BIG BANG

Part IV

Stuck With You

The Doctor went on, deciding that it would be better to get the truth out right away rather than try to sugar coat it. "Come 'ere" he said, in a voice that sounded eerily to Jack like the "previous" Doctor, his friend the U-Boat Captain. "I told her to take us somewhere safe, and she is. We're going back… way back… Farther back than I've ever gone. Farther back than I think any Time Lord has ever been." Hearing himself say the words out loud didn't make them any easier for the Doctor to believe, he was still utterly amazed by what was happening.

He put on his glasses and pointed at the display. "See this symbol, although it is two-dimensional to you, I see it, with the help of the TARDIS, as a six-dimensional shape, and it represents spacetime. The color, form and motion are shifting, do you see?" He looked at Jack, hoping to discern some sign of understanding. He realized he needed Jack to understand, not just because he needed a second mind; he didn't particularly need that kind of help. But rather he needed someone to corroborate, to agree with him. Maybe even to argue with him. He needed a companion.

"The changes we're seeing are fluid, and difficult to perceive, but what it's telling us is inarguable -- we've gone back so far that the universe doesn't exist, not like we know it. Or knew it. According to this," he poked at the screen, "we are very close in relativistic terms to the beginning of our universe."

The Doctor knew that this was a lot for Jack to take in. He'd already had a few seconds to assimilate it and a few seconds to a Time Lord was nearly an eternity.

"The TARDIS has taken us to the point in spacetime where she feels it is safe?" Jack asked.

"Yes, nearly; lockdown's been cancelled. She's slowed down but she's still underway. You can feel that she's not stopped yet, can't you?" The Doctor asked. He knew he was pushing Jack a bit. It had only been a few minutes since they were standing outside in sunny Cardiff. A few minutes before that, Jack had probably been with his team, and he'd been waving good-bye to Rose and wondering what to do with his 24-hour pass. He closed his eyes and brought forth an image of Rose: all yellow and pink, smiling, laughing and hugging him. The way he most liked to think of her.

Jack interrupted his daydream. "She'll be okay. We'll figure this out and get through it. We always have and always will."

The Lord of Time opened his eyes and stared, masking astonishment that Jack had read his mind. And waiting for him to continue, which Jack did: "Explain to me again where we are… When we are."

The Doctor formed his thoughts as he removed his glasses. "You know how the universe started, right? The universe as you knew it – as we left it – had expanded to that state from a primordial condition of enormous mass and heat nearly 14 billion years in the past." The Doctor was finding his way and growing more energetic by the second.

"A huge 'fireball' erupted at an initial time-point in spacetime. At that initial time-point, before time started, density, pressure and temperature were infinite. The laws of the universe as we've come to know them – laws like general relativity and gravitation – did not exist. The universe was filled homogenously with these unimaginable temperatures, pressures and densities. And matter and anti-matter…" and at this point The Doctor laughed because he found the scenario quite amusing, "matter and anti-matter had not yet differentiated to become the universe with which we are familiar, where matter predominates over anti-matter. To put it simply, it was a very strange place. Eventually, and the time scale here is amazingly compressed, a sort of phase transition occurred and the elementary particles were formed."

Shrugging his shoulders, he took a deep breath. Even the Time Lords didn't know everything about the beginning of the universe. It was a series of events, larger, more complex and more random than any imagination could fully conceive, which resulted in the universe both he and Jack had known and loved – a universe with gravity and planetary motion and where the speed of light was a constant. But the birth of the universe was a precipitous series of events, and that's what now worried him. If the TARDIS had brought them here, to about – and he had to peer at the display again – about ten to the eleventh power of a second after the initial time-point marking the beginning of the universe, then…

"We're at the time before the creation of protons and neutrons, and before anti-particles were obliterated and protons came to dominate," he said. "That's about as much as I can tell looking at this damned display!" He kicked the console, not so much out of anger but frustration. The TARDIS engines had stopped and other than The Doctor's voice, the room was totally quiet. They were safe in the TARDIS, he knew, and the TARDIS had clearly and finally decided that she had delivered them and herself to a safe place.

