World Enough, and Time ("Void" entry)
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who_contestTitle: World Enough, and Time
Rating: PG
Genre: Character Study/Alternate Universe/Angst
Word count: 2000
Spoilers for the events of series 2 and 4, through to The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
Characters: The Duplicate Doctor, Jake Simmonds, Rose Tyler
Summary: Safe travel across parallel worlds is impossible. Years after the walls between realities were sealed, Pete Tyler's Torchwood is about to prove otherwise.
My subject is running late.
This is not a rare problem for interviewers, of course. With actresses or pop stars, tardiness is practically good manners. When your subject is the nation's expert in temporal physics, however, it's hard not to feel as though a point is being made.
Twenty minutes after our appointed time he arrives, three bright young disciples following on behind. With lab coat slung over one shoulder and hair ruffled into peaks at the back, to a casual observer he looks like a junior technician. Yet the aura of authority is unmistakeable, and on a second glance the white streaks in the hair become apparent. As he moves he talks, leaving no space for interruption between sentences. The monologue continues unchecked for a good thirty seconds before somebody points me out.
Dr John Noble pivots on his heel and fixes me with a stare that is at once baffled and piercingly direct. "Ah. That's today, is it?"
He can perhaps be forgiven for having other things on his mind. In less than a fortnight, all being well, Dr Noble will set off on a journey unlike any in the history of human endeavour. It will begin with his taking control of a new kind of spacecraft, the exact mechanics of which are unknown to all but a few colleagues. Once inside, by most discernible standards he will no longer exist. Untouched by light, gravity or time itself, he will slip into the Void between the folds of reality and emerge - where? The ultimate destination is another closely guarded secret.
If this sounds fanciful, then one should remember that Dr Noble's employers have form. After all, it wasn't so long ago that Torchwood was pioneering experiments in travel across the dimensions - a period that coincided with one of the greatest natural disasters in memory. Though no link between the Institute's activities and the collapse of the polar ice caps in the late Noughties has ever been proved, conspiracy theories still abound. A few critics have even called for a moratorium on research that does not deal with any of the "three Fs"; fuel, farming and "physiology".
Shouldn't we be busy improving the Earth on which we live, they would ask, rather than searching for an escape route?
Dr Noble looks hurt, but recovers fast. "First off, any scientist will tell you it doesn't work like that. Some of the most brilliant discoveries- the ones that really changed how we do things, right here and right now- only came about when we started to think beyond this planet. If we hadn't been trying to keep things running up in space, we wouldn't have solar power. Without the Mars expeditions, androids might never have left the toy shops. If Harriet Jones hadn't launched the Subwave network-"
Here I lean forward. The former president is not, after all, a name one associates with world-changing invention; but the end of the sentence never comes. He rubs a hand on the back of his neck, and turns away, as though lost in thought. When the silence becomes uncomfortable, I try prompting him. Clearly, I say, part of John Lumic's legacy has been a certain wariness towards new technology. What, then, can he offer anyone who thinks that his experiments will create more problems than they solve?
Dr Noble sucks in a breath between his teeth. "Hope," he says at last. "I'm not asking people to have faith. Faith gave us Lumic; it turned everyone into his followers. But hope gives us a future. There's so much more out there; more worlds than we can even imagine. We don't have to be afraid of them. We do have to be prepared."
A lot of preparation has certainly gone into this latest venture. To start with, all Torchwood's old testing protocols - focused purely on assessing the speed and the direction of travel through the Void - had to be scrapped. A more sustainable approach was required. While previous attempts were akin to firing a bullet through the skin of reality, the new craft is designed to move like a needle in the hand of a talented surgeon, darting between dimensions and closing any rifts as it goes. "All transdimensional travel is damage", Dr Noble explains. "You can't steer a boat without creating a wake, and you can't push through reality without leaving scars. What you can do is mitigate the damage, so that the barriers between worlds can snap back easily each time. Where once we risked making waves, now we're barely ruffling the surface."
