Prologue
Once upon a time, there was a world.
It was a beautiful world. The leaves on the trees were silver, and two suns lit the sky a peaceful burnt orange. The people watched on from their citadel, as the web of time danced before their very eyes.
The people joined the dance, stepping into the web, becoming a part of it, as the web became a part of them. They stood at the heart of coincidence, their fingertips inches from playing over the threads of causation. But they didn’t. They just watched.
They came to be seen as noble, even in spite of their darker days. Other races respected the gods who were too modest to create, the eyes that gazed without casting judgement. In in a similar way, the people of that world respected themselves, grew aware of what they did well, and persevered, through their every act, to uphold those virtues.
In the end, Time claimed the universe.
It claimed most of the universe through its counterpart, Death. Death was the fall, the hunger, the decay, the entropy, the collapsing stars and the smell of rot. But however hard she tried, Death could not claim the people of that first world. They wriggled out of her grasp, changed themselves, to evade submission.
Death gave up – but still, Time claimed them.
One day, the people came to vote, just as the always did. The ordinary people on ordinary streets panicked, fought, speculated. The seers and soothsayers sighed, sure as always that good will and human decency would prevail. The right choice would be made.
And then it wasn’t.
The people of that world awoke to the news that their neighbours, their friends, and the strangers on the street who bade them good morning, were all concealing a secret. They concealed hatred, and that hatred led to the birth of an awful creature.
The Evil King took his place, and Time lowered her brush, the work of art at last complete. Death chuckled, and turned to the clock on the wall. Beauty tore herself apart.
The Evil King consumed the planet. Time looked away. There were some things not even she could face.
Jasmine was fastened to a chair.
The rest of the room was empty, and for the most part, dark. The walls were shiny and metallic, like the chair itself, which used a rather excessively advanced contraption to keep her in place. The only light came from behind her. If she could have turned around, she might have been able to tell what was projecting it.
A man stepped forward. At least, she thought he was a man. It was hard to tell: he moved furtively, and all she was permitted to see was his shadow, cast in front of her. He could have been a cut-out or a puppet. He had no colour, no features, no fixed identity. He was just a shifting shape.
“Jasmine Sparks,” he said, and she was glad he had a voice. He wasn’t a good man; she knew that, because good men didn’t talk through shadows, or fasten innocent old women to chairs. But he didn’t sound evil either. He spoke with confidence, with promise, and perhaps with a slight croak or crackle in his voice, like that of a man who’d shouted a bit too loudly a few too many times.
“Where am I?” asked Jasmine, shuddering in shock at the sound of her own voice. It was old, older than his, sounding like a machine powering up after decades of inactivity; she felt her throat burn as it left her. It was a miracle she could still speak, or listen, or even think. Those last few years were a blur; a blurred memory in which all she did was survive, carry on, instinctively performing those basic, meaningless tasks of self-preservation.
“Where am I?” echoed the man as he did something with his arm, probably lifting it to his chin, as he paced slowly across the room – left to right, right to left. “Surely you should be asking the question ‘Where was I?’ Would you like to know?”
Jasmine scowled. She didn’t want to say it, and he knew it. She didn’t want to plead with him, to acknowledge that her whole history and identity rested in the hands of one man.
“Yes,” she sighed, reluctantly, realising it was the only way she would ever get an answer.
“You were on a prison world,” explained the man, and suddenly Jasmine was not listening to the tone of his voice, or watching the way his shadow transformed. All she saw and heard were the words, the story, the thing that gave her life meaning and just as quickly took it away.
“When you were in Hell with the Doctor, you – like him – were thrown across time. All those years back, the Time Lords controlled the event for the Doctor, sending him back to Earth. They clearly didn’t do the same for you. You arrived on that planet, and it was the worst place you could have found yourself. An initiative of the Planet Makers -- Station X -- for prisoners of the worst sort. An experiment, asking the question: 'is true rehabilitation ever possible?'”
“The prisoner would be left on their own, on the planet, for 19,220 of its days. They would use the log-book to record their thoughts, and they eventually would discover that the hour-glass functioned as a time machine. Once it had emptied, they would be able to travel back to the day they arrived, and would have a choice: what would they do with their past selves? The result of that encounter would determine whether or not they had been rehabilitated and the planet was kept in a weak time-lock, so that any paradoxes could be contained.”
“Unfortunately, the experiment did not go as planned. The first prisoner came to regret his actions after the fifth decade, recording in detail his self-loathing. When he travelled back in time, he murdered his past self, wiping himself from existence. The second prisoner began to despair, his views inconclusive, and walked out into the desert, where he died.”
Jasmine recalled the skeleton in the desert. Prisoner 2, then. She had always wondered what his name was.
“When you arrived on the planet, the mechanisms were activated again, and it was assumed that you were the third convict. The Planet Makers had gone bankrupt by then, and no one was present to read your log, but the system ticked over on its own. Sadly, you had not been protected against the pathogens in the planet’s atmosphere, and you fell ill. But once we found where you were, Jasmine, we brought you here by ordering for you to be returned in one of our spare TARDISes, and we cured you. You have a few years left. Not many, but a few. And you can live them knowing who you are and what your purpose is.”
“You have a purpose, Jasmine Sparks. You are useful. But first you need to understand the futility of trying to fight, of trying to order the universe. You weren’t on that world for any reason at all. It meant nothing. Your whole life has been a product of chance, of randomness, and that makes it meaningless.”
And with that, the man left.
Jasmine looked around, the whole room darkening. This is it, she thought. This is where it all ends. My whole life spent on the same warm, endless expanse and now I’m going to die in a cold, cramped cell I’ve never seen before.
There were more footsteps, and Jasmine felt the chair mechanism loosening. She stood up, slowly, feeling and hearing her bones crack as she did. She'd never quite gotten used to old age.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” said a voice. This one, at least, was attached to an identity. It was an old man’s voice, a few pitches higher than it might have been in his younger years, and it quivered as he spoke, as if he didn’t quite believe the words out of his own mouth. “That’s the President. He’s not that bad when you get to know him, but he prefers to stick to the shadows – he doesn’t like people to see him, says it will undercut his principles. He’d rather be an idea than a person.”
“Oh, he sounds lovely,” answered Jasmine, and moved towards the sound of this man’s voice. “The President of where?” As she reached him, the wall in front of her became transparent, revealing itself as glass. She placed her hand to it; so unused to the sensation of skin against cool glass, she retracted it again straight after. It took her a moment, watching the world and taking in the new sights, to identify where it was. So much had changed.
“Gallifrey,” said the old man next to her, and smiled.
They were at the top of a great tower, Jasmine realised. The other towers of the Capitol stood tall a few metres below, the streets below them so far away they looked like thin lines drawn across a page. The sky was TARDIS-blue and cloudy. In the distance, beyond the polished glass that sealed off the civilisation, the mountains were capped with snow.
“You’re back on Gallifrey, Jasmine Sparks. As they said, back on your home planet… Merry Christmas.”
It was a beautiful world. The leaves on the trees were silver, and two suns lit the sky a peaceful burnt orange. The people watched on from their citadel, as the web of time danced before their very eyes.
The people joined the dance, stepping into the web, becoming a part of it, as the web became a part of them. They stood at the heart of coincidence, their fingertips inches from playing over the threads of causation. But they didn’t. They just watched.
They came to be seen as noble, even in spite of their darker days. Other races respected the gods who were too modest to create, the eyes that gazed without casting judgement. In in a similar way, the people of that world respected themselves, grew aware of what they did well, and persevered, through their every act, to uphold those virtues.
In the end, Time claimed the universe.
It claimed most of the universe through its counterpart, Death. Death was the fall, the hunger, the decay, the entropy, the collapsing stars and the smell of rot. But however hard she tried, Death could not claim the people of that first world. They wriggled out of her grasp, changed themselves, to evade submission.
Death gave up – but still, Time claimed them.
One day, the people came to vote, just as the always did. The ordinary people on ordinary streets panicked, fought, speculated. The seers and soothsayers sighed, sure as always that good will and human decency would prevail. The right choice would be made.
And then it wasn’t.
The people of that world awoke to the news that their neighbours, their friends, and the strangers on the street who bade them good morning, were all concealing a secret. They concealed hatred, and that hatred led to the birth of an awful creature.
The Evil King took his place, and Time lowered her brush, the work of art at last complete. Death chuckled, and turned to the clock on the wall. Beauty tore herself apart.
The Evil King consumed the planet. Time looked away. There were some things not even she could face.
Jasmine was fastened to a chair.
The rest of the room was empty, and for the most part, dark. The walls were shiny and metallic, like the chair itself, which used a rather excessively advanced contraption to keep her in place. The only light came from behind her. If she could have turned around, she might have been able to tell what was projecting it.
A man stepped forward. At least, she thought he was a man. It was hard to tell: he moved furtively, and all she was permitted to see was his shadow, cast in front of her. He could have been a cut-out or a puppet. He had no colour, no features, no fixed identity. He was just a shifting shape.
“Jasmine Sparks,” he said, and she was glad he had a voice. He wasn’t a good man; she knew that, because good men didn’t talk through shadows, or fasten innocent old women to chairs. But he didn’t sound evil either. He spoke with confidence, with promise, and perhaps with a slight croak or crackle in his voice, like that of a man who’d shouted a bit too loudly a few too many times.
“Where am I?” asked Jasmine, shuddering in shock at the sound of her own voice. It was old, older than his, sounding like a machine powering up after decades of inactivity; she felt her throat burn as it left her. It was a miracle she could still speak, or listen, or even think. Those last few years were a blur; a blurred memory in which all she did was survive, carry on, instinctively performing those basic, meaningless tasks of self-preservation.
“Where am I?” echoed the man as he did something with his arm, probably lifting it to his chin, as he paced slowly across the room – left to right, right to left. “Surely you should be asking the question ‘Where was I?’ Would you like to know?”
Jasmine scowled. She didn’t want to say it, and he knew it. She didn’t want to plead with him, to acknowledge that her whole history and identity rested in the hands of one man.
“Yes,” she sighed, reluctantly, realising it was the only way she would ever get an answer.
“You were on a prison world,” explained the man, and suddenly Jasmine was not listening to the tone of his voice, or watching the way his shadow transformed. All she saw and heard were the words, the story, the thing that gave her life meaning and just as quickly took it away.
“When you were in Hell with the Doctor, you – like him – were thrown across time. All those years back, the Time Lords controlled the event for the Doctor, sending him back to Earth. They clearly didn’t do the same for you. You arrived on that planet, and it was the worst place you could have found yourself. An initiative of the Planet Makers -- Station X -- for prisoners of the worst sort. An experiment, asking the question: 'is true rehabilitation ever possible?'”
“The prisoner would be left on their own, on the planet, for 19,220 of its days. They would use the log-book to record their thoughts, and they eventually would discover that the hour-glass functioned as a time machine. Once it had emptied, they would be able to travel back to the day they arrived, and would have a choice: what would they do with their past selves? The result of that encounter would determine whether or not they had been rehabilitated and the planet was kept in a weak time-lock, so that any paradoxes could be contained.”
“Unfortunately, the experiment did not go as planned. The first prisoner came to regret his actions after the fifth decade, recording in detail his self-loathing. When he travelled back in time, he murdered his past self, wiping himself from existence. The second prisoner began to despair, his views inconclusive, and walked out into the desert, where he died.”
Jasmine recalled the skeleton in the desert. Prisoner 2, then. She had always wondered what his name was.
“When you arrived on the planet, the mechanisms were activated again, and it was assumed that you were the third convict. The Planet Makers had gone bankrupt by then, and no one was present to read your log, but the system ticked over on its own. Sadly, you had not been protected against the pathogens in the planet’s atmosphere, and you fell ill. But once we found where you were, Jasmine, we brought you here by ordering for you to be returned in one of our spare TARDISes, and we cured you. You have a few years left. Not many, but a few. And you can live them knowing who you are and what your purpose is.”
“You have a purpose, Jasmine Sparks. You are useful. But first you need to understand the futility of trying to fight, of trying to order the universe. You weren’t on that world for any reason at all. It meant nothing. Your whole life has been a product of chance, of randomness, and that makes it meaningless.”
And with that, the man left.
Jasmine looked around, the whole room darkening. This is it, she thought. This is where it all ends. My whole life spent on the same warm, endless expanse and now I’m going to die in a cold, cramped cell I’ve never seen before.
There were more footsteps, and Jasmine felt the chair mechanism loosening. She stood up, slowly, feeling and hearing her bones crack as she did. She'd never quite gotten used to old age.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” said a voice. This one, at least, was attached to an identity. It was an old man’s voice, a few pitches higher than it might have been in his younger years, and it quivered as he spoke, as if he didn’t quite believe the words out of his own mouth. “That’s the President. He’s not that bad when you get to know him, but he prefers to stick to the shadows – he doesn’t like people to see him, says it will undercut his principles. He’d rather be an idea than a person.”
“Oh, he sounds lovely,” answered Jasmine, and moved towards the sound of this man’s voice. “The President of where?” As she reached him, the wall in front of her became transparent, revealing itself as glass. She placed her hand to it; so unused to the sensation of skin against cool glass, she retracted it again straight after. It took her a moment, watching the world and taking in the new sights, to identify where it was. So much had changed.
“Gallifrey,” said the old man next to her, and smiled.
They were at the top of a great tower, Jasmine realised. The other towers of the Capitol stood tall a few metres below, the streets below them so far away they looked like thin lines drawn across a page. The sky was TARDIS-blue and cloudy. In the distance, beyond the polished glass that sealed off the civilisation, the mountains were capped with snow.
“You’re back on Gallifrey, Jasmine Sparks. As they said, back on your home planet… Merry Christmas.”
Ever After
Written by Janine Rivers
Jasmine noticed the man had a comb in the top pocket of his suit jacket, even though there was very little of his thin white hair left to run it through. He was dressed in a suit, much how she remembered suits used to be (though her memory was vague); certainly more human than Gallifreyan. Self-consciously, she reached for her own hair, which ran down her back; one of her rough, awkward haircuts, an art she had sadly never mastered.
“It’s probably changed a lot since you last saw it,” the old man was saying, about Gallifrey. Jasmine might have been gazing out of the window, but she was listening intently to every word. “It’s been… a very long time. And to think that you’re a specimen from…” Jasmine turned back to him. He had paused, and was watching her, shaking his head, not believing what was in front of him. “From before the Time War…”
“The war’s over?”
The old man chuckled. “Oh, Miss Sparks, you really have missed a lot. The war raged on. Both Time Lords and Daleks were destroyed – supposedly. Both of course survived – as we have a knack of doing – and eventually returned to the rest of the universe, inevitably upsetting the rest of the universe. Things went a bit wrong, then we kept ourselves to ourselves for a bit. Long period of political isolationism, then more interference, then back to isolationism, and the whole cycle played over and over…”
“How long ago was this?”
The old man tapped his nose. “Let’s just say, we’re Time Lords, and even we don’t have time to calculate that. But from the universe’s point of view, there’s no point in counting either way.”
“What do you mean?”
“The universe is over. Save for the odd star system…” he sighed. “Gallifrey is all that’s left.” He observed the look of terror on Jasmine’s face, and waved a hand half-heartedly. “We averted the end a few times, stopped the universe from swallowing everything up. But after trillions of years, sadly, its time is finally up. Gallifrey exists sealed away in a bubble of its own – the heat-death will take longer to reach us, though eventually, it will. But that’s Time Lords for you.” He lowered his voice, and leaned in closer. “Good at postponing the inevitable.”
This is all a lot to take in, thought Jasmine. She didn’t say it. She would have, once upon a time, but after years of isolation, she had grown accustomed to speaking only what needed to be said.
“Why am I here? What was that...“ she gestured to the door “...all about?”
“You’re famous, Jasmine Sparks. Presumed dead, of course, but there were always those who doubted. After a conspiracy spanning a million years, someone found you; tracked down your biological print. We couldn’t interfere in history, so we had to extract you at the very end of your timeline.”
“Interesting,” said Jasmine, but her face had turned cold. “I might be old, senile, even, but don’t think I don’t remember what the Time Lords were like. You only save what you can use. So what do you plan to use me for?”
The old man raised his arms defensively. “Okay, there may be an ulterior motive at play, but don’t think that undermines your importance. We need your help, and this is a job that only you can do.” He waited for a response, but Jasmine refused to give one. Reluctantly, feeling a little humiliated, he continued. “There’s a threat to this planet’s security. A terrorist, out in the wilderness, plotting to tear apart the very fabric of time and space, in a misguided plan to take over the universe and achieve her own ends. We’re a benevolent society – we don’t want to kill her. And you are the only person who can make her see.”
“Why?” scoffed Jasmine. “Because I’m human? Check your records, granddad. Anything human in me died about fifty years ago.”
“Not because you’re human. Because you’re Jasmine Sparks.”
Jasmine considered. “Why am I famous?” she asked. “Who made me famous?”
“Who else? The Doctor. Never stopped speaking of you. Never stopped missing you…”
“And what makes you think that because I changed the Doctor, I can change this terrorist, too?”
The old man laughed. Jasmine scowled. After being cut off from the universe her whole life, the cruellest thing anyone could do now was cut her out of their jokes too.
“Because,” the old man explained, “you’ve done it to her before. The terrorist, Jasmine, who threatens to destroy the last civilisation left in the universe, is the Doctor.”
***
“What’s your name?”
It was half an hour into the journey that Jasmine finally spoke. She had been silent, and the old man was keen to give her time.
“Judas,” replied the old man, with a terrible sadness.
Jasmine considered that, and then laughed to herself when she remembered the old Earth meaning of the name. “That’s a cruel name to give you,” she remarked. “If the tradition is the same on Gallifrey as it was… back home…”
“I chose it,” said Judas, and left it at that.
The real reason Jasmine had been quiet was because she was constantly on edge. She hadn’t travelled in a car since she was a teenager – since before she had been left on that planet. The lumps and bumps of the road, and the fast acceleration beyond what most creatures could manage, made the old woman feel deeply uncomfortable. Not that she would ever admit it.
It was an old vehicle, much like what they used to have on Earth: battered, ugly, seldom-used, but did its job well enough. It was a thing built to last.
They were travelling through the wilderness; after a brief encounter with customs, they had left the citadel, allowed to exit from the one small gap in the glass dome. Between the edge of the citadel and the start of the desert communities, Jasmine had been told, was three hour’s driving through nothing; a long stretch of barren land. But the snow hid the mud beneath, and the mountains promised a new horizon as the mighty glass dome grew smaller in the rear-view mirror.
“What did she do?” asked Jasmine. She knew her best friend had made mistakes, and had probably made more after Jasmine had died (or, rather, hadn't died); done awful things, even. But still, Jasmine stood by her side. “Why do you call the Doctor a terrorist?”
“Tell me, Jasmine,” began Judas. “Have you ever heard of a quantum crystalliser?” Jasmine’s silence told Judas everything he needed to know. “Of course, ridiculous question. Sorry. A quantum crystalliser is a device which manipulates history. They used to be widely available. You could program them to a particular end. Say, I wanted to take a random person off the street, and make them a world leader. I’d program the crystalliser to do just that, and it would warp history around that person, make sure they were born into the right family, and were in the right place, at the right time. Usually, by nudging small events. Little pushes with big ramifications. But they were banned, outright.” He glanced back at the citadel, for what seemed to Jasmine like no reason whatsoever. “Probably for the best. All but one were destroyed. The last was preserved by an ancient order, fighting against the Gallifreyan constitution, and legend said that it was programmed so that it could be activated by only one being. Hidden away in a distant dimension, far beyond the reach of any three-dimensional life.”
“I see. The Doctor’s after the crystalliser, isn’t she?”
Judas nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. He was driving carefully, even when there were no other vehicles about, as if he were expecting something to jump out at him at any moment.
“She wants to change history,” he elaborated. “Undo and rewrite all lives, including yours, and design the universe herself. Like God.”
Jasmine shuddered, remembering God. The reason she was here in the first place. For the first time all day, she felt a surge of anger towards the Doctor. How could she have become that, after everything she’d fought against? It was everything she despised.
“People change,” said Judas, as though reading Jasmine’s thoughts. “Not always for the better. The Doctor had a tough life, lost a lot of people, and eventually lost hope in the universe. Some say she went mad. Others say worse – that she’s still perfectly sane. Of course, I’m hoping she is. That way, she’ll listen to reason. She’ll listen to you.” He paused, swallowing. “We need you to save us, Jasmine. We need you to save what’s left of our world.”
For the rest of the journey, no words were exchanged. Jasmine stared out the window, watching the snow falling silently onto the side of the road, watching the two suns disappearing below their horizons, leaving a starless black sky to mark the night on Gallifrey.
***
The community came upon them suddenly, a cluster of huts and wooden benches, cabins and cottages, a few families around campfires, warming themselves against the night. Judas continued driving, the car tracked by the eyes of suspicious civilians. He parked up at the very end, where the wilderness was about to begin again, next to a small hut with a thatched roof and fading brown paintwork on the walls, the orange light of a fire glowing inside.
Something else was inside, too. Someone. Jasmine steeled herself against the future, understanding that everything was about to change.
“She’s a terrorist,” Judas reminded her. “Whatever she tries to tell you, whatever she tries to make you a part of, just remember that. You’re here to do a job. And if you can’t do that job, you'll leave, and we'll deal with it ourselves, in a somewhat less pleasant way. And remember, she thinks you’re dead. She might need some time.”
Jasmine nodded. She’s a terrorist, she repeated in her mind. I’m here to do a job. Such basic, imperative thinking was easy these days. She gave Judas a nod, and he smiled back, as she stepped out of the car.
The cold air hit her, nearly knocking her over. She was wearing only a pair of jeans and a jumper.
Inside the house, someone was moving. Jasmine took a deep breath, and reminded herself of the same sentiments which had haunted her when she thought she was facing death all those years ago in Hell: I’m not ready.
The door opened. There she was, in a thick winter jacket, her hair tied back in a pony-tail, dark rings under her eyes. Her.
The Doctor.
