MEMORIES LOST
This is where Time comes to die, the vast cosmic shores where defunct time lines beach themselves en masse in a cosmic carnage that would terrify all those who ever saw it. The beach is composed of the crushed up bones of every life form that never was meant to be and the ocean that laps gently on the shore is their precious lifeblood.
However even in this realm of death life exists, some of it lives inside the thick crimson seas, keeping it churned up to stop it from clotting while other predators fly in packs scavenging on the fresh bodies that pile up when a time line dies.
Elsewhere in a nicer part of this obscene reality sits a small cottage, outside are a multitude of wild flowers and a small lawn that really needed cutting twenty years ago. Inside this cottage a middle-aged looking blonde woman is finishing her seventeenth cup of tea of the morning. She might have liked a biscuit but there wasn’t one so there is no need to mention them anymore.
Across from the woman sits a slightly older man, James Deacon, he owns the cottage and is far too polite to ask his guest where she gets the tea from, as he never keeps any in the house. However he is keen to know something about this strange and beguiling woman. He thinks that his angst-filled daughter might learn a few things from her, if not by learning then just by being near her as he isn’t sure how woman work but thinks it may be some kind of radiation.
The woman, who likes to be known as the Joan Smith, smiles again. She likes smiling, despite not having much to smile about as she’s recently worked out where exactly she’s ended up. She likes the simple farmer and tolerates his daughter, well she can’t really complain as it’s their house and she’s just a guest but still she’s not bad as some girls she has known in her lives times.
Being a Time Lady from the planet Gallifrey has gifted her with a number of gifts over the millennia, a long life, an appreciation of the things that really matter and the largest collection of bank accounts filled with untold billions of universal wealth ever. Well she has to buy the tea somehow and there are always new clothes to buy for the companion and then she always needs new shoes. Anyone who runs away from as much evil as she does tends to go through a few pairs of shoes per month. If only she could remember all this then the story would be a lot shorter than it’s going to be…

HALF A WOMAN
Joan Smith yawned theatrically; stretching her hands up into the air and then letting them fall down to her sides. She looked at James and smiled again. “I think I’ll try to tackle the lawn again.” Her last attempt had led to the nail-breaking accident, which she had to let heal for a whole week. “This time I know I’ll make some headway. I think I was using the wrong tactics.” This time she was going to use the battle plan of a race she had dreamed about, a charming and intelligent people known as Daleks. “Do you have any neutron bombs? Displacement cannons? Maybe a Trans-solar Disc I can borrow?” She sighed when she knew a yes would not be forthcoming. This last month had been simply paradise, she had found a sort of family to take care of and have take care of here. James was as good a husband as she was never going to marry and the children were a lot of fun and their laughter was good for the soul. However the lawn refused to be tamed, no matter how hard she had tried. Something had always cropped up to stop her getting the task done.
James shook his head and laughed at the joke he didn’t seem to get but knew must be funny. “I’m sorry Joan, I don’t know nowt about what you’re speaking of.”
Joan nodded slowly. “Me neither really, it was just a dream I had I guess. It all seemed so real though, as if it was something from my past almost.”
James nodded too. “Aye lass, as I said memory is a tricky thing. Best leave it alone and let it sort itself out I reckon.”
“I suppose you’re right, after all why would a woman of my age get mixed up in all that silly nonsense? I much prefer sitting here and having a lovely cup of tea.” Joan picked up the teapot, and poured James a top up and then added the last of the brew to the cool remains in her own cup. “Why would anyone want to risk their life to help people she hasn’t even been introduced to?”
“Can’t say that I know that one either lass, but it seems to me that some folk farm and some folk don’t. Those that farm tend to the needs of their crops or their livestock. Those that don’t know nowt and shouldn’t go around pretending that they do.”
Joan laughed. “Well I can’t say I’m in your league James but I think I’m not a bad Land Girl all told. I know how to use a pitch fork and can keep the kids amused for up to twenty minutes at a time.” As if on some sort of cue the two young boys ran through the kitchen, into the parlour, back into the kitchen and then outside again. “Maybe I can get a couple of energetic youngsters to play the cut the grass game with their favourite Aunty Joan?”
