Time To Keep In Your Heart For a While
Leonard came to a halt at the top of the stairs outside 4A and stared breathless at the sight of the woman in the open door of 4B. She had long blonde hair, a blue shirt and denim shorts and she looked like she had walked out of his dreams. 'New neighbor?'
Sheldon could see the inevitable inelegant Leonard mating dance beginning. 'Evidently.'
Leonard was very happy. 'Significant improvement over the old neighbor.'
Sheldon couldn't deny that was true. 'Two hundred pound transvestite with a skin condition? Yes, she is.'
The woman turned when she heard the voices in the hall. She smiled in delight at the guys in the hall and walked quickly up to Sheldon, got up on her toes and pulled him down into a passionate kiss.
'Gmmnha… what are you doing?' Sheldon pried the woman's hands off his neck. He quickly unlocked his front door and ran to the bathroom for mouthwash.
Leonard was staring in alarm between the girl next to him and down the apartment hallway where he could hear Sheldon frantically gargling loudly in the bathroom. The girl was looking down the hallway slightly perplexed. 'Oops. Hey, Leonard, what's the date today?'
'Dec 12, how do you know my name and who are you?' Leonard couldn't make heads or tails of this girl. She was hot but she was crazy.
'Oh, that's awkward. I really shouldn't. You'll find out soon enough.' Penny hummed to herself for a second. 'Hey, is that Indian food? Great, I'm starved.' Penny grabbed the bag from Leonard and walked back into 4B and shut the door.
Leonard stood frozen in shock. Everything was all too weird. Suddenly, it hit him that the girl had taken their lunch and run off with it. He pounded on her door and tried to open it but it was locked. 'Hey, give us our food back!'
Things got much stranger when Sheldon came jogging up the fourth floor steps and handed Leonard another bag of Indian food. 'Hey, Leonard, it's really for the best if you don't ask.' He unlocked the door to 4B, walked in, and shut the door leaving Leonard wondering what to do. He was angry about the stolen food but he was more flummoxed by how Sheldon had gotten more food and come back in this amount of time. 'When did he get a key for that girl's apartment? When did he get down stairs for the food?' This had to be some kind of bazinga. He didn't think this could get much stranger until Sheldon came stomping out of 4A.
'Where is that mad plague carrying Jezebel?'
Leonard looked at Sheldon like he was insane. 'Come on man, just say bazinga, this is getting too weird.'
'Leonard, weird is your belief that your work is brilliant, I want to know where that Typhoid Mary went.' Sheldon went to 4B and started knocking.
'What are you doing that for, you've got a key to the door, Sheldon.'
Sheldon looked at Leonard like he had slipped a cog. 'Why would I have a key for 4B?'
'Because you just came up the stairs, handed me this Indian food, and went into 4B.' Leonard was getting tired of this joke and the frustration was clear in his voice.
'Leonard, I am aware of your myopia, but even without your glasses, you would have just seen me walk out of 4A after having gargled away the plague of germs that woman contaminated me with.' Sheldon was wondering if the sight of the woman kissing him had incapacitated Leonard's ability to think rationally.
'Sheldon, just look at this receipt, it says 1:18… just like when we bought it?' Leonard was trying to figure out how the lunch had the same time as the last one. He didn't see Sheldon buy two lunches.
'Of course it does, because that's when we bought it. Perhaps, you should see a doctor about this?' Sheldon took the bag and walked into 4A. He hoped he could have lunch in peace unless Leonard was determined to continue his pursuit of that bio-hazardous minx across the hall.
Leonard followed Sheldon into 4A. 'We didn't buy that lunch. That girl who kissed you stole ours. That's the lunch you just bought and gave to me! And, who is that girl!'
'This lunch which the receipt says was purchased at 1:18, the time we did buy our lunch, is the lunch I bought for us, Leonard.' Sheldon started opening the food. 'I have no idea who that girl is but she clearly didn't take our lunch as it is sitting right here in front of you. You should eat, Leonard, you are clearly in a state of confusion likely from low blood sugar.'
'Come on, just say bazinga, man!' Leonard gave up in frustration. He was hungry, frustrated, and confused, and too annoyed to deal with this any further.
'Just eat, Leonard.' Sheldon wondered who that madwoman was across the hall. He was still shocked by the kiss even if her lips were surprisingly soft and warm. And comfortable. That odd thought kept Sheldon thinking for the rest of the week.+++
The following week Leonard and Sheldon drove to the comic book store. When they got inside Sheldon saw that mad woman looking through one of the comic bins. She was dressed in the same blue shirt, denim shorts, and Ugg boots that she had on last week. She was impossible to miss since all the men in the store kept floating around her stupefied into insensibility. Sheldon wasn't feeling nearly so speechless.
'Madam, I have come to speak to you about the assault on my person last week.' She looked up at Sheldon with vibrant green eyes that he could only describe as enchanting.
'Hi, cutie, who are you?' Penny thought the tall man with the Texas accent was rather handsome, especially all worked up like this.
Leonard came up next to Sheldon and did a double take when he realized his roommate had come across their food thief neighbor. They hadn't seen any sign of her all week so neither one of them expected to come across her here in Stuart's store. 'Come on, you know who we are. We're your neighbors. You stole our lunch from us!'
Penny looked at the guy with glasses and wondered what he was talking about. 'If I knew who you were, I wouldn't ask. Don't be obtuse.'
'Indeed, Leonard, she never even said her name much less stole our lunch.' Sheldon rolled his eyes at Leonard's inability to speak sensibly with any attractive woman. 'I am Sheldon and this is my roommate, Leonard.'
'Oh, that's sweet. I'm Penny.' She smiled and wondered why Sheldon was talking about being assaulted by her.
'Sweet? You don't have to listen to his idea of cutting edge theory. I want to know why you kissed me last week.' Sheldon wanted to keep this conversation on track but Leonard had to go into his mating preening.
'Uh, we're not roommates, I mean we are but in separate heterosexual bedrooms.' Leonard didn't want this incredibly hot girl to get the wrong idea about him and Sheldon.
