Doctor Who Fic: Tea & Heisenberg
Tea & Heisenberg
by John Clifford
Fandom: Doctor Who (8th Doctor)
Rating: PG-13 (for mild suggestiveness)
Doctor Who is the property of the BBC, the TARDIS is a registered trademark, etc. etc. etc...
“True story,” begins the man in the bottle-green velvet frock coat. “I’m driving down the road with Werner Heisenberg, and suddenly there are klaxons and lights behind us and a police vehicle in the mirror.” He pats the table next to his saucer for the spoon he forgot to obtain from the café counter; before I can offer my own, his hand slips into a voluminous side pocket and retrieves a silver wand-like device. He points this at the top of his cup, thumbs a switch on the side, and the wand begins to burble. The tea bubbles then swirls, neatly stirring itself.
“There’s a nice trick,” I observe.
“Hmm,” the man agrees, eyebrows waggling. He takes a bold sip. “So, I tell him, ‘Drive, man! Put your foot down!’-old habits die hard-but Werner just pulls calmly over, rolls down the window, and waits. The policeman strides up to the car, peers inside-I peer back, alert for the telltale glint of metal or gleam of plastic-and says, ‘Good evening, sir. Do you know how fast you were going just now?’ And Werner replies--”
“‘No, but I know exactly where I am!’” I finish before he can.
“Oh,” says my companion, vaguely pouting. “Heard that one, have you?”
“I was a quantum physicist,” I explain. “We’ve all heard that one.”
“Oh, were you?” he replies, sipping again, watching me carefully over his cup. He’s either feigning interest or knows more than he’s telling, and I can’t for the life of me determine which it is.
“Never more than a workaday one,” I admit, “but that’s how I chose it. I worked hard at university, earned a fully respectable degree, but by the time I’d done that I was married. I liked being married. And anyone who really wants to do anything profound in science cannot truly be married.”
Something flashes in the man’s ice-blue eyes then; he tries to hide it with an encouraging smile. I would’ve thought his sleight of hand better than this.
I shrug in any case, sip from my own cup, and let the screen of memory glide down over my gaze. “It was still fun. The blazing girls and boys in the lab let me play with their cyclotrons, critique their theories, drink their champagne when the cat survived after all…”
“Schrodinger’s?”
“No, Jeanine’s. That’s another story. All I mean is that I enjoyed my work. I simply never needed it to be anything more than that. My life was at home, with Peter and Anna and Tim. Though Peter, ironically, brought the work home far more than I ever did.”
“Oh?” the man replies with a smirk. “I do hope he wasn’t a sanitation engineer.”
“No,” I chuckle. “Peter was a teacher. And I can recall far more weekends with the telly because Peter was buried in term papers than ones stuck in the lab, and far more dinner conversations swallowed whole by this or that student’s problems at home than we spent discussing troublesome particles. Perhaps it’s only ironic that it’s ironic?”
“That it should only be the scientists that are expected to obsess over their work at all hours of the day?”
“Yes!” I gesture so emphatically I nearly knock over my tea. “And teachers, dealing day-in, day-out with the tangled lives of the young--shouldn’t those be the sort of problems we make our great mental sorties against?”
“A friend of mine has a favorite game,” the man replies sadly, “called Should/Is.”
“Oh yes,” I nod. “I know it well.” I can feel the strange smile alighting on my lips. “Lately, though, I’ve been much more preoccupied with this one: What If You Had a Time Machine?”
“I’m sorry,” the man says suddenly. “Have we met before?”
“Not that I can recall,” I answer. I set down my cup, offer my hand across the table. “I’m Diane. Diane Craig. Should’ve thought to mention that earlier.”
“The Doctor,” the man replies. His fingers are long and pale, his grip firmly gentle.
“Well, yes. If you want to get formal about it, but--”
“Oh, never mind,” the man mutters. “So. If you had a time machine. What would you do?”
“My husband died,” I tell him, simply. “A little over two years ago now. He had diabetes; there were complications.”
“I’m sorry,” says the man; somehow it’s not perfunctory. “So you would go back…”
“I wouldn’t save him.”
The man blinks.
“No,” I say. “Hear me out. I’ve given this a lot of thought. Too much, perhaps.”
