Chapter VII
As the TARDIS shifted back through time Rick began to think about exactly what it meant if they truly were going back to the past. When he drew some of the possibilities out to their logical conclusions the results frightened him. Just before he spoke up to second guess the Doctor's motives he came up with an idea that would eliminate the need to even make the trip back in the first place. "So I've been thinking all this crisscrossing timelines you're talking about may not be necessary. What if I run into myself in the past? That has to be a major no-no in time travel. Couldn't we just use all this fancy equipment in here to make a vaccine using the blood you took from me?" Rick proposed. The Doctor spun around from the controls, rubbed his chin and leaned back thinking on it for a moment, just a moment. "No, that wouldn't work. You have an immunity that keeps the passive form of the disease from metastasizing and converting you while you're still alive. Everyone that's still alive in your world has it. However it's not a total immune response, it prevents the infection from causing death but does not prevent the infection. Ergo the infection in your blood is permanently in the passive state and aside from exposing it to the active organism it will remain that way. A vaccine made from your blood would be ineffective in stopping the spread of the disease." the Doctor explained. "Although you raise a good point, vaccination would be preferable to quarantine. Perhaps if I got a sample from the original patient, prior to the disease undergoing further mutation and variation I could use the TARDIS onboard laboratory facilities and synthesize a vaccine from the infection's original form on this planet. Since all future mutations are based upon the original virus the vaccine should be effective against all derivations thereof." the Doctor stated. The TARDIS started whooshing again as they landed in San Diego prior to the start of the outbreak. The final whoosh passed and then a still silence. It was time to put the plan into action.
"Before we do this I need to know something." Rick spoke up as the two of them stood up from their seats. "If you are successful in cleaning up this mess and preventing the first walker from turning what will happen to the people I know, to me?" Rick asked. "The time stream will be re-written and all the damage done by the outbreak of the zombification disease will be reversed. The people who have died as a result will be alive again, as humans not zombies, err walkers. Everyone would have gone on with their lives in the way they would have if the outbreak hadn't occurred; all of the troubles they had suffered will be forgotten." the Doctor explained. "Since you are in the TARDIS you will be protected from the changes in the time stream. That means that you will need to be inoculated with whatever cure to the disease that we are able to synthesize from the original infectious agent. That also means that when you return you will be the only one who remembers any of this. The walkers, the fallen Earth, the memories of people you would have never met otherwise, all of that will exist only in your mind." the Doctor further elucidated. "You mean that when I go back the people I know wouldn't remember me but I will remember them?" Rick asked. "Precisely." the Doctor replied. It was a bittersweet victory but a victory nonetheless, and more so a victory that would have never been possible without the Doctor's intervention. Daryl, Andrea, Dale, Herschel, Beth, Tyrese, Bob and everyone else they lost would be alive but they wouldn't remember him. Shane and Lori would be alive and back into his life the way they were before, all the while Rick would remember what Shane did and live with the knowledge of an affair that never happened, always suspect that it would occur given the right circumstances. The bonds of trust between Rick and his partner would never exist the way they did before as a result, the same could even be said of Lori as well. Carl would still be an innocent growing boy passing through puberty as boys do, there would be the usual set of challenges but thankfully they wouldn't be existential ones. Glenn and Maggie would have never met each other, nor Rick for that matter and only he would know what they could have been together. Such was the price for a better world, and while a seemingly steep price one that was well beyond worth it for what they would gain.
"I'm down, so are we going to go or what?" Rick asked with renewed resolution. "To be accurate I'm going to go." The Doctor told Rick as he walked to the TARDIS door with Rick following behind him. The Doctor stopped, standing in front of the door and turned to face Rick. "You're infected, you need to stay here." the Doctor stated. "What we're going to be dealing with out there is a highly concentrated form of the active pathogen. You've seen what being introduced to the active form of the disease does to people in your time." the Doctor explained. "Yeah, they turn." Rick replied. "Precisely." the Doctor confirmed. "What about you? Are you worried you might get infected?" Rick inquired. "My immune system can repel a Dalek nanophage so a little bit of the corpus reanimatus would pose no more concern to me than a case of the sniffles would to the everyday human." the Doctor explained. Reluctantly Rick backed away and consented to the Doctor going along solo. He didn't want to make things worse by introducing a future stage of the disease in tandem with the concentrated original form. "If you need to stretch out your legs you can go through that door and down two levels there's a track that goes all the way around the perimeter. Also you can access television and video games from any point in the time-space continuum from that monitor up there. The lower monitor has access to the combined archive of human literary works, both in print and digital form. There's a jack for direct mind to mind transfer as well but let's stick to the basics shall we?" The Doctor informed Rick pointing out a few things he can do to pass the time. "Oh and do me a favor and don't touch any of the controls over there, there and there. Oh and especially not that one over there" the Doctor warned him. "I'll be fine here; you go on ahead and fix this mess." Rick told the Doctor. "Alright then, I'll be back in a few." the Doctor replied then walked up to the door, placed his hand on the knob and started to turn it. "Allons-y!" he exclaimed as he opened the door and walked out of the TARDIS into the world back when it was walker free. Meanwhile Rick sat down and activated the upper monitor, he sifted through the TARDIS's databanks and put a random episode of Rick and Morty on while he waited for the Doctor to diagnose, treat and cure the past of its terminal walker infection.