by Steve Cole
‘Thank you!’ Graham shouted, in the TARDIS, to the TARDIS, and to the Doctor and the universe, and whatever else had conspired to allow him to christen his favourite team. Who needed a bucket list when life could twist and turn and surprise you like this on a Monday morning?
The Doctor smiled. She doubted a quick kickabout could ever lead to saving the Earth, but sometimes the simplest things were the greatest things – like her favourite race, and like those beautiful, perfect spheres, on the pitch and spinning in all the solar systems. And if she’d learned one thing about the future, and the past, and the present, it was that she never really knew what would happen next. Which was why hope would always win.
9
The Tourist
by Vinay Patel
Enthusiastic, self-motivated individual required for exciting franchise opportunity with a well-regarded city-based tour-guide company to urgently fill unexpected vacancy. Must have a love for arcane history and for entertaining domestic and international audiences alike. Access to own printer a bonus. Lanyards provided on request.
The absurdity of applying for a job as a tour guide in a place you’ve never visited, let alone lived in, had occurred to George. Who was he to venture out into the big city and immediately slap his authorial stamp on it? OK, so Gloucester wasn’t exactly the big city, but it was a big enough city for George, thanks very much. Sixty-seven years he’d had in this life. Sixty-seven years spent living in the middle of nowhere with his mum, which, to him, was sixty-seven years well spent. He didn’t want to be here at all.
But it was all different now. Needs must.
Perhaps the interviewer sensed his hesitance.
‘Tell me, George. Do you like people?’
‘Of course,’ said George. ‘As long as they’re likeable.’
The interviewer laughed at what George presumed was a funny memory that’d just popped into her mind, because he had certainly not made any jokes. She flicked the pen repeatedly against the desk, the way people do when they want to let you know that they’re thinking.
‘I wouldn’t normally do this, given your lack of experience but… your reference was impeccable, and this vacancy really needs filling.’
George wasn’t sure what a reference was. Had he given one? He didn’t think so. But maybe that was just how things worked in the big city. People were happy to ring up and tell other people you were great. He could see how that would be a pull factor.
‘Plus you’ve got an honest face. That really helps in this gig.’
Nobody had ever said that about George. His mum never was one for compliments. Only instructions. Even her deathbed words sounded like a litany, inconveniently interrupted mid-flow by rigor mortis. Was it a shopping list? Chores to be completed? George wasn’t sure. She’d said it all in a tongue from the old country that she’d never bothered to teach him. He probably should’ve asked. Too late now. Either way, it’d made him feel funny inside, like when you watch a foreign movie without subtitles but can still tell that everyone’s sad.
He was glad, though, to hear this about his face because, until he got to know Gloucester better, he imagined he’d be lying to people all the time. Most of them would be holidaymakers so wouldn’t have a clue if you were making things up anyway. Nobody fact-checks their holiday.
The interviewer got out of her chair and held out her hand for a shake.
‘Get out there, George,’ she said. ‘Get the street into your feet.’
CELEBRITY PSYCHIC CLAIMS MISSING CAFÉ/BAKERY OWNER IS DEATH CULT GANG LEADER
Exclusive interview by Gustav Brooks
The unlikely story headlined a fading, crumpled newspaper that declared itself to have been voted South West England’s Most Trusted Bi-Monthly Paper (2016 & 2018). There was a part of George – the self-educated, proud, discerning part – that knew that reading this story would be bad for his brain. There was, however, another part of George, a part he shared with every inhabitant of planet Earth, that was just really, really, really compelled by unapologetic trash and it was this part that led him in…
With many of us still trying to process the traumatic events of January’s biker gang invasion, the truth still feels many pieces away from a full picture. One of those missing pieces is the literally missing figure of Allan ‘All-Ears’ Hogan. Some of you will remember Allan from his time as publican of the Twisted Yarn, where his penchant for themed events was legendary. Hair Metal Thursdays was a staple at the Enquirer offices!
The Biker Gang Incident! That part wasn’t nonsense; George had definitely heard about it, but it had slipped his mind. It felt like ancient history. After all, that was months ago and news moves so fast these days, even if you’re far from where it happens.
When an unspecified personal tragedy led to a new career in artisan baking, we all hoped Allan would quickly find his feet again. So we were crushed to hear that he had gone missing following January’s incident, one of many victims of that allegedly Satan-worshipping mob. The remembrance cakes left outside his cafe (most of which looked better than Allan’s efforts, it must be said) suggested that we were not the only ones mourning.
Now local celebrity psychic Sally Domino – best known for hosting Britain’s Most Haunted Second Homes – claims that the outpouring of sympathy was misplaced. Allan may have had his ear to the ground, but perhaps it was him we should have been keeping an eye on all along…
‘He was definitely one of them,’ claimed Domino during our exclusive phone interview. ‘Not just one of them, THE one. The head of the snake.’
What led her to this jaw-dropping conclusion?
‘I didn’t go looking for it. I never really go asking questions of the dead these days, it’s not what you do when you’re retired. But there I was hanging upside down, retiling my garage ceiling, when one of the victims came to me and whispered ‘Baker Biker Boss’ over and over, and I knew I had to investigate. After that, it was pretty easy to put two and two together.’
