Four Doctors, Chapter 10

The foppish, Victorian-garbed Doctor was somewhere in the midst of explaining the current state of the time-war and why it required the intervention of his own future incarnations, when both of the other Doctors suddenly cried out in agony and collapsed to the floor. It took Victorian Doctor a moment or so to notice.

"... of course we want to contain events and keep them from impacting the rest of time and space but we're finding leaks in the safeguards we've setting up so ... what is it? What's wrong?"

"Oh, it's nothing much," Tweedy-Doctor said as he picked himself up off the floor. "Just pieces of ourself being stripped away rather abruptly. You didn't notice?"

"No. Can't say as I did."

"Which means," Pinstriped-Doctor chimed in, "that it's happening somewhere between him and me."

"That might explain why the grumpy one hasn't turned up yet," Tweedy-Doctor said. "I do hope he's all right."

Rory stepped into the middle of the collected Doctors. "Excuse me a moment here, I just want to get a few things straight." He addressed the one he'd known all along as the Doctor. "Are you saying that you three ... you're all the same person, just...?"

"Earlier versions of me, yes. It's a bit complicated to explain just now..."

"And one of these earlier versions has gone missing."

"More or less, yes."


"But if you ..." he looked around to Pinstriped-Doctor, "if you both are later versions of the same person shouldn't you remember what happened to him?"

"You would think so," Tweedy-Doctor said. "But timestream-crossing does some funny things to a person's memory."

"Define 'funny,'" Rory said.

"Worst-case scenario, it could completely wipe a person's complete memory of everything that happened before he crossed his own timestream," Tweedy-Doctor said. "I've ... we've ... done this sort of thing before and we know what we're doing so the effects are more subtle."

Pinstriped-Doctor picked it up: "it's a bit like reading a book you'd forgotten you'd read before. It all starts to feel very familiar and you remember being there before, but details only fill themselves in as you keep going forward."

"Seems awfully inconvenient," Amy said.

"I know, right?" Tweedy-Doctor answered. "And that's the best-case scenario."

"Right," Pinstripes interjected, turning toward Victorian Doctor. "So, where are the others?"

Victorian Doctor looked confused. "The others...?"

Tweedy cut him off, impatiently. "The others. Teeth and Curls, Technicolor Dreamcoat, and the rest."

"The Time-War doesn't involve them."

"I'd say it does," Pinstripes said.

"We're the one who started it," Tweedy said. "We antagonized the Daleks and dragged the Time Lords into it. Or did we antagonize the Time Lords, and drag the Daleks into it?"

"In any case, it's our war ... all of ours, like it or not," Pinstripes said.

"Still," Victorian said resolutely, "I've chosen to keep them out of the thick of it."

"Probably for the best," Pinstripes murmured. "They'd probably just get in the way."

Tweedy just shrugged. "So what exactly are we doing here?"

"I've been explaining that," Victorian said in exasperation. "If you'd been listening..."

"...instead of writhing on the floor as large bits get torn out of our past, yes, we're so sorry."

"There are leaks in the timestream," Victorian Doctor went on, pointedly ignoring the commentary. "We've found a scattering of time-corridors..."

"Yes we've noticed," Tweedy said. "At least I noticed, and I assume that's why he's here."

"And more than a scattering," Pinstripes said.

"A whole network," Pinstripes said. The Victorian Doctor was brought up short by that.

"A whole network? Are you sure?"

"Reaching out to some of the worst wartime atrocities throughout time and space," Pinstripes said.

"And centered right here," Tweedy said. "On Gallifrey."

"Well," Victorian said. "It seems like this is worse than I thought."

"Isn't it always?" Tweedy said.

"That's always been my experience," said Pinstripes.

Chapter 9 >

Chapter 1 >>

Four Doctors: Chapter 9

Takeshi Watanabe settled into the grass under a tree to watch the gathering crowds in the park.  Rose sat beside him, trying to gauge the emotion behind his stoic facade. She wondered, alternately, about the best way to initiate a conversation and whether she should even try. And so they sat, side by side, watching as benumbed survivors accumulated around them. The Doctor paused by Rose's elbow just long enough to thrust a testing finger into the air.

"The time-distortion is thick enough to cut with a knife here," he said, before wandering off to explore the park.

Once he had left, Takeshi spoke up. "What is it, this 'time corridor' your Doctor is looking for?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Rose said with a shrug. Then thought better of it. "Actually my guess might be a bit better than yours..."

"I would guess a time-corridor is a thing that is used somehow for traveling to a different time."

"Right. Okay," Rose said. "So your guess really is as good as mine."

"And the blue box," Takeshi continued, "this is also for traveling to different times? You and your Doctor, you have come from the future I perceive."

