[Fic - Doctor Who] Final Transmission
Yeah! I have finished something other than school work and lesson planning (although I made my students very unhappy today by giving them an essay exam...poor childrens...)
Without further ado...
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. I should think I would be a great deal richer if I did.
Well, consider this one out of two of Sci's unconventional Doctor Who stories. If I ever get to the other one. I'm working on the last piece of the Expert Trilogy (Tentatively entitled "Gods of Great and Small") and finishing off "A Room Without Windows."
Many thanks to me lovely betas aeternitasbeach and my Jack monitor celes_grant. :D:D:D
Final Transmission
~ sciathan file ~
Zelianne hates these periods between fieldwork.
It's times like these that she goes from digging about in ruins of bygone civilisations to desk jobs and reverts from being a dirt-poor archaeologist to simply being a poor archaeologist. It doesn't seem to matter though, that she is an expert in the western regions of the old United Amerikays and the regions of places like The Angels, decimated by pollution explosion and a war over water resources a few centuries back. Nor does it matter that she has contributed many artefacts to museums and interplanetary exhibitions around the galaxy. The Institute just swears up and down that they are certainly working on a grant to continue her dig, but she hasn't seen a single blue Terran cent thus far. Zelianne hopes that they will give her something definite soon - of course she hopes for a lot of things, like being able to get off this ruddy planet and head out to the planet Las Vegas to one day do some digs on alien soil.
But everyone else has had the same idea too, as all the specialists on the new planetary civilisations seem to garner funding a lot faster than she does. Moreover, as she goes on, the allure of those distant stars and places is slowly fading into a muted longing to just know her own blue star.
The problem with this is that, apparently, Earth is old hat and boring and no one really wants to spend more money on digs for the seminal human planet, believing, with the rashness of survivors, that they know all there is to know. Maybe this is why the Institute only smiles sycophantically when she asks (again and again and again) if her funding request has been granted.
So, instead, she is back home in the New Britannian Empire working for a museum doing archival work, which, of course, amounts to little more than paper pushing and labelling. Quite an efficient use of her expertise if Zelianne did say so herself. Really - couldn't think of anything more scintillating and mentally rewarding than deskwork.
Today - joy of joys! - she is cataloguing the contents of the 20-25th century storerooms and all of the items that have recently been processed by the dating computer. One day these artefacts may find their way out to be displayed to people who don't believe Earth history is old hat, or the intelligentsia who think Earth history is rather high-brow indeed, or for private collectors who will then acquire certain items by less than legal means. Scoffing, Zelianne turns to the list and notes that the first few artefacts are small personal items ranging from a musical apparatus from the Technological Revolution and an old hair dryer, to what she expects is a mislabelled Styrofoam cup from before the worldwide ban.
Most of the junk on the list is rather boring and she has already decided that she'll foist it on some intern whose salary is better than her own so she can have a go at some items that appeal to her interests more.
The first of these items, the skeletal remains of one of the sacred Rac that were worshipped by the peoples of United Amerikays, is not the best sample of its kind that Zelianne has ever seen. However, it keeps her amused for a good half an hour, correcting the notations in the catalogue ledger and then giving it to the technical grunt to feed into the Terran Federation Data Network. The aforementioned grunt balks at her rather horrific handwriting, but she merely responds that they don't pay her for penmanship and the museum is too cheap to give her a Persucom to revise the entries herself. This is not to mention the fact that she delights in the archaic notion of writing things out with a pen and not with a keypad.
Zelianne finds that the next few entries are not nearly as interesting as they look on the fibreall paper - but that's often the case. She revises two of the entries and starts from scratch on the third because whoever had made it originally did not know an antiquated plug from their own arse.
She then finds that beneath the cool, new sheets of fibreall is one yellowed one that seems as if it has been accidentally attached to her chosen workload for the day. Flipping to this sheet, Zelianne comes to something so wholly anomalous that she decides that a trek to the secondary storage room may be entirely in order. And it is far and so poorly ventilated that she rather abhors going there and almost always leaves the items in there for the intern grunt who has a higher salary than her.
But this is different. This old sheet (and she has a fondness for old things, anyways) has only one single item listed on it. Wrinkling her nose, she reads, again to make sure:
Blue Police Box (20th? C.)
In her head she accesses the Old English, before the dialects were standardised into Terran Common and struggles to remember the word "Police." Unable to come up with a modern day equivalent, she brushes it off and reads the rest of the description.
Material assumed to be wood. Dating unsuccessful - several tests result in an unknown substance reading, errors, and nonsensical readouts. References to shape of object date it to 1950's. Likelihood of preservation of such an object from such a period is given by datamatrix processing to be about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. No decay noted. Artefact locked by indeterminate device. No successful entrance made after several attempts.
In her entire career she has never seen datamatrix or dating software fail to give answers or useful data of any kind. And if the person who guestimated the initial date for the artefact was to be believed, it is nothing short of miraculous…because it is wood from a purportedly 20th century artefact. A veritable first. And that description…
Thinking back to her days carousing about uni and doing impressions of professors when they weren't listening (and once, rather devastating to her marks in that course, when one was), she recalls an old codger who insisted on wearing about an ancient mortarboard hat and trying to make tedious digging through the dirt all the more interesting through his bizarre obsession with archaeological conspiracy theories. His favourite one was about a blue box that appeared throughout history - in hieroglyphs, cave etchings, on tokens buried with mummified remains, scratched on walls in temples, and encoded in datamatrix files for the old Internet in a number of photos and ancient daily news feeds.
But, she firmly tells herself, it is nothing more than a myth and so she shouldn't be surprised if the item on the cataloguing sheets were to be nothing more than just a mundane box and that museum archival work should continue to be as boring as burnt toast.
…Although she would chance the boredom as it might prove amusing. Even if the datamatrix odds are only 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%.
She grins and rolls the fibreall sheet up and jams it into the back pocket of her trousers. She grabs her coat and heads out, wishing only that she had been the archaeologist who had originally discovered it. Because obviously the idiot who had found it first hadn't figured out exactly what it was.
But then again, all Zelianne has is a myth perpetuated by a man in a mortarboard.
***
The guard takes exception to her temporary pass and then has the absolute nerve to try to get Zelianne to give him her datamatrix avatar as part of "new security procedure"…with a highly hinted at dinner tossed into it.
So that's how it is. It's fine by her.
She sweet-talks him towards the wall and reaches out to his hand, taking it, and begins making circles in his palm. Then, in one fluid movement she shoves him back and grazes the biodata processor with the tips of his fingers. The door to the storage room fades out and the man looks somewhere between horrified and enraged as she saunters away. Really, he must never have been on digs with Ulops who, as a species, have a much higher opinion of the power of their pheromones than she does.
Continuing down the aisle to the storage area, she finds a sizable preservation container with a number that matches her fibreall sheet index and inputs her archival code. The metal door flickers and then dissolves into its constituent particles. All that is left, exactly per the description, is a blue police box reminiscent of those found in the 20th century.
And the wood really is undamaged…pristine, even.
She tries the lock, hoping that maybe - just maybe - it will let her in, having decayed with time or something. But it holds, and the secrets that the artefact holds are barred to her for the time being. The strange box merely sits, she thinks, waiting for something. Someone.
Running her hand over the surface - knowing this is not at all professional behaviour - she detects a faint trace of a vibration…as if somewhere very deep within it is pulsating and…alive. Quickly, she draws her hand back and tells herself that this must be only her imagination. It is, she rationalises, probably an ordinary box that has survived this long due to a bizarre combination of atmospheric conditions in someone's basement…and so on and so forth with some technical gobbledegook thrown in for extra incomprehensibility.
But, even so, as she walks around the entirety of the exterior, she can't quite shake her initial impression of it being there - waiting, watching.
Forgetting the archival record she is supposed to be amending, Zelianne leaves the mysterious and very lucky blue box and vows to come back the next day armed with more information.
