Episode 11:1- Trapped in Multispace
Rose Tyler woke up.
The first thing she noticed was that it was wet.
This was followed shortly by the thought that she was in her room on the Time Machine, in bed.
The two ideas, 'wet' and 'Time Machine' played about in her head for a while before she realized that she was still half-asleep, and should probably wake up really soon before she drowned.
She leant down the floor, legs still in bed, and scooped up some water, quickly splashing it on her face. It immediately revived her from the drowsy-half-awareness of sleep.
Not the most efficient way of waking up, granted, but it worked.
She stood on her bed in her pink flannel pajamas, weighing up her options. At this early in the morning, it was easy to state the facts one by one.
Fact One- Her bedroom was half-flooded by water.
It lapped just at the edge of her bed. Any higher, and she would have drowned. She shuddered. It was a scary thought. Drowning in your sleep can't be the nicest fate, she thought.
Fact Two- She should probably get out of her pajamas before she started to yell at Calvin for flooding her room.
Jack would probably make a pass at her otherwise.
She leapt from her bed carefully to her dresser, and leaned over into her closet. The clothes at the top weren't damp, at least. She chose a pair of denim jeans, and a purple top, and threw a jacket over it. And then she jumped back to her bed.
Fact Three- The water rising still, ever so slightly.
As soon as she noticed it, she knew it was right. The water level had increased a bit. Just a bit.
Rose dropped to her stomach and scrutinized the water carefully. It was just as well that she hadn't kept anything overly precious on the floor.
Fact Four- She'd really like to get out of her room without drowning.
Easier said than done. If only she had something like a boat, or a raft.
A RAFT.
It had appeared out of nowhere. Floating in the middle of the room.
Rose decided not to question this convenient turn of events, and instead clambered on. She grabbed a long pole that was floating in the water, and began to punt herself to the door.
She opened it, and pushed herself out. As she entered the hallway, it became apparent that the water was just getting deeper and deeper. She couldn't even see the floor of the Time Machine anymore.
The dimensions were stretching. It looked incredibly weird.
Eventually, a school of scintillating goldfish swam past her, and she had to admit that she was basically in an enclosed ocean. There were no prizes for guessing whose fault this was.
"CALVIN!" she yelled.
Jack woke up.
His bed felt very nice, actually. Like it was made out of air. He attempted to snuggled back into his covers, and then discovered that there were none.
This was quickly followed by the realization that he was floating in mid air.
There was no gravity in his room. The bed, the small desk, all his clothes, and most importantly him were drifting.
Now, the first thing a person usually does upon finding out that they're in zero gravity is attempt to swim away. This doesn't work. Thin air is not like water.
Jack didn't try this. He had had training that had taught him not to try undignified 'swimming'. Instead, he removed his shirt, and threw it as hard as he could upwards. The momentum fired him backwards, and he hit the ground with an equally undignified 'oof'.
He grabbed a grey T-shirt and a pair of jeans of the ground, and attempted to pull them on, after a few moments of indecision. He then pushed off the floor at an angle, aiming himself at the door, which he opened. In this way, he began to make his way down the halls. It wasn't long until he bumped into Hobbes, who was floating in the middle of the hallway, unable to touch the walls, and looking rather bemused.
"Is this your fault?" he asked, waving his tail a bit. "Because I was walking down to the kitchen to get breakfast, and this happened."
Jack pushed himself off the ground, bumping into Hobbes, and sending them both rocketing up to the ceiling. "This is an extremely awkward way to move," he commented to himself. "And, no, I didn't. I woke up, and I was floating."
Hobbes pushed himself to the ground. "The other odd thing is, the kitchen should be right there." He pointed at the door next to him. Jack ricocheted over to it, and opened it curiously.
"Oppa Gangnam Style!" a loudspeaker blasted. "Gangnam Style!"
He stared in for a moment, and then slammed it quickly closed, the force making him recoil to the other side of the hallway.
"I know," Hobbes nodded. "Terrifying, isn't it?"
"That's... not the word I would have chosen."
Hobbes shrugged, starting to drift a bit. "Well, there's only one thing we can do."
"Head forwards?"
"Head forwards," the tiger agreed. "And possibly yell at Calvin a bit, since this seems to be his fault."
That being said, the two began to bounce off the walls, moving along the twisting hallway that didn't seem to end.
