The TARDIS rocked and Sheldon lost his footing on the ladder in the library and fell on the floor hard. It knocked the wind out of him but what worried him was that the ship had rocked at all. He tossed his newest find in Penny's library a compendium of 'The Superheroes of the DC Universe 300th Anniversary' aside and ran to the control room. He expected to find Penny there or arriving behind him but the room was empty. The screens showed the ship sat idling in the time vortex. That worried him because they shouldn't have stopped anywhere. They had a course set to Arcadia so the TARDIS shouldn't be idling at all. Penny had shown him how to take the ship out of the vortex and put it into lockdown. She told him it was a kind of safe mode in case anything happened to her since he couldn't really fly the TARDIS. He figured the rocking and idling was because something had happened to Penny. Now, he just had to find her. The TARDIS was bigger on the inside. Much bigger.
Sheldon headed for the pool first because it was one of Penny's favorite rooms. It was empty. Their comics and video games were scattered about where they had left them. He tried the galley, dining room, bowling alley, the skating rink, even the shoe closet. Sheldon hated searching the wardrobe section because it was large and only Penny knew how big it was so it was hard to say if he had ever searched it all. It also reminded him that while she looked like a young twenty something and usually acted like one she really wasn't. She was older than his Meemaw and several of their Meemaw's back. She was an alien, a Time Lord of Gallifrey. This place reminded him of the centuries older she was. It reminded him of the mind bending with the Master. He had felt the Master's mind and he sometimes woke up with nightmares from that competition.
Sheldon had the nightmares off and on over the last two years. The first time he'd had one of the nightmares had been after the excellent vindaloo on Krishna IV. Whether it was because he'd impulsively closed the TARDIS door and launched himself into life as a Time Lord's companion like someone from his beloved Doctor Who, or because the closeness of being overwhelmed by the Master's mind was haunting him, or it was just the vindaloo, he'd woken up afraid.
'Danger, danger… Penny?' He wanted to say no one came into his room but this was her TARDIS so he felt off balance saying she couldn't go somewhere in it.
'Hey, honey, I heard your nightmare. It's OK, sleep.'
'Penny, I don't… that is I don't usually have people, people at home don't come in my room, but this is…'
Penny nodded in understanding. 'It's OK, Sheldon, this is your room. I wouldn't come in except I heard you having a bad dream. Is it him, the weasel?' Penny sighed and worried whether the mind bending was too much for her friend in spite of Sheldon's exceptional mind. He still wasn't a Time Lord.
Sheldon looked around. 'Are the walls really that thin?'
Penny smirked at that. 'No, the TARDIS told me you weren't sleeping well. She likes you, you know?'
Penny had smoothed his hair and told him to close his eyes and she had sung 'Soft Kitty' which would have surprised him if he hadn't been so tired.
Sheldon had woken up the next day and he really knew then how different Penny was from humans. Penny and the TARDIS were connected like the Doctor and his TARDIS on the show. She knew he'd been having a nightmare because the TARDIS knew it.
'Alright, if you two are connected why don't you just show me where Penny is? Haven't I been looking long enough or looking in the right places? What do I have to do to find her?' Sheldon wondered why the ship didn't just tell him. It occurred to him then that maybe he had just not let the ship tell him. He had been going where he wanted to go instead of letting the TARDIS get him to Penny. 'Well, Obi-TARDIS-Wan, how do I use the Force here and find Penny?' Sheldon leaned against the wall but a doorway opened instead and he fell on the floor for the second time today. It was moments like these he questioned Penny's saying the TARDIS liked him.
Sheldon looked up at the ceiling and a large 'Hello Kitty' face stared back at him. He sat up and saw a large collection of Care Bears in a wall sized cabinet and he remembered Penny said she collected them. He got up from the floor and saw the bed in the middle of the room and Penny lying under the covers. He'd fallen into her bedroom. 'Thank you.' Sheldon wondered for a second if the ship had a name. He'd have to ask Penny but for now he had to see what was wrong with his friend.
Penny was feverish, hot to the touch and sweaty. Sheldon almost ran from the room afraid of the alien germs that could be attacking him. The TARDIS rocked again. He wasn't sure now if the rocking was because Penny was sick or if the ship was just giving him her version of a kick in the pants to do something? Penny had shown him that the sonic screwdriver had features to analyze the health of beings. The sonic was connected to the TARDIS like all the rest of the technology in the ship so it was able to do more than just act like a screwdriver. Sheldon found the sonic and used it to check Penny's health. He had no idea what the readings meant but he hoped the TARDIS did. The next place to go should be the infirmary.
Sheldon found the infirmary around the corner outside and across from the door to his room which had a poster of The Flash on the door. 'Has my room always been this close to Penny's room or are you moving things around?' The TARDIS rocked again. Sheldon got moving before the pants kicking got harder. The lights were lower than usual in the infirmary except for a central table that was well lit and had a hypo-spray for drug injections. Sheldon couldn't be sure if this was something to help Penny or not; he had to trust the ship. Sheldon brought the hypo-spray back to Penny's room and knelt down by the bed. She was moaning and talking in her sleep but the language was unintelligible.
