Prologue - The Two Scientists

AUGUST 15TH, 1991, SOMEWHERE ON THE ARIZONA/NEW MEXICO BORDER

He was being beaten. He was always being beaten. He was *dead*, and so forced to take only the most menial of jobs, jobs that required no ID or other papers. Jobs that were hard to find nowadays, and even harder to keep for any real length of time. Jobs that very often had the lowest sort of individual as co-worker, many on the run themselves, but for less legitimate reasons than his own. People who were quick to anger, and quicker to hit. People who didn't like his tone, or something else. It didn't matter. For his scientist's training had not prepared him for dealing with people like this, people who, for no good reason, just didn't like him. Before, in their anger, they didn't like him. Now, they would, with their fists and feet, make him angry. They wouldn't like him any better, though. No, they wouldn't like him, now that he was angry.

He tried like blazes to hold the demon back, for their sakes. He could never tell what his anger was going to do, and he did not wish to become a murderer. It had been too close a thing, far too many times. But he knew from harsh experience that their rage would be spent soon, that showing no resistance would disgust them and drive them away, while they called the bravest man they would likely ever meet for a craven coward.

More than once, Dr. Kimble's twenty-year-old book on his hellish time outside the law had shown him the way to crawl along society's underbelly, to fit in where he was not supposed to. He had met and befriended many good people this way, people with whom he even shared his problem with. Somewhere in America, there was a young girl, literally a phenomenal genius, who owed this man everything. As a result, she used her computer expertise to erase his few notable footsteps as he went, covering his tracks even more so.

Yet still, there was this group, itching for a pointless fight which they always found and always regretted. His anger, which he always tried to shield these lowlifes from, made him sloppy. Made him believe they should simply leave him alone, then catching himself too late when they got annoyed. The successive loss of his mother and two wives had made him a certain way. There was no going back to change the past, despite what the young couple at the university had always said, when he was their friend and student teacher. Time was immutable, but strength could change things, if properly applied. He knew this for a fact. It was his mantra, his holy grail, his own grand unification theory of absolutely everything. But through his mourning for his first wife, his overdose, Elena's death and his need for flight, this obsessive quest for strength had brought him naught but the attentions of an ambitious tabloid journalist and a succession of more corrupt small towns than even chaos theory allowed for. Doctor David Banner was living the nightmare side of his experiments, sometimes feeling irredeemably lost.

Suddenly, he realized he couldn't even remember why these fellows were hitting him. With that, Banner realized he was in trouble. Yet this once, the trouble would pass without what he regarded as the inevitable consequences. The pain subsided. The thugs weren't there. He was in a small waiting area, with an unseen guard firmly urging him to just sit tight. Somehow, David was able to do just that. The creature within him, always shouting in his skull, was at that moment a distant echo. Still there, but separated by a great deal more space than usual. Space-and, somehow he knew-time.

AUGUST 15TH, 1991

He awoke to find himself in the past. The traveler through time began the internal monologue that calibrated and focused him in a life where one of the most basic things was completely out of focus, and perhaps an eternity beyond recalibration. Eternity, as Doctor Sam Beckett knew all too well, was a very funny thing.. Yet for all the chaos, it contained some very predictable patterns. Some could even be called redundant.

"I was being beaten. I was always being beaten, punched, dunked, or some combination of the three when a leap first occurred. I only wish that the entire purpose of the leaps were to stop or prevent these beatings. But this violence always proves symptomatic. Its part of the price I pay for an arguably successful experiment. My scientist's training never prepared me for dealing with these kind of people. Luckily my Tae Kwon Do training did. I laugh when I think that it took becoming a mother to remember I had it. I stop laughing when I realize that I don't always remember past leaps, let alone my own past. Still, swiss-cheesed memories or no, my martial arts always proves perfect for dealing with these *nozzles* as Al would call them."

"Learning Tae Kwon Do was part of rage management over my brother's death-No, wait-Tom's alive, and Dad, he lived until six months before I leaped, and Sis-her name?-is mayor of our little town back in Indiana. Damn! I still actually have to remind myself of the name Sam Beckett on occasion. The ironic part is, I can actually remember this *leapees* memories better than some of my own. I-He was half-dead on a broken tarmac, when a beautiful woman spirited me away for recovery, where I-he-resumed a life on the run-from-what? A huge, ugly giant appears in my mind, and seems as close as my own breath, like anger wearing humanoid form-only-he's not all there. Weird. As I send the bullying jerks on their way, I remember why I learned the martial arts-it was for rage management. But not my own rage. A friend of mine, a biophysicist whose work was pivotal in making these leaps physically survivable, was so tortured by his wife's accidental death that it strangled his soul. Grief left him a recluse. I was frightened by it. Wanted to know how to reign it in after Donna left me-No wait,Donna -Donna-well, she didn't leave, I know that. There was an old man, my martial arts sen-sei. He would've known how to cope with all this. Blind, but with eyes that could see the world. A master who knew his Tao as well as his sidestep."

"My friend never took those classes along with me and so missed that joyous old man's teachings, as valuable in physics as in a street fight. Yet did this man I've leaped into come to know Sen-Sei later on? I feel he did. Synchronicity. I feel heartened by this. That Sen-sei, that old friend I failed to help, and that book had been so much to me. All three played roles in what my life was to become, for good or ill. I can't remember their names, but I remember that book. *With One Arm At My Throat* by Richard Kimble. That, and *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* had been required reading for young physicists at the Institute. Even D-Dennis-Daniel? had loved Kimble's book, and he could be humorless at times. Then I remembered-not my friend's name-but how he died, back in 77'. I attended his funeral-his and-Elena Marks-that's a breakthrough, of sorts, and it was said that a hulking green creature was seen leaving the scene of the fire that caused their deaths. A creature that looks exactly like the one in this guy's mind. In my mind, now. My pulse is racing, without my knowing why. This is absurd, I have control. Maybe not over my when or where, but I have this much control. Just–just not now."

