I would like to credit David Peckinpah who wrote the script dialogue from the Sliders episode "Genesis" in Season 4 of the series. Actual character dialogue from Peckinpah's script is used during this episode.

"How long does it take to fill a freakin' prescription?" he muttered, under his breath.

A chipper nurse reached across the counter, extending a bag to him. "Here you go, Mr. Mallory. This refill should last you another six weeks."

"Thanks." Mallory took the prescription bag from her, biting his lip to keep from laughing at the nurse's green kimono made from the same material as hospital scrubs. This was only his second time returning to his Earth for a refill of his Dapsone prescription, but Mallory could tell he wasn't going to easily tire of gawking at the native population's offbeat style of fashion.

"Oh, could I see your medical card again?" the kimono-clad nurse politely requested from him, her eyes trained on some data from the screen that she'd suddenly caught sight of. "I just need to double-check your ID number. It seems we just registered another 'Quinn Mallory' the other day, and I want to make sure I didn't enter it under his account, instead of yours."

Mallory sighed, handing over his Fujimori Allied Health medical card. Fortunately, this hospital had branches all over the U.S., including Honolulu, where he'd initially registered.

"Strangest thing," she continued, typing in Mallory's number. "The Quinn Mallory who was in earlier this week looked sort of like you . . . except he had lighter hair, and he wore glasses."

"Yeah. Strange." Mallory pocketed his card, after the nurse handed it back to him. He was itching to leave.

"Have a fortune cookie," she brightly offered him, from a small bowl.

Mallory looked over his shoulder, but unfortunately, no one was waiting in line behind him.

"Uh, sure . . ." Mallory snatched up a fortune cookie and broke it in half. He unfolded the slip of paper inside. It read:

"Potatoes may reduce the risk of heart disease. Try baking or broiling them, rather than frying your spuds."

Wade tapped Mallory on the shoulder. "We're leaving," she said, linking her fingers with his.

Colin was with Wade. "Quinn and Silas believe we are ready to try entering our homeworld."

"It's about time," said Mallory. He dug his hand into the prescription bag and removed one of the small bottles of Dapsone pills, which he pocketed for safekeeping.

"What about the Slidecage?" Wade asked Colin, as the three of them strolled through the hospital lobby.

"Quinn thinks he relocated the way around it," Colin revealed.

"Dr. Hong, please report to Examination Room 314, third floor," came the dry, nasal voice of Marcia Ketterman over the hospital loudspeaker.

"Glad to see Marcia is still gainfully employed," quipped Mallory, as he, Wade, and Colin walked through the sliding glass doors of Fujimori Allied Health.

Once outside, they met up with their nine other sliding counterparts, who had assembled by the sidewalk at the edge of the hospital's parking lot.

"6 minutes," Quinn told them, showing off the timer. He clutched Colin's shoulder. "Just think, Colin. It may be only 6 minutes until we're home."

"Home." Colin savored the comforting sound of the word, which had taken on a totally new meaning for him during the past few years.

"Check this out, guys." Rembrandt was reading a copy of the Long Beach Herald, this city's newspaper. "This is what we get for missing the morning news. It seems the 'Maggs tried to leave their mark here yesterday night."

He displayed a newspaper headline for everyone, that read, "Series of extraterrestrial aircrafts land in San Francisco, London, Hong Kong." It was accompanied by a prominent black-and-white photograph of a crashed manta ship.

"The bastards crashed and burned as soon as they entered this dimension," hooted Rembrandt, passing the newspaper over to Professor Arturo.

"The virus must be really getting to them," Maggie commented. "But if they're tracking us, why would they still be stupid enough to attack when they know there's something lethal being left behind wherever we go?"

"Either the apes are losing brain cells," Janine cracked, "or they think they can beat it somehow."

"Hmm." The Professor was rather intrigued by the news story below the photo. "According to this, President Matsunaka has ordered an immediate evacuation of the San Francisco crash site. He says that the world must use research from the ship's remains and autopsies of those aboard it to learn more in protecting themselves against further threats from outer space."

"More like interdimensional space." Diana bit her tongue. "If I was him, I'd be more concerned about the Dublians."

Emily Beecham approached Quinn, Colin, and Dr. Silas Larson. "So what happens if the Slidecage blocks our path?"

"We'll be bounced back to this world," predicted Quinn. "The Slidecage shouldn't let any new travelers in. But at least we'll know these are the right coordinates for Kromagg Prime."

Silas spoke up. "And if we get that far, our next step will be to bypass the Slidecage itself. Based on the encrypted data in Colin's microdot, combined with the readings from Diana's PDL, I've extrapolated a likely algorithm for navigating an accurate path around the Slidecage." He unfolded a slip of paper, on which he'd scribbled the following addendum to Kromagg Prime's coordinates:

405-134-101-118 37x 39x

A figurative light bulb appeared over Quinn's head. "Those look so familiar. Don't they, Colin?"

"Yes." Colin stared at the full coordinate set. "It is coming back to me. I think Silas may have deciphered the information we once had."

"I thought so too," said Silas. "Michael gave me a decryption algorithm when I first began this journey, but I'd only glanced at it once or twice - he'd encoded it within my timer. Obviously, that apparatus is still back on Persian World."

As the remaining minutes passed, Quinn double-checked the coordinates he'd entered.

405-134-101-118

Quinn extended the timer outward and shot a stream of quantum energy from it. "Homeward bound!" he shouted, watching the purple vortex materialize.

Quinn joined hands with Colin, and the Mallory brothers leapt into the interdimensional rift. Each of their friends gradually followed.

"I'm still getting used to that," Emily blushed, pushing her glasses up onto her nose.

Malcolm and Mallory tumbled to the ground. Janine and Rembrandt were the last ones out of the vortex, narrowly avoiding a collision with Malcolm and Mallory.

Arturo looked around at the hilly meadow they'd landed in. "We seem to have made the slide safely," the Professor observed.

Quinn's face fell immediately. "Uh, oh," he lamented. "We know what that means . . ."

His friends gave him expressionless stares, not understanding.

Glancing at Colin, Quinn sighed. "We didn't get bounced back. No Slidecage. This isn't our homeworld."

Colin looked as sad as a wounded puppy.

Diana had pulled out her PDL. "Let me double-check the coordinates, just to be sure."

"Obviously, they're the wrong coordinates." Quinn stared at Dr. Larson, critically. "Silas, are you positive you had your homeworld coordinates memorized correctly?"

"Absolutely," Silas stated, without a doubt. Then, he paused uncomfortably. "Although . . . who knows how Yashar's scientists might have messed with my mind while I was under hypnosis. They might have jumbled up the numbers in my memory."

Rembrandt had taken the timer from Quinn. "Well, wherever we are, we're here for a week."

Diana was scrutinizing the data readout on her PDL. "Quinn, this world definitely has the exact same coordinates as those Dr. Larson gave us. There's no mistake about that."

Janine made a face at Silas Larson. "Maybe he never had the coordinates to begin with? Maybe he just made himself believe that he had them, so he could catch a free ride with us?" Her voice was riddled with suspicion.

"That's impossible," said Silas, matter-of-factly.

Quinn hated to admit it to himself, but he'd been thinking the exact same thing Janine had.

"Everyone calm down," Professor Arturo provided a voice of reason. "We have plenty of time to figure it out."

Maggie wiped some sweat from her forehead. "Does it seem really hot out here, to anyone else?"

Indeed, all of the sliders could feel an extraordinary mugginess around them, even though the sun wasn't blazing at full force.

The duodectet had strolled along the knoll to the side of a dirt road. Wade was looking at the trees around them with great scrutiny.

"You guys, look at these trees." Wade pointed to all the bare branches with a noticeable lack of leaves. "It's early-summer, but the branches are practically naked."

Diana shrugged. "The seasons could follow a different cycle on this Earth."

"I just want to get to the nearest city, so we can find a Four Seasons," quipped Mallory, placing one foot on the road's gravel. "I say we try to hitch a ride."

"Good luck finding a car to hold all twelve of us," muttered Janine, peering down the country road.

In the distance, a futuristic vehicle came throttling toward them from afar, getting bigger and bigger as it approached.

"Ah, we're in luck," Arturo said, breathing a sigh of relief. "Here comes someone right now."

The car's edges were flat like a pancake, with windows on all sides, and it made mechanical sputtering noises as it eased across the ground, almost floating.

Before they knew it, the vehicle had stopped right in front of the large group. Its multiple doors robotically lifted open from all sides, in unison.

"Wow, some wheels you got there!" Rembrandt called to the vehicle's occupants, as they began to get out.

Six soldiers had popped out of the futuristic car, toting large, heavy weapons resembling machine guns.

Mallory muttered, with a side-glance at Remmy, "I'm guessing this isn't the Welcome Wagon."

"Nobody move!" barked one of the soldiers. He and his fellow officers had spread themselves out strategically, aiming their weapons at the sliders from different angles. "These babies fire twenty kilo bolts of electrical current. Just being stunned by it will make you wish you were in a SenDep tank."

"Hey, we're not here to hurt anyone," Malcolm protested, defiantly.

"Who's your leader?" the head officer further interrogated them.

Rembrandt was about to raise his hand, but Quinn couldn't allow the Cryin' Man to take the heat. "That would be me," Quinn quickly said, raising his hand.

"Who are you?! Where did you come from?!"

Quinn decided to go with the truth. "My friends and I are scientists . . ."

"All twelve of you?!" interrupted the commanding officer, not buying it.

". . . we're searching for two fellow scientists, Michael and Elizabeth Mallory," Quinn finished, ignoring the soldier's surliness.

Taking in Quinn's words, the commanding officer nodded to one of his subordinates. The lower-level soldier pulled out an oval-shaped gizmo from his pocket, and marched over to Quinn.

"Place your finger on the groove," instructed the subordinate soldier, from behind his protective helmet.

Quinn did as he was told.

"What is that thing?!" demanded Maggie.

"It's okay, Maggie." Quinn looked straight at the masked soldier, unafraid. "Do whatever you need to do."

The soldier pushed a button on the curvy handle of the device. A needle-like appendage penetrated the flesh of Quinn's thumb.

"Ow!" Quinn winced.

The needle remained in place, as the gizmo sputtered and beeped. Its operator then released the contraption from around Quinn's finger. Quinn sucked his bloody thumb.

"What was that all about?" Rembrandt demanded, his eyes narrowing.

From behind his heavy, dark helmet, the soldier was studying the digital screen on his apparatus.

"It's a biothermal heat imprint scanner," spoke the commanding officer. "It measures your quantum signature, your DNA, and your genetic makeup."

Within 30 seconds, a miniature digital photograph of Quinn Mallory appeared on the scanner's screen, accompanied by alphanumerical data.

"This can't be right," said the subordinate soldier, reading the data from his heat imprint scanner. "According to this, you're Quinn Mallory, the second son of Dr. Michael Mallory. But you've been declared dead by your parents and by our government."

Quinn was speechless. "I . . . I'm a double," he rationalized, "from another dimension . . ."

"Not according to this, you aren't," the soldier replied. "You have the exact same quantum signature as the Quinn Mallory from our world. An identical genetic composition, identical blood work . . ."

"Identical everything." Quinn, despite his overlying skepticism, had a gut feeling that he was somehow meant to be there. "I'm him. I'm Quinn Mallory."

The soldiers looked at each other through their helmets. Then they raised their stun guns, and the commanding officer pulled out a walkie-talkie.

"Command Center, this is Thurman. We have a 'situation' here. I'm going to need at least five squads of backup . . ."

General Thurman entered the waiting area, holding the biothermal heat scanner. He was accompanied by some of the local sheriffs.

"Quinn and Colin Mallory." He shook his head at the brothers. "Unbelievable. In fact, I'm still not so sure I believe it."

"Trust us. We're the sons who Michael and Elizabeth Mallory gave up for adoption almost thirty years ago," Quinn insisted, making direct, authentic eye contact with the general.

"We have been searching for our parents for a long time," Colin said.

"Mmm-hmm." Thurman stared at Silas. "Dr. Silas Larson. According to your profile, you were an interdimensional scout from the Post-Voraton Era."

"Only trying to serve my species, sir," Silas replied.

"And Miss Emily Beecham," he addressed the young spectacled lady. "Our files indicate that you were given clearance by the government to search for your brother offworld. Private Thomas Beecham, a soldier Missing-in-Action during The Manganese Conflict."

"That would be me," Emily quietly confirmed. "But my family never told me much about Thomas's disappearance. What exactly was The Manganese Conflict?"

Thurman didn't answer. He next turned to Maggie. "Margaret Alison Beckett," he read from the information on his miniature screen. "Reportedly killed in the San Bernardino Riots of '74. You were only two-years-old." He cocked his head at her. "My, how you've aged!"

"I can explain . . ." Maggie held up her fingers, indignantly.

"I know. You're a double," he cut her off, gruffly. "Your quantum signature doesn't match that of the Margaret Beckett from this Earth." General Thurman moved along to Diana. "Dr. Diana Davis, quantum propulsion specialist at NIDA in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Funny, I just talked with your double half an hour ago on the phone."

"Hope you had a nice chat," shot back Diana, gritting her teeth with a nervous flinch.

Thurman switched the digital photographic file from an image of Diana to one of the Professor. "And here we have Maximilian Arturo, professor of biology and evolutionary theory at Oakwood State University. I spoke with your double earlier, too . . . a rather pompous fellow."

"Sir, at much as we enjoy your coy repartee," Arturo facetiously scoffed, "one would hope there is some purpose to this garish display of knowledge." He harrumphed, rather impatiently.

