The Doctor:
Oh, why was she here? I had Arcadia's friend Courtney here, stood at my console with him, and SJ was texting someone from the chair and being a typical teenager, with Phi and Clara off with something else. "Oi! Give over! Cadia!"
"I got stuff to clean up with." She held up some paper towels to my confusion. "And I got these from the chemist."
She showed me some weird things on her wrists. "Vortex manipulators?"
"Travel sickness."
"Good." That made a little more sense. "Because I don't like people being sick in my TARDIS. No being sick. And no hanky-panky, Cadia, Courtney." For some reason my daughter blushed there. Who was she texting? Clara and Phi came back at that point, staring at me. "Sorry, that's the rules. Even for me."
My wife shook her head, her golden eyes skeptical. "Look, Courtney, Dove, you're not going to be needing those because you're not going to be doing any travelling. Doctor, will you just, just tell her?"
Wait, what was I supposed to be doing again? "Tell her what?"
"Tell her that she's special." Clara muttered through clenched teeth.
Seriously? "Have you gone bananas?"
"Do you really think I'm not special?" The young girl asked, now younger than my twins, a similar age to Jenny. Ish. "You can't just take me away like that. It's like you kicked a big hole in in the side of my life, even when Arc said you say it a lot. You really think it? I'm nothing? I'm not special?" Arc? Who was that?
"How'd you like to be the first woman on the moon?" I asked her after muttering to myself for a moment. "Is that special enough for you?"
Her face lit up a little. "Yeah, all right."
Yes, a trip to the moon, sounded good. "Okay. Now we can do something interesting."
I set us going, to Phi and Clara's protest, but we all got changed into spacesuits, stepping out into a storage area with cylindrical objects, either with the US flag, but others with Cyrillic writing. "This isn't the moon." Courtney pointed out. "Where are we?"
"On a recycled space shuttle, Dove." My wife replied, taking off her helmet. "2049, judging by that prototype version of the Bennett oscillator. "Where's the gravity coming from?"
"What are they?" Clara asked, looking at the things as we all took off our helmet in unison.
"About a hundred nuclear bombs." I replied as an alarm sounded through the airlock. "Ah. We're on our way to the moon. Check that. We're about to crash into it! Hold on! Hold on!"
We all grabbed hold of cargo nets, Courtney sticking to Cadia, and Phi to our daughter. It was great having her back fully, in with us all the time. But she was pretty angry right now. "Why didn't you just tell her you didn't mean it?"
The space shuttle belly-flopped onto the moon's surface and skidded to a halt. The three person shuttle crew entered the hold where we were next, lead by a woman. "Who the hell do you think you are?"
"Why have you got all these nuclear bombs?"
"I'm not going to give you another chance."
Really? Stupid guns. "Oh? Well, you're just going to have to shoot us, then. Shoot the little girl first."
Courtney stared at me. "What?"
"Yes. She doesn't want to stand there watching us getting shot, does she? She'll be terrified. Girl first, then her teacher, and then my kids, my wife me. You'll have to spend a lot of time shooting ua because we will keep on regenerating." My twins and their friend sat on the deck behind a bomb, sulking. "In fact, I'm not entirely sure that I won't keep on regenerating for ever."
"Da, what are you doing?" Cadia asked as his sister kept on texting. Seriously? How many texts did she have on that contract?
I was making slow steps backwards and forwards, ending up doing bunny hops. Don't ask. "Gravity test. So, it'll be very time-consuming and messy, and rather wasteful, because I think I might just possibly be able to help you. You see, I am a super-intelligent alien being who flies in time and space, as is my wife, and my twins. Are you going to shoot us?"
The woman sulked now. "No."
My wife visibly relaxed, moving away from the children. "Good. Why have you got all these nuclear bombs? No, no, no. Easier question. What's wrong with my yo-yo?" Just like my fourth incarnation, she started to use it to test the gravity. Penny in the air.
"Seraphina, it goes up and down."
"Bingo."
The penny dropped. "Ah."
"We should be bouncing about this cabin like little fluffy clouds." My daughter told us, not looking up from her phone. "But we're not. What is the matter with the moon?"
"Nobody knows."
Clara looked at us Time Lords. "Do you know what's wrong with the moon?"
Arcadia shrugged, looking at his sister in confusion. "It's put on weight."
"How can the moon put on weight?"
My son, who chose the name the Engineer, knew easily. He'd created half of this stuff. "Oh, lots of ways. Gravity bombs, axis alignment systems, planet shellers."
Captain Boss Lady looked hard at him. "So it's alien."
"Must be causing chaos on Earth. The tides will be so high that they will drown whole cities." Phi said softly, her eyes warm and compassionate. "So what are you doing about it?" She took a case from a wall. "This?"
"That's what you do with aliens, isn't it?" She asked. "Blow them up?"
SJ:
Sherlock and I had been texting all day, and I think everyone was starting to get annoyed, but I did have to put it down for a while when we went through at airlock to the moons surface. He was seeing his brother anyway. "Wow. Wow!" Courtney laughed, jumping onto the moons surface. "One small thing for a thing. One enormous thing for a thingy thing."
