"Right, that's just about enough, thank you very much." I push him off. Well… My hands are on his back at the same time as he begins to roll, which certainly he could have instigated himself, but I'd rather think I push him off. "What do you have to tell me and how long is it going to take?"
"About two minutes if you don't interrupt. I practiced on Wall Street."
"Well, you're about twelve seconds behind so if you'd just start part one very, very quickly-"
He launches in. And as he talks I go about putting into action a plan that occurred to me while I was being crushed beneath him. Not the one to do with lowering his personal gravity. Or the one about the clear and present need for a sheep on the Tardis.
I'm sorry, I have lots of plans, I'm always having plans, and most of them are a bit like that. It's not my fault, there's nothing I can do about it. No, I'm talking about the inoffensive one that actually has something to do with the situation, i.e. the one about doing something nice for a man whose life I am at least partially and probably wholly responsible for destroying and who just brought me a tuna sandwich.
But yes, meanwhile, he begins.
"When I had the accident I was on my way back from a mission in 1972-"
"Big undercover bust, was it? Temporal piracy? Villainous interference in established timestreams?"
"Thought you weren't going to interrupt? And no. Simple recon, cataloguing a newly-recognized split point."
"Stop!" I was on my way around the console, but I turn on my heel and put out a hand. Mun doesn't argue with me. I think he knows there are going to be interruptions. This is going to take a damn sight more than two minutes. "Firstly, confirm for me that a 'split point', under Justice Department regulations, is what it sounds like, i.e. a point in time at which something very important can go one way or the other."
Bored, glancing at his wrist, "Confirmed."
"And the Justice Department catalogue these points?"
"It's a pretty new thing, but yes."
"And what," I ask, picking up his arm (in both hands) and pointing to those leftover scraps of manipulator in his flesh, "Does this button do?"
"Nothing anymore. It used to be the redial. Fried now."
"Follow me, bring it with you."
"You ain't funny."
"Yes I am. I'm a laugh-a-minute. Everybody says so."
"Like who?"
"Like everybody. Never heard a 'Doctor Doctor' joke? So what happened in 1972, then?"
"Depends which 1972 you're talking about."
"Now who's wasting time?"
"I was at a meeting and they just couldn't stop bringing up your name."
"Who couldn't?"
Oh, but we're out of minute, and Mun is off again on a magical mystery tour of all things and all places, whether he wants to be or not. Still, I suppose he's seeing the sights, getting the full crash course in first impressions. Mun Jones is the reason to keep the kitchen clean, the living room tidy, the city centres litter-free. Always wear clean underwear in case you end up under a Mun Jones. He's the ultimate surprise inspection, and your only saving grace might be that he's as surprised as you are.
But this is no time to stand here musing on the journeys of the ultimate time traveller. Whether there's anybody here to see or not, I have to do something really scary and clever and just that little bit naughty that always makes it better.
You're here. You can be in awe and wonder at me. Perfect! Captive audience…
Firstly I rearrange the boundary matrices of what was formerly a closet just off the console room. It's alright, we're not talking serious remodelling, and all it ever had in it was a broom and the shattered remains of a coolant pipe and a vodka bottle. Don't ask. Long, traumatic story, River was here, not going over that. Anyway, this creates a brand new uncharted space. Secondly, I reattach the locational reassertion requirements in order that this space become permanently fixed, which is something I've never, ever committed to before, not because I'm afraid of commitment or anything like that, but just because you never know when you're going to need the space.
And the eyes of an entire captive audience have entirely glazed over. A lesser man than myself would be attempted to try some post-hypnotic suggestion. Luckily for you, I am too strong and mature a person to make You All Want To Cluck Like Chickens When I Snap My Fingers…
Snap.
…No, it never does work.
In idio… I mean, huma… I mean, layman's terms, I made the first ever permanent room in the Tardis. Theoretically, should her entire system collapse, this little box of a former broom cupboard should actually remain.
That was the scary bit. What, you ask, was so scary about it? Well, it was either going to work or I was going to be crushed as the old girl folded in on herself, becoming a singularity that would probably have developed into a black hole large enough to eventually eat the universe. But that didn't happen, so we're okay. Now for the clever bit. Also the naughty bit. The part you can get fines and prison terms for, if you were the kind of person who couldn't get out of those kinds of things.
For the second time in as many months, I hack into the Universal Star Map. It's not a difficult task; the Time Lords were the first race to develop time coordinates and most of the Map itself was discovered by us, so it's not too bad about letting me in. Then again, I have been very slightly barred ever since I deleted a place. The idea of the Map is to be totally comprehensive and I sort of put a hole in that.
Wasn't my fault.
It was the Silence's fault.
If you want a place to carry on existing, you don't let a Time Lord die in front of me there.
Anyway, now I'm adding something. Balance restored, ying and yang, feng shui, other Asian terms, sunrise, sunset, all that stuff.
I am tying a set of temporal and spatial coordinates to the former broom cupboard off my console room. No matter where I am or when it is, those numbers will lead to that place. And I am going to give this very rare and highly sought after set of numbers to Hamunaptra Jones, just in case he ever finds out that I was the one who blew that sun up at him.
He won't hear it from me. Cool he may be but the man could snap me over his knee like a twig.
He is, by the way, back. I grab his wrist and, using the sonic, link the new coordinate sequence to the button that currently does nothing. "What are you doing?" he says. In answer, with all my fingers crossed, I press the button.
He goes away. A moment later, from just offstage as it were, I hear, "Goddamn, man, what the hell-" and the natural continuation of that sentence. I run down there so he doesn't think I've sent him off to some horrible little cupboard at the end of the universe where he'll never be able to find out it was me and break me over his knee like a twig. I should never have said that the first time, now I can't get it out of my head.
"Don't panic," I tell him, "You're still here."
Then I explain it to him. That in any emergency, or any time he needs to tell me something, he can just press that button. Next time he flashes out and back in again somewhere where the forest tries to eat his hair, somewhere that burns or is a bit cold, next time there's a gamma field flying at him, that's his emergency reset.
In my current form, at my current size and… fragility, shall we say, I've never been hugged by anything his size.
Conclusion: have to stop doing nice things for people.
With what feels like my last scrap of breath; "So. Mun. 1972?"