From: Coast2C@aol.com
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 21:33:40 -0400
Message-ID: <960430211742_387213217@emout13.mail.aol.com>
Subject: Convergence:  Part 9 of 25

Convergence
by 
Dana Anderson

Part 9 of  25      (Author's Notes and Disclaimer found in Part 1) 

*               *               *               * 

When Al stepped into the Imaging Chamber and the holographic 
image of Sam Beckett's current whereabouts resolved around him, 
he thought to himself that it would have been difficult to imagine a 
situation further removed from the quiet scene Al had just left than 
this.  

Sam was in the middle of a bar room brawl with three really big 
biker types.  

Al started rooting, out loud, for the biggest one.  "Come on Ugly, 
you and your buddies can take a scrawny guy like this apart without 
spilling your beer.  Paste one on him for me, will ya?"  

He was only half serious, and when the thug picked up a chair and 
lifted it above his head in preparation for bringing it down across 
Sam's back Al felt his loyalties shift.  "Look out, Sam" he yelled.  

Sam swung a leg up and around and took the big guy out.  He 
finished off the other two with several swift punches and one more 
kick.  

The bar crowd quieted in disappointment at the hasty conclusion of 
what had promised to be a lengthy entertainment.  Sam was bent 
over with his hands on his knees gasping for breath.  Al waited for 
him to recover.  When Sam regained the strength to straighten up, 
he jerked his head toward the men's room and walked away.  Al 
punched his handlink and appeared in the dingy room a few 
moments ahead of Sam.

"What the heck was that about, Sam?" Al asked as Sam entered the 
room and began to examine his injuries.

"I could ask you the same question" Sam retorted.  "Or are you 
going to try and tell me you weren't rooting for them to kick my 
butt?"

Al looked at the floor and shifted his feet.  *Sometimes he acts just 
like a little kid,* Sam thought.

"Sorry, pal" Al apologized.  "I was kind of ticked off at you, but I 
couldn't let that nozzle blind side you."

"'Ticked off at me'" Sam echoed.  "What did I do?"

"You leaped and your timing, as usual, stinks" Al growled.

"What did I do to deserve this?" Sam asked the ceiling.  Then he 
turned to Al and said, "I'm sorry if I interrupted something sordid, 
but I'm sure you can go back and apologize to Tina and have all 
kinds of 'fun' making up."

"Tina's married to Gushie" Al informed him.

"Oh" Sam said.  "Sorry.  How long have they been married?"

"Three and a half years or a little over four months, depending upon 
your point of view" Al replied grimly.

"Then how come you said my timing...Oh!...Anybody I know?" Sam 
asked.

"Yes and no" Al replied.  "Never mind, let's talk about who you are 
and why you're here."

Al was being Al again and if he didn't want to talk about something, 
he wouldn't, Sam thought.  

"That would be a refreshing change" Sam said aloud.

It was four hours later when Al felt he had relayed sufficient 
information about the current leap from Ziggy to Sam.  Now it was 
up to Sam to make some changes to see if their calculations 
regarding the most likely reason for Sam being who and where he 
was were correct.

Al briefly considered the idea of asking Ziggy if Jenna was awake, 
but decided that he didn't want to pursue that avenue when he was 
this tired.  It had been a long, eventful day and Sam was in the 
middle of a leap.  Other concerns would just have to wait.  He 
emitted a long sigh as he passed her quarters, but continued on to 
his own and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

*               *               *               * 

By the time Al woke, performed his morning routine, checked in 
with Ziggy for the updated data on the leap and visited Sam to 
review the data with him it was noon back at the Project.  Al was 
ravenous, so he headed straight for the cafeteria when he exited the 
Imaging Chamber.  

As he entered, Al saw that Jenna was just turning away from the 
kitchen and was surveying a dining area that was completely devoid 
of other diners.  He walked up to her.  "Can't have you disobeying 
orders" he said.  "I guess you'll have to eat with me."

She squared her shoulders as though preparing herself for a 
disagreeable task.  She assumed a stern expression, but Al could see 
that same glint of amusement in her eyes he had seen the night 
before.  "I can stand it if you can" she stated firmly.

As he watched her walk toward one of the empty tables Al was glad 
to see, among other things, that her limp had almost completely 
disappeared.  He fetched a tray of food for himself from the kitchen 
and joined her at the table she had selected.

