On a comet shooting slowly through space, Odwa stood and regarded the retreating form of the Babylon Dwarf, oblivious to his presence.  The star field twinkled around the lone chunk of ice that Odwa rested on.  He waited patiently for the impending destruction of the ship, one of his greatest pranks of all time...well, except for the Killer Rubber Chicken on Algor 7.
    When the ship failed to explode, Odwa became impatient.  Then he became irritated.  Then angry.  Then finally furious.  "How dare they...?  How could...?  Why...?!" he stuttered.  His white hair started fluttering furiously as if in a windstorm.  His long white cloak experienced the same effect, and he raised his arms, each now cackling with electricity.
    "I'll destroy them anyway!!" he cackled, eyes aglow with violet flame.  "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who can't take a joke!!!"
    "Why Odwa!"  A flash of light signaled the arrival of Q.  "Long time no see.  Your fashion sense hasn't changed though.  Togas still in, are they?"
    "Hello Q." Odwa's voice was less than enthusiastic.  "You're one to talk about fashion, wearing that Starfleet uniform."  Q was indeed wearing a Starfleet jumpsuit with grey shoulders, a black torso and pants, and red command undershirt.  He bore the rank of captain with his pips.  Odwa continued.  "What do you want this time?  Why don't you go back to your own dimension?"
    "Come, come Odwa, that's not very hospitable!" Q protested.
    Odwa huffed.  "Look, can this wait?  I've got business right now."
    "That's why I'm here." Q folded his arms.
    Odwa chuckled.  "Oh no, have I threatened your little pets!" he mocked.  "Come on Q, evolve a little.  Go find an Argonian to play with."  Odwa threw an energy bolt the size of a small moon at the Babylon Dwarf.
    Q waved his hand and transformed it into an apple turnover.  It splattered against the hull of the ship, and froze immediately due to the icy temperatures of space.
    Odwa turned to Q.  "That wasn't very funny."
    Q pointed a finger at Odwa's nose.  "Stop now, before things get out of hand."
    Odwa batted it away.  "Why do you care??"
    "I'm warning you!"
    Odwa shook with rage.  "You....warn....ME???"  An explosive custard pie flew towards Q's face.  Q temporarily vanished and reappeared an inch towards the left.  His hands flashed brilliant amber and a beam of radiance flew towards Odwa.  Odwa cupped his hands to his sides, crouched and chanted "Ka-me-ha-me-ha!!"  The two energy blasts collided, sending both Q and Odwa tossing.
    Q thrust his fingers outwards and anti-proton charges exploded all over Odwa.  Odwa responded by thrusting a nebula through Q's form, who shuddered and discarded it like a worn sock.  Odwa shrank down to the size of a neutron and flew around an atom of Nitrogen. Q split the atom, causing a nuclear shockwave which Odwa rode on with a surfboard.
    The surfboard hit Q in the head, who landed on a nearby asteroid.  Odwa stood above him, with a large mallet aimed at his head.  Before he could drop it, Q slashed a sword up and into Odwa.  The fire in Odwa's eyes instantly died, and he collapsed, choking, to the surface of the asteroid.  The two transported to Tarantulas' Lair, currently devoid of it's master and creator.  "Poor, poor Odwa." Q chuckled.
    "What...what have you done to me?" Odwa gasped.
    "I've taken away your powers.  You are now weaker than a garden gnome." Q smiled.  "Don't say I didn't warn you."
    "I...will regain my power.."
    "After a time, yes.  Maybe if you've learned your lesson."
    "I...will....destroy you."
    "I leave you in good company.  Fair well Odwa!" Q vanished in a flash of light, and Odwa was left in the cold, dark, and damp cave where even the rats feared to go.