"I'm getting there." General Thurman circulated over to Janine. "The illustrious Janine Chen. The infamous Berkeley city councilwoman who openly challenged The LARKS Act."

"What the hell is that?" Janine shook her head, in confusion. She'd never heard of the legislation before.

"I guess you really AREN'T from this world." With a tight smile, he addressed Maggie, Diana, Janine, and Professor Arturo, collectively. "None of you have the same quantum signature as those of us native to this dimension. So, we will accept the likelihood that you are interdimensional duplicates."

"Duh, I could have told you that, General Brainiac!" Janine rolled her eyes.

"However, none of the rest of you have genetic profiles on file," General Thurman said to Mallory, Rembrandt, Malcolm, and Wade. "So we will assume that either your doubles were somehow killed before their profiles could be recorded, or, more likely, your alternate selves were never born on our world. Whatever the case may be, you're definitely not Kromaggs. Your heat imprints are fully human. So we will regard you as law-abiding civilians . . . for now."

"But what about us?" Quinn eyed Thurman eagerly. "You believe us, don't you?"

"I don't know what to believe," Thurman stated, although from his voice it was obvious that he did. "What I do know is that your genetic profiles are identical to residents of this dimension. Until further evidence proves otherwise, you will be regarded by the identities that you possess." He swiveled around, turning his back to them. "Michael and Elizabeth Mallory want to meet you boys. Your friends, too."

Colin and Quinn gazed at each other, with great excitement.

"That means . . ." Colin's voice was overjoyed.

"Yeah, family reunion," mumbled Thurman, exiting the room.

Quinn and Colin hugged one another. Then Maggie hugged Quinn. Rembrandt hugged Colin. Quinn hugged Wade. Colin hugged Malcolm. Emily hugged Silas. Diana hugged Janine. Janine snorted and rolled her eyes again, yet she couldn't help but smile.

The sheriff cleared his throat. "We will be chaperoning you to Pasadena, where you will be escorted to Michael and Elizabeth Mallory's research compound."

As they were led outside, Quinn barely even noticed the stuffiness that wrapped itself around his skin.

"So what kind of fuel is this baby powered by?" Quinn asked the driver, through the ventilation that separated them.

"Electric," replied a familiar, Russian-accented voice. "8,000 potentiometers per lithium-ion battery pack . . . a helluva improvement over those skimpy lead-ion battery packs." Despite his droll, disinterested tone, Alternate Pavel really seemed to know his information. "At 240-watts in charger, is fast as agile little bird on TV screen . . . gotta love that 'Energizer Penguin' . . . it keeps waddling and waddling and waddling . . ."

"They must have had to cut back on their emissions from vehicles after the Voraton device was launched," Maggie inferred.

"Voraton!" This alternate of Pavel Kurlienko sneered with contempt. "Mechanical beast! Destroyer of our world!"

"I guess the Voraton KR-17 is public knowledge," said Colin.

Quinn peered out the window. "It's definitely muggy outside, but the ecology seems to be holding up pretty well."

"Yeah, from what Vernon Larson had told us, I was expecting Kromagg Prime to be a barren wasteland," Maggie recalled. "This is a walk in the park, compared to his dreary description."

Quinn's gaze wandered out the window once again. He was still going back and forth: was this place really his and Colin's homeworld? Was it just a carbon copy? What happened to the Slidecage? How could it NOT be home for them when their quantum signatures apparently matched those belonging to the other people on this Earth?

His emotions continued to waffle, as the motorcade proceeded onward to Pasadena.

"This is Epcot Center. It is the facility where the Mallorys continue their biospheric research. It's been the site of many ecological breakthroughs." Thurman waved his hand around, gesturing at the colossal, circular white dome that resembled a large golf ball.

Mallory slanted his lips, crookedly. "Where are Mickey and Minnie?" he joked.

"Wow, I've always wanted to come here!" Malcolm explained. "I mean, not 'here' . . . but my parents would never take me to Disneyland. They thought it was too juvenile."

"Aw, a couple of spinning teacups never hurt anyone." Mallory slapped Malcolm on the shoulder.

Rembrandt was still staring up at the Epcot Center. "General Thurman, we had one of these on my world . . . except it was part of an amusement park in Florida."

"Oh, the Mallorys built an Epcot branch in Orlando, too," Thurman confirmed. He turned very serious. "Enough chit-chat. Here's how things are going to work. Michael and Elizabeth live in a high-rise apartment. Nice place, too . . . I've been to a few Christmas parties there. The brothers, Dr. Larson, and Miss Beecham will be the only ones allowed contact with the Mallorys, initially. The rest of you will wait in the lobby outside their place."

"No way!" Maggie protested. She really wanted to meet Quinn and Colin's parents.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Beckett . . ."

"General, look . . . we stick together. Through everything. Good times and bad. Happy and painful. And this reunion might be a little of both." Rembrandt stared General Thurman straight in the eye, undaunted. "We want to be there for our friends. That's the way it's gotta be."

"We have security policies, Mr. Brown," argued Thurman. "I cannot make any exceptions."

"We're going with!" Maggie shouted, stubbornly.

"That isn't an option, Ms. Beckett . . ."

"It's okay, guys." Quinn put a kibosh on the quarrel. "Don't worry. You'll get to meet our parents soon enough . . . assuming they're the right ones."

Maggie pouted as Quinn put his arm around her. The group strolled through a garden where grass and occasional trees sprouting leaves grew. They walked in-between several greenhouses containing faint splashes of bright, lively colors through the illuminated paned glass windows. Soon, the duodectet was waived through a secure entrance into a clean, sterile building. The twelve of them crowded into an elevator, along with General Thurman and the police escorts.

The elevator ascended up ten flights of stairs. On their way up, the sliders were treated to recorded elevator music, the lyrics to "I Truly Adore You" by Olivia Newton-John.

They soon were watching the elevator doors slide open, leading onto the top floor of Mallory Tower. Revealed to them was a spacious penthouse with several hallways jutting out in different directions. A wishing fountain bubbled within the parameters of a circular pool, filled with shiny coins that had been tossed in by passers-by.

"The Mallorys' penthouse is straight down the hall, Apartment 1064," General Thurman gave them the directions. "I will escort the four of you while the rest of your friends wait here."

Quinn and Colin waved goodbye to their friends, following Emily and Silas down the blue-carpeted hallway. On their way to the Mallory penthouse, they passed by a number of aquariums built into the wall. Through the glass of these tanks, one could see murky yellowish-green water and bubbles being created.

Colin leaned over and whispered to Quinn, "Why do they not fill them with goldfish?" referring to the tanks in the wall.

Emily rapped on a set of French doors with a golden number 1064 embossed on them. Over her shoulder, she told the others, "It looks like they've remodeled since I was last here."

"Are our parents expecting us?" Quinn asked General Thurman.

"In a manner of speaking. We told them that we have guests to introduce them to. However," admitted Thurman, "I didn't reveal your identities. We felt it would be most objective to see if they recognized the two of you on their own, without any biased anticipation ahead of time."

The doors opened, and there stood a woman in her late-thirties with curly red hair flowing down her shoulders. She wore a sleek black pants suit with an emerald chain around her neck.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"Elizabeth! It's me! Emily!" A chipper squeal of excitement exited Emily Beecham's mouth as recognition instantly filled Elizabeth's eyes.

"Emily?!" Elizabeth warmly embraced her long-lost ally. Over Emily's shoulder, Elizabeth Mallory caught a glimpse of Quinn and Colin.

Both of the brothers had immediately recognized Elizabeth's face from the microdot.

"Oh . . . my . . . God?" Elizabeth's eyes had grown as large as golf balls. She stared at Quinn's face. "Quinn . . . ?" Turning to her other son, "Colin . . . ?"

"She recognizes us! She knows who we are!" Colin smiled at Quinn.

Elizabeth took both of her sons into her arms with a motherly hug. "Oh, my!" She yelled into the penthouse, "Michael, get out here!" in a frantic voice.

A tall, balding man with glasses came running into the foyer. Upon seeing Quinn's face through the doorway, Michael Mallory knew instantaneously that his long-shot dream had actually come true.

"Son . . . ?" Michael then looked over at Colin, and his tears fell harder at realizing that both of his long-lost sons were finally home.

"Dad . . . ?" Quinn whispered. His breath had been taken away completely.

Meanwhile, Maggie was getting restless. She could not stand being in the dark any longer about what was happening over at the Mallorys' penthouse.

Maggie Beckett took off down the hall.

"Hey!" one of the guards yelled after her.

"Maggie!" Diana strode after Maggie, concerned that the headstrong marine was about to get herself into a heap of trouble.

Once Diana had begun her march down the hall after Maggie, the others followed like magnets. Rembrandt, Wade, Mallory, Janine, Malcolm, and Professor Arturo hurried behind Maggie and Diana in a large cluster. The guards could only trail after the sliders, fruitlessly commanding them to stop.

Elizabeth was hugging Quinn, and Michael was hugging Colin, when the eight interdimensional allies approached.

Michael Mallory gave a confused laugh. "Well, what have we here?"

"These are our friends . . . Dad." Colin smiled warmly upon saying the word.

"I thought I told you to stay in the lobby!" General Thurman growled at the eight disobedient sliders.

"I'm sorry, sir. We couldn't stop them," one of the guards apologized.

Michael held up his hand. "Nonsense. Any friends of the boys are welcome in our home."

Before long, all fourteen of them were lounging around Michael and Elizabeth's nicely-furnished living room. Thurman and the other officers had stationed themselves outside.

"Mom, Dad . . ." Quinn breathed deeply, still not quite believing that he was finally with his biological parents. "How did you know it was me and Colin? The last time you saw us, I was a baby and Colin must barely have been walking."

"Intuition. A mother knows." A wise gleam shined in Elizabeth's pupils. "Plus we had your photographs digitally-enhanced to project what you would look like at your current ages. It's been an ongoing tradition every year - sort of to keep you boys alive in our hearts."

Michael looked at Quinn. "Your foster parents told us you had died in an automobile accident. They even showed us your death certificate."

"My mom told me how she and Dad - well, my 'other' dad - hid me from you guys when you came back for me." Quinn pondered Michael's revelation. "They must have faked my death, and doctored up a bogus death certificate to show you."

Elizabeth turned to Colin. "And when we returned for you, Colin, we were told your parents were dead. No one in the village of Westchester, where we'd left you, knew where you were."

"I was sent by our local pastor to live with a foster family in El Segundo," Colin explained. "My new adopted parents . . . they treated me like I was their own son. Which wasn't always the best experience. They were quite strict, and had very little tolerance or patience for my inquisitive mind."

"Boys, how long have you been searching for us?" Michael took a sip of his tea, wide-eyed.

Quinn and Colin traded glances. "Almost four years," Quinn answered. "Although we hit some bumps along the way. You see, I was 21 when this all started. I built a sliding machine by accident, and Wade and the Professor -" he gestured to each of them, "- came along for the ride."

Rembrandt coughed, pointedly.

"Oh, and Remmy too," Quinn sheepishly added. "Actually, I pulled Rembrandt into the vortex by accident when I turned the power up."

Smiling good-naturedly, Remmy shook his head. "Water under the bridge, Q-Ball." After a pause, the Cryin' Man added with a wink, "You're still buying me a new Deville when we get home, though."

As everyone laughed, Quinn continued. "We slid for three years until we arrived on Maggie's Earth. It was about to be destroyed by a cluster of pulsars from outer space."

"Oh, my!" gasped Elizabeth.

Maggie linked her hand with Quinn's. "Quinn saved my life - and the lives of hundreds of people from my homeworld. We found a new parallel Earth where there was plenty of room to relocate a colony of refugees before the pulsars hit." She sighed, longingly. "I lost everything, but gained so much."

Rembrandt picked up the account, since Maggie's eyes were beginning to well up. "You see, Maggie's husband, Dr. Steven Jensen, was killed by this insane colonel who was in command of Maggie's base. Rickman murdered Maggie's husband . . ."

". . . and my parents," Malcolm spoke up, bitterly.

". . . and a double of the Professor's, who'd swapped places with 'our' Professor," explained Remmy.

Professor Arturo snorted. "I've never let them live down that mix-up, either," he harrumphed, with a twinkle in his eye.

"So I went with Quinn and Rembrandt and Wade," said Maggie. "I had to avenge Steven's death."

"When we finally made it back to Earth Prime," Quinn told his parents, "we found out that the Kromaggs had invaded."

Rembrandt nodded, solemnly. "Wade and I had gone on ahead of Maggie and Q-Ball. The filthy 'Maggs overran our hotel and dragged me and Wade off. They stuck me in one of their 'Reeducation' Centers . . ."

". . . and put me in a breeder camp," Wade quietly added.

Michael and Elizabeth leaned forward in horror.

"As we were busting Remmy out of the 'Reeducation Center,' I was captured," Quinn said. "While I was being held in that facility, they reunited me with my mom . . . my 'other' mom, who you'd left the microdot with." He stared at Elizabeth, and proceeded to ask a question that had been nagging at him for a long time. "Why aren't you and my foster mother exact duplicates? I mean, you both gave birth to me on different worlds . . ."

Elizabeth Mallory failed to make eye contact with Quinn. Her gaze dropped to the floor, then skirted toward Michael. "Probably a genetic fluke," she suggested, rather hastily. "Maybe some differences in exact ancestry?"

Michael quickly jumped in. "So the Kromaggs intentionally reunited you with your foster mother?"

Quinn nodded. "My guess is that she'd revealed the existence of the microdot to the Kromaggs when they initially interrogated her. Later, we discovered that they had implanted a tracking device in me. In fact, once when they captured us, the Kromaggs even implied that they intentionally let us escape from Earth Prime so they could track us back here."

