(AN: This started out as one story, then I decided to change it into another story. Also, despite the presence of K-9 here, this Doctor is not meant to be Tom Baker or indeed any specific iteration of the character. He's just The Doctor, which is how it should be.

"Are you awake, Mr. Hudson?"

Bernard Hudson opened his eyes, then immediately shut them as spikes of pain stabbed through them. The light was overwhelmingly bright, even through his eyelids, and as big as the world. A second later he tried it again, and although the light was still as bright, he was able to tell that he staring up into a large lamp. Not only that, but it appeared was laying on a cold metal table, strapped even, to such a degree that he could barely move. Strange that he hadn't noticed that as soon as had regained consciousness

"I repeat, are you awake Mr. Hudson?" The voice seemed distorted, echoing throughout the room as if he were in the middle of a vast cavern. Was that where he was? He couldn't see much of anything beyond the lamp..

"Who the hell are you? What am I doing here?" Bernard said, struggling in vain against his bonds. He was feeling so weak for some reason…

"Ah, good. Normally I don't care either way if the subject is conscious, but who am I to turn down a request from a colleague?" The voice replied. "In regards to your questions, there's no need for you know. In a few moments you won't even remember asking them."

"What are you talking about?"

"Now you might be feeling a bit of disorientation and weakness." The voice continued. "That is common for humanoids who have had the tops of their skulls removed."

"I don't know what game you're playing, but it's not funny!" Bernard yelled, finding new strength as he strained against his bonds. "Now let me go!"

"You're going to feel a bit of pressure in a second." The voice persisted. "That will be the isomorphic solution being injected into your brain stem. The subsequent pain will be the rapid alterations to your physiology and central nervous system."

"You're insane! Somebody help me! HELP ME!"

"Goodbye, Mr. Hudson."

Then the pressure came,and Bernard Hudson screamed.

When had the TARDIS become so quiet?

The thought had come without warning, sneaking like some jungle cat into the mind belonging to the being known as The Doctor at the moment when he (at that time he was a he) when he least expected it. That moment, for those curious, was the second before he took a sip of his Earl Gray tea just after he had finished reading a volume of 48th century Martian poetry while sitting in his favorite chair in his favorite cozy firelit, study. This was why, The Doctor often claimed, he was rarely if ever taken by surprise. Even if sometimes it appeared otherwise.

Yes, quiet. The Doctor had been alive for several centuries by his last reckoning, and he had spent a good deal of that time freewheeling across the entirety of spacetime in his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, the vaguely sentient, unbelievably sophisticated transportation vehicles created by his people) and he could rarely recall it ever feeling so...empty. Normally there was at least one voice there to break the silence, often times several, usually human. One voice to push him away from the Gallifreyan tendencies toward lethargy and intellectual stagnation, to stave off the feelings of age and loneliness that preyed upon him in these exact moments..

So. Quiet.

"Sigh." The Doctor sighed, flinging the book behind him, which somehow managed to land perfectly sound on top of a pile of other books in the corner. "I'm starting to feel it. The weight of time. The soul-crushing ennui that comes from eternity. I feel like the protagonist in a vampire romance novel. Much more handsome of course, but still…"

He stretched out, catlike, in his chair, a late-19th century number that he had picked up when the Zygons had attempted to take over Parliament. He stared into the crackling flames in his fireplace. Then leaned back and sighed again.

"This won't do, this just won't do at all." He announced. "I feel like I'm stuck in a rut. When was the last time I saved the universe from an alien threat? Or kept the fabric of reality from tearing like a wet napkin? I mean I'm The Doctor for pity's sake! I need action! Adventure! Maybe just a little romance, not going to rule anything out. The wind at my back, infinity stretched out before me, that'll get the blood pumping through the old hearts again! Definitely!"

Excited now, The Doctor gulped down the rest of his scalding hot tea, immediately regretted it, and threw the empty cup behind him, which knocked over a pile of books and shattered into a thousand pieces. Grabbing his walking stick, he stood up like a man triumphant, waving it about like Napoleon waving his saber. "K-9!" The Doctor shouted.

