FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Amidst fire and the penumbrae of electrical discharges, chaos flooded the TARDIS. The wheeze and grind of the engines--normally a calming familiarity--strained and gasped with fractured groans. Above the controls, the time rotor shuddered as the TARDIS rocked and lurched. The cloister bell's doom-laden tone accompanied flashing warnings on the main screen. The Doctor felt her hearts skip a beat.

[Inverse Space-Time Vacuum Pressure: 98% (relative stability)]

[Temporal Collision: Imminent]

[Time to Impact: T-7.13 Minutes (Relative)]

[Destination: Event One]

"C'mon, Doc! Can't you steady this thing?"

"Working on it, Graham!" She had to shout over the cacophony as three nictitating plasma conduits on a nearby wall ruptured. Searing plumes of kaleidoscopic plasma spewed into the console room. "Down!"

Graham and Yaz dove to the floor. Ryan tried to vault the nearby railing to avoid the blazing wave but stumbled. Thrown into the outermost corona of the spray of blazing energy his cries of pain overwhelmed all other noises.

"Ryan!" Yaz was closest. She sprinted to pull him to safety. The ship lurched again: nearly sending her to join him. "He's unconscious!"

The Doctor held tight: focused by adrenaline.

Event One and she had a poor relationship. Its strong temporal pull continued to pull the TARDIS closer. Any time-ship this close would be devoured. Already beyond the hundred-thousand-year threshold, the backwards temporal acceleration continued to climb.

Half of the systems were offline including Architectural Configuration. She couldn't delete enough internal mass to throw them free.

Old trick.

Worked before.

Not an option.

"How's Ryan look?" Rumbles and small detonations swallowed most of the Doctor's words.

"Badly burned," Graham said. "He needs a doctor!"

Yaz and Graham knelt over to Ryan: trying to shield him from further injury.

"Yeah, well, we've got one," Yaz said, "and she's busy trying to keep us from getting flattened!"

Flattened.

The Doctor jerked her head up. "That's it! Yaz: great idea!" Under her breath, she muttered, "now, if only we can survive it."

The TARDIS chameleon circuit had been broken for centuries. She had fixed it, once.

Almost.

Sort of.

For half a day.

Some thousand-or-more years ago.

It was hard to recall.

It had been an erratic incarnation.

"Okay, fam: hang in there!" Steadying herself, she dashed across the console room. Access panels hung open: portions of the chameleon circuit already exposed. She didn't need to change the outside appearance of the TARDIS. All she needed was to override its most basic property: dimensional parameters.

She hoped she wouldn't crush them all.

Her sonic screwdriver sang as she delved into the mess of connectors, wires, junctions, and data ports.

Subjectively, time slowed down.

We're going to survive. I just have to do this right.

Bristol. Twenty-fourteen.

Sparks flew as she began redefining the basic dimensions of the TARDIS exterior. The changes would probably revert within minutes but that would be enough. She hoped. After a few more moments, she finished.

Across the room,the TARDIS screen continued its dire countdown.

[Impact With Event One in Ten ... Nine ... Eight...]

"Doc: I think she's not going to make it!"

"Hang on to something!" she shouted. "Here ... we ... go!"

Her sonic whistled and hummed, flipping chameleon circuit relays and forcibly overriding exterior dimensions.

[Five ... Four ... Three ... Two ... One...]

A powerful quake ran through the ship, throwing its passengers around.

Then, the tornadic sounds inundating the TARDIS ceased.

A few fires crackled but stopped spreading.

Shaking halted.

Red trouble lights flickered to life.

The hiss of fire extinguishers filled the air as internal systems, no longer taxed with avoiding Event One, came back online. The plasma leaks sealed themselves. A chameleon circuit indicator light flashed as the Doctor's last-minute calculations were purged by an auto-restart.

They had made it.

Slowly, the Doctor stood. Now came the hard part.

The TARDIS was a wreck. She went to the console and began examining read-outs.

"Doctor," Yaz said, "What happened?"

"Well, uh, we were, well, sort of trapped in something of a ... a pull. A vortex within the time vortex. Like getting too close to a black hole." She sounded distracted. "That's Event One for you."

"Event One?"

"Hmm?" The Doctor looked up. "Oh, yes. A point singularity in space-time jam-packed with more energy than you could shake a universe at!" She returned to her readings. "You'd know it as the Big Bang. It lurks at the heart of history like ... like..." She paused. "Like a whirlpool in time."

"Wait," Graham said, "You're tellin' me that we went right into the Big Bang? Like the original mother-of-all-explosions?"

The Doctor nodded. "For a moment, yes. As we got to within a few seconds of the universe's origin, though, I was able to bypass the singularity."

"We did what, now?"

"I'll explain, later," she said. Then, furrowing her brow, added, "But this isn't right. This can't be right..."

"What is it, Doctor?"

"Well, according to TARDIS readings, we're now drifting at approximately T-minus thirty-six-point-seven-seven hours."

"And what does that mean?"

"Well, technically it means that while we avoided impacting Event One we, well, went further."

"Further?"

The Doctor nodded to Yaz. "According to these readings we're in the time before."

"Before? Before ... what?"

"All of space and time, Graham." The Doctor smiled nervously. "We're a little over a day and a half before the Big Bang."

"Forerunner Taal: I've been trying to reach you." Forerunner Maltik's amorphous form undulated up the stairs to Taal's observatory. Its voice modulated in time with the ripples and waves it vibrated through its outer membrane. As usual, none of the panels in Taal's research space were lit. No experiments were running. Even the omnichats and psycheshares had been disabled."Taal?"

A sigh originated from a couch next to the bowed, exterior windows that showed only darkness.

"Automated scans picked up something," Maltik continued.

"Another pi-meson: decaying into nothingness?" Taal's tail, formerly resting on the floor, swept it as he sat up.

Maltik extended several pseudopods and ascended the final few steps. Its smooth, dark grey and translucent body undulated closer. "No," the delgathan said. "It's much more than that."

Black-furred Taal looked up.

"What do you mean?" the sentralli asked. "There haven't been any evaporating particles across the Kek for ... eons."

"It's not a particle," Maltik said. "Not just one."

"What?" The wolf-like forerunner sat fully upright.

"It's actual matter, Taal. Macroscopic material: an object of measurable mass. And it simply ... appeared."

Taal lurched to his feet: gold-trimmed, red toga rustling about his paws. "And you're certain? This isn't a system malfunction or a piece of debris that fell off The Refuge?" Scattered pinpoints of white fur, resembling stars in his black hide, wavered like a night sky from the primordial past. A faint ember of curiosity lightened his eyes.

Maltik pulled itself fully together and formed an approximation of a sentralli torso and shook its head. "Confirmed," it said. "However, it could be--"

"It could be the answer," the humanoid wolf said. "Maybe we've finally found what's been barring us from ... The End." Taal looked out into the void. "At last."

His spiraling, multi-hued eyes peered in vain for any sign of Maltik's object. But photons had decayed away epochs ago. Somewhere out there a chunk of matter approached The Refuge. In the vast nothingness of Kek Space either their calculations had been tragically wrong or...

Or, maybe they were almost done.

"We have to wake the rest," he said.

Maltik nodded its pseudo-head in agreement.

"Before the Big Bang?" Ryan's tone was weak and pained. The skin along one side of his face and down his right arm was blistered and burned. Graham finished applying first aid ointment while Yaz wrapped bandages over Ryan's wounds.

Graham helped his grandson to a sitting position.

Ryan winced but continued. "In school I was taught there was no beginning. Or 'before' it, at any rate."

Graham shook his head. "C'mon; everything that has a 'now' has to have a beginning. And every beginning has to have a 'before'."

Yaz shook her head. "Not according to my teachers. I remember learning that in Year Twelve."

"Well, your teachers were partly right," the Doctor said. "It has a beginning. Just not a 'before'." She didn't look confused so much as challenged. "Space-time is a single thing. But it exists in more than three dimensions; more than four."

"You're losin' us, Doc."

"It's like this," the Doctor said. "The universe has boundaries when viewed from higher dimensions. Since we're inside it, we never see the edges. All three-dimensional sides meet up with the others." She turned to Graham. Holding her hands out from each other as if holding a large ball, she continued. "And all of space and time sprang into being at the moment of the Big Bang. Entropy blinked and in that nano-instant, the stasis of an eternal, point singularity was upset" She looked to Ryan and Yaz. "And 'Boom'! Here comes the universe."

Graham shook his head at the explanation.

"Dimensions three and four were created simultaneously. By definition, there can be no 'before' to time." She sighed. "Still, beyond the fourth dimension there are other enfoldings of space-time. In fact, the universe has this sort of membrany, higher-dimensional ... 'gelatin' around it."