"I've always wondered," Remmy pondered out loud, on that note, "back when we first met the 'Maggs . . . they looked . . . different."

"Yes. Much darker in complexion . . . somehow more sinister," Arturo elaborated, comparing the Kromaggs from Earth 113 to those whom they'd run into more often.

"I can explain that." Michael got up from the sofa and walked over to a rolled-up map on the wall. Pulling it down from overhead, the map unraveling like a scroll, Michael revealed a full geographic map that showed Kromagg Prime's global atlas. "Since the beginning of intelligent life, the Kromaggs on this planet have generally inhabited Africanus," he pointed to the African continent, "which is where we believe their evolutionary genesis can be traced back to. They lived mainly in the jungles below the equator, while human beings roamed the deserts. Eventually, Kromaggs and humans encountered one another, and formed a bispecies nation."

"The differences in skin pigments amongst Kromaggs can be attributed to varying tribal geography," Elizabeth further clarified. "The Kromaggs who lived in Africanus generally had darker skin, but those who migrated to Eurasia with their human allies developed lighter pigmentation over time. Kromaggs on the Southasian continent acquired skin tones somewhere in-between those of their brethren from Africanus and Eurasia. Kromaggs also initially had a more limited vocabulary than humans did, despite the more multi-layered structure of the Kromagg brain. That could be one of the reasons why so many Kromagg names traditionally begin with the letter K . . . over time, humans actually taught Kromaggs our own linguistics, which the Kromagg species integrated into its preexisting vocabulary."

"Even from across the Ocean Atlanticus, humans and Kromaggs shared a mutual tolerance," said Michael Mallory, of his Earth's history. "From the first time a Kromagg seaship landed at the Plymouth Cliffs in 1562 - and then again, in 1607, when they were invited to share in the first Thanksgiving near Jamestown settlement . . . we had more than two centuries of interspecies peace."

Elizabeth frowned. "But all of that changed. Part of it was our fault, part of it theirs."

"Our civil war started around 1805," recounted Michael. "When hunters from the North American slave trade tried to shackle Kromaggs along with the black man, the Kromagg species naturally revolted. Humans on the continent of Africanus were either slaughtered, enslaved, or chased off the continent. Many Kromagg revolutionaries spread their hatred of humanity to the Eurasian and Southasian continents."

"But it didn't stop there," lamented Elizabeth, sadly. "The Kromagg species has always been highly intelligent. In the early-Eighteenth Century, they had created their first manta ships out of organic metal. Initially, those ships were used simply for transportation. But once the civil war began, the mantas were converted into warships."

"And the manta ships crossed the Atlantic, to retaliate," Quinn intuitively filled in the blanks.

"Fortunately, we had our own weaponry . . . short-range missiles to deflect and pulverize the manta ships," Michael Mallory explained. "But the Kromaggs still had a slight technological edge, so the fighting ensued for over a century. It wasn't until September of 1977 when we finally released the Voraton KR-17, slowly obliterating Kromagg DNA on our Earth." He sighed, with heavy regret. "That was a mistake. The Voraton resulted in a mass exodus of millions of Kromaggs, who fled offworld before they were infected. We couldn't solve our own problems peacefully, so we ended up dispersing our warfare across the multiverse." Michael took a quick gulp, and then regained his composure. "However, the Voraton also released toxins and other chemical byproducts into the atmosphere. These pathogens targeted chloroplasts and some proteins. Plants began to wither all over the world, and many animal species became extinct. We had to somehow rectify the effects of the Voraton."

"So we developed an antivirus," Elizabeth told them. "We hoped it would reverse the environmental deterioration that had taken place. Unfortunately, we also knew that, if successful, the antivirus would leave us vulnerable to reinvasion by the Kromaggs."

"So you built the Slidecage!" Remmy caught on.

"You guys would know." Michael had a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

"What . . . ?" It took a moment for Colin to figure out what his father meant.

"The Slidecage was disabled, apparently by some offworld visitors." Michael grinned at Quinn and Colin. "We went inside and learned about your intervention there from the two occupants living inside of it."

Maggie's eyes lit up. "Thomas and Jules?!"

Elizabeth nodded, smiling back at Maggie. "They're safe. They've been with us for years now."

Quinn tilted his head, slightly confused. "Dad, if you knew we were searching for you, why were you surprised to see us?"

"Even though we knew you boys were probably working on the decryption algorithm, your mother and I know what a dangerous job sliding can be," Michael wearily explained. "As days passed by, months turned into years, and with no sign of your group, we began to worry that something had happened to you." He shook his head, looking very ashamed of himself. "Quinn, Colin . . . we never should have doubted you."

Colin leaned forward to hug his father. "We understand, Dad. And we don't blame you for it. The Slidecage was a necessary evil."

Silas Larson looked thoughtful. "If I remember correctly, you were just getting ready to go online with the Slidecage before I slid out. It would have been around October of 1981."

Michael nodded, recalling that time period. "You made an honorable sacrifice for your species, Silas. Especially knowing there was a good chance you might never be able to return home."

Diana had finished taking a sip from her cup of tea. "What I want to know is why your Earth's climate is so unbelievably humid?"

"It was a side-effect of the antivirus," explained Elizabeth. "Erratic weather patterns developed as the biosphere began to slowly regenerate. In some areas, like California, we're inundated with extreme heat. But in other places, like South America, the ground is practically frozen solid. Well, south of the Pampas, at least. We did manage to save the Amazon."

Professor Arturo tightened his lips. "Geothermal climate extremities were the price you paid for the ecological self-correction from your antivirus."

"Exactly." Elizabeth took a bite out of her muffin. "It's a slow process, but we're gradually getting back our chloroplasts. In the meantime, we've isolated a variety of seeds, pollens, vegetation, and plant species in our enclosed biospheres all over the hemisphere. I'm sure you saw some of them when you first arrived here at Epcot."

"Elizabeth is our foremost authority on ecology and botanical restoration." Michael beamed with pride at his wife. "She heads our national Emergency Conservation Unit."

Slightly embarrassed by her husband's flattery, Elizabeth blushed. "The domed biospheres, our electric cars . . . they are necessary steps we've taken to salvage our surviving organic resources. The Voraton tragedy forced us to find creative environmental solutions while we wait for the planet's ecosystem to repair itself."

"Back to the Kromaggs." Wade steered he conversation on-track again. "So they could invade your world at any moment?"

"Yes . . . potentially," Michael carefully said. "However, our aeronautic technology has come a long way in the past twenty years. We've positioned satellites above our atmosphere, and they would send off warning signals if they were to detect Kromagg DNA entering our dimension from hyperspace. We wanted an extra safeguard, just in case the Kromaggs had managed to somehow bypass the Slidecage."

Elizabeth looked at her sons. "Honestly, we had given up all hope of ever seeing you boys ever again. Until we retrieved Thomas and Jules from the Slidecage, our government had considered you both dead. I believe your DNA files still acknowledge your presumed deaths, in fact. But once we found out you'd beat the Slidecage . . ." She shook her head, and was overcome with tears. "We didn't dare speak of the thought out loud . . . we were afraid it wouldn't come true if we did . . . but deep down, I think we both knew in our hearts that it would only be a matter of time before you found your way home."

The Mallory brothers took their mother in their arms.

"There's another thing that happened to us," Quinn spoke up. "Well, to me, actually. It's a long story, but basically, I was hit by an electric pulsation that caused me to receive . . . visions."

Elizabeth stared at her son. "What kinds of visions?" she asked, tentatively.

"It seems to depend on what I make physical contact with," Quinn explained. "I'll tend to randomly touch an object or person, and then I'll see a vision related to that thing or individual. It's either of the past, present, or future - there's no real pattern to whether I end up seeing forward or backward through time . . . but I don't know why it happened to me, but it did."

Michael looked at Elizabeth, who's face was rather pale at hearing this. "So it's completely random, Quinn?"

"I guess so. I haven't totally figured it out yet." Quinn's shoulders sagged.

Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth asked, "Have you had any of these . . . visions since you arrived here?"

"No."

"Well, if you start receiving them again, please let us know . . . so we can support you." Elizabeth added that last bit rather quickly and hastily.

"Quinn . . . Colin . . ." Michael addressed his two sons. He shared a side-glance with Elizabeth, and they seemed to communicate non-verbally. "We do have something else to tell you . . ."

Colin and Quinn both leaned in, attentively.

"When your foster parents told your mother and I that you had died . . ." Michael switched from Quinn to Colin. ". . . and when we learned you'd been sent to live with another foster family, and we couldn't track you down . . ." Michael clutched Elizabeth's hand, searching for the words to match his sadly nostalgic expression. "Once the Kromaggs were gone, and before we saw the repercussions of the Voraton, your mother and I decided to expand our family."

Both Quinn's and Colin's faces turned white with shock.

"You mean . . . ?" Colin had totally been thrown for a loop.

"We had another child," Elizabeth said. "You have a sister."

Now everyone else in the room was listening in shock, as well. The brothers' mouths were hanging open

"Her name is Hannah. She's 23-years-old," Michael proudly told them. "Right now, Hannah is resting in her bedroom. Since your arrival, we went in and told her that you're here now. She's very excited to meet you."

"We're . . . we're excited to meet her too," Quinn responded, breathless.

"But there's something you should know ahead of time, so it doesn't come to you boys as a shock." Elizabeth blushed, realizing how ironic that statement must have sounded. But she continued. "Hannah was born with metastatic vertebrae compression."

Although they had a basic idea, Colin and Quinn each looked confused, not fully certain what their mother meant by that.

But Mallory knew. "She's paraplegic," translated Quinn's fraternal double, for the benefit of all his friends.

Michael nodded. "You're familiar with it?" he asked Mallory.

"Intimately," Mallory replied, wryly grinning in spite of himself.

"Wow . . ." Quinn was still speechless, trying to comprehend the shock of discovering another long-lost sibling.

"A sister . . ." Colin trailed off, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with eagerness.

A softer, younger, more feminine voice wafted through the wall of the Mallorys' parlor.

"Mom . . . !" the voice called out.

"Hannah's awake." Elizabeth smiled at the brothers. "Are you ready to meet her?"

"I - I . . . oh, I mean, yeah. Sure. Definitely. Let's go!" Quinn was pretty much babbling in anxiety.

"A sister . . ." Colin repeated, absent-mindedly. He still had a faraway look in his eyes.

As Quinn and Colin arose from the sofa with their parents, Quinn locked eyes with Maggie. "Well, are you coming?"

Maggie was taken aback. "Quinn, are you sure . . . ?"

"Come on." Quinn took Maggie's hand and led her out of the room as they followed Michael and Elizabeth Mallory into Hannah's bedroom.

A young woman in her early-twenties was sitting up in bed. Her straight, thick, reddish-brown hair was slightly messy, falling down past her shoulders. She wore a pink nightgown and had ovular facial features, very much resembling those of Quinn and Colin. An empty wheelchair was stationed next to her floral-patterned bed.

"Hi!" She cheerfully greeted her brothers. In spite of her obvious handicap, Hannah Mallory seemed remarkably upbeat. She flashed them a huge, amicable grin. "You must be Quinn and Colin."

"Yeah . . ." Quinn smiled back. Something about this girl just made him feel reenergized and hopeful. "And you're Hannah?"

Hannah Mallory's grin only got wider. "Well, come here! You're my brothers, aren't ya?! Gimme a hug, guys!"

Colin and Quinn approached Hannah, and kneeled down by their sister's bedside so they could embrace her. Maggie looked on, warmly.

"Pleased to meet you, Professor." Hannah cheerfully shook Arturo's hand, from where she sat upon the cushion of her mechanical wheelchair.

Professor Arturo returned Hannah's smile. "The pleasure is all mine, Miss Mallory," he said, with gentlemanly vigor.

Diana smiled at Hannah. "This must be quite an experience for you."

Hannah fondly looked up at her two older brothers. "No kidding! Ever since Mom and Dad first told me about Quinn and Colin when I was younger, I always dreamed about my brothers returning home." Her face was happily lit up. "And here they are!"

Elizabeth placed her hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Hannah, don't you think Quinn and Colin might be interested in seeing your collections?" She was gently hoping to enable her daughter to get to spend some time alone with her two older brothers.

"Collections?" Colin looked at Hannah. "What do you collect?"

Hannah Mallory was grinning from ear-to-ear. "Sea urchins, hermit crabs, baby lobsters . . . Mom gave them to me from the ECU Millennial Conservation Project." Her expression became slightly sad. "They're some of the creatures that we're trying to prevent from becoming endangered species. Poor things!"

Quinn smiled down at his sister, warmly. "We'd love to see. Show us the way."

Hannah jiggled the electronic lever on her wheelchair, veering herself into one of the hallways inside the Mallorys' spacious penthouse apartment. Colin and Quinn followed closely behind her.

Turning to the remaining sliders, Elizabeth gestured to the living room. "Shall we sit?"

Everyone non-verbally agreed, and they all sat down again.

Michael scratched his balding forehead. "So how did the rest of you join up with our sons?"

Maggie shifted in her seat, uncomfortably. The very memory of it brought chills to her flesh. "Colin hadn't been with us for even a year when he and Quinn were involved with a terrible accident."

"Well, Colin's involvement was accidental," Diana clarified. She turned to Michael and Elizabeth. "You see, on my world I worked with a great scientist, Dr. Oberon Geiger. At least, I thought he was great - when I was his student. All I had in my life at the time was my work, and Dr. Geiger provided me with the validation I needed to continue in my career." She sighed, reflecting on all the deception and mistrust. "Little did I know Dr. Geiger's true ulterior motive. In 1996, while I was completing my graduate program, Geiger was . . . 'injured' when he and a few of his lab assistants were conducting some routine equipment maintenance." Diana's speech slowed, and she painfully recalled the tragic demise of her friends and colleagues. "One of our ionization reactors exploded, and their bodies were bombarded with photons." She paused again, as tears came to her eyes and she sniffed. "The lethal emissions tore their molecular structures apart. Most of them were vaporized almost immediately."

