"All right, everybody into the T.A.R.D.I.S., I'll jump an hour or two into the future. Hello, Ben and Polly, I'm bringing Dodo to you in an hour or two right now."
"Doctor, what does that mean?"
"Sorry, time travel tense trouble. It means I'm travelling into the future by an hour or two right now."
"Ah."
Everybody got into the T.A.R.D.I.S. Liz Shaw's reaction was of a sheer amazement.
"Doctor, when you said, it was bigger on the inside. I didn't really believe you."
"Well, what do you think, Liz?"
"I think it's incredible. There are so many buttons and levers. How do you know which buttons to push?"
"Experience"
"Doctor, what's this switch?"
"Liz, that switch there is the fast return switch. Hold the switch down, and the T.A.R.D.I.S. will be sent hurdling into the beginnings of the universe. All time-keeping technology will disintegrate, and all machines will stop working."
"How do you know this, Doctor?" Troilus asked.
"Because one time, the spring to the switch got stuck, so I experienced it firsthand. Barbara here figured it out."
"Just in time too." Barbara replied.
"Liz, you can ask me all the questions you want about the T.A.R.D.I.S. after I drop everybody off at their proper places. But here's the abridged version. That is the dematerializing control and that, over yonder, is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors (which Salamander forgot about), that is a comfy chair. Sheer poetry, dear Liz. Now, please stop me bothering me for now. You can ask me all the questions you want after I drop everybody else off at their proper places."
"Doctor, that's exactly what you told me when you explained the T.A.R.D.I.S.!" Steven smirked.
"What?! No, it isn't."
"Really, because you used the exact same lines. Is it a prepared speech or something?"
" I did not tell you the same thing. I didn't describe the chair as comfy. It was a different chair when I first explained it to you. It had a panda on it."
"Oh. I see. That makes all the different in the universe." Steven sarcastically replied. "Though I must say, Doctor, you've been doing it up the interior a bit."
"What, are you going to say you don't like it?"
"No, on the contrary, I prefer this. I actually get 'space-time' machine out of this."
"Oh, well. That's a change of pace."
"How so, Doctor?" Vicki asked.
"Usually, when people see a new T.A.R.D.I.S. interior, they don't like it. Don't like it all." the Doctor replied.
"Who says that?" Barbara asked.
"Myself."
"What?!"
"Barbara, I'm a time traveler. You don't think I've met myself before?" the Doctor squabbled.
"Do the earlier versions of you ever remember it?" Vicki asked.
"It has only happened once. It helped the Fifth Doctor and the Tenth Doctor stop a black hole the size of Belgium from appearing inside the T.A.R.D.I.S. I remembered it as the Fifth Doctor which allowed me to solve the problem as the Tenth Doctor. Stable time loop at its simplest."
"Did anything happen?" Troilus asked.
"Well, the Tenth Doctor did proceed to crash the T.A.R.D.I.S. into the Titanic. That's how I knew as the Ninth Doctor to keep my friends away from it."
"So you're definitely later than the Fifth Doctor, and probably later than the Tenth Doctor." Clara commented.
"Not necessarily, Clara. I could still be a Doctor prior to the Fifth. My future self could have told me about that encounter." the Doctor said.
"What? How does that make any sense?" Steven asked.
"For the record, Steven, whenever multiple versions of myself meet, I always determine the first Doctor to remember the meeting as the 'present' Doctor. Any Doctor who comes before is a 'past Doctor', and any Doctor that comes after is 'a future Doctor'." the Doctor explained.
"So have you ever met your future self?" Liz asked.
"Once. Maybe more."
"How can you not know?" Liz queried.
"Well, for one thing, I probably wouldn't remember the meetings. And number two, who's to say, a future version of me hasn't walked by me, and I not know it?" the Doctor responded.
"Oh, I see your point." Liz said.
"When did you meet your future self?" Vicki asked.
"I met my future self once, Vicki. I saw a man who didn't go by the Doctor anymore, didn't deserve to go by the name."
"Why?" Kate asked.
"Because of what happened on Gallifrey. The trials of life you could say." the Doctor replied. His grim silence discouraged any more questions.
The Doctor flipped a switch and they were off.
"Why didn't I ever go in when we were working together before?" Liz said, returning to fawning over the T.A.R.D.I.S., and going over to the console.
