When grilled properly, Harkanian Kelp steaks are the only meatless steak in the universe with flavor enough to satisfy. Some species have disagreed, but those species still think light speed is as fast as one can travel, so I ignore them in as polite a fashion I have energy for any given time.
We can all agree, however, that when not grilled to perfection, in mere seconds the steaks shrivel into a purple wad of gummy string, not at all appetizing. Once the outside reaches the proper heat, the hardest of the work is done. Let something interrupt that difficult process, though, and you've either got a lot of chewing to do, or you'll be eating something else that night.
The arrival of a renegade TARDIS ruined my most recent batch of steaks. Believe it or not the arrival was expected, within a few hours. The landing spot, however, near enough my grill to topple it over just as my steaks were reaching the critical stage was unexpected.
Knowing the Doctor, I should have expected anything. Even one's dinner is not calm if he turns up.
He was early. Probably one of the few times in his thousands of years that he had ever showed up anywhere early. Regardless, a grinding sound moments before the vehicle materializes out of thing air. Then the wind picks up. is usually the only warning, before wind picks up, and before the process is complete your grill has been blown over, your irreparable (and expensive) kelp steaks are shriveling before your very eyes on the ground nearby, and the appetizing, somewhat narcotic smell of a thwarted dinner hangs in the air. The meat tongs, still in your hand in useless fashion over the space your grill had recently occupied reflect the distorted blue image of the Doctor's recently arrived TARDIS like a funhouse mirror. You let the your hand fall to your side as the grinding noise stops, the wind dies down, and a soft clicking proceeds the creaking open of the door of the TARDIS. Out steps the Doctor in his eighth incarnation.
Having been in his seventh lifetime form during our last meeting 100 years before, he had regenerated once, as Time Lords call it since that time, and he warned me of the change in his brief subspace message several days before hand.
"Hello again," he said looking round. "Love what you've done…do I smell Harkanian Kelp steaks?"
"Yes, you do," I told him. "Want one?"
His already wild eyes may have begun to gleam with possible anticipation until they followed the direction of my tongs, now pointing at the wads of rubber kelp blubbering in silence on the edge of my garden.
"Suddenly remembered they aren't my favorite, thank you though," he said.
"Honestly, Doctor, I can handle your outdated TARDIS, your changes in appearance, your unpredictability, and even your inexplicable obsession with human beings."
"I wouldn't call it obsession," he said.
"But ruining my steaks might just be where I need to draw a line."
"You broke my umbrella, we can call it even."
"I replaced that years ago, last time we met."
The Doctor cocked his head to the side. "So you did. Well, don't use them anymore anyway. Shall we commence with the paying of old debts, sir?"
I grabbed my single piece of luggage, which I had by my side already. The Doctor opened the door to his TARDIS, and motioned I should go in first. "Made some changes in here, as well. Make yourself at home."
I took in the control room of the Doctor's TARDIS, now looking more like an ancient wooden library than the spaceship it appeared as the last time I stepped within the infinite space of its interior. Wood and brass, gas lamps and candles. Carpeting. Easy chairs and a sofa.
"Interesting," I said. I put down my bag. "A bit dark for my tastes, but it works. It's new look is better than yours, I have to say."
"Thank heaven your race has never discovered tact," the Doctor said, stepping away from the door which he now closed. "However would I recognize one of you if suddenly you started to give a flying fig about discretion?"
"I assume it would help you," I said, gesturing toward the large clear cylinder with undulating lights in it that dominated the room, and the center of the master control console.
"She," the Doctor said, approaching the panel. It had more buttons and levers than I could differentiate in one look. "Isn't that right, old girl?" He rubbed the smooth wooden console with one hand, and flipped levers with the other. It was this affinity for the machine, or rather "her" that had put the Doctor somewhat in my debt. I had, during the course of an unfortunate mutual encounter with some Cybermen saved the TARDIS from certain capture, or destruction or something. I had attempted to save the Doctor himself first, but he insisted I free the machine, and after much folderol, and more than a few broken bones I had done so.
