"Doctor?" asked a young woman, surprised to see the figure lying, stretched out on a deck chair in the sun, wearing a hunting jacket, brown boots, an almost ridiculously long scarf, and with a large felt fedora pulled down over their face as though to keep the sun out of their eyes while they rested.
"No," answered a voice from beneath the hat. "If you're addressing me, then no. Not a doctor." A hand rose and lifted the hat from the person's face, revealing a somewhat prominent nose – though not as prominent as either of the noses that Sarah Jane remembered the Doctor having – a strong jawline, and a pair of eyes with dreamy eyelashes, which opened slowly to reveal even dreamier blue-grey eyes which cut somehow coldly across to Sarah, displaying their boredom with life and yet gentle enquiry as to why they had been addressed as a doctor.
"I'm sorry," Sarah said hastily. "You looked like my friend the Doctor."
"I have that sort of face," the stranger admitted. "People say I look like such-and-such that they know, or knew, or 'have we met before'. I get it a lot. So you know a doctor, and I reminded you of them, but we haven't introduced ourselves yet."
Sarah opened her mouth to oblige the suggested action when the stranger cut her off.
"Then again, I've had many very interesting conversations with people and I didn't know their names before or indeed after we had spoken," the stranger said. "When one is as bad with names as me," they chuckled then, almost scoffing, "what is the point in giving them?"
Sarah closed her mouth and frowned at that. "I'm Sarah Jane," she said. "Sarah Jane Smith."
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Sarah Jane Smith," the stranger said. "Please, draw up a deck-chair. The sun isn't out, but you will find that it is quite warm enough to enjoy, especially for lazily sorting through thoughts." The stranger waved their hand lazily at a space beside them that, a moment ago, Sarah was sure there hadn't been a deckchair, but there was now, and it was almost as though the chair had been there the whole time.
"Is that what you were doing?" Sarah asked, sitting tentatively in the deckchair, watching as those sharp, dreamy, cold, bored blue-grey eyes closed again.
"Yes, no, sort of," the stranger answered, their tone vague and definite at the same time, and not at all frustrated that they had just given answers which didn't line up with each other. "I suspect that is what I was doing, but I can't remember what was going through my mind then now. It is possible that I had nothing going on in my mind at all."
Sarah was beginning to wonder about this person. They hadn't introduced themselves, they dressed rather a lot like the Doctor, and the stuff they were talking about didn't make sense to her, but in a completely different way than when the Doctor was talking about technology.
"You find my introspection disturbing, perhaps," the stranger said, and Sarah Jane couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement.
"Confusing," Sarah decided to answer. "I don't understand it."
"Ah," the stranger says, as though they have heard this answer before, many time. "Have you ever, Miss Smith, just stared out at the world for a while, letting your thoughts wander around in your head as they pleased, and then, when someone comes up beside you and asks you what you're thinking, you can't remember? Those times when you're not really thinking about anything at all, but everything at once, but if you try and do it on purpose you just give yourself a headache?" the stranger asked, as though by way of explanation.
"Sounds to me like hypnotism," Sarah ventured.
The stranger chuckled. "I suppose, in some way, it is. Just a little bit. Self hypnotism though. Please, lie back and just stare up at the tree above you, pick a cluster of leaves and then don't directly focus on them," the stranger said, raising their arm to point at a branch above them, though they didn't open their own eyes. "Daydreaming, I believe the teachers in school would have called it," they added.
"Oh, daydreaming," Sarah said with relief. She understood that concept.
"Except that it isn't really daydreaming," the stranger continued. "Daydreaming is different, but the vacant gaze on your face will be much the same."
Sarah frowned again, but lay back in the deckchair like this stranger had told her to and stared up at the leaves swaying overhead.
"There's one guaranteed way to know you've got it: when someone asks you what you're thinking, and your completely honest answer is 'nothing' or 'I don't remember'," the stranger said quietly, contently.
"Excuse me Professor," a new voice, young and definitely both female and from the lower classes of London area by the pitch and accent, "but I was wondering if I could talk to y- oh. Sorry, I didn't know you had company."
