Tempus Omega: The Planet that Never Was
Part One
Lendo Tempo noticed something out of the corner of her eye. She turned to look at whatever it was. It turned out to merely be the clock on her office wall. It was just to her right as she sat at her desk. And it seemed as though it had simply popped into existence. She stopped working at her computer and turned to look directly at the clock. There was nothing unusual about it. It showed all twenty hours of the day, and it had a single long arm which circled the clock once a day. And it was hanging up on the wall at eye level just as it always had. She had had it there on that wall for several years now. So why would it appear to simply pop into existence?
It was nearing the end of the work day and she reasoned that she was probably getting tired and her mind was playing tricks on her. She had been doing desk work most of the day here at the Temporal Affairs facility. She had been busy typing for some time… but now that she had paused, she suddenly couldn't remember what it was she had been typing. She felt as though she had forgotten something important. She looked at the computer monitor in front of her. On it was a report she had been writing for her boss. But there was something about it that just didn't seem right. She felt she was missing something, but she just couldn't remember what it was. It was like forgetting somebody's name.
Lendo Tempo was thirty-ish, had short dark hair, and she always made sure she kept herself in shape. Her friends and co-workers called her a workaholic, but she just considered herself hard-working. She looked at the clock again, hoping it might trigger a memory of what she ought to be doing. Nothing happened. Just the continuing nagging feeling that she had was forgetting something important. This had been happening a lot recently. And she was just starting to feel that she ought to consult a doctor about it.
But before she could figure it just what she should say to the doctor, she heard a small explosion of some kind outside his office. She rushed out into the hall where her co-workers were also coming out of their offices to see what was going on. They all saw a man lying on the floor. He had a mop of curly hair, a long coat, and a very long, multi-coloured scarf. "What's going on?" Lendo asked. "Who is this?"
A crowd of about ten people had gathered around by now, but nobody knew who the man was nor how he had gotten there. Lendo and two others squatted down to check on him. They found that he was alive, but unconscious. Lendo looked up at the others. There were some general shrugs and confused looks. "Help me get him to sickbay," she finally said at last, reaching for the man's legs.
Two others helped. They brought him down the hall and into a large room with cots and one distracted medical officer who was casually reading a magazine. They set the stranger down gently on one of the cots. Doctor Wellkin set down his magazine and walked over to the new arrivals. He looked down at the unconscious stranger. "What's this?"
"We don't know," Lendo said. "We heard a sort of a whoosh or something in the hall and… there he was. Just lying there."
"Who is he?" Doctor Wellkin asked, beginning an examination.
"We don't know that either. Who he is, where he came from, or what's wrong with him."
The other two left the room and went back to work, leaving Lendo and Doctor Wellkin alone with the stranger. Doctor Wellkin opened the man's eyes and mouth and poked and pulled at certain body parts. Finally, he stood back and said, "I'm afraid I just can't find what's wrong with him. There are no obvious injuries. Is there any identification?"
"We didn't check."
The two of them checked the man's pockets for personal effects. They found nothing except for a receipt ticket from their own facility, a sort of baggage claim ticket for personal items listing a large collection of various strange objects. They also removed the man's scarf and coat and shoes, and hung them up.
"No proper ID," Lendo announced.
"Well," Doctor Wellkin said, "We'll just let him rest for now, until we can find out who he is and how he got here."
Lendo went to the property impound desk at the front entrance and showed them the ticket. The woman who worked there was in no mood for games. "This can't be real. It's dated for tomorrow."
Lendo took it back from tall, thin young woman and examined it again. "How can that be?"
"You tell me," the woman insisted. "Where did you get it?"
But Lendo thought that the matter was so confusing that they may have to classify it. So she said nothing and simply turned and left.
#
The renegade Time Lord known only as the Doctor worked the controls of his illegally appropriated time machine, the TARDIS.
The Time Lady, Romanadvoratrelundar (known as Romana) now in her second incarnation, stood nearby, hoping that the Doctor would ask for her help at some point soon so that they could actually get to where they were heading.
Their robot dog, K-9, sat silently nearby.
But then a flashing light and shrill little alarm emanating from the console suddenly informed the Doctor that there was a temporal disturbance in the immediate area. A moment later, the TARDIS was jerked to one side. The two Gallifreyans grabbed the central console for support as they were both tossed about.
"Come on, old girl! You can do better than that!" The "old girl" knew that her Time Lord was referring to the fact that she was a time machine, and should have known sooner that the disturbance was coming and should also have warned him sooner than she had. She was a temperamental machine sometimes.
