My Mission Through Space and Time

by truenarnian

When my sister disappeared, I thought the world had ended. At least, my world had. But then I met the Doctor, an extraordinary man who seemed to know everything: past, future, you name it, he knew it. Allying myself with him was a no-brainer. As it turns out, I would learn so much from him, and he would learn from me. (Doctor and OC, but not romantic)

2. Chapter 2: Double, Double

Chapter 2- Double, Double

Before I write further of my adventures, let me tell you about the Doctor's "logic": it was confusing, it was terrifying, and most of the time it didn't even seem like logic at all. But that's because the Doctor doesn't give you all the pieces to the puzzle—his mind works so fast he forgets we can't read it. So when the Doctor suggested that we go back to mess with the robot alien in my apartment, I was a bit taken aback.

"What?" I exclaimed as we turned out of the side street and down a narrow, dead-end alley. At the end of the alley stood a tall, wide, blue box, the translucent windows on the topmost panels of the doors glowing as if lit from within. The box was the most beautiful blue I've ever seen, and I had stopped running so I could properly look at it. The Doctor kept running, pulling a key from his pocket and fitting it into a keyhole on the box I couldn't see from where I stood. After a second, the box's lock gave, and the Doctor lunged inside. I followed after him at a jog, wondering how such a tall, lanky man could disappear so completely inside such a small space, but completely froze once I had walked through the blue box's doors.

I had been expecting maybe a telephone inside, or possibly a weapon of some sort (it did say "Police Box", after all), but I certainly hadn't expected it to be bigger on the inside.

I blinked and pinched my arm several times, but I turned out to be awake. Unsettled, I stumbled backward stiffly out of the impossible box. I ran completely around it: it was only about three feet square. I knocked on one of its walls, and was rewarded with a deep, booming echo, an echo far too loud for simply a hollow wooden box.

The Doctor poked his head out as the last echo faded away. "Oi! Quit knocking on the TARDIS like that!" he said, slightly drawling the first word.

"B-But…how?" I asked pleadingly, looking at him with wide, confused, desperate eyes. In response, the Doctor smiled and pulled his head back in, and I numbly followed.

I hadn't been hallucinating; it really had looked like that inside. It was rather humongous: there were at least three yards of space between the doors and the stairs that led to the huge, circular control panel, which was covered in all kinds of knobs, dials, and levers (and possibly a set of salt and pepper shakers). The control panel rested on a floor of thick glass, and I could see another set of stairs leading down under it to a snug space below. A huge, glass pipe ran through the room like a giant, crystal chimney, all the way from below decks, through the controls, and straight into the roof; well, I assumed it ended at the roof, because I couldn't see all the way up. Instead of a proper ceiling, the room's roof just rose to what seemed like infinity. A huge, circular window stood at the right of the doors, showing nothing but white. The whole thing was bathed in a warm, orange light, which gradually changed to a dim white in a corridor that branched off the control room. If I could describe the inside of the blue box in a single word, I would have chosen fantastical.

I wouldn't be allowed to publish if I had to describe it in three.

"I-It's…it's…" I stuttered, flattening against the magical box's doors. The Doctor, who had been running around his controls like a little kid who didn't know which present to open at Christmas, glanced up at me with a grin to rival said little kid.

"Oh, I love this moment," he said in a fondly reminiscent voice. "Go on, say it," he encouraged.

"Bigger on the inside," I whispered incredulously, staring up at the infinite ceiling. I glanced down at the Doctor. "How?"

The Doctor dashed down from the controls, jumping down to the foot of the steps. "Welcome to the TARDIS," he said proudly, throwing his arms wide. "T-A-R-D-I-S. Stands for 'Time And Relative Dimension In Space'."

Carefully, I walked slowly toward the Doctor, stopping at about halfway across the space between the doors and the stairs. "You've got a magic wand that can lock doors and disable robots. You knew how to handle the…the…"

"Aligrena," the Doctor supplied, lowering his arms.

"The Aligrena," I continued. "You've got a giant spaceship squeezed into a blue phone booth." We stared at each other; he expectantly, I curiously. "Is there anything else I should know?"

The Doctor paused thoughtfully. "Well, I've got two hearts, and I'm eleven hundred years old," he supplied, as if it were the most ordinary comment in the world.

After staring at him in shock, I asked suspiciously, "You're not human, are you?"

"No, I'm not," the Doctor replied proudly.

"You look human," I remarked.

