The day to leave planet Earth was finally here, and Rose Tyler was so ready. She came down the stairs carrying a large backpack, the early light of the day bringing an expectant grin to her face. But first she would have to get past her mum. Jackie Tyler stood in the entrance hall, arms folded over her round belly.

'Test drive?' she asked, glancing accusingly at her daughter, and then at the heavy rucksack on her back.

'It is,' Rose insisted. 'Moon and back. Just a hop, like he said. This is some extra gear, just in case. You know how dodgy the new TARDIS is.'

Jackie shrugged. 'Just a hop, then.'

'Yeah.'

But Jackie had that look that told Rose she was waiting for a confession. 'I saw the suitcases in your room,' she said. 'You're practically packed already. You can't wait to get away from us.'

Rose sighed. How could she make her understand that even after they'd done it all and saved everyone and everything in the whole wide multiverse, she wasn't going to kick back and watch EastEnders all day?

But then Jackie waved her off dismissively. 'Oh, what am I complainin' about. Got that PR gig to worry about, me, with the German PM. Probably best if you lot are at a safe distance to the planet.'

Rose gave her a grateful smile, but Jackie raised a warning finger. 'But if you miss Michael's birthday, I'll give the two of you what for. And your baby space ship. Where is that useless man anyway?'

Rose glanced through panes of glass into the ornate yard, and the ominous shape of the shed that loomed in its back end. 'Last minute preparations, I reckon.' She let out a sigh. 'He's worked all night again.'

Jackie huffed. 'Still hasn't figured out how sleep works, eh?'

'He's never needed it before. Thinks it's a waste of time.'

'Well, boohoo. Join the rest of us dirty humans.' She glanced at her daughter, who had taken on a rather thoughtful look. Jackie knew that look by now; she'd seen it more and more the closer they'd come to the departure. 'I don't understand you,' Jackie said.

'We won't be gone for ten minutes.'

'I'm not talking about that. You're still hung up about him, aren't you? God, it's never enough with you.'

'I'm not hung up about him,' she retorted.

'He's him, Rose. Even if he's just a clone, or whatever.'

'Product of a human-Timelord-Metacrisis,' Rose explained for the millionth time.

'That's what I said, whatever,' Jackie said. 'He's still the same person on the inside.' With a huff, she added, 'Unfortunately. Could really do without explosions in the morning.'

Rose chuckled at that, and she knew that her mother was right: Even with just one heart, he was still the real deal. But that was precisely the cause of her doubts. If he really was a perfect clone of the Doctor, then he was also the same man who had marooned her in this universe, leaving just in time for the multiversal fabric to seal off forever. He had practically gone out of his way to make sure he'd never have to see her again.

Rose pushed it all aside and forced a reassuring smile onto her face. 'You coming?'

Together they marched down a marble path, heading for the shed. Jackie kept gushing but Rose barely listened. The sunlight had a promising touch, and she could feel her excitement building again as she walked. Beyond the blue sky, she knew, lay a vast expanse filled with life, wonders, and mysteries, all smiling down at her like the stars in the night sky. She could hear their call, feel them beckoning. And today she would answer. In just a few minutes, she would soar through the time vortex and step right next to where this universe's Neil Armstrong had stood.

The shed had housed various tools for lawn maintenance before they helped the Metacrisis Doctor turn it into an incubation chamber for the new TARDIS. Now the windows were battered and the walls perforated like Swiss cheese. Several pipes and cables tangled around it, sprouting through crude openings that had been created with the help of a sledgehammer.

A bright light came from inside. The glow of the infant TARDIS' nascent consciousness, the Doctor had explained. A month ago, it had been just a flicker, but now it was a strong, white glow that pulsated softly. Since yesterday, the Doctor had installed a fifth power generator at the side of the shed, crammed next to the other four, and covered by a thick plastic canvas that hid everything from satellite eyes. Several cords headed through new holes into the structure. 'Good lord, look what he's done with it,' Jackie said as they dropped the luggage. 'Why can't he just build something useful? Like a gardening robot.'

