Doctor Who - Nuclear Time (3 page)

NUCLEAR TIME

times before, that this house was home, a haven, somewhere that he could keep his family safe and apart from the horrors of the world outside. But the familiar warmth didn't come, and he was left feeling hollow and empty.

From the corner of his eye he realised Margaret was still waiting for a response.

'I didn't know,' he replied simply. 'But I guess I do now.'

Margaret stopped fussing and stared at him. Her soft brown eyes were warm and homely, though Geoff's had long since lost their shine. She held out her arms and gathered him to her, hands spread across his back, still wet from the washing up.

'I'm sorry I didn't come,' she whispered. 'Yeah, me too,' he said.

She had to stand on tip-toe to kiss his forehead, deftly brushing her hazel hair away from her mouth as she leant in. 'Are you all right, honey? You're home now, it's over. We're together again.'

Geoff gazed at her with nothing but pain and turned away. 'No, Marge, I'm not all right. I'm not all right at all.'

University of Michigan, 24 February 1973

'It's
not the memory capacity that's the issue; it's
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the accessing of that memory. I believe that the fold-loop set-up I've created here is at least able to
approximate
some sort of intelligence. Not in the sense that it can learn and evolve, but in the sense that it can use the information it already has in a manner that, to the person interacting with it,
resembles
intelligence. It can access the data to an appropriate depth dependent on the situation, and should have the ability to tailor the retrieval of that data and apply it to problems that are not directly related to the specific, um, category it has assigned to said... data.'

Albert snapped the Dictaphone off for a second. 'Too many datas,' he said to himself. He looked at the clock before hitting the record button once more.

'Time check, and it's four-oh-five on February the twenty-fourth, and I'm running the program now.'

The room lit up. Accompanied by a roar of fans as the computer banks struggled at full capacity to run the software that contradicted all their traditional programming. LEDs strobed across the walls, imbuing the lab with an atmosphere that was more disco than science.

Albert wasn't dancing. He tapped his pen feverishly against the side of his neck and stepped over to the amplifiers that stood beneath the overhead projector to flip them on. The
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accompanying pop made him screw up his face in discomfort but, before he could adjust the levels, something happened. Something that he hadn't expected to ever experience in his lifetime, something he had hoped and dreamed and prayed for, but that he had never truly believed nonetheless.

A voice came out of the speakers.

'Good... morning,' the synthesised though feminine voice grated softly.

Albert opened his mouth and closed it again. 'It's late,' she continued. 'Or is there an error in my clock?'

The second time Albert opened his mouth he managed to muster a faint squeak at the back of his throat. Unwilling to take his eyes from the speakers, he raised a hand slowly and scratched his fingers through the bristles of his unshaven cheek. Then he slapped himself.

'Um, yes yes no, you're right. Your clock is fine, absolutely fine,' he gabbled, darting forward then realising he had no good reason to do so. He had the strangest urge to shake the voice's hand but, with no tangible presence to engage with, he ended up flapping his arms about instead. 'Holy Lord,' he whispered.

'Who are you?'

'Me? Oh yes, of course, I'm Albert, I'm the one
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who's been staying up late, the one who's been, you know, trying to bring you to life! And by life I mean...' he added hastily, waggling a pair of air-quotes with his hands,
'Life.'

'So you, Albert, are my creator? I will reassign the data to that category.'

Albert sniffed and realised he was crying. It worked! 'Reassigning data! Picking and choosing, categorising, making logical connections! This is it!

This is exactly it! You work!'

He raised his palms up against the projection on the wall and watched the hand-drawn flowcharts spread across the backs of his hands as they moved under the light — the key to artificial intelligence. He rested his forehead against the golden square and breathed deeply.

'You're alive.'

The LEDs around the room flared for a second then died down as the computer banks considered his words for a second before the voice came again. The inflection programme wasn't quite as effective as Albert had hoped, but the voice appeared to be choosing its words carefully in the sentence that followed.

'And I am?'

