Data World
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Template:Infobox Sliders episodes Data World is the seventeenth episode of the fourth season for the science fiction television show Sliders. The Sliders arrive at the Chandler Hotel, a constant on most of the parallel Earths they visit, and end up trapped as computer programs within it.
Colin, Maggie, Quinn, and Rembrandt emerge from an alley and dodge the zombies roaming the streets outside the Chandler Hotel. With eight hours on this world, they come to the hotel's doors and instantly appear in the lobby and are checked in owner and manager Archibald Chandler. Chandler reveals firsthand knowledge of the Sliders which surprises them, but their questions are temporarily put off by Chandler's admission that the hotel's services will cost them nothing, but they are not free. In their room, every window opens onto a wall.
In the hotel bar, Colin, Maggie, Quinn, and Rembrandt are provided with their "usual" drinks, and they laugh at the rules and regulations they're provided with during their stay in the Chandler. Besides the more obvious rules, there are such stipulations as "no singing in public places" and "no wearing of blue eyeshadow". Rembrandt tests these rules and loses his voice after singing a few bars.
Quinn's attention is caught by a dwarf wearing a general's jacket and American flag bandanna, but he disappears just as Chandler approaches them to explain that the Chandler Hotel is a virtual reality construct. The beings they encountered outside the hotel are "empties", people who abandoned their physical form to remain here after the Anti-Tech Riots as digital constructs. When Quinn and his friends entered the Hotel, they were digitized into the hotel's database, and now their bodies are wandering outside as well.
The Sliders later meet with the dwarf, Mac, who's been hiding from Chandler in the hotel's junk file. With a laptop they acquire there, the Sliders try to free themselves from the Chandler, but Chandler shows up and, disgusted by Maggie's outburst, deletes her program. Quinn agrees with Colin and Rembrandt to abide by all of Chandler's regulations in the future, and Quinn agrees to play a game of chess with Chandler.
While playing chess, Chandler -- that is, his program with no body on the outside to return to -- scans Quinn's mind and plans to enter his physical body so he can slide to other worlds. Mac barely downloads Quinn's program in time to the junk file, and they, Colin, and Rembrandt find Maggie's program compressed onto a CD. Quinn decompresses Maggie just as Chandler acts on Rembrandt's, leading to a few comical moments of Maggie speaking from Rembrandt's body!
Maggie's body is restored, and Mac and the Sliders fight two of Chandler's fighting programs, modeled about the Norse gods Thor and Freya, to reach the hotel's CPU and delete the files of everyone there, transferring all their essences back to their bodies outside. Chandler congratulates Quinn on his victory before he is deleted for good.
Colin, Maggie, Quinn, and Rembrandt wake against a car and remember little of what happened, other than a vague familiarity with Mac who meets them on the street. They slide out of this world with seven seconds to spare.