"I don't look human, you look Time Lord," he corrected.

"Time Lord?" I questioned. "Is that what you are?" He nodded, a proud smile lifting the corners of his mouth. "How many Time Lords are there?"

At this, his smile lost its luster and his eyes broke away from mine. "Just me," he replied in a soft tone. His eyebrows were raised, but only at the center, and his now-faint smile didn't reach his eyes. I knew that expression and the tone that went with it: Naomi and I wore it whenever someone tried to tell a happy story about our parents. It's the face anyone takes when they're bone-crushingly sad, but doing their best to conceal it from anyone else.

I randomly cast about in my brain for another question or anecdote—I knew from experience that anyone in that state of obvious grief needed to be pulled out by something or someone else. "O-Okay, so we've run into your little box of magic. Now what?"

The Doctor seemed grateful for the distraction. Instantly brightening up, he answered, "Now we go back to your lovely little bakery, capture the Aligrena, and hopefully get the chance to nick some of that banana bread, because it looked divine." He turned and lunged back up the stairs and I followed quickly, the serving apron which I had been wearing the whole time sliding a little down my thighs. I untied the full-body apron and slung it over a banister; suddenly, sparks exploded from a pair of knobs fairly close to me. The Doctor looked up from his flipping of switches and admonished, "Hey! The TARDIS is a spaceship, not a coatrack!"

Instantly I had snatched the orange apron from the banister and crumpled it in my hands. "Sorry," I said.

"Don't apologize to me, apologize to her!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Who?"

He looked at me as if I were a small child who wanted to eat cookies instead of a proper dinner. "The TARDIS," he replied, sounding as put-out as the mother of that child. "I do believe you just offended her."

I looked up at the giant glass pump which enclosed a crystal sculpture that sort of looked like a series of frozen teardrops. "Sorry, TARDIS," I called uneasily, nervously twisting the big ball of cloth in my hands into a smaller clump. "I won't let it happen again." The logical part of my brain was telling me that I was just feeding the Doctor's fantasies, but the rest of my brain (which had abandoned logic a long time ago) decided to go with the flow and accept those fantasies. Between the robot that could disguise itself as a person and the space alien with a grin as wide as the Grand Canyon, a living machine seemed like the most believable thing of the day.

The knobs the sparks had erupted from turned back and forth at the same time. The Doctor, watching the TARDIS's response, said, "Ah! That means she's so-so about you," he translated. "She'll be watching. I'd be careful if I were you."

"Right," I said uneasily. The Doctor pulled a final lever and suddenly the TARDIS began shaking. The crystal pump began moving up and down and the whole room filled with an eerie, unearthly vwoorp, unsettling and soothing at the same time. I braced myself against the controls as the TARDIS shook violently, the Doctor beaming up at his beloved ship. The shaking and vwoorping ceased as suddenly as it had begun a few moments later, but I clung to that banister even when the TARDIS was still.

The Doctor leaped around the control panel and to the top of the stairs, swiveling around when he realized I wasn't following him. "Are you coming?" he asked.

"…Yeah," I said, my fingers beginning to cramp from gripping the controls.

"Then quit white-knuckling the console and come on!" he said, reaching over and grabbing one of my wrists. He ripped my hand from the console and pulled me down the stairs and out the door—into my apartment.

"How did we get back here?" I demanded, dropping his hand.

"The TARDIS can disappear there and reappear here," the Doctor said, pulling the door closed behind me. Suddenly, my apartment door locked itself and multiple people pounded down the stairs. The Thing was lying on the floor, its claws slowly opening and closing.

I glanced at the locked door. "Who's running down my stairs?" I questioned.

The Doctor glanced at his watch, the face of which he wore on the inside of his wrist. "Us," he replied, staring into space for a moment.

As he whipped out the tinted goggles again, I said, "But we're here; we can't be running down the stairs right now."

"Did I mention that the TARDIS can also travel in time?" he replied, plunging his arm inside his jacket for his screwdriver.

All I could think was, Seriously?! "No, I think you left that little tidbit out," I answered faintly. Suddenly, the Thing flashed blindingly and a loud zeeow filled the room, making me flinch from the sound's sharpness and volume. When the spots faded from my eyes, I glanced down and found that in the Thing's place, the Doctor was lying spread-eagled on the floor, fingers twitching and eyes closed.

