Light shone in through the annoying crack in the curtains. Irritably, one Sheriff Jack Carter rolled over in an effort to ignore the call of the day, only to see the time on his well-placed alarm clock.

8:32

It took him a moment to remember why time was a relevant matter, and why human beings didn't simply just evolve into slugs that could sleep all day and gain food stuff from the air or something when it occurred to him. Something very big occurred to him, something that would get him in one heck of a lot of trouble. Work! Breakfast! The daily routine! His realization about his place in the human existence startled him so much that he rolled out of bed, successfully catching not only the annoying curtains but also the cord to the well-placed alarm clock and dragging them down with him until he was a great caterpillar of blankets and clock-cord that had begun blaring it's alarm wildly.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

Carter pulled on his uniform, all beige with no fun, which when fully complete gave him such an acute resemblance to Andy Griffith that while pausing to look in the mirror for a brief second to make sure his badge was straight; Carter moaned to himself about needing to get a less black-and-white haircut.

Yanking on his boots Carter hurried out the door to the small rented home he was living in; 23 Main Street, Littleton, Iowa. He powerwalked across the street to the police station and grinned sheepishly at his team who were doing what they do almost every morning; shaking their heads while pushing him a coffee and breakfast sandwich. Carter's team was, in his humble opinion, the best in all of small-town existence. With Co-Sheriff Samual Vimes and Deputy Emma Swann at his side, the three saw to it that no dog was lost, no graffiti un-cleaned, and no drunk wandered the streets raving.

"Alarm not go off again?" Emma said conversationally, not looking up from the paper: The Little Babble; the front page advertising a sale on stamps and discussing a church pot-luck that had occurred in the previous week.

"Only after I woke up" Carter replied gruffly, plopping cream and sugar into his coffee. "Now, anything crazy happening today?"

Vimes looked up at him from the one computer, his scar overly-dramatizing his features; "Tesla's drunk again, sociopath guy won't leave his house, and that Weasel Woman-"

"Weasley" Emma corrected without looking up from the Babble.

"Weasely woman's convinced he's dead- oh and that Eddie Arlette guys dog has chased the Kanes cat up a tree again"

"Again?" Carter groaned. That dog, he was pretty certain, was not only part pit-bull, but was kin to Satan too.

"Again" Emma said, putting down The Babble, "Best get to business"

And so the daily routine began. First the threesome stopped by the bar to get the town drunks either home, to Doctor House or to the police station if need be. Which, in the case of one particularly troublesome fellow, a Mr. Nikola Tesla, it was almost always the police station. Next, they stopped by Mrs. Weasley's home, who with her giant frizz of brown hair most insistently told them that her neighbor, a rather peculiar man by the name of Mr. Holmes hadn't left his house for over a week. From her home they went to Mr. Holmes, which was always an odd…adventure. Vimes would knock on the door and it would be opened just a crack- revealing a pale thin face with pin-prick black eyes. They would talk briefly and the face, Mr. Holmes, would insist that he was quite all right and that he was merely bored. Oh, and he usually brought up the "sociopath" card before closing the door on them. They then of course told Mrs. Weasley, that no, Mr. Holmes was not dead and would you please stop worrying about him, he's quite all right.

"Do you get federal funding if you're a sociopath?" Carter was wondering aloud as they made their way to deal with what was possibly the worst part of the day. The dog.

The dog's name was Pete, and he was a nasty black-and-white devil with a long flat muzzle and a tendency to not only growl, but chew on everything. Including Sheriff Carter.

"Oh Sheriff! Good you're finally here!" Standing at the base of only the largest tree in all of Littleton were the Kane kids, Sadie and Carter, and also Mr. Eddie Arlette, the owner of "Pete". Now somehow, and Carter was never sure how, the Kane's cat Muffin would make it out of the house, find herself under Pete's paws, and Pete, being a dog of little imagination, would proceed to chase Muffin up the biggest darn tree in Littleton, sometimes climbing the great oak-beast himself just to get at Muffin.

Carter didn't even bother listening to the kids, Eddie, or the dogs explanation for how both cat and dog had wound up in the tree, more specifically on opposite ends, the cat being the farthest left possible and the dog being the farthest right possible. Carter simply began climbing the tree. Vimes had some fear of heights (so he insisted) and Emma well, he couldn't see her up a tree- it wouldn't be right of him to make her climb the thing, so Carter ALWAYS climbed the tree. Carter started with the cat, 'cause usually once the cat was out of the tree the dog would follow soon after. Today this was not the case. The dog had genuinely gotten himself stuck, and so, after Carter dropped Muffin into a yelling Sadie Kane's outstretched arms, he had to climb towards the demon-dog Pete.

"Nice boy- good…stay" Carter was saying as he crawled across the tree on his knees towards the growling beast. "Now just hold still…"

"Grrr!"

"Don't worry- come on now" Carter stretched out an arm, to have it snapped at.

