If Only Collapsing Was Easy (Doctor Who) | Teen Ink

If Only Collapsing Was Easy (Doctor Who)

April 26, 2012
By TARDISinTokyo BRONZE, Brookfield, Illinois
TARDISinTokyo BRONZE, Brookfield, Illinois
3 articles 0 photos 31 comments

Late night. Sandy beach. Cold water; very cold. The Doctor dragged himself out of the ocean, onto the relatively warm, damp sand. How many miles had it been? Nine and three eighths? Swimming away from the shipwreck with no one to talk to in all this time. An eternity. Muscles burning, he heaved himself another foot up the beach and collapsed.


Icy water lapped at the rubber soles of his shoes. When would the tide come in? He glanced up at the moon. At this altitude, this time of night, the moon’s current distance from the earth, the water temperature...

~at it’s closest the moon can be 363,104 kilometers from the earth~

Frantically he calculated. He had about three hours before he would be underwater. That would never do. The last thing he wanted was to be submerged again.

~wind blowing east, towards the wreck. someone is bound to smell the smoke and launch a rescue..~

He crawled painfully farther up the shore. Were there any caves nearby? He knew of people drowning in caves when the tide came in. It was a horrible situation. He hadn’t been able to save anyone...

~sand to water ratio at this point is 52 percent. gets dryer the farther up shore one goes...~

He flopped down again with a gasp as his arms gave out. They’d be burning like this for... how long?... at least five days.

~lack of oxygen to the muscles. pain would be 4.5 kriks. haven’t been swimming in ages...~

Maybe he could take a trip to OxxxOt 7 for a full body engulfment by the jelly-like xOOx.

~5th planet in the regalias system. warm climate. lack of indigenous humanoid life forms, but there were usually plenty of tourists...~

Did wonders for a body due to the rejuvenating secretions, and once you got over the feeling that you were being eaten (which you weren’t, the xOOx have a clearly defined orifice near the lower end of their bodies that goes nowhere near you even as they engulf you) the whole experience was completely relaxing.

~can’t stand being eaten~

He’d taken a sample of the secretion once. Maybe he’d just use that. The last time he’d been he’d fallen asleep and, upon waking, panicked and lashed out at the xOOx. Proper apologies had been made, of course, but it was still highly embarrassing. Perhaps he could go there before he’d been.

~coordinates something like 5948 by 66772 by 8900 by 6121112.99 by .00047775, perhaps~

That would solve things nicely. He’d just have to act a bit new to the process...

~hi i’m the doctor. and you are? what does this do? are you sure it’s safe?~

Of course, he’d need his TARDIS for that.

~time-and-relative-dimensions-in-space~

Where was it now? He tried to feel around with his mind. The Huon energy was easy to sense.

~the racnoss tried to saturate donna with huon energy once. well, they did, but i kept it from going any further...~

It was on this landmass, about a kilometer away and 3/4 of one up. Clever TARDIS. It had flown itself here to escape the wreck too. In his panic to save everyone he hadn’t had much time to think about the old girl. But after they’d been shoved out on lifeboats and the explosion had thrown him a mile in the opposite direction, he must have been heading for her instinctually. How else could they have both ended up here...

~probability with no connection close to .21156%...~

Where was here? He sniffed the air and licked the sand. Salty, but he’d been smelling salt for hours now.

~remains of crustacean life forms. dead 322 days, give or take. rubber; perhaps human debris. eggs below the surface, would hatch in under a week. nothing alien or out of place~

There was a sort of misty tang to the sand, something like the fog-nuts of Niithin.

~9th moon in the kiro-epsionary cluster. humanoids, but blue. spears. warm and humid climate.~

Those were brilliant, they had a frigid core and absorbed heat from their surroundings, and stored a delicately balanced mist of condensed liquid and spores in the hollow shell.

~core temperature 122 Rs when environmental temperature was 491 Rs provides the balance~

A clever technique for spreading and reproducing, and for centuries had convinced the native Rithl of their magical properties.

~...believed for centuries that they housed the souls of the dead...~

He rather regretted explaining it to them; they hadn’t taken it kindly. Of course, they now had a new food source to pull them out of their disaster. (That’s now as in 78 years from now and several galaxies away).

