Fixed Point in Time
Chapter 2: The Golden Sombrero
that morning…
When she opened the door, Allison's first thought was that the air conditioner was dying. She could hear a grating whine, like someone was rubbing metal across piano wires.
"SARAH?" she called, intending to check whether the smart house's AI was aware of any problem. But a flicker of light drew her attention, and she saw –
"What in the world?" she said aloud. She couldn't think of anything else to say. She watched a blue, rectangular form appear out of nowhere and solidify next to the stairwell.
"Oh, hello, Dr. Blake," SARAH chose that moment to respond. "Shouldn't you be on your way to work? I calculate that you only have seventeen minutes until your shift…Oh, my! What is this?" The AI was genuinely surprised. "Dr. Blake, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"You mean the big blue box that just popped into existence in the living room? Um, yeah." Allison took a closer look at it. It had letters in English painted on the side. The left side of her brain immediately kicked into gear, trying to rationalize the object's appearance. "It's one of Fargo's expandable tents," she said with a relieved sigh. "Jack's been talking about taking Kevin on another camping trip. Something must have triggered the auto-deploy feature –"
"Dr. Blake, you don't understand," said SARAH. "My sensors can resolve events of duration almost down to the Planck time scale," she explained. "This object was not here, one instant, and then suddenly it was, fully formed."
Allison rubbed her eyes, then walked over to the object. SARAH had a point. The thing had not expanded; it had just appeared right there. Teleportation? she thought. Stranger things had happened in Eureka, both here and back in her original universe.
Just as she was thinking to grab her camcorder, which had been left on a table next to the couch and remembered at the halfway point of her commute to Global Dynamics, a door on the side of the blue box opened.
Allison caught herself against the end table. She turned toward the box, still in full-on fight or flight mode, when she got her second dose of adrenal shock for the day. A head poked out from behind the door. A woman's head, with long, reddish-blonde hair. A head that looked very familiar.
"…Tess?"
The head turned toward Allison. "Al," the woman said.
Allison was so disoriented by this latest turn, that she completely forgot to be self-conscious about the fact that she was currently living in the home that belonged to the new arrival's ex-lover. "How...what…did you just come out of…?" she tried to ask, but her thought was interrupted by as yet another occupant stepped out of the blue box.
He looked about thirty, with wavy brown hair parted in an outdated style. He was dressed in a gray tweed suit, with a bowtie that would have done Orville Redinbacker proud. He stopped, took in the scene of the living room, and was about to speak, when SARAH served Allison notice that the Greek god of surprises had pulled off the hat trick.
"Dr. Blake! Be careful! I don't know how it's even possible, but that man…he's not human!"
"Oh, hello!" the main said, looking up. "Who have we here? Who's a sexy, disembodied, computer generated voice?" he said cheerfully.
"SARAH, what do you mean?" said Allison at the same time.
"Oh, I uh…" SARAH was hesitant. Allison recognized the AI's "blushing" voice. "I mean, I am detecting two heartbeats, a redundant circulatory system, other examples of impossible biology..."
"Yes, well, of course you are, dear," said the man to the ceiling, "because I have them."
"Wait…What did he just say?" asked Allison.
"Hmmm?" asked the man. "Oh: 'because I have them.' Two heartbeats. Examples of impossible biology. You know, the kind of stuff we aliens have that you humans don't."
"What."
"Al," interjected Tess. "He's an alien! A real, live alien!" Some of Tess' innate wonder at the universe showed through; she was smiling excitedly as she walked over and took Allison by the hands and sat her down on the couch. Allison had not seen her friend smile like that in a long time.
Allison pulled her hands away from her friend. "Tess, who is this guy? And how did you get in my house?" She almost didn't see Tess wince at the words my house, and if she did, she ignored it.
"Ah, yes," said the man, "it is time I introduced myself." Wiping his hand on his jacket, he stepped forward. "I'm the Doctor," he said, offering his hand.
"Doctor of what?" asked Allison.
"Oh, here we go…" muttered Tess.
"Clever!" said the Doctor. "That's not the question most people ask. Usually, they say 'Doctor…?' And then I say, 'Just…The Doctor.' And they say, 'No, Doctor who?' And I say, 'Exactly!' And then…"
"Okay! Third base!" said Tess, clapping her hands to get their attention. "Moving on…"
"Why do you two always say that?" the Doctor asked Tess, wagging his finger at her and with more than a hint of annoyance in his voice. "'Third base.' I don't get it. I feel as if the two of you are having a joke at my expense, and frankly, Tess, my dear, I don't like it. Not one bit…"
"Doctor," she said, indicating Allison, who was looking on with disbelief.
