"Peggy! Peggy!"
Peggy rolled over and moaned, trying to drown out her roommate's shouts under her pillow. It wasn't working. Jenny threw something that nailed her square in the small of her back. Her body stiffened and arched in pain.
"What was that?!" she demanded.
"Your biology book. You know…for the class you're going to be late to if you don't get your butt out of bed!"
Peggy sat up so fast her vision darkened. When it cleared, she faced the clock.
7:51 AM
Peggy shot out of bed, too panicked to say anything. Jenny was screaming something at her, but she wasn't paying any attention. She threw on clothes, grabbed a granola bar from the bowl on the table and shot a quick goodbye to Jenny, who was standing beside the window, staring out. Then she was gone, down the hall and stumbling down the stairs, still weak from sleep.
Alarms were blaring all around me, steam shot out of places I know steam wasn't supposed to shoot out from, and my pilot was having the time of his life.
"All right honey, let's see what you can do!"
"Doctor!" I shouted.
"Shut up, Rory, I'm concentrating!" he replied without facing me. He wasn't concentrating. He had his sonic screwdriver in one hand and a half-eaten Jammie Dodger in the other. We were doomed.
My wife, Amy, was off on modeling business to some town in Australia, and I was home alone. She'd offered to let me come along, but frankly…modeling business in Australia didn't sound thrilling. Sounded like a lot of melted mascara, and Amy wasn't fun when her mascara was messed up. So I decided, for my own health and safety, to bow out.
The Doctor had stopped by in the TARDIS a few days after she'd left. I wasn't on call at the hospital…they had an overabundance of nurses and an unusually low flow of patients. Expecting Amy but finding only me, he was a bit awkward sitting in my living room. He suggested a trip, and I didn't object.
"What the blazes do you think you're doing?" I shouted back at the Doctor, who was now, I kid you not, jumping up on top of the console.
"I need a better look at the TARDIS' engine!" he said, his mouth full of Jammie Dodger. Then he crammed the end of his sonic in his mouth with it to free up his hands.
"That's disgusting!" I said.
"Ifrs sfeeinfik!" he mumbled back.
"WHAT?!" I screamed back as hot steam shot out right next to my left ear.
He swallowed and spat the sonic into his hand, bits of Jammie Dodger on the end.
"IT'S SCIENTIFIC!" he screamed as alarms started to go off.
"ARE THOSE A PROBLEM?!" I yelled.
"Not until the Cloister Bell starts going off!" he said.
All the lights and alarms cut out and a deep darkness settled over us. A long, mournful tolling broke the silence every other moment.
"Ah. There it is," I heard the Doctor's voice through the palpable darkness.
The dark world surrounding us exploded in motion. Everything shook, and I hit the ground. I bit my tongue and tasted blood. The Doctor started yelping.
"Okay…okay…now we're in free flight…not a problem."
"What's…free flight?" I muttered from the ground, my tongue throbbing.
"Basically…we have no engine, temporal or otherwise."
"So…"
"So I have no clue where or when we're going…or what'll happen when we get wherever or whenever it is."
"Fantastic."
"That used to be my thing!"
"SHUT UP, DOCTOR!"
Peggy blasted out of her dorm on the campus of Princeton and tore toward the science building. As she ran, she didn't notice the faint blue sparks that were periodically flashing across the landscape. Like miniature lightning bolts, they shot from one point to another, leaving no sign that they'd ever been there.
As she hit the sidewalk that led to the doors of the science hall, a bright light flashed up above and slightly behind her. She turned to see what looked like a hole in the sky open up above her. She dove out of the way right as something huge, blisteringly fast, and a remarkable shade of blue burst out and crashed right where she'd been. The sparks that had been periodically shooting back and forth now took over the landscape. Sky blue lightning connected any two points that could be connected on campus. The only thing they weren't touching was Peggy, who was staring at the huge crater that now lay right in front of the hall of science.
She picked herself up off the ground and looked around, expecting a crowd to gather, firefighters to show up, something. But no one came. No one moved.
Peggy did a double take. No one moved. No one was moving at all. Terry, a fellow student in her bio class, had been right behind her. Now, he stood frozen mid-stride. She approached him.
His eyes were open. His lips were parted, as if he were beginning to breathe hard in his haste to get to class. Peggy waved a hand in front of his face. Blue sparks jumped off and into her hand. She jumped back, but felt nothing. She raised her hand to his face again.
Blue sparks connected her hand and his face. They tickled slightly, but didn't hurt. The student didn't respond.
"Hello?" she said. Not a blink crossed the young man's face.
Peggy turned away and looked around. Students stood like statues around the campus, in various poses. Some were sitting on benches eating breakfast. Others were walking or running to class. One girl was even mid-trip, floating in mid-air. None were moving so much as an eyelid. Blue sparks shot off each of them periodically and into each other.
A sound from the crater made Peggy whip her head back so fast her dark-framed glasses nearly flew off her face. She pushed them back into place. It had sounded like a door was opening from within the crater.
"I-is anyone there?" she stammered to the crater.
Another crash sounded from within, accompanied by a grunt.
"Hello?" Peggy said again.
"Is someone out there?" said an energetic voice from within the crater. "I didn't hit anyone, did I?"
The shaking reached a crescendo, then stopped. I lay on the ground, my tongue feeling twice as large as it should and my ankle feeling twisted. Before I could even think, the Doctor was banging at the TARDIS doors. Each pound sent a new wave of pain through my aching head.
"Can't you just use the sonic?" I asked, hoping to get some relief.
"Oh…right," he said quietly. "Don't know why I didn't think of that earlier."
There was a moment of silence before the high-pitched whirring of the Doctor's favorite tool penetrated the dark. I cringed.
"Has it always been that loud?"
"Headaches tend to make high frequencies just a touch more annoying," said the Doctor, not stopping his screwdriver's assault on my ears. "Not to worry, almost got the doors unstuck."
Right as I was about to curse his screwdriver, the noise stopped. Then, a giant crash shook the darkened interior of the TARDIS and light streamed in. The Doctor had kicked one of the doors open. I heard a girl's voice from the outside.
"I-is anyone there?"
The Doctor, rather than answer the poor thing, kicked the other door out, which no doubt terrified her even more. We had just hurtled down in a blue box out of the sky, probably opening some kind of temporal hole over wherever it was we were.
"Hello?" the voice came again, even more terrified. Finally, the Doctor answered her.
"Is someone out there?" he yelled. "I didn't hit anyone, did I?"
Wonderful way to start off, Doctor, I thought to myself.
I pushed myself up off the ground. I felt what I hoped was spit but what I was sure was blood trickle out of my mouth. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and got to my knees. The silhouette of the Doctor was rushing toward me. He grabbed my face in his hands.
"Now listen Rory, I have no idea what's out there. I don't even know if the air is breathable. We may be the first extra-planetary beings to step foot on whatever world this is. So above all, listen to me, our conduct is key. We could be the tipping point to a war between species. I've seen that happen once, and I don't want to see it happen again. We-"
"Is everyone all right in there?" came the girl's voice once more. She spoke with an American accent.
"Sounds like we're not too far out of the galaxy," I spat back at the Doctor, my mouth pinched between the heels of his hands.
"Uh…yeah, yeah, we're fine…" the Doctor replied hesitantly.
A slender silhouette darkened the sunlight streaming in through the TARDIS doors. The Cloister Bell stopped sounding and the emergency lights came back on.
"Oh. That's convenient," said the Doctor, letting go of my face finally.
I shook my head to reorient myself and looked at our visitor. She had shoulder-length brown hair and glasses with thick, dark frames. As she set down her blue checkered backpack I noticed the t-shirt she was wearing underneath her blue button-up.
"Giraffes?" was the first word that came out of my mouth.
"Hm?" she turned toward me. Her eyes were deep brown.
"I-uh-was asking about your shirt. The giraffe."
She stared at me, curious.
"What?" I asked, my words slurred due to my abnormally large tongue.
"I never thought aliens would be interested in my t-shirt," she said. Then, after a pause, she added, "And are you drunk?"
"Who, me?" I slurred. "No, no…my tongue is swollen. Bit it."
I'm fairly certain she didn't understand a word I said at that point since my tongue was getting even more swollen, but the Doctor did. He came back with some suspicious-looking liquid.
"Drink this."
"What the-"
"Silurian medic solution. Military grade. It'll fix you up right away."
"What's it taste like?"
"…Cherry."
I swallowed the medicine. It didn't taste like cherries. It tasted like fire and acid. It burned my mouth and throat all the way down and into my stomach and left a weird burnt metallic aftertaste. After a few moments, I felt my tongue recede and the blood stop. My head and ankle stopped throbbing too.
"That wasn't cherry!" I protested.
