Uncountable Infinities (the Hobgoblin of Small Minds mix) [Romana, Brax, Rose | G]
Title: Uncountable Infinities (the Hobgoblin of Small Minds mix)
Author: ionlylurkhere
Characters/Pairings: Romana, Brax, Rose
Rating: G
Summary: Romana and Rose, between Doomsday and Journey's End.
Word Count: 3,000
Original Story: How the Universes Turn by magicallaw
Notes: Thanks to elliptic_eye and nonelvis for helpful beta-ing.
A hush descends on the room, the knowledge that the lecture is about to begin spreading through the assembled students on subliminal levels. Romana, sitting in the front row, ready to take notes and eager to do as well in this class as all the others, even if she's never quite examined where that motivation comes from just yet, is momentarily disconcerted when Cardinal Braxiatel fixes her with his gaze and gives her a brief, thin smile.
Then he looks up at the whole lecture hall and clears his throat. "Welcome to Advanced Theory of Time Travel," he says. "Today, students, I am going to tell you the greatest and most terrible secret of the universe."
The room's quiet changes mood, turns from expectation to shock; they've known everything so mundane that it might be described as a secret since they were Time Tots, haven't they?
"It is a given," Braxiatel goes on, "though perhaps not one you have examined particularly closely, that in an infinite universe, given infinite time, anything that is possible occurs. Occurs an infinite number of times, in fact. And so, at least from some perspectives, there are an infinite number of universes."
He pauses.
"That is not the secret, of course," Braxiatel says. "Merely something you must understand before you can understand the secret."
* * *
In an infinite multiverse, everything that is possible occurs, in every possible combination. Beyond simple repetitions of events lie far more powerful repetitions of patterns.
Romana knows the girl before her now, in this no-place where they can meet, where Romana can -- with just the right mixture of luck and judgement -- nudge things in the right direction, because she knows her own earlier self: cut off from the Doctor and the whole universe he inhabits, confronted by a universe with its own problems, but ultimately destined (or should that perhaps be doomed?) to return, to solve the problems of the entire multiverse.
She knows her name too, but that's easy. "Rose Tyler?"
"Yes," the girl says, tucking non-existent hair behind a non-existent ear. "Who are you?"
Well, there's a complicated question. Eventually, Romana settles on an answer: "I'm a means to an end."
She’ll save her life, she’ll save everyone’s life. She needs her to listen.
"I’m listening," says Rose, even though Romana's non-existent lips never breathed a word.
* * *
Braxiatel warms to his theme. "In an infinity of infinite multiverses, then, what true meaning can causality have? What is the great purpose of our mighty and ancient race"--is that a hint of sarcasm in his velvet tone?--" if everything that can happen, does?"
He pauses, and no one's sure whether the question's rhetorical or they're supposed to be raising their hands to suggest an answer.
He gives a disappointed sigh and continues. "The situation is in fact more dire than you imagine. If every possible 'state' of the whole universe exists somehow, somewhere out there in the infinite multiverse, then time itself -- causality itself -- has no real meaning. There are an infinite number of different sets of rules that can provide some sort of meaningful order to the set of events. An infinite number of stories that make some sort of sense. Even the laws of physics are just a way of deciding which states are accessible from one another."
Another pause. Romana realises that she's given up taking notes, and isn't sure whether it's because she's so intent on listening, or because she's already written him off as a crank.
"The greatest, most terrible secret of the universe," Braxiatel says finally, "is that time travel is easy."
There is uproar in the lecture hall. Romana looks behind herself and sees a group of five students at the back walking out together.
"Do not worry yourselves, my dear future Lords of Time," Braxiatel says after calm has re-established itself. "Your legacy is as safe as it ever can be, thanks to the ruthless actions of your forebears ... and your contemporaries."
There are nods and smirks now; Braxiatel's words are, ultimately, reassuring -- they've all heard the children's tales of the Dark Times, and they've all whispered rumours to each other of the CIA's skulduggery.
