THE GRAND TOUR OF OKLAHOMA

Chapter Ten

"At last," Rose said when they went inside the museum.

She looked back and saw Suri hovering around the entrance, looking in at them.

"He's persistant, I give him that," the Doctor said as they walked up to the admission desk. "But maybe he'll be gone by the time we finished with this."

They paid ten dollars each for admission and received a ticket and brochure. On the wall beside the desk was the same mission statement that had been written on the gate. They went around the corner and saw a woman and her two young children waiting by an elevator. A woman sitting on a stool by the elevator indicated for them to get in the queue behind them. They waited about five minutes and then the lady got up from the stool when the elevator opened. They got in with her and she closed the door.

"We are going to start the tour on the third floor," the lady said to them. "The tour will start the morning of April 19th and continue on as the events of that morning unfold. You will go from the bombing to the aftermath to the investigation to the trial of Timothy McVeigh. When the elevator doors open, you'll start at 7:00 am on the morning of April 19th."

The doors opened and everyone stepped out into a large room. On the right side of the room was a large blow up of Oklahoma City with a caption above it that said, A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER DAY. On a little plaque at the side was a listing of the weather forecast for that day that included a chance of severe thunderstorms. The rest of the room had a listing of the businesses and government facilities that had been in the Murrah Building as they headed back towards a set of wooden double doors, they stopped at a huge blow up of a surveillance camera photo from a nearby hotel of the Ryder truck speeding towards the Murrah building five minutes before the bomb went off. Then they walked over to a wooden scale model of all the buildings that were in the area. A woman used a laser pointed to point out the Murrah Building, a Water Resources building that was next to it as well as the Athenian Building. She was telling them that Timothy McVeigh parked the Ryder Truck in front of the Murrah Building and walked off towards his getaway car located three blocks away at the YMCA. The bomb went off when he was halfway there and he continued walking to his car, got in and drove off. While she was talking, Rose glanced up at a large photo behind her and winced. She tapped the Doctor's arm and he looked at her as she pointed to it.

"Says that was taken in the daycare a few days before the bombing," she whispered as she pointed to a photo of three children riding a toy train. "Oh, those poor children."

The Doctor nodded and put his arm around her. The woman finished talking and pointed to a door off to the right.

"You need to stay in here until the presentation finishes," she said to them. "The doors on the other side of the room will open automatically afterwards and then you're free to finish the tour on your own. What you're about to hear is the only known recording of the actual explosion. It was caught on tape that morning from a hearing room in the Water Resources building while a hearing was going on. A man was trying to obtain permission to drill for water on his property. The meeting started at 9 a.m. and two minutes in, you'll hear the bomb go off."

She walked over, opened the door and ushered everyone inside. The room had a long wooden table with a prop tape recorder and microphone. Behind the table was a large monitor that was designed to look like a window. Across from that was a long leather seat that went from one side of the wall to the other. Everyone sat down and the lady closed the door. They heard a recorded announcement that the recording would begin in a moment and then they heard someone shuffling papers and a woman announcing who she was and why they were at the hearing today. They listened while she asked the man for his name and how to spell it. Then suddenly, they heard a tremendous explosion in the background and the lights dimmed as photographs of the 168 people who died flashed on the monitor, as the explosion died down, the photos dimmed and while they heard the yells and screams, the doors on the other side of the room opened and everyone got up and went out. Just beyond the door, a TV was mounted above them with a news broadcast of the aftermath. Everyone stood there for a moment listening to a Channel 9 reporter talking while a helicopter showed footage of the still smoking building.

"At this time, we don't know what happened," a lady reporter was saying while they watched the footage, "there has been an explosion at the Murrah Building downtown but we're not sure what caused it."

They watched until the looped footage began again and then they moved on. Next was some of the rubble and devastation that blast caused including a little plaque above them on a ceiling beam that pointed out the beam had suffered damage from the blast and they could see pitted areas and cracks from it. They moved into a small room where there were several photos on the wall of the destroyed building and in the room were several rectangular pillars that held artifacts recovered from the rubble. They moved to the first one and looked through Perspex at someone's broken coffee cup. The information card beside it named the owner of the item and whether or not they survived. In another display was someone's broken watch that had stopped at 9:02 a.m. and in another one was someone's attaché case. Rose felt a lump come to her throat when she walked to the next one, looked in and saw a toddler's pink sandal. The info card beside it said the owner had died that day and Rose felt a wave of emotion wash over her while she thought of the photo of the happy children on the train. While she looked, she felt a hand on her shoulder and looked over her shoulder at the Doctor who had a concerned look on her face.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, just…the little child that wore this shoe died and I was just thinking of that photo from the daycare and the laughing children. How can anyone be so heartless and kill innocent people and innocent children?"