The hypo-spray looked like a gun and the barrel had a meter with ten brightly lit green bars on it. It worked much like a gun, press and pull the trigger but where? Sheldon hovered for a second and the ship rocked again. 'I'm doing it!' He pressed the hypo-spray to Penny's neck and pulled the trigger. The devise hissed and the meter on the device showed a reduction of one bar out of ten on the meter. It seemed there were nine doses left of what Sheldon prayed was helpful medicine and not a poisonous mistake. In a few minutes, Penny's moaning stopped and she didn't seem to be lying as uneasily as she had. Sheldon put the hypo-spray on the table by Penny's bed and pulled a reading chair over to the bedside. He sat for a while watching his friend and started to worry about her more than he was comfortable with. He thought about his Meemaw, too. Sheldon had to find something to do.
He glanced at the bookcases around the room and the many volumes on the bookshelves and figured a book would help pass the time. He was intrigued to discover what a Time Lord would read. The first book he saw was an unpromising shock. ''Secrets of the Tarot', seriously, Penny? All of time and space, and you're from a civilization that has reached the pinnacle of achievement and the first book on your bookshelf is about the Tarot?'
The TARDIS rocked and the Tarot book fell on his head. 'I'm sorry, no need to take it personally.' Sheldon spoke to the walls and put the book back but he determined to be more diplomatic in his comments while he perused Penny's bookshelves. He settled on 'A General history of the Pyrates' a book he'd loved when he was growing up. He'd found it in his Meemaw's house. It had been one of his Pop-Pop's favorite books. That would pass the time with less worry. While he read he heard Penny moan again. He looked at her and her eyes were open but unfocused. He got closer wondering if she was awake and trying to say something. 'Penny, what's wrong. Can you understand me?' Her eyes were very green, almost luminous. Her eyes had been the first thing he'd noticed about her in Stuart's Comic Shop. Enchantment had danced in them but now this wasn't enchantment it was indefinable. Sheldon stared and her eyes drew him to her even though he wasn't moving. It was very much like the mind bending but unlike that game this wasn't forceful.
The mind bending had felt like a fight against someone right from the start but this was like being with someone on a rollercoaster starting slow and going faster and faster. Sheldon felt the presence of Penny's mind like he had the Master's. They were both powerful and grand but her mind wasn't commanding or regimented, it was vast like space and galaxies stretching away. And, as scary as the Master's mind was it had always been outside looking at him. Here, he was with Penny, he was Penny in some odd way. Sheldon felt or saw, he couldn't say, a vast plain. He was standing on it and a massive city stood in the distance encased in glass like a crystal ball. He was seeing what Penny had seen in her childhood, the Citadel of the Time Lords and it was nothing like the TV show. It was better and more terrible. He felt the older than time and vaster than space that David Tennant had described and the reality was beyond anything he imagined because he was feeling the awe of it like Penny had when she had been a young child there.
Sheldon prided himself on his superior mind but, now, he understood he was no Time Lord. He wanted to run away but Penny's mind was moving across the plain with a group of children, they were going to the Untempered Schism and they felt like any ordinary children. He felt Penny's fear and anticipation. It was the Day of Initiation when the Children of Gallifrey found to have minds capable of becoming Time Lords looked into the void of the time vortex. He/Penny walked up the path and the anticipation and fear and wonder rose. Darkness and torches and Time Lords in formal regalia standing on steps walked on by Rassilon before humans had come down from the trees felt solid and cold and as real to Sheldon as his fast beating pulse. He felt the void of the schism as Penny/him moved closer to it and he felt more afraid than when he'd fought the Master. This wasn't something for him to see; he couldn't see it. This was more than a dramatic actor's speech. Sheldon felt the Untempered Schism and he was Penny about to look into it. The Schism was all of space and time and Penny's mind was inside it and it was inside her and Sheldon knew he would never come back sane if he didn't run away.
Sheldon yelled incoherently and flung himself away from Penny. He scrambled to his feet and ran out the door and hit the wall across the hall and stumbled. He picked himself up and ran towards his Flash poster and into his bedroom and dove onto his bead. He threw the blankets over himself. He was afraid. He knew he wasn't afraid of anything real because there wasn't anything really to be afraid of; this was simple fear, primeval fear. He had seen something too big to comprehend and natural instinct had taken over. He passed out soon after. When he awoke, Sheldon felt cold and clammy. His clothes were soaked through from sweat and he shivered from the sticky cold cloth on his skin. When he felt calmed down, he went into the shower and the hot water helped more than any shower he'd ever taken before in his life. He felt like a conceited idiot with his Novus Human. Maybe, his mind was bigger than other humans but he wasn't a Time Lord.
He finished his shower and dressed. He checked in on Penny and found the hypo-spray blinking. He guessed it meant it was time for another dose. Penny seemed to be sleeping quietly and she didn't seem as feverish and sweaty as last time. He gave her a second dose of the medicine and put the spray back down on the table. He looked at his friend who looked so very human. He knew how different she must be after his tussle with the Master's mind but he hadn't been in the Master's mind. He had stayed himself and he had felt the Master's mind like someone else he was fighting. When he had looked into Penny's mind he had lost any sense of himself and he became more her than him. When he was her with the kids he felt like any child but when they got to the Schism the feeling became bigger than he could contain. Sheldon guessed the ceremony actually altered the children's minds. The abyss on Gallifrey really did look into them.
