An Empty Vessel

ever close off your mind, absolutely, to anything, my boy.' snapped the old man, philosophically just before creaking unsteadily to his knees to investigate the small electrical fire that had sparked and flared up beneath the console earlier.

Ambling around above him, the tall, dark wavy haired, handsome ex-space pilot Steven Taylor bumbled in his usual way towards the wrong conclusions. 'You mean to tell me, there are other universes that are not akin to the reality of the physical that's all around us, outside the ship?'

'Bah!' crooned the aged Doctor testily. 'If you can't understand the argument I'm stating, don't keep making unfounded assertions. What I'm saying is, that these other universes are 'akin' to our own, except we can't touch them or enter them. They are there, they are tangible - physical you might say to anyone within them, but because they are on a different plane we cannot move to them, or exist in them unless we become part of their reality.'

Steven frowned a little until his face awoke like the dawning of a new day. 'Ah, like matter and anti-matter, Doctor?'

'Exactly, exactly. Two totally different corporeal points but both in existence.' The discourse concluded the Doctor took out his pencil torch and pocked it into the panel he had opened earlier. His angular nose haughtily sniffed as if he was trying to smell out the damage. After a brief inspection, he moaned softly and rubbed a knurled hand through his mane of white hair. 'Impossible.' he griped contradictorily, causing Steven to be amused. 'All the circuit jammers have been rendered obsolete.' His bottom lip twitched with unfrequented fear, as the inspection of his words took a strangle hold over both himself and his wonderful craft.

Steven helped the Doctor onto his feet and asked with anxiety what exactly was the Doctor getting at.

Grasping his lapels, the Doctor intoned mournfully, 'This means every circuit in the TARDIS cannot be switched off or overridden. They will therefore continue to be active until they burn out. When that happens..the TARDIS will be finished and us with it!' It was now, that the Doctor, had to steady a collapsing companion who, being very mortal, could fear death more readily than the seemingly timeless traveller.

Suddenly, the whole room shook like some building afflicted by an earthquake and the console began to reverberate with the groans of what seemed to be a dying beast. To the Doctor, this only meant one thing, destruction and then the cold, black embrace of death. He chocked as the air within the vessel suddenly began to stifle his already dry throat.

Steven dragged himself with the last vestiges of strength he had and growled croakily, 'Doctor, surely we aren't finished yet?!'

Sweating profusely as the console room began to get even more humid than a few seconds earlier, the Doctor mopped his brow with a grimy handkerchief. 'I'm...I'm afraid so, my boy. All the systems are breaking down'

Behind him the console was beginning to smoulder and disintegrate before their strained eyes. 'Oh...no...no...the central column is melting to nothingness...' His voice trailed off as a flickering candle flame of now raw white energy appeared from the base of the column and then began to engulf the whole column until it was unbearable to look into.

'Dissipation...' was the last word the Doctor ever uttered because everything blurred and blazed out of his vision, then everything went as black as a coal face.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

t seemed like an infinite number of years had passed since the deadly disruption had afflicted and destroyed ( the indestructible? ) TARDIS. So much so, that when Steven and the Doctor rose groggily to their feet they felt they were suffering from some form of an elongated dream. They had awoken within...the brightly lit TARDIS console room - a console room that should not, in all practicality still be there! But as the Doctor discovered when he tried to activate the main console there was...'No power, no power at all, yet all the circuits appear intact again.'

His head aching, but his internal workings all in order and his once parched throat now wonderfully wet, Steven Taylor came to stand at the Doctor's shoulder. 'But how can that be? I mean, everything went up like a hundred tons of dynamite. We surely didn't imagine it, did we?'

Imperiously, the Doctor replied, 'No, no, we didn't imagine it at all...' The septuagenarian sucked in a sharp intake of breath and sighed. 'All I can see as an explanation is that the TARDIS itself somehow held itself together and restructured itself safely wherever here is, but in doing so used up all the last reserves of power.'

Cautiously, Steven eyed the TARDIS main doors and held the old Doctor's arm as he ventured to step outside. 'Wait! Doctor. We haven't any power, right?'

The Doctor snorted impatiently. 'Obvious, my boy, obvious.' He held up a hand. 'And therefore you go on an further, yes, we can't see what is outside. But in order to recharge the TARDIS' energy reserves we have to go out there and find a power source...' With that his voice trailed off to silent oblivion and the sprightly aged gentleman activated the door controls and walked himself out of the craft.

Not wishing to seem a coward, Steven took a deep breath and similarly followed. The sight that greeted him was extremely unwelcoming. Poor Steven found himself surrounded by a confusing whirl of clinging, constantly shifting, mist. He could discern through the bleakness shadowy figures some distance away just milling around. He strained his eyes because the darkness blotted his vision so much, that even outlines were fading to obscurity.

'Doctor? Doctor, where are you?' Echoes greeted his questioning in a mocking repetitive cycle that boomed like a hollow oil drum at the bottom of a well. He decided to continue walking, yet no footsteps sounded. Instead, Steven found himself floating just a little above and just a little below the level of the mist curling around his feet, ensnaring him like a rabbit in a trap. He withered to try to get away from the fact that he was defying the laws of gravity, a fact so alien, he could not comprehend it. In doing so, he overbalanced and fell into the fog, disappearing from sight...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~