***
Before she returns the next day, she does her work and checks up on the complete dig record for the mysterious blue box…only to find there isn't much of one at all. It had been found only twenty years ago, on a street corner, unnoticed in the wake of a rather brutal invasion by enemies that were not even recorded. Moreover, when Zelianne tried to find records in the datamatrix she finds it is also curiously bereft of information on the event the record (almost) outlines. And, in case these oddities weren't enough, the record is not in any standard format for any documenting agency that she knows of…
She merely notes that information surrounding the box is becoming increasingly bizarre at every turn. It had been found exactly as it is now - locked up and anachronistic and mysterious. It had ended up here seemingly because no one else had had any notion of what to do with it.
The signature that signalled its donation to the museum is nothing more than someone's initials - JHTW - that are anonymous even in their act of identification. Sighing, she puts in an inquiry for other files on the box, thoroughly expecting it to go the way of her dig funding, and goes back to correcting further acts of idiocy.
To her surprise, someone saunters into her temporary office at the museum regarding the anomalous artefact not two days after she makes the request. It is someone she has never seen in all her long, boring days of archival work and haranguing the Institute's finance division. He wears an odd outfit - a long coat and suspenders - that looks as if he has borrowed it from a museum collection somewhere. Stupidly, for a second she wonders if he wandered out of one of the digital displays, suddenly fully formed. His face is handsome, though - she decides the security guard can keep his dinner until Hades freezes over - but it has something that keeps it from looking entirely youthful at the same time…something Zelianne can't verbalise even if she wants to.
He doesn't sit down - rather, he just leans on the corner of her desk, one side of his coat peeled back and a hand planted on his hip as he says, "Hello there. You Zelianne Farcom?"
She can't place his accent for the life in her - the closest guess she has is that he is an immigrant from one of the outer planetary settlements come back to the mother world. And he is grinning at her and it is vaguely distracting.
"Yes?" she says, arching an eyebrow and looking over the rims of her reading glasses at the stranger - better to pretend one is unimpressed, really. If people think they are impressive they are easier to please and manipulate…although more likely to be smarmy bastards. However, she can put up with that for a short duration with the right incentives to behave.
He pulls out a file from…well, she doesn't really know and doesn't really want to know. However, he doesn't set it on her desk for her to read. He merely keeps it rhythmically bouncing in the air.
"Blue box, eh?" He asks, matter-of-factly, as if it is a joke she is missing. Not once does he even glance at the file. Rather, she has the distinct impression that he is reading her. His face slips into an expression she can't quite identify…and she knows, like his eccentric clothing, he seems just a bit…off. Not wholly off, though…it's just as if some oddity has brushed off him that now clings there, permeating his whole being.
"Yeah, I wasn't expecting you. They usually don't send anyone unless it's to tell me very politely that my funding has been rejected."
"Oh I hate being expected," he says. His grin returns. "And I don't really do all that much rejecting, either. As for polite - depends who you ask."
The file comes to a rest on the strange man's hip. It's maddeningly tempting to simply ask for it, but there's obviously a game to be played here. Zelianne leans forward on the desk, still affecting a nonchalant attitude, even though she has the distinct impression that a rosy blush might just be stirring in her cheeks.
"So you gonna tell me what you know?"
He sits down, crosses his legs, and seems to contemplate - and she doesn't at all know why she thinks this - giving her a wink. Then, leaning his elbow on his own knee and copying her gesture, he says "Nope, I suspect telling you what I know would take several centuries. Depends what you want to know, though - some subjects I am…very knowledgeable in."
This time the stranger definitely winks. Zelianne affects a frown and leans back into her chair, before stating airily, "Blue box, boy."
He laughs, "Feeling alliterative?"
"No," she makes a show of slowly pointing to a blank spot in the air where the thin, slightly transparent screen of the datamatrix link blinks into being and begins scrolling sets of iridescent blue figures. "More annoyed."
The stranger laughs and then gets to his feet. Stepping around her disorganized desk (well, as disorganized as it can be with only a few stray files and the shell of 25th century computational device on it) and, leaning towards her, he brings his lips so close to her ear that they tickle her when he speaks.
"Secret compartment above the 'P.'"
For a moment she can make no sense of this statement at all - his words sound like prophecy, something ludicrous and impervious and fantastic. Then, taking advantage of her moment of confusion, with renewed vigour, the man pulls himself up and turns to walk out the door.
Only then does she realize what this man feels like…he feels like anachronism and anomaly. Like a blue police box with a "P" above the door. He's opening a door for her, she thinks. He's opening an impossible door.
"Wait!" Zelianne shouts, rising from her chair, "You obviously know far more about it, why are you telling me this?"
He stops, but doesn't turn around.
"Don't leave her to die alone," he whispers, just loud enough for her to hear. There is a heaviness to his strange words that she realizes has been under his superficial levity the entire time. Somehow, though, she knows not to go towards him, "Why me…? You…you know something about it that I obviously don't. I don't even understand what you're saying to me."
Giving a short laugh he responds with a lightness she can't quite believe now, "He'd appreciate the poetic irony of you being an archaeologist, Zelianne Forcom."
Then he walks from the room and when she gets out into the corridor there is no trace of him ever having been there in the first place. Later, walking back to the storage room, Zelianne is sure of two things: firstly, the Institute hadn't sent the mysterious man and secondly, she would likely never see him again.
***
This time she brings a step stool with her, all the while not quite sure why she believes a nutter who just strolled into her office and whispered some rubbish into her ear. So, when she opens the preservation unit and sees the face of the blue box again and almost mechanically steps up onto the stool, she can't help but feel a bit foolish.
But, she allows her fingers to trace the grain of the wood once more. Then, absorbing the antiquated lettering, she reaches over the letter "P" and feels - so cleverly hidden beneath her fingertips - a slight panel. For a second a sensation of butterflies and excitement wells up in her stomach and, feeling very young and very foolish, she wonders if sliding this slight piece of wood out of the way to reveal whatever it is that it has to reveal is at all comparable to how Lord Caravan felt when opening Tutankhamen's Tomb.
She slides it over, letting a wave of imagined dank and ancient air (or air that is only twenty years old made more exciting by imagination) wash over her. Then, reaching in, she feels the shape of a small metal object. For a moment Zelianne just allows herself to feel about the unfamiliar shape of its perimeter before she plucks it out.
It is a bizarre object - merely a hopelessly old-fashioned key like they used before biodata processors and all the technological nonsense. It is perfectly preserved (she has never seen one in such good condition), uncovered by rust, and beautiful in its simplicity as she turns it about in her hand to examine it. Strangest of all - and the anomalies do mound up around this box - the key is warm to the touch despite all the years it must have spent walled in its dark cubby hole.
Then she remembers, blaming it on random neurons firing off craziness, Don't leave her to die alone. She brushes the enigmatic tones of the strange man's voice aside, but doesn't quite manage to remove them from her mind.
Stepping off the stool, she looks at where she knows this key fits and, holding her breath for reasons she can't even explain to herself, slots it in and turns it. Carefully, she opens the door with a reverence an old box may or may not deserve.
Zelianne had not exactly been sure what she was expecting to be inside. But what is actually there in the relic is not what she is expecting. Not in the least.
She has seen the detritus of history that belongs to Earth and several worlds besides her own - the poisonous trove at Russwoll in the United Amerikays, the refining of self-replicating fuel taken from Xenon VII, devices that transport one's particulate matter from one place to another, and all sorts of junk that was predicted in ancient texts that were very, very wrong about alien life as a whole. She has read about historically miraculous (although child's play in the wider universe) medical cures that bent the population dynamics to the breaking point and drove humanity out towards the stars, memorized dates for wars over water, learned of gods and pantheons of all sorts…
Because she has studied history, she has long ago ceased to be surprised by so many things. It takes something that is bigger on the inside and yet so cobbled together to reduce her to the mentality of a child. And here she is: marvelling at a world she can't comprehend and thinking that she will never be able to properly understand anything again.
