Part Three
The cloud of blue steam was still drifting around the floor of the chronon-accelerator room in the Temporal Affairs main laboratory. The alarm was now silent. Everybody had the chance to catch their breath. The scientists began checking the equipment to make sure it wasn't about to explode. The machine was now safely switched off.
Zarwin Waqti and Lendo Tempo looked through the glass. They saw an empty space where the Doctor had just been standing.
Lendo quickly looked up to see if the other one was still there next to her. Indeed he was. And he was also looking through the glass with surprise on his face.
Waqti turned to one of the scientists, "Get in there! See where he went!"
The man moved quickly through the security door. The room beyond was small. There was nowhere anybody could be hiding. He walked around the entire cylinder. He looked up and down the entire height of it. There was simply nowhere for anyone to hide in this room.
He came back out into the main laboratory and shook his head. "He's just gone."
"Where did he go?" Waqti said. He turned to the Doctor, "Where did you go? The other you?"
"Well, I would venture a guess, I went back in time about two days and maybe one level up? That is where you found me? Or so you said. I was unconscious at the time."
"So you are the one we've had here in our sickbay, yes?" Waqti said, just to make sure he fully understood the situation.
The Doctor widened his eyes, "Yes. And a charming sickbay it is too. Your staff have been delightful hosts."
"I'm glad you like it," Waqti said, distractedly, still coming to grips with what had just happened.
#
Pellar woke up from a sound sleep in the rebel cave. His wife was not in the cot next to him. "Cass?" he called into the dark room. Other people were asleep in their cots nearby. A nearby woman stirred slightly as he called out. Most of the lights in the cavern were out. Perhaps she had simply gone to the bathroom. But somehow he didn't think so. He got up and walked quietly around the room. There was just enough light from elsewhere in the giant cave for him to see the faces of everyone sleeping in the room. And none of them were his wife. He went into the common area. No wife. He checked the restrooms. Still no wife.
He opened the door to the closet they had converted into a prison cell. Romana opened her eyes. "Can I help you?" she asked sleepily.
He hesitated. He didn't know if he could trust her... but he did need to find his wife. "Have you seen my wife?"
"I don't even know who your wife is."
"Yes, you do! You met her at breakfast!"
"If you say so," Romana said, having no memory of such a meeting.
"Here. I'll show you." He pulled his wallet out of his pocket. "You saw her! You met her!" he insisted. But he couldn't find the photograph of his wife that he normally kept there.
He had a sudden feeling of dread drop to the pit of his stomach! "No, no, no!"
He panicked and ran out of the closet, forgetting to close and lock it behind him. He ran from room to room, "Cass!? Where are you!?"
Romana stepped reluctantly out of her makeshift cell. She watched Pellar panic. She knew exactly what the problem was. But there wasn't anything that could be done. They had changed time. Over and over. There were now multiple timelines, overlapping, memories of different times from which people were permanently separated.
She looked down the long tunnel that led to the cave entrance, but she saw the distant silhouette of a man on guard, holding a rifle of some kind. She wasn't going to get out that way.
Pellar ran back into the common room, still calling for his wife. But still there was no response. He looked through the boxes of personal property, but none of her things were present.
Finally, there was nowhere left to look. He leaned against a wall and fought against hyperventilating. He slid slowly to the floor and fought back tears. And then he just went emotionally numb, and sat and stared into space.
Romana approached him slowly. She sat down next on the floor to him. She put her hand gently on his shoulder as he began to cry.
#
he Doctor finished helping the scientists repair their chronon accelerator. "Good work, Doctor," Lendo said.
"Oh, it was nothing," he said, waving a casual hand.
"My boss, Mr. Waqti, was very impressed with the modifications you made to our monitors. And he wanted me to ask you if you could modify them any further."
The Doctor had actually been wondering how he was going to be able to steer the conversation around to doing exactly that. If the rebels did indeed have Romana, then this could be his only way to track her down.
He flapped an arm airily, "Well, I mean, I could have a look at it."
"Thank you, Doctor."
