Emily stood on the edge of the roof and looked down. The perspective from this high up seemed unreal but it would serve its purpose. Today she was going to kill herself. Her parents had managed to stop her previous attempts by taking all of the knives out of the drawers and locking the kitchen which contained the gas oven so throwing herself off a high rise block of flats had been the only way left. She had lied about being at the flat to visit her grandmother and had taken the lift all the way to the top and climbed out onto the roof. The wind whipped at her long black skirt and her black hair. Her black rimmed eyes turned upwards to regard the sky; the clouds were big, bulgy and white. Emily couldn't see the point in clouds or in anything, come to that. Sticks was what they had called her, the other girls at her school, because of her slender figure. Soon she would not have to listen to them any more, ever. She closed her eyes and took a step forward. Instead of falling to her death she felt the intense pressure of a hand around her own. She looked up into the face of a young man with wild hair wearing a tweed blazer, collared shirt and red bow tie. He appeared to be standing in a floating blue box. In spite of the obvious effort it required to hold her the man managed a smile.
"Hello." he said "I'm the Doctor."
Emily did not know what to think. A thousand questions flooded her mind. Who was this man? How could he be in a floating box? Why was he wearing a bow tie?
"Who are you?" she said.
The man smiled again "I'm the Doctor." he said "And you're very heavy. No offence, but I think you could stand to stop eating quite so much junk food. Junk food. Met an entire civilisation once that existed on junk food. Nice people. Or were they amphibians? I can't quite remember."
"Are you going to keep holding me?" said Emily.
"No. I'm going to pull you up into the Tardis and maybe there we can discuss what's going on." The Doctor staggered backwards, pulling Emily into his time machine. She was on her hands and knees as the doors swung closed behind her. To her surprise and utter amazement, she was now in what looked like a giant control room for…something, she didn't know what. And the man, the Doctor was moving around animatedly, talking as he did so.
"…So I said "Why not put the rotary blades on the top?" and he did! Good old Leonardo da Vinci. Very clever man but awful breath." The Doctor stopped what he was doing and went to Emily's side. "It's all right, you can get up now. You're safe."
Emily got to her feet, wobbled, and looked around herself in awe "What is this place?"
"It's a Tardis. My Tardis. Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Sorry, keep forgetting, this sort of technology doesn't exist on Earth in the twenty-first century." The Doctor peered into each of Emily's eyes and pulled her arms out in front of her. "Everything seems to be in order, now, why don't you tell me why you stepped off the edge of that roof in the first place?"
Emily cast her eyes downwards "I just don't see the point in anything." she said "Everyone laughs at me at school and my parents don't understand and I've never been on a date and there's just no point." She was on the edge of tears.
"What did you want to be when you were younger?" The Doctor stared at Emily.
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"Answer the question please; what did you want to be when you were younger?"
Emily sniffed. She looked at the floor of the Tardis for a very long time. Then she said "An artist."
"Tell me then, Miss…I'm sorry, you know my name but I don't know yours. Very rude of me. What is your name?"
"Emily."
"Tell me then, Emily; what is stopping you from being an artist?"
"I don't have… the materials…" Emily broke off and started to cry.
"Okay, crying, not good, not good at all." The Doctor seemed to waver, putting his arms out and then putting them back before tentatively enfolding Emily in a hug "It's all right, I think, I…"
The Doctor let go of Emily and ran to the central control panel, pulling levers, turning knobs and leaping around the console. The entire machine seemed to shudder and a huge whirring and grinding sound could be heard. Emily looked up to try and find the source of the noise before she was thrown to the floor. The time machine banked this way and that before coming to a rest. Emily picked herself up.
"What just happened?" she said.
"Have a look outside." said the Doctor, smiling. Emily went to the doors of the Tardis and opened them. Before her eyes was a large room filled with paintings, some finished and some unfinished and several tables which overflowed with papers. A man with long white hair and a beard placed a cage which contained a beautiful bird on a table next to a window. He opened the cage and the bird flew away to freedom. The man turned.