*She looks better today,* Al thought, *but she still has those dark 
circles under her eyes.*  He made a mental note to ask Ziggy if she 
had slept better last night than she had been over the past couple of 
weeks.  Then he decided he was sick and tired of feeling like a 
sneak.

"Did you sleep all right?" Al asked.  "You look a little tired."

"I got almost four hours last night.  That's nearly Rip Van Winkle 
action for me" Jenna replied.

*Dr. Beeks was right,* Al thought.  *Jenna and I do have a lot in 
common.*  Al knew that it frustrated the hell out of the psychiatrist 
when he joked about something that was really bothering him and 
then refused to talk about it further.  Maybe it took another joker to 
puncture that defense.

"We can't have you walking around the complex with smudges 
under your eyes.  People will start thinking I'm making you do my 
work as well as your own."  Al said.  "Maybe you should see Dr. 
Ambrose.  He could give you something to help you sleep better."

Jenna put down the spoon she had picked up in order to begin on 
her soup.  "No sedatives" she intoned with a dark look.  "No way."

Al recognized the tone as well as the look.  Evidently she had dealt 
with as many recalcitrant Second Lieutenants as he had Ensigns.  
He raised both hands to shoulder level with palms out in surrender.  
"Okay" he said.  "Sorry, just trying to help."

"Apology accepted" Jenna answered.  She picked up the spoon 
again.  "Sorry I snapped at you.  Must be the lack of sleep making 
me cranky" she said, smiling.

Al groaned and shook his head.  *Boy, have I met my match this 
time,* he thought.

"I guess Dr. Beeks must be on your case about me, right?" Jenna 
asked.

*Uh oh,* Al thought.  It wouldn't do for him to forget about the 
caliber of the brain behind that face.  He had just taken a bite of his 
sandwich, so he used the excuse of chewing to give him a brief 
moment to consider his options in the way of a reply to that 
question.  By the time he swallowed he had confirmed that his 
earlier impulse of directness was the way he wanted to proceed.

"Yes, she is" he answered.  As he continued he watched Jenna 
carefully to gauge her reaction.  "Ziggy tracks some of the basic 
activities of the senior staff and compares them to a range of human 
norms she has filed in her memory.  If anyone deviates from the 
range for long Ziggy rats on them to Dr. Beeks.  Verbena tried to 
talk to you about it a few weeks ago, but you seemed a little 
reluctant."

"I'm not particularly fond of psychiatrists" Jenna said.

*Same here kid,* Al thought.  "Well, she felt it was too important to 
just let go, so she asked me to talk to you" Al said.

Jenna nodded as though this confirmed a suspicion she had already 
formed.  Then she smiled.  "I'll bet the good doctor read you the riot 
act when she found out how you dealt with the situation."   The 
smile changed to a grin and then a laugh.  Jenna started to return to 
her meal but her laughter erupted again.  

Al stared at her.  He wasn't sure if she was laughing at him or just 
near him.

When Jenna had recovered sufficient composure to speak again she 
was still chuckling intermittently.  "I'm sorry, Al" she managed.  
"It's just that I got this mental picture of the look Dr. Beeks must 
have had on her face when you told her you had _ordered_ me to 
start behaving normally."

Al had to grin at the reminder of that confrontation.  "She was a bit 
skeptical of my approach" he admitted.

"Well" Jenna continued "I hope she doesn't use the evidence of my 
'abnormal' sleep cycle to justify her disapproval of your technique.  I 
haven't slept through the night in over ten years and I doubt 
anything Dr. Beeks could come up with would be more effective 
than a direct order from a superior officer."

*Ten years,* Al thought to himself.  *Not since she leaped the first 
time.  Or since her husband died.  Maybe a combination of the two.*

"Now that you know 'Big Sister' is watching" Al said "I'm going to 
rescind the orders I gave you.  Your schedule is now your business.  
Just remember that if Ziggy busts you again Dr. Beeks will probably 
decide it's time for her to step in personally."

Just then his handlink beeped.  He fished it out of his pocket and 
glanced at the display.  The little screen displayed a group of 
nonsensical characters, so he smacked it with his palm a couple of 
times in hopes of clearing the readout into something 
comprehensible.