The two of them left the laboratory and went to the monitoring room. They went back to the station where he had already made some minor modifications. The Doctor walked around to the rear of the station, removed a panel and looked at how it was wired together. "Ah, I see the problem." And he got to work.
#
Romana woke up, still locked up in her small room. She was beginning to get very annoyed. There was a filthy stink in the air and an even filthier toilet in the corner. There was a single door... which was closed and locked.
The door suddenly opened and a guard stood in the doorway. "Let's go, Miss."
"Oh. All right, then." She followed the guard.
He brought her back to the room she thought of as the interrogation room. This time there was a chair waiting for her. But she still faced the six, grim faces behind the large table. Pellar Krono still sat in the middle. "Please sit down," he said.
She sat.
"Now... we've been discussing the fact that your time mobile can move back in time without experiencing the trouble our own vehicles have been having."
"All right," Romana said, neutrally.
"It had better." Then he leaned forward, "Just who are you?"
"Oh, just a traveler."
"You know what I think? I think that you and your companion are from another timeline."
"Really?"
"Yes. Really. The barriers between timelines seem to be breaking down. It's been happening with greater and greater frequency. More people have been experiencing conflicting memories. We've been seeing ghost images of other timelines. And a couple of times now, we've actually encountered people who don't belong in our timeline. But you and your companion are the first we've encountered with their own time mobile. Are you time agents?"
"Well, no."
"Then where did you get this... TARDIS of yours?"
"Well, it doesn't actually belong to me."
The six people on the other side of the table leaned back and whispered amongst themselves for a moment. Then Pellar announced, "We want you to take a small commando team, and one of our leading scientists with you in your machine. We have decided that our damage to the time continuum has to be erased."
"It can't be done," Romana pointed out.
"We disagree. You will take our soldiers back to the original research facility where time travel was first invented. Our team will then destroy it and prevent time travel from ever being invented. And then we will let you go. Is that understood?"
"And if I don't?"
"I don't want to go there. But we will if we have to."
These fools were going to keep at it and at it until the time continuum immediately surrounding their world was totally destroyed. And if she didn't help them, then the situation... HER situation was clearly going to get bad. "Oh, I might as well. It's not like I had anything else planned today."
"Good. Follow this guard, please."
Romana got up, faced the armed guard who had brought her into the room, and followed him back into the main cavern. They walked over to a large collection of crates and boxes in the far corner. And they were both followed by Pellar.
They met up with a commando team standing next to the TARDIS which was sitting behind the piles of large crates.
Romana looked at Pellar, "I assume then that you're the top scientist in the team?"
"That's right." He gestured to the TARDIS, "Well?"
Romana held out her hand, palm up, "I assume you have the key?"
Pellar pulled it out of his pocket and put it in her hand. "It didn't work when we tried it."
She patted his arm condescendingly, "I wouldn't worry about it." She unlocked the TARDIS door and entered, followed very closely by the others. There were ten troopers in all.
"Hello, K-9," she said once inside.
"Greetings, mistress."
Pellar looked at the robot dog on the floor. "What's that?"
"Oh, it's just our dog," she said, working at the controls.
Pellar continued to look around, "Are there seats? Somewhere we can strap in?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Anyway, here are the coordinates, the time relative to now, and the geographical, latitude and longitude." He handed Romana a slip of paper.
Romana walked around the console, setting the coordinates, and finally threw the dematerialization switch. There was a groan from the TARDIS and the floor shook. A moment later, the time rotor began its steady rising and falling.
"What is that?" Krono asked, watching the thing go up and down.
"It indicates we are now in flight."
Pellar nodded. The armed troops stood quietly; their faces frozen in stern soldier's stares.
After a minute or so, Romana saw they were about to emerge from the time vortex. But when she tried to materialize, the TARDIS buckled violently. Pellar and the troops were thrown about. They were certain that Romana had intentionally given them no place to sit and strap in. K-9 rocked about gently. The TARDIS itself groaned loudly in protest.
