The next morning, or whatever time it was, Tardis woke me up from my sleep. "Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad!" She jumped up and down in excitement and I sat up with a random pain in my back, probably from sitting in that chair awkwardly.
"Yeah?" I saw her space-dusted eyes and still marveled at how different they were.
"Get up! We're going!" It was as if she was the parent and I was the kid, because I was still half-asleep.
"Going where?" I stretched my arms and legs and stood up.
"It's a surprise!" She took my hand and tried to pull me to the door but I stood my ground effortlessly.
"Tardis, calm down. Where exactly are we?" I was about to let her answer, but then realized, "How do you know how to drive the TARDIS, Tardis?"
"I was born from the TARDIS. I know everything about it, Dad." She might as well add a "Duh" to the end of her sentence.
"Never mind that, I want to know where we are." I started to walk over to the door, but Tardis tried to stop me this time.
"Wait! Dad!" I felt her pull my hand and arm back, but I continued to the door, turned the doorknob, and pulled. I couldn't believe what I saw.
"Tardis," I started to look outside in awe.
"It was supposed to be a surprise!" We were underwater. You could see giant fish swimming around, a coral reef was above us, and the sun was out on the surface. How was the water not flooding the TARDIS, you might ask. How do you think we don't get pushed out into space when we open the TARDIS doors while we're up there? Same concept. I stuck a finger into the water, and it was cold, probably because we were so far down, and then turned to Tardis.
"Dad, I just wanted to-"
"Are you kidding? This is going to be fun!" I ran back over to the center console and to the monitor to see where we were. "Ahh, Neptune. Not like the Milkyway-Neptune, but Neptune-Neptune." I babbled nonsense to her. "This planet is all... water..." I remembered. "Why did you bring us here, Tardis? There's not much we can do underwater..." I went back to the door and she had her bare feet in the wall of water. She was giggling, and then looked back at me.
"There's people here."I shook my head. "If you mean humans, there's no possible way they could be here."
It was her turn to shake her head this time. "I'll show you." She returned to her feet and closed the door, then ran over to the console.
"Tardis,"
"Let me show you." She seemed desperate to just impress me, or prove me wrong, or both. I smiled and nodded then sat down in my chair. The TARDIS started to make her noise and I could feel us moving through the water. Tardis ran around, flying my ship with ease, and I crossed my arms. This mysterious girl had appeared in my TARDIS last night and now we were already going on adventures. This was going to be very fun, I could just tell.
"Come on!" Tardis ran over and grabbed my hand. "The people are here!" I followed her to the door, and when she opened it, there wasn't a wall of water, there was a city. This was impossible, no human could be here, not on this planet. It was all water, there was no land, and they had no oxygen to breathe from. Before I could even ask, Tardis dragged me out and I locked the door before she ran off by herself. "I told you! Look! People!" She was right. There were many people walking the streets of this underwater city with regular people clothes. I pulled my sonic screwdriver out from my jacket and scanned all around me. Just like Tardis said, my screwdriver confirmed that they were humans.
"There's people on Neptune... There's people on Neptune!" I exclaimed and Tardis smiled at me.
"Look." She pointed to the sky, or its equivalent, and I noticed a large dome was surrounding the city. It wasn't some solid glass dome, but some sort of energy field.
"Let's go investigate!" I ran off and Tardis pelted after me.
We bumped into people more times than we could count, and almost angered one enough to threaten us with a call to the authorities. When we escaped that person, Tardis and I had to stop and laugh. "That woman was crazy!" She fell over and couldn't stop.
I imitated her: "If you don't apologize, I'll call the Justices! Rah rah rah!" I growled and laughed with Tardis. "How are people living on this planet, though?" I wondered and she grabbed my hand.
"Let's go find the library!"
"Sounds like a great idea, but I'm supposed to be the clever one." I joked.
