Planning for the Past
Well here it is, the first of many, if this is well received.
It has come to my attention that some people aren't familiar with the phrase "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object"
This saddens me.
Please review, Strenghts, Weaknesses, Plotholes. I'd like your opinions here.
Thanks
Kudos to whomever spots the Halo reference. (I simply can't not do it)
Rose Tyler took life as it came.She didn't plan for the future, because she hoped it wouldn't come.
It seemed to stretch out before her, endless, daunting and oh so empty.
While she planned strategy and tactics for combat scenarios ranging from breaking up terrain branches of interplanetary smuggling rings to repelling full-scale invasions, she had no plan for herself or what she would do when she got to old to participate in field missions. At twenty six she worked with Torchwood as a field agent while still living her mother and surrogate father. The thought of moving out and getting her own flat seemed like, well, the end; like she was finally giving up on any chance of anything…more.
No, giving up wasn't the right word, that one remaining fragment of her heart had so far refused to give up hope that the Doctor may return some day, she suspected that it never would. Striking out on her own, it would feel more like a betrayal, moving on with out the Doctor, or maybe an admission that she could live a life without him.
"Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life."
Permanent. Maybe that was what scared her. Living out her life in a fixed point in time and space; a harsh reality after having the universe and all of time as her backyard. A house with doors and carpets and everything domestic, Waking up, going to work, coming home, eating chips, then going to bed so she can do it all over again. Not that working for Torchwood would ever be the usual nine to five, this time she knew there was a war all around her, and she now took part in its fighting.
She was Rose Tyler: Defender of the Earth, now. She defended it for the Doctor, because he wasn't here to do it himself, and she defended it for her seven year old sister, so she would have a better world to grow up in. She defended it for herself,
what else was she to do?
She was thirty five now and a senior field agent, she was also one of the leading scientists as well as their top negotiator. She, her father Pete as well as Mickey attended every first contact with Alien governments and races. The TARDIS translation system still reached her somehow, not as strong as before but they never had negotiations fail because of a language problem.
She converted a set of rooms in her wing in her parent's mansion into her own private labs, after returning home from Torchwood late at night she would lock herself in and...Created. The devices nearly made themselves, she just… knew… how they we're supposed to be. After analyzing alien artifacts for the last fourteen years, you couldn't work with advanced technology for that long without learning something. Putting them together seemed as natural as breathing.
Only her sister was allowed in her labs, at sixteen she idolized her super hero older sister. The steady stream of questions she provided helped Rose mentally work through what she was doing, and another point of view helped her when she found herself stumped.
'Stumped' Didn't only happen during the creation process.
"What is it?"
"……I'm…not sure."
"Not sure? You're the one who built it!"
"That doesn't necessarily mean I know what it's for."
"……Have I mentioned how strange you are lately?" Pause. " Is that the toaster?"
"That bit there seems to be temporal stabilizer coupled with a spatial block, that there I jerry-rigged from that device we found in Bermuda."
"The one that kept throwing ships into random points in time? Dad's going to notice you took if from the vault."
"Dad still owes me for the time I got him out of that Jen'Quon fiasco."
"Mum's going to notice the missing toaster."
"Mum also owes me for getting dad out of the Jen'Quon fiasco."
"What am I going to do tomorrow morning if I feel like toast?"
"You owe me for getting dad out of the Jen'Quon fiasco."
"Who else owes you for getting dad out of the Jen'Quon fiasco?"
"Everyone who would not benefit from dad being married to their Emperors daughter."
"You still haven't told me what this thing dose."
"I told you I don't know."
"No, you told me you don't know what it is. So is it some temporal, spatial time zapper thingy?"
"No, I'd need some type of quantum refractor for that. I did figure out how to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow though."
"And what did that do to it?"
"Now instead of jumping to random places in time it stays stable in one point in time; stopped dead in a single instant"
"Them why is it still here? If it exists only in one instant, and that instant is gone, shouldn't it disappear?"
"Absolutely correct! That, is what the temporal stabilizer and spatial block do. It keeps the device static!"
"It keeps the device, what?"
"Static, never changing, never moving. That device now exists in the exact same spot, permanently, and on every plane of existence, forever, past, present, and future. A Cybermen still pressing itself through the void would have to walk around that!"
"But it wasn't there two hours ago; it was busy in the kitchen making toast!"
"Yes it was, just, not yet."
"That doesn't even-. No. Never mind. So what can you do with it?"
"Uh."
"So we now have an omnipresent toaster/paperweight that can double and a Cybermen kick board?"
