kalibex

IIRC, someone thought calling the following 'Temporal Grace' would be...punishingly Cute. Might've been Will Howells. Dammit, whatever happened to all those adwc old-timers from back in '96-98? Where are they today?

Untitled Story
(2,202 words)
1998-99

Grace Holloway's head appeared around the living room door
jamb, her hands occupied with fitting a pearl stud earring into her
left earlobe. "Oh, Kevin..." she said, peering distractedly at the
apparition. "Just ignore it; honey; it'll go away soon." She
disappeared from view.

Kevin Adams-Holloway, fairly self-contained at eight, stared
after his mother, then, clutcing his bowl of popcorn, turned
back to look at the glowing figure again.

The faint form was standing right in front of the TV, blocking
his view. He sighed, then walked over to the sofa and plunked
himself down on it and stared at the figure. It was a middle-aged
man, dressed in robes of green and yellow, with a funny hat like
a hood, and a wingy thing sticking up behind his head.

Well, Mom was right; it'd fade away, like the others. Sometimes
they were men, sometimes women. They usually wore fancy clothes
with bright colors, and just stood there, or walked around a bit,
disappearing through walls, like ghosts. Mom said it probably had
something to do with someone she once knew called 'the Doctor'.
But she knew *lots* of doctors. *She* was a doctor. Dad was
a doctor, too.

Mom had said 'the Doctor' was from another planet.

Kevin shook his head stubbornly. Mom told a lot of funny stories.

He looked up at the figure again. This one was different. It was
brighter, and instead of walking around like they usually did, it was
looking straight at him with a weird look on its face.

Kevin gawped. The ghost took a hesitant step towards him.

"Mooom! He's lookin' at me!"

Startled, Grace reappeared in the doorway, her earrings now both
in. "What, honey?" She advanced into the room and strode towards
her son.

He turned to look at her, his strawberry blond hair picking up
gleaming highlights from the glowing ghost. "He's looking at me.
He sees me!"

*This* was new. The apparitions had never before taken any
notice of any of the residents of the house, merely moving about
randomly and soon disappearing. "It's okay, Kevin; I'm here."
She sighed. "And just when Daddy and I were going to go see
La Boheme. It figures."

"What figures?" Kevin asked, relaxing now that reinforcements
had arrived.

"That something weird would happen. Murphy's Law: Whatever
can go wrong, will. Go wrong."

The Time Lord was an Arcalian, Grace noted, recognizing the
colors: green and yellow. He was peering at both her and Kevin,
his face twisted and his mouth moving as if he were talking, though
they heard nothing.

Prompted by an obscure impulse, Kevin extended the popcorn
bowl in offering.

The Arcalian ghost clearly followed the movement. He stared
at the bowl, then up at Kevin with a subtle expression of horror
on his face.

Grace blinked. Either her eyes were deceiving her, or he was
becoming more solid. No, he *was*! And the glow was fading.
Something inside Grace tingled in warning. "Kevin, give me
your hand."

Her son looked at her curiously.

"Now, Kevin! We've got to get out of here!"

At the urgency in her voice, he dropped the bowl of popcorn
and practically threw himself at her. She caught him up, wrapping
her arms around him, just in time to
feel
a
wave
of

dizziness

Her eyes deceived her, or else her brain refused to properly
process the input from her eyes. For few seconds, she saw nothing
describable. It was...

Whatever it was, it wasn't important.

Grace Holloway came back to her senses to find herself on her
knees, clutching her son. His face was buried against her front,
his own arms wrapped fiercely around her. "It's all right; I'm here,"
she soothed, rocking back and forth.

She became aware that someone nearby was muttering. Looking
up, she saw that the Arcalian, large as life and fully present, was
leaning over a desk, pressing something and talking urgently.
Grace glanced around. They were no longer in the house, but rather,
an elegant room of Art Deco inspiration, made of what looked like
a green-colored wood.

Grace sighed. They had to be on Gallifrey. She looked to the
Time Lord behind the desk and tuned into what he was saying.

A few moments later, she blinked. She couldn't understand a word.
"Hello; can you understand me?" she asked.

The man paused in his flurry of activity to stare at them. His
mouth opened, and a string of nonsense syllables poured out.

Grace stared, perturbed. Then she groaned. "Of course! No
TARDIS -- no translation!"

The man turned back to his task. A few moments later, a door
in the wall behind them burst open, disgorging a brace of
brightly-garbed Panopticon guards. Grace winced. From her past
experience, the Time Lords so seldom had anything to actually do
that they tended to over-respond to emergencies.