"So much for history." Lundvik sighed, shaking her head. We left the scorched, wrecked and unnamed shuttle, while Courtney and I started to take photos. I was the Memory, because none were hidden from me, but it didn't mean I couldn't make memories of my own. That and Sherlock wanted to see what the moon looked like through an iPhone. Don't worry, Arcadia fixed the many bugs, especially the battery life. "There was a mining survey, Mexicans. Something happened up here. Nobody knows what. That's when the trouble began back on Earth. High tide everywhere at once. The greatest natural disaster in history."
The airlock to the building was wide open, and we walked around to it. "Cobwebs?" Aunt Clara asked.
"Henry, go back and prime the bombs." The Captain told her second.
He hesitated. "Er, is there any instructions?" Wait, what? He didn't know how to work the nuclear explosives that were capable of causing devastations such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What the fuck?!
"There's a switch on each of them. The light goes red."
"They won't go off?"
She shook her head. "No, not till I fiddle with this thing." A red case she'd kept with her the whole time, and Henry seemed happy with that and wandered off. "Shall we?"
I looked at the woman, able to hear her thoughts even through the thick helmets and the infinite vacuum of space. "Is that the best you could get?"
"Second-hand space shuttle, third-hand astronauts." Oh, wow. We walked inside, seeing a remarkable amount of cobwebs as we closed the door to the corridor behind us.
"How many people here?"
"Four. Minera Luna San Pedro. It was privately financed. They where doing a mineral survey up here."
Ma frowned a little. "Messages? Mayday? SOS?"
Duke shook his head. "Pretty much all the satellites had been whacked out of orbit. They managed to send back some screams." Oh, charming.
"So then you came up here to rescue them with your bombs?" My brother asked pointedly, stood quite close to his friend. Neither of them liked each other in that way, god no. My brother was the kind of guy who probably wanted to wait until he found the perfect person, and Courtney would be gone soon.
"Not quite. They disappeared ten years ago."
Da was the one to stare at them now. "Nobody came?"
He shrugged. "There was no shuttle."
"You had one."
I looked at the woman hard, speaking in unison with her. "It was in a museum. They'd cut the back off it so kids could ride in it. We'd stopped going into space. Nobody cared. Not until-"
Courtney screamed then, and ma, Aunt Clara and my twin ran over to her as she found a space suit nestled in a cocoon. "Oh, my God. Doctor, Phi, tell me there wasn't anyone inside that thing."
"He could, but it wouldn't make it true." I told her sadly, seeing the last thoughts trapped inside the bones, as well as memories that were sunk deep, deep inside.
"I'll get some power back on."
Clara took hold of her student, moving her away from it. "Come on. Now, Courtney, come here. Don't look. You all right?" Ma burnt the webs around it with a wave of her hand, and I held it lightly with my kinesis. "Hey. Look. Look at me. Look. It's all right if you're not."
She shook her head. "I'm fine. What did it?"
Da, as usual decided to be crass. "Maybe something trying to find out how you're put together. Or maybe how you tasted."
"Do we have guns?" I asked softly, making ma look at me. You used to have them, why couldn't I?
"Not unless you brought some."
Then the settlement started up thanks to my brothers tinkering, and he looked at us. "Save the air." We took off our helmets, and he and da started to look at the survey records. "They didn't find anything. The Mexicans. They didn't find any minerals on the moon at all. Nada." But I felt my brothers worry now, seeing something we couldn't notice. "Lines of tectonic stress."
One of the actual astronauts pointed to something. "That's the Mare Fecunditatis. It's been there since the Apollo days. It's always been there."
"No, no, no. These are much, much bigger." Ma told us, looking a little confused as she played with her long blue curls. "Sea of Tranquillity. Sea of Nectar. Sea of Ingenuity. Sea of Crises."
OK, she was thinking in like, 6 different languages in her head, I couldn't understand her. "Meaning?"
"Meaning, my Sarah Jane, that the moon, this little planetoid that's been tagging along beside you for a hundred million years, which gives you light at night and seas to sail on, is in the process of falling to bits."
Then there was a loud bang and everything started shaking, before a high pitched sound almost buckled me and a scuttling noise was in the back of my head. "What the hell was that?"
"Duke, is that you?"
He shook his head. "I don't sound anything like that."
Courtney looked at my twin, who was already sticking his head back in the service panel. "Can you try and get the lights back on?"
"That's what I'm doing, people. Not that it's obvious or anything."
"Torch. Give me your torch. Whatever it is, it's in here." She handed me one, and I followed the basic programming like thoughts that came from a giant spider with luminous knees running at us. "I think we've found your alien. "Back, back, back! We need a door. A door, a door!"
Clara ran back to the main door. "Here! Here! The door's locked."
"Come on, come on! There's no power to work it. Come on!"
