Struggling To Adjust (Book Three of The Bad Wolf Chronicles)

Daleks In Manhattan

Jessie poked her head out of the TARDIS and grinned when she recognized the setting. "Ha ha!" she cheered, dancing out and spinning. "I can smell the saltwater! Home sweet home!"

"Where are we?" Martha asked as she came out as well.

"Ah, smell that Atlantic breeze!" the Doctor sighed, coming out and sniffing. "Nice and cold. Lovely." He looked over the top of the TARDIS and grinned. "Martha, have you met my friend?"

Jessie laughed when she saw the Statue of Liberty towering above them. "We’re in Manhattan!" she laughed. "Oh, this is great!"

"Is that?" Martha gasped. "Oh my God, that’s the Statue of Liberty!"

"Gateway to the New World," the Doctor told her. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

"That’s so brilliant," Martha said with a grin, looking around. "I’ve always wanted to go to New York! I mean the real New York. Not the new new new new new one."

"Nah," Jessie said with a grin. "Manhattan’s great! STARK Tower, all the shopping . . . " She swallowed. "STARK Tower."

"You know Tony Stark?" Martha squealed.

Jessie cleared her throat. "Er . . . he wouldn’t recognize me now. I’ve, ah . . . changed a lot since I last saw him." She shook herself and straightened up. "But yeah, the whole new new new new thing. So good they named it twice."

"Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally," the Doctor brought up. "Harder to say twice. No wonder it didn’t catch on."

Jessie giggled. "New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam."

"I wonder what year it is," Martha wondered, "because look." Jessie put on her sunglasses, tilting her head up to see the structure Martha was pointing to. "The Empire State Building’s not even finished yet."

"Work in progress," the Doctor said. "Still got a couple floors to go." Jessie found a newspaper on a bench nearby, and she picked it up, grinning at what was on the top. She went back over to Martha and nudged her, pointing at the date. Both girls grinned. "And if I know my history, that makes the date somewhere around – "

"November 1st, 1930," Jessie and Martha said at the same time.

"You two are getting good at this," the Doctor commented.

Jessie burst out laughing, offering Martha a high-five, which the girl accepted. "And it’s eighty years ago," Martha said, showing the Doctor the newspaper, and he furrowed his eyebrows and mock glared at the two of them. Jessie just held up her hands innocently. "It’s funny, because you see all those old newsreels all in black and white like it’s so far away, but here we are. It’s real. It’s now." Jessie took back the newspaper and looked it over, her eyebrows raising as Martha grinned at the Doctor. "Come on, then, you two. Where do you want to go first?"

"Well," Jessie said slowly, "my old fed instincts are telling me that this is going to be a longer detour than we thought."

The Doctor poked his head over her shoulder, and Martha looked at the article she was looking at. "‘Hooverville Mystery Deepens,’" she read before shaking her head. "What’s Hooverville?"

Jessie pointed off. "That way."

***

"Herbert Hoover," the Doctor explained as they walked through Central Park. "31st President of the USA. Came to power a year ago. Up till then, New York was a boom town. The Roaring Twenties, and then –"

"The Wall Street Crash, yeah?" Martha asked, and Jessie nodded. "When was that? 1929?"

"Yep," Jessie agreed. "The whole economy was wiped out overnight. Thousands of people were unemployed. Suddenly – whoop!" She made a motion with her hands that made both Martha and the Doctor stare at her. "Huddled masses were doubled in number with nowhere to go. So, they all ended up here in Central Park."