"Grandfather?"
"Hmm. Yes, yes, I think so."
"...grandfather?"
"Yes, let me see here. Just need to test this and-"
"Grandfather?!"
"Susan, my dear child, there is no need to shout! I can hear you perfectly well!" The older man, bent over the controls of his time-space machine, finally addressed his grandchild. "Yes, the relative stabilizers are on the blink."
"Do we need to get a replacement for them?" Susan inquired.
"We certainly shall in some time," the Doctor said as he continued to look across the various displays, "but it's not as if we can just go back to the shipyards on Gallif-"
"Doctor, have we landed?" Ian called from deeper within the TARDIS, his voice drawing closer to the pair of them in the console room.
"Yes, Chatterbox, it appears that we have." The Doctor waved the younger man off as he entered. "I'm just doing a few checks before I suss out where we are. Give me a moment, give me a moment."
"Alright! Alright! Sorry." Ian raised his hands, backing away to where Susan stood. "In a bit of mood, is he?"
"Oh, he gets this way when he's tinkering." Susan said. "Grandfather's been this way with the ship ever since we left home."
"Yes, Grandfather was just about to check the scanners to find out where we've landed." Susan explained.
"Yes, yes, indeed." The Doctor said, flipping another switch and reading off the dials. "I... well, let's see here. This is... can that be right?"
"What is it, Doctor?" Ian asked, moving to the old man's side, glancing down at the readouts from the TARDIS that he could not make heads or tails of.
"Yes. Yes... helmic regulation. Temporal stabilizer. Time-differential shortener." The Doctor seemed lost in another world entirely as his eyes narrowed upon the dials and readouts. "No. No, there can be no mistake. No mistake."
"No mistake? What do you mean?" Ian asked.
"Hush, Chesterfield! I'm seeing that my sums are right." The Doctor said, tapping a gnarled finger against one of the gauges a few times.
"Chesterton." Barbara corrected.
"She's calling you, my dear boy." The Doctor waved Ian off, clearly more focused on his own mental deliberations. "Yes, yes, that's right." He stood up properly once more, hands resting in the lapels of his jacket. "Yes, we've arrived."
"Well, don't keep us in suspense, man! Where have we landed?" Ian asked.
"If my calculations are correct, we're on Earth in the year 1963." The Doctor explained.
"You mean-?" Barbara asked.
"Yes, my dear. According to the instruments, we've arrived more specifically on the twenty-third of November, 1963." The Doctor said. An eerie silence fell over the four of them for the longest time. The Doctor stood there, a bit of a satisfied smile just barely twisting his lips. Ian and Barbara exchanged looks, then did the same with Susan.
"Our... time." Barbara said.
"Literally, though." Ian said. "So exactly?"
"Not entirely, my boy." The Doctor said. "To the rest of the world, you entered this junkyard just over a half hour ago." After a moment or so, Ian and Barbara both gave a cheer, even embracing and spinning a bit in place, as the reality of the situation sunk in for them.
"Why, that's marvelous!" Ian said.
"Oh, yes. Yes, indeed." The Doctor said, tapping the dials.
"Well, that does depend." Barbara said, after she and Ian had broken their embrace.
"Depends on what, Barbara?" Susan asked.
"Will your grandfather be letting us go?" Barbara asked. Soon, her head was joined by Ian's and Susan's in looking to the Doctor. The old man looked sternly at the three of them.
"You did kidnap us, after all." Ian said. "Didn't want us revealing your secrets?"
"Not that we would have, surely." Barbara said.
"Not a chance that I was willing to take from either of you." The Doctor said. "Although I will say we've all been through quite a bit together."
"Cavemen." Ian said.
"Daleks." Barbara shuddered.
"The Voord." Susan commented.
"Marco Polo and the court of Kublai Khan." Ian added.
"Oh, that feels so long ago! I can barely remember it now." Susan said, laughing a bit.
"Aztecs." Barbara added as well.
"Yes, yes, we've been through life and death together, certainly." The Doctor said. The elderly man hunched over the console a bit, clearly mulling things over in his head. "I suppose, to a degree, I've come to trust you. Just as you have come to trust me."
"Yes, that's right." Ian said, and Barbara nodded in agreement.
"I shall extend that trust to you here." The Doctor said. "If you wish to leave, I will not stop you." He moved over to the TARDIS console. "Hmm, let's see... yes." He flipped the switch. With a mechanical whirring, the doors opened up. Ian and Barbara peered out, gazing into the familiar junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane, just as it had been when they left it so very long ago. They stood at the threshold, gazing out into the gathered night.
"And only a half hour since we left to the rest of the world?" Ian asked.
"Hmm? Yes, yes, that's right." The Doctor nodded. "I do hope you aren't getting cold beat, my boy?"
"What?" Ian asked.
"I think he means cold feet." Susan explained. "Right, grandfather?"
"Hmm? No, my dear. Left. They'll have left. If they leave." The Doctor said. "Yes. If they leave. If that's still what you want, of course. Why on Earth would they be right? Nonsense!" The old man busied himself around the controls, leaving them to deliberate and seemingly paying neither them nor his granddaughter any heed.
"Well... what are we going to do?" Barbara asked.
"I... guess we'll go home." Ian said. "Since we can go home, now." Nonetheless, the pair stood there, gazing out into the world they had known, the world they had seen around it all making it seem so very, very small now. "We can go now."
"I understand." Susan said. The two schoolteachers looked back toward Susan. "I shall miss you both very much."
"What do you mean, Susan?" Barbara asked.
"Grandfather's not going to want to stay here in the twentieth century." Susan said. "The only reason we stopped here was because I had asked him to. He said it himself, he doesn't really like it here." That reality sank in for the two humans. This would be the last time they'd ever see Susan or the Doctor again.
"Ian, perhaps we could stay for the evening?" Barbara suggested.
"How do you mean?" Ian asked.
"It is rather late, you know." Barbara said. "And we know that the TARDIS has rooms to rest in. Perhaps we should take this evening and leave in the morning?" It was then that Ian seemed to catch onto Barbara's words.
"Yes, you're right, Barbara. I think that would be best." Ian said.
"You mean it?" Susan asked, a smile breaking out across her face.
"Yes, Susan. I think we'll stay for one more night." Ian said. Over at the console, the Doctor had his back turned to the trio and a bit of a smile on his face as he reached for the switch to close the doors. So contented was he in his granddaughter's happiness (and his begrudging happiness that the two were not yet leaving) that he failed to notice the bit of movement in the reflection on one of the gauges...
The next morning, goodbyes were exchanged. Ian and Barbara lingered for a bit longer, but soon enough departed the TARDIS and headed back out from 76 Totter's Lane to Ian's car parked outside, just where they had left it. Ages ago for them, but only hours to the rest of the world.
"It's a strange feeling, isn't it?" Barbara asked.
"How do you mean?" Ian asked, opening the passenger side door for her, closing the door behind her, and then walking back around to get into the driver's seat.
"All the things we've seen, all the things we've done." Barbara said. "And now, we're back here. I hardly think we can expect everything to go back to normal again. Can we?"
"Maybe not, no." Ian admitted. "But we've both wanted to get back here. I've missed being able to go to a pub and drink a pint of beer. To walk in a park and watch a cricket match."
"I know, I know," Barbara said, "and you're right. You're right. The Doctor's world isn't our world." She sighed. "No matter how much we might like it to be so."
"You're not regretting the choice to leave, are you?" Ian asked.
"No. No, nothing like that." Barbara shook her head. "A part of me will always wonder if it was the right one, though." Ian regarded his coworker for a moment, then nodded as he turned the key in the ignition and got them moving away from the junkyard.
"Grandfather?"
"Hmm?"
"Will you miss them, too?"
"Hmm? Oh, don't bother me with such tosh. I have to fix the relative stasis livers." The Doctor was once more working on the inner workings of the console. "Suppose we'll have to patch this. Yes, yes... oh, what a mess. What a mess, indeed."
"But will you, Grandfather?"
