Happy New Year, friends!
Some of you may be wondering, "Who's the Man in Black?" Others of you perhaps don't care, nor know who the Man in Black is. Either way, this story is for you. I will explain. I will also tell what I hope is an interesting story about Las Vegas and one of the Doctor's oldest enemies!
If you feel like it, go ahead and read The Window on the Left, but if you don't, it doesn't matter. I'll spare you the details, and just let you know that the Doctor and Martha Jones' relationship in this story has progressed into romance. ;-) No canon angst here!
So here we go! Viva Las Vegas!
ONE
Time is a funny thing.
No-one can run from it, nor hide from it. No-one is immune to its effects. Everyone feels its passage, and how it seems to "behave" differently depending upon one's state of mind. People waste it, or save it, according to their desires or needs. Most people believe that regaining it, once it's gone, is impossible, though everyone desperately wishes they could. It's like a weight on all existence, something that slogs forward while those in its thrall try to give it meaning.
Such an inescapable, pervasive thing, is time, yet it is totally, frustratingly out of reach. It just slips by, or runs away like a freight train, and nothing can contain it. No-one fully understands it. No-one can manipulate it, no-one can see it, nor see through or across it to know what it holds, how its threads weave into the fabric of being.
Except for one man.
"And he's burnt the scrambled eggs," Martha Jones muttered, walking into the kitchen in her flat, getting a strong whiff of something charred.
"Hm?" the Doctor asked, looking up from his reverie. His eyes had been fixed on the two slices of bread in his hands, which he had been holding for several minutes, having got stuck on a train of thought, en route to the toaster. "Oh, sorry!"
He put the bread down and made to remove the pan from the burner, but she had beat him to it, and was already scraping the eggs into the rubbish bin.
"It's okay," she said, with a chuckle. "All of time and space, and yet… eggs. Stymied by eggs."
"Yeah. And, actually, late-model Studebakers, for some reason," he muttered, now actually moving toward the toaster with the slices of bread, preparing to deliver them for toasting.
Fluidly, she deposited the pan into the sink, ran a bit of hot water and used a soap-ready wand to wash out the residue. Then she quickly dried the pan with a white cloth that had been hanging from the cupboard door, and placed it back on the stove. She pulled another four eggs out of the fridge with two hands and set about cracking them in the pan once more.
"Sorry," he said again, as he watched her.
Ordinarily, he wasn't a bad cook. In fact, he was quite a good one. Eight centuries of travel had given him quite a sophisticated, intergalactic palate, and once in a while, he became inspired. He'd been known to be quite creative with his culinary prowess.
"It's okay," she repeated, as he leaned against the counter near the toaster. She jostled the yolks and whites with a spatula, added a bit of salt, and then asked, "You okay?"
"Yeah, just thinking about… time," he answered.
"Oh. Well, that makes a change."
"The Man in Black," he said.
The two of them had retired to Martha's flat last night to wind down from an adventure in the States, wherein they had saved two people from a violent death by home-made explosives. In doing so, they had redirected a chain of events that would have meant that those deaths, over time, would save the human race. In the mix, there was a man who wore all black, a mysterious figure whom they had encountered, who had tried to derail the entire event, meaning Armageddon for the Earth. And it all hinged on a "fixed point" in time, an event that cannot be avoided without disastrous consequences.
An event that cannot be avoided. Or changed. That is, unless a Time Lord got involved.
"Ah. New revelation?" asked Martha.
"Nothing drastically new," he shrugged. "Just… wondering how he knew what to do. Who to talk to. What does he know about time, fixed points, existence as we know it?"
"Well, we were wondering all of that before."
"Yeah, but I guess I didn't fully think it through – was too exhausted or something. But just now… I mean, Martha, only Time Lords know about fixed points. Only one of us could see how that explosion, those two deaths, would lead to…" he sighed.
"But you said you got a human vibe off him when you confronted him."
"I did," he told her. "But there are so many reasons why his human vibe could be false. Or why my ability to assess a human vibe might be irrelevant."
"Okay, well… maybe he's a Rehengese, or was hired by them. You said they had some wicked technology…"
"But not feelers across time," he corrected.
She sighed. She picked up the pan of scrambled eggs and distributed its contents upon two nearby plates, then reminded the Doctor that the toast had popped up behind him. Silently, he buttered the toast then placed one on each plate. She poured them each a cup of coffee and they sat down to have breakfast.
"Well," she said, after taking her first bite. "Are we still agreed that we need to find him?"
"Yes, definitely," the Doctor said, nodding with a mouthful of toast.
"If nothing else, just to make sure that whoever hired him didn't kill him and his entire family, if they found out that the mission got thwarted."
"But also because… fixed point, Martha. I can't just let that pass." When he said that last bit, he seemed far away, as though searching for a specific star in the sky.
"So, if the Rehengese don't have time-seeing or time-travel or time-anything, and we're assuming (loosely) that he's human, then could just go back to that neighbourhood, on that day, and follow him.
The Doctor gave a small groan. "Go back there… to that day? Intercept him as he leaves the scene?"
"I know what you're going to say. Too dangerous. Timelines. Paradox. Horrible things."
"In a nutshell," he said with a smirk.
"Well, then… it's on you, I guess. Because other than just going to where we saw him last, I've got nothing."
"I just don't like going back so close to the scene of a fixed point, especially since we might also run the risk of crossing our own timelines."
