event must have been. Silence filled the hospital room for several moments before the man named Dr. Garner, supposedly deceased, cleared his throat.

“What would you have me do, Alexander?” Sam’s face came up with a start. “That accident is a few years from where I am now. It happened in Al’s present, my future. How am I gonna leap forward from here and change it if all I have is just a warning from a psychic. If it just happened in Al’s time, Ziggy wouldn’t have any information for me, at least not yet anyway.”

“A psychic?” Al said in disbelief. “You put your stock in the words of someone who claims to know the future?”

“Time travel was once thought impossible, and here we are in 2001 having this conversation,” Sam responded back. “Especially after what I saw in Mustafa’s lab and a dead man standing here with us right now, who is to say that psychics don’t exist?”

“All I was told, Al, is that Hawkins will be…is responsible somehow for this disaster. That means he must have survived his bullet wound.”

The Admiral smacked his handlink. “Yeah, he’s alive. Ziggy says he’s under heavy sedation just a few doors down. Doesn’t appear to be any changes to the timeline that would affect us concerning the monkey butt.”

“Great,” muttered the leaper. “Even if Hawkins wakes up now, we’re still years away from Al’s present. He might not be linked yet to anything that would give us a clue as to how this all happened.”

“There might still be a way, Sam,” Garner stated. “But it will involve something you have never done before. It may be best to leap further ahead and backtrack the information to the cause of the explosion. Perhaps the answers to your questions lie in the future.”

“You’ve leaped outside of your lifetime twice before,” Garner reasoned. “If I recall you were your ancestor in the Civil War, and you also saw what might have been your future when you met your granddaughter Isabella.”

Granddaughter? Sam’s heart soared when he heard Isabella’s name. Vaguely, he recalled the fact that he had a granddaughter, but knew it would be a topic for another time. “My great-grandfather was in the past and it was similar DNA that allowed that. The future is different. It hasn’t happened yet. How can I be someplace that doesn’t exist?”

“Only in your mind, it doesn’t exist, Sam,” Garners tried to convince the leaper. “Forgive the expression, but it’s perhaps a leap of faith. The future is attainable. It’s your mind that prohibits you from getting there.”

“The future? What kind of crap is this?” scoffed Al. “The only reason Sam made it to the future was because someone yanked him out of his current leap cycle. It wasn’t a natural leap.”

Garner turned to Al. “Are you as narrow-minded as well?” retorted the doctor. “As I am trying to convince Sam, your mind must be made open to ideas never before believed possible.” Sighing, Garner looked upward looking for assistance. After what seemed like a few seconds of him communicating to an invisible presence, the doctor turned his gaze to Sam. “I can see trying to convince you myself is not going to work.”

The doctor ignored the hologram’s jab and approached the leaper. “It’s time for us to go, Sam.”

Garner gave the hologram a sideways glance. “I’m sorry, Al. Where we are going, you cannot follow.”

“You wanna bet, Casper?”

Sam ignored his best friend as he tried to get an answer to his previous question. “Where are we going?”

“Do you really need to ask me that, Sam?” Garner demanded. “Where is the one place we can go to find the answers to your questions?”

After a few seconds, the leaper nodded. “I understand. We’re going to see Him!”

“Who’s Him?!” Al pouted, then he did a double take. “Ohhh, wait a minute, you pesky poltergeist, you’re not taking Sam to see that bartender, are you?”

“For someone who doesn’t enjoy being around dead people, you’ve been quite chatty.”

The truth of those words sank in as Al realized that he was indeed talking to a dead man and subconsciously took a few steps back. “Sam, leap away or something. Get away from this guy.”

Sam shook his head, his mind spinning. “I think…I think I’m supposed to go with him, Al.”

The handlink in Al’s hand chirped. “Sam, Ziggy says that if you go, the chances of finding you will be slim. It could take months of me standing in the Imaging Chamber trying to get a lock on you, and I am not putting myself through that again.”

Garner gave the Admiral a sad smile. “Your part in this story has come to an end. If Sam is to do what is expected of him, there won’t be any way that you can help him.”

