The Loop: Chapter Three
"I appreciate it's quite a lot to take in." said River.
Ghost was sitting on a chair, huddled under a large pink blanket with a motif of yellow ducklings around the edge. He didn't think he'd ever be warm again. The memory of the terrible blackness and the bone gnawing cold kept rearing up. He shuddered. I just fainted. I just didn't feel well. He'd woken up on the floor again, this time wrapped up in bedclothes. He had been too weak to move, and he had to lie there, letting her hold his hand and try to explain what had happened.
She pushed a large mug of hot tea across the table towards him and he grabbed it, hungrily. His hands were still shaking.
"It doesn't feel real." said Ghost. "Roach is dead. Everyone's dead. I'm meant to be dead." He tried to focus on this fact. Roach couldn't be dead. He was Roach. He was called Roach because he just didn't die...
"I'm sorry." said River. "There was nothing we could do. He was gone."
Ghost didn't hear her. "Shepherd killed him." He felt like he was watching it happen, over and over again, though a pane of glass, like it was a film. "Shepherd wanted to kill me. He..." He trailed off, unable to find the right words. He reached under the blanket to touch his chest, where he'd felt the bullet tear through his body, but there was nothing.
"The nanites are very good. They can fix you up without a trace... as long as they get it right."
"But he shot me. I felt it happen!" The skin where he knew the bullet had hit him felt strange, slightly number than the rest of his chest, but there was no mark, nothing to indicate anything had ever happened.
"Yes." River spoke very slowly and carefully, like she was speaking to a particularly slow child. "It did happen, but we fixed you." She pushed a tall bottle across the table and Ghost recognised the silver fluid he'd vomited up. "Microscopic machines." She said "You put them in, they sort the problem."
"I've never seen them before." He said, confused.
"That's because they won't be invented until a hundred years after you were born." She replied, with a charming smile.
"It's an awful lot to try to explain at once! Probably best not to, really." Ghost turned to look to see the man slide out from under the central pillar of the room. He stood up, dusted himself off and squared his bow tie. Ghost watched him as he started to fiddle with the buttons and knobs on the panel. "Suffice to say, you're technically dead, except you're obviously not, and you're currently sitting in a time travelling spaceship. Simple!" He waved the strange tool Ghost had picked up earlier. "I'm the Doctor, this is the TARDIS. You've met River."
River shot him a warning look.
"You're a doctor?"
"No. I'm the Doctor. She's a professor though. Archeology. Clever. Beautiful"
Ghost looked at River. She raised an eyebrow.
"Which begs the question," said the Doctor "Who are you?"
"Simon." Said Ghost.
"Yes! Lieutenant Simon Riley, codenamed Ghost." The Doctor turned round and started tapping on a keyboard attached to the pillar in the centre of the room. Ghost watched lights flash along the pillar, course over the wires and a strange glow started to build around it. He tensed, ready to spring away in case it exploded.
"It's alright," said River. "It does that."
There was sharp crack and an explosion of sparks flew out of one of the panels.
"And sometimes that." She smiled.
The Doctor leant down and stared at an image that had appeared in the space in front of him, He waved away the purplish smoke that the sparks had left behind. "Hmm. Blah, blah. Parachute Regiment. SAS. Oh! Love their hats! Had beret thing about a hundred years ago, doesn't really go with this face. Anyway! Seconded to Anglo-American joint task force, murdered by General Dwight Shepherd on the 17th of June 2016. About right? Well. Apart from the murder thing, obviously. Oh, wait. Body was never recovered." He grinned manically at Ghost.
The words washed over him, and he sat, stunned when the Doctor had finished speaking. He'd been murdered.
"I've been murdered." He said, automatically.
"Sort of." Said the Doctor. "Obviously, not actually murdered, because you're still here. Alive."
"Why does it say I'm dead then?"
"Certainly seems to be a good answer, in the face of the evidence."
"But I'm not dead."
"Correct."
Ghost considered this impeccably logical and sensible statement which still seemed to make no sense at all. He decided not to think about for the time being, because it hurt his head. He thought about something that had been bothering him since he woke up. "Where am I?" he asked.
"This the TARDIS!" said the Doctor, turning a circle round and waving his arms at everything in the room.
"It will help if you think of it as a sort of space ship." said River. "It will also help if you think that space ships are real. I'd also recommend that you readjust your worldview to include the fact that time travel is possible and that we can travel in both space and time, which, if you can manage this too, are sort of the same thing."
"This is a joke, right?" said Ghost. He started to laugh, nervously "It's a big joke. It was Roach right? Roach loves this sort of thing! Where did he get you two from?" He smiled, looking expectantly at River. "He must have spiked my drink or something!"
She shook her head. "I'm sorry."
"Time travelling spaceship?" He laughed, an unhinged giggle. "That was the real kicker!"
River frowned. "It's true. He's dead."
"Until you said-"
"It's not a joke! This is real." She folded her arms "If you don't believe me, why don't you really see what's outside that door."
"Fine!" said Ghost. He pulled the blanket around him, stood up and walked over the door again. "You really had me going! Can't believe I fell for it!" he said, shaking his head at them as he grabbed the handle and pulled it open.
Then he turned, and the infinity of the universe hit him the face.