There was a loud and pronounced thumping down the stairs as Paula Deacon made her presence known. “What’s for breakfast?” She grumbled and threw herself down into a chair.
James looked at Joan before standing up and leaving the two women alone for a bit, it was best in the long run.
“Breakfast was hours ago Paula dear.” Joan replied. “However I managed to save you a modest selection of wholesome fare. We have crispy bacon, French toast, a fried egg and baked beans.”
Paula’s shoulder’s sagged. “I can feel my arteries clogging from the fumes already. I don’t want to be fat again. It was really hard slimming down the last time and then he said he didn’t love me anymore and I saw him kissing Fiona Jennings and she’s not fat so it couldn’t have been the overweight thing. You think I’m pretty right? Maybe he still secretly loves me and has to put on some sort of act in front of his friends and also when they’re not around?”
Joan placed the plate in front of the teenage hormone saturated time bomb in pink and white denim jeans. “Maybe he’s not worth thinking about anymore? Now eat up and then you can burn off some calories helping me have another go at Jurassic Park. I’m sure it’s not a dinosaur really, more like a big lizard. “We can use you brother Toby as bait while we run away.”
Paula couldn’t help but laugh. She formally hated Joan of course but unofficially she liked her, she knew lots about everything like boys and hair and make up and arm locks to stop younger brothers teasing you or eating your face cream. All in all Joan was really nice and even pretty for her age but Dad liked her too and that was gross and horrible and she still missed Mum terribly and this really was nice bacon. “Ok, the bacon’s nice.”
Joan fished out another plate from the still warm oven and placed it down next to Paula’s other plate. “This will be our little secret ok?”
Paula was about to agree when one of her brother ran shouting excitedly into the kitchen. “Can’t I get a moment’s peace and quiet?”
Joan sensed the souring of Paula’s mood so quickly she picked up the playful lad in her arms and carried him outside to try and find where his brother had built a camp out of some old bails of hay and a badly damaged tractor tyre. “Ok, what have we got here?”
“Halt stranger!” Victor jumped up and wielded a stick of wood like a shotgun. “Friend or foe?”
“Friend, I hope.” Joan replied. “Although you really shouldn’t be thinking about guns at your age. Now does this fine military base have any refreshment hmmm? It’s not polite to keep a lady waiting you know, you’d never have passed inspection if Alistair was in charge of this place.”
“Who’s Alistair?” Toby asked Aunty Joan.
Joan smiled as a fragment of her memory floated briefly to the surface. “He was an old friend of mine. He was a soldier, we argued all the time of course. I was forever telling him off for jumping in feet first and shooting everything in sight. Of course he was always getting into trouble and it was usually me who had to help him out of all the trouble he got himself into. Of course when I got myself into trouble he was always there to save me, even if I didn’t need it at the time. Those were great times; we saved the world a lot back then. Ok you two, stand to attention at once.” She tried not to smile as the children took ages to get it right. “Ok, our mission is to defeat the evil weeds of the Lawn Empire. We have to be brave and noble and never surrender until each and every weed has been dug up and the grass cut to a reasonable length. Do you understand your instructions?”
“Yes Aunty Joan!” Victor and Toby shouted together.
“Ok then, lets get some gardening stuff and dig those weeds up!” Joan tried to show the boys how to march but they ended up tripping up all the time so she broke ranks and they made their way casually over to the garden shed. They were just getting really organised when Paula made an appearance and tried very hard not to despise anyone for not being perfect in every way.
“Ah good.” Joan said as she used her back to stop the large collection of wicker chairs from falling on top of everyone. “Why don’t you take charge of the troops Captain? They have their orders but they might need an experience hand with some of the more tricky plants.”
“But she’s a girl.” Toby whined. “What good’s she?”
“Silence!” Paula thundered. “Ok you ‘orrible little soldiers, get yourselves moving towards the garden, on the double!”
Joan couldn’t help herself from laughing as Paula got her younger brothers running around the side of the house to start work on clearing the overgrown piece of lands that was allegedly a garden.
