On the Nature of Infinity (1/1)
This idea has been rattling around in my head since The Next Doctor. It's a bit of a departure from what I've written before. No warnings, minimal spoilers.
Thanks to nonelvis, np_complete, and platypus for their beta work and general philosophical thoughts.
…
The Doctor parked the TARDIS in the Vortex and set about some repairs and upgrades. There were little things that he still found that reminded him of her ordeal at the hands of the Master, even the way a pair of wires had been twisted together left over right rather than his usual right over left. All this time later, and countless hours spent on maintenance, and he continued to find these little oddities. Each time, he took his ship somewhere safe and obliterated the lingering traces, trying not to think about the bonfire.
He would probably be finding sand that wasn't really sand from San Helios in his ship for just as long, although he had been careful to knock most of it off his trainers before he entered. Now, two days later, he found sand under the collar of his jacket, even though it should have been long gone.
As he shook out his jacket over the grated floor, watching the miniature sand storm take flight, he was interrupted by a sound that he couldn't immediately place. He looked up at the console in puzzlement and the sound came again, this time recognizable for what it was: a knock on the door.
"In the Vortex?" the Doctor said to the room. Of course he would answer the door. It had been a three-tap knock, firm enough to brook no mistake, and his curiosity was now aroused.
He opened the door, not sure what he would find. Yes, outside, in the swirling Vortex, there was a woman, maybe a girl - no, surely too old for girl, although she was slight. There was something wrong about that perfect whiteness - it caught none of the green from the Time Rotor or the orange from the walls around it. She wore a filmy white skirt wafting around her outstretched legs. Her hair was a burnished black darker than the darkest night sky. Her eyes, when she lifted them to meet his, were translucent grey, but her lips were as pink as petals, matte and plump.
"Good afternoon," she said, offering him her hand, which he didn't take. "It would be polite to invite me in, considering." She waved at the dancing colours of the Vortex.
He closed his mouth, which had been hanging open, and folded his arms across his chest. "I'm not sure that's a good idea. Who are you?"
"That's your first question?" she asked, amused. When he blinked, she was gone, but he heard a chuckle behind him and spun to find her lounging easily across his jump seat. Inside his TARDIS.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She smiled a Cheshire Cat smile, full of enigma and amusement, and the pink lips stretched around her teeth almost to disappear into her pale skin. She slid one finger along the top of the jump seat. "Is that any way to welcome a guest?" she chided.
"You're not my guest," he told her, bounding over as quickly as he could to put himself between the console and the jump seat. He pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his hand and aimed it at her.
"Have it your way, then," she sighed, and in an instant they were in a richly furnished room, with the woman now lounging on a blue velvet chaise longue instead of his jump seat. He spun around and saw a grand piano where the console had been. The grating underneath his feet was replaced with a woven carpet so thick that he left footprints as he retreated several steps away.
"Now," she said, "you may consider yourself my guest, Doctor." A table appeared before her with a tea service. "Please, make yourself comfortable."
"Tell me what's going on!" he shouted, rattling the tea service.
The woman waved a well-manicured hand in the air. "Please, feel free to conduct whatever examinations you feel are necessary to make yourself at ease. This room is as real as you are and I mean neither you nor your ship any harm." Her smile returned with that statement. "Shall I save you the questions and simply tell you what you want to know?"
"I would be ever so grateful," the Doctor said tightly.
"You may call me Larryal," the woman told him. She began removing grapes from a bunch that had not been in her hand a moment before. One went past her lips and burst under the application of perfectly white teeth, and she made a small murmur of pleasure before continuing. "I wished to speak with you. For one of the Narrow Ones, you tend to be remarkably persistent, and that amuses me."
Through slitted eyes, he watched her eat another grape and scanned the room around them, although, as she had said, he found nothing out of the ordinary.
"How many enemies do you have who would be courteous enough to knock?" she asked, laughter in her voice. "You're just upset because you can't imagine how I was there in the first place. Doctor, you're in no danger from me. I promise."
"Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
She shrugged, but her eyes still danced with mischief. "You can be reassured or you can continue to bluster. It's your decision. I'm not going to hurt anyone, and I'm just here to talk."
He put the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket and folded his arms across his chest, leaning back against the piano. "Talk."
"Oh, you hate it when someone else is in charge, don’t you? You can't conceive that there is anything beyond your understanding of the universe, your rules. Do you remember? 'Before the universe, impossible.'" At that, he bristled, but Larryal laughed. "I'm not the Beast, I promise."
"I don't know what you are."
"Does it matter?" She swung her legs over the side of the chaise longue so that she could stand up. "Would you care for some tea? No? It's very good, you know."
The chaise longue, piano, and tea service gave way to a wood thick with mossy ground and birdsong.
"Shall we walk, Doctor? Be a gentleman and offer me your arm. Oh, thank you." The slight arm wound through his was strong and her long legs kept easy pace with him. "Go on, then. Ask and I shall answer."
"Where are we?"
"Strictly speaking? In your TARDIS. Not strictly speaking? Everywhere. Anywhere."
"Why are you here?"
"I wanted it, and it became so." She hugged his arm closer to her side. "You should be immensely flattered. I do not often manifest in one particular About, and it takes quite an individual to intrigue me enough to do so."
"About?"
"You'd call it a multiverse," she said. "An About is a set of the possible universes with a common set of rules, variables, and constants."
"I am acquainted with the concept," he said shortly.
Larryal continued as if he hadn't spoken. "I've been watching yours, and it's fascinating. Oh, you Time Lords, you think you have everything well under your thumb, but even you're so terribly arrogant that you think you control the multiverse or that there can be finite rules in infinite space. I suppose with your limited senses, that's a reasonable conclusion to reach, but even so." She clucked her tongue. "You ought to know better."
He stopped and let go of her arm to stare at her, not even sure where to start asking questions, and terribly insulted at the word "limited."
"We'll start at the very beginning," Larryal said. "What is infinity?"
"Unbounded or unlimited space, time, or quantity," he said.
"Then let me point out the fundamental error in your understanding of the natural order. It is infinite. Define a rule or a law or a theory for me."
He considered for a moment. "The Blinovich Limitation Effect -"
She cut him off with a wave. "There are an infinite number of universes in which it is true and an infinite number of universes in which it is false. Let's discuss a rule that should be of particular interest to you. Gallifrey is time-locked and now destroyed, so you may not travel into its past."
His insides jolted to hear the name dropped so casually from her lips in the middle of what appeared to be an intellectual argument, and even as he opened his mouth to shout, she rolled her eyes. The expression was so incongruous to her persona of Lady Professor that instead of raging, he found himself furrowing his eyebrows and putting his hand to his temple. "You may contest that particular fact all you like, but it is the truth," he said, feeling suddenly tired, and wanting to go home, wherever that was.
"In this About, it is," Larryal responded. "I'm disappointed in you. All you see is your pain, and your guilt, and you completely missed the point of what I said to you. Do you really think that Gallifrey -"
"Stop using that name," he hissed. "You have not earned the right."
She raised an eyebrow and continued. "… is time-locked in all of infinity?"
He stared and tried to ignore the rising lump in his throat. "Of course it is."
"And you call humans 'stupid apes,'" she complained. "Honestly, it is astonishing to see someone who consistently challenges everyone else's expectations and perspectives cling so very stubbornly to his own beliefs. Have you ever been wrong, Doctor? Don't answer that - it's a rhetorical question."
She sat on a newly appeared wrought iron bench and gestured for him to join her. He remained standing, arms crossed and glaring down at her.
She rolled her eyes again. "Let me tell you how complex the natural order is, Doctor. There are universes based on every decision, every action, every thought. Even now, there is a wave of newly diverged universes in the wake of your decision not to sit down on this bench with me. With something so inconsequential, a multitude of universes spring into existence within your About. Even that in perspective to the About you live in, where Gallifrey is time-locked, where there are no Time Lords in alternate universes, and even that About is only part of a set of other Abouts where Time Lords existed. It continues to roll up. There are even Abouts that aren't infinite - that's how expansive infinite is, Doctor. It can even include its own absence."
"Are you saying -" His throat tightened around the words. "Can I -"
"No," she said. "Not this you. For your timeline, your world is gone. For the infinite yous that exist - some of them destroyed Davros before he created the Daleks. Some died along the way and did not regenerate. Some chose not to fight in the last Time War and were destroyed along with everyone else. Some lost the war. And others, yes, others succeeded and went home again." She paused. "I said yes to some when you asked that question and took you back to Gallifrey."
He sat down on the bench with a thump. "Why are you here?"
She put her head on his shoulder, and despite himself, he did not object to the intimacy. "I like you," she said. "You have so much potential. You bury yourself in responsibility and take delight in such small things. This entire About revolves around you and you don't even know."
"In infinity, somewhere, doesn't an About revolve around everyone, sooner or later?" he asked, and he was surprised at the bitterness in his voice.
"Some Abouts are more interesting than others," she replied.
Lifting her head from his shoulder, she turned on the bench to face him. He steadfastly looked forward, but he could feel her next to him, feel her gaze on him, see her at the edge of his peripheral vision. The tree he was staring at disappeared and was replaced by emptiness, which seemed to have a faint blue tinge to it. He looked around and all around them was the blueness, except for the bench they still sat on.
"How rude," she said. He kept his gaze forward into the blueness and she let out a tiny, exasperated sigh. "I'm here because it is occasionally difficult to see all possibilities all of the time and I tire of the company of my own kind. Infinity can be infinitely boring. Now and then, so to speak, I like to watch one About and learn from it. I have done this many, many times, but your About - well, Doctor, you are fascinating. Isn't it the same thing you do, find a particular time and space and explore it?"
He shrugged.
"You're the one who was so excited to meet William Shakespeare," she reminded him. "It's a bit like that for me. I'm a fan of yours, Doctor. Be flattered. Sign an autograph. Quit pouting." He cut his eyes over to her without moving his head, and she was smiling, this time without apparent mischief. "Why do you keep travelling?" she asked.
"Because I can never see it all. There's always something out there to surprise me."
"Even though it breaks your heart?"
"Even then," he said, weary to his bones.
"You carry so much on your shoulders and think there's no one else. Even if the Daleks had won in your time, there would still be universes out there where they had not. There are now. It's not always your burden."
Stretch your mind, she urged silently, and he allowed himself to rest and open for her. Into that openness, he felt the widening knowledge of her mind and then saw -
"Can't be," he said, shaking his head and scrubbing at his eyes to clear away the impossibility of what he had seen. He felt the urge to run, as he had when he had first looked into the Vortex and seen what he had called infinity. This was as distressing, in a different way, and he was no longer a child with a child's mind.
Beside him, Larryal uncrossed and recrossed her ankles, sending her skirt puffing into the blueness where it seemed to fade at the edges. "Parallel worlds. Parallel universes. It only makes sense."
"No, it's not right," he protested. His head swam at what he'd seen. "A parallel Vortex?"
"An infinity of them," Larryal said.
He was becoming tired of that particular word, and more than anything, he wanted to be back inside the TARDIS. With the thought, they were, and he looked at Larryal in surprise. She smiled her cat's smile back at him.
Unsteadily, he stood up from the jump seat and put his hands on the console, wanting the tactile reassurance of the reality of his ship. He remembered Donna's face when he had helped her to hear the Ood song, and how she had sagged with relief when it was gone. The empathy he felt for her at this moment was profound.
"You're linear, whether you like it or not," Larryal said.
This rankled nearly as much as "limited" had earlier. "We're standing in a time machine," he said tersely. "How linear is that?"
"I didn't say your travels were linear. I said you were linear," she corrected. She stood and went to stand by one of the columns, pressing her palm against the surface and contemplating it with detachment. "You're advanced, but even with all your technology and knowledge and genetic manipulation, you are linear. You can't go back and be eight years old again, staring into the Vortex. You can't change your life. Everyone else's? Well, certainly. Although," she said, suddenly hesitant, "I can assure you that it's not nearly as pleasant as you might think it would be."