"Yeah," Rose said.

"Did you know of this ...?" he waved a hand to encompass everything around them. "You knew this would happen today?"

"Yeah," Rose admitted. "I mean no, we didn't know it was today ... I mean, we didn't know when we got here.... See, I think the Doctor doesn't always manage to steer the TARDIS -- his time-machine, I mean -- as well as he pretends to. Half of the time we don't know where, when, we end up. So yeah, we knew, historically, that this happened ... but we didn't know it was happening here, now, while we were here. Does that make sense?"

Takeshi sat in brooding silence for a bit before speaking again. "You could change what happened, could you not?"

"I don't know," said Rose. "The Doctor, he does seem to get involved wherever he goes. I think he can't help himself, he just tries to fix things wherever he goes. And yet... I don't know. I almost destroyed everything by trying to save my own father's life. I think some things, somehow, can't be changed."

"We call them 'fixed points,'" the Doctor said from behind them. "And Hiroshima, August 5, 1945, is one of them." He squatted beside Takeshi. "Hundreds of people have tried, hundreds of times, to change what happened here today. I've tried myself, more than once. I am truly sorry." He put a hand on Takeshi's shoulder. Takeshi bowed his head and appeared to be fighting back tears.

The Doctor stood up. "Right," he said. "Work to be done. You wait here." And he strode off across the park.

Takeshi and Rose sat for some time in awkward silence. Eventually Rose spoke up: "The Doctor really does a lot of good, you know. Even if he can't change ... all this," she waved a hand at their surroundings, "he ... he's a good man."

Takeshi said nothing, but pulled a small chess set from his jacket pocket and began setting it up. He moved a few pieces, playing both sides of the board without much enthusiasm. Rose, having run out of encouragements to offer, watched in silence. Neither of them saw the man approach until he stood directly above Takeshi's chessboard.

The man looked ... not quite right, somehow, but not in any way they could put a finger to. His eyes seemed wrong, devoid of life. His movements were a little too deliberate, too precise, as he lowered himself to sit at the chessboard and move a black pawn.

"Play," he said to Takeshi. And Takeshi played. The game was intense. Neither man spoke, all focus was on the board. Rose soon lost interest and went to find the Doctor.

She discovered him standing by the river, watching people wading into the water. Wading in, and not coming out.

"They're going in to die," the Doctor said to her. "They're drowning themselves. Do you notice what's wrong here?"

Rose looked. She studied the scene intently. Aside from the obvious, abject despair of a population trudging so numbly to its death ... "Where are the bodies?" The Doctor nodded. That was the right question, though she still wasn't quite sure what it meant.

"Where's Takeshi?" he asked suddenly. He looked back, then took off running toward where the old man and the odd man continued their game.

Takeshi was decidedly uncomfortable about this strange adversary. For all his intensity he seemed dispassionate about the progress of the game. Even as Takeshi stood poised to force mate in the next four moves, the other hardly blinked. At the last moment he switched his move. A weak feint with a pawn, which left his rook exposed, just to see how the other would react. He didn't; he took the rook without comment.

Then the Doctor was there, nudging Takeshi aside to take his place for the rest of the game. The Doctor recovered easily and pushed boldly into mate in two. The stranger looked up, raised his hand, and touched his fingertips to the Doctor's temples. The fingertips shone suddenly with a bright light. The Doctor cried out briefly, then went silent. The stranger hauled the Doctor's limp body over one shoulder and carried it off toward the river.

< Next Chapter

Chapter 8 >

Chapter 1 >> 

Four Doctors: Chapter 8

“Donna!!” The sudden voice startled her. She pulled back from the door and turned to face the lanky, tweedy young man who had just called her name.

“Donna, that is your name, isn’t it? I mean you look like a Donna,” the young man rambled on as he worked himself between Donna and the blue box.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” she asked him.

“No! I mean, how could you know me? I mean if you knew me you’d remember me, wouldn’t you? And since you clearly don’t, you clearly don’t. QED, as they say.”

“Right. So it this yours?” She asked, pointing to the box.

“This? Yes, I mean no, this is nothing of any consequence. Not something you need to concern yourself with. Just an old police box. Nothing to see here.”

“Nothing to see? Well then, I’d just like a quick look at nothing if you don’t mind.” And before he could object she pushed past him and into the box.

-          -

Amy and Rory heard the scuffle just outside the door and were just about to investigate, when the door burst open. A ginger-haired woman burst in with the Doctor close behind.

“No, don’t!” the Doctor cried and lunged at her as she crossed into the control room. He grabbed her and covered her face with his hands. “Don’t mind any of this, it’s all an elaborate hallucination. Just forget you saw any of it.”