The Time Lady’s eyes were wide, her jaw dropped. It might have just been because of the weather, but Jasmine was sure of it: there were tears in her eyes. Jasmine wondered how many years had passed before those eyes, the whole time she wondered aware of one impossible fact, a fact that made her feel like she belonged in a way nothing else ever had.
She remembers me.
For one precious moment, everything was forgotten. Politics were brushed aside, losses had never happened, years had never passed. They embraced, clinging so tightly to each other. After all these years, the Doctor still even had the same smell.
“It’s you,” she cried, holding her companion tightly. “It’s… Jasmine, it’s you, you…”
“I lived,” whispered Jasmine, tears in her own eyes too. How was the Doctor not set back by her frail movements, her lack of weight, her wrinkled skin? Why didn’t she care? “I lived,” Jasmine repeated, one more time.
Noticing that Jasmine was growing faint out in the cold, the Doctor hurried her inside the hut. She didn’t notice the old car outside, driving back towards that ancient city, just out of reach. She wouldn’t have cared if she had.
***
The Doctor’s hut was not, disappointingly, bigger on the inside. It was cramped, stuffed to the brim with millenniums’ worth of artefacts: models, sculpted from wood; paintings, arranged precariously around the stone fireplace; old clocks, each reading a different time. The central focus of the hut, however, was the bookshelf next to the Doctor’s armchair, where she routinely ran her finger up and down the books, brushing even the merest traces of dust off the spines of those ancient volumes. Then, of course, there were the photographs – photographs of different people, different places, different Doctors, scattered on every available surface. They, unlike the books, had gathered dust, as if the Doctor could not quite face lifting them up or looking too closely at them.
There were two armchairs, Jasmine observed, as the Doctor poured them both a drink from a china teapot. Jasmine wondered who else had sat in her chair; who had worn it out, caused the tears and discolouration, and whether a similar fate had befallen them.
She’s a terrorist, Jasmine reminded herself again, for good measure. I’m here to do a job. But it was hard to think that with any real conviction, when the alleged terrorist was pouring her a cup of tea. Still, she supposed most terrorists had someone they would pour tea for.
Jasmine had explained to the Doctor about her time on the planet: about how Hell, unlike what mythology would have had her believe, was not the end. The Doctor listened intently, nodding, occasional lumps forming in her throat, but never taking her eyes off her friend. Jasmine returned the gesture. During the time she spent looking at the Time Lady, it occurred to her how young and beautiful she was. That realisation triggered something profound within her, but she knew straight away that it wasn’t envy, much like she knew straight away that the Doctor wasn’t really young at all.
“I’m so sorry,” the Doctor said when Jasmine concluded her story, a catchphrase she still hadn’t dropped after all these years. “Your whole life, Jasmine. I can’t even begin to…”
“It’s fine,” said Jasmine. “Well, it isn’t. But tell me about your life. I’m tired of talking.” She sat back on the armchair, back aching as it always did.
“We’re at the very end of the universe,” began the Doctor. “Gallifrey’s one of the last worlds left, and I’ve been stuck here for the last couple of centuries.”
“On your own?”
The Doctor shook her head. “Not for the first hundred years. I had another friend; we used to go on adventures, in the TARDIS. They were the last adventures I had. When we ran out of places to see, we both settled here, and this land is where he’s buried.”
“The last adventures?” Jasmine frowned. That didn’t sound like the Doctor at all. “There’s always more to see.”
The Doctor chuckled, darkly. Jasmine shivered. She could almost see the terrorist, in that fleeting moment. But when the Doctor started talking again, her voice was kind; kind but weary. “Oh, Jasmine. When I said the universe is ending, I don’t just mean we’ve reached the end of it. Time itself is exhausted. History’s slowly being undone. Most civilisations aren’t accessible to us anymore, because from our point of view, they never existed.” She caught a flash of Jasmine’s alarmed expression. “It’s fine. It’s nature. We started off at a point of singularity, and that’s where we return. Together in the beginning, together at the end. Besides, there are remnants. My books.” She gestured to her bookshelf. “The last surviving works of fiction, those which are yet to be unwritten, though a few of them are missing prologues. And here…”
She stood up, walking past Jasmine, and pulled open the curtains. Snow, darkness, and their own reflections.
“Look closer,” instructed the Doctor, noticing Jasmine’s confusion. “Look as closely as you can at the sky.”
Jasmine did, and through her limited eyesight, saw it. Up in the starless sky, about the size of Earth’s moon, was a perfectly-formed letter, glinting silver: P.
“That’s all that’s left of human civilisation, now,” said the Doctor. “A monument to the Planet Makers, constructed out of Dwarf Star Alloy. Practically indestructible. The corporations made their mark up there, but everything just died around them.” She closed the curtains, and returned to her seat. Jasmine sat up again, leaning forward to warm her hands over the fire.
“It’s probably changed a lot since you last saw it,” the old man was saying, about Gallifrey. Jasmine might have been gazing out of the window, but she was listening intently to every word. “It’s been… a very long time. And to think that you’re a specimen from…” Jasmine turned back to him. He had paused, and was watching her, shaking his head, not believing what was in front of him. “From before the Time War…”
“The war’s over?”
The old man chuckled. “Oh, Miss Sparks, you really have missed a lot. The war raged on. Both Time Lords and Daleks were destroyed – supposedly. Both of course survived – as we have a knack of doing – and eventually returned to the rest of the universe, inevitably upsetting the rest of the universe. Things went a bit wrong, then we kept ourselves to ourselves for a bit. Long period of political isolationism, then more interference, then back to isolationism, and the whole cycle played over and over…”
“How long ago was this?”
The old man tapped his nose. “Let’s just say, we’re Time Lords, and even we don’t have time to calculate that. But from the universe’s point of view, there’s no point in counting either way.”
“What do you mean?”
“The universe is over. Save for the odd star system…” he sighed. “Gallifrey is all that’s left.” He observed the look of terror on Jasmine’s face, and waved a hand half-heartedly. “We averted the end a few times, stopped the universe from swallowing everything up. But after trillions of years, sadly, its time is finally up. Gallifrey exists sealed away in a bubble of its own – the heat-death will take longer to reach us, though eventually, it will. But that’s Time Lords for you.” He lowered his voice, and leaned in closer. “Good at postponing the inevitable.”
This is all a lot to take in, thought Jasmine. She didn’t say it. She would have, once upon a time, but after years of isolation, she had grown accustomed to speaking only what needed to be said.
“Why am I here? What was that...“ she gestured to the door “...all about?”
“You’re famous, Jasmine Sparks. Presumed dead, of course, but there were always those who doubted. After a conspiracy spanning a million years, someone found you; tracked down your biological print. We couldn’t interfere in history, so we had to extract you at the very end of your timeline.”
“Interesting,” said Jasmine, but her face had turned cold. “I might be old, senile, even, but don’t think I don’t remember what the Time Lords were like. You only save what you can use. So what do you plan to use me for?”
The old man raised his arms defensively. “Okay, there may be an ulterior motive at play, but don’t think that undermines your importance. We need your help, and this is a job that only you can do.” He waited for a response, but Jasmine refused to give one. Reluctantly, feeling a little humiliated, he continued. “There’s a threat to this planet’s security. A terrorist, out in the wilderness, plotting to tear apart the very fabric of time and space, in a misguided plan to take over the universe and achieve her own ends. We’re a benevolent society – we don’t want to kill her. And you are the only person who can make her see.”
“Why?” scoffed Jasmine. “Because I’m human? Check your records, granddad. Anything human in me died about fifty years ago.”
“Not because you’re human. Because you’re Jasmine Sparks.”
Jasmine considered. “Why am I famous?” she asked. “Who made me famous?”
“Who else? The Doctor. Never stopped speaking of you. Never stopped missing you…”
“And what makes you think that because I changed the Doctor, I can change this terrorist, too?”
The old man laughed. Jasmine scowled. After being cut off from the universe her whole life, the cruellest thing anyone could do now was cut her out of their jokes too.
“Because,” the old man explained, “you’ve done it to her before. The terrorist, Jasmine, who threatens to destroy the last civilisation left in the universe, is the Doctor.”
***
“What’s your name?”
It was half an hour into the journey that Jasmine finally spoke. She had been silent, and the old man was keen to give her time.
“Judas,” replied the old man, with a terrible sadness.
Jasmine considered that, and then laughed to herself when she remembered the old Earth meaning of the name. “That’s a cruel name to give you,” she remarked. “If the tradition is the same on Gallifrey as it was… back home…”
“I chose it,” said Judas, and left it at that.
The real reason Jasmine had been quiet was because she was constantly on edge. She hadn’t travelled in a car since she was a teenager – since before she had been left on that planet. The lumps and bumps of the road, and the fast acceleration beyond what most creatures could manage, made the old woman feel deeply uncomfortable. Not that she would ever admit it.
It was an old vehicle, much like what they used to have on Earth: battered, ugly, seldom-used, but did its job well enough. It was a thing built to last.
They were travelling through the wilderness; after a brief encounter with customs, they had left the citadel, allowed to exit from the one small gap in the glass dome. Between the edge of the citadel and the start of the desert communities, Jasmine had been told, was three hour’s driving through nothing; a long stretch of barren land. But the snow hid the mud beneath, and the mountains promised a new horizon as the mighty glass dome grew smaller in the rear-view mirror.
“What did she do?” asked Jasmine. She knew her best friend had made mistakes, and had probably made more after Jasmine had died (or, rather, hadn't died); done awful things, even. But still, Jasmine stood by her side. “Why do you call the Doctor a terrorist?”
“Tell me, Jasmine,” began Judas. “Have you ever heard of a quantum crystalliser?” Jasmine’s silence told Judas everything he needed to know. “Of course, ridiculous question. Sorry. A quantum crystalliser is a device which manipulates history. They used to be widely available. You could program them to a particular end. Say, I wanted to take a random person off the street, and make them a world leader. I’d program the crystalliser to do just that, and it would warp history around that person, make sure they were born into the right family, and were in the right place, at the right time. Usually, by nudging small events. Little pushes with big ramifications. But they were banned, outright.” He glanced back at the citadel, for what seemed to Jasmine like no reason whatsoever. “Probably for the best. All but one were destroyed. The last was preserved by an ancient order, fighting against the Gallifreyan constitution, and legend said that it was programmed so that it could be activated by only one being. Hidden away in a distant dimension, far beyond the reach of any three-dimensional life.”
“I see. The Doctor’s after the crystalliser, isn’t she?”
Judas nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. He was driving carefully, even when there were no other vehicles about, as if he were expecting something to jump out at him at any moment.
“She wants to change history,” he elaborated. “Undo and rewrite all lives, including yours, and design the universe herself. Like God.”
Jasmine shuddered, remembering God. The reason she was here in the first place. For the first time all day, she felt a surge of anger towards the Doctor. How could she have become that, after everything she’d fought against? It was everything she despised.
“People change,” said Judas, as though reading Jasmine’s thoughts. “Not always for the better. The Doctor had a tough life, lost a lot of people, and eventually lost hope in the universe. Some say she went mad. Others say worse – that she’s still perfectly sane. Of course, I’m hoping she is. That way, she’ll listen to reason. She’ll listen to you.” He paused, swallowing. “We need you to save us, Jasmine. We need you to save what’s left of our world.”
For the rest of the journey, no words were exchanged. Jasmine stared out the window, watching the snow falling silently onto the side of the road, watching the two suns disappearing below their horizons, leaving a starless black sky to mark the night on Gallifrey.
***
The community came upon them suddenly, a cluster of huts and wooden benches, cabins and cottages, a few families around campfires, warming themselves against the night. Judas continued driving, the car tracked by the eyes of suspicious civilians. He parked up at the very end, where the wilderness was about to begin again, next to a small hut with a thatched roof and fading brown paintwork on the walls, the orange light of a fire glowing inside.
Something else was inside, too. Someone. Jasmine steeled herself against the future, understanding that everything was about to change.
“She’s a terrorist,” Judas reminded her. “Whatever she tries to tell you, whatever she tries to make you a part of, just remember that. You’re here to do a job. And if you can’t do that job, you'll leave, and we'll deal with it ourselves, in a somewhat less pleasant way. And remember, she thinks you’re dead. She might need some time.”
Jasmine nodded. She’s a terrorist, she repeated in her mind. I’m here to do a job. Such basic, imperative thinking was easy these days. She gave Judas a nod, and he smiled back, as she stepped out of the car.
The cold air hit her, nearly knocking her over. She was wearing only a pair of jeans and a jumper.
Inside the house, someone was moving. Jasmine took a deep breath, and reminded herself of the same sentiments which had haunted her when she thought she was facing death all those years ago in Hell: I’m not ready.
The door opened. There she was, in a thick winter jacket, her hair tied back in a pony-tail, dark rings under her eyes. Her.
The Doctor.
The Time Lady’s eyes were wide, her jaw dropped. It might have just been because of the weather, but Jasmine was sure of it: there were tears in her eyes. Jasmine wondered how many years had passed before those eyes, the whole time she wondered aware of one impossible fact, a fact that made her feel like she belonged in a way nothing else ever had.
She remembers me.
For one precious moment, everything was forgotten. Politics were brushed aside, losses had never happened, years had never passed. They embraced, clinging so tightly to each other. After all these years, the Doctor still even had the same smell.
“It’s you,” she cried, holding her companion tightly. “It’s… Jasmine, it’s you, you…”
“I lived,” whispered Jasmine, tears in her own eyes too. How was the Doctor not set back by her frail movements, her lack of weight, her wrinkled skin? Why didn’t she care? “I lived,” Jasmine repeated, one more time.
Noticing that Jasmine was growing faint out in the cold, the Doctor hurried her inside the hut. She didn’t notice the old car outside, driving back towards that ancient city, just out of reach. She wouldn’t have cared if she had.
***
The Doctor’s hut was not, disappointingly, bigger on the inside. It was cramped, stuffed to the brim with millenniums’ worth of artefacts: models, sculpted from wood; paintings, arranged precariously around the stone fireplace; old clocks, each reading a different time. The central focus of the hut, however, was the bookshelf next to the Doctor’s armchair, where she routinely ran her finger up and down the books, brushing even the merest traces of dust off the spines of those ancient volumes. Then, of course, there were the photographs – photographs of different people, different places, different Doctors, scattered on every available surface. They, unlike the books, had gathered dust, as if the Doctor could not quite face lifting them up or looking too closely at them.
There were two armchairs, Jasmine observed, as the Doctor poured them both a drink from a china teapot. Jasmine wondered who else had sat in her chair; who had worn it out, caused the tears and discolouration, and whether a similar fate had befallen them.
She’s a terrorist, Jasmine reminded herself again, for good measure. I’m here to do a job. But it was hard to think that with any real conviction, when the alleged terrorist was pouring her a cup of tea. Still, she supposed most terrorists had someone they would pour tea for.
Jasmine had explained to the Doctor about her time on the planet: about how Hell, unlike what mythology would have had her believe, was not the end. The Doctor listened intently, nodding, occasional lumps forming in her throat, but never taking her eyes off her friend. Jasmine returned the gesture. During the time she spent looking at the Time Lady, it occurred to her how young and beautiful she was. That realisation triggered something profound within her, but she knew straight away that it wasn’t envy, much like she knew straight away that the Doctor wasn’t really young at all.
“I’m so sorry,” the Doctor said when Jasmine concluded her story, a catchphrase she still hadn’t dropped after all these years. “Your whole life, Jasmine. I can’t even begin to…”
“It’s fine,” said Jasmine. “Well, it isn’t. But tell me about your life. I’m tired of talking.” She sat back on the armchair, back aching as it always did.
“We’re at the very end of the universe,” began the Doctor. “Gallifrey’s one of the last worlds left, and I’ve been stuck here for the last couple of centuries.”
“On your own?”
The Doctor shook her head. “Not for the first hundred years. I had another friend; we used to go on adventures, in the TARDIS. They were the last adventures I had. When we ran out of places to see, we both settled here, and this land is where he’s buried.”
“The last adventures?” Jasmine frowned. That didn’t sound like the Doctor at all. “There’s always more to see.”
The Doctor chuckled, darkly. Jasmine shivered. She could almost see the terrorist, in that fleeting moment. But when the Doctor started talking again, her voice was kind; kind but weary. “Oh, Jasmine. When I said the universe is ending, I don’t just mean we’ve reached the end of it. Time itself is exhausted. History’s slowly being undone. Most civilisations aren’t accessible to us anymore, because from our point of view, they never existed.” She caught a flash of Jasmine’s alarmed expression. “It’s fine. It’s nature. We started off at a point of singularity, and that’s where we return. Together in the beginning, together at the end. Besides, there are remnants. My books.” She gestured to her bookshelf. “The last surviving works of fiction, those which are yet to be unwritten, though a few of them are missing prologues. And here…”
She stood up, walking past Jasmine, and pulled open the curtains. Snow, darkness, and their own reflections.
“Look closer,” instructed the Doctor, noticing Jasmine’s confusion. “Look as closely as you can at the sky.”
Jasmine did, and through her limited eyesight, saw it. Up in the starless sky, about the size of Earth’s moon, was a perfectly-formed letter, glinting silver: P.
“That’s all that’s left of human civilisation, now,” said the Doctor. “A monument to the Planet Makers, constructed out of Dwarf Star Alloy. Practically indestructible. The corporations made their mark up there, but everything just died around them.” She closed the curtains, and returned to her seat. Jasmine sat up again, leaning forward to warm her hands over the fire.
There was a moment’s silence between them. The fire crackled. It’s time, Jasmine decided, but as she opened her mouth to speak, the Doctor beat her to the mark.
“I missed you.” This time, the Doctor was looking away. “I missed you so, so much. You, Tommy, and everyone else that followed. There were others, and I was happy. I even got married, had a proper family… but I outlived them all, in the end, and there’s no way back now. All I have are a few old photographs. The Time Lords extracting you was a miracle. You have no idea how special you are. You’re like a gateway… I could return to the old days, if I wanted to. Get back into the world as we knew it together. Not that there’s much point.”
“I was sent here,” interjected Jasmine, suddenly. She thought she would find the subject uncomfortable, but found herself staring at the Doctor, her face cold and expressionless.
“I know,” replied the Doctor, simply.
“They say you’re a terrorist.”
“They’ve said that about a lot of people.”
“Is it true?”
“That I’m a terrorist? That’s subjective, surely.”
“What they told me about you, about what you want to do… is it true?”
The Doctor sighed. “Is it true that I want to step into the tenth dimension, activate a quantum crystalliser, and alter the path of history? Yes.”
Jasmine couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her hands felt cold again, the fire suddenly ineffective.
“Times changed,” continued the Doctor. “I changed. I learnt things. Time is malleable, more malleable than I thought. Laws are only meaningful if they’re broken, and the laws of time are no exception. Changing the course of history the way I want to isn’t going to affect time at all.”
“But it’s not your right,” answered Jasmine, at last. “You don’t have a right to change history, Doctor. I’m sorry, but you just don’t.”
“Don’t I?” The Doctor turned to her, challengingly. Her voice was shaking, angry, but not at Jasmine. “Tell me this, Jasmine. Why don’t I? Is it because I don’t understand the universe? Because I can’t predict it? That was the case, once upon a time. The universe was big, and I was small. But look at it now.”
Jasmine thought of the P in the sky, the corpse of human ambition, rotting in the night.
“Remember the Zygons?” asked the Doctor. Jasmine nodded. “We tried so much for them, and it carried on long after you – after I thought – you died. We had a peace treaty and everything, a whole species prepared to live alongside the human race. And do you know what happened? After a couple of thousand years, hatred happened. People learnt that there were aliens living among them and rather than welcoming them, they fought them. Sixteen thousand Zygons were killed, some of them just children, in the name of protecting the Earth. Full-scale war, more innocents massacred, from both sides. That was around the time of the Silurian coexistence strategy – and what did the human race do, already in the middle of a bloody, brutal war? It bombed the hell out of them, too.”
Jasmine shuddered. No one thes days (where she came from at least), she realised, ever remembered learning about the Holocaust – it was just something you knew. But if she had remembered, she imagined it would have felt something like this.
“There was never peace,” said the Doctor, staring into the fire. “Not in all the years of this universe, not on any of those worlds… in the end, creatures always just fought each other. And this planet was the worst of all.” She turned, gazing to the wall, in the direction of the Capitol. “As soon as they saw the end approaching, they had a chance to achieve peace, but in all their anger and paranoia, they elected a madman. My friend, he was still alive then. He said it was a kind of death-drive – he thought the people of Gallifrey just wanted to accelerate the process that would destroy them. I don’t know whether they did, but it’s what’s happened. The man’s a monster, and everyone beyond the glass wall knows it.”
“So what? It’s one man, one leader.”
“No, it’s not. That’s what everyone fails to understand. I’ve been telling them for so long. He’s not the scariest thing about this world. The scariest thing is that he has the power he does, that the people gave him that power, that people believed all that was left was hatred, that the last hope was to shut ourselves off and live in fear rather than in trust. We could have spent our final days watching the universe pass away in the sky, at one with the stars. Instead, we’re going to spend them cowering.”
“If he’s such a monster, I’m surprised he hasn’t killed you.”
“They call me the Opium of the People,” said the Doctor, and laughed. “I’ve heard whispers from the Capitol. They think I’ll keep the outsiders from rising up because they’ll be waiting for me to take action, but they don’t believe for one moment that I’m strong enough to.” She considered, and then said something truly unexpected. “And I’m not. Or at least, I wasn’t. I’d given up. I wasn’t going to try and change the past at all, not on my own. But then something wonderful happened, something impossible, something which made me realise that maybe, just maybe, it could be done.”
“What happened?” asked Jasmine, completely clueless.
The Doctor smiled. “You.”
Jasmine held her hand out, uncertain, shaking. The Doctor just looked at it at first, finally beginning to see the years she had missed through the lines on the back of Jasmine’s hand, a map of her life.
“Take it,” whispered Jasmine. “It’s been so many years since I've had the chance to touch another living creature.”
