"I thought it'd drive him mad..."

"I think he misses you...I miss you too,"

"Okay," 

"I - I also have to tell you something, and you can't tell The Doctor!"

----------&----------

Rory and Amy are sleeping peacefully, when the doorbell starts ringing loudly. It doesn't even finish ringing when it's being rapidly pressed again. The couple both groan and Rory gets out of bed first, grabbing his dressing grown as he opens the bedroom window and looks down at the street. Brian is stood, staring up at his son.

"Dad...it's half past six in the morning..." Rory says tiredly as Amy joins him at the window.

"What are you doing lying around? Haven't you seen them?" Brian holds up a perfectly square cube and the street is covered in identical versions of the cube, like they fell from the sky.

Rory and Amy sigh, heading downstairs and joining Brian in the street.

"What are they?"

"Nobody knows. They're everywhere."

"Well, where have they come from?" Amy looks around the street and her eyes are drawn to the park across the road, "Wait..."

A man in a tweed jacket is sitting on top of a child's climbing frame examining a box, next to him is a little girl with dark blonde hair up in a ponytail, bellow them, a woman in black doc martens is leaning on the frame.

"Doctor!" Amy shouts, recognising the family.

"Invasion of the very small cubes. That's new..." The Doctor turns around and Amy smiles.

----------&----------

Back in the TARDIS, The Doctor is examining the cubes and Willow, Alexandra and Amy are watching the news on the TARDIS scanner.

"World leaders are appealing for calm," Mathew Amroliwala is on one side of the screen, showing one BBC channel.

"After the global appearance of millions of small cubes. Despite official warnings, people have been taking the cubes from the streets into offices and homes," Sophie Raworth is on the other channel the TARDIS is showing.

"What are they?" Mathew asks

"Where do they come from?"

"And why are they here?"

The TARDIS switches the channel and Professor Brian Cox appears, holding a cube "Well, they're certainly not random space debris. They're too perfectly formed for that. Are they extra-terrestrial in origin? Well, you'll have to ask a better man than me,"

"All absolutely identical!" The Doctor exclaims as he examines a cube with a magnifying glass "Not a single molecule's difference between them. No blemishes, imperfections, individualities," Willow turns off the scanner and walks over as Brian starts speaking.

"What if they're bombs? Billions of tiny bombs? Or transport capsules maybe, with a mini robot inside. Or deadly hard drives. Or alien eggs? Or messages needing decoding. Or they're all parts of a bigger whole. Jigsaw puzzles that need fitting together,"

"Very thorough, Brian," The Doctor tells the man

"Very, very thorough," Willow mutters

"Well done..." The Doctor grabs some tubes and starts walking out "Stay here. Watch these. Yell if anything happens," he passes some things to Rory as Amy picks up a box.

"Doctor, is this an alien invasion? Because that's what it feels like,"

"There couldn't be life-forms in every cube, could there?" Rory continues from his wife

"I don't know. And I really don't like not knowing,"

The five step out of the TARDIS, which is parked in the living room.

"Right, I need to use your kitchen as a lab. Cook up some cubes. See what happens," The Doctor explains

"Right, I'm due at work," Rory checks his watch

"What? You've got a job?"

"Of course, he's got a job!" Willow laughs as Rory exclaims nearly the exact same thing.

"Of course, I've got a job. What do you think we do when we're not with you?"

"I imagined mostly kissing..."

"Ew," both Alexandra and Willow mutter

"Ew?" Amy asks them (mainly Willow)

"Ew," Willow repeats and Alexandra laughs at her mother, whilst Amy rolls her eyes.

"I write travel articles for magazines and Rory heals the sick,"

"My shift starts in an hour. You don't know where my scrubs are?" Rory asks Amy

"In the lounge, where you left them," she sighs and Willow smiles and the domesticity, which contrasts her husband who frowns slightly,

The Doctor starts making his strange contraption and Amy leans on the other side of the counter. Willow and Alexandra are sat at the kitchen table, both colouring in a colouring book with intricate patterns.

"Oh, the Ponds, with their house and their jobs and their everyday lives. The journalist and the nurse. Long way from Leadworth..." The Doctor starts sonicing bits of metal together.

"We think it's been ten years. Not for you or Earth, but for us. Ten years older. Ten years of you, on and off," Willow's eyes widen and she stops colouring for a moment and stares at her daughter who'd turned eleven only weeks earlier. How long had it been for her? 23? 25 years? She had no idea.

"Look at you now. All grown up..." The Doctor Smiles at Amy as he imagines the 7-year-old he met oh so long ago.

Without warning, the front door is smashed down and soldiers march into the house, Willow jumps up and grabs Alexandra, pulling her into her legs as she goes to stand next to The Doctor.

"Clear! Trap one, kitchen secured!"

"Trap three, back garden secured!" Willow turns back to see the rest of the squad are outside the patio doors.

Rory is marched in at gunpoint "There are soldiers all over my house, and I'm in my pants!"

"My whole life I've dreamed of saying that, and I miss it by being someone else..." Amy mutters and The Doctor laughs as Willow lets out a large smile.