"Oh my God!" whispered Elizabeth Mallory, absolutely horrified. She grasped her husband's hand.

Diana continued, brushing away her tears with a cloth napkin that had been neatly folded on the coffee table. "Geiger was the only one who survived. But his atomic structure was badly altered. He kept phasing in and out of our dimension, constantly shifting realities. We were finally able to stabilize Dr. Geiger in a realignment chamber surrounded by a containment field. His labs at Geiger Applied Research became his permanent new home. But Dr. Geiger legally retained all controlling authority over laboratory operations."

"During that time, Geiger offered me a miracle," Mallory spoke up, recalling how he first met Diana and Geiger. "Here was this creepy old man inside some bubble, offering me the chance to walk again. I thought he was nuts, but I figured, 'What the hell!' So I agreed to the surgery, and they did it. They healed me." He turned to give Diana a long, genuine smile. "Geiger helped me to walk again. But it came with a price. His only 'request' was that I become a lab assistant for his division, and that I participate in some 'research' as a 'genetic donor.' Geiger claimed he only wanted to extract my DNA so he could compare it to other versions of me in parallel realities. So into the Combine I went . . ."

" . . . and into Mallory went Quinn," sighed Maggie. She still had a headache from the emotional recollection of that day when Quinn and Mallory had first been merged.

"So then we slid into that mess," Rembrandt said. "We took our two-Quinns-in-one with us when the next window opened. Diana came with us, to help unmerge the two of them."

"And I had a bunch of security guards pointing guns at me," Diana added, sheepishly, further elaborating why she chose to leave her world behind.

"Eight months later, we finally made it back home," said Mallory, referring to himself and Diana, "only to watch the Kromaggs invade our world."

"I'm sorry." Michael bowed his head, pain-stakenly pushing his glasses up onto his nose. "That's terrible."

"Watching all those people die . . . our world crumbling right before us . . ." Diana could no longer utter her sad sentences. As tears completely overtook Diana, Wade pulled her into a soft hug from where they sat next to one another on the sofa.

Malcolm spoke up, telling his own account in the hopes of cushioning Mallory and Diana's anger. "Maggie and I are from the same homeworld. My dad was stationed on Maggie's military base, until the colonel killed him." Malcolm was remembering all too well that devastating experience of finding his father unconscious from the probe of Rickman's syringe. "Remmy took care of me, and slid me off our world right before it was destroyed. I stuck it out for two years with the other refugees at our camp, until the Kromaggs came. By luck, Remmy randomly slid back onto that Earth a few days after the invasion, and he found me in hiding." He looked down, sadly. "The Kromaggs captured a good friend of mine. We've been searching for her for the past two years."

Elizabeth tried to muster a kind smile for Malcolm, although she was devastated hearing his story. "I hope you find her."

Michael Mallory turned to address Janine. "And you? How did you become a part of this extraordinary adventure?"

"Through an extraordinary mishap," replied Janine, lightly. She focused her gaze on the Mallorys' grapevine-patterned wallpaper. "I was an interdimensional scout on my world for the tourism branch of 'Slidetronics' . . . a high-tech company that manufactures sliding equipment. They basically had me make short visits to parallel Earths, ensuring that those dimensions were hospitable enough to recommend to tourists. Once a dimension had the Slidetronics 'seal-of-approval,' our tourists could access the company's recommended coordinates at their own risk." Janine reflected upon that fateful day. "A little over two years ago, Rembrandt, Maggie, Diana, and Mallory had made a random visit to my Earth. As they were leaving my world through their wormhole, I was reentering my Earth from my own vortex just a few feet away. I accidentally fell into their vortex. The world we ended up on was crawling with Kromaggs, who, in their infinite wisdom, thought it would be fun to erase my homeworld coordinates from the timer. And the rest is history."

"Didn't you have your home coordinates memorized?" Michael asked Janine, incredulously.

"Well . . . yeah, at one point I did." Janine snorted. "But that was way back when I first began my training. After professionally sliding for so many years, I would just set my timer to 'autoslide.' It got to the point where I didn't have to remember my Earth's coordinates anymore, because I could just access them at the push of a button." Sighing, she admitted, "I guess I probably should have kept my world's coordinates fresh in my brain. It would have saved me a hell of a lot of grief, that's for sure! But it's like trying to remember your locker combination from sophomore year . . . you don't think you're ever going to really need it again until something unexpected happens."

Elizabeth gave Janine a sympathetic gaze. "Unfortunately, Janine, I doubt we have your home coordinates in any of our surviving databases. I'm sure I would have remembered reading a dossier with a description of your Earth, based on what you've just told us about it."

"So," Wade looked slightly hopeful, "what about the coordinates for Earth Prime - our Earth? You both left Quinn there, specifically, so wouldn't you still have Earth Prime's coordinates on record?"

Michael shook his head, regrettably. "I'm sorry, Wade. Your home coordinates were lost in an explosion back in '79, when some terrorists bombed our old Malibu facility. Maggistas. We lost a lot of good people and about 40% of our computerized data, including past slides."

"It's okay," Wade said, flatly. She was now staring across the room at one of the bubbling greenish-tinted tanks.

"Wade?" Speaking softly, Malcolm got his friend's attention.

"I'm sorry." Wade shook herself out of her sub-trance and addressed Quinn and Colin's parents. "Um, Mr. And Mrs. Mallory . . . ?"

"Please, it's Michael and Elizabeth," Michael Mallory gently told her.

"I just can't seem to shake this queasy feeling I get, every time I look at one of your glass aquariums." Wade pointed out the bubbly tank for the Mallorys. "It's just so similar to the space I remember being trapped in, when I was a prisoner of the Kromaggs."

Elizabeth looked curious. "They had hydropods in the breeder camps?" The incredulousness echoed in her voice.

"No." Wade closed her eyes, and then steadily proceeded forward with a verbal explanation. "While I was in the breeder camps, they assigned me as the midwife to an impregnated prisoner, Christina. She and I became really close." Sighing, Wade tried to push Christina's subsequent tragedy out of her mind. "After I helped Christina and her Humagg son to escape, the Kromaggs sent me to a manta base where they . . . did something to me. I'm not sure what."

"The 'Maggs had Wade hooked up to electrodes in one of those creepy . . . 'hydropods.' She was almost completely sedated," Rembrandt said, explaining the relevance of the hydropods to Michael and Elizabeth.

"She detonated the entire manta base," Mallory stated, grinning proudly at Wade. "The Kromaggs would have deployed a superweapon to invade your Earth." He gestured all around him, indicating Kromagg Prime in its entirety, and then realized what an integral role he and his friends had played in preventing the destruction of Quinn and Colin's homeworld.

Twin expressions of horror spread across the Mallorys' faces.

"You mean . . . they would have reinvaded, if you hadn't sacrificed yourself?" Elizabeth gaped at Wade, close to speechless.

Wade nodded, solemnly.

"But how could they?" sputtered Michael. "The Dynasty must surely have been under the impression hat the Slidecage was still active?"

Diana cleared her throat. "As Colonel Kesh explained it to us, Wade and the other humans were being bioengineered as a virtual computer network. The cyberiads, as they were called, had been programmed to telekinetically open rifts in hyperspace. The Kromaggs were using the cyberiads' joint consciousness to create space folds between dimensions. That's how they would have gotten past the Slidecage."

"Unbelievable," Michael shook his head, in a combination of awe and revulsion. Although there was very little shock or surprise inherent in his reaction.

Elizabeth leaned over toward Wade, and clutched the redheaded slider's hand. "We owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude for saving our world."

"Thank you," replied Wade, in a whisper. Until that moment, she hadn't fully realized the impact of her actions two-and-a-half yeas earlier.

"Oh, we've been doing more than that," Rembrandt told the Mallorys. "Ever since we got ahold of an anti-Kromagg virus created by scientists on one world, we've released the virus on every world we've landed on since then. Each one of us now carries it in our bloodstream."

Michael and Elizabeth just stared at Rembrandt, wide-eyed. Their silence was thick and awkward.

"Well, you're welcome," Janine said to the Mallorys, pointedly and facetiously. She was rather peeved that Michael and Elizabeth weren't even commenting on the sliders' joint efforts or thanking them for it.

"Um . . . we admire your bravery . . ." Elizabeth struggled to find the right words. "But . . . um . . . are you sure that was a good idea? Didn't you consider what effect the foreign blood might have on your bodies?"

Sighing, Rembrandt recalled, "There was no time to think. It was all happening so fast . . ." He tried to push away that emotional, climactic moment when he had departed Seer World all by himself, in the hopes of returning to Earth Prime. "But none of us have gotten sick from it."

"And have you considered what biological effects this virus might have on the ecosystem, when you release it on other worlds?" Michael posed to them.

"No . . ." Maggie responded, somewhat irritated at the Mallorys' skepticism. "Christina's homeworld and the Seer's homeworld both used it to drive out the Kromaggs, and they were coping just fine after the virus entered their atmospheres."

"We don't mean to sound beligerant," Elizabeth apologized. "But, as scientists, we're both concerned that you might not have thought this all the way through."

"Your concerns have merit," Arturo acknowledged, nodding at the Mallorys, "but we really have a moral duty to spread this viral epidemic to as many parallel worlds as possible, rather than simply leaving these defenseless Earths behind to unknowingly fend for themselves. After all, if we attempted to verbally warn people in parallel societies about the Kromagg threat, they would most likely laugh us right off their planet. Yes, there are risks - but what we are doing is the lesser of two evils."

Michael and Elizabeth traded thoughtful glances, as both of them mutually considered the Professor's words.

Over in Hannah's bedroom, the three Mallory siblings had their eyes glued to the swimming creatures in Hannah's big glass aquarium. Flattened, exotic fish glided through the water, and about a dozen shelled hermit crabs lurked at the bottom of the aquarium. Lobsters and sea urchins also scampered across the bottom of the tank, scurrying over little multi-colored pebbles. The sea critters brushed up against plastic algae or decorative slabs of rock at the bottom of the tank, as they lapped up granules of fish food.

With her lips, Hannah playfully made exaggerated oval shapes with her lips. She had her cherubic face pressed up against the aquarium glass.

"God's creatures are extremely beautiful," commented Colin, as he watched the bright pigments floating around underwater.

"They were just too pretty to have let them die in those murky waters off the coast of Vanuatu," Hannah gushed, her eyes following the fishes' churning fins. "When the West-Pacific Mudslides hit, Mom rushed to save as many of these little guys as she could. Our marine biologists relocated so much of that sea life into shedaquariums all over the country. We regularly breed them to preserve their species, but Mom and Dad let me keep some of the extras." Hannah turned to stare at her older brothers, longingly. "What's it like sliding?"

"Excuse me?" Quinn hadn't been expecting that question.

Hannah looked down at her wheelchair-ridden legs. "I've always wanted to travel between dimensions. Even knowing that the Kromaggs are still a threat . . . I have always had the strangest desire to see what other worlds are like. What are their people like? What would I have turned out like, if . . . ?" She stopped, as though something had caught in her throat.

". . . if you had been able to walk," Colin finished for Hannah, giving her a compassionate gaze.

A small tear trickled down her cheek. "I've been this way ever since I was born. I hate it." Hannah's chin quivered slightly. "Do you know what it's like having absolutely no independence? Having to rely on other people just to get around?"

"Yes. Yes, I do," nodded Colin. "In a way." He kneeled down in front of Hannah. "I haven't lived my life without legs. But as a child, my parents . . . my foster parents . . ." he clarified. "They kept a watchful eye over me. Mother told me that I needn't look any further than home. But I always had this undying urge to see the rest of the world . . . to see all of the things out there that were so much bigger than myself."

"I know how that feels," Hannah admitted. "Ever since Dad explained quantum physics to me, I've had a tremendous desire to meet so many of my alternate selves who are scattered throughout the multiverse. I just want to reach across hyperspace and hug all of the other Hannah Mallorys out there."

Quinn merely gave Hannah a warm smile. He didn't have the heart to disappoint her, to tell his baby sister that she most likely didn't exist on a majority of the parallel worlds in the multiverse . . . at least, not on the ones he'd visited.

"I'm so glad you came." The delighted look on Hannah's face conveyed all of the affection she had for Colin and Quinn.

The feeling was mutual for both of them. Quinn and Colin greatly looked forward to the week ahead of them, getting to know Hannah - their sister.

Silas and Emily, on the other hand, had elected to go and reunite with their respective families. Both the Larson and Beecham families now lived within 100 miles of Pasadena, so Silas and Emily were given police escorts and made it home for their own family reunions in no time flat.

"What's this all about?" Diana asked the Mallorys, as Michael handed her a glass goblet.

"Just a little celebration," answered Elizabeth, brightly. She approached Rembrandt, and began to pour what appeared to be a fine wine into Rembrandt's goblet.

"Uh, listen, thanks . . ." Rembrandt nodded at Elizabeth, thanking her in kind for the beverage, " . . . but, uh, Malcolm here isn't old enough to drink alcohol."

"Remmy!" Malcolm blushed furiously, in embarrassment.

"Relax, Rembrandt. It's sparkling cider," Elizabeth Mallory assured the Cryin' Man, with a chipper smile. "Michael and I picked it up during our last trip to Knott's Berry Vineyard. It's actually much better-tasting than the real stuff."

