The Wildthymes Are Killing Me

by TerryBalls

"When you walk in eternity for long enough you come to realise what a load of old cobblers eternity is." Sally Sparrow meets Iris Wildthyme and Faction Paradox.

The Wildthymes Are Killing Me
Chapter 1

When she first arrived at Georgia Tech, Laoise Sparrow tried Anglicising her name to Leigh. Unfortunately, people called her "Lay-guh", which was even worse than "Lao-ise". Nowadays she still introduced herself as "Laoise", but signed her name "Lee". It would have upset her mother, and especially her grandmother, but hey, they weren't around right now.

Lunar childhood left Laoise short, feeble, and sickly by Earth standards. In low gravity, her bones and muscles hadn't grow the same way an Earthling's would, and it was exacerbated by the low-protein diet most Lunese subsided upon. Laoise wore a supportive brace around her legs for her first six months on Earth, and ate a special tofu-rich diet to help her gain bone and muscle mass. She saw a physiotherapist every two weeks and worked out in the gym with a specialist personal trainer three times a week who kept her on a low-intensity regime that still left her shattered. Every aspect Earth life was exhausting for her.

Laoise loved the little snatches of nature she could enjoy. She loved the blue sky and the red bricks, and even brown dirt was a novelty compared to the monochrome world she had grown up in. She loved the flutey twitterings of the wild songbirds, the wind in the leaves, and the bubbling of flowing water. She loved the cool summer breeze and the feeling of sunlight on her face. But constant fatigue meant walks through the city or the surrounding countryside were a struggle. Her training did help her fitness built up over time, and after about a year she was fully adapted to Earth gravity.

Nevertheless, Laoise remained cautious when it came to physical exertion. Her bones were still much more brittle than those of her Earthling counterparts. Small scrapes that most young adults would brush off could seriously hurt her. She didn't play sports or go dancing on nights out, preferring instead to read for leisure, and to work on recreational engineering projects. Her dorm room was an accessible ground-floor room, a quiet and sterile environment that suited most of the disabled students, but did make it harder to organically develop a thriving social life. At the end of first year, when most undergrads chose to move into private accommodation in the city, Laoise instead stayed in her college dorm. She didn't have any friends who she felt comfortable renting with, and she didn't know if she'd be able to find something suitable for her needs.

The second year, she promised herself, would be different. Her brace had come off, and she was feeling healthier. No longer would she spend all day working alone to make deadlines at the last minute. No longer would she spend her precious leisure time on solitary pursuits. Instead, she'd get her work done in good time, and then try to have some fun. She would make friends.

Certainly, her improving health made it easier to get work done. Making friends was much harder. Social circles had been established, and Laoise found it easier to keep to her solitude, rather than imposing upon others. She was often lonely, but her grades were excellent, even by her own standards. In December, Laoise implanted a subdermal microchip in her wrist, which she used to control a simple robotic arm. This was motivated by nothing but the sheer curiosity of whether she could do it.

In the spring term, Laoise applied to study in the UK for a year. The dean encouraged her to apply for Oxford or Cambridge. Her grades justified it, but she was sure she wouldn't be accepted. This turned out to be a rare example of Laoise being wrong. She was invited to an interview at Magdalen College, Oxford, and the admissions tutor was impressed by her performance, academic record, and her budding robotics research. She had offers on the table from Surrey, Strathclyde, Bristol, and Imperial College London, but she was giddily excited to accept a place at Magdalen.

Laoise thought a new country would be the ideal new start. Oxford's climate was much closer to the Moon's than the sweaty summers of Atlanta, so she quickly felt at home. The workload at Oxford was more intense, but all the same, at 6:30pm on Friday Laoise finished for the week. Laoise didn't want to go to the Junior Common Room to hang out with exuberant freshers, but she was saved when a girl from one of her tutorials, Elena, knocked on her door to ask if she'd like to accompany her to a nearby houseparty.

Having spent the best part of two years in her room, Laoise didn't know what to do when they arrived. Everyone was a stranger, except for Elena, and she know her well enough to feel comfortable clinging to her The music made it difficult to follow conversations, and she was tempted to just go home and go to bed until she remembered her resolution to herself. This was the year she got a proper college experience. She stuck around, but struggled to involve herself in the party, and ended up in a corner with a cute boy who she thought was probably half Japanese. His name was John, and he was studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Edmund Hall, another nearby Oxford college.

"I wish I'd just studied Philosophy, to be honest," he admitted. "Economics is too mathematical for me, and Politics is OK but a Political Philosophy module would have been enough."

"Don't you need mathematics to do good philosophy?" Laoise asked.

"No, not really. It's mostly trying to find a dead white guy who you agree with and claiming his views as your own."

"Is it always a white guy?"

"Well, sometimes it is a white woman. But they're nearly always white. I'm still a bit stuck in Western Philosophy. Occasionally someone like Du Bois comes up, but… it's mostly dead European men, yeah."

"I guess I don't understand how you can engage with something like Swinburne's teleological argument without a good grasp of statistics. Maybe I'm completely wrong here, but it seems to me that most great philosophers were also naturalists and amateur mathematicians – Al-Farabi and Kant and Descartes and Russell…"

Laoise worried that she had put her foot in it. She had never enjoyed conversation much and she was badly out of practice. But John was smiling, a crooked, toothy grin. "Well, I guess I'm not going to be Bertrand Russell," he said. "What about you?"

"I'm on an exchange from Georgia Tech. I'm planning on a dual major in neuroscience and cybernetics."

"You're American?" John asked.

"No… I mean, sort of? I was born on the Moon. One of my mums is British and the other is… Irish-Canadian-American, I guess."

"Have you spent your whole life on the Moon? Before uni, I mean."

"Pretty much. We had a holiday to see my grandparents in Canada when I was small, but coming on holiday to Earth is rough, by the time you've adapted to the gravity you have to go back again."

"I went on holiday to the Moon, once," said John. "I was pretty young, but it changed how I thought about Earth forever. I mean, the Moon seemed like a magical place where I could jump higher. Do you resent gravity?"

"Well, I don't think the Moon is magical. Earth just feels more substantial, more real. It was hard at first, but living here has made me stronger, more resilient. Getting even the simplest thing done requires so much effort, it makes it all feel more worthwhile."

"That's fascinating. I suppose it's all relative."

Laoise stared out the window, watching large raindrops plop onto the glass. The music was uncomfortably loud and the people were so… unpredictable. Their conversations bounced so unpredictably between loud and quiet, they moved in ways she didn't understand.

"You alright?" said John.

"Yeah… yeah, I'm fine," said Laoise.

John paused for a second and regarded Laoise. "This place is a bit much for me. Would you like to come back to my room and play some board games?"

Laoise was not naïve. She knew she was being propositioned. You wouldn't know it if you'd only known her on Earth, but she had been quite popular back on the Moon. There hadn't been many children Laoise's age on the Moon, but Moon Children were the subject of regular documentaries, and then, eventually, a reality series. Earth had an obsession with those strange rich kids, with low muscle mass, low body fat, and small, thin bones. A few of her school friends had found modelling work back on Earth, their unnaturally slender frames apparently serving as ideal billboards for women's fashion. Those that hadn't were leveraging their low-level fame and rich parents into a variety of careers in entertainment, or else, like Laoise, were geared up for long spells in higher education. But Laoise felt kinship with even the most vapid of them. It helped that they all seemed to want to kiss her.

On Earth, Laoise didn't feel like a sex symbol. She felt underweight, weak, and pallid. The leg braces she had worn for those first few months had served as an effective barrier to intimacy. At the same time, she wasn't touch-starved. Her mothers had raised her to feel self-love, and while it wasn't always easy, she didn't derive her self-worth from her perception of other people's perceptions of her.

But still… it was nice to be noticed.

John led Laoise over to St Edmund Hall, through the gates and up to his room. The stairs were a struggle, but a year ago would have been impossible for her. She gripped the bannister and hauled herself up.

John's room was nice enough, with a corner desk under the window and a sturdy-looking bookcase. The bottom shelf was reserved for nerdy boardgames – Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Kodama –but it was a middle shelf at waist height that immediate caught the eye. A peculiar skull sat in a glass case. It didn't resemble any animal Laoise was familiar with. It might have been a bear's, perhaps, if not for the elongated beak-like snout that was almost cetacean. There was no lower jaw, and the temples had been replaced with hinges. It was odd and unsettling.

"What's up with Yoderick here?" Laoise said, trying to sound like she was asking for help identifying an unusual musical instrument or some other innocent curio, not... a fucking skull.

"Oh, that?" said John, affecting a similar coolness. "It's a carving. Don't worry, I'm not… you know. It's just a pretension, a daily reminder of mortality, you know…"

"Huh," said Laoise. "Well, if you like it, I guess…"

"I wouldn't say I like it," said John. "But… I'm going to sound like such a wanker… it fulfils a need in me. Drink?"

"Please."

John reached into his wardrobe and pulled out two bottles. "I have cheap vodka or cheap wine."

"What sort of wine?" Laoise asked.

"Red," he said, checking the label. "Spanish. Last year's vintage."

Laoise's formative experiences with alcohol had been with dandelion wines brewed on the Moon. It was impossible to grow grapes there, and difficult to grow any fruit. Some people apparently grew hops and barley to brew into beer, and Sally had once turned some excess strawberries into strawberry wine, but dandelion wine was the stock drink of Lunese teenagers, socialites, and elderly alike.

Grape wine was different, particularly red wine. Laoise had drunk a rich aged Burgundy at a bar in Georgia and had found it difficult to stomach, with its unfamiliar oaky taste. But in any case, she couldn't imagine herself preferring cheap spirits. "I'll have some of that, please."

"OK. Erm… did you bring a water bottle?"

No, of course she hadn't. There was nothing for her to drink from, and she certainly wasn't prepared to just swig from the bottle. There was a glass in the bathroom that John used to store his toothbrush, but it was still stained red from a previous use. Laoise cursed herself. She was ruining it again. John began to mumble some apology, and she worried that he was about to ask her to leave, so she kissed him.

He broke the kiss after a few seconds. "Oh. OK. Wow. Wasn't expecting that."

"Do you want to?" asked Laoise.

In reply, he kissed her back.

Chapter 2

"Panda! Belt up!"

Fortunately, there were only two occupants of the speeding red double-decker bus – 22 to Putney Common – so only one wasn't expecting the handbrake turn. Panda hit the wall as the bus swerved around a tight corner. It was a good job he didn't have bones. Being so small and light meant that he was thrown around easily, but it also meant he didn't experience quite so much force when he hit the side of the bus at seventy miles per hour.

"As I have told you repeatedly, Iris, this is a bus! The only seat belt is on the seat you are currently sat in, and I've never seen you fasten it!"

"Bloomin' Nora!" shouted Iris, and she performed another handbrake turn, this time a full 180. Fearing he was going to be sick, Panda tried to reach for one of the bus's bins, but they were too high for him to stick his head in. He wrapped his tiny arms around the pole in the middle of the bus and prayed to all the benevolent forces of the universe that they made it out alive.

