The Doctor knew that he could always destroy the fragment.

But it would be a bit difficult to do that without destroying everything within it.

From what he could see, though, he didn't have any other choice.

There ought to be a way to just break it open, releasing what's inside. The environment now was saturated with all those spores. Supersaturated, even. If he flooded it, threw in just one too many, that ought to push it just too far, abruptly bringing everything out of solution. Well, all the extraneous bits, at least. The crystals would form around the distortions. Everything else, what originally had happened, all the initial dates and perceptions, would reassert themselves and override the assumptions. Then, all he'd have to do would be to go around and collect all the crystals, all the sand, and dispose of it.

Except that made it sound all so easy, and it wasn't, not at all. Not now that things had become mirrored. Because of that, what originally had happened couldn't always be recovered. He wouldn't just be taking away impurities—he'd be taking away some of the pure history, plain and simple. What worried him was that there was no way of telling which moments would stick to the impurities and become lost. There wasn't any way to differentiate them, causing some things to adsorb while letting others slip free. It would just be left up to chance.

The Doctor noticed Darwin watching him from one of the passages—what had Lucas called them? Aquatubes?—that allowed him access to the vast majority of the ship. "This may give a whole new meaning to 'sand storm', you know," he commented. The dolphin clicked a response, and then swam forward. "Oi!" the Doctor exclaimed, making a face as he started to follow him. "You don't have to give me an 'I told you so' even if you were right all along."

He was being led back to the moon pool, he realized. Very well. He wasn't sure if he would win the argument, but he'd give it a good shot. It was hard to defend yourself when your opponent had the ability to swim ahead of you and pretend to ignore every word that came out of your mouth.

But winning an argument, the Doctor soon realized, wasn't on the dolphin's agenda—well, that, or Darwin figured he'd already won and put the matter behind him. The Doctor wasn't quite sure. Either way, it seemed he was supposed to explain to someone else what was going on. It was getting bothersome, having to explain himself so many times without actually being able to do what he kept saying he needed to.

That way, however, ensured that he thought things through. Really thought them through, not just acted on years of pent-up emotion and half-formed thoughts.

Not like—

The Doctor forced a smile onto his face as he looked at Lucas. "Remember when I was asking you about time?" he asked. The boy nodded, and the Doctor showed him the fragment. "This is it."

"What?"

"This," the Doctor said, very clearly, "is time. A form of it, in a physical shell it generated. And what I need to do is break that shell."

"And what happens then?"

"Well, we get the sand storm Darwin was talking about all along, for one. And once that's cleaned up, or just before, or around about then, Captain Bridger takes seaQuest straight to the surface and opens the hatches to let everything else diffuse out, and then you can pick up the rest of the crew and I'll be on the way."

"In your ship?" Lucas asked. At the Doctor's look, he added, "Krieg told me, before he went to talk to Commander Hitchcock. He said your ship is bigger on the inside, and that it just looks like a box, like one of those old telephone booths they used to have, and that's how you got it on board without anyone noticing."

"Well, that's one reason I managed that, yes," the Doctor said. "But I'm not here to discuss my transport. I—"

"Can I see it?"

The Doctor opened his mouth, but for a moment he couldn't reply. There was really no reason not to let him see it. Just…he'd probably ask for a trip, then, and he couldn't do that. He still needed to double check his history, but he was fairly certain that seaQuest—or at least the next version of her, since this one unfortunately but unavoidably was going to be destroyed shortly before she was due to return to port—was going to be experiencing something like this in her future. Well, not like this, specifically, but…. That future shift had been a temporal one, and he thought there could even have been another echo or two behind it, and he didn't want to mistakenly change any of that. And Lucas…. Lucas had stayed on seaQuest, even eventually signed up and became Ensign Wolenczak to stay aboard her. He remembered that. And to make sure that the youth came out of whatever those future shifts threw at him unscathed, it would be safer for him if he was untouched by time travel before then.

It was different with Krieg. Lieutenant Benjamin Krieg only had served on seaQuest's first tour. They'd run into their fair share of the inexplicable, but it was nothing compared to what they'd be facing in the future, not if he was reading things right.

