The Doctor and Me

The Stranger and His Box

If there was ever a mad man with a box, he was that man. His personality enchanted anyone whom it had touched. With his maroon bow tie and his tan, tweed jacket, he wore a white shirt that was embroidered with extremely thin, coffee-coloured stripes. His red suspenders held up his dark brown pants slightly above his ankles, revealing worn-down leather boots that seemed as if they were going to fall apart at any moment. His oak-brown hair was pushed up into a wave, as if to symbolize the waves of time he surfed in his fantastic blue box. This man rescued planets and people for a living, so his job was never done. Somewhere, out in the great, vast, never-ending universe, someone needed help, and this traveler would always be there. No matter where a destination was, even if it was in the future or past, the Doctor would arrive, alongside the groan of his amazing machine, the groan that delivered hope wherever it went.

It was late at night, and I was in bed, attempting to dream of any way to escape this horrid place known as Leadworth. Just as I nearly passed out into a daze, I heard a deep moan. Maybe it was an illusion, but I awoke with great curiosity. I slipped on my green, fur-lined moccasins and my red bathrobe as I perambulated towards the front, cherrywood door. I poked my head outside and found a sizable blue police box, which had a glimmering light on the top, sitting in my garden. It's light emanated in every direction, illuminating the white ground underneath it. I was reluctant in my approach. Just as my feet began crunching in the snow, I heard a creak that came from the box. A man, about 6 feet tall, stepped out. Looking around, he finally caught sight of me and showed a slight smile, but then, as if upset with his surroundings, he turned straight around and got back in his transport device. He had not left my yard, nor had he appeared a second time in the five minutes that I was freezing outside. Waiting for him to come out again was absolute hell, so I decided to strut up to the door that he had peeked out of and knocked. There was no answer, even after I started yelling, "Hey!" loud enough to wake up the whole neighbourhood. Taking initiative was the only action I could think to do, so that's exactly what happened. Pushing the wooden slab open, stepping up a small board in the entrance, and searching for this stranger, I was released into a magical world that awakened something inside of me, but at this point, I had no idea what that thing was just yet.

"Hello! Took ya long enough," the man exclaimed. He was sitting in a tan, leather chair up a small flight of about five stairs, reading a novel that seemed to be at least 500 pages long. "What's that you're reading?" I responded. The strange person poking his head up from the pages held up the book. I read the cover, which said Advanced Quantum Mechanics and depicted a smaller image of the police box underneath the words. I did not dare to ask what about the topic he was reading because I could not even start to understand beginner's quantum mechanics. "You know, you haven't said the thing, since everyone says the thing," he said. I was confounded, but just as I was about to ask, I looked around. I could not believe what I was seeing, nor could I comprehend what was happening. I was in a room larger than what I stepped into, larger than would be anticipated to be in a simple wooden box. Copper sheeting with hexagonal holes cut out of it lined the sides of the machine, glass was used as flooring, steel was used for the stairs and supports, and a gigantic window was placed in the copper to the left of me. The center console was made up of a plethora of items, seemingly coming from a junkyard: numerous levers, a keyboard from a 1970s computer, a typewriter, and an old TV monitor from the 1940s that swung around the controls. The man, based off the usage of old mechanical parts, was about as nostalgic as any old-timer it seemed, but he looked so young. There was a blue glow rising from the floor panels and an orange tint about the rest of the interior. "Well," I said, "If I must say it... This machine is a feat in transdimentional engineering, in which a larger space, object B, is placed within a much smaller space, object A. This allows a subject to be inside something much smaller, but experience a whole world inside. Fantastic!" The man's face said it all: he had never heard that before. "Well, that's new... But also spot on. I have to say, you seem like quite an intelli..." he was cut off by a screaming alarm. He continued, in an excited tone, while running to the center console, "Ah! Yes! This is great! There's something out in the great, wide universe that needs saving! What do you say... What's your name again?" "Connor, my name is Connor," I yelled over the blaring noise. "What do you say then, Connor? Do you want to see worlds that you could have never imagined? People that you would have never thought about meeting? Or do you want to stay here, in daft, old Leadworth, where the dogs are boring and have heads (this was alluding to something that was to come later)?" he questioned with great intensity. "Absolutely I do because anything is better than this place! Allons-y!" I shouted as the groaning and moaning of the machine began once more. However, I was truly reticent in my feelings towards what was going on.

I had so many questions: Who was this strange man? Where was he taking me? Would anyone at home even notice that I had disappeared? Filled with all of these issues, my mind raced as the seemingly-British person pulled down on a red and silver lever as he yelled, "Geronimo!!!"