Chapter 3: Hoping and Planning and Flying

Time marched onwards, and suddenly, it seemed, it was the month before their graduation ceremony. Theta had just failed his TARDIS pilot's exam for the second time. He just kept getting excited and trying to run around and pull all the levers himself-thereby impeding the other five students taking the test. They were all in his room-Koschei, Allon, Neryon and Illori, trying to cheer him up, or at least get his mind off of it.

"I think I'll be The Caretaker," Neryon mused, thumbing through his Abnormal Psychology textbook. After his own experience with brain damage, he'd studied up on the subject, and had a real aptitude for therapy.

"The Watcher," Allon chimed in. He'd developed incredible alacrity in monitoring timelines-he could catch a fixed point before it was fixed, a skill that the seers were all too excited to have available to them.

"Any ideas yet, Illori?" Koschei asked from her position sprawled on Theta's bed, propped up on her elbows. Ten years of school, growing up and pressure from her parents at their yearly visits had not yet convinced her to let her hair touch her shoulders. As Illori started explaining her three options, Koschei glanced sympathetically at Theta. It was a mark of their friendship that she'd known why this vein of conversation would upset him all over again before they'd even really started in on it-but it was a mark of her respect for him as an individual that she didn't immediately say, "let's not talk about this-it's upsetting Theta," like he couldn't handle with his friends' success in the shadow of his own failure.

"I vote 'Star-Chaser' myself, but 'Sky-Weaver' is cute too," Theta suggested when Illori looked around for opinions.

"If you call yourself 'Rain Flyer,' I'll call you 'Duckling' for the rest of your life, and ensure that it is engraved on your tomb," Koschei laughed. Illori threw a cushion at her, which she deftly caught and used to help prop herself up.

"What about you, Thete?" Illori asked. Theta stalled for a moment, pretending to be finishing a sentence in the essay he was halfheartedly working on.

"I'd thought maybe The Traveler or The Wanderer or something," he finally had to admit. "But…"

"Oh, your test," Illori gasped. "I'm so sorry-I forgot."

"Nah, it's okay," Theta shrugged. "It's something I have to think about soon, anyway. We graduate in less than four weeks, after all. I need a backup plan."

"No, you NEED to learn how to fly a TARDIS right," Koschei contradicted calmly. "You can't let one test be the only thing that holds you back from what you were always meant to do."

"It's not that I'm bad at it," he sighed. "I just keep trying to grab things from other people's consoles. I'm really very good-I see the lights flashing and know what the alarms mean before they do, that's all. Then I get benched for disrupting the test."

"Well, could you do it with two?" Koschei asked, sitting up and surveying him critically.

"I dunno-maybe I could," Theta responded in confusion. "Maybe I could do it alone, too-but I can't pass the test. At this point, I think anyone seeking to test in would protest if I was in their group, since I've wrecked things for ten other people so far."

"But what if you could take the test alone, or with just one other person?" Koschei pressed. "Could you still fly it then? All you really have to do is prove to the administrators that you're capable of actually flying a TARDIS; I'm willing to bet that they'll ignore 'Does Not Play Well With Others' in favor of 'Epic Skills and Boss Points.'"

"Dunno if 'Boss Points' necessarily help you pass the TARDIS exam," Allon said with a snort.

"She's got a point, though," Illori said quietly. "What if the two of you took it together? Koschei could sign in, take a nap, and you could take a TARDIS for a spin, and once they see that you can fly it all by your lonesome, I bet they'd pass you-probably fast-track you into the Explorer Program. If you can do it, that is."

"He can do it," Koschei shrugged, with about the same tone she'd use to indicate that she stored milk in her refrigerator and bread in her cupboard; like it was a simple, obvious thing.

"If they let me take it with two," Theta said slowly. Now that the idea had taken hold, it was like a voracious weed, digging its roots deep into his hearts, winding through his veins, spreading hope like countless spores to revitalize every cell in his body. What if he could do that? Illori had a good point; they might just streamline his application to the E.P. if he could prove his flight skills.