"Higher dimensional ... gelatin." Yaz looked skeptical.

"Well, it's not like it's going to be used in baking or anything," The Doctor replied. Her tone reverted to chipper. "Mind you, if the Eternals ever developed a proper chef, one of them could probably make an amazing panna cotta with it!"

"Doc?"

"Sorry. Got a bit distracted." The Doctor returned to the console. The power readings flashed red. "And being before the universe would explain why the TARDIS is running on stored power. No universe means no Eye of Harmony. No Eye of Harmony means no power."

"So, we're stuck then?" Yaz asked. "Before or 'outside' the universe?"

The Doctor straightened up, hands on hips. "Oh, don't worry; the TARDIS has been stuck outside of space-time, before! Yonks of times, in fact." She cocked her head. "Well, relatively speaking at any rate. Just never before."

"So, how do we get back, then? Does the TARDIS have enough power to re-enter the universe?"

The Doctor shook her head. "No. And without even more, we'd never escape the pull of Event One on the other side." She furrowed her brow in thought. "But luckily, back a few regenerations I had the good sense to work out an alternative energy source. All we have to do is find a weak spot in space-time, a functional trans-temporal rift or black hole, park the old girl on top of or near it, open the siphon buffers, and, in a day-or-so we'd be fully charged!"

"Enough to get back home?" Ryan asked.

The Doctor didn't answer.

The console beeped, again. "Seriously, what now?" she said. Then, her eyes widened. "Oh." A smile crept into the corner of her mouth. "Well, hello there."

"What is it?" Yaz went to stand beside the Doctor. The console displayed a dark sphere within which was a dim, electric blue outline. "It's a spaceship."

"What's it doing here?" Graham asked.

The Doctor shrugged. "Who knows? Stranded like us? Native to the pre-universe? Plenty of impossible options!" She examined the readings. "The TARDIS can barely pick anything up. It's like it's been completely insulated. And, come to think of it, the amount of energy it's leaking into space is so negligible it might as well not exist." She pursed her lips and whistled. "That's why the TARDIS can't get concrete visuals on it. Now that's impressive engineering!"

"Well, I don't mean to rain on your parade, Doctor," Graham said, "but what if we can't see it because there's nothing to see it with?"

She looked up. "Hmm?"

"I mean, Doc, take a look: where're all the stars?"

Everyone's eyes peered intently at the console's depiction of space, outside. Graham was right. In every direction there was nothing.

Absolute void.

The Doctor tapped on a keyboard and ran several scans. "There's nothing," she said, at last. "No hydrogen, no atomic nuclei, no subatomic particles." She looked worried, again. "It's as if entropy has ... won."

The TARDIS systems pinged.

"Looks like this is a day for surprises," she said. "Not only is that ship the only other matter or source of energy within scanning range but it's also ... huge."

She adjusted the display. The blue outlines of the alien craft zoomed out and re-positioned to one side. Next to it, a tiny speck appeared.

The TARDIS.

"It's ... gigantic," Ryan said.

"The size of several solar systems," the Doctor said. Her tone was one of breathless awe.

"How does anyone build something that ... that huge?" Yaz asked.

Bigger than any Dyson Sphere, that's for sure." The Doctor smiled. "Shall we go and ask?"

"The object is a space-time anomaly and not naturally-occurring," Taal said. "It possesses a minute amount of shielded singularity energy but is still significant enough to be scanned through its transcendental construction." He crossed his arms. "That's why we woke you."

"You were right to do so," Balaas said. Her dimly-lit quarters hummed: still powering up. "How long has it been since you and Maltik assumed the mantle of 'Forerunner'?"

"One-point-eight million years, Captain Culdyre."

"So short a time," The captain swung her legs over the edge of her sleep chamber and considered what the wolfen sentralli had said. "What about the two Forerunners before you? Amalthus and Belranni-Thar? Did they report anything?"

"Only a few decaying subatomic particles and a handful of evaporating photons about two-point-eight million years into their ten million year posting."

"And nothing since?"

"A couple random quark structures in final throes of disassociation but nothing else."

"So we've really, finally made it. We're at the end."

Taal nodded. "Kek Space is uniform. Maltik and I entered it into our report one-point-one-eight million years ago. Nothing since."

Captain Culdyre nodded and closed her eyes. She mentally read all the reports filed during her sleep. "Ah, yes: there it is. Thank you, Forerunner."

"Just doing our job." He ran his claws through his scalp fur. "Still no sign of any genesis event or entropic fluctuation."

"Still, this must be it." Steadying herself, she stood. "Where is Maltik?"

"Reviving the High Researcher."

"Good. I'll want Kodin's insight on this." She crossed to a floating opalescent sphere and waved her hand over it. An orb of water materialized around her and generated a flurry of bubbles. In seconds her shower was done. The water evaporated before converting into energy to be returned to power storage. "How long do you think we have?"

"It's hard to say," Taal said. "But we are approaching each other."

The captain donned an azure and black robe. Deftly, she smoothed her hair and pulled it forward over her shoulders. Her dark skin, ceremonial garb, and military braids gave her an air of authority. "We should prepare to revive the rest of The Aged: but not until we know more about what we're dealing with." She proceeded to the door.

"I'm letting Maltik know, now."

"Good," the captain said. "Now, let's examine our impossible visitor and figure out if we're finally at our journey's end."

Leaving, they began their long trek to The Refuge's bridge.

The Vworp Vworp of the TARDIS' materialization echoed through a yawning chasm of metal and technology. Over six hundred meters from floor to ceiling and twice that side-to-side, the chamber was vast. Its receding length resembled a warehouse for storing skyscrapers. Team TARDIS looked at the scale measurements of the display, amazed.

"This place looks like it's compensating for something," Ryan said. Still injured, he still tried to make jokes.

The Doctor had hoped they would find a medical facility on the titanic alien ship. But the vast, shielded vessel had been too large for the TARDIS to scan quickly.

"We're going out there?"

The Doctor finished her scans of the ship's interior atmosphere. "Not without space suits," she said.

"They breathe carbon monoxide or something?"

"No, Yaz... The air's a fairly common oxygen-nitrogen mix; a bit more oxygen than you'd get on Earth but it's still ... wrong." She tapped a small screen. "It seems the component atmospheric molecules are enormous. Some hundred-or-more times what we would encounter in our home universe."

"So?" Graham asked.

"So, your body couldn't metabolize the oxygen you breathed in from that air," the Doctor explained. "It would be like breathing helium only without the funny voices: non-toxic but still suffocating. You'd collapse from lack of breathable air in a few minutes."

The Doctor led the others to one of the TARDIS' prep rooms and suited them up in red spacesuits. They were, she explained, tough enough to withstand a lot of abuse, hold days of oxygen, and even simulate higher or lower gravity conditions. Within a quarter hour, they were ready.

They passed through the TARDIS doors and stepped out into the canyon-like chamber.

Behind them, behind the Doctor's blue box, was a towering, recessed wall. In front of them the dimly-lit room stretched away to pitch darkness several kilometers away.

"How does anyone find anything in here," Graham said.

"Well," Yaz observed, "if we can find a door or something maybe the Doctor can sonic some information out of the computer system?"

"If they have computers, you mean," Ryan said.

"Oh, every civilization uses computers at some stage, Ryan. Even the Logipolitans, in fact, towards the end."

"The who, now?" Ryan asked.

"Long story. Saving the universe from an old friend. I'll explain, later. Right now, though," she withdrew her Sheffield-sturdy sonic screwdriver, pointed it at the nearest wall, and set up a resonance scan to see what was behind it. "So, let's find us a computer. Good thinking, by the way, Yaz!"

Graham helped Ryan over an odd bench on the wall. It was a metal protrusion: hexagonal around its perimeter but grooved and circular, inside. It proved just deep enough for Ryan to sit.

"There, now, Ryan; take a load off. The Doctor is in."

"Yeah. I know. It's just, I feel I messed up again." He spoke in a quiet voice. "I missed the railing; got knocked off my feet and straight into a burn ward."

"Ryan: we're all a little off our game out here." His grandfather waved one hand vaguely, indicating the new world the Doctor had introduced them to. "We all stumble, now and then."

"Look, you're not getting it," Ryan replied. "I 'stumble' a lot worse than you or Yaz. My dyspraxia is going to make keeping me around a whole lot more ... dangerous. If not to me then to the people who have to keep trying to save me."

"Nonsense, Ryan." Graham sounded comforting and patted his grandson's non-bandaged shoulder. "That's what families do: help each other."

"Most families don't have someone who's always getting into trouble."

Graham chuckled, lightly. "Oh, I don't know about that."