"He thought he was justified in doing it," the Doctor said, coming up behind her. "Most terrorists and tyrants have their excuses for doing things like this. He thought he was in the right and these people suffered for that."

Rose remembered the Doctor explaining to her that some things he could interfere with and some things were fixed events. She asked him if he could have stopped this or if it was a fixed event.

"Fixed event," he said, shaking his head. "And before you ask, 9/11 was also a fixed event. Most monumental world changing events like this are fixed. Believe me; if I could go back and stop this maniac from doing this, I would because this upsets me as deeply as it does you."

Rose squeezed his hand and they moved on into the next room. This one had a small theater in the center of it surrounded by more artifacts. The people in the film were survivors talking about their experiences. Rose and the Doctor scooted in at the back of the theater and listened. Rose got another lump when she listened to one lady talking about being in a board meeting when the bomb went off.

"I was at the head of the table in a meeting with eight other people," she was saying. "The bomb went off and those eight people literally disappeared in front of me. I was the only one who survived."

"God," Rose whispered while the Doctor squeezed her shoulder.

They watched footage of people running around, frantically asking about their children and loved ones and then they listened to an ATF agent who became trapped on the ninth floor and found a tape recorder. They played the audio of the tape while he walked around recording what he was seeing. They then showed footage of him holding a large cardboard sign out a window indicating he was ATF and he was trapped on the ninth floor. Rose felt the Doctor tap her shoulder. She looked at him and he pointed to his left. She looked where he was pointing and saw the sign in a Perspex display case on the wall beside him. Rose watched a bit more but it was starting to make her depressed so she asked the Doctor if they could go ahead and go on and he nodded and took her hand. They looked at the display cases around the theater. One story was about Dana Bradley who had her leg pinned under a heavy beam and they had to amputate it after they couldn't move the beam. The surgical knives in the kit they brought didn't work so the rescuer finally had to amputate the leg with his pocket knife. Dana was with her two children and mother and she was the only survivor. Rose shook her head sadly after reading the story and walked over to the Doctor who was looking at a dress in another display case.

"See this?" he said, pointing to the dress. "This woman survived the blast and her dress has a few rips and tears in it, another woman survived the blast and here's the remains of her outfit," he said, pointing to a tiny plastic bag that held scraps of fabric inside it. "They're making the point that depending on where you were, you got through it with nary a scratch on you or severe injuries. Some goes for the building. See," he said, pointing to some blown up photos beside it. "The front of this office was blown away, yet this suit hanging on the door is still there, same with the books in the bookcase that stayed there while the rest of the room was destroyed. Quirky things like that. It is a bit fascinating when you see photos like this where something only a few feet from the devastation is not even touched. It all comes down to where you were standing when it happened that determined whether you lived or died that day. I saw that sort of thing all the time during the Time War."

Rose perked up at that. The Doctor rarely discussed the Time War with anyone so she always listened closely when he did.

"Did you see a lot of this sort of thing then?" she prompted as they moved on.

"During the Time War? Oh yes, some of it much, much worse than this. Daleks are completely without sympathy and mercy so you can imagine the casualties whenever they invaded somewhere."

Rose grimaced thinking of how bad it must have been to be in the middle of a Dalek invasion and the bloodbath that happened before they moved on. They walked into another room and paused when they saw a photograph of a firefighter cradling a dying toddler in his arms.

"I know this one, mum showed it to me," Rose said, pointing to the photo. "I was nine when this happened and I remember being upset when I saw it. This photo was everywhere. I remember the little girl died and that made me even more upset."

The Doctor walked up to a reproduction of The Oklahoman newspaper with the photo on the front.

"Her name was Baylee Almon. She was one year old," the Doctor said, stepping back.

He walked over to an info card beside the newspaper.

"She died shortly after the photo was taken and the photo was shown all over the world and she became the symbol of the bombing even though her parents objected to that," he said, glancing at Rose.

They looked around the room and saw a few sculptures and drawings based on the photo. They moved on after that to a room that showed footage of news broadcasts around the world. Rose pointed to one TV when she saw the BBC but the footage was only one for several seconds before it switched to Israeli television. As they moved on through the rooms, they saw a timeline listed on the walls, it showed different days after the bombing, each day they listed the number of the dead which kept growing with each day listed. They walked into another room and watched footage of some of the funerals for the victims.