The light is dim and the crystalline central column looks like a forlorn giant holding up a dying world. The console below it has bits and bobs of all kinds haphazardly attached in a configuration that doesn't match any of her knowledge of any technology - be it of the 20th century mislabelling on the fibreall or even her own 32nd century. Turning about, she notices that there is a single, ordinary coat rack just inside the wooden doors where an old black bowler hangs forlornly, without an owner.
It strikes her, more than it usually does when she is knee deep in the dust of days gone past and ruins of buildings that haven't born any resemblance to habitable places for centuries, that somebody lived here - here where there is miraculously no dust and just a very quiet humming which drifts forlornly through the air.
With a slow timidity, she finds herself moving further towards the darkened central column. Spotting something that looks - just a tiny bit, if she tries - like some vaguely identifiable ancient technology, she touches a monitor. As if she has somehow disturbed the universe inside this box and it knows she is here, the hum grows louder. Seconds after her fingers graze the strange material, an unseen circuit is activated and art she had never seen the like of - complicated, and swirled concentric circles - spills over the screen. Then it flickers, and film of a man with wild brown hair, who is wearing a deeply old-fashioned suit that she has never seen the like of, except in very old datamatrix images from the old Internet, shatters the tomb-like atmosphere of the impossible box.
"You." Zelianne jumps back at the sound of his voice, looking about her and wondering if someone else is also perfectly preserved and waiting about, immaculate, in the golden shadows of the room. However, there is no such sleeping figure and she knows somehow that she is alone with a recording. The screen blurs and bursts into silvery snow for a moment before the man comes on again: "You. Don't let me abandon you."
The screen flickers and reconstitutes itself. The man appears again, frozen for a moment, before he begins his stern recitation again. "Don't let me abandon you," another flicker and the same footage rolls again, "Don't let me abandon you."
It continues four more times and then, with a pop, the screen fades to black again and the anachronistic man is gone. Stepping back away from the extraordinary mushroom shaped console in the middle of the room, Zelianne stops and pauses to look around. She has measured her life and career by time (she recounts in her head: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, Iron, New Industrial, Neo Industrial, Computational, Pre-Exodus, Exodus) and, for the first time in her entire existence, within an artefact that shouldn't be in oh so many ways, she feels absolutely…timeless.
That thought, and this nonsensical world, make her want to run, but, she has never been one to leave her curiosity unsatisfied. Feeling drawn back towards the contraption at the centre of the room, Zelianne reaches back to touch the cool bronze of the console gingerly, wondering if her touch creates a circuit of life in a cell that has been dormant for…years? Days? Centuries? She loses track as she feels a crackle of energy surge through the air, and suddenly, a projection shoots up from the floor grates. For a moment, all he can see is an indistinct, flickering male form sprouting out from her side. She jumps out of the way of the figure who has begun intoning "This is Emergency Programme One," and sounding all business. Now, seeing him clearer, she is surprised to see it is not the same man - this one is a tall, rough man who wears a heavy jacket and the kind of jumper that has never quite gone out of style in the New Britannian Empire.
The man flicks in and out and the audio becomes scrambled and most of the substance of the message is lost - here and there a word in an archaic accent is clear. Throughout the strange display the lights of the room dim around him, as if this box can't quite live without this man who is only a kind of data ghost.
It all evolves before her as a kind of a terrifying sort of archaeology, the kind where ghosts are artefacts and she seems to be the only witness to a phantasmic historical pantomime. And exactly what she is witnessing - what histories, what times, what events, what men, Zelianne doesn't know. Everything here is running together, too large and too finite all at once. …All too much for human comprehension.
Suddenly the words become clear again.
"So this is what you should do: let the TARDIS die." Zelianne flinches, now knowing that this place has a name, an identity, beyond Blue Police Box (20th? C.). The lights dim evermore as the holograph ghost goes on, "Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it; no one will even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years, the world will move on and the box will be buried."
Even in the grainy holographic image, she can see his eyes: they are indescribably sad. They are saying good-bye to someone. They are giving something up. There is a static filled noise - as if fabric is being torn - and he vanishes, leaving only golden light and empty space that resonates with the lonely tones of his voice.
Don't leave her to die alone.
She thinks she is beginning to understand. But, against that man's wishes, someone has found this box, someone has moved it from a street corner, and it will not be buried. This is not another house, not a mere relic, this is a living, sentient being who is now alone, who doesn't want to be abandoned.
She is witnessing TARDIS die. She is witnessing its her life. Here Zelianne and this box have run together in a concentric whirl - a vortex of images.
A soft female voice floats over the room, saying one word, "Doctor…" and another ghost is called into being for one moment: an old man with a mass of white hair and a stiff, imperial bearing. The only details of him she records is that he wears an old fashioned coat, the like of which Zelianne has never seen and has a feeling she never will again. He disappears before she can drink in the details and create a complete snapshot for her memory (for a record, she adds mentally) - what is left is only a blur of impressions.
But she has no time to ponder this because from below the grates of the room voices have come babbling up - low and high, eccentric accents, shouts and whispers alike…and the room is an aural surround imbued with a false veneer of life ringing through the vast space.
Now there are imagistic relics of these men all around her - she catches a velvet smoking jacket, a lengthy, trailing scarf, high collars, a brightly coloured jacket, snatches of old fashioned clothing all about - half-ghostly figures relaying messages to people who must be long gone. Sometimes a female voice mixes in - playful, alarmed, annoyed - by turns.
She walks towards one figure, touches his shoulder, and he dissolves into sparkling nothing beneath her fingertips.
Close to her, the figure of a man in a ripped and tattered velvet coat, something that looks suspiciously like blood smeared down his face, greasy brown ringlets, and deadened eyes that seem more ancient than anything she has ever unearthed in the Earth's dust chokes out, "If she survives when I have…when I have done it…she will be…the last…if, if she survives…If anyone hears this…"
She has to turn away from this forlorn figure and, mercifully, his voice is subsumed into the din that she has awakened.
All this whirls around Zelianne and the underlying hum in the room becomes like a song accompanying this cacophonous chorus and, she realizes that she is something so small, she can't hope to comfort this being - for it seems irreverent to call in "the box" - who has lost something in these men that is irreplaceable.
The second figure had said that no one was supposed to get in. That this beautiful, lonely being was supposed to die. But through a fluke of fate and a strange man who found his way into her office, she is here now. It is her job to discover, to document - but only things that are so long gone that the life has gone out of them, because it is hard to comfort dust. But she has noticed and she has found her way in.
Although the world goes on outside - time is something different here, in this…(the world feels too big in her mind as she thinks it, not knowing what it means) TARDIS.
Don't leave her to die alone.
Around her, the voices are fading, although the hum of the ship itself remains the same low requiem. It emanates from the bronze centre console so she moves back to it. Not knowing how it is one comforts what one originally thought was just an artefact, she hesitatingly spreads her fingers over it, before sliding her entire hand onto it - as if caressing someone.
She wonders if the humming is its heartbeat. If this is where it keeps its heart - but she doesn't know and has no one to ask. So she leans forward and whispers, "I'm sorry, so sorry they're all gone. I'm not much, but I'm here. You're not alone. You're not abandoned."
The lights dim around her and, in the darkness one last figure springs into ephemeral life. This one is far less grainy than the others and does not flicker. His hair is hidden under the rim of the same black bowler that she had seen on the coat rack coming in, his hands are shoved into the pockets of his black coat. His face is round and mischievous looking, despite the fact that his mouth is drawn into a contemplative frown.
This new figure is doing nothing more than thinking on record. His head is tilted just so and his eyes are looking in Zelianne's direction. Those eyes - a bright green in the midst of his otherwise dark appearance - are bright, intelligent…but so…old. Even more ancient than the man with his torn velvet coat that she had to turn away from.