“Never,” the man says. “There’s no such thing.”
“When he had just passed, I watched a lot of science fiction. It was a childhood comfort. And at first, yes, of course I thought a lot about going back and saving him. I nearly went mad with it. But that never works, does it? Paradoxes. Counter-changes. Webs and fabrics and tapestries of time. The will of the universe.”
“Oh,” the man cuts in, smirking as much as he must think he’s allowed. “You know science fiction…”
“No, but then I thought--” I shake my head, not in denial, but with the effort of understanding. “That’s right. We never get to go back, do we? Even in a time machine. Even if we could change things. We can walk east and then we can turn right around and walk west again, but that’s not going back, is it?”
“No,” the man agrees, “It’s not.” There’s something dark in his eyes; something wondering, almost proud, in his soft smile. “You’re a rare human to notice. So, what would you do?”
“I’d go back,” I say. “But not to go back, not like that. I’d just like to see him again.”
There’s a strange intensity in the man’s reply. “You couldn’t speak to him. Even just speaking to him could--”
“I said I’d like to see,” I assure him. “I meant observe. From afar. See my Peter again. See myself, even, in our younger days. Just to clarify the memories. I think I could spend years now just watching. Does that sound silly?”
“Not at all,” the man says, his jaw tightening. “But is observation ever just observation? What about that uncertainty principle?”
“Oh, come now,” I retort. “Any scientist knows that the uncertainty principle isn’t really so simple. Werner Heisenberg never said any act of observation would alter the outcome of the observed. He merely said that when trying to determine two linked qualities of a particle, such as location and momentum, you can’t accurately judge one without changing the other. A rather specific set of circumstances.”
“True enough,” the man agrees. “How’s this afternoon for you?”
“I don’t have anything planned,” I reply.
* * * * *
I’m not sure where I expected him to take me. A museum? A film? The riverwalk? A grimy B & B, perhaps; at my age, there are worse adventures. But certainly not this blue box with a world inside. I’ve only taken two steps beyond the door and surrounding me I can see a library, a lab, a mausoleum, a chapel, a shrine, a study, a sitting room, a control room, a planetarium, all packed into this one wide space. And that’s just in the first chamber! I catch glimpses of rooms and further rooms surrounding this one, and every half second or so my brain remembers that all of this is contained in one compact police box--before it forgets it again, because how could that make sense?
My companion offers no explanations, just smirks at the look that must be on my face, strides over to the elegant lump of antiquated machinery in the center of the room, and begins flipping switches and twisting dials. The lights surrounding them flicker to life or wink out. As I follow him, he comes to a panel with analog readouts in English: EARTH, HUMANIAN ERA, today’s date. He asks no questions and offers no advice as he rolls back those numbers.
Then a heavy lever is pulled, and the chamber begins to grumble. Sapphire light pulses in the machine’s central column, crystal tubes slide together and apart, together and apart, and the light…
A thump. We’re there. No-we’re then.
* * * * *
The frock-coated man leads me once more from his box of worlds, and we’re standing windblown in the park on a day long been and gone. The park down the road from our first home, where we used to bring Anna to play, when Tim was just a baby.
Of course, it’s not a day I remember specially. It just feels like yesterday. Then I remember how often today feels like yesterday these days, and I frown, but before I can wonder any further--there he is. Peter, walking, almost bouncing on his long legs down the dirt path from our street, his gorgeous hands curled around Anna’s knees as she sits on his shoulders, her small fingers tangled in his still-blond hair.
I can see my companion watching me cautiously, just at the corner of my eye, but I’m only smiling, and he begins to relax. He pulls a bag of colorful candies from his coat and starts offering them to squirrels.
And dear lord. There’s me, coming up the path behind, my hair so long and so brown, my earrings so hideously huge. And my Tim, my darling Tim, my thirty-year-old baby boy, he’s not even yet born, just an eight-months bulge in my belly, bowing my legs as I push on after Peter.
My hand slides down over my mouth, but I do not cry. I do not cry. The man who brought me here tenses, though, rolling his candies back into his pocket, placing a hand on my shoulder, peeking beneath his own bangs for my eyes.
Peter finds them first.
