Doctor I Short: The Flight of the TERMAC
The Doctor was finished with his greatest invention. He wiped the sweat off his wrinkled forehead as he put his green cape on over his now dirtied yellow jumpsuit. He picked up a megaphone which he claimed to have also invented, but he had actually just bought it from a shop and painted it silver.
“Gerbert, I’d like you to see my latest invention!”, he screamed through the megaphone, much to the annoyance of Gerbert who put down his newspaper and got up from the Sofa.
Gerbert was another of the Doctor’s inventions, a humanoid robot who to anyone else would appear to be a gorilla with a spherical bronze TV on its head, complete with antenna, but he’s a robot, the Doctor just really didn’t want to ruin his clothing for the sake of housing the robot parts, instead choosing to massacre a gorilla costume to Gerbert’s dissatisfaction.
Gerbert groaned, “What is it Doctor?”. As he spoke, the spherical tv on his head glowed.
The Doctor presented his latest invention, it appeared to be a metallic cylinder, pipes stuck in it pumping a translucent bright pink liquid, the door appeared to be repurposed from one of the older Gallifreyan elevator models where the door opened forward. Wasn’t too hard to find those in junkyards, the doors fell off easily if they were left even slightly open. There was also a ramp leading up to the door, wooden, tacked on at the last minute for no apparent reason, it was nice of him, but neither of the people here needed it.
“That doesn’t tell me anything Doctor, what is it, a bomb?”
“Don’t be so silly Gerbert, it’s my new ship, I’m calling it THE TERMAC!”, he held his hands towards the ceiling, grinning madly.
“What was wrong with that spaceship you made, the Cosmos?” He pointed to the ship in the corner, it looked like what someone in the 1800’s would think a rocket would look like, oddly circular for a rocket, but unlike the TERMAC, the design felt a bit more cohesive.
“Well, answer this, can the Cosmos travel through time!?!”
“Doctor, we’ve been over this, if you want Time travel, just buy a TARDIS already, those things are safer, can this one even disguise itself?”
“Sure. Come on, let’s test it out.”
The 2nd Law of Robotics states that “A robot shall obey any instruction given to it by a human…”, now, the Doctor wasn’t exactly human, but the laws never defined what they meant by human so he obeyed this order anyway. Stepping in, he was amazed, the Doctor had actually managed to replicate the interior of a Tardis, albeit on a smaller scale, if you were in the centre and you swung a cat around by the tail, it would barely not hit the walls, and the console room was the only room. In the middle of the room was a pillar with a computer on it, the back of the pillar opened to reveal a cabinet, used for storage obviously.
“See Gerbert, my invention is better than a TARDIS, you can just input a time, location and boom, it takes you there!”
As he said that, the Doctor slapped the computer, causing the monitor to go off, before flashing “Earth, America, Storage area, November 24, 1971”. The Doctor looked puzzled by this outcome, but it was too late to change it as the TERMAC set off, making a noise akin to if you threw 5 sets of drums off a cliff in real life. Gerbert quickly slammed the door shut, pushing up the handle. He clutched onto it as the ship began to spin, meanwhile the Doctor grabbed onto the pillar in the centre for dear life.
November 24, 1971, the Boeing 727 storage area:
The TERMAC suddenly stopped making noise entirely.
“Well Gerbert,”, the Doctor said, “, we’ve landed. If you could step out of the door please.”
Gerbert wanted to say “But Doctor, I’m not a normal sight on Earth, you know this.”, but unfortunately the 3rd law of robotics states that any attempt at self preservation can’t contradict the 2nd law. Occasionally he thought about how unethical these rules were on a sentient being.
He stepped out of the TERMAC into a room containing several suitcases yet not one light.
“GOOD!”, the Doctor exclaimed before jumping out of the TERMAC. “I was worried I might die, there’s a 1 in a million chance when stepping out of a TARDIS that your insides just collapse and you die, wouldn’t want that happening here... don’t know what the chances are… Right, now we know it works, let’s get back in and go home.”
As soon as the Doctor got in, he noticed that something was very wrong. The lighting was now red, meaning that the TERMAC needed to charge for a rather long time. In anger, he kicked it, saying “Stupid piece of junk, the battery is out, we need to lay low for a bit.”.
Gerbert sat down on the floor, deciding that if he was going to get bored later, he may as well get that started now. The Doctor went back inside of the TERMAC and bought out what appeared to be a large empty picture frame and put it on a wall, suddenly, it appeared as if the part of the wall the picture frame covered wasn't even there, instead leaving a giant hole. The Doctor then grabbed 2 bags of popcorn and a fold up chair, sitting in front of the hole and giving Gerbert a bag.