"Grrr!"

Carter stopped and glared at the thing for a few seconds. Eddie was shouting up something about getting his favorite chew toy to lure him down. Dogs. Why do people like them? Carter wondered as he made a move for Pete again. As he lunged, Pete moved, jumping up and onto Carters back and walking across and down Carter until he was on the ground again. This, for the dog was good- gravity was a nice thing. For Carter however...

The darn dog had thrown him off balance and he found himself falling out of Littleton's biggest tree, landing on his back cursing.

"Sorry- Pete sometimes thinks he's an acrobat. You need help at all?" Eddie was leaning over him, offering a hand, which Carter took, though still glaring at Pete, who was now sitting there with a look of puppy-like innocence, which, in all truth really means pure evil.

Carter grumbled the whole way back to the police station, visions of ice-packs and dead dogs floating in his head.

When the daily routine was broken. Normally, after dealing with the daily cases they went back to the station, had lunch, loafed about for a bit, then it would turn out that some kids were either out drinking by the high school or spraying graffiti on the church, and they'd chase them down, bring them home and by the time that was done it was time to head home. Nothing else ever happened in Littleton. Nothing. Until right then, that is, for Carter, (Emma and Vimes had already made their way across the street to the police station) as a car came like a mad-bull, swerving wildly left and right, however rather than have a hatred towards red this bull was anti-beige. There was screeching of brakes as a bright yellow kit car with an estimated age somewhere around 100 years old collided with Carter, sending him over the windshield so that once the shock had passed he realized he was on the wrong end of the car; the license plate reading WHO 1.

"Terribly sorry!" A voice cried out, leaping from the car and pulling Carter up with more enthusiasm than should be allowed after what had probably been a major accident. The other person (presumably the driver) was looking Carter over from top to bottom and was becoming increasingly excited.

"Thought so! Knew it! And here I was a tad afraid I was going crazy- but then of course that's simply because they've tapped into my cerebral cortex and applied a type C holographic-reality with a slight ouch of a number 45 neural interface, probably from Klom if I'm not mistaken"

Carter looked the man over from top to bottom, his brain working again. The man was somewhere in his early twenties, with one of those wool coats British people tended to wear, and a garishly red bowtie.

"What?" Carter exclaimed; he'd seen the Doctor around town, he was some sort of physicist- he taught at the high school and he'd always seemed a bit off, but never so off as to intentionally crash his car into a police officer and start yammering away about…well, Lord knows what.

"You're not injured!" The Doctor said beaming, "see- take a look at yourself- not a scratch on you!"

"What are you talking about- you just hit me at like 70 miles an hour with your car! Of course I'm injured, see-" Carter stopped. There was no blood, there were no bruises. His beige Andy Griffith suit wasn't even dirty. "I'm not…whoa, whoa, whoa, this is some kind of crazy"

The doctor stood there still grinning ear to ear, Emma, however, had had enough of it.

"You're under arrest Doc- you just intentionally hit this man, the sheriff!"

Which is exactly how the Doctor landed himself in the police station cell, and Carter at Doctor Houses, getting checked over for things like internal bleeding, which is generally pretty bad.

"Not a scratch on ya" House said, feigning a lack of surprise. "Guess god likes you"

"Not a scratch? But he hit me at practically 70 miles an hour!" Carter protested, unwilling to believe that he could have possibly come out without a scratch.

"Don't look at me, I just tell you what's wrong with you- you tell me how it happened" House retorted back, "Now get out- there's plenty of sick people here who are just dying to come here, unlike you, now boot it!"

Carter wandered the streets in a daze; the moon hanging low and bright so that only a few stars were visible. What happened? I should be dead- or at least bleeding my guts out…or something. His head buzzed. Something didn't make sense, something that he couldn't put his finger on. He peered into the bar as he wandered by- the regulars already in their positions. Tesla with roughly three bottles in front of him, Stark looking gloomily into what Carter guessed was some "very hard stuff" and Billy looking as he always did: depressed. It occurred to Carter just then just how sad and pathetic Littleton was, all three of those men were supposed to be, well, super smart. Instead they spent their days drinking their intelligence to nothingness so that their little gray cells withered away unused. As he walked along more caught him as odd. That dumb cat and dog repeated their chase every day and almost always in the same way. In fact, he was a cop! Crimes (or random acts of evil dogginess) were not supposed to be routine or run of the mill; they should have definition. Be different from each other, unique. That didn't happen in Littleton- in fact Carter remembered when he used to work… elsewhere. Somewhere. Somewhere where the crimes were anything but ordinary… but where..? Why couldn't he remember? Come to think of it, all he could remember was waking up every day and going across the street to the police station. There never was anything else. At least, not that he could recall. And it had been the same every day, except today. Today he got hit by a car.

I got to talk to the Doctor. Carter thought to himself, and not just any doctor: THE Doctor.