Broken bones require my species close to a year to heal, and hence it was a great sacrifice on my part. He somehow knew this, and offered his assistance to me anytime in the future I needed it. I asked only that every hundred years or so he arrive back on my home planet and take me in "her" to the ancestral home moon of my people. It's a desolate rock, treacherous to journey to since an asteroid debris belt swung into its orbit. With the Doctor's help I am able to get there each time before anyone else, and I secure prime line of sight for the ceremony of rejuvination my people conduct. Then he takes me back to the previous day, so I can experience both the southern and the northern alignment in one visit, which is otherwise impossible.
I get something out of the arrangement, and I only have to deal with him and his quirks every century or so. It seems a suitable deal, and one we have kept unbroken since we met.
The grinding gears of the TARDIS roared again as the Doctor threw a few more switches. "Making some tea, care for some?"
"Half a cup. Does it come with Harkanian Kelp steak?"
"No, nor with humble pie either. I apologized once for your dinner."
"Did you?"
"Didn't I? I certainly intended to, and that ought to count for something, don't you think?"
"Just one please, thank you."
When I said it, it seemed the most logical response possible. I take my tea with one lump, always have. At least since I was first introduced to the drink. The Doctor's response,
"I'll take a reading," seemed as normal to him as it did unusual and confusing to me. Then suddenly my own response seemed to have made no sense after all. As though all context for it in my mind were drawn from my consciousness like a thread.
"Fair enough," the Doctor said.
I followed this up with another phrase which insinuated itself into my mind seemingly of my own unconscious volition. It made perfect sense to me for those moments to reply to the Doctor's question with, "If you insist."
Then the thread was drawn again from my mind, and I realized he had asked no question, and that my comment, as well as his were out of any discernible context. Before I had the opportunity to ask him about this, the room lurched. The Doctor steadied himself with his hands on the control console in front of him. I was not so lucky; I staggered backwards a step and landed square on my back onto the carpeted floor. An alarm of some kind from within the TARDIS sounded.
I got to my feet, and perceived two things. First, the floor was now at a slight incline. Second, though I had only glimpsed the oddity of the last few minutes of conversation up until that point, I was now fully aware of how nonsensical it had been. No mere quirk of the moment, my mind, seemingly restored to where it belonged, now grasped the outrageous and off putting truth.
"I didn't intend to say most of that," I told the Doctor, who was flipping switches and levers on the control panel with robotic dexterity. "Did you?"
"Yes and no," the Doctor said, not looking up from the console. It was exactly the sort of double-speak for which he, and to a certain extent all Time Lords are famous. "The same with you, I'm afraid?"
"How do you mean?"
The Doctor sighed, and the alarm stopped. The TARDIS righted itself, and we stood on even footing again. "Safe distance for now."
"From what?"
"First questions first," said the Doctor. "Our little scatterbrained chat a moment ago was intentional, just not sequential." He dashed to the opposite side of the hexagonal control console, and turned a dial. "We will intend to say them. In the future, we just weren't supposed to say them when we said them. Yet."
"But at the time…" I corrected myself, knowing that any use of the word time in such a conversation would now likely have scores of meanings, "that is to say as I spoke the words, it seemed I intended to. I even understood their context, and then...then…"
"And then you didn't?" the Doctor said. I nodded. "Understandable. You were further along your personal timeline than you were supposed to be when you said it, only to return to your proper place in it a moment later. Same as myself. Though I suspect I saw it coming. Actually I smelled it coming."
"I beg your pardon? You smelled it coming?"
The Doctor moved to yet another section of the console, tapping at only one button several times. "Time has a smell like anything else, you know. Something goes wrong with it, say it gets overcooked, you notice it. Well, a Time Lord nose notices anyway."
"What is time supposed to smell like?"
He looks up from the console. "Bit like raspberries. Or is it blueberries? I so rarely eat either one…"
It was exactly the sort of distracted musing for which the Doctor was famous. Usually it is best to let him finish, which he will do eventually. But given the circumstances, I interrupted. "Doctor, perhaps you can concentrate on explaining what happened just now?"
