Prologue-The two scientists
                  
                 He was being beaten. He was always being beaten. He was
"dead", and so forced to take only the most menial of jobs, jobs that
required no ID or papers.Hard to find, harder to keep. Jobs that very
often had the lowest sort of individual as co-worker, many on the run
themselves, but for less legitimate reasons than his own. People who
were quick to anger, and quicker to hit. People who didn't like your
tone, or something else. It didn't matter. His scientist's training had
not prepared him for dealing with people like this-people who, for no
good reason, just didn't like him. Now, in their anger, they didn't like
him. Later, they would, with their fists and feet, make him angry. They
wouldn't like him any better, then. No, they wouldn't like him when he
was angry. 

                But that time was not now. For now, he held back-for
their sakes. He could never tell what his anger was going to do, and he
did not wish to become a murderer. Too close, too many times. He knew
their rage would be spent soon, that showing no resistance would disgust
them and drive them away, calling him a coward. More than once, Dr.
Kimball's 20-year-old book on his hellish time outside the law had shown
him the way to crawl along society's underbelly, to fit in where he was
not supposed to. He'd met and befriended many good people this way,
people with whom he even shared his problem with. Somewhere in America,
there was a young girl, a complete genius, who owed this man everything,
and as a result, erased his footsteps as he went, covering his tracks
even more so. But still, there was this group, itching for a fight which
they always found and always regretted. His anger, which he always tried
to shield these lowlifes from, made him sloppy. Made him believe they
should simply leave him alone, then catching himself too late when they
got annoyed. The successive loss of his mother and two wives had made
him a certain way. There was no going back, despite what the couple at
the College always said. Time was immutable, strength can change things,
if properly applied, he thought. But through his mourning for his first
wife, his overdose, Elena's death and his need for flight, strength had
brought him naught but the attentions of an ambitious tabloid journalist
and a succession of more corrupt small towns than even chaos theory
allowed for. He was living the nightmare side of his experiments,
sometimes feeling irredeemably lost. He thought to himself, almost
amusedly, that he couldn't even remember why these fellows were hitting
him. With that, Doctor David Banner realized he was in trouble. Then the
pain subsided. The thugs weren't there. No one was. He was in a small
waiting area, with a friendly but firm guard urging him to sit tight.
Despite nerves, David was able to do just that. The creature within him,
always shouting in his skull, was now a distant echo. Still there, but
separated by a great deal more space than usual. Space-and, somehow he
knew-time.

August 15, 1991-I was being beaten. I was always being beaten, punched,
dunked, or somesuch when a Leap first occurred. I only wish that the
entire purpose of the leaps were to stop or prevent these beatings. But
they were syptomatic, not the problems themselves. The price I pay for a
successful experiment.  My scientist's  training did not prepare me for
dealing with these kind of people. Luckily my tae-kwon-do training did.
To think, it took becoming a mother to remember I had it. Perfect for
dealing with these two "nozzles" as Al would call them.  Tae-Kwon-Do was
part of rage management over my brother's death-No, wait-Tom's alive,
Dad lived until 6 months before I leaped, and Sis-her name?-is mayor of
our little town back in Indiana. Damn my swiss cheese memory! I actually
have to remind myself of the name "Sam Beckett" on occasion! The ironic
part is, I can actually remember the "leapee's" memories better than
some of my own. I-He was half-dead on a broken tarmac, when a beautiful
woman spirited me away for recovery, where I-HE!-resumed a life on the
run-from-what? A huge, ugly giant appears in my mind, and seems as close
as my own breath, like anger wearing humanoid form-only-he's not all
there. Weird. As I send the jerks on their way, I remember why I learned
the martial arts-it WAS  rage management. But not mine. A friend of mine
was so tortured by his wife's accidental death that it strangled him,
left him a recluse. I was frightened by it. Wanted to know how to reign
it in after Donna left me-No wait,Donna -Donna-well, she didn't leave, I
know that. That old man would've known. Blind, with eyes that could see
the world. A master who knew his Tao as well as his sidestep. My  friend
never took those classes along with me and so missed that joyous old
man's teachings, as valuable in physics as in a street fight. That
Sensei, that friend, and that book had been so much to me. I can't
remember their names, but I remember that book "With One Arm At My
Throat" by Richard Kimble. That, and "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance" had been required reading for young physicists at the
Institute. Even D-Dennis-Daniel? had loved Kimble's book, and he could
be humorless at times. Then I remembered-not his name-but how he died,
back in 79. I attended his funeral-his and-Elena Marks-that's a
breakthrough, of sorts, and it was said that a hulking green creature
was seen leaving the inferno. A creature that-Looks exactly like the one
in this guy's mind, like I can feel somewhere, like it wants to get out
of-( Sam seizes his head and his eyes take on a familiar dilation,
although not coloring) OH, BOY! -