Rose: Introducing the Iris
Rose arrives at her black boyfriend's Mickey's flat. "Hey, hey, here's my woman. Kit off!"
"Shut up." They kiss.
"Coffee?" Mickey asks as he walks into his kitchen while Rose heads to his old computer. Rose really does love her coffee.
"Yeah, only if you wash the mug," he was lazy like that. "And I don't mean rinse, I mean wash. Can I use your computer?"
"Yeah. Any excuse getting in the bedroom. Don't read my emails!" Mickey shouted.
Rose uses the website to hunt for Iris, resulting in 17,700,000 results. Then Iris Living Plastic giving 55,300 results. And then Iris Blue Box 493 results. The top one says - Iris Who? ...do you know this woman, contact Clive here. She clicks on the site and there is a fuzzy picture of the Iris.
~TI~
The next day Mickey drives Rose to Clive's Street in his yellow VW beetle and parks on the opposite street to his house.
"You're not coming in," Rose told Mickey, still in the car. "He's safe. He's got a wife and kids," she told him, trying to reassure him that she would be fine.
"Yeah, who told you that? He did. That's exactly what an internet lunatic murderer would say." He was very protective of his Rose. She looked after him when his Gran passed away a few years back. When they became boyfriend and girlfriend her returned the favour and became very over protective of her.
Sometimes Rose finds it sweet and sometimes she finds it annoying.
One of Clive's neighbours puts out his black wheelie bin and gives Mickey quite a nasty look as Rose heads over to Clive's door. Rose knocks on a door and a young boy of maybe seven or eight opens it.
"Hello, I've come to see Clive? We've been emailing."
"Dad! It's one of your nutters!" she felt quite insulted for that.
An overweight man with short brown hair and brown eyes comes to the door.
"Oh, sorry. Hello. You must be Rose. I'm Clive, obviously."
"I'd better tell you now. My boyfriend's waiting in the car, just in case you're going to kill me."
"No, good point. No murders," Clive waves at Mickey.
His wife asks, "Who is it?"
"Oh, it's something to do with the Iris. She's been reading the website. Please, come through. I'm in the shed."
"She? She's read a website about The Iris? She's a she?" the wife called as Rose and Clive walked through shed the house to the shed in the garden.
"A lot of this stuff's quite sensitive," Clive explained to Rose once they were in a huge but very messy shed.
"I couldn't just send it to you. People might intercept it, if you know what I mean. If you dig deep enough and keep a lively mind, this Iris keeps cropping up all over the place. Political diaries, conspiracy theories, even ghost stories. No first name, no last name, just the Iris. Always The Iris. There used to be another one as well, a man called The Doctor. The two of them could be seen travelling together. And the title seems to have been passed down from mother to daughter and father to son. It appears to be an inheritance. That's your Iris there, isn't it?" He had brought out a folder and opened it to show Iris as she was last seen to Rose. It was a bit of a blurry picture but you could clearly see it was The Iris.
"Yeah."
"I tracked it down to the Washington public archive just last year. The online photo's enhanced, but if we look at the original." The original picture was of Kennedy's cortege going through Dallas. The Iris was one of the many faces in the crowd. "November the 22nd, 1963. The assassination of President Kennedy. You see?"
"It must be her mother," Rose said in disbelief, 'cause how could she be there in that specific time when she saw her yesterday.
"Going further back. April 1912. This is a photo of the Daniels family of Southampton, and friend. This was taken the day before they were due to sail off for the New World on the Titanic, and for some unknown reason, they cancelled the trip and survived. And here we are. 1883. Another Iris," this photo was a sketch.
"And look, the same lineage. It's identical. This one washed up on the coast of Sumatra on the very day Krakatoa exploded. The Iris as well as The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, they're there though I haven't been able to spot any pictures of the Doctor much. He brings the storm in his wake and they both have one constant companion."
"Who's that?"
"Death. Though The Iris is known to protect more people than The Doctor."
