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 – most likely World War II. Again.
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.
The Doctor had only just left behind that one-time-Time-Agent-now-con-artist whose carelessness had almost wiped out the human race in 1941. And now he had stumbled upon a time corridor somewhere in the middle of the same world war. Coincidences like that made him uneasy.
And there was a sense of deja-vu about the 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 -- a notion which made the time corridor's presence here that much more troubling.
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 Kenji 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. "Do or do not. There is no try." Leaning in toward Rose, he went on: "Little bit of advice I gave a young aspiring filmmaker once. Nineteen-sixty-something, Modesto California. I hear he's done pretty well for himself since then..."
"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," Kenji 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 Kenji, 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 Kenji'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 Kenji Watanabe, gazing around him at the TARDIS console room. "So this box of yours ... it is bigger than it looks."
The City & The City by China Miéville
