Every Star, Every Planet
This is a junkyard, on a sentient, malevolent asteroid that lives outside of the universe. A TARDIS with no engine has just landed here. It's dark, and the only three people who know this place well aren't at all trustworthy.
At least, that's what they'd like you to think. It's actually a set made out of balsa wood, polystyrene and the usual tricks. There are only a few square metres of it, and it's surrounded by cameras. The police box shell is made of plywood, and is exactly as big on the inside as it should be. Everything is normal — although a few thousand pounds worth of special effects try to disagree. It actually is dark, but that's because it's the middle of the night, and most of the crew has left.
Except Neil, in the next room. Neil was wide awake, because Neil was one of those people who sleep in the mornings. He was writing on an iPad, as much because things must be written as he had anything to write about.
Suddenly, he stood up, walked through several doors, across the set, and through more doors to the toilets. After relieving himself, he walked back between the two police boxes, before sitting down again and resuming his writing.
He stopped for a moment, because he heard commotion outside.
"Matt? It's 1am, what are you doing up?" said the voice of Robb.
"Must've gotten lost," a second voice mumbled. "Which way's my room?"
"C'mon."
There was the sound of footsteps, and two people – one in a t-shirt, the other in a bowtie – came through the door, crossed the room and exited by the far door. Neil resumed writing as they passed.
The two men continued through another door, and their voices became too muffled to make out.
A few minutes later, Neil sat bolt upright. He switched off his iPad, gathered up his effects, and then walked – trying not to run and give the game away – back to the set.
The two of them came to a door. "Here you are," said Robb. "See you in the morning."
"Thanks," said the other man, more cheerily.
Robb noticed his reluctance to open the door. "You've not lost your key or anything, have you?"
"No, I'm fine, really," the other man insisted.
"OK," Robb said uncertainly, as he walked away. The man in the bowtie watched him go.
Flick, whirrrr, click.
He opened the newly-unlocked door. A light flickered on, and an annoyed voice started saying, "Hey, hey, you don't just barge in…!"
The voice stopped speaking as soon as his eyes met with the other man's. They flicked down, taking in the man's bowtie and tweed jacket, and then flicked back up. For a moment, the two of them stopped and just stared at their own face staring back at them.
"Who are you?" they both said simultaneously.
"Health and safety," the man in the bowtie said, flicking open a wallet and showing his Department of Health ID card. "There's a gas leak in here; mind if I look around?"
"Only if you hand me your ID," replied the man in the dressing gown.
The man in the bowtie looked taken aback. "It's legitimate," he insisted.
"Then hand it to me."
He did, and the man in the dressing gown looked at the blank piece of paper in the wallet. "I know how this works," he murmured. "You just think, and then show it," he continued, showing the obviously fake ID to the man in the bowtie.
"…You're not me," he said. "…Am I you?"
"Nope," said the man in the dressing gown with a grin. "How old are you?"
"907," the man in the bowtie replied.
"You're joking!" the man in the dressing gown laughed. He grinned as he continued, "29. Now who are you, really?"
"I'm the Doctor," said he, surprised.
The man in the dressing gown stopped laughing, and then stopped smiling. "And you just handed me working psychic paper," he said, suddenly very serious.
"And how do you know how psychic paper is? It's not traded on Earth for another 1300 years!"
The man in the dressing gown smiled again. "Doctor, I'm willing to bet that's not the only question on your mind. Another two are: Why is there a copy of House complete with fake TARDIS laid out down the way, surrounded by cameras and why is there a man who looks just like you and knows everything about you but who isn't even a Time Lord?"
"You're Matt," the Doctor said, suddenly quite lost for words.
"Yes, Doctor, I'm Matt Smith," said the man in the dressing gown, "And you've got two options here. Either you run away back to the TARDIS that's bigger on the inside because it's got a pocket dimension in it and avoid London and Cardiff between 2005 and 2015 like the plague, or… I can get someone to explain it to you."
