Ficathon fic: Origin Stories (Iris, Iris's TARDIS)
Title: Origin Stories
Author: ionlylurkhere
Characters: Iris Wildthyme, the Number 22 to Putney Common
Rating: G
Word count: 1000
Summary: The one adventure she thought she'd never have.
Notes: Written for glinda_penguin in the 2009 EDA ficathon. Prompt: "In Scarlet Empress Iris claims to have found her TARDIS abandoned and dying on a deserted planet, how did either of them end up there, how did they escape? And for that matter how does her TARDIS feel about having Iris as pilot?" Thanks to biichan for helpful betaing.
When the man steps aboard, Iris is under the dashboard executing a particularly tricky piece of rerouting on my exitonic circuitry. That's my excuse, you see; that I was temporarily incapacitated by her substandard repair work when I should have been preventing him from entering.
"Putney Common, please," he says.
Iris bashes her head on the wheel when she comes back up, and my Zeiton crystals throb in sympathy with the bump on her head as she rubs it. "I'm sorry, love, what did you say?"
"Putney Common, please," the man says again, putting some of the local fungible exchange tokens down on the counter.
"Does this look like a bus to you?" Iris says.
"Yes," the man says, "it looks like the Number 22 to Putney Common."
"Looks like, I'll grant you," Iris says. "But did anyone ever tell you--" she leans in towards him, as though to impart a confidence "--that appearances can be deceiving?"
My appearances don't deceive, not like those of my ever-malleable sisters and cousins, who blend in subtly and unobtrusively wherever they are. But they do confuse and obfuscate. When my creators first called me forth from chaos, my appearance as an artefact of a particular culture on a particular backwater planet baffled them. They weren't alone; my appearance generally baffles people. It's only in this very narrow set of time and space coordinates that I make anything so mundane as sense.
"I'm sure they can," the man says, "but, er, I'd still like to go to Putney Common."
That's why I let him on board, you see: in all my existence, which has been a fairly long one by now in linear-subjective terms, I've never actually travelled down Route 22. It's the one adventure I thought I'd never have.
"Oh, all right, then, love," Iris says, pocketing the money. "If it'll make you happy. Make yourself at home in the back."
The man -- the passenger: not Iris, not one of her companions, not one of the waifs and strays she picks up now and again to return to their proper place in space-time (though the border between this category and the former is blurred at best), but a real, bona fide passenger -- steps into the rear part of my downstairs section, apparently failing to notice that it's not exactly outfitted to London Transport standards, and Iris sets off.
Iris's driving is, of course, every bit as erratic as her navigation of the Time Winds. She swings out from one lane to another at random, swerving back into the correct one as she turns a corner. She runs lights, blasting my horn merrily at anyone who gets in her way. I should have known better than to expect anything different, of course.
At one point, we're about to collide with a large delivery lorry, but at the last possible moment Iris dematerialises me and we leap into the Vortex.
"Are you sure this is the way to Putney Common?" the man says, looking out of the window at the swirling maelstrom around us. "Only I don't remember Hyde Park being quite so orange."
"We're taking the scenic route!" Iris cries out joyfully.
I'm mildly disappointed not to manage an uninterrupted trip through London, but she's right, of course. That's what she taught me, so linear-subjectively long ago now: to appreciate what comes between as much as the end-points. Between the point of departure and the destination is the journey; between the prelude and the coda comes the symphony; between the beginning and the end comes the story.
I couldn't see it at first: I perceived only my present presence and the desired endpoint, and couldn't plot a path between them. That's why my creators exiled me in the end. They couldn't unmake me, but they could transduce me, like a piece of bulk cargo, to an out-of-the-way planet where no-one would ever come across me, there to remain until my sentience exhausted me. They never knew how to teach me to travel. Iris, on the other hand, couldn't help but do so. She always, always, wants to explore, to go beyond what she's already seen and been; even as she lay dying, in desperate need of assistance with her regeneration, her desire for more reached out to me.
The plain truth of it is that I'd have died there in the end if it hadn't been for Iris, just as she'd have died rather more immediately without the solace of my Zero Room. So I forgive her her foibles, and she does her best to keep me going, and we bumble along together as best we can. In the end, I may be smaller on the inside than the outside, but Iris contains infinities enough for both of us.
That's one version, anyway, a version that Iris seems to like the shape of, or at least finds convenient to tell at certain junctures. It might be true, it might not. Perhaps I'm a capricious djinn who found myself accidentally bound to Iris in this complicated form because of her trickery. Or maybe I used to belong to a jewel thief, flying around London on antigrav plates until I was upgraded a few more times and learned to fly in an entirely different medium. If you asked the man stepping off now in Putney Common, waving cheerily to Iris but looking slightly baffled, he'd probably still insist that I'd been assembled at Park Royal.
When it comes down to it, everyone who steps through my doors gets to choose their own adventure. I don't see any reason that I should limit myself to just the one.
