Quantum Leap: Blind Date- September 15, 1995

Chapter 1

Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped in to the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap.... will be the leap home.

Sam awoke on a comfortable, fluffy-feeling bed. The clothes he was wearing were so soft- was it a robe of some kind? He had never felt anything like it before, or at least hadn't worn something with such a pleasant texture. It was pitch black, so he could only assume it was night time, but heard the sound of an alarm to his left, so he found that his assumption was wrong. Feeling blindly in the dark, he eventually found the clock and hit as many buttons as he could find to turn it off. As the noise ceased, Sam gave a sigh of relief. This was before he realized he would have to find the light switch in total darkness.

Sam didn't often find himself operating in the dark. Usually all the action was in at least decently-lit places, or during the day, sometimes during fires. Out of all the things his travels had prepared him to do, finding a light switch or a plug in the dark was definitely not one of them. Luckily for Sam, the room was fairly small. He hoped he wouldn't be late as he continued his search and eventually found a switch near what felt like a door, so he switched it on. Strange; it seemed to already be on. He fiddled with it, turning it off and on again, but seeing no difference.

"Suki! You left your sister's light on again!"

"Sorry, Mom!"

Sam could hear a conversation from nearby, almost in the next room but probably a little further than that. He found that the door was halfway open and decided to walk through it. He felt with his bare feet the soft carpet of presumably his room change to a different kind; something rough and thin. Feeling for walls and finding what could have been a hallway, he held his hand out and walked alongside of it, scraping his fingers on the unevenly painted wall. His hand no longer felt the wall, but it seemed to just be another doorframe, another room, so he continued until he felt tile on his feet. Was that name Chinese or something? Japanese? It didn't make any difference to him; they were speaking in English anyway. Hopefully they didn't speak any of those languages around the house; he could barely pass as whoever he was supposed to be by just speaking English. Maybe he would luck out and be able to speak it anyway because of some connection with the person he leaped into.

Sam was seriously hoping that he was supposed to be blind, otherwise something was horribly wrong with either him or whoever he leaped into. Had he left the lights on or off? He didn't know. It didn't matter to him, but maybe this family cared about conserving energy or something. Either way, he couldn't turn back now.

"Hey, honey, we have breakfast for you," a woman's voice said. "Sit at the table and it's a bowl of white rice in the middle, sardines and sausage on a plate, the chopsticks on the left, and green tea on the right. Careful, it's hot."

"Thanks," Sam said, careful to not give anything away.

"What, no 'I want pancakes and bacon, gosh, Mom!' this morning?" she commented. "And I don't get to say, 'You're Japanese and you are going to eat what I cook no matter what your American friends say'? And 'I hate natto!!!'"

"Well, uh, bacon sounds nice I guess," he stammered. Finding the table was luckily an easy task as the table was already very close to him and all he had to do was pull a chair out. He reached for the chopsticks but they weren't there. Nothing was there.