“All I can say is that if he goes into the future as it will play out from this moment, you won’t be there to assist him.”

“Am I dead in this future--?” Al started to say, but before he could speak further, Garner moved his hand in a farewell wave, and the form of Al Calavicci dematerialized into thin air.

“I don’t have the time to argue with him over his beliefs and his fears, Sam. You must come with me now. Remember your astral projection sessions. In your mind, feel yourself relaxed. Imagine yourself projecting forward as total consciousness without solid form, moving ahead as energy. Bend the reality of this hospital room as if you were turning a page, your destination being on the other side of the page. The wall of this room is a curtain. Pull it aside with your mind, and above all, stay at peace. Remember, you’ve seen this done before when Angela the Angel stepped from Al’s reality at the Project to yours in South Bend, New Mexico.” (author’s note: refer to Mirror Expression trilogy at end of Season 9.)

Squeezing his eyes shut, Sam concentrated on Garner’s words, forcing the knowledge of the catastrophe out of his mind to the best of his abilities. Quantum energy seemed to flow through him as he felt himself start to float. But this time, it was different. All the leaps before it felt like an overwhelming rush of pure energy sweeping through and carrying him off like a flash flood. Now, it felt like small hands were pulling him, guiding him to a destination. All at once, the hospital room dissolved into a void of blue, but just as quickly it disappeared and Sam found himself back in the hospital room with Garner standing before him.

Opening his eyes, Sam looked around himself. “Why am I back here? Is this the future?”

“I’m afraid not, Sam. For some reason, your mind is preventing you from going where you want to go. There is no more time to waste on this, I’ll have to assist you.”

Garner reached out and his hand physically made contact with Sam’s. The normal sensation of overwhelming quantum energy overtook him and then changed to the sensation of hands pulling at him as Sam leaped out of Reginald van Halstrom.

“Garner, you bastard!” Al screamed as the walls of the Imaging Chamber resumes their normal metallic shape. “Dom, re-establish a link with Sam, NOW!” he yelled into the handlink.

“Sorry, Al, honey,” bawled Tina’s voice almost dripping with tears. “I can’t get a lock on Dr. Beckett at all.”

Swearing in Italian, Al swung his arm around to smash the handlink out of anger, but at the last moment brought himself under control. Instead, he slammed his fist onto the handlink button that controlled the Imaging Chamber door. With a whoosh, it swung open, and the Admiral stormed out.

As he approached the bottom of the ramp, he spotted Tina by herself. The computer programmer was nearly beside herself as she constantly wiped her eyes with tissues. The piles on the floor around her feet suggested that she had been at this for some time. The news of the catastrophe seemed to hit her hard too.

“Dom and Aurora,” blubbered Tina, “bolted as soon as the news bulletins came on. They have relatives in the D.C. area. I think they tried to like get plane tickets to go find them, but President Bush ordered that all aircraft stay on the ground due to the travel ban.”

“Until anyone knows what’s happened, President Bush has ordered that all modes of public transportation like trains, buses, and planes be halted indefinitely. This is totally scary, Al. It’s like 9-11 all over again, but much worse.”

“Tragedy or not, Dom had no businesses deserting his post. I need to find Sam. He leaped out and I need to know where he is.”

“That is impossible at present, Admiral,” purred Ziggy from the blue globe suspended from the ceiling. “Based on past leap readings, I project with 100% certainty that Sam is somewhere in time as himself. The only way I will be able to lock on to him is if you stand in the Imaging Chamber until I cycle through all the days of his life. Even then I cannot guarantee success, through no fault of my own.”

“No one will fault you, Ziggy,” growled Al. “I have a hypothetical question though.”

“What if Sam has moved ahead past our present and into the future? Can you track him then?”

“Damn,” hissed the Admiral, who turned around as he heard the sound of Donna Elesee-Beckett’s footsteps approaching.

“I don’t know how to say this, Al. But just before the catastrophe, City Of Hope called my residence outside the project.”

“City Of Hope is a cancer center facility in Los Angeles, California,” intoned the parallel-hybrid computer.

