Mixed Signals

Well, Kyron really is the master of the conflicting message, is he not?

He posts quite clearly:

If you're a fan of Retro Television then please visit Retroz TV Forum: http://retroztv.proboards.com/index.cgi Where I make the rules.
So I register under the cunning pseudonym of "NotDavidRestal" and pleasantly start posting. I chip in my opinion on the great sci-fi shows, the latest health of Judi Dench, my memory of Countdown Classics, a defense of TISM, an interesting point about missing DW episodes...

No fighting. No aggro. No criticising of anyone for their opinion.

So there I am, effortlessly clocking up 44 posts (and becoming the second-most frequent poster on the entire forum) when I noticed the "humor" section requires a password. So, spotting that the Silver Smurfer is in town, popped him a very cordial email asking for instruction and noting that some of the layouts are a bit dodgy.

The next thing I know, I'm banned!

Not a word of explanation - even Steve Hill explains WHY!

After I was invited there as well!

I can't even view the forum at all, and Ron - in his clear moral superiority - has altered his blog so no one can post a comment there! It's as though, having realized he's on to a complete loser when his argument skills couldn't defeat Joshua Wynne after a Hannah-Murray-related stabbing incident, has retreated from the world of mortals.

Just like I said he had, right at the beginning.

Unless, of course, old Matty Matt Mattster is prepared to post a comment here to explain the situation. I, after all, am brave enough to let people comment on my territory.

If I can make my point in your territory imagine what I could do in my own. You are welcome to try.

And I did. Guess some people couldn't cope when their bluff is called.

Oh well, now we've established Mallet as the cowardly immoral cheat we assumed him all to be, I can get on with the good stuff.

*Somebody* Had To Do It...

It's amazing what you can find out you've written while completely pissed, so here I present my novelization of The End of Time Part One. So for the last week I've been finishing it off for the sheer hell of it, and since my Short Trip concept Saturday Night at the Red Lion has been sent off to Big Finish for their no-doubt-immediate rejection, I might as well post it here.

The sequel is already underway...

...and both installments will be reissued in one massive bumper edition!

And meantime, a snippet from the novelization of the Eleventh Doctor's first episode...

The Doctor sprinted out the back door as fast as his new legs would carry him. ‘We’ve got to get back in there!’ he shouted over his shoulder as he hurtled into the garden. ‘The engines are fading! It’s gonna blow!’

Amy lifted the hem of her nightie and tried to keep pace with the manic figure. She finally found him crouched beside the end of the police box, fastening a length of rope around something on the ground. She could barely see him, the only light coming from the blazing inferno inside the overturned blue booth that shone from the shattered windows. Smoke was belching out through the open double doors, that were now acting more like lids. ‘But it’s a box,’ she gasped, ‘How can a box have engines?’

‘It’s not a box,’ the Doctor replied briskly, tightening the knot and leaping to his feet to face the little girl. ‘It’s a time machine!’ he said excitedly and then ran around the disintegrating TARDIS, looping the rope through the brass door handle.

‘What?’ asked Amy incredulously. ‘You’ve got a real time machine?’

‘Not for much longer if I can’t get it stabilized!’ he grimaced, flinging the free end of the rope onto the far side of the horizontal police box. ‘A five minute hop into the future should do it...’

Amy realized he was serious as he began to slide the rope through the other brass door handle, linking the two open panels together. ‘Can I come?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Not safe in there, not yet. Five minutes,’ he told her with a smile, running past her and climb up the base of the police box, clutching the free end of the rope like an explorer scaling a mountain. ‘Give me five minutes, I’ll be right back,’ the Doctor promised her, and dropped inside his dying time ship.

Absence of the Daleks

Chapter One

The Doctor stood, leaning against the corner-joist of his disguised time machine and watched as a soldier from four hundred years hence strode down the pavement of the high street to start a new life in the comparatively barbaric present. Like they said, time conquers all... or was it love heals all wounds?

After a climactic battle with the Daleks, when all of recorded history was at stake, the Doctor’s longtime companion Commander Mark Triyad had decided to make his home in England in the year 1996. It seemed confronting the Daleks seemed to always cost the Doctor his travelling companions – Landon, Sara, Tom, Ace, Tegan... all the way back to Susan. At least Mark had survived his encounter, and his leaving the Doctor’s side was made of his own free will.

The wandering Time Lord, now in his eleventh regenerative form, was a medium-sized man whose smooth, oval face was framed by swept-back auburn hair and dressed in a rather shabby dinner suit with a red velvet cloak flung around his shoulders. He turned to look at his remaining companion – a short nineteen-year-old girl with shoulder-length ginger locks, wearing a somewhat crumpled school uniform. Dara Hamilton, who had been travelling with the Doctor since his latest regeneration and who was thankfully willing to remain travelling aboard the TARDIS.

Dara looked wistfully through the traffic as Mark crossed the road to meet up with Serena, the woman he’d fallen in love with in two different histories. “Well, Doctor,” she asked at length, “what do you think? Will they be all right?”

“Everything will be all right, Dara,” the Doctor assured her. “Mark was right about the 24th century; they’ll experience an uneasy peace. Nothing as nasty as the Zylons for quite some time,” he mused.

“And the Daleks?” asked Dara.

The Doctor’s good humor deflated visibly. Following the destruction of their planet Skaro and the annihilation of their empire, the Doctor had assumed that the Daleks as any kind of universal force were finished – but he had been proved wrong. One faction of the Daleks had survived into the far future and used all their resources to master time travel. These Daleks had created a thick network of time corridors connecting surviving Dalek factions across the entire history of the universe, uniting into a completely new empire – one gifted with the ability to overcome any obstacle as they could simply nip back in time and defeat their enemies retrospectively. With a mixture of blind luck and determination, the Doctor had managed to sever all the time corridors, isolating the Dalek factions once more. The most advanced Daleks were now marooned in the depths of a time loop, unable to escape and repeat their efforts. Thankfully, the Doctor had ended the Empire before it had conquered the universe, but not before the Daleks’ own timelines had been distorted beyond recognition.

He finally answered his companion. “Now they’ve rendered their future a blank slate, anything can happen... but, for now, humanity is safe. Well, Dara, you said something about a holiday?”

“I sure did!” she replied with her usual boundless enthusiasm and slipped her arm under the Doctor’s. “Let’s go!” she grinned, leading him through the narrow doorway of the police box and into the brightly-lit control chamber within.

The Doctor laughed and allowed himself to be dragged aboard his own ship. The door swung shut behind him and, after a moment, the light on the police box roof began to flash on and off as odd sounds throbbed from within the box. The TARDIS began to fade from view and by the third flash was gone, its grinding rumble lost under the noise of passing traffic.

*

The three members of the survey team stood alone on the barren patch of land, their booted feet already starting to sink into the mud. Their flyer was rested on the most solid part of the ground, on a flat expanse of bone-white rock. One of the survey team, Enros, scratched his stubbly chin and looked across the bleak landscape. “This,” he said with a rising sense of disbelief, “is Serpent Island?”

The team leader, Crall, nodded and checked his handheld computer. “That’s the best translation. According to the files this island is noted for the hundreds of thousands of snakes that infest it. Large and small. Apparently you can’t take more than two steps in any direction without treading on one of them.”

Enros turned in a circle and looked around the muddy wasteland. “Well, I’m fairly certain this is one urban legend disproved. There’s not a single snake on the whole island!”

The third member of the team, Sadia, kicked at the mud. “I thought all the serpents were on the other side of the planet,” she muttered. “I mean, that’s why the ocean west of Davius is called the Serpent Sea, isn’t it? And what about those giant cannibal earthworms who live at the Radiation Range up in Darren?”

“All the data suggests the serpents here are dwarf mutations of the sea serpents,” Crall said.

“All the data suggests there’s no serpents here at all,” Enros pointed out. “Hardly anything is known about the dark side of the planet. They might be talking about a completely different island altogether. Besides, we are in the middle of the Ocean of Death, aren’t we? All it takes is a tidal wave of that acidic water and all life would be destroyed here anyway. What’s next on the list?”

Crall sighed. “The Swamp Lands on the other side of the Icecano.”

“Sounds nasty,” Enros grimly. “What’s that then?”

“A swamp, like it sounds.”

“What? No mutants? No monsters? No nameless horrors hiding in the mist?”

“None,” Crall said, checking his computer. “According to this, the swamp itself is a living organism and it’s growing far larger all the time.”

“Is it hostile?”

“Not sure. Conflicting reports suggest that the Swamp Lands consume every living organism that touches on the surface. But if that was true, no one would come back with information, would they?”

“Point.” Enros sighed. “Still, better than another blank space of the map and promises no one has seen the truth and lived. How many of those are there?”

Taking the request seriously, Crall checked the computer. “The Islands of Mists, the Forbidden Islands, the Desert of Despair, the Land of the Lost and... the Island of Moving Mountains.”

“It’s always islands, isn’t it? The natives never have a nice word to say about them,” Enros mused. He turned to look at Sadia who was staring at a rock in silence. “Well, are you coming then? Or do you want to stay here and see if you can spot a serpent.”

Sadia looked up at him. There was a strange intensity in her gaze. “Come and see,” she said softly.

The other two obligingly crossed the ground to join her. They looked down at what she had found. Half submerged in the mud was a deformed greenish-brown body sprouting vestigial limbs that squirmed and thrashed in the murky patch of ground.

For a long moment there was nothing but the deep hollow howl of the wind.

“How the hell did that thing get here?” gasped Enros, staring at the blob.

“It’s one the serpents,” said Sadia with a strange note of triumph in her voice. “They’ve mutated like all the rest. They’ve reached the final phase of the evolutionary chain!”

“It can’t have,” murmured Crall, scanning the blobby creature with his handheld device. “Its accelerated evolution would mean that it was millions of years more developed than everything else on the planet! There’s no other race in or out of this world so advanced.”

Enros noticed that Sadia was staring at him with a horrible intensity. “Then whatever is happening to life on this planet is occurring on this island faster and more intense than anywhere else,” she said softly. “Whatever’s causing it – radiation, bioenergy, malign psychic influence...”

“What? A curse?” scoffed Enros.

Sadia didn’t seem to hear the interruption. “It’s happening here worse. Intense. Maybe that force, whatever it is, is concentrated here. Because it starts off here and radiated around the planet. The heart of the volcano is where it’s hottest.”

“Ironic, as this world has a heart of super-frozen ice,” joked Enros weakly. He did not like the sudden change of behavior in Sadia, any more than he liked the writhing lump in the mud.

