Five And A Half Hours Later: Technical Note
Chapter 11: Technical Note
This just makes Chapter 12 possible. I know it's hard to understand already.
Unless
Tripping along the well worn lanes of the vortex, on her way back to an appointment with destiny, the TARDIS thought about hope. Then she realised what she was doing, and felt slightly embarrassed, which was worse.
Thinking was something no self respecting TARDIS would ever admit to. Even though there was no one left to admit anything to anymore, still there were standards to maintain. Thinking was fallible, imprecise, squishy. Ships, especially brilliantly advanced, technologically complicated miracles of engineering did not do squishy. Proper ships calculated, plotted variables, measured probabilities. There were parts of the TARDIS that had a distinct squishiness about them - she was sort of alive after all - but it would be extremely impolite to mention them in company and the TARDIS operated a don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
Except for right at the moment. Right at the moment, she was sorely tempted to tell him what she was thinking, even if he hadn’t asked. He had set course for Satellite Five (again) and then slumped in the jumpseat, but he kept muttering to himself. Standing up, pacing around a bit, and muttering. Always the same word.
At least emergency programme one was nearly finished with. The stupid thing had been running for weeks and she was heartily sick of it, but he was bound to shut it down in the next couple of minutes. He couldn’t possibly be thinking of using the last sub-routine. Not a single instant too soon, she’d been able to withdraw her telepathic link from inside the frighteningly primitive mind of the girlchild and retreat to the golden calm of her own serene consciousness. In a couple of hours, the effects would have worn off entirely. No more being tempted to do anything, no more jealousy or revenge or anger, or any other of the vapid emotions she’d absorbed through too much human contact.
Ships that did not eat should not crave chocolate. TARDISes were not renowned for having feet, and therefore thinking about pointy shoes was completely pointless. There were times when the TARDIS was glad that all the other TARDISes had gone bye bye so she’d never have to admit how far below her own standards she’d fallen.
This was precisely why it was so dangerous to spend all your vacations on Earth. She'd thought being marooned there was quite enough, but no, given any excuse at all, and it was rare that the excuses were as sophisticated as wanting a pint of milk these days, he’d be straight back with those same co-ordinates. It was like someone had pinned a giant elastic band to the centre of the planet and wrapped the other end round his waist. If she had to see that housing estate where he’d picked up the girl one more time she’d promised to send a fake declaration of war to the next passing alien with a really big gun.
Sadly, she didn’t think he’d find that funny. He didn’t find anything funny anymore, apart from the girl, sometimes, and the welcome distraction she provided. Since Gallifrey packed its bags and left for oblivion the inside of his mind had not been a funny place to be. Funny peculiar, maybe, not funny ha-ha. He was getting things out of perspective, making some distinctly out of character decisions for a Time Lord. Now that she was forced into thinking, forced into using some approximation of this basic, linear language, the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’ was a bit of a concern.
He was ‘the’ Time Lord, the only one, and he was doing exactly what he wanted, pleasing himself. He’d totally lost contact with the ‘relative’ - they weren’t even nodding acquaintances. What pleased him, and really, really pleased him sometimes, when she was doing something mysterious with her tongue that the TARDIS couldn’t quite work out, was the girl.
His whole world - or vortex maybe, since he didn’t have a world any more - revolved around her. And now, everything else did too. She had no idea. Not, the TARDIS corrected, that the girl wasn’t self centred, quite the reverse in fact, but she didn’t comprehend just how central she was. She even had the temerity to think that she’d managed to fly the TARDIS by herself. As if brilliantly advanced, technologically complicated miracles of engineering could be piloted by typing ‘emergency programme’ and hitting the return key. A human flying a TARDIS was truly the most stupid, stupid idea in the history of stupid ideas ever. But the girl thought she’d managed it, and that was even stupider. There wasn’t even such a word as ‘stupider’ and that was what too much squishy thinking did for you.
