This is a shift day. There are two updates today.

"Salvage"

10. The Good Doctor

The Palace, Mesphoria – in the year 2033

Mersi had led Sam to what he guessed was a guest dining room of some sort. There he found Rose sitting at a table, eating from a plate they had brought her. Another plate was waiting, he assumed for him. The guard woman nodded for him to go along, and he watched her go before joining Rose at the table.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

"I was on my way to get something to eat, when I…" she mimed the hit, and by the way she looked at his face he guessed she had left a mark on him. "This is not chips, but it's not half bad either, try it," she pointed to the plate. He picked up the utensil, which wasn't quite like the forks he was used to, but he imagined it served the same purpose.

"I don't know why, I thought they'd be bigger," he frowned.

"Why, because they are?" Rose asked.

"Well… yeah," he admitted. "Where did you go?"

"Not far. I didn't see anything, and then they found me and brought me here. They found out the Doctor came to help, so they decided to feed us." He was looking at one item on his plate, which looked halfway between a rice pudding and mashed potatoes, and she shook her head. "I wouldn't if I were you. Try this bit," she directed his fork. He tried a bite and was pleasantly surprised, which made Rose laugh.

"How do you get used to this?"

"You just do, I guess," she shrugged. "You come to a new world, it's not going to look like anything you're used to, so you have to try."

"Makes sense," he agreed. He gave himself the space of a few bites before getting around to asking what he wanted to ask. "So you've been doing this for a while then? Travelling, with him?"

"I suppose. It hasn't really been that long, actually."

"How'd you meet him?" The question made her smile.

"I met him, I'd say for you it was about twenty-seven, twenty-eight years ago," she counted, and he stared at her. "What, time travel," she reminded him.

"Right," he sat back, so she continued.

"He just… came out of nowhere, one night. There was this thing, a… a consciousness. It could animate plastic. I met the Doctor while he was looking into that. I thought he was… crazy, at first," she admitted. "Only then he wasn't. I helped him, and when it was all over, he offered to take me with him. How could I say no to this?" she smiled, taking another bite.

He tried to think about what he knew, from personal experience and from what he'd been told. He wasn't pretending that he completely understood this thing about regeneration, even after Gemma, and others, had testified to the fact that they had met this alien called the Doctor, and not all of them had seen the same one. It was one thing to be told that they were all the same person, but it was another to experience it. His own encounter with the Doctor, not this one here, was so many years away now, but he hadn't forgotten. If he had found himself in that man's presence, he would have accepted right away that he was in a good place, and that he could trust him. He did not know this man here, and though so far he seemed equally trustworthy, he had to know more. If this girl here had travelled with him, entrusted him with her safety, then she'd be the best one to ask.

"What's it like? What's… he like?" he went on, and she took a moment to think.

"You ask a lot of questions," she pointed out, and for a moment he thought she was on to him in some way. He played it like he hadn't even realized he was doing it.

"I'm sorry. It's just still a bit much to take, you know? One second I'm there, on Earth, and now I'm here. I need to know that I'm safe." She took this in, and she looked like she believed him.

"It can be a lot to take," she agreed. "Is it that there's someone you need to get back to?" she asked, reaching into her pocket. "I've got a phone if you need to call," she held it out to him. He looked at it. The model definitely looked like something from the years she'd mentioned earlier.

"No, it's fine, I don't… It's just me," he revealed, and she put the phone away.

"Oh. No wife, no girlfriend, or…" she asked slowly.

"No," he replied. "I have my parents, brother and sister, but they're back home, they think I'm on a trip to England."

"So if you didn't mention Wales, you'd definitely not want to bring up Mesphoria, would you?"

"Not really, no," he shook his head with a smirk and she laughed.

"Fair enough," she nodded. "As for the Doctor, all I can say is, if you ask me, there's no safer place than with him."

"So, no danger then?"

"Oh, no, there's definitely danger," she corrected. "But not the kind you had in mind. He helps people sometimes, when they need him."

"Like here."

"Yes. And sometimes that means that there'll be danger, but the Doctor will be there, and that counts for more than I could possibly say. Sometimes he can be a bit dark, closed off, but he has reasons." She'd left it off at that, so he could guess he shouldn't expect any kind of response from her on that particular subject.

All in all, from what she'd told him, he had come to the conclusion that he was where he should be. Even if it had been an earlier version of Gemma than the one he'd first known who had brought him here – if he had it all right, which frankly he wasn't sure he did – she had to know what she was throwing him into, so why would she put him in the hands of someone untrustworthy?

"So what does that taste like?" he pointed to another thing on his plate.

"I think that's what they call an acquired taste."

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)