A myth amongst kin
-o0O0o-
If you ever meet a Time Lord in time of your greatest triumph, they always either run, help because its just an illusion or kill you, for your triumph is in truth your greatest failure.
-o0O0o-
She was there, again. Just a reflection in a window, a shadow in the corner of his eyes.
Humanity's first Time Traveler Davis Godwin pulled his hood deeper and dogged into the doorway leading down to the workshop of the TSTA he had spent half his life in. Fifteen-hundredth years ago.
The door unlocked without a hitch and he stepped into the giant hall full of prototypes and grinned at the sight of Mizuno wiping the new visors of his baby.
"Please tell me that one won't explode the moment I slow down," he joked.
Norelem patted the hull with xis claws. "At least more stable with whatever that was you came up with."
"The Du'roon, not we," Davis corrected and starred at the white matte surface. "I finished the central circuits an hour ago, printing is ongoing."
"We can't install the drive until tomorrow, there was a problem with the fumes," Mizuno corrected.
Norelem flawed apologizing. "It seems Janett needs to wait a day longer."
"It's a time machine," Davis deadpanned, knocked on the panel and left.
It was not his daughter he wanted to return to. It was this goddam time, this unrealistic utopia he wanted to leave. Once he realized how much he actually had been blown of course by the Impact of the time tunnel, he expected something more resembling the Time Machine than Star Trek.
But when the world was burnt out and devastated by greed, humanity had just packed their things and wandered the stars, for a second earth, a second chance not to fuck up again, and they took it.
There's no Planet B, the motto of three generations before him and everyone in his time had dedicated themselves to, the hunger and war, was meaningless.
Then again, his whole life purpose had been to better humanity, that was why he joined the TSTA in the first place, why he build the time capsule with the Professor under the enigmatic guidance of the Du'roon, the first alien species to contact humanity peacefully and stayed that way.
Except, in this time everybody believed him to be dead, and the experiment failed, thus time travel forever abandoned. Well, it wasn't just the two weeks jump forward he had planned, similar to the jumps the test chimpanzee had accomplished. But now, it was a new possibility, a new project humanity could obsess over, the only thing they hadn't accomplished yet. He was an event, a celebrity, an oddity, and he hated it. There had been a goddamn lottery for who would be allowed to nurse him back to health. Not to mention the interviews.
"You need somebody to drive you," Mizuno offered, but Davis waved dismissive. "I'll walk."
"Still the… hallucinations?"
He but bis lips to not sound like a lunatic by denying she was no hallucination and nodded shortly. "Burn trauma."
It was true in a way, if he had stranded in another time, he would probably still be a crisp burnt potato.
"You know, you can sit in, for a check, anytime," Norelem, patted the capsule once more. Davis nodded with a smile, despite knowing that it didn't work that way.
-o0O0o-
Zess was a not a very bright child but adorable in her naiveite. Her biggest dream was to become a Extra-terrestrial taxonomist, cataloguing all the alien species in the known universe. It was weird, the universe had become so much bigger than in his time, and yet dreams like this still existed.
Even if he wasn't sure that was the real name of that profession.
The problem was that while the child of his landlord had already memorized all current known alien sentient species on earth, she didn't differentiated between myths and actual existing ones, believing in dragons, fae and goblins as faithfully as Zygons and the beheaded monks.
So, when she asked him about Time Lords, and her mother shushed her down with an eyeroll, he knew it was just another myth.
"Time Lords? I've never heard of them."
"But you're a time traveler, you must have met one at least once. They always come to the important history places."
He rubbed his chin, indulging her. "Perhaps? How do they look?"
"Nobody knows, that's the fun in it, you only know afterwards. Before, they delete your memory."
"That doesn't sound inviting."
"They aren't. They rule time, they make everyone dead in the end."
That sounded a lot more like a mixture of the fates of ancient reek mythology and the irish fae.
"I thought the Time Agency controls time," Davis smiled.
"They control time travel. The Time Lords control time. They make everything happen and are careful that nothing changes. Otherwise, they correct it. All the laws how time behaves? Written by them."
Ok, that was enough. "Those are natural laws, defined by physics and how the universe was created."
"What do you know, everybody knows people in the 22nd century believed gravity effected the speed of light when in truth every child knows-"
"Zess," her mother interrupted, "no, scientific breakthroughs after the 21-40'ties!"
"Sorry."
What the-? Right. He took a sip of his drink to lessen the awkward tension. Maybe she was a bit more intelligent than he gave her credit?
"No changes, hm," he muttered, glancing out of the window.
Directly into her eyes.