"Doctor. Phi, twins"
Da dragged us down behind a table, him holding me down, ma holding Cadia and Clara had Courtney. "Stay still. It's sensing movement. It can't see you. Fast movement. There must be another exit through there. Slowly. Slowly. Head to that exit. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly, slowly. " We inched across as I tried to get a hold on my forcefield. Basically, you get a grip on the ability of telekinesis, using the force you'd use to move something, but instead of moving anything, you just hold it in a certain radius and there you have it. Forcefield, but it was hard to hold. "Gently, gently. When I say run, run."
Lundvik stared at my da. "Who made you the boss?"
"Well, you say run, then."
"Duke!" The giant spider leapt on him as he came in from another corridor, and by the time I managed to throw it off, my parents dragging me away, he was gone.
Clara threw me towards it. "Quick, it's shutting."
But Courtney got stuck on the other side, my telepathy getting in the way as her feet weren't on the ground. "Misses!!"
"Courtney! Courtney!" Ma and Clara shouted, trying to get through the door. "The power's gone again."
"It's killed him. It's coming in here! Arc, Mrs Smith, Doctor, it's coming in here!"
Arcadia ran through the door, leaving just us here as my twin tried to get her off the ceiling as gravity now had hold of her. "You'll be okay! Courtney, look at me. Look at me! Courtney!" The spider was on the ceiling, walking towards her, the speed too fast for me to get a grip on it to keep it back. "Try and get to the door! Try and get yourself down here."
Da was working on getting the glass out of the door, grabbing ma's yo-yo. "Courtney, grab my yo-yo!" She did, just as gravity returned and she dropped to the floor on top of my twin. The spider reared over her them and she screamed, then reached for something in her backpack. "Courtney!"
We all ran in, just after she pumped something out of a bottle at the spider. "Courtney."
"Kills ninety nine percent of all known germs." We muttered together, and I laughed to myself as I saw that she had antibac spray.
"Good stuff, Courtney. Just don't try that at home, okay?"
Clara fussed over her student while ma did her son. "You all right?"
"Why did I just fly? This is nuts."
Da was too busy scanning the remains of the spider with his screwdriver. "Did you say germs, girls? Oh, God, this is incredible. Look at the size of it. It's the size of a badger. It's a prokaryotic unicellular life form, with non-chromosomal DNA. Which, as you and me know. Well, not you and me. Well, you, certainly not. You and me, yes, scientists know, this is a germ. You flew because that one point three billion tonnes shifted after my daughter who was trying to save us got confused by everything. It moved. It's an unstable mass."
Lundvik and ma were looking over the remains of Duke. "He'd just had a grand-daughter. Elina. She was his first. He was my teacher. He taught me how to fly. We were both given the sack on the same day."
"Which way to the Mare Fecunditatis?"
"Please can I go home now?" Court asked, and my brother took her hand to try and comfort her. "I'm really. I'm really sorry, but I'd like to go home."
We started back across the moon, and both my relatives that were teachers were looking at my da who didn't seem to understand anything. "Doctor, this is dangerous now."
He just shrugged. "It was dangerous before. Everything's dangerous if you want it to be. Eating chips is dangerous. Crossing the road." Why did ma just flinch? "It's no way to live your life. Tell her. You're supposed to be teaching her."
"Look, I have a duty of care, okay? You know what that is? Your wife does."
Da didn't look amused. "Course I know what a duty of care is, I have kids. What are you suggesting? She's fine. What are you, thirty five?"
She frowned. "Fifteen."
But she got taken back to the tARDIs with da and Arcadia, but he wanted us to get in too. "Why are you shutting her in? We don't need to stay, do we?" Clara asked. "It's obvious, isn't it? The moon doesn't break up."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been in the future, and the moon is still there." Cadia pointed out, sticking his head out of the door. "I think. You know the moon is still there, right?"
Ma shrugged, looking a little confused. "Maybe it isn't the moon. Maybe it's a hologram or a big painting, or a special effect. Maybe it's a completely different moon."
She frowned a little. "But you would know."
"We would?"
"If the moon fell to bits in 2049, somebody would've mentioned it." I pointed out, for onced not able to hear my mother. "It would have come up in conversation, or Ma would have seen it. So it doesn't break up. So the world doesn't end. So, let's just get in the TARDIS and go." Mostly because I had a date. Sort of, a date, not really. It was not a date, it was just a coffee.
"Sarah Jane, Arcadia, Clara, there are some moments in time that I simply can't see." Ma told us, wrapping a shoulder around us both. "Little eye-blinks. They don't look the same as other things. They're not clear. They're fuzzy, they're grey not gold and red. Little moments in which big things are decided. And this is one of them. Just now, I can't tell what happens to the moon, because whatever happens to the moon hasn't been decided yet. And it's going to be decided here and now. Which very much sounds as though it's up to us."
Lundvik glared at all of us. "Neither of you are going anywhere. I've lost my crew. We were the last astronauts. This is the last shuttle, these are the last nuclear bombs. We're the last chance for Earth, and you're staying to help me."
Her thoughts were pretty conclusive. "Decision made."
Arcadia:
Why was SJ constantly texting? Who was she texting? She had like, 6 contacts, and that was just family. "What is killing the moon?" Clara and I asked together. "How can the moon die, though?"