"Only slightly omnipresent; it's not everywhere at once, its everywhen right here. In the year five billion, the sun will expand, the earth will explode, and this toaster will still be here; weather or not the table is still there to support it."
"As long as I can get some good fresh toast while the universe ends."
…
…
…
…
"So, now that you've made the immovable object; I'd say it's time for the irresistible force."
"……Alright, get me the waffle iron."
At forty seven she had taken over for her father as head of Torchwood, though she remained active for field work. At the celebratory dinner their waiter asked who the older sister was; that's when she realized something was off.
Some experiments in her lab gave her some surprising results.
For the first time since she found herself trapped in this dimension, she felt life in her again.
Rose Tyler started making some plans for her future.
A 175 year old entered the only locked room in the mansion her parents had left to her. Inside it she left a days supply of food along with some fresh bedding.
She left, locking the door behind her.
The next day the food was gone and the bed unmade.
She smiled.
Now Rose Marion Tyler was 217 and she dedicated her time to running Torchwood, watching the Tyler descendants flourish, and working on her project in the Tyler mansion.
She could accomplish so much more in a single day once she realized that she no longer needed to sleep nightly, or weekly.
A 235 year old Rose examined the object before her with trepidation, it was crude, inaccurate and far more likely to blow up than send her back in time, but it was done, she had her time machine. Making any kind of time travel device out of twenty-third century parts was like trying to make a Swiss watch out of rocks and a mallet.
As long as she kept it away from shelled eggs, she should be ok.
The oblong spheres could double as fragmentation grenades when they boiled instantaneously, splashing burning hot yoke and shell shrapnel across ten square feet.
Leaving the Tyler mansion to her sister's descendants and Torchwood to fend for itself upon her mysterious disappearance; she went to the only locked room in the mansion and laid down on a slip covered bed that hadn't been slept in for twenty years now. She set the machine and turned it on.
When Torchwood came to search the house, looking for clues as to the whereabouts of their long-time director, they found only a note………and the exploded remains of eggs.
Rose was apparently no longer in the year 2220, but the floating toaster that fought for dominance with the irresistible waffle iron; was.
It would always be.
Rose Tyler had taken her first step into the past, and the future.
The year was 2200 and Rose woke up lying on a freshly made bed feeling like she had a hangover too big to occupy her head. Rolling out of the bed she took a huge gulp of the provided drink before she started on the rest of the food. Time travel without a capsule was not fun. Once she was mostly convinced that the food she ate wouldn't return the way it came; she crawled into the bed and slept.
The next morning she stepped out of the bed and into the adjacent bathroom, after making full use of the bathroom's Jacuzzi-sized tub and polishing off the rest of the food, she lay back down on the bed, squeezed her eyes shut, and pressed the button
Later Rose unlocked the door and entered the empty room. She cleared away the dirty dishes, put a slipcover on the bed, turned off the lights and left, locking the door behind her.
It was 2180 by the time Rose appeared over the freshly made bed.
After she regained consciousness she theorized that travel through time without something to protect you from skipping across the vortex was not something you got used to.
By the time she reached 2120, her fifth jump. She decided her theory to be completely confirmed
The jump to 2040 was the last where she would be provided for and safe. It was the first year she had started providing for her future. The next two jumps had no food or warm bed waiting for her. Her parents were still alive back in 2020; her sister would be living there too. She had chosen this room specifically because it was the most remote in the entire mansion, no one ever came here.
Rose Tyler had never planned ahead, not until she realized it was possible for her to harness time, at that moment she concentrated her now formidable mental capacity into planning every detail; that's why when she provided for her future self for the first time, she included a fresh change of clothes, extra rations and a backpack to carry them in.
When she entered two days later there was a set of dirty clothes made of material she had never seen before and the rations and backpack we're gone.
Rose Tyler's past glimpsed her future, and smiled.
She woke up in 2020 looking into her sixteen year old sisters eyes.
"You are in two different places right now, wearing two different outfits. How did you manage that?"
"Time Travel. I'd forgotten how calm you are when faced with the seemingly impossible."
There was a pause
"…Who won?"
"What?"
"Who won? The omnipresent toaster or the irresistible waffle iron?"
"Well at the rate they were going when I left them, neither, for the rest of time."
There is another pause that stretches into a long silence between them.
"……..I told you we should have used the family sized waffle iron."
The year was 2000 and Rose had to ex-filtrate the Tyler estate without being seen. Not to easy when you're half-conscious trying to hold down your last meal and stuck in one of the innermost rooms of one of the worlds richest businessmen.
The 214 years of field work was adequate.
Rose knew she had nearly six years of time to kill; she spent it traveling the world. She had the Doctors psychic paper still in her pocket when she fell through the void, stuffed behind it was a psychic credit card; she used both for her travels.
