"Rory! Don't panic! Everything's going to be fine. Just hold on. It's The Doctor! I'm here to help!" Having scrambled back into his clothes in the lobby's restroom, The Doctor came bursting back into his friend's suite, yelling gallantly. "Rory?" He dashed past each open door, only allowing himself to observe enough to confirm the human's absence, though a few flashes of places they had travelled managed to slip into his memory – the Velvet Fields of Sleff, the honeymoon planet near the Horsehead Nebula, Rengata's Onyx Caverns, even Upper Leadworth. No sign of Rory, yet, however. The Doctor hurried on, waving his sonic like a frantic wizard.
Music reached his ears from further ahead. It was loud with a great deal of guitar and beatings of drums, a human half-singing, half-shouting unclear words above the riff. The old man in The Doctor cringed at the racket, but the spark of youth in him might have enjoyed it given the chance. The noise only meant one thing at present: Rory. Arriving at the source, The Doctor found the door locked. Without a moment's thought, he zapped the lock and seized the doorknob, flinging through into the room.
"It's okay, Rory! You're safe…now…" The Doctor trailed off under the weight of several icy stares.
It could have been worse, but it wasn't a time for such reflection. Rory sat, sullen-faced, on a chaise longue, adorned in his centurion costume bar the helmet. A young woman with short red curls had her arms about his neck, one porcelain-smooth leg draped across his lap. Her alarmingly short toga shifted mercifully to greater concealment as she turned to The Doctor. Amy's face glowered. It glowered from there and from the marble floor where an Amy in a nurse's uniform had been reading a magazine and chewing bubble-gum. It glowered from another chair across the palace-designed room where a pirate with long ginger hair had been inspecting her nails, and it glowered from a doorway off to the left, eyes narrowing above stripes of war paint.
"Perhaps I should've knocked." The Doctor moved his jaw in an uncomfortable fashion. It was surprising how Rory did not blush or go particularly pale. The man simply seemed to go numb in times of stress and all emotion focused in his eyes. The word 'plastic' echoed in The Doctor's mind.
"Should I be annoyed on account of embarrassment or because you're a simulation that's gone wrong?" The young human's tone could have cut steel. It had certainly managed to cut the music.
"Yes and no, but partly yes. The simulations have gone wrong – at least they were wrong in my room so I had to make sure you weren't facing any unwanted, er, attention." The Doctor was acutely aware that the Amys were still watching him. Pirate Amy had climbed over the arm of her chair and begun prowling closer. The Amy at the adjoining doorway was sidling in his direction, garments of leaves rustling at each step.
Rory frowned. "What do you mean 'they've gone wrong'?"
The Doctor considered a proper explanation and discarded it. "Nothing. Clearly it's just my room and nothing untoward or unexpected or unpleasant is going on in here. I'll just stop babbling and leave you to, er, yes, stop disturbing you." He backed off as the leaf-garbed Amy revealed a flint knife in hand.
"It's all right, Jungle Amy, leave him," Rory commanded.
The war-painted girl gave The Doctor one last weighted glance before she retreated, padding silently to stand behind the chaise longue.
'Jungle Amy?' The Doctor repeated soundlessly, incredulous after the initial shock.
"Who is he?" the Amy beside Rory asked. Her expression was guarded.
Rory rubbed at his eyelids to avoid having to look at the timelord's face. "That's…that's The Doctor. He's a friend and also probably my son-in-law, but not really, I don't know. You know him anyway, well, not you, the real you, and… I'm talking to computer sprites of my wife. This is more than weird."
"Ohhh The Doctor," Pirate Amy replied, brightening. "How did we forget?"
"I'll be going now," The Doctor said quietly. "Sorry."
"Why don't you join us?" Roman Amy offered.
"What? No!" Rory's voice marginally succeeded in drowning out The Doctor's identical response.
Pirate Amy smirked. "Oh, you boys, where's your sense of fun?"
Now Rory looked horrified. "Please, please, believe me when I say this is not coming from my head."
The Doctor nodded, edging back the way he had come. "And you're quite sure none of these are the real Amy?" The threat in Rory's expression spurred him to resume, "No, silly suggestion. Don't know where that came from. Why of all things would the real Amy think about anything like this?" He stepped back into the hall. "I'll just…go. Hopefully the programme will go back to…whatever. See you, er, later, then." The Doctor gave Rory a hasty double- thumbs-up and power-walked for the exit.
"Where do you think you're going, buster?"