Sheldon got some chamomile tea and thought about what he had experienced. Penny and the TARDIS were connected like one being. Penny and the Schism connected her to all of space and time. The Time Lords were pretty much space-time itself in a way. No wonder they got so pretentious with so much in their heads. It was his Novus Human on super steroids. Sheldon looked at Penny being careful of making eye contact. He guessed her delirium had been the reason for the experience. Time Lords were some kind of telepaths. Penny was connected to the ship and even to the Untempered Schism. Maybe the Schism was what made them telepaths? The universal connection made it possible to reach out to other minds? He'd have to ask Penny but he wasn't sure there was an answer that would translate any more than he could explain String Theory to a cave man or for better analogy explain up to a Flatlander. Whatever the cause, being sick made her telepathy uncontrolled so it was best to avoid eye contact until she was more herself. He assumed it was the eye contact, at any rate.
The next morning Sheldon woke in the reading chair to a hand brushing his arm. 'Hey, Sheldon, how are you?'
'Hey, Penny, are you feeling better?' Sheldon poured a glass of water for his sick friend.
She drank some of the water slowly. Penny felt how dehydrated she was but she wasn't sure her stomach was ready to keep anything down. 'A little dizzy, but I feel better than a couple days ago.' Penny hadn't paid any attention to the flu symptoms that were coming on. She'd been having too much fun with Sheldon. 'That will teach me to ignore a temperature.'
'What happened, can I catch it?' Sheldon felt awkward with the question in his ears. His fear of germs was bigger than his sick friend right in front of him and he felt like an ingrate.
'No, honey, I doubt it. Gallifreyan diseases aren't any more likely to bother you than human diseases can affect me. Our diseases evolved with us and they don't jump easily.' Penny saw the hypo-spray on the bed stand and picked it up. 'Found your way to the infirmary, I take it?'
Sheldon shrugged and smiled. 'Yeah, your TARDIS helped a lot there when I figured out the shaking was her trying to tell me something.'
Penny got a faraway look in her eyes that made Sheldon get up and fuss with the blankets to tuck Penny in. 'She thinks you did a pretty good job, I do, too.'
'Do you want something to eat?' Sheldon guessed Penny would need some food after not eating for days even if she didn't feel like it at the moment.
'Sure, some chicken soup, a small one, light for colds and stuff.' Penny was glad someone was here to play nurse.
Sheldon made an excellent and appropriately fussy nurse but Penny noticed he was a little more distant and his attention was a little lower on her body than usual for him.+++
The Arcadian train delighted Sheldon and the private coach made the trip comfortable for them both. The Arcadian colony had a love of Victorian era fashion and their trains, though far more advanced than coal fired steam, did much to replicate the experience. The Flying Scotsman III was a renowned recreation of the legendary train and Sheldon spent their first hours aboard traveling every inch from the engine to the passenger carriages to the brake van. They had settled down to read in their carriage after lunch but Penny could tell Sheldon wasn't as comfortable around her as he used to be since she'd been sick.
'Sheldon, honey, I'm up here.' Penny pointed to her eyes.
'Sorry, Penny, I was thinking… oh, not like that…' Sheldon waved his hands in the direction of her bust line and got more tongue tied as he went on. 'Not that your bust isn't something to look at… I mean'
Penny patted the seat next to her. 'Come here, honey, and talk to me.'
Sheldon put his laptop aside and sat next to Penny on the other side of the carriage. He fidgeted like a child when he was emotionally uncomfortable and Penny wanted to find out what was making this discomfort. She had guessed it was from her sickness since his avoidance behavior had started after that.
'Are you still worried about getting sick, we went over the gamut of Gallifreyan diseases and unless you're worried about your hair turning permanently electric blue there's nothing you're apt to catch.'
Sheldon shifted a bit since he still wanted to run more tests to be sure but Penny had gotten tired of cross checking diseases and threatened him with the Blue Rash that was one of the few diseases that could cross their species.
'No, I'm not worried about that, well, not much,' Sheldon glanced at Penny and huffed a bit, 'I was worried about you getting sick again. I'm not a medical doctor, Penny, and even if I was you're not human. I didn't know if I was going to kill you with that spray or help you and a shaking TARDIS isn't exactly the clearest form of medical advice.'
Penny leaned her head on Sheldon's shoulder and rubbed his arm. 'You're so sweet. My TARDIS wouldn't let you hurt me, Sheldon, but we can go over some common health and safety rules for Time Lords if it will make you feel better.'
It wasn't a bad idea at all for both of them now that Penny thought of it. She had rarely traveled with a companion before so her knowledge of human health wasn't a whole lot better than Sheldon's knowledge of Gallifreyan health, besides he was working from a TV show and could be proceeding from a number of misconceptions. Aspirin wasn't poisonous, it was more like ipecac. It would have been a better purgative for the cyanide in that Tennant episode than that ridiculous pantomime the show did.
'Something is bothering you, though, Sheldon, and your sight line has been closer to your old roommate's, lately. Are you getting all old-fashioned southern boy embarrassed about seeing a lady in her bedclothes, Sheldon?' As much as Sheldon spoke critically about his home, Penny found Sheldon to be as straight laced as anyone she had met at the Alamo that one time she'd visited Texas.
'No.' Sheldon looked out the window. It hadn't bothered him until she mentioned it, just now, but he had thought more than once or twice about how clinging her nightdress had been while she'd been sleeping during her sickness. He really didn't want to have that conversation. He ran his hand along the window frame wondering if there was a release so he could jump out and end this chat.
