Notes; I never though I'd ever experiment with a crossover story but one day recently it hit me like a pile of bricks that I just had to try this one. The idea was just not going to leave me alone until I give it a go. Actually I originally wanted to write something based on "Ayreon", a series of progressive rock albums that actually tell a very obvious, detailed,and interesting science fiction type story. It seemed like it would be very interesting if the two universes came together. The story line of this fiction will likely end up a bit darker, because I am roughly following the Ayreon plot, which if you follow the story line, is actually pretty grim and even a bit creepy. I plan thouhg still to write something that can be easily followed and will make complete sense to readers who are fans of either or.
Reviews are more than welcome or course.
Clara was getting ready to leave her classroom on a Friday at the end of the school day. She reached for her purse, stored under her desk, and set it down on her lap to dig for her lip gloss, which she quickly applied while daydreaming of a bubble bath and night watching romantic comedies in her comfy flat. She thought of stopping for a bottle of some decent wine on her way home and, decided she may as well go shopping for curtains over the weekend. Perhaps a couple of new floor lamps would be nice while she was at it. She imagined as she stood in her empty classroom, applying pink lip gloss and thinking of her new curtain color, just how boring her life must have seemed to almost anyone at all, just how ordinary. She almost laughed to herself. If only they knew even one small part of the truth.
The sudden loud whirring and whining sound, made her look around the room, but still it happened too fast to really catch it's direct well enough at all. It was only when the Doctor quickly threw open the door to her storage cabinet, that she knew for sure where his ship had landed. Still his sudden landing had only managed to startled her, causing her to jump up from her office chair, sending it crashing against the blackboard, and the entire contents of her open purse dumping onto the floor.
"What is God's name..." she cried, scrambling to retrieve her spilled belongings.
"A fine aim you have with that chair," he said laughing, but somehow his tine was serious too. "I must make a note of that skill of yours. Next time we are on some alien planet backed into a corner, angry enemies approaching, you could more than likely take the whole lot of them down with a well aimed office chair."
"Very funny," Clara mumbled, finally managing to get everything back in order. "What you doing, parking in my cupboard again?"
The Doctor only shrugged. "Good a place as any to park her. You coming?"
"Now? Where? Why?"
"I figure, why not go to Mars." The Doctor's answer sounded exactly like he casually went to such places on a regular basis.
Clara stood blinking her eyes in confusion at him for at least a few seconds. "You mean the planet?"
"Of course. What else would I possibly mean. Timed right we'll get there just in time for breakfast and a great view of the moons."
"Doctor, it's four in the afternoon."
"Oh it quite possibly is, yes. But not in Mars's eastern timezone."
Clara was beyond baffled by the whole matter. She had planned on her hot bath, her movies, her weekend of living normal boring old ordinary life. And now she was listening to some seemingly senseless ranting about breakfast and a view on a planet she knew full well was neither friendly to life, or inhabited. The curiosity that drove her to travel, to chase after the crazy Timelord time and again compelled her once again and with little more than a second thought she was back on board his time-ship again.
"The first human explorers finally made it to Mars in the year 2037, claimed it for the human race. They've just been building and building since. Creating atmosphere, planting trees, mining resources, starting little families that grow up watching dust storms like you would have watching rainfall." The Doctor went about explaining the history of something his companion barely understand as he dematerialized his ship. "See this is a reason I keep coming back to humanity as an amazing spices of being. Your need to do the impossible time and again. Someone tells a group of humans they'll never get of the ground, and you go off and eventually build the first cities on a planet they always said is nothing but rocks and freezing cold. Push the blue button, to your left."
"I just told a room full of school kids last Tuesday that they would not likely see man reach Mars in their lifetimes. Too far, too, too long, of a mission, all that boring old fact stuff," Clara remarked, as she pushed the button and hold on to the control console. "Tell me I didn't just wrong disappoint a bunch of twelve year olds."
The Ship rematerialized, with a loud obnoxious noise, and the Doctor shoved open the door with far less caution than his companion knew he should have had. Within a few seconds though she slowly and very cautiously walked outside herself.
