The Chronicles of Widget (Phoenix Rising)

by Angela Timms

  xcv No time to spare when we got to the hotel though. Bags were put down, mobile phone calls were made and after a couple of drinks in the bar, so that Niall could relax after his long drive, the taxi was ordered to take us all to the Dr Who Exhibition. It was cold and far too far to walk. Not the original plan but the taxi arrived quickly and we were dropped off near to the Exhibition. We didn’t see anything new but we did get dropped off right outside the Exhibition and that was in a way arriving in style.

  It was so exciting. I couldn’t believe it that it had all come together and now I’m at the Exhibition. That is exciting in itself but I really hope that I can find an answer. It is the only solution I can come up with at the moment but all I can say is “here we go”. Not that anyone can see my fear. I’m just a stuffed puppet in a basket.

  For weeks running up to this trip though I hadn’t been. I’d been looking at the web site and looking at the programs. I was looking for clues but mostly I was enjoying myself. The encounter with the Troll had rather polarized my thoughts though. This is more than just a fun trip out. I knew that. But as I was lifted from the car and carried to the Exhibition the feeling of anticipation was also mixed with extreme fear. I would be going to other worlds and driving a machine I knew nothing about. It could all go horribly wrong. Deep breath Frixian, you can do this. You can make this happen.

  The glass doors were welcoming enough and I felt like I was leaving the mundane world behind for something a bit more magical. That is the wonder of magical places like this. I could explain it as fantasy which exists within the mundane.

  The development must be new as the land around it is undeveloped and there was a lot of those building site railings. Probably in time this land will be developed and other entertainments will join it. For now it is a bit bleak with the Exhibition standing out on a sea of would be building site. To the right is a Tardis parked at a jaunty angle on the jetty. Now that is a bad omen. That got me thinking. As I’m going to borrow it and bring it back I seriously hope that isn’t the box that I am going to borrow and a bad bit of parking when I bring it back long before I get here. Thankfully, I think that is just a decorative one, put there to amuse those waiting for the boat which takes people around the bay. It is hard to tell as I can’t take out any of my technology to have a look as I’m not able to move. That is really frustrating.

  Inside is a cinema-like foyer the first thing I saw after the exhibits that were put there to amuse is a pleasantly laid out café. Models and film props from the series look on as guests sit in the café area waiting for the Exhibition to start. That was where Angel’s friends were waiting for her and this was where we would have to wait for our show to start as well. Now, call me paranoid, but with the Goblians about having all those monster bodies just standing there was a recipe for being attacked. If we were then there was nothing I could do about it. If the Tardis was in there it was certainly not projecting any kind of a field that allowed me freedom of movement. So, to me all I can see are potential monsters standing as if waiting to pounce and who knows what could happen if they do. Sniff, sniff but only a very vague scent which is old. I bet they have tried to get in here but they aren’t Frixians and they can’t use Timelord Technology. They can however manipulate the exhibits and use the costumes to hide in. They can make any of them attack at any time. I know that, it is magic they perfected a long time ago. So it isn’t exactly safe. Nothing is anymore. Then again, if they could, they would. Perhaps they can’t. Perhaps they don’t know we are here. Of course as soon as I do anything they will know as they will be able to sense that there is Frixian magic being used. It will be a huge beacon and of course that will also bring on a Goblian attack. I can’t imagine they would stand back and let me fix the Tavern. I can see it will be a difficult night if I survive this bit.

  I just hope that my old friends and new here will be alright. They are roleplayers or at least they understand Science Fiction. That means that they put themselves in strange situations when they are pretending to be someone else while playing a game and also they have watched a lot of films where strange things happen. They can see beyond the mundane and if need be I can gift them with the power to use the Frixian items. They have the gift of imagination so as the artifacts I use have been created with a similar magic I can link the two. Even the simplest paper clip if used with the will to make something better or different can be used by us to be something magical and important. Similarly anyone with creativity and the

  xcvii ability to see beyond the mundane can be our warriors if it comes to it. I will get them through this somehow. If this goes wrong then it could be very interesting for everyone. They are brave to come with me. Angel told them why they were coming. I don’t think they really believe that we are aliens in a puppet so they are probably just there because they are her friends. She told them in case I needed to move and she didn’t want me limited by their disbelief in a situation that they were in a room, just them and we were attacked.