"I guess you know I like explanations?" the Doctor second-guessed.
Matt grinned.
Neil leaned on the police box door, trying to untwist his stomach. He knew that this couldn't be the real deal – someone had just come up with that idea back in 1963, when police boxes were still actually common.
But the plywood one was over there, at least six feet away, and there'd only been one here this morning.
So he ignored the sign on the door – that he himself had pointed out – and pushed to open. As it opened, he ducked around to the other side and closed it behind him. He didn't want to look just yet.
As he stood facing the closed door, staring at the ground, he tentatively stretched a hand out behind him.
Then he swept it from side to side, trying to stop it from shaking, and hoping against hope that it would touch a wall.
It didn't. He turned around slowly, and – even though he knew exactly what he would see – was stunned. It really is bigger on the inside!
As he walked across and up the steps onto the iconic glass floor, the shock faded away, and was slowly replaced with a sense of awe that seemed to resonate through his whole body and send shivers up and down his back. This really is the TARDIS. Exactly as we said it would be.
It was all there. The staircases away to who-knew-where (although there must be a swimming pool somewhere), the underbelly where the Doctor was always clever (as long as someone was paying attention), and the mish-mash of levers, clocks, dials, pumps, a keyboard, more levers, several things Neil couldn't discern the purpose of, others he could but didn't seem to connect to anything…
He stood beside the console, looking over the instruments of elegant glass, brass and gas-based pneumatics. It was truly breath-taking. He reached down to touch it, before a problem occurred to him: he didn't know what any of it did. Sure, he had read the operators' manual the team had put together for David and later, Matt, but that was just a joke; none of it was real. …But then again, the TARDIS wasn't supposed to be real either.
But then he remembered what he had said had happened. I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and ran away…
He looked towards the door in fear, as he realized what it meant that the Time Lord wasn't there. He didn't know what the Doctor would do to him if he was found, and there was no way to tell what the Doctor was doing or when he would be back. He thought about leaving through the door, just in case. Nobody would know, and anyway, he couldn't fly it if he wanted to.
He touched the console lightly, and felt the vibration of an engine. As he did so, the tone changed, and seemed to grow just a little softer and warmer.
Maybe he didn't need to know. He walked around the console slowly, stroking his hand lightly across the instruments, before taking hold of the wibbly lever.
He stood there for a moment, considering what he was about to do, remembering the Doctor's speech. All of time and space; everything that ever happened or ever will. Where do you want to start? Anywhere you want. Any when you want. One condition: it has to be amazing.
"Next stop everywhere?" he said, uncertainly. Then he threw the lever hard.
Then there was that sound: a repetitive, unearthly groaning and wheezing – the sound of a door key over piano strings.
And over the most wonderful sound in the universe was another: the sound of Neil laughing triumphantly, into a cavern that was bigger on the inside.
"Steven!"
"Matt?" Steven replied, sleepily. "It's... 2am..."
"You won't believe this! C'mon!"
Matt almost dragged Steven away from his room, until the two of them emerged into the set.
Then Steven spotted the Doctor.
"I'm dreaming," he said to Matt, "Pinch me." He did. "Ow. So I'm not dreaming. What's going on?"
The Doctor approached the two, rambling, "Oh, so you're Steven. Which means you can't have taken it, and I need to talk to you later..."
"Taken what?"
"Someone's stolen the TARDIS," said the Doctor and Matt at once.
There was a second's pause. Then Stephen managed to say, "Matt, go find Neil and I'll talk to the Doctor."
As Matt left, Steven realized what he just said. "I never thought I'd say that in my life, just so you know."
"Out of interest, who are you?" the Doctor asked, as the two of them started walking towards the main set.
"Showrunner," Stephen replied automatically.
"Matt said you'd explain things..." the Doctor said, trying a different tack.
