Just a little something that's been lying on my hard drive for a while...

    Disclaimer: Standard.  Details moved to bottom.

            WWIDIIW...?
            A sort-of fusion thingy
            by
            David McMillan

    I had to suppress a momentary surge of panic as the Slide effect kicked 
in.  Despite the number of years I've been doing this, that sudden, 
short-lived falling sensation never gets any easier to handle.  I've never 
gotten entirely accustomed to elevators, either.
    Which, given where I found myself once my eyes recovered from the aurora 
of collapsing wave functions, was one more piece of evidence I'm Somebody's 
favorite whipping boy.  
    I was in a cylindrical elevator cab facing a front wall of almost 
perfectly transparent glass.  This gave me an unobstructed view of the shaft 
rails zooming past at truly ludicrous speed.  I couldn't help myself; I 
flinched backwards, swallowing convulsively, and my shoulder blades thumped 
painfully into the back wall of the cab.  My peripheral vision indicated that 
the wall I was leaning against was probably glass, too, a fact I made every 
attempt to ignore as I fought to bring my heart rate back down.  That was 
when I realized that I was not alone.
    My new companion in freefall was an attractive blond woman with brown 
roots and a small mole on one cheek, dressed in a blouse-and-miniskirt combo 
that flattered her figure beneath an open white lab coat.  She was looking at 
me with a concerned expression, and began reaching towards me with one hand.  
But she aborted the gesture partway, as if unsure of how the gesture would be 
received.  
    "Are you...all right?" she asked cautiously.
    Dammit, I knew who she was, but who was I, this time?  I peeled myself 
off the wall of the cab and tried to look calm and collected.  
    "I'm fine," I replied.  "Just a momentary touch of vertigo.  It's passed 
now."
    Her hand still hung between us, suspended, uncertain.  "Are you sure?"  
She probed me with her eyes, cautiously, as if she were almost afraid of what 
my reaction might be.
    I tried to take a deep breath without being obvious, and answered in the 
most bland, neutral tone I could muster.  "Yes.  Quite sure.  Thank you, 
Doctor Akagi."
    Ritsuko recoiled as if I had slapped her.  She hid it well, but I still 
felt like I'd just kicked a puppy.  A sudden warning bell went off deep in my 
subconscious as she turned away and pretended to study the walls of the 
elevator shaft as they streaked past, and I tried to puzzle out her behavior.
    Distracted, I reflexively tried to pinch the bridge of my nose in a 
futile attempt to ward off the migraine I felt building behind my eyeballs.  
Everything suddenly crystallized as my fingers bumped into a pair of glasses, 
and an icy fist clenched in my gut.  For the first time, I tried to look at 
my reflection in the too-perfect glass, hoping, praying that I was wrong...
    My reflection was faint nearly to the point of being invisible, but after 
a few seconds my eyes were able to pick out the key features that nailed down 
the coffin lid on my hopes.  I knew who I was this time.  I felt like 
throwing up.
    [Gendo Ikari...Kyrie Eleison, I'm Gendo.  Freaking.  Ikari.]
    Ritsuko turned to face me, frowning, and I realized I must have thought 
that aloud.  Damn my big mouth, anyways -- I couldn't afford to have her, of 
all people, doubting my sanity.  Not if I wanted to survive this Slide.
    "I'm sorry; what was that?"
    "Nothing," I replied calmly, forcing myself into character.  "Merely 
thinking out loud."
    She didn't look hurt this time, but simply returned to her contemplation 
of the shaft outside the elevator.  But I thought I caught her shooting a 
glance my way in the spectral reflections of the cab wall.
    We arrived at the bottom thirty seconds later, decelerating with a 
knee-buckling force I found vaguely comforting.  Quite frankly, that damned 
elevator was freaking me out.  
    Ritsuko opened the doors and stepped out, then paused as I failed to 
follow.  
    "Is something wrong?"
    I scrambled for a Gendo-esque reply.  "No.  Everything is proceeding 
according to plan."  Oh, right, THAT sounded perfectly natural.  "However, I 
just recalled that I left a small matter unresolved back in my office.  
Nothing serious -- it should only take a few minutes.  Why don't you go on 
without me, and I'll catch up with you?"  I pushed my glasses --HIS glasses-- 
back up my nose, hoping I was catching the right glare angle, and tried not 
to sweat.   Oddly enough, my fumbling seemed to put her at ease.
    "You?  Forgot something?"  She looked almost amused.  "Well, I suppose 
there's a first time for everything.  There's no rush -- take your time.  
I'll get things started."  Suiting action to word, she turned and walked away 
down the corridor.  I couldn't help notice the sway of her hips as she walked 
away, and wondered if she was trying to turn me --not me!  Gendo, dammit!-- 
on.  I stabbed the UP button on the elevator control pad and let the doors 
close between us.  The elevator began moving, and it hit me how lucky I had 
been; if it had required a key card or passcode, my fumbling would have given 
me away to Ritsuko for certain.  As the elevator accelerated up the shaft, 
the basic untenability of my position hit me like an avalanche.
    I was Gendo Ikari.  The man with more secrets than a yard full of cats, 
the man no one really trusted, the father whose own son hated him, the 
conspirator dancing a deadly game of triple-cross with SEELE, the UN, and the 
whole damned human race, the loner who had not a single friend to whom he 
--I!-- could turn for help...
    I'd be lucky if I lived out the day.
    Correction -- I'd be lucky if I lived out the next hour.  I was in an 
elevator that lead to Terminal Dogma, possibly the most-secured place on 
Earth, and I didn't know any of Gendo's passwords or codes.  Hell, I didn't 
even know which pocket the man kept his key card in!
    I looked up at the dim, growing pinprick of light at the top off the 
shaft, and wished that it really was a freight train.  It would have been 
more merciful.
    With a groan, I pulled off my glasses and leaned my forehead against the 
cool smoothness of the cab wall.  If I closed my eyes, I could ignore the 
shaft supports shooting past -- the mechanism was that smooth.
    I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting it trickle over my 
teeth and past my lips as I fell blindly into my uncertain future.  "Oh, 
boy..."

