 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...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ |
