Retro Worm Hole

Thirteen

Herbert Henry Asquith was looking over paperwork in his office in the Prime Minister's residence, that being Number 10, Downing Street. He was about to be very taken by surprise, but he didn't yet know it. Currently, he was most likely wondering what to do about the fact just recently his entire female kitchen staff had been fired and replaced with men who had less of a respect for the rules than the women did. He skimmed over some executive pieces of parliamentary paper he was probably supposed to be signing, bored to tears, when he heard some noises on the windowpane behind him. It sounded like a scurrying of fingertips and nails running across the glass. He assumed it was only a bird getting disoriented by something – a carriage carrying a lantern, perhaps – but he went to have a look anyway. After all, safety and caution didn't cost a penny.

Asquith drew back the curtain and saw outside nothing but the dull navy sky of London, with the smog from the factories floating on the horizon blurred by the raindrops on the glass. And his own pale, nearly unrecognisable reflection looking back at him. Sighing, blaming a bird, he let the curtain drop back down and turned to sit back at his desk. But he was surprised to see a woman sitting there in his place, rifling through his own paperwork.

"I say!" he exclaimed, "What the bloody hell do you think you're-"

"Shh, watch your language," the girl, who looked very young but had something oddly elderly in her mannerisms, told him sternly, "I'm just reading over some of your documents, Herbie, and I'd like it if you take a seat?"

"Take a seat? In my own office? I'm the Prime Minister, you can't-"

"Oh, but you see," she turned and smiled coldly at him, "I can." Then she clicked her fingers and he felt his limbs overtaken by some external force, dragging and contorting him until he marched like a clockwork soldier to the chair on the other side of the desk and flung himself down into its plush, leather arms. There he found himself unable to move.

"What the devil have you done to me!?"

"Ooh, I'm not sure. Maybe you're a robot? Maybe I'm using witchcraft? I could have a voodoo doll in my pocket."

"To think, a woman breaking into Downing Street, and woman and an American."

"Calm down, Herbie. The Americans are gonna save your butts in France in five years' time," she said absently, skimming his papers while he remained fixed rigidly to his desk, "I've been hearing some very clandestine rumours about a certain amount of social upheaval with your European neighbours – have you been to visit Franz Ferdinand recently?"

"The Archduke?"

"I'd say hop on that train before it leaves the station and gets shot by a Serbian. But I'm not here to talk about the end of British society as we know it, because it's a few years too early for all that jazz," she said, "Now, I'm finding these pieces of paper of yours totally interesting, Herbie. Because here we have a lot of requests for money from random branches of government and a few industrialists – which is funny because a liberal Prime Minister such as yourself shouldn't really, like, be giving money away to industrialists. We have taxes for a reason, they're the ones who should be giving you money. Unless they're, oh, I don't know – funding a secret government project to brainwash the female population?" she said this with a smile on her face, moving all the papers about and leaning towards him with her elbows on the desk.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," she said, "In name and nothing else since, y'know-" here she fake-laughed for a moment "-women can't be doctors. Here's the thing, Herbo, did you maybe one night a while back start getting headaches? Maybe your wife and your kids have noticed you've been a bit colder with them, harsh, spending more time at work, and gradually all of your opinions have been changing until you're carrying out some secret Tory missions. This is about the turning point in history where the crown stops having power and the state starts to gain it. Otherwise you can bet your bottom dollar I'd be hanging around the royal suite of Sandringham waiting for His Royal Highness George V to show up so I could bonk him on the head and use a sewing needle to pick a tiny little worm out of his brain. Because you bet your ass I've got a sewing needle all primed and ready to go."

"What are you trying to do, then?" Asquith asked her, but she was sure that she was no longer talking to H. H. Asquith. She'd met him before, anyway, but in a different regeneration, and he was an alright kind of guy back then. She had to hurry it up, though, because Clara was hiding out on the window ledge in the shadows after the pair of them had to climb across and phase in through the wall. She couldn't leave her just floating there to get spotted.

