Chapter Text
superposition: a quantum principle that refers to a physical system that exists in multiple states simultaneously based on a specific set of solutions
—
The first physics course Rose takes in Pete’s world is very nearly the death of her.
Maybe that’s overstating it. But not by much, in the long run. The pudgy young lecturer brightly speaks about motion, about measurement, about change. How what they’ll do in this course is the practice of describing reality through equations. He drags a student to the front of the hall, places a wheel in their hands, spins them around on a stool. Tracks a pendulum’s periodic motion with video software. Makes jokes about friction and thrust and how physicists do it better. Rockets himself across the stage with a handcart and a fire extinguisher, whooping with glee as he holds his flat cap tight to his head.
Amidst the barely younger students in the university lecture hall, Rose feels immeasurably old. She’s seen the death of the Earth, she’s seen monsters and aliens and the flow of time—and here she is, taking science and tech classes in order to work her way into some kind of understanding of what the science and tech team is talking about when they begin muttering in their odd science and tech lingo while she delivers ream after ream of paperwork that she can’t make heads or tails of.
“I mean, you could just wing it,” Mickey’d said, around a mouthful of chips from the basket they’d been splitting after a mission. Well, after Mickey’s mission. After Rose’s clerical duties. “Those lab nerds’d wet themselves to help you out, they think you’re hot.” Then he’d paused, shrugged. “But, you know—could be useful, for you. Some university under your belt.” He doesn’t attempt to take hold of her hands, which she has wrapped tightly around her drink, fingers white and tense.
In case this doesn’t work out, he’d carefully not said. In case you don’t find him, and you don’t wanna be stuck at Torchwood for the rest of your life.
But Rose had heard it anyway. Then she’d tossed that thought away as quickly as possible, as she tried to do with any doubts. Of course, like any of those doubts—oh, so many, so so many, and so many connected to him—they’d come crawling back in the lonely night. So she’d gone to Pete and quietly told him she’d wanted to take some classes at university, so she’d understand what people were saying.
“I’ve got the experience,” she’d told him in his bright office one morning, nursing a coffee. The evening before, she’d been called out late in order to shadow a first-contact team, completely ignoring the fact that she’d been part of more first contacts than the entire team combined. And then doubled. “But some theory wouldn’t hurt.”
Pete’d looked at her keenly. “Should I tell Jackie, or do you wanna?”
Rose, even now, remembers her full-body wince at the realization that her mum would take the classes as a sign that Rose was planning for a future beyond the—beyond finding him, and would rejoice in something that simply wasn’t true.
She was still looking. She assumed he’d tried, certainly, but he’d also had such stunning despair in his eyes as he’d nodded to her questions. On your own? she’d asked, and god, she almost wished she hadn’t, not at the knowledge of how badly he’d been hurting. But she didn’t know enough about the walls of the universes, didn’t always understand what the tech lads meant when they’d explained that closed meant closed. Didn’t know why, before every shift when she’d visit that horrible room, she could still feel something there, pressed against her cheek beyond the cool white drywall.
She’d done the impossible before, after all. No small task to do it again. Just no TARDIS or lorry this time. She’d find her way back. Somehow.
Best to prepare for the worst, though, a traitorous voice in the back of her head had whispered. The voice sounded distinctly like her first him, for some reason. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but for the actual contents of the whisper.
(In the end, neither Pete nor Rose had said anything to Jackie, and Pete’d silently arranged her Torchwood schedule to accommodate her course load at one of the finest universities in the nation. Instead, Mickey’d mentioned the courses during a family dinner, and Rose had very seriously contemplated murder.)
One of the things that makes class so difficult—aside from the incessantly cheery professor, when she can’t stop comparing his explanations to his explanations, full of metaphor and the weight of centuries of experience—is the knowledge that half of what the man is wattling on about is wrong. A student, one who sits closer to the front, not tucked away in the back like Rose has seated herself, asks questions about time travel, about space travel, about something called entropy.
