a/n: I'm posting this early because I've really wanted to get this chapter up for a while and I don't know whether I'll be able to post another chapter this week. And this chapter mentions the theory of quantum entanglement. It is an actual theory in modern physics.
Chapter Eighteen
A few days later, Gwen Williams sat in the Hub with her feet up, nominally watching telly. On the wall behind her was a whiteboard Ianto had installed with a large number written on it, which was the number of days until her baby was due. It currently read 17.
Everyone in the Hub had told her over and over she didn't have to come in, that she deserved to have some time off, but she insisted on showing up anyway, arguing that at least she could field some phone calls and occasionally man the tourist information desk. But the truth was she was bored. B.O.R.E.D. BORED. Rhys was on a three day truck run, subbing for one of his drivers who had fallen ill, and with him gone their flat was just too plain quiet.
She turned off the television when she heard the voices of the Doctor and Rose filter in from the tunnel entrance to the Hub.
"So it still doesn't do wood?" Rose said in disbelief as they walked into the Hub.
"Oi, Earth girl, don't diss the sonic!" the Doctor replied sharply and then winced.
Rose's eyebrows shot up. "Earth girl?"
The Doctor's lip curled in disgust. "Well, isn't that wizard. I thought I was done with Donna's mannerisms."
"So that was Donna, then?" she asked teasingly.
"No, that was me. Of course. Influenced by Donna during the metacrisis," he said, grimacing. "Evidently I still talk like her sometimes." He sounded horrified.
"So mostly you sound like him, but sometimes you sound like Donna, and sometimes you sound like the first you I met?"
"I do?" Now he sounded surprised.
"You didn't know?" Now it was Rose's turn to be surprised. She couldn't believe he didn't realize that. At the stunned look he gave her, she continued. "Yeah, sometimes when you're talking about something or remembering something from when we first met, your accent changes. Makes you sound a bit like you're from the North again."
"Huh," he said with a puzzled expression on his face.
"Not that I mind…" she said in a low, sultry voice. She grabbed him by his blue pinstriped lapels and pulled him close. "After all, that's the you I first fell in love with."
"Yeah?" he asked, wrapping his arms around her.
She nodded, grinning at him flirtatiously. "Definitely."
Grinning back, he dipped his head to kiss her. A voice coming from the stairwell broke them apart.
"Revolting," said Owen Harper.
"You're one to talk, Mr. I-Only-Date-Bimbos-and-Skanks," Toshiko said from her workstation up on the balcony. "I think they're cute."
"Nauseating is more like it," Owen continued. "You two need to get a room, and preferably one not in the Hub. Last time they heard the two of you up in the Plass. Got reports of hauntings up there from all the moaning."
More than a little embarrassed, Rose looked at the Doctor, expecting him to look the same. Instead, he grinned openmouthed at her, looking exceedingly pleased with himself. He waggled his eyebrows at her.
"Shut up," she said to him, and his grin widened, his tongue curling against his teeth in an unconscious imitation of her smile.
Ianto entered the room and flipped the television back on. "You'll all want to see this," he said, and they all gathered in front of the television to watch.
"And again, our top story tonight comes out of London," the pretty, blonde newsreader was reporting. "This morning Number 10 announced new policies under the auspices of security measures, policies that have been pushed through Congress in a matter of hours and have just been signed into law."
The picture changed to a shot in front of the home of the President where an older man was speaking into a microphone, surrounded by reporters.
"Isn't that…" the Doctor asked, looking sharply at Rose.
She nodded, still staring at the screen.
"In the interests of national security," he was saying, "all residents will need to be registered in their home precincts. This registration will include name, address, employment records, fingerprinting and a DNA sample to ensure the registration of each individual and to make certain records are not falsified. Anyone refusing to give this information risks deportation or imprisonment. Once registration is complete, a registration card will be issued that cannot be falsified. That card will be used for identification purposes. It must be carried on one's person at all times and must be presented to authorities upon request."
The screen returned to the newsreader. "That was Frank Collins, new head of the NIH, regarding the new requirement for all residents to submit to a DNA test. Frank Collins was appointed to head the National Institutes of Health last week by the new president of Great Britain, Brian Greene. As you have just heard, the government is requiring the registration of all individuals."
The picture changed to a reporter in front of Number 10. "In order to pass this through so rapidly, President Greene invited select members of the opposing party to a breakfast meeting. Although all opposed the measures when they arrived, all had changed their votes by the end of the meeting. Congresswoman Margaret Blaine, from the congressional district that encompasses most of southern Wales, had this to say."
