Quinn Mallory - a young physics student at the University of California and a genius at the same time - has just woken up in his home in San Francisco. He was awakened by the nightmare he had dreamed of. He saw the tragic death of Professor Arturo, Wade's head submerged in some green liquid, his brother Colin disappearing into the wormhole... And finally the last moments of Rembrandt, who - in front of Diana, Maggie and Mallory - jumped into the unstable wormhole. The moment Mallory asked Maggie and Diana "what do we do now?," Quinn suddenly woke up. He was amazed, he was back in his room and all his companions disappeared. Approaching the mirror - instead of his own reflection - he saw the face of his double from another dimension. The face of a man in whose body he was trapped a year ago. This was Mallory's face.        

Season 6 credits: Quinn, Wade, Remmy, The Professor, Maggie, Colin, Mallory, Diana

After a while, the proper reflection of Quinn appeared back in the mirror, but there was also something strange about that reflection. Quinn looked five years younger! He looked around his room. Then he ran through the whole house, and realized that he was surrounded by a reality he knew before his adventure with sliding began. He must have gone five years back in time! His mother Amanda Mallory, greeted him in the kitchen - like nothing had happened - and informed that Wade Wells had called. Quinn was shocked again... Does this mean she was alive? Unable to understand what had happened, he ran out of the house, got into his car, and headed towards Wade's house. Along the way, he was so excited and distracted, he almost collided with another car! The second driver yelled at him. Quinn could not believe his eyes... It was… Professor Maximillian Arturo - safe and sound! However, the Professor did not recognize Quinn as a companion of the slides, but only as a student who was late for his classes.

When Wade opened the door of her house, Quinn was totally shocked! He’s just seen his long lost friend, so he hugged her and kissed enthusiastically. Wells did not understand this outburst of feelings, so he briefly told her about their dimensional journeys together and how Wade was kidnapped by the Kromaggs. She tried to calm him down by saying that Quinn was just having a strange dream and was suffering from some kind of disorder. She recommended him a good psychotherapist. Quinn had decided to visit him immediately. When he got there, he realized he knew the place. It was the office where Rembrandt Brown was treated after visiting a world that was almost identical to ours, but different in details. For example the Golden Gate Bridge was blue, instead of red. While waiting for his turn he suddenly saw Rembrandt Brown and Gillian walking into the waiting room. Quinn jumped up from his chair and ran to them with a warm greeting.  However they did not recognize him at all. Trying to remind Remmy about their slides only made things worst. Brown not only did not recognize Quinn, but considered him to be a psycho-fan of "Crying Man", his on stage persona. Even Gillian did not remember that they had met in another dimension, where she was able to see ghosts and other entities invisible to everyone else.

Confused, Mallory returned to his home. He was desperate... He went down to the basement, his laboratory. The slide equation was written on the board, but it was not yet solved. There was a question mark at the end of it. The exact same thing happened five years earlier, before Quinn's double completed the formula. Now Mallory has decided to build a new timer. After a few hours, he finished it, but the device did not work. Surprised, Quinn realized that for some reason the laws of physics prevented him from recreating the sliding machine. It was late in the evening, but he decided to visit Professor Arturo and ask him for help. Seeing the young student at his door, Arturo refused to let the boy in. He was still angry with Quinn about the dangerous traffic situation earlier in the day. However Quinn was desperate. His life’s achievement was at stake. He begged his professor for 5 minutes of his time until Arturo finally caved.

Quinn showed the Professor his notes with the interdimensional sliding equation. However Arturo acted like he was just learning about the boy's brilliant discovery for the first time. They recalculated the formula together and came to the same conclusion. Somehow the laws of physics had changed and they could not build a working timer. The longer they talked about this, the more the Professor began to remember their adventures. Quinn reminded Arturo how he had saved one world from an asteroid and invented penicillin in another. Suddenly two policemen rang the doorbell. It was Sid and Ryan. The Sliders met them a few years earlier during their adventures, but in completely different dimensions! The policemen were searching for Quinn - because the singer Rembrandt Brown had reported him as a psychotic fan. Fortunately, the boy hid in the closet until the officers left. Mallory agreed with the Professor that they needed to meet Wade and Remmy at the University of California.