At a length he begins, "I'm not sure why I'm doing this - I think," he pauses, pulling a face, "I think, Jack, that you may come back, being akin to a cockroach as you are. Don't worry, I'm rather fond of cockroaches and think that they have a rather unfortunate reputation. But, as always, I am digressing. It happens - digression. Best parts in my life are digressive in nature. But getting on with it -"
He pauses again, wiggling his fingers out in the air as if sweeping the words out of the atmosphere.
"This is my last regeneration, you know," Zelianne does not know in the least what it is he means by this statement, "So, when I go - probably doing something exquisitely spectacular or terribly mundane…and I hope, the former rather than the later - the Time Lords will be gone, but, the TARDIS will remain. But if you're seeing this, that's already happened, so it should have ceased to be surprising. And you'll see me again, I bet - as that spaz in pinstripes that was my tenth self said - wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…But I'd like to think I've saved the best for last even though it is not very much your last...although, I must say, the gob stays rather constant. But again, that should have ceased to be surprising as well….oh, centuries ago."
It slowly dawns on her, in a way that makes sense intellectually (almost) but not on a level where she can truly accept that she has had it wrong…Zelianne hasn't seen "men" in here, she has seen "man"…one man had lived here, with a number of different faces to his one life. One man had died here. And with that comes the clear realisation that it is not "man" in the denotative sense, but rather some kind of alien. But even this is not the revelation it should be - it is, if possible, worse.
"So, Jack, or whoever may come across this message - make this my last selfish request. Don't let my TARDIS die alone. She'll be crippled without me and unable to get up to her usual mischief among other planets and timelines and she won't think paltry humans are much compensation - although she has grown quite used to them in my later regenerations - "
His voice remains light, but listening to this speech in this place full of ghosts somehow makes it all the worse. Eyes burning, she blinks and tries to keep focused on the man in front of her.
The man, meanwhile, is looking down at the floor, before his entire hologram shifts and he walks over to the console, placing his hand upon it in much the same manner that Zelianne has just done. Something catches in his throat, something she might have missed if she wasn't used to recording details, "Don't leave her to die alone. Please just do that last thing for me."
Looking up, the man just gives a jaunty nod and flicks quietly out of existence. She knows, somehow, that this is the last ghost she'll find even though, for a sort of good-bye message, there isn't any good-bye. This is somehow fitting, though, to these words that have been unsaid.
The hum stills to almost a whisper and the lights fade to just a burnished glow. Looking away, her eyes catch on the bowler hat, still awaiting its owner on the hat rack. Taking in this seemingly irrelevant detail, she has to raise a hand to wipe her eyes. She has only just met this man, and even then, not really. But she feels his loss like a giant hole…or maybe just an unclaimed hat.
Zelianne leans down, feeling a tear drip down her face, and lays her cheek against the cool metal. "I'll be back," is all she can manage. Everything else sticks in her throat. "I'll be back."
She goes to the door, taking in the enormity of the room inside a small box one more time: yes, she will be back. She'll be back because there is no one else to fulfil one strange man's last request.
Framing her own small world in the doorway of TARDIS before she closes and locks the door, she sees the entire impossible world inside go dark. Closing the preservation crate, she slips the key onto the chain next to her mother's ring and simply leaves to go back to her flat.
***
The next day, the first thing she does is to revise the artefact report on Blue Police Box (20th? C.)…but after she types it out, she immediately erases what she has learned from the tablet and stares at the resulting blankness before giving up and turning to other piles of bureaucratic nonsense. TARDIS is, as far as she is concerned, a tomb - but to museums and archaeologists, alike, this does not mean that it is sacred and untouchable. She thinks about this fact and avoids the secondary storage room until the tail end of the day when she can find nothing else to busy herself with. Really, Zelianne wishes she could just "lose" the lonely box in a place that only she knows…
Shrugging into her coat, she prepares to face the unexpected rainstorm outside. The biodata scanner briefly flashes her name as she leaves through the museum's side entrance. As is her usual luck, it is absolutely pouring and the human race, for all its technological advances, has done little to improve the simplicity of the umbrella. A simple device that she has, of course, completely forgotten.
However, when she is in the process of pulling her jacket over her head in order to run the distance to the other storage building, Zelianne hears a slightly familiar voice asking, "You going my way?"
It is the infernal man from her office - the one who she thinks has all the answers and whom she is never supposed to see again. But he is here, offering her an umbrella, as if he is completely normal.
"You going towards the truth, Jack?" she quips, narrowing her eyes.
He merely chuckles and returns an enigmatic, "Touché."
Zelianne raises an eyebrow at him and shakes her head. They walk in silence only interrupted by the sound of raindrops on the umbrella. Finally, he speaks again.
"I suppose I should apologize for shifting that burden onto you - but I figured it would be easier on me and the TARDIS both."
"Why?"
The man gave her a guarded look as if he wasn't used to asking such pertinent questions.
"He wasn't the only one amused by archaeologists, you know," he tries.
"Okay, sir," she grinds out, stopping and rounding on him, "You don't know what I've seen, so if you'll just answer properly, I'll be very thankful. I resent being amusement."
He simply sighs and stares off in the rain.
"Someone once told me that when you know too much - and I know too much - you get tired, because you know, above all, that everything dies. And I saw the man who said those words die and I don't want to know more."
She pauses and states, almost savagely, "You loved him."
He only laughs and remains looking straight ahead, a tightness about his jaw.
"I've loved a lot of people," he says dismissively. "A lot."
In response, Zelianne only frowns and he continues on.
"The funny thing is, I'll still see him again despite it all. Again and again. And I can't tell him what's happened."
"Tell me," Zelianne asks. "I saw him and know nothing about him. And everything in that world of his seems to miss him - I miss him and I never even knew him beyond what his ship showed me."
She stops and follows his gaze, before whispering, "And I think that was meant for you. I don't belong there."
He doesn't say anything for a moment.
"The Doctor was - and still is, because time is akin to a dominatrix sometimes…to call her a harsh mistress is too lenient - the only constant in my life for a long time. The Doctor in the TARDIS…that is something that is going to take a lot of time to explain properly. But one of the things he did so well was taking up people that didn't belong there. It's appropriate for you to be there, believe me."
They're almost to the door of the storage room and as they go, Zelianne feels the key grow warmer - although, and perhaps this is only in her imagination, it is not quite as warm as it was yesterday.
"Come," she says, reaching down and taking his hand, "One thing I think your Doctor never learned was that saying good-bye is the beginning of letting go. You are not alone now. And the sooner you face that, the sooner you can stop chasing ghosts."
She thinks about TARDIS, rolling over images of her Doctor, again and again - sending her a message from someone who can no longer speak. These messages have a finality in them; a paradox of ends within a place where time does not seem to matter. But time has invaded its world at last and if there is one thing she knows, it is that being alone is a basic fear of most species - be they resembling a blue box or a man wearing a blue coat.
The man called Jack withdraws his hand from hers and puts it in his pocket. Under the roof of the second storage building, he takes down the umbrella and gives it a shake before handing it to her.
"No," he says simply. "There are some things that no one wants to see end."
***
Thirty-four years later she remembers this moment as she, now the museum's curator, sees the lights go out for the final time and the room (now down to only one) shrink about her.
For a moment she remembers an anachronism in a blue coat walking away into the drizzling rain.
She goes to say good-bye to her, then, and as she does, a lock on the console unlatches itself and the faintest gold mist comes out and swirls around her. She breathes it in because this is her heart and her last breath (and in that moment she doesn't know where she ends and TARDIS begins).
And oh, with that last golden pulse, the things she sees.
In her last moment there is a song and an image of burnt orange sky - of a man wearing several faces, several old-fashioned jackets, several grins. He's laughing a thousand laughs. Then the mist evaporates and the lights go out for the last time and she is alone in an ordinary wooden blue box, in the dark. She finds she can't even cry because she, too, feels like an empty shell.
She remembers his words as he walked out into the rain and wonders if she might have done the same, had she only known. If she had only known.
But Zelianne simply closes the door to an ordinary box, and locks it out of habit. Then, replacing the key on an old chain with her mother's ring, one last time she lets her fingers glide over the pristine wood, and drawing them away, steps outside and seals the container off.
