Clara questioned endlessly as the two of them got back into the time ship. She sat down on the stairs near the center console, still holding the disc in her hand, and looked from it to the Doctor and back again repeatedly as she questioned, still shaken up.

"Doctor? Why did we just run off. Why not stay and look for the boy, take him with us, or..."

"That boy died years ago. Clara we were looking only at information he must have left behind a hundred years ago. That was not a recent recording."

"You're sure he'd not just recorded that last week and is simply off working somewhere, waiting for someone to help him? Maybe he ran off to find tools for his cupboards?"

"I thought about all that too. No chance I'd run off and leave him stranded if I thought he was alive somewhere. But the condition of the place, and the time readout makes it clear as anything. It's been a very long time. We are not leaving anyone behind. Only the thoughts of what humanity could have been."

"Okay fair enough. But he mentioned a nuclear war that destroyed the Earth? How did that start in the first place?"

"I have no idea yet. My best guesses would be resources or religion. Two things humans never seem to stop fighting about."

"You said we've crossed into a new time stream, right? How did we do that?"

"Well I told my ship to fly to Mars and gave her a year to aim for. She did all that of course, but sometimes this old ship gets a little funny with navigation. This old ship is old. Flying all over inside the time stream, with streams and possibilities everywhere and all she's aiming for is one little red planet. I think she made a wrong turn."

"So how we get back?"

The Doctor laughed slightly at that question and thought for a second before saying hesitantly. "I should just be able to reverse her back through the vortex, use our last location, your classroom, as a destination and then off we go."

"So let's go then."

he laughed again at his companions suggestion. "You want to just leave, go off home to normal old known history and future, never knowing what happened in this one? A universe without human's in it, now that's something new, and you Clara are the only living human being in it now."

Clara stared at the floor for a moment considering. After a second though her face lit up again with that same emotion that made her keep on running around the universe and time and space in the first place. "Okay, let's stay and see what's going on here."

She jumped up from the steps and ran to stand by the console, by now as excited as usual to explore. Her past unease was fading as she grew used the future being unlike the ones she had seen before.

Somewhere in the universe, presumably far away from Earth and anything known or identifiable, the two of them sat at the edge of the open door of the blue box safely behind the invisible shielding. Space was close to empty in the place they had materialized. A few stars were scattered here and there, but the distance from one the the next was enormous and little but a few sparse but colorful gas clouds hovered aimlessly. Clara looked out over this near nothingness, feeling a mix of wonder and near fright at just how empty it was. Her home on Earth, she knew, was so far away by then. No, she reminded herself. In this strange new time line it was no more at all. She understood for the first time in all of her traveling and in seeing so much, in so many places, just how small she was, just how small any individual was really.

"So," she asked, still looking outside and trying to shake the thought that she might actually recognize anything at all there, "Where are we?"

"Some small galaxy somewhere hard to explain," the Doctor answered. "Not sure the place has a name exactly. It's a small one. Very old compared to some. No planets left at all, and the stars are getting old and slowly burning out. In a few million more years I would think the whole tiny galaxy will be almost nothing at all. We are near its outer edge."

"That's amazing."

Clara was about to say more but a faraway motion caught her attention. She lost sight of whatever it was she had seen for a second but looking out over space, given its vast emptiness, she was able to find it again quickly. She blinked her eyes and confusion and looked again still more less puzzled over it. She was starting right at a bright flash of light that made its way across the blackness. In the first moment it looked certainly pretty, and a curious thing, but little more. She knew very little about such things, but it seemed to her safe enough to assume the light was explainable by some science or other, even so far from anything bright. That was until in the next moment of watching it curiously, the thing sharply changed direction at least seventy degrees. She blinked and stared again, more intently. Now she knew that surely such a thing as that kind of movement should have been impossible out there.

She went on watching as whatever source of light it was she was observing, as it appeared to slow down and then actually pick up speed again in seconds. It changed direction again, moving almost back the way it had first come, before it slowed to a near stop and then turned again to fly another way, picking up speed rapidly again. Of course, Clara thought, feeling a bit silly at having missed the obvious. It had to be a spaceship of some kind, some other explorer out there in the middle of universal nowhere, for reasons she could only guess at. She found herself growing worried when she saw another of the same sort of moving lights fly into her field of vision from another direction and then a third from what looked from her perspective to be above. She watched all three of them now, coming from their various directions, with more fear and concern than much else.

"Doctor," she gasped, still watching the lights, scared to let them out of her sight for a second. "I think we are going to be surrounded."

"Fascinating," the Doctor said quickly, in a tone that indicated quite clearly that he had barely actually heard what she said at all.

"Doctor!" she cried, finally looking at him and trying urgently to get his attention. "Those ships are going to surround us!"

"Sorry, what? Ships? Oh no, I don't think they will."

"What is..."

"They aren't spaceships," the Doctor explained, paying equal attention by then to both her and the lights outside. "That's incredible. I thought that was all a myth. Some kind of mistranslated and badly recalled story from the childhoods of the ancients, left in the books in the halls of history..."