"Rule #1!" he said, turning to our visitor. "Now…what's your name?"
"P-peggy. Peggy Crockett," she responded, her eyes shifting everywhere. "Your-your ship didn't look this big on the outside."
"Yeah, yeah, more military grade stuff. New VR mumbo jumbo and such," said the Doctor. "Now. What can I do for you, P-peggy Crockett?"
Peggy stood there staring at him. She was trembling.
"Come on then, spit it out," said the Doctor harshly. "I haven't got all day, you know."
"Doctor!" I protested.
"What?" he said, turning to me.
"She's bloody terrified, can't you see that?"
"Oh. Really?" He turned and examined her in the dim emergency lights. "Hard to tell in here."
I rolled my eyes at him and approached Peggy. I took her hand.
"My name's Rory Williams, and this is the Doctor," I said in a calm voice. "Don't pay any attention to him, he becomes a pain when he's stressed. And…we kind of just crash landed."
She stared at me, her eyes getting wider every second.
"Can…can you tell us where we are?" I pressed.
"P-p-p…" she couldn't seem to get the word out.
"Pluto?" the Doctor chimed in.
"Shut up," I said, not looking at him.
"P-p…" Peggy still was having some trouble.
"Praxcalious? In the Nevit system?" said the Doctor.
"SHUT UP," I said, turning to him this time.
"P-Princeton," Peggy finally got out.
"Princeton?" I repeated.
"Princeton?" repeated the Doctor in a confused tone. "Never heard of that. Is it in the Horverdia Cluster? That would make sense."
"It's a university, Doctor. In America," I explained.
"Oh. Also explains why I don't know it. I try to keep away from universities. Stuffy places. Keep wanting to dissect me."
I turned back to Peggy.
"Are you okay?"
"I….I think so. I don't…no, no I'm not! A giant blue box just fell out of a hole in the sky and nearly killed me!"
"Right…sorry about that," the Doctor muttered, stroking the TARDIS console.
Peggy was undeterred. "And on top of that, no one's moving and there's this weird lightning stuff and-"
"Wait, wait, wait…" said the Doctor, rushing over to Peggy. "No one's moving? Weird lightning stuff?"
"Yeah…what does it mean?" Peggy asked, turning to him.
"No idea," said the Doctor. "But…it sounds like something I want to investigate. I'm sort of an expert in weird lightning-y things, you understand. Now…take me to your lightning!"
He sprang out of the open TARDIS doors, leaving Peggy and I standing alone. I looked at her. She was still glancing around.
"So it's really…"
"Bigger on the inside, yes," I finished. "You get used to it, really."
She wandered over to the console and raised her hand.
"Ah…you might not want to touch that," I cautioned, running over to her. "He gets a little…sensitive when people touch his equipment. It's kind of his…partner."
"What, is he married to it or something?" Peggy said.
That's a complicated question, I thought.
"Never mind, I wasn't gonna touch anything…it's just…never mind." She turned away and back to me. "Rory…what's going on?"
"I…have no idea," I admitted. "We should check on the Doctor."
We climbed out of the TARDIS, which I now discovered was lying so the doors faced the sky, and then out of the crater. The Doctor was making a cursory investigation of a nearby student. And the student wasn't moving.
"Oh now THIS is something," the Doctor was talking to himself. "Temporal suspension…static interaction…haven't seen anything this since the Attraxi issue in '43."
"1943?" Peggy asked.
"1543, actually," the Doctor said, whipping out the sonic. "Rough day for old Michelangelo…"
He turned on the sonic and began scanning the student.
"Wait…you've met Michelangelo?" Peggy said. "Who the heck are you guys?"
"We're time travelers," I said simply.
"TIME TRAVELLERS?" Peggy was incredulous.
"…yeah."
"So…is this your fault?" she asked.
"No!" said the Doctor turning around. "Well…yes, perhaps. Maybe. Not sure."
"How could we have done this?" I asked.
"Like I said…not sure. But our entrance to this time period was…well…"
"Wibbly?"
"Very wibbly."
I walked over to the student the Doctor was examining. He was in the middle of running. His eyes were wide in panic, and he looked like he'd been breathing hard. I passed my finger under his nose to see if he was breathing. He wasn't.
"Doctor…is he dead?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "At least I don't think so. Looks more like… suspended animation."
"Hey."
We both turned to look at Peggy, who was staring at us.
"You guys don't get the lightning."
"What?" asked the Doctor.
"The lightning. There's no lightning for you guys," she said.
"Lightning?" I said.
She sighed. "When I got close to him before…lightning came out and shocked me. It was…weird."
"Come over here," the Doctor beckoned.
Peggy did. She held up her hand in front of the student's face, and, just like she'd said, little blue lightning bolts came out and connected her hand and his face.
"Doesn't that hurt?" I asked.
"No. It just sort of…tickles."
The Doctor scanned her hand with the sonic.
"Can't get a read on exactly what it is. You're sure it doesn't hurt?"
"No…it just tingles. Like a million tiny feathers rubbing my hand."
I stared at the Doctor, who was watching the little squiggles dance between Peggy's hand and the student's nose. He put his hand in between them and they cut out immediately.
"So why don't you like me?" he muttered to the lightning. He removed his hand and the bolts shot back out. Peggy stared at him as he watched.
"Um…you guys can see the lighting around us, too, right? Or is that just me?" she asked.
I glanced around. Sure enough, I saw glimpses of the blue lightning flashing between trees, buildings, and frozen students.
"Yeah, I can see it," I said.
Peggy sighed in relief. "Oh good," she said. "I was worried I was going crazy."
"Well…no use staring at Winky over here," said the Doctor, adjusting his bow tie. "Let's go exploring."
"Winky?" I asked.
"Rip van Winkle? Slept for a hundred years?" the Doctor said. "Seriously, do they not tell those stories anymore?"
"His name was… is Terry," said Peggy. "He's…he's gonna be all right, isn't he?"
The Doctor looked right at her.
"Yes, Peggy. He will be."
He held her gaze for a while, then started looking around.
"Now then…where to start? Preferably away from the dissection center. Don't like to push my luck."
He began walking away from us toward the nearest building. Peggy watched him, a look of utter confusion on her face. When he got around 15 feet away from us, she shrieked.
"Doctor! Stop!"
He froze, didn't move a muscle. Slowly, he turned his head back to her.
"Peggy. Is something wrong?"
"You're about to walk right into a huge lightning bolt!"
The Doctor turned his head back to front. I'm sure he was thinking the same thing I was: there was nothing in front of him.
"Peggy…" he began. "Are you sure?"
"It's right in front of your face, can't you see it?"
"No, Peggy…I can't," he said slowly. He backed away a bit from the spot where she'd seen the "lightning" and pulled out his sonic. Peggy turned to me.
"Can you see it?" she inquired.
"Ah…no, I can't," I admitted.
The Doctor began scanning the spot. Suddenly, something large and black swooped out of the sky toward him. He jumped out of the way just in time. We saw the hawk swoop past him and freeze in midair, right where Peggy had told the Doctor to stop. The Doctor backed away from the frozen bird of prey.
"I thought you guys said you could see it!" Peggy was becoming hysterical.
"I can see it!" I said, "But there's not that much of it. Just little flashes here and there."
"But there's a giant bolt surrounding us like a fence! How can you not see that?!"
"Okay…Peggy…" the Doctor approached her cautiously, as if he thought she might bite. "I'm beginning to think you have some kind of-"
"I'M NOT CRAZY!" she shouted in a frenzy.
"CONNECTION to all this!" the Doctor finished, exasperated.
"Oh…" Peggy said. She paused for a moment, breathing hard, then added, her voice barely audible, "Doctor…did I cause this?"
"No," he said immediately. "You were probably just in the wrong place at the right time. You'd be surprised how many times it turns out to be that. Now…are there any ways out of here that aren't blocked by lightning?"
Peggy looked around. Then she pointed to the right of the building the Doctor had been walking towards.
"Over there," she said. "There's a gap about two feet wide in the lightning."
"Okay…you'll need to guide us there," said the Doctor. "And Peggy…I'm going to be honest with you. If we touch that lightning…you'll be on your own. We're counting on you."
Peggy gulped, then stepped toward the spot she'd pointed at. I glanced at the Doctor, and we followed.
Peggy stepped toward the pulsing wall of lightning, the two mysterious time travelers falling into step behind her. She approached the breach in the "fence." As she got closer, the little hairs on her face tingled. The lightning didn't make a sound, but it had an effect, almost an aura, around it. It terrified her…and it thrilled her. Her hair began to stand on end, and not because of the lightning. She turned to the two men.
"You really can't see this?" she asked. She noticed that her voice was suddenly much calmer than before. It was as if she had a connection to this strange energy that she couldn't explain.
