SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Chapter Seventy Two

They found a McDonalds and ordered two bags filled with different things so they would have enough food to last them until the morning. When Rose got up to the drive-through window she talked briefly with the young lady inquiring whether there was an alternate route.

“We’re coming from Disney and we’re trying to leave before the hurricane hits,” she said. “But the traffic’s slowed on the motorway.”

“That’s because there’s construction going on a few miles up and there’s only one lane open,” she said.

“Great,” Rose muttered. “Is there another way around it?”

The woman gave her an alternate route that would take her around the construction site.

“After about ten miles, you should be able to get back on the interstate,” she said. “But I’d be careful since the rain is coming down in buckets.”

“I will and thanks so much,” Rose said.

She took the bags of food and rolled up the windows while she found a parking spot.

“Might as well stop and eat here for awhile,” she said, turning off the ignition. “Maybe the rain will let up a bit.”

“Rose, do you want me to drive?” Alan said.

She glanced at him.

“Can you drive through weather like this?”

“Can I drive through weather like this? You’re talking to the clone of the man who pilots the TARDIS single-handedly. Besides, even though I’m half human, I still have better eyesight than humans do. I think I’ll be able to see the road a bit better than you will.”

“Have at it then,” she said. “I’m not complaining if someone else wants to drive. What do you want to eat right now?”

“The Big Mac and chips,” Alan said.

She handed it to him.

“Awinita? What do you want?”

“Let me have the chicken sandwich and the French fries.”

She handed it to her and took another chicken sandwich for herself. Her eyes glanced up when the wind rocked the minivan and she looked back at Awinita.

“You said you’d been through a hurricane before, yeah?”

She nodded.

“It wasn’t this bad though. It was a category one so it didn’t do much damage. But the wind was this bad and there was a ton of rain. When it hit land it almost immediately got downgraded to a tropical storm so none of us were worried. There was a ton of flooding and a few trees were blown down but no one got hurt.”

“Well, as you can imagine, England doesn’t get things like this,” she said. “Which is why I’m a bit nervous about driving in it.”

“We don’t really worry about them unless they’re huge monsters like Andrew. We don’t get them in North Carolina all that often. At least not as often as Florida does. Most of the time they hit Florida or come up from the south and hit the Gulf States, not us. I wouldn’t worry about it, Rose. Once it hits land, it’ll die down. My worry would be if it went across Florida into the Gulf and picked up strength again and headed for Alabama or Mississippi or Louisiana. So, I would try to get out of Alabama as fast as I could too, at least get further inland where you’re not gonna get the full force of it. But then again, for awhile at least, you’re probably gonna get heavy rain and winds from this and possibly tornadoes.”

“Oh God, don’t even say that. I’ve seen that Twister movie before,” Rose said. “I’m not in the mood to deal with those either.”

“Look at it this way. Least we decided to keep the van,” Awinita said. “Think how bad it would be if we were walking.”

“Yes, makes me glad we did keep the van,” she said. “I s’pose we might have to keep it anyway since winter is coming on and we’re headin’ back North. Unless you two wanna go walking through snow and ice.”

“I don’t,” Alan said.

“Me neither.”

“Although, Rose,” Alan said. “As far as storms go this isn’t a big deal. The Doctor’s seen a lot worse. You know the Great Red Spot on Jupiter? That’s an anticyclone that’s constantly spinning across the planet and it’s bigger than three Earths combined. The Doctor went beneath the planet’s surface one time and viewed it on his monitor while he took measurements. When he measured it, the wind speeds were 620 kilometers an hour.”

“Jesus,” Rose said. “Yeah, you’re right; this hurricane does pale in comparison.”

“Fascinating thing. It’s been going nonstop for centuries, if not millennia. There is no true surface to the planet. It’s mainly composed of hydrogen with just a tiny amount of helium which is why the Doctor had to stay inside the TARDIS. No life forms exist there, at least none that the Doctor detected. On the other hand, you have Venus which has the sulfuric acid rains that I mentioned earlier. Those started because a volcano erupted in the 1970’s and it’s still going to this day. There is life there but they exist in subterranean cities and there are all sorts of nasty giant bugs that live there as well, hence the need for the Venusian Aikido, that and they’ve been invaded in the past by other civilizations.”

Awinita munched on her sandwich while she listened quietly. Her mind boggled. She had no idea there were other life forms on the other planets around Earth. She swallowed the bit of sandwich in her mouth.

“What about the other planets? Do they have aliens on them too?” she asked.

“Mercury doesn’t. It’s too close to the sun. Mars did at one point. That’s why the probes have found evidence of canals there. Ceres does, the Cerians have thick fur because it’s freezing cold there.”

“Ceres? I’ve never heard of that one,” Awinita said.

