The original settlement plan for the Albionshire pseudocontinent had called for Terminal Island, a desolate rock a hundred miles from the City of New Albion in the storm-tossed Morgan Sea, to house a prison, and in fact the construction crews had started building one before plans changed and the island was abandoned but for an automated lighthouse serving to warn the ships inbound from the Isle of Stars off the rocks. Twenty-odd years later, at the turn of the century, the half-completed fortress-like structure had suited the Galactic Police Organisation just fine for the site of a special projects laboratory. They needed a place that was relatively isolated but afforded quick transport to the city; that was easily defended; and that was sturdy enough to withstand potentially disastrous research mishaps.

Most of the time the research mishaps that happened at Research Station Terminal Light were not disastrous, but better safe than sorry.

In the main lab, the station's director jotted a few notes on a datapad, stuck it in an inside pocket, and then settled her tinted brass goggles over her eyes.

"Right," she said, surveying the control board before her. It was handmade and looked it, but every piece had been crafted with the utmost care and precision, with nothing wasted or out of place.

Beyond the board, past the sheet of duracrys that shielded the control area from the rest of the lab, the machine it controlled was similarly built, a combination of inspired improvisation and solid engineering. It consisted of a circular metal stage about ten feet in diameter, surrounded by a small forest of electrodes, power converters, and what seemed to be cannibalized full-length dressing room mirrors. From the ceiling above it depended an antenna that looked a bit like a giant version of the claw in a Grab-a-Prize machine.

"Computer, begin recording," said the woman at the controls. A bit less than average height, slim, thirtyish, and dark-haired, she was dressed not in the lab coat and slacks one might instinctively expect of so prominent a researcher, but rather blue jeans, Dr Martens boots, and a slightly ratty green jumper under a battered black leather jacket that was a little too big for her.

Behind her, a younger and much taller redheaded woman in the uniform of a New Albion Metropolitan Police constable leaned against the wall, her arms folded.

"Bet ye a fiver it won't work," she said in a distinct Scotian burr.

The woman in the goggles glanced back over her shoulder with a faint smirk, then turned back to the control board and declared for the recording, "Constable Pond's wager is duly noted. Universal Translocator Array test 1632, monopolar transducers with the sarium krellide power cell acquired last month from Detrebelius IV. Energizing in three. Two. One."

She pressed the large green button in the center of the console. For a moment nothing happened; then, with an ascending whine of power, the power converters in the ring around the stage began to glow, dully at first, then brighter. Arcs leaped from one electrode to the next, linking them together, until they formed a complete ring -

- and, with a dull mechanical THUD, the machine went dead and all the lights went out.

There were two seconds of complete silence, then the sound of folding money being unpocketed, handed over, and repocketed, and the test director's voice remarked, deadpan, in the darkness:

"UTA test 1632... unsuccessful."

A moment later the lights came back on and the telephone on the wall next to the control board started ringing. The brunette sighed, pushing her goggles up onto her forehead, and punched a button on it. "Yes."

"Professor, Albion Light and Power is on line three," came the voice of the laboratory AI. "You've blacked out Hobart again."

"Oops. Thought I'd blocked that circuit. Sorry!"

"Also, the Brigadier is here. He's asking to speak with you."

"I'm busy."

"He says it's urgent."

"All right, all right, send him down." She rubbed her temples, growling. "I'll be in the TCMF."

Brigadier Sir Daniel James Griffin-Hudson, head of the Galactic Police, found his star science agent in the Tea and Coffee Making Facility, also known as the laboratory lounge, and a grumpy mood, in that order.

"Brigadier, I can't be constantly disturbed like this," she told him as soon as he entered the room. After pausing to sip her coffee, she went on, "I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough here and I need to stay focused."

The Brigadier, a surprisingly young-looking man with thick black hair and a neatly trimmed vandyke beard, paused in the doorway and looked not so much annoyed as startled for a moment before recovering his composure.

"Fine," he said. "I'll ask Edison's team to deal with the mysterious alien energy signature we've detected under the city, then, shall I?" Turning to go, he added, "Sorry to disturb you, Professor."

"Wait," said the Professor, putting up a hand. The Brigadier, still with his back to her, smirked slightly and winked at Constable Pond, who struggled manfully to hold in a laugh.

"Did you say energy signature?" the Professor continued; then she tossed her coffee in the sink, put down the mug on the counter, and said, "Right, where is it?"

The Brigadier turned, looking innocently surprised. "I thought you said you couldn't be disturbed."