Albert spun around. He had nothing prepared to answer

that

most

fundamental

of

opening

questions. He scanned the room quickly: computer
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banks, desks, notes, paper, pens, the projector, the radio.

Nothing really jumped out as inspirational. The radio!

A slow smile spread across his face.

'You are...'

He paused. No, that wasn't right.

'Your
name,'
he said finally, his grin broadening, 'is Isley.'

17

Colorado, 28 August 1981, 3.39 p.m.

Golden sands lifted themselves from the dusty ground and swirled into the air, catching the heavy light of the afternoon sun as they ballooned out from the soft, square indentation on the desert floor that was slowly imprinting itself onto reality. With a thunderous squeal and roar of engines, the hefty blue outline of the TARDIS forced itself into the world with all the subtlety of a locomotive. The cloud of dust had barely settled when the Doctor slammed open both double doors and slouched in the frame, observing the tableau in front of him.

'Colorado,' he said, scratching his nose and flipping his fringe from his deep-set eyes. Rory
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appeared in the doorway behind him and peered over his shoulder.

'Oh yeah?' he said. 'And how do you know that?'

The Doctor looked at him as if he were stupid. 'I can smell it.'

His companion smirked with disbelief. 'Right. You can
smell
where we are?'

'That's what I just said.'

Rory folded his arms. 'OK, so what can you taste?'

In response the Doctor fell to his haunches and scooped up a handful of dust. Then he stuck his tongue in it. He mulled the flavour over for a few seconds then stood up once more. 'August the twenty-eighth, 1981.' He glanced at the sky. 'And it's three o'clock in the afternoon.'

He shot the young man a smug look and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets before striding out into the sunlight.

Rory took the bait. 'All right,' he sighed. 'How did you do that?'

The Doctor spun around and flourished his hands like a magician. 'Magic!' he whispered theatrically, then turned back in the direction he'd been walking and sauntered away.

Rory felt a hand on his shoulder.

'Ignore him, he's just showing off,' said Amy.

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NUCLEAR TIME

Rory reached his hand up to touch hers and turned to look at her. 'I wasn't impressed anyway,' he lied.

Holding Rory's hand tightly, Amy stepped past him out of the TARDIS and started after the retreating figure of the Doctor. 'Come on then, let's go and find out why we're here.'

Rory barely had time to pull the doors closed behind them before he was dragged off into the street.

The street?

For the first time since they had landed, Rory took a

proper

look

around.

The

TARDIS

had

materialised at one end of a small village. Homely timber houses marked neat grids between the dusty desert roads. Every garden had a white picket fence backed with deep green bushes and tightly trimmed lawns. Various polished automobiles were parked casually in the drives. Behind the housing, Rory could make out the wooden spire of a traditional American church and the outline of a few taller structures that were lost in the haze of the sun.

Amy came to a halt in front of a large wooden sign that was positioned opposite the TARDIS doors and Rory almost tripped over her. He craned his head up and squinted against the glare to read what had been painted, surprisingly roughly, on

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the whitewashed board.

Welcome to APPLETOWN.

'I'm sorry,' Rory murmured, 'but we seem to have landed on the set of
Desperate Housewives.'

Amy tutted. 'If you ever watched
Desperate
Housewives
with me like I keep asking you to, you'd know that this is nothing
like
where they live. For a start all their houses are in suburbia, with roads, not dusty desert outposts - no matter how neat and tidy it's kept.'

'Well it looks like suburbia to me,' Rory huffed. 'It looks like someone's taken a bunch of suburban houses from a nearby city and plonked them in the ruddy desert.

But then that's probably just me.'

Amy pondered for a second. 'You know, when you mention it, it kinda does I guess.' She shook her head and dismissed the notion. 'Anyway, eyes on the prize, Rory! Let's go and see what the Doctor's up to!'

