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Her first stop had been to the year 2035. But it had been rough and over in a flash, barely enough of any action or misadventure to call a real expedition. It had been three days of stealing all the equipment she needed in order to survive, handheld computers that never need regarding, universal Wi-Fi connections, setting up bank account in falsified names. Running in back alleys and hiding from the police force was an adrenaline rush and nothing else. It was all work and no play, and Lee after all these years needed to let go of all the stress that was propping her up.
She had hopped back to her own timeline and made the final touches on her vortex manipulator. It would take her to any time on earth, the only planet she had the space coordinates for. It was possible if she went into the future that she could glimpse a time when the human race when out and visited other planets. But at the moment Lee was also aware of the fact of how she would be atomized if she traveled to the far distance time after the planet beneath her feet had been destroyed itself.
So she found herself standing in Central Park as the fog rolled into the small valley of grass thinking of what possible past event she would want to visit. She looked around the park, at the children rushing home for dinner, at the businessmen cutting through on their way back home. For a moment she considered heading back home herself, it was only a few minutes away. But the house she had grown up in wasn’t really her home anymore and she had accepted that a long time ago.
She stared absently at the silver cuff on her wrist wondering if she had thought of everything. Something had to have been missing surely she could not have covered all her tracks. She had quit her job, come up with a reasonable alibi but still Lee felt as if she was missing something. Maybe it was the spark, the desire to leave her world behind. She wanted to get out, she needed to leave. But she didn’t seem to have the courage to make the jump.
I’m just Lily Williams the young woman who is too smart for her own era. She thought as her fingers ran against the cold metal. No, I’m not ever her any more. But I’m not Riley Song, cosmic warrior and bringer of the Time Lords either. I’m just Lee, not willing to listen to anybody but myself.
She smiled at the thought. Bucking every trend, rebelling against the norm, perhaps the strongest family trait in her. It was true though, whoever the races of the universe feared she would become, Lee had not yet achieved that point in her life yet. She was still a twenty two year old creature struggling to stand up straight some days. Lee closed her eyes, where had he gone all those years ago when he stole a blue box? It was a memory buried so deep that even she couldn’t see it. The wind was picking up around her, the ambient noise of the city rising to a deafening crescendo. Anywhere, somewhere, it was all somewhere over the rainbow from now on. She allowed fate to control her fingers, as the feeling of suffocation took hold of her body for an instant.
The air was different. It was the first thing she noticed, earthy and wet as she opened her eyes. She was standing in the middle of a vast expanse of farmland with picturesque rolling hills and green fields Germanic from her impression. A small dirt road winding in-between green farms dotted with moving figures in the distance. Lee joined the path the foreign dirt scuffing her soles as she approached with a quickening pace those already ahead of her. She could have looked down at her wrist to see that she was sometime in the early 18th century, but she had not stumbled upon that common knowledge yet as she joined the German farmers in their walk towards a hamlet town.
She still didn’t know where and when she was as she entered the cobblestone town. Yet at least she was not getting too many looks as she followed the crowds towards a church. Lee rummaged in her bag for a scarf and tied it over her head before she followed them all into the gothic church. Her head craned up, she had seen such beautiful churched in her travels to Europe but this was something else. The newly exposed arch framework, the heavy stones glistening with new age, all still in their original place. The walls bare, the glass windows sparkling as they allowed glimpses into the town beyond. Above the plain altar was a large organ suspended in its own balcony, being played by a grey wigged man.
Someone pulled at her hand, and Lee turned to see a young boy looking at her with a rather blank face. "Excuse me miss, woman over there." He said pointing.
Lee not knowing more than a few phrases of German smiled at him. Glad to see that even though it had been twenty two years since she had stepped foot in the TARDIS she lovely machine had graced her with a translation circuit inside of her head. “Sorry, my mistake." She replied as she made her way to the correct section of the sanctuary and sat down as the rest of the church was filled.
Lee did not know why she was in an 18th century Germanic town. She looked at her vortex manipulator in hopes that it would give her the answer and made a mental note to add an interface which showed the day and place. She was sitting in a church while the organ was playing a prelude as parishioners filled in, something she could have experienced in nearly any time. It was a piece she had analyzed at college while taking music theory courses the chord progressions were flooding back to her, one, four, five seven.... it was some Bach prelude to a cantata.
The answer slapped her in the face. A Bach prelude, Johann Sebastian Bach was playing the organ right in front of her eyes. She had to stifle a giggle as she listened to the music of one of the most prolific composers of all time. The people around her had no idea of how important he would be to the history of the world, of how his work would affect so many different genres. To them he was just the church music director. Lee leaned back in the pew and laughed. Well if visiting historical figures was an option, her list of places to visit had just become much longer.