"Positive," the man who called himself the Doctor said. "Not a thing."
The young man named Rory seemed almost apologetic. "Me neither, Peggy."
She faced the fence again. It was so warm…so inviting, yet she felt nothing from it physically.
"The…the break is right here." She began walking toward it. Rory and the Doctor fell into single file behind her.
"Careful," she shot over her shoulder. "There's barely enough room for one person to get through."
She walked until the lighting on her sides drifted away and there was room for them all to stand side by side.
"It's safe next to me," she said. The Doctor and Rory spread out. The Doctor pulled out his tiny tool and began pointing it around.
"What is that thing?" Peggy asked.
"It's a sonic screwdriver," said the Doctor.
"What's it do?" Peggy pressed.
"Stuff," said the Doctor, checking his readings.
"That's not an answer," Peggy said.
The Doctor flicked the screwdriver shut, frustrated.
"If I explained everything it could do we'd be here for centuries. Now, I may have that much time, but you certainly don't. So…for now, you'll just have to accept 'stuff' as an answer."
Peggy turned away, hurt. Rory came and put his hand on her shoulder.
"Hey…it's not you," he said. "He hates it when he doesn't know what's going on. Makes him feel helpless, you know. So he gets snippy. You're fine."
"Yeah, yeah. Sure," Peggy said, moving away.
"Rory," beckoned the Doctor. "Come here, I need to ask you something."
"Right," Rory called back. He turned once more to Peggy, who kept her back turned. "You'll be fine. We'll figure out what's going on here. We always do." He turned and jogged back to the Doctor.
Peggy glanced around her. The blue lightning was dancing. It was as if tiny blue fairies were doing a ballet all around her. It was beautiful. She heard no sound, felt no heat, and yet she sensed…something from this force around her. Although there was no music, the dance of the bolts seemed to line up with some unheard beat. The pounding of the drums…the vibrato of the strings…even the deep rumbling of the bass…she could hear it without hearing it.
She wanted to touch the lightning.
I approached the Doctor, who was holding his sonic out for me to take.
"What exactly do you expect me to do with this?" I asked. "You're the only one who knows how to do anything with it."
"Just act like you're reading it," he said, as he came over to glance at the readout.
"Okay…" I did as he asked.
The Doctor's voice dropped to just above a whisper.
"Rory. I don't know about you, but something about this Crockett girl seems…off."
"What is wrong with you?" I answered in the same low voice. "Ever since we've met her you won't get off her back for anything. You've been a complete git to her. What's your problem?"
"It's not her," he said. "Something just seems…wibbly here."
"Doctor, we're apparently surrounded by invisible time-stopping lightning. Something's more than wibbly."
"But it's not just that. It's her place in all this," he said, daring a glance at her. "You ever think about how she's the only one still moving here?"
"We're still moving," I rebutted.
"We may be the cause of all this, Rory, don't forget that."
"Right."
The Doctor looked back at me.
"But she seems…calm. Any other human would be panicking right now, but she's relatively calm."
"She nearly had a panic attack back there!"
"When she thought I was accusing her of causing this, she did," the Doctor said. "But think about it. When she saw her friend frozen, when she saw us crash out of the sky, she seemed fine. A bit shaken, but otherwise fine. Doesn't that seem weird?"
"I think it's-"
I was interrupted by Peggy's shriek from somewhere behind us. The Doctor and I both whipped our heads to see Peggy, arm outstretched, standing frozen. But she wasn't silent. She was screaming.
"HELP! HELP! I CAN'T MOVE!"
The Doctor rushed over and grabbed her arm.
"Whoa nelly!" he said. "Rrrrrrooooorrrrrryyyyyy!" His voice was oddly drawn out, as if it was being slowed.
"What?"
"Sooonnniiccc!"
I ran over and held it out to him.
"Seeetttiing siiiixxx-fiiiiffftyyy-fiiiivveee!"
I made the adjustments and pointed the screwdriver at Peggy's outstretched arm. The sonic gave a huge pulse and Peggy and the Doctor fell back.
"Well!" the Doctor said, breathing deeply. "That was SOMETHING!"
"Peggy?" I asked, falling down next to her. Her glasses had flown off her face and her eyes were closed. I checked her pulse. It was racing.
"She's alive…for now, anyway," I said.
The Doctor swept the sonic up from the ground where I'd dropped it and scanned Peggy.
"She definitely got some kind of charge from that little escapade," he said, reading the sonic. "She's brimming with the same sort of energy as the lighting…but there's something different this time…it's…more biological. Almost alive."
Peggy's eyes sprang open, but she didn't say anything. Her eyes shifted from me to the Doctor to the sky and back to me in a constant cycle. She looked like she was panicking, but couldn't speak.
"Peggy," I said. "Peggy…can you hear me?"
She nodded.
"Can you speak?"
She shook her head.
"Can you move?"
In answer, she raised her arm quickly, knocking me in the jaw. Her eyes got even wider.
"It's all right, it's all right," I said, rubbing the spot she'd clocked me. She had a mean swing. "Are you having trouble controlling your movements?"
She nodded again.
"Okay..." I looked up at the Doctor, who was watching my examination with something that looked like amusement. "I think she'll be all right. She just needs to let the energy fade from her body. I think it's causing a shock response without actually making her go into shock."
"Or.." the Doctor said, jumping over to me, "it's a bit more than just energy."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I said, not even trying to hide my frustration. He never just came out and said anything…he always had to be so cryptic.
"It means that I've begun to crack exactly what this energy is composed of."
"Um…it's energy. Doesn't that mean it's just composed of…energy?"
"Ah, Rory…still held back by 8th grade physics are we? Well, allow me to open your mind. Isaac Newton? Numbskull. Brilliant man, mind you, but a numbskull."
"What are you talking ab-"
"You were referring to the fact that energy is itself a pure substance? That's wrong." The Doctor jumped up and started pacing, like he always did when he got excited destroying everything I thought I knew about the world I lived in. "Energy is almost pure, but it's still composed of base particles. Can't explain them all to you now, we'd be here all millennium, but this energy in particular is very interesting because…it's composed of information."
"Information?" I repeated, still glancing down at Peggy. She seemed to be calming down, although she still hadn't made any noise. "You mean, like…ones and zeros?"
"No, no!" The Doctor yelled out disgustedly. "That's computer code! Hardly information at all. This is the computer code of the universe flowing through that young woman's body right now. The stuff that makes up time itself."
"But that-"
At that moment, Peggy sat up so fast she nearly cracked her head on mine.
"What just happened?" she said so quickly I almost missed it.
"You…touched the lightning, I think," I said, a bit taken aback with her sudden recovery.
The Doctor crouched down and looked her in the eyes.
"Peggy…do you remember touching the lightning?"
"I…no. Yes. Maybe. I remember…wanting to dance with it. Then I reached out…and it surrounded me. I started dancing."
"…Dancing?" I asked. I wondered if shock hadn't affected her perception of reality.
"Yeah, dancing. I went up into the air in a triple spin," she said. "It was…amazing."
"Peggy…you've been on the ground since we met you," I said. I heard the whir of the Doctor's sonic again.
"But I…I flew. I'm not crazy, I know I'm not!" She was growing hysterical again. I had to calm her down.
"Okay, okay…we believe you," I said. "Don't panic."
"Peggy," the Doctor said, glancing at his screwdriver. "What did the…flying feel like?"
"Like…flying," she said, seeming puzzled.
"Nothing…unusual?" he pressed.
"No…the wind was rushing through my hair, the sun was shining down on me, and I was spinning so fast…"
"That's…entirely possible," the Doctor said.
"How on earth could that be possible?" I whispered to him. "She didn't move at all! You saw her!"
At this, Peggy seemed to lose interest in the conversation. She got to her feet remarkably fast given the condition she'd been in and began to look around.
"So…now what?" she said, her voice chipper. Any trace of fear had left her eyes. Only an odd excitement filled them now.
"What you mean, 'now what?'" I said, staring at her. She seemed to be completely well, almost better than she had been before she touched the lightning.
"Well…we've got a lot to figure out, don't we?" she said loudly. "People frozen, weird lightning stuff all around. So let's get to it."
This was uncanny. How could one girl go from terrified to courageous verging on reckless this quickly? She wasn't even acting like the same person. In fact…she was acting like…
"Well, what are you waiting for?" she said, running in what seemed to be a random direction. "We've got to get working! Allons-y!"
"What did you say?" I called after her.
"Allons-y!" she said, still running away from us. "It's French for 'let's go!'"
"I knew that," said the Doctor as we raced to catch up with this new Peggy Crockett.
Peggy ran as fast as she could, excited to see what was out there. Everything was a puzzle waiting to be solved, and she was the one to solve it. Cracking this case open and putting it back together again was all she could think about, and she couldn't wait.
