Quantum Leap

Tyler Koshakow
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Sam Beckett—the time-traveling scientist portrayed by a young Scott Bakula—travels through time and leaps into your body
Sam Beckett travels back through time and leaps into your body just before you are about to do that terrible thing. Just before you cheat on you husband, just before you drive drunk and crash into a car full of teenagers, just before you swallow all the pills in the bottle, just in the nick of time, your body becomes wreathed in veins of plasma that no one can see, your mind is swapped out for another mind, and Sam Beckett takes control.
These are the easy ones. The ones they don’t make into episodes for TV. All he has to do is wait it out. He takes your body for a walk by the waterfront. It’s wonderful just to move around in someone else’s skin. He kneels to the water and stares at your face in the reflection, tries to memorize it, feels the soft flesh of your cheeks with your fingertips.
And then, when the danger has passed, that same grip—invisible, glowing—comes and takes him away. In your mind it was you who did the right thing. You who thought it through, walked coolly beside the calm water. The memory is yours now. That time it could have gone so wrong. That time it nearly did. That time, it was so easy.

Tyler Koshakow lives in Bellingham, WA, where he edits scientific books and journals for a living. His fiction, nonfiction, and ephemera have appeared in Citron Review, Necessary Fiction, Midwestern Gothic, Bellingham Review, Hobart, and others. He writes short essays about short records at flashfortyfive.tumblr.com.