The End of the Universe (Doctor Who fanific)

Chapter 2

The three Doctors looked at each other in some confusion before they all broke out into arguing at once. Seven found himself struggling to even be heard over the chaos..

"Now what is the likelihood of me deciding to come here on a whim, and you being here at exactly the same time?" Five asked exasperatedly.

Four laughed, "Why, incredibly high. There's only so much room at the end of the universe, you know."

"I know that!" Five snapped. "I mean, here, in this exact spot. Don't you think we should all be flying next to each other? Instead, we all ended up right here."

"I think-" Seven started.

"Well, of course we did. I have a TARDIS, you have a TARDIS, he has a TARDIS. It stands to reason they would all find each other, lock onto each other's gravity. Especially since they're all the same TARDIS," Four said.

"I said-" Seven said pointedly.

"Why would three of us even decide to come here?" Five asked. "It's not like there's anything to see."

"Well, then, why did you come here?" Four asked. "Do I really turn into this?" he added in an aside to Seven, without waiting for an answer.

"I think we've been called here," Seven burst out. Both Four and Five stopped and stared at him.

"What, you mean, like a homing beacon of some sort?" Five asked.

Seven shrugged, "I don't know. It could just be the TARDIS calling out to others like her. It is lonely out here," His voice grew wistful, and the other two looked at him.

"Well, that doesn't explain what you're doing here," Five said flatly, as if that explained everything. "You got here first, what were you following?"

"It's just a theory! I don't know what we're all doing here!" Seven said, his eyes wide in the innocent expression that fooled so many of his enemies. Somehow he doubted it would fool himselves.

"Let's just try and remember, shall we?" Five said, his voice taking on a calming tone. "What were we all doing when we decided to come here?"

Four sighed heavily, "Oh, what does it matter? I'm here now." Both Five and Seven watched him in bemused patience and he sat up, "Fine, fine. I was, now let's see, I had just come from the water gardens of the Arcadian Prince, and I was on my way to...oh, yes, Macchu Picchu in the fourteenth century."

"Oh, the sunrises are lovely in the fourteenth century," Five said with a smile. At a look from Seven he looked down. "Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes. I'd just left Brighton, I believe it was the 1910s and I was about to check in on an old friend in the Centauri system. And then, I don't know, I just thought I'd take a little detour. I've always been curious about it, the end of the universe." His voice became dramatic and Four sat up.

"Yes, exactly! It was a whim. I have those, you know."

"And I," Seven said loudly, because they were talking over him again, "had just finished having tea with Raphael, and the thought just...came into my head. To come here. And I don't have whims,' he added with a pointed look at Four.

"Good, you shouldn't. Nasty, inconvenient things," Four agreed with his wicked grin. Seven rolled his eyes at Five, who gave him the equivalent of a shrug in his expression.

The TARDIS lurched again and the three of them clung to the console warily. "We still don't know what that is," Five said.

"If I'm right," Seven mused aloud. "It's a signal."

"Hello!" a voice said brightly, whirling around, face falling when he recognized the three other occupants of the TARDIS. "Well, I was about to ask you who managed to get into the TARDIS, but I already know the answer. Why? Because it's your TARDIS too. Hello, I'm the Doctor!"

The new arrival jumped around behind the other three, his energy apparently matching the youthfulness of his outward appearance. Four and Five looked at Seven, silently asking if he recognized the newcomer, to which he shook his head. None of them had ever seen him before.

"Ah, of course, you don't recognize me, well, why should you? I'm older than you lot, ages older," the new Doctor all but bounced up and stood up straight, an effect that only called attention to how awkward he was. "I'm the Eleventh. And you are the Fourth, Fifth and Seventh, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm generally not. Sorry, I have to remind myself; it's all run together a bit now."

"I'm sorry, did you say Eleven?" Five asked incredulously.

"Aha, never thought you'd make it that far, did you? Don't worry, I remember it all, and I'm as amazed as you are," Eleven said. "But the question is, what are we all doing here?"

"Well, we think we may have been called here," Seven said.

"We all had the same thought, completely randomly, to come to the end of the universe," Five said with a smile, starting to enjoy the challenge.
Eleven leaned against the TARDIS console, watching them carefully. "So you think something called us all here across time and space, from wherever we were?"

Five nodded, "It may even have been an accident. The TARDIS, searching for some other life form, her signals boosted by time folding across itself."
Eleven nodded, "So, a TARDIS sends a beacon across space, a perfectly ordinary beacon, searching for some remnant of her home planet at the end of the universe, and that brought us here?"

"Thought waves!" Four burst out.

"Don't you see? The TARDIS is connected to our thought patterns."

"The signal probably wasn't even physical," Seven said. "It was only in our minds!"

"Can't be," Eleven said, shaking his head.

"Well, why not?" Five asked.

"Because I definitely didn't receive a thought beacon from any other TARDIS, and believe me, I would have known," he said, more quietly, a weight seeming to settle on him.

"So what are you doing here then?" Seven asked.

"I don't know," Eleven answered. "I was full-clothes bathing on the moons of Astraketh when I just thought it might be interesting to see the end of the universe. That's all, I swear."

The TARDIS caused a distraction then by suddenly switching between two wall colors. They looked up in alarm.
"The time streams are starting to twist," Five said

"Hmm," Seven said in agreement.
"You haven't changed the TARDIS very much, have you?" he said to Eleven. "It seems to be getting confused."

The younger-older Doctor suddenly looked guilty, "Well, I may have, er, changed some things around. You didn't think I was going to stay with all that white, now did you?"

"A typewriter? What do you need that for?" Five asked, as the TARDIS switched again and the console arrangement changed, new mismatched controls appearing among the older, sleeker ones. Including, apparently, a typewriter.

"Typewriters are cool," Eleven said, holding his head high.

"The point, Doctors, is that we all seem to have come here, and I'd like to know why," Seven said, and the others quickly quieted down. "Any suggestions?"