Penny smiled and touched Sheldon's cheek, turning his head back towards her from the window. 'Look at me, Sheldon, honey, what are you trying not to tell me?' Sheldon's eyes widened a bit and his gaze shifted nervously with the closeness to Penny's face and eyes. Sheldon jumped across the carriage and sat as nervous as a jumpy cat.
'It's you; I don't really know you, do I?' Sheldon thought about where to start this talk. 'I know you're Penny, of course, and you're a Time Lady from Gallifrey but I don't know you or what that really means.'
Sheldon looked at Penny but she didn't respond except to call the passing porter to bring some tea and biscuits for them. 'Go on, Sheldon.'
'When you were sick, you got kind of delirious. It was soon after the first time I used the hypo-spray. I thought you had woken up and I tried asking if you were OK but you just stared at me and it was different.'
Penny nodded and signaled the porter to come in with the tea when he knocked on their door. He set the service down on the carriage folding table and left Sheldon and Penny to their privacy. Penny poured them their tea. 'Keep going, honey.' Penny had a good idea that some kind of mind link had gotten made but she really didn't remember much from the first couple of days outside her own fever dreams.
Sheldon looked at Penny and he tried to put the young college age looking girl sitting across from him into context with the images that floated in his dreams and in his imagination from the contact he'd had with her mind. 'Your eyes were glassy or shiny and then it was like the mind bending, I was drawn in and it was like I wasn't me anymore. I think I saw Gallifrey and it was when you were a child and I felt so much wonder and fear and I was at some initiation and I felt a power there that was so big I just ran away from you. I was in my bed and hiding before I knew it.'
Penny sat and smiled at her friend and was glad her guess had been right. 'You got inside my head for a while and it creeped you, is that it?
Sheldon got up and started to leave the carriage. 'I was, I am, and I don't want to be laughed at because I'm a monkey.'
'Sheldon, don't talk like him or that silly show and it is often a silly show.' Penny put her tea down. 'But if it makes you feel better, I'll take you home right now. I wanted a friend to travel with not a monkey or a pet or someone that is scared of me or scared of being laughed at. The universe is a ridiculous place and if fear of being laughed at bothers you, you're in for a bad trip in it whether you travel with me or you go home and never leave Pasadena again.'
Sheldon sat down confused as to whether Penny was angry at him or making fun of him or sympathizing with him. He was terrible at reading emotions and feelings and these kinds of 'talks' with Missy or his mother just made him feel worse. With anyone else they were usually torture. His Meemaw understood him and he wished he could talk with her but he only had Penny. He knew they were friends but he didn't know how to talk like this, about feelings, with her.
Penny got up and came over to sit next to Sheldon. 'How do birds fly north and south so well, even to the same nests?'
'Evolution has given them sensory perception of Earth's magnetic field, and they have imprinting of senses during early migrations, as well as keen olfactory maps in their heads.'
'Yes, all senses humans don't have so they have to make up for it with machinery and technical arts. That's really all Time Lords are, a few extra senses about time. They can't do anything humans are incapable of except by a few quirks of evolution and those few extra quirks can be copied by machines. Don't turn Time Lords into some kind of magical space Yodas in your head. You met the Master, was he any different from any other bully or jerk?'
Sheldon sighed and remembered his dad, drunk and yelling and he was hiding under his bed with Missy. 'The mind bending had really been a lot like my father when I was young. He was a drunk and he'd come home bullying and blaming us and making us all scared especially Missy and me. The Master's mind was a lot like that yelling bully in the kitchen, a lot more truly powerful but not much different, I guess.'
Sheldon tried to believe Penny meant they weren't so different from each other but those images and feeling told him otherwise. 'But what I felt in your head was alien and so very different from anything I have ever known.'
Penny held Sheldon's hand and smiled. 'I think that's because you couldn't tell whose feelings you were feeling or why the feelings were what they were. We were linked but I was out of it so you got everything at once and you had no experience of handling a mind link. Think if you had been blind all your life in a world where no one had ever had sight and then for a second you had sight and then it was blinked out again, how would you process that?' Penny got up and drew the red felt door curtains so the porters knew the occupants wanted privacy and sat back down with Sheldon.
'If there was no one who had ever had the experience, it would be impossible. Is that what you are saying, I can't understand it?'
'If there were no one that could explain a mind link or the experiences that went with it, yes, but is that the case here, Sheldon?' He had to trust her or want to or Penny couldn't help him.
'Well, no, but it is scary, Penny.'
'Of course, everything new is. It's even scarier to get back on the horse when you know how much it hurts after you've been thrown and kicked the first time.' Penny held Sheldon's hand again. I am sorry it happened and I'm sorry it scared you. We don't use that linking ability easily or lightly. It's unspeakably rude and intrusive to just link with another mind without consent before hand. I'll bet even the Master didn't try to link your mind, did he?'
'No, but that would be against the rules of the game, wouldn't it?'
Penny laughed at that. 'Game rules wouldn't stop that weasel for a second, Sheldon, but, mind linking, connecting your minds together; he doesn't want his privacy invaded any more than you want someone in your room. That's why I thought that Deanna Troi was so weird in that Star Trek show you like. No Gallifreyan would ever read people so casually like she does and someone who made a habit of it would be under psychiatric care. It is unspeakably presumptuous, insulting, and objectifying to climb into people's heads unasked and uninvited.'
'I take it there's no road trip to Betazed in our future?' Sheldon asked wryly. He was surprised a telepathic species was so offended by casual use.
