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eponymous_roseStory: The Wanderer Fantasy
Chapter: The Principle of Stationary Action (1/???)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponymous_rose
Beta: The all-powerfulimsanehonest; any mistakes are the result of my sneaking around behind her back and tacking new stuff in at random.
Word Count: 5,665
Genre: Adventure, humour
Characters: Rose, Ten
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mild-to-moderate violence, profanity. Dodgy explanations of quantum and Lagrangian mechanics.
Spoilers: Pre-Doomsday. This fic was manufactured in a facility that deals with season three of the new series; those with spoiler allergies should nevertheless be safe.
Disclaimer: “Doctor Who” and all related whatsits are the property of the BBC.
In which: The quantum slingshot makes its unwanted début, a wholly unexpected sort of battleground emerges, and things, as they are wont to do in a story like this, go from bad to worse.
Link:
The Wanderer Fantasy
Part I: The Principle of Stationary Action
“I don’t think hitting it any harder’s gonna help!” Rose shouted, fingers in her ears.
The Doctor looked up from the TARDIS console, hammer in hand. “What?”
“I said-!” Rose began, then realized that she still had her ears plugged and, judging by the Doctor’s grin, was still yelling. She lowered her voice. “Banging on the console. It’s not actually helping, is it?”
The Doctor stared at her like she’d just expressed an interest in taking a leisurely holiday to Raxacoricofallapatorius. He held up the hammer. “I’ll have you know that percussive maintenance is a perfectly valid strategy when it comes to flying the TARDIS.” With a sniff, he pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket, pointing it at one of the flashing lights. “A failsafe, if you will.”
Rose was about to reply, but he’d already abandoned the quiet hum of the screwdriver in favour of the hammer’s familiar clatter. “Oh, never mind,” Rose groaned.
He paused. “What?”
“I said ‘never mind’!” Rose bellowed, and he rolled his eyes.
“Touchy, touchy,” he muttered, flicking switches and twisting knobs. “Why say anything at all if you’re not going to say anything at all.” He pointed with the hammer to a little red button. “Press that and don’t let go until I tell you.”
“You’re being extremely aggravating today, you know that?” Rose reached around him to lean on the button.
He had the sonic screwdriver between his teeth now, and was scowling down at the console as best he could with the implement in his mouth. “Aggravating, rude, sounds about right,” he mumbled, then gave the console a final bang. “All right, then!” he pronounced, pleased.
Rose released her hold on the little red button. The TARDIS swerved violently.
“No, no!” the Doctor shouted. “Don’t let go!”
Rose punched the button down again. “You said it was all right!”
With a shuddering groan, the TARDIS levelled off. The Doctor made a face and gave the console another solid rap with his hammer. “I said ‘all right’. What I didn’t say was ‘Rose, please let go of the button so we can wind up sucked into a black hole the next time we materialize, thanks.’”
“There’s no need to get snippy about it,” Rose grumbled. With a grimace, the Doctor tossed the screwdriver onto the console and leaned over her to pull the viewscreen nearer. Rose felt a sudden thrill of fear at his bleak expression. “Oh, I- we’re not really going to be sucked into a black hole, are we?”
He studied the screen intently, tapping the hammer against his chin. “Nah,” he said at last, “still on course. Barely.”
Rose, despite her indignation, couldn’t quite stifle her sigh of relief. “You were just winding me up, weren’t you?”
“’Course not!” he scoffed, shoving the viewscreen back to its original position. “Does that sound like something I’d joke about?” He paused. “No, hang on. That sounds exactly like something I’d joke about.”
“If I weren’t so busy holding this button down, you’d get a smack,” Rose warned.
The Doctor bent down and rapped the hammer experimentally against one of the panels. “Good thing you’re holding that button down, then,” he pointed out.
Rose fumed, leaning a little harder on the button.
“They’ve got fountains like you wouldn’t believe,” the Doctor added, and she blinked.
“Sorry?”
“On Myrthdor,” he clarified, as though it should have been obvious. The TARDIS rocked again, and he had to snatch at the console to keep his balance. Apparently unfazed by the turbulence, he scrambled to his feet and continued prodding the machinery. “Just incredible! Huge torrents of water, all different shapes and sizes and colours. Brilliant hydrological architects, the lot of them.”
As a precaution, Rose shifted so that she was putting still more weight on the little red button. “What are the people like, then?” She grinned. “Mermaids? Are they mermaids? Nobody’s gonna believe it at home if I tell ‘em we’ve met real mermaids.”
The Doctor flicked a switch back and forth a few times, and her grin faded when she noticed the way his brow was furrowed. Something wasn’t right. “’Course not,” he scoffed after a moment, distractedly. “Mermaids.”
“All right, then. What are they?”
“Dolphins, mostly.” He frowned and glanced up. “Well, no, I say dolphins, but they’re really more like tuna.”
“Tuna,” Rose repeated dubiously.
The Doctor nodded and cranked a lever in a direction that Rose was fairly certain it wasn’t meant to go. “Highly intelligent tuna with a genius for manipulating fluid dynamics, but tuna nonetheless.”
“Oh,” Rose said. She had a sudden and inexplicable craving for fish and chips.
The TARDIS, evidently deciding against the subtle approach, resorted to more emphatic shaking. The Doctor cast a worried look at the ceiling. “What’s the matter, then, old girl?” he murmured. Rose thought of a witty retort to the effect that bashing the TARDIS with a hammer wasn’t likely to induce immediate cooperation, but the Doctor cut in before she could speak.
“You’re still pressing the button!” he gasped.
“’Course I am!”
“Well, stop! Right now!”
Rose jumped away as though she’d been burned. After a moment’s hesitation, the TARDIS rocked violently and materialized with a solid bang.
Rose stared up at the ceiling from her new position on the floor. “I could have done without that,” she said.
The Doctor muttered something incoherent, and she propped herself up on her elbows to see him crouched next to the console, rubbing his head.
“You all right?” she asked, unable to keep the teasing tone from her voice.
“Gravity field was a little strong,” he muttered in lieu of response. With a groan, he stood and ran his hands back through his hair a few times, as though checking to ensure that everything was still in place. Rose elected to stay on the floor as a safety measure.
“What d’you mean, a little strong?”
The Doctor was frowning at something on the console and seemed not to have heard her question. Grimacing, Rose regretfully abandoned the relative security of the floor and walked over to stand behind him. A small light was blinking insistently.
“A quantum slingshot,” the Doctor whispered.
“What?”
The Doctor was staring at the console. Rose shifted to get a better view of his face, and immediately wished she hadn't - she'd never seen him so utterly devoid of expression. “That can’t be right,” he mused. With rather more force than necessary, he slapped the switch next to the light – the noise made Rose jump. “Simple enough - it’s malfunctioning." He swallowed. "It must be.”
Rose, getting nervous despite herself, grinned and tried to catch his gaze. “What’s a-a quantum slingshot, then? Sounds sort of low-tech.”
“It’s a… it’s a…” He scrubbed again at his hair with both hands, still scowling down at the little indicator light. “Well, I guess it’s easiest explained with elementary quantum mechanics, right?" Rose was about to point out the contradiction in terms, but he finally met her eyes and grinned, evidently anticipating her next question. "Says that to get from A to B, you’ve gotta travel every possible path between the two.”
Rose poked the sonic screwdriver, still resting on the console where the Doctor had left it, and it rolled noisily between the switches and knobs, eventually coming to a stop next to the indicator light. “So the sonic screwdriver just took a little detour to China en route?”
The Doctor scowled, absently snatched up the screwdriver and pocketed it, then ran his hand back through his hair for what seemed the millionth time since they'd materialized. “Well, sort of,” he said after a moment. "It took every possible path, but they wound up averaging.”
“You should stop rubbing your hair,” Rose noted. “You’ll wind up bald and look utterly ridiculous.”
The Doctor pulled his hand away from his head and gave a hollow laugh. Rose shivered - while she fancied that she could read the Doctor's emotions well enough, he wasn't usually this transparent. Something about that light was bothering him. What scared Rose most was that he wasn't telling her everything: when it came to the Doctor, secrets were invariably dangerous.
“Well,” he said, “just for that, you’re getting a little lesson in quantum theory.”
With a wince, Rose nodded toward the door. “Shouldn’t we see what’s out there, first?”
“You can’t rush science, Rose,” the Doctor chided. “You humans! Always trying to get from point A to point B in the shortest possible time, not even considering that there might be some interest in taking the scenic route. That’s exactly why it took you so long to come up with quantum theory, and even then you got it all wrong!” He cleared his throat and patted the console. “Now, here’s why what just happened should be impossible.”
Rose dutifully came to stand beside him as he hunched over the controls.
“When the TARDIS moves through space and time, like anything else, it’s taking every possible path from A to B.” His voice was animated, enthusiastic, but his eyes were dark and fixed on the tiny, blinking light. “What happens is that you get a certain path where a quantity called the action is minimized.”
Rose scowled. “Am I going to need to go back and get my A-levels in order to pass this conversation?”
The Doctor put a finger to his lips. “You can't interrupt science, either." She rolled her eyes and he continued. "That special path, where the action is minimized, is the shortest distance between two points, from a physical perspective.”
Rose blinked. “Okay, so just a line between two points - that’s your special path?”
The Doctor frowned. “I could’ve sworn I just said that. Now, hush. You don’t want to miss a chance to hear a lecture by the guy who first planted the seeds of doubt in Heisenberg’s mind, do you?” He straightened up and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “That special path I mentioned – the straight line in your clever little example – is what we see happening, because all the other paths we take cancel each other out.”