The professor smiles, but there’s a condescending edge to it. “Well, James—James, yes? James, while it’s nice to think of those things in science fiction, the reality of it is that it’s just a narrative. A thought experiment. We exist in a block universe, and while we—we humans, of course—can feel the passage of time, we can’t really effect what will happen. We have the illusion of choice, but we’re stuck in the logic of our world and our observations.” Then the professor shrugs. “Also, time travel breaks the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy only works in one way, you see, and it can’t be reversed.”
At this, Rose bites her tongue. Hard.
—
It should be noted that in some popular science books one finds figures showing how the entropy changes with time but is applied to the “entire universe.” This is of course, meaningless since the entropy of the universe is not definable.
The latter conclusion also dismisses Clausius’s formulation of the Second Law. Thus, the entropy of a well-defined thermodynamic system is timeless. The entropy of the universe is not timeless; it is simply meaningless.
Arieh Ben Neim, “Entropy and Time”
—
Two years ago, a while after he’d changed, she’d asked him about how time travel had actually worked. What time was like. It was after she’d lost her face, and he’d been in a bit of a mood after they’d returned to the TARDIS, even after they’d danced at the street party.
“But really,” she’d said, flashing him her best, most winsome smile—the one she’d known since that first, strangled discussion in the street after she’d watched Earth blow up would always be effective, her tongue in her teeth—”how’s it all work? If we’d never shown up here, all of London’d have no face. Then the future’d cancel out, yeah?” She’d darted into his line of view, as he’d been glaring at the console. “Then I’d just fade away, right?”
That, apparently, had been the wrong line to take. His angry dimple appeared. Uh-oh.
She’d been surprised, then, when his face cleared as he looked at her, smoothing out to something a bit more neutrally alien and a bit less angry-man-like.
“Rose Tyler,” he’d said lowly, rolling his name around her mouth like a sweet. “Are you—” and here he’d leaned into her space, just a smidge, his arms crossed like they’d done in his previous body, “—asking me questions to distract me?”
She’d just turned up the wattage on her grin, her cheeks burning with the effort. He’d hooted and leaned away, his coin-flip mood shifting to something light and amused. “You’ve learned too much from me,” he’d said. “But! Right. Time travel. Strictly speaking, time is not a linear progression—no, you already know that part. Honestly, Rose, it’s hard to explain. There’s a world where London’s got no face, for sure.”
“You mean like… parallel worlds, yeah? Like. Like where Mickey is.”
“Almost, but not quite. Gotta start smaller scale.” Then he’d been silent for a bit, his eyes distant. She poked him in the side, and he squealed. “Hey! Thinking!”
“Thought you were supposed to be the clever one in the room,” she’d said. “Take less time.”
“Thinking of how to scale it down to your level, you little cow,” he’d said, and then he’d dodged out of the way out of her swatting hands. “Fine! Fine, I’ve got it!” He’d dashed around the console, away from her, and grabbed a plant—from where?!— before thrusting the withered thing into her hands. It was twiggy and spare, with only a few leaves which curled, dry and dying, close to the stem.
“What is this?”
“A plant, obviously. Keep up!” He danced away from another smack, then back again. “No, but really—just something I picked up. A gift from an emperor, few centuries ago.”
“Taking great care of it, of course.” She’d turned it over in her hands, and desiccated soil began to stream from the pot. “Oh, not the dress!”
He’d tutted, crouched by her knees and absentmindedly swept at her skirt with his hands as he’d begun to talk. “So, this plant, yes? Looks old and awful, yes?”
“Obviously,” she’d said, twirling her hips a bit. Only to aid in the soil dispersal, of course, not for the minute twitch of his fingers as she rocked her hips a little figure-eight before him.
(Sometimes, she wondered if he knew what he was doing to her, what with his fondness for touch and nearness. If he didn’t, then she could chalk it up to his alienness. If he did, she’d have two options: either he had… some sort of intention towards her—unlikely, her brain had scoffed at the time—or he couldn’t help himself despite knowing how it’d feel for her, this unattainable Time Lord playing out these sketches of romanticism and her drinking it in like dark rum. Not once did she think it was intentionally cruel. She still doesn’t, and she misses the tight grip of his hugs, both his bodies desperate and firm against her own supplicating bend.)
