1910
Missy stared down at her empty glass. "More? she said, looking pitifully at Romana. "A full account of 1910 is going to require more than that."
"Will it help your tale?" Romana said. "It's not intoxicating to us."
"Fermented correctly it can be," Missy said, grinning at some private thought. "But that's a different story."
"The question isn't really about what happened in 1910, as I see it," Sam said, while they watched Romana refill Missy's glass. "Maybe you should start with what brought you to where 1910 takes place? Mammoth Falls?"
"Yes, Mammoth Falls," Joyce said. "Small town with all the usual small town features."
"It's one of those places between here and there," Jack said. "Never had a reason to stop but one of my instructors at the Academy came from there. Tough old bird."
"Bird, Jack?" Sam said, glaring at him.
"Colonel Muldoon was a very strict instructor," Jack said innocently. "She could detect a practical joke from a thousand feet."
"You get a pass, this time Colonel," Sam said, shaking her head. "This time."
"What is the meaning of bird?" Teal'c said. "Is it not just a flying animal?"
"It's used to designate a full Colonel, like Jack, in the Air Force," Daniel said. "The entomology is interesting..."
"Which you can explain later," Sam said. "I'm sure our guests didn't come here for a culture lesson."
"The only air force involved in your civil war were men convinced that balloons were safe. Unsteerable," Missy said. "But an effective terror weapon in the right hands." She smirked at a private thought.
"Missy, enough stalling," Romana said. "We don't have an infinite amount of time."
"Yeah," Joyce said. "I still have to get home before Christmas, and the longer you take the more it is likely I won't make it."
"You travel in a time machine," Jack said. "Why can't you just go back to the right time?"
"My mother won't appreciate me being a lot older when I get home, than when I left," Joyce said. "Unlike some people," she glared at Missy, "I actually age."
"Just because you have those cheap Furling genes, and not the wonderfulness that are mine, is no excuse," Missy said. "If you don't want to age, don't."
"I suspect there are people who do want her to age," Romana said, winking at Sam. "But enough stalling."
"Alright," Missy said. "It was very simple. As the old man over there said, Mammoth Falls was between here and there. Back around 1865 it was even more in between than it was in 1910, and now."
"I'd been in your little capital taking care of some private business when I'd found myself, due to an acquaintance of an acquaintance, with the sudden need to head out of town."
"You didn't help assassinate Lincoln, did you?" Joyce said, interrupting her.
"Who?" Missy said, giving her a puzzled look. "You mean that hick lawyer from Illinois? No, he was an old acquaintance. Why would I kill him? He owed me for helping him win the election back in 1859. Killing someone who owes you a favor is self defeating. Makes it hard to collect."
"Oh," Joyce said. "That makes sense, but then why did you run away when he was shot?"
"It's a long story," Missy said. "For another time," she added at a glare from Romana.
"I'd like to hear that story," Daniel said. "There are rumours but no proof that Lincoln didn't actually win in 1860."
"Oh, he won," Missy said. "Don't doubt that. But things can happen along the way to make it easier or harder. I made it harder for his opponents."
"Missy!" Romana said.
"Oh, right. 1865, getting out of town. That doesn't matter. But on my way, a few miles from a certain town, I came across a caravan of a ragged bunch of starving men. Never did discover where they originally came from but they'd been in a war prison before the prison commander decided to head west, and took the healthiest prisoners with him."
"Didn't they know the war was over?" Daniel asked.
"I don't think they noticed," Missy said. "Drugged to the gills, as the saying went. With a drug that isn't very common on this planet. I think the last time I'd run across it was at a small Roman villa near Pompeii before someone accidentally set off a volcano. The nasty little Goa'uld there had a nice little operation going on, sending conditioned slaves to his friends. All with the help of his favorite drug."
"Was that why we had to leave Pompeii so suddenly?" Joyce asked. "I thought it was because of the volcano."
"Volcaino, volcanno, it was true. He had to go before he discovered you and ruined my plans," Missy said. "Little pipsqueak thought he was smarter than someone millennia older, just because they have that faulty genetic memory."
"So, you ran across a Goa'uld and his slaves," Daniel said. "What was his name?"
"Didn't bother to ask," Missy said. "They're impossible to negotiate with when they are trying to get away. So I didn't."
"They tend to get away," Jack said. "If you kill the host, the snake finds someone else."
"Not my first Goa'uld encounter," Missy said, smirking. "A little disintegration goes a long way."
"Sweet," Jack said. "Scratch one Goa'uld."
"What happened to the drugged men?" Daniel said.
