From: la095at8@csulb.edu (Michael Ejercito)
Newsgroups: alt.ql.creative
Subject: In the Beginning
Date: 16 Dec 1995 00:21:19 GMT
Organization: Cal State Long Beach
Message-ID: <4at3dv$rkc@garuda.csulb.edu>
Summary: The events that transpired on the day that Sam first leaped

   At 6:00 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time, in Stallions Gate, New Mexico,
Doctor Samuel Beckett woke up. His General Electric clock radio, which he
programmed to go on at 6:00 a.m., was playing "You Oughta Know" by Alanis
Morrisette when he woke up. As he heard her sing, "And I'm here to remind
you, "he realized the significance of this day.
   "Today I make history!"he shouted. Today was a good day for him. Today
he travels through time.
   He went downstairs into his dining room to eat breakfast. He poured
some Trix cereal into a white ceramic bowl. He got up and poured Minute
Maid orange juice into a glass. As he was eating his cereal, he wished
there was someone he could share his feelings with.
   He thought about Donna Eleese, a quantum physicist he was engaged
to. She had a doctorate just like Sam did. They met at Project StarBright,
which was a project of the Department of Defense. They got engaged.
   There was a big wedding. Sam's mother and sister attended the
wedding. The wedding was missing one thing.
   The bride.
   Donna did not show up for the wedding. She left Sam at the altar. Sam
never had a successful relationship with a woman ever since.
   To heel with Donna, he thought. Today he will make history.
   Sam went into the garage and pressed a button on the wall. The garage
door opened, letting the morning light into its dark reaches. Sam looked
at the red Porschhe 911 in his garage. He went up to the door and inserted
the key. He unlocked the door and opened it. He sat in the driver's seat
and placed the ignition key into its keyhole. He turned the key and the
engine sputtered and roared to life. Sam put the gearshift lever into
"Reverse" and backed out of the garage, out of the driveway, and into the
street. He used the remote garage-door opener to close the garage door,
put the gearshift lever to first, and drove down the street.
   Outside Stallion's Gate, New Mexico, Sam was cruising down Highway 666,
which passed through Stallion's Gate. He turned right on a gravel road
which led straight to the mountains. The gravel crunched underneath the
tires. The road ended at a hillside-or so it seemed. Sam applied the
brakes and the Porsche came to a stop. Sam got outside of the car, dressed
in a suit. He went to a small metallic box perched on a pole sticking out
of the sand. He pressed a few buttons on a numeric keypad mounted on the
box. After he pushed the buttons, the hillside opened up, revealing a
parking garage.
   Sam drove into the garage. He parked his car in a space marked,
"DR. SAMUEL BECKETT." He got out of the Porsche and went to a row of glass
doors on the wall. He opened on of the glass doors and went inside into
the main lobby. The lobby was an elegant room, with marble-tiled floors,
marble columns, a water fountain in the middle, and sofas lined along the
walls. There were a few people going through the lobby-some of them
scientists, others Navy personell. Sam was not surprised at the elegance
of this room. This underground compound was originally built to serve as a
temporary seat of government for the President and Congress in case of a
nuclear attack. Sam went to one of the elevators and pressed the down
button.
   Sam got inside the elevator and pressed the button for the lowest
floor. There were several scientists and Navy personell in the
elevator. Once the elvator reached the bottom floor, he got out into the
lobby. Unlike the main lobby, this lobby was simpler-with a carpeted floor
and a sofa. At one of the walls there was a door that had a sign that
read, "AUTHORIZED PERSONELL ONLY." By the door was a desk where guards in
Navy uniforms were sitting. There was a monitor on the desk which was
hooked up to a camera inside.
   Sam walked up to one of the guards and said, "I am Doctor Samuel
Beckett. I need to go inside." Sam presented the guard with a security
badge.
   "You may enter, sir, "the guard said as he inserted his key into one of
the locks.  Sam inserted his key into the other lock. Then Sam opened the
door. The work conducted inside was so secret that it took two keys to
open the door-one held by an authorized employee, the other held by a
guard on duty. Only the project supervisor had both keys and could open
the door without assistance from the guard.
   Sam walked into the hallway. The walls of the hallway were not plaster,
but reinforced steel. Sam went into his office and turned on the
light. The walls of his office were covered with plaster. There was a
fluorescent light fixture overhead.  Near the back of the room there was a
desk. A nameplate which read "DR. SAMUEL BECKETT" was sitting on top of
the desk. There was a push-button telephone and an Apple computer on
top. The computer was special. The computer, specially designed by Apple
Computer, Inc., used a unique disk operating system. This was one of the
security features, which prevented employees from transferring
data. Employees could not transfer data through disks to other computers
because no computer outside the compound could read the disks. Another
security feature was that all the computers were on an isolated network-a
network which is not connected to a modem.