'Oh, that's nice; I can't imagine why that would be important to clear up. Besides, maybe, I've decided I like girls since then.' She got closer to Sheldon and breathed in deeply smelling his shirt. 'Hmm, that is a familiar smell, just like home.' Penny hooked her arm with Sheldon's and walked over to the rare comics section with him leaving Leonard spluttering in their wake. 'So, tell me more about this kiss, Sheldon.'
'Last Wednesday afternoon, Leonard and I were returning to our building. We got to our floor, saw your door open. You smiled at us, walked out, and proceeded to kiss me in much more than just a friendly fashion. I went to gargle the germs away and you returned to your apartment unseen by us since, until today.' Sheldon waited for Penny's response.
Penny pulled out a very impressive replica of a sonic screwdriver from her boot and turned it on waving it up and down in front of Sheldon. She looked at a remarkable screen display that Sheldon had never before seen on one. It was an incredible collector's item. 'Are you a fan of Doctor Who, Penny?'
'Oh, yeah, never miss it.' Penny nodded and replaced the screwdriver in her boot. She had a half smile and looked up a little abashed at Sheldon. 'Was the kiss really that bad?'
'What, well, no, aside from possible germs, but your skillfulness was most impressive. Why did you do that?' Sheldon wanted to find out why she kissed him and he really wanted to see her sonic screwdriver again.
'Tell you what, I'll apologize, and we can get some comics before I do that in the future. How do you feel about them?' Penny pointed out a Flash #1 and Green Lantern #1.
'Stuart, the owner over there at the register, said he was stupid to buy them, it might bankrupt him, but how could he resist? It is a statement I would have to agree with.' Sheldon looked at the comics thinking of what he would pay to have them. 'They are priceless; any collector would love to have them, Penny.' Sheldon was delighted to find Penny was a comic book fan.
'Great, let's get those. Hey, Stuart, come on over!' Penny waved to Stuart and he almost leaped over the counter to help Penny.
'What? Are you out of your mind, Penny? They would cost thousands of dollars. Flash #1, alone, sold at auction for as much as $400,000!' Sheldon couldn't take Penny seriously about this.
'Yes, miss, how can I help you, Penny was it?' Stuart had been praying this girl would just stay here all day. Talking to her was a dream bonus.
'We'll take those two.' Penny pointed to the comics.
'You're kidding?' Stuart thought this had to be a joke. He didn't think those comics could be bought much less would be out of the blue.
Leonard had come up behind the three and gagged loudly when he heard what Penny was buying.
'Nope.' Penny pulled out a plastic card from her back pocket. Sheldon wondered what Penny hoped to accomplish with a blank white card.
'I guess a Visa Black card might manage it. I have to check your credit, Penny.' Stuart took Penny's credit card half dazed this sale was happening. 'And give yourself a tip. I love the service in this place, 20% good, Sheldon? Yeah, give yourself a 20% tip on top of it, Stuart.'
'Sure.' Stuart went to the credit card swipe. He put in the price. It cleared without a pause. 'Oh, my, God.'
'Penny, you can't possibly do something like this. It is absurd to just buy those books like any old comic book.' Sheldon thought Penny was overcompensating due to his complaint about the assault. The kiss really wasn't that shocking. Actually, it had been rather pleasant in his memory over the last week. It would be crass to admit it but Leonard's inquiries about what Sheldon knew about Penny over the last week had been a source of great amusement to him. It certainly didn't warrant a financial penance like this.
Penny walked over to the register with Sheldon. Leonard followed them listening to this conversation in disbelief. 'Why not? They're just comics, too. Or would you prefer a couple of Superman #1s?' Penny touched Sheldon's abdominal area and brushed her hand up and down a bit. 'Hmm, sweet.'
Stuart froze with Penny's card in hand held out to her. 'You have multiple Superman #1s?'
'Oh, yeah, you want those wrapped up Sheldon?' Penny took her white plastic card and put it back in her pocket. Sheldon just looked at Penny with puzzlement and suspicion. 'Tell you what; just bring them out to my car, Stuart.' Penny kept her arm wrapped with Sheldon's. 'Let's go over to your place and you can show me your collection, Sheldon.'
Sheldon and Penny walked out to Penny's car where they waited for Stuart. Sheldon simply had to confront Penny about this obvious theft. 'Penny, I have no idea how you convinced Stuart that white piece of plastic was a Visa Black card but when he comes out of that store and hands you those comics you will be guilty of a heinous theft. The assault on me I can forgive, but this is too much.' Sheldon watched Penny open her car's trunk and begin rummaging around. 'What are you doing?'
'Getting a map of the local power grid, Moonpie.' Penny pulled out a map case and two Mylar bags with comic books in them.
'Penny, only my Meemaw calls me Moonpie.' Sheldon wondered what Penny would need a map of the power grid for. His thoughts were cut off when Stuart came to the car with the comics.
'Here you are, Penny. Is there anything else?' Stuart was ready to crawl on his knees for Penny if she asked right now.
Penny took Stuart's comics and handed them to Sheldon. 'No thanks, sweetie, here, these are for you.' She handed Stuart the comics she had gotten out of her car trunk and tossed her power grid map into the backseat of the car. 'Let's go, Sheldon.'
Sheldon and Stuart didn't hear a word Penny said. Neither of them had ever seen Superman #1 in the pulp before. They were looking at two of them in mint condition. When Leonard caught up to Sheldon he went green at the sight of what Stuart was holding.
Penny knocked loudly on the roof of her car. 'Sheldon, honey, you can read your comics in the car, let's go.' Penny got in her car and started it up. Sheldon got in on the passenger's side in a daze. They were half a mile from the store before he heard Penny asking for his address. He told her distractedly while he sat and looked at the legendary comic books in his lap.
Stuart went back in the store. He told everyone the shop was closed for the day which everyone understood after that purchase. He sat alone and stared at his new comics until his assistant manager Denise came in. She almost fainted when she saw what he was looking at and joined him in silent worship.+++
Sheldon and Penny got to the fourth floor of Los Robles and Penny asked where the kiss happened.
