CHAPTER 7: The Woman Who Wasn't There
"Space and time isn't safe yet. The TARDIS exploded for a reason."
Dressed in his top hat and tails, the Doctor circled the console as he addressed Rory and Amy, still outfitted in their own wedding attire. "Something drew the TARDIS to this particular date and blew it up. But why? And why now? The Silence, whatever it is, is still out there, and I have to..."
His train of thought afforded a fraction of a reprieve — long enough for him to finally register the sound of a ringing phone. "Excuse me a moment," he said as he picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
The Doctor's tone instantly became one of recognition, of familiarity. "Oh! Hello. I'm sorry, this is a very bad line." A pause. His tone fell. "No, but that's not possible. She was sealed into the Seventh Obelisk, I was at the prayer meeting. Well, no, I get that it's important. An Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express..." A smile crept over his face as his eyes darted over to Amy and Rory. "...in space."
He paused. "Give us a mo."
Cupping his hand over the receiver, the Doctor turned to the newly-wedded couple. "Sorry, something's come up. This will have to be goodbye."
"Yeah, I think it's goodbye," Amy nodded. She turned to Rory. "Do you think it's goodbye?"
"Definitely goodbye," he said.
Immediately, Amy headed for the TARDIS doors. She poked her head out into the night — into the overgrown garden of her childhood house — and waved with heavy, deliberate emphasis. "Goodbye!"
And then, realising she actually meant it, Amy allowed herself a moment to take in the sight for one last time. All those years. All those memories. All that longing, back in her childhood, for the Raggedy Man to return in his magic blue box.
"Goodbye," she said.
And she closed the door.
With the phone still in hand, the Doctor smiled. He put the handset to his ear; his company was decided. "Don't worry about a thing, Your Majesty. We're on our way."
He hung up, then turned his attention to the TARDIS controls. Throwing a lever, the craft was set into motion, and all three held onto the console as they balanced against its wayward movements. Amy and Rory exchanged excited glances, not knowing what awaited them - but knowing that the uncertainty was part of the thrill.
And then, without warning, the Doctor pushed all his weight down on a nearby switch. Metal screeched against metal as the TARDIS shuddered intermittently, then with a loud bang, stopped cold in an abrupt halt. Hollow silence filled the room as the Doctor looked at Rory and Amy with a furrowed brow.
"Didn't we do this bit?"
"Do what bit?" said Amy.
"This. Right now. This whole thing. Well, except for us talking about whether or not we did this bit. But everything before it feels... familiar."
She looked around the walls of the TARDIS. "It's all new to me."
"Deja vu, Doctor?" said Rory.
"Something like that."
The Doctor looked genuinely perplexed, and Rory stepped forward in concern. "Are you alright?"
There was no answer, and Rory asked again. The Doctor appeared to be gathering his thoughts. He attempted to wear a smile, but it didn't stick. "Must have been something I ate," he said. "Or something I thought I ate. Or just something I thought. Crazy town up here, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise." He dusted his hands, an apparent signal to dispose of the entire conversation. "But anyway, enough about me. Back to business. Now... where were we going?"
Amy and Rory looked at each other. "You hadn't decided yet." said Amy.
That perplexed look returned. "But we were about to head to..." His words trailed off, their conclusion long forgotten. The Doctor racked his brain, tried to remember his destination. He had decided, hadn't he? He thought they had. And yet... yet it seemed so cloudy, like a distant haze that was being carried away by a gentle breeze.
But then, the haze cleared, and the Doctor blinked. "You're right. We were still deciding."
He laughed, a simple chortle that spoke of the obviousness of the situation. Of course they were still deciding. How could he forget something like that? "This old brain isn't what it used to be, I suppose. Lots of clutter rattling around, lots of cobwebs in the corners." His fingers closed around a lever on the console and he attempted to pull it upwards. "Forgot where I put my sock drawer once. Who forgets that? Who misplaces a sock drawer? Turns out it was where it always was, but the room had shifted around it when the TARDIS... what is wrong with this thing?"
The Doctor continued to struggle against the mechanism, battling with great force to move it into place. It wasn't normally this hard. He shifted his stance and leaned in with his shoulder, and through gritted teeth he gave the lever every ounce of strength in his body. Eventually it snapped upwards and into place, and the Doctor straightened his jacket in satisfaction.
"Whew. That was an effort. Pent up energy in the field compression array has never been so difficult to downshift." The Doctor patted the TARDIS console with a tender hand. "What's wrong, girl? What did you have in there?"
"Whatever it is," Amy said, "it's shifted to the monitor."
She pointed to the nearby display; on screen was a simple white dot against a black background. Nothing more. Curious, the Doctor peered into it, then down at the console keyboard where his fingers typed at a furious pace. "What are you, then?" he asked.
As he entered the final key, the circle cut to static for the briefest of seconds before the image changed. A woman with long, blonde hair stared directly into the camera, her perfect complexion, full pouty lips and deep blue eyes quickly establishing her as a figure of absolute beauty. She sat alone in a room, the lights around her flickering intermittently, and she looked nervous as she searched for the right words.
