"How much time do we got?" said Rembrandt, getting tired from running after 3 blocks.

"You tell me, Remmy," said Maggie, a little annoyed at this day. "You're the one who has the timer."

"Oh yeah. I forgot," said the embarrassed Remmy, taking the timer out of his coat pocket. "We have 30 seconds."

"I don't get it," said the always confused Colin. "Why would people get mad at you for just crossing the street?"

Quinn looked back at the crowd that was gaining on them, and smiled at the situation. "Its called jaywalking. It isn't taken seriously on most worlds because so many do so. I guess they don't think that way on this world. At least we got some money from the ATM."

"More bad news Q-Ball," said Remmy. "The 100s and 50s have the president's picture bigger than normal, and the quarters have a horse on the back instead of the white house. Little looks like normal money." Remmy then holds up the timer: "It's time." The vortex shoots out and opens 5 feet in front of them.

As Rembrandt, Colin, and Maggie jump in, Quinn looks back at the amazed crowd stopping in their tracks. He always enjoys seeing the confused and perplexed faces right before Sliding into another universe. He felt mysterious. So he gave his usual smile and wave and jumps into the portal, just before it closes.

As Quinn was flung out of the other side of the vortex, he hit the pavement of a sidewalk hard.

"Ugg! I really need to fix that thing, so it will land us in a grassy ar--" Quinn's sentence was cut short when he found that their was no sign of his companions.

"Gu-Guys?" Quinn started to panic. "Guys! Where are you?!"

It was pointless. His friends were nowhere in sight. As a matter of fact, no one was around. He decided to keep his cool for a little longer before he worries about his friends. They've been separated before and they might be on another part of this earth. Quinn was the last to slide, so they couldn't have been on the last earth. They had to be here, somewhere.

This earth looked familiar. Like it was Prime, but more the way Quinn wanted it to be. The streets were clean, there was a decrease in the population surplus, and there were no noisy sounds. It was more peaceful then you would expect. As if Golden Gate Park was dominating all of San Francisco.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. There weren't many people on the street, but enough to make you feel like its a busy shopping day. When Quinn would pass someone, they would give a smile or even say hello. It seems like it would be a wonderful place to settle down. But then...

everyone suddenly froze in place. Like someone pressed a pause button on the whole world.

Quinn couldn't believe his eyes his eyes. He was the only one still in motion. He looked at the statued people.

"Great," he thought, "Mannequin world," but then his eye got a hold of something unphysical and unexplanitory. It was a man, frozen in the air. As if he was leaping when everything froze.

"What's happened?"

"I believe I can answer that," said an old man appearing behind a group of freeze-framed children.

He was a strange looking man. But, he looked like an intelligent one at that. "I have brought you here for a reason."

"But..." Quinn said, changing the subject, "...How is this possible?"

"Oh, I can do this anytime I want," said the old man, smiling. "The whole world, to me, is my television. And I can stop it at my will."

"But, that doesn't exist!" Quinn argued. "You can't pause life."

"Oh, come on Quinn," said the man, waiting to see what Quinn's reaction was and began again. "It wasn't long ago that you came here by opening an inter-dimensional gateway or you slid here. Now, to anybody else, it would seem 'impossible', but you know it's true."

Quinn gave an odd expression. "How do you know that? Who are you?"

"A friend," said the friend. "That's all you need to know."

"All right," said the skeptical Quinn. "If you know this much, then where are the rest of my friends?"

"They're safe."

Quinn wasn't satisfied with the man's answer. "I asked you a question. Now answer it!" The man smiled again at Quinn's need-to-know voice. "They're still in limbo. They will reunite with you later."

"So, then why am I here?"

"Because this is no ordinary earth, and you haven't come here by random...This is your creation"

"What?!" said Quinn in a shocked expression. "I'm not following!"

"Let me explain," said the mysterious man. "5 years ago, you first opened a gateway to a parallel earth. When traveling through the wormhole, you created an earth...similar to yours, but had its differenc--"

"Wait" said Quinn, cutting off the man "You are saying, this world was created when I jumped through the gateway the first time?"

"Correct."

Quinn's eyes lit up "Of course. When I jumped through the gateway, I must of changed the way the space-time continuum worked and made a copy of the earths between to make a new...But, that was only five years ago. I saw people that were older than me. That doesn't make sense."

