A Thousand And One TARDIS Nights
ONE
The warp-ship crashes into the Tower beneath her, but it's already too late. The Doctor feels the sonic screwdriver click into place even as she's thrown clear. It's broken, of course, but it's metal enough and conductive enough for the task. A link is bridged where no link should be. The stream of neutrons are polarised against their flow. As she tumbles down towards New Gallifrey she can see the temporal stabilisation field ripple into rainbow blurs as it accelerates into reverse. She'll have just enough time to watch it reach maximum destabilisation and eject both itself and the Anti-Time Lords out of the web of time before she impacts with the Panopticon; if she's really lucky, she'll land on the bastard Coordinator Vansell while she's at it.
This would be a good death, she thinks. How many universes have I saved now?
There's a scream and she's just gotten around to hoping it isn't her, really, how undignified would that be? when she slams into something which is a bit of a surprise unless she miscalculated the gravity, and she didn't go splash, which is even more of a surprise, but the most surprising thing of all is that she appears to have landed on Dennis.
"Are you flying?" she asks.
"On my broom!" Dennis agrees cheerfully, like they're not rushing at high speed towards the apocalypse in progress. "I know what I'm doing, mostly! I'm not too good with steering though! Hang on!"
The Doctor does, as best she can. "You stole a broomstick?"
"No!" says Dennis indignantly and then, after an impromptu nine-hundred degree turn, adds, "I did steal your TARDIS though! Because it had my broom in it! Do I have to go to prison now?"
Luckily, (a) crashing a broom through the Panopticon, the Chancellory Guards, the Presidential Office, sixteen personal quarters, three time capsules and the Harp of Rassilon distracts the Time Lords from the whole theft thing and (b) it turns out the Doctor can pardon Dennis with her new Presidential powers, so (c) they quickly chuck dung-bombs at Vansell and sneak off in the confusion.
TWO
"Doctor! Look out! The ROSM's still active -- it's locked me in the control booth!"
"Use the sonic screwdriver. Quickly, Dennis. Dennis!"
"You've got it!"
"What? I thought you had it?"
"No! All I've got is this chair and these rows of buttons! Duck!"
"Gah! Okay, nice killer robot, nice killer-- Since when are there two of them?"
"There aren't, there are five! I can see them on the screens! They're heading this way! What do I do?"
"Okay. No need to panic. They're quite slow, I can keep dodging for a bit. No need to -- okay, need to panic, need to panic, Dennis: push the buttons."
"You told me never to touch the buttons!"
"Well, now I'm telling you to touch them."
"Um! Okay! Here goes!"
"Argh! That's the turbo boost! And that's the lasers! Knives! Stop pushing those buttons!"
"But you told me to!"
"Stop!"
"You'll get skewered!"
"Push other buttons, Dennis. Other buttons!"
"Am I supposed to push the buttons or not?"
"Push the correct buttons!"
"How am I supposed to know if they are correct or not unless I push them?"
"PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS DENNIS!"
"Okay!"
"AAAAaaaa... oh. They stopped. Hah! Oh, well done, Dennis."
"Hang on, I think I've found the button that unlocks the control booth door! Oops! That wasn't it!"
"ARGH! STOP PRESSING BUTTONS! STOP PRESSING BUTTONS!"
"...I'm so very confused!"
THREE
The Doctor stared at herself in the Wardrobe mirror and sighed. Nothing felt right today. It wasn't just that she was worried the white sundress she had on had once belonged to Sarah Jane -- wearing your companion's clothing was never a good sign -- it was that she'd randomised the TARDIS co-ordinates, shifted around the internal structure, tied her hair up and back and swapped outfits five times and she still felt in need of a change. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps this was the end. Pre-regeneration sickness. Perhaps it was finally time to give up this incarnation and become the next. Or worse, perhaps she had finally grown bored of change and now it was time to settle down on some nice planet somewhere and get a mortgage and an ordinary UNIT job and generally live her days one at a time, one after each other in sequence. Maybe this was the end of life as she knew it. Eleven: died of Ennui. It was
"Hey, look!" said Dennis, sticking his head in the room. "I've found the Chocolate Frog of Rassilon! It regenerates when you lick it!"
He demonstrated. The entire ship shook and the cloister bell started booming loudly.
"Um," said Dennis. "Oops?"
"Oh, thank Omega," the Doctor said.
FOUR
"HALT! YOU WILL O-BEY!"
"It's a sad universe when a woman can't even go out for chips without running into a bunch of Daleks. You're not even supposed to exist any more. You do know that? Your planet, your empire, your emperor -- all burned away into dust."
