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Physicist and philosophers have long debated the existence of multiple universes. One theory is that when the universe began to expand after The Big Bang quantum fluctuations caused separate bubble universes to develop. Another theory suggests that for every decision we make a new universe is created where the alternative choice gets played out by another version of ourselves, meaning that every single thing that could ever be, should ever be or may ever be is happening somewhere in an infinite number of realities.
If that was correct it would mean there was a reality where Mac had never been born.
He was okay with that.
It also meant that a universe existed where his mom had survived her illness, and gone on to have two more children after him. That idea was harder to be comfortable with. But since his mom had succumbed to sickness in one reality it made sense that she would have recovered in another; and why wouldn’t his parents have gone on to have more children? There was comfort in the rationality of that. If the notion made a small chink of jealousy prick at Mac’s heart it couldn’t be helped.
Mac hoped his alternative self knew how lucky he was.
He probably didn’t, but then he himself probably took for granted something another Mac coveted.
But if anything and everything was happening in one of an infinite number of realities then that would mean there was also a universe where a version of him had a purple rhino called Bernard as a pet. That was a tricky concept for Mac to process but if he accepted the idea that an unlimited amount of realities and possibilities existed then he would have to concede that rhinoceros owning Mac was out there, possibly taking Bernard for a walk at the local rhino park. Maybe Bernard was a good boy and a loyal friend. He would probably be a good guard rhino. Murdoc certainly wouldn’t have broken into Mac’s home so easily if there had been a purple pachyderm sleeping by his front door.
A world without him, a world where he had two siblings and a world where he bought rhinoceros food in Pet Smart was one thing. Mac could mostly accept those possibilities with a shrug and a wry smile. But the idea that a world existed where a traveller and her friends explored time and space in a vehicle that looked like an old British police box and that world was his very own was almost too much.
“So this is an ordinary looking empty office building, right?” Matty asked, gesturing to the photo on the War Room’s display.
The team looked at her expectantly. She stared back with a mischievous glint in her eye.
Riley threw up her hands. “Okay, I’ll bite. Yes, that looks like a completely ordinary building, Matty,” she said with exaggerated patience.
“Thank you, Riley.” Matty and Riley ducked their heads at each other. “No, it is not an ordinary empty building. Strange occurrences have been reported happening at this particular address.”
“Why do freaky happenings and bad guy’s lairs always end up being in abandoned office blocks and warehouses?” Bozer asked in a disgruntled tone. “When people move out of those places the buildings ought to be either immediately filled with new tenants or demolished. It would save everyone a lot of time and trouble.”
“That makes sense actually.” Russ nodded to Bozer. “I’ll make a note of it.”
“You do that. Underline the words new tenants and demolished,” Bozer said, slicing a finger through the air to emphasise the important words.
Mac squinted at the picture on the display. “What freaky things have been happening in this building?”
“There have been reports of ‘otherworldly noises’ coming from it,” Matty made quotation marks with her fingers, “there’s been flashing lights and the electricity in the block keeps surging and going out and the power company can’t figure out why.”
“Yep, that sounds freaky. And you’re telling us this because...” Desi prompted with raised eyebrows.
“Before it was empty the office block was used by the CIA and technically they still own it.”
Desi’s eyebrows dropped into a sceptical frown. “They’re worried that glitchy lights are a threat to national security?”
“They’d rather it wasn’t happening.” Matty shrugged. “Upsetting the neighbours makes being covert tricky.”
“So why are we talking about it?” Bozer asked.
“I thought it would be nice for them to owe us a favour.” Russ pushed himself out of the leather chair he’d been sprawled in and walked over to stand by the display board. “I’ve offered our help.”
“I don’t know,” Bozer drawled. “When has the Phoenix doing another organisation a favour ever gone well for us?”
“There was that time with the money laundering gang,” Mac said.
“You mean the time when you got knocked out, tied up in a supply closet and ended up taking half the building out with a homemade rocket launcher?” Bozer didn’t screech but his voice was more than a few notes higher than usual. “That time?”
“Oh yeah,” Mac wrinkled up his nose, “that mission didn’t go so well did it?” He paused. “We got the bad guys though.”
“Yay team!” Bozer did a sarcastic mini fist pump.
“It will be fine,” Russ announced with his widest smile, clearly counting on his confident delivery to embolden the troops. “The problem is probably just down to some faulty wiring and a few pigeons. You’ll go in, fix the electrics, shoo the pigeons and bish-bash-bosh jobs a good ‘un!” he threw his arms wide. “What could possibly go wrong?"
“Hiya!” a voice called from the door. “Blimey, it’s a bit posh in here isn’t it?”
Everyone spun round.
There in the door stood a blonde woman with a long coat, a rainbow on her T shirt and a huge grin. Her companion, a middle aged man, was wearing a smile that was slightly more nervous than hers.