“Right, obviously. Except, Miss Tyler,” and here he’d stood, springing away from her hips like he’d been electrocuted, “watch this.” Then his eyes had tightened, just a hair, like he’d been focusing on something distant, and he clicked his tongue.
In her hands, the plant was whole and healthy, burning green with all the best fire of life. She’d dropped it in her shock, and he jumped forward, catching it before it could hit the grating.
“How’s that then?” he’d said, waggling his eyebrows.
—
If time didn’t have a direction, it seems to me that would make time into just another spatial dimension, and if all we’ve got all are spatial dimensions, then it seems to me nothing’s happening in the universe. I can imagine a four-dimensional spatial object, but nothing occurs in it. This is the way people often talk about the, quote, “block universe” as being fixed or rigid or unchanging or something like that, because they’re thinking of it like a four-dimensional spatial object.
But all of this seems so — what can I say? It seems so remote from the physical world. We’re sitting here and time is going on, and we know what it means to say that time is going on.
From “A Defense of the Reality of Time,” by George Musser in interview with Dr. Tim Maudlin
—
In the second month of classes and seven months after Canary Wharf, Torchwood is absorbed by UNIT. Rose, currently working her way up as a paper-pusher and gofer and moonlighting occasionally on operations where combat won’t be required, is called in during the first week by some of UNIT’s officers.
This doesn’t come as a surprise. Her story’s been quietly passed around at Torchwood, and while Mickey and Pete had done their best to run interference for her, she’d also been stubbornly working her way up the ladder, determined not to rely on Pete’s name. The quiet blonde chav with sad eyes, running around the entirety of Torchwood like an intern who occasionally had knowledge of species and cultures at the most inconvenient times—no one better to gossip about, this girl who appeared out of nowhere attached to both the richest man in the nation and a somewhat cocky but clever and beloved squad leader.
Some of the science and tech lads had attempted to pick her brain about technology in the other universe, and the crestfallen looks on their faces when she’d had to explain that her experience with tech was mainly with a handheld future screwdriver (and she didn’t understand how it’d worked beyond “it’s sonic!”) had rankled.
That, and she’d added off by saying that she’d begun as a shopgirl, and she could rock the hell out of a price gun. That hadn’t garnered her many fans, except for the lads who’d caught it as a joke. And then those ones, seeing her smile, had started blushing, and Rose had hightailed it out of there.
(There were still a few who asked her out to lunch every couple of weeks or so. The first time, it’d happened in front of Mickey, who’d snorted. “Good luck, mate,” he’d told the man. “You’ll need it.” Once again, Rose had contemplated murder.)
UNIT’s lead… interrogator? Debriefer? Rose doesn’t know the term—whatever her position, though, is an imposing, stern-faced black woman with a beautifully pressed uniform. Torchwood didn’t have uniforms. She introduces herself at the beginning of the discussion as Captain Erisa Magambo, and then proceeds to rip Rose’s file to shreds. She begins with an accounting of Rose’s actions in this universe, from pseudo-intern to occasional consultant on first contacts to scut work and a brief, unexplained holiday to Norway and ends with Canary Wharf, detailing Pete’s own debrief and her entrapment in this universe.
Even in these dry, passionless tones, Rose thinks of that white wall. Since UNIT had absorbed Torchwood into their Big Ben location, this universe’s Canary Wharf had been shut down. Rose hadn’t seen that damned wall in a week, hadn't pressed her cheek to the plaster. It’s a conflagration, deep inside, like a coal dropped down her throat and still smoldering in her stomach. She wonders if it will burn right through her gut, this anger, or if it will burn her out from the inside. She doesn’t know which scares her more.
“Miss Tyler,” the captain says. Still and solemn, no huge outward tics. Rose has seen better facades by far. There’s curiosity there, and a need to classify and contain.
