laceyjanewriting

[laceyjanewriting]

The Engineer’s Story

I was born in the 51st century, in New-New York. When I was born my mother sent me away to live with my grandparents. This is not so unusual. She thought I would be safe with them and have a happy life. What is unusual is my mother. You see her parents didn’t just live somewhere else. They lived some when else. At some point they had gotten trapped in New York in the early 20th century. My mother used a vortex manipulator to send me to my grandparents 31 centuries in the past, like a baby in a basket, with just a note to explain. She didn’t even tell my father about me. He found out later. That was another thing about me. My father wasn’t human, which makes me only half human, which makes me a bit of a anomaly. From my alien father I inherited an unusual intelligence and an intuition about time and space that no human had and I couldn’t even explain to a human. There are no words in any human language to explain it. Growing up I was a bit strange. Gifted, I went to MIT to study theoretical physics. I wanted to figure out everything about time travel. But I didn’t fit in in college.  My theories were too complex for the contemporary scientist. They thought anything that they couldn’t understand was made up. They laughed at me because I couldn’t explain. Words were not my gift. One professor actually told me that the only reason women go to college is to find smart husbands. I left and went back home to my parents, which they very much appreciated. My mum was a writer and my pop was a doctor. I worked in a repair shop. The owner was not too open to hiring me, but I proved myself by fixing anything he put in front of me. He had me dress like a boy when I was in the shop alone. Seems people didn’t trust a woman to fix their machines. Anyways I like working in the shop. Solving people’s problems. Plenty of time to work on my own problems. The vortex manipulator that brought me back in time had burned out making its way through the time distortions that trapped my parents there. I spent the better part of my life just living, meeting people and working to understand and fix the vortex manipulator (VM). I once met some people who had met my alien father. They said the Doctor had saved them and she gave me singing lessons. Finally I got the VM working but I could only go to the last place it had been, give or take a few minutes. I said good bye to my grandparents who were old now like grandparents are supposed to be. I pressed the button and suddenly I was in the middle of a hospital room in the 51st century where I found a woman sobbing. Of course as I appeared she stopped crying and asked me who I was and where I had gotten the VM. I think she was concerned something had gone wrong with her plan and I had taken the VM. “I’m Wendy Williams,  and I’m your daughter.” It took a while for her to comprehend who I was and believe me. But when she understood, she hugged me and held me. “I’m getting a taste of what happened at Demon’s Run to my parents, I guess,” she laughed. She took  me home with her. Introduced me to her crew and told me she was an archeologist, like Indiana Jones, she said, but I hadn’t heard of him. It was a bit weird that I had grown up in a time before my mother. I was a bit behind the times for once in my life. I enrolled in the university and finally found a challenging, satisfying world to live in. I loved living in the 51st century. Then the Doctor came. My actual father, I finally met him. He was wonderful and fun and brilliant. He taught me about Time Lords. About his people that were all gone now. I learned everything I ever wanted to know about time travel. He taught me his language which  was much better for talking about such things. It came naturally to me, like adding words to thoughts I could not express before. I thought I was living the most perfect life. In retrospect I know my mother worried when I was with him. She told me to be careful. She explained how she had met him and how he was wonderful, but also how he has been slowly forgetting her and how he has hurt her. “He is the most amazing man in the universe and I would die for him, but I want you to have your own life. I live for the days when I’m with him,” she told me. “I want you to live for yourself.” I didn’t understand but I remembered her warning. And then she went to the Library. She died for him, like she said she would. Her crew had been my best friends and they were gone too. It was less than a year after I had come back to the future. Before my first birthday. She was gone and she left me there, all alone. On my birthday, not long after the Library the Doctor showed up again. I was heartbroken and I blamed him. “You are supposed to save her! If you can’t do that, then what is the point of you!” I yelled at him and told him I never wanted to see him again. I told him this using his own language and I used a word for ‘never’ that had more finality than the word in English. Hurt, he had no reply, but  he complied and left my birthday present without saying anymore. At first I hid away the gift he left me. I didn’t want anything from him. I wanted my mother and friends back. I wanted revenge. I made plans to go to the Library and destroy the creatures called Vashdanarada that had killed my friends. I made plans to sneak past the quarantine. I invented a way to kill these creatures that hid in the dark. But before I could do it I finally looked in the birthday gift the Doctor had left.  