(Disclaimer- It's the end of the world! It's the end of the- oh, my mistake. It's only metal spiders.)
Episode 2:1- The End of the World
"So," grinned Calvin, spinning around the console with an evil look on his face. "Where to? Past or future?"
"Future," Rose shot back.
Hobbes cranked a handle. "We are now set for the twenty-sixth century! Yes, they really did get the hovercars working, although they do tend to blow up slightly if you go past 80 km/h."
Rose shook her head, smiling. "You two think you're so great."
"We are so great!" protested Calvin. "You know what, the twenty-sixth century is boring. Let's go..." he cranked the handle a few more times. "...to the new Roman Empire! It is now 2000 years in your future."
"Boring," Hobbes disagreed. "I have a better idea."
"Oh, do tell," Calvin encouraged him. Hobbes gave an Evil Genius Laugh (patent pending) and spun the handle faster than before. He hit the large button on the middle of the console with a flourish, and gestured towards the trampoline that served as the box's exit. "After you," he told Rose, with a mock bow. The three of them exited the box and found themselves in a hallway. Calvin dashed over to a shutter that seemed to be covering up something, and opened it. There was a large bay window, giving a view of...
"The Earth," Rose realised with a start.
"Welcome to the year 5.5/apple/26," Hobbes announced.
"Yes, they really do start using fruits for years this far in the future," Calvin chimed in. "You really don't want to visit the 4/pear years. It gets really messy."
"But what is this? Why are we here?" Rose arched an eyebrow.
"This, Rose Tyler," Hobbes told her grandly. "Is the end...of the Earth."
"What?!"
"Computer?" Calvin asked his wristwatch. It beeped for a moment, and then a cool female voice began to speak.
"Today is the day the sun expands to consume the Earth. You are currently on Platform One, where the party will begin in 15 minutes."
"Wow," Rose summarized.
"I know, right? Come on, let's go."
They set off at a steady walk towards the main room, where the gathering would take place.
"Shuttles five and six now docking. Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation and religion. Earth Death is scheduled for fifteen thirty nine, followed by Drinks in the Manchester Suite," the Tannoy told them.
"What do they mean by guests?" Rose asked.
"Aliens, basically," Hobbes said casually. "The great and good are gathered here to... well, watch the Earth explode. For entertainment."
"And when you say 'the great and good'..."
"He means the rich people who basically have nothing better to do with their lives, yeah," Calvin finished. He threw open a wood-panelled door, and they walked into a bustle of colors and sounds. There was a group of tree-people, and some odd scaly things that were swishing their tails back and forth.
Rose stared around, but her two companions seemed to take it in stride.
"Go mingle," Calvin told her, giving her a slight push forwards. "This is your future, remember?"
Hobbes started towards a bunch of tigress babes relaxing in the corner, with a lustful look on his face. Rose shook her head slightly, grinning. He was such a flirt.
She wandered awkwardly around for a while, saying hello to the more human-looking of the aliens gathered. She grabbed a small thing that looked a bit like a canape, but smaller. And that was when she came face-to-face with the Face of Boe.
At least, that was how he introduced himself. He seemed to know her from somewhere, although if Rose had ever seen him in her life, she would have recognised him by then.
To paraphrase: the Face of Boe was a gigantic wrinkled head in a glorified jar.
Go figure.
Rose quickly made some sort of excuse to go away, not that the Face wasn't perfectly charming, but she was just weirded out a bit. The giving of gifts began. The tree-people gave her 'a clipping of their grandfather' and she tore out a little of her hair, and gave it to them as a 'clipping of herself'. Whenever someone offered her a gift, she accepted it and gave the same thing in return- a bit of her hair. By the end of the gift giving, she had received a sapling, a bagel, some spit to the face, some pretty colored stones that she put in her pocket, a pair of tweezers, and a ball. The ball was an odd, metallic thing that didn't actually absorb light.
"And last but not least," the steward announced. "Our very special guest. Ladies and gentlemen, and trees and multiforms, consider the Earth below. In memory of this dying world, we call forth the last Human. The Lady Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen."
The sliding doors opened, and in was wheeled a rack with skin stretched over it. At least, that was what it appeared to be. But the skin had eyes and a thin mouth. Which made it kinda weird.
"Thank you, thank you," the 'skin' simpered. "I know, I know it's shocking, isn't it? I've had my chin completely taken away and look at the difference. Look how thin I am. Thin and dainty. I don't look a day over two thousand. Moisturise me. Moisturise me," she added to her assistants, who promptly sprayed her with a watery mist.