Rose raises an eyebrow. “Captain Magambo,” she responds. Let the captain make of her what she will; she’s certainly not answerable to anyone in this universe except her mum and these days that string was tenuous at best. She’d moved out two weeks prior, into a somewhat squalid but affordable apartment. Jackie had fussed and Pete had quietly, awkwardly offered to slip her some money to get a better place, but she’d brushed them both off. The flat was quiet and spare. She’d set up a fan first thing, but it wasn’t quite the same as the singing hum of the TARDIS. Never could be, of course, but at least she’d tried. A little.
The captain continues talking.
“Miss Tyler, your talents and experience are being wasted in your current position, despite your stated desire to ‘make your own way,’ according to Mr. Tyler’s report. If you’d be amenable, UNIT would like to train you to be part of our first contact protocol teams. This would include athletics and weapons training, along with survival instruction. While you’d begin as a junior agent, accumulated demonstrated leadership capabilities and strategic field decisions would lead to advancement within these teams, potentially leading to captainship of your own team.”
Rose lowers the errant eyebrow, allows her mouth to purse in a frown. The captain sets down Rose’s file and looks her in the eye.
“Your coworker, Mr. Smith, has already demonstrated captaincy potential of his own, and he believes you hold that same potential. He spoke very highly of you, in fact, and urged us to consider you for this position.”
This is delivered in the same manner as the rest of the briefing: stale and unemotional. But there’s an air to this little speech that makes Rose think that Magambo wants her to be grateful for this notice.
Rose closes her eyes and tries not to scream. She cannot settle. She must settle. She cannot. You can’t, she remembers him saying, his distraught face on that fucking beach, and stands abruptly.
“Lemme think on it, yeah?” she says, her voice wobbling against her will. “Gotta get to class.” Then she leaves the room, then the building, and then vomits in a bin outside. For a moment, she wraps her arms around her waist, hugging herself tightly as she crouches on cobbled street.
Alone and slow, picking up the shattering pieces of herself, she stands and goes to class.
—
“There’s a sense in which I believe a certain understanding of the block universe. I believe that the past is equally real as the present, which is equally real as the future. Things that happened in the past were just as real. Pains in the past were pains, and in the future they’ll be real too, and there was one past and there will be one future. So if that’s all it means to believe in a block universe, fine.”
From “A Defense of the Reality of Time,” by George Musser in an interview with Dr. Tim Maudlin
—
“It was dead,” she remembers saying. “It’d been—how?!”
He’d placed the plant back in her hands, curling her fingers around the pot for her. It’d smelled sweet, like jasmine with an earthier note. “That, Rose Tyler,” he’d then said, “was simple stuff. Every moment that exists has unlimited potentiality linked to it. You thought the plant should have died, of course, anyone would, why wouldn’t they? But my people—I can see all of those potential moments, and, with a bit of work, can choose the moment that I think should take precedence. Whatever that choice becomes that reality, and then splitting and splitting and splitting infinitely. You 21st century humans talk about your observer effects, particles and waves, I suppose, but in this instance my observational senses forcibly override because, frankly, I can observe a bit better. Twenty-two temporal senses alone, Rose—” and he’d stopped as she’d stepped back, her hands choking-tight around the pot. His mouth lingered open, then slowly shut. His face had lost its animation, fallen back into that flat alien face that he put on sometimes, when he’d lost that mania, when there’d been an unexpected blow to the psychological gut.
Rose’d looked up at him with wide, wide eyes, and he’d stared back, eyes shuttered.
“Was that too much,” he’d said quietly, not asked. Then he’d swallowed, grabbed the pot from her hands, set it beneath the console again, and began flipping levers like mad, like a man possessed.
“Where to now, Rose Tyler? Fancy a—”
“Doctor, stop. ”
He’d grit his teeth, ignoring her tracking gaze, continued to press buttons, pump the bike pump, throw levers with violent abandon. So she’d walked closer to him—a quarter of the console away—and gently picked up the plant from where he’d set it. It was still bright green, twining and thriving. But she’d not been able to erase the image of it, dying and brown in her hands.
