Elsewhere (Chapter 4)

Chapter 4: The Eve of Invasion

The Doctor was back at the grave. He knelt down in front of the tombstone and placed one hand on the top of it. He shook his head and closed his eyes.

“What do I do, Caleb?”

A flock of some form of birds flew out of the trees tops in the distance and it made him jump. He laughed to himself and then sat down in front of the grave.

“What am I doing?” he said. “Talking to a grave. It’s madness. You’re not there. You’ve passed on. Hopefully up there in the Matrix. Hopefully…” he said wistfully. He picked at a long blade of grass. “When I took you with me it kind of felt like I was…I don’t know…maybe recreating things again.” He looked across to the trees. The sun was beginning to set now and the trees cast long shadows across the field. “It felt like the last time I ran away with Susan. Except it was…different. I feel awful for saying this, Caleb, but up until recently I very much regretted taking Lilly on board. I keep thinking of what life would have been like if she hadn’t joined us. You’d still be alive…”

He got to his feet and looked down at the grave again.

“But she’s changed. She’s not there yet, but she’s healing. I think Holly has been a catalyst in healing her. The two of them have grown close.”

He scratched his chin and looked away.

“The thing is, can I bring myself to leave her one day? Is she going to have to stay with me forever, because her father is still out there. Still messing about in time.” He exhaled, blowing air out of his cheeks and put his hands into his pockets. “I just want all of this to be over. I just want to be free and enjoy myself again. I really wish you were here to help me to make my mind up about a way to defeat the Kro’Tenk. But if I go down that route…I will lose everything. Everything. And I will never be able to live with the consequences.”

He took another look around the glade, nodded and then began walking away. “Until next time, Caleb.”




Holly, Lilly and Roxy were sat in the Old Fat Cat enjoying a drink when the Doctor came strolling in. He was wearing a new, long, grey coat and was grinning wildly at them. He pulled up a stool and sat down at the table with them.

“Hello, Roxy,” said the Doctor, nodding to the girl.

“Hey, you. Nice to see you again.” She whacked him on his arm.

“And what was that for?”

“For taking my best friend away and putting her in danger.”

The Doctor held up his hands. “It was Miss Dangerfield’s choice, not mine, Roxanne. Trust me.”

“I’ve already told you that,” said Holly, frowning as she grabbed a hand full of Cheese and Onion crisps.

“Where’ve you been?” asked Lilly. “You’ve been gone hours and it’s getting late.”

“I had to pay a visit to Roger Stark.”

“So do we have a plan yet?”

“Hmmm,” said the Doctor, wincing at the thought.

“Well, how’s Richard?” asked Holly.

The Doctor looked uncomfortable. “Let’s just say that our old friend Roger Stark hasn’t exactly followed things through the way he should have done. Richard’s going to have a lot of catching up to do when he wakes up.”

“But he’s alright?” asked Roxy.

“He’s alright,” nodded the Doctor. “Any Worcester Sauce crisps back there?” he said, craning his neck to look over the crowd of people towards the bar.

“Nah, just your bog standard flavours,” said Holly. “What’s this plan then?”

The Doctor looked at the three of them and then broke into a wide grin. “Why don’t you three just enjoy your night.”

“Night’s almost over,” said Holly. “Come on, Doc.”

The Doctor shook his head. “Roger has a plan to use a big satellite dish to fire a high energy beam into the gap when the Kro’Tenk come through. It’ll seal it up.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” said Lilly, taking a sip of her JD and coke.

“The only problem is that it will destroy the previous dimension.”

“It’s pretty totalled anyway, isn’t it?” said Lilly.

“There are still billions of people alive over there. They deserve a chance at survival.”

Lilly nodded, but didn’t look like she was in total agreement.

“Other than that, I don’t have any other plans up my sleeves.” He started grinning again. “But we’ll be fine. We’ll all be alright. I trust myself to come up with something else.”

“Well, I’m off to visit the ladies,” said Holly, getting up.

“I’ll join you,” said Roxanne. “Need to sort out my makeup anyway.”

The Doctor watched the girls as they left the table and then turned back to Lilly, still smiling.

“Okay, Doctor Giggles, out with it,” she said, scrunching up her bag of crisps.

“Beg your pardon?”

“You have a plan, don’t you?”

“No. No I really don’t.”

Lilly arched her eyebrows and stared at him.

He finally stopped smiling and sunk back in his chair. “I have a plan, but it’s possibly the worst possible plan in the history of plans.”

“Even worse than that time you thought it’d be a good idea to antagonise that Robo-Bull by dressing us all in red because you thought it’d be too much for the bull?”

“That was a good plan, and it should have worked.”

“It didn’t.”

“I know that.” He picked at a beer mat and then looked back at Lilly. “This plan will definitely work, but the devastation would be too high.”

“To whom?”

“To this world.”

“How bad?”

The Doctor ripped the beer mat in two and threw both pieces down. “As in there will be no world left.”

“What?!”

