My visions do not always come at convenient times. Well, why would they, really? Occasionally, I get lucky and they come in the form of dreams. More often, however, it interferes with something I'm doing, and I'm forced to pull bac k from whatever it is, while I shake off the aftermath of the vision.
This time, unfortunately, I was in the middle of a surgical lab, and my cooperating physician was none too pleased that I appeared to be fainting at the sight of an exposed bone.
When I came to, I was in his office. He was duly concerned for my welfare, and once he assessed that I wasn't sick or having a nervous breakdown, he began reading me the riot act about my mettle, my work ethic and whether I should re-think my decision not to become a museum curator.
I only half-heard what he said, because this vision had been a doozy. It was disturbing to say the least, and world-shakingly significant, I knew. I could hardly wait to get out of there so I could see Rose.
I barged in unexpectedly, and Rose was seeing another client. I felt sheepish as soon as I did it, and of course I agreed to wait in the lobby until she was finished.
As the other client left, Rose put her hands on her hips and scolded me. "Reed, just because I'm authenticating your visions does not mean I'm your personal life-consultant or something, and that you have the right to..."
"One of them died," I blurted out.
"One of whom?"
I rolled my eyes. "One of the three females in my vision! Died!"
Rose frowned at me worriedly, her lips hanging slack. After a few beats, she invited me into her office.
"Which one died?" she asked, abruptly.
"The woman."
"Okay, tell me... wait, first, are you all right?" she asked.
"I'm shaken," I told her. And I was.
"What kind of shaken? Like, with loss or grief, or more like fear?"
"None of those. Like with deep-seated trauma. Like an earthquake has just hit."
She nodded vigourously, as though she understood. "When and how did you see it?" For the first time, she threw on a pair of glasses, pulled out a legal pad and began taking notes.
"I was in surgery," I said. "Up to my wrists in blood, and I passed out cold."
Rose winced. "Ooh, not good. Has that ever happened to you before when you have a vision?"
"No!" I told her, more emphatically than I had intended. "Usually, I have to take a step back, and maybe I feel dizzy afterwards, but this is the first time I've passed out. This is the first time I've..." I sighed.
"What? Tell me."
"I've felt what the females in my visions are feeling. It's the first time I've experienced their pain. I felt the jolt of the death, felt her black out when she died, and it's when I came to. And in the vision, I felt... love."
"Love?"
"Yes, she was feeling love at the end of her life, in spite of a violent death."
"Okay, very interesting. What kind of violent death was it? Was she murdered?"
"Erm," I began tentatively. "I'm not sure, exactly. My first assessment would be the electric chair, but that doesn't seem right. Not right at all."
"The electric chair?"
"Yes. She was seated, strapped to something, and a burst of energy of some kind killed her. Or rather, drained her life force, if that makes any sense."
Rose studied me. But before she could say anything else, I realised something, I shut my eyes, and added, "And... electric chair. Hm. Now that it's been brought up, there's something else I guess I hadn't registered until now."
"What's that?"
"The woman is a criminal? A fugitive?"
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
"I don't know."
"So you feel that the death you experienced was an execution?" Rose wanted to know.
"Maybe, but that doesn't seem right either. I felt a sense of... sacrifice?"
"Sacrifice?"
"Yes. Love. Sacrifice."
"Love and sacrifice, just before a painful, explosive death?" Rose asked, jotting stuff down. I confirmed. "What of the little girl and the teen?" she wanted to know.
"Nothing, I didn't see them."
"And the man?"
"I didn't see him either. But there was a different man. And now that I think about it, a different little girl, and some other faces that are less significant."
"A different little girl and a different man?" she asked, writing. "Tell me about the girl first. How is she different from the girl you usually see?"
"Well, she's about the same age, but this one has a name: it's Charlotte. And I feel she's... important somehow, but not like the original little girl, not exactly connected to any of the females I usually see. Except, I think she may have had something to do with the death. Oh, that's awful..."
"Do you think Charlotte killed the woman?" asked Rose.
"I don't know. Maybe... maybe," I mused. "But, no, Charlotte has a sweet disposition. She's tormented and special, and just needs a friend. She's... sweet, but she's not well-rounded, or fleshed-out in my mind. She has only a face and a voice. I can't tell her hair colour... in fact, I might even say that she doesn't have hair. It's almost like I'm seeing only a face, emerging from a white wall, or a panel of flagstone."
Rose squinted at me for a few moments, and then she cleared her throat and wrote something down. "Continue," she encouraged. "Please."
"That's all I have right now for Charlotte. Or the death. I know I felt it, and it was huge. Traumatic. But I don't have more details than that. The narrative of this vision was... disjointed. I think there was too much emotion."
"Okay, then. The man. You said the man with the bowtie was not there, but another man was?"
"Yes, another man, though... equally important." I shut my eyes. "The feelings of love and sacrifice at the end of the woman's life, they were aimed at him."
I could hear Rose writing furiously.
"He was tall. More conventionally good-looking, I'd say, than the bowtie man, for whatever that's worth. He was a thin man. Dark-haired, and his hair was in disarray, but in a well-coiffed sort of way, like someone had spiked it and then disheveled it on purpose. He was wearing a pin-striped suit and trainers. You know, those old-fashioned Chuck Taylor trainers?"
There was a long, long pause, and Rose said, "Yes, I know them."