"YOU ARE THE EN-E-MY OF THE DA-LEKS! YOU WILL BE EX--"
"Hello, Doctor! I saw you on the scanner so I thought I'd come help carry the food!"
"Dennis! Get back in--"
"HALT! I-DENT-I-FY YOUR-SELF!"
"Wow! Giant novelty salt shakers! I like salt on my chips! How do you get the salt out? From here? Do I have to twist this sticking out bit? Shaking isn't working!"
"VIS-ION IM-PAIRED! HELP! I CAN NOT SEE! VIS-ION IM-PAIRED!"
"There's no salt in there, Dennis, it's--"
"Oh! I know how to fix that! I've been practicing my spells every time we set down somewhere safe enough! It's a simple alchemical creation-transmogrification complex! I just wave my wand like this!"
"DE-SIST OR YOU WILL BE EX-TERM-IN-A-TED! YOU WILL BE EX-EX-EX-ex-shuuuuuussssshhhh."
"There you go! Full of salt! ...what? What?!"
FIVE
"Imagine," says Abbot, "that you could encode philosophical concepts into mathematical language," and she'd be having chills even if he didn't have a military fork pressed against her back. "Imagine you could construct equations that describe not just physics, not just biology, but society. Equations that describe Life and Knowledge, Power and Despair and the entirety of the Soul."
"The Skasis Paradigm," the Doctor breathes.
"To solve it, to comprehend its subtle complexity, its terrible simplicities, is to experience transcendental enlightenment. The universe is thought and you are both. Can you imagine it? Imagination is the greatest force in the universe."
"Please," she says. "You can't do this. You don't want to do this."
"Imagine your companion, even now searching for you, coming closer and closer, reading the walls as he goes, absorbing all that information, the subliminal command codes woven into it. Imagine a boy, smart, always questioning, fearless, optimistic and naive. Imagine a boy raised in the Magics and the Sciences, who has travelled at will through Time and Space, whose mind is open, fertile and prepared to accept anything. No culture shock, no future shock, no xenophobia: just endless, pure imagination in which to grow."
The door handle rattles. She opens her mouth to yell, something, anything, but only blood comes out. The tines of the fork are protruding from her chest, one in each heart.
"Imagine it," says Abbot in her ear, and all the screens come on green as Dennis opens the door.
"Hello? Doctor? Are you in here?"
Don't look, she tries to say. Dennis. Don't look. She can't. Her voice won't come. Abbot is holding her back. She can't move. Can't scream. Can't anything.
Dennis looks up at the screen. Neural links kick in. Dennis and the machine, locked in sync. The equations change as he reads them, become smaller, more compressed, simpler and impossibly complex, collapsing down into one singular thought that contains everything, as bigger on the inside as you can possibly get.
"Oh," he says.
"Do you understand?" Abbot asks.
"Yes," Dennis says. "It's quite simple, really." He gestures, and the screens are suddenly butterflies.
Abbot laughs in delight, letting the Doctor go. She slumps to the floor, hands moving weakly. "We've won, Time Lord! The power is ours! A child shall lead them -- this child shall lead us, into the future, into our glorious Empire!"
"Why would I do that?" Dennis asks.
"I command it! You are our messiah, our weapon - the words of control are--"
"What, those? They didn't seem important any more, so I get rid of them. No, I think you'll be quiet now." Dennis comes over and sits down by the Doctor, cross-legged on the floor. "Would you like to know the secret?"
Abbot has no mouth. The Doctor can't speak, but she shakes her head.
"It's okay," Dennis says. "It's just a story. And in stories, you can do anything you want. Sometimes that makes for bad stories, sometimes for good, but it doesn't matter. If you don't like it, you can just read something else. Or write it. Would you like me to tell you a story now?"
The Doctor blinks. Once for yes. Or maybe just a blink. Everything grows dark. Dark like Dennis's eyes, which glitter somehow, twinkle, like starfields, like black diamonds.
"Once upon a time," he says.
Once upon a time, there is a blue box, spinning through the void. It runs on plants and love and time and possibly a black hole or something. Like all good stories, it's bigger on the inside. In the console room stands an attractive woman in a black leather jacket, tapping her sonic screwdriver against her lips in confusion. Sat on the console is a young man with a mess of mouse-brown hair, a little short for his age but filled with endless energy.
"Did something weird just happen?" the Doctor asks.
"No?" says Dennis, and offers her his open packet. "Chocolate frog?"
They hop free, hitting buttons at random. The timeship careens off down the Vortex.
"Oops?"
"DENNNNNIS!!!!"
And there they go. The faces change and the stories too, but this, always this: the Doctor and companion, in the TARDIS.
