Spring Cleaning, Round 2 [Backdated to just after podpop]

[fantastix]

Who: The Doctors, their assistants and friends, some visitors [Open], and the Master.
Where: The TARDIS, the blue police box located in the Hangar.
Summary: Somebody's made a mess of the old ship. The Doctors are very unhappy. Time to dig in and clean up! Also, there's some necessary hashing-out of titles and ownership between three men who happen to be the same person. And a bit of a problem arises...
Warnings: Possibly mild swearing on Nine's part.


The Doctor and his immediate successor with the long coat had run straight from the Observation Deck when they'd learned where the TARDIS was and gotten their bearings. They'd been whisked through the uncomfortable transport tubes, spilled into an arsenal of ships, and been left to search. Luckily, as diminished as their abilities were, they could still sense the old girl. It wasn't long before she was found.

They wasted no time in opening the door, winding up in a console room that could never fit inside the seemingly small exterior of the police box without some serious dimensional shifting. It was a wide space, well-lit, but definitely not the room the two new arrivals were used to.

Here, they'd finally find this other Doctor the other crew members have told them so much about. And with any luck, they'll have some answers too.

Comments

[makeherblue]

"Lovely name" The Doctor finally gave Fuu back her hand. He cocked his head, almost birdlike, to glance at the origami gift and smiled as he reached down to take it, balancing it in his palm. "Perfect. Cranes are always useful, you know."

In other words, thank you, Fuu Hououji. The Doctor was gentle with the origami crane as he half-turned to follow her gaze toward the TARDIS. He'd heard about how the TARDIS had opened her doors during the SHODAN mess and he had to say, while it was a bit...alarming that anyone could just walk in, he had to say she was proud of her too.

"The TARDIS has a mind of her own," the Doctor's expression didn't betray his experiences back with the Sobek when this had been going on in Stacy. He continued to smile, giving the TARDIS's paneling a fond pat. "Old girl probably wanted to save you, so you should probably thank her, not me."

[monster_san]

"Ah, thank you," said Fuu at the compliment, watching the man inspect her gift. He did have a rather curious way of moving. She was glad that the gift was well-receive, though--it had been hard to figure out what could be suitable for such a service.

If this had been any other type of spaceship, Fuu would have been astonished at the thought of the TARDIS being, well, alive. As it was, she turned to the open door and bowed to it. "In that case--thank you very much, Miss TARDIS." Now she was more curious than ever about the spaceship. "I'm glad to know that one of the intelligences aboard Stacy would rather see us alive than dead."

[makeherblue]

The Doctor beamed as Fuu bowed at the TARDIS -- the TARDIS must have felt flattered, what with her giving a pleased sort of hum from within the console room. The orange light spilling onto the floor flickered. Miss TARDIS! If the TARDIS could talk, he'd never hear the end of it! Miss TARDIS! That'll probably put the old girl in a good mood and maybe she'll behave next time he needs to find his favorite slippers next time.

"I heard about SHODAN," the Doctor said with a frown. "Nasty AI, made Stacy look like a saint from what I heard."

[monster_san]

Fuu tried to restrain her reaction to the TARDIS' response to a nonplussed blink. She was mostly successful--suddenly, she was reminded of Clef's summoned creatures. I wonder how Miss TARDIS would get along with Fyula? she wondered briefly, before the Doctor's next remark took her mind away from that subject.

"She was terrible," Fuu said with a grave nod. "It makes me wonder if there are any more AIs like her hiding within the ship's systems, to be honest."

[makeherblue]

Terrible was one way of putting it: personally he was going with horrid, irritable, mean and probably some others that weren't coming to mind right this second, but "terrible" was also perfectly functional.

"Could be. Probably ought to run a diagnostic or even just a good-old fashioned snoop." The Doctor lowers his voice conspiratorially to Fuu. "Sometimes I don't think even Stacy knows what's knocking about inside her!"

This was the Doctor aiming for polite to a ship.

[monster_san]

If the subject had been different, the Doctor's theatrical attitude would have made Fuu smile. Unfortunately, his suspicions rather matched her own. "I think the same thing," she said, nodding. "Unfortunately, it seems that her systems have been heavily damaged since she was commissioned, with mutinies and pirates... there are at least three AIs that can control her, and I worry that there are more." And while it was hard to imagine worse than SHODAN, Fuu was quite certain it was no impossibility.

"There is the Neuropathy department, but it must be even more difficult to try and repair something that's as much brain as it is computer."

[makeherblue]

The Doctor nods. Yes, monists and pirates and rebels and never-do-wells probably have that sort of effect on an AI not ready for that sort of thing. Stacy strikes him as the sort to be very by the book, as by the book as an AI can be, and that was before you counted in the fact she might have three plus other AIs vying for control.

“And that’s even assuming she’ll let anyone get close enough to do repairs these days.” The Doctor lowered his voice, as if he was talking about Stacy’s unfortunate choice in decorating. “She seems like the grumpy sort, you know. So! Repairs won’t do it. Nudges and pokes – I’ve found – tend to be just the thing in situations like this.”

Also jiggery-pokery but since Fuu looks like a human, he probably shouldn’t assume she knows anything about that or has a degree or even a Jiggery Pokery Proficiency Certificate, if she’s anything like Jamie McCrimmon.

[monster_san]

Fuu raised her eyebrows and then nodded--she hadn't even thought of that issue. Of course a sentient system like Stacy might have the ability to shut out attempts to repair or modify her systems; Fuu reflected that she still hadn't managed to change her way of thinking to encompass all the potential difficulties of a living spaceship.

"From what I've read, I think the Warden personality would definitely qualify as 'grumpy,'" she said with one of those awkwardness-covering smiles. "But at least I can understand that principle from program coding. Usually it's the smallest-looking errors that are the most frustrating, so it's often counterproductive if you drastically change things."