There were a couple more jolts as the Doctor struggled with the various knobs and switches on the console, finally getting the craft under control. It looked as though they were out of the worst of it. He then checked the readings and found that the temporal disturbance had come from the nearby planet Tempus Omega. That planet! It was well named. "Romana? How would you like to visit the most temporally troubled planet ever?"
"Must we? It sounds like it's going to be a lot of needless bother." Sometimes it seemed to Romana that the Doctor actually sought out trouble.
The Doctor was taken aback by her lack of enthusiasm. He preferred it when his companions got excited with whatever suggestions he made. So he flashed her a smile, "You'll like it. I promise."
But Romana only sighed. There was no winning with the Doctor. She was merely a passenger on his journey, and she knew it.
The central rotor stopped rising and falling, and the console made a soft boing to let the Time Lords know that they had materialized on the surface of the planet. Romana checked the readings on the console display. "You're right!" she said incredulously. "Doctor, these temporal disturbance readings are enormous! It's so large, and so wide spread, if it was radiation, it would be the amount you could only find in the middle of a full-scale nuclear war!"
The Doctor nodded, smiling, "Coming?" He popped his hat on, opened the door and marched outside.
And then he was gone. Romana took a moment to sigh in exasperation. And then she realized that she may as well look after him before he got into too much trouble. "Watch after the TARDIS, will you please, K-9."
"Affirmative, mistress," the robotic dog replied with a tone of disappointment in his voice.
#
Rees Doocul watched the slab of meat sizzle and smoke on the burner in front of him. It grew darker. The smoke drifted up into his face and made him cough slightly. It was time to flip if over. He had been trained for this, and he knew what he was doing. So, he ignored his training and waited for the meat to burn just a bit more. Not too much. But just enough to annoy the customers without them returning it as inedible. Rees Doocul did not like his job. He had been working in various fast-food restaurants for nearly a decade, and he was just about convinced that his soul had burned away and he had now been transformed into some sort of a zombie. Dingy's Meat Sandwiches was the latest company to employ him. And unfortunately, they liked him. And it didn't look as though he was going to be leaving their employment any time soon… unless of course he took matters into his own hands and quit.
Rees lived on the planet Tempus Omega, where the dominant life form was largely human-looking, with some minor internal differences. For some unknown reason, the basic human form kept popping up throughout the universe. This phenomenon of parallel evolution had been studied by various independent agencies on many different planets over the centuries. But no definite or satisfactory conclusions had ever been reached. Tempus Omega's technological development was about equal to Earth's in the early twenty-second century. And fast food was a global phenomenon.
Nearly fifty years earlier, robots had done most of the manual labour for their society. Unfortunately, the economy almost completely collapsed after the introduction of a robot labour force because 90% of the population suddenly found itself unemployed. So the super-rich were then rounded up and lynched by the masses. Most of the robots were then destroyed. Unemployment immediately plummeted. And everybody had a job. Even if most of the jobs were merely fast food or some other soul-destroying menial service.
When his shift finally came to an end, Rees Doocul signed out, said goodbye to his co-workers, and left for the day via the employee entrance at the back of the restaurant. He stepped over the mountains of trash in the alleyway, kicking boxes and soiled bags out of the way. He took a moment to stop and reminisce about how efficient the robot trash collectors had been. But now that mere people were doing it again, it frequently remained uncollected and overflowing for days at a time.
He resumed his tedious walk home. He noticed a small vertical takeoff plane of some kind sitting in the middle of the alley, some distance directly before him. He stepped closer towards it two men came up to him. They had been standing, unobserved at the side of the alley. "Rees Doocul?"
"Who wants to know?"
"Come with us, please."
"Who are you?" He took a step back, not at all liking the looks of these men.
"Just come with us, please."
"Sure. Okay." He then turned and ran.
But they were faster. They caught up to him and grabbed him from behind! He struggled, but the two men quickly had his wrists bound by a plastic cord. "What the hell's going on!?" he demanded of his attackers. But they turned out to be somewhat reluctant to explain themselves.
They bustled him into the plane. And when they were aboard, they called to the pilot in the front of the craft and ordered him to lift off. It was the size and basic layout of a private jet on Earth. Rees was thrust into a chair and strapped in. There were four armed people sitting strapped in to the adjacent chairs, two men and two women. "What are you doing?" he asked them again.