"Oh. Okay." Rembrandt blushed with his own embarrassment, throwing Malcolm an apologetic look of guilt. He raised his glass in a toast. "Well, then - cheers!"

Maggie echoed Rembrandt's enthusiasm. "To Quinn, Colin, and their new family!" As she raised her glass, Maggie twinkled fondly at Hannah. "Especially their new little sister!"

Hannah beamed back at Maggie. "To Maggie and the rest of my brothers' friends," she toasted, from where she sat in her wheelchair. "For taking good care of my brothers during all these years they've been sliding."

Wade made her own toast. "To the scientists of Kromagg Prime," she announced, "for taking responsibility for their world and actually caring about the well-being of its ecosystem."

"To those who've battled the Kromaggs, and stood up against them on behalf of the entire multiverse!" Michael Mallory elevated his goblet up in the air, gazing with particular reverence toward Wade, but then glancing around at all of the other sliders, as well.

"And to our sons . . . Quinn and Colin . . ." Blinking back tears, Elizabeth sniffed and her hand trembled, fingers clutched firmly around her champagne glass.

Michael put his arm around his wife, comforting Elizabeth, who was overcome with emotion.

The doorbell rang, startling everyone in the room.

Elizabeth Mallory went over to open the door, and Emily and Silas came bursting through it, excitedly entering the penthouse.

"Hey, guys!" Mallory greeted them, with a wave of his arm. "You're just in time for some fake wine."

Emily grinned coyly, surveying the sliders. "We have a surprise for you," was all she said.

"Whatever could it be?" Professor Arturo pondered out loud.

Silas could barely keep from bouncing around in upbeat anticipation. "Look who we found . . ."

Two additional people walked into the penthouse through the open doors. Quinn, Rembrandt, Maggie, and Colin immediately recognized the nerdy, spectacled brunette man and the skinny teenage boy trailing behind him.

"Thomas!" Maggie shouted, overjoyed to see him alive and well. She ran over and threw her arms around Thomas Beecham.

"Jules!" Rembrandt jubilantly smothered Jules Konig with a fatherly hug.

Jules smiled back, shyly. "Hi, Rembrandt."

"Good to see you too, Maggie." Thomas blushed from Maggie Beckett's tight embrace. He stepped back so Maggie could take a good look at him. "I still think you look like a 'Lola' . . ." chuckled Thomas, and Maggie playfully jabbed him in the ribs.

Introductions were made. Thomas shook the Professor's hand as Quinn introduced his mentor.

". . . and this is Maximilian Arturo, my college physics professor. He was with us at the beginning."

"A pleasure, Mr. Beecham," Arturo congenially said, with a gentlemanly handshake.

"Same here," replied Thomas. "What particular branch are you a professor of?"

"Cosmology and ontology . . ." Arturo began to explain.

"Ah. So which came first: the chicken or the egg?" Thomas joked, with a wink. "Are we really here, or are we just bags of bones?"

"Er - something like that," Professor Arturo politely replied, tightening his lips.

"And this is Diana Davis . . . she is a physicist, and has helped us through some tough times," Colin told Thomas.

Diana shook Thomas's hand. "Pleased to meet you, Thomas. Perhaps we can exchange some theories?"

"Oh, I only dabble in physics. After meshing paws with the Kromaggs, I try to stay away from wormholes as much as possible," he modestly said. Thomas adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "Philosophy is more my forte. Transspecies consciousness . . . animorphic sentience . . . all that good stuff. Ever read Clan of the Cave Bear?"

Diana blinked in confusion. "Um . . . I don't think they quite got around to publishing that one on my world."

"Oh, it's marvelous. You should skim through it some time. It's a 'must-read' for any mortal who's ever pondered what it's like to be a bear."

"I'll keep that in mind . . ." Diana bit her lip.

Rembrandt, meanwhile, was fielding introductions for Jules.

"Jules, this is Wade, one of my best friends," Remmy cheerfully said, putting his arm around Wade.

Wade leaned forward to greet the adolescent. "Good to meet you, Jules. We've heard a lot about you."

"And Janine Chen . . ." Rembrandt shifted his hand gesture over to Janine.

Janine gave Jules a half-salute. "Hey, kid."

"And this is Malcolm . . ." Rembrandt introduced Jules to the youngest member of their team.

Jules smiled shyly at him. "Hi, Malcolm."

"Hey, Jules." Malcolm lightly touched the arm of this pretty good-looking guy, and a slight tingle of excitement subtly rippled down Malcolm's spine.

Thomas was now peering intently at Mallory's face. Upon hearing that Mallory was Quinn's fraternal double, Thomas Beecham had felt compelled to examine this phenomenon up-close.

"So have you ever read Clan of the Cave Bear?" Thomas asked Mallory, inquisitively.

"Sorry. I'm more of a Goldilocks-kind-of-guy," Mallory quipped.

Thomas Beecham looked expressionless, not really getting Mallory's joke.

"Well, come now! Let's all sit down!" Elizabeth clapped her hands together, and headed into the kitchen to collect some refreshments.

Emily Beecham squeezed her older brother's hand as they plopped down on one of the sofas together. "I really missed this character," she affectionately told everyone, referring to Thomas. "When I was growing up, he always had something interesting to say."

"Yeah, but you were the only one who seemed to appreciate it." Thomas smiled back at his sister, and then addressed the entire group. "Man, that penal colony where they deployed us to . . . that was quite the bitch. Pardon my Parisian." He blushed momentarily, then continued. "My unit was assigned to Mangana, an offworld zone of exile for the most brutal criminals on our Earth . . . skin-chompers, trench-diggers, gold-snatchers . . . the worst our society had to offer. In that dimension, Mangana was a province of Brazil, with plenty of jungle-centric terrain and creepy-crawlies to keep our baby boys occupied." Thomas heaved a depressed sigh, in recollection. "Unfortunately, the Kromaggs found their way to that parallel universe where we were stationed. Manta ships tearing up the Amazon . . . who woulda thunk it? Our photon trials apparently led them straight to the Manganese colony - because within a week, it was 'whap, thwap, holy crap, Mary Anne!' The human corpses piled up faster than exfoliated skin during a pedicure."

Maggie gave Thomas a sensitive gaze of sympathy. "I can see why you nearly went crazy. If I'd had to witness all of that, I'd probably have slid out of that place too!"

"I might have thought twice about it, had I bothered to anticipate the Slidecage." Thomas shook his head. "I should have known better. Michael, here, and the government bigwigs . . . they warned us that it might be difficult for us to get back home when our assignment was finished."

"We did come back to get you," Michael told Thomas, thinking back to Kromagg Prime's retrieval mission from 1986. "But by the time we reached Mangana, you must have already wandered off - maybe you'd already slid out of there by that point, Thomas? All we found were the dead bodies of our brave soldiers . . . God bless them!"

"You both have endured much more than any human being should ever have to," Colin emphasized, looking from Thomas to Jules. He focused in on the younger guy. "I could not imagine being raised my entire life by a Kromagg father."

"Yes. 'Father' - I mean, Kolitar - treated me as though I was his own son," Jules admitted. "That must be why I believed it so easily."

"Having to grow up with a freakin' bag over your head - literally." With a grumble, Rembrandt shook his head, remembering how awfully Kolitar had abused Jules.

"How long was it before they rescued you guys?" Maggie asked, looking from Thomas to Jules.

"Er - not long." Thomas Beecham pressed his lips together. "We were barely done with our first game of checkers before Michael's S.W.A.T. team came bursting in."

Jules smiled faintly. "Thomas was winning," he said, shyly and softly.

Malcolm couldn't stop staring at Jules and the post-teen's cute, boyish smile. Jules caught Malcolm's stare, causing Malcolm to avert his eyes away, bashfully.

"Quinn, it seems that when you slid the humans and Kromaggs out of the Slidecage, you must have inadvertently disabled the entire system," Thomas speculated, theorizing why reinforcements from Kromagg Prime had swept through the Slidecage to rescue him and Jules so promptly.

Michael Mallory nodded, knowingly. "It wasn't meant to be tampered with from its nerve center. We'd programmed the Slidecage as a one-time-only operation. None of us wanted to risk the mainframe being damaged by any of the Maggistas within our own dimension."

Janine looked completely baffled. "Maggistas?"

"Terrorists," Hannah glumly answered, with one ominous utterance. "The Maggistas are human rebels . . . Kromagg sympathizers."

"They disagree with the violence created by the Kromaggs," Elizabeth explained, referring to the Maggistas, "but they simultaneously abhor any preemptive human conflict directed at the Dynasty. The Maggistas generally view us as being just as morally-corrupt as the Kromaggs. Once the world learned of the Voraton plague, the Maggistas instigated vigilante attacks on government facilities all across the country. The Maggistas' tempers flared even more hotly when they found out about the Slidecage."

"So they felt it needed to be destroyed, to 'even the playing field,' so to speak, out of principle?" the Professor confirmed.

"Exactly, Professor Arturo," said Michael. "Fortunately, we'd sealed the only point of access to the Slidecage inside the central nervous system. While our sensors monitored the Slidecage's ongoing containment over the years, not even we could access it. We didn't tell them this, of course. But it kept the Maggistas vainly hunting for some way to bring down the Slidecage."

"And in the end, they got their wish anyway . . . thanks to me." Quinn's eyes dropped to the floor in shame.

"Honey . . ." Elizabeth Mallory put her arms around her son. "Please don't blame yourself. As far as the Kromagg Dynasty knew, our world was doubly-protected by both the Voraton virus and the Slidecage. No commanding officer in the Dynasty would have dared to try reentering our world, once they realized that the Slidecage was trapping everyone who tried to cross over. They had no clue that you'd disabled the Slidecage completely."

"But you started to reverse the effects of the Voraton by eradicating the virus," Colin pointed out. "That would have left our world virtually defenseless."

"But the Kromaggs didn't know that," Hannah grinned slyly, winking at her two brothers.

"Under my direction of the ECU, we dispatched the antivirus in 1987," Elizabeth recalled. "Since then, we've been isolating organic species and breeding them in areas of quarantine all over the world." She softly placed her arm on Jules's shoulder. "Jules has been assisting me in our labs for the past several years."

"I was legally emancipated shortly after they brought us out of the Slidecage," Jules added.

Maggie shook her head, in disbelief of all she was hearing. "Your world has been through so much . . . hell."

A blanket of uneasy silence covered the room.

The clanging of plates and glasses could be heard coming from the kitchen area. One of the white-shirted caterers clad in black slacks poked his head out of the dining room, visually scanning the parlor for Michael and Elizabeth.

"It appears they've finished preparing our spread," Michael announced, breaking the silence.

Janine stood up and clapped her hands. "Let's eat!" she suggested, trying to shatter the awkward ambiance.

Everyone began grabbing plates, loading up with green salad and toppings, fresh fruit, and submarine sandwiches layered with meats and cheeses. The Mallorys' guests all separated off into small groups throughout the penthouse.

"So, Malcolm," asked Jules, coming over beside the sliding adolescent, "how long have you been sliding?"

"Two years." Malcolm nervously gulped down a mouthful of tortellini. "How about you? I mean . . ." He quickly scrambled for additional words, upon realizing that Jules wasn't a full-time slider. "How long have you been helping Elizabeth in the lab?" Malcolm blushed.

Jules smiled back at him. "It's been nearly three years. They've taught me so much about the natural world." He reached down to pick up a cloth napkin, and his fingers inadvertently brushed against Malcolm's hand.

They both felt tingles.

Elizabeth had come over to where Malcolm and Jules were standing. "Michael wants to spend a good part of the day tomorrow showing Quinn and Colin his little 'toy shop.' You know, Egghead Stuff." She chuckled a little bit, and then offered the two teenagers, "What do you say I take you boys to Knott's Berry Vineyard tomorrow? - I'm sure Jules would love to show you the breadth of his sylvan knowledge, Malcolm." Elizabeth gave Jules a knowing wink.

Jules lightly took Malcolm's hand. "It'll be fun, Malcolm. Please say yes."

"Uh, sure." Anxiously, Malcolm forced a smile at both Jules and Elizabeth. His heart was thumping with excitement.

Michael Mallory had wandered over to where Silas was chatting with Diana, Emily, and the Professor. He slapped his hand congenially on Dr. Silas Larson's shoulder. "Hey, Silas, tomorrow I'm giving Hannah and my boys a little 'scientific demonstration.' I thought you might be interested in seeing our developments since you were last with us. Care to come over again tomorrow, and maybe help out with some of the pesky technobabble?"

"Absolutely!" Silas understood immediately what Michael was referring to. "I've been dying to see how it's been coming along."

Colin looked utterly confused, as did Quinn, who spoke up, "Um, what's this Big Secret all about?" It slightly frustrated Quinn that he couldn't decipher the "code" that the two men seemed to be speaking in. Quinn visually looked at Hannah for help.

Hannah shrugged in response. "I wish I knew, Quinn. Dad has been keeping a tight lid on whatever it is. He won't even tell me about it."

Michael lovingly ruffled Hannah's hair with his fingers. "You'll see soon," he promised his three children. "And I guarantee you kids, your insightful Mallory minds will not be disappointed."

That left Quinn and Colin to spend the day with their father, their sister, and Silas - to learn about this mysterious project Michael Mallory had spoken of during the previous day.

"Welcome to my dungeon!" quipped Michael Mallory, feigning a really bad Transylvanian accent. The physicist spun the combination on the handle of a door, unlocking it and pushing open the entrance to a laboratory that had been built within the Mallory penthouse.

"Whoa!" Hannah's eyes widened at the sight of all the miscellaneous gadgets and gizmos throughout her father's lab. "Dad, you've been doing some SERIOUS work since I was last in here!" She proceeded to wheel herself into the laboratory.