"Gallifrey has imposed the Laws of Time upon the universe, forced the tumultuous chaos of events and states of existence into strict, linear order -- before and after, cause and effect. But do not fool yourselves -- never fool yourselves -- that this order is the only one possible. Time travel is easy because there are many possible orders, and however high-minded the phrasing might be in your oaths and artefacts, the greatest duty of the Time Lords has always been to prevent any order other than our own from coming to be."
* * *
Gallifrey is gone. The Time Lords are gone. All that survives are a few renegades, and ancient memes scattered into the Time Winds, re-emerging in the noospheres of a thousand worlds that don't know what to do with them.
Old ideas and older names. "My name is Romanadvoratrelundar," Romana says, in case any of the memetic triggers built into the Gallifreyan language have burrowed their way into Rose's culture.
Rose frowns. "Rom--"
Clearly not. "You may call me Romana."
"I still don’t know who you are," Rose says.
It's as much lie as truth. Romana says, "Yes, yes you do."
The ancient abilities of the Time Lords allow them to communicate, but what lets these two understand one another is a far more recent point of commonality. "Does he need me?" Rose asks.
"Not yet," Romana tells her.
"Where am I?"
It's a reasonable question.
“You’re not anywhere, Rose Tyler. And yet you’re everywhere all at once. At least, you will be.” Or have been. They're beyond before and after, here; all that is, is, including Rose's experience with the heart of the TARDIS.
"Let me guess: the end of the universe?"
Perhaps Rose understands more than she thinks: every possible state of existence is out there somewhere in the multiverse, so in some sense, all the potential ways for the universe to cease already exist. Long ago, the Time Lords chose the least worst as the endpoint to their story. But now that ending has been rewritten, and all the possibilities are open once again. "Always," Romana says with a smile.
* * *
After the lecture, the group of students Romana spends the most time with -- she's both too confident and too unsure of herself to call them her friends -- discuss Braxiatel's presentation. It's certainly not what they were expecting, and as they complain to each other about the Academy letting them down by allowing him to teach such an important course, any niggling sense at the back of anyone's mind that today they thought things they'd never thought in a century of life to date is diminished by the blending and averaging of their opinions.
Eventually, they descend to imitations of the Cardinal's too-smooth voice and strange vocabulary, the ways his words veer between too direct and too obscure, so that meaning slips through the gaps in between. But just before they do, they decide that someone needs to talk to him after the next lecture, explain what it is that the students are expecting. Somehow, everyone -- Romana included -- knows that this task will fall to her. She assures them that she won't fail in it.
* * *
"This is wrong, isn’t it?"
How much does the child detect? Is she talking about the ungoverned state of the universes, now that Gallifrey has gone? Or this meeting, this bending of rules that are no longer enforced? "Very much so," Romana says, ultimately not committing to anything.
"You’re wrong," Rose accuses.
"No, I’m just not dead." Some Romanas are dead, of course. A vast number of them. There are a smaller but equally daunting number of dead Roses, out there in the Hilbert space of possibilities. But all possibilities occur, and only one Romana and one Rose needed to survive to come here.
The obvious ramification occurs to Rose in time. "So then the Doctor's wrong?"
When has the Doctor ever been right?
"Yes," Romana whispers, "but let's not tell him yet, hmm."
* * *
The next lecture, though, differs significantly from the first. In an almost plodding exposition, Braxiatel takes them through Jojoro's Hierarchies of Parallelity. He uses a selection of comfortingly long and arcane words to describe the differences between "natural" alternative worlds, their quantum probability trees branching outwards but simultaneously all parallel to one another; the octet of continua according to the parity of their real-space coordinates, with a brief diversion into proving the lemma that only E-Space and N-Space possess sufficient self-coherency to allow the development of any complex structures, let alone life; and finally, the truly parallel and paradoxical worlds, only possible with time travel. He stresses at length the difference between those interventions -- permissible but, he assures them with a wink, extremely rare -- which merely tilt the balance in favour of a particular outcome that was already possible, and the terrible consequences of paradoxes, entire new realities relying on forbidden transitions between future and past.
