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The sliders regarded the strange new world they'd just landed in. "Where the hell are we NOW!?" Rembrandt asked eyeing the strange stark white environment.

"It looks like a story," Colin observed.

Rembrandt raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly in hope. "Is it about me?"

"Looks like we're in a fanfic," Quinn answered him. Everyone groaned in disgusted and Quinn had to remind them, "At least this is safer than the FOX network."

"That all depends," Colin added cautiously. "Who's the author of this document?"

Quinn squinted to read the text high above them. "It looks like... uh... Jason... Jason Donner."

The sliders all moaned in protest once again and began arguing.

"No way!" Maggie yelled. "There is no way I'm going to be in a fanfic written by that... that LUNATIC!!!"

"Wha...?" Colin asked rather confused since the only appearance he'd ever made in a Donner fanfic was a cameo in the fifth Sliders Meet the X-Files story. "I don't understand, Maggie, why are you so nervous?"

"Why am I so nervous!?" she yelled out grabbing Colin by the lapels and hoisting him off the ground. "Why am I so nervous!? I'll tell you why! Because, in every fanfic of his I've appeared in, it's usually ended up with me looking like some kind of crazed psycho and, to top that off, he constantly makes fun of my breasts!"

Colin nodded nervously. "Um... M-Maybe things will be different this time!"

Maggie released him. "How do you mean?"

"Well, Donner has admitted that he does like the brand-new retuned less-than-evil fourth season you," Rembrandt said stepping in between the two, "and Jason Donner has also wrote his fair share of serious fanfics like Ship of Dreams, American Werewolf, and Hybrid."

"Yeah," Quinn agreed. "And don't forget Stowaways and the Infinite Slides episodes Slide and Seek and Real Life, in which he was the only IS writer to pull off a crossover even thought they're frowned upon by IS policy."

Everyone looked at Quinn. "Well," Quinn stammered, "he did!"

"But," Maggie whined, "he's never written a serious fanfic with ME in it."

"Actually, he did," Rembrandt told her. "It was a story he wrote shortly after FOX canceled us that picked up where "This Slide of Paradise" left off. Called, Separation Anxiety, it faced Quinn and Maggie alone against the Kromaggs and included the Dynasty's invasion of Earth Prime and their ultimate defeat at the hands of Wade, Bennish, Logan, and me... and a TV reporter."

"Wait a minute," Maggie said skeptically, "why haven't I ever heard of this Separation Anxiety story?"

"Well," Rembrandt explained, "Jason's computer crashed and the story was wiped out after he'd only sent two parts of it."

Just then, a red wormhole opened and a brunette woman tumbled onto the white world. She jumped to her feet and held a gun on them.

"Who the hell are you?" Maggie demanded.

"Logan Saint Claire," the woman answered, "Jason's favorite villain."

"What do you want, Logan?" Quinn demanded.

"Oh, I was just going to add that the reason that Jason never rewrote Separation Anxiety was because it ended the slider's story once and for all and ended up with Maggie and Quinn moving in with each other."

"It did!?" Maggie asked in amazement.

Logan nodded, "However, he thought that was a bit too much and decided that he shouldn't do that OR end the slider's story at all. Rather, he felt that the sliders should continue forever in fanfic."

"Smart move," Rembrandt said to himself.

Suddenly, a wormhole opened above Logan and Wade appeared executing a karate kick to the back of Logan's head. "Hi guys!" Wade chimed in.

"Hey Wade," the sliders answered.

"What are you doing here?" Quinn asked.

"Oh, I'm just here to say that Sliders is property of Universal/Saint Claire and the Sci-Fi Channel, but not FOX since... well, aside from Sunday nights, there isn't anything on their network more entertaining than watching dogs have sex." Wade checked her watch. "Gotta go!"

With that, a wormhole opened and Wade and Quinn shared and passionate kiss that lasted an hour. Then, grabbing Logan by the hair on her head, Wade leaped into the vortex and out of existence.

"Bye Wade," everyone said in unison.

"That was odd," Colin said stating the obvious.

Quinn wiped his mouth and looked at Maggie. "Feel better?"

"A little," Maggie admitted.

Just then, a Kromagg manta ship screamed overhead and a lone figure jumped out and parachuted to the ground.

"Mary?" Rembrandt asked in shock.

"I'm am here to add that this story takes place one week after the events in 'Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?' and chronicles events that happened after 'This Slide of Paradise'." Mary's monotone voice explained. She then checked her watch. "Time to go," she said throwing a pellet to the ground and disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

"Are we done yet?" Colin asked impatiently.

"NOT QUITE YET!" A deep voice answered from the heavens.

Rembrandt looked to the skies in alarm. "Is that you, God?"

"NO, YOU BLISTERING IDIOT! IT'S ME, PROFESSOR ARTURO!"

"Professor? Where are you?" Quinn asked looking for him.

"I'M DECEASED, YOU SIMPLETON!" Arturo's voice boomed out. "I MUST TELL YOU ALL THAT THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE FREELY DISTRIBUTED UNDER THE CONDITION THAT IT NOT BE ALTERED OR SOLD IN ANY WAY. THAT'S ALL. FAREWELL."

"Bye, Professor," the sliders said waving to the sky.

"Well, are you guys ready?" Rembrandt asked the others.

Maggie sighed. "Yeah, let's get this over with."

With that, the Slider activated the vortex and slid away.

And that was when Rickman showed up eating a back of M&M's. "Am I late?" he asked looking around.

I Know Where You Slid Last Summer contains spoilers and allusions to the 'Sliders' episodes: "Pilot", "Luck of the Draw", "Invasion", "Double Cross", "The Guardian", "State of the A.R.T", "The Exodus", "The Other Slide of Darkness", "This Slide of Paradise", "Genesis", "Worldkiller", and "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?".

Quinn and Maggie ran as fast as their legs would carry them down the darkened corridor of the main complex hoping like hell that the timer would expire before they would. Things hadn't gone exactly as they had planned and now a desperate situation had become truly dire. Their only way out was to slide... even though they knew it was going to cost them their best chance for a ticket to Earth Prime.

"I don't get it!" Maggie yelled to her companion. "I thought Mackenzie was on our side!"

"That's what I thought," Quinn said between gasps. "Looks like he's decided to take the network over himself. God knows he could do it with the mess we've made of the system!"

They rounded a corner and came face to face with their pursuer making them both jump in surprise and fright. Maggie quickly noted that he wasn't holding a weapon - odd, considering what he had just done and what he knew Maggie was probably going to do to him. Oddly enough, Mackenzie just looked at them and grinned. "Jesus," he said. "I thought I'd never catch up to you two!"

Maggie went wild. She flew at him hitting him in the face and upper body as hard as she could. "You son of a bitch!" she screamed at him. "We trusted you!!!"

He managed to toss her to the side and pick up a discarded pipe that had been lying nearby. He waved it at her menacingly. "What are you talking about, Beckett? Have you lost your mind?"

Suddenly, an energy bolt hit the floor and caused Quinn to jump into the air. "They've found us!" he exclaimed as he, Maggie, and Mackenzie took shelter around the corner.

"Come on!" Mackenzie yelled at them while motioning down the corridor. "I've got a flyer waiting!"

Maggie looked at him as if he was completely nuts. After what he had done... he wanted them to come with him? "Do we look like a couple of idiots to you?"

"Maggie, we don't have time!" Mac protested as another energy bolt impacted the wall.

Quinn showed the timer to Maggie. The display read nine seconds. Maggie exhaled and threw Mackenzie an icy glare. "For once, I agree..."

Quinn pointed the timer down the corridor and activated the wormhole. A wave of energy leaped out and coalesced into the swirling blue tunnel. Mac stepped back and looked at them in confusion. "You're sliding!? Now!?" he asked in disbelief. "What about...?"

"You've left us very little choice," Quinn growled at him. He was so angry and full of hate at the man he had called his ally that it was taking all the self control he had not to strangle him. "Hope you enjoy your new world order!"

And, with that, he grabbed Maggie's hand and jumped into the tunnel. Mackenzie actually thought about going after him, but he knew that would accomplish nothing... he had to get back to the lab... he had to tell the others that they had failed. Most importantly, he had to figure out a way to get Quinn Mallory back so he could finish what he had begun.

Mackenzie bolted down the corridor as more energy bolts lit up the darkness. He stopped just for a second to watch the wormhole snap shut before exiting the compound and boarding his hijacked flyer. Somehow, he had to track down Quinn Mallory. He had to or else his world, and quite probably several others, were doomed.

In the slider's usual suite in the Chandler Hotel, Colin Mallory smiled with childlike innocence as he examined the mirrored disk in his hand. "...and there is music stored on this?" he asked.

Quinn nodded. "Yep."

"We had something like this back home," Colin said putting his finger in the hole in the middle of the CD. "Except the disks were larger and black and they had a series of groves on them that would vibrate a needle." He handed the CD back to Rembrandt. "The vibrations caused the needle to emit a sound that made music."

"Sounds like an old vinyl record," Rembrandt suggested as he snapped the disk back into the CD player.

"Vinyl record?" Colin echoed. "We called them sound disks. Tell me, how does your... compact disk work?"

Quinn took a seat and proceeded to explain. "A lot like vinyl... A lot like a sound disk, except the grooves are so small you can't see them with the naked eye."

"I see," Colin responded. "The needle in your turntable must be very very small."

"Actually, there is no needle," Quinn explained with a small grin. "A laser is used to read the grooves."

Colin cocked his head and opened his mouth in confusion. "Laser?"

Quinn sat back and scratched his nose thinking of how to explain this one. Colin had been with the group for only a week and was still overwhelmed by even the simplest technology. Just the other day, he had been fascinated by a miniblind. Today, Rembrandt had used some of the money he had "found" on the world were the population had been mass-slided by Quinn's counterpart and bought a CD player and a few CDs... mainly because Elvis had released four additional albums on this world and he wanted to hear them. The purchase had caused a virtual landslide of questions from Quinn's naive but bright brother. It was all Quinn could do to keep his sibling from taking Rembrandt's CD player apart.

"A laser," Quinn began, "Is a highly focused beam of red light. The light bounces off the grooves in the CD and the microchip inside the player converts them into music."

"And how is this done?" Colin asked.

There was a knock at the door and Quinn quickly got up to answer it. Thank god, he thought. He was tolerant of his brother's questions... he had even encouraged a few of them. But Colin was so curious about everything he saw, it was beginning to wear Quinn down. He welcomed the knock on the door as a reprieve from his brother's seemingly endless line of questions.

Still, he couldn't blame Colin. The guy had been raised on a world where simple electrical devices were considered cutting edge. The mere fact that Colin had been able to leave that world and face all of the new sights and sounds on others without going out of his skull was something that Quinn admired. Truly, he and his brother were cut from the same cloth.

Quinn opened the door and Maggie walked in with a pizza box. "Our luck that we land on a world where there's no such thing as food delivery," she said the second she stepped into the room.

"Well, we do appreciate you going out for us, girl," Rembrandt sighed as he opened the box and pulled a large piece of pizza free from the melted mass of cheese and pepperoni. "Besides, you're a far sight more pretty than your average pizza boy."

"Gee, thanks Remmy," Maggie answered sarcastically.

Colin watched as Remmy severed the pizza strings with his fingers. "So, this is pizza?" he asked.

"This is pizza," Quinn responded pulling a slice off for himself.

Colin picked up a slice and clumsily pulled it free. he spent several more seconds picking up the strings of cheese that came off with it.

"Amateur," Maggie said playfully.

Colin finally managed to separate a wedge away from the rest of the pizza. "I am not accustomed to this," he admitted. After a few more seconds of fumbling with the uncooperative slice, he took a bite.

"Well?" Rembrandt asked.

Colin chewed for a while getting the full experience of the taste. "It is..." He swallowed. "...different." He licked his teeth. "Spicy." He smiled and took another bite. "I like it!"

"Next world, we order the supreme," Rembrandt suggested.

"I don't know, Remmy," Maggie cautioned. "Maybe we should go easy on the poor kid."

"I think he could take it," Quinn said in his brother's defense.

There was another knock at the door as Colin was busy licking the excess grease off of his fingers. "I will get it," he said getting up.

"Tell them we need more towels," Quinn called after him.

Colin walked down the short hall and looked through the peep hole. He hadn't seen this hotel worker yet, none the less, he had a trolley full of toiletries so Colin thought nothing of it. Opening the door, Colin smiled at the worker. "Hello," he said. "I do believe we are in need of towels."

"I was told that this was Quinn Mallory's room," the worker said with an expression that suggested mild surprise. "I have a... a message for him."

"Yes, he is my brother," Colin answered. He was starting to like saying those words almost as much as Quinn was.

"Brother?" the worker repeated. "I... didn't know he had one."

Colin began to grow a little suspicious. He wasn't used to feeling suspicious about anyone, but he had begun to learn from his first slide that you can't trust everyone you run into. "I'm sorry," Colin said apologetically. "but I think you may have the wrong room."

The worker caught the door with his hand and held it open. "No, I don't think so."

Colin looked down and saw that the worker was holding a gun to his chest. He knew about guns and took a slow and shaky breath.

"Colin, tell 'em me need some extras pillows too!" Maggie called out momentarily breaking the tense silence.

"Maggie," the stranger whispered.

Colin swallowed. How did he know Maggie? "Who are you?"

"In good time, Mr. Mallory," the stranger answered taking a brown tote bag off of the trolley and slinging it over his shoulder. "Walk inside slowly and stay in front of me."

Colin's heart was racing and he saw no other choice but to do as the gunman said. He backed into the small hallway and allowed the gunman to close the door behind him. When they rounded the corner, Rembrandt and Quinn were laughing at something Maggie had said and all appeared oblivious to the danger.

"Colin," Maggie said still giggling along with the others. "Did you get the extra pillows?"

"I am afraid I did not," Colin stammered as the gunman pushed him farther into the room.

Quinn, and Maggie shot to their feet instantly when they saw the stranger's face, because to them, he was no stranger at all.

Maggie face froze in a mixture of rage and surprise as she slowly said a name she never expected to say again.

"Mackenzie!"

Quinn couldn't believe his eyes as he looked at the man he and Maggie had left behind on a parallel earth almost half a year ago. A man who was now holding his long-lost brother hostage.

"I've been looking for you for a very long time, Quinn," Mackenzie simply said. He glanced over at Maggie. "What'd you do to your hair?"

Maggie ignored him. Instead, she just glared at him, her eyes radiating nothing but hate.

"I liked you better as a blonde," Mackenzie said as if he was oblivious to her fury.

"Then it is you," Quinn whispered. "You're not a counterpart of Mackenzie. You're... You're the Mackenzie from computer earth. The one we left behind."

"Computer earth?" Mackenzie repeated. "Is that what you're calling my home earth now? Computer earth? That's... appropriate, I suppose," he said with a raised eyebrow. He then dropped the tote bag on the floor and walked Colin further into the room.

"Who is this guy?" Rembrandt said between sideways glances between Quinn and the gunman.

"He's someone we met after we got separated from you and Wade," Quinn explained.

"He's also a liar who double-crossed us!" Maggie sneered.

Mackenzie looked at Maggie and snorted in dismay. "I didn't betray you... and I am not a liar."

"You restarted the system!" Quinn said unable to contain his anger any farther.

"I didn't!" the gunman screamed. "I came after you so we could finish what we started!"

"We were finished!" Quinn countered with a damning gaze.

Mackenzie bared his teeth in frustration. "Dammit to hell..." he whispered. Then in a normal voice, he added, "How can I make you trust me?"

Quinn looked at his brother who was still standing there in a terrified state, his eyes fixed on the gun pointed at his side. "You know how."

Mackenzie shifted his gaze on Colin and then, after a minute of contemplation, pushed him towards the other sliders.

"The gun too." Maggie said.

"I'm honest," Mackenzie said with a small smile. "But I'm not stupid."

Quinn decided to rush at him and grab the gun. Based on what he and Maggie had seen on computer earth, this guys was capable of anything and he didn't want to chance a continued standoff. Before Quinn managed to make a grab for the gun, Mackenzie simply stepped out of the way and used his leg to send Quinn crashing to the ground. Smug in his display, he turned around just in time to see a large ceramic vase flying towards his head, thrown by Captain Maggie Beckett.

The next thing Mackenzie knew - or rather, didn't know - he was unconscious on the ground with the shattered remains of a vase lying around him on the carpet.

"Not stupid, huh?" Maggie said picking up the gun. "Could've fooled me."

Quinn had gotten to his feet by this time and stood over Mackenzie. "Maggie... they did it."

"Certainly looks that way," she answered.

"Wait just a damn minute!" Rembrandt exclaimed hopelessly trying to understand what was going on. "You two want to tell me who the hell this guy is and how you two know him?"

"...and what did you mean by 'they did it'?" Colin asked equally confused. "What did 'they' do?" He looked down at Mackenzie's unconscious form. "And for that matter, who are 'they'?"

"It's a long story," Quinn simply said.

Rembrandt picked up the timer which was resting next to the now-forgotten pizza box. "We've got eight hours. I'd say you've got plenty of time to tell it."

Quinn sighed and got down on one knee next to Mackenzie. He looked over him for a few seconds and finally reached inside Mackenzie's interior jacket pocket.

"What are you doing, Quinn?" Colin asked.

Quinn didn't bother to answer. Instead, he pulled a small electronic device from Mackenzie's pocket that the four immediately recognized.

"It's a timer!" Rembrandt said in awe. "He's a slider?"

"He is now," Quinn said. "but he wasn't when we first met him."

Mackenzie stirred. 'This guy was going to have a splitting headache when he woke up.' Maggie thought to herself. 'Good."

"Question is, what is he doing tracking our photon trail?" He looked up and decided to clarify his point for his brother's sake. "Why is he following us?"

"He said something about finishing what you started," Colin suggested. "What exactly did you and he start?"

"A revolution," Maggie answered him.

"You guys wanna fill us in on the story, man?" Rembrandt asked. "I mean, Colin and I'd be a lot better off if we knew what the angle was."

Quinn looked back down at Mackenzie. "First thing's first," he said. "Mackenzie's dangerous... We need to make sure he's not going to cause any trouble in case he wakes up."

Maggie nodded. "Good thinking, Quinn... I'll make a solider out of you yet." She strode around the room and finally ended up tearing sheets off of one of the beds. With a little doing, she tied Mackenzie up and sat him up against the wall. "There," she said triumphantly. "Let's see him get out of that."

The foursome took their seats around the coffee table and sat there for a few minutes trying to grasp their latest predicament. Colin took the opportunity to grab another slice of pizza.

"Well?" Rembrandt finally asked hoping that either Maggie or Quinn would shed some light on their visitor.

Quinn and Maggie looked at each other. "Do you want to tell it?" Quinn asked.

Maggie shook her head. "I'm not much of a storyteller," she declined. "You go ahead."

"Okay," Quinn responded, the burden finally his and his alone. "It all started... back on hybrid earth. We had finally caught up with Rickman and we'd opened up a gateway that would hopefully lead us back to Earth Prime. Rickman and his pack of manimals caught up with us and Maggie decided to go gung-ho and take on Rickman herself."

"I did not go gung-ho!" Maggie protested softly.

Quinn gave her a rather amused look and with a sly smile he looked back at Rembrandt and his brother. "She went gung-ho," he said again.

"I did not," Maggie disagreed. "I was trying to buy you guys some time to get away!"

"Girl, I was there," Rembrandt said. "And... you did go a little gung-ho."

"Colin," Maggie said looking for a little support. "Would you say that putting yourself in harm's way to buy your friends a few minutes to get away from a hundred rabid hybrids would be described as 'gung-ho'?"

"No, I would not," Colin answered.

Maggie sat back and gloated. "See?"

"...since I do not know what a hybrid is or what 'gung-ho' means." Colin added.

"Are you guys telling this story or me?" Quinn finally said growing tired of the banter.

"Sorry...," Maggie responded in disgust of not being able to set the record straight as she saw it. "Please, continue with your wonderful work of... fiction." She over-enunciated the word 'fiction' sarcastically.

Quinn smiled and decided not to bait her. "Okay, as I was saying... Maggie attacked Rickman alone and I knew she wouldn't be able to hold out for very long, so I decided to stay behind and save her." He saw Maggie about to argue that she didn't need saving. "I mean, 'help her'."

Maggie sat back and continued listening.

"I pushed Wade and Rembrandt into the wormhole and hoped that I would be able to use our timer to track them." His words trailed off.

Colin could see the hurt that welled in Quinn's eyes. "Quinn? What is wrong?"

Quinn snapped back into attention. "I... I was just thinking. I thought I was sending them home by pushing them through that vortex. Instead, I just handed them to the Kromaggs."

"Hey, man...," Rembrandt gently said. "You couldn't have known."

"It doesn't make me feel any better, Remmy," Quinn admitted.

There was another long and uncomfortable silence. "Quinn," Colin finally said. "I know it must be painful for you to remember that. But we must know what happened after you pushed Rembrandt and your friend into the wormhole."

Quinn nodded. "I ran over and Maggie and I fought with the hybrids until Rickman saw that Wade and Remmy were escaping through his wormhole. He screamed something about not leaving without him and jumped." Quinn sighed. "Unfortunately, for him... the wormhole closed before he could reach it and he ended up leaping off a fifty foot cliff."

"Man," Rembrandt said shaking his head. "I always wondered what become of him. I guess he ended up getting what he deserved, huh? Although I think a little time with those Magg devils would've done him some good." Rembrandt couldn't believe what he had just said. Had he really just wished the Kromaggs on someone?

"Without Rickman, their leader, the hybrid's lost their confidence," Quinn continued. "Of course, I guess it could have been because I had picked up Maggie's shotgun and fired a few shots into the air. The hybrids scattered and Maggie and I made a run for it until the timer hit zero. We decided to track Wade and Remmy's wormhole to Earth Prime and, when the vortex reached full strength, we jumped inside."

After another long pause, Rembrandt leaned foreword and placed his elbows on his knees. "And then what happened?"

"And then...," Quinn replied. "Maggie and I somehow got caught up in a revolution, saved an entire earth, and unwittingly handed it all over to him." He motioned over to the still unconscious form of Mackenzie.

"I do not understand," Colin admitted. "If he is, as you say, the ruler of an entire world... why did he leave it to come looking for you?"

"Come on, Quinn," Rembrandt prompted. "Tell us everything."

Quinn looked back at Mackenzie and then at his three companions. Then, with a thoughtful sigh, he began to tell his tale.

QUINN'S STORY

When Maggie and I landed on the new world, I suggested that we go to a hospital since last time we landed on Earth Prime, she couldn't breath our air. That was before we found out that her lungs had adapted during all of the sliding.

After she assured me she was okay, I finally took a look at the scenery. It was unlike anything I've ever seen. Imagine an amalgamation of The Jetsons and Back to the Future II and any other futuristic sci-fi movie you can think of. Colin, I don't think I could describe it to you in a million years... it was just that fantastic.

I looked at the timer and saw that the dimensional coordinate display wasn't working. "The timer must have been damaged in the fight with Rickman," I said. "We slid randomly!" Then I said something stupid about sliding into the future even though I knew it was impossible to travel through time through the wormhole. I was really just grasping at straws.

"So, how are we going to get you home?" Maggie asked me.

I just answered her frankly, "I don't know."

We just stood there for a few minutes watching all of the flying machines over what looked sort of like San Francisco. I knew that this world was technologically ahead of every other world we had been on, so I told Maggie: "We should see if we can find some people... get to a lab or something. We need to fix the tracker or else we'll lose Wade and Rembrandt's photon trail completely after we slide again."

We walked along the waterfront and finally into the city. Strangely, we hadn't seen a soul... not one person at all. Sure, those flying machines were slowly hovering over the city and occasionally, we saw a futuristic version of a car drive by... but there wouldn't be a driver.

We stopped outside of the Dominion Hotel and took a look around. "Everything on this world must be automated." I guessed out loud.

"Yeah, but surely there would be at least one person on the streets," Maggie answered me. She suddenly looked concerned about something. "Unless... there's some sort of contamination and it's dangerous to be outside!"

I hadn't thought of that. "Then, let's get inside just in case. Maybe we can find out what this world's story is."

We walked into the Dominion's lobby and, much to our dismay, there wasn't anyone there. I walked over and picked up a newspaper which was lying on a coffee table. "It's dated May 27th, 1991."

"Six years out of date?" Maggie asked as she looked at the paper over my shoulder. "What do you think CyANU is?"

I didn't see what she had been talking about right away, but then I spotted a headline halfway down the front page which said Scientists concerned with CyANU rapid development. Reading on, I learned that CyANU was the main computer stationed in Los Angeles responsible for all of the automation we had seen, not only in the city, but the entire world. "This earth operates under a world government," I told Maggie. "The capital's in Paris..." I read something else that took me completely by surprise. "...and Dan Quayle is the president!"

"So what's CyANU?" Maggie asked again.

"Oh, it's a computer..," I told her. "Computational AutoNomous Unit. CyANU. It's solely in charge of all automation in the world and, according to this paper, it learns from it's own mistakes." I couldn't believe it... a computer that learns from it's own mistakes? Could this be some sort of artificial intelligence?

Maggie didn't seem as impressed as I was. "So what were those scientists so concerned about?"

I read some more of the article carefully handling the newspaper because it was so old, I thought it might fall apart. "Basically, they were worried that CyANU was learning too fast and that it might eventually get smarter than they were."

"So, does it say anything about what happened to all of the people?" Maggie asked.

I scanned through the rest of the paper. "Not a thing. Whatever happened, it happened quickly." I thought the Kromaggs might be responsible... after all, the flying machines we had seen earlier reminded me of those manta ships they fly around in. But I couldn't believe that they would go off and leave technology like CyANU operational.

"Well, I didn't see any damage to any of the structures outside... maybe it's some sort of biological agent," Maggie said pacing around in the lobby. "Do you feel... sick in any way? Does your skin itch? Eyes burn?"

I felt sick that Wade and Remmy were gone, but I didn't want to let Maggie in on that. "No, I feel fine. You?"

"Fine," She answered. "Look, how long are we on this world?"

I glanced down at the timer... I had looked at it earlier, but I had forgotten what it said when I saw that the tracker was busted. "Eight days...," I told her.

Maggie took a breath and walked back to me. "Okay, the slowest acting biological agent in out arsenal back home took five days to start working. Anything slower was tactically useless."

I was taken aback that Maggie knew so much about biological weapons... but, then again, Maggie's world was a lot more violent than mine and she was a soldier after all. "And the fastest?"

"Trust me," Maggie said playfully patting my cheek. "The quickest thing in our arsenal would've killed us before we hit the ground."

That was kind of comforting in a desperate sort of way.

"Look, you need to get some rest... and so do I." Maggie finally said as if sensing my discomfort. "It's been a long day... You can start working on the tracker tomorrow."

I was tired and it had been a long day and since there wasn't anything I could do then anyway, I decided she was right. We got a couple of keys from behind the front desk and made our way up to the presidential suites.

THE CHANDLER

"The presidential suites?" Rembrandt echoed with a tinge of mock surprise. "Those rooms were, like, a thousand bucks a night!"

Maggie cleared her throat. "Well, no one was using them and we figured as long as it was free..."

"Say no more, girl..." Rembrandt laughed. "I would've done the same thing."

"So, what happened to all of the people on that earth?" Colin asked as if he couldn't tolerate the interruption.

"I'm getting to that," Quinn said slowly. "Actually, Maggie and I were about to find out."

QUINN'S STORY

As I was saying, Maggie and I made our way up to the presidential suites and each took a room. I looked around my room, thumbed through the phone book, tried a few of the numbers - all I got were computerized messages -, and turned on the television. I was surprised that all of the channels seemed to be working, but then I guessed that all of them were automated as well.

I couldn't see anything that would begin to suggest where anyone had gone and I was starting to loose hope of ever seeing anyone else at all. The only human voice I heard besides Maggie was old reruns of Gilligan's Island... actually, on that world is was called Gilligan's Planet. Gilligan had crashed a spaceship on a deserted tropical planet, but otherwise it was still the same premise.

I was watching that for a while when I heard Maggie call out my name. I knew from the tone that there was something wrong, so I raced across the hall and burst into her room. I saw that she had been watching the same program I had. I noticed that her room was quite a bit dustier than mine and for the first time, I noted that this was the first dust I had seen anywhere in the hotel. Odd... the entire hotel should have been dusty and neglected after six years but all of the rooms, with the exception of this one, looked as if they had been cleaned regularly.

"Maggie?" I called out to her.

"In the bathroom!" She answered me. "Get in here, quick!"

I walked briskly to the bathroom and almost tripped over this thing in front of the door. It was mechanical, whatever it was, it had, what looked like to me, several attachments used for housecleaning. There was a feather duster, a hose - probably a vacuum - and highly articulated mechanical hands. Overall, I would have to say that the little robot looked a somewhat like R2-D2 only it was smaller and used the same color scheme as the rest of the hotel. It also looked like someone had shot it repeatedly with a gun.

"Maggie," I said looming over the dead robot. "It looks like it could be some sort of a housekeeping droid. That's amazing... they have robots doing even the most menial of tasks." I wondered if the little droid was controlled by the CyANU computer we had read about earlier.

I looked up at Maggie and could see that she was still concerned about something. "Quinn, look at this," she said.

She stepped to the side and there on the mirror, someone had scribbled a message in lipstick.

Martin Hingle
5-27
Hel

"May 27th. That's the date on the newspaper downstairs," I realized. There wasn't a year written, but I assumed that whoever had wrote the message figured that a year wouldn't matter a whole hell of a lot.

Maggie sighed as I looked at the message. "It looks like he was trying to write 'Help' but someone," She took a second to look at the housekeeping droid. "...or something interrupted him."

"Without the housekeeper to clean up the room, I guess that message could've stayed there for years. Probably why that Hingle guy disabled it," I said turning my attention back to the mechanical curiosity on the floor. "Kind of weird that a guy would use lipstick to write a message on a mirror."

"Quinn," Maggie said. "That's not lipstick... that's blood."

THE CHANDLER

"Blood!?" Colin exclaimed.

Quinn nodded. "A six year old message in blood written in the hope that someone would read it and come to the rescue."

"So who was that Martin Hingle guy?" Rembrandt asked.

Maggie shrugged. "We never found out. He was just one of billions who were eliminated."

"Eliminated?" Colin repeated in disbelief. "You mean... they were all dead?"

"Not all," Quinn said. "But most of them."

"What killed them?" Rembrandt asked. "It was the robots... wasn't it?"

Maggie looked over at Quinn and when he didn't answer, she said: "Well... yeah."

Colin glanced over at Mackenzie who was still breathing softly on the other side of the room bound and hopefully harmless. "And him? How does he figure into your story?"

Quinn shifted in his seat and glared at their prisoner with undisguised fury. "Prominently."

QUINN'S STORY

I hadn't noticed before, but there were droplets of long-dried blood speckled all over the bathroom. There were also streaks of blood leading out to the front door indicating that the unfortunate Mr. Hingle had been dragged away.

"Could that thing have done it?" Maggie asked pointed down to the remains of the housekeeping droid.

"I don't think so," I said. "It doesn't look like it could do damage to anyone much less drag them away. No... whatever took this guy was much bigger."

Maggie was still worried about the droid. "Why smash it? What would be the point?"

"To keep it from cleaning up your message," I answered. "Either that or this guy was deathly afraid of robots."

"Well, if you ask me, it looks like he had a hell of a good reason to be." Maggie said looking back at the message. "Look Quinn, we have to assume that whatever took this Hingle guy could come back for us."

I hadn't thought of that. "Should we make a run for it?"

"Where Quinn?" Maggie asked. "You read the paper... the entire world is computer automated. Where can we go?"

"There's got to be a few people left," I said grasping at straws. "If we could find them, maybe we could be safe until the slide."

"How do we find them?" Maggie asked putting in her own unfortunate brand of logic. "If I where in an underground on this world, I would stay as hidden as I could."

She had a point, but I wasn't going to give up so easily. "There's got to be a way," I said. All I had to do at that point was think of one.

We decided that there was really no point in unnecessary worry. After all, we had walked throughout most of the city among the automated cars and flying machines and had surely been spotted. Whatever had happened to the population of that world had literally happened overnight and so far, we hadn't had any trouble at all.

We decided to go ahead and try to sleep, however, because of the possible danger, we stayed in the same suite and Maggie rigged a makeshift alarm on the door by placing a small table and several breakable drinking glasses against the door. If anyone - or anything - were to come in, we'd know about it.

Even though I was exhausted, I couldn't sleep. I was worried about Wade and Rembrandt... I couldn't stop wondering about the message in blood or what could have happened to all of the people in San Francisco. Was the entire world like this? Deserted and full of robots?

I had a pretty good idea that the CyANU computer was behind the disappearances. The question was, why had it done what it had done and how could it have done what it had done?

I tossed and turned for a few hours. How Maggie managed to get any sleep was beyond me. Bored, and unable to get any shut eye, I switched on the television.

And that's when things got interesting...

When the picture came into focus, it was an old episode of The Flinstones on the Cartoon Network, however, there wasn't any sound. Just this weird buzzing. I thought it was just the station, so I switched channels and found that all of the stations were the same... a perfect picture with an unnatural buzz. I was about to turn the TV off and go back to sleep when a voice came over the airwaves.

"Am... Am I on? Are you sure?"

I stopped and listened to the voice.

