Part Four
The Doctor was busy working in the monitoring room at the Temporal Affairs facility. He had made great headway in improving their tracking equipment. But very gradually he became aware of a disturbingly familiar sound... the howl of the time winds. It was very low at first, and he realized it had been there for some time, but was only now entering his threshold of awareness. This could only mean trouble.
He saw ghostly images of others working in the monitoring room with him. As well as others walking through the walls as though they weren't there.
Eventually, Zarwin Waqti approached the Doctor from the far end of the room. But he wasn't entirely there. He was semi-transparent, and he started to almost blink out of existence… like he was a loose lightbulb. "Do you understand what is happening here?" he asked the Doctor. And then he vanished completely. A moment later, Waqti was there once again, "Do you understand what is happening here?"
"Yes, I do," the Doctor said.
"We need your help. Come over here!"
The Doctor got up to follow him, but found Waqti gone again. And then, as though the universe was trying to annoy the Doctor, Zarwin Waqti was there once more, and again he said, "Do you understand what is happening here?"
The Doctor said, "Yes, of course I do!" He then paused to see if the man would vanish again.
He didn't. "We need your help," he said urgently. "Come over here!"
The Doctor stepped hesitantly towards the man, expecting him to suddenly vanish again. "Please!" Waqti shouted.
"Coming!" the Doctor said.
The time winds continued to howl louder. It was also hard to move.
They made their way to the far side of the huge room. The room was still very dark, but now the lights coming from the displays were almost all red at this point. Lendo Tempo was there, along with five or six technicians clustered around a single display monitor, all of them trying to understand the situation and come up with a strategy of some kind. The readout monitors that were not red were off. The Doctor wasn't sure at first exactly what they were meant to register, but the situation was certainly bad.
He looked more closely at one of the monitor screens. "Oh, dear," he said.
"Do you know what this mean?" Lendo asked.
"Well, according to your equipment here, everything around us for nearly ten thousand years is now cut off from the rest of the universe. Completely cut off. And there's nothing we can do to get out of it."
"Why not?"
The Doctor paused to collect his thoughts. It was like speaking to children. "All right," he said. "Think of it like a scab. A scab is dead skin. A temporal scab is dead time, it doesn't move. And therefore... you can't move through it."
"Do you know what this means?" Lendo asked again. Only this time, she was clearly moving through time more slowly than before.
"Do you know what this means?" she asked again. But this one was another Lendo Tempo. The first one turned to look at the second one.
"Do you know what this means?" asked a third.
"Do you know... do you know... do you know..." there were now six versions of the same woman in the room. They all turned to the Doctor and said at the same time, "What's happening?"
The Doctor took a moment to sigh at the inevitability of how this day was going. "We're all stuck in time now."
All six Lendo Tempos moved slowly. Very slowly. One of them spoke, her pitch much lower, "Do you... know... what... this... means?"
"Someone has damaged the very fabric of local spacetime beyond repair," the Doctor said over his shoulder as he kept his main focus on the equipment, trying to find a way out of their situation.
Another Lendo Tempo said very slowly, "How... are... you... moving... so... quickly?"
"The time continuum has been damaged! It's a side effect!" The Doctor replied, not taking his eyes off of the monitor screens, doing his best to understand the situation and then come up with a solution that eluded everyone else.
All the scientists and Waqti and Lendo continued to move slower and slower. Some of them froze altogether, and then faded away to nothing.
One of their field agents ran into the room... slowly. He reported, "Our... time... mobiles... are... unable... to... move..."
Waqti turned to the Doctor. "I... think... I... think... I... think... I... think..." and on and on he went, stuck in his own time loop. And then he slowly faded away to nothing.
"Where... did... he... go...!?" Lendo asked.
Everyone was now moving slowly, and they were each copied over several times to the point where there was a constant steady droning of several people talking over one another, but so slowly that none of them could be understood. The Doctor finally decided that the only thing he could do was simply ignore them.
By now the time winds were howling so loudly, the Doctor almost couldn't hear them anyway.
Lendo then collapsed, looking suddenly fifty years older than a moment ago. She was dead by the time she hit the floor. Her bones turned to dust. One by one, the others in the room did this as well. Until the Doctor was alone.
