Chapter One

A young girl sat leaning against one of the four colourless walls of the room she occupied, her dark skin providing a perfect contrast. She stared intently at the wall across the room, and though she did so with a most concentrated stare, the dim sheen of her eyes proved that she was not interested in the wall, but rather something deep within her mind.

At last, she blinked and her vision cleared. The room in which she sat was just as frigidly abandoned as it had been before her arrival, not that she knew it. She had a vague feeling that she had once known this place, but it was also obvious that something was amiss. She swiftly stood.

The unwelcoming atmosphere pressed her to leave, yet she was loathe to relinquish the quaint mood she was in. Only this room could preserve it, she knew, and a change of surrounding would almost definitely alter it beyond reparation. She was so close to remembering...what? There lay the problem.

She moved toward the exit despite her misgivings. Two things did not cross her mind until she reached the door: Where was she? Better still, who was she?

This somehow seemed irrelevant. Each time she attempted to confront herself with the questions, her rising concern was quelled by a calm inner warmth of knowledge yet unsurfaced. It was unsettling that a mere sense of confidence could keep her memories and worries at bay, but only slightly. These worries were soon banished from her mind. She did not doubt that the answers would emerge when required.

Perhaps the ease with which she dismissed her alarm could be due to her surroundings, which had removed much of her apprehension. She felt a companionship with this place, but how? Why?

The girl smiled, an expression of wonder at her own ignorance and lack of caution. She ventured out into the carpeted hallway, letting the heavy door fall shut behind her. Surprisingly, it almost failed to disturb the hospitable silence outside when it did so.

When she first headed down the corridor, her thoughts were quiet, but as the flooring faded to shining silver metal, an intense excitement welled up inside her. She grinned and quickened her pace. She was now certain that she knew this place.

Seven intersections later, she skipped down a staircase. And she froze. The sight before her sent an unexplained burst of happiness flooding through her mind. It was beautiful, it was alien, and somehow, it was home.

Just through the orange and bronze archway was a room of enormous size. The sweeping ceiling with its pearly effect and murky brown-grey color fascinated her immediately. The pattern swirled slowly as she watched, but she didn't stay immersed in it for long. Her eyes were soon pulled to another aspect of the room.

The floor at the end of the stairs was perfectly transparent, without a scratch or a smear. It was as though no one had ever stood on it. Underneath, she could see round cavities with fans inside and cables hanging listlessly nearby, but in its reflection she saw something more intriguing. She turned to look at the glowing orange walls and the evenly spaced circles upon them, but once again her attention was monopolized.

The walls curved towards the center of the room, where a grand console towered over it all. Buttons, levers, tubes, keyboards, switches, dials, and knobs of all kinds littered the surface of the thing. The girl even spotted a large horn that sprouted out from it. A clear material encased the internal machinery of it, reaching all the way up to meet the patterned ceiling. A tan seat was also visible from her vantage point, but it looked rather plain in the midst of this awesome creation of science fiction. The visitor, enthralled, reached out to touch one of the circular ornaments on the wall nearest her.

"Sorry, what?" A murmur of speech seeped into the room in an undoubtedly Scottish accent.

The girl retracted her hand and shifted her enraptured gaze to the source of the noise. An average-sized rectangular white door stood innocently at its post, but it was quite certainly the culprit. Someone was behind it, outside.

"Well, it's always a big day tomorrow. We've got a time machine. I skip the little ones." A different voice made itself known. It was a man.

"You know what I said about getting back for tomorrow morning?" The hesitant Scottish speaker paused. "Have you ever run away from something because you were scared, or not ready, or just, just because you could?"

An even longer silence followed this question, but the man spoke again, softly this time. The girl could barely hear the regret-filled answer.

"Once, a long time ago."

"What happened?" The anxious Scot asked sharply.

If there was a reply, it was not audible, but by this point the guest had decided to make a retreat. She backed up the stairs as quietly and carefully as her capabilities allowed. There would be consequences if she were to be caught in what was allegedly a 'time machine', even if she had no control over the location of her appearance whatsoever.

"Right, Doctor, there's something I haven't..."

The woman continued to speak, but one word of her loud statement had piqued the girl's interest.

Doctor.

The word was familiar in a strange way, but before a more thorough search of her patchy memory could be made, a startling rhythmic chiming that emanated from the console began without warning. It seemed this man's name was to be yet another mystery unsolved.

The girl was safely hidden behind the archway when, after an exclamation from the Scot, the white door creaked open.

A tall man wearing a tweed coat and suspenders breezed in and a red-haired girl of a lesser age darted inside behind him. The ginger closed the door, saying, "People phone you?"

The man leaped up the stairs to the console, his untidy brown hair flopping comically. He reached over a few knobs and dials, pulling a long rod out. A metallic echo resulted from this action and still the man continued the conversation easily.

"Well, it's a phone box. Would you mind?" He flicked a hand in the direction of the jangling phone.

"Wh-" The ginger began, but seemed to think better of it and instead released an exasperated breath, climbing the stairs. She plucked the phone from its perch and lifted it to her ear.

"Hello? Sorry, who? No, seriously, who?" The Scot looked incredulously to her companion, who was busily fiddling with the machinery, a smug smirk settling on his face.

"Says he's the Prime Minister. First the Queen, now the Prime Minister. Get about, don't ya?" The girl's eyebrows were raised when she said this, the phone pressed against her shoulder to muffle her voice.

"Which Prime Minister?" The man gestured to a red-handled lever near the ginger, so she put a hand on it and made to pull it down, looking to him for approval. He nodded and another glance from him spurred the girl on. She lifted the phone once more.

"Er, uh, which Prime Minister?" She held the phone against her shoulder again, telling the man, "The British one."

"Which British one?" He asked, as though this was an obvious question.

The ginger asked eagerly of the person on the phone, "Which British one?" Her face registered disbelief, and then with the calm of someone who has reached the maximum of strangeness for the day and has finally decided to let things go unquestioned, she offered the device to her friend. "Winston Churchill for you." The man looked mildly surprised and accepted the phone.

"Oh! Hello, dear. What's up?" He seemed pleased with whatever the answer was.

Idly he flipped a switch on the console as he spoke again, his smile growing by the moment.

"Don't worry about a thing, Prime Minister."

He looked up at the ginger knowingly.

"We're on our way."