"You're sending that hack Edison to investigate an alien energy source?" the Professor asked, taking her jacket from the hook on the back of the TCMF door and shrugging into it. "I'm already disturbed. Calls himself an action scientist, doesn't know the first thing about action or science. Pond! We're going."

"You are a very bad man," Pond whispered to the Brigadier, amused, as she followed the Professor out.

1300 block of Newcomen Ave.
Coalbrookdale district, City of New Albion

"Oh, good, another sewer," Pond declared as she and the Professor arrived at the mission address to find a squad of Tactical Branch greysuits guarding a cordoned-off street bulkhead. Sighing, she unfolded her long, lean frame from the driver's seat of their official aerocar (she always drove; the Professor, for all her many qualifications, had never bothered to get a driver's license) and said ruefully, "Sometimes I wish I'd become a kissogram instead of going to the police academy."

The Professor finished consulting a portable sensor unit, blinked, and looked across the car roof at her. "A what?"

"Kissogram," Pond repeated.

The Professor pocketed her scanner and started walking toward the cordon. "What in the world is that?"

"You go to parties and... kiss people. With outfits." Pond shrugged. "I'm told it's a laugh."

"Is that a real job? You're not winding me up."

"It is in Leadworth."

The Professor badged her way past the guards, one of whom held the bulkhead door up for the two women to descend. As they climbed down, she shook her head. "Blimey, more going on in that town than I would have thought. When I was your age I worked in a department store." They reached the bottom of the access ramp to find another tac op, this one with sergeant's stripes, guarding the lower door. He came to attention upon recognizing them.

"Who'd you cross to get this detail, Stacker?" the Professor asked him, grinning.

"The usual," Sgt. Pete Stacker replied with a slight smile. Then, sobering, he added, "Mr. Edison's already here."

"Well, that's my day complete, then," the Professor replied. Then, giving Stacker a smile, she asked rhetorically, "It's a good job, isn't it?" Clapping him on the shoulder on the way by, she added, "Shoot someone, will you? We're paying for this stuff."

The Professor and Pond went through the inner door into a vaulted antechamber, all antique-looking brickwork and superfluous decorative touches. New Albion was only about thirty years old, but it had been built to seem Victorian, right down to the infrastructure parts no one would ever see. In there, a small team of men and women in the brick-red coveralls of the Technical Branch were milling about setting up equipment, under the evident supervision of a dark-haired, long-faced young man in an old-fashioned checked suit and ascot. Seeing the two women approach, he frowned, making his face even longer, and gripped the lapels of his jacket as he declared pompously,

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Professor Rose Tyler. What are you doing in the field? Ran out of other ways to convince the Brig your outlandish salary is justified, I suppose."

Rose smiled sweetly and brushed imaginary lint from one of Edison's shoulders. "That's cute, Thomas." Then, leaning closer, she added in a dangerously pleasant murmur, "I was saving the universe before you were a thin scum on the top of an Ijin cloning vat." So saying, she fixed his lapels and then, turning away, said briskly, "Pond, if he speaks to me again you can shoot him."

"'Kay," said Pond agreeably. As she followed the Professor past Edison, she put a hand on the flap of her sidearm holster and eyed him warily, but he was too busy looking utterly flummoxed to make any further comment - though when he did speak again, the constable was amused to note that he was careful to direct his remarks to her, not Professor Tyler.

"She never answered my question, what is she doing here?" As a possibility dawned on him, he looked first surprised, then annoyed, and started following the constable, demanding, "She's here for the source of that energy wave, isn't she? Still looking for some way of powering that insane machine of hers! Well, I'm still first officer on this scene, I'll have you know. Any patent rights derived from technologies found in there belong to me - "

Edison stopped with a squeak as Pond rounded on him, hands on hips. At six feet tall she loomed over him; her height, flaming red hair, temper, and general aesthetic value had earned her the nickname "The Towering Inferno" among her GPO colleagues, though it was never used to her face. Annoyance flashing in her hazel-green eyes, she pointed at herself and said,

"Mr. Edison, do you see the chequered tie I'm wearing? The bowler hat? This bit here where it says POLICE? I am a constable, Mr. Edison. Not an action scientist, not a patent lawyer, and certainly not anybody who needs to be concerned with what you think your economic rights may be. My job - my only job - is to keep that woman alive. Which, since she is an action scientist, and as such is in the habit of flinging herself headlong into unimaginable dangers, is challenging enough without you yapping in my ear about things I don't give one-tenth of one damn about!" Leaning down into his face, she fixed his gaze with hers and hissed, "Are. We. Clear?"