"A parasitic brain-worm invasion of the British Empire – I'll admit you kinda had me stumped for most of it. If it wasn't for a close friend of mine the world's greatest detective, we might not have been put onto this at all. And another… acquaintance we share. I think you know Emmeline Pankhurst, don't you?"

"You're a Pank?"

"That depends on if she ever gives me my spanner back… now, Herbie, I know it's not you I'm talking to. I know it's the worm. I know it's controlling you, making you walk and talk, pulling all the strings like in that episode of Spongebob where Plankton remote-controls Spongebob to try and steal the Krabby Patty formula." He stared at her. "What's the worm called, Herbster? Don't tell me they're shy?"

"We are the Oth," he said.

"Finally! A name! A bright new species I've never heard of – it's always a downer to run into some aliens while they're carrying out their plan of world domination. Though, the excitement's totally still there," she said, then repeated for herself, "The Oth… interesting, interesting. What else is interesting is that you Oth are a hive mind, aren't you? Or you're interconnected. A telepathic field, probably, so that you can communicate with each other in whatever weird, wormy way you like to talk. Since you're finding it so hard to legitimately control Herbie right now.

"Listen," she said softly, "Herb's gonna be fine. But Wormy? Wormy might not make the trip back home."

"You can't hurt us."

"Not yet. But, uh, how many people have you killed? Mostly men, I assume, but plenty of women before you built your machines. It wouldn't surprise me if you had a hand in Victoria's death – because I met her and lemme tell you, the girl was spry even when she was getting on a bit," Thirteen said.

"You don't talk like anyone else on this planet."

"I haven't heard of you, you haven't heard of me, that's fair enough. The name Gallifrey probably doesn't mean a thing," Thirteen said. Going by the flat look on Asquith's face, it didn't. "But you'll remember me after this, when I write my name in your proverbial blood. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself, but your occupation of this planet is going to end tonight, Wormy, I can promise you that. I just need the trigger phrase."

"The what?"

"The code-word that unlocks your mental conditioning of the brainwashed women in Lambeth," Thirteen said, "Maybe the population of Lambeth is tiny and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, taking into account the gigantic population of the globe, but I can't stand to see what you've done to them. So how do you stop the conditioning?"

"You can't."

"You definitely can," she said, "And you've got one more chance to tell me before I stop playing nice. Because it'll be something niche and weird and 'masculine' like some extra-fast explanation of the offside rule or a porn web address. Are you gonna tell me how to reverse the subliminal programming?"

"You cannot reverse it," he lied. She'd been prepared for this, so she cleared her throat and stood up. "Are you leaving?"

"Yeah, I've given up," she said, but then looked around the room and commented, "I see you've got a gramophone?" She walked over to it and lifted the needle, in spite of his protests, and took the record off it, "What's this, Bach? I'm gonna keep this as covering my expenses – you, Herbie, have no idea what a Bach vinyl like this would be worth in 2024." So she did take it and stowed it in her bag, "But don't worry man, I've got a replacement right here." And she drew another 12" record out of her bag, this one in a battered cardboard sleeve. "Y'know I'm not the biggest fan of Cyndi Lauper, and I can't for the life of me remember why I carry this damn thing around but, uh, I've got a feeling you won't be too keen on it."

"Don't try and stop us, woman, you won't succeed," he said, but she had a feeling that Girls Just Wanna Have Fun might change his mind. Not just the song, the song was a coincidence, but she'd added a few… extra grooves. Of her own design.

"Okay, so, time for a little bit of a history lesson, what do you know about the year 1988?"

"You're talking about the future. You can't know the future."