Amy barred the passageway, arms folded, dressed in her policewoman/kiss-o-gram outfit.
"Oh," said The Doctor. "Right. No, you see, this isn't my room. He's the one you want." He pointed back to the Roman boudoir.
The simulation raised her eyebrow. "Are you telling me how to do my job?"
"No, well, a little bit, yes. You're supposed to be Rory's wife and it's really not my place to be here so if you'll just let me pass -."
"I don't think so. You've caused more than enough trouble and you think I'll let you get away now? That man has died because of you and more than once. Did you think I'd let you leave with the things you've let happen to the man I love?"
"Listen, you're not Amy, you're a projection, and I'm sorry, but since you're not moving, I'm going to have to prove it." She moved faster than he anticipated. No sooner had he raised his sonic it was smacked from his hand and she had slammed him into the wall.
"Amy, listen to me!" he yelped, cringing at the jolt to his spine.
"No, you listen, Doctor. Always telling us what to do. How are we supposed to know if what you say is right, if it's true, if it'll keep us safe? No. You can shut up and listen." Her voice had begun to soften. Her hands moved from where they gripped his jacket to pinch the collar of his shirt. "Just relax, Doctor," she whispered. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Nurse Amy approaching, a syringe held aloft. Clear liquid spouted from its tip.
"Rooooryyyyyyyyyyy!" The Doctor's bloodcurdling yell brought the centurion pelting out into the hall. His jaw dropped. "Call them off!" the trapped timelord blurted.
Rory leapt forward and seized Nurse Amy in the act of trying to bare The Doctor's arm. She resisted very little and was easily deposited in the Roman room. Kiss-o-gram Amy needed somewhat more force before she would let go of The Doctor's shirt. She pouted and blew him a kiss. A second later, Rory slammed the door shut and it was sonicked for good measure.
"We need to find out what's happening." The Doctor gasped for breath from the struggle. "I've never – this isn't how they work. It's carefully controlled. Never dangerous. Something's wrong."
Rory sighed. "Let's just go. We'll go somewhere else, somewhere less…alien, just go back to the TARDIS and pick up a few drinks from home, talk about things that aren't…this."
"No!" The Doctor snapped. "No, no, no! I'm not giving up. Not yet anyway. This is a brilliant place and Rory Williams is going to have a stag party worthy of the history books." He paused. "The nice ones that everyone wishes they'd been to, not the other kinds involving bloodbaths, actual blood baths, or questionable galactic records." He straightened his shirt, checked his bowtie and ran a hand through his damp hair. "Off we go then."
"Er, Doctor…I might need my clothes."
"Nonsense. Roman centurion? No one'll bat an eye in this place. You can fetch them later. Go and get changed in the TARDIS if you must. I've got a job for you anyway." Not waiting for a further reply, The Doctor strode for the lobby.
The Roman centurion marched quickly across the lawns of Hedonis 4, a key in one hand, a wad of psychic paper in the other. He wished he had been strong enough to persuade The Doctor to let the problem lie, that they could leave the saving and the mistakes for someone else to clear up. He wanted to go home to his new wife, or at the very least be travelling with her. Because The Doctor was hers, really, her imaginary friend made flesh, always had been flesh, which was perturbing in more ways than he cared to admit. Being alone with The Doctor felt like being a story in Amy's head, as though Rory Williams weren't quite real, running around in a dream that some beautiful Scottish girl had created. Without Amy, Rory sometimes had trouble believing he was real. Maybe that was a side-effect of being written in and out of a universe.
Yet, in spite of all that, he did not want to run back to her so soon. How could he return knowing he had not allowed himself to have fun? What this planet offered did make him feel guilty, but he could not bear the thought of Amy finding out that he had not let The Doctor make amends. Rory did not want to be 'Amy's serious husband', laughing less each day until he might never see that smile on her face again. It was something he feared, becoming boring Rory, stick-in-the-mud spoil-sport Rory, Rory who could never make her as happy as The Doctor…
No. He would stay. He would stay and help The Doctor, for her.
Arriving at the TARDIS, Rory pushed the key into the lock and let himself in. What was it The Doctor had asked him to look for? Off down the tunnel to the left of the typewriter, into the cloakroom, large black chest… he followed the directions and pushed past a few coat-rails. After tripping over an exceptionally long scarf, wondering if it had been knitted by a very old Gallifreyan grandma, he found the chest The Doctor had described. It took him more than ten minutes to find the 'thing that looks like a Frisbee but isn't a Frisbee so don't go lobbing it around like it is a Frisbee or I'll be very cross', due to the sheer quantity of intergalactic junk the timelord had stashed within. Many of the strange items made noises or started blinking flashing colours when his hand roamed near them. Rory hoped they were toys. He didn't really think The Doctor would have put some dormant alien bomb in amongst his clothing, but only because he knew how much the timelord loved his hats.
