The Bermuda Triangle

“Stop! Right there... I know what you're saying and we're not going there. At no point are we going anywhere... near there. You aren’t even aware that there exists. I don’t even wanna think about there and, believe me, neither do you. There, for you, is... like the Bermuda Triangle.”
Rose Tyler – Father’s Day by Paul Cornell

Prologue

Sunday, December 3rd 1989

The piercing sound of the screaming child was deafening. Inside the flat, the child’s mother held her daughter intently as she lashed out with her arms and legs.

The mother’s crying was almost inaudible. “Shh, Rose,” Jacqueline Tyler pleaded. “Please, for God’s sake, just stop crying…”

Outside, nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler began to weep. A single tear rolled down her cheek, and she closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mum,” she whispered.

Beside her, the Doctor placed a firm hand on her shoulder in a gesture of support. “Don’t beat yourself up,” he urged. “That little girl just wants her daddy.”

Rose began to cry harder, and the Doctor began to worry about them being seen, as well as for his companion’s well being. “Come on,” he said gently, but with firmness that let Rose know that it wasn’t a good idea to argue. In any case, she wasn’t in the mood to argue. She now knew that it had been a mistake to come here.

She allowed the Doctor to lead her away from the window, and they headed back to the TARDIS.

* * * *

Three Days Later

Jackie Tyler placed her daughter down in her cot, having rocked her gently back to sleep. She sighed, both with regret that Rose had been woken up – poor thing wouldn’t have had a clue what was going on, thankfully – and relief that Arthur Utterson hadn’t come knocking on the front door. She crept out of the room and tip toed back to her own, where she found Rachel curled up in a foetal position under the covers, sound asleep. The air was musky now, and the sound of Rachel’s heavy breathing filled the air.

Jackie smiled and grabbed the bedclothes, which were now halfway to being on the floor, and gently draped them over the girl, tucking her in before gently planting a kiss on her forehead. She then removed her dressing gown and climbed into bed. Being careful not to wake up her lover, she wrapped her arms around her and soon fell asleep.
* * * *
Chapter 1

Rose Tyler entered the TARDIS Console Room with a sense of trepidation. She had never quite known what to expect whenever she heard the whir of the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver coupled with the clanking sound of machinery. Clearly the Time Lord was tinkering with some piece of equipment, as he often did.

Well, she mused; he had to do something to keep him occupied on his days off from saving the universe. But all too often Rose had found him growing increasingly agitated with some broken piece of equipment that he just couldn’t fix. She had often suspected that he found some enjoyment in the pastime, for a while at least, only to lose his temper when whatever-it-was failed to work properly despite his spending hours on it. Despite his apparent intellect, of which he frequently liked to boast, the Doctor had never quite seemed to understand that using his free time to fiddle about with the TARDIS’s engine components would usually result in putting him in a foul mood for the rest of the day. To be fair though, his recent regeneration had helped a great deal in curbing his temper. Gone were the days when he would cut himself shaving and go off on a brusque, Northern-accented tirade about “stupid apes”.

Rose had to admit that a part of her missed the old Doctor, despite how attached she had grown to his new incarnation. It comforted her to occasionally recognise bits of his old personality in the new one. He still liked to stroke bits of the TARDIS, which always made her smile.

He reminded her in some ways of Mickey, tinkering about with his cars. If she closed her eyes, she could almost smell the axle grease.

Boys and their toys, she thought with a smile.

To her surprise, for once the Doctor wasn’t working on the console itself, but rather on a small circular piece of equipment that she had never seen before. He didn’t seem to be too worked up either, just intensely focused on whatever he was doing. She didn’t want to interrupt him, so she stood for a few moments and waited for him to acknowledge her presence.

When he didn’t, she asked, “What’s that you’re doing?”

The Doctor let out a small sigh and looked at her, removing his Horn-rimmed spectacles, the ones Rose strongly suspected he didn’t actually need but which he only wore to look clever.

“Oh,” he said, dragging out the vowel in that endearing way of his, “just working on a little project. You wouldn’t be interested.”

Rose tended to get the tiniest bit annoyed at his dismissive attitude sometimes. He often seemed to think that just because she was human, and young, that she wouldn’t understand or even be interested in his little science experiments.

“Try me,” she said, folding her arms.

“Well,” he began, “I’m working on this little device, see,” he held it up for her to inspect. “It’s called a Blinovitch Compensator. You see, when the Time Lords were still around they imposed a sort of cosmic Observer Effect on the universe to safeguard causality and prevent paradoxes. Aaron Blinovitch — lovely man… big bear of a guy from Russia, makes great lemon cakes — was a physicist who in 1928 discovered the effect and applied his own theory to it, which became known as the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, which is not to be confused with Novikov’s self-consistency principle. Put simply, nobody can cross their own timeline without serious repercussions as you know, and if they did it would create a weak-point in the space-time continuum. If two versions of the same person from different points along the same time stream came into direct physical contact, it would create a sort of high-energy discharge that would short out the time differential and cause a rather large explosion. But now that the Time Lords are gone, well… the effect no longer applies. These days, if two temporal versions of the same person were to interact physically it would create a rent in space-time that would allow some pretty dangerous Vortex-dwelling creatures to come screaming through to sterilise the wound. Clear?”