The emergency programme had been running for weeks - in fact, since the day he’d switched it on, no one had switched it off. This Time Lord had promised to look after her and he wasn’t the sort to break his promises. Ever. In any incarnation. Emergency programme one was far more than a pretty little movie and a one way ticket to Chav Estate Central. It also required the TARDIS to set up a telepathic link to monitor the girl’s activities, just in case she didn’t let the ship die on a street corner, just in case the key, and Rose with it, fell into the wrong hands and required saving. Just in case something happened in the middle of the fantastic life he hoped she’d be having. Just in case she needed him. And on a practical level, he wasn’t stupid enough to let the only person with a key to the current lock off on their own without some sort of failsafe. He was quite mechanically minded, this one.
He hadn’t foreseen the carnage she would cause with that tow truck though - such criminal damage wouldn’t have occurred to him. But he had left explicit instructions on what to do if the girl was in trouble and ever tried to work the ship properly, on her own, after a decent amount of time. Those instructions were very simple: reverse.
The TARDIS was quite insulted that the girl actually thought she could argue a brilliantly advanced - make that fantastically advanced time/spaceship into doing anything it didn’t want to do. But she’d followed her instructions, jumped back to that nasty, rat infested London slum and then returned to the equally nasty, Dalek infested spacestation. Mostly because he knew that in making sure he could save the girl, he’d also made sure she’d create an alternate timeline, and he knew he was the only person left who could sort it out. And that was the biggest example of squishy thinking she’d ever seen.
The TARDIS had played her part, reluctantly, except that she’d been so irritated by the girl’s assumptions that she’d rationalised burnt fingers and lights out and cold showers as the only sort of punishment any human could understand. Because she was worried. Because he’d told her to do something she knew categorically was risky, dangerous, Bad with a capital Bad. Two TARDISes really should not be in exactly the same place at exactly the same time. Even if there weren’t any laws any more to stop it, sheer common sense should have told him no. But he wasn’t listening. He’d seen a problem, and instead of fixing it, he’d made it worse. Because he’d promised. Because he couldn’t give up hope. Because something that the TARDIS didn’t have a name for stole over his mind every time he glanced in the girl’s direction.
The frightening bit was, when the girl had mounted her second smash (the console) and grab (any spare bit of power she could find) raid, had destroyed the Daleks and fallen over, he’d been more interested in catching her than wondering what was going on. He’d come back to the console room, entirely unregenerated, and she’d told him that his programme was still running and he’d started singing. He’d been laughing inside his head ever since. Even though she could tell he wasn’t quite sure what would happen next. He’d pleased himself. He’d laughed. He’d sung. And he’d hoped.
And now they were on their way back to total annihilation. She wasn’t sorry. This whole thinking business was embarrassing enough, but the fact that she’d started actually feeling - especially embarrassed - was mortifying. The first timeline was still in place. Through his head, she’d been able to feel it leaching back through the impostor, allowing some changes, sidetrips to Barcelona and Sheffield, for example, but inexorably reasserting its dominance. The co-ordinates he’d set would take them back to the Gamestation before the girl appeared the first time round - a tricky calculation, but nothing that a brilliantly advanced, technologically complicated miracle of engineering couldn’t manage. They would find the proverbial shady spot, because as long as you were very, very careful, you could be in the nearly the same place at nearly the same time. Time travel was just a matter of parking, after all. After that, they would watch, make sure he regenerated, make sure that what was meant to be actually happened. Without an unattended TARDIS the girl couldn’t come back from the fireplace and the whole of the alternate timeline would cease to exist. This thinking, feeling TARDIS and the muttering man inside her would be wiped out. She wanted to tell him she was glad.
He was on his feet again. That same word was on his lips. Unless. He paced. He stopped. He muttered to himself. He paced again. He reached out and made a course correction, only a tiny one, an hour or two at most. And, with a little whistle, he activated the very last part of emergency programme one.
The TARDIS had a split second to be horrified before she felt that awful shudder in time as she passed herself, too close for comfort, and landed again, in Archive Six. Minus one Doctor, minus one Rose Tyler, and minus one Captain Jack Harkness, (which was a shame, since he was always so good with his hands). Self consciousness fading fast, the TARDIS still had enough squishy human residue left to be angry. Furiously, absolutely, blisteringly, blindingly incandescent with rage, and this time with the Doctor. If she’d had a mouth, she’d have shouted her head off. If she’d had a head either. She felt her non existent feet trying to stamp. She knew exactly what he’d done, and this time there wasn’t any going back. She was stuck.