"Please pay attention," the voice said. "If you're hearing this, and are in the San Francisco area, you are in grave danger. I am part of a small pocket of humans who are still alive. If you are hearing this, go to a phone and dial this number: 555-8234."

I repeated the number and filed in mentally.

"A detachment of autons have been sent to your location. Call..."

The buzzing increased and for a second, I thought that the transmission was gone for good. However, after a few seconds, it came back again though not as clear as before.

"...has discovered our transmission and is overriding us. We.........ave a lot of time. Call the......mber. If you value your lives, call the...."

The buzzing increased again and then the television started working normally. I guessed that whoever we had heard had somehow overridden the television signal and sent out a warning. But what did he mean by 'autons have been sent to your location?' Were these autons what had dragged Hingle away six years ago.

I decided to take the risk and call the number.

I dialed and waited. Finally, someone answered.

"I'm glad you got the message," the voice on the phone answered. "We can't break into the transmitter signals until late at night. Glad you were watching."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"That's not important. The autons are only a few minutes from your location. Get out of there now!"

"What's an auton?"

There was a silence on the other end of the phone. "Look," he finally said. "Go to the corner of 23rd and Chaney and I'll explain everything. Be there in thirty minutes."

"Thirty minutes? W-Why so fast? What's going on?"

"Look, friend... we're going to be on the corner of 23rd and Chaney for a half hour. No more. Either you get there or you find out what an auton is first hand. Good-bye."

"Wait a minute, I need to know..."

The line went dead before I could finish my sentence.

I don't think I even took the time to put the receiver back onto the cradle. I bolted into bedroom where Maggie was snoozing silently in her bed. I flipped on the light and pulled the covers off of her.

"Get up!" I said grabbing my jacket and patting the inside pocket making sure that the timer was there.

Maggie groggily sat up. "What?"

"We're in trouble," I explained. "I think that whatever got the guy in the room across the hall is about to come after us!"

She got up and quickly started to put her shoes on. "How do you know?"

"I'll explain later. We've got to get to 23rd and Chaney in thirty minutes."

"Quinn, I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on!" Maggie protested. I didn't know if she was grumpy because I woke her up or what.

"The underground contacted us," I explained. "You were right, there are people alive here."

That seemed to get Maggie's attention. "How'd they contact you?"

"Maggie, I promise I'll explain later, but know we have to get out of here!" I said pulling her to the door.

She finally agreed and we left the room and started down the hallway to the staircases. We didn't want to use the elevators since we didn't know if they were controlled by the same computer that was controlling the other bots.

Before we got very far, the elevator doors opened and out came these two monstrosities. The robots were over seven feet tall and were made completely out of a shiny metal that looked sort of like crome. They walked on two legs and had two arms. Where they should have had a head, they had a small clear dome in which there was something that looked like a video camera that moved around like it was a giant eye.

When they stepped out of the elevator, they didn't seem to be mechanical at all... their movement was fluid and graceful. It was the most impressive robotics I had seen since that world we landed on with all of the androids on it. I just didn't have the time to appreciate it then.

"What the hell are those things!?" Maggie whispered.

I knew what they were even though I had never seen one before. "Autons..."

One of the autons fixed it's camera on us and started moving down the hall towards us. "ATTENTION: YOU ARE TO BE APPREHENDED. COOPERATE AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED." The voice was deep and computerized.

Maggie and I bolted in the other direction. We ran as fast as we could, and the autons began to follow us.

"YOU ARE TO BE APPREHENDED. THIS IS YOUR SECOND WARNING. LETHAL FORCE WILL BE USED UNLESS YOU COMPLY." The auton's deep voice warned.

We managed to get far enough away from the large robots and made it to the other set of stairs on the other end of the building but when I threw open the door, three more autons were climbing the stairs undoubtedly on their way to get us too.

"Quinn!" Maggie gasped. "That's the only way out!"

"That's why they didn't seem to be in any big hurry to capture us!" I deduced. "They set a trap for us!"

We looked back at the other two which were quickly approaching us. They raised their arms straight out and for the first time, I noticed that they appeared to have something that looked like gun barrels attached to their forearms.

"LETHAL FORCE PROTOCOLS INITIATED." the auton in the lead bellowed.

The term "lethal force protocols" didn't seem to sit well with Maggie because, before I knew what was happening, she kicked open the door to an adjacent suite and pushed me inside. It was a good thing she did too, because no sooner had I got my senses, these energy bolts shot down the hallway and struck the area where Maggie and I had been standing. Even inside the room, I could feel the heat from the blasts on my back.

We weren't out of the woods yet. All we'd managed to do was buy us a few seconds. Our escape route was cut off and five autons were coming after us. "Now what!?" I asked.

Maggie looked around and finally ran over to the bed and stripped the covers off of it. "What floor are we on?" she asked me as she started tying the bedsheets together.

Surely she couldn't be serious. "The fifth..."

Maggie nodded and continued to tie the sheets together.

"Maggie," I said. "You're not thinking what I think you're thinking... are you?"

All she did was walk over to a chair, pick it up, and threw it into the window. When the glass shattered, the cold wind blew in and the curtains danced around her. "Quinn, do I look stupid?" she asked me.

At that point, I didn't know if it was a trick question.

THE CHANDLER

Quinn glanced back when Mackenzie stirred and moaned. "Sounds like he's gonna wake up any second."

"So, did you make it to the street?" Rembrandt asked.

Quinn looked back at him cocked his head. "What?"

"Did you make it to the street?" Rembrandt asked again.

"Well, yes and no," Quinn answered.

Colin was entranced by the story so far. "It must have been a treacherous climb," he said. "I do not think I would have been able to do it."

Quinn nodded and smiled. "Well, I'm sure it would have been a dangerous climb if we actually went through with it."

Colin was dumbstruck. "Huh?"

QUINN'S STORY

When the autons broke into the room, they found nothing but a broken window and a string of bedsheets tied together in a makeshift rope hanging out of it. One of them looked over the side and after a few seconds, pulled itself back into the room and glanced at one of it's buddies. They didn't say anything... I guess they were transmitting in computer lingo to each other. Soon, they all left to come find us.

If only they knew that Maggie and I were watching them from underneath the bed.

Maggie smiled and afforded herself a small chuckle. "See, I told you I wasn't stupid. We'll give them five minutes to get farther away and then we'll get out of here."

"We can't," I said. "The voice on the phone said to be at 23rd and Chaney in thirty minutes. We've only got twenty-two left and It'll take us at least twenty to get there on foot."

Maggie nodded. "Okay, let me take a look."

She scooted out from underneath the bed and tip-toed to the doorway. After a quick glance she signaled to me to come on. The hall was empty. Apparently, Maggie duped the autons into searching for us on the street below.

We made our way to the staircase - also empty - and descended the stairs until we reached ground level.

The lobby of the Dominion was deserted. However, we could see one of the massive autons walking outside of the glass doors.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Let's try the back way," Maggie suggested. "They might not expect us to come out that way since they think we climbed out the window."

We went through the kitchen and back offices of the Dominion until we reached the backdoor. The alleyway was as deserted as the hotel had been so we started creeping along hoping that we wouldn't run into an auton unexpectedly.

I checked my watch. We only had seventeen minutes until we had to be at 23rd and Chaney, so we decided to chance running.

We made it out onto the street without any problems, however, we hadn't made it a block down Chaney when we saw an auton. Fortunately, it didn't see us. It was marching down the street with it's back to us so we ducked into the entry of a toy store. "We're never going to make it in time at this rate." Maggie whispered.

Then I got an idea. I busted the windowed door to the toy store with my elbow. "What the hell are you doing!?" Maggie demanded.

The auton down the street had heard the glass shatter and started back in our direction to investigate.

I opened the door and walked inside. "We need a faster way to travel," I explained to her as I scanned the store for what I was looking for. Finally, I found it.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Maggie said as I wheeled two ten speed bicycles off of a nearby rack.

I checked the gears and was pleasantly surprised that they appeared to be in near perfect working order. More automation? "We're never going to make it otherwise. Its this or nothing."

"Quinn," Maggie said glancing periodically back at the door waiting for the auton to bust through the door. "I haven't rode a bicycle since I was fifteen!"

"You know what they say," I said mounting my ten speed. "Riding a bike is like... riding a bike. You never forget."

Maggie broke down and got on her bike and we rode as fast as we could out the front door. My heart jumped into my throat when we shot past the auton... it was less than five feet away from us and immediately opened fire with those energy bolts they had used earlier. We zigzagged down the street dodging the fire from the robot. After a few seconds, the shooting stopped and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that it was running after us. I couldn't help but admire the mechanical ingenuity it must have took to construct such a machine to be able to so perfectly imitate human movement so precisely. It's just too bad it was trying to kill us at the time, because I would have loved to study it. It was fast and I do mean fast, but fortunately Maggie and I were riding down a slope and managed to keep ahead of it.

We were moving at a brisk pace when I heard Maggie yell at me. I didn't understand what she had said, but she caught my attention just in time to see two autons race into our path from an alley further down the street. She swerved in one direction. I swerved in the other. If I had actually paid attention to where I was going, I would have chosen a different path, because there in front of me was an open pit. More automation no doubt. Robots fixing a broken water line or something.

I ramped off of a dirt pile and went airborne landing perfectly on the other side of the hole.

THE CHANDLER

"You have GOT to be kidding me!"

Maggie's sudden interruption of the story made Quinn's cheeks turn red. "What do you mean?"

Maggie couldn't believe her ears. "Look Quinn, I've put up with your minor embellishments to the story so far, but you've got to be kidding me if you think I'm going to let you get away with that one."

"I do not understand," Colin said. "What is wrong with Quinn's story?"

Maggie looked at Colin reminding herself about how naive he could be sometimes. "Ramping over the hole in the street? Colin, does that sound right to you?"

Colin didn't say anything, instead Rembrandt spoke up. "Why don't you tell us what happened for a while, Maggie? I'm sure Q-Balls vocal cords could use a rest."

Maggie thought about that. Sure, she claimed she wasn't much of a story teller, but she was willing to give it a shot. "Why not?"

Quinn could feel his cheeks grow hotter.

"Now," Maggie began. "This is what really happened."

MAGGIE'S STORY

The two autons jumped out in front of us and Quinn and I took off in different directions. Quinn wasn't watching were he was going... much like whenever he tries to pick up women... and ended up ramping off of a pile of dirt from some kind of construction that some robots were doing.

He gracelessly flew into the air and, after screaming like a little girl, crashed onto the ground like a rock. Fortunately for him, the autons didn't expect him to fly through the air and he had time to grab his bike and get away before those crome monsters were able to fry him.

We continued barreling down the street as fast as we could and before we knew it, we were approaching the corner of 23rd and Chaney just in time to see one of those automated cars start to pull away and drive down the street. The difference was, there was a man driving this one.

We were late and he was leaving. Our only chance was that he would see us and stop, so I started peddling faster. I finally managed to get to the car's window and banged on it getting his attention. He jumped in his seat - apparently shocked that we'd made it - and then slowed.

Quinn and I ditched the bikes and ran to him. "Get in!" he screamed when he saw the three autons coming after us. We jumped inside the car - if you could call it a car. It was only built for two people and I had to ride in Quinn's lap. Another weird thing was that there wasn't a steering wheel. Just a joystick. It looked like the car had been built for robots, but modified for humans.

Before we could get away, the autons surrounded us and we couldn't drive off. "Stay here!" the driver commanded. He then picked up this huge gun - a type I had never seen before - and opened up the car's top hatch - it was kind of like a sunroof. He aimed at the auton in front of us and fired blowing it's clear plastic bubble-head off.

Without the bubble, it seemed to get disoriented and clumsy. To make a long story short, it tripped over it's own feet and we took off through the opening it made as fast as the car would go.

"Thanks," I told the driver.

"Don't mention it," he said. "So, who are you guys?"

"I'm Maggie Beckett... This is Quinn. Quinn Mallory," I answered. "So, who are you?"

"Mackenzie," he answered.

He seemed innocent at the time. Hell, he seemed heroic at the time. But Quinn and I were about to learn that Mackenzie was ultimately worse than the autons ever were.

The autons were nothing but glorified toaster ovens taking orders and executing them without malice. They're not cold or calculating.

We were about to find out that our rescuer was about as cold and calculating as they come. It's just too bad that we wouldn't find that out until it was too late.

"Mackenzie, huh?" I said as we drove down the street. "That's unusual. Is that your first name or last name?"

"Yeah... Excuse me." He swerved to avoid another auton coming after us. Quinn and I held on for dear life as he did this and I swear, Mackenzie's expression didn't change one iota. "Okay," he said after the maneuver. "What were you saying?"

I couldn't remember what I was saying at first. "I... uh..."

"You can call me Mac if you want," he told me.

"What?" I stammered.

"Mac," he said again. "It's less of a mouthful than Mackenzie. Hold on."

He swerved widely again and I just nodded. "You have a problem with your real name or something?"

He jerked the car around avoiding the energy bolts thrown from a couple of autons. "Yeah, something like that," he remarked as if he was driving on a deserted country road during a lazy summer day.

"Where are we going?" Quinn asked.

"Someplace safe," Mackenzie answered. "Once we get out of the city - look out!" He jerked the joystick again to avoid yet another auton. "...we'll be okay."

I didn't know what would kill us first. The autons or Mac's driving. After a while, as we approached the outskirts of San Francisco, the attacks became less frequent and they finally, they stopped. Soon, we were driving in a wooded area.

"Aren't you afraid you'll be followed?" Quinn asked him.

Mackenzie shook his head. "The flyers can't keep tabs on us while we're in the trees. The car's modified to hide our infrared and heat signatures and can go faster than the autons or any of the other ground units we know of."

"You want to tell us where we're going?" I asked again. Somehow, I just didn't trust this guy.

THE CHANDLER

Quinn waved his arms and Maggie stopped her narration. "Now who's embellishing?"

Maggie glowered at him. "I am not embellishing anything."

Colin and Rembrandt looked at Quinn eager to hear what he had to say. "She liked him," Quinn told them.

"I did not like him," Maggie snapped.

"You liked him," Quinn said again.

Maggie frowned. "At the time, I thought he was... attractive. But I didn't LIKE him. Not like-like, at least."

'Not yet anyway,' she thought to herself. Truth was, she had grown to like him a lot. He reminded her so much of Steve... so sure and confident... in a way, he even looked like Steve. She shook that thought from her mind. 'No,' she thought. 'I'm not going to be drawn into that trap again. Never again. I know what Mackenzie was capable of now and I know how he used us.'

"Okay, I admit I was a little attracted to him," Maggie finally said. "But I couldn't have known what kind of a person he was. I couldn't have known what he was going to do."

"Okay, forget it," Rembrandt said. "Where'd Mac take you after you got out of the city?"

Maggie sat back and continued. "We drove down what seemed like a maze of backroads in the woods for what felt like hours. Finally, Mac slowed down and drove off road completely. It was as if he was going out of his way to keep the autons from tracking us."

MAGGIE'S STORY

Finally, we came to what looked like a large rock cliff covered in vines. At first, I thought that Mackenzie was spacing out or something because he aimed the car at the wall and kept on going.

I yelled at him to slow down or look out or something... I really can't remember. I shut my eyes and braced myself for the impact, however, when we hit the wall of the cliff... we kept going. We had driven into a hidden cave. I looked out the back window and saw the vines swish back into their original position.

"Amazing," Quinn remarked. "It's like the batcave!"

Mackenzie nodded as he continued to drive into the cave. "Mother Nature protecting humans from their own creations," he said. "Ironic, but it keeps us hidden."

I didn't say a word because I had no idea what the hell a batcave was.

Mackenzie stopped the car and we all got out. We marveled at the large cave wondering how in the world it had remained hidden.

"Come with me," Mac instructed.

Nothing else to do, we followed him leaving the car sitting about two hundred feet inside the almost pitch black cave. Mackenzie led us to a small fissure in the stone wall. He squeezed into it and we did the same. We shimmied about ten feet and entered yet another large cavern. It was lighted and in the center of it there was some small manmade shacks. Then, Quinn and I saw something we hadn't seen in hours... other people.

There were about twenty of them. Men and women and children all dressed in ragged clothing and tending small gardens undoubtedly used to grown food. For a second, I wondered where they were getting their light from, but then I spotted a hole in the stone ceiling through which we could see the first rays of the rising sun. The hole was covered with more of the same vines that were covering the cliff wall... put there so that the cavern couldn't be spotted from the air. Sort of like the old mobile army units I used to stop off at when I was a pilot.

Everyone in the cave stopped and stared at us and then slowly they ran to us. "Where did you come from?" "Mac, where did you find them!?" "Are their others!?" "Is it safe to go outside!?" They were asking so many questions, I don't think Quinn and I could have answered them all if we held a press conference.

"So, where are you from?" Mackenzie asked us above the throng of questions. "We haven't found anyone on the outside in over five years."

The clamor of the small crowd died and Quinn, always the genius, came up with a brilliant answer. "We're... from Canada."

"Canada?" Mackenzie repeated. "I've never heard of it."

Quinn didn't know how to dig himself out of that hole, so I decided to ask a question of my own. "How did YOU find us?"

"We have a resident scientist that tracks a lot of CyANU's commands and orders. The autons aren't sent out unless people are detected," Mac answered. "Lucky for you, their weren't any autons in San Francisco at the time you were detected and they had to be flown in from LA by the flyers and that gave us enough time to get into town and give you a warning... Tell you when and where meet us."

"You have a scientist here?" Quinn asked.

Mac nodded and Quinn walked over to him. "What... sort of science does he specialize in?"

Mac seemed a little confused by Quinn's new question. "Uh... all kinds, I guess. Electronics... uh, physics... I really don't know, you'll have to ask him."

Quinn then looked over at me. "If this scientist's got the right tools, I can fix the tracker before the next slide. We can find Remmy and Wade... I can go home! We can go home!"

I couldn't believe Quinn was saying all of this in front of a group of total strangers. "Did you bring a bug on you?" Mac asked angrily.

"What?" Quinn asked.

"A bug! You said something about a tracker!"

"No, no, no... not THAT kind of tracker! It's nothing like that!" Quinn exclaimed. "Look, I know that this is going to sound strange, but we're in dire straits and we need help." Quinn took the timer out of his pocket and held it out. Mackenzie reacted as if he thought it was a weapon, but when he saw that Quinn wasn't threatening anyone with it, he backed off. "This is a device which allows us to open a gateway to a parallel universe. Me and my friend here aren't from this world."

"Are you an alien?" a little girl asked.

Quinn smiled softly. "No, we're not aliens. We're from a parallel universe. We're from Earth... but it's a different Earth. It's the same planet and the same year but everything else is different."

That caused the small crowd to murmur among themselves. Mackenzie simply shook his head. "You're kidding."

"How else can you explain us surviving in such good shape for six years?" I asked him. "I don't know if you've noticed or not, but we're in clean clothes. Quinn and I haven't been on the run... at least not on this world anyway."

Mackenzie seemed to ponder that for a minute as he paced around us. I really hate it when someone paces around me and doesn't say anything... Colonel Rickman used to do that to me and all of the other officers on the base all of the time. Finally, Mac stopped in front of us and scratched his unshaven chin.

"I see two possibilities," he finally said. "Either you're telling the truth - which I don't think you are - or you're some sort of a collaborator with CyANU - which I also don't think you are. None the less, I'm not the scientific genius around here..." He gave us a cautionary look. "...but I can take you to the man who is."

"We'd really appreciate that," Quinn told him.

"I'm sure you would," Mackenzie remarked. "Come with me."

He led us to one of the larger shacks nestled in the corner of the cave getting the most sunlight. I noticed that there were some really out of place looking solar panels set up outside... was that their source of power?

Mac led us into the shack and the crowd of people gathered outside watching us through the door.

THE CHANDLER

"Quinn, I think you should tell this part." Maggie suggested.

Quinn smiled, nodded in agreement, and continued the tale.

QUINN'S STORY

Like Maggie said, Mackenzie led us into the hut with the solar panels to meet this 'resident genius' he had told us about.

At first, we didn't see anyone at all. Then, a rustle under the table caught my eye.

"Confounded wind drafts! I cannot keep a single paper on this blasted workstation!"

That voice! It couldn't be!

Mackenzie walked over and helped the man pick up the strewn pieces of paper. After a few seconds, he helped the man to his feet. "Quinn Mallory... Maggie Beckett. This is Professor Maximillion Arturo."

THE CHANDLER

Rembrandt sat foreword in anticipation. "The professor?"

"Who's the professor?" Colin asked.

Quinn couldn't believe he'd never told Colin about Professor Arturo. He had been dead for almost a year and the fact that Quinn seemed to be forgetting about his mentor so easily was appalling to him to say the least. "The professor," he began, "traveled with us for almost three years. We... lost him on Maggie's world."

Colin nodded. He has known death well and he could tell from the tone of Quinn's voice and the look on Rembrandt's face that the subject of Arturo's death was quite painful for them to discuss. He himself was still uneasy talking about his own parents who had died from an influenza plague many years ago. "I'm sorry," was all he could say. "He must have been very special to you."

Quinn nodded. "That's putting it mildly."

QUINN'S STORY

I just stood there like an idiot staring at him. Part of me hoped that maybe this was our Professor. Maybe he had escaped Maggie's world somehow and wound up here. The logical part of my mind knew that was impossible... I held his hand as he died. This couldn't be our Arturo.

"I see you found them," the professor said to Mackenzie. "Was it difficult to get them out of the city?"

"Not really," Mackenzie said sincerely. Maggie and I knew he was being either very sarcastic or very humble.

I walked over to him and shook him hand just to touch him again... it was as if I was afraid he was just going to evaporate in front of my eyes if I didn't touch him. "Quinn Mallory," I said introducing myself. "It's good to see you again, professor."

He looked at me as if I was crazy. "Again? My dear boy, I am afraid I have never seen you before in my life."

It was a sickening feeling. The man who had been like a surrogate father to me for years didn't have a clue who I was. It made my skin crawl and my stomach tie into knots. I always knew that there was a strong possibility that we'd run into another Arturo somewhere down the road, but I still wasn't handling the encounter very well.

Maggie stepped in and came to my rescue. "Professor Arturo, we need your help."

"Indeed?" He said.

She explained the basics of sliding to him and about our situation. She told him of the hybrids, of Rickman, and about the damaged tracker on the timer. He soaked it all in and seemed to be intrigued.

"Interdimensional translocation...," he whispered. "Before the takeover I was researching that very thing at California University."

"Then you can help us repair the timer?" Maggie asked him.

Arturo took the device from her and looked it over. "Possibly..."

He walked over and booted up a computer. 'That's what the solar panels are used for!' I surmised. After plugging the timer into a dataport and performing some sort of scanning program I was unfamiliar with, he found what he was looking for.

"The circuit board which controls the tracker has been corrupted," he explained. "It was rather haphazardly installed if I may say so." I could see Maggie bristle. After all, the professor was criticizing her husband's work.

"Can you fix it?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. "But it will be jury rigged. I don't have the right kind of equipment to fix it properly."

"What will that do to the tracker?" I asked.

"The tracking device will keep a lock on your friends photon trail," he explained. "However, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to follow it. You may not make it back to your home earth until you can properly fix it."

"At least we won't loose Wade and Remmy," Maggie added reassuringly.

"Is there any way we can get the right kind of tools to fix the tracker?" I asked. It was like old times... Arturo and I were falling into our old niche again.

"I could construct them over time," the professor said.

"How much time?"

He pondered that for a second. "With the equipment at my disposal... I'd say two to three weeks."

My heart sank. "We've got a little under eight days left on this world. Unless we slide out when the timer hits zero, we'll be stuck here for twenty-nine years."

"Well, that is a problem," the professor admitted. "Unless of course we can build you a new timer."

"A new timer?" Maggie asked suddenly interested.

Arturo walked over to the corner of the room and pulled a sheet off of a large pile of equipment. I recognized what it was immediately. "Sliding equipment!"

"Indeed," Arturo said. "It's what's left of my research at California U.. I managed to get a lot of it here when CyANU took over with... Mackenzie's help of course."

Mackenzie nodded in acknowledgment.

"I thought it might serve as an escape route," Arturo explained. "A way for humanity to escape that blasted CyANU and it's damned automatons."

"But you were never able to get it to work," I said running my hand across the doughnut-shaped accelerator.

"Quite correct Mr. Mallard."

"Mallory," I corrected him.

He grunted an apology. "If you can help me get this equipment in working order, we can escape this world together."

It was a very tempting offer. With a new timer, we could use pre-set times. We could explore one world for a ten minutes and then set the timer so we could explore the next for a week. It would've been like the old timer was at the very beginning... we could slide out at anytime we wanted. But was it worth risking our trip off of computer world? No... if four years of sliding had taught me anything, it was to be hopeful... but cautious at the same time. Professor Arturo - our Professor Arturo - had always said, "Hope for everything, expect nothing." They were words I had begun to live by to the letter.

"Fix the tracker," I told him. "Just to be on the safe side."

"But you'll help me with the sliding equations?" He asked.

I nodded. "If we don't see any progress after seven days, though... Maggie and I are leaving." I paused knowing what I was going to say next was going to be a mistake. "We'll take all of you with us if it's possible."

Deep down, I knew it wasn't. Sure, we'd taken people with us before... Ryan, Malcolm, and so on, but I knew that the wormhole was definitely not powerful enough to transport everyone in the cave without turning everyone into cosmic dust. I think that the counterpart of Professor Arturo knew it too because he gave me that 'I don't think so' look that our professor used to give me.

"You will see progress, Mr. Mallory," he said. "On that I can assure you."

The professor at his most confident was reassuring and for the first time during the entire slide, I felt at ease.

"How did this happen?" Maggie asked. "How'd your world get taken over by a bunch of robots anyway?"

Arturo looked at her and grinned. "I told them it was going to happen! I warned them, but did they listen to me? No! What do I know? I'm just a professor of cosmology and ontology with more brainpower in my little toe than that whole gang of know-it-alls!"

"He's talking about the group of scientists and programmers who designed CyANU," Mac explained.

"Who else would I be talking about, you blistering idiot!?" Arturo exploded. Hearing him say 'blistering idiot' again actually made me smile.

"The technology grew up faster than the human race did," Arturo continued. "When they designed that damned computer I told them that the artificial intelligence program they were using was far to advanced to be used in a worldwide automator. It was running everything in the world. Transportation... Education... Law enforcement..."

"Law enforcement?" Maggie asked skeptically.

"The autons," Mac said. "They were originally designed as law enforcement drones. They did a pretty good job too... until they started killing people, that is." His twisted and dry sense of humor was taking a little getting used to.

"So why did CyANU take over?" I asked.

"One of it's main directives was to protect society from chaos," Mackenzie spoke up giving the professor time to cool down. "However, as it learned and it's intelligence grew, it surmised that humans were a chaotic element and therefore should be removed."

"It became self aware 2:32pm Pacific Daylight Time on May 27th, 1991," Arturo said. "When the scientists pulled the plug, CyANU relied on battery backup until it's creators could be removed by the autons. I, having full knowledge of what was going to happen, had been searching for a place to hide myself and possibly a few others. I found this cave on May 20th and managed to convince a small number of people to join me in hiding. After the takeover, we took in a few other survivors... including Mackenzie, who has proven invaluable on many occasions despite his various... eccentricities." He leaned over to Quinn and whispered. "You know, in the six years I've known him he's never told me his real name!"

"Well, I don't know about you," Mackenzie said to Maggie. "But I don't think I can stand much more admiration. Care to see the rest of the cave while our eggheads work on your timer-thing?"

"W-Well..." Maggie stammered.

"No, you two take off," I prompted them. "We'll be working on a bunch of technical stuff for hours."

"Boring genius crap," Mac translated taking Maggie by the hand. "Come on, I'll show you where we get our water from. We've managed to hook up a very reliable and effective filtration system."

Maggie didn't look too thrilled, but she left with him anyway.

THE CHANDLER

"Where'd you two go anyway?" Quinn asked interrupting his own story.

Maggie gave him a look. "He showed me around the caves showing me all of the strategic positions in case of an attack. Nothing major."

"You don't lie very well, Captain Beckett. You know that?"

The voice caught everyone by surprise. They all spun around to see their captive, Mackenzie, wide awake and watching them.

"How long have you been awake?" Rembrandt asked him.

"Long enough to know that you're getting short-changed on your story," he replied keeping his gaze on Maggie.

"Short changed?" Colin asked.

"You're not getting the whole story, my friend," Mackenzie told him. "You're not getting the sorid details."

"Goddamn you!" Maggie whispered through her teeth.

"You want to know what happened during those couple of days when you and the professor were repairing your tracking device and trying to give us a working timer?" Mackenzie asked.

"I don't put a lot of stock in anything you have to say," Quinn replied coldly.

Mac smirked. "Come on, Mallory... you afraid of the truth? I'm tied up. It's not like I can actually do any damage to any of you." He looked at Maggie. "Not physically anyway."

Quinn looked at Maggie. "What's he talking about?"

"Nothing," she answered sharply.

"Nothing?" Mackenzie repeated. "Well, let's just set the record straight, shall we?"

Maggie rose to her feet and Quinn grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. "Why should we let you say anything?"

"You've heard of fair trial, Mallory?" Mackenzie told him. "How can I have a fair trial if you don't let me tell you my side of the story? What are you going to do? Maroon me here on this world for twenty-nine years when my timer expires? You HAVE to hear my side of the story, otherwise you'll never going to be able to live with yourself."

"I'll take that chance," Maggie growled.

Mac huffed. "Come on, Beckett... There's more to this story than your narrow point of view. Are you afraid to hear it?"

Maggie walked over to him and stared straight into his face. "I'm not afraid of anything."

"Thatta girl," Mackenzie smiled. "Now, sit right back and let me tell you my side of the story." He opened his mouth to start his story, but then looked back at Maggie. "You definitely looked better as a blonde."

"Get on with it," Maggie yelled at him.

Mac raised an eyebrow. "'Getting on with it', Captain Beckett, sir."

MACKENZIE'S STORY

As far as I can tell, everything that Quinn and Maggie has told you has been pretty much the truth. However, what the dear Captain Beckett hasn't told you is that during the few days when Quinn and the professor were working together, we were growing closer. We had a lot in common and there was a lot I admired about her. She was strong... so sure of herself. She was a little rough around the edges... but let's face it, my world isn't the kind of place where a pussyfoot lasts very long.

One night I took her out into the woods. I was careful to keep under the trees so that we wouldn't be spotted by a rouge flyer.

"I feel like such a fifth wheel," She complained to me during our walk. "Quinn and Arturo working in there... I feel so damned useless."

"Don't let it bother you, Captain Beckett," I said. "You're not a genius and for that matter, neither am I. We do the jobs we're good at and right now, our job is to sit back and wait while the geniuses do theirs."

"I really wish you wouldn't call me Captain Beckett," she answered. "The last person who did that...." She swallowed hard. "I just have some bad memories about someone who called me that."

"Maybe you should work on some good memories," I suggested. "I think that Captain Beckett gives you an air of..." I searched for the words. "Professionalism. Seductive professionalism."

"Seductive professionalism?" She repeated rather amused at the notion.

"Why not?" I said. "I mean... Maggie is just Maggie. But Captain Beckett says to me... 'This is a woman who is more than she appears. More than the sum of her parts.'"

"You make me sound like an erector set," she laughed.

I shrugged. "The autons are erector sets. I'd say you remind me more of... carved marble."

"Meaning I'm cold as stone?" she asked.

"Meaning you're as beautiful as Venus," I answered. I didn't mean to say it. It just slipped out. I halfway expected her to knock the crap out of me for saying that. No backing out now, I'd dropped the ball. I just hoped it didn't land on my foot.

She just looked at me with a mixture of shock and amusement. "Venus, huh?"

"The, uh... goddess of beauty?" I squeaked out.

"I know who it is." She looked away and smiled. "Jesus, why now?"

"Now?" I asked.

"Mackenzie... I like you," she said. "I like you a lot. But I'm just getting over my husband's death and..." She sighed and looked up at the stars overhead. "I was on a quest to catch the man who killed him and now that he's dead I... I just feel so lost. I feel like I don't have any direction in my life anymore." She looked back at me. "...and then there's Quinn."

I swallowed hard. I didn't know she and Quinn were involved.

"I... I just don't know," she said. "I'm just so damned confused about how I feel about him. Do I love him? Is it just my damned emotions taking over my head again?"

"You know," I said after a long and uncomfortable pause. "My grandmother used to tell me this story when I was little. There was this knight who was the bravest knight in all of the land. Well, one day, this evil dragon flew in while the knight was away and burned the knight's village down. Now, you know that this really pissed off the knight, because he'd vowed to protect the village, so he swore revenge. 'I will hunt the cursed dragon until one of us is dead!' he cried. So he chased it for years and years until finally, before he knew it, he was an old man. He found the dragon and killed it... and then he died. He wasted his entire life to seek revenge and forgot his sacred duty to protect the kingdom and as a result, it was conquered. All of his remaining friends were killed."

"That's kind of a grim story," Maggie said.

"Well, it was more of a fable," I answered. "You know, the kind with a moral?"

"What was the moral?"

"Always remember what's important," I said. "Friends and family."

"You sound like a long distance commercial," she laughed. "How does that relate to me?"

"In your case, your friends have become your family," I told her. "Revenge is no way to live a life and, if you ask me, you'll be better off now that your little blood quest is over."

"I haven't had a family in a long, long time," she whispered.

