"Stargate-Crossed" - Part One

 

Part One

            Ave Maria.

            A wonderful piece conducted by the brilliant Franz Schubert was the perfect soothing music for the Doctor to work in peace with. His TARDIS was where it had always been since the beginning of his exile – in the U.N.I.T. HQ laboratory where he did most of his research, his experiments, and his repairs on the TARDIS.

            It was exceptionally serene there in the HQ that day, as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and a research team were hard at work on a discovery made in Giza, Egypt: the unearthing of an ancient, ring-shaped alien device that they housed in the base’s hangar bay when they returned.

            The Doctor knew his expertise would’ve been helpful in deciphering the origins of the machine, but the Brigadier had promised him some time off after that business with the Master and the Autons, a week ago. All U.N.I.T. personnel were ordered not to have disturbed him for four whole days – that included his latest assistant, Josephine “Jo” Grant.

            And still the lab phone rang in the midst of his work in the TARDIS.

            He almost didn’t hear it over the record playing Ave Maria. Disgruntled, he switched off the record and answered the phone call. “Who is it?” It wasn’t exactly the friendliest greeting, but he really didn’t want to be disturbed.

            “Doctor?” The voice on the other end was soft, delicate, and a bit mousey – it was undoubtedly Jo. “I’m sorry to have bothered you on your time-off. I know the Brigadier told us not to…”

            “It’s quite alright, Jo,” the Doctor comforted, his ire receding. “What was it that you needed from me?”

            “Well…” Jo hesitated to explain. “It’s an emergency.”

            Slightly alarmed, the Doctor gave his full attention. “Nothing’s happened to the Brigadier, I hope.”

            “I’m afraid something has…or we think something has,” Jo contradicted herself. “We made an incredible breakthrough on the alien machine: it has the power to create a wormhole – a gateway into another world.”

            “Let me guess,” the Doctor cynically said, “the Brigadier gathered an expedition team and they went through the wormhole together.”

            “Yes,” Jo confirmed. “And they haven’t returned in hours!”

            “I see,” the Doctor acknowledged. “Sit tight, Jo. I’m on my way there.”

            He snagged his inverness cape and tied it on, heading out of the lab and hopping into Bessie, his main mode of transport during his exile on Earth. A canary-yellow Edwardian roadster, Bessie was a key part of the Doctor’s compensation package from UNIT and the only specific demand he made of the Brigadier when he agreed to be the scientific advisor of U.N.I.T.

            In spite of being a vintage vehicle, Bessie moved lightning-quick between the laboratory complex and the hangar bay. Jo waited for him near the entrance and led him right in towards the spot in the massive, nearly endless space where the tests on the ring-shaped device were conducted. Bustling around the machine was the research team, a group of five young men and one woman in lab coats, operating numerous computers linked with the alien device.

            Seeing it up close for the first time, the Doctor was in awe. “It’s quite remarkable,” he said of it. His eyes followed along the large metal ring with seven symbols all along the edge with nine chevrons. “Those symbols…what’re they supposed to represent?”

            “They’re constellations,” the research team’s cryptographer (a young bespectacled man with floppy hair and a shaggy beard) told the Doctor. “Six for the destination and one for the point of origin.”

            “It was buried beneath this cover stone.” Another researcher gestured to a large stone tablet with Egyptian hieroglyphics etched onto it. “We managed to translate what it said for the Brigadier and his team, before their departure.”

            The Doctor analyzed the translation written on a blackboard right beside where the cover stone was situated. “Oh, no,” he cringed. “This is wrong. All of it is wrong.”

            “I doubled check the validity,” the cryptographer stated, readjusting his glasses.

            “You should have tripled checked, dear boy!” The Doctor snapped, right before he took an eraser and some chalk, making the corrections. “It’s supposed to read, ‘A million years into the sky is Ra, sun god, sealed and buried for all time his Stargate.’ How in blazes did you think ‘Stargate’ was translated as ‘door to heaven’?!” He suddenly came to a horrifying realization in making his adjustments. “Oh, dear! Jo, don’t tell me the Brigadier actually believed this machine to be the doorway to heaven?!”

            “I’m afraid so, Doctor,” Jo confirmed. “He seemed more than intrigued to find out what was on the other side.”

            “Well, he should’ve consulted with me before he did!” The Doctor irately bellowed.

            “But, Doctor, we all were given strict orders…”

            “…not to disturb me,” the Doctor finished Jo’s sentiment, at his own chagrin. “I know, I know.” He glanced back at the Stargate, his mind racing. “I suppose I’m the only one who can get them out of the mess they’ve put themselves into. But all of you will have to bring me up to speed on how this device works.”

            “Of course, Doctor,” the lead researcher verified.

            “One question,” the Doctor added. “How on earth – or, in this case, not on Earth – did the Brigadier and his expedition team intend on returning?”

            “We assumed there’d be another cover stone wherever it is they ended up to,” Jo told him.

            Every update the Doctor received on this situation he found that much harder to comprehend. “They risked the odds of returning on an assumption?! I’m starting to wish I’d never taken time off at all.”