  I don’t want to worry anyone so I am just Widget, just their puppet and as I sit in my basket waiting to go into the Exhibition it is difficult for me. Everything is a threat and they are sitting here chatting. The wonder of ignorance and not knowing or rather the wonder of not believing something is true. It was a smart double bluff. They believe they are here to go to the Exhibition where I am here to be a prop for a review and story about the Exhibition. The story that Angel is writing is about me borrowing the Tardis. So they don’t think anything of me being there in a basket with them, especially as I am actually only a puppet at the moment. They are more worried about the Weeping Angels. Well I’ll keep an eye on those for them. I don’t have eyelids so I can’t blink anyway.

  Time ticks by like an impossibly slow beast and that means I have to look around carefully, again and again, expecting trouble. Not that we will be any safer in the Exhibition but I at least want to get on with this.

  Finally the time came for us to be invited to go into the Exhibition. Tick, tock the clock had ticked and now we are going. Picked up in the basket, taken to the cloak room and the basket had to be left behind so that Angel could move me like a puppet around the Exhibition. For one nasty moment I thought that Angel was going to leave me here too but no, just the basket.

  I will have to do this one without the puppet body. I will have to step out of my body as I can’t let the humans see what I’m doing. The Tardis has been touched by time travel so I can physically touch it without needing the puppet.

  Over and over and over again I plan and it is a simple plan. Leave

  xcviii body, go into exhibition just before they get to the Tardis and before the humans get to drive or pilot or whatever you call moving the Tardis I borrow it and then bring it back before they get there. I will be able to get in as it will be allowing them into the place and it should be fired up and ready to go. Or whatever term is appropriate for it being on standby. I won’t be able to help my friends with whatever they are helping The Doctor with. Although I really, really wish that The Doctor was here to help me with what I’m dong. I think I met him in passing once in time and space. There is something very familiar about the man I see on the television.

  The owners of the show will never know if I can get it back before they know it is gone. Then we did email first to ask permission, well sort of. I suppose they don’t believe us. We asked for permission to use photos in the Exhibition and we asked for the Exhibition to be used in the book. I don’t think that we actually asked to borrow the Tardis but we did tell them we were going to do it as part of the story. I don’t know if that counts and if it goes wrong and the Tardis is lost I really don’t know how Angel is going to explain this away in a Court of Law.

  I will have to be quick as the whole plan relies on me getting into that room before they do and that they give me just a moment. Step, step, timing, words, door open to the Exhibition, right there I go. The Tardis’ defenses are down to let the tourists in. So in I go. I took a deep breath and st
epped out of the puppet. It was disorientating to start with and I stumbled forward, before getting used to being six foot tall instead of my usual three foot in the puppet. My legs were a little stiff but I knew I had to run and move quickly through the open door.

  There are two existences here in the Exhibition and I had just stepped between two existences. There is the ethereal one which I am in when out of the body which is the magical one and the mundane one which the others are in. In the ethereal there are rules as much as the mundane and I have to remember them. This is because the Exhibition contains the Tardis and that makes the place able to exist in both dimensions at the same time. So the floor is solid so I can run on it. Doors are solid so I have to push them

  xcix open. Just at the moment the guide opens the door I have to dive through after pushing past people and the tour guide without touching anyone. In ethereal form I am moving like the wind, exactly like the wind but as it is in both dimensions speed must to be tempered by accuracy. I ran, I leapt and I was there, through the door. Looking back for a moment I saw my friends, carrying the floppy Widget puppet.

