Doctor Who?
~~by Bobbie Cabot~~

If you knew about the Doctor and you saw a 60s blue British police call box, you'd probably come to the conclusion that the time-travelling Doctor is around somewhere, trying to save the world from the Daleks again, or maybe from the Cybermen, the Sycorax or the Judoon.

But this time, this isn’t the Doctor. Not exactly…

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“Well, I don’t know why you had to regenerate me as a girl!” the tall, slim, very pretty blonde complained while she walked down the row of stores in the open-air mall.

“I didn’t regenerate you as a girl,” her companion, a shorter brunette answered crossly as she followed the blonde. “No one regenerated you! Didn’t he explain that there’s really no controlling regeneration? ”

“But why a girl!! Of all the things…”

“Like I said, no one can control regenerations!”

“Seriously, Binky. A girl?”

The brunette raised her arms in frustration. “I give up!” She reached out and swiped at the flashlight-thing that the blonde was holding. “Gimme the sonic screwdriver, for God’s sake! You don’t even know how to work it.”

“Hey! Gimme that back. I do so know how to work the screwdriver! I was the one who got the brain dump.”

“Well, he said that would take time to take effect. In the meantime…” She flicked something on the flashlight and the top opened up like a four-pronged pair of pliers with a green light in the middle.

It made a kind of warbling sound, and the brunette followed the sound like one would a geiger counter’s clicks.

“I think I found it!” She waved the blonde to follow. “Quinn, stop shopping and come on!”

The blonde looked up from the vintage, striped brown, off-shoulder blouse she was looking at. She returned it to the hanger along with the rest of the blouses in the shop’s display and hurried after her friend.

-----

The brunette that Quinn called “Binky” stood in front of a vintage music store. The sign said “Groovy Tones – musical curios from the 40s to the 70s.” She was waving the buzzing flashlight with the green light at the store’s glass display front.

“So, it’s inside?” Quinn asked.

Binky nodded. “Apparently.” She went into the store, and Quinn followed.

The tinkling of the door’s old-fashioned chimes greeted them, and an old man in a bathrobe that seemed to be his uniform came over.

“Good morning, Quinn, Mary Elizabeth. Welcome to Groovy Tones. What brings you two here?”

“Good morning. Are you the one that runs the place?” Quinn asked.

“Not usually,” he said. “But my shop is currently in… ummm, let’s just say it’s in a state of temporal flux at the moment, caught between two planes of reality. So, while I wait for it to turn up, I’m here helping out a friend, and taking care of his shop.”

“Hold on… you know us? How did you know our names?”

The old man chuckled. “It’s magic! More like a magic spell, actually.”

Binky frowned at him.

“You don’t believe in spells?” he asked her.

“Arthur C. Clarke’s third law says ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’”

“Arthur C. Clarke again,” the old man growled. “What does he know?”

“So, you know us?” Quinn asked.

The old man harrumphed. “Of course! You’re Doctor Quinn Valentine, who recently completed his residency and doctoral thesis, and just acquired his doctorate at the University of Cambridge, and you’re with your best friend, Mary Elizabeth Kristensen, and she is a doctoral candidate also in Cambridge.”

She was about to nod and congratulate the man for his knowledge but paused.

“Wait! You said ‘he’…”

“Well you were, weren’t you? A ‘he,’ I mean. Before your regeneration made you into a girl.”

“Hold on a second! You know about that, too?”

“Of course I know! You should be more careful. Your regeneration’s your own fault, you know, letting your TARDIS land on you and crush you.”

“It wasn’t my fault! How would I know it would take off straight up and then come crashing back down? We just finished assembling it, and we were still testing it, after all.”

“Well, anyway, what can I do for you today?”

Quinn looked at him for a second, made the decision to ignore any questions she might have tor the old man, and to just concentrate on what they were after.

“We’re looking for something,” she said.

“Well, duh, of course, you’re looking for something. I mean, what are you looking for, specifically, and maybe I can help you find it?”

“We’re, umm, looking for a cassette tape. You know what that is, right?”

The old man sighed. “Well, yes, of course I know what a cassette tape is. You ARE in a vintage music store, after all. You know, for a doctor, you don’t sound too smart.”