But Lucas's curiosity was genuine, and he didn't mean anything by it, and he had no idea what his future held. "All right," the Doctor agreed, "but not yet. I need to break this first."

Lucas read his expression. "What's so hard about that?"

"It's not meant to be broken," the Doctor explained. "This shell it generated for itself—it's meant to hold until everything within is through cycling. It's tougher than it looks. It's not like I can just take a hammer to it."

"So what can break it?"

The Doctor grimaced. "That's the trouble. I'm not sure." Worse still, it was active, still receiving signals to speed the cycling process as if it were releasing its spores into a bountiful environment, not an overburdened one. That constant feeling he'd had since he'd come had been magnified by all those spores, which was why he'd hadn't been able to find its centre, its source, until Dr. Westphalen had handed it to him. But even a few blasts with the sonic screwdriver wouldn't be enough to alter these signals. He couldn't shut them off or scatter them or anything. It was the wrong kind of signal for that.

Lucas took the fragment from him and turned it over in his hands. "Diamond's hard," he said. He scratched at the older, softer surface. "More so than this."

The Doctor shook his head. "I don't think any physical means is going to work."

"So even shooting it into a hydrothermal vent wouldn't melt it, you mean?"

"Unlikely. Its protection spans more than three dimensions, you know." He took the fragment back, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and aiming it at the fragment to prove his point. Not that he really expected Lucas to hear the same changes in its pitch as he did, but he had rather hoped that something might have changed with the readings now that he really knew what he was dealing with. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be the case. At least, not where it mattered.

"Then why ask me what can break it if it's not something I'm going to know?" Lucas asked when he'd finished and pocketed the sonic screwdriver again.

The Doctor refrained from pointing out that, in actuality, Lucas had asked him, not the other way around. "Because you're clever," he answered. "Like me, you make connections other people wouldn't think to make."

"Maybe so," Lucas countered, though he was smiling at the compliment, "but you made your point earlier, when you were saying how I know nothing about time."

The Doctor grinned. "Precisely. You know nothing about it. I know quite a lot about it. Between the two of us, we ought to come up with something, shouldn't we?"

Lucas stared at him for a moment. "You didn't know I'd be here," he said after a moment. "You just wanted to talk to Darwin again, didn't you?"

"Dolphins have a different sense of time than either of us," the Doctor reminded him. "He might know about the temporal saturation that's occurred, and how it's skewing all your perceptions and extrapolating your assumptions into basic changes, building up to the point that it's even mucking about with the ship's computers, but I don't think he'll be able to tell me how to destroy this."

"Maybe you can't," Lucas said. "Maybe someone else has to."

"Perhaps," the Doctor agreed, although he didn't think it very likely, "but we won't know until we figure out how to break it open, now will we?"

"But how are you supposed to break time? It's not physical, and even the shell that is physical can't be broken by physical means, you said, so how is it even supposed to be possible?"

"Time can crack," the Doctor told him. "It's just not common, and generally not good. Something's gone wrong if the timeline cracks, and I ought to know."

"So what can cause it to crack? Can we use that, and force it to crack this?"

"To get the sort of crack we want," the Doctor said, "something very bad would have to happen. And generally, at least with me, when something very bad happens, I don't have a lot of luck controlling it, so I do not want to try when the environment's this sensitive to changes."

"You're not being very helpful," Lucas groused.

The Doctor sighed, and handed him the fragment back. "Maybe hold this for a while again. It's a bit difficult for me to think around that."

"Because of that force you feel, yeah, I remember," Lucas said, taking it.

"Repulsion, really," the Doctor commented. "Like magnets. Opposite poles attract, and like—"

"Yeah, I know. Like poles repel," Lucas said, smirking. "I'm not five."

"Like poles repel," the Doctor slowly repeated. "Like magnets."

"You just said that."

"Like a magnet," the Doctor said again. He grinned. "That's it!"

"What?"

"It's like a magnet," the Doctor told him. "Its strength is coming from its integrity, which is powered by its attraction and repulsion of everything around it. If we disable that, if we demagnetize it, it will be easy to break open. Well, easier, at any rate." He grinned again. "So how do we demagnetize a magnet?"

