Lost Our Minds |5| The Ascension

Chapter Nine: The Power Of Three

Brian rang the doorbell eagerly, clutching a small black cube in his hand. On the first floor, Rory and Amy poked their heads out of their bedroom window, having just woken up.

"Dad, it's half past six in the morning," Rory complained.

"What are you doing lying around?" Brian asked, bewildered. "Haven't you seen them?" Amy and Rory looked around to see the street peppered with cubes.

Minutes later, they were down at street level, still in their pyjamas, examining one of the cubes. "What are they?" Rory asked.

Brian shrugged. "Nobody knows. They're everywhere."

"Well, where have they come from?" Amy asked, before frowning as she glanced towards the children's play area on the corner. "Wait... Doctor! Angel!"

The two looked round from the top of a climbing frame, both looking puzzled. "Well, invasion of the very small cubes," McKenzie said. "That's new."

***

"All absolutely identical," the Doctor was saying later, once everyone had got dressed and gathered in the TARDIS. "Not a single molecule's difference between them. No blemishes, imperfections, individualities."

"What if they're bombs?" Brian suggested. "Billions of tiny bombs? Or transport capsules maybe, with a mini robot inside. Or deadly hard drives. Or alien eggs? Or messages needing decoding. Or they're all parts of a bigger whole, like jigsaw pieces that need fitting together."

McKenzie, whose eyes had widened with every suggestion, clapped him on the shoulder. "Very thorough, Brian. Very, very thorough. Well done." She turned on her heel. "Stay here. Watch the cubes, yell if anything happens."

Amy and Rory ran after them as they left the TARDIS. "Hey, is this an alien invasion? Because that's what it feels like." Amy caught at the Doctor's arm.

"There couldn't be life-forms in every cube, could there?" Rory asked.

The Time Lord's brow furrowed. "I don't know. And I really don't like not knowing." He shook himself. "Right, we need to use your kitchen as a lab. Cook up some cubes. See what happens."

"Right," Rory nodded, checking his watch. "I'm due at work."

McKenzie blinked. "What? You've got a job? Wicked!"

"Of course I've got a job." He paused. "What do you think we do when we're not with you?"

She shrugged. "I thought probably the same kind of thing we do when you're not with us." Rory tilted his head in concession as she nudged the Doctor with her hip.

"Oi, behave!" He smirked across at her. "I'm busy!"

She snorted. "Never stopped you before."

Amy rolled her eyes fondly. "I write travel articles for magazines and Rory heals the sick."

"My shift starts in an hour." Rory frowned, looking to his wife. "You don't know where my scrubs are?"

"In the lounge, where you left them," she replied. He nodded, leaving to get dressed.

"Oh, the Ponds," the Doctor sighed. "With their house and their jobs and their everyday lives. The journalist and the nurse. Long way from Leadworth."

"We think it's been ten years," Amy told them. "Not for you, or Earth, but for us. Ten years older. Ten years of you, on and off."

McKenzie smiled. "Three hundred years for us. Look at you now, eh? All grown up."