“It’s where Sam’s mother was moved to when her condition got worse a few weeks ago,” Donna added. “Her breast cancer apparently has been malignant for some time now and has spread. Her recent treatments were believed to be helpful but now she is apparently unable to tolerate the procedures. She’s not expected to live much longer. The doctor said they tried to contact Tom and was unable to leave a message with him.” Tears formed around her face. “What gets me is that Tom didn’t tell us about her condition, and now he and J.T. are presumed dead. Sam is gonna be devastated when he hears about all this.”

Al bit his tongue and remained silent. A few months earlier, Tom had revealed to Al that Thelma Louise Beckett was terminal. It was believed that Sam’s mother would stay alive for at least another year or two. This announcement wasn’t what Al needed to hear. When Tom asked the Admiral to tell Sam, Al had refused, believing that if Sam knew his mother was dying, he wouldn’t be able to complete his leaps with her on his mind. But now, Sam was missing in Time, and his mother was dying.

Donna nodded. “Stephen and I are packed. We plan to go early tomorrow morning during daylight. A couple of soldiers are going to drive us in a military van past the protestors out front and make sure we get there in one piece. Stephen is frightened to go but I can’t leave him behind, not with all the things that are going on right now. I want him with me.”

“I understand,” Al said. “Have a safe trip if I don’t see you before tomorrow. I hope Mrs. Beckett pulls through somehow.”

“Thank you,” Donna sniffed as she made her way to her quarters to pick up Stephen.

“Ziggy, if anything new develops to depress me, let me know. I’m gonna be in my quarters watching the news with my wife.” Al walked as fast as he could to the elevator and stepped inside, his heart heavy over the developments concerning his best friend. As he selected the desired floor, Al let out a deep breath and slumped against the elevator wall, sliding down it to the floor and wondering what the hell was going on in the world.

Sam and Garner found themselves standing outside the entrance door to Al’s Place. The building itself looked no different from his previous visits to the establishment, right down to the familiar window sign that advertised liquor, wine, beer, lunches, and sandwiches. Other than the front of the building, there was much to be desired to the imagination. A thick blue fog was the only other thing visible in all directions besides the doorway. Feelings of disorientation from the fog overcame Sam as he suddenly felt like he was back in the blue void again.

“I know that, but where are we? What city is this? When I was here before, it was either Pennsylvania or New Mexico. This is nowhere, a blue void.”

“Very true, Sam.” Garner opened the door and motioned for Sam to enter. “We are in between time right now. I know it’s a bit hard to explain. The only approximate word I can say to describe this is limbo. Time has no meaning here. A few minutes here could be seconds in the real world. This state of existence can only be sustained for a limited amount of time.”

After the two men entered, the door closed behind them with the jingling of small bells. Looking around, Sam realized that the bar was exactly how he remembered it. The counter, the tables, everything was the same except it was devoid of customers. The television set was running but no sound was heard. On the screen was the picture of a news anchor with a small picture of a mock nuclear explosion cropped just off the shoulder.

Below the television screen was a long mirror that stretched behind the bar. Out of reflex, he peered at it to see his reflection. To no surprise, he was himself, dressed in a blue button shirt, and tan slacks. Feeling his back pocket, he could tell that his velcro wallet was in there.

“Welcome, Samuel,” boomed a voice from across the bar, breaking the silence. “The critical juncture of the current timeline has been reached.”

Swiveling his head, Sam saw who it was that addressed the leaper. It was Him. The enigmatic bartender named Alberto, Albert, or even Al for short, was standing by the far side of the room. He was dressed in a white button shirt and black pants. It seemed odd to Sam that the bartender was not wearing an apron or a dishtowel over his shoulder.

“Have a seat,” Alberto ordered as he scooped a punchboard game off the counter and placed it underneath behind the bar. Grabbing a few glasses and a pitcher of ice water, he brought them over to the table and joined Sam and Garner who had just taken a seat at a table, the same one Sam had witnessed Al’s uncle, Stawpah, disappear from during his first visit here. “I am sure you have a lot of questions for me, Sam,” the bartender said as he poured drinks for everyone. “To the best of my ability, I will try to explain the answers to you. There will be no games this time, no double meanings or twisted words. A major disturbance in the timeline has occurred and it has to be corrected.”