"Well, if we can't heat it up or break it down or something like that because it's physically protected…." Lucas thought for a moment. "Would an alternating current work? Using an electromagnet, I mean?"

The Doctor beamed at him. "That's right. It's similar enough, or will be with a few special modifications of mine, so it'll work the same. We'll be able to weaken this, slowly, by reversing its polarity. And re-reversing the polarity. And re-re-reversing its—"

"Okay, okay, I get it." Lucas chuckled. "I've got some odds and ends in my room that we can probably make into what we need. Let's go. But you're explaining all those modifications of yours, okay?"

The Doctor frowned, but realized he may not win the argument, and he really shouldn't take the time to have an argument in the first place, even if it was all in fun. "Fine," he agreed, "but I'm not going to promise that you will understand it. And don't argue with me, because some things you won't, no matter how clever you think you are."

Lucas grinned at him, and the Doctor suddenly wondered if the teenager had managed to trick him into that particular mindset. "We'll see," was the smug reply.

Less than an hour later, the Doctor, nearly free of his headache—he wouldn't be rid of it entirely until the fragment was broken open—was holding the demagnetized fragment. Well, mostly demagnetized, since it wasn't possible to completely demagnetize it. Not that demagnetized really was the right word for it, but neither would it be correct to call it detemporalized, so he decided to stick with the analogy in his explanation to Captain Bridger.

He'd be able to break it now, but before he did that, he had to make sure the captain knew the consequences.

"I know what I need to do to sort this out," the Doctor said. He showed Bridger the fragment again, even though it didn't look any different. He recounted what he had discussed with Dr. Westphalen, then explained what he and Lucas had done, and why, and what that allowed him to do.

"What's the drawback?" Bridger asked, crossing his arms. They were back in his quarters, away from listening ears, and the Doctor had a feeling that he wanted him to be frank. "There has to be a drawback to breaking that fragment open or you wouldn't be telling me this. You would have already done it."

The Doctor sighed; of course Bridger would see right through it all, cutting straight to the point. "It's stored all those moments," he answered, "and I don't know what'll happen to them once I break this. I don't expect they'll revert to the way they were originally; I'll be releasing raw time, not rewinding what's already here. But I can't guarantee that what it changed will stay changed. Some things will, I expect, since some became mirrored, but with others, well, others might still be rewritten. That's part of the recycling process, after all. Not noticeably, though, not to you. The end results would remain the same. But, the means—the means would change, and that could change other things in your future. Choices, decisions, thoughts, feelings—they're all subject to it, to this change." He hesitated, then added, "And, thing is, I have to break this here, so all those moments aren't just lost. And once I do, everyone within range—roughly about a ten mile radius from the centre, I imagine—will be affected by this. Not much. But…."

"But what, Doctor?" Bridger asked, raising his eyebrows in a way that told the Doctor, quite clearly, that he wanted a full explanation.

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, looking a bit sheepish. "But things may not be as…straightforward as they've been before," he admitted. "I mean, they will be at first. These next few weeks of yours will be extraordinarily straightforward. Well, straightforward in the sense that nothing like this'll be happening, that everything will follow logic and rules and have a pattern to be found if you look for it, even if it's not easy. After that, though, it'll be different. Just a bit. You lot will be more susceptible to things of this nature, things that don't necessarily make sense or add up or follow the rules you expect them to. It won't be obvious. It'll just slowly build up, more and more, and it'll be something you realize once you look back at it all and are trying to find a point where things changed. This would be that point, the point when you started attracting things that are neutral to everyone else." He paused. "I mean, sure, you could chalk it up to other things. I expect you will, unless you remember this quite well. SeaQuest herself is bound to attract all sorts of odd things, isn't she? It's your position, your job, the fact that you're first on the scene or that it's your responsibility. But it'll also be because of who you are and what you've come in contact with and how you've dealt with everything that's come before, this included."

"So you think this may have caused that future shift you keep talking about that's affecting it in the first place?"