“This is no ordinary world, you stupid idiot,” snapped Sadia, voice thick with hatred. “That’s why we’re here. Life all across the planet is mutating, transforming until they become creatures like this! And the serpents of this island are the first to finally achieve it.”

Enros was taken aback at her manner, and felt annoyance rising in him. “And how do you know that this mutant isn’t just another escaped specimen from the biolabs that’s swum ashore?”

“Because it isn’t,” said Crall softly. He showed the display of his computer to the others. “The DNA chains aren’t a perfect match. This isn’t the final mutation, but still very close. All data indicates this creature was once a six-metre long limb-free reptile.”

Enros spared a horrified glance at the mess of brain matter and tendrils. “How long before the mutation completes itself?” he asked hoarsely.

“Unknown,” Crall noted grimly.

They suddenly noticed Sadia was grinning at them. “It doesn’t matter. It proves what we were sent to confirm. That is the final form of all life. One day, that will be the only creature in the universe. Fish or fowl, flora or fauna, it all ends up looking like that!”

She started to laugh uncontrollably.

Crall studied her face, noticing how pale she had become, and wondered if the implications of the discovery were driving her out of her mind. Sadia stared back with a look of purest contempt, then kicked out with one long leg. The mutant, torn from the warm mud it had been lying in, was flung straight at Crall’s chest with enough force to knock him off his feet. As if enraged, the creature began to let out a strange insectoid chittering, and the slimy, pulsating bundle began to claw at Crall’s shirt with the bird-like claws several of its tentacles ended with. The material shredded, as did the skin beneath. Crall’s screams of sheer agony seemed to infuriate the monster even more.

As Enros tried to kick the creature free from Crall’s body – he was loathe to touch it with his bare hands – the grinning Sadia was strolling off towards the flyer, still laughing to herself. No one could see how bloodshot her eyes had become, or the way the visible blood vessels were a bilious green.

*

No sooner had the Doctor and Dara left London, 1996, then all hell had broken loose.

Dara gripped the TARDIS console as the room lurched and dipped around her. Bracing herself against the hexagon-lined edge of the control desk, her hands clung to the recesses in the panel directly in front of her, while taking care not to accidentally touch the LEDs or banks of switches within. Things were bad enough; she didn’t need to accidentally set off the self-destruct.

“Doctor, what’s happening?” she cried over the pained whir of machinery inside the console.

“That’s a very generic question, Dara,” came the reply. “Would you care to be more concise?”

The Doctor was in a far less dignified position than his companion – he was actually lying over most of the console, his arms wrapped tightly around the clear glass column that struggled to rise and fall at the heart of the hexagonal console. The cake-stand like crystalline array inside the column was pulsing and flickering as if something was interrupting the power supply.

“Why is the TARDIS out of control?” shouted Dara. “Is that concise enough?”

The Doctor was about to reply when the glass time rotor column reared up with increasing force and cracked him on the chin, causing him to jack-knife backwards off the console, and somehow ended up backwards-somersaulting into the corner of the room. “Tah-dah!” he added grandly, but was undermined by lying upside down with his legs sprawled against the wall.

“Has the TARDIS finally gone haywire?” Dara called, trying to drag the discussion back on course.

“Don’t talk about her like that!” the Doctor reproached Dara, leaping to his feet, only to be thrown back to the floor by another sickening, unpredictable lurch. “We’re flying through turbulence,” he managed to tell Dara’s ankles as he tried to climb up the steep floor. “You remember how the TARDIS missed my laboratory at UNIT headquarters? I thought I miss-dialed but actually we were knocked off course!”

“By what?” asked Dara, suddenly wishing Mark was here to help.

“Whatever it was, it’s gotten distinctly worse while we were saying goodbye,” the Doctor explained, his thoughts following a similar path to Dara’s. He was at the panel opposite Dara and peered at the monitor built into the console there. Spiralling pattern spun and fluxed in a mass of crude pixels. “We’re in the middle of the storm and looks like it’s getting worse!”

“Storm?” Dara echoed. “So you know what it is?”

The Doctor tried to hang onto the console and operate it simultaneously. “Well, call me paranoid, but destroying that network of time corridors turning history inside out might just have had some knock-on effects,” he said lightly. “Imagine all those corridors severed and tumbling into each other, like a spider’s web torn from its moorings...”

“I’m imagining!” Dara promised him as the TARDIS bucked again.

“Of course, spider’s webbing is incredibly strong as to be almost unbreakable, so to be torn free would require a force equivalent to...”

His mind was wandering again, as it was oft to do. Trying to keep calm, Dara called, “Moving rapidly on, can’t you stop this?”

“Hmm?”

“Stop us bouncing around like dice in a box!”

“Oh. That.” The Doctor frowned in annoyance. “No,” he said, finally answering her question.

“Why not?” Dara demanded.

“I’ve tried everything!” the Doctor shouted back at her with equal passion.

“Well try it again!” Dara shouted in return.

The Doctor blinked, shrugged, nearly lost his grip, slammed down against the desk, then started to manipulate the controls on the panel once more. The moment he’d snapped down the first contact, there was a dull bass thud as if the TARDIS had suddenly slammed into a wall. The room was suddenly level, the floor suddenly solid beneath their feet, and the abrupt change left both the Doctor and Dara swaying dizzily as they tried to regain their balance. The painful mechanical noises were over, leaving just the usual threadbare hum of the temporal drives.

“Oh, Doctor,” Dara breathed with delight. “You did it...”

“Shhh! Shhh! SHH!” the Doctor hissed, jabbing a finger in front of his mouth while he bent over the console, moving from panel to panel as if studying the flashing lights and understanding the information displayed. Sometimes Dara wondered if they made any sense to him, since he would sometimes tell her it was just meaningless flashes. He might have been joking. You could never tell with this Doctor.

The Doctor was circling the console and Dara got out of the way, allowing him to reach his starting point. Reaching into one of the recessed controls, he twisted a dial and they turned to look at the scanner alcove. The shutter rolled upwards smoothly to reveal a flickering, coiling mess of rainbow fire. It seemed to coil back on itself as they watched, burning, and merging and splitting again.

“Ow,” mumbled Dara as her head began to ache at the sight of it.

“It’s a four-dimensional representation of a five-dimensional cross-section of a six-dimensional phenomenon,” said the Doctor said, as if trying to guess the artist of a renaissance masterpiece despite not having a clue what he was talking about.

“Which is?” Dara prompted hopefully.

“It’s a Time Quake, Dara!” the Doctor marveled, as if the simpler explanation made more sense to him as well. “A probability rift, running through the ages, widening and branching into the timelines of a dozen galaxies!”

“And for the mere mortals in the audience?” his companion asked pleasantly.

The Doctor stared at her with his pale eyes. “Time has cracked down the middle. A loose vortex has formed in the gap. All those shattered Dalek time corridors are dragging everything they can down with them. Whole pathways through the infinite nexus could burn out under that pressure...”

“That sounds bad,” said Dara uncomfortably.

“It is, Dara. Just imagine the effect of one timeline being erased,” he mused. “Like Serena. If she was wiped from history, imagine what would have happened.”

“Mark would still be with us?” Dara guessed, suspecting this wasn’t the precise answer her friend wanted.

“More than that. She wouldn’t have been there on the ruined Earth to help us. We would have mostly likely been captured and exterminated by the Daleks,” the Doctor continued, seeming absorbed in new version of events he was describing. “Their empire would never have been defeated. And all from one person.”

Dara spared the thing on the monitor a glance. “Is that going to happen?”

“I’m not sure. But normally the pattern of infinity has enough effect to create a cause,” the Time Lord said reassuringly. “You push time out of shape and time will push back.” He paused remembering events on the last human colony, events he was still not sure if happened inside or outside his head. “If Serena was erased, someone else would survive the holocaust to help out. Mark may not have found true love, but history would be almost back the way it was. The pattern would be filled.”

“So, there’s nothing to worry about?” Dara asked hopefully.

The Doctor didn’t reply, but stared at the scanner.

“Doctor?” Dara pressed.

“Can’t you feel it?” asked the Doctor wonderingly.

“Feel what?” Dara replied, shaking her head in confusion. The atmosphere of the TARDIS suddenly seemed colder, tense and anxious.

“The strands of time, fraying at the edges.” A strange, lost expression crossed his face. “Not a moment’s peace...” he trailed off, his face suddenly paler than ever, until he looked like a fresh corpse. Dara cried out as he swooned, falling forward to the floor.

Dara bent down to roll him over – the Time Lord was semi-conscious, looking around wildly.

“They’re being wiped out, Dara,” he croaked deliriously. “One by one, their timelines are being erased... wiped off the blackboard... something’s hunting down every last one of them... them and only them! Everything they ever did, every action, every effect... surgically removed from time... the Daleks are being written out of history!”

*

The planet was called Hell, though no one was entirely sure. The Earth Empire of the 26th century was widely spread, but this planet was on the outskirts of the galaxy, way beyond their borders. Were the primitive humanoids who lived there degenerate Earth colonists whose culture had named this world after that unpleasant realm? Or was it a coincidence, a quirk of language?

In any case, the name was accurate. The surface of Hell was a scorched desert where only a few noxious weeds sprouted. There were no oceans, rivers or lakes, and what little, filthy water existed did so miles underground and was hoarded preciously. The sky was a boiling red bloodstain around the unrelenting sun whose heat and radiation caused cancers and diseases to those exposed to it for more than a few days. The native Helkans were used to it, bred from only those strong enough to survive on the surface.

But not even the Helkans could survive the Daleks.

At the order of their Emperor, the Daleks had swarmed over Hell like locusts over ripe fruit. Their numbers were relatively few, and augmented by ranks of Ogrons. However, not even the Ogrons could survive for long on this newly-conquered world, forcing Daleks to take over more and more of the day-to-day operations while the anthropoids either died of sunburn or were exterminated for failure.

The Daleks had not conquered this miserable world on a whim, but had come here for a very specific reason. They wanted Helkogen Gas, the abundant element trapped in numerous, random pockets under the surface – the expansive gas had an incredible-fast acting effect on organic matter. A single lungfull of pure Helkogen could wipe out the entire population of a city in ten seconds. The Daleks however, did not need an atmosphere to survive, and thus Helkogen was the perfect weapon, one that destroyed everything except themselves. The surviving Helkans were turned into slave labor force at the hastily erected mine workings.

The Helkogen gas was mined, purified and pumped into a giant oval capsule which was then loaded onto the outside of a shuttle which would then hurtle into orbit to meet the Death Wheel – a Dalek space station already containing millions of the capsules. Once Hell was drained of its Helkogen supply, the Death Wheel would be used, plunging its long shaft into the atmosphere and converting the mix of gasses to Helkogen before siphoning it back out again – leaving a planet totally bare of life.