"Doctor? Is that you?" he said, upon seeing the Tardis. The Doctor squeezed past Emily and went over to the man whom he shook hands with.
"Emily, I'd like you to meet Leonardo da Vinci, painter, sculptor, writer, geologist, botanist and vegetarian." The Doctor gave Leonardo a thumbs up with both hands. "Well done on that last one."
Emily stepped out of the Tardis as if in a dream. "Is this really happening?" she said.
"Doctor, may I ask who this exotically dressed young lady is?" said Leonardo da Vinci, walking over to Emily. "Yes, yes her face , her hair, she's perfect. Young lady, would you sit for one of my paintings?"
"Er, no, actually, bad idea, could cause a trans-temporal paradox and we don't want another one of those." The Doctor herded Emily back into the Tardis and turned to face Leonardo da Vinci. "Sorry old sport, wibbly wobbly timey wimey and all that. Catch you later. Or sooner." With that he went into the Tardis and closed the door. Soon the Tardis began to fade in and out with a huge whirring and grinding noise.
"Wait, Doctor!" called Leonardo da Vinci "At least explain to me how the helicopter works!"
"Well that could have gone better." The Doctor pulled a lever and smiled at Emily. "Now, art supplies, where are we going to get some?"
Emily stared at the Doctor as if he might disappear at any moment. "Was that…Leonardo da Vinci?"
The Doctor nodded, still smiling. "Brilliant, isn't it? All of space and time just waiting for us to have a look. I thought old Leo might have some paints we could borrow but that's the trouble with genius types, they're always…" He trailed off and began examining a screen.
"So this is a time machine? And you're a time traveller?" Emily cautiously approached the Doctor.
"Getting distracted!" The Doctor beamed triumphantly at Emily, then stopped himself. "Sorry, yes, time traveller. Time Lord, in fact. Last of the…" He trailed off again, seeming to be lost in his own thoughts before snapping back to the present. "Art supplies."
In a street in London a huge grinding and whirring sound could be heard and a blue box winked into view. Several seconds later, the Doctor and Emily strode out of it, Emily having to almost run to keep up with the Doctor's confident gait. They rounded a corner and came upon a pedestrian street. The Doctor spread his arms wide "I love these kinds of places." he said "It's always so nice to walk down them don't you find?"
Emily looked hesitantly at the Doctor "I never really thought about them before, they were just…there."
The Doctor turned to Emily and wagged a finger in her face "Nothing is ever simply just "there", Emily…what's your last name, sorry?"
"Owens." said Emily.
"Nothing is ever simply just "there", Emily Owens, you have to look beyond the surface to the what, why, how, where and when." The Doctor paused, seeming to be in conflict with himself "Sometimes even the "why not"."
"Can we go and get some art supplies please?" said Emily.
The Doctor snapped back to the here and now. "Yes, right, sorry. Art supplies. Yes."
Emily began to walk up the pedestrian street. The Doctor continued to take in the sights and sounds of the street. A wall several yards from where he was standing was covered in posters. His curiosity piqued, the Doctor walked over to the wall and stared at one of the posters. It read:
FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!
OCTAVIUS BLISK, PLAYWRIGHT, ROCK STAR AND STAND UP COMIC COMES TO THE O2 ARENA!
The acclaimed writer of Romeo and Juliet, Imagine and the Goon Show brings his one-of-a-kind performing genius to London's most famous arena for ONE NIGHT ONLY!
Tickets go on sale 23rd June £10.00 Adults £5.00 Children
"Doctor, the art shop is just up the road." Emily came back to where the Doctor was standing. "Is everything all…"
"Blisk. Ocatavius Blisk. What do you know of him? Who is he and why is he billed as the greatest playwright of all time?" The Doctor's face had taken on a stern, piercing quality which made Emily shrink back a little.
