Pages from a Broken Book - Tipping Point
Title: Page Eleven: Tipping Point
Characters: Rose & 10.5
Beta: the oh-so-fantabulous jlrpuck
Rating: PG
Warning: Spoilery like crazy for Journey’s End.
Page Eleven of the Pages from a Broken Book series
Summary: He lives day-to-day, ticking each off in his head like a calendar. It was inevitable that one day, he would run out of room for marks. Told from 10.5’s POV.
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four ~ Page Five ~ Page Six ~ Page Seven ~ Page Eight ~ Page Nine ~ Page Ten
Tipping Point
The dream changes, night after night, although some elements remain the same. He always wakes with a scream lodged in his throat. He always wonders when it will finally go away.
He stands on the beach in Norway, stares at the waves because they are forever breaking, continuing into infinity, even if he has stopped moving, stopped changing. He cannot look away and hears the footsteps on the sand crunch crunch crunch. Rose, to his left, looking in the mirror as she adjusts her lipstick, slides her eyes from side to side to center them on her face. He does not quite recognize her; her hair is darker, her clothes are silkier. She turns to walk toward him, and he thinks she walks to him, but no - she’s walked past him to a man standing at the far end of the beach, her face breaking into a smile as she breaks into a run. He watches as she runs to Him, sees His arms take her, spin her around, sees them fly into the waves, unchanging, infinite, always.
The first time someone interrupts his reading to ask him a question, he doesn’t quite know how to respond.
“They said you’d know where to find it,” says the young man who stands next to his table in the Torchwood library. The boy is disheveled, dark circles around his eyes. A good thing he doesn’t hold anything in his arms, because he would certainly drop it and be too flustered to pick it up. “The librarians - they say you know every inch of the library.”
“What do you need?” he asks, somehow unable to be more than mildly irritated at the interruption.
“Analysis of the psychology of the Sycorax genome and its equivalent in advanced society structure of the Sontorans.”
He grins; he can’t help it. “Oh, I could tell you about the Sycorax. And the Sontorans. Follow me.”
He lectures the boy as they dive into the stacks; the boy struggles to keep up, physically-speaking. Mentally, he’s sound as a pound, and when they emerge from the stacks, both are weighted down by piles of books which are then tumbled onto the table next to his. They spend the day delighted by each other’s conversation.
A week later, a young woman appears at his table, holding a bit of metal the size of an egg in her hand.
“Timothy said you could help,” she says, obviously annoyed to ask for help at all. “He says it’s Sontoran, he says you’re the expert.”
He whips out his glasses and takes the object from her. “It’s not,” he says, examining it. “But I see why he thinks so. Look, see these marks? Not nearly even enough to be Sontoran, far more sophisticated species than whoever made this bit of crude workmanship.”
“So what is it?”
“Vulcan, maybe. Could be Candonian. Hold on, let’s see-"
He holds the thing at arm’s length and gives it a squeeze. Inexplicably, it bursts into flames, and he drops it suddenly, surprised how much the fire hurts. The young woman lets out a shriek and they both snuff out the flames. The metal object lays in the middle of his burnt papers, smoking but cool to the touch.
“I spent two weeks on those calculations,” he complains, but the young woman is now delighted.
“How’d you know to do that?”
“Lucky guess,” he says, as the Head Librarian rushes over, eyes glinting with anger.
“How many times must I say it, no fires in the-Oh, Doctor Noble! I’m sorry, didn’t know it was you.”
“Fire’s out,” he replies, almost jovial, and hands the metal egg back to the young woman. “Clever thing. What will you do with it?”
“Try to recreate it,” she says. “Can I come back if I get stuck?”
He says, “Of course,” before he has a chance to consider.
He stands on the beach in Norway, stares as if he has stopped moving, stopped changing. The mirror stretches the beach into infinity, but he is alone. Rose swims in the mirror with another man, but he doesn’t quite recognize them; their lives are darker, rougher. He walks toward them, his footsteps echo as though followed by a thousand people, but when he turns to look, he sees only the beach, the sand and the waves, unchanging, infinite, always.
He has been at Torchwood for four months when the director appears at his table in the library.
“John,” says the director pleasantly. “Lovely day.”
The director has been absent from his days since the first, which considering the overheard conversation in the stacks, he cannot help but think is an odd thing. There was no George Orwell in this universe, but he remembers 1984, and sometimes wonders if the stream of scientists, researchers, and field agents who appear at his table on a weekly if not daily basis are sent by the man standing before him.
“Lovely day,” he agrees, wary. “Can I help you?”
“You can, as a matter of fact,” says the director. “A small problem in the laboratory.”
“Mary’s fire egg?” he asks, flashing to the woman who appears once a week like clockwork to discuss her project. They have a brilliant hour looking at schematics and measurements, and he half wonders if he’s as much help to her as she seems to imply.
“No, Mary’s doing splendidly, thank you for asking. This is actually a bit of alien tech none of us can identify. Bit difficult to move, so Methuselah will have to come to the mountain, if you wouldn’t mind?”