Fearing that either Earth or Draconia might stumble across their plan before it was complete, the Daleks had worked their slaves – both Ogron and Helkan – to death. But by now, the starved and sleep-deprived slaves were collapsing, dying faster than the Daleks could exterminate them. There was but one shuttle left to fill before the planet could be abandoned completely.

And then they came.

A fleet of circular, silver saucers was suddenly surrounded the Death Wheel and the two Dalek cruisers in orbit above Hell. The countless Daleks on trans-solar discs flying around the Death Wheel immediately swept upwards to defend their new weapon and the Emperor Dalek, who was now aboard.

The Daleks opened fire on the fleet. The lightning bolts of radiation dispersed harmlessly over the intruders, with no change in their state. One of the Dalek cruisers detached from the Death Wheel to add its fire power to the one-sided battle. But even as it swept into the battle zone, power suddenly drained from its engines. The Dalek saucer lost momentum, slowing to a total halt. The free-floating Daleks were similarly paralyzed. The effect spread, and the Death Wheel slowed its rotation until it too was frozen in place.

In its throne room, the golden spherical shape of the Emperor Dalek was helpless, barely metres from its emergency escape pod that could have taken the leader of the Dalek race to freedom. Throughout the Death Wheel, in the detention cells, the loading bay, the atmospheric penetration tower, the other Daleks were jammed as well, trapped like flies in amber.

Suddenly a ripple seemed to spread out from the enemy ships, expanding in all directions and engulfing the Daleks, the cruisers, finally even the Death Wheel itself. Slowly but surely colour and substance was scrubbed away, until at last there was nothing left. The orbiting Dalek stronghold had ceased to ever have existed. But the field was not content and continued to expand until it was washing over the barren Helkan surface below. The mining setup blew away like smoke in a breeze. The Ogron corpses disappeared, for there was no reason for them to be dead, let alone on Hell at all. The lifeless bodies of the natives were restored to life as weeks of destroying slave labor was swept away. The ruins that had been their villages and wells shimmered and finally snapped back into normal. The Helkogen gas was once more heavily diluted and spread under the suddenly unbroken ground.

The Helkans were simple, kindly beings – on a planet as harsh as Hell, only cooperation prevented them going extinct. As they stumbled around in relief that their nightmare was over, that very nightmare faded from their uncomplicated minds. In less than a minute, they had completely forgotten the invasion, the horror, the terror. All of it. They returned to their tents to wait for nightfall when the temperature dropped to a mere 50 degrees in the shade as, high above them, the fleet of saucers vanished.

Then, abruptly, a strange wheezing groaning sound shattered the silence of Hell as a tall blue police box materialized in the sand under where, moments earlier, a mighty drill tower would once have been able to cast shade. The door creaked inwards and a head, adorned with a white panama hat, peered out into the scarlet heat and light.

“Oh dear,” the Doctor, the Seventh Doctor, sighed in mild despair. “This doesn’t look like Maruthea, either.” His grey eyes spotted the Helkans trudging back to their village. “Those chaps over there certainly aren’t party-goers either...”

The Seventh Doctor blinked. For a moment, he was sure he’d seen the Helkans in a chain gang marching between a latticed tower and a mineshaft. But the plain was empty. Troubled, the Doctor retreated further into the TARDIS and slammed the door shut, making another attempt to reach his friend Bonjaxx’s birthday party. The police box faded away, and the Doctor never suspected that he’d been denied an adventure with the Daleks and the infamous Dalek-Killer, Abslom Daak. Of course, in this new unfolding reality, Abslom Daak was executed years earlier for his numerous crimes. He had not had the option to become a Dalek-Killer.

There were no Daleks to be killed.

*

They were still staring at the scanner at the fifth-dimensional apparition. Dara had managed to get the Doctor propped up in his Louis XIV chair. He was still worryingly pale, but seemed to be more distressed emotionally than physically.

“Opposing realities are grinding together like shifting continents,” he said bleakly. “The tapestry of the past is unraveling. Tomorrow’s being turned on its head. A trillion history texts are becoming fiction. The whole destiny of an entire race being deflected and on a million worlds the Daleks are becoming a fading memory... then a myth... then nothing. They simply never were.”

There was an awkward silence.

“At least it’s localized with the Daleks,” Dara said, trying to be positive.

“Localized?” the Doctor scoff. “The chaos ripples out, small things effect bigger things, on and on and on – step a butterfly and hundreds of butterflies are never born, they never exist and the rodents that depend on those insects starve and so on and so on!”

“But the Daleks are evil!” Dara protested. “Wiping them out can only be a good thing?”

“Can it?” the Doctor asked and Dara was stunned as she realized he was – for once – being perfectly serious. He honestly didn’t seem to think the erasure of the Daleks could be something to be happy about. “And when they’re all gone, what takes their place in history? What causes all the wars and the deaths and destruction? What fills the gap the Daleks leave?”

“Who says there has to be a gap!” Dara snorted. “If the Daleks are gone then the wars don’t happen. The people don’t die.”

“And then what, Dara?” the Doctor demanded, leaping from his chair. “All those planets never learn the lessons of cooperation against an enemy. They keep fighting amongst themselves. And what about all the criminals and murderers who were exterminated, they now get to live, to cause chaos, killing people who were supposed to survive, inventions and discoveries never made...”

“You’re being pessimistic,” Dara said, trying to calm him down.

“Am I? You don’t see time like I see it, Dara, like a mountain range, past and future and present all visible at once...” The Doctor ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “If you stop the Second World War from starting, that doesn’t automatically make Europe have a happy ending. There are plenty of fascists in England alone who agreed with the Nazi ideals. To truly stop the war you’d need Britain to be of the same mindset as Germany. There’s no war and the Nazis win hands down. Is that good, Dara? Does that balance the books so that all who died in the conflict now get to live in oppression? I’ve seen societies like that, you know. I know the advances that can be made by un-tempered ruthlessness. In that world, they would have become so advanced they could have fought the Daleks on their own by 1996. A strong, ordered world built on so many corpses... maybe they wouldn’t even have fought the Daleks, just declared a truce...”

The Doctor grabbed the edges of the console to steady himself. The control room seemed to be sliding away from him. He concentrated until it was back in focus. “Dara,” he said hoarsely. “For better or for worse, the proper histories of thousands of worlds across the cosmos are at this very moment being altered, re-written, erased and revised! It doesn’t matter if the new ones are ten times better or ten times worse! If that distortion doesn’t dissipate the entire fabric of time will be ripped apart!”

Dara swallowed as the enormity of it all sank in. “Won’t the Time Lords do something?”

The Doctor let out a bitter laugh. “Of course they will. They’ll batten down their own hatches and make sure they’re perfectly safe. Once that’s done, they’ll start committee meetings to decide what to do next – and that will almost certainly start with blaming me for all this!”

“So what can we do about it?” Dara begged.

The Doctor looked at her and Dara realized how old he looked, his grim white face, shiny with perspiration was showing every last one of the centuries he’d lived. “We need to get past that time corridor debris,” he said firmly. “The corridors are all drawing together into a kind of plug that will jam the vortex.”

“And that’s bad.”

“In the long term yes, in the short term no,” the Doctor replied and, still using all his effort to remain upright, reached out with an uncertain arm and pressed a button. The outer-panel of that particular console section smoothly rose and slid back like a car bonnet to reveal the electronic maze of pulsing circuits. The Doctor stared down into the flashing lights. “That plug will stop the Time Quake getting through, seal off part of the universe and keep it unaffected. We need to get there and find some way of restoring the status quo. And, no,” he added harshly, “I don’t mean the band.”

Dara bit her lip. The only time the Doctor didn’t appreciate her jokes was when things were deadly serious.

“But how do we get past the storm,” she asked carefully, “without getting ripped apart?”

The Doctor was gazing at the optic-fibre cables, arteries of pinprick lights between endlessly opening-and-closing relays, operated by jiggling lasers. The pulsing electronics seemed to calm the Time Lord and restore some of his strength as he stared intently into revealed innards of his beloved TARDIS.

“By being very, very clever,” the Doctor replied finally and, brandishing his sonic screwdriver, set to work.

*

Sadia paused in the hatchway of the flyer and looked back at Crall and Enros. They’d finally dislodged the mutant and Crall was rolled onto his side, coughing blood. Sadia felt a surge of satisfaction wash over her, turning into a desire to kill the pair of them. It was like she was sinking into an ocean of hatred that was not her own – she felt so much anger, yet she couldn’t for the life of her work out why she felt it. Indeed, she almost felt frightened. There was something inside of her that wanted the pair dead.

She had visions of beating them to a pulp in her bare hands, a deep desire to rip them limb from limb. But no. She didn’t have to do it like that. She could let them die in a more interesting way. Yes. That would bring the satisfaction she wanted, of being the only survivor. She clambered into the flyer and pressed the stud control that lowered the wing-door closed, sealing her safely inside.

Sadia looked through the door window as Enros ran towards her, mouth opening in screams she couldn’t hear. He was angry, confused, but above all afraid – because she knew that he knew what she would do. What was going to happen to him. On some level he knew.

She felt all doubt ebb from her, replaced with a feeling of invincibility as she operated the flyer control. The engines engaged, kicking up a cloud of white dust as the anti-grav drives thrust the flyer straight up into the murky blue sky. For a moment the ship titled backwards, but then leveled out. Sadia spared a glimpse out the window – and far below, the barren wasteland that was the misnamed Island of Serpents. She could see the tiny shape of Enros screaming helplessly and shaking his arms in the air. Crall was lying on the ground, unmoving. He was too far away for Sadia to see if he was still alive.

But they were trapped there. No food. No water. At the mercy of the mutants and whatever it was that had transformed them. They were lost. She was alone now, the invincible survivor. And that was good.

Sadia hit the engines and the flyer sliced off into the sky.

*

Enros watched the gunmetal grey shape vanish into the blue heavens, and finally stopping shouting for Sadia to stop mucking about. She’d abandoned them there, and this was no idle prank. Outside their customized survival base, every part of this massive stinking planet was a death trap. He looked down at Crall, who had lost consciousness. The injuries to his chest were superficial, but there was no telling what germs or venom might have spread from the monster.

The thought struck him and he whirled around on the spot, scanning the monotonous landscape for sign of the creature the humans had been rather unreasonably kicking all day – but a shapeless mud-covered blob in a field of mud would be hard to spot at any time. He returned to Crall and looked for his computer, but couldn’t find it. Enros had a nasty suspicion it had sunk into the mud as well... always assuming the creature hadn’t snatched it while no one was looking.

