The Doctor brushed the hair from her face, looked around the T.A.R.D.I.S and laughed. Sparks flew across the console room. The simple flight path she had asked the machine to take had been disregarded. Instead, the T.A.R.D.I.S, had decided the best course of action to take was to stay materialised and fly right through the treacherous fields of the Magellanic Clouds...with no stabilisers.
"Look, I know you're not happy about this but neither am I." The Doctor threw a large switch and smashed her fist into a cluster of flashing buttons. "I'll be late for my appointment as much as you'll be and there'll be no telling of the consequences." The lights in the console room dimmed. A spotlight, seemingly erupting upwards, formed around a single dial beside The Doctor's hand. "I've told you, we can't." The Doctor turned and sat in her pilot's chair. "My timeline crosses too many times at this location. If we travel through the vortex too close I'll meet 472 versions of myself and erase a vast quantity of memories I'd quite like to keep."
The T.A.R.D.I.S. began to chime the Cloister Bells.
"I've had this agreement with myself for the past 500 years and I've promised the next 500 regenerations I'd do the same." She pulled out a small white bag from her coat and popped a Jelly Baby in her mouth. "It's easy for you, one personality and one...well, two bodies at the most…I'm constantly in flux. Worst thing of all is that I cannot stand Jelly Babies anymore." She spat out the sweet back into the small paper bag. "Do you know how long I've had that bag of Jelly Babies? A millennia maybe...They were a vintage year I'll tell you that."
The T.A.R.D.I.S. re-illuminated.
"Thank you." said The Doctor. The T.A.R.D.I.S. whirred back into life. "Here," The Doctor flicked a switch, "have your stabilisers back."
It was Paul's last day on Earth. He had arranged it all around 15 years ago. This was the day, he had decided, that he wanted to pass on to the next great journey as promised by New New Earth Holy Scriptures. His friends and family watched at home on their holographic screens as the last of the gene-scrubbers were injected via the device to the side of his bed. Paul lay there alone staring at the walls of his hospital bed.
With a ping a message from his old school friend James scrolled across a monitor beside him.
2 soon bro. rip.
The sound of a woman crying erupted from the walls. Sonic transmissions fed directly into the construction of the building. Good for immersion in a movie but not a fantastic choice for his wife's grief.
Paul pressed a button on his bedside controller and the sound stopped.
He closed his eyes, rolled onto his side and pondered on the great beyond. His breathing became more shallow until the point at which he felt he was breathing no more and all fell silent for a time.
Well, for a time until the sounds a great mechanical churning started shaking the walls of Paul's room. Paul opened his eyes ever so slightly and huffed.
"Oh what now, don't tell me the walls are picking up BBC 278 again." Paul rolled over and gasped. He hadn't ordered a big blue box in his death package. Perhaps he had been given an upgrade. He's never been upgraded on a flight to first-class so this was a surely his final lucky day.
What a pleasant surprise… he thought to himself until the moment the door on the box sprung open.
A woman in unusual clothing flew out shouting in various languages at the top of her voice. She stopped. Looked around and down at Paul in his bed and pushed a solemn expression across her face.
"Oh no, I'm so sorry to interrupt." She put her hand on Paul's head."You've only just been injected, yes?"
Paul nodded as he adjusted his hospital gown.
"Good, good. I'm here to help you with your journey. I'm The Doctor."
"You're not my doctor though. What happened to Doctor Miller?" Paul pulled The Doctor's hand from his head. She offered it to him and Paul shook it lightly.
"Unfortunately Doctor Miller ran into what I like to call, a problem." The Doctor began to examine the various displays surrounding Paul, analysing his medical data. "Luckily, I'm here and that's all that matters."
"What happened to Doctor Miller then? Am I going to die alright?"
"I made quite good time actually. I've only just died myself." The strange woman pulled out a glowing metal stick and began waving it over Paul and around the room. "I've had this appointment booked and rebooked so many times it's beginning to get a little bit tedious. But, with so many variables in you little humans it's a necessity."
"Little humans?" Paul sat bolt upright. "I demand to see Doctor Miller."
"Oh no no no, no don't say that too loud you'll alert a nurse." The Doctor pulled out the small paper bag from her pocket and pushed it towards Paul "You're not too precious are you? Ignore the half chewed one." But Paul ignored the gesture completely and with a look of fear on his face resumed calling for his nurse. He swung an arm around and pressed a rather large red button The Doctor had been willing him not to push.
A red light illuminated the room and an alarm sounded.
"Paul, you really want me to get angry don't you. I'm doing you a favour here." The Doctor grabbed his arm. 'Listen to me. You've got about five minutes before you become a gelatinous blob of protein and I'm the only one stupid enough to interfere with the process."
"Please step away from the door. Hospital staff are now entering." Echoed a metallic voice. A light above the door reading STAND BACK lit up.
"I don't have time for this…" The Doctor muttered letting go of Paul's arm. Taking a proud stance The Doctor stood in front of the door. A stray hair sat on her nose which she blew out of the way. She held the metal device she had analysed Paul with up to the door and smacked it a few times against her palm.
