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locker_monsterTitle: The Other Side of the World (13/31)
Rating: PG
Characters: Rose, Martha
Timeline: Season three
Summary: Season three AU; After a fateful visit to Royal Hope Hospital, Rose finds herself lost in time and space with medical student Martha Jones. As they struggle to find a way home, they meet old friends, and old enemies, along the way...
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. Any borrowed dialogue belongs to Russell T Davies and the BBC.
A/N: A sequel to "The Other Side". It's not necessary reading; it just sets up the premise that it was the Doctor who was trapped in Pete's World, not Rose. And a shout-out to my awesome betas:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
joking and quean_of_swords. This story wouldn't have been posted without you guys.
Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six. Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine. Chapter Ten. Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve.
The corridor was packed with people. There were no beds to speak of, just piles of tattered blankets shoved up against the wall or piled in a corner. The clothes the people wore were muddy and torn and judging from the smell in the corridor it was unlikely anyone had seen a tub full of hot water in a very long time. From their dirty faces and the dismissal living conditions it was obvious they all lived here. A whole underground facility full of humans. It felt like they were waiting, but waiting for what?
“It’s like a refugee camp,” said Martha as they followed Atillo.
“Refugees from what?” wondered Rose. “The Futurekind?”
“Why don’t we take a look?” A small crowd of people had separated them from the lieutenant but he hadn’t noticed yet. Jack took the opportunity to approach a keypad on the wall next to a heavy metal door. He pressed the buttons in a random pattern, letting his skill as a Time Agent shine through.
When the door slid open, Rose was hit with a blast of hot air, refreshingly warm after standing in the chill of the corridor. She peered through into the next room, only it wasn’t a room at all.
A massive silo thousands of storeys tall stretched from ceiling to floor. In the centre was a giant rocket, a simple design with engines at the bottom and a pointed nose at the top. Rose could see where the facility got its name.
“Now that is what I call a rocket.” Martha squeezed in beside Rose and craned her neck upwards.
“What do you know,” said Jack. “Passengers instead of refugees.”
“He said they were going to Utopia.” Rose recalled what Padra had said on the surface. It sounded like Utopia was another planet.
“Excuse me.” The three of them pulled out of the doorway to find Atillo glaring at them, impatience written all over his face. “The Professor is this way.”
“Nice rocket,” said Jack, sealing the door shut. He playfully slapped the lieutenant on the shoulder as he passed by.
In every corridor there were humans, of all ages, sizes, and races. Atillo took them down several before they reached another metal door. He indicated they should go through and quickly left without saying another word. The protection of everyone in the facility was his responsibility. Rose felt no offence that he seemed so eager to leave them behind.
The room beyond this door looked like a lab. There was machinery and wiring everywhere Rose looked but it was all disorganized. She was reminded of the Doctor in a way. The TARDIS had maintained a similarly disordered appearance while the ship had been in his care.
“Hello?” she called out, stepping further into the lab.
“Sorry, I don’t have time to chat. Chantho, could you please talk to the lieutenant’s men.” The voice sounded from somewhere in the room. Rose tried to spot the speaker but with all the equipment he could have been hidden anywhere.
“Chan–hello–tho.” A blue skinned alien, who looked a lot like an insect, popped up from behind one of the rusting consoles. The mandibles on either side of her face twitched curiously. “Chan–you are not Atillo’s men–tho.”
“No.” Rose held out her hand. “I’m Rose, and this is Jack and Martha.”
The alien, Chantho, approached cautiously but once she was close enough to Rose, she took the offered handshake. The alien’s skin was smooth and hard, like a shell. “Chan–you are the ones who wanted to see the Professor–tho?”
“The visitors?” The mystery voice spoke again. From what Rose could hear, he sounded like an older man. Her assumption was proved right when a white haired man slowly rose to his feet from behind a boxy piece of equipment. He set down the part he was holding and glanced anxiously between the three newcomers. “One of you is a captain? And a doctor?”
“Captain Jack Harkness. And this lovely lady is Doctor Martha Jones.” Jack gave Martha a small nudge forward.
The old man immediately turned to Martha. “A doctor of what?”
She appeared a bit wide-eyed at the sudden attention. “Medicine. Is that important?”
The old man’s hopeful look fell instantly. “Pity. I mean no offence,” he added quickly, “but I was hoping perhaps one of you had a mastery of science.”
“You’re the Professor?” asked Jack.
“Professor Yana.”
“Just the man I was looking for.” Jack slipped off his rucksack and placed it on the floor. “Maybe you can tell me where all the stars went.”