All is right with the world.
The warp-ship crashes into the Tower beneath her, but it's already too late. The Doctor feels the sonic screwdriver click into place even as she's thrown clear. It's broken, of course, but it's metal enough and conductive enough for the task. A link is bridged where no link should be. The stream of neutrons are polarised against their flow. As she tumbles down towards New Gallifrey she can see the temporal stabilisation field ripple into rainbow blurs as it accelerates into reverse. She'll have just enough time to watch it reach maximum destabilisation and eject both itself and the Anti-Time Lords out of the web of time before she impacts with the Panopticon; if she's really lucky, she'll land on the bastard Coordinator Vansell while she's at it.
This would be a good death, she thinks. How many universes have I saved now?
There's a scream and she's just gotten around to hoping it isn't her, really, how undignified would that be? when she slams into something which is a bit of a surprise unless she miscalculated the gravity, and she didn't go splash, which is even more of a surprise, but the most surprising thing of all is that she appears to have landed on Dennis.
"Are you flying?" she asks.
"On my broom!" Dennis agrees cheerfully, like they're not rushing at high speed towards the apocalypse in progress. "I know what I'm doing, mostly! I'm not too good with steering though! Hang on!"
The Doctor does, as best she can. "You stole a broomstick?"
"No!" says Dennis indignantly and then, after an impromptu nine-hundred degree turn, adds, "I did steal your TARDIS though! Because it had my broom in it! Do I have to go to prison now?"
Luckily, (a) crashing a broom through the Panopticon, the Chancellory Guards, the Presidential Office, sixteen personal quarters, three time capsules and the Harp of Rassilon distracts the Time Lords from the whole theft thing and (b) it turns out the Doctor can pardon Dennis with her new Presidential powers, so (c) they quickly chuck dung-bombs at Vansell and sneak off in the confusion.
TWO
"Doctor! Look out! The ROSM's still active -- it's locked me in the control booth!"
"Use the sonic screwdriver. Quickly, Dennis. Dennis!"
"You've got it!"
"What? I thought you had it?"
"No! All I've got is this chair and these rows of buttons! Duck!"
"Gah! Okay, nice killer robot, nice killer-- Since when are there two of them?"
"There aren't, there are five! I can see them on the screens! They're heading this way! What do I do?"
"Okay. No need to panic. They're quite slow, I can keep dodging for a bit. No need to -- okay, need to panic, need to panic, Dennis: push the buttons."
"You told me never to touch the buttons!"
"Well, now I'm telling you to touch them."
"Um! Okay! Here goes!"
"Argh! That's the turbo boost! And that's the lasers! Knives! Stop pushing those buttons!"
"But you told me to!"
"Stop!"
"You'll get skewered!"
"Push other buttons, Dennis. Other buttons!"
"Am I supposed to push the buttons or not?"
"Push the correct buttons!"
"How am I supposed to know if they are correct or not unless I push them?"
"PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS DENNIS!"
"Okay!"
"AAAAaaaa... oh. They stopped. Hah! Oh, well done, Dennis."
"Hang on, I think I've found the button that unlocks the control booth door! Oops! That wasn't it!"
"ARGH! STOP PRESSING BUTTONS! STOP PRESSING BUTTONS!"
"...I'm so very confused!"
THREE
The Doctor stared at herself in the Wardrobe mirror and sighed. Nothing felt right today. It wasn't just that she was worried the white sundress she had on had once belonged to Sarah Jane -- wearing your companion's clothing was never a good sign -- it was that she'd randomised the TARDIS co-ordinates, shifted around the internal structure, tied her hair up and back and swapped outfits five times and she still felt in need of a change. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps this was the end. Pre-regeneration sickness. Perhaps it was finally time to give up this incarnation and become the next. Or worse, perhaps she had finally grown bored of change and now it was time to settle down on some nice planet somewhere and get a mortgage and an ordinary UNIT job and generally live her days one at a time, one after each other in sequence. Maybe this was the end of life as she knew it. Eleven: died of Ennui. It was
"Hey, look!" said Dennis, sticking his head in the room. "I've found the Chocolate Frog of Rassilon! It regenerates when you lick it!"
He demonstrated. The entire ship shook and the cloister bell started booming loudly.
"Um," said Dennis. "Oops?"
"Oh, thank Omega," the Doctor said.
FOUR
"HALT! YOU WILL O-BEY!"
"It's a sad universe when a woman can't even go out for chips without running into a bunch of Daleks. You're not even supposed to exist any more. You do know that? Your planet, your empire, your emperor -- all burned away into dust."