“I can’t eat, Doctor.”
“I know, I just want you to hold it for me please. Let’s see if anything juicy happens while we wait for the ship to recharge.”
The Doctor and Gerbert were now keenly listening to what people were doing on the airport, Muzak played in the background as they observed the environment, many people were drinking and smoking… Gerbert had heard of drinking before, he wished he could do it sometimes.
“Look over there!”, the Doctor said pointing to a man. He was wearing sunglasses and a black trenchcoat. He had a briefcase and gave a note to a female attendant.
“Reckon he’s asking her out Gerbert?”.
Gerbert just said nothing out of annoyance.
The Doctor tapped the new window, zooming in on the man. The attendant put the note in her pocket, but the man then tapped her arm.
“I’d really like you to read it.”, the man said in an assertive tone.
Annoyed, she rolled her eyes and took the note out of her pocket, reading it as covertly as she could. Her face quickly turned from annoyance, to horror as she turned to the cockpit in an attempt to leave. Why wouldn’t she when the note said “Inside this briefcase is a bomb.”. He snatched back the note, saying “Sit next to me.”.
Reluctantly she complied.
“I don’t think this is what romance looks like Doctor.”, Gerbert said bluntly.
“Oh… it’s the DB Cooper thing… well, Dan Cooper, but DB is what most people call him.”, the Doctor said, mirth turning to anguish turning to a lack of emotion.
They watched as he opened his briefcase, inside sat 8 glass cylinders, a red electricity bolt connecting the top of the tube to the bottom of it. It didn’t quite look like something from the 1970’s, at least as far as the Doctor was concerned. Dan then closed it quickly. While the doctor was thinking about the best course of action, Dan Cooper laid out his demands;
“Right, I want $200,000 in negotiable American currency, four parachutes (two primary and two reserve), oh, and get me a fuel truck standing by in Seattle to refuel the aircraft upon arrival. You can leave now. Oh, and no funny stuff!”
She ran off to the cockpit, never to be seen again.
“So Doctor. We’ve witnessed a bomb threat. How long do we have to stay here?”
The Doctor went inside the TERMAC and then went back out.
“Too long Gerbert, simply too long, we’ll probably have to stay here for I’d say most of his plan…”, the Doctor seemed to be distracted near the end of his sentence.
“What’s wrong Doctor?”
“... He can see us.”, the Doctor pointed towards Dan Cooper, who had turned around. He smiled as he seemed to be waving at the Doctor. The Doctor smacked the inside of the picture frame to confirm that there was still wall there… how could he see them?
“Gerbert, could you analyse him?”
Gerbert started doing that before he was asked, the man seemed human, but his sunglasses seemed to be emitting a signal through the wall. Suddenly, a different flight attendant sat next to Dan, and he smirked before turning around.
“It appears his eyewear has x-ray functionality. That’s not a thing from the 70’s I assume. So, didn’t you say this TERMAC had a way to hide itself? That would help when they unload the cargo, surely…”
The Doctor was suddenly looking forward, but not at anything in particular. He stayed quiet for a while until he went inside of the ship and pulled out a large curtain and cloaked the ship with it. Gerbert looked at all of this, unable to say anything, which in and of itself was saying something. The Doctor was thankful for the silence, getting back in the chair and waiting. Nothing interesting happened after this, nothing can be interesting after this, Dan Cooper didn’t even do anything interesting. Eventually the Hole just became a means by which the Doctor and Gerbert used to stare out of one of the windows at the side of the plane.
“The clouds look nice Doctor.”, said Gerbert. His programming meant that he deleted memories of no use automatically, like him saying that. This was the 15th time he had made that observation about the clouds. The doctor nodded.
“Yes… quite nice.”.
Eventually though, the ship began to land, the Doctor and Gerbert cleaned up their area and hid inside the TERMAC while negotiations were being made, flight plans were being made and remade and changed and ignored and changed and settled on finally, money and parachutes changed hands, and everyone else pretended as if nothing had gone wrong, removing luggage and letting passengers off. The TERMAC was never looked at as something that they needed to get off the plane, it, entirely by accident, blended in quite well. If you weren’t actively looking for it, you couldn’t find it. Unfortunately, there was 1 person actively looking for it once the plane took off.
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Gerbert waited yet again.
“You know Doctor, if I knew I’d be here for this long, I would’ve bought my knitting supplies…”
“You knit?”
Gerbert modded. “Just making a jumper for myself, don’t like just being shirtless all the time.”