Yana seemed taken aback by the question. “The stars, my boy? Is that a joke? It’s the year 100 trillion. Every star in the universe has burned up.”
Her first trip in the TARDIS the Doctor had taken Rose to the year five billion. The jump in time had felt impossible then, but now, here she was in the year 100 trillion. That wasn’t just impossible; it was beyond imagining. Nothing on Earth, nothing in the galaxy, was even remotely a trillion years old.
Beside her, Martha looked unsteady on her feet. “You okay?” she asked, placing a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder.
“Can we sit down?” Spying a set of chairs in the corner, Rose grabbed one of the straps of Jack’s rucksack in one hand and with the other she guided Martha to a chair. They sat down, garnering some attention from the Professor and the blue alien.
“Don’t you know where you are?” asked Yana.
“We got a little turned around. Year 100 trillion. I always dreamed of seeing the end of the universe.” Jack looked around the lab. “Not what I expected.”
“Is any of this familiar to you?” Yana appeared hopefully once more and he anxiously wringed his hands as he waited for Jack to reply.
As Jack made his way around the lab, Rose leaned forward in her chair, carefully assessing Martha. The young doctor seemed slightly awed, and a bit confused, but she held her resolve. After travelling together in the TARDIS for so long, unusual circumstances were becoming commonplace.
“I’m pretty well travelled, but nothing here looks like anything I’ve seen before.” Jack paused to run his wrist device over some of the machinery.
Yana didn’t need to say anything to express his disappointment. He sighed heavily. Chantho’s mandibles hung limply. Rose felt bad they had gotten their hopes up, even accidentally. She got up out of her chair, intent on saying something to Yana, when her foot hit Jack’s bag. Whatever was inside, it was heavy and very solid.
“What do you have in here? The kitchen sink?” It felt like the right time to make a joke, to lighten the mood a little. Rose opened the top of the rucksack and she reached in, her fingers brushing against a thick, plastic handle. Hauling out the object, she placed it down on the nearby table.
Martha leaned forward in her seat. “That’s…” She looked up at Jack. “You’ve got a hand. A hand in a jar. A hand in a jar in your bag.”
A hand, severed near the wrist, sat in a tank of bubbling liquid. A light in the bottom lit up the hand, allowing everyone to see it in every gruesome detail.
“That’s my Doctor detector. It lit up when you landed in the Plass. That’s how I knew you were there.”
“That’s the Doctor’s hand?” Rose knelt down on her knees, putting herself at eye level with the tank. She peered through the bubbles, as if the hand looked familiar. In truth, it was just a hand to her, one, if she suspected correctly, she had never held before. “Where did you find it?”
“Wait. The Doctor had two hands. I’ve seen them.”
“You’ve met the Doctor?” Jack asked Martha.
“Time travel. Tall bloke, black leather jacket, big ears?”
The description made Jack grin. “That’s him.”
“It’s not his.” Jack and Martha paused, their confused looks imploring Rose to continue. “I mean, it is the Doctor’s, but not the Doctor you met. Just after the Daleks and Satellite Five, he… changed. He told me it was regeneration. His face, his attitude, it was all different afterwards.”
“Chan—is this a tradition amongst your people—tho?”
Rose tore her attention away from the hand to address Chantho. “The Doctor wasn’t human. I guess his people used do this all the time, to cheat death. He lost this hand in a sword fight on Christmas Day.”
“The Doctor has one hand?” Jack sounded almost mortified.
“He grew a new one. Don’t ask.” Jack grinned at Rose and she felt her stomach flutter. She had missed Jack’s grin.
“Chan–Professor Yana–tho?”
The worried tone in Chantho’s voice persuaded Rose to her feet. Yana was slumped against a control panel, his gaze distant and his expression blank. Though Chantho called his name a few more times, he didn’t seem to hear her, like he was listening to something else. And then in a flash, Yana regained his focus and turned his head to regard Chantho.
“I’m all right. Just a bit tired.” They were hollow words. Yana looked more than tired; he looked frail and not just because of his age. Rose wasn’t the only one to notice. Chantho reluctantly backed away from the Professor.
“So what’s all this for?” Rose gestured to the lab in general, changing topics for everyone’s benefit. “It’s a lot of equipment if you don’t know how it works.”
“You really aren’t from this time,” mused Yana. He allowed himself a chuckle and motioned for them to join him at one of the computers. “The call came from across the stars over and over again. Come to Utopia. Originated from that point.” Yana pointed to a red dot on the screen. The computer displayed a map of sorts but it didn’t look like any map Rose had seen.
