Chapter One
The beautiful rhythm of Lynyrd Skynyrd tugged at my body, pulling it every which way with every beat. I was well aware that my dancing could easily be mistaken for a possession-gone-wrong kind of deal, like a rooky demon had infiltrated my body, but had lost its footing and didn't quite know how to compensate for the sudden influx of weight. Suddenly, pulsating sound echoed through my room. I almost didn't hear it because my belching of the chorus to Simple Man had practically rendered my ears useless. Fortunately for me, I had forgotten what verse it was on, and stopped to listen.
I turned the sound down, but not completely off, to investigate. Tuesday's Gone had begun, and I couldn't butcher a perfect song like that by stopping it right in the middle. My ears turned this way and that, sniffing out the origin of the odd noise, much like a crime-fighting dog would sniff for clues. Then, I threw open my closet door, confident in my ear-sniffing abilities. Sure enough, I found the source of the sound. At first, I figured I had just gotten up too quickly, and full-on passed out, because a faded blue, old-timey, British phone box had suddenly appeared in my closet.
I realized that whether this was a dream or not, I should act quickly. Better safe than sorry. I figured that if I actually gave myself time to process, I would just pass out (if I hadn't already), so I got to it. The first thing that came to mind was to attach two of my guitar straps to each other, and tie one end to the closet door handle, and the other to the adjacent main-door handle standing six feet away. This way, the closet door wouldn't open.
It's amazing how fast you can do something when you're in shock. It's like your main brain is all clogged up, leaving your small brain (other may call it the "subconscious", and I call those people pricks) free of any main brain stuff that might slow you down. You just act on auto-pilot, instead of sitting and thinking, should I tie it this way or that?
I finished in what I was sure was a world record for something. The contraption was made in a solid four seconds, and I directed my attention the phone booth in my closet. I stood silent for about a minute, waiting. The song had just finished and Free Bird had just come on. From my closet came a strange, British voice saying, "Aw, it's over. I quite like Tuesday's Gone. Free Bird is good too, I suppose. A bit mainstream for my liking, but good none the less. Now, where am I?"
At this, both my main brain and my small brain were sufficiently clogged, and I stood there dumbfounded. The knob started to jiggle and budge, but the object behind the voice couldn't seem to get it open. "Well that's odd," the voice said, "nothing a little sonic screw driver can't fix."
At this, a weird metallic-like buzzing sound was emitted, but the knot remained. "Hm," the voice continued, "Must be an archaic lock. What is this… string?" Then, the voice stopped, and the creaking sound of a door opening echoed over Free Bird.
What the hell is happening? I inwardly screamed. Before I could attempt to answer that question, a pair of scissors were shoved through the small opening that the hastily put together tie/lock had allowed, and snipped the thin chord holding the door in place. The swift motion of the scissors coming together, and the newly parted strings falling the either side, looked to me as the Fates cutting my life's thread.
Instead of running, I jumped behind my dresser. I cursed myself for acting like a stupid white couple in a horror film, but I knew that if I didn't figure out what was going on, the endless questions would burn through my bones for the rest of my life. My mother's voice pounded on my skull, telling me to run. All I could hear for a brief moment was her voice repeatedly saying, curiosity killed the cat. I practically smiled as I suddenly remembered the widely unknown other half of the adage, but satisfaction brought it back.
I made it behind the dresser just in time for the man walking out of my closet to not see me. I bent down to the ground, practically laying on the floor, and shakily peeped over the side (a quick tip I learned from Psych.)
The man who walked out of my closet was naturally thin, with dark brown hair and matching eyes. His hair line was magnificent and his hair thick and was gravity defying. He was wearing a casual kind of suit with a trench coat and a pair of overused white Converse. Proof that Converse literally go with everything.
The man looked at the make-shift lock that was keeping him in, then looked around the room for the author. I quickly receded behind the dresser as he scanned my area of the room, but as he turned his back to me and was facing the wall, I pounced.
Utilizing my skills learned from many years of watching cop shows, two self-defense classes, and an older brother, I grabbed his wrist and brought it up between his shoulder blades, pinning him against the wall. All before he could even get out, "Who the-." I was quite proud of myself. I was still in shock, and everything that had happened in the past sixty seconds had been pure adrenaline, but I was still impressed.
