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Being the son of a famous resistance leader is far more of a hindrance then any benefit. People expect I will be like my father, often they expect that I will be a younger version of my father. When they actually meet me they are often disappointed, I do not even look like him, the great David Campbell.
I resemble my mother. I am small like her (I hate the term short because that was what I was branded, often as an insult, throughout my childhood). Also, like her, I have dark hair and small features. Unlike my mother, I am shy and rather quiet but to me this is not a disadvantage. In my quietness I am able to observe and watch everything around me, to know all the things that are happening around me.
I learnt this skill very early on in my life. I was born and spent the first 12 years of my life in London, what the Daleks had left of that once noble city. My parents were involved in re-building the city, both of them serving on different rebuilding committees. My father would spend days travelling the city, encouraging the people working to re-build it. My mother, being David Campbell's wife, was also involved in planning the rebuilding, deciding where parks and hospitals and school should be placed. In her own right, she was involved in finally bringing power back to London. I was left in the care of a succession of nannies, most of them young women who seemed to be in awe of my father. I should not blame my parents, my father was a war hero and my mother his attractive wife, naturally they were adopted as figureheads for the rebuilding of London, but I did. I simply blamed them for not being there, for my not being the most important thing in their lives, for my loneliness.
Then, when I was due to turn thirteen, my father died. He had survived the rain of meteorites, lived through the plague the Daleks sent to destroy us unscathed, had not been killed or captured when the Daleks invaded, he had even survived in the resistance, he had fought many battles against the Daleks and him and my mother had come through it all virtually unscathed - unlike many others. The cruel irony was he died in the great influenza outbreak that swept through Britain and Europe that winter. My mother was heartbroken, almost inconsolable, whereas I just felt lost. Although my childhood my father had been a distant figure, his work took him away from us days at a time and when he did come back home he was tired and irritable. As a child I would dream of the time when he could simply stay at home and be my father. Then, when I was on the verge of becoming a teenager, any chance of that was stolen away from me. I felt lost, a loss for what now could never be.
My mother, shortly after his very public funeral, decided that London was no longer a place for us to live. She said it was finally time to do what her and my father had always intended to do, what they had been planning to do when the Daleks were defeated but never did because they were swept along in the rebuilding of London. Move to the country and farm the land. A friend of hers, someone from one or other of her committees, found her a position managing one of the huge robot run mega-farms. After the end of the Dalek occupation we turned whole swathes of southeast England into new mega-farms, run by robots made from leftover Dalek technology and ex-robomen. They were to feed us. Daleks had barely been interested in the welfare of their human slaves, so we had to almost rebuild the mega-farms from basics. Like so much of the Dalek technology they left behind we have taken it over and now use it for our own benefit. It only seems justice, the Daleks tried to destroy our world and now we're benefiting from all the technology they left behind. Though low on physical labour, suddenly we were awash with leftover Dalek robots.
For the last four years my mother and I have lived here on this mega farm. The robots and giant farming machines do most of the work, but there are ten of us living here. My mother is the manager, her deputy is Richard Chapman and his wife Sonia, our computer programmer and robot engineer Elizabeth Stevens, Richard and Sonia's son Howie (though he seems to spend most of his time pretending to study); the others are Lawton, King, Richards and Nation - these are former robomen, though strong workers who always do what is asked of them. The conditioning the Daleks put them through has destroyed a lot of their higher brain functions. They can follow instructions to the letter, but they can barely think for themselves and have no memory of their lives before they were robomen. Their are almost zombies, walking ghosts to remind us that not so very long ago humans were merely Daleks slaves. (Even now I find myself staring at the scars that run down the sides of these men's heads, where the robomen implants were removed. When I realise what I'm doing and I always turn away in horror)
That morning I had been sent to check on one of the robot harvesters, working in the eastern orchard. It had been picking apples and then, the night before, had simply stopped. It was a hot summer's day and there was little work for me to do, so instead of taking one of the trans-solar cars (technology we converted from the Daleks' trans-solar disks) I chose a leisurely walk, a chance for me to become lost in my own thoughts. The trans-solar cars are fast and efficient, skimming along over the ground on their magnetic cushions, but so fast you can miss the world around as it rushes past.
When I reached the orchard I found the robot harvester had simply stopped in its tracks, it's mechanical arms frozen in the act of taking apples. On examination I easily found the problem. The computer program running it had crashed - occupational hazard, especially because the Dalek language has only half the characters of human alphabet. I rebooted the program and robot harvester carried on its work as if it had never stopped.
On my leisurely walk back to the farm buildings I considered swimming in the irrigation channel, it's water being slow moving and deep, but quickly rejected the idea. Last year Howie had caught a nasty skin infection from swimming in one of the irrigation channels. Instead I slowly walked along side of it.
It was there, on the opposite bank of the irrigation channel, on the edge of a field of wheat. I had seen it from afar as I walked along the path, but only as I came closer was I able to see it fully and realise what it was. It was a blue oblong box, probably somewhere over two meters high, a light on the top of its (which was unlit), one side of it were a set of double doors (firmly closed) and above the door was written "Police Box". It was exactly how my mother had described it, in all those stories she told me as a child.
