Author's Note: In the previous chapter, the neural relay system in the wedding bands is not new—I borrowed it from Silence in the Library (and Time of the Angels), where it is that tech that makes data ghosts possible. I figured rings that have demonstrated sensitivity to psychic effects and mental communication would not have to stretch far to have data-ghost capabilty.
And, timey-wimey mess concludes in this chapter. I confess I don't know if I kept it all straight, but the Paradox Machine (crafty invention that it is) is more or less the end-all explanation for how everything holds together. I hope it hasn't been too much of a headache trying to follow it all so far—my apologies, and I hope other things in this story make up for it. We have yet to get to the Eleventh Doctor!
T Minus 88 Days, 0 Hours, 42 Minutes (and 37 seconds, and counting)
Rose stared at the Doctor's ring in her hands for a moment before slipping it onto the ring finger on her right hand. It felt appropriate, as she wore both their wedding bands, that she felt like two people at once. She picked up the sonic screwdriver from the floor, the same one that had been in the Doctor's hands just a second ago. Not trying to think too much, she continued his work. The Doctor had been just minutes from completing the Paradox Machine, and she finished it in moments without fanfare. When she looked up, both Dave and Lynn were watching her. She gave them instructions to move the machine outside, as close to the anomaly as they could get it.
Then she called her father on her phone, and baffled him further by asking him to check the pockets on her pink bathrobe. He found a piece of paper. It had coordinates. In fact, it was a short list of them. He read them to her. She found a piece of paper, and a pen, and wrote them down. Then she took them to the Paradox Machine, and pre-programmed the first coordinates into it.
She was, for the moment, part timelord, part human; part Rose, part Doctor. It hurt her head, but not as badly as the time (she recalled faintly) that she was Bad Wolf. And one thing she knew, something she knew the Doctor had not wanted to acknowledge, was that she would be better creating the very very very very complicated space-time event than he was. Because she had been in the TARDIS more than this incarnation of him. Because she had been Bad Wolf. The crack was not going to unwrite her so easily. She just hadn't known how to do it before. But now, with part of the Doctor's consciousness with her, she did. She could.
The Dimension Cannon had been so called because when it was first built, it had, for a time, fired her into other universes, other dimensions. Now it was going to help launch her into the past, and to where she needed to be, to bring the Doctor and his very very very very complicated space-time event back again.
She explained quickly to Lynn and Dave what they had to do. Of course they hadn't used the cannon before; in their pasts, it had never been needed. The stars had never gone out. They listened in amazement, then did as told, and before long, she was standing in front of the modified cannon/Paradox Machine's business end, the anomaly behind her, the word "initialise" issuing from her lips.
The next thing she knew, she was in the alien's engine room (in its past, when it was still on its earth-bound journey), surrounded by its engineers. She cloaked herself immediately with her ring, nearly swallowing her tongue in the process, but thankful she hadn't given herself away. Then, as silently as she could, she assessed the room, even peeked around one of the aliens to read their computer displays, and was unable to stop a grin from growing on her face.
Oh, Doctor, you only secured one engine from the aliens because the other one they were carrying, the one that "failed", was mine.
She stood between two alien engines. Picking the one in use (Such pretty lights! She thought), she reached for its shiniest, most vital and dettachable-looking part, and yanked it out.
The engine room broke into pandemonium. Engines didn't usually fail mid-flight without preceding signs of trouble; alarms rang out, lights dimmed, and only vital programs kept running, fueled by stored secondary power. She watched as the alien engineers, confused but calm, decided to switch to the second engine without delay. It kicked into action, killing the alarms and restoring the lights and power. Rose kept back as the aliens then started to fuss over the first engine, flummoxed by its failure and missing piece. She amused herself and confused them further by using her ring to occasionally cloak other parts of the engine from view, throw illusions of sparks here and there, and generally challenge them as much as she could until they gave up.
Still hidden from their sight, she started using the "failed" engine to build her own Vortex Manipulator.
"Where is he? I mean, where are you?" asked Harriet Jones (of the present) as she glared at the scarf-less Doctor next to the alien ship's engine. She had been watching all the computer screens for over thirty minutes and nothing had changed since the Future Ugly-Scarf Doctor had charged her with the task. Finally she'd gotten a bit tired and thought she'd run quickly to check on the Doctors. The lone Doctor looked up at her from the mess of wires and metal parts on the engine room floor and blinked at her.
"Beg your pardon?" he asked. "Me?" His sonic screwdriver was poised just above something that looked like a food processor.
"The other you. The one who was here, from the future."
"Oh," he said, attention returning to the construction of his... what was it? Vortex Manipulator. "Me. Me from later. I'm very busy. Will be very busy. Places to do, things to see. I just wish I'd..." His voice trailed off.
"Just wish you'd...?" Harriet Jones prompted.
The Doctor shook his head as if to clear it. "Just wish the other me had been able to stay. He told me how to build this thing (not that I wouldn't have been figure it out) but it did save time. For some reason, it just..." He shook his head again.