"Oye!" he cried, "No need to get handsy." I opened my mouth to speak, but my adrenalin was flushing out of my system, and I couldn't get anything out. I could barely move at all.
"I'm the Doctor. I won't hurt you, pinky promise," he said as he slowly raised his pinky against the wall. Whether I believed him, or my muscles stopped working from the realization of what was happening, my grip loosened. He slowly turned around, but kept his back against the wall and his hands up. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you."
Everything had settled in, somewhat. A phone booth had appeared in my closet, and man had come out of it. I figured that it would take me at least a week to fully process this, so in the meantime I should just go with it. The man looked at me and lightly said, "I'm the Doctor. What's your name?"
All I could muster was, "… what the… what the hell?"
"Yes, yes I know this must be hard to process bu-"
"Summer."
"What?"
"My name," I said as sternly as I could, although I couldn't meet his eye, "My name is Summer."
"Well hello, Summer. As I said, I'm the Doctor. Nice to meet you." He started to lower his hands and get off of the wall. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you," he repeated once more. He then gestured to the bed and said, "May I?"
I nodded, and he slowly got off the wall and flopped on my bed. It was odd, and yet impressive, how his steps seemed both careful and spontaneous. "So, uh, Summer, could you please enlighten me as to where I am?"
"Um… Well you're in my room."
"More macro, if you don't mind."
"Okay, uh, Jupiter."
His face seemed to light up as he said, "Jupiter is it? Haven't been to Jupiter in ages. Funny, it looks like Earth to me."
"Good observational skills. This is, in fact, planet Earth." I retorted.
"Well then why did you say Jupiter?" He asked, then added under his breath, "You really got me excited for a second."
"You are currently in Jupiter, Florida. Continent: North America, Country: United States."
"Hm," he said with a half-smile, "That's a fun name. How did that come about?"
"Communication errors and incorrect Spanish translation."
"Fun. So, ha, funny question. Uh, what year is it?" By now, I had loosened up to the sudden visitor. He didn't seem evil, he just seemed lost. I could relate.
"Year eight hundred and two thousand, seven hundred and one," I replied with a straight face.
"Really? What are you, a pure pure pure bread?"
"Wait, what?" I asked with a nervous laugh, "No, I was joking. That was the plot to The Time Machine. No, it's 2015. May I ask why you're wondering?"
"Never mind that, why did I end up here? My TARDIS picked up some sort of signal, but what?"
"I-I'm sorry, your TARDIS?" I asked.
"I mean your planet doesn't look like it's in any immediate danger…"
"I'm sorry, my planet? Does that need to be specified?"
He seemed immune to my confusion, because he continued saying, "I was in, what, Galaxy Gotynic was it? A signal strong enough to travel from Earth across 95 galaxies should leave a trace…" he trailed off as he reached into his shirt and pulled out a thin piece of metal with a blue light at the top that made the same buzzing noises I heard before my guitar string was cut. He bounced to his feet and followed his pocket-sized orb out of my room and through the hallway.
He walked quickly past the family room into the kitchen but suddenly stopped, and walked backwards on his toes back into the family room.
"Um sir?" I asked, following him out.
"Not sir. Just Doctor."
"Okay. Doctor?"
"Yeees?"
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to find what the signal came fro- what a magnificent cat you have! May I hold her?" He asked, bending down to better inspect my pet.
"I don't see why not," I answered.
"What's her name?"
"Comet."
"Oh I like that. Magnificent name for a magnificent cat," he said, cat in hand, "and what is this collar around her neck?"
"I mean, it's exactly that: a collar. Why?"
"Because…" he said, removing it, "It's not just a collar." He had it in his hands, and was turning it over in the light.
I watched him look at it from every conceivable angle, sniff it multiple times, tap it lightly, and finally wave his blue-tipped wand thing at it before I said, "Okay, you can't just say something super vague like that and not follow it up with an explanation," I said.
"Fair enough," he answered, not looking up. "This is an alien radio-telepath from the planet Samor."