'You came out of your apartment, 4B, and kissed me right here.' Penny looked around, handed Sheldon the power grid map, and got her sonic screwdriver out again. She adjusted a few small dials on the device and activated its familiar humming effects. She covered the hallway then opened 4B and walked inside. Sheldon watched her activity in puzzlement and waited for her in the hallway.
Penny looked at the readouts on the screwdriver and readjusted the dials and pressed the activation button. The screwdriver made a low whistling hum and the light at the end cycled through red, yellow, and green lights then went silent. She smiled, put her screwdriver back in her boot. Sheldon, sweetie, could you hand me the power grid map?'
Sheldon walked into 4B and gave Penny the map. She took the map out of the tube case and spread it out on the kitchenette counter. Sheldon watched her in ever increasing bafflement. The kiss had been long forgotten by now, put aside, actually, he was sure he couldn't forget that kiss even if his eidetic memory ever failed him. The comics had been too incomprehensible. He had thought she was committing some vast fraud on Stuart but if those were actually Superman #1s, they would more than equal the value of the comics he held in his hand. He couldn't imagine the wealth Penny had to have to actually purchase such things in such an offhand manner. Perhaps, she was some kind of international supervillain and the comics and power grid map were part of some kind of unimaginable James Bond level crime? He scoffed at that idea, he entertained such things in his hobbies but this was real life. He looked at Penny. Real life didn't have women like her.
'Sheldon, come here a minute. There are three locations to choose from.' Penny pointed at three points on the map. 'If you were going to conduct experiments on tachyon particles and quantum fluxuations where would you do it on here?'
Sheldon put down his comics and looked at the map points and the power systems needed for research like that but there was only one place in the map region that would do. He didn't really need to consult a map for that. 'CalTech, obviously, but CERN would be a more practical place to get reliable work done on research like that.'
'I'm sure of that but I doubt what we're looking for is being done by people trying to be reliable. Do you work at Caltech, Sheldon?' Penny chewed her lip and looked up from the map at her tall friend.
'Yes, but I am in theoretical research, what you're suggesting would be more answerable by Leonard since he is the experimental physicist.' Sheldon wondered if Penny was a researcher or more likely a spy like Leonard's Joyce Kim? That would explain the cavalier attitude towards money.
'OK, then, let's see if Leonard's back from the comic store.' Penny started for the door and paused. She fished in her pocket for a second and pulled out an apartment key. 'Here, Sheldon, you might need a key to my apartment.'
'Thank you, Penny.' He followed Penny out of the door surprised at the trust of giving him a key to her home. It didn't even occur to him that he left his comics behind.+++
Penny locked up 4B while Sheldon checked his door and found it open. Leonard must have come back from the store while they were looking over the map. They walked into 4A and saw Leonard making a sandwich in the kitchen.
'Hey guys, were you in Penny's place?' Leonard was sounding like a lost child.
'Yes, Leonard, Penny had some questions for you.'
'Oh, yeah?'
Leonard sounded a lot happier all of a sudden. Sheldon rolled his eyes at the predictable, even to him, change in Leonard's behavior and turned to his madcap companion but she was looking at one of his whiteboards.
'Is this your work, Sheldon?' Penny read the math and started laughing loudly.
'Yeah, it's some quantum mechanics and string theory.' He wondered what Penny found so funny.
'Approximation, is that your joke, Sheldon?' Penny sat on the back of the couch and read through the math again and started laughing all over again. 'You have got to tell that joke to my friend, Verity, she will bust a gut.'
'Are you both physicists, Penny?' Sheldon was astonished Penny understood the joke, no one else did.
'No, we're more hobbyists. She used to work in TV and acting. She loves doing comedy. I like to dabble in acting but we both love a good math joke.' Penny chuckled at the board again. 'Math jokes will beat most anything.'
Sheldon couldn't deny that. Leonard spoke up hopefully since Penny was a fan of math. 'I have a board. If you like boards, this is my board.'
Penny walked over to the board Leonard was standing next to. She glanced quickly at the work and smiled sweetly. 'That's so cute, physics for toddlers. Do you write children's books, Leonard? You should make sure the math is right for the kids, after all.'
'I'm a research physicist, Penny, and my work is cutting edge.' Leonard looked at his board and saw the error but he tried to talk his way around it. 'This isn't for children, it is important research. Things like that are always being updated.'
'If by cutting edge you mean a derivative restatement of the kind of stuff you can find scribbled on the wall of any men's room at MIT, sure. And, Penny is right about the error, Leonard.' Sheldon was impressed by Penny's knowledge for a hobbyist.
The impending mathematical throw down was cut off by Howard and Raj coming through the front door.
'Wait till you see this.' Howard was ecstatic.
'It's fantastic, unbelievable.' Raj was no less excited but then he saw the gorgeous blonde in the room and he froze.
Howard was no less shocked but much less frozen than his nervous friend. 'Enchante Madamoiselle. Howard Wolowitz, Cal-Tech department of Applied Physics. You may be familiar with some of my work, it's currently orbiting Jupiter's largest moon taking high-resolution digital photographs.'
Penny nodded and smiled. 'Applied physics, do you know anyone doing research into quantum flux analysis and applications to scanning tachyon fields, Howard?'
Howard was almost as shocked into silence as Raj. 'Yeah, Barry Kripke had my team building a bunch of scanners that he said were top secret. He said something like that but the stuff is a bunch of junk. It can't work.' He turned to Raj who whispered at him. 'And Raj says Kripke had his department connecting stuff to the laser telemetry telescopes around the state.'
'Really, that's so cool.' Penny walked over to Sheldon. 'Sheldon, do you know where Kripke's lab is?'
'Yes, I do, but his work is even more childish than Leonard's' Sheldon didn't have a clue what Penny was going on about.
'I don't doubt that at all. Let's go have sex over in my place.' Penny hooked Sheldon's arm and marched them out of the apartment and shut the door behind them on the way to 4B.