Rose was getting interested despite herself. “So – hang on a minute – there are these ghosts of ourselves taking every path except the one we’re actually taking? And they sort of… war amongst themselves and wind up not existing?”
The Doctor winced. “Well, that’s one way of putting it, I guess. You're lucky it's a fairly crude theory to begin with.” He twirled a knob experimentally; the light kept flashing.
"Well, what just happened? And why’s that light still blinking?”
The Doctor shrugged and pulled out the sonic screwdriver once more to point it experimentally at the light. “It shows that we’ve deviated from stationary action. We’re no longer on the special path – something curved our straight line. That’s the quantum slingshot.” There was a faint hum and a pop, and the indicator stopped flashing.
“What d’you mean, something?”
The Doctor was unscrewing the bulb of the indicator light from the console. “Something that can move deliberately through time and space. If something intercepts us in the Vortex, blocks one of our potential paths, even if it’s not the one we’re actually taking-“
“Then they stop cancelling out,” Rose finished. “That’s not good, is it?”
“Well, it just means that we’ve been jolted off course on a very fundamental level.” He shook the light next to his ear and frowned. "Doesn't sound like anything's loose, but can't hurt to check, right?" He bent down and opened a panel under the console, eventually emerging with a box of fresh bulbs.
Rose filed away a joke about Time Lords and light bulbs for future use. "What you said sounds sort of plausible, though, I guess."
The Doctor grimaced and set about replacing the bulb. "Rose Tyler, your faith in my scientific ability is astounding."
Rose ignored him. "But what I really want to know is why you think this is so impossible!"
The Doctor tensed; the light bulb slipped into place and began flashing again. Rose realized that he was again weighing his options, deciding how much to tell her.
“It’s funny,” he said after a moment, voice strained. Rose, uncomfortable, turned to watch the light blink. “This little indicator should’ve been rendered obsolete. Never thought I'd see it light up again."
"Why's that?" Rose prodded gently. The Doctor exhaled, and she knew that he'd decided to tell her everything. A small, traitorous part of her was terrified at the thought that he'd started to trust her that much.
He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands now that the bulb had been replaced, so he set to fiddling with the controls once more. "The lights were originally used as a sort of… air-traffic control for Time Lords. So if someone intersects one of your quantum paths, you’re aware of it when you materialize and you can make corrections."
Rose felt realization dawn. "You said this could only be caused by something moving deliberately through time and space." He met her gaze, and she asked the question they both knew came next. “You think it could be another TARDIS?”
He shrugged, all dishevelled hair and wild eyes. “It couldn’t be,” he said. “Bit of space junk, that’s all.”
Rose frowned. “But-“
He spun toward her and raised a hand. “It cannot be another TARDIS,” he said, and his voice shook with the effort of controlling it. “This is the last.”
There was a moment of silence during which Rose forgot to breathe.
“Okay,” she said at last. He was still watching her, wary and unsure. “Okay,” she repeated.
“All right,” he said, and cleared his throat.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He took a deep breath.
Rose touched his shoulder. “Come on, then. Can’t miss those fountains!”
The Doctor looked up, and his grin wasn't quite as exuberant as usual, but it was a step in the right direction. “Right! Fountains. Although…”
Rose grimaced. “Although?”
“Although I suppose it’s just within the realm of possibility that we’ve landed elsewhere.”
Rose smiled and took his hand in hers. “'Course it is. Let’s find out where – and when – we've wound up, shall we?”
The Doctor squeezed her hand. "Thank you," he said after a moment, then pushed the TARDIS door open a crack.
Rose peered into the darkness, into the black gash cut across the warm comfort of the control room. "Looks sort of dark, doesn't it?"
The Doctor grinned at her dubious expression, eyes alive again. “What do you say? It’s probably just night-time out there, hey?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “With our luck?”
The Doctor quirked an eyebrow, Rose stuck out her tongue, and together, hand in hand, they stepped through the TARDIS door into the darkness beyond.
“It’s all over now!” bellowed a powerful voice that, Rose suspected, probably didn’t belong to a highly intelligent tuna. “We’ve got you surrounded!”
In unison, the Doctor and Rose raised their hands. This, Rose thought as she squinted into the blackness, was getting off to a bad – but not entirely unexpected – start.
Just as the Doctor had cleared his throat to speak, there was an explosion of light and sound overhead. Rose dragged him with her to the ground as the echoes reverberated. There was screaming from somewhere nearby. The Doctor released her hand and she covered her head as best she could.
The silence that followed echoed nearly as loudly as the explosion. Somebody coughed.
Rose reached out blindly and managed to snatch the Doctor’s hand in hers. “Where are we?” she hissed.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m dying to find out,” he said, voice brimming with excitement. Rose made a face at his choice of words. "Wherever we are," he continued, "it's probably not Myrthdor."
“Oh, you noticed the lack of fountains, did you?” Rose began, but was cut off by another volley of blasts – these much nearer. Orders were being bellowed from somewhere behind them.
“It’s a war-zone,” the Doctor murmured when the noise had died away again.
“The floor’s sticky,” Rose observed, then froze as a sudden thought occurred to her. “Oh, it’s not… it’s not blood, is it?”
The Doctor shifted, and Rose winced as she realized what he was doing. “No, no, tastes sweet. Sort of. Really dirty.”
“Sometimes,” Rose muttered, “you can be very, very alien.”
In the absence of light, she felt the Doctor’s grin. “So can you,” he said, and there was a hint of pride in his voice.
Before she could begin to puzzle out a reply, a gunshot echoed quite nearby. Rose jumped, and heard a few other stifled gasps. There was a faint source of light behind them, she realized, but she knew that turning around meant presenting herself as a target. Not a good plan, then.
“See, that’s what I mean,” the Doctor murmured. “It’s all wrong. The echoes are too quick. I don’t smell smoke. Or blood. We’re in an enclosed space, but this feels like a whole battlefield.” There was moaning and crying close by. Rose shivered.
“Bigger on the inside,” she muttered.
“Sort of,” the Doctor said. “I think it’s simpler than that.” And, without warning, he got to his feet.
Rose grabbed at his hand. “What are you doing?” she hissed, terror making her voice louder than she’d intended.
“Oi!” someone shouted. “Down in front!”
There was a loud crack and the Doctor gasped. Rose reached for him as he sank back down to his knees. “Doctor!” He was shaking, and she pulled him closer, frantic, feeling for missing limbs or bruises or-
She froze as she touched something cold and wet on his shoulder.
In the next instant, she realized that he was laughing silently.
“Doctor?” she patted his shoulder tentatively.
He gave a startled snort of mirth. “Careful, that’s cold!”
“What are you-“
“It’s a first,” the Doctor was saying, still giggling. “A real first. I have never, in all my centuries of travelling, had somebody throw their drink at me.”
Rose froze as realization dawned. Behind them, the lights grew brighter – she could now make out the cushions of a row of seats in front of them. Rising carefully to a low crouch, she turned around.
A larger-than-life, unrealistically handsome face was barking orders at several ragged rows of soldiers.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she breathed. The Doctor held up the offending cup of pop and rattled the remaining ice cubes with a grin. She sank down on the floor beside him with a groan. “We’re at the bloody cinema!”
She heard him stifle another laugh. “I know!”
“Would you two please stop fooling around up there?” a middle-aged woman behind them snapped, all greying hair and pink frills. “Some of us are trying to enjoy the film!”
Rose and the Doctor exchanged a grin. “Off the floor, then,” she murmured, and they shifted to the seats behind them as inconspicuously as possible.
The Doctor seemed to be having trouble containing his snickers, so Rose thought it best to assist him with an elbow to the ribs. He cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he whispered, as insincere as she’d ever heard him.
“I’m not the one with grape pop all over his suit,” she pointed out.
He paused, then wiped anxiously at his shoulder. “You’re not serious. Grape? Oh, that’ll stain. That’ll never come out.”
It was Rose’s turn to giggle as he pulled a small handkerchief from his pocket and started scrubbing vigorously.
“Really, this isn’t a ruddy comedy!” the woman behind them snapped. “Would you either shut up or get out?” Rumbles of agreement echoed her ultimatum.
“Must be a pretty good film,” the Doctor mused.
Rose squinted into the darkness and could just make out the outline of the TARDIS near one of the front exits, nestled inconspicuously in a corner of the room. “Hang on,” she said. “How come nobody noticed the TARDIS’s arrival?”
Yet another volley of explosions, complete with blinding bursts of light, echoed her words.
“Oh,” she added, cleverly.
The Doctor was leaning forward, staring intently at the screen. “Judging by the quality of effects here,” he murmured, “I think we’re just a few years into your future.”
“Really?” Rose squinted at the screen. “How can you tell? Looks the same as any big-name action film back in 2006.”
The Doctor shrugged. “Simple enough. The little bits of fire in each explosion follow a pattern based on a fifth-order polynomial. Any higher than that and you get singularities and whatnot, and the simulation just looks ridiculous. This is the height of visual effects until, oh, 2013. I’d put us at-“ he frowned thoughtfully. “2010. Last week of April, in fact.”
Rose blinked. “How on Earth can you know all that, based on the effects?”
He grinned and held up his arm so his watch was visible. “I checked the time before we left.”
She couldn’t suppress a giggle, and there was an angry grumble from the woman behind them. “Near-future, then,” Rose whispered.
“Right.”
“On Earth?" she thought it prudent to ask.