"Wow, it's . . . amazing." Colin was almost speechless.

Michael put his hand on Colin's shoulder. "There's plenty of good stuff for you to tinker with, son. And no one's going to stop you."

Quinn reached out to touch a spiral, multi-layered three-dimensional model of the Einstein-Rosen-Pudalski Bridge. "You constructed a prototype for the multiverse?"

A flash popped into Quinn's eyes, shaking him and throwing him backward. Quinn got a momentary glimpse of a much younger Michael Mallory, wearing a lab coat, attaching some wires within a raw prototype for a sliding timer.

"What is it, Quinn?" Michael tried to touch his younger son's arm, but Quinn uncharacteristically squirmed away.

"Quinn . . . ?" Colin came over to his brother. "Did you see something?"

Silas and Hannah were now also looking curiously at Quinn Mallory.

Michael stared directly at Quinn. "Was it one of your visions, son?"

"I had a flashback." Quinn looked straight at his father. "Of you." He began to pace around the laboratory. "It was the first one I've had since we arrived here. I guess I naively thought that maybe this family reunion would . . . maybe somehow 'cleanse' me of these psychic jolts. That maybe getting back to my roots might stabilize me. But I guess not. I guess I'm eternally destined to be a walking, breathing 'looking glass'!"

Quinn's voice rose in accordance with the flaring of his temper.

"Quinn . . ." Colin moved forward to console his brother, but Michael Mallory gently put his hand on Colin's shoulder, stopping him.

"Let me," Michael mouthed to Colin, in a whisper. The elder Mallory approached Quinn. "Son, I don't know a whole lot about your . . . ability. I don't know why you received it, or where it's meant to lead you in life. But here's what I do know: it's a gift, Quinn, not a curse. Otherwise, God wouldn't have allowed you to receive it."

A lone tear trickled from Quinn's eye duct, down his cheek. He realized how he'd yearned all these years for the absent support of his father, following Michael Mallory's tragic death on Earth Prime. Quinn's foster father - Michael's double - obviously hadn't been around to guide Quinn during Quinn's emotional, tumultuous adolescence.

Yet, here he was now - Quinn's biological father, ready to heal the heartache that had boiled deep within Quinn for nearly two decades.

As Quinn and his father hugged, a potent flash of light pierced through Quinn's eyeballs.

He saw a younger Michael Mallory standing with an older man in his laboratory . . . Michael stood back, watching the older gentleman's body blink in and out of the spot where the man was standing . . . disappearing, then reappearing . . . disappearing again . . . and reappearing once more . . . over and over again . . .

This flashback inexplicably accelerated forward several years, to a candlelit chapel where Michael and Elizabeth Mallory were exchanging their marital vows, obviously on their wedding day. A quick flash of Amanda Mallory - the mother whom Quinn had been raised by for his entire childhood - interceded the vision of Michael and Elizabeth's wedding. Amanda closed her eyes, and the air around her faded to black.

By now, Quinn was physically shaking. The blackness he saw turned into what Quinn could clearly feel to be a premonition. He saw a Kromagg coming up behind his own father and plunge a dagger through Michael Mallory's chest. The Kromagg wore an astronaut-like hazmat suit. This simian-like creature diabolically showed his pointy teeth, followed by a smirk, as Michael Mallory slumped to the floor, blood gushing from Michael's wound.

Next, Quinn saw a flashback: the temporal chills crawling up Quinn's spine indicated that he was glimpsing into the past. The image was one of Jules being swallowed whole by a sparkly blue mass of quantum energy.

Then, Quinn once again felt his body propelling forward into the future. He was gliding through a dark, purplish-blue tunnel, warm energy shimmering all around him. His entire being felt completely free - uninhibited, unshackled. It was as though Quinn was in total control of his direction and destiny - yet, at the same time, deep down he could sense that he actually wasn't.

After all, Quinn was merely an observer of what apparently could be his future.

But what did it mean?

Snapping out of his trance, Quinn broke away from Michael.

"A premonition?" Michael Mallory instinctively sensed his son's frustration.

"I think I need to lie down . . ." Quinn staggered toward the door, and proceeded to lose his balance.

He didn't even hear Colin and Hannah shouting his name as he hit the floor.

Jules grinned back at Malcolm. "Yeah. Elizabeth told me how they eliminated the drinking age for us minors, back when it looked like there might not be a tomorrow. I guess Parliament thought, 'We're probably gonna die anyway, so why not let the kids have their fun?'"

Malcolm laughed. He and Jules strolled along a cobblestone path made from polished rocks, past weeping willows and green grass being showered with automated sprinklers.

They were at Knott's Berry Vineyard, two miles outside the city limits of Buena Park, California. Malcolm and Jules, being roughly the same age, had been encouraged by Elizabeth Mallory to spend the day together. The two of them were entering the park's "petting zoo" - a scenic wildlife preserve where deer and rabbits frolicked about freely.

"Elizabeth says that the ECU was central to restoring these acres of beauty," Jules recalled, based on his experiences as Elizabeth Mallory's scientific apprentice. "Her scientists worked tirelessly to create an artificial atmosphere that was placed around Buena Park. It helped to neutralize the toxins emitted by the Voraton."

"Man, I wish I was good at science." Malcolm smiled at Jules, with a hint of good-natured envy.

"I saw your sketchings . . ." Jules shyly spoke up, blushing a little bit. "That drawing you did in the car ride over here. Of the swan." Jules was referring to the likeness of a handsome swan floating across a pond. Malcolm had only drawn it to pass the time during their car ride from Pasadena to Buena Park. "It was very beautiful, Malcolm."

"Thank you," Malcolm responded, feeling more tingles ripple up his skin from the sincerity expressed by Jules.

They stopped in front of Camp Woodstock, the play area designated for families visiting Knott's Berry Vineyard. Small children were scampering underneath the arched entrance, giddily mesmerized by the cartoony life-sized statues of various Peanuts comic strip characters.

"Do you want kids?" Jules suddenly asked Malcolm, with a faraway look in his eyes as he observed the happy little tykes.

This question took Malcolm by surprise. "I - I don't know. Um, I guess I never really thought about it."

That wasn't entirely true. Back when he was living on the New World colony with other refugees from his and Maggie's homeworld, Malcolm clearly remembered Gretchen talking with him about how the colonists had a grand responsibility to repopulate their new Earth.

"I don't know either," admitted Jules, somewhat bashfully.

The two teenagers were startled by a nearby clamor. Outside the fence of the park, a mob of angry people was gathered. They shouted harsh obscenities at the tourists inside Knott's Berry Vineyard.

Frightened children ran to their parents. The protestors were scary-looking, adorned in mock military uniforms with their faces painted similarly. And they were bald.

Malcolm clutched Jules's hand, almost as a reflex. Their mutual touch instantly gave both boys a communal sense of comfort.

"Who are they?" Malcolm whispered, his voice shaking.

Jules replied in a low, hushed voice, "The Maggistas."

"Maggistas?" Malcolm was still rather confused by this reference. "They can't be Kromaggs . . . ?"

"No," Jules confirmed for Malcolm. "As Elizabeth explained earlier, they are humans who sympathize with the Kromagg Dynasty. They despise our government for what it did to our Earth . . . for what it did to this society. Especially The LARKS Act."

Malcolm was now staring at the mob of Maggistas with horrified intrigue. He wondered how they had cosmetically transformed themselves to resemble the Kromaggs.

"They're wearing prosthetics on their heads," Jules told Malcolm, as though he had read his friend's mind. "Plastic. They didn't shave their heads. I thought the same thing too, the first time I saw them demonstrating. They wear makeup, as well." Jules made a second reference to the distorted, bumpy texture of the Maggistas' faces. It was obviously a topical layer of cosmetics, designed to facially emulate Kromagg features on these humans.

"I hate the Kromaggs!" Malcolm said, in an acidic whisper. He was now thinking of Gretchen, and her abduction two years earlier from their colony on Primitive World. Tears streamed down Malcolm's face as he thought of all the terror Gretchen must be enduring in the breeder camps. If she was even still alive . . .

Jules gently brushed the tears from Malcolm's soft, mocha cheeks. "Don't cry, Malcolm," Jules said, his heart crumbling as he shared the sensation of Malcolm's sadness.

"Gretchen was the only one who looked after me . . . who cared about me . . ." Malcolm gulped, between sobs, speaking of his two years stranded on that primitive refugee colony.

Jules gave Malcolm a soft hug.

The police had arrived. Positioning shields and cattle prods, they began rounding up the unruly Maggistas.

"Oh, there you boys are!" Elizabeth Mallory came scampering up the park walkway, having been searching for Malcolm and Jules. "I was afraid the Maggistas might have gotten you. A few of them managed to vault the fence, and took some hostages over by Ghost Rider."

Emily Beecham was speed-walking after Elizabeth, and finally managed to catch up with their group. "Most of the Maggistas have been detained," Emily informed Malcolm, Jules, and Elizabeth. "But it sounds like they're still shutting down the park for the rest of the day, just as a precaution."

Malcolm and Jules collectively breathed a sigh of relief, clutching each other's hand.

"Let's go home," Elizabeth decided, placing her hands on the shoulders of Jules and Malcolm. She saw how scared Malcolm looked.

The four of them headed toward the nearest exit to the parking lots. As Elizabeth and Emily led the way, Jules turned to Malcolm, whose tears were slowly subsiding.

Jules leaned in, and gave Malcolm a very quick peck on the lips.

Jules then pulled away, and they both returned their attention to following Emily and Elizabeth out of the park.

Maggie was sitting by his bedside. "Quinn, are you all right?" she asked, through concerned, squinted eyes.

"Ugh, what happened?" moaned Quinn, trying to sit up. He saw Michael sitting next to Maggie.

"You took quite a fall, son," Michael told Quinn. "You got dizzy after having one of your . . . premonitions?" He waited for Quinn to verify his assumption.

Quinn closed his eyes and laid back. "Yeah . . ." He tried to recall exactly what visions he'd seen, then remembered one in particular. "Dad . . . ?"

"Yes, son?"

"Dad . . . so has our Earth been vulnerable this entire time? Ever since I disabled the Slidecage?"

"Before that, even," Michael regretfully confirmed. "Around '97 or so, ECU scientists tested our atmosphere and discovered that most of the toxins created by the Voraton had dissipated from the stratosphere. Your mom and her team had concluded that, in theory, if the Kromaggs could somehow bypass our Slidecage, there wouldn't have been enough viral chemicals remaining to significantly affect most Kromaggs soldiers. It had been ten years worth of environmental erosion, followed by another ten years of our only biological defense against the Kromaggs gradually evaporating."

Colin had entered the bedrooms with Thomas and Silas right behind him. "So what did you do once you realized the Slidecage no longer worked?"

Michael sighed. "We've been basically planning for war ever since. We crossed our fingers that they wouldn't try to reinvade, and so far we've been lucky . . ."

"But our aeronautics division has been working on long-range defensive missiles, in case our luck runs out," Thomas admitted.

Maggie stood up, resolutely. "Thomas, I've seen the horror those weapons can cause to the civilian population. There's gotta be a better way."

Thomas shook his head. "I wish we had one, Maggie."

"How likely is it that the Dynasty will try another invasion?" Quinn looked to his father, frantically.

Perplexed, Michael shook his head. "I don't know, Quinn. The Dynasty must still have our homeworld's coordinates on file - after all, it's their homeworld too. But as far as we know, the Kromaggs are still under the impression that the Slidecage is active. The only other person who I gave the full decryption algorithm to was Silas. We knew that if he found a way to reverse the Voraton's plague, he'd need an equation to help him slide back here so he could share it with us."

All heads in the room turned to Silas Larson.

Silas shrugged helplessly. "When Yashar captured me, his soldiers confiscated my timer."

"So it's probably still back on Persian World," Colin deduced.

Maggie tilted back her neck, in relief. "Then there's no way the Kromaggs could ever get ahold of it. Even if 'Yashar's web' has collapsed by now, we infected Persian World with the anti-Kromagg virus."

Quinn looked over at his father. "Dad, the Kromaggs are not stupid. They've obviously been tracking us, and they probably suspect what we're doing. It's unlikely that the Dynasty would attempt a mass invasion without covering their butts first."

From out in the foyer, the front door could be heard opening. It wasn't long before Elizabeth Mallory poked her head in the room.

"How are my scientists?" she asked, stopping short at the sight of Quinn lying weakly in bed. "Oh, Quinn! What happened?! Are you okay?!"

"I'm fine, mom," Quinn answered, as Elizabeth leaned in to smother him with a hug. "I just had another . . . vision. I sort of fainted."

Malcolm, Jules, and Emily crept into the room, silently waving hello to everyone else.

"How was Knott's Berry Vineyard?" Colin asked them, brushing his hand against Malcolm's shoulder.

"It was . . ." Malcolm had no idea what to say.

". . . an experience," Jules finished for Malcolm, smiling at his new friend.

"We had to leave early," Emily told them. "There was a little trouble in the park."

Maggie looked concerned. "What kind of trouble?"

"The Maggistas," Elizabeth explained. Michael knowingly acknowledged her reference, with a somber nod of his head. "They were harassing park visitors again. I should have considered that before I brought the boys there."

"No. We had a nice time, Elizabeth," Jules assured her. He smiled at Malcolm again, and gave his fellow adolescent a small squeeze of his hand.

"Even considering everything we went through with the Voraton, the Kromaggs have sure managed to leave their mark behind," commented Emily, retrospectively. "I mean, they still have humans from this dimension taking up arms on their behalf."