Across the grass of the park, still a good fifteen, maybe twenty metres between us, and only for a moment. And I turn away then, before the green-coated man can turn me or even think to, and I’m walking for his blue box. Memories are washing over me, a particle flow, a cacophonous stream, and that mostly intangible box seems the only solid ground.
With every step that falls in the grass, another memory bursts apart.
Peter and I are curled up in bed around one another, reading Heinlein. Now he’s grinning... This never happened. Peter could never get into Heinlein.
We’re in Copenhagen, in a little café like the one where I met the blue box man… We were never in Copenhagen. “What’s in Copenhagen?” Peter always said, even after the play.
The house seems empty, Anna and Tim both at school. I’m sitting back on the sofa, my eyes closed. I’ve just called off from the lab, just need a day to-but suddenly Peter is there, between… Yes. Well. That was…but when did Peter ever cancel a lecture to stay home?
Another step and I’m standing before the box, stumbling forward. My hand pushes for the flat of the door. There’s a spark like static from the blue.
“I saw a woman today,” Peter tells me in bed.
“Oh yes?” is my teasing reply.
“When we were at the park, with Anna and Elizabeth.”
“Anna and Timothy,” I correct him, absently rubbing the curve of my stomach. Peter’s hand covers mine.
“She reminded me of you,” he says. “Older, much older, but…”
“Oh yes?” I repeat dangerously.
“It just made me think, is all. About what we’ll be like, someday…”
I frown, ask, “What about like we are now?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Peter answers. He’s only half listening to me. “But it made me think about time. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”
“‘…creeps in this petty pace from day, to day…’” I complete the quotation. “I know that one too, professor.”
“But that’s just it!” Peter exclaims, and I’m surprised at the force of it. “It doesn’t, does it?”
“You’re having a moment, Mr. Craig,” I say. “Aren’t you? And suddenly you notice just how fast we’re going.”
“I am, Dr. Craig,” Peter answers with a significant grin. “And yet I know precisely where I am.” I grin back, reaching to cup his cheek, to peer through the near-dark into his blue, blue eyes…
As blue as the strange wooden box which stands before me now, humming beneath my hand.
Fin.
by John Clifford
Fandom: Doctor Who (8th Doctor)
Rating: PG-13 (for mild suggestiveness)
Doctor Who is the property of the BBC, the TARDIS is a registered trademark, etc. etc. etc...
“True story,” begins the man in the bottle-green velvet frock coat. “I’m driving down the road with Werner Heisenberg, and suddenly there are klaxons and lights behind us and a police vehicle in the mirror.” He pats the table next to his saucer for the spoon he forgot to obtain from the café counter; before I can offer my own, his hand slips into a voluminous side pocket and retrieves a silver wand-like device. He points this at the top of his cup, thumbs a switch on the side, and the wand begins to burble. The tea bubbles then swirls, neatly stirring itself.
“There’s a nice trick,” I observe.
“Hmm,” the man agrees, eyebrows waggling. He takes a bold sip. “So, I tell him, ‘Drive, man! Put your foot down!’-old habits die hard-but Werner just pulls calmly over, rolls down the window, and waits. The policeman strides up to the car, peers inside-I peer back, alert for the telltale glint of metal or gleam of plastic-and says, ‘Good evening, sir. Do you know how fast you were going just now?’ And Werner replies--”
“‘No, but I know exactly where I am!’” I finish before he can.
“Oh,” says my companion, vaguely pouting. “Heard that one, have you?”
“I was a quantum physicist,” I explain. “We’ve all heard that one.”
“Oh, were you?” he replies, sipping again, watching me carefully over his cup. He’s either feigning interest or knows more than he’s telling, and I can’t for the life of me determine which it is.
“Never more than a workaday one,” I admit, “but that’s how I chose it. I worked hard at university, earned a fully respectable degree, but by the time I’d done that I was married. I liked being married. And anyone who really wants to do anything profound in science cannot truly be married.”
Something flashes in the man’s ice-blue eyes then; he tries to hide it with an encouraging smile. I would’ve thought his sleight of hand better than this.