"It's quite alright," the stranger, now identified to Sarah as a professor, answered, not even opening their eyes to look at the girl. "I was just showing my new acquaintance here how to think of nothing."
Sarah sat up and looked over at the girl, rather than continuing to stare vacantly at the leaves above her.
The girl smiled, probably to herself. "My favourite lesson," she said. "Hello miss," she added, bobbing her head in a polite greeting to Sarah.
"Sarah Jane Smith, nice to meet you."
"Ace, likewise. Professor?"
"By all means, talk my ear off. Draw up a deckchair and allow me to be at your disposal," the professor answered, waving their hand again and Sarah was certain this time that the deckchair she was seeing hadn't been there a moment ago.
"Professor, I hate school," Ace stated as she sat down heavily on the chair.
"Most teenagers do," the professor answered with a chuckle. "I remember despising it myself."
"But you're a-!"
The professor chuckled. "Yes," they conceded, amused. "Yes. My school only prepared me for the educational system. I felt it was the only thing that I could do. So you hate school."
"I'm going to blow up the arts building," Ace stated.
"Wasteful," the professor stated. Not a frown or a shake of the head. "The arts building is where people can be creative."
"Not at my school," Ace protested with a pout, crossing her arms.
"And when you blow up the arts building," the professor said easily, "what then? You will be expelled – a shame for such a bright young person – and the school will be forced to dedicate almost all of its budget to fixing up the art building, rather than getting better text books or some such, thereby making your school even worse for all the students still there. Not to mention, if anybody were to get hurt, you or the school would be held responsible."
Ace frowned. "I hadn't thought about any of that," she admitted.
"And now?" the professor asked, finally cracking an eye open to look at Ace.
"I guess I'd better not," Ace admitted, somewhat defeated. "I still hate school professor."
"We all do," the professor answered. "But I suggest that you make the teachers hate you for being brilliant and not conforming to their ideas of what brilliant people should be like. Come out with top grades and your spectacular jacket. Then, with your excellent grades, you can get out and do whatever you want."
"Like making explosives?" Ace said with a grin.
The professor chuckled. "I think you're already doing that, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"Then I suggest blowing up Stone Henge," the professor said lightly. "There's a whole lot of nothing around there, do some landscaping."
Ace grinned. "Really?" she asked, excited.
"Why not? It's just a few lumps of rock that people have ascribed meaning to. They're not actually important to anybody any more."
"What!" Sarah nearly shrieked. Her eyes had been getting wider and wider in shock as the conversation continued. "You're advising someone to destroy a heritage listed site?"
"The past isn't important if it doesn't shape our present," the professor stated, eyes closed once more. "And the real purpose of Stone Henge has been long forgotten. Therefore, they're just lumps of rock that look impressive."
Ace was grinning.
Sarah blinked a few times. "As a journalist," she began, and she saw Ace's grin drop suddenly. "I want the story," she finished.
Ace's grin returned, and a small smile even appeared on the unknown professor's face.
"I suppose I'll be the one driving you, will I?" the professor asked almost absently.
"Oh would you Professor?" Ace asked eagerly. "I don't mind catching the train, it's a long way after all, but I'd really appreciate it."
"And your mother, whom you also dislike greatly, would feel better about the safety of her little girl if she were in the company of 'the famous professor' that you're always going on about to her," the professor added, once more cracking an eyelid to look at the girl.
Ace's face did a series of nervous, embarrassed and unhappy twitches while her head bobbed ever-so-very-slightly in agreement to this statement.
The professor sighed, as though put upon, but then stood from their deckchair, rubbed, and then opened their eyes. "Well, no time like the present. Tomorrow is Saturday and as you say, it's a long drive to Stone Henge. Go tell your mother, pack what you need for a weekender."
Ace lunged up, wrapping her arms around the professor's neck. "Thank you Professor!" she yelped, then ran off.
"Will you be joining us also Miss... ah. Bad with names. No, don't bother telling me again, I'll not remember it. Starts with an S though. Never mind. Will you be joining us on our trip to Stone Henge, or will you make your own way there?"