For the first time, she was standing directly visible outside on the opposite side of the street, wearing the rather timelessly elegant outfit of a cream-coloured blouse, black trousers and black heels, her brown wavy hair cut short to a bit under her chin, her hands folded before her belly, her face blank of emotions. Waiting. Observing. First him, then her eyes wandered down to Zess, and a moment later she turned and disappeared, just like that into thin air. Logically he knew she could have been teleported away, but it didn't look like that. At all.
He gulped, then leant closer to the little girl.
"Tell me more about those Lords of Time."
-o0O0o-
He flopped down on the bench next to her with a provoking "hi!"
She looked up startled and snapped her book shut.
"Interesting. You should not be able to see me."
"That makes your little stalking act even more creepy, you know."
"Pardon?"
"There's nothing to justify myself for. If you want to talk, contact my assistant. Otherwise leave me alone. I'm glad you're interested in humanity's ability to time travel, and if you have problems with it, I'm very sorry but that's how it is now, I'm sure you'll get used to it. If you now excuse me, I have a tight schedule to keep."
He rose and stretched his arms, enjoying the dumbfound look on her face. "Have a nice day, and fare well to never see you again. Bye!"
He saluted and left, smugly strolling back to the waiting taxi he had jumped out after he had spotted her again.
Was it respectless? Probably, but she didn't do anything to deserve his respect.
And now, that he officially warned her off, if she turned up again, he was able to finally sent the police- or whatever counted as it in this time- after her. Mythical alien or not.
Prof Dog watched him slumping in the seat. "Who was that?"
"Time Lord apparently."
The furless wolf-like creature's ears twitched. "Fascinating. They usually run, help or kill you when spotted. Congratulations, then."
Davis hummed only, already back to skipping though the script for the coming presentation. Out of the circus made around his person, the scientific panels were the only one he truly enjoyed.
And yet, that sentence burned himself into his subconscious, intruding his thoughts at the oddest times in the following week.
She did not run, she did not kill, but with what would she help?
This life was as close to perfect as humanly possibe, and yes there were cracks.
But they were minor.
While humanity had bettered their care for their environment and found a somewhat social equality with itself, there were still skirmishes with other species, a slight trace of the group-thinking left, just this time targeted outwards. Davis doubted that would be ever gone, it was part of the definition. And yet, they had evolved enough to carry out those fights with words, not weapons. For the most part. The scientific breakthrough he was able to observe and know of, were astonishing.
And yet, something was wrong.
The smiles to polite whenever he spoke of the Du'roon, a small laughter when he recalled an event.
He had a four-hour discussion about the anti-ach protest and how the history of that genetic mutation project went down, until he blurred out that he was marching from the vey first moment with them and shut them up with it.
And after that, the inconsistencies pilled up.
Small things, a wrong date, an odd sentence in a historical speech, a painting no one remembered, a famous person he never had heard of.
And the minor cracks grew bigger.
Two and a half weeks later, two weeks since his time machine was fully functioning but the phantom pain of the burns holding him back to climb back in it, there was a soft, high but velvety voice behind him. "Good day, Mr. Godwin."
-o0O0o-
He halfheartedly nipped on his iced coffee, while the Time Lord finished her almond-nut sundae.
"I never thought there would be a gelateria in the thirty-sixth century."
"It's gelato. As timeless as books. Remember that weird time in the beginning of the twenty-first century, when everybody thought e-books to replace them? Joke on them. Yes, the extinction of cows had been a problem for the time, but it got solved, obviously."
"Please not with the arc- project."
"Spoilers." She elegantly dipped the corners of her mouth with the napkin, and then steepled her hands on the table, watching him.
She had this weird ability of waiting without judgement or expectation. Just waiting.
He had no idea what to say. Him actually following her spoke volumes, and yet.
"What is happening."
"Humanity discovered and moreover executed a time travel."
"Yes, but the timeline is changing."
"As always."
"No, not like, history is remembered different than it is, but the actual events."
"Yes. Time is not a static concept."
He knocked his fingernails on the table. "I know, I know. I've seen the time tunnel-"
"Time Vortex."
"Time Vortex, whatever. This is more than just time looping in on itself and changing. Something is wrong."
"Not in the way you think. Which is very interesting, indeed."
"What do you mean."
"Well, your whole survival is obviously wrong, as you might have noticed. The Du'roon never helped, you are blown into atoms forever lost in the Vortex. You enter, but you never leave."
Davis choked, but she mercilessly continued. "What you are referring to are time splits. You are experiencing more than one closely related Timeline simultaneously. Which is a thing Humans don't do, so your brain chose one of them to cope. Undoubtedly caused by your raw exposure to the vortex. That is how you saw me, despite me hiding in a less probable moment, by the way."