Things spice up a little towards the end, as he develops his theme of alternative time travel possibilities, showing the higher-dimensional mathematical analogues to what look at first glance like nothing more than conjuring tricks with words and mirrors, but in the end, this is exactly what they'd been expecting from the Advanced course.
Romana waits behind at the end, anyway. She made a promise, after all.
* * *
Romana shows her things, pasts and futures of a small selection of the most relevant of the infinite different worlds in which the Doctor exists.
"How long will this take?" Rose asks, after a subjective week or so. "How much time have we got?"
"Well, you and I have all the time in the world, every world, in fact." Begged, borrowed, stolen, but Romana's to use until she can guide events into the right -- or least worst -- configuration. "The Doctor, on the other hand, has approximately 18 months." Romana flashes another possibility past Rose, the only one that falls into the prohibited paradox category. "Well, technically you can add another year onto that but if other people can forget it ever happened then I don’t see why we can’t either."
"Sometimes you make less sense than he did." Rose understands more than she thinks she does, of course. The stories around the Doctor always have the same sort of shape, it's what makes him him. So she knows the outline of Martha's stories, even if she couldn't fill in all the details.
"You only have to ask, you know," Romana says.
"All right then," Rose says. "What happened?"
Romana tells her. One version, at any rate.
* * *
The other students have all left by the time Braxiatel notices her. "Can I help you--"
"Romanadvoratrelundar," Romana supplies.
"Ah, yes, of course," he says. "So, can I help you?"
"I just wanted to say ..." Romana swallows. "Well, that that was a much better lecture than the previous one. Thank you."
Braxiatel laughs, and it's a much richer sound than she'd have expected. "My dear girl, that was one of the worst lectures I've ever given. And believe you me, there's some stiff competition. Much as it pains me to admit it, my other duties prevented me from giving the time and attention to preparing that I should have liked. As a result, I'm afraid you received a rushed recitation of all the nonsense that I was force-fed when I was your age. Well, a little older, I suppose, in your specific case," he says indulgently.
"Then, you mean ..."
"I mean that if you want more lectures like that, rather than the first one, then the people you need to talk to are in quite another wing of the Panopticon. Make an exceptionally polite request to them to make more messes for me to tidy up, and your wishes shall be granted."
"I see," Romana says. She doesn't, really; doesn't want to, if he's hinting at what she thinks he's hinting at. "Well, if that's your final word--"
"Ah, no," Braxiatel says. "My final word is to invite you to dinner. At your convenience, of course."
* * *
"How long have you been here?" Rose asks.
Time passes strangely between these meetings. On some level, they're just events, and can be connected in any coherent way. Romana passes her time in reminiscences, Rose in living into the future the painful way, one day at a time.
"Oh, about a year," Romana dissembles.
"Really?" When Rose is away from this place, Romana knows, their encounters take on the quality of dreams. But they happen, and the only trickery Romana's really doing is to tie them into the waking Rose's consciousness.
"No, not really."
"Okay, so Martha’s left," Rose says. Romana's begun showing her the probability projections in some sort of order, it makes them easier for her to assimilate. "Who’s next?"
"Well, funny you should ask," Romana says, "because it just so happens that the Doctor’s next companion is the most important woman in all creation."
"Donna Noble?"
Romana starts. "How did you--"
"I don’t know. I just did."
Where else is Rose's consciousness going, beyond Romana's control? Has she opened a door that can be used by others as well?
It doesn't matter; the possibility makes their business more urgent, if anything. "Problem is, Rose." Romana bites her lip. "She needs your help first."
* * *
Romana sits down opposite Braxiatel, a sumptuous feast spread on the table between them. She's sure it's improper on several levels for her to be here, but any blame would certainly attach to Braxiatel rather than herself, and she has to admit to being just a little bit fascinated. This obsession with food, bordering on Epicureanism, for example -- she's never seen this many different types of protein in the same place at the same time. To say nothing of what he assured her were "works of art" on the walls; no computer pictures here.