"... Crystal," Edison replied meekly.

Pond nodded firmly. "Good." She turned on her heel and stalked off after the Professor without another word.

"Nicely done," Rose remarked as the constable caught up with her.

Pond grinned. "It's too much fun picking on Tommy. What do you think we've got?"

"Not sure," Rose replied, consulting her pocket scanner again. "Definitely a strange energy reading through here. Probably in a lower chamber." They went through a brick arch into a side passageway, then came to a heavy, unmarked metal door. This proved to be locked, but that was no real problem, since Constable Pond carried a key that would supposedly open any official lock in the city.

Beyond the door was a dank and gloomy concrete staircase leading down. The Professor produced a flashlight from somewhere in her jacket, switched it on, and led the way down.

They found themselves in a huge room that Rose suspected had originally been a pumping station, two stories deep with a catwalk bolted to the wall about halfway up, onto which the door they'd entered by opened. In the center, where the pump had presumably been installed on a concrete pad about twenty yards across, stood a piece of machinery whose purpose she didn't immediately recognize. Though it was connected to the ceiling and the walls around it by a small forest of pipes, it was definitely not any sort of pump. It had too many... glowing parts... for that. And it was making the wrong sort of noise, too, filling the room not with a wheezing clunk but rather a low, ominous hum.

The energy circulating within it, visible through the complicated mass of clear tubing and piping that covered the outside, all converged on a central drum-shaped object that shone like the open mouth of a blast furnace, if blast furnace fire had been green. Both women felt vaguely unsettled just looking at it. Pond slowly, almost surreptitiously, drew her service blaster, holding it straight down at her side, as she felt the fine hairs on the nape of her neck stand up.

"That looks dangerous," said the Professor matter-of-factly.

"Yup," Pond agreed.

"And evil."

Pond studied the converging pipes and tubes and had to concede that there was something weirdly, inherently sinister about the design. "Very," she agreed.

Rose reached up and lowered her goggles over her eyes, then grinned, the lenses and her teeth catching the green light. "Let's get a closer look."

They climbed down a ladder to the lower level and carefully approached the machine. Up close, Rose could see that there was a control board just below the central drum; she wasn't sure what most of it did, but the large gauge in the middle was obvious enough. It was divided into quarters, white, yellow, orange, and red, and the needle was most of the way through the orange quadrant. Assuming the red meant what it usually did on such gauges, the thing was nearly... what? Overloaded?

"Is this thing producing or collecting energy?" she mused thoughtfully.

"Professor," said Pond.

"Just a second," Rose said, still poring over the controls. "Induction level... okay, so it's collecting. But collecting what?"

"Professor."

"Shh. Thinking. What is this? Not artron energy. Not huon particles... "

Pond edged a little closer, nudging the Professor with an elbow, and said, "Maybe you should just ask them."

Rose looked up at her, puzzled, and then turned around.

The machine - and the two women - were surrounded by a dozen or so men and women in the distinctive red, pointy-hooded coveralls of Big Fire operatives. In their lead was a man in a business suit, his head covered with a similarly cut hood in black - this particular crew's Q-boss.

"Oh," she said, putting her goggles back up on her forehead. "Hullo, Earl, long time. This is yours, I take it?"

"Ah," said the Q-boss. "Doctor Tyler. I might've known they'd send you."

"Professor," said Rose.

"Pardon?"

"Professor Tyler. I keep telling you, I'm not licensed to practice medicine." Ignoring the man's drawn pistol and his troops' submachine guns, Rose turned back to the control board. "Do you know what this thing is supposed to do?" She peered into the glow of the core without her goggles' tint to change its color, then snapped her fingers and turned around. "It's Getter rays. Isn't it? It's siphoning in and concentrating ambient Getter rays. You must have planted subcollectors all over the city. That's where all these pipes lead." She grinned. "That's a huge operation. You must've been running it for months, right under our noses. I'm impressed, I honestly am."

Turning back to the controls, she added offhandedly, "Of course, it's not going to work, unless what you're trying to do is blow up the whole city. And though I certainly wouldn't put that past Big Fire, if that was the case, why would you and your crew still be here guarding it? Unless... " She turned and walked toward the Q-boss, still paying no mind to his weapon. "They didn't tell you it would do that, did they?"

