The Vices, Chapter 3
Upon the following day of the first accomplished virtue, the TARDIS began to emit a series of punctuated beeping sounds. At first, the noise was so faint that Rose thought it was her alarm clock. In a sleep-addled state, she attempted to disable the bright red device, but only succeeded in slapping it off the side of her nightstand where the chirping persisted.
“Argh!” she groaned in annoyance. She slipped out of bed and paused as she traced the true source of the sound outside of her bedroom.
“What is that?” she muttered to herself curiously.
She padded into the console room in slippered feet, still in the process of drawing her dressing gown around her waist. The beeping sound came again, and betrayed its origination point just below the time rotor. Rose sucked on her bottom lip nervously. This was not a good time for TARDIS malfunctions.
She turned her head as the weary form of the Doctor appeared behind her. He was walking through the room and hadn’t seen her yet.
“Doctor!” Rose said alertly.
He started in the middle of rubbing a hand through his thoroughly messed hair. Rose was surprised to see him wearing a faded green t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants.
“Whuh?” he drawled lazily, and it turned into a yawn.
“Doctor, there’s something wrong with the TARDIS,” she informed him.
“Oh. Okay,” he said with a shrug. He started to slip off to the kitchen but Rose cleared her throat noisily.
“Don’t you want to see what the problem is?” she hinted as she pointed to the rotor.
The Doctor frowned and stood staring at her. Apparently not.
“Get over here, now,” Rose ordered.
The Doctor pulled a pout but made his way over to her position.
“Today is sloth, I see,” Rose observed. “That means you won’t want to do any work or even care that there is work to be done. Well too bad!”
Rose lifted an eyebrow as she picked up the Doctor’s discarded sonic from where it had been left on the console. “It could be serious,” she added as she handed it over.
The Doctor rolled his eyes before buzzing the console once. “It’s fine,” he said quickly.
He turned around to resume his trek to the kitchen, but Rose jumped in front of him.
“Why don’t you explain the results of your scan to me then?” she challenged.
The Doctor looked like he'd been caught in the cookie jar. “Um…”
“Scan it for real,” Rose demanded.
The Doctor returned to the console and swept the sonic over it three times, carefully reading the results afterwards. “The Stabilizers’ Dimensional Control has been destroyed,” he reported. He pushed back into the jump seat as if he needed a rest, already enervated from such light work.
Rose blinked. “What does that mean?” she asked nervously.
The Doctor sighed and slumped further down into the seat. “It means…the TARDIS’ micro universe, what you perceive as all the rooms inside of it…is shrinking. In a few hours time, it will be the size of a dollhouse.”
He yawned again, bored with the topic of conversation.
“What?” Rose screeched, and the Doctor winced. “Who could have tampered with it?”
“Um…the flowery one…Acedia,” he said as he pointed to a dried flower petal that was balancing on the grating. “…Must have snuck in here last night.”
“But that’s not fair!” Rose said angrily. “How did she get in anyways?”
Rose ran over to the front door and tried the handle. It was locked tight. Not only had the wicked goddess broken into the TARDIS, she’d now trapped both of them inside of it.
“What are we going to do?” Rose exclaimed. “We’ll be squished!”
The Doctor’s eyelids were starting to droop heavily. “Dunno…” he managed to get out.
Rose stared in horror at her surroundings. Were the walls already starting to shrink, or was she just imagining it? She ran back to the Doctor’s side and shook his shoulders until he opened his eyes.
“Doctor please!” she begged him. “Tell me how to fix this!”
The Doctor moaned. “It’s no use,” he argued. “It would take like…seven steps. It’s way too hard.”
Rose let out a miffed squeak. She’d never thought she would hear the Doctor say something like that.
“Uh, I’m pretty sure we can handle that!” she said facetiously. “What’s the first step?”
“You have to…deactivate all the drive circuits,” he said distractedly, before suddenly perking up. “Hey, do you want to play Mariokart with me?”
The Doctor’s non sequitur threw Rose for a loop. “Play Mario? What? No! Doctor, you need to focus! Tell me how to deactivate the drive circuits!”
The Doctor frowned grumpily. “Flip all the green switches,” he huffed.
Rose followed his instruction and turned on her heel. “Next!”
“Reverse the polarity of the main warp feeds by twisting the small crank under the console,” the Doctor intoned.
Rose stooped down and located the device. “Little help here please!” she called out. “It’s completely stuck!”