"… again, what?"
"Hundreds of Billions of years ago, Earth wa-"
Just then, a thunder shook through the house as a huge stone fell through the roof. It was about 10 feet in diameter and a perfect sphere. It was blacker than a starless night, yet reflected the kitchen lights (what was left of them anyway) as thought it was made out of diamonds. The ground around it was turned to small pebbles and my kitchen table was broken into thousands of little pieces. The support beams in my ceiling were peeking out from the newly formed hole above us as if to see what woke them from their long slumber. My ears rung as I stood agape at my new sky-light and debris-ridden kitchen. I looked at myself and brushed off the dust I was now shrouded in, when I realized a sharp pain in my arm. I turned my arm over to find a sharp rock lodged firmly in my bicep and a warm river of blood cascading down my body. The Doctor turned to me and screamed, "Are you okay?!" I looked at the hole in the roof, then at the over-sized marble that now lay on my pancaked table, then to the Doctor, and whispered, "What was that?"
"That," he replied, "is very, very bad."
Chapter 2
The sudden intruder started hissing like a mad cat, and vibrating softly like a cheap back massager. "Um, Doctor? What's… happening?" I asked, my heart still racing from the adrenalin spike from the shock of a giant rock tearing a hole through my ceiling.
"Short story: an alien spaceship from another galaxy just crash landed in your kitchen," he answered in a nonchalant manner, if not the least bit excited. I stood silent for a moment before answering in a casual tone almost matching the Doctor's, "Well that's new." I figured that freaking out wouldn't do anything in my favor, so I should just go with what was in front of me, and accept it. I figured there would be plenty of time to freak out later. There would also be an infinity of time to freak out if I die, I thought silently, but I pushed this thought to the furthest corner of my mind.
"Okay…" I started, "So it's an alien ship. But where did it come from? And, what do you mean by alien? Like a little green Martian with one eye and three hands?"
"First of all, Martians are not green they are red, and no, this is not Martian…" By now the space rock had started vibrating more violently, effectively becoming a source of a small earthquake within my house, and the Doctor took notice. "We're running out of time," he mumbled.
By now, my arm wasn't bleeding as much as it was before, and my wound's stream of blood had settled to a small trickle, but I was starting to get light-headed. Noticing this, I became a bit frantic. But, me being me, I turned my fear into burning anger, so I turned to the Doctor and howled, "Running out of time?! WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?! TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON."
Waving his blue-tipped singing metal stick around the exterior the spaceship like a madman, the Doctor answered, "Summer, you need to calm down. This is a spaceship from the planet of Cleocream. The beings that live there are very, very different from many other living things. These beings take the form of electricity, and—" Silence, and the readjustment to the lack of movement from the floor, cut him off. The giant orb had stopped reverberating. Mind you, it had only been moving for about twenty seconds, but the newfound steadiness of the house felt unbearably foreign. In those momentous twenty seconds, all past, present, and future had been swept away, replaced by a magnificent space stone, and a delirious space dude who called himself "The Doctor" (the "The" seemed a bit pretentious, but I think he lived up to it in the end.) In those seconds, everything I had known was what was in front of me: a big, fat, alien, problem.
This thought seemed to reassure me, to a point where I practically laughed. I can do this, easy, I thought, It's like one big math problem. I can do math. This is a problem, and all I have to do is find the solution. A sudden wave of confidence flooded my body, turning my bones to solid steel, my blood to fire. "Okay spaceman," I asserted, "Tell me everything I need to know about these things as quick as you can." I could tell that my new aura of self-assurance took him aback, because his back straightened as turned to look at me with his head cocked to the right. He looked like an adorable little puppy tilting its head to the side, because it didn't understand what the word "walk" meant yet. I wanted to give him a ribbon or something for Best Puppy in Show. But alas, there was too little time, and too many aliens in my kitchen.
He visibly faltered for a moment, but seemed to come to a conclusion as he muttered, "I'm really going to regret this," with a sour tone. He took two sweeping steps toward me, arms outstretched. Before I had time to react he grasped my head and jerked it forward, smacking my forehead into his, and memories unfolded in my head as though they were my own.