He thinks he hears something in the director’s words, but follows him anyway, still tense, still uneasy. The lift takes them deep into the Tower at an unnerving speed; he wonders if he shouldn’t have left a note at his table, to tell Rose where he’s gone. Only, he reflects, he doesn’t actually know. They exit into a blank hallway, white and smooth, and the director leads him into a laboratory lined in stainless steel, with only a table in the center, and two worried men in lab coats standing nearby.
“Is this Doctor Noble?” asks one of the men anxiously.
He stares at the table, confused. “It’s a table,” he says, wondering what is going on.
“We know that,” snaps the man, and the director chuckles.
“It’s what’s on the table,” says the other man, far more amused than his companion.
His footsteps echo in the chamber as he approaches the table. He stretches out his hand to touch it - and his fingers fall on smooth, hard air.
“Invisible,” he says, surprised. “Well, that’s quite clever.”
“Not quite invisible,” says the director. “You’ll find, if you squint-"
He does, and sees it - the shimmer, like a thin waterfall in a spherical shape. He runs both hands around it. It is about the size of a basketball, warm to the touch, with seams running along it. He thinks he can feel it resonate.
“You lot are always running tests,” he says. “Where are they?”
The irritable man offers him a sheaf of papers filled with numbers and symbols. He puts on his glasses as he takes them, keeping one hand on the object, and scans the first page.
“From today?”
“Yes.”
He flips, one-handed, to the second page. “Last week?”
“Yes.”
He flips again. “And this?”
“A month ago.”
“How very interesting. It’s growing larger, heavier - and steadily less visible.”
The director smiles. “You see our dilemma, and why it is so well protected. What sort of thing expands and makes itself unnoticeable, if it does not mean to cause harm?”
He snorts, moving to the next page. “Humans - paranoid lot, you are. Can’t imagine it would be something good, could you?”
“What good could it possibly be?” says the irritated man.
“A time capsule,” he replies, handing back the papers and resting both hands on the object again. “Rather clever reverse one, actually - it moves backwards in time, I’ve only seen it once before. Quite harmless, because you see, it’s already opened, in your own past, perhaps - oh, three hundred years ago. It was about the size of a pea then, perfectly visible. In another two hundred years, it will be the size of an oven, and quite invisible. You won’t see it, you won’t know it’s there - but it’ll open up, and gather up all the ideas of all the people nearby, until it’s quite full, and then close up and begin its journey to the past. By the time it’s done, all those marvelous ideas will have condensed themselves into a single, most important thought - and whoever runs across the capsule will take that thought for themselves. Perpetuating the cycle. Lovely thing, really, when it’s done properly.”
“That’s not possible,” says the irritated man. “If it’s already opened-"
“Anything is possible.” He steps back then, looking at the empty air where the sphere sits. “Has it been here all this time?”
“We found it three months ago,” says the director. “If what you say is true - this has the potential to be a useful tool.”
Like me, he thinks, and frowns. “I suppose. You can’t control it, though. All those thoughts - it’s not you who decides what emerges.”
“Keep studying,” the director tells the coated men, and takes his elbow. “John, thank you. You’ve been a tremendous help to us.”
“Yes,” he replies, still troubled, not wanting to take his eyes off the sphere. The director continues talking, down the hall, in the lift, but he doesn’t hear him. His thoughts are whirling, and when the director stops on the level with his office, he smiles back at him.
“I can call on you again, should need arise, yes?”
“Yes,” he repeats, and the doors slide shut, leaving him alone in the lift. He slumps against the wall, his thoughts so full of the sphere below that he doesn’t even bother to press the button that will take him to the library. He has no idea how much time passes as he rides the lift up and down; when it finally opens to the library, he exits, walks past the librarians, finds his table, untouched. He sits, staring out the windows onto London below, where people scurry from one place to the other, cars zip through intersections, everyone in a drastic hurry, never stopping once to look around them.
The lights begin to blink out as the librarians close down the library. He hears them move to reshelve books left on tables; gently persuade researchers to leave. The library is a flutter of pages and footsteps, and soon, the Head Librarian returns, her smile not quite reaching her worried eyes.
“Doctor Noble? Are you all right?”
It startles him, and he answers, knowing it’s a lie. “I’m always all right. Yes, thank you.”
“Miss Tyler will be waiting,” says the librarian. “It’s all right, leave your books as they are - they’ll be all right for one night.”
“Thank you,” he repeats, and takes the stairs down, letting the air rush past his face, ruffle his hair, as he leaps from landing to landing. His coat billows behind him; he can almost pretend he’s racing somewhere, adventure ahead, life or death...or death...or death....
He wanders home in a fog, slipping his key into the lock to find it already undone; the door slides open, and then Rose is there, her arms wrap around his shoulders, her face is buried in his neck. She trembles, and he holds her.
“Where were you?”
“There’s a sphere in the basement of Torchwood,” he says, stumbling over the words. “The director-"
Her breath catches, she pulls away. Her eyes are full of unshed tears and her lips are very red.
“He wants to use it as a weapon,” he continues, his voice numb. “It’s a time capsule, only it works in reverse, takes messages from the future to the past. He sees it as a weapon, put his own ideas and thoughts into it, all in the name of keeping humans safe.”