Leonard's jaw hit the floor with Howard and Raj's. They stared at the front door to the apartment and all of them said at the same time, 'Have sex!?'+++
Sheldon shook off Penny's arm when the door to 4B closed behind them and the sense of what Penny had said hit him. 'I most certainly will not have sex with you. Is that what those comics were about? My mother said a pretty face like mine would run into women like you.'
'Keep your shirt on, Romeo, that was just to keep your friends from following us.' Penny pulled out her screwdriver and pressed one of the buttons. The apartment morphed into a white room with round window like embrasures and in the center of the room was a very familiar six sided control pedestal with a large crystal pillar in the center that had a maze of complex crystals and lights inside.
'Oh good lord, I have been drugged and lost my mind.' The room was a TARDIS control room right out of the first series of Doctor Who.
'No you haven't Moonpie. It is a TARDIS and it can travel anywhere in time and space. Come on, you know the drill, Sheldon, you've got enough of the show on the shelves in your apartment.' Penny was standing next to the control console and punching in a long series of commands.
'Penny, that's just a TV show. How can this be a TARDIS?' Sheldon stood unsteadily in the middle of the room. Penny rolled her eyes and smirked. She walked over to Sheldon and took one of his hands and put his right hand over her left breast.
'Feel anything happening in there?' Sheldon squeaked at where Penny put his hand but said he felt her heartbeat. 'Great, now, what do you feel there?' Penny put his hand over her right breast. He felt a second heartbeat.
'Oh, Great Rasilon!' He fainted.+++
Sheldon woke to a smell like lavender and green apples. Penny was waving a small ampule under his nose. 'How are you doing there, honey?'
Sheldon sat up and stared at Penny who was sitting on her haunches looking at him in concern. 'You are a Time Lady like Romana. You're a Time Lord?'
'Among other things, yup. Get on up, sweetie, the floor isn't very comfortable to sleep on unless you want to start being an ascetic monk?' Penny helped Sheldon up.
'Penny, I… I… what?' Sheldon really had no idea where to start with this conversation. His beloved Saturday morning BBC TV show wasn't a TV show anymore.
'Verity, my friend, you remember I mentioned her?' Penny went over to one of the embrasures and picked up two mugs that were sitting there. She brought them back and offered one to Sheldon. He smelled a strong Irish Breakfast tea.
Sheldon sipped the strong tea. It was bracing and helped with everything that was happening. 'The one who loves the math jokes, yes.'
'She made a bet with a friend of ours. The Doctor, he said no one on Earth would take a show about Time Lords and time travel seriously. It was too childishly fantastic. Verity said otherwise and being into TV she got the show on the air back in '63. Hartnel is a dead ringer for the Doctor, by the way. Anyway, he couldn't believe she was right and the High Council has had its knickers in a twist over it ever since. Of course, their answer to it was to harrumph and ignore it and let time sweep it under a rug.' Penny rolled her eyes and went back to the control column and started operating more buttons and switches. 'Typical, they always assume they're above everything and let whatever happens happen and screw the little guys. That's why the Doctor took off. Most of us that slipped off did it for one reason or another like that. Verity wanted to show folks how much fun there was out there and how important it was to look out for folks just a bit, especially, when you don't have to. Dispassion can be even crueler than maliciousness, Sheldon.'
Penny entered the last details and asked Sheldon the location of Kripke's lab. After he told her the CalTech building it was in Penny put in a few more numbers and activated the central core. The crystal pillar lit up and started its up and down motion that Sheldon had seen so many times on TV.
'Verity Lambert is a Time Lord?'
'Yup, like some more tea, Sheldon?'+++
Sheldon sat with Penny at a table near the control column. They were working their way through their second cup of tea and things were coming together for Sheldon. Penny was impressed with Sheldon's rapid grasp of all this. Most people handled it with much less aplomb.
'So, what were you doing in a comic book store, and why did you kiss me last week?' Sheldon still wanted an answer to the kiss. He wondered why that was occupying his thoughts more than an actual TARDIS or that a real Time Lady from Gallifrey was having tea across the table from him. How did one process something like this?
'I was passing by in the Time Vortex, as much as you can say that outside reality, when my TARDIS picked up an anomalous time displacement set in the early 21st century. It's impossible tech in your time, Sheldon. There's a host of technologies and scientific discoveries to make before your civilization could even start to develop something that could do that in your time. I stopped by to check it out.'
Penny sipped her tea and was happy Sheldon was following this so well, of course she knew he must be quite bright going by his math jokes, anyway. Far more impressive was his seeing through the psychic filter on her Plasticard at Stuart's comic shop. It took an extraordinary mind to counter its outward display and Sheldon had seen through its filter with apparent ease.
'Did you think to find such equipment in Stuart's store?' Sheldon asked with a wry snort.
Penny chuckled at that. 'No, but a comic book shop near CalTech was bound to bring a few engineers and their like minded travelers together like a watering hole, so to speak. I thought I might get lucky, besides, the boutique next door had some really cute Care Bears I wanted for my collection.' Penny went back to the control column and checked some more readings. She redefined the search parameters to focus more on CalTech then she set up a time displacement targeting net so her TARDIS would home in on the rogue machinery when it was used again.
'When you came in the store and said I kissed you last week, I figured I might have found a link. When I smelled my DNA on you, I was sure of it.' Penny sat back down with Sheldon and admired the blue of his eyes. They reminded her of a song at a Zevon concert back in 1988, 'Reconsider Me'. As for the kiss, I guess that's something to look forward to, honey.' Penny smiled a bit into her tea.
Sheldon was alarmed that she could smell her DNA on him because of that kiss. There was Gallifreyan DNA and who knows what alien organisms swimming around in his system. Then, he realized this Penny hadn't kissed him, yet, and that made him feel disappointed which was more alarming and disconcerting. That was a new thought to process. Time travel brought on a bizarre cocktail of emotions since there was nothing linear to their experience.
'The kiss was my past and your future?'
'Seems so, sweetie.' Penny wiggled her eyebrows and smiled winsomely.