"Doctor!" I yelled, starting forward to help him. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my arm, and I looked up to see the Doctor holding me back—oh great, now there were two of them?! My head whipped between the Doctor on the floor and the Doctor at my side. "Why are there two of you? Did you leave that out, too?"

"It's the Aligrena," the Doctor said, handing me the tinted eyepiece. "It disguises itself as the last person someone's seen. You saw James before because he was the last person you saw; it's disguising itself as me because I'm the last person you laid eyes on since then. It's not me down there—just look through the goggles."

I lifted the goggles to my eyes. As I peered through them, the Doctor lying on the floor became the Aligrena again, a flat metal slab lying on a mass of mechanical limbs. It was like looking through night-vision goggles and X-ray specs at the same time. I lowered and raised the contraption several times, to verify that I wasn't hallucinating (but honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised if I woke up soon after falling down the stairs and hitting my head, and this all turned out to be some horrific coma nightmare). "The goggles are calibrated to see through an Aligrena's disguise. I invented it myself—it's called the False-Image Perception Suppressor. I call it the FIPS for short."

"You're all about the acronyms, aren't you?" I said, handing the FIPS back to the Doctor. "Hang on—I'm the last person you saw. Does that mean you're seeing me on the ground?"

"Yes, I am," the Doctor replied, lifting the FIPS to his eyes. Suddenly, the Aligrena-Doctor on the floor convulsed and bolted to its feet.

"We require a calibrated mind. Erica Stone possesses a calibrated mind. We require Erica Stone," the Aligrena-Doctor chanted, a robotic undertone in its (his?) voice.

"Where is Naomi Stone?" the real Doctor inquired.

"Naomi Stone possesses a calibrated mind. We possess Naomi Stone. We now require Erica Stone."

"Why have you come to Earth?" the Doctor interrogated. "What do you need calibrated minds for?"

"We require calibrated minds for the journey home," the Aligrena-Doctor said tonelessly. "Erica and Naomi Stone possess calibrated minds we will possess Erica and Naomi Stone."

"Oh, no you won't!" I exclaimed, running full-tilt at the Aligrena. I caught it at the tweed lapels and slammed it into the front door over and over (that must have been the banging the Doctor and I heard before—or are we hearing it now?). I knew it probably wasn't the best idea to attempt to physically assault a robot, but would you have kept your head if you realized you were facing down the thing that took your sister?

The Aligrena-Doctor blankly stared while I assaulted him, but after the fifth time I shoved him against the door, his face suddenly became alive. His skin took on a strange translucence, a red glow beginning to blossom behind his face. His hands suddenly clamped onto my upper arms and he dropped his jaw, blood-red light flooding out of his mouth and eyes. The light seemed to take hold of me, and there was an unsettlingly tangible feeling of it oozing over me like thick tar.

"Don't you dare!" the real Doctor threatened, brandishing his screwdriver at his Aligrena double. The red shroud-light stopped sliding down my body, frozen at the bottom of my ribcage. I tried to fight my way out of my cocoon, but the alien light held me captive. I kicked out at the Aligrena's legs; okay, good, my legs are free, I thought. As the real Doctor kept buzzing the screwdriver, I leaned my upper body as far back as I could, still hanging on to the Aligrena. Because of the unbreakable clutch I had on the coat, the alien bent with me, and I summoned every ounce of strength I possessed to heave forward and slam the Aligrena into my door harder than ever before. The force of my assault broke my lock and the door swung open. The Aligrena-Doctor and I fell onto the landing, just a foot from the stairs.

Suddenly, I felt a pair of hands close around my ankles and attempt to pull me off the Aligrena. I kicked and thrashed what I could until the real Doctor said, "Erica! It's me, the real me! Quit it!"

With an irritated sigh, I stopped kicking. The Doctor's grip on my ankles tightened, I loosened my own on the lapels, and he slid me backward out of the red shell, freeing me from its unearthly hold. As soon as I was liberated, I bolted upright next to the Doctor, thanking him as we backed away toward the TARDIS, which stood in my living room.

Apparently, my assault had damaged the Aligrena: it was flickering between an image of the Doctor and its true form, the red light receding into the black, bar-shaped screen.

"Now what?" I asked.

The Doctor glanced down at me. "Forgive me, Erica," he said, green eyes full of sincerity. My eyebrows pulled together for a second in confusion, but before I could ask what he meant, he pulled me in front of him like a shield and taunted, "You need a calibrated mind, do you? Well, there's one right here!"