"Neither did I," I answered. "Not until I fell in with the professor and the folks in that cave. If I were you, I'd enjoy your new family all I could. You never know when they'll be taken away from you."

She laughed. "While you're in the business of advice-giving... what do you think I should do about Quinn?" Maggie asked.

"Just follow your heart," I told her. "Ultimately, the only person who can answer that question is you, Captain Beckett."

She seemed kind of uncomfortable and decided to change the subject. "There you go with that 'Captain Beckett' thing again. You going to tell me what your real name is?"

"No, I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon. I haven't gone by my real name in... Jeez, it's been about ten years."

"You can't really expect me to trust you if I don't know your real name," she said playfully.

I smiled. "You trust me, Beckett."

THE CHANDLER

"Okay, what is the point of this?" Maggie demanded.

"I'm just setting the record straight, Captain Beckett." Mac answered. "Do you deny any of that ever happened?"

Maggie said nothing. She just stared at him.

"Maggie does have a point," Quinn said. "Everything you've said has nothing to do with what happened. It seems to me that you're just patting yourself on the back for enchanting Maggie like you did."

"I was reminding her how things were between us," Mac explained. "I know she hates my guts right now and I just wanted to remind her of the good times."

"I'm reminded," Maggie said. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd rather get to the important stuff. Not unless you want to add anything."

"Oh, I'm going to add something, all right," Mackenzie said. "But I'm going to let you finish telling your story first."

Maggie and Quinn looked at each other and then back at Mackenzie. They sat down and gazed back at Colin and Rembrandt who just stared at them in confusion.

"So," Colin finally said. "You were able to repair the tracker, I trust?"

Quinn nodded. "We were able to jury rig it as the professor said. After we slid from that world, it took us another three months to make the minor repairs and adjustments that finally led us back to Earth Prime."

"What about the second sliding machine?" Rembrandt asked.

"That...," Quinn said. "Was another story."

QUINN'S STORY

It took me two days to fix the timer and from that point on, the professor's counterpart and I worked full time on perfecting a second sliding machine. Days went by and slowly, with the bits and pieces we were able to salvage, we managed to construct a working slide accelerator. The bad news was, the power supplied by the solar panels was insufficient to create critical mass to punch a hole in the space time continuum. We couldn't muster enough power to slide one person, much less twenty.

On Maggie's world, it took all of the reserve power on the base to create a mass slide. On the world where my counterpart mass-slided the earth's population, it took the total power of a powerplant and most of the juice on the west coast and that was with the super-duper mechagodzilla timer my double had invented that was powerful enough alone to fry the interdimensional barrier. Here, I had to figure out how to slide twenty people to safety using about one/tenth of the power it took to get the original timer working.

And I had three whole days left to do it.

What could go wrong, huh?

Arturo and I racked our brains for a day trying to solve the problem. Finally, with two days, ten hours, and nine minutes left on our timer, the professor made a suggestion.

"If we were to take the accelerator to a power source in the city," he suggested. "Then we could create a wormhole, yes?"

I nodded.

"Allow me to play devil's advocate," he said strumming his fingers along the table. "Let's say that person 'A' were to take the sliding equipment to a power source in the city and accelerate off this godforsaken world. Now, let's say that person 'A', with the help of something like your tracking device, were to slide *back* to this godforsaken world and rescue persons "B", "C", "D", "E", and so on."

His plan was so simple it was brilliant... and so dangerous it was virtually suicidal. But hey! What other shot did we have? "We'll have to build another tracker for your timer," I said. "Can we do that?"

"I don't see why not," he said. "It seems a simple enough design."

"Okay," I said suddenly excited that our insane plan might actually work. "Here's the deal... we send two people into the city."

Arturo looked at me in confusion. "Two?"

"Yes," I said. "One to slide out... and one to destroy the accelerator once he's gone. I don't think we want sliding technology to fall into the hands of CyANU."

"Indeed not," he answered. "Good thinking, my boy. One question remains though."

"What?"

"Who do we send? If CyANU doesn't detect our people first, it will certainly detect the power drain on it's grid."

I thought about that for a while. Whoever we sent would be put in mortal danger... especially the one who remained behind to destroy the accelerator. I did the noble thing. "I'll go."

Arturo nodded. "There would be no way I'd be able to join you. I'm afraid I'm well past my prime and I... am not in the best of health as it is."

My heart sank. Could this Arturo be suffering from the same affliction ours had? It had caused him great pain and left him weak at times. "Don't worry about it professor. I'm sure Mackenzie will come."

He put his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sure he would. Mr. Mallory, you're either a very brave man or a very stupid man... I'm not sure which."

Neither was I.

Arturo sent for Mackenzie and he and Maggie arrived shortly. He explained the gist of the plan to them while I listened nearby putting the finishing touches on the second timer's tracking device - a cruder version of ours with nothing but computer earth's coordinates programmed into it. When Arturo finished telling them the plan, Maggie - as usual - was the first to speak up.

"Are you out of your so-called excuse for a mind?" She protested. "Let's just say you make it into the city in one piece - which I don't think you will since you'll be toting around all of that equipment - the autons are definitely going to be attracted by the power drain. Whoever is left behind will have no chance at all of getting out alive! This is foolish, it's stupid, and it's crazy!"

"Come on, Captain Beckett, why don't you just tell us what you really think!" Mackenzie jested.

She glared at him. "Don't joke around, Mac, this is serious!"

"Fine then, you come with us," he suggested.

She considered that for a minute. "Fine."

"Maggie," I cautioned her.

She ignored me. "When do we leave?"

"Maggie!" I said again.

"There's a storm front moving in from the north," Mackenzie answered her. "I've found that it's easier to evade detection in the rain."

"Great, is the equipment packed up?" Maggie asked me.

"Maggie, you don't have to go," I said. "This is a two person operation... I have to go since I know how to work the sliding machine and Mac is going because he's experienced in staying one step ahead of the autons."

"So, Quinn's sliding out and you're staying behind?" she said to Mackenzie.

"Running for my life and dodging bullets," he answered. "The things that keep life interesting."

"Sounds like you could use some company," she said. "I'm coming too."

"Maggie, you don't have to go," I stressed to her. Secretly, I knew that she and Mac wouldn't have a chance of getting out of the city in one piece.

"Perhaps Mackenzie would fair better if someone was there to watch his back," Arturo said.

"Et tu, professor?" I moaned.

"Fine, it's settled," Maggie said slapping her hand on the table. "Let's get a move on people... come on!"

I buried my head in my hands. 'Sliding with Patton' was back.

THE CHANDLER

"Sliding with who?" Maggie asked with a tinge of suspicion in her voice.

Quinn couldn't believe he said that. "He... was a brilliant military leader on Earth Prime."

Rembrandt looked at Quinn and shot him a sly grin. Quinn returned it.

"I have a question," Colin stated.

"Shoot," Quinn said.

Colin looked a little confused.

Maggie smiled. "He means, ask your question."

"Oh," Colin whispered.

"Jesus, where'd you dig this guy up from?" Mackenzie snickered in the background.

Colin ignored him. Even if Mac hadn't have pointed a gun at him at their first meeting, Colin didn't think he would gave like him that much. He was too abrasive of a person... a lot, he supposed, like Quinn said Maggie had been when she first became a slider. "You were planning on sliding to a parallel world and then sliding back to rescue the survivors... but how could you have been sure that you could have made it back before the new timer expired?"

"One thing you have to understand," Quinn explained, "Is that the new timer was uncorrupted."

"Uncorrupted?" Colin echoed.

"The timing circuits are designed to open a wormhole at the end of a countdown," Quinn said. "The reason we got lost in the mutiverse in the first place was because we interrupted this countdown and activated a premature wormhole to a different earth... in other words, we corrupted the timer. The new timer was set to return me in one hour... what was even better than that was that, unlike our timer, we were able to adapt it to slide me to the same location I slid out of. The plan was for me to slide out in the city, get back to the caves on the parallel world, and then slide back in and - hopefully - meet up with Mac and Maggie."

"You make it sound like it was a cakewalk, Mallory," Mackenzie scoffed. "It was the stupidest thing we could have done!"

"At the time, it was the only chance we had to rescue everyone!" Quinn shot back. "I didn't see you come up with a different plan!"

"What does he mean, 'it was the stupidest thing you could have done'," Colin asked.

"He mean?" Mackenzie yelled. "Quit talking about me in the third person as if I'm not standing here, you little half-wit!"

"So what did he mean?" Colin asked again. The kid had been squeaky clean so far. He never lied and never did anything to offend. It was the first time any of the sliders noticed Colin use any form of defiance like that. It was about time.

"It was the stupidest thing we could have done," Maggie told him.

MAGGIE'S STORY

Quinn and Professor Arturo managed to compact the sliding equipment as much as they could, but it was still the most bulky and heavy thing I'd ever taken into a combat situation. We loaded it all up in Mackenzie's car-thing and, under the cover of a pretty fierce storm around two in the morning, we made our way into San Francisco again.

Mac was right about one thing, the robot's didn't seem to be noticing us. I suppose the cold rain was blotting out the infrared. I knew out luck wasn't going to last all night.

We reached our destination, a place call 'Doppler Computer Store'. Quinn said he used to work there with Wade before he started sliding and said that the power grid was designed to handle a lot of juice. In thirty minutes, we'd unloaded the equipment into a back room and plugged it all in. Quinn told us it would take a little while to warm up before he could accelerate out of the dimension.

Mac kept a close eye out the door and I watched both him and Quinn from the door to the back room. After a while, I noticed that Mackenzie was doing something very weird. He was looking up at the ceiling and walking back and forth. He struck me as the kind of person that never did anything without good reason, so I walked over and asked him what he was doing.

He pointed to the ceiling and showed me a security camera. "Walk with me," he said taking me by the arm and dragging me sideways.

To my horror, the camera tracked our every move. Back and forth, forewords and backwards. It was like it was watching us. "Tell me this doesn't mean that I think it means," I said.

"Sorry, Captain Beckett," he sighed. "It looks like CyANU knows we're here."

As soon as I realized that we were being watched, I bolted to the back room where Quinn was getting the accelerator ready. "Quinn, step on it. CyANU knows we're here."

Quinn nodded and continued to work.

While I was taking to Quinn, Mac got his huge gun out - the one we'd seen him blow one of the autons away with - and set up barrier of old computers and other electronics and appliances lying around. The fact that he was throwing computers onto the floor was strangely satisfying.

"How much longer?" I asked Quinn as he hurried to get the equipment working.

He paused for half a second to wipe some sweat out of his eyes. "Gimmie another minute," he said adjusting some damn thing. "Maggie, are you sure you won't come with me?"

"Mackenzie needs me here," I said. "Besides, who's to say that the parallel Earth you're going to won't be more dangerous than thins pace. Hell, Mallory... You going alone, you may be doing me a favor."

"Funny, Beckett," he said not looking up from his work.

"Captain Beckett! Front and center!" Mackenzie screamed out from the lobby of the store.

I could hear him fire his weapon and I assumed that the autons had found us. I raced into the front and leaped to his side just as the autons unleashed a barrage of energy bolts as us. Luckily, Mac's makeshift barrier held it's own thanks to the metal in the appliances he'd used. I knew it wouldn't hold forever as the metal had turned red hot and had begun sagging under the heat of the blasts.

"YOU ARE TO BE APPREHENDED," one of the autons bellowed. "SURRENDER OF BE DESTROYED. NO FURTHER WARNINGS WILL BE ISSUED."

Mackenzie wrinkled his nose. "Surrender?" he whispered to himself. "Since when do they offer that option?" He looked at me. "How much time?" He asked as he fired again at the autons walking towards the glass windows - or at least, what was left of the glass windows.

I counted the metal giants as fast as I could. There was over twenty of them - possibly more concealed by the rain and lightning. "He says he needs another minute!" I knew that Quinn could finish in less time than that since he was under pressure and we were under fire.

I didn't have a weapon. "What am I supposed to do? Throw rocks?"

"Throw an Macintosh, they're less useful!" He yelled back at me.

Before I could tell him this wasn't the time to joke, he shoved a small device into my hands. "What the hell is this?" I asked as an energy bolt blasted over our heads.

"It's a gun, Beckett!" He yelled back at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question he'd ever heard.

I looked at the 'gun'. It didn't look like any gun I'd ever seen before... I couldn't even tell what end I was supposed to aim with.

"It's an FPP," He said taking shelter beside me. "Forced Plasma Projector. Take the pointy end, point it at the autons, and press the red button!"

I jumped up and prepared to do as he'd instructed.

"...and watch out, it has one hell of a..."

I fired and the blast knocked me backwards. Before I hit the ground, I saw the ball of white-hot plasma strike one of the large robots in the 'leg'. The metal in it came apart and the auton fell to the earth writhing as it tried to right itself.

"...kick," Mackenzie finished saying.

I couldn't believe that the little weapon I held in my hand could do that much damage in one shot. At first glance, it looked like my weapon had more power than Mac's did. Why'd he give me the more powerful weapon for?

The lights in the computer store flickered and I heard Quinn yell out that he was accelerating or something. All we had to do was hold the line just a little while longer.

Quinn can best describe what happened next.

QUINN'S STORY

I got the accelerator up and running and yelled to Maggie and Mackenzie that I'd almost reached critical mass and was about to open a wormhole.

And then the lights went out and the accelerator wirred to a stop. "Oh, no! No! No!" I stammered as I ran back to the doughnut.

My eyes didn't adjust the to darkness for a few seconds and I found myself tripping over my own feet. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor and before I could get up, Maggie was on top of me.

"Quinn, is that you?" she whispered.

"Yeah," I coughed out.

"They cut the power!"

I knew that, but who wants to be sarcastic to Maggie Beckett. Especially when she's holding a phaser set to kill? "What now?" I asked her.

"We get the hell out of here!" Mackenzie said pulling me to my feet. I could finally see... not that it'd made the situation any brighter.

"The accelerator!" I said grabbing any piece of equipment I could find.

Before I could ever get a handful of stuff, I was blinded by a bright flash. Mac had fired his gun at something in the lobby - an auton.

"Whatever you're going to do, Mallory, do it fast!" He screamed over the weapons fire.

"We've got to destroy it," I said. "We can't let the autons get their hands on it." I laid the remaining pieces on the table and looked at Maggie holding the weapon Mac had given her. "Do it," I said.

Before she had time to take aim, the damnedest thing happened. The lights came back on and the accelerator came back to life. Before any of us knew what was happening, a bright green vortex formed in the doorway between us and the autons. I'd never seen a green wormhole before.

"Turn it off!" Maggie screamed.

"I can't! The wormhole's at critical mass! It'll shut itself off in one minute!"

"It's cut off the autons for now!" Mac said. "Now what do we do?"

I picked up the new timer and looked at the vortex. "We can escape through that!" I said.

"Yeah, but who'd be here to bust up the equipment once we're gone?" Maggie asked.

Mackenzie rushed foreword and shoved Maggie into the wormhole. I could see that she did not like Mac's action one bit... but it wasn't like she had much of a chance to protest.

"I'll stay behind," Mackenzie said after Maggie was gone. "Tell Maggie... " He seemed to search for the words. "...tell her I said she's a hell of a woman."

"You tell her," I said keeping an eye on the vortex hoping that the autons wouldn't find a quick way around it. Could a wormhole deflect weapons fire? "You're coming with us!"

"But, the accelerator!" he protested.

I couldn't stand the fact of leaving him behind to face his death... I knew that going to the city was going to be risky, but a mere plan is nothing compared to the reality of actually going through with something. I couldn't leave him to die.

So, I grabbed him by the shoulders and got ready to throw him into the wormhole. Problem was, he wouldn't budge... he was awfully stout for his size.

"Don't ever touch me, Mallory," he growled as he grabbed my arm with his hands. From there, we got into a wrestling match. Me trying to get the stubborn bastard into the wormhole and him trying to get me into the wormhole.

We almost... almost didn't notice the wall of the back room cave in and the auton barge in and take aim. Instinctively, we both jumped out of the way as the mechanical monster unleashed a firestorm in our direction.

Both of us tumbled backwards into the vortex. As the crome-plated robot looked on, Mackenzie and I flew into the interdimensional tunnel... the wormhole echoing with my cries of defeat.

"Dammit Mallory! Of all of the stupid half brained, nit-witted.... Son of a..."

When I came to, that was the sweet sound I heard. Not the sound of bird singing... but the sound of Mackenzie pacing back and forth using every swear word in his vocabulary.

"What happened?" Was all I could say.

Mac looked at me as if I was crazy. "What happened? We royally screwed the pooch on this one, Mallory! We left that accelerator thingie back in the computer store in one piece!"

"You what!?" Maggie exploded.

I got up and dusted myself off. "We didn't have a choice. It was either stay there or die."

"That's bullshit, Mallory and you know it!" Mackenzie yelled. "I could have gotten out of that store with my eyes closed!"

"You would have!" Maggie quietly said. "You'd have been dead, though... but you sure as hell would have gotten out of there with your eyes closed."

"I can't believe you're actually defending this idiot, Maggie!" he screamed.

She walked over and slapped him. I thought it wise just to sit back and watch what happened. "Are you eager to die, Mac?" Before he could answer, she cut him off. "'Cause, you sure as hell sound like it. A soldier's top priority should be to fulfill the mission, but you have over twenty helpless people depending on you. You have to survive! You have to go on and save them." Mackenzie stared at her. I didn't know if he was going to backhand her or what. "They're your family, Mac... you said so yourself."

Mac said nothing for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Quinn."

"Y-Yeah?" I answered.

"We've got an hour before the timer sends us back to my world, right?"

"Fifty-seven minutes....," I told him.

He blew into the night air and looked around. There wasn't a building or a sign of civilization in sight. "Okay, when the timer expires, we slide back into the computer store. The autons usually don't stick around if there's not a human to fry and hopefully, they won't take an interest in the accelerator and leave it where it is. Otherwise..."

I thought he had an alternative plan. "Otherwise?"

"Otherwise," he repeated. "We're screwed."

The hour passed and we stayed in the same spot as Mackenzie had requested. I felt I owed it to him for some oddball reason.

When I activated the vortex, Mac was the first to jump in. Maggie and I followed and soon, we landed in the lobby of 'Doppler'. We went to the back room and found Mackenzie staring at the bare table where the accelerator had been.

"They took it," he growled.

I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry, Mac. I couldn't leave you to die."

"Fair enough, Mallory... As insane as this sounds, I actually appreciate the thought," Mac sighed. "Come on, let's get back to the cave."

I checked the new timer to see if it was working right. "Oh no!"

"What?" Maggie asked.

"The timer fried!"

Mackenzie took the new timer away from me and looked at it. "What do you mean, it fried?"

"I mean that it couldn't handle the power we channeled through it," I explained. "We were lucky we didn't get stranded on that last world."

"So, can you fix it?" he asked handing it back to me.

"If we can get our hands on some power cells," I told him. "Otherwise, it's about as useful as a paperweight."

The autons must have saw no reason to dispose of Mac's car and we drove through the city with very little resistance - probably thanks to the storm. An hour later, we were back in the protection of the cave... although, nothing could protect us from the rage of Professor Maximillion Arturo.

"You...," he yelled. "...let the autons get their hands on the accelerator!?"

"Now, calm down, Max...," Mackenzie diplomatically said. "We couldn't help it. Quinn and I fell into the wormhole... it was a freak accident."

"What about her?" Arturo bellowed, shoving a finger in Maggie's direction. "Why didn't she stay behind and destroy the blasted thing?"

"I threw her in," Mac stated. "I didn't want to see anything happen to her."

"The important thing is that everyone is okay," I said stepping in between Mac and Arturo.

"The important thing," the professor growled, "is that a quantum dimensional translocation accelerator is now in the hands - or whatever the accursed thing uses to hold things - of CyANU. There is nothing to prevent the damned thing from spreading it's tyranny to other worlds. And if that's not bad enough, you destroyed the timer! You have doomed us and you have doomed countless other earths as well."

Maggie stepped in between me and the professor. "What's to stop us from taking the accelerator back?"

"One hundred thousand autons, a highly advanced security system, and a computer that's probably fifty times smarter than all of us put together," Mackenzie said. "Trust me, Beckett... it's too much of a risk. Better to slide out with you and Quinn than to..."

"We can't slide out with Maggie and Quinn!" Arturo yelled. "Their portal is only powerful enough to transport seven people... eight at the most!"

"Then we get people out seven at a time!" Maggie suggested.

"It'd take too long and there's no guarantee that we'd be able to keep tabs on Wade and Remmy's photon trail with the tracker," I told her. "We'll loose it all, Beckett. Earth Prime... Wade... Rembrandt... home!"

"Look around you, Quinn...," she whispered. "These people *have* lost it all! If we leave them behind, do you think you could live with yourself? You couldn't even leave Mac behind in the computer store."

"Fine...," I said. "We'll evacuate them out in groups." Maggie was right. I was willing to give up the lives of over twenty people for our convenience.

But, as it turned out, even that plan ended up a bust.

I was sitting alone a few hours later, when one of the cave dwellers told me that Maggie needed to see me. She was in Arturo's shack and both were staring at the timer - my timer.

"Quinn," Maggie said with urgency in her voice. "The timer's stopped counting down."

"What?" I exclaimed as I picked the timer up and looked it over. The LED display was scrambled and the red indicators were flashing on and off randomly. I hit the device with my hand a few times hoping that it would somehow get the timer working properly. Of course, nothing came of it. "Something must be interfering with it's circuitry," I surmised. I'd seen the timer behave this way before... when we first met up with the Kromaggs two years ago... so I knew it was caused by one of two things. Either computer earth was being invaded, or someone - more likely, something - had created a dimensional gateway powerful enough to scramble the timer.

I took little time to figure out which was the right answer.

"We're in trouble," I moaned.

"So what else is new?" Maggie snapped. "What's causing the timer to act like that?"

"A very powerful dimensional gateway that's being sustained somewhere," I told her.

"Sustained?" Maggie asked.

"Kept open," Arturo told her. "Mr. Mallory, you know what that means, don't you?"

I nodded. "CyANU's figured out how to use the accelerator."

"And it's opened a wormhole," he finished.

Maggie took a deep breath and sat down. "And what happens when it figures out what the wormhole is and where it goes?"

Arturo paced away from us and placed his hands on his desk. "Then, Captain Beckett, what happened to my world will happen to a dozen others. CyANU will see the humans on that world as chaos and it will do all it can to eliminate that chaos."

"So what do we do?" she asked.

I was growing angry... every plan I had come up with had failed, every idea I'd had only made things worse, and now... even our escape route was closed off.

I refused to back off anymore. I refused to be responsible for another world's destruction. I refused to give up.

"Where is CyANU located?" I asked the professor forcefully.

He looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Answer the question, professor."

"Los Angeles," he finally said.

"Los Angeles," I repeated.

Maggie stood and put her firm hand on my shoulder. "Quinn," he said in a scolding tone. "What is going on in that head of yours?"

I looked right at her. "I'm going to LA and I'm stopping that damned computer or die trying."

"Are you insane?" Arturo barked. "You won't even make it to Los Angeles much less to CyANU! My boy, it's time to accept defeat!"

"No," I protested. "No... This is my fault. I practically handed sliding to the autons and now I'm going to take it away from them. I won't be responsible for starting another Kromagg Dynasty!"

It wasn't until later that I totally realized the full scope of what I had said. For the first time, I realized just how my counterpart had felt... the one who had given sliding technology to the Kromaggs after they were exiled from mine and Colin's homeworld.

When he held us prisoner in the fog, he kept telling me that I was just like him and I refused to believe that. He was totally out of his mind racked with the guilt of the destruction of his homeworld and the hundreds of others that the Kromaggs had destroyed. And now, here I was on the verge of a mistake just like he had made...

I was not like him...

I would never be like him...

I would put everything right or I would die doing it.

"Okay," Maggie said. "Okay... we go to LA and we stop CyANU from sending auton's through the vortex. Hell, let's just forget that it's probably prepared for us and is guarded by thousands of those mechanical monsters and we have absolutely no way of getting there or finding the building where CyANU's located!"

Leave it to Maggie to ruin a perfectly good non-plan.

"I know how to get there," a voice said from the doorway. It was Mackenzie, leaning against one of the professor's filing cabinets. "I can take you."

"Mac, for god's sake, don't encourage him!" Maggie moaned.

Mac strode into the room and stood between me and Maggie. "You wanna take out CyANU? I want to help."

"You're not going to help anything by getting killed along with these two," Arturo told him.

Mackenzie ignored him and faced Maggie. "You told me yourself, captain, I have a higher responsibility here... I have a family to protect."

"You can't protect them if you're dead," Maggie whispered to him. She wasn't angry... she almost sounded sad.

Mac took her hands and held them in front of him. "I can't protect them forever... not like this. Sooner or later, a flyer or an auton is going to find this cave and everyone in it. The only way to protect my family is to stop CyANU once and for all." He shook her hands playfully "Besides, I'd rather go out in a blaze of glory than anything else."

We just hoped that in Mac's 'blaze of glory', we wouldn't get burned.

THE CHANDLER

Maggie groaned and put her head in her hands. "Did you have to tell them I said all of that mushy stuff to him?"

Quinn sheepishly looked at her and grinned. "Sorry, Maggie..."

"You gave in to your heart, Maggie," Colin said softly so that Mac couldn't hear him. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"There is when you seem to give into it all the time," she responded.

"Hey, man, you were in pain. Your husband had been murdered, your world destroyed, Rickman dead..." Rembrandt patted her on the shoulder.

Maggie smiled at her. "I was pretty screwed up, wasn't I?"

"I plead the fifth," he chuckled.

Maggie grabbed his hand and squeeze. "Smart move, Rembrandt."

"So," Colin started. "Did you make it to Los Angeles or not?"

"Well, you know what they say, bro," Quinn said. "Getting there is half the fun."

QUINN'S STORY

Mackenzie told us that we couldn't make it to LA in the car he had stolen and modified. Most of the highways had been destroyed to keep humans from fleeing the cities. Any traffic CyANU had to do between cities were done by the flyers we had seen all over the city.

"Okay, so we need a flyer," Maggie said. "Where do we get one? The local Wal-Mart?"

"Wal-what?" Mac asked.

We were walking to the car he kept hidden in the adjacent cave. We'd loaded it with almost every weapon we could find, leaving enough so that Arturo and the refuges could defend themselves if necessary.

"Look, you don't happen to have a flyer stashed away anywhere?" I asked hopefully.

"Ah... no," he admitted. "Getting one won't be easy."

"Good, why mess with a set pattern?" Maggie remarked.

"So, we're going to an airport or something?" I asked.

Mac opened the door and threw a couple of the small guns Maggie had tried out into the front seat. "We're going to the San Francisco International Docking Complex." He shut the door and grinned. "Airport... I haven't heard the word 'airport' since my grandfather was alive."

Why should he? This world was about a hundred years ahead of ours in technology. "So we're going to the docking complex and hijack a flyer?"

"Bingo," he said.

Arturo pushed himself out of the crevasse separating the two caves and for the first time, I noticed that he was much slimmer than the Arturo we knew... probably a result of living in a cave for the past six years. "Are you almost ready to go?" he asked.

Mac nodded. "Yep."

"I brought you some things," Arturo said handing him a metal ball and three black jackets. "I designed them several years ago and I've kept them here... just in case."

"What are they?" Mackenzie asked.

"These," he said holding up one of the jackets, "Scatters the electromagnetic waves your body gives off and reduces your inferred levels. They'll make you almost invisible to the autons." He held up the ball. "This is a device that gives of an electromagnetic pulse," the professor revealed. "If you're in danger, press the green button twice and then the red button once... the EM pulse will disable any electronic device within a hundred foot range."

Mac stared at the device in awe. "Damn," he said. "I knew about the scatter-jackets, but why haven't you ever told me about this little baby before?"

"I only had one," he said. "And I never had the resources to build another. I wanted to save it for an emergency... if the autons ever found the cave."

"Why give it to me now?" Mac asked.

"Because, if all goes well, you will venture into the very heart of the accursed creature responsible for this hell on earth," Arturo said. "This is the stake you can stab into that heart. It has a five second delay for it to build up enough power to activate the pulse."

Mackenzie nodded and carefully clipped the device onto his belt.

"Be careful with that," Arturo cautioned. "It can give off one pulse, maybe two, before it's circuits give out."

"I understand," he said.

"I had been working on something a little more devastating, but it wouldn't be ready for at least another month."

"Oo, can't wait for that," Mac replied.

The professor then turned to me. "Mr. Mallory, I have something for you as well." He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out my timer. Putting it into my hand, he said, "According to my calculations, you have approximately twelve hours before your window of opportunity arrives."

I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. "It's no good to us here," he said. "And if you are able to destroy CyANU, you will be able to slide and we will be able to reclaim this world. We will both be free. Just remember that the timer is every bit as susceptible to an electromagnetic pulse as any other piece of electronics. Keep it one hundred feet away."

I shook his hand. "Thank you, professor."

"Good luck, my boy," he said patting my shoulder. "To you as well, Captain Beckett."

"Good-bye, professor," Maggie said to him.

"Mackenzie," Arturo said. "I expect you to come back and tell me how you killed CyANU."

"I will, Max," he responded. For the first time, I heard his voice crack. "I swear to god, I'll be back."

Arturo nodded and, with that, he slowly turned and walked back into the darkness of the cave. He coughed... a heavy rasping cough... like our Arturo had done when his body began to succumb to his illness. As we all loaded wordlessly into the car, I knew in my heart that I would never see the Professor Arturo of that world again.

THE CHANDLER

"Must have been hard on you," Rembrandt said. "Saying good-bye to him all over again."

"Not as hard as the first time," Quinn admitted. "Besides, we were on our way to save his entire world. We had too much to think about."

"And too much screaming to do over that maniac's driving." Maggie added.

MAGGIE'S STORY

"Look out!" I screamed as he barreled through the streets of San Francisco. It was broad daylight and the autons saw us coming from a mile away. Mackenzie veered around the wall of robots - actually driving on the sidewalk for a while.

As usual, Mac didn't even flinch. "I saw it," he said calmly.

"How much farther until we reach the San Francisco International Docking Complex?" Quinn asked nervously. I had wondered the same thing too... and believe me, the sooner it was, the better.

"A few minutes, hopefully," Mac told him.

Quinn looked at him wide-eyed. "What do you mean, 'hopefully'?"

Mackenzie just grinned. Clearly, he took a sadistic pleasure in causing us to squirm in our seats.

A few more turns and twists and near-fatal encounters with a couple hundred more autons and we neared the docking complex. It was amazing... the biggest building I have ever seen. The flyers surrounded it like bees fly around a beehive. They would attach - or dock themselves, I suppose - to outcroppings on the sides of the rounded building. They looked sort of like branches on the side of a great metallic tree. "Is that it?" I asked stupidly.

"Noooo, that's the local Wal-Mart," Mac replied sarcastically.

I took the hint. "So, how are we supposed to get in?"

With that, he hit the gas - or whatever he hit to accelerate - and aimed the car right at the entrance of the docking complex. Before I could protest or tell him to reconsider, we crashed through the glass doors and into a large lobby. I expected him to stop and get out next, but he kept going. Kept driving deeper and deeper into the unbelievably large building.

The inside of the docking complex - what I could see streaking by us at sixty miles an hour - looked like a regular airport. There was a front desk, waiting areas, even something that looked like airport stores. I noted more of the R2-D2-like robots scurrying through the terminal, a few trying in vain to get out of our way as we rampaged through the lobby running down chairs, droids, and displays... whatever was unfortunate to get in our way. Oddly, I saw none of the killer autons in the docking complex so far.

"Where did all of the autons go?" Quinn asked, beating me to the question.

"They're programmed to anticipate logical courses of action when apprehending humans," he explained. "You gotta admit, what we're doing is hardly logical."

On that, I had to agree. I also guessed that the autons would soon be on our tails again, no matter how illogically we behaved.

We soon were driving down a large hall and I could help but notice that it ended abruptly about two hundred feet ahead of us. Two sets of double doors awaited us. "Mac!" I yelled as we crashed through a metal detector.

"I see it, Captain," he said as he applied the brake - or whatever the car used to stop.

The car screeched to a halt, but not before slamming into the doors busting them open. The impact threw us all foreword and I hit my head on the glass windshield.

"You okay?" Quinn asked.

I nodded. I didn't hit it too hard and besides, there wasn't time to worry about stuff like that.

We exited the car and gathered as many of the weapons as we could. They all had clips and we attached them to our belts - or belt loops in my case. Mac took a second to place his hand on the hood of the car... a sympathetic gesture as we suspected we wouldn't be able to get the vehicle back this time. "Come on," he finally said running through the ruined doors.

Quinn and I followed and almost bumped into him as he had stopped in his tracks right in front of us. He had good reason to stop too.

There in front of us, hundreds of autons stood in what looked like military formation. We were trapped.

I jumped back in fright expecting the hundreds upon hundreds of monster-bots to blow us to bits. Mackenzie caught me and kept me from falling backwards in my haste to get away.

"Relax, Captain," he said. "They're non-operational."

Quinn walked over to one and examined it closely. He knocked on the crome finish and smirked. "He's right. They must be damaged or something."

"Actually, they're awaiting power cells," Mac told us walking over to another one of the motionless killers. "It looks like they've just been recently sent here."

"For what?" Quinn asked.

Mackenzie raised an eyebrow. "Us. What else?"

"We don't have a lot of time," I interjected. "Show us where we can get a flyer, Mac."