"Everything does, sooner or later." Ma sighed, rubbing her eyes. "A time and a stage, a curtain starts to fall..." Wow, words. She hadn't done that since before I was born, she drew now. She had nothing to draw with.
Lundvik looked around at all of us. "Can we save it?"
My sister shrugged, looking at her phone still. "Depends what's killing it."
"There are the other three."
We headed down to the crater, spacesuits in the cobwebs near the cracks. "Is it those germ things, then? Are they like cockroaches? Is it, is it an infestation?" Clara asked da, who was looking in interest. Gross.
"Well, I've only seen one of them. It would take an awful lot more to cause the moon to put on one point three billion tonnes." And then one jumped at him, and my sister had to throw it off as Courtney's spray wouldn't work. But then it just scuttled back to its lair when SJ let go of it. "Well, that makes two."
"Sunlight." Clara breathed. "If they're germs. My nan says it's the best disinfectant there is." Nice, didn't think of that. I was the Engineer though, not the Chemist.
I knelt by the hole, looking from it to the only actual astronaut. "Shine your light down there."
She didn, showing a lot of the germs. "Where have they come from?"
"Maybe they've been there all the time. It's warmish. They're multiplying, feeding, evolving."
We moved quickly, and Lundvik looked at my parents. "Seraphina, Doctor, if the moon breaks up, it'll kill us all in about forty five minutes."
"I agree. Unless something else is going on." Ma used the yo-yo again, and it came back wet. "It's not water. It's amniotic fluid. The stuff that life comes from, it stinks when you go into labour." We really needed to know that, ma. "I've got to go down there. Back to your shuttle. Get your bombs ready. Doctor, Clara, Sarah Jane and Arcadia, get to the TARDIS. Get safe. Get Courtney safe. I will be back."
Then she grabbed the spray from Aunt Clara, and jumped down before we could stop her. "What? No. Seraphina. Seraphina!" Da called, leaning over the edge but my sister held him back. "Phina!"
"Will she?" We all raised our arms in surrender, because our ma was unpredictable as anything. "Will she be back?"
My sister finally looked away from her phone. "If she says so, I suppose she will."
Then my phone rang, and I looked to see that it was Courtney. "Arc? Come in."
"Courtney?"
"I'm bored. When are you coming back?"
Why didn't that surprise me? "We're on our way. What you doing?"
"Putting some pictures on Tumblr. Your sister has got rather a lot of followers, she's Tumblr famous."
Oh, no, no, no! You couldn't do that! "No! Courtney, don't put any photos on Tumblr. Especially none of us!" A small moonquake made them stagger as we approached Henry, his helmet open to the vacuum, a skeleton now. I looked across at the shuttle, on the opposite side of a ravine. "Was that where we landed? It looks so different."
Cracks started to form in the crust. "It's going down." And then it tumbled down into the ravine.
"Courtney! Doctor! Seraphina!" Clara screamed. "Seraphina!"
And then ma appeared behind us. "Today's the day, humankind."
We headed back to the module, Clara and I freaking out over the fact that Courtney was somewhere on the TARDIS, but da didn't seemed fussed. "Where's the TARDIS?"
"She's in the shuttle, isn't she? She'll turn up."
Even ma folded her arms at that. "Last time you said that, she turned up on the wrong side of the planet. And we had to get a lift from a Russian submarine crew." Ah, I heard about that, when ma was Sarah Lake. "Look, we need to know where Courtney is."
"Courtney is safe. Och. Well, do you have her phone number?
Clara stared at him. "No, no, no. Of course I don't have her phone number."
"Well, what about the school? Does the secretary have her number?"
Ma and Aunt Clara shook their heads. "We can't. The secretary hates me. She thinks I gave her a packet of TENA Lady for Secret Santa and she fancied you and now everyone knows that you're married to me, gorgeous." Then she looked at Lundvik. "Look. Courtney's posting stuff on Tumblr, she follows my daughter. Doesn't that know where you are?"
"I don't know. I'm not a historian. She's your daughter"
Da just grabbed SJ's phone, but not before she'd encrypted her messages. Not sure I wanted to know. "I know what the problem is. Oh, she can't post that. She can't put pictures of me online. And what the hell do you post, it looks like bath bombs and half naked selfies of men." Welcome to the non fandom side of Tumblr.
Then he called her, and put the image on the monitor. "Yeah?"
"You can't put pictures of me and my kids online." Because that was the most pressing thing right now. And I had Facebook.
Ma rolled her eyes, looking at my best friend. "Are you okay?"
She frowned a little. "Er, I'm fine. What's up?"
"You said you know what the problem is."
"Yes, yes. It's a rather big problem." Ma and Da spoke together as he kept hold of SJ's phone. "I had a little hypothesis. The seismic activity, the surface breaking up, the variable mass, the increase in gravity, the fluid."
Ma took over, moving a console before scanning to to create a 3D moon. "I scanned what's down there. The moon isn't breaking apart. Well, actually, it is breaking apart, and rather quickly. We've got about an hour and a half. But that isn't the problem. It's not infested."
Courtney frowned on the monitor. "What are they, then, those things?"