   Sam sat down on the leather chair behind the desk.He thought about the
hard work he did. He has conducted research on time travel. He had a
string theory of time. A person's life was like a string. One end
represent's birth, the other death. Connect the two strings and make a
loop. Bunch the strings together and the days of your lives are connected,
so you can leap along your lifetime. But he could not prove his theory
unless he actually traveled through time. Congress had threatened to cut
funding for the project, whose code name is Quantum Leap. They had just
finished testing the quantum leap accelerator the previous day, which was
the device used for time travel into the past.
   Sam was sitting down having dinner at the commissary. The clock over
the entrance read 6:30. He planned to leap at 7:00 p.m. The tables at the
commissary were covered in blue tablecloth. There was a huge Magnavox
television on the wall to the left of the entrance, while smaller
televisions were hanging from the ceiling. There were a row of pay
telephones on the right wall. In the back there was a bar and the
cashier's counter. Sam was having steak for dinner-his last dinner before
his leap.
   A short, balding man with bad breath walked up to Sam. He said, "Hello,
Doctor Beckett."
   "Hello, Gooshie," replied Sam.
   Gooshie was the chief programmer for Project Quantum Leap. He
programmed the computer which operates the quantum leap accelerator. "So,
Doctor Beckett, what is up?"
   "I am going to leap tonight at 7:00 p.m.," said Sam. "I will make
history today."
   "But Doctor Beckett," Gooshie protested, "the accelerator is not ready
yet."
   "Congress is threatening to cut funds if I do not produce results."
   "I thought President Clinton promised to veto any bill which would cut
funding for this project."
   "You know that Clinton doesn't stand a chance in 1996. Besides, what if
Congress overrides the veto?"
   "You are right, Doctor Beckett. I'll get everything ready. But if you
are in any danger, I will pull you out."
   "I understand, Gooshie."
   "So, Doctor Beckett, do you think O.J. did it?"
   "Maybe I'll find out."
   Sam was walking through the hallway. He was wearing a white latex
suit. He opened the door to the control room. The control room was hidden
in darkness. Sam pulled out his keys and said, "Now to activate the
system."
   He went to a small door on the wall. He inserted the key into the lock,
turned the key, pulled the handle, and opened the door. Inside was a
compartment where mounted on the back was a switch marked "MAIN". Sam
flipped the switch from "OFF" to "ON".
   The lights in the room came on. Sam heard a beep. A huge, multi-colored
plastic box in the center of the room lit up, flashing in various colors.
   "Hello, Ziggy," said Sam.
   "Hello, Doctor Beckett," a male voice replied.
   Sam looked at Ziggy. Above the box, which was Ziggy's main console,
there was a plastic sphere hanging from the ceiling by a titanium
rod. Through the sphere Sam could see a network of fiber-optic
cables. Ziggy was a light-circuit computer-a computer which uses
fiber-optic cables in place of electrical wires to do computations. Ziggy
had four terabytes of random-access memory-one hundred thousand times as
much memory as most mainframe computers. Ziggy had one terabyte of
read-only memory. Sam went up to the console and said, "Ziggy, activate
the quantum leap accelerator."
   From the back Sam heard a humming. This meant the accelerator was
on. Before Sam could leap, he had to make a telephone call. Sam went up to
the telephone by the door. He picked up the receiver and dialed a number.
   In the White House in Washington, D.C., President William Clinton,
better known as Slick Willie, was mulling over whether or not to send
troops to Bosnia to enforce the peace treaty. The telephone rang at his
desk. He picked it up and said, "This is the President of the United
States. How may I help you?"
   "Mister President, this is Doctor Samuel Beckett from Project Quantum
Leap," Sam replied. "Today I make history. Today I step into the quantum
leap accelerator and will travel to the past."
   "You are doing this? Today?" The President had been keeping track of
Project Quantum Leap, but he never expected Sam to leap soon.
   "I have to do this, Mister President. Congress is going to cut
funding."
   "I will veto any attempt to cut funding for this project."
   "I'm not sure if a veto will work. Old Newtie is convincing the
Democrats into cutting this project."
   "I get your point, Doctor Beckett. The only thing I want to say right
now is good luck."
   "Goddbye, Mister President," said Sam.
   "Goodbye, Doctor Beckett," said Clinton.
   Sam put the receiver back and hung up. "The President said its okay,"
said Sam. "I'm going to leap."
   Sam went up to the main console and said, "Ziggy, prepare the quantum
leap accelerator for leaping. Sam pushed some buttons on a keyboard."I
programmed the accelerator to fire at 7:00 tonight." Sam looked at the
clock above the door. "That gives me five minutes."
   "Have a nice journey," replied Ziggy.
   Sam opened the door to the accelerator chamber and entered. Scientists
watched the monitor screens which were placed along the wall. Sam was
surrounded by a blue aura. He raised his arms as his hair blew
about. Gooshie had Ziggy project Sam's condition on the screen.  As the
accelerator was running, Sam felt himself being detached from his
body;detached from his time.
   Gooshie saw a warning on the screen. He pushed a button on the console
and said, "Ziggy. Abort!" But he only got an error message.
   At 7:00 p.m., Mountain Time, Doctor Samuel Beckett leaped.

  I hope you enjoy this story. Could you mail or post comments?