SPECIAL AGENT JAMIE PRATT, FBI (Michelle Forbes), in The Outer Limits: A Stitch in Time, was a senior branch-office agent in an unnamed university town (which could have been Seattle, Washington). In the multiple timelines of the above-named episode, she was either investigating a baffling series of murders--or committing them. Contents [hideshow] 1.1. Prologue: The Loss 1.2. Timeline One: Investigation 1.3. Timeline Two: Modified Investigation 1.4. Timeline Three: Allison Lives 1.5. TImeline Four: Vigilante Prologue: The Loss Jamie Pratt suffered a tremendous personal loss: her dear friend, Allison Morris, fell victim to a serial murderer of women, one Jerome Horowitz. He not only killed Allison; he dismembered her, so people would remember him. Pratt would later learn that Allison was the last of seventeen women who died by this man's hand.Against Bureau policy, she insisted on identifying and tracking the murderer herself. By dint of sheer persistence, she succeeded in capturing and delivering Jerome Horowitz to face trial. He was, in due course, convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to die by lethal injection.The execution was set for July 17, 1996.Timeline One: Investigation On July 16 (ironically the anniversary of the launch of Project Apollo, though she barely noticed it), reporters insisted on calling with salacious questions about Allison. Her answer was always the same: Anything I had to say, about Horowitz, or Allison, or any of it, I said it at the trial. As it happened, she had another investigation to run: a series of murders of men, seventeen thus far, all killed with the same gun (a nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson), according to the same modus operandi, and occurring, on average, one per year since the first target, who died in Miami, Florida, in 1956. The emmo: two chest shots and a head shot. The targets had no connection she and her partner, Corey Lonn, could detect. The targets were as varied as they were numerous: a two-bit sugar pimp, a construction worker, a real-estate salesman, a minister,...except that some (though not all) of the targets had arrest records for minor sex offenses.A break came with the latest case file, on one Robert Beck. The perpetrator got careless: she left her fingerprint on a table lamp in the murder room. But what really baffled Pratt was that the owner of that print, Dr. Theresa Givens, was only five years old on that fateful day in August of 1966 when Robert Beck met his end.She went to see Dr. Givens at the university, where she gave a lecture on her discoveries involving time and its perception by human beings. She shared with Dr. Givens the matter of the fingerprint, but got nowhere.That night, her current dating interest, a police officer named Warren, stood her up. She angrily threw down a framed picture of him and cut her hand in the process.But the next morning, time cartwheeled on her. This timeline ended as she was looking at Theresa Givens' file from the National Security Agency.Timeline Two: Modified Investigation In this timeline, Jamie Pratt did not see anything about a fingerprint at the Robert Beck murder scene. Instead, her fellow agent, Corey Lonn, brought her a ballistics report: the ballistics expert assigned to the branch had a lead on the murder weapon. It was a 9-mm Smith and Wesson, manufactured in 1988 and, in 1989, issued to Theresa Givens, PhD, consultant to the National Security Agency.This made little sense. A gun, maybe the one belonging to Dr. Givens, killed both before and after it was made?That night (July 17), she had no time to think of that. Everyone in the office stayed late to watch the TV coverage of the execution of Jerome Horowitz. Included in that coverage: Horowitz' last interview, in which he discussed his first victim, Cindy Vetterman, whom he killed on February 16, 1980--the day after his twenty-first birthday.She fled the group, and confessed to Corey that the execution did not bring her the closure she had sought. Corey manfully offered what comfort she would allow herself to derive from him.But overnight, time would cartwheel again...Timeline Three: Allison Lives In this timeline, Jerome Horowitz had not been executed the night before. Instead, his picture was on the corkboard on her wall--the eighteenth known target of the Nine-Millimeter Murderer.Corey Lonn, however, still had investigated Theresa Givens. He turned up an interesting item: when she was fifteen, a never-identified man kidnapped her, raped her, and nearly beat her to death. Sex offender; victim of a sex crime, Pratt observed, still noting (as in the other two timelines) that some of the targets had sex-offense records.Shortly after that, Allison Morris came to visit Jamie. She tried to get Jamie to break for lunch, but Jamie demurred. Allison also made one other suggestion: that Jamie go out with Corey Lonn, and not with Patrolman Warren.And then, toward the end of the day, Jamie Pratt made a fateful move: she visited Theresa Givens at the university.She found her in her office--or rather, in a laboratory off her office. Oddly, Theresa Givens seemed to remember her from somewhere, to guess the nature of her errand...and then to want to recruit her for some project of hers. She gave Pratt a turn when she mentioned how you got Horowitz --though Jerome Horowitz was a target of the Nine-millimeter Murderer.And then Givens made an electrifying confession: that she had committed the murders, twenty in all. But how, seeing that some of the murders happened before she was born? And Givens explained the extensive equipment in that laboratory: a time portal, a means by which to stop crime before it starts. Givens explained how her time portal worked, and mentioned one problem: a time traveler to the past, who changed that past, would remember the original and the changed timeline. And would do it with every retro-jump into time.Pratt started to Mirandize Givens, and then suddenly drew her service gun when Givens took out...a nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson. She announced her intention to jump into time and confront her original assailant, the one who had kidnapped, raped, and beat her when she was fifteen.Givens set the time portal up and stepped through. Incredibly, she stepped into an oval bordered with wires, and did not appear at the other end. Pratt, gun drawn, stepped through after her.She found herself in a damp and grimy basement. And in the next room, she beheld Givens confronting a man holding a terrified girl who could only be a younger version of Theresa Givens. She tried to take charge of the scene, but neither Givens nor the assailant would lay down their respective weapons. Givens then turned to Pratt and asked her how good a marksperson she was. The best, said Pratt. You had better be, said Givens, who then lowered her own weapon and walked toward the assailant. The assailant then threw the girl away from him and shot Givens in the left chest. Pratt put a bullet into his head, between the eyes, and thus dropped him.But his bullet had taken its toll. After sending the younger Theresa Givens out of that basement, Pratt tried to help the older Dr. Givens. But Dr. Givens insisted Pratt take a hand-held device, open the time portal, and return to the present day while the returning was good.TImeline Four: VigilanteWhen Jamie Pratt stepped through the time portal, a horrifying transformation occurred. The laboratory vanished. In its place was an extension of a university professor's office. And with that change, horrible memories slammed into her head. They included the hard reality of twenty series of brutal sexual murders the FBI had investigated over the years. Among them: Allison Morris, who had fallen victim to Jerome Horowitz, who had been executed the night before.It wasn't fair! By stopping Theresa Givens, she had let a man live who ended up killing Allison!She did share with Corey that Allison would have liked him, and would have insisted she, Jamie, go out with him. And so they agreed to see one another socially.But Jamie Pratt had to do one more thing. She returned to the university. There she met a much lovelier and better-adjusted Theresa Givens, who spoke of such lofty uses of time travel as historical research. Imagine witnessing Abraham Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg Address, or being in Paris when Lindbergh landed, : she overheard Givens saying to a group of students.Givens recognized her. After invoking the Name of God, she said, I know you! You're the one! You're the one who saved me! Pratt wanted to know only one thing: did Theresa Givens prove time travel with a working prototype?Theresa confirmed that she had. And then she agreed to build a time machine for Pratt to use.And so Jamie Pratt did in this timeline, what Theresa Givens had done in three other timelines: she carried out executions of serial murderers before they could claim even their first victims. Her first target: Jerome Horowitz.
Show less «
