"The Theater, The Theatre"
25. Lucas & Twelve
New York City, in the year 2070
She didn't know exactly when she'd gotten it in her head to do this, but if she had to give it a guess, it would have to have started as far back as when she was all of nine or ten years old. She would listen to her mother tell her little sister, who would have been four or five at the time, all about her own dear childhood friends, the Doctor and the Teacher. But where Gemma had taken to them and listened to each story in a sort of enraptured way, her sister Ginny had never been nearly as interested. She preferred the same old stories every other boy or girl would grow up listening to. In some ways, Gemma had been okay with that. It meant she could keep her friends to herself.
Even though Ginny did not care as much for them though, their mother would often dip back into that well, whenever she told them stories, and at that time of being nine or ten, Gemma had figured out something she had never caught on to before. Maybe it was that she'd been too young before, and the bigger picture had just gone over her head, but as she listened to the tales of the Doctor and the Teacher now, she was taken with the growing impression that there was more to the stories, that they might have hit closer to home than she'd realized.
Her mother wouldn't confirm or deny it at first, nor would her grandmother, and they should know, shouldn't they? The stories had always only ever come from either of them. But they'd only give her a small indulgent smile and send her off to play.
And then one day, just because it had dawned on her that she hadn't done it before, she'd asked her father. One day, he'd told her the words that would forever change her life. She had asked him about the stories, and the Doctor and the Teacher and where they'd come from, and he'd pulled her up to sit next to him before whispering to her in a sort of conspiratorial tone that they weren't just a story. This much Gemma had known, for a few years already, and she told her father that much, and about how her mother had said the Doctor had saved them.
"She saved a lot of people, didn't she?" Gemma had asked. Her father had looked at her, his eyes on her but his mind so far in the past.
"I'm sure she has, but you… you and your mother… We might have lost you both that day, and then I wouldn't have you, or your sister… If you ask me, we owe her our family."
In the years that followed, Gemma had carried those words with her, whether she realized it or not. We owe her our family. It was one thing to look at all those stories she'd heard from the perspective that they were make believe, meant to carry both Gemma and Ginny Lucas to sleep, to dreams. It was another entirely to set them in the real world, where the danger didn't go away if you shut your eyes, covered your ears, or hid and told your mother not to go on telling. So when her parents said that the Doctor had saved them, it meant they had actually been in mortal danger, that they could have died, if not for her. This would eventually grow to exist in Gemma's mind as meaning that everything she was, that she had been allowed to be born at all, was in some way dependent of the alien who could change her face, or his face.
And without really deciding so much as only doing it, Gemma had begun to search for the Doctor. What she would do if or when it happened, she didn't know, and she might not know until it happened, but she was going to do it. She would find the Doctor and the Teacher, and her family's debt would be expressed somehow. For a long time her search consisted of looking on the internet, or on the news, anywhere, for reports that might have had anything to do with them, or sightings of the blue box. She'd quickly discovered she wasn't the only one seeking the mysterious Doctor. That might have been encouraging if anyone else out there had any luck of their own, but they didn't.
As discreet as she'd always been about the whole thing, never telling her parents, or her sister, or her grandmother, her search had not remained entirely undiscovered. But then the one person that had found out was not just anyone; it was her uncle Arthur.
Her grandmother called him Artie, but to Gemma he had always been uncle Arthur, and when he'd found her out for seeking out the Doctor, he had surprised her in revealing that he had met them, too, the Doctor and the Teacher. Not only that, but he'd done just as she was doing, he'd tried to find them. Though he hadn't found them of his own accord, he had seen them again, so when he gave her some pointers, she did listen as best she could. Maybe it would help her get to her goal.
The years had carried on though, and she might not have given up on her search, but it was coming to feel entirely hopeless. Now here she was, twenty-three years old, and as the Doctor would one day assure her that it was fairly amusing, Gemma's luck changed on the day of her little sister's high school graduation.
She'd worked late the night before, and so naturally she'd woken up late. She had rushed to get herself ready, taking the fastest shower she'd ever taken, getting hair and makeup done as though she'd been sat on a chair and given a good spin. She was still fixing up her dress by the time she'd gotten down to the street and hailed a cab. It might have been the first relaxing breath she'd taken in the time since she'd woken, and her head had lolled back against the seat as they drove on.
Had she not been sitting exactly as she was, exactly where she was, at exactly this moment, she might not have seen it. But she did, and when she did, there was no doubt to it.
"Stop the car!" she'd blurted out, sitting up but never breaking eye contact with the blue box perched up on a roof across the street.
She didn't remember if she'd paid the driver or not, but he hadn't followed her, which either meant she had paid him, or she looked so crazed he hadn't bothered and simply been glad for being rid of her. All she cared about for now was to make it up to that box and hope it, and its occupants, would still be there when she arrived. She had to be buzzed in, and when the door had opened, her thoughts had briefly gone to her family, to her sister, and she hoped she would not end up missing out. They'd have to understand, right? This was the Doctor and the Teacher…
She arrived at the roof, out of breath and then knocked for a few more breaths, when she came to a stop and saw it sitting there, just as her mother and grandmother had always described it… the blue box.
It sat all alone there on the roof for a moment, and she was still hesitating as to how she was meant to proceed when the woman stepped into view.
She'd been standing behind it before, as far as Gemma could tell, and it was not her arrival which had brought her into view. The woman walked along the roof, slowly, with a strange sort of object in her hands. She kept adjusting knobs and switches, muttering to herself as she looked to the sky, where her object was pointed. She would stop, shake her head and mutter some more, and then she'd make more adjustments. If this wasn't her, then…
"Oh!" the woman had startled when she'd turned and found her there. "Hello," she greeted her now. "It's alright, I have the right to be here, I… I'm running experiments, see?" she reached into her pocket and produced a piece of paper proclaiming her as Jane Smith, a meteorologist. Gemma smirked, wondering if this was where she had acquired her middle name.
"Sure," she nodded. The woman 'Jane Smith' stared at her a moment, taking a step forward.
"May I help you with something?"
"Actually, I think I'm here to help you. My name is Gemma Lucas, I think you knew my parents, and before them my grandmother, too."
TO BE CONTINUED (TODAY)