When I realised what it was, simply sitting there on the edge of the wheat field. I felt an uneasy chill shudder through my body. It was just standing there, almost as if it had been abandoned, but it could not be real. Yet there I was staring at it from across the irrigation channel. I decided to simply wait and watch to see who would return and claim it, if anyone would. Not to be seen, I sat myself down amongst the reeds and grass on the channel's bank. I did not have to wait long.
A handful of minutes later I heard raised voices and suddenly two figures stumbled out of the wheat field and headed straight for the blue box. A man, walking briskly, dragging a young woman behind him. The man was tall, though he had a stocky body more suited to a shorter man, his hair was all thick, yellow curls, covering his head and he had a commanding bearing about him - the bearing of someone accustomed to being right. His comical attire ruined the impression. He wore a coat that appeared to be a patchwork affair of bad taste. It was made up of different strips of material that had been sewn together into a frock coat, but it appeared that the only reason the different pieces of the cloth had been chosen was to clash with the others. The bright and style-less coat seemed to dominate the man.
The woman, far smaller and more petite than him, was striding behind him. She had flame red hair, which flowed down over her back in a mass of curls. Her clothes were also bright, but the colours seemed to have been matched to complement each other. Her clothes also seemed to have been specially tailored to display her trim and lean figure.
"Come-on Mel, hurry up," the man called out as he headed straight for the blue box.
"Wait Doctor, wait," the woman called back as she chased behind him.
"No time? No time!" He replied.
"Yes there is. We travel in time and space, there's always time and if there isn't we can make it," she said to him.
"Mel, just hurry up."
The man had reached the front of the blue box and actually pulled open one of the doors. He was about to enter it, to step inside it.
"No Doctor. This is my future, well the future of the earth, and I want to explore it. I want to see what has happened to the earth."
"We can't, it is not possible."
The woman had stopped in front of the man and defiantly stood there with her arms folded across her chest.
"We're already here," she replied to him, "why can't we just stay awhile and explore?"
"Because I've been here before. At least two of my previous selves are wandering around at this time and if I meet them it could be catastrophic. The Web of Time could be totally destroyed!"
"Are you sure about all this?"
"I am... I am... I'm fairly sure it was this time. It was certainly this period of time, around the time of the Dalek invasion."
"The what?"
"We can't take the risk, Mel. The Web of Time and everything. Now come on!"
The man stepped inside of the blue box and disappeared from sight.
"All right Doctor, all right. You've made your point," the woman replied. Then she too entered the blue box, the door firmly closing behind her.
This was followed by the strangest part of the whole thing.
The light on top of the blue box began to flash on and off, a strange rushing and whirring sound poured out that blue box and across the irrigation channel to me, and then the blue box disappeared. It didn't just vanish but instead it simply faded from existence, in a handful of drawn out seconds. When it was gone all that was left was an eerie silence.
I stayed sitting in the reeds for a long and uneasy moment, simply staring at the space were that blue box had been. My mind had been stunned by what I had seen. If I had not seen what had unfolded in front of my eyes I would never have believed any of it.
After a long moment of inactivity I slowly stood up, still staring at the space were that blue box had been. I picked up a stone and hurled it at the space. The stone fell to the ground with a thump and rustle, it hit nothing but the ground, and there was nothing there now.
On the walk back to the mega farm buildings, my mind kept turning over and over many different events from my life.
As a child my mother had told me wonderful, fanciful stories about her and her grandfather. She told me stories about how her and her grandfather travelled the universe in a ship called a "Tardis", having wonderful adventures on different worlds. I had loved those stories, they were wonderful and exciting, they brought colour into the drab world that surrounded me, but I only saw them as stories. Now, as I hurriedly walked along under that hot sun, my mind was rapidly re-evaluating all the stories my mother had told me. She always described her grandfather's "Tardis" as a blue box with a flashing light on top of it. My mind was racing over and over.
At the entrance to the mega farm's buildings there is an old Dalek case, only the outer shell left standing (though a large section of that has always been missing), but that day I rushed straight past it.
Nation was slowly and methodically cleaning one of the large robot harvesters. I walked up to him and asked:
"Do you know where my mother is?"
Slowly he looked up at me, the sunlight highlighting the grey hairs that seemed to populate his hair more and more. I tried not to stare at the scars on the sides of his head but it was almost impossible to do so. Nation's scars were wide and prominent, running down to his jaw line.
He took a long moment to answer me.
"Your mother." He said in his flat and emotionless voice, "is in the. the. the workshop."
"Thank you," I smiled back at him.
Nation stared back at me with a blank expression on his face. He never smiled.
As I hurried through the main buildings, to the workshop at the rear, I ran literally into Howie. He stepped straight into my path, physically blocking me.
"Has wonder-boy fixed the poorly sick harvester?" Howie snarled at me.
