The Time Lord Chronicles.
Chapter 1: Perchance to Dream.
The time rotor rose and fell with an odd wheezing groaning noise and then promptly went silent. The only occupant of the TARDIS looked up from the monitor screen and frowned. He gave it a solid thump and the rotor started up again. He frowned and with a shake of his head turned his attention back to the monitor in front of him.
The occupant looked human but looks were deceiving. He was dressed in a tweed suit more reminiscent of 1920’s England than the depths of time and space. A pair of simple wire-rimmed glasses were perched on his nose, and coupled with the outfit made him look like a Cambridge professor.
“Ah, yes. That should do for now” he muttered to himself. With a whiz of activity, he moved round the octagonal console pressing buttons. The rotor whizzed twice more and fell silent. There was a brief pause and then the TARDIS shuddered.
“Easy there, old girl.”
Helen didn’t consider herself a thief, though the two TESCO security guards chasing her out the supermarket would argue that. She hadn’t intended to take the dress but it had called to her. Not literally, just in the sense that she desired it.
By the time she had crossed the car park, dodging cars, and out towards the petrol station, she had long since dropped the dress, though the security were still in hot pursuit. She raced around the path, trying to put the hedges between her and her pursuers. Helen made for the entrance to an alleyway and came skidding to a halt outside an old red phone box. Helen pulled open and the door and stepped inside. She felt a sudden shiver and knocked into a man dressed in a tweed suit and small wire-rimmed glasses. Taken by the surprise the man staggered back into a overly large room, and tumbled against an odd looking console in the centre of it. Taken by surprise, Helen didn’t move and just stood there. The door slammed shut behind her and a wheezing groaning noise started up.
He grabbed his glasses off the TARDIS floor and stood up, placing them back upon his nose.
“Who are you? What have you done?”
Helen blinked a couple times and just gaped at the inside of the phone box. Inside it was not a phone box, but an octagonal room, easily four or five times the size of the exterior. The walls were decorated with small round portals that looked like they contained everything imaginable. Only one side of the room was devoid of those portals and that held another door. A central console dominated the room, also octagonal, covered with buttons and levers. At the centre of the console was an opaque crystalline column, which occasionally flashed with pale colours.
“Um… what?”
The man muttered would could have been a curse and turned back to the console.
“Perfect! We’re in flight and I have no idea where or when we’re going. You could have doomed both of us.”
“What is this place? Who are you?”
“I’m the one asking the questions young lady. Now,” he readjusted his glasses “who are you?”
“My name is Helen. Look… there’s these… how is this possible?”
“Helen. Right. Yes, yes, it’s all a branch of physics you won’t understand just now. Stop jabbering and take a seat over there.” He gestured to a wicker chair beside the door. “I need to work out where we’re going.”
Helen sat in bewildered silence for several minutes while the odd guy moved around the console pressing buttons and pulling levers. If she didn’t know better she would have said that he didn’t know how to operate whatever this thing is.
It has to be alien, she thought to herself. Have I been kidnapped by a … a tweed wearing alien? She shook her head and tried to put it from her mind. Finally he gave up and turned to her, adjusting his glasses as he did so.
“Right Helen. Since you’ve set us in flight I guess introductions are in order. I am Stanislavadevoratrelundar.”
“What? I didn’t hear that right.”
“Stanislavadavoratrelundar. It’s my name.”
“I’m not sure I can say that. Um… Stanis… can I just call you Stan?”
His face went dark for a moment.
“If it helps, then yes.” His tone was far from pleased.
“Ok. Stan. I need some questions answered.”
Stan went to one of the round portals on the walls and opened it to reveal a small wooden stool. He pulled it out, closed the door and sat down.
“We’re going to be a while until she finds a place to land, so ask away. I don’t promise to answer everything but you can ask.”
Helen shifted nervously on her seat and took a deep breath.
“This… thing…”
“The TARDIS.”
“TARDIS? Right, it’s alien isn’t it? You’re alien?”
“We’re all aliens. You’re an alien to me. But yes, I’m not human despite appearances.”
“It’s a space ship?”
“A time and space ship to be exact, and that’s the problem.”
“Problem?”
Stan sighed and rose from his seat. He walked over to the console, flipped a few buttons with a sigh and turned back to Helen.
“Yes. You see she’s not in tiptop condition. I had landed on Earth to try and conduct repairs. When you barged in, you knocked me onto the console and it set her in flight through time and space. Unless I try to set co-ordinates, I have no idea where she goes.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. She won’t drop us into a star or anything but it means until I get to do some repairs, I can’t get you home.”
“That’s ok. Ah… it probably won’t hurt to vanish for a few days.”
“Probably be longer than days, Helen. If and when I can get you back, years may have passed.”