And so the Doctor did, holding her hand delicately in her own warm hand. Her skin was still soft, thought Jasmine, still smooth and young. The Doctor ran one of her fingers along Jasmine’s palm.
“Does it feel strange?” she asked. “After all this time?”
“Yes,” admitted Jasmine.
The Doctor paused. “Do you want me to stop?”
With Jasmine’s other hand, she wiped a tear from her eye. “No.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I feel alive. For the last decade of my life on that planet, I was like a zombie, a robot, pre-programmed to the extent that my sense of self had… gone. But now I’m back here, back with you, able to touch and talk and be seen… I’m alive again. Autumn, Jasmine, I don’t know. Jasmine died on that planet, and then both of us came back.”
“If only the rest of the universe would live together, like you two live inside one mind.”
She’s a terrorist, Jasmine thought again. I’m here to do a job. Only this time, she didn’t believe it.
“What do you want to do?” she tried, trying her best to remain hypothetical at this stage. “What would you want to do, if you made it into the tenth dimension?”
“The quantum crystalliser doesn’t just channel literal wishes. It channels emotions, too, states of mind. It can turn them into a command. You’ve given me hope, Jasmine, so I would press that button and think of you, of the possibility that not all things have to end, or turn bad, or give up. And I’d channel that across the universe, across all of time and space, in one last push against the dying of the light. I just want the universe to have another go. It’s been re-written millions of times, so why can’t we try one more? One last stab at the very end, one last chance to do it right?”
Jasmine nodded. “And it has to be you?”
“There was an old legend, in the citadel. It was about a hybrid, who would stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. Over the years, it was reinterpreted. They figured out that the Hybrid would be a threat not to Gallifrey’s present, but to its past – it would re-write history. I am the Hybrid, Jasmine, and I’ve known for a long time. When the ancients hid the crystalliser all those years ago, they made sure that only one person could activate it – and I believe that person is me.”
Jasmine thought about the crystalliser, about the Hybrid, about the Doctor, and about history. Then, she thought about the President: the man who had transformed himself into a shadow, chained up a woman he was claiming to protect, and told her that there was only one truth.
“I’m coming with you,” decided Jasmine. “Into the tenth dimension. Whatever that entails.”
“I can’t let y-”
“It’s the only way I’m letting you try,” insisted Jasmine. “I’m an old woman, I can make my own choices.”
“Exactly! You’re old, Jasmine. You might be younger than me but you don’t regenerate. It’s nearly impossible, physically, for you to survive the transformation into a ten-dimensional being. It will kill you.”
“Then at least let me try.”
The Doctor sighed, and looked up at her clocks. “Okay.”
“But first,” instructed Jasmine, “there’s something I’d like you to do for me. I know there’s not much of history left, but you said you could use me as a gateway back into my own time. If I’ve calculated this properly, there are a few things I need you to do… and, at the end of it, there is a favour I need to ask of you. For me. A condemned woman’s last request. Do you think you can do that?”
The Doctor took a book off her shelf -- News From Nowhere, by William Morris -- and gave it a quick shake. A key fell out into her palm, glowing golden.
***
“I missed you.” This time, the Doctor was looking away. “I missed you so, so much. You, Tommy, and everyone else that followed. There were others, and I was happy. I even got married, had a proper family… but I outlived them all, in the end, and there’s no way back now. All I have are a few old photographs. The Time Lords extracting you was a miracle. You have no idea how special you are. You’re like a gateway… I could return to the old days, if I wanted to. Get back into the world as we knew it together. Not that there’s much point.”
“I was sent here,” interjected Jasmine, suddenly. She thought she would find the subject uncomfortable, but found herself staring at the Doctor, her face cold and expressionless.
“I know,” replied the Doctor, simply.
“They say you’re a terrorist.”
“They’ve said that about a lot of people.”
“Is it true?”
“That I’m a terrorist? That’s subjective, surely.”
“What they told me about you, about what you want to do… is it true?”
The Doctor sighed. “Is it true that I want to step into the tenth dimension, activate a quantum crystalliser, and alter the path of history? Yes.”
Jasmine couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her hands felt cold again, the fire suddenly ineffective.
“Times changed,” continued the Doctor. “I changed. I learnt things. Time is malleable, more malleable than I thought. Laws are only meaningful if they’re broken, and the laws of time are no exception. Changing the course of history the way I want to isn’t going to affect time at all.”
“But it’s not your right,” answered Jasmine, at last. “You don’t have a right to change history, Doctor. I’m sorry, but you just don’t.”
“Don’t I?” The Doctor turned to her, challengingly. Her voice was shaking, angry, but not at Jasmine. “Tell me this, Jasmine. Why don’t I? Is it because I don’t understand the universe? Because I can’t predict it? That was the case, once upon a time. The universe was big, and I was small. But look at it now.”
Jasmine thought of the P in the sky, the corpse of human ambition, rotting in the night.
“Remember the Zygons?” asked the Doctor. Jasmine nodded. “We tried so much for them, and it carried on long after you – after I thought – you died. We had a peace treaty and everything, a whole species prepared to live alongside the human race. And do you know what happened? After a couple of thousand years, hatred happened. People learnt that there were aliens living among them and rather than welcoming them, they fought them. Sixteen thousand Zygons were killed, some of them just children, in the name of protecting the Earth. Full-scale war, more innocents massacred, from both sides. That was around the time of the Silurian coexistence strategy – and what did the human race do, already in the middle of a bloody, brutal war? It bombed the hell out of them, too.”
Jasmine shuddered. No one thes days (where she came from at least), she realised, ever remembered learning about the Holocaust – it was just something you knew. But if she had remembered, she imagined it would have felt something like this.
“There was never peace,” said the Doctor, staring into the fire. “Not in all the years of this universe, not on any of those worlds… in the end, creatures always just fought each other. And this planet was the worst of all.” She turned, gazing to the wall, in the direction of the Capitol. “As soon as they saw the end approaching, they had a chance to achieve peace, but in all their anger and paranoia, they elected a madman. My friend, he was still alive then. He said it was a kind of death-drive – he thought the people of Gallifrey just wanted to accelerate the process that would destroy them. I don’t know whether they did, but it’s what’s happened. The man’s a monster, and everyone beyond the glass wall knows it.”
“So what? It’s one man, one leader.”
“No, it’s not. That’s what everyone fails to understand. I’ve been telling them for so long. He’s not the scariest thing about this world. The scariest thing is that he has the power he does, that the people gave him that power, that people believed all that was left was hatred, that the last hope was to shut ourselves off and live in fear rather than in trust. We could have spent our final days watching the universe pass away in the sky, at one with the stars. Instead, we’re going to spend them cowering.”
“If he’s such a monster, I’m surprised he hasn’t killed you.”
“They call me the Opium of the People,” said the Doctor, and laughed. “I’ve heard whispers from the Capitol. They think I’ll keep the outsiders from rising up because they’ll be waiting for me to take action, but they don’t believe for one moment that I’m strong enough to.” She considered, and then said something truly unexpected. “And I’m not. Or at least, I wasn’t. I’d given up. I wasn’t going to try and change the past at all, not on my own. But then something wonderful happened, something impossible, something which made me realise that maybe, just maybe, it could be done.”
“What happened?” asked Jasmine, completely clueless.
The Doctor smiled. “You.”
Jasmine held her hand out, uncertain, shaking. The Doctor just looked at it at first, finally beginning to see the years she had missed through the lines on the back of Jasmine’s hand, a map of her life.
“Take it,” whispered Jasmine. “It’s been so many years since I've had the chance to touch another living creature.”
And so the Doctor did, holding her hand delicately in her own warm hand. Her skin was still soft, thought Jasmine, still smooth and young. The Doctor ran one of her fingers along Jasmine’s palm.
“Does it feel strange?” she asked. “After all this time?”
“Yes,” admitted Jasmine.
The Doctor paused. “Do you want me to stop?”
With Jasmine’s other hand, she wiped a tear from her eye. “No.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I feel alive. For the last decade of my life on that planet, I was like a zombie, a robot, pre-programmed to the extent that my sense of self had… gone. But now I’m back here, back with you, able to touch and talk and be seen… I’m alive again. Autumn, Jasmine, I don’t know. Jasmine died on that planet, and then both of us came back.”
“If only the rest of the universe would live together, like you two live inside one mind.”
She’s a terrorist, Jasmine thought again. I’m here to do a job. Only this time, she didn’t believe it.
“What do you want to do?” she tried, trying her best to remain hypothetical at this stage. “What would you want to do, if you made it into the tenth dimension?”
“The quantum crystalliser doesn’t just channel literal wishes. It channels emotions, too, states of mind. It can turn them into a command. You’ve given me hope, Jasmine, so I would press that button and think of you, of the possibility that not all things have to end, or turn bad, or give up. And I’d channel that across the universe, across all of time and space, in one last push against the dying of the light. I just want the universe to have another go. It’s been re-written millions of times, so why can’t we try one more? One last stab at the very end, one last chance to do it right?”
Jasmine nodded. “And it has to be you?”
“There was an old legend, in the citadel. It was about a hybrid, who would stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. Over the years, it was reinterpreted. They figured out that the Hybrid would be a threat not to Gallifrey’s present, but to its past – it would re-write history. I am the Hybrid, Jasmine, and I’ve known for a long time. When the ancients hid the crystalliser all those years ago, they made sure that only one person could activate it – and I believe that person is me.”
Jasmine thought about the crystalliser, about the Hybrid, about the Doctor, and about history. Then, she thought about the President: the man who had transformed himself into a shadow, chained up a woman he was claiming to protect, and told her that there was only one truth.
“I’m coming with you,” decided Jasmine. “Into the tenth dimension. Whatever that entails.”
“I can’t let y-”
“It’s the only way I’m letting you try,” insisted Jasmine. “I’m an old woman, I can make my own choices.”
“Exactly! You’re old, Jasmine. You might be younger than me but you don’t regenerate. It’s nearly impossible, physically, for you to survive the transformation into a ten-dimensional being. It will kill you.”
“Then at least let me try.”
The Doctor sighed, and looked up at her clocks. “Okay.”
“But first,” instructed Jasmine, “there’s something I’d like you to do for me. I know there’s not much of history left, but you said you could use me as a gateway back into my own time. If I’ve calculated this properly, there are a few things I need you to do… and, at the end of it, there is a favour I need to ask of you. For me. A condemned woman’s last request. Do you think you can do that?”
The Doctor took a book off her shelf -- News From Nowhere, by William Morris -- and gave it a quick shake. A key fell out into her palm, glowing golden.
***
The Doctor stepped into her TARDIS, for the first time in over a century. It was exactly the same as it had been on the day she had first entered it – exactly. Devoid of any historical inspiration, it had reverted back to its factory settings: colours of white and blue, a square console unit, roundels on the surrounding walls, and bulky, impractical doors. It took the Doctor back.
Such a long way…
The memories were there still, somehow; the earlier they were, the clearer they were. Memories of a different man with different ideas about the universe. But was he more cynical or less? The Doctor wasn’t sure.
She programmed the DNA sequence she had extracted from Jasmine, with her permission, into the flight planner. You have to do this alone, Jasmine had told her. I wasn’t there before.
The Doctor was fulfilling prophecy, now. She was a product of predestination; a snake eating its own tail. She was writing the final chapter of the last book in the universe, and it would remain unpublished. She set the coordinates for 2016.
A while later
The Doctor felt a jolt as her eyes opened.
She heaved, pushing open the door to the storage chamber before she froze to death. She quickly disposed of the device that was inside her jacket, hoping she would never have cause to use it again.
After taking another moment to be repulsed by what variations of the human species could be capable of, she thanked the universe for the fact that at least these aliens were a familiar species. The spaceship was designed much like the spaceships she had seen from the human empires: well-lit, sleek, with isolated command decks.
She scanned her eyes over the controls, wishing that her sonic screwdriver had not been destroyed. The controls were easy enough. She opted first to wake all the prisoners out of cryo-sleep and then lead them to the back exit. She would have to act quickly; it would take only a few minutes at most before some of Them noticed that the prisoners were leaving the ship and They re-entered to find out why.
The Doctor continued to prioritise, and chose the second button to press. After doing so, she took out her phone, searching for Robin’s number. Her friend answered seconds later.
“Doctor!” came the response. “Is that you? Did it work?”
“I’m inside Their ship now,” the Doctor whispered, and turned around. The front entrance was still clear, and all the prisoners had left. “Tell Ward it’s safe to bomb it now.”
“But you said…”
“I said I didn’t want any innocents getting killed, Robin. I’ve got the prisoners out, so that isn’t going to happen.” The Doctor waited for a response, checking her watch anxiously. “Robin…”
“What about you?” came Robin’s response. “You’re innocent.”
“I’ll be fine,” reassured the Doctor, calculating the distance to the exit. “Just give Ward the order.”
Robin considered for a moment. “Okay.” The Doctor listened closely to the other side of the call. Robin was doing as she had asked.
“One more thing,” said the Doctor. “Robin, please don’t ever feel guilty.”
“For what?”
“I know. About what happened that Christmas, about Gabriel. I knew from the start. I even knew you’d try – what mother wouldn’t, Robin? I know. I would have done the same, and I’m speaking as a parent, as one who’s lost…” She trailed off.
“You’re not a parent,” said Robin, confused.
“Not when you’ve known me. It’s been a long time. Robin, Tommy said that when you thought you were going to die, you’d told me you were sorry. Don’t be. As soon as you fell asleep in the TARDIS, I put it right. I’d expected it, I let it happen, and it helped you grieve. So, shoulders up Mrs McKnight. Put it behind you – and carry on being brilliant.”
“Wow…” There was a muffled sound on the other side. “It really is you, isn’t it? You’re… you’re my Doctor.”
“Yes, I am.” The Doctor smiled to herself. “And it was wonderful meeting you one last time, Robin McKnight. I’d never expected it – but it was always an honour.”
The sound of aircraft rattled overhead. The Doctor hung up the phone, and prepared for the blast.
As programmed, the TARDIS materialised around her.
***
It was easy, in the end. Genocide. It was easy to do it, knowing that she was soon to undo it. That didn’t make it right, of course. She was keen to remind herself of that. It wasn’t a "get-out free" clause.
But it wasn’t just that. The years had taken their toll, and far more unpleasant thoughts reached the forefront of her consciousness. They deserved it, thought the Doctor, before swiftly deflecting responsibility to herself: What have I become?
She stood in Jasmine’s apartment now, only vaguely remembering it from all those lives ago. A silent movie was playing on the TV behind her, and the sun was trying to shine through the clouds -- a dim light in one little grey patch. Perhaps it would emerge, eventually, and everyone else would see it too. A lamp flickered on, and Jasmine entered the room, leaping back in shock. The Doctor tried to contain her surprise, too. It wasn’t just Jasmine who stood before him, it was…
A child.
Was she really this young? Another question occurred to the Doctor. Was I?
“Doctor?” asked Jasmine, somehow. The Doctor was ready – Jasmine had warned her that she would work it out.
The Doctor couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, anyway. “You’re incredibly perceptive.”
“Tommy told me about you.” Jasmine’s face dropped. It must have all been so recent. The Doctor had accepted Tommy’s death such a long time ago and filed it away under "things that had definitely happened". The woman in front of her was still grappling with it, still refusing to believe it. “You’re a future version, aren’t you?”
The Doctor nodded. “He can’t ever know I was here.”
“How far?”
She looked out of the window, as if estimating, and then gave up. “Very far.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Why are you here?”
The Doctor sat down. Jasmine seemed surprised.
“I’m here to speak with you,” began the Doctor. “I want to tell you something.”
Jasmine sat down opposite.
“I know what you’re thinking of doing,” the Doctor said. “About God. And I just came to tell you… you don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to do it.” The Doctor spoke softly, thinking back to the old woman she had left on Gallifrey. She was the consequence of a decision yet to be made: if Jasmine sacrificed herself in Hell, she would be issuing her own life sentence. “Things are… about to change. Change so much that they make me into the person I am today. And you kick off that change. But you don’t have to, Jasmine. You don’t have to be there for it.”
She was looking right into Jasmine, into the centre of her her mind, into her very being. Jasmine reciprocated the action.
“You’re from the future,” Jasmine observed. “You know what happened, and whatever happened, you can’t change it. There are rules.”
“The rules are wrong.”
Jasmine sat back, startled.
“Were wrong, I mean…” The Doctor looked to the floor. “Time is malleable, a lot more malleable than I thought.” She was about to apologise for repeating herself, but remembered that it was a different Jasmine she had addressed earlier. “Jasmine Sparks, you don’t have to fight God. You do not have a duty; that is, and always has been, mine. There’s still time to turn your back.”
“Doctor…” Jasmine shook her head. “If you feel compelled to do something, then that’s your duty. Duty comes from within you. And this will always be my duty. I’m sorry.” She stood up, but as she went to leave, the Doctor grabbed her hand. Jasmine stopped, and they both stood where they were for a moment.
The Doctor suddenly found, to her embarrassment, that she couldn’t let go. Jasmine had made her choice; it was a poorly-informed choice, but it was the only way. The Jasmine of the future had promised her that it was okay, but still, the Doctor could not reconcile herself. She wanted to keep Jasmine here, hold her forever. Jasmine had been one of the first to send the Doctor over the edge, one of the first to die when it all started to go wrong. And she had been the one who refused to leave the Doctor’s mind. She was there every morning, and she was there every night.
The Doctor had realised how much she cared about Jasmine, and had refused, on this one and only occasion, to ever truly believe that she was gone forever. That had been a belief worth committing to.
Jasmine let go of the Doctor’s hand, and the Time Lady kept her eyes on her as she left her flat for the final time.
But it wasn’t the Doctor’s last visit. She had to visit it again, just one more time…
***
When the Doctor saw Sheila, she didn’t stop, but rushed forward. She recognised her from the woman’s silhouette, from the movements of her hands, from the sound of a packet being popped.
Sheila collapsed into the Doctor’s arms. The Doctor pulled out a spare sonic screwdriver – thankfully, Jasmine had warned her that the first would be destroyed – and, rarely for her, made a biological alteration then slowly, aware of her fragility, she sat Sheila down.
The old woman rubbed her stomach and looked up, examining the Doctor curiously.
“I neutralised the tablets’ effects,” explained the Doctor. “You’re lucky I got here when I did.”
“Am I?” asked Sheila, dryly. “I just wanted to end it all.” She was sobbing into her hands, her head still heavy with tears. “I just wanted it all to be over. I hate it all so much…” She looked down, then back up again, like she didn’t know where to let her eyes rest. “Look, dear, don’t you have a family to be getting back to?”
“Sonic screwdriver,” said the Doctor, ignoring her, and playing with the contraption in her hand. “Surprisingly good in medical emergencies.” She pocketed it, and her attention returned to Sheila. “I knew Jasmine. I was at the funeral. You won't be able to recognise me, though. I thought Patsy wrote a good eulogy. I didn’t know a few of those facts.”
“I think I knew all of them,” said Sheila.
“No you didn’t.” The Doctor shook her head, and couldn’t resist a smile. Sheila sat forward.
“I knew all of them,” she repeated. “The ten facts. Listen, it’s nice of you to t-"
“No,” interrupted the Doctor. “You didn’t know all of them. What about the eleventh fact?”
“The eleventh?”
“Of course. The most important of all. Why else do you think I came here?”
The Doctor stood up, and pushed open the door to the hallway, revealing the TARDIS, its sign glowing brightly. Sheila gasped, reading the words, and the Doctor took the key out of her pocket.
“Fact eleven, Sheila,” said the Doctor, opening the door to her TARDIS and beckoning the old woman to follow. “Jasmine Sparks is still alive.”
***
In the Doctor's hut, Jasmine noticed that there were more sheets of blank paper – made of a thick, high-quality material – than there were pages written on. Jasmine wondered if these had once been pages of books, unwriting themselves as their history was undone. She dismissed the thought, put a pen to the paper, and began.
Her handwriting was wobbly. Her hand had a tendency to shake; she had only written about three pages a year back on her planet, just to make sure she got in the practise. Still, at least she could spell – she thought.
Those last few years had been an extended period of confusion as her cognitive processes slowly fell apart. Being sent back in time had somehow reawakened her. And above all other things, it felt good to be able to write stories again.
Day 19,220
Before the end, one last memory came back. I remembered who I was. Jasmine Sparks, Autumn Rivers… me. I remembered something that was beyond words, and it gave me the strength to do what I had to.
I remembered the hourglass, and I had to know, before I died, whether I was right. Was it really timed to my life?
I pushed on the wall, still instinctively knowing, even in my confusion, which it was. The floor lights were still shining, and I could see it. A mound of sand, built up in the lower section. And in the top…
The last few grains of sand, emptying.
I stepped down, into the lowered section where that enormous hourglass had sat for all these years, counting my seconds as grains of sands. I placed my hand on the glass. The final grain of sand fell.
It was over.
The lights on the floor grew brighter and brighter, until I was forcing my eyes closed, almost screaming with the pain of it. The room tremored, and I felt the glass growing hot to the touch, but I knew, for some reason, that I couldn’t take my hands off it.
Then it stopped. I let go.
I stepped back and opened my eyes.
The lights were back to how they were when I entered the room. Everything was the same – except for the hourglass.
The sand was back in the upper section.
Still wondering where I was and what I was doing here, I stumbled out, back into the main area. I walked over to the computer. Again, I knew, from all the years I’d done it, that I would sit down and write. So I did. And the writing said something I couldn’t quite believe, something which struck terror into my heart, as well as another emotion, far more powerful and far more terrible.
Hope.
I read it again, just to be sure. I was right. Day 0.
Either I had escaped my own fate, and somehow made it through to the reset, to the arrival of the experiment’s next subject. Or something else had happened – something which hadn’t happened to me for decades.
I’d travelled in time.
I pushed open the door to the base, and stepped back out into the desert. The hot air hit my face, as it always did, like I was walking into an oven.
I stepped onto the sand, trying to find my balance. It was harder to walk in the stuff, at my age. I nearly fell, but was able to stop myself. If I had, I think that would have been it. I pushed on, hearing myself wheeze.