Stuck in the timeline, really part of events, part of a repeating cycle of stories that began with the Dalek’s transmat beam and ended with that stupid girl messing around with the vortex, with the Doctor regenerating, and then swanning off and leaving the girl by the fireplace, so that she could come back and unregenerate him again, and start the whole cycle anew. Except that now that now, he’d closed the loop, and made it permanent. There was no way out. A perfect, self repeating timeline, in which both alternate futures existed. She’d come back into her own past, and she was going to have to repeat the pattern all over again, forever.
She’d already done it, in fact. There was a reason why the TARDIS in Archive Six had already, by a staggering co-incidence, worked out the location of the Dalek fleet - she already knew it was there: twice. She could feel the Doctor, in another part of the spacestation start to wake up, with another really nasty headache and the sort of amnesia and dizziness you got from messing around with time. Her only consolations were that he’d have to act all surprised when the same things happened again, and that soon, she wouldn’t be able to feel, or think well enough to be annoyed with him anyway. He could carry on astounding everyone with just how quickly he’d thought of that delta wave solution, and just how easily he’d been defeated and abandoned the entire human race - and himself - to destruction, or a lifetime of taunts about unblocking sinks. Plus - she’d known him kiss about as many people as she could count on the fingers of one hand (assuming she owned hands), and yet he’d gone straight in for that first/last kiss with the girl like some time travelling Casanova - because he’d kissed her before, many times. And then, there was the fact that he’d given up. Ignoring the logic that if the girl had managed to hold onto the vortex for a good twenty minutes with no ill effects, it couldn’t possibly kill him in five. Especially since he’d pulled that living bonfire routine. He’d done it on purpose. He’d given up and let the whole thing happen, and just walked away, precisely because he was hoping he wouldn’t have to.
It was technically impossible to have exactly the same TARDIS in the exactly the same place at exactly the same time without creating another timeline, or something else Bad happening. He was attempting the impossible. Emergency programme one was attempting the impossible. He was trying to jump out of the loop. Every practical, rational, scientific principle forbade this course of action. He was well aware of all these things. He was a mechanically minded man.
That wasn’t all he was.
He was also a man who lived and loved in hope. He was also a man who thought it might be possible to make fate blink. There wasn’t any going back. Life didn’t have a rewind button. But it might just have a fast forward.
Against destiny and time and mechanics, he balanced hope, and love, and the possibility of something more. Science versus fiction. Physics against the metaphysical. Fact against faith. There were rules that kept the universe turning, but hope made it bearable.
Emergency programme one was very simple. Its instructions were clear: reverse. As the thinking, screaming, TARDIS, trailing a cloud of hope and impossibility approached that earlier version of herself, caught in the transmat beam, with Jack and Rose already taken, the last part of emergency programme one kicked in. It broadcast co-ordinates and, following instructions, the first, original TARDIS dematerialised, tried to jump the timeline, skip the paradox, and reverse. It really wasn’t possible to be in exactly the same place at exactly the same time, so the two ships crossed, swapped over. The first TARDIS, carrying a probably very confused Doctor who was bound to be wondering what was going on, attempted to fast forward, find a very specific fireplace, on a very specific spaceship, to keep a very specific promise. It was an exercise in hope. It couldn’t possibly work. Any mechanically minded man could have predicted that.
But maybe he’d saved the world so many times it was time it saved him back.
The man in the battered leather coat caught himself, up to his wrists in wires, mending the loose connection in the fireplace properly, with care and attention, and not just a good bang with the side of his fist. He felt time shudder around him. He felt his awareness of the dominant, the multiple, the endlessly possible futures shift slightly, settle into an ever so slightly different pattern. He remembered things he couldn’t possibly have known. ‘If I’m lucky...’ he muttered to himself, ‘very, very lucky….’ And he swung the magic door back to the future and stepped through the other side.
Rose was standing with her back to him, her head down, rubbing at her hand, and he felt that triumphant orchestra of joy cresting within him again, that same impulse to sing, that outward sign of hope that had made him whistle, and hum and generally make an idiot of himself every day over the last week.
She might not remember the past, and it wasn’t really his past either, but they had a future full of memories to make, a lifetime of second chances.
