Hi there,

First off, and with all sincerity: thank you for sending us “[null]“!

As you may have heard, five years ago when we did the original call for stories for Machine of Death 1, we received about 675 stories. This time around, we received almost THREE TIMES that amount, with 1,958 stories submitted. Not only were we blown away by how MANY stories we received, but we were also blown away by their raw quality. The bad news is that the reality we live in insists there’s only room for 30 or so stories in the book, and that means there’s going to be 1,920 stories that we can’t fit into Machine of Death this time around, regardless of how awesome they are.

Unfortunately, yours is one of them. We regret that “[null]” will not be appearing in Machine of Death 2.

Normally this is where an email like this would end, perhaps with a brief thank you for your submission. But we’re serious when we say the sheer quality of the stories we received staggered us. There’s enough excellence, there in our inbox, to put out FIVE really amazing volumes. And it would be a crime to leave these stories unpublished like that. Many of the stories that aren’t right for the Volume 2 anthology (for a bunch of different reasons: anthology pacing, variety, length, and so on) would fit wonderfully in any hypothetical future collection, or some other kind of MOD project down the line.

Of course, right now the focus will be on Machine of Death 2: on assembling the book, on getting the stories illustrated, on getting the finished book out into the world, and in making the whole thing as awesome as we can. But after that, if all goes well, we’d like to continue doing some really exciting things with these really great stories you’ve sent us. And we’ll be keeping your story in consideration for whatever those plans might be.

Obviously we can’t promise anything, and nobody can predict the future. But if all goes well, a while down the road, we may be able to send out some more acceptance letters. There’s a chance you could hear from us then.

Even if we’re never able to purchase your story and this is the last you hear from us about it, let us say this: thank you. You created something out of nothing, brought a new narrative into the universe, and shared it with us. Reading these stories has been a humbling and inspiring experience. Thank you, once more, for being a part of it.

If you submitted more than one story, we’ll be sending you an email with our decision for each of them over the next few days!

All the best,

- Ryan, Matt & David !

ps: we’re doing a Machine of Death event in LA on November 17th. If you’re in the area, come on out! We’d like to give you, as a Machine of Death story submitter, a MOD badge as a token of our appreciation. There’s more details about the event here: http://machineofdeath.net/nov-17

pps: If you’re interested, updates on the progress of both Volume 2 and future MOD projects can be found on our blog at http://machineofdeath.net

and now the story…

[null]
by Phil Oddy

Meatballs. Sauce. Cheese, of course. It wouldn’t be the same without cheese. Did I say extra cheese? I must have done. Oops. Salad; a bit of everything, but because I like salad rather than from any misplaced belief that piling the salad on will mitigate the effect of the rest of the contents of the sandwich. I shouldn’t be eating this stuff. I’ll be lying about it when I get home because what I should be doing is cutting back, watching my weight, staying healthy and staying alive. Because I have a pair of scales at home that keep topping fifteen stone and a card in my wallet that tells me I am going to die of ‘HEART FAILURE’.
I’m having a rough day, OK, and I need something in my belly to get me through the afternoon otherwise I know my willpower’s going to crumble and I’ll end up hitting the chocolate. And which would be worse?

I pay for my sandwich, plus a bag of crisps and a Diet Coke and head for the table in what we’ve established to be the analysts’ corner (by dint of the fact that we always sit there) where I can already see Geoff and Charlotte are sitting. I wonder if they’d like me to break their intimate chat with news of my rough day? I sit down next to Geoff.
Charlotte takes one look at my lunch, the sandwich filling oozing out of the sides of the waxed paper, giving me away before I can even pretend it’s chicken salad.
She raises her eyebrows.
“‘CHOKED ON A BEANSPROUT day, John?” she asks.
That is what I like to pretend my death card says when I’m having a bad day. It gives me license to avoid the healthy stuff.

Welcome to the Estrel Dawkins Institute. Mr Dawkins, as I’m sure you are fully aware unless you’re from the moon or the past or something, is the renowned inventor of the Dawkins Predictor, or Machine of Death, and his Institute exists to, and I quote the great man himself, “preserve the integrity of its legacy”. The Institute comprises Customer Support (predominantly based, predictably enough, in Bangalore, and servicing a worldwide user base of well over a million Machines), Engineering (who you can thank for the improved anaesthetic delivery system that, if you were tested in the last six years, means that the needle scratched fractionally less than it would have done otherwise), Legal and PR (simultaneously suing and seducing the Machine’s most ardent critics) and Data Analytics. That’s who we are, Geoff and Charlotte and me, Data Analytics. We’re the important ones. We’re here to save lives.

