Weeping Angels - Complex space-time event

‘I just want to save one person,’ sniffed Mark, wiping more tears from his eyes. ‘Do you have any idea what it’s been like, these last nine years? All the good people who have died, where I’ve stood by and done nothing. How do you think I felt on September the 11th, watching all those people die? But I did nothing. I could’ve saved my own father, but I did nothing. I followed the rules, Doctor. I did as I was told. I just want one life. Is that too much to ask?’

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor regretfully. ‘I’m afraid it is. You can’t change the past.’

‘Can’t he?’ said Amy. She had tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘You’re always saying time can be rewritten. Why not now?’

‘Because this isn’t about one person’s life,’ explained the Doctor. ‘The Angels have arranged this deliberately so that any change in the timeline will have the greatest possible impact.’

‘But there’s got to be some way of saving her,’ cried Amy. ‘There has to be something we can do!’

‘No. Rebecca’s death is a complex space-time event. If Mark prevents it, he won’t just change the future, he’ll change the past as well.’

The poor guy, thought Rory. All he wants to do is to save his wife’s life. Rory thought about what he would do if he was in Mark’s shoes, and it was Amy who was about to die. Would he risk everything just for the slightest possibility of saving her? Of course he would. Like a shot.

Because the thought of her death, the thought of having to go on living without her, was simply too terrible to imagine.

Rory wiped the tears from his eyes and swung his torch around him again, almost grateful for the distraction.

While the two Angels on either side of Mark hadn’t moved, the others had each taken three or four steps closer and had raised their arms to either side. Closing off any gaps between them.

‘You’re lying!’ cried Mark. ‘You can’t know any of this for sure!’

‘Mark, if you save her, what do you think will happen?’ said the Doctor. ‘You think you’ll just get to carry on from where you left off?’

‘No –’

‘No. You’ll wipe out the events of the next eight years.

All that time will be unwritten. But that’s not all you’ll lose. You’ll lose the past nine years too. All the time you had with Rebecca will cease to have existed. All gone. Not even a memory. Every moment you ever spent with her will be lost without trace!’

‘Why?’

‘Think. You’ve travelled in time. Your past, present and future are inextricably bound up together. Think of all the times you’ve intervened in your own past. Would you have even got together with Rebecca in the first place if it hadn’t been for your future self? No. But if she never died, you’d never have travelled back and so you’d never have got together. That whole timeline will be erased.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ stammered Mark. ‘I don’t believe you!’

‘You’ll lose her, Mark. And the Angels will feed, and they will grow stronger. And that will be the beginning of the end of the Earth.’

***

Touched by an Angel, Chapter 16