The Sun Below, Part 1: A 16th Doctor Adventure

Ashes of Cedar Grove

Written by Zara Day

I

"Lunch time, everyone!" shouted the shift manager from beside the elevator. The crew looked up to him with eager faces, their throats dry from coal dust and bellies empty. The manager got himself out of the way of the miners as they packed themselves like sardines in the elevator. Once they were launched, the manager set to his work of inspecting the coal's quantity. As he looked at the first cart, he heard a sound, like fizzing. It sounded like something was frying, and he felt like he was frying too. The mines got hot, sure. But never this hot.

"Hello? Is anyone down here?" the manager yelled down the shaft. No reply. He shrugged and went back to his work. The fizzing continued, sounding louder now. He didn't turn to look. "Fella, playing jokes on me is a waste of a good lunch break."

He wrote down a note on his clipboard and moved towards the other cart when the heat got unbearable. He looked at his left arm and saw that it was burnt. He looked down the shaft and saw a bright light, as if someone had managed to drill a hole to the outside, and the sun was peeking through.

"Who's doing that?" The manager yelled, covering his eyes to shield them from the light. The heat was getting way too high for him to handle, so he turned to press the button for the elevator to come to him. He rubbed his arm. It was blistering and white. He felt heat now from his sides, too. He looked and was stunned to see that both carts of coal were starting to light. His back was more than burning. It was charring. He turned around, if for no other reason than curiosity to see what was to be the cause of his death, and when he did, his eyes stopped working, the brightness overwhelming his brain.

By the time the elevator made it down with the crew on it, he was gone, along with both carts of coal. Only an ash outline of his body was left, and a slightly warmed mine shaft.

II

When the Doctor opened the Tardis door, she was met with a familiar smell of floral perfumes and coal-tar soaps. She'd landed herself right in the middle of a 1950s Earth afternoon. Judging by the look of the town, the church to her right, the fire department to her left, the post office in front, and the boundless pine trees that filled the gap around them, it was rural America. The trees looked to be entering Allelopathy, a.k.a. turning red for the autumn. And yet, the town felt warm, genuinely warm. There was something odd happening here. The Doctor withdrew her sonic and scanned the air. 90 degrees Fahrenheit. She wished she had someone with her to do the oh-and-ahs, but there was nothing to be done about that now. She closed the Tardis behind herself and locked the door. If this were the UK during this time period, the Tardis, looking like a blue Police box, wouldn't actually raise much suspicion there on the side of the road, not that the Doctor was necessarily concerned, seeing as the Tardis tended to blend in not by camouflaging but by averting people's gazes away from it.

She decided to stop by the post office first, as it seemed the most promising. The sign above the door read US Post Office, Cedar Grove, WV. She opened the door and found only the clerk behind the counter inside. The man was sitting back reading a newspaper before he saw her. The title read "Another Miner Gone Missing." The clerk folded up the paper and placed it to the side of the register.

"What can I do for you, ma'am?"

"Ma'am?" she wondered aloud in a whisper, smiling. "I was wondering when I'd come back to this."

"Excuse me?" The clerk asked, leaning in.

The Doctor looked down at her outfit. The white shirt under a matching blue pinstripe vest and kilt. It looked pretty snazzy on the last body, but it was not her style. That would be a later-on problem. First things first.

"People have been disappearing?"

"Indeed. Some people say it's a union thing, but even their families don't know where they've gone."

The Doctor pointed to the paper, and the man nodded, handing it to her. She could see the slender hand that reached for it, pale again, but still holding the black polished symbols on the fingers. She read the front page and nodded.

"Very unusual. Where are the mines?"

The clerk laughed incredulously. "You don't plan to go in them, do you?"

The Doctor looked up with a raised brow. "I had."

"But you're..." He looked her up and down.

"Dress for it, I know. But the crew there've got to have extra equipment and attire there, I'd reckon. By the way, is it always so flipping hot here in October?"

"I guess you didn't read the story on page 2. There is a heat wave lately, and meteorologists don't know why."

"I don't remember hearing about a heat wave in the United States in 1955."

"Not the United States, ma'am. Not even West Virginia. Just Cedar Grove." The Doctor practically giggled at these words.

"A localized heat event and disappearing coal miners. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating."

"No offence, ma'am, but you're very strange."

The Doctor winked. "Life's more fun this way. Now, please point me in the direction of this coal mine."

III

It seemed off to the Doctor that the entrance to the mine wasn't marked off with police tape due to the investigation. Although she'd spent a very long time on Earth, even being stranded on Earth for years, decades later, the way human industry continued despite clear and present danger startled her to the point that she'd rather pretend it wasn't true. Outside was a pack of men eating packed lunches while covered in coal dust and wearing hard hats and overalls. Many of their eyes darted to the Doctor, looking her up and down. She smiled at the crowd pleasantly.

