BIG BANG

Part VII

Love Times Two

"Jack…. Jack…. Jack…." The Doctor's voice chanted, over and over.

Jack's shoulder hurt, but the pain was different than before. It felt like someone was pressing it, punching it.

"Ouch! Don't do that!" Jack opened his eyes and focused on the face above his.

It was The Doctor. "Jack, are you all right?" The Doctor's hand was gripping Jack's left shoulder with unexpected strength.

"I will be once you stop trying to dislocate my joint!"

Instead of letting loose, The Doctor grabbed Jack's right shoulder with his other hand and abruptly Jack was standing, The Doctor hugging him and laughing, "You are a most uncommon man!"

Jack hugged back. "Is that really you?"

"Oh, yes. It's me," The Doctor stepped back, his warmth lingering. Jack suddenly felt weak and leaned against the railing. "The railing!" he said out loud, not meaning to but there it was… "The TARDIS, is she okay?"

"If I'm okay, she's okay. And if she's okay, I'm okay." The Doctor twirled around in a little dance, once again scrutinizing his ship. She did indeed look right, and feel right. "But…"

"But?" asked Jack.

"Well, I woke up and I felt like myself, and the TARDIS felt like herself, but we felt different, too." The Doctor wasn't quite sure how to put this into words, but they blurted out of him of their own accord. "Those are fantastic beings, if one were to name them beings. They aren't even that. Or rather they are so much more than that. Nor are they even really a 'they', although I'll use it for lack of a better term.

"They exist, but on a plain -- at a level -- that is unlike anything I've ever imagined. They are incredibly old, vastly conscious, phenomenally complex, and brilliantly intelligent. Encountering them was unlike any experience I've ever had. They are so astonishing as to…"

Jack interrupted, he couldn't help himself, "Be beyond my understanding, I know!"

The Doctor's eyes flashed, his smile gone. "No! As to impress even me," he growled. But then he quickly moved on.

"When they were with you, I was with them. I was in a place so very different from any I've ever been before, communicating with them in ways I've never imagined. But at the same time, I heard everything they said to you and felt what they felt when you told them that you loved me. Both times you told them that you loved me."

Jack blushed and looked at the floor. He'd spoken the truth…

The Doctor went on. "They're not just incredibly ancient… they are not just from before our universe, they are from BEFORE the universe that was before our universe.

"You see, they've done it once already. They've terraformed a universe."

Jack was glad he was still leaning against the railing.

Masters of the Universes

"Their home universe died a normal death from old age billions and billions of years ago." The Doctor smiled at his terminology, it reminded him of a particular human astronomer he'd been close to, once upon a time. "Their universe had a totally different set of physical laws from our own. Time flowed non-linearly. There was a breathtaking amount of homogeneity. Matter and anti-matter did not form the way they did at the beginning of our universe. Everything was different, the primordial elements didn't evolve. Galaxies weren't created. Instead, theirs was a universe entirely, as far as I can tell, of what we'd call dark matter and dark energy: infinitely unified, infinitely cold and infinitely dark."

The Doctor closed his eyes and breathed in. "But their universe was not cold or dark to them. To them, it was beautiful, full of light and warmth and life as they perceived those things. But there was one thing their universe did have in common with ours." Again The Doctor paused, but then continued, "Death."

"They mastered their universe and its physical laws, much in the way the Time Lords had begun to master our universe and its laws. They achieved ultimate harmony; were completely homogeneous with their universe – they were their universe, and their universe was them. They looked for a way to survive their natural extinction and they found one. They protected themselves and watched. And when everything was as it needed to be, they manipulated events on an enormous scale in order to recreate what they'd lost. And they were successful."

Jack nodded, "Terraforming on a cosmic scale. Never mind what they destroyed."

The Doctor's eyes flashed again. "No, you're right. They don't see things that way. They have no concept of time. Their concept of existence is radically different. They have an incredible amount of arrogance and a belief that their needs outweigh all others."

Jack was relieved. He'd been worried that The Doctor had been co-opted somehow, or had become completely and inextricably infatuated with these beings.

"But… don't they recognize what they are obliterating? How could they raze an entire universe?"

The Doctor sighed; sometimes it was like arguing with a wall, these humans… especially this one. "They are the closest thing to a god I've ever encountered. For all intents and purposes they are gods. They don't really have a name for themselves, but their sense of self-identity would be similar to our word for cosmos. We are to them as a piece of fluff… no, a molecule in a piece of fluff, would be to you. We are nothing. Your conversation with them – you were more of a curiosity than anything else."

"But you said that they felt what I felt!"

"Yes, they did, it intrigued them. And they returned me based on what you said. But it won't matter in the end, they don't care. They're not evil or good, compassionate or unfeeling, malevolent or benevolent. They just are. We are inconsequential to them and they are oblivious of us."

"Now you know what it feels like," Jack muttered under his breath, but The Doctor ignored him.

"We're in a bubble that the TARDIS has created and is sustaining at no small cost – she's protecting us; holding our heads above the waves of spacetime change that are washing over everything we know. But they allow the TARDIS to do this, and on some level we're probably so insignificant it doesn't matter what we do; they may forget entirely and allow us to live the rest of our lives here, like this, imprisoned as a dragonfly in amber. Or with little if any forethought they could come about and extinguish us."

Jack smiled. It felt a little strange, like he'd not done it in awhile. "You do have a gob, don't you?"

"Yep," The Doctor smiled back.