"In about a half million years, if things go according to plan, hydrogen atoms will dominate the universe and gravity will start acting on matter – stir it up, wait about 13 billion years, and 'voila!' one universe including stars, planets, and organisms, nicely served…"

The Doctor's voice trailed off as he looked up at Jack and smiled. "Too much? Not enough? Just right?" he asked. Of course he loved Jack, too. If there was anyone else he'd rather be stuck with in the present situation, with all of its potentially horrifying ramifications, he didn't know who that was. Well, maybe he'd rather be with Rose… but if not Rose, then Jack. He was lucky to have those two in his life. Normally he'd be thrilled to have even one such person, but to have two brave, kind, caring, strong and confident people? He was privileged, and he knew it. He'd known from the very beginning of this regeneration that he was lucky, despite all the unlucky things that had happened to his predecessors, and all the unlucky things that had happened and would happen to the current him. He was blessedly fortunate.

And so he looked up at Jack, again and said, "I'm glad you're here," and meant it.

Jack and Albert

The Doctor was quiet again, lost in his own thoughts.

It was Jack's turn now to move away and sit on the sole chair. "Why only one?" he wondered as he allowed himself to settle. After all these years, these centuries, he thought, it would've been kind to have set out a couple of extra chairs. Then he laughed quietly to himself, recalling his recent tumble to the floor: "No seatbelt either! Not the best thinking. But then again, it was not unlike The Doctor to be oblivious to sundry comforts.

The Doctor had been watching him. "Something funny?"

Jack nodded almost imperceptibly. Of course, The Doctor's cosmology lecture had been somewhat unnecessary, but because he loved to listen to The Doctor talk, loved to hear the sound of his voice, Jack had allowed him to wax pedagogical. It didn't matter really what The Doctor was talking about… it could be anything… Jack was happy just hearing the words. It was funny because in any other situation it was always the Captain who was the center of attention and the voice everyone listened to. Jack took to the role naturally, like putting on his coat each day. But when he was with The Doctor, he could relax that side of his personality. It wasn't that he was unwilling or unable; rather he became a slightly different person. Not a better or worse person, but a listener – a sounding board – and he liked it.

Jack played another position on this different team. He was now point guard instead of the center on the basketball court, and he was confident enough in his abilities to be able to take any position and run with it. He shrugged and ended that train of thought.

Yes, he knew about the beginning of the universe, and he knew that if the TARDIS had deposited them here, at this point, so soon after the initial boom that as unlikely as it seemed everything other than their little, fragile oasis was terrifyingly different. Hell, "other" may not even be definable, much less comprehensible. If the ramifications weren't so catastrophic, it might be intriguing.

"Boss," Jack said, the term more one of endearment than deference, although there was that, too. "I know what it means."

"Yes, I expect you do."

"You know…" Jack leaned back, "I met Einstein."

"You DID?!"

"Yes, twice actually, the first time was in the very early earth twentieth century."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"And no, I didn't give him any bright ideas. In fact, I didn't speak to him at all other than submit a patent application for a small electromagnetic device…"

The Doctor raised his other eyebrow.

"Well I had to make money somehow! A man's gotta live…"

The Doctor nodded, he could imagine how difficult Jack's life had been on earth all those years that he'd been waiting for the two of them to cross paths again.

"I met him again at Princeton in the 1940's." Jack shook his head. "I don't know how he did it, but he'd remembered me. He recognized my face, although for him my face should've looked 35 years older." Jack let out a long sigh. "I was with the Manhattan Project and had been sent with Oppenheimer and a few others to try to recruit him. We failed, of course – by that time he'd reconsidered his position on the development of atomic weapons of mass destruction."

"But he recognized you? And he knew who you were despite the fact that you hadn't aged?"

"Yes, he took me aside, away from the others and whispered in my ear, 'Is it time dilation or something else?' And then he leaned back and looked at me and smiled, 'No, I suppose you shouldn't tell me. And of course I can tell no one else, correct?'"

Jack was silent with his memory.

"Whelp," The Doctor said finally, breaking the spell and raising his hand in a mock toast. "Here's to you, Albert!"