"Possibly because your own skepticism prevented you from actually entering. I'm sorry, it's a human trait."
"What's a human trait?" Clara commented.
"Humans have the remarkable ability to doubt what they cannot believe to be true, even when proof to the contrary is being shoved in their face. It's matched only by humanity's skill at abandoning common skill at convenient intervals."
"Thanks, Doctor." Steven said, as the T.A.R.D.I.S vworped out of the hospital room. "That isn't the most cliche, back-handed compliment ever given to the human race."
The Doctor deposited Barbara off and set his next stop for Ben and Polly where Dodo would stay for the time being. As Dodo was walking of the T.A.R.D.I.S., Vicki volunteered to help Ben and Polly.
"You sure, Vicki?"
"Positive. I mean, I'm about the same age as Dodo, so I can think like her."
"Fair enough."
"Hey, Dodo. Ready for something?" Vicki shouted to Dodo as she jogged off the T.A.R.D.I.S. after her with all of her possessions she had brought along.
"Ready for what?"
"I don't know yet. I just know something."
"Does that even make sense?"
"Yes, of course, it makes sense."
"How?"
"How doesn't it make sense to you!?"
The two girls continued squabbling good-naturedly while the T.A.R.D.I.S. dematerialized, and the Doctor ended up in his old lab back during his U.N.I.T. days.
"Ah, my old lab. I'd forgotten how much I appreciated this" the Doctor said, looking around.
"Doctor, does the lab have everything you require?" Kate asked.
"Yes, so far, I believe it does, I'll let you know if I need anything. Steven, Troilus, help Kate with anything she needs. Come on, Liz, Clara, we've got work to do."
"Doctor, what do we need to do?"
"Well, first thing, Clara, I need you to go into the T.A.R.D.I.S. and retrieve some travel dials. Use the voice-activation system to find their location within the T.A.R.D.I.S., key words: 'Marinus', 'travel' and 'dial', you'll be directed to where they are."
"Travel dials, Doctor? What are they?
"They operate much in the same way as the T.A.R.D.I.S. does. You pre-set them to a specific location, and they automatically take you there. It allows you to travel through space, but not through time. Liz, they're quite common, but I happened to get these from Marinus. They'll be the basis of what I'm developing."
"Marinus? What happened on Marinus?" Liz asked.
. The Doctor continued to walk around his old laboratory. Oh, the memories. But he couldn't spend all of his time reminiscing, he had to get on with work. His plan was to rewire the travel dials so that in a pinch, any companion could use them and automatically return to the T.A.R.D.I.S. He would base it off of the fast-return switch. He also planned on wiring communication devices. As he looked at his instruments, he told Liz about the adventure on Marinus.
. "Oh, Ian, Barbara, Susan and I scoured the entire planet looking for microcircuits to keep running a supercomputer. Marinus had this system which eliminated evil thoughts from its inhabitants, but there was this race called the Voord who developed immunity to the computer. We retrieved all the keys, but unfortunately, in order to stop the Voord from gaining control over the entire planet, we had to destroy it."
"Why do you say 'unfortunately'?"
"It's a mixed bag. As a result of the computer, Marinus was a peaceful world for almost a millennium. It made its inhabitants unafraid of war, crime, and all the rest. It was unique in the universe for that. But the problems were that when the problems came, the inhabitants were ill-adapted towards it, and as I said at the time 'I don't believe that man was made to be controlled by machines.Machines can make laws, but they cannot preserve justice. Only human beings can do that.'" While the Doctor explained about the time on Marinus, Vicki and Dodo were standing in Ben and Polly's sitting room, wondering what they were going to do. Polly came downstairs.
"Ah, I see you're here. I'm afraid there's not much to do here."
"That's okay. What time is it?" Vicki asked.
"It's about 10:45 AM, local time." Polly replied.
"So, where's the nearest bookstore?" Vicki asked.
"Bookstore? Bookstore? Really, Vicki?" Dodo replied.
"Well, I'm curious to see how scholars interpreted Ancient Greece."
"I see, you want to open a book and silently mock all the historians at how wrong they got their facts." Polly teased.
"Precisely"
Dodo was prepared to spend the morning watching television. She had no idea what she wanted to watch, she would watch whatever seemed interesting or Ben suggested. But then she spotted something sitting below the television.
"What's this?"