Penny felt her TARDIS looking for her attention. She went to the controls and saw the scanners had found what they were looking for. 'We got us a nibble, Sheldon. Let's land and investigate.'
'Why doesn't it make the noise?' Sheldon didn't expect everything to be like the show but he had hoped the TARDIS takeoff and landing sound would be real.
'You mean that grinding noise? That's like spaceship engines flying by, it's for TV drama.' Penny pulled up a menu tree and selected a choice. The grinding sound of the Doctor's TARDIS filled the room and Sheldon smiled like a kid on Christmas morning. Penny thought he looked charming and her TARDIS agreed.
Penny opened the TARDIS door after they landed and stepped outside with Sheldon.
'Penny, this is my office.' Sheldon recognized everything except for the new wall size filing cabinet. Penny's TARDIS had a working chameleon circuit, evidently.
'Don't tell me you want it to look like a police box. That's the Doctor's thing. We're in your office because I don't want to land in the middle of the folks operating this stuff when we don't know what we're dealing with, yet.'
'The Doctor is real?' Sheldon had been focused on Penny's hair and the smell of green apples and the way she sipped her tea at the time. That was a surprise to him on reflection.
'Yeah, that's who Verity made the bet with. It's why she was so dead set on Hartnel even though the role was completely against type to what he had usually done. Seriously, they could be twin brothers.' Penny opened the door of Sheldon's office and checked the hallway outside. There was no one around.
Sheldon told Penny Kripke's lab was downstairs on the next floor. They took the stairs down and found the lab with the lights on inside. Penny took out her sonic screwdriver and checked for time displacement equipment. She got a green light. 'This be the place, Sheldon.'+++
Penny and Shelden walked into Kripke's lab and saw a very impressive array of computers and display screens presenting a bewildering running tally of arcane data. 'Your friend Wolowitz wasn't kidding about the useless junk.' Penny looked closer at several of the displays. 'This stuff is all a sham.'
Sheldon walked over to a monitor and looked at the numbers and mathematical symbols coming up. 'Even Kripke couldn't be this incompetent. The proverbial room of monkeys couldn't produce something this nonsensical.'
Penny came over to look at the monitor Sheldon was following. 'Yeah, someone is using him like a puppet. I'll bet he doesn't even know what any of this stuff is or that it is a load of crap. He probably doesn't even really know what he is doing.'
Sheldon looked around the room. 'That's the case with Kripke most of the time, but even this nonsense would be atypical for him.'
'Is that tho, Shewldon? Wet's see your wab of Bwilliance.' Kripke strolled up to Penny. 'However, I would wove to show you awound 'my' wab, Woxanne.'
'What is this slimier than a Rutan thing, Sheldon?' Penny raised her leg a bit and got out her sonic.
'That's a Kripke. Not as dangerous as a Rutan but its tentacles are much more grabby.' Sheldon came closer to Kripke and Penny.
'What is a Wutan? One of your silwy TV show chawacters, Shewldon?'
Kripke tried to corner Penny at a desk. She pointed her sonic and zapped the slime. Kripke's eyes rolled back and his body jerked and flapped like a fish on a hook for several seconds. Penny shut off her sonic screwdriver and Kripke hit the floor like a bag of wet oatmeal.
'What did you do to him, Penny?'
'He's just knocked out for a few hours. I doubt he knows anything we want to know and besides, he's slimy.' Penny put her sonic in her hip pocket to have it closer to hand.
'We should get him to his desk. No one will notice any difference in the quality of his work and they won't want to break the silence when they see him out like a light there, Penny.'
They got Kripke to his desk and set him up to look like he fell asleep on his work in case anyone came in.
They looked around a minute more and Penny found a nondescript panel. She slid it aside and found a second room with more useful equipment inside. 'This is better. It looks like its coordinating between Raj's telescopes and the displacement equipment.'
They saw a door opposite of the one they came in and Penny grabbed Sheldon before he could touch the door handle. 'Easy, honey, my guess is the real deal is behind that door and whoever it is on the other side probably doesn't want casual visitors.'
'This isn't a TV show, Penny.' Sheldon started to reach for the handle until he saw Penny step back and cross her arms and raise her left eyebrow with a smirk. He paused and they looked each other in the eye. 'I'm about to learn something the hard way if I touch that, are I'
'I'd rather you didn't, Moonpie.'
Sheldon stepped aside and let Penny check the door with her sonic. 'Only my Meemaw calls me Moonpie, Penny.'
'Harmless, but you need Gallifreyan DNA to open it from this side. This is becoming less surprising by the second. Penny had a good idea of the Time Lord inside. One who had a particular love of having obedient puppets running around.
She opened the door and they walked into the low lit room beyond. A central command desk had a computer station, communications station, and transmat system controls. The walls had screens displaying the time vortex and the scanner's current search and displacement frequencies. Next to the sidewall adjusting a mental interface to the laser telemetry equipment outside was a bearded figure dressed in black.
Sheldon got his hackles up. 'Wheaton!'+++
Penny and the Master both looked at Sheldon and both asked, 'Who?'
'I can't believe one of the greatest hack actors in the universe is behind this.' Sheldon bristled at the sight of his nemesis.
'Oh, that's because that isn't a human actor, Sheldon, he's a Time Lord known as the Master.' Penny guessed Sheldon wasn't considering the outward similarities of humans and Gallifreyans.
'Only a master of bad acting.' Sheldon scoffed only then realizing he wasn't really looking at the actor he loathed so much.
'Well, you're not wrong there.' Penny rolled her eyes at the memory of the Master's thespian skills. He gave ham embarrassment.
'Penny, my dear, it has been far too long.' The Master strolled up to Penny lasciviously. 'Have you taken to keeping pets, now, like the Doctor?'
Penny pushed him off and huffed. 'No, I gave that up when I dumped my pet weasel.'
'Cheap insults? 'Ever the petty Penny.' The Master laughed and stepped back to the command desk.
'Penny, did you date the Master?' Sheldon couldn't believe he was meeting the arch enemy of the Doctor.