“Looks that way. Somewhere in London, even.” At her questioning glance, he shrugged. “Judging by the angry woman’s accent.”
“Oi, you two!” They turned in unison to face the source of this latest recrimination – a short, round, pimply-faced teenager with flaming red hair was striding down the aisle toward them, brandishing his flashlight emphatically. “You want to either stop your snogging or shove off?”
The Doctor winced and ran a hand back through his hair. “Listen-“ Rose saw him squint at the usher’s nametag, which was barely visible in the flickering light of the soldiers' campfire. “Matt, there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding here.”
“I will call my manager,” the adolescent – Matt – sniffed, drawing himself up to his rather unimpressive height.
The Doctor grinned. “Now, now, there’s no call for that.” He dug into his pocket for the psychic paper. “You see, we’re-“
He froze, and Rose followed his gaze. Some distance behind the young man, next to the screen, a figure shrouded in robes was standing with arms folded. She was quite certain that it hadn’t been there a few moments ago.
“Who’s your friend, then?” the Doctor queried. There was another explosion on screen, complete with desperate screams. Rose blinked at the flash of light.
When the darkness had settled again, the figure had disappeared. “Doctor,” she said.
“I know.” He was frowning now, reaching for his sonic screwdriver. “Something’s definitely gone wrong, here.”
Matt sighed and gestured wearily with his flashlight. “Seriously, I don’t give a shit what you two are doing. I don’t care whether you snuck in. Just clear off, all right? Before people start asking for their money back.”
“It’s a little late for that!” bellowed the woman behind them, waving her purse in the air like a warrior's scimitar. A few muted grumbles echoed her proclamation.
The Doctor, ignoring the theatrics around him, had pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and was holding it horizontally, watching the flash of the blue light. Rose couldn’t resist smiling sweetly over her shoulder at the near-apoplectic woman, who sniffed and scowled in reply.
“A laser pointer, too?” Matt groaned. “Trudy put you up to this, didn’t she? Trying to get me fired?” He snatched the sonic screwdriver from the Doctor’s hands.
“Hey!” The Doctor grabbed it back. “Believe me, you don’t want to mess with that.” He scowled down at the tool. “You’ve got your grubby little fingerprints all over it and everything.”
“Did it pick up any traces of energy? Anything weird?” Rose enquired.
The Doctor shook his head. “Probably just someone else trying to sneak into the film. Someone with a fetish for cloaks. Probably a fantasy film playing somewhere, came in the wrong way.” He grinned weakly, and Rose was glad that he seemed unconvinced – the figure in the robes had certainly succeeded in giving her the creeps.
Matt had been listening to their conversation with growing consternation. “You know what?” he said finally, holding up his hands in mock-surrender. “Tell Trudy I don’t give a shit. She wins. I quit. This job’s a waste of time anyway.” He dropped the flashlight. At the same moment, a burst of brightness illuminated the screen - another grenade.
The Doctor inhaled sharply and stood. Rose blinked and touched his hand. “What is it?”
“I… I thought I saw-“
And then he was running straight at Matt, who was looking more startled and annoyed by the moment, and Rose finally saw what it was the Doctor had seen.
The figure, all cloaked in robes, was standing behind Matt, holding a long, thin, wickedly twisted sword.
That was never good.
By the time Rose had jumped to her feet, the Doctor had thrown himself at Matt, knocking him to the ground as the blade whistled harmlessly over their heads. Matt gave a bellow of indignation, and the screams on screen were beginning to meld with the startled cries of the audience. Rose’s eyes were caught by another tall, cloaked form, sprinting from the other side of the cinema. “Doctor!” she shouted. “There’s a second one!”
The Doctor was on his feet in an instant, but spun around as the sword streaked toward Matthew again. The second figure was upon them, now, and Rose lost sight of the Doctor for a moment as a series of blinding explosions lit up the screen. He shouted something that she couldn’t make out over the stereo sound. She ran toward him.
By the time the light had dimmed to a more reasonable level, she had reached the scene of the fray. Matt was sprawled on the ground, wide-eyed and shaking. The Doctor stood next to him, screwdriver in hand.
The cloaked figures were nowhere to be seen.
“Doctor!” she said, and his gaze met hers. She saw him tense for a moment, then relax as his eyes adjusted to the change in light. “Are you all right? What happened to the-“
“The Cultelli,” he said, eyes scanning the theatre.
Rose filed that one under ‘Things to Ask the Doctor When Out of Immediate Danger’. “All right then, the Cultelli. Where did they-“
“Their time ran out,” the Doctor said enigmatically.
“What the hell was that?” Matt squeaked from the floor.
“That,” the Doctor said, stuffing the sonic screwdriver into his pocket, “was an assassination attempt. And a pretty good job of it, too.”
“You’re shitting me,” Matt moaned. “What are you, gangbangers? Just leave me the hell alone, all right? I don’t want any part of this.”
“Stop whining,” the Doctor snapped.
There was something in his voice that dragged Rose’s fear back to the surface - and at that moment, she noticed that the Doctor had one arm tucked under his jacket.
She was at his side in an instant, and snatched at his hand. He gave a startled gasp and pulled away, but not before she'd noticed the torn fabric, dotted with something that definitely wasn't grape pop. “You’re hurt,” she said accusingly.
The Doctor tugged at his bloodied sleeve, then opened his mouth to speak, caught her gaze, and appeared to reconsider. “Yeah,” he said, “one of them caught me across the arm. It’s not serious.”
By the time he’d finished talking, Rose had taken over the unbuttoning of his cuff. Somebody had stopped the film at some point – the lights were up again, and a small crowd had gathered around them.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” a woman volunteered meekly.
“No, it’s all right,” the Doctor said with a forced grin. “Worse than it looks, spilled a bit of ketchup on there earlier today. Or was it chocolate sauce?”
Rose had rolled his sleeve up to the elbow – she could hear her pulse thrumming in her ears as she inspected the long slice across his forearm. Blood was seeping steadily from the wound, and she wished she’d paid more attention to the medical dramas her Mum devoured on the telly. She couldn't recall having seen the Doctor bleed before - would two hearts make things better or worse? “This is deep,” she diagnosed at last, feeling terribly useless. “You need to get this looked at.” She reached into his pocket and retrieved his grape-stained handkerchief, wrapping it around the wound to staunch the bleeding. He grimaced at the contact.
“Well,” somebody said, “I’m calling the cops.” A balding man with spectacles was punching numbers on his cell phone, a smart little orange thing that Rose supposed was practically an antique by now.
“No cause for that!” the Doctor protested. He reached into his pocket in a dramatic motion that had the unfortunate effect of jolting his injured arm. Rose touched his shoulder when he swayed, and for a terrible moment she thought he was on the verge of fainting. “See?” he gasped at last, snatching the psychic paper from his pocket and brandishing it at the crowd, who immediately appeared duly impressed. "Right," he whispered to her, "action movie fans. This could be fun." He raised his voice. "MI-6! You really don’t want to mess with us, you’ll blow our cover.”
“Yeah,” Rose added, following his lead. “Drug cartel and all that.” She sought out the man who’d threatened to call the police and captured his gaze. “You don’t want to be held responsible for the failure of our mission, do you?”
“Well, no,” the man stammered, looking thrilled and terrified all at once. “No, I don’t. Of course I don’t. I’ll keep it a secret, of course I will. You can count on me, you can!”
“I think that we should probably get out of here sooner rather than later,” the Doctor hissed under his breath. "We don't know when the Cultelli will decide to make a return visit." Rose swallowed hard and scanned the crowd.
“You,” she said finally, pointing to Matt. There was a smudge of blood on her hand, the Doctor’s blood, and she had to swallow again before continuing. “Do you have somewhere we can go? We need to debrief.”
“Oh, sod off,” Matt grumbled, getting to his feet. “I’m finished with this.”
“That wasn’t a request,” she snapped. “Don’t think I won’t jump at the chance to arrest you for your part in all this. It won’t be pretty, arrested by MI-6.”
Matt met her gaze, and his eyes were frightened for a moment before teenage rebellion reasserted itself. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine, then. We’ll drop by my flat.” He unpinned his nametag, threw it to the ground next to his abandoned flashlight, and stalked off toward one of the exits at the front of the theatre.
The Doctor smirked and pulled away from her grasp, tucking his wounded arm back under his jacket, and together they followed the boy. As they approached the exit, she shot a glare back at the man with the cell phone, just in case. He winked and tapped the side of his nose. She grimaced.
“Quick thinking,” the Doctor whispered, and Rose managed a faint grin in reply. “We need to watch the boy,” he continued after a moment. “He’s in terrible danger.” Rose glanced up at his drawn features, but no further information seemed forthcoming.
Matt at least had the decency to hold the door open for them. The air was fresh and cold and smelled of rain and stale car exhaust, though the street looked deserted apart from a few parked vehicles that Rose suspected were deceptively fuel-efficient. She turned to Matt. “How far is it?”
“Just down the block,” Matt said. Now that he wasn't struggling to assert his authority in front of a panicking group of moviegoers, he seemed to have wilted a few inches. At some point, he'd stuffed his hands into his pockets, and he scowled at the road as they walked. Rose couldn't help smiling when she noticed the way he kept darting glances over his shoulder at them. Finally, he planted his feet and took a deep breath. “You really MI-6?"
The Doctor grinned and produced the psychic paper once more. Matt stared at it, then pulled a pair of large glasses from his pocket and squinted at it again. He looked, Rose couldn't help noticing, like some sort of overgrown insect with bad skin.
