by Cour M.
“I have done the right thing before, and that first began when I chose to always go by what my instincts tell me. If you link my mind to the Matrix, out of proper sequence, then you will change the course of history in ways that are not natural. Even if this is contrary to my wishes. Just please, let us go.”
“I cannot do that, Doctor. You might very well be the key that shall shape how we continue in this war, or what steps to take next. I thank your older incarnation, Eight, for he brought us a gift when he delivered you to us. And—”
Boom!
⌛
They were all interrupted by an explosion that occurred outside.
“That sounded like a laser explosion,” Martha pointed out. Eight rushed to the TARDIS doors, with Martha running after him, and they saw another set of ships emerge from the sky, shooting at the Timelord aircrafts.
On the Monitor, Ten turned off the channel between him and General Grevorian disappeared as Ten switched on the cameras to the outside. Ten magnified the shot on the invading ships.
“Daleks!” He hissed, “they are a Dalek squad.”
“Exterminate,” The Daleks declared from their ship, “we invade! Invade! Invade!”
Eight closed the door just before a Dalek laser shot at the TARDIS. The shot did hit the front of the TARDIS however, and the force made the TARDIS shake and shudder. The force rocked everything as Ten clutched the consul unit, while Eight and Martha grabbed each other, fell on the ground and rolled around, trying to anchor themselves.
“Hang on!” Ten cried as he began to fly from out of the skirmish. Suddenly however, Dalek fighter jets emerged from the skies and began to lay siege to the city, firing everywhere.
“Oh no,” Ten realized, “we landed right at the beginning of the Battle of Traxos. I forgot about this one.”
Ten dodged laser shots, as he flew through the onslaught, yet he did not have to worry for long. Suddenly the Dalek ships were being shot out of the sky by another force. Eight switched the monitor to show the scenes behind them. A rush of Gallifrey ships were arriving behind them, and the battle began.
“We really did land right in the middle of a battle,” Eight concluded, “well, stellar! Just stellar! Put in the coordinates to the hyper-loom docks.”
“Just did it!” Ten confirmed. Through the battle, they flew, with lasers and gunfire going around them, then they dematerialized and arrived at the hyper-loom Docking bay.
“And now we have to capture an Eye of Harmony connection?” Martha asked.
“Don’t have to,” Ten confessed, “we already did.”
“What?” Eight remarked.
“We have another dying star now,” Ten replied. “I just materialized around it.”
⌛
Eight’s eyes turned to stone.
“You what?!”
“You heard me. I have just materialized around one of the dying stars, with it frozen in time, and it’s now located in the heart of the TARDIS.”
“You have two connections to the Eye of Harmony on one TARDIS! My TARDIS!”
“I have redistributed the power on the TARDIS,” Ten reassured them, “therefore the stars can only give the TARDIS twice the power rather than being a danger.”
“Danger?” Martha echoed.
“Whatever you did,” Eight argued, irate, “no amount of calibration can guarantee that all side effects will be neutralized! We are still lethal now.”
“I don’t understand,” Martha interrupted, “What does it mean to have two connections to the Eye of Harmony on one ship?”
“Both the best and the worst!” Eight roared, “it means that either the TARDIS is strengthened for a time, but any imbalance of power will lead to an overload of light-force. Either the TARDIS will move faster, or it will explode. But not just killing us. Such a force can wipe out an entire planet, cause an eclipse in the fabric of a galaxy, creating a destiny trap, maybe even break the universe where time will keep folding over on itself. Imagine, every moment of time and space getting jumbled? An explosion of this force could do that!”
Martha looked at Ten.
“That could occur? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I—,” Ten was distracted when he saw the battle still going on in the monitor.
“No,” he groaned, “this is where the Bromsir Tower is destroyed.”
Ten rushed to the doors of the TARDIS, opened them and ahead the Battle of Traxos was being waged. The carnage was intense, the destruction extensive, and Ten watched as the Tower of Bromsir was shot down by the Daleks. Ten’s gaze fell as the debris and building collapsed.
“Our parents took us there,” he voiced, “when our brother had just graduated from the Academy.”
“You know that I don’t like talking about him,” Eight countered, bitter. He pressed a button and the TARDIS doors closed in his face.
“What are you doing?!” Ten cried.
“I’m taking us away from here. The TARDIS is a danger to Gallifrey.”
“No, not yet!” Ten bellowed.
“Doctor, listen to him,” Martha urged Ten.
“No, not yet!” He continued, rushing to the consul unit, but Martha, acting quickly, got to her knees and grabbed Ten around his legs. He fell on the floor, collapsing, and Martha moved to his torso, rolled him over, placed her hands on his arms and tried to get him to see sense.
“Doctor, please listen to—”
Trying to get to the consul unit, Ten flailed his arms, accidentally pushing Martha off him and she fell backwards on the ground.
“Hey!” Eight cried, enraged, “what did you just do?!”
Ten realized, in his heartbreak, he had gone too far. Again. Martha stood up, walked over to Ten and slapped him in the face. Ten blinked and this woke him up to the situation.