Sonic reaching a high pitch, the Doctor pointed high above them. "Found it: a digital streaming point in the wall projecting an beam of base-sixteen numbers into a wireless, tight-band broadcast." She followed the unseen currents of data back to the wall behind the TARDIS. "And if I'm right, there should be an access-point just beyond that wall."

"Now all we need to find is a door," Yaz said. Then, she smiled. "Like that one: right over there!"

Everyone followed her pointing finger.

"Wait, that's a door?" Ryan said.

"It looks like one."

"But it's gotta be at least three hundred feet high," Graham said. "What're they movin' in this place? Saint Paul's Tower?"

"Or bigger things," the Doctor said. "Let's get a bit closer and see if we can open it."

The group walked to the base of the vast, inset portal. Around its protruding frame, there appeared no controls, buttons, or even screens.

"Maybe it operates by proximity? Biometrics?" She raised her sonic. "Let's see if I can fool it."

A powerful shudder shook the floor as a split formed down the middle and began sliding to the sides. A rush of wind blew by. Graham helped steady Ryan.

Then he stopped. The four travellers stared.

Two impossibles stared back.

"Are you kiddin' me?" Ryan said. "We've gone from scorpion-aliens to a skyscraper-sized wolf-man?"

"And a ... human woman, apparently," the Doctor added.

"A lot taller than Saint Paul's..."

The four backed away, heads craned up at the giants.

The two titanic entities looked down at them: squinting to see the beetle-sized travelers.

"Intruders," Captain Balaas Culdyre said, "you've managed to create quite a stir: waking me up and putting my crew on alert." The giant woman's words reverberated like thunder. "Tell me: who are you and how did you come to the end of everything?"

"Totally unexpected," the Doctor said. She extended her hand and approached. "Hello! I'm the Doctor and these are Yaz, Ryan, and Graham." She smiled. "Pleased to meet you!"

"Unclassified aliens from the successive continuum?" High Researcher Kodin watched the miniscule creatures speaking to Captain Culdyre and Taal in the forward conference chamber.The alien travellers resembled insects on a kitchen counter. "And they arrived in a trans-spatial craft of some sort?" She rubbed her top set of horns, black eyes watching every detail of the zoomed-in video feed.

Maltik, in its default, amorphous form, undulated a reply. "So they claim."

"You don't believe them?"

Maltik rippled its reply. "What is more likely: that these miniscule beings have broken through higher-dimensional barriers that we could not or that they are indiginous beings who somehow made their way into Kek Space? It could be another plot to subvert our voyage. Maybe the Lifeboaters--"

"Be rational, Maltik. If we cannot escape Kek Space how could the Lifeboaters return?"

"I don't know," the undulating grey mass intoned. "But even after more than a googolplex years, it remains more likely than 'outsiders'."

Kodin furrowed her brow ridge.

She stretched to remove a crick in her tricollar joints. The systems that paused The Aged's hibernation states were supposed to address issues arising from megaannum of sleep. Clearly Maltik had rushed her revivification.

"They don't look threatening." She glanced at her eyeless companion, unable to read its emotions. "Maltik: what's wrong?"

"With me?" it replied. "Nothing. And you'd best keep accusations of mental discontinuity to yourself without evidence. If you are implying that I--"

A tiny panel slid open next to the bank of machinery before Kodin. Within it, a tiny capsule slid into view. It hissed open and two of the tiny aliens got out: each in a red containment suit.

Kodin peered close. She could just see inside their transparent faceplates. Both resembled the captain--in that each possessed bilateral symmetry, hair on the top of the head, two arms, two legs, heads featuring eyes, nose, and mouth--with one even possessing a similar pigmentation. The other, though, was pale with straight hair blending from brown to grey. The High Researcher mentally directed seven of his internal systems to monitor vitals of the tiny creatures.

"Hello," the pale one said. "I believe you're expecting us? I'm Graham and this, here, is my grandson: Ryan. Your captain said one of you could help him with his injuries?"

"I am High Researcher Kodin: official bioplasmics researcher of The Aged and ultimate collective of the sombrai race." She modulated her voice to make certain her words did not damage the creatures. "Yes, I was informed you needed assistance. I will assess your Ryan's biology so repairs may be made."

"'Repairs'?"

Graham cleared his throat. "You're not going to--like--replace parts of him with metal, are you? He's got burns, y'see, and 'repair' is a word we usually reserve for machines."

"You are machines," intoned the delgathan. Maltik had no surface features but the blob seemed to stare more intently at them. "All things are 'machines' at a fundamental level."

Ryan stared at the giant, amorphous entity. "What is--?" Ryan started but Graham shushed him.

"Ah, right. Well, I'm just checking Mister, uh..." He forced a smile. "Sorry, I don't know what to call you."

"I am Maltik," it rumbled. The blob extended the tiniest of feelers towards the two. From its tip, it formed a rough approximation of a human face. "I am the last and ultimate collective of the delgathan race. I am also not accustomed to talking with insects." With that, it withdrew its tiny tendril, turned and exited the lab.

"Sorry about that; didn't mean to offend," Graham said. He looked up at Kodin. "I really don't know the right words to use. I've never met a, well, a delgathan before. Or a--well--what you said, earlier. A sombrero or something? Sorry."

"'Sombrai'," Kodin replied. "One of the two-hundred-fifty-six members of The Aged: each representing an entire race, culture, or ontological belief system." The four-horned alien gestured and summoned a cloud of nanomachines to coat her eye. She increased magnification to better observe the miniscule humans. "But there is time for that, later. Right now, your Ryan's injuries should be attended to. Then," she added, "I have other assignments before me."

Ryan smiled wearily. "Thanks."

"Fair 'nuff," Graham said. "I'll just stay out of your way, then, shall I?"

"You shall," Kodin said. "But it won't be long until you may rejoin your companions." Kodin interfaced with the lab's subsystems and instructed that they generate a tiny platform. "Please get on and lie down."

With Graham's help Ryan climbed atop it. The surface shifted and reshaped itself with miniscule ridges, grooves, lights, and protrusions forming across its surface. Feeling awkward and far too fragile, he realized it was probably a laboratory's specimen slide.

When he was situated, the researcher nodded. "Now, we shall begin." She sent mental commands to her equipment and began examining the tiny, injured Ryan.

Captain Culdyre sat comfortably in a high-backed, crimson chair at the conference table. A holoscreen floated at eye-level to her left displaying magnified images of Yaz and the Doctor. Behind them stood the TARDIS: like a tiny, blue salt shaker. Taal sat to one side, steepling his fingers in front of his muzzle, eyes not on the images but on the tiny human and Time Lord, directly.

"Amazing tech you got here," the Doctor said. "I mean, all you have to do is think of something and >voila!< there it is! Are you using some sort of perpetual state psychometric scanner or have you gone for nano-machines in your central nervous systems?"

The captain smirked. "The latter, but a bit more thorough than what you're implying."

"Well, I'd love to take a look at it: one hyper-advanced species to another!"

"We'll see," Culdyre said.

The conference room was much larger than the hallway the TARDIS had materialized in. A circular, white table surrounded a central dais above which floated a projected ball of darkness: hanging at eye-level with the giants. Around it were massive chairs sized like those of Taal and Culdyre. Beyond, the chamber retreated into the distance, large enough to easily encompass a city. On the distant walls hung flags or banners depicting coats of arms.

It unnerved Yasmin being this close to creatures eyeing her like she was some sort of bug. She knew how she treated bugs and wondered if she accidentally got stepped on if either Taal or the captain would notice.

Or care.

Around her, the thunderous rumble of conversation persisted like a storm.

"...But we have ruled-out singularity travel through any methodology," Taal was saying. "It's simply impossible." His thunderous voice held an even deeper, more guttural reverb than that of his captain. He may have been shorter but his voice made up for it. "You could not have come--"

"Oh, we're clever that way," the Doctor said. "Speaking of which, you seem to understand space-time dynamics pretty well. Some of your technology would even have some of the best scientists back on my homeworld scratching their heads."

"Flattery, Doctor," Culdyre said. "Or a humble brag. Either way, we were addressing how you came to be here."

"And I've told you." She paused for a moment and, cautiously, proposed an alternative. "I suppose, though, it all depends on where 'here' is, doesn't it?" The Doctor began pacing. "Because, as you doubtless know, there can be no 'before' to--well--everything! I mean, sure, I met one entity, once, who claimed to have come from 'before' but he was all liar and teeth and fire and all that... Totally unpleasant sort." The two giants exchanged glances as the Doctor took a deep breath. "But here you're saying that's where we actually are. Also, to add more confusion to the mix, my ship also says the same thing. Which means..."

"Means what, Doctor?"

The Time Lord smiled at Yaz. "We're literally lost in a theoretical absurdity: something I've always wanted to be lost in!"

"So you maintain your story that you 'accidentally' ended up here?" Culdyre said.

