A Question of Time

The Family managed to get away from Lazarus Laboratories without drawing Martha’s attention. They didn’t go far, however, landing just a wee bit in the future and a little bit closer to the center of London. The reason behind this was that they needed to go shopping. For some reason, the three objects which the TARDIS’ kitchen ran out of the most were either only found on Earth or just tasted better when gotten on Earth.

So, after picking up milk, tea and jelly babies, the Doctor and the Master had decided that they'd best do some repairs on the TARDIS, so the main room of the TARDIS had a few sections of its floor open, and the Master and Jack were down inside the workings of the TARDIS, doing various repairs on the ship.

Then night fell.

Like every night, the Master found himself smiling down at Jack and the Doctor, who were curled up together like two puppies. He stood for a second by the side of the bed before lying down next to his mates, grateful for every second, peaceful or not, that he could spend with the two.

Meanwhile, down and across the hall, Rachel was looking over the bookshelves which made up two of the walls of her room. From the Master and the Doctor, she’d received her love of knowledge; from Jack and the Doctor her love of fantastical stories. These two loves combined into an near obsession with books and libraries.

She hadn’t planed on sitting down to read before going to bed, but the moment she walked into her room she noticed that something was different from the last time she’d been there. Thinking that the TARDIS had acquired a new book for her, Rachel had immediately gone over to her shelves and started poking around.

The book she pulled out was ancient, a thick book bound in ancient red leather. There was no title or anything of that sort upon the book, which looked more like a journal than a proper book. Curious, Rachel made her way over to a large chair and sat down, the journal in her hands. Slowly she opened the book and was somewhat surprised at what she found. The journal was written in Twenty-First Century English, but the words seemed to shake and Rachel realized that the TARDIS was translating the journal into a language that she would understand.

“What was it written in originally?” Rachel asked the TARDIS, without looking up from the journal. The words shifted back to their original form. Despite not knowing how to read the language, Rachel knew what it was called… Old High Gallifreyan.

My childhood name was Ushas. I was loomed on Gallifrey and from the instant my mother and father’s DNA was entered into the Loom I was expected to rise through the ranks and become Lady President.

I never would be able to live up to those expectations.

The first action I took that went against my House’s wishes was my choice of Academy. I chose to entered the Prydonian Chapter and I laughed at the looks of disgust the scarlet and orange robes of Prydonian Academy drew from my Cousins. I was smarter then them, but more importantly I was clever. I knew that the true power and wisdom on Gallifrey lay with the ‘outcasts’ in Prydon.

It was in the Academy that I met two men who would irreversibly change my future… it is because of them that I take pen in hand and record this memoir, a preface to the findings of my lifetime of research.

I do not know what name they have given you. I only know that you must exist… the child of the Doctor, the Master and their third mate, whom I will never meet.

I hope that you, and your parents, believe me… I hope that you believe I am who I say I am.

I am the Rani, who in childhood was called Ushas. I was a member of the Prydonian Academy, Class of ‘92. After I graduated, my experiments drew the ire of the Lord President and I was exiled from Gallifrey… becoming the first Renegade of Modern Times.

Rachel blinked in surprise, staring down at the journal in her hands. “The Rani‘s Journal…” she whispered, a shiver running down her spine. “What could be so important that she’d write it in Old High Gallifreyan?”

It was at the Prydonian Academy that I met the Doctor and the Master for the first time, of course, they didn’t carry those names, not yet.

The Doctor was not the legend he has become. He was just Theta Sigma of the House of Lungbarrow. A waif of a boy whom the others ridiculed with the names of Snail and Wormhole. A dreamer who would rather find patterns in the clouds then listen to his Cousins attempts to teach him.

The only one, other then myself, who saw the brilliance in Thete was another boy called Koschei, a young boy who would eventually chose “the Master” as his name. Koschei was a member of the House of Oakdown and no one could deny his brilliance. Under Koschei’s protection, Thete was a force to be reckoned with.

The three of us were unlike our classmates. We didn’t understand why and perhaps I never will, not completely at least. I have no doubt that, after my death, the Doctor and the Master will managed to take what I have figured out and understand themselves.

We became known as “the Deca’… the brightest young minds of the Prydonian Academy, the most troublesome as well. Eager to find all the information we could, the Deca managed to teach ourselves Old High Gallifreyan, something which the Council had long ago outlawed.

My friends did not know that I knew their greatest secret, the secret which both the House of Oakdown and the House of Lungbarrow hid, or at least attempted to hide from the rest of Gallifrey.

The House of Lungbarrow had tried in vein to hide the so called “Loom defect” of their Cousin Theta Sigma. Unlike other Time Lords, Thete was born with a small mark in the center of his stomach, what humans call a “belly button”.

This fact was discovered by the other young members of the Academy, and lead to them calling him by those dreadful names… the House of Oakdown on the other hand, was more successful. No one ever suspected that Koschei had the same “defect” as Thete.

On the last night of our studies in the Academy, Thete ---The Doctor, sought me out and told me an unbelievable tale.

“Ushas… you are one of the smartest people I know. I’m going to tell you something… something I don’t understand…

I can remember waiting to be born…It was like being all strung out. All unraveled inside the Loom.

I was spread really thin, I couldn’t think. Not put thoughts together. But I knew where I was and what was happening.

I couldn't wait to get out.

And then I was born. My lungs nearly burst. The first rush of air was so cold!”