"Wow," was his eventual conclusion. He handed the paper back to the Doctor with a nervous grin. "You know what? Trudy’s bloody well never gonna believe this! Mysterious blokes all dressed in black trying to kill me, and I’m rescued by bloody MI-6!”
As they started walking again, the Doctor caught Rose's hand in his. "You know what?" he whispered, breath tickling her ear. She shivered. "I think we've got a few more tricks up our sleeve that Trudy's never gonna believe."
"Probably just as well, then," she said, stopping so suddenly that he had to sidestep to avoid running into her.
He followed her gaze to where Matt was in mid-step, awkwardly balanced on the toes of one foot, staring down the length of an elegantly twisted sword. The figure at the less deadly end of the weapon had its hooded face turned toward them. What the threat lacked in subtlety, it more than made up for in effectiveness.
"Oh," the Doctor said in a small voice. "That's not good, then."
And then the figure spoke, and it was a child's voice that echoed from the robes. "What did you do?"
The Doctor and Rose exchanged glances. "Excuse me?" he said at last.
The figure poked its sword closer to Matt, who swayed alarmingly, on the verge of losing his balance. "What did you do?" the shrill voice persisted.
"What did I do?" the Doctor parroted, dumbfounded.
There was a sob from the depths of the cloak. "Where's my Dad? What’ve you done with my Dad?"
End Part I
Coming soon – Part II: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, in which secret agents are revealed to have perplexing codenames, journeys are begun, and Napoleon is, rather awkwardly, explained.
Chapter: The Principle of Stationary Action (1/???)
Author:
eponymous_roseBeta: The all-powerful
imsanehonest; any mistakes are the result of my sneaking around behind her back and tacking new stuff in at random.Word Count: 5,665
Genre: Adventure, humour
Characters: Rose, Ten
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mild-to-moderate violence, profanity. Dodgy explanations of quantum and Lagrangian mechanics.
Spoilers: Pre-Doomsday. This fic was manufactured in a facility that deals with season three of the new series; those with spoiler allergies should nevertheless be safe.
Disclaimer: “Doctor Who” and all related whatsits are the property of the BBC.
In which: The quantum slingshot makes its unwanted début, a wholly unexpected sort of battleground emerges, and things, as they are wont to do in a story like this, go from bad to worse.
Link:
The Wanderer Fantasy
Part I: The Principle of Stationary Action
“I don’t think hitting it any harder’s gonna help!” Rose shouted, fingers in her ears.
The Doctor looked up from the TARDIS console, hammer in hand. “What?”
“I said-!” Rose began, then realized that she still had her ears plugged and, judging by the Doctor’s grin, was still yelling. She lowered her voice. “Banging on the console. It’s not actually helping, is it?”
The Doctor stared at her like she’d just expressed an interest in taking a leisurely holiday to Raxacoricofallapatorius. He held up the hammer. “I’ll have you know that percussive maintenance is a perfectly valid strategy when it comes to flying the TARDIS.” With a sniff, he pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket, pointing it at one of the flashing lights. “A failsafe, if you will.”
Rose was about to reply, but he’d already abandoned the quiet hum of the screwdriver in favour of the hammer’s familiar clatter. “Oh, never mind,” Rose groaned.
He paused. “What?”
“I said ‘never mind’!” Rose bellowed, and he rolled his eyes.
“Touchy, touchy,” he muttered, flicking switches and twisting knobs. “Why say anything at all if you’re not going to say anything at all.” He pointed with the hammer to a little red button. “Press that and don’t let go until I tell you.”
“You’re being extremely aggravating today, you know that?” Rose reached around him to lean on the button.
He had the sonic screwdriver between his teeth now, and was scowling down at the console as best he could with the implement in his mouth. “Aggravating, rude, sounds about right,” he mumbled, then gave the console a final bang. “All right, then!” he pronounced, pleased.
Rose released her hold on the little red button. The TARDIS swerved violently.
“No, no!” the Doctor shouted. “Don’t let go!”
Rose punched the button down again. “You said it was all right!”
With a shuddering groan, the TARDIS levelled off. The Doctor made a face and gave the console another solid rap with his hammer. “I said ‘all right’. What I didn’t say was ‘Rose, please let go of the button so we can wind up sucked into a black hole the next time we materialize, thanks.’”
“There’s no need to get snippy about it,” Rose grumbled. With a grimace, the Doctor tossed the screwdriver onto the console and leaned over her to pull the viewscreen nearer. Rose felt a sudden thrill of fear at his bleak expression. “Oh, I- we’re not really going to be sucked into a black hole, are we?”
He studied the screen intently, tapping the hammer against his chin. “Nah,” he said at last, “still on course. Barely.”
Rose, despite her indignation, couldn’t quite stifle her sigh of relief. “You were just winding me up, weren’t you?”
“’Course not!” he scoffed, shoving the viewscreen back to its original position. “Does that sound like something I’d joke about?” He paused. “No, hang on. That sounds exactly like something I’d joke about.”
“If I weren’t so busy holding this button down, you’d get a smack,” Rose warned.
The Doctor bent down and rapped the hammer experimentally against one of the panels. “Good thing you’re holding that button down, then,” he pointed out.
Rose fumed, leaning a little harder on the button.
“They’ve got fountains like you wouldn’t believe,” the Doctor added, and she blinked.
“Sorry?”
“On Myrthdor,” he clarified, as though it should have been obvious. The TARDIS rocked again, and he had to snatch at the console to keep his balance. Apparently unfazed by the turbulence, he scrambled to his feet and continued prodding the machinery. “Just incredible! Huge torrents of water, all different shapes and sizes and colours. Brilliant hydrological architects, the lot of them.”
As a precaution, Rose shifted so that she was putting still more weight on the little red button. “What are the people like, then?” She grinned. “Mermaids? Are they mermaids? Nobody’s gonna believe it at home if I tell ‘em we’ve met real mermaids.”
The Doctor flicked a switch back and forth a few times, and her grin faded when she noticed the way his brow was furrowed. Something wasn’t right. “’Course not,” he scoffed after a moment, distractedly. “Mermaids.”
“All right, then. What are they?”
“Dolphins, mostly.” He frowned and glanced up. “Well, no, I say dolphins, but they’re really more like tuna.”
“Tuna,” Rose repeated dubiously.
The Doctor nodded and cranked a lever in a direction that Rose was fairly certain it wasn’t meant to go. “Highly intelligent tuna with a genius for manipulating fluid dynamics, but tuna nonetheless.”
“Oh,” Rose said. She had a sudden and inexplicable craving for fish and chips.
The TARDIS, evidently deciding against the subtle approach, resorted to more emphatic shaking. The Doctor cast a worried look at the ceiling. “What’s the matter, then, old girl?” he murmured. Rose thought of a witty retort to the effect that bashing the TARDIS with a hammer wasn’t likely to induce immediate cooperation, but the Doctor cut in before she could speak.
“You’re still pressing the button!” he gasped.
“’Course I am!”
“Well, stop! Right now!”
Rose jumped away as though she’d been burned. After a moment’s hesitation, the TARDIS rocked violently and materialized with a solid bang.
Rose stared up at the ceiling from her new position on the floor. “I could have done without that,” she said.
The Doctor muttered something incoherent, and she propped herself up on her elbows to see him crouched next to the console, rubbing his head.
“You all right?” she asked, unable to keep the teasing tone from her voice.
“Gravity field was a little strong,” he muttered in lieu of response. With a groan, he stood and ran his hands back through his hair a few times, as though checking to ensure that everything was still in place. Rose elected to stay on the floor as a safety measure.
“What d’you mean, a little strong?”
The Doctor was frowning at something on the console and seemed not to have heard her question. Grimacing, Rose regretfully abandoned the relative security of the floor and walked over to stand behind him. A small light was blinking insistently.
“A quantum slingshot,” the Doctor whispered.
“What?”
The Doctor was staring at the console. Rose shifted to get a better view of his face, and immediately wished she hadn't - she'd never seen him so utterly devoid of expression. “That can’t be right,” he mused. With rather more force than necessary, he slapped the switch next to the light – the noise made Rose jump. “Simple enough - it’s malfunctioning." He swallowed. "It must be.”
Rose, getting nervous despite herself, grinned and tried to catch his gaze. “What’s a-a quantum slingshot, then? Sounds sort of low-tech.”
“It’s a… it’s a…” He scrubbed again at his hair with both hands, still scowling down at the little indicator light. “Well, I guess it’s easiest explained with elementary quantum mechanics, right?" Rose was about to point out the contradiction in terms, but he finally met her eyes and grinned, evidently anticipating her next question. "Says that to get from A to B, you’ve gotta travel every possible path between the two.”
Rose poked the sonic screwdriver, still resting on the console where the Doctor had left it, and it rolled noisily between the switches and knobs, eventually coming to a stop next to the indicator light. “So the sonic screwdriver just took a little detour to China en route?”
The Doctor scowled, absently snatched up the screwdriver and pocketed it, then ran his hand back through his hair for what seemed the millionth time since they'd materialized. “Well, sort of,” he said after a moment. "It took every possible path, but they wound up averaging.”
“You should stop rubbing your hair,” Rose noted. “You’ll wind up bald and look utterly ridiculous.”
The Doctor pulled his hand away from his head and gave a hollow laugh. Rose shivered - while she fancied that she could read the Doctor's emotions well enough, he wasn't usually this transparent. Something about that light was bothering him. What scared Rose most was that he wasn't telling her everything: when it came to the Doctor, secrets were invariably dangerous.
