WADE
I appreciate being asked to speak today at Tracy's funeral. I gotta admit, at first, I was confused. I'm not real? I'm fictional? The person who created me is dead?

And also, he only wrote me for about the first two years' worth of slides, a very small fraction of the third year, and everything after that was a lot of other people?

I thought I was losing my mind.

I don't know if anyone else here has ever been lost in the interdimension. But in addition to that, I was erased from reality, shifted into an alternate timeline where I was... uh, mutilated. And turned into the jukebox from the movie BIG. Then I was rewritten back into my initial timeline with my original memories, then I had my my original and alternate memories recombined...

A lot of that has been less-than-great for my mental health. Even now, years later -- sometimes, I need to take a second to make sure I'm not losing it.

But aside from the interdimensional homelessness, none of that is Tracy's fault. He left the show before all that; he's not responsible for my screwed up life. Tracy's the one who gave me life. He created me.

And the fact that I'm the product of his imagination... actually explains a lot about why my personality and my hair took some twists and turns over the years.

I'm 53 years old. From what I understand, Tracy's only responsible for what happened to me from age zero to 25. And primarily, Tracy's attention on my life was from when I was 22 to 25. The first two years of sliding and a few months of the third year.

Looking at my life and those years as a TV show: I'm the only woman in a cast of four. Three men, one woman. Tracy could explore writing men in three distinct ways with Quinn, Rembrandt and the Professor. But Tracy had only one female character.

So everything he had to say about women, he said through me. What did he say?

Tracy started with me working the floor in sales at a computer store; studying prose and poetry at community college. He made me 22 in retail and not even working towards a bachelor's degree; that's in contrast to Quinn who was 20 and already in grad school, in contrast to Quinn who takes computers apart to fix them while I just sell 'em.

Seems diminutive, right? I'm not as well-educated as Quinn and also not as smart; I'm not his equal, I'm just someone who crushes on him and he either doesn't notice or he's ignoring it. I'm just the girl. The shy, undereducated, unassertive, underprivileged, lovesick girl.

Except even then, Tracy seemed to make me more. My intro has me telling a bunch of men not to spend their money at my store just yet; to come back in a few months and spend more money on computers that aren't out yet but will be then, that'll be better than what they could buy today.

Tracy made me someone who could turn down good money now for big money later; he also showed me earning confidence and trust from men -- professionally -- for what I know technologically. Poetry and prose? Was that just me killing time in college or was that me learning language and creative expression for my career?

And then my crush! Quinn and I talk computers. I'm aware that Quinn looks like a football player -- Quinn, wipe that smirk off your face -- but my crush is clearly about our meeting of minds. And then there's our first slide. A world where the Russians conquered America. Quinn and the Professor end up in chains. Rembrandt ends up in a gulag. But I end up leading the revolution. And when we're trying to get off this world and get home and a watchman tries to stop us -- I'm the one who kicks him in the face.

On the slides after that, Tracy saw me become an influencer, renewing the spark of an anti-war movement. Tracy saw me take point in another resistance against a dictatorship, and then become a key strategist in a mayoral re-election campaign.

Tracy saw me land on an Earth that was going to be destroyed by an asteroid. And everyone was panicked and scared. But I felt serene. I wanted to make the most of my last days. Tracy saw me act on how I felt about Quinn -- but then he saw me step away from that; he saw me build something different with Quinn where we were allies and partners and friends who trusted each other with our lives, but where I had so much more to offer the multiverse than just being Quinn's love interest.

Tracy seemed to see me as so much more than just the girl.

I'm not saying that Tracy's take on me was always perfect, because it wasn't. There were a number of situations in the second season where I didn't have a big part, where Quinn, the Professor and Rembrandt were in focus -- and in those stories, my job seems to be the one who gets scared and shrill. But there was still enough besides that to make it the exception instead of the rule.

Tracy saw me take the lead again on restoring the US Constitution to an American that had lost it. And Tracy saw me making pretty much every plan and strategy when the boys all got captured for a male breeding program and I had to save them. Tracy saw me get home and build a career as a writer only to lose it all and slide again.

Tracy commissioned one story with another really good person and writer, Jon Povill, where a precognitive telepath named Derek fell in love with me and read my mind to make me happy -- and I called Derek out for what that was: an intrusion and a violation that didn't have any respect for my consent and autonomy and privacy.

I stood up for myself and my boundaries, and knowing now that Jon wrote that and Tracy approved it -- I'm just so grateful.

In the third year of sliding, something in me suddenly changed: I was suddenly the computer hacker of the group. Before, Quinn always seemed to be the one breaking into databases and digital infrastructures. Suddenly, I was the one getting through computer security, copying camera footage, rerouting datastreams, destroying debt records.

I know Tracy signed off on this, and it's interesting. On one level, me being promoted to hacker extraordinaire didn't track. I barely did anything technological before. But it actually connected right back to my first scene in the show when I knew about computers that hadn't even been released yet.

I didn't totally understand what was happening, but I knew what it meant: I now had a position of expertise and authority in the group. I was the computer expert where Quinn was the engineer, Arturo was the mathematician, and Rembrandt was the artist. Tracy always treated me as an equal part of the friend group. But with this upgrade, he made me an equal partner in the adventure.

This was the life that Tracy wrote for me. So who am I? Who did he make me?

Wade looks through the reception hall at the people gathered to celebrate the life and achievements of Tracy Torme. She looks across all the female friends in Tracy's life who have come today.

She looks at Torme's sisters, Melissa, Daisy and Carrie. She looks at Nan Hagan and Janet Saunders who worked with Torme on SLIDERS.

Wade looks at one woman in particular, Robin. Robin is an animal welfare activist and rescuer, anti-human trafficking advocate, a journalist, a private detective, a championship surfer, a swimsuit model, an undercover investigator. Among all those things, Robin was also Tracy Torme's wife.

Tracy made me an egalitarian encapsulation of what he saw in women. Everything he thought we were. Everything he thought we are. Everything he thought we could be.

He saw that we could be revolutionaries and leaders who could inspire systemic and societal change in politics and business, in battlefields and boardrooms.

He saw us capable of defending ourselves and taking action to guard and protect. He saw us as strategists who could think and reason against a war or a disaster or a political campaign or a psychic who could predict our every move.

He saw that we could be experts in sales and data management, and actually, in any field of science, mathematics, engineering and technology. He saw us as emotionally resilient people who could face danger and death with courage. He saw us as influencers who could steer our world through conflict.

He saw us as friends who weren't restricted to being his love interests or girls to be saved and protected. He saw that romance was a facet of a woman but not what defined our lives. He saw us as his partners and comrades; he saw that we could be the teacher just as often as we might be the student. He also saw us being kind of shrill at times, but he saw us as his equals.

I can tell you that he loved all the women in his life very much. I know that he loved you all as his family, as his allies, as his influences, as his leaders, and as his friends.

And I know that because I know me. Tracy wrote me to be everything he admired and respected about women.

Tracy made me a representation of all of you. He made me a reflection of all the women in this room and in his life.

Thank you.