~TI~
Back out in the street, a black wheelie bin moves closer to Mickey's car.
~TI~
"If The Iris is back, if you've seen her, Rose, then one thing's for certain. We're all in danger."
~TI~
Mickey watches the bin move a few feet closer to him and gets out of his car. Not believing that what he could see was happening. He goes to the bin and lifts up the lid but sees nothing inside. "Come on, then."
~TI~
"If she's singled you out, if The Iris is making house calls, then God help you."
~TI~
Mickey shuts the bin lid and turns to walk back to his car but finds that his hands are stuck to the plastic lid. He pulls his arm and the plastic stretches with him. The bin growls, flexes, snaps and finally pulls Mickey inside it elf and burps.
~TI~
"But who is she? Who do you think they are?" I only saw the Iris. I never saw a man with her who was presumably The Doctor.
"I think she's the same woman and he the same man. I think they're immortal. I think they're an alien from another world."
Rose returns to the car to the car after that to reveal that Mickey is back behind the wheel though he wasn't the same Mickey as before. This Mickey is plastic. "All right, he's a nutter. Off his head. Complete online conspiracy freak. You win! What are we going to do tonight? I fancy a pizza."
"Pizza! P-p-p-pizza!"
"Or Chinese."
"Pizza!" Plastic Mickey drives off down the street.
~TI~
In a pizza restaurant Rose is still oblivious to the fact that Mickey has shiny skin and a fixed grin on his face. "Do you think I should try the hospital? Suki said they had a job going in the canteen. Is that it then, dishing out chips? I could do A Levels. I don't know. It's all Jimmy Stone's fault. I only left school because of him. Look where he ended up. What do you think?"
"So, where did you meet this Iris?" Plastic Mickey asked out of the blue.
"I'm sorry, wasn't I talking about me for a second?" She was always looking after everyone else, her mum, her boyfriend.
"Because I reckon it started back at the shop, am I right? Was she something to do with that?"
"No."
"Come on."
"Sort of," Rose admitted.
"What was she doing there?"
"I'm not going on about it, Mickey. Really, I'm not, because, I know it sounds daft, but I don't think it's safe. I think she's dangerous."
"But you can trust me, sweetheart. Babe," his voice turns deep, "sugar, babe, sugar. You can tell me anything. Tell me about the Iris and what she's planning, and I can help you, Rose. Because that's all I really want to do, sweetheart, babe, babe, sugar, sweetheart."
"What're you doing that for?" she asked, he was starting to scare her.
"Your champagne," a waitress who was in fact The Iris said to the couple, holding out the bottle.
"We didn't order any champagne. Where's The Iris?"
I tried getting Rose's attention. "Madam, your champagne."
"It's not ours. Mickey, what is it? What's wrong?"
"I need to find out how much you know, so where is she?"
"Doesn't anybody want this champagne?" I ask the both of them, humans never look up.
"Look, we didn't order it," plastic Mickey growled before he looked up to see it was The Iris. "Ah. Gotcha," plastic Mickey grinned maliciously.
I start shaking the bottle vigorously. "Don't mind me," I told them as they watched me. "I'm just toasting the happy couple. On the house!" I cheer before I release the cage around the cork and it flies into plastic Mickey's forehead and he absorbs it. After a few seconds he spits it out.
"Anyway," plastic Mickey said before he got up and turned his hand into a chopper. Rose runs away screaming as Mickey wrecks the table. This caches the rest of the customer's attention.
I grab the Auton and put him in a headlock, trying and succeeding to pull off its head. The rest of the customers scream and start to leave the building.
"Don't think that's going to stop me."
The body gets up and starts flailing around while Rose sets off the fire alarm, "everyone out! Out now! Get out! Get out! Get out!"
Rose and I run through the kitchens with me carrying the head, while the body wrecks the restaurant before following us to the back exit.
