Doctor Who: Keeping Up With the Joneses Read Online Free PDF

Speculation, always dangerous, I never indulge. Right! Come on!’
    ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘Back to Jonestown to save the day. Chop chop.’ He paused. ‘It may be a bit different.’
    ‘How different?’
    ‘Well… Newer. Modern. Future-y. Time’s passed. What year is it?’
    She told him.
    He winced, sucked air through his teeth. ‘Not any more. Well, nothing for it. Gadewch i ni wneud hyn, eh?’
    She peered at him. ‘Is that some sort of Time Lord expression?’
    ‘Yes. Absolutely. My mother tongue, that is. The pure form of the most perfect language in the universe.’
    ‘What is it, really?’
    He sighed. ‘It’s Welsh, Christina.’
    But now she wasn’t sure that was her name after all.
    He pulled open a door, and behind it she could see the main street, thronging with people. They went through.
    *
    The centre of Jonestown was exactly the same: a small place with small dreams and a hint of quiet sorrow, as if it was built out of the knowledge that all good things must pass. Sash windows and wooden doors opened onto flagged streets, and people still wore the same clothes with the same patches. She recognised faces and smiles, saw them all smile back. No one said ‘Where have you been?’ No one seemed to think it was remarkable that she’d been away. Her house was still burning, and the fire brigade were just turning up now in a shiny new engine. She looked around sharply, ready to run, but the storm was gone. He must have been mistaken, all the same. No time had passed at all.
    Then she raised her eyes, and saw the silver spears of the skyscrapers, the perfect gleaming bridges and the cable cars connecting them all like beetles climbing from branch to branch in a forest made of glass. Or diamond. She wondered if the Doctor would really buy her a new house. She wondered if she wanted him to. She wondered how she would explain a fortune in diamonds to Mr Epley Jones the bank manager.
    She saw a woman she didn’t know – oh, wait, it was Arwen Jones the fire chief, tall and whipcord lean – directing the fire crew, and that wasn’t a hose, it was a great big… thing. It was familiar, somehow. They pointed it at the fire, threw a switch, and the flames dwindled and guttered. Arwen nodded, well done all, good effort, now let’s make the building safe. And in they went, and the charred structure was stone cold. Their uniforms relaxed, turned into ordinary clothes.
    She was in the future.
    But that meant her house had been on fire for years. Decades. It was impossible. She was getting a headache.
    The Doctor looked absolutely delighted. ‘Morning, Fire Chief! I’m the Doctor. Don’t worry, I won’t get in the way. Very nice work, though. Top notch.’ He was shaking Arwen’s hand with that same ridiculous enthusiasm, and Arwen seemed not at all averse.
    ‘If you like,’ Arwen looked over at Christina: is this man yours? He’s a bit in the way. Not that he isn’t picturesque, I will say.
    ‘When did you stop using water, may I ask?’ the Doctor wanted to know.
    ‘These are new,’ Arwen said, and she was warming to him, of course she was, she loved to talk shop. ‘Sonic firefighting. Developed locally, I’ll have you know, and now the higher-ups taking an interest. Rolled out nationally in the spring, and good for Mr Heidt, I say.’
    ‘Sonic?’
    ‘That’s what they tell me. Well, to be honest, it’s point and shoot, isn’t it?’ She indicated the fire engines, and he saw the Heidt symbol, a broken tablet seemingly held together by a tangle of lines twisting amongst one another like a bramble snarl.
    ‘And the uniforms?’
    ‘Psychic response weave. The cloth knows what you need it to be. Reads your mind. They’re his as well.’
    ‘His?’
    ‘Heidt. Brilliant man, but shy. Not everyone’s keen. Well, he’s not local, see?’
    ‘Brilliant, is he? Well, yes, I should say. And I know brilliant. If I think it’s brilliant then it’s really glow-in-the-dark, Einstein on his