“It has to do with the explosion,” guessed Sam, staring over at the television screen on the wall. The news anchor was no longer present. Instead, live images of government agency workers dressed in radiation suits rummaging through the fiery, smoking wreckage of Hope Springs was alternated with pictures of Washington D.C. burning in flames with the word LIVE superimposed in large block letters.

Alberto nodded gravely. “This may be difficult to understand. You have probably come to the realization that the city of Hope Springs and certain individuals like General Hawkins and Dr. Garner, to name a few, have repeated shown themselves recently over the course of your leaps.” Sam nodded as the bartender continued. “When you first met Alexander in 1959 while you were Ohdee, you took it upon yourself to reveal your identity to him. Do you know why you took that course of action?”

Sam took a sip from his water before answering, “Sometimes when I have limited information during a leap, I have to rely on my instincts and my gut reactions. On occasion lately, it seems like there is this voice inside my head that guides and tells me what I should do to successfully complete a leap. That voice told me that I should tell Dr. Garner who I really was.”

“Mm-hmm.” Alberto’s moustache bristled as he elaborated on Sam’s reply. “At the risk of deflating the faith in your abilities to complete a leap, it should be noted that I am the cause of the little voice you’ve been hearing from time to time. Even when you were dying as Ohdee inside of Alexander’s Time Displacer Unit, I was still trying to talk to you, trying to get you to realize that you could go home if you truly believed you could, but I had to influence your ability to do that. Speaking of influence, your partner Al has told you of late that General Hawkins has controlled your leaping to fit his agenda, well the same holds true for me, sad to say. I, too, have been influencing your leaps as well.”

Sam’s jaw gaped at this revelation. “To what end can you justify doing all this?”

Garner raised a hand. “Sam, please hear him out. All will be made clear to you.”

Clearing his throat, Alberto continued, “Back in 1959, you were given some encouragement when it was decided that the ulterior goal had to be achieved for the greater good. I allowed you the impulse to tell Alexander who you really were otherwise General Hawkins would have pulled the plug on Project Quantum Leap, and at that point, you weren’t ready to lose your, how may I delicately put it, training wheels and be able to leap by yourself. By doing this, we made a grave error. Unforeseeable events were put in motion when Dr. Braden caught on to you when your blood type didn’t match the samples taken from Ohdee. To allay his suspicions, you were leaped eight months forward to prove Garner’s experiment worked so that your project could be saved and you would be leaped out quicker.”

Anger formed in Sam’s words. “Dr. Braden drugged me and found out about me and the project. Why couldn’t you see all that? Because of what you made me do, an evil project was created that hurt many people. Do you understand the torture you put me through at their hands? All the anguish I went through because I thought that all this time that other project was my fault when it fact it was yours? Am I your whipping boy or what? Go find someone else to do your dirty work, because I quit!”

“I mean it!” Sam yelled as he bolted out of his seat. “You said no games, but you persist in playing them. Once you told me that I could go home at any time. I’m ready to go home now.”

“The catastrophe, for one thing. Deep down you know you have to prevent it from happening and besides that, your curiosity will ensnare you to stay long enough and listen to what I have to say.”

A dejected Dominic Lofton drove his vehicle down the desert road that led back to the project. His wife Aurora was constantly drifting in and out of sleep next to him. He knew he was in deep trouble for leaving his post, but when news of the disaster had struck; there was no one who could secure permission for him to leave. For all he knew, his relatives were dead in the explosion and until the travel ban on public transportation was lifted, there would be no way short of driving cross country that he could make the trip, and that wasn’t an option considering his wife’s condition. All he and Aurora could do was turn their car around after news came over the radio that all planes and trains were not running.

Over the last twelve hours he had repeatedly called their number, but no one answered. In the last six hours, the phone lines became completely jammed. News agencies were having trouble speculating whether it was another terrorist attack or a government cover-up that caused the nuclear explosion.