"A SEGA Megadrive and some old game cartridges, Ben picked them up at a yard sale for our son thirty years ago. It doesn't work anymore, but the games are available elsewhere. Our grandchildren love the games."
"Could you play Mario on them?"
"Mario, Vicki?" Ben had just walked in the door. "A Nintendo game on a SEGA console? Impossible. That never happened."
"But didn't Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog have a few games together?"
"Unless you're talking about the Olympic games released a decade later, then no. Mario and Sonic were the biggest gaming rivals in the 1990s. As a matter of fact, until the SEGA Dreamcast fell so far behind the competition in 2001-"
"Ben, not this again. I know you're a fan of video games, I will never understand why, but I'm pretty sure that they don't want to hear all about it."
"I like video games because they're a source of intellectual stimulation and they allow me to bond with our grandchildren whenever they come over. Even if they do complain that the X-Box One and the PS4 are outdated."
"So, Ben, do you have anything a bit more modern?"
"Yeah, the SEGA Megadrive and its attachments is my classic console. Though it hasn't worked for years."
"What kind of gaming console has attachments?"
"Oh, I give up. Ben, you can educate the girls all you like about video games." Polly said, throwing her hands up in frustration.
"The SEGA Megadrive had a couple of attachments, the SEGA CD and the 32X , meant to allow more powerful games."
"Did they work as a marketing strategy?" Vicki asked.
"Well, no. Neither add-on sold well, and many people consider the only quality games to ever be made for the CD and 32X are Sonic CD and Knuckles Chaotix."
"And both are Sonic the Hedgehog games?"
"Well, yes. Knuckles Chaotix is a spinoff game for Knuckles, but same franchise."
"Ben, quick question, how do you know all this?"
"Well, my grandson has a tendency to go on these spiels about both his favorite video games and video game commentary channels."
"Video Game Commentaries?"
"Yes, on the Internet, people record themselves playing a particular video game, and then they talk about the game. It can quite entertaining."
"What are your grandson's favorite channels?"
"Oh, one involves a pair of brothers and the older brother's friend. Another is the name of an episode from this show that I've never watched called Cowboy Bebop. Within 18 months or so, they'll be celebrating their ten-year anniversary. Apparently they're a self-proclaimed rip-off of a video game commentary featuring British guys."
"Okay, why does your grandson like them?"
"Because all of them have a tendency to go off onto topics that have nothing to do with the games they're reviewing."
"How so?" Dodo asked.
"Well, you know how the Doctor has a tendency to wander off topic in the conversation?"
"Yeah."
"Compared to these guys, the Doctor is succinct and always focused."
"Oh, dear."
"Ben, you said your SEGA Mega drive doesn't work? Could I take a look at it? I might be able to help. In the meantime, Vicki, why don't you go to the bookstore?" Dodo said.
"Polly! The girls have a plan for what they're going to do for the day." Ben called up to his wife.
"Yeah- what is it?"
"I'll stay here with Dodo because she wants to fiddle around with the old Mega Drive for a bit. She thinks she can get it working. And you and Vicki can go to a bookstore, and she can pick out some good books." Turning to Vicki, Ben continued."Personally, I'd recommend H.G. Wells. He has some great fictional pieces, and if you're really hungry for an over view of history, Wells wrote the first editions of 'An Outline Of History' about a century ago."
"Polly, at about some point, why don't you call us up and we can agree on where to take the girls for lunch. Does that sound good?"
"Yeah."
Polly came downstairs.
"Come on, Vicki, there's a great bookshop called 'Daunt Books' over on Maryleborne High Street."
As Polly and Vicki left to walk down Baker Street, Dodo began inspecting the Megadrive. She took a Sonic & Knuckles Cartridge and inserted it into the slot. Upon turning on the television with the Megadrive connected, she flipped the On-Off switch just about the reset button, and discovered it wouldn't turn on.
"Okay, the adapter cord is in. There's no tearing anywhere. Ben, do you have a screwdriver, I'll have to disassemble it first. It looks like I need a Phillips #1."
"I should have one in the pantry."
"Where is it?"
"It's the only door in the kitchen. Once inside, look down and to the right."
"Thank you."
Dodo went to get a screwdriver and begin disassembling the Megadrive. Noting that the Outer Case looked completely fine except for the normal wear and tear, she examined the motherboard closely by separating it from the outer case. There was a single black screw on the bottom cover that needed to be removed using the same Phillips Screwdriver. She saw the silver casing, and removed the eleven screws. Pushing the headphone jack to the side, she took out the single golden screw, and then the two black screw on the left and right sides of the cartridge slot, and removed the motherboard.