"Fair enough," he said. "I respect the question, but I don't have the answer. Not yet, anyway."
"Are we safe?" I asked.
"I imagine. At least as safe as one ever is whirling through the space-time continuum in a vehicle powered by a star."
"Well, you've survived it all right for all these years."
"Depends on your definition," he muttered, flipping a switch. I opted to leave the comment alone, and steer things back to the subject.
"But we are clear of the disturbance?"
"For now, yes. To be sure, I'll take a reading." He pulled open a drawer to reveal a monitor of some kind. More button pushing.
"Can we then proceed to my ancestral moon?"
"Not before we investigate."
"We?"
The Doctor looked up from the monitor. "Right, sorry, Force of habit. Not until I investigate."
"Is that necessary?"
"I wouldn't be much of a Time Lord if I didn't try to find out why time flipped out on us. I'm not familiar with this phenomena just yet."
"This is space, Doctor. One can't be expected to investigate every single anomaly out there, can he?"
"Of course not, don't be absurd. Just the one's he sees personally." The Doctor smiled and bent down over the monitor again.
I began to protest, but caught myself. I realized how fruitless it would have been. That is who the Doctor is, and I have seen him but a handful of times, and those times had generally been without incident up until that point. I had no cause to complain. I pity, however, those who become his regular companions in his journeys and eccentricities.
At any rate, arguing would only delay my arrival on the Ancestral Moon even further.
"What is the nature of the anomaly, Doctor?"
"It wouldn't be much of an anomaly if I knew that. However," he flicked a few switches and glanced at a monitor, "I can say it's invisible to the naked eye."
"To a Time Lord's eyes perhaps."
The Doctor looked up from the monitor, but not at me. Rather he appeared to look upward toward the top of the control room. His head cocked to the side. "Fair enough." With a move best described as a hurried flourish he swung the monitor in my direction. "What do you see there?"
No matter how desperate I was to look superior on the moment, I could come up with no better answer than, "nothing but space and stars."
The Doctor bounced his index finger off of the front of his nose several times in what I assumed to him was indicative of something, but I didn't know what, and I didn't wish to.
"That is all I see too," he said. He punched away at some buttons on the console beneath him. "And working with something one can't see is not only less efficient, but it's a trifle boring, don't you think?"
This was certainly more of a rhetorical inquiry than one in want of a reply from me. That notwithstanding, "I imagine that would complicate matters, yes, but what can one do?"
"We spruce up the place, of course," the Doctor said. "Keep an eye on that, if you please," he said, tapping the monitor he'd swung toward me earlier. He threw a switch and something within the TARDIS hummed. I stepped closer to the monitor.
The Doctor threw another switch. Another humming ensued. All the while I watched the monitor as much out of boredom as anything else. I was not, however, bored for long. For after the second round of humming I observed hues of purple stretching out like tentacles for what must have been light years on the monitor. Like blood vessels they branched and twisted, merged into and entangled with one another. This entanglement, more complex in the middle of a large irregular oval that also emerged purple was more regular the further one got from the center of this oval, like the nougat center of a candy being pulled apart from both sides-if the candy were 100 light years high and about 50 light years wide that is.
Remarkable to see it materialize before my eyes, I have to say, even if on a monitor.
The Doctor shifted position and bent down over the same monitor. "Behold, I give you Time Cotton, and no small amount of it either, by the looks of it."
"Time cotton," I repeated. "Is that what this phenomenon is called?"
"It is when you don't know what it is but get to name it yourself."
"But, time cotton? Why call it that?"
"Because 'time cheese' would be ludicrous wouldn't it? Besides, looks like a cotton ball being torn apart, no?"
"More so than cheese," I conceded. "But how did you create it? And why?"
"I didn't." The Doctor looked down at the monitor at the newly christened time cotton. A slight smile crept across his face. "That's our friend that caused all the trouble a little bit ago. What the TARDIS got stuck in until I pulled the old girl out. Just made it visible to our eyes."
"But what is this, time cotton?"
"In short, it's time itself, coming apart."