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, you are a clever one, aren't you? Yes. It's quite possible. I can't say for certain, but it's likely."

"But wouldn't that mean—?"

"One is happening in response to the other, in both directions. Yes. It's a bit complicated."

"But once you break the fragment, all we'll have to do is take her up the surface for a while?"

"To let the spores diffuse out, yes," the Doctor confirmed, nodding. "And, well, there's also cleaning up whatever crystallizes down here."

"And what happens in the moment that you break that fragment open?"

The Doctor blew out a breath. "Well, to be perfectly honest, I'd be surprised if you feel so much as a ripple."

"How's it going to affect you?"

The Doctor looked mildly surprised by the question. "Ooh, it'll be a bit more noticeable for me. I've been through worse, though. Might be a minute or so before my head clears again and things are all in order and I'm not seeing everything at once—that does give you a headache. Trust me on that. Normally I can ignore it, or just keep it down to two—two possibilities at once isn't bad, really, especially in comparison—but not when things are changing like that. Well, there are other times I can't block it out either, but most of the time I can push it back unless I specifically look, which I don't really like to do unless I have to. Has the potential to spoil things. And, the headache. Plus, it's all possibilities, and probabilities as to how probable those possibilities actually are, and—" The Doctor stopped. "Sorry. Suffice to say that, after a minute or two, I'll be right as rain. Why?"

Bridger opened his mouth, as if he were going to say something else, and then shook his head. All he said in reply was, "You don't have to be here when it's broken if it incapacitates you, even temporarily."

The Doctor smiled. "Thanks," he said. "But I do, actually. I have to be the one to break it. It'll yield more readily to me, you see, because of who and what I am. If someone strikes it with a poor stroke and it's not a clean break, then we can't control how things are released, and the more control we have, the better. I just want a small crack, not a large one. I don't need to empty everything that's inside of this. I just need to let it out a bit in a rush, to trigger all the extraneous bits to come out of solution. Then I can seal the crack, and clean up all the crystals here, and scatter those and the fragment. Then, the cycling can start again, like it should be. Slow and steady and regulated, by its established equilibrium and by feedback and feedforward processes and everything else."

Bridger nodded. "All right, then," he said. "Go on. Break it."

"Now?" the Doctor asked, slightly taken aback.

"We've no reason to wait."

"You don't want to…warn anyone? About anything? That you're planning to surface, even?" The Doctor scratched his head. "You lot always seem to have so many last minute things to do, that's all. Never enough time for them all to get done, but—"

"I relayed a message to the surface vessels earlier. I told them you were conducting a few experiments, trying to see if you could garner any more information out of us. Jog our memory—that sort of thing. They'll be ready for anything. Half the military folk seem to think all you scientific people are crazy. Especially you, when most of them don't even know what you're really doing. But I can have O'Neill relay a message now, if you like."

"Might be best," the Doctor agreed. "We're less likely to be shot at if we surprise them. I don't like getting shot at, and it happens a lot. Wouldn't want them to start thinking I managed to overpower you or some such thing, ordering you to do this and that."

Bridger chuckled. "You're used to people being suspicious of you, I see. But not everyone on this planet shoots first and asks questions later, Doctor. SeaQuest is a peacekeeping vessel and for scientific research, but we've had scrapes of our own to remind us why we're mixing science with the military, so all of the crew are quick and good at thinking on their feet. One man would be hard pressed to get the better of all of us."

"But not impossible," the Doctor reminded him. "Not everyone plays fair."

"You read about our experience with Dr. Zellar, I take it." Bridger looked weary for a moment. "Kristin hasn't played a game of chess since, and she was quite good at it."

"Was she?" the Doctor asked. "Shame, then. I would have loved a good game."

"She's taken up poker," Bridger informed him with a smile.

"Poker?" the Doctor repeated. "Really? Wouldn't've pegged her for that. I like poker, though. Haven't played it since, oh…. I'm not really sure I remember exactly when it was now. There was that illicit game in that one hospital unit during the Korean War that I crashed…." He grinned. "They didn't seem to mind. Well, not until I started winning."