“Where is that?” asked Jack.
“Oh, it’s far beyond the Condensate Wilderness. Out towards the Wildlands and the dark matter reefs. Calling us in. The last of the humans. Scattered across the night.”
“But what is it?” wondered Martha.
“I don’t know. A colony, a city, some sort of haven? The Science Foundation created the Utopia Project thousands of years ago to preserve mankind, to find a way of surviving beyond the collapse of reality itself. Now perhaps they found it. Perhaps not. But it’s worth a look, don’t you think?”
The last survivors of the human race were all in this facility. The sub-standard living conditions, the cramped spaces; they endured it all because there was nothing left and the rocket in the silo was their last chance.
Rose snuck a glance at the Professor. No wonder the man looked so worn out. It was his responsibility to get everyone off this planet. The expectations of an entire race rested on his shoulders. “But you can’t get there, can you?” she said. “That rocket wouldn’t still be here and you wouldn’t be asking for our help.”
Yana looked ready to protest but rather he shook his head. “The rocket uses a footprint impellor system. Chantho and I have tried to get it to work but we haven’t had any luck. I have some scientific knowledge, but not enough it seems.”
Jack roughly patted Yana on the shoulder, causing the old man to stumble on his feet. “To quote an ex-boyfriend of mine, ‘It’s not you, it’s your equipment.’” Moving to one of the consoles, Jack grabbed a length of cabling. “I know machines and it’s always the small things that get overlooked.” Using his wrist device, he scanned the cable until he reached a certain point. “And this… just needs to be reversed.”
A few simple keystrokes inputted into the console and suddenly all the electronics in the room lit up.
“Chan—it’s working—tho!”
Martha grabbed onto Rose’s arm and shouted happily. Rose smiled at Jack, remembering why she had missed this man so much. He didn’t have to do much to brighten someone’s day.
The human race was on their way to Utopia.
Rating: PG
Characters: Rose, Martha
Timeline: Season three
Summary: Season three AU; After a fateful visit to Royal Hope Hospital, Rose finds herself lost in time and space with medical student Martha Jones. As they struggle to find a way home, they meet old friends, and old enemies, along the way...
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. Any borrowed dialogue belongs to Russell T Davies and the BBC.
A/N: A sequel to "The Other Side". It's not necessary reading; it just sets up the premise that it was the Doctor who was trapped in Pete's World, not Rose. And a shout-out to my awesome betas:
joking and quean_of_swords. This story wouldn't have been posted without you guys.Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six. Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine. Chapter Ten. Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve.
The corridor was packed with people. There were no beds to speak of, just piles of tattered blankets shoved up against the wall or piled in a corner. The clothes the people wore were muddy and torn and judging from the smell in the corridor it was unlikely anyone had seen a tub full of hot water in a very long time. From their dirty faces and the dismissal living conditions it was obvious they all lived here. A whole underground facility full of humans. It felt like they were waiting, but waiting for what?
“It’s like a refugee camp,” said Martha as they followed Atillo.
“Refugees from what?” wondered Rose. “The Futurekind?”
“Why don’t we take a look?” A small crowd of people had separated them from the lieutenant but he hadn’t noticed yet. Jack took the opportunity to approach a keypad on the wall next to a heavy metal door. He pressed the buttons in a random pattern, letting his skill as a Time Agent shine through.
When the door slid open, Rose was hit with a blast of hot air, refreshingly warm after standing in the chill of the corridor. She peered through into the next room, only it wasn’t a room at all.
A massive silo thousands of storeys tall stretched from ceiling to floor. In the centre was a giant rocket, a simple design with engines at the bottom and a pointed nose at the top. Rose could see where the facility got its name.
“Now that is what I call a rocket.” Martha squeezed in beside Rose and craned her neck upwards.
“What do you know,” said Jack. “Passengers instead of refugees.”
“He said they were going to Utopia.” Rose recalled what Padra had said on the surface. It sounded like Utopia was another planet.
“Excuse me.” The three of them pulled out of the doorway to find Atillo glaring at them, impatience written all over his face. “The Professor is this way.”
“Nice rocket,” said Jack, sealing the door shut. He playfully slapped the lieutenant on the shoulder as he passed by.
In every corridor there were humans, of all ages, sizes, and races. Atillo took them down several before they reached another metal door. He indicated they should go through and quickly left without saying another word. The protection of everyone in the facility was his responsibility. Rose felt no offence that he seemed so eager to leave them behind.