I leaned in closer to the monitor. "What could cause time itself to pull apart?" I felt myself becoming dangerously close to interested.
"It's actually more common than you think," the Doctor said. He flipped a single switch. "Pockets of time split in any number of ways when the conditions are correct. Never in this manner, though."
"Never like cotton," I offered.
"It's like cotton in another way. Look." The Doctor reached into one of his jacket pockets, and after some excavation produced a ball of actual cotton, which he held up closer to my face.
"You keep cotton on you as a matter of course?"
"If this is how time should be out there," the Doctor began, either not hearing or choosing to ignore my question, "Here's what appears to be happening to it." The Doctor gently pulled apart the cotton ball by drawing the halves of it away from one another in either of his hands. "Tiny, thin fibers of time pulling apart from one another, but close enough to other strands to touch one another in different places, until," the Doctor pulled on the cotton ball further. This resulted in two irregularly shaped pieces of cotton, with long tufts sticking out of each half like a wild vine. "Now hold out your hands."
I did so. The Doctor placed a piece of the cotton in each. "Now if you would, put them back together for me, just as they were.
"I cannot," I said.
"Come you're a smart man, surely there's a way. Tape perhaps? Glue?"
"That would just make a mess of things," I said. "You can't glue something that small and precise."
"Exactly so," said the Doctor. "Which is why this is no ordinary, run of the mill, walk through the park rip in the space time continuum. Break a window into a million pieces, and you can still put it back together, if you have enough glue, enough time, and an inordinate love for impossibly difficult jigsaw puzzles. That's how time usually breaks."
"But with this phenomena," I gestured the cotton in my hand toward the monitor, "the very act of trying to put it back together would make matters worse. Time, if you will, is too fibrous. Just like…"
"Cotton," the Doctor said crossing his arms.
"Time cotton," I said, nodding my head. "So what do we do about this?"
"We?"
"I'm here, and I'm obviously not getting to my ancestral moon," I said. "I'm determined to not be in the way, so I shall endeavor to help fix this, cotton of time. What can I do?"
"Yes. That's sporting of you, old chap, very sporting. And as soon as I have an idea, you're free to take part in it." He looked down at his control panel, but didn't flip any switches.
"Are you telling me you haven't the slightest idea how to proceed?"
"Of course not, I have a very, very slight idea. Which is infinitely better than no idea."
"What is it, then, Doctor?"
"I can't say. It's so slight I don't know what it is yet, but it's in there somewhere, believe me." He tapped the side of his head.
"What happens if we do nothing? Leave this cotton to do as it may?"
"If you cut or break a hologram into many pieces, each piece still contains the entire picture. Time, broken as it is, remains whole, even in pieces. What we have here is an actual renting of the fabrics of time. Entire timelines from heaven knows when will abruptly end as they separate from the whole. In the mean time a lot more of history will flicker out of order than our conversation did earlier. If the rate of separation continues like this, half the universe will lose time continuity in days. Which is why we must repair it."
"But how does one repair such fine damage without causing more damage?" I asked.
"What does one do with cotton?" The Doctor mumbled, surely to himself. Then he looked up at me. "Quickly, what sort of things can one do to cotton? Brainstorm."
I looked for the answers on the cotton ball itself. "Well, I made it into a crude ball."
"We know we can pull it apart, but we don't want that."
"One can make garments for earthlings," I said, not imagining why one would want clothing made of such material.
"Actually three hundred civilizations across the universe now use cotton as a staple fabric. They say the Yaveen haven't sweated in over 400 years."
"Doctor, please. I'm sure it's a fascinating plant, with an illustrious history," I began. He cut me off before I could finish my point.
"Gin!"
I looked at the Doctor. He looked back at me with that expression of his that indicates his conviction that you already know what he is thinking. I didn't. "You've lost me."
"There's an expression on Earth," said the Doctor, "to be out of one's 'cotton pickin' mind. Means to have a crazy idea."
"You want us to go crazy?"
"No, but what fun that would be, am I right?"
"Some of us are closer than others."