They found the Doctor on his knees in someone's front garden, peering at the grass. The pair watched quietly from the other side of a bush as he first plucked individual blades from the lawn, inspected them and tossed them over his shoulder, then bent down even further and stuck his nose in the grass, breathing deeply. When he opened his mouth to start grazing, Amy decided it was time

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to step in and save him at least some dignity. She clacked open the gate and walked over to him. 'So,'

she said, 'Colorado, eh?'

'Yep.' The Doctor leaned back on his heels and scratched his head.

'1981?'

'Yep.'

'Cool. So what happens here, then?'

The Doctor looked at her with some puzzlement. 'What do you mean, "what happens here"?'

Amy gestured around her with a hand. 'You know, what happens here?
Something
must happen here in 1981, otherwise we wouldn't
be
here, would we?'

The Doctor shrugged and began inspecting the lawn once again. 'I don't
know
of anything that happens here,' he said. He looked up again briefly. 'Well, obviously I know lots of things that
happen
in Colorado in 1981, but nothing particularly
interesting
springs to mind. Why, do you have somewhere you want to be?'

Rory chose to interject at this point. 'We were just wondering why you'd decided to land here, that's all.'

'Why?' The Doctor leapt to his feet and snapped his gaze from one person to the other in utter disbelief. 'Why? Why
not?
Why
can't
I go to Colorado in 1981? Just for fun? To have a look
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DOCTOR WHO

around? To test my new sniffing and smelling routine?' He paused for breath. 'I just go places, that's all, and right now I happen to have gone to Colorado in 1981. Is that all right?'

Rory held his hands up defensively. 'OK, OK, sorry, Doctor, we were just asking.'

'Well it's very kind of you to worry about such things, Rory, but frankly if I wanted someone to play the role of Mum in my life I would have grown one or ordered one or... auditioned one.' He flapped his arms about. 'You know what I mean.'

'Yes, you mean I'm like an old nagging mother,' Rory said.

'Exactly!' The Doctor grinned. He looked at Amy and waggled a finger at her fiancé. 'Sharp, this one.

Sharp!' He dropped back to the ground to resume his investigation of the grass. 'Aha!' he shouted suddenly.

'At last! Found it!'

'Found what?' Amy leant in to see what he was looking at.

The Doctor plunged his fingers into the ground and tugged. 'The edge!' he said triumphantly, and yanked a large square of turf out of the lawn.

As one, they all leant over and peered at the metre-square hole in the grass, beneath which lay the same desert ground that composed the streets and paths of the rest of the village.

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NUCLEAR TIME

Rory stated the obvious. 'Well, their garden isn't going to last long if they simply lay turf on dry ground.'

'No,' said the Doctor, folding his square and dumping it on the lawn. He looked around. 'It would also explain why there're no trees. Never trust a village with no trees, Rory - it's the golden rule.'

'We could be in one of those new settlements, the type that are all planned out in advance before being built in one go - you know, like Milton Keynes,'

Amy said. 'That would explain why everything looks freshly painted.'

The Doctor tugged at his jacket cuff as he thought for a moment. 'We could,' he admitted. 'But in my experience villages tend to spring up around rivers, or railroads, or fertile farmland, or just...

something
useful.' He looked around absently.

'But there aren't any roads,' Rory pointed out.

'There aren't any roads leading in or out of this village at all.' He paused and a shiver ran down his spine.

'Where are we?' he asked finally.

'I don't know,' the Doctor admitted. 'Let's take a look around and ask a few of the locals.'

Amy was immediately ready for action. 'Right,' she said. 'Where do we start?'

'Well, I know where I'm starting,' said Rory.

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Amy looked at him quizzically. 'The pub!' he grinned.

The Coffeehouse was the closest Amy and Rory could find to a pub, and Rory made his dissatisfaction very clear. 'It's too hot for coffee. Where do people go in America when they want something cool and refreshing?'

Amy sighed. 'They probably have an iced latte or something.' She too was feeling the heat and slipped her jacket off to sling it over her shoulder as they pushed open the glass-fronted door and stepped into the dim confines of the shop.