Cleavant Derricks

Circus saxophonist Vladimir Ivanoff suddenly defects from his touring troupe in that temple of "Western decadence," Bloomingdale's. He wins asylum and moves into the crowded Harlem flat of Black security guard Lionel Witherspoon. Although Vladimir learns that life in America can be cold and even painful, he grows to love what seems to him a strange and wondrous land.

Brilliant grad student Quinn Mallory has created a device that opens a wormhole to an infinite number of parallel universes where history has taken different paths, some subtly changed and other radically different. Quinn's test trip goes awry, stranding his physics professor, Arturo, his friend, Wade, and bystander Rembrandt in parallel San Francisco's, "sliding" from one alternate reality to another, unable to return home.