I found myself staring at my friend, my classmate… I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I was struck dumb and there was Thete, only a few days into calling himself the Doctor, wanting me to give him some sort of explanation.

I was never able to ease the Doctor’s fears. Never able to explain those strange memories that he had, but years later I found myself faced with another dear friend, another Time Lord who had something to tell me.

“Rani--- I know that Thete told you… about his memories. I have the same ones you know. Little flashes of a life before, before I was Koschei of the House of Oakdown. I can never remember my name, what I looked like or even what era I lived in.

All I remember is dying… but at the same time I wasn’t dying, it seemed to be someone else who fell, someone else who died.

It was as if it was both me and someone else, someone so dear to me that I would sacrifice everything for them.“

Can it be mere chance, or coincidence that made me encounter two such men? Mere chance that I would find the Fragments? Coincidence that these Fragments matched with the Doctor and the Master’s stories?

Thousands of years before the Doctor, the Master and myself were loomed there were three great men who forever changed Gallifrey. Rassilion, Omega and the Other. They are many stories about two of these men and many facts which only I have pieced together.

Rassilon, the first Lord President, or our Last Dictator if you believe the stories… as I do. A man who is said to have found a way to have never-ending life. But Rassilon is also credited with limiting the number of regenerations which any one Time Lord may have.

In the Death Zone on Gallifrey lies the Great Tomb of Rassilon. There I know the Doctor and the Master have gone, there they found themselves playing the Game of Rassilon and discovered the truth about Rassillion… a truth I fear I shall never know.

Omega was one of the Time Lords' greatest scientists. He is the one who created the Eye Of Harmony, a singularity born from the first black hole. While doing this he provided the power for our travels ---but he paid the price. Sucked into a world of Anti-Matter, he was thought to be dead until the Doctor had the misfortune of encountering him.

No one knows if Omega is truly dead, his will was strong enough to keep him alive in the Universe of Anti-Matter, so who is to say that he does not continue to live… in some unknown space and time.

These stories were not unfamiliar to Rachel, when she was little she’d always been after her Fathers, begging each one for tales of their previous adventures. So she’d listened to the Master’s greatest plots, Jack’s adventures with the Time Agents and the Doctor’s travels in Time and Space.

But she had never heard of any Time Lord who went by the name of ‘the Other’.

While Rassilon and Omega are relatively well known, the Other is a mystery. No one knows if he was actually a Time Lord ---or something much more powerful and ancient.

He appears only in the Fragments, small scraps of Old High Gallifreyan which start in the middle of a sentence and end just as suddenly. Some Fragments consist of only a handful of words.

In these Fragments the Other is seen as the silent one, while Rassilion and Omega were the superstars of their day, the Other seems to almost be the power behind the throne.

The only thing which is known for sure is that some argument arose between the Other and the first Lord President of Gallifrey. The Lord President killed the Other’s family and, quite suddenly, the Other vanished from history.

The Fragments which tell what happened to the Other are considered to be forgeries by the High Council, but I do not think them to be such a thing. I believe they are one hundred percent accurate.

The Other saw what was becoming of the Time Lords, he saw the beginnings of what would become the official policy of non-involvement. The Other realized that something had to be done, or else a day would come when the Time Lords would cease to exist.

He linked himself with the Houses of Gallifrey, insuring that every now and then the looms would create Time Lords with an increased capacity to question ---which would most certainly lead those Time Lords to rebel.

However, this alone was not enough. So the Other found a House which he believed would survive, a House he believed suitable. After making the necessary preparations, the Other threw himself into the looms of that House.

Dark, mysterious legends, the sort which you only whisper in the dead of night, say that the Other threw himself into the looms so that one day he would be born again.

Many Heads of Houses have, over the course of Gallifrey’s history, claimed that their house was the one whose loom the Other threw himself into. However there is a slight problem with that argument. The Fragments clearly state that the Other threw himself into the looms of a House. And a House only ever has one loom… or at least all but one House at the time of the Other had just one loom.

It has taken me several regenerations to discover the name of this House, the house of two Looms… the House was called Kompvort. The House of Kompvort was an immense House, with 82 Cousins allotted to them.

The reason for this large number of Cousins was also the reason for the House having two looms. The original founders of this House were the descendents of both Rassillion and Omega, so they were allowed two looms, one for the children of Rassilon and one for the children of Omega.

Long after the famous members of the House Kompvort were forgotten, the High Council was fearful of the power of the House, for it produced many powerful Time Lords.

So it was split. The children of Rassilon into one House, with thirty-seven Cousins and the children of Omega into another, taking the remaining forty-five Cousins.

And the looms which had once functioned as one were split apart and the Houses slowly forgot that they had ever been joined together as one. Now each House has a number of Cousins which has not changed since those long ago days and only two have the right number of Cousins to be the Houses of Rassillion and Omega.

The bottom of the page had been torn out, so that the Rani’s notes were incomplete. Several pages after that were missing… but the last page of the Journal was intact, although it only had a few sentences jotted down on it. The writing was incredibly sloppy, as if done in a great hurry.

To the daughter of Thete and Koschei:

Once I came across a creature who was the last of her kind. Unlike the thousands of mystics the world over, she could actually catch glimpses into the future.

I asked her to look as far as she dared in the lifelines of your parents… and she gave me a warning to pass on to you. I have asked the Doctor’s TARDIS to deliver this to you when these warnings will be appropriate…

They are coming back…

Back from across the darkness.

Born from the darkness once again…

She will knock four times.

Good luck, daughter of the Deca.

TBC