Fin
Without further ado...
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. I should think I would be a great deal richer if I did.
Well, consider this one out of two of Sci's unconventional Doctor Who stories. If I ever get to the other one. I'm working on the last piece of the Expert Trilogy (Tentatively entitled "Gods of Great and Small") and finishing off "A Room Without Windows."
Many thanks to me lovely betas aeternitasbeach and my Jack monitor celes_grant. :D:D:D
Final Transmission
~ sciathan file ~
Zelianne hates these periods between fieldwork.
It's times like these that she goes from digging about in ruins of bygone civilisations to desk jobs and reverts from being a dirt-poor archaeologist to simply being a poor archaeologist. It doesn't seem to matter though, that she is an expert in the western regions of the old United Amerikays and the regions of places like The Angels, decimated by pollution explosion and a war over water resources a few centuries back. Nor does it matter that she has contributed many artefacts to museums and interplanetary exhibitions around the galaxy. The Institute just swears up and down that they are certainly working on a grant to continue her dig, but she hasn't seen a single blue Terran cent thus far. Zelianne hopes that they will give her something definite soon - of course she hopes for a lot of things, like being able to get off this ruddy planet and head out to the planet Las Vegas to one day do some digs on alien soil.
But everyone else has had the same idea too, as all the specialists on the new planetary civilisations seem to garner funding a lot faster than she does. Moreover, as she goes on, the allure of those distant stars and places is slowly fading into a muted longing to just know her own blue star.
The problem with this is that, apparently, Earth is old hat and boring and no one really wants to spend more money on digs for the seminal human planet, believing, with the rashness of survivors, that they know all there is to know. Maybe this is why the Institute only smiles sycophantically when she asks (again and again and again) if her funding request has been granted.
So, instead, she is back home in the New Britannian Empire working for a museum doing archival work, which, of course, amounts to little more than paper pushing and labelling. Quite an efficient use of her expertise if Zelianne did say so herself. Really - couldn't think of anything more scintillating and mentally rewarding than deskwork.
Today - joy of joys! - she is cataloguing the contents of the 20-25th century storerooms and all of the items that have recently been processed by the dating computer. One day these artefacts may find their way out to be displayed to people who don't believe Earth history is old hat, or the intelligentsia who think Earth history is rather high-brow indeed, or for private collectors who will then acquire certain items by less than legal means. Scoffing, Zelianne turns to the list and notes that the first few artefacts are small personal items ranging from a musical apparatus from the Technological Revolution and an old hair dryer, to what she expects is a mislabelled Styrofoam cup from before the worldwide ban.
Most of the junk on the list is rather boring and she has already decided that she'll foist it on some intern whose salary is better than her own so she can have a go at some items that appeal to her interests more.
The first of these items, the skeletal remains of one of the sacred Rac that were worshipped by the peoples of United Amerikays, is not the best sample of its kind that Zelianne has ever seen. However, it keeps her amused for a good half an hour, correcting the notations in the catalogue ledger and then giving it to the technical grunt to feed into the Terran Federation Data Network. The aforementioned grunt balks at her rather horrific handwriting, but she merely responds that they don't pay her for penmanship and the museum is too cheap to give her a Persucom to revise the entries herself. This is not to mention the fact that she delights in the archaic notion of writing things out with a pen and not with a keypad.
Zelianne finds that the next few entries are not nearly as interesting as they look on the fibreall paper - but that's often the case. She revises two of the entries and starts from scratch on the third because whoever had made it originally did not know an antiquated plug from their own arse.
She then finds that beneath the cool, new sheets of fibreall is one yellowed one that seems as if it has been accidentally attached to her chosen workload for the day. Flipping to this sheet, Zelianne comes to something so wholly anomalous that she decides that a trek to the secondary storage room may be entirely in order. And it is far and so poorly ventilated that she rather abhors going there and almost always leaves the items in there for the intern grunt who has a higher salary than her.
But this is different. This old sheet (and she has a fondness for old things, anyways) has only one single item listed on it. Wrinkling her nose, she reads, again to make sure:
Blue Police Box (20th? C.)
In her head she accesses the Old English, before the dialects were standardised into Terran Common and struggles to remember the word "Police." Unable to come up with a modern day equivalent, she brushes it off and reads the rest of the description.
Material assumed to be wood. Dating unsuccessful - several tests result in an unknown substance reading, errors, and nonsensical readouts. References to shape of object date it to 1950's. Likelihood of preservation of such an object from such a period is given by datamatrix processing to be about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. No decay noted. Artefact locked by indeterminate device. No successful entrance made after several attempts.
In her entire career she has never seen datamatrix or dating software fail to give answers or useful data of any kind. And if the person who guestimated the initial date for the artefact was to be believed, it is nothing short of miraculous…because it is wood from a purportedly 20th century artefact. A veritable first. And that description…
Thinking back to her days carousing about uni and doing impressions of professors when they weren't listening (and once, rather devastating to her marks in that course, when one was), she recalls an old codger who insisted on wearing about an ancient mortarboard hat and trying to make tedious digging through the dirt all the more interesting through his bizarre obsession with archaeological conspiracy theories. His favourite one was about a blue box that appeared throughout history - in hieroglyphs, cave etchings, on tokens buried with mummified remains, scratched on walls in temples, and encoded in datamatrix files for the old Internet in a number of photos and ancient daily news feeds.
But, she firmly tells herself, it is nothing more than a myth and so she shouldn't be surprised if the item on the cataloguing sheets were to be nothing more than just a mundane box and that museum archival work should continue to be as boring as burnt toast.
…Although she would chance the boredom as it might prove amusing. Even if the datamatrix odds are only 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%.
She grins and rolls the fibreall sheet up and jams it into the back pocket of her trousers. She grabs her coat and heads out, wishing only that she had been the archaeologist who had originally discovered it. Because obviously the idiot who had found it first hadn't figured out exactly what it was.
But then again, all Zelianne has is a myth perpetuated by a man in a mortarboard.
***
The guard takes exception to her temporary pass and then has the absolute nerve to try to get Zelianne to give him her datamatrix avatar as part of "new security procedure"…with a highly hinted at dinner tossed into it.
So that's how it is. It's fine by her.
She sweet-talks him towards the wall and reaches out to his hand, taking it, and begins making circles in his palm. Then, in one fluid movement she shoves him back and grazes the biodata processor with the tips of his fingers. The door to the storage room fades out and the man looks somewhere between horrified and enraged as she saunters away. Really, he must never have been on digs with Ulops who, as a species, have a much higher opinion of the power of their pheromones than she does.
Continuing down the aisle to the storage area, she finds a sizable preservation container with a number that matches her fibreall sheet index and inputs her archival code. The metal door flickers and then dissolves into its constituent particles. All that is left, exactly per the description, is a blue police box reminiscent of those found in the 20th century.
And the wood really is undamaged…pristine, even.
She tries the lock, hoping that maybe - just maybe - it will let her in, having decayed with time or something. But it holds, and the secrets that the artefact holds are barred to her for the time being. The strange box merely sits, she thinks, waiting for something. Someone.
Running her hand over the surface - knowing this is not at all professional behaviour - she detects a faint trace of a vibration…as if somewhere very deep within it is pulsating and…alive. Quickly, she draws her hand back and tells herself that this must be only her imagination. It is, she rationalises, probably an ordinary box that has survived this long due to a bizarre combination of atmospheric conditions in someone's basement…and so on and so forth with some technical gobbledegook thrown in for extra incomprehensibility.
But, even so, as she walks around the entirety of the exterior, she can't quite shake her initial impression of it being there - waiting, watching.
Forgetting the archival record she is supposed to be amending, Zelianne leaves the mysterious and very lucky blue box and vows to come back the next day armed with more information.