"Well, a malfunction in TARDIS' navigation seems to be the cause, so, yes." She put her hand on her companion's shoulder. "But the idea of how we got through the singularity was thanks to Yaz."

Giant eyes fixed on the tiny human.

"Me?"

"When you said we were about to be 'flattened'," the Doctor explained. "Years ago, I encountered an invasion by two dimensional creatures on Earth. Nasty pieces of work! They could sort of control the dimensions inherent to physical objects; crushed their victims into flat, lifeless husks. But their mastery of dimensional mechanics proved their downfall. I was able to learn from that experience and by feeding new equations into the TARDIS chameleon circuit, I was able to collapse her exterior to a zero-dimensional object and slip right past Event One."

"Wait," Taal said, "your ship has that degree of control over its configuration?"

"Yes, doesn't yours?"

The two giants again exchanged glances.

"So you could, in theory, get back to where you came from? Into the next... Into your own continuum?"

Yaz shivered involuntarily.

The captain--for just a moment--almost looked ... hungry.

Magnified a hundred-fold, Captain Culdyre's face was easy to read. Yaz doubted the Doctor noticed. She was too busy being delighted about their 'absurd' surroundings. But Yaz had learned about micro-expressions during a guest lecture from a detective during her early police training.

Brief, they were nonetheless revealing.

"Hmm? Oh, yes!" The Doctor said. "I mean, maybe. Theoretically. Sure! Only this time I'll take it slower and be more careful."

"Then if this were a mistake, why didn't you simply go back?"

The Doctor looked up at Taal. "Well, that's the problem, you see. My ship, the TARDIS, relies upon a massive black hole for power. And, well, that black hole is back on the other side of the singularity."

"Couldn't we find one in this universe?" Yaz asked.

She shook her head. "I doubt it, Yaz." She looked up at the two giants. "Unless I'm mistaken, your universe lost its black holes already, hasn't it? All evaporated?"

Taal nodded. "Many years ago." He frowned down the length of his muzzle. "Approximately a googolplex, actually."

"Wait, 'Google'? Like the search engine?"

The Time Lord shook her head. "Ten raised to the power of ten raised to the power of a hundred, years, Yaz; biggest number that has a name." She paused. "Well, on Earth that is."

"But if you did have access to the energies of a black hole?" the captain asked.

"Oh, yeah: I could get us back in a jiffy!" She frowned. "But everything in your universe has been lost to entropy."

For minutes no one said a thing.

"Except them," Yaz finally pointed out. "Except for The Aged."

The Doctor perked up. "Hang on a minute." She addressed the captain. "How did you manage surviving the entropic death of your entire universe? I mean that sort of power--"

"Is supplied by a captured supermassive black hole at the center of our ship," she replied.

"We nurture it as one might a rare flower: rationing matter to plunge into it when we need more energy," Taal said.

Culdyre nodded. "Carefully controlled, we have delayed its death far beyond its normal lifespan."

The Doctor's eyes widened. "Oh! Oh-oh-oh, that's brilliant! Yes! With that, even a small bit of your ship's energy, we could get back home! I'm sure of it!"

A few kilometers away, the conference room door slid open. Maltik entered. "Which may never happen."

Yaz stood up from her chair in alarm.

"Doctor, Yaz," Taal said, "please be introduced to fellow Forerunner, Maltik."

"Ah, yes. Nice to meet-- Wait, 'forerunner'?"

"A title for those who spend the epochs awake in Kek Space, watching for signs of the next universe, allowing the rest of the crew to sleep."

The Doctor nodded. "Makes sense, makes sense."

"Excuse me," asked Yaz, "but what does 'Kek' mean?"

"An ancient word," Taal said. "It basically means the state before life and after death."

"So, nothingness, then."

"Yes."

Maltik undulated past the others. It moved, serpent-like, past Culdyre to the chair on her opposite side. It hefted its amorphous body up, over the chair's back, and engulfed it. Within its body, small lights began to flicker and dance.

"So you and Taal essentially had watch duty," Yaz asked.

"Yes," Maltik said again.

"Although I am beginning to lose hope that our voyage will ever have an ending," Taal said. "We have been in the state of a full-entropic decay for one-point-eight-eight million years, now. And while all our studies and models indicated that, inevitably, a flux of random chance would upset the surrounding stasis and generate a new universal instigation point: we have seen no sign of it."

"Hmm... That's odd," the Doctor said. "I mean my people have calculated that should happen fairly soon after the universe reaches absolute heat death. But if it's been over a million years since it crossed that point..."

The time scales under discussion made Yaz uneasy. To distract herself from thinking about it, she addressed Taal.

"Excuse me, but why?"

"Why?"

"Yes: why? Why are you doing this? I mean all this can't be just about survival, right?"

Taal shook his head, looking somewhat less concerned by the course of the conversation. "You are correct." He looked momentarily very tired; very old. "I have long since outlived any desired lifespan for myself as an individual or my race as a whole. But to leave a monument that will represent my people beyond the end of time: that is my sincerest of hopes."

"But you've been alive for, what, billions of years?"

"Beyond 'billions'," Maltik intoned.

"Wait," Yaz said, turning to the giant blob. "You don't mean that googolplex number Taal mentioned?"

"More," the amorphous giant said. The lights within its body flickered. "To be precise, it has been one-point-$%lg-09-point-void-span years."

A wave of momentary comprehension flooded Yaz's mind, leaving her dizzy and pained.

The Doctor winced. "Sorry 'bout that, Yaz. The TARDIS can't translate some of what he said since English doesn't have an equivalent word for a number that big so it relies upon giving you a feel for it, instead."

"But that... It's so big it's ... incomprehensible!" Yaz said.

"Oh, humans will get there eventually," the Doctor said. She turned back to the captain. "Captain Culdyre: it would be my honor to help you escape your dead universe! In fact, I can think of a few places in the distant future of our universe where you and your crew could be settled that wouldn't cause any trouble: spatially or temporally. You could set up your memorials and make deals with other races to help those who want to make it beyond the end of our universe! All I would need is access to your black hole and someone I can teach to modify The Refuge's hull, transcendentally." She looked around, beaming. "With your existing technology, it shouldn't take any time at all, really!"

The Captain smiled. "You have no idea how happy that makes me, Doctor." She turned to Maltik. "I am satisfied; these tiny aliens mean us no harm."

"But Captain," Maltik began.

"Begin waking the rest of The Aged, forerunner," Culdyre said. "The end of our voyage is here."

Maltik vibrated thousands of waves across its surface. "Yes, captain. As soon as High Researcher Kodin completes her work."

"Excellent."

"Has it been long since all your crew have been awake at the same time," Yaz asked.

"Oh, yes," Culdyre said.

Taal sighed. "The last time all of The Aged had to be woken was approximately fifty-seven-point-eighteen septillion years ago." He paused. "The forerunners at the time had lost patience and wanted to take a vote on whether or not The Refuge should attempt to follow the Lifeboaters."

"Lifeboaters?"

"Those who abandoned our universe back when there were still stars. Advanced races who elected to seek other, parallel realities in which to dwell," Maltik said.

"But, for whatever reason," Taal continued, "even when we tested it we found that something had changed within Kek Space such that our efforts proved ... fruitless."

He moved his arms a lot when he talked, gesticulating in a way that made the star-patterned swaths of his fur resemble distinct, swirling galaxies.

Yaz found it strangely beautiful. "Why didn't you go with them, then? Back at the beginning, I mean?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yeah, why 'the long wait' approach?"

"This is our universe, Doctor," Maltik said. "It is the birthplace of our heritage; our civilizations, art, discoveries, battles, alliances, and histories."

"There were many advanced races by the time the last stars died," the captain said. "The majority elected to leave." She frowned. "Quitters, if you ask me."

"They lacked appropriate devotion to our heritage and our ancestors' sacrifices," Maltik said.

"We, The Aged," Taal said, "represent the handful of peoples who felt we should pass forward into whatever universe gets birthed from ours as a more natural, next step."

"We couldn't time travel that far," Culdyre said, "the energy expenditure would have been too great. We needed most of our energy to protect what we wished to salvage and, moreover, enough to protect The Refuge from the energies of a universal-creation event."

"Whoof. That's definitely 'the long way around'."

Yaz nodded. "So, before you'd met us, you were just going to set up shop immediately after the Big Bang, then?" She turned to the Doctor. "Where will they go?"

"We Time Lords once had a concept called 'Gallifreyan Lead Time'. Sort of a UTC that marked the furthest forward point Gallifreyans were allowed to travel lest we create paradoxes for our own futures. It moved forward with the rest of time, so while a few were allowed to study beyond that edge, it marked the ultimate extent of where we were allowed to go." She ran her fingers through her short, blond hair. "I can think of a few pocket galaxies where I can lead them; out-of-the-way places where they can get their bearings, gradually, over time before announcing themselves to the races advanced enough to understand them." She sighed. "Besides, Gallifreyan Lead Time went out of fashion when the Time War wiped out most distinctions."

