STORIES

TWENTYTHREE

"What are we doing?" Wil asked, the sound of despair ringing clear in her voice.

"We are waiting, Teacher."

"Why?"

"Because you pressed the little blue button."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know."

"WHAT ARE WE DOING?"

"We are waiting patiently, Teacher."

"BUT WHY?"

"Because we need help."

"No we don't."

"With all due respect, Teacher, I believe we do."

"Bullshit. And have I ever told you that I hate it when people say 'With all due respect'? Well, I do!" She felt like throwing something but the damned control room was too uncluttered, too spotless, too perfect. Its perfectness hugely annoyed her. This isn't what a TARDIS control room is supposed to look like…

"Do you trust me, Teacher?"

There was a lengthy pause. Dead air.

"Does your silence mean you do not?"

Wil shook her head. "No, no. I'm thinking that at this precise moment I don't even trust myself."

"Why is that?"

"Because I desperately need to fucking do something! Anything! Where's John? What happened here? Does he need help? Is he even still alive?" The despair had turned into a shrill wretchedness.

"Do you trust me Teacher?"

"Yes. Yes I do, Grasshopper. I trust you with my life. But with John's life? I don't know – I don't know that I trust anyone with John's life! Not even…" She stopped pacing and sat down heavily, wearily on a chair, as if she was slowly being deflated.

"Teacher, are you feeling unwell?"

"I am feeling as well as can be expected," she said peevishly, doing her best to avoid the question and its highly unsettling truthful answer. "What makes you think they're going to show up?" She looked down at John's wristband and tried her best not to cry. "It's superluminal, not pan-dimensional. John…" her voice caught, "John never said anything about it being able to communicate between cosmii."

"They will come."

Wil laughed almost maniacally. "You sound like a Zen master. Maybe I should start calling you Ch'an-shih, hmm? No, wait! Maybe you sound more like Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams. Do we know what happened here, Ray?"

"Teacher, this world was attacked."

"Oh, great. Well… thank you so much for that brilliant insight, Ray!"

There was a long silence.

"I'm sorry, Grasshopper."

"Yes, Teacher. I know."

"Do we know how this world was attacked?"

"There was a massive geophysical event. Or perhaps more accurately stated: multiple massive geophysical events. Many if not all of the planet's active volcanoes erupted, apparently simultaneously. There were nearly a thousand of them. This could not have occurred naturally; it was made to happen. Unsurprisingly the eruptions led to other cataclysmic events: tsunami, earthquakes, infusion of the atmosphere by ash and sulfate aerosols. The global extent of the destruction is astonishing and the devastation extends far into the planet's stratosphere."

"Astonishing? I'm not sure that's the word I'd have used, Grasshopper. We're talking about the annihilation of an entire race."

Wil leaned back on the chair and closed her eyes. Normally her mind would've embraced Grasshopper's presumptive statements and taken flight with them. All sorts of ideas, observations, theories, questions, and answers would've popped into her head. Yet none of that happened. It was like she was intellectually numb. But emotionally she was the exact opposite – she felt as if a billion pins were pricking her, like every nerve was on edge, on fire. Christ, she thought, fire – bad choice of a metaphor. The planet's entire surface looked sickeningly as if it had been torched. She'd never seen nor imagined anything like it.

"It must've been horrible," she mourned.

"Death would not necessarily have been immediate," was the ship's response.

Wil's eyes flashed open, "Are you trying to make me feel better?"

"Teacher, in a way I am. All life would not have been extinguished instantaneously. There is reason to hope."

She shook her head, not wanting to allow the faintest glimmer of hope to enter into her broken heart. Not wanting to have that same heart shatter again after its precious, delicate hope was – as it would most certainly be – quashed.

"How do you know they will come, Grasshopper? How can you know?"

There was another long silence.

"Grasshopper, are you keeping secrets from me?"

"No, Teacher."

"And by no do you mean yes?"

"No, Teacher."

Despite herself, Wil smiled.