Chapter 3
But in fact, they were my own. They now stood among my life's story, perfectly and beautifully weaved into every moment. My past had now included the information the mighty Cleocrians: history, biology, music, everything. It was like my world had been recoded, the knowledge of this alien race stood in my little brain (subconscious, whatever) as a born instinct—like knowing to put your hands in front of you as you fall, without having to be taught to—from my first, and I imagine until my last, breath.
On their planet, they communicate through electrical neural impulses. It's not that they have a language that they speak to each other in by thinking in it: they have no language at all (they actually don't have a name that translates to an Earthly language, the name Cleocream came from the Doctor. He had just finished playing checkers with Cleopatra, and had a hankering for ice cream, when he first heard of them, and took upon himself to give them a name.) The human brain's thoughts before they are translated into words, in my case English, begin as neural impulses. The Cleorians talk through these neural impulses – they communicate through thoughts before they have form. This may seem a bit unfathomable, or maybe it makes total sense (you do you, sister) but it makes sense when you take into account that they are pretty much walking electricity. You and me, we use electricity to pump our hearts and flex our brains, which in turn move our body and make us think. These guys just cut out the middle man. They use electricity directly to move their body and think, no ooey-gooey brain or heart needed.
They are incased in a suit of armor to keep the free-moving electricity in, kind of like skin just harder, shinier, metal, and twenty times cooler than ours. Electricity flows through their body like and over paid football player would flow through their private lazy river as a means of getting around their three acre back yard. They bob along in the current with their $100 haircut and $300 swimming trunks, until they arrive at the place that they want to get out at, say the outdoor kitchen. They then proceed to leave the current and perform the activity that they left to do, say cook a burger. When they finish their specified task, they return to the lazy river to bob along again until they get out to perform a different task at another location.
The Cleocrians also use their electricity as a weapon against other life forms, by temporarily exposing electric fields through their fingers. They have full control of the wattage being passed on to the attackee (let's pretend that's a word), and essentially have settings for warm, toasty, extra toasty, and burnt. Then, after a long day or fierce battle, they are able to recharge to compensate for any energy lost.
There is a main source of power, located in the center of their body, which is their life source. Like a brain or a phone, if it loses energy to the one, central processing center, it dies and is unable to be charged back up again. This is guarded by enumerable layers of the Earth equivalent of diamonds, and enough energy fields to power a small town for three weeks. In other words, impossible to get to, much less destroy.
I stumbled backward, clutching my now aching head. The sudden influx of knowledge had left me with a small gorilla trapped in my head, banging at the walls of my skull in an attempt to escape. The whole rewriting-my-inborn-instincts-by-adding-completely-new-memories-of-an-alien-race affair had only taken about half a second, but it took me another half second to get my land legs back and remember what was happening, as well as realize what had just happened. I looked over at the Doctor and saw him clutching his head as well, then shaking his head like a dog shaking out water. "I am never doing that again," he grumbled.
"Yeah," I said with a grimaced laugh, "No arguments here."