"You went beyond it while it was still banned, didn't you?" Yaz asked.

"Only a few times!"

"That's so you."

The hundred-seventy-plus meter-tall wolf cleared his throat. "I will carry your TARDIS to the engineering bridge, Doctor," Taal said. "From there, we can show you how to access The Refuge's heart and you can show us how to modify our ship's exterior."

"I'd rather fly her there, myself, to be honest."

Taal reached down with two fingers on either side of the ancient blue box. "You should conserve your ship's energy," he said. "Get inside and I'll convey you, directly."

The Doctor paused, looking at tree-sized fingers with claws bigger than her body. Quickly flashing a broad smile, she nodded. "Okay, then! Being carried it is! Let's get started!"

Tall nodded, waited for the TARDIS doors to close, and then gingerly picked up the tiny vessel to carry it out of the conference room.

After they left, the captain leaned back in her chair. "It's almost time, Maltik." She sounded relieved. Unimaginably tired but relieved.

"Are you certain the Doctor can deliver what she says?"

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Once we incorporate their technology we'll have enough command over spatial dimensions to keep entropy at bay for, if needed, another googolplex years!"

"And if the rest of The Aged don't agree with that long of a wait?"

"We all made the pact. And we all know what happens to those who threaten to violate it."

"Of course, captain," it said. "I'll begin waking the others."

The hum of the TARDIS door was comforting: finally surroundings with a "normal" scale. Yaz took off her helmet. "You don't really trust these guys, do you?" she asked. "I mean, I'm all for helping people in trouble but something about this feels..."

"Off?"

Yaz nodded.

"I feel it too; something doesn't quite add up." The Doctor watched the external feed from Taal's palm as he bore them along cavernous corridors. "But that could merely be jealousy on my part, I suppose."

"Jealousy? Of them?"

"Think of it, Yaz: beings not billions of years old, not trillions... But beings older than our entire universe! Even the Guardians and Eternals can't say that." She sighed. "It's all a bit..." She waved her hand vaguely in the air before her.

"But can we even know what minds that old really think like? I mean, why aren't they more ... alien?"

"I know. Trust me: I know." She flashed a smile. "But that's why we'll keep on our toes, right?"

Outside, Taal paused and pressed his black-furred hand against a scanner plate. A second later, a massive panel slid open revealing a dark tunnel. A bullet-shaped car came into view, slowed, and parked itself next to the entry. Taal got in. He pressed a few buttons and the vehicle raced down a dimly lit tunnel broken only with a few blue lights at regular intervals.

"Wow. The TARDIS is gauging our speed close to the speed of light!" She shook her head. "If they're on low-power reserves, right now, I'd hate to see what they call 'full power'!" She paused. "Say, Yaz: did you notice anything about The Aged? About their ... aesthetic?"

"In what way?"

"Everything is in sixteens." She accessed the console for a moment. "Ahhh, and that's why! The TARDIS' translation buffer tells me that every time they've said a number it's actually been in base-sixteen!" She frowned. "Which troubles me."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure, Yaz." She pursed her lips, brow furrowed in thought. "Two-hundred-fifty-six representatives of former races and cultures: each combined and distilled into a single, colossal being; a biological time capsule. Each one probably possessing millennia of history." She paused, seeing another pattern. "Hang on: sixteen squared is--"

"Two-fifty-six," Yaz said.

"Normal enough," the Doctor mused, "but why does that ... bother me? What am I missing?"

"Say, Doctor..."

The Doctor looked up. "Yes?"

"Well, while we were in there, I was looking around: to get my bearings, you know?"

The Doctor nodded.

"Well," Yaz continued, "Those banners on the walls: one behind each chair? There were two-hundred-fifty-seven of them. Not two-fifty-six."

The Doctor furrowed her brow.

Outside the TARDIS, the transport bore them deeper into the depths of The Refuge. Wherever the engineering bridge was, getting there was taking them further and further from Graham and Ryan.

Kodin's tall, deer-like ears swivelled to listen more closely to Graham. She straightened her deep blue toga and peered into the matter separator cache, occasionally asking questions to continue their conversation. Having a brain with so many augmented neural connections made it easy to multi-task. In addition to studying local entropic space and taking scans of the aliens' time vessel, she was able to carry on a fascinating discussion about the human's homeworld.

The Refuge's massive world-brain began parsing the data her experiments had gathered, giving her more brainspace to focus on Graham.

"I am so glad you are here," she said. "You are an excellent conversationalist. I and the others have had no new ideas to tackle for... Well, it feels like forever!"

"Oh, pah! You're much cleverer than us; you've had experiences humans could never imagine."

"Maybe so, but your 'humanity' and 'Earth' is entirely new to me." She leaned back in her towering chair. "I didn't realize how I've missed such interactions." She shook her head. "The last time I had anything surprising to deal with was..." She tilted her head and scratched at her anterior left horn. "Over fifty septillion years ago!"

Graham rocked from foot-to-foot. "Yeah, well, I don't know how you do it. I'd be barking!"

His space suit was comfortable enough but craning his neck to look up at the skyscraper-sized researcher was giving him a twinge in his back.

"Mental illness is not a problem," Kodin said. "We all have neural stabilizers implanted." She looked at him and instructed her internal computer systems to parse the English language for a parallel. "A neurological pace-maker, if you will."

"So, no matter how bored you get, you'll never, well, go 'nuts'?"

Kodin laughed. "That's an extremely imprecise term!"

"Wait a minute: so loneliness and isolation don't get to you? You don't get tired of millions of years with only the same people to interact with?"

"We do," she said. "But we can't 'go nuts' from it. We simply ... persist."

An alert pinged within her mind as her scans began sending data directly to Kodin's brain. "Insanity is a matter of brain structure and chemistry: not emotion. We have tempers, changes of opinion, and all manner of emotional responses to our voyage," she explained. "But 'barking' is not, as you might say, 'in the cards' for us. Such ailments are detected and corrected long before they become a problem." Idly, Kodin sifted through the incoming reports, considering everything with a tenth of her available brain-space. "We get tired of things, certainly, and loneliness is painful. But our mission is worth it: to bring our heritage and knowledge beyond the death of our universe."

"I guess that sounds okay," Graham admitted, "but it also feels a little bit ... hollow, somehow."

But Kodin's attention was no longer devoted to their conversation. She frowned and shook her head. "This is wrong," she muttered. "Very wrong."

"What is?"

Kodin didn't respond.

She half-closed her eyes devoting her full attention to the results of her scans. Around her holo-monitors and panel displays began lighting up.

Graham tried calling her name a dozen times while jumping up and down to catch her attention. He didn't know what was going on but the first thing he thought was "techno-seizure". When the High Researcher stayed unresponsive for several minutes, he ran to where Ryan slept in his healing tube.

Despite his concern for Kodin, he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw his grandson's skin having healed already. Opening the container, he gingerly shook Ryan awake.

"Hey, Ryan! Ryan! Wake up!"

Ryan flinched at the abrupt waking. "I'm up, I'm up! Geez! What's going ... on?" He stared up at the titanic, mountain-ram-like scientist. "Is she okay?"

"Been like that a few minutes," Graham said. "You think this could be normal for her? Is she under attack or something?"

"Damned if I know, grandad," he said. "But we should probably get her help." He stumbled a bit getting out of the medi-capsule but steadied himself.

"How?" Graham asked.

"I think I still remember how to operate that wall-tube-car thing," Ryan said.

"Shouldn't we wait here; see if she gets worse?"

"What exactly does 'worse' look like? Besides, it'd take a dozen people just to lift one of her fingers. We gotta find help!"

Graham nodded, nervously. "Okay, okay. Let's go."

Kodin stayed immobile until long after both humans had departed. She had run a dozen experiments; taken thousands of new readings.

She re-divided her attention.

"Mister Graham?" She looked around, trying to locate him. "Oh, fetz!" she swore. Checking on Ryan she found him gone, too.

She opened a psycheshare channel.

"Maltik?" she said. "We have a problem."

Six more Aged had awakened and come to take instruction from Taal and the Doctor. Like Taal, each represented a long-deceased group from the "before" universe.

One resembled a red cloud with tendrils that solidified the further they got from its tapered, columnular center. Another, also with tentacles, resembled a cuttlefish on a long coiled serpent's body. The rest were bipeds: two resembling humans with the remainder completely wonderfully strange and alien. She wished she could sit down with each one of them and talk for years about their cultures, histories, and pasts.

But there would be time for that, later.

