So... long gaps between chapters, but I'm plugging along! I just finished another piece I've been working on, so hopefully I can sprint through this one now, and not leave y'all hanging for weeks at a time! :-) If you're reading this, then I thank you sincerely for staying with me!
Martha is still in a weird dimension where Dr. Weth sent her... what now? Well, she's about to find out some truly weird s**t that's gone on in that place. Fortunately, she's pretty smart, and actually, so are her cohorts. Hope is alive!
Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist. I'm doing my best to research stuff to suit my pseudoscience, but failed chemistry in school. Just sayin'.
Enjoy!
TEN
Martha didn't particularly want to be left alone, but eventually, everyone went to their separate quarters to decompress. She noted that there were no toilets here, obviously, because there was no food… but it also meant that there were no showers. She really could have used one just now, mostly because it might help her relax.
Were people sweating here, and needing showers? She hadn't noticed, which meant that the answer was probably no. But how could that be, if they all still had pulses, as Holly had indicated?
If they had circulation, they could bleed. Did that mean they could die here?
These questions hurt even her formidable brain for the moment, so she decided to explore the room. How would she spend her time over the next several weeks, or however long she was to be here? Though obviously, she hoped it wouldn't be longer than a day or two, and based on her experience with the Doctor, now that she was here, he would shift things into high gear.
Her getting "taken" had always been the plan, it just wasn't supposed to happen this soon, before he worked out what it meant, and where she was to "go."
She had faith that he would take care of it, and her, but she still had an indeterminate amount of time to wait…
She wandered over to the apparent "entertainment" alcove, which had a bookshelf and a table. The table had a flat wooden box piled high with decks of cards, compact board games, crosswords, Rubik's cubes, one of those little wooden cup toys with a small ball attached by a string… and the like. The bookshelf had a handful of mass-market romance novels, the entire Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series and a smattering of other popular fiction of the last ten years. Most of the books were medically-oriented – a handful of textbook and reference manuals, but also non-fiction accounts, such as Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, and a few of Kay Redfield Jamison's books. Most of those she had read, but she didn't think it sounded bad to revisit them, if her time here necessitated it.
She thought about that… her time here.
Indeterminate.
A little bit terrifying, even after the horrible pain and nausea had passed.
Though, it could be worse, of course. She was immeasurably glad to have Walt, Holly, Bella, Danielle, and Petra, who all seemed clever, normal, and helpful. And she was relatively sure of who they were: other humans, confused, and taken in the same way as she. These were the people they had been looking for in the first place, though, truth be told, Martha had been hoping for more answers, and more control, when she found them.
Still, they were not spectres, not alien decoys, or whatever the universe harboured to mess with people.
But she wasn't even sure where here was, apart from the group in general having decided that they were probably in another dimension. This was not helpful, obviously, because dimensions in the universe were infinite… as were universes.
She took a deep breath and tried not to despair, but instead count her blessings.
And to reassure herself that she was still her, Martha Jones, the Doctor's plucky Companion who was clever and kind and never gave up. Which meant that she would give herself a little while to acclimate, then set about figuring a way out.
But she had to learn more about "here" first. Back to the questions that hurt. She couldn't help but ask them.
If they didn't need to eat, did that mean they didn't age? Was time standing still? And was it truly a time anomaly, or had something been done to them, the captives? If biology was wonky here, did that mean physics was, as well? Of course it did, because they had all basically been snatched out of reality and brought here… she and Danielle in pieces. That seemed to support the idea that wherever they were, it constituted, or was part of, a time anomaly. The physics of it had affected their biology, even after the fact, with the pain and the nausea…
Physics wasn't her area, of course, especially not time itself. But she was no slouch with the sciences, and reckoned she knew more about time than anyone else here… she could work things out. Especially if biology was intertwined.
This was giving her hope.
And, were they being watched? And if so, how closely? And via what sort of channel? Cameras? Telepathy? Were there guards somewhere?
She needed to explore, and she wondered whether the others would let her inspect their rooms. She reckoned they would…
Case in point, she looked about and noticed, not for the first time, a window. It was on the one long wall in the room where there was nothing else – no furniture nor decoration there. It was about eight feet up, so, too high to see through. But there was a light coming through it - a restless light, tinted slightly blue. It gave the impression that there might be a swimming pool out there…
"Hey," said a voice to her left.
She turned, and Walt was standing there, smiling. The "exit" from the room was another alcove that had a door, and like the other alcoves, three steps. The other "residents" did not close their doors, so for now, Martha did not, either. She wondered if they were all afraid of what might happen if they shut themselves away from one another.
"Oh, hi," she said.
He came down the steps. "I don't suppose Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine, by Rudnytsky and Charon, ended up here?"