Then they entered the Hall of Remembrance which was a semicircular room that held photos of all the victims. They were in Perspex window boxes and most of the boxes had a small memento from the family that fit with that person. These were arranged along the back wall in three rows. Below them were wooden stands with silver plaques on them that had the name of the three people above the stand engraved in them. The names went from top to bottom and always in threes. Rose moved to the first stand and saw Miss Baylee Almon was listed first. She looked up and her heart wrenched when she saw a photo of Baylee. She was sitting in the middle of a ball pit, smiling a wide smile while she sat in the colored balls. In front of the photo was a small Muppet Babies Miss Piggy toy that Rose assumed had been hers. Overcome with emotion again, Rose put her hand to her mouth while her eyes misted over. The smiling child was so different from the battered and bloody naked baby nestled in the firefighter's arms in the photo. She felt the Doctor's arm go around her while he came up beside her.

"Baylee," she said, pointing to the photo. "That's her."

She glanced at the Doctor. He kept his face passive but she knew him well enough to know he was seething inside. She could tell from the hard look in his eyes and the tightening of his jaw while he stared at the photo. She looked back at the photo and felt her own anger.

"You know, it's a good job they caught that bastard and executed him because if I'd gotten hold of him I would have killed him with my bare hands," she said.

"Me first."

Rose turned her stunned face to the Doctor who shrugged.

"I'm not a Dalek, Rose. I know I have a problem sometimes with my anger and I can overreact but in this case, if I'd been in the same room with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols I would have had to sit on my hands to keep from beating them to death. And if I had, I wouldn't have regretted it. I can't stand innocents suffering and dying but especially children. This little girl would have been 17 now if he hadn't decided to make his cowardly little statement to the government about Ruby Ridge and Waco. Instead, she's lying in a coffin somewhere and her parents have to make do without her for the rest of their lives. If that thought makes me angry and makes me want to wring those bastard's necks till they drop dead, then sue me."

Rose squeezed his hand, the Doctor squeezed back and they moved to the next grouping. While they read the names, Rose noticed that everyone was listed by their first and last names except for Baylee who was listed as Miss Baylee Almon. She pointed that out to the Doctor.

"Well, she is the most famous person from all this. But I think they may be honoring her for her role in being symbolic of this whole thing," the Doctor said.

When they got to the end of the room and finished looking at the photos, they went downstairs and turned left. This floor was about the investigation and trial of the suspects and at one point they saw what was left of the Ryder Truck including a twisted metal bumper. The bumper and other pieces of the truck were in the middle of one room in a display case that was open all around with a small Perspex barrier. Rose went up to the barrier and folded her arms on it while she stared at the twisted bumper. Then she looked at a twisted front axle and finally some smaller pieces of metal. She looked back at the Doctor who was reading a plaque on the wall that described fingerprint identification.

"You see this?" she said to the Doctor who turned around and looked at the bumper. "I can see how they would be able to pick out the bumper and the axel but this tiny piece here," she said, pointing to a scrap of burnt metal. "You gotta think about how much rubble there was after this and they were able to look at this piece of scrap and say it was the lorry? Amazing."

"That's what they pay forensic investigators to do, Rose. You have seen CSI, right?"

"Yeah, but…it doesn't look like it's from a lorry. Plus, I'm pretty sure other cars got damaged, yeah. But they were able to say this belonged to that lorry."

The Doctor got into her face.

"Be…cause…they're….trained…to…spot…crap…like…that," he said slowly and deliberately while Rose giggled. "They…get…paid…to…do…that…Miss…Fold…The…Clothes…At…Henricks. Are...you…trained…to…identify…scraps…of…metal…at…bombing…sites?"

"No…I'm…not," Rose said, imitating him.

"Well, then quit wondering how they did it if you're not trained. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm reading about fingerprints and how they managed to identify the victims with them or with dental records if there were no fingerprints available."

He started to walk off and then got back in her face.

"By the way, they found someone's missing leg and were never able to match it up with anyone," he said, pointing to the wall. "So someone somewhere lost a leg."

"Ya what?" Rose said in shock, "you mean there was another victim?"

"They found one single solitary leg with no owner, that's all I'm saying," the Doctor said with a shrug as he walked away.

Rose was shocked by that and followed him into the next room where they had courtroom drawings of McVeigh and trial information.

"So…what happened to the rest of the person?" Rose said.