Cassandra continued on with a long, ridiculous tangent about how ostriches breathed fire, and how iPods were massive boom boxes. She caught Calvin out of the corner of her eye, snickering at Cassandra's obliviousness.
The Adherents of the Repeated Meme, who were some creepy guys in black cloaks, were giving the metal spheres to everyone there, including the steward, who was politely declining. The Adherents refused to listen to him, and gave him a sphere anyway.
It was a bit too much for her, and so she decided to go outside to get some space. Quickly ducking through the heavy wood doors, no one saw her go. Except for Hobbes. He noticed, and tried to dart away after her. A tree-person blocked his path, and brandished a camera at him.
No one noticed a metal sphere opening up, revealing a metal spider inside.
Outside, Rose wandered over to a large window that was showing the scene outside. The Earth was sitting there, in a cocoon of blackness and stars, while the sun was drawing closer and closer. She fingered a small plaque, reading the inscription.
"The National Trust has kept the Earth preserved," she read aloud. "for the last 2 million years. The funds for holding the Sun back, however, have expired. The gravity satellites surrounding the Earth will stop holding it back in 20 minutes."
She blinked. "Wait, twenty minutes?"
The plaque then changed its text to read '19 minutes' instead, and from there went on to display an ad for Intergalactic Xox Burgers. "Ah."
A clunking sound from down the hallway drew her attention, and a pretty blue skinned, black haired woman approached, carrying a toolkit in her hand.
"Oh, hello," Rose said. "What's your name?"
The woman smiled, and bent down near an air vent. "You have to give us permission to talk."
"Oh. I, um, give you permission to talk?"
The woman began to remove the metal grating from the vent. "Thank you, miss. I'm Xandra. I won't be long, don't worry. Just have some maintenance to carry out, then I'll be on my way."
Rose sat down against the wall. "What sort of maintenance?"
"The Face of Boe has a glitch in his suite, he's not getting any hot water."
"I met the Face a while back," Rose mused. "Huh. So there's still plumbers?"
"Well, I certainly hope so, otherwise I wouldn't be here. Where are you from, miss, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Oh!" Rose started. "I'm not from here... I come from a long way away. A really long way. I just came along with these two people. I don't even know them that well. I hardly know them at all. What am I doing with them?"
She stood up, still lost in thought. "I guess you need to get back to your job, then. I might see you around." She walked off down the hallway.
"Thank you, miss!" called Xandra from where she was working. "Not a lot of people give me permission to talk. You're very kind."
She peered down into the dark air vent. "Now, what have we got here?"
She could hear a faint scuttling noise coming from down the passage. A red light danced randomly in the darkness, and a metal spider came through.
"Oh, hello!" Xandra exclaimed.
The spider did not reply.
"Do you want to get a spot reserved for yourself?"
The spider only scuttled closer, followed by a whole lot more of its kind.
"Oh, you brought friends!"
This was followed up by the spiders, not looking so cute anymore, dragging her into the ventilation tunnel and away. No one heard her screams.
Rose sat in the gallery, gazing over a panoramic view of the Earth. It was so very close to collapsing. Hobbes came up quietly behind her, and Rose acknowledged his presence with a single head nod.
"Hard to believe, isn't it," he mused. "Millions of years of work and innovation, and all of it has led to this-" he gestured at the sun. "-the Earth. Being destroyed."
Rose made a noise that could have been affirmative. There was silence.
"Who are you?" she suddenly burst out. Hobbes raised his eyebrows. "Who are you two?"
"We told you. I'm Hobbes, he's Calvin. We travel."
"But how come you're a tiger? And why is a six year old saving the world?"
Hobbes laughed dryly. "It's what we do, basically. It's our job, except we don't exactly get paid."
Rose took her phone out of her pocket, and fiddled around with it a bit. No signal. It wasn't as if she expected there to be one, but...
"Here," Hobbes sighed, taking a water pistol from his satchel. "Give me that for a moment."
Rose allowed him to take her phone. The tiger aimed the water gun at it. There was a puff of smoke, and it turned into a hard drive with an interface. Hobbes began typing into it. "With a bit of jiggery pokery..."
"Jiggery pokery." Rose folded her arms. "Is that some kind of technical term."
"Yup," he replied, still fiddling. "I came top of the class at jiggery pokery. What about you?"
"Nah, I failed hullabaloo."