“Who the hell are you?!” Matty barked, “And how did you get in here? Where’s security?”
“Now let’s not get worked up,” the older man held his hands up in entreaty. “We’re not here to cause any trouble.”
“I don’t know, I might be,” the blonde lady said, casually strolling further into the War Room with her hands behind her back. “But not to cause bad trouble, I’m more about the nice, fun trouble,” she added. “Mischief might be a better word to describe it, or high jinks. I’ve always liked that phrase, high jinks, do you think there’s such a thing as low jinks?”
“I think that unless you want every trained operative in this building descending on this room and dragging you into an unmarked interrogation room you’ll explain yourself right now!” Matty hissed through gritted teeth. Mac knew that tone and the fiery potential banked up behind it, the back of his neck prickled.
The blonde lady pulled a leather wallet out of a pocket and flashed a piece of paper at Matty. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine, I’m the Doctor and this is my associate Graham,” she said, the older man raised a hand in greeting. “We have the authorisation to be here. Look.”
Matty scowled at the paper, as she read the words written there the lines creasing her forehead relaxed. “You’re from UNIT?” she said. “I thought they disbanded?”
“UNIT?” The Doctor turned her ID card around to stare at it. “I mean, yes, UNIT. It did disband, it almost completely disbanded, we’re from a secret branch that still exists. Top secret, super top secret, not many people know about us. We barely know about ourselves.”
“We’re on the down low,” Graham said, tapping the side of his nose. “In fact, we're so down we’re underneath the down low, we’re on the underground low.” His words stuttered to a halt as he realised that most of the occupants of the room were staring at him with quizzical expressions.
“What’s a UNIT?” Bozer asked, “And how come we’ve never heard of them?”
“You didn’t need to know,” Matty told him simply. She turned to the Doctor with narrowed eyes, “So you’re the Doctor? I’ve read about you, you’re not what I expected.”
“People change. And you can’t believe everything you read.” The Doctor gave a dismissive twitch of her shoulders. “So!” she said, turning to the screen. “The empty building on Whittaker Avenue, that’s an interesting thing to talk about. We've been wondering about what’s happening there too.”
“Why is UNIT investigating an empty CIA building?” Russ asked.
“No particular reason,” the Doctor replied, “it’s just a bit of a slow day at the office.” She hummed and glanced around the War Room, peering closely at it’s glass walls. “Is that privacy glass?” she asked, pointing.
“Yes,” Matty answered.
“Cool!” The Doctor walked over and tapped the glass, when it turned opaque she gasped, delighted. “Look at that!” She tapped the glass again and it cleared, then knocked her finger against it a third time to bring up the filter. She looked over her shoulder at the team behind her. “If you rap your knuckles against it really, really quickly does it flash on and off like a strobe light?”
“Yeah, but it only works a few times then the system locks and you have to go in and reboot it,” Mac said, adding, “Or so I’ve heard,” and dropping his head sheepishly when Matty skewered him with a look.
“Fair enough.”
The Doctor turned, pulled something silver out of her pocket, pointed it at the display on the main wall and pushed a button. The silver device buzzed and a screen on the display opened showing a video link with a young man and woman. The two of them were stood in front of a dirty white wall in what looked a lot like an abandoned building. When the video link activated they both jumped and the woman leaned forward towards the screen with a scowl of admonishment.
“There you are Doctor!” she said.
“I’m here too.” Graham raised a hand. “You know, just in case anyone was wondering.”
“How did you do that?” Mac and Riley asked at the same time, Riley looked down at her laptop and Mac stepped forward toward the War Room screen.
“With my sonic.” The Doctor waved the device – her ‘sonic’ – around. It was dark silver, almost grey, with flashes the colour of smouldering embers running down it’s sides and a glowing light at it’s tip.
“How does that work?” Mac asked.
“I made it,” the Doctor said, “it’s a screwdriver that I modified. I gave it my own touch you might say.”
“You made it?” Mac’s eyes brightened, “What with? How did you programme it to interface with the screen? What did you do to generalise the connection?”
“It’s all in the modulation, you see.” The Doctor turned to Mac with a pleased little bounce. “I have to say it’s nice to meet a fellow screwdriver enthusiast. I say screwdriver, it’s more of a Swiss Army Knife really.”
“It is?” Mac looked thrilled, almost giddy, and he and the Doctor looked ready to start an in-depth conversation about research and development when Russ spoke up.
“Would the two of you mind geeking out over your inventions later so we can figure out what’s happening in Poltergeist Towers now?”
“Awww!” the Doctor whined, a little like a belligerent three year old. “But you’re quite right, we should prioritise.” She winked a ‘later’ at Mac. “So, these are my friends Ryan and Yaz” she said, pointing at the screen, “Say hi everyone.”