"Well, in essence, this earth is only 5 years old. But, when the second this earth was created, it had a history going back millions of years, because of the other world's history."

"I still don't understand why I'm here," said Quinn.

"You will."

And with that, the man disappeared, the pause spell vanished and everything went back to normal. Kids went back to playing, people went back to shopping and everything was like nothing ever happened.

"Weird," said Quinn. He then looked at his timer to see how much time he had. But, it wasn't counting down. It was...dead...

===========

Quinn looked at "his" front door with some apprehension. He would have rathered the Chandler, but he felt drawn here. It was home. Or the closest he could come to it. And he wouldn't give it up. He tentatively reached for the tainted brass knocker and let go, closing his eyes. The knocker fell in slow motion, hitting once, twice. A bird chirped and flew from it's tree. He opened his eyes. Nothing had happened. Why was he so relieved?
He would stay at the Chandler. This was only another parallel world, after all. He must find that man and get his friends back. He started walking down from the front porch.
"Quinn?"
There was a sound of tiny golden bells. Quinn recognized that voice. This was no parallel world, one of the hundreds they had slid through. This was his mother! The one he had hoped to meet again all that time ago. He turned around.
"Mom." One word and never to say more.

============

Rembrandt, Colin, and Maggie exited the vortex slightly disoriented. They did not notice it close, or that there was never a vortex. They did notice that Quinn was not with them.
"Hey, where's Q-ball?" asked Rembrandt nervously. "Didn't he slide with us?"
"Oh no" said Colin. "You don't think they caught up to him."
Maggie wasn't listening. "Hey guys, who's the old guy?" Rembrandt and Colin frowned but followed her gaze. There, past the bars of their cell, a man with a balding head sat manipulating various controls of a large machine. His back was turned to them and he did not seem to notice that they were there.
Rembrandt looked around at the surrounding bars. "What the...?"
Various "things" were scattered around the darkened room, some too complicated to be denominated to "machine" status. Near one side, a lighted chamber held a strange device.
Maggie tried to get the man's attention. "Hey, hey!" she tried to bang on the bars but fell back with a shock. "Those aren't bars," was all she said.
The old man spoke for the first time in a low voice, that seemed unused to conversation. "No, they are not."
He ignored Rembrandt's protests and carried on. "You are sliders..."
Colin came as close to the pseudo-bars as he dared. "Yes"
"It is too bad. Quinn is the only one."
"What man?" Rembrandt said, surprise. "He's here? Alive?"
The man paused, his back still too them. A silver gleam ran up the back of the chair.
"He is well."
Colin looked at all the stuff parked around. "You invented these?"
An uncomfortable hesitation. "A long time ago, I was a slider, like yourselves. I was a...genius, acclaimed across the world." Suddenly his voice rose in anger. "But I was an outcast! Why!? Why..."
"I never knew any friends, like Quinn Mallory. He knows not his luck. No, I wasn't the type," he continued bitterly. He started muttering and Rembrandt suddenly started to worry. "Hey, man look..."
Suddenly the old man went haywire. "I, God! I, God!!!"
Rembrandt felt a tingle. "Wait a minu..." he and the rest of the sliders disappeared into quantum dust once again.
The old man sighed in relaxation and the wrinkles on his face subsided into a more youthful appearance. The infusion had worked.
"It almost got me that time," he thought. "I must meet Quinn Mallory. He is my only hope."

It's amazing what three and a half years of neglect can do to a room.

Quinn opened the door and peered inside. His bed was still a mess. He could hear Day Tripper talking on the radio about the latest hot woman to take her clothes off in his studio. "Hyperspace" was laying on his bed. There was no dust; with no one in the room and the doors and window sealed shut, the room was almost tomb-like.

There was only one difference. The telescope was gone.

Quinn walked downstairs, searching for the boyhood gift from his father. He walked out to the backyard, about to ask his mother frantically what had happened, when he saw her using the telescope to look up at the heavens.

"What do you see?" Quinn asked with a smile as we walked up to his mother.

She pulled her eye away from the telescope. "A reunion, Quinn." She hugged her son tightly to her chest. "After I watched your diary tapes, I called the FBI, and they took your schematics. They've been looking for you, Quinn."

