Chapter 4

"There's still a Torchwood on this planet. It's open for business. I think I know a thing or two about aliens."

"Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth... You're dead, officially, back home. So many people died that day and you've gone missing. You're on a list of the dead. Here you are, living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have."

"Am I ever going to see you again?"

Heathrow Lunar Space port

New London

The Moon

April 2220

The lunar shuttle from Heathrow Space port, arrived in New London three hours, eight minutes, and twenty nine seconds after engaging the slip stream engine. It was a weird quirk of transdimensional physics, that no matter how far you travelled by warping space, be it the colonies on the Moon, on Mars, or the latest colony on Alpha Centauri IV, it always took 3.14159 hours.

It still made the Doctor chuckle to this day as he watched eminent physicists scratch their heads as they tried to work out why. He knew that pi was one of those universal constants that kept popping up in the most unexpected places.

He had proposed the theory over a hundred years ago, and had carefully selected his brightest students who had the right mindset to think outside the box (or the sphere in this case), and gave each of them a little piece of the puzzle to work on for their thesis.

He then held a dinner party at the manor, where the students would meet for the first time and get talking about their theses. 'See those three?' he'd said to Rose. 'By the end of the night, they'll be coming to me with an exciting idea of how they could build a propulsion system that would take mankind to the stars.'

And of course, he was right. 'Professor Smith! We've just been talking and have realised that if we combine our ideas, we might be able to build an engine that could warp space', they had enthused.

Rose saw the twinkle in his eye. 'Really. Tell you what, put forward a proposal to build a prototype, and I'll try and secure some funding. You could make this your doctorate project', he had said with his best innocent expression.

Rose wasn't surprised. He'd used the same method to help mankind develop a fusion reactor which now gave the planet cheap, safe and limitless energy.

'I can't just build it for them', he had told her. 'That would be like giving a cave man a machine gun. All he'd do would grab the barrel and use the stock as a club'.

And when the academics and intelligentsia tried to credit him with the inventions, he would humbly deny it. 'Oh, I just had a stray thought, it was my brilliant students who turned it into a reality'.

And that supposed stray thought, now meant that he was sitting on a park bench in Hyde Park, under a transparent dome, with a crescent Earth overhead. He felt something in his chest, something he hadn't felt for over two hundred years. He looked down at the prominent veins on the back of his wrinkled hands. There was no golden light flowing through those veins, not this time.

"Not long now my love," he whispered. He looked to his right and saw Susan walking along the path.

"Good meeting?" He asked as he rose to his feet.

She gave him that smile again, the one that did things to his memories. "Brilliant!" She exclaimed as she hugged him around the neck and planted a loving kiss on his cheek. "Thank you."

"Pah! I didn't do anything. I just lived my life, it was your literary skill that made it into a story," he said dismissively.

She smiled at how he still claimed that his tall tales were true. "Have it your own way Grandee. It turns out that the producers son was one of my cult fans on the website. He continually pestered him into making a program of the books."

The Doctor staggered slightly, and Susan caught his elbow to steady him. "Are you alright Grandee? You look pale."

"I'm alright Nurse Susan, I'm always alright. You don't have to cluck over me like a mother hen," he said in pretend grumpiness.

"Yes, I'm a nurse. Just you remember that your Stroppiness," she said with gently authority.

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Mmm, yes, and I'm a doctor, Now I would be grateful if you would help me to get home, I have a message and a gift to deliver."

She looked at him with concern. She wasn't sure if the hospital would be a better destination than his apartment. But although he looked pale, she could see a twinkle of mischief in his eyes, and something else, something ancient and timeless.

The Doctor went through to his bedroom, and opened the tall, wooden wardrobe, which didn't seem out of place with the other traditional furniture in his penthouse suite. Most inhabitants of New London went for the futuristic, moulded furniture that fitted into the modular design of the city.

He reached out his long black coat, and shrugged it over his shoulders with help from Susan. She took a pale yellow scarf off the rail, and draped it lovingly around his neck.

"Ooh look! My old Fedora. I haven't worn that for years." He reached it from the bottom of the wardrobe and put it on, tilting it at a jaunty angle. "What'cha think?" He asked her with a grin.

"Very dapper," she replied. "It makes you look distinguished."

"Distinguished? I like distinguished. Sarah Bernhardt gave me this hat after the opening night of the play Fédora on Broadway in 1889. Rose asked Sarah if she could have the hat at the after show party. They got on really well together... well actually, they got very drunk together," he said with a far away look in his eyes. "The kids organised the trip for their mother's seventieth birthday surprise."

"Not another one of your tall tales," Susan said rolling her eyes and smiling.

Little white lies.

He closed the doors of the wardrobe, put his hands in his pockets, and turned to look at her. His face had an expression which she had never seen before, a mixture of excitement and regret.

"Susan my dear, I have a confession to make. Not quite a deathbed confession, but very nearly," he said with a single laugh.

"What are you talking about Grandee?"

He took a key out of his pocket. "All those tall tales I've told over the centuries, I made the family think they were flights of fancy. Rose and our children new different, because they were part of them, but for the rest of you, we protected you from the truth."

