Page "Quantum Leap" Paragraph 5

When Sam recovers, he finds his memories to be incomplete, particularly with knowledge about himself or the project ; Al would refer to this as his " swiss-cheesed memory " throughout the series.

Sam finds himself in the past as a supersonic jet test pilot, appearing to others and himself in the mirror as another person, but initially attributes this to his amnesia.

Al eventually makes contact with Sam, appearing as a hologram that is tuned to Sam's brainwaves so only Sam can see or hear him.

Al explains the situation to Sam, revealing that the only way for Sam to return is to correct something that went wrong in the past, according to the project's artificial intelligence " parallel hybrid computer ", Ziggy ( voiced by co-executive producer Deborah Pratt ).

Guided by knowledge of what originally transpired stored in Ziggy's databases, as well as Al's own experiences, Sam is able to escape from a crash that originally took the life of the pilot, and changing history ; as he does so, he finds himself " leaping ", ending up assuming the identity of a different person at a different point in history.

Al later states that while they had tried to bring Sam back during this " leap ", they were unable to do so, leaving Sam forced to continue leaping until the team can figure out how to bring him back permanently.