"Well, he wrote these plays for the stage, although some have been adapted into films. Romeo and Juliet is his most famous one, oh and he wrote the song Imagine that was at number one for twelve consecutive weeks, and…"
The Doctor put his hands on Emily's shoulders. His dark eyes bored into her own. "Tell me you know who William Shakespeare is, Emily."
Emily looked to one side of her and then back at the Doctor, puzzled "Who's William Shakespeare?"
The Doctor burst into the Tardis control room, trailing a rather confused Emily in his wake "Why didn't I see this before? The time graphs were all pointing to some sort of temporal disturbance, the only question is from what source and how do I disable his ability to time travel and set the time stream back to normal."
Emily approached the Doctor haltingly "I don't understand, Octavius Blisk is the most talented man in modern history. How can he be responsible for destroying the time stream?"
"Listen, Emily. Octavius Blisk didn't write The Tempest or The Life of Brian or anything else he claims to have created. He is a time traveller. A time traveller with no scruples who has stolen the creations of some of the greatest geniuses in human history and passed them off as his own. And if I don't stop him all of history could collapse."
Emily turned away from the Doctor. "I don't know what to think…this is all so strange…" She turned back to him "Could you just…drop me off at home? It's not far, I'm sure your Tardis won't have any trouble…"
"Drop you off at home. No. You could try and kill yourself again and that's not what we want. I think you should stay with me a while longer."
"But…why? Why do you care what happens to me? I'm not important, I'm not…anything." Her voice was barely audible.
The Doctor peered into Emily's face and put one hand on the side of her head "Emily Owens, in nine hundred years of exploring space and time I have never met a human being who wasn't important. Just stay with me, a little while longer, and I'll prove that to you."
Emily looked at him, biting her lip. "Okay." she said.
The Doctor smiled "Brilliant. Now. Octavius Blisk, time traveller, steals others' inventions and claims they're his own, could be tricky, but to do that he needs a time machine and I will bet you anything that we will find one at his base of operations which is…" The Doctor paused and pointed to Emily for dramatic effect.
"Er…his estate in London?" Emily hazarded.
The Doctor smiled again "Exactly."
Richard Burns was having an odd sort of day. Not that being the chief housekeeper for the world famous Octavius Blisk wasn't an odd sort of job at the best of times, today it was simply bizarre. Octavius Blisk had returned home at 9:00 p.m. after a day of interviews and had retired to his master bedroom on the fifth floor. There was nothing unusual except that he had not been seen all day and when Richard had gone to check the bedroom there was nobody there. Two new staff had arrived today with a reference list as long as your arm. One had a weird sort of hairstyle, the other was apparently his younger sister who was on work experience with him who looked like a goth. Richard Burns shrugged and thought that as long as he kept collecting a pay check, these things didn't concern him.
"Okay, we're inside." The Doctor took a slender metallic object out of his boiler suit and tossed it from hand to hand. "All we've got to do now is find where Blisk keeps his time engine and Bob's your uncle. Not Angel Bob though. Bad memory. Bad, bad memory…"
"Why are you wearing a bow tie with your boiler suit?" said Emily.
The Doctor gave her a half smile "Bow ties are cool. Let's split up. You take the upstairs, I'll go downstairs and call me on this communicator if you find anything." The Doctor tossed Emily what looked like a small box."
"I have a mobile phone…"
"Phones are too risky. Don't know who else could be listening. Try and make it look as though you're…"
"Hoy! You two! Stop gabbing and get back to work!"
The Doctor looked suitably cowed, then he looked at Emily, pointed to his eyes, pointed up, down and then gave her a thumbs up and a smile before dashing off. Emily just sighed as she grasped a feather duster and trudged away.