She's worked him out, she's decided. He's a contrarian, even before you consider his highly unorthodox relatives, and the Academy keep him around to challenge the students' assumptions, make sure they don't succumb to woolly thinking, even as they reconfirm the self-evident truths they've learned since childhood by rebutting his nonsense. Doing so one-on-one will be good sport, she thinks.
"So, Cardinal," she says as she struggles to access the edible part of the "moules". "Your contention is that all possible events somehow exist independently of one another, and that the Laws of Time, the very foundations of the nature of existence, are merely one way of connecting them up. Correct?"
"Oh, my dear Romanadvoratrelundar," Braxiatel says, "I would never seek to contend with you. But if it suits you, let us pretend that I do believe such a proposition."
"If that's the case, then surely it must be possible to construct other frameworks for existence which are antithetical to the very existence of Gallifrey? And we Time Lords?"
"Quite so. There are a range of ... let's say 'narratives', because that's the terminology most likely to make you feel uncomfortable." He gives her another of those smiles, as he did before the initial lecture. "In some versions, the Time Lords are Gods who can no more be opposed than the laws of physics, and Gallifrey is the centre of all that is good and true in the universe, simply by definition. In others, it's a stuffy bureaucracy that needs to be escaped, but if it can't be escaped then it can certainly be tied in knots with its own red tape. And some versions merely differ in terms of who's in charge, not the details of how the universe works. But, yes, in some people's stories, the stories that we don't allow to be told, we're an implacable adversary, ourselves and the other both defined by our mutual incomprehension, our utter inability to coexist."
It's a more full-throated restatement of his position than she'd expected, but Romana is undeterred. "Very well," she says. Then she drops her bombshell. "But if it's even possible for such 'narratives'--" she uses the word deliberately, to show him she's not afraid of it "--to exist, then why are we still here?"
Braxiatel laughs. "Oh, that's simple," he says. "We're still here because whatever the dispute was -- war, argument, or whatever else in between -- we've always won it." The twinkle in his eyes dies suddenly, his voice quietens to a whisper. "Or at least, we have so far."
* * *
This will be the last of these meetings. Even if they succeed in preserving the continued existence of the multiverse's possibilities, the one thing that will become impossible is for them to speak like this.
"It's time," Romana tells her.
"I know," Rose says. She's been through so much, but this is the truth of the life they both chose: that there is always more.
Romana senses her hesitation. "You are strong enough."
"Maybe," Rose says. "I reckon I could use some help though."
Romana knows she can't intervene directly, however much she might want to. Her presence would introduce too many variables. Any intervention must be subtle, controlled.
"You have everything you need?" she asks Rose.
Rose won't let her dodge the question. "Is that a no then?"
"You know how this ends, Rose." Romana's shown her the future -- not the most likely future, but the one they need to make sure happens, if their work is to succeed.
"Yes," Rose says, "and he’ll need you more than ever."
All the way through, Rose has understood more than she's admitted, to Romana or herself. And once again Romana's left being made uncomfortable by the insights of someone who it should be easy to argue rings around. "That’s a maybe," she evades.
"So, what will you do?" Rose asks her.
Romana gives her the only possible answer. "Wait."
"On your own?" In that moment Romana realises it's unfair to blame Rose for failings that belong to Romana alone. If nothing else, Rose cares, even about this strange woman she meets in dreams who won't let her rest, no matter how many things she's done or how much she's sacrificed, the woman who's spent subjective months doing nothing but show her that the universe will always need saving.
"As I said, Rose, you know how this ends." Romana tries to extend the same level of care in the other direction, to make sure Rose knows what is being asked of her. "You know how it ends for you."
"I guess I’ll be seeing you then." But not here, never again like this.
"I guess you will," Romana says. "Now, last time I checked, Rose Tyler, every single universe needed saving." That's the awful truth, of course; that even after they've saved all of them together, they'll each need saving individually.
Rose turns away, and Romana watches her disappear into everything, trying to suppress the stab of jealousy at her ability to do so.