Quinn's eyes lit up. "Is the equipment still here? Downstairs, in the basement?"

"Of course, Quinn, it would take years to get rid of all that..."

"Come with me!" Quinn rushed with his mom to the basement, and went through all of the initialization sequences. It had been a while since he'd heard the whirr of his generator. A computer monitor came online, and Quinn sent out a search script for his old timer. FUNCTIONING INDEPENDENTLY was all it would say. Plugging the Egyptian timer into an I/O interface cable, Quinn began downloading all kinds of information.

"Quinn, what are you doing?"

"I'm autosetting the timer. No more waiting for the window of opportunity for this thing!"

Quinn pointed the timer towards Schrodinger and activated it. Nothing.

"Damn," Quinn said. He grabbed his jacket, kissed his mom on the cheek, told her he'd be back in an hour, and walked out.

The old man was in the same spot in the park as he was when Quinn first met him. Quinn rushed up to him.

"How the devil did you manage to damper sliding from this world?" Quinn demanded.

The old man just smiled.<

As he crossed the Berkeley campus he was greeted by his classmates. He got the same responses from his colleages like Wing and Bennish, "Where the hell have you've been?!?"
And he told them that it was a long story and walked on.

When he returned home, he was greeted by his mother, "Oh, I'm glad you're here..." and then out of the blue a man in black appeared from one of the rooms. "Hello, Mr. Mallory..." The man said, his face with no emotion. "Fredrick Reisen. FBI."

Quinn just stood there gaping. His mother had a truly apologetic look on her face as if to say, "I'm sorry."

* * *

Rembrandt, Maggie and Colin rematerialised in the middle of Golden Gate Park, for once landing on grass, yet still managing to squash each other.

After the usual amount of bickering over whose fault the landing was, they stood up and gazed at the view around them.

"Looks almost like home," said Rembrandt, not really believing it was. "Not many people, though."

Colin pointed at a man sitting on a bench. "Isn't that the man who was at that other place?"

The man was sitting quietly at a bench under a tree, wearing a hat and reading a newspaper. He looked harmless.

Before the guys could stop her, Maggie had run towards the man. "I don't know who the hell you are," she screamed, "But I want to know what you've done with my friend!"

Rembrandt and Colin caught up as she finished her yelling, apologising for her behaviour.

"I'm sorry, man. She mistook you for someone else."

"On the contrary, Mr. Brown," replied the man, "I am the same man she is referring to."

"How is that possible?" Colin was confused.

"That is not for you to know right now. Excuse me." The man stood up and brushed Maggie aside. He began walking off.

"Hey, wait a second," Maggie called after him.

"I am in control here." And as if to flaunt his power, he pressed a button on a device and all the things around them stopped in mid-activity. Children were suspended in mid-jump and dogs in mid-run. It was like he'd pressed a pause button.

"What the..." muttered Remmy. Maggie recited a large amount of expletives under her breath and Colin just stood there staring.

The man pressed the button again and everything resumed.

"I trust you will remember that. Your friend would also do well to do so." With that, he walked off and disappeared, leaving the three sliders standing.

"Do you think that means he's here?" asked Maggie, hopefully.

Rembrandt shrugged. Only one way to find out."

* * *

Quinn had no choice but to answer the questions the FBI man was asking him about the sliding equipment. The man looked like an FBI man. He had that stern expression on his face which
never changed, no matter how many anecdotes he threw in.

The questions were extremely unusual though...

===========

The clerk on duty at the Chandler had not seen a Quinn Mallory in the registry.
Rembrandt took a moment to ponder the likeness to Prime.
"What are you daydreaming about Remmy?" asked Colin.
"I just don't know but this is to close to Prime when I first slid. Too close for me, I mean where are the Maggs if this is Prime?" Remmy pondered.
"Well whatever world this is we need to find Quinn and fast, where else would he go on his first day of a new world?" Maggie asked.
Remmy thought and said, "His house, let's go."
"Hey Remmy, how much time do we have?" Colin questioned.
Remmy looked for the timer and could not find it, "Hey do any of you guys have the timer!"
"Not me!"
"Nor I..."
===========

