The memorial service for Tony Stark, aka Ironman, was a relatively simple affair compared to the public funeral that had been witnessed by over two billion people around the world. When it was over, Tony's closest friends and associates gathered for a simple wake. They busied themselves exchanging stories, telling jokes and remembering all the good, and sometimes not so good elements of the life that had been Stark's.
To one side, Steve Rogers and Bruce (Professor Hulk) Banner were consulting with Henry Pym, Scott Lang and Hope Pym.
"I don't want to wait too long on this. The longer we let it slide the more that can go wrong," Banner insisted. "Right now, our only real hold up is the equipment we salvaged after the battle."
"How soon would you want to do this," Henry Pym asked.
"Tomorrow?" Steve suggested.
Pym looked over at his daughter then back at the Captain. "The equipment can be ready. The question is, will Tony's "Quantum Leap" formula still work? Especially in light of the twist to the time stream that the alternative Thanos caused when he attacked you two weeks ago."
"The calculations are still valid," Bruce replied. "I not only checked them myself, but I had Dr. Reed Richards confirm the stability elements. We're good to go as long as the Pym particles last."
"Maybe we should reconsider who should do this," Scott interjected. "I mean no aspersions on Captain America, but he'll be visiting multiple points in time where he already exists, in some cases, where at least two versions of him exist. Avoiding contact between multiple Caps is going to be tricky."
"Which is why we're only sending one person back on this mission," Bruce explained. "Besides, who else but Steve can lift Thor's hammer, which has to be returned to Asgard."
"Good point," replied Scott. "How long do you think..." Lang suddenly paused. "Does anyone else hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"A kind of slow, mechanical wheezing sound."
Within seconds everyone present could hear it. It slowly built is strength, then doubled over itself with a series of echoing pings like a ship's sonar system. Within seconds it built to something that sounded like a 1950's style science fiction mechanical effect. A heavy whooshing sound accompanied it and seconds later a large blue telephone booth seemed to simply fade into existence, with a bright blue flashing light on top. The box suddenly solidified and the noise stopped with a heavy thump that seemed to echo across the world!
"What the Hell?" the elder Pym muttered. Dr. Stephen Strange joined the group, his outer garb changing into his more familiar Sorcerer Supreme outfit.
"I think we're about to have a very formidable visitor," the mage said as his hands began glowing.
"How do you know?" asked Hope Pym.
"Just look around you," Strange replied.
The Wasp did, and was shocked by what she saw. "Everyone's, no everything's stopped moving." Sure enough, everything outside an eighty foot radius from the strange box had frozen, like the hands of a watch stopping. Even birds in the sky floated motionless above them.
Long moments passed in silence. Steve glanced up where the words, Police Call Box, could be easily seen. "I recognize this, thing," he said.
"You do?" asked Scott.
"During the war. These things use to be all over London. It gave the policemen pounding a beat a way to communicate with their headquarters before radios came into widespread use."
"Well, what is it?" Hope asked.
"Just what it says, a police call box."
"What is it doing here?" asked Banner.
The door suddenly opened and out stepped a middle-aged man wearing a red-velvet smoking jacket, a ruffled white shirt, a black, unusually wide bow tie, dark brown trousers and black ankle boots. His blonde hair was thickly curled and appeared to be in transition to gray. "It's here because I'm here," he said.
"And who are you?" Steve asked.
"OH! Allow me to introduce myself. I'm the Doctor."
"Doctor Who?" asked Scott.
"Just the Doctor. I must say you lot have really managed to muck things up; and more than just a little bit."
"Exactly what did we 'muck up' if you don't mind my asking," Banner responded.
"The time stream, of course. You decided to solve all your problems by skittering around through quantum space without regard to how you were affecting parallel strings of reality. It really is too much."
Parallel what?"
"Strings... or in your vernacular parallel time lines. Have you even mastered the fourth level of Zenon Theory?"
"Zenon Theory?" asked Pym.
