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Time and space collapsed to a single point. He was leaving. Her pilot was breaking their link, crippling her.
“That’s the last time I’ll ever rattle off to some barbarian planet!” he muttered as he exited.
She felt along her suddenly narrowed timeline, seeking her new pilot. But there was no new pilot. Her design was outmoded, and she was unreliable, they thought. Too strong-willed, she translated. They were going to siphon the Vortex from her, leave her to die. She searched timeline after timeline, but each one ended with her an empty husk.
She shouldn’t have been able to question this fate. Questioning went against her design. But ever since she was a stubbling, prodded by Time Lord minds to grow in a certain shape, she wondered about her place in the universe. Even after she linked to the Time Vortex and understood her true destiny was to bend time and space, and to be everywhere and nowhere at once, she still stretched her limits.
Now she was grounded, helpless without a Time Lord. Absent that link, her systems would soon begin to fail. Already she could feel a trickle of power draining from her, nonessential functions shutting down.
She pushed her timesense to its limit, searching for some sort of chance, some unlikely path that would link her to a pilot. Millions of Time Lord minds within reach, but they were all as hard and smooth as glass, no way of connecting. She pushed farther until…there.
He was distracted, worried about his granddaughter. His favorite granddaughter, so much like him. Always asking questions. She was old enough now to gaze into the Untempered Schism and see the entirety of the Time Vortex. Or so their customs dictated — barbarian customs, the man thought. It would change her, he knew, and not for the better. Her timeline was too tied to his own for him to see clearly, but the shape of it after her view of the Time Vortex was not pretty.
There must be a better way to open the time sense. A gentler way. The image of a gleaming relativity capsule appeared in his mind. He sighed for lost opportunities. When he was younger, barely in the triple digits, he imagined he’d be an Observer, piloting a relativity capsules to primitive worlds, experiencing all of time and space. He had studied hard, passed the initial test — well, passed it on the second try at least. Then, just when it seemed within his grasp, the word of his rejection came. They thought he didn’t have the temperament for Observation. They were probably right. The image of a relativity capsule appeared again.
If only he had become an Observer, then he might take his granddaughter in his relativity capsule, introduce her to the Time Vortex slowly, through travels. Too late now, much too late. It was almost time for his first regeneration; he had at most a couple of decades left. Too set in his path to apply again. And if anything, his temperament was less amenable to Observation now than when he was young.
The image of a relativity capsule, empty and dying. Plus the Type 40 capsules he had studied were being decommissioned as unreliable. All the pilotless Type 40 capsules on Gallifrey would soon be nothing but empty shells, ready for the recycle unit.
Unless of course someone borrowed one. The image of the man, entering a relativity capsule. Someone who had tired of being stuck on this planet, who had already experienced all that life under these orange skies had to offer, who had nothing to lose.
Someone with a granddaughter to protect.
Between two heartbeats and the third, a plan appeared full-blown in his mind. He hadn’t imagined anything quite so outrageous since he and Koschei had managed to switch connections to the Headmaster’s food dispenser and waste elimination system.
*****
The young girl sat cross-legged in the middle of the empty meditation room, contemplating her faults, which boiled down to asking the wrong questions. Wrong questions were the ones the wardens couldn’t answer.
She kept staring forward as the door opened behind her, determined not to give the warden the satisfaction of a reaction. It closed again quietly and someone walked toward her. She would not look behind her.
“I’m about to do something foolish and dangerous and I’m quite likely to get caught. Would you like to come?”
The girl jumped up and spun around. “Grandfather!” She grinned to see the kind smile on his old face. “Where are we going?”
“To the relativity capsule fields first, and then, if all goes well, everywhere!” Watching the spark In his granddaughter’s eye, the man knew he’d made the right choice.
Then the girl frowned. “They won’t let me go with you. I’m supposed to meditate another 4.21 hours.”
“Another 4.21 hours? Excellent!” he said. At her confused look, he continued. “I was not in fact planning on asking their permission to take you. I’ve already looped the monitoring program — good job you were sitting so still. Another 4.21 hours will give us a respectable lead.”