"My dear child," The Doctor said, coming up from the underside of the console and resting a hand on Susan's shoulder, "they were only human. Relative to us, they're like the mayflies. We shall go on and you'll forget about them, given time. It's the way of things."
"I won't." Susan shook her head. "And I don't think that you will, either."
"Hmm... sentimental and childish. Yes, sentimental and childish." The Doctor tutted, shaking his head. "Do me a favor, my dear. Fetch me something copper from the junkyard, would you? It must have at least fifty per-cent purity of copper to help with the stabilizers. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Grandfather." Susan said with a bit of a sigh.
"There's a good girl, off you pop." The Doctor said, turning back once more to the console, busying himself with its operations. Susan flipped the switch on the console to open the doors, stepping out into the junkyard. After she had gone, the Doctor only then allowed himself to frown a bit.
"I shall miss them. Oh, yes... I shall miss them." The man, so much younger than he truly appeared to be, was despondent to see the pair leave. The words he'd said to Susan, perhaps, would be ones that he himself would one day believe. Perhaps. Still, life went on... and so would they, once they'd gotten the ship ready to go once more.
Susan had stepped out into the yard and had begun picking through the refuse for something made of copper. It was as she was carefully digging through that her eye caught the broken remains of a sign set against the wall. For a moment, nothing about it seemed out of the ordinary at all. When she looked at it again, however, she thought something was very peculiar about it. Something she could not place until she looked at it straight on. It was a sign for a local bakery she had often passed coming to and from the Coal Hill School. The place had always smelled wonderful to her, given the different pastries and sweets that were sold there, the scents from that bakery wafting out into the air of London. This sign had, until a week before their departure, hung up over that bakery.
"That's... odd." She muttered to herself. The sign itself wasn't odd, it had simply been replaced by a newer one that now hung in its place, but the strange thing about it was the letters on the sign had seemingly been painted on in reverse - right to left instead of left to right as most English writing was and with the letters having been flipped one hundred and eighty degrees. Approaching it, Susan picked up a broken bit of the sign that had the letters 'EE' in 'SWEETS', but again facing in the opposite direction from what one might expect.
"I must be seeing things." Susan rationalized, but her eyes wandered back to the TARDIS. Sure enough, the lettering on the police box shape the now-broken chameleon circuit had given it had been shifted into this bizarre reflection. She touched a hand to her forehead. Her head did not feel warm and she certainly did not feel ill. Deciding to check further, she moved to the gate and slipped out through where it had been left ajar. Standing there at the edge of the street, she gazed upon the blue picket gate and read the lettering that had been painted onto it in white.
nameroF .M.I
tnahcreM parcS
enaL s'rettoT 67
A feeling of dread passed over Susan's mind as she gazed upon the inverted text. "Grandfather!" She called out through the opening she'd just walked through.
Everything had been going perfectly fine. Traffic had been light, even for London in the morning, and the pair had come to the Coal Hill School without an issue, dressed and ready for a new day, minus one pupil of theirs.
"It is good to be back." Barbara said. "This whole place seems so different now."
"I expect that's the way it will be." Ian said, walking with her toward her classroom. He reached over, grabbing the handle and opening the door for her.
"Thank you." Barbara said as she entered.
"You're most wel-" Ian said, following her in behind her and stopping mid-sentence. The pair of them froze on the spot immediately after. In that room stood one Ian Chesterton and one Barbara Wright. They were dressed for a day at the school and were currently speaking to one another as casually as they often did in the mornings before their students arrived to begin the day. The only problem with this incredibly ordinary sight that was not at all unusual or unexpected was the fact that it was being witnessed by none other than Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.
"What the Devil?" Ian exclaimed, gazing at the man who was the spitting image of him. The other Ian, the one sitting on Barbara's desk, rose and moved to face his counterpart. "Who are you? What are you?" The other Ian did not speak, instead merely raising a hand and pointing a finger at Ian. By this point, Barbara had moved to stand behind Ian as the two faced each other, the other Barbara likewise having shrunk back behind her Ian, and likewise not saying so much as a word.
NEXT TIME
A BAD REFLECTION ON YOU
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