"Konnichiwa, Ms Tyler!" Calvin yelled out over the roar of a motor. Rose glanced up in surprise. She had fallen into a steady rhythm of pushing her little boat forwards with the stick, past locked doors. She had already noted that she should probably have reached the console room by now, and it was probably impossible for this much water to actually fit in the Time Machine in the first place, but that didn't stop the fact that it was there and she was stuck in the middle of what was turning out to be an ocean.
At some point, the walls had opened out so far that you could barely see them. Somehow, the ceiling remained in place, although it had turned a rather nice shade of pale blue.
The roar of the motor got louder, and a small speck appeared on the horizon. It was Calvin. He was the only person that could possibly have hair that spiky.
And... he was driving a motorboat.
"Do you even have a license to drive that thing?" Rose yelled at him.
"Nope!" came the cheerful response. "Want a lift?"
The motorboat drew closer, and it got close enough for Rose to pole-vault from her little raft into Calvin's noticeably sturdier boat.
When the stick punctured the rubber of the raft, it instantly deflated and sunk underneath the water.
The goldfish that had been lazily swimming around in the water grew large teeth, and chomped at it, devouring it in less than a minute.
Calvin and Rose stared at the goldfish, now drifting in the water again, and slowly turned to look at each other.
"...this complicates matters," Calvin said.
Rose just snorted, and pushed him away from the controls.
Hobbes and Jack finally arrived at a place that was slightly more interesting than the usual floor, wall, ceiling, wall.
The corridor opened up into a vast, lava-filled cavern. There were rocks scattered liberally throughout, possibly to step on, but it was still... a vast, lava-filled cavern.
Jack glanced incredulously around. "Why do you even have one of these in here anyway?"
Hobbes held up a paw defensively. "Hey, you never know when you might need a vast, lava-filled cavern!"
Jack just blinked slowly.
"Okay, okay," Hobbes admitted. "I actually have no idea why we have a lava room. This place is really, really unpredictable."
They soon figured out that the only way to get across to the other side (where a small white door was) was to... drift across.
"Pick up rocks," Jack advised Hobbes, gathering several large ones from the ground. "That way, if you lose momentum, you can continue on by throwing it."
Hobbes loaded a few into his arms, and braced himself against the wall. "Righto." And he pushed off, gliding through the air. Jack followed.
"Now all we have to do is hope that gravity doesn't kick in, and we don't plummet to our deaths," Hobbes added cheerfully.
"Is that likely to happen?" Jack threw a rock.
Hobbes considered. "Nope. Definitely not. We lasted this long, right?"
Jack groaned. "Oh, that's just tempting fate..."
As a matter of fact, they had almost got to the other side when gravity started to work again. It was almost casual the way it happened. Jack was the first person to start noticing that they were drifting downwards.
When he pointed this little fact out to Hobbes, the tiger glanced around, threw his final rock, and landed delicately on the other side.
"There," he said, grinning. "Nothing to it!"
Gravity then proceeded to kick in one hundred percent, and Jack started to plummet dramatically to his death. Hobbes, fortunately, caught him easily.
They both lay on the ground, panting.
"That was super terrifying," said Hobbes. "And let's never ever do it again until at least next week."
Jack glared.
"Oh, look!" Hobbes said, getting distracted. "Rocks!"
Calvin stared out at the endless ocean while Rose attempted to pilot the boat. She was doing a better job of it than he had been, which was part of his moodiness.
The other part of his moodiness was actually justified.
"I can't believe you automatically assumed that this was my fault," he complained.
"To be fair," said Rose, figuring out which lever worked the throttle and gunning it viciously. "When anything ever goes wrong around here, it's usually your fault."
"You seriously think that?"
"Yup."
Silence for a moment or two, apart from the gentle roar of the engines, and the splashing of the water.
"You're stupid and so is your face," declared Calvin quite calmly.
"Is that the best you can do?" Rose asked, turning halfway to glance at him.
He wrinkled his nose. "I was rushed for a witty response, okay? Don't hold it against me. And by the way, the goldrannahs are still chasing us."
Rose steered sharply left for no good reason. "Goldrannahs? You mean... the goldfish that tried to eat us?"
"Uh, yeah. They didn't really try to eat us, though..."