Rose Tyler's past was now in her future.
It's 2006 and Rose stays in London living in a small flat of her own, it stands looking over the Thames, right above the patch she knew where the TARDIS would materialize at when they accidentally crashed into this dimension. She carefully ticked off the passing days on her calendar.
Everything after the day marked in red had been torn off and thrown away.
They wouldn't be necessary.
People looked at her oddly because she refused to wear earPods for obvious reasons; while her superphone had eventually died, she turned her own hand at jiggery-pokery, and a deft hand it seemed to be. Of course it still needed to be tested on an inter-planetary level, superphone it may be, but even the Doctors Jiggery-pokery didn't know how to connect to the Telraxians version of a radio. She got good reception though, everywhere. She'd made a quest of it once. She'd had a series of long-term experiments started that needed to run through before she could move on with her research, so she spent five years trying to find a single spot on the entire planet where she couldn't get signal. Funny when you think about how most of humanity is doing just the opposite. After being Torchwood's go-to-girl for anything and everything extraterrestrial or unusual, she was quite determined that, if she ever found that place, she would never leave it. Unfortunately, such a place didn't exist.
It was around midday when she heard it. The sound she hadn't heard for 220 years. She watched from the window as the TARDIS door cracked open and a young Mickey Smith cautiously peered out before he turned back to the interior and declared something with a cheeky smile. Moments later the three of them emerged, gaping at the spectacle of London with Zeppelins. She watched as a (much) younger version of herself as she stumbled up to the picture of the alternate version of a man who had been dead for twenty years. She watched as the Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders, convincing her that the man in the ad was not her father. The Doctor watched Rose for a moment before saying something to Mickey and returned to the TARDIS. Mickey watched Rose, Watched the shifting picture of Pete Tyler.
About a minute later Mickey left Rose to follow the Doctor into the TARDIS. "Gingerbread House" muttered Rose as she watched her younger self pull out her phone and wander out of sight.
The older Rose had just enough time to shut off the lights in her flat and remove all final traces of her existence and return to the window with a final cup of tea before a Giddy Doctor and Mickey burst from the TARDIS. Something small and green glowed in the Doctors hand as he spun in bouncy circles before spotting young Rose a little ways off. A one hundred watt smile grew in intensity as he disappeared in the direction Rose went off to. A couple minutes passed before she saw herself walk briskly away, shouting and gesturing to someone behind her, picking up her pace even as she disappeared out of sight followed seconds later by the Doctor dashing after her. He looked up briefly and Rose felt the air leave her lungs as he looked directly at her for a moment, the look of confusion couldn't crowd out the abject curiosity that was always present. Concern (mostly) replaced confusion as he looked back in the direction young Rose disappeared to; He looked from one Rose to the other with a torn look on his face before he reluctantly resumed dashing after young Rose. As the Doctor disappeared Rose released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and felt her heart start beating again. The tear startled her and she stared at it on her finger for a moment before shouldering the backpack by the door and exiting her flat for the last time.
Rose Tyler walked into her past and towards her future.
The key around her neck burned as she approached the TARDIS, it missed her home too. Her heart was in her throat as she slotted the key into the worn lock and turned it. The familiar click of the latch and screech of the hinges was almost as wonderful sounding as the sound of the TARDIS herself. She felt the TARDIS hum a greeting in her mind as she stepped onto the most magnificent ship in the uni-no multiverse. The TARDIS was not confused by her altered presence in the least, she existed to travel through time the existence of a 241 year old version of the 21 year old human that had just left her wasn't the least bit confusing to her. Rose found her presence in her mind soothing even in her current comatose/hibernating state. "Don't tell him I'm here, okay girl?" The TARDIS could not respond but Rose felt confident she had heard.
Rose made her way to the butterfly room, she knew he never went there, not yet, it still hurt too much. It wasn't until after she promised him forever that he showed her this room. She found a soft spot under a silver-leafed tree on the red grass and watched the two suns turn in the Burnt-orange sky, exotic butterflies from hundreds of worlds flocking around, and sometimes on, her. She fell asleep wondering if the red dots on the gas giant that hung hugely in the sky were anything like the ones on Jupiter and slept she better and deeper than she had in over 200 years.
Rose awakened when the ground suddenly pitched sideways; Butterflies alighted madly, becoming whirlwinds of colors while Rose eventually found herself clinging to one of the upper branches of the tree she had been resting under. The TARDIS, along with her internal dimensions, continued to toss about and Rose found herself slipping. Unable to keep her hold on her branch her grip finally lost she flew headfirst into another branch, she registered impacting the ground before she blacked out.