One of the women turned to face him, "Mr Rees Doocul?"
"Yes?"
"I am afraid that we are going to have to transport you to approximately seventy years in the future."
A voice came over the speaker, "Stand by for time jump."
The woman who had just spoken to Rees spoke to him again, "You might want to hang on to something at this point, sir."
Rees lifted his bound hands just a bit. Which wasn't very much, as his biceps were still tied to the chair. "Really?" he said sarcastically.
And a second later, he felt it! The nauseating jump to the higher dimension of time! Rees felt almost as though the plane had vanished out from under him for a split second and that he might fall through it back down to the ground! And then for the next several seconds, he didn't know which way was up or which way was down. His head lolled back and forth as he tried to get his bearings. He was unable to focus on anything.
And then a moment later, it stopped. He breathed deeply for several seconds before he was able to determine that he was in fact unharmed and still sitting upright in the chair. But it would take his stomach several more seconds to be convinced of this.
The talkative woman from before pointed to the side of his chair, "There are nausea bags if you need them." And then Rees noticed that the woman herself looked nauseous as well.
Rees thought for a moment that he should not show weakness to these people. But then a wave of particularly strong nausea swept through him. He was just able to grab a bag out of the indicated slot and open it up. He leaned over and breathed heavily into the open bag. But after a moment or two, it turned out that he didn't need it after all. He sat back in the chair took a few moments to simply breath heavily. "What's your name?" he finally asked the woman.
"Lendo Tempo."
"And can you tell me now what's happening to me?"
"I've told you, sir. We are taking you approximately seventy years into the future."
"Time travel?"
"Yes."
"Well… I've heard the rumors. It's real?"
"Yes, it is."
"All right. Why are you taking me into the future?"
Lendo didn't seem to be able to focus for a moment. She leaned forward and put her head in her hands. She looked very uncomfortable. Then she said, "I'm all right," at the same moment one of her colleagues leaned forward with a sympathetic look.
Then her colleague said, "That's happening more often, Tempo."
"Yes, I know."
"Wait, who's going to feed my fleemer?" Reese asked, referring to his domesticated ferret-like pet.
Lendo said helpfully, "We have your address. I'll see he's taken care of."
"Where are we?"
"When are we, would be the correct question, sir. We are now some seventy-five years in your future. There has been a new invention recently called a wave cycling cancellation device. Our records of your mind indicate that you would be a very efficient wave cycling cancellation device operator."
"Really?"
"Yes. Here…" she leaned over, removed the restraints from around Rees's wrists and arms, and handed him a booklet on wave cycling cancellation devices. Rees glanced through it somewhat reluctantly at first. He had known about wave cycling for a few years, but only as a hobby. In fact he was quite good at it. And he had always thought that there ought to be some way to cancel wave cycling. And apparently, with this new device, they were finally able to do it.
"This is amazing!" he ejaculated. "I mean… I've been thinking along those lines already!"
"We were in fact aware of this, sir. You will want to contact Melner Copperspoon at this address," Lendo handed Rees a slip of paper and a small plastic box. "He is most eager to set up an interview with you."
They felt the craft set down on the ground again very gently. "Landing complete," said a voice over the intercom.
Lendo got up and indicated for Rees to follow her. She led Reese through the hatch, and down the steps to the ground. They found themselves standing by the side of a long stretch of road at what looked like dawn. They sky was clear and blue, the air was slightly cold, and they were surrounded by fields of long grass on either side of the road. Nobody was about. The place was completely deserted of other people. Rees looked down at the booklet again. He was actually getting excited about all this. It was almost more exciting than the fact that he had just forcibly traveled through time! He wouldn't have to make fast food anymore! Ever!
And when he looked up, Tempo had gone, and their time ship was rising silently into the air over his head. And a moment later, it was simply gone.
He stood there at the side of the empty road. He checked the small plastic box they had given him. There was a particularly large sum of local currency, and a change of garments. The style was only slightly different from what he was used to. He looked up and down the road again. He was completely alone. He sighed.
There was a sign nearby which had been obscured by the time machine. It pointed out that the local village of Grand Nash Woods was nearby. He resigned himself to a long walk and began heading in the direction of the arrow on the sign.
#
The Doctor and Romana found themselves in a city. Flying vehicles drifted lazily through the sky overhead in orderly lanes of traffic. Ground cars darted about nearby on the other side of a protective, transparent shield. And the TARDIS was neatly tucked away in a green, grassy park of some kind with trees, bushes, walkways, flowerbeds and fountains. Pedestrians walked here and there, paying the new arrivals no more attention than they did to one another.
