This chapter is a little schizophrenic. We're wrapping up Saturday night with Colin/Donna/Martha, and leading into Donna's important Monday-morning meeting! Oooh!
EIGHTEEN
Sometime around four a.m., Colin Brownhill heard a noise he had never heard before.
He had been sitting on his cousin's sofa, flipping through the television channels (marveling at how much total crap was on TV in the wee hours of the morning), when an otherworldly grinding sound cut across the space. Donna, still in her stunning purple dress, sat beside him, her legs curled under her, with her head on one of the throw pillows, where she had begun "resting her eyes," two hours before.
After realising that Martha was gone, she had panicked. She had relaxed somewhat when she'd rung, and Martha had answered, but had become all wound-up again, when Martha had reported that she'd been taken prisoner. Donna had spent the ensuing two hours trying to get in contact with someone called Captain Jack Harkness, though she had no idea how to do so, and according to the internet, the man had died during World War II… if he ever existed at all.
Colin hadn't known what to make of any of it; it all sounded daft, like they were having him on, for a laugh. Donna had, just tonight, come forth with a huge confessional, concerning her life with Martha and "the Doctor," and he had been just trying wrap his mind round all that, when the revelation that Martha had been kidnapped (or rather, had gone willingly… sort of… hoping she could get out of it if something went wrong? What the hell had she been thinking?) had come… and he was reluctant to believe any of it. Aliens? Temporal activity? Kidnapping? His cousin being held… and did they really expect him to believe she was currently on a different planet? Jesus.
But Donna's distress, which disturbed him a lot more than he might have guessed, seemed genuine. So he'd stayed with her, promising not to leave her alone, until Martha or the Doctor came back.
The noise gave him pause, for sure, but then it grew louder and louder. He nudged Donna's thigh.
"Oi," he said. "Donna, wake up."
She sat up straight at the sound of his voice.
"I wasn't asleep," she insisted, though she'd had her eyes shut, and had been breathing deeply for nearly two hours.
"Do you hear that?"
Donna focused. Then her eyes lit up. "It's the TARDIS!"
With that, she was running, stumbling toward the back door, cackling loudly, happily, and calling Martha's name.
"What?" he called after her, as he followed her through the back of the flat, and out the door to the garden.
To his total astonishment, he looked to his left, and saw an old-fashioned blue police box sitting there, that definitely hadn't been there before. It was lit from the inside, and seemed to be humming, just a bit, almost as though it were alive.
Donna ran around front of it, and disappeared inside.
"Donna! What the hell? What are you…" he stopped, realising that Donna had no interest in his questions nor entreaties at the moment, and he sounded a bit mad.
But he followed her round to the front, and examined the thing. She had called it the TARDIS – he didn't know what that meant, though he assumed that this was the thing she was planning to show him, hours ago, when she was trying to convince him that she, Martha and the Doctor were not complete nutters. At the time, it wasn't here, which sent her into a panic. And now it was here.
How did it get here?
And what was she doing in there?
"Donna?" he said, reaching forward to open the door.
When he did, his jaw dropped.
Colin was an intelligent, curious man, who also happened to be an architect. His initial reaction to the TARDIS had been exactly like that of both Martha and Donna – first, denial, then inspection of the exterior, just to make sure, then the inevitable declaration: "It's bigger on the inside!" But after that, he had asked about six thousand questions that neither woman could answer, mostly to do with the structure of the thing.
"How does it stay, you know, stable?" he asked, looking about. "I mean the columns here, they aren't in the right places to keep a dome like this one aloft. I could show you the math…"
"Colin, honestly, the Doctor is going to have to answer all these questions," Martha said. "I don't know how it works. I can tell you that the TARDIS' interior is basically in another dimension, and the door acts as a portal of some sort. It's all tethered to this console here, underneath which is the 'heart' of the TARDIS – I think this is what holds it all together. And not just the TARDIS itself, the pieces of itself, but it holds together parts of reality, the time vortex, and probably a chunk of the Doctor's psyche. Literally or figuratively… probably a combination of both."
"How do you know all that?" Donna asked her, half annoyed, half impressed.
"I listen," Martha shrugged.
Martha filled in Donna on the night's events, including everything the Doctor had told her he'd learned from General Kir. "And, it sounds really weird, but apparently, the guy immediately in charge of the Doctor's… care and feeding… the Doctor says he's a good bloke, who doesn't want to be involved in anything shady. He says he trusts him."
"He trusts him?"
"Yeah… like, he's gone out of his way to make the Doctor's stay more comfortable, including not wanting to violate cruelty parameters, like not letting prisoners see and communicate with their next of kin. Or their Companion."
"That's weird. I mean, it's brilliant. But weird," Donna remarked.
Donna and Colin filled in Martha on their date, including all the stuff she'd told him about the Doctor, and what the three of them really did with their time.