They had landed inside a pressurized building, with perfectly safe air. It became quickly apparent that they were at the end of a narrow windowless passageway. Dim artifical lighting flickered overhead from a ceiling barely more then a couple of meters high. The place was light metal and plastic, and silent except for a wind heard well from somewhere outside. The pair wandered slowly through the passage until it met up with another slightly wider and higher one.
This second passage though revealed little more than the first. No signs of people, no evidence of life or existence of anyone at all. Surely the place should have contained the cries of children, the sounds of a dropped dish, or even the noise of a badly tuned radio. But there was so far nothing at all. It was easy enough to assume they had landed inside some little used area. They both walked together down a new passage and then another one, taking themselves further an further from where they had landed, but still no closer to finding anyone at all.
"Where is everbody?" Clara questioned slowly as she walked forward. She was getting nervous and had no idea why. It was only an abandoned building so far. Surely no clear and present danger. She had had trouble walking right since stepping out of the time ship, and she almost lost her footing as she tried to step over a scrap of a metal laying on the floor.
"Not sure yet," the Doctor answered. "We'll find them. We must have come at a bad time. Maybe they are in a meeting or something. And be careful trying to walk here. Much less gravity."
"Well I know that of course," Clara said, still considering the empty and silent passageways. "It's one thing to read up on a subject, to think about what gravity must be like here, but another to try to walk fast in it. Do you suppose there's some danger in here. Bad air maybe, leaking chemicals? Something that can kill us? Should we actually be in here?"
"Good point. Worth checking." In the next second the Doctor had his well trusted sonic screwdriver in his hand, spinning slowing on the spot and walking forward ad back a bit scanning the air around them.
"Air's fine. The slight chemical readings would seem to be little more than some engine coolant and bleach. Same stuff you'd smell in any workshop on Earth."
"Okay next question? Do we actually want to meet whoever lives here? I mean we have no idea..."
The Doctor laughed at her. "Clara, Clara. These are not some aliens bent on humanity's death and destruction. They're human people like you, rasing families, working, living, chasing humanity's dream so others don't have to. You look so nervous today. What for?"
She shook her head. "I'm fine. I mean I don't think it's anything really."
The came to a place where they faced a dead end in front of them. But to the left right two new passages lead in opposite directions. The Doctor grinned at his companion.
"You check the left one, Ill check the right. Call me if you find anything interesting, or terrifying or whatever it is you humans tend to yell about."
Clara was about to object, to suggest the wisdom of sticking together. But the Doctor was gone running straight down the righthand passage, before she could even open her mouth to speak.
"Why is it," she asked herself out loud while she slowly took the lefthand one, "even the simple days of looking for breakfast and moonrises, end up with me alone in passagesways with flickering lights."
She found herself shuddering slightly with an anxiety she could not explain. She found herself worrying strangely enough that the lights could simply all go out. She worried about just how dark the place would be if the power should fail. Something wasn't right and she wished she had at least a hint of what that something could be. There was no clear danger and yet she stood nervous and trembling and feeling somehow far too alone. It was that feeling of almost complete aloneness she realized then, that she could not understand or get over. She asked herself what it all meant and shook her head, not even close to knowing the answer.
She came to the end of that hallway before she expected to, and found herself facing a simple lightweight white door instead of just another turn off. She stood facing the door for a moment, and unsure what to do, she slowly reached out and knocked on it.
"Hello?" She called, and a second time slightly louder while knocking again. Not a sound answered her back.
Slowly, carefully, she turned the handle and pushed open the door. Walking in, with even greater caution, as her strange anxiety grew worse, she found herself in what must have been someone's workroom, office and living space, all sort of throw in together, combined in one space for what she could only guess was for reason of practicality. Computers and related equipment sat here and there on top of the work tables. There was a fancy futuristic looking thing that could have only been a two way radio of sorts sitting near one keyboard. Science equipment of many kinds was thrown carefully about and most of it knocked over. Coils of wire and tools were tossed onto the tables and floor. Somewhere in the small room something she knew was meant to be a a sleeping place and on the other side of the room were a collection of plants, most likely taken from a greenhouse that had to have existed but had not been discovered yet.