She navigated through shocks of sky blue lightning. New strands shot out here and there, but she evaded them easily. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She felt full of energy, and she'd just needed to work a little off. She glanced behind her to see Rory and the Doctor panting to catch up. They weren't in danger of the lightning; she had just run down a 20-foot stretch of clear ground.
While she waited for them to catch up, she considered her new outlook. Before she'd been terrified, but still curious. Now she was overwhelmed with the thought of the unknown. She couldn't let fear outweigh whatever was waiting for her out there. It was as if a voice in her head was urging her on. "Go! Go find it! Keep running!"
Rory and the Doctor finally caught up.
"Wh…wha…what's gotten into you?" Rory panted.
Peggy wasn't even breathing hard anymore. She felt like she'd been running all her life. Her brief sprint hardly affected her.
"Just excited. Aren't you?"
Rory and the Doctor answered simultaneously.
"Absolutely thrilled," the Doctor said.
"Terrified and confused," Rory said.
"Good!" Peggy answered, as if they had both told her they wanted nothing more than to jump into this adventure. "So…where do we start?"
Where do we start?! I thought. One minute the girl's scared out of her mind, lying paralyzed on the ground, and the next she wants to run straight to the bloody center of the problem!
Peggy bounced on the balls of her feet and swung her arms like a 4-year-old on a playground. This behavior was so…familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. I saw a little bit of Amy's fire in her eyes now…was that it?
"Ah, right…start," said the Doctor vaguely. "Well…I can't see the lightning…does it seem to be originating from any point on campus, Peggy?"
Peggy looked around, her eyes absolutely blazing. She seemed to scan campus for only a second before turning back to the Doctor.
"Nope," she said quickly, "It's all just jumping to and fro from everywhere at once."
"Does it seem to be stronger in any particular area of campus?" the Doctor pressed, pulling out his sonic again and scanning not campus, but Peggy as she whipped her head around so wildly her glasses slipped down her nose a bit.
"Over there," she said, pointing toward a nearby building with tables out front. "The dining hall."
"Should have known…always the dining hall…" the Doctor muttered as we set off after Peggy, who had taken off toward the stronger lightning.
Peggy flew toward the dining hall for a good 5 minutes before she realized that she had to wait for her two compatriots, who were lagging behind. She stopped and looked after them, tapping her foot.
"Come on!" she said. "We're never going to get there at this rate!"
"Peggy…" Rory said, panting again, "it's 20 meters away…it's not going to take us all day."
"Stop using the metric system! This is America!" she said, taking off again.
This girl was mad. Absolutely insane.
Peggy had gone from scared little girl to intrepid explorer in an instant, and now she was hunting around this dining hall filled with frozen people as excited and carefree as if she were on an Easter egg hunt. And the Doctor wasn't helping.
"Keep sniffing around, Peggy! We're sure to find something!" he called after her, whipping his sonic back and forth. "Why can't you be as fun as she is?" he asked me.
"Because you're both mad and I'm trying to keep my sanity for as long as I can. I AM a nurse you know. I need that sanity for my patients' sake."
"Sanity never led to any great inventions!" said the Doctor. "Look at Edison! Thousands of failures before he figured out that a little piece of thread could light up a room! You think a sane person would have kept at it?"
"Well maybe he was just-"
"He was insane, Rory. Perfectly, gloriously, beautifully insane! But because of that man's insanity, we can stand in the middle of a dark room and flip a switch and flood it with light! So don't mock the poor girl. She's going to find something wonderful!"
I glanced over at Peggy, who seemed to be investigating the salad bar.
"You find anything, Peggy?"
She stood up so fast she scared me a little. Attached to her shirt by a toothpick was a…
"DOCTOR!" I shouted so loud he dropped his sonic.
"Rory! Be civil!" he said, picking it up.
"Look at her!"
He did. Peggy beamed back at him. A toothpick was holding a stalk of celery to her shirt where a lapel pin would have been.
"Nice fashion sense, Peggy! I have always had a bit of a fondness for vegetable accessories!"
This was mad.
"Can we please get back to work?" I asked, fearing that they'd go on for hours about crouton hats if I didn't reel them in.
"Oh fine, Nurse of Sanity," the Doctor said, pulling out his sonic again.
"Don't call me that. That's stupid."
"So is sanity."
"Keep exploring. Keep running. Put it together. Find the problem. Save the day!"
Peggy was so exhilarated that she was a little frightened. But any fright was driven away by the mad rush to find out what was going on.
The lightning had changed her. Unlocked her. It was as if there was a little voice that wasn't hers spurring her on. And she loved it.
She glanced around again, trying to pay attention to the lightning, looking for a source of the invisible time stopper. It jumped between the frozen students in the middle of breakfast, and for a moment, she stopped. The old Peggy came up, and she felt sad. Sorry for these students. For a moment, she didn't want to solve the puzzle or save the day or be the hero. She just wanted to help these people.
"Save the day! Keep thinking!"
She was off again.
One of us is going to die today. Either me from frustration or them from me killing them out of frustration.
As if dealing with one ADHD-afflicted alien with a god complex was bad enough, there seemed to be a mini-him running around campus now. Peggy was hopping around like a squirrel on speed, and the Doctor was right behind her, like a slightly larger squirrel on speed who was now wearing a fez.
We had wandered into the costume shop in the theatre education building. That was a mistake. Surrounding the Doctor with decades' worth of clothing was just calling him to "borrow" a few pieces here and there. In addition to the fez, he was now wearing a huge Texas cowboy belt, complete with gold buckle the size of my face, a 19th-century (I think) era frockcoat, and what appeared to be a clerical collar.
"Isn't that sacrilegious?" I asked him as we perused the lines of musty-smelling costumes, following Peggy's vision of the lightning.
"Not if you actually are a priest," he replied.
"You-" I stopped. "No. No, no, no, there is no way that you-"
"I happened to be a personal favorite of good old Clement I," he said smugly. "Saved him a bit of grief from the Sontarans back in 89. Ah…A.D. 89, great year. None of those pesky centuries to worry about. Did you know the Sontarans actually don't see religion as weakness like they do everything else? Granted, they only see their religion as legitimate, which explains the issue with the Pope, but still."
He turned and kept moving down the hall of tuxedos and dinner dresses while I gaped after him.
"That had better be a joke!" I yelled after him as I took off to catch up.
A few moments later, I was still fuming about the Doctor's apparent priesthood as I caught up to them staring at a gap in the costumes.
"There's a door here," said Peggy, who was wearing a multicolored scarf of ungodly length. "I work here sometimes. I like fabric."
The sight of the passage pushed all thoughts of the Doctor's sacrilege out of my mind. What should have been a regular door to a costume mending room was now a gate. Made of lightning.
I call it a gate because "door" doesn't quite cut it. The lightning literally had formed two posts in front of the door with the lightning forming an elaborate pattern between them. The pattern wasn't static, either. It kept moving and shifting, forming shapes and dissipating to a crazy mess. Sometimes it even seemed to form a picture of some sort before degenerating into a mess of lightning.
The bolts were an unearthly and, pardon the pun, electric blue. It was downright unnatural. I'd seen those blue bolts briefly buzzing between targets outside, but this was a whole new level. The gate shone with a light that made me shield my eyes after a while.
"It looks like it's transmitting some kind of message," said the Doctor, watching one shape evolve into another and then another. "One letter at a time."
"Why isn't the Tardis translating it?" I asked. I was so used to the feature that I genuinely forgot about it sometimes.
"Not sure. The message is literally made of the universe source code. The Tardis may not pick it up as a message."
"So how do we get through?" Peggy said eagerly.
The Doctor whipped out his trusty sonic and began scanning it again. The whir of the screwdriver was almost hypnotic combined with the buzz of the lightning. I started wondering why I could see this lightning if I couldn't see any of the other bolts.
The buzz got louder and somehow softer at the same time.
What had it done to Peggy to make her so different?
The sonic blended in to the buzz to make one big hum.
What was it made of?
My eyes began to close.
"Jelly baby?"
My eyes snapped open. A plastic bowl of fruit flavored gummy candies was right in front of my nose. I jumped back and yelped in surprise. The Doctor stopped scanning to check on me.
"Ah. No thanks," I said to Peggy, who was holding the bowl eagerly. She seemed a bit crestfallen at my rejection, but recovered quickly when the Doctor took a few.
"Haven't seen these in a while," he said as he chewed and scanned. "Where did you even get these?"
"The cafeteria," said Peggy. "They have a lot of obscure foods there if you know where to look."
"I'm liking this university concept more and more," he said.