The realization of Emily's words slowly simmered inside of Quinn. As though in a trance, he reached over to the nightstand next to his bed and grabbed a small pocketknife that had been left there earlier.

"Quinn . . . ?!" Maggie, startled by Quinn's brisk actions, could barely utter her boyfriend's name before he'd plunged the blade into the flesh of his arm.

Colin watched the blood ooze from above Quinn's elbow. "Why did you do that . . . ?"

But it only took Colin a moment to realize why.

Quinn stared up, from his bed, at Colin, Maggie, his parents, and Hannah, who'd just wheeled herself into the bedroom.

"The Kromaggs aren't getting anywhere near my family," Quinn declared, shaking, as he released the pocketknife and it tumbled to the floor.

Diana stood with Emily Beecham, nibbling on a smoked oyster hors d' oeuvre as they mingled at one end of the buffet table.

"So Emily," Diana asked, "now that you're home, do you have any big plans?"

"My family is just glad I'm still alive," replied Emily, blushing. She took a sip of wine from her goblet. "While I was gone, my dad purchased a farm out in Valencia. My parents have been breeding llamas, sheep, and camels, trying to increase the fertility of those beasts. I may help out by monitoring their breeding patterns for awhile. Eventually, I'd like to get back into organic chemistry - maybe see if I can do my part in replenishing our Earth's resources."

"And what about you, Thomas, my man?" Mallory asked Thomas Beecham, slapping the nerdy former recluse on the shoulder. They had joined Diana and Emily. "What's at the top of your list?"

Thomas blushed. "Reconnecting with my sister." He exchanged smiles with Emily. "Michael offered me a job working in the archive at Mallory Central. I'll get to sift through thousands of files on parallel universes that were explored during the pre-Voraton era - sans coordinates, of course. Should be fun . . . I always was more of a bookworm than a G.I. Joe."

Mallory shook his head, pressing his lips together. "Whatever floats your boat, Tommy-boy." He elbowed Thomas as he began moving along to chit-chat with other people. "But ya know, a guy's never too old for a bottomless margarita and an exotic danger or two," he recommended, before heading toward the other end of the buffet table.

Thomas looked slightly nonplussed, puckering his lips together as he considered Mallory's proposition. "Nah. I think I'd get a little too tipsy in that scenario."

Maggie gave Thomas a heartfelt smile at his modesty, and then she turned to the 19-year-old orphan. "What about you, Jules? Still planning to stick around here?"

Taking a quick sip of flavored mineral water, Jules nodded. "Elizabeth and I are working on a new family of sunflowers. They've already begun sprouting . . . I can't let them down now."

Malcolm abruptly released a laugh. He blushed, after realizing that he was the only one who'd found Jules's comment funny. Malcolm blurred his laugh into an awkward cough, then took a swig of mineral water.

Over by the fondue pot, a spurt of laughter erupted from Rembrandt's vocal chords. The Cryin' Man was watching as Mallory taught Colin how to catch a cocktail weenie in his mouth after tossing it up in the air.

Upon rearing his head back to welcome the miniature hot dog between his lips, Colin lost his balance and fell backward - taking down the entire buffet table with him in an eardrum-busting clatter.

A glittery blue glow spontaneously erupted from Jules's body, temporarily causing the young man to vanish from sight.

"Jules!" Malcolm heart thudded against his chest, in a confused panic.

All heads in the room turned curiously from Colin lying in a heap on the floor over to the spot where Jules had been standing.

Within another second, Jules's body had resurfaced. The older adolescent looked winded, terrified, and extremely embarrassed.

"Good heavens!" gasped Professor Arturo, still trying to make sense of what he had witnessed.

Jules's face turned pink, and he hastily darted out of the room in shame.

"Jules!" Elizabeth called after her young protégée, with an air of sympathy and some obvious understanding of what had just happened to Jules.

"No, Elizabeth . . ." Malcolm gently yet firmly stopped her. "Please . . . let me."

Elizabeth gave Malcolm a heartened smile and nodded her head at him. As Rembrandt and Mallory helped a messy Colin up off the floor, Malcolm exited the parlor. He quietly made his way into one of the empty guest bedrooms, where Jules had taken refuge.

"Jules . . . ?" Malcolm crept into the room.

"Go away, Malcolm."

"Jules, what happened?"

"I'm a freak, that's what happened!!" Jules looked up at Malcolm through his swollen eyes. The adolescent was crumpled on the floor, sobbing.

Malcolm closed the door and locked it behind him. "You can tell me. I promise you that no one else will hear." He kneeled on the floor next to Jules, and hugged him.

That only made Jules cry harder. He immersed himself in the softness of Malcolm's arms. "It was . . . a bad idea . . ."

"What was a bad idea?"

Gagging, Jules tried his best to clear his throat. "I volunteered to receive an implant."

"An implant?" Malcolm was confused. "What kind of an implant? For what?"

"Michael was working on a teleportation device . . . and he needed volunteers . . ." Jules continued to choke out the words. "For some reason, it only works on those of us from our homeworld."

Malcolm began to caress Jules's back, hoping it would help to calm him. "But I thought you were born in the Slidecage?"

"I was," he admitted. "But both of my birth parents were from this dimension. Michael measured my quantum signature . . . he said it looked like I'd inherited both of my parents' signatures." Jules sniffed. "They needed younger people to be implanted, so I said I'd do it. But something went wrong . . . and now . . . THIS keeps happening to me!" He was referring to his spontaneous teleportation ability.

"Can't they remove the implant?" asked Malcolm.

"No. It's a part of my biochemistry now." Jules looked down in shame. "I'll bet I must seem hideous to you! A total freak!"

"No!" Malcolm insistently reassured him.

Jules refused to make eye contact.

Instinctively, Malcolm abruptly leaned forward and pressed his lips against Jules's for a long kiss. Jules, initially shocked, wrapped his arms around Malcolm, in turn. He craved the warmth and tenderness of Malcolm's body, and didn't want to let him go.

Neither one of them wanted to let the other go.

Feeling something he'd never felt for another person ever before, Jules placed his hands on Malcolm's obliques and slowly slid Malcolm's shirt off.

Malcolm did the same to Jules.

"They're called 'body slidules.' It is an organic device implanted into a human being, giving him or her the ability to create wormholes to move oneself through space and time." Michael Mallory began speaking reflectively. "My father engineered the first prototype in 1965. The body slidule was originally intended as a way in which humans on our Earth might be able to physically elude any assaults from the Kromaggs."

Quinn squinted, shaking his head. "Dad, when you say 'organically-based' . . . what exactly did you make it from . . . ?"

"It's an organic compound made from iron, zinc, and magnesium. When inserted into the brain, it would dissolve and merge with blood vessels and brain tissue," Michael said. "Those metals are grown in the jungles of Africanus before being manipulated for material-building purposes. Unfortunately, because of where it's available geographically, the Kromaggs initially had exclusive access to most of it."

"The metallic variables in this organic compound pick up digital transmissions sent to the test subject," Elizabeth picked up the description. "This allows a person to channel his or her own neural signals outward, after the subject consumes a plethora of glucose. The excess energy generated will hopefully create a wormhole."

"Hopefully?" Maggie sounded suspicious.

"Not everyone can withstand the process. My father used himself as one of the earliest guinea pigs," Michael recalled. "He was able to generate wormholes from his body, but his physical capacities deteriorated every time he did so. That's why his lab assistants made sure he carried a portable sliding machine with him, just in case he couldn't get back on his own."

Quinn was thinking back to what Archibald LeBeau had told him, about the 1965 encounter with the elder Mallory.

"That's amazing!" Colin exclaimed.

"Yes, but it wasn't foolproof. This practice eventually took its toll on my father, and he died from brain hemorrhaging," Michael sighed. "Since then, we've been extremely cautious, and we made sure to develop it further before permitting anyone else to experiment on themselves again."

Arturo was mesmerized by this description. "Dr. Mallory, how in the name of God is someone able to create enough energy to transport himself interdimensionally?!"

"Yeah, it must take a ton of mental discipline to do that," Wade commented. "I should know."

"That's why Jules volunteered himself," Elizabeth said. "He told us how Kolitar had taught him the Kromagg healing technique, and then he showed us."

"That boy displayed tremendous mental capabilities," remarked Michael. "Such an ability is exactly what you need to withstand excessive quantum leaps. Also, so far, the slidule has only been successfully implanted in people whose quantum signatures originate from our homeworld. Jules was the perfect candidate."

"So what went wrong?" Rembrandt inquired. "Was he too young?"

"No, no, no," Michael assured them. "In fact, younger volunteers are preferable. The older someone becomes, the harder it is for them to adjust to the implantation. Spontaneously jumping from one dimension to another takes its toll on one's bone structure and metabolic rate." He sighed again, still regretful. "I was only 22 at the time, and I volunteered to be implanted myself. But my father wouldn't hear of it. He felt that the template was too unstable, and he didn't want to risk losing his only remaining son - especially after my baby brother, Charlie, was killed in a Kromagg attack." A hint of a tear glinted at the edge of Michael's eye.

Quinn flinched, thinking of his Uncle Charlie, the family member whom he'd turned to for kinship in the years following his adopted father's death on Earth Prime. Uncle Charlie . . . dead on this world . . . at the hands of the Kromaggs.

Colin tentatively raised his hand. "Um, perhaps it didn't work on Jules because he was born offworld? In the Slidecage."

"Maybe, but probably not," Elizabeth said. "Both of Jules's biological parents were from this world, so Jules should have genetically inherited their quantum signatures. Aside from that, the materials used to construct the Slidecage would also have contained our homeworld signature. Jules was born within those walls, so the quantum imprint likely rubbed off on him. We know this because when we measured Jules's quantum signature, it matched ours perfectly."

"So why didn't the implant work?" Diana asked, with a hint of exasperation. "Was Jules unprepared for it, psychologically?"

"No. We believe that, since the original template was made with my father's nucleotides, that Jules's DNA rejected it. We've been unable to successfully modify that template, even after almost four decades of retesting. Through trial and error, we've seen that no matter who agrees to be implanted, regardless of his or her quantum signature, mental ability, or age, the body slidule ultimately fails . . . to varying degrees."

"For Jules, his unique DNA prevents transdimensional relocation," said Elizabeth. "But because the implant cannot be removed, residual amounts of the organic metals will presumably remain in his system for the rest of his life. Jules can't willingly move himself using the body slidule - but he is still prone to erratic moments of spontaneous teleportation, intradimensionally."

An empathic gaze spread across Wade's face. "Like me," she said, knowingly.

"Except that your ability seems to be purely mental, Wade," observed Michael Mallory. "But Jules, on the other hand, gained this ability largely due to outside chemical influences. Even with his strong mental threshold, it's going to be an uphill battle for him to learn to control it."

"I can't even control mine!" Wade exclaimed, shaking her head in sorrow for Jules.

"This entire ordeal has been - is an extremely scary experience for him," Elizabeth said, obviously exhibiting some desire of motherly concern for Jules's well-being. "He was embarrassed when all of you witnessed his self-teleportation."

"So what can we do for him?" Mallory asked, sensitively.

"He needs some time to himself," Elizabeth said, remembering how Malcolm was with Jules. "He'll hopefully feel better in the morning." She looked around at all of the sliders. "The best thing we can do for Jules is let him know that we don't think any less of him because of this. He's struggled with self-consciousness and . . . guilt," Elizabeth dared a quick side-glance at Quinn and Colin, before continuing, abruptly, "throughout his entire life. All he wants is to be treated as though he's 'normal' . . . whatever that's supposed to mean . . ."

"Mom?" Quinn caught sight of a subtle quiver from his mother's lips. It was obvious that Elizabeth was trying to hold back tears.

Quinn reached for Elizabeth, to take her hand, but she squirmed away from Quinn before he could touch her.

"No!" she snapped, and then shuddered. Elizabeth closed her eyes. "Excuse me . . ." She took off running into another room.

"Mom?!" Quinn, confused and concerned, made a motion to go after his newfound mother. But Colin held him back.

"Dad, you'd better go see what is wrong," Colin suggested to Michael Mallory.

Michael already wore a distraught expression. "I think I know," he replied, ominously, following his wife into the next room.

"Quinn, go after her!" Wade hissed, in an almost reprimanding tone. "She's your mother, and she needs you!"

When Quinn hesitated, Maggie gave him a physical nudge forward. "Come on! You're their family. You guys have to show your parents that you care!" she emphasized. With that, Maggie practically forklifted Quinn and Colin into the bedroom after the Mallory parents.

Elizabeth was sprawled out on her and Michael's bed, sobbing uncontrollably into her husband's lap. As Maggie aggressively guided Colin and Quinn further into their parents' bedroom, the brothers perched themselves right next to Michael and Elizabeth.

Colin reached out to touch Elizabeth. "Mom?" he asked her, tentatively. "Did . . . did we do something wrong?"

Elizabeth slowly sat up to face Colin, her swollen, red eyes looking back at him. "Oh, no! Absolutely not, sweetheart!" She gagged, and then sputtered, "There's something I need to tell you boys."

"Elizabeth, are you sure . . . ?" A piercing gaze of shame from his wife cut off Michael's gentle voice.

"It's time we told them, Michael," she said, quietly. "It's time they knew the truth." She quickly glanced at Quinn, and then added, "Before they discover it on their own. They should hear it from us." Elizabeth Mallory sniffed, and gave Colin's knee a little squeeze.

Michael sighed. "Should I explain it to them?" he asked his wife.

"Explain what?!" Quinn demanded, in exasperation. Although he felt for his parents, Quinn was starting to become scared. And that fear was really getting to him.