“Hi!” Ryan and Yaz called down from the screen.
“Is no one going to say ‘hi’ back?” The Doctor looked at the Phoenix team with surprise and judgement.
“Hi,” Bozer, Riley and Mac said. Russ gave a little salute.
Graham stepped up to the screen. “Wotcha, team. You definitely drew the short straw with this one, you’re in a dusty old building and I’m in Spy Central, you should see their peek a boo glass.”
“I did like that,” the Doctor said, staring at it longingly, “I’m going to have to get some. I could put it in the Tardis’ aquarium for if the sharks want a bit of privacy.”
Matty loudly cleared her throat.
“But anyway, back on track,” the Doctor said. “My fam are in the building you’ve been talking about right now, they’ve been taking readings. Fam, what have you found?”
“We’ve been sniffing around and there hasn’t been much to find,” Ryan said. “There’s mostly dust, some mold and a couple of rats.”
“What about the energy readings?” the Doctor asked.
Mac met Desi’s eye across the room and they shared a smile. The Doctor had walked into the War Room and established herself as the head of the group and Mac wasn’t sure how she’d done it. Matty’s forceful presence was usually enough to make even the most steel spined, battle hardened generals if not kowtow then sit up and listen but the Doctor was definitely running the meeting and Mac wasn’t sure how she’d managed it, or why Matty was letting it happen. Russ too for that matter. Whoever UNIT were they must be powerful but Mac suspected it was actually more to do with the Doctor herself than the clout of her organisation. She had a goofy, childlike character but she managed to embody the confidence and poise of a leader. Mac was interested to see how the whole situation played out, and not just because of whatever was happening in ‘Poltergeist Towers’.
Ryan held up a copper box with green wires spiralling out of the top. “The machine that goes bing you made is reading a residual energy.”
“Does it say what type?” The Doctor asked.
Yaz took hold of the box and gave it a shake. “It says it’s Prostglandins Energy.”
“Prostglandins, hmm.” The Doctor rocked back on her heels. “What information do you have here?” she asked Matty.
Riley tapped a few keys on her laptop. “I’ve gone through the reports of the ‘freaky occurrences’ and there’s kind of a pattern. The power problems and noises have been spread out but are happening in bursts that are getting consistently closer together.”
“Interesting.” The Doctor pointed her sonic at Riley’s laptop and pressed the switch, the screwdriver buzzed and Riley’s report appeared on the screen next to Ryan and Yaz’s video chat.
“Seriously, how are you doing that?” Riley demanded.
Lost in her thoughts, the Doctor didn’t answer
“Prostglandins energy. Light fluctuations happening in cycles that are getting closer to each other…” she said to herself, pacing up and down the War Room,“…getting closer together…like a racing heartbeat...or a countdown...closer together...of course!” she yelled. “Anyone else here with me?” she looked out at the room excitedly. “The rushes of energy are getting closer together! Yes? Anyone? No? Okay -it’s just like contractions. Contractions!”
“Are you suggesting that the building is giving birth?” Russ reared away from the Doctor, the look on his face suggesting he was considering calling for either medical intervention or security. Possibly both.
“Of course the building isn’t giving birth,” the Doctor scoffed. “Buildings don’t have babies. Not at this time of year.”
Russ opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out.
“Looking at these figures I don’t think we have much time, are you coming?” The Doctor bounded towards the War Room door and turned when she reached the doorway noticing that only Graham was following. “You’re coming right?” she asked “Trust me you don’t want to miss this.”
The team looked at Matty.
“Go ahead,” she said. “We may as well see whatever this is to the end. I can’t wait to read your after action reports.”
“I hope you’re not in too much of a hurry to get there,” Bozer said as he, Mac, Desi and Riley followed the Doctor and Graham. “The building is across town and traffic is at a standstill this time of day.”
“We’re not driving there,” the Doctor answered.
“Do you have a helicopter?” Desi said, “Landing a helo on the roof will attract a lot of attention.”
“We don’t travel by chopper.” Graham rubbed his hands together. “The way we travel is much more stylish and a lot quieter. Well, it’s quieter most of the time, our mode of transport can get a bit loud and cranky if it thinks it’s being ignored.”
“Your vehicle gets grumpy?” Mac asked.
“Only if you’re not polite,” the Doctor called over her shoulder. “She can have quite delicate sensibilities when she decides to. I forgot to say ‘please’ once and she wouldn’t let me in the north wing for a fortnight.”
The Phoenix team shared a ‘whaaat?’ look but continued to follow where the Doctor led.
She led them to a blue wooden box under a stairwell.
“Ta da! Meet the Tardis!” the Doctor said with a flourish.
Mac, Bozer, Desi and Riley stood in stunned silence until Riley said, “I’ve bitten once today it’s someone else’s turn.”