Our moment of self-pity was cut short by an abrupt screech emanating from the spaceship. The spherical machine started screaming and moaning as a 7X7 hole appeared on the side as small blocks making up the surface disassembled and repositioned themselves elsewhere. Then, a shadowed figure rose from inside as smoke poured out onto my kitchen floor (a bit melodramatic and theatrical for my taste, but I figured it was best if I kept my criticisms to myself.) The figure slowly walked out from the center of the orb to the new world in which he found himself in, placing each foot down with exceptional force. The earth under him quaked in fear with each planted step. I gulped down my nerves and mustered as much confidence as I could (no easy feat in this kind of situation) and said in a shaky voice shrouded in false determination, turned to the Doctor and said, "Okay, spaceman. Let's do this…"
Now, the Cleocrians are a somewhat peaceful race, in relation to each other. They have skirmishes here and there between their own people, but when it comes to other life forms (and by this I mean alien), they have little to no trust. Their planet had an attempted take-over three times, all from different life-forms. Apparently, a lot of other planets in the universe are obsessed with manifest destiny. But while they are a peaceful race among their peers, they are mighty warriors among foes. Every Cleocrian has vowed to destroy any other life forms that they may stumble upon. They figure that they should destroy each alien before it destroys them. This twisted sense of self-preservation made me wonder about the atrocities they must have endured in the face of foreigners, and I ached at the thought of any living thing being turned into a murderous machine out of necessity. And the children of their planet…
An immense figure stood before us, in a metal body. It looked a lot like Iron Man actually, just with different colors. Whoever designed their outfits had a great sense of style, because the colors and shapes that ran up the intruder's body coexisted magnificently. The base color of their suit/body was a deep, charcoal black, matching the spaceship. It had breast plates that were the color of the sky, after the last remnants of the sun's cheerful colors had washed out: a deep blue. That same blue was repeated on the base of the warrior's feet, and along the side of his torso. The fingers and eyes were glass, so I could see the light blue bursts of electricity run through his body, and power his soul. While these glass fixtures were easy on the eyes, I figured that they served a much more frightening purpose, which was to retract backwards to allow electricity jump from his body to the body of his challenger i.e., me. While this did fill me with a significant amount of dread, it also filled me with enumerable sorrow. What must these people have endured to have necessitated the evolution of these weapons? I silently thanked the doctor for not sharing this information with me.
Once the intruder had understood his surroundings, he quickly turned to the doctor, and pounced. His glass-tipped fingers retracted, leaving tendrils of electricity to tug at the Doctor's body. The blue/purple plasma was tugging at every inch of him, when I jumped on the Cleocrian and tried to tug him back. I was able to pull the attacker off enough to release the Doctor from the grips of the tiny snake army of electricity, but only for a second. It looked like the intruder was not going to let the Doctor go until he was a heap on the ground. In the short second that I relieved the him from his electrocution, the Doctor mustered out the whispered words, "Summer, run."
As he said that, a little blue spark caught my attention. I looked down, hands still clasped firmly o the intruder's shoulders, to see that my bleeding arm had dripped a drop into a small crack on his back. The tiny drop had conducted a bit of electricity that had escaped from within his armor. It was then that I knew exactly what to do.
Chapter 4
I hadn't exactly formulated a plan, I just knew exactly what I was doing. My body moved with grace and purpose, despite me not actively telling it what to do. I flew past the spaceship and the alien wrestling showdown, down a hallway, and out the garage. I got a two liter soda bottle out of the recycling bin, and looked across the street to find my neighbor, Mrs. Scwimmer, holding up a camera phone. When she caught sight of me, she raised a waving hand and called out, "Summer! Are you okay? Should I call someone? I hope you don't mind me recording. Say, what was that that fell onto your house? Is everyone okay?" etc., etc.
"Not now, Mrs. Scwimmer," I mumbled with a deep tone of annoyance. I banked a hard right, running so fast that I could barely feel my legs. Looking back, I'm immensely proud of myself for not tripping over my own feet. I ran to the shed, flung open the door, and scanned the rotting wood walls for the pool supplies desperately. My eyes caught the dried chlorine supply, as I snapped and yelled, "AHA!" (I would imagine that I looked like a 60's Mickey Mouse cartoon, with my snapping and all, but I wasn't overly concerned about that at that moment.) I folded the bottom of my shirt upwards, creating a giant pocket, and put three handfuls of dried chlorine in it. I then ran around the perimeter of my house, chlorine burning my hands and stomach, and threw up my bedroom window.
Climbing in, I found my supply of gum sitting studiously on my desk, waiting patiently for me. Luckily, it was one of those Hubba Bubba bubble gum roles. "Perfect," I whispered aloud, silently thanking the five year old child inside me for getting bubble gum. Putting the empty two liter bottle down, I hastily opened it, and took a huge bite off the top. I chewed fervently and hurriedly as I ran to my bathroom, directly next to my bedroom.
I had to twist my body awkwardly to maneuver open the door since I had so much in my hands, but once inside I jumped for the rubbing alcohol. I found it, placed it on the table, and proceeded to transfer the chlorine from my makeshift shirt-pocket into the bottle. Then, confident in my gum chewing abilities, spat out the mountain of gum and stuck it to the bottom of the bottle. I grabbed the container of rubbing alcohol and the bottle of chlorine and ran back into the center of the storm.