There had been a recent rain, and so the traveler through time looked into a puddle, made reflective by the sunlight that always came back stronger than any downpour. As he expected, he faced a mirror image that was not his own. The man's features were familiar, but Beckett felt a lot like this was a face he couldn't possibly be seeing. The dates he had glimpsed in the other's mind spoke of the 1990's, almost his own time. This face, he almost knew, was not one that should be around, even in the 80's. But that oddity was lost quickly as Sam saw that the man's eyes were badly dilated, looking both white and green as the feelings of helpless despair overwhelmed him. This rage did not care how much control the leaper had. It was going to come out, and his face was showing it. Sam saw his hands growing larger, and began to lose not merely consciousness, but himself. He managed to utter familiar words before he lost all coherence.

"Oh, Boy!"

A few moments later, it could truly be said that Sam Beckett was no longer there.

AN EVER-CHANGING FUTURE

STALLION'S GATE, NEW MEXICO

Gooshie stared in horror at the readout.

"We've lost Doctor Beckett."

Al Calavicci shook his head.

"Goosh, don't you mean that you just don't have an exact lock on his where and when-abouts?"

"No, Admiral. I mean he's just nowhere to be found. I even scanned back into Elvis Presley's lifetime, to see if he went ahead in it, like he did with Oswald? No go. Admiral, Doctor Beckett has left eternity."

Despite his promise to Beth and the girls, Al pulled out his cigar, lit and puffed on it. His nerves had just gone into overdrive.

"Ziggy? Clue me in, here. Wouldn't basic conservation of matter and energy mean that, even if Sam were dead or destroyed, we'd pick up something?"

The device that had redefined the term 'super-computer' a dozen times over responded in its usual manner.

"To truly clue you in would drain even my considerable resources, Admiral. But in this you are correct. Doctor Beckett should be there, even if our capacity to lock onto him is in question. No matter his condition, the evolution of our ability to find his basic presence is no longer in doubt. So I do not believe he has been destroyed. Rather, I look to the corollary of the laws you truncated in your quote. Energy/matter may be neither created nor destroyed. Yet it can be changed."

Al rolled his eyes and put his cigar aside. There wasn't enough good tobacco in the world to help him deal with Ziggy.

"Sam is always changing. When he leaped into that pregnant girl, he underwent a hysterical pregnancy, even though guys aren't designed that way."

"Oddly, Admiral, you may in fact be on the right track. But I believe that Doctor Beckett's current change may exceed mere sympathetic physical reactions."

Al nodded.

"So what happened to him?"

"Admiral, I project a ninety-five percent probability that Doctor Beckett has suffered a perhaps catastrophic mutation, altering even his very body chemistry. I suggest you risk engaging the party Doctor Beckett has leaped into."

Al looked at the waiting area doors, now triple-reenforced after a spree killer Sam had leaped into escaped the project, nearly causing untold disasters.

"That, Zig, is a risk I'd prefer not to take, even for Sam."

For Sam Beckett, Al would literally do anything. The young scientist had saved his marriage back in the late 70's, when post-traumatic stress disorder had rendered Calavicci a nearly-worthless drunk, one even Beth was preparing to give up on. He was a man dwelling in a nightmare, and having even worse ones, ones in which Beth did not wait for him to come home from his captivity in North Vietnam, and Al had become a loser with a succession of bad marriages. Sam Beckett had never given up on him, even choosing to help his new friend Al over his old friend, a widower scientist who had become a recluse.

"But since it is for Sam, my preferences mean exactly jack squat."

Before Al could request entry, yells came from inside the waiting area.

"Beeksy? Who do we have guarding the leapee?"

Doctor Verbeena Beeks had been preparing to enter the area herself, to begin some limited questioning of the new arrival. As Al was for the escaped spree-killer, so was she for a thankfully short-term 'leapee' who had taken one look at her, and asked in a dismissive voice whether Beeks was the facility's maid. History contained some things she wished Sam could wipe out forever.

"Its Officer Talbot, Al."

Al felt his nerves start again.

"That nozzle? Wasn't he suspended?"

She sighed.

"His lawyer has that under review."

Al's eyes went wide.

"We're a top-secret facility! How can we not have the ability to hire and fire who we want?"

The yells became louder.

"I SAID SIT DOWN! You want some more of this nightstick? You–yoou crushed it?"

Talbot ran out at lightning speed, and this time no lawyer could save his job.

"The guy's nuts! Completely nuts!"

Al sneered at the guard, cowering in the corner.

"Well, he's also not getting out. I just secured the three doors by remote. They're magna-locked, and made of solid..."

A series of crashes from inside contraindicated whatever Al was about to say. For the man inside had somehow proven more solid.

"Ziggy! Pull your vitals down behind the disaster shields. Do it now!"

"Done, Admiral."

Certain components were recessed, others closed over, and the accelerator sank into the ground below, to theoretically secure quarters. That theory would now be put to the test. Despite all logic, the third and final door leading out from the waiting area. Al saw a dark-haired, middle-aged man of average build emerge. Everyone else of course, saw Sam Beckett. But all saw the man's face contorted in open rage, and all heard him roar like a wild animal unseen since the Earth was new. Al gulped to see the heavy door now fly away like a porch's screen door during a July 4th gone wild.

"Sam?! What the hell did you get us into?"

Next- Chapter One - All The Rage