The newly named 'goldrannahs' were calmly riding the waves that the little motorboat was making, despite the fact that the boat was going at at least 60 miles an hour.
Calvin hunted around in the small storage area of the boat until he found a slice of ham. He held it up to the light.
"This is reminding me too much of Ponyo," he muttered to himself, walking over to the rear end of the boat. "Here, fishy, fishy, fishy..."
He dangled the slice of ham over the water.
Instant results.
The fish leapt out to fight over the ham, nearly taking off Calvin's index finger in the process. As it happened, the fish only drew a bit of blood.
A drop of blood fell into the water, and the fish began to thrash about in the water.
"Ack!" Calvin yelped, jumping back as a fish leapt out of the water, attacking his nose. "PONYO ON STEROIDS! TYLER, TOP SPEED!"
"What?" asked Rose, who hadn't been paying attention.
"KILLER GOLDFISH PIRANHAS!"
"Aye aye, Captain," Rose nodded, zooming forwards at the fastest she could manage. She had finally gotten the hang of the controls, and was quite enjoying herself.
It would have made quite a picture- a large pack of bloodcrazed goldfish chasing after a small motorboat, piloted by a teenage blonde girl humming the theme song to Ponyo, and being egged on by a tiny deranged six-year old lunatic with spiky blonde hair.
It was about that point when the water underneath them suddenly and inexplicably turned to sand.
The Laws of Physics were, quite unfortunately, in place in this part of the Time Machine, and so the boat kept flying forwards until it crashed into a sand dune. Sand flew everywhere.
"Hey, look!" Calvin said, popping up from a pile of sand. "The goldrannahs asphyxiated!"
"That's nice." Rose spat out a mouthful of sand. "Why don't we focus on the little fact that a desert suddenly appeared out of nowhere?"
Calvin looked around. "Hey, yeah! There's no water anywhere! How did that happen?"
"You tell me. It's your insane, deranged Time Machine."
They both got up.
The motorboat disappeared.
"I feel like I'm on the Heart of Gold," Rose complained. "It's like the bloody Improbability Drive taken up to eleven."
"At least we aren't going to be eaten by vicious killer goldfish," Calvin said cheerfully.
"Yes, but on the minus side, we might be mauled by the giant dingo that's currently stalking us."
There was a pause as a large drop of drool dripped down in front of them. They both very slowly glanced up.
The dingo growled.
They both screamed in a very girlish manner, and dashed off into the cactuses.
The dingo roared and stampeded after them.
A lone gust of wind blew some tumbleweed across the sand. And, for some reason, there was still a ceiling.
There was finally a door that could open. Hobbes rattled the door handle, and called Jack over.
"I wonder what's inside," the Captain mused.
"We should probably find out," Hobbes agreed.
Neither of them made a move to open it.
"I'm scared," Jack admitted. "Something horrible could be in there."
"Like, the entire collection of Justin Bieber song discs?" Hobbes suggested.
The door was the only thing in the hallway. There was no way to get around it, apart from going back. And, considering that there was a lava room there...
Hobbes slammed open the door, and peeked inside. Jack covered his eyes.
"It's a Bed Room," said Hobbes, with a tone of half shock, half relief.
"A bedroom?" Jack half-uncovered his eyes.
"No, a Bed Room. The whole room is a bed!"
"Ooh!" Jack jumped feet-first into the room. "Think of all the fun we could have in here!"
"NO." Hobbes stepped carefully in, not wanting to fall over. "Get the dirty thoughts out of your mind, Captain."
He laughed, and bounced lightly across the bed. "I'm a master of the bedroom."
There were no profanity filters in this room, that much was obvious. Hobbes enjoyed bouncing about the room for a bit, half-wishing that there was some jazz music to dance to.
"I wonder where Calvin and Rose are," he said after a moment.
"WHY THE HECK IS THERE A JUNGLE IN HERE?"
"SAFARI AL HACKS HIS WAY THROUGH THE CONGO!"
"And you! Shut up!"
"Ack! A GORILLA!"
"That's me, you moron!"
Rose sighed, leaning against a tree, and watched Calvin go completely insane again. It must be the stress, she reflected.
"Safari Al spots a treehouse!"
"Shut up," Rose said again. "There's no treehouse there."
"No, seriously," Calvin said in a normal tone of voice. "There's a treehouse. A door in the middle of the tree."
