A quietly alternating wheezing and groaning sound emitted from the central column in rhythm with its constant rise and fall.  The sound of the ship’s engines was a strange one; they seemed unearthly and out of place.  The noise wasn’t nearly as strange as the rest of the features within expansive time machine, however.  Emily Johnson hadn’t expected the blue box that was a little bigger than a conventional phone booth to contain more space than most buildings.   

Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps on the metal flooring, she turned around to see a man with brown hair step out of the corridor.  The man was just over six feet tall, slightly slim, and he held himself with an air of eccentricity; there was natural inquisitiveness and curiosity in his gaze, mixed with a near-limitless abundance of energy and a great amount of intellect.  

To describe it, she would have said that it was like living with a three year old hyperactive boy who had the mind of a university professor.  He had called himself ‘the Doctor’; using a title rather than an actual name in a rather cryptic fashion, and he’d dodged answering her questions about his odd choice of name.  It was something that she’d become accustomed to, however; ‘Doctor’ was easier to remember and pronounce than some other names she’d heard of.

It was this odd and eccentric man who took it upon himself to operate the machine, which he’d said was called the ‘TARDIS’.  The name of the weird machine was an acronym for; ‘Time and Relative Dimension in Space’, as the Doctor had explained.  

“G’morning Emily,” the Doctor said with a wide beaming grin.  He walked up to the console and then started manipulating its controls with blinding speed.  It seemed from his tone that he wasn’t even bothering to check what he was pressing or why he was pressing it.  “How are you today?”

“I’m fine,” she said flatly, trying and failing to keep up with the frantic pace at which the Doctor manipulated the controls. “I’m just a little bored sitting around on my ass all day.  So where are we going to go now?  Earth, again?”

The Doctor chuckled.  “Nah, I was gonna take us to…” he took a moment to check the controls before continuing, “…Kel'elm'noetrowtonkerithirk.  There’s some nice beaches there; and the local population is one of the friendliest cultures that I’ve ever encountered.”

“Is it just me, or is every name in the universe outside Earth an unpronounceable one?” she muttered with a sardonic edge to her voice.  “So where is this ‘Kel-something’?”

“It’s called ‘Kel'elm'noetrowtonkerithirk’,” he said, pulling a lever.  “It’s the second planet of a solar system in the bottom left hand corner of what you would call the Orion constellation.  You know, I originally wanted them to call it the ‘Hourglass constellation’ after I first saw it in when I was in Greece that one time.”  He paused just long enough to shrug. “But, as always, you humans have a habit of seeing patterns in things that aren’t there.  It works excellently for your boundless human imaginations, certainly, but it’s not always that great for coming up with an effective fix to a problem.  It’s like that time with the Eye…”

“Are you always like this?” Emily interrupted.  “You just talk non-stop.  While I appreciate you taking me away from the Daleks and on an adventure through time and space… you might want to consider changing your name to ‘Dr. Chatterbox’.”

“Oh well, you’ll like it on…” The Doctor was interrupted a second time as a light on the console began blinking red and a quiet alarm began bleeping away.  His expression changed from one of cheer and excitement to one of grim seriousness and utter determination.  With a resigned sigh, he explained, “That’s a distress signal; someone needs help.  I’m afraid that we might not have time to stop off at the beach anytime soon.”

“Who needs help?” she asked.  “Can’t you trace the signal or something?”

“I’m doing that now...” Dialling a few numbers into a keypad and pressing another button, he called up a small star-chart on one of the few small screens which were mounted upon the central console.  “Ah hah,” he cried out.  “I’ve found it; the signal is coming from a faraway planet in sector seven-four-six-beta-delta-one-eight-six-omega-indigo-alpha-beta.”

“In English, please?”

“The planet is called Pythagoras; and I think there’s something important about it… I just can’t remember right now,” he muttered.  “Ah well, let’s see who’s in trouble…” The Doctor began manipulating the controls again, and the rhythmic rise and fall of the central column began to speed up, along with the sound that it emitted.  “If I were you, I’d hold on to something; I’m going to get us there as quickly as I can.”