15 minutes later and we hadn't made any progress on the gate. The Doctor was experimenting with various settings on the sonic to open the gate, which made me just nervous enough for me to pull Peggy and myself down the hall to avoid an electrocution. As we watched the Doctor move the sonic in elaborate patterns, I glanced over at her. In the roughly 2 hours since I'd met her, I'd seen her go through more change than I'd seen in anyone in my lifetime. And I think I was beginning to see why.
"It's him, isn't it?" I asked her.
"Hm?" she said, tearing her gaze from the Doctor to look at me.
"His mind is…I dunno…inside you somehow. Making you this way."
Peggy got defiant. "What do you mean, it's him? What if this is me? You don't know me!"
"Peggy, the girl I met when I got out of the Tardis and the girl staring back at me with celery on her collar and a freakishly long brown and red scarf are two completely different people. You can't tell me you don't see that."
She gazed at me defiantly for a few more seconds before turning back to the Doctor.
"I want to solve this mystery, whatever it takes. If that means my changing a little, then I'll do it."
"You've changed more than a little, Peggy, you-"
"Geronimo!" cried the Doctor. "I think I've cracked it!"
Peggy turned back to me.
"Looks like we're closer to cracking the case."
She took off, and I followed, wondering if Peggy Crockett would ever be the same again.
Peggy tried to push Rory's words out of her mind as she approached the Doctor, who was now perusing the readout on the sonic with intense excitement.
"It's not a message at all, at least, not like we were expecting," he said. "It's more of a…status report."
"Status report?" said Rory, coming up behind Peggy. She didn't so much as glance in his direction.
"Exactly," said the Doctor. "Remember, this is source code. This "gate," so to speak, is actually a line of code that feeds out a status report every minute or so."
"What's it reporting on?" said Peggy. "And can we get past it?"
"Don't know, and don't know," said the Doctor. "Along with being a status monitor, it seems to be some sort of…firewall, I suppose you could call it. Except in real life."
"What happens if we try to get through it?" asked Rory.
"What happens when something hits a firewall in a computer?" asked the Doctor.
"It gets…blocked?" posited Peggy.
"More than blocked," said the Doctor grimly. "Powerful firewalls destroy the file or virus that's trying to get in. The complexity of this little beauty makes me think we're getting pretty close to the heart of this thing, whatever it is."
"But then why was the lightning so strong in the cafeteria?" asked Rory. "If this is the heart of the thing, why didn't Peggy lead us here right away?"
Peggy whirled on him. "Don't pin this on me!" she said. "I'm just as confused as you are! It's not my fault I don't understand-"
"Easy, Peggy," said the Doctor, smiling, which infuriated his travelling companion. "My guess would be the amount of people in the cafeteria increased the source code's transmission, which made more lightning appear around it. It seems like this…I guess we can call it program…uses human bodies as nodes in a network. Like computers at an office. It transmits information between them to span a distance it couldn't on its own. In doing so, I think it puts them in a temporal sleep mode or something, hence the freezing."
Peggy and Rory stared at him for a full minute before speaking at the same time.
"You think so?" asked Peggy.
"You don't have any ideas, do you?" said Rory.
"Yes," answered the Doctor.
"So…let me grossly oversimplify for those of us who aren't time travelling wizard geniuses," I said, putting as much acid into the phrase as I could. "We are essentially trying to make it to the center of a university-wide computer network that's using human bodies as transmitters for information. That information is contained in these blue bolts of lightning made up of universe source code. And this…firewall…thing, is holding us back from actually getting in there. Sound about right?"
"Only the bit about oversimplifying," said the Doctor, "But it'll work for now."
I sighed. At this point it was better to give up on getting past the Doctor's ego and let him play mastermind for a while.
"So now what?" I asked.
"That is the question," said the Doctor, staring at the status monitor.
"Well…what do all good hackers do?" Peggy asked, looking between the two of us.
We stared back, waiting for an answer that Peggy seemed to want us to ask her for. I gave in.
"Enlighten me," I said, not even making an effort to keep the sarcasm out.
"They hack their way past the firewall!" she said, beaming.
"Peggy, I can't speak for both of us, but I for one haven't the foggiest idea how to program the universe," I said.
"Actually, Peggy, you may be onto something," the Doctor said. "The human race has itself convinced that everything they've invented has been their own creation, from the design to the finishing touches. But what if that weren't the case?"
"What do you mean?" I asked, more curious than I was willing to let on.
"Your design for computers is genius, don't get me wrong. That was one of your most impressive leaps. But why do you think it's genius? You think you just came up with that out of your own heads?"
"Yeah…kind of," I said defensively.
"You THINK you did," the Doctor said quickly. "But in actuality, you're just copying what you see around you. Or rather…what makes up what you see around you. The design for your most complex machinery, from the Antikythera mechanism to the modern computer, has copied the very underlying structure of the universe."
"So in other words..." Peggy trailed off.
"The way we program computers is the same way we can program the universe." I finished.
"Precisely. And how do you program a computer?" the Doctor said, as if he were a professor at this university and we were his freshman students.
"You open a console window!" said Peggy.
"Brilliant!" said the Doctor.
"Um…I hate to break up this meeting of Gates and Jobs, but we don't exactly have a Start menu we can click to open any kind of console window," I said.
"We don't need to open any window, it's already open!" the Doctor said, pointing to the status report, still flashing its strange symbols.
"This is the console window?" I asked. "I thought you said it was a status report!"
"It is. That's the program it's running right now. But..." he pointed the screwdriver at the window and made a few elaborate movements. "…if we simply interrupt the flow of the program, it should…"
The symbols stopped flashing and the gate turned a solid blue so bright that I had to shut my eyes. When I was able to open them again, the symbols were back, but much smaller and arranged in lines. Like a console.
"Great. Now how do we get it to do what we want it to do?" I asked.
"We need something to interface with the console, like a touchpad or keypad or-"
"A laptop?" asked Peggy, pulling off her backpack.
"That…might work," said the Doctor.
"Where do we plug it in?" I asked as Peggy pulled her laptop out and handed it to the Doctor.
"Well…" he said. "I'm assuming this little plug right here." He gestured to a prong of lightning coming off the main console window."
"But what if that fries her computer?" I asked. "Or worse, overloads it and it explodes?
"Remember, Rory, this isn't actually lightning," the Doctor reminded me. "It's information. The only thing we have to worry about it getting it into a form her computer can understand. I hardly expect this little beauty to be written in basic HTML."
"So…how do we do that?" asked Peggy, holding her computer at the ready.
"A little conversion. May I see your laptop?" said the Doctor, and hardly waiting for an answer, he snatched it from her and popped it open. I glanced over his shoulder to see what he was doing. To my extreme shock, he opened the Web browser.
"Don't tell me you're going to DOWNLOAD the universe source code!" I exclaimed.
"Of course not, Rory. Don't be daft," he said.
I exhaled.
"I'm going to download the module for the universe source code!"
"Right. Should have known. Probably can find it open-source," I said.
The Doctor's hands flew over the keyboard faster than I could follow. He periodically pointed his sonic out, away from the computer, and gave a few short pulses. A window popped up on the screen with some very familiar symbols.
"Is that…Gallifreyan?" I asked, noting the Doctor's circular-based native tongue.
"It certainly is," he responded, giving a few more pulses on the sonic.
"You don't mean to say that Gallifrey has a website?" I asked.
"No, of course not, Rory. Gallifrey's been lost for eons. They wouldn't be so concerned as to set up an Earth website. I'm tapping in to the TARDIS circuits to download her time vortex spanner program."
"And Peggy's computer will be able to read that?"
"Remember the TARDIS translator function? Works on computer code too. Should be fine."
And sure enough, before my eyes, a window popped up filled with millions of different symbols. I saw Gallifreyan mostly, and what I thought looked a lot like the symbols we were trying to crack.
"This is…" I trailed off.
"…fantastic!" Peggy finished.
"My thoughts exactly," said the Doctor, sounding pretty pleased with himself.
He took the sonic and pulsed it at the prong of lightning. It snapped to the end of the screwdriver, and he connected it to one of the USB ports on the laptop. Then he went to work on the code itself. He manipulated the symbols into complex rows, and I saw the symbols on the wall in front of us begin to adjust themselves as well. They flew left and right, formed new rows, and downright vanished. Sometimes they showed up on the program on Peggy's screen. Sometimes symbols from the program would show up on the wall. All the time, the Doctor's hands were moving too fast for me to follow. All I could do was hope that he knew what he was doing.
After about 10 minutes of intense coding, the wall faded slightly. After about 10 more minutes, it faded down to a barely perceptible blue discoloration. It only took about 2 more minutes for it to wink out of existence completely.
"Done and done," said the Doctor, snapping the laptop shut and handing it back to Peggy.
"You may want to delete that program soon. Amazing how much memory that takes up," he said.
"Right," said Peggy, taking back the machine.
We all turned and stared at the space where the firewall had been. The air had a metallic twang to it now that the lightning had vanished. A moment passed, then another. None of us moved.
"Well, take care not to trample anyone in your rush to the door," I quipped lamely. Neither of my companions laughed.
"What do you think is in there?" asked Peggy, suddenly, and thankfully, sobered again.
"What does the strongest firewall usually protect in a computer system?" asked the Doctor.
"The most important information?" I ventured.
"Which in this case would be…?" the Doctor pressed.
"The main node. The CPU," provided Peggy. "The motherboard."
"Right," confirmed the Doctor. "We've just hacked our way into the brains of the network. And now we find out who decided to freeze Princeton."
Find the solution! Solve the problem! Save the day!
The voice pounded in Peggy's mind, but her feet didn't immediately obey this time. She paused to look at the door that had been opened. This was it: whatever had frozen her friends and turned her world upside down was through that opening. Was it friendly? Hostile? Dangerous? If she went in there, would she come back out?
Don't worry about that! You've gotta be the hero, remember?
The voice urged her to throw caution to the wind and enter the door. But she halted. Rushing in blindly could just get her killed, and that wouldn't be any good to anyone.
"Well, nothing to do but go in," said the Doctor. And he walked through the space. Rory glanced at Peggy, silently asking her if she'd rather go last. She nodded, and Rory walked through after the Doctor. She watched his back fall into shadow into the mysterious room.
Well, you're next, said a voice in her head. But this one was different. Calmer, steadier. More…Peggy.
She walked after Rory into the great unknown.
We found ourselves in an absolutely stunning room. In fact, I was pretty sure the room didn't exist in the traditional sense of the word. I think it had been grafted on to the costume shop by whatever had frozen everyone, which would have been impossible, since the costume shop was surrounded by other rooms on all sides. But the room we were in looked like it was made of the same stuff that was currently flowing between frozen students on the common ground outside. Except this lightning was more organized, and there were more of the symbols we'd seen on the firewall console window flying around.
We stood on a bright blue platform made of lightning amid a huge abyss. Surrounding us was a dome of symbols and code flying faster than the eye could track. In the middle of the platform was a large pillar of bright blue light that stretched to the bottom of the dome all the way to the top. Huge symbols flowed slowly from top to bottom. The Doctor approached it.
"Now then, what have we here?" he said, holding out his sonic.
The blue pillar didn't like his gadget. A prong of lighting shot out and wrapped itself around the Doctor's arm. The Doctor yelped and jumped back.
"Are you all right?!" Peggy and I cried together.
"Fine, fine. No physical harm done," said the Doctor, laughing off the shock. He tried his sonic. It whirred for half a second, then died.
"It fried my sonic!" The Doctor sounded genuinely insulted. He whipped back to the pillar of light.
"What was that for?!" he asked it.
And it answered. Huge symbols arranged themselves in a row across the column of light.
"Ah. Well. That's new," said the Doctor.
New words popped up, this time in a language I understood.
"LANGUAGE DETECTION: ENGLISH. INITIATING TRANSLATION MACRO.
"Oh, that's thoughtful," said the Doctor. "Aural language recognition with built-in translation software. Almost like they expected us. Now then…" he dashed over to the console. Nothing happened this time. Apparently, it didn't think the Doctor himself was dangerous. I began to question the machine's logic.
"What's the big idea killing my screwdriver?" he demanded of the floating words.
"POTENTIAL THREAT DETECTED. SELF-PRESERVATION PROTOCOL ENGAGED."
"Well I wasn't going to kill you or anything!" yelled the Doctor. "I was just going to do some research. Call it a Google."
"CONFIRMATION: YOU WISH TO MAKE AN INQUIRY?"
"Sure, why not."
"CONFIRMED. STATE NATURE OF INQUIRY."
"What are you?"
The computer took a moment, almost as if it were deciding whether it wanted to answer or not. Finally, we got this simple answer.
"UNIT NAME: SUPERMASSIVE INTELLIGENT DATA PROCESSING UNIT 407. CREATOR: CLASSIFIED. OPERATING SYSTEM RUNTIME: APPROX. 2.3 EONS."
"Supermassive Intelligent Data Processing Unit 407? That's a bit of a mouthful," said the Doctor.
"Let's name it Sid!" exclaimed Peggy.
"We are not naming this ancient destructive god-like time stopping computer Sid!" I said.
"The girl has spoken," said the Doctor, turning back to the computer…Sid.
"So…Sid," he began.
The screen was silent.
"Oy! You! Computer thing!"
"CONFIRMATION: YOU WISH TO MAKE AN INQUIRY?"
"No, I wish to make a statement."
"CONFIRMED. STATE INFORMATION."
"I'm calling you Sid. Easier to say."
The computer took a moment to process. I was half expecting it to vaporize all of us for insulting it.
"ALIAS ACCEPTED: SID."
The Doctor laughed. Peggy laughed with him. I stared in disbelief. Apparently, this computer wasn't intelligent enough to realize what idiots we were.
"Now then, Sid…" began the Doctor.
He was interrupted by the screen.
"CONFIRMATION: YOU WISH TO MAKE AN INQUIRY?"
"Ah. Yeah. You don't need to check every time, you know."
"COMMAND ACCEPTED. BYPASSING CONFIRMATION PROTOCOL."
"Good, good," said the Doctor, rubbing his hands together. "Now then-"
"Why is the whole school frozen?" blurted Peggy.
At first, the computer didn't respond. I wondered if it could only communicate with one of us at a time. Then, it responded.
"INQUIRY UNCLEAR. PROVIDE MORE INFORMATION."
"She means, why has the temporal stream in this area been interrupted?" explained the Doctor.
"TEMPORAL ENERGY HAS BEEN ABSORED TO ALLOCATE RESOURCES FOR TRANSPORT."
"What resources are you transporting?" demanded Peggy, approaching the console.
"CLASSIFIED."
"Declassify it!" demanded the Doctor.
"NEGATIVE. MY PURPOSE IS NOT FOR PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE."
This was the first time the computer had referred to itself in the first person. It was eerie.
"You came down here and froze thousands of innocent people. That could be taken as an act of war. I think you want to explain yourself."
The computer again took a moment, weighing the Doctor's argument.
"Sid," said the Doctor. "Before you answer that question, I want you to do something for me. Look me up. The Doctor. I might be in a few databanks. Then take those little tidbits into consideration before deciding if you really want to tick me off. Because I'm bloody close right now with thousands of students being held hostage by a know-it-all AI."
Sid paused, thinking some more. Then it displayed its search results.
"INQUIRY RESULTS: THE DOCTOR. ALIAS. TRUE NAME: UNKNOWN. PLANET OF ORIGIN: GALLIFREY. LIFESPAN: UNKNOWN. TEMPORAL BEING. IMPOSSIBLE TO DETERMINE TEMPORAL POINT OF ORIGIN. HISTORY:"
Then Sid began to play video clips of what it found of the Doctor's escapades. Some of it I recognized: the Sycorax invasion around Christmastime; the attack of the black cubes worldwide; the Sontaran's poison sky scheme. But then I saw some horrible things I never would have imagined. Children running through burning streets being chased by Daleks. Ships crashing into beautiful golden buildings and bursting into flames. Families being separated by crashing bridges. War councils screaming at each other as soldier after solider marched into the fray and died instantly. And amid it all, a tired old man watching. Waiting.
"That's enough," the Doctor said. Sid kept playing. The old man walked to a Tardis and took off. He flew to what could only be a government building and entered. The scene cut to the inside of what looked like a weapons vault. The old man entered and walked straight to one huge cube. He didn't even glance at anything else. He approached it and reached for it. The scene cut away for a moment. When it came back, the old man was gone. So was the cube.
"Sid. Stop. That's a command," said the Doctor. Sid obeyed.
"Doctor…" began Peggy. "What was that?"
"Nothing," said the Doctor, soberer than I'd ever seen him. "It's past now. Sid's seen what he needs to see."
He directed these next words at the screen. "Now. What is your purpose? And I'd think twice before censoring yourself."
Immediately, Sid displayed: "MY PURPOSE IS TO ALLOCATE TEMPORAL RESOURCES FOR PROCESSING POWER."
"What on earth could take that much processing power?" asked Peggy.
"WORLD-BUILDING SIMULATION."
"You're telling me this thing is freezing time to run Minecraft?" I asked.
"Rory. Please allow me to pretend you didn't just say that," said the Doctor.
"Sorry. Just trying to keep things light," I said bitterly. "What kind of simulation could this thing be running that would cause it to steal time from people?"
"It's not a simulation, not anymore. You saw the runtime of this operating system. 2.3 eons. Sid, display activity log for past 2.3 eons."
"Are you crazy? We'll never be able to read all th-"
But Sid simply displayed one task in bold blue letters:
"UTOPIA POCKET DIMENSION SIMULATION PROGRAM."
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Rory.
"It means that for the last 2.3 eons this thing has been running a simulation to perfect a pocket universe. It's spent all that time tweaking and perfecting every last detail. And now it's decided to move on to phase 2."
Peggy got a sick feeling in her stomach.
"And I'm assuming phase 2 is…" Rory began.
"Implementation," said the Doctor simply.
"Which means…" Rory pressed.
"Sid has been running as a background process in the universe for 2.3 eons," said the Doctor. "He's been polishing and perfecting every aspect of this pocket dimension. Now he's done. Now he wants to test it for real. So…he's taking temporal energy from this world so he can…overwrite it."
Peggy's heart plunged.
"He's going to…overwrite reality?" she gasped.
"It's been attempted before," said the Doctor. "The Daleks tried it in the middle of the Time War to stop it from ever happening. But everyone that's tried it has had one fatal flaw: they were too impatient. It takes time to make a dimension stable enough to overwrite a preexisting one. Take too little time and kaplowie. Your pet project is nothing more than a cosmic bubble ready to pop."
He turned to Sid.
"But Sid…or rather, whoever built him, wasn't concerned with any little thing called time. They probably didn't even care if they were around to see it. They just wanted to change this universe. They saw a problem and wanted to fix it, just like any engineer."
"But this universe doesn't need overwriting!" blurted Peggy. Rory and the Doctor turned to look at her. She blushed.
"I mean…yeah, we have our problems. It's part of the…source code. But that's what keeps it interesting! Humans aren't wired to live in utopia. We'd need to go through a…a…species reorientation or something!"
"I think that's what Sid intends to do," said Rory.
"But then we wouldn't be humans!" argued Peggy. "We'd be…I don't know what we'd be. But we wouldn't be human!"
"I agree," said the Doctor quietly. "Whatever this new universe is, it wouldn't be us living in it. It would destroy every currently existing form of life and replace it with a copy. Unless I'm mistaken, that's genocide."
The Doctor turned to the computer and muttered to himself, "What I don't understand is: why would someone build you eons ago? That's hardly enough time to realize what's wrong with the universe, let alone plan something like this…how could someone have known?"
Sid displayed an answer.
"MY CREATOR HAD FOREKNOWLEDGE OF THIS UNIVERSE'S FAULTS."
"How?" the Doctor demanded.
Sid took a moment.
"HOW?" the Doctor slammed his hand on the luminescent panel.
Sid answered.
"MY CREATOR SAW ITS END."
"A time traveler!" The Doctor slammed his hand on his forehead. "Of course it was a time traveler! How could it not be a time traveler?"
"So someone travelled 2.3 eons ago to build this thing because they saw the end of the universe?" I asked.
"Yes, yes, yes, of course. Brilliant project for a brilliant mind! Whoever built this thing…I have to meet them!" The Doctor was waving his hands wildly again, which meant we were in for a long tirade if we didn't get him back on track.
"Um. Excuse me," I said, waving my arms to get his attention. "Don't mean to bring you down to earth, but we do have an impending Doomsday scenario on our hands. How do we stop the overwrite?"
"Sid!" said the Doctor, addressing the computer once more. "Display security clearance requirements."
"NONEXISTENT. ONCE INITIATED, PROGRAM MUST FULFILL DUTY."
"What if we unplug it?" suggested Peggy.
"Sid's drawing power from the background radiation of the universe, and something tells me that switching off all the stars at once might not be a good idea," said the Doctor.
"Control, alt, delete?" I quipped.
"Rory, if you don't have anything nice to say…" began the Doctor.
"All right, all right, I'll shut up," I said.
"What if we overloaded it?" asked Peggy.
"If this thing's been running a utopia simulation for 2.3 eons, I think it may be a bit difficult to overload it," I said.
"Wait…Peggy's on to something," said the Doctor. "Whoever built this needed an enormous amount of processing power. Getting as much as they needed would have been a huge effort. They may have only gone to the trouble of getting just enough. Which means a big enough process might be enough to overload it."
"What kind of process would we need to overload a universal supercomputer?" I asked.
"A universal traveler," said Peggy simply.
Both the Doctor and I looked at her.
"I've figured it out. What's happening to me. I've got you inside me, Doctor. I can see your memories, your life, your emotions, but only snippets. It's odd. Almost too much to handle. But from what I can see, you might be enough to do Sid in."
"Right. Have Sid scan my brain and personality as a side process."
"Not you. Me," said Peggy.
"Peggy, I don't think-" the Doctor began, but I interrupted him. This was too much for me.
"Peggy, that thing would fry you instantly!" I cried.
"And it would do that to the Doctor too. But the universe needs him. I've seen it. It can't afford to have him fry. Who am I? Just a little sophomore from Princeton. This is my chance to save the universe, my only chance."
"Peggy, I won't let you do that," said the Doctor, stepping toward her.
"I know you won't. I've seen that too. You're a good man, the best there ever was. But you have to let me. We'll die if you won't."
"Not all of us will," said the Doctor. "You didn't ask for any of this. You can't take it upon yourself to-"
"Let me have this!" yelled Peggy with surprising ferocity.
I stood for a moment, stunned. What had happened to the cheerful little girl I'd known?
"Peggy," began the Doctor. "Look, I don't know what you've gone through, but you're desperate. I can see that much. I've been desperate people before. But this isn't the way out. Suicide is-"
"This isn't suicide!" exclaimed Peggy, "this is sacrifice!"
"In a war, it's all the same!" yelled the Doctor. "I've seen far too many suicides dressed up as 'sacrifices,' and I'm bloody well not gonna see another one!"
"I knew you'd say that," said Peggy quietly. Then she snapped her fingers, and the lights went out.
When Peggy snapped her fingers, three things happened at once.
First, Peggy ran over to Sid and began whispering to him exactly what she wanted him to do. He complied.
Secondly, the Doctor lunged for where Peggy had been, but missed and crashed into Rory. The two hit the ground hard.
Third, Sid launched the first step to initiate Phase 2 of his program.
Outside the control room, the lightning picked up. Bolts began streaming between students faster. Worldwide, bolts began to show up and freeze other hubs of human activity. Some Princeton students began to fade, overwritten with Sid's program. Terry, the student the travelers had investigated first, was one of the first.
Peggy stood behind Sid, arms spread, ready for the scan. Sid shot a prong of lightning out and attached it to her head. Rather than the shock she'd been expecting, she felt a warm peace flood over her.
Maybe this won't be so bad.
As Sid began to probe the Doctor within her, she saw his memories. A young spunky girl who called her Grandfather. A warrior girl with a mean streak. A time-hopping captain with a knack for flirting. The most important woman in the universe, and the woman who forgot.
Peggy was struck by how many of the Doctor's memories had to do with people, not things. He focused on the people he loved, not the things he did.
She wondered how long it would be before he tried to stop Sid.
Sid probed deeper still.
"Oy!" I said. "Get off!"
The Doctor was laying on top of me after he'd failed to (I assume) stop Peggy from letting Sid scan her. We got tangled up for a few minutes before I could escape his lanky frame.
"Where did she go?" he asked in the darkness.
"How'd she turn the lights off?" I asked in response.
"We have to find her Rory!" I heard the Doctor yell, then I heard his footsteps take off in the direction of Sid. Meanwhile, I heard something power up in the distance.
Things were coming to a head very quickly.
The impossible girl. The empty child. The end of the universe. Times, places, and people flashed before Peggy's eyes faster than she could register.
Her mother. Her father. Younger sister. Hometown.
Peggy flinched. Sid was probing her memories? Why would he be there? There was so much more of the Doctor in her.
"Sid!" she whispered. "Why are you scanning my memories?"
Sid gave her verbal feedback, like she'd instructed him.
"Scanning memories with strongest cortex feedback."
The Doctor's memories had taken precedence over her own for only a moment.
"Sid. Scan only memories related to 'The Doctor.'"
"Negative. Once program has been initiated, changes cannot be made."
"Cease program!" Peggy exclaimed.
"Negative," Sid responded simply.
Peggy saw more of her life fly by. Mom and Dad fighting one night. Dad storming out. Mom crying, cursing, not caring that Peggy was standing by. She saw herself run to her room and hide in her pillow.
She saw her mom pick up the phone, then drop it as her hand went to her mouth.
She saw herself and her mom in the hospital, her dad in bandages and hooked up to IVs after he got in a wreck while drunk.
She saw the graveside service. The pastor's words that bounced off her like she was made of stone.
She saw the half-empty bottle of pills and her mom's limp body. She saw herself dial 911.
