John's street hadn't been that remarkable in the past, and no one had yet remarked on it in its new incarnation. But people would soon start saying what they thought people always had: how posh the area was, how large its houses and how many trees in its gardens. The people who lived on that street would think about how well they'd done to end up in a place that was like it, and only one of them would have any idea of the truth.
On the corner of the road was a blue and ruined box, completely out of keeping with the tone of the street it now sat in. Beside it, two people stepped out of a phone box that wasn't big enough for them both. John stared in horror at the world he had just emerged to, unable to believe it was the one that he'd left behind.
"This isn't right," he said. "It isn't where I live. The phone box that's a bomb; it must have moved"—
"It hasn't," said the Doctor, shaking her head. "Look at the street signs. It's the same name; it's the same place. It just now looks a little bit different.
"Then," said John, looking towards the ridiculously large building in front of him, "then that's"—
"That's your house," said the Doctor, smiling. "Your mother's gone up in the world."
John gaped. "But that's impossible! It's insane!"
"Oh, it's both those things. But it's happened, all the same."
Her new friend stared up at the new house, trying to take it all in.
"It's very big," he said in the end. "But the curtains are all a bit tacky."
"Well, that's the problem with regeneration," said the Doctor. "You never know what you're going to get." She hesitated. "John," she said. "We've not talked about what you're going to do, now you don't have anywhere to live. It's not strictly your house any more"—
"That's not a problem," he said. "Dad lives out of town; he'll be the same as ever."
The Doctor made a face as she disagreed. "Normally? You'd be completely right. But this bomb's at the nastier end of the atrocities committed by my people. It regenerates the memory of a place, not just the substance of it: when your Dad thinks of this town he'll think of it as it is now. As if it was always this way; like it had never changed. And that means"—
She hesitated, and shuffled her feet on the grass.
"What?" said John, unable to keep the anxiety from his voice.
"It isn't fair," she said. "You've already lost one of your parents today."
"What does that mean?" said John, getting angry for the second time in the day and in his life. "How can I have lost him as well?"
She looked at him with bad news in her eyes, in the way that a doctor would have to know how to do.
"I don't know for sure," she said. "But I think the John he'll remember is another you. The one you would've become if you'd regenerated as well, like you"—
"Like I should've?" snapped John. "Is that what you're going to say? That it's not enough to have lost my parents, lost my life; that I should've gone and exploded myself as well?"
"No," said the Doctor. "That's not what I wanted to say"—
"I only have your word for any of this!" he shouted. "You couldn't even defuse the stupid bomb! I bet Dad'll remember me just fine, and Mum too! She looks a bit different, maybe, but I'm still her son! I've been there so often for her; for things that she won't forget. She'll see that it's me, right? She'll recognise her own flesh and blood?"
The Doctor tried to arrange her face to spell "No" in a gentle way, then gave up and looked despondent instead.
"It's different flesh now," she said heavily. "It's not the same blood."
"You don't know what we've been through," said John, "you don't know how we are!" He ran towards to the front door that was still a little open, ready to enter the house that had once been his own. The Doctor thought about shouting for him to stop then just ran after him instead, trying to think of any way to stop the disaster about to unfold.
In the window and unseen by them both, a thing with the head of a hairdryer loomed. It stood tall thinking thoughts that couldn't even be described, feeling things that would make language begin to break down and scream.
Behind the lattice grille that marked its mouth, three sharp and metal blades began to spin.