“How much did that set you back?” asked Geoff.
I shrugged. I hadn’t really been concentrating but I didn’t have a note in my change so it was more than a fiver.
“Prices are scandalous in here,” he muttered, biting into his homemade cheese and pickle.
I don’t have time to make sandwiches before I come to work. I barely have time to get home from the previous night’s work.

OK, when I say “we’re here to save lives”, that’s not really, like, the official line. Officially we’re here to apply “advanced analytical techniques” to the reams of data collected by the Machines around the world and identify patterns that might indicate faults, or Machine misuse, or an interesting story for PR to pump out. But we don’t see it like that. I don’t see it like that, anyway. We have a responsibility; we CAN save lives, ergo we SHOULD save lives.
There are some who still don’t believe that the Machine does anything more than a sophisticated combination of statistical reasoning and guesswork, but I’ve seen too much data, too much evidence. You cannot beat the Machine of Death. The Machine will tell you how you’re going to die, and that is how you’re going to die. It’s like Fate himself designed this thing. And once Fate has shown his cards…
I have a theory. I have a bunch of theories, but let’s start with this one. Let’s say there’s a terminal disease, like cancer for example, and let’s say that you analyse the death cards of millions of people, looking for those who are going to die of it. You plot them by age, country, demographic, whatever you can find, and you notice something interesting. Young people are far less likely to have a ‘CANCER’ card. People in Britain are far less likely to have a ‘CANCER’ card. Wealthy people are far less likely to have a ‘CANCER’ card. What’s more, there was a sudden drop off in the rate of ‘CANCER’ cards being produced for these groups almost ten years ago. You know that no-one’s produced a cure for cancer as yet, but you start to think that one must be pretty close, otherwise why would the Machine suddenly stop telling people that they’re going to die of it?
So you hunt around and you find a couple of pharmacologists in Cambridge who have an experimental cure, and you think it’s these guys – they’re the ones about to cure cancer. So you tell the world about the Christophi Gough method and suddenly half the philanthropists in the Sunday Times list sink their loose change into the project. The treatment goes to trial earlier than anyone expected, and it seems to work, but it’s expensive and it’s quite traumatic to go through, so the first people it really benefits are the young… and the wealthy… in Britain. It works, so it gets more funding, and then it gets cheaper and safer and easier to deal with and then it spreads around the world and before long, no more cancer. It saves millions of lives.
But who did WE save? There’s no denying that, without us pointing out that someone was close to the cure for cancer, no-one would have invested so readily. There would always have been a cure – the treatment would always have worked – but it wouldn’t have been ready so quickly. Here’s where it gets tricky. The only reason we could report that it would work was because we saw that it was going to work and, crucially, when it was going to work. But the only reason it started to work when it did was because we reported it. Paradox, much?
What happened, happened, when it happened, because we were looking for it. If we hadn’t been looking, it wouldn’t have happened when it did. How many people would have died whilst James Gough was traipsing, cap in hand, from research council to research council, trying to persuade them that his crazy idea might just work? I don’t know, but surely they’ve got us to thank for saving their lives? At least a little bit.
But maybe that’s just my perspective. It was my first big dataset. It got me this promotion.

“So what’s causing all the stress?” asked Charlotte, picking at a reheated, greasy stir-fry. She made the wrong choice today.
“Annual results. Samson wants me to come up with some ‘golden nuggets’ for the press release. We’ve got nothing new to talk about. Not since the road safety thing was kiboshed.”
“Do you have to?” asked Geoff, looking pained.
Samson is Legal Director, and Dawkins’ right-hand man. I’m meeting Dawkins at one. Yes, I have to.

