Chapter 1 – The Doctor Visits
"Sophie, time to get ready for bed darling"
"One minute mum"
As I finished colouring in the last bit of my tenth 'Doctor' comic strip, I found my mind wandering to all my made up adventures with the Doctor and wishing they would come true. My mum tells me that ever since I turned five I have been fixated on my Doctor. I made him up and created his life through drawing after drawing. I have a whole draw full of them and how the Doctor goes travelling in his spaceship called the Tardis. I made up his life and how he would travel through time and space and stopping alien plots. I made up his companions that he took on travels with him and in one or two I put myself in their place and would travel with the Doctor to the end of the Universe and stop aliens from taking over the earth.
"Sophie, I mean it. Bed, now!"
"Ok mum I'm finished"
I put my pencils away and crawled into bed, hoping to have a dream where I would travel with the Doctor again. However, my dream is interrupted at one o'clock in the morning by a faint whooshing sound that gradually gets louder. My hair is being blown about like it does in the wind but my window is closed. There's a light and the faded shape of the Tardis comes slowly into focus and before I know it, the Doctor himself along with Rose Tyler are standing in my room looking very confused.
My throat is so dry I can barely get out a hello. The Doctor is muttering about the Tardis keeping on jumping time tracks. Rose on the other hand has noticed my drawing and is just about to pick it up.
"No, don't touch that!"
I grab the picture and stuff it in my drawer with the others. Rose looks a bit taken aback by my sudden outburst but soon goes back to the Doctor's side. The Doctor has finished examining my room and is now looking at me like I'm an alien.
"Hello. I'm the Doctor and this is Rose and who are you may I ask?"
"Sophie"
"Well nice to meet you Sophie. How old are you?"
"Seventeen. I know right, seventeen and still living with my mum."
The Doctor smiles and looks at Rose. "Oh, nothing wrong with that"
His gaze trails to my draw full of Doctor drawings and in no time he's opened it and is examining them with interest and shock.
"Sophie, did you draw these?"
"Yes. I've been drawing them since I was five"
He spins round on the heels of his converses and looks at me.
"How?"
Rose slaps him on the arm.
"What do you mean how? With pencils of course"
The Doctor shook his head.
"No I mean, we've never ever come here before and I have never ever seen her before in my life so how could she possibly know about me, about you and Mickey, Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, and about the Daleks, the Cybermen, Slitheen, Ood, you name it and I bet you it's in one of these drawings"
Rose suddenly catches on and backs away from the draw as if it had fangs.
"I don't understand. I made you up in my mind when I was five years old. All those drawings, those adventures, those monsters and your companions, they're all my imagination and have been for twelve years"
The Doctor paces back and forth before snapping his fingers and taking out his sonic screwdriver. He presses a button and a bright blue light bathes my face. After about a minute of this, the Doctor examines the screwdriver and then backs away from my bed.
"What? What is it Doctor?"
I'm starting to get worried. I should be ecstatic but I'm not. The Doctor frowns and then holds my head.
"Sophie, this won't hurt a bit, just hold still"
I do as he says and he looks me in the eye before rushing back into the Tardis and coming out with a bunch of papers. He looks through the quickly before throwing them back into the Tardis and yelling out in frustration.
"Doctor what's wrong?"
Rose takes him by the arm and forces him to stop pacing the room. I get off my bed and do the only thing I know that gets me noticed. I walk over to the Doctor and step on his foot, not so hard that it hurts but hard enough for him to notice and look at me.
"What was that for?"
I smile a little at his disgruntled expression – he looks like a kid who accidently broke something.
"To get you to stop and look at me so you can answer my question. What is it that is wrong?"
The Doctor makes me sit down before explaining.
"According to my records, I'm not just your imagination; you know everything about me and my life. Now considering I'm 907 and you're only 17, this is not possible but I'm just going to run a little test"
I sat up properly and readied myself.
"The name of the planet of the Slitheens"
"Raxocoricofallapatorius"
"My race and their home planet"
"Time Lord and Galifrey"
"What does Tardis stand for?"
"Time and Relative Dimension in Space"
The Doctor looks relatively shocked but none the less he isn't fazed and he asks one more question. One more completely random and absurd question.
"What happened to my right hand on Christmas Day two years ago?"
I'm so taken aback by this question that for a moment I'm not sure I can answer it. But I do.
"It was cut off in battle by the Sycorax leader and because you were still in the first fifteen hours of your regeneration cycle you had enough energy to grow another one and it became a fighting hand"