I asked Ms Domino if Allan not appearing to have ever owned a motorbike would have limited his participation in a biker gang. She greets my query with a scoff.
‘If anything, that just proves it. The real leaders of these things don’t do any of the driving, do they. Do they?’
The jury, as they say, is out.
George laughed. He didn’t intend to. He didn’t realise how much he’d been needing it. He laughed so much that his chest hurt. Pulled a muscle maybe. Or maybe it was guilt from laughing when his mum never would again.
George finished his coffee and pushed the paper aside. He wondered who had left it there. Was it someone still in this café? Had they laughed too and wanted to share? Or were they just in a rush?
Life here seemed like that to George. Always a rush. Like you’re chasing someone you don’t know. No lives in the city are new, he decided. You’re always just expanding to fill the cracks someone else left behind. Even your laughs are second-hand.
Property For Sale: 2-bedroom 4th-floor flat, quayside adjacent in an attractive modern block. Fashionable open-plan layout with exposed brickwork. Presented ‘as is’ with tasteful contemporary furniture. (Some window restoration work required). Motivated seller. Please contact OLIVER at Big Panda Estate Agents.
Oliver wasn’t how George expected him to be. He had been expecting a hustler, that was what estate agents naturally felt like in his mind. And it was possible that the attitude Oliver had on him was part of his own style of hustle, but George reasoned that a hustle should probably make you want to stay. The flat was a bomb site.
‘Did something… happen here?’ asked George, understanding perfectly that the art of playing detective is all in the placement of the dramatic pause.
Oliver shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know.’
‘I just mean… it’s very cheap.’
‘You know what?’ said Oliver, settling onto the sofa. ‘I’d call it a bargain!’
‘Suspiciously cheap.’
Judging from Oliver’s
twitchy response, he had some sort of allergy to the word ‘cheap’. To George, this was a good indicator that he should keep using it. ‘I’m just learning what I can about this city, but I’m pretty sure this place shouldn’t be this cheap.’
A deep sigh from the sofa.
‘Look, I don’t love it either, mate. I’m on commission, after all. But the seller picked this place up at auction and they’re looking to get rid right away. In fact, she told me this morning that it should go to the next person who looked. Lucky you.’
That really was lucky.
‘If it makes you feel better, you must be paying more than they did.’
It did make him feel better. Somehow, paying much more for property than it used to be worth a mere heartbeat ago felt like communing with an ancient British tradition. He made an offer right away.
George built his routine here over the next few weeks. In the days, he repainted the walls, repaired the window (how did a ball smash through all the way up here?) and memorised maps of the city with their corresponding histories. At night, he’d walk the routes he’d studied, layering his learning onto reality. Getting the street into his feet. It was A Lot. If you’re really paying attention to detail, you can spend a lifetime studying just one place and you still wouldn’t know it all. George had opted to try.
Then there was the stuff in the flat. The former owners had left so much behind. Most of it he liked and found to suit him. Even the bum indentation in the sofa seemed to match his own contours very nicely.
But the photos were different. A man. A woman. Smiling. Always smiling! Well… him trying to smile and her knowing how to better than anyone George had ever known. It was a smile that let you know everything would be OK and hopefully this couple were, even if the circumstances of George’s being there seemed to suggest otherwise. What do you do with abandoned memories? George tossed them. He felt like they were mocking him. ‘This is the life you would’ve had, George,’ they seemed to say, ‘if you’d moved to the city before you were seventy-nine. What were you hiding from? Look at you now. Old and alone.’
George could do precisely nothing about the first of those things. But he could do something about the second.
WILSON-SOLDADO, Marcia – Three marriages. Two surnames. One heck of a lady. Wednesday nights at Seniors’ Hackysack won’t be the same without you. Love from all of the girls at Stitchin’ Witches to our Martyr of the Cathedral Green.
P.S. We are looking after Mittens best we can. We don’t think she realises you’re gone yet but might do when the posh food runs out.
It seemed strange to call this place a ‘cat home’. No cats would ever find their home here, it was at best a passing residence, a ‘cat hotel’ or ‘cat inn’ if you preferred. Sonia, behind the counter, received this rumination from George as if it wasn’t the 700th time she’d heard it from a potential adopter; sometimes expressed as a joke, sometimes as a genuine revelation. Today she felt it was the latter. She dutifully nodded at the profundity of the observation and led George along the rows of cages. A small tabby with big ears caught his attention. ‘That’s Mittens,’ said Sonia, unlocking the cage. ‘I’ll leave you to get acquainted.’
Mittens looked him right in the eyes. What a delightful, fearless creature! George thought as the cat scampered towards him and presented her paw. So very forward. And yet George couldn’t help but take this offer. This was a gesture of love.
Ow.
No. That was a swipe.
Pulling away, George sucked at the blood newly released from the back of his hand when he noticed a woman a few feet away, leaning in to his moment with Mittens. He found himself surprisingly defensive about it. ‘Excuse me, ma’am, were you wanting to look at this cat?’