"Yes, things are going well," thought the old man. Entering Quinn's lab in the basement, the old man goes to the computer, and accessed the last files that were downloaded, copying them to zip drive. As he was leaving the old man saw a familiar photo and thought what the hell. Removing the photo from the wall, he saw the safe. Apparently found by the FBI the old man looked in anyway and found that they had not looked very hard to not notice the false back. Reaching in the old man pulled out a schematic for a remote control device.
===========

Remmy knocked on Quinn's door. After a few moments a woman answered and asked, "Yes, can I help you?"
"We're looking for Quinn Mallory!" Maggie butted in.
"We're friends of his," Colin stated.
"I thought I knew all of Quinn's friends," Quinn's mother asked.
"We're from Canada," blurted Remy.
Colin and Maggie fought hard to repress laughter.
"The FBI took him to some lab a few hours ago," Mother informed them.
"Do you know where that is?" asked Maggie.
Mother told them, "No I don't."
"Thank you for your time," Remmy offered.
===========

"Wow, you guys went the whole nine yards in recreating my lab!" Quinn said.
"We tried all other variables," a scientist mentioned. "You seem to have the only missing clue to the anti-gravity formula."
"Uh, um, I guess so," stuttered Quinn. "So what have you solved so far?"
The scientist pulled out a chalk board with Quinn's equation copied word for word but for the last line.
Quinn rushed the board and asked "Where is the final line?"
"We were hoping that you could answer that," Agent Fred asked.
Quinn did not answer but finished the formula but for the answer to fixing the timer, if the time was tampered with, stating "Is this what you wanted?"
"Yes, that is exactly what I needed," answered a familiar voice.
Quinn turned around at the voice muttering under his breath, "Dad."
"Not exactly but close enough," said the old man.

Quinn had a look on his face which conveyed both terror and confusion. In a quiet, almost reluctant voice, Quinn said, "Who are you?"

"Life is more complicated than that. I am no man. Not in your sense of the word, at least."

"So what are you? A-a Kromagg, is that it?" Somehow Quinn knew the answer went deeper than that, but he figured if he made the guy mad, he might slip up and say something he shouldn't.

Instead, the old man began to laugh again. "Kromagg? You think you are going to make me so angry at you, I will tell you something you want to know, is THAT it?" Quinn was amazed at how well he knew his thoughts. "Oh, yes. I know your thoughts better than you think. I am the one who created you, Quinn Mallory. I created you to travel to different dimensions, to explore them. It needed to be done, and you were the ideal candidate."

Quinn lunged at him, but the old man was swifter than he looked. He dodged out of the way, forcing Quinn to crash into a table. Quinn looked up at him defiantly. "You did this. You forced everyone I cared about to suffer. You let the Kromaggs enslave my world. You destroyed Maggie's world. You..."

The old man once again burst out laughing. "You must not be as smart as I created you to be, Quinn Mallory. I would have thought you could figure it out easily. This is not about you at all." Disbelief was written all over Quinn's face. "No, I am not here for you. I am here for them." With that, Quinn watched as the old man disappeared, leaving in his wake an image of Rembrandt, Colin and Maggie frozen in place.

Quinn ran all over the city trying to find the old man's hideout. But there was no sign of him anywhere.
He then realized there was something fishy about the story....first, Quinn created this universe, then the old man created Quinn? That was impossible!

***

It was time, the old man decided. Now was the time to put on his beret and put the next part of his plan in action. Soon everything would be perfect... as long as Quinn Mallory didn't screw it all up.

***

Quinn knew something was wrong with the old man's story. It just didn't fit together. But he had no idea what was really going on. All he knew was that he had to find his friends somehow, and the only way to do that was to find the old man. But he was tired of looking. He had already searched everywhere. He had just about decided to give up and go home, but then something made him change his mind. He donned his beret and headed in the opposite direction....

"A nice simile," said the man from behind Quinn, the man who claimed to have 'created' him. "I appreciate your sense of style."

Quinn continued walking. There was one image that tugged at his mind every time he considered that experience - that of a hotel. He'd considered checking in at the Chandler shortly after sliding in, but this was San Fransisco and he'd had taken a fateful detour toward his house instead. Time to correct that mistake.

