Fading Echoes
"Hey, you two, would you mind terribly if we got out of this jail cell?" Reich Rose's amused voice finally broke Jared and Rose apart, and he pulled her out the door then to one side to wave the other girls by. Jack took the opportunity to grab their erstwhile captor and heave him, still unconscious, into the cell in their stead, then Jared sonicked it locked again.
"Why is my gut telling me this is too easy?" Jack muttered to no one in particular, while following the group back up to the main room. There, the two men and seven identical women quickly established Who, When, Where, and Why – what little they knew – before Rose caught the utterly lost expression on the foreign-speaking woman's face.
"Jared, this me doesn't seem to speak English. She does speak a bit of German. Can you figure out what her language is?"
At the sound of his mistress's voice, Tock began barking from the side tunnel. "You didn't bring Tock too, did you?" Rose scolded Jared, glaring at him before she went to open the door and suffer his joyful greeting, then brought him back to the others.
"Oi! Not like I had any choice - he followed me!" Jared called after her, then turned to the Rose she'd indicated and, in basic German, got her to talk to him in her own tongue. Immediately his face lit up, and he began chattering back. "It's a form of Gaelic," he informed the others, "closer to Welsh than anything, but still quite odd." He turned back to Welsh Rose (as she was immediately dubbed in everyone's mind, though no one said it aloud), who looked about to cry from relief, and slowly he began explaining the concept of parallel worlds and doppelgangers, with a side of time travel. From her return gestures and his nods, the others guessed that she understood. Finally she speared him with what was obviously a vital question.
"How do you get back home?" he repeated in English, then gestured to the Dimension Cannon's long console to one side. "With this."
"Jack, is this your Cannon?" Rose teased him with a grin. "I'm impressed."
"Well, don't be impressed with me yet, sweetheart. I recognize the center cabinet there, but that's as far as I've gotten. I don't know if I'm going to build the rest of this or not – and I have no idea right now how to work it."
"We don't have time to mess around with it, Jack. Get one of the techs out here." Rose was already bending over the console, but she looked a little confused.
"What's wrong, love? It's not that different from ours, from what I can see," Jared asked as he joined her.
"I... Jared, I can't see the other parallels here. Just Alpha. No, wait... there..." her finger stabbed at one of the monitors, but then pulled back. "And now it's gone again." She turned to the tech now climbing the short flight of stairs in front of Jack. "What's wrong with this thing? What's not turned on?"
Giving them all a sidelong glance, the tech scurried over to start fiddling. He stopped, stared, then fiddled some more. "Uh... I can't see anything wrong. It's all on. But the parallels are gone."
Jared had whipped out his sonic again, and was giving the beast a thorough buzzing. Finally he clicked it back off again, his eyes huge.
"Jared?" Rose's voice was suddenly a frightened almost-whisper.
"There's nothing wrong with it. The parallels are closed off. Or trying to be. They're fading in and out, just like you saw."
As she looked from his face back to the console, Rose's face turned a few degrees whiter, and her jaw dropped. She'd finally focused in on the patterns that did show, rather than the ones that were missing. "Jared... that's the same pattern we saw before. When all the timelines were centering on Donna, at the Crucible."
He looked again. "But now they're centered on YOU!" He looked askance at his life partner again. "What are you about to do now, Bad Wolf?" His mouth quirked, but then another thought burst through, the one that had been trying to get his attention back at their own Cannon. "I saw that pattern, too, back in Beta, before I jumped here."
The tech had been peering over their shoulders. "That's also the same pattern we saw before, when Corvantes decided to get you girls. He thought it meant you were keeping him from achieving what he wanted, by your influence on his twin in each parallel."
Jared gave the man a sharp glance. "But you didn't think so?"
The tech looked uncertain. He struggled a second, then, "Look, I've only been playing with this thing for a few weeks. I don't know what the patterns mean. I just... I didn't think it was as simple as he thought. He's kind of fixated on himself, you know what I mean?"