Her voice was trembling just a little, though, and it took me off-guard. I opened my eyes. She was staring at me again, wide-eyed, betraying fear.
"Are you okay?" I asked her.
"Tell me more about him. Eyes? Mouth? Voice?"
"Erm, brown eyes. Big eyes, like constantly frantic. The mouth... sharp, thin lips, I guess. Voice is nothing special, a bit high, maybe. Speaks like a Londoner, but then, so does the other man."
As I spoke, she was working hard to regulate her breathing. Her eyes were wider than they had ever been, and her hand shook a little. She had ceased to take notes.
"Tall, thin, pin-striped suit, Chuck Taylors. Spiky hair, good-looking, frantic."
"Yes."
"Did he seem... enigmatic?"
"Of course, he's part of a vision from another universe! Everything about this is enigmatic! Seriously, Rose, are you okay?"
She opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out for a few moments. At last, she said, "Just a moment."
She put the legal pad and pen aside, and stalked across her office with purpose. She opened a cabinet in the corner, over her head, and began to root around in it, in a space she could not see. She was growing more and more agitated as she searched for something.
"Can I help you?" I asked her. I felt somehow that we had switched roles. My description of the second man from my vision had upset her even more than the Howling. Again, I wasn't sure how I had caused this, but there was definitely something at work here, other than another world trying to get into touch with me alone.
She opened a different cabinet and dragged a folding chair out of it. She climbed up, single-mindedly searching now with her eyes, for some artefact that I hoped would make some sense out of what was happening.
After another long moment, she returned to the sofa with a framed photo. She gazed at it for a moment, and then seemed to take a breath for courage then asked, "Is this the man from the most recent vision?" before handing me the frame.
The photo was of her, dressed in a burgundy cocktail dress, about thirty years younger than she appeared to be today. She was smiling widely, her blonde hair upswept with just the right amount of straggle hanging by her ears, framing her expensive jewelry. The man in the photo was wearing a tuxedo, not a pin-striped suit, but it was definitely him.
"Yeah, that's him!" I answered, studying the photo. "You know him?"
She sighed, her shoulders slumping. "That was taken the night we got engaged."
"Oh!" I said, surprised.
"We went to the Saddler's Wells Opera to see a revue of Gilbert and Sullivan favourites with my parents. It was dreadful. But afterwards, he took me for dessert at a bistro that I can't even remember the name of anymore, and asked..." she gulped hard, and sighed. "He had a ring, and everything. The whole thing was so, so unlike him."
"He's your husband? But I thought..." I gestured toward her desk, having remembered the wedding photo I'd seen. This was definitely not the same guy.
"No," she said, sighing again, gulping again to hold back tears. "He died, shortly after this picture was taken. About six months later, actually. He learned that Cybus Industries was trying to rebuild with one of its overseas subsidiaries and it turned out they were manufacturing... you know what? It's a really long story. But he tried to stop them, and he'd forgotten that he couldn't just regen... again, long story. Actually, maybe he hadn't forgotten, maybe the fight is just in his DNA no matter what, but the point is..." she stopped short.
Now it was my turn to frown, squint and study her. "I don't understand," I said.
"The man in the pin-striped suit is called the Doctor, and he doesn't exist in this universe."
I pointed to the photo in my lap. "He's called the Doctor? Just... the Doctor?"
"Yes. Well, no. The man in the photo is... he's a clone. Like I said, the Doctor doesn't exist in this universe... he was cloned in Dimension Alpha and... again, it's a long story, the two universes, and the cloning. But I know them both, and the man in your vision, the one in the pin-stripes, is the Doctor."
I thought about this. It didn't add up.
"But wait," I said. "In my vision, he had a name. And it wasn't the Doctor. That's not even a name, is it? It's a title."
"He had a name? Like... a name that his parents gave him?"
"Yeah."
Rose sat back on the sofa and seemed to stare at the far wall for a few seconds. Then she asked, "Do you remember what it was?"
"Yes, it's..."
"Wait, don't tell me. Don't."
"Why not?"
"Because, I'm not meant to know. It's clear to me now, it wasn't meant to be. I can't know. No-one can know, Reed. Understand that."
"Why not?"
"Because, the Doctor's given name is one of the great mysteries of the universe. The given names of all Time Lords, in fact, are deeply hidden. And only his spouse can know."
She looked at me with such sadness, such deep loss. "Oh, and you were supposed to..." I began.
"The man I was going to marry was a clone, but he had the Doctor's memories, he had the personality, the brain, the bloody bravery. He had all of those old secrets in his mind, even though he wasn't really the Doctor. He explained it all to me, how a marriage ceremony is a revelation of sorts to the Time Lords and their spouses. Now, technically, he wasn't a Time Lord, he was human. But his mind was Time Lord, and his spirit and memories were Time Lord memories. His proclivities, as it were. So for us, it would have been merely symbolic, this name revelation, and he wanted to reveal it at the proper time, as though it were the real thing. But as I understand it, a true Time Lord physically cannot reveal his name until the marriage is sealed. There is no choice nor symbolism in the act - it is sacrosanct and literal." She was speaking mechanically, as though reciting from a memorised text.
"Why?"
"Again, one of the mysteries of the universe. The Time Lords were steeped in mystery. So you see, Reed, you cannot just go telling people his real name, even if you can."
"Okay, I won't. I promise. Just one question, though."
"Yes?"
"What the hell is a Time Lord?"