Four Doctors, Chapter 5

“Right. So. Let’s just review what we know, shall we?” The Doctor put on his best professorial airs, which still, he felt, didn’t quite fit this youthful and gangly new physique.

“Well I know nothing,” Rory offered. “Amy?”

“Nothing,” she agreed. “That about covers it.”

“Right,” Rory went on. “So really it’s more about you reminding us that you’re the only one here who really knows what’s going on.”

“Don’t be cheeky,” the Doctor said. “I may not look it, but I’m a lot older than you are, or were, before you became an Auton and spent two-thousand years … well never mind that right now, that’s not what’s important.”

He adjusted the overhead viewscreen. A vast network of time-corridors appeared as faintly glowing lines, all crisscrossed and radiating from a central point.

“Looks like a spider web,” Amy observed.

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “It is very much like a spider web. A spider web buried just below the topsoil, if you will, of spacetime. So an underground spider web … something like a trapdoor spider’s web, except nothing like that, really. It’s more like a cosmic system of gopher-holes. And we’re the big lumbering buffalo who’s gone and trod in the gopher-hole and got stuck, and swept away in the currents … you know, metaphors are rubbish for trying to explain a thing.”

“So what you’re saying,” Rory broke in, “is that it’s a lot of tunnels through spacetime, the TARDIS went and stumbled into it, and got swept off-course by it all.”

“That’s… well, yes.”

 The Doctor leaned in close to Amy and, in a loud stage-whisper, added, “I like this boy, Amelia. He’s definitely a keeper.”

“But what’s it all for?” Rory asked.

“Ah, well there’s the question.” The Doctor returned to studying the readouts on the console. “Unidirectional vortices… a very limited functionality… mostly works like a great big cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking up stuff from all these endpoints and dropping it all here.” He finished with a finger planted at the center of the web on the screen.

“So what’s there?” Amy asked.

“Yes, exactly! What is there, and what does it want with all this out here, and why does it want so much of it, and what exactly does it intend to do with it all?”

“Again with the questions we can’t answer,” said Rory to Amy. “You notice how he does that?”

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” said Amy. “And now he’ll dazzle us with answers we can’t really understand.”

Not quite yet,” the Doctor said. “First I need … if the Old Girl would be kind enough … to locate the when and the where for all these temporal points, and …” He was interrupted by a few petulant bleeps from the console. “I did ask nicely,” he shot back, and was answered by an indignant squonk. “Well then pretty-please. With sugar. And a dollop of honey too, if you like.”

Rory leaned in to Amy and asked, “Does he always talk to the equipment that way?”

“Like an old married couple,” Amy replied.

After a few more knob-twists, button-pokes, and bleeps and bloops, the Doctor straightened up and gave the console an affectionate pat.

“Thank you, Dear. Right,” he continued, turning to face the Ponds, “looks like someone is targeting all the worst, the most devastating, most brutally awful acts of war from throughout space and time, taking things from there and collecting them …” he squinted again at some readings, “… at some central point which does not actually register … not sure how they get in past the time-lock, though… someplace not within normal spacetime … or even within any of the standard varieties of abnormal spacetime, apparently.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Rory prompted.

“You know, my people had an old proverb; ‘All temporal vortices lead to Gallifrey.’ Which, come to think of it, doesn’t seem all that proverbial.”

“It probably loses something in translation,” Amy quipped.

“Not really,” the Doctor said. “My people were never very poetic.”

“Right, question,” Rory broke in. “I’m awfully curious about the ‘leads to Gallifrey’ part of all that.”

“Yes. Well. It looks like the only way we’ll get any real answers here is to break through the time-lock and visit my old home-planet to see what sort of new and unpleasant developments are now being infiltrated into the Last Great Time-War.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Rory muttered.

< Chapter 6

Four Doctors: Chapter 4 >

Chapter 1 >>

Four Doctors: Chapter 4

Darkness. The world, the universe, all is total darkness. Except, one wonders if darkness can even exist if light is … 

            <Pawn to E4.  Your response?>

            <Knight to C6.>

… if light is what? A distant memory? A half-remembered rumor? A myth?