"Bacteria. Tiny, tiny bacteria living on something very, very big. Something that weighs about one point three billion tonnes. Something that's living. Something growing." She rubbed her belly absently, like she was remembering when we were small enough to grow in there. Strange thought, mostly because she's so small herself. "That."
The image changed with a flash of gold, showing what looked like a baby dragon inside the moon. Cute, I name thee Spyro. "That lives under the moon?" We looked at her. "What?"
"That doesn't live under the moon. That is the moon."
Lundvik was now staring at my parents. Why did everyone do that? "What the hell are you talking about?"
Ma shrugged, leaning into her husband. "The moon isn't breaking apart. The moon is hatching." It made sense, but not to anyone else. "The moon's an egg."
"Has it, er, has it always been an egg?"
She nodded. "Yes, for a hundred million years or so. Just, just growing. Just getting ready to be born."
"Okay. So the moon has never been the moon?"
Da shook his head, his arm tight around ma. "No, no, no, no. It's never been dead. It's just taking a long time to come alive."
"Is it a chicken?" Courtney asked, looking thoughtful. "Cos, for a chicken to have laid an egg that big-"
"Courtney, don't spoil the moment."
"Da, what is it?" SJ asked, looking in fascination. She loved dragons, she was writing a story about one.
He smiled at her, and I took my twins hand. "I think that it's unique. I think that's the only one of its kind in the universe, just like you two. I think that that is utterly beautiful."
And then the only non time traveller sickened us. "How do we kill it?"
"Why'd you want to kill it?"
"It's a little baby." Courtney breathed, looking too.
She shook her head again, looking directly at my parents. "Seraphina, Doctor, how do we kill it?"
Seriously? "Kill the moon?" She nodded, and an ma turned off the hologram in a swirl of gold. "Kill the moon. Well, you have about a hundred of the best man-made nuclear weapons, if they still work. If that's what you want to do."
Hang on, was she even considering this? "Ma, wait"
"Will that do it?"
"A hundred nuclear bombs set off right where we are, right on top of a living, vulnerable creature? It'll never feel the sun on its back."
Lundvik seemed pretty calm about this. "And then what? Will the moon still break up? You said, you said we had an hour and a half?"
Ma didn't seem phased. "Well, there'll be nothing to make it break up. There will be nothing trying to force its way out. The gravity of the little dead baby will pull all the pieces back together again. Of course, it won't be very pretty. You'd have an enormous corpse floating in the sky." She glanced at me and SJ, and I could also see Jenny and Suzy in her eyes. "You might have some very difficult conversations to have with your kids."
"I don't have any kids."
And not my sister was getting angry, her eye swirling like ma's before it faded to the normal, well, semi normal, green. "Stop. Right, listen. This is a, this is a life. I mean, this must be the biggest life in the universe."
"It's not even been born."
Lundvik then glared at my sister who was looking like she was going to scream. "It is killing people. It is destroying the Earth."
Clara shook her head. "You cannot blame a baby for kicking. Phi, Sarah Jane broke your rib and it nearly pierced your heart!" Well, that explained her football skills.
"Let me tell you something. You want to know what I took back from being in space? Look at the edge of the Earth. The atmosphere, that is paper thin. That is the only thing that saves us all from death. Everything else, the stars, the blackness. That's all dead. Sadly, that is the only life any of us will ever know."
Courtney was staring at her now. "There's life here. There's life just next door."
Now she looked at her and between us kids. "Look, when you've grown up a bit, you'll realise that everything doesn't have to be nice. Some things are just bad. Anyway, you ran away. It's none of your business."
"Arcadia, I want to come back."
Even Clara shook her head. "Courtney, you'll be safer where you are."
Lundvik entered the code to start the countdown on the bombs. "Doctor, Mrs Smith, I'm sorry. I want to come back, okay? I want to help."
Sarah Jane's eye lit back up, sparking even in the other, giving her 1 and a half golden eyes. "Ah, there's some DVDs on the blue book shelf. Just stick one into the TARDIS console. That'll bring you to us. Be ready, because shits about to hit the fan."
"Language, young lady!" Ma snapped.
She looked at her with a sarcastic look. "Earth English. And make sure you hang on to the console, otherwise the TARDIS will leave you behind."
"So what do we do? Doctor, Phi? Huh? Seraphina, Doctor, what do we do?"
They shook their heads. "Nothing."
Oh, you had to be kidding me. "What?"
"We don't do anything. I'm sorry, Clara. We can't help you."
Clara now stared at him. "Of course you can help."
"The Earth isn't our home. The moon's not our moon. Sorry."
No, no, that is not anything like this. "Come on. Hey."
"Listen, there are moments in every civilisation's history in which the whole path of that civilisation is decided. The whole future path. Whatever future humanity might have depends upon the choice that is made right here and right now. Now, you've got the tools to kill it. You made them. You brought them up here all on your own, with your own ingenuity. You don't need Time Lords." Ma told them, moving in front of us. "Kill it. Or let it live. We can't make this decision for you."
Clara shook her head. "Yeah, well, I can't make it."