"If everything is infinite, isn't anything possible?" he countered.
"One at a time." She came to stand close to him, and this time, she only came up to his shoulder, forcing him to look down at her to make eye contact. "I've met other versions of you," she confessed. "I said I was a fan."
She was almost demure in her last statement, blinking up at him through thick eyelashes, and he studied her closely. "How well do you know me? Don't you dare say 'infinitely.'"
"You'd prefer another adverb?"
"Full sentences would be even better."
She counted off on her fingers. "You've thrown me out of the TARDIS. You've accepted my offer of tea. You played my piano. You've shagged me against the console. Actually, twice. Dear me, if I keep going, I'm going to need more fingers." She waved eight arms, like Shiva, and then went back to counting with the normal number of appendages. "Once, you went bounding off in the forest like some demented squirrel."
"Oh, stop it," he groaned. He turned away from her to lean heavily on the console.
"See, I do know you. You're very much like a squirrel."
"You're winding me up."
"It's so much fun," she said with a lush laugh. "Haven't you ever wanted to relive the same moment, over and over and over and over, until you get it exactly right?"
That playful comment stung, and he took a moment to compose himself rather than shooting back a retort. How many times had he fought against the temptation to do just that, knowing that the laws of time dictated his behaviour?
"I'm immortal," she said quietly, all flippancy gone. "Even you will die one day. Even your fixed point friend can't outlive your universe. I do, however, have the ability to rewind, relive, and redo that you don't. Here I am, Doctor. I'm lonelier than you are, even if there are others like me and I can do anything. You remember what that was like, to be alone in a crowd?"
He swallowed. "How do you … how do you …"
She danced her fingers down the keys of the grand piano, which had once again replaced the console. It was a dissonant melody that lingered in his mind when she stopped. When she didn't answer his question, he came to sit on the bench beside her and began to play with her, watching her pale hands move. He followed her lead as she continued in the same vein.
They stopped after what might have been minutes, or days, or decades, and Larryal closed the lid on the keys and turned to face him. "Nothing is impossible," she said, and her mind once again brushed against his, requesting rather than demanding entry. "Here is what I can give you." He let himself go limp and her expansive knowledge pushed into him.
Larryal had no memories of her own, but rather an open awareness of everything that could be. He felt the smallness of even the sensation of taking the Vortex within him and knew that even with this onslaught, she was holding back to spare his mind. All of the encounters that she had described earlier flooded into him in a rush. He raged and shoved her out of the TARDIS, watching her laugh and cry and struggle and plead. He took her hard and fast against the console, her filmy gown billowing around his hips as he drove into her. He sat on the jump seat with her and took tea from a hovering tray in midair. And more.
Her mind shifted and he felt himself rise away from the now and see his life unfolding in a thousand different ways, all tiny variants of what he knew. Not all of them, he was relieved to see, were disastrous. The negative outcomes were so minor that he guessed that she was shielding him from the rest. He might have told her to stop protecting him, but he found that he liked it and clung all the more tightly to the images parading before him.
The Time War.
He shrieked internally, recoiling instinctively and feeling Larryal's unyielding presence all around him. I can't, he tried to say, but there were no words in the procession of possibilities and he remained terribly silent. He saw their last gambit succeed, and the Daleks destroyed, and his home world celebrated despite the terrible loss of lives.
Gallifrey was whole.
When Larryal withdrew from him, his eyes streamed with tears and he could barely focus on her face.
He saw the timelines unwind before him, this time from his own perspective and without her influence, and counted the possible responses, felt them streaking away from the moment. In the end, he chose the one that felt right for this him, this moment, this here.
"Thank you."
…
He saw the timelines unwind before him, this time from his own perspective and without her influence, and counted the possible responses, felt them streaking away from the moment. In the end, he chose the one that felt right for this him, this moment, this here.
"It's not worth it."
…
He saw the timelines unwind before him, this time from his own perspective and without her influence, and counted the possible responses, felt them streaking away from the moment. In the end, he chose the one that felt right for this him, this moment, this here.
