The Doctor ran quickly down the aisles of the vast 83rd Century bookstore, holding the large, trumpet like device to his ear. If he listened closely he could just barely hear… There! He spun quickly to his right, down another long row, following the faint, high-pitched humming noise. He ran past the small section labeled "Science Fiction - Old Earth" then, just as rapidly, backpedaled until he was standing in front of the shelf denoting authors whose last names began with M. He began flinging books off the shelf with no regard for order. As the volumes piled up around him he finally stopped, clutching a slim novel in his hand. Slowly, he held it up to his ear, listening, then gingerly, he opened it, methodically turning pages until he found what had been making the noise. With two fingers he carefully lifted the thin metal sheet. It could easily have been mistaken for a bookmark, but the Doctor knew that he held the trapped consciousness of the last king of Zalar.
"Well," he said, removing a rectangular device from his coat pocket, "that is what happens when you attempt transdimensional travel without a tempering agent." Carefully, he slipped the bookmark into the matching slat on the device, programmed in a few coordinates and pressed one final button. "There, back in your study with only, ohhhhhhh, twelve minutes lost and a hundred years of war diverted. Clever me." He smirked, but his joy fell a bit flat in the empty aisle.
He slipped the device back into his coat and turned to go. Before he made it all the way round though, he stopped, and swiveled round on his heel to look at the book that had caught his attention. At a shelf on eye level, sandwiched between Terrors of the Planet Kosh by Melbourde, Anne, and Trapped in Cyberspace by Merville, Vince, rested a book by one Mercer, Michael, a book with a very curious title. Tilting his head to the right, he read, THE DOCTOR: An Inspired Tale of a Madman and his Adventures Through Time.
The Doctor plucked the book off the shelf and held it away from his face, studying the cover. It was blue, with a crude hand drawn picture on the front, his TARDIS! He hastily opened the book and sped through its pages. It was all there. His entire history printed in this cumbersome book. Companions: Jamie, Leela, Romana, Ace, Rose, the Ponds. Even all his old foes, three whole chapters devoted entirely to the Daleks. He flipped back to the cover of the book. Michael Mercer. Who was this man, and how was it possible that he knew so much about the Doctor? The copyright page listed a small publishing house in London, and a date, December, 2012. He pocketed the book and ran, disregarding the piles of fiction and the angry robotic shopkeeper he left in his wake.