“So, what exactly are we doing here with the technology that blew up your mass spectrometer?” Martha asked, watching as Abby carefully spread a bit of the blue gel (nanotechnology, she reminded herself) onto a glass slide. Martha had been drafted as lab assistant pretty much as soon as Abby’d realized the truth about who she and the Doctor were, and she was hoping it was for more than just gossip. Considering the Doctor’d gone pale and muttered something about not coming back to find them laughing at him, she knew she wasn’t the only one.<\/p>\n
“We’re testing a theory,” Abby explained, sounding nearly as eager as the Doctor when he got going. “When I first scraped this stuff off the inside of the car, I could swear it responded to my voice. Now, at the time I thought I was imagining things, but you know how it is: once the Doctor gets involved, the spectrum of what’s ‘possible’ gets a whole lot broader.”<\/p>\n
Martha grinned back at her. “Right. So what’s the plan?”<\/p>\n
“Well, I figure most of the higher-level functions this stuff is designed to handle are either autonomous or probably restricted to certain individuals. Y’know, like with voice recognition software or something.” She set the slide on the microscope and peered through it, even though they knew by now it wasn’t nearly powerful enough to reveal the sub-atomic dimensions of these nanites. “So what I want to find out is: if the stuff can be voice-controlled by just any stranger off the street, how far does that control go? They pretty much put half my lab back together; can they fix other things too, like injuries? If this really is what was used to teleport Admiral Sullivan, how much of it do you need to be capable of teleportation? Stuff like that.”<\/p>\n
“So you’re going to have them, what? Heal that cut on your forehead?” Martha asked.<\/p>\n
Abby shrugged. “Not sure it’s a good idea to let the nanogoo that close to my brain, so I was thinking something a little more remote.” She held up one blue-gloved hand and a scalpel.<\/p>\n
“And if they can’t heal it?” Martha demanded dubiously.<\/p>\n
Abby just smirked. “That’s the other reason you’re here. At least…you are ‘almost’ that kind of doctor, right? If not, I guess I can call Ducky too. He can always use more practice on the living.” Her eyes twinkled as she suggested this.<\/p>\n
Martha laughed. “Don’t worry, I promise I passed basic first aid. Just be careful; you don’t want to accidentally cut anything off. These nanites might be able to fix that, but I can’t.”<\/p>\n
“I’m always careful,” Abby said in a tone of mock injury.<\/p>\n
The two women looked at each other with matching smirks of pure mischief. “So. Where do we start?”<\/p>\n
+++<\/p>\n
Half an hour later, they had ascertained that the nanites could indeed heal minor injuries. They’d even–uninvited–tackled the cut on Abby’s forehead: coming into contact with her skin they just seemed to sense it. They’d also managed to dismantle and re-construct the microscope and the glass slide, and to teleport the glass slide from one side of the room to the other.<\/p>\n
“So what’s yours like?” Abby finally asked as they were setting up another test: using a larger sample of the nanites to try to teleport Bert.<\/p>\n
“My what?” Martha asked, confused.<\/p>\n
“Your Doctor.”<\/p>\n
Martha frowned. “I don’t understand–isn’t he your Doctor too?”<\/p>\n
“Oh, hell no,” Abby answered cheerfully, spreading the nanites carefully over Bert’s belly. “Mine looked different, dressed different, even acted different.”<\/p>\n
“But…how is that possible?”<\/p>\n
Abby shrugged, her pigtails bouncing with the movement. “Not a clue. Oh, he’s the same man–at least he seems to be underneath in spite of the surface differences–but it’s like he…I don’t know, got transplanted into a new host. Y’know, like the Trill on Star Trek or the Goa’uld on Stargate.”<\/p>\n
Martha had a sudden, unsettling flash of the Doctor as some sort of large parasite, living inside the body of the man she knew as the Doctor. As quickly as she entertained the thought, though, she dismissed it as the memory of administering bi-cardial CPR flooded her mind. “No…no, there’s nothing living inside him. He’s not human, that’s certain, but there’s only one of him.”<\/p>\n
“That’s a relief,” Abby teased. “Not sure the universe could handle more than one of him.”<\/p>\n
Martha smiled broadly at her. It was nice, having someone to talk about the Doctor with, someone who knew where she was coming from and wouldn’t ask a whole lot of bothersome questions (Tish) or distrust the man just because (Mum). “Honestly? I’m not sure the universe can handle even the one of him. He’s a bit…”<\/p>\n
Abby grinned. “Weird?”<\/p>\n
Martha’s own grin trebled in size. “Mad.”<\/p>\n
Abby laughed, but before she could answer, Martha’s mobile chirped at her. She frowned, digging in her pocket to pull it out. “I’ve got a text. But there’s…there’s no number to ring back.” Pressing the necessary buttons, she held up the phone in front of her and read in a puzzled voice, “‘What is the purpose of these tasks?'”<\/p>\n
She glanced up at Abby. Abby shrugged.<\/p>\n