"It's not real," he said. "Not for me. Not ever again."
This time, he meant it.
Thanks to nonelvis, np_complete, and platypus for their beta work and general philosophical thoughts.
…
The Doctor parked the TARDIS in the Vortex and set about some repairs and upgrades. There were little things that he still found that reminded him of her ordeal at the hands of the Master, even the way a pair of wires had been twisted together left over right rather than his usual right over left. All this time later, and countless hours spent on maintenance, and he continued to find these little oddities. Each time, he took his ship somewhere safe and obliterated the lingering traces, trying not to think about the bonfire.
He would probably be finding sand that wasn't really sand from San Helios in his ship for just as long, although he had been careful to knock most of it off his trainers before he entered. Now, two days later, he found sand under the collar of his jacket, even though it should have been long gone.
As he shook out his jacket over the grated floor, watching the miniature sand storm take flight, he was interrupted by a sound that he couldn't immediately place. He looked up at the console in puzzlement and the sound came again, this time recognizable for what it was: a knock on the door.
"In the Vortex?" the Doctor said to the room. Of course he would answer the door. It had been a three-tap knock, firm enough to brook no mistake, and his curiosity was now aroused.
He opened the door, not sure what he would find. Yes, outside, in the swirling Vortex, there was a woman, maybe a girl - no, surely too old for girl, although she was slight. There was something wrong about that perfect whiteness - it caught none of the green from the Time Rotor or the orange from the walls around it. She wore a filmy white skirt wafting around her outstretched legs. Her hair was a burnished black darker than the darkest night sky. Her eyes, when she lifted them to meet his, were translucent grey, but her lips were as pink as petals, matte and plump.
"Good afternoon," she said, offering him her hand, which he didn't take. "It would be polite to invite me in, considering." She waved at the dancing colours of the Vortex.
He closed his mouth, which had been hanging open, and folded his arms across his chest. "I'm not sure that's a good idea. Who are you?"
"That's your first question?" she asked, amused. When he blinked, she was gone, but he heard a chuckle behind him and spun to find her lounging easily across his jump seat. Inside his TARDIS.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She smiled a Cheshire Cat smile, full of enigma and amusement, and the pink lips stretched around her teeth almost to disappear into her pale skin. She slid one finger along the top of the jump seat. "Is that any way to welcome a guest?" she chided.
"You're not my guest," he told her, bounding over as quickly as he could to put himself between the console and the jump seat. He pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his hand and aimed it at her.
"Have it your way, then," she sighed, and in an instant they were in a richly furnished room, with the woman now lounging on a blue velvet chaise longue instead of his jump seat. He spun around and saw a grand piano where the console had been. The grating underneath his feet was replaced with a woven carpet so thick that he left footprints as he retreated several steps away.
"Now," she said, "you may consider yourself my guest, Doctor." A table appeared before her with a tea service. "Please, make yourself comfortable."
"Tell me what's going on!" he shouted, rattling the tea service.
The woman waved a well-manicured hand in the air. "Please, feel free to conduct whatever examinations you feel are necessary to make yourself at ease. This room is as real as you are and I mean neither you nor your ship any harm." Her smile returned with that statement. "Shall I save you the questions and simply tell you what you want to know?"
"I would be ever so grateful," the Doctor said tightly.
"You may call me Larryal," the woman told him. She began removing grapes from a bunch that had not been in her hand a moment before. One went past her lips and burst under the application of perfectly white teeth, and she made a small murmur of pleasure before continuing. "I wished to speak with you. For one of the Narrow Ones, you tend to be remarkably persistent, and that amuses me."
Through slitted eyes, he watched her eat another grape and scanned the room around them, although, as she had said, he found nothing out of the ordinary.
"How many enemies do you have who would be courteous enough to knock?" she asked, laughter in her voice. "You're just upset because you can't imagine how I was there in the first place. Doctor, you're in no danger from me. I promise."
"Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
She shrugged, but her eyes still danced with mischief. "You can be reassured or you can continue to bluster. It's your decision. I'm not going to hurt anyone, and I'm just here to talk."