Some things were meant to be. Hope was the only saving the world plan he would ever need.
This just makes Chapter 12 possible. I know it's hard to understand already.
Unless
Tripping along the well worn lanes of the vortex, on her way back to an appointment with destiny, the TARDIS thought about hope. Then she realised what she was doing, and felt slightly embarrassed, which was worse.
Thinking was something no self respecting TARDIS would ever admit to. Even though there was no one left to admit anything to anymore, still there were standards to maintain. Thinking was fallible, imprecise, squishy. Ships, especially brilliantly advanced, technologically complicated miracles of engineering did not do squishy. Proper ships calculated, plotted variables, measured probabilities. There were parts of the TARDIS that had a distinct squishiness about them - she was sort of alive after all - but it would be extremely impolite to mention them in company and the TARDIS operated a don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
Except for right at the moment. Right at the moment, she was sorely tempted to tell him what she was thinking, even if he hadn’t asked. He had set course for Satellite Five (again) and then slumped in the jumpseat, but he kept muttering to himself. Standing up, pacing around a bit, and muttering. Always the same word.
At least emergency programme one was nearly finished with. The stupid thing had been running for weeks and she was heartily sick of it, but he was bound to shut it down in the next couple of minutes. He couldn’t possibly be thinking of using the last sub-routine. Not a single instant too soon, she’d been able to withdraw her telepathic link from inside the frighteningly primitive mind of the girlchild and retreat to the golden calm of her own serene consciousness. In a couple of hours, the effects would have worn off entirely. No more being tempted to do anything, no more jealousy or revenge or anger, or any other of the vapid emotions she’d absorbed through too much human contact.
Ships that did not eat should not crave chocolate. TARDISes were not renowned for having feet, and therefore thinking about pointy shoes was completely pointless. There were times when the TARDIS was glad that all the other TARDISes had gone bye bye so she’d never have to admit how far below her own standards she’d fallen.
This was precisely why it was so dangerous to spend all your vacations on Earth. She'd thought being marooned there was quite enough, but no, given any excuse at all, and it was rare that the excuses were as sophisticated as wanting a pint of milk these days, he’d be straight back with those same co-ordinates. It was like someone had pinned a giant elastic band to the centre of the planet and wrapped the other end round his waist. If she had to see that housing estate where he’d picked up the girl one more time she’d promised to send a fake declaration of war to the next passing alien with a really big gun.
Sadly, she didn’t think he’d find that funny. He didn’t find anything funny anymore, apart from the girl, sometimes, and the welcome distraction she provided. Since Gallifrey packed its bags and left for oblivion the inside of his mind had not been a funny place to be. Funny peculiar, maybe, not funny ha-ha. He was getting things out of perspective, making some distinctly out of character decisions for a Time Lord. Now that she was forced into thinking, forced into using some approximation of this basic, linear language, the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’ was a bit of a concern.
He was ‘the’ Time Lord, the only one, and he was doing exactly what he wanted, pleasing himself. He’d totally lost contact with the ‘relative’ - they weren’t even nodding acquaintances. What pleased him, and really, really pleased him sometimes, when she was doing something mysterious with her tongue that the TARDIS couldn’t quite work out, was the girl.
His whole world - or vortex maybe, since he didn’t have a world any more - revolved around her. And now, everything else did too. She had no idea. Not, the TARDIS corrected, that the girl wasn’t self centred, quite the reverse in fact, but she didn’t comprehend just how central she was. She even had the temerity to think that she’d managed to fly the TARDIS by herself. As if brilliantly advanced, technologically complicated miracles of engineering could be piloted by typing ‘emergency programme’ and hitting the return key. A human flying a TARDIS was truly the most stupid, stupid idea in the history of stupid ideas ever. But the girl thought she’d managed it, and that was even stupider. There wasn’t even such a word as ‘stupider’ and that was what too much squishy thinking did for you.
The emergency programme had been running for weeks - in fact, since the day he’d switched it on, no one had switched it off. This Time Lord had promised to look after her and he wasn’t the sort to break his promises. Ever. In any incarnation. Emergency programme one was far more than a pretty little movie and a one way ticket to Chav Estate Central. It also required the TARDIS to set up a telepathic link to monitor the girl’s activities, just in case she didn’t let the ship die on a street corner, just in case the key, and Rose with it, fell into the wrong hands and required saving. Just in case something happened in the middle of the fantastic life he hoped she’d be having. Just in case she needed him. And on a practical level, he wasn’t stupid enough to let the only person with a key to the current lock off on their own without some sort of failsafe. He was quite mechanically minded, this one.