A shadow loomed across the front of the house, it cooled everything it shrouded and the birds stopped singing in the trees when it passed over them. The shadow moved without form or substance across the ground in a mocking parody of the real and decent laws of reality.
“By the pricking of my thumbs…”Joan turned around as the back of her neck grew cold “…something wicked this way comes.” She screamed as the shadow rushed at her, chilling her body to the very core.


INTERLUDE
It can be said that Time is linear and constant; this is of course right and wrong at the same time. This is where most people start bleeding from the ears as they try to grasp the concept. Consider a fish tank, the fish swim happily about totally oblivious to the outside. They are self-contained in their own little reality yet part of the bigger reality surrounding it. Now consider all of reality as the tank and try to imagine what surrounds it…you can start screaming now but it won’t help you.

HALF A SHADOW
Joan fell to the ground, hurting herself in the process. The shadow moved over the surface of her body, chilling it until it was numb. Joan tried to thrash about but it was no use. It pinned her arms and legs to the ground before trying to force itself into her through the mouth and nose.
“Do not struggle.” The shadow spoke at last.
“Who are you?” Joan asked.
“I am part of you.” The shadow replied almost helpfully.
Joan shook her head. “You’re no part of me.”
“Yes I am, I’m your memory.” The shadow placed a memory inside Joan’s head.
Joan saw the face of a young woman. She seemed familiar somehow, there was a name but she couldn’t remember what it was. “Who is she?”
The shadow replied. “She calls herself Susan, she is your granddaughter.”
Joan couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t remember having a child never mind a granddaughter. “I don’t believe you.”
“Belief is not required, you will accept the truth.” The shadow started to flash more images into Joan’s mind. “Rassilon, Borusa, Hedin, Omega, The Master, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Vicki…”
Joan tried to resist the intrusion of images into her brain. “Stop it, it’s lies. You’re lying to me. These names and faces mean nothing to me at all.”
The shadow spoke softly, with great compassion. “They will, once you accept that I am you.” It passed more names and faces into Joan’s mind. “The Daleks, The Cybermen, The Krotons…enemies you have faced and defeated with the help of friends and allies.”
Joan screamed at the horrors she was forced to endure. “Stop it, I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to see such things.”
The shadow paused for a second. “I know...it’s never easy to look upon such things and not be affected by their repellent nature. We have faced all this and much more, we endure it because we have to, if we didn’t billions would have died.”
“Why are you showing me these things?” Joan demanded. “I don’t want to know any of this stuff, this is nothing to do with me.”
The shadow shifted slightly. “Perhaps this will convince you otherwise?” It rippled and solidified into the appearance of an elderly white-haired man dressed in an Edwardian frock coat, similar trousers and other apparel. “Now then my dear we must talk about what is to happen to you. Yes, hmmm, yes we must.” He stood up and motioned Joan to sit next to him on the barely stable bench outside the house.
“Who are you?” Joan demanded.
The elderly man leaned closer to Joan’s face. “I am the Doctor, the original I might add. You share my intelligence but perhaps you need my memories too? Yes, a splendid notion, I will tell you all I remember.”
Joan found listening to the old bloke rather difficult to avoid as he spoke of travelling to many distant worlds in a broken time machine with friends and family. Then she couldn’t help but shed a tear as he described his last few moments of life, trying to defeat the Cybermen of Monads and save his friend Polly from their clutches before they could turn her into one of those evil monsters. When she looked up she gasped when she saw she was seeing a much younger man with sad eyes and a mischievous smile. “What happened to the Doctor?”
The Doctor smiled wistfully. “Why I’m here of course.” He put out his hands and looked at them for a second. “Yes those are certainly the Doctor’s hands so that makes me the Doctor.”
“But you’re so different.” Joan gasped. “You can’t be the same man.”
The Doctor took out his large red and white spotted handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. “It’s a renewal, of sorts. Some call it a gift while others call it a curse. I was dying, I died and I was renewed with the help of the TARDIS. Regeneration is too pat a word for something so profound.” He took out a bag of sweets from his baggy jacket pocket. “Jelly baby?”
Joan took one of the sweets cautiously. “This isn’t dangerous is it?”
“That depends on what you use it for.” The Doctor popped one of the candies in his mouth and chewed it for a second. “I find this works best for me.”
Joan nibbled the sweet delicately to see if it really was ok. It tasted ok, really sweet in fact. Not dying horribly of poisoning she popped the rest of the jelly baby into her mouth and chewed it slowly. “So if you’re the Doctor what happened to you after you were renewed?”
The Doctor smiled. “I thought you would never ask.” He told her of Daleks, tyrants, the future and the past and how he helped people who couldn’t help themselves. “Then they caught up with me and after they found out they couldn’t force me to do their dirty work they stranded me on Earth, with a new body of all the ungracious pomposity.”
Joan felt sorry for the Doctor, being betrayed by his own people for trying to do the right thing. There was a rush of air and the peculiar little man was replaced by a much taller man with a shock of nearly white hair and the daftest assemblage of clothing she had ever seen. “So you’re the next Doctor?”
The Doctor smiled and nodded. “Yes and luckily a big improvement on the last one. That hair was always scruffy and the clothes never ironed properly. I soon changed that though with a hairbrush and some borrowed attire. Then there was that car, still Bessie was nice enough too.”
Joan couldn’t help but like this Doctor, he was very loyal to his friends and very tolerant of that buffoon of a Brigadier. It was very obvious that the Brigadier was the Doctor’s best friend but Liz and Jo were very nice too. Sarah Joan seemed a lot better, she was strong willed and stubborn but in a nice way. She was glad that she was there when the Doctor returned from the cave of the Great One.
The Doctor finished his recap of his life and after a brief pause was replaced by a much more vibrant version.
“I like the scarf.” Joan said genuinely.
“Madame Nostradamus knitted it for us.” The Doctor replied. “Harry didn’t like it much but he was a sailor, they’re more hat people I’ve found.”
Joan tried on the hat and scarf but found that they didn’t quite suit her. “So what did you do after you defeated the big robot thingy?”
The Doctor started to speak of wandering the cosmos with a reckless abandon, seeing what the Universe had to offer. He spoke of the Universe of anti-matter, a planet that swallowed other planets, his best ever friend Romana and a duel with the Master that his future self had warned him to lose to that he might win.
Joan absorbed all the witty anecdotes and madcap humour as the Doctor faded and was replaced by another Doctor. It almost felt like the end of an era when she saw the smiling cricketer sitting next to her.
“How do you do?” The Doctor asked Joan. “I suppose you want me to tell you about all my adventures through time and space? It would be much easier if I showed them to you. Just relax and let my mind touch yours. I promise you it won’t hurt, maybe.”
Joan felt a sudden rush as she saw a hundred adventures flash through her mind at once. Many hours of old adversaries and new challenges, best friends and best enemies too. Adric, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, Peri, Erminem, The Master, The Rani and Omega oh my. “That was intense.” She paused to collect herself.
“Not as intense as this.” The Doctor said sadly.
“No my dear Doctor you must die! Die Doctor, Die!” The Master laughed victoriously in the Doctor’s mind as he relaxed and let go of his life.
Joan screamed as she fought to separate herself from the Doctor.
“Not a moment too soon.” The Doctor snapped angrily. “When you’re invited into someone’s mind, please have the decency not to get too involved.”
Joan looked at the overweight vision of primary colours and felt a migraine coming on from the contrast.
“Now where was I?” The Doctor asked. “Oh yes, I had just gotten this vastly superior incarnation. The mind is much sharper and the wit razor sharp.”
“Shame about your manners.” Joan muttered.
“What? No never mind. Peri and I decided to accept a life of solitude and contemplation. It was more her idea than mine but it seemed to make sense at the time. Anyway I killed the Cyberleader and then the Controller with their own weapons and destroyed their base on Telos. Of course Sil was far cleverer, but I got the best of him on our fifth encounter with dear Evelyn. The Rani and The Master were a much simpler case even if they kept trying over and over again. Did I mention the Ice Warriors? They nearly wiped out Earth if it wasn’t for me. I’m not boring you am I?”
“No.” Joan yawned. “Some sort of chronological account would be helpful though.”
“Whatever for? An accurate account must be exciting and it’s always the best bits that come to mind first. So there we were, Peri wasn’t much help of course but she did at least make a passable Drahvin soldier, then again Mel didn’t. It was on the planet Toaananger that Frobisher and I stopped Yardmark the Malevolent from destroying the entire Universe, or was it Grant who made their ultimate weapon of mass destruction implode?”
“So you did?” Joan asked hopefully.
“Well that was many years later, I was torn out of time and space by the Rani as she planned to use me for her evil plan to build a massive space-brain. Unfortunately she half-killed Mel and really killed me.”
“Oh, what a shame.” Joan lied badly.
“I thought so too.” The new Doctor replied. He rested his weight on his umbrella as they sat and talked about life, the universe and everything else. “Mel didn’t stick around though, I don’t think she found my jokes funny. Ace stayed for a while, despite my best attempts at bad jokes and burned rice pudding. You’d have liked Benny, everyone does. Roz and Chris took some getting used too; I think I may have left Chris on Gallifrey. I should remember to pick him up one of these centuries.”
Joan sighed, as the sun grew higher in the sky. “So what was your next body like…sexy.” She blushed.
“I’ve never been called that before.” The Doctor replied. “Ok so I have a trans-dimensional fan club of teenage girls with nothing better to do that talk about me, anyway I know you’ll want to hear me talk.”
“Sure.” Joan nodded eagerly. “Sit down, relax, and take your shirt off. I mean take a load off.”
The Doctor spoke of his exploration of the cosmos with his friends Grace, Izzy, Sam, Fitz, Compassion and a couple of others too.
Joan thought that this Doctor was like a burning meteor, he lived life to the full wanting to experience everything he could.
The next Doctor was quieter with a dry wit and a bit of a weird nose. However he loved his companion Emma before the Doctor killed her. The one after that kept asking her for lemonade and ended up throwing up all over her shoes. Then there was the obnoxious one with the most beautiful ebony hands and the foulest of vocabularies this side of Spiradon. The one after that, well Joan couldn’t quite make her mind up if he was a he or a she. Certainly he had a gruff masculine voice but he dressed like a seventies game show hostess! He spoke of a sarcastic misery called Eve and a mentally challenged robot companion called Cam. Finally he finished speaking and she was alone with the shadow once more.
“So I’ve heard all their stories, what now?”
The shadow enveloped Joan once more. “Our thoughts merge and you remember who you really are, Doctor.”
She nodded. “Ok, but if this is a trap there’s pretty much nothing I can do about it.” The shadow pushed into her mouth and it seemed to taste of tea bags and chocolate. Memories flooded once more as the tidal wave of memories crashed into her conscious and subconscious minds. New friends, David and Claire Mason. So sad, he was killed by the Cybermen but his sister tried to clone a new body to house his memories except she got it wrong and ended up with a sister not a brother. Then there was Haana, once a timid creature who was scared of everything and now was a brash adventuress in her own right. There was Penny and Jean-Marc, two lovers from very different backgrounds who fell in love and got married. Then there was Bobby, dear loyal Bobby how sacrificed his own life to save hers. Debbie and Webbi, two preening bimbo’s one with two legs and the other with eight. They were both with her at the end when Merlin tried to kill Morgaine for killing her lover from another dimension. She remembered trying to stop the killing but Morgaine sprung her own trap and she had died, or so she thought. “If I’m not dead, what happened to me?” The Doctor stood up.

INTERLUDE
Space, the final frontier? More like a big barrier to stop people realising just what exactly is out there. Consider a huge blanket covering a shark or large dinosaur from popular series of movies. Now imagine billions of these creatures squeezed into one large creature with a billion hungry mouths to feed. Well the things that are hiding out there eat those creatures as easily as they would devour a whole planet of juicy humans. Consider space the ultimate act of kindness to stop the appetizers from getting frisky…


ALL DOCTOR
The Doctor looked around at the house, it was not the same place as it had been a few hours ago. It was just a building now; its inhabitants had long since gone, as they had never been here. “A psychic construct to stop myself from going mad? Do I really want a family that much? Get a grip Doctor, you created them so you didn’t have to talk to yourself.”
Around the immediate area there was nothing save a partially mown lawn and a lot of weeds. The Doctor saw a lot of grass cutting tools dropped casually. She picked one up and felt the warmth of tiny hands still on the grips. She let the tool fall to the ground and turned away before hot tears poured from her eyes in a private moment of grief.
She walked on and on for endless miles, a straight line on a course to an uncertain destination. At last she came to the edge of the world and she looked down at the vast breakers yard of causality. It was here that realities came to die, all the redundant time lines where evil had defeated her in the past. She saw the crimson waves and the vast leviathan creatures that churned through them.
She knew that it was very easy for death to come to Time but it was also easy for life to come from time. Every possibility was played out; every choice had dozens of options each one as valid as the other until it ended up here. If they ended here then would they not also come from here? The vast spawning pools of new time lines must be somewhere around here but she couldn’t go on alone, imagining all this exposition. What she needed was a companion otherwise she might go peculiar and start wearing her underpants on her head.
“Hello?” A young man appeared from around a large rock. “Ah good, I thought I was all alone here. I’m Daniel Latimer, you don’t know where here is exactly do you?”
The Doctor smiled. “I amaze myself sometimes. I’m the Doctor, I’m not sure where we are exactly but why don’t I share a few thoughts with you as we have a wander over that way hmmm?”


Daniel had tried his hardest to get this Doctor woman to stop calling him Danny but he had failed miserably in his attempts. Instead he only ignored her half the time she called him it. “If this is some sort of weird place with no time except what we imagine, can’t we pretend its supper time or something and have something to eat?”
The Doctor smiled with the endless patience grandparents have for the supersonic hyperactivity of the grandchildren they’ve been conned into looking after for a few hours. “Hunger is all in your mind, just do what I do and ignore it. Would you like a Jelly baby Danny?” She pulled out a bag of the sweets from her jacket pocket.
“Thanks.” Daniel replied and took several. “I’m starving.”


It came first as a howl, the primordial birthing scream that every mother tunes into, during delivery of her baby. The air was alive with the hum of newly formed realities, each one rushing out to take its rightful place in the great causal narrative.
The Doctor looked down at the bubbling neo-realities. “We need to cross the dimensional interface just after the moment of creation. At that moment everything that was ever needed has already been made so we won’t be pulled apart and our sub-atomic particles won’t be rearranged into a billion billion other things.”
“You make it sound so easy Doctor.” Daniel replied.
“It is, when you have over two thousand years of experience with a dodgy TARDIS.” The Doctor arched her fingers together and concentrated. “I’m going to need a lot of teabags for this one Danny.”
Daniel nodded then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I know you have this post-modern female self-empowerment thing going on but how dumb do you think I am Doctor?”
The Doctor put her hand up. “Watch and learn Danny, watch and learn.” She pulled out a number of odds and ends from her pockets and let her companion make himself useful by holding the most important ones. “Ah, my yo-yo, very useful for testing local gravity. Look I can do walking the dog.”
Daniel looked around to see if there was anything more interesting that a middle-aged woman playing with a kid’s toy, he was not surprised to find lots of things that were more riveting, until the Doctor coughed annoyingly in a look at me or else manner.
“One cup or two Danny?” The Doctor hand found a fold down table, a bone china tea set and condiments in her shoes. “Milk? One lump or two?” She took hold of the milk jug.
“Two please.” Danny, formally known as Daniel but now undergoing a bit of an identity crisis, replied.
“Sugar?” The Doctor held up the bowl of sugar lumps.
“Erm two?” Danny guessed hazardly and feared the worst as the Doctor passed him his cup.
“Cheer up Danny, you look like you’ve lost a tanner.” The Doctor looked earnestly at her young chum. “Once we get through this lot then it’s plain sailing. I’ll have a look and see if I can find any biscuits. I’m quite partial to a chocolate bourbon from time to time.”
“The more I get to know her, the weirder she seems to get.” Danny muttered to himself as his finished his cup of tea.
Once they were finished the Doctor put all the used teabags together. Then using a milk bottle, some plastic sporks and a doorstop she crudely fashioned a spinning device. “The teabags act as a self renewing energy source. The Time Jammer will pause reality across the dimensional membrane, allowing us to pass from this limbo realm into a brand new universe.”
“Are you sure it will work Doctor?” Danny wasn’t sure it would stay together never mind do what the Doctor claimed.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” The Doctor asked as she set the device into motion.
Danny watched as the shimmering on the nearest bubble of reality paused and became still. He considered his options. “The worst is this all fails and I’m stuck here with you for the rest of eternity.”
“Exactly, once we escape from here you can do exactly what you want, free will is very important to me.” The Doctor extended her hand. “I must remember to find a nicer shade of apricot than this. Come on Danny, take my hand, its time to leave tomorrow-morrow land…”
They stepped across the impossible divide into something elsewhere…


Danny opened one eye and was surprised to find that a) he was still alive b) he was somewhere safe and c) he was lying down on the floor. “Where are we?” He asked hoping for an answer he could understand.
The Doctor stood up and looked around the room. It was well decorated with a number of wooden effects. She picked up a book and leafed through it. “According to this we’re on a boat.”
“How come I’m not moving from side to side and feeling sick then?” Danny asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe they don’t have seasickness in this universe? You can’t expect all the laws of nature to stay the same. We could very well be in a universe where there is no colour red or there are only seven musical notes.”
“Well your lipstick seems quite red to me.” Danny bushed a shade of red himself.
“That’s very sweet of you to notice Danny.” The Doctor replied and hummed some piano scales. “Eight notes, so the octave remains intact. I wonder when we are, everything feels like Earth to me.”
Danny opened the only door in the room and looked outside. “Smells pretty bad out there, like petrol cars and hot dogs.”
“Could be anywhere on Earth in the early twenty-first century.” The Doctor exited the room. “Come along Danny, there’s a mystery to solve.”
“I think I’ve already solved it Doctor.” Danny pointed to the pile of tourist brochures. “Were on the Cutty Sark.”
“Great.” The Doctor replied. “I always liked this ship. I remember showing Victoria around it one time. Of course back then she was a working ship and not a museum piece like she is now.”
Danny followed the Doctor through the bowels of the ship until they finally emerged on deck. “Great, just fantastic. What the hell is that?”
“Relax, it’s just the London Eye.” The Doctor pulled out her purse. “Tell you what why don’t I treat us this time and you can buy the fish suppers afterwards. Then we can go and surprise Alistair, he’s a very good friend of mine. You’ll like him, maybe.” The Doctor and her companion took their first steps towards the beginning of a wonderful friendship.


EPILOGUE – QUESTIONS RAISED
So the Doctor escaped death and found a new friend. However she is still far away from her friends and she has a cruel choice to make, can she take back her name or let an impostor continue to take her place. Will her plan work or does Merlin have an ace up her sleeve? What about Danny? Is he a real person or a figment of the Doctor’s imagination made flesh? Can he have a life at all or will he vanish the moment the Doctor forgets about him?
Will the Brigadier really be pleased to see a woman he has never heard of before? Why isn’t there already a Doctor in this reality and who is the Architect?
And why is it that the Doctor has never had a run in her stockings in six years? Despite her travelling with Penny, the clothes-borrowing fiend, who usually managed to ruin whole outfits in a single afternoon. It was her who destroyed the Doctor’s crushed green velvet suit, you know, the one she always wore when visiting old friends or defeating the Daleks. Still she has that bright pink silk outfit Haana picked out for her to wear. So how come the Doctor is wearing her crushed green velvet suit now?
And why are there police cars approaching the Doctor and Danny? The answers to some or less of these questions may never be known…