"Quinn, Colin . . ." As tears returned to Elizabeth's eyes, her voice became meek and guilt-ridden. "Your . . . real mother died - almost 29 years ago."

"WHAT?!" blurted out Maggie. She nearly knocked over a lamp on the Mallorys' nightstand.

Speaking slowly, Quinn stared, expressionless, at Elizabeth. "You didn't give birth to us, did you?" He had been mentally putting the pieces together over the last several seconds.

Elizabeth Mallory shook her head. "No," she eked out, in an anemic whisper. Tears continued to stream down her cheeks, although her audible sobs had subsided.

"Quinn, your mother, Amanda, died shortly after giving birth to you," Michael stoically revealed. "She had a pelvic cyst that ruptured, and the doctors couldn't save her. It had been hidden behind the fetus, and had gone undetected on the doctor's ultrasound until right after delivery." He turned to his other son. "Colin, you were only ten months old at the time."

Colin shook his head. "My earliest memories are from my home in Westchester, before my parents died. Before I was brought to El Segundo."

Michael closed his eyes, forcing the words out of his mouth as he relived he memories. "I was so afraid to raise you boys alone. You were just a newborn, Quinn. So, four months later, Elizabeth and I married. We had worked in the same lab together, and although I never stopped loving Amanda, Elizabeth was the one bright spot for me in many tedious days." He gazed lovingly at Quinn and Colin's stepmother. "Without Elizabeth, I never would have gotten through my grief over Amanda's death. I had been about ready to kill myself."

Elizabeth looked back at Michael with an equal amount of love in her eyes. "I couldn't let your father destroy himself, just throw away his life like that and leave the two of you orphaned. Amanda, though I didn't know her very well, was a good person. She wouldn't have wanted your father to remain so lonely and unhappy."

"No, she wouldn't have," Quinn softly agreed, having known Amanda Mallory better than practically anyone there in the room.

"And next to your birth mother, Elizabeth was always someone I could turn to for strength and goodness . . . for happiness." Michael's lovestruck eyes shifted from his wife back to his sons.

Gulping, Quinn asked, "Dad, you didn't - I mean, when our birth mother was still alive . . . ?"

"Absolutely not," Michael stated, with unquestionable honesty. "I could never have done that to Amanda. I never would have been unfaithful to your mother."

"Your father and I were never together until after your birth mother passed away," Elizabeth reassured her stepsons, placing her hand on top of Michael's. She gazed at Quinn and Colin, harboring deep angst in her nurturing eyes. "But I've always loved you boys as though you were my own. As though I had given birth to you myself."

"But you didn't," Quinn told her, quietly.

"No, I didn't," admitted Elizabeth. "But that didn't stop me from loving you both unconditionally. I suppose . . ." She paused and then ventured on, warily, "I suppose you both despise me now. I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"Of course we don't," Colin insisted. He was still blinking, trying to come to terms with what he and Quinn were being told. "My foster parents in El Segundo . . . they may not have looked like my real parents, and they certainly were strict, but their love for me was always apparent. And in my heart, I knew that's what truly mattered."

Elizabeth smiled back at Colin, feeling a bit of welcome relief.

Quinn's eyes, however, were trained on the floor. "So . . . our birth mother . . . she died right after giving birth to me?"

Michael nodded, sadly. "In a matter of hours."

"So she died because of me?" Quinn's head snapped up, as he forced himself to visually confront his father and stepmother. "I killed my mother?!"

"Quinn, no!!" Maggie tried to assure him, rushing to his side. "You didn't do anything."

"Oh, honey, please don't think that!" Elizabeth pleaded, overcome with emotion. Her heart yearned for her stepson. "Quinn, it wasn't your fault at all!"

"Quinn, you were only a baby at the time. And your mother's cyst was at least a year old. It had been in her body well before you were even conceived," insisted Michael.

Quinn got to his feet, cringing in shame. "But they couldn't detect it because of me! If I hadn't been growing inside of her . . ."

He couldn't bear to think about it anymore. Quinn took off running.

"Quinn, please . . . !" Elizabeth Malloy burst into tears.

"Come back, brother!" Colin called out to Quinn, advancing toward the door after him.

Maggie had already jumped out of the bedroom, right behind Quinn. "Listen to me, Quinn!" She had followed him into the parlor, where everyone else was watching in confusion. "You can't blame yourself for this! It's nothing you could have prevented!" Maggie spoke to him in an emotional, strained voice, about ready to cry, herself.

"I can't do this anymore!" Quinn shook his head wildly. "I just can't!"

In a flurry, Quinn fled out onto the foyer, disappearing through the Mallorys' front doorway.

Maggie ran after him halfway, but stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes were watering up.

She just didn't know what to do.

Maggie was now blubbering heavily onto Colin's shoulder.

Michael trudged out from his and Elizabeth's bedroom - Elizabeth noticeably absent from his side. "I can explain . . ." he told them, his voice shaking.

Rembrandt, Arturo, Wade, Mallory, Diana, Janine, Hannah, Silas, Emily, and Thomas listened as Michael Mallory recounted the tragic ordeal of the death of his wife, Amanda. He told the ten of them how he had immediately married Elizabeth, who raised Quinn and Colin as though they were her own flesh and blood.

"Unfortunately," Michael was telling the group, "the war was getting worse. We really needed to step up development of the Voraton KR-17, and quite frankly, it was unsafe for the boys to remain on our world. So, less than a year after we got married, Elizabeth and I made the painful decision to give Quinn and Colin up for adoption. We didn't feel there was anyplace in this dimension secure enough for them to reside . . . thus, Elizabeth and I scouted out habitable parallel worlds until we could track down two married, childless sets of Amanda and myself. Our duplicates agreed to take care of Quinn and Colin until we could defeat the Kromaggs and return for our sons. But if either of us died . . ." Michael shut his eyes, guiltily. "We just wanted them to be able to grow up happily and safely."

"Whoa!" Wade uttered, totally taken aback.

"Well, that definitely explains why Elizabeth appeared in the microdot, rather than Amanda," said Rembrandt, not really knowing what else to say.

"Well, gee, we're just full of surprises today, aren't we?" Janine smirked, looking in Michael's direction.

Diana elbowed Janine in a reprimanding manner.

"Quinn's foster parents told us that he had been killed in a car accident. They even showed us his death certificate," Michael recalled, "although it is now obvious that they had that document falsified. When we slid to Colin's adopted dimension, we learned of a terrible influenza that had swept through their community. The Michael and Amanda Mallory of that world had died five months earlier, and no one seemed to know the whereabouts of the family that had taken Colin in. The local pastor in Westchester mentioned that the family was very distant from the rest of the village, and tended to keep to themselves." Michael put his arm on Colin's shoulder, for support. "With this knowledge, Elizabeth and I lost all hope of ever reuniting with our sons. After we had Hannah, Elizabeth and I tried to come to terms with the loss of the boys and accept it. But then, when word came of their arrival in the Slidecage . . ." He frowned, reflecting on the past several years. "Obviously, we hoped you'd find your way here . . . but we knew that your trek was dangerous, that Kromaggs on other worlds would pursue you, and that overall, the odds were against you."

"We tend to beat the odds when playing interdimensional roulette," Mallory boastfully said, with his eyebrows raised. "Although I have been known to lose my shirt on occasion." With that, he humbly tightened his lips.

"Well, honestly, for awhile there we weren't even sure we wanted you boys to see what had become of your homeworld," Michael sadly admitted. Guilt was strewn all over his face as he looked at his oldest son. "Colin, you and your brother were too young to remember this, but you both were born amid one of the bleakest points in our world's history. Kromagg guerillas were attacking us seemingly out of nowhere. We took down a lot of their manta ships, but not nearly enough. By the 1950s, most humans had been completely driven out of Eurasia and Africanus. Western Europe was in turmoil - Kromaggs and humans literally fought each other on the streets, hand-to-claw. When your mother . . . when Amanda was pregnant with Quinn, we realized how awful things would be for you, growing up here - unless we were successful in defeating the Dynasty. 1973 was a particularly bad year, since at least a dozen American cities were hit very badly. It was absolutely devastating." He looked winded just talking about it.

"Colin, when your birth mother died . . ." Elizabeth, who had just entered the parlor, stopped herself from choking out her words as she addressed the remaining Mallory brother. "It was just too much for your father to bear. He couldn't fathom having to live with himself if the Kromaggs somehow got their hands on either of you. So that's why we put you and Quinn up for adoption. Our government needed us to create a bioweapon. We didn't feel we could keep you safe with our attention devoted to that endeavor."

Colin dropped his eyes, glumly. "I realize that you gave us up out of love, and that you did what was best for us. But please understand . . . Quinn blames himself entirely, for enabling the Kromaggs to conquer additional worlds as they track us."

Elizabeth shook her head, wildly. "Oh, no, no, no! It's not his fault at all!" Her eyes widened with sympathy. "Oh, poor Quinn! These past four years must have turned him into an emotional wreck!"

"Yeah, Q-Ball blames himself for everything," Remmy sighed. "For the invasion of Earth Prime, for what happened to Wade, for Mallory and Diana's world being conquered, for Janine being dragged into this . . ."

"We really should talk to Quinn about that," Thomas spoke up. He adjusted his eyeglasses. "Um, you see, it's kind of our fault for driving the Kromaggs out into the multiverse in the first place. That world on which you first encountered the Dynasty," Thomas was, of course, referring to Earth 113, "well, that was probably one among the first couple-hundred or so Earths they colonized after we drove them from this planet with the Voraton. The Kromaggs had high-tailed it out of this dimension en masse in their manta ships, so they had plenty of artillery and armory to conquer at least a good half-dozen worlds before they had to hoard more resources from other Earths. In fact, one of those worlds sought us out for help, before we erected the Slidecage."

"How?" asked Arturo, curiously.

"They must have broken though enemy lines and hijacked a Kromagg vortex," recalled Thomas, "because they sent some human emissaries to ask us for military assistance. A large portion of their soldiers had apparently been wiped out during the first couple days of invasion. We didn't feel comfortable giving them a Voraton device of their own, since we were beginning to have doubts about the one we'd released on our own soil. So our military dispatched troops to their Earth, which was still under Kromagg attack. At the pleading of King Ezekiel and Queen Annabelle, their dimension's North American rulers, we shared our missile technology with them. After all, we felt quite guilty, having inadvertently unleashed the Kromagg menace onto their turf in the process of liberating our own." Thomas took a deep breath, and then continued with his historical account. "That's the dimension where Mangana, the South American region I'd been deployed to, eventually came under attack in 1986." He heaved a sigh of distress. "To think, I could have avoided all that carnage if I'd just stayed out of the Junior Corps."

Maggie gave Thomas a confused stare. "What's the Junior Corps?"

"An attempt to shore up our military. They started it in the middle of the century," Thomas explained, "as a way for students to pay off their college debt. And I had plenty of that." He sighed, shaking away the memories.

"Vern enlisted when he was 15," Silas contributed, thinking of his brother. "But he did it because he'd always wanted to serve his country. Unfortunately, our government used financial bribery to tantalize enlistees who really didn't want to be there. We needed the manpower, so they were desperate to lure young men into armed service."

Thomas grumbled, bitterly, "Biggest blunder of my life. I'd thought it would be an easy way to keep the bill collectors off my back. Heh . . . I thought maybe I could get a simple grunt assignment. Perhaps I would be able to remain stateside on armory duty? But nooooo . . . lucky me got shipped offworld to Mangana - home of exotic mosquitoes and fire-breathing ants."

Emily put her elbow on his shoulder, softly touching her brother to clam him down. "I was only three years old when Thomas left for basic training. I felt so proud of my brother . . . sliding off to war to teach those apes a lesson!"

"I got to come home for holidays . . . although with our family all together, the only thing we could really look forward to was the tasty Thanksgiving pheasant." Thomas wryly bit his lip, exchanging smirks with Emily.

Biting her lip, Emily good-naturedly explained to the sliders, "Our extended family is a bit . . . wacky. Messed up, actually. And that's on a good day."

Janine wore a confused grin. "Fire-breathing ants?!" she spat out in disbelief, still hung up on the reference Thomas had made a moment earlier.

"Just an expression," Emily clarified, with a smile. "Right, Thomas?"

"Er, try telling that to he poor saps in uniform who accidentally parked their fannies atop Manganese anthills." Thomas refocused his attention on Maggie. "Anyway, the Junior Corps gave me a plumb assignment, even though it was the last place I wanted to go. But it's not like I had much of a choice. Once you committed yourself, they locked you in and assigned you wherever they needed to fill space. I never would have even joined the Junior Corps if our family hadn't been too poor help me pay my student loans."

Maggie still looked puzzled. "I don't understand why you would send more of your troops to their world. I thought you said your war criminals were exiled there? Why not just let the manta ships blow them to smithereens?"

"Maggie," Michael Mallory patiently explained, "they may have been cretinous pieces of human garbage, but they were still human. And they weren't the only ones in danger. All the good people of that world were now at the mercy of Kromagg invaders. Because of us. We unwittingly released the Kromaggs onto their world, so we felt a moral responsibility to help them defeat the Dynasty."

"Our main rationale for sending war criminals offworld was to protect our own civilian population," said Thomas. "Mangana was sparsely populated, so it was the perfect place. The people of that world allowed us to send our exilees there, in exchange for our military protection. They didn't want our bad guys escaping Mangana and inflicting terror on their world's civilians."

"So we bartered," stated Michael, "making a deal with the Royal Family. That Earth was way ahead of us in developing non-violent scientific innovations. We provided them with our military manpower and some of our combat artillery, and in turn, they shared with us some of their scientific breakthroughs."

"Once the Kromaggs invaded that Earth, our