Dr Noble will be the second Torchwood employee to travel in this way. Eighteen months ago the Institute's H-G robot was launched inside a prototype capsule, re-entering observable space ten weeks later. The fact that it materialised in New Delhi, 4,000 miles from its starting point, is a detail that does not seem to worry staff unduly.
"H-G was brilliant", Jake Simmonds tells me, while his boss pauses the interview to take a videcall in the adjoining room. "He did everything he was built for. The only trouble was with the homing technology on our end. And this time we'll have a manual driver who can switch course on re-entry if he needs to, so fingers crossed."
Simmonds, one of Torchwood's longest-serving military men, exemplifies the confidence that runs throughout the project. The atmosphere in the lobby is both busy and upbeat. Nobody lingers, but nobody moves as though pursued. The very presence of a journalist in the building before launch day indicates the trust that has been placed in Dr Noble. Much like a good general, or a skilled doctor in the medical sense, he encourages staff to express their worries while dealing with his own in private.
The official Torchwood biography is typically sparse. Born in Chiswick, west London, he gained his doctorate from Glasgow University and spent a decade on research abroad. "Just wandering about", is how he puts it, with a look that invites no further questions. It was Pete Tyler who brought him back to London and installed him at Canary Wharf, with the Institute now fully under the control of the People's Republic.
If Tyler's transformation from drinks mogul to scientific crusader seems unlikely, John Noble's own career path was hardly less remarkable. Over the next two years he designed and launched the first satellite network that could run without any Cybus technology. He perfected the catalytic converter on the modern Zeppelin, and kick-started the field of transdismensional engineering. Anyone keen to see an example of the latter need only go as far as Belfast, where the recently finished children's library has been drawing crowds. A wooden cabinet no broader than your average man, its doors open to reveal an entire building stocked with over three million books.
"That was Rose's idea," Dr Noble grins. "Sort of a riff on CS Lewis."
The hint is a tantalising one. The Vitex heiress, adopted daughter to Pete and Jackie Tyler, has always led what one might call a sheltered public life. On paper, her role at Torchwood is advisory. In practice, however, she would appear to spend at least as many hours in the office as either of her parents did in their heyday. Whenever the Institute has been battling some crisis, she has invariably disappeared behind the scenes. In the new spirit of openness, I wonder whether we might soon know more of her story - but now it's clear that I've overstepped the mark. The muscles in my subject's jaw tighten. For the first time, I get a sense of what he must be like when threatened.
"You'd have to ask her. And if you did, she'd probably tell you to piss off. So. Take that how you like, or just make it up. Most people do."
It's time to backpedal, and fast. Perhaps, I suggest, the usual journalist's questions just aren't up to this scenario. In a few days' time, he will be more alone than anyone can imagine. Travelling in the Void will mean dispensing with every survival instinct. Vision and hearing, breathing and touch - all will become irrelevant once the craft is in motion. It's hard to see how someone could prepare for that, no matter how smooth any rehearsal might be.
The tension in the room has shifted again. Everybody looks towards their leader, who looks at nothing. The anger has left his face, and what remains feels gentler than before.
"I used to call it Hell," he says. "The Void. But that was wrong of me. Only a madman enters Hell voluntarily."
A madman, or a man who can never let anything go. I think of Orpheus in the Greek myth, plunging into the Underworld in search of what he lost. Yet this description, too, feels inadequate. Before I can ask another question, however, a second videcall comes through in the next room. Dr Noble is out of the door so fast that his entourage has to break into a run. Simmonds offers me his hand, with a what-can-you-do smile. This time, I have my cue to leave.
The pace in the lobby has, if anything, increased. A Zeppelin buzzes somewhere in the middle distance. Trolleys are being unloaded, supervised by a bevy of white coats. Identical stamped crates and identical uniforms; this is a military operation, with the front lines drawn up between universes.
Another hand touches my elbow. "Hang on a sec, Jake." I turn, narrowly avoiding collision with a trolley. And then I stare.
"Did he try and give you the runaround? Good for you. Means you were getting close to the stuff that matters." Rose Tyler leans in to check the timestamp on my security pass. "Still got three minutes before my mate here has to show you out. Come and meet H-G."