Jenna snatched the device out of his hand and cradled it in her 
palms as though it were a wounded hatchling.  "Hey" she cried.  
"Don't do that!  How do you expect it to work properly if you whack 
it like that?"

"If it would work properly I wouldn't have to whack it" Al retorted.  
He reached into his pocket and produced another handlink.  "It's a 
good thing I picked up this spare last night when that one started 
acting up again."  He activated the spare handlink and read the 
information displayed on the tiny screen.  "I have to go" he said.  
She was engrossed in an examination of the handlink she had taken 
from him.  "Can you fix it?" he asked.

"If I can't it isn't broken" she replied.  Then she looked up.  "But if I 
do fix it you'd better not let me catch you whacking it again."

Al shook his head.  "No promises" he said.  "I think the blasted 
thing was designed to malfunction.  See you later?"

She nodded and murmured "Sure" but she had already returned to 
her inspection of the device she held in her hands.

*               *               *               * 

Al spent the rest of the day immersed in Project business.  After he 
had relayed some new information Ziggy had come up with to Sam 
and they had updated the situation of the current leap Al returned 
from the Imaging Chamber to find several inquiries that needed to 
be handled.  The work normally would have been shouldered by 
section heads but, with most of the middle management on leave, Al 
had to intervene personally.  By the time the last issue was cleared 
up it was past eleven at night.  Al checked in with Sam again, went 
back to his quarters and went to bed.

*               *               *               * 

By early afternoon the next day, it appeared that Sam was about 
ready to leap.  Al was in the Imaging Chamber reviewing the 
changes Sam had made to several people's histories when the spare 
handlink Al had been using suddenly went dark.  

"Damn" Al cursed.  He smacked the device a couple of times and 
shook it, but the handlink refused to respond.

"You broke it" Sam said.

"No kidding" Al replied.  Al shouted to the air around him "Gushie, 
where's the other handlink?"  He paused for a response which Sam 
could not hear.  "Oh, yeah" Al replied, in what appeared to Sam as a 
one sided conversation "Find out if she fixed it.  I need a handlink, 
pronto."

Al attempted to force some sign of life from the little machine in his 
hand, but to no avail.  A moment later he turned as he heard the 
sound of the Imaging Chamber door opening behind him.

Jenna entered the Imaging Chamber and approached Al and Sam 
without looking up from the handlink she was operating.  After she 
had taken a few more steps she glanced up and came to an abrupt 
halt.  She surveyed the entire room with care and when she came to 
the spot where Al perceived Sam to be standing her perusal changed 
to a riveting stare.

Al felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.  *She shouldn't be 
able to see Sam.  She _couldn't_ see Sam,* he thought to himself.  
But he couldn't conceive of another reason why she would be staring 
right at the very spot that Al perceived as the location of Sam 
Beckett's face.  To make the situation more unnerving, Sam 
appeared to be staring at _her_.  Sam shouldn't be able to see 
anything in the Imaging Chamber unless Al was touching it.

"We've met, haven't we?" Sam asked.  "Major Tyler, if I remember 
correctly."

Al gulped.  *There has to be an explanation for this.*  "Great, Sam" 
he interjected out of pure nervousness "you can read the name plate 
on her uniform sweater.  But your recognition of Army rank insignia 
needs work.  She's a colonel."

"I was a major when we met the first time" Jenna explained.

"The first time" Al echoed.  So Sam had been right.  When he 
leaped into her and saw her photo and reflection he said there was 
something familiar about her.  Evidently, seeing her here had 
allowed him to make the connection.

Jenna nodded.  "At M.I.T. in 1983.  Dr. Beckett attended a lecture I 
gave there.  When he found out that I had read his doctoral thesis in 
quantum physics we spent some time discussing his theory."

Sam's memory, swiss-cheesed as it was, came up with the most 
esoteric past knowledge at times.  "As I recall, you spent the length 
of time it took us to drink two pitchers of beer reviewing my theory 
point for point and asking questions you already seemed to have 
formulated the answers for.  Then, while we worked on the third 
pitcher, you tried to convince me that, while you admitted the theory 
was brilliant, I would never be able to produce the proof.  You said I 
should give up on it and start working on something else."