Bridger smiled again and shook his head. "You must get around, then. But before we find ourselves back there or caught up in World War III or shunted back to the Cuban Missile Crisis or whatever can happen if those spores of yours keep feeding, you'd better get whatever you need to break it open. Where's the best place to do that?"

"You know, I'm not really sure. By now, the concentration throughout the ship is probably about the same. It likely doesn't matter, but to be on the safe side, I think I'll nip back to Dr. Westphalen's quarters, if you don't mind. If things haven't dispersed, that ought to have the highest concentration; it was there for the longest period of time."

"Will you have everything you need in five minutes?" Bridger asked.

"I have everything I need now," the Doctor replied with a grin. "But five minutes it is, just to be on the safe side."

"And you're certain this will work?" Bridger pressed.

"Well," the Doctor started, drawing the word out, "nothing's really certain. But I think we've got a good chance this time."

The Doctor grinned, and then left the captain to his own devices. He wasn't exactly sure what Bridger intended to tell everyone, or how he planned to pull it all off as if there were nothing of concern happening on board. He ought to be thinking about what he was going to say about his lack of report, but he was sure that once they found out that his records had mysteriously disappeared from the world database—he'd needed to go back and make sure they had some, however falsified, before he started pestering the UEO, since he just knew they'd be checking into him—they would be more worried about tracking him down and their lack of success in that particular venture than they would be about anything he might have had to say about the N'zyritian ship.

Besides, it wasn't as if he'd ever really intended to give them a report anyway.

No matter. Captain Bridger would cover for him. He was probably good at that sort of thing. Well, the Doctor knew that the UEO didn't know the whole story about the N'zyritians, and he highly doubted they knew all the details about the wreck of the George, either. So, it stood to reason that he'd be able to keep all the details of this from surfacing, too.

Oh, well. It was bound to be good preparation. All of that sort of thing was just the beginning. Or…well, no, maybe it wasn't, not necessarily. It could just be the reverberation of this, what he was about to do—a collection of spores at key points in the timeline, attracting these events, which would in turn lay the foundation for their creation, which would make this the beginning of everything that had happened and would yet happen in the future. A branching point, rooted in the present but reaching past and future alike.

SeaQuest's crew might scatter after her first tour. He knew this particular ship herself would be destroyed—something that worked in his favour, as it would scatter whatever had adsorbed to the ship's surface and thus survive his quick clean-up process. Of course, whatever survived would be inert; wouldn't be activated until it was separated again. Fair bit of energy would be released then. Not that that would be very evident, given how Bridger had elected to save the world by destroying his beloved ship. But, still. Even if the crew scattered, even if the original ship was destroyed, there was going to be enough residual dust clinging to them that, at the very least for those who returned and allowed it to act collectively, it would be enough to influence things in their future, as he'd told Bridger.

Their future would be an interesting one.

Not necessarily straightforward, probably not entirely pleasant, and clearly not regulated, but…interesting, he'd bet. For all of them, wherever they ended up, whether they were on the next tour or not.

He wished, fleetingly, that he could be as confident in his own future.

Still. Other matters at hand. Well, one pressing matter in particular. But he was ready for it. He really was. Fragment, and TARDIS key. Lucas had tried to argue that one. A key probably wouldn't even score a rock, he'd said, let alone crack it. But the fragment wasn't really a rock, and the TARDIS key was understandably exposed to much more temporal energy than a regular key, and said key was endowed with certain properties that other keys did not have—properties that were really too extensive for him to name, which was one thing he had had to be insistent on when Lucas kept asking, although he'd had to point out how it was possible to extrapolate a perception filter from it as an example to cease that line of questioning, although that had ultimately meant that he'd had to demonstrate and— Still. Point is, it would work. End of discussion.

And whatever happened after he cracked the fragment would happen.

Even if his best guess wasn't correct.

A/N: For anyone who's curious, 'adsorbed' is a word, not a typo. It means stuck to (well, 'accumulated on' is probably a better choice) the surface, as opposed to 'absorbed', where the substance in question would be taken inside the first substance, like when roots take up water. And, as always, many, many thanks to those who take the time to review.