    Drip...drip...drip... The dropping of water was the first thing Dino-Bot heard.  His ocular sensors flickered on, and his on-board computer filed a report.  "Attention: automatic repair was successful in repairing all internal damage.  Stasis lock has been averted.  Structural damage at 16%.  All modes currently at full power."
    Dino-Bot looked around, and realized he was chained to a chair.  He had to stop himself from laughing.  A man entered the dark room, and sat across from him at a table.  Dino-Bot noticed the man was smoking a cheap cigarette and bore the markings of a Gestapo agent.  "Who are you?" the agent asked.
    "My name is Dino-Bot."
    "An American."
    "No."
    "A Canadian."
    "No."
    "A Russian."
    "No."
    "What are you then??" the agent hissed.
    Dino-Bot thought about the fastest way to annoy a Nazi.  "I don't know."
    "You are not telling the truth.  We have ways of making one speak the truth." the agent waved another Nazi in, who had a syringe full of blue liquid.
    "Sodium penathol?  Oh sure, give it a try." Dino-Bot snickered.
    The agent attempted to stick the needle into Dino-Bot's arm.  The needle bent out of shape.  The agent gulped and looked to the Gestapo man, unsure of what to do.  The agent waved him off.  "Very well.  We have your comrade."
    "The spider?"
    "Yes.  We will kill him if you do not cooperate."
    "Go ahead." Dino-Bot leaned back.
    "Reverse psychology.  Very amusing."  The agent spoke into a telephone mounted on the wall.  "Gas him."

    The doors to the cell opened and Tarantulas noticed the three guards were holding Uzi's and decided he had enough chipped paint for one day.  "Yes, yes, what do you want?"
    "Come with us." the lead Nazi demanded.
    "Why?" Tarantulas snorted.  When no answer came, he decided to humor them and go along.  They walked down a long hallway, where many people were crying out.  "Just like my Lair!" he noticed.  Finally, they arrived in a large room, with an adjacent observation room.  The Nazis shoved Tarantulas inside.  "A shower room!!" Tarantulas noted with glee.  "I could use a scrub down!"
    Inside the observation room, the lead Nazi flicked a switch.  Immediately, chlorine gas spouted from the shower spouts in the room.  Within two minutes, the gas turned off, and Tarantulas was still standing there.  "Where's the water?"
    Tarantulas decided that there must be a plumbing problem, so he blew a hole in the wall with his leg bolts and looked at the pipes.  "Here's your problem," he began.  "You've got the pipes all mixed up.  This must be the heater," he referred to the chlorine pipe.  "And the water is over here."  He opened up both pipes and swapped the two around.  "There!"
    The Nazis were more than a little surprised when water gushed out of the shower heads when they tried to gas Tarantulas again.

    Even more surprised were the Nazis two doors down.  Fifteen were trying to use the washroom, and were mystified when no water came out of the taps or toilets.  They were all dead within twenty seconds.

    The tap turned off, and Tarantulas finished whistling his version of ‘I've Been Working On The Railroad'.  He clomped down to the sealed door, to find a towel, and noticed it was locked.  He growled, pulled out his gun, and blew the door off his hinges.  The Nazis in the observation room saw the firepower of Tarantulas' weapon and decided not to pursue.
    As he was replacing his gun, a light on his chest blinked and chirped.  "Curious." He reached inside one of his compartments and pulled out the Timescape X remote.  "It appears that history has somehow been changed, and the Timescape X is not destroyed!!!  Oh, most excellent indeed." he cackled.  "Maybe I should retrieve Dino-Bot...nah."
    Pulling out all of his now unnecessary adjustments, he pressed the lead button and was swept away through time and space.
    The Gestapo man exited the observation room, with a Nazi guard.  The guard scratched his head.  "Now what do we do?"
    The agent sighed wistfully.  "Perhaps we can still persuade the other one."