My parents looked at her and Lindvik. "Well, there's two of you here."
"Well, yeah. A school teacher and an astronaut."
My sister moved forwards to stand with them, taking Aunt Clara's hand. "Make that a school teacher, an astronaut and the Memory." I went and stood with them too. "And the Engineer."
"Sarah Jane, Arcadia, get back here. This isn't for us, this isn't our world."
"Yes, it is. We are asking you for help."
"Listen, we went to dinner in Berlin in 1937, right?" Yeah, and I got food poisoning. "We didn't nip out after pudding and kill Hitler. I've never killed Hitler. And you wouldn't expect me to kill Hitler. The future is no more malleable than the past."
I folded my arms, my sister looking murderous. "Okay, don't you do this to make some kind of point."
Da shook his head. "Sorry. Well, actually, no, I'm not sorry. It's time to take the stabilisers off your bike. It's your moon, womankind. It's your choice. Twins, here, now."
"And you're just going to stand there?" Clara asked when we didn't move.
"Absolutely not." The TARDIS then arrived and Court came out. "A teenager, an astronaut and a schoolteacher."
The Astronaut in the equation then looked at our blue box home, where we sat and looked over the world we weren't allowed to be part of. "Hang on a minute. We can get in there, can't we? You can sort it out with that thing."
My parent's wouldn't budge. "No. Some decisions are too important not to make on your own. Twins, get in the TARDIS, now!" We stayed still. "Arcadia Jack and Sarah Jane Clara Tate, get in the TARDIS, now!"
"No. I speak Earth English." My sister told her. Ma reeled back a little, but then seemed to harden before following Da inside and they left us. On the moon. For some kids its supermarkets, for us its the goddamn moon.
"Oh, what a prat." Another quake, and germs started to flood the surface, and my sister was back to texting. Great. "I'm going to detonate the bombs, agreed? Agreed?"
A port hold then broke, letting air rush out before SJ threw a piece of metal to seal it. "If we let it live, what would happen if the moon wasn't there?"
"Listen, we haven't got time for this."
My sister then snapped, her anger breaking free, more gold flecking her eyes. "We're discussing it! What would happen if the moon wasn't there? We weren't allowed to look at much like this, because to them this isn't our planet."
"I have a physics book in my bag. There's this thing on gravity?" Courtney suggested.
"Okay, there would be no tides." I told them, starting to pace, running my fingers through my hair as I started to pace, feeling the spikey ends starting to stick up. "But we'd survive that, right? They've knocked out the satellites. There's no internet, no mobiles. I'd be fine with that, not sure about SJ with the texty texty."
But she just stared at me, getting angry. "It's not going to just stop being there, because inside the moon, Sir, is a gigantic creature forcing its way out. And when it does, which is going to be pretty damn soon, there are going to be huge chunks of the moon heading right for us, like whatever killed the dinosaurs, only ten thousand times bigger."
My sister thought for a moment. "But the moon isn't make of rock and stone, is it? It's made of eggshell."
"Oh, God. Okay, okay, fine. If, by some miracle, the shell isn't too thick, or if it disperses, or if it goes into orbit, whatever, there's still going to be a massive thing there, isn't there, that just popped out. And what the hell do you imagine that is?"
My best friend shrugged. "Loads of things lay eggs."
And now she got a sarcastic look. "It's not a chicken."
"I'm not saying it's a chicken. I'm not completely stupid."
"It's an exoparasite."
Hang on, I really was confused now. "A what?"
"Like a flea. Or a head louse." Oh gross. The pros of home schooling, you didn't get them.
"I'm going to have to be a lot more certain than that if I'm going to kill a baby." Clara told us, while my sister stood there, perfectly still as she thought.
"Oh, you want to talk about babies?. You've probably got babies down there now, you and the freaks. You want to have babies?"
Both my twin and Clara nodded. "Well, yeah."
"Mister Pink and Sherlock Holmes." Wait, that was who she was texting?
"Shush!"
"Okay. You imagine you've got children down there on Earth now, right?" Lundvik asked them. "Grandchildren maybe. You want that thing to get out? Kill them all? You want today to be the day life on Earth stopped because you couldn't make an unfair decision? Listen, I don't want to do this. All my life I've dreamed about coming here. But this is how it has to end." She set the trigger to our horror. "I've given us an hour. There's a cut-out here. If anyone has any bright ideas, or if he comes back, that stops it. But once it's pressed, it stays pressed."
My sister cleared her throat, looking stiff. "And if they don't come back?"
She just shrugged. "I didn't expect to survive anyway."
"He's going to come back, though, right? Isn't he, Miss? Arc?"
"Hey, why don't you call me Clara?" She asked her as I put my arm around her.
"I prefer Miss, Miss. We just need to make up our minds, that's all. Well, you know them."
I sighed, shaking my head. "I think they really might just be leaving it to us. We've never argued like that, and they've never left us before, not in danger."
Then there was a sound of static, and the monitor called to us. "Can anybody hear me? Come in, please. Can anybody-" We patched through. "This is ground control."
No shit, Sher- Maybe not. "Yeah, yeah, I can tell by your haircut. How are things down there?"