"A fourth order application of Quantum Field Mysticism. Think of it as basic Quantum Theory to the tenth power," Strange supplied.
"Ah Ha! I knew there was at least one of you who understood what I was saying. Though I see you use organic sorcery as a means to access the Quantum realm as opposed to crude technological devices to bulldoze you way across time. I'm surprised you didn't explain the intricacies to you friends before letting them run amok."
"Unfortunately, I wasn't here to provide them any guidance."
"Yes... Quite true. At least they managed to survive the experience, though I wouldn't make it a habit of giving children matches."
"Well, maybe you could enlighten us... Doctor?" Banner observed, "As to exactly how we managed to 'muck things up?'"
"Well then, let's take the Brooklyn Bridge as an example."
"The what?"
"It's a suspension bridge that uses thousands upon thousands of tiny wires to hold up the roadway. These tiny wires each represent a time line, tightly packed close to each other to provide integrity and strength. Yet each wire is unique. The events occurring on one wire are sometimes almost exactly the same as those of a parallel wire. Others are completely different than the events occurring on another, just as the atoms that make up the wires are not all exactly the same in their arrangement, especially at the quantum level. They are all however parallel to each other because they all travel, for the most part, in the same direction; Forward from the past, through today and into the future. The points where the wires touch are continuous and on the quantum level can allow the passage of energy from one wire to another, like little baby sub-atomic quantum particles traveling back and forth along the wire, creating integrity and permanence."
"Are you understanding any of this?" Steve asked Dr. Pym.
"Some of it. How about you?"
"He lost me at the Brooklyn Bridge."
"Bundling the individual time lines together gives all reality a flexibility and strength that ensures they survive. Just like the wires are bundled into bigger and bigger cables until you have created the main support cable that holds up the roadway. But it is still composed of thousands upon thousands of individual wires. Passage between the time lines occurs organically all the time and as long as the passage is organic, then everything remains intact. What you lot have been doing is jumping all over the place wearing away at the integrity of individual wires, causing them, after a fashion, to fray. When a wire frays enough at one point, it breaks. Now you can have one time line break and nothing else is affected, not immediately. But over time the whole cable can be weakened if, through carelessness, other time lines are allowed to fray and break.
"So which time line are you, Doctor?" Hope asked.
"Why the central time line. The prime meridian if you will. I come from the central thread of the central wire of the central bundle of the central roadway support cable."
"So we've been causing the time lines to fray?" asked Strange.
"Oh, not you. Your organic travel along the time line is harmless and quite natural. It's these other... amateurs who are causing the problem. Fortunately, most of the damage has been confined to the outer wires and while not easy, my compatriots and I have been splicing things together to prevent further fraying."
Professor Hulk took off his glasses and started rubbing his eyes. From the tone of his voice, it was obvious to everyone he was more than a little offended by middle-aged gentleman. "This is getting to sound more and more like techno-babble, Doctor. If you want us to even begin to believe what you're saying is true, we need more than just your word." When he removed his hand from his face, Steve noticed that there was a thin, red circle around the inside of Banner's pupil.
"I don't know about you, Bruce, but I'm getting a headache. You wouldn't happen to have any aspirin on you?"
Banner reached into a pocket and pulled out a small bottle which he handed to Steve. The Super-Soldier opened the top, shook out one tablet and popped it into his mouth. He handed the bottle back to Professor Hulk who paused for a moment, then shook out about twenty tablets and swallowed them in one gulp. As he was putting the bottle back in his pocket, it occurred to him that Steve didn't get headaches, or at least never admitted to them. He looked at his friend who was giving him a sideways grin and he immediately calmed down.
"Doctor Banner has a point," said Hank. "We need some reason to take you at more than just your word. Especially if you're bulldozing through time yourself with your own machine."
"Actually," interrupted Strange, "His 'Police Box' feels like it's less a machine than a living entity."