She takes his hand and holds it tightly; his breath catches now. The thoughts that have spun in his head settle now, as if him speaking the words have given them reason to breathe.
“And I can’t stop him.”
He pulls from Rose, walks past her as if in a fog, into the little sitting room, into the kitchen, into the hall, back to their bedroom. His thoughts are calm but he is anxious, unable to stand still. Rose follows him.
“I’m trapped - in this body, in this time, on this planet. I’m trapped, and I can’t do anything about it. There’s no escape, there’s no way to make sure that whatever goes into that capsule is good and reasonable. How can I make sure he doesn’t do what he wants, doesn’t turn what ought to be a wonderful and fantastic present into a weapon against his own kind? He doesn’t know its power! I can’t even explain it to him - he’s human, his brain is too small for it! He can’t possibly understand - he can’t comprehend - how infinitely unstable time is. He’ll never be able to see that turning that capsule into a weapon could end in the capsule having never existed in the first place.”
Rose leans against the doorframe, almost afraid to enter when he shouts and rails. He takes her by the shoulders; she remains limp in his hands.
“You know, Rose. You know - you held the Vortex in yourself once upon a time - you know it can’t be controlled. It nearly killed you! It nearly killed Donna! He couldn’t know. I can’t hope to tell him.”
Her mouth opens; he can’t bear the thought of hearing her voice.
“There’s nothing I can do here, Rose - nothing. I’m useless. I’m useless to Torchwood and useless to you and useless to myself. I can’t be the man I was and I can’t be the man you want me to be - I don’t fit here. I don’t fit anywhere. I’m making a mess of everything I touch because I know what ought to be done and I can’t do it.”
One of the tears in her eyes slides down her cheek; he feels his heart break in time.
“I’m small, Rose. That’s all I am - small, insignificant, human. And you’ll hate me for it, someday you’ll wake up and realize I’m not who you think I am.”
“No,” whispers Rose.
His hands drop from her arms, but she takes his head in her own hands, and holds onto him as he backs away.
“No,” she repeats, louder now, and she lifts up and kisses him. He pushes her away, gasping for air.
“Rose,” he says, but she interrupts him again.
“You’re not human - you’ve never been human! Can’t you tell? You’ve been trying for so long to only be human - and you’re killing us both. Every day we say a little less to each other; every night we move a little bit slower. Every time you make love to me, it’s less and less you. You’re only marking time.”
“That’s what human do,” he insists, and she shakes her head.
“We don’t mark time - we revel in it. We cherish every minute, we make the most whatever we’re given. You’re doing everything but marking it - you’re trying to ignore its passage entirely. You’re running from it.”
He sees her then, standing before him - sees her, in the dim light of their bedroom. She isn’t the nineteen-year old who swung on a cable to save him from falling into the Nestene Consciousness. She isn’t the girl who absorbed the Time Vortex, nor the girl who defied him to help send the Daleks and Cybermen into the Void.
No, she’s a woman now, her face a little older, a little sadder, with a few more lines than before, a bit less make-up, hair not quite as blonde. He wonders when she became timeless for him; he wonders if he will always see the strong and vibrant 19-year-old, even when she’s withered and grey.
“Have you ever once been happy here?” she asks him. He thinks of Timothy, and Mary, and the others who came to his table. He thinks of the afternoons with them, solving problems, discussing solutions. The moment in the laboratory with the sphere, when everything was perfectly clear, a timeline stretching in directions he would always be unable to follow.
He thinks of the moment on the mountain, unbound by gravity, flying through the air, with Rose in his arms.
“Yes,” he says.
She smiles, one that reaches her eyes and makes the skin there crinkle a little. “Then do that.”
“It’s not Torchwood.”
“I don’t care if you never go to Torchwood again,” says Rose, choking back a laugh, and he hugs her tight.
He stares, alone on the sand, the mirror before him. The man there is laughing, deep and throaty and mean. Rose is nearby, just within reach, dancing in the waves. He stares in the mirror and does not recognize the man he sees.
He stares the director in the eye. “I can’t continue working here.”
“I wondered when you would know,” says the director, surprising him. “We’ll let you go, of course - you’ve never signed a contract, so we have no hold on you.”
He inhales, and starts again. “The sphere-"
“Quite safe.”
“It should be returned.”
The director is silent. “Why? It could be very useful.”
“Not for you. Not for how you want it to be.”
“I know you’re clever, John - it’s one of the reasons I wanted you here,” begins the director. “But I dare say the lot of us could figure out how to use that sphere properly, if given time - and you say we have two hundred years. Such potential, John - such potential to save so many of us-”
“Or kill us all,” he says, and they stare at each other for long moments.
“It’s already open, if what you say is true,” says the director.
“Time is not black and white. I told your president once, I told him not to ask. He ignored me, and he died. Are you really going to doubt me now?”
The director pales, and turns to the papers on his desk. His hands shake. “Take it,” he says gruffly. “But, John - should I need your help again, you will give it.”
It is not given as a request; he doesn’t assume it was meant to be. “Always,” he replies, feeling a sort of giddy relief, and leaves without another word spoken.