'He doesn't do domestic,' Rose replied with a grin.

The next moment, a loud sucking noise made them both jerk away from the door – which wasn't there anymore. 'Bloody hell!' Jackie gasped. 'He doesn't do doors either, does he?'

They could now see the interior of the improvised incubation chamber, and the sphere that hovered in its middle. The glow of its consciousness spilled from openings in its triangular edges, rendering its shape almost black by contrast. It illuminated all the gadgets and gizmos in the room with a rich light, as if the TARDIS was some divine being. Rose could almost hear a church's organ orchestrating the scene.

Until a face with spiky brown hair, sideburns, and brown eyes that shone with curiosity leaned into the empty door frame, looking it up and down. 'Blimey. Gone it is,' the Doctor said before he acknowledged the women and broke into a wide grin. 'Hello Rose, Jackie. Perfect timing, I gotta say. I was about to call you. Great look, Rose.' He clapped theatrically into his hands, suddenly all serious fashion critic. 'Black and red, very intimidating. Love the cargo pants. Can't have too many pockets I always say.'

'And you,' she replied. 'Found some time to rest I reckon? What's that?' She nodded at the object in his hand. It looked very much like a futuristic garden hose that was connected to the still glowing fractured shape of the TARDIS.

'Why don't I demonstrate?' he said, aiming the hose at Rose and Jackie. They instinctively stepped aside just before he shouted, 'And go!' while switching on a button at the head of the hose.

The door reappeared with a deafening bang, making Rose flinch and Jackie scream as she ducked for cover, expecting, with good justification, that more explosions could happen.

But instead, the door started to melt into a puddle of silvery matter.

The Metacrisis Doctor regarded the metal sludge in the doorway with a curious look. 'Ah.'

'Here we go again,' Jackie fumed. 'Doors have handles, you know?'

'Oh, that wasn't me, Jackie.' He gestured over his shoulder to the glowing TARDIS. 'That was her, using my paradoxalyser.' Looking at Rose, he tapped the head of the hose, grinning from ear to ear. 'What d'you think of the name?'

'Dunno. What does it do?'

'Well, it's a teleport beam, really, but it's also a toy. Scans a thing, shows it to the TARDIS, and when she's curious enough, it transports the target into a compartment inside her so she can investigate it. She's a bit OCD like that, gets downright scared of anything she can't understand. It's a safe way to teach her stuff.'

'Safe?' Rose glanced warily at the liquid metal solidifying into a plate of silvery splatter.

'Er. Unfortunate side effect. Ever tried prying a toy out of a child's hand? I think she wanted to keep the door, nice simple composition and all, so she interfered with the paradoxalyser beam. Anyway, step inside ladies, come on, come on! We've got a schedule to uphold, don't we, Rose?' He moved toward the blinding light of the TARDIS, his silhouette darkening the closer he got. He tapped the shell of his baby spaceship, and the triangular pieces moved back together, hiding the golden glow and revealing the TARDIS as a silver ball with a metallic sheen that hovered just slightly above the ground. The Doctor jumped to a chair on top of it and let his legs dangle from the space-time-machine.

Rose snorted; he looked like a school boy on picture day, his blue suit and tie clashing with his white trainers.

His charm was less effective on Jackie. 'I told you,' she said as she stepped over the silver puddle with difficulty. 'He hasn't changed a bit. Still mad as a hatter.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Never is appreciated, true genius.'

'You ruined the shed! What's genius about that, you Metacrisis?'

While the Doctor talked her mother down, Rose took in the new TARDIS. Gone was the charming wooden shape of a Police Box that the other Doctor's TARDIS had used to disguise itself. In fact, when the real Doctor had handed it to them, it had just been a shard, the size of a football. It might have looked like some pretty stone a prospector might have taken from a cave, where it not for the strange alien consciousness that had pulsated within.