Heading to the university, Quinn called Wade from a pay phone and asked her to meet him there. Then he went to a pub, he knew Rembrandt Brown had used to visit. When Remmy saw him, he took him again for a pursuer. After a while, the singer had an epiphany! He remembered who Mallory - he used to call Q-Ball - really was. Then Quinn managed to convince his friend to go with him to the University. The four Sliders gathered in the lecture hall. They began to recall their old adventures thanks to Quinn's stories. It turned out that all four had exactly the same memories from their first slide till the world where the professor played a detective chasing Jack the Ripper. However all the adventures that followed this world, Quinn remembered quite differently. He told the others about an “Egyptian World” where they missed the slide and found the new timer. It turned out that the other three remembered “The Egyptian World” differently. In their memories the Sliders did not miss the slide and they never had to use a timer other than the original one, constructed by Quinn.

The Sliders did not understand why some of their memories were the same and the others completely different. They came to the conclusion that this must be related to the fact that they could not construct the timer in this world. Suddenly, the Professor came up with a theory: that they might have been trapped in a virtual simulation! At that exact moment the classroom blurred and disappeared. Suddenly four Sliders were standing in a dark cave. There were five lab tables in front of them, and on top of them lay their own bodies connected to complex medical equipment. The body on the fifth table was turned sideways, so they could not see the face. The four Sliders realized that they indeed were a part of a virtual projection. Suddenly, the fifth projection appeared next to them. It was a young woman. Only Quinn recognized her face - it was Maggie Beckett!

Maggie firmly told the travellers that they would not run away from this simulation. Suddenly, her face transformed into Quinn’s and then Colin’s.... Diana’s and Mallory’s. Wade, Remmy and Arturo did not recognize the last three faces. Finally, Mallory’s face turned into a Kromagg. At this point the Sliders learned the whole truth. A few years back, when the Sliders first encountered the Kromagg Dynasty, they put in Quinn's brain an implant, that allowed the Dynasty to follow them travelling through the parallel worlds. They hoped that Sliders would find our “Earth Prime” so that they could invade it. The Kromaggs hated any human civilization that has invented the sliding technology. However as the years passed by the travellers still had not found their world. Eventually one of the Kromaggs was given a special assignment by the Dynasty. He managed to catch the Sliders and connect them to a virtual reality simulation of their home. This way the Kromaggs wanted to awake in travellers the will to return to their home world.

For the past two weeks, Wade, Remmy and the Professor have been existing in a reality that took place five years ago, and lived it as if their first slide never happened. Quinn was the exception. The Kromagg initially connected him to the same simulation as well, however the implant in Quinn's brain was causing interferences resulting in the constant rejection of the simulation. As a result the Kromagg placed a completely different sequence of images in Quinn's mind. Initially the Dynasty implanted many different doubles of Quinn who - like him - travelled to parallel dimensions with a group of friends. The replacement simulation consisted of the data obtained from the implant of Quinn2, and these images were being projected at an accelerated pace in Quinn's mind. Their goal was to show the boy a tragic, alternative version of the Sliders’ adventures. This would make Quinn understand that he must find home as soon as possible, before losing most of his friends. As a starting point of the simulation the Kromagg chose the moment when a negative cause and effect sequence began in Quinn2's life. That moment was the slide to “The Egyptian World” over two years ago.

During the last two weeks, our Mallory had experienced an alternate two and a half years of memories from a double who was not as lucky as he. Quinn saw the moment when Quinn2 and his friends missed the slide in the Egyptian world, the tragic death of Professor Arturo, and at the same time meeting a new companion. He then lost Wade but met his brother Colin, and finally his own body (with the Kromagg implant) was subatomically spliced into the body of his double who has slightly different facial features. Finally Quinn’s brother Colin became unstuck in space-time. A fate which would force him to involuntarily shift from one dimension to another. Our Quinn experienced these alternate adventures in the simulation until Mallory uttered the words, "what do we do now?" The Kromagg explained that at this very moment, a short circuit occurred within the implants placed in both of the Quinns, which caused the chips to overload and they both stopped working. At this point Quinn joined the simulation of Wade, Remmy and Professor Arturo. Quinn was more aware than the other three, so he was able to go inside their minds and convince them that they have all been living in a virtual world. After the truth was revealed, the Sliders could not believe that they had failed to return to “Earth Prime” once again. They were also surprised that somewhere there were their doubles whose journey had turned into a nightmare.