Mac decided to take one for the team. “That’s a blue wooden box with the word police painted on,” he said.
The blue box, the Tardis, was worlds apart from what was usually found in the hallways and laboratories of the Phoenix Foundation. It’s wooden sides and the funny little light on it’s roof was at odds with the high tech equipment the building was filled with but somehow it also managed to fit in. Now that Mac was looking at it he was surprised that there hadn’t always been a funny blue box tucked under those stairs. He didn’t see how it was going to get them to the abandoned building though.
“Why yes it is a blue wooden box but that’s not all it is. It’s so, so much more.” Adoration shone in the Doctor’s face as she reverently patted the Tardis’ side. She opened it’s doors and she and Graham stepped inside. “Come on then!”
The team looked at each other. Bozer gestured to the Tardis with one hand, “So are we going to?”
“I suppose,” Mac said, “What’s the worst that can happen? It might be a bit of a tight squeeze and we’ll be uncomfortable for a minute or two.”
“That could still be pretty bad, do you remember what happened in Milan?” Desi asked.
“It’s not going to be like Milan,” Mac replied.
“You can’t be sure of that.” Desi harrumphed and glared with icy distrust at the Tardis.
“Let’s just get this over with, then we can all get on with the rest of our day.” Bozer stepped in through the open blue doors. Riley quickly followed. Mac and Desi looked at each other and Mac gave a half smile.
“Ladies first.”
Desi rolled her eyes playfully at Mac and walked into the Tardis. Mac gave her a second or two to position herself in the small wooden box then stepped through the doors.
He blinked. He stared. And he stepped back out again.
Mac knocked on the side of the Tardis with his fist and listened to the dull echo it made.
How was that possible?
He walked around the outside of the Tardis then stuck his head back through it’s doors.
It was impossible!
“Mac,” Bozer called from where he was stood by what looked like a centre consul, “I know your head is about to explode and all but time is kind of not on our side right now so are you coming?”
“Yes. Sorry. Yes, I’m coming.” Mac walked into the Tardis, letting the doors swing closed behind him. “It’s just that - it’s bigger on the inside.”
“Isn’t it though!?!” The Doctor held her arms outstretched, delight and pride in every line of her stance.
What had been a funny blue box with a light on top on the outside was a high open space of metal walkways and glowing white quartz columns inside. The one shouldn’t exist inside the other. It couldn’t. But it did.
“But how can it be bigger on the inside?” Mac said, he felt dizzy, like the ground he was standing on had suddenly bucked under his feet. “It can’t be bigger on the inside!”
“It is,” Riley said.
“How can you all be so calm about this?” Mac insisted, sounding a little manic.
“Ah, you know,” Desi shrugged, “I’m in a crazy situation where there are impossible, unexplained sciencey things happening all around me, it must be Tuesday.”
“But it’s bigger,” Mac said, waving his shaking hands. “On. The. Inside. That’s not how physics works!”
“Son,” Graham moved to stand beside Mac and slapped a paternal hand against his back, “I find that it’s best not to think too hard about it. And just you wait, we haven’t even got to the best part yet.” He nodded to where the Doctor was stood at the circular centre console turning dials and pressing switches.
“Why what’s going to happen?” Mac asked Graham.
“Don’t worry, you’ll love it,” he said.
“Right then, off we go,” the Doctor said and pulled a lever. The Tardis boomed and wheezed as the brightly lit pillar in the centre of the console moved rhythmically up and down.
Mac, Riley, Bozer and Desi froze. Then they gaped. Mac hadn’t started to wrap his mind around how the blue box – the Tardis – was bigger on the inside and now parts of it were moving and making noises that sounded like an engine. Mac looked around him trying to identify a power source, spot where the strategically placed mirrors were, or decide if he was actually dreaming or not – anything that would explain what was happening. The technology he was surrounded by looked both futuristic and old, advanced but aged and careworn. It was impossible, implausible and absurd but it was real and right in front of him. He shook himself to try to clear his head.
The Doctor looked over at him and saw his expression. She left the console and walked over to stand beside him.
“I never did ask your name,” she said, “terribly rude of me. You’ll have to forgive me, I was in the moment, I often forget social niceties when I’m in the moment.”
“I’m Mac, and these are my friends Riley, Desi and Bozer.” Mac pointed to the team one by one.
“Nice to meet you, Mac,” the Doctor said. “Do you like my Tardis?”
“It’s...” Blue? Mac thought. Confusing? A little bit untidy? Logically impossible? BIGGER ON THE FREAKING INSIDE? “...unexpected.”
“She certainly is that,” the Doctor said, looking up proudly.
“It is, but it can’t be,” Mac insisted.
“It can if you think about the quantum theory of space eleventh dimensionally and invert it.”
