A Sliders fanfic by Yablo
Based loosely on the Unstuck Man (ep. # 5.1)
Unbeknownst to evil Dr. Geiger, he had an identical double on an identical world who was working on an identical experiment. The only difference was that the other Geiger wasn't worried at all about finding a medical cure...
Our intrepid heroes had doubles who were about to slide, covering each other during a spray of bullets as they escaped. They barely made it into the vortex before energy started crackling all around them, like streaks of lightning crackling around a little globe in a novelty shop. One of the bolts caught Colin right in the stomach and immediately split into a sheath of energy that encase him. Everyhair on his head and arms stood straight out, and suddenly... Another bolt shot crosswise into the sheath and fragmented into a thousand pieces. Colin felt like he was looking into a long line of mirrors, all reflecting Colins back at him with most astonished looks on their faces. But before there was time to even spare a thought on it during the crazy tumbling this vortex was putting him through, he bumped horribly into another body, melted into it, was swallowed up by it, *was* that body. It was almost like the time he nearly drowned in the pond over in Brenton's alfalfa field when he was twelve, almost like falling asleep when the struggling was over. Only it was also horribly like waking up from a nightmare and not being able to recall for a few hair-raising moments what was going on.
"Ooff!" "Sorry." "Ow!" *thud* "Watch it!" "Get off me!" "Sorry about that." *thump*
Remmy watched in stunned silence as Colin after Colin dropped out of the vortex. Somewhere underneath them were Quinn and some other guy Rem had never seen before, but one strange guy turning up didn't hold a candle to the hundreds and hundreds of Colins tumbling out of a hole in the sky like a bunch of lemmings in the pc game he'd discovered 3 slides back. He'd gotten so hooked that he'd had to be dragged away from it for the next slide.
And now there were a thousand Colins rolling off an assembly line, virtually dumped like a herd of little lemming guys.
Maggie popped out last, just as the vortex closed back up. She rolled down the small hill of Colins she had flopped onto, stumbled through the ones picking themselves up around the edge, and clutched her head with both hands, squinting her eyes tightly shut. "I have the WORST migraine! Oh, man," she gasped, "I've never had a headache like this in my life!"
Remmy helped her find a place to sit down and recover while the Colins sorted themselves out and stood up.
Quinn looked around like a wildman once he'd fought his way out from under the first dogpile. What in the world was going on? Why were there suddenly so many Colins? And which one was HIS Colin?
The new guy just screamed until he fainted.
~~to be continued~~
