I was surrounded by robots shaped like salt shakers, and one had just killed my wife. It was like a scene out of Chopping Mall. One of the robots had fired at my woman, a sort of death ray, I supposed, but she had sown a bunch of DVD's to her clothing (because they were pretty), and the laser had somehow bounced off due to the shiny material, causing one of the robots' heads to explode. The beam, however, was not your average laser beam, and DVD's are just a piece of plastic with a hole in it, so Eve fell to the floor with a scream.

I immediately dove to her side, raising my hands in surrender. Part of a wall exploded, knocking off one of those inverted Frisbee things, but then the robots seemed to pause for a moment.

I took the opportunity to check the damage. One of the DVD's had melted onto the jacket like a clock in Salvador Dali painting. I pulled the jacket back and found the Ipod melting onto her skin, and I could swear I heard dying strains of the Ketchup Song coming out of it.

I ripped the DVD off her jacket, scooping away the blackened circuit board the best I could.

Lucky for her, from what I could see through the hole in her shoddily quilted shirt, she had only received a mild scalding, the Ipod taking the brunt of the damage. She'd have a nasty sunburn mark for awhile, though.

I slowly pulled her to her feet, telegraphing every movement to the robots like I would a cop with a gun.
"INTRUDER!" I heard a robotic voice shout. "IDENTIFY YOURSELF!"

It sounded like a British man talking slowly through scuba gear. Eve let out a yelp, then growled and bared her teeth.
I placed a hand to her shoulder. "Careful! Don't tick them off!" I hissed.

I put on a fake smile, waving at the machines. "Hi! Can you understand me?"
The lights on one of the things flashed as a voice spoke. "WE CAN UNDERSTAND! IDENTIFY YOURSELF OR BE DESTROYED!"

"I...I'm Robert, my friend is Eve. Where am I?"

The robot raised a fluorescent tube thing, and suddenly the console exploded. "WE WILL ASK THE QUESTIONS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THIS FACILITY! ANSWER!"

I shrugged, staring into the steel warehouse beyond their heads. "I got lost. I don't know how to operate this thing."
The robots swiveled their heads, as if debating something with their comrades.

"YOUR RESPONSE IS NOT SATISFACTORY! PREPARE TO DIE!"

I braced myself for a blast of microwave radiation, but nothing happened.

I think the only reason why the things hadn't vaporized me, or whatever it was they did, was because a black and white robot had growled something to them about something called Dalek Command. A moment later, this dalmatian looking thing was rolling up the door, pointing its eyestalk at me. "CONFIRM IDENTIFICATION. FIRST AND LAST NAME."

Taking the calmer tone to be a good sign, I introduced myself and Eve to the robot. I told him (or her?) Eve's last name was Oog, which seemed to be a good enough answer for it.

"THEY ARE COMPANIONS OF THE DOCTOR," I heard a stupid sounding gray robot saying.

"WHERE IS THE DOCTOR!" another cried.

"The Doctor is dead," I shrugged.

"THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE."

"YOU ARE LYING!" said the white one.

"Why would I lie about that? I don't even know the guy! I found the guy lyaying in the yard. No breathing, no pulse."

The white one rolled back and forth in a sort of irritated rolling dance. "HE HAS TWO HEARTS."

"I'm pretty sure I would have heard at least one of them!"

The white one backed up, conferring with its companions.

"THE DOCTOR CAN REGENERATE," said one.

"HE IS STILL ALIVE."

I blinked. "You mean reincarnate?"

"ARE YOU STUPID?"

"THE DOCTOR IS A TIME LORD," said the white. "HE CAN DIE MULTIPLE TIMES."

"THE DOCTOR NEVER DIES. WE HAVE KILLED HIM OVER AND OVER AND HE KEEPS COMING BACK. WHERE IS THE DOCTOR? ANSWER! ANSWER!"

"He's on earth," I shrugged. "Probably in a morgue."

"WHY ARE YOU IN SECTOR B26A51E84?"

"It was an accident!" I waved at the console. "I don't know how to pilot this thing!"

The white one rolled through the door. "A PROBLEM THAT IS EASILY RECTIFIED."

I didn't like the sound of that, but they had death rays.

It rolled up to the console, and as it did, a miniature robotic arm popped out below its grille beneath its dome, its tiny metal fingers pushing buttons and flipping switches. "YOU ARE DISMISSED. VACATE THE VEHICLE IMMEDIATELY TO PREPARE FOR PROCESSING."

The statement seemed vaguely Nazi-esque. I stayed where I was until I saw its fluorescent tube pointing at me. The camera eye on its eyestalk seemed to bulge with fury. "OBEY! YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY!"

"Okay, okay! I'm going!"

I'm sure the Doctor had a cool way to solve this particular dilemma, but I didn't, so I stepped outside, the sinking feeling in my stomach getting heavier as I heard the familiar grinding sound. When I saw the phone booth vanish, the feeling got worse, to the point where I almost threw up.

The robots silently led us through the warehouse and down a plain gray concrete corridor.

The corridor led to a second warehouse, wherein my woman got the bright idea of running away.

I hollered, but it was too late. She got away before I could hold her back.

She only gained a few yards before I saw a brilliant flash, and she fell to the floor with a scream. I yelled, but the robots blocked me from running to her.

"KEEP MOVING," one of them ordered.

"THE FEMALE IS UNCONSCIOUS, BUT LIVING," said the other. "VITAL FUNCTIONS OPERATIONAL."
"UNIT WILL BE RETRIEVED FOR PROCESSING."