"How should I know? I'm just saying they found a leg that didn't belong to anyone else in the rubble. How it got there I couldn't say especially since it takes a lot to vaporize someone into atoms even if they were standing in the center of the blast. And before you say anything, it didn't say they found bits and chunks of flesh in the rubble that belonged to a 169th person, just a leg and that's all."

Rose was now intrigued by that, wondering what it could mean. The Doctor was now reading an account of McVeigh's execution and she came up beside him.

"So…you don't have any future knowledge of who the leg belongs to?" she said to him.

"You're obsessed with that leg now, aren't you? Sorry I said anything."

"Yeah but what if it's another member of the group that bombed the building?"

"Well, he's either atoms except for his leg or Timothy sawed the chap's leg off and threw it in the rubble when people weren't looking. As for knowing who it is…no, sorry. I know a lot about future events but I can't read about a suspicious leg in the rubble and tell you without a doubt that it belongs to Cyril Scrapbottom who lived at 123 Sap Street in Oklahoma City and he was a swarthy fellow who liked playing Tetris and drinking beer on Tuesday night at 10. Doesn't work that way. Whoever it is will probably remain unidentified forever more. Now…I'm sure there are several sites on the internet who have conspiracy theorists who post their idea of who the leg belongs to so if you're still wondering I suggest that lot. As for me, I wanna get back to this whole account of how Timmy boy died and went to Hell or some such thing like that."

"He went to Hell, eh?" Rose said.

"Yeah, I'm sure the majority of people think he did. I don't believe in Hell but if there really was one, I hope he would be there frying forever more. But if you recall, I destroyed the supposed owner of Hell back on Krop Tor so if he is there, the head honcho isn't around to monitor his torment and he's probably roasting by himself. Anyway, on to the next thing.

They walked into the next room and paused when they saw the remains of a lavatory that was heavily damaged. The area was sealed in with Perspex and there were cinder blocks piled up so you couldn't see the floor. The only thing that indicated it had ever been a lavatory was the half buried remains of one urinal. Rose looked at the rubble and then looked at the Doctor.

"Can I share a thought with you?" she said.

"Go ahead," the Doctor replied.

"This," she said, gesturing to the rubble. "Well…most of this, actually. Does it strike you as a bit…macabre? Their enshrining all this stuff and keeping this lavatory the way it looked when the bomb happened, it's just a bit creepy."

"I never understood this, to be honest. I come from a planet where this would be unheard of. Time Lords aren't emotional like this and they certainly aren't sentimental to the point they build massive monuments and museums to bombing victims or other dead," the Doctor said in a low voice. "Death is a part of life, simple as that. I'm not quite the same as my fellow Time Lords. I do understand the human need to do this but at the same time, people die every day and some die just as gruesomely as they did here but if you keep on erecting monuments eventually you wouldn't have room for the living so you have to decide what to memorialize. And that brings up another point, you memorialize this lot but isn't a little child that's beaten to death by an abusive parent just as important and just as worthy to have a monument in her memory? I do get that it's a place for relatives and friends to come and grieve, but you're right, Rose. You preserve a loo forever more because it got damaged in the blast? This wasn't even the building that got hit."

"I s'pose they're trying to say that even though there were two buildings between this and the Murrah building that it still got hit hard."

"But a loo?" the Doctor said softly. "Was this the worst hit area in the building?"

"That's what I'm saying," Rose said softly. "They ceiling beams were damaged and that was just as good an example of what the blast did to this building as this here. It just seems…strange."

"Strange and unnecessary. Other things in this museum I would say are necessary as a way to teach future generations the meaning of those words on the wall outside, that all who enter here may know the impact of violence. And in many ways, I think they succeeded. But a bog and a pile of breeze blocks behind Perspex is a bit of overkill, I think. What statement is it supposed to make? Damn you, McVeigh, you destroyed our shitter and we can't bear to part with it so we'll wall it up forever in memoriam? It says right here no one got hurt in here anyway. Just one more example of the quirks of human nature, I suppose. Like I said, this sort of thing was unknown on Gallifrey so I share your thought, Rose, believe me."

"Bit of a culture shock then when you came to Earth and saw things like this?" Rose said to him while they moved away.

"Extremely. But I've been here so much that I understand why humans do it but yes, bit jarring for me the first time I saw a monument to the dead."

The next room had 168 gold origami cranes hanging down from the ceiling.

"Cranes represent peace in Japanese culture," the Doctor said to Rose while he pointed up at them. "Hence the gold ones here."

"They're nice," Rose said, looking at them.

