CAROL SPRING ~ A DOCTOR WHO FANFICTION
Written by Creek Hymn
I borrowed a laptop, and I'm using it in my room. I mean, they hardly let us go anywhere – especially me – so how else am I going to do research? And nobody uses those brown-paged, ink-faded, dusty library books either. Okay…maybe I didn't exactly borrow the laptop, I kind of, well, took it. But I'm using it, and most of the people that work here are so old that they wouldn't notice if a computer went missing for a while.
I open up the internet browser and stare at the screen as the cursor flashes in the text search box. My fingers pick out the letters on the keyboard to spell out my own name in the search box. *Click*. Pages and pages come up…Carol Spring this, Carol Spring that, but not me. Why do I have to have such a common name? Why couldn't my name be something like…Lymphona Fazooka?
Never mind. That's a horrible name. It sounds like the name of a brand for musical bubble gum.
I leave my name in the search box and add 'orphan' to the end to see if that makes any difference. Some news reports show up about me from the times I've tried to escape, but nothing I didn't already know.
I stare blankly at the screen until the constantly flashing cursor starts to drive me crazy and I have to drive my vision away.
Suddenly, I can feel my vision glazing over. It's a vision coming on…the most common one I have. I can see the silver stick taking form out of the scattered white noise of a mental image. The picture clarifies itself to reveal the silver stick, and soon I can see the green light flash on. The whirring sound fills my brain and I sit there for a moment, disoriented. When a single image fills the vision centers your brain and you can hear a sound that isn't really there more than anything else, your senses tend to get overpowered, and you can't exactly tell if you're upright or not. I often find myself on the floor after the vision is gone. The green light evaporates along with the whirring and I blink, restoring a sense of reality. I find myself halfway off the bed, clinging to the blanket which had been smoothed and neat, and was now scrunched up in my hand. I lie back and continue my cyber search.
The vision gives me an idea, so I decide to see if that shiny stick is something significant. I don't exactly know how to describe it, so I end up searching silver stick with green light. In the results, I get a whole bunch of random things that I'm pretty sure are not it. I switch to image mode – and presto, there it is, a mosaic of pixels showing me the very thing I had been seeing in my mind for as long as I can remember…which seems to be pretty far back. I click on the image source, and after looking at a few different pictures, it becomes apparent that the mysterious device is called the 'sonic screwdriver'. Makes sense, though it doesn't look much like a screwdriver to me – more like a shiny eggbeater.
Okay, it doesn't look anything like an eggbeater, but it doesn't look like a screwdriver either!
I type "sonic screwdriver" in the web search. Hundreds of results pop up and out of all of them, I choose the Wikipedia link. I know, I'm just that cool.
Wikipedia – Sonic Screwdriver. I begin reading the information below.
"The sonic screwdriver is a futuristic device used by a man known as "The Doctor"."
Wait a second, "the Doctor"? Is that it? …Doctor who? I continue reading to see if it's just a typo, but several times it indicates this mysterious man, "the Doctor", who goes years between sightings and never seems to age a day to those who are lucky enough to see him more than once. According to the sources, you're extremely lucky if you get to meet him at all. Since Wikipedia isn't exactly the most reliable of sources, I try some of the other result links, but they all refer to this man…the Doctor. So, within the span of 10 minutes, I've gone from searching myself up to searching a doctor up…What does that say about me?
This time, I search up the blue box I also often get visions of. After looking through several different links, it seems that this blue box - a 1960's police box – apparently also ties up to the Doctor, even more so than the sonic screwdriver does. Apparently, it used to be able to 'camouflage' according to its surroundings, but the 'chameleon circuit' was damaged and it's stuck in the form of a police box. People who look for the Doctor usually look for his blue box - the TARDIS, it's called…Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Wait…with a name like that, it sounds like something you would call a…time machine? At this point, I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility, but…whoa. That blue box I've been seeing in my mind for years is a time machine?! If I had known that all that time…! I search up images of it just to verify it matches my memory, and I was right about the writing on the front – big white letters spelling out "Police Public Call Box". Some websites also comment on the scraping-hard-to-explain sound that only that blue box makes when it is materializing or dematerializing.
So…the two most common visions I have are both tied up with the Doctor. Who is this Doctor? Why would I have any memory of him? And why haven't I heard of him before?
I search up "the Doctor". Of course, I get results like "Dr. L. Johnson" or "Dr. S. Jones", or even "Dr. Seuss", so I have to refine my search. I try "Doctor TARDIS" and *^~KABOOM~^* - the results are much closer to what I'm looking for. I find a biography of him and begin to skim through it.
"The Doctor is time lord from a planet called Gallifrey-"
Wait, what? I haven't even read one sentence and I'm confused already. Time lord? Gallifrey? Are they saying he's…an alien? A time-traveling alien? I decide to just keep reading and perhaps things will start to make a little more sense.
"…and he is currently believed to be at least a millennium old."
…I…I don't…I can't…What…?!
"The Doctor often travels with at least one companion and hasn't been known to travel alone in a while. He saves planets on a somewhat regular basis-"
So I guess my theory about my parents possibly being in outer space wasn't completely crazy…that is, if this "Doctor" is even real, and if he is, if I'm even connected to him…
I read about the Doctor for another hour or so, completely lost in the information. Things start to make sense…my memories, my forgotten past, everything about me…everything just seems to connect to the Doctor. The thing that strikes me the most about him is that he is so close to being human that you wouldn't know that he's not until he gave you a stethoscope…or if he died. Two hearts to keep him going for so long, plus when even that fails, he gets an entirely new body and personality. That must be confusing. As far as I know, I don't have two hearts…but there's only one way to find out…
I do a few laps around my small room to get my heart, or possibly hearts, going. I feel my chest where a human's heart would be, and I can feel it beating. I feel my chest lower down, not really sure where a second heart would even go, but after trying several different spots, I don't feel a second heart beat. I suppose my doctors would have noticed…And I've been to a fair amount of them.
But then again, if the Doctor is the last time lord, that means there are no other time lords except him, so if he's my father…what, who, and where is my mother?