***
Before she returns the next day, she does her work and checks up on the complete dig record for the mysterious blue box…only to find there isn't much of one at all. It had been found only twenty years ago, on a street corner, unnoticed in the wake of a rather brutal invasion by enemies that were not even recorded. Moreover, when Zelianne tried to find records in the datamatrix she finds it is also curiously bereft of information on the event the record (almost) outlines. And, in case these oddities weren't enough, the record is not in any standard format for any documenting agency that she knows of…
She merely notes that information surrounding the box is becoming increasingly bizarre at every turn. It had been found exactly as it is now - locked up and anachronistic and mysterious. It had ended up here seemingly because no one else had had any notion of what to do with it.
The signature that signalled its donation to the museum is nothing more than someone's initials - JHTW - that are anonymous even in their act of identification. Sighing, she puts in an inquiry for other files on the box, thoroughly expecting it to go the way of her dig funding, and goes back to correcting further acts of idiocy.
To her surprise, someone saunters into her temporary office at the museum regarding the anomalous artefact not two days after she makes the request. It is someone she has never seen in all her long, boring days of archival work and haranguing the Institute's finance division. He wears an odd outfit - a long coat and suspenders - that looks as if he has borrowed it from a museum collection somewhere. Stupidly, for a second she wonders if he wandered out of one of the digital displays, suddenly fully formed. His face is handsome, though - she decides the security guard can keep his dinner until Hades freezes over - but it has something that keeps it from looking entirely youthful at the same time…something Zelianne can't verbalise even if she wants to.
He doesn't sit down - rather, he just leans on the corner of her desk, one side of his coat peeled back and a hand planted on his hip as he says, "Hello there. You Zelianne Farcom?"
She can't place his accent for the life in her - the closest guess she has is that he is an immigrant from one of the outer planetary settlements come back to the mother world. And he is grinning at her and it is vaguely distracting.
"Yes?" she says, arching an eyebrow and looking over the rims of her reading glasses at the stranger - better to pretend one is unimpressed, really. If people think they are impressive they are easier to please and manipulate…although more likely to be smarmy bastards. However, she can put up with that for a short duration with the right incentives to behave.
He pulls out a file from…well, she doesn't really know and doesn't really want to know. However, he doesn't set it on her desk for her to read. He merely keeps it rhythmically bouncing in the air.
"Blue box, eh?" He asks, matter-of-factly, as if it is a joke she is missing. Not once does he even glance at the file. Rather, she has the distinct impression that he is reading her. His face slips into an expression she can't quite identify…and she knows, like his eccentric clothing, he seems just a bit…off. Not wholly off, though…it's just as if some oddity has brushed off him that now clings there, permeating his whole being.
"Yeah, I wasn't expecting you. They usually don't send anyone unless it's to tell me very politely that my funding has been rejected."
"Oh I hate being expected," he says. His grin returns. "And I don't really do all that much rejecting, either. As for polite - depends who you ask."
The file comes to a rest on the strange man's hip. It's maddeningly tempting to simply ask for it, but there's obviously a game to be played here. Zelianne leans forward on the desk, still affecting a nonchalant attitude, even though she has the distinct impression that a rosy blush might just be stirring in her cheeks.
"So you gonna tell me what you know?"
He sits down, crosses his legs, and seems to contemplate - and she doesn't at all know why she thinks this - giving her a wink. Then, leaning his elbow on his own knee and copying her gesture, he says "Nope, I suspect telling you what I know would take several centuries. Depends what you want to know, though - some subjects I am…very knowledgeable in."
This time the stranger definitely winks. Zelianne affects a frown and leans back into her chair, before stating airily, "Blue box, boy."
He laughs, "Feeling alliterative?"
"No," she makes a show of slowly pointing to a blank spot in the air where the thin, slightly transparent screen of the datamatrix link blinks into being and begins scrolling sets of iridescent blue figures. "More annoyed."
The stranger laughs and then gets to his feet. Stepping around her disorganized desk (well, as disorganized as it can be with only a few stray files and the shell of 25th century computational device on it) and, leaning towards her, he brings his lips so close to her ear that they tickle her when he speaks.
"Secret compartment above the 'P.'"
For a moment she can make no sense of this statement at all - his words sound like prophecy, something ludicrous and impervious and fantastic. Then, taking advantage of her moment of confusion, with renewed vigour, the man pulls himself up and turns to walk out the door.
Only then does she realize what this man feels like…he feels like anachronism and anomaly. Like a blue police box with a "P" above the door. He's opening a door for her, she thinks. He's opening an impossible door.
"Wait!" Zelianne shouts, rising from her chair, "You obviously know far more about it, why are you telling me this?"
He stops, but doesn't turn around.
"Don't leave her to die alone," he whispers, just loud enough for her to hear. There is a heaviness to his strange words that she realizes has been under his superficial levity the entire time. Somehow, though, she knows not to go towards him, "Why me…? You…you know something about it that I obviously don't. I don't even understand what you're saying to me."
Giving a short laugh he responds with a lightness she can't quite believe now, "He'd appreciate the poetic irony of you being an archaeologist, Zelianne Forcom."
Then he walks from the room and when she gets out into the corridor there is no trace of him ever having been there in the first place. Later, walking back to the storage room, Zelianne is sure of two things: firstly, the Institute hadn't sent the mysterious man and secondly, she would likely never see him again.
***
This time she brings a step stool with her, all the while not quite sure why she believes a nutter who just strolled into her office and whispered some rubbish into her ear. So, when she opens the preservation unit and sees the face of the blue box again and almost mechanically steps up onto the stool, she can't help but feel a bit foolish.
But, she allows her fingers to trace the grain of the wood once more. Then, absorbing the antiquated lettering, she reaches over the letter "P" and feels - so cleverly hidden beneath her fingertips - a slight panel. For a second a sensation of butterflies and excitement wells up in her stomach and, feeling very young and very foolish, she wonders if sliding this slight piece of wood out of the way to reveal whatever it is that it has to reveal is at all comparable to how Lord Caravan felt when opening Tutankhamen's Tomb.
She slides it over, letting a wave of imagined dank and ancient air (or air that is only twenty years old made more exciting by imagination) wash over her. Then, reaching in, she feels the shape of a small metal object. For a moment Zelianne just allows herself to feel about the unfamiliar shape of its perimeter before she plucks it out.
It is a bizarre object - merely a hopelessly old-fashioned key like they used before biodata processors and all the technological nonsense. It is perfectly preserved (she has never seen one in such good condition), uncovered by rust, and beautiful in its simplicity as she turns it about in her hand to examine it. Strangest of all - and the anomalies do mound up around this box - the key is warm to the touch despite all the years it must have spent walled in its dark cubby hole.
Then she remembers, blaming it on random neurons firing off craziness, Don't leave her to die alone. She brushes the enigmatic tones of the strange man's voice aside, but doesn't quite manage to remove them from her mind.
Stepping off the stool, she looks at where she knows this key fits and, holding her breath for reasons she can't even explain to herself, slots it in and turns it. Carefully, she opens the door with a reverence an old box may or may not deserve.
Zelianne had not exactly been sure what she was expecting to be inside. But what is actually there in the relic is not what she is expecting. Not in the least.
She has seen the detritus of history that belongs to Earth and several worlds besides her own - the poisonous trove at Russwoll in the United Amerikays, the refining of self-replicating fuel taken from Xenon VII, devices that transport one's particulate matter from one place to another, and all sorts of junk that was predicted in ancient texts that were very, very wrong about alien life as a whole. She has read about historically miraculous (although child's play in the wider universe) medical cures that bent the population dynamics to the breaking point and drove humanity out towards the stars, memorized dates for wars over water, learned of gods and pantheons of all sorts…
Because she has studied history, she has long ago ceased to be surprised by so many things. It takes something that is bigger on the inside and yet so cobbled together to reduce her to the mentality of a child. And here she is: marvelling at a world she can't comprehend and thinking that she will never be able to properly understand anything again.
