"So," said Rose, "did I arrange it all right?"
Sarah Jane looked around at the period clothes, most of them antiques, and perfectly arranged. "Well... yes. I've never had less trouble finding something in the TARDIS. It used to be quite confusing.
Rose smiled. "I worked at a clothes department store before the Doctor blew it up. I did this kind of thing there, but it wasn't half as interesting. A good history lesson it is, rearranging all of these clothes by period. It took me a whole week."
"So, the lowest level is the least modern, and the highest, where we are, is the most modern?" Sarah Jane asked.
Rose looked sort of pleased with herself. "Yup."
"How did you arrange the different years?" asked Sarah Jane.
Rose smiled. "Well, each floor is a decade. And the room's circular, so the lowest year starts where you walk in, then as you walk left, the years go up. Eventually you end up where you started. Unfortunately, there ended up being a heck of a lot of rooms, so we had to add an elevator with all of the decades. It sort of looks like Willy Wonka's elevator actually. It's glass, and has buttons all over."
Sarah Jane had a staid look on her face. She thought about how Rose said "we" like her and the Doctor were a couple.
"Is something wrong?" asked Rose curiously, though she could guess what had bothered Sarah Jane slightly.
"Of course not!" said Sarah Jane. "Just thinking about the past. Reminiscing, you know."
"Yeah, I know what you mean." said Rose understandingly, though Sarah Jane knew she couldn't guess what she meant. Not until the Doctor left her would she ever know what it was like to lose the TARDIS, the Doctor, the aliens...
"So," said Sarah Jane, returning to the task, "what date are we looking for, exactly?"
"'Bout 1939. At least that's what it says in the movie." said Rose shrugging. She walked across the room to the elevator. "Here it is then, go on in."
Sarah Jane eyed the glass elevator sceptically. "Are you sure it's-" started Sarah Jane.
Rose was half a step ahead of her. "Sarah Jane. It's the TARDIS. It's not gonna break." she said, guessing the word that Sarah Jane was about to use was "safe," an unforgivable word while travelling with the Doctor.
Sarah Jane did not look at all placated, so Rose stepped in first, and jumped around a few times to prove the sturdiness of the glass. Sarah Jane then followed her, stepping lightly.
Rose pressed a button with the year 1930 on it in bold black. Then, they shot down a couple floors unnervingly, and in less than a second, were ushered out of the elevator by the Doctor's automated voice, announcing, "You have arrived on the floor 1930."
Rose stepped out of the elevator, paused, stepped forward again, and waited. A ray of analysing light shot down on her from the ceiling and said, again in the Doctor's automated voice "Analysing." Rose stood there for two seconds while the system evaluated all of her sizes and tuned them to the woman's clothing. The ray switched off after a three seconds or so.
"How did it do that?" said Sarah Jane. "The clothes- they visibly changed!"
"Simple process of bio-molecular transformation. The ray adjusted all of the fabrics of the woman's clothes to my size using molecular transformation. Rose turned left, circling the room rack by rack with her eyes. There was a men's section and a woman's section under each year, and finally, she found 1939.
She jogged to the section where the woman's clothes were, and quickly picked out an unadorned blue dress, much like Maria wore in the scene of The Lonely Goatherd. She went into the dressing room by the elevator, stuck her head back out and said, "Go ahead, walk under the ray and then pick out a dress, sorry, no pants for women in 1939." Then Rose disappeared into the dressing room.
Sarah Jane walked below a piece of metal and stopped, copying what Rose had done a moment earlier. The same voice in the same tone said again "Analysing," and after the ray disappeared, walked towards the same year that Rose had visited.
------
Rose tried the dress on, and, like always, it fit her figure perfectly. She looked at herself in the mirror with a content expression, and figured that it would do. She then walked into the back part of the dressing room. This part of each dressing room, her and the Doctor had designed for instant period hair.
It was really a pain trying to figure out the style of each year, so they had created an automatic system that analysed the period outfit that the person was wearing, and then applied the most popular hair-do to the person. It had worked quite well efficiently in a lot of circumstances where they needed quick-fixes.
"1939, Austria." said Rose. And the room instantly began to steam. Rose felt little metal pins and fingers being stuck into her hair, and wondered what the machine would come up with this time.
------
Sarah Jane looked at all of the different dresses on the 1939 woman's rack. She almost instantly found a beautiful dress. It was simple like Rose's, but it had a bit of an older feeling. The waist was not quite so defined, and it the top half looked a bit like a nicely tailored vest. It was mellow red, and anyone would have picked it out for Sarah Jane if they had known her for just a single day.
Sarah Jane followed Rose into the TARDIS dressing room, where she found Rose in the dress that she had picked out. She did a double take on her hair though. Rose, with big eyes, and a bright red face, was gaping at her tremendous hair in the mirror on the wall. The automated TARDIS hairdresser had out-done itself. Rose's hair had been expertly played with and bobby pinned so that she had typical 1930's hair. The TARDIS had even put a hat on her. It was almost, but not quite indescribable.
The TARDIS had styled Rose's hair so that all of her bangs were off to one side, with a side part down the left side of her head. The rest of her hair was a little bit fuller than usual, and was one medium length wave down almost to her shoulders, where it all curled inward like a bob.
The TARDIS had also given Rose a hat. It matched the dress, light blue and beautiful, but was square, tilted back and to the left unevenly so that it showed some of the details of Rose's hair.
Rose noticed that Sarah Jane had walked in and she pointed at her own hair, just short of mortified. "I'm going back in. I am not going out of this room with my hair like this. I don't care if they find out that we're from another planet. I'm keeping my hair the way it normally is. I cannot go out like this."
"Oh, keep it that way," said Sarah Jane, "It looks stunning." she said with a grin. "And you must want to see the Doctor's reaction."
Rose's nostrils flared as she scowled at no one in particular, trying to make the decision whether to keep or change her hairstyle.
"I do love the dress, though." said Sarah Jane truthfully. It looks stunning on you."
"Thanks," Rose said distantly, still preoccupied with her crazy hair.
Sarah Jane walked into the TARIS dressing room and changed into the red dress that she picked out. While she was changing, she heard a great rushing sound as Rose re-entered the TARDIS hairdresser and grimly said "Original." Then came a hesitant "Oh, never mind, the Doctor's reaction will be worth the laughs."
Sarah Jane walked out of the dressing room and admired the dress's fit in the wall mirror. The TARDIS bio-molecular transformer really had done a wonderful job. The dress fit as if she were a duchess who had been at the tailor's being measured all day.
Rose walked out of the hairdressing room with a much happier expression. Her eyes immediately fell on Sarah Jane in her crimson dress, and smiled. "Wow, the Doctor really did program that bio-molecular transformer well, didn't he? That looks fantastic on you." She said.
Sarah Jane smiled. "Thank you. Shall we go back to the console room and visit 1939?"
"How 'bout it?" Replied Rose. They walked back into the glass elevator and pressed the button that said Console Room.