"You're really the Doctor?" Steven almost gasped. "I mean, really? Matt isn't playing some horrible joke on us?"
The Doctor looked uncharacteristically confused. "Yes, really," he said, and waved the psychic paper. "...Showrunner of what?"
"I thought you'd have worked it out by now, with all the cameras and the fake police box and everything."
The Doctor looked around, as though he was seeing everything for the first time. "How do you know about House?" he asked while looking sideways at Steven.
"We didn't, to be honest. Neil just made it up, and wrote the story, and we were in the middle of filming it when you showed up."
The Doctor stared at him as Matt walked back up to them. As the Doctor turned away from Steven to look at them, he said, "Can't find him."
Something else occurred to the Doctor. "What year is this?"
"2010. September. 17th," Steven provided, as the Doctor seemed to silently prompt him for more. "Cardi-"
Then he stopped and glared at Matt. Matt staggered back a step.
"Doctor, there isn't a spacetime rift in Cardiff we haven't notic–" said Steven, before Matt appeared out of thin air and crashed into him, spilling a box of parts over the ground.
"And this is why people find your plots confusing!" said the newly-materialized Matt, while the original looked on in confusion and threw his hands in the air, gesturing "I don't know!" A moment after, the Doctor materialized beside them, and stumbled a step or two.
"…Which means that if you slingshot the wordlines around the rift and then heterodyne the Ricci component…," the original Doctor thought aloud.
A third Doctor – wearing a fez – materialized more steadily. "You can get a torque on the Huon link, and pull the TARDIS back," he said.
"Jack has a vortex manipulator," suggested the second Doctor. "Will have. Did, until I borrowed it off him."
"Of course," said the Doctor who had been there all the time. "Matt, I'll need you to come with me – if we work together, they won't realize what's happened."
"But we don't have a vortex manipulator?" the original Matt said.
"Here you are," said the fez-wearing Doctor, handing over a small grey box to the original Doctor.
The original Matt and the Doctor who had been there all along took one another's hands.
"Er… Geronimo?" Matt hesitated.
"Geronimo!" said the Doctor, before the two of them vanished in a buzzing sound and a puff of smoke.
"Can we do that again?" the remaining Matt asked the Doctor without a fez.
"No. Why are you here?" the second Doctor asked the one in the fez.
"You forgot you need a Hepler wrench," said he, pulling what looked like a Swiss army knife designed by Dr. Seuss out of his jacket.
"Oh, right, forget my own head next," said the Doctor not wearing a fez, as he pressed a few buttons on the vortex manipulator. Then he hit his forehead with his wrist and vanished in another puff of smoke.
The fez-wearing Doctor turned to the stunned onlookers, expectedly. After a moment, he seemed disappointed, and asked, "Nobody's going to ask about the fez?"
"We know about the fez," said Matt.
"I wrote it out," added Steven.
The Doctor looked crestfallen. "…River killed my fez because you said so?" he said, and Steven suddenly looked uncharacteristically guilty.
"Sorry," he admitted sheepishly. "Also, what just happened?"
"What just happened was me being completely irresponsible with the structure of reality, so don't follow my example. …You know about the Pandorica, don't you?"
"Of course," the three of them chorused.
"…It's not as fun when you know everything too," the Doctor whined. "Anyway, I'll fix the hole in spacetime later. Who wants to help me fish for a TARDIS?"
The assembled students were listening intently, and the cameras were recording everything. The whole room was focused on Neil, who was just finishing off his speech to the new graduates of the university – even though he was technically among them. Although some people said it didn't count if it was only honorary.
"…And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art."
There was an enduring applause, but Neil realized he was short of time, so he interrupted. "Switch the cameras off now, please."
The engineer didn't respond initially, so he repeated the command. "Now."