The light is dim and the crystalline central column looks like a forlorn giant holding up a dying world. The console below it has bits and bobs of all kinds haphazardly attached in a configuration that doesn't match any of her knowledge of any technology - be it of the 20th century mislabelling on the fibreall or even her own 32nd century. Turning about, she notices that there is a single, ordinary coat rack just inside the wooden doors where an old black bowler hangs forlornly, without an owner.
It strikes her, more than it usually does when she is knee deep in the dust of days gone past and ruins of buildings that haven't born any resemblance to habitable places for centuries, that somebody lived here - here where there is miraculously no dust and just a very quiet humming which drifts forlornly through the air.
With a slow timidity, she finds herself moving further towards the darkened central column. Spotting something that looks - just a tiny bit, if she tries - like some vaguely identifiable ancient technology, she touches a monitor. As if she has somehow disturbed the universe inside this box and it knows she is here, the hum grows louder. Seconds after her fingers graze the strange material, an unseen circuit is activated and art she had never seen the like of - complicated, and swirled concentric circles - spills over the screen. Then it flickers, and film of a man with wild brown hair, who is wearing a deeply old-fashioned suit that she has never seen the like of, except in very old datamatrix images from the old Internet, shatters the tomb-like atmosphere of the impossible box.
"You." Zelianne jumps back at the sound of his voice, looking about her and wondering if someone else is also perfectly preserved and waiting about, immaculate, in the golden shadows of the room. However, there is no such sleeping figure and she knows somehow that she is alone with a recording. The screen blurs and bursts into silvery snow for a moment before the man comes on again: "You. Don't let me abandon you."
The screen flickers and reconstitutes itself. The man appears again, frozen for a moment, before he begins his stern recitation again. "Don't let me abandon you," another flicker and the same footage rolls again, "Don't let me abandon you."
It continues four more times and then, with a pop, the screen fades to black again and the anachronistic man is gone. Stepping back away from the extraordinary mushroom shaped console in the middle of the room, Zelianne stops and pauses to look around. She has measured her life and career by time (she recounts in her head: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, Iron, New Industrial, Neo Industrial, Computational, Pre-Exodus, Exodus) and, for the first time in her entire existence, within an artefact that shouldn't be in oh so many ways, she feels absolutely…timeless.
That thought, and this nonsensical world, make her want to run, but, she has never been one to leave her curiosity unsatisfied. Feeling drawn back towards the contraption at the centre of the room, Zelianne reaches back to touch the cool bronze of the console gingerly, wondering if her touch creates a circuit of life in a cell that has been dormant for…years? Days? Centuries? She loses track as she feels a crackle of energy surge through the air, and suddenly, a projection shoots up from the floor grates. For a moment, all he can see is an indistinct, flickering male form sprouting out from her side. She jumps out of the way of the figure who has begun intoning "This is Emergency Programme One," and sounding all business. Now, seeing him clearer, she is surprised to see it is not the same man - this one is a tall, rough man who wears a heavy jacket and the kind of jumper that has never quite gone out of style in the New Britannian Empire.
The man flicks in and out and the audio becomes scrambled and most of the substance of the message is lost - here and there a word in an archaic accent is clear. Throughout the strange display the lights of the room dim around him, as if this box can't quite live without this man who is only a kind of data ghost.
It all evolves before her as a kind of a terrifying sort of archaeology, the kind where ghosts are artefacts and she seems to be the only witness to a phantasmic historical pantomime. And exactly what she is witnessing - what histories, what times, what events, what men, Zelianne doesn't know. Everything here is running together, too large and too finite all at once. …All too much for human comprehension.
Suddenly the words become clear again.
"So this is what you should do: let the TARDIS die." Zelianne flinches, now knowing that this place has a name, an identity, beyond Blue Police Box (20th? C.). The lights dim evermore as the holograph ghost goes on, "Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it; no one will even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years, the world will move on and the box will be buried."
Even in the grainy holographic image, she can see his eyes: they are indescribably sad. They are saying good-bye to someone. They are giving something up. There is a static filled noise - as if fabric is being torn - and he vanishes, leaving only golden light and empty space that resonates with the lonely tones of his voice.
Don't leave her to die alone.
She thinks she is beginning to understand. But, against that man's wishes, someone has found this box, someone has moved it from a street corner, and it will not be buried. This is not another house, not a mere relic, this is a living, sentient being who is now alone, who doesn't want to be abandoned.
She is witnessing TARDIS die. She is witnessing its her life. Here Zelianne and this box have run together in a concentric whirl - a vortex of images.
A soft female voice floats over the room, saying one word, "Doctor…" and another ghost is called into being for one moment: an old man with a mass of white hair and a stiff, imperial bearing. The only details of him she records is that he wears an old fashioned coat, the like of which Zelianne has never seen and has a feeling she never will again. He disappears before she can drink in the details and create a complete snapshot for her memory (for a record, she adds mentally) - what is left is only a blur of impressions.
But she has no time to ponder this because from below the grates of the room voices have come babbling up - low and high, eccentric accents, shouts and whispers alike…and the room is an aural surround imbued with a false veneer of life ringing through the vast space.
Now there are imagistic relics of these men all around her - she catches a velvet smoking jacket, a lengthy, trailing scarf, high collars, a brightly coloured jacket, snatches of old fashioned clothing all about - half-ghostly figures relaying messages to people who must be long gone. Sometimes a female voice mixes in - playful, alarmed, annoyed - by turns.
She walks towards one figure, touches his shoulder, and he dissolves into sparkling nothing beneath her fingertips.
Close to her, the figure of a man in a ripped and tattered velvet coat, something that looks suspiciously like blood smeared down his face, greasy brown ringlets, and deadened eyes that seem more ancient than anything she has ever unearthed in the Earth's dust chokes out, "If she survives when I have…when I have done it…she will be…the last…if, if she survives…If anyone hears this…"
She has to turn away from this forlorn figure and, mercifully, his voice is subsumed into the din that she has awakened.
All this whirls around Zelianne and the underlying hum in the room becomes like a song accompanying this cacophonous chorus and, she realizes that she is something so small, she can't hope to comfort this being - for it seems irreverent to call in "the box" - who has lost something in these men that is irreplaceable.
The second figure had said that no one was supposed to get in. That this beautiful, lonely being was supposed to die. But through a fluke of fate and a strange man who found his way into her office, she is here now. It is her job to discover, to document - but only things that are so long gone that the life has gone out of them, because it is hard to comfort dust. But she has noticed and she has found her way in.
Although the world goes on outside - time is something different here, in this…(the world feels too big in her mind as she thinks it, not knowing what it means) TARDIS.
Don't leave her to die alone.
Around her, the voices are fading, although the hum of the ship itself remains the same low requiem. It emanates from the bronze centre console so she moves back to it. Not knowing how it is one comforts what one originally thought was just an artefact, she hesitatingly spreads her fingers over it, before sliding her entire hand onto it - as if caressing someone.
She wonders if the humming is its heartbeat. If this is where it keeps its heart - but she doesn't know and has no one to ask. So she leans forward and whispers, "I'm sorry, so sorry they're all gone. I'm not much, but I'm here. You're not alone. You're not abandoned."
The lights dim around her and, in the darkness one last figure springs into ephemeral life. This one is far less grainy than the others and does not flicker. His hair is hidden under the rim of the same black bowler that she had seen on the coat rack coming in, his hands are shoved into the pockets of his black coat. His face is round and mischievous looking, despite the fact that his mouth is drawn into a contemplative frown.
This new figure is doing nothing more than thinking on record. His head is tilted just so and his eyes are looking in Zelianne's direction. Those eyes - a bright green in the midst of his otherwise dark appearance - are bright, intelligent…but so…old. Even more ancient than the man with his torn velvet coat that she had to turn away from.
At a length he begins, "I'm not sure why I'm doing this - I think," he pauses, pulling a face, "I think, Jack, that you may come back, being akin to a cockroach as you are. Don't worry, I'm rather fond of cockroaches and think that they have a rather unfortunate reputation. But, as always, I am digressing. It happens - digression. Best parts in my life are digressive in nature. But getting on with it -"
He pauses again, wiggling his fingers out in the air as if sweeping the words out of the atmosphere.