If I died now, at least I would be at one with nature, with the stars over my head.
Half a kilometre, that must have been how far I walked. And then I saw her. She was laying in the sand, a bullet wound in her stomach, eyes shut. She didn’t even look like she was breathing. But I recognised her. I felt so many things towards her – envy, pity, guilt, fear.
Using the last of my strength, a strength I’m not even sure how I found, I lifted Jasmine Sparks, and carried her into the base.
All those years’ worth of medical courses I’d learnt online finally came back to me. I found the supplies beneath the bed, and began to work on her bullet wound. Looking back, with a better concept of time, I know it took me about five hours. When I was satisfied I’d done all I had to, I took one last look at her, and stepped back outside.
I knew the story from the first time. I had to leave.
There I was, walking away, that old and powerful symbol in my head: the snake, eating its own tail. That’s me - almost. The snake who stitches up its own tail, I think. This will go on forever, I understand.
I must have walked a long way, because when I turned back, I could no longer see the base. I'd forgot which way I'd come from. While I was getting my bearings, I fell, my face smacking into the sand, not as comfortable as it looked. I think a few bones broke on the way down. It’s what you’d expect.
I stared up at the stars. Soon, it would be morning, and Jasmine Sparks would be waking up. I wish I could save her.
My eyes began to close, and I remembered one more thing.
When I arrived, I’d heard the sound of the TARDIS. I’d forgotten that sound. No. I wasn’t remembering…
I was hearing it again.
It got louder. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t.
The world began to change. I think I was laughing. The sky disappeared, and then I was somewhere else. That was the last thing I knew.
I can’t say I’ve been entirely truthful about everything, reader. Until now, I had been, but I figured you should be allowed the full story, so I decided to add this on the end. I didn’t write this log in the base – I’m actually writing it on Gallifrey. With a bit of luck, they’ll do as I request, and send this off to be added to the rest.
You’re probably feeling sorry for me. Don’t. I lived a long and painful life on that planet, but it’s not over. Now I know why no one came for me. Why I was left to suffer for all those years, and why, on that last day, I was allowed to go back.
It all makes sense now. I have a job to do. Something I never thought I’d do, but put on my bucket list anyway, just in case. I’m scared. I think this is right. I hope this is right. Because it will change everything.
I take another look at the list. One last time. Just to be sure that I’m going to do it.
Yes. Yes, I am.
Change the world.
Jasmine smiled, and put down the pen.
“You always were a wonderful writer.”
Jasmine turned as quickly as she could, startled, and put her hand to her mouth in shock as she saw the woman behind her. The Doctor had done what she'd been asked.
Sheila was smiling, obviously trying not to seem as shocked and distraught as she was. Years had been snatched away, years of Jasmine’s life; for Sheila, it had flashed by in a few seconds. She must have been wishing she could have been a part of it.
“Hello, Nan,” whispered Jasmine. It struck her, then, that she didn’t know which of them was older. It almost wasn’t fair that Sheila hadn’t aged a day. That was usually the Doctor’s trick.
“The…” Sheila steadied herself. “The Doctor told me everything. She brought me back here, to see you. I can’t believe…”
“It’s a lot, I know.” Jasmine stood up, holding onto the desk to help herself out of the seat. She saw Sheila’s face drop as she realised that her granddaughter had become frailer, weaker than her. “It’s a lot to take in.” Jasmine reached out, and gave Sheila a hug. After all those years apart, it was worth waiting for.
“I missed you so much,” Sheila sniffed, and Jasmine was sure that she was crying on her shoulder. “When I thought you were gone I just gave up. You meant so much to me Jasmine, you were my life, my little girl, and I never said…”
Calmly, soothingly, Jasmine hushed her aged grandmother, patting her softly on her back. Outside, she could hear the sound of the TARDIS taking off again. The Doctor must have been going on one last trip – this time, even Jasmine couldn’t say where. With the Doctor, there were some things no one could ever predict.
P-1-Honey-7
The Doctor entered the base, glad to be out of the scorching heat. A couple of unwashed plates sat on the worktop, and a hidden doorway revealed an hourglass, almost the size of the room, and now completely empty. That must have been the greatest torture of all, thought the Doctor. Not just living a lifetime, but watching every second of it drain away like grains of sand.
The base computer. It was across from the kitchen, in its own little space. It was where Jasmine had recorded the years of her life in the hope that, if they couldn’t be shared, someone could at least acknowledge them. The Doctor pulled out her spare sonic screwdriver again, transferring the information onto it, later to be downloaded into the TARDIS data banks.
Jasmine had told her a lot. She’d told her about the years she’d spent thinking, learning, wishing. The days she’d spent in front of that screen, acquiring skills, sharing thoughts, sometimes just staring. But she hadn’t told the Doctor to come here. The Doctor had gone because… She frowned. She didn’t even know. Some force, decidedly internal rather than external, had simply compelled her.
There was also something else Jasmine hadn’t told her, the Doctor now realised, scanning the contents of a bookshelf. The books were bound together carelessly, scraps of paper compiled into bunches rather than properly-published works. She ran her hands across them. The papers were frayed already, but their titles were still visible.
“Miracle on Oxford Street,” the Doctor read, under her breath. “Time at the Museum…” she scanned across a few more, skipping the odd one. “The Planet Makers… Bigger on the Inside.” She smiled at that one. “On Air… The Magic Box… The Cloud Beneath The Sea… In Slumber Repose… The Morning Fog.” The Doctor chuckled. Jasmine was as much of a Kate Bush fan as ever. She moved on to the next shelf. “The Last Great Fire of London… Breath of Life… Darksong… The Day We Lived.” She nodded. “Beautiful title.”
She picked one up, Hello Earth, on one of the lower shelves. A thin volume, frequently-thumbed.
Written by J. Rivers, it read, and the Doctor found herself remarking at the reasons behind that decision. The front was illustrated with a rough sketch of an old vinyl player. She flicked a few pages, skipping to the last third, picked up in the middle of a page, and read a few of the lines out loud to herself.
“’Hello’, asked Jasmine… “Hello?” It was him… she wasn’t sure at first… but she knew the voice. From this life, from another – it hardly mattered… Jasmine felt herself tearing up, feeling the emotions she had been dying to feel for so long. She felt… alive.” The Doctor ran her finger over the word. “’I was right’, said Jasmine. ‘I knew it… I was right’.”
The Doctor closed the book, returning it to its shelf, and turned to leave. She stopped in the doorway, as a terribly impractical but also deeply tempting thought crossed her mind.
And so she returned to the TARDIS, and materialised it carefully around the bookshelf. The final works of J. Rivers – potentially now the last written works in the universe – were the insurance. If everything went wrong, they would remain as testament to a battle which, if not won, had at least been fought.
***
They were talking, now; laughing, as they sat together, warming by the fire, drinking tea, listening to an old record player humming an ancient Gallifreyan tune. The tears had dried in Sheila’s eyes, and the more Jasmine spoke, the more she found she could speak. Since the Doctor had returned, she was quiet, introspective even; she tried to chuckle at the jokes, nod when she agreed, and share in the memories of days gone by.
“I knew you were seeing a UNIT officer!” cried Sheila. “Even before I knew what UNIT was! There was that time the webcam was off for ages, and then you… anyway, you should have told me!”
“It was just a fling. He wasn’t the love of my life or anything.” Their laughter died down, as Tommy Lindsay’s name hung silently in the air, decreeing an end to that particular conversation.
“This is an impressive planet,” observed Sheila, attempting to break the silence.
“In both good ways and bad,” muttered the Doctor.
“You haven’t even seen the half of it,” Jasmine replied, less cynically. “The citadel is beautiful.”
“Unlike the people inside…”
“You’ve been before?” asked Sheila, ignoring the Doctor.
“They were nutters then, too,” the Doctor continued.
“Yes,” said Jasmine. “Yeah, I played guitar on top of a tower, and then I came back, nearly got killed, that was how I ended up back on Earth…”
“That’s Gallifrey for you…”
“Do you mind?” exclaimed Jasmine, causing the Doctor to spill her tea. “You just won’t shut up! I’m trying to…” she hit her head, trying to summon the word. “To… argh! Reminisce! That’s the word.”
“Sorry,” said the Doctor, guiltily. “It’s just, when your people – well, the people you like to think you represent – have been oppressed for centuries, it’s hard not to feel bitter. But you’re right, that wasn’t fair of me. I’m sorry.”
Jasmine shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have forgotten. It can’t be easy to talk about your planet.”
“Electric guitar?” piped up Sheila from the corner of the room. “On top of a tower? That takes me back. Ukulele on the university roof.”
“You didn’t…”
“Only stayed a year. I think they threw me out…”
The three of them laughed.
***
Mid-conversation, and only a few sips into the next cup of tea, the Doctor stood up, suddenly, and marched to the door, wrapping her winter coat back around her for warmth.
“It’s time.” She glanced across at her clocks, and this time, Jasmine did the same. She saw what the Doctor had seen. They were all showing the same time.
“I’m coming with you,” said Sheila, climbing out of her chair in unison with Jasmine.
The Doctor raised a hand. “I need you to stay here, Sheila.”
“To stay safe?” Sheila scoffed. “That’s not happening.”
“No. To protect my people, and to tell them what happened, if the worst does occur.”
“I understand, but…” she stepped forward, reaching for Jasmine’s arm. “You can’t… Jasmine, after all this time, you can’t risk your life. You’re older now, you-“
“I made my choice,” interjected Jasmine. “Nan… my life has been leading to this. My whole life. I had decades on that planet to imagine every possible future. Do you really think I never considered that it would end this way?” She pulled her in for another hug, but this time made the most of it.
It would have been so easy to stay there, resting and drinking tea with her old grandmother. But that thought came back to her, the same one Judas had tried to implant in her, now ironically betraying him.
I have a job to do.
“I have to do this, Nan. I have to do this.”
Sheila nodded, silently. As Jasmine walked out of the door, snow already settling on her shoulders, she caught one last glimpse of Sheila, teary-eyed and shaking, blowing her granddaughter one last kiss. Jasmine smiled, took the Doctor’s hand, and began her journey.
***
Such a long way…
The memories were there still, somehow; the earlier they were, the clearer they were. Memories of a different man with different ideas about the universe. But was he more cynical or less? The Doctor wasn’t sure.
She programmed the DNA sequence she had extracted from Jasmine, with her permission, into the flight planner. You have to do this alone, Jasmine had told her. I wasn’t there before.
The Doctor was fulfilling prophecy, now. She was a product of predestination; a snake eating its own tail. She was writing the final chapter of the last book in the universe, and it would remain unpublished. She set the coordinates for 2016.
A while later
The Doctor felt a jolt as her eyes opened.
She heaved, pushing open the door to the storage chamber before she froze to death. She quickly disposed of the device that was inside her jacket, hoping she would never have cause to use it again.
After taking another moment to be repulsed by what variations of the human species could be capable of, she thanked the universe for the fact that at least these aliens were a familiar species. The spaceship was designed much like the spaceships she had seen from the human empires: well-lit, sleek, with isolated command decks.
She scanned her eyes over the controls, wishing that her sonic screwdriver had not been destroyed. The controls were easy enough. She opted first to wake all the prisoners out of cryo-sleep and then lead them to the back exit. She would have to act quickly; it would take only a few minutes at most before some of Them noticed that the prisoners were leaving the ship and They re-entered to find out why.
The Doctor continued to prioritise, and chose the second button to press. After doing so, she took out her phone, searching for Robin’s number. Her friend answered seconds later.
“Doctor!” came the response. “Is that you? Did it work?”
“I’m inside Their ship now,” the Doctor whispered, and turned around. The front entrance was still clear, and all the prisoners had left. “Tell Ward it’s safe to bomb it now.”
“But you said…”
“I said I didn’t want any innocents getting killed, Robin. I’ve got the prisoners out, so that isn’t going to happen.” The Doctor waited for a response, checking her watch anxiously. “Robin…”
“What about you?” came Robin’s response. “You’re innocent.”
“I’ll be fine,” reassured the Doctor, calculating the distance to the exit. “Just give Ward the order.”
Robin considered for a moment. “Okay.” The Doctor listened closely to the other side of the call. Robin was doing as she had asked.
“One more thing,” said the Doctor. “Robin, please don’t ever feel guilty.”
“For what?”
“I know. About what happened that Christmas, about Gabriel. I knew from the start. I even knew you’d try – what mother wouldn’t, Robin? I know. I would have done the same, and I’m speaking as a parent, as one who’s lost…” She trailed off.
“You’re not a parent,” said Robin, confused.
“Not when you’ve known me. It’s been a long time. Robin, Tommy said that when you thought you were going to die, you’d told me you were sorry. Don’t be. As soon as you fell asleep in the TARDIS, I put it right. I’d expected it, I let it happen, and it helped you grieve. So, shoulders up Mrs McKnight. Put it behind you – and carry on being brilliant.”
“Wow…” There was a muffled sound on the other side. “It really is you, isn’t it? You’re… you’re my Doctor.”
“Yes, I am.” The Doctor smiled to herself. “And it was wonderful meeting you one last time, Robin McKnight. I’d never expected it – but it was always an honour.”
The sound of aircraft rattled overhead. The Doctor hung up the phone, and prepared for the blast.
As programmed, the TARDIS materialised around her.
***
It was easy, in the end. Genocide. It was easy to do it, knowing that she was soon to undo it. That didn’t make it right, of course. She was keen to remind herself of that. It wasn’t a "get-out free" clause.
But it wasn’t just that. The years had taken their toll, and far more unpleasant thoughts reached the forefront of her consciousness. They deserved it, thought the Doctor, before swiftly deflecting responsibility to herself: What have I become?
She stood in Jasmine’s apartment now, only vaguely remembering it from all those lives ago. A silent movie was playing on the TV behind her, and the sun was trying to shine through the clouds -- a dim light in one little grey patch. Perhaps it would emerge, eventually, and everyone else would see it too. A lamp flickered on, and Jasmine entered the room, leaping back in shock. The Doctor tried to contain her surprise, too. It wasn’t just Jasmine who stood before him, it was…
A child.
Was she really this young? Another question occurred to the Doctor. Was I?
“Doctor?” asked Jasmine, somehow. The Doctor was ready – Jasmine had warned her that she would work it out.
The Doctor couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, anyway. “You’re incredibly perceptive.”
“Tommy told me about you.” Jasmine’s face dropped. It must have all been so recent. The Doctor had accepted Tommy’s death such a long time ago and filed it away under "things that had definitely happened". The woman in front of her was still grappling with it, still refusing to believe it. “You’re a future version, aren’t you?”
The Doctor nodded. “He can’t ever know I was here.”
“How far?”
She looked out of the window, as if estimating, and then gave up. “Very far.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Why are you here?”
The Doctor sat down. Jasmine seemed surprised.
“I’m here to speak with you,” began the Doctor. “I want to tell you something.”
Jasmine sat down opposite.
“I know what you’re thinking of doing,” the Doctor said. “About God. And I just came to tell you… you don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to do it.” The Doctor spoke softly, thinking back to the old woman she had left on Gallifrey. She was the consequence of a decision yet to be made: if Jasmine sacrificed herself in Hell, she would be issuing her own life sentence. “Things are… about to change. Change so much that they make me into the person I am today. And you kick off that change. But you don’t have to, Jasmine. You don’t have to be there for it.”
She was looking right into Jasmine, into the centre of her her mind, into her very being. Jasmine reciprocated the action.
“You’re from the future,” Jasmine observed. “You know what happened, and whatever happened, you can’t change it. There are rules.”
“The rules are wrong.”
Jasmine sat back, startled.
“Were wrong, I mean…” The Doctor looked to the floor. “Time is malleable, a lot more malleable than I thought.” She was about to apologise for repeating herself, but remembered that it was a different Jasmine she had addressed earlier. “Jasmine Sparks, you don’t have to fight God. You do not have a duty; that is, and always has been, mine. There’s still time to turn your back.”
“Doctor…” Jasmine shook her head. “If you feel compelled to do something, then that’s your duty. Duty comes from within you. And this will always be my duty. I’m sorry.” She stood up, but as she went to leave, the Doctor grabbed her hand. Jasmine stopped, and they both stood where they were for a moment.
The Doctor suddenly found, to her embarrassment, that she couldn’t let go. Jasmine had made her choice; it was a poorly-informed choice, but it was the only way. The Jasmine of the future had promised her that it was okay, but still, the Doctor could not reconcile herself. She wanted to keep Jasmine here, hold her forever. Jasmine had been one of the first to send the Doctor over the edge, one of the first to die when it all started to go wrong. And she had been the one who refused to leave the Doctor’s mind. She was there every morning, and she was there every night.
The Doctor had realised how much she cared about Jasmine, and had refused, on this one and only occasion, to ever truly believe that she was gone forever. That had been a belief worth committing to.
Jasmine let go of the Doctor’s hand, and the Time Lady kept her eyes on her as she left her flat for the final time.
But it wasn’t the Doctor’s last visit. She had to visit it again, just one more time…
***
When the Doctor saw Sheila, she didn’t stop, but rushed forward. She recognised her from the woman’s silhouette, from the movements of her hands, from the sound of a packet being popped.
Sheila collapsed into the Doctor’s arms. The Doctor pulled out a spare sonic screwdriver – thankfully, Jasmine had warned her that the first would be destroyed – and, rarely for her, made a biological alteration then slowly, aware of her fragility, she sat Sheila down.
The old woman rubbed her stomach and looked up, examining the Doctor curiously.
“I neutralised the tablets’ effects,” explained the Doctor. “You’re lucky I got here when I did.”
“Am I?” asked Sheila, dryly. “I just wanted to end it all.” She was sobbing into her hands, her head still heavy with tears. “I just wanted it all to be over. I hate it all so much…” She looked down, then back up again, like she didn’t know where to let her eyes rest. “Look, dear, don’t you have a family to be getting back to?”
“Sonic screwdriver,” said the Doctor, ignoring her, and playing with the contraption in her hand. “Surprisingly good in medical emergencies.” She pocketed it, and her attention returned to Sheila. “I knew Jasmine. I was at the funeral. You won't be able to recognise me, though. I thought Patsy wrote a good eulogy. I didn’t know a few of those facts.”
“I think I knew all of them,” said Sheila.
“No you didn’t.” The Doctor shook her head, and couldn’t resist a smile. Sheila sat forward.
“I knew all of them,” she repeated. “The ten facts. Listen, it’s nice of you to t-"
“No,” interrupted the Doctor. “You didn’t know all of them. What about the eleventh fact?”
“The eleventh?”
“Of course. The most important of all. Why else do you think I came here?”
The Doctor stood up, and pushed open the door to the hallway, revealing the TARDIS, its sign glowing brightly. Sheila gasped, reading the words, and the Doctor took the key out of her pocket.
“Fact eleven, Sheila,” said the Doctor, opening the door to her TARDIS and beckoning the old woman to follow. “Jasmine Sparks is still alive.”
***
In the Doctor's hut, Jasmine noticed that there were more sheets of blank paper – made of a thick, high-quality material – than there were pages written on. Jasmine wondered if these had once been pages of books, unwriting themselves as their history was undone. She dismissed the thought, put a pen to the paper, and began.
Her handwriting was wobbly. Her hand had a tendency to shake; she had only written about three pages a year back on her planet, just to make sure she got in the practise. Still, at least she could spell – she thought.
Those last few years had been an extended period of confusion as her cognitive processes slowly fell apart. Being sent back in time had somehow reawakened her. And above all other things, it felt good to be able to write stories again.
Day 19,220
Before the end, one last memory came back. I remembered who I was. Jasmine Sparks, Autumn Rivers… me. I remembered something that was beyond words, and it gave me the strength to do what I had to.
I remembered the hourglass, and I had to know, before I died, whether I was right. Was it really timed to my life?
I pushed on the wall, still instinctively knowing, even in my confusion, which it was. The floor lights were still shining, and I could see it. A mound of sand, built up in the lower section. And in the top…
The last few grains of sand, emptying.
I stepped down, into the lowered section where that enormous hourglass had sat for all these years, counting my seconds as grains of sands. I placed my hand on the glass. The final grain of sand fell.
It was over.
The lights on the floor grew brighter and brighter, until I was forcing my eyes closed, almost screaming with the pain of it. The room tremored, and I felt the glass growing hot to the touch, but I knew, for some reason, that I couldn’t take my hands off it.
Then it stopped. I let go.
I stepped back and opened my eyes.
The lights were back to how they were when I entered the room. Everything was the same – except for the hourglass.
The sand was back in the upper section.
Still wondering where I was and what I was doing here, I stumbled out, back into the main area. I walked over to the computer. Again, I knew, from all the years I’d done it, that I would sit down and write. So I did. And the writing said something I couldn’t quite believe, something which struck terror into my heart, as well as another emotion, far more powerful and far more terrible.
Hope.
I read it again, just to be sure. I was right. Day 0.
Either I had escaped my own fate, and somehow made it through to the reset, to the arrival of the experiment’s next subject. Or something else had happened – something which hadn’t happened to me for decades.
I’d travelled in time.
I pushed open the door to the base, and stepped back out into the desert. The hot air hit my face, as it always did, like I was walking into an oven.
I stepped onto the sand, trying to find my balance. It was harder to walk in the stuff, at my age. I nearly fell, but was able to stop myself. If I had, I think that would have been it. I pushed on, hearing myself wheeze.
If I died now, at least I would be at one with nature, with the stars over my head.
Half a kilometre, that must have been how far I walked. And then I saw her. She was laying in the sand, a bullet wound in her stomach, eyes shut. She didn’t even look like she was breathing. But I recognised her. I felt so many things towards her – envy, pity, guilt, fear.
Using the last of my strength, a strength I’m not even sure how I found, I lifted Jasmine Sparks, and carried her into the base.
All those years’ worth of medical courses I’d learnt online finally came back to me. I found the supplies beneath the bed, and began to work on her bullet wound. Looking back, with a better concept of time, I know it took me about five hours. When I was satisfied I’d done all I had to, I took one last look at her, and stepped back outside.
I knew the story from the first time. I had to leave.
