The Melting Planet
Chapter 1
Jackie gave a scathing glance to the tall, thin man in a brown suit fluttering around behind her as she poured hot water into four mugs. If the man noticed her caustic glare, he certainly didn't acknowledge it, continuing to wander about the flat with the level of concentration of an attention deficit child. Currently he was opening drawers, peering inside for half a second, and then moving onto the next one. Not looking for something, just curiosity. Needless to say, half of the drawers and cupboards were left open. Jackie picked up three of the mugs, leaving one for the Doctor, and headed out into the living room, where her daughter, Rose, and Rose's ex-boyfriend, Mickey, were sharing gossip.
"You're kidding, right? Helen's pregnant with Stephen's baby?! I didn't even know they were together!"
"They're not. Well, not anymore. While you've been out there, running around with aliens in the year 1400 or whatever it is you've been doing, all of us have been going along with our normal, boring lives." The biting tone of Mickey's tone was lost on no one.
Jackie handed Rose and Mickey their tea and sat down herself. "So, Rose, Hun, how long are you and Doctor planning on staying this time?"
"Just today and tomorrow," she answered, blowing on her tea.
"At least, until something comes up and you have to leave before then," Jackie said. Mickey gave a look that said it was on his mind too.
Rose frowned, and, not being able to say anything to counter that statement, took a sip from her drink, and, determining that the tea was too hot still, put it down on the coffee table.
"Oy! Use a coaster!" Jackie barked before going back the previous topic. "Rose, I rarely see you enough as it is, and then whenever you visit, you always leave as soon as you arrive, it seems. How am I to know that you and the Doctor won't run off and it'll be another year before I see you?"
"Mum…" Rose gave a pleading look to Mickey, who gave a small shrug. Once Jackie got into one of her tirades, no force in the universe could interfere without evoking her wrath.
"Don't 'mum' me. Every time you run off with that man, I get so worried. You could die out there, and I would never know! Do you know how hard that is, going through daily life, knowing that my own daughter is out in the universe, doing God-knows-what on some alien planet?"
"Fine. I get it. We'll stay the full two days. No running off on this trip. Got that, Doctor?" Rose shouted into the other room.
"Got it," came a reply from down the hall. The Doctor had moved on to Rose's room. Both Jackie and Mickey marked off his behavior as just being weird, but Rose knew that he was intentionally trying to stay out of their conversation and give them some space.
"I sorry, Mum, Mickey; I know you both want me to come home, but if you could see the things out there that I've seen. If you could see the future, the past, the all other worlds out there, you'd want to travel with the Doctor, too."
"I just want to know that you're safe." Jackie pleaded, grasping onto her mug with both hands.
"We've been over this, Mum. The Doctor takes good care of me. I trust him."
"Well, I don't."
Mickey, not wanting to be caught in the middle of an argument between Rose and her mother – both of whom, incredibly stubborn, tried to change the topic. "So, Rose, you mentioned earlier about you and the Doctor visiting a city on Venus and having to keep it from falling into lava in the future. What exactly happened?"
Rose flashed him a smile. Good ol' Mickey – she made a mental note that she'd have to repay him somehow. "Well, it all started about a few days after the Doctor and I had that incident with Queen Victoria and that werewolf-"
Jackie cut her off. "Queen Victoria and a WEREWOLF?! Now I KNOW you have to be making that up!" she declared incredulously.
"Yes. A werewolf, Mum. And the Doctor and I were knighted. As I was saying - Venus. The Doctor and I took three days off from travelling and spent it, just the two of us, together in the TARDIS. The next day–"
"Just what were you two doing during that time?"
"We were just in the TARDIS –"
"Doing WHAT?"
Mickey focused his eyes on his tea when Rose pleadingly looked at him again. He was not getting dragged into this. "We weren't doing anything, Mum. Just talking and… stuff.
"Stuff?"
"Muuuum!"
"You better not bring be back any alien, three-headed grandchildren!"
"WHAT?! NO! The Doctor and I aren't… we're not, you know… Just, NO! No! We're just not!"
Jackie flashed her a disapproving look, but remained silent, allowing Rose to continue her story.
"ANYWAY! I was sleeping in my bed in the TARDIS…
...