"This is my last regeneration, you know," Zelianne does not know in the least what it is he means by this statement, "So, when I go - probably doing something exquisitely spectacular or terribly mundane…and I hope, the former rather than the later - the Time Lords will be gone, but, the TARDIS will remain. But if you're seeing this, that's already happened, so it should have ceased to be surprising. And you'll see me again, I bet - as that spaz in pinstripes that was my tenth self said - wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…But I'd like to think I've saved the best for last even though it is not very much your last...although, I must say, the gob stays rather constant. But again, that should have ceased to be surprising as well….oh, centuries ago."
It slowly dawns on her, in a way that makes sense intellectually (almost) but not on a level where she can truly accept that she has had it wrong…Zelianne hasn't seen "men" in here, she has seen "man"…one man had lived here, with a number of different faces to his one life. One man had died here. And with that comes the clear realisation that it is not "man" in the denotative sense, but rather some kind of alien. But even this is not the revelation it should be - it is, if possible, worse.
"So, Jack, or whoever may come across this message - make this my last selfish request. Don't let my TARDIS die alone. She'll be crippled without me and unable to get up to her usual mischief among other planets and timelines and she won't think paltry humans are much compensation - although she has grown quite used to them in my later regenerations - "
His voice remains light, but listening to this speech in this place full of ghosts somehow makes it all the worse. Eyes burning, she blinks and tries to keep focused on the man in front of her.
The man, meanwhile, is looking down at the floor, before his entire hologram shifts and he walks over to the console, placing his hand upon it in much the same manner that Zelianne has just done. Something catches in his throat, something she might have missed if she wasn't used to recording details, "Don't leave her to die alone. Please just do that last thing for me."
Looking up, the man just gives a jaunty nod and flicks quietly out of existence. She knows, somehow, that this is the last ghost she'll find even though, for a sort of good-bye message, there isn't any good-bye. This is somehow fitting, though, to these words that have been unsaid.
The hum stills to almost a whisper and the lights fade to just a burnished glow. Looking away, her eyes catch on the bowler hat, still awaiting its owner on the hat rack. Taking in this seemingly irrelevant detail, she has to raise a hand to wipe her eyes. She has only just met this man, and even then, not really. But she feels his loss like a giant hole…or maybe just an unclaimed hat.
Zelianne leans down, feeling a tear drip down her face, and lays her cheek against the cool metal. "I'll be back," is all she can manage. Everything else sticks in her throat. "I'll be back."
She goes to the door, taking in the enormity of the room inside a small box one more time: yes, she will be back. She'll be back because there is no one else to fulfil one strange man's last request.
Framing her own small world in the doorway of TARDIS before she closes and locks the door, she sees the entire impossible world inside go dark. Closing the preservation crate, she slips the key onto the chain next to her mother's ring and simply leaves to go back to her flat.
***
The next day, the first thing she does is to revise the artefact report on Blue Police Box (20th? C.)…but after she types it out, she immediately erases what she has learned from the tablet and stares at the resulting blankness before giving up and turning to other piles of bureaucratic nonsense. TARDIS is, as far as she is concerned, a tomb - but to museums and archaeologists, alike, this does not mean that it is sacred and untouchable. She thinks about this fact and avoids the secondary storage room until the tail end of the day when she can find nothing else to busy herself with. Really, Zelianne wishes she could just "lose" the lonely box in a place that only she knows…
Shrugging into her coat, she prepares to face the unexpected rainstorm outside. The biodata scanner briefly flashes her name as she leaves through the museum's side entrance. As is her usual luck, it is absolutely pouring and the human race, for all its technological advances, has done little to improve the simplicity of the umbrella. A simple device that she has, of course, completely forgotten.
However, when she is in the process of pulling her jacket over her head in order to run the distance to the other storage building, Zelianne hears a slightly familiar voice asking, "You going my way?"
It is the infernal man from her office - the one who she thinks has all the answers and whom she is never supposed to see again. But he is here, offering her an umbrella, as if he is completely normal.
"You going towards the truth, Jack?" she quips, narrowing her eyes.
He merely chuckles and returns an enigmatic, "Touché."
Zelianne raises an eyebrow at him and shakes her head. They walk in silence only interrupted by the sound of raindrops on the umbrella. Finally, he speaks again.
"I suppose I should apologize for shifting that burden onto you - but I figured it would be easier on me and the TARDIS both."
"Why?"
The man gave her a guarded look as if he wasn't used to asking such pertinent questions.
"He wasn't the only one amused by archaeologists, you know," he tries.
"Okay, sir," she grinds out, stopping and rounding on him, "You don't know what I've seen, so if you'll just answer properly, I'll be very thankful. I resent being amusement."
He simply sighs and stares off in the rain.
"Someone once told me that when you know too much - and I know too much - you get tired, because you know, above all, that everything dies. And I saw the man who said those words die and I don't want to know more."
She pauses and states, almost savagely, "You loved him."
He only laughs and remains looking straight ahead, a tightness about his jaw.
"I've loved a lot of people," he says dismissively. "A lot."
In response, Zelianne only frowns and he continues on.
"The funny thing is, I'll still see him again despite it all. Again and again. And I can't tell him what's happened."
"Tell me," Zelianne asks. "I saw him and know nothing about him. And everything in that world of his seems to miss him - I miss him and I never even knew him beyond what his ship showed me."
She stops and follows his gaze, before whispering, "And I think that was meant for you. I don't belong there."
He doesn't say anything for a moment.
"The Doctor was - and still is, because time is akin to a dominatrix sometimes…to call her a harsh mistress is too lenient - the only constant in my life for a long time. The Doctor in the TARDIS…that is something that is going to take a lot of time to explain properly. But one of the things he did so well was taking up people that didn't belong there. It's appropriate for you to be there, believe me."
They're almost to the door of the storage room and as they go, Zelianne feels the key grow warmer - although, and perhaps this is only in her imagination, it is not quite as warm as it was yesterday.
"Come," she says, reaching down and taking his hand, "One thing I think your Doctor never learned was that saying good-bye is the beginning of letting go. You are not alone now. And the sooner you face that, the sooner you can stop chasing ghosts."
She thinks about TARDIS, rolling over images of her Doctor, again and again - sending her a message from someone who can no longer speak. These messages have a finality in them; a paradox of ends within a place where time does not seem to matter. But time has invaded its world at last and if there is one thing she knows, it is that being alone is a basic fear of most species - be they resembling a blue box or a man wearing a blue coat.
The man called Jack withdraws his hand from hers and puts it in his pocket. Under the roof of the second storage building, he takes down the umbrella and gives it a shake before handing it to her.
"No," he says simply. "There are some things that no one wants to see end."
***
Thirty-four years later she remembers this moment as she, now the museum's curator, sees the lights go out for the final time and the room (now down to only one) shrink about her.
For a moment she remembers an anachronism in a blue coat walking away into the drizzling rain.
She goes to say good-bye to her, then, and as she does, a lock on the console unlatches itself and the faintest gold mist comes out and swirls around her. She breathes it in because this is her heart and her last breath (and in that moment she doesn't know where she ends and TARDIS begins).
And oh, with that last golden pulse, the things she sees.
In her last moment there is a song and an image of burnt orange sky - of a man wearing several faces, several old-fashioned jackets, several grins. He's laughing a thousand laughs. Then the mist evaporates and the lights go out for the last time and she is alone in an ordinary wooden blue box, in the dark. She finds she can't even cry because she, too, feels like an empty shell.
She remembers his words as he walked out into the rain and wonders if she might have done the same, had she only known. If she had only known.
But Zelianne simply closes the door to an ordinary box, and locks it out of habit. Then, replacing the key on an old chain with her mother's ring, one last time she lets her fingers glide over the pristine wood, and drawing them away, steps outside and seals the container off.
Fin