“Well,” he said, “just for that, you’re getting a little lesson in quantum theory.”
With a wince, Rose nodded toward the door. “Shouldn’t we see what’s out there, first?”
“You can’t rush science, Rose,” the Doctor chided. “You humans! Always trying to get from point A to point B in the shortest possible time, not even considering that there might be some interest in taking the scenic route. That’s exactly why it took you so long to come up with quantum theory, and even then you got it all wrong!” He cleared his throat and patted the console. “Now, here’s why what just happened should be impossible.”
Rose dutifully came to stand beside him as he hunched over the controls.
“When the TARDIS moves through space and time, like anything else, it’s taking every possible path from A to B.” His voice was animated, enthusiastic, but his eyes were dark and fixed on the tiny, blinking light. “What happens is that you get a certain path where a quantity called the action is minimized.”
Rose scowled. “Am I going to need to go back and get my A-levels in order to pass this conversation?”
The Doctor put a finger to his lips. “You can't interrupt science, either." She rolled her eyes and he continued. "That special path, where the action is minimized, is the shortest distance between two points, from a physical perspective.”
Rose blinked. “Okay, so just a line between two points - that’s your special path?”
The Doctor frowned. “I could’ve sworn I just said that. Now, hush. You don’t want to miss a chance to hear a lecture by the guy who first planted the seeds of doubt in Heisenberg’s mind, do you?” He straightened up and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “That special path I mentioned – the straight line in your clever little example – is what we see happening, because all the other paths we take cancel each other out.”
Rose was getting interested despite herself. “So – hang on a minute – there are these ghosts of ourselves taking every path except the one we’re actually taking? And they sort of… war amongst themselves and wind up not existing?”
The Doctor winced. “Well, that’s one way of putting it, I guess. You're lucky it's a fairly crude theory to begin with.” He twirled a knob experimentally; the light kept flashing.
"Well, what just happened? And why’s that light still blinking?”
The Doctor shrugged and pulled out the sonic screwdriver once more to point it experimentally at the light. “It shows that we’ve deviated from stationary action. We’re no longer on the special path – something curved our straight line. That’s the quantum slingshot.” There was a faint hum and a pop, and the indicator stopped flashing.
“What d’you mean, something?”
The Doctor was unscrewing the bulb of the indicator light from the console. “Something that can move deliberately through time and space. If something intercepts us in the Vortex, blocks one of our potential paths, even if it’s not the one we’re actually taking-“
“Then they stop cancelling out,” Rose finished. “That’s not good, is it?”
“Well, it just means that we’ve been jolted off course on a very fundamental level.” He shook the light next to his ear and frowned. "Doesn't sound like anything's loose, but can't hurt to check, right?" He bent down and opened a panel under the console, eventually emerging with a box of fresh bulbs.
Rose filed away a joke about Time Lords and light bulbs for future use. "What you said sounds sort of plausible, though, I guess."
The Doctor grimaced and set about replacing the bulb. "Rose Tyler, your faith in my scientific ability is astounding."
Rose ignored him. "But what I really want to know is why you think this is so impossible!"
The Doctor tensed; the light bulb slipped into place and began flashing again. Rose realized that he was again weighing his options, deciding how much to tell her.
“It’s funny,” he said after a moment, voice strained. Rose, uncomfortable, turned to watch the light blink. “This little indicator should’ve been rendered obsolete. Never thought I'd see it light up again."
"Why's that?" Rose prodded gently. The Doctor exhaled, and she knew that he'd decided to tell her everything. A small, traitorous part of her was terrified at the thought that he'd started to trust her that much.
He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands now that the bulb had been replaced, so he set to fiddling with the controls once more. "The lights were originally used as a sort of… air-traffic control for Time Lords. So if someone intersects one of your quantum paths, you’re aware of it when you materialize and you can make corrections."
Rose felt realization dawn. "You said this could only be caused by something moving deliberately through time and space." He met her gaze, and she asked the question they both knew came next. “You think it could be another TARDIS?”
He shrugged, all dishevelled hair and wild eyes. “It couldn’t be,” he said. “Bit of space junk, that’s all.”
Rose frowned. “But-“
He spun toward her and raised a hand. “It cannot be another TARDIS,” he said, and his voice shook with the effort of controlling it. “This is the last.”
There was a moment of silence during which Rose forgot to breathe.
“Okay,” she said at last. He was still watching her, wary and unsure. “Okay,” she repeated.
“All right,” he said, and cleared his throat.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He took a deep breath.
Rose touched his shoulder. “Come on, then. Can’t miss those fountains!”
The Doctor looked up, and his grin wasn't quite as exuberant as usual, but it was a step in the right direction. “Right! Fountains. Although…”
Rose grimaced. “Although?”
“Although I suppose it’s just within the realm of possibility that we’ve landed elsewhere.”
Rose smiled and took his hand in hers. “'Course it is. Let’s find out where – and when – we've wound up, shall we?”
The Doctor squeezed her hand. "Thank you," he said after a moment, then pushed the TARDIS door open a crack.
Rose peered into the darkness, into the black gash cut across the warm comfort of the control room. "Looks sort of dark, doesn't it?"
The Doctor grinned at her dubious expression, eyes alive again. “What do you say? It’s probably just night-time out there, hey?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “With our luck?”
The Doctor quirked an eyebrow, Rose stuck out her tongue, and together, hand in hand, they stepped through the TARDIS door into the darkness beyond.
“It’s all over now!” bellowed a powerful voice that, Rose suspected, probably didn’t belong to a highly intelligent tuna. “We’ve got you surrounded!”
In unison, the Doctor and Rose raised their hands. This, Rose thought as she squinted into the blackness, was getting off to a bad – but not entirely unexpected – start.
Just as the Doctor had cleared his throat to speak, there was an explosion of light and sound overhead. Rose dragged him with her to the ground as the echoes reverberated. There was screaming from somewhere nearby. The Doctor released her hand and she covered her head as best she could.
The silence that followed echoed nearly as loudly as the explosion. Somebody coughed.
Rose reached out blindly and managed to snatch the Doctor’s hand in hers. “Where are we?” she hissed.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m dying to find out,” he said, voice brimming with excitement. Rose made a face at his choice of words. "Wherever we are," he continued, "it's probably not Myrthdor."
“Oh, you noticed the lack of fountains, did you?” Rose began, but was cut off by another volley of blasts – these much nearer. Orders were being bellowed from somewhere behind them.
“It’s a war-zone,” the Doctor murmured when the noise had died away again.
“The floor’s sticky,” Rose observed, then froze as a sudden thought occurred to her. “Oh, it’s not… it’s not blood, is it?”
The Doctor shifted, and Rose winced as she realized what he was doing. “No, no, tastes sweet. Sort of. Really dirty.”
“Sometimes,” Rose muttered, “you can be very, very alien.”
In the absence of light, she felt the Doctor’s grin. “So can you,” he said, and there was a hint of pride in his voice.
Before she could begin to puzzle out a reply, a gunshot echoed quite nearby. Rose jumped, and heard a few other stifled gasps. There was a faint source of light behind them, she realized, but she knew that turning around meant presenting herself as a target. Not a good plan, then.
“See, that’s what I mean,” the Doctor murmured. “It’s all wrong. The echoes are too quick. I don’t smell smoke. Or blood. We’re in an enclosed space, but this feels like a whole battlefield.” There was moaning and crying close by. Rose shivered.
“Bigger on the inside,” she muttered.
“Sort of,” the Doctor said. “I think it’s simpler than that.” And, without warning, he got to his feet.
Rose grabbed at his hand. “What are you doing?” she hissed, terror making her voice louder than she’d intended.
“Oi!” someone shouted. “Down in front!”
There was a loud crack and the Doctor gasped. Rose reached for him as he sank back down to his knees. “Doctor!” He was shaking, and she pulled him closer, frantic, feeling for missing limbs or bruises or-
She froze as she touched something cold and wet on his shoulder.
In the next instant, she realized that he was laughing silently.
“Doctor?” she patted his shoulder tentatively.
He gave a startled snort of mirth. “Careful, that’s cold!”
“What are you-“
“It’s a first,” the Doctor was saying, still giggling. “A real first. I have never, in all my centuries of travelling, had somebody throw their drink at me.”
Rose froze as realization dawned. Behind them, the lights grew brighter – she could now make out the cushions of a row of seats in front of them. Rising carefully to a low crouch, she turned around.
A larger-than-life, unrealistically handsome face was barking orders at several ragged rows of soldiers.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she breathed. The Doctor held up the offending cup of pop and rattled the remaining ice cubes with a grin. She sank down on the floor beside him with a groan. “We’re at the bloody cinema!”
She heard him stifle another laugh. “I know!”
“Would you two please stop fooling around up there?” a middle-aged woman behind them snapped, all greying hair and pink frills. “Some of us are trying to enjoy the film!”
Rose and the Doctor exchanged a grin. “Off the floor, then,” she murmured, and they shifted to the seats behind them as inconspicuously as possible.
The Doctor seemed to be having trouble containing his snickers, so Rose thought it best to assist him with an elbow to the ribs. He cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he whispered, as insincere as she’d ever heard him.
“I’m not the one with grape pop all over his suit,” she pointed out.
He paused, then wiped anxiously at his shoulder. “You’re not serious. Grape? Oh, that’ll stain. That’ll never come out.”