The time vortex is, by its very nature, uninhabitable. Created by the Time Lords as a means of traversing the past and the future, any naked life form inside it would be aged to death by the time winds or incinerated by the vortex itself. In spite of this, a large structure existed within the time vortex. The thing resembled a Roman temple with a marble floor, great pillars reaching upwards and a stone roof. All around the time vortex raged yet the structure remained static. In the centre of the structure sat a wide marble throne with a huge back that reached almost to the ceiling. On this throne sat a man, or at least what one could assume was a man. He had humanoid shape, yet his limbs and torso were withered from under use. His head was bulging and it protruded from his neck like a watermelon over a rag doll. In the man's hands was clasped a sliver of crystal that seemed to pulse and glow like a heartbeat. The man seemed to be concentrating, and for a brief moment his brow furrowed even deeper. A human appeared in the structure in front of the man. Inhabitants of twenty-first century Earth would have recognised him as Octavius Blisk; playwright, author, musician and stand up comic extraordinaire. The man on the throne made a gesture with his malnourished arm and Octavius Blisk flew out into the time vortex to disappear. The man seemed to settle deeper into the throne, eyes unblinking and bloodshot, mouth a line, eyebrows knotted together.
Emily was despondent. She had dusted most of the upstairs rooms in Octavius Blisk's mansion and had found nothing out of the ordinary. She wondered why the Doctor had rescued her and brought her here instead of just letting her end it all. The boiler suit that the Doctor had persuaded her to wear was itchy and uncomfortable and she wished she was back in her long black skirt. Emily walked down a long corridor on the fifth floor of Octavius Blisk's mansion to where a large, ornate door was. Could anything unusual be in there? Emily opened the door and walked in. The room was the master bedroom of the house that contained a four poster bed, a balcony and a private shower. Some of Octavius Blisk's paintings hung on the walls. Emily searched the room thoroughly. She looked under the bed, in the closets and behind the paintings. Nothing. Emily flopped down on the bed, her spirits crushed. As she was gazing at the ceiling she saw a tiny button on it distinct from the rest of the paint. That's odd, she thought. Standing on tiptoes on the bed and using the handle of her feather duster meant that she could push the button. With a giant hissing noise, the far wall swung open to reveal a huge chamber. Emily clapped an hand to her mouth to keep from gasping. The chamber was dark and metallic. What looked like giant glass cylinders were set into the floor, each with a person inside them. Emily tentatively moved into the chamber and stroked one of the glass cylinders with her hand. It was cold to the touch and left moisture on her palm. A plaque on the side of the cylinder told Emily that the man inside was LENNON, JOHN. Emily had the strangest feeling that that name should mean something to her but when she tried to grasp the thought it vanished. She took out her communicator and called the Doctor.
"Hello, Emily?"
"Hello Doctor it's me. I've found something in Blisk's room that I think you should see."
"Be right there." The communicator went dead.
At the back of the chamber was a booth cut into the metal walls. Three spiked arms pointed to the booth, encircling it and on the floor was an X shape. Emily walked over to the booth when it started to fill with smoke. A humanoid shape appeared within the smoke and Emily tripped over backwards, landing on her bottom. She quickly hid behind a cylinder as the shape resolved itself into that of Octavius Blisk. He steppedf out of the booth, seeming to be unused to walking on solid ground. He walked for several paces and then stopped.
"I know you're here. I can feel your thoughts. There's no point trying to hide from me."
Emily's breath caught in her throat. She prayed to all the powers of goodness that he wouldn't find her. Octavius Blisk walked further through his secret chamber. He flung out an arm and made a gripping motion with his hand. Emily found herself yanked from her squatting position by her throat and dragged forward until she was face to face with Octavius Blisk.
"Now what could you be doing in here, I wonder? Spying? Nobody has ever found this room before." Octavius Blisk tightened his hand into a fist "And soon nobody ever will!"
Emily gasped as a vice-like pressure was exerted on her throat. She tried to breathe but nothing went in. She gasped and gulped, her tongue sticking out of her mouth. Black spots started to dance in her vision and she could feel her face overheating. Emily realised that she needed to breathe soon or she would die.
"Now that's hardly a fitting way to treat a young lady." The pressure on her throat stopped and Emily fell to the floor, gasping. The Doctor stood in the space between the bedroom and the secret chamber. Octavius Blisk turned to face him.
