"Sands of time?" Bridger repeated, raising his eyebrows. He wasn't incredulous, exactly—just cautious. "You do realize, Doctor, what that Earth expression of ours actually means? What it's truly referring to?"

The Doctor made a face at him. "Of course I do," he answered, sounding a bit defensive at the very suggestion that he wouldn't know something. "And this isn't the first time that your expressions can take on a different, considerably more literal, meaning. A stitch in time saves nine and all that. I have to take that literally, even if you don't. I've had many a lecture on that, let me tell you." He sighed. "Yes, I know what your sands of time expression really means. But what's to say that nothing else was ever born out of that expression?"

"I have a feeling you'd rather tell me," Bridger said.

"Everything has its time," the Doctor began, grinning a bit as he did so, "even time itself. Have you ever wondered about those moments in your history that no one seems to know anything about? That's what happens when time can't cycle like it should, renewing itself. That time starts to die, all those moments filled with history, and it starts to break down and decay until there's hardly a sign of what happened once upon a time oh so long ago."

"Or perhaps," Bridger suggested, "we simply haven't gathered enough archaeological evidence to piece together what we know."

"Oh," the Doctor said, sounding a bit disgusted, "please don't talk to me about archaeologists. Waste of time, if you ask me, to have them spend all their time digging in the dirt as if they could unearth something from time immemorial that's long been lost in the mists of time, hoping that whatever it is has withstood the test of time, when they could be doing something useful to pass the time of day, especially considering that they're not even right half the time, but I suppose their thinking is that there's no time like the present, that time's of the essence, since time and tide wait for no man, and that if the time's ripe for it, they've no time to lose."

"Doctor," Bridger started, letting a touch of exasperation colour his tone, "I get your point. We have a lot of time related expressions in English. But would you mind telling me why this one in particular is pertinent at this time?"

The Doctor grinned. "It's high time that I got to the point, is it?" Bridger just looked at him, and the Doctor gave a small shrug. "Sorry. Couldn't resist. Though I do have a bit of a laugh whenever I come across archaeologists, being a time traveller and all. They usually are wrong. Well, most of the time."

"Doctor—"

"Sorry. Wasn't intentional that time, though. Just sort of slipped in. Mostly because that wasn't really an expression. But, yes, I see your point, time's a-wasting, and— Sorry! Really didn't mean to…. Well, maybe a little bit…." The Doctor trailed off and shook his head. "Anyway. Point is, time passes through cycles, like everything else. It restores itself, renews itself, sort of like water when it goes through the water cycle, and that way it can carry on. What we're passing through right now is fresh. New growth, scripting itself into history. And this fragment helps to allow that. It's just one stage in the cycle."

"But time isn't physically sand," Bridger protested, "and that's what it sounds like you're trying to tell me."

The Doctor opened his mouth, but it was still a few seconds before he said anything. "No," he finally agreed. "Time itself isn't physically sand, or dust, or any of that. But this is a physical manifestation of time. Bit complicated, granted, but essentially, this fragment contains time. It exists because it acts like a magnet, attracting things to it to create this shell, a physical barrier to protect itself."

"Against what?" Bridger asked. "The rest of time?"

The Doctor looked relieved that he'd made that last assertion, because a few seconds before he'd looked quite alarmed. "Yes, exactly," he confirmed. "And to protect the rest of time from it. It works both ways."

Bridger figured there was no point in hiding his doubts. The situation couldn't make any less sense, after all. He nodded at the fragment. "So if the time contained in that acts as a magnet, it would attract things that are opposite to it, yes? What's the opposite of time, then?"

The Doctor laughed. "Now's not the time for that discussion," he said, instead of answering the question. "Particularly because time for you lot is still just a widely accepted but completely misguided concept, at least in terms of your understanding of its true nature. Suffice to say that what it attracts is never the same thing twice and that it's always shifting, because what it attracts depends on which particular moments are cycling and what occurred within those moments. But, you see, the reason I could sense this fragment, could feel it, and none of the rest of you could, is because I've been through time more times than you could count. I'm saturated in it. More years have soaked into me than I've lived, I'd wager, and that's saying something. It's not just been a few trips through time for me, or even a few years of that travelling, like it has been for some of my companions. That wouldn't be enough for them to feel this. I've been in this time and in pieces of the same time cycling through other universes. I've been outside of time. I've even held the key to it in my own hands. I understand it. I can see it. And I am clearly too alike to be considered neutral by that fragment. It's trying to repel me. Must think I meddle too much for my own good."