  Frixian magic makes me able to use the Tardis. It is just our kind of magic thing. It is real yet unreal. This is a situation where you just don’t know whether it is real or not. Being in the room would have been awe inspiring if I wasn’t in such a hurry. I held my breath, gathered my composure and cast my spell. I spoke the worlds, believed the belief and put my hands onto the machine as I became one with it. So magic cast I set the timer which made sure I went to the right time and pulled the lever. That was the moment when I knew it was all real. It was not just the magic of belief, it was real magic, real time travelling magic. The Tardis came to life with the familiar rasping sound I had heard so often on the television shows. That sound is so significant now, it means that I got things right and the Tardis was off to the time I had set. Well hopefully it was. It was also so reassuring as at least it was going somewhere. Off we go. I took another deep breath and I that hope that The Doctor would be there to help faded away. It would have been so much easier if he was here. If he was I could ask him about how to rebuild the control panel and it would make what I’m about to do so much easier and more fun. I could really do with his help at the moment. I didn’t want to be alone. But I was. The Doctor was not in the house.

  The whiz, whiz, scrapey, scrapey sound heralded the shift in time and space and then I felt nothing. A serene moment of knowing we have landed. But where and when? Had I got it right?

  Outside was the world I needed to visit. Outside if I am right the moon will be cold, it will be inhospitable and it will be the Moon. I’m in ethereal form so that doesn’t matter. I reassured myself and then thought about it. As I am in ethereal form and the rock isn’t, I can’t pick up the moon rock. Not without the Tardis’ help again, I needed metal from that to pick the rock up at all. So a couple of bits of the Tardis had to come with me.

  c No time to lose, I’d got here right on time in the grand scale of things. In the distance I could see the moon vehicle on the way back to Earth so I wasn’t going to get caught. The sunlight glinting off of its metallic case sparkled. It looked out of place in the vastness of space, invading, metallic and human. Out of place but not out of time. I was here, they were not. That is good, I got that right. Hopefully it is the right day. Then again it must be as the moon vehicle is off on its way home. So metal in hand I stride out and am grateful for my ethereal existence as the non gravity will not launch me out into space. Fun though that might be who knows where I might end up.

  The terrain was dusty and empty. Like a world wiped clean. The rocks and terrain marked by previous physical erosion and elemental action, possibly by water, possibly space winds. Who knows? Finding the area we had talked about wasn’t too difficult and there was plenty of the black rock. There are bits of rock that it would have been easy to chip off but there were also bits laying around so I decided on a couple of them.

  Once back in the Tardis the controls set and off I go again. That was the easy bit. The Tardis leaps into life and there I go again, then it stops at the new location and time.

  If I have got it right I will now be back home. But opening that door will reveal all. This is the hard part. I have to say that I’m feeling a whole mix of emotions. To be home after all the years is really quite incredible. Although the location is set far from where I have been in the past it is still my planet in my universe in my time. I must keep calm and it seems to take an age as I walk to the door, put a hand on it and push. I pushed too hard of course and the doors flew open and the purple light of home flooded inside. The Tardis was almost instantly bathed in the smell of the flowers. It washed in, intense and heady wafting into the interior to mix with the smell of the Tardis.

  The mountains and hills surrounding the valley rose to the orange heavens bathed in differing shades of purple. They soared to impossible heights around where the Tardis nestled between two

  ci hillocks. I had to smile as it was perfectly landed, right where the sheltering rocks could hide it. Of course there was no time to congratulate myself as I really had to focus on the situation. Each part of this adventure had to be right, had to be successful, or I would fail. This if course being the most serious part, getting the crystals, I could not fail. I’m physical here, I can touch what I like, do what I like which also means that anything out here can hurt me. That is something I have to remember. What I’d like to do is go and see the people I haven’t seen for over a hundred years but I must concentrate and get the crystals and get the Tardis back. Then I could go back to the goats and that was where I always want to be.

  The soft springy grass of home is just as I remember it and, stifling a tear, I have to go on. That means going out into the open. It is of course wonderful to be home. Just as full of wildlife and vegetation. A herd of lilac unicorns spooked and galloped away up a mountain path as I got closer. This in turn spooked a baby dragon who took flight and soared into the sky. This of course brought silence to the birds but then the sound of gunfire and explosions in the distance can’t be ignored. So no need for a quiet arrival. His golden wings reflect the light of the sun as he soars to the heavens then wheels away as he almost got to that valley and flew off to the right.