"Out of the way, you eejits!" Iris screamed. She put her foot down. There was a thud and a braying noise. The windshield, previously perfectly transparent save for a tiny bit of bird poo in one corner, was coated with a viscous substance, yellow and blue and red.

"Did you… did you just run over a unicorn?"

"It was a vampire unicorn!" said Iris, turning on the windscreen wipers. They did not go swish swish swish. They merely turned the gloopy mess into a thin smear.

"Does that make it OK?"

"Too right it does! Vampires are inherent killing machines!"

"There hadn't been a murder on this planet for four hundred years before we got here!"

"Ah, don't believe that hippy crap, I bet there's a whole black market of unlicensed murders that the police can't detect. Brace!"

They swerved left again. The bus was cannonballing down the streets of a grid city that looked like Manhattan had taken too many hallucinogens. The bewildered residents were anthropomorphic versions of mythical creatures: Pegasus in a business suit, Cerberus in a miniskirt, a Yeti on a bicycle. Panda dared to look behind them. They were now being pursued by two komodo dragons the size of blue whales. The front one lashed out its tongue and the rear window of the bus shattered.

"Iris, put us in the vortex!"

"What d'ya think I'm tryna do? Our timespring has run dry!"

"What the devil is the timespring?"

"It's what makes my bus run like clockwork, and it's all out of puff! I've gotta build up the tension a bit more…"

The komodo dragons were gaining on them all the time. The bus might be able to travel anywhere in space and time, but it was still limited to seventy miles per hour. There were times when Panda wished it could do more, but never when Iris was behind the wheel. She had an intensely furrowed brow, and was licking her lips absentmindedly. Driving, even badly, required all of her concentration.

"Iris!" Panda shouted. They were literally within spitting distance of the dragons now. Panda felt a few specks of saliva fly through the shattered rear window and onto his face. And just when he sensed that the dragons were about to leap on them, the familiar sight of the vortex appeared outside the bus's windows, that psychedelic tunnel of blue and red.

"'Ave it!" Iris shouted, punching the air in celebration.

Panda breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the dragon spit from his face. Then he was sick on the floor of the bus. On the plus side, he didn't need to eat often, so his vomit was largely gin. On the negative side, he didn't drink gin for the taste.

"I don't know what you were fretting about," Iris said, swivelling out of the driver's seat and strolling down the aisle to Panda. "When have I ever let anything bad happen to you?"

"In nearly every one of our adventures together, I get beaten, or eaten, or battered, or clattered, or bashed, or mashed, or smashed, or…"

"Panda, love, let's focus on the positives. We're alive, the drinks cabinet is stocked, and the whole universe is laid out ahead of us…"

Iris tailed off as the ticket machine beeped into life. A long spiel of tickets began printing, in a slow and jerky fashion.

"Do we have… passengers?" asked Panda. If a stranger got on the Celestial Omnibus, they were nearly always lost, and if they weren't lost, it was bad news. As they were in the time vortex, the there was little chance that someone had wandered on board in mistaken hope of travelling towards Putney. Although, technically, they were heading towards Putney. Head far enough in any direction in time and space and you'd end up in Putney eventually.

"It's not tickets it's printing, it's… oh, hell's teeth, it's MIAOW."

"MIAOW?" said Panda. The Ministry for Incursions and Ontological Wonders was a branch of the British government that was technically their employer, often seeking Iris' assistance with the paranormal. They weren't on particularly good terms. "Is it from the lovely Mida?"

"I bloody well hope not. She's nowt but trouble, that one. Ay, there's a signature at the bottom. Just says 'Gnu'."

"Let me see that," said Panda. "Iris, this says 'G. Hu,', not 'gnu'. Hu being a common Chinese name meaning 'parrot', 'barbarian', or, rarely, 'tiger'."

"G. Hu?" said Iris. "New blood. Oi, Panda, this is our chance. If we get in her good books she might do us a favour down the line. Or better yet, if we make a dog's dinner of this mission then hopefully they'll never bother us again."

"This doesn't say anything about a mission," said Panda, examining the ticket carefully.

"That's the only reason MIAOW ever get in contact. It's never just biscuits and a cuppa wi' that lot. Back in the 70s we used to all go and get drunk on Friday afternoons, but young people these days don't know how to have fun. Right, belt up, Panda."

Panda sighed, pulled himself up on a seat of the bus, and braced as best he could. Alas, Iris dropped them straight out of the vortex at a dead standstill, and Panda was thrown straight out of his seat.

"You know, if you actually installed an appropriately sized seatbelt on one of these chairs, I would be able to belt up, as you put it."

"Passenger throughput would drop dramatically if people had to constantly do up and undo seatbelts."

"We don't have passengers!"

The two timer travellers left the bus. Panda recognised this as the office of Dr Mida Slike, the gorgeous former Secretary of State for MIAOW. Unfortunately – from Panda's point of view, if not Iris's – Mida was not sat behind her desk. Instead, a young East Asian woman was.

"Iris Wildthyme and Panda, I presume?" she said.

"That's us. Transtemporal righters of wrongs, wrongers of rights, you know the rest. Who are you?"

"Yes, though I'd rather you called me 'Minister' when we're on official duty."

"And when we're off duty?"

"Ms Hu."

"What, you don't have a doctorate?" said Panda. "I'm afraid half the things we get up to are impossible to understand without a deep knowledge of British science fiction."

"My party doesn't believe in doctorates," said the Minister. "If we could kindly turn to the matter at hand…?"

"What's the mither, chuck?"

The Minister glared at Iris, and slid a sheet of paper across the desk to her.

"This is a highly classified criminal case. In 1984, Steven Millman was murdered. A suspect was arrested and confessed, and judged by the police to probably be insane. She received a psychiatric assessment, but before she could be transferred to an appropriate facility, she disappeared from custody."

"1984, you say? And, erm, what year is it now?" said Iris.

"2094."

"Ooo, a cold case, and a bona fide antique at that. So you want us to go back and work out what happened?"

"We know exactly what happened, Ms Wildthyme. If you continue with the briefing note…"

There was a photo at the top of the page of the suspect. She was a waifish young woman with golden brown hair and bright blue eyes. She had delicate facial features, but she looked haunted, vacant, and anaemic. The chart she was stood against gave her height as 4 foot 11 inches, not even 150cm.

Laoise Sparrow. DOB not given (likely late 1960s). Address not given.

"Laoise Sparrow," muttered Iris.

"Those records are not correct," said the Minister. "Laoise Sparrow did give her date of birth, and she did give an address. These were disregarded by the interviewing inspector, who deemed them to be nonsense. They were the date of birth and address of this woman."

The Minister slid a second sheet of paper across the desk. It was a visa application form. The name was Laoise Sparrow, and the miniature photo was clearly the same woman. Her address was an address on the Moon, and her date of birth was a Lunar date in 2072.

"Crumbs," said Iris.

"I can see why the police disregarded that," said Panda.

"Great, case solved. You know who murdered Steven Millman. What do you need us for?"

"The issue, Ms Wildthyme, is precisely that we know who murdered Steven Millman. His murder is an ontological paradox. Now that we know Ms Sparrow committed the murder, she must commit the murder, or we risk damaging the web of time. And despite our best efforts, you remain MIAOW's best source of reliable time travel."

"You're off your rocker if you think I'm gonna take that poor thing back in time and force her to murder an innocent man!" said Iris.

"Your mission is not to be an accessory to murder, Ms Wildthyme. Your mission is to preserve this strand of the Spiral Politic, this branch of the Web of Time. We need Steven Millman to die on the recorded date, and we need Laoise Sparrow to confess to the murder. How exactly you go about achieving those two goals is up to you. In any case, once Ms Sparrow has confessed you are to retrieve her from her cell and return her to the present day, where she will receive all the appropriate treatment."

"Hell's teeth," Iris swore. "I've half a mind to tell the Web of Time to shove itself up its stinkin' great arse…"

"Wholly grateful to you for bringing this matter to our attention," said Panda. "We will, of course, be requiring payment for our expenses…"

"Of course."

"And removal from MIAOW's systems, at that," said Iris. "A complete wipe. After this, we're done. Finished. Kaput."

"Consider it done."

"What?" said Iris and Panda simultaneously. MIAOW had always considered Iris an indispensable asset, if an unreliable one. The thought of them actually agreeing to release Iris from their service was unthinkable.

"This is the last disruption to the Web of Time that we can foresee during this government's term. If you complete this mission then MIAOW will have no further purpose for you. You have my word that we will remove your contact details from our systems."

"Result!" said Iris. "And what if it goes to pot?"

"If, for any reason, this mission is a failure, then the consequences for you will be severe. I'd go as far as to say that they would be of the upmost severity."

"Right, easy decision. We'll just be off to see this Laoise Sparrow then. Ta'ra, love."

They got back on the bus, which by rights should not have fitted into a small off-Whitehall office, but somehow did all the same. The whole thing was shown to be an optical illusion when the bus dematerialised back into the time vortex.

"Laoise Sparrow," said Iris. "Summut about that name rings a bell. Ah, probably nowt."

"The file says she's currently studying cybernetics at Magdalen College, Oxford," said Panda.

"Can't stand Oxford," said Iris. "Students, tourists, and that terrible Richard Dawkins, I mean, we have several friends in common, but his theology…"

"So should we pick her up from another part of her timestream?"

"It's tempting, but that would be a lot of bother. Research, investigation, all that rubbish. Suppose I'll just have to suffer."

Chapter 3

Laoise slipped out of John's room before the sun rose. She didn't know if that was the done thing, but it was what she wanted to do. She made her way back to Magdalen and her room, and warmly congratulated herself on managing to do it without getting lost or stopping for breath.

John texted a few days later. She hadn't given him her number. She wished he didn't have it. It wasn't that he was… OK, it was that he was creepy, but not in that way. In his personal manner, John was respectful and well-mannered and pleasant. But… he had a skull in his room. A bizarre, horrific skull. Keeping skulls was not a trait that Laoise was seeking in a partner or even a friend. Their aesthetic preferences were so far apart that they could never be compatible.

Ghosting him was an option, but not one Laoise felt comfortable taking. John might be weird, but he was fundamentally a good guy. If he thought this was going somewhere, he deserved to at least be let down to his face. So she sent him a text, asking to meet at a nice little café near St Edmunds Hall. A public place, with a friendly atmosphere to minimise the risk of proceedings taking a dramatic turn for the worse, and to make sure there were other people around if they did.

It was a brisk October day, with a bracing cold to the air. Laoise had initially hated the sweltering humidity of Atlanta, but only when she got to Oxford did she realise how much she'd adapted to it. This would have been a warm day at the Shackleton Crater, but Laoise felt the chill. Fortunately there was no frost for her to worry about as she shuffled along to the café a little after 11am. She was also grateful it was dry: the initial wonderment of real rain had worn off after her third time getting caught in a rainstorm. Free from hazardous weather, Laoise used the walk as a chance to live in the moment and soak in her surrounds.