The brief moment of hope faded and her gaze fell to the floor. She started crying. Stan became much more uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry, but crying won’t help. I’ll do what I can to get you home. What made you burst in here like that anyway?”
Helen looked up and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
“I was running from these … security. I thought this was a phone box.”
“I’ve picked up a criminal. Great! What are guilty of?”
“Shoplifting. Pocket picking…”
Stan sighed and returned to his stool.
“Right, in that case if you are travelling with me till I get you home there are a few rules.”
Helen nodded. Inside she wanted to burst into tears again.
“Rule one. The universe is big and nasty, so let me do all the talking.”
She nodded again.
“Rule two. Don’t wander off. And rule three is no pinching things without my say so. In return I’ll do everything I can to get you home safe and sound. Sound fair?”
“Yes, Stan.”
Though she was well out of her depth, Helen felt a brief surge of excitement. Whatever trouble she was now in, no one else could say they had travelled in time and space.
The TARDIS was in flight for what felt like hours, though in truth it had been only twenty minutes. Helen had remained seated in silence throughout but Stan had spent the whole time either pacing around the central console or muttering to himself. Suddenly, the time rotor column slowed and came to a halt. The groaning noise faded as it did so.
“Well, we’ve landed. Let’s take a look.”
He flipped a switch and one of the round portals on the wall shimmered and became a holographic TV screen. It showed a forest of green. Trees, grasses and ferns stretched out from the clearing where the TARDIS had landed.
“Is that Earth?”
“No. The colours are slightly off. The scanner can’t tell me where or when we are, just that wherever we are it’s got breathable air and an Earth like gravity. No radiation.”
Helen rose from her chair and headed over to have a look.
“So, what do we do?”
“It’s Earth-like so there is a good chance that someone has colonised it. If so, then perhaps I can get parts and tools to fix the TARDIS. Come on.”
They stepped out from the TARDIS into the forest and had a look around. Helen gasped when she turned around. The red phone box that she had entered had become a … a tree!
“What the…”
“It’s called a chameleon circuit. It’s about the only bit of the TARDIS that does work. Wherever we go, she’ll take on the appearance of something appropriate, so that no one spots her.”
“How will we ever find her again if we wander off?”
“The TARDIS generates a bit of a telepathic field. We’ll find her because she’ll draw us to her. Don’t worry.”
“There’s no birds or insects.”
“Not every world has them. These plants might thrive by some other means.”
Stan spotted something glittering in the grass and knelt down to examine it. It was a shell. He sniffed the end and rose up. Looking around he spotted a few bullet holes in the ground and bark.
“We’re not alone. Humans have got here at least.”
“How do you know?”
He showed her the bullet.
“That’s a human design shell. Assault rifle I’d guess by the look of it. It’s been here for a few days.”
Helen examined the shell but she had no clue and handed it back. Stan dropped it into his pocket.
“Is this a war zone then?” Helen asked.
“No. It’s too quiet and not enough damage to the vegetation. There’s some small damage back there but…”
“What?”
“No sign of bodies or blood. Come on, let’s find out where we are and what’s going on.”
After pushing through the undergrowth and finding a muddy trail, Stan pointed out booted footprints heading in the direction that the two of them were going. A few splats of blood trailed along with the prints.
“One set is heavier than the others. I’d say someone is carrying a body. Maybe it is a war zone after all.” Stan said.
Helen felt like a third wheel. She had nothing to add to this and she knew it. With a sigh she walked on ahead and pushed through the undergrowth to see what lay ahead.
“Stan!”
With a flash he was up from where he studied the tracks and bounded through the ferns after her.
“What is it?”
He emerged onto the edge of a wide clearing of long grass in the midst of the thick forest. At the centre of the clearing was an unusual structure. It resembled a horseshoe with a dome-like structure situated in the cup of the horseshoe. The main body of the horseshoe was ground floor but the dome rose at two levels above it. At the base of the horseshoe was a single door, though the rest of the building showed no windows.
“Well, well, what have we here? Definitely human design. Twenty-sixth century by looks of it.”
“Twenty-sixth? Wow.”
“Indeed. Ok, lets go see if anyone’s home.”
Stan set forwards and after a few seconds Helen followed him. The grass was long and billowed in the breeze. Not too unlike Earth, Helen thought.
“Are all worlds so like Earth?” She asked.
“Most yes. Remind me of quarries.” He chuckled. Helen didn’t get the joke and shrugged.
At that moment there was movement all around them. Stan and Helen came to a stop, as four black suited figures wielding futuristic rifles rose from their positions in the grass. They both rose their hands to surrender.
“Hello. Can you help us? I’m…”
Everything went black, as one of the figures smacked Stan in the face with the butt of the rifle.
To be continued...