The Doctor and Rose looked at each other as the screen changed to a shot of Margaret Blaine being interviewed by a slew of reporters in front of Number 10. "We believe," she said, "that the security measures that the President has instituted are necessary and not unduly burdensome. We wholeheartedly support him in this."
The image changed to one of people queued in neighborhoods and submitting mouth swabs. Many of the women held babies and had small children in tow. In the background, soldiers carrying rifles seemed to be herding people to the registration queue. The newsreader spoke over the images. "With a speed that is unprecedented in government, the registration of the first wave of people began this afternoon with the residents of Estates in the southern portion of London. The Roberts, Cromwell, Chamberlain and Powell Estates were the first on the list with people being removed from their homes at gunpoint and escorted to the testing stations by the military."
At the mention of the Powell Estate, the Doctor wrapped his arm around Rose's shoulders and pulled her close. She leaned into him. She hadn't lived on the Powell Estate in a decade, and never in this universe, but its mention sent a chill through her.
The shot changed again, this time to the outside of a school building, and the newsreader continued. "In a later statement, the government is requiring that schoolchildren be registered in time for the fall term, with the warning that any child that is not registered will not be allowed to attend school and risks being removed from the home and placed in foster care.
"Demonstrations against the new regulations have already begun across the country." The image on the screen shifted to a shot of people holding up signs. "Large groups of people have already begun demonstrating in front of Number 10 as well as in Whitehall and Westminster, but the government remains unmoved and has stated that the registrations will continue."
Ianto leaned over and turned off the television. "After hearing this, I immediately searched the databases to find out more information. They have plans to register everyone in Great Britain, infants to the elderly, in the course of the next four weeks. Obviously they've already started in England, but they expect to begin in Scotland and Wales in a few days."
The Doctor and Rose exchanged worried glances.
"How is that even possible?" Toshiko asked. "There are too many people that would need to be registered for them to be completed in four weeks."
"Local doctors and police are handling the actual registration, but they'll be monitored by a new intelligence organization. Evidently they are forming a new department that will combine all the different intelligence groups together. The NSA, the ISS, the Secret Service, Torchwood, all will come under the same head."
The Doctor's eyes widened. "What's it going to be called?" he asked, although he already suspected he knew the answer.
"It's going to be called UNIT," Ianto answered. "It stands for…"
"Unified Intelligence Taskforce," the Doctor finished. "And I suppose all of these branches of intelligence will be coming under the head of the military?"
"Yes," answered Ianto, surprised. "How did you know?"
"Parallel world," the Doctor said cryptically. "Torchwood there, Torchwood here. UNIT there…"
"UNIT here," Rose finished. "And Torchwood was evil in that world and good here, for the most part anyway. Does that mean…"
"Probably," the Doctor said. "It all balances out. UNIT for the most part was a good organization there. Here, probably not."
"Parallel worlds?" Toshiko asked.
When Rose spoke, she spoke to all of them. "You know that the Doctor and I aren't from here. I came from a different Earth, a parallel one. And so did Mickey. And the Doctor, well, he's from the same universe as we were. And on this other Earth, the one where I grew up, there were a lot of things that were the same as here, but there were a lot of things that were different, too. Back there, we didn't have a president and Congress. We had a prime minister and a parliament. And we didn't have the zeppelins, either."
"Yeah, yeah, we knew all that," Owen interrupted. "So what does that have to do with what's going on now?"
"Well, if the universes are parallel, there are going to be things that are similar between them. Right, Doctor?" When he didn't answer, she turned to him. He was staring off into space, a look of both shock and puzzlement on his face. "Doctor?"
He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. "Oh, but Rose, it's more than that, isn't it? Parallel worlds diverge. As different decisions are made, parallel worlds grow farther and farther apart. But these two worlds are actually converging." He turned and stared at her. "Oh, why didn't I see this before? We're not just parallel, we're entangled."
"Are you sure?" she asked. "I thought entanglement only happened on a microscopic level. I mean, that's why they call it quantum entanglement, yeah?"
"Humans think that it only can happen on a very small scale because that's all they can see, all they can measure. But entanglement can happen on a universal scale as well."
Gwen raised her hand. "For all of us that didn't study physics, which is the rest of us, can you explain what you're talking about?"