"Are those alive? Like actual living and independently functioning creatures, way out here, surviving in space?"

"There were only a couple of references to them anywhere, that I ever happened to find. We knew them only as Universal Migrators. The older folks used to talk about them a bit back in my school days. Some say they created the universe itself. Others said no, that could not be. At any rate, they're been here long before much else. Maybe millions of years, flying across space, never really getting anywhere, and yet seeing so much. I would guess they live only to explore, to seek and find the possibility of it all."

"They don't seem dangerous now at all"

"Of course not."

"What are they doing?" Clara wondered out loud. She watched as the three forms she still saw only as fast moving lights, flew together in rapid patterns around empty space, covering what must have been kilometers in mere seconds. Somehow of all the many impossible and amazing things she had ever seen, it was this one that impressed her the most.

"They could just be playing, maybe trying to impress each other It's impossible to say really."

"How far away are they,"

"Not that far."

"So then we weren't being surrounded at all..."

"Not at all."

The fast moving lights, quickly turned then in a new direction all at once. In far less than a second one seemed to nearly flip itself over entirely and move off in the direction it had first come from so fast it was nearly impossible to comprehend it at all. The other two flew off together, moving faster and faster and picking up their speed gradually until they seemed to disappear but were more than likely only moving too fast to really see at all. It would have only been another instant though until they really would have been far way.

Once she was back inside the ship, and the door closed again, Clara sat on the steps again thinking and considering things she had never wondered about before. Just how long had the universe been there? Just what might have had a hand in creating anything at all? Maybe it really had been those beings of bright light she had watched. Had they really existed forever? And if they were creators of life itself just how much did they know or see, and what could they do. She could only imagine then that they had barely thought a thing of her, had they even her at all. She was so small, so simple, so human.

While she sat thinking over questions of things much greater than herself however, the Doctor, in typical form, was only growing more and more analytical about the whole matter. More and more practical. He stood at the ship's controls voicing out loud his feelings that surely the beings they had seen could only have been part of some highly unusual alien race. After all, the universe he said was so big that anything was possible, even if not likely or practical.

"See there you go again, getting all science-y and obsessing over how's and why's.

Can't that old myth be true and not just a story at all, isn't that all we need to think," Clara said, leaning against the one of the panels and shaking her head.

"Now why would we want to do that?" The Doctor looked at her as though she had just somehow grown another head and was speaking some long dead language.

"What?" Believe that maybe we actually did see the creators of the universe? It all had to start somewhere, right?"

"That would be all to simple is why."

"Maybe so. It's still fun to imagine it though... if not a little beyond mind blowing. Anyways, do you think they know we are here, in the wrong time line. Does it matter what they think of our dropping in?"

"Likely not."

Clara sat on the bed in the room she used while on board traveling. She reached over carefully to grab her laptop from the top of a nearby shelf, and nearly fell off the edge of the bed in the process. She managed to catch herself though and carefully sat back on a pile of pillows and bedding while flipping up the screen. With some hesitation mixed with a sense of curiosity she placed the disc she had found in the empty room back on Mars into the disc-drive.

Another recording of the same young man in the same room came up on her screen. He looked just the same as before, but behind him the scene had changed slightly. A few moved and rearranged objects, she realized looking closely. Computer equipment had been turned to face another direction, or perhaps he had moved his own work station. In any case, clearly some time had passed since he had last recorded on his computer. Just like before the sound buzzed for a moment, but in a couple seconds he was speaking again without only slight distortion of the audio.

"Hi. Me again of course. Umm, I'm not sure what to say to you. I don't know why I am talking at all. I know there is no one to talk to and the one I call 'you' is only really my hope and dream of someone someday finding this, someday listening and understanding. I want to communicate I guess so I know I will always actually know how to. Besides, I can't just talk to myself. I guess that'd only lead to me going insane and I don't want to do that. I've worked too hard, survived too long, to just lose my mind now. Anyways, I've been busy in here lately. Rearranging everything, trying to get the ventilation system in section ten fixed.

"I went outside yesterday, which I know full well is a bad idea by myself, but its not like I've ever had any help in the first place. I needed to check for this main section here. The roofs are basically just lightweight plastic, bolted onto the top of the whole thing after it was all sent up here... well yeah it's a bit more complicated than that of course but yeah, heavy duty sheets of building material all just tightly bolted together. Needs constant repair and checking. I worry at times the whole thing will eventually just break apart and yeah... game over basically. At any rate the roof was fine and while I was out there I got a few decent pictures. Mostly just the cliffs nearby and a couple of the sky and some interesting weather. You'll likely just think it's all silly, that this place is boring and empty, but I'll save the pictures in a file anyway"

He stopped talking then suddenly and the picture cut out at once. Clara sat staring at the screen for a moment, only feeling sad about the boy she would never know, and was long dead. The next file started to play on it's own and this time the last human boy was wearing red clothing instead his usual blue. The detail that really caught Clara's attention though was his face. Even with the image color bad as always, and the image so fuzzy, she could make out the terrible bruises over the right side, and the clearly recent bloody scrapes over his nose and mouth. He spoke though to some unseen recording equipment, with that same old way of casually speaking as though someone was listening to him.