“I don’t like the sound of that…” Emily muttered just before feeling the sudden lurch of inertia and G-force as the TARDIS accelerated through the time vortex.


It awoke into a dark room, lit only by the dim blue light of its ocular sensors.  The room had only one door that it could immediately see the outline of.  Surprisingly, it could not access any of its night vision and everything remained lit only by the dim blueness.  What was going on?  It could not move; its armour was jammed in place by a force field.  It had been captured… it had to find the others in its unit; it was the commander and they were left without direction.

“The great terror of the universe reduced to a mere prisoner inside an electrical cage.  How does it truly feel to be the last of your kind, looking down the barrel of extinction’s loaded gun?”  The voice belonged to a female, and a humanoid would have described it as seductive and sleek, and it had an edge of hatred and utter malice.  The commander would likely have described it as the inferior voice of an inferior being which needed to be eradicated and its last traces of existence removed from the universe.

Besides, something was wrong.  Was it truly the last?  Was that even possible?  The last thing it could remember was the opening shots of a skirmish, and the last-ditch attempt to destroy them using the time vortex as a weapon.  Had it worked?  Obviously not otherwise it wouldn’t be here in any form; imprisoned or not… so why was this woman being completely ridiculous?

“Why do you not answer me?  Are you afraid of me?”  She laughed and strutted into view while swaying her hips somewhat as if trying to impress someone.  She was tall and slim.  Its sensors detected that she was almost too slim, and would probably be considered underweight by most scientific standards.  “You should be afraid; I’m not the one in a cage…”

“Is an inferior humanoid worth being afraid of?” it asked evenly.  “Is any inferior humanoid worth any emotions other than hatred, pity and then the sympathetic mercy that we eventually grant you; the release from your degenerate and inferior forms into oblivion?”

She laughed again. “You’re trying to claim some kind of moral high ground? Oh dear… I’d heard that your kind was delusional; but I didn’t even know the extent of it until now…”

“What do you want?” it asked, scanning her and contemplating its next course of action. “You are one of them… you must want something.  Your kind’s pathetic attempts at appeasement in order to avert a war did not work, I assume?”

“No, it didn’t, and I suppose we are kin in that regard…” she muttered.  “You are the last of your species, and I’m almost certain that I am the last of mine; everybody lost the Great Time War... your kind has been utterly destroyed, and so has mine.”

“You are an enemy…” it said, changing the subject and ignoring that line of thought.  It was not a decent prospect to learn that your entire species had been destroyed.  “I promise that you will be eradicated upon my escape from this imprisonment.  You are the enemy!  You will die!”

“Oh no, my destructive little pet, I have a proposition for you… perhaps we can work together and produce a new species.  Conquer the galaxy side by side, with you as the Emperor and me as your Empress.”

“You propose an alliance?”

“Yes, of course I…”

“REQUEST DENIED!” it shouted.  “You are an inferior species!  You will be exterminated!”

  
Pillars of thick noxious smoke rose from the distant city as she watched from the balcony of the capitol building.  Scattered blazes were still visible even at that distance and she could see rescue forces working desperately to keep any of the survivors alive after the raid.  Akara wrinkled her nose at it; such death and destruction was a disgustingly cruel action; the endless trickle of death needed to stop, and soon.

“Have you sent the signal out yet, Mathematician?” the Councillor asked beside her.  He coughed slightly, leaning on his cane for support.  Everyone on the planet knew that there wasn’t going to be a long time left until his body died, and it showed in the way he walked.  She knew that a mere month was a rather generous estimate. “We need any help we can get to help battle this travesty... any help at all would be better than being left to battle this threat alone.”

“Yes, the signal has been sent out,” Akara replied softly. “But I’m still opposed to the idea; what if we get the wrong kind of help.  I’m not entirely sure that all of the horrors of the Time War are truly over.  The Timelords underwent self-destruction and sacrificed themselves. Most of the dark things went down along with them, but there have been some scared rumours of surviving Daleks terrorising that backwards planet in the Milky Way galaxy.”

“The risk of Daleks is low, Mathematician,” he reminded her. “Besides; have you not heard all of the other rumours floating about?  The Daleks were not the only things to have survived the war in some form; there is also a remaining Timelord.  He is one of the true Timelords, and not a false one; even if he was a renegade.”

“Of whom do you speak, Councillor?” she asked with a look of astonishment.  “I hope that you of all people aren’t overly-optimistic enough to hope that the Doctor would bother with helping us; and that’s even if he did survive. There are a lot of darker rumours surrounding that one: some people even say that the Doctor eats babies.”

The Councillor shrugged and limped a few steps closer to the edge of the balcony, and then leant slightly on the railing.  “If he is indeed the one who answers the call; then we are saved.  I’m sure of it… I’ve never been surer of anything in my entire life; and that’s saying something since I’ve lived for almost ten generations.”

She opened her mouth to speak, “I’m afraid, however, that I certainly disagree that a strange blue box is just going to suddenly appear in our entrance ha…”  

The rest of her words were drowned out by a sudden wheezing and groaning sound which pierced the air and kicked up a whirlwind around the balcony.  A bright flash of light and a blue-white arc of lightning struck the obsidian floor just a few metres away from them.  The ghostly shape of a tall box was visible in the centre of the flashing azure light, and as the light died down, the box was solidified and took substance.  

“I’m quite certain that you’re correct,” the Councillor laughed joyously. “He chose to instead land on our balcony!”

He was right; the tall blue windowed box did indeed fit the general description of the TARDIS; it was almost too surreal to be true.  If it was true, then it could mean either their damnation or their salvation.  But it was more likely to be the former.

“This is impossible…” she muttered.  “It must be impossible because it just cannot be true, not by any length or manipulation of probability…  It must be a trick of some kind!  An illusion created by the enemy to lull us into a false sense of security, perhaps…”

With a click, the door to the box opened inward, and a young-looking man with short-but-messy brown hair and a long jacket leaned out.  He looked her straight in the eye, seemed to consider something for a second and stepped out of the box.  He was tall and thin, had a sharply intelligent gaze and he seemed to radiate inquisitiveness.

“Hello there, I traced a distress signal here,” he said quickly, like a man possessed.  “Do any of you two know why someone would be sending a distress signal from a lavishly-decorated tower on a remote planet?”

“It was us who sent out the signal,” the Councillor replied. “We need to get help, or we are going to go extinct very, very soon, given all of the increasing rates of attacks.”

The man glanced over their shoulders briefly and cringed.  “I suppose you’ve just received one, with the state of things out there.”  He grinned at them and then extended a hand.  “Well I’m here to help. I’m the Doctor by the way, and you are?”

“I am High Councillor Clausto Omega-Pi of the planet Pythagoras,” the Councillor replied with a slight bow.  He gestured to Akara and said, “And this is Mathematician Akara Delta-Epsilon, she is a good friend of and Chief of Temporal Operations.”

“Wait… ‘Temporal Operations’?” asked the man who called himself the Doctor, furrowing his brow and frowning somewhat as he seemed to go over the information.  And then he snapped his fingers and announced, “Oh yes, I remember now!  Of course I do; Pythagoras was one of the many planets that were involved in the Time War… home to the Timeweavers.”

“We were somewhat involved,” Akara explained.  “Though we were obviously not involved with the war nearly as much as you were; if you truly are who you claim you to be… are you truly the Doctor or are you an impostor or a confidence trickster of some sort?  A lot of the wrong kinds of people would profit from…”

“Is it safe to come out of here, Doctor?” a woman’s voice which came from inside the tall blue box interrupted her.

“It should be,” the ‘Doctor’ replied.  He turned to the Councillor, “Shall we take this discussion of ours inside? I’d like to hear about what prompted the distress call, and the balcony just isn’t the place for it...”