The plump faced young woman was running for her life. Beads of perspiration poured down her brown face, sweat plastering her kinky braids to the sides of her head.

The shiny metal men were coming. Men with barrel chests and cylinders for limbs.

They shouted for her to not resist, but then they shot people.

When she saw the odd square head appliance, she darted around a corner, narrowly avoiding a laser blast.

It was an old hotel. Doors everywhere. All of them locked. She tried door after door, but none of them opened.

She was about to give up on trying the rest of them until she noticed something amiss about the one next to the Coke machine.

All the rest of the rooms had computerized door locks that she couldn't open, but this one had a brass handle, the kind that belonged to the front door on a house.

She ran to it, and when she pressed down on the button, she found it opening.

Without a second thought, she shoved her way in and shut the door.

The interior looked nothing like the old dilapidated hotel room she expected, nor even a deteriorating suite.

The place looked like a bachelor's apartment had collided with an airplane in midair, a smooth streamlined vehicular interior scattered with piles of laundry and what appeared to be video game peripherals. You did no so much walk into the room as you waded through the discarded pizza boxes, underwear and dirty dishes.

Handsome imitation leather car seats served as coat racks . Bewildering control panels held empty CD cases, machine parts of unknown purpose, and the occasional soda can.

A rodent of indeterminate species squeaked at her from beneath a Steelers jersey before darting under a magazine with aliens on the cover.

Her foot bumped into a railing, and she found herself staring at an enclosure containing a big glass table with fancy light up displays set in the surface.

"Fail," said a monotone voice. "Stupid chameleon circuit."

She looked up and saw a slouching sloth-like figure playing an X-Box. He was tall, with wide, flabby arms and a round belly. His hair was short and dark, his skin pasty white.

"This isn't a hotel room, you know."

She stared into his glasses. "I understand that part."

"You found your way in, so you can find your way back out."

"Please. There's metal men out there that want to kill me."

"Cybermen. Right." Sigh. "You're killing me, Smalls."

He sunk rather than seated himself in a chair, slouching to the point where only his hair could be seen above the back of the seat. His chubby fingers attacked the controls like the world's laziest pianist.

The entire room shook sideways, then the noises in the hallway stopped.

"There. It's safe. You can leave now."

"What, just go back out into the hotel?"

"You're at a zoo. There's no cybermen. I checked. Look outside."

She tried the door, but it wouldn't budge. "It's stuck."

"That's because I changed the TARDIS into a bronze bear. Push harder. It'll open."

She tried it. Nothing. "It's still stuck."

"You're killing me, Smalls." He whispered it like a prayer. With a groan, he got up, plodding up to the door in loping ape-like movements.

After fighting and cussing at the door for a moment, it popped open, and she could see a giraffe in an enclosure, as well as a concession stand.

"See? You're right behind the Africa exhibit. You can hide out here for awhile until the cybermen go away. There's plenty of food."

"And what will you be doing in the meantime?"

He shrugged. "Once I beat Cleveland, I've got some important DVD's to watch."

"So you've got this...powerful device, and you're just going to sit here and watch movies?"

He shrugged. "You can never get tired of the Avengers." His shoulders slumped. "Honestly, I've stopped caring. I've seen too much of what's going on out there. Please go. I don't want to have to deal with this."

She sighed. "Maybe I don't want to go out there. Maybe I will be all right for a few minutes, but then they'll find me, and I'll be running for my life again."

"Fine," he sighed. "Stay here." And he went back to his game.

"What is this place?"

"It's called a room for nosy people. It contains a time console and other things you shouldn't know about."

She climbed over the rail, staring at the table. It looked like a computer. It had digital displays on it like they had on spy movies, but then it had what looked like a giant lava lamp in the center, a thing that changed color every five minutes while glowing flecks and blobs of light floated to the top.

"Who are you?" she asked the stranger.

"I'm me."

"I mean, what's your name?"

"Time lords don't have names. Call me I.T. if you want."

"You're a `time lord'?"

He shrugged. "I don't actually rule anything. Time repairman is probably a better description. But everyone on my planet calls us time lords."

"So you're a time traveler."

He only shrugged.

"Have you been to the future?"