People who sided with the government conspiracy explanation quickly began showing distrust with demonstrations outside of every military installation known in existence. No matter what was believed, the end result became the same as American citizens were in a state of panic and paranoia. In some cities, people feared another attack and full-scale riots had broken out. Police precincts could no longer maintain law and order in some areas of the country, a state of anarchy loomed in the distance to take over. Dom had shut off the radio a few hours back, unable to hear anymore about how the world had turned upside down in the blink of an eye.

Before long, Dom turned his car onto the side road that led up to the security entrance to the project. An unwelcome sight quickly became apparent. The road leading up to the main entrance was blocked by mobs of people protesting the project. Armed guards kept the people away from trying to break through the closed security fences.

How was this possible? Dom thought. How did all these people get here? Quickly, the head programmer recalled the website that months ago Dr. Beckett’s nephew, J.T., logged into and told everyone all the information he knew about the project. As his vehicle pulled up to a stop at the back of the mob, the angry protestors whirled around and began to surround him and pummel the vehicle with their signs. Some people slashed his tires while others smashed in his car windows. Hands reached in to unlock the doors and then pulled Dom and Aurora out of the vehicle, the engine still running in park.

The security guards at the fences did nothing but stare and watch as Dom and his wife were led away by the angry people to the other side of the mob. The crowd parted as they approached. Aurora refrained from resisting while Dom was dragged, kicked, and punched until he was thrown without mercy to the dirt in front of a large vehicle. Blood dripped into Dom’s left eye as he stared up into the open back end of a large white van. A shadow within stirred and made its way to the open doorway. As it loomed closer, Dom was able to see the familiar features of a man in his late forties with a trimmed moustache just turning gray and neatly groomed hair.

The man seized Dom and dragged him up on his feet. “We meet again, stranger,” Jake said as he ordered both prisoners to be tied up.

“What do you want from me?” Dom pleaded while a few of the protestors began to bind his arms and legs. “Don’t harm my wife. She’s pregnant!”

Dim recollection came to Dom as he arms was completely bound behind him. “You seem familiar somehow.”

“I should be,” Jake grinned. “You made it possible to almost smuggle my partner into your project once, courtesy of your car.”

The head programmer struggled in his bonds to get at Jake but could barely move forward with the ropes now secured on his legs. In a futile attempt, he collapsed to the dirt.

“Save your strength,” Jake continued. “I still owe you for Benjamin getting arrested that night. I have a better use for you,” he smiled wickedly.

PART TWO

“You have to understand something, Sam,” the bartender informed him. “Time is an intricately woven tapestry. In theory, when events change, the strings in the fabric change also to create a new picture. Just with your leaps alone, the image has been rearranged countless times. Due to the constant change, it occasionally puts time in such a flux that we cannot perceive the entire image as a whole and can only interpret small alterations. It may shock you, Sam, but we are not as perfect as you think we are. If we were, we would have no need for anyone to travel in time to put things right that once went wrong.”

Sam’s anger lessened slightly as Alberto continued, “When Dr. Braden became involved in the tapestry of your leaping existence, it tangled the skein so badly that all the after effects of his interrogating you became uncontrollable. In an attempt to untangle everything, we tried to manipulate events to bring the tapestry back into clarity and focus. The reason why your leaps would sometimes have a déjà vu feeling to them with recurring people and places was our attempt at manipulating events. Again, it made things worse. Tweaking the tapestry, it was soon determined that two horrible events would now occur. One was the creation of Hawkins project and the catastrophe that has now resulted from it. The other with our best guess would be in the year 2008.”

“The future,” Alberto confirmed. “A few years from your project’s present, two people from the Middle East by the names of Dr. Badi-Al-Zaman Qasim, whose name ironically means ‘Marvel of Time’ in Arabic, and Abdul-Azim Mustafa, will take the secrets Braden got from you and build a project similar to yours, run by the terrorist network known as al-Qaeda. These terrorists would then travel back in time and change world history for the worst.”

“But I stopped their accelerator lab experiment. Both men died, and I burned their research notes,” Sam recounted.

The bartender clasped his hands together. “So you did, Sam. The research was destroyed and the al Qaeda have been denied their project. But by completing that leap, you started the chain of events that launched the other catastrophe. As bad as the tragedy in Washington D.C. is, you actually prevented the worst of the two. So now, you can concentrate on the explosion.”

