Desert Night

"When the traveler goes alone he gets acquainted with himself." - Liberty Hyde Bailey

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Chapter 6

A Turn Toward Home

Sam's motorcycle finally left I-25 and pulled into the small town of San Antonio, New Mexico. There was absolutely nothing to see at first, just a pull-off leading under the interstate and east on Highway 380. It was not long before he came to a town already asleep. Dirt roads led off to the left and right. There was only one major intersection, not surprisingly called Main Street, without even a traffic light to grace it, only a flashing yellow light.

The small town of San Antonio had such hazy boundaries, it was hard to say how many people actually lived there. Maybe a hundred, but that was being optimistic. It was mostly farmers and people who worked in Socorro or the nearby White Sands Missile Range. For the most part, it was agricultural, lying right on the Rio Grande and watering crops with the river, now of decent size since it was winter.

For a town you can drive through in under a minute, it had a rich history. In 1629, Franciscan friar García de Zúñiga and a Capuchín monk named Antonio de Arteaga planted the first wine grapes, intended for the making of sacramental wine. This was in defiance of Spanish law prohibiting the growing of grapes in the New World. The town was also the birthplace of Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton Hotels. His first hotel burned down, but the long, polished, solid wood bar still stood at the Owl Bar and Cafe, the other great claim-to-fame for this tiny town.

Sam looked to his left and saw the Owl Bar. He ate many lunches there, talking with the friendly proprietors. He smiled at the fierce owl that greeted weary travelers with the bold pronouncement of HERE IT IS!

"Best green chili cheeseburgers in the universe," Sam smiled, waiting just a little longer than usual at the flashing yellow light.

"Ooh yeah, and that waitress they had a few years ago, what was her name? Damn, but they do grow them good in New Mexico! You remember those three sexy girls down in Las Cruces...uh, well, maybe that's one memory you shouldn't recall."

"Al!" Sam cried out in disgust.

"Then again, you might not recall it anyway. We were all so drunk," he laughed fondly.

"Al!"

"Oh, don't worry, I don't think you ended up with any of them. Bobby LoNigro was there too, and Gooshie. I know the two hot Latinas went for me, and I think Gooshie got the Polish princess. Y'know, I honestly don't know what you did the rest of that night. Or how you and Bobby ended up in jail," he laughed. Sam looked over in amazement. "That's when we came up with the term 'Swiss-cheesed memory,' remember? No, of course you don't remember," he sighed and took a puff on his cigar.

Sam gunned the bike and blasted over Main Street, over some railroad tracks, and into an agricultural area. Sometimes, he wished he could drive fast enough to get away from Al.

The area right around the Rio Grande grew lush and fertile. Sam had to keep his mouth shut as they came across a sudden increase in bugs. But the verdant life did not last long. In less than a minute, Highway 380 was once again a lone ribbon stretching precariously through the barren wasteland. There were occasional dirt roads leading off to a distant light, or dry washbeds making the road sound a little more hollow. Otherwise, there was nothing at all to see. Even the billions of stars up in the heavens were slowly being hidden by gathering puffs of clouds. Sam thought he could smell the dusty aroma of rain in them. He hoped it would not rain on him. Rain in the desert caused flash floods. Plus it would be extra uncomfortable with all this leather.

"Anyone following?" Sam shouted back to Al.

"No. I think we lost them. It'll be easy to keep an eye out for traffic out here. No one drives out this way, not this time of year."

"Some do," Sam muttered to himself.

They knew they had to build Project Quantum Leap somewhere secret, a place where no one would stumble across the facility. What better place than an area no one could survive in? What better place than Jornada del Muerto?

He passed through a canyon of mesas. It was too dark to see anything, but Sam tried to look through the night, out into the endless darkness, to see if he could make out the glowing mountain.

February 1995.

The Project was almost done. By this time, Sam was holding discussions with Ziggy, fine tuning the programming while the Acceleration Chamber and Waiting Room were being finished. He and Al were starting to feel the pressure to complete the construction before funding was cut.

There were a few flashes of memories. The day they installed the new vending machines after Al broke them...again. Man of La Mancha blasting as he sat behind a console with his fingers through his hair in frustration. Sitting in the incomplete Acceleration Chamber, fretting over losing everything when he was so close. Verbeena Beeks coming up to him with a package, the published thesis called Wards of Time.