The whirring-wheezing noise of the TARDIS in flight accompanied by jerking motions that almost made her fall out of her bed was what woke Rose up that morning, if morning is what you'd call it. After all – there was no real sense of time in the TARDIS. You could wake up in the French Revolution in the morning, by noon, go swimming at the bioluminescent lake of the planet Ariel, and at the end of the day, have dinner with Genghis Khan (of whom Rose thought wasn't quite as bad as all the stories made him out to be, although his table manners were atrocious.)
Wiping the sleep out of her eyes, Rose slid into the fuzzy slippers situated next to her bed. She always kicked them off wherever – sometimes even in a different room of the TARDIS – but, somehow, whenever she needed them, they were always next to the bed. She couldn't figure out if the Doctor put them there or if was the TARDIS itself. Stranger things had happened. She kept meaning to ask him about that.
She shuffled through the impossible number of rooms to the control room to see where the Doctor had landed them, why, and, most importantly, to complain about his interrupting her sleep.
"Good morning, Rose!" he declared cheerfully, not even glancing up from the screen on the consol.
"Mornin'…" she groggily replied. "Any particular reason why you felt that now would be a good time to fly around?"
The Doctor looked up and gave her one of his winning grins. "Nope! Absolutely none at all."
Rose gave him a dark look. It was too early for this.
He ignored her dark expression. "Glad you see you're up, though. Whaddya say - how does Venus sound?"
"What if I said no?" Rose responded, yawning.
The Doctor's grin widened. "Well, too late for that, because we've already landed."
"You're impossible." Rose said, humor in her voice. Both of them knew that she'd never turn down his offers of various travel destinations.
"Nothing's impossible, Rose, but I'll take unlikely."
"So, what's on Venus?"
"The city of Inanna – the planet's capital. Founded in 2142, it was site of the first manned expedition to Venus, and, later the first human colony on Venus. Now, in 3529, it's one of the largest human cities, nearly triple the size of London."…
...
At this point, the Doctor walked into the living room, tea in hand and cut Rose off. "Ac-tually, Inanna was founded in the year 2143, not 2142. And it's larger than three times London. Higher population density, too. More akin to Tokyo, in that respect, really. At its peak, it was a little over fifteen-thousand people per square mile, although, when we landed, in 3774, it was a little under four hundred. Mostly human population, but with a large number of cross-breeds who immigrated from Earth, seeking more equality." The Doctor sat down next to Rose and sipped his tea.
"As with most Venusian cities, it's named after a goddess of love. Inanna was the Sumerian goddess of fertility, sex, and war. For the most part, aptly named; the city had a reputation of the inhabitants being a tad promiscuous. Fortunately, never lived up to that war portion. I don't know what it is about humans, but 'themed planets' will become such a fad in the future. Just seems to cheapen things from my point of view. Look at Pluto – perfectly good planet, and then you humans have to make it so depressing by naming everything on it after death. Hades and Nergal are simply terrible city names. It's no wonder the suicide rate there is so high – Welllll, then again, could partially be from that being-so-far-away-from-the-sun-to-the-point-where-it-always-just-looks-like-a-bright-star thing…" the Doctor then turned to look each of them in the eye with absolute solemnity. "Pluto. Is. A. Planet." He then slipped back into his normal cheerful demeanor.
"All-in-all, Inanna; lovely city. Great character. Friendly people." He took another sip and put his feet up on the coffee table "Might I add, Jackie, that this tea is exquisite. Where ever did you get it?"
"Tesco," she said, flatly, obviously not moved by his attempted compliment and irritated about his feet on the furniture.
Rose leaned over to Mickey and jokingly whispered, "See what I have to put up with all the time?"
"How do you stand it?" Mickey sarcastically whispered back, with a smile.
"Ay! I heard that!"
Mickey rolled his eyes. "Back to the story. Rose, you said the two of you landed in 3529 and the Doctor said 3774. He called you out on that one-year difference but not that one. That's almost two hundred fifty years apart."
"No, no. She was right, and so was I. The TARDIS doesn't always end up in the time period that I tell it to. Or the right planet, sometimes. She's a tad temperamental. I was aiming for 3529, but ended up two hundred forty-five years later."
Rose gave the Doctor a playful whack on the head. "I wasn't at that part yet. You're ruining my story."
"Well it was coming up." Another whack. The Doctor held a hand up in mock surrender. "Fine, fine. Ignore the nine-hundred year old genius expert. But you know me. Can't resist a good yarn. Carry on."