Hopefully.

The Aged continued making modifications. They manifested a veritable army of robots to assist in making adjustments around the vast engineering bridge.

In its entirety, the deck possessed a perimeter too large to be seen from the Doctor's vantage point. Taal explained that the entire chamber circled the supermassive black hole in the open vacuum at the heart of The Refuge. Windows along the inner ring of the doughnut-shaped room opened upon tall, black, rectangular columns interspersed between polished, brass- and blue-steel piping. Kilometers beyond that, unseen but still felt by the Time Lord, was the time- and space-destroying singularity: held and managed by powerful force fields.

"Doctor," Taal said, "I'm curious about something."

"An excellent trait to have after so many years," the Doctor said.

"Is the next universe significantly smaller than ours? I've run transitory scans on you and your compatriots as well as the external configuration of your TARDIS. Your molecular structures are made up of particles, sub-particles, and strings more than a hundred times smaller than our own."

The Doctor nodded. "Must be," she said. "We'll have to modify The Aged so they can survive in our reality."

"But it raises a question," the massive wolf rumbled. "Why?"

"Why?"

"Yes: 'why'." Taal stroked his chin, hundreds of meters above the Doctor's head. "After all, everything else about our relative states of matter is identical. Merely ... out of proportion."

"Well, both of our universes expand thanks to dark energy," she replied. "So perhaps yours is, relative to your start-point, older than ours? Your space-time--and the matter and energy occupying it--have simply reached a larger state than ours."

"Doctor, if that were true, you would have noticed." Taal chuckled. "As you went back and forth in time in your universe, you would have constantly been changing size relative to your arrival and destination points. Mind you," he added with a smile, "that might be amusing to see."

She nodded. "Not exactly," she said. "I wish your people had further explored time travel."

"We did," he replied. "Just not enough to call ourselves 'Time Lords'."

"Touché." She looked up at him, gesturing with her arms. "Basically, all of time and space--from Event One to Event Omega--is a single, big ... ball. A ball of space, energy, matter, dimensions, and time. According to temporal relativity, traveling between different times, even as the universe expands, keeps things relative to the final state of the universe at its end."

He furrowed his starry, black brow. "We know of such measurements," he said. "But they aren't a constant."

"Well, they're not; not really. But the duration of a universe does fluctuate by a few hundred thousand billion years, constantly: due to quantum foam and random actions within it." She shrugged. "Even the Time Lords don't know exactly when Event Omega will be." She sighed. "But on the cosmic scale of things, the universe's final size is fairly constant." She watched The Aged engineers continue their work.

"Ours isn't."

The Doctor blinked. "What?"

"Even capped by Event Omega," Taal said. "Ever since the luminal times: when there were still stars." Taal shrugged. "Perhaps that's the only difference between our universes: yours has a constant end-point and ours does not."

"Hmm... Now it's my turn to ask: 'Why'."

Taal shrugged. "I would not know."

It could be connected to why there's been no entropic destabilization events since heat death, the Doctor thought. From the vast distance of the outer engineering walls, a flash of movement caught her attention.

Emerging from a tunnel shot a small, human-sized transport. It vaguely resembled a pneumatic tube capsule from a drive-up bank. The car came to a rest, hovering on magnetic fields. Yaz stopped examining the power cables The Aged had attached to the TARDIS and joined the Doctor.

"They're back!"

The Doctor brightened. "Graham! Ryan!"

The car's top hatch slid back. Ryan emerged: good as new. Graham had trouble with his dismount but his grandson provided support.

"See? We all have our stumbles," he quipped.

Ryan rolled his eyes.

"Doc!" Graham said. "It's the high researcher! She's gone all catatonic!"

"Kodin," Ryan clarified. "We couldn't get her to snap out of it; we came as fast as we could!"

"Oh?" Taal asked. "Perhaps she simply didn't notice you?"

"Not notice us?" Ryan sounded offended.

"You are small," Taal said, holding his thumb and forefinger close together.

"No," Graham replied. "It's worse than that. There were all these ... twitches. And screens, all around her, flicking with numbers, letters... Stuff I didn't recognize."

"Oh, and Graham says that just before she went catatonic, she said that something was wrong!"

The Doctor frowned. "How far is this lab Kodin was working in?"

"I dunno, Doc; but it took us the better part of the last hour to get here."

"This ship is too damn big," the Doctor muttered. "Okay, Taal: do you think you can have your ship muster up an interplanetary transmat to get me--"

He held up a hand. "Doctor, there is no need. Kodin is fine." He directed his attention to Ryan and Graham. "I recognize what you describe," he said. "She is merely devoting her attention--her full brain power--to a single task." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "But none of us have had to do that for, well, eons. We've solved all the big questions of our reality. There's nothing left to discover. I don't honestly know what she could be researching so intently."

"Maybe it has to do with her saying something was wrong?" the Doctor said.

Taal frowned. "Possibly. But I'm not sure what she could have been researching that could have any bearing on our current circumstances. I think Culdyre asked her to run some scans, but that's all."

"I do."

The Captain, Maltik, and Kodin had materialized a few thousand meters away on a transmat platform scaled to their size.

"Why didn't we get to use one of those?" Ryan asked Graham.

"Kodin!" Graham shouted. "You okay?"

She nodded. "I'm sorry to have distressed you; but there was something I needed to confirm."

"Everyone," Culdyre shouted, "Stop your modifications! Shut them down and begin reverting!"

"What? Why?" the Doctor asked.

The three Aged loomed closer.

"Oh, I think you know, Doctor," Culdyre said.

"Do I? Well, I've been accused of being out of my mind, before, but it's usually temporary. Besides, at the moment, I'm quite in my right mind and I honestly don't know what you're talking about!"

Maltik formed a pseudo head with a face resembling that of the tiny Time Lord. "So you say," it reverberated. "And yet how is it that a time traveller, who came here from the next universe, would not notice a retreating edge of time?"

"A what?" Yaz asked.

Kodin looked perplexed. "I only noticed it after reading radioactive decay coming off of your vessel's exterior and compared it to ours. At first I thought it was a problem with instrumentation. And, then, I suspected possible interference from your travel machine. But, no: the problem is more fundamental than that."

"What are you saying?" the Time Lord asked.

"The end of everything is receding from us at the same rate we move forward," Culdyre said. "And I suspect you already knew that. You came here for the heart of our ship, didn't you?"

"What? No! We came here by accident!"

"From when?" Maltik intoned. "The past or the future? Which is more likely: an intelligent race coming from a future beyond the end of time itself, one which we will shape and guide once we get there, or a singular genius from our own past: somehow leaping to the present with the intention of stealing our power source and preventing us from reaching our journey's end?"

"That's absurd!" Yaz shouted.

"We've told you the truth," the Doctor insisted. "We mean you no harm!"

"But you admit you need our black hole," Culdyre pointed out.

"We didn't know that before we arrived," Ryan said. "We were damaged; flying blind!"

"Besides, Maltik," Taal interjected, "there's the matter of their molecular make-up. It proves they come from a universe with a different fundamental scale than ours."

"Forerunner Taal," Maltik said, "I understand your ages-old ennui; it is unavoidable." Taal looked about to deny it but Maltik raised a tentacle. "Further, these last few hours I have been gladdened to see that your listless anhedonia has somewhat faded. But if it is hope you are feeling, I fear it rises from a false place."

"What do you mean?" Taal asked.

"Have you not considered that if someone from our distant past, from the luminal universe before Kek Space, leaped over those intervening years that they would reflect the size our universe was, then, before so much of its recent expansion?"

Taal paused looking surprised but the Doctor laughed.

"We were just talking about that!" She turned to her companions. "I swear, this ship's size really does prevent reasonable conversation!" She returned to face Maltik. "Come on, Maltik: even if your theory was right, you're smart enough to know that your universe has expanded trillions of times its original size! Our differences are much less than that!"

"But if our universe is extending itself," Taal mused. "Perhaps, in some way, that could explain--"

"Please, Taal," the Doctor said. "You know he's wrong!"

Culdyre stood next to the Forerunner and put a hand on his shoulder. "Taal, you've been out of sorts ever since the exile. I know you're seeking any way to leave The Refuge ... and we shall. But this woman, this Time Lord, has deceived us."

"One second," Ryan said. "What's this 'exile' you're on about?"

The four giants stopped and all gazes fell on Ryan.

"It is not your concern, insect," Maltik intoned.

"Maltik!" Kodin admonished.

"I can explain," Taal said.

"You owe them nothing," Maltik intoned.

But Taal went on. "The truth is that the last time all The Aged awoke, there were many of us who wanted to change course and follow the Lifeboaters."

"It was an attempted mutiny," the captain said, "and, as it turns out, an impossibility". Her tone was quiet but even.