The buses in Oxford were not red, they weren't 1963 Routemasters, and they certainly didn't go to Putney Common. So when a red 1963 Routemaster to Putney Common came careering down the road, Laoise noticed it. The roads were otherwise empty, which was a good job given how poorly it was being driven, straddling two lanes.

The bus screeched to a stop just down the road, and reversed the wrong way back up to where Laoise stood. The front door concertinaed open. The driver, an elderly woman wearing a wide-brimmed red hat with matching scarf and lipstick, looked Laoise dead in the eyes.

"'Scuse me, love," she said, in a vaguely Northern accent that was hard to place. "You wouldn't by any chance happen to be Laoise Sparrow, would yer?"

I must be dreaming, Laoise thought. She tried to make something of this lucidity, take some control of the dream world, but nothing happened. She tried to shake herself awake. No dice.

"You OK, love?" said the bus driver, applying the handbrake and getting out. "It's OK, I'm not one of those weirdos who goes around… you know." She extended a velvet-gloved hand. "Iris Wildthyme. Transtemporal adventuress, meddler, artist, glamourpuss, grandmother of hedonism, Otley Run world record holder, auxiliary Time's Champion, and inspiration for the universe's longest-running episodic science fiction series."

Laoise shook Iris's hand, dumbstruck.

"Ey, look, this might be a bit much for you to take in right now, but what d'ya think about the 1980s? Any residual cultural nostalgia? D'ya wanna go? Live Aid, Star Wars, the Atari, recreational drugs hitting whole new highs, and also, don't want to worry you, but if you don't go history may implode. A breakdown of causality, a twisting of universal logic, entire lifetimes erased from time, and a serious risk that humanity may never invent Grindr."

"Are you crazy?" Laoise asked.

"What does that matter? I'm a wanderer in the fourth dimension, I potter about in the fifth, and I've been known to drift through the sixth when I'm feeling particularly brazen. You've got to trust me, pet, this is dangerous business. Ey, I'm licensed, if that helps?"

Laoise handed Iris a banknote and walked away.

"There's no fare, don't worry – oi, hold on… right, well, if you change your mind, I'll be 'ere with me bus..."

Laoise hurried on, keen to put some distance between herself and Iris. John was sat in a red and white hoody at the café when she finally arrived. Laoise ordered herself a vegan cheese panini and raspberry jam croissant, while John had a latte. Laoise sat down opposite him. She could just about make out the back of Iris's red Routemaster over his shoulder. She put that out of her mind and focused on John. He had a constant grin on his face, backed up by a happy twinkle in his eye. He seemed to barely be able to take his eyes off Laoise.

"Sorry I was a little late getting here," said Laoise. "A crazy lady tried talking to me about the 1980s."

"Don't worry," said John with a chuckle. He lent forward and lent his hand on his cheek. "It gave me more time to look forward to seeing you again."

That was when Laoise realised her mistake. John thought "grabbing coffee" was a date. This was awkward. It was as far from a date as it could be. She should have better prepared him for what was about to happen. She tried to ease him in gently.

"John, look, you seem like a good guy," Laoise started to say. John lent back a tad, and a look of confusion briefly flashed across his face, before he winced. "Thank you for showing an interest, and offering to share your wine with me, and letting me share your bed. I just don't know you well enough to make any form of commitment, particularly at this stage in my life. The healthiest thing for me right now is to see a lot of different people."

"I get it," said John. He sighed and briefly dipped his head so his chin touched his chest. He made eye contact once more, and smiled limply, the twinkle gone from his eyes. "Thanks for being honest with me."

"I figured I owed you that much," said Laoise, guilty that she hadn't come straight out with "you keep a horrid skull sculpture on your bookcase". At least she hadn't said she wanted to be friends.

"You don't owe me anything," said John. He reached for his half-drunk mug of coffee, but fumbled with the handle. Laoise worried he was going to spill it, and reached pre-emptively for a napkin, but John didn't disturb the mug at all. He wasn't having co-ordination trouble. His fingers were passing straight through the handle as if they weren't there..

"What the fuck," said John. "Laoise, am I imagining this? What the…"

Laoise reached out to hold John's hand and reassure him. Her hand passed straight through his. A chill ran up her spine. She pulled her hand away, but the damage had been done. John fell backwards through his chair. He yelled out in fear, his eyes wide, eyebrows raised, but there was no sound of his body hitting the floor, or his chair being knocked over. Fortunately, he did stop before he fell through the Earth.

"John!" Laoise said. If this was a stunt, it was cruel. But it couldn't be. Now she had a proper look at John, he was… translucent. Only slightly, mind, but it was noticeable. He stood, and Laoise could make out the bright red outline of Iris's bus through John's shoulder.

Laoise ran outside. There was still nobody on the road, no pedestrians on the pavement, except for Iris and her bus on the far side. Laoise ran across the road. Iris was sat leaning against the side of the bus, drinking ASDA-brand gin straight from the bottle.

"Iris!" Laoise shouted. Iris looked up at her and smiled in recognition.

"Ay up, chuck," Iris said, staggering uneasily to her feet. "Fancy a tipple?"

"You said something about people being erased from time. How could I know… what would that look like?"

"Oh, depends on the flow of the time cascades, all the different time eddies and time vortices and time rapids."

"Are you just affixing the word 'time' to different nouns?"

"It sounds stupid because it is stupid. Believe me, when you walk in eternity for long enough you come to realise what a load of old cobblers eternity is."

"What sorts of ways can it look, when someone's erased?"

"It might not look like anything at all, love. To people like you, it might be like they never existed. That's if they're lucky and it's a nice quick affair. If it's a drawn out thing, they slowly find they can't interact with the world, start phasing through matter, loved ones don't recognise them, that sort of thing."

"Laoise?" John had followed her out. "Is this the crazy lady you were talking about?"

"No, love, I'm not crazy for a start," said Iris. "Try picking up your feet when you walk."

Laoise's eyes darted to the ends of John's legs. His ankles poked up through the tarmac.

"I heard you mention people getting erased," said John, biting the side of his lip. "Is that's what happening to me?"

"Probably, pet, but don't let it bring you down," said Iris. "Ain't nowt to worry about. Won't hurt. It's like sneezing, or dying, really."

"Please, is there anything we can do?" said Laoise.

"Well, maybe," said Iris. "If we go to the 80s then we might still be able to salvage the timeline. And I've got some stuff in the bus that might be able to help."

Laoise sighed. "Fine. Fine. Let's go to the 80s. Just don't let him die."

"Ah, young love, it's beautiful. Right, on the bus then, you lovebirds."

Laoise flushed. Damnit. She didn't love John, but there was a huge gaping chasm between "love" and "feeling indifferent to them being erased from time" which could fit most of humanity inside. Still, at this point there were more important issues to worry about than Iris's misconceptions about her relationship with John. Laoise got on the bus after Iris, and turned to see if John needed any help. When John stepped into the bus, his feet made footsteps and he could climb aboard. Laoise had never been relieved to hear footsteps before. The bus, whatever it was, recognised John's existence.

"There you go," said Iris, setting her drink down on one of the bus seats. "You should be safe here. The bus is sheltered against time winds, time currents, time cascades, and timeplosions. PANDA!" she shouted up the stairs. "Get the Zero Gin, we've got a live one!"

"What do you mean, a live one?" said an indignant voice. He sounded like a posh Englishman, probably from the South East.

"Just get the gin and get down here," said Iris. She turned to John. "It will just be a tick, luvvie."

"Iris, there's no way I'm going to make it safely down the stairs while trying to carry this thing," Panda called down.

"'Ere," Iris leaned into the stairwell. "Lob it down."

"Ally-oop…"

Iris caught the gin bottle smoothly. "Zero Gin!" she said, grinning maniacally at John. "Have a swig of that, lovely."

John reached out cautiously and successfully gripped the neck of the bottle. He unscrewed the gap and brought it to his lips. "Zero gin… this is non-alcoholic, right?"

"Non-alcoholic gin? Wouldn't be much point in that, love. That's full-blooded spirit, it is. It's called Zero Gin because it counterbalances the effects of time distortion. It's medicinal."

John took a sip. It went straight through him, literally, dripping onto the floor.

"Oi, careful, you're wasting it!" said Iris.

"Sorry, but right now I don't care about wasting a bit of gin," said John. He took a great swig, and only some of it immediately fell on the floor. John spluttered in surprise, sending a cloud of gin particles out into the air and a trail of liquid gin down his face. "I think it's working."

And, indeed, John was back to his usual substance and opacity.

"Does that mean we don't need to time travel?" said Laoise.

"Afraid not, pet," said Iris. "Whatever caused your boyfriend to disappear is still out there. If he steps back out into 2094, without the protection of my bus, he'll vanish."

Laoise pursed her lips. Her Mum – Sally – had always warned her not to mess around with time travel. Her bedtime stories were packed with people with no past, or no future, after having their personal time streams disrupted by the machinations of others, or their own foolishness. "And you're sure about this?"

"I'm positive. I know exactly what you need to do, where you need to do it, and when you need to do it. It will be easy. We'll go to 1984, you do what needs doing, and then I'll get you home. I've had my best people on the case."

"Actually," came the voice from upstairs, "you told me, and I quote, to 'stay right out of it.'" There was a gentle scrabbling noise, like a cushion rolling downhill, and a small stuffed panda bear stepped onto the bottom step. It looked at Laoise, then at John.

"Iris. This is an extremely delicate and sensitive operation. There are already many ways it could go wrong. We can't have strays tagging along."

"He's not a stray, he's her boyfriend!"

"He's not my boyfriend," Laoise finally said.

"Boyfriend, fuckbuddy, the difference doesn't matter right now!"

"He's not that either!"

"I don't care what he is," said Panda. "He's not coming with us."

"I am a living breathing person."

"That can be changed."

"I'm not going to my death at the hands of a stuffed bear."

"BEAR? I mean… STUFFED?"

Panda leapt at John's face. There was no doubt John was a fully corporal being again now. Panda bit and scratched and torn at John's skin, then climbed up to his scalp and began yanking at his hair. John screamed in pain and tried to bat Panda away, which only caused him to pull his hair further.

"I'll give you BEAR! I'll show you STUFFED!"

"Boys! Boys!" Iris barked. "I won't have any of this rambunctiousness on me bus! Calm yourselves!"

They froze. Panda did not let go of John's fringe.

"Cheers. Panda, much as I value your input, on this occasion I've got to put me foot down. We ain't throwing this poor lad out there to disappear from existence. Imagine if that was Laoise's first impression of us. How could she ever trust us?"

Panda rubbed his right paw first over his right eye, then his left eye. "Be that as it may, he can't come with us. I'm sorry, but I can't allow it. The risk is too big. It's hare-brained. If this hothead goes back to 1984, he could erase himself from time. If you insist on taking him with you, then you'll have to do it without me."