"Which hotel were you thinking of, Mr. Mallory? The Dominion, perhaps?" asked the elderly gentleman in his English accent. Quinn did not look in his direction.

"Really, Quinn. I could stop you in your tracks if I so chose. I could translocate you to the other side of this world ... or into the vacuum of outer space. I do hope you won't drive me to that."

Quinn stopped and turned to face his nemesis, who was wearing what looked to be a miltary beret.

The old man looked contrite. "My apologies. That was one of my nastier aspects speaking. Why don't we go somewhere more pleasant to continue this conversation?" He pressed a button on his control device and the air fluctuated around them. Their surroundings shifted from a nondescript sidewalk to a cozy tearoom restaurant.

Quinn sat down at a table with the grey-haired man. It was then that something clicked in his mind and he recognized the remote control his antagonist held: it was Rickman's timer, the one Maggie's husband had built!

"You're starting to catch on, I think. Now tell me, who do you think I am?"

Quinn sat mutely. It occurred to him that he hadn't yet said a single thing in this entire 'conversation'.

"All right, I suppose you're ready for an explanation. Have you ever noticed how you and your companions always seem to land in the middle of trouble - a trouble which the four of you are uniquely qualified to fix?"

Quinn nodded. He thought of all the people whose lives he'd helped change, all the worlds where "sliding had made a difference".

"Well, the times and places you've slid to have been more than just coincidence." The man paused. "I've been watching over you, guiding your journey. So you could 'set things right where things once were wrong. '"

Quinn looked more closely at the wise old man, recalling what he'd seen of "Quantum Leap". He hadn't had much time in his youth for TV - it was almost as though his entire life had been spent preparing him for sliding.

"Quite true. And I believe you were just about to ask me... am I God?"

Quinn couldn't even bring himself to nod this time.

"Well, you don't have to. No, I'm not God, though some parts of me like to think they are. Merely a being that exists primarily outside the ten major dimensions. But I am - or was - your father. Part of him, anyway. As Michael Mallory, I tried to impart to you some of the wisdom you'd need for your journey."

Quinn was becoming perplexed. The man bore a passing resemblance to his father, but how...

"Please try to understand - I wasn't all of your father. I merely infused him with some of my essence to have a little control over what I'd created." He winced. "I'm afraid some of my aspects are a bit too concerned with control."

He continued. "After your father died, another aspect of me resided in your physics professor, Maximillian Arturo. He helped you develop the theories you needed to perfect sliding." The man smiled. "I was also part of Bennish, believe it or not.

"Most recently, you met me as Archibald Chandler, the proprietor of a digital version of the Chandler hotel. You can't remember that incident, because it was played out symbolically in your subconscious and left no trace in your memory. Let's just say that was one of my control-freak aspects acting up."

Quinn finally spoke. "So what does this have to do with Remmy, Maggie and Colin? You said you were 'here for them'."

The gentleman appeared pained. "I'm sure you've noticed - not all of my aspects are as altruistic as the one you're speaking with now. Part of me was also inside Angus Rickman when he murdered the Professor."

Quinn sank back, stunned.

"It's an aspect of me that feeds off the lives of others to maintain its own health. And until recently, it has been dominant in me. It's from Rickman that I got the pattern for this device... and this beret I'm wearing." He took a deep breath. "That aspect consumed some of the life from the other Sliders. They're nearer to death every hour, though they haven't noticed it yet.

"So I've decided to give the three of them the remainder of my substance. It's their only hope of survival." He rose, followed a second later by Quinn. They shook hands, and the elderly gentleman returned the Egyptian timer, fully functional once more. "Even without me steering you, Quinn, rest assured there are still plenty of ways to make a difference. You'll just have to look a little harder.

"It's been nice knowing you, Mr. Mallory. But remember that I'll always be with you in spirit - as long as they are..."

***

(Several worlds later)

"Hey, what's up Q-ball? You've been acting kind of... I don't know, *different* the last few weeks."

Quinn sat on the hotel room couch, staring off into space. Thinking... about all the people who had shaped the person he was, for better or for worse.

"I've felt kind of different myself lately," contributed Maggie. "As if... part of me is at peace with itself." She smiled. "Maybe it's that new beret I picked up a couple worlds back."

Quinn smiled back, but it was an altogether different kind of smile.