The old man led them to a table piled high with a lot of music knickknacks and odds-and-ends. He pointed to a cardboard box full of used cassette tapes in the corner. Some of them were still in their cases but most weren’t.

“Here’s our selection of cassette tapes,” the man said. “You can have the entire box for five hundred dollars.”

“Five hundred American dollars for a box full of moldy, used tapes?” Binky said in a very crisp, northern English, Lancashire accent. “I think not.” She started rooting inside the box. After a moment, she found the one that they wanted.

“Aha!” she said, and held up the beat up-looking cassette tape. It was labeled “TARDIS Mix Tape. DO NOT ERASE! - The Doctor.”

Quinn turned to the old man. “We only want this one. How much?”

“That one? How about fifty cents?”

Binky reached into her jeans’ front pocket and brought out a bunch of coins. “Bugger! I don’t think I have any American coins!”

“Here,” Quinn said, and handed her two quarters.

Binky stuck her tongue out at Quinn. “Americans…” she muttered, and gave the coins to the old man.

“Thanks, m’dear. Anything else?”

Binky put her hands on her hips. “Hello? Receipt?”

The old man gave her a dirty look, but after a moment, turned back to an old-fashioned manual cash register on the front counter, punched up some buttons on it, pulled a lever, and it spit out a small piece of paper. He handed the receipt to her.

“There! Happy now?”

“Ta... Umm, thanks,” Binky said.

“’Kay, let’s get outa here,” Quinn said. “Thanks, mister.”

“Let me help you,” the old man replied. He snapped his fingers and they found themselves being picked up by something invisible, and then they were floating towards the front of the store. The door swung open and they found themselves outside.

“Whoa!” Quinn said. “That was like magic!”

The old man chuckled. “That was nothing. I’m great at magic. Spells are us, you know. Now, goodbye!”

The door slammed closed.

They looked at each other.

“Rude,” Binky commented. “What did we say?”

“Let’s not find out and just get back to the phone booth. That dude’s pretty creepy, and I’m scared what else he’ll do with his ‘magic.’”

Binky suited words to action, and they rapidly walked back to the edge of the little open mall where a red telephone booth stood. Most British people would have recognized the red telephone booth with the legend “TELEPHONE” near the top, but it was weird seeing a red, British one in California.

The two didn’t hesitate and opened the booth’s doors.

“Boo!” a bunch of uni freshers exclaimed, and leaned out the doorway as a soon as Quinn and Binky opened the doors.

“Oi!” Binky said, and tried pushing them all back in. “You lot! Back in there!”

There were at least a dozen of them trying to lean out of the door. Someone from the outside would wonder how a dozen people could fit in a tiny phone booth (or, more appropriately, a red London “telephone box”), but TARDISes, even home-made copies of old, outdated, broken-down ones, are still larger on the inside than on the outside.

“We’re hungry!” one of them said. “Did you get chips at least?”

“Shut your mouth!” She turned to Quinn, in an almost accusing manner. “You didn’t have to bring your bloody students!”

Quinn shrugged. “They didn’t want to be left behind. And we wouldn’t have been able to finish the TARDIS if it weren’t for them. We owe them.”

“Bloody students…” Binky muttered, shoved them inside, and stepped in herself.

When everyone was inside, Quinn took the opportunity to look her new TARDIS over. She would have preferred the chameleon circuit to be working, but what could they do? They were building a copy of the Doctor’s TARDIS, but that one’s chameleon circuit wasn’t working, so her version wouldn’t have a working one either. At least they were able to update the look so, instead of a 50s police call box, hers was disguised as a contemporary, red, London phone box.

At the moment, her TARDIS could only fly through space. But, with the data cassette tape they just acquired, it’d be able to fly through space AND time. Hopefully…

“Anyway,” she thought, “time to get back to the lab and finish up the final pieces of the TARDIS. Besides, I’m sure the Doctor is getting impatient by now.” Maybe next time, she’d be able to come back and stay longer. She sure did miss LA.

She stepped into the box, closed the door and, in moments, the red box slowly disappeared accompanied by a mechanical, groaning kind of sound.

---end---

Note that this is a fanfiction story of Doctor Who. The TARDIS
and the Doctor, as well as the original Doctor Who logo,
are properties of the BBC. No ownership of these properties
is claimed. No IP infringement is intended.

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