The sphere fits into a satchel, and no one stops him on the way out. It is heavy, but not terribly so. The paperwork he finds with it gives him the address where it was found. He emerges from the Tube in the center of London, near the Templar Grounds, and he cannot think of a better place for it.
He walks through the Grounds, taking no notice of the gates or guards, who take no notice of him. It is quiet there, stone and brick and trees, all neatly divided by gates and metal workings. He feels calm there, holding the fate of the Earth in his satchel, the birds in the trees, the far-off cars on the road he can’t see. He walks past the Inner Temple, the Judicial Houses, and finds himself suddenly wandering around what looks like a university campus, though he’s fairly certain there was never a university there before. Students mill about in the sunshine, and a football bounds across the grass to land at his feet. He kicks it back to a group of young men who shout their thanks and continue their game; he waves, half smiling, and continues on.
The groups near him discuss history, economics, mathematics. His ears perk, and he thinks of the sphere in his satchel; a good place to leave it, this, and he wonders if he can put it in a tree, or should find the library, when he overhears a tidbit of the conversation nearest to him.
“No, you’ve got it all wrong, you can’t just assume that the conjugate variables are thermal, you’ve got to consider the mechanical and chemical as well. Think of it like a triangle.”
“More like an octagon, really,” he interrupts, and the group turns to look at him, astonished. “Thermodynamics, yes? You’ve got the main three, yes, but there’s five others to consider: electrical, magnetic, surface, elasticity, and gravitational potential.”
“That’s too advanced for this,” says the young woman who was speaking. Her dark hair is pulled back from her face, and glasses perch on her nose; she almost reminds him of the young woman from Cardiff, in Torchwood and with the Gelth, and he recognizes her accent and takes a chance.
“Gwen, isn’t it?” The girl’s eyes widen, and she nods. He kneels next to them, and looks in on the schematics they have spread in the center of their circle. “Now, you can ignore those for the general bits and pieces, kiddy work really, but whatever numbers you come up with aren’t going to work in real life, they’re only to please your professor and show that you’re all good little monkeys following a plan. If you were to try your-" He frowns, examining the papers. “What is this?”
“Hydraulic automotive sailboat,” offers one of the young men.
“Oh, clever,” he says, admiringly. “Think of this yourself?”
“Yes,” says Gwen, while the boy says, “No.”
He laughs, and whips out his glasses. He looks around the group for the first time; there’s four of them: Gwen, two young men, and an older gentleman, who sits and watches him with a bemused expression. “Which of you drew this out?”
“I did,” says the first young man. “Henry.”
He reaches out and shakes Henry’s hand. “Good show, Henry. Lovely boat here. Only it won’t float. Want me to explain why?”
“Please,” says the older gentleman. “I’ve explained five times now, I’d like to see if you can knock it through his thick skull.”
“Now, now, just because he’s young-"
“Youth is no excuse for ignorance, particularly monkeys striving to impress their professor. But please.” The man waves him on, and in ten minutes Henry understands what he has done wrong, and Gwen has made a good, if incompatible suggestion, which Roger modifies to correct the problem. The three of them roll up the schematics and race away to a harder surface, where they can make their corrections without grass stains.
“You won’t join them?” he asks the older gentleman, who hasn’t moved from his place on the grass.
“They don’t need their professor tagging along,” says the man, still amused. “Particularly when you’ve trumped me for the day. Where do you teach?”
He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, but he is, as well as an odd feeling he doesn’t quite recognize. “I...don’t. Not anymore. Did once. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were - I apologize for interrupting your lesson.”
“Ah, not a lesson, just a bit of helpful advice. Monkeys, indeed. They’ll come find you now, I expect - care to join me for tea? I liked your explanation of the hydraulics, I would very much like to hear more.”
“Of course,” he says, and helps the other man up.
“Doctor Emmett Jacobs,” says the professor. “And you?”
“Doctor John Noble,” he replies, without hesitation, and the man smiles.
“Doctor,” says Doctor Jacobs by way of greeting, the most natural thing, and he finds he doesn’t mind the moniker, nor does he mind when Doctor Jacobs continues to use it. They spend the rest of the morning in the nearest tea house, arguing and discussing and throwing their hands in the air, and at lunch, Doctor Jacobs invites him to his laboratory, where they continue the discussion, but this time with samples, and break three windows in the process, and cause numerous pigeons to experience heart attacks.
He walks home, the satchel with the sphere having safely been stored in a cabinet in Doctor Jacobs’s laboratory, because he has been invited to return the next day, and it is heavy to carry. His steps are light, he almost whistles. He remembers the frightened looks on the pigeons as they flapped away, the way the students in the quad below jumped at the sound of breaking glass.
How much of him is human, anyway? How much of him still alien? He doesn’t know. He thinks he knows how to find out. He wonders if it matters at all.
Rose is waiting for him at the door, and he kisses her, resting his hands on her cheeks and pressing his body against hers. She looks 19 and 24 and all the ages in between, and she is timeless for him, and he is sure he is timeless for her.
That night, they make love with the lights on.
He stares in the mirror and does not recognize the man reflected there. The man who stares back smiles, as though he likes what he sees.
