Chapter two
The answer came to me in the form of a memory stick. It was shaped like a lego and I found it taped to the door of my locker on a Monday morning, a few weeks after I'd had my first suicidal thoughts. That's the word for them, right? Seems a bit clinical to me. I thought of them as morning mooches, but I guess the terminology became defunct when I started thinking about it during the
day as well. But I digress.
The lego was red, and it was stuck up there with a square of shiny duct tape. I peeled it off and opened up the little lid, examining it from every angle. There was no writing, no kind of explanation. I assumed it had been put there by mistake, but I decided it would be best to take a look anyway because I'm a nosy little shit and it was my locker.
It's weird, how much that little mystery improved my day. Having been numb inside for so long, the tiny spark of curiosity felt... surprising. As hard as I tried to prepare myself for anticlimax, it refused to go away. I sat in class, I thought about it. I ate my lunch, I thought about it. Walking home, I thought about nothing else.
Part of me wanted not to know, just to stave off inevitable disappointment. But that's the thing about curiosity: it makes you do all kinds of stupid shit. I rushed through my homework, and was firing up the laptop and plugging the lego in before you could say "self restraint".
I opened it up. There were five files, each with a girl's name: Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara.
You can imagine how fucking weird that looked.
I thought I'd stumbled on some serial killer's secret database or something. So I clicked on Rose, and a big bastard of a word document popped up, over fifty pages long.
It was her story, right from the beginning.
I read it all the way through. There were pictures, personal accounts, military reports and witness statements, and large blocks of text filling in the gaps that read like wikipedia entries. Some sections, like her childhood, were brushed over, but the later entries went into some intense detail. When I was done with her, I went straight on to Martha. I couldn't help myself. The curiosity I had been so afraid of losing grew stronger and stronger with each new file. I read until three in the morning, hiding my laptop under the duvet when my folks came home from their respective jobs. And I must say, it was a wild ride.
Of course, the presence of aliens had become widely known over the past decade. Seemed like we couldn't go a year without some scaly fucker trying to explode London, usually at Christmas. But it had made a weirdly small impact, aside from a spike in the popularity of winter getaway cottages. This, though. This was something else altogether. A manic demon-god, a face changing time traveller, picking up babes in his phonebox and getting into as much danger as possible, leaving a trail of dead bodies as he went. A crazy ancient dickhead from beyond the stars.
It had gone past being too weird to be true, and come full circle until it all felt too weird to have been made up.
And I loved it.
I was wide awake when I finished, so I went online and found more. Not much, but more. Conspiracy sites, for the most part, presenting half-assed "proof" that he was more than just an obscure internet legend. People who thought they'd seen him in boots, that sort of shit. But it was enough evidence for me.
When I finally made myself shut down my laptop and get horizontal, my mind was still buzzing. An idea had taken hold, just a little one, but with huge implications.
What if I could convince him to take me next? A successor to all those other girls? There didn't seem to be much of a quota for coming along. You mostly had to be in the right place at the right time.
I didn't like the idea of him, specifically. "The Doctor", as he called himself. Hiding your name is one thing, but changing your face as well? Asshole clearly had something to hide. But that didn't matter. I could see the universe, fight monsters and robots, never have two days the same.
And of course, die at the first opportunity.