"You told me to leave this for you," she said. "You said something about using the time core of the TARDIS to retain a message that could withstand a dimensional shift. You also said not to mention any of the events that happened, but to leave you with enough information so that you'd know what to do should the time ever come again." The woman chuckled. "Not exactly making it easy, are you? But then again, knowledge of events that happened in a universe that says they didn't is what got us into this mess in the first place. So let's keep things purely hypothetical."
She inhaled deeply. "Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you needed a big force. A massive force. You're said you're going to tell us the only way to unleash that much power is to cause a paradox, but what you won't tell us is that sometimes the best way to do it is to prevent a paradox. Like, say, to prevent the very paradox that attracted your attention in the first place. And if you ever come across a weapon that eliminates targets based on its genome structure, a good way of preventing it is to secretly change that weapon's setting from Time Lord to something else. The Solonian field mouse, I believe you chose."
The woman shook her head in disbelief. "You clever man. You had this one cooking for a while. You'll ensure you won't die, but doing so means you can't prevent your death and do, well, any of this because you weren't alerted to it. No paradox, plus no alarm, equals a paradox. Well, that's the plan, at least. And that's probably more information than you need."
She paused, then smiled to the camera. "Listen to me. I'm speaking about you succeeding in doing things that you haven't done yet. But that's how time works, isn't it. Depending on your perspective, things have either happened or they're yet to come. They were five minutes ago or five centuries ahead. If you're watching this, it means that everything I've just said did happen and you were successful. But because you were successful, it didn't happen. Time can be so mysterious. Like right now - that feeling of deja vu you're no doubt experiencing is just due to the residual overlap. It will pass at the moment of temporal difference. The lack of a paradox. You said that, too."
The woman sighed - deep and sad. "We're not going to meet again. Though if you succeed in what you're going to do, we'll never have met at all. I'm not sure how I feel about either."
The woman looked off screen as she turned her attention towards an outside voice, calling out from a distant location. "Miranda! Come out here and be amazing."
The recorded voice of the Doctor.
She turned back to the camera. "'Amazing'," she said. "I'm going to try, but you set the benchmark pretty high. Your mind is the most wonderful thing I've ever encountered. As appealing as it is intimidating. And yet, strangely unaware." She curled a length of hair around a finger. "I'm surprised you never noticed. I only glitch my words when I'm around someone I like."
The woman smiled. "Goodbye, Doctor. Thank you for everything."
And the monitor cut to static.
The Doctor slowly reached up and turned it off. A heavy silence hung among the group as they processed what had just happened. The Doctor swallowed. His throat felt dry.
Rory was the first to speak. "Who was that?" he asked gently.
The Doctor's eyes were distant. Pondering. And he turned to Rory, still lost in a haze of wonder, and said, as though waking from a dream:
"I haven't the faintest idea."
No one knew what to say after that, and for the longest time they just stood, replaying the moment in their minds.
"Time travel is funny business," the Doctor said slowly, solemnly. "In here it's a linear journey, an adventure, but out there... out there it's a pincushion of moments that create stories told for generations. Decisions we make slice through lives, through memories, through histories. It's a journey of everywhere and everywhen, and out there, even when things happen out of order or not at all, those stories are told as they should. History happens because of what you can do, rather than despite it." He gave an absurd chuckle. "It doesn't make sense, does it? Nine hundred-odd-years on, and even I'm still getting my head around it. Even I, a mad man in a box, a man who's done so much for so long, still can't help but think about that universal question... what if?"
Amy regarded the Doctor with tender eyes, and then noticed something. "Doctor, what are you doing?"
"Hmm?"
She motioned towards his hands, and the Doctor looked down at them. Idly, they fidgeted, the fingers of one hand wrapping around the other. He appeared to be feeling for something — a ring, perhaps — that was no longer there. The Doctor gradually grew aware his motions, and he cleared his throat, brushing his hands on his jacket to busy them elsewhere. A nervous reaction, he figured. Nothing more.
"It's been a big day," he said. "Least of all for you two. Mister and Misses Married! You don't get that every day. Well, you do in the Galaposit Theta quadrant — citizens are instructed by law to marry anew every twenty minutes. 'Course, the cyclic radiation means the average lifespan for indigenous life is only three hours, so, you know, swings and roundabouts."
He clapped his hands, sparking himself back to life. This energy, this enthusiasm, this was the Doctor in his element. He looked at the couple before him. "Swings and roundabouts. I think I know of a planet—"
"You always know of a planet!" said Amy. "Talking plants, three moons, lakes of silver..."
"And they're all out there, waiting for us among the stars. Shall we see them?"
"Do you need to ask?"
"I just like to hear you say it." The Doctor turned to Rory. "You too, newlywed."
"You've got a combo deal now, I'm afraid. Take wife, take husband."
The Doctor grinned. "A honeymoon, then! Oh, the sights you'll see. The places you go. And you're not getting any younger; let's get cracking before you're both oldlyweds! Diamond caverns, floating cities... I even know of a place where everything's upside down and the natives worship big versions of smaller things. Next stop: Australia!"
He worked the TARDIS console with frenzied energy, and Amy and Rory shared a hug. They smiled, excited by the adventures that lay ahead.
And not knowing what a future with the Doctor would ever hold.
THE END