The Doctor oozed off the jump seat bonelessly and knelt beside her. “Oh…I don’t know,” he complained, “It looks really stuck.”
“Just do it!” Rose commanded. She covered her face behind a strained hand. If she was going to have to drag him screaming through this whole process…she’d go insane.
She stared up at the ceiling as if it could offer some assistance. Unfortunately, all she got was the sinking realization that the TARDIS was already shrinking. She shuddered as she observed the branching columns were at least a foot shorter than before.
“Okay,” the Doctor said. “I got it…finally!”
Rose switched her attention back to him with a little more urgency in her voice. “Step three,” she insisted.
The Doctor flipped the switch on the TARDIS that looked like a combination lock. When Rose looked incredulous, the Doctor explained. “That was the easy part.”
“Is the next one the hard part?” Rose asked.
“Well,” the Doctor reflected, “you just need to realign the maxivectormeter on drags so they cross connect with the radia-bicentric anodes. You ever played memory? It’s like that except…if you pick the wrong pair, you sort of…explode the TARDIS.”
The Doctor leaned back onto the rough grating. “Wake me up when you’re done,” he added.
Rose shook her head emphatically as she pulled him back up. “No way are you leaving me to do all of that. I don’t even know what that meant! You have to show me!”
The Doctor didn’t bother to mask his irritation. “I’m getting a little sick of you telling me what to do!” he retorted.
Rose dropped her hold on his shirt in astonishment. Make that the second thing she’d never expected the Doctor to say. Of course, she’d never had to be this bossy with him before. He’d always offered his help willingly. Maybe it was time to try something different. There was still a lot to do, and the TARDIS wasn’t getting any bigger.
“Please,” Rose implored. “I need your help Doctor. Don’t you want to help me?”
The Doctor flinched, slightly affected by the sentiment.
“And the TARDIS,” Rose followed up quickly. “I know you’ve put so much hard work into over the years. She’s your ship, Doctor. You don’t want her to shrink into nothingness do you? She represents everything you’ve done…the adventures you’ve had, the friends you’ve brought on board…like me. The two of us, we’re your girls!”
“You are my girls,” he said emotionally. “I’d do anything for the two of you.”
The Doctor was staring into Rose’s eyes so intensely that he didn’t notice the ceiling had come down just under his natural height. He stood up and bumped his head hard. He rubbed at the knot while making his way over to Rose, all of the previous lethargy gone from his expression.
“Let’s do this,” he said with fire in his eyes.
Together, they managed to complete the fourth step, though it took them over half an hour. By that time, the ceiling was so low that they were both bending at the waist to maneuver.
“I don’t think we have much time left!” Rose warned.
“Just switching over to digital mode,” the Doctor reported. “The fifth step’s a breeze. Now let’s trigger the feedback from the conceptual geometer. Dang! I can’t do it. The buttons got too small!”
Rose slid to his side on her knees. “I’ve got little fingers!” she offered. She followed his extraordinarily complicated directions, until the dial read 57-836.
“Well done Rose Tyler!” he congratulated her. “Only one step left!”
Rose was crawling on her hands and knees by then, and the main TARDIS console had shrunk to the size of a blender.
“We have to reactivate the drive circuits!” he told her.
“Green switches other way?” Rose asked with a grin.
“You’ve got it!” he cried.
Rose hurriedly flipped the tiny switches with a fingernail and heard the ship react like a generator restarting after a storm. She watched in amazement as the TARDIS stretched itself back to normal proportions, giving them both room to spread out luxuriously.
“That was just a temporary fix,” the Doctor warned. “I’ll need to work for the next several hours if I want to get things back to normal permanently.”
Rose laughed at the idea. “Now here’s something I never thought I’d hear myself say. I can’t wait for you to tinker with the TARDIS!”
“It’s not tinkering!” the Doctor said defensively. “It’s serious maintenance!”
Rose sobered a little and slipped her hand into the Doctor’s appreciatively. “I’m just glad you’re back to normal. Looks like you’ve made it through the second vice. And me as well…and the TARDIS.”
The Doctor lowered his head and stared at the ground. “I can’t believe I almost let something bad happen to you…either of you. I really meant what I said. The two most important things in the world to me are the two of you.”
Rose blushed and lifted his chin with one slender finger. “I know,” she said honestly.
He smiled shyly at her. “I should really get to work,” he said, but then he froze, his gaze directed at the lower half of his body. “Ugh! What in the WORLD am I WEARING?!!!"
(Next Chapter)