Jared gave a long sigh. "Well... until we find out what that does mean, we'll just have to deal with what we do know."
"But that leads us back to the original question. How are we all going to get back home now?" Rose asked, struggling to put aside his Bad Wolf question. Now that it was her in the metaphorical hot seat, she didn't know if she wanted it.
Jared leaned over the console on both fists, staring off into the middle distance for a long, long minute. Only Rose and Jack had any idea of how fast that awesome mind was speeding, considering and discarding innumerable possibilities.
Finally he sighed again, then turned and faced the room, leaning his hips back against the console. "There's only one way I can think of, now." Catching Welsh Rose's eyes, he said to her in her language, "I'll explain this to you next," and she nodded, unhappy but perforce to wait, and he went on in English.
"Think of time as a river," he began. "With a definite flow, and a known channel. Yes, it is known. Jack and I are both from the far future. We know how things are going to turn out at many different times in history. It already has, for us."
Pausing for a moment for that to sink in, he went on. "Now, consider this: a time traveler, like one of us, going back into the past, into a known spot along that river, and doing something different. Something that 'changes history', as it were. What kind of effect would that have? Well, most things that a single individual can do only make very tiny changes. The inertia of time's flow overcomes it easily – like dropping a pebble into a real river. A few ripples, and then it's as if nothing happened. Yes, there are some tiny effects, that impact only a few people, but it doesn't disrupt the entire stream. Things like... people or things disappearing without a trace, or – have you ever gone shopping, and you could have sworn that shop was on this corner, but now it's over there? That could have been a time disruption. A little adjustment."
Again, he paused, then continued. "Now, think about dropping a big boulder in that river. Up to a certain point, time's inertia can still overcome it. The adjustments made after the waves meet again would be much more noticeable – LOTS of people having different memories, major mysterious happenings, but still... life would go on.
"Now imagine a huge disruption. Make a big enough change, something extremely important, with deep ramifications, and time's inertia can't overcome it. Then... the time stream actually splits. Before that point, you have one world, one timeline. After that point, two."
"Or eight?" asked Rose, jumping ahead. "Is that why there are eight parallel worlds here that we've been watching?"
Jared nodded. "I've been studying them through our Cannon, in our world," he told the others. "I've traced them all back, and can tell you almost precisely when each one split off of this one, that we're standing in now. It really is the Alpha world – the first world."
"So what does that get us?" asked one of the other Roses.
"Well..." Uncharacteristically, Jared hesitated briefly, then forged ahead. "It means the only way I can think of to get you each back to your world is to use the Time Jumpers they used to bring you here to send you back to the point at which your timeline split off from this one. And you'll have to make the change yourself. I know that each point – what I used to think were Fixed Points," he said in an aside to Jack, "are actually major historical turning points, that could be – and were – affected by one person. If you go back and make it happen, then you'll ride the split away from us, and be back in your own timeline again. Then all you have to do is use the Time Jumper again to jump back to your own time - I can pre-program them for you – and you'll be home."
Dead silence reigned while that was digested. Then, "Wait a minute!" cried one Rose. "If we do that, then aren't we MAKING the split ourselves? Making our own world, back in history? How can we do that? How can I go back and create the world I came from, back before I was even born? If I don't make it, I won't even BE born TO make it!"
Jared grinned at her. "Rose... my people were Time Lords. They studied time for thousands of years. And even they never figured out the answer to that paradox. Don't try to figure it out yourself; you'll only drive yourself insane. Just take it on faith."
"That's a hell of a lot to ask," she replied evenly.
His grin dribbled away. "Yes, I know it is. And I don't know what assurances I can offer you to trust me."
His Rose spoke up, addressing her doppelgangers. "How about this: I'm you. I'm as much you as I can be without being in your skin. And I traveled with this man for years, all through time and space, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's telling you the truth. I trust him – have trusted him, on many occasions – with my life, my sanity, my family, and my worlds. Both of them."