She looked around and saw another chainlink fence encased in Perspex on the wall to her left. She walked over and looked at it. An info card described the gifts and tokens that were left on the fences outside and the one inside the display had some plush animals and other trinkets on it to demonstrate.

"This is also odd to me," the Doctor said softly as he came up behind her. "It's not the need to leave something to honor the dead that's odd it's the things they leave. Did you see what was on the fence outside? I get the teddy bears and toys for the children but I saw a Budweiser keychain, in what way does that honor the dead?"

Rose giggled.

"Well, the spirits of the dead might like a pint or two in the afterlife," she said.

"No, I think it's peer pressure more than anything. I think people come to the fence, see a heap of things people leave behind and feel compelled to leave something as well so they go through and pick something they have on their person just to leave it behind, hence the Budweiser keychain. Still, I s'pose it's the thought that counts."

"When Diana died, my mates and I went and saw the heaps of flowers they left at the gates of Buckingham Palace," Rose said.

"I get leaving flowers because that's a traditional funeral thing and flowers are pretty and a fitting tribute and I get the plushie animals for the children. I get the photos of the dead that relatives leave behind and I even get when they light candles and leave them but a Budweiser keychain?"

Rose giggled and patted his arm.

"Humans, we're a strange lot, aren't we?" she said.

"Yes, and I need to put that on a t-shirt and wear it everywhere so everyone can share in that sentiment," he said as they moved on.

They saw a window and looked out. They saw the chairs in the distance. In front of the window was a bench and a piece of wood that had two telephone receivers hanging off either side. The sign on top of the wood indicated that people could pick up the receiver and listen to someone talking about the symbolism of the chairs and other things. Rose picked up a receiver, put it to her ear and gasped and flinched when after a moment of silence, someone yelled in her ear.

"THE CHAIRS YOU SEE OUTSIDE THE WINDOW ARE…"

Rose slammed down the phone into its holder while the Doctor bent over laughing.

"Blimey, these must be for the hearing impaired then. I think you could hear that if you were sitting on the chairs," he said, pointing to them. "Wait, I see a volume control," he said, reaching under the table and turning a knob to adjust the sound.

Rose picked up the receiver and sighed with relief when the sound was turned down in hers. She sat down on the bench and adjusted the volume while the Doctor picked up the other phone and sat down beside her. They stared at the chairs while they listened to a male voice describe the arrangement of the chairs.

"The chairs you see outside the window represent the men, women and children who were killed in the blast," the male voice said. "They are grouped in nine rows to symbolize the nine floors of the building. The first row of chairs represents the ground floor and so on. Each person is placed in a row according to where they worked or were found in the building at the time of the bombing. On the west side are five chairs that are separate from the others. These five individuals died outside the Murrah building. One died in the parking lot, two died in the Water Resources building, one died going into the Athenian and the fifth is Rebecca Anderson. A licensed nurse, Rebecca rushed into the building shortly after the explosion and helped get people out. On her third trip in, debris fell on her head and she staggered outside where she collapsed and was taken to the hospital. She died in the hospital four days later after slipping into a coma."

"Oh my God, did you hear what they just said about Rebecca, the nurse?" Rose said to the Doctor.

"Yes, it was wonderful of her to risk her life doing that and going in without a thought for her own safety," the Doctor said to her. "She was very courageous."

They listened for a moment more and then put the receivers back in the slots. They got up and headed into a corridor that led into a children's area where children could learn about both terrorism around the world and the jobs of police, firemen and rescue workers. They perused it for several minutes and realizing that was the end, they walked to the elevator to go down to the ground floor.

When they came out of the elevator, Rose stopped the Doctor and pointed to the gift shop.

"I know it sounds daft but I wanna get a couple of things, something for Baylee and something for Rebecca to honor them."

"I don't think that's daft, go ahead," he said.

They went in and looked around. There were books, memento books, picture frames and some dolls and plushie animals. Rose walked over to the plushie animals and smiled at a stuffed rescue dog. It looked like a yellow Labrador retriever with a little piece of orange fabric around it's body that said rescue dog on the sides. She chose that for Baylee and walked over to a little shelf. She chose a tiny angel for Rebecca. The Doctor perused the items and watched her so when she was ready, he walked over and joined her. She paid for her purchases and then they walked around the corner to the doors. Rose groaned when they saw Suri sitting on a low wall across from the door. He waved at them and Rose sighed.

"He's gonna drag us to this church or die trying, isn't he?" Rose said to the Doctor as the two of them headed for the door.

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