"Please don't hurt me!"
That was the first thing I remember saying. I had fallen over backwards and hit the ground. Two figures stood over me. They looked as confused as I was.
"Don't worry," said one of them. "I'm the Doctor". I realise now, but did not then, that his name demands a capital letter. "I won't let anyone hurt you."
A doctor! I remember thinking, I must have passed out…
"How did you do that?" asked the young woman (I never knew her name). I just stared at her; I did not know what I had done. "You just appeared, out of nowhere - Doctor, what just happened?"
"Did I?" I said. Well, I didn't pass out, then.
The Doctor pointed something at me, then waved it around, pointing it at different places in the room where we all were. A sceptre, it looked like, but a small one, and it made a noise. My eyes followed his gaze, in twitching leaps from place to place. He looked at it, then at me, then around the room, then at the tool again, then back at me.
"Yes," he said. "But the sonic is not picking up any teleportation residue, so I don't think he came here from outside." He sort of did a funny turn - almost a dance - and then addressed me directly.
"Why did you think we were going to hurt you?" He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. "Has someone hurt you before?"
I was still on the ground, on my back, facing them. I started to shake my head, then sort of half-nodded. In the end, it just became a shrug.
"I don't remember."
"Well," he said "that is unusual."
And then he smiled a kind of indiscreet, open smile like a child who had just been given a new toy. That's how I remembered him, smiling. Not quite at me, but about me. He was smiling because I was his new toy, and he had found me.
"What is unusual," said the woman, "Doctor?"
"You just appeared here, out of nowhere." he said, directed at me. "Here, in a museum, where no one has entered for two hundred and twenty years, you - " he pointed at me again, " - just appeared. No teleportation, no point of entry, no journey, only a destination."
"I don't - "
" - remember," he finished my sentence. "You don't know how you got here."
I shook my head.
"I don't even know where here is."
"This!" shouted the Doctor, making the woman with him jump, "is the Museum of the Art of the Extinct. Ten thousand civilisations, from all across the universe, shown to us by what they've left behind". The way his voice echoed gave me an impression of the size of the room I was in.
I looked around. I was, indeed, in a museum. A museum of art, in fact. At least, there was an incredible variety in what I saw. I'm not sure I would have called it all art, but what do I know? As far as I knew, that is the first art I ever saw.
"The great irony, of course," said the Doctor. "is that no one has been here for a hundred and seventy years. The whole of the planet was put under quarantine by order the Shadow Proclamation."
He did another of his funny little twirls, as though he was taking in the whole of the museum at once.
"What happened here?" asked the woman.
"A plague," he said. "of nightmares and obsessions. Of dark thoughts and suspicion. A whole planet went mad in a matter of days."
"That's awful," she said.
The Doctor paused, and looked into the middle-distance. "It was. But it's fine now. The TARDIS hasn't detected any delirious pathogens, psychic reagents or squoogly-woogly mind-eating things." He smiled, which I think was meant to be comforting. "So it's fine, now."
I stood up, and in doing so dropped something that I had not even noticed I was holding: a leather-bound book. I bent down to pick it up.
"I guess this is mine." I said. It seems silly now, but it was true: I had no idea if it really was mine. I did not even know who me was.
I turned over in my hand. It was a journal.
"Maybe it will tell me who I am," I said, in a flash of misplaced hope. But, it was empty. An empty book, a blank slate. Poetic symmetry at work.
The Doctor, the woman (what was her name?) and I walked though the museum. He kept spouting little facts and anecdotes, and occasionally would stop to read a description and say something like "that's not how it happened at all!" or some such nonsense. In all honestly, a lot of the art was lost on me. There were certainly things of great beauty on show, but I had more pressing matters to deal with, like the fact that I did not know my own name, my past, or how I had arrived to be in museum of the dead on a planet of the dead.
The young woman largely kept herself to herself, although she did occasionally glance over to me as though she were appraising me for something. She and the Doctor seemed to know one another well, but the conversation was almost entirely one-sided. It was like a teacher talking to his favourite pupil. I said very little.
In time, we reached a rectangular cabin. The Doctor took out a key, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. The woman followed him. I waited. There wouldn't be room inside for all three of us, I though.