Jump to Page Twelve
Characters: Rose & 10.5
Beta: the oh-so-fantabulous jlrpuck
Rating: PG
Warning: Spoilery like crazy for Journey’s End.
Page Eleven of the Pages from a Broken Book series
Summary: He lives day-to-day, ticking each off in his head like a calendar. It was inevitable that one day, he would run out of room for marks. Told from 10.5’s POV.
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four ~ Page Five ~ Page Six ~ Page Seven ~ Page Eight ~ Page Nine ~ Page Ten
Tipping Point
The dream changes, night after night, although some elements remain the same. He always wakes with a scream lodged in his throat. He always wonders when it will finally go away.
He stands on the beach in Norway, stares at the waves because they are forever breaking, continuing into infinity, even if he has stopped moving, stopped changing. He cannot look away and hears the footsteps on the sand crunch crunch crunch. Rose, to his left, looking in the mirror as she adjusts her lipstick, slides her eyes from side to side to center them on her face. He does not quite recognize her; her hair is darker, her clothes are silkier. She turns to walk toward him, and he thinks she walks to him, but no - she’s walked past him to a man standing at the far end of the beach, her face breaking into a smile as she breaks into a run. He watches as she runs to Him, sees His arms take her, spin her around, sees them fly into the waves, unchanging, infinite, always.
The first time someone interrupts his reading to ask him a question, he doesn’t quite know how to respond.
“They said you’d know where to find it,” says the young man who stands next to his table in the Torchwood library. The boy is disheveled, dark circles around his eyes. A good thing he doesn’t hold anything in his arms, because he would certainly drop it and be too flustered to pick it up. “The librarians - they say you know every inch of the library.”
“What do you need?” he asks, somehow unable to be more than mildly irritated at the interruption.
“Analysis of the psychology of the Sycorax genome and its equivalent in advanced society structure of the Sontorans.”
He grins; he can’t help it. “Oh, I could tell you about the Sycorax. And the Sontorans. Follow me.”
He lectures the boy as they dive into the stacks; the boy struggles to keep up, physically-speaking. Mentally, he’s sound as a pound, and when they emerge from the stacks, both are weighted down by piles of books which are then tumbled onto the table next to his. They spend the day delighted by each other’s conversation.
A week later, a young woman appears at his table, holding a bit of metal the size of an egg in her hand.
“Timothy said you could help,” she says, obviously annoyed to ask for help at all. “He says it’s Sontoran, he says you’re the expert.”
He whips out his glasses and takes the object from her. “It’s not,” he says, examining it. “But I see why he thinks so. Look, see these marks? Not nearly even enough to be Sontoran, far more sophisticated species than whoever made this bit of crude workmanship.”
“So what is it?”
“Vulcan, maybe. Could be Candonian. Hold on, let’s see-"
He holds the thing at arm’s length and gives it a squeeze. Inexplicably, it bursts into flames, and he drops it suddenly, surprised how much the fire hurts. The young woman lets out a shriek and they both snuff out the flames. The metal object lays in the middle of his burnt papers, smoking but cool to the touch.
“I spent two weeks on those calculations,” he complains, but the young woman is now delighted.
“How’d you know to do that?”
“Lucky guess,” he says, as the Head Librarian rushes over, eyes glinting with anger.
“How many times must I say it, no fires in the-Oh, Doctor Noble! I’m sorry, didn’t know it was you.”
“Fire’s out,” he replies, almost jovial, and hands the metal egg back to the young woman. “Clever thing. What will you do with it?”
“Try to recreate it,” she says. “Can I come back if I get stuck?”
He says, “Of course,” before he has a chance to consider.
He stands on the beach in Norway, stares as if he has stopped moving, stopped changing. The mirror stretches the beach into infinity, but he is alone. Rose swims in the mirror with another man, but he doesn’t quite recognize them; their lives are darker, rougher. He walks toward them, his footsteps echo as though followed by a thousand people, but when he turns to look, he sees only the beach, the sand and the waves, unchanging, infinite, always.
He has been at Torchwood for four months when the director appears at his table in the library.
“John,” says the director pleasantly. “Lovely day.”
The director has been absent from his days since the first, which considering the overheard conversation in the stacks, he cannot help but think is an odd thing. There was no George Orwell in this universe, but he remembers 1984, and sometimes wonders if the stream of scientists, researchers, and field agents who appear at his table on a weekly if not daily basis are sent by the man standing before him.
“Lovely day,” he agrees, wary. “Can I help you?”
“You can, as a matter of fact,” says the director. “A small problem in the laboratory.”
“Mary’s fire egg?” he asks, flashing to the woman who appears once a week like clockwork to discuss her project. They have a brilliant hour looking at schematics and measurements, and he half wonders if he’s as much help to her as she seems to imply.
“No, Mary’s doing splendidly, thank you for asking. This is actually a bit of alien tech none of us can identify. Bit difficult to move, so Methuselah will have to come to the mountain, if you wouldn’t mind?”