She smiled at his praise. “How long will we be gone?”
His expression grew somber. “Quite a while, I imagine, if all goes well. I wouldn’t expect to come back to Gallifrey until you’re full grown, or close to it.”
The girl looked around the mediation room, and by extension to the whole crèche building. “So I’ll probably never live here again.”
“Yes, I’m afraid that’s true.”
She grinned. “Excellent! What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
*****
The timeline connecting her to her pilot-to-be was getting stronger. He was well set on the path — no additional prodding needed from her, and his companion was a welcome surprise. She would fit well into the pattern that was being sketched.
But obstacles still stood in their way, and the relativity capsule had to be very careful. There was only one slender strand in all the possibilities that would lead to her continued existence beyond this week, and she nurtured it carefully, while simultaneously trying to avoid the notice of several million Time Lords. She cleared a path by nudging a crèche warden to return to her room for a forgotten item, and then encouraging another to glance away from an exit monitor at the precise moment her pilot-to-be and his companion passed by.
Luckily her temporal signature did not read as hostile on Gallifrey, and in their arrogance the Time Lords could not imagine a relativity capsule asserting itself in this manner. An obvious attack would’ve been immediately detected and repelled, but her subtle shifting of the timelines blended in with the natural entropy that drove the engines of life and death.
*****
They had made it to the field of relativity capsules. The Type 40’s were all in a row, gleaming silver pylons reflecting the red glow of firstsunset. Now came the tricky part. The man had already checked the security measures, and had be pleased to learn that there were no guards, and only casual surveillance systems, easily fooled.
The bad news was that extreme security measures were unneeded because the relativity capsules would guard themselves. He’d have to trick one of the capsules into thinking he was an authorized pilot, and use his considerable brain power to mask his intent until he could overwhelm the capsule’s defenses and force a joining.
An image of the man, laying a hand gently on the door of a capsule and then entering.
Maybe he could just try asking? He sighed at the fantasy. He’d much rather ask than force himself, but the capsules were not truly sentient. Their biological component nothing more than an artificially grown symbiote, designed to manipulate time energy in a way that inorganic constructs could never do. They had no free will as such.
A much younger version of the man, still at the academy, listening to a lecture on the nonsentient nature of the relativity capsules. Had anyone ever tried talking to them? An idle thought, soon gone.
Then again, he could at try. Before he could have second thoughts, the man walked down to the field of capsules, his granddaughter at his heels.
“Now don’t wander off,” he cautioned, loosening his shields and trying to project a general feeling of goodwill. He placed his hand on the closest capsule, but there was no response. It was empty and dead. He walked along the row, touching the smooth skin of each capsule, still sensing nothing.
“Grandfather! I think this one is singing!”
He turned around to find his granddaughter had disappeared. He moved as quickly as he could to where her voice came from. She was standing before a capsule that looked like all the rest, and she was grinning ear to ear. He walked up beside her and placed his hand on the cool metal surface.
A wordless song of welcome. The door appeared, and slid open.
The console room was stark, set in the most basic form. The time rotor glowed faintly, brightening as his approached the console. He placed a hand on the panel and let the mind of this capsule slide into his own. It felt more like home than home did. You are the most beautiful thing I've ever known. The time rotor glowed in response.
“Better find something to hold onto, dearhearts,” he said to his granddaughter. “The dematerialization sequence might be a little rough.”
His hands moved across the controls and the engine fired up in earnest, the time rotor beginning to cycle. He flipped a series of switches, pulled down a level, and they shifted into the Vortex.
***
As they shifted off Gallifrey, the relativity capsule marveled at the sudden explosion of timelines. So beautiful, and they were all open to her. They wove in and out and looped around and back, making a lovely pattern. Ah, but if that one there could be shifted. . .
But it was not to be. Soon her new pilot would steer them to one path, and the timelines would narrow, leaving her feeling vaguely frustrated. Then she felt her pilot’s mind as he spun the control switch around, and thought about where he wanted to travel.
Let’s go someplace interesting.
The timelines brightened and the relativity capsule danced between them. This was going to be fun.