He put the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket and folded his arms across his chest, leaning back against the piano. "Talk."
"Oh, you hate it when someone else is in charge, don’t you? You can't conceive that there is anything beyond your understanding of the universe, your rules. Do you remember? 'Before the universe, impossible.'" At that, he bristled, but Larryal laughed. "I'm not the Beast, I promise."
"I don't know what you are."
"Does it matter?" She swung her legs over the side of the chaise longue so that she could stand up. "Would you care for some tea? No? It's very good, you know."
The chaise longue, piano, and tea service gave way to a wood thick with mossy ground and birdsong.
"Shall we walk, Doctor? Be a gentleman and offer me your arm. Oh, thank you." The slight arm wound through his was strong and her long legs kept easy pace with him. "Go on, then. Ask and I shall answer."
"Where are we?"
"Strictly speaking? In your TARDIS. Not strictly speaking? Everywhere. Anywhere."
"Why are you here?"
"I wanted it, and it became so." She hugged his arm closer to her side. "You should be immensely flattered. I do not often manifest in one particular About, and it takes quite an individual to intrigue me enough to do so."
"About?"
"You'd call it a multiverse," she said. "An About is a set of the possible universes with a common set of rules, variables, and constants."
"I am acquainted with the concept," he said shortly.
Larryal continued as if he hadn't spoken. "I've been watching yours, and it's fascinating. Oh, you Time Lords, you think you have everything well under your thumb, but even you're so terribly arrogant that you think you control the multiverse or that there can be finite rules in infinite space. I suppose with your limited senses, that's a reasonable conclusion to reach, but even so." She clucked her tongue. "You ought to know better."
He stopped and let go of her arm to stare at her, not even sure where to start asking questions, and terribly insulted at the word "limited."
"We'll start at the very beginning," Larryal said. "What is infinity?"
"Unbounded or unlimited space, time, or quantity," he said.
"Then let me point out the fundamental error in your understanding of the natural order. It is infinite. Define a rule or a law or a theory for me."
He considered for a moment. "The Blinovich Limitation Effect -"
She cut him off with a wave. "There are an infinite number of universes in which it is true and an infinite number of universes in which it is false. Let's discuss a rule that should be of particular interest to you. Gallifrey is time-locked and now destroyed, so you may not travel into its past."
His insides jolted to hear the name dropped so casually from her lips in the middle of what appeared to be an intellectual argument, and even as he opened his mouth to shout, she rolled her eyes. The expression was so incongruous to her persona of Lady Professor that instead of raging, he found himself furrowing his eyebrows and putting his hand to his temple. "You may contest that particular fact all you like, but it is the truth," he said, feeling suddenly tired, and wanting to go home, wherever that was.
"In this About, it is," Larryal responded. "I'm disappointed in you. All you see is your pain, and your guilt, and you completely missed the point of what I said to you. Do you really think that Gallifrey -"
"Stop using that name," he hissed. "You have not earned the right."
She raised an eyebrow and continued. "… is time-locked in all of infinity?"
He stared and tried to ignore the rising lump in his throat. "Of course it is."
"And you call humans 'stupid apes,'" she complained. "Honestly, it is astonishing to see someone who consistently challenges everyone else's expectations and perspectives cling so very stubbornly to his own beliefs. Have you ever been wrong, Doctor? Don't answer that - it's a rhetorical question."
She sat on a newly appeared wrought iron bench and gestured for him to join her. He remained standing, arms crossed and glaring down at her.
She rolled her eyes again. "Let me tell you how complex the natural order is, Doctor. There are universes based on every decision, every action, every thought. Even now, there is a wave of newly diverged universes in the wake of your decision not to sit down on this bench with me. With something so inconsequential, a multitude of universes spring into existence within your About. Even that in perspective to the About you live in, where Gallifrey is time-locked, where there are no Time Lords in alternate universes, and even that About is only part of a set of other Abouts where Time Lords existed. It continues to roll up. There are even Abouts that aren't infinite - that's how expansive infinite is, Doctor. It can even include its own absence."