"That's crazy," Earl shot back. "It's a power source for - " He caught himself. "You don't need to know what it's for. Point is, it's not gonna blow up. We're just here to guard it until Lord Komei comes to collect the core. Because we knew when it got near a full charge you guys would notice it and send someone to investigate." He smirked. "And here you are. You know, the Ten have been wanting to talk to you for a long time."

Rose gave him a skeptical look. "Earl. C'mon." Putting an arm over his shoulders, she turned and gestured to the machine with her free hand. "Look at this thing. Do you honestly believe this machine is intended to do anything other than explode?" She shook her head. "Getter rays are dangerously unstable in mass quantities, and whoever built this machine has to know that. You guys are being sacrificed."

One of the Red Hoods at the back spoke up. "Uh... I think she might be right, boss. I mean, there were those extra insurance papers we had to sign before we left the office... "

Earl turned to give him a look, saw that the others were all nodding agreement, and turned back to Rose, who smiled wryly.

"No honor among thieves, Earl," she said, giving his shoulders a sympathetic shake before letting him go and returning to the control board.

Earl faced his men, spreading his hands in bafflement. Slowly, they put up their weapons, nodding. He put his pistol away and turned back to Rose, who - blithely ignoring the Big Fire ops - had crouched in front of the board, pulled off the panel below it, and was fiddling around with the wires underneath. Next to her, Constable Pond kept doing her best to cover all the enemy agents at once, occasionally casting sharp glances down at the Professor.

"What can we do?" asked Earl, an edge of something like panic creeping into his voice.

Rose straightened up, holding a silver canister in one hand. A cable led from one end of it and trailed back into the guts of the machine. She took hold of one of Earl's hands and folded it around the canister, positioning his thumb on an angled bit of metal on the top.

"Hold this," she said very seriously, looking him in the eye. "Whatever you do, don't let go of it."

"Okay."

"The rest of you, just... chill. Notice how the hum has gotten louder? That's because Getter rays respond to emotions. The machine's picking up on your fear. So just try to stay calm. Oh, and - I'm going to need Constable Pond's help with this next bit. It's very delicate work. So if any of you gets the bright idea to jump us while we've got our hands full, you'll get us all killed. Therefore, don't. All right?"

The wide-eyed agents nodded almost as one. "Yes m'am," said the one who'd spoken earlier.

Rose smiled and nodded. "Good boys." Turning to her very-skeptical-looking police partner, the Professor dropped her goggles over her eyes again and said cheerfully, "Come along, Pond. Let's do some science."

/* Elvis Costello
"Pump It Up"
This Year's Model (1978) */

Earl and his troops stood and watched, fascinated and terrified, as the two women started dismantling the front panel of the machine. Before long, both were fully engrossed - indeed, nearly embedded - in the internal componentry as they worked out what systems did what and which ones to disconnect in what order. It was part on-the-fly electrical engineering, part bomb disposal, and Rose caught herself humming the theme from Danger UXB during a particularly dodgy bit of wire sorting.

The tensest moment came right at the end, when, having freed it from all the equipment around it and shut off the flow of energy from all the collector pipes, Rose delicately slid the central core - a cylindrical crystalline device about six inches by two feet, glowing bright green - out of its housing and disconnected one last fat cable from the metal ferrule on what had been its back end. Then, holding the glasslike canister in both hands, she puffed her cheeks and blew out a long breath. She met Pond's eyes and both women began to giggle with a mixture of triumph and relief.

"Are we clear?" Earl asked.

"Almost. We need to get this thing out of here and dispose of it safely," Rose told him. "It's still unstable. Potentially very dangerous. Nobody move until we're out of the room." She carried it gingerly down from the platform and across the room to the ladder, handed it to Pond, and climbed up to the catwalk; the constable handed it up to her, then climbed up after.

"Hey!" Earl called. "How much longer do I have to hold this?"

"What?" Rose asked. Then, smiling, she said, "Oh! That? You can put that down anytime you like. It doesn't actually do anything."

Earl blinked, then gritted his teeth. "You - you tricked me?!"

"Not really. You really were in a lot of danger." She waved. "But we've got it under control now. Nice working with you!"

"Why, you - Guys! Get them!" Realizing that he was still holding the device, the Q-boss threw it furiously to the floor.

At which point, since his thumb on the safety cap was the only thing that kept it from igniting, the smoke grenade went off, filling the room with thick grey fog.

"Right," said Rose, "now I've tricked you. Come on, Pond!"

"Were you kidding when you said that was still dangerously unstable?" Pond asked as she and Rose pelted up the passageway toward the anteroom as fast as they could run.