  In the distance the roar of battle cannot be ignored. That was something I really didn’t expect. Explosions rang out but not in this valley. This valley is protected. This is where I come from, my home, well what I call home as I wasn’t born here. The war still rages out there, it has for years and it won’t be long before this valley is under threat. But not yet. It is a last bastion of fantasy and hope. If the people of Earth still believe in it.

  I won’t go into it but what happens on your world reflects in mine and echoes across the Universe. Nothing happens without a reaction somewhere else. While you believe in magic we are safe. So it isn’t just me being kind that I want to get Frixians to your world to protect you from the Goblians. If the Goblians kill you all we will have nobody to believe in magic.

  So it is important, what we do. We need the crystals. Much like the Doctor does for his Tardis. We need crystals from home. This is

  cii

  home and now I need to find more crystals. I will take one extra for him, a thank you for letting me borrow his Tardis. Words are spoken, out of sight, whispered broken, to find what is right. The words I whisper seem to boom out although they were spoken so gently. That is magic, it has no concept of volume.

  Now to wait but only a moment and the ground begins to glow in places. So I dig, and dig and dig. One by one I dig up the crystals and put them into my little bag. One by one I pick them up and one by one we are closer to saving everything. Or at least getting the Tavern moving again which is the start of saving everything.

  Then I smelt it, Goblian magic. It wafted across the landscape, strong and stinky. It was a dark smell cloud in the eternity of beautiful scents from the plants and flowers. Goblians are close. The war is spilling into the valley,
that can’t happen. This was far too soon. We aren’t ready. This is awful.

  A fireball crackled through the air, heading my way. It was huge, black, glowing red and burning. I held my hand to stop it and the magic flowed but the power that had sent it was too strong, I could only slow it and it fell short. It missed me and the Tardis but the once beautiful foliage and animals it landed on disappeared in a flower of fire.

  A black creature rose up from behind the mountain where the battle was raging and swooped down. It was bird like but more like a lizard, its huge leathery wings flapped, it’s steely talons were ready to grab, its beak sharp and ready to bite. It was dragon like but not a dragon. It was very clearly a machine, the scales manufactured, the teeth ravenously sharp. It had a rider as well and as it got close I could see that the rider in detail, it was a Goblian. He was dressed head to foot in black spikey armour and he held a barbed trident in his free hand. His other hand held the ropes which controlled the huge metal beast.

  I will have to have enough crystals, no time for any more. I grabbed the last of them and stuffed it into my pocket. As the beast is bearing down on me I can only run. I can’t look back, I just have to run

  ciii blindly and head for the Tardis, then leap through the Tardis door and shut it which shut out the sound of the animals and plants screaming in pain. There was a metallic scraping sound as I leant against the door panting and really hoping that the paintwork hadn’t been damaged.

  Now that was close, that was awful. They can’t be there. That is, erm was, the last secure place. Those poor animals, the rest of my people. What can I do?

  If what happens in my world reflects in the mortal world and what happens in the mortal world reflects in the unmundane world then I have a problem. Which world do you sort things out in? Either or both?

  The darkness in mankind’s hearts and minds is reflected here, destroying the beauty of here. War for mankind means power to the Goblians and destruction here as the warlike attitude of mankind makes them warlike. Then why did I think it wouldn’t mean that? I have been sitting on my hillside with my friends believing like they did that all we had to do was provide a sanctuary. But sanctuaries aren’t immune to the sort of damage that men can do. I’ve been living on my hillside in peace and happiness far too long. There is a world of pain out there and mankind has forgotten what living without it is all about. Many have forgotten the simple kindness to others and what that means. Of course with that sort of thought you have to be careful of those who would take advantage. The wisdom to know the difference between people is the ability to be kind to those who deserve it and to treat those who don’t with the contempt they deserve. If that was what everyone was like there would be no pain and sorrow for those who didn’t deserve it.