“It’s a dwarf planet between Mars and Jupiter. It’s in the asteroid belt there.”

“Oh, news to me,” Awinita said.

“Um, mentioned Jupiter…Saturn doesn’t, but its moon Titan does. Neptune doesn’t, Uranus doesn’t and Pluto did at one point, but now it doesn’t and the recently discovered planet, Eris does. They found it in 2003 and from what I’ve heard the residents there weren’t too pleased at being discovered by their backwater neighbors. They live underneath the surface though like the Venusians so they aren’t too worried about the probes spotting them. Course what I’m telling you applies to the other universe, I don’t know for sure about this universe which is why you might not have heard of Ceres before. It could be totally different here. We won’t know until we get the TARDIS and see for ourselves.”

“Where was Gallifrey?” Rose asked.

“Um, it was about 29,000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Kasterbourous.”

“Did anyone on Earth ever discover it?” Awinita asked.

Alan frowned.

“Mmmmm, I don’t think so, not to my knowledge,” he said. “Unless they did and they didn’t tell anyone they did.”

“I wish I had been able to see it,” Rose said. “From what you’ve told us, it sounded beautiful.”

Alan nodded.

“It was drier than Earth was but it had beautiful golden fields and red deserts and green and silver forests. It was lovely.”

“Too bad you don’t have a way to show it to us,” Awinita said.

Alan nodded. He munched on a French fry. Suddenly, he paused in mid-chew.

“Maybe I could…” he muttered.

Rose glanced at him.

“Alan?”

“It might be possible…”

“What might be possible?” Awinita said.

“Donna took a part of my Time Lord mind, but perhaps, perhaps I still have the ability to see people’s memories and project my thoughts into other people’s minds. Rose, would you indulge me in a little experiment?”

Rose glanced at the downpour outside the car.

“I’m not in a rush,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“Well, you know that the Doctor was able to enter people’s minds on occasion and read their thoughts or set up mental blocks. If I can still do that, I can show you guys what Gallifrey looked like, among other things.”

He sat his food down on the floor behind his seat and Rose did the same.

“Now, I’m gonna try this on you since the Doctor’s read your mind before and you know what to expect. I’m gonna do the opposite though. I’m gonna send an image into your mind and I want you to tell me if you see something, alright?”

“Alright,” Rose said, nodding.

“Just relax and clear your mind and then tell me the first thing that pops into your head,” he said.

“Okay, mind’s cleared.”

Awinita watched, fascinated, while Alan put his fingertips to her temples and closed his eyes. Rose closed her eyes and for a moment there was silence. Then, Rose began to giggle.

“What?” Alan said with his eyes still closed.

“Um, I see you in a pink frock holding a banana and hopping like a bunny while you’re singing “La,la,la” at the top of your lungs.”

“Brilliant, I can still do it!” Alan said happily.

Rose opened her eyes.

“That was the image you were projecting into my head?” she said, amused.

“Well, yeah, I had to make it so outrageous that you would know it didn’t come from your own mind,” he said, shrugging.

“Well, it worked because I never would have thought that up myself in a million years,” she said.

“Okay, now that I know it works, let me show you Gallifrey,” he said.

He put his fingertips against her temples and they both closed their eyes. There was another moment of silence and then a smile spread over Rose’s face.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, softly. “That domed city. Is that the Citadel you talked about?”

“Yes.”

He leaned back and took his hands away.

“Show Awinita,” Rose said.

He looked at her.

“D’ya wanna see?” he asked.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not in the least. Normally, I would ask you to imagine a door closing on any memories you don’t want me to see but I’m only going to be projecting a memory into your head, not seeing into yours, and I would never intrude where you didn’t want me to go.”

“Okay, I’ll try it,” Awinita said, setting her food aside.

He shifted around in the seat until he was almost facing her.

“Just close your eyes, relax and clear your mind and just trust the first image that comes into your mind,” he said.

“Okay.”

She closed her eyes and Alan put his fingertips to her temples. Rose watched while the same smile spread over her face.

“Whoa, that’s cool,” she said while she kept her eyes closed. “That’s a freaky looking sky. But I love the silver trees. I wish we had that on Earth.”

“Yeah, me too,” Rose said.

She frowned.

“Why is the city in a dome? Is the air not breathable or something?” she asked.

“No, that was for protection from attack. The Citadel was the most important city on Gallifrey and it had a library that held all the recorded knowledge of the Time Lords, among other things, so they made sure it was fortified and protected from invasion.”

He paused a moment and then had an idea.

“Hold still, I want to show you what a Dalek and Davros look like since Rose and I mention them so often,” he said.

“Okay.”

There was another moment of silence and then Awinita giggled.

“Oh my God, are those Daleks?” she said.