"Grandee, I'm worried about you, I think we should go to the hospital."

He turned away from her, and put the key into a lock on the wardrobe door that she hadn't noticed before. "Tell me Susan, how is it that I can be two hundred and six years old?"

She had thought about that herself, when she had heard the claim. "Well, let's see. You could be lying about your age, but then I've seen evidence that supports your claim when I was researching the family history."

The Doctor turned the key and pushed the door inwards, which Susan thought was weird, because she was sure it had opened outwards when he took his coat out.

"Er, or it could be one of your experiments in gene manipulation, and you've managed to slow down the ageing process," she ventured.

Oh she was smart. Just like Rose. "But wouldn't I have done the same to my wife so that we could live our lives out together?"

"Oh yeah, I suppose so," she conceded.

"Could it be that I'm a human-alien hybrid, and the tall tales that I've told you are true?"

"Oh Grandee, that's just nonsense," she said as she noticed light falling on the carpet that seemed to be coming from the wardrobe.

"Is Torchwood nonsense? They've been dealing with aliens for centuries. Me and Rose used to work for them."

"But those are just conspiracy theories and hoaxes." Where was that humming noise coming from.

"Conspiracy theory hmmm. Why don't you come in and see a conspiracy fact?" He said as he stepped inside the wardrobe.

"Grandee, what are you doing standing in a wardrobe? You're really freaking me out now," she said as she walked forward and peeped into the wardrobe. What she saw made her mouth fall open and her eyes go wide. Her great great great great great grandfather was apparently far enough away from her to be standing outside of his apartment in the vacuum of space. He was leaning against a six sided control console, with his arms crossed and a wide grin on his face.

"Not quite Narnia I know. Bit it's not bad, is it?"

Susan snapped her body back out of the wardrobe, and just stared at the impossible sight in front of her.

"NO!" She exclaimed. "No, no, no, no, no. It's not possible." She leaned left and right to look at either side of the wardrobe. If it hadn't been against the bedroom wall, she would have walked around it.

"Oh my God. The blue box in your stories… it's based on this wardrobe," she gasped in disbelief.

"Er, not exactly," he said as he looked over his shoulder to the console and activated a lever. The wardrobe morphed into a 1950's police box.

"Aaagh!" Susan squealed.

"It is the blue box from my stories… sorry, from my adventures," he corrected himself.

She cautiously stepped back into the TARDIS. "Then it's true… all of it. The travelling, the aliens, the adventures?"

"Yep, and I've got one last trip to make in the old girl."

The doors closed, and the Time Rotor started to pump up and down with a beautiful grinding, wheezing noise. Susan started giggling and then laughing.

"I don't believe it, I'm actually travelling in the TARDIS. It is the TARDIS isn't it?" She wasn't sure if that was its name, or if it was just a name he made up for his stories.

"Time and relative dimensions in space, T-A-R-D-I-S," he spelt out. "TARDIS."

"And where are we going?"

"Ah, now that's a bit timey-wimey," he told her. "When I was finally reunited with Rose, she told me that when her brother was born, she felt like throwing it all in and giving up, because she thought she would never see me again."

"Wha? You're going to see your wife. Won't that cause some sort of paradox?"

"Ooh, I knew you were the one when I first sat you on my knee all those years ago. Yes it would cause a paradox if she remembered it, but she told me that she suddenly came out of her depression and felt certain that she would see me again."

"So you gave her hope for the future, but she doesn't remember why," Susan said, catching on quickly.

"Give that girl a medal," he said as the Time Rotor stopped. "So, here we are, Glendale Private Hospital, 21st June 2011, 5:30 am." He leaned wearily on the console and turned to look at her. "Would you like to meet her?"

"What, Greatly Rose. The incredible woman from those stories? My great great great great great grandmother? Oh yes please."

"Okay then. We're in a hospital, you're a nurse. Go and pop to the wardrobe and find a uniform from the early 21st century."

"Wardrobe? You have a wardrobe in a wardrobe?" She asked with a grin.

"Ah, but its a police box now. Now, through there, first left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead, under the stairs, past the bins, fifth door on your left." Susan looked at the archway he had indicated and looked back at him with an excited look in her eyes, before running off to follow his directions.

The Doctor sagged against the console, and struggled over to the jump seat. He flopped down and took some rasping breaths. He just hoped he hadn't left it too late. A golden mist spread out from the console, like an ethereal hand reaching out and soothing him. The TARDIS would make sure he could deliver his gift of hope.

When Susan returned, she was wearing a dark blue, nurses dress, with sensible shoes, and a white, paper hat on her head. The Doctor had recovered some of his energy with the help of the TARDIS.

"That's one hell of a wardrobe you've got back there," she said with a smile.

"Yes, Rose always enjoyed dressing up for our adventures. So come on my dear, let me take your arm and you can help me get to the Delivery Suite." He reached his cane from beside him, and eased himself out of the jump seat. Arm in arm, they walked down the ramp to the doors.