"You recall correctly" she replied.  She finally managed to break her 
gaze away from Sam's face and looked at Al.  She extended her arm 
and delivered the repaired handlink to him.  Al, in turn, gave her 
the broken one.  She looked at it briefly, then glared at him.

"You've been whacking it, haven't you" she accused.

Al sighed.

"He whacks them all the time" Sam confirmed.

"Well, he'd better not mistreat that one" Jenna said, indicating the 
handlink she had just given to Al.  She regarded Sam briefly.

"It was nice to see you again, Colonel" Sam said.

"My pleasure" Jenna replied, in a voice completely devoid of 
emotion.  She turned and left the Imaging Chamber, closing the 
door behind her.

"You could see and hear each other" Al stated the obvious.

"Yes" Sam answered simply.

"How?" Al demanded.

"I don't know" the brilliant quantum physicist replied.  And leaped.  

*               *               *               * 

Al stood silently in the center of the now hologramless Imaging 
Chamber for a moment trying to recover from the shock he had just 
had.  He shook his head and headed for the exit.

As soon as he stepped out of the doorway, he was confronted with 
the evidence that someone else had been more severely affected by 
recent events than he had.  Jenna was standing with her back 
against the wall just outside the Imaging Chamber with her eyes 
clamped shut.  She also seemed in immediate danger of 
hyperventilating as well.

Al grabbed her by the arm and shook her.  Jenna's eyes flew open 
and she focused on his eyes in an almost desperate attempt to 
reconnect with a reality she could accept.  Al understood her 
problem at once.  He retained his grip on her arm and hurried her 
across the Control Room and out the door on the far side.  

Al took her directly to his quarters, sat her down in a chair on the 
balcony and went back inside.  He grabbed a bottle of scotch and a 
glass out of a cabinet and returned to the balcony.  He poured her a 
drink, placed the glass in her palm and used his hands to mold her 
fingers into a firm grip on the glass.  

"Drink it" he ordered.

She complied.  Jenna choked a little on the first swallow, but 
managed two more sips without a problem.

Al refilled her glass without taking it away from her and looked 
back at her face.  She still looked pretty shaken up, but the light of 
reason was returning to her eyes.

"I'm sorry you got such a shock" Al began.  "I didn't think you 
would deliver the handlink personally.  Even so, I wouldn't have 
expected you to see anything in the Imaging Chamber except me, all 
alone in a white room."

"I know" Jenna replied.  "It wasn't anyone's fault."  She trembled 
briefly and then looked at her glass.  "My undying thanks to 
whoever invented hard liquor."

Al relaxed.  And thank God for that 'resilient psyche' Dr. Beeks had 
correctly deduced Jenna must possess.

"I've been reviewing the parameters of the Quantum Leap program 
for weeks, but haven't seen anything suggesting that anyone but you 
and Dr. Beckett would be able to see the other side of the effect the 
Imaging Chamber produces" Jenna said.

Al stopped in the middle of the process of unwrapping a cigar he 
had produced from his shirt pocket.  He had been so preoccupied 
with Jenna's progress in detailing her leap data that he hadn't even 
wondered about what she was working on in the afternoons.  He 
resumed unwrapping his cigar.  This brought up issues that had 
remained unspoken between them for too long already.

Al got another surprise when he prepared to light his cigar and 
noticed that Jenna had produced a cigarette from somewhere on her 
person.  He lit it for her and then ignited his cigar.

"I didn't know you smoked" he observed.

"It's a habit I cultivate from time to time out of sheer cussedness" 
she said.

Al understood what she meant.  When the tide of public opinion 
began to turn against the habit in the mid-Seventies and reached a 
fever pitch in the Nineties, Al had become more and more obstinate 
about continuing to smoke.  Almost in direct proportion to the 
outside pressure that he stop, he had to admit to himself.  

*Enough delay,* he thought.  *We're going to talk about Sam 
Beckett and Project Quantum Leap if I have to order her to sit there 
without moving until she's ready to discuss it.*

"So" he ventured.  "You and Sam have met before.  And you had the 
nerve to tell him he would never be able to prove his theory."

"I was right, too" Jenna replied.

Al shook his head.  "What do you mean, you were right?  He did it."