Iris crossed her arms across her chest. "Alright, Panda, love, we'll see you when this is over."

"Iris, you can't seriously…"

"Sorry, Panda, did you say can't? Now, listen. Bit of advice. Tell me the truth if you think you know it. Lay down the law if you're feeling brave. But, Panda, never, ever tell me I can't."

Ten seconds later, the bus hit the vortex, with Panda stood by the curb.

Laoise watched in wonder as the Oxford she knew disappeared. The dark blues and reds of the time vortex swirled past the Celestial Omnibus's windows. In the driver's seat, Iris was something between a bus driver and a synthesiser operator – actually, Laoise was pretty sure the remnants of an antique Moog synthesiser were under the steering wheel.

Then they landed. London. Laoise recognised it more from films and TV than anything. The buildings were off-white stone, the streets were lined with beech trees, and the Celestial Omnibus shared the bus lane with another red Routemaster and a string of black cabs.

"Right, luvvies, 1984. The UK. Stay away from Orgreave, don't express any strong views about Ireland, and use a latex barrier if you have sex with a stranger." Iris pulled into a side street and, miraculously, found somewhere to park.

"Is it safe for John to go outside?"

"Is he wearing anything that identifies him as a Conservative voter?"

"What's a Conservative voter?" John asked.

"Ay, that's the right attitude. You were almost convincing."

"I was more concerned about the whole erased-from-time thing."

"Don't worry. That was only a problem in t'future. Now we're in the past, the time winds would have to loop back around before they got to him. He's safe as houses, at least as long as that Zero Gin is still inside him."

"You still haven't explained what we need to do," said John.

"Ah, that's the tricky part. I will explain, but in order to maintain temporal whatchamacallit, I have to shout the plan out of the top window of the bus."

"That doesn't sound real," said John.

"None of this is real, young man, especially not you, we'll have less of that cheek," Iris snapped. "I mean, sorry love, you're going to have to trust the Transtemporal Adventuress on this one. G'arn, off the bus, you'll be safe."

John looked at Laoise. She raised an eyebrow. They didn't have much choice but to go along with Iris' eccentricities. They stepped off the bus while Iris went upstairs and opened a window.

"'Ere, catch this," Iris said, dropping a folder out of the window. It hit the floor and one of the sheets of paper fell out. John tried to stamp on it, but it blew away in the wind before he could.

"Oh, hell's teeth, I hope that weren't an important one," said Iris, watching it go. She looked back at them. Only the top part of the window opened, and not wide enough for her to stick her head out. "Right, luvvies, this is going to be a bit tricky. According to police records, in order to save the universe Laoise has to kill a man called Steve Millman and confess. So off you pop and do that, and I'll see you when it's all done."

Laoise's stomach dropped. Had she heard that properly? She was too shocked to protest. Her arms hung by her side, limp and heavy and useless. She was aware of John trying to pull the concertina bus door open, to no avail, and then banging on the windshield while engaged in a shouting match with Iris. But it made no difference. The bus reversed away, and disappeared into the vortex.

Chapter 4

"What do you mean, missing?"

Sally Sparrow was sixty years old – or 109, depending on how you measured it. The Dean of Magdalen College often dealt with angry young students, but rarely saw someone as clinically furious as Laoise's mother was right now. He was glad he had a police officer on hand for support, although he would have preferred not to need them. For her part, Sally found focusing on being angry helped to take her mind off how tired and dizzy and nauseated Earth gravity made her.

"Laoise attended her 9am tutorial on the 13th. Afterwards she mentioned to another student that she was meeting a student from St Edmund Hall."

"And?"

The Dean shifted in his seat, and looked to the police constable.

"We couldn't identify exactly who she was meeting with," said the Constable, a young round-faced woman of Himalayan appearance. "Supposedly he was called John, but none of the Johns at St Edmund match the description of the man Laoise was seen meeting. We checked the CCTV in the café. The suspect is clearly of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese descent. We spoke to several male students from those backgrounds, but none of them were good visual matches for the suspect."

Sally waited for the officer to continue. Sally's wife, Róisín, reached out under the table and stroked her hand.

"We have officers searching the surrounding countryside and divers in the lakes. There was an appeal for witnesses on the national news. There have been a few reported sightings, but they turned out to be mistaken identity. Now that we've made contact with you, we can keep you in the loop with any developments."

"Please do," said Sally sternly. Róisín squeezed her hand. The two women stood to leave. "We'll be making our own enquiries," Sally said.

"As long as you let us know when Laoise is found," said the constable.

"It's 'Lee-sha'," said Róisín. "Not 'Lao-ise'."

The officer smiled weakly and the Sparrows left. The Doctor and Nardole were stood outside the door to the Dean's office. They hadn't been allowed into the meeting as they weren't Laoise's family.

"Were you two eavesdropping?" Sally asked.

"Not really," said Nardole. "We do have pretty good hearing, though. You'd be amazed how much I unintentionally overhear."

The Doctor wasn't paying them any attention. He was fiddling with a gizmo that reminded Sally of the remote control for a toy car, except with a small dot-matrix screen set into the centre.

"This is definitely Oxford, not Cambridge?" said the Doctor, without looking up.

"Shh, you don't want the Dean to hear you talking that way," Nardole glanced back over his shoulder.

"It's Oxford," said Sally, tilting her head. "What's the matter, Doctor?"

"The levels of time distortion are way above the background rate. You might get it in Cardiff, or Cambridge, or Aberdeen, but in Oxford? Never seen this sort of thing in Oxford before, not even when I took Connie Willis to meet Empress Matilda during the siege… never mind. Point is, someone's been messing with time, and they hadn't been doing it last time I was here. It's new time mess."

"Is it one of your lot?" asked Sally.

"Well, it could be any time sensitive species." The Doctor pivoted on the spot and walked away down the corridor, still staring at the dot matrix. "But realistically, yes, it's probably my lot."

"Could it be connected to Laoise?" said Sally, following behind.

"I don't believe in coincidences as far as the Time Lords are concerned."

"Sorry, your people are called the Time Lords? Isn't that a bit on the nose?"

"Coming from the species who call themselves 'clever humans' in Latin?"

"Speaking of which," said Róisín, "how can you be sure that it isn't the physics department actually inventing time travel?"

"Humanity doesn't invent time travel for another two thousand eight hundred years, and even then, you're not very good at it," said the Doctor.

They exited onto the High Street. It was an overcast day. Birds chirped over the rumble of traffic. Sally felt a rush of nostalgia at the sound of the mellow song of the blackbird and the squeaky ditties of the dunnock, even the magpie's rattle and the hoot of the wood pigeon. There were not wild birds on the Moon yet, despite a few attempts to establish colonies under the domes. The TARDIS was parked across the road, next to the entrance to the Botanical Gardens. The Doctor crossed ahead of his companions without looking. A driverless car honked at him. Sally didn't realise they had that functionality.

"I thought the first human time traveller was Orson Pink? He'd be a young man now. Shouldn't we be seeing some early stage breakthroughs?" asked Nardole when they'd all crossed the road.

"Orson Pink erased himself from existence by travelling back in time to kill his grandfather before he could conceive his father," said the Doctor, unlocking the TARDIS. "In doing so, he caused a ripple effect that changed the direction of humanity's theoretical physics experiments. In this timeline they discover commercial cold fusion instead."

"Wait, why would anyone kill their grandfather to erase themselves from time?" said Sally, her eyebrows raised.

The Doctor grimaced and set his gizmo on a sideboard, freeing his hands to twiddle with dials on the TARDIS console. "There's a cult that grew out of Gallifreyan society, out of my people's society. Time Lords are obsessed with stability and longevity. Faction Paradox are obsessed with chaos and death. They induct people who invoke the grandfather paradox by killing an ancestor before their descendant could be conceived."

"That doesn't answer the question."

"Honestly, they mostly do it because it's cool, and because it annoys Time Lords, and because it was once their best defence in an unwinnable war. There we go!" said the Doctor, hitting a switch with an exaggerated flourish. A couple of copies of the gizmo materialised on the TARDIS console, their dot matrices flashing.

"Nardole, you know your way around Oxford, correct?" said the Doctor. Nardole shrugged casually, as if embarrassed by his own competence in a way Sally always assumed exclusive to the British. The Doctor handed him one. "Take that and head to Oxford Castle, it's to the west of here. I'll go to the Bodleian in the north. Róisín, you're the techy one, you take this," said the Doctor, passing her the third gizmo. "You two stay here, with the TARDIS. Make sure nobody runs off with it. With these three gizmos, we can triangulate the time distortion and zero in on the epicentre. That's our best chance of finding Laoise."

The Doctor put on his sunglasses and handed Róisín an earpiece so she could keep in touch with him and Nardole. The Doctor and Nardole left the TARDIS. Sally allowed her guard to drop. She slumped into a chair with a big sigh.

"You OK?" asked Róisín. Sally winced. Decades of marriage had taught them when the other one was feeling bad. "Is there anything I can do?"

"I'm going to be sick," said Sally. Róisín looked around for a bin or bucket. "Try downstairs," said Sally. Róisín headed down the staircase that went beneath the console room, gritting her teeth and keeping a tight hold on the bannister. A bucket was collecting drops of turquoise liquid. How did it remained in place when the TARDIS was in flight? Judging her wife's need more acute than the leak, Róisín poured the contents of the bucket over the floor and took the bucket upstairs.

"Here," said Róisín. Sally held the bucket under her chin. "I don't think you're actually going to be sick. It's probably just nausea. Let's get you some fresh air."

Róisín helped Sally to her feet and supported her outside. Sally sat on a nearby bench and didn't lift her head from the bucket.

"I'll go and get you some chilled water," said Róisín. "Sit tight."

"Thank you," said Sally, not looking up.

Roísín breathed deeply as she crossed the road and headed down a side street. Truth was, she was struggling with the gravity too. She felt like she was going to be sick, she felt like she was about to fall over, she felt like she was swimming in treacle. She gritted her teeth, focused on a spot right ahead of her, and walked with her fists clenched. People kept out of her way. She realised she must look furious. Truthfully, she was, but she was trying to think constructively rather than succumbing to her emotions.

She found a café, and was about to nip in for two bottles of water, when someone shouted behind her.

"This is noooooo way to treat a customer. A distin, a distinguished customer. I am a paying customer and you are manhandling me. I make you money! Get your hands off me!"

A large man in a black t-shirt holding a stuffed panda. It took Róisín a few seconds to realise the panda was the source of the complaints, squirming wildly in the bouncer's grasp.

"Come back when you're sober, and it's after 3pm," said the bouncer, throwing the panda on the ground. It swore.

"Unbelievable!" said the panda. "I will be taking my custom elsewhere! After all I have been through, you'd think…"

Róisín tapped her earpiece. It beeped. "Doctor, Nardole, there's something strange here."

