Doctor Who: Time
Title: Time
Pairing: 10/Rose
Rating: T for now
Disclaimer: Not mine, but if your offering...
Summary: Post-Doomsday fix it of only mildly epic proportions. In which the Doctor, Rose and Donna save the Earth, Pete's World and a handful of others. Let's see how.
A/N: Sorry about the slowness between updates. It's been a bit hectice around my home but alls wel that ends well :D I promise to be more punctual about the whole thing now that summers here.
Also my apologies for the expansive liberties I've taken with physics here. But really, the Doctor, Liberties with physics? It was bound to happen ;)
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
“Doctor,” It seems he’s lost her “I’m afraid you’ll have to explain more than that.”
“Right.” His hands gestured vaguely, forming a ball in front of him “If everything solid, everything definite, definitive? Well, things like... Pompeii was, or like Australia existing is. Are the bits of fruit, the Time Vortex is the Jell-O.”
“With the TARDIS we can burrow through it and emerge upon another piece of fruit and the Jell-O just reforms around us. So we can take the shortest distance between two proverbial bits of pineapple. See, that’s where you lot have it wrong” The Doctor had begun to warm to his topic. Settling himself in the pilot’s chair and gesturing expansively.
“You think linear is the fastest, you’re catching on with how not everything is a straight line, but it’s certainly not the quickest. Best I can explain, and that’s quite well, wherever we travel I open a temporal corridor between two places and we just shift through. Et voila! The travel is really an illusion provided by our limited perceptions, because, if we just disappear and reappear, taking no apparent time - did we really travel at all?” The Doctor raised his eyebrows speculatively in a finale and contemplated taking out his specs for this next bit to add a bit of... ambience.
Donna thought she perhaps had bitten off more than she could chew.
“So if you’re still with me. The Time Vortex is the Jell-O to your pineapple. If you had the relative perception of the pineapple chunk that is. Because you are possessing of a TARDIS and a Time Lord to ferry you about, your perception is more like a person about to consume the Jell-O but that’s beside the point. Now if your hip to the physics of your era,” The Doctor decided upon donning the specs, and he pulled out a handy laser pointer as well. Might as well go for broke.
“If you accept that Jell-O is a wave and the pineapple chunks are particles, that is, the Jell-O, by nature, is in constant flux; while the pineapple is in a fixed state then one precludes the existence of the other in the same point in time and space.” Leaning back against the console and squinting one eye while sketching out a quick squiggle and dot on the wall of the TARDIS. “So a particle can’t be a wave and a wave can’t be a particle. A pineapple isn’t Jell-O and Jell-O isn’t a pineapple. And this metaphor is falling apart a bit, sorry.”
“But if you accept that matter is in constant movement, than a particle is in constant flux which makes it a wave, however a wave is not in a fixed state by its very definition. That’s the big argument of your day, really, you’re all looking at is a bit sideways and nothing will make definitive sense until 2038 when you lot discover the 119 element. But the comparison holds true for the Time Vortex.”
The Doctor took a deep breath in preparation. Donna blinked.
“The TARDIS allows us to manipulate the wave of the Time Vortex like a particle. That’s what this symbol here means.” Gesturing at the concentric rhombuses on the upper left corner of the Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor.
“When we activate the Temporal Flux Capacitator, that button over there, this should appear, and when we land it should disappear. “ Donna peered closer at the Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor
“But we’re not travelling are we?”
“Nope! That’s the thing.” He gave the Qonian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor a good shake and watched the symbols reappear on the screen “We are supposedly moving through a particle, not a wave, according to the Qonian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor. What’s more, this thing-a-ma-jig here” Donna leaned in observantly, while he circled what looked like a stylized exclamation point but was really the Qonian symbol for Bizonium Theorem, discovered by Louis the Hirsute in the 82nd century. “Means that not only is the Time Vortex no longer in flux, its centered. Anchored. Like a point in space and time was the epicentre of the Time Vortex. It’s unnatural. “
The Doctor sighed expansively, tucking away his laser pointer and removing his specs to rub the bridge of his nose, hoping to eradicate the beginnings of a migraine. Donna squinted speculatively at the Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor then at the Doctor.
“Maybe it’s broken?” She suggested, shaking it firmly for herself then closely inspecting the symbols as they were etched anew in the Qomian sand behind the crystallized panel. The Doctor caught up in his frustration, was taken aback b the rush of affection he felt for Donna, her brow furrowed as she inspected the Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor for physical flaws.
“That’s not a possibility. Qomian technology has a lifetime warranty and that’s Time Lord lifetime, not human.”
“Well the Etch-a-Sketch could still be broken. What’s this then?” Apparently, Donna had found a little scratch in the finish, which really wasn’t his fault. Rose had dropped it, really. Still it didn’t break then, now that was quality technology. They just didn’t make that anymore. Or yet.
“Donna, its fine, so says the ‘It’s functioning perfectly symbol.’” Really, it’s not as if Donna would know it was just the logo. But just as well... The Doctor snatched he Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor from her hands to point illustratively at the bottom right corner. Donna frowned at the Doctor, seemingly scrutinizing his beaming face more than the Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor.
The Doctor glanced down to the machine as if to confirm his earlier statement and suddenly thrust the apparatus into Donna’s hands before leaping around the console in a frenzy of turning knobs and pulling levers and pushing buttons.
“What? What’s going on?” Donna had stepped back a safe distance from the whirlwind of action and was now scrutinizing the Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor. Nothing seemed terribly different but then, she couldn’t really read it.
“See that swirly thing just adjacent to that boxish symbol. The Time Vortex, well, whatever it’s centered on, is moving.”
“What’s that mean? It’s a place it can’t be moving!”
“Exactly right Donna! Which is how I’m going to lock onto the signal...” Holding down the Continuum rudder while reaching out his left foot to push down the lever controlling the dispersion of Time stuff, he balanced against the console, squinting at the oscillating Time Engine, watching closely for the catch... And there!
“We’ve got it!” Releasing his pose and straightening up “Now the TARDIS will take us to this point as soon as it stops fluctuating long enough. Anywhere, any when, eh girl?” He patted the console before lurching into it as the TARDIS rocketed through time and space.
“Oi, watch it!” Donna stumbled into one of the coral struts and wrapped an arm around it, “Time sick, yeah!”
“Ha! We’re in pursuit, fast on their heels!” The Doctor grasped the console with both hands, bracing himself for the chase “Pass me the Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor.”
“The what?” Donna clung to the strut with one arm; the other clasped the monitor to her chest.
“The Qomian Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor!” Sticking one hand out in Donna’s general direction as the TARDIS shook its way through the Time Vortex in pursuit of the same.
“Huh?” Donna’s eyes were closed against the building nausea in the pit of her stomach.
“The Qomian Transit- Oh for, the Etch-A-Sketch!”
“You come get it! I’m not letting go until this thing gets some decent shocks.”
Muttering under his breath, the Doctor stumbled towards her, reaching out to grab the Qomain Transitory Spatial/Temporal Monitor from Donna’s outstretched hand. Staring at the screen while he braced himself against the console once more, he watched as the sand erased and rewrote itself again and again.
As focused as he was on the instrument, and as preoccupied Donna was with staving off Time sickness, neither noticed the faint golden glow radiating from the entrance to the TARDIS.