Enros struggled to calm his breathing and raised his right wrist to his mouth so he could speak into his communications bracelet. On most worlds it was completely reliable, but technology had a way of being corrupted on this hell-planet. “Control? Amerson control? Come in, please! Emergency! Come in!”

Silence.

Enros felt a prickling between his shoulders and whirled around again. His heart was hammering at his ribcage. But he could see nothing. “Control, please!” he shouted into his bracelet.

The tiny speaker crackled and the faint voice of the expedition commander, Al Tarrant, struggled to be heard over the howl of the wind. “Enros? Is that you? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Sadia!” Enros gabbled, still scanning the horizon with his eyes. “She’s gone mad, she attacked us, stole the flyer and dumped us here! Crall’s been injured by a mutant, badly. I require immediate extraction – do you hear me, immediate?”

“Understood,” the voice whispered. “Where are you?”

“Island of Serpents,” Enros shouted. “You can’t miss it – a huge mudpile without a single damn serpent!”

Another voice joined Tarrant’s. The strange electronic quality made it appear that the communications net was malfunctioning, but Enros knew the voice was being relayed better than the Commanders. The new voice was quiet, intelligent, thoughtful; raised only to be heard better.

“Mr. Enros,” it said calmly, “did you complete the survey before Sadia turned on you?”

Enros might have laughed in other circumstances. But not when talking to their scientific advisor. It wasn’t that he was devoid of humor... it just seemed wrong to laugh in his presence. Wrong and disturbing. “There was nothing to survey. This place is supposed to be covered in snakes, there wasn’t one. Well...”

The voice was clearly expecting his clarification. “Yes, Mr. Enros?”

“There was one mutant we found. Looked to have completed the cycle entirely, but Crall’s sure it was still on its way. The computer confirmed, it was originally one of the snakes...”

“Fascinating,” the voice murmured. “The morphogenic field must be particularly strong on the dark side of the planet...”

“Very fascinating, I agree,” lied Enros. “I need extraction and a medical team!”

“Kambril and Selman are leaving now,” Tarrant’s voice assured Enros. “They’ll be with you in less than an hour at top speed and they’ve got a dozen medi-packs.”

“Less than an hour?” Enros was almost screaming.

“You are on the dark side of the planet,” the other voice said calmly. “Even on direct line of flight, the distance is vast. I suggest, Mr. Enros, you do what you can for Mr. Crall and stay as calm as possible.”

“Calm?” Enros echoed. “My blood pressure is the least of my worries.”

“Indeed, it is, Mr. Enros,” the voice replied, perhaps making a light joke. It was impossible to tell from the near-inflection-free voice. “All evidence suggests that you have picked a most dangerous part of the world to be stranded in. The morphogenic fields appear to already have corrupted one of you. If you wish to escape that fate, I would suggest using as little adrenaline and anger as possible.”

Enros forced himself to take ten breaths before he spoke. “Is that the best you can do?”

“At this distance? Against an inevitable outcome? With countless factors beyond my control or knowledge?” The voice was sarcastic, but as ever relaxed. “Mr. Enros, you should be grateful that I am able to even advise you.”

“Enros, the others are clear of Dalazar now. They should be in your sector in thirty-two minutes. I need to clear the net to try and contact Sadia. Only talk again if things get critical.”

The communication ended, leaving Ecros alone, the only noise the endless moan of the wind... until a clicking, chittering sound rose over it. The little man struggled to find the source of the noise, then grimly forced himself to sit down next to Crall in the mud. He didn’t want to be noticeable for the next half an hour anyway. Another chirping noise.

“Define ‘critical’,” Enros said miserably.

*

After about fifteen minutes, the Doctor announced they were ready. Dara suspected that they were nowhere near ready, but the Doctor was unwilling to stay on the sidelines any further. She was certain that more could be done to prepare the TARDIS then removing some of the roundels from the walls (which, amazingly, continue to glow with their treacle colour even when detached) and some circuits rewired by the technical process of biting off the insulation and jamming them together.

The control panel opened on the console was still open and what seemed to be small shelving unit had been built into it, carrying racks of printed circuits connected to each other and the console by coiled telephone cables. The Doctor began to punch buttons furiously and placed his hand on the sliding control that would activate the TARDIS’s main drive. On the scanner was the tangle of severed corridors, a dazzling collection of thin yellow bands spiraling into each other.

“Are you ready?” he asked, studying the monitor displays.

“No,” Dara admitted.

“Nor me,” the Doctor admitted. “Alakazam!” he announced and thrust the slide control upwards. With no preamble the controls responded, the hum of the engines deepening. The time rotor began to move up and down smoothly. For a moment, the Doctor and Dara exchanged a triumphant grin but then the whole TARDIS began to shake and shudder as if pummeled on all sides by meteorites. Once again the duo were left clinging to the console as the vibrations became worse.

“This is supposed to happen right?” Dara called out.

“Well, it could be worse,” the Doctor said philosophically.

“How?” Dara asked, and then immediately regretted it. She could tell by the Doctor’s expression that he wasn’t pleased with her tempting fate either.

The TARDIS seemed buckle and jerk severely around them, and there was the distant and unnerving sound of rending metal. The walls of the control room seemed to distort as if it was a reflection in a carnival mirror, as the time rotor struggling to continue pistoning up and down.

“We’re being shaken to pieces!” Dara wailed in realization.

“You did ask,” the Doctor replied with no trace of sympathy.

“Can’t you do something?”

“Not unless you want us to flip over and break up – we’re committed to this now!”

The room wasn’t just shaking, it was now spinning. Centrifugal force began to tug at the occupants of the TARDIS as it plunged faster and faster, deeper and deeper into the very eye of the tangled web. The motions became more violent, as if deliberately trying to hurl the pair to the rattling floor beneath them. Smoke was pouring from the lash-up circuits wired into the console and the TARDIS seemed to topple. The components within the exposed roundels burst into flames. More explosions ripped through the console and the underside of the desk erupted in sparks.

“This cannot be good!” Dara coughed from the fumes.

“Just another three nexuses and we’re through the plug hole!” the Doctor promised as suddenly the scanner before them turned unbearably white, bleaching the control chamber with the eye-searing glow. It was a window on the Armageddon they were hurtling towards. More explosions tore out chunks of the console, and then suddenly the buffeting steadied to a low ripple of constant movement, and the glare on the scanner slowly cleared and the image of a planet reformed, rushing closer and closer. The sphere was bloodshot, sulphurous, with two pus-coloured moons slowly orbiting it. And the TARDIS was hurtling towards it.

“We’re gonna crash!” Dara spluttered as the clouds of the atmosphere began to clear and beyond was a fast-moving blur of rock and stone, but even that was lost through the smoke that was filling the control room from the overloaded mechanisms. The lashed-together calibration tower was torn apart in acrid blue flames, leaving a smoking ruin of charred circuitry that collapsed as detonation after detonating erupted from the console.

“So we are,” the Doctor said lamely, even as his hands moved swiftly over the crackling, smoking controls.

*

By now Sadia was half a planet away from her former comrades, the flyer sweeping above the deep blue Sea of Acid. It was differentiated from the similarly-acidic Ocean of Death by its relative shallowness, and the fact the acid of this sea created intensely powerful fumes that could corrode human lung tissue in minutes, and rot human flesh off the bones in hours. She was now somewhere between the major continents of Darren and Dalazar, but wasn’t entirely sure where.

“Sadia?” crackled a voice over the in-flight communications net. “This is Tarrant! Come in!”

Sadia ignored the voice. Her thoughts were more focussed with the new strength in her limbs, and the rush of motion as the planet hurtled past around her. She could smell mud and blood and overheating components and coolant in pipes. She realized her mind was wandering off, thinking of nothing conscious bar the desire to be alone and kill to stay that way. It felt right that she could see, hear and smell with strengthened senses. This, she decided, was what she wanted to be. Alone and alive.

“Sadia, repeat, this is Tarrant – report your location! Priority!”

She stared blankly at the nearest landmass and tried to remember its name. It was a strange dull yellow colour and rose to a point, like some kind of smooth mountain. There were shapes on the shores near the dark blue-green waters, but none of them moved. It struck Sadia that she was no longer entirely certain how to pilot the ship she was in, and did what she could to land it.

In her attempts she finally managed to switch off the communicator and silence the voice.

The flyer jerkily curved back towards the golden island, the auto-pilot thankfully engaging and completing the landing for her. By the time it was resting on the yellow surface of the shore, Sadia was desperate to escape the craft and more by luck than judgement managed to hit the door control before she was frantic enough to start hurling herself against the windscreen.

The wing-door unfolded and the low moan of the wind could be heard. Sadia sniffed the air and stumbled out into the open. She was starting to feel very strange, and everything seemed unreal and dreamlike. She was almost unbearably, feverishly hot. She staggered, stumbled and fell to the hard metallic ground. There was a noise inside her head, like the rising and falling of overworking engines. It seemed to be getting louder and louder.

Sadia looked around wildly for the source of the intolerable noise.

A patch of air further down the shore was a sickly, electric green. The blazing frenzy sent displaced air in a breeze in time with the wheezing and groaning as the colour moved through the spectrum, shrugging off the yellow of the island. The green object was now blue as it phased from phantom to substance as in seconds the noise stopped and a battered blue box with translucent windows was standing askew on the sloping ground, looking for all the world like it had always stood there.

The noise had stopped and Sadia felt a wave of relief as she finally passed out.

*

Al Tarrant had been in more comfortable bases, but knew the one he was currently residing in was not meant for humanoids like himself. Little of it was above the surface of the ruined planet, and none of it depended on fresh air and daylight. Worse, the original inhabitants did not have the comparatively poor eyesight of humanity, which meant the lighting was almost always painfully dim – but, on the bright side, it meant no one had to admire the harsh, bleak metal architecture. The chamber he stood in was relatively well-lit, with the blow-up charts and maps of the planet providing enough illumination to work the instrument consoles, study their readings and monitor the scientific equipment present.

“Damn,” Tarrant said as he saw a particular blinking light cut out. “Computer,” he called across the room, “what is the status of the flyer?”

The bland, almost insolent synthesized voice replied. “Engine idle, main door now open.”

“You mean it’s landed?” Tarrant growled, annoyed at the machine’s unhelpful insight.

“Confirmed. The flyer now occupies grid reference 302-497-987.”

Tarrant automatically turned to check the nearest map. The modulated voice of his scientific advisor, still at the back of the room, lost in shadow, spoke. Two thin lights flashed with light in the darkness, like flickering eyes burning in the gloom. “Ah. The Island of Gushing Gold,” the voice grated. “A fitting place for her to head, would you not agree Commander?”