“Yup.”

“Is that a plunger on the front of them?”

Alan smiled.

“Yup, it is.”

Awinita laughed.

“What’d they do, rotor rooter you to death?”

“No, unfortunately, the Daleks weren’t quite that harmless,” he said.

He showed her an image of a Dalek killing someone with its laser.

“Ouch!” she said. “You can see his whole skeleton.”

“Yup. Now here’s Davros.”

Awinita made a face.

“Ugh, the guy looks like he’s been out in the sun too long,” she said. “Ick! No wonder the guy created things that do nothing but kill. He’s probably bitter because he can’t get laid.”

Both Alan and Rose roared with laughter.

“Well,” Awinita said, opening her eyes. “He’s dog ugly and he’s probably pent up and horny. And since no one in his right mind will screw him, he went off and created these Daleks to kill everything and get revenge for him.”

“Wow, that’s an interesting theory,” Alan said. “Disturbing, but oddly enough it makes sense in a weird, twisted way. I just hope I can get the image of Davros cruising singles bars out of my head now. But now you know what we’re talking about whenever we talk about him or the Daleks.”

“Thanks. I’ve seen the Cybermen before since there was this huge debate awhile back on whether they were alive or not, so I knew what those were when you mentioned them but not the Daleks. It’s hard to believe something that goofy looking is so dangerous. I can’t get over them having a plunger. Did Davros just go around his house and build the first one out of odds and ends or something?”

“Who knows?” Alan said. “I wouldn’t put it past the nutter.”

“Not trying to bother you since you discovered you still had this neat little gift, but could you show me what the TARDIS looks like and then I’ll stop asking you to show me stuff.”

Alan nodded. He put his fingertips back up to her temples.

“Mind you, this is how his TARDIS looks. Ours won’t look the same way since our chameleon circuit will be functioning.”

He closed his eyes and showed her the outside of the TARDIS.

“Hmm, that’s a police box?”

“Yes. And this is what it looks like on the inside.”

“Whoa!” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Cool, love the way it looks.”

She frowned.

“Is that the Doctor dancing around the thing in the center like a maniac?” she said.

“Yes, he’s doing a jig around the console.”

“You what?” Rose said. “You’re making the Doctor dance around the console?”

“Just for illustration, dear,” he said as she laughed. “Merely showing her the Doctor in my own inimitable fashion.”

Awinita giggled hysterically.

“What now?” Rose asked.

“Um, you just came in the room and the Doctor stopped dancing and is now slowly stripping for you.”

“What?” Rose said as both of them laughed. “Alan, quit that!”

Awinita snickered.

“Now, Alan just came in, tapped him on the shoulder and thumped him on the head,” she said. “And now he’s stripping for you while the Doctor kinda spins around in a daze like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.”

“Alan Timelord, quit that!” Rose said as he sniggered.

“And now the Doctor and Alan are like circling around each other while you’re on your knees begging them to stop.”

Awinita raised her eyebrow.

“And now you’re all in some kind of Roman arena and they’re dressed as gladiators while you’re up in the stands in a toga telling them you’ll screw them both if they just stop fighting.”

“Alan!” Rose said as he laughed.

“No, Alan, keep going, this is entertaining,” Awinita said. “Um…now you’re all underwater and all of you are mermen and women and…”

She laughed.

“And Alan and the Doctor are slapping each other in the face with their fishtails while you swim around them screaming that you’ll shag them both.”

Alan giggled when Rose smacked his arm.

“Quit it!” she said, laughing.

“Okay, I’m stopping now,” Alan said, taking his fingertips away from Awinita’s forehead.

“Damn, I was enjoying that,” Awinita said as she and Alan picked up their food. “Better than any of those cheesy sci-fi movies we’ve been watching. You wanna raise money to go to the other Disneyworlds? Just charge people and let them see little movies you think up. You’ll get a lot more money than just selling pipe cleaner dolls.”

“For the love of God, don’t give him ideas,” Rose said as he laughed. “He’ll do it, I guarantee ya!”

“Aaaah, thanks for the laugh, Alan, that was great,” Awinita said, digging in her fry carton for a fry.

“No problemo, always happy to cheer up my friend on a rainy night,” he said.

By the time they finished eating the rain had eased up a bit although it was still heavy. Alan went to the back for a moment so Rose could switch to his seat without getting out. Once she was settled, he eased into the driver’s seat. He smiled as he picked up his Stitch and handed it to her.

“Here, my right hand man will keep you safe while I drive,” he said.

Rose smiled and held it to her body while Alan started up the car and turned on the windshield wipers and headlights. He paused a moment mentally going over the woman’s directions before he put the car into reverse and eased out of the parking spot

Back                         Home                              Doctor Who Main Page                          Next