"Probably," Rose replied, though Pond noticed that she was trying to hold it as level as she could, even while running. They burst out of the passage into the anteroom, much to the surprise of Edison and his team.

"Pete! Backup code two!" Pond shouted. "There's a Big Fire Red Squad somewhere behind us and they're nae gonna be happy!"

Sgt. Stacker leaned around the door, saw the constable and Rose running toward him, then nodded and got on the radio to get more greysuiters downstairs.

"Where do you think you're going with that?" Edison demanded as Rose pelted past him, the Getter aggregator tucked under her arm. "I've got priority - !"

5:34 PM
Research Station Terminal Light

Constable Pond put her head into the Professor's office to find her exactly where she'd been since their return from the city: sitting at her desk, feet up, gazing thoughtfully into the shifting green depths of the Getter-ray aggregator.

"Do you need anything else, Professor?" she asked.

Rose seemed to come back from a long way away. "Hm? Oh. No, thanks. I'm fine."

Pond nodded. "I'm heading home, then. See you in the morning."

"See you."

Rose sat in contemplation of the aggregator for a while longer, then got up and carried it into the UTA lab.

Saturday, May 8, 2410
9:02 AM

Constable Pond arrived the next morning to find Professor Tyler stretched out on the couch in her office, fully clothed but for her boots, which stood nearby, and her jacket, which she'd rolled up and used as a pillow.

"Have you been here all night?" she asked.

"Huh," said Rose, popping awake. "Oh. Good, you're here." She shifted to a sitting position, rubbing her face, then pulled on her boots and laced them up. "Yes, I have."

"Doing what, may I ask?"

"Working." Rose got up, smiling. "Come on, I'll show you."

The lab looked much the same as it had the day before, except that it was bathed in the same green light as they'd seen in the sewer chamber, and the failed Detrebelian power cell had been removed from the nest of cables at the back and replaced by the Getter-ray aggregator.

"Took me most of the night to build the right connectors," Rose explained. "We don't want anything coming undone once the power starts really flowing."

"Hold on, I thought you said Getter rays were dangerously unstable."

"They are. But it only has to work for a few seconds, and then they'll all be used up."

Pond frowned. "You think it's really going to work this time?"

"It has to. Getter rays are potentially the most powerful form of energy in the universe. If this doesn't work... well. If I could capture the full output of a quasar for a few milliseconds, that would do, but I don't have the technology available to do that." She put a hand on the aggregator. "This might be my last chance... and I'll only get one shot."

"We won't be able to test it first?"

Rose shook her head. "Not enough energy. We'll need everything this module has if it's going to work at all." She stood looking at it for a few more moments, then pulled her eyes away from it and said, "Let's go into town. I've got a lot of people to see... "

With Constable Pond, as always, at the controls, Rose went into the city, showered and changed her clothes (for almost identical ones) at her tiny Shoreside apartment, and then spent most of the day saying goodbye - to her faculty colleagues and a few special students at the New Albion Institute of Science, where she'd first studied and then taught for most of the last decade; to various people at GPO headquarters downtown; to a few friends and familiar haunts around the city. They flew most of the way back to Terminal Island in a contemplative silence, but just before arriving, Pond said,

"I suppose this means I'll go back to the Force. Maybe they'll give me a nice, quiet job. Traffic duty. Crossing guard."

Rose snorted. "After three years with me, you're probably the most qualified officer they have. They should make you, oh, a DCI at least."

Pond smiled, but didn't reply; they were entering the Terminal Island control zone, and she had to pay attention to her comms or run the risk of being shot down by their own lab's defenses.

Saying her goodbyes to the laboratory staff was the hardest part, Rose thought, and it was with a heavy heart that she saw most of them off at the close of the day, knowing that she was never likely to see them again. If what she was trying to do worked, she'd be leaving New Albion, almost certainly forever. And if it didn't, she'd be just as almost certainly killed. Either way, this was probably the last goodbye, and they all knew it.

On the other hand, knowing what she was heading for buoyed her spirits again, and it was with very mixed feelings that she took one last look around her office and then went down to the lab. She carried nothing with her except what she could carry in the (surprisingly voluminous) pockets of her black leather jacket. No bag, no suitcase, nothing material to show for ten years of life fully lived in this strange but strangely familiar universe. Everything that mattered was either in one of her pockets or in her head.

Rose entered the lab and was surprised to find, in addition to the ever-faithful Pond, that the Brigadier and young Thomas Edison were on hand. She hadn't seen them arrive; they must have come while she was up on the admin level saying her farewells to the staff.

