When Professor Nick Cutter entered his office and saw the old-fashioned blue police box standing in the corner of the room, he finally began to wonder if Stephen was right.

Maybe he was just going crazy.

There was, he thought, no other explanation for the police box. Nor was there an explanation for the fact that the box then opened and a man stepped out – but not before Cutter could peek through the door and see that the box was bigger on the inside.

"Ah, hello!" the man said cheerfully. He had brown hair that fell like a mop over his face and was wearing a bright red bow tie around his neck. "Professor Cutter, isn't it? Lovely to meet you at last. Charming office you've got here; pity it's so untidy. I may've landed on a fossil or two... but they shouldn't be too difficult to replace, should they?"

Cutter simply stared at him.

"Well! I've heard all about you," the man went on, seemingly oblivious to Cutter's complete shock. "You're working on the anomaly project, aren't you? Rips in the fabric of space and time... hm, yes. Fascinating really. Not to mention more or less unheard of in all of history." He did a full twirl in the centre of the office, his arms spread wide to gesture towards the whole of the room. "What have you been doing in this ARC of yours, Professor?"

"Who the hell are you?" Cutter managed at last.

The stranger clapped his hands together and turned back to him. "Ah, yes! Introductions! Quite right, quite right. Well, you're Nick Cutter, of course – unless my calculations are wrong, and they're never wrong... at least, not when it really matters. I'm the Doctor."

"The doctor of what?"

"Just the Doctor." He gave a wide smile. "I'm sorry to appear out of the blue like this, but I did think it was time we had a bit of a chat."

Professor Cutter was utterly lost by this time. It was a source of great frustration to him, that he could continue to be surprised by anything even after months of working with space-time anomalies and dinosaurs. He decided there was nothing to do but play along with it. After all, he was most likely dreaming or hallucinating, and whichever one it was, it would go away with time. He hoped.

"Take a seat," Cutter said, gesturing towards the empty chair before his desk. He shut the office door behind him and leaned against the wall. "And don't touch anything."

The Doctor winced like a guilty child and retracted his hand, having been caught in the act of reaching for a dinosaur skull. "Right," he said, spinning side-to-side in the chair as he spoke. "Here's the thing, Professor Cutter. I caught wind recently of this whole 'anomaly' business, and I thought I probably ought to investigate."

"Are you with the government?" Cutter asked.

"What? No. Nothing like that." The Doctor flapped a hand. "I'm working on my own." A shadow passed across his face for a moment before he continued. "How do I put this? Let's just say... whenever rips or cracks in spacetime turn up, they're generally bad news."

"You can say that again," muttered the professor.

"Yes – dinosaurs, right? Fascinating." The Doctor, whoever he was, apparently found a great number of things fascinating. It was beginning to get on Cutter's nerves. "So, I've done a bit of research, but I could always use an explanation from an expert. Why don't I get us a cuppa –" he tilted his head towards the blue police box "– and you tell me everything you know about the anomalies?"

Cutter stared at him. "How much time have you got?"

"Oh, I've got all of time."


The Doctor disappeared into his strange police box and emerged with a tray bearing a teapot and two cups in saucers. "You might have to clear a bit of space on your desk," he said, warily regarding the piles of paper that cluttered the polished wooden surface. Cutter rolled his eyes and began to stack the papers on top of each other, until there was enough room to balance the tray between two piles of paper almost tall enough to touch the ceiling.

"What else does your box do?" Cutter asked, accepting the cup the Doctor passed him.

"That's the TARDIS. What doesn't she do?" The Doctor smiled fondly over at the police box. "Time And Relative Dimension In Space. She's sort of like one of your anomalies, except she doesn't let dinosaurs come rampaging through, and she goes where I tell her to – mostly."

"And she's bigger on the inside," Cutter added. The Doctor laughed aloud. Cutter shrugged and took a sip of his tea. Grimacing, he informed the Doctor, "This is cold."

"Is it?" The Doctor made a face. "So sorry. Here, pass it back." He took the mug from Cutter and pulled a strange-looking, pointed device from his pocket. "Sonic screwdriver," he explained, preempting Cutter's question. He pointed the device at the tea and held down a button for several seconds. "Try it now."

Cutter did so. He burned his tongue.

"There we go." The Doctor grinned. "So, these anomalies?"

Cutter put his cup back in its saucer and set them both aside. "Wait," he ordered. "I have a few questions of my own. How do you know who I am, and how did that –" he pointed to the TARDIS "– get in here?"