“Doctor,” she’d said once more, stepping ever closer to him even as he danced around the controls in a frantic dash. “Please.”
There must’ve been some note in her voice that she hadn’t been able to control, some throaty begging or weakness that she’d hated as soon as it’d escaped. But it’d worked: he stopped, full and final, braced against the console like a man waiting for a mortal blow.
“It wasn’t too much, Doctor,” she’d said, curling one of the leaves between her fingers. “I promise, it wasn’t.” And that was the truth, she’d thought. There was something familiar about what he’d shown, what he’d described. Observation—what if she could do that, see all of time and all potential options? What sort of things would she do? “Just… I had a question.”
He’d darted a glance at her. Silent permission to continue talking.
“Doctor,” she’d started, and took his stillness as further permission to creep closer to him, and did so until the hem of her skirt brushed against his shins. She swallowed, and his second glance lingered on her, his face impassive but his eyes darting across her features like he’d been cataloging them for some future remembrance.
“How many times have you done that for me?” she’d asked. “Changed a moment?”
His mouth flattened until it was like an old cut, pale and tight.
“Please don’t ask me that,” he’d said softly. Then he laid a hand on one of her elbows, cupping the jut of her bones within his palm, like he’d been reminding himself that she was real. “Please, please never ask me that.”
Silent, and so close to him, Rose had nodded, the plant pot still tight within her grip. “Okay,” she’d said. She’d expected him to step away, then, once she’d given her assurance, but instead he’d remained in her space. His thumb slowly cascaded, up and down, against the boundary between her jacket sleeve and her skin, and she hadn’t been able to suppress the goosebumps from that gentle touch. So instead she’d let herself sway closer to him.
Still not touching him, though. She didn’t think she’d be brave enough for that. The Doctor began to sway in time with her, and hummed as she smiled at him. His face was fey and strange in the light of the rotor, but oh, she adored those sharp features, those dark, considering eyes.
“So what’s it like?” she’d asked, after they’d stood there for what felt like an eternity and a moment. “Seeing all that stuff?”
He’d closed his eyes, dragged in a long breath through his nose. Exhaled a puff of air that gusted over the top of her head. “You saw it once,” he’d responded, lowly. “When you opened the TARDIS. Scared me to death.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Rose had craned her head back to look at him, and once again that love—because that’s what it had to be, she knew—rushed through her.
“Tell me about it,” she’d said, and clasped the pot to her with one hand and reached out her other to touch his elbow, tense and bony through the wool of his suit. Mirrored with his own grip, she thought, and the symmetry and bravery of their motions pleased her.
He’d swallowed, and then, quietly, he’d begun to talk.
They swayed together in their ersatz dance the entire time, even as he detailed how she’d ripped open the TARDIS and drank down the vortex, making herself a goddess with a fast-approaching expiration date. How she’d poured that power into the entire Dalek fleet, removing them from existence, ending the Time War for good. How she’d scattered her name across space and time, tweaked reality to fit her views so she could ultimately lead herself here.
How he’d taken the power from her to save her from herself.
At this telling, she’d bent closer to him, the plant pressed uncomfortably between their bodies.
“I killed you,” she’d said, feeling ill. He’d smiled sadly at her.
“No, not killed, Rose.” His hand left her elbow and pulled the pot out from her grasp, and she’d let him. “Regenerated. I didn’t die.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Not… not as you think I do,” He’d set the pot on the grating, but then had just as quickly resumed his spot in her space. His eyes roamed her face again, searching for what, she didn’t know. “I’m alien,” he’d said, and he’d brought a hand up again, but this time to cradle her cheek. “You and I have fundamentally different understandings of existence. Of reality.”
The Doctor’s hand had been cool and gentle, and there was such a weight in his eyes. She’d thought back on what he’d said that evening, of potentiality, of moments stacked high with equal options, of superior observers and of choice and of that green, living plant that had been so withered before.
(Please don’t ask me that, he’d said. How many times had he seen her die? How many times had he wrenched reality to fit what he thought best, had he exercised this frightening power?
