Back to the Doctor
Alien Expectations Part 3
Marty took off running after the Doctor, but the second it took for him to react to his ride running off on him was enough for Celox and the Doctor to disappear down one of the many hallways. Marty stopped and tried to listen for footsteps, but the noise from the nearby marketplace drowned out anything else he might have heard.
He turned around to ask the Oslunctus where they had gone, or to ask what floor she had said, but the glass doors had closed and nothing he did could make them open. Marty wanted to laugh from the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, but swore – loudly – instead.
"I don't believe this is happening," he kicked the door, but still there was no result.
OOO
The Doctor raced after Celox through the metal corridors.
"Wait!" The Doctor called, but Celox – who was easily outrunning the Doctor – didn't even look over his shoulder to see who was yelling to him.
It wasn't until he ran into the opening doors of the lift that he looked at the Doctor.
"Hold the doors! I want to help!"
Celox looked uncertain, but held the doors anyway and a moment later the Doctor ran in and the doors closed behind him.
"Celox, was it? I'm the Doctor," the Doctor grinned and held out his hand.
"Yes, I know," Celox pulled something small and metallic out of his pocket, it was slightly larger than Celox's hand and the length was the same as the distance between his ear and mouth. A phone, the Doctor realized. Celox began to dial a number. "She always told me you had impeccable timing."
"Well, I do what I can."
Celox pulled the phone away in frustration. "He's not picking up his PC!"
"PC?"
"Personal Communicator, obviously," Celox waved his phone, or rather PC, before the Doctor and then shoved it into his pocket. He watched the lift numbers descend; they were halfway to level 59.
"What's been going on here Celox?"
"She told me people were going missing… but I- Well I certainly didn't think my brother would be next. With the others she said there was nothing we could do. That we had to wait, until you showed up."
"Do they all disappear from the same floor?"
"No, there have been disappearances from level 42 to 63."
"We have to figure out exactly where your brother went today."
The lift doors opened and Celox began running again.
"This way!" He yelled to the Doctor, without even turning around, and the Doctor immediately followed him through the dark, rusted underbelly of the Final Marketplace.
OOO
At a loss for how to find the Doctor, Marty decided to go back the way he came. No matter what, the Doctor would have to return to the TARDIS eventually, right?
He made it back to the large glass domed marketplace and looked around. They had weaved through the countless rows of stalls, but Marty was certain they had left the blue box on the opposite side of the room.
Making his way back to the TARDIS was practically impossible though. Without the Doctor guiding him through the crowd he found himself practically spinning around with every step trying to take in everything he was seeing.
There was nothing truly recognizable. Every shape looked new somehow, every colour seemed to be slightly off, no noise was like anything he had heard before. The only familiar thing he found himself picking out of the market was the brief snippets of English the TARDIS was translating for him.
If someone this morning had told him he was going to be able to have a conversation with an alien later that day he… well, actually he would have been a little skeptical, but it certainly wouldn't have been the strangest suggestion ever given to him.
"Watch it," some pale, tentacled alien gurgled at him.
"Sorry ma- err, dude," Marty thought it best to avoid genders. He had a strange suspicious that out here the chances weren't nearly as good as 50/50.
One of the merchants caught his eyes and began to wave him over. The alien had a golden hue, four thick trunks for arms, each one ending in six fingers and an opposable thumb.
"Sir, sir," his massive arms continued to wave at him. Marty let his curiosity overwhelm him. "Welcome, welcome."
"What are these?" Marty looked at the merchant's table covered in small bronze or gold trinkets. Some were on chains, like necklaces, while ones the same size as his palm were in cases. All of them reminded Marty of the inside of clocks, tiny gears twitching and turning.
"Truly rare items sir. This is the only place you can find them outside of the Skavros System. Location charms!"
He looked at Marty as though this fact was meant to impressive him.
"You don't say. Uh… what does it do?"
"Hm, first time off planet kid?"
"Uh, yeah, definitely."
"I could tell. Where ya from?"
"Earth."
"Ah, what do they call you guys again? Earthlings? Or was it monkeys?"
"Human, actually."
"Well little human, I'll give you a special first time off-planet special."
"Unless you take U.S. dollars, I don't think we can do business."
"Now, now, don't be so hasty. We can always trade. I've never been to Earth. Trade me something from Earth."
"But what are they?"
The alien picked one of the ones on a gold chain up. "No matter where you are in the universe, this little device can give you the exact coordinates if you ask. It even gives you the local name."
Marty looked at the metal charm up close. It didn't really look like cogs in a clock after close inspection, there were far too many, they weren't currently moving, and speckled through it were red and purple crystals that seemed to vibrate.
"Where am I now?"
The gears began to whirr at a fast pace.
"The Last Marketplace," replied a singsong voice. "Adverspars 42. Solar system 1A-"
"Okay, okay, I get it," Marty didn't know if it was just an easily programmed trick, but he suddenly pictured Jennifer wearing it. When she got better and found out he had travelled to the other end of the universe, he could give her a piece of this place. He fished around in his pockets until he found something rectangular and plastic.
"I don't suppose you like Van Halen," Marty said as he looked down at his walkman.
OOO
"Master," the gravely voice sputtered like a backfiring engine.
"Report," whined the metallic voice from its shadows.
"The detection programme you place within the surveillance system…" He swallowed hard, pushing his way through the wires that hung from the low ceiling to be closer to his master.
"Yes?"
"It has found something."
"Show me."
"I don't want to be too optimistic, there's no definitive proof-"
"Show me!"
The creature hobbled over to a screen and after pushing a few buttons, an overhead image of Marty McFly speaking to the vendor came on, their conversation began playing itself to the dark figure.
"-rst time off planet kid?"
"Uh, yeah, definitely."
"I could tell. Where ya from?"
"Earth."
"Ah, what do they call you guys again? Earthlings? Or was it monkeys?"
"Human, actually."
"Human," the metal voice went up a pitch. "The perfect donor has been located."
"I will, of course, find him for you… just in case he's telling the truth."
"He is human," his master insisted. "I detect no trace of a lie."
The creature looked at his metal master, a rusted metal hunk of a torso, the skeletal remains of a right arm, the teardrops drilled under its eye-sockets, and shuddered in fear.
"The Cybermen will rise again," his master, the Cyberman, said sternly.
To Be Continued…
(Let's play the number game! How many times I can manage to get the numbers "42" and "63" into this fic? Now, why did I pick the Cybermen? Well mostly because it works in the timeline. I couldn't use Daleks, because they essentially don't exist at this point… even though of course they do, thank you 11th Doctor. That, and I don't really care for Daleks that much. Cybermen freak me out, the idea of being stripped of your emotions and turned into a cold killing machine… damn. No wonder Star Trek lovingly ripped them off and created the Borg. Okay, so I wasn't really going to talk about how I was writing Marty or the Doctor, I wanted the fic to speak for itself, but I think I should probably give a brief summary of what I'm going for: At this point in the Doctor's life he isn't keen on the idea of travelling with a companion, his most recent being Donna Noble – which ended horribly. So he's going to be a little standoffish with Marty, even slightly exasperated with him at times when he wouldn't normally be with others. Marty was a little harder for me to figure out. Is time travel old-hat to him at this point? Yeah. And he's not going to be as thrown off by new things as much as some of the other companions. That's why when he goes into the TARDIS for the first time he manages to rationalize it fairly well. That being said, aliens are completely new to him and will still give him pause. And that's all I want to explain, the rest will hopefully be in the text.)