Theorizing

Part 2 - A Message to the Future

June of 2014 at Project Quantum Leap had threatened to be an awful lot like May of 2014, which had been like April and before that, going back in an unbroken chain to when contact with Sam Beckett had been lost. But then Rear Admiral (Retired) Albert Calavicci had received a mysterious text message from Ziggy, the parallel hybrid computer, just when he had been about to sit down to dinner with his wife, Beth, and their five daughters, assorted sons-in-law, one daughter-in-law, and a passel of grandchildren. He had sprung up from his seat, whooped louder and longer than any guy in his early seventies had any right to, and had woken up his youngest grandson, Logan.

Alone in her quiet home, as she sat near the edge of the swimming pool, Dr. Donna Eleese had been picking at takeout and trying not to think about things as the stars winked on, including, in the Big Dipper, Megrez. She had made a wish, "Here's to you, Sam, wherever you may be." She received the same text message, but she didn't whoop or jump. She just sat there and sniffled, and then dried her eyes. "I do hope it's not another false alarm," she had sighed.

That had been a few days previously. It had been no false alarm; rather, it was almost the universe's version of a good news, bad news joke. The good news was that the project was not dead. The bad news was that the person who had leaped was not Sam Beckett at all. And the cruelest news of all was how much Jonathan Archer looked and sounded like Sam Beckett – at least, like a somewhat older version of him. Dr. Verbena Beeks had performed the DNA test herself, and had determined that Jonathan and Sam were close, albeit not identical. Still, the DNA relationship was closer than even for non-twin siblings.

Archer had been fitted with one of Beckett's old suits, a condition that had made Donna really cry when she had gotten home that first night. On the following day, he had asked to get out and see New Mexico, and Al had driven him around in a candy apple red sports car. "Yanno," Al had mentioned then, "they tell me there are a lotta beautiful women around here. But," he had shrugged, "I have no idea. I can't see anyone but Beth." Jonathan had smiled a little at that, a surprising revelation from someone he had no other way of knowing.

That had been the day before. Archer was being kept at the project's secret offices and, apart from Al's tour of the area, he hadn't been outside. The spending of his time had been about the unexpected leap, his story about where and when he was from, and the project trying to figure out how to believe him – and be able to justify their decision, if it ever came to that. But they had come around eventually, all of them.

This time, he asked Gooshie and Sammy Jo Fuller and Dr. Beeks, "Do you think there's any chance of me going back to my ship?"

"Well, Doc– uh, Captain Archer, I can't really be sure. Ziggy says there's a fourteen percent chance that you're with us for good," Gooshie reported.

"What do you think?"

"I have no idea. Tina and I were talking, and she thinks, well, honey, why don't you tell the captain yourself?" He gestured encouragingly to Tina, who was a technician at the project.

Tina came over, as Captain Archer and Dr. Beeks looked on. "See, it's like this." She had a pair of ribbons in her hair and took them both out. "Your – I mean, Dr. Beckett's – theory is that your life is like a string. And his time travel technology works by allowing you to ball up that string and then the days that you live all touch each other in these weird and unexpected ways. It stops being linear."

"All right," Captain Archer remarked, "I'm with you so far."

"But, see, look at these two ribbons. What can you tell me about 'em?"

"They're both turquoise," Jonathan said, "and that one is a little bit wrinkled."

She smoothed the wrinkled ribbon as well as she could. "Now, are they the same dimensions?"