"It was," Taal agreed. "But we didn't know it at the time." He sighed again. "Many of The Aged, then and now, feel our voyage has gone on too long."

"Taal, it is true that we have passed the projected points of multiple Entropic Destabilization Events to spawn a new universe," Kodin said. "But it remains possible that if we continue, we shall reach one, soon."

"And how long is 'soon'?" the Doctor asked. "Eternity?"

"Needless to say, Doctor, my compatriots and I felt similarly," Taal continued. "And when Igneusilfera--the two-hundred and fifty-seventh member of our crew, representative of the black-flames--took charge of our growing dissent, more of us came around."

"You listened to him; let his personality poison you," Maltik accused.

Taal frowned.

"We took a vote. Only afterwards, when we attempted it did we discover we couldn't leave for a parallel universe." Kodin confirmed.

"There was a majority?"

Culdyre looked annoyed. "More than eighty percent."

"Eighty?" Graham said.

"And you didn't try to find another way to follow the Lifeboaters or attempt other options?" the Doctor asked.

"We spent nearly a million years on it," Taal said. "But it ended with Igneusilfera proclaiming that the only alternative was death." The giant wolf shook his head. "He wasn't mad, if that's what you are thinking. His coalition--the talmin, sordin, and sakalvasti races along with the Black Fire Covenant--had always possessed an undercurrent of ... nihilism. Their thinking may have been opposed to most of our goals but we had vowed to preserve the dark as well as the light. As he said when our voyage began, 'If the end we are to overcome, I would look upon all the triumphs of entropy before joining it'."

"Sounds like a barrel of laughs," Graham said.

"He was a regrettable addition to our crew: beyond what was originally planned," Culdyre said. "But he contained a vast array of religions and peoples with an admittedly darker take on the nature of the universe. We believed it important to include all of our experiences. So, we elected to bring that darkness with us."

"But you exiled him from The Refuge?"

"Yes, Doctor. After a short conflict."

"It lasted mere millennia," Maltik confirmed. "And in the end--"

"In the end, I and the others who had clung to Igneusilfera's side, left him." Taal said. "It was clear he had only joined our crew to ensure their philosophies of flame and darkness would outlive the universe: even if that was at our expense."

"Their races were primitive; retrograde," Maltik said. "They were far behind the truly advanced races at the end of the stellar epoch."

"Which is why none of the Lifeboaters would take them," Culdyre said. "But we wouldn't kill him. Such a sentence would be beneath us. We would exile him to Kek Space and, if he could persist to the final entropy he so desired to see, such should be his fate."

"But before his exile was to begin," Taal said, "Before he was to be set adrift, he managed to escape custody. A custody I had been in charge of." He hung his head. "For all the scope of time before me and since that event, I still remember it as if it were yesterday."

"He didn't get far," Kodin replied. "He stole technology from the labs and tried to launch himself into the future: stealing energy needed from The Refuge's heart."

"But he failed," the Captain said. "He failed and was shredded into nothingness as he approached Event Omega." She paused to give Taal's shoulder a squeeze once again. "You are forgiven Taal; you always have been."

"But that brings us back to you four," Maltik said. Even without a muzzle, its voice sounded like a snarl. "The Aged have been taken in, before, by promises to shorten our great enterprise; of ways to circumvent patience and rush ahead. But they have all been lies!"

"We have no reason to trust you, Doctor," Captain Culdyre said.

"You have no reason to distrust us, either!" Frustrated, she stewed for a moment before continuing. "Look, I get it: you're grasping at straws, here! And your plan? It was amazing! Brilliant, even! And so tasking for you! I can't imagine what it must be like to live so long ... to persevere just to continue living ... to leave a monument! To save the legacies of your peoples! But you can't cling to the past; you have to keep adapting and moving ahead! That's what it means to be alive!"

"But, Doctor: the future retreats from us," Kodin reminded her.

"And we only observed this fact once you came aboard," Maltik intoned.

"I think we have time to consider our options," Culdyre said. "You'll be placed in isolation while The Aged confer. It should only take a million years or so."

"A million years?" Ryan exclaimed.

"We don't live that long," Yaz said.

"We can extend your lives," Kodin said, meekly. "Your biologies are not terribly different from what we already have documented. Why, you're practically an orathian like the Captain!"

"Or," Maltik said, "we could simply let you evaporate; fall into nothingness like the rest of our universe."

"Just wait... Wait a moment," the Doctor said.

"The time for waiting is only just beginning, Doctor," Captain Culdyre said. "And we shall let you know when The Aged have completed their deliberations." She turned to face Taal. "I trust you. You know I do." She adopted a steel-eyed gaze and stiffened her jaw. "Pick up the outsiders and take them to an isolation unit. Their travel machine can be studied at our leisure."

"But, Captain--"

"Forerunner Taal, are you planning mutiny again?" Her frown deepened. "Our voyage must continue."

"I'll do it," Maltik intoned. "You can trust me, Captain."

"I'd prefer it if Taal demonstrated his loyalty, Maltik."

"No, wait!" the Doctor shouted. "Just, ugh, slow down, will you?"

Her mind spun; she had to figure this out. There was something there, something beyond the extra member, the ancient mutiny, and the rest. It was something Kodin had said. Something her research had discovered. Something like--

"Eureka!" she shouted.

All eyes, titanic and small, turned to the Doctor.

"That's it; don't you see?" She exclaimed. "The future is always rushing away from you because you're carrying a massive black hole!"

"What?" Kodin asked.

"Your 'heart' is a near-infinitely compressed amount of matter and energy that has yet to evaporate, yes?" She retrieved the sonic from her inner jacket pocket. She activated it and established a data feed to TARDIS navigation. "Just as I thought! About a day and a half away!"

"A day and a half before ... what?" Taal rumbled.

"The Big Bang! The next universe! Our universe!"

"But, Doctor, you said that almost a day ago, now," Yaz said.

"And according to TARDIS temporal diagnostics, that's still the case." She turned to Kodin. "Think about it: a massive ripple in space-time, moving downstream like you always do but refusing to be eroded by water. You keep creating more stream ahead of you! You'll never reach the end: not until your black hole deteriorates and your ship falls into dust! It can never work!"

"If that's true, The Refuge's gravity-well could have prevented multiple Entropic Destabilization Events for half a googol years, now," Kodin said. Her face fell. "We failed from the very beginning."

"No," Maltik intoned. "That's not possible."

"Plus, they can't be from our future," the Captain added. "If they are, then they have never heard of us. That means we fail. We do not make it into their reality; never guide life in our own image and ensure our legacies!"

"'Guide it in your own images?' Y'know, your arrogance has just about hit my last nerve, mate," Ryan said.

"It isn't arrogance if you really are superior," Maltik rumbled. The blob pulled itself up into a snake-like tower of translucent, dark grey ooze. Its interior flashed with nova-like lights. "You would do well to remember that, insect!"

"Maltik! Wait!" Kodin rushed to intervene.

Malta's tentacle struck her on the head and shoulder sending Kodin to the ground. Her lower left horn snapped off and the high researcher cried out in agony.

"Kodin!" Taal leaped forward and slashed Maltik's protoplasmic form with his claws. They dug deep eliciting a lighter grey ooze to seep from within.

"Forerunner Taal: restrain yourself!" Captain Culdyre shouted.

Maltik contracted in on itself, folding its damaged exterior inside its protoplasmic mass. But just as swiftly, it generated several dozen smaller pseudopods and began to batter Taal away from it.

Taal's impact against the table rocked the four visitors.

"Into the TARDIS! Quick!"

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham didn't need to be told twice.

"Stop their ship!" the Captain shouted. "Don't let it leave!"

The engineering crew of Aged acted to seal the engineering deck. Several operated control panels that connected their engine to the TARDIS.

The black and blue-steel machines surrounding the ship's heart hummed to life like a rising hurricane. Star-like activation lights blossomed over their surfaces as the machineries that contained the black hole began tapping its energy.

"Captain," Taal shouted, "they aren't our enemies! Don't do this!"

Taal tensed and, with all his strength, and off from the table and away from Maltik. He slammed into Culdyre and pushed her back before more pseudopods grappled him. Dragged back, the giant wolf's digitigrade legs sank into Maltik's depths.

Kodin stood, shakily: hand pressed to the base of her jaw where her lower horn used to be.

"So, you're disobeying commands again? Like last time?" Culdyre demanded.

"If it means saving lives, then yes!"

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor deadlocked the entry and activated defenses. The four watched the battle over the internal display. A powerful boom shook the TARDIS. In the distance, the cloister bell began to ring.

"Our connection to their black hole: The Aged are trying to engineer a siphon feed!" she exclaimed. Several panels exploded in a shower of sparks. Part of the chameleon circuit, flashing and damaged, lay exposed. The TARDIS shuddered again. "They're trying to steal our external geometries!"

