Train? What train? Where do we go from here?
Lock & Key
By Scott Jewett
Chapter 6: The Two Doctors
"All right," Clara said as the whine of the TARDIS engines died down, "what do you mean about catching a train?"
"You'll see" the Doctor replied with a twinkle in his eye, starting towards the door. "Shall we?" He took three more steps before a massive blast rocked the TARDIS, sending them both reeling.
"It is the TARDIS! EXTERMINATE!" came the unfortunately familiar cry from outside. The Doctor got up, helping Clara to her feet.
"That's not possible!" he gasped over the sound of laser blasts. "Daleks don't exist in this universe!"
"Maybe they got here first?" Clara suggested, wobbling as the TARDIS shook.
"Possible," the Doctor agreed, "but how did they find us so quickly, then? Unless…no. Oh, no." He dashed to the console of the TARDIS, flicking on the viewscreen.
"What? What is it?" Clara asked, trying to peek over the Doctor's shoulder, as he was holding the viewscreen far too close to his face.
"They didn't find us." The tone of the Doctor's voice was one Clara was far too familiar with. She referred to it in her mind as the "This is very, VERY bad" tone. It didn't help that it was underscored by the Dalek's continued assault on the TARDIS exterior.
"What do you mean, they didn't find us? They're out there, aren't they?"
"They're out there," the Doctor replied, "because they happened to be out there. It's a coincidence, Clara. Look." He pulled the viewscreen away from himself. Clara looked, and gasped.
The shaking of the TARDIS did nothing to distract from the fact that the parallel Earth looked like a massive industrial complex. No nature, darkened skies, large dirty buildings with smokestacks belching smog into the atmosphere. The visibility was drastically reduced. And, dotted among the landscape, were Daleks. Rolling over the ground in obvious patrol formations, floating through the skies in squadrons, and as far as Clara could see, rolling methodically out of a couple of larger buildings off to the left.
"Okay, why does this seem familiar, somehow?" she asked, unable to look away.
"Because you remember being Oswin" the Doctor replied. "Even the lowest Dalek in the chain of command, or in your case locked away at the center of a prison planet, has knowledge of the Dalek plan for universal domination. They've tried this on multiple planets in our universe, turning them into massive production facilities for Dalek battle suits. The humans are probably kept elsewhere, in labor camps, mining the materials they need from Earth or other suitable planets, or being converted into drones." Although he kept his voice even, Clara could sense even more anger in it. "This universe might be nothing like ours. I didn't have time to explore it fully. It could be empty apart from this galaxy, and they don't care! They just want it all. Another outpost of the glorious Dalek Empire." He flicked a few switches. The viewscreen shifted to a map of some sort, with various cone-shaped projections on it.
"As I thought!" he said. "Multiple temporal wormholes, but only one with a Dalek energy signature."
"Multiple?" Clara said. "As in…time travel?"
"Exactly!" the Doctor replied. "In this universe, one man was smart enough to invent time travel. Presumably, he has the next piece of the Time Lock with him in the past. The Daleks oriented on it from this point in time, and traveled back to get it. Probably decided to take the planet over from there, while they were at it. We need to follow their wormhole. I think," he added, checking a few readings, "we'll just be able to make it. The artron energy capacitors are starting to run low."
"Does that mean we won't make it back to our universe?" Clara asked.
"In any other universe, I'd say yes" the Doctor said. "However, assuming we're successful in the past, that shouldn't be a problem, thanks to my brilliant younger self. And we should probably hurry."
"Why?" Clara asked.
"Because the attack outside has stopped" the Doctor replied. "Daleks don't give up, especially if you're on a world they own. They've gone for the big guns, I'll wager." Bringing up the outside view on the viewscreen proved his point-a massive airship was coming toward them.
"Right, here we go!" The Doctor yanked down on the lever. "Time to grab that train!"
"Train?" Clara said. "Train! Time traveler! Doctor, where were we?"
"Same place we're going, Clara!" the Doctor replied gleefully. "Hill Valley, California!"
Hill Valley, California
October 26, 1885
1:18 am
The War Doctor had never enjoyed hot, dusty climates. They were too reminiscent of the planet he'd been on when he activated the Time Lock, effectively destroying his entire race. Even in the middle of the night, Wild West-era California was far too warm for him. Or maybe the atmosphere and weather conditions were slightly different in this universe.
However, a chance to do what he was doing now was too good to pass up. As he waved his sonic screwdriver over the last few components of the repaired steam engine, he smiled.
"I think that should do it, Emmett" he said as he pulled himself out from under the locomotive. "Just a few elements from the TARDIS, adapted for your universe's artron energy, of course. And I still say the hardest part was restoring the anti-gravity technology!" His companion, a man with a shock of white hair and crazy-looking eyes, laughed.
