associations2

All this takes place in the first twenty to twenty-five minutes of the show; the Sliders� �mission� here is already accomplished, but they still have four days before the slide. So they find various ways to spend their time. First, everyone spends the evening together at the Mallory Mansion.

After a nice dinner together, everyone gathers in the den. Colin chooses this time to inform his parents that the Quinn they saw in the Slidecage was not their Quinn but a double (from Earth Prime) who thought he was their Quinn. When he tells them that, they admit that they suspected that the Quinn they saw in the Slidecage was not their son. When Colin says that he doesn�t understand, Elizabeth Mallory goes into her and Michael�s bedroom and comes back a few moments later with two photograph frames with pictures in them.

The frames are stacked on top of one another, so Colin (and we) can only see what is in the top frame. It has two photos in it; one of the photos is an eight-by-ten and the other is a three-by-five that sits atop the larger photo in the lower left-hand corner of the frame. Colin recognizes himself in the larger photo and deduces that the smaller, overlaid photo must be of himself as a baby, though he can�t explain how his parents got a picture of him as an adult (he�s posed and smiling, so it�s not a captured-image from Slidecage security tapes).

Elizabeth confirms that the baby picture is an actual photograph of him that was taken before he was transferred to his foster parents� world. She then explains that the larger picture isn�t really a photograph at all but a computer-gener-ated image. The picture of the adult Colin was created by scanning his baby picture into a computer and then using a highly-sophisticated photo-enhancement program to do an age-extrapolation on the photo; in other words, they gave the computer the baby picture and asked it to show them what the baby would look like as an adult (it�s like what they do with those pictures of missing children who�ve been gone a few years; they use a computer to �age� the child in the picture in hopes that he�ll be more recognizable if the photo shows him as he might appear today. Of course, since this world is so advanced, the program is more sophisticated and therefore more accurate). Of course, the extrapolation isn�t completely accurate (the hairstyle and exact shape of the face is a bit off), but it�s pretty damn close.

It is then that Elizabeth pulls the other frame out from behind the one with Colin�s pictures in it. She says that this frame�s pictures are of Quinn. But when Colin finally gets a look at the face in the picture, he doesn�t recognize it as Quinn. In fact, none of the Sliders recognize the face in the photo as Quinn�s, but one of them does recognize who it is. Rembrandt does. He recognizes the face in the photo as that of Mallory, the fraternal double with whom Quinn is merged. Suddenly, all the pieces fall into place.

It suddenly makes sense to Rembrandt that Quinn�s Earth Prime mother, Linda, looked nothing like his Home World mother, Elizabeth; they�re not the same person with a different name, they�re different women who happened to have married doubles of the same man: Michael Mallory. Earth Prime�s Michael Mallory married a woman named Linda Church and had a son with her whom he named Quinn. Home World�s Michael Mallory married a woman named Elizabeth Geiger (that�s right, Oberon Geiger�s sister) and had a son with her whom he also named Quinn.

Several months back (in �Alternate Possibilities�), Mary had confessed that she had purposely given the wrong Quinn the microdot, but had maintained that there actually was a Quinn out there to whom the microdot actually belonged. So, with Mary�s confession and the events of �Turning Point� to draw from, Rembrandt had known for quite some time that his Quinn wasn�t the Home World Quinn, but he had never even considered that the Home World Quinn might, in fact, be Mallory! But it all made too much sense! Having a different mother but the same father would make doubles look different from each other! And Mary had said that part of the reason that the microdot had been given to our Quinn instead of the Home World Quinn was because that Quinn didn�t have the scientific prowess to unlock the Slidecage; that lack of scientific prowess very much applies to Mallory. Of course, it�s just as likely that the Mallory Rembrandt knows is just a double of the Home World Quinn, but he suddenly has a nagging suspicion that that isn�t the case. Call it gut instinct, but Rembrandt is suddenly very convinced that Mallory is this world�s Quinn.

Rembrandt shares his theory with the group. They are, of course, skeptical at first, especially since none of them have ever met Mallory and can�t even say from personal experience that he looks like the man in the computer-generated photo, but they have to admit that with everything that�s happened since they started sliding, they can hardly discount the possibility.

KEEP GOING . . .