Zap. It was like a scene from Chopping Mall. Eve fell to the ground with a scream.

However, she had a bunch of DVD's sown to her clothing, and the laser had somehow bounced off due to the shiny material, causing one of the robots' heads to explode.

I immediately dove to my wife's side, raising my hands in surrender. Part of a wall exploded, knocking off one of those Frisbee things, but then the robots paused for a moment.

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

I ripped the Ipod off her, and the DVD from jacket to minimize the burns.

Lucky for Eve, from what I could see through the hole in her shoddily quilted shirt, she had only received a mild scalding, the Ipod taking the brunt of the damage. She'd have a nasty sunburn mark for awhile, though. Not dead.

I slowly pulled her to her feet, telegraphing every movement to the robots like I would a cop with a gun.

"INTRUDER!" A robotic voice shouted. "IDENTIFY YOURSELF!" It sounded like a British man talking slowly through scuba gear.

Eve let out a yelp, growled and bared her teeth.

I placed a hand to her shoulder. "Careful! Don't tick them off!"

I put on a fake smile, waving at the machines. "Hi! Can you understand me?"

The lights on a machine flashed as a voice spoke. "WE CAN UNDERSTAND! IDENTIFY YOURSELF OR BE DESTROYED!"

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

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

I shrugged, staring into the steel warehouse beyond their heads. "I got lost. I don't know how to operate this thing."

The robots swiveled their heads, as if debating something with their comrades.

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

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

I guess the things hadn't vaporized me because a black and white robot had growled something to them about something called Dalek Command. A moment later, this dalmatian looking thing rolled up the door, pointing its eyestalk at me. "CONFIRM IDENTIFICATION. FIRST AND LAST NAME."

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

"THEY ARE COMPANIONS OF THE DOCTOR," a stupid sounding gray robot said.

"WHERE IS THE DOCTOR!" another cried.

I shrugged. "The Doctor is dead."

"THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE."

"YOU ARE LYING!" said the white one.

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

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

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

The white one backed up, conferring with its companions.

"THE DOCTOR CAN REGENERATE," said one.

"HE IS STILL ALIVE."

I blinked. "You mean reincarnate?"

"ARE YOU STUPID?"

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

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

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

"WHY ARE YOU IN SECTOR B26A51E84?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Okay, okay! I'm going!"

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

The robots silently led us through the warehouse, down a plain gray concrete corridor to a second warehouse, wherein my woman got the bright idea of running away.

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

Eve only gained a few yards before something flashed, and she fell to the floor with a scream. I yelled, but the robots blocked me from running to her.

"KEEP MOVING," one ordered.

"THE FEMALE IS UNCONSCIOUS, BUT LIVING," said the other. "VITAL FUNCTIONS OPERATIONAL."

"UNIT WILL BE RETRIEVED FOR PROCESSING."

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

They paused as if giving the question serious thought, but only replied, "YES."

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

I had no weapons, and the things surrounded me on all sides. Seeing as I had no options, and Eve still had a chance, I followed my captors through the warehouse, marching through a long convoluted maze of identical looking concrete tunnels.

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

I got led into an open cell, ordered to stand by the back wall while they locked me inside.

After the last one had rolled away, I slumped to the floor, crushed, dejected, and utterly without hope.

"I recognize that shirt," a female voice said from the next cell.

Too depressed to look up, I only shrugged. "You probably shop at the same store."

"Only if we both shop in the TARDIS storeroom. I've seen it there. I'm certain of it. The shoulder is even fraying on the left side."

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

I smirked. "How's Doctor Greene?"

The woman's expression was blank as a slate. "Excuse me?"

I just laughed and shook my head.

She didn't share my mirth. I stared at her face and space uniform in puzzlement. "Who are you?"

"Don't you remember me?"

My turn to give a crazy look of bafflement. "Unless you're the woman from TV, I don't know you from Adam."

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

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

Her hands clamped white knuckled to the bars. "Where is he!"

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

A choking sob rose in her throat. "No! No! It can't be! Did you check both hearts?"

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

"It was his last regeneration!" She broke down in tears, flopping on the floor. For several minutes she was completely inconsolable.

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

She sniffed. "Riversong."

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

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

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

The woman wiped her eyes, laying down the missing details. The Doctor, an alien from the planet Gallifrey, owned the spaceship, which assumed the shape of a London police box as camouflage before getting stuck that way. The extra dimension inside explained its bigness. She called the robots Daleks and they liked killing things. We'd somehow arrived in the year 4023.

I asked her about the dinosaurs and other things, but she had no clue about what I spoke about.

She suddenly gasped. "Where's the TARDIS?"

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

I shrugged. "They have laser guns."

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

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

She beat her head against the bars. "Moron!"

"We're screwed."

Riversong sunk to the floor. "I agree with that assessment." She sighed. "You really are an idiot."

Considering the circumstances, I didn't disagree. I slumped on the flat uncomfortable prison bed, staring at the bars.

"You don't happen to have a sonic screwdriver, do you?"

"That's just an expression."

"What?"

"I don't have a screwdriver."

"No, a sonic screwdriver."

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

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

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

She shrugged. "Perhaps? It has a glowy end on one side, and it spins..."

Remember those socket wrench things I found in the store room? "It's in the TARDIS."

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

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

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

A little girl in a similar looking astronaut outfit sat cross legged in the cell on my other side. I waved to her. "Hello?"

"Hulloh."

"What's your name?"

"River Song."

I glanced back at the older Riversong and she made a face. "Oh! That's right! I remember you now!"

Before I could get an explanation about the strange reaction, my cell door came scraping open.

The Daleks had returned my wife to me, but everything had changed.

She'd traded the loincloth thing she'd been wearing for a spandexy white jumpsuit, cropped her hair short in butch style, and her eyes and face no longer searched the terrain like a caged tiger.

"Eve?" I stammered.

Smiling, she gave me a nod, marching into my cell.

When she came close, something like squid tentacles dropped out of the sides of her hair, and an enormous eye opened on her forehead. "Robert...my dear husband."

[0000]

In case you're wondering, I was making a joke about the actress who played Riversong also being on ER.