THE ADVENTURES OF A CONSULTING TIME LORD
by Soledad
Disclaimer: Both Dr. Who and Sherlock belong to the BBC. I'm just borrowing them to have some fun.
Author's note: The full version of the A.N.T.H.E.A acronym is the creation of my good friend, Jenn Calaelen, whom I owe my thanks. Credit be given where credit is due. *g*
Chapter 03 – A.N.T.H.E.A
As soon as he left the TARDIS and took his first glimpse, the Doctor couldn't suppress a groan of dismay. Of all places on Earth, his ship had just to pick the Holmes estate to crash land, hadn't she?
In a way it made excellent sense, of course. If anyone, Mycroft Holmes was the most likely person to assist them with their little problem. That still didn't mean that the Doctor actually wanted to meet the renegade Time Lord who'd been living on Earth in human disguise for at last fifty years.
He'd done his level best to avoid such meetings in the past – what counted as the past in his personal timeline, that is – even though, or especially because Mycroft had the annoying tendency to show up at the least convenient moment. Occupying a "minor position in the British government" – and keeping it somehow for half a century, without anyone becoming suspicious – had given the Watcher, as he'd once been known, an unfortunate advantage over the then-exiled Doctor.
Living on Earth on sufferance of UNIT had been bad enough, without his fellow Time Lord being unbearably smug about it. Even now, ten regenerations later, the Doctor felt the old annoyance well up in him.
He was not the least surprised that his arrival had already been noticed. After all, Mycroft had the best possible surveillance system on the planet – and well beyond it: the salvaged central console of a dead TARDIS, trapped on Earth without the heart of the ship that would enable him to leave. It would have noticed the falling of a leaf in the extensive park surrounding the manor house; spotting another TARDIS slamming into the earth behind the building was no real challenge for it.
As expected, it was Anthea who came to look for him: the pretty, doe-eyed brunette with the smooth, ageless face. Mycroft's highly efficient PA as far as most people were concerned. His bed warmer if one believed the gossip columns. The Doctor was probably the only one save for Mycroft himself to know who – what – Anthea really was.
She was wearing a little black dress as she'd done every time they met, few as those times had been, her huge, dark eyes practically fused to her Blackberry device, her well-manicured fingers moving across the touch screen with superhuman speed. As always, the Doctor felt a pang of jealousy at the speed she was constantly receiving and correlating astonishing amounts of data; not even he could keep up with that, and he was several magnitudes faster than other people.
There were cases where organic beings were at definite disadvantage.
"Anthea," she said with a stiff nod, by way of greeting.
A.N.T.H.E.A, as the true identification code of the being facing him would have been spelled – it stood for Artificial Nano-Technology Human-form Executive Assistant, a definition so stupid that whoever had come up with it should have been shot on the spot – finally looked up from her Blackberry. Her luminous eyes turned opaque for a moment as she performed at least a dozen different scans on him within 4.5 seconds.
"You've regenerated," she stated the obvious.
"No kidding," he replied dryly.
She blinked again, her fingers moving over the touch screen of the Blackberry in a blur, without her needing to look at what she was doing.
"Come," she said abruptly. "Himself is waiting."
"And we can't possibly make him wait for a nanosecond too long," the Doctor commented sarcastically.
Anthea ignored him – sarcasm was wasted on her anyway – and led her into the house without a further word.
~TBC~