The woman wrested herself free and took a look around. “So it is a TARDIS. I knew it was,” she said.
The Doctor watched her carefully, skittishly. “Um. So you remember… I mean, you recognize…”

“Oh, I’ve seen a TARDIS before. This one isn’t quite as nice as the Doctor’s, mind you, but it’s close enough. Same make, different model I expect?”

“It is…” Amy began, but the Doctor cut her off.

“It’s more like than you might think,” he said. “And you’re feeling all right…? No imminent brain-explosions…?”

“I should hope not.”

“Um, Doctor, what…?” Rory interjected, though no one was really paying any attention.

“But you do remember the Doctor…?”

“Remember him? I only just left him the other side of the hill there.”

“Of course you did! That’s why … it hasn’t happened yet, has it?”

“What hasn’t…?”

“Oh nothing. Nothing at all for you to worry your pretty little old head about.” He grabbed her in a great big bear-hug – or as big a bear-hug as his lanky frame would allow. “Ah, Donna, it is so very good to see you again, I can’t even begin to tell you.”

“Oi, there, not so chummy,” the woman snapped as she pushed the Doctor away. “Not till we get a few things sorted out here.”

“Ah, there’s the old Donna,” the Doctor said affectionately.

“Doctor, what’s this about?” Rory tried again.

“Doctor?” the woman, Donna, looked around. “Is he here?”

“He’s right there…” Amy started to say.

“Yes, we’ll get to that,” the Doctor said.

“Ah, there he is,” Donna said as a wiry little man in pinstripes and sneakers came into the TARDIS.

“I say,” he said, “I like what you’ve done with the place,” He crossed to Rory. “Doctor, is it?”

“Um, no,” Rory said. The pinstriped man turned to Amy. “Doctor?”

“No,” Amy said, shooting a questioning glance at the Doctor.

The pinstriped man followed her gaze. “Oh.” He showed a momentary disappointment which quickly gave way to enthusiasm as he approached with a hand extended. “Doctor!”

“Yes, of course,” the Doctor said, shaking the man’s hand.

The pinstriped man touched his own hair and indicated the Doctor's as he muttered, “Still not ginger …”

“I know,” the Doctor replied.

“Ah, well. Good to meet the next … the next?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. The next … so how do I, how does it…?”

“You really don’t want to know.”

“No, I expect you’re right.”

“Doctor!” Amy and Donna both called out simultaneously. Both men turned in response.

“Right,” said the Doctor. “I guess some introductions are in order. Amy, Rory, Donna," he pointed out each in turn, followed by the pinstriped man. “And the Doctor. Myself. In a previous life, you might say.”

“Okay,” said Rory. “I think it’s time for some kind of explanation.”

But before either Doctor could respond, another strange man – tall, with shoulder-length wavy hair and a sort of Victorian-style outfit, strode boldly into the TARDIS. “So,” he said. “I suppose we’re all wondering why I’ve called myself together here.”

“You know, I’ve always wanted to say that,” the pinstriped Doctor said to nobody in particular.

“And now you have,” the tweedy Doctor replied.

“Yes, I suppose so,” the pinstriped Doctor said. “Somehow not quite the same though, is it?”

< Chapter 9

Chapter 7 >

Chapter 1 >> 

Four Doctors: Chapter 7

Takeshi Watanabe stood quietly at the TARDIS door, looking out at the blasted wasteland that just moments ago had been his hometown of Hiroshima, Japan. Rose stood by, wanting to say something but no words seemed appropriate to the moment. The Doctor glowered over the console, poking at buttons and frowning at readings. Finally he straightened up and strode briskly toward the door.

“Right. Let’s go,” he said to Rose.

“Where?”
 
“I’ve got a lock on the time-corridor. We’re going to check it out.”

“Doctor…” Rose gestured at Mr. Watanabe and at the scene beyond. “Shouldn’t we just leave well enough alone?”

“Someone who doesn’t belong here is already involving themselves in this. I’ve seen it happen countless times before, and it never ends well. Not unless I make it end well.”

He walked to the door, pausing at Takeshi’s shoulder. The two men stood a moment in silence, looking at the devastation. The Doctor put a hand gently on Takeshi’s arm. “Too much war,” he said. Takeshi nodded and followed numbly behind Rose and the Doctor.

They passed in silence through the crumbled burning ruins. Here and there a survivor would emerge to stagger away, or to wail pitifully over loved ones buried in the rubble -- or perhaps reduced to ashes in the street and a shadow burned into the wall. Many had been scarred, burned, some were barely recognizably human any more. If indeed there were such a thing as Hell, Rose thought, it couldn’t be worse than this.