The room beyond this door looked like a lab. There was machinery and wiring everywhere Rose looked but it was all disorganized. She was reminded of the Doctor in a way. The TARDIS had maintained a similarly disordered appearance while the ship had been in his care.
“Hello?” she called out, stepping further into the lab.
“Sorry, I don’t have time to chat. Chantho, could you please talk to the lieutenant’s men.” The voice sounded from somewhere in the room. Rose tried to spot the speaker but with all the equipment he could have been hidden anywhere.
“Chan–hello–tho.” A blue skinned alien, who looked a lot like an insect, popped up from behind one of the rusting consoles. The mandibles on either side of her face twitched curiously. “Chan–you are not Atillo’s men–tho.”
“No.” Rose held out her hand. “I’m Rose, and this is Jack and Martha.”
The alien, Chantho, approached cautiously but once she was close enough to Rose, she took the offered handshake. The alien’s skin was smooth and hard, like a shell. “Chan–you are the ones who wanted to see the Professor–tho?”
“The visitors?” The mystery voice spoke again. From what Rose could hear, he sounded like an older man. Her assumption was proved right when a white haired man slowly rose to his feet from behind a boxy piece of equipment. He set down the part he was holding and glanced anxiously between the three newcomers. “One of you is a captain? And a doctor?”
“Captain Jack Harkness. And this lovely lady is Doctor Martha Jones.” Jack gave Martha a small nudge forward.
The old man immediately turned to Martha. “A doctor of what?”
She appeared a bit wide-eyed at the sudden attention. “Medicine. Is that important?”
The old man’s hopeful look fell instantly. “Pity. I mean no offence,” he added quickly, “but I was hoping perhaps one of you had a mastery of science.”
“You’re the Professor?” asked Jack.
“Professor Yana.”
“Just the man I was looking for.” Jack slipped off his rucksack and placed it on the floor. “Maybe you can tell me where all the stars went.”
Yana seemed taken aback by the question. “The stars, my boy? Is that a joke? It’s the year 100 trillion. Every star in the universe has burned up.”
Her first trip in the TARDIS the Doctor had taken Rose to the year five billion. The jump in time had felt impossible then, but now, here she was in the year 100 trillion. That wasn’t just impossible; it was beyond imagining. Nothing on Earth, nothing in the galaxy, was even remotely a trillion years old.
Beside her, Martha looked unsteady on her feet. “You okay?” she asked, placing a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder.
“Can we sit down?” Spying a set of chairs in the corner, Rose grabbed one of the straps of Jack’s rucksack in one hand and with the other she guided Martha to a chair. They sat down, garnering some attention from the Professor and the blue alien.
“Don’t you know where you are?” asked Yana.
“We got a little turned around. Year 100 trillion. I always dreamed of seeing the end of the universe.” Jack looked around the lab. “Not what I expected.”
“Is any of this familiar to you?” Yana appeared hopefully once more and he anxiously wringed his hands as he waited for Jack to reply.
As Jack made his way around the lab, Rose leaned forward in her chair, carefully assessing Martha. The young doctor seemed slightly awed, and a bit confused, but she held her resolve. After travelling together in the TARDIS for so long, unusual circumstances were becoming commonplace.
“I’m pretty well travelled, but nothing here looks like anything I’ve seen before.” Jack paused to run his wrist device over some of the machinery.
Yana didn’t need to say anything to express his disappointment. He sighed heavily. Chantho’s mandibles hung limply. Rose felt bad they had gotten their hopes up, even accidentally. She got up out of her chair, intent on saying something to Yana, when her foot hit Jack’s bag. Whatever was inside, it was heavy and very solid.
“What do you have in here? The kitchen sink?” It felt like the right time to make a joke, to lighten the mood a little. Rose opened the top of the rucksack and she reached in, her fingers brushing against a thick, plastic handle. Hauling out the object, she placed it down on the nearby table.
Martha leaned forward in her seat. “That’s…” She looked up at Jack. “You’ve got a hand. A hand in a jar. A hand in a jar in your bag.”
A hand, severed near the wrist, sat in a tank of bubbling liquid. A light in the bottom lit up the hand, allowing everyone to see it in every gruesome detail.
“That’s my Doctor detector. It lit up when you landed in the Plass. That’s how I knew you were there.”
“That’s the Doctor’s hand?” Rose knelt down on her knees, putting herself at eye level with the tank. She peered through the bubbles, as if the hand looked familiar. In truth, it was just a hand to her, one, if she suspected correctly, she had never held before. “Where did you find it?”