Sam was flabbergasted. “In some strange way, I caused the nuclear explosion?”

“In the original history, the man in charge of your astral projection sessions, a Dr. Daniels, was originally killed in 2001 a week later when he stumbled onto what Mustafa and Qasim were up to due to the heightened paranoia of foreigners after 9-11. They were never implicated in his death. But once those two were killed through your leap, it altered history and avoided a temporal war against the terrorists. Daniels, who holds a degree in psychiatry as well as parapsychology, was tabbed by Hawkins to be the psychiatrist for the soldiers that would be used for his project. Thus, all the staff for Hawkins project now fell into place. When Daniels life was saved, it created a new timeline, one in which the explosion occurred.”

“Wait a minute,” Sam cut in, “I wasn’t the only one who made it possible for the leap to be completed. Dr. Garner did something I never thought was possible, and shouldn’t have been possible. He wasn’t supposed to be in any of my leaps after 1959. Dr. Garner originally died from suicide in early 1985 when the scientific community ostracized him!”

“Very true, Sam,” Garner agreed. “However, you saved me from an early death when you convinced me my time experiments worked and I became accepted by that very same community.”

“But your death was changed a second time,” argued the leaper. “The second time, you were supposed to die in 2003 from cancer. When I returned home to the project after leaping out of your Time Displacer Unit, I looked up what happened to you, and the Washington Post had your obituary printed up as July 2003 with cancer as the cause of death!”

“A death I chose to avoid, thank you very much,” put in Garner. “I remember all three of my deaths vividly. Dying of cancer would have been the least painful of the three, but involved the most long-term suffering. When you leaped into Hope Springs in 2001, your friend Al was at the testing of Hawkins’ new project and was unavailable. The leap mission objective of taking out those terrorists was too important to allow failure, so we controlled your project’s computer. As the window of successfully completing this mission began to close tightly, it was decided that I would appear in the image of Al to nudge you along. That was why I arrived late. After I told you why you were there at the science institute, I returned back here to consult with the bartender. When I returned to assist you, I found you and my still living elderly self being held at gunpoint by Mustafa and I chose to break a rule and literally leap into myself to take the bullets.”

“To me at that age of my life, dying to save you or living two more years suffering from a disease was no contest. I made the end of my life meaningful and died with dignity, not wasting away hooked up to some machine. Besides, I knew I would still end up here to help others in need.”

“The dead on another plane of existence,” Sam murmured. “Helping the living, just like Al’s uncle, Stawpah.”

“Correct, Sam,” Alberto nodded. “But by doing what he did, he broke one of our rules. Just like your project has rules, we are bound by our own code. Whether it is an angel like Angela or someone like Alexander or Stawpah, no one is allowed to forcibly assume control of a mortal’s body to change history. But under the circumstances, I allowed Garner to do it in order for you to stop the terrorists.”

Despite himself, a grin began to form on Sam’s face. “So angels do exist. Al was right.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Al’s memory has fewer holes than yours,” the bartender smiled back.

“Perhaps, but now that I think about this, you broke another rule, too,” Sam suddenly accused the portly barkeep.

Alberto broke into another grin. “Indeed I did, Sam, very observant. You remembered one of our other rules. The dead cannot assist people in any time period before time of death. It must be afterwards. A necessary rule to not muddy up the tapestry and avoid temptation of changing one’s own past or endangering their existence.”

A thought struck the leaper. “Then I’m a violation of almost all of your biggest rules!”

“Technically, no, Sam,” the bartender chuckled. “You are still mortal and not dead.”

“Your experiment was based on your string theory of leaping around in your lifetime, that is a contradiction of our rule, too. That was why we grabbed you during your first leap. You were an unknown element that defied our rules, but it was deemed that your heart was good and that you would be allowed to change things in your own lifetime, which took some of the slack off of my staff. Although from time to time we sent someone to keep an eye on you,” Alberto added with a smile.

