From: "Joshua Falken" Subject: Quantum ReBoot - Installation (part 3) Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 22:19:14 -0300 Message-ID: <01bdf4b5$290b3460$LocalHost.3@smdksbcr.telnet.com.br> Quantum ReBoot -- Installation Written by Joshua Falken _________________________________________________________________ I come from outside of the Net. Through lives, peoples and cities, to this place, Mainframe. My format? I think... Leaper. To change the history for better, to put right what went wrong. ReBoot! _________________________________________________________________ Chapter 3 Project Quantum Leap Control Room Ziggy told to Al and Verbena which could be the Sam's mission. "My God!", Al murmured in disbelief. "Are you sure, Ziggy?", did he demand. All the Ziggy's ego showed. "Admiral, with a million gigabyte capacity I'm quite capable of rubbing my tummy, patting my head, and doing a trillion floating point operations at once! The probabilities are of 99,99993! Of course I am sure!" Verbena closed the eyes, while Al had fire in the eyes. He was ready to pull up the blue ball, that was Ziggy's CPU, of the roof. Verbena said, trying to calm the courages: "Al, is better you go speak with Sam." He agreed. _________________________________________________________________ Mainframe Room Read-Only "What did you make with Enzo?!", did AndrAIa demand, while she threatened Sam with the paralyser fingernails. "Nothing!",Sam cried, divided between if he was surprised by her agility or for the fact that she know that he wasn't Enzo Matrix. He held her arms, impeding that she nailed the fingernails in his neck. She was younger than he but the determination more than compensated that. "Then where he is?!" "In the future!", he said hoping her believe in the truth. "Do you think that I'm basic?!" "But it's the truth!!" Sam tried think in something, when he saw a mirror. "If you don't believe in me, LOOK AT!" When she looked at the mirror image, she opened the mouth of astonishment. She was holding a guy with brown eyes and brown hair, but in the reflection she was holding Enzo! "But... how?", did she murmur. Sam took advantage of her distraction and he pushed her of top of him. He rose and he went to the other side of the table. AndrAIa had already recovered of the shock and she got ready to attack Sam. On that moment, the Imaging Chamber door opened up. Al came running for the blue door. "Sam, we know now... WHAT IS HAPPEN?!", did he ask when he noticed the situation. "She can see me, Al! As myself!" AndrAIa saw a guy (with a terrible taste for clothes) come from a kind of blue rectangular portal. She attacked him. Her arm had crossed the man! "Where is Enzo?" AndrAIa, although surprised, she asked for the hologram, with a determination shine in the eyes that surprised Al. "Well, Little Mermaid...", he began. Little Mermaid?! That hurted, Al!, Sam thought, closing the eyes. AndrAIa didn't also like to have called like this, making faces. Al noticed that, but he continued: "well... believe or not, Enzo is safe... in the future!" "How can he be in the future?", did AndrAIa ask incredulous. "Well, that is with me.", Sam said. "I'm a time traveler, and I travel changing places with a person of the past." AndrAIa thought that history was very weird, but she was surprised when her game sprite instinct told to her that could believe in them! She took a breath for the next question. "And why do you travel in the time? And how do you resemble Enzo in the mirror?" She didn't still understand that. "I resemble Enzo, why when I Leap into somebody I catch the person's "aura", and the person catch my "aura", in the Waiting Room.", Sam explained, while Al punches the handlink. "And I travel in the time because... well... because I'm lost in the Time and I'm trying return home. And it seems that some unknown force guides me "to put right what went wrong", to me can Leap home." "And why did you leap into Enzo?" "Because some very wrong thing will happen in Mainframe, and I have to put right." "What will happen?", did she ask concerned. In some way she knew that Sam was telling the truth. "I answer that!" Al was turned for Sam. "Sam, Ziggy discovered which is your mission. And I think we are in big trouble - BIG." _________________________________________________________________ Project Quantum Leap Control Room "Sam already Leaped into singers, test pilots, miss prize's candidates, sought killers, soldiers, con men, mentally-absent people, and even in a chimpanzee... but of this time..." Donna Eleese shook the head. Gooshie agreed: "God should be playing dice! I mean... which is the importance of a computer for the world?!" The comment was not very happy. "Dr. Conelf, don't you consider important MY WORK?!?", did Ziggy ask, clearly offended. Verbena left Donna and Gooshie trying calm down the egotistical supercomputer. She had to go to the Waiting Room, speak with Enzo. She entered in the room and she saw Enzo bored. "How are you, Enzo?" "All right, except that I don't have anything to do.", the sprite answered. "Well, perhaps I can bring some CDs for you listen." Verbena didn't want him know that he was in the Userworld. She already knew that the Mainframe inhabitants (and probably everybody that lived - lived! - in the Net) thought that they - the users - were a kind of God, malicious and that liked to play with their fates -- exactly as God, Fate or Time with the Sam's fate. If he knew that was talking with a User... Enzo thanked and she left. He hadn't told that was feeling a weird thing in the stomach. The sensation was as if his body was charging batteries for a journey. _________________________________________________________________ Mainframe Room Read-Only "Which is the mission, Al?" Sam asked. The observer took a breath. "According to Ziggy, Greg Carter tried install in your computer, Mainframe, a new graphic program. The problem was that that program had an incompatibility flaw with the operating system of this city. The installation provoked a system crash, that disabled completally the HD, not allowing the city's restoration. He threw the HD away." "Al, you mean that... was the whole city destroyed?" "Yes." "Enzo, Dot..." "Deleted without backup." Sam leaned on in the wall. The legs had lost the firmness suddenly. "Oh, boy! My God, I have to save the whole city! And the incredible, is that the city was inside of a HD! The User will destroy Mainframe, and he not even would know about that! And I don't have the minimum idea of as to avoid that!", he thought. Part of AndrAIa's neural interface felt that was something in the talk that she had not noticed, but the other part was scared with what it would happen. "Can't we make anything to stop?", did she ask. "It's for that that I am here.", Sam answered. "But I don't know how." "Don't worry, Sam! Ziggy is running scenarios after scenarios, to discover as preventing that ". "Meanwhile, I will be here, trying to discover some thing that can help." Al nodded and he disappeared for Imaging Chamber door. Sam asked AndrAIa: "Do you help me?" She look directly to him, for a moment. "Sure." And both began to open windows and more windows. _________________________________________________________________ Project Quantum Leap Waiting Room Enzo was listening "Johnny B. Goode " (he thought the music was a little strange, but he liked), when suddenly he felt a lot of pins in his body. "Doctor!", he called her. Dr. Verbena Beeks ran to Enzo. "What did happen?" "I don't know. I am... feeling something...", the sprite told twisting. Verbena called the medical staff, when Enzo Matrix was wrapped up by the blue light of Quantum Leaping.