'Damn straight.' Penny picked up a biscuit and her tea. 'I don't think there is any world like that, at least not one I've been to. Telepathic races are either similar about casual use because they value individuality or the species is one vast mind link and an individual as we understand one is virtually incomprehensible to them. The use it and joke about it attitude yet be individuals like Star Trek is preposterous fiction.'
'Do you think we should try the linking together?' Sheldon was curious, he couldn't help that. Time Lords, the very words made him feel grand when he was a child watching Tom Baker on PBS TV back in Texas. He collected everything he could find about the show and he watched it avidly whenever it was on. He met Peter Davison once at a Doctor Who convention and he was funny and charming and Sheldon never forgot he had the wrong series book for a signature and Peter had made it seem OK like the Doctor. It was still unreal that he was sitting in a train drinking tea and riding next to a Time Lord.
'That's up to you, Sheldon, but it won't feel the same. If you do this, you will be able to tell the difference between you and me because I won't be half delirious through it all. What you experienced was closer to what folks having sex share when they really want intimacy. They don't just share bodies; they will share minds when they feel truly close.' Penny brushed aside the memories that went with that posie ring while finishing another cup of memory and the dregs that she read in the bottom of her cup reminded her of other days.
Sheldon choked on his tea and coughed uncontrollably for a few seconds. Penny rubbed his back and looked at him with a grin. 'You're thinking we had Time Lord sex, aren't you? It's a lot wilder than what your friends were thinking we were going to do, huh?
'Penny!' Sheldon was blushing from head to toe. He almost wished his sister was here doing one of her creepy jokes about her legs and his body parts for nine months. Sheldon was already feeling awkward about seeing Penny sleeping in her bed clothes, joking about Time Lord sex was sending his mind into a tail spin of embarrassment.
'Well, then, that should give you an idea of how personal being in someone's mind is to us. You got only half the fun. If we had been fully linked I would have been in your mind and sharing your memories the way you felt some of mine.' Penny looked out the window at a lake the train was passing. It was deep in a tree lined gorge below the train's course and the water was deep blue reflecting the sky above. 'You got some very specific memories, answers to a question but you don't understand the answers because even your question's terms are still not understood. Ask your question and maybe we can find some answers to both, together.'+++
Sheldon could only think of the show and how much he wanted to be in the TARDIS with the Doctor. The modern series had made them everything he thought was so grand about the very term 'Time Lord' and David Tennant's speeches were soul stirring but, now, he was sitting next to a real one and she looked like an art student on spring break in her tattered grey jumper and yoga pants and sandals. He expected a Time Lord to be lordly but Penny felt anything but right now to look at her. However, Sheldon had been in her head and he knew she was so much more than the hot blonde chick Leonard had kept tripping over his tongue about. He thought of the Flash Gordon movie and Emperor Ming's "if you knew anything of the true nature of the universe, you would have hidden from it in terror" Sheldon had gotten a look in the hot blonde chick's head and he had run and hidden from what was in it in terror. 'What are you, a Time Lord, what does that mean?'
Sheldon recalled the images as best as he could because he still couldn't tell which thoughts were his and which were Penny's memories. 'I saw a city like something in a snow globe. It was beautiful and it was old and humans were still monkeys in trees when you were looking at it, Penny, at least that's how it felt. I guess that was Gallifrey and the Citadel. Then, I was with children and that was the most normal thing I felt in your head. Kids going on a trip and some were bored, some were teasing, some were scared, and you were feeling fear and worry but I didn't know why, I still don't but we got to the mountains near the citadel and walked up a path. It was ancient and Rassilon had walked there so long ago even before the Citadel was built. I knew that because you knew it and I never felt so small in my life. Every step was moving towards something you were going to look at, the Untempered Schism and it was the scariest thing I had ever felt in my life because I knew it was beyond me to make sense of it. That's when I broke out of that trance we were in. I ran to my room and hid in my bed like I was a kid again hiding from my drunk father. I was terrified.'
Penny nodded in sympathy. Sheldon had been, effectively, alone in experiencing her feelings and the events in her life that went with them without context or explanation. 'First off, honey, we're not any of the mystic nonsense the show cooks up about Time Lords. Some Time Lords can get pretty full of themselves and give themselves titles like The Master and The Rani but that's usually just a sign that you're dealing with a nutter. Even the Doctor can get full of himself sometimes but he'd never make one of those histrionic speeches or call himself something like 'The Oncoming Storm'. Grand as Tennant's delivery is, the Doctor would laugh himself silly trying to say anything like that and Sarah Jane would never let him live it down if he tried. Still, you felt the weasel's mind and mine, we aren't human and we do have differences, the most significant is that Gallifreyans can sense time, the dimension itself just like we can both sense length, width, and depth. It can be over stimulating to the self-image if you spend a lot of time around folks who aren't time sensitive which is just about everyone.'
Penny wanted Sheldon to get what time meant to Gallifreyans without the mysticism. The irony of her example wasn't lost on her. 'You saw the Tarot books and other paranormal works on my shelves?'
'Yes, I wondered what anyone from Gallifrey would do with such nonsense. I think your TARDIS didn't like my criticizing your bookshelves.' He still couldn't believe Penny read such tripe.