The “road safety thing” was Geoff’s analysis. He found a glut of road deaths in rural India, the sort of concentrations that we don’t see very often, for precisely the reason that we’re looking for them. If ever we did see something like that, we would have a procedure (we don’t – we’ve never needed one) to raise the alarm and get it investigated. The faulty brakes or dangerous bend or lax attitude to drink driving laws would be discovered and fixed it some way and so no-one would die, and so there wouldn’t be a concentration of predictions saying ‘CAR CRASH’ or ‘HIT AND RUN’ or ‘HEAD THROUGH WINDSCREEN’ (I’ve seen that one. Ouch.) so there would be nothing for use to find. Geoff describes us as being in a stand-off with Fate. I think we’re on the same page.
On this occasion, Geoff thought he’d found something so we got all excited. What was going on? Was the cause something that couldn’t be prevented, even if we told everyone about it in advance? Was the Machine showing fallibility? Was this the first recorded instance of the Machine being wrong?
No. It was another, all too common, instance of Geoff being wrong. The Machine is only supposed to be used on human beings, it’s in bold in the terms of use, but it seems to work on animals too – guess their blood isn’t that different from ours – and from time to time you find a rogue operator who tries to bump up his profits by offering an extra service for pet owners. The Institute usually cracks down on it pretty quickly, especially since they introduced a flag into the system results set to spot non-human indicators. A flag which Geoff forgot to exclude from his analysis. We ran it all again, after we realised, and the concentration wasn’t even that high – dogs get hit by cars quite a lot especially, it would seem, in India, and everyone seems to accept that fact and aren’t about to start re-enigineering roads to prevent it.
The press release was written and signed off before we realised, but luckily it never got sent out. We’re kind of on probation at the moment.

Geoff put his fork down.
“You could tell them about the nulls,” he suggested. Fair play to him, he kept a pretty straight face
Charlotte giggled.
“Oh, yes!” I exclaimed, slapping myself on the forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? I could tell them about the nulls!”
I couldn’t tell them about the nulls.

Planes don’t crash any more. Sure, some of them land in some pretty hairy ways (Lufthansa 451 on the autobahn outside Frankfurt springs to mind), but they don’t crash. Not one. Not since China Southern 327 disappeared en route to Los Angeles, and we revealed that we had ‘PLANE CRASH’ predictions for 97% of those on board (and no registered death cards for the rest of those missing). We didn’t manage to prevent it – we hadn’t been looking. It was only when it flashed up on the BBC News ticker that Charlotte suggested running the analysis. I still remember the chills that ran through me when I saw that statistic.
We looked back further. Only seven people died on FinnAir 042 but we knew about all seven of them. Nearly two hundred went down with ANA 962 but we had around 60% of those, and that was back when Death Machines were still outlawed in Japan. We felt we had to say something – we weren’t trying to cash in on anyone’s grief, just offer a hope that we could help prevent it happening again… But there was an outcry.
We were accused of gross corporate negligence, we were even accused of manslaughter. We were castigated for not telling the world what we knew before the plane took off from Guangzhou (conveniently ignoring the fact that we hadn’t known anything before the plane took off from Guangzhou). Dawkins was all over the television, explaining that it wouldn’t have made any difference, that the Machine was never wrong, that the plane was always going to crash and the passengers were always going to die. Legal and PR told him not to invoke Fate, but he slipped up when up against Paxman on Newsnight and for months we were labeled crackpots and the Institute compared to a some kind of sci-fi cult. The Scientologists spent millions trying to distance THEMSELVES from US.
But once the furore had died down, once the authorities across the world realised that banning people with ‘PLANE CRASH’ death cards was impractical (they’re just a bit of card, and therefore easily faked) and pointless (the Machine is never wrong – if you’ve got ‘PLANE CRASH’ then a plane crash is what you’re getting, be it private, commercial or woodworking), once we could get a word in edgeways again, we got the opportunity to put forward the simple proposal we had tried to get out there in the first place. Now, airlines supply their passenger lists to the Institute, any time of the day or night and, within the hour, we run the list against the death card register and flag any flight with more than three ‘PLANE CRASH’ death card-ers on it, or with more than 10% of the passengers having no recorded death prediction. We don’t require ID for people who have taken the test, but in most places you have to provide some kind of proof that you’re over 18, so we generally have a passport, driving license, National Insurance or Social Security number on record. It’s pretty rare that we can’t match 90% of any group of people to a death prediction, and when we do (or rather when Naveen over in Bangalore does), none of them say ‘PLANE CRASH’. Not any more.
Take that, Fate. Data Analytics is watching you…

I dropped most of the sandwich into the food waste bin, and slid the tray onto the rack. I glanced at the clock on the wall, I had ten minutes. I had nothing.