"As I was saying before the Doctor so rudely interrupted, I was regaled with more information than I could ever use about Inanna…"
...
"And, since you're up, let's be off!" The Doctor waltzed towards the TARDIS doors.
"I'm in my jim jams," Rose stated.
The Doctor spun on his heel to face her. "And?"
"And my slippers."
He simply looked at her.
Rose sighed. "I'm getting dressed. Don't leave without me." About fifteen minutes later, Rose emerged in jeans and a t-shirt.
"We ready now?" The Doctor asked. Rose gave a nod. "Alright-y then! Allons-y!" He put his hand on the handle of the TARDIS door.
"Wait! Doesn't Venus have a poisonous atmosphere or something?"
"Well, yes, but –"
"And you're just going to open the door."
The Doctor grinned. "Oh, you do know me too well, Rose Tyler." He opened the TARDIS door with a flourish.
Rose expected billowing amounts of yellow and orange gas to fill the room, choking the two of them to death, but, nothing.
"Now, you see, Rose, no danger. Venus was terraformed in 2450. Cleaned up all that sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and all those other 'dioxides' in the atmosphere, added a bit of oxygen and hydrogen, regulated the temperature, added some water, and made the land suitable for growing crops. One of the first non-earth-like planets you humans did terraforming to, too. Mars - there was no issue there. The moon – difficult, I'll take that- but everything fell into place once the atmosphere was established that it would stay this time. Even Saturn's moon, Titan, was terraformed relatively easily – it already had water and an atmosphere with a similar pressure to Earth's –all they had to do was heat it up and take away all that pesky hydrogen cyanide and it was ready to go! But Venus! Oh! Venus was a tricky one. Took about fifty or sixty years to make it habitable without a big glass dome… Well, actually, the dome was Plexiglas, but you get the idea. Shall we have a look?" and with that, the Doctor strode out the door, Rose in tow.
The first thing Rose noticed was a gust of hot air. She looked around. The land was barren – there were plants, yes, but no live ones. Up in the sky, the color was similar to Earth's blue but with more yellowish.
The Doctor noticed Rose's gaze to the sky. "Yeaaaah… although Venus's atmosphere is almost completely similar to Earth's at this point, they never could get that color out. Kinda like a carpet stain that never goes away, no matter how hard you scrub. Hypothetically, of course. You can't scrub the sky."
"But Venus is supposed to be orange! And where are all these plants from?" Rose exclaimed. This was nothing like the textbooks from her science classes.
"Didn't you listen at all to my little speech about the terraforming?"
"I tried, but I had no idea what you're talking about, so I kinda stopped paying attention." Rose said, still taking it all in.
"They changed the planet to resemble the Earth more. Its environment, its land, its magnetic field – all of it, recreated." The Doctor explained. "Although, it shouldn't be this hot. One component of the terraforming process was changing the temperature as well. It should be a temperate twenty-three degrees celcius, but it's abouuuut…." The Doctor stuck his finger in his mouth, and then held it out to the wind. "Mmm… thirty-two degrees. Also, there's a storm coming, so we should hurry to the city before it hits."
"One problem. What city? You've landed us in the middle of nowhere, Doctor."
"Oh, it's right over there. About five miles over," the Doctor said, already walking in that direction.
"Five miles!" Rose exclaimed.
"Yup! Be glad that you're wearing your trainers!" And they were off...
...
"So you made my daughter walk five miles in thirty-two degree weather?" Jackie snapped. "Couldn't you have just moved your flying blue box closer?"
"That's what I wanted to know," said Rose.
The Doctor raised his shoulders defensively. "Well, yeah, I could have, but the TARDIS was already being temperamental when I was flying it. I was afraid that if I tried to move it, it might have ended up farther off course. And, Jackie, it's called a TARDIS, not 'flying blue box.'" Jackie scowled. The Doctor calmly sipped his tea, a small grin on his face.
Mickey laughed. "You were already two-hundred fifty years off course. Sounds like you couldn't have ended up much farther."
"Well, I didn't know that then, did I?"
"Doctor! I'm telling my story!" Rose huffed.
"Don't look at me! Your mother was the one who disrupted you this time." This earned him a jab in the ribs. "You are downright abusive today!" he joked.