How many, then, in that war, when he’d lost?)
His thumb brushed across her cheekbone, and his eyes were still dark, still studying her face. So she’d forced a smile, for him, for this man who was so burdened by the past but tried so hard these days to hide it.
God, she loved him. She wondered, distantly, if there’d ever been a moment before, when she’d told him, and he’d changed it.
“Different, yeah,” she’d said, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat. “Good different or bad different? Because from where I’m standing, all… that seems a bit difficult.” Then she mirrored his actions again, raised her hand to his cheek, resolutely ignored the shaking of her fingers all the while. He closed his eyes at her touch.
“Difficult?” he’d echoed. But there was the faintest returned pressure against her hand.
“Yeah. I think I’d go mad if I saw all that.”
“Well…” he’d said, drawing the word out. “You almost did.”
“I did, didn’t I? But it’s what you see all the time. All that… possibility. And only you get that choice.”
A nod, barely-there stubble rubbing warm against her palm.
“Okay, then,” she’d said. Whispered, really. “Do I ever have a choice?
His eyes flew open. “Oh, Rose,” he’d said, sounding so sad and old. “Always.”
(Three months later in his timeline, at Canary Wharf, he’d slip a dimension hopper over her head and he’d prove himself a liar. But this lie, at least, was done in real time, in her present, not the flickering could-bes of his existence.)
“Okay, then,” she’d repeated. “Good.” She patted his cheek, and, feeling inestimably bold and tender, pulled his head towards hers and brushed her lips across his forehead. “Thank you,” she said, and he was silent and still again. “I’m going to go get some sleep, Doctor. See you in the morning.”
“No morning on the TARDIS,” he’d murmured, but she was already walking away.
(Later, in the quiet, with only the hum of his beloved ship to keep him company, the Doctor would pick up the plant. He would blink and reality would shiver to his whims and it’d become dull and dead once again. He would study it, and he would think of Rose without her face, with her eyes burning gold, with wrinkles and fine lines, with eyes like pearls and slits cut into her cheeks, with her lips carefully sculpted from marble. He would think of her walking away, so fresh in his damnably good memory.
Then, carefully checking that Rose was out of earshot, he would hurl the pot against the grating with a snarl. It would shatter beyond repair.)
—
If some regions remain out of that person’s sight forever, those regions are behind the observer’s own personal horizon. No black hole is necessary. For example, if you get in a spaceship and accelerate, then as long as you have a sufficient head start, some light rays will never catch up to you. They are behind your own personal horizon.
From “Time Machines Would Run Afoul of the Second Law of Thermodynamics,” by George Musser in interview with Dr. Aron Wall
—
The professor is in fine form today, bouncing around the lecture hall stage like a particularly excitable and plump hedgehog. He’s describing the history of basic rocketry, and the thought of anything related to space travel sorely tempts Rose to simply turn around and leave. But she’s already late as-is, and is forced to find a seat in the front of the lecture hall.
God, she doesn’t even have her things, just her wallet and her phone. She’d just left. Up and done a runner, when she hadn’t done that sort of thing in ages. So instead she sits in the first row and does her best to discreetly type her notes in ad-hoc shorthand on her phone.
It doesn’t work.
“Miss… Tyler, yes? Miss Tyler, if I could ask you to place your phone in your bag, I’d be very grateful.”
She looks up, and the professor is stooped slightly in her direction. Like he’s doing her a kindness and asking her as an aside, when in reality his voice is pitched so that everyone in the lecture hall can hear. Her ears burn as a few titters echo around the room.
“No can do,” she says stoically. “Forgot my stuff at work, so I’m tryin’ to take notes on here.” She lifts up the odd tablet of her phone—this world had more advanced tech, he’d said, and she still wasn’t quite used to not flipping or sliding her phone closed—and waggles it insouciantly.
Then, because she doesn’t always know when to stop, she adds: “That alright with you, sir? ” with a kick of spite at the end.