"For years they did it by hand," he said, "until they invented the cotton gin, and made the process much more efficient. I might be able, use the TARDIS like a time gin. Pull the cotton out there into the TARDIS engine core, keep it mostly in tact, and send it safely into the time vortex." He threw more levers and switches as he said this.
"But what about timelines?" I asked him. "Won't we just cause more damage to that cotton or whatever it is?"
"Not if I'm right." He looked me over for a moment and asked, "How strong are your arms?"
"Time Lordss say a TARDIS is the most complex, powerful vehicle in all of the universe, and yet here I am ready to do the work of an ancient peasant."
I was reclining in a makeshift chair the Doctor had provided in a room adjacent to the console room. On either side of me two large metal levers with hand grips on the top. In front of me a monitor, with not only a view of the phenomena that caused all of this trouble, but a small digital circle in the middle of the screen."
"You wanted to help," called the Doctor. "This takes two people, and I doubt you have the experience to work a TARDIS control panel."
"I thought you once told me you did the work of six men when you flew the TARDIS."
"Ah, but we're not flying it. We're calibrating the first ever time cotton gin in the universe. For that I need you."
"But levers?" I asked wearily. "Can't you program the TARDIS for this part? What's the point of having one if you still have to use muscle. Not to mention I'm a guest."
"She doesn't like manual labor," the Doctor said. He threw a few switches. "But you're right about being my guest. Terribly rude of me. I tend to not to be an ideal host when the survival of the time continuum is on the line. A Time Lord, thing, you understand."
As it wouldn't have made the slightest difference had I understood or not, I merely grunted. Then I asked him, "That being the case, are you almost ready to begin?"
"No, I am totally ready." The Doctor came through the door into my room. "I've adjusted the regulators to emit a chronoterefin pulse that should draw the cotton into the TARDIS with minimal damage."
"To the cotton or the TARDIS?"
"Both. Your job is to pull on these levers to cause the pulse, and draw the cotton toward us, and to prevent a logjam. Watch the cotton come through this here," he tapped the glass of the monitor on top of the digital circle, "and give or take slack on the pulse accordingly. Simple."
"And what if you're not correct, Doctor?"
"Oh come now, wouldn't it be more interesting to hear what comes next if I'm right, than if I am wrong?"
"Something tells me it will at least be more comforting."
"The time cotton will pass through the center of the TARDIS, down in the engine core. Once there, I'll release it into the time vortex safely. Then we shut down the pulse, you're off to your ancestral moon, and I'm off to…well I'm off. Ready?"
I looked from the Doctor to the monitor, to the levers and back to the Doctor. "I hope my strength holds out long enough. I had no lunch, you may recall."
The Doctor slapped me on the back and yelled, "places." I grabbed both of the levers, ignoring the question in the back of my mind as to whether the destruction of the time continuum would be painful should it come to that.
"Switching on pulse," the Doctor called.
A reddish brown color bled into the time cotton's purple, presumably because of the pulse effecting the visual spectrum. It was quite a site, in fact, one I hadn't expected. But the Doctor expressed no alarm, so I kept my thoughts on the matter to myself.
The cotton also began to swirl, barely perceptible at first, gradually more noticeable. A tendril of it emerged and spiraled toward the center of the monitor.
"Not until it's within the circle," the Doctor reminded me.
"Understood."
I gripped and re-gripped the levers several times as I watched the first segments of the cotton glide their way toward the circle. Whether it was the gravity of the situation hitting me full on, or merely the effort to concentrate so deeply on the circular target I don't know, but I was all at once absorbed in the significance of what I was doing. Though my species is not prone to anxiety, I confess the weight of the scenario had an effect on my unlike anything else I have experienced before or since.
A mere few hours before, I had been grilling my lunch, awaiting a regular trip to my ancestral moon. Now I sat in a TARDIS, controls in my hand confronting a phenomena that if not treated exactly so could bring about the end to everything, not merely myself. I was not afraid, but as dead serious as my leisurely race of people is liable to ever be. Is this what the Doctor felt like all of the time, or was it far more passé' about it all? I made a note to ask him, if we survived all of this.