After that, Colin left, and the two women both spent most of Sunday asleep. Martha, once again, took up residence in the Doctor's bed in the TARDIS, and Donna curled up on the sofa in Martha's living room where she had been staying for almost a week.
"I have fresh sheets in the linen closet – they're bamboo. I'll throw them on my bed for you," Martha had offered. "Don't sleep on that sofa again!"
"It's comfy," Donna had shrugged.
"Seriously? It's second-hand!"
"So?"'
"I always wake up with a backache when I sleep there."
"Guess I must not be as old as you," Donna had said, with a wink.
Donna, however, was quite aware that she needed to be awake and alert, and on-time, for her Monday- morning rendezvous with the ladies' toilet and a stethoscope.
So, she retired to the sofa at six a.m., and slept only until noon. Martha, however, was unconscious until at least tea time. Even then, Donna had to wake her.
Martha's mobile phone rang at around 4 p.m.
"Hiya, Dr. Jones. Fancy coming home for dinner?"
"Dinner? What time is it?" Martha moaned, then looked round the bedroom for a clock. "Blimey, the man's a Time Lord, you'd think there'd be at least one clock in the room!"
"It's four o'clock on Sunday afternoon," Donna said. "I went out and got all the ingredients to make my famous sausage and vegetable lasagna. I'll do the work, if you'll meet me in the kitchen in two hours, so I don't eat the whole thing."
Martha smiled. "You've got it."
She went back into her own flat, took a leisurely shower, dressed slowly, tidied up a bit (including laundering the Doctor's discarded clothes) then joined Donna in the kitchen, offering to put the salad together.
As it turned out, Donna made an excellent lasagna, and the two of them shared it with salad, wine, a few laughs, followed by a store-bought cheesecake. Martha noted Donna's conviviality, something she hadn't quite seen since she and the Doctor had arrived back in London. She reckoned that Colin had a lot to do with that, especially now he was becoming privy (admittedly, startlingly quickly) to the weirdness of their lives.
Martha, though, once again found herself unpleasantly alone overnight, and dearly regretted having slept so long, following her visit with the Doctor. She now knew that he had been captured, not arrested, though he did not seem very worried about his circumstances. She wondered if he'd been covering his trepidation for her sake, and still had a million other questions.
She talked Donna into sleeping upstairs, so that she could flip channels from the sofa all night.
All weekend, Martha had been ducking calls from work; when she had decided to stay in Mallorca for three extra weeks with the Doctor, she had applied for a short sabbatical, and it had been granted. So, at the moment, she was not expected to be working, but she reckoned that Julia's flu was just now clearing up, and she might be playing it safe, not wanting to compromise her immune system straight away, or that of her patients. Martha hoped that someone else had filled in Julia's Saturday and Sunday shifts, and that A&E hadn't been left in the lurch.
When her phone rang at six a.m. Monday morning, she had been dozing on the sofa for a couple of hours, and she reckoned, Donna was the one with an "assignment" today… why shouldn't she do a shift at the hospital? It was better than sitting around here, wondering what to do next.
"Yeah, I'll come in," she told the head nurse. "Should be noted, however, that I'm running on very little sleep, so I probably should be confined to non-emergency triage."
"I think we can make adjustments for that. I'll let Dr. Michaels know, he'll need to do the jump-and-run stuff. He's amenable, usually."
And so, she dressed and went to work. When she left, Donna was pacing the kitchen, dressed in a grey suit and high heels, looking as though she belonged in an office building. She had stuffed a pad of paper and a pen, some duct tape, a bottle of non-abrasive surface cleaner, 5-6 folded paper towels into her shoulder bag, along with the souped-up stethoscope. Her phone and other personal effects were the last things she added; she planned to leave the house in a taxi at half-past seven.
"You'll be fine," Martha told her.
"I know," Donna said, uneasily, giving her the thumbs-up. "Supertemp."
"That's you!"
"By the way, do you mind if I borrow your laptop, bring it along today? Maybe if I get cornered or something, I can use it as camouflage."
"That's fine – yeah, take it with you. Call me later?"
"Definitely."
Donna snuck into the building sometime just before eight o'clock. The place wasn't crowded, but there were enough people around that she was glad she'd brought a pair of sunglasses and worn fairly non-descript business attire. Though, like the Doctor, her most distinctive feature was her hair, which was hanging loose for all the world to see. She wished now that she'd had the presence of mind to tie it back and wear a sun-shading scarf or something, but too late now.
She found her way easily to the ladies' and silently apologised to all the women in the building, by scrawling out on a sheet of paper, "Closed for Maintenance," and then duct taping it to the door. She then placed three pieces of duct tape over where the door met the doorjamb, so as to discourage entry.
Within two minutes of arrival, she heard the first woman curse outside the door, then try to open it, then complain to a colleague, "The bloody loo is bloody closed. What're we supposed to do now?"
"Use the gents', for God's sake," she said under her breath, as she pressed the stethoscope's auscultator against the wall, roughly where Colin had suggested.