Romana can wait. She's become very good at it.
Author: ionlylurkhere
Characters/Pairings: Romana, Brax, Rose
Rating: G
Summary: Romana and Rose, between Doomsday and Journey's End.
Word Count: 3,000
Original Story: How the Universes Turn by magicallaw
Notes: Thanks to elliptic_eye and nonelvis for helpful beta-ing.
A hush descends on the room, the knowledge that the lecture is about to begin spreading through the assembled students on subliminal levels. Romana, sitting in the front row, ready to take notes and eager to do as well in this class as all the others, even if she's never quite examined where that motivation comes from just yet, is momentarily disconcerted when Cardinal Braxiatel fixes her with his gaze and gives her a brief, thin smile.
Then he looks up at the whole lecture hall and clears his throat. "Welcome to Advanced Theory of Time Travel," he says. "Today, students, I am going to tell you the greatest and most terrible secret of the universe."
The room's quiet changes mood, turns from expectation to shock; they've known everything so mundane that it might be described as a secret since they were Time Tots, haven't they?
"It is a given," Braxiatel goes on, "though perhaps not one you have examined particularly closely, that in an infinite universe, given infinite time, anything that is possible occurs. Occurs an infinite number of times, in fact. And so, at least from some perspectives, there are an infinite number of universes."
He pauses.
"That is not the secret, of course," Braxiatel says. "Merely something you must understand before you can understand the secret."
* * *
In an infinite multiverse, everything that is possible occurs, in every possible combination. Beyond simple repetitions of events lie far more powerful repetitions of patterns.
Romana knows the girl before her now, in this no-place where they can meet, where Romana can -- with just the right mixture of luck and judgement -- nudge things in the right direction, because she knows her own earlier self: cut off from the Doctor and the whole universe he inhabits, confronted by a universe with its own problems, but ultimately destined (or should that perhaps be doomed?) to return, to solve the problems of the entire multiverse.
She knows her name too, but that's easy. "Rose Tyler?"
"Yes," the girl says, tucking non-existent hair behind a non-existent ear. "Who are you?"
Well, there's a complicated question. Eventually, Romana settles on an answer: "I'm a means to an end."
She’ll save her life, she’ll save everyone’s life. She needs her to listen.
"I’m listening," says Rose, even though Romana's non-existent lips never breathed a word.
* * *
Braxiatel warms to his theme. "In an infinity of infinite multiverses, then, what true meaning can causality have? What is the great purpose of our mighty and ancient race"--is that a hint of sarcasm in his velvet tone?--" if everything that can happen, does?"
He pauses, and no one's sure whether the question's rhetorical or they're supposed to be raising their hands to suggest an answer.
He gives a disappointed sigh and continues. "The situation is in fact more dire than you imagine. If every possible 'state' of the whole universe exists somehow, somewhere out there in the infinite multiverse, then time itself -- causality itself -- has no real meaning. There are an infinite number of different sets of rules that can provide some sort of meaningful order to the set of events. An infinite number of stories that make some sort of sense. Even the laws of physics are just a way of deciding which states are accessible from one another."
Another pause. Romana realises that she's given up taking notes, and isn't sure whether it's because she's so intent on listening, or because she's already written him off as a crank.
"The greatest, most terrible secret of the universe," Braxiatel says finally, "is that time travel is easy."
There is uproar in the lecture hall. Romana looks behind herself and sees a group of five students at the back walking out together.
"Do not worry yourselves, my dear future Lords of Time," Braxiatel says after calm has re-established itself. "Your legacy is as safe as it ever can be, thanks to the ruthless actions of your forebears ... and your contemporaries."
There are nods and smirks now; Braxiatel's words are, ultimately, reassuring -- they've all heard the children's tales of the Dark Times, and they've all whispered rumours to each other of the CIA's skulduggery.