"YOU ARE THE EN-E-MY OF THE DA-LEKS! YOU WILL BE EX--"
"Hello, Doctor! I saw you on the scanner so I thought I'd come help carry the food!"
"Dennis! Get back in--"
"HALT! I-DENT-I-FY YOUR-SELF!"
"Wow! Giant novelty salt shakers! I like salt on my chips! How do you get the salt out? From here? Do I have to twist this sticking out bit? Shaking isn't working!"
"VIS-ION IM-PAIRED! HELP! I CAN NOT SEE! VIS-ION IM-PAIRED!"
"There's no salt in there, Dennis, it's--"
"Oh! I know how to fix that! I've been practicing my spells every time we set down somewhere safe enough! It's a simple alchemical creation-transmogrification complex! I just wave my wand like this!"
"DE-SIST OR YOU WILL BE EX-TERM-IN-A-TED! YOU WILL BE EX-EX-EX-ex-shuuuuuussssshhhh."
"There you go! Full of salt! ...what? What?!"
FIVE
"Imagine," says Abbot, "that you could encode philosophical concepts into mathematical language," and she'd be having chills even if he didn't have a military fork pressed against her back. "Imagine you could construct equations that describe not just physics, not just biology, but society. Equations that describe Life and Knowledge, Power and Despair and the entirety of the Soul."
"The Skasis Paradigm," the Doctor breathes.
"To solve it, to comprehend its subtle complexity, its terrible simplicities, is to experience transcendental enlightenment. The universe is thought and you are both. Can you imagine it? Imagination is the greatest force in the universe."
"Please," she says. "You can't do this. You don't want to do this."
"Imagine your companion, even now searching for you, coming closer and closer, reading the walls as he goes, absorbing all that information, the subliminal command codes woven into it. Imagine a boy, smart, always questioning, fearless, optimistic and naive. Imagine a boy raised in the Magics and the Sciences, who has travelled at will through Time and Space, whose mind is open, fertile and prepared to accept anything. No culture shock, no future shock, no xenophobia: just endless, pure imagination in which to grow."
The door handle rattles. She opens her mouth to yell, something, anything, but only blood comes out. The tines of the fork are protruding from her chest, one in each heart.
"Imagine it," says Abbot in her ear, and all the screens come on green as Dennis opens the door.
"Hello? Doctor? Are you in here?"
Don't look, she tries to say. Dennis. Don't look. She can't. Her voice won't come. Abbot is holding her back. She can't move. Can't scream. Can't anything.
Dennis looks up at the screen. Neural links kick in. Dennis and the machine, locked in sync. The equations change as he reads them, become smaller, more compressed, simpler and impossibly complex, collapsing down into one singular thought that contains everything, as bigger on the inside as you can possibly get.
"Oh," he says.
"Do you understand?" Abbot asks.
"Yes," Dennis says. "It's quite simple, really." He gestures, and the screens are suddenly butterflies.
Abbot laughs in delight, letting the Doctor go. She slumps to the floor, hands moving weakly. "We've won, Time Lord! The power is ours! A child shall lead them -- this child shall lead us, into the future, into our glorious Empire!"
"Why would I do that?" Dennis asks.
"I command it! You are our messiah, our weapon - the words of control are--"
"What, those? They didn't seem important any more, so I get rid of them. No, I think you'll be quiet now." Dennis comes over and sits down by the Doctor, cross-legged on the floor. "Would you like to know the secret?"
Abbot has no mouth. The Doctor can't speak, but she shakes her head.
"It's okay," Dennis says. "It's just a story. And in stories, you can do anything you want. Sometimes that makes for bad stories, sometimes for good, but it doesn't matter. If you don't like it, you can just read something else. Or write it. Would you like me to tell you a story now?"
The Doctor blinks. Once for yes. Or maybe just a blink. Everything grows dark. Dark like Dennis's eyes, which glitter somehow, twinkle, like starfields, like black diamonds.
"Once upon a time," he says.
Once upon a time, there is a blue box, spinning through the void. It runs on plants and love and time and possibly a black hole or something. Like all good stories, it's bigger on the inside. In the console room stands an attractive woman in a black leather jacket, tapping her sonic screwdriver against her lips in confusion. Sat on the console is a young man with a mess of mouse-brown hair, a little short for his age but filled with endless energy.
"Did something weird just happen?" the Doctor asks.
"No?" says Dennis, and offers her his open packet. "Chocolate frog?"
They hop free, hitting buttons at random. The timeship careens off down the Vortex.
"Oops?"
"DENNNNNIS!!!!"
And there they go. The faces change and the stories too, but this, always this: the Doctor and companion, in the TARDIS.
All is right with the world.