"I'm not a charity," Missy said, dismissively. "I suppose they kept walking and eventually the drug wore off and they went home."
"And the Goa'uld trinkets he must have had?" Sam asked. "What happened to them?"
"Gallifreyan's such as us can't use Goa'uld tools," Missy said. "Incompatible with our DNA. And pointy eared over there wasn't available. If I recall correctly, she and Romana were off at a Starbucks having coffee. Nasty stuff."
"You don't know what you're missing," Joyce said, taking an exaggerated sip from her Starbucks cup.
"You hadn't met her yet," Romana said to Joyce.
"The Goa'uld trinkets?" Sam reminded her.
"Most of it I disintegrated," Missy said. "But there was this curious looking crystal. It was almost identical to an Atlantean ship control crystal, except possibly much older. Leaking a particularly nasty form of energy. It would have eventually killed that Goa'uld's host."
"Oh, that makes sense, now," Joyce said, nodding.
"You usually need two of them," Missy said, "so I put it in a little box I normally keep other dangerous things in, went into town and went to the bank. It seemed to be the safest place to put it until I could find the other crystal and come back for it."
"You found the other one in Budapest, right?" Joyce said.
"Imperial War Museum," Missy said, nodding. "The Gestapo was doing their best to plunder it while retreating to Berlin. I got in their way but Link and his buddies were there also, for reasons he never explained, and got to it before I could do more than disguise it."
"So, you took something from a Goa'uld you killed, and put it in a bank for later," Jack said. "How do we get to 1910?"
"After retrieving the other control crystal from Link, I felt a need to get the other one out of the bank," Missy said.
"So you just bounce around different years in a nonlinear order?" Sam asked. "Isn't that dangerous?"
"For some," Missy said, smirking. "Not for someone who has looked into the Untempered Schism, and survived."
"You could have just said, 'It's a Time Lords thing,'" Sam said.
"Time Lord?" Jack said, looking at Missy suspiciously. "What does that mean when they're at home."
"Masters of Time and Space," Missy said. "What more do you need to know?"
"It isn't quite that simple," Romana said. "A Time Lord, or Lady, is someone who has looked into the Untempered Schism, and completed Academy training."
"And what is this schism thing?" Jack said.
"To put it at its simplest, it's a hole in the universe that lets you look at the Time Vortex," Sam said, frowning. "If you don't have the correct genetics it will kill you. If you survive, you gain the ability to sense and manipulate time. And it doesn't exist in this universe."
"Then how did they get here?" Jack said.
"Not relevant, at the moment, sir," Sam said. "If you want the full debrief, I'm sure it can be arrange in time."
"Can we get back to 1910?" Joyce said. "Ancient Time Lord history is just a distraction. Almost as bad as Catherine Langford's 'What's a Furling' every time we see her. It doesn't matter."
"Every time you see Catherine Langford?" Daniel said. "How often have you seen her?"
"A couple times," Joyce said, adding impatiently, "but it has nothing to do with 1910."
"Missy, just continue," Romana said. "Sam can get us a list of questions later that we may answer."
"I agree with Joyce," Sam said. "Save irrelevant questions for some other time. I'd like to hear about 1910 also."
"1910," Missy began, pausing with her empty glass held out. As soon as Romana refilled it, she started talking.
"It wasn't anything exciting," Missy said. "I was arguing with the bank manager about getting into my safe deposit box. He didn't believe me when I said it was mine. And refused to return what was left of the gold nuggets I'd used to pay for it." Missy muttered something under her breath.
"I didn't know when I would be back so I left enough gold to cover it for centuries," she said. "Besides, it wasn't really gold, and I wanted whatever was left back."
"You gave a bank fake gold?" Sam said. "Where did you find something that a banker would think was real gold?"
"It had the correct composition," Missy said, shrugging. "But it was something I made in my lab. It usually turns into lead in a century or two, depending on how you make it."
"Like leprechaun gold?" Daniel said.
"Leprechauns aren't real," Joyce said.
"You keep believing that, Pet," Missy said. "Where was I? Oh, right. The bank. I wasn't getting anywhere and was about to force the issue when this scraggly looking man came in with a gun. While the bank manager was dealing with that rather inept bank robber, I snuck into the vault and retrieved the crystal. Unfortunately, the bank robber saw me."
"That was clumsy," Romana said, frowning.
"We all have our moments, usually involving the Doctor," Missy said. "The satchel was full, so he stuffed it into a pocket and ran out of the bank."
"Did anyone notice?" Sam said.
"Notice what?" Missy said.
"You coming out of the vault," Sam said.