She found that she had to keep reminding herself of the reality of the scene around her. This wasn’t a quick jaunt thousands of years to a distant future. It was only moments ago, in real-time, that this desolation had been a vibrant and active city. Too much time-travel, she supposed, could have a kind of numbing effect. She only had to look to Takeshi, to his reaction to the ruins that had been his home, to feel again the reality of it all.

And, just perhaps, to understand a little better why the Doctor wanted her tagging along on his travels.
The steady stream of survivors grew as they moved away from ground zero.

“Where are we going?” Rose asked.

The Doctor pointed several blocks up, at a stand of bamboo and trees that seemed to have been mostly spared.

“Asano Park,” Takeshi muttered to himself.

Rose looked around at the growing crowd around them. Many were already approaching the park, taking shelter within the greenery. “They’re all going there,” she observed.

The Doctor nodded. “Most of the survivors of the Hiroshima bombing end up there.”

“Right where someone put this time-corridor thing,” Rose completed his thought. He nodded grimly.

“There’s something very not right going on here,” he said.

< Chapter 8

Chapter 6 >

Chapter 1 >> 

Four Doctors: Chapter 6

“Doctor, are you sure we’ve even moved?” As far as Donna could tell, the rocky wasteland around them looked a lot like the rocky wasteland they had just left behind.

“Mmmm?” The Doctor was staring out past the horizon, lost in thought. “We’ve moved. That was Skaro. This is Gallifrey.”

“So is there a reason why half the planets we visit look like Beachfield Quarry in Sussex?”

“Hmm? Of course there is,” the Doctor said, then fell into a moody silence.

“Right,” Donna said. “That’s helpful. Thanks.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor replied, shaking off his mood. “Industrial civilizations throughout the universe may develop in an infinite number of different ways, but the devastation it leaves on their native ecosystem looks the same everywhere.”

“So we left that first place, Whadayacall…”

“Skaro,” the Doctor said. “Home planet of the Daleks.”

“Those metal things we saw back there?”

“Yes, those metal things that invaded your own planet not too long ago.”

“Did they?” Donna asked. “When was that?”

“It was right before you appeared on my TARDIS the first time. Surely you remember…?”

“Yah,” Donna replied. “Surely you remember I had a wedding to plan back then? Alien invasions were not a big concern of mine.”

“Clearly not,” the Doctor said. “So we’ve gone from Skaro…”

“Home planet of the Daklites, right.”

“Daleks,” the Doctor snapped. “The single most ruthless war machines in the known universe. And we’ve come here to my own home planet of Gallifrey…”

“Hang on now,” Donna said. “You told me your planet was destroyed.”

“Well it was,” the Doctor said.

“And it was time-locked, or something, so you could never go back.”

“It was,” the Doctor said.

“So how can we be there now?”

“That,” the Doctor replied, “is what I’d like to figure out.”

He pulled the gadgety device out of his coat pocket and began taking more readings. “That time corridor we blundered into seems to be transporting something from the Thall City of Skaro, where we were before …” He adjusted some dials and took a few more readings. “… to somewhere just over that rise over there.”

Donna had tuned out the Doctor’s speech and was surveying the scenery around them. 
“So I imagine it looked better before the big war, then?”

“No,” the Doctor said. “It always looked like this. My people call this the Wastelands.”

“Oh, there’s originality for you.”

“We’re scientists, not poets.”

“Obviously. Do you suppose anyone lives out around here?” Donna asked, looking around at the myriad caves in the surrounding rockface.

“Oh, quite a lot. We call them the Outsiders.”

“Of course you do.”

“But they’re not our concern right now,” the Doctor said, returning his attention to his gadgety device. “We’re far more concerned with who’s responsible for this time-corridor. And the Outsiders just don’t have the technology, the wherewithal, or, quite frankly, the interest.”

“No, I don’t suppose they would,” Donna quipped, but found the Doctor too engrossed in his readings to take notice of her acerbic wit. “So,” she went on, “I’ll just nip about and see what’s what, then.”

“Sure, fine,” the Doctor said absently.

“Maybe see what the natives are up to.”

“Jolly good. Enjoy yourself.”

Which left Donna with nothing better to do than to follow through on her bluff, even though the Doctor’s complete and utter failure to notice rather dampened the appeal.

Climbing to the top of the rise behind them, looking out over the barren landscape below, she saw an odd and oddly familiar blue box in the valley below. She turned back to look the way she had come – the Doctor was still engrossed in his work, and the TARDIS stood a few meters beyond, right where they had left it. She considered calling out to get the Doctor’s attention, then decided not to bother him. She set out down the hillside to investigate the duplicate TARDIS on her own.

< Chapter 7

Chapter 5 >

Chapter 1 >>

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 >>