"Er… what?" she asked, with a chuckle.
"I was reading it," he said. "But it disappeared off my nightstand. Reckoned it might've ended up with you, since you're the med student."
"Oh," she said. "So the book selection is tailored to the individual."
"So it would seem," he said. "Apart from the Ian Fleming and Arthur Conan Doyle stuff, most of what was on my shelf was history books, and memoirs about teachers – since then we've mixed and matched and traded a lot. Holly had the Rudnytsky Charon book upon her arrival, and I decided to read it… thought it might give me some insight into Dr. Weimer."
"Ah."
"I mean… whatever her name is. The German shrink that put us all here. I suppose it was a sad attempt to try and control something, or learn something so as to be able to… I don't know."
"I understand," Martha said. "I've been wondering if there's a way out of here. A way I can help things along."
"Well, I suppose, if anyone can, you can. You and your Doctor."
"That's my hope. He's amazing and a genius and all that, and can crack the code, as it were, faster than anyone. But we're both better when we work together."
He smiled. "Sounds like a proper partnership."
"Perhaps," she sighed. Then she caught herself being wistful and shook it off. "Er… let's see."
She went over to the bookshelf, and Walt came out to the middle of the room to wait. She searched the books first to see whether there was any kind of organisational system, and there was. The book he wanted was a medical memoir by Rudyntsky, and she found it with other titles of the same ilk, in alphabetical order by author.
She plucked it off the shelf. "Here you go. Looks like your bookmark is still in it."
She approached Walt to hand him the book, and as she did so, he gestured toward the window. "Couldn't help noticing you noticing… that."
"Yeah. Is there a swimming pool?" she chuckled.
"No," Walt said sombrely. "We don't know what it is. Some kind of… I don't know what it is. It's a barrier of abstract light and movement."
The tone of his voice gave Martha a chill. Immediately, her smile faded, and she asked, "Why can't we see through it? I mean, why is the window way up there?"
He shrugged. "Who knows? Why is any of this happening?"
"Can you help me get a look at it?"
"Sure," he shrugged, and set the book on the floor. He walked over to the window and laced his hands together, cupping them at hip level. "Hop in."
She placed one foot in his hands, and he hoisted her up to the window, and she could quite easily see.
He had been right. It was, as he had described, a barrier of abstract light and movement. It looked, indeed, like a swimming pool with sun shining through it, but like it was set sideways into a wall almost, and surrounded with glass. But to the right and left, it seemed infinite.
"This is weird," she said.
"Yeah, you can say that again."
"I mean, it's not like the sensation of being underwater… like we're in a submarine or something. It feels like there's a space between wherever we are, and the blue barrier."
"You can see that?" he asked.
"Yeah," she mused. And she let go of the windowsill, and bent to put her hand on one of his shoulders. He bent as well, and she was able to hop off his hand-stirrups without any trouble. She put her hands on her hips, and said, "I need a closer look, Walt."
"Pray that you don't get one."
"Why do you say that?"
"There are six of us now," he said, his tone a bit dark, but also, somehow, matter-of-fact.
Her eyes grew wide. "What does that mean?"
"Look around, Martha. Everything comes in threes. Three steps up into each alcove," he said, gesturing to the 'bedroom' alcove to the right. "The living room alcove has three pieces of furniture, the sofa itself having three cushions."
"Oh. Okay…"
He crossed to the alcove that housed the bookshelf and games. "Three columns of bookshelf, each with six shelves," he pointed out. He then began pulling things out of the game box. "Three decks of cards, three of these wooden-things-with-a-ball-attached games, three little travel games: Sorry, Battleship, and Parcheesi. Three crossword books…"
"Okay, I see," Martha said. She looked more closely at the space.
The lamp at the bedside had a triangular base. The eiderdown also had a triangular pattern. The room had three livable alcoves, and the fourth – the exit - had a different colour of carpeting, as though to set it apart.
"Are they all like this?" she asked.
"Yep. Even the living quarters are three and three. Bella, Holly, and I in one. You, Petra, and Danielle in the other. Like two little rotundas connected by a walkway. If we measured it, we'd probably find that it's three feet wide, or some other creepy, meaningful measurement."
This surprised her. She hadn't ventured outside her room yet, so she hadn't noticed.
What she did notice was that Walt had gone pale.
"What's wrong?"
"It's all an indicator of what's to come. Trinity."
"Trinity?"
"We'll all cross over to become part of a trinity," he whispered. "Holly said we shouldn't tell you about it yet, because you need time to adjust but… you're obviously the investigative sort."
"I am, yeah," she said.
"I can see that you're not just going to stand still and wait for something to happen. And that's good."