I bounded into the kitchen to find the Doctor, twitching and heavily heaving, subduing the Cleocrian with his blue-tipped metal wand. While this was working for the moment, the Intruder was obviously mustering up his strength and was starting to stand up taller. "No time to waste," I thought.
"I thought I told you to run!" screamed the Doctor.
Sprinting past their skirmish to the silver wear drawer, I called over my shoulder, "And I did run. You never said to not come back. Next time, you're going to need to be more specific."
I found the fork that had a bent handle from my putting it in scorching soup a month prior. I needed something thick, solid, metal, and with the least amount of uniformity. Pulling it out I smiled at it, my sort-of-plan was working beautifully. I quickly placed the fork on the adjacent table, and proceeded to pour the rubbing alcohol into the two liter jug containing powdered chlorine, then I stuck it onto the Intruders back (directly on top of the small break in his armor that I had realized earlier) by means of the slobbery pink Hubba Bubba wad.
The Intruder was taken by surprise by my sudden actions, but when nothing happened immediately, he turned back to killing the Doctor. I quickly turned to my right to open the rag cabinet, and pulled out the rubber oven mitts. Then I watched as the two chemicals mixed with each other, and started to bubble. The bottom of the bottle started expanding from the heat of the reaction, until it suddenly burst in a small, but effective, explosion. It happened not a moment too soon, because I could see the Doctor becoming limp.
Just as I had expected, the elementary bomb had left a small hole in the intruder's back. A few licks of lightning escaped from their new opening, and attached themselves to basically every metal surface within a five foot radius. All my lightbulbs exploded in a shower of glass and sparks, and the only light source left was the sunlight falling through the window, bathing everything in a soft yellow glow. It was almost beautiful. Seeing my short window of opportunity, I navigated the fork through the small slit, making sure to not touch any part of me not shielded by rubber to anything metal.
This worked magnificently. The Intruder suddenly became immobile, letting go of the Doctor. I ran over to catch him as fell to the ground, watching the inside of the Cleocrian spark madly through his eye holes. He then proceeded to crumble to the ground like a house of cards. Some part of his body jerked here or there, but he was mostly incapacitated.
Ensuring myself that the threat was neutralized for the moment (I felt like a super spy as I thought this) I turned to the Doctor. He was weak and barely conscious, but the look of confusion on his face was more precious than the cocked head from two minutes ago (only two minutes? It felt like a lifetime) and through teary eyes I let out gleeful laugh. Then, I looked down at his head that I was now clutching in my lap, and said, "Hey, are you okay? What do you want me to do?"
"Just let me lie down, I'll be fine in a sec," he wearily answered. I got up and poured a glass of cold water, and sidestepped around the heap of metal that was the Intruder and his ship to get a straw. I returned back to the Doctor and gave him the glass. He waved it away, but before I could protest the wail of police sirens echoed through the otherwise noiseless house. I really didn't want to be there to explain to the police what the hell had just gone on. Quite frankly, I had no idea myself. The Doctor raised a heavy head tried to move, but at that pace we wouldn't make it out before next week. "Where would we even go if we got out?" I thought.
As if reading my thoughts, the Doctor coughed out, "The TARDIS… in your closet. We can escape through that."
"What, hide in a giant blue box from a different continent from three decades ago? Yeah, really inconspicuous," I said sarcastically.
"Just trust me," he answered.
From the moment he materialized in my closet, a giant rock had been hurtled through my roof, new memories had been painfully inserted in my head, an alien called a Cleocrian had attacked me, and I had been lightly electrocuted at least twenty times. Despite this, there was suddenly no doubt in my mind that I could trust this man with my life. "Okay," I said, "But you're going to need to move a bit quicker, spaceman." By now, the police had found my house, and had parked their cars out front. One officer was emerging from his car, and soon others were following suit. "We need to be out of here in the next thirty seconds, or we're going to have to answer some pretty tough questions," I said, looking down at the Doctor.
