Destruction of the Time Gate

by PHRZCumberbatch

Jane is the captain of her spaceship and is let in on a little secret: the universe is going to end. She teams together with a mysterious stranger as they head toward the end of the universe, in a race against time as members of her ship become "affected" and begin killing. I should probably give you a warning and let you know that the Doctor doesn't appear until chapter 17.

5. 05 Research

Jane stood on the circular platform of the bridge and tried to hide her scowl as she examined the many screens in front of her. After learning about the affected she had spent the rest of the day and all of the night searching for more cases and found them popping up all over the universe, though they weren't as noticeable as before. There were no more leading headlines of the attacks and killings, though the police reports showed that the killings were only increasing. Daily life went on, the suddenly dead and missing people not causing a lick of a difference. Though as she continued to search she noticed how the reports continued to disappear, and no matter what encryptions she used she could not trace the missing reports.

The cumulating deaths and missing reports weren't the only reasons why she was upset. She couldn't find the commander anywhere in any report online. He just didn't exist, at all. Even though she knew that he wasn't really a commander, she had looked up all of the known commanders in the universe (showing billions of results) he was not among the list. His image had been captured by hundreds of cameras as he had walked among the ship the day before, and though she had searched with his image on the main database for a match nothing showed up. He was an anomaly that she couldn't explain. She should be able to pick up who she was with her technology, but his name must have been erased somehow from all databases. Who would do that?

She couldn't figure out what type of job he had, though if she had an idea that was where she would search. Her search phrases were just too broad, his information might be out there somewhere and perhaps he wasn't so impossible and she just couldn't find him. If only she could specify where he was from or what he might do as a profession. She began to question why he was the one chosen to help save the universe from ending. How did he know so much about the Time Gate and the colliding universes? Where did he gain the information from? Was he one of the scientists?

She began to wonder if the commander was from the alternate universe. If people here were able to pass through to the other side, did that mean that someone over there could pass over to this universe? It would certainly explain why he knew so much about the Time Gate, and his strange clothing. Though, if he were from the alternate universe, wouldn't he try harder to fit in instead of parading around in an outfit that hadn't been seen for centuries?

Even more infuriating than all of this was the fact that none of her crew knew what was going on. The end of time itself is at stake, and they had no idea. Millions of people all over the universe were killing everyone around them, and yet no one knew about it. She began to question whether it was really happening, surely the end couldn't happen as all of her crew members were animatedly chatting with each other, their excitement noticeably brighter than before. Jane watched them through her transparent screens as they assumed that she was ignoring them, they were passing bets and laughing with one another, excited about the games that were going to take place later that day.

As she watched their smiling faces Jane began to doubt herself. Certainly the end of the world couldn't be approaching if everyone were so happy. What if all of this were just an elaborate ploy? The reports of the sudden mass killings, that apparently only she had seen and which just so happened to disappear. The Admiral's call, the strange man who called himself the commander, they could just be using her to transfer the commander to a remote location, to do who knows what. The explanation of the colliding universes could just be a ploy for her to become scared and do what the commander asks.

No, she decided, it wasn't all a big lie. Her instincts told her that what the commander had said were true. The fear in the Admiral's eyes was not faked. There was no way that so many reports could be faked and then be erased, even if it was just someone hacking into her own computers. Creating such an elaborate hoax with time travel and colliding universes was just too extreme.

The end of the universe was coming, she realized, unless somehow she and the commander reached the Time Gate and somehow fixed everything. Until then, she was not going to let her crew know of the impending doom. Let the games begin.