There I was, walking away, that old and powerful symbol in my head: the snake, eating its own tail. That’s me - almost. The snake who stitches up its own tail, I think. This will go on forever, I understand.
I must have walked a long way, because when I turned back, I could no longer see the base. I'd forgot which way I'd come from. While I was getting my bearings, I fell, my face smacking into the sand, not as comfortable as it looked. I think a few bones broke on the way down. It’s what you’d expect.
I stared up at the stars. Soon, it would be morning, and Jasmine Sparks would be waking up. I wish I could save her.
My eyes began to close, and I remembered one more thing.
When I arrived, I’d heard the sound of the TARDIS. I’d forgotten that sound. No. I wasn’t remembering…
I was hearing it again.
It got louder. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t.
The world began to change. I think I was laughing. The sky disappeared, and then I was somewhere else. That was the last thing I knew.
I can’t say I’ve been entirely truthful about everything, reader. Until now, I had been, but I figured you should be allowed the full story, so I decided to add this on the end. I didn’t write this log in the base – I’m actually writing it on Gallifrey. With a bit of luck, they’ll do as I request, and send this off to be added to the rest.
You’re probably feeling sorry for me. Don’t. I lived a long and painful life on that planet, but it’s not over. Now I know why no one came for me. Why I was left to suffer for all those years, and why, on that last day, I was allowed to go back.
It all makes sense now. I have a job to do. Something I never thought I’d do, but put on my bucket list anyway, just in case. I’m scared. I think this is right. I hope this is right. Because it will change everything.
I take another look at the list. One last time. Just to be sure that I’m going to do it.
Yes. Yes, I am.
Change the world.
Jasmine smiled, and put down the pen.
“You always were a wonderful writer.”
Jasmine turned as quickly as she could, startled, and put her hand to her mouth in shock as she saw the woman behind her. The Doctor had done what she'd been asked.
Sheila was smiling, obviously trying not to seem as shocked and distraught as she was. Years had been snatched away, years of Jasmine’s life; for Sheila, it had flashed by in a few seconds. She must have been wishing she could have been a part of it.
“Hello, Nan,” whispered Jasmine. It struck her, then, that she didn’t know which of them was older. It almost wasn’t fair that Sheila hadn’t aged a day. That was usually the Doctor’s trick.
“The…” Sheila steadied herself. “The Doctor told me everything. She brought me back here, to see you. I can’t believe…”
“It’s a lot, I know.” Jasmine stood up, holding onto the desk to help herself out of the seat. She saw Sheila’s face drop as she realised that her granddaughter had become frailer, weaker than her. “It’s a lot to take in.” Jasmine reached out, and gave Sheila a hug. After all those years apart, it was worth waiting for.
“I missed you so much,” Sheila sniffed, and Jasmine was sure that she was crying on her shoulder. “When I thought you were gone I just gave up. You meant so much to me Jasmine, you were my life, my little girl, and I never said…”
Calmly, soothingly, Jasmine hushed her aged grandmother, patting her softly on her back. Outside, she could hear the sound of the TARDIS taking off again. The Doctor must have been going on one last trip – this time, even Jasmine couldn’t say where. With the Doctor, there were some things no one could ever predict.
P-1-Honey-7
The Doctor entered the base, glad to be out of the scorching heat. A couple of unwashed plates sat on the worktop, and a hidden doorway revealed an hourglass, almost the size of the room, and now completely empty. That must have been the greatest torture of all, thought the Doctor. Not just living a lifetime, but watching every second of it drain away like grains of sand.
The base computer. It was across from the kitchen, in its own little space. It was where Jasmine had recorded the years of her life in the hope that, if they couldn’t be shared, someone could at least acknowledge them. The Doctor pulled out her spare sonic screwdriver again, transferring the information onto it, later to be downloaded into the TARDIS data banks.
Jasmine had told her a lot. She’d told her about the years she’d spent thinking, learning, wishing. The days she’d spent in front of that screen, acquiring skills, sharing thoughts, sometimes just staring. But she hadn’t told the Doctor to come here. The Doctor had gone because… She frowned. She didn’t even know. Some force, decidedly internal rather than external, had simply compelled her.
There was also something else Jasmine hadn’t told her, the Doctor now realised, scanning the contents of a bookshelf. The books were bound together carelessly, scraps of paper compiled into bunches rather than properly-published works. She ran her hands across them. The papers were frayed already, but their titles were still visible.
“Miracle on Oxford Street,” the Doctor read, under her breath. “Time at the Museum…” she scanned across a few more, skipping the odd one. “The Planet Makers… Bigger on the Inside.” She smiled at that one. “On Air… The Magic Box… The Cloud Beneath The Sea… In Slumber Repose… The Morning Fog.” The Doctor chuckled. Jasmine was as much of a Kate Bush fan as ever. She moved on to the next shelf. “The Last Great Fire of London… Breath of Life… Darksong… The Day We Lived.” She nodded. “Beautiful title.”
She picked one up, Hello Earth, on one of the lower shelves. A thin volume, frequently-thumbed.
Written by J. Rivers, it read, and the Doctor found herself remarking at the reasons behind that decision. The front was illustrated with a rough sketch of an old vinyl player. She flicked a few pages, skipping to the last third, picked up in the middle of a page, and read a few of the lines out loud to herself.
“’Hello’, asked Jasmine… “Hello?” It was him… she wasn’t sure at first… but she knew the voice. From this life, from another – it hardly mattered… Jasmine felt herself tearing up, feeling the emotions she had been dying to feel for so long. She felt… alive.” The Doctor ran her finger over the word. “’I was right’, said Jasmine. ‘I knew it… I was right’.”
The Doctor closed the book, returning it to its shelf, and turned to leave. She stopped in the doorway, as a terribly impractical but also deeply tempting thought crossed her mind.
And so she returned to the TARDIS, and materialised it carefully around the bookshelf. The final works of J. Rivers – potentially now the last written works in the universe – were the insurance. If everything went wrong, they would remain as testament to a battle which, if not won, had at least been fought.
***
They were talking, now; laughing, as they sat together, warming by the fire, drinking tea, listening to an old record player humming an ancient Gallifreyan tune. The tears had dried in Sheila’s eyes, and the more Jasmine spoke, the more she found she could speak. Since the Doctor had returned, she was quiet, introspective even; she tried to chuckle at the jokes, nod when she agreed, and share in the memories of days gone by.
“I knew you were seeing a UNIT officer!” cried Sheila. “Even before I knew what UNIT was! There was that time the webcam was off for ages, and then you… anyway, you should have told me!”
“It was just a fling. He wasn’t the love of my life or anything.” Their laughter died down, as Tommy Lindsay’s name hung silently in the air, decreeing an end to that particular conversation.
“This is an impressive planet,” observed Sheila, attempting to break the silence.
“In both good ways and bad,” muttered the Doctor.
“You haven’t even seen the half of it,” Jasmine replied, less cynically. “The citadel is beautiful.”
“Unlike the people inside…”
“You’ve been before?” asked Sheila, ignoring the Doctor.
“They were nutters then, too,” the Doctor continued.
“Yes,” said Jasmine. “Yeah, I played guitar on top of a tower, and then I came back, nearly got killed, that was how I ended up back on Earth…”
“That’s Gallifrey for you…”
“Do you mind?” exclaimed Jasmine, causing the Doctor to spill her tea. “You just won’t shut up! I’m trying to…” she hit her head, trying to summon the word. “To… argh! Reminisce! That’s the word.”
“Sorry,” said the Doctor, guiltily. “It’s just, when your people – well, the people you like to think you represent – have been oppressed for centuries, it’s hard not to feel bitter. But you’re right, that wasn’t fair of me. I’m sorry.”
Jasmine shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have forgotten. It can’t be easy to talk about your planet.”
“Electric guitar?” piped up Sheila from the corner of the room. “On top of a tower? That takes me back. Ukulele on the university roof.”
“You didn’t…”
“Only stayed a year. I think they threw me out…”
The three of them laughed.
***
Mid-conversation, and only a few sips into the next cup of tea, the Doctor stood up, suddenly, and marched to the door, wrapping her winter coat back around her for warmth.
“It’s time.” She glanced across at her clocks, and this time, Jasmine did the same. She saw what the Doctor had seen. They were all showing the same time.
“I’m coming with you,” said Sheila, climbing out of her chair in unison with Jasmine.
The Doctor raised a hand. “I need you to stay here, Sheila.”
“To stay safe?” Sheila scoffed. “That’s not happening.”
“No. To protect my people, and to tell them what happened, if the worst does occur.”
“I understand, but…” she stepped forward, reaching for Jasmine’s arm. “You can’t… Jasmine, after all this time, you can’t risk your life. You’re older now, you-“
“I made my choice,” interjected Jasmine. “Nan… my life has been leading to this. My whole life. I had decades on that planet to imagine every possible future. Do you really think I never considered that it would end this way?” She pulled her in for another hug, but this time made the most of it.
It would have been so easy to stay there, resting and drinking tea with her old grandmother. But that thought came back to her, the same one Judas had tried to implant in her, now ironically betraying him.
I have a job to do.
“I have to do this, Nan. I have to do this.”
Sheila nodded, silently. As Jasmine walked out of the door, snow already settling on her shoulders, she caught one last glimpse of Sheila, teary-eyed and shaking, blowing her granddaughter one last kiss. Jasmine smiled, took the Doctor’s hand, and began her journey.
***
The Untempered Schism was kept beneath Gallifrey now, inside the Cloisters, whose brick walls grew thick with moss. The place stunk of passed time, of damp, dust, and something stale. A blue light, almost but not quite moonlight, illuminated the Doctor and Jasmine’s faces.
The place might have been virtually silent, but every footstep echoed. Jasmine shuddered.
They stood in front of the schism, eyes shielded against the raging vortex contained within. The Doctor had warned Jasmine not to look. She hated that – not looking where she was going.
“Don’t they know we’re down here?”
They had entered through a passage, already dug out, but the Doctor was reluctant to tell her who by.
“A Time Lord within the citadel defected,” explained the Doctor. “A long time ago.”
“Who?”
She shrugged. “That’s the thing with double-agents. They’re always using frustratingly elusive names, like Capricorn and Donald Duck and, in this case, 'The White Rabbit'. Anyway, whoever they were, they lowered the defences, and switched off the security system, just temporarily.”
“You’re still not inspiring me with confidence. It’s too dangerous to look into that thing, yet you want us to step inside?”
“The Untempered Schism has evolved, much like Gallifrey, but in a different direction. You could only look, back in the day. Now it’s a gateway, and a transformative one. It doesn’t just let you step into the fourth dimension, because that would kill you. It turns you into a four-dimensional being. Of course, no one has ever tried it. Not until today. And it isn’t safe, Jasmine. It isn’t too late to turn back, either.”
“Actually, I think it is.”
A cluster of guards moved into the cloister. The lift creaked shut behind them, and they spread out, masks covering their faces. A good psychologist would have warned the Doctor that they were more dangerous that way.
“You will step away from the Untempered Schism, Doctor,” said one, and raised a gun.
“Careful, soldier,” warned the Doctor. “Let’s not do anything rash.”
“We don’t want to hurt you!” he growled, but the Doctor sensed that he was only moments away from pulling the trigger. “Step away, and no harm will come to you or your companion.”
“Good training,” observed the Doctor. “Wording a threat like it’s an act of compassion. But I know what you are, and I know what you stand for.”
The guard was speechless. Finally, he spoke again, this time with none of the understanding he had attempted to convey before.
“Step away from the Untempered Schism. You have three seconds.”
The Doctor narrowed her eyes, and reached into her pocket.
“Three, two…”
But the Doctor beat him to the mark. In a swift motion that frightened Jasmine twice as much as the guard had, the Doctor pulled a gun out of her own pocket, and without hesitation, fired.
The guard dropped to the floor, his gun spinning across it and into a corner of the room. The Doctor kept her gun fixed on the rest of the guards, who had now all raised theirs. Jasmine tried to stay calm, breathing slowly; in through her mouth, out through her nose.
“I’ve fired the preliminary blast,” warned the Doctor. “This weapon’s now set to maximum capacity. If any of you make a single move, undo the safety catch or anything, I will fire it again, and you will all die.”
She kept the gun trained on the men, and took a step backward – towards the Untempered Schism. She gripped Jasmine’s hand, but Jasmine moved away. The Doctor risked turning towards her companion, just for a second, and the look in her eyes did it. Jasmine took a step closer.
“See, Jasmine?” started the Doctor, but addressing the group of men. “This is what Gallifrey’s done to me, to all of us. Turned us into killers, into monsters. They’re no different to me, underneath. Which means they’re two things: they’re the people we’re fighting, and the people we’re saving.” She reached out her hand, this time not looking at Jasmine, but breathed out when she felt Jasmine take it.
“I’m sorry,” whispered the Doctor. “I’m sorry. But I’ll make this right.”
At the blast of twelve fatal weapons, the Doctor threw herself backwards, pulling Jasmine in with her.
The place might have been virtually silent, but every footstep echoed. Jasmine shuddered.
They stood in front of the schism, eyes shielded against the raging vortex contained within. The Doctor had warned Jasmine not to look. She hated that – not looking where she was going.
“Don’t they know we’re down here?”
They had entered through a passage, already dug out, but the Doctor was reluctant to tell her who by.
“A Time Lord within the citadel defected,” explained the Doctor. “A long time ago.”
“Who?”
She shrugged. “That’s the thing with double-agents. They’re always using frustratingly elusive names, like Capricorn and Donald Duck and, in this case, 'The White Rabbit'. Anyway, whoever they were, they lowered the defences, and switched off the security system, just temporarily.”
“You’re still not inspiring me with confidence. It’s too dangerous to look into that thing, yet you want us to step inside?”
“The Untempered Schism has evolved, much like Gallifrey, but in a different direction. You could only look, back in the day. Now it’s a gateway, and a transformative one. It doesn’t just let you step into the fourth dimension, because that would kill you. It turns you into a four-dimensional being. Of course, no one has ever tried it. Not until today. And it isn’t safe, Jasmine. It isn’t too late to turn back, either.”
“Actually, I think it is.”
A cluster of guards moved into the cloister. The lift creaked shut behind them, and they spread out, masks covering their faces. A good psychologist would have warned the Doctor that they were more dangerous that way.
“You will step away from the Untempered Schism, Doctor,” said one, and raised a gun.
“Careful, soldier,” warned the Doctor. “Let’s not do anything rash.”
“We don’t want to hurt you!” he growled, but the Doctor sensed that he was only moments away from pulling the trigger. “Step away, and no harm will come to you or your companion.”
“Good training,” observed the Doctor. “Wording a threat like it’s an act of compassion. But I know what you are, and I know what you stand for.”
The guard was speechless. Finally, he spoke again, this time with none of the understanding he had attempted to convey before.
“Step away from the Untempered Schism. You have three seconds.”
The Doctor narrowed her eyes, and reached into her pocket.
“Three, two…”
But the Doctor beat him to the mark. In a swift motion that frightened Jasmine twice as much as the guard had, the Doctor pulled a gun out of her own pocket, and without hesitation, fired.
The guard dropped to the floor, his gun spinning across it and into a corner of the room. The Doctor kept her gun fixed on the rest of the guards, who had now all raised theirs. Jasmine tried to stay calm, breathing slowly; in through her mouth, out through her nose.
“I’ve fired the preliminary blast,” warned the Doctor. “This weapon’s now set to maximum capacity. If any of you make a single move, undo the safety catch or anything, I will fire it again, and you will all die.”
She kept the gun trained on the men, and took a step backward – towards the Untempered Schism. She gripped Jasmine’s hand, but Jasmine moved away. The Doctor risked turning towards her companion, just for a second, and the look in her eyes did it. Jasmine took a step closer.
“See, Jasmine?” started the Doctor, but addressing the group of men. “This is what Gallifrey’s done to me, to all of us. Turned us into killers, into monsters. They’re no different to me, underneath. Which means they’re two things: they’re the people we’re fighting, and the people we’re saving.” She reached out her hand, this time not looking at Jasmine, but breathed out when she felt Jasmine take it.
“I’m sorry,” whispered the Doctor. “I’m sorry. But I’ll make this right.”
At the blast of twelve fatal weapons, the Doctor threw herself backwards, pulling Jasmine in with her.
***
The Doctor was right. The fifth dimension was easier. It was linear, three-dimensional, so close to the three-dimensional Gallifrey that it almost could have been the same place. Almost.
They were still in the Cloisters – or rather, where the Cloisters would have been. They stood in a patch, a ditch, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, each topped with gigantic fragments of broken glass. The shards jutted out in all directions, a part of the landscape.
The graveyard of civilisation.
“Oh my God,” murmured Jasmine. “What’s happened to Gallifrey?”
“The fifth dimension is a world very, very slightly different to our own,” explained the Doctor. “There was a universe, and there was a Gallifrey. But this one…” She crouched down, scooped some of the black material into her hand, gave it a sniff, and brushed it back off, grimacing. Ash. “This one’s gone already.”
“What caused it?”
“Who knows? The President, maybe. They always said he’d blow the citadel up. I never believed that, personally. He’s evil, but only to his own ends. He’d make sure his own towers are safe behind glass, at the least.”
“Then what do you think?”
“Maybe it was me,” suggested the Doctor. “Maybe I did it, in a world where I wasn’t given…” she looked at Jasmine, “…a new surge of hope.”
Jasmine looked downward, feeling a bit modest.
“So, are we safe from the fourth dimension now? Can I see normally again?”
The Doctor shook her head. “You’re just adjusting to the parallel universe. Once you’ve done that, you’ll start to see this world in four dimensions. I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to it.”
Jasmine rubbed her head. It felt like it had been fried, inside and out. “Are you?”
“I’m doing okay. I’d try to take it slowly, but we may have been followed.” Unexpectedly, perhaps inappropriately, she laughed.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.” She kicked a pile of rocks on the floor. They rolled in the ash and came to a halt. “I was just thinking… the oldest prophecy about the Hybrid talked about a being who’d stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. Well… here I am.”
A few feet ahead of them, the Untempered Schism beckoned, the one part of the landscape unchanged. Jasmine took the Doctor’s hand again, and stepped forward. She was getting used to the routine.
Into the sixth dimension.
***
The Doctor was right. The fifth dimension was easier. It was linear, three-dimensional, so close to the three-dimensional Gallifrey that it almost could have been the same place. Almost.
They were still in the Cloisters – or rather, where the Cloisters would have been. They stood in a patch, a ditch, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, each topped with gigantic fragments of broken glass. The shards jutted out in all directions, a part of the landscape.
The graveyard of civilisation.
“Oh my God,” murmured Jasmine. “What’s happened to Gallifrey?”
“The fifth dimension is a world very, very slightly different to our own,” explained the Doctor. “There was a universe, and there was a Gallifrey. But this one…” She crouched down, scooped some of the black material into her hand, gave it a sniff, and brushed it back off, grimacing. Ash. “This one’s gone already.”
“What caused it?”
“Who knows? The President, maybe. They always said he’d blow the citadel up. I never believed that, personally. He’s evil, but only to his own ends. He’d make sure his own towers are safe behind glass, at the least.”
“Then what do you think?”
“Maybe it was me,” suggested the Doctor. “Maybe I did it, in a world where I wasn’t given…” she looked at Jasmine, “…a new surge of hope.”
Jasmine looked downward, feeling a bit modest.
“So, are we safe from the fourth dimension now? Can I see normally again?”
The Doctor shook her head. “You’re just adjusting to the parallel universe. Once you’ve done that, you’ll start to see this world in four dimensions. I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to it.”
Jasmine rubbed her head. It felt like it had been fried, inside and out. “Are you?”
“I’m doing okay. I’d try to take it slowly, but we may have been followed.” Unexpectedly, perhaps inappropriately, she laughed.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.” She kicked a pile of rocks on the floor. They rolled in the ash and came to a halt. “I was just thinking… the oldest prophecy about the Hybrid talked about a being who’d stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. Well… here I am.”
A few feet ahead of them, the Untempered Schism beckoned, the one part of the landscape unchanged. Jasmine took the Doctor’s hand again, and stepped forward. She was getting used to the routine.
Into the sixth dimension.
***
They were still on Gallifrey, standing in its ruins. Morning was arriving, now, in three dimensions at least. When Jasmine dared to extend her line of sight to the fourth again, she saw every hour of the day, and a sky whose colour broke apart before her very eyes, like ink on litmus paper.
“Okay.” She placed her hands on her hips. “What’s changed?” “Sixth dimension out of ten. Let me think…” The Doctor racked her brain, and stared out at the rocky horizon. There was no one there. A space. Shifting, almost, but vacant. Leaves blew through it, and even a layer of ash, in the wind. Curiously, the Doctor approached, Jasmine following closely behind. The Doctor shivered. “You saw it too?” asked Jasmine, as they reached the spot, half-way up the hill, and circled around it. The Doctor placed her hand over it, flexing her fingers. She shook her head. Whatever it was, it went beyond the senses. “A shift in the air,” murmured the Doctor. She’s having one of those moments, Jasmine thought. Where she’s trying to be eloquent and intelligent about something she just doesn’t understand. “Except it’s not in the air,” the Doctor continued. “It’s like it’s on… another plane of existence. But not the fourth dimension.” She scooped a mound of dirt into her hand, examining it, sniffing it, grimacing. “Soil, interesting.” “Ash,” Jasmine corrected her. “And soil, and other… things. Probably some minerals, or something.” “Some top analysis there.” “Hey!” complained the Doctor, jerking her head back to address Jasmine. “I married an archaeologist, you know.” She brushed that matter aside quickly. “Now, you asked me what the sixth dimension is, and here’s the answer. The fifth was a parallel universe. The sixth is access to multiple parallel universes – and as six-dimensional creatures, we should be able to move freely among them. Once we’ve learned how they work, of course.” “So this patch of land…” “…is, in a parallel universe, an occupied space, yes. I wonder who’s here…” “Savalar Drivaki,” Jasmine said to herself, and the Doctor’s eyes lit up. “Yes, Jasmine! You’re starting to see! Can you go any deeper?” Jasmine took the Doctor’s hand – for no reason other than that she wanted to – and focused. |
They were still on Gallifrey, still standing in its ruins. Morning was arriving, now, in three dimensions at least. When Jasmine dared to extend her line of sight to the fourth again, she saw every hour of the day, and a sky whose colour broke apart before her very eyes, ink on litmus paper.