'Everyone has a few mistakes in their past, Sheldon. One of mine was that weasel at the Academy.' Penny rolled her eyes at her young naiveté back then. That was part of why she dropped out and stole her TARDIS.
'And it is for the sake of that time that I have not obliterated you and your simian sidekick, my dear.' He pressed a button and the air around Penny and Sheldon shimmered. 'The forcefield is harmless but impenetrable. You may go back the way you came, dear, and leave me to better things.'
'What is it this time, run out of cheap black suits?' Sheldon assumed the show made the Master's costume color correct to the mold.
Penny smiled at Sheldon's spot on assumption. She saw the tick. Sheldon's sarcasm had struck a nerve but the Master had always assumed he was a trend setting sartorial mavin. She couldn't help the giggle-snort at the truth of the quip. Penny's laugh moved the Master to reassert his authority in the room.
'Boy, you have no idea what this equipment represents. This time displacement scanner can reach across the vortex of time and pull out and reshape or obliterate anything- matter, energy, time itself!' The Master preened before Sheldon and Penny with the power under his command.
'Yeah, and collapse the space-time in the area like a cheap Jenga Puzzle, except, of course, for your sorry ass, but what for, petty theft?' Penny wanted to keep the Master on a roll. He always loved showing off how brilliantly diabolical he was.
The Master sighed and looked fondly at Penny. 'You once had so much more imagination, my sweet Penny. This is but a prototype that will let me create my own Hand of Omega. Once I have that, I will bring down the mighty High Council of the Time Lords and rule all of space and time.'
Sheldon huffed sarcastically. 'McCoy's Doctor really wasn't kidding about the infinite capacity for pretension among you people, was he, Penny?'
'Spot on.' Penny scoffed. The Master might be able to do it or he might have bit off far more than he could chew in his hubris. It was always 50/50 with him and best not to take chances since he was nuttier than a fruitcake. The forcefield was the problem.
'You keep trying these stunts, doesn't losing ever get boring?' Penny wanted to see if he could be drawn further out.
'No more so than your transparent attempts to irritate me, dear, but those days are at an end. Good bye, Penny.' The Master laughed and turned back to the time scanner's controls and continued with his plans.
Penny huffed in frustration. 'Come on, Sheldon.' She walked back up the way they came with Sheldon coming up behind in her wake.'+++
'Penny, what you were talking about back there sounds like Earth will eventually get turned into a black hole.'
'Yup, Earth, the Solar System, depends on what he's shooting for.' Penny was busy running through their options.
'What do we do about that, Penny?'
'Get in there, of course. The weasel's TARDIS has to be the nexus controlling the whole thing and his escape hatch if the whole thing goes south on him which wouldn't be the first time. If we can get in and disrupt the connection, I can send his ship back to Gallifrey and use my TARDIS to take over the scanner and shut the thing down permanently.' Penny and Sheldon paused in the hall outside Kripke's lab.
'How do we get past his forcefield, I assume it can keep out a TARDIS, I'd certainly prevent that if I were in there.' Sheldon hoped he was wrong.
'Yup, scanned for that, and the time scanner would repel anything less than a ship on a timeram from getting through when it's operating. No need to get that desperate, yet.'
'How does the field handle kinetic force like a bomb?' Sheldon had an idea on the explosive end.
'Not nearly as well and doorways are always a weak point no matter how they're built. Got one, Sheldon?'
'Leonard's lab might help.'+++
Penny read through the ingredients and walked into Leonard's lab with a satchel of chemicals from her TARDIS. 'I love this recipe, Sheldon, and these little spices will give it some an extra punch. I gotta give this recipe to Ace, she'll squee over this. This should overload any surge compressors holding that doorway.'
Sheldon closed up the keg and Penny got some extra duct tape. Together, they rolled the bomb back towards Kripke's lab. They passed by Kripke at the desk and heard him moan. Penny gave him an extra sonic zap so he wouldn't get under foot. They rolled the bomb down to the scanner room door where Penny pulled out a different sonic screwdriver.
Sheldon noticed the different model. 'Where's your old screwdriver, Penny?'
'In my pocket. The weasel will have this thing booby trapped, now. I lifted his when he tried to get handsy. This thing will recognize his sonic and be less likely to activate something bad.' The door opened and Penny removed the internal mechanism of the sonic and taped it to the bomb. 'He'll have this sonic booby trapped, too, watch. It will make a great detonator.'
They rolled the bomb into the entrance where they had been talking to the Master. He didn't notice them; he was so focused on the displays in front of him.
Penny shook her head. 'Typical. Hey, weasel, wanna go to a rodeo?' She waved the housing of the Master's sonic in front of him and slammed shut the door and activated the forcefield lock.
The building shook impressively with the force of the bomb. Penny waved the empty case of the Master's sonic. 'He blew up his sonic without paying attention to the bomb in the room, heh.' Penny tossed away the empty case.
'Penny, that exothermic reaction has to go somewhere.' Sheldon was curious where.
'His TARDIS will be busy dealing with that so we can waltz in while it is.' Penny opened the door and the remaining smoke and heat was still impressive. The forcefield was offline. Sheldon had never seen Wheaton's face with such stunned disbelief and even though this wasn't really his nemesis the sight was still satisfying.
'Rasilon's Beard, and they call me the crazy one. Young man, if you had any sense, you would run for your life for the next hundred years from that archangel of anarchy. You could have disrupted the time scanner and imploded the system, Penny!'
'Oh, boo hoo, we get dumped into the vortex and the planet is saved. You'd be no great loss to reality, weasel.' Penny was quite ready to risk the Master's life, and her own, but she felt guilty she didn't mention the risk to Sheldon. 'Sorry, I didn't mention that part.'
'That's alright; I expected that bomb to kill us. It's not the first time I've survived Leonard's concoction. That's why our elevator doesn't work.' Sheldon was wondering when he started being so sanguine about this. Penny was a dangerous influence.
The Master hit a switch on the control desk and the displays all went dull grey. 'The system is now in a time lock with my TARDIS and only I can open it. Penny, we are now at a stalemate, dear. Let's have a civilized solution to this. Join me, again, and rule the universe at my side. I'll even let you keep the monkey.' The Master awaited Penny's response with a wicked grin.
