Doctor Who: The Evangelion Error (Book One)

E6 Part 3: can he see or is he blind?

NERV Remote Site SACRAL-3
T-20 Hours, 44 Minutes

"I don't get how you do that," Shinji said as the airlock cycled.

"Do what?"

"How you can just stroll through checkpoints without anyone questioning you. Even with that." He gestured towards the psychic paper, still in the Doctor's hand.

The Doctor sniffed. "Just have an honest face, I suppose."

The inner dome opened and they walked into the dome. The building was bisected by a thick, ceiling-high metal wall. On this side of the divide, someone had set up a maze of fabric cubical partitions. The air smelled like bleach and cigarettes.

"It's a good thing, too." Shinji added. "Your cover stories are kind of horrible."

"Oh, come off it." The Doctor stopped to examine a wall clock.

"It's true!" Shinji insisted. "Well, okay, that whole UNIT thing wasn't bad, but the one back on the train --"

"Shinji? What are you doing here?"

Shinji spun around and saw Ritsuko leaning out from one of the cubicles, a puzzled expression on her face. She looked exhausted, her reading glasses askew, her bleached-blonde hair in disarray.

"Oh, brilliant! Hello there!" The Doctor reached forward, that familiar goofy smile on his face, and offered his hand. "Dr. Akagi, isn't it? I've heard a lot about you. Well, not a whole lot, what with the super top-secret organization and all. But what I did hear was really quite impressive! Well, not impressive impressive, but..."

Ritsuko eyed him. "And you are...?"

"Right, sorry. Dr. John Smith. I'm Shinji's teacher. And also --" He flashed the psychic paper. "-- Ministry of Education and Technology. Health and Safety Division. Shinji's helping me out on my rounds for extra credit. He needs it, what with all the world-saving and, er, giant-roboting and all..." Shinji raised an eyebrow. The Doctor shot him a look. "But anyway -- we just happened to be passing by, and I couldn't help but notice... your clocks seem to be running a bit slow."

Ritsuko adjusted her glasses. "Oh, you noticed that, did you? I'm impressed."

"So the clocks are wrong. So what?" Shinji asked. "That happens all the time."

"Not these," the Doctor said. "They're all laboratory-standard atomic clocks. Should all be in sync. Every last one."

"It's called time dilation, Shinji." Ritsuko took off her glasses and rubbed them against her lab coat. "Time in this building and its immediate surroundings runs more slowly than it does outside. The effect is minor at this range - just a second or two out of every minute - but it's still measurable. It's a well-known feature of Einstein's theory of relativity, all perfectly in line with our current knowledge of physics... except for the part where we really should be traveling closer to the speed of light in order to see this sort of thing."

"Any idea what's causing it?" the Doctor asked.

"Oh, of course." Ritsuko moved her chair aside and waved her hand at a row of monitors behind her. "It's that, obviously."

Shinji leaned in and studied one of the screens. The image on it showed a big eight-wheeler truck, painted entirely white, parked in a large room somewhere else in the dome. Several motionless figures were positioned around it -- a pair of NERV soldiers, a worker in a hazmat suit, two drivers in the front -- all frozen in place, like they were paralyzed. The truck's back doors were open, and beyond them he could see... "Wait, that's..."