"Yes, he did; didn't he?" she sighed.  "But my conclusion was based 
on the fact that I understood the components of the computer he 
would have to build to make the theory work.  I didn't discuss my 
understanding with him, but I knew he would never get permission 
to use human cells in the manner required to produce a hybrid 
computer core.  I hope for his sake that if a Board of Ethics ever 
finds out about it the donors were fully informed and willing."

"They were" Al responded.  The donors, in fact, were himself and 
Sam Beckett.  He wondered if she was already aware of that fact and 
was simply wondering if he was as well.

"Good" she replied, with a look that told him his suspicion was 
correct.

"You thought Sam used some of my tissue without permission" Al 
stated.

"I was fairly sure he wouldn't have, but scientific obsession has been 
known to override a person's ethical beliefs" she said.

Al had to allow her the truth of that statement, although he didn't 
much like her even obliquely comparing his pal to the nozzles who 
had kept her locked up and drugged in an attempt to figure out why 
they hadn't succeeded in killing her outright.

"Not Sam Beckett's" Al defended his friend.  "How long have you 
known that Project Quantum Leap was what caused you to travel 
back into the past?"  *In for a penny, in for a pound,* he thought.

"I suspected it before I leaped back to 1989 that last time" she 
replied.  Jenna told him about recognizing Sam and the scar on his 
wrist when she had appeared briefly in the Waiting Room and then 
recalling it after the conversation she had had with Al and Ziggy the 
first night she had found herself in their present.

"And by the next morning you were sure" Al stated.  "You read 
everything Sam had written that Ziggy had in her memory banks 
that you hadn't already read."

"Yes" she confirmed.

Al simply stared at her.  He still did not have a clue as to why she 
wasn't the president of the I-Hate-Dr.-Sam-Beckett club.  Why had 
she so meekly stepped into the persona of Deputy Director of the 
project that had so drastically affected what should have been her 
life?

Jenna saw that Al was chewing on something.  "Did you have a 
point?" she asked.

*She asked for it.*  He took a deep breath.  "You knew, or 
suspected, all this.  But instead of calling up Senator Wilson, 
blowing the whistle and getting revenge on the people who were 
responsible for subjecting you to what you yourself described as a 
living 'hell' you knuckled down to the task of making the Project 
more viable."  There, he had said it.

Jenna's face blanched immediately to a chalk white color and Al saw 
that every muscle in her body had stiffened to immobility.  The glass 
she was still holding shattered in her hand, but she appeared not 
even to notice it.  Al did.  And he also saw that a shard of glass had 
cut her palm and blood was beginning to seep from the wound.

"Here, let me see your hand" Al said and reached out.  This action 
snapped her out of her trance and she jumped up from the chair and 
backed away from him.

"You...how could you..." she sputtered.

"You cut yourself" Al explained.  "I just want to see if it's serious."

She shook her head and made a chopping motion with her 
undamaged hand, cutting him off.  "That's not what I mean" she 
stammered.  She was regaining some of her color along with control 
of her voice.  "How could you think that I would be so petty as to 
take the attitude that Sam Beckett had spent twenty years of his life 
trying to see how badly he could mess up my day?"  Jenna's chest 
was heaving with the effort to even speak to him.  "How could you 
think I would have anything but sympathy for the situation he's in?"  

The expression of despair and betrayal in her eyes sent a sharp, 
unexpected pain through him.  

"How could you think that I wouldn't do everything I could to help 
him get back?" she continued.

Al was momentarily stunned at the unadulterated anger in her voice.  
He rose from his chair and took a step toward her.  Jenna dodged 
around his approach, bolted to the door of his quarters, wrenched it 
open and, leaving it ajar, ran out into the hallway and disappeared 
from view.

Al closed his eyes in pure mortification.  Even after all he had 
learned about her in the past months he had continued to suspect her 
of harboring resentment toward Sam and the Project.  Even after he 
had realized that she shared many of the character traits he most 
admired in Sam, Al had not been able to believe that the motives 
behind her activities had been pure and positive.  Jenna knew, better 
than anyone else in the world, what Sam was going through.  But Al 
had selfishly refused to recognize that this might mean she could be 
just as dedicated as he, if not more so, to the belief that his friend 
could be retrieved.

"How could I have been such a complete idiot?" he finished Jenna's 
accusations for her. 

*               *               *               * 

End Part 9 of  25