Chapter 6
The Doctor led Sam and Al into the console and approached the central column with a grin as he read what was on his screen. "Oh, marvelous! New York City, October 30th, 1997. Just in time for Halloween! Bit cold outside, though. May want to get a coat from the wardrobe."
"What wardrobe?"
The Doctor scratched his head. "Right... well, then.. First left, second right, third on the left, straight ahead..."
"Again?" Sam complained.
"It's not the same instructions," the Doctor pointed out.
"They're still rather convoluted though." He sighed. "Okay...first left, second right, third on the left, straight ahead and?"
"Past the stairs, under the bins, fifth door on your left." The Gallifreyan gave the central column a bit of a glare. "And don't go moving the corridors on him this time. You've had your fun twice already so leave him alone."
Sam headed into the corridor with a little trepidation regardless of what the Doctor had said. He didn't relish the idea of getting lost again. However, he arrived at the wardrobe moments later. Walking in, he stopped and stared.
As he was looking, Al popped into the room. "Wow!" he breathed, seeing not only the size of the room but also the multitude of clothes inside. "He'd never have enough time to wear all this stuff."
Sam turned to Al. "I think he has you beat."
Al gave him a slight glare. "Oh, ha-ha. This place is a little weird, I'll tell you that."
"Well, he says the space is semi-infinite. That would do it for sure," Sam reasoned, walking over to the rack of clothes and looking for a coat.
Al raised an eyebrow. "Semi-infinite? Come on, Sam. You really believe this yo-yo?" Seeing the surprised look on Sam's face, he clarified, "Hey, I may feel a little better about his intentions concerning Rose but he's still loonier than Daffy Duck."
"I don't know, Al. With all I've seen since I got here, I think he's the real deal." He found a leather jacket that looked his aura's size. He pulled it out. "What do you think? Black leather always looks nice."
"Sure, it's a nice jacket," Al commented before returning to the question at hand. "Let's suppose you're right and you did go to another planet. That, at least you could see with your eyes, touch with your hands. Empirical evidence, right? What proof do you have that you were in another time and that that man back there really is an alien?"
"I don't have empirical evidence for any of it...yet. However, assuming that I did travel to Rextar Seven... which I can definitely say wasn't Earth... then by definition I would be in another time. As to him being an alien? I don't know. I just feel I can trust him."
"I still say he's got a few screws loose," Al contradicted. "Like what he did in that room back there. He was talking to a... a... well, I don't know what the hell that thing is in the middle of that room but normal people don't tell inanimate objects not to change hallways around."
Sam gave him a tilted half-grin. "You didn't just spend a half hour wandering in circles when she changed the configuration."
"You probably just got lost. Easy to do with hallways like that. Who builds a building with corridors that are more like a maze?"
"No. The corridors changed. I have an eidetic memory, remember?"
Al had to concede that Sam had a point in that favor. After a split second, however, he realized Sam's choice of words. "What do you mean 'she'?"
"Just what I said. This time ship is a she. I think I ticked her off by comparing her with Ziggy."
"Great," Al muttered. "Now we've got two computers with egos."
"The ship is more than Ziggy. To the Doctor, Ziggy is just a slight upgrade to a common computer. This time ship makes our computer look like a kid's toy."
"I seriously doubt it, Sam. He's pulling your leg or spiking your tea or something. Wouldn't surprise me if he'd somehow gotten Miss Tyler on some recreational drugs and you're hallucinating it all."
"Well, only time will tell..." started Sam. He began to walk out, having put on the jacket. He began chuckling. "43rd century. I was in the 43rd Century! Can you imagine, Al? Lennon didn't have to. He saw it all. And Carroll... and Verne... And now Beckett. Geez, I'm in good company!"
"Yeah... Right..." Al started, his voice plainly showing that he was concerned about his friend's mental well being. "And maybe this is a really bad dream and I need to wake up."
"Don't count on it, Al. I gave up on that explanation years ago... or 398,000 years from now... or about a half hour ago, depending on your perspective."
Al sighed slightly, tucking his hands into his trouser pockets. "All I'm saying, Sam, is that you shouldn't trust that guy too much. We still have no clue who or what he really is."
"I guess you're right but I just have a feeling about him. It's like... well, it's like when I first met you. I just knew there was something about you that had nothing to do with the fact you were about to bash in the front of a vending machine. I can't tell you why I felt that then and I can't tell you why I trust this Doctor now."
That startled Al into a moment of silence. He knew Sam wasn't akin to making such judgments about a person on first sight but, when he did, he was usually dead on target. Still, his own instincts were telling him that this guy, even if he might be trustworthy in Sam's eyes, was trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with D, and that stands for 'Doctor.' "Just... be careful."
"Okay. We better get back or the Doctor will wonder if I've gotten lost again. You know, with all the stuff that's happened, I still don't know why I'm here. You got anything?" Sam asked as they started out of the wardrobe.
