Doctor Who: Nothing O'Clock: Eleventh Doctor: 50th Anniversary Read Online Free PDF Page B

that swirled about the TARDIS pushed the Doctor
     backwards.
    The Kin stood at the door of the
     TARDIS. ‘It’s so dark.’
    ‘We’re at the very start of it
     all. Before light.’
    ‘I will walk into the Void,’ said
     the Kin. ‘And you will ask me, “What time is it?” And I will
     tell myself, tell you, tell all Creation,
Time for the Kin to rule, to occupy,
     to
invade
.
Time for
     the Universe to become only me and mine and whatever
     I keep to devour. Time for the first and final reign
     of the Kin, world without end, through all of
     time.
’
    ‘I wouldn’t do it,’ said the
     Doctor, ‘if I were you. You can still change your mind.’
    The Kin dropped the Amy Pond mask
     on to the TARDIS floor.
    It pushed itself out of the TARDIS
     door, into the Void.
    ‘Doctor,’ it called. Its face was
     a writhing mass of maggots. ‘Ask me what time it is.’
    ‘I can do better than that,’ said
     the Doctor. ‘I can
tell
you
     exactly what time it is. It’s no time. It’s Nothing O’Clock.
     It’s a microsecond before the Big Bang. We’re not at the Dawn of
     Time. We’re before the Dawn.
    ‘The Time Lords really didn’t like
     genocide. I’m not too keen on it myself. It’s the potential
     you’re killing off. What if, one day, there was a good Dalek?
     What if …’ He paused. ‘Space is big. Time is bigger. I would
     have helped you to find a place you could have lived. But there
     was a girl called Polly, and she left her diary behind. And you
     killed her. That was a mistake.’
    ‘You never even knew her,’ called
     the Kin from the Void.
    ‘She was a kid,’ said the Doctor.
     ‘Pure potential, like every kid everywhere. I know all I need.’
     The squiggly whatsit attached to the TARDIS console was
     beginning to smoke and spark. ‘You’re out of time, literally.
     Because Time doesn’t start until the Big Bang. And if any part
     of a creature that inhabits time gets removed from time … well,
     you’re removing yourself from the whole picture.’
    The Kin understood. It understood
     that, at that moment, all of Time and Space was one tiny
     particle, smaller than an atom, and that until a microsecond
     passed, and the particle exploded, nothing would happen. Nothing
could
happen. And
     the Kin was on the wrong side of the microsecond.
    Cut off from Time, all the other
     parts of the Kin were ceasing to be. The It that was They felt
     the wash of non-existence sweeping over them.
    In the beginning – before the
     beginning – was the word. And the word was ‘Doctor!’
    But the door had been closed and
     the TARDIS vanished, implacably. The Kin was left alone, in the
     Void before Creation.
    Alone, forever, in that moment,
     waiting for Time to begin.

8
    The young man in the tweed
     jacket walked round the house at the end of Claversham Row. He
     knocked at the door, but no one answered. He went back into the
     blue box, and fiddled with the tiniest of controls: it was
     always easier to travel a thousand years than it was to travel
     twenty-four hours.
    He tried again.
    He could feel the threads of time
     ravelling and re-ravelling. Time is complex: not everything that
     has happened has happened, after all. Only the Time Lords
     understood it, and even they found it impossible to
     describe.
    The house in Claversham Row had a
     grimy
For Sale
sign in the
     garden.
    He knocked at the door.
    ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You must be
     Polly. I’m looking for Amy Pond.’
    The girl’s hair was in pigtails.
     She looked up at the Doctor suspiciously. ‘How do you know my
     name?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m very clever,’ said the
     Doctor seriously.
    Polly shrugged. She went back
     into the house, and the Doctor followed. There was, he was
     relieved to notice, no fur on the walls.
    Amy was in the kitchen, drinking
     tea with Mrs Browning. Radio Four was playing in the background.
     Mrs Browning was telling Amy about her job as a nurse, and the
     hours she had to work, and Amy was