"So you're Octavius Blisk, thief of time and the greatest artistic accomplishments in human history." The Doctor moved closer, his eyes glinting. "What if I want you to stop everything and return these people and their creations to their rightful places in the time stream?"
Blisk leered at the Doctor. "You cannot stop me. I will be the greatest figure in this planet's history. The only figure in its history."
Emily finished coughing and looked up at Blisk. "Doctor be careful!"
Octavius Blisk whirled round and pushed his palm outwards. Emily flew across the chamber and skidded into a wall. The Doctor lunged for Blisk but found that his upper body was covered in scorpions. His hands tore over his shirt and jacket, trying to remove them. A sword appeared in Octavius Blisk's hand. Holding it outwards he started towards the Doctor but was stopped by Emily, who leapt onto his back. The Doctor found that the scorpions had vanished. He stared at Blisk who was now trying to dislodge Emily from her position on his back and an idea came to him. Holding out the slender metallic device, he pressed a button and the end of the device glowed green accompanied by a ringing, buzzing sound. Octavius Blisk began to balloon outwards and shrink, like a reflection in a fun house mirror. The Doctor moved closer with the device and Octavius Blisk began to warp and bloat even more radically before disappearing in twin spirals from his head and feet. Emily dropped to the floor, the object of her aggressions having vanished.
"What did you do?" she asked.
"I disrupted his physical presence in time with my sonic screwdriver." said the Doctor. "I had my suspicions he wasn't all there and he wasn't."
"What was he, if he wasn't a real person?" said Emily, standing up.
"At a guess, I'd say he was a psychomorphic projection. A spirit clone sent from somewhere else entirely to effect a physical presence in this period of time." The Doctor paced back and forth, tapping his forehead with both sets of fingers "But where could it have come from; what could possibly have enough power to…" The Doctor stopped. His eyes were wide, his mouth open slightly. "Oh."
"Oh? What do you mean? What's "oh"?"
The Doctor spun round. "Imagine that there was an artifact discovered by ancient Gallifreyans that greatly enhanced one's psychic abilities and bestowed upon them the ability to manipulate time. Now imagine that our friend Octavius Blisk has access to this artifact and is in the time vortex now sending out spirit clones to kidnap the human race's geniuses. That in a nutshell is what we're up against."
"So Octavius Blisk… the real Octavius Blisk…is in the…time vortex?" Emily winced in puzzlement "And he's controlling these…spirit clones…to steal history's greatest accomplishments and pass them off as his own?"
"Yes and now we've got to get back to the Tardis before he has a chance to send out another clone." The Doctor strode away from Emily in the direction of the bedroom door.
"But how will we stop him?" Emily hurried after the Doctor. "And how will we know where he's going to strike next?"
The Doctor halted and turned back to Emily. "Because we've already been there."
It was night over Florence, and the city was quiet. Nowhere more so than the estate of Leonardo da Vinci. The unfinished paintings loomed out of the gloom like dark monuments and the tables stood silent. Smoke began to fill the centre of the room, rising in ever increasing clouds until a humanoid shape formed within them. The shape solidified and stepped out. Octavius Blisk looked around himself and grinned. The two intruders at the mansion had never suspected that they had left behind a time trail for him to follow right to his next target. Soon he would be the inventor of the helicopter as well as his myriad other achievements. A small sound in the corner of the room caught Blisk's attention, causing him to turn. A black shape burst out of the shadows with a net, throwing it over him. His arms were seized and he was wrestled to the floor. A light was struck and touched to a lantern and in its glow Octavius Blisk could see the girl who had been at his mansion in the twenty first century. "You."
Emily took out her communicator. "We've got him, Doctor."
"Brilliant! I knew I could trust you." The Doctor moved around the Tardis console, flicking switches and pulling levers. "I am in the time vortex now, trying to locate the exact position of whoaaaa!"