"Right," said the Doctor, straightening up. "Sorry. Where were we? Oh, yes. I'm the Doctor. And you, you, are Dr. Allison Blake! Did I say it right? 'Allison Blake?' It is an honor to meet you, Dr. Blake!" He reached out and grabbed her hand, pumping it up and down vigorously.
After the Doctor let go of her hand, Allison was even more confused. She looked over at Tess, and then back to the Doctor. "Where did you come from?"
"Well, Gallifrey, originally, but lately -" said the Doctor, before Tess cut him off.
"We came in his spaceship," she said, pointing at the blue box. "That's his ship, Al. Though technically, it's a time machine, too."
"Yes," said the Doctor, "Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. In short, it's a TARDIS."
"TARDIS?" said Allison. "Isn't that a little convenient that it makes an acronym in English?" She was looking skeptically at the blue box. "It seems awfully small for the two of you."
"Actually, it makes an acronym in every language," said the Doctor. "And it's bigger on the inside."
"It's true, Al," said Tess, "I've been in it. It's a practical application of the uncompactification of dimensions beyond the tertiary manifold, on the order of four." That got Allison's attention. Fourth-order tertiary manifolds were thought to be theoretical artifacts, existing only to bridge the gaps in certain quantum gravity models.
"Doctor Blake," said SARAH, "what Dr. Fontana and…the other Doctor are saying, well, it seems to be true. I've been attempting to scan the interior of the object. Even with the door open, I cannot get any readings. It's as if nothing inside that doorway exists."
"Of course it exists, you silly goose," said the Doctor. "It's just that it exists in a different dimension than your scanning equipment does. So, naturally – no dice," he said, giving an empty-handed shrug.
The scary part was that all of the science Tess and the alien were spouting off actually made sense. She looked at the blue box again.
"You want to see it?" Tess asked, with a big grin.
Allison suddenly found herself wanting to see the inside of this wonderful ship. But as soon as she stood up, she stopped. "Wait. Tess," she asked, "you still haven't explained: how did you end up with…him?"
"He picked us up in Australia," said Tess, and then stopped herself short of adding anything. But Allison had caught it.
"Us?" she asked.
The Doctor and his companion exchanged a brief look, before he answered for both of them. "Ah, yes. There is another member of our merry band." The Doctor looked at a wristwatch. "By the way," he asked rhetorically, "shouldn't Jack be done by now?"
Before Allison could react to what sounded like the name of the man she loved, before Tess could respond with a shake of her head and the words "different Jack," SARAH's alarms answered the Timelord's question.
"SARAH, what's happening?" asked Allison.
"Dr. Blake! While Dr. Fontana and the alien have been talking to us, someone has been tampering with my communications node! All my outside lines have been cut: telephone, internet, satellite, short-wave, cable. I no longer have access to Eureka's communications grid!"
Allison looked frantically at the others. Tess met her gaze, but there was no panic in her eyes, nor surprise. And the Doctor was tapping his watch, as if it had stopped.
Or become unsynchronized.
Allison's gut told her she was in danger. Her head, for once, unlike all those times she had ignored the feelings she had had for a certain town sheriff, for example, didn't disagree: her head told her to RUN! FAST! She bolted for the front door.
"Al, wait!" Tess begged, but Allison wasn't listening. Leaping over the steps to the foyer, she grabbed the handle of the door and pulled with all her might, not wanting to look back and see how close the others were behind her. She got the heavy door open, and slipped around it, about to make a break for her truck, when she saw the man blocking her way.
He was taller than her, but not too tall. He was maybe four inches shorter than Carter. He was wearing a black jacket and had sandy blonde hair. He looked to be in his forties, but he had the look of someone with wiry strength, and he had a military-type bearing she had seen many times before. She tried to run past him, but he grabbed her easily and dragged her back into the house.
"SARAH! Call Jack! Call Jack!" she screamed.
"Dr. Blake!" said the AI plaintively, "there's nothing I can do!" The man kicked the door shut behind him and dragged Allison back to the living room.
"There you are, Bauer," said the Doctor to the new arrival. "Stop fooling around. We have work to do."