It was Rose’s turn to giggle as he pulled a small handkerchief from his pocket and started scrubbing vigorously.
“Really, this isn’t a ruddy comedy!” the woman behind them snapped. “Would you either shut up or get out?” Rumbles of agreement echoed her ultimatum.
“Must be a pretty good film,” the Doctor mused.
Rose squinted into the darkness and could just make out the outline of the TARDIS near one of the front exits, nestled inconspicuously in a corner of the room. “Hang on,” she said. “How come nobody noticed the TARDIS’s arrival?”
Yet another volley of explosions, complete with blinding bursts of light, echoed her words.
“Oh,” she added, cleverly.
The Doctor was leaning forward, staring intently at the screen. “Judging by the quality of effects here,” he murmured, “I think we’re just a few years into your future.”
“Really?” Rose squinted at the screen. “How can you tell? Looks the same as any big-name action film back in 2006.”
The Doctor shrugged. “Simple enough. The little bits of fire in each explosion follow a pattern based on a fifth-order polynomial. Any higher than that and you get singularities and whatnot, and the simulation just looks ridiculous. This is the height of visual effects until, oh, 2013. I’d put us at-“ he frowned thoughtfully. “2010. Last week of April, in fact.”
Rose blinked. “How on Earth can you know all that, based on the effects?”
He grinned and held up his arm so his watch was visible. “I checked the time before we left.”
She couldn’t suppress a giggle, and there was an angry grumble from the woman behind them. “Near-future, then,” Rose whispered.
“Right.”
“On Earth?" she thought it prudent to ask.
“Looks that way. Somewhere in London, even.” At her questioning glance, he shrugged. “Judging by the angry woman’s accent.”
“Oi, you two!” They turned in unison to face the source of this latest recrimination – a short, round, pimply-faced teenager with flaming red hair was striding down the aisle toward them, brandishing his flashlight emphatically. “You want to either stop your snogging or shove off?”
The Doctor winced and ran a hand back through his hair. “Listen-“ Rose saw him squint at the usher’s nametag, which was barely visible in the flickering light of the soldiers' campfire. “Matt, there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding here.”
“I will call my manager,” the adolescent – Matt – sniffed, drawing himself up to his rather unimpressive height.
The Doctor grinned. “Now, now, there’s no call for that.” He dug into his pocket for the psychic paper. “You see, we’re-“
He froze, and Rose followed his gaze. Some distance behind the young man, next to the screen, a figure shrouded in robes was standing with arms folded. She was quite certain that it hadn’t been there a few moments ago.
“Who’s your friend, then?” the Doctor queried. There was another explosion on screen, complete with desperate screams. Rose blinked at the flash of light.
When the darkness had settled again, the figure had disappeared. “Doctor,” she said.
“I know.” He was frowning now, reaching for his sonic screwdriver. “Something’s definitely gone wrong, here.”
Matt sighed and gestured wearily with his flashlight. “Seriously, I don’t give a shit what you two are doing. I don’t care whether you snuck in. Just clear off, all right? Before people start asking for their money back.”
“It’s a little late for that!” bellowed the woman behind them, waving her purse in the air like a warrior's scimitar. A few muted grumbles echoed her proclamation.
The Doctor, ignoring the theatrics around him, had pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and was holding it horizontally, watching the flash of the blue light. Rose couldn’t resist smiling sweetly over her shoulder at the near-apoplectic woman, who sniffed and scowled in reply.
“A laser pointer, too?” Matt groaned. “Trudy put you up to this, didn’t she? Trying to get me fired?” He snatched the sonic screwdriver from the Doctor’s hands.
“Hey!” The Doctor grabbed it back. “Believe me, you don’t want to mess with that.” He scowled down at the tool. “You’ve got your grubby little fingerprints all over it and everything.”
“Did it pick up any traces of energy? Anything weird?” Rose enquired.
The Doctor shook his head. “Probably just someone else trying to sneak into the film. Someone with a fetish for cloaks. Probably a fantasy film playing somewhere, came in the wrong way.” He grinned weakly, and Rose was glad that he seemed unconvinced – the figure in the robes had certainly succeeded in giving her the creeps.
Matt had been listening to their conversation with growing consternation. “You know what?” he said finally, holding up his hands in mock-surrender. “Tell Trudy I don’t give a shit. She wins. I quit. This job’s a waste of time anyway.” He dropped the flashlight. At the same moment, a burst of brightness illuminated the screen - another grenade.
The Doctor inhaled sharply and stood. Rose blinked and touched his hand. “What is it?”
“I… I thought I saw-“
And then he was running straight at Matt, who was looking more startled and annoyed by the moment, and Rose finally saw what it was the Doctor had seen.
The figure, all cloaked in robes, was standing behind Matt, holding a long, thin, wickedly twisted sword.
That was never good.
By the time Rose had jumped to her feet, the Doctor had thrown himself at Matt, knocking him to the ground as the blade whistled harmlessly over their heads. Matt gave a bellow of indignation, and the screams on screen were beginning to meld with the startled cries of the audience. Rose’s eyes were caught by another tall, cloaked form, sprinting from the other side of the cinema. “Doctor!” she shouted. “There’s a second one!”
The Doctor was on his feet in an instant, but spun around as the sword streaked toward Matthew again. The second figure was upon them, now, and Rose lost sight of the Doctor for a moment as a series of blinding explosions lit up the screen. He shouted something that she couldn’t make out over the stereo sound. She ran toward him.
By the time the light had dimmed to a more reasonable level, she had reached the scene of the fray. Matt was sprawled on the ground, wide-eyed and shaking. The Doctor stood next to him, screwdriver in hand.
The cloaked figures were nowhere to be seen.
“Doctor!” she said, and his gaze met hers. She saw him tense for a moment, then relax as his eyes adjusted to the change in light. “Are you all right? What happened to the-“
“The Cultelli,” he said, eyes scanning the theatre.
Rose filed that one under ‘Things to Ask the Doctor When Out of Immediate Danger’. “All right then, the Cultelli. Where did they-“
“Their time ran out,” the Doctor said enigmatically.
“What the hell was that?” Matt squeaked from the floor.
“That,” the Doctor said, stuffing the sonic screwdriver into his pocket, “was an assassination attempt. And a pretty good job of it, too.”
“You’re shitting me,” Matt moaned. “What are you, gangbangers? Just leave me the hell alone, all right? I don’t want any part of this.”
“Stop whining,” the Doctor snapped.
There was something in his voice that dragged Rose’s fear back to the surface - and at that moment, she noticed that the Doctor had one arm tucked under his jacket.
She was at his side in an instant, and snatched at his hand. He gave a startled gasp and pulled away, but not before she'd noticed the torn fabric, dotted with something that definitely wasn't grape pop. “You’re hurt,” she said accusingly.
The Doctor tugged at his bloodied sleeve, then opened his mouth to speak, caught her gaze, and appeared to reconsider. “Yeah,” he said, “one of them caught me across the arm. It’s not serious.”
By the time he’d finished talking, Rose had taken over the unbuttoning of his cuff. Somebody had stopped the film at some point – the lights were up again, and a small crowd had gathered around them.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” a woman volunteered meekly.
“No, it’s all right,” the Doctor said with a forced grin. “Worse than it looks, spilled a bit of ketchup on there earlier today. Or was it chocolate sauce?”
Rose had rolled his sleeve up to the elbow – she could hear her pulse thrumming in her ears as she inspected the long slice across his forearm. Blood was seeping steadily from the wound, and she wished she’d paid more attention to the medical dramas her Mum devoured on the telly. She couldn't recall having seen the Doctor bleed before - would two hearts make things better or worse? “This is deep,” she diagnosed at last, feeling terribly useless. “You need to get this looked at.” She reached into his pocket and retrieved his grape-stained handkerchief, wrapping it around the wound to staunch the bleeding. He grimaced at the contact.
“Well,” somebody said, “I’m calling the cops.” A balding man with spectacles was punching numbers on his cell phone, a smart little orange thing that Rose supposed was practically an antique by now.
“No cause for that!” the Doctor protested. He reached into his pocket in a dramatic motion that had the unfortunate effect of jolting his injured arm. Rose touched his shoulder when he swayed, and for a terrible moment she thought he was on the verge of fainting. “See?” he gasped at last, snatching the psychic paper from his pocket and brandishing it at the crowd, who immediately appeared duly impressed. "Right," he whispered to her, "action movie fans. This could be fun." He raised his voice. "MI-6! You really don’t want to mess with us, you’ll blow our cover.”
“Yeah,” Rose added, following his lead. “Drug cartel and all that.” She sought out the man who’d threatened to call the police and captured his gaze. “You don’t want to be held responsible for the failure of our mission, do you?”
“Well, no,” the man stammered, looking thrilled and terrified all at once. “No, I don’t. Of course I don’t. I’ll keep it a secret, of course I will. You can count on me, you can!”
“I think that we should probably get out of here sooner rather than later,” the Doctor hissed under his breath. "We don't know when the Cultelli will decide to make a return visit." Rose swallowed hard and scanned the crowd.
“You,” she said finally, pointing to Matt. There was a smudge of blood on her hand, the Doctor’s blood, and she had to swallow again before continuing. “Do you have somewhere we can go? We need to debrief.”
“Oh, sod off,” Matt grumbled, getting to his feet. “I’m finished with this.”
“That wasn’t a request,” she snapped. “Don’t think I won’t jump at the chance to arrest you for your part in all this. It won’t be pretty, arrested by MI-6.”
