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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!" Quin