In the Attic

    Sarah Jane sighed with contentment.  What a cozy night!  It was very seldom that she had the opportunity to spend a Friday evening at home with Luke.  After all, teenage boys weren't supposed to want to spend their weekends at home with their mums.  But Sarah didn't think it could hurt Luke to stay home on a Friday once in a great while.  As Luke was already a teenager when she'd adopted him, Sarah had missed out on parenting a younger child who would naturally stay home on weekend evenings.  So she didn't mind having Luke at home with her now—making up for lost time, so to speak.
    

     They weren't doing anything special; they were just enjoying working side-by-side in the attic.  She was under a tight deadline for a news article she was writing, so she was tapping away on her laptop.  Luke was working on a lengthy school assignment.  Sarah wasn't sure what the assignment was, but Luke was using the desktop computer to do some sort of research.
    

     As the sun set, the attic grew dim and quiet.  The only light came from their two glowing computer screens, and the only sound was the quiet clicking of their fingers on the keyboards.  Sarah felt lulled by the peaceful, companionable mood in the attic.  
    

     Suddenly Luke's mobile, which was sitting next to him on the desk, burst into song, pulling Sarah out of her reverie.  Sarah didn't recognize the melody of the ringtone.  She supposed it must be a pop song that Rani or Clyde had introduced to Luke.
    

     Luke glanced at the phone, then turned back to the laptop.
    

     “Aren't you going to answer that?” Sarah asked.
    

     Luke looked surprised.  “Sometimes, Mum, when you're writing, you ignore your phone,” Luke pointed out, still not picking up his mobile.  “Why can't I do the same?”
    

     “I only do that when I'm under a tight deadline and I don't have the time to chat on the phone.  I'm sure that your homework can wait—you don't really need to be doing it on a Friday evening, do you?”
    

     “It's not homework,” Luke admitted as his phone, still sitting beside him on the desk, stopped ringing.  “Clyde mentioned a new pop group today in school, and I decided to look them up on the Internet.  I read their Wikipedia page, and there was an interesting link in the article, so I followed it, and then I found another article to read, and another, and so on.  It's really interesting to spend all this time just reading new information without interruption.”
  

      “And how long have you been at this?”  Sarah asked.
    

     “Three hours and eight minutes,” Luke answered, with characteristic precision.
    

     “Luke,” said Sarah, rolling her eyes, “look at your Caller ID and see who just rang.”
  

      Obediently, Luke opened the flip of his phone and reported: “It was Clyde.  He left voicemail.  Although I haven't listened to his message yet, I believe I know the purpose of his call.  In school he was talking about getting together a group of students for a vampire movie marathon at his house tonight.  Probably he was calling to give me the details.”
    

     “And don't you want to go to this vampire movie marathon?” Sarah asked.
    

     “It would be interesting,” Luke said, “but I'm busy with Wikipedia at the moment.”  His eyes slid back toward the computer screen, as if he couldn't stand to be parted from it for a moment longer.
    

     “Luke, wait!” said Sarah.  “Wikipedia can be fun and interesting, but you're letting it control you, and that's not good.”
    

     “I'm letting it control me?”  Confused, Luke furrowed his brow.
    

     “You're allowing it to get in the way of your social life.  You're letting the virtual world steal you away from the real world.”
    

     “Oh,” said Luke, thinking over Sarah's words.  “So then you think that I should go over to Clyde's house tonight?”
    

     “Definitely,” Sarah said.  “Ring him back now.  Tell him that I'll give you a ride to his place whenever he's ready for you.”
    

     Sarah turned back to her laptop as Luke picked up his mobile and dialed Clyde.  Instead of diving back into her work, though, Sarah thought about what had just happened.  She found her mind wandering back to a night long, long ago, at a Buddhist monastery in the countryside, when the Doctor, then in his third incarnation, had admitted aloud that his greatest weakness was his greed for new knowledge and information.  This was before the days of Wikipedia, even before the days of the personal computer.  Nonetheless, Sarah saw a parallel between the Doctor's unquenchable thirst for knowledge and Luke's Wikipedia-fed quest for knowledge.  
    

     Before she could reflect any further, Sarah heard Luke asking her, “Mum, can you take me round to Clyde's now?  He says that he's ready with the movies.”  So Sarah grabbed her purple coat and fished her car keys out of the pocket.  Much as she had enjoyed spending a few quiet hours alone with son, she knew that the boy belonged with his friends on a Friday night.  She could talk to him again on Saturday.
    

     That, thought Sarah, was the best thing about being Luke's mum—even if he wandered off with his friends for a bit, he always came home again.  Over the course of her adventures with the enigmatic Doctor, she had never known if the Time Lord would disappear around some corner and never appear again.  Luke, on the other hand, belonged with Sarah—and he always would.