The two time travelers walked along the pavement walkway that twisted and turned gracefully in the middle of the park area. The grass was very thick on this planet, and smelled very slightly of mint.
As they surveyed their surroundings, they began to notice something very odd. There were vague images, almost three-dimensional shadows of other people walking about, going about their own business, living their own lives, and occasionally, walking through the trees or even through the people who were actually there. These were obviously, thought the Doctor to himself, temporal echoes from alternative timelines that had once existed, but had now been lost. But none of the people who were actually there seemed to notice them at all. Only the Doctor and Romana saw these echoes. One man-shaped echo even walked straight through the Doctor. "That's odd," the Doctor commented. Romana raised her eyebrows in confirmation.
There wasn't much they could do about the temporal echoes at the moment, so they continued their casual stroll out of the park and into the city where they eventually stopped at Dingy's Meat Sandwiches to sample the local cuisine. They entered the crowded building and looked up at the menu which was posted on a side wall. Everything looked bad and smelled worse. They looked at some of the food that the nearby patrons were eating happily, apparently blissfully unaware of what other dining options were available virtually anywhere else in the universe. It was fast food of the very worst kind. Romana gave the Doctor a worried look. The Doctor, never one for understanding personal boundaries, leaned in over one of the occupied tables and grabbed one of the small sandwiches that hadn't been taken yet. "May I see that?" he asked the family of four seated at the table. They all jerked back as this strange man assaulted their meal. The Doctor sniffed the sandwich hesitantly, then jerked his head away from the offending piece of food and plopped it back into their large red plastic basket. The Doctor then stood up straight again, "Well, I don't think much of that." He turned to Romana, "Come on," he said. "We'll go someplace where the food smells edible. And he marched out. Romana followed gratefully.
They soon found a nice little restaurant more to their liking. The food was well prepared and was served with a little more class. It had an outdoor seating area where they sat at a table and enjoyed their meal while watching children play in the nearby play area one level below and off to the side.
"So what else do you know about this planet?" Romana asked, as they ate.
"Apparently, the people here are unique in the universe, in that they have no genuine beginning. About a hundred years from now, these people are going to discover the rudiments of time travel. One of the first places they go is back in time to study their history and origins. The only trouble is they can't find any. They re-check their archeological and anthropological findings, and try again and again, never finding anything."
"What, nothing at all? Doctor, that's not possible."
The Doctor went on, "They find their planet, more or less in its natural state. They find other animals, but they don't find their own species. So after a few more expeditions, they conclude that they simply don't have a beginning. No evolution. No colony from another world. No creator gods. Nothing. So with that in mind, the government eventually set up a team to go back in time to see to it that they had a beginning. They gathered a group of several hundred volunteers and just went back in time, set up a colony with primitive tools and equipment and end up simply creating themselves."
Romana couldn't believe what she was hearing. "That's ridiculous."
"Oh, I agree. I agree. And yet…" he held out his hands to indicate the world around them.
"But it didn't stop there," he went on. "Once they found they could make changes, they went back and back and back, further and further, again and again, making more and more changes upon changes, altering their history, until they created a completely different world in their own present. Social changes. Political changes. Preventing the odd war. Creating a world they thought was ideal."
"All of which explains the temporal anomalies we're seeing," Romana said, nodding. She looked again. There were visual temporal echoes of things that were happening in alternate timelines. Things and people that had been erased, almost as though they had been recorded over on an old-fashioned magnetic tape. It had happened so many times, the echoes were becoming more and more prevalent. Of course, only time sensitives like Time Lords could perceive them without specialized equipment. So the local people continued on in ignorance to what was going on all around them.
#
Lendo returned to the Temporal Affairs facility after having deposited Rees Doocul in his new life where he would presumably prosper. She went to her office, but it was no longer there. In the room that used to be her office, one of her colleagues now sat at his own desk, surrounded by completely different personal decorations. Lendo just sighed. Her colleague, Vin, looked up at the confusion on Lendo's face. "Oh, no. Is it happening again?"
Lendo shrugged and shook her head, "Yes. But don't worry about it. I don't know why we should expect the universe to work properly anymore."