"They can do that?" Yaz asked.

"They'll destroy us in the process but, yes: and they'll have gained a transcendental hull in the process" She raced around the six panels of the console, throwing switches trying to dislodge the intruder in the TARDIS' systems. "But even if they succeed, we know they can't make it. They'll burn up in the Big Bang: spreading themselves across our universe: all of time and space!"

Another boom rocked the TARDIS and, this time, the lights went dim and red. The walls wobbled, momentarily expanding away from the console room's center. Each of them felt a wave of bent space rush through them. The floor and ceiling rippled like a pond.

"It's happening!"

"Okay: no time to spare; gotta break free and dematerialize!" The Doctor frantically worked the controls as power levels fluctuated. "We don't have enough energy," she said. "We need ... to reverse ... the connection!"

"Look!" Ryan shouted.

All eyes turned to the display.

Maltik had consumed Taal with the wolf struggling to escape. Kodin was pleading with Captain Culdyre while the rest of The Aged worked their systems to hack and consume the TARDIS. But it was Taal who Ryan was pointing to.

The wolf struggled and managed to regain his footing. Gradually he drew away from Maltik's core. Step-by-step, he made his way to the other Forerunner's outer edge. Maltik strained against the internal pressure. Taal's strength and claws made the amorphous Aged shudder and convulse. A clawed hand ripped through Maltik's surface. The amorphous Aged kept forming more pseudopods in an attempt to force Taal's limbs back inside. Forerunner Taal was too strong.

With an explosion of gunmetal grey goo, Taal's body burst fully free from Maltik. Maltik exploded: splattering over a wide area. The titanic wolf snarled in an almost feral expression. He ran to the console controlling The Refuge's connection to the TARDIS. A moment later, the hacking attempts stopped.

"What's he doing?"

"Setting us free, Ryan," the Doctor shouted.

"Doctor!" Taal bellowed, "Open your intakes! Now!"

"Taal! I order you to stop!" Tackled by Captain Culdyre, Kodin hit the ground.

"No, Captain," he said. "I was right during the mutiny and I'm right now. We must end our voyage!" He looked at the TARDIS. "Goodbye, Doctor."

"Hang on, fam!" the Doctor shouted.

As Culdyre lunged for Taal, his clawed fingers activated several controls. A burst of light shone from the core of the engineering deck. Across The Refuge's inner ring, hatches opened releasing eons of stored gas and dust. They streamed into the heart of the supermassive black hole, glowing ever-brighter. At the same time, quantum siphons began to drain the differential gravitic energies of the black hole.

"What's he doing?" Graham shouted over the chaos.

"Giving us energy," the Doctor said. "All of it!"

The TARDIS lurched: sparks erupting across the console room. Everything shook as flames sprouted from a dozen, overloaded heat-sinks. Ryan grabbed Yaz as she lost her footing while Graham caught his grandson by his belt. Yaz, steadied, flung her arms around the nearest railing to anchor the three of them.

Interior lights flared as the deep, sonorous wheeze of the TARDIS filled the air like a shriek. Another lurch, another re-centering of gravity, and the outside visual feeds went black. Shaking and screaming into the time vortex, with hours decreasing towards this universe's end, the main TARDIS monitor produced an alert.

[Space-Time Vacuum Pressure: 78.3% (rising)]

[Temporal Collision: Imminent]

[Time to Impact: T-20 Seconds (Relative)]

[Destination: Event Omega]

[Destination: Event One]

[Destination: Event Omega]

[Destination: Event One]

[Destination: Event Omega]

[Destination: Event One]

.

.

.

"It's collapsing!" the Doctor shouted. "We've absorbed the bulk of The Refuge's energy; it's position has been unbalanced ... it's getting consumed!"

On the screen: light erupted. The dark universe of Kek Space lit up again. The massive ship, its technology failing, steadily crumpled in upon its core. The supermassive black hole began to burn and collapse within it. Everything, every bit of The Aged's technology and accomplishments, was consumed in a fiery implosion that seemed to stretch into infinity. But the black hole, itself: it began an accelerated evaporation. Hawking radiation pummelled the TARDIS exterior, adding to its spatial velocity.

Throwing switches, broadcasting her previous modifications to the damaged chameleon circuit, the Doctor induced the TARDIS' exterior dimensions to rapidly collapse. The walls shuddered, threatening to collapse inwards, but held.

"Hang on!"

[Five ... Four ... Three ... Two ... One...]

The roar of creation echoed from beyond the TARDIS exterior. Unparalleled heat and energy rippled through expanding space. A point singularity exploded into three, four, and more dimensions: swallowing up the TARDIS.

The Doctor reversed the flow on the captured energy and funnelled it back into Event One. With a lurch, the TARDIS shot forward in time.

Relative minutes, hours, days, years, and millennia shot by.

"It's the great expansion," the Doctor shouted. "If we can just ... get past ... it...!"

And, then, with a resounding boom, the time vortex fell away, sending the TARDIS spinning out of Event One's whirlpool.

The rocking and shaking began to die down. Internal TARDIS repair systems came online.

Panting, eyes wide but alongside an excited smile, the Doctor shouted in triumph, "We did it!" She shouted. "We're home."

Ryan helped his grandfather to his feet.

"I think," Yaz said, "I think Taal did it."

The Doctor's smile faded. She nodded in agreement. "He did. Yes, he did."

Team TARDIS gathered around the main console and looked upon the young, blazing universe.

"Are they gone, then? The Aged?"

"After an explosion like that?" Graham said to Ryan.

"Yes," the Doctor said. "Sadly, yes."

Team TARDIS was quiet as the energy buffers began expelling excess energy. The date gradually stopped spinning on the main console screen, settling in at 712,500,278 years after Event One. "Not even a billion years old," she said. "Just a baby, really."

Outside, a blaze of intense, blue-white stars filled the darkness. Everywhere were nebulae, bursts of light, and veritable palettes of stellar formation. There was nowhere that was not bursting with energy and the promise of creation. The three joined the Doctor at the console and looked at the young, burgeoning universe around them.

They were quiet for a very long time.

"So," Graham said, breaking the silence. "What now?"

The Doctor let out a deep breath. "Now?" she asked. "Now, we take a break. Maybe even take you to the Eye of Orion. It's relaxing, there." An alert from the console caught her attention. "But, first, I have to trace the malfunction that sent us into Event One in the first place. Once that's fixed, we go ... onwards."

Graham nodded and patted Ryan on his back.

"As long as we can rest, I'm good with that, Doc."

Yaz continued to watch the early universe outside. She almost felt lost in the patterns and colors. It was so different from where they had escaped: the very opposite of nothingness. It was ... everything. Then, eyes focusing, she noticed something; something in the liminal outlines of space.

"Doctor, look..."

"Hmm?"

The Doctor squinted at the display for a long moment. "I'm afraid I don't see anything, Yaz."

"There," she said, pointing. "In the upper right corner."

The Doctor looked closer and exhaled a slow, deep breath.

In the early stars, barely three-hundred-million years old, there was a shape.

An early constellation.

"It's a wolf," Ryan said. "Made of stars."

"It's howling," Graham said.

"Doctor, do you think--?"

"No, Yaz. No I don't," the Doctor replied. "Constellations are due to pareidolia: the mind's tendency to find patterns in random chaos."

"But it looks like..."

"Yaz, think about it. We just happen to be looking in this one direction, from this one part of the universe, at a very exact time. Taal is on our minds. It's coincidence coupled with psychology." She smiled. "Still beautiful, though."

"You don't think part of him, well, made it through?" Graham asked.

"No," she said. But, then, the Doctor paused in thought. "But..."

"But?" Ryan asked.

The Doctor went to the console and flipped several switches and turned some dials. The image of the outside shifted, becoming more of a fine, blue-lined grid overlaying the early stars. The wolf's head was still visible. Attached to it looked like a humanoid body reflected in the gas, plasma, and energy of the universe. Its arms spread out to its sides and up as if ascending to some unseen heaven, above.

"What are we lookin' at, Doc?"

The Doctor breathed, long and low. "The Cosmic Microwave Background," she said. "The patterns from the earliest moments of creation." She paused and thought about it. "I suppose it could be like one of those pin-puzzle boxes you stick your hand into to see its outline on the other side." She sounded ... sad. "I don't know. Maybe, in some way, The Refuge, it's crew, and Taal imprinted on the Big Bang?" She sounded skeptical, but hopeful.

"Leaving a memorial," Yaz said.

The Doctor nodded. "Spread throughout creation for all time."

"I guess they really did leave a mark on our universe," Ryan said.

"That they did, Ryan. That they did."

END