There were some things, Bridger knew, that just had to be accepted, no matter how weird or wonderful they were. The Doctor, with all his ideas, was apparently one of those things. "All right," Bridger agreed. "If this fragment is causing the problem because this cycling process is moving too quickly, causing this feeding of yours, how do we fix it?"

The Doctor hesitated. "I'm not...entirely sure," he admitted, looking a bit sheepish.

"You don't know?"

"Well, the thing is, it looks like it's been accelerated by a future shift. I can't prevent that, not now that it's started and I'm involved. I have to let it stand."

"But can't you just slow it down?" Bridger asked. "I don't know; couldn't you interfere with the signals it's receiving?"

Again the Doctor shook his head. "They're already here. Always have been, echoing back. I don't know what that particular future shift is going to be, but I'll bet someone was doing something they shouldn't've been. Rather hard to say, though. The signal's here, but it's buried now. Like whatever needed to happen did, and it's no longer needed, because the future's going to be changed the way the person, or machine, or whatever it was that sent the signal wanted things to be changed, but the signal still had to be sent for it to happen in the first place, so—" The Doctor broke off, clearly having caught sight of Bridger's face. "It's complicated, like I said. Time has layers, and they keep moving about. All you lot ever know is the top layer, or the one beneath it if you're ever involved in something that might have been or once was, providing you happen to remember it."

"So have you any ideas at all?" Bridger queried.

The Doctor stared off to one side for a moment, lost in his own thoughts. Then he said, "I might. But I want to talk to Dr. Westphalen first. I need to know how long it's been at this to judge the effects. Even then I may not have the clearest idea, though."

"Anything is better than nothing," Bridger reminded him. "I can't have everyone on board my ship—" He stopped, realizing something. "If this fragment's been releasing these spores all along, then it's not just the crew on board now that's affected by it, is it? Everyone else would be, too. Everyone we sent topside."

"Initially, yes," the Doctor said. "But things had only just reached the saturation point when I arrived, I think. Even threw me off for a minute there, to be perfectly honest. But things are compounding inside your vessel, Captain, building up and increasing in concentration. The people who were sent up to the surface vessels would have been taken out of the system. Up there, on the surface, it's open. Things will have dispersed. They ought to be fine. Even the people down here will recover their sense of when things happened once equilibrium is reinstated, though I'll have to do something to make sure it's the right equilibrium. Wouldn't want everyone to have their dates off, now would we?"

Bridger wasn't fooled by the Doctor's light-hearted tone or the grin on his face. "And can you do something? Make it so that things go back to the way they were, before any of this started? Before we were affected by this time distortion?" he asked.

The Doctor's grin faltered slightly. "Well, I should be able to," he said. "You won't need to worry about it."

"But do you?" Bridger pressed. If what the Doctor was saying was at all true, then of course he, being caught up in everything with the rest of the humans on his ship, wouldn't need to worry about anything; he'd never know the difference, not really, not unless he compared notes with someone who had been sent topside, someone who hadn't been significantly touched by this…feeding, or whatever it was.

The Doctor wasn't grinning anymore. "I always have to worry," he replied quietly. "If nothing else, it's safer that way. Won't forget myself."

The reply wasn't one Bridger particularly liked, although he appreciated the Doctor's honesty. From the sounds of it, the last time the Doctor had 'forgotten himself', things hadn't gone so well. He'd survived, but from the look on his face as he'd said that, Bridger wasn't so sure everyone else had.

"I'm trusting you to do your best, Doctor," Bridger reminded him. "We all are."

The Doctor gave him a small smile. "I know. I won't let you down."

"No," Bridger agreed, but with just the two of them present, he wasn't pretending to be as bright and chipper as the Doctor kept trying to be. He remembered the Doctor's earlier words, from their last discussion of trust. He accepted them, and he understood them, but it didn't mean he had to like them. "Not unless you have to."


Keller found Dr. Westphalen in the med bay. She didn't look like she was doing much of anything at the moment, really. She was staring down at a handkerchief, lost in thought. He called her name, twice, and she looked up at him, shaking her head and smiling. "Sorry," she said. "I was just…thinking."

"Penny for your thoughts," Keller quipped.

"It's something the Doctor said," Dr. Westphalen admitted. "I'm trying to figure out if he could really be right."

That certainly piqued Keller's interest. "What did he say?"

"From what I gathered," Dr. Westphalen answered, "he informed me that I'm not remembering things quite right."

