Not so much running to do

Amy Pond was bored.

This was one of the first times she had been truly bored in quite a while, usually there was never a dull moment with The Doctor, whether they were rescuing giant space whales or running from statues that can move just a tiny bit slower than the speed of light, she was never out of things to do.

Even when The Doctor was doing maintenance on the TARDIS (a task that seemed to take many, many, many hours) , there was still plenty of things to do (swimming, fashion shows in the three storey wardrobe, and enough hyper-vodka to drown a small nation, to name just a few). But no, this time it was more than TARDIS maintenance- in fact thinking about it, The Doctor hadn't really explained what he was doing, he had just seen something on one of the TARDIS’s many scanners, mumbled something about timey-wimey things, and told her to amuse herself for a while.

But she had decided it had been “a while” for four hours now, and enough was enough, so she marched into the control room with a look on her face bordering between “amused” and “homicidal”, and exclaimed “I am quite tired of sitting around twiddling my thumbs, and wish you would stop lollygagging about so we could jolly well get going, what what!” I am, of course, paraphrasing as I fear what she actually exclaimed would offend some of my readers.

But when she saw The Doctor’s face, all anger was gone from her complexion, for the look on the Time Lord’s face was one she had only seen once or twice before.

Piles of paper with complicated Gallifreyan script covering every inch, lay scattered about where he sat on the TARDIS’ floor and, although Amy knew it had only been a maximum of seven hours he had been doing... whatever it was he was doing, he looked as if he had been at work for several weeks.

But none of this is what caused Amy to rush over to his side, no, she had seen The Doctor tired before, but the look of defeat marring his childlike face was one that so rarely was seen on the visage of this mighty man, that Amy was now clinging to him more for her sake than his.

“Doctor”

She said quietly.

“What’s wrong?”

The Doctor looked surprised for a moment, as if he had only just noticed her presence, but his face quickly fell back to sadness.

“I performed every scan the TARDIS is capable of performing and there is no way it could be anything else”

Amy looked bemused.

“What could be nothing else?”

The Doctor let out a rare sigh.

“Well, if there isn't a malfunction in the TARDIS, and believe me, there isn't, then ‘It’ is a gap in the fabric of space-time, leading into another dimension”

“... And I’m guessing that’s a bad thing, then?”

Amy asked.

The Doctor jumped up and started an explanation.

“Yes. That is a very bad thing, do you want to know why?”

The redhead started to vocalize an affirmative response, but The Doctor cut her off

“Rhetorical question, Pond. The reason it’s a bad thing, is because I sealed up all the holes in space-time a few years back. Travel between dimensions can get... messy”

A dark look crossed the eye’s of the near-immortal man, and for just a second, it looked like every day in his nine hundred year life span was piled on him at once, it was only there for a second, but it was enough for Amy to catch it.

“Anyway...”

The Doctor continued.

“So yes, I sealed them all so nothing could go through, believe me you don’t want dimensions bleeding into each other, but now we have to go through this one... because literally ANYTHING could be on the other side of that thing, it could contain anything from a planet made from cotton candy, to a race of galaxy sized space-creatures that eat supernovas sandwiches for breakfast... and the TARDIS can’t scan through realities... so we have to go in and see what’s what. Any questions?”

Amy raised her hand slowly, but realised the stupidity of raising one’s hand when you are the only person being asked, and voiced her queries.

“So... how many realities are there?”

A look of comprehension passed across the time lord’s face.

“Ah, of course, should have explained that first, really. A new reality is formed when an important decision is made, one for each possible outcome, but all completely separate from each other, for example, there is a reality in which young Amelia Pond never went out to investigate that strange blue box that landed in her back garden, never met me, never traveled in time, never helped me save the universe... perhaps the right word is ‘was’ a reality. Nobody’s ever counted, but there must be billions of billions of billions of them. Anything else?”

Amy thought for a second.

“Will there be another me in this place?”

The Doctor feigned fear for a moment.

“Two Amy Ponds, I’m not sure the universe could cope”

Both shared a short laugh before The Doctor got back to explaining.

“But yes, there could be, or it might be that the human race never existed in the first place. But if you do meet yourself, don’t be alarmed if she is drastically different from this version of you.”

“Wait, wouldn't the universe... explode... or something, if we so much as made eye contact?”

Amy asked, only half joking.

The Doctor nearly looked offended.

“Really Amy? You've been travelling with me for... how long? And you still think things like that? But no, the universe would not explode, two different time streams, two entirely different Amy Ponds”

A short silence filled the TARDIS, offset only by the gentle whuzzing of machinery, before The Doctor spoke once more with a soft look on his face.

“One other thing, Pond. Going into this new reality... it’s going to be very dangerous- and I mean dangerous by my standards, so... you don’t have to come along...”

The statement was left hanging.

And then laughter echoed off the wall of the TARDIS, as The Doctor’s face brightened considerably.

“Very funny, raggedy man. Now... I don’t think I have any more questions, and there’s an entire new reality to explore, so...”

The Doctor cracked a huge grin, before pulling down a lever on the TARDIS’s control panel, and giving his infamous battle-cry.

“GERONIMO!!!”

                                                                                       --- NMR---

In the small village of Ponyville, one cerulean pegasus was just dropping off to sleep in her cloud bed, when her sharp ears picked up a faint sound.

But she somehow felt this sound was... something more, like this single sound was defying more laws of physics than Pinkie Pie on a good day.

That is, she would have been feeling this, but she was too tired to care,  so she finally dropped off into a much needed sleep.

She would have a very busy day tomorrow, after all.