"Walt, you're freaking me out."
"Am I?"
"What's happened? Clearly, you've seen things."
He nodded, and crossed back over to close the door. When he came back, his voice was soft, but he was no longer whispering.
"I was the second to arrive, and Holly was the third. Before Holly got here, Bella and I were just sort of going along, wondering what the hell to do, but once there were three of us…"
"Yes?"
"After a few days went by, and Holly got used to things, we got summoned to the…" and Walt pointed up to the window.
"Oh!" Martha said, genuinely surprised. "How?"
"We don't know," he said. "There was a… presence. A voice in our heads that said come, and next thing we knew, the big wall was gone, and we were dangling over... like, a gorge, or a void. Being pulled across the blue barrier. The voice was telling us that we would cross over to become part of a trinity…"
Martha closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she said, "To the Monoklino Abyss."
"Yes," he said.
"Whoa. Where did that come from?" she asked, her heart racing.
"Was there a voice in your head?" he asked, knowing the answer already.
"Yes," she replied. "Sort of. I mean… I guess there was, but it was more like I just knew it all of a sudden."
"And so it begins," he said to her.
"Damn," she whispered. "And I thought this would be easy."
"It' not all just card games and no weight-gain," he chuckled.
"Why didn't you get pulled across?" she asked.
"We each were grabbing onto our respective columns in our rooms, screaming, begging not to be taken anywhere else," he said. He swallowed hard. "The floor underneath us started to fall away, and… well, when you said it looked like there was a space between where we are and where the wall of blue begins, you weren't wrong. Just… white. White forever. And it was clear that we could fall."
"That sounds awful," she said to him. "Horrifying."
"Just… dangling. Like over a cliff, but there's no ground. Or there is, but there's too much fog or snow, or… maybe you fall and go splat, but it felt more likely that you'd just fall forever."
"The three of you? Together?"
"At the same time, but not together. We could hear each other, see each other. At the end, I could only hear screaming… Bella and Holly begging for… what? Life? This life? To be returned to each other and to me? We don't know."
"And whatever was threatening you, did it want to cause you to fall into that space, or pull you across into the blue?"
"If we didn't cooperate, we'd be dropped... but clearly we weren't. If we did cooperate, we would go across the blue barrier, which would be easier, more peaceful… but somehow in the long run, worse. Probably because we'd be giving them what they want. Either way, there would be no coming back."
He talked with wide eyes, staring at the floor, clearly reliving a trauma. This was why they didn't want to be apart. Martha had been able to see quite easily how and why they clung to one another in an environment like this, but now it was even more obvious. This was a shared suffering for all six of them, but a highly-specialised horror was experienced by Walt, along with Bella and Holly. They held onto one another, lest it happen again. They cared for her, Martha, and did everything they could to take their minds off of what was happening because they knew what six people could mean.
"Hmm…" she said, walking around in a circle now, as the Doctor might do.
"What?"
"Well, three things occur to me," she said. "Sorry – it's just happening that way. One, it seems like, whatever this is, consent is a big part of being able to rip people out of their existences."
"Cooperation from our spouses, you mean?"
"That, and getting you to agree to be pulled across into a trinity. It means that it's not impossible to do without our permission, but a lot harder. Like with my arrival, and Danielle's."
Walt nodded. "Okay, yeah."
"Two, the trinity thing makes a weird kind of sense. Tertia Trochos, the German shrink's species, means third wheel. She horns her way into partnerships, usurps one of the partners, but it's always and forever just a brand of messed-up trio, which actually explains a thing or two about why she wanted to concentrate on my so-called 'husband's' obsession with his ex."
"Oh. Yeah, I don't know anything about that…"
"And three: Walt, why were you dangled over the nothingness, threatened with bringing you across to become part of a trinity, but not brought across?"
He said, "The knowledge appeared, the voice spoke… whatever. It said we weren't ready."
"Maybe because you weren't ready to go willingly."
"Maybe. That makes sense. That we'd be returned to the status-quo here, and eventually would be worn down into thinking, how bad could it be?"
"So, you were dropped back in your rooms like nothing happened?"
"Yes, essentially. The wall went back up, and that was it. A few days later, Petra arrived, and we were no longer a trio."
"But now that we are basically two trios, you're all scared again."
"Yeah."
She frowned, gave it a good think, and walked around in a circle again. Walt just watched her.
"So, what's… I mean… why do we become part of a trinity? What's in it for them? And who are they? Is this all German Shrink's doing, or is she part of a bigger… thing?"
"How the hell should we know?" he asked her. "We were sort of hoping you might."