Jared knew he was staring at her, but couldn't help it. Her words from that long ago night on Reich World, as she was reeling from the Doctor's cruel abandonment, echoed from his memory: "How can I believe you? If you're him... how can I trust you?" He'd asked her to wait until he'd earned her trust again. And she had.
Some psychic echo of his churning thoughts might have brushed against her mind, because she turned her head and looked straight back at him... and smiled shyly, reaching for and taking his hand. Nobody else knew the significance of their entwined fingers, but they did. A mutual squeeze, and they turned back to face the others together.
"And what if we don't do it, whatever it is?" Reich Rose asked quietly. "What if we fail? Or refuse?"
"Then your world won't exist. And everyone you ever knew will never have been born. An entire world full of people, from the date of the split."
"And what about us, then? Me? What if I fail?" another asked the obvious corollary.
Jared thought for a moment, then sadly shrugged. "I don't know, Rose. I honestly don't know. You might... fade out, like the parallels here are trying to do, like your world will. Or you might continue to exist in this world, but be stuck here forever. I just don't know."
"Couldn't we try again?"
He shook his head firmly at that. "No. You're only going to get one shot. You CANNOT keep going back to the same time and place. Trust me on that." His Rose was nodding vigorous agreement, and the look on her face convinced the others.
"But then we can get back to our own times, our own lives, after that, right?" Another asked.
Jared nodded again. "I'll set the Time Jumpers up to signal you when the split has been made and you're in your own timeline, and like I said, I'll pre-set it to take you to the same day you were kidnapped. You'll just step back in to your life." Remembering, he took the Time Jumper he'd relieved the goon of, and asked the tech, "Where are the others?"
The tech nodded to a box at one end of the Cannon console, and Jared saw it contained several of the bulky wristwatches. He was just about to toss his in, as well, when something about it caught his eye, and he looked closer, frowning. "Where did you get these?"
The tech shrugged, then waved a vague hand across the room. "In that box, over there, in a pile of stuff."
"What is it, Jared?" Jack put in.
"I don't know. Something's strange about this. Are they yours?"Jack shook his head. "Have you ever seen this make before?" Another shake.
Another pause, then Jared shrugged. "Well, they obviously work." So he tossed it in the box with its fellows, and turned back again to the girls.
A few moment's silence, and Jack, sensing the tide turning, asked his friend, "Jared, are you sure you know each point?"
"As close as I could determine them from the other world, Jack – " he started to answer.
"Wait a minute. Wait. A. Minute," broke in the tech. His expression was almost frightened. "What are your names again?" He pointed back and forth between the two men.
Jack stared, perplexed. "Why? Weren't we properly introduced? I'm Jack Harkness, and he's Jared Wolfe. And you are?" he turned it back, sarcastically polite.
"Joel Johnson?" the tech squeaked.
Jack smirked, saying aside to Jared, "There's too many J's in this room."
This time, Joel's jaw dropped completely open, catching their eyes again. "OK," he finally said, giving in. "I'm in waaaaay over my head." He turned to the Cannon console and opened a door at the far end, kneeling down and digging deep into the innards. Pulling out a dusty, greasy package, he walked back and handed it to Jared with an expectant air.
Bemused, Jared took it, and read aloud the message scrawled on the brown wrapper. "Joel: give this to Jared. From Jack. There's too many J's in this room." Eyebrows flaring, he looked his question at Jack, who shrugged.
"Beats me," he replied. "Whatever that is, I haven't done it yet."
Jared tore open the package, catching the half-dozen paperback books that fell out. Then he glanced at the titles on their spines and laughed. "History books. Just the right ones, too: one for each split point."
"So now we've got road maps," Jack laughed back.
Jared nodded, then turned to look at each potential world-changer. "Well?" he challenged.
A pause, and then one stepped forward. "Are you sure we can do this? Whatever it is?"
He looked straight back at her, and said significantly, reassuringly, with that knowing smile that only he could produce, "It's history. You already have."