The long yellow grass rustles beneath his feet as he strides forward, parting as he moves through it, leaving a path of crushed stalks. The trees around him, dusty brown with low-angled and wide-reaching branches, sway in the warm breeze, and in the sky he sees birds flocking in their thousands in an annual dance. Beneath them, the lake stretches out across the landscape, reflecting the clear, blue sky above it.
Animals graze or hunt around it: he can see a few quadrupeds – he knows not the names people here give them – drinking at the shore. A predator attacks – not from the land, but from the water itself, jaws snapping down on one of the herbivores and dragging it into the water to drown.
It is a beautiful sight.
Someday, an intelligent man will observe that there is grandeur in this view of life. If only he could have truly seen it, though – the constant struggle of kill or be killed, predator and prey, locked in the eternal arms race of natural selection. Perhaps this is why the Wanderer is so bad with names? Life hardly seems able to keep still long enough to be given them.
He walks, the grass rustling as he moves through it. He stands out in this landscape, a being of unnatural civilisation transposed onto the natural world; close-cropped hair, a dark jacket and jeans on the African savannah. Right now, he is hot and seating more than even he is comfortable with. But he doesn't care. When all is said and done, everything is just molecules spinning around each other. The arrangements they can take, however, can be breathtaking, whether they be natural or unnatural.
Take, for example, the sight before him. A tribe of primates, sitting in the shade of a small grove of trees. To the Wanderer's own sensibilities, they look obscene – hairy, bowed, picking insects out of each other's fur. They might as well be apes. And then one stands – not on four legs, not even using their arms for support, but truly stands, and he smiled. The tribe hear a rustle, their hair standing on end in alarm, and they flee, running into the forest – running, with two legs, from a predator on four. The lion (or is it a leopard? Names again.) lunges catching one of the stragglers, a young female, jaws clenched around her head. The child struggles for a moment, and then goes limp as the predator bites down harder.
The rest of the tribe scream in fear, rage, and perhaps sorrow. The resemblance to apes is stronger now that they've climbed the nearest trees, and a few of them scramble to find something, anything, to throw at the cat to try to chase it away, to save their comrade. It is too late, much too late, but they hurl branches and twigs at the cat – it growls in annoyance, and drags its meal out of the grove, gripping it by the neck as it bounds away to another tree to drag it up into the branches. A meal for one.
The Wanderer continues to watch as the tribe climb down, still chittering in the direction of the cat. A few poke around at the bloody earth, perhaps futilely hoping to find their fellow. But others begin to cast a wider net in search of something else – rocks are gathered, branches are hefted, and the Wanderer-apes march to war.
The first assault is one of disorientation – chunks of earth and small rocks are hurled, pelting the cat along its flanks, a lucky clump of hardened mud breaking apart in its face. The cat lets out an enraged roar, and leaps down, baring its teeth in full at the cats – no leopard ever had sabres quite that long, the Wanderer was sure – and advanced angrily.
The second assault began – the clods of dirt were abandoned, now replaced by full stones. The cat halts as the barrage begins, swatting a few out of the air, but others crashing into its body, leaving bloody marks and cuts. The animal roars again, and leaps-
-a branch swings, the cat's intended victim putting all of his strength into it, and the cat is knocked aside, its head bleeding from a gash left by the lump of wood. The primates hoot and bellow defiance, throwing more stones at its prone form – a stone catches it behind the ear, smashing as it crashes against the skull. Another hits its flanks, and more catch its unprotected underbelly.
The cat struggles to stand under the withering fire, and yelps as a rock hits its tail. Finally, with a few enraged snarls at its would-be victims, it limps away hurriedly. The tribe give what the Wanderer takes to be a cheer – a familiar sound. A declaration of victory to any gods who were listening, before there even were gods. Such a human trait.
He smiles to himself. If only Darwin could have seen this.
The scene changes. Snow crunches beneath a Wanderer's – the same Wanderer's – shoes. There are some similarities with the previous landscape – herbivores graze under scattered clumps of trees. But the differences are vast – snow carpets the land as far as they eye can see and further, the trees bear needles instead of leaves, and the herbivores are larger and shaggier than any that ever graced the African savannah. Someday, this will be called "Russia". Today, there is no name for it that the people here use other than "home".
The Wanderer has a good vantage point. The snow-capped mountains – though "capped", or even "covered", were understatements – are rugged, and they are harsh to creatures that lose their footing. He has a finds a good position, shifting a few stray stones as he takes a seat.
The landscape isn't the only thing that has changed – gone are the hair, jacket and jeans, replaced with longer hair that ends in a protruding tuft at the front and a more practical blue suit under a thick brown coat, for which the Wanderer is glad of. He adjusts the collar to protect his neck from the cold, and dusts a few snowflakes off of him as he waits. Tonight will be cold, but it promises to be quite a spectacle, and he wouldn't miss this for all the worlds.