"He needed to go on a merry goose chase," said a familiar woman's voice out of thin air. "I can help you now. You're running late." These words were said with the exasperation that could only come from a long-suffering wife.
The Doctor and Harriet Jones looked up to see Rose Tyler walking from empty space and into their sight, as if she had come out from behind a wall that wasn't there.
"What happened to me?" The Doctor asked, his eyes on Rose's Vortex Manipulator.
"Sorry, luv," Rose murmured as she bent down, removing another sonic screwdriver from her pocket—his, he realised—and started assembling engine parts next to him. "You just weren't very very very very complicated enough."
"Oi," said the Doctor, hurt. But she kissed him on his forehead, which did make it better. In fact, the contact between her lips and his skin seemed to restore him—the working and assembly of the makeshift Vortex Manipulator was clear in his head again—he didn't understand why it was getting fuzzy before.
Was it fuzzy before? Timelord senses tingling, he looked at Rose, head cocked.
"What?" asked Rose, not looking up from her work. Her hands and fingers were moving at a speed and with a knowledge that was nearly supernatural. They were almost done. It shouldn't have been possible. At least, that was what he thought until he noted that she was wearing two rings.
"Did you just save me from something?" the Doctor asked. More than that, he knew he couldn't, shouldn't, ask.
She looked at him then, her eyes twinkling, a smile on her lips. "You don't have to sound so bloody grateful," she said.
They completed the Vortex Manipulator together, at least up to the point the last piece was still to be disconnected from the alien ship. Once that happened, nothing, not even peppermint oil, was going to stop the aliens responding to the alarm that the ship was completely engine-less.
Rose checked the work over quickly, then helped the Doctor put the Vortex Manipulator, as it was, onto his back. Then she turned to Harriet Jones. In one hand, she held a folded piece of paper. In the other, Harriet Jones' note-taker.
"Madam President, I have two favours to ask," said Rose. She placed the note-taker in Hariet Jones' hand first. "Give this to me the next time you see me. To be specific: the first time you see me next. It has files, codes; just information needed to keep the Viceroy distracted. Don't tell me you got this from, well, me. Just say it was from the Doctor."
Harriet Jones nodded.
"This," said Rose, passing her the folded piece of paper, "you don't even have to say anything at all. Just put it in the pocket of the pink bathrobe. It'll be clear when you come to it."
"Pink bathrobe," repeated Harriet Jones. "Alright."
Rose smiled at the Doctor and Harriet Jones. "You have no idea how good it is to see you." She gave them a hug at the same time, ignoring the puzzled looks from the Doctor all the while. "Now, you didn't see me. This will all be a dream. Now go, both of you. I'm just here to make sure it works," she said, tapping the Doctor's Vortex Manipulator.
"You confound me, Rose," said the Doctor. But he still started entering coordinates into his Vortex Manipulator, and Harriet Jones didn't say anything when he took her hand.
"Madam President, we have to go. Boss's orders," he said, quirking his head at Rose. Rose grinned.
"See you later," said Rose. She ripped the last required component from the alien ship, and plugged it into the Vortex Manipulator on the Doctor's back.
The Doctor's machine activated, and then they were gone.
The next scene was familiar to Rose as alarms erupted and lights dimmed in the engine room again. At least this time she was alone, for the moment. "Hush," she whispered, almost to herself, as she used the sonic screwdriver to jam the locks on the door to the engine room. That would buy her some time.
She removed the Vortex Manipulator from her back, dismantling it as quickly as she could. Then she replaced the stolen parts back into the plundered skeleton of the alien's second engine, rebuilding it— with a small but important change. She was going to send the engine—and only the engine—into the past. To coordinates she had looked up, given to herself, then memorised. To the moment the ship was being prepared for voyage and having its second engine installed. The second engine that had always been the first.
It seemed to her nicely circular, timey-wimey, and very very very complicated. This Paradox Machine had its work cut out for it—and cut out by it, for that matter. The machine could never have been built... if it had never been built. Even human Rose could admire the beauty of that.
She ignored the scratching at the door, working as quickly as she could. When she was done, the restored but different engine disappeared in front of her eyes. The doors to the engine room opened, and clicking, angry aliens burst into the room.
"Now for my very last trick," Rose said. Phone and sonic screwdriver in her hands, she sent a signal to the Dimension Cannon/Paradox Machine down on Earth. She waited only a half-second, giving the Paradox Machine time to engage and isolate the space-time anomaly in front of it. Then she called the Paradox Machine to her.
The aliens, the ship and entire universe seemed to be screaming at the same time as the machine and space-time crack was transported into their midst. The bright, erasing light from the gaping maw of the crack's sinister smile almost blinded Rose; she threw her hands up to block the light—and noted with regret that the Doctor's ring had already disappeared from her right hand finger. And she thought she saw, but couldn't be sure, the Doctor dettaching himself from the side of the Dimension Cannon/Paradox Machine and approaching her with a Dimension Jumper. "Not today, Rose," she thought she heard him say, before he wrapped her in his arms and took her away.