I shrug in any case, sip from my own cup, and let the screen of memory glide down over my gaze. “It was still fun. The blazing girls and boys in the lab let me play with their cyclotrons, critique their theories, drink their champagne when the cat survived after all…”
“Schrodinger’s?”
“No, Jeanine’s. That’s another story. All I mean is that I enjoyed my work. I simply never needed it to be anything more than that. My life was at home, with Peter and Anna and Tim. Though Peter, ironically, brought the work home far more than I ever did.”
“Oh?” the man replies with a smirk. “I do hope he wasn’t a sanitation engineer.”
“No,” I chuckle. “Peter was a teacher. And I can recall far more weekends with the telly because Peter was buried in term papers than ones stuck in the lab, and far more dinner conversations swallowed whole by this or that student’s problems at home than we spent discussing troublesome particles. Perhaps it’s only ironic that it’s ironic?”
“That it should only be the scientists that are expected to obsess over their work at all hours of the day?”
“Yes!” I gesture so emphatically I nearly knock over my tea. “And teachers, dealing day-in, day-out with the tangled lives of the young--shouldn’t those be the sort of problems we make our great mental sorties against?”
“A friend of mine has a favorite game,” the man replies sadly, “called Should/Is.”
“Oh yes,” I nod. “I know it well.” I can feel the strange smile alighting on my lips. “Lately, though, I’ve been much more preoccupied with this one: What If You Had a Time Machine?”
“I’m sorry,” the man says suddenly. “Have we met before?”
“Not that I can recall,” I answer. I set down my cup, offer my hand across the table. “I’m Diane. Diane Craig. Should’ve thought to mention that earlier.”
“The Doctor,” the man replies. His fingers are long and pale, his grip firmly gentle.
“Well, yes. If you want to get formal about it, but--”
“Oh, never mind,” the man mutters. “So. If you had a time machine. What would you do?”
“My husband died,” I tell him, simply. “A little over two years ago now. He had diabetes; there were complications.”
“I’m sorry,” says the man; somehow it’s not perfunctory. “So you would go back…”
“I wouldn’t save him.”
The man blinks.
“No,” I say. “Hear me out. I’ve given this a lot of thought. Too much, perhaps.”
“Never,” the man says. “There’s no such thing.”
“When he had just passed, I watched a lot of science fiction. It was a childhood comfort. And at first, yes, of course I thought a lot about going back and saving him. I nearly went mad with it. But that never works, does it? Paradoxes. Counter-changes. Webs and fabrics and tapestries of time. The will of the universe.”
“Oh,” the man cuts in, smirking as much as he must think he’s allowed. “You know science fiction…”
“No, but then I thought--” I shake my head, not in denial, but with the effort of understanding. “That’s right. We never get to go back, do we? Even in a time machine. Even if we could change things. We can walk east and then we can turn right around and walk west again, but that’s not going back, is it?”
“No,” the man agrees, “It’s not.” There’s something dark in his eyes; something wondering, almost proud, in his soft smile. “You’re a rare human to notice. So, what would you do?”
“I’d go back,” I say. “But not to go back, not like that. I’d just like to see him again.”
There’s a strange intensity in the man’s reply. “You couldn’t speak to him. Even just speaking to him could--”
“I said I’d like to see,” I assure him. “I meant observe. From afar. See my Peter again. See myself, even, in our younger days. Just to clarify the memories. I think I could spend years now just watching. Does that sound silly?”
“Not at all,” the man says, his jaw tightening. “But is observation ever just observation? What about that uncertainty principle?”
“Oh, come now,” I retort. “Any scientist knows that the uncertainty principle isn’t really so simple. Werner Heisenberg never said any act of observation would alter the outcome of the observed. He merely said that when trying to determine two linked qualities of a particle, such as location and momentum, you can’t accurately judge one without changing the other. A rather specific set of circumstances.”
“True enough,” the man agrees. “How’s this afternoon for you?”
“I don’t have anything planned,” I reply.
* * * * *
I’m not sure where I expected him to take me. A museum? A film? The riverwalk? A grimy B & B, perhaps; at my age, there are worse adventures. But certainly not this blue box with a world inside. I’ve only taken two steps beyond the door and surrounding me I can see a library, a lab, a mausoleum, a chapel, a shrine, a study, a sitting room, a control room, a planetarium, all packed into this one wide space. And that’s just in the first chamber! I catch glimpses of rooms and further rooms surrounding this one, and every half second or so my brain remembers that all of this is contained in one compact police box--before it forgets it again, because how could that make sense?