Davis placed his hands flat on the table, concentrating on the perfectly flat, nonporous surface and breathed slowly. Nose in, hold mouth out. There was so much wrong with everything she just said.
"Sometimes you can do nothing but accept it and move on," the Time Lord smiled. "Well, then again, who am I to condemn curiosity? So. Which topic first. The fact that you should be dead, or you hallucinating timelines?"
Davis slowly opened his eyes, still shaking, still not able to speak.
"Death, then it is," she nodded.
They usually either run, kill or help you.
Davis laughed bitterly. "I certainly won't simply let you kill me."
"Why do you humans always say that in that weird confidence of being able to stop your oponent?"
Davis blinked, glancing down on the drink she had just bought him, with a bad feeling. "Defiance, I guess?"
She chuckled and thoughtlessly traced the rim of the bowl before her. "I have no intent to kill you, the mere assumption of your death will suffice."
"They'll declare me missing and shelve the project until I turn up fifteen hundred years later. That's what all that fuss is really about."
"Has humanity ever let go of something, they haven't found a better replacement for?"
"And now they finally will."
"No, they won't. They will probably never travel though time with their own devices, except you. It's just not your nature."
He rose from his chair. "Yeah, right. No. There's no reason exept you don't wanting it that way. I will leave. Today. I waited long enough. And then we'll see. "
"And then you will bring down hell on the universe."
He snorted. "Hell."
But her earnest, melancholic look prompted him to stay. "Ok. Undulge me, I'll bite. Why hell?"
"Your failed jump is a fix point for not only a timeline, but a whole string. A central point in human history, like an early death of Genghis Khan or Napoleon never conquering Europe. So central, people can only imagine history after it up to a certain point because it changes everything. Where are you from?"
"New Zealand. What does it have to do with that?"
"You are from earth," the Time Lord corrected. "As long as humanity has yet to find its identity as a species from one planet on which political borders doesn't matter in its definition, its greed and inward competition will only destroy."
"Not if we have a common goal."
"Which is?"
"To create a better future."
The Time Lord demonstativly looked around.
"Before we have to flee our planet," he added with an eyeroll.
"How? Time travel? Because there is no other posibility than that."
"Indeed. You have no Idea of the hopelessness, of the anger on former generations who believed they own the earth instead of borrowing it from future generations. Have you ever been there? I still regulate my water intake on instinct. We were battling the consequences of human caused climate change for three generations now, and still there were people negating it. Sixty seven percent of all farm animals known a century ago alone were extinct, and do not let me start on plant could stop it before we ever started."
"How," the Time Lord asked again.
"We find a way," Davis replied stubborn.
"You are going to erase them," the Time Lord corrected. "Don't even try to deny it. here's no other way. As you said, after three generations of active consequences peope were not believing, how stubborn are they if there are no conequences visible, yet."
"It's for the greater good," he growled.
The Time Lord laughed bitterly, terrifing and old and so much more than the little mere human he was. He bit his lips.
"Do you know what they say about people acting for the greater good? It's a quote from a Human, by the way. They who say it, never do."
"You know nothing-"
"I know everything," she hissed and for the first time Davis was scared of her. "They will simply repeat it. They are humans. If you tavel back the survivors will know its possible, will invent it themselves and travel further back to avoid the massacer in the first place. That's how it always goes if time is wapoized. I have seen it, I have fought like this. Humanity has fougt like this, died countless times like this, but you can't remeber because in the end it never happenend. Just a myth. Theres going to be a competition of which side is erasing which one first, and in the end nothing is going to be left."
"It doesn't change that they know now," Davis tried to change the angle. "If you condem humanity like that, whats the difference between then and now?"
"They lost their planet, their home," She smiled softly. "You only ever realize what you have, when you loose it."
"They will go back."
"They resit it for a century now."
"Sorry, what?"
"Humanity, here, in this time, discovered time-travel hundred years ago, in the same scientific discoveries that allows them to stop somebody from aging and revive a body with full functioning memory after up to four years after its death. Do you know why they do not practice this? Because they all agreed that those are the boundaries defining them as human. Because they know the destruction their endless beautiful curiosity will bring without those. I think, you know it, too."
The memory of Zess' ambitious plans flickered though Davis' head and his stomac coiled at how realistic they actually were.
"So, that whole circus around me, is just that. An Illusion."
"On the contrary. With that time jump proving to be sucessfull, you ascended into myth as a man of morality and inteligence fouteenhundret years ahead of his time."
"Good lord," he groaned.