Rose woke back up with the knowledge that she had been out for exactly three hours, twenty two minutes and seventeen seconds. She rubbed the new knot on her head before locating and retrieving her backpack and making her way cautiously to the console room. As she approached the room, the sound of tinkering drifted towards her, she peeked in. She could see the Doctors trainers sticking out from under the console, one foot twitching to a beat she could here the Doctor humming. Rose held her breath as suddenly the sounds of tinkering and humming stopped, the foot stopped twitching. Seconds stretched to eternity as her heart leapt into her throat. She almost sighed in relief as the Doctor resumed his activities as though nothing whatsoever had happened. She glanced at the display that showed the time of day outside the TARDIS and set her watch to it. She would be able to sneak out that night. The Doctor had slept in the spare room; well he'd said he'd slept but she hadn't believed him, she hadn't been woken in the middle of the night by his nightmares.
It was 1:17am when Rose ventured out of the TARDIS, checking the screens to make sure the living room was, indeed, empty. Seeing no-one she cautiously crept towards the flat's front door.
"Stowaway Eh?" Rose felt her blood freeze and she turned. "Not the first time, certainly. But this is the first time I've had a stowaway be someone I've already invited on my ship." He seemed to consider this for a moment. "Twice!" He amended.
"Three times actually, if you count Christmas." She corrected and he nodded, tugging on his ear.
"So, any particular reason I gave you a ride from a parallel world?"
"None that I can mention." She said fingering the strap of her backpack. "I've seen enough of reapers." The Doctor nodded acknowledging this piece of wisdom.
"Fair enough." He said, surprising Rose slightly. "I'll let you get back to it." He turned back to the spare room and started to move away, paused then turned back to the Rose he had not yet met.
"Mind you I should think I've had to do more mind wipes to prevent paradoxes than all of the other Time Lords combined. That's got to have some long-term effects on my psyche." Rose smiled.
"That explains so much." She said and before he had a chance to be offended she took advantage of the fact that he wouldn't remember this and grabbed his necktie and used it to pull him into a heart stopping kiss before she dashed out the door and down the stairs, leaving a still-dazed Doctor behind her.
Rose's future awaited her.
The Doctor stared at the plate of chips in front of him like they held the key to the universe. He'd never been this addicted to a foodstuff before, well, aside from tea that is, but that just didn't count. It was even worse than his jellybaby cravings he'd had when he was all teeth and curls. He still couldn't figure out how he'd always kept from tripping over that blasted scarf.
Well, maybe it was wrong to say he was addicted to them; he typically just sat there and stared at them until they got cold while he tried not to think of Rose Tyler. A goal that was pretty near impossible since he was always half expecting her to reach over and steal a handful.
The Doctor sighed and stood, dumping the cold un-touched chips in the bin and slowly made his way back to the TARDIS. He usually didn't dwell this much and it made him wonder what had gotten into him lately. Silently he made his way back to the TARDIS, upon shutting the door behind him the TARDIS instantly sprang to life and the sound of ancient engines filled the room. Puzzled, the Doctor quickly ran to the consol flipping switches and checking displays, trying to find out what his frankly magnificent time ship was up to. Then with a slightly startled 'Oh' the Time Lord remembered what day it was. Fifty Years.
It had been fifty years to the day since the Doctor had failed to finish that sentence, and the TRADIS was taking him to bad Wolf Bay.
It was a ritual he had never missed, he wasn't exactly sure why he did it but he always had. Even when the Master had held him prisoner during the year that never was. The insane time Lord had flown the Reliant to Norway and had abandoned the Doctor to the beach for half the day leaving him to sit and stare at the desolate shore.
The TARDIS landed and the Doctor checked the read-out, noticing that the date said 2006 instead of 2056, at this exact time Rose Marion Tyler was telling him that she loves him, and was currently failing to return her words in an alternate universe. It was odd, while it was in no way unusual for the TARDIS to end up in the wrong time and/or place, she had never been wrong about this, it was very unlike her. He supposed it didn't matter, he hadn't gone to this beach that year; he had only started with the first year anniversary in 2007; so he didn't need to worry about crossing his own timeline. He exited the TARDIS and walked across the sand.
The Time Lord didn't stare out at the sea, but at a specific patch of dirt and rocks, the empty sound of wind over rocks and waves crashing onto the shore filling his head.
"How long did you wait?" A voice behind him asked breaking the icy silence. The Doctor allowed a smile to steal across his face as blocked memories resurfaced.
"Oh, five and a half hours."
Rose Tyler was looking forward to her future.
Finis-ish