"Hello, gentlemen. Mind if I ask you a few questions?"

One of the guys who'd been tucked into a bologna sandwich and hadn't noticed her before looked up. His nose and mouth were the only parts of his face not covered in dust. He stated, "We were told not to talk to reporters."

"Oh, I'm not a reporter," she rifled in her pocket and withdrew a folded piece of leather with a blank paper inside. "I'm from the Mine Investigating Notability... Department here to get information about these deaths."

"Disappearances," a relatively clean-looking worker said from the elevator. "Officially, they are disappearances."

"Because of the lack of bodies," the Doctor presumed.

The bologna sandwich man took a bite, avoiding eye contact. The Doctor looked to the rest of the crowd, who were doing the same. It must have been terrifying to think that they could be next. She made her way to the elevator, but the clean man held his hand out to block her. She held the psychic paper back up. The man looked at it and grunted.

"It says you're only a receptionist at M.I.N.D."

The Doctor looked at the blank paper incredulously. "Receptionist? Really? Daft psychic paper. Leave gaps for the mind of a bloke in the '50s, and what do you get? Receptionist." She mumbled as she put it away.

"Just let her down," a guy to her right said, mouth full of hot dog. "You're only in charge because Nick disappeared yesterday. Do you want me to be in charge tomorrow when you disappear?"

The supervisor went pale at the idea and nodded. "Just make it quick." He looked around. "Someone, come escort her!"

Bologna man swallowed quickly. "I'll do it!" The Doctor looked back at him and smiled. Interesting.

The supervisor sighed, "I should have expected. Fine, Mr. Kim. Go with her and make sure she doesn't do anything but look." He handed the Doctor a hard hat from the rack. "Last thing I need on my first day is a receptionist cracking her head on the ceiling." The worker nodded, putting his sandwich back in his pail and following her onto the elevator. The supervisor pressed for the elevator to descend, and slowly it crept.

"What's your name then?" The Doctor asked, pleasantly.

"James," he replied shortly.

"James Kim. Jim. Jimmy. Jimbo. Oh, Jim Kim! That is fun! What had you so eager, Jim Kim?"

Jim looked to the Doctor, embarrassed. "Oh, I've, uh... I'm just hoping you'll find something. My brother was the first one who disappeared, and it feels like nobody cares."

"So that's why you keep coming back here every day when people are dy... disappearing? Looking for your brother?"

Jim looked to the Doctor with a curious look, like that was a goofy question. "I also need the money."

"Ah, right." That explained everyone else being there. "Your brother didn't say anything before leaving?"

"No." There was a crack in Jim's voice. "That was two weeks ago. He's dead. He'd have to be in order to put ma through this. No way he's on strike like the company keeps insisting."

"Do you think the company is responsible?" The Doctor said without a hint of reservation.

Jim looked to the Doctor, and his face looked uncertain. "I wouldn't think so, but I wouldn't put it past them. People working in these mines have been dying early for a long time, and there is talk that inhaling coal dust like we do is bad for our lungs." He withdrew a bandana from his back pocket. "That's why I wear this while I work."

The Doctor looked at the bandana and was genuinely impressed. "Brilliant. I love it when people think for themselves. Not a smoker, are you?"

Jim chuckled lightly. "Not my thing, inhaling fumes. They're bad for people, aren't they, doctor?"

"You know my name?"

"That's what your paper said, right? You're a doctor."

The Doctor was relieved the psychic paper had at least worked a pinch with someone like Jim. "Not a Doctor. The Doctor." She looked around the elevator. "Are we almost there?"

"It takes a while, huh."

"Too long. Hold onto something. This is not really my tempo."

"What do you- Oh, wow!" He gripped the elevator brakes as the compartment jerked and now began falling rather than descending. The elevator plummeted down into the depths until finally slowing to a safe landing at the cave opening.

"Was that too fast for you?" The Doctor asked. Jim was smiling sheepishly.

"If it were like that every day, I might actually look forward to coming to work."

IV

"The elevator isn't returning," the supervisor said from the surface, tapping the button constantly. He leaned over to look down the shaft into the darkness below.

"Let me have a look," said someone from behind the supervisor's back. He turned and saw a young man in a pinstripe suit and a cane in his hand.

"Ah, Congressman. I wasn't expecting-"

"Hush now," the man said, placing a finger to his lips. He approached the elevator and looked it up and down while tugging at his beard. "Your overspeed generator has been overburdened, I'm afraid." The supervisor looked at the device the Congressman was pointing to with his cane.