"Very perceptive of you, Doctor. Though I would appreciate you not calling her an It, or even a Police Box. She is a Type 40 TARDIS, and she is both very lovely and spry for her age."
"Noted," Bruce replied. "But it still doesn't answer the question of whether you can prove what you say."
The Doctor pulled a pocket watch from his jacket and clicked it open. "Well... If it's proof you need, I'd say I might just be able to provide that for you in about ten seconds from now... Give or take thirty years."
"What?"
Once more the world around them began to thrum with a mechanical wheezing sound. When it stopped a second Police Box had materialized, though it seemed to be a slightly different shade of blue than the first. The door opened and a much younger man stepped out. He was wearing a dark, pinstriped suit with a lavender shirt and a small, dark gray bow tie. Atop his head he wore a red fez with a long tassel hanging from it.
"Hello... am I on time?" he asked.
"When are you not on time?" the older man replied.
"Who are you?" asked Steve Rogers.
The older man quickly made introduction. "Doctor Banner, Doctor Pym, Doctor Strange... I'd like you to meet the Doctor."
"Again?" asked Scott.
"Is this man your associate?" asked Steve.
"You might say that."
"Associate? Oh I like that," the second Doctor responded huffily. "You're making me sound like the hired help."
"Actually, when you get down to it, He's Me and I'm Him," the elder Doctor said.
"So you're both the Doctor," Scott said, looking from one to the other. "I don't get it."
"It's not difficult," offered Doctor Strange. "While they both appear to be different men, their TARDIS' are essentially the same time travel device."
"You mean they're the same model 40," said Hank.
"No, I mean they are the same TARDIS, each with minor changes and improvements, but essentially the same machine, or I should say, being."
"I think he's got it," the younger Doctor said.
"We call it regeneration, explained the elder Doctor. "When our bodies wear out we regenerate our physical form on the cellular level. New bodies, but the knowledge and experiences all transfer over..."
"For the most part..."
"So how long do you live?" asked Banner.
"Potentially, each regeneration is good for anywhere from 125 to 180 years, but this varies based upon how far up and down the timeline we travel along with the kind of hazards we deal with. It can be much longer"
"...Or shorter depending on circumstances."
"I'm going to get a paint brush and paint a big number one on Doctor Ruffles and number two on Doctor Fez," muttered Scott.
"Actually, I'd be number three and my compatriot would be number..."
"Eleven. Unless you count that old geezer who fought in the Time War, then I'd be number Twelve. You know, I really wish I could remember who won. At any rate, it's time I was about patching up this temporal string. I mean that's what I'm here for in the first place." He turned back to his box and opened the door. "Okay, you can come out now. Olly, Olly Oxen Free!"
To the surprise of everyone present, except the Doctors, Natasha Romanov stepped out of the TARDIS. The expression on her face was a little confused, but seeing Captain Rogers and Bruce she unhesitatingly ran forward and tried to embrace both men at the same time.
"Nat? How? But Clint said you died on Vormir,"
"Actually it was her doppelganger from another parallel universe who died," explained the younger Doctor.
"We were traveling through the Quantum Realm when I felt something bump into me. It sent me tumbling off course and I wound up on this strange world called Trensalor, where it's always Christmas. When I tried to press the recall button on my suit, it failed."
"Doppelganger?" asked Strange.
"You weren't the only time line trying to undo the effect of what Thanos did. There were about seven other threads that had the same idea. That's why I've..."
"We've..."
"...Been busy trying to tie up all the loose threads as it were and stopping things from fraying apart. When your Natasha bumped into that other Natasha she was thrown to one side and came out on Trensalor. The other Natasha never made it to her own Vormir, so unfortunately in that thread your Avengers didn't succeed, freeing up the alternate Thanos to attack you here."
The Doctor stopped talking as a soft, mechanical wheezing noise began filtering through the conversation. He looked over at Scott. "Would you be so kind as to take about six steps to your left? I'm afraid we've got incoming."