"I'm clever too, you know!" We walked the streets looking at the many stores on the way. A hat shop caught my eye and we looked at each other at the same time, a smile on both of our faces. We ran in and started to pull hats off the shelves; there were Stetsons, fezzes, knit hats, top hats, umbrella hats, and all types of hats possible. "Dad!" The first hat Tardis grabbed was a blue fez, and I jumped to get one for myself. It was a red one, just like the one River shot off my head long ago.
"Tardis, can we get it? Can we get it?" I begged and she grabbed a knit hat for herself. "Is this enough?" I asked the cashier with a wad of cash in my hands.
"What is this?" They asked and examined the paper money. "Do you know what I could get for these?" The cashier looked up and I shrugged.
"No, not really."
"You could take the hats, and more if you wanted to!" Tardis and I glanced at each other and shrugged. We grabbed about two more hats, she got the blue fez and I got a Stetson, then strolled out of the store satisfied.
"What was that all about?" I wondered out loud.
"I don't think they use paper money here..." Tardis shrugged and we walked on.
"Where's this library, anyways?" I asked looking around at all the people buying things from the stores or walking the sidewalk.
"The signs say it's just straight down this road." Tardis pointed out and I saw the signs pointing down the street.
"Follow the signs, then." We noticed that almost everyone we passed was staring at us strangely. They could tell we were outsiders, but didn't want to say anything about it.
"I wonder, what are the 'Justices?'" Tardis asked.
"Seems like their law officers of sorts. Like policemen." I guessed, and we eventually made it to the library. "Ahh, here we are. I'm guessing we need to go to the history books." I tried to open the door, but it was locked. It looked only noon, so there'd be no reason for it to be locked.
"Dad," Tardis pointed to a sign that read:
Authorized personnel only. All violators will be subjected to arrest and punishment by the Justices.
"Hmm..." I thought and next to the door was a keypad and a hand print scanner. "Looks like we'll just have to knock." I smiled and then did so, waiting for someone or something to answer.
"Who dares to intrude on the Library of Neptune?" A voice boomed from some unknown speakers.
"Well, I'm the Doctor, and this is my daughter, Tardis." She tugged on my sleeve and pointed to a camera behind us, then we both waved.
"What is it that you want?" The voice growled impatiently.
"Um, we were wondering if we could go read some books of yours?"
"That's preposterous! No one can read anymore! Only the scholars and government officials can!" The voice sounded very surprised, but was shaking us off as idiots.
"Well, if you really want to argue with me, I could just march back to my boss and tell him you didn't admit a government worker into your, our, library." I shrugged and turned to walk off.
"Wait! You didn't say you came from the Sapphire Nation." He seemed afraid.
"I have credentials if you don't believe me." I added for assurance. After a long pause, the voice finally answered.
"Fine, come in. Come in."
The door opened and I grabbed Tardis' hand. "You really do like to show off your cleverness." She chuckled and the doors slid to a close behind us.
As the last sliver of light disappeared, Tardis stayed close to me, seeing that it was pitch black in the room except for a dim light of a screen ahead of us. The lights came on with a loud noise, and it echoed through the large room we were in. A man was hunched over a piece of equipment, and didn't notice us until Tardis cleared her throat. "Hm? Oh! It's you! Welcome, welcome!" He put his tools down and rested his goggles around his neck, then took a glove off to shake my hand. "Felman Lux, at your service! Sorry about my grumpy boss. You're the Doctor, correct?" I shook his hand unwillingly and then waved a greeting when he let go.
"Yes. I'm the Doctor, and this is my daughter-"
"Tardis." Felman interrupted and stared at her, intrigued by her eyes most likely.
"We were just wanting to look up some history books." I whipped out my psychic paper and he nodded, barely looking at it.
"Okay, this way, then." He put his gloves down by his machine, then guided us. "We're expanding the library, you know." He informed proudly. I gazed around, and felt that I'd been here before. "Did you know that the oceans on the whole planet are drying up at alarmingly fast rates? I'm sure you did, you work for the Sapphire Nation." He babbled on and on, and I raised a brow curiously.