“Martha I didn’t mean to—”
“To lie to us?!” Martha yelled, at her wit’s end. She got up, began to leave, then turned around and faced Ten again, “Do you ever see what you do! Do you ever think?! You now have two dangerous powers on this ship. You can blow us up, damage the universe, and we could have destroyed Gallifrey ourselves!”
“You don’t have any faith in me?” Ten asked, hurt.
“Not right now,” she replied, “why should I? Now we are a danger to everything!”
Martha turned around and left the consul unit. Ten stood up.
“We will not be a danger to the universe,” Eight assured Ten, “I am landing us in the Melliaren Rift.”
“You’re taking us out of the universe?”
“Yes, we are leaving the universe now. Therefore, if we explode, then we will not be close enough to destroy any planet, and any tear we cause there will not have any effect—even if time folds over on itself, there will be no repercussions. It will just be more of the same.”
“If we go to Mecrellas, then we can immediately insert the Eye of Harmony connection into my consul unit. It’s there, now, at the Hall of Justice probably. All we have to do—”
“And what if it collides and erupts when we get there? The entire planet can be destroyed, maybe even the nearest three planets near them. We don’t know the magnitude of the effect. Therefore, we have to remain outside of the universe till I can confirm that we are not a danger to anyone.”
“Meanwhile the Imitation Games still are taking place. And what happens if down there, they begin to reenact the worst parts of Earth’s history? What if we go down there and they are doing a remake of the Battle of Agincourt, the Vietnam War or the Spanish Inquisition?”
“They already did those,” Eight countered, “I would know, I was there to stop them before. And let me tell you this, I wish to go down there and discover every way to end it again, but you have put us in this position. I will not endanger millions of lives. So, we are stranded here, until I know that we are safe.”
“Many people might die if we stay here. We could save them.”
“You already have someone to save here, and she is on this TARDIS.”
“You are certain she will forgive you because and I quote, ‘she knows that I never meant to hurt her’? There are so many things wrong with that sentence.”
Ten, bitter, walked away, and then he turned back.
“You know you would have done the same thing. You would have taken the Eye.”
“Yes, I would have. That is the only reason that I will forgive you now; because you are me and I would have done the same thing.”
“Precisely.”
Ten placed his hand in his pockets and walked out of the command room.
⌛
After he left his younger self alone, Ten did not hesitate. He began to run through the rooms of the TARDIS, down one corridor to another. He entered one room that the TARDIS modeled after a room from the Neuschwanstein Castle, then another from the Leeds Castle, one that had the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in it, then he entered a room that literally was structured like the interior of the Ben Franklin Bridge. From one room to the other, he eventually arrived at the center of the TARDIS. He walked through some engineering rooms and then he came to the door that contained both Eyes of Harmony extracts. He looked at them through the glass on the door, but it wasn’t enough. Despite the danger it would cause him to go in there, he entered, closed the door behind him and the brightness of the room covered him. He slowly moved along the walkway and on both sides of the landing were the dying stars suspended in time, hovering there.
Two hearts of the TARDIS.
Ten leaned over the railing and looked at them both.
“Martha,” he whispered, “I promise, you will love this.”
He closed his eyes and bit his lip.
She would forgive him.
He had brought her an Eye of Harmony connection.
And he would finally be able to get her home.
Chapter 11
Stranded
After walking around the TARDIS for roughly an hour, Martha gave up. She had been looking for the room that was once hers to sleep in on the previous TARDIS, but she didn’t find anything at all. In fact, in the place that her bedroom had been, she found a broom closet.
“I don’t get it,” she said out loud as she stared into the cabinet, “there was always a bedroom here, and I used it.”
She drummed the wall with her hand.
“Then the TARDIS invents rooms,” she realized, and she looked all around her, “so, you’re like a space ‘Room of Requirement’, aren’t you?”
She had wished to go to her room to find refuge and be alone. Needing time to recover her thoughts, she sought solitude, but it was not so. She needed a bedroom, and she needed the Doctor to give her one. Therefore, there was nothing for it but for her to retrace her steps and return to the control room. She wasn’t prepared to speak to either Doctor yet, because she couldn’t stand the sight of Ten, and was embarrassed of how she looked to Eight. She had lost her temper… ah well! Everyone does that every now and again, so all she could do was accept that she couldn’t change anything.
Gathering her courage, she returned to the control room, and she saw that it was vacant. She breathed in a sigh of relief, because whenever another one of them would come back, she would have time to prepare. As she walked to the consul unit, she noticed that the TARDIS doors were open and she saw the blackness of the skies from without. Yet there was no one in the doorway at all.
Worried, she walked up to it and leaned out.
“Um, hello?”
“Martha?” She heard from above her. She held fast to the doorway and looked upwards. Eight’s head peeked over the roof of the TARDIS and he looked down at her.
“Good evening,” Eight greeted. “Have you had your cry out?”