"Thomas," she said, nodding cordially. "Couldn't even wait until I was gone to come and claim my lab? Well, don't worry. I haven't destroyed any of my notes or equipment. That'd be petty. You're welcome to absolutely everything I leave behind."

Edison looked uncomfortable. "Thank you. But that's not why I'm here. I just came... " He hesitated awkwardly. "... To wish you luck."

Rose raised one dark eyebrow. "Really?"

"Really. I know we've had our differences over the years, but... we're colleagues, and I respect your... your intellect. And your achievements. I hope you succeed. And I want to be here to see it."

Rose studied his long face keenly, looking for any sign of sarcasm, but found none. Softening, she smiled and clapped his shoulder. "Thank you, Thomas," she said.

Edison returned the smile a little shyly. "Tom. You can... if you were staying, you could call me Tom."

Her smile widening a little, Rose tilted her head toward the control booth. "Better get behind the rad shield, Tom. I doubt you want to risk coming with me."

He nodded and went around the end of the transparent barrier. Rose turned to the Brigadier.

"So this is it," he said. "You're leaving us."

"I lived up to my part of our deal," she pointed out. "You asked for four years; I've given you more than six."

Griffin-Hudson nodded. "Don't get me wrong, I've no cause for complaint." He grinned wryly. "But we'll miss your smiling face."

Rose sobered again, looking a little downcast. "I know. But we all knew this day would come."

The Brigadier nodded and replied in a brisk, stiff-upper-lip fashion, "And now that it has, take with you all the best from all of us. It's been a privilege to have you in the GPO. You've made the Science Patrol what it is today, and we'll do our best to maintain the standards you've set." Coming to attention, he gave her a crisp salute and added, "Good luck, Professor."

Somewhat to his surprise, Rose grabbed him by his tie. "I've told you a hundred times, Brigadier," she said. "Don't salute me."

Then, somewhat more to his surprise, she used her grip on his tie to pull his face down for a kiss before turning him loose and propelling him toward the rad shield. To his startled expression she said with a laugh, "Couldn't leave without doing that at least once, could I, not after all those newspaper stories we've laughed about." Then, having installed him next to Edison, she squared up and returned his salute, still grinning. "And thank you, Brigadier, for everything. I couldn't have got this far without you."

Leaving him to trade befuddled looks with Edison, Rose turned and walked back out to the platform, where the last of her closest associates waited. Constable Pond had left her hat somewhere, her flame-red hair falling in luxurious waves around her shoulders, and Rose plucked at a lock of it with a slight smirk.

"If there was a way to steal this," she said, then left the rest of the remark unaired and said instead, "You take care of yourself, Amy. Remember what I told you: DCI at the very least. Don't let them stick you in some dead-end no-hope posting. You're better than that."

"Maybe working with you," said Amy uncertainly. "But when you're gone?"

"You've learned enough. You're ready to go it without me." Rose grinned. "This is when you fly."

Amy eyed her for a moment, then broke into a beaming smile.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah! Why not! It's... it's been amazing, Professor Tyler. Really amazing. Thank you."

"Constable Pond," Rose replied, "it's been my honor." She stood on tiptoes to embrace the policewoman. "Cor, you're tall."

When the hug was finished, Amy (surreptitiously dabbing at her eyes) went to the controls, while Rose went up onto the platform in the middle of the UTA and pulled on a long grey coat over her jacket. The coat, festooned with wires, a power cell, and a couple of isolinear circuit wafers, was the array's navigational interface, designed to link up with the control system so that the wearer's precise position in spacetime - a critical piece of information - was constantly updated right up to the instant of crossover.

"Power up the positioning sensors, please," she said, and Pond operated the appropriate controls. The lighting in the room changed, overhead lamps dimming, as the power converters in the ring began to glow with a greenish Getter light. Little sparkles of the same energy ran up and down the wires attached to Rose's coat. She reached into an inside pocket of her leather jacket underneath and produced a small metal object.

"Reference tracking sample... engaged," she said, clipping the item - which looked for all the world like a simple Yale key - into a hollow on the circuit board affixed to her coat's right lapel. It began to glow with a low chiming noise.

"Tracking," Amy reported, her eyes jumping from one indicator to another; then, excitedly, "Locked on! Target is... stationary." She looked up, meeting Rose's eyes through the window. "We're good to go."

"Right." Rose put one hand on each of the rails flanking her position at the center of the UTA stage. "Energize the primary array."