"Is that all she is to you? A unit?"

They paused as if giving the question serious thought, then they simply replied, "YES."

"INCREASE IN FACIAL TEMPERATURE UNNECESSARY. FEMALE WILL ACCOMPANY YOU TO PROCESSING FACILITY."

I had no weapons, and the things surrounded me on all sides. Seeing as there was nothing I could do, and there was still a chance my woman was alive, I followed my captors through the warehouse, marching through a long convoluted maze of identical looking concrete tunnels.

After several yards of this, I at last arrived at a block of jail cells with bars resembling that of a cage for a large breed dog, but more thickly reinforced.

I was led into an open cell in between two other cells at the start of the tunnel, then ordered to stand by the back wall while they locked me inside.

They left me alone, and, after the last one had rolled away, I slumped to the floor, crushed, dejected, and utterly without hope.
"I recognize that shirt," I heard a female voice saying in the next cell.

I was too depressed to look up. I only shrugged and said, "You probably shop at the same store."
"Only if we both shop at the TARDIS storeroom," the woman protested. "I've seen it there. I'm sure of it. The shoulder is even fraying on the left side."

Startled, I glanced up and saw a middle aged caucasian face framed in curly blonde hair. I noted with some amusement that her pale makeup appeared to be applied a centimeter too thick. I also noticed she had a striking resemblance to one of the female doctors on ER.

"How's Doctor Greene?" I asked with a smirk on my face.

She had no idea what I was talking about. Her expression was blank as a slate. "Excuse me?"
I just laughed and shook my head.

She didn't share my mirth, so I sighed and stared at her face and space uniform in puzzlement. "Who are you?"
"Don't you remember me?"

Now it was my turn to look at her like she were crazy. "Unless you're the woman from TV, I don't know you from Adam."

"You've regenerated, haven't you? That's it, isn't it? Poor dear, you really don't remember a thing."

"I'm not the Doctor, if that's what you're implying. I'm just a dumb guy who found his phone booth."

I saw her hands clamping white knuckled to the bars. "Where is he!" she yelled.

I frowned at the patches on her gray space uniform. "He's dead."

I could hear a choking sob rising in her throat. "No! No! It can't be! Did you check both hearts?"

"I put my head to his chest. I would have heard something."

"It was his last regeneration!" She broke down in tears, staggering back from the bars.

She flopped on the floor, and for several minutes she was completely inconsolable.

When she had calmed down a bit, I attempted communication. "What's your name?"

"Riversong," she sniffed.

"Riversong, can you tell me what the hell is going on?"

"It's an experiment. The less you know about it, the better. It's not like you can do anything about it anyway."

"No, I mean, what about everything else? What is that blue phone booth thing? What is a TARDIS? Is it real? What year is it?"

The woman wiped her eyes, then laid down the missing details. The Doctor was an alien from the planet Gallifrey. The phone booth was modeled after a London police box, and it assumed that shape as camouflage before getting stuck that way. It was sort of a spaceship with an extra dimension inside. The robots were called Daleks and they liked killing things, and it was the year 4023.

I asked her about the dinosaurs and other things, but she had no clue about what I was talking about.
The woman suddenly gasped. "Where's the TARDIS?"

I told her what happened, and her expression became drawn and grave, her knees seeming to give way beneath her. "You were better off dying," she moaned. "Now they have the TARDIS, they can travel back in time and destroy everyone before they were born, including us. The whole time war with all its bloodshed will count for nothing! How could you let them take it!"

I shrugged. "They have laser guns."

"Don't you ever sweep the area before opening the TARDIS doors?"

I shook my head no. "I read about a CCTV, I don't know where the monitors are."

She beat her head against the bars.

"We're screwed," I said.

She sunk to the floor. "I agree with that assessment." With a sigh, she added, "You really are an idiot."
Considering the circumstances, I didn't disagree. I slumped down on the flat uncomfortable prison bed, staring at the bars.
"You don't happen to have a sonic screwdriver, do you?"

"That's just an expression."

"What?"

"I don't have a screwdriver."

"No, a sonic screwdriver."

"I have a sonic toothbrush in my in my apartment. Does that count?"

"I'm talking about a tool, rocks for brains! Something that can get us out of here!"

I paused. "Does it look like a socket wrench?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps? It has a glowy end on one side, and it spins..."
I remembered seeing the socket wrench things with the light bulbs on them in the storage room. "It's in the TARDIS."

"A fat lot of good it's doing there!"

"I thought everything was a toy!" I protested. "I don't believe in dimensions and time travel!...I mean, I didn't."

After that, we didn't speak to each other for a long time.

I looked into the cell on my opposite side and found a little girl in a similar looking astronaut outfit sitting cross legged on the floor. I waved to her. "Hello?"

"Hulloh," she said.

"What's your name?"

"River Song."

I glanced back at the other Riversong and she suddenly stood up. "Oh! That's right! I remember you now!"

Before I could get an explanation about the woman's strange reaction, I noticed the door of my cell scraping open.
When I looked up, I discovered that these robots, the Daleks, had returned my wife to me, but something had changed.
Instead of the loincloth thing she'd been wearing, she had on a form fitting white jumpsuit, her hair had been cropped short in a butch haircut, and her eyes and face no longer searched the terrain like a caged tiger.

"Eve?" I stammered.

With a smile, she gave me a nod, marching into my cell.

As she came close, I saw something like squid tentacles dropping out of the sides of her hair, and an enormous eye opened up on her forehead.

"Robert...my dear husband."