New Beginnings [3]

Chapter 4 - The Power of Three

The Doctor sat on top of a child’s climbing frame examining a box. Maddie sat on the ground with TJ. “Doctor! Maddie!” Amy called. “TJ!”

“Invasion of the very small cubes. That’s new.” The Doctor comment.

“Cubes!” TJ called as he clapped with his hands.

Maddie looked at the Doctor. “Oh, my god. We really need him to learn what danger is.”

“He is 1.” The Doctor exclaimed. “Let him have some fun.”

Then Amy's eyes popped. “TJ's 1?”

“Yes.” Maddie replied. “We celebrated it in the Tardis.”

“But we weren’t there.” Amy exclaimed.

“Oh.” The Doctor scratched the back of his neck. “We forgot.”

“You forgot.” Amy cried out.

“He got sick.” Maddie countered.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Amy comment sadly.

“Apologies accepted.” Maddie comment seriously.

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The Doctor held up a cube. “All absolutely identical. Not a single molecule’s difference between them. No blemishes, imperfections, individualities.”

“What if they’re bombs?” Brian frowned. “Billions of tiny bombs? Or transport capsules maybe, with a mini robot inside. Or deadly hard drives. Or alien eggs? Or messages needing decoding. Or they’re all parts of a bigger whole. Jigsaw puzzles that need fitting together.”

The Doctor looked at him. “Very thorough, Brian. Very, very thorough. Well done. Stay here. Watch these. Yell if anything happens.”

“Doctor, is this an alien invasion? Because that’s what it feels like.” Amy asked.

“There couldn’t be life-forms in every cube, could there?” Rory also asked.

The Doctor looked at them. “I don’t know. And I really don’t like not knowing.”

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The Tardis was parked in the lounge. The Doctor looked at them. “Right, I need to use your kitchen as a lab. Cook up some cubes. See what happens.”

“Cooking?” TJ asked confused.

“Let daddy do his work.” Maddie replied to him.

TJ pouted. “Mommy.”

Maddie put him on the ground and gave him a toy. “Here, sweetie.”

Rory looked down at TJ, then at the others. “Right, I’m due at work.”

“What? You’ve got a job?” The Doctor asked confused.

“Doctor.” Maddie groaned.

Rory looked at him in disbelief. “Of course I’ve got a job. What do you think we do when we’re not with you?”

“I imagined mostly kissing.” The Doctor remarked.

“My god, sweetie. That was rude.” Maddie exclaimed.

“And you are not?” The Doctor asked.

Maddie looked at him, crossing her arms. “Not as you.”

“Of course, dear.” The Doctor comment.

Then Amy changed the subject. “I write travel articles for magazines and Rory heals the sick.”

“My shift starts in an hour.” Rory looked at Amy. “You don’t know where my scrubs are?”

“In the lounge, where you left them.” Amy replied.

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“All the Ponds, with their house and their jobs and their everyday lives. The journalist and the nurse. Long way from Leadworth.” The Doctor was sonicing a gizmo together.

“We think it’s been ten years. Not for you or Earth, but for us. Ten years older. Ten years of you, on and off.” Amy comment.

The Doctor looked at her. “Look at you now. All grown up.”

“They both are.” Maddie comment happily.

Just then the front door was smashed down. “Clear! Trap one, kitchen secured.” As Maddie quickly grabbed TJ.

“Trap three, back garden secured.” The rest of the squad were outside the patio doors.

Rory was marched in at gunpoint. “There are soldiers all over my house, and I’m in my pants.”

“My whole life I’ve dreamed of saying that, and I miss it by being someone else.” Amy comment as Maddie snored.

Just then a woman entered the house. The Doctor put Maddie and their son behind him. “All these muscles, and they still don’t know how to knock. Sorry about the raucous entrance. Spike in Artron energy reading at this address. In the light of the last twenty four hours, we had to check it out, and the dogs do love a run out. Hello. Kate Stewart, head of scientific research at UNIT. And with dress sense like that.” She held out a scanner, which shows two hearts beating in the Doctor’s chest. “You must be the Doctor. I hoped it would be you.”

“Tell me, since when did science run the military, Kate?” The Doctor asked.