            <Knight to F3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to E5.>

There are flashes, impressions of a world made up of images and material objects. Of days spent in shops or out of doors …

            <Bishop to B5.  Your response?>

            <Knight to F6.>

… and always a chessboard. Yes, the game was once played on a board, with pieces, with physical objects…

            <Bishop to A4.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to A6.>

… not simply the constant dry stream of information it has become …

            <King castles.  Your response?>

            <Bishop to E7.>

He remembers sitting in the park and enjoying a friendly game of chess with whomever happened by.  He wouldn’t even have minded losing …

            <Rook to E1.  Your response?>

            <King castles.>

…wouldn’t have minded losing once in a while.  Except, of course, he never did.  It was rare enough that he was ever truly challenged.

            <Bishop to B3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to B5.>

There was that one fellow … not very friendly.  Odd-looking, too … something in his eyes … something not natural …

            <Pawn to C3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to D6.>

This odd stranger, with the lifeless eyes … he sits down without so much as a how-do-you-do and starts a game …

            <Pawn to H3.  Your response?>

            <Knight to A5.>

… no chit-chat, just goes at his game like his whole life depends on it

            <Bishop to C2.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to C5.>

The stranger is good, he’ll give him that.  They play to a stalemate.  And for the first time, the stranger cracks a smile.

            <Pawn to D4.  Your response?>

            <Queen to C7.>

Not much of a smile, but it’s the first sign of humanity he’s shown.

The stranger stands, looks down at him. 

“You’ll do nicely,” the stranger says.

            <Knight to D2.  Your response?>

            <C pawn captures D4.>

It is his last memory of the place … of the life he once had…

            <C pawn captures D4.  Your response?>

            <E pawn captures D4.>

…or was it just a dream?

< Four Doctors: Chapter 5

Four Doctors: Chapter 3 > 

Four Doctors: Chapter 1 >>

Four Doctors, Chapter 3 revised

This is a work in progress, and as such will probably be revised more often than not as I work through it. This particular chapter was tweaked in response to a few points a friend and fellow Whovian raised when I posted it before. It was the first instance, so far, where I realized I had to fix them early before getting too much further into the story. And so, here is the revised third installment of the Four Doctors.
 
The TARDIS landed with a solid “thunk”.  The Doctor frowned over the console readouts.

Rose tentatively loosened her grip on the support beam she’d been clinging to.  “Have we stopped?”

“Stopped?" The Doctor snorted something remarkably close to a laugh. "Relatively speaking, the entire Universe is expanding outward at a rate slightly greater than the speed of light. Nothing is ever 'stopped', really.” He gave her a quick glance, a spark of humor in his eye.  “But for now we're anchored to a planetary gravity well.  We’ve landed.”

“Landed where?” Rose joined him by the console to stare at a bank of blank screens.

 “Can’t say,” the Doctor mumbled, punching at some buttons and re-checked his readouts. “That jaunt through the time corridor fried a few circuits so I can’t get a reading.”  He poked in frustration at the controls once more. “We’ve set down just beyond the corridor’s terminus but where and when that is exactly …” he slammed his mallet into the readout panel and re-adjusted some dials, all to no avail. He turned and strode purposefully toward the door.  “We’ll have to go outside and get our bearings.”

“Is that safe?”

“Probably not,” he replied brightly, and threw open the door.

He stepped out and looked around to get a sense of the place.  They were in the middle of a city but somewhat removed from the bustle of downtown by a wide, slow moving river to his right.  The rising sun hung low in the sky to his left.  He took in the trees lining the streets and sniffed the air.

“Definitely Earth,” he said as Rose stepped up beside him. “Mid Twentieth-Century, I’d guess.  Late summer.  Some fifty years or so before your time.”  What he didn’t mention was a strong stench of death in the air.  They were in the middle of a war – one of the big ones, probably the second World War.

He strolled down to the edge of the river, nodding a greeting to a small, plump old man sitting contentedly at the riverbank, studying a chessboard set up beside him. He seemed to be waiting for someone to come along and join him. The man smiled and lifted his hat, reminding the Doctor of himself in a previous life -- not so very long ago, and yet it seemed so irretrievably distant.