"The Doctor would know," she muttered. "I've got to figure a way to get in touch with him! Now that I've got the name of something to give him... Monoklino. Monoklino Abyss."
And then, instinctively, she pulled her mobile phone from her pocket. She had had it in her pocket when she'd been plucked out of reality… and there it was. In her hand. She opened it and it lit up, showing the time. She reckoned it was probably the time when she had last been in London, leaving Tesco, minding her life with the Doctor…
Walt chuckled.
"We've all tried that," he said. "It doesn't work."
She dialled the number she always dialled, to locate the Doctor in the TARDIS, and put it to her ear. A horrible tone came across… clearly it wouldn't work, as Walt had said.
"No," she agreed. "But if we could boost the signal…"
"And contact a different dimension?"
Martha's heart began to pound. "Contact a different dimension? Boost the signal to contact a different dimension! Yes!"
"Yes?"
"Boost the signal to contact a different dimension and home in on a particular man, in a particular vehicle!"
"Okay. Lost now."
She looked at the ring on her finger. "What was it Danielle said about this diamond?"
"What? I don't know?" Walt chuckled. "What are you on about?"
"She called it… what? Something like, perfect inside. Interior perfection. It's interiorally…"
"Interiorally is not a word," Walt said.
"Internally flawless!" Martha shouted, the phrase coming to her.
"Oh yeah. I remember that. I.F."
"Yes, that! I.F.! I have to find her!" Martha ran up the three steps toward the door and threw it open. "Danielle?"
"Yeah?" said a voice. Within a few seconds, Danielle appeared in one of the three doorways in the rotunda.
"You said this diamond was I.F., yeah?" Martha asked, holding out her left hand. "What does that mean?"
Danielle looked at her quizzically, then once again, pulled her hand in close, and inspected the diamond closely. "Well, you probably already know that a diamond consists of a tightly packed, three-dimensional network of carbon atoms."
"Yeah!"
"An I.F. diamond has especially strong bonds to its four neighboring carbon atoms."
"Creating strong faces, like with aluminium, but stronger, because it's…"
"Because it's diamond," Danielle said. Then she smiled. "If you're asking whether diamond is stronger than aluminium…"
"Heh," Walt chuckled from behind Martha. "Even I know that and I'm just a history teacher!"
Martha took back her hand, and said excitedly, "But a diamond has got the same FCC structure!"
"Face-centered cubic, yes. But its tetrahedral bonding pattern makes it stronger than the metallic bonding pattern of aluminium. Allowing for relatively easy movement of electrons, and making it highly conductive. Well, aluminium is highly conductive, and diamonds can be, in special circumstances."
Martha smiled. "You're a jeweller, eh?"
"I may or may not also have a Master's in molecular chemistry," Danielle shrugged. "Sort of what got me interested in jewels. I'm the world best-educated bauble vendor."
"What you are is a genius!" Martha shouted, then took Danielle's head in both hands, and kissed her cheek. "Do you think any of our friends knows anything about electronics?"
The Doctor was throwing the gears into place and jumping ahead in the TARDIS by twenty-four hours. Martha was gone, and he had to take Hilde Weth to task for it. But not too much, not too fast…
And to make this little ruse convincing, he couldn't go in later the same day – it was for this reason that he had also changed his clothes – out of his brown suit, and into blue. She was bound to notice, as their last meeting had had her so very focused on his necktie…
Things were changing fast. Revelations were coming.
Martha's presence and friendship were like a fruit that needed to be harvested at the right time… was that time upon them now? Was there something fresh to be known and felt with her? Something other than the running and jumping and problem solving?
Of course there was. There had to be. It felt different now. He felt panicked, like a mad man. He felt everything in his skin, in his pores, and he had to get in there, get Weth to talk. Get her to… to…
He needed Martha back. Now.
This needed to end. Now. So that they could get on with their lives, get on with whatever was next for them…
…which might be a thing, indeed.
But what were Martha's thoughts? Only one way to find out.
As he prepared to run, it occurred to him that he might find something highly unexpected in Hilde Weth's office, since he had never just popped in before, without an appointment. As far as he knew, the Tertia Trochos only worked on one partnership at a time, so what did Hilde Weth do in there when she wasn't expecting a visit from her mark?
And then something highly unexpected happened right there in the TARDIS.
The comm system screeched again, with another incoming communiqué from another dimension. He recognised the static…
But he also recognised the familiar brr-brr of a phone ringing underneath it. He cursed, and walked tensely back to the console.
The screen said it was Martha's phone, but…
"No way," he said out loud. He smiled. "Can you be this brilliant?"
*psst* She can. ;-)
Thoughts? Feelings? Revelations? I'd love a review! Thanks so much for reading!
Happy Holidays!