“Yeah, I did,” Martha smiled, “And what are you doing up there? And how did you get up there?”
“It’s my TARDIS; I better know how to get up here. Besides, I just needed some moments of peace, and I often come up here to do it.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Stellar!” She laughed, and he smiled at that.
“Want to come up?” He invited.
“Sure, if you want the company.”
“Yeah.”
“But you said that you wanted to be alone.”
“Martha, you know how him and I are. We say we want to be alone, but we never actually mean it.”
Eight leaned down and offered her his hand. Martha took it and Eight pulled her up as he remained holding onto the light on the top of the TARDIS. He laid down, placing his head against the light. Martha imitated him, and then they let their legs dangle over the edge. Laying there, they looked out into the night.
“There are no stars,” Martha noticed.
“We left the universe, so there are none out here.”
“But how can we have left the universe?”
“With incredible difficulty. But it was right to do. Martha, I need you to believe me.”
“I do,” Martha assured him, “I can believe it.”
“And thank you, for defending me back there. I was worried initially, that when I saw you again and you were with my future self, I thought you would spend the whole time not trusting me. Or even believing in me. Yet, here we are, and you didn’t—well, there was no worry of adjusting. I suppose I could always trust you to do it.”
“To do what?”
“The right thing.”
Martha smiled, and looked at Eight’s hair.
“And to think, you and he are the same Timelord, the same Doctor.”
“Same Timelord, yes, but not the same Doctor. With each incarnation, our personalities can change a bit. The core of our character is the same, along with the same ambitions, intentions and overall principles, but every time that we regenerate, whoa! It’s always a surprise to us what we turn out to be. The incarnation before me was like a Timelord version of the character Columbo. I know you remember that character!”
“Yeah, I do, from that cop show.”
“Yeah, that man! I was very much like that. I used a clownish way about me to hide my true shrewdness.”
“Wicked!”
“Stellar!”
“But wait, though. You said that you knew that I remembered that character?”
“Oh, it’s because we used to watch it on the tele often when we travelled together. You and the other companion that I had at the time loved classic shows.”
“Really? We did?”
“Yeah, we sat in the TARDIS and would watch Columbo, Horatio Hornblower, Sharpe, Fawlty Towers, The Snoop Sisters, Only Fools and Horses, and Star Trek.”
“We watched all those? Yeah, I loved those. Ten and I love Star Trek, so you both have that in common.”
“Actually, you and I went to the ‘The Wrath of Khan’ premiere in theatres.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, we went back to the 1970s and saw it. I also took you to see Star Wars ‘The Return of the Jedi’ on opening night.”
“No way! We really saw ‘The Return of the Jedi’ in the theatre?”
“Yeah, we did. Fun secret?”
“Oh, do tell.”
“Actually, while I know that objectively speaking, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ is the best, my favorite of the original trilogy is ‘Return of the Jedi’.”
“Me too! I mean, don’t get me wrong, the whole ‘Luke, I am your father’ line was priceless, but I still think the last film was great. And remember when Princess Leia strangled Java the Hut with her chain?”
“Oh, how could I forget? And she looked amazing while she did it.”
“Oh, so gorgeous that it hurts! But you know what was annoying? Because of her outfit, people began saying that she was being objectified, and that it was sexist, and you know what I say to that? Why does everyone have to ruin a good thing by bringing in their whole puritanical correctness? Princess Leia was beautiful, and it was brilliant.”
“Precisely,” Eight laughed, “and she strangled Java the Hut!”
“I know! What morons!”[9]
⌛
“But another movie that we had seen together,” Eight remarked, “and it was quite surreal for you. We went to the theatre premiere of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.”
“We did?”
“Yeah, and it was my first time in seeing it.”
“No way!”
“Yeah, you had seen it before, but I didn’t.”
“What did you think about it?”
“Truthfully, you laughed at me at the time.”
“Why did I do that?”
“Because while we saw the film, I kept repeating the words ‘I don’t get it’.”
“Oh, yeah, I could see you doing that. I suppose it’s one of those movies that you just have to be blown away by the visuals and accept that it’s just offering you the vastness and complications of time and space.”
“Yeah, but here’s the problem. You know that I don’t like not knowing things, and I hate walking away and not having any answers. That movie forces you to walk away with no answer. And as for the visuals, well, I live them every day. So, my jaw didn’t drop.”
“You perhaps are the only person I know who could watch that movie and not be impressed with the things you see.”
“It’s impossible for me to be. So, I walked away from that movie just thinking, um what? And that’s it.”
“I was raised on that movie.” Martha rolled over so that she could look at Eight straight on. “You really aren’t afraid to tell me all this stuff? I mean, you know that this is all just beginning for me. Telling me something can change anything.”
“It would, but when you first met me, you already knew a lot about me, you made it very clear that there always were things I could never know, and, well… I met you for the first time twice.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Apparently, I met you twice. I met you once when you were travelling with a Doctor before, and then I forgot all about it, and then I met you all over again.”
“You forgot when we met the first time?”