"Pretty bad. Yeah. Pretty bad. Listen, we're patched in to one of the TV satellites. We haven't got long. How are things up there?"
Then my sister pushed in front. "Can we broadcast on this?"
"Who are you?"
She smiled bitterly, looking back at Clara, Court and I. "School trip. Can we broadcast on this?"
"Well, yes."
So then we were broadcasting, and my sister was speaking to everyone, looking sad and stoic. "Hello, Earth. We have a terrible decision to make. It's an uncertain decision and we don't have a lot of time. We can kill this creature or we can let it live. We don't know what it's going to do, we don't know what's going to happen when it hatches. If it will hurt us, help us, or just leave us alone. We have to decide together. This is the last time we'll be able to speak to you, but you can send us a message. If you think we should kill the creature, turn your lights off. If you think we should take the chance, let it live, leave your lights on. We'll be able to see. Goodnight, Earth. Thank you, and hi Sherlock..." The transmission ended. "Was that okay?"
Court nodded as I hugged my sister tight. "Yeah."
The lights flickered, causing Clara to take my hand and then Courtneys. "Come on. Let's see."
We watched as the lights started to turn off, only on the two America's and Europe, but I wasn't expecting anything from the others. The world was ignorant around each other, but it was still my home. Until even they went dark as the video went viral. The planet was in darkness. "Night, night."
"Oh, Phi, Doctor, where have you gone?" Clara asked, resting her head on her forearms.
Lundvik shook her head slightly. "We can't risk it all just to be nice."
"Miss?" She started to count down. "You can't!"
"Sorry, girls and Arcadia. See you on the other side. Two-"
But then my sister cried out, a blast of telekinetic energy hitting the cutout switch, cancelling the detonation. And then the TARDIS came back. "One, two, three, four, five into the TARDIS."
Lundvik stared at my mother. "What's happening?"
"Let's go and have a look, shall we?"
We all ran into the TARDIS, where da then started us going, Lundvik staring at all of us. "Bloody idiots. Bloody irresponsible idiots."
Da glanced at her. "Mind your language, please, There are children present, my own too."
"You should have left me there, let me die. I wanted to die up there with the universe in front of me, not being crushed to death on Earth."
"Nobody's going to die." Oh, so you did know what was happening, Ma.
She looked at both of them. "Could you please let us see what's happening?"
We landed on the Earth, a Lanzarote beach below a full moon in a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The moon was falling apart as the baby spreads its wings. "What's it doing?" Court asked, standing between Clara and I.
Ma smiled, going to take my sisters hand before she put her forcefield up. "It's feeling the sun on itself. It's getting warm. The chick flies away and the eggshell disintegrates. Harmless."
My little twin sister backed away, the forcefield going around both of us. "Did you know? Seraphina, did you know?"
"You made your decision." She replied quietly, looking at us. "Humanity made its choice."
"No, we ignored humanity."
She shrugged. "Well, there you go."
Tears were streaming down her face, her eyes mimicking hers perfectly now. She came into her full ability, like ma. "So what happens now, then? Tell me what happens now. I can't, I, I can't..."
Da and ma turns their backs on us. "In the mid-twenty first century humankind starts creeping off into the stars, spreads its way through the galaxy to the very edges of the universe. And it endures till the end of time." Then they looked back at us. "And it does all that because one day in the year 2049, when it had stopped thinking about going to the stars, something occurred that make it look up, not down. It looked out there into the blackness and it saw something beautiful, something wonderful, that for once it didn't want to destroy. And in that one moment, the whole course of history was changed. Not bad for a girl from Coal Hill School, two off worlders, and their teacher."
"Oh, my gosh. It laid a new egg. It's beautiful. Arcadia, it's beautiful."
I smiled at her, my human best friend. "That's what we call a new moon."
Court looked at Lundvik with a small smile. "You can be the first woman on that."
"I think that somebody deserves a thank you." Da muttered softly.
"Yeah, probably." She agreed, before looking back at my sister and Clara. "Thank you. Thank you for stopping me. Thank you for giving me the moon back."
Ma sighed, shaking her head. "Okay, Captain. Well, you've got a whole new space programme to get together. NASA is er, it's that way. About two and a half thousand miles." She looked at my friend. "You still got your vortex manipulators? I'll give you a run home."
Sarah Jane:
"Not that it's any of my business, but I think you did the right thing." Da told us as Clara and Courtney came back as well as me. I had a perception filter on my bag.
I glared at my parent's. "Yeah, you're right. It's none of your business. Come on, Courtney, off you go. Double Geography. Say hi to Danny for me."
She grinned at me. "Can we do it again?"
"Go. Go, go. Chop chop." Clara told her, as I stopped the TARDIS flying. Clara had said her piece to Seraphina, I'd heard her, so she left with my brothers best friend,
"Tell me what you knew."
Ma shrugged. "Nothing. I told you, I've got grey areas. Like how you can't hear everyone, I can't see everything."
Seriously? "Yeah. I noticed. Tell me what you knew, Seraphina, Doctor, or else I'll walk out those door and you'll never see me again."