So I am led, over the protests of my minder, away from the organised chaos and onto a different floor. Inside a locked room is a stasis pod bolted to the wall, and inside the pod is the most famous robot in the world. With its telescopic legs folded away, its head just reaches my waist. A dozen monitors are plugged into the metal cocoon, blinking out statistics in an endless, ever-renewing code.
"Stuck in the box today, I'm afraid. We need all the data we can get." After a moment, Ms Tyler crouches to rest her fingertips over the blank eyes. Somebody - presumably a junior researcher - has drawn a cartoon smile on the viewing panel in indelible marker. She traces the arc with her thumb.
Watching her in that space, there seem to be as many questions as there are worlds. How she first came to join the Tylers, more than twenty years ago. How much she has done since, and when, and where. If she ever resents the weight of Torchwood's legacy. Whether she envies her younger brother his escape into academia, where knowledge can only be gained, not risked.
But the minutes are ticking by, and there is no technology yet that can reclaim them. So instead, I ask her: Would you go, if you had the chance? Take the leap into the Void?
The electric hum from H-G's monitors is the loudest noise in the room. Afterwards, I must unpick Ms Tyler's answer from my recording, taking down each word as it becomes clear.
"I made a choice. Long time ago. The kind of choice you make when you're a kid, when you think forever means one thing and that's it. So when it all turned out different, of course, I blamed him. John.
"Now I know there's no such thing as forever, not the way I meant it then. But in between the worlds, there's eternity. It's not safe, and it's not cosy. It's hard. It’s Hell."
Rose Tyler looks up, and her eyes are shining. "And if I get a say in any of it, he won't be on his own for long."
Rating: PG
Genre: Character Study/Alternate Universe/Angst
Word count: 2000
Spoilers for the events of series 2 and 4, through to The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
Characters: The Duplicate Doctor, Jake Simmonds, Rose Tyler
Summary: Safe travel across parallel worlds is impossible. Years after the walls between realities were sealed, Pete Tyler's Torchwood is about to prove otherwise.
My subject is running late.
This is not a rare problem for interviewers, of course. With actresses or pop stars, tardiness is practically good manners. When your subject is the nation's expert in temporal physics, however, it's hard not to feel as though a point is being made.
Twenty minutes after our appointed time he arrives, three bright young disciples following on behind. With lab coat slung over one shoulder and hair ruffled into peaks at the back, to a casual observer he looks like a junior technician. Yet the aura of authority is unmistakeable, and on a second glance the white streaks in the hair become apparent. As he moves he talks, leaving no space for interruption between sentences. The monologue continues unchecked for a good thirty seconds before somebody points me out.
Dr John Noble pivots on his heel and fixes me with a stare that is at once baffled and piercingly direct. "Ah. That's today, is it?"
He can perhaps be forgiven for having other things on his mind. In less than a fortnight, all being well, Dr Noble will set off on a journey unlike any in the history of human endeavour. It will begin with his taking control of a new kind of spacecraft, the exact mechanics of which are unknown to all but a few colleagues. Once inside, by most discernible standards he will no longer exist. Untouched by light, gravity or time itself, he will slip into the Void between the folds of reality and emerge - where? The ultimate destination is another closely guarded secret.
If this sounds fanciful, then one should remember that Dr Noble's employers have form. After all, it wasn't so long ago that Torchwood was pioneering experiments in travel across the dimensions - a period that coincided with one of the greatest natural disasters in memory. Though no link between the Institute's activities and the collapse of the polar ice caps in the late Noughties has ever been proved, conspiracy theories still abound. A few critics have even called for a moratorium on research that does not deal with any of the "three Fs"; fuel, farming and "physiology".
Shouldn't we be busy improving the Earth on which we live, they would ask, rather than searching for an escape route?