Small explosions burst out from the console. Romana fought with the controls. She worried she might be in over her head. What would the Doctor do? "Come on, old girl," Romana said through gritted teeth. And still the machine protested. Okay, what else would the Doctor do? Suddenly Romana made a fist and thumped the console as hard as she could. And finally, the time rotor came to a gentle rest with a soft "boing." They had arrived.
Romana sighed. Pellar and the soldiers regained their lost footing, checking their weapons. Romana turned to face them, "All right. We're here."
Pellar and the soldiers stepped towards the doors. Romana then took a step closer to Pellar. "Before you go out there, I have to tell you that what you're planning will only make things worse."
"You were told to assist us," Pellar said.
"Yes, I was. And right now, the best way to assist you is to warn you that what you're planning simply won't work. You just saw how hard it was to materialize with the damage you've done so far. What do you think is going to happen if you do even more damage!?"
Pellar nodded. "We have to try it. Our scientists have been working on this solution for nearly a year now."
"I don't care how long it's taken you to get it wrong. You've still got it wrong."
"And no doubt you're right?" Pellar said sarcastically.
"Well, of course I'm right!"
"And why would you bother telling us?"
Romana couldn't believe such a question. "Why would I bother telling you? I'm trying to help you in spite of yourself."
She looked at the seven-member commando unit standing around, ready to fight and to kill. Yet all they could possibly accomplish was to make things worse.
"Open the door!" the lead commando shouted, pointing his weapon at the Romana's face.
She finally, reluctantly threw the door lever.
"Go! Go! Go!" The commandos ran outside. Pellar pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Romana, "After you."
She smiled, "I'll wait here, if that's all right with you."
"Sorry," he said. "We need to be sure you don't leave without us."
"As if I would," she muttered under her breath as she headed for the door.
The research complex they were raiding consisted of five buildings surrounded by a thick wall and two entry gates. It was night. The area was well lit by bright lights high up on poles, like street lights. And so far, nobody seemed to notice their arrival. Their security was obviously designed to keep people out. But the TARDIS had materialized inside the compound.
The commandos ran to a nearby shadowy corner and took cover there, checking their map, and quickly orientated themselves. Then one of them whispered, "Go!" and they made for their target building, Pellar in the lead. One of the soldiers held back along with Romana.
"Don't I get a weapon?" Romana whispered.
"Sh!" he responded angrily.
Within seconds, there was a single explosion. It was then followed by two more. Then a loud alarm began blaring. Gunshots followed, shadowy silhouettes of people with guns darting from building to building. The commands fired at the overhead lights, plunging the entire facility into near total darkness.
The commando team ran finished in one of the buildings and darted into another, guns continuing to fire, blood splattering, people dying. Romana ducked and flinched with every loud bang, but was unable to run with the soldier holding the gun at her side. The two of them squatted in a dark corner, watching the distant activities. "Hey!" shouted someone behind them. Romana turned to look. It was a man in civilian clothes. But before she could think what to say, the soldier at her side spun around and opened fire, killing the man instantly.
She squatted back down. Reprimanding him would probably do no good, so she remained silent. From her vantage point, she saw people running into and out of buildings. She saw them firing guns at one another. She wondered briefly how they could possibly know which ones they should kill as everyone was in the shadows.
Within three minutes, the rebels had killed almost everybody at the facility. The gunfire began to slow down, until there were only one or two shots here and there... then one more... and then the shooting stopped. They were obviously setting their charges at this point. And a moment later, they came running back to the TARDIS. Now there were only eight of them. Two had been killed... two rebels. There was no telling how many government scientists and security guards had just been murdered.
As they began filing back inside the police box, there was a tremendous explosion from the main complex! After ducking, Romana turned to watch in awe as the gigantic fireball move up into the sky, quickly growing darker and finally vanishing in the night.
These fools had just created the ultimate paradox. After making change upon change upon change, they had now prevented themselves from creating time travel in the first place. So how did they exist to come back and prevent it? All other timelines in which they had the ability to travel in time were now all cut off. The timeline to which they wanted to return was cut off. Romana was now completely cut off from the Doctor.