Al shook his head. "Not a clue, Sam. Ziggy is still having fits with you bouncing in and out of her ability to track you. Trying to figure out what part of the timeline you're supposed to change isn't even possible at the moment. Ziggy can't figure the probabilities."
"Figures."
A few moments later they arrived back to where they'd left the Doctor, who was slipping on his brown overcoat. Looking over to Sam, he gave him a smile. "Ready? New York, 1997, here we come!" Bouncing out the door, he stopped just a few feet out. Wherever they were, it wasn't New York City and it certainly wasn't 1997.
Sam almost ran into the Doctor. "This isn't New York City." He pointed to a rather tall building in front of them. "That's the Sears Tower."
The Doctor's frown strengthened. "Yes, it is. Well, it's close, isn't it? I mean, it is a major city in the United States of America."
"Yeah, I guess." He looked at one of the women walking by them wearing cropped jeans. "But we're not in 1997 either. I'd guess late 80's and it's likely summer based on what she's wearing."
The Time Lord grimaced slightly. "Yeah... sorry about that."
Al, for his part, didn't seem to be listening to the two scientists' banter as he looked back at the blue police box sitting just in front of the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology. Taking a step back, he looked first on the left side and then on the right before walking through the holographic door to verify what he had seen. Returning to Sam's side, his eyes still on the strange anomaly, he stammered for several seconds. "S... Sam... it's... it's... But... that's impossible!"
"What's impossible, Al?"
The Observer pointed to the blue box behind them. "Th... that! It looks like an English police box from the 1960s but it's... it's..."
"Bigger on the inside," the Doctor and Sam said at the same time.
"It's sort of like a Klein bottle. Semi-infinite space inside a finite one," Sam finished for him in a matter of fact voice.
"Yeah, but... Sam, Klein bottles aren't bigger on the inside. They just have a continuous surface. That thing..." Al pointed to the TARDIS again. "That thing..."
"I said, sort of, Al. You have to extrapolate the concept."
The Doctor sniffed at their conversation. "Actually, it's dimensional transcendentalism."
Sam's eyes widened, excited by the Doctor's words. "Of course! When we step into the TARDIS, we're actually stepping into a different dimension confined by the boundaries of the external dimension."
The Doctor grinned broadly at his words. "Told you. You are brilliant."
Al just shook his head slightly, deciding that it probably would be safer on his sanity not to think about the odd blue box too much. He could already feel the headache starting behind his eyes from trying to understand it clearly. He hadn't liked abstract theories in the first place and now there was an abstract fact right in front of him. "Fine... you two get it. That's good enough for me. I'm going back to the project. With this moving around in time, I'm not sure how we'll figure out what you need to do, but I can try."
"Yeah. That's a good idea. See you later," Sam agreed.
With that, Al ran his fingers along the handlink and exited the Imaging Chamber.
"Do?" the Doctor questioned with a frown. "What exactly is it that you think you need to do?"
"Don't know yet but it's always something," the leaper explained. "Like I told you, GFTW moves me around and I sort of... well... fix things. I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually... then I'll do it, and you'll get Rose back."
"What do you mean fix things?"
"It's what I do now. It wasn't exactly by choice, you know. After that first leap, it's just what happened. I saved a pilot's life and was there to save his baby as well. Once that happened... I leapt again and had to make a very weird home run. They always seem to be huge changes at the micro level but nothing that would change the world or anything."
"How do you know what you change doesn't affect the world? You alter Earth's history without full knowledge of the effects it would have on space-time," the Doctor exclaimed with indignation. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"
Sam sighed. "Listen, I didn't make this up. Like I said, I was only going to observe. Since then I've just been trying to get home. You don't know what that's like, okay?"
The alien exhaled, his mind running quickly over the latest bit of information he'd learned concerning Sam Beckett. While he completely disapproved of Sam's altering history without a completely clear understanding of the consequences of his actions, he also could understand the desperation the scientist was going through in his quest to return to his own time and his own reality. Taking a breath, he looked around, getting a perspective of where he was. "Lovely view of the city from here, even if it is at street level. We'd get a better look from the top of Sear's Tower, though."
Figuring the man accepted his statement about fixing thing, the leaper changed to the new subject seamlessly. He, too, regarded their surroundings as they started towards the main road that ran in front of the museum. "The view is lovely. I was up in the Sear's Tower before and it's great. I love Chicago." His smile grew larger. "And being that it is Chicago, I bet we can find a hot dog vendor too. I haven't had a Chicago Dog in years."
"A hot dog?!" the Doctor exclaimed. "You just traveled to Chicago in the 1980s and you want a hot dog?"
"Yeah. They're good," he said with the excitement of a kid at a carnival.
