So I realized, as I was approaching the end of this chapter, that it's full of meaningless technical mumbo-jumbo, and I thought to myself, that might not be so good.
Then I realized - I had written ALL of the mumbo-jumbo so that it's coming out of the Doctor's mouth, which is perfectly normal for him. So it's okay.
It was several minutes before the Doctor pulled himself together. Finally, he stood, wiping his eyes and sniffling softly.
“My apologies, Ms. Walker,” he said quietly. “I usually am able to keep my composure. It’s just… well…”
He stopped. Sarah didn’t say anything, just looked at the Doctor expectantly.
“You heard about the Battle of Canary Wharf, yes?”
Sarah cocked an eyebrow at the Doctor. “I remember hearing that there was an incident at One Canada Plaza, in Canary Wharf, right after our Thanksgiving holiday,” she replied. “But I also remember that the British government was very, very tight-lipped about it. MI-6 wouldn’t tell us anything at the CIA.”
The Doctor shook his head. “Typical British arrogance,” he grumbled. “Build themselves an empire, then sell it off bit by bit but think they can still project imperial aspirations.”
He stopped, and then looked up. “Sorry, I got off track there a bit. Anyway, I had a friend… a very close friend… her name is Rose Tyler. She was my traveling companion for just over two years. I met her one night in a department store that I blew up. We got into a lot of trouble together, that’s for sure!”
The Doctor laughed at the memory, but then turned somber again. “At Canary Wharf… the reason it happened is because these two cyborg races – the Daleks and the Cybermen – managed to breach the wall between this universe and one of the many, many other universes. They crossed through the Void to get here.”
“The Void?” Sarah asked.
“You’d probably refer to it simply as Hell,” the Doctor explained. “It’s literally nothingness, and everything that exists there is stuck in it for eternity. There’s even a beast there – called Abaddon, which is a mite apocalyptic for my tastes… but, I suppose if he ever got out, it would be a bit disastrous.
“Anyway,” he went on, “up at the top of One Canada Plaza, there was an opening into the Void, and continuing on into the other universe. Well, I opened that door wide, and all the Cybermen and Daleks that had crossed through got sucked into the Void for good.”
He paused again. “Rose and I had both crossed through as well, so we had to hold on to these super-gravity devices. But… Rose had to let go to keep the portal from closing, and she ended up losing her grip on the handle she was holding.”
“Oh my God,” Sarah gasped. “She was…”
The Doctor shook his head. “No,” he said. “At the last moment, her father – or at least, this other universe’s version of her father – crossed through, grabbed her, and safely transported her back to his universe. However, immediately after that, the opening closed – permanently.
“It wasn’t until she was gone that I realized the truth about something – that I had fallen in love with her. I ended up causing a star to go nova just to squeeze a message through to the other universe, to say good-bye – and I got cut off before I could tell her that I loved her.”
As he had been talking, he had circled the console of the TARDIS, and now, as he stopped talking, he came to a stop in front of the bench seat mounted by the console, and dropped heavily on to it, as though he had been drained of all energy.
Sarah was about to cross the TARDIS and sit down next to him, when a change seemed to come over him. “Well, no need to worry about the past!” he chirped cheerfully, bouncing up from the seat.
She cocked her head and looked at him strangely. “Are… you… are you okay?”
“Never better!” the Doctor proclaimed. “So, tell me… how would you like to take a little trip?”
“Well… what?’
“Off we go!” He hit a switch, the door slammed shut, and the green cylinder in the center of the TARDIS began to pump up and down. “Hold on!”
Suddenly, the TARDIS shook as though it had been struck by something very large. Sparks flew out from the console, and a bell began to ring.
“Oh, dear,” the Doctor said, looking frantically at a monitor on the console. He then looked up at Sarah from hooded eyes. “The TARDIS doesn’t like you, young lady.”
Then, to Sarah’s utter amazement, he started talking to the TARDIS. “Behave yourself!” he shouted. “She’s a very nice person, and there’s no reason to be acting like this!”
