X-NEWS: spcvxb rec.arts.drwho: 5755 Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0 13.10.90 VAX/VMS V5.4; site spcvxb.spc.edu Path: spcvxb.spc.edu!njin!paul.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!dimacs.rutgers.edu!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!agate!ucbvax!ndc.UUCP!mak Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho Subject: Doctor and the Tardis - part IV Message-ID: <9103212015.AA02339@ndc.com> From: mak@ndc.UUCP (Mike Klaus) Date: 21 Mar 91 20:15:51 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 155 Disclaimer: Not for preflight consumption. - - - Timeloop in subway station doc #4 & SJ - They keep finding themselves in a previous episode. A riot breaks out as the doctor pops in right after some kind of satanist type protest. The crowd believes that the Doc is some kind of evil being, and so they begin to riot. Rather than returning to hail their lord and master, the satanists run for an exit. Angry crowd is menacing the Doctor, and they push him off of the platform onto the track. There are so many people there because it's been over an hour since the last train. Sarah thinks that the Doctor dies when the train runs him over - she is lost on the other side of the ugly, milling crowd. Actually, the Doctor is there to retrieve the rock from his earlier time-displacement experiment, wherein he had taken it back in time to tap the rock against an earlier version of itself, in order to disprove the Law of Simultaneous Coexistence. Chaos had ensued, and the rock was taken from the Doctor. He didn't know where it had gone, but he was finding out because he was being dragged through space and time in it's wake - and without a Tardis, yet! So, when he popped in to the Underground, he was disoriented and confused. Picking himself up from the rubble of cinders on the railroad tracks, he picks up the detector which has bounced out of his coat pocket. It's flashing! The head Satanist has lost his sacred rock somewhere amid the cinders. The Doctor crawls around on the cinders while waving the detector around, oblivious to the approaching train. He spots the rock ( pink granite ) leaning against the third rail. Luckily, he still has his scarf, which he uses to pick up the rock and thus saves himself from electrocution. He disappears in a flash of blue light, just before the train hits him. Rioters nearby on the platform think that he is someone that they recognize named 'Bob', and that he was electrocuted before the train hit him. People on the train think that they have seen a ghost. Two weeks previous, Sarah had seen the Doctor in that station. Actually, it seemed to be his reflection in a mirror. He was smiling, happy, and he told Sarah that everything was OK now. Sarah didn't believe this, since the Satanists seemed to be taking over in London. The Doctor lost his smile, and said that he had thought that he was no longer travelling backward in time. He told Sarah about the riot which might happen two weeks later. Sarah blinked back her tears. The reflection disappeared, and Sarah saw that it was a clear glass display case cover. She hadn't been sure that the Doctor had been there at all, that she was just talking to herself and the train schedules. But now, it had actually happened. She felt like her head was completely empty. She had tried to talk to the Doctor, but even right beside him she couldn't yell loud enough to hear herself above the roaring crowd. Then, pushed around in the melee, her free will was gone along with her will to live after seeing her favorite doctor's demise. She was pushed onto a train by the crowd, the doors closed, and the train pulled away - wherever it was going, she didn't know or care. Meanwhile, Doctor #4 finds himself back in the Tardis. The floor is littered with cinders and railroad ties. Sarah wakes up on the train, feeling drained. Her purse is gone. She rides alng for hours, finally deciding to go back to the office and maybe she left her purse there. Jumping out of the train, she feels strangely sad and nervous in the station. Something bad had happened there, but she couldn't remember what. Heading for the exit, she sees a man hiding behind a pillar, wearing a floppy hat and a long scarf. She panics. She runs. She runs back to where the detectives are still looking for a body on the tracks. Someone recognizes her, says " That's her! She was talking to Bob right before he was murdered!". This brings back some memories that Sarah can't deal with - sweaty palpitations & hyperven- tilations. She wants to run away, but that man with the hat frightens her and she won't run past him to the exit. She faints and rolls off of the platform onto the tracks. The unfamiliar scene there does not bring the bad memories; Her head clears a little, and she can think again; which is unfortunate, because now she can feel the bumps from when she fell. She sees the pink granite rock! It's leaning against a rail on the other side of the tracks, a virtual mirror image of the rock that Doctor #4 picked up. She knows that it's important because she had seen it in the Stasis Box on the Tardis. And, although the Doctor told her that it was only an image, she had been able to pick it up and feel it's texture. On the Tardis, Doctor #4 places the pink stone in the Stasis Box. He sighs. In order to be free of it's influence, he must see to it that the rock stays in the stasis box forever. Anyone who touches it becomes dual-determined, and then everything must be done twice. The doctor talks to himself about this at length, having no one to converse with yet needing to talk through his theory of Simultaneous Coexistence of Chaos. He walks around on the cinders and railroad ties as he talks, losing his footing now and again. The satanists had liked being dual-determined because they could touch someone with the rock and then torture or kill him, asking him for cooperation. Then, the second time, leave the individual alive. This left no evidence of wrongdoing, and produced malleable individuals. They could take over anything, anywhere. Back at the train station, Sarah picks up the pink rock. In the Tardis, the Pink Rock disappears from the Stasis Box. Sarah struggles to remember her special relativity. Clocks run more slowly in a gravitational field. By tossing the rock up into the air, it will be in free- fall for awhile and thus it's 'clock' will run a little faster. After many such tossings, the rock's clock will be fast enough to aquire an additional chronon; it will be one quantum time state into the future. In theory, it would emit a graviton when it came back to the ground state - giving up it's extra chronon and once again being in time sync with it's surroundings. However, ground state for this particular rock was not a local earth-normal parametric coordinate. She suspects that the rock would be teleported to some other place and time, if the theory was correct. Her head throbbed. She doesn't care much if she was going to be killed in the resulting release of energy - the Doctor was gone and that was a tremendous loss. At least, the damn thing would be gone from London. - - - - - - - - - More to come. -mak