It was the most amazing thing. It was a TARDIS matrix. It is hard to explain, but the heart of the TARDIS is living and this was like it’s offspring. The Doctor’s TARDIS has many amazing properties and powers, but none of it is possible without the TARDIS matrix. He had given me the key to building my own TARDIS. When I touched it I could feel all of time and space. I could see the future and the past. I could see what could be and what must not be. The Doctor once told me that a Time Lord (or Lady) chooses their name. Their name is a promise they make for all of time and in all of space. No matter where or when they go they would still be that person. I had a choice now. I could go on with my plan and become the Exterminator or I could forgive and become the Engineer. Seeing the two choices made it seem obvious which one was right. Like seeing yourself in the mirror when you are angry. You think, oh is that me, I look awful.  I wanted to be the person who builds things to help people not the person who builds thing to destroy. From that point on I was the Engineer. I left my old name behind. I got a job working on a ship in the Space Caribbean. I fixed my ship and made improvements and sat on beaches relaxing, like I was retired. I also worked on my own TARDIS. I was rather old compared to humans but I don’t age like humans. I looked to be in my thirties even though I had lived for closer to 80 years. I stayed there until something unexpected happened. The Doctor showed up, but he didn’t know me. A previous regeneration. It was the Doctor before he knew me or my mother. Somehow he managed to show up just in time for pirates to attack and destroy my ship. He helped me save the crew and I saved him. To save him I had to use my incomplete TARDIS. To avoid awkward explanations I knocked him out in order to save him. While he was out, I did have to do some explaining to Rose, his companion at the time. She reminded me of River. I told her I had a friend that died to save the Doctor once. Rose had been willing to die with the Doctor that day. She wouldn’t leave him even though she had no way to save him. She told me the Doctor was worth it. I dropped them back at their TARDIS and said goodbye. Then I met him again, with a new companion, Martha. I was afraid to ask what happened to Rose. They showed up at a construction site at which I was the supervising engineer. Again the Doctor showed up just in time for mayhem to break out. He saved the day again. This new companion was in love with him too, but he was not returning the feelings. I asked her before they left, why she stayed with him when he was not interested in her the same way. She told me he needs someone, and he is wonderful. “He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and can see the turn of the universe. and... he's wonderful.” She quoted to me. He save lives and he never asks to be thanked. The next time he found me while I was working undercover. We uncovered and stopped evil plans from powerful people and I met Donna Noble. She was funny and sassy and she was not in love with him. Maybe it was the red hair. Us ‘gingers’ need to stick together. I was glad that the Doctor had her. I realized that I cared about the Doctor. This younger version had grown on me. The next time I met the Doctor was at home. In New-New York in the 51st century. I was on my way home from class, when I saw an advertisement for an old Shakespeare play, Hamlet. The advertisement had a picture of Hamlet and it was none other than the Doctor. It was the last showing that night so I went and saw the play about a tormented son. It was good and he did a good job. I waited at the end and gave him roses. We went out after and then he told me how he had lost Donna and Rose and Martha. He told me he had gone a bit mad and changed a fixed point and messed everything up. How he was told he his song was coming to an end. He asked me what he should do… I told him we should run. So I travelled with the Doctor. He took me to see Queen Elizabeth the First. We ran into the other versions of him and I met Clara for the first time. We travelled a bit more but soon after that he dropped me off at home and said he needed to find out what the Ood wanted. I never saw that face again. I spent time building my TARDIS and I didn’t see the Doctor for a long time. I went to the Library, not to exterminate anything. Instead I made a shielding to protect me from them. I got River’s diary and I went to the data core. I linked the data core to my TARDIS so I could talk to River. I linked her consciousness with my TARDIS. Now she could use it to travel anywhere in time in space. Not her body but her consciousness could. She was like a ghost. She told me how the Doctor had saved her there forever. Never coming back to say goodbye. “He doesn’t like goodbyes,” she explained When next I saw the Doctor he had a new face but it was an old face to me. It had been so long since I had seen that face. It was that face that I had been so mad at. But he still didn’t know who I really was so it was before that time for him. I was willing to forgive him, though. It was also the face that had taught me all about time travel and time lords. Then he had to go and yell at me. He saw that I had the sonic screwdriver from the Library. The one that he had left with River’s journal and suddenly he had to know who I was. I had at one point mentioned that I had a friend at the University and he now surmised that River was that friend. This was the Doctor before he met me but not before he knew who River was and how she had died. This was the Doctor that had left River’s consciousness in the Library without saying goodbye. Now I was mad again. I told him he was correct, River was my friend, and if he wanted to know more he would have to go back in time and  ask her about it. He had no reply for that and I left him there, speechless. Finally the Doctor showed up at my apartment with Clara. It was my birthday again, this time I was happy to see him. I smiled and I invited them in for tea and I made an old family snack my old mum made when I was little.  We were family again.