#
Romana, Pellar, the surviving commandos and K9 watched the controls of the TARDIS. They all needed a moment to recover from a very bumpy ride. The smoke was still clearing. The time rotos ceased rising and falling. "Does that mean we're back?" Pellar asked.
"I don't know," Romana had to admit. "You've just tried to erase your own existence, and you expect me to be able to take you back there?"
"Then where are we?"
She kept her eyes down at the console readouts, "That's what I'm trying to determine."
"Just open the door!" one of the commandos shouted.
"I can't until I know it's safe," she insisted.
But Pellar had seen her operate the door control earlier, and so he reached over and did it himself.
The large double doors swung up and Pellar and the commandos marched outside.
They came to an immediate halt. They were confronted with a visual cacophony. A nightmare mish-mash of different realities all apparently co-existing before them. Buildings of every shape and size, trees and bushes of every kind. And hundreds of thousands of people all walking, running, standing, and many of them screaming in panic as they too were aware of the presence of the other realities, but none of them understanding what it was. And all of it accompanied by the howl of the time winds.
Romana of course had it worse. She was a Time Lady. She was even more aware of different timelines. Standing in the open doorway, she clutched her hands over her ears and nearly fell to her knees at the sheer overwhelming amount of chaotic information bombarding her senses. She staggered away from the open doors of the TARDIS and retreated back inside.
#
Things got worse in the Temporal Affairs monitoring room. The time winds blew harsher, the barriers between dimensions became thinner. The Doctor, all alone now, checked the readings on the equipment he had modified. He used the scanner. He zoomed in, zoomed out, and finally found one time vessel in motion. There was so much damage caused so suddenly, that only one time machine on this planet still be in flight. The TARDIS! And since nobody from this planet could possibly control it, it had to be Romana! But how could she ever hope to get back now? The damage done would make it nearly impossible. What she needed was some sort of beacon. Fortunately, the Doctor was in a facility filled with temporal engineering equipment. But he would need his sonic screwdriver!
With nobody to stop him, he ran back to the main entrance where his pockets had been emptied upon arrival. He opened several nearby small lockers until he found his things. He quickly filled his pockets and turned to go. Then he remembered something. He went through his pockets again, found the small ticket they had given him to reclaim his personal possessions, and he left it on the desk.
#
Pellar found that he was experiencing all sorts of conflicting memories. Including his family. Several different families. He tried to remember how to get home. But he seemed to remember several different homes in several different directions. The closest one was nearby, and it was the home that he shared with Tarry, or Geegee... or Mara? He had a head full of memories that conflicted. Were they real?
Unable to make any sense of the chaos, he turned and headed back to the TARDIS.
Fortunately, it stood out from everything else. It was like a steady light in the dark. He found it quickly and ran towards it. But then he stumbled and fell to his knees.
Romana saw him on the TARDIS scanner screen. The damage to time was not affecting her inside the TARDIS. But now she had to go out there to rescue this fool.
She turned to K-9, "Well, wish me luck, K-9."
"Good luck, mistress."
She took a deep breath to steady herself, then opened the doors and darted outside.
She was immediately bombarded with conflicting stimuli. She stumbled around almost as though she was blind, barely able see where she was going. But she did manage to make her way to Pellar, who was on all fours.
"You have to get me out of here!" he shouted above the chaos to Romana. "Somewhere that I can find my family!"
"I can't!" Romana shouted back.
"You have to try! They're my family! I remember them. We'll just have to try until we find them!"
Romana pointed out, "If we go to another timeline that has your family, then that timeline would also have another version of you! And it would be just as chaotic as things are here!"
Romana blinked several times, trying to focus. And when she did, she saw that Pellar Krono suddenly looked thirty years older. The commandos however were nowhere to be seen.
"What's happening?" Pellar asked. "You knew this would happen!"
"Yes, I did," Romana confirmed. "And I warned you about it!"
"Is that supposed to make it okay!?"
"No, it's not! It's just a fact!" she shouted above the noise.
And then in the blink of an eye, he aged another decade. His arms gave out and he fell flat to the ground. He tried to get back up, but he just didn't have the strength.