"Gallifrey has imposed the Laws of Time upon the universe, forced the tumultuous chaos of events and states of existence into strict, linear order -- before and after, cause and effect. But do not fool yourselves -- never fool yourselves -- that this order is the only one possible. Time travel is easy because there are many possible orders, and however high-minded the phrasing might be in your oaths and artefacts, the greatest duty of the Time Lords has always been to prevent any order other than our own from coming to be."
* * *
Gallifrey is gone. The Time Lords are gone. All that survives are a few renegades, and ancient memes scattered into the Time Winds, re-emerging in the noospheres of a thousand worlds that don't know what to do with them.
Old ideas and older names. "My name is Romanadvoratrelundar," Romana says, in case any of the memetic triggers built into the Gallifreyan language have burrowed their way into Rose's culture.
Rose frowns. "Rom--"
Clearly not. "You may call me Romana."
"I still don’t know who you are," Rose says.
It's as much lie as truth. Romana says, "Yes, yes you do."
The ancient abilities of the Time Lords allow them to communicate, but what lets these two understand one another is a far more recent point of commonality. "Does he need me?" Rose asks.
"Not yet," Romana tells her.
"Where am I?"
It's a reasonable question.
“You’re not anywhere, Rose Tyler. And yet you’re everywhere all at once. At least, you will be.” Or have been. They're beyond before and after, here; all that is, is, including Rose's experience with the heart of the TARDIS.
"Let me guess: the end of the universe?"
Perhaps Rose understands more than she thinks: every possible state of existence is out there somewhere in the multiverse, so in some sense, all the potential ways for the universe to cease already exist. Long ago, the Time Lords chose the least worst as the endpoint to their story. But now that ending has been rewritten, and all the possibilities are open once again. "Always," Romana says with a smile.
* * *
After the lecture, the group of students Romana spends the most time with -- she's both too confident and too unsure of herself to call them her friends -- discuss Braxiatel's presentation. It's certainly not what they were expecting, and as they complain to each other about the Academy letting them down by allowing him to teach such an important course, any niggling sense at the back of anyone's mind that today they thought things they'd never thought in a century of life to date is diminished by the blending and averaging of their opinions.
Eventually, they descend to imitations of the Cardinal's too-smooth voice and strange vocabulary, the ways his words veer between too direct and too obscure, so that meaning slips through the gaps in between. But just before they do, they decide that someone needs to talk to him after the next lecture, explain what it is that the students are expecting. Somehow, everyone -- Romana included -- knows that this task will fall to her. She assures them that she won't fail in it.
* * *
"This is wrong, isn’t it?"
How much does the child detect? Is she talking about the ungoverned state of the universes, now that Gallifrey has gone? Or this meeting, this bending of rules that are no longer enforced? "Very much so," Romana says, ultimately not committing to anything.
"You’re wrong," Rose accuses.
"No, I’m just not dead." Some Romanas are dead, of course. A vast number of them. There are a smaller but equally daunting number of dead Roses, out there in the Hilbert space of possibilities. But all possibilities occur, and only one Romana and one Rose needed to survive to come here.
The obvious ramification occurs to Rose in time. "So then the Doctor's wrong?"
When has the Doctor ever been right?
"Yes," Romana whispers, "but let's not tell him yet, hmm."
* * *
The next lecture, though, differs significantly from the first. In an almost plodding exposition, Braxiatel takes them through Jojoro's Hierarchies of Parallelity. He uses a selection of comfortingly long and arcane words to describe the differences between "natural" alternative worlds, their quantum probability trees branching outwards but simultaneously all parallel to one another; the octet of continua according to the parity of their real-space coordinates, with a brief diversion into proving the lemma that only E-Space and N-Space possess sufficient self-coherency to allow the development of any complex structures, let alone life; and finally, the truly parallel and paradoxical worlds, only possible with time travel. He stresses at length the difference between those interventions -- permissible but, he assures them with a wink, extremely rare -- which merely tilt the balance in favour of a particular outcome that was already possible, and the terrible consequences of paradoxes, entire new realities relying on forbidden transitions between future and past.