The Kromagg, whose mission was to motivate Sliders to find their home again, failed. His projection suddenly disappeared, and then the same happened to the holograms of the four travellers. At the same moment four Sliders woke up on the tables. They carefully disconnected the apparatus from their bodies. It turned out that only the Kromagg hadn’t woken up - his damaged mind was still connected to the simulation, so he would remain in a coma for the rest of his life. Walking around this underground laboratory Quinn suddenly noticed his timer. It was the one Sliders had been using for five years, since the beginning of their journey. Mallory was disturbed by the displayed numbers - only 15 minutes left to the next slide! The Sliders found a tunnel that was probably the exit of the cave. On the way out, Remmy suddenly remembered having been on this world for two weeks and that one of the caveats was that loud conversations were disruptive and punishable. The last thing all four remembered before being kidnapped was having dinner at a restaurant.

Walking down the tunnel, Quinn told the other three that his memories from the simulation had started to fade. Instead, the memories of his own adventures slowly returned to him. These memories did not include the loss of the Professor and Wade or meeting Maggie, Colin or Diana. He also realized that most of the worlds Quinn2 and his friends had visited were similar to the worlds they had visited, but the events unfolded differently there. For example, in “Zombie World” where Quinn2 became infected, Maggie, Wade and Remmy helped him survive. Our Quinn, on the other hand, experienced this adventure differently. It was Wade who was infected, and he, along with the Professor and Remmy, helped her. The last world, in which the Sliders stayed – before they slid into “The world where they couldn’t speak out loud” - was a desert, post-apocalyptic wasteland, where there was a cult of "Crying Man" fanatics. Quinn2 was in this world in the guise of Mallory, accompanied by Remmy, Maggie and Diana, but not by Wade, Remmy and the Professor, as was the case with our Quinn.

Unfortunately, one recollection concerned Quinn deeply and he had to explain it when suddenly the Professor stumbled and fell. Quinn decided to seize the moment. He asked Wade and Remmy to continue searching for an exit from the cave while he helped get Maximillian on his feet. As the Professor stood up, Mallory suddenly grabbed him, held him against the wall and whispered furiously that he got inside Arturo's mind through the simulation and that he knew the truth. The truth was: the Professor was a cheater who joined the Sliders a few years earlier and at the same time, the team had left the real Arturo behind. Quinn’s suspicions were confirmed by the Professor. He had deceived the Sliders years ago. He imprisoned their Professor and joined them on an adventure that would ensure him riches and fame. Quinn decided that this information would only remain between the two of them. Wade and Remmy could not find out about it. Mallory could punish the false Professor and abandon him right away. However the alternative adventures of the other Sliders that he saw in the simulation made him understand, that the lack of Professor could lead to the slow disintegration of the group as a whole. Despite a great disappointment, Quinn was happy that his friend and mentor was still alive. A few years ago, Arturo was diagnosed with a terminal disease, but a Healer from the city of Aquarius was able to cure him. Quinn saw in the simulation that the alternative Professor was not so lucky. Not only that the Healer in that reality was not that effective, but after some time the Professor was killed by Colonel Rickman.

Quinn and Professor Arturo caught up with Wade and Remmy and left the cave together. The travellers stood on a green hill next to the bay. Mallory walked over to Miss Wells and hugged her and kissed her tenderly. Quinn and Wade had been a romantic couple for some time now. As the display of the timer hit zero, the time for their departure had come. The vortex opened and the four Sliders jumped into the tunnel, hoping that maybe the next world they land on will be their real home, and not just a simulation. Though the Sliders were still unsure if they would ever find “Earth Prime,” relief was found in knowing that the implant inside Quinn's head had been destroyed, and that the Kromaggs could no longer follow them.

Based on Ibrahim Ng's fanfic
 Text: Bartosz Listewnik
Translation: Brick Lady