Matt met her gaze, and his eyes were frightened for a moment before teenage rebellion reasserted itself. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine, then. We’ll drop by my flat.” He unpinned his nametag, threw it to the ground next to his abandoned flashlight, and stalked off toward one of the exits at the front of the theatre.
The Doctor smirked and pulled away from her grasp, tucking his wounded arm back under his jacket, and together they followed the boy. As they approached the exit, she shot a glare back at the man with the cell phone, just in case. He winked and tapped the side of his nose. She grimaced.
“Quick thinking,” the Doctor whispered, and Rose managed a faint grin in reply. “We need to watch the boy,” he continued after a moment. “He’s in terrible danger.” Rose glanced up at his drawn features, but no further information seemed forthcoming.
Matt at least had the decency to hold the door open for them. The air was fresh and cold and smelled of rain and stale car exhaust, though the street looked deserted apart from a few parked vehicles that Rose suspected were deceptively fuel-efficient. She turned to Matt. “How far is it?”
“Just down the block,” Matt said. Now that he wasn't struggling to assert his authority in front of a panicking group of moviegoers, he seemed to have wilted a few inches. At some point, he'd stuffed his hands into his pockets, and he scowled at the road as they walked. Rose couldn't help smiling when she noticed the way he kept darting glances over his shoulder at them. Finally, he planted his feet and took a deep breath. “You really MI-6?"
The Doctor grinned and produced the psychic paper once more. Matt stared at it, then pulled a pair of large glasses from his pocket and squinted at it again. He looked, Rose couldn't help noticing, like some sort of overgrown insect with bad skin.
"Wow," was his eventual conclusion. He handed the paper back to the Doctor with a nervous grin. "You know what? Trudy’s bloody well never gonna believe this! Mysterious blokes all dressed in black trying to kill me, and I’m rescued by bloody MI-6!”
As they started walking again, the Doctor caught Rose's hand in his. "You know what?" he whispered, breath tickling her ear. She shivered. "I think we've got a few more tricks up our sleeve that Trudy's never gonna believe."
"Probably just as well, then," she said, stopping so suddenly that he had to sidestep to avoid running into her.
He followed her gaze to where Matt was in mid-step, awkwardly balanced on the toes of one foot, staring down the length of an elegantly twisted sword. The figure at the less deadly end of the weapon had its hooded face turned toward them. What the threat lacked in subtlety, it more than made up for in effectiveness.
"Oh," the Doctor said in a small voice. "That's not good, then."
And then the figure spoke, and it was a child's voice that echoed from the robes. "What did you do?"
The Doctor and Rose exchanged glances. "Excuse me?" he said at last.
The figure poked its sword closer to Matt, who swayed alarmingly, on the verge of losing his balance. "What did you do?" the shrill voice persisted.
"What did I do?" the Doctor parroted, dumbfounded.
There was a sob from the depths of the cloak. "Where's my Dad? What’ve you done with my Dad?"
End Part I
Coming soon – Part II: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, in which secret agents are revealed to have perplexing codenames, journeys are begun, and Napoleon is, rather awkwardly, explained.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-07-13 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 06:48 am (UTC)Simply, it makes me happy. Oh, and this line? You don’t want to miss a chance to hear a lecture by the guy who first planted the seeds of doubt in Heisenberg’s mind, do you? I don't know if I told you before, but I still think it's made out of all things spiffy. *grin*
Very much looking forward to the next bit! And, you know what? I think I'll do so. *happiness*
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Date: 2007-07-13 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 01:47 pm (UTC)Can't wait to read more!
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Date: 2007-07-13 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 03:38 pm (UTC)Hope the next part meets your expectations! :D
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Date: 2007-07-13 03:39 pm (UTC)(And I love that icon veddy much!)
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Date: 2007-07-13 03:43 pm (UTC)Re: the Heisenberg line - I'm such a terrible nerd. :D Nerdy jokes are really the only jokes I know. *nodnod*
You with your sneak-previewing beta-y superpowers! Hope you enjoy the next chapter as well - for some reason, I like it better. I'm also extremely nervous about the point of view in which it's written, but, y'know. I'll let you tell me how it works! *grin*
(I love that icon, by the way. TARDIS + field + clouds + blue, blue sky = undeniable win!)
And, in case I don't say it enough, THANK YOU for being such an awesome beta. This calls for gold stars and cheese!
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Date: 2007-07-13 03:47 pm (UTC)Um.
Yes, where was I?
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed - and like I mentioned earlier, because this is my first non-drabbly Who!fic, it feels extra-nice to know that I've got the banter right. I'm also glad it was fairly unpredictable - I'm such a sucker for surprise endings that having people know what happens next makes me very nervous. And I'm glad you like my geeky brand of humour, too! :D
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Date: 2007-07-13 03:51 pm (UTC)I think the snarky Doctor/Rose banter is one of my favourite parts of the show, so I'm really relieved that it's apparently worked out in this fic!
And danger? Oh, there'll be plenty of opportunities for them to pull together from here on in. *evil grin*
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Date: 2007-07-13 03:52 pm (UTC)Hope you enjoy future chapters as well - this going to be a long, long fic. *grin*
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Date: 2007-07-13 03:54 pm (UTC)And like I keep saying, every time I see that I've got the "voices" all right, I heave a huge sigh of relief - this is my first non-drabble fic in this fandom, so it's nice to know I didn't totally screw it up. :D
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Date: 2007-07-13 03:57 pm (UTC)I was extremely nervous about the quantum discussion, so it was nice to hear it worked out - I have a tendency to be a bit of a walking textbook in any discussion having to do with the stuff I study. Of course, it's basically crack!science in the first place, so the amount of sense it makes is all relative. *wink*
As for the gradual reveal of the cinema, my beta deserves a huge amount of credit for that - originally, I revealed it quite a bit earlier, which wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. :D
Glad to hear you're looking forward to more - there will be many, many more chapters!
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Date: 2007-07-13 04:01 pm (UTC)I miss Nine too, but wasn't quite sure I could pull off his voice back when I started planning this fic (about, um, two months ago now). Thus, we get Ten/Rose as a consolation prize!
And like I keep saying, I'm absolutely thrilled that the banter turned out all right - this is my first non-drabble Who!fic, and the dialogue was my primary concern. The more I write, the more it becomes a bit more natural, so it should improve a bit as the fic progresses. Hopefully. *grin*
Glad you're looking forward to the rest - there's plenty more to come! :D
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Date: 2007-07-13 10:43 pm (UTC)And now so do I, so I'm heading down to the Long John SilverFish for dinner. But first, thought I'd let you know that I'm liking this -- reads like an episode.
~
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Date: 2007-07-14 02:33 am (UTC)I do exactly the same thing ... and it's fun to have some crack!science. I had quite a lot of fun with one particular chapter of my current WIP in which I pretty much just make up a lot of chemistry. Heh.
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Date: 2007-07-14 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-14 04:10 pm (UTC)And making up chemistry sounds like way too much fun - the only thing I can really do at all convincingly is make up atmospheric processes. Geeks unite!
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Date: 2007-07-14 04:12 pm (UTC)Speaking of flavours, hope you enjoyed your fish and chips!
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Date: 2007-07-14 04:16 pm (UTC)Also glad the quantum theory bits weren't too boring - I've never really written much sci-fi and was basing the crack!science almost entirely on a gruelling-but-mind-numbing mechanics course I took last year. I didn't want any echoes of my professor's monotone seeping in, after all.
And, like I never stop saying, I'm really happy this read a bit like an ep, since it's my first non-drabbley Who!fic and that's a bit of a nerve-wracking experience. So: yay! And also: thanks again! :D
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Date: 2007-07-14 04:16 pm (UTC)Oooh! Oooh! ::bounces::
That's exactly what I'm doing. No spoilers for the story in that, because my first chapter references the atmospheric converters used for the planetary modification project. I pulled heavily for said crack!science from this site on terraforming and this patent about the production and use of hexafluoroethane.
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:08 pm (UTC)Ooh! *flails*
You have no idea how geekishly excited I am by that! :D I'm halfway through a degree in atmospheric science, so anything and everything related to, well, stuff above the ground makes me way more excited than I should be. :D
I must read this story of yours!
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:17 pm (UTC)As geekishly excited as I was to see that you mentioned atmospheric science in the first place. :)
I'll shamelessly pimp it then: The Hidden Well.
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:24 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to reading all your fic - it's actually been on my to-do list for a while, now. :D
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Date: 2007-07-16 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:20 pm (UTC)Thank you! :)
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Date: 2007-07-17 05:48 am (UTC)I also enjoyed the lighthearted take on the Doctor and Rose- burst out laughing at the psychic paper.
A couple nitpicks- if the late hour hasn't clouded my mind, there are a few North Americanisms in the dialogue- whine instead of whinge and (probably) movie instead of film are teh ones I caught. Also- this won't make much difference but- the 'coming soon' part would flow nicer with less commas:
"...and Napoleon is rather awkwardly explained."
The "rather awkwardly" could be bracketised instead.
And in other matters...I knew you sounded Canadian! And Albertan? Did you catch any glimpses of baseball-sized hail a couple days ago, or did you miss that?
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Date: 2007-07-17 02:53 pm (UTC)Re: the quantum mechanics - yeah, it's a pretty dodgy explanation at best, but I didn't want to get into Noether's theorem (for every symmetry of the Lagrangian, there is a conserved quantity - it makes my little geeky heart go pit-a-pat because it actually explains conservation of energy, linear and angular momentum, and all that good stuff), for the simple reason that I didn't want to have to explain the Lagrangian and start pulling out differential equations. :D It's a vastly simplified concept, provided with no explanation whatsoever - but then, that's what the Doctor's famous for!