The first portion of the cotton now entered within the circle, and I pulled on the levers. It didn't take all of my strength to move them, but this was no operation for a lightweight. Somewhere within the TARDIS a high wheezing sound matched my moves with the levers. I had just rowed myself into position for another pulse, when I saw the cotton cloud drift out of the circle. I had already tensed my muscles to prepare for another pull, but managed to thwart the process just in time.
The cotton, which as a whole had begun to take on the shape of a tendril was drifting further upward away from the circle.
"Inertia," the Doctor called. "It won't drift back now. I'm adjusting the angle of the TARDIS to compensate."
I watched the monitor. The cotton mass flew first down past the circle, than off to the left, before the image stabilized. Again, a gradual drift toward the circle began.
"Is this working, Doctor?"
"Won't know until it's over."
Or, I thought, we won't know anything at all when it's over, because there won't be anything left.
The end peak of the cotton mass drifted into the circle again, and again I began pulling and resetting, pulling and resetting the levers as though rowing down a river at home.
Then the TARDIS jolted and I lost my grip on the levers. Before I could reach for them again, the entire room began to shake, and I was almost thrown from my seat. "Doctor?"
He didn't answer right away, and as I couldn't see him from where I sat, I wasn't sure if he was injured, or if the increased rumbling had drowned me out. "Doctor?"
"The cotton is reacting with the engine core," he called. "There's a time feedback effect."
"Shall I stop?"
"No," he cried. "No you must continue, in fact, no matter what happens. And it's about to get much more difficult."
"I suppose I'd feel insulted if things were too easy while I was aboard."
"Consider it a challenge to make up for the lost steaks."
"They are practically the same-"
The TARDIS shook violently. The Doctor appeared in the doorway, balancing himself with his arm on the frame. "I can't stabilize it. You must continue to create the pulse only when the cotton is in the circle."
I looked over at the monitor as the vibrations increased within the room. "I see about five of the circles with all this shaking. Actually I see five of everything."
"You know what they say," yelled the Doctor over the din, "aim for the one in the middle." Another jolt. The Doctor vanished back into the console room.
"The one in the middle," I said to myself, though I couldn't hear my own voice now over the humming.
I grabbed the levers, and shut my eyes. I blinked several times, and the trained my gaze on the screen. I leaned in closer for a better view, hoping to counter the visual effects of the shaking.
One circle did seem to be the real one, and as soon as I determined a fraction of the cotton entering it was not merely a blur, I pulled on the levers again. Nothing exploded so I assumed I got it right.
"50% of the cotton is captured," yelled the Doctor.
I continued the rowing motion, my back aching not only from pulling the levers, but from sitting up at such an odd angle trying to get a better view of the monitor on every reset. The shaking got noticeably worse with each pull. Unfortunately so did the view. I pulled once on the levers, and the TARDIS lurched to the side with such force I toppled out of the chair onto the floor.
"Easy," the Doctor yelled, followed by a few other words that I simply couldn't make out over the noise. I figured the cotton must not have been within the target range when I sent the last pulse.
I staggered to my feet amidst humming, screeching and other noises from within the TARDIS that couldn't have meant anything good. I staggered back to the chair on a floor now tilted by several degrees again. I assumed my position back in the chair. Only when I squinted to try to focus again on the ever elusive circle did I realize just what a strain the operation had been putting on my eyes. I could feel them protest the abuse, but I ignored the incoming pain. Instead I wiped away the slight weepiness in both of them and gripped the levers again.
I adjusted myself in the seat, and turned to my right to find the Doctor's face even with my own.
"You've missed a few cycles," he yelled.
"Must you sneak up on me like that?" I asked. "I'm trying to work here."
"The cotton's own gravity is trying to pull it back out of the TARDIS."
"Can you stop the bloody shaking, Doctor? I can hardly see a thing." I squinted at the monitor, and turned back to the Doctor, who had already gone back to the console room.
Squeezing my eyes almost shut, I leaned toward the monitor, and waited for the cotton to pass into the blasted circle, which I was beginning to hate with a passion. The moment the smear resembling the cotton came anywhere near the smear resembling the circle, I was going to pull as fast as I could as many times as possible.