'I thought the comic book villain scene chewing on the show was an exaggeration?' Sheldon missed Roger Delgado, he was definitive.
'Nope, it's all him.' Penny looked at the mental interface on the wall. 'Mindbending, you up for it, once was?'
Sheldon remembered the Time Lord mental wrestling device from 'The Brain of Morbius' the minds are locked into a battle for supremacy by the machine until one defeats the other.
'Penny, you can't do that. Only you can shut this stuff down, you're too important, now.'
'Yeah, I know, Moonpie, but the weasel will have more booby traps in here to use than we can count if we try anything else.'
'Yes, heed your mistress, pet.' The Master went over to the interface and activated his half of the mindbending array. Once the other half was activated only the defeat of one by the other could release the players.
'Just get back to my TARDIS, Sheldon, this won't take long.'
Sheldon pulled Penny back from the machine. 'We don't have to beat him, I just have to hold him long enough for you to get the job done, Penny.' Sheldon kissed Penny before she could retort and surprised her senseless for a second. 'And only Meemaw calls me Moonpie.' Sheldon stepped up to the other half of the mindbender and activated it. The contest had begun.
'Dammit, Sheldon!' Penny wanted to punch him but it was too late. Sheldon would have to handle the Master on his own.+++
Penny went to the command desk and pulled out an old posie ring made of hair. She had made it of the Master's hair when they were at the Academy long ago. 'You never appreciated sentiment, weasel.' She put it on the DNA scanner and it recognized the Master's DNA in the hair and unlocked the controls from the time lock. She uncoupled the Master's Tardis from the system and sent his ship back to Gallifrey on the planet's time vortex homing beacon. The scanner screens reactivated and the scanner began reaching out across time and space. The displacement scanner's board controls on the desk shut down and went offline. 'Crap, it needs to be done from the TARDIS, and the actual scanner's probably sitting in the vortex so when this transmission station falls in the singularity the weasel and his TARDIS could sail off with the set up for their next big thing, jerk.'
Penny picked up the posie ring and put it back in her pocket and glanced at Sheldon still locked in battle with the Master. She said a silent prayer for her friend and ran for both of their lives back to her TARDIS before the displacement scanner turned the planet into a singularity.+++
Sheldon could feel the Master's mind and it was incredible. It was admirable in it logical, orderly efficiency. It was brilliant and powerful and Sheldon could feel he was losing this fight. The Master did, too, and he was laughing. Sheldon could see it in his mind. The Master's face, Wheaton's face was laughing at him. That hack's face beating his mind was a cosmic joke. A joke, Penny was onto something and math jokes beat anything. Sheldon countered with the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation spoof. He felt the Master's mind falter trying to make it fall in with his regimented logic. Sheldon sent in the Abbot and Costello math jokes next and he felt the Master's mind pulling back against the silly illogic. Sheldon began dumping every inane pop culture silliness his eidetic memory had encountered, 'I Love Lucy, Threes Company, Benny Hill, Sponge Bob. The Master's mind could make no sense of any of it. It didn't fit with his orderly mind. Sheldon took off the gloves and hit him with reality TV. The Master wasn't Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Rick and Morty finished him off. The mindbending array released Sheldon and the Master. The Master was holding his head and howling in agony and then he collapsed unconscious.
Sheldon walked over to the Master's moaning body. 'That's what you get for trying to match wits with someone who would have to lose 40 IQ points just to be a genius.'
Sheldon got some cable wire from Kripke's lab and hogtied the Master in case he woke up. Sheldon looked around the scanner room. The machinery was doing something but it was beyond him to know if it was good or bad. He hoped Penny did. He surmised she must have gone back to her TARDIS to work from there. He waited by the command desk and kept an eye on the Master.+++
Penny took off into the vortex and homed in on the displacement scanner's open communications relay. It still needed a TARDIS to tell it what to do. The TARDIS scanners detected the time scanner's control relay and hooked up with the displacement machine's operating system. Penny shut it down and set up a time loop and coupled it to the field detection for the Scanner's frequency so if it was restarted her TARDIS would retain its operational control and its effects would be contained around the machine and unable to affect the outside world. She then dialed in a quick emergency landing. The machine's local effects made navigation back to Earth a bit erratic since the space-time around earth was still settling down.
She did a scan of the environment and saw her TARDIS had landed in Sheldon's building. Penny patted the central core and giggled. 'Oh, that's so sweet, you like him, too? You and me both.' Penny hit the internal chameleon circuit and the control room changed into a common single bedroom apartment. She opened the door but didn't see anyone. She went back inside to call Sheldon and see if he was alright when she heard his voice outside in the hall. Penny was relieved to see him there with Leonard and went out in the hall and planted a welcome home kiss on her brave new friend.
'Gmmnha… what are you doing?' Sheldon pried Penny's hands off his neck. He unlocked his front door and ran to the bathroom for mouthwash.
Penny watched Sheldon run down the hall and mentally kicked herself. "Oh, crap; I didn't check the time reference." Penny thought ruefully.
'Oops. Hey, Leonard, what's the date today?'
'Dec 12, how do you know my name and who are you?'
Penny figured this wasn't the worst thing to happen, today, relatively speaking. 'Oh, that's awkward. I really shouldn't. You'll find out soon enough.' She thought for a few seconds about how to unravel this little paradox and realized she smelled some tasty curry and since she hadn't eaten all day, well, what's one more paradox at this point? 'Hey, is that Indian food? Great, I'm starved.' She grabbed the bag and went back into her TARDIS.
Penny put the bag down and reset the control room. She went to the communications console. 'Come on, Sheldon, be out there.'
Sheldon had finished hogtying the Master and wondered what to do next when he heard Penny on the Time Scanner's communications system.
He ran over to the central command station to get near the microphone. 'Yes, Penny, I'm here, can you hear me?'
'Yes, Sheldon, things alright on your end?' Penny was relieved; the Master was a murderous lunatic.