He stuck his head out and said "well come on then," as though he was talking to a naughty dog that was taking its time to enter the house.
I squeezed through the door, and there I passed out.
That is not exactly true. Well, it is, but literally, rather than figuratively. The room was larger on the inside than on the outside. I felt very dizzy, and it was like my mind was detached from my body. I saw my body collapse in graceless slow-motion, and then fold in on itself as it hit the ground, as though it were nothing but skin and air. I passed out of myself and sort of hung, formless in the air.
And then I was standing there again, where I had fallen. The young woman looked frightened, but the Doctor just looked intrigued.
"Doctor -" she called to him. "Doctor, what just happened."
My mind was racing. Literally, not figuratively. It was like everything that had lain dormant in my brain came to life and called out to me. Except, of course, any recollection of myself. The Doctor could the change in me, and ran over to a circular console and began pushing buttons and pulling levers. He looked at a screen, and then at me.
"Two hearts," he said. "You're a Time Lord."
"Am I?" I said.
"But you weren't a Time Lord when I met you. When you appeared in the museum, you were a human."
"How very strange," I said. I had changed; I could see colours that were not there before. I could see the woman's thoughts, like an open book before me. I could remember an empty space, a nothingness, but not what it meant or what I did there.
"A shape-shifter!" we both said at the same time. And we laughed. We both saw it so clearly! How could I not have seen this before?
"When you appeared in the museum -
" - I became human - "
" - but something happened when you entered the TARDIS - "
" - the shock of it all, it really knocked me for six. The mechanics of it - "
" - were outside of your species' understanding of how the world works."
He smiled. I smiled. This was fun.
"So, I needed a moment to pull myself together." I said. He appreciated the pun. "And came back here as a Time Lord."
The journal was still in my hand. It had disappeared when I did, and reassembled itself as well. It was leather-bound, with hand-made paper in its pages.
I looked about my surroundings. It felt like an observatory, domed, but instead of a telescope, there was a round console in the middle. The air felt different, as well. It was cleaner than the air in the museum, and regular. Each molecule tailored, a custom blend for perfect comfort. Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, something floral - roses - as a little embellishment. It was like breathing Turkish delight. New senses overwhelmed me. my brain was running at a speed faster than ever before.
The woman watched me as though I was going to explode, with fear and wonder in her eyes. She looked tired and eager and unsure, like a child who had been allowed to stay past her bedtime by the coolest babysitter ever, but did not like anything on television and had to pretend she understood what was going on around her.
This space inside a smaller space was interesting. The technology behind it made so much sense, all of a sudden. It was dimensionally transcendental! Another dimension within the TARDIS, which was a terribly efficient use of space Of course, it had to maintained by something, a presence, a living being, a caretaker, a spirit, an energy, a spirit, an energy, a spirit a spi a sp a a a a a…
It happened again. I was nothing, I was everything. I saw myself fall, but it was not me. It was a puppet whose strings were cut loose, a rag doll thrown aside. And then I was standing there again, looking through human eyes.
The Doctor put his hand on my shoulder. "I wondered if that would happen," he said. "Time Lords are a bit more complicated than humans. You would have died, so you had to revert back to a previous form. Do you feel better?" He looked genuinely sorry. I imagined what went through his mind when he found out that his new find was, or could be, a Time Lord.
I nodded, which was a lie. After the burning brightness of Time Lord senses, being human felt terribly dark. I could not feel the… presence any longer.
"I felt someone else here," I said. "Someone who cares for you very deeply."
He smiled his peculiar, self-directed smile and patted the console. "That's my girl," he said. "You just met the TARDIS, my TARDIS. Beautiful, isn't she?"
Something flashed on the console, and any joy from his face dropped away. He looked intently at it for a few seconds, and then up at me.
"I'm going to have to put you in quarantine, I'm afraid," he said. "Plague planet, I'm afraid."
I remember feeling unsure (but what choice did I have?), but the woman looked frightened.
"Doctor?" she started, but he cut her off.
"Oh, you needn't worry!" he said to her, as though he was having to point out something terribly obvious. "The TARDIS will prevent transmission of anything untoward. It's when we're out there that I'm worried about."
He gestured towards the door, with his sonic sceptre.