“Okay.” She placed her hands on her hips. “What’s changed?” “Sixth dimension out of ten. Let me think…” The Doctor racked her brain, and stared out at the rocky horizon. There was someone there. A woman. Indistinct, almost, but there. A layer of ash was forming at the bottom of her jeans, blown onto her by the wind. She was young, dressed in denim, cheerful attire against her jet-black hair. Curiously, the Doctor approached, Jasmine following closely behind. The woman gave the Doctor a smile. She returned it, warmly, if a little awkwardly. “They didn’t tell me to expect anyone else!” the woman called over, also heading towards the Doctor. They stopped half-way up the hill, the three women exchanging handshakes. The mysterious woman’s hand, the Doctor and Jasmine noticed, was warm and muddy, and closer up Jasmine spotted a trowel in one of her pockets. “I’m Savala Drivaki,” said the woman, introducing herself as she pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I’m the first in an expeditionary team to this world; I’m meant to be surveying it. But I suppose you know that, don’t you?” “Yes,” lied the Doctor. “Actually,” admitted Jasmine, “neither of us had a clue.” “Do they know what happened to it?” asked the Doctor, keen to move on. “That’s why I’m here.” Savala winked. “The current theory is, it was an overspill of time energy. One of the reactors in the main citadel went critical, began leaking time energy, which gradually undid the lives of each and every member of the population – until they were able to contain it, which was perhaps what caused the explosion.” “Ah,” challenged the Doctor. “But surely if they were wiped from existence, we wouldn’t remember that they ever existed at all?” “We found bodies in the wreckage,” countered Savala, clearly ready for the challenges. “Enough to warrant our assumption that this was a civilisation once, but not enough to justify the size of the citadel. Yes, their timelines were wiped clean, but the sheer size of this place remains, one last trace not quite faded. Their legacy, if you like.” She shrugged. “I write poetry, in my free time.” Jasmine dared to glance into the fourth dimension. Suddenly, awfully, unforgettably, she saw Savala’s true form: a sequence of personalities, piled on top of each other, spiralling inwards; particles, moving apart, dissipating into the air, carrying on, leaving a space. Life, death, then neither. It would take some getting used to. She glanced away. “Six dimensions,” she said to herself, focusing carefully. “If I can just…” |
Savala was there, now. And she wasn’t.
Two worlds, occupying the same space. Indistinguishable, except for this one woman. They had both, presumably, experienced the same history. In one, there was someone here to dig it up.
“I’m adjusting,” said Jasmine, feeling her perception of the fourth dimensioning widening. As she looked around, she could see the citadel around her, from rise to fall. She could see the glass shining, and beyond the shine, its cracks and smears; and, as she lifted her arms, she could feel the shattering glass swirling around her in the storm.
Time was a delicate tapestry. If she took one step out of turn, attempted to lift or push or pull or even touch, in four dimensions, she could threaten its integrity. She could apply too much pressure and split a life in two, just as a wobbling hand could drop and shatter a plate.
With great power… comes great responsibility. In four dimensions, it was still important to take Uncle Ben’s word as law.
“Are you ready to move on again?” asked the Doctor. Apparently, she had adjusted already. That wasn’t surprising.
Jasmine nodded. Ahead of them, in two distinct yet connected spaces, the Untempered Schism beckoned. They stepped inside, this time making no physical contact, and emerged in the seventh dimension.
***
When the Doctor woke up, she was sitting at a table, in a square room.
The room was made out of marble, or something like it, sculpted into block shapes, and polished to the point of obsession. The Doctor looked down at the table, seeing her reflection, then quickly looked up again.
She felt sick. Reflective surfaces were daunting enough in three dimensions – when time was brought into it, and your own future was reflected back at you, they were just plain wrong.
She found herself thinking back to her days at the Academy. In her mind, she was in her old lecture hall, blackboards at the front stretching twelve feet high against the oak panelling of the walls.
One night, she had stayed behind after the lecture. The lecturer, an old woman who always wore grey and insisted on none of her students ever standing up when she entered the room, never left until a good hour after the students were gone. At the root of the Doctor’s motivations was curiosity. She wanted to know what happened in that time.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” the lecturer had asked, but not out of malice.
The Doctor had shaken her head. “I don’t have anywhere to be,” she had said, with complete honesty. “I wondered whether you had any suggestions.”
The lecturer had chuckled. “You’re young, you could be anywhere… in fact, considering you’re soon to become a Time Lord, you could be everywhere. But that’s the tragedy of life, of age, of the rules of our very universe.”
“What is?” the Doctor had asked.
“That the only people who want to change things, make things better, are those who are too old to make any difference at all. The only people who can are the young, who don’t have the desire to, anyhow.”
The Doctor didn’t realise it at the time, but she had listened. She had taken the lecturer’s advice, albeit half-heartedly. And today, at the end of her life, she found herself disagreeing. Time had run out, and she was making more of a difference than ever.
She looked back around her prison, trying not to become distracted by even more memories. She wasn’t sure how she knew it was a prison. The fact that there were no doors or windows might have given it away.
She glanced down at her hand, shifting and changing in the light. As a being, she was trapped between dimensions, floating between the third and the seventh.
The wall gave way, and a man sat down opposite her. He could almost be described as a man, at any rate. He was garbed in black, some perfectly-fitting material with no discernible qualities of its own. A helmet with a visor was lowered over his head. The Doctor looked down, again afraid to see her own reflection in it.
The man only had one arm, the Doctor noticed, a little higher than usual, and… sticking out of his front. Considering his clothes were tailored to fit it, it must have been commonplace around here.
“You have trespassed on our home world,” spoke the man, in a voice in which thesound of every consonant resembled the crack of snapping of bones.
“This is Gallifrey,” answered the Doctor, keeping an edge to her demeanour. “This is my home-world.”
“Lying will not be tolerated.”
“The seventh dimension,” said the Doctor, leaning forward across the table as if she were the one doing the interrogating. “Parallel universes, but… with different starting conditions. Worlds predestined to head in diametrically opposite dimensions, where anything conceivable is possible.”
“You will be eradicated from our territory,” spoke the man again.
The Doctor smiled and, with great concentration, plotted her trajectory along the fourth dimension. She found herself moving, physically and mentally, exercising parts of herself she had spent her whole life unaware of. The Time Lord, she had discovered today, was so much more than just a shape, a collection of atoms. They were vessels of history, life after life, and once those lives could be retrieved and manipulated, time was an ocean, and life was a compass.
While the man waited, and waited and waited, the Doctor travelled in time. She didn’t need a TARDIS anymore -- in a way, she had become one herself -- and she finally understood the burden her old ship must have carried.
Once she had walked for a few million years, she looked around her prison. The walls, somehow, still stood. Obviously, they weren’t made of marble.
There was only one other person. A young woman. No… old. It was becoming impossible to tell. But the Doctor knew her, in all her lives, as Jasmine Sparks.
“Come on,” said the Doctor, as Jasmine stared back blankly, taking in the eternity which she too had just witnessed. “We’re nearly done.”
***
The eighth dimension was, on the surface, no different from the seventh. The Doctor and Jasmine found themselves able to navigate instantly across parallel universes and timelines. In principle, movement was the same.
Except it wasn’t.
At one point, Jasmine fell to the floor, and slipped back a century in time, causing herself injuries across several dimensional planes. The Doctor helped her back into the present and held her, the old woman’s form pulsating like a beating heart, across a hundred years.
They waited. And they realised.
This dimension went on forever. The future never ended -- the universe never did -- but instead it contracted before growing back out again, in perpetual motion, each contraction then creating another parallel universe, causing the axis of alternate realities to continue onto infinity too.
Even the past was endless. Every effect had a cause, but there was no uncaused causer. The chain simply carried on going backward, an abyss leading back to an unobtainable starting point, where one could keep on falling without end.
“You’ve got to stay strong,” urged the Doctor. “Jasmine, we’re nearly there, I promise. This dimension, and then one more, and we’ll make it.”
Though the Doctor wouldn’t have admitted it, she was beginning to feel the pain herself. Every concept she had ever learnt was collapsing in her mind, as the world around her refuted it. She had thought, when they began, that she was evolving. Now she wasn’t sure.
“Okay.” Jasmine forced herself up, and took a step towards the Untempered Schism. “We can do this. Where next?”
The Doctor sighed. “I’m sorry, Jasmine. This is… this might not be pleasant. We’re about to enter into a dimension in which the laws of physics are profoundly different from our own. We should be able to adapt, to evolve, but you just have to remember…” she gripped her friend firmly, “Everything you’ve ever held to be true, whether it’s the way you think, the ground you walk on or the air you breathe, is about to change. Trust nothing. Believe nothing. And then we might just survive.” She tried to smile. “Are you ready?”
Jasmine took a deep breath.
“Nope. But soon, that question won’t even matter, so let’s go.”
***
Two worlds, occupying the same space. Indistinguishable, except for this one woman. They had both, presumably, experienced the same history. In one, there was someone here to dig it up.
“I’m adjusting,” said Jasmine, feeling her perception of the fourth dimensioning widening. As she looked around, she could see the citadel around her, from rise to fall. She could see the glass shining, and beyond the shine, its cracks and smears; and, as she lifted her arms, she could feel the shattering glass swirling around her in the storm.
Time was a delicate tapestry. If she took one step out of turn, attempted to lift or push or pull or even touch, in four dimensions, she could threaten its integrity. She could apply too much pressure and split a life in two, just as a wobbling hand could drop and shatter a plate.
With great power… comes great responsibility. In four dimensions, it was still important to take Uncle Ben’s word as law.
“Are you ready to move on again?” asked the Doctor. Apparently, she had adjusted already. That wasn’t surprising.
Jasmine nodded. Ahead of them, in two distinct yet connected spaces, the Untempered Schism beckoned. They stepped inside, this time making no physical contact, and emerged in the seventh dimension.
***
When the Doctor woke up, she was sitting at a table, in a square room.
The room was made out of marble, or something like it, sculpted into block shapes, and polished to the point of obsession. The Doctor looked down at the table, seeing her reflection, then quickly looked up again.
She felt sick. Reflective surfaces were daunting enough in three dimensions – when time was brought into it, and your own future was reflected back at you, they were just plain wrong.
She found herself thinking back to her days at the Academy. In her mind, she was in her old lecture hall, blackboards at the front stretching twelve feet high against the oak panelling of the walls.
One night, she had stayed behind after the lecture. The lecturer, an old woman who always wore grey and insisted on none of her students ever standing up when she entered the room, never left until a good hour after the students were gone. At the root of the Doctor’s motivations was curiosity. She wanted to know what happened in that time.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” the lecturer had asked, but not out of malice.
The Doctor had shaken her head. “I don’t have anywhere to be,” she had said, with complete honesty. “I wondered whether you had any suggestions.”
The lecturer had chuckled. “You’re young, you could be anywhere… in fact, considering you’re soon to become a Time Lord, you could be everywhere. But that’s the tragedy of life, of age, of the rules of our very universe.”
“What is?” the Doctor had asked.
“That the only people who want to change things, make things better, are those who are too old to make any difference at all. The only people who can are the young, who don’t have the desire to, anyhow.”
The Doctor didn’t realise it at the time, but she had listened. She had taken the lecturer’s advice, albeit half-heartedly. And today, at the end of her life, she found herself disagreeing. Time had run out, and she was making more of a difference than ever.
She looked back around her prison, trying not to become distracted by even more memories. She wasn’t sure how she knew it was a prison. The fact that there were no doors or windows might have given it away.
She glanced down at her hand, shifting and changing in the light. As a being, she was trapped between dimensions, floating between the third and the seventh.
The wall gave way, and a man sat down opposite her. He could almost be described as a man, at any rate. He was garbed in black, some perfectly-fitting material with no discernible qualities of its own. A helmet with a visor was lowered over his head. The Doctor looked down, again afraid to see her own reflection in it.
The man only had one arm, the Doctor noticed, a little higher than usual, and… sticking out of his front. Considering his clothes were tailored to fit it, it must have been commonplace around here.
“You have trespassed on our home world,” spoke the man, in a voice in which thesound of every consonant resembled the crack of snapping of bones.
“This is Gallifrey,” answered the Doctor, keeping an edge to her demeanour. “This is my home-world.”
“Lying will not be tolerated.”
“The seventh dimension,” said the Doctor, leaning forward across the table as if she were the one doing the interrogating. “Parallel universes, but… with different starting conditions. Worlds predestined to head in diametrically opposite dimensions, where anything conceivable is possible.”
“You will be eradicated from our territory,” spoke the man again.
The Doctor smiled and, with great concentration, plotted her trajectory along the fourth dimension. She found herself moving, physically and mentally, exercising parts of herself she had spent her whole life unaware of. The Time Lord, she had discovered today, was so much more than just a shape, a collection of atoms. They were vessels of history, life after life, and once those lives could be retrieved and manipulated, time was an ocean, and life was a compass.
While the man waited, and waited and waited, the Doctor travelled in time. She didn’t need a TARDIS anymore -- in a way, she had become one herself -- and she finally understood the burden her old ship must have carried.
Once she had walked for a few million years, she looked around her prison. The walls, somehow, still stood. Obviously, they weren’t made of marble.
There was only one other person. A young woman. No… old. It was becoming impossible to tell. But the Doctor knew her, in all her lives, as Jasmine Sparks.
“Come on,” said the Doctor, as Jasmine stared back blankly, taking in the eternity which she too had just witnessed. “We’re nearly done.”
***
The eighth dimension was, on the surface, no different from the seventh. The Doctor and Jasmine found themselves able to navigate instantly across parallel universes and timelines. In principle, movement was the same.
Except it wasn’t.
At one point, Jasmine fell to the floor, and slipped back a century in time, causing herself injuries across several dimensional planes. The Doctor helped her back into the present and held her, the old woman’s form pulsating like a beating heart, across a hundred years.
They waited. And they realised.
This dimension went on forever. The future never ended -- the universe never did -- but instead it contracted before growing back out again, in perpetual motion, each contraction then creating another parallel universe, causing the axis of alternate realities to continue onto infinity too.
Even the past was endless. Every effect had a cause, but there was no uncaused causer. The chain simply carried on going backward, an abyss leading back to an unobtainable starting point, where one could keep on falling without end.
“You’ve got to stay strong,” urged the Doctor. “Jasmine, we’re nearly there, I promise. This dimension, and then one more, and we’ll make it.”
Though the Doctor wouldn’t have admitted it, she was beginning to feel the pain herself. Every concept she had ever learnt was collapsing in her mind, as the world around her refuted it. She had thought, when they began, that she was evolving. Now she wasn’t sure.
“Okay.” Jasmine forced herself up, and took a step towards the Untempered Schism. “We can do this. Where next?”
The Doctor sighed. “I’m sorry, Jasmine. This is… this might not be pleasant. We’re about to enter into a dimension in which the laws of physics are profoundly different from our own. We should be able to adapt, to evolve, but you just have to remember…” she gripped her friend firmly, “Everything you’ve ever held to be true, whether it’s the way you think, the ground you walk on or the air you breathe, is about to change. Trust nothing. Believe nothing. And then we might just survive.” She tried to smile. “Are you ready?”
Jasmine took a deep breath.
“Nope. But soon, that question won’t even matter, so let’s go.”
***
This time, the differences couldn’t be more apparent. The ninth dimension was quite unlike any other.
They were drifting through space, in the place where Gallifrey might have stood, had the vast and insurmountable forces of this universe permitted it to.
There were stars, or things that looked a bit like stars. They were more like webs, glowing as bright as suns but stretching over the horizon, swaying like nets over the empty space. And the Doctor… was flying.
Or it was like flying. The world was moving past her, or her past it. Her first instinct was to panic, for herself and for Jasmine, out in the vacuum, but then she realised...
I’m not breathing. I… don’t need to breathe.
A piece of debris came flying towards her, at enough of a velocity to kill her. She raised her arm, all too late, but somehow it just touched. The Doctor and the debris fell still, frozen, both somehow cancelling the force of the other.
For one peaceful moment, there was nothing. No movement, no need to think, no need to do anything whatsoever, a feeling of being at one with whatever this place was. Then the star-webs began to close in.
At first, the Doctor expected to be drawn towards them, as they wrapped around her, a mountain collapsing in on an ant. The Laws of Gravity said she would be pulled towards them. Except…
The Laws of Gravity came from another universe.
As soon as the web above her reached its particular distance, the Doctor was thrown backward, away from it, like a repelled magnet. She might not have even had a heartbeat, but she felt the surge of energy through both her hearts. All of a sudden, she was travelling again, backward, at speeds beyond sound, beyond light, beyond time.
The web below her closed in, and propelled her upwards.
The web above her repelled her again.
The web below propelled her up at twice the force.
The web above sent her spinning back at ten times the force.
And there she was, the tennis ball of the universe, batted from one side to the next as the sides grew closer. Except she wasn’t being exchanged, or even transported. She was being crushed.
They were drifting through space, in the place where Gallifrey might have stood, had the vast and insurmountable forces of this universe permitted it to.
There were stars, or things that looked a bit like stars. They were more like webs, glowing as bright as suns but stretching over the horizon, swaying like nets over the empty space. And the Doctor… was flying.
Or it was like flying. The world was moving past her, or her past it. Her first instinct was to panic, for herself and for Jasmine, out in the vacuum, but then she realised...
I’m not breathing. I… don’t need to breathe.
A piece of debris came flying towards her, at enough of a velocity to kill her. She raised her arm, all too late, but somehow it just touched. The Doctor and the debris fell still, frozen, both somehow cancelling the force of the other.
For one peaceful moment, there was nothing. No movement, no need to think, no need to do anything whatsoever, a feeling of being at one with whatever this place was. Then the star-webs began to close in.
At first, the Doctor expected to be drawn towards them, as they wrapped around her, a mountain collapsing in on an ant. The Laws of Gravity said she would be pulled towards them. Except…
The Laws of Gravity came from another universe.
As soon as the web above her reached its particular distance, the Doctor was thrown backward, away from it, like a repelled magnet. She might not have even had a heartbeat, but she felt the surge of energy through both her hearts. All of a sudden, she was travelling again, backward, at speeds beyond sound, beyond light, beyond time.
The web below her closed in, and propelled her upwards.
The web above her repelled her again.
The web below propelled her up at twice the force.
The web above sent her spinning back at ten times the force.
And there she was, the tennis ball of the universe, batted from one side to the next as the sides grew closer. Except she wasn’t being exchanged, or even transported. She was being crushed.
She tried to move across the fourth dimension, across time, to escape the sequence of events, but found herself stunted. Not even a dead end, but no path at all, in either direction. There was no such thing as time, not in the sense that she knew it.
Everything went quiet, everything went still, and the Doctor felt two equal and impossible weights pressing
down
on
her
Jasmine, I’m so sorry
The Doctor’s mind was, to all intents and purposes, broken. Time had disintegrated before her eyes (or whatever she used to see), and everything she had ever held to be true had been proven wrong around her. She was a goldfish, in an ocean turning red with blood. To escape she would have had to have changed not just where she was, but what she was. And she couldn’t do that.
I’ll die as the Doctor, and no one else.
Even if her notion of time had collapsed helplessly, the memories were still there. Names floated through her mind, some relevant and others meaningless: Susan, Kathleen, Adric, Benny, Cioné, Martha, Bill, Aden, Summer…
In truth, the Doctor admitted to herself, she had never expected it to end. She would live forever. She would be the woman to outlive the universe, and even if it killed her, she would outlive the bloody President.
But it didn’t matter. This was a cause worth dying for. It had been worth trying, worth hoping that she was the Hybrid, that she could make things better and have another go. Dying doing something was better than living doing nothing.
The Doctor closed her eyes.
It’s over now. You can rest.
The Doctor died.
***
“It’s over now. You can rest.”
She was sitting on a cloud.
She was back in the original universe – or at least, she felt like she was. Aside from sitting on water vapour – which could easily have been condensed anyway – the laws of physics here acted as she expected them to. Heat rose. Up here, in the sky, it was warm. She bathed in the heat, glad for it; in the previous dimension, ‘temperature’ had not existed at all.
She peered over the edge of the cloud. Below her was an endless row of fields and pastures, shades of green across a patchwork landscape. She smiled.
She was the Doctor, and somehow, she was alive. When she looked up, she saw Jasmine standing in the centre of the cloud. She was in the same clothes as before, but looked so much younger -- seventeen, roughly -- around the age she had been when she took those last steps into Hell.
“You died,” said Jasmine, and for a moment the Doctor panicked. Her next words calmed the Time Lady’s nerves. “Thankfully, in a universe with different laws of physics, death isn’t an end. So you came back. I…” she looked down, modestly. “I brought you back.”
“But what about you? Weren’t you...?”
The Doctor didn’t want to say it, that horrible word. Dead. If she said it, it might happen, and she couldn’t let that be the case. Jasmine Sparks couldn’t die again, not after all of this.
Jasmine shook her head. “I evolved. You thought I’d be the one at risk, because I was old, but age isn’t weakness, not across the dimensions. It’s strength. That’s why it had to be us, and no one else – the eldest of our kinds.”
“And where are we now? Where’s this?”
“Oh, this place?” asked Jasmine, nonchalantly, clearly loving this whole thing more than she was letting on. “This is a place I created. I rescued you from the ninth dimension and brought you into the tenth.”
The Doctor nodded, finally starting to understand. “The tenth dimension… where everything imaginable is accessible. Space, time, alternate timelines, universes with different laws of physics, and each branching off infinitely.”
“As a ten-dimensional being,” explained Jasmine, “I was able to create within the ten dimensions, so I made us this cloud for us – this whole world. I’ve created it in three dimensions, blocking off the other seven, for your own safety.”