"If they don't, then take it with six," Neryon said simply. "Us, you, and one more-ask Zenio from the fifth floor, he won't care. Then once we're off, the five of us will just sit down and let you do all the work."

"Like you do, in advanced nanorobotics?" Allon laughed. Neryon stole the pillow from Koschei and flung it at his twin.

"If I try to help him, I just get in the way," he defended. Theta shrugged, not able to contradict him. Neryon was brilliant when it came to people, but a bit of a dunce with software and moving parts. It was lovely to have him as a lab partner though-he could work on whatever he pleased and Neryon would chat away with him and keep him company and act like he knew what was going on when the professor came over.

"We serious about this?" Illori asked, pulling out her tablet.

"No, never knowingly be serious!" Koschei reprimanded. "But we're certainly doing it."

"I'll sign us up, then," Illori said with a shrug, starting to tap buttons.

-0-

Theta's hands were sweaty. He rubbed them against his robes, trying to get the moisture off. This had sounded like such a good idea three days ago, but now that he'd spent so many hours in the practice modules, using his friends' logins so he could fly all six consoles at once, he was really starting to worry. He'd crashed the module more than he landed it.

Without someone to officially navigate, he'd have to direct manually on each console. That wasn't impossible, but it meant he'd had to memorize about four dozen different formulas per location. He'd decided in advance where he was going to go-Earth, 1869 AD, because it was the year and planet Gandhi was born, so, why not? Sol was also an easy system to get too-eight formulas shorter than the next shortest.

The next difficulty was how to hold down levers on opposing consoles. He'd have to do it twice on the way there and three times on the way back. He'd also need to be able to hit some buttons from awkward angles-and they tended to be difficult to get all the way down if they weren't pushed from directly in front. The solution to extending his reach and his force came in the form of a medium-sized rubber mallet-a souvenir that Allon had gotten from some primitive culture they'd visited on a field trip. He'd gotten it because he thought it would be a funny weapon against spiders, but quickly discovered that it damaged surfaces more often than spiders. But Theta could slip it through lever handles to hold them down, and use it to hammer down buttons that he couldn't reach.

He knew that technically, even if there was an emergency and he screwed up, his friends had all been through the required basic training, but then whole point of taking the test like this was to prove that he might not have been able to fly the way he was supposed to, but he could fly so well that the institution should make an exception and give him his license anyway. That wasn't going to happen if he had help. If he was going to convince them to bend the rules, he'd need to really impress them.

He swallowed.

A TARDIS, disguised as a Dorruk Subway entrance, materialized on the landing platform, and six students filed out, looking successful.

"TARDIS test, group 263, please enter…" a bored time lady announced from the door in a droning monotone. Theta bolted to his feet and headed into the TARDIS, his friends following suit at a more normal pace. The moderator's eyes focused on him, and he could see the bolt of recognition go through her mind. She straightened up, blinking and then narrowing her eyes, no doubt remembering his three impressive failures.

"Hello," he greeted her with a passable imitation of friendliness. "Fourth time's the charm, isn't that what they say?"

"Not remotely," she responded humorlessly, scanning his team a little more closely, then sighing in defeat. "Just remember to keep your hands on your own console," she grumbled. "Otherwise you'll fail everyone. Again."

"Oh, no worries," Koschei assured her with the devilish grin for which she'd become institutionally famous. "He's got a handle on this." She clapped her friend on the shoulder, then headed to a console, not really paying attention to which one.

"Are these the consoles for which each of you will be testing?" the monitor asked, taking a step back and sitting down in a chair from which—with the help of a few strategically-placed mirrors—she could comfortably observe all of the proceedings.

"No, actually," Neryon replied evenly, and at his nod, everyone but Theta took their own steps back, sitting down on the benches surrounding the console. "We were just here to get him in the door."

"Right!" Theta exclaimed, clapping his hands together and springing forward before the test monitor had the chance to get her bearings. "Time to take her out for a spin. First, a destination," he continued, spinning a dial in a way that appeared wild, but in actuality he'd practiced for hours to learn the exact amount of force it took to get the navigation to point to earth.

