38. Time Distortion.

1. Time Challenge.

"I want to do something useful with the rest of my life," Crystelle One says.

A long time previously, Crystelle had had access to an instant Cloning Machine and had made an instant clone of herself (ref. 13). She had gone on to make other clones of herself, but the first clone had been special. She'd sat opposite her clone, each wearing a badge - one said "Master", the other said "Slave". They were the only badges she could lay her hands on at the time. .
That's how she remembers the occasion. Her memory has a habit of embroidering what happened in this area. .
It had been as if she was looking at herself in a mirror and the mirror image had other ideas about what position to sit down in. They had chatted and found they both shared many points of view - all of them, in fact. .

Crystelle had previously asked her husband, Devyon, a DNA Biologist, to use some information she had been given from the Gallifreyan Library to develop a form of regeneration (ref. 12). It was a little bit like the Gallifreyan regeneration, but rather limited.

Unfortunately, the regeneration has been burning their bodies out ever since they tried it out, and as Crystelle's first clone, Crystelle One as she likes to be called, had been on so many Tardis journeys, she's a little older than her original Crystelle, so she's been the first to show serious adverse health signs.

She's been told she only has weeks to live.

Everyone wants to make a positive difference to others, to help others or just to get along positively. Crystelle One feels her impending demise approaching and feels more desperate than ever to do something useful. Something that will count in the Universe.


Many of us feel this way from time to time, more urgently than before. It would be a tragedy to reach the end of one's life having achieved little, but many of us only achieve few things in our lives. Let's make them count for something positive!

For something to count in the Universe, it would be a rare thing, though!

There's another time challenge! Achieve something fresh in only a few weeks!


Crystelle One has been in the sick bay of the Doctor's Tardis recovering from an incomplete regeneration. More recently she's fallen over while trying to do something. Her original Crystelle and her daughter, Chloe, and her friend, Myriad, the Doctor's wife, have been visiting her.

"If I fall over I fall much harder than I did when I was younger," Crystelle One says. "My legs don't bend so well; they like to stay straight, so I fall from my full height instead of collapsing gracefully."
Myriad resists adding that she doesn't bounce quite as well either!

Crystelle One ends out trying to justify why she thinks she's alright to do things and she really doesn't want to be lying down in bed all the time.

"I'll be quite alright," Crystelle One insists. "I'm just a bit off-colour, that's all."
The others know she's just putting on a brave face. They all know she has just weeks to live; the Doctor and the Doctor's Tardis have both said so. There's no getting away from it, and Crystelle One certainly can't get away from it! As Spike Milligan once said – I don't mind dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens! .

The Doctor enters, smartly dressed as usual, perhaps a little over-dressed. His blue dapper suit doesn't look too out of place on him.
"Ah, I thought I'd find you all here," he declares. "I've a challenge for us all!"

A challenge is a very welcome change from their downcast expectations.
"Gallifrey have despatched a small group of Time Consultants to examine an anomaly in the universe!"
"Is that us?" Myriad asks. .
"No, no!" the Doctor says. "That's someone else; the people, that is, not the anomaly... Would you like us to skip along and look over their shoulders and see what's happening?" .

"What are they going to be looking into?" Chloe asks. Being in her twenties, she's the youngest there by a generation, apart from the Doctor who has regenerated recently, and she's keen to go on an adventure.

"Time itself!" the Doctor announces with a flourish. It sounds more absurd as he goes on to laugh and then adjust what he's just said. "Well, in one part of the Universe. But if it's left unchecked, it will affect everywhere in the Universe ... Lights out!"

"How?" Myriad asks. It seems like a practical question as the Doctor appears to be exaggerating.
"Time is accelerating in one part of the Universe," the Doctor says. "And it's getting worse at an alarming rate. People visiting there using Hyperspace transporters take a while to return and have aged considerably when they get home. Clocks bear this out."

"Might that be normal if they were travelling conventionally?" Chloe asks.
"Ah, the speed of light limit," the Doctor relishes a thinking challenge. "Yes, but not when using hyperspace! And this is a recent effect and although it's only found in one part of the Universe, it's spreading rapidly, and it'll spread everywhere in only a short time... I have a theory..." He becomes more serious.
"Are you sharing?" Chloe asks.

The Doctor looks at Chloe. "As with all oddities that suddenly spring up where we've never noticed something before, someone will be behind the thing. Something or someone triggered it to happen just now. Why now? Just when life in the Universe has sprung up? Why not a million years ago? Why not a billion years in the future? Someone's meddling. But who?"

"The Daleks?" Chloe suggests. "They have the evil motives and the brain power."
"They are the most likely," the Doctor acknowledges, "but there are other contenders."
He loves short guessing games, but as the main contender has already been named this somewhat takes the wind out of his sails.

"Could it be by accident?" Chloe asks. "Or is that someone still in control of it?"
"That's quite a possibility," the Doctor admits. "Someone might be trying some new time transportation system out, and it's gone wrong. I'm itching to see what's happened!"
"Is it someone wanting to see the end of time?" Chloe wonders.
"If that's so, then they probably won't be able to get back," the Doctor replies. "If that was so, then they may have short-circuited time itself and everything in the Universe might get sucked into their time short-circuit."

"Sounds awful!" Chloe says.

The Doctor compliments Chloe. "Chloe, I'm extremely glad you're with me if we're right. You've got some great deducing skills."
"I can de-juice an orange in no time," Crystelle quips. .
"And I have my Wristwatch Tardis," Chloe says, ignoring her mother's quip and glowing with pride at her having made her device from Gallifreyan instructions and then miniaturised it to fit into her wristwatch (ref. 29).

"Yes," the Doctor admits, "that might come in useful, yet." He doubts it but is open to giving Chloe some encouragement.

"Shall we go?" the Doctor asks more loudly, to address all present.
"Where?" Chloe asks. "To the Control room?"
"Yes!" the Doctor recognises his accidental dual meaning and turns toward the sick bay door.
"I'm coming too," Crystelle One says emphatically. She's not going to be left out, however ill she seems!


The Doctor and Chloe are the first to arrive in the Control room.

"Shall we go?" the Doctor asks again, this time with his original meaning more apparent.
"Yes," Chloe says glowing with the enthusiasm of youthfulness.
In their enthusiasm, they have no thought to wait for anyone else who happens to be aboard the Tardis at the time...

The Doctor taps a few co-ordinates into his Tardis and pulls the dematerialisation lever. They are on their way.


The Doctor isn't hanging around!