"ANYWAY, eventually we got to the city…."
Rose and the Doctor looked out upon the tall, spire of the buildings once they arrived. The emptiness-
"Didn't you forget the part with the shoes on the walk over?" the Doctor interrupted.
Rose gave him an angry stare. "If you're so interested in interrupting me, why don't you tell it?"
"Alright, then, since you asked so nicely." The Doctor took a sip, took his feet off the table, and leaned over. "In the middle of the walk, Rose noticed some thing odd about the constancy of the ground…"
"Doctor! How much longer do we have to go? It's hot and my feet are beginning to hurt," Rose complained. "Can't we just go back to the TARDIS and land closer?"
"Come on, Rose. It's not that much farther."
Rose stopped. "And how much is 'not that much'?"
"Ehhh… about the same distance we just travelled." He said, still going forwards. Rose stayed where she was. The Doctor eventually turned around. "Well, what are you standing there for? Since we're already halfway there, might as well keep going. Look, you can see it right there." He pointed into the distance. It was kind of blurry –there was some sort of weather between them, obscuring their view - but they could make out buildings – a tall and strange array of skinny skyscrapers.
Rose glared, but started walking anyway. "Hey, does the ground feel weird to you?" she asked.
"Now that you mention it, it does feel a tad sticky," the Doctor said, looking at his shoes. More dirt than usual was embedded into the underside. He brought a finger to the bottom of them with the intention of giving a stroke, but he quickly pulled his hand away upon touching, as it if brought him pain. "We need to move quickly through this area." And with that, he pulled her into a run, the Doctor noticing his feet sinking into the ground somewhat with every step....
...
"Well, what was it? Why was the ground sticky?" Mickey asked.
"If I told you now, I'd completely ruin the sense of suspense later, wouldn't I?"
"I think he just wants to show off that big brain of his. He's always doing that; keeping information to himself until he has to share," Rose butted in.
"Heyyy. You'd want to show off too if you were as clever as I am."
"I swear, you two sound like an old married couple," Jackie pointedly said as she finished the last of her mug. She stood up and looked into everyone else's glasses, noticing Mickey and the Doctor's were empty. "Who wants more tea?" she asked.
Both the Doctor and Mickey offered up their glasses. Rose looked down at hers on the table, all but forgotten. It had gone cold. Jackie picked up Rose's glass anyway. "I'll warm yours up for you, dear."
"Thanks, mum," Rose shouted behind her as Jackie left the room.
The Doctor got up and paced around the room, restless again. Rose could never figure out how his thin frame could always hold so much energy. Always fidgety, he was; she had always noticed it, but his little eccentricities seemed so much more visible in contrast to the domestic location.
A small, awkward silence. Rose didn't want to say anything to the Doctor for fear that Mickey would feel left out, and vice versa. The Doctor was the one to finally break it.
"So, Mickey, haven't seen much of you in a while. How have things on Earth been?"
Mickey sank in his seat. "'S'alright, I suppose. Nothing that would interest either of you, having been everywhere in the universe and all…"
"Naaaaw, I wouldn't say that – there's all sorts of adventure to be had in the mundane. Just gotta look for it."
"Oh yeah?" Mickey exclaimed. "Like what?" The Doctor was silent. Mickey continued. "What do you know about life here? That's just it, you don't, so don't even try pulling that 'adventure in everyday life' rubbish with me."
Rose covered her face with her hands. She knew a blow up between Mickey and the Doctor was inevitable, but she had hoped that it wouldn't have to be this visit. Not now. She couldn't back out of it, either; make up some emergency that they had to go attend to – she'd promised to her mother that they'd stay the full two days.
The Doctor stood in front of Mickey and leaned over, hands clasped behind his back, until his long nose almost touched Mickey's small one. He spoke in a low voice "Still bitter about Rose coming with me, eh." Mickey glared. The Doctor straightened up again and put his hands in his pockets. "Shame. And here I was, hoping that we could be civil, even if only for her sake."
Jackie walked out of the kitchen with the four mugs. If she had heard the conversation in the other room, then she showed no sign of it as she handed everyone their tea. "So, since the Doctor won't explain what was with the sticky ground, what happened then?"
Rose tried to take a taste of her tea, but burned her tongue. Too hot. She set it down. "Well after we finished running, it started to rain."