She saw her mom come home from the hospital a shell of who she used to be. She saw herself draw into herself more and more.
She saw the suicidal thoughts. Thoughts of self-harm that went unfulfilled only because she didn't want to get caught.
She saw Princeton, her escape. She saw her freshman self drown herself in projects and extracurriculars. She saw herself still not find that escape.
She saw herself come alive one day, today, when she found someone who cared: the Doctor. She saw Rory and his sarcasm that made her giggle. She saw the adventure that made the Doctor tick. She saw herself feeling again.
She saw a world worth living in again.
She saw nothing but black.
The world became a cacophony of buzzes, bells, alarms, and shouts. Then, it became blindingly, impossibly blue. I shut my eyes against it, but it hardly did anything. I was sure I was going to go blind when suddenly, it stopped.
We stood outside, surrounded by sun and trees and sky. Students walked or ran on their way to class.
Students were moving again.
I looked around for Peggy and the Doctor. The Doctor lay on the ground, seemingly protecting something. Underneath him was a prostrate, slender figure.
"Peggy!" I breathed, almost involuntarily. I feared the worst.
"She's alive, barely," said the Doctor, out of breath himself.
"What just happened?" I asked.
"Sid overloaded," the Doctor said, getting up.
"Without killing Peggy?" I asked.
"I helped a bit," said the Doctor. "She'd done most of the overloading, but I just plugged myself into an open port there are the end. Processing power was split so it didn't split her brain. I do have one bugger of a migraine right now, though."
"You're joking," I said.
"Only halfway," the Doctor admitted. "I did plug myself into the computer and I do have a monster headache, but I have no clue if we actually split Sid's processing power or if we just got lucky. I'd bet on the latter."
"What did she try to do?"
"Just what she said: plug herself into Sid and have him scan my memories in the hopes that he wouldn't be able to handle 9,000 years of memories. She was right, I guess."
"How'd she turn the lights off by snapping?"
"She had Sid's source code running through her blood. Maybe she just got a hunch that it'd work."
"Convenient."
"You'd be surprised how many times it turns out to be that way."
I looked down at Peggy's small frame.
"And Sid?"
The Doctor made an explosion sound with accompanying hand gesture.
"And we survived?"
"Well…maybe" the Doctor made the gesture and noise again, "isn't so appropriate. Sid kind of…ceased to exist. Since it was a pocket dimension, he activated a safety measure to thrust us out before it collapsed."
I continued to look at Peggy.
"Odd how we always run into the bravest people in the universe," I said.
"We'd better move her before someone notices. Something tells me a medical examination may bring up some odd results."
"Get her to the TARDIS. I should be able to fix her up."
3 months later, Peggy sat in her dorm, preparing for her trip home for fall break. Her roommate was finishing packing in the bed across from her.
"Okay…books, clothes, bathroom stuff, check, check, check," she was saying.
Peggy wasn't listening. She was thinking of her mother and what it would feel like to face her again. She hadn't seen her since her adventure with the Doctor and Rory. Since she'd seen her life literally flash before her eyes.
In the months since, an intense search had been carried out for 5 missing students who simply vanished one day without a trace. One of those students was Terry. The police said they were hopeful they'd turn up, but Peggy, somehow, knew what had happened. They were gone for good. The Doctor had lied. Of course, she couldn't say anything about it.
When she'd woken up in the TARDIS' sick bay after plugging herself into Sid, she'd seen the Doctor sitting alone by her bedside. He looked…scared.
"What's wrong?" she'd asked.
"I'm sorry," he had replied.
"For what?"
"None of this should have happened to you."
"I shouldn't be alive right now, but I am, and I'm pretty sure it's thanks to you. I feel like that's enough apology for a lifetime."
"Yes." The Doctor had been silent for a moment, seemingly struggling with something. "Peggy?"
"Yeah?"
"Why were you so willing to sacrifice yourself? You hardly gave it a second thought."
Peggy had thought of what she'd seen: the loss, fighting, self-hatred, despair. Why wouldn't she have sacrificed herself?
"I guess I…just was looking for a good cause," she'd said slowly. "I lived my whole life getting shoved to the side by pain and felt like giving up so many times that I guess all I needed was something to make me feel like my life wouldn't have been a waste."
She'd looked at the Doctor.
"You know what that feels like, don't you?" she'd asked him.
He'd been silent for a long time before answering.
"More than you know."
"Then why'd you save me?"
"Because I know what that feels like. But I've survived, and let me tell you something: dying is the easy way out. Living with that weight, living with the pressure to live well…that's hard. But that's what makes a life worthwhile. People mourn the dead for a few years, but in the end, once you're dead, you're dead. You can't make any ripples once you've sunk into the pond."
He'd looked into her eyes before continuing.
"Peggy, I could have let you sacrifice yourself and die back there. I could have. I know that's probably what you wanted. But I wanted you to live because I wanted you to taste life. I wanted you to make waves. And to do that…you needed to survive."
"What made you think I could make waves?"
"Because, Peggy." The Doctor's eyes were heavy with emotion. "Because you are Peggy Crockett. There has never been and there never will be another Peggy Crockett. How could you not make waves? By virtue of who you are, you can change the world."
She'd stayed in the TARDIS for what felt like a week, but the Doctor assured her it was no more than a day. Granted it was a time machine; the Doctor could keep her there for however long he liked and brought her back to her time and she'd never know. When she'd recovered, the Doctor took her back to right after Sid had collapsed. She stepped out of the TARDIS onto a remote corner of campus and turned back to the two men who changed her life.
"Thank you," she'd said.
"Not a problem," replied the Doctor.
"Thank you," said Rory.
"I mean it. You two have…you've given me something to fight for," said Peggy.
"You've always had something to fight for, Peggy," said the Doctor. "We just…reminded you of it, I suppose."
"Yeah," Peggy had said softly. "Yeah."
"Peggy? Yo, Crockett!"
A pillow slammed into Peggy's face, knocking her glasses to the floor. Jenny stood, hands on her mouth. She giggled.
"Sorry," she said. "Didn't mean to hit your face. Just wanted to check that you were good to go."
"Oh, sorry," said Peggy, recovering her glasses from the floor. "Yeah, I'm good. Just...thinking."
She hadn't talked to her mom since she'd left to start the school year, not even a text. Now she had a whole week to spend with her.
This week was something to fight for. Every day was something to fight for now.
She just hoped the Doctor still believed that.
The blue doors shut behind Peggy Crockett. We stood there, side by side, for just a moment.
"Think we'll see her again?" I asked.
"Rory, I'm a time traveler," said the Doctor. "The odds of me running into the same person again are about 80 million billion to one."
"So…knowing you…that's a yes," I said.
"Definitely," he said with a grin. Then, he flung himself to the console and began making preparations for our next flight.
"So…where to next? Midnight, planet of diamonds? No, wait…been there already. Didn't turn out the greatest."
"Actually, I want to get home, see Amy," I said. "See my thing worth fighting for."
"Oh, you humans are so sentimental," said the Doctor. "I get one of you to actually buck up for a second and all of you get all weepy and sappy. It's pathetic."
I smiled and let him have the jab. He'd had a rough day.
His sonic screwdriver sat in a section of the console for repairs.
"Your screwdriver going to be okay?" I asked.
"Oh, it'll be fine," he said. "Sid just did some minor software damage. Nothing the TARDIS can't repair. In fact, it should be about-"
He was interrupted by a beam of light shooting out from the screwdriver. A hologram of a woman in an ornate dress appeared.
"Oh. That's new," said the Doctor.
The woman began to speak.
"So!" she said in a cheery voice, "If you're seeing this, Doctor, it means you've found my little sandbox and promptly ruined it." She clucked her tongue. "So like you. Anyhoo, just wanted to let you know that I completely expected you to come in and muck things up like usual. Just wanted to leave you a little present to show you I'm still kicking and ready to play!"
She blew a kiss at the Doctor.
"As if I'd really want to create a utopia. That's so…boring. Perfection. Pah. But I do hope you had fun. Here's looking at you, kid."
She signed off with an ornate signature that stuck around long after her image had vanished.
"Missy?" I read. "Who's Missy?"
"I have no idea," said the Doctor. "But she apparently knows me. Maybe our timelines got a little crossed, like with River and I."
"Yours and River's timelines are more than a little crossed," I pointed out.
"True," conceded the Doctor.
We stood for a moment in silence.
"Well then, no use standing here wondering about Mystery Woman," said the Doctor perkily. "We've got to get you back to your little treasure." He gagged. "Sheesh, I almost made myself sick with that one."
I laughed. As much as he denied it, I could tell that Peggy had stuck in his mind. The one and only Peggy Crockett, the girl that needed something to fight for.
I hope she's still fighting. For all of our sakes.