"He actually said that?"

Dr. Westphalen gave a small shrug. "He told me that the story is the same, but the timing isn't. That I'm not remembering when things happened correctly." She picked up the handkerchief and showed it to him. "Sand," she said. "From our last alien encounter." She bit her lip. "When was that?"

Keller chuckled. "Five and a half weeks ago. I'm not liable to forget something like that."

Dr. Westphalen's face blanched. After a moment, she said, softly, "Apparently I am." After a moment, she added, "I thought that was three weeks ago."

For a moment, Keller wanted to correct her, but he held back. Even though he knew she was wrong, her proposed time—three weeks—seemed much more right than his remembered five and a half, particularly now that she'd said it and he'd had a chance to think. Maybe he was the one remembering things wrong, not her. It wouldn't be the first time he'd lost track of things. If he hadn't been keeping such strict count on his mission to Mars and back, he wouldn't have had the faintest how much time had passed, not once the days had blended together. And that wasn't that terribly long ago, was it? Since he'd returned? Two months? No, must be longer than that. That was much too short. Six months back would be a more likely guess. Maybe even seven. But surely….

No, no, that wasn't right, none of it.

All of it felt right, as if it should be right, but it couldn't be; it was preposterous.

Five and a half weeks ago, he'd said. Why would he say a thing like that? The notion that he could be wrong hadn't occurred to him before, but now that Dr. Westphalen had put forth another date, proposed another time, he realized that very well could be wrong. He probably was.

It was five months back, maybe, that he'd returned from Mars. Or possibly five and a half. Perhaps that's why he'd been thinking five and a half weeks; he'd been mixing his months and weeks. Not something he'd done before, but, as he and Nathan teasingly reminded each other, they were getting on in their years.

"No," Keller found himself saying. "No, no, now that you say it, I think three weeks sounds about right."

Dr. Westphalen twisted her mouth into some semblance of a smile. "Yes," she agreed dully. "I found myself thinking much the same when Dr. Levin informed me that it had been no less than six weeks ago. Of course, he'd had to correct himself from seven weeks first. Claims he can't remember properly, but he seemed fairly certain that six was right. Well, once we'd established that it hadn't been eight."

"Then it's more than just us?" Keller asked, realizing with a sinking feeling that he was clearly no less affected by whatever this was than she.

Dr. Westphalen nodded. "Everyone I've asked so far. Not one of the medical staff has given me the same date twice. I don't know what to make of it. It seems the Doctor's right, but I don't know how he possibly could be. I don't understand it. How can we all have such different ideas in our heads, so easily influenced by one musing or another? It doesn't make sense. And it—" She broke off, shaking her head. "It's frustrating."

Keller didn't consider himself to be an apt reader of people's feelings, but he was good enough at it to know that Dr. Westphalen felt more than just frustrated. She sounded like she felt guilty. "Do you think this is your fault?" he asked carefully.

Dr. Westphalen attempted another smile, but was no more successful than the last time. That, as far as Keller was concerned, told of how horrible she was really feeling; she couldn't even pretend otherwise, though that wasn't for lack of trying. "I think I brought this upon us, yes," she admitted. "That meteorite fragment I found. Or whatever it really is. The Doctor seems to think it's the cause of all this."

Keller thought for a moment. "He called it a TIR," he recalled. "Temporal something or other."

"Oh, he'd told me that, too," Dr. Westphalen replied, "but he followed it up by saying it didn't make sense, that it couldn't be that. So I'm inclined to think that it isn't. But I can't possibly think of what it could really be. Certainly nothing I've heard of. Not likely anything any one of us has heard of." She stopped. "I thought I'd picked that up for curiosity's sake. Now I really have to wonder. If I can't trust my memory, what else can't I trust? Has that dratted thing affected anything besides our sense of how time has passed?"

She was right. They hadn't even noticed that this had been happening, not until the Doctor had pointed it out to them. He wouldn't have realized for quite some time, he was sure, if Dr. Westphalen had not presented him with all the evidence she'd gathered. He wasn't even convinced that he would have noticed at all, if he was perfectly honest. Nothing felt wrong. Nothing twigged at his memory, or refused to sit right, or anything like that. It all felt perfectly natural. Right. Like it was exactly as it should be, as it had always been.

And if that certainty could be blatantly false, what else was?


