became best friends over the years. When Sam was lost leaping around time; Al was Sam's constant companion and source of support, doing whatever he could to help Sam and at times, thinking of creative solutions to problems that Sam had not. After the Starbright Project, Sam and Al worked together on Project Quantum Leap (PQL), a time travel experiment based on Sam's own theories about time and space. Apart from his role as Sam's observer/assistant, Al's specific role and responsibilities within PQL are never clearly discussed. Given Al's military status, it is likely that he occupies a senior leadership position within the project; possibly as a government liaison since he is seen attending government oversight and budget hearings petitioning for continued project funding. It is implied that Al has taken over day-to-day operational leadership of the project in Sam's absence. While Al is intelligent and vastly experienced in many areas of life, the greatest asset he brings to Sam's various leaps is a fresh perspective to the problems he faces as well as providing valuable information and a source of emotional support to Sam. These things aside, Al has also proved himself capable in other ways. For example, when a killer Sam had leaped into and exchanged places with escaped the PQL facility and gotten into the nearby city; Al went after him and was able to subdue him successfully. When Sam prematurely activated his time machine and was propelled into the past, it was Al's duty to remain in contact with him through holographic projections tuned into Sam's brainwaves (it was revealed over the course of the series that Al's hologram can also be seen and heard by animals, small children - who "see the truth" - and the mentally ill; one leap also saw them dealing with a man whose brainwaves were remarkably similar to Sam's own, allowing him to see Al and other holograms despite being a mentally stable adult, although he never saw Sam as anything other than Sam's current "host"). Over the next few years, Al worked with Sam, providing him with information from their historical database about the people that he was there to help, and lending Sam advice and moral support. Al also seems to be able to remember events the way they used to be after Sam has changed them. For example, when PQL was in danger of losing its government