“Invert eleventh dimensional space?”
The Doctor had said that like she was explaining how to work a toaster. Like she wasn’t talking about taking the Theory of Relativity, tearing it into tiny pieces, throwing the bits up into the air then making something brand new from the upside down jumble of figures.
“Yeah, invert it.” The Doctor made a twisting motion with her hands. “I could show you the equation if you like, it’s quite long, you have to really like equations to be interested. Do you like equations?”
“I love equations.,” Mac said.
“Really? Brilliant! Me too. I can write it out for you, I just need a pen first, and a really, really big bit of paper.”
The Doctor looked around her as if she was expecting to spot a biro and a large sheet of flip chart lying around when the Tardis gave a hiss. “Oh, we’re here, we’ll have to do that later,” she said and turned and ran out of the door with Graham close behind her shouting, “Come along, team, don’t forget the hot water and towels!” as she went.
“We’re here, apparently,” Mac said to his friends. “Here being exactly where we were when we got in this thing.”
“Good to know.” Bozer clapped his hands together. “I hate long journeys.”
“I’m pleased that it wasn’t a long trip too, we didn’t bring any snacks.” Riley pressed her lips together. “You know I can’t travel for more than ten minutes without eating some chips.”
Desi shook her head. “A hungry Riley is an angry Riley.”
“Don’t make me hangry,” Riley called, heading for the Tardis doors, “you wouldn’t like me when I’m hangry.” She pushed her way out of the wooden doors, stilled just beyond them, then turned around, stepped back through then walked up to Mac and put her hands on his shoulders. “I need you to stay calm and not freak out on me okay?” she said.
“I’m always calm,” Mac told her.
“Really?” Bozer said, “Because off the top of my head I can name at least half a dozen occasions when...”
“I am almost always calm,” Mac repeated in a slightly raised voice.
“Good,” Riley said. “Okay. You ready?” She stepped backwards through the Tardis doors, bringing Mac with her.
As he pushed through the doors Mac found himself in an empty building that smelled of neglect and a hint of ozone. He could see dirty white walls and a grey ceiling that looked alarmingly like the ones in the Doctor’s friend’s video chat. They weren’t in the Phoenix headquarters under a staircase and around the corner from a vending machine like they should be. Mac stayed very still, breathing and waiting the unbelievable moment out.
“Remember what I said about not thinking too much about it,” Graham called from where he was stood with the couple from the videos stream, Ryan and Yaz.
“But!” Mac said to no one in particular.
“Tardis stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space,” the Doctor said, looking at the copper device Ryan and Yaz were holding. “She travels in space, that’s how we got here. She can travel in time too but that wasn’t necessary and I don’t like to show off,” the Doctor paused and looked up. “That’s a lie actually, I love to show off, I always have.” She glanced over at Mac and held up her contraption. “Do you want to help me with this?”
“Yes, yes I do.” Mac couldn’t get his head around a building giving birth, something being bigger on the inside and travelling in space and time but he could fix things. He fixed things. That was what he did.
Mac and the others gathered around the Doctor as Desi and Bozer looked around the dusty, echoing room and Riley frowned down at her laptop. The Doctor hummed and stared hard at the fuzzy display on her machine, she tapped at the reading with a fingernail. “Oh yes, it’s definitely on it’s way. In fact,” she put her ear up against the wall next to her, “I think we’re about to see another contraction. Everyone hold onto something!”
The ceiling lights came on and flickered and a low growl rumbled beneath Mac’s feet. A rush of energy surged through the room. The only time Mac had felt anything like it was when he’d been working undercover as a coach’s assistant at a major league baseball club. He’d been on the field when the crowd had realised there was going to be a home run and their roar and the focused excitement of those thousands of people had surged forwards. The rush of emotion had been almost a physical force hitting the field, like a wave of heat or magnetism pushing at and through him. The machine in the Doctor’s hand lit up.
“What was that?” Bozer asked, when the burst of energy ended and the lights went back out. He was breathing a little fast, they all were, whatever had just happened had hit with an intensity that had left them all reeling.
The Doctor licked a finger and held it up. “Something’s wrong.”
“You’re damn right somethings wrong!” Riley snapped. “If I was watching this happen in a movie I’d be yelling at the characters on the screen to get out of the building as fast as they could. I don’t want to end up stuck inside a TV.”
“No, I mean. Something’s wrong with the delivery, it’s like it’s stuck,” the Doctor pressed her ear against the wall again. “It’s struggling, we need to help.”
“We do?” Graham said decisively and started rolling up his sleeves. “Then let’s help.” He paused mid roll, “how do we help exactly?”
“I have a plan,” the Doctor said, “I’ve played bingo with Michael Faraday and I’ve seen every episode of Call The Midwife so I’ve got this. Fam, team, I need you to fetch me all the wire you can lay your hands on, pull it out of the walls. Quick like bunnies, scoot!”