The Doctor found Dr. Westphalen with Commander Keller in the science lab—or med bay, as they called it. He really ought to remember to start calling it that. Wouldn't do to cause confusion. Not that things could get much more confusing from their point of view, anyway, if they'd started to realize what was going on. And…he thought they were. Realizing, and starting to understand, that is. Judging by the silent reception he received, at least. The stares. They told him so much, those stares. They told of fear, and they told of accusation, and they told of hope.

Not confusion, though.

They finally understood.

That was good. It should make things easier.

Well, marginally easier.

"You know what's happening," he said, watching them carefully. "You've worked it out."

Dr. Westphalen tried to give me a small smile in response. "It's as you said, Doctor. The timing's off."

The Doctor glanced at Keller. "You've noticed it too, then?"

The man nodded. "Once Dr. Westphalen pointed it out to me, yes. But I don't see how it can be happening."

"It's time," the Doctor explained. "That fragment you found. It's not a TIR at all. It's time itself."

"Time's just a concept," Dr. Westphalen replied softly. "That's all the more clear now."

"Maybe for you lot, yes, but it's not really," the Doctor said. He went on to explain about the sands of time, and the cycling process, and how the time itself was seeping from the fragment, carried off like airborne spores, and how the feeding and growth that resulted was skewing their perceptions of the past because seaQuest was acting like a closed system, keeping everything in.

More silence. Perhaps he ought to have gone a bit slower.

"It's normally all right," he added. "Out there, the spores can just go off, feeding off past and present to grow the future. It's just been building up in here, becoming too concentrated. It'll be all right if you head to the surface and open the hatches for a while. You just need to release them. They'll go; concentration gradients and all that. It's just simple diffusion."

"So I did cause this, then," Dr. Westphalen finally said. "When I brought that on board." She glanced away, and the Doctor knew she felt terribly guilty, that she blamed herself.

"Kristin," he called gently, "Kristin, look at me, all right?" She reluctantly met his gaze. "It's not your fault," he stated, as clearly as he could.

"I brought the fragment here. Of course it's my fault."

"You didn't just pick it up for curiosity's sake," the Doctor told her softly.

Dr. Westphalen laughed. "Perhaps I did; perhaps I didn't. It doesn't really matter. I still brought it in the end."

"It does matter," the Doctor insisted. "And, like I said, it wasn't just curiosity's sake. Now, it didn't seek you out, exactly. But it called to you. Well, it called to everyone, actually. It needed to be moved. It had remained in one place for long enough, and the environment wasn't conducive to it anymore. Well, not as much as it could be. The fact that you found it was a coincidence. Well, not exactly, but sort of. It didn't have to be you who found it; anyone could have, the way it was calling. It's more, well, let's say you're a bit more receptive to it, given what you've been exposed to, so it pulled you in. Ergo, it wasn't purely coincidental. Just…partially coincidental. You just happened to be the first person with the right, well, qualifications, to come along."

"Then this all could have been prevented?" Dr. Westphalen asked. "If I'd never gone there in the first place, never found that fragment?"

The Doctor pulled a face. "I'm…not so sure about that, actually," he admitted. "Not now, at any rate."

"But if she hadn't gone," Keller pointed out, "she wouldn't have been able to hear the call or whatever it was."

The Doctor shook his head. "It's deeper than that," he persisted. "Normally, all the time contained within the fragment does is cycle to its renewal, growing and spreading. But I think it rooted itself in you, Kristin Westphalen. And as it's been growing out, it's been growing into your past, changing things."

"What?"

"It's been influencing you, tweaking your past experiences, shaping you. It's trying to turn you into an active carrier. Having a time doing it, too, considering it has needed to alter other small things to centre them on you." The Doctor blew out a breath. "Not its fault, of course. It's been stuck in the same place for thousands upon thousands of years. No wonder it wants to move. Time doesn't like being forced to stand still, not when it's meant to flow."

"What do you mean, it's been influencing her?" Keller demanded. Dr. Westphalen herself still looked too shocked to comment.

The Doctor stared at Dr. Westphalen. "You've been touched by something before this," he said. "It's there, around you. Traces of…something. I'm not sure what. But you've been touched by the past before. Haven't you?"

Dr. Westphalen shook her head in denial, and then she stopped, thinking over his words again. Her lips formed a small 'o' as she remembered something. "Maybe I have been," she conceded softly. She took a few breaths. "I don't know how long ago it was, especially not now, but we found the shipwreck of the King George."