The Aligrena, now in its true form, raised itself on the limbs attached to its lowest edge and shuffled toward us. The Doctor, guiding me backwards, continued, "You've already got her sister's, why not go for the matched set? After all the work you put into looking for them, they're ready for you to take!"

"Doctor, what the hell are you doing?!" I exclaimed, shaking his hands off my arms. I wanted to turn around to face him head-on, but I didn't take the chance of turning my back on the Aligrena. "I will not let you offer me up to that thing like a birthday cake!"

Suddenly, the Aligrena was flying through the air, too many claws to count reaching for my throat. The Doctor yanked me the rest of the way into the TARDIS, drawing the Aligrena inside. The Aligrena latched onto me like it had before and began squeezing me painfully, but this time I put up a better fight—I had dropped to the ground and began rolling around on the floor to fight it off. The Doctor had whipped out his screwdriver again, buzzing it the length of the Aligrena and causing it to suddenly shut down as if it had run out of battery. I shoved the mass off of me and crawled to the stairs, clinging to the banister while the Doctor dragged the lifeless Aligrena up to the console and began plugging wires into it. His work took up about three minutes, and when he was done, he pulled back from the console triumphantly, intending to show it off to me. There the Aligrena was, a great metal-and-wire mass sitting on the console, no red light shining from its eye-screen. I relinquished the banister and climbed up to the console, keeping well out of the Aligrena's reach.

"It won't be hurting anyone for a long while," the Doctor said satisfactorily. "I've disabled all but the most basic functions. When it reboots in, oh," he checked his watch, "about half an hour, we can scan its hard drive for information, and with any luck, find your sister."

I turned to look up at him smiling down at me proudly. Clearly, he expected me to be grateful; instead, I punched him in the arm.

"Ow!" he yelped, rubbing his bicep. "You've got quite an arm on you! What was that for?"

"Using me as baitand not even thinking to tell me about it!" I exclaimed. "You could've at least told me about your plan!"

"It only became a plan thirty seconds after you nearly destroyed the Aligrena!" the Doctor retorted. "If I told you about it in front of the Aligrena, it wouldn't have been such a good plan anymore."

"You call that a good plan?"

"Okay, maybe not exactly good…"

Suddenly, the Aligrena's eye-screen flared red, and the Doctor hurriedly flipped some switches on the console, re-stabilizing it. As the red faded away, the Doctor said, "Well, it's obvious I owe you some answers. Will you let me take you to get something to eat so I can explain?"

I wanted to scream at him that I never wanted to see him again, to tell him to leave me alone and steer clear of Chicago for the rest of his life; but if I never saw him again, I wouldn't see Naomi, either.

I took a calming breath and nodded. "Okay. Let's go."

The Doctor smiled. "Thank you, Erica," he said, clapping me on the shoulder. He ran out of the TARDIS, calling, "Just give me a minute, I'll be right back!"

For a few seconds, I stood, uneasily conscious of the distance (or lack thereof) between the Aligrena and I. Then I caught sight of my orange apron, lying on the ground. I picked it up off the TARDIS floor—I must have dropped it on my first jaunt in the time-and-space machine, and it had been lying here, forgotten, ever since. Crumpling the orange fabric in my hand, I jogged to the TARDIS's doorway and tossed the apron into my living room: I won't need it for a while.

The Doctor was just coming back up the stairs as my apron landed on my couch. He was toting one of my bakery's takeout boxes under his arm and had a chunk of banana bread in his other hand. "Blimey, this is amazing!" he praised. "I thought the Anduvians knew how to bake bananas, but this is exquisite!"

"Thanks," I said uneasily. Sure, people had told me my banana bread was good, but no one had acted like it was their first bite of food after months of starvation.

The Doctor looked up at me, and there was pure bliss in his eyes. Just exactly how much did he love bananas? "Right! Let's get you something to eat! I daresay you've had enough bakery food to last you a lifetime—care for a burger?"

The Doctor pushed past me into the TARDIS and set the box of banana bread on one of the chairs set against the banister, rapidly swiveling around to the console as soon as he had done so. He danced around it, mashing buttons and throwing levers. The TARDIS began shaking and vwoorping again, and the Doctor and I clung to the console as she took off. For the first time since I discovered my sister was missing, I found myself smiling. Now that I could relax a bit, the aspect of traveling through time and space seemed more inviting than before.

Maybe there was more to this mysterious Doctor than the events of this morning.