"Yes Master?" Came the reply, in a high-pitched, mechanical voice.

K-9 was one of The Doctor's many acquisitions during one of his freewheeling excursions, your run-of-the-mill child's supercomputer built in the shape of a metallic blue, Old Earth style dog. A hot ticket item the year it came out, The Doctor had bought it and modified it a little (greater memory capacity, a more flexible OS, the ability to travel on surfaces other than perfectly flat concrete, and so on), and took it on his adventures, or at least the ones where a talking robot dog was useful. As it happens, those numerous modifications that The Doctor had performed on K-9 had the added benefit of making what was once meant to be a children's toy into one of the more advanced machines in the galaxy (at least by non-Gallifreyan standards), but The Doctor had always said that anything that claimed it was a dog but didn't know how to roll over couldn't be all that smart.

"K-9, have you been sitting next to me this whole time?" The Doctor asked.

"Affirmative."

"Well why didn't you say anything?"

"I am a dog Master. Dogs do not talk."

"Really?" The Doctor countered. "Well if dogs don't talk, then how are you answering my questions?"

"Some things are better left unsaid."

"...Alright, I can accept that." The Doctor admitted. "Not sure how I feel about getting sass from a walking microwave, but I'll accept it. Where are we now, K-9?"

"Your study, Master."

"The TARDIS, K-9, where is the TARDIS."

"Sector VKL of the Vilbrum Protectorate. Currently in orbit 400,000 kilometers above the system's second planet."

"Vilbrum...Vilbrum…" The Doctor murmured, mulling the name over in his mind. "Ah yes, the Vilbrum, of course! Lovely people, great art, great music, . And if this is the right place and the right time, then we might have found ourselves that adventure. Come along, K-9!"

Side-stepping his robotic companion, The Doctor rushed out of his study and raced down the hall. Although the inside of the TARDIS fell outside the normal definition of space and thus theoretically could contain an infinite number of rooms (currently it seemed capped at 52), it always seemed like you only needed to pass by a few rooms to get where you needed to go, even if they weren't the same rooms as when you started out.. When he had first went to his study he had passed by 3 bedrooms, a sauna, and a staircase leading up to a greenhouse, and it had only taken him half that many as he entered the control room of the TARDIS.

Technically speaking, this was the second control room for the TARDIS, a rustic wood and brass affair that offset the more Gallifreyan design of the main one. In older models of TARDIS, and they didn't get much older than The Doctor's, these two rooms were the only way to do much of anything on the craft, piloting being only one aspect. Newer TARDIS, like the ones used by Rassilon and the First Council, could be operated from any room, or even by pure thought. Took a lot of the fun out of it, in The Doctor's opinion, but then that was the Time Lords for you. Never do something fun if you can't do it dull.

"Let's see, let's see…" The Doctor mumbled. He flipped a few switches, pressed a few buttons, checked the information a nearby screen and then, excitedly pumped his fist into the air. "Yes, this is perfect! Just need a little nudge a few hundred thousand kilometers to the right, maybe a century or two forward, and that should just about do it!"

"Where are we going today, Master?" K-9 asked, finally rolling into the room. As powerful a computer as it was, K-9 wasn't the fastest dog in the galaxy by any stretch of the imagination.

"Where we're going is one of the most impressive bits of scientific achievement this side of the galaxy has seen in a millennium." The Doctor said, punching in some commands into the control console. The all-too-familiar sounds of the engines revving up, getting ready to slide the TARDIS out or normal space and into the timestream, brought a smile to his face. "As for what we're going to do when we get there, why only what the idle & privileged who claim the desire for adventure have done since time immemorial, of course! And who else in the universe is as idle and privileged as us?"

The Doctor slammed down a lever, comparable to a gas pedal in an ancient Earth automobile, and the whole room shook violently as the TARDIS fell out of reality like a lead balloon and went rocketing towards its destination.

"K-9, we're going on a safari!"