The bullets kept flying out of the computer robot thing attached to the chimney.

"I need your help!" I shouted.

"Maybe I don't want to help you!"

The floorboards exploded in front of me, pattering too close for comfort. I darted behind a post.

"Don't you want to fix time?"

He didn't respond.

"Kid, what if we can save your mom?"

"Stop!" The boy sighed. "Mr. Smith, stop."

I stood up with a groan, brushing myself off. "First my wife ruins time by killing Washington, now this!" I took a deep breath. "Kid..."

"It's Luke, okay?"

"Sorry, Luke. Look, I'm sorry my son ruined your life. I didn't know he was a killing machine. I just met him yesterday."

He bit his lip. "You can bring mom back?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Not without your help. I've got a time machine with no instructions."

I glanced back at the staircase and saw a tentacled head lurking at the lip.

"If you help me do this right, Luke, I promise I'll make a lot of things you don't like go away."

My son's head disappeared from the staircase. I wasn't sure if he'd heard me, or I hurt his feelings, but I figured he was a bright lad, so I guessed I may have.

However, I was in a catch twenty two: If I went after him and tried to patch things up, Luke might not want to speak to me again, and then I'd have no information.

But if I let my son run off to who knows where, he might run into the TARDIS and screw things up more.

Also, where was Eve? I figured her fancy heels would make it difficult to navigate the broken staircase, but she seemed...unusually quiet. Especially now that my son had vanished.

No matter. I'd figure it out later. At present, I felt nothing was more important than getting information from Luke. "Luke, please. Tell me what you know about fixing time."

"Mr. Smith," he said to the machine. "A little help?"

And a voice spoke from the big computer thing. "Here is a visual representation of your recorded interference in the time stream."

A diagram appeared on the monitor, showing a series of points connected by colored lines. "This information was acquired from inferences based on archaeological evidence, and the writings of associates of the individual known as The Doctor located in 1770's era Boston."

The top dot on a red line glowed like a distant star. "The first recorded incident was the introduction of Dromaesauridae Velociraptorinae into a society of prehistoric natives on the Isle of Tombelaine, France."

"France," I muttered. "Explains a lot."

"Fortunately for you, the tribe in which your companion came from originally became extinct due to a massive tsunami. Tidal waters washed all evidence of the tribe's existence into the surrounding sea. Mineral deposits suggest the bodies were to be devoured by crabs, for no skeletal remains could be found in the area.

Therefore, the presence of saurian lifeforms poses a greater threat to the preservation of history than any interference with that primitive French tribe."

A copy of the Three Musketeers appeared on the screen, a copy in which D'Artagnan and his friends were pictured riding on velociraptors.

Then I saw a display of French dinosaur sausage paired with a cheese wheel, then black and white footage of Nazis feeding Jewish prisoners to their scaly pets.

"That's...not good," I said.

"No it is not."

Another star appeared on the monitor.

"The second major alteration of time occurred on the planet Skaro in 3926, a disastrous incident which granted Dalek forces unlimited access to temporal technology. Attempts to prevent this invasion have proved unsuccessful."

"I don't get it. The guys that helped me, they have a TARDIS, but they refused to help me go back and change things. They kept saying stuff about fixed points. The universe has gone to shit. You'd think they'd care about that!"

Luke frowned, giving me a look that said he didn't know the answer.

"They wanted to make sure their friend Riversong was safe, I guess. That's all I can figure."

Luke grinned. "So there's your answer! Take the TARDIS to 3926, save Riversong and stop the Daleks!"

"How? The only reason we escaped was because my wife was made into a Dalek killing machine." I shook my head. "I don't know how to get guns or anything, even if I knew how to fire one. And even if I did, I wouldn't know how to get them into the timeline when I needed them. Logically, I shouldn't be able to go back in time to a point before I can go back in time. You get what I'm saying?"

"First things first. Let's take an inventory of what we've got to work with." He dug a colorful cylinder out of his pocket. "Sonic lipstick."

I frowned. "What. Is that for repairing female Daleks, or what?"

Luke just stared at me. "Why would it do that?"

Yep, I thought. Born in a test tube. "Never mind. What's that thing do? Is it like a sonic screwdriver?"

He nodded. "I see you're familiar with it."

"Yes, and it's good you have one. We might need it. What else you got?"

He dug through a pile of debris, pulling out something that looked like the home plate from a robot's baseball stadium. "Transmat. It teleports you to different locations."

"Is that like a molecular transporter?"

"Kind of."

"Great. I never figured out how you can step into a machine that takes apart your atoms and puts them together using other atoms in a different spot and still be you when you step out."

The boy shrugged. "Mr. Smith says that souls actually exist. And somehow they can be sent along with the assembly instructions." He paused. "Most of the time, at least."

"You mean, sometimes it puts your butt on the wrong way, like Space Balls?"

Luke shrugged. "Not that I've heard about. But I have seen pictures of a human who accidentally merged with a Vervoid. It's not pretty."

Even though I had no idea what a Vervoid was, I said, "No, I imagine not."

"But most the time, there isn't any problem. At least, not any time I've ever seen it being used."

"I don't know. This sounds dangerous."

"Maybe it is. We don't use it all the time."

"What the hell. Maybe we can use that thing in an emergency."

He picked up a gray plastic thing resembling a telephone headset, one part broken and hanging off.

"What's that?" I said.

He tossed it aside. "Nothing. I have some telekinetic abilities, but they can only be harnessed with a device."

I frowned. "Oh. That's...handy."

He showed me a lot of other sketchy devices, most of them broken.

A cube that defended you against being erased from existence, which is something my son should never have.

Remote controls for spaceships we weren't within a million light years of.

Holographic recordings of Luke's dead friends.

Some sort of Dick Tracy watch that detected alien stuff.

A small device that closed temporal rifts.

Various formerly cursed objects that once brainwashed people, altered their body chemistry or otherwise ruined their lives.

In the far back, I found a pile of science fictiony guns, but the building's former owner had self righteously removed their destructive power, rendering them into useless party favors, nonlethal taser-like things and flashy pyrotechnic cannons.

One of them even overstimulated the sex centers of the brain so you wanted to screw everything in sight. Luke said that Ms. SJS had called it a "Love Gun". Sure. Who ever heard of sex without love? P.S. I'm being sarcastic.

Okay, so they did seem useful for distracting the enemy. Even the sex gun had potential, but I wasn't sure how I'd shoot a Dalek with it while they're `in the shell'.

"I've got one more thing," said Luke. "K-9!"

A little gray robot appeared out of nowhere. It looked like a boxy metal version of a dog, its eyes a solid red cyclops visor, its ears like little satellite dishes. Instead of a nose, it had a sort of gun barrel.

"Young master stand back!" this robot shouted to Luke. "Your life is in danger!"

The machine's nose fired a laser at the ceiling above my head, sending down a shower of debris. "Intruder! Vacate these premises immediately or the next time I shall not miss! You have ten seconds to comply."