The control room swung backwards and forwards, causing the Doctor to stumble onto a chair. He grabbed the chair with one hand and pulled his communicator out with the other. "I think I've found what I'm looking for. Emily, keep that spirit clone occupied. Do not let him out of your sight or things could go from bad to extremely horribly nastily…even more bad. Over and out." The Doctor paused "I always wanted to say that. Over and out." He quickly got up, pressed a few buttons on the Tardis console and grabbed onto a screen for support as the Tardis lurched crosswise. Then it stopped. The Doctor knew where he must be. He knew what would have to be done. He hoped that Emily would be safe, and mused on the wisdom of asking her to help him. He put those thoughts out of his mind and strode towards the Tardis doors.
Emily put down her communicator. "The Doctor's about to engage Octavius Blisk - the real Octavius Blisk. All we have to do is make sure he…" she pointed at the spirit clone "doesn't get out of control."
"I must say that I don't entirely understand everything that is happening, my dear child." Leonardo da Vinci brought a lantern from the other side of the room. "But I trust the Doctor. That man has helped me more than I could ever repay him."
Emily thought about when the Doctor said that Leonardo da Vinci had bad breath and she smiled. A change came over Leonardo da Vinci like the sun appearing from behind a cloud. "That smile." he gasped "It's perfect! It's wonderful! I can complete my latest painting!" Leonardo da Vinci began to rush around, lighting lamps and gathering painting supplies. "My dear, would you be so kind as to smile for me again?"
Emily was mildly shocked "I don't know what you mean…I was just thinking of something."
Leonardo da Vinci's smile reached his ears. "My dear young lady, you have given me the inspiration I need to finish my painting! If you would be so kind…?"
Emily didn't quite know what to think. Her smile was nothing out of the ordinary, yet this man…this famous, incredible man…said that it inspired him. Emily felt a surge of self-confidence go through her and she smiled again. Leonardo da Vinci began feverishly to paint. And nobody noticed that the net which had contained the spirit clone was now empty.
The Doctor stepped out of the Tardis and looked around. He was standing on a marble floor that seemed to exist inside the time vortex. Stone pillars reached upwards to a marble roof and in front of him was a huge throne. On that throne sat a withered humanoid who clutched a glowing crystal. The crystal glowed with a dull red light that corresponded to the man's heartbeat. The Doctor took several careful steps forward.
"Octavius Blisk I presume." The Doctor's face was a mask. "You are meddling with powers you cannot possibly comprehend. I want you to stop using that crystal and return to your own time with me."
Octavius Blisk's voice seemed to come from all around the Doctor. "I can see…everything…civilisations…eras…discoveries…"
"That's what the crystal does; it amplifies a person's psychic energy immensely while withering and destroying their body." The Doctor now stood directly in front of Octavius. "I won't ask you again. Give it to me."
Octavius Blisk raised his ancient head. He stared at the Doctor before breaking into a smile. The crystal glowed brighter and several armoured knights appeared between him and the Doctor. As one, they drew their swords and charged.
"There! Finished!" Leonardo da Vinci sat back on his stool and regarded his painting with the satisfied air of a master craftsman.
"Can I stop smiling now? It's starting to hurt."
Leonardo da Vinci turned his painting towards Emily. "What do you think?"
Emily gawped. Before her eyes was the world famous masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. She was smiling mysteriously - as though she knew something that the rest of the world did not know. And it was her smile, the one Emily remembered from school photos and holiday snapshots. Emily felt suffused with a feeling of well being. Something inside her head shifted, and layer upon layer of self-loathing parted and evaporated like rain in the sun. She thought that there was a point to life if she could offer something to somebody else that was hers and hers alone. Emily broke into a big grin. "I love it."
The room was plunged into blackness. Emily could not see her hand in front of her face. She called out "Hello? Is anyone there?"
Eventually a shape resolved out of the darkness. Emily felt her spirits rise as she expected it to be Leonardo da Vinci but felt renewed confusion and fear as the figure in the black turned out to be Kathryn, from school.