Things spice up a little towards the end, as he develops his theme of alternative time travel possibilities, showing the higher-dimensional mathematical analogues to what look at first glance like nothing more than conjuring tricks with words and mirrors, but in the end, this is exactly what they'd been expecting from the Advanced course.
Romana waits behind at the end, anyway. She made a promise, after all.
* * *
Romana shows her things, pasts and futures of a small selection of the most relevant of the infinite different worlds in which the Doctor exists.
"How long will this take?" Rose asks, after a subjective week or so. "How much time have we got?"
"Well, you and I have all the time in the world, every world, in fact." Begged, borrowed, stolen, but Romana's to use until she can guide events into the right -- or least worst -- configuration. "The Doctor, on the other hand, has approximately 18 months." Romana flashes another possibility past Rose, the only one that falls into the prohibited paradox category. "Well, technically you can add another year onto that but if other people can forget it ever happened then I don’t see why we can’t either."
"Sometimes you make less sense than he did." Rose understands more than she thinks she does, of course. The stories around the Doctor always have the same sort of shape, it's what makes him him. So she knows the outline of Martha's stories, even if she couldn't fill in all the details.
"You only have to ask, you know," Romana says.
"All right then," Rose says. "What happened?"
Romana tells her. One version, at any rate.
* * *
The other students have all left by the time Braxiatel notices her. "Can I help you--"
"Romanadvoratrelundar," Romana supplies.
"Ah, yes, of course," he says. "So, can I help you?"
"I just wanted to say ..." Romana swallows. "Well, that that was a much better lecture than the previous one. Thank you."
Braxiatel laughs, and it's a much richer sound than she'd have expected. "My dear girl, that was one of the worst lectures I've ever given. And believe you me, there's some stiff competition. Much as it pains me to admit it, my other duties prevented me from giving the time and attention to preparing that I should have liked. As a result, I'm afraid you received a rushed recitation of all the nonsense that I was force-fed when I was your age. Well, a little older, I suppose, in your specific case," he says indulgently.
"Then, you mean ..."
"I mean that if you want more lectures like that, rather than the first one, then the people you need to talk to are in quite another wing of the Panopticon. Make an exceptionally polite request to them to make more messes for me to tidy up, and your wishes shall be granted."
"I see," Romana says. She doesn't, really; doesn't want to, if he's hinting at what she thinks he's hinting at. "Well, if that's your final word--"
"Ah, no," Braxiatel says. "My final word is to invite you to dinner. At your convenience, of course."
* * *
"How long have you been here?" Rose asks.
Time passes strangely between these meetings. On some level, they're just events, and can be connected in any coherent way. Romana passes her time in reminiscences, Rose in living into the future the painful way, one day at a time.
"Oh, about a year," Romana dissembles.
"Really?" When Rose is away from this place, Romana knows, their encounters take on the quality of dreams. But they happen, and the only trickery Romana's really doing is to tie them into the waking Rose's consciousness.
"No, not really."
"Okay, so Martha’s left," Rose says. Romana's begun showing her the probability projections in some sort of order, it makes them easier for her to assimilate. "Who’s next?"
"Well, funny you should ask," Romana says, "because it just so happens that the Doctor’s next companion is the most important woman in all creation."
"Donna Noble?"
Romana starts. "How did you--"
"I don’t know. I just did."
Where else is Rose's consciousness going, beyond Romana's control? Has she opened a door that can be used by others as well?
It doesn't matter; the possibility makes their business more urgent, if anything. "Problem is, Rose." Romana bites her lip. "She needs your help first."
* * *
Romana sits down opposite Braxiatel, a sumptuous feast spread on the table between them. She's sure it's improper on several levels for her to be here, but any blame would certainly attach to Braxiatel rather than herself, and she has to admit to being just a little bit fascinated. This obsession with food, bordering on Epicureanism, for example -- she's never seen this many different types of protein in the same place at the same time. To say nothing of what he assured her were "works of art" on the walls; no computer pictures here.