He looks around himself at the scenery that surrounds him as he waits. In all the worlds in the universe, in all the times he has witnessed, there are sights that still astonish and amaze him – a snowflake drifting through the air, perhaps, or a tree growing in conditions even the best botanist would consider "hostile". Right now, the planet is undergoing one of more than a dozen periods of glacial cooling, and this is the longest and the coldest it has seen in its history – yet even here, so far north, life still thrives.
It is precisely for the life that thrives here that he has come.
It is a few hours later, and the sun has set early on the glittering landscape. It is difficult to penetrate the gloom – a pair of glasses sits atop the Wanderers nose. Odd, nonsensical, and fulfilling a function that only he knows about. But he can see. And the sight that meets his eyes makes him smile and mouth to himself, "Oh, that's brilliant!"
The mountains are craggy and dominated by sharp inclines and declines, but for those who take care there are paths that cut through them. Some of these paths are wide indeed, through accident or through use, and are used sparingly unless conditions are dire. This year has been colder than most – its users are more desperate than usual to reach the warmer temperate climate further south. And their numbers are large.
He feels them before he sees them – shaggy beasts rumbling along the path, ploughing through snowdrifts and dislodging boulders with massive curved tusks. Mammoths. Mammuthus primigenus. Massive shaggy behemoths that strode the earth's northern hemisphere. When this glacial period ends, the species disappears with it. A tragedy. But right now, oh, they are brilliant! The Wanderer sits forward, adjusting the glasses he may or may not need, and waits patiently.
As magnificent as the creatures are, they're only one half of the show. And if the Wanderer knows his history well – and he does - then the other half should be appearing right…about…now-
There is a flare of orange in the gloom, a blurry smudge of colour in the void of night time, and shapes move beneath him. The Wanderer isn't the only one who has been waiting, finding a good vantage point to watch the mammoth herd. Shadows dance around the mammoths as they halt, confused at the new source of light.
Creatures dart in close, waving their sticks and yelling in a guttural language that even the Wanderer can't quite make out. But the meanings are obvious. A man – for it must be a man, or a woman – yells at a mammoth, a flaming branch held before him, waving it before a frightened mammoth. The animal trumpets in alarm, brandishing its tusks at its attacker, catching him in the chest and knocking him to the ground. The man screams in pain, but his place is filled by another, darting in to jab the branches at the mammoth's sensitive eyes. The animal backs up, away from the burning light-
And over the edge of the path, down into the steep slope.
The animal clutches at the edge, trumpeting in fear, but loses its footing, its own bulk dragging it down into the jagged rocks below. Another follows it, driven back by the hunters. A third breaks past them, sending a pair of branch-wielding hunters sprawling on the ground, a position from which they do not move. Another follows it, and another, and soon the entire herd is stampeding. The work of the hunters is complete – the path is wide, but not wide enough for so many massive animals to run, and more mammoths tumble over the cliff edge from their own confused stampede than from fear of the fire.
Tonight, the hunters shall feast.
The Wanderer stands, still watching the carnage as it unfolds. There is pity there, pity for animals too frightened to understand the cruel slaughter that is happening to them, helpless to prevent it. But there is admiration there, too – the human race has come a long way from the ape-men who feared the attentions of Dinofelis – the sabre-toothed leopard – that preyed upon them. They are no longer the prey – they have become the predators. They have come a long way – ruthlessness enough to take lives, intelligence enough to make simple tactics produce huge payoffs, and endurance enough to survive in the harshest of climates.
He watches as the last of the mammoth herd finally passes through the narrow path, a third of its number having taken the fatal tumble that will feed an entire tribe for weeks and provide fur, fat and bone enough to keep them well stocked to survive the coming winter. In the short term, their hunt has been an overwhelming success – they will not starve, and they may even be able to improve their lives by creating more bone-huts, spears that will hunt more prey, and furs to protect them from the biting cold that is already seeping across the landscape.
But their survival is not permanent. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. And as resourceful, and intelligent, and hardy as these people are, their time too is coming – when the mammoths die out, they will too; Homo neanderthalensis, the humans that have dominated Eurasia for thousands of years already, eventually giving way to another, more flexible species as the glacial period ends – unable to cope with the changing conditions, they will follow their prey into oblivion.
All good things come to an end. The Wanderer has seen many good things, and has seen then end – sometimes with a bang, often with a whimper. But he has always been a witness to their passing, a solemn duty he bears because no one else will, because no one else can, because there is no one else left to do so.
He watches for a while as the torches flicker, guiding the Neanderthals down the slope through pre-made cutaway paths, and begin their night's butchery, the long, messy process that turns tonnes of mammoth into usable commodity. And without another word, he leaves, snow crunching beneath his shoes, making his way back to his ship. A blue rectangular box, alarm fixed to the top, "POLICE public access BOX stamped across it." He steps inside.