'Time has fault lines and weak points. If the place is weak enough people and events can bleed through like afterimages, ghosts and premonitions and other psychic events. Unless it's a shyster or a deluded soul, on rare occasions some people sense the images that come through. People who live in a weak area for generations can become sensitive to time but it is rare. None the less, some of that nonsense isn't nonsense. I like to keep track of that kind of stuff. The way cultures experience the sense of time fascinates me. On Gallifrey, there were several very weak points, weak enough to actually affect evolution. We are all time sensitive, some more than others. Especially sensitive children are selected to become Time Lords. Your memories sound like that is what you saw in my mind, the day I was initiated into the Academy of Time Lords.'
Sheldon nodded, he'd thought as much about the dream. 'Psychics are time sensitive, not magical?'
'That's pretty much it though people on Gallifrey took the ability for magic for a very long time. The Sisterhood of Karn is a remnant of those days before Rassilon and the Time Lords. Don't ask for details it was so long ago it's all more myth and tradition than fact and we don't time travel into our own timeline. It's all messy enough as it is.' Penny stared out the window and remembered the lessons at the Academy in history and philosophy and art. 'Rassilon wanted us to be more than mystics and superstitious prophets bound to destiny and preordained fates. He wanted science and reason to guide Gallifrey and for the rulers to be something better than supposedly all seeing prophets to be followed blindly.' Penny had grown up adoring the stories of Rassilon. The realities of the despotism and wars shook her childhood faith but she held to the dream of Time Lords as protectors and guardians that she believed Rassilon wanted them to be if only in hopes unrealized. She remembered the little girl under a silver tree looking at the Citadel and dreaming of being like that first Time Lord.
'He sounds like someone to admire. I wish we had someone like him.' Sheldon was a firm believer in reason to solve problems over hokum and sentimentality.
'Be careful what you wish for, Sheldon. The Master isn't so very different from him. The noblest goals can turn into a nightmare if the means to achieve them are irrelevant. Empires are not founded on pure goodness and Care Bears. Gallifrey is home to the oldest and mightiest race in the cosmos. They'd be the first to tell you so without exaggeration. They look down on the galaxies and watch the passing of time from the Citadel without interfering, unmatchable and invulnerable. On the other hand, with all that dispassionate watching, one could say they are just the ultimate couch potatoes. Depends on how you look at it. Scale down, how very different is that from any empire? Self-importance and vanity are dangerous enough; add power and entitlement and you can have a very ugly monster on your hands, whether it's Morbius or the Borgias, or Walt Disney.'
Sheldon looked awry at the crack at beloved Uncle Walt but he wanted to stay on the Time Lords. 'So, the Time Lords are no different than humans or anything else?'
Penny smiled, 'They're no better or worse by virtue of their power or abilities. But the only way to understand that is to walk with me that day. It's only one Time Lord's opinion but it's not a TV show you'll be seeing.' Penny turned on the couch to face Sheldon and held out her hands and waited to see what her friend would choose.
Sheldon looked at Penny's hands and his eyes followed up her arms and neck to come to her eyes. He really had been afraid to look there for the last couple of weeks. He didn't want to be scared of Penny anymore. He turned to face her and took her hands. 'Remember, you can stop this at any time, just let go of my hands.' Penny stared and her pupils dilated large and black and the sea green became deeper and more luminous and Sheldon felt the train slip away and around them was the far orange sky he'd seen in Penny's mind. He stood under a silver tree that Penny had climbed down from. The summit of the Citadel could be seen from its highest branch and Penny had scared her parents to death from being up there and yelling that she could see Rassilon's home.
'Can you see it?' Sheldon was balanced on a thin branch at the summit of the tree. He wavered with vertigo but Penny held him fast.
'Remember, this is a dream and memory, honey, you can't really fall here.' Penny pointed to where the little Penny was looking. The fear and wonder he felt were her parent's fear of where she had climbed and the awe and hope were her wonder and hope to go there, Rassilon's home, The Citadel of the Time Lords. 'We all learn the stories of Rassilon and his city. The city was built by Rassilon to guard and guide Gallifrey, to be a place of pure enlightenment. The Citadel had stood there for ages before humanity had evolved. I was born before human civilization existed.' Sheldon felt the pride in Penny's words. For young Penny, Gallifrey was ancient and beyond time, a fortress, and the Citadel was its bulwark. That was young Penny's home if she could be worthy of the Initiation Ceremony. She was afraid of failing to be like her hero.
Sheldon's vision changed to the children. They met and played and laughed like children everywhere. Sheldon watched young Penny acting aloof. 'I didn't want the Time Lords to think I was like those babies.' Sheldon felt his Penny's bemusement at the scene they watched.
Young Penny kept aside because she wanted to act like the Time Lords that escorted them in the formal regalia of their many colleges. Penny followed the Prydonians, the heirs of Rassilon, the Chapter of her great hero. Sheldon felt the pride she had and the ambition and her fear the Prydonian Time Lords would think she was just a silly child and was unworthy to join them. Sheldon remembered a similar fear when he was so young, a PhD in Germany and for the first time going to teach a room of adults. He wanted to show them he could do this. It was so much like Penny but this place was so much older. He felt it when the imposing scarlet robed Time Lord held out a hand to Penny and directed her to walk up the stairs to the Untempered Schism.
'I thought I had almost forgotten how to walk for a second.' Penny shared the thrill that filled her young soul in that moment and Sheldon felt her young self's exhilaration. Her mind was worthy to try looking into the Schism and now she would have to face the void and be changed. Rassilon had made this place. It was an ancient place of Pythia, the Matriarch Priestesses that ruled Gallifrey before the Time Lords. Rassilon had opened this place for all to test their worthiness to be Time Lords to feel the whole of the vortex of space and time from the Big Bang to the Final Heat Death. This was the inheritance of every Gallifreyan given to them by Rassilon and she was ready to look into the Untempered Schism like her great hero and be inspired.