Sarah stared at this professor for a moment, mouth hanging open. She now felt very bad for mistaking this person for the Doctor. The professor was a woman. Long blonde hair tied in a pony tail that looked somewhat rumpled from being sandwiched between the chair and the professor's back hung down to just below their shoulder blades, and there was the way things draped over the body that indicated breasts and hips... the clothes had hidden these features rather well when the professor had been lying in her deckchair.
"Dawning realisation," the professor stated, dry amusement evident in her voice. "You thought I was male."
Sarah closed her mouth and swallowed. The professor had a lower female voice, which could be mistaken for a man's, but now that Sarah was more aware, she wondered how she had gotten it wrong. So much for observant journalist.
"It's alright. As I said, I suffer from being mistaken for people all the time. Men and women. Doesn't bother me. So, are you coming with, or will you find your own way there?"
Sarah shook her head, forcibly bringing herself out of her thoughts. "Come with, if I can. If I can interview you and Ace on the way up, then that will make things easier," Sarah answered.
The professor nodded. "Of course."
~oOo~
"You can't be doing this you know," a calm, quiet, deep voice said.
"Oh?" the one Ace had called 'professor' answered. "Why not?"
"Because Stone Henge is supposed to be still standing in another hundred years time," the voice growled back angrily.
"Will there be drastic historical ramifications if it's not?"
"There could be."
"Definitive yes or no answers only, and it's getting blown up either way. You alter history so that it is safe, dear boy. I will alter the present for the benefit of the people living in it."
A tall man with curly brown hair and a scarf even longer than the professor's stepped out of the shadows and sighed deeply.
"Someone mistook me for you today," the professor said. "Young-ish woman, journalist, name started with an S."
"Sarah Jane Smith," the Doctor said, a fond smile on his face.
"That's the one. Bright spark she seemed. She's coming."
The small smile on the Doctor's face disappeared. "She'll find out."
The professor shook her head. "No she won't, because I don't travel by TARDIS or vintage motors, lovely as they are, and I have no intention of either dying or telling her. Now if you will excuse me, big fella, I'm off to destroy an old Druidical sight that got used by aliens to invade Earth."
The Doctor sighed and nodded reluctantly.
"Bye now!" the professor called and kept walking, waving over her shoulder.
"Take care..."
~oOo~
The woman dubbed in Sarah Jane's mind as 'the Professor', thanks to Ace finally giving some semblance of name to go with the woman's face, was leaning against a very nice car, arms folded and large felt fedora pulled down over her face – just like when Sarah had first seen her on the deckchairs – which had vanished once they weren't being used, oddly enough. Sarah was beginning to suspect her of being some kind of alien, but there was something about the woman that at the same time dissuaded her of that idea. It was probably just the suspicious part of her mind that had one too many conversations with the Doctor and the Brigadier at UNIT.
"Ah, dear lady, no I'm not being patronising, I'm female, and I mean it what's more," the Professor called when, lifting her hat, she saw Sarah approaching. "And my bright-spark as well. Excellent timing," she added, looking over Sarah's shoulder and spotting Ace. "Everybody in and buckle up, safety and all."
Ace and Sarah nodded and got into the back seats. There was a large box sitting on the front passenger seat, and of course the Professor was driving them.
"I believe you said you wanted to conduct an interview along the way?" the Professor said leadingly as she pulled the car away from the curb.
Sarah nodded and took a pen and note pad out of a pocket on her bag.
It started out with who Ace was – real name, date of birth, address and the school she went to – then why Ace was blowing up Stone Henge – because she had been talked out of blowing up her school – and why Ace had wanted to blow up her school. That last one got into a long piece about the state of the educational system, the teachers, the schools, everything.
"You've got two articles in one," the Professor observed. "Blowing up Stone Henge and the problem with schools right now."
Sarah smiled. "It's certainly a big statement," she admitted, then turned her attention to the Professor. "So, what about you? History, what subjects you teach at which schools, stuff like that," Sarah asked.
The Professor laughed genially while keeping her eyes on the road ahead.