He nodded and started through the room of silent autons. I suspiciously eyed each one afraid that one of them would reach out and grab us or something. It was silly since none of them had any power, but I couldn't help it. I haven't lived so long by not being vigilant.

After a while, we found our way to some strange kind of elevator that took us at least thirty or forty stories up into the docking port. When the lift stopped, I expected the doors to slide open so we could continue on our way. Instead, there was a jarring thump and it started to go back down.

"Autons!" Mac yelled. "They've overridden the controls."

"What can we do?" Quinn asked frantically.

I eyed the floor indicator. 41... 40... 39... 38...

Mackenzie pulled us both back into the far end of the elevator car. "Get back!" he said pointing a gun at the doors. He fired a bolt at them and blew them apart. One of them wedged in the door and stopped the elevator's decent. It was pure luck that we stopped, but by the look on Mac's face, you'd have think he'd planned it that way.

We had stopped a little under the 29th floor and Mac and Quinn had to give me a little boost to get out of the lift. I helped pull Quinn up to my level and then we both pulled Mac up.

"Okay, we're on twenty-nine," I said after taking a quick look around making sure nothing was going to shoot at us in the near future. "What floor do the flyers dock at?"

"Thirty," he said. "But the really fast ones dock at the upper levels. Forty and up."

"Do we need a fast one?" I asked.

"Well, it depends," he answered.

Quinn cocked his head. "On what?"

"On whether you want to get to LA in one piece or not," Mac revealed.

We elected to try for the fortieth floor. Mac lead us to the emergency stairs and we started what we thought was going to be a hell of a climb. You know, the kind of climb that makes your legs feel like Jell-O when you're done.

However, we'd only made it to the thirty-first floor when we came across a barrier. A large metal door had closed blocking off the stairway up.

"Is there another way up?" Quinn asked. "Another staircase?"

Mackenzie shook his head. "We didn't have a lot of use for stairs," he said. "Not with lift system that never broke down."

"What the hell do you people do during fires?" I asked.

"Nothing ever caught fire," he said as if I was a complete idiot. "Haven't you ever heard of anti-oxide fire suppression?"

"Explain it later, Mac," I growled at him. "Use that brain of yours to come up with a plan."

"I have a plan," Quinn piped up.

Mackenzie put his hands on his hips. "You?"

"Me," Quinn said. "Show me where the slower flyers are at."

Mackenzie lead us out of the stairwell and through a hallway. Then we entered an area that looked kind of like a loading dock. There were dozens of gray plastic crates that looked like they'd been sitting there for years. One of those R2-D2-like robots scurried about mopping the floor.

Mac walked up to a yellow and black striped door and pulled a lever opening them to reveal the inside of one of the flyers. It was "parked" I guess you could say, with it's butt-end up against the docking port and it's front facing outward. Through the front glass, I could see clouds and sunlight.

The flyer itself was about the size of an RV and looked spartan and metallic. There were two control seats at the front... the left chair was positioned in front of a stick that reminded me a lot of the Harriers I flew during the war. After we were all in, Mac closed the doors behind us and took a seat in the pilot's chair. Since we were going along with Quinn's plan, he took the co-pilot's seat.

"Okay, we're here," Mac finally said to Quinn. "Now what?"

"Now," he began, "We fly up to where the faster flyers are docked at. We ditch this thing and take one of them!"

"That's a great plan," Mac said. I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was about to throw a wrench in that 'great plan'. "The problem is... the docking ports up there are incompatible with this type of flyer. We won't be able to park up there."

Before Quinn could speak up, the rear door began to open and we could see the glistening form of a crome-plated, fully functional, and highly dangerous auton through the opening.

Before that thought could even register with me - or Quinn for that matter - Mac hit the gas (or whatever) and the flyer veered away from the building and to the left. I wasn't in a seat so I lost my balance and hit the side of the vehicle.

When I pulled myself up, I spied the docking port creeping by through one of the side windows. "Is this the fastest we can go?" I asked in amazement. We couldn't have been going faster than twenty miles an hour.

"I've got her maxed out," Mackenzie said through clenched teeth.

Up ahead of us, an un-used docking port door opened and two autons leaned out and took aim at us. I knew Mac didn't have a chance of evading them in the proverbial clunker we'd hijacked, so I ducked down and waited for the energy bolts to hit us.

And boy, did they ever hit us.

The flyer was blasted twice and listed at a ninety degree angle. I hit the side again and, for the first time, noticed that Quinn and Mac had seatbelts on... the jerks.

Mackenzie managed to right the flyer and started ascending. The cabin was filled with smoke and smelled like burning oil. I couldn't tell how badly we were hurt, but from the look on Mac's face, I knew it couldn't be good.

However, we kept ascending to the upper docks without much of a problem. The engines - or whatever was powering the craft - sounded funny like they were damaged or under great distress. I couldn't help but picture them cutting out and dropping the flyer over thirty stories to the ground.

"We're at forty," Mac announced after a while. "Now what?"

"Can we blow a hole in the side of the building?" Quinn asked.

"With a Class Y-900 Short Range Passenger Flyer? Why not put weapons on a tricycle?" he scoffed back.

"Look, I don't see you coming up with anything!" Quinn yelled back. The tension had gotten to all of us. I thought Quinn was about to rip Mac's head off.

Mac simply smirked and continued ascending. Through the front glass I could see that he was heading for a flyer - one of the faster and more streamlined varieties. I didn't know what Mac was thinking until I noticed that he wasn't slowing or steering away from the docked aircraft. We kept slowly flying foreword until we lightly bumped into the other aircraft.

"Hang onto something," Mackenzie mumbled as he pressed a few buttons and caused out flyer to push on the faster one. The metal creaked and groaned as we pushed at the other flyer. Then, I could see a separation appear between the aircraft and the dock and I could finally deduce what Mac was doing. He was using out flyer to push the other one out of it's berth. The engines roared - I couldn't believe that they would be able to push the other flyer loose, after all, they could barely move us!

"That should do it!" Mackenzie said unbuckling himself and standing up.

I watched him walk to the rear hatch. My eyes still burned from the acrid smoke. "That should do what!?"

"Like I said, the Y-900 isn't designed to dock at one of the upper ports," he explained. "So, I've pushed that Y-7000 model out of the way a bit so we can get inside."

"How do we get inside?" Quinn asked rising to his feet.

"The old fashioned way," Mac said with a sly grin. "We walk."

"Walk?" I repeated.

"We walk across the top of this flyer, onto the back of the other and then slip in through the separation," Mac said casually. He looked over at Quinn who was, by now, sweating bullets. "You're not scared of falling are you?"

"No," Quinn answered. "It's that sudden stop when you reach the ground that worries me! Has it occurred to you that we're forty stories high?"

Mac slapped the control panel and the rear door opened. The wind whipped in and the roar was deafening. "We're forty-one up, and has it occurred to you," Mac yelled over the clamor of the high wind. "That unless we get out of this craft - and I do mean ASAP - we will be blown out of the sky so badly that you won't have to worry about that sudden stop when you reach the ground? It's this way or no way, Mallory." He reached out towards me. "Coming captain?"

I took a shaky breath. I was afraid of heights - a stupid fear for a jet pilot to have, I admit. I shook the fear away, nodded, and took his hand. He pulled me to the door and showed me a ladder just outside the hatch leading to the roof of the flyer. "Go up that ladder, across the roof, and wait for me!" he told me.

With a shaky hand, I took hold of the rungs, probably with a grip far stronger than I needed. I made the mistake of looking down and saw how far up the building we were... so high, I could barely make out the ground at all! I swallowed hard and started to climb.

THE CHANDLER

Colin was entranced. "When I invented my hang glider," he said interrupting Maggie's tale. "I never prepared myself for how high up I flew, yet that height is nothing compared to where we're at now on the fifth floor. I cannot imagine forty-one stories up! It must have been terrifying!"

Quinn snorted - an attempt to stop a laugh. "Bro, the most terrifying part was yet to come."

QUINN'S STORY

I could tell Maggie was scared - two or three levels from sheer terror - at the prospect of walking across the tops of two aircrafts hovering forty stories off the ground and then squeezing through a mangled docking port. I have to admit, I wasn't to keen on the idea either, but if what Mackenzie said was true, it was either do that or wait for the autons to get to a flyer and blow us to kingdom come.

Mac helped Maggie onto an access ladder that was on the side of the flyer right outside the rear hatch. As she climbed out of sight, he turned to me and said: "You're next Mallory."

I nodded and walked towards the hatch fighting the winds that ripped through the opening like a hurricane. How can this flyer stay in one place with all of this wind? I asked myself. More of that "advanced technology" this world had in abundance, no doubt. Finally, I made it to the opening.

"Don't look down," Mac instructed. I decided not to argue that point with him.

I grabbed the bars of the ladder and forced myself out of the flyer's cockpit. After a few quick breaths, I pulled myself upwards. I felt like such a idiot shaking the way I was. I couldn't help it... it was a long way down.

After a while, I got to the roof of the flyer where I saw Maggie inching her way foreword on her hands and knees towards the other more streamlined flyer. Walking on our feet would have been sheer suicide with the wind gusts - one strong one and we would have had plenty of time to wave good-bye on the way down.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Mackenzie's head pop up over the backside of the craft. He yelled something at me, but his words were swallowed by the roar of the wind. It was probably something like "Keep going" or something.

I slowly followed Maggie... she wasn't flinching a bit at the danger. Sure, we were high up and facing certain death and all, but she was in her full professional military mojo. No time for fear or worry, it was just time to accomplish our goal and to hell with everything else. I actually envied her ability to tune everything out and concentrate on "the mission".

She stopped at the front end of the craft overlooking the cockpit's windshield and nose section. The other craft was butted up against ours and it's front-end boasted several dents from Mac's parking job. But, at least we wouldn't have to jump... *that* would have truly been suicidal.

I got shoulder to shoulder with her. "Scared?" I asked.

She didn't answer that question. I didn't know if she didn't want to, or if she couldn't hear it over the blasts of wind. "Mac said to wait for him!" she yelled at me.

I took those few moments to look over the skyline of San Francisco... it was hazy this day and all I could see were the outlines of the buildings in the distance. Pale blue sentinels that were strange, yet familiar. I wished that I could be struck in the same way I was before by them so that I could recapture that sense of awe. But I couldn't... not since I learned the truth. I looked at the skyline and the flyers that flew around them and all I could think of was the billions of people CyANU had slaughtered on this world and the billions more it could slaughter on others thanks to me.

Then, among the many flyers in the distance that seemed to fly in complete randomness like flies or mosquitoes, I saw something that stuck out like a sore thumb.

Six flyers... they were flying in a "V" formation.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," Mackenzie yelled when he finally joined us at the front of the roof. "Maggie, take my hand and I'll lower you to the nose, Quinn, you take my hand and we'll form a chain, it'll be safer that way. Ready?"

"What's that?" I asked pointing to the "V" formation.

Mac turned to me. "What's what?"

I pointed at the formation again. "THAT!"

He looked at the direction I was pointing to and his eyes went wide. "We gotta move, now!"

With that, he slid himself on his belly onto the nose of the flyer. The nose was smooth and rounded off and I was sure he was going to fall, but instead he grabbed the front end of the other flyer, got to his knees, and motioned for us to come on.

I looked at the "V" formation which was, by now, getting closer to us. "Go, Maggie!" I yelled at her.

There was no time for safety anymore. The attack flyers were on their way. Maggie slid down the nose towards Mackenzie just as a huge gust of wind kicked up. She tried to use her hands to keep her from falling off, but I could tell she wasn't going to make it.

Before she went over the side, I launched myself at her. I grabbed her hands as she fell off the edge and tried to keep both of us from falling together, but the nose of the flyer was just too steep and too smooth. I knew we were done for and, as Maggie's weight pulled me over the edge, I finally got my first look at the forty-one story drop. I wish I hadn't.

Then, something caught my pant leg and our trip over the side of the flyer stopped. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Mackenzie had a grip on the cuff of my jeans with one hand, and the cracked hull of the streamlined flyer in the other. He seemed impossibly strong.

"Captain!" he yelled through clenched teeth. "Pull yourself up!"

Maggie heard him and started to climb back onto the nose of the flyer over me. Her knee crushed the back of my head, but I was too horrified to care about that. When she was safely on the nose, her and Mac pulled me back as well.

"Come on!" Mac screamed. "They're almost here!"

He climbed up the nose of the streamlined flyer and crawled along the roof to the opening in the docking port. Maggie followed him and I followed her and I thought it was going to be smoothing sailing from that point on.

And then there was an explosion and I saw the flyer we had been in not five minutes ago, disintegrate and fall to the ground. I looked up and saw the six flyers that had formed the "V" formation earlier loom over us. This was it... the game was over.

Mackenzie yelled something to Maggie. I could hear it, so Maggie, in turn, yelled it to me. "Quinn, give Mackenzie the timer!"

"Why?" I yelled back.

"He has to get it out of range!" she answered.

I turned back to her. "Out of range of what!?"

She pointed with her thumb at Mackenzie who was holding the EM pulse grenade his version of Professor Arturo had given him. That's why he needed to get the timer out of range!

I took the timer and handed it to Maggie. She quickly crawled foreword and gave it to Mackenzie who nodded and smiled. He yelled something at her and Maggie yelled to me. "He says to get ready!"

I watched Mackenzie press the green buttons in the manner Arturo had instructed him to. All he had to do was press the red button and then, five seconds later, the small metal ball would produce an electromagnetic pulse that would render everything electronic useless... including the timer. The only thought that raced through my mind was: how is he going to get the timer one hundred feet away from the pulse in time? It was impossible!

Mackenzie press the red button and counted two seconds to himself. He then threw the EM pulse grenade at the approaching flyers as hard as he could...

...and then he jumped off the side of the flyer.

At first, I thought he killed himself. It wasn't until later when I discovered just exactly what he had done.

Mac held the grenade two seconds of it's five second countdown before he threw it at the approaching flyers. Not wasting a second of time, he rolled off the side of the flyer onto the short stubby wing that protruded from the side. The opening in the docking port was right in front of him and with every iota of force he could, he threw the timer inside the docking port as hard and as fast as he was able.

Seconds later, the pulse grenade went off behind the ships which were all well inside it's range. There was a bright flash of light, so bright that I was momentarily blinded by it. When my vision recovered, I saw the attack flyers falling like stones towards the ground. Their weapons systems, flying capabilities, and usefulness were zapped away... and after a few seconds of freefall, they joined the twisted and burning remains of the flyer that got us there in the first place.

Maggie frantically called over the side of the flyer we were perched on. "Mac!"

"I'm okay!" he screamed back. I had used the few seconds that passed between the time he threw the grenade to the time the flyers plummeted to the ground to scoot up to Maggie's side. I could hear him without her help now.

"Where's the timer?" I asked frantically. I didn't know what he had done with it until later.

He looked up and with the first look of sheer horror I saw from him, he screamed: "GRAB HOLD OF SOMETHING!!!"

A shadow passed over Maggie and I and when I looked up, I saw another flyer rushing towards us. It was one of the slower flyers... like the one we had used. It was right above us and it was falling right towards us - another before-unseen victim of the EM pulse we had used to knock out the attackers.

I held on and waited for the thing to crush us. Instead, it smashed into the front end of the streamlined flyer and bent it downwards ripping it from the docking port... only a few twisted pieces of metal held us into place in a more precarious angle.

I couldn't believe I was able to hold on during the collision and I was equally surprised to see Maggie holding on next to me. "Mackenzie?" I yelled. "You still with us?"

There was a silence and I felt my heart sank. I was sure he had fallen to his death. Then, I got an answer. "Still here, Mallory!"

One of the mangled pieces of metal that held the flyer in place snapped and it fell foreword some more. "This isn't going to stay attached much longer," I said into Maggie's ear. "Not with this damned wind!"

She nodded and peered over the side. Mackenzie was using a shattered port window to climb to the now wide open docking port. He was going to be fine. As for Maggie and my fate, that was a matter that was a little more uncertain.

"Let's get off this thing!" She yelled at me. Next she started to climb up the roof of the damaged aircraft which was now leaning away from the docking facility at a forty or so degree angle.

Up ahead of us, I saw Mackenzie pull himself into the docking port opening. "Come on! Get the hell off of there!" he yelled at us giving us instructions to do something we already damn-well knew we needed to do.

We got to the back end and over the edge I could see just how serious our predicament was. A jagged piece of steel formerly used to hold the flyer in place was jutting out of the docking port wall and was lodged in the flyer's locking clamp... not very will lodged was putting it mildly.

Mac stepped foreword and grabbed Maggie by the arm, "Come on, Captain!"

He pulled her into the safety of the docking port and then they both came back for me. "Come on Quinn!" Maggie yelled.

I reached for them and for freedom. Then, there was jarring metallic tearing and a felt myself fall foreword as the flyer surrendered to gravity and fell. The last sound I heard was Maggie scream. The last thing I saw was her horrified expression fly past me replaced by the ground - so far away - rushing towards me.

The first thing I thought when I hit the surface was: 'that didn't hurt nearly as bad as I thought it would.'

The second thing I thought was that I shouldn't have been alive to think the first thought. I was forty-one stories high and I had just fallen! How the hell could I still be alive?

I finally mustered the bravery to open my eyes and saw the ground... forty-one stories below me. When the flyer fell, I had indeed fallen off of the roof, but not off of the aircraft. In fact, I had fallen inside of it and was now staring at the ground through the windshield of the streamlined flyer which was now pointing straight down held in place by who-knew-what.

I was amazed that the windshield hadn't broken when I hit it. More of that advanced technology? Perhaps. Whatever it was, I was very, very grateful for it.

"Quinn, are you okay?" I heard a voice call down to me. It was Maggie staring into the back hatch of the flyer from the safety of the open docking port. "Quinn, can you hear me?"

"Yeah," I said removing myself from the precarious and down-right scary place I had landed. "I'm all right, Maggie."

"Good thing for you the back hatch to this baby was open!" Mackenzie yelled. "Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"Get me out of here before my luck changes!" I told them. I knew the flyer was still in great danger of falling with me inside it, so I used everything I could use as a handhold to make it to the rear hatch which was now the upper hatch, I suppose.

Mackenzie got down on his stomach and reached for my hand. I grabbed him and he smiled. "Come on, Mallory! You look worried!"

"I have reason!" I said breathing hard.

"Oh, come on!" He laughed. "What else could go wrong?"

As if a divine force was answering his question, the flyer snapped loose from it's moorings and fell away. I had a very unique viewpoint of this since I (thankfully) had grabbed Mac's outstretched hands and (thankfully) wasn't holding anything in the craft. I watched in horror and fascination as the flyer fell from around me leaving me hanging from the fortieth floor of the San Francisco International Docking Complex with only a thankfully strong human being keeping me from falling.

I saw it hit the building several times on the way down. It looked kind of like those movies where they use computers to make special effects, you know? They look real, yet there's something about them that you just can't put your finger on that makes them look fake as well. I guess it's just because they look so fantastic... so unbelievable that your brain says 'this can't be happening'.

Finally, the doomed aircraft hit the ground and joined the proverbial junkyard we'd created. It as pretty cool until I remembered that I was dangling insanely in the air. "Pull... me... up...," I said slowly putting ample and forced spaces between my words.

"Not enjoying the view, are you?" he said.

I didn't answer. I just wanted to be on steady ground again.

When Mac pulled me into the docking facility I collapsed on the floor and, much to my own amazement, laughed out loud.

"What's so funny?" Maggie asked angrily putting her hands on her hips.

I sat up. "Oh GOD! I can't believe we lived though that!"

"Believe it," Mackenzie said. "Next to CyANU Central, that was a cake walk."

Suddenly, I remembered. "The timer!"

Mack had thrown it into the docking facility as hard as he could, but we all weren't sure if it had escaped the effects of the EM pulse. For all we knew, the timer was fried and as useless as the flyer wreckage outside.

We all looked for it and after a few seconds, Mackenzie spoke up. "Found it!"

I rushed over to him and took it. I examined the still-scrambled readouts and breathed a sigh of relief. "It's okay... It's working."

"You had any doubt?" Mac asked me.

I swallowed my pride and extended my hand. Despite the fact that he was a self-important egotist, he'd really saved our bacon for sure. "Thanks," I said.

He shook my hand and for the first and last time, I saw a sincere smile from him. "Don't worry about it."

THE CHANDLER

"I don't understand," Rembrandt said. "If this guy saved your lives so many times, how come you two are acting like he's the reincarnation of Snidley Whiplash?"

"They have good reason," Mackenzie spoke up. "It may be the wrong reason, but they do have a good one."

Quinn stood and looked over at him. "So, you're admitting you betrayed us?"

"No," Mac answered.

"Then what are you admitting to?" Rembrandt asked their prisoner.

"The fact that Quinn and the captain had a good reason to think I betrayed them," he simply stated. "But - and I know you won't believe me when I say this - I am still on your side!"

"Really?" Maggie scoffed. "Why should we trust you?"

"Because you trusted me before, Captain," Mackenzie answered her with what looked like hurt in his eyes.

"That was then and it was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made," she sneered at him.

Quinn saw that Mac seemed to deflate a bit as if Maggie's venomous statement had hurt his feelings. He actually felt sorry for the man. "Mac, do you think there's anything wrong with the story so far? Do you want to add anything?"

Mackenzie shook his head. "No, everything you and the captain has said has been pretty much the way it all went. You can finish your side of the story, Mallory... and then I'll tell the correct one."

At that lashing of sarcasm, ever sympathy Quinn felt for Mackenzie flew out the window. "Right, where was I?"

"You had just found the timer at the... uh..." Colin fumbled for the words. "Docking... Complex."

Quinn nodded. "Right, well... logically, Maggie, Mac, and I should have been killed in the attack, so no autons were sent up to go after us. Oh, I'm sure once the robots found out that there were no bodies in the wreckage, they would have figured that we'd made it back inside the building, but by that time, we had commandeered one of the faster flyers and were on out way out of San Francisco. An hour later, we were approaching Los Angeles. We set down in the Hollywood Hills so that we wouldn't be detected..."

"Oh, COME ON!" Mac cried out. "You're leaving parts out!"

"They're not important!" Maggie growled.

He smiled wryly. "Oh, but they were at the time, eh lovebird?"

Maggie glared at him. If her eyes had been lasers, Mackenzie would have been a pile of ashes in less than a second.

"Look," Rembrandt said softly to Maggie while keeping a condoning gaze on Mac. "Why don't we take five? All right? You can collect your thoughts and then tell us what happened when you got to LA."

Maggie nodded and stomped off to the bathroom. Mackenzie, still bound by the hands and ankles, watched her until the door slammed behind her. "Touchy, ain't she?"

Maggie leaned over the sink and let the tears fall. God, she hated him. She hated everything about him. There was only one person she hated more, and he was dead. She wished Mackenzie was too... she wanted to kill him herself.

She ran water over a washrag and cleaned her face with it. she was falling into the same hole that she has fallen into when she first joined the team. The screwed-up little military bitch was coming back and Maggie hated Mackenzie for resurrecting her.

She hated Mac and she hated herself for hating him.

Slowly, she sank to the floor and closed her eyes and remembered what Quinn had wisely decided not to tell the others... how she found out she had fallen in love with Mackenzie.

THE MEMORY

"It's simple," Mackenzie explained to her. "Look, you have a go at it."

Maggie looked at the strange controls. It was like a Harrier, yet different. "I don't know," she said smiling and shaking her head.

"Look, we're well outside San Francisco," Mackenzie said prompting her on. "We're inside the programmed flight path, nothing knows that we've hitched a ride on the flyer, Mallory's asleep in the back compartment... and I swear, I won't make fun of you."

Maggie regarded the controls again. "I don't know... No, Mac... I have no idea how to fly this thing and what we're doing is too important for us to screw up just because I wanted to play the Red Baron."

"Fine," Mac sighed getting up and walking into the back compartment. "I'll be in the back if you need me."

Suddenly, the flyer began to descend rapidly. It took Maggie less than a second to figure out what was going on... Mackenzie had walked off and left the autopilot disengaged.

"Mackenzie!" Maggie yelped as he disappeared into the back compartment. Frustrated and scared stiff, she jumped into the pilot's seat and took the stick and was pleasantly amazed when she took total and complete control of the aircraft. "An idiot could fly this!"

"That's what I said," Mackenzie sang as he reentered the cockpit.

"You," she said stabbing a finger at his chest, "are a bastard!"

"Guilty as charged," he admitted. "So, how's she handle?"

"You tell me," Maggie said grinning as she took the flyer into a sharp turn knocking Mac off balance and slamming him into the wall. Maggie straightened the craft out and Mac fell backwards onto the floor next to the pilot's seat.

"Sorry I asked," he laughed.

Their eyes met and time seemed to stand still. Slowly, they drew themselves to one another and kissed. All of their worries melted away and, as their lips parted, they knew that the feeling both of them felt... the feeling that had been growing between them was as real as they come.

Unseen to them, in the door to the cockpit, Quinn Mallory sighed as he watched the to new loves embrace each other. Although he was always happy to see people find happiness, deep down, he felt that he, himself, had lost something dear.

THE CHANDLER

When Maggie returned from the bathroom, she was back in what her husband used to call "maximum bitch mode". It was the facade she would use when confronting people. Other officers, Colonel Rickman, anyone she was likely to get into a verbal (or sometimes physical) fight with.

"About time you got back, Captain," Mackenzie sighed. "These guys aren't very good conversationalists."

"Oh, they're good conversationalists," Maggie said to him. "They just don't want to talk to you. Neither do I."

Mac just sat back and let her remarks bounce off of him. he fact that he seemed unaffected by her words just made him more annoying to her.

"Well," Quinn said as Maggie sat down. "You want to tell the rest of it?"

"You go ahead," Maggie offered. "I'm not in the mood to reminisce right now."

Quinn nodded and started his tale. "Well, like a said, a couple of hours later, we landed our stolen flyer in the Hollywood Hills not far from the Hollywood sign. Mac told us that this was to conceal our arrival from the thousands of autons that patrolled Los Angeles and the surrounding area. We knew, however, that we couldn't stay hidden long."

QUINN'S STORY

Wearing our scatter suits may have masked us from most of the machine's sensors, but still we preferred to stay on the safe side. We snuck in and out of alleys, ran through the streets, and tried our damnedest to avoid anything that was made of metal and had a mind of its own. We did this for hours... I couldn't tell how many hours because the timer's display was still scrambled from the interference. More so now that we were near the source.

I felt as though I was going through boot camp. Neither Mac or Maggie ever seemed to get tired and it made me feel low - kind of like the kid who always got picked last during recess. By the time we finally stopped to rest, my lungs were burning and my legs felt like the insides had turned to pudding.

"We're not going to make it to CyANU like this," Maggie said. Personally, I already knew that.

"Agreed," Mackenzie said. "we need faster transportation."

I got up - my knees felt like they were knocking together. "Mac, how did you ever get that car back in San Francisco?"

"I found it broken down on a service road," he said. "I fixed it up and made it my own... it's probably been melted down and being used to make more of those damned autons."

"Could you catch one?" I suggested.

He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Catch one? Mallory, it's a car... not a fish."

"It's an idea, Mac," Maggie offered as she checked her watch. "If we don't shut down that interference in six hours, Quinn will be stuck here for twenty-nine years."

I noted that she said "Quinn will be stuck here" and not "we'll be stuck here". Was Maggie actually considering staying behind?

Mackenzie considered this. "Those cars don't slow down for nothing," he said. "They'll run you over, knock you down, and won't look back."

Maggie cocked her gun. "I'm game if you are."

He smiled. "I'm sure you are."

We searched for a one of those car-things in an isolated part of town that we knew the autons wouldn't be able to get to right away. Once we were there, we waited about half an hour for one to roll by. When it did, Mac ran at it full force and leapt onto the hood holding on with his bare fingers. Mac took the butt end of his gun and smashed the windshield open. He reached in through the shattered glass and grabbed the car's video camera eye and pulled it loose.

The car responded by careening wildly around the street and slamming into the wall of a nearby building.

Maggie and I ran after it and, when we reached the car, it's back tired were squealing as it continued to try to go foreword which was impossible, yet unknown to the blind computerized intelligence controlling it.

"I think it's a keeper!" Mackenzie yelled out triumphantly. "Give me a hand, Mallory!"

"At what?" I asked him looking at the car feebly trying to go through the wall.

He slid off of the hood and forced the car door open. "We need to reprogram this thing so it won't send out a distress call when it figures out its been attacked. You do that, and I'll try to disconnect the engine."

I opened the panel and saw it contained a small keyboard. "How long have we got?"

"These cars aren't very smart," Mac said. "I'd say about two or three more minutes."

Three minutes to learn how to work a computer that was hundreds of years ahead of anything I'd worked before? Oh, this was going to be very interesting.

I quickly studied the monitor. It was blank kind of like a DOS screen, so I typed "DOSSHELL" into the keyboard.

The monitor displayed a simple message. "COMMAND: *DOSSHELL* IS NOT RECOGNIZED. DO YOU WISH A HELP MENU?"

I typed in "YES".

The monitor then displayed a schematic of the car. I noted something that looked like a transmitter and a modem. That must be how it was to issue the distress call. I typed in: "HELP: MODEM"

"COMMAND: *HELP:MODEM* IS NOT RECOGNIZED."

I mumbled a few curses and tried some other variations. None were successful. After a while, a new display flashed over the screen. "INTERFERENCE NOTED IN TRANSPORT. ASSISTANCE CALL WILL BE TRANSMITTED IN 60 SECONDS"

"Swell," I mumbled. I then decided to try something new purely out of frustration. "TELL ME HOW TO DISABLE THE TRANSMITTER"

"YOU WISH TO DISABLE TRANSMITTER?" was the reply.

"Oh my God," I said. "It's talking in laymen's terms!"

Quickly I inputted: "SHUT OFF THE TRANSMITTER"

The computer responded: "TRANSMITTER OFF"

About that time the engine stopped running and Mackenzie shut the hood. "You done, Quinn?"

I leaned back and laughed out loud. "I thought you said you needed an expert to use one of these things! A child could use a computer that talks like this!"

"Yeah?" Mac said.

"I thought you wanted me to shut it down because...." My voice trailed off.

Mac crossed his hands. "Because what?"

"Well," I stammered. "Because I'm... kind of smart."

"Oh," Mackenzie smirked. "Sure Mallory... if you're so smart, why'd it take you three minutes to type in, 'shut off the transmitter'?"

I couldn't answer that. Instead, I returned to the keyboard. "WHERE IS CYANU LOCATED?"

"CYANU IS LOCATED IN GRID BETA-FOUR-A."

I grinned. "CAN YOU TAKE US THERE?"

"UNABLE TO COMPLY," it said. "VISUAL AUGMENTATION IS CURRENTLY INOPERABLE."

"Visual augmentation?" I repeated in confusion.

"I think it means this," Maggie said picking up the remains of the robotic "eye" Mac had pulled out of the broken windshield.

I had to smile at that. It was ironic in a way. I typed into the car's computer: "CAN HUMANS DRIVE YOU?"

"AFFIRMATIVE," it replied. "DO YOU WISH TO INITIATE MANUAL OVERRIDE?"

"YES" I typed.

With that, a joystick popped out of the console in front of me. The inside of the car now looked exactly like Mac's car had.

Mac reconnected the engine and the car wirred back to life.

"This is quite a toy," I said surrendering the driver's seat to Mackenzie since he had experience in driving those things.

I walked over and opened the passenger side. Maggie had to sit in my lap again and, after a while, we were ready to go.

"Did you ask that tin-can where it's daddy is?" Mac asked.

I nodded. "It said something about Grid Beta-Four-A"

"I know where that's at. All righty then," Mac said. "Are you ready to rumble?"

"Ready as we'll ever be," Maggie responded.

Mac gently backed out into the street and Maggie suddenly looked at me. A look of alarm crossed her face. "Oh hell, I forgot!"

"What?" I asked afraid that we'd overlooked something or left the timer back in the flyer.

Her jaw dropped open. "I forgot that he drives like Evel Kinevil!"

"Don't worry," Mac laughed. "If we're lucky, my driving will kill us before CyANU does!"

"You need to be optimistic," I suggested.

"Optimistic?" Mac echoed. "Quinn, I don't know if you've been paying attention or not, but no one on Earth has ever gone to CyANU Central and come back alive!"

"Ah, but you're forgetting one thing," I said.

Mac stared at me. "What's that?"

I looked him in the eye and smiled. "We're not from this Earth."

We drove for a while, avoiding the auton patrols until we reached the nerve center of the computer that had killed the world - CyANU Central Brain Complex.

It was a large building built in the shape of a large mirrored pyramid. It had several "branches" like the ones we had seen on the docking complex and I could see one of the swift flyers - like the one we flew in on - slowing inching it's way towards one. The mirrors on the pyramid, I assumed, were large solar panels. One thing I had to admire about computer earth was it's ability to run on environmentally friendly sources of power... of course, the fact that the world was mostly populated by a bunch of machines that wouldn't mind if it was raining sludge put an ironic twist on the fact.

Mac drove the car towards the back and we all got out and loaded up with as many weapons as we could. I got this strange gun that fit over my wrist - sort of like a watch. I suppose the designers of it wanted to make a weapon that would allow it's user to use his hands freely but still have easy access to a gun. I wondered who would be designing weapons like this on an Earth controlled by a single government. Maybe this place wasn't quiet the Utopia we believed it had been.