Rose’s eyes glazed over. The Doctor’s explanation had been delivered at his usual breakneck speed with nary a pause for breath, and he was now once again looking at her as if she had just dribbled on her shirt.

He sighed, and went back to his work. “This device should, in theory, work to counteract the effect.”

Rose thought about what he had said, taking a minute to process it. Some months earlier, from her personal perspective, the Doctor — the old Doctor — had taken her back to November 7th 1987, the day her father, Peter Alan Tyler, had died. She had hoped to see him before his death in a traffic accident and be with him as he passed away. She had, however, found herself unable to fight the impulse to save him by pushing him out of the way of the oncoming car. This had caused what the Doctor had then called a “wound in time”, and allowed creatures from the vortex to emerge into her reality. Her dad had put things right by throwing himself into the path of the car that had originally killed him in the other timeline, and this act had restored the correct timeline, albeit with subtle alterations. Rose knew that originally, Pete Tyler had been run over outside a shop, having just bought a vase as a wedding present for Stuart and Sarah Hoskins. In the new timeline, her father had died outside the church where the Hoskins had gotten married that same day.

Now, she remembered both versions of events, which at first she had found extremely confusing.

“OK,” she said finally, “so you’re hoping that thing will stop those… things from coming through if anyone alters the timeline?”

“We used to call them ‘Reapers’, but yeah, exactly,” the Doctor replied. “This device emits an energy signal that will, in effect, ‘retune’ someone’s biological signature.”

“Their what?”

He sighed again. “Every living being is attuned to the rest of the universe. Everything is essentially made up of electrical energy, and we all have a kind of ‘frequency’ in which we’re connected to everything else at the most basic molecular level. In your time human beings haven’t even the most basic understanding of how this works, but we used to teach elementary temporal mechanics in the nursery.”

“So?” she asked, choosing to ignore his condescending comment.

“So, the Time Lords were essentially immune to the Blinovitch effect. They transcended it before your ancestors turned the first wheel. Well,” he added quickly, dragging out the vowel again, “more or less. I’ve met and interacted with my other selves several times but that was way back when Gallifrey was still around…”

“What, you’ve gone back and met yourself… before you changed?”

“Yeah, but like I said, that was before the Time War. Who knows what would happen if I were to meet one of my past selves now. My guess is the time differential would only result in the earlier me ageing prematurely to catch up with me in our time stream, like a rubber band effect — ” Off Rose’s look he said, “sorry, I’m babbling.”

“S’alright,” Rose said absently. It had suddenly occurred to her that it might be possible to travel back and see the old Doctor again, or even for the Doctor to travel back and save his planet from destruction, but then she remembered what he had said to her in 1987; “My entire planet died. My whole family. Do you think it never occurred to me to go back and save them?”

“I couldn’t save Gallifrey, though,” he said as if reading her mind. “It existed in its own little pocket of space-time. The planet was a fixed constant in the universe, even to us. That’s why it was impossible to travel across the planet’s own timeline. Well, for some of us…” That last part had been spoken under his breath, and seemed to imply a strong sense of regret.

Another thought occurred to her. “So, how many of you have there been?”

“Hmm? Oh, nine before me. I’m the tenth.”

She knew that he was an alien, and that he had lived for many centuries, but while it was one thing to be over 900 years old, the concept that he had previously been several different people she still found difficult to get her head around. She wondered what they had all been like. Had he always looked young? The scariest thought was that he might not even have always been male!

“Does that frighten you?” he asked.

“No,” she replied a little too quickly to be convincing. “No.”

He smiled, and that smile quickly turned into a beam. “Eureka!”

“What?”

“I think I’ve done it! And don’t ever let me say ‘Eureka’ again.”

While they had been talking, the Doctor had been continuing to work on his little gadget, and now seemed to believe that he had made a breakthrough.

“It works?”

“Yes! No! I don’t know… I mean, it should…”

Rose rolled her eyes.

“You see, the thing is,” he began, “in order to find out, I’m gonna need to test it…”

Rose sighed. “Do I sense the words ‘guinea’ and ‘pig’ heading in my general direction?”

“Well,” he began, and flashed that brilliant smile, “if you’re up for it.”

Rose beamed back at him. “What do I have to do?”

“Ah, well, just stand still for a moment…” he picked up the device and in a quick burst of energy took a couple of big steps backwards. He pointed the device at her.