The real question is, what will yours be?
Author: ionlylurkhere
Characters: Iris Wildthyme, the Number 22 to Putney Common
Rating: G
Word count: 1000
Summary: The one adventure she thought she'd never have.
Notes: Written for glinda_penguin in the 2009 EDA ficathon. Prompt: "In Scarlet Empress Iris claims to have found her TARDIS abandoned and dying on a deserted planet, how did either of them end up there, how did they escape? And for that matter how does her TARDIS feel about having Iris as pilot?" Thanks to biichan for helpful betaing.
When the man steps aboard, Iris is under the dashboard executing a particularly tricky piece of rerouting on my exitonic circuitry. That's my excuse, you see; that I was temporarily incapacitated by her substandard repair work when I should have been preventing him from entering.
"Putney Common, please," he says.
Iris bashes her head on the wheel when she comes back up, and my Zeiton crystals throb in sympathy with the bump on her head as she rubs it. "I'm sorry, love, what did you say?"
"Putney Common, please," the man says again, putting some of the local fungible exchange tokens down on the counter.
"Does this look like a bus to you?" Iris says.
"Yes," the man says, "it looks like the Number 22 to Putney Common."
"Looks like, I'll grant you," Iris says. "But did anyone ever tell you--" she leans in towards him, as though to impart a confidence "--that appearances can be deceiving?"
My appearances don't deceive, not like those of my ever-malleable sisters and cousins, who blend in subtly and unobtrusively wherever they are. But they do confuse and obfuscate. When my creators first called me forth from chaos, my appearance as an artefact of a particular culture on a particular backwater planet baffled them. They weren't alone; my appearance generally baffles people. It's only in this very narrow set of time and space coordinates that I make anything so mundane as sense.
"I'm sure they can," the man says, "but, er, I'd still like to go to Putney Common."
That's why I let him on board, you see: in all my existence, which has been a fairly long one by now in linear-subjective terms, I've never actually travelled down Route 22. It's the one adventure I thought I'd never have.
"Oh, all right, then, love," Iris says, pocketing the money. "If it'll make you happy. Make yourself at home in the back."
The man -- the passenger: not Iris, not one of her companions, not one of the waifs and strays she picks up now and again to return to their proper place in space-time (though the border between this category and the former is blurred at best), but a real, bona fide passenger -- steps into the rear part of my downstairs section, apparently failing to notice that it's not exactly outfitted to London Transport standards, and Iris sets off.
Iris's driving is, of course, every bit as erratic as her navigation of the Time Winds. She swings out from one lane to another at random, swerving back into the correct one as she turns a corner. She runs lights, blasting my horn merrily at anyone who gets in her way. I should have known better than to expect anything different, of course.
At one point, we're about to collide with a large delivery lorry, but at the last possible moment Iris dematerialises me and we leap into the Vortex.
"Are you sure this is the way to Putney Common?" the man says, looking out of the window at the swirling maelstrom around us. "Only I don't remember Hyde Park being quite so orange."
"We're taking the scenic route!" Iris cries out joyfully.
I'm mildly disappointed not to manage an uninterrupted trip through London, but she's right, of course. That's what she taught me, so linear-subjectively long ago now: to appreciate what comes between as much as the end-points. Between the point of departure and the destination is the journey; between the prelude and the coda comes the symphony; between the beginning and the end comes the story.
I couldn't see it at first: I perceived only my present presence and the desired endpoint, and couldn't plot a path between them. That's why my creators exiled me in the end. They couldn't unmake me, but they could transduce me, like a piece of bulk cargo, to an out-of-the-way planet where no-one would ever come across me, there to remain until my sentience exhausted me. They never knew how to teach me to travel. Iris, on the other hand, couldn't help but do so. She always, always, wants to explore, to go beyond what she's already seen and been; even as she lay dying, in desperate need of assistance with her regeneration, her desire for more reached out to me.
The plain truth of it is that I'd have died there in the end if it hadn't been for Iris, just as she'd have died rather more immediately without the solace of my Zero Room. So I forgive her her foibles, and she does her best to keep me going, and we bumble along together as best we can. In the end, I may be smaller on the inside than the outside, but Iris contains infinities enough for both of us.
That's one version, anyway, a version that Iris seems to like the shape of, or at least finds convenient to tell at certain junctures. It might be true, it might not. Perhaps I'm a capricious djinn who found myself accidentally bound to Iris in this complicated form because of her trickery. Or maybe I used to belong to a jewel thief, flying around London on antigrav plates until I was upgraded a few more times and learned to fly in an entirely different medium. If you asked the man stepping off now in Putney Common, waving cheerily to Iris but looking slightly baffled, he'd probably still insist that I'd been assembled at Park Royal.
When it comes down to it, everyone who steps through my doors gets to choose their own adventure. I don't see any reason that I should limit myself to just the one.
The real question is, what will yours be?