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The World of Paradox
"So… you're really his daughter?" Rose looked at Natalie in awe as the four travellers stood inside the TARDIS, the Doctor at the controls while the three women stood off to the side, the other woman having only expressed a brief surprise at K9's presence before leaving the robot dog alone. "And you're just… what, a few years old?"
"Give or take, anyway," Natalie shrugged. "I lost track of the exact time while I was… well, I went travelling and I fell through a few dimensional rifts…"
"Ah," Rose said, nodding uncertainly. "Uh… can we just accept that I accept I won't really understand any more of that?"
"Fair enough," Natalie said. "We were separated for a long time because he thought I was dead, and now we're back together; let's leave it at that."
"…Not a nice story, is it?" Rose looked at Natalie with a new sense of discomfort.
"In a world where the Faction can screw with history whenever they want so long as they're careful, it wouldn't be," Amy pointed out grimly. "They have no fixed base, they have no definite agenda beyond 'smash stuff and break history', they have all that power and only know enough about it to be dangerous without knowing enough to know what they shouldn't do."
"Ah," Rose said.
"OK," the Doctor called out, smiling at the girls from his position by the console. "Course is set and we're on our way to London; any preference for exact date, Miss Tyler?"
"Well-" Rose began, before the entire TARDIS suddenly shook, the time rotor essentially exploding in the middle of the room, leaving all four organic passengers feeling as though they were suddenly accelerating rapidly upwards before the sensation shifted.
"What's happened?" Rose asked, leaning against the console with the others.
"The time vortex; it's gone!" the Doctor yelled, hands flying over the nearest panel as he looked at the screen in shock. "That's impossible; it's just… gone!"
"Hold on; the time vortex is gone?" Amy repeated incredulously. "As in, the thing we travel through? Isn't that like the Pacific vanishing while we're on a boat?"
"Affirmative," K9 noted from where he was spinning around in place on the console room floor, as though scrambling to maintain his balance while the ship continued to 'fall' wherever it was going to land.
"It should be!" the Doctor yelled, scrambling around the console and over Natalie to take a better look at another screen. "Brace yourselves; we're going to crash!"
With those words, the TARDIS jolted to a halt, what looked like gas masks falling from the ceiling as the sensation of falling came to an end just as abruptly, and far less violently, then when it had started.
"Everyone all right?" the Doctor asked, looking anxiously around the console room.
"We're good," Amy said, exchanging a glance with Natalie and Rose.
"All personal systems accounted for, Master," K9 put in. "Warning; TARDIS power systems have been depleted."
"Wait… you mean…" Natalie looked anxiously between the dog and her father.
"The TARDIS is dead," the Doctor said solemnly, reaching out to flick a single switch as he stared at the now-dim central column.
"Oh God," Amy said, looking at her friend in horror.
"But… you can fix it, right?" Rose asked.
"There's nothing to fix," the Doctor said grimly, walking around the console, tapping a couple of buttons only to be met with no response. "She's perished. The last TARDIS in the universe… extinct."
"Couldn't we get help?" Natalie asked. "I mean, we landed somewhere; there has to be something out there, right?"
"We fell out of the vortex, through the void, into nothingness," the Doctor countered, looking solemnly at his daughter. "We're in some sort of… no place… the silent void, the lost dimension-"
"Otherwise known as London?" Amy cut in, looking back from the TARDIS door with a smile as she indicated their landing spot, right next to a bus stop, on the other side of the road from an old church and a red-bricked building, right next to a river that had to be the Thames even without the Houses of Parliament on the other side.
"London?" Rose looked at Amy incredulously. "You mean… after all that panic, we got where we were going anyway?"
"Hold on…" the Doctor said, walking out of the TARDIS, followed by the other women and K9.
"Yep; here we are," Amy said, picking up a discarded newspaper from the ground. "OK, the date is February 2007; a bit behind the times for me, but how's that for you?"
"Uh… a bit earlier than it was when I left, but just by a couple of months," Rose conceded.
"So this is London," the Doctor said.
"That would appear to be the case," Amy said with a nonchalant smile.
"Your London."
"I thought Amy lived in Leadworth?" Natalie asked.
"Well, I'm not that far from London-" Amy began.
"And your London includes Zepplins all of a sudden?"
"Includes what?" the three women asked, looking sharply upwards at that announcement to see the aforementioned massive airships moving through the sky above them.
Frankly, Amy was just ashamed that she hadn't realised these things were there earlier; she must have been so focused on the familiar landmarks of Parliament and Big Ben that she hadn't bothered looking up.
"That's beautiful," Natalie said, before looking at the Doctor and Amy. "I take it those aren't normal for London at this time?"
"We haven't even used zepplins for years," Amy confirmed, staring at the sky in confusion. "Wasn't there some big mess with them in the 1930s…?"
"This isn't our world," the Doctor said firmly.
"But if the date's the same…" Rose began uncertainly.
"It's parallel, isn't it?" Amy looked at the Time Lord. "Like that time you went to the alternate world where you were a fascist dictator?"
"You were what?" Rose looked sharply at the Time Lord.
"It was an alternate version of me who went mad for reasons I've never been sure of; he's long dead, so it's not important," the Doctor said dismissively.
"Uh… I'm sorry, but what's all this about alternates?" Rose asked, after looking around confirmed that nobody else was showing a particularly strong reaction to that news.
"Parallel universe, Rose," Amy explained. "The idea that other realities can exist where everything's the same but history's different in some way or another, like traffic lights are blue, Kennedy was never assassinated, or-"
"Or he's still alive," Rose cut Amy off, staring in shock at an advert on the side of what looked like a bus stop, revealing the form of Pete Tyler in a sharp business suit, silver things in his ears, holding a bottle labelled 'Vitex Lite', apparently in a cherry flavour. "A parallel world and my dad's still alive…"
"Don't," the Doctor said, stepping forward to stand grimly in front of Rose. "Don't think about it, Rose; this is not your world."
"So… this is nothing to do with me?" Rose said, looking at the poster with a tentative smile, in a manner that left Amy feeling that Rose had only been listening to about half of what they'd just been talking about. "This is just… he lived and he pulled this off all on his own? All those daft little schemes of his… one of them finally worked?"
"Rose," the Doctor looked firmly at the young blonde, "I know that I have given you no clear reason to trust me, but trust this; looking at that image will bring you nothing. Your father died when you were six months old; this Pete may have his own Jackie, his own Rose, and they are not-"
"OK," Amy said sharply, as she stepped in between the Doctor and Rose. "Let's just… calm down before we do or say anything we'll regret later?"
"…Good point, Pond," the Doctor nodded at his friend and student, before turning to look at Rose with a less stern expression. "Just… look, go with Amy and… see what you can find out about Pete Tyler's life here if you want, but don't…"
"Don't just drop in on him," Rose finished, nodding at the Doctor in awkward understanding. "Right."
"Good," the Doctor nodded at the young blonde before he turned to look at Natalie. "In the meantime, you're with me and K9; we need to take a better look at the TARDIS and see what we've got to work with."