"Again, I've got nothing," she said, biting into her toast.
He sat back, took a long sip of his coffee that made him grimace, then he folded his arms, and seemed to contemplate for a few minutes.
"Okay," he said suddenly. "Let's start with the TARDIS. Sentient software. Maybe she and I can do a bit of an interface and run a mug-shot check on him or something. I reckon it's pretty likely he's been photographed somewhere, some way, in an official capacity. A mug shot, driving licence…"
"Excellent," Martha chirped. "A place to begin. Hallelujah. Now eat your eggs. - I worked hard on them."
Though, as Martha had feared, the TARDIS was able to offer no insight into who the Man In Black might be.
"So, back to square-one," the Doctor said quietly, setting down the interface headband on the console. "I'm setting a course for the day we last saw him in 1966, in that neighbourhood..."
He stood at the controls with his hands on them, ready to throw the TARDIS into gear, but something was stopping him.
"You're feeling nauseated, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"Your Time Lord gut doesn't want you to risk crossing your own timeline, does it?"
"No. Nor does it want you to risk it."
She came up beside him, placed both hands on his arm and led him back to the lone seat in the console room.
"Then let's wait," she counselled. "Let's just, you know, do what we usually do. Let's get on with our lives, and see if an opportunity arises. You might have an epiphany in the coming months – who knows?"
He nodded subtly. "Okay."
She draped her arms over his shoulders, and rested her head against his. "Sorry – didn't mean to push you. Just work at your own pace, and I'll back you up."
He smiled softly and kissed the bit of bare arm that was currently resting front of his mouth. "Thank you." After a few beats, he asked, "So, what do you want to do next?"
She smiled. "Let's just set the coordinates to random and see what happens."
"Oh-ho! It's been a good long while since we've done that!" he enthused, like a child. Then he stood up and made his way to the controls, made a few adjustments and threw the TARDIS into gear. They held on, as the vessel jostled, and then stopped after about twenty seconds.
"Where are we?" she asked.
He pulled the screen toward himself and checked the readings. "Interesting. We're in Las Vegas."
"Like, on Earth?"
"Yep."
"Anything and everything all across history and the universe, and we set this thing to random and it brings us back to Earth?"
"Yep."
"Hunh. Go figure."
"Want to go out and take a look anyway?"
"Sure. Never been to Las Vegas. It's not as exotic as some of the places we've been, but… it's all about the journey, isn't it? And being with you." She popped up on her tiptoes and extended her neck for a kiss. He obliged happily, then she asked, "When are we?"
He looked at the screen, reading the swirls of circular lettering that constituted the Doctor's native language. "Oh, no," he said. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This won't do at all."
"What? What's wrong?" she asked, worriedly.
"It's the summer of 2016. 8th of August."
"Seriously? Eight years? She didn't even bring us into the far-flung future?" She laughed a bit, then stroked the console. She spoke then to the TARDIS itself. "I've seen you get a lot more creative, love. Bit off your game today?"
The Doctor sighed heavily. "Yeah, that's not why I said it won't do," the Doctor told her. "2016 on Earth is just… ugh."
"Ugh?"
"Yeah. It's bleah."
"Bleah?"
Before the Doctor could explain, a phone seemed to ring from somewhere on the console. He looked at Martha with surprise, shrugged, then flipped a switch.
Before he could say hello, a strange sound came over the speakers, like electronic blips interspersed with a flute playing a two-note melody. And a bit of the whine from a fax machine thrown in every few seconds.
Martha wrinkled her nose. "What is that?"
"It's an untranslated communiqué," he said. "Buried somewhere in there is probably a voice message of some sort, but the TARDIS can't quite decipher it yet. Though… she's trying." He tipped his ear toward the console and seemed to be listening.
From Martha's point of view, nothing was changing. The Doctor, however, was nodding his head, perhaps starting to understand. It was sort of like when he could hear the nuanced differences in the whine of the sonic screwdriver, and she most definitely could not.
After about a minute, the sound stopped, and they heard the standard click, signalling that the call had been cut off.
"Did you get anything?" she asked.
"Just the point of origin," he said. "Local."
"So… Las Vegas?"
"So it would seem. Las Vegas, August, 2016."
"Oh. So it found us because we're here."
"Or we're here because it found us. The TARDIS' random function could have been influenced by a particular frequency coming at us… depending on the type of message, the coding used…"
"So what was it, a distress call?"
"From Las Vegas?" he asked, at first a bit incredulous of the question. Then, "Well, I suppose it's possible. They do have Area 51 nearby-ish."
"That's real?"
"Yep. Unfortunately."
"So, do you have a way of contacting Area 51?"
"Of course, but if it's them, it's probably a trap," he said.
"A trap?"
"They've been trying to get me out there since the fifties," he said. "But I know what would happen the minute I crossed the threshold."
"You'd be a prisoner."
"If I'm lucky!"
He spent a few minutes playing back the sound as it had come through, and trying to get the TARDIS to trace the source a bit more specifically. Martha waited.
He mused, "No, it's definitely coming from inside Las Vegas proper, not from the desert."
"Could it be a wrong number?"
"Not bloody likely," he said. "A phone call is one thing, Martha, but a signal that can breach the TARDIS' equipment? Even if it's encrypted? That's got to be…" He let out a puff of air signalling that he wasn't sure what to say next.
"So, it's weird?"
"It's weird."