Hobbes finished up what he was doing with the phone-turned-hard drive, and, with another flick of the water gun, turned it into a phone again. He handed it back to her. "Here. You can now call anyone in the world at any time, as long as you've got the phone number."
"Seriously?" Rose hit the speed-dial number for her mum, and listened for a moment. "Mum?"
Pause.
"No, I'm fine. Absolutely fine. Top of the world." She grinned slightly. Another pause. "I might be a bit late coming home, that's all." Pause. "Love you." She hung up. Hobbes was grinning wildly, and he raised his arms, as if to say 'how about that?'
"I just called my mum from the future," she told him, slightly shocked. "She's been dead for millions of years."
"Oh, how morbid. I give you a universal mobile, and all you can think of is how dead your mother is currently." He got up. "Well, back to the party. Apparently Calvin's discovered something he thinks we should know. Plus, I've got to return the Transmogrifier Gun before he notices."
"You stole it?"
"I prefer the term 'liberated'."
"Hobbes! Slimy-Girl-Known-As-Rose!" Calvin ran towards them. "Guess what I just found out?"
"Oi!" protested Rose. "I'm not slimy!"
"You are," assured Calvin. "There's been a murder on board."
Rose gasped, and Hobbes's face hardened. "Who?"
"The steward."
"Cause of death?" Hobbes questioned.
"Apparently sun radiation poisoning, his sun filter was down. And look what I found in his room!"
Calvin was holding a metal spider between his thumb and forefinger. Rose snapped her fingers together a couple of times. "I've seen those before! Just out of the corner of my eye!"
"They're all over the Platform," Calvin informed her.
"So... split up?" Rose ventured.
"You read my mind. Hobbes and I will go this way, you go that way, question the guests, meet back here in 15 minutes, any more and something's gone wrong."
"Gottit." Rose gave them the big thumbs-up. Hobbes and Calvin wove their way through the crowd, and Rose decided to go to Lady Cassandra, the so-called Last Human.
"That didn't go well," Rose quickly decided, strolling away happily from Cassandra. She had, in the space of 5 minutes, insulted the lady, found out that she had had over 300 operations, none of them at all appealing, insulted her some more, called her something inappropriate for this fanfiction, and walked out.
Cassandra had given her some dirty looks from across the room, but Rose payed them no heed, and decided to find a certain boy and tiger to see if they had found anything more interesting.
"Hiya, Slimy Girl," Calvin said by way of greeting. "You'll never guess what we worked out five seconds ago."
"Do tell."
"We found a way to make this little guy-" he shook the metal spider he was still holding. "-show us who his owners are, using the Transmogrifier Gun. Attention, everyone!" he yelled to the room. Everyone turned to look. Calvin had quite a loud voice for such a young boy. He placed the spider on the floor, and zapped it with the object that looked quite a bit like a water gun. It flickered into the image of a frog, and hopped a few steps, before changing back into a spider, and scuttling over to the Adherents of the Repeated Meme. Which were, you know, the creepy guys in black cloaks. Hobbes walked over and peered at the Adherents.
"Calvin," he requested. "What, exactly, is a Repeated Meme?"
Calvin relayed this to his wrist watch, which whirred gently. "A repeated meme is an idea, a thought," it told him in its cool voice.
"I thought so," remarked Hobbes, ripping of the leader's cloak to reveal an empty shell. It was basically wire and a battery, hooked up to voice box. "Now, I wonder who their controller is...?"
Every single person in the room turned to look at Cassandra. She giggled. "Oh, you've figured it out, you clever boys and girls. The sun filters will go up, and this lovely, lovely space ship will be fried. I was going to use the deaths of the assembled elite to generate profit from their companies to finance my operations," she began. "but... I can still do that."
"Oh?" Hobbes waved the Transmogrifier Gun at her.
"Oh, yes." And with that, there was a loud ZAP. Cassandra, the last Human, had teleported away. Despite the fact that no teleporters were allowed.
There was a long silence.
"Well, that complicates things," grumbled Calvin. "Rose, are you coming with us?"
There was no reply.
"Rose?"
He turned on the spot, 360 degrees. Rose Tyler had disappeared.
"Seriously? You had to insult the person who is responsible for the latest plot on our lives. Of all the times... Hobbes? We have a human to rescue."
And the duo dashed out of the room.
(A/N-
Rose Tyler. The most accident-prone companion he's ever had. There will be an update soon.
If you wish to ask me questions to do with the story, or just general things, please check out the link on my profile to my ask dot fm account. I check it every day, so go have a look.
~Kitty