"You said you're The Doctor." said Paul. "But I've never seen you before."
'Yes' she said. "But have you seen the nurses either?" Paul shook his head, he hadn't seen them.
"I came into the hospital, registered as a patient of Doctor Miller with the computer, took the pill it dispensed and woke up here."
"Typical monkey." The door fought against The Doctor's interference. The Doctor stood back "And do you know who they are?"
A blinding light shone into the room. A series of four stunted and smooth silhouettes were projected through the light.
The largest of the silhouettes slid forward. A small blue light pierced through the peak of shadowy shape. "WE ARE HERE TO ATTEND TO PATIENT NUMBER 67554. PLEASE REMAIN CALM WHILST HOSPITAL STAFF RESOLVE YOUR DEATH." Two symmetrical lights pulsed atop of the silhouettes dome.
Another pair of similar lights illuminated atop of one of the more distant silhouettes." SCANS DETECT UNAUTHORISED BINARY VASCULAR SYSTEM. GALLIFREYAN DETECTED."
"Here they go…" The strange woman rolled her eyes.
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
The silhouettes fell aside as the red glow of the glaring warning lights cast off their cloaks of darkness. Revealed was a creature all too familiar to The Doctor. After all these years, after all the time she'd spent saving reality from their hatred, The Daleks still soldiered on. Wriggling their lasers they paced into the room.
"Sewers." declared The Doctor. "How are the sewers doing on Skaro?"
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" The metal monstrosities paced ever closer.
"How's my old mate Davros? Still blinking?" The Doctor stepped backwards and reaching behind braced herself on the frame of the bed. In unison, the creatures eyestalks swung towards The Doctor's time machine.
"T.A.R.D.I.S. DETECTED. BLUE BOX IDENTIFIED. LOCATE THE DOCTOR." The Daleks ceased their procession and unanimously tilted their metallic frames towards the strange woman in front of them. "YOU WILL LEAD US TO THE DOCTOR."
The Doctor relaxed ever-so-slightly and let out a small sigh.
"And what makes you think I would do that?" She said.
"YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY." The Dalek's body shifted as it talked.
"Do I have a choice in the matter?"
"YOU ARE A FEMALE COMPANION OF THE SWORN ENEMY OF THE DALEKS , THE DOCTOR. YOU WILL AID US IN RETURN FOR YOUR LIFE."
Paul sat in disbelief in this bed.
"Oh Daleks, so predictable." The Doctor stood up tall. "Did you just assume my gender?"
The Dalek quartet swung their lasers around as if to fire upon the very face of the strange female and slowly paced towards her.
"DETAILED ANALYSIS COMPLETE. THIS GALLIFREYAN IS THE TIME LORD KNOWN AS THE DOCTOR."
"And you know the best part of assuming my gender?" The Doctor raised her hand. "Is that I have a really stereotypical tendency to forget to put my handbrake on." She snapped her fingers.
In a howl of extermination and misfired laser blasts the T.A.R.D.I.S. heeded her friend's request and swung as if it were a giant pendulum across the hospital room. The Daleks who were stood in its path were flung, like a group of small pebbles, unexpecting of the sheer force of the time machine. The Doctor, once again, grabbed Paul by the wrist but this time pulled him into the T.A.R.D.I.S. as she struggled with the door. The Doctor howled with laughter but once inside Paul heard her whisper a promise about a new paint job and gripped onto a rail as he saw the grandeur of box's interior. He whimpered admiring the size of it all, fell to his knees and collapsed.
When Paul came too he could feel a cold steel grate across his bottom and see the soles of some very well-worn boots and. Attached to the boots was a woman he knew only as The Doctor and attached to her, was a very long multicolored scarf.
"When I get a bit nippy I pop this old thing on." said The Doctor. "How's the patient?"
Paul said something under his breath and then asked; "Are we safe now?"
The Doctor looked down at the man in his weathered hospital gown and offered him a hand up. Paul obliged and leant against the strange woman who had saved him. They looked at the console monitor.
"The Daleks almost had you." said The Doctor. "They had this nefarious plan many moons ago you see, to turn humans into gelatinous protein blobs which they could then turn into more Daleks." The Doctor pointed to a chair and Paul sat down. "I found out about the plan years ago, well years ago for me, but the problem is those little gene-scrubbers. Good for erasing traces of human genetic traits but also deadly little things. They're what makes the biological jelly."
Paul nodded.
"You see I'd be jelly too if I was there too long. Two hearts, quickens the flow of blood." She tapped her chest. "I only dare go after I've regenerated and I can only save one person at a time, at a push. This is the first time I've seen The Daleks burst in like that though. I'm usually quite subtle."
She adjusted her scarf. A slight yellowish glow emanated from her neck.
"I'm so sorry that you didn't get the death you wanted. The one promised by all that Dalek propaganda."
Paul clutched his stomach.
"Oh yes, and you might throw up, expel a few of those scrubbers. Harmless now though. I just used the artron energy flowing about in the T.A.R.D.I.S. to decay their metallic components."
Paul leant over a railing and wretched.
"You can say thank you another time then."