"Well look who it is." said Kathryn, her otherwise pretty face contorted into a sneer "It's Sticks. Why don't you look normal Sticks? Why Don't you have a boyfriend like everyone else?"
"This can't be real…" Emily felt her spirit shrink within her at the name-calling. She turned to Kathryn. "How can you be here?"
"I go wherever I want. It's you that shouldn't be here. You should be dead, lying on a pavement in that horrible little town where you live. Why are you still breathing?"
"No…this isn't real…this isn't happening." Emily turned to run away from Kathryn and bumped into a male body. Standing in front of her were her parents.
"Emily, dear." said her mother "What an embarrassment you've been to us."
"You really have let us down something terrible." said her father. "Why can't you be more like Kathryn? Everybody likes Kathryn."
"I swear I'm never having any more children." said Emily's mother. "Not if they're going to be as…odd…as you."
"Nobody likes you, Sticks." said Kathryn, moving to stand by Emily's parents. "And nobody ever will."
Leonardo da Vinci had been surprised when his studio went completely dark. He had called out but there had been no reply. Gradually, shapes had appeared from out of the blackness. He had recognised them as his paintings that he had been working on, the Vitruvian Man being the most prominent. As Leonardo da Vinci watched, the Vitruvian Man climbed out of his portrait and glared at him. It had an angry expression on its face and looked malevolent. It started towards him, employing all of its limbs like some bizarre inhuman creature. Leonardo da Vinci attempted to run but the Vitruvian Man seized him and restrained him with its manifold arms. Out of the blackness came the figure of Octavius Blisk.
"You're coming with me." he said.
The Doctor dodged and jumped about as the knights slashed at him with their swords. Holding out his sonic screwdriver and swinging his arm from right to left, the Doctor sent a burst of sonic energy at the knights which sent a ripple through their physical forms but did nothing to slow their advance. The Doctor was becoming desperate. He needed to get the crystal away from Blisk, that way he would be unable to generate any more psychic images or send out spirit clones. The knights were fighting in perfect formation, controlled as they were by one mind. The Doctor's mind worked furiously. He couldn't let the knights push him back to the Tardis. An idea came into his mind. The Doctor ran vack a few metres and transmitted a focused sonic pulse from his screwdriver into the middle knight. The knight's body became impossibly thin in the centre and his helmet and feet bloated outwards. This opportunity was all that the Doctor needed. He sprinted past the knight, avoiding the swung weapons of the others by a hair's breadth and ran straight for Octavius Blisk. Just as the Doctor almost reached Octavius Blisk's throne a pit opened up in the marble floor. The Doctor tried to halt but he was running too quickly and the pit swallowed him up.
"It's time to face facts, Sticks." said Kathryn, standing between Emily's mother and father. "Nobody loves you. Nobody cares about you. Your own parents like me better than you. And," here she giggled "it's not hard to see why."
"I wish you'd killed yourself when you had the chance, Sticks." said Emily's mother. A cruel smile oozed onto her face.
"What did you just say?" said Emily.
"You heard me, Sticks." said her mother, smiling even more broadly. "Nobody loves you."
"That's not true. The Doctor cares about me. He saved my life."
Kathryn and Emily's parents seemed to flicker, if only for a moment.
"The Doctor saved me and I helped him fight Octavius Blisk. I inspired Leonardo da Vinci to create his greatest painting. I'm going to be an artist one day. I do have value! I am worth something!"
Giant cracks had begun to appear in the darkness. Light spilled through those cracks. Kathryn and Emily's parents looked at eachother.
Emily continued "And my name is Emily!"
The illusion shattered, leaving Emily standing where she had been when the world had gone dark. Leonardo da Vinci was standing, dazed, on the other side of the studio. Octavius Blisk, or one of his spirit clones, was standing in front of him. Like lightning Emily ran at Blisk, picking up a potted plant as she did so.
Blisk turned "How did you…?"
Emily broke the pot over Octavius Blisk's head, sending him to the floor. Leonardo da Vinci blinked rapidly and looked around himself, as though awakening from a dream. "What happened?"