"Well, when we get there, anyway," he looked at me and then did another little flourish as he pointed towards a long corridor. "You'll find a room down there, on the left, just past the squash court and opposite the greenhouse. Why don't you get some rest?"
It was not a question; I knew that was a polite way of telling me to go somewhere else while he thinks about what I am. I walked in the direction he told me, holding the journal to my chest.
The room itself was not what I expected. It was like a cheap hotel room. The carpet was an uneven red, and the whole place smelt of damp. There was a desk, a bed, a door (which led to a musty bathroom) and a bedside table (which contained a packet of jelly babies, a ball of brown string, and a pen).
I took the pen, and began to write in the journal. Well, I thought, if I do disappear again, I can see whether anything stays written, or whether it resets itself. Hopefully, if I lose my memory again, I'll at least have this.
That's what you're reading now, by the way: my journal. It's been edited a little, and typed up, but that is what it is.
I was in the room for perhaps an hour. I had tried to get some rest, as the Doctor ordered, but sleep did not come easily. I looked at myself in the mirror, for some time, until I found the stranger's face staring back at me too alien and unknown. I don't even know if it was my face, really. I had kept the same features when I reformed in the TARDIS as a Time Lord (I am still unsure as to what a Time Lord is, but apparently I was one for a little while) as when I was a human (I'm fairly confident I know what that is, but I don't know why).
I left my room. Perhaps the Doctor could enlighten me. He did not seem particularly surprised to see a young man appear out of no-where and then change species in front of him, so maybe he could help me.
The corridor had changed. Gone was the smell of roses, replaced by a sulphurous stench, and the temperature had dropped enormously. I fell forward, thinking for a moment that that had happened to me again. But no, I had just stumbled. Someone had left a heavy ceramic plant pot in front of my door.
The door opposite me was the greenhouse, I remembered him telling me, so I dragged the heavy pot into there.
It was hot and damp. The ceiling glowed like the sun, but not blindingly so. All sorts of plants grew from all sorts of pots. Seeds were scattered all across the floor. I bent down to scoop some up, and in my hand they sprouted. My marvel was replaced soon by fear, as great jutting thorns grew and cut my hand. I tried to throw them to the ground, but more exploded to life, roots shooting in every direction.
When I got out, I slammed the door behind me and lurched forwards back to my room.
Where am I? I thought. Who is this Doctor? What's a TARDIS? How did I get here? and then What am I?
Later, I joined the Doctor and the young woman back entrance with the console. The corridor had regained its former pleasantness, with honeysuckle air and a cool refreshing breeze. I think it thought it would get caught if I was going to see the Doctor.
"Art is a very powerful thing," he was saying. "It can plant a seed in your mind, inspire a nation to band together, bring the manliest man to tears."
He had seen me come in, but did not acknowledge me, as such.
"When the museum first opened, enormous numbers of people flocked there to see what it held. Copies of the works of art were sold all over the world - some say there was something from the museum in every home. The planet itself became a huge tourist attraction. Its success was its exclusivity; no copies of the art were allowed off-world." He slowed down, and spoke more softly, "Which makes it all the more sad that no one got to see it for over a century."
"Tell me about the plague," I said.
An eyebrow raised. "It started less than a year after the museum opened. People started seeing things in the dark, and losing sleep because of it. There were riots, people complaining of an alien invasion, of dark shadows haunting their dreams. The whole planet began to suspect one another of causing it, and soon enough, they tore each other apart.
"And all the while, the museum became more and more popular. It made more money in its last month than it up until that point, as people flocked to see the art of countless lost worlds.
"Transport to the planet was eventually cut off, citing a plague outbreak. In reality, there was very little evidence for this. It was a best guess by very clever men and women. It share many similarities with diseases, first concentrating in built-up areas, and then found elsewhere until the whole world was delirious."
"That's awful," I said.
The Doctor looked at me, and almost said something, but stopped himself.
He brushed down his clothes with his hands, and said "Right," then pointed to me. "You're going to go back to your room, and we are going to have a look at the Nazca lines."
He turned to the woman and said "Peru, year 1652 AD, grab a hat, it's sunny out there."
And then they stepped out the door.
I was alone.
Apart from the TARDIS, of course.