Rose looked over, and saw that he was indeed right. The tree in question was remarkable big. Calvin grabbed her hand and dragged her along to the door, pushing it open.
And they stepped into the kitchen of the Time Machine.
"I don't get this place." Rose down into a chair.
"I could make some hot chocolate," Calvin offered.
"Please do," she invited.
So he did. When he looked in the cupboard, there was no chocolate or cocoa or hot-choclate mix, so he took the large jar of Nutella out instead. He poured two cups of milk into a pan, and set it on the stove. When it started to bubble, he added four large scoops of the Nutella and stirred it in. He turned the stove off, added cinnamon, gave it a stir for good measure, then poured it into two mugs.
Calvin carried the mugs to the table, and set one down in front of Rose. She smiled, and took a sip, before sighing. "Oh, this is good."
He nodded, drinking a bit of his own. "It is, isn't it?"
"Where did you learn to make it?"
He shrugged. "Oh, here and there."
They were content to sit there, drinking the Nutella hot chocolate for a while. Unfortunately for them, though, the Time Machine had other plans.
"Calvin," Rose said conversationally. "Is it just me, or are we shrinking?"
He hummed a bit, and attempted to take another sip of his drink. The handle was too big for him to grasp. "I get the feeling that we're not shrinking. The room's growing. Either that, or we somehow crossed over into Alice in Wonderland and the hot chocolate we just drank had the label 'Drink Me' on it."
The table had grown to above their heads now.
"I think it was the first bit," Rose stepped over to the edge of the chair. They were now positively tiny. "And the room's shrinking now."
Even though the furniture remained at its massive size, the roof started to press down. When the highest cupboard began to crack and splinter, they both decided to run for it.
Jumping down proved harder than it looked. The chairs had begun to shift in unusual ways, so it was more like a game of Pac Man than anything else.
When they made it to the ground, the floor warped underneath them, and they were dumped downwards like that scene in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with the Devil's Snare. The movie, that is.
And they landed in the Bed Room.
"Okay," Hobbes managed to disentangle himself from Calvin's body. "Bowling ball butt. I was only wondering where you were. I wasn't attempting to summon you or anything."
"If the Summoning Charm in Harry Potter can be used to summon basically anything," Calvin randomly asked. "Can we do something like accio demon and summon an eldritch horror?"
Everyone stared at him, except for Jack, who was making no move to get out from underneath from Rose.
"Rose," Hobbes said finally. "Get off Jack."
"Aw, but she's comfy," Jack whined. Rose scrambled speedily off.
"Right," Calvin said once everyone was sitting down on the giant bed floor of the Bed Room. "Any suggestion on what the zark is going on today would be appreciated, because I have no idea myself."
"What, it wasn't your fault?" Jack and Hobbes said together.
Rose rolled her eyes. "We've been through this. Seriously, though. You have no idea what we've been through today."
"Antigravity mode," Hobbes said.
"No. My room was flooded. And so were the halls."
"Lava pit," Jack countered.
"Killer goldfish," Rose snapped back.
"Almost getting burnt to death while floating over the lava pit," Hobbes chimed in.
"Getting mauled by a giant dingo, and having the kitchen turn into Alice in Wonderland's house," Calvin grinned.
There was no definite winner to this little standoff. Calvin relented, and sat down again. They had all gotten up at some point.
"As I was saying," he continued. "Does anyone have any idea what's going on?"
Hobbes smiled, and it broke out into a full-out beam. "I just figured it out."
"What?" Rose turned to look at him.
Hobbes pressed his paws flat on the cushioned surface. "Oh, I just figured it out."
"WHAT?" everyone chorused.
He had that gleam in his eye. "The Time Machine is evolving!"
(A/N-
New chapter! And it's actually on time this week! Wow.
So, I was going to have a tiger chasing Calvin and Rose, and I was going to extend that scene, but then I remembered that In the Forest of the Night had that scene. SO.
Thank you to TheSpiffySpaceman, who reminded me about Safari Al. He will probably return next chapter.
This chapter marks the beginning of the main story arc. It's a lighthearted beginning, but it'll get a lot more serious later. Charles's absense actually has meaning to the plot, it's just not me being lazy.
Please remember to review! :-D
~Kitty, who is relistening to the Pitch Perfect Soundtrack for the 50th time in a row.)