He thinks he hears something in the director’s words, but follows him anyway, still tense, still uneasy. The lift takes them deep into the Tower at an unnerving speed; he wonders if he shouldn’t have left a note at his table, to tell Rose where he’s gone. Only, he reflects, he doesn’t actually know. They exit into a blank hallway, white and smooth, and the director leads him into a laboratory lined in stainless steel, with only a table in the center, and two worried men in lab coats standing nearby.
“Is this Doctor Noble?” asks one of the men anxiously.
He stares at the table, confused. “It’s a table,” he says, wondering what is going on.
“We know that,” snaps the man, and the director chuckles.
“It’s what’s on the table,” says the other man, far more amused than his companion.
His footsteps echo in the chamber as he approaches the table. He stretches out his hand to touch it - and his fingers fall on smooth, hard air.
“Invisible,” he says, surprised. “Well, that’s quite clever.”
“Not quite invisible,” says the director. “You’ll find, if you squint-"
He does, and sees it - the shimmer, like a thin waterfall in a spherical shape. He runs both hands around it. It is about the size of a basketball, warm to the touch, with seams running along it. He thinks he can feel it resonate.
“You lot are always running tests,” he says. “Where are they?”
The irritable man offers him a sheaf of papers filled with numbers and symbols. He puts on his glasses as he takes them, keeping one hand on the object, and scans the first page.
“From today?”
“Yes.”
He flips, one-handed, to the second page. “Last week?”
“Yes.”
He flips again. “And this?”
“A month ago.”
“How very interesting. It’s growing larger, heavier - and steadily less visible.”
The director smiles. “You see our dilemma, and why it is so well protected. What sort of thing expands and makes itself unnoticeable, if it does not mean to cause harm?”
He snorts, moving to the next page. “Humans - paranoid lot, you are. Can’t imagine it would be something good, could you?”
“What good could it possibly be?” says the irritated man.
“A time capsule,” he replies, handing back the papers and resting both hands on the object again. “Rather clever reverse one, actually - it moves backwards in time, I’ve only seen it once before. Quite harmless, because you see, it’s already opened, in your own past, perhaps - oh, three hundred years ago. It was about the size of a pea then, perfectly visible. In another two hundred years, it will be the size of an oven, and quite invisible. You won’t see it, you won’t know it’s there - but it’ll open up, and gather up all the ideas of all the people nearby, until it’s quite full, and then close up and begin its journey to the past. By the time it’s done, all those marvelous ideas will have condensed themselves into a single, most important thought - and whoever runs across the capsule will take that thought for themselves. Perpetuating the cycle. Lovely thing, really, when it’s done properly.”
“That’s not possible,” says the irritated man. “If it’s already opened-"
“Anything is possible.” He steps back then, looking at the empty air where the sphere sits. “Has it been here all this time?”
“We found it three months ago,” says the director. “If what you say is true - this has the potential to be a useful tool.”
Like me, he thinks, and frowns. “I suppose. You can’t control it, though. All those thoughts - it’s not you who decides what emerges.”
“Keep studying,” the director tells the coated men, and takes his elbow. “John, thank you. You’ve been a tremendous help to us.”
“Yes,” he replies, still troubled, not wanting to take his eyes off the sphere. The director continues talking, down the hall, in the lift, but he doesn’t hear him. His thoughts are whirling, and when the director stops on the level with his office, he smiles back at him.
“I can call on you again, should need arise, yes?”
“Yes,” he repeats, and the doors slide shut, leaving him alone in the lift. He slumps against the wall, his thoughts so full of the sphere below that he doesn’t even bother to press the button that will take him to the library. He has no idea how much time passes as he rides the lift up and down; when it finally opens to the library, he exits, walks past the librarians, finds his table, untouched. He sits, staring out the windows onto London below, where people scurry from one place to the other, cars zip through intersections, everyone in a drastic hurry, never stopping once to look around them.
The lights begin to blink out as the librarians close down the library. He hears them move to reshelve books left on tables; gently persuade researchers to leave. The library is a flutter of pages and footsteps, and soon, the Head Librarian returns, her smile not quite reaching her worried eyes.
“Doctor Noble? Are you all right?”
It startles him, and he answers, knowing it’s a lie. “I’m always all right. Yes, thank you.”
“Miss Tyler will be waiting,” says the librarian. “It’s all right, leave your books as they are - they’ll be all right for one night.”
“Thank you,” he repeats, and takes the stairs down, letting the air rush past his face, ruffle his hair, as he leaps from landing to landing. His coat billows behind him; he can almost pretend he’s racing somewhere, adventure ahead, life or death...or death...or death....
He wanders home in a fog, slipping his key into the lock to find it already undone; the door slides open, and then Rose is there, her arms wrap around his shoulders, her face is buried in his neck. She trembles, and he holds her.
“Where were you?”
“There’s a sphere in the basement of Torchwood,” he says, stumbling over the words. “The director-"
Her breath catches, she pulls away. Her eyes are full of unshed tears and her lips are very red.
“He wants to use it as a weapon,” he continues, his voice numb. “It’s a time capsule, only it works in reverse, takes messages from the future to the past. He sees it as a weapon, put his own ideas and thoughts into it, all in the name of keeping humans safe.”