    Dino-Bot became bored.  He had been strapped to the chair for five hours without moving, and now his servos were jamming.  "Enough of this." he spat, and pushed his arms out, snapping all the chains off.  He transformed into his Beast form, a velociraptor, and curled up to go to sleep in the corner.
    Twenty minutes later, the agent walked in.  "He has escaped!" he cried out.  He was about to run and alert the guards, when he noticed the giant lizard curled on the ground.  Instantly, time seemed to slow down for the agent.  He tried to move his hand to his gun, holstered at his hip, but fear had completely paralyzed.  The lizard's eyes opened and stared at him.
    "Ah, Gestapo man." Dino-Bot activated his transformation sequence.  "Dino-Bot maximize!" transforming him back into Robot mode.
    "Remarkable..." the agent muttered, then remember who he was.  "Sit.  We have killed your friend."
      "How?" Dino-Bot countered.
    "He was gassed." the agent smiled.
    "What type of gas?"
    "Chlorine."
    "Okay, so how did you really kill him?" Dino-Bot snorted.
    "We gassed him!  And unless you want to be next, you had better tell us what you know." the agent stormed out of the room, and turned off the lights, surrounding Dino-Bot in darkness.
    Dino-Bot's eyes converted to infrared, and he pondered this.  Chlorine gas would have no affect on Tarantulas, yet the agent insisted that was how he was killed.  Surely the Nazis would try another method to kill Tarantulas.  Unless Tarantulas was no longer here.
    Dino-Bot knew they had Quantum Leaped, but he could not fathom why or how.  That meant Dr. Sam Beckett was involved.  His speciality of course was changing history.  Earlier, upon Dino-Bot's reunion with Sam in Tahiti, he learned that the Timescape X somehow interfered with the Quantum Leap process.
    All this evidence weighed to one conclusion: Tarantulas had escaped, probably through the Timescape X.  And of course, he could not count on Tarantulas to rescue him.  He decided to find evidence to support his theory.  Realizing he could not do that in the interrogation room, he broke the hinges off the door and left.
    The Nazi guard on the other side of the door swore profusely when Dino-Bot walked past.  He grabbed for his gun in shock, but it fell from his hands when Dino-Bot picked him up by the lapels of his collar.  "Where is the gas chamber?" Dino-Bot snarled.
    The guard stammered out directions, and Dino-Bot dropped him.  The guard watched in amazement as Dino-Bot turned back into his Beast mode, the dinosaur, and ran off.
    In the hallway outside the gas chamber, Dino-Bot bent down and picked up some small components he recognized from being recently installed in the Timescape X to act as a amplifier.  More specifically, the targeting laser diamond, the conductor cable, the plutonium isomer rod, and the micro-taser.  He converted to Robot mode, and stored the components.
    This supported his theory.  If Sam had succeeded in changing history so the ship was no longer destroyed, and the Timescape X with it, then the amp components were no longer needed, and Tarantulas would just discard them.
    Dino-Bot growled and shook his fist in the air.  But he was still trapped in the past.

    Deep in the recesses of The Lair, a flash filled the room, and Tarantulas stepped out of the Timescape X portal.  He yawned, stretched, and put the remote in the storage compartment. "Attention Tarantulas:" his computer chimed.  "The destruction of HAL has caused a massive power surge through the ship and all main power has been shut down.  The ship's auto-destruct has been averted, but not before it severed the auxiliary systems.  The ship can not regain main power for some time."
    "How interesting.  Continue."
    "The emergency generators for The Lair are working at full capacity and are stable.  All experiments are still in stand-by mode.  There were two intruders logged during time period of 14:36 to 14:37.  Scans identified the two as the entities known as Q and Odwa."
    "What was Q up to?" Tarantulas pondered.
    "The entity known as Odwa still being tracked in Sector 4.  However, power signatures do not correlate."
    "Thank you." Tarantulas acknowledged the computer's report.  After loading on a few instruments that might prove useful, Tarantulas loaded his gun and walked towards the fourth sector of his Lair.  As he neared the area, he heard a moan and heavy breathing.  Tarantulas cackled a little and rounded the corner.  There lay Odwa, crawling on his belly, stopping every few seconds to catch his breath.  "At this rate, it'll take you another two days to reach the lift."
    "Tarantulas!" Odwa coughed.  "I didn't expect you back so soon."
    "They never do." Tarantulas countered.
    "Help me out of here, would you?"
    Tarantulas tapped his chin.  "Now why would an omnipotent being need help out of a physical room?"
    "I've....I'm just weary." Odwa answered.
    "No...you're powerless." Tarantulas grinned.
    "It's temporary!" Odwa confessed.  "And won't last long, so help me and I will repay you.  And I can repay you in any way you wish."
    "Oh.." Tarantulas thought.  "Well, you can pay me in...entertainment!!" he laughed sinisterly.  Odwa tried to crawl away, as Tarantulas brought a jar out from behind him.  He aimed it at Odwa, and twisted the lid open.  Odwa was sucked in with binds of energy.
    Tarantulas closed the lid and held up the jar.  It was an ordinary appearing wide mouth mason jar, about 2 m tall and 0.5 m wide.  Inside, Odwa was poised in a frozen state of terror, clutching the sides of the jar.  "You're in a stasis jar.  You are frozen in time until your release, if you are ever released.  This way, not only can you never sneak up on me again, but I can put you in my collection."
    Tarantulas put the jar with Odwa down next to his jar of Wide Mouth Mason (the band), and Jar-Jar Binks, both frozen in terror.  Tarantulas had an unusual sense of humor.  He kept this jar collection right next to his bed, so when he woke up in the morning, he could have an early morning scream.  Apparently, it's good for the heart.