I seals the exit shut while Rose runs down the alley, past the TARDIS. The end is secured by padlocked gates. "Open the gate! Use that tube thing. Come on!"
"Sonic screwdriver," a lot of humans can't seem to recognise it. Before the War only the Doctor had the Screwdriver and I had the, though I couldn't read it myself. The Doctor said that made me cleverer than others, which I was anyway as it was meant to show the person you were showing it to whatever position you needed.
"Use it!"
"Nah, tell you what, let's go in here," I nudge my head towards the TARDIS before I unlock it and go inside while the Auton hammers on the metal door, making large dents in the door.
"You can't hide inside a wooden box. It's going to get us! Iris!" Rose tries the gate again then runs inside the TARDIS. She stops, takes one look and runs outside again. The inside was impossible. A siren is wailing in the distance. She runs around the TARDIS then when the Auton finally smashes through the metal door, she makes up her mind and goes inside. It must be better in there then out here.
"It's going to follow us!" Rose said to me as she travelled up the stairs to the new console.
"The assembled hoards of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door, and believe me, they've tried. Now, shut up a minute." She was quite the chatter box wasn't she?
The TARDIS has been newly redesigned since the War. It is still mostly empty of decorations or equipment but the time console is more central and the walls are slightly curved then the last one. What were once roundels are now brass coloured hexagons.
"You see," I started explaining to her about the Autons. "The arm was too simple, but the head's perfect," I was referring to the head of the Plastic Mickey. "I can use it to trace the signal back to the original source. Right. Where do you want to start?"
"Err; the inside's bigger than the outside?" I love that bit. All the humans say it. I love seeing the wonder and awe as they see my TARDIS for who she really is.
"Yes."
"It's alien," she's clever.
"Yeah."
"Are you alien?"
"Yes. Is that all right?" It can be quite of a shock to some.
"Yeah." Huh, she's strong this one.
"It's called the TARDIS, this ship," I decided to explain it to her as was only fair since she will be in here for a few minutes. "T. A. R. D. I. S. That's Time And Relative Dimension In Space." As soon as I said that Rose burst into tears. Ah, I should have expected that to happen. "That's okay. Culture shock. Happens to the best of us." I was thinking it should have been about the Autons. She must not have had any experience with any aliens.
"Did they kill him? Mickey? Did they kill Mickey? Is he dead?" she asks me. Ah, so that's what she was crying about. I do now recall the Autons in the shop was Mickey, her boyfriend. Oops, I'm sorry I forgot him.
"Oh. I didn't think of that," I admitted to her. I feel bad about that.
How can she forget Mickey? "He's my boyfriend. You pulled off his head. They copied him and you didn't even think?"
"He's probably fine," I tried to reassure her. "The thing that's behind this probably needs him alive to maintain the copy." I decided to let her have a bit of hope that Mickey was alive. If she's going to stay here with me for the moment I need her to have a clear head.
"And now you're just going to let him melt?" she asked The Iris, though she was very glad that Mickey could still well be alive.
"Melt?" what was she talking about? I turned around to see the plastic Mickey head melting on the console where I had attached it to with cables. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no!" How can this be happening? Oh, wait, he's plastic. He's melted because of the heat. I should have thought of that before. I need to trace the signal so I can even think of a plan to destroy the source. I set the TADIS in motion trying to track the signal as fast as I can.
"What're you doing?" Rose asks me. She didn't have a clue what all those buttons were for.
"Following the signal," I replied. "It's fading. Wait a minute, I've got it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Almost there. Almost there. Here we go!" The TARDIS lands and I run runs for the door. It was a bit of a shaky ride. This TARDIS was meant to be flown by six people not just one or two, that's why the rides are always so bumpy. It would be a lot smoother if there were more people to control her. The Doctor didn't even pass his test.
"You can't go out there. It's not safe," Rose warned her. How can she go out there when there was the plastic Mickey out to get us? Never thought she'd ever be saying that and then she followed Iris out the door.