Seltsamkeit:
The Beginning
[Rating: General
···
Length: Very Long ···
Genre: Humor ···
Word count (chapter: 2, 058 ) (total:48, 32 153 )]
[ Chapter
One ·
Chapter
Two ·
Chapter
Three ·
Chapter
Four]
PRELUDE
The sky darkened, its light pulled towards one minute
crack. The already stretched fibers of reality shuddered
and tore at this point, the waves of disturbance would
be felt in the delicate tapestry of time for centuries.
‘This is all well and good,’ thought the humanoid shape
that leapt into the tare,
‘But at this rate I’ll never make it home in time for
dinner.’
* * *
On the other side of the galaxy, millions of years away,
a small blue police box spun, dwarfed by the starscape
about it. Had it been as big on the outside as it was
within, it would be doing the dwarfing. But it wasn’t,
so it continued to be dwarfed. It is not usual for a London
police box to be dwarfed by a star field, spinning or
nae. It is even less usual for a space/time machine that
looks like a London police box called the TARDIS to do
so, and even on the off chance of this, seemingly impossible
to have an advanced race of aliens on it. Aliens that
can die thirteen times, regenerate their bodies into a
new form. Aliens with two hearts, a low body temperature
and a liking for jelly babies.
Well, one of them at least. His name is the doctor.
Within the dwarfed police box, thousands of corridors
made up the labyrinthine interior. Peppered here and there
with doors to rooms that seemed to be in the habit of
changing position. Regular round indents into the pale
cream walls were common in every room, even the toilets
and shower blocks that had not been used for several millennia.
This was the TARDIS, a dimensionally transcendental (Broken
down for carbon based lifeforms to ‘bigger on the inside
then the outside’) space/time craft. Albeit a slightly
damaged one, so instead of blending in with its surroundings
on landing it stayed a police box, but if it basically
worked, who can complain.
The TARDIS was not being very helpful. In fact, it seemed
to disapprove of the Doctor’s poking about and stubbornly
its alarm klaxon blared. The small mass of wires that
spilled out into the corridor around him would twitch
every now and them, snaking about his ankles in a rather
threatening manner. They seemed rather set on staining
his white shoes, much to his dismay, as he had just spent
a rather stressful two hours cleaning Plobbian mud off
them.
At least he thought it was mud, but the other options
of its possible identity had made his stomach churn. Grateful
that the rest of his clothes had been spared (except the
hem of his favorite tan coat which he luckily had a spare
of) he turned his thoughts away from cow-like creatures
droppings and concentrated on his task.
“Come on, old girl.” He chided, dodging a sudden jet
of steam
that erupted from the circuitry before him.
“How rude!” Finally giving up his surreptitious prodding
with the sonic screwdriver, the doctor stepped back and
gave the wall an almighty kick. The alarm stopped. The
floor also decided to become the ceiling.
Picking himself up and, despite the fact there was absolutely
no dust in the corridor, brushing off his shirt, the Doctor
scooped up the wires and tried to put the wall panel back
on. They seemed to be thicker now and no matter how much
he pushed at it, the roundel would not pop back into place.
To make matters worse, a very loud and very irritated
Peri burst through one of the doors.
“DOCTOR!! WHAT WAS THAT!” She still had her hands over
her ears and had failed to notice the alarm had stopped.
“The old girl…” he stepped forward and pulled her hands
from her ears
“…decided to disrupt the temporal relation to-”
“Doctor, you know I can’t understand that gobble-de-gook.
Just tell me in plain English!”
“Malfunction in the environmental unit, causing the usual
equilibrium t-” A warning glare from the now even more
irritated Peri stopped him.
“We went upside-down.”
Rolling her eyes, she stormed back down the corridor,
calling
“Where did you put the aspirin?” But she had already returned
to the console room before the doctor could answer. He
made a mental note: never to take on another companion
called Peri. Especially an American one.
* * *
“Doctor! What on earth is going on?!” Roz Forrester, clinging
onto poor Chris Cwej’s coat, who in turn was clinging
onto the Doctor’s shoe yelled. Not the Doctor we encountered
before, but a shorter one with brown hair. He’d died a
few times more too.
“The old girl decided to disrupt the temporal relation
to-” Suddenly hit with the distant memory of saying this
before, the Doctor would have scratched his head had both
his hands not been clutching onto the rail at the side
of the pool. This was increasingly difficult due to the
fact that he had two extra people’s weight tugging on
him and the aforementioned pool’s contents had just doused
them.
Guessing that Roz would be glaring at him, he sighed
and re-thought his words.
“Malfunction in the environmental unit, causing the usual
equilibrium t-” Breaking off to swing himself across the
rail, Chris and Roz dangling beneath him until he could
get a decent foot hold (with the one Chris was not now
clinging to) on the pool’s filter, he cleared his throat
and tried again.
“We went upside down.”
“Oh,” Roz called up with enough sarcasm to fell a deaf
elephant.
“I didn’t notice.” Lowering them slowly down a handy
cable, the Doctor looked up innocently at the ex-floor.
Chris, grabbing the cable, called down to Roz
“This is actually fascinating. A whole inter-dimensional
structure like this suddenly turning on its head. Think
of the possibilities!”
Feet now finally on the ground…ceiling…Roz, matching
Chris’s light tone, replied
“Oh, yes marvelous. Were in one of the tallest rooms of
the TARDIS, with a dirty old swimming pool to boot, when
the scientifically impossible happens!”
“Actually, it must be possible for it to happen. A minor
fault, it’ll take a moment to fix. Happened before, I
think.” Cheerfully squeezing the gray water from his long
brown hair, the Doctor strolled off in the direction of
the console room. Fuming, Roz stormed off to find a towel.
Chris decided to follow the doctor. When Roz got into
one of these moods it
was best to stay away.
He found the doctor Pulling at a roundel, shoes against
the wall.
“Need some help there?” Chris asked, startling the Doctor
so he let go and fell on the floor/ceiling.
“I don’t think you can, I seem to remember gluing it back
on with…” He trailed off, staring vacantly at the wall.
“The environmental unit! How could I be so dim! Chris,
the sonic screwdriver is in the pocket of my coat in the
console room. Could you go get it?” Still sitting on the
floor, the Doctor seemed so absorbed in his thoughts that
Chris decided not to question him and rushed off to get
the screwdriver.
He returned to find the Doctor leaning against the wall,
listening intently to the alarm that had just decided
to start up.
“Here you go.” Shushing him urgently, the Doctor snatched
the screwdriver and removed the roundel below the glued
one. Thick pulsating cables spilled out onto the ceiling…floor…
coating the Doctor’s shoes in gunk. Sighing with relief,
he
pocketed the screwdriver and grinned at Chris.
“I can’t believe I left it like that. I’ve a good mind
to give myself a good talking to if I ever bump into him,
whichever me it was. The environmental unit was left in
terrible shape! Were lucky to have only been turned upside
down. A few more minutes and we would have been inside
out too!”
There was no point in asking him how. He’d just say he’d
explain later.
* * *
Looking disappointedly down at his shoes, the fair-haired
Doctor strode down the corridor towards the shoe room.
He was very proud of his shoe room, even though it only
had four pairs of shoes in it, one from each of his selves.
He was rather unnerved by the fact that, when he opened
the door, there were eight pairs of shoes. Next to his
spare white pair, two brightly obnoxious green, blue and
yellow ones malignantly lay, followed by a neat pair of
non-descript leather boots and a brown narrow pair covered
in gunk. This could not be good. Picking up his spares
he made to leave and, at an impulse, turned to see if
the imposter shoes were still there. They had disappeared,
but a small stain where the final pair had lain was slowly
spreading across the carpet.
The TARDIS shuddered suddenly, almost knocking him off
his feet. Running to the control room, he was horrified
to see that Peri had gone. The hexagonal space showed
no sign of her, and as he checked one of the millions
of readout monitors on the console in the middle of the
space, it was confirmed that there was no longer a human
presence on the TARDIS. Still checking over the console,
giving it an encouraging thump here and there, he looked
up to see a rather disheveled man (who looked about thirty)
with wavy brown hair down to his chin and gray muck on
his hands burst through the inner door.
* * *
Grimacing as he levered his gunk covered shoes off, the
Doctor hopped his way to the shoe room. After he had donned
his spares, he suddenly noticed that the last three in
the row had disappeared. If his hands had not been covered
in muck he would have rubbed his eyes. Deciding to blink
instead, he was further disturbed by the fact that they
had re-appeared, but the once pristine white ones were
almost as filthy as his.
The TARDIS shuddered suddenly, almost knocking him off
his feet. When he arrived at the control room, Chris wasn’t
there. Instead a startled looking man in his mid twenties
with dust blonde hair and a cricket uniform was standing
near the console, muttering to himself and rocking gently
on his heels.
They looked at each other for a moment, faces pulled
comically into an identical expression of shock.
“I let my hair grow THAT long!?” The blonde one suddenly
erupted, grinning widely.
“I can’t believe I used to like cricket!” The wavy-haired
one replied, making to shake hands but thinking better
of it due to the half-dried muck that coated them.
“How old am I now?”
“I’m number eight. You’re the fifth me, right?”
“I think so. Eight of me now…That’s absolutely intriguing.”
The older of the two paused and stopped grinning, looking
at himself sternly.
“Were you the me that left the environmental unit like
that?” Puzzled, the fifth Doctor answered.
“It was fine when I left it. You’ve had trouble with it
too then?”
“Trouble! It was near collapse…Again!” The eighth Doctor
burst out, grabbing himself by the shoulders.
Untangling his once-clean coat from his later self’s
mucky hands, he stepped back behind the hexagonal console.
“I thought it was fine…” He muttered ashamedly. It is
most embarrassing to be told off by yourself.
“FINE! You mongweed! You forgot to check to organic potential
readouts, didn’t you?”
Though neither of them actually knew what a mongweed
was, it sounded rather forceful. With the complete posture
of a naughty schoolboy in the principal’s office, the
fifth Doctor sniffed softly.
“I didn’t know the TARDIS had organic potential readouts.”
Suddenly realizing that he had only learnt about them
when Roz had pointed out a display panel on the console
that said ‘organic potential readouts’ three days ago,
the insight that Roz and Chris were missing suddenly impressed
itself on the eighth Doctor’s thoughts.
“Have you seen a tall boy about nineteen and rather beefy,
with a thin loud and irritable girl and a towel on her
head?” He asked himself, who was brushing the muck of
his coat in a deflated manner.
“Not recently. Have you seen a loud American girl looking
for aspirin?” Both pondered on their lost companions for
a few seconds, but before more could be said the TARDIS
lurched and the central column of the console stopped
moving. They had landed.
[ Chapter
One ·
Chapter
Two ·
Chapter
Three ·
Chapter
Four]
|
