The thin, disheveled man with the wild mop of brown hair just looked at Sarah for a moment. Then, reaching into his grease-stained blue suit jacked, he pulled out his glasses and perched them on his nose. He continued to study Sarah for a moment, and then, as if making a grand proclamation, announced, “I’m the Doctor!”
Sarah stared back at him for a moment, a quizzical look in her eyes. “Um, doctor who, exactly?” she asked.
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Ah, if I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that… I’d have… hmmm… multiply by five, carry the seven…”
Sarah cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have to ask – are you absent minded, or just plain crazy?”
The Doctor looked back at her, a serious expression on her face. “Well, some’d say a little of both, I suppose.”
He continued to study her. “Now, you say you work for the Central Intelligence Agency… you’ve never heard of me?”
Sarah shook her head. “My area of expertise is the Middle East,” she replied, “and lately, southern California. You sound like you’re from England.”
“Only as of late,” he replied. “Like I said, I’m a Timelord, originally from Gallifrey, but I think England’s a jolly old country to putter around in.”
He frowned. “But I still find it hard to believe you haven’t heard of some passing reference to me. Didn’t you hear about the Christmas Star over London, not even two months ago?”
“I heard that that was some sort of fundamentalist Muslim attack,” Sarah replied. “Al Qaida or somebody managed to get a lighter-than-air craft over London and start attacking with focused energy weapons. And then your Defense Minister – what’s his name? Harold Saxon? He blew it up.”
“Yes, quite,” the Doctor replied. “Except, it wasn’t Al Qaida. It was the Racnoss.”
“I can’t say that I fully trust that Mr. Saxon,” Sarah had continued. “He just doesn’t feel ri- wait. The Racnoss? I’ve never heard of them, and I know every terrorist group out there.”
“They’re not a terrorist group,” the Doctor said. “They’re aliens. Millions of years old. Feed on human flesh.”
Sarah held up her hand to stop him. “That’s impossible,” she protested. “There are no aliens. I know this for a fact.”
“Well, I’d say your wrong, being one myself,” replied the Timelord, “but it’s a little bit chilly out here, even for California. What do you say we take this conversation inside?”
“Inside where?” Sarah asked, confused.
“Why, my TARDIS, of course,” the Doctor said. “It’ll be plenty warm in there.”
“Wait, you mean the police box? Sorry, Doctor, but we just met. I don’t think so.”
“Ah, that,” laughed the Doctor. “Remember what I said? Bigger on the inside?”
Sarah gave him a look of skepticism.
“Go on, open her up!” the Doctor insisted. “Take a look!”
Sarah’s skeptical look only deepened, but she opened the TARDIS nonetheless. She stepped inside…
“Oh. My. GOD.”
“Told you,” the Doctor smirked, stepping into the TARDIS with her. “Take a seat, we’ll talk more about alien life.”
Sarah just stood frozen in the doorway, looking around her at the TARDIS. “But… but this is impossible,” she whispered.
“And until a few minutes ago, you thought alien life was impossible,” the Doctor replied. “In fact, you knew it was a fact. But here I am!”
“But, but no,” Sarah replied, confusion clear on her face. “I know alien life doesn’t exist, because I’ve been to the future, I’ve been to the twenty-sixth century. Humans had left Earth, moved to another solar system with literally hundreds of planets and moons. All that time, though, they never encountered any extraterrestrial life.”
As she spoke, the Doctor’s eyes had gone wide. “They left Earth… they never encountered any extraterrestrial life…”
A huge smile grew on the Doctor’s face. “Oh, Sarah Walker, I don’t think you realize how lucky you are,” he enthused. “You’ve been to a place where only a few Timelords have ever been, and that totally by accident!”
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked. “I’ve been to the future. And what do you mean Timelords have been there?”
“I suppose I should explain,” the Doctor said. “First of all, Timelords tend to time travel. This thing we’re in, the TARDIS? Lets me travel through time.”
“Okay,” Sarah replied, “if you say so.”
“Secondly. Have you ever heard of Schrödinger’s Cat?”
“Uh,” Sarah thought for a moment. “That’s where a cat is placed in a box, with a radioactive substance, but we don’t know the decay rate, and whether or not the substance has killed the cat – so technically, as far as we know, the cat is both dead and alive?”
“Exactly!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Now, take that theory, and apply it to every decision ever made by any individual anywhere in the universe. Assume that for each side of every decision, a separate universe split off in another direction.”
“You’d have… trillions of universes,” Sarah replied, after thinking for a moment.
“You’d have infinite universes in infinite combinations,” the Doctor said. “However. Of all those combinations, the Timelords only ever found one where humans never develop faster than light travel, where they move off of Earth permanently, and where they never encounter other life in outer space. We actually had a name for it, because it was so anomalous – we called it Universal Fractal Anomaly 6513e.
“Like I said, only a few Timelords ever went there. And that, Ms. Walker, is why you’re so special – you’ve gone where so very few have been before. Where I will likely never go.”
“But if you can travel throughout time and space,” Sarah said, “why can’t you go there?”
The Doctor fell silent. When he spoke again, his voice had become soft and contemplative.
“There was a time,” he began, “when the Timelords could travel to any point in any universe.
“And then there was a great war. Daleks – these mechanical hybrids – attacked our planet. It was a war that stretched through eons – the Time War, we called it. And they defeated our defenses.
“I had a certain power. I had the ability to destroy the Daleks. But if I did that, it would also destroy Gallifrey.”
He stopped for a long moment. Sarah came up to him and placed her hand on top of his. “What did you do?”
He looked up at her, and she could see years, decades, centuries of hurt and anguish in his eyes. “If you look up to the sky tonight,” he replied, “you will see nothing but a dark spot where Gallifrey once glowed brightly in the sky.
“I am… the last of the Timelords.”
The Doctor fell silent again. Sarah stood next to him, in shock. And then, without thinking, her inner human came out, pushed the CIA agent to the back, and she pulled the Doctor into an embrace.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
The Doctor felt emotions begin to boil to the surface. Years of repressed emotions from the destruction of Gallifrey, the last few months since he lost Rose to the parallel universe, the emptiness he felt when Donna turned down his offer to travel with him.
And as Sarah Walker held the Doctor in her arms, he began to cry, and then to sob.
Sarah truly was a special individual. She was seeing something that so few had seen – the almighty Doctor, reduced to a broken man.
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