A Day that Shook the World

Part 2

“No!” the Doctor shouted as he was thrown into the corner along with the other captive passengers of the plane. He didn’t like being shoved around, and he definitely wasn’t in the mood for games or anything of the sort. But at the moment, the Doctor’s mind was set at one thing, and one thing only: getting him and Jo off of that plane. He made his way around the people in the crowded corner to Jo. “We have to get off of this plane,” the Doctor hastily whispered to her. “Right. Now.”

    “Well, it doesn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to figure that out!” Jo snapped back. “The real question is, how the hell are we going to get off without being stabbed or dying from a fall of at least a thousand feet in the air?”

    The Doctor thought about this. The door to the airplane was on the other side of the plane itself. “Well,” he suggested, “if we find a parachute and manage to distract the Arabs, we could jump off without getting too scraped up.”

    “But what about all of these people? I say that we should get rid of whoever is flying the plane, and then steer it to safety.”

    “But Jo, I...” The Doctor hesitated, not really wanting to tell Jo what exactly was going on. “I... I can’t fly a plane.”

    Jo shot him a terribly dirty look at hearing this. “Says the man who built a life-size remote control car and can fly a helicopter with his eyes closed! Doctor, I know that you can fly a plane! And even if you couldn’t, since when would that stop you from trying to save people? What are you trying to hide from me?”

    Okay, the Doctor was really bad at lying. But that wasn’t really anything new. Even so, he didn’t know what to tell Jo at this point. The only thing that would satisfy her was... the terrible truth. “Jo,” the Doctor began, wanting to make this as short and simple as possible, “This is a fixed point in history. If we change it, time will go out of whack and this universe would most likely collapse upon itself!”

    “But, why, Doc? What’s going to happen?”

    The Doctor sighed. He really, really didn’t want to tell her, but for time’s sake and to avoid any argument, it seemed as if he had no choice. “This plane. It has obviously been taken over by Muslim terrorists. They plan on crashing this plane into New York City... If we stop this event, almost 3,000 people who should be dead would be alive, which would, as I said earlier, make the universe collapse upon itself.”

    Jo blanched. “But, why-”

    The Doctor put a hand over her mouth to stop her from asking any more questions that he wasn’t prepared to answer. “I’ve told you enough already. It’s not good for you to know too much about the future, Miss Grant.” Jo nodded slowly, and the Doctor lowered his hand from her mouth. She was still slightly recovering from the initial shock of the overwhelming situation at hand. "We need to focus on getting out of here. Now, where's my-" The Doctor looked over onto one of the seats of the airplane where the previous contents of his and Jo's pockets were strewn. There, his sonic screwdriver lay towards the top of the large pile. (The Doctor's pockets were  dimensionally transcendental, or 'bigger on the inside', like the TARDIS) The pile wasn’t too far away..."Okay, Jo. Here's what we should do:"

    After the Doctor told Jo the plan, she nodded as the Doctor put it into action immediately. “Um, excuse me,” the Doctor said in Arabic, “but what exactly are you planning on doing with us and this plane?”

    “And why should I tell you anything?” one of the Muslims answered.

    “Well, since it seems as if we are going to die anyway, so how could it hurt?” the Doctor insisted.