AUTHOR'S NOTES:
    What can I say?  I actually rather like SI fics, when they're done well 
-- perhaps because good SIs are so darned hard to pull off successfully.  At 
any rate, I've done some speculating about what I could do with an SI that 
hasn't been done before (as far as I know).  And "Quantum Sliding" was one of 
the things I came up with.  As should be obvious from the term, I 
cross-pollinated the concepts of the TV series "Quantum Leap" and "Sliders."  
The title is an acronym for "What Would I Do If I Were...?"
    So, I thought, if I were being bounced randomly around in time, sliding 
into people's lives Sam Beckett-style, what would be the WORST case scenario 
to find myself in?  Well, there are probably worse ones than Gendo Ikari, but 
he was the first that came to mind.  After all, if YOU were suddenly Gendo 
Ikari, how would YOU stop his designs?  Without tripping over SEELE, without 
getting locked up by Fuyutski or Ritsuko, without any real knowledge of all 
the secrets that only Ikari really knew?
    At the present time, I have no solid plans to continue this -- I just 
thought I'd toss the concept out to be savaged--er, I mean, discussed by the 
list at large.  Hence the SPAM tag.  I hope everyone finds it interesting.


    Disclaimer:  NGE and all characters thereof are the property of Gainax.  
Quantum Leap was created by D. Bellisario.  I can't remember who owns 
Sliders, but it's not me.


-- 
David McMillan, Imagineer at Large.  
Chief Systems Analyst and Integration Engineer, Exotic Technologies Division, 
  <Censored> GmBh.  Mecha and Weapons Design Specialist.
"Agent Mulder?  My name is Neo.  I believe I may be able to show you part of 
the truth you've been searching for.  I should warn you, however -- it's not 
what you think."
--

             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'