“It’s not too far from the Dalazar shore,” Tarrant agreed. “We can collect her pretty easily.”

“That is not what I meant,” the voice replied. “The Island of Gushing Gold is a monument to greed, selfishness without caution. It is logical in a way that Sadia would head there.”

“Sadia isn’t greedy,” Tarrant retorted.

“She is functioning differently now,” the voice pointed out. “She cares about nothing but fulfilling her basest of desires with no thought of others. Is that not greed? Selfish? I would recommend attempts to rescue her be prioritized. It will not be long before the next eruption...”

The voice was interrupted as the map of the island in question spluttered and blurred, the image rolling madly through the thin, free-standing screen it was shown on – and all the other maps fluctuated in sympathy. The spinning lights briefly lit up the rest of the chamber, outlining the bulbous white shape of the owner of the voice. In moments, though, the screen spun and settled to normal.

“What was that?” demanded Tarrant.

His companion spoke firmly. “Computer, scan all sensor inputs on all frequencies for the last twenty rels. Analyze data and readout. Explain the anomaly,” it added for good measure, knowing how literal computers could be. Without very specific instructions, they rarely did as desired.

“Anomaly specified,” the computer announced. There was a whirring click and then a filtered recording of what sounding like an asthmatic tank engine afflicted by grating gears played over the speakers as the computer read out. “Sensors indicate severe electromagnetic disturbance at coordinates 302-497-987,” it announced. “Supercharged ionic flux triggering severe extra-particle activity.”

“An intrusion to the world,” the scientific advisor concluded.

“A foreign object has materialized right next to where Sadia landed,” Tarrant realized.

“The inference is confirmed,” said the computer, as if they cared for its opinion.

“Have you heard a noise like that before?” Tarrant asked his companion.

There was a pause, as if the owner of the voice was thinking. “My memory is not all that it was,” the voice revealed, almost reluctantly. “But I have a strong suspicion as to the cause of it, and the origin of the materialization. I know of but one being whose mere presence causes ripples in the fabric of reality itself. And if I am right...”

Tarrant couldn’t wait for the answer. “Well?”

“If I am right,” the voice continued, “then after so many years, the endless war has recommenced. Soon, the skies above us will boil!” The voice lost any trace of control and rose into a painful electronic shriek. “He has come at last! The Doctor has returned to confront the destiny of us all!!”

*

Dara tried to remember something beyond the bright flashes and the harsh choking smoke, but she couldn’t. Struggling to regain her senses she realized that everything in the TARDIS was quiet and still for once. Dara managed to sit up and look around, blinking as her eyes adjusted.

“Wakey-wakey,” she heard the Doctor’s voice call, “upsy-daisy. Get up and don’t be lazy!”

Dara looked up at the console, where the Doctor was examining the damage they’d received. Dara could tell at a glance it was pretty bad – the tower he’d built was nothing but charred stalks clogging up the exposed innards of the console, while several read-out displays had popped and shorted out. Burns blackened patches of the control desk, and the glass column was fogged up with smoke.

“I’m not lazy,” Dara groaned as she managed to get to her feet. “How bad is it?”

“I’ve seen worse,” the Doctor said, blowing some black ash from the recesses before him. “Mainly subsystems burnt out under pressure. The automatics should be kicking in soon. Six hours or so and we’ll be able to move.”

“But what about the universe?” Dara asked. “Isn’t that still exploding?”

“You noticed that, huh?” the Doctor grinned, mopping the soot from his face with a red cloth. “Luckily, we’re out of the firing line. Emergency materialization right at the heart of the safety zone.” He waved the cloth in the direction of the scanner. “Wherever this is, it’s the last place that history will be rewritten. Perhaps not the last place where history is made, though...”

Dara followed his gaze to look at their surroundings through the scanner window. Beyond was dull yellow beach sloping upwards to some kind of mountain or volcano. The TARDIS had landed near the shore where crashing surf was a dazzling green, reflecting the sun in the clear blue sky above. Dara noticed that there were strange statues dotted around the coastline.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” she said brightly. “Any idea where we are?”

The Doctor stared her, then indicated the explosion ravaged console. “The external sensors show we’re on a planet more than twice the size of Earth,” he said at last. “40 per cent greater radius, 16 per cent more surface area and 6.4 per cent deeper volume. The surface area is three billion square kilometres and this is one of the few landmasses that doesn’t have more area than all the continents of your planet put together. A tiny tropical island.”

“A planet that big...” Dara marveled at the sheer scale. “The gravity would crush us flat, wouldn’t it?”

“Normally,” the Doctor shrugged. “But it’s close enough to Earth normal as makes no odds.”

“How does that work?”

“Presumably the internal structure of the planet makes it feasible,” the Time Lord pondered. “I’ve seen similar things before. Deep canyons, honeycombed strata layers, pockets of gas... of course, on this scale they’d have to be a hundred and fifty seven million times stronger than a hurricane on Earth...”

“They don’t do things by half on this planet,” Dara marveled. “Shall we have a look?”

“If I can get the doors open,” the Doctor said hopefully, and pulled on the red door handle. There was a pained whirring of the mechanism. Only one of the double doors moved, jerkily opening just enough to allow narrow access to the outside universe.

“Will the automatics fix that too?” Dara asked.

“We can but hope,” the Doctor said, pausing only to collect his top hat before squeezing through the gap in the doorway and out of sight.

*

It took Dara longer to get out of the TARDIS. She wasn’t half as slender as the rake-like Doctor, and had to struggle to fit her torso through the thin portal that allowed her into the tattered wooden interior of the police box shell of the TARDIS. It was with much relief she tugged on the brass handle and exited through the wide open door. She stepped out, blinking in the brilliant sunshine, the light reflecting off the yellow ground and the green silk of the ocean. Apart from the Doctor, the island seemed deserted. There was no birds in the sky, no plants, shrubs or trees. The only noise was the waves and the strange empty moan of the wind – disconcerting as there was barely any breeze.

“Well, I’ve seen worse places for a holiday,” Dara decided as she pulled the TARDIS door shut behind her.

“I’m not sure you’re looking hard enough,” the Doctor replied. “I wouldn’t advise swimming in that green goo – it’s not water at all.”

“What is it then?” Dara frowned. “Apple juice?”

“It’s a highly-corrosive compound that destroys metallic compounds. A sea that can rust an ocean liner to the frame in seconds,” the Doctor brooded.

“How do you know this?” Dara asked, suddenly suspicious.

With a flourish, the Doctor indicated a small tidal pool he’d been standing next to. Fumbling into his pocket, he found a pen he’d stolen from Colonel Crichton and threw it into the green puddle. The pen sank to the bottom of the pool, then began to float up to the surface. By the time it was there, it was pitted and scarred almost beyond recognition, breaking down into brown crumbs that slowly dissolved.

“Ouch,” Dara winced. “What kind of planet has oceans of super rust?”

“Ones I would normally want to avoid. On the bright side, we can be sure no Cybermen are going to interrupt us,” the Doctor added brightly.

Dara wracked her brains to remember which aliens he was talking about – she often got Zygons and Zylons mixed up with Mandrels and Bandrils. “Why is that?” she asked in the meantime.

“Cybermen can’t cope with gold, and that’s what this island is made of.” He reached down to a dry patch of yellow ground and rapped it with his knuckles. It made a mild clang. “See? Metal. And the only metal that could possibly survive corrosion from any sea, let alone that one, would be gold. Or at least something very similar to it. QED and ipso facto.”

“An island made out of gold...” Dara boggled, staring at the yellow landscape in renewed interest.

“That’s nothing Dara. I’ve known whole planets made out of the stuff...”

“You think gold’s common on this planet?” Dara wondered. “We could get rich here!”

“Dara, even if the universe wasn’t on the brink of total chronological collapse, I have much better things to do than use the TARDIS to make claims for mineral rights,” the Doctor scolded her. “And what if that ocean is typical of this world? Gold might be the only metal anyone can use here, and you’d deny them their rightful supply? What next? Snatching candy from babies, the pennies from dead men’s eyes?”

“I haven’t seen anyone, have you?” asked Dara, arms folded as she always stood when she was mustering the ultimate argument.

“Quite a few,” the Doctor muttered, turning around. “And further more... who’s that?”

He pointed past Dara, past the TARDIS, further down the shore. Sprawled on the golden ground was a body in a simple black outdoor uniform complete with boots and gloves. Her long dark hair covered her face, and at first glance it looked as though she had been washed ashore. But the strange Delorean-style hover transport further up the beach was a more obvious source of the woman.

The duo immediately made their way over to the body. “Hey,” Dara called as they drew closer, “are you all right?”

With visible effort, the woman lifted her head to look at them, revealing her features. The Doctor and Dara could see at once that there was something wrong with her face. Something terribly, sickeningly wrong.

Tufts of the woman’s hair were starting to fall out and her skin was a hideous ghastly white, glistening with rivulets of something too thick and viscous to be sweat. A tumor-like bump had formed in one temple and was splitting open, while one ear seemed to have sealed up, the lobe fused to the side of the head. One eye was scrunched closed while the other was mad and staring. The woman let out a strange noise, like she was groaning in pain yet simultaneously letting out a strange animal roar.

And then she attacked...

TO BE CONTINUED... NEVER...

Unfinished Symphony parte the first

I post this to wash Yahtzee out of my mind...
--------------------

Prologue

The world was millions upon millions of years old, but in terms of civilization it was very young. It had passed through the usual passages of growth and formation, suffered heavy asteroid strikes that in turn lead to ice ages and finally stabilized. Mammalian life survived such disasters better than cold-blooded reptiles, but both were ultimately thriving as the ages passed. The world they lived in was an uncomplicated paradise, simple, wild, and beautiful.

Simians were evolving at their own pace. They had developed their dexterity enough to adapt to life in trees and on the ground, the tribes deciding that caves were more reliable and defendable homes. Some had realized that picking more fruit than was desired could leave a surplus to feed them for rainy days when no one wanted to go picking and get their fur wet. Of course, the fruit often went bad, and the apes mused on how to make this spare food last longer while others attempted to grow fruit trees closer to home for easier access. It would take many centuries for a proper civilization to flourish, but it had started nonetheless.

And then, one day, everything changed.

The apes were out in the fields, minding their own business so as not to antagonize the unfriendly reptiles that patrolled the area when they saw something none of them had ever witnessed before. In the cloudless and cobalt blue sky were floating three... things. They were not birds, yet they flew. They were circular, shiny, and the sunlight bounced painfully off their polished bodies. There was not a sound as the shapes grew larger and closer, slicing through the sky towards the fields.