In the cotton image went, and I put my head down now, and pulled with all of my might. My lungs burned after a few cycles but I refused to let up. I was no longer even looking at the display, but the TARDIS now shook with such ferocity I doubted it would have made any different anyway. This position made it easier to push and pull the levers. Though nothing the Doctor said confirmed it, I theorized that if I went faster for as long as I could, it was better to send a pulse prematurely, than to allow the cotton into the circle and not send a pulse at all.
If the Doctor was unsatisfied with the sloppiness of my new method, he could take over himself; at least he'd have the advantage of two hearts pumping blood to his arms over my single.
Still the shaking worsened, and more than once my hand slipped from a lever. Alarms from the console room went off, but I heard them only in the back of my mind now. Everything, my entire being was a muscle tearing, lung burning, hand cutting painful rhythmic dance of pull-lever-push-lever. The only interruption was one more large jolt, but I managed to stay in the chair that time.
White spots appeared in front of my eyes as I continued rowing, my lungs now so weak breathing was felt voluntary; I feared if I didn't inhale with intention, I'd not breathe again.
My right shoulder seized up, and I tried to shake it off, but the pressure built, and began to shake the whole side of my body. Only then did I realize it was not a cramping muscle, but the Doctor grabbing me.
"You've done everything you can here," he yelled. "we've got to eject the cotton into the time stream now."
I looked up at my monitor that I'd been ignoring. It was still a blur with the increased shaking of the TARDIS, (which had begun to make me nauseous as well.) But I could still see some of the time cotton in the display. "We don't have all of it yet," is what I tried to say, but I lacked the breath. Indeed I realized I was gulping for air in a way I had never done before. At least it was in fact still a reflex action. I shook my head and tapped on the screen in front of me.
"There's isn't time," the Doctor yelled. "It's burning up the engine. We need to eject what we have into the time stream and hope that what little is left will follow. Come on." He motioned toward the console room.
My fingers at first wouldn't release the levers, my muscles having tensed around them. With some painful force I pried them off, and swung my legs out of the chair and onto the floor. The Doctor caught me as I stumbled from fatigue, but I made it to the console room on my own power.
"I need you to keep an eye on these readings," he told me. It's just as well, as if I had had to grab another lever, I'd have welcomed the destruction of the time continuum just for a chance to rest. "I need to know when chronoterefin saturation falls below 40%."
"What," I managed to yell back, having retrieved some of my breath. "What's 40%?"
The Doctor jogged around the six sided control console, and tapped a monitor on the way by, indicating the one I was to watch.
"I'm going to partially open the time vortex when the saturation is below 40%, to start ejecting the cotton. It has to get below 40% before all the cotton passes through the engine."
"Or?"
"There you go again with your questions about failure. Ask me about success."
I was too tired at that point to be annoyed by the Doctor's typical verbal ballet. "What if it works, then?" I asked.
"Then we don't blow up. All set?"
I nodded, hoping to save breath that was still difficult to obtain.
The Doctor manned a small silver dial just in front of him.
"50 per cent," I panted.
The TARDIS lurched slightly, but I steadied myself against the console. I looked down at the console, my eyes watering again from the strain. I wiped them on my sleeve.
"Don't get emotional on me," yelled the Doctor. Our entire conversation had to rise above the roar of the machine now.
"Forgive me," I yelled back. "Being with you is always such a moving experience. 48 per cent. 47."
All the while the Doctor made the tiniest of adjustments on his silver dial, looking up only occasionally to push another button, or to steady himself against a sudden jolt of the TARDIS. If he felt any nerves or fear at the situation, his face didn't betray it. In fact, he grinned a moment later when he said, "The cotton's just about there. How are we doing?"
I glanced down at the monitor. Even the big bright numbers had started to blue with the intensity of the shaking, but I could easily make out, "44 per cent."
Despite only being inside of the TARDIS a handful of times over my centuries, I knew that showers of sparks were not supposed to fly out of the large rotors that pumped up and down above the control console at all times.