Sheldon let Penny's hands go and he shivered. It wasn't from terror like the first time but it was still too much. Now, it was understanding that stopped him. He couldn't really see the vortex like Penny any more than he could flap his arms and fly but he was a physicist. He could comprehend it just like he comprehended String Theory. He'd never feel a quantum particle like Penny could, so to speak, but they both knew it was there. Better than any of that he didn't feel afraid of her anymore, Penny was more than a Time Lord, she was his friend.
Sheldon thought of the two year adventure he spent with Penny and looked around this fabulous train carriage rolling across an alien world. 'Penny, I think I get it now but it makes me ask why I am here. I love all this,' he got up to look out the window at a herd of vibrant purple six legged horses racing with the train, 'but I was always inspired to get a Nobel Prize, I still am, and I'm not doing that here.'
Penny stood up and hugged her friend. 'Guess it's time to go home, yeah?'+++
Sheldon and Penny walked out of the alley next to 2311 N Los Robles and into the front lobby of his building. 'Two days should have everything cleaned up from the Time Displacement business, so make up a good story for your friends, Moonpie.' Penny winked at Sheldon.
Sheldon rolled his eyes at the thoughts that must be going through their minds after the way Penny made their exit. 'Yeah, I'll tell them all about the vindaloo and the Venusian pickpocket. And only Meemaw calls me Moonpie, Penny.'
'Come on, they have five arms to keep busy and I told you to leave the comics in the TARDIS, besides he just wanted to complete his collection of Green Lantern, you've gotta have some sympathy for that?'
'Yeah, I suppose, and he did swap me for his extra Detective Comics #27.'
'There you go, you sure packed all your comics?' Penny was sure he did but she didn't want to say good bye any more than Sheldon.
'Yes, I got them all, and-'
'Holy smokes!'
Penny and Sheldon turned to the doorway and saw a young woman in a familiar blue shirt, shorts, and Ugg boots carrying a large box filled with shoes and staring at them, especially at Penny. 'Woah!' Both time travelers looked a little perplexed since nothing indicated any kind of time rupture on the TARDIS scanners when they landed. Penny took a few steps towards her doppelganger and cautiously took a sniff of her hair. She smelt human which was a relief.
'Hi, I'm Penny and this is my friend, Sheldon.'
'Freaky, I'm Penny, Penny Queen and I don't know Sheldon. Hey, Sheldon.' The new Penny waved at the tall man but she couldn't take her eyes off a woman she would swear could be a twin sister if she had one.
'Call me Penny Lord, then, are you moving in?'
'Yeah, I signed the papers on 4B upstairs a little while ago and now I'm moving stuff up there but this place doesn't have an elevator, can you believe it? I've gotta carry everything up from the garage.'
'I live in 4A, Penny, I'd be glad to help.' Sheldon offered readily and Penny smiled and nodded enthusiastically. 'Yea, we both would, and I'd love to hear more about you, where are you from, Penny?'
'Omaha, Nebraska, but I moved out here to try acting...' +++
Leonard, Howard, and Raj came up the stairs to 4A after dinner at the Cheese Cake Factory. They were still arguing about what Sheldon and Penny could be up to after two days.
Howard was in the firm no camp. 'Come on, Sheldon is too much of a robot to be having sex with any girl. He could never do anything with a girl that looked like Penny.'
Leonard was in the maybe camp. 'You didn't see the kiss she planted on him when we first ran into her. That girl could unfreeze frozen hydrogen.'
Raj jumped firmly into the kill me before I ever forget this sight camp. 'Look!' He pointed to the open doorway of 4B where Sheldon was caught between two Pennys that had him sandwiched between them in a kiss for a camera set up on a tripod. The guys got out their smart phones to take pictures of Sheldon with the incredibly hot identical twins.
'Creeps!' Penny pulled out her sonic and hit the button. The whine was followed by the batteries of the smartphones exploding. The three filming peeping toms jumped and yelped in pain.
'Serves you right, jerks. Take pictures of me again, and I'll hogtie you and castrate you!' Penny slammed her door shut and locked it. She had no idea how those phones all blew up at the same time but she was happy she got to see some karma get dished out.
The guys looked at the door of 4B and couldn't imagine the world Sheldon had wandered into but they knew they'd only ever see something like that in their dreams.
Meanwhile, Omaha Penny was still fuming because of the guys outside. 'God, guys like that piss me off. Do they live in the building, Sheldon?'
Sheldon looked apologetic. 'Unfortunately, the one with the glasses is my roommate, Leonard, and the other two are our equally socially maladjusted friends Howard and Raj.'
'Well, tell them to stay out of my hair, jeeze, I was starting to like this place. I just broke up with my boyfriend Kurt because he was cheating on me, now I got creeps here filming me.' Penny dropped down on the couch her good mood had evaporated.
Penny sat next to her new friend and hugged her. 'Don't worry, Sheldon will talk with them, he's pretty good at handling ex-boyfriends and creepy guys. He took out my creepy ex a while back.
'Oh yeah?' Penny looked up at the tall physicist. He didn't look like a superhero. 'Can you get my money and TV back from my creep ex-boyfriend?'
