Prologue
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. And although BBC et al have got all the copyrights, I'm pretty sure there's no-one in the universe who actually owns the greatness that is the last of the Time Lords with a TARDIS.
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It had started out like any normal day, and looking back on it now, I realize that that's how every such life-changing experience starts: normal.
At the time, I believed that there was nothing spectacularly out of order that morning, but of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty, and as events unfolded I came to see that the tiniest changes all pointed to the greatest change of them all. There was nothing unusual about the way I woke up and got ready for another day of life. Today's act: eight hours in a dingy nondescript antique store and book emporium. In other words, work. As always, the alarm's strident voice broke out at a quarter to seven, and shooting my arm out from underneath the warm covers, I was able to silence it with a brisk slap of my palm after a few seconds of blind, frantic patting. After a few minutes, I poked my head out from under the duvet with a sigh of resignation, then sat up and stretched.
The first thing I noticed was that the painting above the dresser was slightly askew. That in itself was not overly out of the ordinary - however, that was the wall shared between my room and my brother's, and his headboard was right up against it. I shook my head with a rueful smile. That brother of mine was something else, to use my mother's words.
I got out of bed, immediately noticing seemingly insignificant oddity number two: my slippers were under the bed, not beside it like they usually were. However, being the ignorant git I was at the time, I blamed it on my nightly stumble towards the bathroom for…well, that's none of your business, now, is it?
Showered and dressed in fifteen minutes flat, the bathroom was all in order to my unseeing eye. If I had been enlightened the way I am now, I would have noticed that the handprint on the mirror was not made by my brother bracing himself against it as he came in for a closer shave, but rather by a hand that was too small, too effeminately shaped for his hand – and, for that matter, mine as well.
Half an hour later, I had finished breakfast, and was heading out the door into the unusually cold morning. As I stepped out of my flat and headed for the elevator, I didn't look back as I normally did, to make sure that the door was closed and that I hadn't imagined locking it.
Now I wish I had.
Anyone who's had an unusual day start out in the same fashion as mine will tell you that they wish they'd done this or that to prevent the unusual stuff from happening. And although I've just said that I myself wish I had turned around to look at the door, sometimes in the night when I simply can't fall asleep I wonder if I really would have looked back, had I been so inclined.
I never really understood how one little thing could change an entire lifetime – how one small alteration could prevent some catastrophic occurrence from ever being more than a whisper of smoke in the dark back corner of a mind. That whole Ashton Kutcher flick never really sank into my head – you know, the one about the butterfly and all that. (And there wasn't even really a butterfly in it…)
That is to say, I never really understood it all until that day.
If you're anything like I was then, you will have spent more than one sleepless night contemplating the universe and the existence humankind and all creation. You'll have gazed up at those stars and wondered if we really are alone, and if one day we'll ever reach them.
Well, I'll tell you. They're out there.
And who are "they", you ask. What nonsense is this, you demand.
It's not nonsense. Oh, it's real – so very real.
I don't exactly remember how it started. The first thing I can recall, even up to now, was that I was running, running hard and fast and away from whatever had caused that bridge to go up in flames. Running, so scared out of my mind that, as stupid as it was, I couldn't help but look back over my shoulder.
Just…running.
Of course, that's what you would expect somebody to do when there are things coming after you – weird, unexplainable, incomprehensible, impossible, but very-oh-so-very real things.
I suppose I sound crazy. And maybe I am. But that's fine. People here on Earth may never believe me, but there is one out there in the universe who always will.
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Well, there's the start...hope you guys enjoy! Please review, as all the constructive criticism helps me write better :) Stay tuned!