The Doctor smiled. "I'm a time-traveller, Professor Cutter," he said. "Wouldn't usually be so forward about it, but from what I understand, you've been doing your fair share of travelling yourself. I like to keep myself informed whenever something... unusual crops up. People all through time and space have been talking about these anomalies. I'm surprised you've managed to keep the rest of twenty-first century England out of the loop."

"'All through time and space'?" Cutter repeated. "Just how much of time and space have you explored?"

"Oh, a fair bit."

"And out of all of it, you decided to barge into my office?"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Are you complaining? It's just a little bit of excitement to spruce up your day."

"I've had enough excitement to last all of time," Cutter said flatly.

The Doctor took a sip of his tea and screwed up his nose. "Ah. Cold. Right."

He busied himself with the sonic screwdriver, and Cutter took the opportunity to hammer his point home. "I mean it, Doctor," he said emphatically. I'll tell you what I know, but then I want you and your box to go. We've got enough to deal with here without bow-tied doctors and blue boxes and screwdrivers."

The Doctor looked at him over the rim of his cup for a long moment before he nodded. "All right," he said. "Just tell me what you've got."


Two cups of tea and an hour later, Cutter had brought the Doctor up to speed on everything they knew. It was a relatively quiet day in the ARC and they hadn't been interrupted; Cutter suspected that most of the team – especially Stephen – was avoiding him. It had only been a handful of days since he'd stumbled out of the Permian into a changed world, but he'd made such a fool of himself in that short time that they all thought he had lost it. Of course, Cutter reflected, staring at the strange man who had appeared out of a police box that was bigger on the inside, it's entirely possible that I have.

"Right," said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair. "Well. Thank you for that, Professor. Most informative." He steepled his fingers and looked at Cutter carefully. "Let me just recap... these anomalies, which appear for reasons unknown, open unpredictably to let through any number of dangerous extinct creatures, which subsequently go out of their way to wreak havoc on most of London. Oh, and when you went through one of these anomalies, you meddled with the past, and somehow you changed the present?"

"That's what I said." Cutter's tone was terse. He'd been questioned about this sort of thing too many times over the last few days.

The Doctor nodded slowly. A moment later he had jumped up and was yanking open the TARDIS. "This is serious!" he declared, snatching Cutter's cup and saucer from the desk and flinging them through the door. Cutter jumped to his feet. "This is a big deal, Professor Cutter," the Doctor said earnestly. "It's not every day someone meddles with time – certainly not a mere human." He threw the rest of the tea things into the TARDIS, wincing a bit the sound of shattering china.

"'Mere human'?" Cutter repeated.

"That's what I said." The Doctor leaped into his TARDIS, turning to hang out the door to bid Cutter farewell. "Anyway, best be off. I've got to fix this. I don't know why it's happening, but it needs to stop. Thanks for your time, Professor! It's been fun. Next time, I'll remember the biscuits." He made to close the door, but Cutter threw his hand out and braced it open.

"Wait."

The Doctor obeyed, pulling the door open again. "Wait what?"

"You said you were going to fix this," Cutter began.

"If I can," the Doctor answered with a nod. "I think I can. I should be able to. Hasn't really happened before, like I said. It'll keep me busy for the next little while, at least. Always good to have something to do."

"Right, right." Cutter waved an impatient hand. "But if you do fix this, does that mean... I mean, is there a chance that... you might reverse the timeline change?"

The Doctor tilted his head. "I guess it's possible."

Cutter hesitated for a second, then pulled his wallet from his pocket, fished out the photo he kept there, and showed it to the Doctor. "This is Claudia Brown."

The Doctor took the photo and glanced at it. "You want me to find her?"

"I want you to bring her back." Cutter stared at him imploringly. "All of time and space, you said. Surely – surely she's there somewhere. If the past changed once, then maybe it can change again."

There was a long pause while the Doctor looked at the photo. At last, he glanced up and met Cutter's gaze. "I've lost friends before," he said quietly, his previous boyish enthusiasm gone. "I know how it feels. I'll do my best, Professor. You have my word."

Cutter didn't respond.

The Doctor gave back the photo and shut the TARDIS door.

Nick turned to survey his office, complete with teacup stains the Doctor had left behind. It was still unfamiliar to him; he'd only been working there for a few days, even if the people with whom he worked remembered him from months ago. Though it was piled high with paper and clutter like his office at the university had been, it was all paper and clutter that had been placed there by another man, another version of himself. There was nothing here that was his. Nothing he would be leaving behind.

He turned to knock on the TARDIS again. He'd barely let his fist fall when the door sprung open.

"You're coming along, then?" the Doctor asked brightly.

Cutter shrugged. "Nothing keeping me here."

"That's the spirit." The Doctor clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on in."