She stepped back out of the office and walked up and down the corridor, looking into different offices with open doors, until finally she found where her office had got to. Her things were all there. The fleemer she had acquired from Rees Doocul was still in the carrying case which was sitting on top of the desk. She sat down, took a moment to reorientate herself, and tried to resume her work. She opened some files on her computer and stared at them, her mind not quite switched on yet.
Lendo's boss, Zarwin Waqti, entered the office. Waqti was an older man, balding, short, heavy, and in poor health. "Tempo, I have a job for you. We've just detected a disruption to the time waves. We sent Vela back to check it out. He brought back these photographs."
Waqti handed Lendo a small stack of photos of the Doctor and Romana exploring the city.
"This is the man in sickbay!"
"Yes, I know. He must have his own time vessel. We don't know who he is or where he's from."
"So is this version of him," Lenso said, pointing to one of the photographs, "before or after the one in sickbay?"
"Or a parallel version?" Waqti suggested. "We don't know. But for right now, we have to stop his unauthorized use of a time vessel."
"Right. I'll get them."
#
The Doctor and Romana were once again exploring the city. They were in a pedestrian district, with no ground vehicles. It was very much like an outdoor shopping mall. They looked in shop windows and admired the architecture as they continued to explore. But eventually they both grew bored, and the Doctor began to wish that something more interesting would happen.
No sooner had he wished for it than it happened. He gradually became aware of a woman watching them discreetly through the crowd. She was about a hundred feet away, pretending to look at reflective surfaces, shop windows and so on, while clearly keeping both the Doctor and Romana in her site. The Doctor stood side by side with Romana as they both watched a painter with his easel set up in the middle of the crowd. He was painting what he saw, which in this case, was shoppers watching him paint. The Doctor, keeping his eyes on the artist's canvas, said, "Romana. There's a woman watching us."
"She must be very bored to have settled on us."
"Yes." And a moment later, the two of them moved off through the crowd and immediately gave the woman the slip.
But of course, the Doctor was curious about this woman and wondered why she was following them. So he let Romana continue on while he circled round through the crowd to come up behind the woman and surprise her.
The Doctor quickly found her again, as she started to look desperately through the crowd, having just lost the Doctor and Romana. He was now directly behind her, about twenty feet away. He then made straight for her... when there was a flash! Everybody froze. The entire crowd. Not a single person moved an inch. And a bluish hue enveloped the area.
It was a time grenade.
Suddenly armed commandos wearing anti-chronon suits stormed the shopping area. The suits were black coveralls covered with wires and small metal hubs into which the wires were all interconnected.
The Doctor could only move slowly, being a Time Lord. But everybody else around him was absolutely frozen.
And then the woman upon whom he was sneaking suddenly turned and drew a weapon. It was a beam weapon of some kind, modified to work in a null-time field.
The commandos took cover amongst the frozen crowd members and fired back.
The woman fired again. She looked about and found the Doctor. She turned to cover him.
And then just as suddenly as it had started, everyone unfroze. Everything was exactly as it had been few moments before… except now, there was a shootout going on. Everybody panicked and ran for cover. There was screaming and shouting everywhere.
The Doctor quickly to find Romana amidst the chaos. "Romana!" he shouted. But she was nowhere to be seen.
When the commandos finally fled and the situation had calmed down, the Doctor approached the woman who had been following him. She stumbled from fatigue. The Doctor caught her by the arm. "Oh, dear. You're not well." He helped the woman sit down on a nearby bench. He sat down next to her and took a sealed bottle of ginger pop from of his pocket and offered some to the woman. "Thank you," the woman said, still somewhat dazed. She took a refreshing sip, caught her breath, and then returned the bottle to the Doctor.
The Doctor patted the woman amiably on the arm, "That's the stuff. So, why don't you tell me who you are and why you were following my friend and me and who those commandos were and what they wanted? I realize that's a lot of questions. But it is rather important."
The woman was still breathing heavily from the firefight. "Ah, um, well, my name is Lendo Tempo, and I'm here to arrest you… actually."
"Oh, that all right. Well, I'm the Doctor. And my friend Romana was around here somewhere. And once you get your breath back, we can go and find her. All right?"
"No, I'm afraid not," Lendo said. "I'm going to have to arrest you for unauthorized use of a time vessel. We have been monitoring you."
"Hang on… What makes you think we're not from your own future or some other time when we don't need authorization?"
"Because I am from the future. And therefore I would have recognized your vessel. And I don't."
"Oh. Well, what makes you think we're not from even further in your future, from a time where we've done away with that sort of nonsense?"