Well, it couldn’t hurt. Within seconds Martha had tapped out a simple question of her own: ‘What tasks?’<\/p>\n
Almost instantaneously came back the reply: ‘The tasks that you and the other one have been commanding us to perform.’<\/p>\n
Martha looked at Abby again, and as one the two girls turned back towards the goo-encrusted Bert.<\/p>\n
“You don’t think…them?” Martha started, astonished. “Is that even possible?”<\/p>\n
Abby shook her head, but more in wonder than in disagreement. “Word of advice, just in case you haven’t figured it out already: when the Doctor’s involved? Never ask that question.”<\/p>\n
+++<\/p>\n
Hurrying upstairs to announce their discovery, Abby and Martha collided with the Doctor and Tony, who were on their way to the lab.<\/p>\n
“We’ve figured out how to communicate with the nanites!” Abby blurted out as soon as they’d all picked themselves up off the floor, unable to keep the canary-eating grin off her face.<\/p>\n
His face lit up like Christmas morning. “Brilliant! I ought to let the two of you work together more often. How’d you manage it?”<\/p>\n
Martha held up her cell phone. “They’ve been texting me. Wanted to know why we were putting them through their paces.”<\/p>\n
“Brilliant!” the Doctor repeated, grinning from ear to ear. “Just brilliant! And wouldn’t you know, thanks to Lieutenant Sawyer, I’ve got why they decided to hang on to Harry.”<\/p>\n
Abby looked curious. “How’d you manage that if she can’t remember?”<\/p>\n
“He did this freaky…mind meld thing,” Tony interjected with a shrug. “Which, I don’t know, didn’t look all that impressive if you ask me. But Sawyer seemed to buy it.”<\/p>\n
The Doctor shot him a sour look.<\/p>\n
Abby, on the other hand, looked intrigued. “I didn’t know you could do that. Why didn’t you ever use it when I was traveling with you?”<\/p>\n
The Doctor looked a bit taken aback. “Well, I suppose I never needed to.”<\/p>\n
“Um, yeah!” Abby disagreed. “It could’ve come in major handy with that whole thing on Septima VII. A little telepathic interrogation and boom!” She clapped her hands together. “Everybody knows the viscount lied, and we’re off the hook.”<\/p>\n
“Pshaw, you didn’t need me poking around in other people’s brains to work that one out!” the Doctor scoffed mildly in return. “Besides which, Septimans have roughly the psi rating of a rock. And not just any rock, but an extraordinarily dense one. Even if I’d been able to get anything from the viscount, which is hardly certain, it’s not likely it would have stood up in a court of law, now, would it?”<\/p>\n
Tony frowned, looking from one to the other. “What am I missing here?”<\/p>\n
“Quite a number of things, I imagine,” the Doctor retorted. “Starting with the flora and fauna of Perelandra and ending with just about anything past the end of your nose.”<\/p>\n
Abby slapped him upside the head.<\/p>\n
“Ow!” the Doctor exclaimed more in shock than in pain, pivoting to pin an injured look on his former companion. “What was that for?”<\/p>\n
She waved a finger at him. “Be nice!”<\/p>\n
Martha laughed. “Now why hadn’t I ever thought of doing that?”<\/p>\n
“It’s a long story, which I promise I’ll tell you someday,” Abby told DiNozzo. “For now, let’s just say it involved a murder and a lot of very weird forensic evidence, including a ten-foot chicken.”<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t a chicken, it was an–ow!” the Doctor got cut off mid protest by Abby stomping on his foot.<\/p>\n
“It won’t help us find Admiral Sullivan, anyway,” she concluded.<\/p>\n
“That’s the easy part,” the Doctor boasted, waving Martha’s phone at them. “All we’ve got to do is ask. Now if we can just find out where your lot–” This was directed to Abby and DiNozzo. “–are keeping their guests, then we beam ourselves and our pilot on up, make the exchange and everything will be right as rain.”<\/p>\n
“Oh no, not so fast,” Abby held up a staying hand. “If we’re going to go after the Admiral, wouldn’t it be better to take the TARDIS?”<\/p>\n
The Doctor shrugged. “I don’t see why. If this is the race I think it is, they’re harmless enough. We ask nicely, they ought to put us right back where they found us.”<\/p>\n
Abby shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. It’s just, if I know Gibbs? He’s going to insist on coming along. And if you start negotiating with these guys and he can’t understand a word of what’s being said…”<\/p>\n
“Oh!” The Doctor looked suddenly perturbed. “Yes, I suppose that would be rather a problem, wouldn’t it? Just as well: we’ve got a question for Director Shepard and Admiral Stockton anyway, so probably best to trade information. Tally-ho, then!”<\/p>\n
Turning around, he sprinted up the stairs.<\/p>\n
“Tally-ho?” Abby echoed in disbelief.<\/p>\n
Martha rolled her eyes expressively. “Don’t ask.”<\/p>\n
DiNozzo just followed them with a pained look on his face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“So, what exactly are we doing here with the technology that blew up your mass spectrometer?” Martha asked, watching as Abby carefully spread a bit of the blue gel (nanotechnology, she reminded herself) onto a glass slide. Martha had been … Continue reading