There is an unearthly noise as the box fades. The Neanderthals don't hear it, nor would they care if they did. They have fresh meat.
The mammoth is large, hairy, and intimidating. Its tusks curve forward, and its truck is raised as if in mid-trumpet. The humans gathered before it stand still, marvelling in awe at its bulk.
"Auntie look! An elephant!"
The aunt pats the little girl in the head. "Sure is, Amelia. It's a big 'un, inn'it?"
The little girl nods, staring up at the stuffed mannequin with wide-eyed amazement that something so large could ever have lived. She hasn't yet noticed that if one looks up in the foyer, a life-scale model of a Blue Whale hangs as a testament to the leviathans of the deep. To her, the mammoth looks like the biggest thing she has ever seen.
She is so transfixed, in fact, that she hardly noticed the man beside her until he starts to talk.
"Technically, it's more a mammoth. Well, it is a mammoth, though add a bit of fur and I suppose an elephant could pass for one. You'd need to sort out the hump, though, maybe some sort of prosthetic-"
Amelia looks up at the man, confusion plain on her little face. "Sorry?"
The man is…well, to her all adults are "old", but this one is different to her auntie, or the parents of her friends. He looks…well, he looks about thirty, and his face is youthful. But his eyes…they are an old man's eyes. He wears a tweed jacket and something around his neck-
"Wha's that?"
The man looked down, following her gaze. "Oh, that. It's a bow tie. I wear bow ties. Bow ties are cool."
Amelia shrugged, muttering "If you say so", deciding that the man had very bad taste in clothes.
The man looked back at the mammoth. "Such a shame. Beautiful creatures. Imagine, a whole herd, stretching out across the horizon as far as the eye can see – beautiful. Maybe I'll show you some day."
Amelia frowned. "I'm not going anywhere. Not without Aunt-"
The man waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, no, no, no, no. Not You you. Other you. Ah, you'll understand eventually. I hope you do, because it would be absolutely rubbish to show you a herd of mammoths and you're just bored. Absolutely rubbish."
Amelia harrumphed in disbelief. "They're all dead, mister."
He smiled. "Oh yes, dead as a doorknob, though in my line of work it always pays to check. Always do when I open doors. Especially that time on Rigel Seven…oh, listen to me, boring you to death. Sorry to take up your time!"
And with that, he was gone.
The Wanderer watches for a while from one of the building's upper balconies. The people who walk in and out of this place call it a "museum", though he has always thought they were more like temples to some illusory God of History, offering up votives and attracting worshippers like any other temple. The thought makes him smile, if not in amusement then in contempt. If there is any god out there in the universe, then it was Time, who had no patience for such adoration.
He watches as the little girl and her auntie leave. Someday, little Amelia will become very important, not just to him but to the universe. Today, she is just a child who thinks he's a madman. And he is. But if there is anything he knows, it is that he is a madman with a box. And that is an important difference.
He has been there. Not for everything – not all of history requires his attention. But there are moments, moments that are fixed or in flux. He has been there – sometimes to smooth out the wrinkles in time, and others to serve as a silent sentinel, watching, observing, witnessing. It is an important duty that was once thrust upon him, but now, with no guards and no overseers, he takes it up gladly. The important moments in history – the ape-men taking their first steps into sentience; the tragic fate of the Neanderthals; the rise and fall of Babylon, and Rome in its place; the discovery in a little shop somewhere in England that compressed steam could do wonders; the world wars – the first, the second, and someday the third. And someday, he will watch as humanity travels the stars.
They won't be prepared for it. There will be accidents. There will be consequences nobody could predict. And, as always, there are creatures that are bigger, meaner and hungrier than humans out there, casting their eyes for new prey. But the Wanderer has faith – if not in humanity, then in its ability to find a stick big enough to send whatever predator mistakes it for easy prey running in a way that is so very human.
What use will museums be then? Who will be left to remember the "little" people? Who will be left who was actually there, who knew the sights and sounds and smells of a Roman market, or had seen Babylonian soldiers marching the Israelites into captivity? Who would be left who joined George Stephenson in his jubilation?
I will.
I am the Doctor. I have watched, and witnessed. Someone must watch over Time, because as flighty a mistress as she is, she is young and old at once. Like me. I have had…oh, so many faces. So many voices and minds. But always, there has only been one Doctor. I have journeyed across the stars – I watched as the Medusa Cascade erupted from the fires of the Great Time War. I watched as your sun coalesced into a radioactive ball of matter. I watched as fish made their first steps onto the land, and eventually became reptiles. Nobody else saw these things. Nobody else can see these things. Nobody is left to see these things. All gone, perishing in flame and terror and all frozen in that moment for eternity. Except for me.
Only me.
There is only the Lonely God. The Wanderer. The Destroyer of Worlds, and the Oncoming Storm.
There is only the Doctor.