    Inside the Meeting Room, Version 5 was privileged enough to sit in on the discussion.  Worf, Londo, the Doctor, the holographic doctor, Scotty, and Sam pulled up their seats.  Sam, of course, was still thought to be Starbuck.
    "Why don't you just program the TARDIS to get Dino-Bot?" Londo asked the Doctor.
    "My dear boy!" the first incarnation of the Doctor stuttered.  "I can't control the TARDIS.  What ever gave you the idea I could?"
    "You can't?" Worf asked.
    "Certainly not." the Doctor responded.
    "Well, not yet anyway." the doc added.  "There must be some other way to get Dino-Bot and Tarantulas."
    "Wait just a minute!" Scotty interrupted.  "Who said anything about getting Tarantulas?  Leave him in the past!"
    "The past?  Are you sure?" Tarantulas asked, walking calmly into the room and sitting down in his chair.
    Version 5 wrinkled her nose at him.  "Where's Dino-Bot??"
    "I left him with the Nazis.  They can teach each other a lot." Tarantulas said, deadpan.
    Sam cleared his throat and scratched his nose.  "Perhaps we are thinking about this the wrong way."
    "Shut up Beckett." Tarantulas snapped.  "And get out of Starbuck's clothes."
    As Worf, Scotty and the others wondered what Tarantulas meant, Sam sighed.  "I suppose I might as well tell you the truth..."
    "Let them see it instead!" Tarantulas jumped up.  He crossed over to Sam, grabbed his arm, and slapped on some type of arm-band.  Instantly, the image of Starbuck faded to be replaced by Sam's real image.  "It's my Quantum Signature Purifier.  So long as you wear that, we can see you as you really are."
    "How come you, Dino-Bot, and Version 5 could see me as I was before?" Sam wanted to know.
    "Well, as I originally speculated, the Timescape X travel process is similar to Quantum Leap, excluding the swap of signatures.  The Purifier is basically a Timescape X remote set to a rotating frequency."
    "Wow, I really understood that." Version 5 snorted sarcastically.
    The doc raised his hand a bit.  "Do you mind my asking, but who is that guy??" he pointed to Sam.
    Sam cleared his throat.  "I'll explain it in a moment, but first on to what I was originally going to say.  Doctor," he addressed the Time Lord.  "You have a diary, yes?"
    "That is correct, yes my boy."
    "Include a special note in it for future reference that says..."

