Doctor Who: The Evangelion Error (Book One)

E8 Part 1: Hanging On the Tablaphone

NERV Headquarters. Central Dogma. Command Center.

They all stood there in the dark, the room as silent as a tomb. Shinji tried to imagine what fighting two Angels at the same time would be like. Like, say, both the bird-mask thing and that snake creature at once... or maybe two of the crystal. The thought alone was enough to send a wave of bile crawling up his throat. He clapped a hand over his mouth and choked it back down.

"Two of them." The Doctor stared out into space. "One to drain, one to defend. See? Team players. Just like I said..."

"Our defenses are completely offline." Misato's eyes seemed to have glazed over. "Even if we call for backup... anything the JSSDF sends us will just shut down. Right?"

"Yeah. Told you they were clever..."

The Doctor glanced at Misato. His eyes met hers.

"Well! So much for taking a long lunch, then, eh?" He pulled off his coat and tossed it over a nearby chair.

"Wait, hold on," Lieutenant Hyuga seemed to have caught his breath. "Just who are you, anyway?"

"Right now, I'm the one who can do this." The Doctor pointed the screwdriver at the console bank.

The room abruptly hummed back to life. The lights switched back on. The consoles and the holographic displays started up. Shinji could even hear the air conditioning spin back into motion.

"Tweaked your Faraday cages," the Doctor said. "That should give you enough power to get communications back up and running. Get those people upstairs evacuated! GO!"

The lieutenant glanced at Misato. She nodded. "R-right!" He scrambled to another station.

"Come on, people!" Misato shouted. She clapped her hands together. "Let's MOVE IT! Get the rest of the staff back in here!"

The room exploded into a flurry of activity. Someone threw the doors back open. The Doctor donned his glasses and sat down at the forward console. "Resources, resources -- let's see what we've got..." His fingers danced across the keyboard.

Shinji went over to the Doctor's side. The holographic display above the console lit up. Screen after screen of information -- technical documentation, inventories, lists, maps, chemical formulas -- flashed by at an impossibly rapid pace, too fast for Shinji's eyes to keep up.

"Wait -- that's administrator access." Ritsuko came up behind them, her arms crossed. "How did you get those security privileges?"

"What? Oh, that." The Doctor grinned. "Caspar responds well to flattery."

Ritsuko's face went through a fascinating series of emotions in the span of a few seconds -- from confusion to shock to horror to finally a kind of irritated resignation. She groaned and covered her face with her hands. "Of course she does."

"Look, not gonna complain about having the lights back on," Lieutenant Aoba said as he took his seat, "but you still haven't answered my question, dude."

"I'm called the Doctor. Business cards're still in the works, so let's just leave it at --"

"He's an alien scientist from another world," Father said, his voice carrying over the din in spite of his conversational tone. "Apparently of a species unrelated to the Angels."

The room went back on pause. Crap, Shinji thought. He glanced around the room. He didn't think his father looked angry, at least... not like he could ever really tell... and then there was Rei. She stared at the Doctor, her face somehow even paler than usual.

The Doctor turned and eyed the commander. "Jumped to that conclusion fairly quickly, didn't you?"

Father snorted. "Please. Highly advanced technology, two heartbeats and a box that's invisible to radar. You're not exactly hiding it."

The air conditioning whirred.

The Doctor sighed. "Eh. All right. Touché." He went back to work.

The command staff, exchanging bewildered glances, slowly followed suit. "Oh, come on. You're joking, right?" Misato approached the Doctor, an incredulous smile on her face. "You're not really -- you can't expect me to believe that you're --"

"Um," Shinji said.

She looked down at him. He gave her a kind of embarrassed shrug. Her smile faded away. "You've got to be kidding me."

"It's, um... he doesn't... live in an apartment," Shinji said in a low tone of voice. "It's... kind of this... spaceship sort of thing. That looks like a box."

Misato ran her hands through her hair. "And you've known about this how long?" she finally asked.

"I'm sorry!" Shinji whispered furiously. "He wanted to tell you himself! He said he was building up to it!"

"You have to admit, Captain," the Doctor said loftily, "it is kinda a big step. Definitely third-date material at best."

Misato rubbed her eyes. "Okay," she said. "I'm going to move on now, because we're in a lot of trouble here. I just want to say -- for the record -- I can't believe this is my life."

The Doctor grinned. "Duly noted."

"So I suppose the next question to tackle is how to deploy the Evas." Fuyutski rubbed his jaw. "Even if we can restore partial power to the cages, those transport systems weren't exactly built to be energy efficient."

"We'll use the manual system," Father said. "Aoba, send word to the pit crews. I'll be down there shortly to --"

"No."

Fuyutski looked up at the Doctor, his brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean no," the Doctor said.

Without turning around, he held up the sonic. On the console next to him, a disc drive suddenly sparked and burned out.

A warning bell rang at Maya's console. "Uh, sir?..." She peered at the screen. "We, um... we just got a signal from all three Evas. Their onboard computers powered up and locked themselves out. Encryption unknown."

"Unknown? But --" Ritsuko rushed over to Maya's side. "But that means -- even if we get the pilots inside, we won't be able to initiate synchronization. They're completely unworkable."

Once more, everyone turned to stare at the Doctor. Even Shinji.

Lieutenant Aoba swallowed. "Uh... did he just disable the only weapons we have?"