Like now. Grace glared up at the guards surrounding them as
several stasers were pointed in their direction. Kevin came up for
air and stared, his eyes enormous.

"Stop it!" Grace exclaimed. "We're not dangeous -- can't you see
you're scaring him?!"

At this, the guards consulted among themselves. One broke away
from the others and came forward, extending a hand.

Grace's gaze followed the arm up to the face of its owner. An
oval, determined face, set in lines of duty. Grey eyes, a thatch of
brown hair peeking out from the red guard's cap.

But not unkind. She took the hand, and was prompted to her
feet, Kevin all the while clinging to the skirt of her cobalt silk
dress.

"Hello; I'm Doctor Grace Holloway. You can't understand me,
can you?"

The guard looked from her to Kevin, then back at his fellows.
There was more melliflurous Gallifreyan amongst the guards.
Behind the desk, the Arcalian said something in a querulous tone.

The guards all bowed their heads slightly in acknowledgement,
then formed a phalanx around her and Kevin, and began to usher
them out.

"Visiting time's over, I see," she muttered, annoyed at the abrupt
dismissal. Must be a bureaucrat. You could always tell a bureaucrat,
no matter where you went. Reminded her of Swift.

The fellow who had helped her up had heard her. He glanced at
her speculatingly, then displayed the ghost of a smile.

***

They were shown to a tastefully appointed room decorated in cream
and peach with accents of a blond wood, and left there. The friendly
guard gave Grace a reassuring smile as the squad left.

She glumly tried the door. It wouldn't open, of course.

Kevin stood in the middle of the room, staring around at his
mother as she strode back and forth, examining the room.
"Mom? Are you okay?"

She grimaced at the anxiety in his voice. "I'm sorry, Kevin --
force of habit." She was automatically checking for alternate exits,
for any obvious spying devices. Ingrained habits left over from
her tenure with the Doctor, years before.

In any case, there was nothing obvious here that could help them.
Not that there was any urgent reason to 'escape', but from her few
visits here with her Gallifreyan friend, she'd developed a healthy
dose of wariness regarding Gallifrey and its residents. They were
a Machiavellian and subtle people, and the thought of being stuck
here, a human on a planet of time-traveling beings that definitely
regarded her kind as 'primitive', did not appeal at *all*.

Grace went to Kevin; knelt down to look him in the eye. "You
all right, hon?"

Kevin looked steadily back. "I-I'm okay, Mom. But where are
we?"

Grace sighed. "On Gallifrey. I was here a few times before."

Her son's eyes widened. "You mean those stories were *real*?"

Grace gave her son a wry look, then reached out to tousle his hair.
"Yes, those stories 'were real'," she said in mock indignation.
"What, you think I made them all up?"

"Well... Yeah."

"Well, you'll learn... Truth is usually stranger than fiction,
kiddo."

***

Two figures stood over a holo-screen, fascinated.

"Observe how she reassures her young," Palix enthused. "That
is classic primate mothering behavior! Did you ever think you'd
get to see that right *here*, on Gallifrey?"

Fepsin rolled his eyes. "No, Palix; I've never been particularly
interested in primate behavior. What I'm interested in now is
figuring out what language they're speaking, so we can start
communicating with them and find out how they got here."

"Well... It's obviously Terran. But the time period..."

"Yes; that's a little harder to pin down..." The Xeno-scholar
peered at the computer screen. It was one of the three-dimensional
holographic displays that had come into vogue recently; protuberances
occasionally arced out, emphasizing important data that was scrolling
by next to the view of the two humans.

The computer took a full *twenty* nanos to analyze and date
the humans' vocal utterances. A *ping* sounded as the translation
began to roll forth from the speaker.

"I swear," muttered Fepsin, "you always lose computation speed
with these souped-up models."

On the projection suddenly appeared an interesting piece of data
that had the two scholars raising their eyebrows at each other.

***

Grace looked up quickly as the door to the room slid open. A
middle-aged Time Lord, in fairly simple brown robes without
skull cap or collar, stood framed in the doorway, his hands folded
in front of him. Behind him were two guards.

She placed a steadying hand on Kevin's shoulder.

The Time Lord smiled and stepped forward into the room,
leaving the guards behind as the door closed.

"Hello!" he said amiably. "A pleasure to meet you, Doctor
Holloway. I believe we have an acquaintence in common -- the
Doctor."