The place was in safe enough condition and the scans had of course confirmed no leaks of anything of such concern. But the place was nevertheless obviously falling apart as far as ideal standard conditions for highly technical life support structures, would surely have seen it. The flickering lights were one thing, but the walls were dented in places and looking like a fatal collapse could happen within years. The more she looked at tables and storage cupboards, the more missing bolts and screws she counted. One small cupboard door, she noted, was hanging by only a bottom hinge. She knew it could let go and crash to the floor at any point, simply from it's own weight.
"Doctor," Clara called, turned back toward the door she had left open. She stayed in the room, looking around again, trying to notice anything interesting, or perhaps any sign of anyone coming to at least fix some hinges.
She turned to a dusty computer set up on a work table closest to her. The unit contained a keyboard mic , speaker, and headset and it made complete sense to assume it was the one most commonly used. The technology was ahead of her own time of course, but still, turning it on was a simple enough thing, even given her limited skills. A data disc sat nearby on the tabletop, clearly placed with greater thought than the many randomly thrown around items all over the room. Barely thinking twice she placed it into the disc drive as the computer finished starting up. At once a moving image came onto the screen and the speaker made a terrible cracking feedback noise. The picture on the screen was poorly filmed and likely damaged. The screen was filled with rolling grey horizontal lines and the video was somewhere between black and white and slightly colored, but she could still clearly make out the image of a young man possibly under twenty, dressed in simple blue clothing.
"Whoever it is that might be listening to this at any point, hello." she heard over the speaker as the sound caught up to the picture, still full of some feedback but audible. "My name is Franklin Mijovic-Anderson. I am about nineteen years old. It's safe to assume I am the last human alive, and I have not successfully found reason to think otherwise."
Clara gasped in shock at her horrifying discovery. But she went on listening, curiosity and dread equaling driving her.
"The year is currently 2115, or at least I think it is. I am losing track of such details and cannot be bothered to figure it out. It hardly matters now I suppose. A little history lesson for anyone who may be listening now, however that may be possible, all things considered. 2084 was the year everyone on Earth came to an end. Apparently it went up nearly at once over only about four hours. Just a few hours to desamate an entire planet. Who knows who fired first or who they were aiming at, but nation after nation where all very quickly firing nuclear weapons at each other. I guess in a couple of hours the world was dying and in only a couple more everyone was gone. It was all rubble and dust and fallout, a planet made into a scrap-yard filled with bodies. I never did learn what it was all for. I wish sometimes I understand that and sometimes I don't think I would have wanted to know. But the colony on Mars was left behind, far from the damage and the madness of it all. I guess they just kept going, kept trying to make it here though nothing was near ready to stand alone yet without Earth's help. I was not even born yet. I've only read of all this in the records and share with you now the best I can. This place has been failing, slowly dying itself as long as I've lived. I am the last of the citizens still alive. It's all helpless now. I'll never be rescued and if something should happen to me, there is no one to ever know about it."
The sound and the picture came to a sudden end after that. The file menu that came up indicated there was more on the disc, but Clara only clicked the close button instead. She stood staring that the now quite computer showing only a blue screen, and shock terribly for a good minute or more.
"Something is... very wrong here." the Doctor speakign suddenly in the silent room made her turn quickly. She hadn't even known he had been standing behind her, listening to the boy speak as well.
"This isn't where we meant to come, is it?" she asked, shakily.
"No. Well it is and it isn't. This is a Mars colony yes. There's no doubt about that. But it's all wrong. Time is all wrong."
"Doctor, I've seen the future far beyond today. I know for sure the world did not end in 2084. That's less than sixty years from my own time. That's just not possible."
"It's an alternate time stream of some kind. It's got to be. I can't imagine what else could have happen other than flying through the time-stream to land into some alternate version.
You're right Clara, that's only sixty years. Time felt fine when we left Earth. If the human race was about to be wiped out of history I'd have sensed it sooner. Clara, come on, hurry. We've got to go. And grab that disc will you. We might find more clues on there."