"It was Octavius Blisk…I think." said Emily. "He made us see things that weren't there."
The spirit clone faded into nothing. Emily looked at the floor where he had been.
"Sorry about your plant." she said.
The pit into which the Doctor had fallen appeared to be bottomless. There was no escape. Satisfied that he no longer needed the knights to protect himself Octavius Blisk uncreated them. With a supreme effort of will, he rose from the giant throne he had occupied and hobbled to the pit, the crystal in his hands glowing and dulling, glowing and dulling. Octavius Blisk stopped at the edge of the pit and peered in. A faint ringing, buzzing noise could be heard from deep within the pit. Then, like a rocket, the Doctor came soaring upwards towards Octavius, the bottom of the pit being manipulated by his sonic screwdriver. As the pit's floor came level with the rest of the marble expanse the Doctor seized the crystal away from Octavius Blisk and ran for the Tardis. Without the crystal's energies to sustain him, Blisk toppled over dying. The Doctor had other problems though. Without the psychic link to Blisk's mind the projection of his will could not continue to exist. If the Doctor didn't hurry the temple would disappear and he would be aged to death in the time vortex. The Doctor closed in on the Tardis as the floor beneath him began to fade. He snapped his fingers to open the Tardis doors and dived headlong into his time machine just as Octavius Blisk's temple ceased to exist. Pulling out his sonic screwdriver he aimed it at the Tardis doors and pressed the button. The sonic screwdriver sounded off and the doors swung closed. The Doctor caught a breath and then considered the time crystal. Any human who so much as touched it would fall under its power and become what Blisk had been so the Doctor couldn't let Emily have it. At the same time it would have to be contained so that it did not fall into the wrong hands. The Doctor drummed his fingers against his mouth, then decided a trip to the zero room was in order for the crystal. There it would be safe and the Doctor would always know where it was. Having done that, the Doctor pulled out his communicator and spoke into it.
"Emily, are you there?"
"I'm here Doctor. We had some trouble with a spirit clone but it's all taken care of."
"Ha-ha!" The Doctor grinned victoriously. "Emily Owens, protecting history from those who would exploit it. And," the Doctor checked a screen "We've still got some very important people to send back to their own time periods if you feel up to it. Say you do."
"I feel ready for anything, Doctor."
The Doctor smiled proudly. Humanity could be wonderful sometimes.
It was early evening when a huge whirring and grinding sound filled the quiet suburban street. A blue box faded into existence and stood on the pavement. Soon the doors opened and a gushing teenage girl came out of them.
"…and I can't believe I played Monopoly with John Lennon and Spike Milligan!" Emily was saying "John Lennon kept trying to lend us both money and told us to imagine there was none!"
"You should have met Ringo." mused the Doctor "Why does nobody ever want to meet Ringo?"
They stood in the warm evening air, the girl and the nine hundred year old alien.
"Is everything all right now?" said the Doctor "No thoughts of killing yourself?"
"No! Definitely not! The world's too exciting for me to want to do that! And if it weren't for you I never would have realised."
The Doctor shrugged "You know me, someone in trouble, I couldn't resist."
"There are so many things I want to do now! I want to be an artist and I want to go to Japan and I want to learn about music and I want to do…everything."
The Doctor smiled down at Emily "To live would be an awfully big adventure."
"What about you? What will you do?"
"Oh I'll be around. Not here, obviously and probably not now but I'll be…around."
"I'll miss you." said Emily.
The Doctor smiled "Oh come here." he said and walked over to Emily and hugged her. Emily put her arms around the Doctor and they held each other for a long, long time. Eventually the Doctor released her.
"Go on," he said "Tomorrow's the first day of the rest of your life."
Emily gave a big grin and walked across the road to her house. The Doctor waited until she was inside before he went back into the Tardis and shut the door. Soon a huge whirring and grinding sound could be heard and after that there was no blue box in the street at all.