"Q-ball, can't this wait?" Rembrandt's voice was nearly drowned by Quinn's yells.

"No. Listen to me." A pounding on the wall from the next door room punctuated Quinn's words. If he noticed, he gave no response. He flipped on the room lights, to the audible displeasure of the other Sliders.

Wade all but growled at him. She groped for the bedside clock, turned it so she could see the green numbers, then did growl. "It's three thirty in the morning --"

"Three thirty seven," Arturo's sleep-laden voice interrupted. "We have precisely two hours until dawn and seven hours and twenty four minutes until the slide. Turn the lights off, Mr. Mallory, and leave us to our much needed sleep."

Quinn answered by switching on the television as well. The loud burst of static shocked any remaining sleep from the group. This version of the Dominion proudly sported an in-wall television, with a ten foot screen. The hotel also advertised the dual VDV decks and the 1000 channel satellite reception in each room. It was the television addict's paradise.

"Watch," he said. He flipped to a channel identified only by the letters TF in the lower right-hand corner. The screen came alive with the image of a rather plain woman in her late-twenties chasing a dark-haired teenaged boy around an apartment with a sword. The scene ended and cut to an island with waves lapping on the beach. Quinn paused the picture.

"So what," Wade voiced. Any other time of the day and she might have been interested. But this was one of the few full nights of sleep they'd been allowed in recent months, and she really wanted to complete it before sleep became impossible.

Quinn sat down on the edge of the bed. He held the remote in one hand, the timer in the other. "This is called stock footage. It's a second or two of film used to establish a scene."

"Mr. Mallory. Would you kindly turn that picture off before we all get sea-sick?" Arturo sat up in bed, arranging the pillows as back support. He recognised this mood in his student, and knew there'd be no relief until Quinn had his say.

The television shut off with a flash of light. "That island is what first got me thinking about it," Quinn continued, otherwise oblivious to the interruption. "It's the nature of stock footage. It's the *same* second of footage used no matter what time of day or year the scene is supposed to take place." Movement from Rembrandt signaled another possible interruption, which Quinn cut off by speaking louder and faster. "Just like our slides."

Three seconds passed while the words sunk into the heads and thoughts of his companions. "Can we go back to sleep now?" Rembrandt asked, his voice muffled by the pillow over his head.

Quinn jumped to his feet and started pacing the length of the room. "Haven't you ever noticed that our slides *always* look the same? The twists and turns are the same. Even the colours are the same. Yet we always end up someplace different."

"No, they're not," Wade voiced. She remembered several instances when the slide looked different. "What about the time you were stuck in the astral plane?" It was so hard to avoid a good argument. Especially in the face of incomprehensible logic.

"*Most* of the time, then," Quinn conceded. "More often than they should."

Another three seconds passed in silence, which Quinn took for rapt attention to his words. In reality, the others were working out ways to get him to shut up. "The slides have to be stock footage. Which means, we are characters in some fictional multi-verse."

"I thought you said this couldn't wait until morning?" Wade followed Rembrandt's suit and shoved her head under her pillow too. Then she pulled the quilt over her and the pillow and hoped to God that if she couldn't see Quinn then he couldn't see her.

Crashing glass interrupted the attempts at sleeping through Quinn's tirade. Wade and Rembrandt peeked out from under their respective pillows in time to see the sliding glass door shatter to the ground. Two men dressed in black bodysuits and camouflage face-paint, and a buxom woman dressed in an identical bodysuit accessorised with black spike-heels, swung in on ropes and took up shooting stances amid the sea of glass. Each carried large automatic weapons.

Quinn spoke softly to the others. "They look like highly trained--"

"Shut up," one of the bodysuits barked. He had a nasty looking scar running down one side of his face. Other than that, he was extrodinarily handsome.

"-- military experts. They must belong to an elite, secret --"

"Shut up or we'll shoot." The bodysuit sounded annoyed. It was hard to tell if he looked annoyed because of the camo-facepaint. But, it was a pretty safe assumption.

"governmental unit."

"How do you know?" Rembrandt whispered back.

Quinn referred him back to the descriptive line about large, automatic weapons. As understanding began to show on Rembrandt's face, Quinn then pointed out the insignia emblazoned on their upper arms: O.P.U.S.S. Both Quinn and Rembrandt agreed that they'd never heard of such an organisation, ergo --

"He said, 'Shut up'," the female-bodysuit snapped, in a voice that managed to be both sultry and severe. Quinn and Rembrandt exchanged confused looks. They hadn't realised they were speaking.