"Get out of my way. Go and pretend to study, meat-head," I snapped back at him.
Instead he stepped up close to me.
"You told my mother I cheated on my last distance examination and she's making me do it again and she's taken away my vid-games. I hate you, you Dalek loving liar."
"You copied, word for word, an essay I wrote on the Dalek invasion when I was eleven. You're fifteen and you can't even write a simple history essay. Go and help Nation clean the harvest out there and you might learn something, because he's far more intelligent then you" I almost shouted back at him, from somewhere inside of me anger poured out.
His face flushed red with embarrassment, red flushing his checks and burning his ears. In that moment I pushed past him, physically pushing him out of my path, and striding away from him down the corridor.
I felt shaken, where had that sudden burst of anger come from, I did not know. My emotions were heightened and on edge since seeing that blue box, now they seemed to be jumping to the fore with the least provocation (could this revelation have such a disturbing effect on me?).
My mother was in the workshop; as usual she was working on the domestic robots. She was trying out more new improvement on one of them - she had already improved our domestic robot to such a high degree that they did all domestic tasks for us, even cooked for us.
I walked across the cluttered workshop towards her. She was sat at a workbench; her small body was covered in an old grey jumper and her old navy blue slacks. With her head bent forward I could see a few grey hairs speckled throughout her smooth, straight black hair.
I sat down, on one of the hard stools, at the bench next to her.
"Mum," I said to her.
She looked at out of me and her heart shaped face broke into a smile.
"What can I do for you?" She asked me.
"Tell me about your grandfather," I replied.
Her face took on a puzzled expression. It was obviously a strange question for me to be asking her because for years and years I had shown no interested in him.
"What do you want to know?" she asked me, putting down the processing unit she had been working on.
"What did he look like?"
She thought for a moment, before replying, her face took on the expression of someone trying to form a picture in their mind's eye.
"He was elderly, I always remember him as old. Grandfather had white hair, which he wore rather long and swept over his head. He was always a smartly dressed man; he wore a suit, tie and waistcoat and when we went outside the Tardis he wore a hat and cape."
"What was he built like, how tall was he?"
"He was slightly taller than me, but not much, and he was slim, thin build."
"Oh," I replied. Suddenly I felt a wave of disappointment wash over me, it had not been my great-grandfather and all those stories had just been stories. In the wake of this disappointment came a rush of puzzlement. If that man was not my mother's grandfather why did he travel in a blue box just like her description of a "Tardis" and why had that woman called him "Doctor"?
"Are you feeling all right?" She asked me.
I ignored the question, instead I pushed on with my own questions.
"What did his ship looked like? What you travelled in."
"At first, after we left, the Tardis could take on any form to disguise itself. Wherever we landed it could change to blend into the surroundings. But when we first came to Earth something went wrong with the chameleon circuit and it stuck in the form of a London Police Box."
"A blue box, about two metres high, with a flashing light on top and double doors filling one side of it," I added.
"Yes," there was a heavy note of questioning in her voice.
"I've seen it. About half an hour ago, it was on the opposite side of the irrigation channel, at the edge of the larger wheat field. I was coming back from repairing harvester when I saw it. I waited and I saw a man and woman get into it and it disappeared, like you told me your grandfather's Tardis did."
"What did this man look like?" She asked me.
"Tall, stocky with lots of blonde curly hair and a very bad taste in clothes. He looked nothing the way you described your grandfather."
She took a deep breath, drawing the air in through her lips, before she spoke. She was always doing this when I was a child whenever I asked her an awkward or embarrassing question.
"When grandfather and I left our own world they tried to stop us going, our own people that is. Their way of stopping us was to attack our minds. It left us with terrible amnesia, great big black holes in our memories. I still have no memory of my own parents, I can't remember their names or their faces of anything about them. Grandfather and I had lost so much knowledge about our own people. I didn't know whether regeneration was a fact or just another myth."
"Regeneration?" all this information from her was so puzzling, jigsaw pieces upon jigsaw pieces.
"My people, our people, when we are seriously injured or ill or old we don't die, instead we regenerate. Our cells don't die, instead our cells reform into a new body and we have a new life. But this only happens twelve times and then death is death. The trouble was I couldn't remember if this was what would happen or just another myth. Grandfather and I have were left with so many gaps in our memories. Grandfather must have regenerated. That means we can regenerate."
Her face lit up with a smile that positively shone out from her eyes.
"But what if he wasn't your grandfather?" I asked her. I did not want to upset her or steal away her happiness but I had to ask, I had to eliminate the possibility.
"Ian, he was travelling in a Tardis that was in the shape of a London Police Box and his travelling companion was calling him Doctor. It couldn't not be my grandfather, your great-grandfather."
"What does that means for us?"
"I don't fully know but I do know it means a world of possibilities for us."
She reached over and squeezed my hand. Her face was full of such joy, she physically radiated happiness. I had not seen her so bright and filled with life in such a long, long time.
As her hand tightly squeezed my own, I saw what excited her so much. I was only half human, what was next.
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