"Earth," he announced as the blue and green planet appeared on the screen. "The year 1869, AD, by the Christian calendar."

"Wait," the monitor began as her faculties returned to her and she realized what was about to happen.

"Let's go!" Theta roared, mainly just to have something to say to cut her off, and with a flourish slammed his hand on the "dematerialize" button.

"First, we'll need coordinates," he exclaimed, narrating what he was doing largely because he had started off that way and it felt odd to stop now. Besides, as he would realize later, he always felt more powerful, more in control, when he was talking, explaining something.

"Spatial coordinates!" he threw two dozen switches to their correct positions.

"Outer Temporal coordinates!" frantically he typed in the formula for the Christian Calendar's AD era. The whole TARDIS shook and wobbled as it began to spin through time. This was where things got complicated. The moment he'd finished typing, Theta slid to his left, punching in a code and simultaneously using the mallet, which he produced from beneath his robe, to whack the massive engage button on the opposite console.

"Route Stabilizers active!" he announced as the shaking decreased.

"You can't do this alone!" the monitor was shrieking.

"Shut it!" Koschei bellowed. "Don't distract him or he'll crash and kill the lot of us!"

Although her outburst had the intended effect on the stunned time-lady, who appeared a bit too green and faint to step in, it hit Theta like a punch to the gut. It hadn't occurred to him until just then, the risk he was taking with his friends onboard. What if something went wrong?

The TARDIS made a distressed moaning sound and his body leapt back into action out of raw instinct. Suddenly, this flight wasn't just about his dream, or showing off, or anything so insignificant. It was about protecting his friends. And if there was anything at which he truly excelled, that was it.

"External dampeners!" he shouted, sliding again, dropping the mallet flawlessly into a lever to pull it down and running his hand under a row of switches to flick them all upward, artfully stopping before the last three. "Lock down the zig-zag plotter, engage gravity detector, input era coordinates," he listed a little manically as he darted around the hexagon, retrieving the mallet, smacking something, inputting another string of codes while threading the mallet through another lever.

"Prep camouflage program!" he jammed his thumb and forefinger into two buttons. "Setting specific temporal zone… Second October, 1869," he read as he typed.

"Reset stabilizers, disperse temporal residue, scan for parking space, and," he whirled, surreptitiously depressing a button behind his back to make it look like he was actually pausing for a moment. He held his finger up, then pointed at the discombobulated moderator. "Engage. Landing. Stabilizers." He said nonchalantly, before using that finger to push one last lever up to the "on" position.

With a great groaning and wheezing, the TARDIS slowed, then stopped, then fell silent.

A thin wisp of steam escaped from somewhere on the console, releasing pressure. Theta looked at each of his friends, then at the moderator, before striding down the walkway to fling the door wide.

"Madame moderator," he announced, his eyes going wide as it hit him that he'd done it—he'd actually done it—"welcome to planet Earth."

Granted, he could tell by the climate, language and garments that he'd managed to land them on completely the wrong side of the planet (this was clearly London, not Pormandar) but still, he'd done it.

"Theta Sigma," the time-lady murmured as she got her bearings. "That was stupid and dangerous. You broke every rule of the TARDIS test and put all of us in unnecessary peril.

But," she added as Theta's shoulders fell, "yes. Yes, you've done it. You can, in fact, fly a TARDIS, on manual, no less, entirely on your own."

Theta looked up at her, then at his friends' triumphant grins, then back at her.

"You're wrong," he said quietly.

"Oh?" she demanded, one eyebrow arching higher than any eyebrow had any business arching.

"I didn't do it alone," he explained. "I piloted the TARDIS, yes, but I was only able to do it because of everyone here."

The test moderator's eyes narrowed again, but thoughtfully this time. She placed a hand on Theta's shoulder.

"You have great potential, child," she commented enigmatically before heading back to her seat.

"I could'a told you that," Koschei snorted as Theta carefully shut the door and headed back to the console for the return trip.