"She's not actually a Professor," Ace supplied. "Not at any school I know anyway, but she helps us kids out when we need it."
"Like blowing up historical monuments?" Sarah asked, quizzically.
"Like not blowing up their schools," the Professor corrected. "The sorts of lessons I give the kids are like the one you had today – how not to think, how to let the mind wander – and the one you saw me give the bright-spark here," the Professor said.
"Consequences of actions," Ace filled in seriously. "Professor teaches us how to think things through, way better than the schools do. They just tell us theory and expect us to remember it. Professor's shown us how, where and why learning things can be useful," Ace added.
"You said 'us', Ace?" Sarah asked.
Ace nodded. "All over the neighbourhood. We all know the Professor gives good advice. Helps out with homework too sometimes, explains things until they make sense."
Sarah chuckled. "Wish I'd had someone like that when I was travelling with the Doctor. He'd explain things, but in the most technical jargon, so you never really knew what he was saying."
"Like?" the Professor and Ace asked at the same time.
Sarah paused. How had her interview turned on her like this? Oh well. "I remember he once said something about 'the correct resonance allows for destabilisation if you can reach the correct wave-length,' or something like that."
"Hit something," the Professor said.
Sarah blinked, then tapped her pen against the window of the car.
"If you can maintain the sound wave – or is that too technical?" the Professor cut herself off.
"Sound moves through the air in waves," Ace said. "That's in the standard science text book. I learned more from reading the text book than listening to the teachers," she added with a look at Sarah. "But I'd still bet that text book was a decade out of date."
Sarah nodded. "I get that bit."
"Okay. So if you can maintain the sound wave for long enough, then something will break. Depending on the frequency of the sound wave – that's pitch, if you've got a higher or lower sound – some things will break rather than others. Glass needs a higher frequency than stone, for example."
"You can break stone with sound waves?" Sarah asked, shocked.
"And bones, and cause all sorts of havoc with water, not to mention brain tissue – sensitive stuff is brain tissue," the Professor answered.
"How do you know that Professor?" Ace asked eagerly, an eager grin on her face.
"Medical texts aren't just for med-students," the Professor scolded lightly. "What's more is that they're available to anybody in libraries around the country."
"Cool," Ace said, sitting back in her seat.
"So you teach students how to think about things Professor?" Sarah asked.
"I show anybody willing to look that everything has more than one way of being done," the Professor answered. "I imbue the desire to learn and broaden horizons. I refuse to discount anything just because someone says it isn't 'rational' to believe in it."
"Like God, and magic," Ace said with a grin.
"Exactly," the Professor said happily. "I'm a firm believer in both, as well as the remarkable capability of the human mind to rationalise and dismiss even the most irrational and impossible occurrences."
"Like aliens," Ace's grin seemed to grow even wider.
Sarah's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.
"I'd really like to meet one some day. Not the world-domination-type that are always showing up in the papers though," Ace continued.
"In the conspiracy section," Sarah cautioned.
Ace shook her head. "Nah, Professor said that people just call it the conspiracy section because they don't believe it, and it's probably completely true. Why would it be printed otherwise after all?"
"It's one thing to print a politician's lies – it is true that he or she said them after all – but to put complete fiction in a newspaper?" the Professor said with a chuckle. "Keeping an open mind opens up the whole world."
Sarah was still gaping like a fish out of water.
"You had questions for me that I dodged, but I can't remember what they were now," the Professor pointed out with good humour. "Need to learn better when someone's distracting you," she added with a chuckle.
Sarah blinked rapidly and looked back down at her notes. "Oh, right, yes, interview. What is your personal history Professor?"
"Born and raised in Australia – I doubt telling you city and state is going to matter that much in regards to your British readers, so I won't bother," the Professor answered. "I'm forty-seven years old, do your own math to find year of birth if you need it, and I moved to 'merry old England' when I was thirty. I was a school teacher, but found my calling to be elsewhere. Currently not employed because I rather enjoy living on my family's rather ridiculously large amount of stored wealth and travelling at my own leisure."