'He may be open to negotiation.' Sheldon gave some thought to how to do this.
'How about we drive over together, Sheldon, and we can bring back some take out afterwards?' Penny got up and pressed a button on her sonic signaling her TARDIS to deploy the vehicle she wanted.
'What is that thing you keep using? It looks familiar.' Penny was sure she'd seen it in some TV show.
'This, it's a little toy from Doctor Who. We're fans, but watch out for Sheldon, he'll try telling you all kinds of stories about how it's real or something.' Penny laughed at Sheldon's eye roll.
Penny recognized the show and giggled on the couch at the idea of a time traveling police box.
A couple of hours later Penny Queen opened her door to find her new friends with her TV, money, and several other things Kurt had claimed like her music collection. Sheldon shrugged. 'We can be very convincing.'
The time travelers helped set up Penny's TV and Penny Lord wanted to make her goodbyes. The Nebraska girl said she wanted to finish setting up her Care bears and left the friends to some privacy.
'It will be like I never left, Moonpie.' Penny giggled at the funny universe.
'I don't think she has a TARDIS but she sounds like she needs a friend. How about you, are you OK?' Sheldon knew how big the galaxy was, several actually, and he knew it could get lonely out there.
'I'm a 'Time Lord'.' Penny emphasized the title with deep resonance and they both started laughing and hugged each other. 'I'm good, but if you ever get bored?' Penny pulled a sonic screwdriver out of her pocket. 'Not as many features as a deluxe model but it can hook up with a laptop and make a call to a friend.' She hugged Sheldon and walked to the front door. 'Hey, Sheldon, I thought only your Meemaw called you Moonpie?'
'I need some way to tell you and QueenP apart and I like hearing you say it.' He waved to the woman that turned his life into the best mess he'd ever known and watched that door shut for now. Time Travel was too funny to talk about forever.+++
Penny came out of her bedroom having set up the last of her Care Bears. She found Sheldon reading through her 'Secrets of the Tarot' with a smile.
'Do you use the Tarot, Sheldon?'
'Me, no, but my friend Penny takes an interest in it, and I've seen more than a few odd things to just laugh at it.' Sheldon put the book back with care.
'My psychic says I should practice more but I want to get more into acting. The Tarot and stuff is a fun hobby, though. I wouldn't expect a brainy physicist to care about stuff like that.' Penny acted almost shy about her books that Sheldon perused.
'It's a big universe; you never know what might come in handy.' Sheldon looked further along among the romances and historical fictions and found an old favorite series of books from his own childhood. He pulled out a very dog eared copy of the 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' from Penny's series collection. They all looked equally read and reread. 'Looks like you're quite the Baum fan?'
'I love them; I've reread them I don't know how many times since I was eight.' Penny was surprised Sheldon seemed to like so many of the same books she did.
'You know, he had more in mind than just a fantasy story?' Sheldon thought back on meeting the writer back in Nebraska.
'Yeah, I read about the political ideas back in high school. It was pretty dull history but the connections to the characters were interesting. That's kind of what made me think acting and theater would be a fun job.'
'Yeah, there's that, but Baum had more than politics in mind when he wrote it, Penny.'
'Yeah, what was that?'
'Funny enough, it started in Omaha in 1894 with Kelly's Army attacking the Union Rail Yards. Those homeless guys were helping stop a giant alien cockroach queen from a place in the Rigel star system turning the homeless folks around there into hosts for her larval army. She was the basis for the Wicked Witch.' Sheldon smirked and nodded earnestly at Penny's guffawed snort. 'True story.'
'You gotta tell me more, do you like spaghetti, Sheldon, I was going to make some?' Penny thought Sheldon's kooky storiestoday were pretty funny and they sure helped take her mind off Kurt.
'With Mama Italiana Marinara sauce and little hotdogs added?'
'Yeah, I love that sauce and I can add the hotdogs. Did they kill the cockroach? Is this a gross out guy story, Sheldon?
'Oh, no, she turned out to be the sweetest thing. She needed an army to fight the Sontarans since they were invading her home world.'
Penny looked at Sheldon with a scrunched up glare. 'I know them; they're from that Doctor Who show. Penny said you'd try to bullshit me with that.'
'You got me.' Sheldon chuckled at Penny's glare.
'I still want to hear the story, though. Have you ever tried writing far out fiction like Robert E Howard? He was from Texas, I liked his Dark Agnes and his cowboy stuff back when I was in rodeo competitions.'
'No, I'm not the artistic type you are, but I did meet Bob, once. We ended up having to get ourselves out of a Turkish prison because Suleiman the Great thought Bob was trying to sweet talk his wife Roxelana.' Sheldon still thought Red Sonya should have been blonde, and Penny was amazing with a sword.
Penny started laughing in fits, 'Oh, god, Sheldon, where do you come up with this stuff?' Penny leaned against Sheldon to catch her breath. She didn't want Sheldon to stop talking, he was too wonderful a story teller.
Sheldon felt the familiar weight against him and he threaded his hand into Penny's. 'From finally learning to get out of my apartment and my head once in a while, there are scary places out there, but fun ones, too.'
Penny felt like that when she was leaving Nebraska. She looked at Sheldon's hand and hers together and smiled in gladness she'd found this apartment. She looked at the tall story telling Texan a bit blushingly. 'I guess you never know what you'll find when you go somewhere?'