“Now,” he said, “this won’t hurt a bit.”

“Good thing you’re not a dentist, or I’d be really worried now...”

He smiled. “Say cheese!”

A quick flash emitted from the Compensator, blinding Rose for a second. She squinted in an attempt to refocus.

“Sorry about that,” he said sheepishly. He ran to the console and consulted the scanner. “The TARDIS is reading your bio-signature, it should be able to tell us… Yes!”

“It worked?”

“Seems to have, yeah,” he grinned.

“So what did that do exactly?”

“Essentially, it reconfigured your bio-signature at the molecular level and attuned it with the higher universal frequency used by the Time Lords.”

All this technical jargon reminded Rose of the time at her friend Shareen’s, when Shareen’s boyfriend had forced the two of them and Mickey to sit through an episode of Star Trek: The-One-With-the-Female-Captain. Mickey had lapped it up, surprisingly, but she just hadn’t been able to get into it as it had sounded to her as if the characters were speaking in a foreign language.

Sensing her confusion, the Doctor simplified his explanation. “Basically, the universe now thinks you’re a Time Lord.”

Rose was astounded. “So we just fooled the universe!?”

“We fooled the universe! Go on, say it!”

“You’re brilliant!”

“I’m brilliant!”

“But, how exactly does it work, though?”

The Doctor’s self-congratulatory smile faded and he let out another exasperated sigh. “Oh, later, I’ll explain later. It just does. Now we have to test it.”

“Right. How exactly?”

The Doctor’s expression grew serious. “You have to go and meet yourself.”
* * * *

“Are you sure this is such a good idea?”

“Of course,” the Doctor assured her. “Trust me.”

Somehow, Rose didn’t find that very reassuring. The unmistakable grinding sound of the TARDIS’s engines signalled their arrival at their destination, wherever that may be.

“So where are we?” Rose asked.

“Home.”

“Home?”

“Well, your home. The Powell Estate!” he said grandly, as if announcing their arrival at Buckingham Palace.

“Why?”

“Because that’s where we’re gonna meet them.”

“Who?”

“You and me. Come on!” He grabbed his long camel coat from the hat stand and exited the ship. Rose tentatively followed, for something about this gave her an uneasy feeling. The thought of those winged creatures — Reapers — menacing them again was enough to make her feel extremely uncomfortable.

She stepped out of the TARDIS, and indeed found herself in very familiar surroundings. It was night, and the place was deserted as the city of London slept. There was a bitter chill in the air.

“It’s a bit cold,” she observed as she rubbed her hands together.

“Now, we’re about to create what’s known as a predestination paradox,” the Doctor explained, ignoring her comment. “It’s perfectly harmless, given the controlled circumstances. We’re going to meet ourselves here, exchange pleasantries and then we’ll say our goodbyes, get back in the TARDIS and travel back a few minutes and do it all over again from the other perspective.”

“So we’re gonna become our other selves straight after?”

“Pretty much. Essentially, if you’re able to shake hands with yourself then the experiment will have worked.” He produced a small device from his left coat pocket. “If for any reason the device fails, this device will tell me a few seconds in advance so we’ll be able to abort contact.”

Only the Doctor could make a handshake sound like a delicate world-threatening procedure. Although, in this instance, Rose supposed that it was.

“That looks like a calculator,” she observed.

“It is, well… it was, but with a bit of jiggery-pokery.”

“There’s that technical term again.”

The Doctor smiled. He could have conducted this meeting anywhere in the universe, but he had brought Rose here, reasoning that she would feel more comfortable about the experiment if she were in familiar surroundings. Also, it would give her a chance to spend time with her mother afterwards. He knew that Jackie would be more than pleased to see her.

“Hold on,” Rose said, “you always say it’s too dangerous to cross your own timeline.” She considered that this new version of her friend was in many ways remarkably different from his previous incarnation; she was certain that the old Doctor would never have entertained anything like this.

“Like I said, controlled circumstances. But we have to be careful. This shouldn’t last any longer than a couple of minutes, just to be on the safe side.”

Rose nodded in understanding. After a minute, the Doctor started to look worried.

“Where are we? I mean, they… us…?” Rose asked.

“That’s a very good question. Hold on,” he said, “take this.” He handed her the calculator-device. “I’m just gonna scan the area. Knowing the TARDIS, they might have materialised on the other side of London.”

“In the wrong century…” Rose remarked under her breath.

“Cheeky.”

He disappeared into the TARDIS, leaving Rose to examine the device he had given her.

In the Console Room, the Doctor conducted a four-dimensional scan of the area, searching for any indication of another TARDIS. Or rather, his TARDIS, at a different point in its time stream.

Suddenly, an alarm began to sound, indicating an impending temporal collision. “What!?” he exclaimed, and checked the TARDIS’ temporal location; December 3rd 1989.