"I'm from the future. Now, anyway, consumerism makes people cynical. In 1988, there was this movie came out called They Live where this guy, Roddy Piper, he discovers that all the bourgeoisie are actually aliens brainwashing people into buying and procreating while they reap the rewards," she explained, "It's a cult hit, I make my wife watch it on bank holidays and she asks me if that's what I'm doing on Earth – and I say don't be crazy, what kind of aliens would do something like that? Well, the Oth, I guess.

"Anyway, that's 1988. Same decade there was also a case of a teenage suicide after he listened to a Black Sabbath song and shot himself – subliminal messages were blamed there; they said if you played it backwards you could hear a secret message. Then, of course, The Simpsons did it. But they've done everything. And then South Park did that, but… I digress. I'm trying to educate you on the finer points of poppy, feminist anthems here." And she let the needle drop on the gramophone onto her original pressing of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and let Cyndi Lauper take it away. It took just until she started singing "I come home in the morning light," (with the Doctor humming along), for Herbie to scream. Then she lifted the needle immediately.

"What did you do? That music-"

"Yeah, the older generation are never a fan of the music of tomorrow. Just wait until your granddaughters start dancing to Elvis, man – he's gonna get banned from TV for his pelvic thrusts. And after that The Beatles, and then in the next twenty years you'll have to make way for Ella Fitzgerald. Basically, at this level, all Cyndi Lauper's gonna do is cause you unimaginable pain, because it's set to play an extra note over the top which is well out of the range of human hearing. But not Wormy's hearing. Wormy will go boom if you don't tell me the code, and I don't think Wormy wants to go boom." Then she let the needle drop again. The worm wasn't going to explode yet, it would only do that if she sonicked the gramophone. Which she was planning on doing, as soon as she got the code from Asquith.

"Stop! STOP! I'm begging you!" Asquith shouted, still held tightly in the chair by Clara, who was probably watching from outside through a crack in the curtain. She could probably hear everything that was going on.

"Why? I don't think it's that bad, really, maybe a little crackly in parts…"

"Oh daddy dear you know you're still number one, but girls they wanna have fun," Cyndi Lauper, who hadn't even been born in 1912, crooned.

"Honestly, Herb, I'll just put it on loop if you don't tell me," she said, turning the volume up on the gramophone so that people couldn't hear his screaming. Not that it mattered, the doors were all locked, and his whole house staff were male. Soon they would be liberated from control of the Oth as well. "I can listen to Cyndi Lauper for hours, but I don't know about the rest of the building. This song is a classic." He did last for one full round of the song, one and a half full rounds in fact, until the pain of the worm writhing around in his brain just got too much and Asquith shouted for her to stop, the code was in his drawer. She turned off the gramophone. "Y'know if you're lying to me I'll just turn it back on?"

"I'm not lying – it's written down, it's long, too long to remember, it's in the locked desk, you need the key."

"Key? I doubt it," she said, taking out her sonic screwdriver and crouching down behind the desk to get to the locked drawer, the latch of which switched open quickly and revealed a whole lot of useless paper. She sighed and took it out and put it on a heap on the desk, "It's not written in invisible ink or something, is it? And when I say 'invisible ink' I mean semen, which works in the same way. Although this screwdriver doubles as a UV light now I made it purple. Pretty cool, huh?"

"I don't understand half the things you're saying."

"I'd be worried if you did, Herb. What is it about Herberts in government? There's you and then you've got Hoover and the collapse of the American and global economy still to come… although his wife did bake some good cookies once, I took some in a tin, but my daughter prefers her cookies with more… seafood. Ah-ha. Is this it?" She found a piece of card while she had been rambling on about this and that. She skimmed it. "Are you kidding me? This is the most ironic thing I've ever seen – your damn worms picked a tongue-twister?"

"It's nothing to do with me," Asquith said.

"She sells she shells on the sell… wait, hang on, I can… damn, that's wily of you, pick something people can hardly say…" she muttered, then told him, "I'm gonna have to check this. Where's your fancy red Prime Minister phone?" He didn't answer, but she looked around the room and spotted a telephone, going and using the circular mechanism to dial Vastra's house, for that was where Madame Vastra was; all of them, including Pankhurst, were still at Paternoster Row. And Maud Watts, whom they had maybe… kidnapped. A little bit.