"Einstein first started talking about entanglement in a paper in 1935," the Doctor said. At the blank looks on the faces of everyone but Rose, he turned to her. "You do have Einstein here in this universe, don't you?"
"Yeah, but he's not as well known here as in our universe," she answered. "And he didn't have as much of an impact in science here."
"How is that even possible? Einstein was brilliant, an absolute genius, and when I met him he was on the verge of…. Well, I suppose it's possible that I may have helped him a bit over a few of his rough edges..."
"Doctor, focus," Rose said, and he looked slightly irritated at being interrupted. She scowled at him.
"Anyway," he said, stretching out the word as he returned to the topic at hand. "To grossly oversimplify an extremely complex theory, quantum entanglement is basically when two things interact with each other and then are separated, under certain circumstances they behave as if they are still connected. What happens to one seems to affect the other simultaneously. Einstein called it 'spukhafte Fernwirkung', or 'spooky action at a distance'. But what Time Lords knew is that entanglement can happen also between universes. After two universes touch and interact, they can become entangled so that what happens in one universe seems to be mirrored in the other, even though they have since separated." He demonstrated the concept with his hands, first touching his two fists together, then separating them and vibrating them at the same time.
"And that's what you think has happened to our two universes?" Rose asked. "We've become entangled somehow?"
"Yes, we must have. There are just too many examples of our two universes interacting specifically with one another. First we ended up here with Mickey. Then when Torchwood was messing with the Void, it was connected to the same universe we had visited. And then, with all the infinite universes out there, you were still able to find me. And now with the UNIT business…."
"So are you saying that what happens there is duplicated here and vice versa?" Despite her genius with science and computers, Toshiko was still trying to wrap her mind around some of the concepts.
"Weell," he answered, drawing out the syllable. "No. Not actually. Not directly, anyway. Even on a quantum scale the action wasn't identical. And on a universal scale, the action is echoed rather than the same. Rose," he said, turning to her, "I think our presence here is making the entanglement stronger. When Mickey was here, he was just taking the place of this universe's Ricky. Your mother is taking the place of the parallel Jackie. But you and I don't belong to this universe, in any form. Our very presence is strengthening the link between this one and our own, even more than what would be usual between entangled universes. What happens in our universe reverberates here and vice versa. The Cybermen had been created in our home universe and then were created here. And it was no coincidence that Pete decided to shut down Torchwood One at Canary Wharf after the one in our home universe was destroyed. It's like I've said before, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
"I thought that was Mark Twain," Rose said suspiciously.
"Where do you think he got it?" he asked with a smirk.
Rose rolled her eyes.
"But the real question is," he said, "what was the interaction that initially caused the entanglement?"
"Wouldn't it have been when we ended up here with Mickey?" Rose asked.
"No. There had to be a crack between our two universes that let us get here in the first place. But there was no reason for there to be a crack then. When Torchwood was playing with the Void, yes, or when Davros set off the Reality Bomb, but not then. In fact, with the way time works, Torchwood playing with the Void could have caused the crack we slipped through," he said to her, and then he addressed everyone. "Most people consider time to be a straight line, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a ball of… a ball of… well… wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff." He groaned loudly and made a face.
Rose raised her eyebrows and tried not to laugh. "Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff?"
He scratched the back of his neck and looked sheepish. "Yeah, you'd think I'd be able to come up with a better description than that, wouldn't you?"
"Getting back to what started all of this, what are we going to do about the registration?" Rose asked. "You can't give a DNA sample."
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But more importantly, why do they want everyone to provide a sample of his or her DNA? There has to be a reason behind this, more than just for identification purposes. They are looking for something."
"Or someone?" she asked worriedly.
"Or maybe a group of someones," Owen interjected. "People who are genetically compatible."
"Yes, but compatible to what?" the Doctor wondered. No one had an answer.
"But that still doesn't answer the question of how you are going to give a DNA sample," Rose said.
"Let me work on that end of it," Owen said. "We'll figure something out."
"In the meantime, I've got to phone Dad," she said. "Maybe he can tell us what's going on." She pulled her mobile out of her pocket and stepped away for a moment. After a short conversation, she came back and sank down on a chair.
"Did Pete tell you what this was all about?" the Doctor asked.
Rose shook her head. "I didn't ask," she said. "There's more to this than we even know."
"Well then, we'll just go back and sort it," he said with a cheeky grin.
She looked up at him and shook her head again. "We can't," she replied. At her comment, the Doctor stared at her in shock.