Amy threw switches. "Primary array coming online."

The room filled with a hum very like that of the machine in the sewer, the green glow brightening. Rose's hair began to ruffle as if she were standing in a light breeze. Motes of bright energy rose from the plates beneath her feet as the electrodes began to form their ring of arcs, until only one gap remained... and there it stayed.

"Energy levels holding at 94 percent!" Amy shouted over the crackling roar of the arcs. A siren started to moan. "Primary coil temperatures exceeding critical limits! Powering down!"

"No!" Rose yelled, the urgency in her voice stopping the constable's hand before it could pull back the emergency-stop lever. "This is the only chance we're going to get!"

"Professor, it's not working!" Amy shouted back. "There's not enough energy! Coil temps are 1500 degrees above redline and rising - we've got to shut it down or it'll blow!"

Rose wavered, on the edge of agreeing, until she remembered something she herself had said to Q-boss Earl.

"Getter rays respond to emotions. The machine is picking up on your fear."

She reached deep inside herself and summoned up all the passion in her heart, all the determination and refusal to quit that had seen her through the last ten years of hard work and danger, all the love and desperation that had driven her forward toward one single goal - this moment, this crossing, and what, if her calculations were correct, lay beyond it.

It can't all have been for nothing, she thought. Because I'm never going to give up. I didn't give up after Satellite 5. I didn't give up on Krop Tor. I didn't give up after Canary Wharf. And I'm not giving up now!

The Getter-ray aggregator suddenly glowed even brighter, its light so intense it was nearly white. The crystal cylinder cracked with a sound like a rifle shot, but wasn't breached. Before Amy's astonished eyes, the needle of the energy level gauge shot from 94% up to the maximum reading of 125% and jammed against the stop. The rising motes of energy became a vortex, swirling up from the floor to obscure Rose's feet, then her legs.

"Breakthrough imminent!" Amy declared breathlessly. "Crossover in four seconds!" Meeting the Professor's eyes again, she grinned in amazement and called, "Godspeed, Rose!"

Rose's reply, "G'bye, Amy," came just before the Getter vortex swallowed her up and, with a thunderous BOOM and a blinding flash of light, collapsed in on itself.

Standing at the control board in the suddenly dark and silent lab, Amy Pond found her hands moving automatically, following her well-drilled training and locking down the board. The overhead lights came back on, revealing that most of the UTA had been reduced to so much melted scrap by the final implosion. A wisp of greenish smoke puffed from the crack in the dark and empty Getter-ray aggregator.

"Well," said Thomas Edison after a moment. "That was... remarkable. I wonder if she made it. I... suppose we'll never know."

Amy looked down at the locked board, noting the positions of some of the indicators, and smiled. "Yeah. She made it."

7:32 PM
GPO Headquarters, New Albion

Brigadier Sir Daniel J. Griffin-Hudson entered his outer office looking weary and a little shell-shocked, and was surprised to find his adjutant, Captain Luornu Durgo, still at her desk.

"Welcome back, Brigadier," she said. "How did it go?"

"She's away," the Brigadier replied. "Constable Pond tells us the instruments indicate she made it through."

Lu smiled. "That's a relief." Indicating the door behind her, she added in a businesslike tone, "There's a new recruit waiting in your office, sir."

The Brigadier looked at his watch. "Lu, this really isn't a good time for me," he said, but she just smiled enigmatically.

"No, you want to see this one. Trust me."

Griffin-Hudson sighed, rubbing at his face. "All right. If you say so." He trudged past her desk, giving her a tired smile, and entered his inner office.

There was a woman sitting in the green leather wingback chair facing his desk. At the sound of the door behind her, she got to her feet and turned to face him, and the Brigadier just stood there and stared at her in amazement for a few moments.

She was about twenty, dressed the way young people dressed in New Albion these days, in a T-shirt with some slogan printed in a font so stylized as to be casually unreadable, jeans whose legs were a little too long, sneakers, and one of those half-zip-up tops with the single big pocket on the front. Her hair was bleached blonde, but in a fashionable way rather than one that was intended to fool anyone - the parting in the middle was dark brown, as were her eyebrows. She looked a little nervous, as if she wasn't quite sure what she was doing here.

"Uh... hi," she said awkwardly. "I think, uh... are you the Brigadier?" Her accent was pure Albion, the dialect spoken in the working-class neighborhoods to the southwest of the city center - Powell, the Brigadier thought, or possibly Southbank.

"That's me," Griffin-Hudson replied.

