Touched by a Time Traveler

One end of this string represents your birth, the other end your death. You tie the ends together, and your life is a loop. Ball the loop, and the days of your life touch each other out of sequence, therefore leaping to one point in the string to another . . .

Don’t ya see, Al? I’m here to give Donna and I a second chance.

That surprise punch in the last inning . . . it was inspired.

You can’t expect me to do this and not get involved. So if Tess falls in love with Doc, I’d appreciate it if you just leap me outta here as soon as possible.

Who ever heard of one lousy hairdryer blacking out all of the East Coast?

You’re hear to save her tomorrow, not to initiate the civil rights activity in the South.

Older Brother: Come on, Mikey, we gotta rehearse.

Mikey: [waving] Bye-bye!

Kid, if I’m lucky I’m gonna spend the rest of my life leaping around from one place to another instead of face down in a pool of blood.

This committee has decided that your 2.4 billion dollar funding request for Project Quantum Leap . . .

Disco’s not gonna last forever. I got a feeling it’s probably gonna die in a couple of years.

“I try to find a husband . . . to find my husband”

You know, this is degrading. First he chases me around the office, then he says I gotta wear lipstick

He says he wants to play.

Fred, I appreciate your opinion, but no matter how many editorials you publish, I am not gonna stop playing rock’n’roll.

Jake stared from one man to the other. A horse neighed behind him, and shuffled through the thick straw bedding. His eyes narrowed. Where the hell was he? He’d fallen asleep on the uncomfortable mattress in his jail cell last night, thinking about his strange encounter with his new lawyer. He glanced around. He stood inside an old wooden barn, in a horse stall to be precise. The familiar pungent smell of horse sweat, manure, and hay permeated the air. The equine occupant of the stall chose that moment to blow hot air down Jake’s neck. He swatted an impatient hand at the horse’s nose to make the animal move away from him. He thought he’d seen the last of horses since leaving Montana. How did he get here?

Laney’s brows scrunched together. She glanced at her surroundings. She was inside a cramped old-fashioned coach of some sort, and the windows were wide open, sending in thick clouds of dust. She stared out at the passing landscape. Evergreens and prairieland as far as she could see. Not a hint of a skyscraper of road anywhere.

He glanced around at his unfamiliar surroundings. He was in a parlor of sorts. A short table stood a few feet away from the sofa on which he sat. An oddly-shaped lamp hung from the pastered ceiling, and Gabe squinted his good eye. It was a rather plain-looking, milky-colored dome attached to a wooden support, along with what looked like blades that reminded him of a windmill that was hung on its side. He’d never seen an oil or kerosene lamp like it. Perhaps it wasn’t even a lamp, but some ornate decoration.

Had she somehow crucially alterted her own present by changing Alice’s future? The thought that she might have started some terrible chain of events that she could not possibly have foreseen, nor known about, worried her more and more. It was only in the small hours of Wednesday night that an answer came to her that seemed to make sense. The present that she knew, the way things were in her time, could only have come about if she had traveled back to the past. Her finding the chatelaine, her answering Alice’s call for help, those things were necessary to shape the past and bring about the future as it was. She had to believe this. It did work. She was a part of how things had turned out, not an alternative version, but the one she was meant to live in. If she hadn’t gone back, hadn’t taken the decision to help Alice, well, that wouldhave resulted in a different future from the one she knew.

Could the elevator have been, like, a time machine?

He chuckled and shook his head. To think that he’d wanted to ruin his brother and the ranch at one time. Because of his misguided need for revenge, he’d ended up in the future. Meeting Morgan and her son had been the best thing that could have happened to him. Although he missed his simple life in 1872, there was much to like about modern times, too.