Dr Noble looks hurt, but recovers fast. "First off, any scientist will tell you it doesn't work like that. Some of the most brilliant discoveries- the ones that really changed how we do things, right here and right now- only came about when we started to think beyond this planet. If we hadn't been trying to keep things running up in space, we wouldn't have solar power. Without the Mars expeditions, androids might never have left the toy shops. If Harriet Jones hadn't launched the Subwave network-"
Here I lean forward. The former president is not, after all, a name one associates with world-changing invention; but the end of the sentence never comes. He rubs a hand on the back of his neck, and turns away, as though lost in thought. When the silence becomes uncomfortable, I try prompting him. Clearly, I say, part of John Lumic's legacy has been a certain wariness towards new technology. What, then, can he offer anyone who thinks that his experiments will create more problems than they solve?
Dr Noble sucks in a breath between his teeth. "Hope," he says at last. "I'm not asking people to have faith. Faith gave us Lumic; it turned everyone into his followers. But hope gives us a future. There's so much more out there; more worlds than we can even imagine. We don't have to be afraid of them. We do have to be prepared."
A lot of preparation has certainly gone into this latest venture. To start with, all Torchwood's old testing protocols - focused purely on assessing the speed and the direction of travel through the Void - had to be scrapped. A more sustainable approach was required. While previous attempts were akin to firing a bullet through the skin of reality, the new craft is designed to move like a needle in the hand of a talented surgeon, darting between dimensions and closing any rifts as it goes. "All transdimensional travel is damage", Dr Noble explains. "You can't steer a boat without creating a wake, and you can't push through reality without leaving scars. What you can do is mitigate the damage, so that the barriers between worlds can snap back easily each time. Where once we risked making waves, now we're barely ruffling the surface."
Dr Noble will be the second Torchwood employee to travel in this way. Eighteen months ago the Institute's H-G robot was launched inside a prototype capsule, re-entering observable space ten weeks later. The fact that it materialised in New Delhi, 4,000 miles from its starting point, is a detail that does not seem to worry staff unduly.
"H-G was brilliant", Jake Simmonds tells me, while his boss pauses the interview to take a videcall in the adjoining room. "He did everything he was built for. The only trouble was with the homing technology on our end. And this time we'll have a manual driver who can switch course on re-entry if he needs to, so fingers crossed."
Simmonds, one of Torchwood's longest-serving military men, exemplifies the confidence that runs throughout the project. The atmosphere in the lobby is both busy and upbeat. Nobody lingers, but nobody moves as though pursued. The very presence of a journalist in the building before launch day indicates the trust that has been placed in Dr Noble. Much like a good general, or a skilled doctor in the medical sense, he encourages staff to express their worries while dealing with his own in private.
The official Torchwood biography is typically sparse. Born in Chiswick, west London, he gained his doctorate from Glasgow University and spent a decade on research abroad. "Just wandering about", is how he puts it, with a look that invites no further questions. It was Pete Tyler who brought him back to London and installed him at Canary Wharf, with the Institute now fully under the control of the People's Republic.
If Tyler's transformation from drinks mogul to scientific crusader seems unlikely, John Noble's own career path was hardly less remarkable. Over the next two years he designed and launched the first satellite network that could run without any Cybus technology. He perfected the catalytic converter on the modern Zeppelin, and kick-started the field of transdismensional engineering. Anyone keen to see an example of the latter need only go as far as Belfast, where the recently finished children's library has been drawing crowds. A wooden cabinet no broader than your average man, its doors open to reveal an entire building stocked with over three million books.
"That was Rose's idea," Dr Noble grins. "Sort of a riff on CS Lewis."
The hint is a tantalising one. The Vitex heiress, adopted daughter to Pete and Jackie Tyler, has always led what one might call a sheltered public life. On paper, her role at Torchwood is advisory. In practice, however, she would appear to spend at least as many hours in the office as either of her parents did in their heyday. Whenever the Institute has been battling some crisis, she has invariably disappeared behind the scenes. In the new spirit of openness, I wonder whether we might soon know more of her story - but now it's clear that I've overstepped the mark. The muscles in my subject's jaw tighten. For the first time, I get a sense of what he must be like when threatened.
"You'd have to ask her. And if you did, she'd probably tell you to piss off. So. Take that how you like, or just make it up. Most people do."