The woman frowned. ‘Nah. She’s all yours. TARDIS is no place for a kitty. She’d get all over the place. Upside down, more often than not. Imagine the litter tray issues!’
George had never heard of Tardis, but assumed it was a part of Gloucester he’d not gotten to yet. Probably where the ‘cool kids’ hung out. He filed it in the back of his brain as another place to investigate.
But something was familiar about this woman dressed in blue.
‘Have we met before?’ he asked. She seemed to take this question very seriously. ‘It’s perfectly possible,’ she said. ‘I tend to get about. But I left Gloucester a long time ago. Or not that long ago actually. Depends how you look at it.’
George was not sure how to look at it.
‘I just like to check back from time to time, whisper in the right ears, help out some lost souls. Plenty of them about. How about you? Where are you from?’
‘Well…’ said George. And he realised he had never been asked this question before. How lucky he had been, never having to consider if his appearance matched his location. How wonderful it was to be certain of your belonging. How debilitating, how unsettling it must be to not be able to know, perhaps to never know what the truth of you is.
Although.
Did George know the truth about himself? Come to think of it, he never had asked his mum how they came to be in the middle of nowhere, basically by themselves, for what must have been decades. Centuries? Life just keeps going, even if you’re not counting. Was he certain that he was fifty-three years old? Was this face his face? Was that blood from his hand actually green or was it just the lighting in here? Where even was the old country? Was he absolutely sure that he was human?
George didn’t share any of this with the woman, of course. Only one thing needed saying, the answer to the question which felt so obvious when it came. The most certain thing he’d ever felt, maybe the only certain thing.
‘Me?’ He gently lifted Mittens as he spoke, pulling her wary form into a cradle in his chest. A temporary residence, right by his heart, that would one day build itself into a home. ‘I’m from around here.’
The woman smiled and, right then, George knew exactly who she was and that everything would be OK.
10
Press Play
by Pete McTighe
The Doctor was feeling lonely. Most of the time, she could suppress those feelings and distract herself by saving a planet, averting a war, or emergency-deep-freezing Krynoid hatchlings. But not today. Today was different.
Today, she sat on the steps of the TARDIS console room, munching her last custard cream, watching the glowing control crystal rise and fall.
Rise and fall.
Rise and fall.
While her space-time machine was in Artron II Recharge Mode, the Doctor couldn’t allow anyone else on board, especially humans – the Artron pulses played havoc with their DNA. She guiltily remembered that time with David Bowie, when his left pupil permanently dilated.
The Doctor sighed, savouring her final mouthful of biscuit. Her brain was still working thirteen million to the dozen, in the background, backing up like the biggest and best hard drive in the universe, but it felt dulled and distant. If mardy was an emotion, she was feeling it.
Then the TARDIS beeped. A friendly, quirky little sound she hadn’t heard before. It was like it knew what she was thinking (which, of course, it secretly did). Curious, the Doctor scrambled to her feet, and in response a jet of steam hissed out of the console. Projected onto the steam was a line of old Gallifreyan text:
You have one unread message.
‘What message?’ the Doctor blurted out loud. ‘Since when did you start taking messages?’
Since ages ago, the TARDIS replied in a petulant series of hums and whistles.
‘Well, aren’t you chatty! Where were you last September when I ran out of monologues?’
Just read the message, the TARDIS seemed to say.
The Doctor jabbed a button on the console, then turned as a hologram fizzed into life. She felt a surge of emotion as she stared into the face before her.
The girl was in her mid-teens, with a shock of jet-black hair, a striped top and eyes twinkling with mischief. The sight of her cracked the Doctor’s dar
k mood like an egg.
‘Hello, Grandfather,’ said the hologram.
The Doctor’s voice caught in her throat. ‘Hello, Susan,’ she finally replied. This was clearly a recording made when her granddaughter was still a teenager. When they were travelling together, so many lifetimes ago.
Susan’s image crackled as she continued talking: ‘I’ve built a message bank and retrieval system into the TARDIS data core, for a rainy day. In case you need cheering up. I know what you’re like when you get bored, or lonely.’
‘What am I like?’ snapped the Doctor defensively.
‘Grumpy,’ Susan replied.
The Doctor clutched her braces and frowned.
‘I know nothing lasts forever,’ Susan continued, ‘and that eventually we’ll have to say goodbye. But when that day comes, I want to leave you with some memories of our time together.’
The Doctor’s eyes misted over. There was a lump in her throat.
‘Not just of me, but of future friends. Future times and places. I’ve activated the TARDIS record mode, telepathically linked to your data extract. So if you’re ever feeling bored, or lonely, or sad, all you have to do is access the databank, and retrieve a favourite memory. It’ll keep on recording until you tell it to stop. All your adventures, all your stories won’t go to waste. They’ll always be here, waiting for you, like an archive. Alive for eternity.’
Stunned, the Doctor watched a stream of text appearing on the screen. Old adventures, logged in a long list that seemingly scrolled forever.
‘Some of the early ones might have gaps, sorry about that. You know what the TARDIS is like with integrating new systems.’
The TARDIS grumbled disapprovingly.