The Doctor! Always the Doctor. Doctor Who? He never gave a name other than that. I suppose I should have realised that earlier but I had my excuses. It's not every day I run into aliens that just disappear into thin air. And that wasn't the weirdest thing that I saw that day.
There he was. The man in the trainers and blue suit during a heat wave. The man with the surprisingly good hair. The man I had been chasing all morning.
"So, I'm guessing that was an alien," I finally managed to say.
"Yes."
"And the disappearing?"
"Basically, that was a simple short range teleportation device. He must have a ship around here somewhere," the Doctor explained.
"Alright, I can accept that. But what I really want to know is why did you say goodbye to me this morning?"
"What? I've never seen you before. And anyway, an alien teleports right in front of you and you're more worried about what happened this morning?"
"Well, I've kind of suspected that there are aliens. Just look at the spaceships and giant snowflakes over London. And the fact that London was deserted at Christmas because everyone was too scared to stay. And the thing with all the bees disappearing as well. They can't all be hoaxes."
"Right, so you say I met you this morning?" the Doctor asked looking a little puzzled.
"Not too far from here. You walked up to me, said goodbye, walked round the corner and just vanished."
"I wonder why I did that."
"You don't know?"
"Well, I have a bit of a complicated life. Events don't necessarily happen in the correct order. But anyway, we have a much bigger mystery than that to solve. We need to find out what that Cleptraal was doing here, and I think you'd better come with me. That is of course unless you don't want to."
He started heading towards his blue box. It took me a few seconds to realise what had just happened so by the time I had reached the blue box he had already gone inside. I hesitated before opening the door realising that there wouldn't be much room for both of us in there. I was soon proven wrong. As I opened the door and stepped inside I saw that it was big enough to fit an army complete with horses. I had just walked into a vast, domed chamber that almost looked like it was alive. In the middle of the chamber was what I assumed to be the main control panel, surrounding a central column.
"But… the outside… is smaller," I said bewildered.
"You know what they say. Good things come in small packages."
"Good, not big. What is it?"
"It's called the Tardis. It's my ship. Close the door please, I don't want anybody wandering in."
As I closed the door and sat down the Doctor started playing with some of the controls. He hit a few buttons, spun something and hit some more buttons. All the time he was looking at a screen.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to trace the residual energy pattern left by the transporter. If I can just get a strong enough reading I should be able to find where he's hidden his ship. The problem is there seems to be something disrupting the signal so I can't get a proper reading."
"Is it another hair dryer?"
"No, it's something a bit more sophisticated than that. The interference seems to be coming from space. It looks like it could be a satellite. Hang on, I'm receiving something from the satellite." As he said this the Simpsons appeared on the screen.
"Are you trying to tell me that Sky is run by aliens?"
"A lot of companies are, but this satellite has been hijacked. There's another signal hidden behind it. That's what has been blocking my readings. It would probably cause a few problems with reception on TVs and mobile phones."
"Why would aliens want to disrupt the occasional conversation? Unless they were really bored."
"That's just a side effect. The main purpose is to disguise alien technology."
The Doctor continued to flick various switches, push buttons and even hit parts with a hammer. I just sat down watching him do this, trying to understand what was happening. Then I remembered something he had said.
"What did you mean by things not happening in the right order?" I asked him.
"When you travel through time things are bound to get a little complicated," he replied whilst pumping what appeared to be a bicycle pump.
"Of course. Time travel. Any other laws of Physics that I should know you can break?"
"Well, I wouldn't say break. It's more like bending. Anyway, how do you know your laws are correct?"
"I'm sure a scientist somewhere has proof," I muttered as the Doctor returned to the screen. A few minutes later the Simpsons disappeared off of the screen and were replaced by a series of wavy lines running across the screen. Beneath these were odd circular shapes which I assumed must mean something because the Doctor appeared to be reading them.
"Whoever did this must have been clever. He's managed to convert that satellite into a damping field generator and focused it on four separate points. One down here to scramble the transporter trace, one orbiting Earth which I would assume would be to hide his ship, and one aimed directly at each pole."
"What are the last two hiding?"
"I don't know but if I were to simply reverse the polarity of the photon flow it should weaken the signal enough to get a reading," the Doctor explained whilst lifting up a panel in the floor. He started moving wires around and using his sonic screwdriver on odd shaped objects. When he put the panel back and hit a few more buttons, a picture of the Earth appeared on the screen. It also showed the position of the satellite and where the damping fields were aimed at.
"Oh that is beautiful. Potentially fatal but still beautiful."
"What is it?"
"The satellite isn't just creating the damping field. It's also aiming a low intensity infrared beam at the poles. Nothing strong enough to be easily detected but if it were to be left long enough, say twenty five years, it would slowly melt the ice caps."
"So earlier when I said that it was another hair dryer blocking the signal I was right," I said proudly.
"Not exactly but close enough. But why would a Cleptraal want to melt the ice caps? They hate water."
"At the minute I don't care too much about that. I just want to know, can you stop it?"
A/N As always all reviews are welcome. I hope you are enjoying reading my story and look out for the next chapter (updating soon).