------------------------

            Herkleston, Maryland. Another place, another time, another dimension.

            Craig Williams, an audacious and imaginative 9-year-old boy, led his friends, 8-year-old Kelsey Pokoly (with her pet budgerigar Mortimer perched atop her head) and 10-year-old J.P. Mercer, across the creek – a kid utopia of untamed wilderness in which tribes of children reign over tree forts and dirt bike ramps. On this specific day, Craig wanted to show J.P. and Kelsey a side of the creek only he had been through recently.

            “I’m gonna show you guys something not of our world,” Craig told his friends. “Something that you won’t find any other place but the creek!”

            “Oooh! What is it?” a heavily intrigued J.P. asked with his noticeable southern accent. “I bet it’s a cookie mountain with chocolate chip rocks and a snowcap that’s really vanilla ice cream.”

            “I bet it’s a two…no, a three­-headed lion with wings like a majestic falcon, so that it can hunt its prey in the sky and the ground!” Kelsey’s overactive imagination envisioned, going as far as pretending to battle the creature she imagined with her homemade PVC pipe sword.

            “It’s way cooler than a cookie mountain and a three-headed lion,” Craig told her. He finally brought them into a clearing where there stood a tall, rectangular black solid that glistened underneath the afternoon sun. It was much more than either J.P. or Kelsey imagined, their imaginations engaged in “hyperactive” mode just trying to figure out what the solid could’ve been.

            “It looks like a giant domino,” J.P. said. “Did it get caught in a reverse-shrink ray or somethin’?”

            “It’s gotta be a door to another realm – it’s definitely shaped like one.”

            “You’re very close, Kelsey,” Craig validated, proceeding to knock along the sleek, marbled structure of the solid. This gesture created a door that materialized on the solid, opening to permit the kids inside a massive spaceship-like interior that contradicted the smaller, flatter exterior.

            Neither Kelsey nor J.P. knew what to make of the spatial difference. “This doesn’t make sense,” Kelsey exclaimed. “It’s bigger on the inside than the outside!”

            “How did they fit all this in a domino?!” J.P. inquired.

            “He’ll tell you, as soon as we find him,” Craig assured.

            “Who?” Kelsey asked.

            With a playful smirk, Craig answered, “The pilot.” He then called out a name that J.P. and Kelsey hadn’t heard before. “Neas! Neas, where are you?”

            “Do we know a ‘Neas’?” J.P. whispered to Kelsey.

            Kelsey shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

            Craig’s shouting appeared to have attracted the attention of a resident of the unusual spaceship, entering the room from one of the intersecting corridors; but it was not the man or boy he expected to see. It was a girl – an adult girl – dressed in a colorful long coat with a patchwork design. “That’s a weird coat,” J.P. observed.

            The aquamarine eyes of the woman enlarged when she noticed Craig and his friends in the ship. “Craig?!”

            Craig gave the woman an odd look. “How do you know my name? And where’s Neas? Are you another one of his friends that he takes on awesome adventures with?” His questions came so rapidly that he barely gave the British girl enough time to answer.

            He doesn’t recognize me with this new face!

            Maureen hadn’t seen Craig in a few regenerations, so he obviously didn’t know who she was in her current incarnation. The poor thing was overwhelmed enough from his past experience with interdimensional travel. There was no way he was ready to learn about the concept of regeneration.

            Seeing that he already mistook her for a companion of Neas, Maureen went with the charade. “Yes,” she responded to Craig’s last inquiry. “My name’s Maureen. Neas has told me a lot about you – that’s how I knew your name.”

            “He really remembers me?” Craig beamed.

            Maureen enjoyed seeing how happy that made him. “Of course. He remembers all of his friends. Unfortunately, he’s out right now. He’s away on an errand in your world, and he won’t be back for a very long time.” She’d hoped that old excuse would drive them away.

            “That’s okay,” Craig reasonably said. “We’ll wait here ‘til he gets back. This place has lots we can do.”

            “I’ll say,” J.P. did actually say. “Look at all these buttons and stuff!” He and Kelsey went to the control console, touching every single sensitive knob, button, and switch. “I wonder what these do.”

            “Oi! Don’t touch!” Maureen ordered.

            “Who are you to tell us what to do?” Kelsey defied. “This isn’t your ship.”

            Maureen’s fists and teeth clenched. I just had to say I was Neas’s bloody “friend.”

            Thankfully, the aggravating moment ceased as soon as a call came over the console. She pressed a button that patched it through and answered, “You’ve reached the TARDIS of Neas the Gladiator of Gallifrey. How may I help you?”

            “Oh! Ah, yes,” the caller said over the console room’s speakers. “I wasn’t sure how exactly to have reached you. Yvette said it was just a simple call and that you’d pick up – if you weren’t busy, that is.”

            Maureen frowned at the voice, recognizing it. “Who is this?”

            “This is Kate Stewart of U.N.I.T. and we require your assistance. General Yvette Dwonch of the U.S. division of UNIT has disappeared through an ancient alien device we’ve unearthed from Giza: the Stargate.”