"Doctor, most of this technology was hard for me! The leaps and bounds your people have made in your universe! Time travel, space travel, even regeneration! Imagine being able to change your own genetic codes…"
"It's more of a burden than you might think" the Doctor interjected. "Live long enough, and you'll regret more than you can imagine. Anyway," he added, brushing dirt from his coat, "I imagine it's time for me to be going. More pieces of the Time Lock to hide, you know."
"And that!" Doc Brown said. "To be able to take things out of the time stream entirely! Just freeze them in a pocket universe, indefinitely…" The Doctor sighed.
"Emmett, I know this is all incredibly fascinating, but I really must be going." His tone betrayed the fact that he simply didn't want to talk about it. Doc Brown picked up on it.
"Of course, of course! Still, it will be a shame to see you go, Doctor. Having someone of your advanced intelligence to talk to, and repair my time vehicle...it has been a privilege!"
"It certainly has, Doctor" Clara Clayton said as she left her tent pitched near the railroad tracks.
"Clara!" Doc Brown said. "Why aren't you asleep? It's…" He checked his watch. "Great Scott!"
"What is it, Emmett?" Clara asked.
"Oh, it's nothing dangerous or worrisome" Doc Brown replied. "It's just that…my dear, at this moment, 100 years in the future, I made Einstein the world's first time traveler!"
"Einstein?" the War Doctor spoke up. "Oh, yes, your dog."
"Right," Doc Brown replied. "It's almost hard to believe that all this came from that moment, which technically hasn't happened yet!"
"Emmett, dear, please keep your voice down" Clara said. "You could attract bears or something."
"But Clara!" Doc Brown said. "After all, that moment led to us being together! If Marty hadn't tried escaping in the DeLorean, neither of us would be here today!"
"And neither would I!" the War Doctor broke in. "Emmett, Clara, I really must be going. Do take care of yourselves, and try to preserve the timeline as much as possible. Oh," he added, one foot inside the TARDIS, "you should also know that when I come back for that lock, I will probably have regenerated. My face will be different, but my memories won't." Doc Brown ran forward and shook the War Doctor's hand vigorously.
"Travel safely, my friend, and thank you again!" He stepped back, one hand around Clara's waist, as the TARDIS slowly dematerialized. Clara sighed.
"To understand even a fraction of that science…"she said.
"I know, my dear" Doc Brown replied, "but let's stick to what we know. Like getting that locomotive ready for time travel!" The pair turned towards the engine, then spun around as a familiar sound started up again.
"Emmett?" Clara gasped. "Is he back already?"
"I assume so, Clara!" Doc Brown replied as a less-battered looking TARDIS materialized in exactly the same spot it had left seconds before. Doc Brown and Clara watched with baited breath as the door swung open, revealing…a much younger-looking man, dressed in a purple suit and bowtie, with a white ten-gallon hat with a bullet hole on his head. His face lit up as he saw them.
"Emmett! Clara! Wonderful to see you again, it looks like I just left…wait a minute. It is, isn't it?" He spun around, screwdriver in hand, scanning. Clara popped her head out of the TARDIS.
"Any Daleks, Doctor?"
"Nope, set it down just before they arrived" the Doctor replied. "Ah, Hill Valley. Great to be back, love having the excuse to wear my Stetson again. Stetsons are cool." He turned to Doc Brown and Clara.
"I'm sorry, rambling just a bit, and I can see you're a bit confused. What to do…I know!" He grinned widely. "Emmett, I still say the hardest part of fixing the train you wrecked was restoring the anti-grav!" Doc Brown's mouth dropped open.
"Doctor? You really…did…Great Scott!" He clapped a hand to his forehead and fainted.
"Emmett!" Clara cried. The other Clara left the TARDIS to help.
"Gets a bit overstimulated, doesn't he?" she said to the future Mrs. Brown.
"Please just help me with him!" Clara replied. The Doctor helped the two of them lay him down in the cab of the locomotive.
"Should have remembered" the Doctor said. "He did the same thing when the TARDIS materialized in front of him the first time. Of course seeing the reality of regeneration would have the same effect. But," he said, "we have business to attend to. Clara…um, his Clara, not my Clara…"
"Who says I'm yours?" Clara (Oswald) demanded.
"Oh, this will be fun" the Doctor muttered. "All right. Miss Clayton, where is the piece of the Time Lock that I gave to Emmett? I've been followed by some very evil aliens who want to get their hands…well, tentacles…on it." Clara's eyes widened.
"Aliens? Actual beings from another planet?"
"Actual, evil, megalomaniacal, deadly, take your pick" Clara (again, Oswald) replied. "I know. I was one. Long story."