'Yes, fine, the Scanner has shut down and the Master is unconscious and hogtied. He wasn't up to matching wits with a genius. I told you he was just a master of bad acting.' Sheldon still felt the headache from the Mindbending apparatus but it probably wouldn't be as bad as the Master's.
'Impressive.' Penny was surprised a human could match minds with a Time Lord but Sheldon was one of a kind. 'Be careful if he starts waking up. Just bash him in the head with something really hard. Gallifreyans have hard heads, he'll be alright. Worst that would happen is he regenerates, anyway.'
'Regenerates, isn't that dangerous?' There were so many things from the show that were real and others that were TV that Sheldon didn't want to take any chances.
'Nope, the body only morphs. The light show is just TV; we're not like The Highlander. You need to open the communications array, it's on the command console, top right. There are three switches, throw the middle one.'
Sheldon found the switch and threw it. 'Now, what?'
'We call in the Shadow Proclamation for cleanup. Type in Alpha- 911*IL119- Omega- Clean up for rogue temporal equipment and containment for one Time Lord/Master and hit send, got that?'
'Yes, anything else, Penny?' Sheldon was relieved that this sounded easy, at least.
'Then, we have one small paradox to clean up before we have a localized causality collapse.'
Sheldon looked horrified at the speaker. 'What?'
'Don't worry, just pick up some Indian food, listen…'+++
Sheldon watched himself picking up the Indian food and inspect the contents. This was so cool. Unspeakably dangerous if he ran into himself but Penny seemed confident and this had happened before, or it should have to happen so it did. English simply had insufficient tense structures to discuss actual time travel. He needed to talk to Penny about whether Gallifreyan had linguistic structures for this sort of thing?
When Leonard and Sheldon left with the food Sheldon got his matching bag that he'd arranged before his past self arrived. He went out to the waiting cab that he had come in and gave the driver the directions to Los Robles.
'That must be some girl you're meeting to go through all this trouble, man.' The driver was curious what she must be like. It wasn't every day you got a hundred dollar tip upfront.
'She is. I haven't been able to stop thinking of her since the day we met.' Sheldon thought about what would happen next. He didn't want to think about Penny just leaving after this adventure.
'That's wonderful, reminds me of how I felt when I first met my wife. Love makes you do crazy things.'
Sheldon was struck by the word love. He hadn't thought about Penny that way but he had to ask why he kept following her through all this. Why would he try to get in between a battle of real Time Lords to keep Penny safe? 'I guess so.'
The cab arrived at Los Robles and Sheldon paid the fare and ran on into the building. When he got to the fourth floor he found Leonard fuming outside 4B. He handed Leonard the bag of Indian takeout he was carrying. 'Hey, Leonard, it's really for the best if you don't ask.' He got out the TARDIS key Penny had given him and went on in leaving Leonard to that old conversation.
'Hi, Penny, that conversation with Leonard I'm having outside, makes a lot more sense, now.' He sat down at the table where Penny had the takeout set up and opened a bottle of water on the table.
'Yup, that's time travel for you.' Penny could imagine what poor Leonard must be going through and chuckled. She sensed her TARDIS's disapproval of the schadenfreude and rolled her eyes. 'This isn't bad but I know a much better place on Krishna IV. Indhur makes the best Vindaloo. We should go there.'
'Where is Krishna IV?' Sheldon still had a hard time keeping up with Penny's flitting sense of reality.
'It's an Indian colony out past the Crab Nebula in the 43rd century. Yeah, a lot better than this stuff.' Penny got up and headed to the central console and started punching in a course.
'What? We're just going? Just like that?' Penny stopped programming the navigation and looked at Sheldon.
'Don't you want to go? I thought we were having fun?' Penny wasn't too surprised Sheldon might want to stay. She finished up the programming and paused in thought. The TV show always had companions up and going out of the blue but this was really disappearing and maybe never coming back. They both came close to dying, today, so she couldn't blame Sheldon for wanting to stay.
'You call that fun?' Sheldon stopped when he caught Penny's disappointed frown that was obvious even to him. 'Penny, this is all so new to me.' Sheldon waved his hand around the control room. 'And, you are a real, honest to Gallifrey Time Lady, and I can't think of you leaving for good but your idea of fun is incomprehensible.'
Penny nodded and smiled in understanding. She typed in a short sequence on the navigation board and activated the central core. The TARDIS hummed for a few seconds and stopped. She hit the door control and the TARDIS door opened to reveal the door of 4A across the hall. 'The day we left, about two hours after I told your friends we were coming over here to have sex.' Penny wiggled her eyebrows and smirked. She walked around the console and gave Sheldon a hug. 'She'll take off after you go. So long, Moonpie.'
Sheldon watched Penny stroll away down the TARDIS corridor until she turned a corner at the end of the hall. He looked over at the table with the forgotten take out. His Flash and Green Lantern comics were there. He walked over to the table and picked them up.+++
Penny headed down to the pool. A swim and a nap would feel good right about now. And some music, Warren Zevon's 'The Wind' felt about right.
She put on the album and changed into a white swimsuit and dove into the pool. The swim felt good and she paused in mid stroke when she felt the takeoff. She smiled and listened to the album while she continued swimming. Zevon made anything bad feel a lot less bad.
Penny finished another lap and got out to lie down and have a glass of Chardonnay after all that adventure. She poured her wine and got some biscuits and lay down by the pool for a rest. She sipped her Chardonnay and smiled thinking about the quirky physicist. Penny put down her drink and closed her eyes to catch a nap while the Warren Zevon album played.
There's a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sometimes when you're doing simple things
around the house
Maybe you'll think of me and smile
You know I'm tied to you like the buttons on
your blouse
Keep me in your heart for awhile
She would always keep him in her hearts.
'I wouldn't keep you anywhere else.' Sheldon lay down on the poolside couch next to Penny to listen to one of the few modern musicians he enjoyed. 'And it's no fun eating alone.'
'No, it's not.' Penny sighed in relief and picked up her wine again for another sip.
'And, only my Meemaw calls me Moonpie.'