Everyone but Mac ran off.
“You’ve played Bingo with Michael Faraday?” he asked.
“I have, he takes it very seriously but I’ve seen him win the Golden Jackpot twice so I suppose he knows what he’s doing. You know how we were talking about inverting eleventh dimensional quantum theory? Well, we’re going to invert a Faraday cage, instead of blocking energy we’re going to draw it through.”
Yaz had ducked in through the Tardis doors and came out with a handful of hammers, “Here!” she said, thrusting the tools at the others, “for getting through the plaster.” She ran up to the wall near where the Tardis was parked and gave it an almighty whack then started pulling at the wires she’d exposed.
“That actually looks like fun,” Riley said, hitting a wall near her with her own hammer.
Piles of wire with masonry dust clinging to it soon collected at the Doctor’s feet.
“Mac,” she said, “I think you know what we need and you seem like a handy kind of fellow, can you start splicing this together?” she thrust a handful of wire in Mac’s direction.
Mac pulled his Swiss Army Knife out of his pocket. “Absolutely.”
“Use this,” the Doctor held up her sonic screwdriver, “put it on setting Indigo B,” she said passing the screwdriver to Mac, “it’s just like yours except a bit more sonic.”
Mac turned the sonic screwdriver on and marvelled at it as it buzzed in his hand. “I have to get me one of these.”
Mac and the Doctor worked quickly and soon a web of wires stretched out across the floor. The Doctor took the end of one strand and trailed it into the Tardis then sounds of banging and the odd muttered curse drifted out of the open door.
Yaz put her head through into the Tardis. “You alright in there?” she called.
“Fine. Peachy. Finished.” The Doctor appeared back in the room brushing off her hands. “Right then, we’re all ready. All we need to do is stand back and press this button when the next contraction starts. Here.” She handed a green button to Mac.
He stared at it. “Why me?”
“Why not, you’ve built the delivery suite.”
“Okay.” Mac looked down at the button in his hand feeling pleased and very, very unsure. He looked up at the web of wires sprawling across the floor. He still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that the whole situation wasn’t an elaborate prank. What was more logical, that he’d travelled in space in a wooden box to a building where some kind of hidden entity was about to give birth or that he was being filmed on a hidden camera and when he pressed the button a confetti cannon would go off and everyone would start laughing at him? Gotcha!!!
A deep rumbling throbbed under Mac’s feet, shuddering through the soles of his shoes. The lights in the room came on and flashed wildly.
“Now!” the Doctor yelled.
Mac slapped the button and the wires on the floor buzzed. Their pulsing lights became a glow, dim at first then brighter and brighter, casting the shadows of the team as stark silhouettes against the walls behind them. Mac felt his heart trip as the rumbling noise grew into a moan that reverberated in his ribs. The moan changed in pitch, somehow echoing in harmony with itself. Mac could feel the sound inside him. He could hear the sensations it sang with somehow. In the chord Mac heard something that felt like longing, like intent and like focused, desperate love. The hairs on his arms rose and a knot of emotion pushed at his throat. The glow and the hum intensified, rising in pitch and pressure. The singing in Mac’s chest grew louder. Each breath was sharp and electric in his bones and just when Mac wasn’t sure if he would be able to stand anymore it stopped.
Suspended in the middle of the room, hovering above the floor was a cloud. Except it wasn’t a cloud made of water droplets like the ones drifting way above in the blue LA sky. The cloud in front of Mac looked like it was made of light, static electricity or energy. It was white but also silver and also a colour that could only be described as ‘shining’.
“Ooh!” the Doctor breathed. “A baby Nephelai! Aww, look at it’s little fronds, aren’t they cute?”
“What...?” Bozer stuttered, speaking their astonishment for everyone, “What...?”
The glowing, swaying shape hung between them. It was beautiful, Mac realised, ethereal, and somehow he could tell it had consciousness, like awareness and knowledge had been made into light. He knew that something with understanding was watching them.
“That’s a Nephelai,” the Doctor said, “They're intelligent creatures that no one really knows anything about. They come to life like you’ve just seen, like they’re being born, but no one knows where from. They wander around the universe, just floating, never seeming to interact with anything,” she slowly walked around the glowing entity, keeping a respectful distance as she spoke, staring at it in awe. “My people have studied them and they found that the Nephelai have intelligence and intent - they don’t drift around aimlessly - but we had no way of knowing what their purpose was. It was almost like they had better things to do than explain themselves to a bunch of nosey strangers and I suppose you can’t argue with that. In fact, the research team found that when they’d receive reports of a Nephelai sighting they’d go to the coordinates they’d been given and there was nothing there, almost like what they were looking for had deliberately avoided them.”