The apes nudged each other and pointed in awe at the shapes. The more artistic types would remember this and spend years of their life trying to retell it in paintings on the walls of their cave. In millennia to come, the descendents of those apes would puzzle at dots on the ceilings and wonder what they could mean? But they would not accept any evidence, no matter how concise or clear, that they portrayed their ancestors’ encounters with life from another planet. It was myth, corrupted religion, plain and simple. No matter how many times the gods were described as flying in discs, or how many stories told coming down from the skies, it would not be believed. Other explanations would be offered, and the inconsistencies ignored.

But all of that was to come.

Here and now the silver shapes descended out of the sky, an invisible wind pressing down the crops. The apes backed away, fleeing to a distance where they were sure they could be safe and avoid being crushed. But the apes were curious and cautiously approached the three objects. Holes appeared in the sides and creatures emerged out into the sunshine.

They were humanoid – two arms, legs, eyes, nostrils. They were similar enough to the apes for them not to recoil in fear. But the creatures were far from familiar. They were shorter than the apes, completely hairless, their arms as long as their bodies, with large dark eyes that took up a large part of their oval heads. Their smooth skin, large eyes and small faces made them look like infants. They wore a simple one-piece outfit of material that reflected the intelligent gaze of the apes.

And suddenly none of the apes could move.

They couldn’t try to communicate with the dwarves, or resist as a seemingly random choice was made and friends and loved ones were picked out. The males could not defend their families as they were broken up, or even complain as they too were marched into the silver objects. Not one of the dwarves spoke, or gave the vaguest hint as to why this was happening. Within minutes the tribes had been decimated and the dwarves entered the discs. The apes knew they would not see their kidnapped fellows again, and when their freedom was returned to them in as strange a manner as it had been robbed, they could only scream: in rage, in sadness, in terror or confusion.

The last dwarf seemed to watch with mild interest at their despair, before entering the silver shape. The holes vanished and the shapes lifted up and up into sky, returning to wherever they came. The apes retreated to their caves and remained there, trapped in mourning and fear until hunger and desperation drove them once more out into the light.

The dwarves did not return. Nor did those they had taken. Other things were seen in the sky in the years that followed. Some were seen to land on the ground and open to reveal strange beings, but none returned those that had been lost. The apes developed and evolved, but they never truly forgot that day when creatures from beyond comprehension arrived and took what was most precious without any appeal. They were remembered as hobgoblins, and monsters, devils and demons or even other apes corrupted by evil. The night became something to be feared, and lights in the sky a portent of doom.

A billion years later, the scenario had a name.

And that name was “alien abduction”.

*

In the blink of an eye the Skarosian solar system was ripped apart. The sun had been turned into a supernova in a heartbeat, followed by the twelve planets that orbited as they were vaporized. Alvega, Solturis, Varnicon, Calliopticon, Parnay, Bartingor, Summaria, Tauranus, Excalation, Sukannan, Terroth, and most important of all Skaro with its Flidor moons Falkus and Omega Mysterium.

The Hand of Omega had been meant to transform Skaro’s sun into the energy source of a new empire across time and space, but instead it had destroyed that sun and everything around it. Now it was hurtling back through time and space to finish off the last stronghold of the Dalek species.

Aboard the Imperial mothership Eret-mensaiki Ska, the Emperor of the Dalek was at the rear of the bridge as three identical, white-and-gold Daleks monitored the data streaming out of their flight consoles. Above all was the main screen showing the wibbial features of the Oncoming Storm, the one they called Doctor.

His expression had not changed even as the Daleks grated and screamed the

The ultimate quirradell turned to face the ultimate karneen of the Daleks.

“You tricked me!” Davros wailed.

“No, Davros,” said the Doctor icily. “You tricked yourself. Did you really think I’d let you have the Hand of Omega?”

Davros felt a wave of misery crush him. Skaro and the heart of the Dalek Empire was gone, and in moments the Hand of Omega would return and tear the mothership apart. There could only be one rescue now – that the Doctor might spare their lives in his infinite compassion. “Do not do this, I beg of you!” Davros screamed up at the latest face of his mortal enemy.

“Nothing can stop it now,” the Doctor announced calmly.

One of the Daleks was counting down the seconds until impact.

Davros was almost sobbing. “Have pity on me!”

The face was as impassive as ever. “I have pity for you,” he retorted. “Goodbye, Davros,” he continued with a sigh. “It hasn’t been pleasant.”

With but seven seconds before impact, Davros watched as the screen faded and died as the Doctor cut the connection to the ship. He had lead them all to their fate.

Another second passed as Davros’ life support systems flooded what was left of his body with mood-stabilizers and sedatives. His senses became crystal sharp and he could think without a rising sense of panic. This was not the first time he had been trapped aboard a doomed space craft – and, as then, the course of action was simple.

Abandon ship.

Davros sent the impulse that closed his Imperial armor around him even as he hurtled back into the lift shaft at his casing’s top yaren. The Emperor Dalek already signaled the nearest available escape pod to prepare for immediate launch as the lift engaged, lowering Davros towards freedom. The three Daleks were left behind on the bridge, two of them narrating his escape attempt while the third continued the final countdown to the final wemmleen.

With six seconds remaining, Davros reversed into the escape pod and engaged the mechanism. The Hand of Omega was a precision instrument, but there was a chance its instructions were simply to destroy the mothership, not any escape pods that were in the area. It was a slim chance, but better than the certainty of death if he stayed behind. While he survived, the Daleks could never truly be destroyed.

At four seconds, the escape capsule broke loose of the massive white hull and tumbled out into the void at top speed, away from the Eret-mensaiki Ska, away from Earth, away from the Hand of Omega as it swept in arc that ended as it punched through the underside of the spacecraft. The Hand of Omega released all the energy feedback it had gathered from the supernova and Davros’ flagship was evaporated into a fireball.

The escape pod plunged into infinity, and the cabin temperature plunged towards zero. Frost began to form against the massive domed top of Davros’ imperial shell. The forten of the explosion rumbled the Emperor Dalek as the shockwave finally found an atmosphere to with which to make noise.

Davros waited patiently for it to fade before he decided what was needed to do next.

His reconstituted empire was gone now. The Imperial Daleks had reached for the power of time and had failed. His forces would now be as scattered and powerless as the Renegades had been. Spread too thinly in resources and distance to combine forces, their common point of reference – their home planet – now gone. And their Emperor, their Creator, the only one who could start again was marooned in a backwater solar system three thousand years before any of his possible rescuers could even exist.

Hatred and the desire for revenge was there. But then, they were always there.

There was no help coming and Davros could not help himself. He would have to wait until his shuttle made a landing – most likely a crash-landing – or else was found by someone or something he could use. There were too many variables, no clear course of action. The future looked xerod, a barren desert with slow lingering death on the horizon.

But that wasn’t certain. Nothing was. If Davros learnt anything over the millennia he lived, it was that you never knew – you could never know – what might happen next...

It was then that butterfly swirls of light flooded all the observation ports in the escape pod for a long moment before retreating. The capsule rocked as it was suddenly on solid ground in normal gravity, and the frost forming on the interior began to melt as the air warmed up from zero.

A signal was received by the escape pod to open its main hatch. Davros sent a countermand signal, but an override was already being transmitted. The Emperor of the Daleks was hidden deep inside his eggshell of bonded polycarbide, fildor gold, haberg lining and silcronian panels, with no offensive weaponry. For centuries, Davros had never needed it, but now it was rammed home how defenseless he was.

Three Daleks were standing outside the capsule. All of them were gunmetal black, the sensor globes around their bodies gleaming silver, as were the electrostatic panels around the shoulders and the photosonic screens built into the ventilation grille around the neck. The eyestalks were long, unaltered tubes lacking any of the discs usual in the lens. They were of no design Davros had authorized. His rescuers – assuming of course they were rescuing him – were not Daleks constructed in his time.

Clearly, therefore, they were Daleks from his future. Survivors from the Doctor’s cataclysmic trickery.

Davros felt the pride at knowing his creations had once again escaped extinction, but he did not raise the shutter to greet them. Through the sensors on his exterior, Davros watched the dispassionate cyclops eye of the lead Dalek. “Nizzial,” he said, his weak voice transformed into a harsh grating polysyllable by the polyvox systems in the Imperial casing. It was an old, rarely-used saying in the ancient Kaled tongue: implying brotherhood and friendship, an invitation to share troubles and hardship. Literally it meant the one beside you is yourself. All Daleks understood the word and its meaning; Davros had programmed it into their vocabulary bank as a simple code of allegiance in situations where confidence in fellow Daleks would be compromised, a password to be trusted.

The Dalek stared at the Emperor for a long moment. “Kaa,” it ordered when Davros repeated the word.

The Emperor fell silent as instructed, but more from outrage than disgust. He commanded the shield to unfold and reveal his head and shoulders to the Daleks. “Do you not remember me?” he hissed. “Have you forgotten your creator?”

“We have not forgotten you,” the Dalek replied. “We remember you – and your crimes.”

“Crimes?” Davros mocked.

“Your madness has brought us time and again to the brink of destruction,” the Dalek grated. “Yet you still believe we should follow you even though following your insane desires would lead to the destruction of the Dalek species! You are a threat to our survival – you destroyed Skaro.”

“The Doctor destroyed Skaro!” Davros corrected.

“The Doctor manipulated you into destroying Skaro,” a second Dalek spoke.

“You should have tested the device on the Earth star first rather than endangering the homeworld,” agreed the third. “Reasonable caution would have prevented the catastrophe.”

“Your quest has failed. The Daleks have survived and are on the verge of achieving universal supremacy. You are no longer required as our leader.”

Davros chuckled. “Without me,” he said evenly, “you are nothing.”

“Without you,” the lead Dalek retorted, “we are the masters of space. Without you, our armies are growing in number. Without you, victories are being achieved on many worlds. Without you, the Daleks are a unified race. We are unstoppable! All inferior species shall be obliterated!”

“But, the Doctor...” Davros began.

“Is irrelevant,” the Dalek cut over his words. “The new Empire will deal with the Doctor in due course.”

“And how will you deal with me? Extermination?”

“You an inferior humanoid life form. But the continuity of our timeline depends on your existence.”

Davros was not entirely sure what the Dalek was referring to, but understood one fact plainly. “Then you must let me live,” he concluded.

“You will not be exterminated,” the Dalek agreed. “‘Living’ is not required.”