It's time to backpedal, and fast. Perhaps, I suggest, the usual journalist's questions just aren't up to this scenario. In a few days' time, he will be more alone than anyone can imagine. Travelling in the Void will mean dispensing with every survival instinct. Vision and hearing, breathing and touch - all will become irrelevant once the craft is in motion. It's hard to see how someone could prepare for that, no matter how smooth any rehearsal might be.
The tension in the room has shifted again. Everybody looks towards their leader, who looks at nothing. The anger has left his face, and what remains feels gentler than before.
"I used to call it Hell," he says. "The Void. But that was wrong of me. Only a madman enters Hell voluntarily."
A madman, or a man who can never let anything go. I think of Orpheus in the Greek myth, plunging into the Underworld in search of what he lost. Yet this description, too, feels inadequate. Before I can ask another question, however, a second videcall comes through in the next room. Dr Noble is out of the door so fast that his entourage has to break into a run. Simmonds offers me his hand, with a what-can-you-do smile. This time, I have my cue to leave.
The pace in the lobby has, if anything, increased. A Zeppelin buzzes somewhere in the middle distance. Trolleys are being unloaded, supervised by a bevy of white coats. Identical stamped crates and identical uniforms; this is a military operation, with the front lines drawn up between universes.
Another hand touches my elbow. "Hang on a sec, Jake." I turn, narrowly avoiding collision with a trolley. And then I stare.
"Did he try and give you the runaround? Good for you. Means you were getting close to the stuff that matters." Rose Tyler leans in to check the timestamp on my security pass. "Still got three minutes before my mate here has to show you out. Come and meet H-G."
So I am led, over the protests of my minder, away from the organised chaos and onto a different floor. Inside a locked room is a stasis pod bolted to the wall, and inside the pod is the most famous robot in the world. With its telescopic legs folded away, its head just reaches my waist. A dozen monitors are plugged into the metal cocoon, blinking out statistics in an endless, ever-renewing code.
"Stuck in the box today, I'm afraid. We need all the data we can get." After a moment, Ms Tyler crouches to rest her fingertips over the blank eyes. Somebody - presumably a junior researcher - has drawn a cartoon smile on the viewing panel in indelible marker. She traces the arc with her thumb.
Watching her in that space, there seem to be as many questions as there are worlds. How she first came to join the Tylers, more than twenty years ago. How much she has done since, and when, and where. If she ever resents the weight of Torchwood's legacy. Whether she envies her younger brother his escape into academia, where knowledge can only be gained, not risked.
But the minutes are ticking by, and there is no technology yet that can reclaim them. So instead, I ask her: Would you go, if you had the chance? Take the leap into the Void?
The electric hum from H-G's monitors is the loudest noise in the room. Afterwards, I must unpick Ms Tyler's answer from my recording, taking down each word as it becomes clear.
"I made a choice. Long time ago. The kind of choice you make when you're a kid, when you think forever means one thing and that's it. So when it all turned out different, of course, I blamed him. John.
"Now I know there's no such thing as forever, not the way I meant it then. But in between the worlds, there's eternity. It's not safe, and it's not cosy. It's hard. It’s Hell."
Rose Tyler looks up, and her eyes are shining. "And if I get a say in any of it, he won't be on his own for long."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-19 02:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-19 03:03 pm (UTC)So I think they'd start looking for a way to break all the rules soon enough.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-07 03:54 am (UTC)*HUGS*
(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-07 07:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-12 02:25 am (UTC)I like all the history you've come up with for John and Rose in this world. I thought the science/tech references filled it out nicely.
But the ending surprise with Rose having relationship problems with John was my favorite part. What she said about choices made when you were a kid was wonderful.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-12 04:33 am (UTC)And then there's the conclusion to Rose's story arc, which has always bugged me a bit. I found it hard to picture either her or the duplicate Doctor settling for a linear life together just because it was the one they were given. There would be too many constraints in it, and they'd bash up against each other trying to break free.
I don't think they'd give up, either- not until they'd found a way of living the life they want on their terms.