"There are people down there."

The Congressman laughed rather sourly. "I don't care about the people down there. I came here to check on the local economy, and I find that half this town's working-aged men are up here picking their noses. You will get this elevator fixed for them to get back to work, or you'll tie a rope and have them climb down."

The supervisor struggled to get a word out, his throat dry and heart pounding. "Yes, sir. Right away."

V

The mine roof was lined with little lamps glowing amber. The Doctor examined the area around the elevator. She knelt and ran her fingers across the surface. There was a dark grey residue on her fingers. She placed it near her nose and furrowed her brows.

"What are you looking for, Doctor?"

"I'm not sure, but I think I found it." She gestured for Jim to smell the residue on her finger, but he passed. "Might be for the best, I'm fairly sure it's human."

Jim frowned and squinted down at her. "What do you mean?!"

"I mean, these ashes smell mammalian, possibly primate, and unless your company is in the habit of allowing orangutangs down here, there is only one option." Jim looked at the Doctor's fingers and shivered.

"Can your sense of smell be that good?"

The Doctor patted her hands gently to rid them of the ash. "I just have a lot of experience." Her tone was mournful, which only scared Jim more.

"What could do something like that to a person?"

"Lots of things. Humans are quite adept at burning other humans. Sometimes it's after death, and sometimes it's during war or because they are suspected of being witches. But nothing on this planet burns people so quickly that people can go out for lunch and be back and not notice the pile of human sitting right by their feet. That takes a lot of heat and a lot of fuel."

"So it wasn't a human who did it?"

"Likely not. The problem is, I don't know what could. The only thing I can think that doesn't exist, much less would be on this planet, burning people into ash."

Jim looked around, "I don't see any other piles of ash even now that I'm looking."

The Doctor looked behind her at the tunnel. "That is curious."

"Doctor, can I ask you something ridiculous?" The Doctor nodded thoughtfully as she stood up. She began making her way down the tunnel while Jim followed. "Where did you come from?" The Doctor sighed. This conversation was always hard to navigate, as too much of the truth to the wrong person could make her look crazy or worse, make her a target. As Emily Dickinson once told her over tea and jelly babies, "The truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind."

"I came here on my ship. Well, not really a ship. More like an airplane. Well, space shuttle."

"What's a space shuttle?" Ah, yes, maybe a bit too early for talk of space travel. Kennedy hadn't even spoken of going to the moon yet. "Doctor, watch out. You're about to step into the hole. People always step in it and trip."

The Doctor looked down at her feet and saw the small hole inches from her toes. "Thanks. Seems like you know this cave very well."

"I have to," Jim said. Jim squinted into the darkness of the upcoming cave. "They haven't installed good lighting this far in, so we have to do a lot of memorizing the path." The Doctor nodded and withdrew her sonic screwdriver, clicking it to glow like a torch. A blue light flew in front of them. "Are you from the future?"

The question caught her off guard, and she gasped. "Depends."

"On what?"

"Where you're standing."

"I'm standing in 1955."

"Then no. I'm from the past."

Jim laughed. "Aren't we all from the past? I was born in 1932."

"Exactly."

"Then I'll ask it this way. When were you born?"

The Doctor stopped walking and concentrated. "That's a hard question."

Jim stopped and squinted at her face, only barely lit by the sonic. "Is it?"

"Let's just say we measure years differently where I come from? It would take a lot of calculating."

"That's very cryptic, Doctor."

The Doctor laughed lightly. "I'm nothing is not enigmatic."

Jim looked through the darkness severely. "If you have a time machine and the missing people turn out to be dead, will you go back to save them?"

The Doctor looked back at Jim, her smile vanishing. "If you mean will I go back and save your brother if he were killed, the answer is no."

Jim furrowed his eyebrows. "Why?"

"Those deaths would be why I came to the mine to investigate. Without them happening, I don't come to the mines, and I don't know how to go back and save them. It would break the laws of time."

Jim didn't reply at first, just looked away from the Doctor with a face the Doctor couldn't read well in the dark. "What's the point of time travel if you can't correct things that shouldn't have happened? I'm not a scientist or whatever, but the way I see it, time travel means you're responsible for the things you choose not to fix."

The Doctor nodded. "I am responsible for time travel, which is why I don't interfere with the laws of time."

"Who wrote these laws?" Jim snapped.

The Doctor was about to say the Time Lords, but she was caught off guard by how she, without realizing it, had the sonic away yet could see Jim perfectly. They were being illuminated by something else. Something hot. Jim felt it too once the Doctor had gone quiet.