"Hey. Franklin here again. I'm sure I must look pretty awful. I haven't actually seen myself yet but I can imagine. I fell the other day, sometime in the morning. Flew off an access ladder when something blew in section five. That's the one next to... this one... yeah that makes sense I think. This is number four. I'm still a bit confused, not quite right I guess, but I'll do the best I can. I fell about three meters. I remember waking up at some point on the cold floor, blood all over my face, barely able to move. Must have just passed out again for hours maybe a day. I eventually woke up and was able to get to my feet and make it back here. Slept most of yesterday in bed. I made myself get up today and drink water, then eat something. I'm better by now I think, just sick and hurt. And I kind feel like a bit of an idiot for the whole accident. I want to talk more though, sit in front of the computer and pretend there is still someone listening to me.

"I thought I'd tell you more about me. Just so you know there was someone out here, a living person and not just a designation number probably listed in some records file once. My favorite color is orangey red I guess, like the color of our sky on an average day. I love music. I can listen to all of the Earth's old music, saved to the records computer. It's hard to say what I like best of it. Most music is good, but for some reason I have never heard a country song I've liked. I'm educated. Well sort of. I can read and write very well. I learned so much on the old teaching computer. History was not my best subject and it honestly makes me sad to this day. But I was and still am great with mathematics. I like numbers. Facts and figures and formulas make more sense to me than most things in life. Hmm... when I was a child I used to have this crazy wish that I would wake up and find my life had all been a dream, that humanity was alive and well, that my family and I were bound for Earth soon with plans to have Christmas and new years with some relatives I had never got to meet yet. Oh, and I like taking pictures too. I think I mentioned that before. I read in bed at night. I've transferred a bunch of our old e-book files to one of the portable e-readers so I can use it in there. I love old mystery novels. I guess I should turn this off now and stop recording. I need to sleep more I think. Good night."

Clara paused the computer before it could play the next video. She sat for many long moments just looking at the now still image of young man, a lone survivor in an engineered life support structure, his face bashed up from an accident with no one to help him. Still though the smile hidden behind thoughtful eyes, never really left his face. He almost always seemed to look like that. Like he was actually capable of happiness.

She realized that she was coming to see him as a person, just like he had so clearly hinted at wanting when he talked to his computer. He was only a few years older than some of her oldest school kids. He was the kind she'd have wanted to have in her class, the thoughtful interested type that would surely have actually asked good intelligent questions, done his homework on time and wanted a future for himself. He might just have imagined that there was actually time to live beyond the next week. She wondered if He'd have been the type to wind up in detention for smoking in the parking lot. Somehow she doubted that. But he'd have had friends and been popular no doubt, so there would always have been peer pressure. She clicked the play button again, anxious to see more.

This time the boy sat in front of his computer, with a far different look about him. That old smile behind his thoughtful eyes was nearly gone entirely. He looked somehow defeated. He also looked slightly older. Clearly he had not bothered to record anything in many months or maybe ever a year. He spoke slowly, obviously thinking over what to say more than usual.

"So, I've been thinking more lately. Realizing more and more that I am really alone, not just up here, but anywhere. Humans are just something for the history books or something and and there is no one left to even write those books. We did so many great things back on Earth, or at least others did long before I came along. Huge ships sailed the oceans, someone proved the Earth wasn't flat. The first airplane, the first automobile, the first computer. The tallest building, the fastest rocket, man landing on the moon then finally on Mars. There were the Vikings, and the Native Americans, the ancient Romans. Every movie star that ever lived, every singer of every song ever sung, every driver to win the Indy 500, every team to win every superbowl. The work crews that worked to build the empire state building, every tourist to ever look down from the top of it, I guess it's all really all gone now.

"I look at the pictures and the video footage and read the old news articles of old Earth, and it seems like it's still real, just far away. I used to still hope to see it all someday looking just like a scene from some old movie or something. I day dreamed about swimming in a river, climbing my first tree, touching something on the ground outdoors with my bare hands. But I'm realizing now that it's really all gone. Everything mankind ever dreamed or did or wanted is gone forever. Billions of people dead, a planet burned up with little likely left to show there was ever a world to at all."

Clara watched him silently; feeling nearly crushed herself as he sat at that same work station he always seemed to be at, crying harder and harder until he could barely catch his breath at all, but still trying hard to say whatever it was that he was obviously trying to explain.

"I barely knew my father. He died when I was maybe four, five. I used to imagine a lot that he'd have liked to have seen what I became, but now I'm not sure. I never got to know my own mother at all. I guess she died a few hours after I was born. I remember my father, while she was alive once told me she had been happy, had been sure she did the right thing with her life. He told me she held me for a while and she picked my name, Franklin. But from what I've always understood, it was a case in the end of saving her or me, and lately I wonder where the fairness ever was. I'm sorry. I can't stop being sad these days. Nothing makes any sense. Whatever was anything ever for?"

The recording ended and this time Clara turned the computer right off.