My companion offers no explanations, just smirks at the look that must be on my face, strides over to the elegant lump of antiquated machinery in the center of the room, and begins flipping switches and twisting dials. The lights surrounding them flicker to life or wink out. As I follow him, he comes to a panel with analog readouts in English: EARTH, HUMANIAN ERA, today’s date. He asks no questions and offers no advice as he rolls back those numbers.
Then a heavy lever is pulled, and the chamber begins to grumble. Sapphire light pulses in the machine’s central column, crystal tubes slide together and apart, together and apart, and the light…
A thump. We’re there. No-we’re then.
* * * * *
The frock-coated man leads me once more from his box of worlds, and we’re standing windblown in the park on a day long been and gone. The park down the road from our first home, where we used to bring Anna to play, when Tim was just a baby.
Of course, it’s not a day I remember specially. It just feels like yesterday. Then I remember how often today feels like yesterday these days, and I frown, but before I can wonder any further--there he is. Peter, walking, almost bouncing on his long legs down the dirt path from our street, his gorgeous hands curled around Anna’s knees as she sits on his shoulders, her small fingers tangled in his still-blond hair.
I can see my companion watching me cautiously, just at the corner of my eye, but I’m only smiling, and he begins to relax. He pulls a bag of colorful candies from his coat and starts offering them to squirrels.
And dear lord. There’s me, coming up the path behind, my hair so long and so brown, my earrings so hideously huge. And my Tim, my darling Tim, my thirty-year-old baby boy, he’s not even yet born, just an eight-months bulge in my belly, bowing my legs as I push on after Peter.
My hand slides down over my mouth, but I do not cry. I do not cry. The man who brought me here tenses, though, rolling his candies back into his pocket, placing a hand on my shoulder, peeking beneath his own bangs for my eyes.
Peter finds them first.
Across the grass of the park, still a good fifteen, maybe twenty metres between us, and only for a moment. And I turn away then, before the green-coated man can turn me or even think to, and I’m walking for his blue box. Memories are washing over me, a particle flow, a cacophonous stream, and that mostly intangible box seems the only solid ground.
With every step that falls in the grass, another memory bursts apart.
Peter and I are curled up in bed around one another, reading Heinlein. Now he’s grinning... This never happened. Peter could never get into Heinlein.
We’re in Copenhagen, in a little café like the one where I met the blue box man… We were never in Copenhagen. “What’s in Copenhagen?” Peter always said, even after the play.
The house seems empty, Anna and Tim both at school. I’m sitting back on the sofa, my eyes closed. I’ve just called off from the lab, just need a day to-but suddenly Peter is there, between… Yes. Well. That was…but when did Peter ever cancel a lecture to stay home?
Another step and I’m standing before the box, stumbling forward. My hand pushes for the flat of the door. There’s a spark like static from the blue.
“I saw a woman today,” Peter tells me in bed.
“Oh yes?” is my teasing reply.
“When we were at the park, with Anna and Elizabeth.”
“Anna and Timothy,” I correct him, absently rubbing the curve of my stomach. Peter’s hand covers mine.
“She reminded me of you,” he says. “Older, much older, but…”
“Oh yes?” I repeat dangerously.
“It just made me think, is all. About what we’ll be like, someday…”
I frown, ask, “What about like we are now?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Peter answers. He’s only half listening to me. “But it made me think about time. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”
“‘…creeps in this petty pace from day, to day…’” I complete the quotation. “I know that one too, professor.”
“But that’s just it!” Peter exclaims, and I’m surprised at the force of it. “It doesn’t, does it?”
“You’re having a moment, Mr. Craig,” I say. “Aren’t you? And suddenly you notice just how fast we’re going.”
“I am, Dr. Craig,” Peter answers with a significant grin. “And yet I know precisely where I am.” I grin back, reaching to cup his cheek, to peer through the near-dark into his blue, blue eyes…
As blue as the strange wooden box which stands before me now, humming beneath my hand.
Fin.