"Róisín?" said the Doctor. "You've moved. I told you to stay by the TARDIS."

"I've left Sally there. She needed water. There's a talking panda being thrown out of a bar."

The Doctor breathed. "This panda… would he be about a foot tall, and resembling a stuffed toy?"

"Yeah," said Róisín.

"Well, no need to triangulate anything. Good work Róisín. Get Panda out of sight. Tell him you're with me. Nardole, converge on Róisín's position."

Sally was breathing out of the bucket. It made her feel better. Every time she looked up, the nausea returned. She'd stopped looking up.

There was a screeching of brakes. Sally did not look up. There were no crashes or bangs or screams, although she was now in the cool shade of whatever vehicle had just stopped. There was a sound of a concertina door opening. It must be a bus. Wait, was this a bus stop?

"Ay up, chuck," said a voice in front of her. Sally looked up. The bus driver was a little old lady who wasn't wearing the standard uniform. She had a wide-brimmed red hat, leopard-print coat, and bright red cravat tied in a box. "Sorry, Sally, poor choice of words. You coming, or what?"

Chapter 5

Laoise sat on a garden wall. John spoke to her, reading off the papers Iris had thrown them, but she didn't listen and she barely heard. Eventually he took her hand and held pulled her to her feet. They went down the road to a small pub, varnished mahogany and beer-soaked carpets. Neither of them had any of the right currency, but they sat themselves in a quiet corner, away from the door. John plonked a glass of tap water in front of Laoise. It was warm, and Laoise felt herself recovering from the shock.

"You OK?" said John.

"Yeah, I think so," said Laoise. "I'm not going to kill anyone."

John looked at his drink and grimaced. "Do we have a choice?"

"I've chosen. I'm not doing it."

"Laoise…" John glanced around the room. There was nobody in earshot. He leaned towards Laoise and spoke in a hushed tone. "He's already dead. He's been dead for over a hundred years. Even in the best case, he'll be dead before we're born, before our parents are born."

Not my mum, Laoise thought. Sally would be born in less than six months. "It doesn't matter. He's alive now, and I'm not going to change that."

"But you are going to," said John. He held the police notes in front of Laoise. The mug shot of Laoise, wearing the same clothes she had on now. The photo of Millman, with a fatal gunshot wound to the abdomen. Laoise didn't look at the transcript of her interview, but apparently she confessed. "If you don't do this, then people are going to disappear. I am going to disappear."

"I don't understand," said Laoise. "Why would some incorrect police documents cause you to stop existing? It doesn't make sense."

"I don't think it's the documents as such, it's just, you know, the butterfly effect. If he keeps existing then maybe he gets in a car crash and kills one of my ancestors. Maybe he stops my grandparents from ever meeting. It doesn't take much to, you know, make a conception go a little differently, a different sperm…" John's eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up. He looked at the notes, then back up to the bar. "Laoise, is this the Golden Bucket?"

"I didn't… yeah, it says on the coasters," said Laoise.

"This is the bar Steve Millman was drinking in the night he died. And I think he's stood at the bar."

Laoise looked up and back down at the picture of Millman in the file. She couldn't be sure, but yeah, she had a terrible suspicion that was Steve Millman. Then he briefly glanced over his shoulder in their direction and removed all doubt. It was the same guy. He had a small beauty spot under his left lip and his mousy hair was thinning at the temples. Laoise's insides twisted.

"Well… you know what you have to do, I guess," said John.

"I'm not doing it! He's alive. We can find some other way."

"Can we?" said John, gathering the papers into the folder. "We know he dies today. We know you do it. There's no other way, Laoise." He reached for his glass of water, but his fingers slipped right through it. "Shit," he said. He held his hand in front of his face, and Laoise could see his face through it. "I don't want you to see me like this, Laoise. Please. I'm sorry." He grabbed at the folder and ran for the door. It barely moved when he pushed at it, opening just enough that a casual observer wouldn't notice his shoulder passing through solid wood.

Millman turned and saw John leave. He glanced over at Laoise, making momentary eye contact before turning back to the bar. Laoise glanced at her drink. Even if she didn't kill Millman – and she really, really didn't want to – she would be stranded in 1984 with nowhere to go and no money. She'd never met Sally's adoptive parents and had no idea where they had lived in the 80s. Her other grandparents, the Murrays, hadn't even met each other yet. What was she going to do if she didn't meet Iris again? Officially, Laoise didn't exist yet. There would be no birth certificate, nor school records, nor medical records. Would she be able to get state support?

"Alright, gorgeous?" Laoise looked up. Millman had sauntered over to her table, with a pint glass in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other. "Mind if I buy you a drink?"

"Looks like you already have," said Laoise nervously.

"You got me there." He sat beside her and slid her glass over. "That Chink your boyfriend?"

Laoise snorted in sheer disbelief. She'd never heard explicitly racist language in the flesh before. Now Millman was using it to try and chat up a strange girl?

Millman, of course, viewed Laoise's derision as being aimed at John, not himself. "Don't worry, love, you can do much better. You need a proper British lad."

"Really? A proper British lad like you?" said Laoise sardonically. Again, it went over Millman's head.

"Well, my parents were Irish, but the good kind of Irish, you know?" said Millman, as Laoise sipped at her drink. "But yeah, you're just my type." He put his hand on Laoise's thigh. "What's your name?"

Uncomfortable, Laoise didn't want to give him her real name, as meaningless as it was. "Sally Murray. What about you?"

"Steve Millman. SM. Just like you."

"Yeah, weird," said Laoise, squirming away from Steve. He was definitely the right guy. And he was a complete arsehole. Was the universe testing her? "Well, thanks for the drink, but I'm supposed to be meeting a friend…"

"Oh yeah?" said Millman, grabbing her wrist. "What's her name, then?"

"Get off me!"

"I bought you a drink, the least you can do is show a bit of interest!"

"Fuck off, creep!" said Laoise, jerking away. A few of the patrons had turned to look at them, but most were suddenly inordinately interested in the bottoms of their glasses.

Laoise stormed out. It was getting dark, but most of the street lights hadn't turned on yet. One down the road was glowing a warm sodium orange. Laoise made a beeline for it. She'd get under the light, find a main road, and find another bar to hide in for as long as possible.

"Sally!" Millman bellowed after her. Heavy footsteps followed her. She broke into a run, grateful for her sensible shoes, but Millman caught her before she'd even made it halfway to the light, his big hand grasping her tiny shoulder. Laoise swung an elbow and caught his jaw with a terrible crack. Millman shrieked in pain and let go, his hands covering his face.

"Stay away from me!" Laoise yelled as she turned to face her attacker, fists raised.

"Fucking bitch!" Millman said, staggering backwards.

The hairs on her neck stood on end. Laoise had a terrible feeling there was someone else stood right behind her. She tried the same trick again, swinging her elbow over her shoulder, but felt nothing. Then a hand holding a gun came under her arm.

BANG! BANG!

Laoise's ears rang. Millman clutched at his abdomen and fell to his knees. Laoise turned. She could just about make out John, or his outline. It was dark, and he was translucent, but the white stripes of his hoody were visible if you knew what to look for.

"John!" It was all she could say, but her words were drowned by tinnitus. Where had he got a gun? How was he able to use it when he was fading from existence? But before she could articulate those questions, he faded away completely. His handgun dropped to the floor at Laoise's feet. She flinched away from it.

The pub patrons had spilled out onto the street. Some of them ran straight back inside. Others ran to Millman, cradling his head or attempting first aid. She watched, and they watched back, until the police arrived, and the ambulance behind them.

Chapter 6

Nardole and the Doctor met Róisín and Panda in the corner of a busy café.

"Oh, it's you," sneered Panda. "The last time I saw you, you were a rotund, loquacious dandy. Now look at you, a wizened anorexic punk. Equally terrible fashion sense, just in the other direction."

"You shouldn't make fun of people with eating disorders," said the Doctor.

"Hmm? Oh, no, you're quite right, sorry," said Panda. "I'm having a bit of a rough week, and while that doesn't excuse my behaviour, perhaps it explains it."

"It's alright. So, where is she?"

"She went off without me."

"How do you know her?" asked Róisín.

"Oh, we've been together ages. Our mutual friend Tom introduced us."

"Sorry, you're together?"

"Well, not right now, obviously, but we travel together, yes."

"Well, I'm her mum, and she's never mentioned you to me."

Panda's eye's widened. "You're Iris's mother?"

"What? Who's Iris? I was asking about Laoise."

"Oh, her. That makes more sense. No, Iris picked her up in the bus. MIAOW said she was an ontological paradox and asked us to take her to 1984."

"Why 1984?" asked the Doctor.

"Oh, there was a police report saying she had confessed to a murder. So take her back, get her to confess, timeline all sorted out."

"And I take it you weren't prepared to go along with this?" said the Doctor.

"Oh, I was fine going along with that. The issue was Laoise's boyfriend was fading from existence, so Iris invited him on the bus, too. There was no mention of him in 1984, so taking him back seemed unduly reckless."

"Sorry, is anyone going to explain who Iris is?" asked Róisín.

Panda laughed. The trace of a grin crossed the Doctor's face. "Iris Wildthyme is another time traveller," the Doctor said. "Hard for me to elucidate much further, but she travels in a double-decker bus and is generally much more reckless than I am."

"And consequently, much more fun," said Panda.

"Hush, you," said the Doctor, before turning to Róisín. "What's Laoise's boyfriend's name?"

"I didn't know she had a boyfriend. I didn't even know she was bisexual. She's only ever mentioned girlfriends, and none recently."

"His name was John," said Panda.

Róisín shared a glance with Nardole then looked at Panda. "This John… was he East Asian?"

"Well, I sometimes have trouble telling humans apart, but I'd have said so, yes," said Panda.

"OK, that explains that," said Róisín. "He wasn't a kidnapper. And if he was being erased from time, that would explain why the university had no records. I assume."

"Yes, I suppose it would," said the Doctor. "Panda, was there anything unusual about the request?"

"Hmm? Oh, the request to take Laoise to 1984? Not really. Well, the lovely Mida has unfortunately been replaced by a new minister, but I suppose when your remit covers all of time and space…"

"What was the Minister's name?"

"I don't… wait, yes I do. Her name was Hu. Iris misread it as Gnu."

"Oh, Hu? Like you, Doctor," said Nardole.

"Mm, yes, sorry, how did she mistake 'Hu' for 'Gnu'?" said the Doctor, pivoting from Nardole to Panda mid-sentence.

"Her initial was G. G Hu."

The Doctor froze stock still. "Would you have said she had any resemblance to John?"

"Well, like I say, I'm not the best judge, but she did look a bit young to be a government minister…"

The Doctor leapt to his feet. "We need to go to MIAOW. Quickly."

"What? Why, Doctor?" Nardole said.

"John and G. Hu aren't bystanders. They're Time Lords. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing, but it's not good news."

"What? Doctor, what…"

"They're John and Gillian Who. They're my grandchildren."

