Semolina Pilchard

Title Semolina Pilchard
Rating PG-13

"I don't know, you travel from one end of the universe to the other, go right back to the beginning of time and almost to the end and still this race of glorified monkeys who figured out how to walk upright finds new and infuriating ways to mess with your head." He was muttering to himself as he circled the console and Martha found herself watching him a little warily. Was he always this way? Always so... animated?
"Um, Doctor?" She spoke up when it became apparent that he wasn't going to make it any clearer what he was talking about. "Is there... something wrong?"
"Oh, I should say so!" He stopped his relentless movements and turned to face her with the confused little boy look that she had come to suspect was at least 75% an act. "It doesn't make sense, but it doesn't make sense in that oh-so-clever way that makes me think there is sense in there. It's like chaos theory all over again, all that messing about with infinite size and cause and effect. Like anyone in La Paz cared about a butterfly in Hull. Mandelbrot? Ha! I'd like to see that hack navigate through space and time without destroying the universe and then try to tell me about cause and effect. Ha!"

He was off again, and Martha made a little note to herself not to let him near sugar for a while. Or whatever the equivalent was for his physiology. She frowned a little, thinking about what she'd seen him eat – which was pretty much everything he could get into his mouth to be honest – but it was mostly in small quantities, not enough to cause such extreme hyperactivity. He did drink a lot of tea though, maybe that's what it was, maybe theanine created the same kind of chemical imbalance in a Gallifreyan that ten sherbet fountains caused in the average six year old. She was going to have to stop him drinking tea. And that was going to be a hard-fought battle she wasn't especially looking forward to.

"Doctor!" She called out as the blur of motion whirled past her.
"Uh-huh?" Came back the distracted answer.
"What doesn't make sense?"
His arms spread wide as if he was trying to encompass the entire TARDIS in his gesture. "This!"
She frowned, okay so a police box-shaped time machine didn't really make sense to her but to him? Something was wrong here; his brain chemistry must be wildly fluctuating. She had to calm him down, then try to figure out what was wrong and what a glorified thinking monkey like her could do about it.
He looked at her, exasperation etched clear on his face. "You're saying this gibberish makes sense to you?"
"Doctor, I... don't..." Then she got it. It wasn't the TARDIS he was talking about, it was her iPod that she'd managed to rig up to the console speakers. It was the music. "But it's a classic! Trust me, it makes sense if you're as wasted as they probably were when they wrote it."
He shook his head as she defended the song, "I don't know, not content with being apes, now they want to be waddling piles of blubber with giant teeth? It makes no sense!"

Martha rolled her eyes and wondered again just why she'd gone with him.