“Thanks.”
“It was based on a memory I had, from when I was a child.” Jasmine looked past the Doctor, staring over the edge of the cloud, into the clear, summer blue of the sky. “Sitting on a plane, staring out of the window, wanting to just climb out and roll around in the clouds. Nan explained that I couldn’t – I’d fall straight through. But I made it. She’ll be proud, when we tell her.” She turned back around, brushed the thought aside like there were more important things, and gestured to an object at her feet: a sphere, about thirty centimetres in diameter, dark blue and swirling like a mystic’s crystal ball.
The Doctor gasped. “The Quantum Crystalliser! It’s…” she frowned. “It’s a sphere.”
“More than that. It’s a perfect sphere, the symbol of infinity for Eternals. And you’re only seeing it in three dimensions. I can see it in all ten.” Jasmine smirked. “Trust me, it’s impressive. Anyway, I’ll let you do the honours.”
The Doctor stood up, got her balance, and stepped cautiously over the sphere, bending over it to take a closer look.
“As soon as I touch this object, my thoughts and feelings will be channelled into it, and across the dimensions. It will reshape the universe, from beginning to end. The whole of history will take a different course.” She didn’t say it like it was a fact, but like it was uncertain; something which may or may not happen.
“That’s what we agreed.”
“Okay.” The Doctor inhaled. “I’m the Hybrid. If I can’t do it, no one can. This one’s for the universe.”
She reached for the sphere.
It threw her off with a violent spark. She stood up, and walked back, now no longer interested in spreading hope, or goodness, or kindness. She wanted to tear the universe apart. Because the crystalliser had said something to her, in a soundless voice deep inside her mind.
You’re not meant for this.
“I’m… sorry,” uttered the Doctor, pacing the cloud, pulling at her hair, staring over the edge and wondering whether the fall would be worth attempting. “I’ve made a mistake. All of this was for nothing, it… I’m not…”
“Look,” urged Jasmine, “just try again.” She crouched down, picked up the sphere, and held it out to the Doctor. “Please, take it. Just take it, just try again!”
The Doctor’s hearts stopped, as she realised what she’d just missed. “Jasmine…”
“Doctor, please!” Jasmine continued. “You’ve got to…”
“Jasmine,” said the Doctor again, very slowly and very quietly. “You picked up the crystalliser.”
“Yes, I did, so that you would…” Jasmine’s eyes widened as she, too, realised what was going on. “Oh.”
“It didn’t want me. It wanted you. All these years of my life, I was wrong.” The Doctor wasn’t angry, or even sad; her voice was almost a whisper. It was contemplative, Jasmine thought. It was the sound of a woman reconsidering everything she’d previously held to be true. “The prophecy was correct, word for word, but it wasn’t about me. You’re the Hybrid. Half-Autumn… half-Jasmine.”
“You mean… I’m meant to change the universe? To rewrite history? But I can’t…”
All of Jasmine’s newly-found confidence was gone, and she was a little girl again, running from the responsibilities of adulthood.
“You’re already doing it, Jasmine.” Jasmine looked down at the crystalliser, and the Doctor was right. It was no longer swirling inside – now it was glowing, so fiercely that her fingers were lit up golden around it. “Your whole life spent thinking, refining your mind, preparing you for this moment. And Autumn’s too – all those years she – you – spent alone in space. The time you spent on that planet allowed the two memories to coalesce. You’re the only person in the universe with the strength, the focus, and the mental capacity to take on this task. So direct it.” The Doctor was back to herself now, angry and confident and wonderful, speaking in a tone that would have been persuasive even if the words had no meaning whatsoever. “Direct your regrets, your wishes, your hopes, your dreams. Every dream you ever dreamt on that planet, remember it! Every time you were alone and wished you’d done things differently, every time you remembered someone else you missed, and remember the wishes you made for them.”
And so Jasmine did.
They didn’t feel the universe change. The sphere just stopped glowing, and disappeared. There was no explosion, no choir of angels, just an unspoken feeling that something was different this time.
Ahead of them, now beginning to come together more clearly, was the Untempered Schism. Waiting. Beckoning. Jasmine stared into it. There was no time vortex now – they had left that behind a few stops ago. Now there was just light.
“We’ve done it,” said Jasmine. “We’ve fixed everything, made the universe right. And look.” She pointed to the gateway. “We can walk away from it all, into the eleventh dimension.”
“Eleventh? There are only ten dimensions, Jasmine.”
Jasmine shook her head and chuckled. “That’s where you’re wrong, Doctor. The tenth dimension: where anything imaginable is possible. So I know exactly what’s on the other side of that doorway. The things beyond our imagination. Beyond time, beyond space. Oneness with the universes in their totality, and peace. I can feel it now, it’s… so close…” she looked away, and laughed. “It’s turning me into a poet.”
“You were always a poet,” said the Doctor, in far fewer words than Jasmine had.
“I know you were struggling with the transitions, but we can do it together.” Jasmine reached out and took the Doctor’s hands in hers, as they stood next to the schism, so close the light radiated on each other’s faces.
“Peace, at last,” agreed the Doctor. “And with the one person in the universe I could spend an eternity with. Jasmine…” She shook her head, solemnly. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Why?” questioned Jasmine, still smiling, still so sure that she was going to win.
“Because I have to go back. I have to make sure it worked, and besides, even if the universe is destined towards a utopia, that doesn’t mean there won't be turbulence along the way. People will always need saving, and I will always be the Doctor.”
Jasmine opened her mouth to speak, but after one look at the Doctor, stopped herself. She knew. She always knew. Some things didn’t – couldn’t – shouldn’t ever change.
“Then I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“But we can do it together, like the old days! The Doctor and Jasmine, fighting the monsters, and maybe Sheila can come along too this time. Why do you have to do it alone? Why can’t you have a friend again?”
“Because…” the Doctor squeezed Jasmine’s hand. “Because for God’s sake, Jasmine, you’ve done enough. You went to Hell and back, you suffered solitude in two of your lives, lost everything you loved twice over. You deserve peace.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Do it,” instructed the Doctor. “Do it for me. I want you to. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll come and join you here one day.”
Jasmine nodded, but was thinking something else. No, she won’t. She’ll never walk out on the universe, the obstinate fool. She’ll never do it.
There was a moment of silence.
“So,” began Jasmine, her voice shaking. “I guess this is it, then.”
“You go forward, I go back. Yes. But I have a last request, Jasmine.”
“Name it.”
“I…” the Doctor seemed embarrassed. “I want to see you. The way you see everything – just for a minute, a second even, I want to see all ten dimensions, just in you. Is that something you can do?”
Jasmine nodded, and carefully concentrated on the Doctor. “Look me in the eye,” she instructed. The Doctor did. “Are you ready?”
Jasmine opened the dimensions, and changed shape before the Doctor’s eyes, her form spreading out across trajectories previously inaccessible. She was no longer young, or old; she was both, and she was neither. The Doctor watched her timeline play out before her eyes, and it had changed since last time. It could be traced back to a little blonde girl, running around on the fields, in the summer on some distant world, smiling and laughing as her parents chased her this way and that. When the Doctor looked the other way, the timeline went on forever. Autumn – Jasmine – whoever she was, her timeline refused to end.
To the side were the alternate realities. Lives they both might have lived, things they both might have done. The details of those lives didn’t need saying. The Doctor smiled, a tear falling from her eye, and Jasmine closed off the dimensions for good.
“There,” she whispered. “How was that?”
“Beautiful,” said the Doctor, unafraid to use the word.
“You should have seen it from my point of view.”
“No, I mean… you. You were beautiful. Are. I’ve…” the Doctor swallowed. “I’ve had a lot of lives, Jasmine. I’ve loved a lot of people, and I’ve lost them all, and you’re all that’s left, and I don’t know what I’m saying…”
“I know what you’re saying,” said Jasmine, and lifted her hand to the Doctor’s face, resting it on her cheek. “Don’t you forget, I lost the love of my life. I suppose that puts us in a similar place, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use those words again. Doctor, I…”
“You don’t have to.”
“I do. Doctor, I love you.”
The Doctor smiled, and mirrored Jasmine’s action, resting her hand on Jasmine’s opposite cheek.
“Jasmine Sparks, I love you too.”
As they kissed, two worlds touched together. In a single second, an infinite number of timelines converged on one single point. Two space-time events became one, welded together, and predestined to find themselves here: the singularity, at the end of time, safe and content in their final moment together.
They weren’t sure how long the kiss lasted, but it came to an end. Smiling, teary-eyed, they both took a step back, Jasmine now fully submerged in the light of the Untempered Schism.
“You helped me to see again, Doctor,” she said. “After all those years on my own, you… you allowed me to feel again. I was alive, and I felt it. We had a blast, the two of us. I know I never said it properly, but I loved every second of it. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Jasmine. And goodbye.”
Jasmine stepped into the light. The gateway closed behind her.
The Doctor allowed herself a moment. One minute, strict to the exact second. Sixty whole seconds to stand and watch the spot where Jasmine had stood; to cry, to watch, to linger, to think, to do whatever else some part of her commanded. When the minute was over, she turned around, and stepped up to the edge.
“Back to the real world,” she said to herself, and jumped off the cloud.
***
The mighty glass dome, containing the ancient city of the Time Lords… was gone.
In its place, the rural communities simply continued. More huts, like the Doctor’s, were dotted across the landscape. The sky was still a burnt orange – though this fact was hard to tell, as the night was closing in – but the ground was fertile – there were streams, crops, fields, where children danced and played.
The Doctor recognised Gallifreyans. Not just those she knew from her own community, but Time Lords from the citadel, in rags rather than robes – but, crucially, happy.
At a stall by one stream, a young boy was offering fresh fruits. There was no sign of a price, or of a currency at all. The people just came up and took some, smiling, and the boy waved them goodbye as they found their own spots to sit and eat together.
The Doctor craned her neck to get a better look at the sky. Up above, impossibly, stars were starting to appear. She wondered, then, what the rest of the universe looked like, but swiftly remembered that she had to go somewhere first.
***
The Doctor’s hut still stood where it always had – which, on an altered landscape, took her a while to find. A few passers-by tipped their hats to her as she entered; children waved, some stopping still, staring, awestricken. Great, thought the Doctor. Even in this timeline, I’ve got the reputation of a hero, and probably a hero complex to accompany it.
She stepped inside the hut, which was unchanged. The piles of Jasmine’s books were stacked by the window, and before the Doctor had a chance to look down miserably at the chair she had once sat in, she noticed an old man sitting there.
Betraying the logical option, which was to get out of there, she sat down opposite him.
“Judas,” said the man, and offered the Doctor a friendly handshake. He was different to the others outside, she noticed. His face was paler, his eyes wearier, his posture resigned. She soon figured out why.
“This isn’t just a hut,” explained the Doctor. “It’s a temporal anomaly. One spot in space and time not affected by alterations to the timeline. By stepping in here, you can avoid being affected by the wave, and remember the life you lived before. But then, I suppose you knew that already.”
Judas nodded. “It was tempting, to start again. But I knew I owed you this one, Doctor. An explanation. I was the double-agent – I was your contact in the citadel.”
“The White Rabbit. You were the one who let me through to the Cloisters? Who’d been providing intel all this time?”
“Sorry about the Cloisters, by the way. Nasty coincidence that the guard were passing through at that particular time. But if it’s any consolation, the man you shot is living a very, very happy life, now.”
“Thanks,” said the Doctor, but she was thinking something else. It’s no consolation at all. Whatever happens… I still killed him.
“I came here because I wanted you to know exactly what I did, and I wanted you to know why I did it. You see, you might be the oldest person on Gallifrey, but I’m the second oldest. Acquired several new regeneration cycles – not out of greed, but, well… as a sentence.”
“For?”
“My crimes. I used to go by a different name, and perhaps you’ll remember me. Aeneas.”
The Doctor nodded, but wasn’t angry. She might have been, a long time ago.
“I… helped to start the Time War.” The Doctor already knew, but let the old man continue. “I killed the president and helped bring Rassilon to power. She was a good woman, and I killed her because I was so young and stubborn, and angry at the world I grew up in.” His fist was clenched. He’s still angry, the Doctor thought. “It took me a long time to realise my mistake. Until the end of the Time War, in fact. If only I’d waited. My faith ran out a week too early, and she tried to tell me… anyway, I took the name Judas, and punished myself to live until I had come to terms with my mistakes. But I’m glad I did. Because it meant I got to help you – I got to help you stop a ruler who was, in practise, no different to Rassilon.”
“Do you know what happened to the President?” asked the Doctor. “Have you seen him about, outside?”
“Who knows? None of us ever saw him. Perhaps he’s living another life… or perhaps, in this reality, he never existed. That was his biggest problem. He turned himself into an idea, and when you reset the universe, it followed a new course of ideas. So a man like that… he couldn’t come to fruition.”
“I’m glad,” said the Doctor, with more spite than she had intended. “For all I talked about the rot at the heart of our society, the mistakes of thousands, the failings of history… the truth is, all of those things considered, he was still a horrible man, and a lot of people suffered.”
“Not anymore,” said Judas, and the Doctor tried to smile back. Judas began again. “We studied the Hybrid prophecy for a long time, and figured out that it referred to the Quantum Crystalliser, so we started searching for the Hybrid. We studied its qualities, and saw that Jasmine wasn’t, but could have been the Hybrid. She originally died in Hell, breaking the looking-glass, so we had her extracted at the last moment, transported to what was left of P-1-Honey-7. Spending her whole life on that planet, we realised, would unlock Autumn Rivers’ latent consciousness. The Hybrid would be born, and we could save everyone.”
Judas was surprised by the Doctor’s look. She wasn’t impressed, and she certainly wasn’t thankful.
“You took a young girl,” she said, “and you left her on her own, defenceless, for her whole life. Do you realise what you’ve done?” She gave him a hard stare, refusing to take her eyes away. He shifted uncomfortably.
“I’m… sorry…”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked, fearfully. The Doctor had heard it said that old men did not fear death. That, frankly, was a lie.
“I’m going to…” the Doctor considered, tapping the side of her chair with her finger. “I’m going to let you go. Go on, get out of my sight. Go and live somewhere else, start again.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Thank you, you’ll be a great leader.”
“I won’t be any kind of leader, thank you very much, I’ll be a doctor. And you’re not going unpunished. You carry the burden of actions you committed in a universe that went wrong, and I know what that’s like.”
Judas nodded. As he went to leave, the Doctor started speaking again, more quietly, and Judas found himself hovering uncertainly in the doorway.
“One night, when I was a child, I heard them talking about me. They said I’d never make a Time Lord.” She smirked. “Look at me now.”
That was when Judas understood. The Doctor had believed in a better world, in making amends for her own mistakes, but at heart she was still a person, still flawed, and still a child. An angry child, trying to make the world see that she could do it. Well, she had succeeded.
Judas left, and nodded to the old woman outside, who had kept him company in the hut. She had wanted to remember the original timeline. When Judas asked why, she explained that she was doing it for her granddaughter.
Everything went quiet, everything went still, and the Doctor felt two equal and impossible weights pressing
down
on
her
Jasmine, I’m so sorry
The Doctor’s mind was, to all intents and purposes, broken. Time had disintegrated before her eyes (or whatever she used to see), and everything she had ever held to be true had been proven wrong around her. She was a goldfish, in an ocean turning red with blood. To escape she would have had to have changed not just where she was, but what she was. And she couldn’t do that.
I’ll die as the Doctor, and no one else.
Even if her notion of time had collapsed helplessly, the memories were still there. Names floated through her mind, some relevant and others meaningless: Susan, Kathleen, Adric, Benny, Cioné, Martha, Bill, Aden, Summer…
In truth, the Doctor admitted to herself, she had never expected it to end. She would live forever. She would be the woman to outlive the universe, and even if it killed her, she would outlive the bloody President.
But it didn’t matter. This was a cause worth dying for. It had been worth trying, worth hoping that she was the Hybrid, that she could make things better and have another go. Dying doing something was better than living doing nothing.
The Doctor closed her eyes.
It’s over now. You can rest.
The Doctor died.
***
“It’s over now. You can rest.”
She was sitting on a cloud.
She was back in the original universe – or at least, she felt like she was. Aside from sitting on water vapour – which could easily have been condensed anyway – the laws of physics here acted as she expected them to. Heat rose. Up here, in the sky, it was warm. She bathed in the heat, glad for it; in the previous dimension, ‘temperature’ had not existed at all.
She peered over the edge of the cloud. Below her was an endless row of fields and pastures, shades of green across a patchwork landscape. She smiled.
She was the Doctor, and somehow, she was alive. When she looked up, she saw Jasmine standing in the centre of the cloud. She was in the same clothes as before, but looked so much younger -- seventeen, roughly -- around the age she had been when she took those last steps into Hell.
“You died,” said Jasmine, and for a moment the Doctor panicked. Her next words calmed the Time Lady’s nerves. “Thankfully, in a universe with different laws of physics, death isn’t an end. So you came back. I…” she looked down, modestly. “I brought you back.”
“But what about you? Weren’t you...?”
The Doctor didn’t want to say it, that horrible word. Dead. If she said it, it might happen, and she couldn’t let that be the case. Jasmine Sparks couldn’t die again, not after all of this.
Jasmine shook her head. “I evolved. You thought I’d be the one at risk, because I was old, but age isn’t weakness, not across the dimensions. It’s strength. That’s why it had to be us, and no one else – the eldest of our kinds.”
“And where are we now? Where’s this?”
“Oh, this place?” asked Jasmine, nonchalantly, clearly loving this whole thing more than she was letting on. “This is a place I created. I rescued you from the ninth dimension and brought you into the tenth.”
The Doctor nodded, finally starting to understand. “The tenth dimension… where everything imaginable is accessible. Space, time, alternate timelines, universes with different laws of physics, and each branching off infinitely.”
“As a ten-dimensional being,” explained Jasmine, “I was able to create within the ten dimensions, so I made us this cloud for us – this whole world. I’ve created it in three dimensions, blocking off the other seven, for your own safety.”
“Thanks.”
“It was based on a memory I had, from when I was a child.” Jasmine looked past the Doctor, staring over the edge of the cloud, into the clear, summer blue of the sky. “Sitting on a plane, staring out of the window, wanting to just climb out and roll around in the clouds. Nan explained that I couldn’t – I’d fall straight through. But I made it. She’ll be proud, when we tell her.” She turned back around, brushed the thought aside like there were more important things, and gestured to an object at her feet: a sphere, about thirty centimetres in diameter, dark blue and swirling like a mystic’s crystal ball.
The Doctor gasped. “The Quantum Crystalliser! It’s…” she frowned. “It’s a sphere.”
“More than that. It’s a perfect sphere, the symbol of infinity for Eternals. And you’re only seeing it in three dimensions. I can see it in all ten.” Jasmine smirked. “Trust me, it’s impressive. Anyway, I’ll let you do the honours.”
The Doctor stood up, got her balance, and stepped cautiously over the sphere, bending over it to take a closer look.
“As soon as I touch this object, my thoughts and feelings will be channelled into it, and across the dimensions. It will reshape the universe, from beginning to end. The whole of history will take a different course.” She didn’t say it like it was a fact, but like it was uncertain; something which may or may not happen.
“That’s what we agreed.”
“Okay.” The Doctor inhaled. “I’m the Hybrid. If I can’t do it, no one can. This one’s for the universe.”
She reached for the sphere.
It threw her off with a violent spark. She stood up, and walked back, now no longer interested in spreading hope, or goodness, or kindness. She wanted to tear the universe apart. Because the crystalliser had said something to her, in a soundless voice deep inside her mind.
You’re not meant for this.
“I’m… sorry,” uttered the Doctor, pacing the cloud, pulling at her hair, staring over the edge and wondering whether the fall would be worth attempting. “I’ve made a mistake. All of this was for nothing, it… I’m not…”
“Look,” urged Jasmine, “just try again.” She crouched down, picked up the sphere, and held it out to the Doctor. “Please, take it. Just take it, just try again!”
The Doctor’s hearts stopped, as she realised what she’d just missed. “Jasmine…”
“Doctor, please!” Jasmine continued. “You’ve got to…”
“Jasmine,” said the Doctor again, very slowly and very quietly. “You picked up the crystalliser.”
“Yes, I did, so that you would…” Jasmine’s eyes widened as she, too, realised what was going on. “Oh.”
“It didn’t want me. It wanted you. All these years of my life, I was wrong.” The Doctor wasn’t angry, or even sad; her voice was almost a whisper. It was contemplative, Jasmine thought. It was the sound of a woman reconsidering everything she’d previously held to be true. “The prophecy was correct, word for word, but it wasn’t about me. You’re the Hybrid. Half-Autumn… half-Jasmine.”
“You mean… I’m meant to change the universe? To rewrite history? But I can’t…”
All of Jasmine’s newly-found confidence was gone, and she was a little girl again, running from the responsibilities of adulthood.
“You’re already doing it, Jasmine.” Jasmine looked down at the crystalliser, and the Doctor was right. It was no longer swirling inside – now it was glowing, so fiercely that her fingers were lit up golden around it. “Your whole life spent thinking, refining your mind, preparing you for this moment. And Autumn’s too – all those years she – you – spent alone in space. The time you spent on that planet allowed the two memories to coalesce. You’re the only person in the universe with the strength, the focus, and the mental capacity to take on this task. So direct it.” The Doctor was back to herself now, angry and confident and wonderful, speaking in a tone that would have been persuasive even if the words had no meaning whatsoever. “Direct your regrets, your wishes, your hopes, your dreams. Every dream you ever dreamt on that planet, remember it! Every time you were alone and wished you’d done things differently, every time you remembered someone else you missed, and remember the wishes you made for them.”
And so Jasmine did.
They didn’t feel the universe change. The sphere just stopped glowing, and disappeared. There was no explosion, no choir of angels, just an unspoken feeling that something was different this time.
Ahead of them, now beginning to come together more clearly, was the Untempered Schism. Waiting. Beckoning. Jasmine stared into it. There was no time vortex now – they had left that behind a few stops ago. Now there was just light.