We changed the face of global terrorism. That’s what it said in the New York Times. We don’t like to talk about it within The Institute. We didn’t mean to. We didn’t even put out a press release when we realised that we could have predicted the Moscow bombings. It seemed in poor taste and we’d learned our lesson with the plane crashes. Remember, once the cards were out there we couldn’t have stopped those people dying, even if we’d found and linked the 88 ‘SUICIDE BOMB’ predictions more than a day beforehand. So we didn’t say anything, but we set up a trace and started looking for more.
We didn’t find any. Suddenly fuses failed, firing mechanisms started jamming, explosives started detonating early taking out warehouses (and the odd unfortunate jihadist) but civilians stopped dying. For nearly three years, no-one died at the hands of a terrorist of any religious or political persuasion. Again, the fact that we were looking, the fact that we could have sent out a warning, seemed to put Fate in a stranglehold that he couldn’t get out of. Until that first leader in the Times released him.
To be fair, they only suggested that it was us. They’d spotted a pattern and put two and two together, so they said. We may have speculated about a leak (we did speculate about a leak; we had reason to believe we knew where it had come from) but we had no proof and the existence of Data Analytics within The Institute wasn’t a secret, especially after the cancer thing and the plane crashes. We weren’t shy about blowing our own trumpet either – every time we refined the percentage uptake assumptions for another vaccination programme, every time we nailed the source of what could have become another public health scare – so it’s probably true that, if the Times hadn’t been tipped off them someone would have drawn the same conclusion, eventually.
At first we were modestly happy to take the credit. We’d, presumably, saved thousands of lives. If we had existed at the time (and if the Machine had existed, obviously) we could have prevented 911, and therefore the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and few on either side was going to lament that we weren’t ever going down those roads again.
But it wasn’t as simple as that. It appears that the New York Times has a circulation that reaches into terrorist cells, and the cause of all of their recent troubles had just been named. Now they knew we were watching them, that the Machine was watching them. So they hid.
How do you hide from the Machine of Death? Switch your objective away from ‘death’, would be a good start. So no-one dies as a result of terrorism any more, but a lot of people in Mombasa were crippled, hundreds of people were maimed in San Francisco, the infrastructure of Seoul is pretty much shot… you get the picture. Turns out that killing people is actually a lot harder than making their lives a living hell, so that’s what they decided to concentrate on. It’s kind of our fault that we found that out.

There are three flights of stairs between our pod and Dawkins’ office. I was nearly at the top of the third one, and my mind was as blank as the pad of paper I carried, that should have been covered in prep. I was seriously considering telling them about the nulls. I had to be going mad.

The nulls, then. Or, to be precise, the ‘[null]‘s. That’s it – they’re death cards like any other but they’re not in capital letters and you don’t usually get square brackets on a death card, although punctuation in general is pretty commonplace (all the way through to #s and @s – some causes of death are just plain weird). There also are more semi-colons than you might credit. But the ‘[null]‘s stand out.
We don’t know what they mean. Option one: they mean no death, live forever, golden ticket. That’s Geoff’s bet. But they seem more vague than that, and Geoff’s bet it usually worth ruling out early. A blank card (Machine malfunction notwithstanding) would certainly mean no death, but ‘[null]‘? Not for me.
The dictionary says it means “ineffectual” or “valueless”. So option two: the Machines aren’t working – Charlotte’s no-nonsense theory. But we have plenty of examples of Machines not working and they just don’t spit out a card. They don’t tell us when they’re not working, they just don’t work.
So option three (and this one’s all mine): the Machine’s not commenting on itself (it’s not “ineffectual” or “valueless”). Why would it? It’s not testing itself. It’s testing blood, so it’s the blood that’s “ineffectual” or “valueless”. We know that it can cope perfectly well with animal blood, so what is “ineffectual” or “valueless” blood? Is it “not blood”? Are there a lot of Machine operators out there who are pumping tomato juice into their Machines just to see what it does?
Except that the results are so scattered, and include places like the House of Representatives, the Vatican and the Chinese politburo where the Machines are kept in high security vaults to keep them away from saboteurs with a screwdriver and an agenda. Which leaves us with what? Genuine tests, genuine results, but the Machine doesn’t know what to do with them. People with “not blood” coursing through their veins. Everywhere.
The mind boggles.