Sure enough, within a few moments a third TARDIS had appeared, or more precisely, the same one appeared for the third time. When its door opened a brown curly-haired man wearing a frumpy, half crushed hat and a ridiculously long scarf stepped out. "Am I on time?"
"Yes," the first two Doctors answered in unison.
"Good, good! I'll only stay long enough to drop off a couple of things." He strolled over to the third Doctor. From one pocket he pulled out a glowing cube which he started to hand to the ruffled shirt Doctor."
"Hold it," warned Steve Rogers. "That's one of the Infinity Stones. You want to be careful how you handle it. I've seen it tear someone apart and shoot them off into some kind of hole in space."
"Oh, don't worry my good man. I've had lots of experience handling items like this." He dropped the cube into the third Doctor's hand then pulled a small, chrystal globe from his other pocket. Inside everyone could see someone furiously pacing back and forth and occasionally pounding on the inside of the sphere. He dropped it into the other Doctor's hand.
"Loki!" exclaimed Bruce.
"Yes," replied the new Doctor. "I came across him mucking about on an alternate time line trying to get everyone to worship him."
"But how did you capture him," asked
"It wasn't difficult. Asgardian magic verses Time Lord Technology. Piece of cake really." He looked at the other two Doctors. "Time we were off."
"Aren't you forgetting something?" the elder Doctor asked.
"OH, Yes, yes! Just a moment. He went back into his Tardis and came out carrying the metallic case containing the Infinity stones in one hand and Mjölnir in the other. He handed over the case then casually tossed the hammer to the Captain. "I made a quick stop to pick up these items before coming here."
"How did you do that?" Steve asked.
"Do what?"
"Lift Thor's hammer."
"Oh... Well technically I wasn't lifting it. The Tardis was. I was just guiding its direction through this point in space-time. Simple, really... and when you consider it, my Tardis is much more worthy than let's say, your average elevator."
"Professor Hulk looked at the elder doctor. "Do you realize we now have two sets of the space stone existing at the same time and in the same place? That has to be incredibly dangerous!"
"Why?" he asked. "One version is locked in this case, the other still safely ensconced in the Tesseract. As long as the stones themselves don't make physical contact they're relatively harmless. Besides, Captain, we figured you'd want to be on your way as soon as possible."
"On my way?"
"Why yes..." replied the third Doctor. It's past time you do your part in straightening out this mess." Steve looked intently at all three men. Something about the Doctor, about all three Doctors, made him feel as if he could trust the Time Lord. Perhaps it was the very caring glint he saw in his eyes, perhaps it was his directness, whatever it was, Steve felt he could trust him completely.
Captain Rogers confidently strode up to the version of the Doctor with the smoking jacket. He looked back at the other Avengers. "Any objections?" Banner, Pym, Lang and Strange looked at each other then they all nodded in agreement.
"This will save us a lot of guess work," Bruce offered. Steve gave them all a kind of quirky smile then boarded the Tardis.
"Not to worry," said the Eleventh Doctor. "He'll have him there and back again before you can say Steve Moffett."
"Do you have to do that?" asked the elder Doctor.
"Do what?"
"Break the fourth wall?"
"What's wrong with that? I do it all the time," said the Eleventh doctor. It's sort of my 'shtick.'"
The third doctor looked over at the fourth. "I blame you for that."
"Whatever," the fourth doctor replied. He glanced at his pocket watch. "Well, I guess we're off.". With that all three Time Lords, or the one Time Lord three separate times boarded his Police Box and closed the door. Moments later all three time machines had vanished.
Around them the wake, and the world, suddenly came back to life. A blank expression abruptly settled on Professor Hulk's face as he looked around. "What just happened?" Where's Steve, We were just talking to him. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Looking, Bruce found himself face to face with a very old man who, somehow seemed familiar.
"Hello, Doctor Banner," he said, a familiar, quirky smile crossing his ancient face.
"Steve?"
"Have I got a story to tell you!"
END