“Nice day,” the Doctor observed, as he squatted beside the man and moved a black pawn on the chessboard. "Good day for a game."

“It is,” the man said with a grin.  “It is always a good day for chess.” He moved one of his own pawns in answer to the Doctor's opening.

“Good way to spend a morning,” the Doctor said. He shifted another piece on the board and settled to the ground.

“You speak Japanese,” the man observed as he made his next move. He seemed more intent on the conversation at this point than on the game.

“I do,” the Doctor replied.  It was technically true, and easier than trying to explain the TARDIS and its translation matrix.

“You’re not a spy, are you?” the man asked benignly.

“Why, are we at war?”

“I hope not,” the man said. He sighed heavily, shaking his head.  “Too much war.”

The Doctor nodded.  The two of them sat quietly, alternately staring out at the river and studying the chessboard between them.

There was a sense of deja-vu about this place. Not just the physical location, though it did seem familiar. But something niggled at his temporal senses. He suspected they were very near one of Earth's many unchangeable fixed points. World War II had more than its share, certainly, so maybe it shouldn’t have been all that surprising. Still...

He was more and more convinced that they had just left behind an unexpected fixed point – it was the only explanation for the near-disaster when he’d let Rose change history and save her father’s life. Oh, sure it had been risky. And he had danced much closer to the edge with that one than he had ever done (intentionally) before. But even so...

Not to be immodest, but he is the Doctor, after all. He quite literally wrote the book on Advanced Temporal Manipulation (or at least, he had meant to but never quite got around to it. Although, he had come across the book once or twice in Gallifrey’s used-book stores, so he obviously wrote/would write it at some point.) He was the only Time Lord in recorded history to meet and interact with his own past and future selves. He simply didn’t make careless mistakes like that. No, he had to conclude that Rose Tyler and her family had a greater cosmic significance than he’d thought.

And now he’d discovered a time corridor playing about the edges of another fixed point. Whatever was going on here, it could not be good.

Rose sat down beside the Doctor and watched his dark brooding for a bit. Then she turned to the other man.

"Hi! I'm Rose."

The Japanese grinned and tipped his hat in a way she found charmingly old-fashioned. "I am Takeshi Watanabe," he replied. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Rose. And he ... he is Thorn?"

Rose laughed at that. She bumped the Doctor playfully with her shoulder. "Ah, the Doctor's not so bad once you get to know him."

"Nah," the Doctor said. "Once you get to know me I'm much worse." He moved a bishop, but continued to be distracted by a vague unease about his surroundings.

Rose reclined on the grass, gazing up at the early morning sky. Mr. Watanabe brought one of his knights into play on the board. He leaned in toward Rose to speak confidentially, but loud enough for the Doctor to hear.

"Your friend, Doctor Thorn, he is trying to checkmate in six moves."
 
"Not trying," the Doctor said, flashing a toothy grin and shifting a rook into position. "I don’t try, I do."

"Today you do not," said Mr. Watanabe with a grin, as one of his pawns came forward to guard the square the Doctor had been headed toward.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in appreciation. "Impressive," he said. He brought a knight into play. "This game might actually take me ten moves."

"You play well," Takeshi said with a grin, as he moved a bishop off to the sidelines. "But I think perhaps you do not play quite so well as you think."

"You're probably right," the Doctor said with a grin as he repositioned his rook. "But near enough. I play to win."

"I also play to win," replied Takeshi, as he moved his knight. "And you are in check."

The Doctor stared, slack-jawed, at the chessboard. "Fantastic," he enthused.

"Doctor," Rose interrupted, still looking toward the sky.

But the Doctor ignored her, intent on retracing Takeshi's moves on the chessboard. "This is really something," he gushed.

"Doctor," Rose repeated, more urgently.

"I mean I'll still win," the Doctor went on, "but I haven't had a challenge like this since, I don't remember when."

"Doctor!"

"What, Rose?"

"Well I was just thinking it seems strange that that's the first airplane I've seen all morning, and it might be worth pointing out to you, is all."

"Yes, well. There's a war on, you know, and..." The Doctor paused a moment and followed her gaze skyward. "Bloody hell!"