"I'm getting up, I'm getting up…" he answered as he slowly moved his arm to support the weight of his torso. "For heaven's sake…" I said as I walked over to the utensil drawer and got out another, pointier, fork. I walked over to him, and kneeled down. "What are you doing wi—OY!" he screamed as I quickly stabbed his right shoulder with the fork. It worked, because after I did it, the Doctor flew up from the ground with the boundless energy of a toddler and said, "Okay, we should go."
A smiled, nodded, and said, "No arguments here, but we should probably take the Cleocrian with us. God knows what the police would do if they found him." The Doctor nodded as he grabbed the feet and I the arms, and we ran him back to my room. Right before we rounded the hallway, he stopped abruptly and waved to my cat saying, "You too, Comet. Come along. Good kitty." Surprisingly, this made Comet get up from where she had been laying, watching us casually fight off an alien intruder. As we got to my room, we could hear the police call out, "Miss Summers? Can you open up please? We're here to help."
We opened my closet, and there stood the police call box, just as it was those few momentous minutes ago. I looked at my cat, then the Doctor, then the Intruder, then the box, and said with an air of skepticism, "How are we going to fit?!"
"What did I say?" asked the Doctor.
"Right, right," I replied, "Trust you."
"Good," he smiled, "then in let's go."
We walked in, and I felt like the air had been vacuumed out of my lungs. IT WAS BIGGER ON THE INSIDE.
"I would love to stick around and let this sink in, but we really should be going," the Doctor called out from the center of the 100 SQUARE FOOT ROOM. He then ran around the center console, flipping switches and pushing buttons gaily. The ground suddenly shook under my feet and I had to quickly twist my body and jump towards a railing to keep from falling flat on my face. After a few seconds of being thrown around, the movement stopped. I was so confused and disoriented, I didn't know which way was up. But me being me, that confusion turned to fear, which turned to anger. I turned to the Doctor and demanded he tell me what was going on.
"You've got some fire under you," he said with a smile. "This is my TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension In Space. It's a time machine that can travel anywhere in the universe. Pretty cool huh? Right now we are just outside of Earth's orbit. Go on, take a look," he said, nodding towards the door. I reluctantly turned around and walked to the door. I opened it slowly at first, then threw it open when I realized what I was looking at. It was the Earth. I was in a box, above the Earth. I sat down, my feet dangling over the edge, and burst out with laughter. Once my laughter had faded, I turned around and said, "How am I not dead right now?" At this, the Doctor crossed the center console with a skip and swigging arms, and came to sit with me. He dangled his feet over the edge and said, "The TARDIS is protecting us. Giving us oxygen, keeping the air pressure stable, giving us warmth etc."
I looked out and said, "Hm."
It was quiet for some time before the silence following that was interrupted. The Doctor looked over at me and said, "You know, you're taking this pretty well, considering."
I laughed and said, "Considering what? That just twenty minutes ago, I was dancing in my room? Yeah, I guess. It's just that, I figured I'd go with it. If this is a dream, it's the best dream I've ever had. Why spoil it by trying to find its faults? By proving it's real? And if this is real…" I trailed off.
"Yeah?" he asked, "And if this is real?"
"Then this is the best day of my life."
Chapter 5
We sat silent for either two seconds or twenty minutes, I couldn't tell. Our legs jovially swung as we gazed out into the deep velvet expanse, permeated frequently with tiny, yet brilliant specks, like a field of fireflies on the new moon's night. When the Doctor broke the silence, I jumped. I had forgotten how tightly wound I still was from the Invader's invasion. I knew we were free of him, at least for a day or so, and I was starting to let my shoulders fall, but I remained hyper vigilant.
"So," he started, "You're name is Summer Summers?" I sighed deeply awaiting the jokes about Eric Erikson, and Phillip Phillips, and John Johnson, but none came. Realizing this, I said with a small smile, "Yeah, my parents were a couple of wise asses." He didn't reply, but gave a small chuckle and a sly look as if to say, "I see where you get it from."
He was quiet for a little while longer before he said again, "How did you know?"
"Know what?" I replied.
"About the armor," he said. I thought back to my cheetah-like sprint around the house just moments ago.