"Yep, this is a European Megadrive, and judging by the motherboard revision of VA6, it has TMSS."
"So?"
"Most SEGA games for this system aren't PAL-encoded. Therefore, everything runs a bit slower on the European Megadrive than an American Genesis. TMSS also means it boots up a specific screen instead of going straight to the game."
"Ah. I see. Anything else?"
"Well, it uses the same mono and Stereo amps as an HD Genesis 1 Model. So the sound should be just as good, though the pitch should be a bit lower because the Megadrive's slower master clock."
"The motherboard doesn't seem to be problem" Dodo said, as she finished looking at the motherboard, but she found the source of the issue. Inside the Megadrive, the power cord serial port was loose. She tightened it, and after reassembling the Genesis, the console unit now turned on.
"Hmmm, the console unit is on. The cartridge is fully inserted, and securely at that." Dodo looked at it.
"Dodo, it always does that. We have no idea how to fix it. We've taken it to various technological fix-it stores, but none of them know or care about the Megadrive anymore."
"Perhaps it's a problem with the game port itself. I'll clean it."
"What do you need?"
"A credit card and some sandpaper. I'm going to insert into the cartridge slot."
"What? How does that work?"
"I don't know. I know it works."
"How do you know it works? Is it from experience?"
"No. I just know." Dodo stopped suddenly. She was just now realizing an important detail. She had never even seen a Megadrive in her entire life, and yet she still knew how to troubleshoot it and repair it. She had the intelligence to take a glance at a broken Megadrive and could immediately identify the difference between a Megadrive and a SEGA Genesis because of technical specifications.
"What? How can I do this? I was never mechanically inclined from what I remember about myself." Dodo contemplated.
"What's wrong, Dodo?" Ben asked, concerned.
"Huh. Nothing. I'm going to get back to fixing the Megadrive." Dodo replied.
"Speaking of which, I'm curious how the T.A.R.D.I.S. actually works, Doctor." Liz asked, as the Doctor paced around the laboratory.
"Imagine there is someone holding a rock some distance away from you. Focus on the rock. It takes time for light to travel from the rock to you, so effectively you are seeing the rock in the past. Now, granted, it's not that far in the past, but still it's in the past."
"Alright, I understand so far."
"Now, imagine someone was throwing the rock towards you. How far you saw the rock in the past would change as the rock approached you because it takes the light a shorter amount of time to travel the distance between you and the rock."
"Where are you going with this, Doctor?" Kate asked.
"Anyway, the light has a shorter distance to travel, so it takes less time. You see it less in the past. Now imagine you could warp space so that the rock reached you at the same time as the light. That's the science behind how the T.A.R.D.I.S. travels throughout space-time. What you're doing when you travel space-time is essentially altering what the light shows in the past. It's why fixed points exist."
"But what I want to know is all the machines work." Dr. Shaw asked.
"Well, I'm afraid I can't do that Liz. Even I don't quite know everything about every machine. You see, most of the time it takes a crew of six to run a T.A.R.D.I.S. Not to mention, I can't reveal the mechanics behind a machine that could travel space and time."
"Oh, I understand, Doctor."
"Well, you certainly caught on faster than Winston Churchill."
"Winston Churchill?"
"Yes, ol' Winston Churchill. Excellent friend of mine, ranks right up there with Marco Polo. Liz, all you need to know is, I have ways of getting back, including a fast return switch.
"Has it ever broken, Doctor?" Clara asked.
"Once."
"Doctor, what happened with you and Winston Churchill?"
"Oh, let's see, the Daleks used my identification as the Doctor to restore their race and create Supreme Daleks. There was a negated timeline where this humorous exchange took place,
'Good Lord, man, haven't you heard of downloads?'
'said Winston Churchill'
and there were a couple of other things that I can't remember at the moment, but I'm sure they'll come back to me."
"Winston Churchill knew about downloads?"
"In a negated timeline!"
"A negated timeline? What negated timeline could possibly cause Winston Churchill to know about downloads?" Clara asked.