She takes his hand and holds it tightly; his breath catches now. The thoughts that have spun in his head settle now, as if him speaking the words have given them reason to breathe.
“And I can’t stop him.”
He pulls from Rose, walks past her as if in a fog, into the little sitting room, into the kitchen, into the hall, back to their bedroom. His thoughts are calm but he is anxious, unable to stand still. Rose follows him.
“I’m trapped - in this body, in this time, on this planet. I’m trapped, and I can’t do anything about it. There’s no escape, there’s no way to make sure that whatever goes into that capsule is good and reasonable. How can I make sure he doesn’t do what he wants, doesn’t turn what ought to be a wonderful and fantastic present into a weapon against his own kind? He doesn’t know its power! I can’t even explain it to him - he’s human, his brain is too small for it! He can’t possibly understand - he can’t comprehend - how infinitely unstable time is. He’ll never be able to see that turning that capsule into a weapon could end in the capsule having never existed in the first place.”
Rose leans against the doorframe, almost afraid to enter when he shouts and rails. He takes her by the shoulders; she remains limp in his hands.
“You know, Rose. You know - you held the Vortex in yourself once upon a time - you know it can’t be controlled. It nearly killed you! It nearly killed Donna! He couldn’t know. I can’t hope to tell him.”
Her mouth opens; he can’t bear the thought of hearing her voice.
“There’s nothing I can do here, Rose - nothing. I’m useless. I’m useless to Torchwood and useless to you and useless to myself. I can’t be the man I was and I can’t be the man you want me to be - I don’t fit here. I don’t fit anywhere. I’m making a mess of everything I touch because I know what ought to be done and I can’t do it.”
One of the tears in her eyes slides down her cheek; he feels his heart break in time.
“I’m small, Rose. That’s all I am - small, insignificant, human. And you’ll hate me for it, someday you’ll wake up and realize I’m not who you think I am.”
“No,” whispers Rose.
His hands drop from her arms, but she takes his head in her own hands, and holds onto him as he backs away.
“No,” she repeats, louder now, and she lifts up and kisses him. He pushes her away, gasping for air.
“Rose,” he says, but she interrupts him again.
“You’re not human - you’ve never been human! Can’t you tell? You’ve been trying for so long to only be human - and you’re killing us both. Every day we say a little less to each other; every night we move a little bit slower. Every time you make love to me, it’s less and less you. You’re only marking time.”
“That’s what human do,” he insists, and she shakes her head.
“We don’t mark time - we revel in it. We cherish every minute, we make the most whatever we’re given. You’re doing everything but marking it - you’re trying to ignore its passage entirely. You’re running from it.”
He sees her then, standing before him - sees her, in the dim light of their bedroom. She isn’t the nineteen-year old who swung on a cable to save him from falling into the Nestene Consciousness. She isn’t the girl who absorbed the Time Vortex, nor the girl who defied him to help send the Daleks and Cybermen into the Void.
No, she’s a woman now, her face a little older, a little sadder, with a few more lines than before, a bit less make-up, hair not quite as blonde. He wonders when she became timeless for him; he wonders if he will always see the strong and vibrant 19-year-old, even when she’s withered and grey.
“Have you ever once been happy here?” she asks him. He thinks of Timothy, and Mary, and the others who came to his table. He thinks of the afternoons with them, solving problems, discussing solutions. The moment in the laboratory with the sphere, when everything was perfectly clear, a timeline stretching in directions he would always be unable to follow.
He thinks of the moment on the mountain, unbound by gravity, flying through the air, with Rose in his arms.
“Yes,” he says.
She smiles, one that reaches her eyes and makes the skin there crinkle a little. “Then do that.”
“It’s not Torchwood.”
“I don’t care if you never go to Torchwood again,” says Rose, choking back a laugh, and he hugs her tight.
He stares, alone on the sand, the mirror before him. The man there is laughing, deep and throaty and mean. Rose is nearby, just within reach, dancing in the waves. He stares in the mirror and does not recognize the man he sees.
He stares the director in the eye. “I can’t continue working here.”
“I wondered when you would know,” says the director, surprising him. “We’ll let you go, of course - you’ve never signed a contract, so we have no hold on you.”
He inhales, and starts again. “The sphere-"
“Quite safe.”
“It should be returned.”
The director is silent. “Why? It could be very useful.”
“Not for you. Not for how you want it to be.”
“I know you’re clever, John - it’s one of the reasons I wanted you here,” begins the director. “But I dare say the lot of us could figure out how to use that sphere properly, if given time - and you say we have two hundred years. Such potential, John - such potential to save so many of us-”
“Or kill us all,” he says, and they stare at each other for long moments.
“It’s already open, if what you say is true,” says the director.
“Time is not black and white. I told your president once, I told him not to ask. He ignored me, and he died. Are you really going to doubt me now?”
The director pales, and turns to the papers on his desk. His hands shake. “Take it,” he says gruffly. “But, John - should I need your help again, you will give it.”
It is not given as a request; he doesn’t assume it was meant to be. “Always,” he replies, feeling a sort of giddy relief, and leaves without another word spoken.