She had grown a lot in the five months since then, and she'd taken on various shapes in her growth phase. Currently she was a ball made up of symmetrical, triangular shapes, like a big die with too many sides measuring about two-and-a-half metres in diameter. She was surrounded by a number of panels and flat screens that were mounted on broad desks, and a mess of cables and pipes were connected to her surface, like some evil computer in a bad super hero movie.

'Why isn't it blue?' Jackie asked over her shoulder.

The Doctor strode around it. 'Maybe she will be blue again someday,' he said. 'Once her chameleon circuits have developed. Right now she's just an infant, still learning, still playing with geometrical shapes. But I reckon we'll be fine with her being a rhombic triacontahedron for a while.' He came to a halt in front of Rose, beaming at her. 'We'll just tell everyone she's modern art!'

'Until she does something weird,' Rose said. 'Like flushing us halfway down the garden like a giant toilet.'

'That was your fault,' the Doctor said. 'You didn't press the right button.'

'I so did!' Rose laughed.

'But not in the right way,' the Doctor insisted. 'You have to be gentle with her. Have some patience.'

'There he goes talking about patience,' Jackie ranted, folding her arms. 'You can't wait to get out there. But I'm the one who prays every day you don't get killed by that thing, or some other, evil space potatoes or whatever!'

'Packed the potato masher?' the Doctor asked, glancing mischievously at Rose.

'I'm not an amateur,' Rose replied as if insulted by the question.

The Doctor grinned at Jackie. 'Two experienced adventurers, prepared for every eventuality. Nothing to worry about.'

Jackie rolled her eyes and Rose grinned at the Doctor, tongue in cheek. His passionate energy quickly infected her, and for a couple brief moments she felt transported back to a different time, when banter like this had been the regular programme. She looked at the Metacrisis Doctor and saw the real deal standing before her – the impossible man she had fallen in love with. That is until she saw the rings underneath his red-rimmed eyes from exhaustion and lack of sleep, and she felt a little pang of sadness.

She took a deep breath, pushing her thoughts away, and watched the wrong Doctor pat the metal ball three times, causing a triangular door to swing into the TARDIS. Rose peered through the opening into the Doctor's world. A room as big as the shed somehow fit inside those two-and-a-half metres of metal ball; the marvellous Timelord technology made her bigger on the inside. There was the familiar glass column at its centre. Rose hoped it would also move and make that fantastic raspy-trumpety sound once they'd fly through time and space. There was also a console with dashboards and panels full of buttons and levers. The walls posed the starkest difference: rows of circles on sterile white. It looked retro and unfinished, like a partially built set for a spaceship from a TV show in the 1960s. Or some psychopath's torture chamber.

The door leading deeper into the TARDIS' impossible dimensions looked precisely like the now puddled door to the shed, and there were bits and pieces of furniture growing out of the ground, walls, and ceiling.

Rose had taken an immediate liking to the new TARDIS. Knowing the dodgy setup was just her young mind trying to figure things out made it rather adorable.

And now she felt a surge of excitement. She was about to embark on her first trip in the new TARDIS –their TARDIS. Give it some time and things might actually be like they used to. Rose Tyler and the Doctor, travelling through time and space, having adventures over adventures, fighting evil on every front. How she had missed that life!

She turned with a big, apologetic grin. 'I'm sorry, mum. I just got to.'

Jackie looked sad, but resigned. She turned to address the Doctor. 'Promise me.'

The Doctor didn't need to ask what she meant, and he looked serious when he nodded.

Rose hugged her mum for a second time. 'Love you.'

'Love you too.'

'It's just a hop.'

'No, it's not.'


Rose pushed her backpack through the triangular opening into the impossibly large interior of the TARDIS. Two modern space suits hung from hooks in the walls, sporting large name tags that read Sherlock Holmes and... 'Mary Poppins? But I don't have a flying umbrella. Wait, am I about to have a flying umbrella?'

'Not your style. Unless you want one, in which case I do know a place. But nah, it says Mary Poppins because you're so great with Tony.'