"I knew that eggs are not bombs. I know they don't usually destroy their nests. Essentially, what I knew was that you would always make the best choice, my daughter. I had faith that you would always make the right choice."
Arcadia rolled his eyes, coming into the room with a bag of his own. Where was he going? "Honestly, do you have music playing in your head when you say rubbish like that, ma?"
"It wasn't my decision to make. I told you. It wasn't yours either."
Seriously? "Well, why did you do it? Was it for Courtney, was that it?"
"Well, she really is something special now, isn't she?" Da now smiled. "First woman on the moon, saved the Earth from itself, and, rather bizarrely, she becomes the President of the United States. She met this bloke called Blinovitch-"
"Do you know what? Shut up!" I shouted at them, and he stopped mid word. "I am so sick of listening to you!"
They both stepped forward. "Well, we didn't do it for Courtney. We didn't know what was going to happen." I rolled my eyes, wiping away tears of rage. "Do you think I'm lying? That I would lie to my own children"
"I don't know. I don't know. If you didn't do it for her, I mean. Do you know what? It was, it was cheap, it was pathetic." I sobbed, feeling the levers on the console start to shake. "No, no, no. It was patronising. That was you patting us on the back, saying, you're big enough to go to the shops by yourself now, when we have saved the world so, so many times in the last 17 years. Like you said the day we were born. Go on, toddle along."
Da shook his head. "No, that was me allowing you to make a choice about your own future. That was me respecting you. But that isn't your world, you don't have a say, when we find Galli-"
No, no, no! "Stop! Stop talking about Gallifrey like it's our home planet! We have never been there, not at all! Once on a barn when we were hours old doesn't count! My home planet is Earth, and it always has been. When you keep telling us of Gallifrey, you forget one thing. That they destroyed themselves. Respected is not how I feel." I backed away a little, shaking my head. "I nearly didn't press that button. I nearly got it wrong. That was you, my parents, making me scared. Making me feel like a bloody idiot."
"Language."
"Earth English! You get that? Earth English. Don't you ever tell me to take the stabilisers off my bike. And don't you dare lump me in with the rest of all the little humans that you think are so tiny and silly and predictable. We walk their Earth, Doctor, Seraphina, we breathe their air. My brother and I were born there. You make them your friend, and that is our moon too. And we can damn well help them when we need it."
Ma shook her head now, close to tears as she walked towards us. "We were helping."
No, no you weren't... "What, by clearing off?"
"Yes."
They, they believed this, in their heads, this is what they believed... "Yeah, well, clear off! Go on. You can clear off. Get back in your lonely, your lonely bloody TARDIS and you don't come back."
"Sarah Jane." The both breathed, following me and my brother as we headed out of the TARDIS. "Arcadia..."
My brother put his hand on my back, warm through my dress. "You go away. Okay? You go a long way away."
Then we walked out, and our parents dematerialised as we left the store cupboard. "Go be where you need to be. I'm going to make sure Courtney and Clara are OK." My brother breathed, hugging me so tight I couldn't.
I did as he said, my bag becoming visible on my back as I walked to the only place I could think of.
Sherlock was just coming out of the flat as I walked closer, and he saw me right away, walking closer. "Hello."
"Hey." I smiled, pretending everything was OK "Now then."
He took my hand lightly. "What've you been up to?"
"The usual."
"It happened, didn't it?" Sherlock asked me, and I just burst into tears again, and he brought me back into the flat, awkwardly bundling me in blankets and thrusting a mug of what looked like both tea and hot chocolate in one into my hand. It was a nice gesture, if it hadn't been summer, and about 23 degrees.
But I told him everything that happened, and he wrapped his arms around me when I finished, not mad that I couldn't drink the weird concoction in the mug. "Well, they were wrong, wasn't they? Weren't they? Sherlock, what do you think?"
He sighed, tracing something absently on the back of my hand. "I think I've seen this look before."
Huh? "No, you haven't. This is new for me. I've met you, what, twice? I just trust you."
"No, not on your face. On my brothers."
"What did he do?"
He shrugged. "He stopped taking orders, and started giving them. Now, he owns all the government apart from UNIT. He was good at it, taking orders. Loved it until one day, he didn't."
This was such a bad day... "I'm done, I'm done. I am finished with it. I am, I am, I'm done. It's over. I'm finished with them, and I told them that." He looked at me sadly. "What is that face for? Why don't you believe me?"
"Because you're still angry, and they're your parent's. You can never finish with anyone while they can still make you angry, especially your parent's. Tell them when you're calm, and then tell me. I'm here for you."
That made me hug him tight, and he hugged back, making me feel so, so safe. "When did you get to become so wise? More than the Mind Palace, and I swear if you still use drugs I will murder you."
"Same way as anyone else." He smiled softly, tucking the side of my hair without the undercut behind my ear. "I had a really bad day. Argued with my parents who didn't know how it was to think with my brain, or with any of this. Your mum can't hear thoughts, and your da doesn't move things. Tell them when you're calm."
So I just lay down on his lap, still on the sofa, and fell asleep for a while.