~trimandos invaded the bowers, rotted them out from the inside. carried by a meteorite. native to enzymas 5, (with similar climate) bowers went nearly extinct before i got there~

Food. He’d need food. What was there to eat here? He wasn’t very experienced at finding food in uninhabited areas of Earth.

~I want fish and chips~

His head rose and he gazed around. those trees looked promising.

~laminar leaves, five to a stalk. seven stalks, no, eight, but that varies for each individual...~

He could go foraging later, when he had the strength. There were bound to be some munchies around.

~bananas. i like bananas. are those banana trees?~

His eyes felt heavy, and his head flopped back onto the wet sand.

~ratio of sand to water is 76 percent and getting dryer~

He should rest. He wasn’t getting any closer to the TARDIS like this. If he could only lapse out of consciousness as easily as some of his companions could.

~rose martha donna jack charley sarah jane jo tegan peri benny adric turlough nyssa ian barbra susan victoria jamie...~

Some of them were quite adept at fainting. His mind became foggy and his eyes closed.

~losing consciousness at a rate of 3.7901 winks a second~

The moon had barely drifted any closer to the horizon. Morning was still a long way off.

~the moon moves at 1.022 kilometers a second. orbits the planet once every 27.3 days...~

The Doctor still had no plans.

~if only i could think...~


The author's comments:
I wrote this while thinking about how the Doctor, as a Time Lord, is so much cleverer and so much older than pretty much anyone else, and what it would be like inside his head, even during just a few minutes. I don't even think this would be the full extent of his thoughts, it's just scratching the surface.

Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 9 comments.


catty98e GOLD said...
on Jan. 14 2015 at 3:45 pm
catty98e GOLD, Spring HIll, Kansas
12 articles 0 photos 42 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I'm a freak, I've been a freak my whole life. I just have to live with it, you know. I'm just one of those people. I'm not going to change the way I think or the way I feel to conform to anything."
-John Winston Lennon (1940-1980)

Not bad... A few grammatical errors but over all a great story.

AAPhoenix GOLD said...
on Oct. 30 2013 at 12:44 pm
AAPhoenix GOLD, Las Vegas, Nevada
12 articles 5 photos 9 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Nothing is real"- John Lennon
"A journey to wisdom is not very far"- Chris D'Lacey

I realized after I posted that comment, I forgot to capitalize the first word. Great job, me.

AAPhoenix GOLD said...
on Oct. 30 2013 at 12:43 pm
AAPhoenix GOLD, Las Vegas, Nevada
12 articles 5 photos 9 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Nothing is real"- John Lennon
"A journey to wisdom is not very far"- Chris D'Lacey

this story is a little bit confusing, but sometimes, no backstory is better. My favourite lines from this story were "He sniffed the air and licked the sand",  "~I want fish and chips", and I also liked the bannana line. A few things I can point out that could be changed are the fact that his thoughts were never capitalized at first, same with the first words on the bannana thought. The names of companions were not capitalized as well (sorry I become very critical sometimes).

on Sep. 16 2013 at 10:53 pm
Meredith Longer BRONZE, Reinholds, Pennsylvania
1 article 0 photos 1 comment
This is really well done (Congradulations on the thought process being intersting and well written and still being able to stay on point)

on May. 10 2013 at 12:51 am
daniellemarie13 GOLD, Escondido, California
10 articles 0 photos 4 comments

Favorite Quote:
“When you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all… Grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, and that’s it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It’s so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.” ~ Doctor Who

This is great! I think you really nailed what it would look like if we could see just a little of what goes on in his head..

on Feb. 13 2013 at 8:06 pm
SHER_locked PLATINUM, Alta Loma, California
32 articles 2 photos 51 comments
This is so great! I loved how random his thoughts seem, totally how I think he thinks. Love all the details too! =)

on Nov. 25 2012 at 3:14 pm
whovian82 BRONZE, Wayne, New Jersey
1 article 0 photos 3 comments
Omg I loved this!

OceanStorm said...
on May. 12 2012 at 6:27 pm
OceanStorm, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
0 articles 0 photos 6 comments
OH MY GOSH YOU MADE THE BANANA REFERENCE!  I LOVE YOU!

Boota BRONZE said...
on May. 11 2012 at 8:55 am
Boota BRONZE, N/A, South Carolina
3 articles 0 photos 38 comments

Favorite Quote:
Bowties are cool!

Pretty interesting... wonder if he ever gets back to the TARDIS?