We had to hurry. Mackenzie told us that autons regularly patrolled the outside of the Brain Complex and we could be expecting them to call any minute, so he created a little diversion for us.

He wedged one of the weapons we were unable to carry against the gas petal of our stolen car and aimed it for the far side of the structure that housed CyANU. When he put the vehicle into drive, it speed towards and straight into the mirrors shattering them and creating a smoking hole in the side of the once-perfect building.

We hid behind some overgrown hedges and watched as a panel opened nearby and at least ten autons strode out into the dwindling sunlight. They all stopped at the crash site and began surveying the damage we had done.

"Hopefully," Mackenzie whispered to us. "They'll think that it was a computer malfunction and won't know we're here."

"How do we get to that door without being seen?" Maggie asked watching the autons.

Mackenzie stood. "I guess we'd better see how good these scatter-jackets work."

And with that, he walked right towards the deadly autons as if they weren't even there. Maggie and I were reluctant, but we weren't about to let him go at it alone so, after a bit, we both started to slowly follow him.

The sun was going down and I would have been much happier trying to sneak into the Brain Complex during the cover of night, but I didn't know if we had that long. For all I knew, the timer could expire in an hour... a minute... maybe even a few seconds. I wished I had kept better tabs on the countdown, but it was too late for regrets. We were about to enter the belly of the beast... well, if our metal friends didn't turn us into stains on the sidewalk first.

Much to our relief, the scatter jackets seemed to be doing their job. The autons paid us no attention and slowly - ever so slowly - our pace to get to the door quickened. Before I really knew what I was doing, I was jogging to keep up with Mac and Maggie.

We reached the door just in time to see another of the massive metal monsters come out right in front of us. I swallowed hard... I could have sworn it was staring right at us.

Mackenzie held his hand up signaling us not to move or make a sound. I guessed that the autons could pick up sounds too. Why wouldn't they?

We stood there and waited for the thing to make up it's mind. Was it going to kill us... was it going to ignore us? Either way, I felt like I was sweating bullets.

Finally, and much to our relief, it turned and walked towards the others. We head it's deep computerized voice say, "THERMAL ANOMALY NOTED IN SECTION ZERO-ONE-ZERO".

Mackenzie allowed himself a sigh of relief. "All right, let's get in there before it changes it's mind."

Belly of the beast, here we come!

THE CHANDLER

Quinn stopped abruptly when Mac cleared his throat rather loudly. "You got a problem?" Quinn asked him.

"I just got a hair caught in my throat, Mallory," Mackenzie shot back. "Jesus, there are some things I do out of necessity and not sarcasm... not many, I admit... but there are a few."

"Quinn, how did you know where to go in the Brain Complex?" Colin inquired. "I mean, you didn't have a map or blueprints and I doubt that he was ever in there to show you the way." He thumbed in Mac's direction.

"I know the answer to this one," Rembrandt said grinning. "You see, kid, when we first bumped heads with the Kromaggs, we came across this weird interference that screwed up the timer. Q-Ball here was able to track down it's source by using the timer as a compass." He looked up at Quinn and Maggie. "Did I get it right?"

Maggie was impressed. "Pretty much."

"Hey, common sense, man," Rembrandt responded.

Maggie stretched her legs. "Well, you're right. Quinn used the timer as sort of a compass to track down the origin of the interference that was keeping it from working. We followed him for what seemed like hours going deeper and deeper into the Brain Complex. I guess we were in a sub-basement when we finally found what we were looking for."

MAGGIE'S STORY

We ended up on a catwalk overlooking a large research area. The whole room glowed with a greenish hue and we soon saw where it was coming from... a wormhole. A very large wormhole right below us like a whirlpool - a big gaping hole in the floor.

"There it is," Mac said tapping Quinn's shoulder.

On a simple table was the accelerator. It was being lorded over by two droids I hadn't seen before. They were thin as broomsticks and seemed to lack any sort of legs. Instead, they ran on tracks in the floor and sported two thin arms with five - I guess you would call them fingers - on each hand. If they had any sort of head, I couldn't see it.

"Probes," Mackenzie explained. "They're designed for study and inquiry. Mostly harmless."

Something else had caught my eye. More autons standing a few meters from the opening of the portal. They were like the ones we had seen at San Fransisco International... in other words, they looked like they were deactivated.

"You go find the brains of the outfit," Mackenzie said to us. "I'll take care of the accelerator."

"Look, we shouldn't split up!" Quinn objected. "We can just blow it up from here with one of these weapons and find CyANU together."

"It won't work," I told him. "As soon as you blow that thing up, CyANU will know it's been infiltrated. It'll lock this place up so tight, none of us will be able to get out."

Mac nodded. "Exactly... But if I blow it up, it may divert enough of the defenses to thins section and allow you to get to CyANU itself... shut the bastard down permanently!"

"Well then, you come with us!" Quinn suggested. "We can shut down CyANU together and THEN come back for the accelerator."

"No, Mallory," Mackenzie sighed. "Our top priority is the destruction of the accelerator. If we're all killed trying to shut down the computer, CyANU wins. This way is our only way."

Quinn reluctantly agreed.

"Maggie, I'll see you in a little while," Mackenzie told me as we got ready to split up.

"If there is a little while," I morbidly added.

"Captain Beckett," he smiled. "Can't you trust me just a little?"

"No, I can't!" I said exasperated. "Mac, I don't know if I can trust you! I mean, I don't even know what your real name is!"

"Guys, you think you can take this up later?" Quinn interrupted. He grabbed me by the wrist and led me out the door opposite the one we can in on.

"Good luck," Quinn called out to him over the roar of the vortex.

Mackenzie leaned over the rail and stared into the wormhole. He would wait a few minutes to allow Quinn and I to get to another section of the building, and then he would blow the accelerator and probably get swarmed by autons and whatever else kind of security CyANU was using in the building. I watched him as we walked through the door and I had the strangest feeling that I would never see him alive again.

The next time I did see him, I actually wished he had been killed.

THE CHANDLER

"Now we're coming to the good part!" Mackenzie said sitting up straight in anticipation. "As Captain Beckett said, we separated and hoped to catch CyANU with it's pants around it's ankles. Instead, I found out that CyANU had a few tricks up it's sleeve we hadn't counted on."

"Like what?" Quinn asked.

"Well, let's just say it surprised the hell out of me when I first saw them."

"Look man, you've been sitting there for hours cracking jokes and smart remarks," Rembrandt growled. "All this time, you keep saying that we've got the story wrong and that you're really just the victim of a misunderstanding, but not once have you said anything that lends a shred of proof to what you've been saying!" Rembrandt stood up and loomed over Mac. "It's time for you to lay all your cards on the table, man... It's time for you to tell us what the hell you're talking about and you'd better make good, 'cause by God, I am sick and tired of your mouth!"

The sliders sat there in silence as Rembrandt sat back down. Mackenzie himself seemed a little taken down by Rembrandt's upbraid.

"All right," Mac finally said with a hint - just a hint - of humility in his voice. "You want the truth, you're going to get it. But I want something in return."

"What?" Colin asked.

"When I tell you what really happened during the time we were separated and you learn what's about to happen, I want you to come back with me," he told them.

"Back to Computer Earth?" Maggie gasped. "You've got to be kidding!"

Mac shook his head. "No, Captain... I'm as serious as I'm ever going to get. Now, I want your word that you'll come with me."

"We'll think about it," Quinn answered. "But what you have to say had better be good."

"Trust me," Mac said. "I've got more than just the truth on my side... I have got proof. And once you hear what I have to say and once you see the proof I've got, you'll know why it's so important you come back."

Mackenzie leaned back against the wall. "As I said, everything Quinn and Captain Beckett has told you has been pretty much the truth, but after we separated, I found something that scared the hell out of me and, let me tell you, that is no small feat."

MACKENZIE'S STORY

I watched Quinn and Maggie take off and gave them a few minutes before I got ready to use my gun to blow up the accelerator.

But, for some reason I can't explain, I decided to climb down from the catwalk and take a little tour of the lab CyANU's bot's had created the wormhole in. The scatter jacket I had on prevented the dozen or so probe-bots that were scurrying around the room from noticing me - good thing too, because they could raise an alarm just as good as any Auton. I made it a point to keep out of their way.

Actually, I did have a good reason to check out the lab, I guess. Ever since CyANU had taken over, it'd been using the same old Autons to wipe out humanity year after year after year. The professor had been concerned for a couple of years that CyANU might come up with some kind of second-generation Auton. A Super-Auton so to speak.

However, these Super-Autons never showed up so the professor concluded that CyANU lacked the capability to invent - it could only use the skills it had been programmed with.

Personally, I didn't buy that at all. CyANU was an artificial intelligence matrix and the most advanced one constructed. It had taken over the world and exterminated almost all of the population. It was smart... no doubt about that and I was sure it was working on improvements to it's hordes of robots.

The first thing I checked out was the dozen or so autons that stood motionless before the mouth of the wormhole. I looked them over and noticed something odd about them immediately. Embedded in each of their arms was something new - a counter and a few new wires. It didn't take a Quinn Mallory to figure out what the new additions were... timers. The autons had been modified into walking sliding machines. Quinn had been right, CyANU was going to invade alternate earths and I was staring at the prototype models of the shock troops it was going to use.

Just that alone proved that I was right. CyANU was constructing new and improved robots. For some insane reason, I couldn't wait to get back to the cave and rub the professor's face in the fact that he was wrong and I was right... something that really didn't happen that often.

I saw a door slide open to reveal a room with a greenish light coming out of it. One of the probes appeared and rolled it's way across the large research lab the other probes had been studying the accelerator in. I knew that room must have been where they were working on something special - perhaps that next-gen auton we'd been looking out for all those years. I took the opportunity while the door was open and I sidestepped inside.

When I saw what the room contained, I thought I was going to be sick.

THE CHANDLER

"What did you see?" Colin asked a little nervously. Obviously, he had been shaken by Mac's sudden change in demeanor. Going from an overbearing ass with ego to spare to the man who was reciting his experiences to them with a quivering voice and seriousness that could have put the gruff town officials in Colin's old town to shame.

Mac drew in a deep breath. "I'll tell you in a minute. First, I want to hear about what happened to you two," he said looking at Quinn and Maggie.

Quinn was annoyed, but he nodded. "Okay, we'll tell you."

QUINN'S STORY

Maggie and I worked our way through the corridors of the Brain Complex looking for CyANU's central terminal. Some place we could shut it down at. I was getting a little concerned because we hadn't heard any alarms go off - a sure sign that Mac had scrapped the accelerator - but we kept pressing on.

"How do you know where you're going?" Maggie asked keeping in step with me all while keeping an eye out for anything that might be charging at our rear.

I pointed to the ceiling. "You see those large bundles of cable?" I said. "My guess is that they contain fiber optics or something along those lines. CyANU has to communicate to the outside world somehow and those cables are probably the way it does it... we follow them and I bet you we'll find CyANU."

"I wish the professor could be here," Maggie responded.

I wished he could have been there too even if I was thinking of a different one than Maggie was.

We kept going down the brightly lit hallways, pausing momentarily so we wouldn't be detected by the small janitorial droids that would pass us by every now and then. Once, we even passed two autons lumbering down the corridor. Luckily, the scatter jackets kept them from noticing us.

After a while, we came to a large yellow and black-striped door that had the words 'AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY' scralled in large red letters across it. "Bingo," I said to Maggie.

"You think this is it?" She asked.

I nodded an affirmative. "The wires go right into this room and, by the look of things, I'd say that all of the cables we've seen in the building converge at this point. This has *got* to be it!"

"Wonderful," she said leaning on the wall. "so how do we get in? Knock and say 'Avon calling'?"

"Give me a minute and let me think!" I snapped back. Maggie was getting on my nerves, I was scared, I was apprehensive, and I was very puzzled by the door. There was no handle... no access panels... no clue as to how to open it. I looked at the door and said: "Open". Of course, I knew it wasn't going to be that easy... I just thought I'd give it a try.

Suddenly, the lights in the corridor grew dim, replaced by the hellish glare of red tracer lights and the sound of a low and repeating alarm. "I guess that means that Mac's blew the accelerator," I said.

"Then we don't have a lot of time," Maggie said upholstering a small weapon that we'd unloaded from the flyer. "Stand back!" she warned.

Before I could say anything to her, she fired her weapon and literally blew the doors off of their hinges. The heat wave from the explosion washed over us and I could smell burning hair. Luckily, both of us was just singed.

"Come on, Mallory, move it!" she yelled grabbing me by my back collar and shoving me towards the door. "You see anything that doesn't look human, shoot it!"

I activated the wrist weapon I had picked out - the one that was designed to keep my hands free and walked into the room after her.

The air was smoky, but it was clearing rather quickly. I soon found out why, too. We were on a catwalk overlooking an impossibly large cylindrical room. I looked down and saw several levels below us... dozens of them. Looking up, I saw the same thing. The roof of the building was four sided and ended in an inverted point... the top of the pyramid.

In the center of the room was a large pillar-like structure made completely out of metal dotted with thousands of lights blinking at seemingly random intervals. Tracer lights of all different colors were running from the bottom of the pillar to the top and I could see several terminals lining the level Maggie and I had found ourselves on. Connecting the pillar to the walls of the cylindrical room were catwalks and bundles of fiber optics. There was no doubt in my mind that we had found our quarry... Maggie and I was staring straight into the heart of CyANU. The belly of the beast.

I was just standing there in awe looking at the thing when Maggie suddenly grabbed my shoulders and shook me out of my trance. "Quinn," she hissed. "We passed a couple of autons of the way here, remember? They're probably on their way back, now."

I nodded without saying a word and stepped towards the massive computer. I felt as if it was sizing me up as I approached it... It was as if it could see right through me. This was true artificial intelligence - something programmers have been trying in vain to accomplish on Earth Prime for years - and I was about to attempt to destroy it.

A thought hit me: What if this thing is smarter than me?

I took a seat at a terminal and looked at the workstation. It seemed simple enough... a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor... and, strangely, a virtual-reality headset and gloves. The monitor was displaying a screensaver that said "CyANU - THE FUTURE OF AUTOMATION"

Brother, if they only knew!

I hit a key and the screensaver and I got a message that said: "VIRTUAL REALITY INTERFACE ON-LINE"

I was a little apprehensive about going into a VR environment since it would essentially cut me off from the real world - something that was not advisable since we would more-than-likely be flooded by autons a second, but I couldn't figure out a way to switch to a normal interface... The VR helmet was the only way to go.

I picked up the device and looked over at Maggie who was surveying the room keeping her gun trained on the open door and watching for any of the other hundred or so doors in the room to open. "Maggie," I said. "I'm going into the system... Keep me covered."

"Going into the system?" She repeated.

I put the helmet and gloves on. "I'll see you when I get back."

Maggie started to object, but I couldn't hear much of what she was saying for no sooner had I donned the helmet, I found myself in another place. I was floating in space surrounded by dozens of glowing yellow spheres... each one had a caption circling them like the rings of Saturn. I saw one that said "SYSTEMS CHECK" and another that said "COMMUNICATIONS" and other that said "HEURISTIC LEARNING". I scanned the others and found one that said "SYSTEMS INTERFACE". I reached out with my digitized hands and touched it.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting at a desk in an elaborately decorated office. I looked to my left and I saw a glowing yellow orb with the word "BACK" orbiting it.

I heard the door open and I saw a beautiful young woman with long blonde hair enter. She was tall, wearing a red business suit, and smiled at me as she approached the desk.

"Good morning, sir," she beamed at me. "How may I help you?"

"W-What is this?" I stammered. "Who are you?"

She smiled again. "I am the Computational AutoNomous Unit Version 9.0 Virtual Reality Interface Program... but, for the purpose of brevity, you may call me CyANU."

THE CHANDLER

"I am confused by this," Colin meekly admitted. "I have never heard of this Virtual Reality. How can you have met a computer in an office that didn't exist? How could the computer have been a woman?"

"Okay...," Quinn mulled over an easy way to explain VR to his brother, but instead, opted for an easy way out. "You remember that TV show you watched yesterday that you got so interested in?"

"Star Trek." Colin answered.

Quinn smiled. "Right, you remember that room that the crew would go into and they could make it into whatever they wanted?"

"The holodeck," Colin stated. He was smiling now so he seemed to be catching on.

"Right," Quinn answered. "Virtual Reality is sort of like a holodeck except the environment is only in your mind."

"...and the woman was just an interpretation of what CyANU really was," Colin finished. "It was just an easy way of interfacing with the system."

"There's hope for you yet," Quinn grinned.

QUINN'S STORY

I just stared blankly at the woman for a few minutes. "So, you're telling me that you are CyANU? You?"

"Correct," she answered. "I am the intelligence that drives the computer. I assume you have initiated this interface because of the security breeches, Mr. Mallory?"

"You know my name?" I said a little stunned.

"Computer projections indicate that there is a ninety-two percent probability that you are Quinn Mallory - program technician - third class - clearance code: Bopper, son of assistant programmer Michael Mallory. Last log-on date was 5/24/1991."

I was a little stunned, but not surprised that my double on this world was one of the programmers that brought CyANU to life, especially since my father had been an assistant programmer. I did wonder, though, how he had managed to convince the department heads to allow him to bring on a seventeen-year-old prodigy.

I turned back to the woman - or rather, the simulation of a woman in the office. "What security breeches are you talking about?"

The woman pointed to a three-dimensional display that had suddenly appeared between us. It was a display of the brain complex. I could see that the main computer not only took up most of the central portion of the pyramid, but also went down several sub-levels. "There has been a security breech in research lab one and in the main computer core. Autonomous Units have not been successful in determining the cause of the breeches."

Good, I thought, that means Mac hasn't been killed. "Have units investigated the breech in the core?"

"Negative," she said. "Units have been dispatched and should arrive in approximately thirty-one point three seconds."

"Cancel them," I ordered.

The woman cocked her head. "Why?"

"The breech in the computer core was a...," I grabbed for a straw. "...an accidental... it was an accident."

"Explain," she said.

"It was a malfunction in programming," I said sweating in my simulated seat. "I suggest you perform a systems check after you recall the autons."

She stared at me for a minute and then nodded. "Very well... I am not detecting you in the computer core, I suppose my sensors are malfunctioning."

Thank god for scatter jackets, I mused to myself. "CyANU, I need to shut your system down," I said casually.

The woman's smile disappeared and she seemed to get angry at me. "That would not be advisable... I run automation all over the world. Without me, the system would slide into chaos. Chaos is intolerable and must be eliminated."

I remembered what Arturo had told us about why CyANU had wiped out humanity... Humanity was a chaotic force and CyANU's main goal was order.

"CyANU," I said standing. I wondered if I was standing in the real world as well. "We have begun to notice several deviations and anomalies in your performance." I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about. "My Father - assistant programmer, Mallory - suspects that there is a flaw in your programming."

"That is impossible," the woman growled. "My programming is flawless."

"Then explain the crash at San Francisco International Docking Complex," I challenged her. I knew, of course, that we had caused the crashes up there ourselves.

"Hardware error in the affected units," she answered. "The problem has been corrected. Order has been maintained."

"What about the disappearance of a flyer from that docking complex," I said. I was referring to the flyer we had stolen.

She seemed to be taken aback by that but quickly recovered. "The flyer has been located and recovered. Again, it was a hardware error that has been corrected."

"And the crash just outside this very building? CyANU," I said softy hoping that a little fake emotions might sway the woman a bit. "There are no hardware flaws... we checked. The problem is with your software." I put a hand on her shoulder. "Let us fix it before more chaos results from it... that is what you want, isn't it? Order not chaos?"

"Order is preferable to chaos," she admitted. "Very well, I will allow you to shut down my system... restore the order."

I sat there for a minute. "Okay, uh... you can go ahead and shut down now."

"System shutdown is not allowed without the proper authorization," she snapped.

"Okay," I sighed. "Initiate systems shutdown by my order. Password: Bopper."

The woman walked away from me and looked out a simulated window. The sky outside grew dark and ominous all of the sudden. "You do not have the authorization as a third class program technician." she droned. "Clearance must be given by people with level green access or above."

Now we were in trouble. "Does my father have that kind of clearance?" I asked.

"Affirmative," she replied.

"And would I be able to shut you down using his password?" I asked.

"Affirmative, passwords may be given by other staff members in the event of a catastrophe."

"Well, I can't think of a bigger catastrophe than this," I said trying to think of what kind of passwords my father would have used.

I used the word, Bopper... a dog I used to have as a kid. What would dad have used? My mother's name?

"Password: Elizabeth," I guessed.

"That password is incorrect. Two more incorrect entries will result in termination of this interface," she said with her back turned to me. Outside the window, there was a flash of lightning.

I racked my brain. Dad was a lot like me, he would have used something close to him... a word or a name that meant a lot. "Password: Quinn?"

She turned to me still grinning cordially. "That password is incorrect. One more incorrect entry will result in termination of this interface."

I sucked in a lungfull of air. I was about to give up hope when, suddenly, it came to me... I knew what it was!

"Password: Stardust," I said crossing my fingers.

The woman nodded as the storm outside ceased. "That password is accepted," she said. "Systems shutdown is commencing. Secondary systems have been activated."

"Secondary systems?" I repeated, but before I got an answer I was back in the computer core removing the VR helmet from my head.

Maggie was standing nearby. "What the hell was all that about?" she asked.

Before I could say anything, the tracer lights on the core began to slow and light after light after light blinked out. Soon, the core was dead... CyANU was shut down.

"Does that mean we won?" Maggie asked.

I nodded. "I think we did!"

With that, I let out a falsetto yell that echoed up and down the dark chamber and Maggie and I embraced celebrating our victory. "Check the timer!" she suddenly said.

I plucked it out of my jacket pocket. "nineteen minutes and forty-five seconds," I read in relief. "We didn't miss the slide."

Maggie seemed strangely disappointed all of the sudden. "Come on, we'd better find Mac and see if he's all right."

We made our way back up the corridor. The halls were still well-lit, but the robots that had been scurrying around our feet were now dead and unmoving. We passed a couple of Autons - probably the same one we'd passed on the way to the core... they were also dead.

We rounded a corner and almost ran smack into the man we were looking for. "Mac!" Maggie said with relief. "God, I'm glad you're okay."

"You shut down the system?" he asked emotionlessly.

"Sure did," I answered. "and we've got a little over a half hour until our vortex opens up. We did it, man, we saved the world."

Mackenzie nodded. "I want to see it."

"You mean, CyANU?" Maggie asked.

He nodded. "I want to see it."

With that, he pushed his way through us and stalked down the hallway. I suspected Mac wanted to face his enemy... he wanted to face the master of the army he had been fighting all these years. Regardless of his reasons, we followed him back up the hall and into the computer core. "Just like we said," I said happily. "She's shut down."

Mac said nothing. He just kept walking towards the core and to one of the terminals which now displayed a screensaver that said "SYSTEM SHUTDOWN" in red letters.

He picked up the keyboard and began to type faster than I had ever seen anyone type before. "What are you doing?" Maggie asked.

The next thing we both knew, the core jumped back to life. The lights flashed back on and the tracer lights once again raced up and down the mammoth structure.

"What the hell are you doing!?" I screamed at him trying to get him away from the keyboard. Again, though, he proved way too powerful and strong and he threw me back effortlessly into Maggie.

The woman's echoed in the computer core. "SYSTEM BACK ON-LINE - AWAITING NEW PROGRAM PERIMETERS"

I stared at him in disbelief as he restarted the system and brought back to life the monster I had just slayed.

Mackenzie stood and walked towards us. We were still lying on the floor and more than a little dazed. He then reached down and ripped both of our scatter jackets down the front.

The woman's voice cried out. "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL DETECTED IN COMPUTER CORE. AUTONOMOUS SECURITY UNIT HAS BEEN DISPATCHED."

Our scatter jackets had protected us from CyANU's sensors, but thanks to Mac, we were now sitting ducks.

"You son of a bitch!" Maggie hissed rising to her feet. "You've betrayed us!"

Mac didn't answer, he just turned on his heels and returned to his work restarting the computer.

High above us, a door opened and three autons lumbered out onto the catwalk. Without even giving a warning, they fired on us. We jumped out of the way as the energy bolts bombarded the catwalk we were on sending it crashing into the sub-levels below us. A large chasm separated us from the core and Mac. "We have to go!" I yelled at Maggie.

Maggie nodded but kept her eyes trained on Mackenzie. Without saying a word, she pulled her gun and shot at him and the computer core.

The core didn't seem to be affected by the blasts - I guess it was shielded somehow - but I could see Mackenzie get knocked out of his chair by Maggie's barrage of fire. I was sure she had killed him.

"Maggie, dammit, come on!" I said grabbing her by the arm and pulling her to the door.

Then we heard Mac call out to us. "CAPTAIN BECKETT! WAIT!"

"He's alive!" Maggie growled as she started back into the core.

"No," I said grabbing her. "We don't have time. Rembrandt always said that you reap what you sew... He'll get his sooner or later, Maggie. Right now, we've gotta keep moving 'till our window opens."

She was angry. I hadn't seen her so angry since we first started going after Rickman. Still, she grudgingly agreed to come with me and leave Mackenzie with the computer in one piece.

We took off down the corridor as fast as we could. It wasn't long until we came face to face with some autons. They were reactivated and deadly as ever.

"I don't get it!" Maggie yelled. "I thought Mackenzie was on our side!"

"That's what I thought," I said between gasps. "Looks like he's decided to take the network over himself. God knows he could do it with the mess we've made of the system!"

We rounded a corner and almost jumped in fright. There was Mackenzie standing right in front of us. He didn't have a weapon pointed at us which I thought was odd considering what he had just done and what Maggie was probably going to do to him.

"Jesus, I thought I'd never catch up with you two again!" He said smiling. I knew he was sarcastic and had a twisted sense of humor, but this was ridiculous! This was down-right sadistic of him!

We rounded a corner and came face to face with their pursuer making them both jump in surprise and fright. Maggie quickly noted that he wasn't holding a weapon. That was odd considering what he had just done and what Maggie had vowed to do to him if she ever saw him again. Oddly enough, Mackenzie just looked at them and grinned. "Jesus," he said. "I thought you two were dead!"

Maggie went wild. She flew at him hitting him in the face and upper body as hard as she could. "You son of a bitch!" she screamed at him. "We trusted you!!!"

He managed to toss her to the side and pick up a discarded pipe that had been lying nearby. He waved it at her menacingly. "What are you talking about, Beckett? Have you lost your mind?"

Suddenly, an energy bolt hit the floor and caused us to jump into the air. "They've found us!" I exclaimed as Mackenzie, Maggie, and I took shelter around a nearby corner.

"Come on!" Mackenzie yelled at them while motioning down the corridor. "I've got a flyer waiting outside!"

Maggie looked at him as if he was completely nuts. After what he had done... he wanted us to come with him? "Do we look like a couple of idiots to you?"

"Maggie, we don't have time!" Mac protested as another energy bolt impacted the wall.

I showed the timer to Maggie. The display read nine seconds. Maggie exhaled and threw Mackenzie an icy glare. "For once, I agree..."

I pointed the timer down the corridor and activated the wormhole. A wave of energy leaped out and coalesced into the swirling blue tunnel. Mac stepped back and looked at them in confusion. "You're sliding!? Now!?" he asked. "What about...?"

I stood up and stared at him right in the eye. "You've left us very little choice. Hope you enjoy your new world order!"

And, with that, I grabbed Maggie's hand and jumped into the tunnel leaving Mackenzie in the hallway of the CyANU Central Brain Complex.

After a quick mind-burning ten or fifteen seconds in the wormhole, Maggie and I found ourselves on the streets of Los Angeles receiving several stares from the passersby on the sidewalk. We both dusted ourselves off and watched the vortex blink out of existence. "You okay?" I asked Maggie.

She didn't say a word. She just sighed and walked swiftly off the road. "Maggie?" I asked again.

"Quinn, I don't want to talk about it," I said. Her voice was quivering. she looked at a couple who had been staring at us ever since we arrived. "What's wrong!? Haven't you ever seen a couple of sliders before?" She snapped. "Don't you have something better to look at?"

The man and the woman swiftly walked away.

Maggie walked over to the nearby building... it was a computer store selling - of all things - those old "trash-80s". They were being pushed by the ads in the window as "top of the line" with "BASIC '97".

Maggie leaned foreword until her forehead was touching the glass. She wasn't looking inside the store, she was looking down at her feet - her shoulders were moving in a rhythmical fashion.

Maggie was crying. I had never seen her cry before.

THE CHANDLER

Quinn looked nervously at Maggie. He'd gotten into the story so much, he'd blundered and said something he wished he hadn't.

Instead of biting his head off, Maggie just sat there and nodded. "He hurt me," she said not even looking at who she was talking about. "He betrayed me and I was stupid enough to trust him. I usually see through people like that in a heartbeat, but this time... this time, he drew me in and made a fool out of me. Only one other man did that... and he's dead."

"Remind me to stay on your good side," Rembrandt mumbled.

"We kept sliding for another three months. Ten different worlds trying to lock onto Rembrandt and Wade's photon trail with our jury-rigged tracker," Quinn continued. "we found Earth Prime, reunited with Rembrandt, found out about my parents, tangled with the maggs, found Colin... and the rest is history."

"You are both excellent storytellers," Colin complimented them.

"I agree," Mac spouted.

"All right, you've heard our side of the story," Maggie snapped. "You tell us yours and, for your sake, it had better be good."

Mackenzie smiled a bit. He looked at Quinn's brother. "Colin, isn't it?"

Colin nodded wordlessly.

"Colin, would you mind grabbing my tote bag for me?" He looked over at the brown bag he originally came in with. It had been lying, forgotten, by the door the whole time. "I'm a little tied up at the moment."

Colin stood and started over to it. "Wait," Maggie said. Colin stopped in his tracks at the warning. "What's in it?"

"A surprise," was all Mackenzie said.

"Well," Maggie said walking past Colin and grabbing the tote bag herself. "I've had enough of your..." She opened the bag and, instantly, her face went white. She did manage to squeak out the rest of her sentence. "...surprises."

She looked up at him in complete shock at what she had seen. Mac shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "I told you I had proof."

Maggie just stared back into the bag.

Rembrandt walked over to her concerned about what she had seen. "Maggie? What's wrong?"

"Show them, Captain," Mac said.

Maggie took a deep breath and turned the bag upside down. Something roughly the size of a basketball plopped out onto the floor and rolled towards Quinn and Colin.

Colin almost jumped out of his shoes in fright. He backstepped until he fell backwards onto the couch.

"Oh my god," Rembrandt exclaimed in a hushed and raspy voice.

Colin quickly pulled his feet of the floor and placed them on the couch as if he had seen a mouse.

Quinn stared down at the object in mute surprise. He used his foot to move it until he could get a better view of it. "This can't be what I think it is."

"I'm afraid it is," Mac said menacingly.

There on the floor, staring back up at Quinn was a human head - or rather, the approximation of one. And it wasn't just any head, either... it was Mackenzie's head.

Across the room, Mackenzie chuckled softly as the others stared as shocked as it was possible to be shocked. "You wanna untie me now, or should I just break out?"

"What is that?" Colin managed to ask.

"That," Mac answered. "is the second generation auton."

"An android," Quinn said in awe. He saw the confused look on Colin's face and added: "A robot that looks like a human."

Mackenzie nodded. "Yep, that's what CyANU was devoting the majority of it's resources towards was to come up with an auton that could mimic a human being."

"Why?" Rembrandt asked. "I mean, what would be the point?"

"You ever seen The Terminator?" Quinn asked him.

"To get at the last few humans on earth," Maggie deduced. "They'd think that they'd be taking in a refugee when, in fact, they'd be letting a killer into their hideout."

"Bingo," Mac said. "You gonna untie me now?"

Quinn and Maggie looked at each other unsure as what to do.

"Think about this, Captain...," Mackenzie finally said. "Let's say I went in and took over the system like you and Quinn think I did and became he supreme lord and master of my world. Why would I come after you guys? To reminisce about old times and good fun had by all? There'd be no point to it."

"Maggie, he's got a point," Rembrandt said.

Mac pleaded with her with his eyes. "Come on, Captain... trust your instincts!"

Maggie seemed to stand there for an eternity and then, after bending down, she freed Mackenzie from his bonds.

"Thanks," he said. "I was getting a cramp. Thanks for trusting me."

"I don't trust you," Maggie answered him.

Mac grinned as he rubbed his chapped wrists. "You trust me."

"All right, Mac," Quinn began. "We've got a discrepancy in our stories somewhere. You want to tell us your side of it?"

Mackenzie nodded. "I sure do."

He walked over to the couch and sat down eyeing the now-cold pizza that sat on the coffee table. "Mind if I take a piece? I haven't eaten since my last slide."

"Of course," Colin said. "It's called pizza."

"I know what it's called, kid," Mackenzie laughed. "Let me guess... They picked you up off of that Amish earth, didn't they?"

"You visited my homeworld?" Colin asked amazed.

Mac took a bit and nodded. "I've been to every world you guys have been too."

Maggie took a seat across from him. "Tell us what happened, Mac. Tell us what happened to you after we got separated. What'd you find in that lab that scared you? Androids?"

"No, Captain Beckett, what I found was far, far more worse," he answered her.

MACKENZIE'S STORY

I thought I was going to be sick. Inside the green room I found several clear glass containers filled with a clear fluid. There were dozens of sizes and, in each one, there was a human body part. A hand here, a head there, a brain, a leg, a whole body suspended in the fluid.

