More domestic bliss for our trio and a quick peek into the TARDIS.
Oh, and some plot unfolding, too. Can't forget that bit. ;-)
Enjoy!
THREE
The Doctor and Martha came downstairs just before eight the next morning, and found Donna sitting in the breakfast nook, by the window, having tea. She was reading the paper, and intermittently watching Martha's next-door neighbour prune her rose bushes.
"Good morning, you two," she said. "Martha, thank you again for letting me stay here. Do you know how long it's been since I've had a peaceful morning just to sit and read the paper? In a home that doesn't have Harvest Gold teapots on the wallpaper, and no one is screaming at me?"
"I have no idea, but I can imagine," Martha told her, with a chuckle. "And you're welcome."
"So," Donna said, sprightly, turning to the Doctor. "When do we leave?"
"Er, Friday night."
"Friday night?" she asked, a bit incredulous. "How did that happen?"
"Sorry," Martha said, moving round to plug in the teapot again. "My great uncle passed away a couple days ago and the funeral is on Friday."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Were you close?"
"My dad was close with him," Martha sighed. "Anyway, he was in his eighties, and he'd lived a very full life."
"Also," the Doctor added, digging into the bread box for something to toast. "I think we should look into this time capsule thing."
"You do?" Donna asked him, looking at Martha with surprise.
"Yeah. I looked at the website last night, and… it was hinky."
"Hinky how?"
"I dunno," he told her. "Just a bit weird. Made me uneasy enough that I'm going to go check it out today."
"In that case," Donna said, rifling through the pile of newsprint in front of her. "You might want to have a look at this."
She handed him a section of the news, covering the time capsule. There was a photograph of a man, rather awkwardly standing at the corner of Earl's Court and Bolton Gardens, waving to the camera. He was plump, with slicked-back hair and a moustache, wearing an old-fashioned double-breasted pin-striped suit, with black and white saddle shoes.
"Mr. Buford S. Greene," the Doctor read aloud, scrutinising the page. "Now, there's a hell of a name. Who is this guy? He looks like one of those Fat Cat caricatures."
Martha peeked over his shoulder. "Head of PR for Burch and Bradley, a mergers and acquisitions firm."
"What exactly do they merge and acquire?" asked Donna.
"Well, pieces of businesses and business ventures," the Doctor mused. "As I understand it, most of the time, mergers and acquisitions is a department of a larger firm – like H.C. Clements. But this must be one of those outfits that buys and fixes up companies, or, like I said, pieces of them, and sells them off at a profit. They'll buy up the interest in an arm of a firm that didn't go successfully, things like that."
"So, what interest do they have in a time capsule?" Martha wondered.
"It says here, they're the ones that buried it," the Doctor muttered, reading.
"Again, I ask, what interest do they have in a time capsule?" she repeated. "I mean, why would a firm like that bury one? In 1938?"
"Good question," he sighed. "I'm going to get your laptop."
"Okay. Toast?" she asked.
"Yeah, thanks."
"Donna? Toast?" Martha offered.
"I've already had some yoghurt," Donna replied. "And some fruit. Oh, I'll… erm, replace them."
Martha chuckled. "Oh, please. You're my guest."
She tossed two slices of bread in the toaster, then turned to get the butter from the fridge. The two of them waited in silence for the toast to pop, and/or for the Doctor to return...
His voice rang out a minute later, "Oh yeah, this website is hinky too."
He was bounding down the stairs in his trainers, with the open laptop in his hands.
"Again with the hinky," Donna commented.
"I have a highly-refined hinky detector," the Doctor muttered, clicking about, and sitting down at the breakfast bar.
"Though, not that refined, because you can't even explain it," Martha pointed out.
"Oi," he said to her with a frown. "I'm getting there."
Martha put all her weight on one hip, and waited. Meanwhile, Donna brought her tea and came over to the bar to sit beside the Doctor, and read over his shoulder.
"Ooh, he's right," Donna said, with surprise in her voice, as she looked at the Burch and Bradley website. "It's kind of weird. Like, aesthetically, it's fine, it works, but… I dunno, there's something underlying it. Like, something with the photos, or... something. It's unsettling."
Martha frowned. The toast popped up. Martha busied herself buttering it, then dropping two more slices into the apparatus, while she listened to the ensuing conversation.
The Doctor began reading aloud from the website's text. "Burch and Bradley are the pinnacle firm in the pitch of mergers and acquisitions, in the London."
"In the London?" Martha asked.
"Hold on, how come I've never heard of them? I mean, I've worked for a lot of the top firms in this city – law firms, architecture firms, accounting, IT, you name it. I feel like I'd at least have heard of the… what is it? The pinnacle in mergers and acquisitions. Wouldn't I?"
"Probably," the Doctor confirmed.
"Well, yeah," Martha agreed. "I mean, if you're a temp, and you've done top-floor jobs with myriad different types of companies, and Burch and Bradley is leading mergers and acquisitions, dealing with all sorts of different businesses, and pieces of businesses, then… wouldn't they have their fingers in some pie, somewhere that you'd have seen it."
"Right?" Donna asked, loudly, gesturing emphatically.
Then the Doctor continued to read, "We perform our affairs expediently, scrupulously and with supreme translucence."
"Do they mean transparency?" Martha asked.
"Probably," he said. "I mean, I'm no Brit, but does it sound to you like someone whose native language is not English might have written this?"
"Yeah, definitely," Donna agreed. "It's stilted, and just… weird. Shouldn't it say, we conduct our business efficiently, ethically and with the utmost transparency? Or something like that?"
"That sounds better to me," Martha said.