"Yeah." He said it like he were merely telling her he'd just paid a phone bill. "It sucks. Heterosexual parents can't get WIC and child support because gay people are claiming welfare and other benefits for the cats and cloned children. There are no more trees, and child marriage is legal. What's worse, the Royals won the World Series."

"Wait a minute. Child marriage is legal in the future?"

He rubbed his face. "German shepherds have more rights than children."

She frowned. "You did say they got WIC..." She shook her head. "So they've basically legalized child abuse and molestation."

"I didn't make it up."

"And no one stopped them?"

"There are vigilantes, but the government took away everyone's guns, so they mostly stab people. Like I said, you don't want to go there."

She rolled her eyes. "You're a space alien."

"I can tell you're astonished by my otherworldly appearance."

"You look human."

"You wouldn't say that if you saw what's in my pants."

She laughed.

"I have two hearts, and my face changes every ten years." He offered her a control. "You want to play Cleveland?"

"There's an army of robots outside killing people and you want to play Madden NFL?"

The stranger sighed. "Fine. Fine. I'll take care of the cybermen."

IT guy slowly shuffled through the messy room, seating himself at the glowing controls again, poking buttons with a very slight increase of haste. The room shook, then tilted, making all kinds of grinding sounds.

"What's your name?" the stranger said without enthusiasm.

"Kaluki," the girl stammered. "So, what, do I just call you I.T.?"

"Pretty much."

She rolled her eyes. "So what are you doing?"

"Moving the TARDIS."

"What is this TARDIS thing you keep talking about?"

"Television and Recreations, Diversions in Space. You're standing in it."

Kaluki shook her head. "Where are you moving us to now?"

"Vortrug. I need to think."

"Do...we have time for that?"

"This is a time machine. You can always go back a few hours."

"Seriously. A time machine."

"Yes." He rubbed his face in apparent frustration. "Hold on."

He pushed some buttons, frowning at the glowing readouts.

Kaluki pointed to a television hooked to a computer the size of a hotel refrigerator. "What's this?"

"It's a multidimensional VCR. You put in a tape and it's different every time you watch it."

She rolled her eyes. "So you're always discovering something new. How is that different from a normal VCR?"

"In a normal VCR, the plot is always the same. I've been watching Batman Returns for a week, and it keeps changing. The first one I saw involved Bruce Wayne taking Catwoman's boss to court, and the guy eventually ends up in jail. It was kind of interesting because in that one Batman actually marries Catwoman. The version I saw before that one had Batman dying halfway through the film because Michael Keaton got killed by a collapsing light rigging during the production. It always changes. I have to warn you, that thing is super addictive."

She stared at the glowing panel on th side of the `fridge.' "How does it always change?"

"It's in a cross dimensional limbo," she said with a shrug. "And it gets really hard to follow when Batman and Catwoman are literally cats from planet Poxmiq, or Jihadist Moslems. I think the worst one I saw was the one where Batman and the Penguin are friends and Ms. Kyle brings them cake and cookies."

"That's...fascinating." She frowned. It had been the most the stranger had ever spoken to her all at once, and it was mostly geek talk she couldn't care less about.

A loud submarine bell rang, and Kaluki felt a heavy thud beneath her feet.

I.T. stood up. "We're here."

He opened the door, and Kaluki found herself staring into sort of an immense shopping mall with a vast skylight and windows overlooking a massive gas giant smeared with green and purple clouds.

"Time and space," she muttered.

"Pretty much."

The place was crammed with strange looking creatures of various sizes and shapes, some vaguely human-like, others not so much. Reptile people, spiny porcupine people, little hairy people with segmented eyes, a giant cockroach in a dress, eyeless blue beetle faced women wearing double decker sports bras.

Suddenly a giant quadruple eyed grasshopper face filled her field of vision, its mandibles wrinkling its pale caucasian skin as it chomped on some kind of rolled cigarette or a joint. Its nictating eyelids refreshed its large black eyes as it tilted its head at an angle on its stumpy neck.

"Pardon me, miss," the thing said in a demonic sounding voice, its voice smelling like rotten bagels and carpet cleaner. 'You got a light?"

Kaluki opened her mouth to scream, then fainted.