The professor’s face grows uncharacteristically serious, and he raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “See me after class, Tyler,” he says. Flashpan-fast, his normal smile is immediately back on his face, he adjusts his cap, and he’s back facing the crowd of students, continuing his lecture and discussing the current state of rocketry and space travel.
She very seriously contemplates leaving, again, in the rush of students towards the door at the end of class. She nearly makes it, too, except for a clammy hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s go to my office, Miss Tyler,” says the professor, and it is not a request.
“No, ta,” she says, shrugging his hand away. “I’ll remember my notes next time, okay?”
He moves to stand in front of her, blocking her exit. “I’m afraid the phone situation isn’t all, Miss Tyler. Please, come with me.”
Then, of all the things in the world, he breaks wind.
It smells, of all things in the world, like bad breath.
“Oh, do excuse me,” he says. “Come along.”
As he turns, Rose tilts her head, and there’s a spark of curiosity at the back of her skull that hasn’t been there in a long, long time that kicks her forward to follow.
The walk to his office is silent, and after he shuts the door he quickly settles himself behind his desk with a satisfied grunt, gesturing to the chair opposite his for Rose to sit down. Behind him, on a window ledge, there’s an oddly tentacular rock on a pedestal, and Rose knows she’s seen structures like that before.
He opens his mouth to begin speaking, but Rose beats him to the punch.
“Cool rock,” she says. “Where’d you find it?”
The professor blinks. “Oh! Oh, just something from home I found one day.”
“You far from home, then?” Rose presses on. The professor looks at her questioningly.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Miss Tyler, I did not ask you to speak with me in order for us to discuss my life. Quite frankly, I’m worried about you and your ability to pass this course.”
Rose pauses and considers. She’d been receiving average marks on her assignments, although she hadn’t done much of the extra credit beyond a single question on a recent exam. Her capabilities aren’t an issue, and she knows it.
She says as much to the professor, who frowns.
“It’s not that, Miss Tyler. It’s your disavowal of the entire scientific process.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Apparently not,” he says, and then digs in one of the drawers of his desk. She tenses, but the professor simply pulls out a piece of paper, spinning it to face her. It’s a recent exam, and she’s received passing marks. Then he flips through the pages to the very last one, where she’d answered the bonus question. On previous exams, they’d been based on passing comments during lectures, so she hadn’t been exactly surprised to see this one on here.
What is the name for the measure of disorder in a system? Explain. For additional bonus points, explain what science fiction trope it makes impossible.
Underneath, in her loopy handwriting, she’d written:
How selfish to think that the reality you live in is the only one that exists.
“Miss Tyler, you’re currently signed up for science courses, not literature. In fact, your projected course load has you focusing on physics and engineering, both of which are focused on describing reality as it is. While there are realms to be explored in quantum physics, frankly, you haven’t got the raw talent to get that far. If you plan to focus on the engineering aspect, you must stay… grounded.”
Rose flicks her eyes up to the professor. He is doing his best to stare her down, but his face isn’t one that was made for seriousness.
She wonders about the man whose face this once must have been, before it was stolen and made into a facade.
“You’re kind of a shit professor,” she says plainly, and continues speaking through the bald shock in the professor’s expression. “Not in the day-to-day teaching stuff, that’s fine. I get Newton’s laws a bit better now. But I thought you lot were supposed to be looking for the next edge in scientific breakthroughs, not tellin’ students to jog on when they think a bit differently.”
“I beg your pardon?” the professor squawks, affronted.
Rose barrels on. “The reality of it, sir, is that reality is chosen by the superior observer. You wanna know what I observe? Your farts smell like calcium decay, there’s a Raxacoricofallapatorian rock on your window ledge, and you keep pullin’ your hat down in order to hide, I’m pretty sure, a zipper for your skin suit. Bettin’ you don’t like your chips with vinegar, then?”
There’s silence in the office, and the professor is simultaneously agog and frighteningly tense. Rose grins involuntarily, the burn in her cheeks unfamiliar with its rarity these days. Then three cruel talons shoot out from behind the desk.
Oh bugger, she manages to think before she is speared through the gut.