"Are you saying -" His throat tightened around the words. "Can I -"
"No," she said. "Not this you. For your timeline, your world is gone. For the infinite yous that exist - some of them destroyed Davros before he created the Daleks. Some died along the way and did not regenerate. Some chose not to fight in the last Time War and were destroyed along with everyone else. Some lost the war. And others, yes, others succeeded and went home again." She paused. "I said yes to some when you asked that question and took you back to Gallifrey."
He sat down on the bench with a thump. "Why are you here?"
She put her head on his shoulder, and despite himself, he did not object to the intimacy. "I like you," she said. "You have so much potential. You bury yourself in responsibility and take delight in such small things. This entire About revolves around you and you don't even know."
"In infinity, somewhere, doesn't an About revolve around everyone, sooner or later?" he asked, and he was surprised at the bitterness in his voice.
"Some Abouts are more interesting than others," she replied.
Lifting her head from his shoulder, she turned on the bench to face him. He steadfastly looked forward, but he could feel her next to him, feel her gaze on him, see her at the edge of his peripheral vision. The tree he was staring at disappeared and was replaced by emptiness, which seemed to have a faint blue tinge to it. He looked around and all around them was the blueness, except for the bench they still sat on.
"How rude," she said. He kept his gaze forward into the blueness and she let out a tiny, exasperated sigh. "I'm here because it is occasionally difficult to see all possibilities all of the time and I tire of the company of my own kind. Infinity can be infinitely boring. Now and then, so to speak, I like to watch one About and learn from it. I have done this many, many times, but your About - well, Doctor, you are fascinating. Isn't it the same thing you do, find a particular time and space and explore it?"
He shrugged.
"You're the one who was so excited to meet William Shakespeare," she reminded him. "It's a bit like that for me. I'm a fan of yours, Doctor. Be flattered. Sign an autograph. Quit pouting." He cut his eyes over to her without moving his head, and she was smiling, this time without apparent mischief. "Why do you keep travelling?" she asked.
"Because I can never see it all. There's always something out there to surprise me."
"Even though it breaks your heart?"
"Even then," he said, weary to his bones.
"You carry so much on your shoulders and think there's no one else. Even if the Daleks had won in your time, there would still be universes out there where they had not. There are now. It's not always your burden."
Stretch your mind, she urged silently, and he allowed himself to rest and open for her. Into that openness, he felt the widening knowledge of her mind and then saw -
"Can't be," he said, shaking his head and scrubbing at his eyes to clear away the impossibility of what he had seen. He felt the urge to run, as he had when he had first looked into the Vortex and seen what he had called infinity. This was as distressing, in a different way, and he was no longer a child with a child's mind.
Beside him, Larryal uncrossed and recrossed her ankles, sending her skirt puffing into the blueness where it seemed to fade at the edges. "Parallel worlds. Parallel universes. It only makes sense."
"No, it's not right," he protested. His head swam at what he'd seen. "A parallel Vortex?"
"An infinity of them," Larryal said.
He was becoming tired of that particular word, and more than anything, he wanted to be back inside the TARDIS. With the thought, they were, and he looked at Larryal in surprise. She smiled her cat's smile back at him.
Unsteadily, he stood up from the jump seat and put his hands on the console, wanting the tactile reassurance of the reality of his ship. He remembered Donna's face when he had helped her to hear the Ood song, and how she had sagged with relief when it was gone. The empathy he felt for her at this moment was profound.
"You're linear, whether you like it or not," Larryal said.
This rankled nearly as much as "limited" had earlier. "We're standing in a time machine," he said tersely. "How linear is that?"
"I didn't say your travels were linear. I said you were linear," she corrected. She stood and went to stand by one of the columns, pressing her palm against the surface and contemplating it with detachment. "You're advanced, but even with all your technology and knowledge and genetic manipulation, you are linear. You can't go back and be eight years old again, staring into the Vortex. You can't change your life. Everyone else's? Well, certainly. Although," she said, suddenly hesitant, "I can assure you that it's not nearly as pleasant as you might think it would be."
"If everything is infinite, isn't anything possible?" he countered.