"Don't try getting a name out of the Professor," Ace advised when Sarah had finished writing all that down and had opened her mouth. "She's got one, must have, but she's said that since she can't remember anybody else's names and gets by just fine, she can get by without one. She's the Professor."
"Like the Doctor I used to travel with," Sarah said with a sigh.
"Yes, and no," the Professor answered. "I just have a weird name, and its easier for people to remember a name that they give me themselves, I've yet to actually introduce myself to anybody as 'the Professor'."
~oOo~
Sarah followed Ace with her pocket camera as Ace placed her 'bombs' around Stone Henge. Of course, normally, getting this close to the heritage listed site was impossible, or if it was possible, then it was swarming with people – either tourists or archaeologists. Somehow, the Professor had gotten them in though, and Sarah wasn't sure that she wanted to know how.
Ace, having planted the last of her home-made explosives, picked up her bag and ran back to where the Professor was waiting. Sarah took a quick photo before dashing after her.
"Ready for this?" Ace asked when Sarah had joined them, holding up what looked like a canister of hairspray.
Sarah stared but shrugged.
"It's your party," the Professor offered.
Ace grinned, pulled the top off the canister, then lobbed it as hard as she could back towards the standing stones. When it hit, it went off. The super-heat then caused all the other explosives to react as well. Sarah took pictures almost constantly.
"Quite the kaboom," the Professor observed with a smile. "Very nice. Your own recipe?"
"You bet Professor," Ace answered, a huge grin on her face.
"You could get a job working for the government, if they don't lock you up for this," Sarah commented absently. "Actually, I know some people who could really use someone like you," she said once the kaboom had died down, turning to Ace. "What do you think?"
"Professor?" Ace asked.
"It's your life. Investigate, ask questions, think on your own."
Ace nodded, then turned back to Sarah. "Who are they and where do I sign?" she asked. "If I get to make my own explosives, I'm in."
The Professor and Sarah both laughed, and the Professor ushered them all back into the car.
"You never said what the box was for Professor," Ace said as they drove away from Stone Henge.
"I live out of that box," the Professor answered. "All my clothes and stuff fits in there. I'll be dropping you back home, then I'm off to another town."
"You're leaving Professor?" Ace asked, shocked and saddened.
The Professor nodded. "Oh yes, never spend too long in one place, me."
Like the Doctor, Sarah thought, but didn't say.
~oOo~
It was all over the news the very next day: Stone Henge destroyed. The Professor laughed as she read the paper and swirled the water around in her glass like some men swirled their alcohol.
"Congratulations, you've disrupted a great deal of history," a voice growled at her. The same one that had warned her against destroying Stone Henge – or allowing it to be destroyed.
"Kept an eye on it did you?" she answered. "So is it better now?" she dared to ask, completely smug about it.
The Doctor sighed. "Yes," he admitted. "But you still shouldn't have done it."
She snorted in derision. "What is the point of knowing a future if you aren't going to do anything about it?" she demanded. "I'm not like you, I live in the now rather than going around the different times. I'm not breaking any of your time laws by doing what I'm doing."
"You are altering history!"
"No I'm not. I'm taking decisive action with the present, making history and shaping the future, just like every other human being."
"But you're -"
"Not entirely? Yes I know that. I maintain that I'm not breaking any time laws though."
The Doctor harrumphed.
"This girl is quite the journalist," the Professor observed after a few minutes of silence.
"Have you finished reading?"
She handed over the paper with a smirk.
A few more minutes of silence and the Doctor folded up the paper as well, handing it back.
"I don't suppose you'd care to travel with me?" he offered. "See other planets and such."
"Two nameless people wandering the multi-verse? No, I don't think so. Between your way of doing things, and my way of doing things, we'd drive each other mad and wreak a lot of havoc. I'll stay where I am thanks."
The Doctor nodded, stood and walked away.
The Professor chucked the paper into her car, climbed in behind the wheel and as she drove off heard the grinding sound of the Doctor's TARDIS leaving that time and space. Really, a witch and a timelord teaming up? The universe could well be destroyed by good intentions before the week was out.
~The End~