“You could’ve asked for one, I would’ve bought it for you…”
The Doctor looked at the monitor, still not turning on. In truth, he didn’t know how long it’d need to charge, and that frightened him… Gerbert noticed this, but chose to say nothing, as he usually did when he noticed the Doctor frightened. In truth, Gerbert didn’t even know how to react to half of the emotions people express, his AI was set to learn this by frequent interaction, a thing he did little of by circumstance. Suddenly, the plane took off again.
“Ok Doctor, they aren’t handling luggage anymore… you want to get out of the TAR- Uh, TERMAC?”
The Doctor looked down at the floor, he handed Gerbert the folding chair.
“I’ll stay in here for a bit if you don’t mind… I need to think about what to do next.”
“I’m probably strong enough to move the TERMAC physically if that’s of any use to you.”
It wasn’t of any used to him, but he smiled at the comment anyway. Gerbert moved towards the door, opening it, only to find that the curtain had slipped off of the ship. In front of him was Dan Cooper, wielding a gun. The gun didn’t appear to be something you could get in the 70’s, maybe it was the exterior being entirely black metal, maybe it was the rectangular muzzle, maybe it was the fact that it fired lasers, whatever it is, it wasn’t from 1970’s Earth.
“Ah, good, just what I hoped for.”, Dan said.
The Doctor jolted towards him confrontationally.
“What would that be hmmmm?”, said the Doctor, his face was stiffer than a sheet of metal.
Dan stepped back, causing the Doctor to get out of the TERMAC, Gerbert following.
“I noticed you looking at us earlier Dan, who are you really?”, the Doctor gazed into the cold blank sunglass-shielded eyes of Dan.
Unphased, Dan neatened up his jacket and explained.
“Well you see, I had heard about this heist all the way in the future year of 2009… AD! I was a great bank robber, real good at it, but Dan Cooper always had the namesake of pulling the greatest heist, I for one was rather sick of this. Then, I saw a vision laid out before my eyes Doctor, one of my own making, go back in time, BE Dan Cooper, my fame, my glory! Ofcourse, I took a few liberties with the description of the events I’ve heard. That briefcase doesn’t have a bomb in it, you might recognise it as-“
“We don’t recognise it.”, said the Doctor.
“Well… it’s a Time Trap, it draws in Machines to roughly your location and drains their battery essentially, don’t worry, I can give it back. Now, I need you to take me back to August 7th 2009 AD with all the money and in London using your TARDIS-“
“ACTUALLY, it’s the TERMAC good sir, I invented it.” The Doctor wrapped his cape around his shoulders, a bit too proud.
“I DON’T CARE, do it or I shoot.”, Dan was getting rather annoyed, losing any amount of composure he had. Rather contradictory to his previous suave demeanour, Dan actually had a rather short fuse.
“No.”, the Doctor pushed him, he was surprisingly strong for being so old.
Dan fell to the ground, dropping the gun. The Doctor picked it up and hit him on the head with it.
“Gerbert, could you pick him up and then take him to that bit at the end of the plane?”
Gerbert was confused by this but he picked Dan up and did as told. The Doctor pushed a button, causing a path to jut downwards into the cloudy sky. One of the parachutes, filled with money, slid down this slide into the abyss below.
“Ok now let go Gerbert. I wouldn’t normally advocate murder, but he has to jump.”
“I can’t, 1st law of Robotics says I can’t kill.”
The Doctor scratched his head, he was rather confused by this statement. “Why are you operating under the 3 laws of robotics Gerbert, those are borderline unethical to have for something as sentient as you!”
“Didn’t you program me this way?”
The Doctor suddenly got nervous, beads of sweat dropping to his brow.
“Ok, so… I didn’t program you. I found a card with your program at a junkyard. When we get home I’m getting rid of those systems!”
“Ok, so Doctor, just deactivate me and I should collapse to the floor, letting him go.”
The Doctor deactivated Gerbert, causing him to crumple to the ground and Dan to fall onto the land below. He reactivated Gerbert before picking up the briefcase. He kicked the TERMAC.
“Stupid hunk of junk, when I get home I’ll scrap it all maybe I’ll buy a TARDIS afterall.”
“Would this help?”, Gerbert asked, picking up another parachute filled with money.
The Doctor thought to himself what he could buy with that money, granted he’d have to get it converted to Gallifreyan currency…
“Maybe not to buy the TARDIS, we can have fun Gerbert.”
Gerbert and the Doctor walked into the ship. They both felt somehow happy about what had transpired today, despite how little happened. This thought would stay with the Doctor up until he decided to get a TARDIS. The money stayed around, he couldn’t get it converted. When he finally obtained his TARDIS, it would stay in the back somewhere, just a communal pool of money to use on adventures, reminding him of this day.
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