There was a chirping sound, and a light started blinking on the monitor. The Doctor looked at it, then looked up at Sarah again in alarm. The alarm changed to a look of almost anger. Reaching to his right, he pulled a lever. The TARDIS stopped immediately.
The Doctor charged to the door, and plowed out. Sarah followed him, confused. “What’s going on?”
“You,” the Doctor spat, turning to point at her, “should be dead. You HAVE been dead. Care to explain?”
“Of course,” Sarah said, still confused. “I was on a mission in a place called Papen County a couple weeks ago. I was electrocuted, but there was this guy who touched me, and it brought me back from the dead… wait a second, where the hell are we?”
“It’s an affront to nature!” the Doctor continued, his voice ramping up in pitch and volume. “You’re wrong, you should be dead, and I’m of half a mind to just get back in the TARD-“
SMACK.
With an almighty swing, Sarah wound up her right hand and hauled off on the Doctor, landing an open palm on his left cheek. His head jerked to the right and he staggered backwards. Sarah’s movement continued, as her left hand pulled her gun from behind her back at light speed. By the time the Doctor recovered and was standing upright again, Sarah’s Beretta was pointed directly at his face. His eyes widened, and he raised his hands slowly.
“First of all,” Sarah hissed, “you are not leaving me ANYWHERE. I did not ASK to be brought here, you just ACTED.
“Secondly, I have had QUITE enough of being told that I’m wrong, that I’m an affront, and all that BULLSHIT. I’ve had a VERY difficult last couple of months, and if you think you’re allowed to act like this because you’ve got emotional issues, let me tell you something, pal – you’re not the only person in the universe who’s had somebody you cared about slip through your grasp recently!”
She looked around again. “And where the FUCK are we?”
The Doctor’s hands slowly came down. “Ummm… we’re on Mars,” he replied. “Would you mind terribly putting the gun away?”
Sarah looked around. “No way we’re on Mars,” she stated. “We’re in the middle of a city.”
“Yes,” the Doctor said. “This is the City of Oklahoma, in the Utopia Planitia Colony, on Mars. The year is 2192. And we are not in Anomaly 6513e, in case you’re curious.”
Sarah’s gun came down as she gave the Doctor a look. “What do you mean, we’re not in Anomaly 6513e?” she asked him. “I’ve been to Anomaly 6513e. I think.”
“You have,” the Doctor affirmed. “But we’re still 184 years after your time. Don’t you think it’s possible that there are going to be other future possibilities?”
Sarah’s hands went up in defeat. “But how is that possible?” she asked. “How can I have been to 6513e, and yet still be here? And how is it, exactly, that a letter that I wrote ended up in 2518?”
The Doctor nodded. “All valid questions,” he replied. “It’s the laws of temporal mechanics. And it sounds like this particular incarnation of you has made decisions that will lead you to end up being in whatever the predecessor to UFA 6513e is.
“Tell me, Sarah Walker, what’s the biggest decision you made recently?”
“Well…” she thought for a moment. “I’d say the biggest decision I’ve made is that I gave my friend Chuck the option to stay in the future – in 6513e – rather than come back to the 21st century. He chose to come back, though.”
“Ah,” the Doctor said knowingly. “You see, that there, that irrevocably tied this particular incarnation of you to the 6513e future. Your willingness to allow somebody out of time to change the future. And I’ll tell you, I don’t fully understand temporal mechanics myself, but they will adjust themselves with your decisions so that this particular incarnation of you presses forward into what will eventually become 6513e.”
“What if I hadn’t made that decision?” she asked.
“Well, there’s a version of you that didn’t,” the Doctor replied. “Just as there’s a version of your friend Chuck that chose to stay in the year 2519.”
“But wait a moment,” Sarah interrupted, “wouldn’t that cause 6513e to fracture itself?”
“Oh, of course!” the Doctor laughed. “6513e might be a fractal anomaly, but it’s still got trillions of permutations! It’s just that the remainder of temporal and quantum space dwarfs that particular anomaly in comparison!”
Sarah put a hand to her forehead. “My head hurts,” she said. “In and among all this technical mumbo-jumbo you’re spewing, can you answer the simple question of do you have someplace I can lie down?”