A knock sounded on the hotel room door, followed by the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door swung open to reveal a teenager dressed in the hotel bell-boy uniform. The uniform was the perfect shade of red for setting off his copious amounts of acne. "Did someone call for room --?"

The elite military unit opened fire. Bullets sprayed around the room, destroying the wallvision, tearing neat tracks through the pictures, blowing out the light bulbs, and scoring even marks across the walls. None of the Sliders had a chance to move. Quinn counted his blessing on that one. Moving might have accidentally placed them in line of fire. He knew they couldn't be in danger as long as they stood still -- unless one of the bullets ricocheted and hit him in the shoulder.

As it was, none were so much as scratched. The bell-boy, on the other hand, took a single hit in the chest, which picked him up and threw him against the back wall. He slumped to the floor; not a drop of blood spilled.

Before the Sliders could blink, the elite corp was gone. If not for the destroyed room, one would never have known they'd been there.

"Is everyone all right?" Wade yelled. She ran from Slider to Slider, growing more amazed at each that none had been injured. She finished by racing into the hallway. A second later she returned, looking confused. "He's gone."

"Think we should call the police?" Rembrandt asked. He was testing his limbs to make sure they were all attached and working.

"Don't bother," Quinn replied. "They'd be on their way already if it was going to happen." He walked over and shut the room door.

"Mr. Mallory, I think I see your point." Arturo arose from the bed and went around touching each of the bullet holes in turn.

"I don't," Wade shot back, affronted.

"Think about it: four people in a hotel room being shot at by three military experts, and *none* of us were injured."

"So, we're lucky." She collapsed on what remained of her bed.

"That's not luck. That's a statistical impossibility. Then there's the bell-boy, who showed up just in time to be killed. His death alone was a physical violation. Bodies don't fly any direction when they're hit by a bullet. They fall down. A person shot in the chest from the front falls forwards, not backwards. Action, reaction."

"What Mr. Mallory means is that these impossibilities suggest that we are characters on television or in the movies."

"Television, probably. Or a series of movies. We've been sliding way too long for anything else."

"Great, just great," Rembrandt added, from where he sat on the remains of his cot. He buried his head in his hands. "We ain't never getting home."

Arturo and Quinn looked at each other, sizing up the probabilities of the discovery. "There is a chance," Quinn finally suggested.

"I hope you're not going to say we have to track down our writer," Wade said. She had been watching Quinn and the Professor's silent exchange, and could follow their thoughts almost as well as if she could read their minds. She waited for Quinn to dispute her. When he didn't, she turned to Arturo, who answered by looking at his feet. "Let's see if I have this right ... our only chance to get home is to find *God*? And ask him or her to write us home?"

Quinn nodded.

"Wonderful. I'm glad we haven't been presented with a *difficult* task."

"There might be another way," Arutro continued. "Assuming this series of improbabilities proves we're on the right track --" He took in the shattered hotel room with a grimace. "-- we could always try to get canceled."

"We ain't never getting home," Rembrandt wailed again.

"Remmie's right," Quinn interrupted. He was getting annoyed with the others. This was supposed to be his revelation; his moment to prove that all was not lost, and the others didn't seem the least bit pleased. All they could do was complain. "Cancellation doesn't guarantee a free trip home. More likely, it'll mean us being trapped on some random world for the rest of eternity. Or we'll all just die some totally inexplicable, unavoidable, and contrived sudden death. We wouldn't be the first show to end that way."

"You have a point," Arturo responded. "The first option does appear to be the best, if least probable."

Wade glanced again at the clock. It now read four oh two a.m. and she wasn't the least bit tired anymore. She was way too annoyed to be tired. She stood up, brushing plaster dust off the jeans she'd been sleeping in. "Don't you think we'd better get started?" She shot a scathing look at Quinn. How could anyone be taking him seriously? She refused to believe that she was merely a character. She felt far too three-dimensional for that ... most of the time. Of course, it would be nice to be able to explain away bad days as bad writing. "Only four hours until breakfast," she pointed out, "and we haven't yet reached our quota." She stormed out of the room.

END