“I knew a girl like that once,” Graham said. “Trixie Matthews, it took me a while to realise that she wasn’t playing hard to get, she just didn’t want to be got.” He shook his head ruefully, “I was only seventeen, I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer back then.” He pointed a finger at Ryan, “No comments about how I’m not quite the full ticket now either, thank you!”
Ryan slapped a hand against his chest in an unmistakable, ‘who, me?’.
“It’s unbelievable.” Desi took a step forward, the shine of the apparition they’d just watched be born lighting the amazement on her face. “It wanders around in the universe, like through the stars?”
“Yep,” the Doctor said, making a popping sound on the ‘p’ of the word. “They seem to particularly like hanging out near white giants and drifting through asteroid fields. I have a theory that having the asteroids pass through them tickles.”
The Nephelai bobbed gently up and down then with a pulse, or a twitch, or maybe a throb it started to drift upwards, shimmering and shifting until there was nothing of it left.
“Where has it gone?” Mac asked, wide eyes fixed on the space where the new lifeform he’d just encountered had been.
“No idea,” the Doctor said. “It could be anywhere, it could be on your moon or halfway to Raxacoricofallapatorius. If it had asked me I’d have recommended that on it’s first time in this solar system Jupiter is a good place to visit, it has pretty storms and it’s moons are worth a look.”
“So it’s just gone?” Riley said. “Is it over, no more freaky happenings and otherworldly noises?”
“Nope, we’re all done here. This building will be quiet and boring again.”
“That will make the CIA happy,” Bozer said.
“Which will make Russ happy,” Mac added.
The journey back to the Phoenix was just as mind boggling as before despite Mac expecting to see the large space waiting inside the small wooden box. He walked around the Tardis, tapping and examining switches, levers and handles.
He could have spent hours there, days, exploring and testing. He wanted to lie under the console and follow the lines of the wires and peer into the white crystal columns standing in a circle in the centre of the room.
“You like my Tardis don’t you?” The Doctor appeared at Mac’s side as he bent over, nose pressed against an old TV monitor showing an odd display of concentric circles. “You get her don’t you, like, you want to understand her?”
“It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it – her.”
“People are usually all ‘ooh it’s bigger on the inside’,” the Doctor pulled a face and waggled her fingers, “and ’ooh look at the shiny lights and the uppy downy console thing’ but then something distracts them and they kind of get used to her and move on, but not you. And I think she likes you back. Don’t you?” she raised her voice to call her question upwards. An electronic ting echoed around the Tardis walls. “See, she likes you. You should be flattered, she doesn’t take to everyone straight away.”
“Thank you, I guess,” Mac said, he raised his chin to speak up to the roof of the Tardis the way the Doctor had done. “Um, thank you.”
The Tardis landed - landed, arrived, re-materialised - back under the same stairwell at the Phoenix that it had originally been tucked under. Mac, Riley, Desi and Bozer stepped tentatively out.
“Aren’t you coming?” Riley asked as the Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham stayed inside the Tardis, the Doctor in front and her ‘fam’ peeking over her shoulder. “We’ll need you to explain what happened.”
“Nah, I’m not really an after action report kind of person.” The Doctor tugged at her braces and made a face reminiscent of a five year old being offered sprouts for dinner. “I’m sure you’ll do a cracking job of it. We’ll just nip off, you know, make ourselves scarce.”
‘Wait!’ Mac thought. He didn’t want the Doctor to leave and not just because he needed help with his paperwork. There were so questions he hadn’t asked, so much he wanted to learn, things he itched to know.
“If you’re sure,” he said instead.
“Yeah, it’s for the best,” the Doctor said, “I’m terrible at reports. I’ve never done one but I’m sure I’d be terrible at them, I’d get bored and doodle in the margins. I’ve never doodled before either but I bet I’m brilliant at that. Thank you for all your help though.” The Doctor nodded, “We couldn’t have done it without you. Well, we could have but it would have taken much longer, well...”
“She means ‘thank you very much, it was nice to meet you,’” Yaz said, her head popping out from around the Doctor’s arm.
“You too,” Bozer replied.
“Bye then,” Graham called, “See you later.”
The Tardis’ blue doors closed and it started to make the whooshing vroom Mac had heard when he was inside it. If flickered, disappearing then reappearing with flashes of light then it was gone.
“Well…” Riley said.
“That was...” Bozer added.
“We should...” Desi waved a hand in a clumsy circle.
“Yeah.” Mac tensed his jaw, turned on his heel and headed to the War Room with the others at his side.
Low orange flames cast dancing shadows over the deck. Riley and Bozer had gone home leaving only empty beer bottles and a layer of crumbs dusting the bottom of a bowl as signs they had ever been there.