"When I first tried to pry him off of you, a bit of blood dripped from my arm. A blue spark ran through it, which I took as some rebellious electricity reacting and conducting with the salt solution in my blood."
"And the bomb, what was it? Chlorine and alcohol?" he asked.
I tapped my nose, and said, "Good eye. I got the chlorine from the back shed, the alcohol from my bathroom, and the gum from my desk. I'll never be able to look at gum the same way again." I said, as a shiver ran down my body thinking of the sugar glob in my mouth. "And," I continued, "I shoved a fork through the slit that the explosion created. I figured that if it's bad to put a fork in a microwave, it would be really bad to shove one into a walking heap of electricity."
I gazed back at the once heart stopping warrior, now reduced to a pile of scrap metal. "I figure it'll take a good day for his main frame to recharge itself. What do we do then?" I asked.
"We take him back to his planet with a very strongly worded message from me about breaking the Shadow Proclamation." He saw my quizzical look and added, "You're planet is very protected. The Shadow Proclamation pretty much says that if you invade Earth, you get locked up."
"But what was he doing here in the first place?" I asked.
"People from their planet have been known to use nuclear fusion as power sources. He was probably planning on landing in the ocean and pilfering energy from the core of the Earth. Like stealing cable, just much, much worse."
"He probably got knocked off course from some malfunction in his ship. That would explain why he had a crack in his armor, and why it was all smoky when they door opened," I said more to myself than to him. He nodded quietly, not tearing his eyes from the stars in front of him. I continued, "And how did you know where to come? It can hardly be a coincidence that two aliens show up in my house at the same time."
"Ah," he said, glancing over at Comet who had bundled up on one of the chairs, "That's where good ol' Comet comes in. As I was saying before we got cut off, when life started evolving on this planet, the Shadow Proclamation decreed it a 'protected planet'. Ever since then, soldiers from around the universe have been stationed around the Earth, ready for attackers. They can take on many shapes: cats, trees, fish, the likes. Anything organic, and carbon-based. They communicate through their radio-telepaths, kinda like HAM radios. Comet sent out an emergency signal that I picked up, and I came."
"Well then how did Comet know?" I asked
"Comet is originally from planet Samor. They are able to see into the short future if it brings death of destruction."
"So my cat's pretty much a banshee," I said in a matter-of-fact way.
"Yes, your cat is pretty much a banshee. A very important banshee that just saved the Earth from having its core bled of its power."
I turned around to see Comet happily sleeping with a soft purr and said, "Good cat,"
After taking in all of this new information, I said, "And why are they called radio-telepaths? Why not telepathic radios?"
"Really?" he asked, "All of that, and that's your takeaway?" He sighed before beginning again, "I didn't name them. If I could have named them, they would be called something way better. But I guess something must have gotten lost in translation, I really don't know."
"You don't strike me as someone to 'not know' something. You look like you've seen it all," I said as I sung my head to the side to look at him.
At this, he bounced up to his feet and flew over to the center console with the agility of a puma. "Let's get you stitched up, eh?" He called out as he pulled out a first-aid kit. I peered down and saw that my shirt looked like it had been tie dyed with cranberry juice, and traced my finger over the areas of dried blood plastered down my arm. I had lost all feeling in that area long ago, and my head felt a lot better, but I got up anyways and let him fix me up. I sat down as he washed and dressed my wound. Half way through, I looked at him and asked, "So what now?" He looked at me and, while still sterilizing my arm, answered, "Now, I drop this guy off back home, then you."
"What?!" I yelled, "No! First of all, I have nowhere to go. My house has a giant hole in the middle of it, and is probably swarming with a hundred confused police men, remember? Also, you totally owe me. I saved your life back there.
"I would have been fine," he answered in a hosh posh sort of way.
"You would have been fried to a crisp," I answered.
He had finally finished stitching me up and abruptly said, "Fine. One trip"
A wicked grin sprouted on my face, which I imagine looked like a poker player's might right before he lay down his cards to reveal a full house, with a lot of money to be won.
"Where to?" he asked.
Smile still ripe on my face, I met his eye and answered, "Surprise me."