Why didn't this seem like an auspicious beginning? "Oh?" she
said lightly, then blinked. He was speaking English--

Or she was understanding Gallifreyan again. Well, it didn't matter.

"You know the Doctor well?" she inquired politely.

"Know him well? We were in the Academy together!"

Grace resisted the impulse to roll her eyes. Everyone who 'knew'
the Doctor seemed to say that. His notorious record had gained
him an underground celebrity amongst his peers, and although he'd
always outwardly effected to not notice the underhanded admiration
when she'd traveled with him, she'd had the definite feeling he
enjoyed it.

The Time Lord advanced forward into the room to greet them. "I
am Scholar Fepsin," he told them. "As I said, a pleasure to meet you."
He extended a hand, and Grace shook it. "And this would be...?"

"This is my son, Kevin," Grace said. Kevin peered up at the taller
man with the narrow face and the brown hair as he gingerly extended
his own hand for a shake.

"Well, my goodness" Fespin said cheerfully. "your progeny..."
He gestured towards the cream-colored couch standing in the corner
of the room. "Let's have a seat, Doctor Holloway."

Grace allowed herself to be prompted over to the divan, Kevin
sticking closely to her as a shadow. *While the interrogation begins,
you mean*, she thought, sitting down and arranging her skirt neatly.
Kevin sat down next to her, on the side away from the Time Lord.

"So, what brings you to Gallifrey, Doctor Holloway? Are we to
expect the Doctor soon?"

Grace's eyes narrowed. "Why don't you tell *me*?"

Fepsin's face went momentarily blank. "Pardon?"

"I didn't come here because I wanted to, and I doubt the Doctor
had anything to do with it -- I haven't seen him for years. So the
question is, who arranged to bring me and my son *here*?" Her
right arm went protectively around Kevin's shoulder where he
sat wedged in between her and the arm of the couch.

The Time Lord blinked at her vehemence. "Doctor Holloway,
if you could perhaps start by telling me exactly *what* happened...
And please, try to include as many details as you can remember."

Grace sighed, and told him about the strange, momentary
apparitions, at first no more than quick shapes seen out of the
corner of the eye, that had begun appearing several weeks ago,
noticed only by herself and Kevin. Actually, Steven had barely
missed seeing one one evening. Inured to strangeness by her
time traveling with the Doctor, she'd reassured her son and
husband that it was likely nothing too serious.

*I should have known better than to just ignore it,* she thought,
chagrined. But what could I do? *Hello, police? There's a shadowy
figure from the planet of the Time Lords in my hallway. Please
come and kick him out.* She'd half-expected the Doctor to show
up, and had, frankly, spent several days in a happy anticipatory daze.

But he hadn't arrived, and she'd given a mental shrug of
disappointment and gotten on with her life, as the apparitions'
appearences had dropped off sharply. They hadn't seen any for
three days in a row, and she'd thought they were gone for good.

Until tonight.

Her narrative finished, Grace looked expectantly at their Time
Lord host. He sat, musing, for several long moments. "A singular
event," he said then, looking up at her. "I shall have to consult
with my fellow scholars."

Grace gave a bright, false smile. "Fine. Great. In the meantime,
how about getting someone to drop us off back home? June 5th,
2010. 8:30 p.m., Pacific Standard Time."

Scholar Fepsin blinked. "Doctor Holloway, I assure you that
all is being done that can be," he assured her placidly. "But it
won't do to rush into any precipitate actions without a sufficient
understanding of the situation."

"I understand it completely -- we're here, and we don't want to
be! Now why don't you send us home? After all, it's just ten minutes
away by TARDIS."

Fepsin stood up. "Doctor, I'm afraid it isn't that simple. I will
be in touch again when I know more." He moved towards the door.
Grace got up quickly. "You're just going to leave us here? You
can't do that! Wait!"

But he could, and he did. The door slid open and then shut again
on his departure, even as Grace was striding angrily forward. She
stopped, her fists clenched in frustration. "Oooh! That... that
*bureaucrat*!"

Kevin had been silent throughout the entire visit, but now he spoke.
"Are we in trouble, Mom?"

"Oh, Kevin..." She turned back to him. "I don't know, honey,"
she admitted. "I just wish they'd let us go back."

"Are we going to have to stay here? Will Daddy come here, too?"

Grace ran a hand through her hair. "I don't know."

-----

Worth Continuing? (Damn right I'm fishing for a little reassurance - since I haven't even looked at this one since '98-'99...)