Immediately, she heard a voice through the earpieces, that said, "How many cups of tea and coffee are we going to need?"
Another voice said, "Dunno yet, why don't we worry about that after the meeting starts?"
"Can't do that, you twit," Donna said. "What is she supposed to do, take orders like a waitress?"
The first voice then piped up with, "Mr. Greene is not going to be best pleased with me if I walk in and start taking drink orders, as he is trying to begin a meeting."
"See? Never underestimate the logistical sense of a secretary," Donna commented, while the second voice said something like never mind then, do what you want.
"Celia," said the first voice. "Can you help me fill up all three kettles, so we can have the hot water going when the meeting starts?"
Fifteen seconds later, Donna heard someone try the door. "Oh, bollocks, the ladies' is shut," someone said, she recognised as the first voice. "Guess we'll have to use the gents'. I'll just prop the door open with my shoe so we don't traumatize any of the boys."
Donna moved to a toilet cubicle, and pressed the auscultator now against the wall, directly behind. She could clearly hear water running, but she could also hear the two women talking about keeping the first floor clear during the meeting, and feeling uncomfortable that Mr. Greene, if he was so intent on keeping the meeting confidential, didn't hire more security.
Good to know – no extra security. Only the sleepy bloke at the front door, and two secretarial types in charge of keeping the area clear. Cool – I can take them, if I have to.
The two ladies chatted about getting a drink after work, then seemed to head back upstairs. Donna then reapplied the auscultator to the wall over the sink, and duct taped it into place. She now only had to wait.
"Thank you all for coming today," a female voice said, just a couple minutes after nine a.m. "I am Janine Skruggs, for those of you who don't know me. I am CEO of Burch and Bradley. In short, I'm your boss."
Donna was sitting upon the vanity counter between sinks in the ladies' toilet, with the stethoscope earpieces in, pen at paper, making note of the woman's name.
Skruggs continued. "However, if you don't recognise me, it's because I normally work in the central branch near Marsh Wall. This branch, as you know, has been put in charge of expanding the horizons of Burch and Bradley, out of the milieu of mergers and acquisitions, and into… more interesting endeavours. Which is a lovely segue-way into our principle objective today. For that, I must turn the meeting over to the head of PR for our firm, Mr. Buford S. Greene."
"Thank you, Mrs. Skruggs," a posh male voice said. "I am, as the lady said, Buford S. Greene, and yes, I am the head of PR for Burch and Bradley. I am, however, working at this branch on – we'll use her words – more interesting things. This is partly because our newest interesting project is in need of PR, and partly because I have some characteristics, some knowledge, some… attributes, shall we say, that make me uniquely equipped to head up the Earl's Court Time Capsule experiment."
Donna made a note-to-self in margins: what attributes?
"Before we go on, I must insist upon your total discretion in these matters," Greene went on. "Not just concerning what is said in this meeting today, but about the nature of the entire project. This is delicate, potentially dangerous, and among other things, we don't need Environmental Protection on our arses, do we?"
There was tittering amongst those attending the meeting.
"But more importantly, our project could very well be misunderstood. I've already received indicators from certain employees, some of whom are in this room, suggesting that they don't believe in this project. Fair enough – it does sound crazy, doesn't it? But that's why we're here today: to clarify it all, including objectives, expectations, and well, frankly, the consequences if things don't go well."
Donna could hear the rustling of papers, and a single set of footsteps.
"To that end," Greene continued. "I am asking Mr. Abling to hand out non-disclosure statements for you to sign."
From there, Greene read the several-paragraph document aloud, to affirm that everyone in the room understood what they were signing, and the repercussions of too much tongue-wagging. Donna, of course, treated this document with the utmost importance, and wrote down every word that she could.
Then, she heard about a dozen pens scraping along the table, followed by more papers being shuffled, and she assumed, collected.
"All right," said Greene. "Now that's done, let me turn your attention to the screen behind me. It says, as you can see, An Oxbow In Time. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are going to create."
Greene seemed to pause for effect then, but a second, less-posh voice, rang out, "So, what, like a loop in time? Like an oxbow lake, only… in time?"
"Yes, precisely," said Greene."
"That sounds barmy. What the hell does that even mean?"
"Well, I'm glad you asked that. And that question will be answered all in good time. Right now, let's start from the beginning. Imagine, if you will, two titanic conglomerates, working together to police their world. It's as if Disney decided to pair up with Microsoft, to right the wrongs of, say, North Korea."
This was met with a few muttered comments, and guffaws.
"Only, they're not policing the world, but rather, the universe. They are the Heimat Squad of the Kyriarch System, and the Gallifreyan High Council. Also known as the Time Lords."
"Oh, shit," Donna muttered, hearing this.
Oh dear!
And hey, if you're out there reading this, drop me a line and let me know your thoughts! Haven't been hearing from many people lately! Thank you for reading!