“Roger’s plan may work, but if it doesn’t then we’re left with the same problem. The Kro’Tenk will occupy this dimension for the next twenty years and then move onto the next one.”

“But we can’t destroy our own universe!” exclaimed Lilly.

The Doctor thought for a moment and then quickly downed Roxy’s drink. He frowned and almost spat it out and then instead put the glass down.

“What did you do that for?” asked Lilly. “You hate alcohol.”

“Say I was a normal person.”

Lilly stifled the laugh.

“Seriously, Illithia. Pretend I’m not a Time Lord and I don’t traverse the dimensions.”

“Okay, I’ll humour you if you stop calling me Illithia.”

“In this dimension I have downed Roxy’s drink. In another dimension, the next one along from ours perhaps, I haven’t downed that drink.”

“Yeah…?” said Lilly, slowly.

“It’s an alternate dimension, isn’t it? Every decision creates ripples.”

“But surely not that tiny. That ripple would barely disturb anything.”

“But that’s the whole worrying thing, Lilly,” said the Doctor, as the glass collector removed Roxy’s empty glass. He leaned in. “Alternate dimensions aren’t just about someone having a different life or not taking a job opportunity or dropping out of school or staying at school. They are the big changes. The big ripples. It’s the small ones we have to worry about.”

“Meaning?”

“In reality the Kro’Tenk have an infinite number of universes that they can fly through. All the tiny little alternate timelines were someone decided to walk left instead of right or put on black shoes instead of white trainers. Every single decision, Lilly. Every one.”

“So those tiny little decisions create alternate realities?”

“Yep,” said the Doctor, now fiddling with a sachet of tomato sauce. “In every single one of them there is another Holly and another Roxanne and another me and you.”

“Okay, so they have an all you can eat buffet? What can we do about it?”

“We have to stop them here and now.”

“No. We can’t destroy an entire dimension to do it.”

“In the reality after ours we exist, living out our lives. The Kro’Tenk won‘t come to that reality until they have been here for twenty years. We could easily slip across into that one and destroy this one.”

“No!” said Lilly, raising her voice. “How can you even think about that?”

The Doctor lowered his head and kicked angrily at the table leg, causing Lilly’s drink to splash a little over the edge. “I’m sorry.”

“There has to be another way. There is always another way. You know that.”

“Then find me it. Find me it, Lilly.”




“So,” began Roxy as she rinsed her hands under the tap, “what’s the deal with blondie? You never did answer earlier on.”

“I needed to get back to my family,” smiled Holly, looking nervous.

“Alfie broke up with you.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Nah. I think he’s moved anyway. Some village outside of town. Raithby or Salterton.”

“Oh well, it wasn’t going to work out for us anyway.”

“Namely cos he’s not female.”

Holly turned to look at Lilly as she too began washing her hands. “I beg your pardon?”

“You and Lilly.”

“There isn’t a me and Lilly.”

“Oh, Holly,” she said, shaking her head and heading to the hand dryer. “I saw the two of you out in the rain. Jesus Christ if you too had been any more electrified you’d have electrocuted each other!”

“Nothing’s going on,” said Holly, laughing.

Roxy finished drying her hands and then turned back to her. “Come on, Hols, I’m your best friend. You can tell me anything.”

“There’s nothing going on. She’s already told me that.”

“She’s lying.”

“No she’s not,” laughed Holly.

“Well,” said Roxy, heading towards the toilet exit, “I hope you make the right decision, cos we may all end up dead tomorrow.”

“Don’t say that,” said Holly, following her friend out. She caught her reflection in the mirror and stopped to look at herself for a moment. She smiled and then exited the toilet.

“Who’s nicked my drink?” she heard Roxy saying.




The trio of UNIT:X officers as well as numerous soldiers had rolled up into Huxley earlier in the day. Part of the convoy was an ambulance carrying the comatose Richard Hicks and a large, flatbed truck on which stood the large dish.

Whilst the majority of the soldiers had set up camp at the local Territorial Army barracks, Faith and Ollie had booked out rooms at a nearby hotel just off the main road.

“How’d you feel about this?” asked Ollie, as the receptionist handed over the two sets of keys.

“We just do our job in the end, Ollie,” said Faith.

“You don’t want to though, do you?” he asked. He was clearly trying to see if she agreed with him.

“When Stark recruited me I didn’t think I’d be blowing up alternate realities full of billions of innocent people.”

“The only other option is to let them win. Fight them without using the dish.”

“We’ll fail,” said Faith, as they entered the elevator.

“Aren’t you the ray of sunshine?” laughed Ollie.

“Oh, I don’t know. I just wish the rest of the team were here.” She pressed the button for the first floor. “I don’t like it when Roger outnumbers us.”

“Stark’s one bloke, sweetheart,” said Ollie.

“One of him can outnumber two of us, Ollie, you know that. Maybe I’m being paranoid. I know he’s a good bloke and everything, but I’ll tell you one thing…”

Ollie waited for a moment. “Tell me then.”

“I wouldn’t trust him for one second.”

To be continued...