Kate looked at him. “Since me. UNIT’s been adapting. Well, I dragged them along, kicking and screaming, which made it sound like more fun than it actually was.”

“What do we know about these cubes?” The Doctor asked to her.

“Far less than we need to.” Kate replied to him. “We’ve been freighting them in from around the world for testing. So far, we’ve subjected them to temperatures of plus and minus two hundred Celsius, simulated a water depth of five miles, dropped one out of a helicopter at ten thousand feet and rolled our best tank over it. Always intact.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “That’s impressive. I don’t want them to be impressive. I want them vulnerable with a nice Achilles heel.”

“We don’t know how they got here, what they’re made of, or why they’re here.” Kate told him.

Then Maddie spoke up. “And all around the world, people are picking them up and taking them home.”

Kate nodded. “Like iPads have dropped out of the sky. Taking them to work, taking pictures, making films, posting them on Flickr and YouTube. Within three hours, the cubes had a thousand separate Twitter accounts.”

The Doctor frowned. “Twitter?”

“I’ve recommended we treat this as a hostile incursion. Gather them all up and lock them in a secure facility. But that would take massive international agreement and co-operation.” Kate replied.

The Doctor looked at her. “We need evidence. The cubes arrived in plain sight, in vast quantities, as the sun rose. So, what does that tell us?”

Then Amy spoke up. “Maybe they wanted to be seen. Noticed.”

“Or more than that, they want to be observed.” The Doctor nodded. “So we observe them. Stay with them round the clock. Watch the cubes, day and night. Record absolutely everything about them. Team cube, in it together.”

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Four days later, the Doctor was impatient. “Four days. Nothing! Nothing! Not a single change in any cube anywhere in the world. Four days, and we am still in your lounge!”

“Sweetie, it was your idea.” Maddie bounced with TJ, who was laughing.
Amy looked at the Doctor. “You were the one who wanted to observe them.”

“Yes, well, I thought they’d do something, didn’t I?” The Doctor exclaimed. “Not just sit there while everyone eats endless cereal!”

“You said we had to be patient.” Rory exclaimed.

“Even your son is patient.” Maddie added.

The Doctor groaned. “Yes, you! You, not me! I hate being patient. Patience is for wimps. I can’t live like this. Don’t make me. I need to be busy.”

“Fine! Be busy! We’ll watch the cubes.” Amy exclaimed.

So the Doctor creosoted the garden fence, plays a little football, mowed the lawn and did something to their car. He was keeping the football off the ground. “Ninety eight, ninety nine, one hundred. Amy!” He also vacuumed the house. “Four million nine hundred ninety nine, five million.” Then he returned to the sofa. “That’s better. Nothing like a bit of activity to pass the time. How long was I gone?”

Rory looked at his watch. “Er, about an hour.”

“I can’t do it. No.” The Doctor leaves.

“Where are you going?” Amy asked.

“Watch TJ and we will kick Brian out of the Tardis.” Maddie comment. “The Doctor needs something else to do.”

“Oh.” Amy took the hint as Maddie kicked Brian out of the Tardis.

“What are they doing?” Rory asked confused.

“They need some alone time.” Amy replied. “And you can’t have that with TJ around.”

Rory blushed. “Oh.”

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Later they picked them up and had small adventures. It took them 7 weeks to be back at the party of the Ponds, but none of them noticed it. The people who were at party didn’t noticed, but Brian did. Brian went up to the Doctor, Maddie and TJ. “How long were they away?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brian.” The Doctor replied.

Brian pointed it out. “Because they’re wearing totally different clothes from earlier.”

“Seven weeks. I got side-tracked. A lot.” The Doctor told him.

“Yeah, you did.” Maddie muttered.

“What happened to the other people who travel with you?” Brian asked curiously.

“Some left me. Some got left behind. And some, not many but, some died. Not them. Not them, Brian. Never them.” The Doctor replied to him.

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The Doctor looked at Amy. “Can we stay here, with you and Rory, for a bit. Keep an eye on the cubes. However long that takes.”

“I thought it would drive you mad.” Amy told him.

The Doctor shook with his head. “No, no, no. I mean, I’ll be better at it this time. I miss you.”