Mac and Desi sat in companionable silence, Mac staring up at the stars above him. He couldn’t decide if the stars seemed closer because he’d been in the Tardis and had touched the possibility of visiting them or further away than ever because he knew that reaching them was achievable and he’d never get the chance.
Desi clinked her bottle against his, “Which one would you choose to go to?” she asked, nodding upwards.
Mac smiled, “The second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning,” he quoted.
“Neverland could be fun. It has Lost Boys, mermaids and I wouldn’t mind having a go at sailing a pirate ship.”
“Captain Desi, Menace of the Seven Seas?”
“I think I could pull off a swash buckling coat and a feathered three cornered hat.”
“You could.”
The fire pit’s shadows twisted as a blinking light covered the deck accompanied by a wheezing, heaving engine noise. As Mac and Desi jumped to their feet the Tardis appeared and the Doctor stepped out of it.
“I never did show you that equation,” she said, beckoning with twinkling eyes, “and while you’re here we could always go on a whistle-stop tour.”
As a child Mac had wondered what it would be like to visit Neverland, Narnia or the land where the Wild Things are, and what it would be like to come home again. How would it be to go through the rest of your life after having flown with fairies or met a talking magical lion? Could you just settle back into a normality of alarm clocks, mid afternoon traffic and dentists appointments once you knew what else was out there?
It turned out that when you’ve had an experience like that, with the wild and impossible, you gather it safe inside you where it feels like a wonderful dream or a precious childhood memory. Maybe because he was used to doing six impossible things before breakfast Mac knew to hold the memories of the things he’d seen and done in the place in his head where moments that weren’t part of a normal life were kept.
They witnessed the bonding of the first atoms that ultimately went on to form the planet Earth and caught falling diamonds deep in the heart of Saturn's atmosphere. They saw implausible wonders and improbable beauty and watched Mac’s mom and grandfather push a three year old Mac on a swing in the park.
“We’ll do this from a safe distance,” the Doctor had said. “I’ve had some problems with this kind of thing in the past.”
It had hurt but in a way that had filled Mac’s heart with, oh, with something that was pure, huge, breathless, bitter, sweet and more radiant than the supernova they’d surfed through with the Tardis doors wide open.
“In all my years of travelling one of the things I’ve learned is that grief is just love,” the Doctor had said as she’d watched Mac watch his grandfather lift him out of the swing and hold him high in the air, both of them giggling uproariously. “If you grieve it means that you’ve loved and you’ve been loved.”
From her place beside him Desi slid her hand down Mac’s arm and twined her fingers with his.
The quiet night on the deck was disturbed a second time by the Tardis appearing, another light in the sprawling blanket of lights that made up LA.
“Here we are,” the Doctor said, “Home again, home again, jiggity jig, and only a few minutes after we left.”
The Doctor and her friends gathered in the open door of the Tardis as Mac and Desi walked back into their regular lives. They were none the worse for their travels and looked completely unchanged except for the Phil Collins concert T shirt that Desi was wearing.
“Thank you,” Mac said. The flames were still burning in the fire pit and the stars were still out but in the time that had passed while they’d been gone he’d seen so much. Thank you wasn’t enough to give in return for that but it was all he had.
“My pleasure,” the Doctor said. “It was my absolute pleasure.” She raised a hand, as did Yaz, Ryan and Graham.
The Tardis doors closed. Lights flashed. A black hole powered engine hummed and the Tardis vanished.
“That was,” Desi said, “I can’t begin to describe what that was.”
“Me too.”
Desi gave Mac a side eye. “I’m not just talking about the Phil Collins’ concert.”
“Neither am I!” Mac protested.
Desi made a disbelieving hum, “You kind of were though.”
“No, not totally.” Mac huffed but he couldn’t stop a grin starting to form. “But come on – the concert was amazing.” He pointed a finger right between Desi’s eyes, “And you were singing along!”
“I – I mean – the fact that I know the words to those songs is completely your fault, I couldn’t avoid learning them through osmosis.” Desi tugged at her But Seriously World Tour T shirt. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into wearing this.”
“You’ve never looked better.”
There was a Mac somewhere with Bernard the purple rhino as his pet. There was a Mac somewhere with two siblings, one with blue hair and a nose ring, one who was allergic to strawberries and one who’d stayed at MIT and actually worked at a think tank.
Mac wished each one of them well. He hoped they were happy. And right then he was glad he’d got to be his very own version of Mac.
“You are such a nerd.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not bad, but it is true. It’s part of what makes you who you are.”
It was.
Phil Collins fan. Nerd. Mac. Him. His very own individual and unique self.
“Are you hungry?” Mac asked.
“Yeah, I could eat.” Desi nodded.
“I think there’s some left over Chinese food in the fridge.” Mac offered.
“Perfect.”
Mac and Desi turned towards the kitchen and headed inside.