It was true: the world outside the TARDIS was boring. But it was also incredibly strange. The Doctor stood at the corner of the street for a while, watching the pedestrians go by with their faces turned down to the ground. No one was looking at the upturned dome in the sky. For a moment, she wasn't sure if they even knew it was there.
But they did, she saw as she looked across the road. One shopfront was a splash of colour against the grey, painted with a giant mural of the dome obliterating the planet. There was something oddly cheery about the style and the colours, and the world felt even stranger than had.
"The Pub at the End of the World," muttered the Doctor to herself. "They'd have to be into that book, wouldn't they? Not The Time Traveller's Wife. I could do with meeting my wife, round about now."
Hesitantly, she pushed open the door and went inside. In the pub everyone looked happy, and she was in the sort of mood where that made her scowl.
In the corner, a couple were talking and laughing. At the bar, an old man was cracking a joke. And near the loos there was the paper maché sculpture of a dome, its laser pointing at all of the clientele.
The Doctor sighed internally, and went to talk to the barman.
"A glass of water," she said.
"Unpleasantly like being drunk," said the barman with a wink.
"Y'know," said the Doctor, "I was really hoping that you weren't going to say that."
"It's a bit of fun," said the barman. "Not much of a drinker yourself, I take it?"
"It varies. I don't think I decided, this time round. But the water'll be fine," she added when she saw the barman's expression, "I'm not making an occasion of being here. I'm just someone from a planet far away, here to kill some time."
"Round here it's time that does the killing," said the barman. "Or so they say."
"That's true in most places, if you're willing to wait long enough."
"Yes," said the barman with a smile, "but here they reckon we won't have to wait long at all."
The Doctor looked at him like he was a particularly stupid soft toy.
"About that," said the Doctor. "The weapon in the sky. You don't seem much fussed, by my reckoning. Seems weird, to a girl from out of town. How can you theme a bar round your own extinction? 'The Pub at the End of the World?'
"Not a great name, is it?" said the barkeeper. "They were going to call it The World's End. But then people would think it was about that movie, and nobody really likes that. Here, we're all more about the book."
"The book," repeated the Doctor wearily, not bothering to say it as a question. Of course she knew which novel this planet was influenced by— and how, just like everywhere else in the universe, people wouldn't need prompting to start talking about it.
"It's a great book!" the barkeeper said happily. "Don't know if you've read it."
"Of course I've read it," said the Doctor. "Everyone's read that book."
"What happens in it, see," continued the barkeeper as he ignored her, "is there's these people, and they want to know the answer to this really giant question! And they've all been wondering what it is; they think it's really profound. But in the end it doesn't much matter at all! Because the answer, right, it's only"—
"Look, I've had a really bad day," said the Doctor. "I don't need this going and making it worse."
"But it's funny, isn't it? It's like it's saying that there's absolutely no meaning to anything! So maybe it's fine, if we're all about to die."
"That's not what it was saying," said the Doctor. "That wasn't his point at all."
She frowned.
"Was that really enough for you?" she said. "Shouldn't you be frightened?"
"Of what?" said the barkeeper. "Literary analysis? I'm not thick, you know, just because I work in a pub."
"Not that! The thing in the sky; the big leaden dome pointing down.
"Not really. Not because of the book, either. The truth is, even with all this talking about the end of the world; nobody expects it to actually happen. Something will stop the worst of it, before it comes."
"I'll try," said the Doctor, who was getting tired of being the something.
She sighed, and looked around the pub for something that wasn't apocalyptic. She was rewarded soon enough. A sleepy-looking woman held a long leash in her hands, which stretched right into the wall and kept going as a shadow.
The Doctor looked at the dog attached to the lead. It was nothing but a shadow, though it didn't seem to mind: it was barking happily in its two-dimensional way.
"Like it's made of the shadows of hands," said the Doctor, stretching out her own to confirm. "Just like a shadow puppet, only real. That's not in the book," she added dumbly.
"Of course it isn't," said the barman, rolling his eyes. "We just like the book. It's not the same as actually being in it." He shook his head. "Must be something in the water, where you're from."
"Awful stuff," said the Doctor. "That's why I asked for yours. And there's something else I need, as well. Directions."
She handed the invitation over to the barman, who unfolded it with a frown.
"This'll be tricky," he said. "Hard to get to."
"The Central Theatre? I thought it sounded pretty central."
"Getting to the Theatre's no bother. It's getting to eight 'o clock that's the trouble. Days like these, it's harder to navigate time than space. And eight 'o clock? It's when the world's supposed to end."
"Today?" said the Doctor as the barman nodded. "And you're not feeling a little bothered about that?"
"Too right I am. Eight o' clock? Isn't right. You'd think it would be midnight."
"Sometimes the end comes sooner than you think. Didn't you get that from your book?"
The barman shrugged. "I mostly read it for the jokes."
"Yes. It's a funny old world, 'till the day that it stops being there."
"This thing you're going to," said the barman to change the subject. "Is it a comedy or a tragedy?"
The Doctor smiled sadly.
"Dunno," she said. "If I had to guess? I'd say it's like everything here. And in your book, come to that."
She looked up at the paper maché weapon, which was curling apart under its own weight.
"Both," she said. "It's always both."