The Doctor frowned as he studied the instruments on the control panel. For some strange reason, the transit time to his next destination was unusually long, and the trip was rougher than normal, shaking and rattling him and his companions about. Noticing that one of the readings on the small monitor he was looking at didn't make any sense whatsoever, he decided to have a bit of a peek outside despite the fact that looking into time and space while in transit was inadvisable for several reasons.
"Oh dear." he said as another TARDIS, a slightly larger and brighter blue TARDIS blew by on the screen.
"What is it Doctor?" Jamie asked.
"It's me, I think." he replied as the other TARDIS disappeared into the distance seemingly going back the way they themselves had come from. "A me at least."
"How can it be you when you're right here?" Victoria who had yet to get used to the vagaries of time travel since he'd just picked her up on a recent adventure asked.
"Hmm? Oh. When you travel in time as often as I have, you're bound to meet yourself coming and going at some point." he replied, distractedly studying the controls that were telling him that he wasn't exactly 100% precisely in his universe. The TARDIS was furiously at work trying to backtrack the difference between his universe and this one, but when you've got time travelers jumping about doing random things, it could be damn near impossible.
There was a ding, and a readout that would only make sense to a Time Lord appeared on the monitor.
"Oh, so that's it." he said as he set the TARDIS to land where the other TARDIS had come from.
"What's it?" Jamie asked, yet again wondering what the heck was going on.
"Apparently, here I sneezed at ten twelve and fifteen seconds yesterday instead of at ten twelve and sixteen seconds. We're somewhere between eight-hundred and a thousand years forward in my personal timeline. Well, the other me's personal timeline at least. But, it would be the present for him." he replied as he gestured to the readout that the TARDIS had provided him.
"Aye," said Jamie who obviously hadn't understood a word he'd said. "But, where are we?"
"England. 21st Century after I've gone mucking about with time and shifted a couple of fixed points slightly." he replied after a more thorough study of the readout of the time-stream that the TARDIS had provided for his edification.
"Fixed Points?" Victoria asked.
"Well, you see Victoria, Time isn't exactly solid. Events can be malleable if you know how to work with them, and the future can change a bit. I say a bit, because Time likes to keep to a certain general shape which it does by there being fixed points in time that cannot be changed otherwise you'll destroy the entirety of the universe. You can shift a fixed point a little bit however, if you're very, very, careful." he replied, illustrating his statement with several hand gestures.
"Oh." Victoria said, apparently not understanding him whatsoever.
"Now, let's see what's waiting for us outside." he said as he grabbed his cape in case he needed another layer in addition to his jacket for warmth.
Outside of the TARDIS was the back yard of a reasonably nice house. Standing in the middle of the yard watching them exit the TARDIS as if it was old hat to him was an older heavyset fellow.
"Looks like I'll have to call and say they're sick again." the man said with a sigh when he realized that there was no-one else with them.
"That's odd. Usually, people are more surprised by the TARDIS appearin' outta nowhere." Jamie said as he watched the older man go into the house.
"Doctor, what is this?" Victoria asked as she held up a little black box that had been used as a paperweight that she'd found on the patio table.
Meanwhile, in another universe which until a few minutes before then had varied from the previous one only in that the Doctor had sneezed one second later than in the one the Doctor was currently in with his companions Jamie and Victoria:
"Well, isn't this...boring." Amy said as she viewed the trackless wastes of the desert that the TARDIS had landed in.
"I could swear I've been here before." the Doctor said musingly as he looked around.
A loud explosion rent the silence of the wastelands.
"Now that's more like it!" Amy said, perking up immediately.
"Well, what are you two waiting for?" she asked as she ran towards the explosion which had apparently shifted a portion of a cliffside downwards revealing massive metal doors.
Giving a long-suffering sigh, Rory followed after his wife not noticing that the Doctor was still standing there staring at the doors in the cliffside rather than racing forward until he was in the lead like he usually would have been.