"Ummm, I'd rather not say" the Doctor replied. "
Vicki and Polly were looking for reading material. Polly was interested in the tabloids. Vicki couldn't care less. She browsed for an hour, when suddenly she found a book worth reading. It had a man with a monocle and a mustache gazing straight out of the cover. The title was "Theodore Rex", the author: Edmund Morris. Opening the front cover, she discovered it was the middle book of a trilogy. However, much to her disappointment, the store was lacking the other two.
"Polly, look at what an interesting biography I've found!"
"Theodore Rex?"
"Yeah. I've never read a biography on an American President before. I'm curious about him."
"Vicki, is that really the book you want?"
"Yes."
"What? Why?"
"Well, his time as the president of America takes place in between the Victorian era and the Great War, and that's a historical time period I haven't read much about."
. Polly acquiesced, she had been hoping Vicki would have picked a good book that would have been bit more 'normal' for a teenage girl to enjoy. Oh well, at least it wasn't 'Twilight'. She didn't understand how her granddaughters could enjoy that series at all with its stilted dialogue and creepy romances, and those movies were terrible.
. At the requests of her granddaughters, she had watched one of them on Blu-Ray back home, and experience suggested when the only entertainment you could squeeze out of a movie is counting the absurdly high number of stares it was a bad movie. Polly spent eleven pounds plus tax for the book, and the two headed back to the Baker Street. They came home to Dodo finally getting the Megadrive working and booting up Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
"Vicki, what book did you buy?" Dodo said, as she used Sonic's fire shield ability to flame-dash into Angel Island's boss.
"'Theodore Rex' by Edmund Morris" Vicki replied.
"Hmmm, that sounds interesting. What's it about?"
"The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt."
"And what happens?"
"If I knew what happened, I wouldn't be reading it, now would I?" Vicki snarked.
"Fair point. Hey Ben, do you know to pronounce this zone's name? Is it Hydro-city or Hy-drocity ?"
"It's 'Hydro-city', but personally I like 'Hy-drocity' better. You know, going for the 'velocity' pun. It sounds better." Ben answered.
"Ah."
"Vicki, I thought you were going to get something by H.G. Wells." Ben asked.
"I was. I couldn't find it, but this caught my eye instead." Vicki replied.
. Polly and Vicki sat down with Ben on the couch in front of their television. Horizontal gears in all their pixilated glory sped a blue hedgehog up some blue helical half-pipes while an orange, two-tailed fox floated over to him. A bubble surrounded the blue hedgehog preventing him from drowning, but the fox would be frequently subjected to a countdown that signaled oncoming drowning. Dodo soon beat the stage's boss, and the second act. Now, ruins dominated the screen. Dodo struggled with controlling the blue tops that broke walls.
"Hey Vicki, you can plug in a second controller and play as Tails."
"I can?"
"Yeah, you can."
. Vicki left the bag containing her new biography, picked up the SEGA controller and plugged it in. To her frustration, the camera only followed Sonic, and so she frequently had no idea where Tails was. Even more nerve-whacking was the fact that she couldn't control Tails until the AI touched him down.
. Finally, they reached the end of Marble Garden where Sonic and Tails had to use teamwork to beat the boss. It took them awhile, but they manage to maneuver Sonic to jump from Tails' grasp (who had been granted infinite flight exclusively for the boss fight) and popped the cockpit on the top for the final hit.
"Alright, we did it!" the two girls exclaimed, as they high-fived one another. Ben and Polly quietly looked on and smiled.
"Well, Dodo, that's enough for me. I'm going to read 'Theodore Rex' now." Vicki said as she went upstairs and sat on the bed in the one of the guest rooms.
"Sure thing." Dodo shrugged as she continued to 'Carnival Night'.
"Oh, watch out for the 'Barrel of Doom'." Ben warned Dodo.
"What?"
"The fan nickname for a particular gimmick used in this level. People actually called SEGA asking for help to get pass it."
"Really? Do you know how to get pass it?"
"Yeah, go up and down."
"Seriously. That's it?"
"Yeah, that's it."
"Wow."
. The Doctor was about to get started on the sub-wave network communicators when his mind wandered back to Troilus's question about Katarina, and then he realized he also had to design breathing apparatuses. Troilus had triggered a heel realization when he and Vicki had asked about Katarina. He thought about her death. Her very last words were "You show me so many strange mysteries. With you I know I'm safe." The T.A.R.D.I.S. had been stuck on the planet Kembel far away from the spaceship where Katarina died; they had been out of the boundaries of the synthetic atmosphere that the T.A.R.D.I.S. created.
. And then he pondered something, why would the Daleks ever create an atmosphere that allowed humans to breathe? That went double for Cyberman. If you want to destroy your enemies, asphyxiating them is pretty fool-proof. He made a mental note to never bring this up for the Daleks and Cyberman to use, but he also now realized that he had make the breathing apparatuses inconspicuous.
. Dr. Shaw knew that look in the Doctor's eye. She had seen it many times when the two were coworkers. It was his 'chess master' look, the look someone has when they're thinking up a primordial strategy with lots of unknown variables, and assessing likely sequence of events, and anticipating that a least a few of them won't have the preferred outcome. Walking over to the Doctor, Liz began to question him in her usual fashion where she made him voice out his correct plans as a failsafe to see if he was suffering from a glaring oversight.
"I can see the gears of your brain are turning. What do you have in mind?"
"Hmmm. Yes, Liz. Well, I'm trying to think of a way to keep everybody informed enough that they have a general idea about what's going on, and yet not know so much that a mole or a capture would jeopardize everything."
"So you're thinking ahead?"
"Precisely"
"So how are you going to accomplish this task?"
"Well, I have no idea at the moment. I suppose I could whip up some sub-wave network communicators. But I have no idea how long that could take."
"Doctor, you do realize we have these things called 'group-texts'."
"What?"
"Yeah. iPhones."
"iPhones?"
"What's an iPhone? Oh, you mean those smartphones everybody seems so addicted to!"
"What, we're not addicted to them!"
"Really? What happens if you lose them?"
"People don't lose their iPhones."
"What if they break?"
"Doctor, even if the glass cracks a little, it can still work."
"Oh, really. I've already counted a multitude of reasons why iPhones and group chats…""group texts""… iPhones and group texts wouldn't work."
"Oh really. What are they?"
"First, could you guys even get cell reception on Mars? Or Ganymede? Or Callisto?"
"We could use your T.A.R.D.I.S. to amplify the signal."
"What? The T.A.R.D.I.S. is not a cellular reception tower. Although, I will admit that is very clever on your part, Liz."
"What are the other reasons?"
"Well, number two. Notice Steven. Notice Troilus. And Dodo and Vicki are at Ben and Polly's flat, iPhones are a recent human invention. They weren't exactly present on Ancient Greece or on Trenzalore, and Dodo's been out of the loop for fifty years! Whatever caused her current state wasn't going to take a break to let Dodo Chaplet acquire the latest smartphone!"
"I see your point. But do you have any other reasons?"
"Yeah. Even if you could get cell service on extraterrestrial objects, who's to say they could still electronically function? Mars is full of microscopic dust and ice. Do you have protection against two molecular substances that, if they got inside, would slowly disintegrate your phone?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Exactly. So iPhones won't work. And so I come back to my sub wave network communicators. I'll have to make some before I depart."
"You don't have some on hand?"
"No, again, unless it's a Dalek Invasion, I'm not usually coordinating something this massive. And even when it comes to Dalek Invasions, my plan is pretty much straightforward. Come in, fend off Daleks, give some sage advice to the surviving resistance, depart."
"Oh, you don't stick around and help rebuild."
"Liz, that's not in my nature. Many times I've been requested to help, the Thals, the natives Steven stayed behind to help, but I always felt I was lacking …"
"lacking what?"
"the proper mindset. I'm a wanderer of the stars, Liz. That's who I am always going to be. But what I've come to realize is that doesn't mean that I have to wander the stars all the time."
"Doctor, so what about those sub-wave network communicators? What's the general idea behind how they would work."
"Ah, yes. The advantages of the sub-wave network is that it can be set up to be undetectable. Not to mention, there is hardly any delay between receivers."
"Hardly any delay?"
"Well, let's say I'm on Mars, and you're here. It takes light a certain amount of time to travel between Earth and Mars. It takes even longer for the radio waves that your smartphones use. There would be a massive delay between communications. Whereas smartphones would be basically reduced into high level telegraphs, a sub-wave network communicator bypasses the restrictions. The waves travel throughout space much in the same way a T.A.R.D.I.S. The waves also can't be received by anybody other than the intended receiving device."
"Doctor, that sounds pretty good."
"Yeah, it does. Clara? Have you found the Marinus travel dials yet? Clara?"