(Besides, I've only got a couple of courses on the subject under my belt and didn't want to embarrass myself totally. Heehee.)
Re: the 'coming soon' - I generally avoid paranthetical-type stuff as much as possible in my actual writing (my LJ entries, as you can see, are the exception to the rule), because I dislike the interruption to flow. However, I'm willing to concede that this a situation where even my oh-so-favourite dashes would be inadequate. Thanks! :D
Okay, yes. Other matters! Alas, I missed the baseball-sized hail (me being a weather geek and all, I felt the loss keenly) - I live too far North. A friend of mine did do a bit of lazy stormchasing (of the five-minute-drive variety) and caught a glimpse of a couple of funnel clouds, though!
I keep meeting Albertans on LJ! :D The other month, I came across a Holmes!fic that actually featured my university. Many double-takes were had. It's a small Internet.
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Date: 2007-07-18 01:40 am (UTC)I generally avoid paranthetical-type stuff as much as possible in my actual writing because I dislike the interruption to flow.
Ah! That was my mistake- I meant that the sentence would work without the commas around "rather awkward", and parentheses were another option. I also tend to coin words past 10PM, it would seem.
Funnel clouds?! We're in Calgary for the Stampede, saw the sky go black as night, but didn't see anything drastic. How I would (and wouldn't) want to be that friend of yours XD
A small Internet, indeed. =)
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Date: 2007-07-20 03:43 pm (UTC)Hey, I'm a firm believer in the fact that initiative usually trumps age and/or experience! (Also, being the daughter of two librarians means that I squee whenever I hear of a library being put to good use. :D)
If you don't mind my asking, which podcasts did you listen to? I've sort of lost the ability to justify taking further quantum mechanics in my degree (my advisor's already looking at me funny for having taken some of this stuff in the first place), and I'd love to keep it up. If you've read any good books on the topic, too, I'd welcome suggestions! :)
Y'know, I've still never been to the Stampede - it seems like it always works out that I'm out of town or working or, y'know, something. Closest I come is Westerner Days (and, this year, Capital Ex).
I'm with you on the would/wouldn't want to see funnel clouds. On the one hand: yay interesting weather! On the other: ack! Interesting weather of the deadly variety! But I would like to see something dramatic on the 20th anniversary of the Edmonton tornado. Just 'cause. :D
In honour of this small internet, would you object to my random!friending you?
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Date: 2007-07-20 11:29 pm (UTC)Hahaha, the earlier the more time there is to learn. And infect friends. =D
If you don't mind my asking, which podcasts did you listen to? ...If you've read any good books on the topic, too, I'd welcome suggestions! :)
I don't mind at all! The more the merrier.
I've mentioned The Elegant Universe already; and highly recommend both the book and the miniseries that you can watch here. The miniseries (3 hours) gives a more general rundown than the book, but they both complement each other (and the series has great graphics).
Other books:
Flatterland by Ian Stewart- more of a math book, a 'sequel' to the classic Flatland (Abbott).
Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd- quantum computing.
A Brief History of Time if you haven't already read it, and the updates (+ shiny full colour pictures) in A Briefer History of Time.
For elsewhere in physics:
The Science of Discworld by Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen and Terry Pratchett- it's similar to A Short History of Nearly Everything in style, I'd imagine; I still have to get around to reading the latter.
The Sky is Not the Limit by Neil deGrasse Tyson- a very entertaining autobiography of sorts.
Podcasts:
CBC's Quirks and Quarks (you probably have already heard a few episodes on the radio)
NPR's Science Friday
PBS: NOVA and NOVA scienceNOW
Brain Food
Hope that helps XD I'm considering going into quantum mechanics myself, perhaps quantum computing. But it's going to be a long road.
As to friending, I must have been distracted myself, or I would have asked earlier XD I would not object at all. *adds* =)
Oh, if you have time to spare and don't mind driving a couple hours or so on Saturday night, the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory just a bit south of Calgary is holding their monthly open house. (Their next is on August 18). I thought you might be interested, though it focuses more on astronomy than quantum/particle physics.
Myself, I don't know if I can resist mocking all my HP-obsessive friends tomorrow.
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Date: 2007-07-23 04:37 pm (UTC)If you're thinking of going into quantum mechanics, and if you're at all considering taking courses at the U of A, I'd just like to caution you that the Physics program here is a wee bit disorganized. Well, quite a bit disorganized. The prerequisites are all in the wrong order - first-year Physics basically requires third-year differential equations, which is frustrating unless you're an engineer and see some of this stuff before anyone else. Of course, if you're good at math and aren't easily discouraged, it's an amazing program (I actually got to study with one of Hawking's closest collaborators - he got a thank-you in "A Brief History of Time"!).
So, um, yeah. *stops advertising* One of my roommates just finished a degree in applied physics and hated every minute of it because she let herself get discouraged from day one. I, on the other hand, have taken five calculus-based physics courses and loved them all. It's all about the attitude, and with your enthusiasm I'm sure it won't be a problem. :D
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Date: 2007-07-23 11:49 pm (UTC)As to university, I was actually considering going farther from home: U of Waterloo, U of T, or down to California. I'm currently looking over Waterloo- especially since there'd be opportunity to take in some public lectures and events at the Perimeter Institute.
From your description though, U of A sounds a bit like the IB program, especially the part about attitude and enthusiasm XD. UA is on my list as backup, as is U of C. (I'd have a bit of advantage at U of C, since I'm roughly familiar with the campus and a few of the faculty.)
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Date: 2007-07-24 02:11 am (UTC)I was originally looking at McGill for my undergrad, but it came down to the U of A having a similar program, being geographically closer to the severe weather I'd be studying, and offering me a heckuva lot more money. :D McGill's my first choice for grad school, though (unless Cambridge wants to give me a full scholarship! *bats eyelashes prettily and enters the final phase of self-deception: utter madness*)!
Ooh, IB! I would've been a full IB kid if it weren't for the conflicts with French Immersion - as it was, I could only take English and a bit of Chemistry. But I really did enjoy it!
A big part of university is rolling with the punches. I wrote a seven-page Mechanics assignment last year that came back with nothing more than an X across the front page and a 30% in the corner. It was a pretty common sort of thing in that class, and I actually know a few people who dropped it and wound up changing their major to avoid ever having to take it. *winces* But I learned so much interesting stuff in that course! That was my first real glimpse of wave equations! And quantum mechanics! I would never have given that up just because my marks were a bit lower! (And hey - worked out in the end with a B+.)
Anyway. I've been working on writing a guide-to-university for one of my friends, which explains all my rambling here. Sorry! :D
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Date: 2007-07-28 01:30 am (UTC)*nods* I heard of UW through those math contests- they're almost always sponsored by Waterloo, it seems. Well known for the math and computer science department, so I might focus on CS there if I decide to go...*shrugs* We'll see how things work out.
Ooh, IB! I would've been a full IB kid if it weren't for the conflicts with French Immersion - as it was, I could only take English and a bit of Chemistry. But I really did enjoy it!
I would have been full IB as well, but that would have meant choosing between Chem and CS. And taking English IB. Which I did not want to do. XD As it is, I have close to full- 5 courses, by the end of grade 12, hopefully. I'm half looking forward to and half dreading this coming year, now...
But oh, it is fun! Disregarding the marks anyway. The teachers I've had so far are brilliant (barring English. I think there's a trend.) and it feels like I've learnt more this last semester than in a full year in junior high...
I agree though- I'd never give up a course just because my marks are lower than in other classes (and quitting IB at my school is just short of terrifying).
I appreciate info I get on university, though XD
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Date: 2007-07-28 02:53 am (UTC)*adds Computing Science to the List of Degrees to Get After Winning the Lottery, after Astrophysics, Organic Chemistry, and English Literature*
I'm still a bit bitter over Chem IB - the French Immersion coordinator messed up and scheduled French 20 at the same time as Chem 25 IB, so I only got the one course of IB goodness.
I adored the first part of English IB, because we had a prof from the U of A teaching 10 and 20. :D Absolutely brilliant guy. And then, of course, the lady we got for 30 was a bit of an airhead who photocopied Sparknotes of all our stuff and got pissed off if anyone had an original thought. *grumbles* At least for 35, I had someone who didn't just outright laugh in my face when I went on about a symbiotic emotional link between Meursault and the sun in "L'Etranger", or when I wrote one of my final essays about the similarities between the cracktastic Argentinian novel we studied and Oedipus Rex. Heehee. I drove her a bit nuts, though.
But, yes. If you have any queries about university, feel free to ask! *dusts off lapels* Feels so incredibly weird to be going into my third year already - I was picking up some transcripts today and wound up taking a confused-looking first-year Engineering student to see an advisor because he hadn't registered for any courses yet. *wince* Register for specific classes as early as you can, because freshmen always get last dibs on classes and lots of them do fill up pretty quickly. That said, don't panic if a class you want is full. I attended my second Calculus course for a week and a half before an opening came up and I officially registered. *grin*
...I'm doing it again, aren't I? I blame the Orientation training thing I did last year. That and I'm way too excited about university in general to ever shut up about it. Heehee.
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Date: 2007-08-15 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 05:04 pm (UTC)he needs a kiss to make it better
I'm sure we've got a considerable list of volunteers for the job! ;-)