'How would you know? You've been in here all the time.'

'You know I don't do domestic. Besides, I've got my own baby to worry about,' the Doctor said, patting the TARDIS' wall.

Rose shook her head and started securing her luggage with snap links and ropes while the Doctor worked the new controls, pressing buttons and pulling levers in a seemingly haphazard pattern. Just like his Timelord-counterpart used to do, back in the old TARDIS, Rose thought. 'Finally!' he shouted, brimming with excitement and flinging open his arms. 'We're leaving the nest, spreading our wings, leaping into the unknown! How long have I waited for this?'

'Five months?'

'An eternity's worth of foreign planets, spatial phenomena, exotic creatures and cultures... and so many ice cream flavours we've missed out on!' He brushed his fingers softly over the console as he addressed the TARDIS. 'Five never-ending months of watching you sprout from that tiny little piece. Oh, just look at how much you've grown.'

Rose wanted to joke and say, 'Get a room!', but instead she felt it necessary to address the elephant in the room. 'Mum's not wrong, you know.'

'That's a bold statement.'

'Shut up. But you got to admit, she's still a bit dodgy.' Rose eyed a couple of pipes and railings that were jutting out from the walls in a nonsensical manner; the young TARDIS imitating the shed around her, the Doctor had explained. 'Is she really safe to travel?'

But the Doctor's enthusiasm was unquenchable. 'She's absolutely, completely safe.' He scrunched up his face as he considered. 'Well, quite safe,' he corrected himself. 'Relatively safe,' he added.

Rose, looked up at a small four-legged chair growing out of the ceiling above her. She sighed. 'Maybe it's best to wait a couple days, then. Just to iron out the kinks, yeah?'

The Doctor gave her a blank stare before shaking his head in a quivering sort-of motion. 'Oh, no. No, no, no, we can't wait any longer. We have to take her out for a spin at some point, or she'll never learn that she's a space-time machine, and not a, a thing that sits around in a shed.'

Rose smiled weakly, assuming that the TARDIS wasn't the only one in desperate need of a change of scenery.

'Come on, Rose!' the Doctor tried to convince her, 'Don't you feel it? The promise of a new world, the smell of adventure in the air, don't you feel it tickling your nose? The excitement trembling in your bones?'

'Oh, I'm trembling alright,' she answered with a weak smile. 'But more from the idea of being turned into a puddle, or getting flushed out into the time vortex.'

'Rose,' the Doctor said, stepping close to her, his shining brown eyes looking deep into hers. 'Take my hands.' She reached out, feeling his warm skin, and she felt a tingle in her chest that she hadn't felt for quite a while.

'Where do you want to go?' he asked. 'Skimming on the purple lakes of Larya Three? Listening to the eight-armed orchestra on Vulpecula? Riding a flying manta on Rhyzyntcheenay?' His eyes flashed with an idea. 'Participating in the Batoic Olympic Games on Rhyzyntcheenay in the seventieth century? Oh, the vistas, the jade-and-perl chocolate fountains!' Rose smiled as he kept going. 'We only have a lifetime, Rose, we can't explore more than the tip of the iceberg anyway. So let's make it the best of the best for our mortal souls. My plan was to get dawnfire-flavoured ice cream on Obriga IV first, then on to Villengard in the fifty-first where we could get ourselves two sonic screwdrivers, yes two sonic screwdrivers,' the Doctor held up his fingers in a V-shape to underline his point. Then his voice took on a dramatic note as he neared the finale of his proposition. 'And then we watch the golden sky palace of New New Terra, gleaming in all the colours of its three suns.'

The Doctor could have kept talking, but there was no need for more words. Rose's eyes were glinting with excitement. 'Alright, then,' she said as she broke into laughter. 'Let's leap to the stars.'

The Doctor beamed. 'Good call, Rose Tyler!' And without hesitation, he pushed two big levers straight forward, while shouting, 'Allons-y!'