"I don't get it," Alexandra looks up at her mum

"Good,"

A woman enters the house, almost rolling her eyes at all the guns "All these muscles, and they still don't know how to knock. Sorry about the raucous entrance...Spike in Artron energy reading at this address. In the light of the last twenty-four hours, we had to check it out, and the dogs do love a run out," she enters the kitchen

"Hello. Kate Stewart, head of scientific research at UNIT. And with dress sense like that..." She holds out a scanner, hovering it over The Doctor, which shows two hearts beating in his chest.

"You must be the Doctor. I hoped it would be you," she says almost excitedly

"Tell me, since when did science run the military, Kate?"

"Since me. UNIT's been adapting. Well, I dragged them along, kicking and screaming, which made it sound like more fun than it actually was,"

"What do we know about these cubes?" The Doctor asks as Kate walks around the kitchen

"Far less than we need to. We've been freighting them in from around the world for testing. So far, we've subjected them to temperatures of plus and minus two hundred Celsius, simulated a water depth of five miles, dropped one out of a helicopter at ten thousand feet and rolled our best tank over it. Always intact,"

"That's impressive," Willow notes

"I don't want them to be impressive. I want them vulnerable with a nice Achilles heel!"

"We don't know how they got here, what they're made of, or why they're here,"

"And all around the world, people are picking them up and taking them home," The Doctor chucks one in the air, but fails to catch it, Alexandra does though, and passes it up to him. He ruffles her hair in thanks and she swats his hands away.

"Like iPads have dropped out of the sky. Taking them to work, taking pictures, making films, posting them on Flickr and YouTube. Within three hours, the cubes had a thousand separate Twitter accounts,"

"Twitter," The Doctor says with disgust.

"I've recommended we treat this as a hostile incursion. Gather them all up and lock them in a secure facility. But that would take massive international agreement and co-operation," Kate explains

"We need evidence. The cubes arrived in plain sight, in vast quantities, as the sun rose. So, what does that tell us?"

"Maybe they wanted to be seen. Noticed," Amy guesses

"Or more than that, they want to be observed. So, we observe them. Stay with them round the clock. Watch the cubes, day and night. Record absolutely everything about them. Team cube, in it together!"

----------&----------

"Four days. Nothing! Nothing! Not a single change in any cube anywhere in the world. Four days, and I am still in your lounge!" The Doctor is sat between Amy and Rory in their living room, Willow is now in a green dress as she sits on a lounge chair and Alexandra is sat on the floor, putting together a Gallifreyan puzzle on the coffee table.

"You were the one who wanted to observe them,"

"Yes, well, I thought they'd do something, didn't I? Not just sit there while everyone eats endless cereal!"

"You said we had to be patient," Rory says boredly

"Yes, you! You, not me!" The Doctor jumps up "I hate being patient. Patience is for wimps. I can't live like this. Don't make me. I need to be busy,"

"Fine! Be busy!" Willow shouts in exasperation "We'll watch the cubes!"

"Thank you!" he kisses his wife's forehead, then his daughters and rushes out the house. He creosotes the garden fence, plays a little football, mows the lawn and messes with Amy and Rory's car. He then hoovers the house, going under Willow, Amy and Rory's legs as they glare at him. Alexandra nearly attacks him when she comes back from the loo and sees he's taken over her puzzle and finished it in 5 minutes.

Finally, he returns to the sofa "That's better! Nothing like a bit of activity to pass the time. How long was I gone?"

"Er," Rory checks his watch "about an hour,"

"I can't do it. No..." The Doctor jumps up and rushes to the TARDIS.

"Where are you going?" Amy asks as she follows him, everyone else joining.

"Brian, you're still here," Willow hears The Doctor note as she enters the TARDIS.

"You told me to watch the cubes,"

"Four days ago..." Willow informs her grandfather

"Ah! Doesn't time fly when you're alone with your thoughts?" Brain stands up and The Doctor raises an eyebrow.

"You can't just leave, Doctor," Rory sighs

"Yes, of course I can. Quick jaunt, restore sanity. Ooo, hey, come if you like," he wraps his arms around the back of each of the Pond couple.

"They can't just go off like that," Brian says harshly

"Can't they? Can't you?" he asks Amy and Rory "That's how it goes, isn't it?"

"I've got my job," Rory explains

"Oh yes, Rory. The universe is awaiting, but you have a little job to -"

"Oi!" Willow shouts and Alexandra jumps slightly, not used to her mother's voice being raised. The Doctor looks at his wife in shock.

"It's not little. It's important to me. Look, what you do isn't all there is,"

"I never said it was..." The Doctor lets go of them, walking around the console as Brian leaves.

"All right. Fine. I'll be back soon. Monitor the cubes. Call me. I'll have the TARDIS set to every Earth news feed," Amy and Rory start to level but Alexandra gives them each a large hug before sitting on the jump seat, Willow gives them a sad smile as they leave and Amy waves.

"I'm going to the library!" Alexandra announces, notices the sad atmosphere "bye!" she rushes out the room and her parents smile fondly. Willow walks over to The Doctor, who had set the TARDIS coordinates to above the earth.

Willow wraps her arms around her husband and he turns, hiding his face in her shoulder, she slowly starts running her hands through his hair as she feels a wet tear fall on her shoulder.

"At the end of a week of cubic questions and theories, but no answers, could this be the greatest stealth marketing campaign in business history? And if it is, will those behind it ever come forward and explain exactly what it's for?".