"And one we don't have time to tell" the Doctor added. "Oh, and also, I need to take parts of my TARDIS back."
"But you've just fixed the train" Clara said. "Why would you need to take back the parts you borrowed?"
"I need to modify them for my universe's energy signature again, to help power the TARDIS" the Doctor replied. "Otherwise, I might be stuck here forever with a dead spaceship. We can't let that happen, especially with the Daleks on the way."
A crackling sort of noise made the trio look up. Jagged bolts of energy materialized out of nowhere in the cloudless, star-filled sky. As they watched, a hole seemed to open up in space itself.
"Speak of the mechanical devils!" the Doctor yelled as the small Dalek scout ship slid out of the wormhole. "Clara, I need that piece now!"
Clara reached past the other Clara, up onto the top of the boiler, pulling down the piece of the Time Lock and handing it to the Doctor.
"Okay, as fast as I can, thank you, hide here, Oswin, run!" The Doctor tucked the piece of the Time Lock into his jacket pocket as he and Clara ran for the TARDIS.
"Time Lock technology detected!"
"The Doctor has it! He is headed for the TARDIS! EXTERMINATE!"
"Why can we hear that?" Clara yelled.
"Don't know, don't care!" the Doctor replied. "RUN!"
Blasts of energy rained down around the pair as they ran haphazardly towards the TARDIS. The Doctor reached first, snapping his fingers as he ran. As the doors swung open, he stopped dead, grabbing Clara by the wrist and flinging her inside. Then he pulled the piece of the Time Lock out of his pocket and held it over his head.
"Missed again, Daleks!" A maniacal grin spread over his face as he jumped into the TARDIS, his hat flying off his head.
"DESTROY THE TARDIS! EXTERMINATE!"
The Doctor watched the doors swing shut, then spun around with a wide grin on his face, which Clara immediately slapped off.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"One, it hurt when you flung me in here!" Clara replied angrily. "And two, DON'T CALL ME OSWIN!"
"Duly noted, but I needed to distinguish between the two of you!" the Doctor said, running to the console as the TARDIS started taking fire. He piloted it off the ground, taking off like a shot.
"Why aren't we leaving?" Clara asked, rubbing her wrist. "We've got what we came for."
"True," the Doctor replied, "but we only have the energy to travel through space, not time. Certainly not across dimensions. Also, I have to make sure those Daleks don't stick around to take over this Earth!" The TARDIS dipped, spun, and dodged Dalek fire as the chase continued. The Doctor eyed the viewscreen, quickly banking a hard left to draw the Dalek ship away from the small town.
"Hey, look!" Clara said. "There's the clock tower!"
"Yes, I'd love to stay and sightsee, but we're a bit busy!" the Doctor snapped, swinging the TARDIS back the way they had come. "We'll have to get them away from here…maybe towards the ravine!" Off they went, the Daleks in hot pursuit.
"Then what?" Clara asked.
"Haven't a clue…uh oh…" The TARDIS was slowing down. It was still dodging fire, but slower, and the shots were getting closer.
"Running low…I've got to put her down!" Clara gulped as the TARDIS landed, not far from the railroad track that Doc Brown had run the train off of a month earlier to send Marty back to 1985. The Dalek ship passed over them, then swung around to face them, hovering over the tracks.
"DOCTOR" came the annoyingly familiar mechanical booming. "YOUR TARDIS IS NEARLY OUT OF POWER. YOU WILL EXIT IT AND SURRENDER THE TIME LOCK TO THE DALEK EMPIRE. THE TARDIS WILL BE EXTERMINATED IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS WITHIN ONE MINUTE."
"I'm not leaving" Clara said.
"I don't want to, but our options are quite limited!" the Doctor replied. "There must be something…" He ran around the console, flicking switches and pushing buttons.
"Nothing…not enough power." He looked up, seeming defeated. "I don't know what to do, Clara…" He pulled all the pieces of the Time Lock out.
Aboard the scout ship, one Dalek activated the modified program the science division had been working on. The view through Clara's eyes came up in a holographic projection. A quick nudge, and the fingers of her right hand twitched toward the pieces of the Time Lock.
"We are making progress" he said.
Back aboard the TARDIS…
"Doctor, you can't!" Clara said. "You know you can't!"
"And what choice do I have, Clara?" the Doctor asked. "It's either death or surrender, which will most likely lead to death. Death all around. I wouldn't call this my finest hour." Clara looked despairingly at the Dalek scout ship on the viewscreen.
"There must be something…can you look around?" The Doctor shrugged and adjusted the external sensors. The view on the screen shifted left, then right.