"Hello?" Vastra asked.

"I got the password," said the Doctor, "You're not gonna believe this – it's a tongue twister." Then she took a deep breath to try and repeat it, slowly, without slipping up (and she managed it, too): "She sells seashells on the seashore, the shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells seashells on the seashore, I'm sure she sells seashore shells. The entire thing." It took a few minutes for her to make sure Vastra had got it, and then she hung around on the phone for a while longer.

"What are you doing?" Asquith asked her.

"Testing your little code. I can't just let you go without testing the code," she said, "What if it was wrong? I'd have to grab you and play more music."

"Hardly music."

"Count yourself lucky it's not something by the Spice Girls," she quipped, waiting for an update down the phone.

"I think it worked, Doctor!" Vastra proclaimed.

"Did it? Awesome. Tell Pankhurst to mobilise her suffragettes to get that code to every woman with a crocus asperata in her window in London, then put Strax on the phone, I need him to do something, get ready to move." There was a fumbling noise after Vastra related the Doctor's orders back to Pankhurst, then Strax spoke.

"Yes, sir?" he asked.

"Strax, listen, I need you to do me a big favour. I need you to get your grenades and blow up the Attaway Arms Company building," she said.

"Grenades! Of course I will, Doctor, I'll eradicate all of London on your orders."

"N-no! Don't do that, just the factory. Don't start a fire or anything, just destroy all the machines without a trace. You know what, take Jenny with you, okay? Tell her to make sure you don't kill anyone. We're trying to stop the city from getting destroyed, remember?" No answer. "Strax?"

"Yes, yes. Alright. But I will still take a very plentiful amount of grenades, just in case."

"Just make sure Jenny goes with you and Vastra goes with Pankhurst, don't worry about Clara and I," and she hung up.

"Well? What now?" Asquith asked her, "You found the machines, you've freed the women. We can just build more machines."

"Yeah. About that." She held out her screwdriver and aimed it at the gramophone, which again began to blast out the 1983 tune, but this time much faster and much higher and louder, and Asquith screamed more, and within ten seconds she heard a pop and he slumped in his chair. A trickle of orange goo dripped out of one of his ears, but the worm had died because she had severed the telepathic connection, and if there was one break in the chain then the whole chain was useless. She took the record off the machine and then Clara fell through the glass of the window into the office, shivering.

"It's bloody cold out there, you know. Is he dead?"

"No he's not dead. The worm's dead, he'll be washing goo out of his ears for two weeks at least," Thirteen said, stashing the vinyl back in its sleeve.

"I can't believe a good thing actually came of you carrying that stupid thing around with you in your bag."

"Hey!"

"That song gives me a headache."

"That's because your music taste is awful, if more than ten people have ever heard a song you say it's 'too mainstream.' And then you delete it off your iPhone, which is identical to the iPhone of everybody else aged ten-to-seventy in your century," Thirteen quipped.

"I think you did it, anyway," Clara said, "I don't know what was worse, Cyndi Lauper or the sound of the men up and down the street screaming every time you played it."

"Yeah, yeah, give me your cigarette lighter, he has machine schematics in here we need to get rid of before he wakes up. That technology would be devastating in the wrong hands, which is anybody's hands, to be honest. Then we can go home."

"Well, we can't really… we can go back to Paternoster Row. We can't go home."

"…I forgot about that…"

"It'll be fine. I've got a keen plan for you and I tonight," Clara tapped the side of her nose, "Just you wait and see. I've nearly got frostbite trying to write more stanzas out there on that ledge." Thirteen smiled. "And we do need to celebrate you saving the human race from a life of worm-controlled servitude, after all."

The Doctor smiled, "I can't wait."