"I didn't know that it rained on Venus," Jackie stated.
The Doctor blew on his steaming cuppa. "Even before the terraforming process, it rained on Venus. Not water-rain, of course. Sulfuric acid. None of it ever touched the planet's surface, either. The planet was so hot that it would evaporate in the middle of falling. Virga, it's called when it does that. After the conditions became more Earth-like - the sulfuric acid removed, the temperature regulated, and the water successfully added to the planet's terrain - it began to rain water like it does here."
Rose nodded. "So, we were caught in the rain…"
...
Water ran down Rose's face. She scowled. It was pouring, but seemed to be letting up. They were both drenched to the bone. At least it wasn't so hot anymore, Rose was glad for that much.
"Not much farther now!" The Doctor announced. The tall, strange skyscrapers of Inanna were close enough for the pair to appreciate them if they weren't caught in a downpour. Funny, how torrential rain always seems to put a damper on one's admiration of the things. Rose just wanted to get somewhere dry.
As they got closer, the rain slowed to a slow, but steady, drizzle. A sense of unease fell upon the Doctor and Rose. The few buildings that they passed seemed to be in disarray, and the silence. Besides the pattering of the rain on the ground, the sloshing of mud as their feet hit the earth, and their occasional conversation, there was an eerie stillness. Rose watched the Doctor become more and more on edge. Whenever she tried to call him out on it, the Doctor denied his agitation, but the furrowed brow and intense gaze said otherwise.
"Doctor, can't we just wait out the rain in one of these buildings?" Rose asked, motioning to the shops that they were passing, right outside of Inanna's city limits.
"No. We need to make it to the city." He gave no reason. Rose trusted his judgment; the Doctor always had his reasons for things, even if they didn't make much sense to others.
They finally entered Inanna. Rose looked around. The architecture was so bizarre, so alien-looking. Clusters of insanely tall, thin buildings covered the cityscape. Many were very ornate, very geometric, covered in large windows, and seeming to emphasize their own height, reminding strangely of late medieval architecture meeting art deco. Many of the buildings had fallen into disarray. Windows were broken, some of the ornamentations had fallen to the ground and been left there, and graffiti graced the walls.
She saw what should have been lights, what should have been glowing signs, what should have been advertisements, shop windows, large screens, streetlights and people's homes. They should have been glowing brightly. They weren't. There was no light coming from anywhere. It was still daytime, but it was supposed to be a huge, thriving city, and, as Rose learned from living in London, it could be the brightest, sunniest day, and there should still be lights.
More unnatural stillness. Even in the rain, there should have been some sort of sign of life. There were no people, no animals, no cars, no spaceships, nothing. Even the trees planted along the road in an attempt to liven up the area were dead. The streets were filthy, as if no one had swept them in years.
"Maybe they're just having a power outage…?" Rose offered. The Doctor shook his head and took out his sonic screwdriver, just for the sake of having its familiar weight in his hand.
"Nooo… Inanna is always clean, always. This city is famed for its beauty, and the inhabitants take great pride in it. The filth on the ground is indicator enough that something's not right." He crouched down and felt some of the dirt, rolling it between his fingers thoughtfully. He gave it a little taste "No, we couldn't have… But that's…. nooooo. Nooooo…" The Doctor dropped the dirt and wiped his fingers on his jacket. He turned to Rose in all seriousness. "Rose, we have to go back to the TARDIS. Now."
"But, Doctor! We just got here, and after walking all that way, too…" The look in the Doctor's eyes told Rose that there was no arguing with him. "Doctor? What's going on?" she asked, finding his behavior unnerving.
He looked out over the city, then back to her. "We have to leave now. Venus has been evacuated. This planet is about to undertake global resurfacing."
Author's Note: Well, after a year-long hiatus, I'm back. Don't hate me too much.
For those who kept up with my Invader Zim fanfiction, My Beloved, My Betrayed, I apologize for leaving you hanging. No, I haven't given up on it. I've actually gotten half the next chapter written, but I can't promise when I finally finish it. This plot bunny's nagging at me so much that I just can't say no.
And before you ask, no, this will not turn into a Ten/Rose fic. Yes, there'll be some mild romantic elements between them, but nothing past what's cannon. Sorry to disappoint those looking for smut or fluff… okay, not really that sorry. It's my story, damnit. I write what I want!