"How do you know my name?" Sally asked, still hunched over her bucket.

"Sally, love, don't tell me you've forgotten Aunty Iris! How could you forget me? Iris Wildthyme? Trans-temporal adventuress, righter of wrongs, wronger of rights, the Oncoming Hangover, Mother of Eros, glamourpuss, Narrative's Champion, and reoccurring flame of… oh shit." Iris interrupted her soliloquy by recoiling from the TARDIS. "He's already got to you. Ah, well, it happens to all of yer eventually, one way or another. Even Panda, poor darling."

"Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Sally, we travelled together! You helped me and Martha escape from the Weeping Angels, I helped you with your time-jumping boyfriend, we went to Alexandria and Callisto and Ganymede and Manchester, oh, we had such fun…"

"Doctor, is that you?"

"Hmph! In his dreams! I already told you, I'm Iris Wildthyme. The Doctor is a memetic parasite attached to my life. My entire history is routinely rewritten so that it happened to him instead, usually in a less interesting way. Unfortunately, love, you've been caught up in it. You're one of his companions now."

"You're… crazy."

"You'd seem crazy, too, if your whole existence read like a parody of an incoherent fantasy," Iris said, pacing frenetically across the pavement as she raved. More than one person crossed the road to avoid her. "I'm not the problem, love, it's him that's the problem. Him and those grandchildren of his. Oh, chuffin' 'eck, I've been stupid! Laoise Sparrow!"

"You've seen my daughter?" Sally got to her feet, teetering slightly.

"I know exactly where she is!" said Iris. "And I know how we can get her. 'Ere, come on, look busy."

Iris grabbed Sally's wrist and pulled her towards the TARDIS.

"Wait, what about your bus?" Sally asked.

"Right you are," said Iris. She pulled some keys out of a coat pocket and locked the bus with a beep.

"No, I mean, why are you stealing the TARDIS when you have a time machine of your own?"

"I didn't tell you the bus was a time machine," said Iris with a wink. Sally flushed. How had she known that? "But in any case, it's probably being tracked by MIAOW, or those two pesky kids. If we want to rescue Laoise without them beating us to the punch, then the TARDIS is the way."

Sally sighed. "We should wait for the Doctor."

"No, trust me, we shouldn't," said Iris. "It's not safe for him. But you and me, we'll be fine. Quick pop back for Laoise, land the TARDIS back here with her safe and sound, the Doctor never knows. Besides, I don't want it long term. My bus is my bus."

Sally exhaled deeply. "Fine. For Laoise."

Chapter 7

Laoise was, of course, arrested when police arrived. She was entirely compliant and passive through the whole process, offering no resistance when they handcuffed her, shoved her into the back of their car, and then hauled her out again at the station. There, they took a mugshot and her fingerprints. She was made to change into a regulation uniform so her clothes could be examined for forensics. Nobody took her DNA – Laoise knew sequencing hadn't yet become affordable for forensic purposes – but there was some talk about fibres and gunshot residue.

Laoise lay on the tiny bed in her cell. Was Iris coming back for her like she'd promised? As she started to drift asleep, she was awoken by a flash of light. Laoise opened her eyes, although it didn't help much. Her brain struggled to keep up with what she saw.

A skeleton was stood in the middle of her cell. Except it clearly wasn't a human skeleton. It was bipedal, but the bones were all wrong. The gaps between them were filled. It wasn't a skeleton, not in the Funnybones sense. There was a skeleton, but it wasn't animated. Someone was wearing a skeleton like it was a costume.

"Laoise Sparrow," they hissed, high-pitched but soft.

Laoise sat up and scrambled backwards into the corner. "Who's there?"

"Laoise, you had so much potential. You would have been a fantastic recruit. We could have shown you the best version of yourself. But you went and screwed it up, didn't you?"

"I didn't kill anyone!" Laoise said.

"And that, Laoise, is exactly the problem. You're… well, you're basic. And basic people don't get special treatment." She raised a gloved hand, waved goodbye, and disappeared.

The hatch on the cell door opened. Light flooded in. Laoise raised a hand to cover her eyes.

"Quiet in there," said the guard, before slamming the hatch shut again.

After a night in the cells, Laoise was interviewed by two detectives, having declined a lawyer. They confirmed Millman's death. Several independent witnesses had attested to her having fired the fatal shot. There was gunshot residue on her right sleeve. She'd been seen arguing with Millman before killing him. A confession, they said, would make her life easier.

Laoise only told them the truth – her name, where and when she was born, the names of her parents, John, Iris, Panda, the ontological paradox. They didn't believe any of it, although they wrote it down all the same before they hauled her back to her cell.

She was assessed by a man who she assumed was a doctor of some sort. She was asked a string of leading questions, to which she gave honest answers, despite the difficulty some of them posed: yes, she did sometimes see unusual things; yes, her surroundings seemed strange and threatening to her; yes, she sometimes thought other people struggled to understand what she was saying. He showed her some inkblots, which she recognised as a Rorschach test, although more from Watchmen than anything. She told him they were just splatters and didn't remind her of anything.

She'd been heard shouting in the night. She seemed withdrawn and blunted. She believed in impossible things. She showed a lack of imagination. It didn't matter that these observations were contradictory. They added up to a preliminary diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and diminished criminal responsibility. Laoise didn't think much of the quality of the psychiatry, although she could understand a degree of confusion. Arrangements were made to transfer her to Broadmoor. Laoise knew from books and television that a British maximum-security psychiatric hospital was not a good place to be in the 1980s, but it would have to be better than prison, at least.

Laoise settled in for another night in her cell. And, once again, she was disturbed. There was a flash of light, an unearthly wheezing sound, and a gust of wind blew her hair back. When it was over, a blue box stood in the middle of her cell. Laoise recognised the box from Sally's stories, and from some of the early photos of her mothers when they had been courting on Earth. It was the TARDIS.

The door opened, and Iris stuck her head out.

"Ay up, chuck," she said. "Extraction team is go."

Before Laoise could offer a response, Sally came bundling out past Iris and threw her arms around Laoise, squeezing her daughter in big bear hug. Laoise hugged back, but felt her cheeks flush. She had hoped this whole sordid affair would go unnoticed by her parents. Still, she was hugely, hugely glad to see her mother again. It had been years since her mums had helped her move into her dorm room in Georgia, and she'd opted against returning home in the holidays so she could continue to acclimatise to Earth. She hadn't hugged Sally in over two years.

"It's OK, I've got you," Sally said, and Laoise realised she was sobbing into her mother's shoulder.

"Don't want to break up the reunion, but speaking from experience, we'd best shake a leg."

"Right, right, we can do this inside. We need to get you out of this place. Come on," said Sally, wrapping her arm around Laoise's shoulder and guiding her into the TARDIS. It was just like it was in Sally's stories, dark rows of bookshelves surrounding the bright central console.

"Laoise, what were you doing in there?" Sally asked. She wasn't scolding. She was concerned.

"Iris didn't tell you?" Laoise asked.

Sally shook her head.

"She abandoned me and said I had to murder this bloke."

Sally took this in her stride. "And did you?"

"No. I ran into him. He started to harass me, but I didn't want to kill him. I ran away from him and John shot him. I was framed."

"That'd preserve the time line just fine," Iris said.

"You, be quiet," Sally said. "You've caused enough trouble."

"Oi, watch yer gob, Sally Sparrow, I just saved your daughter!"

"From a situation you got her in!"

"It were them damn meddling Who kids. I had to go along with 'em or they'd have me guts for garters. They're still mad at me for refusing to help them kill their grandfather. Only a matter of time before they send one of my grandchildren to kill me before I could leave the Obverse, or Gallifrey, or wherever it is I come from right now."

Sally scowled at Iris, but softened her expression as she pivoted to her daughter. "You're safe now, Laoise. Your mum and I will give you all the support you need. I'm sorry we weren't around."

"Mum… thank you, but this isn't your fault. Nothing you could have done would have stopped any of this."

Sally grimaced. "You're right. I'm sorry. I just want to protect you. How are you feeling right now?"

Laoise rubbed the back of her neck. "Embarrassed. A little tired. Very relieved."

"Traumatised?"

"I don't think so. I mean, I saw a man die, but Millman was a pretty bad dude."

Sally recoiled, eyes wide. "What did you say the guy's name was?"

"Millman. Steven Millman. Why?"

"He… you know I was adopted, right?"

"Yeah. Your parents died when you were about my age?"

"That's right. Well, when I was 18 I was allowed to request the details of my biological parents. Turned out they had both already died. My mum committed suicide when I was still a baby, and my dad died before I was even born. His name… it's him. He was Steven Millman."

"Bloody Christ," Iris muttered. She turned and walked down the stairs, giving them the console room to themselves.

Laoise's heart was in her mouth. She put her hand on Sally's shoulder. "Mum… I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," said Sally. "He wasn't my real dad. I had a happy childhood, much better than I would have had if he'd had any part in it. I've known he was a piece of work for a while. I'm sorry you were exposed to any of it."

"Do you… this might sound silly, but how do you feel about… being related to him?"

"I suppose I'm instinctively ashamed. I feel a bit dirty. But I've learned to deal with thoughts like that. Nothing about him is a reflection upon me. I am my own person with an independent sense of self and I don't treat people the way he did." Sally paused. "How do you feel?"

"I don't view him any differently to any other stranger, really. You're right, he shouldn't define us."

"Never mind him. How do you feel about… your mother and me? How do you feel about how we raised you?"

Laoise hadn't been expecting the pivot. "Erm, I… yeah, you and Mum… you're great. I couldn't ask for more. I like having two mums, that's never bothered me at all. I guess… it might have been better to grow up on Earth."

Sally grimaced. "You're right. I've thought that a lot, too. Your mother always said people were going to live on Mars at some point, so by raising you on the Moon we were doing a service to the future. I wouldn't change anything about you for a second, but you love the Earth so much. If you're going to live here, it would have been best if we'd raised you here."

Iris came back in, carrying a tea tray. "You take milk, Sally?"

"Please. No sugar."

"Laoise?"

"I'm not much of a tea drinker. I'll take the sugar though."

"Don't think a cup of tea is going to make up for leaving my daughter the way you did."

"I know, love. It's not how I like to conduct myself. But I couldn't let that Who lad know I was onto him and his sister."

Sally furrowed her brow. "What lad?"

"I'm trying to be serious here."

"What lad?"

Iris sighed. "That John lad Laoise was with. He's the Doctor's grandson. He and his sister have been trying to get themselves inducted into a death cult that requires people to kill their ancestors. I didn't know what he'd do to yous if he knew I was onto him."

"Is time travel always like this?" Laoise asked.

"No," said Sally. "It's usually much more straightforward."

"Ha! You wouldn't be saying that if you could remember our adventures together! Granny Weatherwax put you in this crazy protective time loop where all possible realities co-existed at the same time…"

"Wait, hold on… Iris is the Doctor?" Laoise asked.