The woman thought for a moment. "Are you?"
The Doctor's eyes widened, "Well, no. But you didn't know that."
The woman worried for a moment. "Then… as I said, you are under arrest."
The Doctor got up and then helped the man to stand. "Feeling fit?"
"Yes, I am. Much better now."
"Good, good! Lead on."
They walked through the now empty shopping area, into a nearby parking structure, and made their way to the very top level where they found a large bus-sized vehicle sitting there. A man in uniform stood guard at the hatch. He shook his head at Lendo, "They captured the woman."
"All right. Thank you."
"Do you mean Romana?" the Doctor asked urgently.
"If that's the name of your friend, then yes."
The Doctor turned to go, but the guard in uniform leveled his weapon, "Hold it!"
The Doctor stopped and turned back to them. He held out his hands reluctantly. "Inside," the guard said.
The Doctor nodded and followed Lendo inside. The interior had several large, cushioned chairs. The front area where presumably the cockpit was situated, was behind a large, secure bulkhead door. Two men sat at a computer work station near the rear of the vehicle.
"This is a Doyle / Faukes style time vessel, working on the old anti-chronon principle," the Doctor remarked as he looked about. Then he smiled, "How quaint."
Lendo, the guard from the door, and the two who had been working in the rear all sat down in the cushioned chairs and strapped themselves in. The Doctor sat in one of the two remaining chairs and strapped himself in as well. Lendo pressed a button on an intercom panel on the arm of her chair, "Pilot, we're ready back here."
A voice came over the intercom, "Copy. Taking off."
They felt the craft lift up into the air a moment later. Suddenly, the whole craft began to vibrate violently. "The turbulence is worse than last time," came the voice from the cockpit. It rattled and shook so the point where nobody could see straight!
Minutes went by like this. "Have a bit of trouble, are we?" the Doctor called over the noise.
Lendo grabbed a nearby bag from an adjacent slot. She pointed to the Doctor as sternly as she could, "Just keep quiet!"
The Doctor shrugged.
And then the ship accelerated and rose into the higher dimensions, including the dimension of time. The shaking stopped, but the trip through time was just starting. For those who were not used to it, nausea was usually the instantaneous reaction to this part of the voyage. They spent about five minutes being shaken about and feeling as though they were falling up and back through the tops of their heads. Lendo used the bag she had grabbed. The others all looked nauseous as well, but were able to keep it together. The Doctor whistled Ode to Joy lightly to himself.
And then suddenly the time travel part of their journey was over.
There was a pause as everyone in the passenger area took a moment to relax and breath properly again. "So how far did we just travel?" the Doctor asked.
"About five hundred years."
The Doctor was disappointed. "Oh, is that all?"
The time vessel eventually landed on an enormous air strip in a dry and arid landscape. Through the window, the Doctor could see several other craft with official government and military logos of some kind painted on their sides. They were taxied for several minutes before they were eventually taken straight into a hangar. Two gigantic hangar doors then rumbled closed with an echoing boom behind them!
The hatch to the time vessel opened and Lendo and the others rose to their feet and gestured for their passenger to precede them out of the craft. Once outside, there were several tough-looking armed guards ready to take charge of him.
He was taken into an elevator on the far side of the hangar. Several floors down, he was escorted into a security corridor where he was screened, his pockets were emptied, and he was even given a ticket to collect his things on his way out... whenever that should prove to be.
They proceeded deeper into the facility, passing a large room. There was a long window along the wall so that the Doctor could see rows of desks, at which about a hundred people silently worked on personal computers. At a closer glance into the room, the Doctor was able to determine that they were each observing different time periods. The computer monitors showed video of activities going on in various different times and places. There were also transcripts being printed of all the great peace conferences and declarations of war and so on.
"Welcome to Temporal Affairs."
#
Romana had been blindfolded and shoved into a vehicle of some kind. She could hear that she was sharing the trip with at least five rather angry people who had some rather uncivilized intentions.
She could tell that they were traveling through time, but had no idea how far they had gone through time, nor in which direction.
She was roughly marched out of the vehicle and into a cave system.
Finally, the blindfold was removed roughly. She was surrounded by armed, angry looking people.
Two angry men stood over her. "Can I help you?" she asked calmly.
"We know you can travel through time. We have your time mobile. Or box."
She looked about. The glares and the guns remained rigid. They also had the TARDIS bring brought in with a forklift of some kind.
"We don't know who you are... but you're working for us now."