"But the water's well above the dome of this city." I argued.
"The dome makes it look like it's farther away, as to not scare the citizens, but it's actually only a few feet above the tip of the dome. Soon we'll have enough to expand the library even more." I was a bit suspicious about him worrying so much about the library instead of the people.
"Here's the non-fiction section, more specifically, the history of the city." Felman gestured with his arm and then offered his help if we had any questions.
"Thank you." I nodded and Felman strolled off back to his machine. "Let's get diggin'." I let Tardis go and find any significant books and I searched on the other end of the bookshelves. It seemed like hours before Tardis found something interesting.
"Dad!" I was more than glad to hop over and see what she found. "It's actually blueprints of the city, when it was originally made." She unrolled them, and sure enough, there was a layout of the whole city.
"How about the dome?"
She smiled. "I thought you'd say that, it's right over here." She picked up another roll of blueprint, and laid it out, weighing the corners down by books. I looked it over at least ten times before finding how it worked oxygen into it.
"It takes oxygen out of the water, leaving the hydrogen to go to the surface. That's why the water levels are falling so fast." I explained, and felt clever as always.
"If they keep taking this oxygen, there'll be no oxygen for them when they build the city on the surface." Tardis added.
"That answers our question. Now why don't they let the public into the library?" We both looked back towards the direction where Felman was working on his machine.
"Why doesn't anyone know how to read?" Tardis asked out loud. "Let's go find out."
We put the blueprints and books back on the shelves where we found them, then returned to Felman. "Felman, why is it that no one else can read except for scholars and people like me?" Felman almost dropped his tools when he heard my voice, and then sighed while taking his goggles off.
"It's because the Sapphire Nation passed a law, that only scholars could learn to read, and that it was forbidden to teach it in schools, of course."
"Right, I just wanted to know if you knew. We do need people who know their stuff, don't we?" I smiled at him and nudged Tardis to come with me to the door. "It was nice meeting you, Felman. Hope your work turns out great." I waved and let Tardis and I out the door.
"He's a strange fella, isn't he?" I smirked at Tardis.
"What are you talking about? You're the strange one, Dad." She giggled.
"I'm the clever one, thank you very much."
We talked more until we came across something going on in the road up ahead. People were crowding and I wanted to see what was happening. "Please! My family's starving and I need this for them to live another day!" A voice cried in desperation. That was my cue. I pushed through the crowd and made it to the center of attention. A man was on the ground with a loaf of bread and some drink in a bottle. He was covered in raggedy, old, and dirty clothing, and had the same look about him. Dirt was all over his face, arms, and legs, except where the tears streaming down his cheeks.
"You have broken Law 5679.2: A theft of any degree will result in imprisonment and fines will be paid for stolen items. You, Harrison Normandy, will execute these consequences immediately." A robot's voice sounded with no emotion at all.
"Please! I need this for my family! I have no job, no money! Please!" The robot was about to shoot him, which contradicted what he said about imprisonment and such.
I made it into the eye of the crowd and simply called out, "Now, you just said that he was to be imprisoned, not shot at." I took my sonic screwdriver out of my pocket, ready to fry this robot's circuits clean.
"By Law 7892.6, you shall be punished with the equivalent punishment for interfering with Justice law enforcement." It was ready to shoot it's gun at me, but I was faster. I pushed the button on my screwdriver and almost instantly the robot sparked and powered down. Luckily it was only temporarily disabled, so I'd have to get out of here soon. I held out a hand to the man on the ground and helped him up.
"Thank you, sir." He thanked me and shook my hands. I smiled and let him go with his food.
I heard many people in the crowd whispering things like, "He went against a Justice!" or "Mum, can we do that?" Tardis struggled to get through the crowd, but made it to me safely.
"Dad, can we go before more of them come?" I nodded and we ran to the TARDIS, where we could hide until we decided what our next course of action was.