"No pressure indeed," the Time Lord quipped. "But seriously. This choice is yours alone. Despite everything I say or do, both decisions are valid. What I described is the worst case cenario, theorised up by an old veteran. Humanity surprised me before. If you belive it to be possible, by all means go ahead. If you want to see your daughter, despite finding closure with the possibility of never seeing her again the moment you climbed in that capsule, go ahead, I did worse to see my family again. I will not stopp you and I will be there to clean up the mess if you fail. That's a promise."
She was here to help.
So, humanity rised through their suffering, grew wiser, more human than they ever have been. And yet, the Time Lord wouldn't keep him from returning, neither did they.
Good lord, he was sick.
"I, I need time," He whispred. "I need time. I will think about it. But I need time."
"That is the thing about Time Travel. You have plenty of it," she smiled softly.
He knocked on the table in greeting and left, feeling her eyes on his back long after he had turned around the next corner.
-o0O0o-
The signal to close the entry hatch of the capsule sounded. Davis fingers few over the controls, the shields flaring up around him and he tapped his helmet once more. to mute the sound. He had taken another week to come to an decision.
There was a weird giddiness as the Time Vortex started to glimmer up around the hull, stretching out tendrils like a small aurora borealis, ready to grab and swallow up the capsule.
Davis took a breath, his hand on the exit button,wich would cause the ejecton of the capsule from the vortex, then counted down. Only when the capule was fully in the vortex he could press it to leave again, otherwise it would tear the thing in bits and pieces.
In the last possible moment, before the capsule disapeared in the swirling eternal present of the Time vortex, he jumped out of the still open hatch, while pressing down. The rotors screeched in protest, as the tendrils hungrily preyed upon the weakness and snaped the capsule into atoms, splattering them through all of time and space.
The explosion carried Davis far enough to not getting sucked in himself. He crashed down against the wall. The fire emergency started to ring and argon to flood the hall.
He coughed, bit his lips in pain and pulled down his broken helmet. Useless now against the Gas. Carefully he crawled back on his feet. Ouch. As fast as possible, he limped to the entrance.
Behind the doors there already was a crowd of people, despite it being long after midnight. Then again, this was a University.
Davis sat down against the wall, breathless, massaging his shoulder.
Mizuno shouldered himself to the front. "Godwin, what happened!"
"He blew the ship up!" somebody in the crowd cursed, other following the statements with affirmatives.
"You what? Why!"
Davis blinked up with a dozy smile. Damn, there was definitely something broken.
"It's better that way. Right?"
For a second there was surprised silence, then people stared ginning and laugh approvingly and strangely enough the crowd dispersed as quick as it had assembled.
They had expected something like this, after all. That or him being blown to pieces during his final flight home.
Perhabs there even was a betting pool.
He coughed again, thankfully no blood, but the pain was argonizing. The flames of his phanto bursn mixing with the acula singings of the explotion.
He cursed sofly, and Miro laughed. "Karma. For forcing us rebuild that thing, just to blew it up again."
Prof Dog, no, Prof Ghrombkwhah,-he needed to learn to pronounce that damn name and not call him nicknames now- patted his head while checking his injury.
"Welcome to the Thirty-sixth century, Mr. Godwin."
"I might have had a little help."
"The Storyteller, I assume?"
"If that's her name?"
"Considering she's the only one able to convince somebody to nearly explode themselves to preserve time, I'm pretty sure it was her, yes. The Doctor would have given a better mechanical solution. The CIA would probably just have killed you."
Storyteller. Funy, Zess had spoken of her specifically. What an honor.
"Well, as you said. They either, run, help or kill you." He smiled weakly. "Sometimes youre not quite able to destinguish which thin it is, tho."
The Storyteller smiled back, nodded, and was around the corner before the Prof could turn and see whom he looked at.
Hey,
another of Tella's typical workdays. If she notices a mayor change in time, she goes and deals with it accordingly. I admit, I did plan for her to get his daughter in the end as a reward, however he was pretty rude, so Tella kind of said no to that. That's also why she just bulldozed over him with that info drop, she now has the social competence to be at least a bit more sensitive. If she wishes.
As for Davis, it's always interesting to write characters who are not that sympatic. I'm not talking about the way he handles a stalker, he as every right to call her out.
Aaand and and….
Next one, we run into an old friend. Literally.
Oh, and this story features now in a collection, and I'm really honored. Thank you!
Also thanks to Snapdragon 418 and Sea16 for following and Redjani for favoring.
You guys make me always want to continue writing for this project! Even more encouraging are reviews, tho.
Stay save!
Greetings
alkatie
PS: Also, go to Big Finish and get The Lone Centurion, now. I don't, care if you don't follow the Doctor Who Audiobooks, there is a completely new one that follows Rory on the 2000 Years of him guarding Amy in the Pandorica. Spoken by Arthur Darvil himself. Go, order now!
KD 09042021