The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When Read online

breast-plates made of aluminium – not much good against a solid blow, but turned the blade of a knife a treat) over identical striped leggings, which terminated inside boots with small wicked heels. They had always caused an uproar whenever they went about in public, dressed as they were, with gentlemen shouting, 'Well, I never!' and ladies gasping behind handkerchiefs. Each carried several pairs of daggers sheathed in various places around their respective persons, which did wonders in putting off unwanted attention when it turned from merely aghast to menacingly opportunistic.

  Doctor When met them dressed in much the same manner as the day before, the only new addition was a rapier hanging at her belt and a twinkle in her eyes which said she knew how to wield it.

  'Ah, good,' she said, 'you're all here. Ready to time travel?'

  Act III: Next Thursday Morning and the Anomaly

  The Time Machine was a box, roughly the size of a large wardrobe, made of metal, wires and strangeness. Or at least that's how it looked to the three toughs, goggle-eyed at the complex systems of knobs, dials, levers and clock faces within. It was a tight fit once they were inside and Doctor When shut the doors behind them, shooing them into a corner where no stray elbows would knock their trajectory off course.

  'This may be disorientating,' the Doctor informed them, pressing, pulling, turning and winding various contraptions with no apparent hesitation. In the next moment they felt very much like that last bit of water in a bathtub, swirling violently through the drain. It seemed to go on forever; it seemed to last a mere eye-blink. Then they were still. 'We're here,' the nonplussed Chrononaut needlessly pointed out.

  'Where, er, I mean when is here?' Wilburforce asked, uncomfortably squashed behind the legs of a Spaghetti Sister.

  'We have arrived precisely at 11.03 Thursday morning,' the Doctor replied.

  'Last Thursday?' asked the Spaghetti Sister known today as Vermicelli.

  'I'm afraid not,' corrected Doctor When, leaning over a dial. 'Which is a shame, because last Thursday was particularly delightful. I would have liked to visit it again. But alas! It is this Thursday coming.'

  'We've only travelled forward two days?' the other sister, Rigatoni, exclaimed bemusedly.

  'Two days, one hour and eighteen minutes, to be precise. Shall we?' With that, the Chrononaut reached around the others to open the door, and they tumbled out haphazardly.

  To find themselves plonked in the middle of a wide, empty field up to their thighs (or Wilburforce's neck) in wheat. The sun bore down upon them from a painfully blue sky, and in the distance conical green trees bordered the field geometrically.

  'Huh,' Wilburforce said, wittily. 'I thought time travel kept you stationary in place, and only time changed.'

  'A common misconception. We travel across time-space, which means that we move freely along all of the four dimensions. Time is only one of them.'

  'So where are we, then?'

  'Somewhere on the Continent, it seems,' Doctor When looked around them. 'I would guess at Southern France.'

  'Don't you know more specifically than that?' Vermicelli turned to her employer with a frown. 'Doesn't the Time Machine tell you?'

  'I am afraid the Time Machine only tells time, my dear. If it were a Location Machine, then maybe we would be in luck. Or a Map Machine, instantly capable of drafting ones position upon arrival,' the Doctor's attention drifted off, murmuring, 'I would call it the Cartographoid Spectrometer.'

  'Doctor?' Wilburforce interrupted her reverie. 'What do we do now?'

  'Ah, yes! The anomaly we are looking for is not far. Come along now!' They followed the Doctor through the field as she strode purposefully forward.

  There was a sudden rustling sound coming from the wheat, but Wilburforce ignored it as mere wind. But then he watched the still, distant tree-tops, incongruous with the rustling that surrounded them.

  'Um, I think we might have a probl-' but he never finished his sentence. The small man was too busy fending off the small dinosaur that was currently trying to eat his face.

  Act IV: Anachronistic Danger and the Innocent Wheat

  'What was that, Wilburforce?' Doctor When turned to ask, just in time to see the Dwarf lay a solid punch onto his reptilian foe, helped by the small man’s spiked leaden knuckles. With the hiss of metal she drew her rapier from its sheath, and the Spaghetti Sisters behind her conjured daggers in each hand. Before them, a horde of anachronistic predators gained ground.

  'I take it this is your anomaly?' Vermacelli shouted over the sound of a dozen sharp claws tearing soil.

