Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [9]
‘Things are getting strange, I’m starting to worry. This could be a case for Mulder and Scully,’ she sang quietly. Fitz turned to stare at her. The Doctor paused in his pacing.
‘What?’ He was looking confused.
Anji sighed, rolling her head up at the ceiling. Fitz started to suspect she was bored. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘it was just my homage to Catatonia.’
Fitz thought for a moment. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said.
‘Homage to... oh, never mind.’ She lowered her head and caught the Doctor’s eye before he could resume pacing. ‘So what is it?’
He glared at her, snapped out. ‘Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be trying to figure it out, would I?’
Fitz stubbed out his ciggie in the ashtray, not bothering to sit up. He wondered about lighting another, just because he could. He had a feeling this could take a while.
* * *
This was wrong.
There was just so much, too much. He couldn’t take it all in. Every time he tried to concentrate on one thing, he’d be missing so much else. He was restricted to seeing only four dimensions. That was the least problem he was having, however. He couldn’t see the connections any more: there was no causal network. What was the relevance of that woman running across a square, her little dog yapping racing ahead of her? He could see the shelter she was running to, see the bombers roaring over the outskirts of Barcelona. It was meaningless though: he couldn’t see the intricate patterns she caused any more, couldn’t see the context, the fine lines that connected all the events. Things were happening but he couldn’t see why, couldn’t see the actions that led to a moment and away from it.
The line back to the System was still open, at least. He sent a pulse back to the Hub, setting search parameters for similar occurrences. The information seemed to take longer to send, it wasn’t the clean flash of data he was used to.
He looked over the information in his local memory cache again, replaying the moment when things had changed. Someone had looked at him, seen him. The person had been flickering, as if they were not solid, but that wasn’t possible. A person is either there or not there. Things either happened or they did not happen. The Absolute always saw the events, the people, the truth. Hard, certain truths. The man in the glasses had been there.
He reviewed the record again. The man was not there. He reviewed the record again. The man was there.
Not there.
There.
Not... It was not possible.
The Absolute tried to trace the man through the records. He noted the man’s face, the shape, the colours. He sent the information back to the Hub. All the accumulated information would be gone through until the patterns were matched, recognised. Then he would know that the man was real.
* * *
They paused halfway up the Montmartre stairs, to let Fitz get his breath back. Anji resisted commenting. The guy was big enough and old enough to know what he was doing to himself. Although he had argued that it was vital to visit the Moulin Rouge on the way.
Even halfway up the worn steps that climbed the hill to the Sacre Coeur, there was a stunning panorama of Paris as it buzzed in the August heat and Anji was glad of the chance to view it. Behind and below her, the Eiffel Tower speared the blue heat haze. If she narrowed her eyes, she could almost see the huge banner flags fluttering over the distant Exposition. The Doctor had already carried on up, clearly unbothered by the heat or the steep ascent. Anji wondered if she could start carrying bottled water around with her: it wouldn’t be a big anachronism, after all, and it would be better than passing out in the sweltering heat. As far as she could tell, half the Parisians had left the city for the cooler countryside but the influx of tourists meant the city was still far too full of people.
Fitz nodded that he had caught as much breath as he was ever going to and they resumed the climb. Back in her London, Anji remembered, she had