And now I’m being called in.

Dawkins is sat in a tall, high-backed armchair. He fixes me with his steely gaze and nods a greeting.
“Good morning Mr Dawkins,” I say. He doesn’t reply.
I sit opposite him, across the shiny mahogany desk. To my right and his left is perched a nervous looking girl from PR, apparently straight out of school. She is holding a chewed up Biro that is hovering, quivering, over a reporter’s notebook. She keeps glancing from Dawkins, across to me, then back again, expectantly.
“So,” intones Dawkins, after letting her do this a few more times, “I think we all know why we’re here.”
“ah, yes,” I begin, before Dawkins cuts me off.
“We need a PR ‘win’,” he continues. “I am not happy with the murmurs I see in the press about the impact the Machine is having on our troubled society.”
He pauses here, and I’m about to agree with him when he abruptly picks up again. It’s like he’s doing it on purpose.
“We need to remind the world that the Machine is a force for good.”
Another pause. I just nod.
“And that is why you’re here…”
He gestures to me. I take that as my cue.
“Well,” I swallow, “Mr Dawkins. It’s been a bit of a lean period, breakthrough-wise…”
Dawkins raises his eyebrows. Except that now I look more closely he doesn’t really seem to have eyebrows. I plough on.
“But we do have some, shall we say, interesting results…”
“Shall we?” asks Dawkins. I refuse to be derailed.
“Well, at the very least they’re intriguing results. You see:” I take a deep breath. I’m going to do this. “We have a number, a growing number, of results, or should I say non-results – nulls – that appear to suggest that…”
I stop. Dawkins’ eyes are wide. I am struck by the fact that they are a deep red. Not bloodshot, just red. The irises are perfectly, completely, blood red. I try to continue.
“…suggest that…”
Dawkins holds up a hand. He has very long finger nails. They’re like talons.

“Enough!” thunders Dawkins, in a voice that seems to come from a void beyond reality. “I have heard enough.”
He rises from his seat; I had never realised what a stoop he had.
“I think it would be better if you left us,” he said, without looking at the PR girl. She scuttles out of the room without having to be told twice. I want to follow her, but Dawkins holds me within the tractor beam of his gaze. It seems an age before he speaks again.
“Do you even know what it is you’ve stumbled across?” he asks, now towering over me.
I think I manage to shake my head.
“You humans,” he scoffs, and at this moment his face seems to lengthen and stretch, “you know so little and yet you presume so much. You know not what you owe me, what you owe us. We only tried to help you to help yourselves.”
His breath stinks of rotting meat and menthol. I gag as he bends close to my face.
“We have been here since the dawn of your time,” he hisses, “and yet you remain so puny, so… fragile.”
Pieces start to fall into place. My mind feels like it is dropping down a chasm so deep that I don’t even know if it has a bottom, and won’t for some time.
“We have so many uses for you, but you break so easily. The Machine should have been your salvation. We give you the power to cheat death – to make yourselves strong – and, instead, you presume to come looking for us?”
He is right in my face now. There is no heat from his breath. He pokes a bony talon into my ribs. His touch is like ice.
“So what is it going to be?” he asks. I am suddenly confused as he straightens up as best he can, and leans away from me. He has plucked my wallet from my breast pocket.

My death card is inside, and now he holds it in his hand. He is squinting at it.
“‘HEART FAILURE’,” he reads. He looks to me and sighs. “Such a shame, it’s not much of a challenge, is it?”
He is smiling now. Smiling as he reaches a hand out and places it on my chest.
“There will be others,” he shrugs. “We retain some hope.”
He stops my heart.

Phil,

Thanks for submitting and sorry for the very long wait in getting back to you. I did enjoy this piece and will be publishing this one this Friday, Sep 16.