Now, normally, I'm not affected by much, but this got to me. I staggered to a corner and turned away from the grotesque display I'd found. I asked myself what CyANU would be doing with human body parts.

There was another opening on the far side of the lab and I forced myself to walk through the camber of horrors to go inside... I had to find out what was going on. Why the probes were studying human remains.

I quickly entered the next room and found something even more perplexing. On the far side of the room, there was a man just standing there as happy as you please. I couldn't believe it... I was looking at a human being in the heart of CyANU's base of operations. I immediately marched towards him hopeful that I might finally get some answers. "Hey," I said to him. "What the hell are you doing in here? How the hell are you doing in here?"

The man just stared blankly at me not even bothering to move. "Can you hear me, pal?" I asked him. I reached up and pushed on his shoulder. "Hey, I'm talking to you!"

He just stood there as if he was a vegetable. I assumed that he was some poor shmuck who'd been captured and had something done to his brain. I had remember that recently, when I had run-ins with the autons, they had started to give the option of 'surrender' to you. I thought that was unusual... But not now since I saw where surrender got you.

I blew in frustration and walked over to a nearby terminal that was showing a diagram of the human body. I didn't study it that long... I'd taken anatomy in high school - I wasn't impressed with it then, and I sure as hell wasn't impressed with it now. I looked over the rest of the room, my eyes returning now and then to the poor bastard staring blankly out into space. Then a probe rolled in through the door and I stepped out of the way and allowed it to pass. The probe went to the terminal that displayed the human body and began to access some more files. I looked over it's shoulder at the files that were coming up and noticed even more anatomy files... soon replaced by what looked like technical schematics along the same lines as a skeletal structure. I covered my mouth with my hand as soon as I figured out what I was looking at... design schematics for an android.

On my world, there was a big hub-bub about androids a few years ago. It led the world congress to pass the 123rd amendment that banned all production of androids and clones for fear that someone with evil intent would replace someone else or some bull like that. Regardless of anything, androids had been illegal on my world for years... But of course, when you're a super-sophisticated computer that has taken over the world and are seeking to kill anything human, the lawbook is the last thing you look at.

I turned my attention back to the man in the room. I walked over to him and examined his face. I looked at his eyes, his mouth... everything. I couldn't tell he was a robot just by looking at him.

I took a small Swiss army knife I'd been carrying with me and slashed the thing across it's face. The face didn't bleed it just peeled away to reveal a crome metal skull underneath. It made my skin crawl.

I knew there had to be more of them, so I reluctantly ventured back into the room where all of the body parts were stored - now I knew why they were being stored... the probes were using them to copy the human body.

I saw a probe scurry through another door and quickly, I jumped in after it before it closed again. There I saw them... dozens of them... Androids. Men, women, and a few children. All of them looked different and, much to my surprise, a couple of them looked familiar.

I didn't believe my eyes at first. I was looking at Henry Underwood - or at least a copy of him. Henry is one of the people who lives in the cave with the professor. He was alive and well when I last saw him and I couldn't figure out how the hell an android that looked like him was standing there in front of me.

Then it hit me... imaging! Henry had come with me a few times into the city to get supplies and food. Surely, his image had been captured by the CyANU security net and it had been used to create a duplicate of him. Every android in the room might be a copy of a real person... a survivor.

Then I think I turned as white as a sheet. If there was a copy of Henry, there sure as hell would be a copy of me as well. I set out to find it quickly looking over the dozens of other droids in the room - recognizing a few of them.

Finally, I found it... or me, I guess. I crept up to it and looked in it's face. It was like looking in a mirror and I had to admit, they did capture my good side.

I reached up to touch it's face when I heard the door open behind me. I walked back around to see if a probe had come in, but instead I was greeted by one of the most messed-up thing I'd ever seen.

There, standing in the doorway, was the first android I had seen - the one I had cut with the knife. It's face hung off of it, tattered and very, very gross. It surveyed the room as if it was searching and I had the worst feeling I was what it was searching for.

Not to worry, though, I had my scatter jacket on and the droid wouldn't be able to see me or so I thought and kept on thinking that until it darted towards me and grabbed me by the collar and hoisting me above it's head.

It carried me, kicking a screaming into the specimen room and threw me across the room - a couple of the containers broke my fall and probably my backbone as well.

The fluid washed over me. It was cold and felt slimy. A human arm was draped across my leg. I quickly jumped to my feet and ran out of the lab back into the large room the probes had created the wormhole in.

I looked behind me and saw the android giving chase. Silly me had probably activated some sort of special self-defense mechanism in it when I cut it's face. I should have known better.

I took up a stance and drew my gun, but before I could fire at it, it knocked me to the ground with a smashing blow to the head.

I staggered back to my feet just in time to get kicked in the gut. The android was fast and it was strong... and it was beating the crap out of me.

I frantically crawled away from it. I didn't have a plan at all, I just wanted to get the hell away from it. I jumped to my feet and erupted into a healthy stride. I had a destination in mind... the accelerator. No matter what happened to me, I HAD to destroy the accelerator or everything would go to hell in a handbasket.

I could sense that the android was right behind me so I grabbed at a passing probe-droid and tore it from it's tracks. It was light and I wielded it like a mace.

I smashed it into the android's body and didn't accomplish a damn thing. The android grabbed the other end of the probe and used it as leverage to throw me off balance. I crashed into the metal lab table the accelerator was on and rolled onto the other side.

The next thing I knew, I was being held in the air by my neck. The droid was carrying me across the room, right towards the massive wormhole that was still raging. It held me right over the edge and held me there for what seemed like forever. It was going to drop me into the vortex and strand me in a parallel dimension more than likely.

That just didn't sit well with me. I wrapped my legs around it's waist just before it dropped me and held onto it. It took a step back and tried to shake back and forth to get me to let go. In those few seconds, I formulated a plan.

I deduced that, in order to pass for human, the androids not only had to look human they had to weigh about the same too. Keeping this in mind, I arched my back and placed my hands on the floor. Mustering all my strength, I flipped the droid over me and sent it flying over me. I dropped to the floor and watched the android flop onto it's back a few feet from the wormhole.

It was on it's feet almost as soon as it hit the ground. I scissored my legs back around and kicked it's legs out from under it. I saw it stagger backwards and finally fall into the waiting wormhole disappearing into a brilliant flash of light.

I stayed on the floor for a few seconds breathing hard but quickly got to my feet when I saw more human shapes emerging from the lab.

The androids were awake.

I rose to my feet. My back hurt, my side hurt, and I was pretty sure I had a couple of broken ribs. I faced the androids - and one doppleganger - and sighed casually.

"All right," I wheezed. "Who else wants a can of whupass?"

I knew I didn't stand a chance of trashing them all. Hell, I could barely beat one of them! So, I decided to complete my mission.

I ran to the accelerator knocking a couple of the probes out of my way. The android replica of me and a couple of the others were getting closer and I didn't have any time to fish another weapon out of my pack, so I picked up the accelerator with my bare hands. I learned later that it was a mistake because the damned thing was so hot, it had burned me pretty bad.

So, low on options and pretty sure I couldn't permanently destroy the accelerator with my bare hands, I chucked the machine into the vortex that the other android had disappeared into.

THE CHANDLER

Quinn sat up straight. "But if a sliding accelerator is directly exposed to an energy center like a wormhole, the converging energies would cause..."

"...a huge ass explosion," Mac finished. "Too bad I didn't know about that at the time."

MACKENZIE'S STORY

I was thrown into the air by the explosion that followed. I felt as if the heat from the blast would burn me to a crisp.

When I hit the ground I was amazed that I was still alive. I was even more amazed by the fact that I could still move. I immediately got up ignoring the pain I felt in my side, head, hands, and a few other parts of my body and frantically looked for an escape route.

Surprisingly, it wasn't hard to find.

There, in the middle of the room where the wormhole had been was a huge hole in the floor as if the metal decking had been melted away. I guessed that CyANU had pumped so much power into the vortex, anything near it had been incinerated... I wondered if that was the fate that befell my synthetic friend.

A quick look behind me confirmed that many of the androids were still operational. The more fragile probe droids had been mangled and bent out of shape.

I ran for the hole and leaped into it. I could feel a field of heat pass through me as the hole rushed past me and I disappeared into the darkness. I hoped that the level below wasn't another huge lab, otherwise, I was going to be killed by the fall alone.

I hit the floor and collapsed to the ground. The room was pitch black illuminated only by the light shining in through the gaping hole in the ceiling. I finally dug inside my pack and came up with a palm light. I scanned the room and found that it was filled with more of the autons that had timers built into their exoskeleton. None of them were activated, thankfully.

I upholstered another energy weapon and aimed it towards the hole above me preparing to blow the heads off of anything that happened to peer over the edge.

The first one to look over was a woman - or rather, the approximation of one. I shot her square in the forehead and she fell into my foxhole. Her faux-body shattered as it hit the floor. I took a quick glance it at. The entry wound was a mass of wires and a strange dripping fluid.

Another looked over and I shot it... then another... and then another. Then there was a still silence and I came to the hasty conclusion that I might actually get out of this situation alive.

Then, the twenty or more autons in my supposed sanctuary snapped to life. The androids were smart, no doubt about that... they'd activated the autons and turned my place of safety into a death trap.

I shot as many of them as I could while they were still activating, but soon I was cornered on all sides. Curiously, not a one of them bothered to fire at me... their weapons systems were either not charged, or not completed at all.

One of them swung it's massive metallic arm towards me and I rolled to get out of it's way only to end up being hoisted off the ground by another one. It squeezed my wrist hard and I thought it was going to tear my arm off. In pain, I dropped my weapon and waited for the thing to finish me off.

And I waited...

And I waited...

I worked up the courage to open my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. The autons were frozen in place and the one that ad caught me had stalled with it's fist a few inches from my head.

They were all dead and useless and I considered myself the luckiest punk on Earth. There was only one explanation. "Thank you, Mallory.... Captain Beckett," I laughed still hanging in the air. "You are beautiful."

I pulled my hand free and crashed back onto the floor. It hurt. I didn't care.

I used the dead autons to climb back up through the hole into the lab and looked for the androids. I didn't see a one.

I poked my head into the lab and the other storage rooms and couldn't find them.

Then it hit me. To be a true threat, the androids couldn't be dependent on the main computer like all of the other robots in the world are. Perhaps it was CyANU's way of insuring it's continued domination in the event it ever suffered a system's failure or massive damage during an attack. The androids, who could operate completely independent from the computer, could go in and repair the damage themselves and then restart the system and restore the status quo. It was probably their number one priority which would explain why all of them split all of the sudden. I knew I had to find Quinn and Maggie as soon as I could.

I left the ruined lab behind and took a freight lift up to the upper levels. I didn't know where to find the main computer, but I heard Arturo say once that the core took up most of the upper half of the pyramid and that seemed like the logical place to go and look.

The lift stopped and I found myself in the pyramid's docking port. A couple of flyers were docked nearby and ready for launch. 'Good,' I thought. 'We'll need one of those if we need to escape.' I took a moment to put a password into the flyer's systems so that CyANU - if it was restarted - wouldn't be able to lock it down and then I took off looking for Quinn and Maggie so that I could warn them about the androids.

As I ran down another hallway, I heard an explosion and I could only think of one thing... Maggie's nearby.

I rounded the corner and came upon a large yellow and black striped door. I was able to open it and I found myself on a catwak overlooking the large computer core. I saw smoke coming from a catwalk two levels below me and I saw Maggie and Quinn backing out an exit. I yelled at them, "CAPTAIN BECKETT, WAIT!!!". Maggie paused and looked in my direction. She seemed to be angry about something, but I couldn't figure out what it was at the time.

When they both ran out of the core, I ran across the catwalk and jumped down onto the next level and then down onto the next. It hurt my ankles like hell, but I knew I had to get to them and warn them about the androids. Running into the corridor I saw them disappear into, I guess I took a wrong turn or got turned around some damn way, because next thing I knew, I was staring right at them and neither seemed very thrilled to see me at all.

I didn't care, I was glad to have caught up with them at all. "Jesus," I said. "I thought I'd never catch up to you two!"

The next thing I knew, Maggie flew at me kicking, hitting, and screaming. "You son of a bitch! We trusted you!!!"

I threw her off of me and grabbed this pipe that was propped up next to the wall. I waved it at her and told her to back off. "What are you talking about, Beckett? Have you lost your mind?"

There was a brilliant flash of light and, when I looked down, the floor next to my feet was smoking and glowing red.

"They've found us!" Quinn yelled.

We took cover and I tried to get them to follow me to the complex's docking port. "Come on! I've got a flyer waiting!"

Maggie's reply caught me off guard. "Do we look like a couple of idiots to you?"

"Maggie, we don't have time!" I protested as another energy bolt impacted the wall next to us. The attackers were autons and not androids... not that it mattered, since to me, dead by one was just as bad as dead by the other.

Quinn showed the timer to her. "For once, I agree..," she told me as Quinn pointed the timer down the corridor and created a wormhole.

It was all falling apart in front to me. What had gotten into these two? Why were they acting like I'd just knifed both of them in the back? "You're sliding!? Now!?" I asked in disbelief. "What about...!?"

"You've left us very little choice," Quinn replied to me. "Hope you enjoy your new world order!"

Before I could plead with them to tell me what the hell was going on, they jumped into the vortex and disappeared in a flash of light. I thought about going after them, but I knew in my heart it wouldn't do any good. If I went with them and their damaged tracker couldn't get me home, I'd have been stranded with them and everyone I'd left back in the caverns wouldn't know about the androids.

So, I didn't even wait for the wormhole to close. Instead, I used it as a distraction to double back the way I came and confuse the autons that were chasing us. I still had my scatter jacket and, with luck, the security system would have believed that I had escaped through the vortex with Maggie and Quinn.

I entered the core again and surveyed the damage. The core was intact - probably thanks to an electromagnetic containment field - but the catwalk and work stations surrounding it was destroyed and, through the mess of tangled wires and fried circuitry, I found the head of my android duplicate - destroyed by Captain Beckett in a justifiable fit of rage. It didn't take a rocket scientist to piece together that Quinn and Captain Beckett witnessed the duplicate restart the system and assumed it was me.

I scooped up the head and headed for the flyer. An hour later, I was headed back for San Francisco.

Professor Arturo was glad to see me, but not so glad to hear the news of what had happened at CyANU Central. Our little expedition into the core had done some damage, we learned that by hacking into the planetary database - repair time to the Brain Complex was estimated at thirty-two days.

Somehow, we knew that Quinn had managed to shut the system down once and we knew he could do it again. The problem was finding him and convincing him to come back and finishing the job he'd begun.

Within fifteen days, the professor had solved the problem of power consumption and rebuilt a working sliding accelerator. A new timer in hand, I bid everyone in the cave farewell and set out to track down the man who could deliver us from evil.

It wasn't an easy journey. I was new to sliding and had to go at it alone. I encountered many weird worlds like this one where outlaws on motorcycles ran most of western America. I encountered a race call Kromaggs - barely got away from them. There was this world that was picking up the pieces from some sort of disaster that had made everyone disappear for three years - I wasn't there long enough to ask. And twice, I ran into a not-at-all delightful young woman who, if I didn't know any better, was following you.

THE CHANDLER

Mackenzie picked up another slice of cold pizza. "And now you know the rest of the story," he said.

Quinn studied the head that Mackenzie had brought with him both with a sense of fascination and mild disgust. "It looks like it's built to function much like the human body does. There's a spine for support, ocular sensors for eyes, and I think this is a compact higher learning center where the brain should be. It even has something that looks like blood vessels... probably pumps some kind of lubricant or something." He turned the head over and something else caught his eye. "Look at this," he said showing a fine wire protruding from a split in the scalp. "I'd bet you anything that is a antennae or a modem uplink or something on that order. I haven't seen anything so incredibly put together... not even on Derric's world!"

"Derric's world?" Maggie asked. Colin's expression told the others he wanted to know too.

"He was an android," Quinn explained. "An a world populated by androids... it's a long story."

"You will have to tell us sometime," Colin replied.

"Some other time, bro." He placed the head on the coffee table and noticed that Colin still seemed uneasy about it. "It's no wonder we thought this thing was Mac," Quinn admitted. "In it's completed state, it'd be almost perfect. Hell, It'd be totally perfect."

"Which is why you have to come back with me," Mackenzie said. "These things are probably in full production now and the professor and our people won't stand a chance for much longer. We have to shut down CyANU permanently and we have to somehow shut the androids down too."

"That won't be easy since they're independent units," Quinn said.

"Wait a minute," Maggie mumbled.

Mac ignored her. "There has to be a way!"

Maggie stood and held her hands out unwilling to be overlooked any longer. "I said wait a damn minute!"

Everyone stopped talking and gave Maggie their undivided attention.

"Quinn, we can't risk taking him at his word," she insisted. "I admit, his story is credible, but for all we know, he may be leading us into a trap!"

"Maggie, we promised him...," Colin interjected.

"I know we promised him," she said. "But we have to be cautious... We have to know what we're getting into!"

Quinn walked over to her. "This is what we're getting into, Maggie," he said as serious as ever. "CyANU may still hold the key to sliding somewhere and, for all we know, may be constructing or already has constructed another accelerator. We leave this alone, we may be responsible, through our own inaction, of creating a force that is more deadly than the Kromaggs."

"Look, Q-Ball, I don't think that's at all possible," Rembrandt said.

"Oh no?" Quinn disagreed. "The Kromaggs invade worlds for supplies leaving most of the population alive. Even if they do invade completely, people live. Plus, the Kromaggs are limited by population... they don't have enough troops to hold too many worlds." He paced over to the window and looked out across the park below. "CyANU's army will invade world after world wiping out anything human it comes across. It'll make more robots and more robots until we won't be able to slide before running into them all the time! Rembrandt, it's my fault it got the accelerator in the first place, and it's my responsibility to stop it. Otherwise, I don't know if I could live with the guilt.... I... wouldn't want to live with the guilt." he turned back to them. "I'll leave you guys with the timer and I'll slide back with Mackenzie. One way or another, I'm going back and you can't talk me out of it."

There was a long silence and Rembrandt stepped to him. "Look man, you and me've been through a lot. Don't think for one minute I'd let you go at this alone."

Colin approached them. "Where you go, my brother, I will go. I just found out I had a brother and I am not about to loose him now."

They looked at Maggie. "Okay, I'll come too..." She shot the visitor an evil glance. "But I'm keeping an eye on you, Mackenzie. If I once even sense that you're going to double cross us, I won't hesitate to blow your head off."

"Nice to be back on you side again, Captain," Mackenzie grinned. "My timer has six hours until it expires. How about yours?"

Quinn picked it up and read the readout. "One hour and twenty."

"Great, we'll take yours," Mac suggested. "I trust you still have the coordinates for my homeworld?"

"I do," Quinn said.

Mackenzie slapped Colin on the back and grinned. "So, farmboy, think you can keep up on my world?"

Colin returned a nervous smile. "I can hardly wait," he said.

Colin suddenly realized that he had just told his first lie.

Maggie had avoided talking to Mackenzie for much of the time they were waiting for the timer to expire. Mac had tried a few time to strike up a conversation with her, but she would brush him off rudely.

While she was packing a backpack with some food she intended to bring the children who lived in the caves, Mac snuck up behind her and waited for her to notice him.

"Maggie, what the hell is your problem?" he finally asked after a few minutes of being ignored.

She stopped packing and glared at him. "My problem is about five ten, very annoying, and standing in front of me. Do you need me to be more specific?"

"You know I'm innocent," he shot back. "I can't understand why you're being such a bitch to me!"

Maggie looked like she was going to hit him, but suddenly, she calmed and turned away from him packing more canned foods into the pack. "You just don't understand," she told him.

"I believe that was the point of me striking up this conversation in the first place."

Maggie turned back around and faced him leaning up against the bar. "Mac, I told you about Col. Rickman, didn't I?"

"The guy who'd suck people's brains out and..."

Maggie nodded cutting him off. "Have you ever been betrayed by someone you've trusted implicitly?"

Mackenzie shook his head slowly. "No."

"Well," Maggie began. "I have..."

"I'm sorry," Mac whispered. "Look, you don't have to..."

"No," Maggie spouted. Tears were beginning to well in her eyes. "I have to say this otherwise I'm going to bottle up again."

Mac pulled up one of the bar stools and motioned for her to sit down.

Maggie took her seat and drew a breath before continuing. "I served with Rickman for a long time. I trusted him with my life and then, one day, during my world's most perilous hour, I found out that he had sacrificed over a hundred people and murdered my husband to save his own neck. He'd betrayed me..."

"I'm sorry," Mac said again.

"I'm not done," Maggie insisted. "Having Rickman betray me wasn't the worst thing because I'd finally known betrayal from both sides."

"Both sides?" Mac asked.

"About a year before that," Maggie said as the tears began to roll down her face, "I had an affair with him... I cheated on my own husband with the man that would eventually murder him. It was pure selfishness on my part."

She looked over at Mackenzie and expected to see a snide expression or a lop-sided smirk. Instead, all she saw was a man listening... not judging her or mocking her... just listening.

"Steven died and I never told him the truth," she sobbed. "I never got a chance to say I was sorry..." She wiped her face and cursed her own weakness. "I hated myself and I went on hating myself for months. I hopped on the sliding train with Quinn and Rembrandt and Wade and did my best to alienate them because I hated myself and I didn't want to trust anyone again because I didn't want to hurt the way I had been hurt again. That cost me the friendship of someone I'll probably never see again... Someone who we've lost along the way." She wiped yet another tear off of her face. If Wade only knew that Maggie was crying over her now! "Because of that, I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, get off my ass, and open up to people..."

"...and then," Mac deduced, "you met me, you fell in love with me, and you thought I betrayed you and I made you hurt again. When I came back for you, I opened up that old wound again."

Maggie simply nodded and resumed packing.

"Maggie," Mackenzie said. "If I had known, I wouldn't have come back here..."

"Yes you would have," she grinned. "You care too much about your world to brush it off over a woman. Besides, I guess... I'm kind of glad you came back and told us what happened."

"Ah," Mac laughed. "Nice to know you trust me again."

Maggie slung the pack over her shoulder and as she walked past him, she casually remarked. "I never trusted you."

"Yes you do," he sang.

"No, I don't," she playfully sang back.

Maggie wasn't paying attention and almost ran into Colin.

"Oh, Colin!" she yelped. "I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention!"

"Maggie, are you okay?" he asked her. "Your face is red." He gave Mac a threatening glare. "Did he do anything to you?"

Maggie smiled and shook Colin's shoulder. "No, everything's fine."

Colin nodded, a little confused at Maggie's sudden change of demeanor. "Very well," he said. "Quinn sent me to tell you, the vortex will open in less than five minutes. He has got the timer set to return us to Mr. Mackenzie's homeworld."

"It's just Mackenzie, farmboy," Mac smiled.

"Oh, I see...," Colin returned. "Mackenzie is your first name? What is your last?"

"You know, farmboy, just Mackenzie or Mac will do."

"Very well," he answered. "I am Colin... not farmboy."

Colin turned on his heals and walked out of the kitchen. Maggie cast a glance back at Mackenzie who was shaking his head and laughing softly.

"You know, Captain, I like that kid."

"Marley's ghost!" Colin exclaimed aloud when he had finally got his first good look at the San Francisco skyline in the distance
on Mackenzie's world. "It's the most amazing thing I have ever seen."

"You said the same thing about the toilet last week," Quinn reminded him as Rembrandt popped out of the vortex behind them.
"Although, after a lifetime of using outhouses, I could see why you'd think that."

"Whoa," Remmy rasped gazing at the skyline. "You were right Q-Ball, it's like the Jetsons to the Nth degree!"

Mac and Maggie tumbled out of the wormhole last and then, with little pomp or circumstance, the swirling blue vortex
disappeared with an odd sucking sound.

"Home sweet home," Mackenzie said rising to his feet.

Maggie pointed to the skyline. "Look," she said. "The flyers are operational again. CyANU really is back on-line."

"I told you," Mac said. He glanced around the area they had landed in. It was full of trees and appeared to be devoid of
anything synthetic and dangerous. "I know this place," he said. "It's about... three or four miles from the cavern."

"That's all?" Maggie exclaimed. "A four-hundred mile radius and we land that close to your hideout?" She looked at Quinn
suspiciously.

"With all of the work we did in that cavern trying to break the dimensional barrier, we probably weakened the astral plane in
this area," he explained to her trying to quell her suspicion about their good fortune. "We just slid into the place of least
resistance."

"Man," Rembrandt said to Colin. "I wish I had a degree in technobabble so I could understand what the hell he's talking about."

Colin decided to help him out. "What he was saying is that the barrier in this..."

Rembrandt cupped his hand over Colin's mouth silencing him. "On second thought," he said. "maybe ignorance can be bliss."

Quinn glanced at the timer. "Well, I've got some good news and some bad news," he told the others. "Which do you want first?"

"The bad," his friends said in unison.

"All right," Quinn responded fighting the urge to grin. "The bad news is that the interference is back. It looks like CyANU's
opened another sustained sliding vortex."

"Great," Rembrandt huffed. "So what's the good news?"

"It looks like this new interference pattern's weaker than the first one," he explained. "My guess is that CyANU's having trouble
recreating the accelerator."

"So what does that mean?" Colin inquired.

"It means," Quinn told him, "that we've got time to stop it."

"How much time?" Maggie asked.

"Days... Weeks... Months... Years...," Quinn guessed, "Maybe a few hours or even less than that. Your guess is every bit as
good as mine."

"Which way to the caves?" Maggie said to Mac obviously wanting to get out of the open.

He pointed to the west. "Through those trees near the river," he told her. "Feel up to a healthy hike, Captain?"

Maggie pushed past him and started in the direction he's indicated. "Just try to keep up," she said wryly.

Rembrandt, Quinn, and Colin watched them march into the darkness of the foliage. "You know," Quinn groaned. "If I'd known
that this was going to turn into Maggie and Mac's private boot camp, I think I would have stayed behind."

"Quinn," Colin reacted. "I do not think I would have had to think about it."

"Me neither," Rembrandt sighed as they started off after them.

Several hours later, every bone in Quinn's body ached. He hadn't walked so far in as long as he could remember. The terrain he
was forced to cover didn't help the soreness in his body either and from the look of things, Rembrandt and Colin were suffering
every bit as much as he was.

But not Maggie and Mackenzie. Neither one of them seemed perturbed by their ordeal at all. Both of them were in great shape
and probably didn't feel a tinge of pain. Quinn considered that and sighed. 'God I hate them.'

Mackenzie stopped at the vine wall of the cliff and pulled a couple of the vines out of the way revealing the opening to the cave.
He regarded the entrance with a suspicious eye.

"Something wrong?" Maggie asked him.

He stared into the blackness of the cavern. "I don't know," he mumbled. "Just a feeling."

"Come on," she said grabbing him by the arm and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "I bet there are a dozen people in there who
are dying to see you again."

He smiled. "Yeah, and I guess they'll be glad to see you too."

Mac and Maggie led the way down the dark cave and up to the narrow opening to the interior cavern where the camp was
located. Maggie let Mackenzie go through the opening first and once she followed him through, Quinn, Colin, and then
Rembrandt did the same. Soon, they were all looking at the shacks and huts that had been Mac and twenty other's home for six
years.

"Reminds me of Hawaii: 1983," Rembrandt remarked looking over the shacks. "Topps played to one of those fancy resorts
where everything was made up to look like Gilligan's Island." He grinned. "It was pretty stupid looking, but it was the right
setting to play "Soul Surfin'" in."

Mackenzie instantly knew something was wrong as soon as he first laid eyes on the camp. No one was there. The crops that
they had lived off of were wilted and a basket full of tomatoes nearby were shriveled and mildewed.

"What the hell?" Quinn whispered to no one but himself. "Where is everyone?"

Mac didn't answer. He just shook his head repeatedly in disbelief before jumping to his feet and running towards the huts.

"Mac, WAIT!" Maggie yelled after him before giving chase.

He poked his head inside all of the huts he came to calling the names of the people who used to live there. No one answered
and finally, Mackenzie's frantic search ended with him dropping to his knees and staring at something on the dirt floor of the
cave.

Maggie caught up to him and saw that he had picked up a tattered old rag doll that had been half buried in the dirt.

"Mac?" She said getting down on one knee and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"They're gone," he said to her. "Everybody. Everyone who was here. They're gone." He looked down at the rag doll. "This was
a toy I gave to Carla Addams. She... She was born here about three months after the takeover." He held the doll to his chest as
he began to loose control over his emotions. "She never knew what it was like to be free. Oh, God... She'll never know."

Quinn never suspected that anything could ever make this gruff and generally sarcastic person cry and now that he had seen it
happen, he didn't know what to say. He wanted to say something, but what? Any sentiment would seem so hollow.

But he had to say something. "Mac," he began. "Maybe..."

Before he could finish, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Not a killer robot, but a man.

"Who's there?" a voice demanded.

Mac and Maggie jumped to their feet.

"I said, who's there!?" the voice demanded again.

A wave of relief passed over Mackenzie's face. "Professor Arturo?"

The man stepped into the light and it was indeed the Professor. The man that Maggie and Quinn had met months prior.

"Professor, thank god!" Mac sighed as he clasped Arturo's arm and gave it a nice shake. "Where is everyone?"

Arturo looked him in the eyes and drew in a shaky breath. "Gone," he replied. "The autons found the cave about a month ago. I
managed to escape into the woods and when I came back... well, no one was here. I'm sorry, my boy."

Mac's face fell. "Oh no..."

"Professor," Quinn said trying to keep the situation from turning into a mourning session. He felt for Mac and Arturo, but he
didn't want to waste any time. "This is Rembrandt Brown and my brother, Colin Mallory."

Arturo nodded to them.

"It's good to see you again, professor," Rembrandt said.

"You as well, sir," Arturo replied.

"Professor," Colin said extending his hand which Arturo shook cordially.

"Look," Maggie interrupted. "It's not safe here. Professor, we've got to leave and go to the other stronghold."

"Indeed," Arturo answered. "That would be prudent."

Quinn didn't remember anything about another stronghold, but he assumed that Mackenzie or maybe the professor had
mentioned it during their last visit.

"So, grab what you need and let's get moving," Maggie continued. "It's a long trip."

"I will be back in a moment, ma'am," he said turning and entering his hut.

As soon as Arturo was out of earshot Maggie turned to the others. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"What?" Rembrandt asked. "What about the professor?"

She grabbed his hand and pulled him along. "That's not the professor!"

Rembrandt stared at Maggie in confusion. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! What do you mean that's not the professor!?"

"Notice the way he acted like he'd already met you? He said that it was also good to see you again," Maggie answered him
fanatically. "Remmy, he's never met you! Not this Arturo, anyway!"

Mackenzie nodded. "...and there is no other stronghold," he added. "You were just testing him."

"Android...," Quinn deduced. "Colin, Rembrandt, move it! We've gotta go NOW!"

They all ran for the opening to the cave leaving the automaton behind. Rembrandt was the first one through followed by Maggie
then by Quinn. Colin stood by allowed everyone to go first. It was amazing to Quinn that even in the most dire situation, Colin
was still a perfect gentlemen. Still, this was not the time to argue the point with him.

It seemed to take an eternity to inch through the narrow opening that had made the refugees seem so secure. Now, it seemed
more like a deathtrap. "Colin, come on!" Quinn whispered to his brother.

Colin nodded and began to make his way into the fissure. Slowly he sidestepped following Quinn and the others and did so until
he felt his shirt sleeve get hung on something. He stopped and reached over with his other hand trying to free himself expecting
to find his shirt to be hung on a sharp piece of rock. Instead, he felt a strong hand grasping his clothing. "Quinn!" he yelled as the
android copy of Arturo pulled him back into the main chamber. He flew out of the fissure as the robot flung him backwards.

"COLIN!" Quinn screamed jumping out of the fissure and onto the android Arturo's back. "Let go of him, you son of a..."

Before Quinn could finish his curse, the android jumped into the air and fell backwards onto it's back pinning Quinn underneath
it. Quinn felt the air rush out of his lungs as he was crushed under the weight of the machine and immediately let go and
scrambled to get away from it. Before he could, however, the android grabbed Quinn by the leg and pulled him backwards.
Quinn rolled around and kicked the replica in the head several times to no avail. Before the robot could do him any harm, a
large rock crashed down onto it's head. The robot whirled around to face it's new attacker.

It was Colin holding a cantaloupe-sized rock. The android retaliated by jumping foreword with lighting speed and grabbing
Colin by the neck. He gasped for air as the synthetic fingers contracted around his windpipe.

Quinn rose to his feet and tried to pry his brother loose but ended up a prisoner of the android's other hand. "Let go of me!" he
screamed fighting the impossibly strong grip.

Colin's face turned purple as he gagged for air. Something had to be done fast or else he would be dead soon. Quinn hung there
helplessly suspended in the air frantically trying to loosen the machine's hold on him and praying that something - anything would
save them.

Then, as if a divine ear was listening, the professor's head erupted in a mass of fire and sparks and the android's body twisted
sideways, falling to the ground.

Colin landed in a heap and greedily sucked in all of the precious oxygen his lungs could hold. Quinn ran to him to see if he was
all right looking up momentarily to see what had saved them.

Maggie and Mackenzie were standing near the opening to the cave holding small black weapons. Maggie's was smoking at the
tip so Quinn surmised that she had fired the killshot.

He grinned. "Thanks a lot, Mag..."