I shielded my eyes from them, as the Doctor repeated, "Why do that?" several times.
I checked back down at the monitor. "Doctor, we've climbed back up to 50 percent. 51 percent now."
"Well know that's just unfair, isn't it," he said. He pushed some button and a sort of mist descended over the time rotors, and the sparks died away, but the look of concentration and concern on the Doctor's face did not.
"Now what?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I've got to eject the cotton into the time vortex. Now."
"But we're not below 40% saturation," I objected. "You said…"
"First off, never quote me to me. It's causes unnecessary confusion. Secondly, and this is probably much more important, we don't have a choice."
"Blowing up is the only option?"
"The only one likely enough to consider. But we'll blow up inside the vortex and keep the rest of the continuum safe. If we do nothing, there goes everything. I should have that put on a tea mug."
He cocked his head to the side for a moment as though actually considering it before he swung to another side of the console.
"Are you sure about this?" I asked him, feeling more angry than afraid about an impending demise.
"I'm sorry you had to get dragged into all of this," he said. "I'd let you off if I could, but I can't move the TARDIS. Thank you for your help."
Amid the shaking, sound of alarms, and even more sparks, the Doctor extended his hand. I shook it, partially out of reflex, and partially because in that moment, it felt as though the least I could do to repay him for his services was to shake his hand, given we had so little time, it would seem.
I looked back at the room I had been working in earlier. "Perhaps if I had only…"
"Wouldn't have changed anything. You did what you could. It was never a perfect plan, I'm afraid. This is a TARDIS, not a cotton gin. You improvise quite a bit out here. Like I'm about to do right now."
In a flash the Doctor lunged for a large switch and threw it with all his might.
I don't know why, but all I could think to do when he did this was yell, "Doctor!"
White light more intense than anything I had ever seen filled the TARDIS and forced my eyes shut.
I knew I was lying down. My eyes were closed, and I could swear grass was beneath me. I heard a hissing sound from nearby, like rain pouring down onto a boulder. But I wasn't getting wet.
Then I smelled it. Steaks. Harkanian Kelp steaks. It was unmistakable. I opened my eyes, and sat up. In retrospect I should have done this much slower, as I felt dizzy right away. My vision was a bit blurry as well, but I could tell it was indeed grass beneath me. A few feet away a grill. MY grill, cooking Harkanian Kelp steaks.
I eased myself to my feet, and (much slower this time) turned around. My home was there, and right in front, was the TARDIS. Before I could take an uneasy step towards it, the door swung open, and out stepped the Doctor.
"Well that was a bit of a plot twist, wouldn't you say?" he asked.
"Doctor? What is this? What happened? Why didn't we blow up?"
"In fact we did, in a way. The overload of the time circuits from the time cotton at over 50% saturation did cause an explosion within the time rotors. But the explosion ignited the time cotton, and in the process sealed everything."
"It did?"
"That's the best I can come up with. I've only been conscious for a minute or so."
"But then why are we here? How did…"
"The fusing of the cotton with the time circuits probably sent the TARDIS along the vortex back to the point of origin of its most recent trip before encountering the phenomena. When in doubt, back to the beginning, I suppose."
"But didn't you knock over my steaks when you arrived the first time?" I gestured toward my grill. The Doctor looked over to the grill.
"It's a game of inches, this time travel. It can have horrible consequences at times. But then again, the rewards almost compensate."
With this he stepped toward the grill, and bent down toward the steaks, taking in the smell. I walked over to him, my muscles stiff from our adventure. I pulled him away from the grill by the arm. "Yes, but even a TARDIS can't control time to a delicate enough degree to keep these steaks from shriveling, so if you don't mind, Doctor."
"Of course," he said, taking a step back towards the TARDIS.
"How strong are your arms, Doctor?"
"Why would you ever ask such a question?"
"I want to see if you can handle bringing me two plates. These are about ready and my arms are killing me."
The Doctor rubbed his hands together. "I thought you'd never ask."
The steaks turned out perfectly.