Romana tried to help him stand, but found that she was now holding onto a frail old man who was virtually nothing but skin and bone. She set him down gently on the ground and watched his body go limp, and the skin crinkle and then flake away off the bones. Romana rose to her feet. She had to look around a moment to find the TARDIS again, even though it was mere feet away. She found it and moved slowly through the chaos around her. She nearly fell over twice before finally making it back to the familiar police box. She grabbed the sides of the doorway and pulled herself inside. Once inside, the effects of the temporal damage became much less. And when she shut the doors, the effects vanished completely. She dropped to her knees on the TARDIS floor and breathed heavily for some time.
K-9 rolled up to her side, "Mistress?"
"I'll be all right, K-9. Just give me a moment."
"Affirmative, mistress." The robot dog then rolled up closer and touched her shoulder gently with his chin. His antenna / tail waggled slightly.
#
Meanwhile, the Doctor was the only person left at the Temporal Affairs facility. He was now in the main laboratory. The time winds blew, the noise and temporal distortions made it extremely difficult for him to finish his work. He had raided the stores room and managed to construct a bizarre tangle of wires and light emitting diodes. A temporal beacon. He connected two wires and twisted them together, making the final connection. He then crossed his fingers and said, "Well, here goes." He pressed the single red button on it and the LEDs lit up. He paused, looking around. Nothing seemed to be happening.
But then only someone in a TARDIS would be able to detect its effects. He stepped back and felt he ought to be congratulated. So he said, "Congratulations, Doctor."
He then smiled and waved a casual hand, "Oh, it was nothing. Nothing."
#
In the TARDIS, Romana worked with the controls, trying to get past the damaged patch of time and into the vortex. But it was nearly impossible. She tried for several minutes, finally thumping the console in frustration.
And then, she saw a flashing light on the console. It was a beacon. It was the Doctor! It had to be! Suddenly, she wasn't alone! He was sending her a trail to follow... exactly what she needed to locate him and materialize. "Hold on, K-9," she said with renewed enthusiasm.
#
The Doctor had made his way up to the surface hangar where several time mobiles sat. If Romana was unable to get away from the terrorists and bring the TARDIS here, then he would need a backup plan to get out of where he was and find her and his TARDIS. He had brought the temporal beacon with him, set it down on the floor, and began making alterations to the nearest time mobile. The time winds continued to blow harsher and harsher. He felt the future and the past and many alternate nows like loud children all fighting for his attention. He couldn't tell if hours were going by or seconds. He couldn't focus on anything. He finally sat down on the floor next to the time mobile's engines, hoping to use an old Tibetan technique he knew to help him focus. But something was pulling him. He just didn't have the strength to resist. He finally gave up and let himself be dragged off.
And a moment later, or perhaps it was hours later, he found himself safely in the TARDIS once again!
The doors swung smoothly shut.
Romana worked the controls as sanity restored itself to the Doctor's perception.
"Feeling better yet?" Romana inquired.
The Doctor paused, lying in the middle of the floor, then gave a small experimental cough. "Well, yes, I think so." He looked at his right hand, and then waggled his fingers of his left hand. He leapt to his feet, "Much better now. Thank you, Romana." He moved over to the console and took over from her. She sighed and simply let the Doctor drive.
But they were having trouble. "On second thought," he said as he fought with the controls.
He couldn't take the TARDIS directly away from the damaged area. The best he could do was slide the TARDIS sideways from timeline to timeline. It was like trying to get past a mountain. "Come on, old girl..." He tried a few more tricks he had learned over the centuries. He hit the console... and finally, the TARDIS slipped out of the damaged sector! They were free!
The Doctor and Romana were finally able to relax. The Doctor made sure the TARDIS was safely traveling through the vortex before taking the time to comment, "It's odd, you know. They were created by a temporal anomaly that shouldn't have been possible. And in the end, a time distortion destroyed them too. Now they're completely cut off from the rest of the universe. They're effectively gone... as far as the rest of us are concerned." They looked at all of spacetime on the scanner. The scar saw to it that nobody could time travel in that sector of space ever again. "Nothing remains of them except a scar on the universe."
The Doctor set the controls to busy himself and take his mind off things. He and Romana would be the only ones who would ever remember them.
And nobody else would ever remember the planet that never was.