“Excuse me,” Garner exclaimed, “but how much longer can this limbo existence be sustained? Once this limbo realm expires, Sam’s project computer can monitor us. We can’t stay cloaked from it much longer.”

Alberto rose from his chair. “You’re right, Alexander. We have told you all we can right now. It’s time for you to move ahead on your journey and figure out what caused the nuclear explosion.”

“The future,” Alberto slapped Sam on the shoulder. “With the tapestry in disarray, we cannot supply you with the answers you seek. You will need to get those after the fact. As I said before, you still need your training wheels, so we will send you to where you need to go. God bless, Sam!”

Al Calavicci sat in silence in his quarters, a lit cigar in one hand and a silver framed photo of himself and Sam in the other. So absorbed in his thoughts, he barely noticed his wife Beth limp across the room, nursing her almost healed broken ankle, to sit on the arm of the oversized chair he was occupying. Only the motion of Beth’s hand swatting the cigar smoke away brought him back to reality.

Sighing, Al set the picture down on the nightstand on the other side of the chair away from his wife. “Wherever he’s leaped, Sam’s still himself.”

     “Because no one’s in the Waiting Room?”
      “There’s no other explanation,” Al shook his head, trying to fight the wave of sadness that was overtaking him due to his missing friend. “Ziggy’s started a nano-second search this morning but I got a feeling Sam’s leaped beyond his lifetime.”
      “Into the past or future?” Beth wondered.

    An odd look of resolve came over the Admiral’s features. “The future. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. He’s in the future...beyond his current lifetime.”
     “How’d he get there?”
     “The bartender sent him,” Al told his wife.
     “The bartender?” Beth asked quizzically.
     Al shrugged. “Why not? Anyone who has the power
to leap Sam through time can be anyone he wants to be... a
bartender, a train conductor...a steambath attendant.”
     Beth thought about what her husband had just told her for a few seconds before looking down at him. “He’d know where Sam was in the future.”
     That brought a chuckle from Al as he failed to take her suggestion seriously. “How do I ask him? As a hologram, would he hear me?”
      “If he’s God, I think he’ll hear you,” Beth frowned.
     “Good,” Al snorted derisively. “But without Sam in the bar, I can’t get there.”
     After a pause, Beth cupped her husband’s chin in her palm. “You could if you leaped.”

Al sat there, looking straight ahead. After he considered the logistics of the idea, his face turned to look his wife in the eyes. “I might not come back,” he said sorrowfully, knowing that there was a chance of being trapped in time the same as Sam. Beth would not be in his life, she would be a forgotten memory like Donna was to his best friend.
Smiling bravely, knowing that her husband’s heart was torn between her and his best friend, Beth kissed his forehead. “You’ll come back. Anyone who came back from Vietnam can come back from anywhere.”

The Admiral looked her in the eyes with wonder. “Forty-five years and you still amaze me,” he said as he put his arm around her and pulled her down to kiss her. To Al, he gave his wife another forty-five years of passion in that one kiss, not knowing when he’d even do so again. Before Beth could catch her breath from the embrace, Al bolted out of the chair and raced out of the room towards the Control Room.
Looking longingly at the door moments after he had left, Beth rubbed a hand across her face to wipe away the tears. “So do you,” she whispered to herself, wondering what she had left to hold onto in this topsy-turvy world.

Donna sighed with impatience as she banged on her son’s bedroom door. “Stephen, we have to leave now. People are waiting for us. The bags are already loaded.”

“I don’t want to go,” came the muffled reply from the other side of the door.

“Look, I know it’s dangerous. But we have to do this. I’m not going to lie to you; this might be the last time any of us ever get to see your grandmother. Open the door right now!”

“No! I’m staying here with Al and Sammy Jo. There are all sorts of scary people outside.”

“I know there are, Stephen. But we’ll be under the protection of marines. They will see that we make it to City of Hope safely and back again.”

“You know that’s not possible,” Donna said into the door. “They can’t both be with us.”

“I don’t want to go, I’m afraid of what’s out there. Something’s gonna happen to both of us.”

PREVIOUSLY ON QUANTUM LEAP

PROLOGUE

PART ONE

“You wanna bet, Casper?”

PART TWO