“Wait. The Doctor had two hands. I’ve seen them.”
“You’ve met the Doctor?” Jack asked Martha.
“Time travel. Tall bloke, black leather jacket, big ears?”
The description made Jack grin. “That’s him.”
“It’s not his.” Jack and Martha paused, their confused looks imploring Rose to continue. “I mean, it is the Doctor’s, but not the Doctor you met. Just after the Daleks and Satellite Five, he… changed. He told me it was regeneration. His face, his attitude, it was all different afterwards.”
“Chan—is this a tradition amongst your people—tho?”
Rose tore her attention away from the hand to address Chantho. “The Doctor wasn’t human. I guess his people used do this all the time, to cheat death. He lost this hand in a sword fight on Christmas Day.”
“The Doctor has one hand?” Jack sounded almost mortified.
“He grew a new one. Don’t ask.” Jack grinned at Rose and she felt her stomach flutter. She had missed Jack’s grin.
“Chan–Professor Yana–tho?”
The worried tone in Chantho’s voice persuaded Rose to her feet. Yana was slumped against a control panel, his gaze distant and his expression blank. Though Chantho called his name a few more times, he didn’t seem to hear her, like he was listening to something else. And then in a flash, Yana regained his focus and turned his head to regard Chantho.
“I’m all right. Just a bit tired.” They were hollow words. Yana looked more than tired; he looked frail and not just because of his age. Rose wasn’t the only one to notice. Chantho reluctantly backed away from the Professor.
“So what’s all this for?” Rose gestured to the lab in general, changing topics for everyone’s benefit. “It’s a lot of equipment if you don’t know how it works.”
“You really aren’t from this time,” mused Yana. He allowed himself a chuckle and motioned for them to join him at one of the computers. “The call came from across the stars over and over again. Come to Utopia. Originated from that point.” Yana pointed to a red dot on the screen. The computer displayed a map of sorts but it didn’t look like any map Rose had seen.
“Where is that?” asked Jack.
“Oh, it’s far beyond the Condensate Wilderness. Out towards the Wildlands and the dark matter reefs. Calling us in. The last of the humans. Scattered across the night.”
“But what is it?” wondered Martha.
“I don’t know. A colony, a city, some sort of haven? The Science Foundation created the Utopia Project thousands of years ago to preserve mankind, to find a way of surviving beyond the collapse of reality itself. Now perhaps they found it. Perhaps not. But it’s worth a look, don’t you think?”
The last survivors of the human race were all in this facility. The sub-standard living conditions, the cramped spaces; they endured it all because there was nothing left and the rocket in the silo was their last chance.
Rose snuck a glance at the Professor. No wonder the man looked so worn out. It was his responsibility to get everyone off this planet. The expectations of an entire race rested on his shoulders. “But you can’t get there, can you?” she said. “That rocket wouldn’t still be here and you wouldn’t be asking for our help.”
Yana looked ready to protest but rather he shook his head. “The rocket uses a footprint impellor system. Chantho and I have tried to get it to work but we haven’t had any luck. I have some scientific knowledge, but not enough it seems.”
Jack roughly patted Yana on the shoulder, causing the old man to stumble on his feet. “To quote an ex-boyfriend of mine, ‘It’s not you, it’s your equipment.’” Moving to one of the consoles, Jack grabbed a length of cabling. “I know machines and it’s always the small things that get overlooked.” Using his wrist device, he scanned the cable until he reached a certain point. “And this… just needs to be reversed.”
A few simple keystrokes inputted into the console and suddenly all the electronics in the room lit up.
“Chan—it’s working—tho!”
Martha grabbed onto Rose’s arm and shouted happily. Rose smiled at Jack, remembering why she had missed this man so much. He didn’t have to do much to brighten someone’s day.
The human race was on their way to Utopia.
Tags:
no subject
Date: 2010-11-28 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-29 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-02 12:55 pm (UTC)I'm new to livejournal, is there a way to get an email when you put up a new chapter?
I also wanted to suggest a not-completed or WIP as part of your summary for us dull people who didn't catch on till we got to chapter thirteen. Thanks
no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 11:20 pm (UTC)I'm new to livejournal, is there a way to get an email when you put up a new chapter?
I don't think so. I post new chapters every Wednesday and Saturday in the evening though, so that would be the time to check back.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-23 03:19 am (UTC)Things get really AU later on, but I won't spoil anything for you. :-)