  'Ingeborg's anomaly,' the Chrononaut corrected the Sister. 'But yes, this is surely it.'

  Then the time for conversation was past and they were concerned with other matters, such as razor-sharp teeth and not dying upon them.

  'On your left, Doctor!' Rigatoni warned from behind, and in due course the air beside Doctor When's left cheek whizzed with the passage of a dagger. It hit a crouching dinosaur where it had been creeping towards them, unseen until that moment. Doctor When grinned at the girl's reflexes, but was then swinging her rapier towards another sharp-toothed adversary. The air was full of daggers, reptilian blood and battered stalks of wheat which were the innocent bystanders in this battle.

  When the last dinosaur fell beside its slain kin, the foursome had only a moment to catch their breath before they were aware of a new danger. A sturdy French farmer was making a beeline for their position, waving his arms and shouting.

  'Ah, I see we have gained the attention of the landowner,' Doctor When remarked, crouching down to clean her rapier with a handful of strewn wheat refuse. The Sisters were busy gathering their daggers from their resting places in the thick skin of the defeated creatures, and Wilburforce picked bits of dinosaur meat from his spiked knuckle-dusters.

  'Bonjour, Monsieur,' the Doctor smiled charmingly at the irate agriculturist as he drew close. He replied in frantic French, accompanied by sharp arm movements to punctuate his words and aghast expressions at the carnage around them in the very centre of his wheat crop.

  'What's he saying?' Vermacelli asked, bemused.

  'Mostly unkind speculation about the professions of our respective mothers, and contemplations of violence towards our persons for having dispatched so many large lizards in his harvestable wheat. It would appear that he feels lizard meat would not improve its flavour. We would do well to depart with some alacrity.' Doctor When replied to the man in French with the ease of fluency as she began the retreat, gesturing for the others to follow. She and the farmer continued their exchange, growing louder and more expletive on the part of the latter, until they were back at the site of the Time Machine. Doctor When opened the door and let her disheveled companions enter.

  'Je suis désolé, Monsieur,' she apologized once more, closing the door on his reddened face. Inside the Time Machine, all was silent. The others looked at her somewhat glassy-eyed and confused by the various incomprehensible things they had just witnessed: first, being transported hundreds of miles away in an instant, as well as nearly two days hence; second, meeting there a good many extinct and prehistoric creatures; and lastly, .

  'We're leaving?' Rigatoni asked.

  'Yes, Ingeborg isn't here.'

  'How can you be sure?'

  'The farmer told me.'

  'He said that?' Vermacelli looked at the Doctor incredulously. 'From what I gathered he was mainly swearing and talking about his wheat.'

  'Indeed. If Ingeborg was still here he would have had a lot more to say. Something along the lines of, “Agghhh! Mon dieu!”' She turned her attention to the dials, levers and buttons. 'And so we are on to the next anomaly! We might even get to see something interesting this time.'

  The Spaghetti Sisters exchanged glances, and Wilburforce might have looked equally skeptical if he wasn't currently being pressed between two sets of shapely legs that were distracting his attention. At least the pay upon completion of this Mission would be excellent, providi
ng they all survived – a circumstance about which they were all becoming increasingly skeptical.

  Act V: Underwater Adventure and a Fizz-popping Good Time

  There was that swirling-down-the-drain feeling again as they slipped in and out of time, uncertain when or where they would end up next. And what strangeness they might encounter therein.

  That question was soon answered.

  'Aha!' Doctor When exclaimed once they had come to a chronological stop. 'We shall need to exit via the periosphere.' With one hand, she pulled down an extendable ladder and reached up to unscrew what looked like a hatch from a submarine.

  The others looked on bemused as the Chrononaut shed her tailed coat and shimmied up the ladder and out of sight. Three spherical objects were thrown to each of them in turn, clear-fronted and mechanical. Doctor When's face appeared in the hatch opening.

  'Come on, then!'

  'Er,' Wilburforce ventured, turning the object in his meaty but miniature hands. 'What are these?'

  'Submarinopulminators! Of my own invention, of course. Still working on the communications system, though'

  'You expect us to wear these?' Vermacelli frowned.

  'Well, of course, my dear girl! How else do you expect to breathe underwater?'

  Up the ladder, they entered another cramped space in which all but Wilburforce had to slouch, in order to fit inside. Doctor When tightened the hatch shut once they were all