When at last the device had been found, Rory the Roman found some rather deRomanized clothes of his own: a casual shirt and jeans, and headed for the control room. As he walked, an eerily familiar noise reached his ears. It pulsed, like the sound of a zip drawn back and forth, mixed with a diving plane, or a whisk sliding over a chopping board. Amy had tried to explain how The Doctor had mimicked it, but whether he had sounded like a hippopotamus in reverse he had yet to confirm. With a sudden panic, Rory bolted onto the main deck.
"No! Stop! What are you doing?" he yelled at the TARDIS console. "You can't leave!" He could hear the noise all around, but the TARDIS did not shudder or flash, her levers stayed still and her dials did not turn. Confused, Rory ran to the door and braced himself for what he might see. He stepped out, his trainers planting on grass, and blinked at the same planet he had left. The TARDIS had not dematerialised. "Okay, that's… I must be overdoing it." He pulled the door closed and made sure it had locked.
"What?"
The voice came from his left but it hardly registered. Rory was too busy concentrating on making sure his key was safe.
"Excuse me… what?" Louder this time, Rory jumped and turned to see a man looking at him. There was a frown about the stranger's face, confused for the most part, but with a generous helping of anger. It was a thin face with a slightly sharp nose and ruffled, spiky hair. He wore a pin-striped suit beneath a long camel-brown coat.
"Er, can I help yo-?" Rory only had an instant to register the presence of a second blue police box beside The Doctor's TARDIS, before a fist connected with his face.
"You're asking me for identification? Me? Have you any idea who I am? I'm over a thousand years old!"
The Tephalisk bartender turned away from the timelord throwing a hissy fit at the counter. It was not policy to be sympathetic. Humans that looked under twenty-five could not be served, and this customer looked very much human and doubtfully quite the age of consent. Old but terribly youthful hands clutched at his hair as The Doctor hunched over the bar-top in frustration. The psychic paper had been left in Rory's care to allow him back into the complex, but even if he had kept it, it was doubtful that he would fool a Tephalisk. These creatures were experts in dealing with illusions. They had to be, working in a place such as this. Every employee on Hedonis 4 would have had training in mental blocking for their own safety.
The Doctor had demanded to speak to someone in charge and explained, in as much detail as he dared, the problems he had experienced. He went from clerk to consultant, to sector managers and programmers, all understanding and perfectly friendly but adamant that he was not to be shown the way to the complex's mainframes. They assured him the issues would be dealt with, uploaded three more spa coupons and a ticket to see an interactive show at a place called The Suspense Box, and told him to await their results in the Quark & Banana bar. He had only agreed to back down when a young Tephalisk by the name of Kaemu said she would investigate personally. With her assurance that she would get back to him before nightfall, The Doctor had left a note for Rory with the lobby desk and taken a seat in the bar.
It was a bit too neon for his taste. The Quark & Banana had strips of coloured light embedded in every table-top, chair leg and wall-light. Even the floor gleamed with blue stars under plastic flooring. The Doctor was fond of brightness and playful tones, but the lack of items to grab, the steely emptiness between the lights, slipped his interest. This place didn't even have curly straws.
And now he couldn't even order anything. Jacket discarded on the stool beside him, the timelord slammed his palm on the counter. "If you won't serve me, I'm going to speak to your manager, and they'll know who I am! Why don't you save yourself the embarrassment and let me help pay your wages before you risk not having any ever again!"
The Tephalisk appeared to shoot him a look and gave a loud hiss.
"Oh, khhhhhhhhk to you too, sunshine. Don't think I don't know another few words to go with that. Let's see now… oh ye- aghhhhh!" The Doctor cried out as something wrenched his arm back. Face wrinkling with pain, he looked up into the stern glare of a huge, muscular Tephalisk wearing the dark red shoulder-plates of Security. "I'm sorry!" The Doctor yelped. "My mistake! It's been a long day, I overreacted. Really, I'm sorry. You can let go now." He cringed as his face was pressed to the cold surface of the counter. "I only wanted a packet of crisps…"
Perhaps he was dreaming. A voice, one that he couldn't possibly mistake, called across the room in bold American English.
"Hey, let him go. He's with me."