"One at a time." She came to stand close to him, and this time, she only came up to his shoulder, forcing him to look down at her to make eye contact. "I've met other versions of you," she confessed. "I said I was a fan."
She was almost demure in her last statement, blinking up at him through thick eyelashes, and he studied her closely. "How well do you know me? Don't you dare say 'infinitely.'"
"You'd prefer another adverb?"
"Full sentences would be even better."
She counted off on her fingers. "You've thrown me out of the TARDIS. You've accepted my offer of tea. You played my piano. You've shagged me against the console. Actually, twice. Dear me, if I keep going, I'm going to need more fingers." She waved eight arms, like Shiva, and then went back to counting with the normal number of appendages. "Once, you went bounding off in the forest like some demented squirrel."
"Oh, stop it," he groaned. He turned away from her to lean heavily on the console.
"See, I do know you. You're very much like a squirrel."
"You're winding me up."
"It's so much fun," she said with a lush laugh. "Haven't you ever wanted to relive the same moment, over and over and over and over, until you get it exactly right?"
That playful comment stung, and he took a moment to compose himself rather than shooting back a retort. How many times had he fought against the temptation to do just that, knowing that the laws of time dictated his behaviour?
"I'm immortal," she said quietly, all flippancy gone. "Even you will die one day. Even your fixed point friend can't outlive your universe. I do, however, have the ability to rewind, relive, and redo that you don't. Here I am, Doctor. I'm lonelier than you are, even if there are others like me and I can do anything. You remember what that was like, to be alone in a crowd?"
He swallowed. "How do you … how do you …"
She danced her fingers down the keys of the grand piano, which had once again replaced the console. It was a dissonant melody that lingered in his mind when she stopped. When she didn't answer his question, he came to sit on the bench beside her and began to play with her, watching her pale hands move. He followed her lead as she continued in the same vein.
They stopped after what might have been minutes, or days, or decades, and Larryal closed the lid on the keys and turned to face him. "Nothing is impossible," she said, and her mind once again brushed against his, requesting rather than demanding entry. "Here is what I can give you." He let himself go limp and her expansive knowledge pushed into him.
Larryal had no memories of her own, but rather an open awareness of everything that could be. He felt the smallness of even the sensation of taking the Vortex within him and knew that even with this onslaught, she was holding back to spare his mind. All of the encounters that she had described earlier flooded into him in a rush. He raged and shoved her out of the TARDIS, watching her laugh and cry and struggle and plead. He took her hard and fast against the console, her filmy gown billowing around his hips as he drove into her. He sat on the jump seat with her and took tea from a hovering tray in midair. And more.
Her mind shifted and he felt himself rise away from the now and see his life unfolding in a thousand different ways, all tiny variants of what he knew. Not all of them, he was relieved to see, were disastrous. The negative outcomes were so minor that he guessed that she was shielding him from the rest. He might have told her to stop protecting him, but he found that he liked it and clung all the more tightly to the images parading before him.
The Time War.
He shrieked internally, recoiling instinctively and feeling Larryal's unyielding presence all around him. I can't, he tried to say, but there were no words in the procession of possibilities and he remained terribly silent. He saw their last gambit succeed, and the Daleks destroyed, and his home world celebrated despite the terrible loss of lives.
Gallifrey was whole.
When Larryal withdrew from him, his eyes streamed with tears and he could barely focus on her face.
He saw the timelines unwind before him, this time from his own perspective and without her influence, and counted the possible responses, felt them streaking away from the moment. In the end, he chose the one that felt right for this him, this moment, this here.
"Thank you."
…
He saw the timelines unwind before him, this time from his own perspective and without her influence, and counted the possible responses, felt them streaking away from the moment. In the end, he chose the one that felt right for this him, this moment, this here.
"It's not worth it."
…
He saw the timelines unwind before him, this time from his own perspective and without her influence, and counted the possible responses, felt them streaking away from the moment. In the end, he chose the one that felt right for this him, this moment, this here.
"It's not real," he said. "Not for me. Not ever again."
This time, he meant it.