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“I sent you out to sell as many cubes as you could in twenty four hours. And look at you, you’ve made a right hash of it, haven’t you. Well, Craig, you’re fired.”

The Doctor, Amy, Maddie and Rory were eating what looked like fish fingers and custard. Maddie give one to TJ. “If I had a restaurant, this’d be all I’d serve.”

“Yeah, right. You running a restaurant.” Amy comment.

“I’ve run restaurants. Who do you think invented the Yorkshire pudding?” The Doctor asked as Maddie looked at little green.

“You didn’t.” Rory replied.

The Doctor looked at him. “Pudding, yet savoury. Sound familiar?” then he looked at Maddie. “Dear, are you alright?”

“No!” Maddie rushed to the toilet.

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The Doctor rushed after Maddie. “Maddison, are you alright?”

Maddie glanced at her husband. “What do toy think?”

“And you don’t say that you aren’t rude, dear.” The Doctor replied. Then he helped her up. “Come on, to the Tardis with you.”

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The Doctor scanned her. “What does it say?” Maddie asked worried.

The Doctor had his eyes widen. “Well, it’s not something bad.”

“Then what is it?” Maddie asked, still worried.

“You are pregnant.” The Doctor smiled widely.

“Really?” Maddie sat up and looked at the screen. “It is.” She grinned widely.

Then they told Amy and Rory about it. They were very happy for them.

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A year flow by and their daughter was born, Amara. TJ was now almost 2. Now Maddie had Amara on her lap as TJ was walking around. “Third set decider, come on, then.” The Doctor was playing a game.

A cube flow around him and blocked his view. “Out of the way, dear, I’m trying to. Whatever you are, this planet, these people, are precious to me. And I will defend them to my last breath. Is that all you can do, hover? I had a metal dog could do that.” The cube pointed a tube at him. “What’s that?” The Doctor frowned.

“Oh dear.” Maddie muttered.

The cube fired, the Doctor and Maddie dodged and a vase shattered. The Doctor and Maddie escaped with their children, after two more pot shots.

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They rushed into the hallway. The Doctor looked in round the door. “Ooo, you really have woken up.”
Rory looked at them. “Doctor? Maddie? Hi. Er, the cube in there, it just opened.”

"The cube upstairs just spiked me and took my pulse!” Amy exclaimed.
“Ha! Really? Mine fired laser bolts and now it’s surfing the net.” The Doctor comment.

“It was not fun.” Maddie added.

Just then Brian entered. “You’re never going to believe this. My cube just moved. It rattled.”

Rory answered his mobile phone. “Hello? Okay, I’m on my way. I have to get to work. They need all the help they can get.”

“Let me come, help out.” Brian told him.

“Take your dad to work night, brilliant!” Rory muttered the first part. “Okay, are you going to be all right here?”

“Keep away from the cubes.” Amy replied.

“Right.” Rory and Brian leave.

The Doctor was looking at his psychic paper. Amy looked at him. “What are you grinning about?”

“We’re wanted at the Tower of London.” The Doctor replied to her.

Then Maddie looked at the Doctor. “What do we do with the children?”

The Doctor looked at her. “I need you and our children save in the Tardis, my dear.”

“I understand, sweetie.” Maddie nodded. “Be save out there.”

The Doctor smiled. “You know me.” Then they kissed as then Maddie took the children and went into the Tardis.

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Some later, the Doctor and the others did it. They defeated it and now they were eating Chinese with chopsticks. “Dear me.” The Doctor comment. “We’d better get going. Things to do, worlds to save, swings to swing on. Look, I know, you both have lives here. Beautiful, messy lives. That is what makes you so fabulously human. You don’t want to give them up. I understand.”

“We understand, sweetie.” Maddie comment.

“Actually, it’s you they can’t give up, Doctor, Maddie. And I don’t think they should. Go with him. Go save every world you can find. Who else has that chance? Life will still be here.” Brian explained it to them.
The Doctor looked at him. “You could come, Brian.”

“Somebody’s got to water the plants. Just bring them back safe.” Brian comment happily.

Then they Doctor and Maddie grabbed the children and went into the Tardis, followed by Amy and Rory.