He hadn’t foreseen the carnage she would cause with that tow truck though - such criminal damage wouldn’t have occurred to him. But he had left explicit instructions on what to do if the girl was in trouble and ever tried to work the ship properly, on her own, after a decent amount of time. Those instructions were very simple: reverse.
The TARDIS was quite insulted that the girl actually thought she could argue a brilliantly advanced - make that fantastically advanced time/spaceship into doing anything it didn’t want to do. But she’d followed her instructions, jumped back to that nasty, rat infested London slum and then returned to the equally nasty, Dalek infested spacestation. Mostly because he knew that in making sure he could save the girl, he’d also made sure she’d create an alternate timeline, and he knew he was the only person left who could sort it out. And that was the biggest example of squishy thinking she’d ever seen.
The TARDIS had played her part, reluctantly, except that she’d been so irritated by the girl’s assumptions that she’d rationalised burnt fingers and lights out and cold showers as the only sort of punishment any human could understand. Because she was worried. Because he’d told her to do something she knew categorically was risky, dangerous, Bad with a capital Bad. Two TARDISes really should not be in exactly the same place at exactly the same time. Even if there weren’t any laws any more to stop it, sheer common sense should have told him no. But he wasn’t listening. He’d seen a problem, and instead of fixing it, he’d made it worse. Because he’d promised. Because he couldn’t give up hope. Because something that the TARDIS didn’t have a name for stole over his mind every time he glanced in the girl’s direction.
The frightening bit was, when the girl had mounted her second smash (the console) and grab (any spare bit of power she could find) raid, had destroyed the Daleks and fallen over, he’d been more interested in catching her than wondering what was going on. He’d come back to the console room, entirely unregenerated, and she’d told him that his programme was still running and he’d started singing. He’d been laughing inside his head ever since. Even though she could tell he wasn’t quite sure what would happen next. He’d pleased himself. He’d laughed. He’d sung. And he’d hoped.
And now they were on their way back to total annihilation. She wasn’t sorry. This whole thinking business was embarrassing enough, but the fact that she’d started actually feeling - especially embarrassed - was mortifying. The first timeline was still in place. Through his head, she’d been able to feel it leaching back through the impostor, allowing some changes, sidetrips to Barcelona and Sheffield, for example, but inexorably reasserting its dominance. The co-ordinates he’d set would take them back to the Gamestation before the girl appeared the first time round - a tricky calculation, but nothing that a brilliantly advanced, technologically complicated miracle of engineering couldn’t manage. They would find the proverbial shady spot, because as long as you were very, very careful, you could be in the nearly the same place at nearly the same time. Time travel was just a matter of parking, after all. After that, they would watch, make sure he regenerated, make sure that what was meant to be actually happened. Without an unattended TARDIS the girl couldn’t come back from the fireplace and the whole of the alternate timeline would cease to exist. This thinking, feeling TARDIS and the muttering man inside her would be wiped out. She wanted to tell him she was glad.
He was on his feet again. That same word was on his lips. Unless. He paced. He stopped. He muttered to himself. He paced again. He reached out and made a course correction, only a tiny one, an hour or two at most. And, with a little whistle, he activated the very last part of emergency programme one.
The TARDIS had a split second to be horrified before she felt that awful shudder in time as she passed herself, too close for comfort, and landed again, in Archive Six. Minus one Doctor, minus one Rose Tyler, and minus one Captain Jack Harkness, (which was a shame, since he was always so good with his hands). Self consciousness fading fast, the TARDIS still had enough squishy human residue left to be angry. Furiously, absolutely, blisteringly, blindingly incandescent with rage, and this time with the Doctor. If she’d had a mouth, she’d have shouted her head off. If she’d had a head either. She felt her non existent feet trying to stamp. She knew exactly what he’d done, and this time there wasn’t any going back. She was stuck.