"No, everyone else was lying face down on the floor. I snuck out the back before they noticed me. But I was too late to catch him before he got away with my crystal," Missy said.
"The crystal leaves a particle trail behind it, but it was very faint," she said. "By the time I'd found the bank robber he'd hidden it in that cannon. I might have given him some advice about keeping an eye on it. Advice he would be unwise to not follow." Missy smirked, and sipped from her glass.
"Why not just disintegrate the front of the cannon?" Joyce said. "You were willing to do that when we were there."
"And ruin the fun?" Missy said. "For those of you living in linear time it might have been a few years but what is time really? It was only a couple days later that I convinced Idris to take us there."
"You don't care about preserving the timeline, do you," Sam said, frowning.
"Time Lady," Missy said, pointing at herself. "Time is what you make of it. THere's nothing sacred about it. I could tell you of hundreds of occasions when the Doctor interfered and changed the so called "Sacred Timeline" and things were fine afterward."
"Time tends to bounce back," Romana said, agreeing with her. "Yes, you can 'damage' a timeline but most times it recovers."
"And it isn't linear for them anyway," Joyce said. "I'm sure you've experienced it that way."
"We have rules about intentionally affecting time," Sam said. "We avoid it if at all possible."
"I'm sure that isn't strictly true," Missy said. "All you Do-Gooders will willingly make non-recoverable changes to a timeline if you think it is morally justified."
"You aren't going to be successful arguing with her, Sam," Romana said. "Missy and timeline manipulation go back a long way, and she's still here."
"It was close a few times," Missy said, shrugging. "Blackholes can have unexpected affects on the Time Vortex. But that's what makes it so exciting!"
"And she's just allowed to wander around the universe with that attitude?" Jack said. "I'm sure we can find a hole to put her in that would keep her out of trouble."
"You must be friends with the Alterans," Missy said, grimacing. "They think time isn't to be played with also."
"They have a perfectly reasonable explanation for that," Romana said. "You told me that yourself"
"Doesn't mean I like those nosy frauds," Missy said. "But I think I'm done here. You now know what happened in 1910. I think I'll go for a walk." She walked out of the room.
"K-9, go with her," Romana said. "Make sure she goes back to the TARDIS."
"Yes, Mistress," K-9 said.
"How much of that was the truth?" Sam asked, looking at Joyce.
"Do I look like a lie detector?" Joyce said, grumpily.
"Yes," Sam said. "You always seem to know if someone is telling the truth in that form."
Joyce sighed. "Maybe fifty percent? The parts about Lincoln and the Goa'uld were true. What happened in the bank or with the bank robber? It was a good story but I think she made that up."
"So, story time is over," Jack said. "Questions. Tomorrow," Jack said, looking at the women. "Don't go anywhere." Pulling Daniel to his feet, Jack nodded at Teal'c and all three men left the room. Several minutes later a door could be heard slamming.
"Should we go after Missy?" Joyce said. "If Sam's base is around here, there is all sorts of things she could do to cause chaos."
"She went back to the TARDIS," Romana said.
"How do you know?" Joyce said.
"Idris passed along a message from K-9," Romana said. She turned to Sam. "If you want to come along, there's plenty of room in the TARDIS."
"No, even if I did I'd still have to deal with the Colonel and his questions about Time Lords and time travel," Sam said.
"Okay," Romana said. "We'll be back in the morning."
"With donuts and coffee," Joyce said. "Can't start an interrogation properly without Starbucks."
"You are fond of coffee," Sam said, sighing.
"I don't outgrow Starbucks do I?" Joyce asked. "That would be horrible."
"You eventually learn to make your own espresso, if I remember correctly," Sam said. "Now shoo! I'm not answering any more questions about future you. Some of us do have respect for our timeline."
"Yes, Ma'am," Joyce said. "Are you coming with?" She asked Romana.
"In a moment," Romana said, waving her off.
"We don't know why she forgets all about this," Sam said. "Or do we?"
"No," Romana said. "It isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Joyce you know wouldn't be the same person if she remembered everything."
"Not complaining," Sam said. "Just curious. See you in the morning."
"Of course," Romana said, leaving Sam in her living room. Joyce was waiting outside for her.
"She wanted to talk about old me, didn't she," Joyce said. "It's really weird."
"It's time," Romana said. "If you live it in a nonlinear fashion things often happen out of order."
"Well, I still think it's weird," Joyce said, opening the TARDIS door. "I think I need a nap or something before tomorrow's interrogation. K-9, don't forget to wake me up."
"Yes, Miss," K-9 said from his favorite corner. Joyce nodded and headed to her room.