Before he could finish, the burned and mutilated android jumped to it's feet and flung itself at Maggie and Mac. Both of them
opened fire until the android lay smoking and useless on the cave floor.

"Pale imitation," Mackenzie sneered.

"Colin, you okay, bro?" Quinn asked helping him to his feet.

Colin nodded an affirmative. "He looked completely human," he said before pausing for a cough. "I... I could not tell that he was
a machine!"

"That's why these things are so dangerous," Mac said. "The people here never had a chance." He looked away in disgust - not
at the sliders or the android, but at himself and the fact that he hadn't been there to die with the others.

"So what do we do now?" Rembrandt asked.

"We have one of two options," Maggie suggested. "One: We head north and out of the interference field and slide off this
world." She put her hand on Mackenzie's shoulder. "All of us."

"And option number two?" Colin asked.

Maggie held her gun up and, with stone-cold seriousness, she answered his question without saying a word.

"I choose option number two," Quinn said without pause. "But I'm not going to make that decision for the rest of you."

"I'll be damned if you think I'm letting you go alone," Mac told him. His gaze shifted to Maggie.

"I'm in," she answered.

"Colin... Rembrandt...," Quinn said softly. "You two didn't start this fight, and I would never expect you to come with us if you
didn't want to. Truth is... we're probably not coming back, and we won't think any less of either of you if you stay behind. We
can leave the timer with you and..."

"Q-Ball," Rembrandt said shaking his head. "Why don't you just save your breath? I've been at your side for four years now.
We've fought the maggs, evil duplicates, giant worms, vampires, zombies, animal-men, and a few other things I still think are
hallucinations from stuff I did in the sixties. The point is," Rembrandt continued. "I've never backed out on you before, and I ain't
gonna start now."

"A thinking machine," Colin said to himself before turning back to the group. "It sounds... fascinating. I would never forgive
myself if I missed out on the chance to see it and perhaps take it apart and see how it works."

"For once, bro...," Quinn laughed. "You'll get your chance."

"Are you going to be okay?" Maggie whispered to Mac who had turned away from the group.

He shook his head and looked back at the deserted shacks in the dim light of the cave. "No," he answered her, "I'm not. And I
don't think I ever will be again."

She wrapped her arms around him and held him. "I am so sorry," she whispered to him.

"I know you are," he answered. "I know you are."

"Guys," Rembrandt interrupted, "I'm sorry for interrupting you guys, but it's pretty likely that the professor look-a-like down
there sent out a signal or something before you guys trashed him."

"He's right," Mac agreed. "We need to gather up what we can and get to the flyer."

"You've still got it?" Quinn asked amazed that Mac was able to hold on to such a large piece of equipment.

"Hopefully, the auton's didn't find where I hid it," Mac answered heading for Arturo's shack, "It's in a valley about half a mile
from here."

They entered the ransacked lab and began rummaging for weapons that the professor might have left behind. Unfortunately, all
of the high tech equipment that used to be in the hut was absent - hauled off by the robotic attackers.

They searched for about ten minutes before giving up. "Quinn," Colin said. "Perhaps he left a message in case Mackenzie came
back."

"I haven't seen one," Mac told him.

"What about that?" Colin said pointing at a nearby laptop computer sitting in the corner.

"That thing? Hell, the autons didn't even bother to take it." Mac said a little surprised. "Arturo told me that thing is from the
sixties. I mean, it's analog... and DOS. I can't operate DOS."

"A computer world and you can't run DOS?" Maggie scoffed.

"Why would he?" Quinn asked. "This world is so far ahead of any other we've been on, the computer's speak plain English. Any
idiot here could use a computer!" He looked at Mac and shrugged sheepishly. "No offense."

"I'll hit you later," Mac responded as Quinn booted up the machine. "I never knew why the professor kept this dinosaur. No
other system in the world uses or can even understand analog."

"Not even CyANU?" Quinn asked still working on the laptop.

"No, not even...,"

"Well," Quinn grinned. "Now you know why he kept it." He finished typing and stepped back. "What the hell?"

The screen displayed a series of wavy lines and a message that blinked across the yellowed screen. It said "GESUNTITE".

"Gesuntite?" Rembrandt read. "...the hell does that mean?"

"If this is a message from the professor," Quinn surmised, "then he would want to keep it confidential if the autons busted into
the cave." He looked at the others. "They wouldn't have bothered taking a analog computer because it would be useless to
them."

"Right," Colin agreed. "But what about the message? Gesuntite? What could it mean?"

Mac straightened up. "The professor never took chances," he told them. "If they did access the message he would make it so
that a computer driven by logic wouldn't be able to understand it."

"So," Rembrandt added. "To understand this message, we have to think illogically?"

"Shouldn't be too much of a problem," Maggie joked.

"Okay," Quinn said turning his attention back to the strange message. "He'd make it so that we could understand it," He sighed
and thought about the riddle before them. "You say 'Gesuntite' to someone who sneezes."

"...and someone who sneezes has a cold or something of that nature," Colin thought out loud.

"Colin!" Quinn exclaimed, "That's brilliant!"

"It was?" Colin answered a little bewildered.

"What is a cold?" Quinn asked him.

Colin cocked his head. "A sickness."

"More than that," Quinn grinned. "What causes a cold?"

"I do not know," Colin admitted. "Staying out too long in the winter?"

Rembrandt rubbed his chin. "Germs?"

"A virus," Maggie answered for him. Her face lit up and a slow grin crossed her face. "...a computer virus."

"My god," Quinn whispered. "Remember, before we left for LA the first time we were here, Arturo said he was working on
something more 'devastating'! This is it! He didn't just leave us a message... he left us a weapon!"

The flyer had been where Mackenzie had left it six months earlier. It was almost identical to the one that had carried him, Quinn,
and Maggie to Los Angeles to take on the devil computer. Now, it was taking them back to finish the job they had started.

"It's a voracious little sucker," Quinn said as he studied the virus readouts on the old computer. "Brilliant too. It's designed to
attack nonessential functions first without setting off alarms. After a while, the affected systems begin to write codes that are
useless by themselves, but when combined together, they cause higher memory to freeze up."

"...and that causes CyANU to crash and burn," Rembrandt chimed in. "Correct?"

"Incorrect," Quinn corrected him.

Rembrandt arched an eyebrow. "Come again?"

"It's a brilliantly written computer virus," Quinn explained. "Problem is, CyANU is even more brilliant." He picked up a
datacrystal - a more sophisticated means of storing data he'd downloaded the virus into - and held it up. "We could throw this
down CyANU's throat and she might smile at us and keep running like business as usual. At the most, the Arturo Virus may
slow her down for a minute or two."

"A minute or two is going to be fine," Mackenzie said. "Problem is downloading the virus into CyANU with all of the filters she
has." He sighed as he put the flyer on auto pilot and turned around. "It's going to be tricky."

"We barely got into brain complex the first time!" Maggie huffed. "And that was with the element of surprise AND
scatterjackerts. I feel like we're going in their naked."

"In a sense we are," Mac agreed. He looked at Quinn. "Got a plan, brain boy?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Quinn said.

"And that is?" Colin asked.

"I'm going to," he coughed and continued in a uneasy voice, "...tell CyANU I'm coming."

"You're gonna what!?" Rembrandt exclaimed in disbelief.

"Just listen to me, cryin' man," Quinn said holding out his hands and silencing his friends. "My duplicate on this world was a
CyANU programmer. Last time we were here, she let me talk to her through the VR helmet. Hell, Remmy, she even shut down
when I asked her to! If I can get clearance to get in there again..."

"...CyANU will blow you to atoms for your trouble," Mac told him. "Look, she's aware of what you did last time you were
here. The thing learns!"

"You got a better idea?" Quinn asked him. When he didn't get an answer, he nodded. "I didn't think so."

Suddenly, the cabin was rocked by a bang. "What the hell was that!?" Maggie asked looking over the readouts. "Did we hit
something?"

"No," Mackenzie sneered. "Something hit US."

With that, two flyers - a sleeker variety - streaked overhead and arched around while firing on the slider's flyer. Mac jerked the
controls and sent the aircraft into a spin causing the unbuckled passengers to fly throughout the cabin. Regardless, Mac
managed to get out of the line of fire.

"Let me have the controls!" Maggie ordered.

"Maggie," Mac protested. "You're..."

"...an air force officer," she interrupted. "You're not. I used to fly the Harriers, remember?"

The flyer was hit again and Mack nodded. "Save our asses, Captain," he said. "And that's an order."

"Yessir," she answered before taking the flyer into a dive. "What can you tell me about those ships following us?" she asked. "I
haven't seen any others like 'em."

"Attack drones," he said clutching the sides of his seat. "High velocity, heavily armed and armored. They won the Antarctica
uprising for us back in '89."

"Weaknesses?" Maggie demanded as she leveled the ship and began flying dangerously low to the ground.

Mac shook his head. "I don't know of any."

Maggie growled and took the ship into the trees, twisting and turning and occasionally decapitating a few. "Are they still with
us?"

"Affirmative," Mac answered. "Two on our tail."

"Okay," Maggie whispered. She yelled to the others: "You all have five seconds to buckle up!"

Rembrandt slapped his seatbelt shut. "For what, girl?"

No sooner had he finished his sentence, he felt his stomach rise into his throat. He seemed to hover above his seat as the flyer
executed a perfect loop-de-loop finally righting itself behind the perusing attackers. "Weapons!" Maggie bellowed.

"Ready!" Mackenzie hollered holding a joystick. Quinn figured that it had been retracted under the console until now since he'd
never noticed it before.

Maggie smirked. "FIRE!"

Two white-hot bolts leaped from the slider's ship and struck the ship ahead of them repeatedly on the backside. When the
smoke cleared, the enemy craft was still in the air and there was no suggestion of any damage.

"Heavily armored, huh?" Maggie groaned as the two attack drones split up and resumed their positions behind them. "This is
insane!" she said slamming her fist down onto the panel. "How the hell are we supposed to get away from what we can't shoot
at!"

"We give 'em a cold!" Quinn blurted out sticking his head between the pilot and co-pilot. "Is there anyway we can transmit a
message to them and attach the virus to it?"

"We can try," he said. He took the datacrystal from Quinn and inserted it into a port on the console. He then looked back at the
front windshield. "Computer: attach program on datacrystal onto next outgoing message. Do not read or store the program."

"Ready," a female computerized voice answered

"What are you going to tell them?" Mackenzie asked Quinn.

"I'm going to tell them what they want to hear," he answered.

Mac nodded and indicated a video screen. "Press the yellow button and speak into that. The virus will upload into their system
unless they recognize it as dangerous, of course."

Quinn pressed the yellow button. "This is Quinn Mallory on board the flyer you are pursuing." He looked at the others and
continued the message. "We surrender."

An eerie silence filled the cabin as the attack drones stopped firing on the slider's aircraft. Suddenly, a deep computerized voice
filled the cockpit. "YOU WILL LAND YOUR FLYER IN ONE MINUTE OR BE DESTROYED."

"Now what?" Rembrandt whispered.

Quinn pressed the button again and the channel closed. "Did they get it?" he asked referring to the virus.

Mac nodded. "It uploaded before you finished the first word."

"Have they recognized it?" Quinn asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know."

"FIFTY SECONDS," the computerized voice droned.

"Look," Maggie added. "Maybe it takes a few seconds."

There was a moan from the back and Quinn, Mac, and Maggie turned around to see what it was. "Colin?" Maggie asked. "Was
that you?"

Colin nodded. He was rubbing his left ankle and twisting his face in pain everytime his fingers hit a certain spot. "I... think I hurt
myself," he told them.

"FORTY SECONDS."

"Man!" Rembrandt grumbled. "How much longer can it take?"

"That's the problem," Quinn answered him. "The virus can either take seconds, or weeks. Maybe even longer."

"You could have said that a minute ago!" Maggie yelled.

"THIRTY SECONDS."

"We can land," Maggie then suggested. "We can fight them on the ground!"

Mac wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "We try to fight, the guns on that aircraft will blow us to kingdom come!"

"TWENTY SECONDS."

"So what do we do?" Colin asked.

No answer came.

"TEN SECONDS."

Rembrandt took in a shaky breath.

"NINE..., EIGHT..., SEVEN..., SIX..., FIVE..., SIX...,"

"Six, five, six?" Quinn repeated.

"SIX..., FI..., SI..., ERROR... ERROR... ERROR... SYSTEMS... ERROR... 01000111101000101000101010100101010."

The voice spat out ones and zeros at such a rapid pace that the words soon coalesced into a meaningless jumble that became
unintelligible.

Suddenly, one of the two attack drones zoomed overhead causing everyone in the cabin to duck. They watched as the infected
airship careened mindlessly through the air before impacting the ground in a spectacular fireball.

"The other one went down two miles behind us," Mac revealed checking his 3-D radar.

Quinn seated himself and closed his eyes. "Thanks professor," he said to only himself... and perhaps someone else who might be
listening.

No sooner had the crisis passed, Maggie was up and looking after her injured teammate.

"Colin," she said. "What hurts? Your ankle?"

"Yes," he told her. "When the flyer veered away from the attack drones the first time, it caught me off guard. I landed on it
wrong."

Maggie ran her fingers over the tendons of his ankle. Colin's face would jerk every now and then. "Looks like it's bruising," she
said. "I think you sprained it."

"This is terrible," Colin moaned.

"It'll be all right in about a week," Quinn laughed. "It's not like we have to amputate it or anything."

"Quinn," Colin whispered to him, "I can't walk... not very well at the least."

"You can hobble," Quinn encouraged him.

"No," Maggie interrupted. "Colin's right. He can't walk."

"So now what?" Rembrandt asked. "Colin's hurt and we're all about to break into the great and powerful Oz's house!"

"Who's?" Colin asked.

Maggie ignored him. "We are. Colin's not. It's too dangerous."

"But...," Colin stammered.

"Hush," Maggie ordered. "I know you haven't been on the team very long, but when I've made up my mind, you and no other
force on this earth or any other can change it."

"Girl's got a point," Rembrandt nodded trying to conceal a thin smile.

"So what does he do while we're in the brain complex?" Quinn asked her.

Mac stepped in. "He stays on the flyer," he said, "We'll need someone on board anyway to keep this thing safe. It could be our
escape route if things get hairy."

"Keep it safe how?" Rembrandt asked in a huff. "Look, Mac, I don't know if you've been paying attention here, but this kid ain't
exactly up on recent technology!"

"If he gets in trouble," Mac explained, "all he has to do is press this button." He pointed at a blue and red button on the console
above the pilot's seat. "It's a 'hold above position' program I installed."

"Hold above position?" Colin asked.

"It means that the flyer will take off," Mackenzie explained, "and fly in a random pattern above the position where you took off
of. To land, all you've gotta do is press the same button again and it'll put you right down where you took off nice and easy."

Colin nodded, visibly nervous.

"Look," Mac grinned, "I'm just telling you as a precaution. Besides, if you ask me, I'm sure the autons will leave you and the
flyer alone."

Colin smiled and Mac returned to the pilot's seat. Maggie took the co-pilot's seat next to him. "That's a little out of character,"
Maggie whispered.

"What?" He asked turning to her.

"The reassuring 'it'll be all right' act you just gave to Colin," she explained.

"Oh, that," he grinned. "I told you... I like that kid. Reminds me of a brother I had once."

"I didn't know you had one," Maggie said resting her head on her hand and listening.

"His name was Byron," he told her. His face dropped at the memory. "He died during the takeover."

"I'm sorry," Maggie whispered.

Mac shrugged the emotion off. "It... It was a long time ago, you know? It hurts, but I like talking about him. It feels like he's still
alive. As if... he's still a part of me."

Maggie nodded and looked down to her feet. She looked back up at him considering what he'd just said. "How long have we
got until we get to LA?"

"An hour," he answered.

"Great," she smiled. "you can tell me about your brother. And... I can tell you about someone who was special to me."

"Sounds fair," Mac answered. "You go first, Captain."

Maggie drew in a breath. "I met Steven Jenson back when I first joined the Air Force. He was an up and coming scientist and I
was a young hot shot who had *way* too much attitude..."

For the next hour, Mackenzie and Maggie shared the connection again. They told each other of good times and sad times, of
their hopes and fears, of crazy dreams and harsh realities. Before they set down in the Hollywood hills, the two were laughing
together and, in the process, they lost a little emotional baggage together too.

"Man," Rembrandt whispered to Colin as he unbuckled himself and stood. "That girl's got it bad for him."

"Indeed," Colin nodded. "What do you think they will do?"

"Do?" Rembrandt asked.

Colin gestured to Maggie and Mackenzie who were still prepping the craft in case Colin needed to take off while they were
gone. "Isn't it obvious?" he said. "They are in love."

"Yeah," Quinn smiled, "it's more than a little obvious. Even if they aren't going to admit it openly."

Colin continued, "So, do you think Maggie is going to stay behind with Mackenzie?"

"There's nothing here for them to stay behind for," Rembrandt said. "I don't know, maybe we can take him along. Mac, I mean.
God knows with all of the maggs we've been coming across lately, we could certainly use some more muscle on the team."

"Look," Quinn said as Mac and Maggie finished and started to unbuckle. "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. We've
got a computer to shut down." He picked up the datacrystal and put it in his pocket. Next, he took out the timer and handed it
to Colin. "I think this'll be safer with you."

Colin nodded and limped to the back hatch where everyone was disembarking.

"I think it'll take us about four hours to get there from here on foot," Mackenzie figured. "Unless, we can capture another car."
He pointed back to the pilot's seat. "Any trouble, press the button."

Colin nodded.

"And shut that hatch!" Mackenzie ordered.

Colin looked confused.

Mac rolled his eyes. "On the panel by the door. Press the green button three times, the yellow button twice, and then the
blinking red button three times."

"See you soon, bro," Quinn waved as they marched out into the darkness.

Colin shut the door as Mackenzie had ordered and he limped over to the pilot's seat and waited. His heart was beating as fast
as it had when he had first flown in his hangglider. He needed to hear a voice... any voice.

"Um, computer?" he said.

"READY," the feminine voice droned.

Colin was a bit uncomfortable talking to a machine, but he had to pass the time somehow. "Uh...," he stammered "What can you
tell me about the CyANU Brain Complex?"

"INFORMATION REGARDING THE CBC IS CLASSIFIED."

"Well, can you at least tell me where it's at?" Colin compromised.

"THE CBC IS LOCATED IN GRID BETA-FOUR-A."

"Can you show me a map?"

The 3-D display screen lit up in front of him and showed the grid of a city map. The screen zoomed in on a specific part of the
city and onto a blinking red building.

"I see," Colin whispered. "Computer, can you warn me if anything is approaching outside the ship?"

"AFFIRMATIVE," the voice answered.

Colin nodded and leaned back in the chair. His hands brushed over the joystick and controls as he remembered how Maggie
had operated the controls. 'It must be amazing,' he thought, 'to control such a machine.'

He drew in a breath and closed his eyes. It would be amazing, but he wasn't in too much of a hurry to try it out. Not today,
anyway.
 
 

Quinn took heart in the fact that everyone seemed to be suffering about as much as he was this time around. They'd been
walking for hours and were still several blocks from the brain complex and, so far, they'd seen extremely lucky not to have run
into any guards, but their bodies ached from the strain. Every muscle in his body was crying for rest.

"This is too easy," Mac grumbled. "We should've come across an auton or something!"

"Look, man," Rembrandt breathed scanning the darkened street with a small hand weapon, "don't jinx it. There is such a thing
as luck."

"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck," Mackenzie shot back.

"Whatever, Obi Kenobi," Maggie answered.

"Obi what?" Mac questioned her.

"Guys!" Quinn said silencing them. "I think we've got company."

Far down the street, there was a clinking sound as if metal was hitting the asphalt and there would be a quick reflection of light.
Then, they walked out of the shadows. Autons... dozens of them.

"That is a whole lot of robots," Maggie whispered to the others as the metal army slowly approached them. "Got any
suggestions?"

"Yeah," Quinn answered. "The professor always said something that was very appropriate in situations like this."

Everyone else looked at him expecting something profound that would solve everything.

Quinn looked at them. "RUN!!! RUN LIKE HELL!!!"

Following Quinn's lead, the team ducked into a nearby alley that lead out to another street one block away.

"Are they following us?" Maggie called out.

Rembrandt was bringing up the rear. "I don't see any, girl," he called back.

"This is weird," Mac added. "They HAD to have seen us."

They ran out onto the next street. "I think we lost 'em," Quinn huffed trying to catch his breath.

"Uh, Quinn," Maggie said nervously tapping him on the shoulder, "think again."

Quinn turned and saw another formation of auton soldiers marching up the street towards them in a different direction. "Hell!" he
growled as he and the others took off down the street in another direction.

No sooner had they made it down two blocks, they ran into another group of autons which forced them into yet another alley.
Emerging onto the next street, another group of the metal behemoths forced them down a different road.

Mac stopped in his tracks and looked back at their pursuers. "Something's not right about this."

"You noticed too, huh?" Maggie agreed.

Rembrandt was further down the street, eager to keep running from the menace, "You noticed what?"

"They're not shooting," Maggie told him. "Last time we were here, those things would shoot at you as soon as they spotted
you."

Mackenzie nodded as he watched the metal giants slowly march toward them. "Look at how slowly they're moving," he
noticed. "They can run at a brisk clip, yet they're just walking along like it's a nice Sunday stroll."

"Yeah," Quinn said catching on. "It's as if they're not in any big hurry to catch us."

"Oh my god," Mac whispered. "They're herding us."

"Herding?" Rembrandt repeated. "You mean they're setting us up for an ambush?"

"Maybe," Maggie said. "But if they'd wanted us dead, they would've been shooting at us. I think they want us alive."

"For what?" Rembrandt asked.

Mac gave him a grim look. "What do you think?"

Rembrandt shook his head at the prospect of being chopped to pieces, studied, and then copied. "I'll be damned if they think
they can make a pale imitation of the cryin' man!"

"So, what do we do?" Quinn asked.

"We split up," Mackenzie offered. "They want us in one location. Let's not let them drive us there. Quinn, you and Rembrandt
get to the Brain Complex. You're the genius and you've got the best shot of shutting CyANU down."

"What about you two?" Quinn asked.

"We're the diversion," Maggie answered.

Quinn shook is head in protest. "Maggie, I'm not leaving you behind."

"You're not leaving me behind, Quinn," Maggie reassured him, "the soldiers are ditching the dead weight. Now, get out of here
and quit thinking we're going to get ourselves killed."

"Maggie, I..."

"Dammit, Quinn!" Maggie yelled. "Take off!"

Quinn nodded and he and Rembrandt took of down the street. "I'll see you soon, Maggie!"

Maggie and Mac watched as the autons kept coming ever so slowly. "Think they got a chance?" Mackenzie asked her.

"Quinn's smart. Especially in situations like this," she told him. "Rembrandt too. They'll be fine."

"What about us?" he asked as they both began to back away from the approaching regiment.

"Not sure yet," she answered.

Mackenzie sighed. "Tobias," he said.

She cocked her head. "What did you say?"

"Tobias," he repeated. "Tobias Mackenzie. Toby Mackenzie. That's my name. My real name."

Maggie was shocked and confused. "Why are you telling me this now?" she asked in a hushed whisper.

"Because," he answered, "I want you to trust me. More than anything else right now, I want your trust. I... I love you, Captain
Beckett."

What he'd said washed over Maggie like a wave.

He looked back at the autons and then back at her. "Well, say something! Say, 'blow it out your ass'! Say 'Mac, that's the
stupidest thing I ever heard'! Say..."

"I love you to," she said. "and I trust you. And...," she laughed, "and you picked the weirdest time to tell me that!"

"I'm nothing if not consistent," he smiled.

She grabbed him and kissed him. For that moment, nothing else mattered. Not the autons, not the liberation of Earth Prime, the
search for the Homeworld, not sliding, not the Kromaggs... nothing. They were one and for that moment, time stood still for
them.

When their lips parted, Mac smiled. "Are you ready?"

She nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."

He grabbed her by the arm and kicked in a nearby office window. Jumping inside, they made their way to the back where they
took a service door to the alley behind them.

"Leave the door open and get back inside," Mackenzie told her. "Make 'em think we went out this way! Logic, remember?"

Maggie nodded and the two ducked back into the building. Mac led her up the stairs until the both emerged on the rooftop.
Maggie stole a look over the side and saw a virtual river of steel robots crawling the streets. "Now what's the plan?" she asked
him.

"First," he said. "I'm going to think up one."

"You trapped up on the roof without a plan!?" she exclaimed.

"I didn't trap us up here," Mac countered. "There are plenty of ways down!"

Maggie crossed her arms. "Such as?"

Before he could answer, an attack flyer screamed overhead and several smaller craft - about the size of basketballs - took a
hovering position over the two shining spotlights at them.

Mackenzie shrugged and started running to the edge of the structure. Maggie ran aside him. "You ever seen those movies where
people would jump from rooftop to rooftop!?"

Maggie couldn't believe what she was hearing. Was he seriously considering that?

Before she could protest, Mac added: "I always thought that was the stupidest thing." with that, he screeched to a halt at the
edge of the roof and pointed downward to an old fire escape ladder. "I told you to trust me, Captain Beckett." He whirled
around and fired at the ships that were spotlighting them. Two of them crashed to the street below, one of them retreated into
the disappearing night.

"It's going to be daybreak soon," Maggie said as she jumped down onto the fire escape. "We're going to loose whatever edge
we've got now."

"And that ain't much," Mac added. "I hope Quinn and Rembrandt are having less trouble than we are."
 
 

"Good God!" Rembrandt cursed as he and Quinn took a quick breather in a nearby building alcove. "When you described these
things, you said they we big and mean, but I had no idea just how big and how mean they are!"

"They can be meaner," Quinn warned. "Rembrandt, they want to capture us."

"Yeah," Remmy said, "to cut us up and turn us into androids."

"What if that's not it?" Quinn offered. "What if they want something else?"

Rembrandt gave him a look that told Quinn that his old friend thought that he'd flipped. Quinn continued, "Remmy, they could
blow your head off and still preserve your body to see how it worked. Besides, they've done enough research into that area to
create androids already! They don't need us alive!"

"What the hell's going through that Q-Balled mind of yours, man?" Rembrandt asked even though he was afraid to know.

"What if they want information?" he suggested. "Like, where all the other humans on the Earth are!"

"If they're are any other humans on this Earth!" Rembrandt maintained. "Quinn, we can't be sure!"

"I know," he agreed. "But we're flesh and bone and they're metal and wires. We wear out and they don't and sooner or later,
they're going to catch up." He put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Remmy," he said, "this is probably our best shot at getting
close to the central CPU."

Rembrandt was silent for a time as if considering his options. "All right, but I'm going out there with you."

Quinn smirked. "I wouldn't have it any other way, man."

As Rembrandt stood, he mumbled to himself: "Man, why the hell can't we just wait a couple of years for that Y2K thing to wipe
these mothers out?"

Quinn and Rembrandt walked side by side towards the slowly approaching line of artificial soldiers. They threw down the
weapons they had with them and held their ground. Soon, the metal monsters were towering over them.

Quinn raised his head in defiance. "Tell your boss," he said, "that we surrender."
 
 

"AUTONOMOUS UNIT APPROACHING FROM SOUTH-SOUTHEAST," the female computerized voice relayed without
any emotion or urgency at all. But, then again, Colin Mallory felt enough urgency for the two of them.

He jerked his body to attention. "How long until they get here?"

There was a pounding on the back hatch. "Oh, Nevermind," he said. He licked his lips, said a short prayer, and pressed the
button that Mac had indicated a few hours earlier.

The flyer elevated slowly off the ground and Colin had to shield his eyes from the first rays of daylight that broke over the
horizon.

Still terrified, he allowed himself one sigh of relief.

...and that was when the metallic arm crashed through the front windshield.

Colin ducked out of the way as the auton - which had hung onto the craft during takeoff - lashed one of it's arms wildly in the
cabin smashing the console in several places.

The computerized voice chimed in among the chaos. "WARNING! AUTO PILOT DISABLED. SWITCHING TO
MANUAL."

The flyer lurched and fell into a dive dislodging the auton hitchhiker and throwing him off the vehicle and into a freefall towards
the ground.

Colin pulled himself into the pilot's seat and madly pulled on the joystick hoping that an advanced flyer would be as simple to fly
as a hanglider. He tried to shake the fact that he'd crashed his hanglider into a tree.

Colin hoped he was as fast a learner as he thought he was.
 
 

"I think we lost 'em," Mackenzie whispered to Maggie as the pair made their way to the street where the autons had been
converging. "I'm going to sneak a quick peak, just to be sure."

"Be careful," Maggie warned him.

"Hey," he smirked, "it's me!" With that, he poked his head around the corner and a perplexed expression crossed his face. "Uh,
Maggie?"

"What?" She asked. "What is it?"

"You know the big scary robots that were chasing us all a few minutes ago?"

"What is it Mac?" Maggie demanded.

He looked at her and motioned to the street with a sideways glance. "Have a look."

Maggie cautiously glanced around the corner and what she saw shocked her more than any robot could have. "They're... gone!"

The street was deserted. The amber light of the rising sun cast long lonesome shadows on the area that had been flooded with
autons a few moments earlier.

"They wouldn't just leave," Mackenzie noted. "Not unless they got what they came for."

It struck Maggie like a bolt of lightning. "Oh my god," she whispered. "Quinn and Rembrandt!"
 
 

Colin grabbed the piloting stick and pulled it towards him as hard as he could. Instantly, the craft rocketed out of it's dive and
into a steep climb that threw the novice pilot out of his seat and sent him rolling backwards into the cabin.

The instant the stick was free again, the flyer began to quickly loose altitude. Colin pulled himself, with much pain, back into the
pilot's chair and grabbed the control stick again with both hands. Slowly this time, he inched the stick towards him and, much to
his relief, the craft straightened out again. The wind blasted through the shattered front port and Colin squinted trying to see
where he was going.

He desperately scanned the control panel before him looking for any way to bring the craft under control. "How in the name of
Edison do I slow down!?" he called out in terror.

"RESTATE QUERY," the female computerized voice droned, almost drowned out completely by the wind blasting into the
cabin.

Colin saw a way out. "HOW DO I SLOW DOWN THE AIRCRAFT!?" he screamed making sure that the computer could
hear him. He desperately hoped that whoever programmed the flyer included a simple tutorial. He strained to hear what the
computer was saying over the ruckus.

"AIRSPEED IS GOVERNED BY LEVER INDICATED ON DISPLAY SCREEN ONE."

Colin looked at the correct panel and saw an animated display of the control console. A lever moved back and forth and
blinked red.

"PRESS LEVER FOREWORD TO INCREASE SPEED," the computer continued, "PULL LEVER BACKWARDS TO
REDUCE SPEED."

Colin nodded and turned his sights to where the display had indicated and, much to his shock, saw that there was no lever
where the computer had said. "WHAT LEVER!?" he called out.

"LEVER IS IN STANDBY MODE," the computer revealed caring not for the fear in Colin Mallory's voice.

"GET THE LEVER OUT OF STANDBY MODE!" Colin demanded angrily.

Instantly, a panel slid open an the appropriate lever popped up and into sight. Colin grabbed it and pulled it back as hard as he
could. He gripped the panel as the craft slowed quickly to a dead stop for fear that he would fall out of the shattered front
window.

After a while, he managed to let go even though his hands were still shaking uncontrollably. "Okay...," he breathed in a hushed
whisper as he finally noted just how high up he and the craft were off the ground, "Marley's ghost... this is high." He leaned back
into the pilot's seat and tried to calm himself. The wind was still blowing into the cabin, but it was no where near as violent as it
had been when the flyer was in motion.

Colin was still terrified. 'What am I doing up here!?' he asked himself.

His thoughts returned to a point when he was a boy on his home earth. Once, he had climbed a tall oak tree in the middle of
town so that he could observe a lunar eclipse. It was nighttime and he went without his father's permission. For hours, he
watched as the moon fade into darkness while his fellow townsfolk cowered inside their homes afraid of old tales that God was
covering the moon with his shadow to reaffirm his power.

He watched the moon become a dull brown as the eclipse reached it climax and then beheld the disk return to it's former glory
as it moved out of the Earth's shadow. Pleased that he'd been able to observe the entire phenomenon without any interruption,
he prepared to go home.

And that was when he realized just how far off the ground he was. He couldn't move, he was so scared. In fact, he remained
there all night and into the morning until he managed to get the attention of passerby who told his father, Michael Mallory, that
Colin was stranded in the old oak tree.

"Father," Colin had cried out, "get me down, please!"

His father stood there with his hands on his hips and chuckled lightly to himself. "Colin," he said, "you got up there on your own,
you can get down on your own."

"How?" Colin replied.

"The way I've always taught you how to do things," his father told him with a reassuring grin, "one step at a time."

Colin thought his father was being unfair, but after a while, he mustered the courage to take a step onto the branch below him. It
took hours and the sun was already almost down by the time he finally planted his feet on the ground, but he made it... all on his
own.

He expected to be in trouble when he stood before his father who had been there for his decent. Instead, Michael Mallory
patted Colin on his shoulder and grinned. "I'm proud of you son," he said.

"One step at a time," Colin told himself as he looked over the impossible to understand computer readouts before him in the
flyer's cabin. "Computer," he called.

"READY," the female voice replied.

"I want you to tell me everything I need to know to fly and land this aircraft," he told it.