Suddenly the Doctor was pulling her to her feet and propelling her up the hill. "Get back to the TARDIS!"

"Doctor," she called breathlessly as she ran. "...Doctor, we... this is..."

"Back to the TARDIS!"

As she reached the top of the hill, the Doctor grabbed her hand and pulled her roughly across the lawn. She stumbled in through the TARDIS door and collapsed to catch her breath. The Doctor had only just got the doors shut when the world outside exploded into a blinding white-hot light. She could feel the TARDIS around her shudder as if it were buffeted by strong winds.

"Doctor..." Rose turned on him. "He was out there!"

"Yeah," the Doctor growled. "Him and a hundred-thousand like him. Ordinary people, living their ordinary lives, in Hiroshima, Japan. They all die today, and there is not a bloody thing we can do about it."

"But Doctor...!"

"You think I like it? I hate it. With every fiber of my being I hate it. But I can't change it."

"So," a soft-spoken voice behind them broke in. They turned to see Takeshi Watanabe, gazing around him at the TARDIS console room. "So this box of yours ... it is bigger than it looks."

< Four Doctors: Chapter 4

Four Doctors: Chapter 2 >

Four Doctors: Chapter 1 >>

And We Are All Mortal

A couple months back, the NPR program Weekend All Things Considered ran a fiction-writing contest, asking for short works centered on a US President (real or fictional; author's choice). This was my contribution.

“I was reading the other day, thing about World War One.” Bobby finishes pouring the scotch into two glasses. “When the war broke out, it says, Prince von Bulow turned to the German Chancellor and said, ‘How did this all happen?’ The Chancellor could only shake his head and say, ‘If we only knew…’”

The President doesn’t take his eyes off the photos spread on his desk, not even to look at the glass of scotch his brother sets at his elbow. “They knew,” he says.

Each step drives the next, possibilities fall away. The noose tightens. And he can’t see how any of it could have gone otherwise. The impotent frustration of that German Chancellor is all too real to him right now. “They didn’t like it. But they had to know.”

Bobby leans over the President’s shoulder at the photos. “Not looking so much like a football field now.”

“Looking more like missile sites every day.”

“But the blockade is holding.”

“For now.” The President takes a swig of his drink. “With the Russian ships goading us the way they have been … only a matter of time.”

“So how did this all happen?”

“No,” the President says. “The question is, how do we stop it?”

When the whole thing started, one general had summed it up quite succinctly saying, “You’re in a pretty bad fix, Mister President.” The President had shot back with, “You’re in it with me.” A good laugh line, and it eased the tension for a bit, but it was a lie. Ultimately the decisions, the responsibility, the worldwide repercussions, are his alone.

“Damn it, Bobby, how do we stop it?”

“Tried praying?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“Well. You know what they say, ‘Whenever God closes a door, He always opens a window.’”

“That’s lovely,” the President grumbles.

“Just trying to help.”

“You want to help?”

“Sure.”

“Find me that damn window.”

A knock at the door. A State Department aide steps in with a stack of paper.

“Mister President … a communication, sir. From Russia. Chairman Krushchev.”

“About time.” The President takes the pages. He reads each page to the end, flips it aside with careful deliberation.

“What’s he got to say?”

The President holds up a finger for silence. It takes a few more minutes to finish reading. He collects the pages, squares the edges against the top of his desk, and hands them to his brother.

“He suggests that we should both stop pulling at this knot of war we’ve tied ourselves into.”

“Good idea. We shoulda thought of that.”

“Krushchev says if we pledge not to try another invasion of Cuba …”

“Like we’d want a repeat of that ...”

“…if we pledge not to invade Cuba, he will pull the missiles.”

“Just like that?”

“Under UN supervision, they’ll get rid of everything.”

“If we promise not to invade.”

The President’s nausea subsides, just a bit. He allows himself a moment of optimism, the first he’s felt in over a week.

“I think we could do that,” he says.

 “Can we trust him?”

“Can we afford not to?”

“It would give us a way out,” Bobby admits.

“When God closes a door, Krushchev opens the window,” the President says with a grin. “Somebody’s got a keen sense of humor.”