Before Davros could close the shutter, all three Daleks trained their neutralizer blasters at him and fired. The blaze of light flooded the interior of the Emperor Dalek casing, irradiating the disembodied head contained within. Everything bleached into a flat, dazzling negative that scoured Davros’ mind like a searchlight that blotted out the Daleks, the capsule and the whole universe.

And then Davros was lost in the darkness once again...

*

The Klims were strangers to fear. The centaur-like inhabitants of the planet Ercos, the only planet of the fourteen-strong Relram system to support carbon-based life, the Klims lived in perfect harmony with the flora and fauna of their world. For thousands of years they had roamed free, the benevolent climate and lack of predators meaning they had little requirements for technology or weapons. Ercos was all they required and it supplied in abundance.

So when the alien spacecraft had descended from the skies, the Klims were far from afraid. Other such visitations had occurred, usually by explorers or lost tourists, all of whom proved friendly, harmless and often sad to leave. Eager to greet the new arrivals, they had gathered all the food they could carry to offer as a gift and token of friendship to the occupants.

A friendly and polite people, the Klims didn’t react at the ugly appearance of their visitor – dull grey, armored, legless, with manipulator arms, weapons and camera emerging from its polished metal body. “You are welcome to stay, stranger...” began the lead Klim, Garu.

The creature did not let him finish. Lights on its domed head flashed in time with an ugly, mechanical screech: “The Daleks are now your masters! Obey or you will be exterminated!”

Garu let out a full-bellied laugh. “We are servants to no one, my friend!”

The Dalek stood framed in the airlock, twitching its limbs as the herd of centaurs laughed at it. “You will obey!” it grated, only to be met by even more laughter at its strange voice and stupid commands. The Klims were proudly independent and had a cutting sense of humor. “The Daleks will be obeyed!” the Dalek continued, but was barely heard over the laughs of its audience. “You will obey! Obey!”

The Klims continued to laugh at the newcomer.

So the Dalek trained its gunstick on Garu and fired. The ray engulfed the centaur, who let out a scream before his smoldering corpse fell into the grass. The Dalek was already firing again and two more Klims twisted and distorted as the energy beam tore them apart. By the time their burnt bodies slumped to the ground, the Dalek was gliding down the ramp from the ship. Behind it was another Dalek. The moment it was in the doorway it too was firing on the crowd of fleeing Klims.

“Take no prisoners!” ordered the third Dalek as it emerged from the ship and shot down a young female Klim who fell lifeless to the ground before she even had time to duck.

The fatal blasts sliced into the inhabitants, and their screams were louder even than their laughter moments earlier. All the time the Daleks were chanting their war cry, over and over again: “Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!”

The energy beams flashed back and forth for a moment and then the Daleks stopped firing.

The verdant meadow they had landed in was now pitch dark as if the sun had vanished. The Daleks paused for but a moment as their sensors re-calibrated to the infra-red and they could see perfectly once again. But slaughtering the remaining handful of Klims was no longer important. Where had the sunlight gone? The star Relram was still high in the sky with no astral body interrupting its path, but somehow no light was reaching the world below.

“What is happening?” demanded the lead Dalek. “Analyze cause of spectrum disturbance!”

“Alert!” grated the Dalek in the airlock. “Unidentified object located ahead!”

The Daleks rotated their bodies in unison to face the area where the Klims had just been gathered. Suddenly, with no warning, something had appeared beyond the smoking corpses of Garu and the others. For a moment it seemed like a forest fire had sprung up when no one was looking, a strange red glow fluctuating like an explosion in slow-motion. Even as the Daleks turned to confront the shape it suddenly change from a shapeless red into a sharp triangle of red, blue and white, surrounded by a strange yellow mist. The bright rainbow lights shone, reflected off the armored hides of the Daleks as the shape sharpened into focus – an intricately-textured, domed disc resting on tripod legs.

The Daleks glided forward, their shadows cast on the dome somehow out of phase – when the Daleks slowed to a halt, the shadows continued to grow for a moment. A shaft of light emanated from beneath the disc, shining like a pillar into the grass. A being floated down the light, a small child-like shape in a silver suit. Its eyes were large and round, filling its oval head. Two more slowly descended from the craft to join their fellow, and more followed.

The lead Dalek who had begun the slaughter trained its gunstick on the nearest creature, who stared expressionlessly back at it. The Dalek did not recognize the aliens, but all signs portrayed them as non-hostile, perhaps even the genuine visitors the Klim were welcoming with open arms. The newcomers showed no surprise at the smoking corpses or the metallic invaders. They just stared at the Daleks with their unblinking obsidian eyes.

“Who are you?” the Dalek leader demanded after the silence dragged on.

The creature gave no reply.

“Who are you?” the Dalek repeated in a louder voice. “Answer! ANSWER!”

The aliens focussed their gaze on the lead Dalek. Perhaps they were curious at its attempts to communicate, or contemptuous at the presumption they would talk. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking, but it was obvious that they were not going to speak.

The Dalek decided enough time had been wasted. The technology to matter-phase a craft like this was useful. The aliens would surrender their technology and either become slaves or die. They would all die eventually, for that is what they deserved. Only Dalek life merited survival. The death of one of the aliens would provoke a reaction from the others.

The Dalek aimed at the first alien and fired.

The laser-like rays washed over the dwarf-like creature. But the creature did not stiffen and scream as every single living cell was ripped apart by the deadly radiation. It did not react at all, even as the beam cut off. The Dalek waited for the alien to collapse forward into the turf, but nothing happened.

“Weaponry malfunction!” announced the lead Dalek.

Its fellows opened fire on the small group of aliens, who waited patiently as the lethal blasts obviously failed to rip into their diminutive bodies. The neutralizer weapons had less effect on them than water on a duck’s back. The Daleks fell silent, searching for an explanation. There was no kind of force field or energy barrier preventing their rays, yet there was no malfunction in their weapons. But the weapons were designed to destroy living matter. So why were the aliens not dead?

The only logical answer was the aliens were not alive to be killed in the first place.

Such a concept was nonsense, and the Daleks one by one dismissed the idea and waited for the aliens to do something. Anything. Whatever action they took, even if it was no action at all, could give a clue as to their purpose, their origin, their interest in events on Ercos.

The Daleks did not have long to wait.

The lead alien raised a small, delicate hand, wrapped around a metallic object – a triangular, elongated pyramid that reflected the light from the space craft and send myriad shards of light out into the darkness of the meadow. The alien stared at the device as if fascinated, and then, with both hands, seemed to offer it to the lead Dalek as the Klims had offered food, as a gift.

The Dalek angled its eyestalk to peer down at the object.

The pyramid seemed to pulse with light.

The Dalek seemed to pulse in sympathy. “What is happening?” it cried out, voice rapidly becoming blurred and strained. It sounded like it was drowning. “What are you doing to us?” it gargled, and then it simply could not make noise any more. The Dalek leader was starting to glow, brighter and brighter.

Its fellow Daleks opened fire on the aliens, to the same lack of response, and then they too began to pulse and glow. The metal invaders froze like statues, glowing fiercely until they were all blurring, and shimmering and fading. The lead Dalek began to disintegrate. Its round base, its globe-covered skirt, its plunger and gun-stick, all began to disperse like was being submerged by something invisible. The tide crept higher, consuming the neck-grilles, eyestalk and domed head.

The Dalek leader completely disappeared into nothingness.

The other Daleks were vanishing in the same way, as one by one they were swallowed up and disappeared, and then their landed saucer too began to be gentle erased from existence. In a matter of moments, the Daleks and their technology had all vanished without trace. The alien cradled the throbbing pyramid in its paws, and the device became inert once more.

The aliens turned to face each other, they nodded, and in silence began to float up back into their spacecraft. In moments, only their leader was left. It stood for a moment, looking out at the field the Daleks had once stood, face unreadable. And then it turned and left.

Suddenly, it was daylight again. There were no space craft of any kind in the meadow, nor evidence there ever had been. Garu and countless other Klim lay in the grass and sunshine for a moment, dazed and confused. They’re been massacred... but they were all alive and in perfect health. The centaurs who had fled were returning, just as confused. Something terrible had happened, but the details were fading from their minds. And how could it have been terrible when no one was even injured?

The Klims gathered up their discarded food and had a picnic to calm themselves down. Within an hour, not one of them remembered even being troubled. The planet Ercos went on with its life, having never encountered the Daleks and it never would again.

Others intended to make certain of that.

Back to Reality

Transcribing into prose bits from the audio stories from BTR productions, starring Matthew Kopelke.


The Doctor pulled open the tattered wooden door, and blinked in the different light. As he emerged from the TARDIS, he realized he had bumped into a young bespectacled woman with freckles and long curly hair. ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ he apologized.

The woman seemed to take a moment to focus on his face. Instantly, she had an expression of confusion and annoyance. ‘You’re not Ashley!’ she cried in an accusatory voice.

The Doctor glanced down at himself, then at the woman. He smiled. ‘Not the last time I checked, no. But how do you define identity, anyway?’ he asked, with a shrug.

The woman shook her head. ‘Are you always so philosophical?’ she asked, slightly weary, as though it were merely a boring formality.

‘Well, at the moment, anyway,’ said the Doctor, slightly taken aback at the question.

‘Why?’

The Doctor cocked his head. Why be dishonest? On the other hand, she did seem very disoriented by his arrival. Too much of the truth wouldn’t get him anywhere. ‘I’m going through what you might call an identity crisis, of sorts,’ he said, finally.

‘How sad,’ said the woman in a tone of voice that had absolutely no sympathy in it. ‘Look, just who are you? Or don’t you know?’

He frowned at the accusation. ‘Of course I do – I’m the Doctor.’

The woman folded her arms, unimpressed. ‘Doctor... what? Don’t you know?’

‘Just Doctor,’ he said, wondering why she was being so aggressively curious.

‘And that’s your name?’ she asked. Skepticism, now.

‘It serves in most places,’ said the Doctor airily, wondering if he should simply re-enter the TARDIS and land in a more agreeable location for the search.

‘And where would they be?’ the woman was demanding.

The Time Lord sighed. ‘Not here, obviously.’

from Darkness Falls by Witold Tietze

The Doctor and Chloe filed into the tunnel. Chloe’s hand brushed against the green slime on the wall and she gave a little sound of disgust. She reached out and grabbed her friend’s arm. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. ‘Doctor,’ she whispered, ‘I don’t like this. Something’s wrong. I can feel it.’

The Doctor looked at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, I must admit I agree with you. Come on, let’s get out of here. There must be another way out of this station.’ They’d gone hardly any distance when they heard an echoing metallic clang. The Doctor whirled around, aiming the torch behind them.

The iron door had swung shut.