Lights switched off – the cameras weren't recording – but everyone still listened. In fact, some had perked up. "I'm sorry about that, but it's very important that the cameras don't see this bit. If I remember correctly, I'm just about to show you one fantastic mistake that has stayed fixed in my memory up until this day. A few years ago, a fantastic, unthinkable opportunity presented itself to me, so in turn I broke the rules – of politeness, of common sense, even what I could dare myself to do. …That's a very odd thing to say, isn't it? 'If I remember correctly, I'm about to…' Well," he said, and looked down at his watch. "It's true. Two, one."
Then a soft wind seemed to rise up out of nowhere. It brushed aside a few papers, and swished through a few hairstyles, before it grew in intensity, and started blowing things over. As the wind grew louder and more powerful, another sound could be heard: a jingling sound, which was quickly drowned out and mutated into a rhythmic wheezing groan.
A police box had appeared at one end of the room, where there had not been a police box before.
The door opened hesitatingly, and a slightly fearful, shaking Neil emerged. As he did so, the entire auditorium stood up somewhat hesitatingly but applauded loudly.
As they quietened down again, the Neil in the TARDIS spotted the Neil at the podium, who said, "Welcome to the University of the Arts," before quickly rattling off the exact date and time.
"Why are you… I… we here?" the other Neil asked and fell over the grammar.
"I don't know why you're here but I can't tell you why I am," said the Neil.
"Spoilers?" replied the other Neil.
"Spoilers," laughed the Neil at the podium.
"I'd have expected that I'd be the first to tell me what I'd be doing!"
"Well, I didn't know what it was until it actually happened, so logically I'm not going to tell you," said the older Neil.
"That's –" started the Neil standing in the door, but then the floor lurched under him and threw him further back into the TARDIS. The doors slammed shut, and the engine groaned into life again.
Neil cursed as he pulled himself off the floor, and ran over to the console. He stood there for a moment, considering whether or not there was anything he could feasibly pull now that the Doctor was on to him. However, he hesitated too long, and the engine ground to a halt before he could decide.
As the door opened, Neil raised his hands and stepped backwards. "Step away from the console and nobody gets hurt, right?" he said, as he turned towards the door.
The Doctor, Matt and Steven all piled in. The ordering was quite fortunate, since the latter two stopped just inside the door, in awe.
"You stole my TARDIS!" the Doctor shouted in shock. "You waltzed in here and stole my lovely TARDIS! From right under my nose! What were you thinking?!"
Neil was stunned, and the words caught in his throat the first time he tried speaking. He heard Steven's voice distantly say, shocked, "Neil?"
The second time he tried, he said to the Doctor, "I wanted to… see the universe."
The Doctor stood speechless for a moment, seemingly shocked at the response. Then he said, his voice calm, "Why didn't you just ask?"
Neil just stared, his hands still in the air. "Why didn't I…?"
The Doctor grinned, and Neil started laughing, and then the Doctor joined in, before turning around to Steven and Matt.
They knew what he was expecting. "It's bigger on the inside!" they laughed in unison, and the Doctor looked disappointed again.
"None of you know how to drive this thing, at least?" he suggested.
"No," Steven answered.
"Thank goodness for that," the Doctor sighed. "Anyway, where do you want to start?"
"What?" all three humans said.
"Y'know, every star, every planet, anywhere and any when in time and space. Where do you want to start?"
They were too stunned to respond. The Doctor continued, "Or would like some time to think about it? I can do that."
"Yeah, that would… that would be helpful," Steven said.
"Then just head out the door," the Doctor said, smiling, "and I'll come back later."
Later, Neil didn't really register walking out with the three others, onto the asteroid set and back into normality. He didn't pay much attention to the TARDIS disappearing in its signature whirlwind of noise and movement either.
Matt waved a hand in front of his face, and Neil slowly and woodenly turned to look.
"Where did you go?" he asked.
"To my graduation," Neil answered absently. "I don't know for sure, but I think I was being given a doctorate."
(Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed that. If you want know what inspired it, watch Dr. Who Confidential. Also, see this: /hMHuk )