“We’ve done it,” said Jasmine. “We’ve fixed everything, made the universe right. And look.” She pointed to the gateway. “We can walk away from it all, into the eleventh dimension.”
“Eleventh? There are only ten dimensions, Jasmine.”
Jasmine shook her head and chuckled. “That’s where you’re wrong, Doctor. The tenth dimension: where anything imaginable is possible. So I know exactly what’s on the other side of that doorway. The things beyond our imagination. Beyond time, beyond space. Oneness with the universes in their totality, and peace. I can feel it now, it’s… so close…” she looked away, and laughed. “It’s turning me into a poet.”
“You were always a poet,” said the Doctor, in far fewer words than Jasmine had.
“I know you were struggling with the transitions, but we can do it together.” Jasmine reached out and took the Doctor’s hands in hers, as they stood next to the schism, so close the light radiated on each other’s faces.
“Peace, at last,” agreed the Doctor. “And with the one person in the universe I could spend an eternity with. Jasmine…” She shook her head, solemnly. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Why?” questioned Jasmine, still smiling, still so sure that she was going to win.
“Because I have to go back. I have to make sure it worked, and besides, even if the universe is destined towards a utopia, that doesn’t mean there won't be turbulence along the way. People will always need saving, and I will always be the Doctor.”
Jasmine opened her mouth to speak, but after one look at the Doctor, stopped herself. She knew. She always knew. Some things didn’t – couldn’t – shouldn’t ever change.
“Then I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“But we can do it together, like the old days! The Doctor and Jasmine, fighting the monsters, and maybe Sheila can come along too this time. Why do you have to do it alone? Why can’t you have a friend again?”
“Because…” the Doctor squeezed Jasmine’s hand. “Because for God’s sake, Jasmine, you’ve done enough. You went to Hell and back, you suffered solitude in two of your lives, lost everything you loved twice over. You deserve peace.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Do it,” instructed the Doctor. “Do it for me. I want you to. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll come and join you here one day.”
Jasmine nodded, but was thinking something else. No, she won’t. She’ll never walk out on the universe, the obstinate fool. She’ll never do it.
There was a moment of silence.
“So,” began Jasmine, her voice shaking. “I guess this is it, then.”
“You go forward, I go back. Yes. But I have a last request, Jasmine.”
“Name it.”
“I…” the Doctor seemed embarrassed. “I want to see you. The way you see everything – just for a minute, a second even, I want to see all ten dimensions, just in you. Is that something you can do?”
Jasmine nodded, and carefully concentrated on the Doctor. “Look me in the eye,” she instructed. The Doctor did. “Are you ready?”
Jasmine opened the dimensions, and changed shape before the Doctor’s eyes, her form spreading out across trajectories previously inaccessible. She was no longer young, or old; she was both, and she was neither. The Doctor watched her timeline play out before her eyes, and it had changed since last time. It could be traced back to a little blonde girl, running around on the fields, in the summer on some distant world, smiling and laughing as her parents chased her this way and that. When the Doctor looked the other way, the timeline went on forever. Autumn – Jasmine – whoever she was, her timeline refused to end.
To the side were the alternate realities. Lives they both might have lived, things they both might have done. The details of those lives didn’t need saying. The Doctor smiled, a tear falling from her eye, and Jasmine closed off the dimensions for good.
“There,” she whispered. “How was that?”
“Beautiful,” said the Doctor, unafraid to use the word.
“You should have seen it from my point of view.”
“No, I mean… you. You were beautiful. Are. I’ve…” the Doctor swallowed. “I’ve had a lot of lives, Jasmine. I’ve loved a lot of people, and I’ve lost them all, and you’re all that’s left, and I don’t know what I’m saying…”
“I know what you’re saying,” said Jasmine, and lifted her hand to the Doctor’s face, resting it on her cheek. “Don’t you forget, I lost the love of my life. I suppose that puts us in a similar place, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use those words again. Doctor, I…”
“You don’t have to.”
“I do. Doctor, I love you.”
The Doctor smiled, and mirrored Jasmine’s action, resting her hand on Jasmine’s opposite cheek.
“Jasmine Sparks, I love you too.”
As they kissed, two worlds touched together. In a single second, an infinite number of timelines converged on one single point. Two space-time events became one, welded together, and predestined to find themselves here: the singularity, at the end of time, safe and content in their final moment together.
They weren’t sure how long the kiss lasted, but it came to an end. Smiling, teary-eyed, they both took a step back, Jasmine now fully submerged in the light of the Untempered Schism.
“You helped me to see again, Doctor,” she said. “After all those years on my own, you… you allowed me to feel again. I was alive, and I felt it. We had a blast, the two of us. I know I never said it properly, but I loved every second of it. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Jasmine. And goodbye.”
Jasmine stepped into the light. The gateway closed behind her.
The Doctor allowed herself a moment. One minute, strict to the exact second. Sixty whole seconds to stand and watch the spot where Jasmine had stood; to cry, to watch, to linger, to think, to do whatever else some part of her commanded. When the minute was over, she turned around, and stepped up to the edge.
“Back to the real world,” she said to herself, and jumped off the cloud.
***
The mighty glass dome, containing the ancient city of the Time Lords… was gone.
In its place, the rural communities simply continued. More huts, like the Doctor’s, were dotted across the landscape. The sky was still a burnt orange – though this fact was hard to tell, as the night was closing in – but the ground was fertile – there were streams, crops, fields, where children danced and played.
The Doctor recognised Gallifreyans. Not just those she knew from her own community, but Time Lords from the citadel, in rags rather than robes – but, crucially, happy.
At a stall by one stream, a young boy was offering fresh fruits. There was no sign of a price, or of a currency at all. The people just came up and took some, smiling, and the boy waved them goodbye as they found their own spots to sit and eat together.
The Doctor craned her neck to get a better look at the sky. Up above, impossibly, stars were starting to appear. She wondered, then, what the rest of the universe looked like, but swiftly remembered that she had to go somewhere first.
***
The Doctor’s hut still stood where it always had – which, on an altered landscape, took her a while to find. A few passers-by tipped their hats to her as she entered; children waved, some stopping still, staring, awestricken. Great, thought the Doctor. Even in this timeline, I’ve got the reputation of a hero, and probably a hero complex to accompany it.
She stepped inside the hut, which was unchanged. The piles of Jasmine’s books were stacked by the window, and before the Doctor had a chance to look down miserably at the chair she had once sat in, she noticed an old man sitting there.
Betraying the logical option, which was to get out of there, she sat down opposite him.
“Judas,” said the man, and offered the Doctor a friendly handshake. He was different to the others outside, she noticed. His face was paler, his eyes wearier, his posture resigned. She soon figured out why.
“This isn’t just a hut,” explained the Doctor. “It’s a temporal anomaly. One spot in space and time not affected by alterations to the timeline. By stepping in here, you can avoid being affected by the wave, and remember the life you lived before. But then, I suppose you knew that already.”
Judas nodded. “It was tempting, to start again. But I knew I owed you this one, Doctor. An explanation. I was the double-agent – I was your contact in the citadel.”
“The White Rabbit. You were the one who let me through to the Cloisters? Who’d been providing intel all this time?”
“Sorry about the Cloisters, by the way. Nasty coincidence that the guard were passing through at that particular time. But if it’s any consolation, the man you shot is living a very, very happy life, now.”
“Thanks,” said the Doctor, but she was thinking something else. It’s no consolation at all. Whatever happens… I still killed him.
“I came here because I wanted you to know exactly what I did, and I wanted you to know why I did it. You see, you might be the oldest person on Gallifrey, but I’m the second oldest. Acquired several new regeneration cycles – not out of greed, but, well… as a sentence.”
“For?”
“My crimes. I used to go by a different name, and perhaps you’ll remember me. Aeneas.”
The Doctor nodded, but wasn’t angry. She might have been, a long time ago.
“I… helped to start the Time War.” The Doctor already knew, but let the old man continue. “I killed the president and helped bring Rassilon to power. She was a good woman, and I killed her because I was so young and stubborn, and angry at the world I grew up in.” His fist was clenched. He’s still angry, the Doctor thought. “It took me a long time to realise my mistake. Until the end of the Time War, in fact. If only I’d waited. My faith ran out a week too early, and she tried to tell me… anyway, I took the name Judas, and punished myself to live until I had come to terms with my mistakes. But I’m glad I did. Because it meant I got to help you – I got to help you stop a ruler who was, in practise, no different to Rassilon.”
“Do you know what happened to the President?” asked the Doctor. “Have you seen him about, outside?”
“Who knows? None of us ever saw him. Perhaps he’s living another life… or perhaps, in this reality, he never existed. That was his biggest problem. He turned himself into an idea, and when you reset the universe, it followed a new course of ideas. So a man like that… he couldn’t come to fruition.”
“I’m glad,” said the Doctor, with more spite than she had intended. “For all I talked about the rot at the heart of our society, the mistakes of thousands, the failings of history… the truth is, all of those things considered, he was still a horrible man, and a lot of people suffered.”
“Not anymore,” said Judas, and the Doctor tried to smile back. Judas began again. “We studied the Hybrid prophecy for a long time, and figured out that it referred to the Quantum Crystalliser, so we started searching for the Hybrid. We studied its qualities, and saw that Jasmine wasn’t, but could have been the Hybrid. She originally died in Hell, breaking the looking-glass, so we had her extracted at the last moment, transported to what was left of P-1-Honey-7. Spending her whole life on that planet, we realised, would unlock Autumn Rivers’ latent consciousness. The Hybrid would be born, and we could save everyone.”
Judas was surprised by the Doctor’s look. She wasn’t impressed, and she certainly wasn’t thankful.
“You took a young girl,” she said, “and you left her on her own, defenceless, for her whole life. Do you realise what you’ve done?” She gave him a hard stare, refusing to take her eyes away. He shifted uncomfortably.
“I’m… sorry…”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked, fearfully. The Doctor had heard it said that old men did not fear death. That, frankly, was a lie.
“I’m going to…” the Doctor considered, tapping the side of her chair with her finger. “I’m going to let you go. Go on, get out of my sight. Go and live somewhere else, start again.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Thank you, you’ll be a great leader.”
“I won’t be any kind of leader, thank you very much, I’ll be a doctor. And you’re not going unpunished. You carry the burden of actions you committed in a universe that went wrong, and I know what that’s like.”
Judas nodded. As he went to leave, the Doctor started speaking again, more quietly, and Judas found himself hovering uncertainly in the doorway.
“One night, when I was a child, I heard them talking about me. They said I’d never make a Time Lord.” She smirked. “Look at me now.”
That was when Judas understood. The Doctor had believed in a better world, in making amends for her own mistakes, but at heart she was still a person, still flawed, and still a child. An angry child, trying to make the world see that she could do it. Well, she had succeeded.
Judas left, and nodded to the old woman outside, who had kept him company in the hut. She had wanted to remember the original timeline. When Judas asked why, she explained that she was doing it for her granddaughter.
Epilogue
The Story of Sheila
I always used to tell people that I didn’t want kids.
To be honest, dear, I used to tell myself that too. I thought, you know, if I said it enough times, I might start to believe it, and I did.
My sister, Jennifer, she had two children of her own: a little girl and a little boy, like the families you get in children’s stories, and bless her heart, she made me godmother to them. So I’d visit them all the time, take them out on daytrips. I mean it, sometimes I’d turn up on their doorstep and say, “We’re having a day out today!” Jennifer and her husband would be pleased to have a day together, the kids would be pleased to see me, and I would be beyond pleased at seeing them.
I’d tell everyone I knew about those kids, because I was so proud of them, I really was. Then I’d tell them how I was happy with that – I didn’t want kids of my own, because I was quite happy to let them go at the end of the day, to not have to deal with all the unpleasant stuff.
But really – really – I wanted to deal with the unpleasant stuff so badly. I wanted children of my own, and a little part of me, somewhere inside the Old Sheila Machine, wanted to say to all those people “I love those kids as my own because they’re the closest I’ll ever have”. I couldn’t have my own kids. That was that. I’d tried, it wasn’t happening, God didn’t make me that way, and the big old guy knows I always hated him for it. I must have been the best mum who was never a mum.
I did keep myself happy. I kept myself happy with Jennifer’s kids, and I travelled the world. I might not have ever been able to settle down into a proper, stable relationship with a man – insecurities, you know – but I’ll say this, dear, I had a few colourful nights in rooms that may not have been my own.
I was… satisfied. That’s the word they use, isn’t it? It’s not a word I use very much, bit formal and academic for me, but maybe I should start using it more.
Anyway, look at me, drifting. What I really wanted to talk about was a very, very special night – the night that Jasmine Sparks came into my life.
Obviously, it was sad. The poor girl’s mother was dying, and don’t get me wrong, I felt terrible about that. All the same, it was like everything had finally clicked into place. There she was, on my doorstep, this little baby, like in Harry Potter or one of those stories, and I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t carried her in my womb, or forced her out into the world. She was, from the moment I laid eyes on her, my little girl. I was a bit old to be Mum by this point, of course, so she just called me Nan, and I was absolutely okay with that.
Jasmine was the perfect little girl, the perfect young woman – and I suppose, eventually, the perfect old woman. She was perfect. I don’t know if she really was – I was a bit biased and all that – but she was perfect to me, and that was all that mattered. God didn’t just make up for his mistake by giving me a child. He made up for it by giving me an angel.
(Jasmine did try to explain to me that God’s actually a maniacal tyrant, and that she killed him by smashing a whopping great mirror. I still don’t really get that. I think the big old guy’s still out there and she’s just got him mixed up with some dodgy old man.)
I had to deal with the news of Jasmine’s death, and that was the worst moment of my life – I’m convinced, actually, that it's the worst moment of anyone’s life. Surely no one’s ever felt worse than I felt in that moment, or they’d have just faded away. When she came back, as shocking as it was to see her aged, it was like God giving me that gift all over again. And when the Doctor came back and told me that she was gone again, for good this time… that was okay. Because I’d expected it. And because my little angel got to live forever.
“She was alone for a long time,” the Doctor explained to me, as we sat in her little hut. The Doctor’s such a lovely woman, if a bit difficult from time to time. But I can’t believe I used to hate her – she’s done more for us in the long term than anyone would ever have dreamed, and she turned my universe into a better place. I say she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, but do they even exist anymore? So many questions.
The Doctor had continued. “She decided to write, in that time, and she wrote about all of our adventures. I was thinking of telling you about them, but I thought it would be better in her own words.”
I nodded. She was right.
“I need you, Sheila,” said the Doctor. “Because it’s not just you who needs to hear those stories, it’s everyone. The people of this universe need to know who it was that gave everything in order to give them this life. They need to know about the broken world, but also all the good things that happened in it. I need someone to compile these stories, properly. To read through them, add to them, and eventually publish them. Maybe we could even work on a couple together, if you want. It would mean a job, here on Gallifrey. If you’re up for that. You don’t have to accept.”
But I was already grinning like a fool.
“I’m not sure whose name to publish them under,” considered the Doctor. “Maybe J. Rivers, because that’s how she labelled the books herself, but I’ll leave it up to you. You knew her better than I did.”
I tried to smile, just for the Doctor. “I very much doubt that.”
“She loved you, Sheila.”
“She loved you,” I replied, and soon wished I hadn’t. The Doctor turned around, faced the door. The poor woman was stifling tears. I let her have her space, because she struck me as the kind of person who valued it. I left shortly after.
I spent that night with some of the locals, sleeping outside under the stars. That’s the one thing the Doctor can’t explain, why the stars are here now but they weren’t before. The quantum crystalliser should only really have affected people and societies – all the abstract things, you know – but somehow it stopped the stars from dying. Maybe they just refused, because things were getting good and you can’t let the universe end when things are getting good.
The next day, I started work. And here I am, months later, still going strong. Apparently Jasmine told the Doctor that sometimes age is strength, and I believe that. I’m doing this job now better than I would ever have done it, because I have all those years behind me, and because I care so much about it.
Today, I finish. The last page. This last story was the hardest one, to tell you the truth, dear. I filled in my bits, the Doctor filled in what she could remember, and together we tried to string together the multi-dimensional bits the best we could. The end was fragmented. It wasn’t a coherent whole of its own, but a collection of little, uncertain, and maybe slightly inaccurate accounts. That’s how real stories are put together, not like paintings but like jigsaws.
Jasmine, if you’re out there in that eleventh dimension of yours, reading these words before they’re even written, I just want to take this last chance to say thank you. Thank you for giving me something to live for. Thank you for making me a Nan.
Thank you for being my angel.
To be honest, dear, I used to tell myself that too. I thought, you know, if I said it enough times, I might start to believe it, and I did.
My sister, Jennifer, she had two children of her own: a little girl and a little boy, like the families you get in children’s stories, and bless her heart, she made me godmother to them. So I’d visit them all the time, take them out on daytrips. I mean it, sometimes I’d turn up on their doorstep and say, “We’re having a day out today!” Jennifer and her husband would be pleased to have a day together, the kids would be pleased to see me, and I would be beyond pleased at seeing them.
I’d tell everyone I knew about those kids, because I was so proud of them, I really was. Then I’d tell them how I was happy with that – I didn’t want kids of my own, because I was quite happy to let them go at the end of the day, to not have to deal with all the unpleasant stuff.
But really – really – I wanted to deal with the unpleasant stuff so badly. I wanted children of my own, and a little part of me, somewhere inside the Old Sheila Machine, wanted to say to all those people “I love those kids as my own because they’re the closest I’ll ever have”. I couldn’t have my own kids. That was that. I’d tried, it wasn’t happening, God didn’t make me that way, and the big old guy knows I always hated him for it. I must have been the best mum who was never a mum.
I did keep myself happy. I kept myself happy with Jennifer’s kids, and I travelled the world. I might not have ever been able to settle down into a proper, stable relationship with a man – insecurities, you know – but I’ll say this, dear, I had a few colourful nights in rooms that may not have been my own.
I was… satisfied. That’s the word they use, isn’t it? It’s not a word I use very much, bit formal and academic for me, but maybe I should start using it more.
Anyway, look at me, drifting. What I really wanted to talk about was a very, very special night – the night that Jasmine Sparks came into my life.
Obviously, it was sad. The poor girl’s mother was dying, and don’t get me wrong, I felt terrible about that. All the same, it was like everything had finally clicked into place. There she was, on my doorstep, this little baby, like in Harry Potter or one of those stories, and I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t carried her in my womb, or forced her out into the world. She was, from the moment I laid eyes on her, my little girl. I was a bit old to be Mum by this point, of course, so she just called me Nan, and I was absolutely okay with that.
Jasmine was the perfect little girl, the perfect young woman – and I suppose, eventually, the perfect old woman. She was perfect. I don’t know if she really was – I was a bit biased and all that – but she was perfect to me, and that was all that mattered. God didn’t just make up for his mistake by giving me a child. He made up for it by giving me an angel.
(Jasmine did try to explain to me that God’s actually a maniacal tyrant, and that she killed him by smashing a whopping great mirror. I still don’t really get that. I think the big old guy’s still out there and she’s just got him mixed up with some dodgy old man.)
I had to deal with the news of Jasmine’s death, and that was the worst moment of my life – I’m convinced, actually, that it's the worst moment of anyone’s life. Surely no one’s ever felt worse than I felt in that moment, or they’d have just faded away. When she came back, as shocking as it was to see her aged, it was like God giving me that gift all over again. And when the Doctor came back and told me that she was gone again, for good this time… that was okay. Because I’d expected it. And because my little angel got to live forever.
“She was alone for a long time,” the Doctor explained to me, as we sat in her little hut. The Doctor’s such a lovely woman, if a bit difficult from time to time. But I can’t believe I used to hate her – she’s done more for us in the long term than anyone would ever have dreamed, and she turned my universe into a better place. I say she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, but do they even exist anymore? So many questions.
The Doctor had continued. “She decided to write, in that time, and she wrote about all of our adventures. I was thinking of telling you about them, but I thought it would be better in her own words.”
I nodded. She was right.
“I need you, Sheila,” said the Doctor. “Because it’s not just you who needs to hear those stories, it’s everyone. The people of this universe need to know who it was that gave everything in order to give them this life. They need to know about the broken world, but also all the good things that happened in it. I need someone to compile these stories, properly. To read through them, add to them, and eventually publish them. Maybe we could even work on a couple together, if you want. It would mean a job, here on Gallifrey. If you’re up for that. You don’t have to accept.”
But I was already grinning like a fool.
“I’m not sure whose name to publish them under,” considered the Doctor. “Maybe J. Rivers, because that’s how she labelled the books herself, but I’ll leave it up to you. You knew her better than I did.”
I tried to smile, just for the Doctor. “I very much doubt that.”
“She loved you, Sheila.”
“She loved you,” I replied, and soon wished I hadn’t. The Doctor turned around, faced the door. The poor woman was stifling tears. I let her have her space, because she struck me as the kind of person who valued it. I left shortly after.
I spent that night with some of the locals, sleeping outside under the stars. That’s the one thing the Doctor can’t explain, why the stars are here now but they weren’t before. The quantum crystalliser should only really have affected people and societies – all the abstract things, you know – but somehow it stopped the stars from dying. Maybe they just refused, because things were getting good and you can’t let the universe end when things are getting good.
The next day, I started work. And here I am, months later, still going strong. Apparently Jasmine told the Doctor that sometimes age is strength, and I believe that. I’m doing this job now better than I would ever have done it, because I have all those years behind me, and because I care so much about it.
Today, I finish. The last page. This last story was the hardest one, to tell you the truth, dear. I filled in my bits, the Doctor filled in what she could remember, and together we tried to string together the multi-dimensional bits the best we could. The end was fragmented. It wasn’t a coherent whole of its own, but a collection of little, uncertain, and maybe slightly inaccurate accounts. That’s how real stories are put together, not like paintings but like jigsaws.
Jasmine, if you’re out there in that eleventh dimension of yours, reading these words before they’re even written, I just want to take this last chance to say thank you. Thank you for giving me something to live for. Thank you for making me a Nan.
Thank you for being my angel.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
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