"Not in the way you're thinking," said Iris. "I'm my own woman, with independent existence. Unfortunately your mother thinks she's been travelling with the Doctor, and her memory is as valid as mine."

"Iris claims the Doctor's whole life is derivative of hers!"

"Well, it is! Dumbed down for the masses, de-sexed for the kids. While we've been dashing through space and time, thwarting death cults, he's probably been running up and down a corridor, or attending an AA meeting."

Chapter 8

"While we were sat around talking, she's nicked my TARDIS!"

"I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation," said Nardole.

"You don't know Iris!" said the Doctor and Panda in unison.

"She'll be off gallivanting around time and space, joyriding with wanton abandon for the Web of Time, ignoring all laws of causality…"

"…putting the milk in before the water…"

"… and generally causing a huge disturbance."

"And she's got Sally with her," said Róisín.

"And she's got… oh, techy one, you are good. You've got your phone. Give Sally a call!"

"There's no way that could possibly work. Even if she has signal, I won't be able to connect to her because of the time difference."

"Trust me."

Róisín reached into her pocket reluctantly and called Sally. The phone rang and rang. That was something, at least. Róisín was ready to hang up and act smug when Sally answered.

"Ró?"

"Sally!" said Róisín, petulantly returning the smug grin on the Doctor's face. "Are you in the TARDIS?"

"Yes, but it's… I've got Laoise."

"Oh, thank heavens. Is she OK?"

"All things considered. She witnessed a murder and was framed for it by a death cult."

"Jesus. I can't believe I'm saying this, but that actually makes sense."

There was an audible curse down the line. "You still there?" Róisín asked.

"There's some a problem," said Sally. "Another Time Lord called Iris is piloting the TARDIS."

"Yeah, we met her friend."

"We're going to have to do an emergency landing, apparently. I'll…"

The line went dead.

"So?" asked the Doctor.

"Iris took the TARDIS, but she was bringing it back. Apparently they have to do an emergency landing."

"They could be anywhere," said Nardole.

"Depends on which emergency landing protocol Iris followed. She might have pulled it out of the vortex wherever they were, but if she has any sense, she'll have instructed it to land in a designated safe point. Fortunately, I know exactly where the designated safe point is, and we've got a time machine." He looked down at Panda. "I assume you have a key to the bus?"

"Afraid not. But the front door is wide open."

The Doctor looked again. "So it is. I would never leave my TARDIS's door open like that. Someone would steal it."

Nardole coughed.

They bundled themselves aboard the bus. The Doctor, of course, climbed into the driver's seat. As soon as he touched the wheel, the bus's alarm went off. The horn honked rhythmically, the windscreen wipers swished, the ticket machine whirred.

"Oh, that's the Cloister Alarm," said Panda. "It's supposed to go off when we're in particular danger, but lately it has been going off every time we drive with the doors locked."

"So Iris locked the bus, but didn't shut the door? How… why is that even possible? You know, I don't care." The Doctor released the handbrake, revved the engine, and played a quick scale on the synthesiser, and they were off, into the vortex. They were blasted with a sound that reminded Róisín of a rocket launch. Her hair and coat were whipped backwards.

"The door is open!" Róisín shouted over the din of the vortex whooshing past them.

"The bus's shields will keep us safe!" Panda bellowed with surprising volume.

"Shame they can't keep sound out!" shouted Nardole.

The Doctor threw the bus into a wide, drifting turn. They banked upwards, steeper and steeper. Róisín took a seat and held on tight. She worried, for a second, that they were going to loop the loop, and knew she'd break a bone if the bus tossed her around, but they only approached verticality for a few seconds before levelling off flat again.

The wind died down. The psychedelic swirls of the vortex disappeared, and were replaced with orange-tinged darkness. The Doctor slammed on the brakes, and they screeched to a halt. Laoise was thrown forward in her seat, but escaped without a break.

"This bus is at its final stop. All passengers must disembark here. Please ensure you have all of your belongings with you before leaving the bus."

"Good news: I'm pretty sure this is the right time and place. Bad news: I landed on the pavement. Iris is almost certainly going to get a ticket."

"Where are we?" asked Nardole.

"London, 1984. Specifically, my safe house on Baker Street at 11pm on a Monday. Come on. The TARDIS will be inside."

They left the bus. It was a chilly evening. Róisín wrapped her coat around her. The pedestrians didn't pay the bus any mind, walking around it as if it wasn't there. That was fortunate. The bus was outside 107 Baker Street, a five-storey building and one of the only ones on the road not to have been converted into commercial premises. The Doctor unlocked the black oak front door and they stepped into the narrow ground floor hall.

"Honey, I'm home!" he called out into the house.

"Laoise? Sally?" Róisín stepped in behind the Doctor, followed by Nardole and Panda.

"Mum?" Laoise stepped out of the shadows at the far end of the hall. She saw Róisín and ran past the Doctor to embrace her. Róisín rubbed her daughter's back.

"I'm so glad you're OK," said Laoise.

"All right, you lot," Iris called from the next room. "Dry martinis for everyone. Nice pick-me-up."

Iris was mixing drinks behind the bar – not a touch Róisín had expected there to be in the Doctor's safehouse, but one she appreciated The TARDIS was parked in the back corner. And Sally was sat on a sofa, slouched over, martini already in her hand.

"Iris, you've got some explaining to do," said the Doctor, eyebrows in attack mode.

"Ey, how's this for an explanation, I saved poor Laoise from the malign influence of your feral grandchildren."

"Don't go turning this around on me. They're your grandchildren too."

"You can't pick and choose bits of my personal history to suit the point you're trying to make!"

"Oh yes I can, and right now I'm picking and choosing the part where you stole my TARDIS."

"I had to if I were gonna save Laoise! Gillian has taken over MIAOW, they've got to be tracking me bus! Speaking of which, how did you lot get here?"

"We took the bus," said Panda.

"Panda, love, it's good to see you! How are you doing?"

"Well, it's been a few hours since you threw me off the bus, but my shattered ego is recovering."

"Come on, Panda, I was just tryna protect you! I had to get you away from that John fella! Here," Iris finished pouring the last martini and slid the glass forward. "Cheers!" she said, lifting her own.

"Would you mind?" Panda asked Nardole. Nardole picked up a glass and bent down to give it to Panda. "Actually, I was hoping you'd lift me up, but this works. Bottom's up."

The Doctor gently sipped on his drink. The others followed his lead. Laoise immediately spat her sip out.

"Ey, steady on, that's good stuff that!"

"You said it was dry!" said Laoise.

"It is dry! I used double measures of dry vermouth!"

"I thought it meant it was non-alcoholic!"

"Look, for the second time today, I don't believe in non-alcoholic alcohol."

"It's not the second time today for me," said Laoise sternly.

"I'll fix you some cranberry juice," said Iris. She rummaged around in the fridge behind the bar, grabbed a glass and poured Laoise a drink. "I could add a touch of vodka, take the edges off?"

"This is good, thanks," said Laoise, glugging her drink down.

"Speaking of me bus, where did you park it?" asked Iris.

"Just out there, on the pavement," said Róisín. She paced to the window and pushed back the curtain. "That's odd. It was there when we came in."

"Please tell me you locked up?" said Iris.

"Iris, you said your bus was being tracked by MIAOW," said the Doctor.

"Oh shit," said Iris.

"Everyone, into the TARDIS…"

There was a loud honk of a horn, and a tremendous CRASH! The Celestial Omnibus shattered the front of the house. The power cut out, plunging them into darkness.

Chapter 9

Seven people were in the house when the bus hit.

Towards the back of the house, and thus safe, were Iris, Nardole, Panda, and Laoise. Laoise screamed and made to run for her mothers, but Nardole wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back towards the TARDIS.

Sally Sparrow was clear of the bus, but not the rubble. Sally covered her head as brick and plaster and floorboard fell onto the settee she was sat on. White dust filled the air. She scrambled to her feet and moved to shield Laoise.

The Doctor was lucky. He had been stood at the side of the room, close to the front of the house. The bus had driven straight for him. Fortunately, as a Time Lord he had exceptionally fast reactions, and was able to sidestep the bus. He did take a blow to the head and shoulder from the rubble of the house collapsing on him. This blow would have concussed a human, but the Time Lord was able to weather it.

Róisín Sparrow had been peaking out through the blinds, in the corner opposite the Doctor. She was extremely fragile even by human standards. The bus hadn't been aiming for her. The driver didn't care about her. She was collateral damage.

The bus didn't hit her, but she was hit by the debris from the crash. Shards of glass lacerated her exposed skin. Brick and mortar knocked her backwards and into the side wall. She would have heard her shoulder pop apart, and her clavicle break, and her patella shatter. She would have.

If not for the onset of deafening tinnitus.

The Doctor grabbed her. She was still conscious. He tried to ask her if she was OK, but her ears were ringing so loudly, it sounded like he was whispering to her from the other end of a swimming pool. Her head spun, and she could barely remember where she was. The smell of burnt rubber reminded her of go-karting as a child.

The Doctor pulled her to her feet, throwing her good arm over his shoulder. She screamed in pain, but together they limped forwards. She tasted blood in her mouth. The others were focused on Laoise. It was just the two of them, struggling forward, covered in dust and grime and blood. They staggered on, past the sofa, lurching dramatically when some more plasterboard fell from the ceiling and caught Róisín on her Achilles.

Now Laoise reached for her mother. Róisín recoiled as Laoise grabbed her bad arm. The Doctor, instead, handed her over to Nardole.

"Grandfather."

The Doctor turned. They'd both disembarked from the bus. Even in the dark, the air thick with rubble dust, there was no mistaking them with their distinctive silhouettes. They stood side by side, their legs shoulder width apart, their fists clenched and spiked. They were wearing skeletal armour, made from the bones of species which only existed in dead timelines. John wore the strange, beaked skull Laoise had seen in his bedroom. The Doctor recognised it as the skull of an intelligent amphibious cetacean species who had emerged on Gallifrey Five. Gillian's headwear was rhinocerine, a thin serrated horn curving upwards from in front of her nose, ligaments at the back of the skull connecting it to her lower back to counterbalance the weight.

"Hello, children," said the Doctor. "Afraid this isn't a good time. My friend needs urgent medical attention."

"Where did you go, Grandfather?" asked Gillian. A shower of sparks fell from the ceiling, briefly illuminating Gillian's eyes through the orbits of her helmet.

"I didn't go anywhere," the Doctor said. "The War caught me."

"The War didn't reach our sector of hypertime until well after you had left," said John, tilting his head oh-so slightly.

"Have Faction Paradox taught you nothing? The War is not an event. It is a trend. It is not something that will happen, then will have happened. It is a tendency of the universe, agnostic to the flow of time or any of the laws of causality you instinctively believe universal. Conflict. Enmity. Antagonism. Entropy. Scarcity. The War seeps and retreats, waxes and wanes, it stains reality and is washed away. It twists history retrospectively. It is the resistant force pushing against the Time Lords' Web of Time. It is the elastic tension in the Spiral Politic. It blots out our pasts as gravity pulls us towards mass."

