Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the BBC or its awesome characters or writings
I sat down on the park bench and pulled my jacket tighter. Tiny snowflakes become visible once they escape the backdrop of white and gray clouds so common in the early spring. A few rest on the rubber toes of my Converse, marked lightly with black streaks. I'd lived a comfortable life, living off the support of my working-class parents for over twenty years. Halfway through my last semester of college, the world turned upside down.
A recession is coming. The university ordered us to pack essentials and move back home, shutting off access to our on-campus dorms and apartments. I wouldn't have my own place again for a minimum of fourteen days, and the news said it was increasingly likely that I wouldn't be back anytime soon. Shelves at grocery stores are unsettlingly bare and the streets are uncommonly clear. The world is uncertain. More are dying. The virus is spreading, and spreading, and spreading. I don't want to be the one to overreact, but it feels like our lives are the pre-lude of an apocalypse. 2020 was supposed to be the year of clarity. Our world cannot support us, my life, the only life I've known.
My temples began to seize, and I could feel the stress rising like mercury in a warming thermometer. I pressed my hands to my temples, and sighed at the snowflakes. Slipping my phone out of my pocket, I swiped to unlock, opened a geographical coordinate app, and activated the location widget. Soon, I saw my own little dot, with the avatar of a cartoon penguin, appear on a green patch near the river. I selected the share location option and typed a long number in the contact bar, a number I'd memorized by heart. The message was simple: "Have a sec? Chilly, bring a jacket."
The Doctor's flip phone pinged, resting near the keyboard of the console. He'd been lounging on a chaise-lounge on the upper level of the TARDIS, thumbing slowly through a new and shining artifact of popular twenty-first-century-Earth literature—a decidedly comical thing called The Fault in Our Stars.
Scrunching his nose, he stretched on the lounge, returned the book to its shelf, and covered his face with his hands. Dramatically, he dragged his fingertips town his face and rolled his eyes, trying to delete yet another tragic display of humans accepting that suffering as the price of life. It seemed to be their favorite theme to cover throughout the ages. Slightly ironic, that they spend so much time writing fictional worlds into being where its characters accept the inevitable, but the act of creating such a piece at all is proof that the bulk of humanity, the real characters, refuse to accept it.
As he took his time on the stairs, he allowed his eyes to wander to the chalkboard, currently half-filled with chicken scratch. As with everything, there was an answer somewhere, at some time, in some way. Reading the message brought a shock of memories to his head and a warmth to the smile that had grown suddenly on his lips. He tilted a mirror to meet his reflection and studied his face. This was the first time she'd see him this way. He picked lint from his sweater, brushed his hair with a comb, and transferred the geographical coordinates from the app to the monitor. Locating the nearest coffee shop, he materialized the TARDIS and strode out the doors with speed in his boots. He returned a second later to retrieve his wallet, recognizing his increasingly scattered brain. How he loved his Earthlings.