The Doctor frowned at the screen. "It's like someone went at this thing with a thesaurus, and no intrinsic knowledge of context or connotation."
"So whoever wrote it isn't from around here," Martha offered.
"Wouldn't the PR person do that? I mean, this is the landing page of their main website. It's the first thing, presumably, the public is going to see and read."
"I could ask Tish," Martha offered. "But yeah… that makes sense."
"But if their PR guy doesn't know English very well…" Donna began.
"So, let's find out," the Doctor said, his fingers flitting over the keys now.
"What're you doing?" Donna wondered.
"I'm Googling Buford S. Greene," he said. Then after a pause, he said, "Apparently, he's from Bristol."
"Bristol?" Martha asked. "Are you sure?" She came around the breakfast bar to look.
"This is him, yeah? Same guy we saw in the paper?" the Doctor asked her, indicating the photo on the people-finder website.
"Yeah," she agreed. "So, he's English."
"And yet, somehow, can't get the intricacies of the English language right. Or at the very least, speaks English really, really awkwardly," Donna pointed out.
"What about the company's CEO?" Martha wondered.
"Good question," said the Doctor, just before trying the same process on the CEO of Burch and Bradley.
"Cyril H. Tippington?" Martha exclaimed with a smile, watching the Doctor work. "Now that just sounds like someone who's trying way too hard to sound British! That's like, the name of a stuffy little mouse with a monocle in a Disney film!"
"I'm afraid I would have to agree," the Doctor muttered. "Though the bit about the monocle is a bit too oddly specific."
The screen showed an error message.
"Wow," said the Doctor. "Not only can he not be Googled, but your computer, Martha, doesn't even like me looking for him."
There was a few moments' silence, and then, the Doctor said, beginning with a heavy sigh, "I suppose it's possible that Martha simply missed that engraved slab of stone for six months, and then just happened to notice it yesterday. And I suppose it's possible that Burch and Bradley really are pioneers in mergers and acquisitions, and that they just chose a bizarre place to bury a time capsule in 1938, and that Buford S. Greene is just not very savvy with language, or someone who isn't savvy with English wrote that website landing page, and Greene just didn't proofread, and Mr. Tippington just isn't on the grid, and it's all on the straight and narrow, but…"
"…not bloody likely?" Donna asked.
"In a nutshell."
He then reached dramatically into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and extracted the sonic screwdriver. He made a few clicks, and returned to the Burch and Bradley website. He made a few adjustments to the tool, and when he aimed it at the computer screen, the thing made a sound that began as normal, then ramped up to a piercing, high-pitched wail within a few seconds. The Doctor took his thumb off the button and looked at the website with disdain.
"Oi! What is that about?" Martha practically shouted, covering her ears.
"This website is fake."
"Fake? What do you mean, fake?"
"Well, not fake, per se, but it was artificially generated by a machine, somewhere other than on Earth."
"Somewhere other than on Earth?" Donna repeated.
"That's what I said."
"Oh, great," Martha sighed. "Well, I guess, such is life with you."
"Ladies, it's time to bring in the big guns," he said, standing up from the stool, and putting the laptop to sleep.
"You're not the big guns?" Donna asked.
"Not always," he said. "Because we still haven't asked the TARDIS to inspect things for us."
"Ah," Donna conceded.
The Doctor headed out of the kitchen and down the hallway, and out through the back door. Martha and Donna followed, and within a few moments, found themselves striding into the TARDIS.
He positioned himself at the computer on the console, and also spoke to his trusted vessel, patting her time rotor. "Burch and Bradley," he said to her. "Did such a company exist in London in 1938?" At the same time, he typed an inquiry of some sort, on the keyboard, then waited.
Results shone on the screen within five seconds. Though they were in Gallifreyan, both women attempted to learn something by looking over the Doctor's shoulder.
"Well, what does it say?" Donna asked.
"It says Burch and Bradley did not exist in 1938, in spite of the fact that the company's website says they were founded in 1936. Burch and Bradley is an artificially-generated name and info scrim."
"What's an info scrim?" Martha wondered.
"It's a sheet of information, concealing something behind it," he said. "Every planet, every society has its way of conveying information, news, et cetera. For the Figland Sorgons of Fexel 5, it's these tiny discs that get delivered to homes every day, from various sources. For Cybermen, it's hourly uploads. For humans in London at this time in history, it's the internet. A smart machine somewhere in the universe did its homework, and worked out that if someone were to implant some sort of operation on planet Earth, and build a front for it, there would need to be a website, in order to make it convincing."
"Oh," Martha commented. "That is smart."
"Okay, we're dealing with something extraterrestrial," the Doctor said, running one hand through his hair. "And probably with someone, or something, that has at least rudimentary time-travel. Or, time-dropping. Which means that maybe they can't travel in time, but they can put things in different places throughout time, or take things in the same way."
"Does that narrow it down at all?" Donna asked.
"Somewhat, but it would help if I knew… oh! Martha, you said you wrote down that Latin phrase, yeah?"
"Yeah," she replied. "Want me to go get it?"
"Yes! Maybe it will tell us something about who they are!"
"Back in a mo'," she said, jogging out the TARDIS door. Within thirty seconds she was back, holding a small piece of paper in her hand. She handed it to the Doctor.
"1938, in septuaginta annis, et tempus advenit responsio," he read aloud. Then he fell silent, and stared at the paper
"What's wrong? What does it mean?" she asked, after a longer-than-average pause.
"It means in seventy years, the time of answering arrives."
"That sounds ominous somehow," she whispered.
"To say the least," he confirmed.
All righty! Thanks for reading! Drop me a line, let me know your thoughts in the form of a review.