"The King George?" the Doctor repeated, trying to place the reference. So many ships had been lost in Earth's history, but the way Dr. Westphalen had said it, this one was apparently one of the memorable ones—meaning he ought to know it. "King George, King George…. Oh! The George! Right! 1913, wasn't it? Just started sinking? Sabotage, I thought. Never did look into it."

Dr. Westphalen nodded. "The captain sunk his own ship."

"Why would he do that?" the Doctor asked, scrunching his brow up as he tried to puzzle out the reasoning.

"In hopes that the woman he loved would love him in return."

The Doctor made a face. "And how is that supposed to work? Last I checked, the human race tended to favour survival. I don't see why any woman would love a man who tried to kill her." He paused. "Then again, Stockholm syndrome. You don't expect victims to defend their kidnappers, either."

Dr. Westphalen laughed—a true laugh. Evidently she found his confusion amusing. But he didn't mind, really; anything to bring her out of her black mood. "She was in love with an engineer," Dr. Westphalen explained. "The captain hoped to frame the man. But it went wrong, and the ship went down with all three of them, and a few stowaways, on board. He'd never intended that, never wanted it."

Made sense. Explained why the ship had sunk—sabotage, like he'd expected. But— "Hang on," the Doctor said. "How do you know that?"

Dr. Westphalen glanced at Keller, who clearly was curious to know the answer as well. She took a deep breath, then admitted, "The captain told me. And, according to the others…. Because it's not very clear for me, really, and when I did come back to myself, the air was bad and we had to…." She trailed off, shaking her head. "The woman, Lillian. Her ghost—" and here Dr. Westphalen hesitated again, as if she couldn't quite bring herself to finish "—possessed me."

"What?" Keller stared at her, as if he couldn't believe what she was saying.

But to the Doctor, it did make sense. There were plenty of things that masqueraded as ghosts—Gelth, Sydrils, Cybermen who were trying to break through from a parallel universe, that sort of thing—but there were actual ghosts about, too. Well, he said ghosts. Generally, they were just manifestations of consciousness, a lasting impression of a human—at least in this case—that once was, clinging on with whatever they could. Always had a reason, though. They never stuck around without a reason. Last one he'd run into thought he'd been cursed. Ancient runes or rhymes or some such nonsense. Wasn't really, of course, but belief was a strong thing.

So was guilt.

And he'd bet guilt was the guilty culprit here.

"You were touched by a time over a hundred years past," the Doctor murmured. "That's ages of traces left on you. All that time. All those minutes. No wonder it thinks you can be a carrier. It thinks you can travel in time." A slow grin spread over his face. "That's brilliant."

Keller, apparently, disagreed. "That's horrible!"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, it's not. I mean, time doesn't want to hurt anyone. It's not out to get you. It just needs a bit of help. It thought you could help it, that's all. Shame it was mistaken, though; doesn't like me, not now that it's chosen you." He paused. "Of course, if that's true, then it's not quite as random as I'd thought. You being the one to pick it up, I mean. It must've been shaping you for years, retrospectively planting all those interests in you, getting you to the right place at the right time."

"But…." Dr. Westphalen shook her head, unable to grasp what he was saying and looking alarmed at the implications of it all. "How can you say that it's had enough time to influence me?"

"It's been sitting," the Doctor said carefully, "in your quarters for weeks. Even if you don't remember all of it, that's plenty of time."

"But even if that's true, that was after I'd picked it up. How can you say it's the reason that I've spent years—"

"But that's the thing," the Doctor interrupted. "You haven't. Not really. It's been changing things. It's trying to rewrite your past. And I won't let it."

"But if I'd never had any interest in this in the first place, how would I have ended up with it?" Dr. Westphalen challenged, genuinely curious and more than a bit worried.

"Oh, loads of ways," the Doctor said. "Maybe a friend asked for an opinion, or just thought you'd be interested, or perhaps you were curious about something else and came across it. Something like that. But once it had your imprint, it latched onto you, because it recognized the traces of the past on you, traces of a time that you ordinarily could never have experienced. And once it did, things started to change. Time doesn't usually rewrite itself, but it isn't normally looking for a carrier, either. Things must have been getting stale, like I'd said. Well, not stale. Barren. Too much unchanged for too long. Thrives on changes, you see. Speeds the cycling process. Tends to go dormant otherwise."

"So how do you propose to reverse this?" Keller asked sceptically.

The Doctor hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and said, "Oh, I'll think of something."

But from the way they were looking at him, he knew he hadn't been very convincing.


A/N: Thanks to those who take the time to review, and I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter holiday.