Group Story wrote: In the year 1978, Dr. David Banner had come across a magnificent discovery while researching. He went into the lab to show this incredible and rare finding to his co-worker, Elaina Marks.
"I don't want Clepance to hear of this."
He slipped a laminated sheet onto her desk. She stared down at it, and her eyes widened.
"I don't want him to hear of it either."
Dr. Banner turned towards another desk, and a man who was testing various fragments of plant material in a device like an electrometer. The man's skin was brown with age.
"Chancellor, could you step over here?"
The Chancellor obeyed, moving towards Dr. Banner and Elaina. "Yes, what is it?"
"Look at this," Dr. Banner said, gesturing at the laminated sheet of paper. The Chancellor gave a slight lift to his head, and his black eyes glanced up at the wall opposite with a thoughtful expression.
"Dr Banner," he said. "Does...Clepance know about this?"
"Not yet, sir. And I would prefer that he doesn't find out."
"He has a right to know..." Dr. Marks began, "but I think I'm with David on this one."
The Chancellor rubbed his fingers on the desk, thinking hard. While he did, Dr. Banner picked up the sheet of paper again.
Measuring the time dilation in 52.3957,-1.4392:
Underneath the heading was the graph of the area. It matched the topography, as it ought to have, and as all the other areas he had tested with the new paraphernalia did. Except in one place. In one place it...didn't. The graph showed a definite trend towards slower time, plummeting as it neared the point.
Dr. Banner tapped his chin and stared pensively at the graph. What could it mean? The instrumentation wouldn't produce a false report, but if that was so...
The Chancellor stirred as if from a deep reverie. "It is as you say. Under no circumstances must Clepance discover this...at least for now. It would be too much for him to bear. Later, perhaps, when we've learned more."
"But how are we to do that, Sir?" Dr. Marks asked. "We've conducted numerous tests, and they have all yielded the same results."
"Then we must try a procedure that has never been used before," said the Chancellor.
"You can't mean--" Elaina's eyes widened with fear as she looked at the Chancellor.
The Chancellor simply nodded back.
"I suppose we should get to it, then," David said. "Elaina, I'll go get some donuts while you set up, okay?" he winked at her.
"Sure," she smiled back.
"I want jelly-filled!" the Chancellor called after David.
Elaina turned towards the Chancellor with an inquisitive face. "Could this really be an important enough situation?"
"It's not a matter of importance so much as interest - or responsibility - or helping out an old friend. You have not met The Doctor."
Elaina tried to keep a straight face. The Chancellor's eyes bored into her. "Now spit out the real reason you don't want him here. Get it out of your system."
"Out of my system? You know as well as I do that all evidence says he wiped out the Kamlii. It was genocide."
"It was a war. They were the provokers, and the slaughterers, and they gave him no choice."
There is no way donuts are worth this, thought Elaina. Dr Banner came back into the near deserted lab, without donuts. "Susan went home already," he said. "No donuts tonight."
There was no reply. He glanced between his colleagues. He had seen those expressions before. “The Doctor?” he guessed. “You're arguing about the Doctor again?” There was still no reply, but the Chancellor's lips tightened, and he saw Dr Marks rubbing her fingers together under the table. The familiar feeling of frustration began to rise in him. He picked up the laminated sheet from the table punched the air with it. “You think this has something to do with the Doctor? The Doctor?”
The Chancellor's worn face darkened, and David had the fleeting feeling that he might go too far in his frustration. But he was too irritated to stop. “Maybe Clepance's invention was on the borderline between genius and lunacy, and maybe he gave it to me to test because it was still in testing stages. But I doubt it is so flawed as to record a figment of the imagination through tests, and tests, and re-tests.”
There was a pause. Dr Marks' ears were flushed. “So you still don't believe in the Doctor?” she said.
David shook his head and turned away, pacing across the lab. He needed to cool off.
“David,” said Elaina in a lower voice. “What about about Dr. Natty? Was she a figment of the imagination too? Is that why she disappeared?”
David stopped, and paused before turning. The nagging doubt that that one incident called up was irritating, but he tried to control it, or at least ignore it.
“I am a scientist,” he said finally. “This is a big, strange world, and I believe that any strange incidents can be explained by something belonging to it, without dragging in – time masters.”
“Time lords,” said the Chancellor. He gave him a tight smile. “Someday you may think more of the Doctor.”
“Oh, I think quite a lot of him already,” said David. “If you were to tell all that you two say about him to a TV station it would make a fascinating show. I would probably watch it.”
No one said anything.
He let out a breath and tried to smile at Dr Marks. “You haven't readied the X3 yet?”
She dropped the pen she was holding onto the desk with significant force. “I'm sorry,” she said. “It's hard to remember. It has been a long time since I last helped Natty with it.”
"Then let's get to work," Dr. Banner stated with a sigh.
The two labored into the night preparing the X3 for Clepance's machine. David still did not know why Clepance had shaped it like a British police box, nor why he had gone through the trouble of painting it blue. But he had gotten used to this sort of creativity from his co-workers and ignored it.
Late in the night (or early in the next morning) he saw something. Something thin, and grey, with a glowing screen hidden just under an old blue book--a cell phone.
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I mean, this is a birthday party for a writing forum, right? So why not write a story to celebrate!
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