"You can wax lyrical all you wish, Grandfather. It won't save your skin."

"You think this is about my skin?" said the Doctor, stepping forward. "I don't care. Do whatever you want to me, if it will make you feel better. That's what I care about. Not me. Just you two, and the rest of my family, and my friends. Not my skin, my blood." He looked each of them in the eyes, or at least the orbits. "I remember, you know. I remember our time together. I remember how we met, although I don't understand it. I remember decades of adventures across the universe. I couldn't fly the ship properly. I spent more time with you than I have with anyone else. But the War happened, and then none of it happened."

"Why are you blaming the War?" said John, through gritted teeth.

"Because I can't lie to you two. Not about something as important as this. The whole reason your mother wanted to get away from Gallifrey was to escape the inescapable War."

"Speak sense, Grandfather. Don't waste your remaining time."

"Gallifrey is the nexus of the War, because the Web of Time is anchored there. Other places aren't as constantly affected. Have you ever wondered how we met?"

"We went looking for you. We had your address."

"The TARDIS doesn't have a fixed address. You just happened to find the place I had parked written on a scrap of paper. Somebody out there gave that to you. Knowingly or not, they were an agent of the war."

"Gallifrey had already been destroyed. The upside of the War is destruction usually doesn't last forever, but I was displaced. I was travelling with Susan, and then Ian and Barbara, and Dodo, and all the rest, but I was also travelling with you, at the same time, as if I was living two lives at once. Then while the three of us were having our silly little adventures, I took Jamie and Zoe to a strange new Gallifrey, where the Time Lords took them from me, and the War took you from me. I could never be sure if you had ever been real, or you were figments of my imagination, or if you were still as real as Zoe. Every time I tried to find you, the War intervened. I don't know which of my grandchildren are still real, or how old I am, or any basic autobiographical details. Every time I think I have something nailed down, the War comes in my future or my past and I lose it all again."

"Enough talk," said John. The siblings drew pistols, seemingly from thin air, and stepped forward in sync. "Time to die, Grandfather."

"You eejits think killing him is going to achieve anything?" said Iris. "He's already sired you. This isn't gonna create some paradox to impress your little goth friends, it's boring old senicide."

They stopped dead in their tracks and glanced at each other.

"I resent the implication that I'm senile," said the Doctor.

"We can kill him now," said Gillian.

"And then kill him in the past," said John. "Double the paradox."

Glass smashed. Laoise leaped in front of the Doctor, holding a broken bottle by the neck and brandishing the jagged edge menacingly in John's direction.

"Laoise Sparrow," said John with a sigh. "You had so much potential as an agent of Paradox."

"Shut up. You tried to kill my Mum. And you tried to get me to erase my other Mum from existence."

"And you failed, despite thinking it would cause your closest friend to be erased from existence. Forgive me if I don't take your threats seriously."

Laoise lunged forward, swiping at John's neck with the bottle, but his carotid artery was protected by a thick layer of collagen and calcium. She stabbed for his gut, but collided with a plate of bone instead, chipping the glass away. He didn't flinch. Nor did he pull his weapon on her. Now she was up close with it, Laoise realised that it was the same gun that he'd shot Steven Millman with.

"Where was this side of you when I needed it?" asked John, as casual as anything.

"Don't threaten my family."

"You would have been excellent in the Faction," said Gillian. "But we don't care about you or your family any more. This is about Grandfather."

Laoise felt a tugging at her left sleeve. It was Sally. Laoise looked to the Doctor, who gave a precise, definite nod. She lowered her bottle and backed away, leaving the Doctor stood in front of his grandchildren. They seemed to raise themselves up tall, their chests puffed out, their shoulders raised. Still the Doctor loomed over them. Their guns may as well have been pea shooters.

"What good is killing him gonna do yous?" said Iris. "You get inducted into some pretentious scene where you have to follow their rules? Do me a favour."

"The Great Houses are the ones who imposed the rules that started the War," said John. "Faction Paradox are trying to end the War."

"Yeah, they've got their qualities," said Iris. "But how is joining them any different to the bureaucratic Time Lords who scramble up through Gallifreyan society?"

"Faction Paradox is diametrically opposed to the Great Houses," said Gillian.

"That's just it. Everything about bloody Faction Paradox is defined by the Gallifrey," said Iris. "They're obsessed with Time Lords, they may as well be a Great House. They have a whole bleedin' society set up around deliberately breaking Gallifreyan convention. Without Time Lords, the Faction stops making sense. At least Time Lords have renegades. Are there any renegade Faction agents?"

"What else would you have us do?" snapped Gillian.

"Don't look at me! Form your own path. Live the lives you want to live. Don't spend your life worrying about whether you're doing it right. Don't obsess about convention. Forge a positive identity of your own."

John threw his arms in the air. "You make it sound simple. We're human beings. We need the structure and purpose the Faction gives us."

"Let me ask you something," said the Doctor. "Do you really want to kill me? Is that what you want? Because if it will make you happy, you can shoot me down right here." He spread his fingers, showing his palms, and raised his arms wide in surrender. "Or we can try something different, something new."

They didn't charge for him.

"If you want… we can travel together again. This time, not as grandfather and grandchildren, but as adults operating on equal terms. You can leave whenever you please. We'll try to find you a place in the universe where you can have purpose. Real purpose, not paradoxical murder."

The siblings looked at each other. Their guns slipped away into nothing. John lifted off his helmet. His head looked tiny without his bone exoskeleton.

"I'll be honest – I've never liked wearing this stuff."

"Agreed," said Gillian. "It takes half an hour to get it all on properly, and just as long to take it off again."

"Doctor, Ró really needs to get to the hospital," said Sally. Róisín was ashen, and struggling to keep her eyes open as Nardole held her up.

"Iris, Panda," said the Doctor. "Can you take the Sparrows to a hospital in the right time period? I'll catch you up."

"On it," said Iris, picking Róisín up in a bridal style lift and carrying her onto the bus. Sally and Laoise followed. Iris put Róisín in the front passenger seat and Sally sat next to her, keeping her upright and talking.

"2094. A&E, Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, London, EU, Earth. Belt up, everyone."

Sally Sparrow had flown to the Moon. This journey felt even longer.

Epilogue

Róisín had lost a lot of blood and broken five bones, but it was nothing that the medics at Guy's and St Thomas' couldn't sort out. She left hospital in a wheelchair and with a cast and sling on one arm less than twenty-four hours later.

The Sparrows sold their home on the Moon. They set themselves up in Exeter, within a day's travel from Oxford but not so close that they would interfere with Laoise's daily life. Sally and Róisín established a charitable foundation aimed at strengthening relations between the two bodies. Exchange programmes and summer camps gave working-class Earthlings the chance to spend time on the Moon, and gave Lunese children much-needed time in Earth gravity. Róisín was soon splitting her time between the foundation and consultant engineering work on the upcoming mission to establish a permanent Mars base.

Laoise did have trauma counselling, and cognitive behaviour therapy. And, more importantly, she learned how to make friends in a way that worked for her. She formed two book clubs: one for science, politics, and philosophy, and the other for science fiction. She attended a regular board game night. She joined a rambling group, and went birdwatching, and volunteered to help maintain natural habitats around Oxford. Eventually, she combined her love of nature with her love of cybernetics, and helped to create communication devices for animals.

The Doctor never did catch up with them, not in the way he had promised. Sally brushed it off. The Doctor's transience was a reoccurring feature of their friendship. At first, Laoise wasn't sure she believed her mother's casualness. Surely some part of her was wounded at her friend's disappearance, if nothing else? Over time, she came to realise it was all sincere.

"The Doctor's alright for a day trip," Sally said one day, when Laoise raised the matter on a call. "But humans aren't meant to travel in time. It doesn't open your eyes to a new perspective, it just makes it harder to understand any individual perspective at all. It's the slow lane for me from now on, I think."

Iris, at least, sent them Christmas cards, and not just at Christmas. The first one arrived in the middle of July 2095. There was a drawing of a snowman with a robin stood on his carrot nose on the front. The card was signed from Iris and Panda, but the date stamp on the envelope was from November 2110. They showed up haphazardly throughout the years, with different companions' names appearing alongside Iris's in a way Laoise could never quite parse into a coherent timeline.

In December 2098, Laoise was living in a polyamorous commune in Kampala, working for a Tusken who wanted to use a cybernetic implant to communicate telepathically with her brother on the Moon. A Christmas card from Iris arrived seasonally, for a change. It was the last one Laoise needed to complete her collection spanning the entire 21st century. The latest one she'd received so far had been postmarked from 3014, while the earliest had apparently been in the Ashmolean Museum's collection ever since 1683, and was only returned to Laoise following a chance encounter with a curator at an alumni event.

Laoise saw the blue box when she left the house. There was a light-skinned black man with kinky hair stood outside it. He was wearing a floral jacket over a kanzu. He smiled at her. They approached each other.

"Laoise," he said, with a gentle smile.

"You've changed," she said. "Mum said you might. Where have you been?"

"What can I say? One thing led to another. It made for a nice change."

"I can't quite place the face. I should recognise it."

"Chiwetel Ejiofor. A bit before your time."

"Well, he looks good on you."

He winced. "Please, you make it sound much gorier than it is. We share a passing resemblance, nothing more than that."

"Out with it," said Laoise.

"Sally once told me she didn't like to think about you living life in the slow lane. I told her that everyone else manages it, and you'd be fine."

"Yeah, she's right. The slow lane lets you appreciate what you have around you."

"It's not a meritless position. But I've been thinking… there are so many people dying preventable deaths. More, when Earth starts being endangered by new unpredictable threats. It doesn't have to be that way."

"I understood unpredictable threats were what we had you for."

"Oh, certainly. Not much I consider truly unpredictable. But sometimes I can't be direct. When you have the sort of time sensitivity I have, deliberately changing the future can make you feel… off. No, the world doesn't need a Time Lord standing watch. It needs people who are just a little bit of the way there…"

"Doctor, spit it out. What do you want to ask me?"

The Doctor scratched his head. "I'm proposing a sort of grad school. I'd teach people with pre-existing time sensitivity how to make the most of it. You'd be a prime candidate. It would supercharge your inventiveness. You'd help humanity navigate the choppy waters to come."

Laoise's heart was leaping. She loved her job, but this… this was something else. She nonetheless had a few reservations. "How many other people will be there?"

"About a dozen, at first. Mostly people like you who I've encountered. But once the first class are all ready to go, you'll be responsible for recruiting suitable candidates."

"And what about time travel?"

"There will be some," said the Doctor. "But don't worry. You're absolutely right, you need to keep a sense of perspective. The time travel will be kept to a minimum, and won't involve Earth or human history. It will just be about getting the feel for a few different sensations."

Laoise looked to the sky. It was a clear day without a cloud in sight. "When do we start?"