The Gallifreyan gave a shrug. "All right. Suit yourself. You have the correct currency on you?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't have any currency on me. When I leap in, I just have whatever the aura has and I doubt your friend walks around with American currency."
The Doctor gave a slight smile. "That's what I thought. Most of the time, I don't have anything either. Usually don't have to worry about things like money. However, as luck would have it, I recently took Rose to a Gwen Stefani concert and I still have some change from purchasing the tickets. At least, I think I do." Reaching into his trouser pockets, he rummaged around before coming up with a handful of dollar bills. "There you go. Should do to buy a hot dog."
Sam took the money. "Yeah... and a diet coke too. You want anything?" he asked as he moved towards a colorful cart stationed across the street with a red and yellow striped umbrella over it.
"No, thank you," the Doctor responded. He followed Sam over to the vendor and then watched as Sam ordered a Chicago dog and received the strangest concoction he had ever seen on the face of the Earth. "I'm not going to ask what is in that thing."
Sam paid the vendor and took his drink and the hot dog, which was covered with mustard, lots of onions, a dill pickle spear, pickled sport peppers, a dash of celery salt and, Sam was happy to see, cucumber slices. There was even the Nuclear Relish, a neon green pickle condiment that looked like it might glow in the dark. He looked at it as if it were a work of art. "Don't knock it 'til you try it," Sam said before taking a bite of the hot dog. "Mom!"
The Time Lord furrowed his eyebrows. "It looks like a biology class on Daleks gone wrong."
Sam looked up and spoke around his bite. "You mentioned Daleks before. I don't really remember exactly but it was around that time when I leapt in."
"And you leapt in just as the Cybermen and the Daleks were being sucked into the Void, yes?"
"Oh, you mean those funny cone-like things that sort of looked like pepper shakers? They didn't look anything like a hot dog. Maybe the cart you serve them from..."
"That was just the casing, it wasn't a Dalek." The Doctor looked more closely at the hot dog. "Are you sure this thing isn't radioactive?"
"Definitely. Just tastes marvelous." He took another bite and dabbed at his face with the napkin. "God, these things are good."
"I'll take your word for it," the Gallifreyan muttered before turning to look at him. The sheer joy on Rose Tyler's features was almost angelic, causing him to stare for a long moment. He didn't know how he hadn't seen that particular expression on Rose's face before, especially since he'd provided far more appetizing food than what Sam was currently consuming. For a moment, his thoughts strayed towards wondering if he could get Rose to repeat that look under different and far more intimate circumstances.
Sam looked up again when the Doctor stopped talking. "What?"
The Time Lord's mind gratefully shifted before his thoughts could imitate those Jack might have. He blinked at the expression on Sam's face. "Umm... nothing," he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. He felt his face flushing slightly with embarrassment. "Nothing at all." He turned to look elsewhere... anywhere but Sam's face... not wanting to be tempted towards those thoughts again. "Just enjoy your hot dog. I'll be back in a moment."
"Okay," Sam said. He stated somewhat guiltily, "I might even get a second one. I don't know when I'm going to get one of these again. I really want to savor the experience, you know?"
"Suit yourself," came the response as the Gallifreyan walked away.
Sam finished his hotdog before going back to the vendor and ordering another one. He was almost finished with it when the Doctor came back. "Almost finished," Sam said agreeably. Within a few minutes, he'd finished the hot dog and was wiping his fingers off. "That was wonderful. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. You really should get one before we leave Chicago."
"Well, we have to come back this way to get to the TARDIS. Perhaps then. Now..." He looked around. "Where's a taxi?"
"I thought you didn't have any money? How can we afford a taxi?"
"I procured the monetary means," the Doctor told him genially.
"Really? How?"
"I made a withdrawal from an ATM. So, we have the means, now we need the room." He started down the street in search of the wayward means of transportation.
"Why don't we just stay in the TARDIS?" the leaper asked, doing his best to keep up. "It's big enough."
"Too promiscuous. Don't want to draw attention to ourselves." The Doctor seemed completely unaffected by his rapid pace. "Besides, I know just the place. I'm friends with the owners. They'll let us stay with them gratis."
"You sure they'll be okay with us dropping in?"
"Of course, they will!" he stated plainly. He turned to him with slight annoyance, never missing a step. "Do you always worry like this?"
Sam shrugged. "Well, I just don't want to be rude and usually, when I leap, I just live with whatever accommodations my host has."
"Well, that's a little difficult at the moment since we aren't in the Powell Estates in 2008," the Doctor stated plainly.
Sam didn't say anything. He figured that this alien probably had dealt with this type of time travel for a while and this was obviously what worked for him. He saw an empty cab coming down the street and put his hand up. When the driver stopped, the two got in. "Where to?" Sam asked the Gallifreyan.
"Hyde Park," the Doctor instructed, before providing the rest of the address.