She's worked him out, she's decided. He's a contrarian, even before you consider his highly unorthodox relatives, and the Academy keep him around to challenge the students' assumptions, make sure they don't succumb to woolly thinking, even as they reconfirm the self-evident truths they've learned since childhood by rebutting his nonsense. Doing so one-on-one will be good sport, she thinks.
"So, Cardinal," she says as she struggles to access the edible part of the "moules". "Your contention is that all possible events somehow exist independently of one another, and that the Laws of Time, the very foundations of the nature of existence, are merely one way of connecting them up. Correct?"
"Oh, my dear Romanadvoratrelundar," Braxiatel says, "I would never seek to contend with you. But if it suits you, let us pretend that I do believe such a proposition."
"If that's the case, then surely it must be possible to construct other frameworks for existence which are antithetical to the very existence of Gallifrey? And we Time Lords?"
"Quite so. There are a range of ... let's say 'narratives', because that's the terminology most likely to make you feel uncomfortable." He gives her another of those smiles, as he did before the initial lecture. "In some versions, the Time Lords are Gods who can no more be opposed than the laws of physics, and Gallifrey is the centre of all that is good and true in the universe, simply by definition. In others, it's a stuffy bureaucracy that needs to be escaped, but if it can't be escaped then it can certainly be tied in knots with its own red tape. And some versions merely differ in terms of who's in charge, not the details of how the universe works. But, yes, in some people's stories, the stories that we don't allow to be told, we're an implacable adversary, ourselves and the other both defined by our mutual incomprehension, our utter inability to coexist."
It's a more full-throated restatement of his position than she'd expected, but Romana is undeterred. "Very well," she says. Then she drops her bombshell. "But if it's even possible for such 'narratives'--" she uses the word deliberately, to show him she's not afraid of it "--to exist, then why are we still here?"
Braxiatel laughs. "Oh, that's simple," he says. "We're still here because whatever the dispute was -- war, argument, or whatever else in between -- we've always won it." The twinkle in his eyes dies suddenly, his voice quietens to a whisper. "Or at least, we have so far."
* * *
This will be the last of these meetings. Even if they succeed in preserving the continued existence of the multiverse's possibilities, the one thing that will become impossible is for them to speak like this.
"It's time," Romana tells her.
"I know," Rose says. She's been through so much, but this is the truth of the life they both chose: that there is always more.
Romana senses her hesitation. "You are strong enough."
"Maybe," Rose says. "I reckon I could use some help though."
Romana knows she can't intervene directly, however much she might want to. Her presence would introduce too many variables. Any intervention must be subtle, controlled.
"You have everything you need?" she asks Rose.
Rose won't let her dodge the question. "Is that a no then?"
"You know how this ends, Rose." Romana's shown her the future -- not the most likely future, but the one they need to make sure happens, if their work is to succeed.
"Yes," Rose says, "and he’ll need you more than ever."
All the way through, Rose has understood more than she's admitted, to Romana or herself. And once again Romana's left being made uncomfortable by the insights of someone who it should be easy to argue rings around. "That’s a maybe," she evades.
"So, what will you do?" Rose asks her.
Romana gives her the only possible answer. "Wait."
"On your own?" In that moment Romana realises it's unfair to blame Rose for failings that belong to Romana alone. If nothing else, Rose cares, even about this strange woman she meets in dreams who won't let her rest, no matter how many things she's done or how much she's sacrificed, the woman who's spent subjective months doing nothing but show her that the universe will always need saving.
"As I said, Rose, you know how this ends." Romana tries to extend the same level of care in the other direction, to make sure Rose knows what is being asked of her. "You know how it ends for you."
"I guess I’ll be seeing you then." But not here, never again like this.
"I guess you will," Romana says. "Now, last time I checked, Rose Tyler, every single universe needed saving." That's the awful truth, of course; that even after they've saved all of them together, they'll each need saving individually.
Rose turns away, and Romana watches her disappear into everything, trying to suppress the stab of jealousy at her ability to do so.
Romana can wait. She's become very good at it.