The sphere fits into a satchel, and no one stops him on the way out. It is heavy, but not terribly so. The paperwork he finds with it gives him the address where it was found. He emerges from the Tube in the center of London, near the Templar Grounds, and he cannot think of a better place for it.
He walks through the Grounds, taking no notice of the gates or guards, who take no notice of him. It is quiet there, stone and brick and trees, all neatly divided by gates and metal workings. He feels calm there, holding the fate of the Earth in his satchel, the birds in the trees, the far-off cars on the road he can’t see. He walks past the Inner Temple, the Judicial Houses, and finds himself suddenly wandering around what looks like a university campus, though he’s fairly certain there was never a university there before. Students mill about in the sunshine, and a football bounds across the grass to land at his feet. He kicks it back to a group of young men who shout their thanks and continue their game; he waves, half smiling, and continues on.
The groups near him discuss history, economics, mathematics. His ears perk, and he thinks of the sphere in his satchel; a good place to leave it, this, and he wonders if he can put it in a tree, or should find the library, when he overhears a tidbit of the conversation nearest to him.
“No, you’ve got it all wrong, you can’t just assume that the conjugate variables are thermal, you’ve got to consider the mechanical and chemical as well. Think of it like a triangle.”
“More like an octagon, really,” he interrupts, and the group turns to look at him, astonished. “Thermodynamics, yes? You’ve got the main three, yes, but there’s five others to consider: electrical, magnetic, surface, elasticity, and gravitational potential.”
“That’s too advanced for this,” says the young woman who was speaking. Her dark hair is pulled back from her face, and glasses perch on her nose; she almost reminds him of the young woman from Cardiff, in Torchwood and with the Gelth, and he recognizes her accent and takes a chance.
“Gwen, isn’t it?” The girl’s eyes widen, and she nods. He kneels next to them, and looks in on the schematics they have spread in the center of their circle. “Now, you can ignore those for the general bits and pieces, kiddy work really, but whatever numbers you come up with aren’t going to work in real life, they’re only to please your professor and show that you’re all good little monkeys following a plan. If you were to try your-" He frowns, examining the papers. “What is this?”
“Hydraulic automotive sailboat,” offers one of the young men.
“Oh, clever,” he says, admiringly. “Think of this yourself?”
“Yes,” says Gwen, while the boy says, “No.”
He laughs, and whips out his glasses. He looks around the group for the first time; there’s four of them: Gwen, two young men, and an older gentleman, who sits and watches him with a bemused expression. “Which of you drew this out?”
“I did,” says the first young man. “Henry.”
He reaches out and shakes Henry’s hand. “Good show, Henry. Lovely boat here. Only it won’t float. Want me to explain why?”
“Please,” says the older gentleman. “I’ve explained five times now, I’d like to see if you can knock it through his thick skull.”
“Now, now, just because he’s young-"
“Youth is no excuse for ignorance, particularly monkeys striving to impress their professor. But please.” The man waves him on, and in ten minutes Henry understands what he has done wrong, and Gwen has made a good, if incompatible suggestion, which Roger modifies to correct the problem. The three of them roll up the schematics and race away to a harder surface, where they can make their corrections without grass stains.
“You won’t join them?” he asks the older gentleman, who hasn’t moved from his place on the grass.
“They don’t need their professor tagging along,” says the man, still amused. “Particularly when you’ve trumped me for the day. Where do you teach?”
He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, but he is, as well as an odd feeling he doesn’t quite recognize. “I...don’t. Not anymore. Did once. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were - I apologize for interrupting your lesson.”
“Ah, not a lesson, just a bit of helpful advice. Monkeys, indeed. They’ll come find you now, I expect - care to join me for tea? I liked your explanation of the hydraulics, I would very much like to hear more.”
“Of course,” he says, and helps the other man up.
“Doctor Emmett Jacobs,” says the professor. “And you?”
“Doctor John Noble,” he replies, without hesitation, and the man smiles.
“Doctor,” says Doctor Jacobs by way of greeting, the most natural thing, and he finds he doesn’t mind the moniker, nor does he mind when Doctor Jacobs continues to use it. They spend the rest of the morning in the nearest tea house, arguing and discussing and throwing their hands in the air, and at lunch, Doctor Jacobs invites him to his laboratory, where they continue the discussion, but this time with samples, and break three windows in the process, and cause numerous pigeons to experience heart attacks.
He walks home, the satchel with the sphere having safely been stored in a cabinet in Doctor Jacobs’s laboratory, because he has been invited to return the next day, and it is heavy to carry. His steps are light, he almost whistles. He remembers the frightened looks on the pigeons as they flapped away, the way the students in the quad below jumped at the sound of breaking glass.
How much of him is human, anyway? How much of him still alien? He doesn’t know. He thinks he knows how to find out. He wonders if it matters at all.
Rose is waiting for him at the door, and he kisses her, resting his hands on her cheeks and pressing his body against hers. She looks 19 and 24 and all the ages in between, and she is timeless for him, and he is sure he is timeless for her.
That night, they make love with the lights on.
He stares in the mirror and does not recognize the man reflected there. The man who stares back smiles, as though he likes what he sees.
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