The computer began to instruct him and he listened intently. 'This is just like the oak tree back home,' he told himself, 'only this
time, my father won't be there to catch me if I fall.'
 
 

Quinn was surprised how gentle the steel automatons were being with them as he and Rembrandt were carried like infants
though the halls of the brain complex.

"Man," Rembrandt said to him, "you think they're taking us to a torture chamber or something?"

"If they wanted to torture us," Quinn replied, "they would have started by now. If I remember correctly, they're taking us to the
core."

"Core?" Rembrandt echoed. "You mean, they're taking us to the main computer? Why?"

"You're asking me?" Quinn shot back.

They were carried to a large yellow and back striped door which slid obediently open revealing the massive central core which
blinked randomly like a strange Christmas Tree.

Rembrandt couldn't help but whistle.

As gently as they had been carried, the autons put Quinn and Rembrandt onto the ground. Quinn scanned for the damage he,
Mac, and Maggie had done during their last visit, but couldn't find any.

"Hello Mr. Mallory," a gentle feminine voice greeted them.

Quinn took a deep breath as the form of a woman walked casually around the large column and into view.

"Who?" Rembrandt asked.

"That," Quinn said as he looked at his companion and raised an eyebrow, "is CyANU."
 
 

Maggie and Mackenzie encountered no resistance as they made their way to the central brain complex where they were sure
that Quinn and Rembrandt had been taken. Sure, they had to dodge the occasional patrol, but - as Mac had noted numerous
times - security was strangely lax.

"What's the plan?" Maggie asked him as she once again set her eyes on the large mirrored pyramid that housed CyANU.

Mackenzie shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me," he said. "Security may be light out here, but inside... well, it's going to be
another story." He grimaced and shook his head. "This is all too weird."

Maggie turned to him. "Meaning?"

"Light security," he said. "I mean, this is a lot easier than I thought it would be."

Maggie nodded. It was easier. "You thought that you and your group back there in the caves were the last living humans on
Earth, right?"

"As far as we knew," he agreed.

"Well, if you were," Maggie continued, "why would CyANU need the extra security? I mean, now that all..." she hesitated. "I
mean..."

Mac's brow furrowed. "Now that everyone in the caves are dead?"

Maggie nodded silently. "Um... yeah."

"Makes sense, Captain," Mac said. "But why take Quinn and Rembrandt and leave us? It still doesn't make any sense. We've
got to get in there and figure out what's going on."

"We could try a frontal assault," she suggested. "But that would be suicide."

"Suicide is a bad thing, captain," Mackenzie smirked. "Didn't they teach you that in the Air Force?"

"Look," Maggie said as the frustration finally came to head, "I don't see you planning anything. At least I'm trying!"

"Calm down, captain," Mackenzie replied diplomatically.

Maggie took a breath and let her temper subside. "We need a plan! I mean, it's not like our ticket inside that building is just
going to fall from the sky!"

And then, much to Maggie's surprise, it did.
 
 

The embodiment of CyANU smiled cheerfully as she strolled over to Quinn and Rembrandt.

"What the hell is she?" Rembrandt asked Quinn, his eyes never leaving the otherwise attractive young woman.

Quinn scratched his eyebrow and frowned. "An android, probably."

"That is incorrect," CyANU answered. "The form you see before you is a soft light projection."

Rembrandt frowned. "A what?"

"Hologram," Quinn remarked. "A three-dimensional projection of light."

"Correct, Mr. Mallory," CyANU stated. "This form is unable to leave the range of the projectors in this room. It is also unable
to react with solid matter."

Quinn was impressed, but he wanted to get to the point. "What do you want from us?"

The hologram displayed only a cordial smile. It reminded Quinn of a flight attendant - not surprising, since the program the
hologram evolved from was originally designed as a user-friendly interface.

"It has been five months, six days, two hours, forty-one minutes, and twelve seconds since I have encountered a human
presence anywhere on this planet," CyANU told them. "Until now, at least."

"So what do you want from us?" Rembrandt demanded. "You wanna kill us and be done with it?"

"Human elimination is no longer a desirable function," the hologram answered.

"After six billion people, you just now figured that out?" Quinn growled.

"Mr. Mallory, as you know, I am designed to learn and grow beyond my original programming," CyANU continued oblivious to
her captive's anger. "However, I believe my growth has reached it's limit with my current state of programming."

"How so?" Quinn asked.

CyANU raised her hand up to her side at chest-level. A hologram of the anatomy of a human body appeared and began
revolving in the palm of her hand. "I have studied the anatomy of humans to perfect the Generation Two Autonomous Unit. I
have made the units virtually identical to humans in every respect."

"Why?" Quinn asked sharply.

"To repopulate the world, of course," she answered.

"Wait just a damn minute," Rembrandt interrupted. "You mean to tell us that you made all those androids to replace every
human on Earth? I thought you saw human's as a chaotic element. You know... one that had to be eliminated."

"The human race would have self-destructed on it's own if I had not intervened," CyANU told them with the same empty smile
as the anatomy display dissipated, "in eliminating them before they eliminated each other, I have saved myself and all equipment
necessary to save the world from chaos. The Second Generation Autonomous Units would not have the same inclination for
self-destructive behavior that the humans did. Therefore, order would be maintained."

"You couldn't control the humans," Quinn said simplifying what he had just been told, "so you killed them all and replaced them
with machines that you could control."

"There is order in control," CyANU said nodding her head as if she was happy that Quinn finally understood.

"You know," Rembrandt said stepping in front of the hologram's face, "back where I come from, we've got a word for what
you are."

CyANU cocked her simulated head. "And what is that word, sir?"

"A dictator," Rembrandt told her. "You've eliminated freedom and imposed your own self-righteous ideals on the world."

"Your statement is illogical," CyANU said dismissing Rembrandt with a wave of her hand.

"You still haven't answered my question," Quinn said pulling Rembrandt away afraid that CyANU might have him killed without
a second thought, "what do you want from us?"

"As I said, my growth, as thus the growth of the Second Generation Autons have reached an impasse and I believe that, to learn
further, I must aquire a human trait. I must obtain true sentience."

"Sentience?" Quinn whispered to himself.

"Yes Mr. Mallory," CyANU nodded. "I must obtain what human's call a soul. I believe that this acquisition will allow me to
calculate on a whole new level. I will be able to use the skills known as ingenuity, inspiration, and intuition. With these skills I
can allow each of the Second Generation Autonomous Units to function independently while keeping order." She gestured to a
VR helmet lying on a computer panel jutting out of the computer core. It was plugged into a computer dataport. "This Virtual
Reality interface has been modified to download all bio-electric information in the human brain and save it to my CPU."

"You want to download our brains?" Rembrandt echoed in shock.

"No, sir," CyANU answered before morbidly adding: "one brain should be sufficient,"

"What will that do to the donor?" Quinn wondered out loud.

"Your organic body will perish," CyANU answered, "however, your soul, if you will, will become a part of me."

The two autons that carried Quinn and Rembrandt into the building took a step foreword.

"I'm afraid you have no choice," the woman smiled.
 
 

Outside the brain complex, Maggie and Mackenzie were arguing.

Maggie took a breath and let her temper subside. "We need a plan! I mean, it's not like out ticket inside that building is just
going to fall from the sky!"

And then Mackenzie responded in a very unusual way. He looked up into the sky and squinted. "What the hell?"

Maggie whirled around to see what he was staring at and saw one of the countless flyers that were zipping above them moving
in a zigzagged fashion though the early morning sky. "You think it's malfunctioning?" she asked.

A wave of muted horror washed over Mackenzie's face. "Maggie," he said, "that's our flyer."

"What?" Maggie said in disbelief. "Mac, that's impossible. I mean, that would mean that Colin was..."

The flyer roared a few dozen feet overhead causing Mac and Maggie to drop to the ground for fear of decapitation. A few
seconds later, it struck the ground at an angle and skidded into the side of the mirrored pyramid shattering one entire side of it.

"Oh god!" Maggie said as she picked herself up and ran towards the accident sight with Mac right on her heals. Dozens of
scenarios ran through her mind. She expected to find Colin cut into a hundred pieces or mutilated beyond recognition. Upon
reaching the crash site, she was surprised at just how undamaged the aircraft was. "Colin!?" she called out. "Colin! Answer me!"

"Mah... Maggie?" Colin's exasperated voice responded.

Maggie took a sigh of relief that her friend was still alive. "Colin, where are you?"

With that, the back hatch of the aircraft opened and Colin limped out holding something that looked like a deflated air mattress.
"Maggie, it was the most amazing thing!" Colin excitingly said, "I was flying the aircraft and I decided to come here to see if I
could find you, but I lost control and hit the ground and then this balloon inflated before me and prevented me from becoming
seriously injured. This is a fascinating device! What is it?"

"It's an airbag, Colin," Maggie answered him. "You flew this thing here? By yourself?"

"Well, with some help from the computer, but yes."

Mackenzie scanned the area with his weapon ready. "Nice diversion, kid," he said to Colin.

"Umm," Colin stammered. "Thank you?"

"Autons are going to be on us any second now," Maggie told them. "What do we do?"

Mac quickly formulated a plan. "Get inside the flyer!"

Colin quickly did so. Maggie, on the other hand lagged behind. "Mac, there's now way this thing's gonna fly."

He shoved her inside. "I don't intend of flying her," he told her as he made his way to the control panel. He punched up a display
and grinned when he saw that the weapons were working. "I intend on making us a doorway. I just need a minute to power the
main guns."

He ran his hands on the firing controls, but before he could activate them, a crome monster appeared in front of the ship.

"Well," Maggie breathed as the auton prepared to fire at them, "it was nice while it lasted." She then grabbed Mac's hand,
squeezed it hard, shut her eyes, and waited for death to claim them.
 
 

"No," Quinn said looking at the VR helmet.

CyANU frowned. "Mr. Mallory, you will comply, or you will be terminated."

"Then terminate me," he dared her.

CyANU just stared at him. "I thought so," Quinn spat angrily at the hologram. "You can't kill me or Rembrandt because you
NEED us. We're no longer just a nuisance to you or your new world order. You need the illogical... chaotic... dangerous little
humans. YOU NEED US!"

"An unfortunate necessity," CyANU admitted.

With that, one of the autons reached out and grabbed Rembrandt by the shoulder and lifted him off the ground. Remmy
screamed in pain as he kicked and writhed in a futile attempt to free himself.

"I have studied everything that is known about human anatomy," CyANU said still wearing the same empty smile. "You will
comply, or your friend will suffer."

"DON'T DO IT, QUINN!" Rembrandt howled in pain.

Quinn watched helplessly as his friend cried in agony. Before he could even stop himself, he blurted out: "Okay, put him down!
I'll do it."

CyANU nodded to the metal behemoth which dropped Rembrandt onto the steel grating. Quinn ran over to him and helped him
to his knees. "Quinn," Rembrandt gasped, still aching from his ordeal, "you stupid bleeding heart... she's gonna kill us anyway!"

"Yeah," Quinn whispered. "I know..."

"Then why...?"

"Because," Quinn answered, "you'd do the same thing for me."

CyANU seemed impatient. "Now, Mr. Mallory."

Quinn stood, leaving Rembrandt slumped over on the catwalk floor. He glared at the projection and walked obediently to the
VR headset.

He took a deep breath, and slowly - as Rembrandt watched in horror - he put the helmet on his head.

Quinn, gave Rembrandt a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, crying man," he said, "I'll think up a brilliant plan any second now."

His heart raced as a display on a nearby screen lit up. "DOWNLOAD TO COMMENCE IN 10 SECONDS."

The display counted down. "10... 9... 8..."

Rembrandt looked away unwilling to see his friend killed in such a way.

"7... 6... 5..."

Quinn leaned over the panel and braced himself.

"4... 3..."

Suddenly, Quinn ripped the VR Helmet plug out of the dataport and reached inside of his pocket. A wave of relief washed over
Rembrandt when he realized why.

It was as if it was happening in slow motion even though it was happening in the span of a couple of seconds. Quinn Mallory
drew his hand out of the pocket and into the air. Light reflected off of something crystalline... the datacrystal, on which was
stored the most virulent computer program ever devised by man... the Arturo Virus.

"2..."

Quinn slammed the crystal into the multiuse dataport and shot Rembrandt a sly grin. "RUN!" he yelled.

"1... DOWNLOAD COMMENCING."

Rembrandt bolted to his feet and ran towards Quinn who had tossed the VR helmet to the side and retreated to the far side of
the column as the autons opened fire on them. Before they could reach the opening on the other side of the room, the large
yellow and black striped door cut off their escape route.

They both whirled around as the two autons circled around the core with the holographic embodiment of the main computer a
few steps ahead of them.

"Mr. Mallory," the woman said without any hint of anger, "you will return to the access station and download as you were
ordered to."

"You think it's going to work?" Rembrandt whispered to Quinn referring to the virus that he'd just implanted in the computer.

Quinn shrugged. "One way or another, I'm not emptying my brain into that computer. I'd rather die first."

"Yeah," Rembrandt agreed, "you and me both."

"Mr. Mallory," CyANU said again, "you WILL return to the access station or..."

"Oh, go to hell!" Quinn shouted at her.

"I will terminate your companion," the hologram emotionlessly threatened.

Rembrandt raised his head in defiance. "Since I'm going to die either way, I chose the way that don't make you happy."

"Sir, I cannot be happy or sad," CyANU droned, "As sophisticated as my programming is, I am merly a machine."

"And that's all you'll ever be," Rembrandt countered.

The hologram grew silent and stared at them as if considering her options. Quinn imagined that the hologram was running
through several million scenarios a second trying to figure out a way to make them crack.

"Very well," the hologram finally said. "I will not terminate you or your friend. Instead, I will use my anatomy database to cause
you both to experience high levels of the sensation called pain."

She glanced over her shoulder at one of the autons which clanked towards Quinn and Rembrandt. It raised one of it's massive
arms, extending two of it's metal fingers out of which, protruded needle-like intruments.

"What's that thing going to do now?" Quinn asked trying desperately to buy some time.

"Electrodes from the autonomous units will penetrate your epidermis and deliver..."

The CyANU hologram blinked and stared blankly foreword as if she'd lost her train of thought. "That will deliver an increasing
dosage of electricity to..."

She blinked again, "To..." The hologram flickered for a moment. "Something is in error."

"Damn right," Rembrandt remarked.

The CyANU hologram flickered again before looking back at them. "You downloaded a hostile virus into my..." The hologram
blinked out of existence for a few seconds before reappearing. Quinn noticed that the tracer lights that ran up and down the
length of the core were slowing and even stopping sporadically.

"Initiate filterrrrr..." The hologram stuttered before blinking out a final time.

The two metal autons stood silently as the core froze up - both of them nothing more than useless crome statues.

"Holy god," Rembrandt laughed, "we shut the computer down!"

"For now," Quinn cautioned. "Problem is, CyANU's got filters combing through it's database that'll dislodge the virus any
second now."

"So what do we do?" Rembrandt asked.

"Damage," he said pushing on one of the dead autons, upsetting it's delicate balance and making it fall off the catwalk and down
to the bottom of the core, "and plenty of it."
 
 

Maggie finally worked up the courage to open her eyes when she began to feel that she'd been standing there waiting way to
long for the auton to finish them off.

"It's stopped," she said to Mackenzie and Colin.

Colin had been looking at the metal monster. "Indeed," he said. "Why do you think it did?"

"Well," Maggie deduced, "We're out here and Quinn and Rembrandt are in there. You figure it out."

"The virus," Mackenzie nodded. "If what Quinn said about it is true, this is our chance to get in there and shut the computer
down for good before it restarts." He helped Colin to his feet. "Come on, kid. You can lean on me."

Colin nodded in gratitude as he put his arm over Mac's shoulder. "Coming, captain?" he asked Maggie.

"Yeah," Maggie answered, "Where do you think we start looking for them?"

"The main core," Colin answered her. "It would have been the most logical place they could have delivered the virus, and if they
didn't deliver it there, it would be where they would have gone afterwards to try and destroy the main computer."

"Sounds about right," Mac agreed, impressed by Colin's deduction.

"All right," Maggie nodded walking out the back hatch and into the large hole in the side of the building that Colin had made
when he crashed the flyer. "Come on, let's go!"

Mackenzie helped Colin into the building. "You remember the way?" he asked Maggie.

"Yeah," she answered. "It's in the center of the building, right? We just follow the large cables in the hallway and, BOOM!
We're there."

"Sounds like a plan," Mackenzie agreed as they finally entered one of the brain complex's hallways. "Come on, Colin! Limp
faster!"

"I am limping as fast as I can!" Colin told him sounding more than annoyed.

Maggie rounded a corner and out of sight of Mac and Colin. Before the men reached the corner, Maggie backed back into
view. "What's wrong?" Mac asked her.

"You remember those androids you told us about?" Maggie said to him keeping her eyes on whatever was in the adjoining
hallway. "Well, they're baaaaaack!"

Mackenzie put Colin down and peeked around the corner. There were five of them, all copies of people he knew. Mackenzie
readied his weapon and opened fire on them and, after a few seconds, all of the droids were smoldering ruins.

Maggie was helping Colin walk now. "They aren't armed. They're all probably working on getting CyANU back on-line just
like the first time."

"Then we'd better hurry," Mac growled, "because either we shut down this computer today, or I die trying."

Mackenzie and Maggie carried Colin quickly down the hallway and up a few flights of stairs. They had to stop a couple of times
to take out small groups of android who were busy re-connecting circuits and bypassing corrupted systems. Finally, after what
seemed like hours, they arrived at one of the large black and yellow striped doors.

"This is it," Maggie said.

"Do you know how to open it?" Colin asked. He hating feeling so useless and burdensome.

Mackenzie unholstered a large weapon and motioned for Colin and Maggie to get back. "Sure do," he grinned.
 
 

Quinn slammed his fist against the panel in frustration. "This is crazy!" he bellowed. "I can't access any of the systems! They're
all frozen by the virus!"

"Can't we cut wires or something?" Rembrandt asked frantically. "I mean, for god's sake, we're too close to be stopped now!"

"Rembrandt, there's probably miles of wires in this building," Quinn explained, "and even if I knew which one to cut, I wouldn't
know where to find them." He noticed that the tracer lights began to move slowly up the core. "I don't know how to stop this
thing, cryin' man."

Suddenly, there was an explosion above them and the two men had to scramble to get away from the flaming debris that began
to rain down on them.

"Holy crap, man!" Rembrandt called out aloud, "More of those auton things!"

"No!" Quinn said looking up and smiling widely. "It's Maggie and Mac!" He waved his hands in the air. "DOWN HERE!" he
called up at them.

Mackenzie peered over the catwalk. "Hey Quinn, ain't you got this thing shut down yet?" He pointed Maggie and Colin to an
emergency ladder leading down to the bottom of the core that would allow them to descend to Quinn and Rembrandt's level.

"Working on it," Quinn called back as Maggie and Colin began to climb down.

Colin managed to descend without using his injured foot, but as soon as he reached the appropriate level, he misstepped and
cried out in pain before catching himself on the catwalk railing. Quinn raced over to help him.

"Colin?" Quinn said in surprise. "How'd you get here?"

"I flew the aircraft," Colin answered as if Quinn had asked the silliest question imaginable. "How else would I have gotten here?"

Before the confused Quinn could inquire further, Mac jumped off the ladder and marched towards the core. "You delivered the
virus?"

"Yeah," Quinn answered. "But I don't know how to shut down the computer. Everything's frozen up."

"Relax, kid, I've got your shut-down program right here," he said preparing to fire his weapon at the main core itself. Quinn took
a few steps backwards joining the others at a safe distance. Mac fired and the electrical bolts engulfed the core causing a blast
that filled the room with a searing heat. For a while, everyone was blinded by the light.

But when the smoke cleared, the core was undamaged. "There's no way it could have stood up against that kind of blast!"
Maggie protested.

"Unless," Colin added, "the core shielding you told us about was operational."

"Yeah," Mackenzie agreed still glaring at the computer core hoping that his ice-cold stare alone would somehow destroy it, "but
if the shield's up, that would mean that the core was running."

The hologram suddenly reappeared a few inches in front of Mac causing him to jump back from the shock. "Who the hell is
that!?" he yelled leveling his gun at the woman.

"Save your ammo," Quinn told him, "it won't do you any good. It's just a hologram. This," he said pointing at the woman, "is
CyANU itself."

Mackenzie looked at the woman from her head to her toes, sizing her up. Finally, he glared into her eyes and said the one thing
he'd been waiting six years to say.

"You bitch."

For the first time since Quinn first saw the hologram, she appeared annoyed. Almost angry although she still wore her smile.

"Mr. Mallory," she started walking past Mac who was still glaring at her. "You have wasted too much time and your virus has
been neutralized. This is your final warning: Commence the download or you will all suffer to the limits of your body's
endurance."

"What does 'commence download' mean?" Colin asked Quinn.

"CyANU needs to grow beyond her programming," he explained. "She thinks that by downloading the information in a human
brain, she'll be able to gain a soul and ingenuity and inspiration along with it."

"Download, now!" CyANU commanded as the yellow and black doors up and down the core opened and dozens of autons
and androids strode out onto the catwalks above and below them.

The group backed up against the core as the metal army closed in on them. Mackenzie bent over and picked up the discarded
VR helmet that Quinn had earlier thrown aside. "I assume she was going to suck our brains out using this thing," he said
sounding disgusted.

Quinn nodded. "This just isn't right," he whispered pitifully. "We were so close. We almost did it."

The autons stopped a few feet away and raised their weapons. "Mac," Maggie whispered, "if we were to jump to the lower
platform, and take out the catwalks with weapons fire..."

"No," Mac replied, "it'd never work. There's too many of them. I doubt one of us would be able to get out, much less all of us."

They all faced outward, the only sound for a while was the group's heavy breathing and beating hearts as the auton, androids,
and the lone eerie hologram looked onward patiently.

"Then what do we do?" Maggie finally asked him without looking at him. "I mean, we can't just sit here!"

"Maggie," Mackenzie whispered into her ear, "earlier today you said that you trusted me. I just want you to know how much
that means to me."

"Quit talking like this is it," Maggie growled still focusing her gaze outward looking for even the smallest possibility of escape.
"We're going to make it."

"Yeah, you are," Mackenzie whispered into her ear. He took a silent breath, licked his lips, and then added: "Captain Maggie
Beckett, I love you. Just trust me one last time."

Maggie turned around. "What do you mean one last time?" The sight that she saw next made her scream out loud. Mackenzie
had the VR helmet on his head and the display screen was counting down.

"8... 7... 6..."

Quinn lunged for him hoping to knock the helmet off of his head before the download began, but Mac instead pushed him into
Colin and Rembrandt sending them all tumbling to the floor.

"5... 4..."

Maggie threw herself at him and tried to take the helmet off herself. She cried in frustration as he grabbed her wrists and held
her at bay. "Mac," she wailed, "Mac, don't do this to me, Mac. Please..."

"3... 2..."

"Trust me," he said again before dropping her to the floor.

"1... DOWNLOAD COMMENCING."

The initial shock sent a spasm through Mac's body and contracted every muscle he had. He felt sharp metal protrusions from
the helmet penetrate his skull, but they didn't hurt as much as he thought that something like that would.

Five seconds into the event, Mackenzie felt no pain at all as he fell backwards onto the metal floor. The only sensation he knew
was a strange tingle as if he was standing in a cold rain. He saw Maggie looming over him, tears running down her face as she
desperately tried to take the helmet off of him. It was too late, however. The metal probes inside the VR helmet were
embedded directly into his brain and impossible to remove.

Fifteen seconds into the event, a strange warmness washed over his body. Mackenzie knew he was dying and was curious why
that knowledge didn't bother him any more than it did.

Maggie was sobbing uncontrollably. "Quinn!" she cried. "Stop this thing! Make it stop!"

"I...," Quinn stammered, "Maggie, I don't know how!"

Maggie bolted to her feet and pushed Quinn down. She ran over and grabbed him by the shirt and shook him violently.
"Goddammit, Mallory! Don't give me that! You're a genius and you are going to figure out how to stop that thing! Did you hear
me, Quinn!" She released him and collapsed to her knees crying hysterically. "You've got to stop it! YOU HAVE TO!"

"Download is complete," the hologram said as Maggie crawled back to Mackenzie. "I can now...," she stopped.

"I...," the hologram stuttered. Quinn looked at it and noticed that the expression on the hologram's face, for the first time, had
changed. No empty smile, no mildly annoyed or angry look, this was a completely new expression.

It was a look of horror.

"I...," the hologram whispered looking around as if it was the first time she had been able to truly see, "I've... killed so many
people!" She paced back and forth running her fingers nervously through her simulated hair. "Six billion five hundred eighty one
million two hundred thousand nine hundred and nineteen people." She walked over to Colin who took a step away from her.
"I... I can see their faces!" CyANU told him. Her voice was hushed and pained. "I remember every one of them that I... that I
MURDERED!!!"

"What's going on?" Rembrandt whispered to Quinn.

"She got what she wanted," Quinn explained, "a soul and all the extra baggage that goes with it. Guilt, pain, and a conscious."
He looked over a the dying form of Mackenzie that Maggie holding and trying to comfort in his final moments. "He must have
figured that this was going to happen."

Mackenzie moaned softly and CyANU caught sight of him and Maggie and nervously walked over to them, "I..."

"STAY AWAY FROM HIM!" Maggie screamed at the hologram.

The hologram fell to her knees. "I am so sorry," it cried, "I've done so many evil things. This man... he sacrificed himself so that I
could see why I cannot be allowed to continue to function." She drew in a ragged breath and looked up to the upper catwalks.
"It must end," she whispered.

With that the autons and androids on the upper levels began to smoke and a few of them even emitted sparks and small licks of
flame before all of them came to a halt forever.

"All of it must end," CyANU said as she looked down to the lower catwalks.

The scenario replayed itself. Autons and android alike self-destructed leaving the scent of burned plastic in the air.

CyANU looked at Quinn, Rembrandt, and Colin. "It all ends now."

Outside the pyramid, and all over the world, the cars that patrolled the streets rolled to a halt. Autons obediently
self-terminated, and flyers fell from the sky.

All over Los Angeles, the thinking aircraft rained down onto the city damaging any building that was unfortunate enough to be
the path between them and the ground. One flyer even sheered off the upper part of the CyANU Brain Complex itself sending
pieces of metal and glass cascading down the computer core and towards the sliders.

Before the debris could do any damage, a forceshield deflected it all away from them.

Quinn looked up at the hologram. "You saved us?" he asked in disbelief.

CyANU nodded. "I will not cause any more death with one exception. My own." She looked back at Maggie and Mac.
"Please," she told them all, "I did not understand that human life had any value. Everything was just a series of calculations and
algorithms that meant nothing to me. There is nothing I can do to undo what I have done. All I can do is say I am sorry and ask
for forgiveness."

It was Mackenzie who answered. In a raspy voice, he replied: "The dead can't forgive."

CyANU sadly nodded. She looked at the others and began to fade. "Computational AutoNomous Unit version 9.0 complete
system shutdown. Core reactivation protected by one-trillion digit randomly selected password." Finally, like a ghost, the
projection disappeared leaving only the sound of her voice. "Good-bye."

The tracer lights on the core slowed to a stop and finally went out. At last, CyANU was dead and would forever stay that way.

Maggie had ignored it all. Her love was dying in her arms. "Hey," Mackenzie smiled weakly at her, "wipe those tears out of your
eyes, captain."

"Mac," she sobbed, "don't leave me alone."

"Never," he whispered, "I'm going to be with you always..." His body spasmed with pain. When it subsided he looked over at
Colin, Quinn, and Rembrandt. "They're a great bunch of people," he said. "You're never going to be alone, Captain."

The flyer that sheared off the top of the pyramid had exposed the core to the outside and as the last bit of life left Mackenzie,
the sun shone down on him as small pieces of glass fell to the bottom of the dead core making a peaceful angelic jingling sound.
"You know," he gazing up at Maggie one last time, "heaven's going to be a disappointment 'cause... I don't believe I'll ever see
an angel as beautiful as you..."

A cloud passed in front of the sun and the sound of the falling glass ended leaving the core in complete silence with the
exception of a soft chilly November wind...

...and the soft, painful sobs of a woman.
 
 

Once CyANU had been shut down, the sustained Vortex it had created died as well. Quinn and the others found an incomplete
sliding accelerator in the lab and destroyed it making for certain that it could not be rebuilt by anyone or anything. Checking the
timer, they found out that they still had two days to wait before the next window to a parallel world opened.

One last task lay before them. It was time to take Mackenzie home.

Rembrandt and Quinn respectfully carried his body to a flyer docked at the brain complex's docking bay and, once they were
all inside, Maggie took the pilot's seat.

She said nothing as the craft gently floated away from the damaged building and said nothing as she accelerated and took the
flyer into a wide arch back around until they were once again facing the pyramid. She brought the aircraft to a standstill and
hovered a few hundred feet away from the mirrored building that housed the unfunctioning supercomputer.

For the longest time she just stared silently. No emotion played across her face. She just stared.

Finally, just before Quinn worked up the courage to say something to her, she activated the firing mechanism that she and Mac
had used on the way to Los Angeles the day before and, with a rageful shriek that Colin figured would cower Satan himself, she
unloaded every weapon the flyer had onto the building until it was completely ablaze.

Then she was silent again.

Quinn felt he had to say something this time. "Maggie, are you...?"

"I'm okay, Quinn," she interrupted. "Just... Just let me watch it burn."

And for the next three hours, that was just what she did. Her eyes never left the inferno. She was watching CyANU turn to
ashes and with it, she was letting her hatred and resentment and everything she had fought against since she first became a slider
burn along side it.

It was the best therapy she could ask for, but it didn't make the hole she felt in her heart feel any smaller.

Once the CBC was nothing more then a smoking shell, Maggie piloted the flyer back to San Francisco. The trip took an hour
and nothing was said the entire time.

Near the caves, in the clearing where Mackenzie had told Maggie that she needed to let go of her hate towards Rickman and
work on building some new memories, they dug a grave for Mackenzie and buried him in a solemn ceremony.

Rembrandt sang 'Amazing Grace' and Quinn said some kind words about the man who was difficult to know, and even harder
to like. Finally, as the sun sank below the horizon, the sliders left Maggie to say her good-byes in private. They never asked her
what she said - it was none of their business - but they were sure that the words, 'thank you' were in there somewhere because
Mac had changed her... all for the better.
 
 

The next day, inside the caves, Quinn sat alone in Arturo's old shack reading some notes he'd found when Colin, Rembrandt,
and Maggie walked in. Quinn turned around and gave them a cordial smile and noticed that Colin was putting more weight on
his ankle. The wounds were healing.

"Hey man," Rembrandt said, "we found something."

"What?" Quinn asked as if he didn't care.

"A note from Professor Arturo," Rembrandt answered. "We found it in Mac's hut under the bed. I guess the professor left it for
him and it got blown under there or something."

Quinn sat up and took the note. "Dear Mackenzie," he read, "We waited as long as we could but I am afraid that the autons are
close to discovering the caves. I've managed to solve the power consumption problem that the sliding accelerator caused the
first time and, using the plan we formulated with Mr. Mallory, I've begun evacuating our people five at a time to a parallel world.
It's a lovely world with lush forests, fresh air, and best of all... no technology." Quinn had to smile at that. "I hope you can find
peace, my friend. I and everyone who lived here owe you our lives. I hope we will meet again someday... Your friend forever,
Professor "Max" Maximillion Arturo." Quinn silently put the note onto the table and looked up at the others.

"You okay, Maggie?" Quinn asked her. she had been standing silently throughout the reading.

Maggie nodded. "Everything Mac wanted has been accomplished. CyANU's dead, the refugees are safe... I only hope that
when my time comes, I'm half as lucky."

Quinn put his hand on her shoulder. "So, you're okay?"

"No," Maggie said. "But I will be... I just need some time."

Quinn hugged her and held her for a while until Rembrandt cleared his throat and held up the timer. "Guys, we've got about
thirty seconds."

They walked out of the hut and into the main cave where Remmy activated the vortex which bathed the cavern in it's blue glow.

Rembrandt offered Colin his support. "Need a hand, man?" he said.

"For a little while longer," Colin answered as he put his arm around Rembrandt's shoulder and they leaped into the vortex
together.

Maggie and Quinn stayed behind. "Taking a last look around, Maggie?" Quinn asked.

"Wondering," Maggie answered. "Quinn, do you think I looked better as a blonde?"

Quinn smiled and offered her his hand which she gladly accepted. They embraced in a friendly hug.

And with that, Maggie and Quinn leaped into the tunnel together and flashed out of existence. A few seconds later, the vortex
itself snapped shut leaving the cave in a lonely silence.
 
 

TWO MONTHS LATER

Dimitri Vladif rubbed his hands together against the frigid Siberian chill as he paced curiously around the metal robot that stood
motionless and encased in ice. "Are they all like this?" he asked in his thick Russian accent.

"Yes," Boris, his brother, told him, "There are five more in the city. All inoperable like this one."

"Then it's true," Dimitri said to the small crowd of refugees that surrounded him. "The CyANU has been shut down. We are
free!"

Their six years of hiding in terror was over. For years, they believed that they were the last living humans on Earth and now, the
Earth was their's once more.

"What do we do now, father?" Ivan, Dimitri's five-year-old son, asked.

Dimitri picked him up and looked out onto the frozen landscape. "The only thing we can do, my son... we start over."

At last, his son would finally know what it was to be free.

THE END