theatrical_muse #194: Vanish
"The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place."--The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Doctor never liked to play around with Emergency Programme One. It seemed so unlikely to ever be used, and, really, it just ended up depressing the hell out of him. But there were threats out there, big ones, and if something were to happen to him, leaving Rose without knowing what to do...
It came to pass--final judgment and all that, he supposed, from the 'God', and who was he to argue?--that the Earth would be overrun with Dalek kind and then eventually destroyed. All because he couldn't throw a switch. All because, in all of his mercy, he could show none to the Humans. All because he was too afraid to be that which he had become all over again.
He stood at the ready. Heathen, perhaps. Maybe it was time. He wondered about Rose and the TARDIS, about how she must have watched his message and landed, pressing buttons and probably kicking the console a few times to get her to work again.
It wouldn't. He'd programmed it that way. Isomorphic controls and all kept Rose from overriding the old girl's systems, if she ever figured out how, which she wouldn't.
It was ridiculously simple, the process. And ridiculously painful. Just one shot after another, hardly enough time to regenerate. Hardly enough to think his last thoughts.
The last of the Time Lords faded to dust.
***
"There's an old police box on the corner here. Yeah, one of those old ones, the blue ones."
Nobody cared, and nobody that passed by that corner ever noticed it, except for Rose and Jackie Tyler, and Mickey Smith. Nobody much noticed them, either. Nothing spectacular ever happened, and they went about their dull lives.
They seldom went by the corner, seldom looked at it, seldom thought or talked about it. It was their little secret.
Mickey had learned to live with the times Rose would muse on the box.
“Yeah, Rose. I miss him, too.”
Jackie would berate her. They'd closed the doors, and even if they went in, there was nothing to see.
“It was a joyride, a silly little vacation at best, and he knew that! You’ve got to stop moping and get on with your life like the rest of us!”
Rose had liked to spend as much time in the machine as possible for quite a while. It was still alive, still was warm and lit, still had some sort of strange pulse in her mind. She thought it perhaps sympathized with her, but she would never be able to know. The TARDIS had sent her back; she would not be able to return and rescue the Doctor. When he made a decision, it was almost always final.
But she tried to have a fantastic, if a bit more normal, life. For him. He would've wanted that. And she wanted to remember him.
***
The Tylers and Mickey Smith passed on, as all Humans eventually do, and most of the others on the planet, and a generation, two generations. Three.
Only a select few ever saw an ancient blue box on the corner somewhere in the middle of the Powell Estate. And those who could thought nothing of it. It was just an old relic, decrepit and rotting probably, even though it was somehow still standing.
Now and then, there was trash littered by the door. Old pop cans and plastic bags. Graffiti would be marked on it now and then only to somehow vanish within weeks after. Serving merely as a dim reminder of times gone by.
Buildings were torn down and built up again. Nobody seemed to want to move to box--or be able to. It was built around, or it was blocked in, blocked from view, or it was built over. It was an archaic machine that nobody could open. Might as well have never existed.
Over the decades and then the ensuing centuries on low power, reserve power, emergency power, the TARDIS ultimately ran completely out, ran down, and too long without the operator--without anyone at all--was hard. Power no longer flowed in normally live circuits. Lights dimmed and finally went out. Like the closing of a theater, and the last show was done. The TARDIS eventually died and could not be detected, hundreds of thousands of years later, still sitting on the planet somewhere that Daleks were swooping down from the skies upon. And finally destroyed.
***
Somewhere at the end of the universe on one of the last chunks of lonely rock floating in space, an elderly Human with pounding headaches one day found himself inconsolably lonesome, but it had passed by the next--he was, after all, surrounded by his own kind, and while he wasn't sure if he could get them to Utopia, he would work on it for the sake of hope.
He eventually passed away, and soon the last of Humanity, along with the universe, went out with a whimper.
The Doctor never liked to play around with Emergency Programme One. It seemed so unlikely to ever be used, and, really, it just ended up depressing the hell out of him. But there were threats out there, big ones, and if something were to happen to him, leaving Rose without knowing what to do...
It came to pass--final judgment and all that, he supposed, from the 'God', and who was he to argue?--that the Earth would be overrun with Dalek kind and then eventually destroyed. All because he couldn't throw a switch. All because, in all of his mercy, he could show none to the Humans. All because he was too afraid to be that which he had become all over again.
He stood at the ready. Heathen, perhaps. Maybe it was time. He wondered about Rose and the TARDIS, about how she must have watched his message and landed, pressing buttons and probably kicking the console a few times to get her to work again.
It wouldn't. He'd programmed it that way. Isomorphic controls and all kept Rose from overriding the old girl's systems, if she ever figured out how, which she wouldn't.
It was ridiculously simple, the process. And ridiculously painful. Just one shot after another, hardly enough time to regenerate. Hardly enough to think his last thoughts.
The last of the Time Lords faded to dust.
***
"There's an old police box on the corner here. Yeah, one of those old ones, the blue ones."
Nobody cared, and nobody that passed by that corner ever noticed it, except for Rose and Jackie Tyler, and Mickey Smith. Nobody much noticed them, either. Nothing spectacular ever happened, and they went about their dull lives.
They seldom went by the corner, seldom looked at it, seldom thought or talked about it. It was their little secret.
Mickey had learned to live with the times Rose would muse on the box.
“Yeah, Rose. I miss him, too.”
Jackie would berate her. They'd closed the doors, and even if they went in, there was nothing to see.
“It was a joyride, a silly little vacation at best, and he knew that! You’ve got to stop moping and get on with your life like the rest of us!”
Rose had liked to spend as much time in the machine as possible for quite a while. It was still alive, still was warm and lit, still had some sort of strange pulse in her mind. She thought it perhaps sympathized with her, but she would never be able to know. The TARDIS had sent her back; she would not be able to return and rescue the Doctor. When he made a decision, it was almost always final.
But she tried to have a fantastic, if a bit more normal, life. For him. He would've wanted that. And she wanted to remember him.
***
The Tylers and Mickey Smith passed on, as all Humans eventually do, and most of the others on the planet, and a generation, two generations. Three.
Only a select few ever saw an ancient blue box on the corner somewhere in the middle of the Powell Estate. And those who could thought nothing of it. It was just an old relic, decrepit and rotting probably, even though it was somehow still standing.
Now and then, there was trash littered by the door. Old pop cans and plastic bags. Graffiti would be marked on it now and then only to somehow vanish within weeks after. Serving merely as a dim reminder of times gone by.
Buildings were torn down and built up again. Nobody seemed to want to move to box--or be able to. It was built around, or it was blocked in, blocked from view, or it was built over. It was an archaic machine that nobody could open. Might as well have never existed.
Over the decades and then the ensuing centuries on low power, reserve power, emergency power, the TARDIS ultimately ran completely out, ran down, and too long without the operator--without anyone at all--was hard. Power no longer flowed in normally live circuits. Lights dimmed and finally went out. Like the closing of a theater, and the last show was done. The TARDIS eventually died and could not be detected, hundreds of thousands of years later, still sitting on the planet somewhere that Daleks were swooping down from the skies upon. And finally destroyed.
***
Somewhere at the end of the universe on one of the last chunks of lonely rock floating in space, an elderly Human with pounding headaches one day found himself inconsolably lonesome, but it had passed by the next--he was, after all, surrounded by his own kind, and while he wasn't sure if he could get them to Utopia, he would work on it for the sake of hope.
He eventually passed away, and soon the last of Humanity, along with the universe, went out with a whimper.