“What!?” he repeated.

Then he realised with horror what had happened. Shortly after experiencing the events surrounding her father’s death Rose, having also met her mother as a young woman in 1987, had asked him to take her to see Jackie again a couple of years later, to see how the elder Tyler had been coping as a single parent. The Doctor had warned her against the idea, cautioning her with a reminder of what had happened the last time she had tried to interfere with her personal history. “I just want to check up on her, make sure she’s all right,” she had said, promising not to repeat her earlier mistake, and so he had finally relented and taken her to December 3rd 1989. They had spent only a matter of minutes watching Jackie and her two-and-a-half year-old daughter from afar before Rose had decided that the visit had been a mistake.

Now, in his haste, he had neglected to confirm the spatio-temporal coordinates. Intending to bring Rose to her present, 2007, he had instead taken them to 1989, to almost the exact point that his earlier self and Rose had arrived, give or take a few minutes. He reasoned that while setting the coordinates he had accidentally tapped into a previous calibration. Now, in a matter of seconds, the TARDIS was about to intersect with itself at an earlier point in its history. The shields would theoretically protect the ship from being damaged in such an event, but the Doctor decided that he didn’t want to take any chances.

He would dematerialise the ship to allow his earlier self to arrive. There was no time to get Rose. He would have to leave her, which was frankly a disaster. He considered that Rose would undoubtedly think that the second TARDIS materialising in front of her was from her future rather than her past, and attempt to communicate with its occupants. This could prove disastrous as, although he was confident that Rose — his Rose — was currently protected by the effect of the Compensator, she had still crossed her own timeline and was about to meet her past self, not her future self as he had planned. The timeline was about to be polluted, and he was powerless to prevent it.

How could he have been so careless? He had been so wrapped up in his accomplishment that he had made an elementary error, one that could have been completely avoided. He could only be thankful that he had overshot by a few minutes, as this small blessing gave him time to prevent all-out catastrophe. All in all, this day had proven to be one giant headache.

Cursing his stupidity, he punched at the controls.
* * * *

Rose watched with growing confusion as the TARDIS dematerialised in front of her eyes. “Doctor!” she yelled. Where was he going?
Almost as soon as the TARDIS had faded out of existence, she heard the familiar wheezing, groaning sound of its engines, and it began to re-materialise in the exact same spot that it had just left, the wind blowing up as the ship’s arrival disturbed the air around it. The lamp on its roof flashed three times as the ship settled into its new environment.

The door opened, and Rose heard an eerily familiar voice from inside the ship call out; “Come on Doctor, you can do that later.” It was her voice.

“I’m coming, stop whinging!”

Rose froze. The voice that had replied had not been that of the Doctor she now knew, but rather the unmistakable Northern twang of his previous incarnation.

A chill ran down her spine. How was this possible?

Instinctively, she ran for cover and hid behind a nearby pillar. From her vantage-point, she was able to see the TARDIS without being visible to its occupants. As she watched, she saw herself emerge from the police box.

It wasn’t her future self, but rather herself from several months previously. Her counterpart was wearing the same pair of jeans that she herself now had on, and her white T-Shirt.

The younger Rose wore her long hair high on her head, whereas she herself had long since had her hair cut to its present shoulder-length form.

As her younger self emerged from the TARDIS, she was followed by… the Doctor.

“Nine before me. I’m the tenth.”

The ninth Doctor.

Another chill passed down Rose’s spine and she felt the blood drain from her face. It was the Doctor, her Doctor. The man she had met in the basement at Henrik’s. He was wearing his familiar leather jacket and V-neck jumper, and he was even more striking than Rose remembered. Her eyes filled with tears as she watched him intently.

She suddenly realised what she was seeing. This had been several months ago, from her own perspective. She had asked the Doctor to take her back to her early childhood to see her mother and get an insight into how Jackie had dealt with the early aftermath of her husband’s death. She had hoped that this would better help her to understand her mother, as Jackie had never really liked to talk about the early days on her own. She was understandably very guarded about this period of her life.

The Doctor — the tenth Doctor — must have made a programming error, she reasoned, and taken her back this far. It was hardly a break from form; after all he had kept her away from home for a year.

She silently admonished him, and vowed to have a stern word with him when she next saw him. Her earlier self and the ninth Doctor were making their way towards Bucknall House, Rose’s building.

The sensible thing to do would have been to stay out of sight, but some inexplicable urge made her follow them.

She remained far enough behind them to avoid being caught, and eventually she realised that they had reached her floor. The Doctor and her earlier self had stopped at Flat 48, the Tyler residence. Rose held back and hid behind a wall at the end of the balcony. In the distance, she heard the sound of a young child crying. She closed her eyes, and although she was too far away to hear what they were saying to each other, Rose remembered…