"I got this email," the girl said. She handed him a datacom unit; he thumbed the holodisplay on and read:

You're much too clever to be wasting your life selling hoodies at Henrik's. What you need is a challenge. Go to the GPO building and ask to see the Brigadier. Go now. The reception staff will let you in.

And brace yourself. You're in for the time of your life.

Love,
The Professor

"I don't really know why I came," the girl admitted. "I don't even know who this 'Professor' is. But... he was right about them letting me in, so... what else might he be right about?" She smiled nervously, then blinked. "Oh. I'm sorry. God, that's so rude. I didn't even tell you who I am."

The Brigadier looked from the message to her face - a face from his past, the face of the woman he'd just said goodbye to as she had looked when he'd first met her, nigh on a decade ago.

He smiled.

"That's all right, Miss Tyler," he said. "I know who you are."

Sunday, May 8, 2410
5:23 PM
Nekomikoka, Tomodachi
Universe GCC #100/W

Rose materialized so suddenly that her vestibular system mistakenly assumed she was falling, which meant that she did fall, crumpling to the ground and slightly wrenching her knee. She remained there for a few moments, until her head stopped spinning. She felt the slight springiness of turf under her, smelled the acrid tang of burnt grass. The air was warm and spring-fragrant; after a moment, birdsongs resumed, hesitantly at first.

She opened her eyes and slowly straightened up, not quite daring to hope, and saw that she was standing in the middle of a large lawn. To her left, the grass sloped slightly down to a quiet suburban street. To her right, the lawn was strewn with cobbled-together electronic-looking gadgetry of no immediately obvious purpose (and what appeared to be a settee). Heavy cables snaked from parts of this apparatus across the grass and into two larger objects that stood at either end of the assembly. One looked like a Pepsi vending machine. The other was a tall, solid-looking blue box that was so instantly familiar that Rose felt for a moment as if she might fall down again. Just as she'd hoped, the UTA had used the TARDIS's key, which she'd carried with her all of these years, to find the machine itself. And where the TARDIS was, somewhere nearby had to be...

She saw a little group of people standing near a tree, not far from the TARDIS, maybe fifteen yards away. A stocky black-haired man in a green trenchcoat, a slim brown-haired woman, two teenage girls - one redheaded, the other another brunette. She knew them all. And standing next to the man in the green coat, a tall, thin man in brown, his shock of dark hair standing up, his eyes wide with astonishment and delight.

"Or we could just wait until she builds one herself," said Don Griffin blandly.

The Doctor said something in reply that she couldn't hear from this far away, then broke into a dead run across the lawn toward her.

Rose met him halfway, her sore knee momentarily forgotten, and just about crushed him with her embrace.

"Told you, didn't I?" she said after a few silent seconds, enormous satisfaction in her voice.

"Hm?" the Doctor replied.

"They keep trying to split us up, but they never ever will."

The Doctor grinned. "You know what," he said, "I think you might be right."

"Of course I'm right," said Rose. "I'm a scientist. Now do me a favor?"

"Yes?"

Rose smirked slightly, shifting her arms so that they were linked behind his neck. "I've come a bloody long way to find you. So will you please just shut up and kiss me?"

"Breakthrough" - A New Albion/Future Imperfect Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2010 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

[I was futzing around with Rose's BPGD file and was suddenly moved to put down the flip side of "The Way to Go Home" - which developed into a fun little glimpse into the parallel universe where she spent all that time, a world where WPI was in the other Worcester and the founders of the Wedge Defence Force were thus mostly Britons. This may not be the last time we get a look at #102/G - who can say? --G.]

And yes, definitely I'm all for seeing more of #102/G...esp if it feels like the Pertwee era...

happy,
t.

Fantastic!

Really, really good mini. I think I almost like this universe better - it's got Amy Pond, and everything's spelled properly.

For some reason, this gives me an image of Zoner and Gryph partaking in the timeframe and location's biggest debate:

Blur or Oasis?

---
"Together we will build an empire of a million shining suns." -- Dave, Dictator of Utopia.

This bit was just... *perfect*.

Shalon Wood

"Character-Driven" in exercise, is just another way to say "Forced Drama". Faugh.

----
Now Playing:
Prodigy -- Memphis Bells(Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, 2004)

Lick it once, lick it twice...C'mon put that shit on ice!

< THIS SPACE FOR RENT >

One question (well, several, but this is the one I can articulate): If its a United Kingdom, who's the King and/or Queen?

“They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

Professor Rose Tyler, by Phil Moy.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.