Stuck in the timeline, really part of events, part of a repeating cycle of stories that began with the Dalek’s transmat beam and ended with that stupid girl messing around with the vortex, with the Doctor regenerating, and then swanning off and leaving the girl by the fireplace, so that she could come back and unregenerate him again, and start the whole cycle anew. Except that now that now, he’d closed the loop, and made it permanent. There was no way out. A perfect, self repeating timeline, in which both alternate futures existed. She’d come back into her own past, and she was going to have to repeat the pattern all over again, forever.
She’d already done it, in fact. There was a reason why the TARDIS in Archive Six had already, by a staggering co-incidence, worked out the location of the Dalek fleet - she already knew it was there: twice. She could feel the Doctor, in another part of the spacestation start to wake up, with another really nasty headache and the sort of amnesia and dizziness you got from messing around with time. Her only consolations were that he’d have to act all surprised when the same things happened again, and that soon, she wouldn’t be able to feel, or think well enough to be annoyed with him anyway. He could carry on astounding everyone with just how quickly he’d thought of that delta wave solution, and just how easily he’d been defeated and abandoned the entire human race - and himself - to destruction, or a lifetime of taunts about unblocking sinks. Plus - she’d known him kiss about as many people as she could count on the fingers of one hand (assuming she owned hands), and yet he’d gone straight in for that first/last kiss with the girl like some time travelling Casanova - because he’d kissed her before, many times. And then, there was the fact that he’d given up. Ignoring the logic that if the girl had managed to hold onto the vortex for a good twenty minutes with no ill effects, it couldn’t possibly kill him in five. Especially since he’d pulled that living bonfire routine. He’d done it on purpose. He’d given up and let the whole thing happen, and just walked away, precisely because he was hoping he wouldn’t have to.
It was technically impossible to have exactly the same TARDIS in the exactly the same place at exactly the same time without creating another timeline, or something else Bad happening. He was attempting the impossible. Emergency programme one was attempting the impossible. He was trying to jump out of the loop. Every practical, rational, scientific principle forbade this course of action. He was well aware of all these things. He was a mechanically minded man.
That wasn’t all he was.
He was also a man who lived and loved in hope. He was also a man who thought it might be possible to make fate blink. There wasn’t any going back. Life didn’t have a rewind button. But it might just have a fast forward.
Against destiny and time and mechanics, he balanced hope, and love, and the possibility of something more. Science versus fiction. Physics against the metaphysical. Fact against faith. There were rules that kept the universe turning, but hope made it bearable.
Emergency programme one was very simple. Its instructions were clear: reverse. As the thinking, screaming, TARDIS, trailing a cloud of hope and impossibility approached that earlier version of herself, caught in the transmat beam, with Jack and Rose already taken, the last part of emergency programme one kicked in. It broadcast co-ordinates and, following instructions, the first, original TARDIS dematerialised, tried to jump the timeline, skip the paradox, and reverse. It really wasn’t possible to be in exactly the same place at exactly the same time, so the two ships crossed, swapped over. The first TARDIS, carrying a probably very confused Doctor who was bound to be wondering what was going on, attempted to fast forward, find a very specific fireplace, on a very specific spaceship, to keep a very specific promise. It was an exercise in hope. It couldn’t possibly work. Any mechanically minded man could have predicted that.
But maybe he’d saved the world so many times it was time it saved him back.
The man in the battered leather coat caught himself, up to his wrists in wires, mending the loose connection in the fireplace properly, with care and attention, and not just a good bang with the side of his fist. He felt time shudder around him. He felt his awareness of the dominant, the multiple, the endlessly possible futures shift slightly, settle into an ever so slightly different pattern. He remembered things he couldn’t possibly have known. ‘If I’m lucky...’ he muttered to himself, ‘very, very lucky….’ And he swung the magic door back to the future and stepped through the other side.
Rose was standing with her back to him, her head down, rubbing at her hand, and he felt that triumphant orchestra of joy cresting within him again, that same impulse to sing, that outward sign of hope that had made him whistle, and hum and generally make an idiot of himself every day over the last week.
She might not remember the past, and it wasn’t really his past either, but they had a future full of memories to make, a lifetime of second chances.
Some things were meant to be. Hope was the only saving the world plan he would ever need.