    Dino-Bot glared at the Nazi guard opposite him fiercely.  The guard began to buckle under the strain.  Dino-Bot opened his mouth, showing off sharp teeth, and the guard felt faint.  He stared right into the marrow of the man's soul, and tears of fear began to well in his eyes, until finally, the strain was too great.  "I fold!!" he yelled.
    Dino-Bot threw his cards on the table.  "Ha!  Full house!  I win."
    The other three Nazis threw their cards down also in defeat, cursing in German.  The fourth still sat shaking in his chair from being stared down by the Transformer.
    The Gestapo man threw 50 more Deutsche marks on the table.  "How about five out of nine?!?"
    "You will not succeed in enlisting me in the Third Reich, so stop trying!" Dino-Bot growled.  "Besides, I have no use for German currency, I just enjoy beating you."
    "Then you no longer wish to play?" one of the younger guards asked.
    "Hmm...have you ever heard of strip poker?" Dino-Bot asked.
    "No." the four Nazis answered in unison.
    "Imagine wagering your clothes in place of the money." Dino-Bot grinned, knowing full well that humiliating the Nazis would really be the icing on the cake.
    The four gasped at the scandal.
    Then a grinding noise filled the air, and the TARDIS appeared.  The TARDIS appeared to be a blue Police Box, but was actually a sophisticated time machine, much bigger on the inside than the out.  It was piloted by the Doctor, and Dino-Bot knew he was being rescued at last.  "Sorry boys, but my ride is here." Dino-Bot got up.
    The four Nazis groaned and packed up the game.  The youngest Nazi secretly liked the idea of strip poker and used it as a party game to pick up girls ten years later.
    Dino-Bot watched as the blue doors opened and the fourth Doctor stepped out.  He spotted a fedora, a long red scarf, curly hair, and big teeth.  "Hello old friend!"
    "Doctor!  You've come to rescue me." Dino-Bot noted.
    "So you can tell.  I can explain everything once we get underway." the Doctor ushered Dino-Bot in, then followed himself.  Soon the TARDIS had vanished.
"Dr. Sam Beckett made me leave a note for myself in my diary, stating that once I had control of the TARDIS to come and rescue you.  It took me a while to remember the note, mind you.  On the note were the exact space-time coordinates of where you would be, courtesy of Tarantulas."
    "Hmpf." Dino-Bot snorted.  "Why not use the Timescape X to retrieve me?"
    "The Timescape X requires an enormous amount of power, and the ship is out of power right now.  Apparently the Timescape X is too much for Tarantulas' reserves."
    "Bah." Dino-Bot folded his arms.  "Who are your companions this time?"
    "Forgive my manners.  This is the Time Lady Romana and my robot dog K9." the Doctor pointed to an attractive woman sporting riding clothes, and a box-shaped metallic dog.
    "Doctor, who and what exactly is this Dino-Bot?" Romana asked.
    "Erm, I'll explain that once we drop him off." the Doctor shrugged.

    Version 5 sat in her new quarters, placing Bob the Bass Guitar at her side.  Data had been kind of to tell her that the odds of her returning home were not good.  Out of all the crew, only the Doctor had been able to come and go as he pleased.  The rest were trapped here in this unusual place.  She didn't mind too much however.  Her old life was boring, and she didn't miss anyone.
    Sam had no contact with Al, something he found most puzzling.  He assured everyone that Starbuck was safe and sound in the year 1999 in the Quantum Leap laboratory.  He also stated that once Al made contact with him, they would be able to figure out how to bring Starbuck back.  Dino-Bot told him there was no hurry.
    Tarantulas had also let everyone know that it was the Quantum Leaping of Sam that had brought Version 5 to the Babylon Dwarf.  However, since the Leap process was not designed for robotic life forms, it only brought Dino-Bot and Tarantulas forward about 2000 years and left them there.  Tarantulas was determined to find the mysterious link between Quantum Leap and Timescape X.
    Tarantulas was also happy to report that, even though he had been unsuccessful in aiding the restoration of the ship's main power, he had repaired the Joymaster 2000.  No one else was happy about that.
    Version 5 began to strum Bob, improvising a melody.  The ship had nothing but emergency power, Odwa was apparently out of the picture, Sam was stuck to this time, and she couldn't go home.  Dino-Bot had assured her that this was nothing new for most of the crew.  She got up and stared at the stars passing by the porthole and wondered what would happen tomorrow.

    The more questions answered, the more remain.  Things will return to normal more or less next time when: