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On Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, a short story you may not have read before.
As you may have noticed, Doctor Who turns 60 today. It goes without saying what a ridiculously large part this TV show has played in my life: my first published work was in Doctor Who Magazine, my first professional prose was a Doctor Who spinoff and my first broadcast credit was a radio episode of Doctor Who. I still love it and I’m endlessly grateful to it.
Here’s a short story I wrote in 2018 for a charity anthology called A Second Target For Tommy, which is out of print physically but still available digitally. Because it was a charity piece I was allowed to do whatever I wanted, so I wrote a multi-Doctor story because I like them. Hope you enjoy reading.
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The Doctor asked me the quickest way out of here, and I had to stop and think about it. I’d only been in the house since two o’clock this afternoon, I hadn’t been outside it since then, and I’d only briefly familiarised myself with the layout upon arriving. Also, the house was enormous – literally ten times the size of my parents’ house in Yokohama, which I’d never thought of as small.
‘I think it’s that way,’ I told him.
‘You think?’
‘It isn’t my house! Do I look like someone who lives in a house like this?’
‘I don’t know, do I look like a thousand-year-old time traveller who battles evil throughout the universe?’
‘What? No.’
‘There you go then.’
Although now I came to think about it, I wasn’t sure what he did look like. He was skinny, quite tall and wore a blue pinstripe suit. His eyes goggled and he was a ball of energy.
I didn’t have time to think about it any further than that, because the lawnmower had finally managed to crack the fingerprint lock on the front door. The door slid open and the lawnmower rolled into the hallway.
‘Run!’ said the Doctor, unnecessarily.
As we headed for the kitchen I became aware that the cleaners were coming to life too. One of them burst from its storage closet under the staircase. It was a small, round, squat unit which hovered across the floor: it raised itself up to our eye level as we approached.
‘Slide!’ said the Doctor. ‘Like me!’ And he dropped to the wooden floor and slid along it on the side of his thigh, his feet pointing towards the kitchen door. Ironically, if it wasn’t for the cleaners polishing and waxing this floor every day, it might not have been frictionless enough for him to do this.
I did the same thing, altogether less elegantly, and travelled about half as far. Above my head the cleaner spat steam at the place where I’d been standing a moment earlier. The cleaner started to rotate its steam guns, trying to aim them at me again. I tried to scramble to my feet – but then found I was moving anyway, sliding along the floor through no effort of my own. I worried one of the other household appliances had got me – the laundry bot perhaps – until I realised it was the Doctor, pulling my feet in the direction of the kitchen. He must have been stronger then he looked, because I’m pretty sure I’m heavier than he is. Luckily I was wearing my soft, thick pyjamas, which offered little resistance on the floor (I’d been sitting in bed reading when he turned up). When I was clear of the cleaner he put out a hand, pulled me upright and we ran into the kitchen.
Once we were inside the Doctor locked the door.
‘It’s only a matter of time before something breaks through that door too,’ I told him.
‘Yes, Noriko, I realise that.’ The Doctor went to the back door and peered out into the darkness.
‘What’s out there?’
‘More of them. We can’t get out this way either.’ He looked around, pointed at the cellar door. ‘Is there a way out through there?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No, seems unlikely given the layout. I’d rather not risk opening it, in case...’
A wave of queasiness washed over me. ‘What’s happening?’
‘You mean, why has every appliance in the house come to life and started trying to kill us?’
‘Why, is there something else going on?’
‘There’s always something else going on. But in answer to your first question, this house belongs to Hitoshi Hirosi, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘I don’t. I’m just here to look after his cats while he’s on holiday. I got the job online.’
The Doctor gave me an odd look. ‘He’s got robots to do everything for him but he hires a teenage girl to stay here and look after his cats?’
‘He says they get lonely with the robots. And I’m twenty.’
‘I stand corrected, Noriko.’ He started to look around the kitchen urgently – in the cupboards, the fridge, the bread bin.
‘I thought you knew Hirosi?’ I asked.
‘No, I lied about that so I could get in here and save your life from the vengeful ghosts which have taken over his appliances.’
‘Ghosts?’
‘In a manner of speaking. You see, in the future your Mr Hirosi will use his enormous wealth to finance experiments into time travel. It’ll go wrong. The crew will all die in the space-time vortex but something of them will survive and –’
‘Why are they trying to kill me though?’
‘I’m coming to that – they’ll come back through time and try to kill him before he can kill them, but they’re deranged by the vortex so they’re not going to approach it very rationally.’
‘Ghosts... so that’s why they didn’t stop, even when I smashed them with the baseball bat?’
‘The vortex energy’s holding them together – and once they learn how to focus that they’ll be even more dangerous.’
‘Right. OK.’ While I processed this, the Doctor took a packet of matcha cookies from a cupboard, opened the packet and offered one to me. ‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m trying not to eat sugar at the moment.’
‘Noriko,’ the Doctor said gently, ‘this may be your last chance ever to eat sugar again.’
With this in mind I took three of the cookies.
‘Thing is, how did they get in?’ the Doctor said. ‘Some part of the house must already have a connection to the vortex, something that’s connected to all the appliances as well... but what?’ He took the last cookie, finishing the packet.
‘I’m supposed to re-order anything I finish while I’m here,’ I said, nodding at the buttons on the side of the fridge. ‘But maybe let’s see if we survive first.’
The Doctor looked at the buttons. There were several, most of which were used for quickly re-ordering common items, and a larger one which responded to voice instructions for ordering anything else. The Doctor suddenly seemed very interested in them: he walked over, putting on a pair of glasses. Then he took a little device from his pocket, like a pen torch, and pointed a blue glowing end at each button in turn.
Then he laughed.
‘Oh you cheeky fellow,’ he said. ‘Imagine doing your first experiments in time travel – and using them to back-order biscuits!’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Hirosi. He’s rigged these buttons up to a temporal projector. Not very powerful but if all you need to do is send an electronic command back in time a day or two –’
‘So, what – when you press the button, it sends the order back in time?’
‘Exactly! So the order’s on its way before you run out. It’s very casual contravention of the laws of time but at the same time, I quite admire it.’
‘Does this help us in any way?’
‘It might!’ The Doctor adjusted his torch (which obviously wasn’t a torch) and pointed it at the buttons again. ‘Now, ordinarily this wouldn’t work – but these buttons are hooked up to the household network, and the network is infested with vortex ghosts – and the energy they’ve brought with them might mean I can boost the signal enough...’ The buttons began to spark and the Doctor addressed them: ‘No, I know you don’t like it but hard cheese!’
‘Boost the signal enough for what?’ I could hear the other appliances at the door, working on the lock. Any moment now the lawnmower, the cleaners and the rest would break in.
‘Enough for this!’ said the Doctor, lowering his torch and slapping one of the buttons triumphantly.
Nothing happened.
‘Come on, come on –’ the Doctor put his thumb back to the button and clicked it twice more.
‘No, don’t do that – it’ll just keep ordering biscuits.’
‘Oh, it won’t order biscuits – I’ve modified the code.’ The Doctor beamed smugly.
‘So what’s it going to order now?’
From beyond the door I could hear a scuffle and some ZAP noises. Then the kitchen door opened, and despite the Doctor assuring me it was safe, I dodged back. I may have hidden behind him a little bit.
None of the possessed appliances came through the door. Instead a small, crumpled man in a crumpled jacket and baggy trousers emerged into the kitchen. He was wearing a bicycle helmet with what looked like a small satellite dish on top, which was wired up to a lashed-together collection of electronics which had been nailed to a backgammon board to keep them all together. A cable ran from the board and into a school satchel which hung from his shoulder. Smoke poured through the door behind him.
‘Ah, my dear fellow!’ said the newcomer. ‘You could have given me a bit more information about the situation – you didn’t tell me one of the vortex ghosts was trapped in a lawnmower! It almost sliced my finger off.’
‘Doctor,’ said the Doctor, confusingly, ‘I had total faith in you.’
‘That’s the problem with this one,’ the newcomer told me, ‘he’s so charming. It’s easier to be cross with the snooty, aloof ones.’ He trotted over and shook my hand. ‘Hello, my dear – I’m the Doctor. And you are...’
‘Noriko.’
‘What an awful kerfuffle this is, Noriko. But I’ve safely trapped all the vortex ghosts in this unit’ – he pointed inside the satchel, which I now saw contained a battered metal box – ‘and the good news is, the cats are all fine.’
I felt guilty – I’d forgotten all about the cats.
‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ warned the Doctor – the first one. ‘The back garden is crawling with robot sculptures based on Hirosi’s favourite video game characters and they’re all possessed by the vortex ghosts too.’
‘Oh my giddy aunt.’
‘Not any more it isn’t,’ said a new voice, belonging to someone who’d just opened the back door. He was also rather small, with a long brown coat and lively eyes. He had an umbrella hooked over his arm and he carried a set-up that was almost identical to the other Doctor’s, without the helmet but with a number of other additions. He carried the satellite dish in his hand, which was slightly more dignified than the helmet.
The first Doctor broke into a grin. ‘Doctor!’
‘That was a clever idea of yours,’ said this new Doctor.
‘I should have known you’d appreciate it. Sorry – I only meant to summon one, but I got impatient and clicked the button again.’
‘Twice,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘You clicked it again, twice. Which makes three times in total.’
The Doctor thought back. ‘Oh yes.’
Just then, the cellar door opened and a woman strolled out. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and wore braces and a T-shirt with rainbow stripes across the middle. ‘Hiya,’ she said, grinning broadly. ‘Only me.’
‘I’m afraid you’re too late, Doctor,’ said the first Doctor. ‘These two have taken care of it all.’
‘Oh have you taken care of it?’ she said, with exaggerated surprise. ‘Because I was gonna say, I just phoned Mr Hirosi and told him exactly what mistake he’s going to make when he sends this experimental mission off in twenty years’ time, so now they’ll not die and become vortex ghosts and this house will never come under attack in the first place.’ She folded her arms, stuck out her tongue and leaned against the fridge.
‘Oh,’ said the scruffy Doctor, looking crestfallen.
‘Right,’ said my Doctor, nodding, a bit taken aback. ‘Good.’
The Doctor with the umbrella sighed. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
The blonde Doctor chuckled. ‘You will.’
Very cute! 💙