"I wish there was…wait, what is that?" The view swung far to the left. The Doctor and Clara stared…and smiled. The Doctor turned on his external communications.
"All right, we're coming out with the Time Lock. Come and get it." He switched it off, suppressing a small giggle.
"Did I sound defeated enough?" he asked.
"Think so" Clara replied. The pair picked up the pieces of the Time Lock and left the TARDIS. The Dalek scout ship lowered closer to the ground. They stood motionless as a hatch opened.
"Time for a distraction" the Doctor muttered. He spoke louder. "Excuse me? Dalek drones, or whatever you're calling yourselves? Are you sure you don't want to stop for a minute? Preserve the moment for prosperity? After all, you just captured the greatest enemy of your entire race. Seems you'd want to remember this for as long as possible."
"Prosperity is irrelevant" came the reply. "You will surrender the Time Lock. You will be returned to our universe and imprisoned on Skaro. Your companion will rejoin the Dalek Empire."
"That's likely" Clara muttered.
"Nope, afraid you wouldn't want her" the Doctor said. "She's not the Oswin you know…in fact, she's not Oswin at all, but that's irrelevant as well. My point is, you should try and enjoy a little glory. Do something, ANYTHING, that would make you just a little bit different than the rest of the Daleks!"
"And why would we do that?"
"Because if you did," the Doctor said, raising his voice slightly as a noise grew louder, "you'd have enough individuality to not think like the rest of your kind, and recognize this for the distraction it is!" He grabbed Clara and dove to the ground as Doc Brown's newly repaired, time-traveling steam engine smashed headlong into the Dalek ship, shattering the outer hull and lighting up the Old Western night in a violent explosion. Metal and circuitry flew every which way, along with some rather unpleasant bits of Dalek. The train screeched to a halt a few hundred yards away, backing up slowly as the Doctor and Clara got to their feet.
"Doctor!" Doc Brown said, stepping down from the cab. "Thank goodness Clara revived me in time to see what was happening. I'm so glad you managed to draw them away from Hill Valley!"
"That town's got some big moments coming" the Doctor replied. "Or, they already happened. You know how it is with time travel."
One time-jumping plot device later…
The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS with a smile on his face.
"I've managed to put together the parts your train will need" he informed Doc Brown. "And I should be ready to go soon." Doc Brown shook the Doctor's hand vigorously.
"This has been quite an experience, Doctor…I can only thank you for all your help!"
"And I for yours" the Doctor replied. "I'd be dead right now if you weren't such a good engineer. One piece of advice, though." He gestured to Clara. "Get this woman to a church, and soon. Don't let her get away!"
"Oh, I'm not going anywhere, Doctor" Clara replied, slipping an arm around Doc Brown's waist. "Isn't it better if I go time traveling anyway? I'm not supposed to exist right now."
"Clever woman" the Doctor replied with a wink. "Take her advice, Emmett, and have fun!" He walked back into the TARDIS. Doc Brown and Clara watched as it disappeared from their lives for the second time.
On board the TARDIS, Clara (Oswald) was keeping a careful eye on the console.
"Question, Doctor," she said as he walked up to her, "why is it that when we came to this universe, we didn't come directly to this time?"
"Traveling across dimensions and through time all at once," the Doctor replied, "takes more energy than doing one at a time. We've been traveling that way through the other dimensions the entire time. However, since Doc Brown is a time traveler, and we were low on power, it made more sense to travel to the present in this dimension, then track him through time. The Dalek invasion was an unpleasant side effect."
"What about Dumbledore?" Clara asked. "He might have been using a Time-Turner."
"True," the Doctor said, "but he'd probably have a very good reason for it, and not just travel through time all willy-nilly like Doc Brown." He smiled. "Willy-nilly. Now there's a fun word to say."
"If you say so" Clara said. "So does this mean we're ready to jump universes again?"
"Not only that," the Doctor replied, "but we should be able to get a jump on the Daleks. I'll be quite surprised if they follow us as quickly as before, since they should be having the same energy crisis. Here we go…back to school!" He pushed a button or two and yanked down on the lever.
"School?" Clara asked. "We were already at Hogwarts!"
"No, no, different school. Trust me, you'll like it."
"If you say so." Clara smiled as she watched the Time Rotor start to slide up and down.
"Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no!" She turned in alarm to see the look of anguish on the Doctor's face.
"What?"
"I forgot my hat!"
"Replay the recording." The Dalek commander watched the recording taken from Clara watching the Doctor make the modifications to his energy capacitors. Clara had been so fascinated, she hadn't realized that she couldn't turn her head or look away.
"Modify this process for our own energy batteries" the commander said.
"I obey" the science officer replied.
"Follow him."
A/N: And there's my longest chapter yet. Read and review!