"What do you mean?" he asked in disbelief. "Sorting things like this is what we do. You remember. We're Shiver and Shake, Mutt and Jeff, Sir Doctor and Dame Rose. You know, the Stuff of Legend."
She smiled a little sadly. "I know," she said, "but this time we just can't. When I first got here, while we were still sorting the last of the Cybermen that had been left in this world, Mickey had this idea. He got it into his head from some spy movie he had watched that we needed code words in case we were ever captured or something. He came up with a whole list of them for us. We went along with it, but we never needed them, so eventually it became kind of a running joke with us." She paused for a second and then said to him in a serious tone, "Well, Dad just used one with me."
The Doctor sat down next to her. "Rose, tell me what he said," he said. "Tell me exactly what he said, word for word."
Rose closed her eyes to better concentrate on the memory of the conversation.
"I rang his mobile and he didn't answer so I rang his office at Torchwood. When he picked up, I said, 'Hi, Dad,' and then he said, 'Rose, I'm so happy that you called. How's San Francisco?' Then I said, 'It's beautiful. I really love it here.' Then he said, 'Your mother, Tony and I really miss you. As soon as you get back, make sure you come out to the mansion for dinner, and make sure you bring John with you.' I told him I would, and that I missed them all and then I rang off."
She opened her eyes and turned to him. "If everything had been alright, he would have asked how Cardiff was or just how we were doing. But he didn't. He said San Francisco."
"What does San Francisco mean?"
"Before I got trapped here," she told him, "Mickey and Jake traveled all over the world and fought against the Cybermen. The first place they went was Paris, and then they went to Hong Kong and Sydney. Later, they went to San Francisco. Since their time in Paris had gone well, Paris became code for 'everything's all right'. Hong Kong was code for 'be on the alert' because they almost got into trouble by not paying attention to their surroundings. Since Sydney was their last stop on that trip, that one meant 'come home'."
"And what did San Francisco stand for?"
"They never told me what happened in San Francisco. But San Francisco meant that there were problems, big problems, but stay where you were because you'd make them worse by coming home." She looked at him evenly. "The fact that Dad used the code at all means he thinks his phone might be tapped and he doesn't want us to come back. Plus, he called you 'John'. He's never called you John. He's always called you the Doctor. If the mention of San Francisco hadn't convinced me there were problems, that would have." She shook her head. "No, we can't go back blind. We need to know exactly what we're walking into before we try to go back and solve it."
He opened his mouth to speak and she cut him off.
"Doctor, I know how much you just like to blunder into things without a plan," she continued, "but we really can't do that this time. We need more information first."
"Rose, how long was your conversation?" Toshiko asked.
"I dunno, a minute or two?"
"Tosh, it was forty-seven point two seconds," the Doctor told her. At the stares he got, he continued. "Still part Time Lord. Why do you need to know?"
"Anyone with a halfway decent computer and adequate hacking skills can trace a phone call, particularly a mobile call," she answered. "But you have to be prepared for it, and it does take time. If the mobile has GPS, and you are already watching for it, it can be almost instantaneous. If you have to triangulate using the mobile phone towers, it can take a while. Down here in the Hub we have a booster that allows us to use our mobiles, but GPS tracking doesn't work. If anyone was monitoring Director Tyler's telephone, I don't think they'll be able to track Rose's mobile here, no matter who they are. The call wasn't long enough. Even Torchwood wouldn't be able to track it that fast."
"Rose, give me your mobile," the Doctor said with his hand out. "You, too. Everyone. I need all your mobiles. Just stick them on the table there."
Rose handed him her phone, and the Doctor took off the back, pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and began sonicking the electronics inside it. She grinned.
"A bit of jiggery pokery?" she asked.
He winked at her. "You may recall I was first in my class at jiggery pokery." He put her phone back together and handed it to her. Then he picked up another phone at random and began to dismantle it. "Doesn't have universal range in time and space, but you can use it anywhere on the planet and no one will be able to trace it, or even listen in."
Rose turned to the Torchwood staff. "Okay, from now on everyone only uses their mobiles. Don't use the landlines, and don't use anyone else's mobile, either. Gwen," she said, turning to the other woman. "Get Rhys in here to get his mobile fixed as well. If my dad is worried, we all need to be on alert. Code mauve."
As he finished another mobile, the Doctor raised one eyebrow, a small smile playing around his lips.
"Code mauve?" he asked. "Not code red?"
"Yeah," Rose responded with a smirk and a wink. "Everyone knows red's camp."