What strange memories!

"What were we doing at this time?" he asked Al solemnly.

"What? You mean us, on this day, back in 1995?"

Back in! To Sam, this was a mere three months before his first Leap. To Al...what year was it to Al? He knew his time between Leaps were sometimes spontaneous, sometimes months between. What seemed to Sam like an instantaneous transition was, to Al, a long and uncertain waiting period.

"Honestly, I don't remember," Al shrugged. "Oh, wait! That year, Tina and I went to Santa Fe for a lovely night of pleasure," he purred, getting dreamy-eyed already, "but I have no clue what you did."

"I wonder," Sam mused, staring out at the desert. "Could I meet with myself here?"

"Sam," Al warned again with a discouraging look, but there was a streak of fear through it as well. "Your task is to stay alive, not risk an M16 in your back by sneaking onto a military complex."

"I know, but still," Sam said dreamily. "I wish I could..."

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I wish I could...what?

Warn myself? Run a quick diagnostic on Ziggy? Prevent all that has happened over these years of Leaping?

Sometimes, a part of me wants exactly that. I wish I could have had things ready just a little bit earlier. We were so close! Then that letter, that threat, all funding about to be pulled. Everything was built and programmed. We were in the phase of working out the bugs, ironing out wrinkles.

So close! I couldn't allow all that work to go to waste.

What if I could warn myself to start looking into secondary funding? What if I could warn myself to work just a little faster?

What if the Project had worked perfectly the first time?

Then I think of all the lives I've touched. I think of everyone I've helped, people I've saved. I think of my brother. Stopping my first Leap was the same as condemning Tom to death all over again. Could I, in good conscious, undo what I've already done?

No!

It'd be like killing all those people I saved, including Tom. Maybe another would want his life back, no matter the cost. But for me, the cost was too high...and it was personal!

I knew I had to be determined. So close to Stallion's Gate! So close to warning myself about the future! But I could not do it. I couldn't change my life so drastically, and change all of history with it.

Then I saw it. Not the glow—no, it was not running at full power yet—but the mountain. I knew it by sight, knew the shape of the peak, even by nothing more than a silhouette in the darkness. I had looked out toward it on so many trips. Somewhere in there, ten levels down, was me, sitting at a monitor with cold turkey.

Cold turkey?

It was another snapshot memory. A cold turkey dinner. A bottle of wine. Some homemade cookies. Someone had brought it in for me, someone concerned that I was still there, someone chiding me for not eating dinner again, someone...

Who?

Tina? No, Al said he took her to Santa Fe.

Gooshie? I can't picture the bad-breathed little man baking cookies.

Doctor Beeks? Maybe another programmer or engineer? It was like my mind blanked out that part.

It didn't matter. The meal had been hot, but I was so wrapped up in a program I was installing, I only picked at the food, slowly, unconsciously nibbling while listening to John Lennon and being thankful for "Shaved Fish."

Give Peace a Chance, Cold Turkey, Instant Karma, Power to the People, Mother, Woman Is the Nigger of the World.

By the time the album got to Imagine, I had figured out the problem. It seemed to work that way. I always had to get through all the social turmoil before I got to my epiphany. Then frantic typing, trying to get the idea out of my head before it faded away.

Whatever Gets You Thru the Night (it was like John Lennon had put that song next on the album specifically to taunt me on nights like this), Mind Games (another tease!), #9 Dream, Happy Xmas (War Is Over).

Then the compact disc went back to the beginning.

Give Peace a Chance...

End of Chapter 6

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A/N: I don't own Quantum Leap or the music of John Lennon. Song titles aren't protected under copyright law. Titles can, however, be trademarked. To the best of my knowledge, the songs in Shaved Fish aren't trademarked. If I'm in error, and if the Lennon estate wants me to remove all references to Shaved Fish, I will comply.

The bit about Sam listening to music to solve his problems was inspired by Quantum Leap: Prelude by Ashley McConnell. In the novel, Sam sings along to Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence. By the time he gets to a certain part of the song, he solves the problem. Many references to pre-Genesis time are based on Prelude. The TV series says Sam listened to Man of La Mancha continuously through the making of the Project, but I imagine his music collection was eclectic.