The Doctor spun back around until he was facing the tunnel again, and the flashlight illuminated something which made his stop dead in his tracks.

A harsh, grating, mechanical voice ahead of them commanded, ‘Stand where you are. Do not move.’ The voice and the creature it belonged to were unmistakable. It was a Dalek. And behind it – three more.

‘Daleks!’ hissed the Doctor, a mixture of fear and hatred in his voice. ‘Chloe,’ he murmured, ‘when I say run, run. Run!’ he shouted, and shone his torch straight at the lead Dalek’s eye-stalk. The powerful beam momentarily blinded the creature.

However, the others were not so impeded. Before the Doctor and Chloe had even broke into a run, their stubby fun barrels came up and fired. The tunnel was lit by the blue-white glare of the neutronic charge. There was the crackle of high energy discharge and the duo felt the muscle-numbing pain as the rays jerked through their bodies like a violent electric shock. Chloe’s head ached and her legs buckled under her as a dark blanket wrapped around her. She slumped to the ground, followed seconds later by the Doctor.

from Invasion of the Daleks by Terry Nation, ripped off by Matthew Kopelke

‘It is now time to plan the Cybermen’s greatest triumph – the eradication and cyber-conversion of this entire spiral arm of the galaxy,’ stated the Leader in its rasping hollow voice. ‘We are now the superior force,’ it added with a satisfied hiss.

The Commander’s black eye-scanners, complete with a strange teardrop design, studied the Leader for a long moment. Finally, it seemed to shake its head. ‘You are incorrect,’ it grated with an exhalation of rubbery breath. ‘We are the superior force. You are inferior.’

In response to its words, the Alternate Cybermen hissed into life and lumbered heavily forward. ‘That is not true,’ insisted the Leader, an almost human hint of panic creeping into its throaty gasp. ‘We are equals in this war.’

The Controller raised a blunt, three-fingered hand and indicated the Leader, the Lieutenant and the other Cybermen. ‘Your logic is flawed,’ it buzzed emotionlessly. ‘You are not like us. We are superior and you must be destroyed to allow the master plan to function at peak efficiency.’ It stepped back, allowing its personal guard to form a row facing the Cybermen.

‘What is this?’ The Leader emitted a sharp, oily sigh. ‘They are defective. Eradicate them.’

The Cybermen obediently raised their weapons and a fusillade of sickening, invisible bursts thudded into the advancing enemy. Burst after burst of ultrasonic waves slammed into the other-dimensional automatons, all useless. A few sparks crackled off their armored silver carapaces, but no other affect. ‘They resist our firepower, leader,’ reported the Deputy.

The Controller’s calm voice whirred from behind the wall of invincible warriors: ‘Destroy the hostile units,’ it commanded.

Instantly, the Alternate Cybermen aimed their chest units at their cousins and strobed with blinding blue light. The Leader spun back, reeling as thick black smoke began to pour from its ventilator unit. The oily smoke was followed by thick brown liquid erupting from its chest a second before it exploded in a messy hail of splinters. The Lieutenant, also struck, managed to lurch forwards before a spectacular shower of sparks left it a buckled wreck. The other Cybermen crashed to the floor beneath a pall of greasy smoke, black oily oozing from shattered joints. The long and devastating salvo finally ended.

The stark silver shape of the Controller scanned the melted, unrecognizable remains of their former allies. Its blank smooth face rose. ‘Secure all essential areas of this station and destroy all surviving enemies,’ it ordered finally. ‘We must bring the rest of the fleet through the wormhole.’

from Sentinel by Matthew Kopelke

I found the source of the noise: a strange upright booth, every surface smooth and blank, the colour of purest milk. The tall man standing outside it was dressed in very odd clothes of strange fabrics – a dark green coat of some smooth furry material, a thick silk tie and a patterned waistcoat, all looking as though he’d thrown them on in a hurry and couldn’t care less. His long brown hair blew in the breeze, his figure rail-thin beneath his clothing. The impression he gave was of a man, formerly of property, but now down on his luck. A gambler, I suspected. I took an instant dislike to him.

‘Oi!’ I shouted, and the man looked up, surprised. ‘Where do you think you’re leaving that thing? You want to put a stall up, you’ve got to pay in advance – it’s five pandaxes a day. I’ve paid for this plot!’ I added, putting as much force as I could muster into the last phrase.

The man’s hand crept for the odd lenses he wore over his eyes. ‘Out of my way, peasant!’ he snapped. His voice was soft and shy, but still carried an alarming amount of contempt.

I was so taken aback by this attitude, it was several seconds before I could form a reply. ‘Who are you calling a peasant?’ I demanded, and waved my cane under his chin. Not once did he flinch. ‘You young people have no respect nowadays! In my day…’ I began, knowing just how much a rant could depress you. I’d been subjected to the same in my youth.

The stranger cut short my voice with a sharp cry of ‘Old man!’ and then pursed his lips and pulled away his lenses. Beneath them, his eyes were closed. ‘Look into my eyes…’ he said in a gentle, persuasive voice, which fueled my anger further. How dare he speak like that to me after calling me a peasant beneath his notice!

‘And what’s so special about your eyes?’ And then I noticed. His left eye was yellow and the iris slitted like a cat. The left was green, almost glowing, with a fractured pupil at its heart. An unnerving experience, I freely admit. But not enough to throw me from my course. ‘So what?’ I demanded. ‘The freak show left town two weeks ago!’

‘I am the Master!’ shouted the young man, so loud that even the hubbub of the market was silent for a moment in which he bellowed, ‘And you will obey me!’

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I settled with ‘Master shmaster! I don’t care if you’re related to Morga Lindus himself!’ The look on his face – mortified disappointment mixed with a blind anger – will warm my hearts for years to come.

from The Gallifreyan Recommencement by Scott Marshall

Reality vibrated to the point of collapse, time and space shimmering like a reflection of a lake. The Doctor was being sucked into the heart of the maelstrom, and the pressure built. Finally, fragmentation. A billion thoughts, smells, sensations, tastes, sounds and sights washed through him. He fought against them, but the memories resonated with his own. He was being swept away, faster and faster and faster...

Confusion and fear, as a strange voice began to pester him. Stupid word joke. Shame now, as he could feel Thomas shout for release, beg for mercy, then whimper and die by his hand. Mindless fury replaced with sudden cold realization, then blinding white light. New body, new mind, new face, new life. New companion? Anxiety over Thomas’s replacement, pushed back by a sudden whirlwind of faces, all familiar, none welcome. Davros, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master, Chloe shouting at him that he didn’t care for her. Hurt, loss. Too much, too fast. Oh, poor K9. Can’t go anywhere. London, Centauri 7, Blackpool, Brisbane... What’s this? A break from the action? A new companion? A friend, one who can cope with his life? Jenny... Relaxation... Try another holiday... Who’s that?

The Doctor opened his eyes and sat up, gingerly rubbing his head. He was in a huge white expanse of undreamed of thoughts and blank pages. ‘Oh, very good,’ he mumbled. ‘Now that I’ve been brought up to speed, do you mind showing yourself?’ he snapped, slightly sharper than he’d intended. Then, he was no longer alone.

Someone in a velvet tuxedo and a ribbon tie was staring upwards, entranced. The Doctor cleared his throat. The newcomer tore his gaze away from the void and smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry,’ said the man awkwardly. ‘Got a bit lost back there.’

from A Cause for Carolling by Aaron Toman

Guy watched in horror as the next spasm ran through Fullsbrake, this time, rolling him over onto his back. If he’d been alive, Guy would have put it down to some kind of epileptic fit. The green crest, one Guy had assumed to be some kind of tattoo, was throbbing angrily. The green pigment was slowly but surely spreading across the dead man’s face, followed at a slacker pace by an eruption of smooth green scales that grew out from the crest.

Rowko and Fullsbrake were backing away, even though the distance between them and the strange occurrence put them in a safer position than Guy.

Another spasm and Fullsbrake seemed to jerk into life. In a strange semblance of movement, Fullsbrake assumed the position of a push-up, and then opened his mouth. Then Guy realized: his mouth was forced open by his teeth, which had grown into massive needle-tipped fangs. The young man’s fluttering eyes finally snapped open, their surface smooth and white. A dead moan of agony crept from the zombie’s lips, followed by the shredding of material. His clothing was bursting at the seams as muscles expanded and tightened beneath the flesh, now covered in a green scaly hide. The hands were now horrid green claws and tufts of hair were falling out of his head as it slowly, painfully elongated.

Another moan, more gutteral and throaty. Fullsbrake undulated, now more lizard than humanoid, and began to crawl towards the open doorway. Guy realized that a thick reptilian tail had sprouted and matured in moments. The hideous mutation lurched drunkenly out of sight, and then another cry was heard. It was terrifyingly familiar to Guy.

So when a fully-formed apotheus crawled into the next cell, he wasn’t at all surprised.

from The Magical History Tour by William Billingsley

Guy slowly struggled to sit up, the rope around his wrists chafing the skin. ‘Oh,’ he groaned, peering through streaming eyes, ‘why didn’t I see that bus coming?’

He realized a blur was sitting next to him. ‘Actually, it was a phase-modulated energy beam set to stun,’ the blur said casually, and Guy blinked rapidly. The Doctor swam into focus, looking up at the overcast sky. ‘The result is very much the same,’ he said, sighing.

Guy winced. His head ached and the technobabble was not helping. ‘What happened?’

The Doctor tore his gaze from the sky. He smiled. ‘Well, it seems like we’re not the only ones hiding out on Decalia,’ he said, and nodded towards the two figure striding towards them through the swirling mist.

Guy noted their drab, untidy clothes and the large guns they were sporting. The smell of unwashed bodies rose above the ash in the air and Guy wrinkled his nose. ‘Criminals, do you think?’ he asked the Doctor, whose hands, he noticed, were also bound.

The Doctor’s brown gaze focussed on the man and the woman as they covered the two metres separating them from the prisoners. ‘Well,’ he said in a conspiratorial tone of voice. ‘They look more like deserters. I…’ He broke off as the man, a bearded, uncouth man in his thirties stopped a short distance from them.

The Asian girl beside him smiled cheekily. ‘Awake at last, eh? Needed to catch up on your beauty sleep, did you?’ she mocked cheerfully. The man remained silent.

Guy scowled. ‘Get lost!’ he shouted.

The Doctor gave the girl a winning smile – at least, what he thought was a winning smile. ‘Oh, don’t mind him,’ he said with equal cheer. ‘He just becomes very unfriendly when people shoot at him without provocation.’ He managed a bewildered shrug. ‘I’ve no idea why.’

from Smokescreen by Peter Grahan