Awesome! Will post the link on Friday…

And thanks. Thanks for being a part of it. We’re very excited to see what you’ve created!

best,

[redacted]

(although a glance at my Twitter stream might give you a clue as to who this is from)

It’s pretty rough and ready – there’s only ever been one draft – but if you’re Steven Moffat and you’d like to talk, tweet me!

*because of the time difference, this was actually delivered at about 11:30am, BST.

Doctor Who and Sam

Part One

The Doctor was in the TARDIS console room, playing with the controls.  He was all on his own – Amy and Rory were somewhere else in the TARDIS doing… something else – he wasn’t sure what.  He was too busy piloting the TARDIS to somewhere exciting and dangerous, with lots of adventures to be had,  At least he presumed that was what he was doing, the TARDIS tended to make up its own mind as to where it wanted to go.  But it WAS usually somewhere exciting and dangerous, with lots of adventures to be had, and as long as that was the case he was happy.  He whistled to himself and grinned as he raced around the TARDIS console, pulling wibbly levers and pushing flashing buttons and…
Suddenly he heard a loud splash and the sound of screaming.  He stopped still.  It was coming from the swimming pool room!
“Amy! Rory!”, he shouted, “I’m coming!”
And he ran up the stairs and down the corridor.

In the swimming pool room, Amy was indeed screaming, while Rory tried to calm her down.  They both stood shivering in their swimming things, as they had only just scrambled out of the pool where they had been enjoying a pleasant swim until a tall man in a uniform and big coat had unexpectedly fallen, with a loud splash (which The Doctor had heard), into the swimming pool with them.
As The Doctor arrived, the man was himself climbing out of the pool and shaking off as much water as he could, which wasn’t very much.  The Doctor saw him and stopped in his tracks.
“You!” he cried, as he was covered in a large spray of water from the man’s coat.
“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” asked Captain Jack Harkness (which is who the man who landed in the swimming pool was), and he stepped forward to give The Doctor a very large and very wet hug.
Amy stopped screaming.
“You know this man?” she asked.
“ah, yes,” admitted The Doctor, “although, not with this face…”
“It is you then?” checked Captain Jack.  “The Doctor?”
“It’s me!” grinned The Doctor.  “Same old Doctor.  Only… not.”
“Good to see you!” said Captain Jack, “I like what you’ve done with the place!”
“ah yes,” nodded The Doctor, “the TARDIS.  Pretty, isn’t she?”
“But what is he doing landing in our swimming pool?” interrupted Rory.
“Yes,” agreed The Doctor, “Good question.  What are you doing landing in my swimming pool?”
Captain Jack shrugged.
“Search me,” he said,  “one minute I was negotiating with a delegation of Silurians about access rights to North Hertfordshire and the next I was…  soggy.”
Amy giggled.  The Doctor looked crosss.
“And that was it?” he asked, “No vortex manipulation or other messy Time Agent tricks?”
“Nope,” said Captain Jack.  “I lost my vortex manipulator to some big blue guy a while back.  No, the Silurian ambassador suddenly got grumpy about something and just leaped up and pushed me.  I fell backwards and suddenly I was… well, here.”
“Oh no,” said The Doctor, “that’s not good.  That’s not good at all.  All wibbly wobbly, timey…”
“What?” demanded Rory.
“Think of it like a doughnut,” said The Doctor, “no, forget doughnuts, it’s nothing like a…  have you got a doughnut?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Then forget about doughnuts.  Something happened.  Something wrong, and we’ve got to find out what…”
Suddenly the TARDIS started to shake and make a loud whooshing noise.
“We’re landing!” said Amy.  “But where?”
The Doctor grinned.
“If I’m not mistaken,” he said, “we’re in North Hertfordshire.  Come on!”
And he ran off down the TARDIS corridor.  Captain Jack shrugged at Amy and Rory, and they all ran after him.

Outside the TARDIS, The Doctor was breathing deeply and looking around.
“Unmistakable!” he cried, as the other arrived, panting, out of the TARDIS door.  “Smell that air!  We’re in Royston.  I love Royston.  I’ve got lots of friends in…  hello.  What’s this here?”
There was a large, silver, metal box, right in front of them.  It was as tall as the TARDIS, and about as wide.  The Doctor felt his way around it, looking for an opening, but it was smooth all the way around.
“Not a problem,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket, “I just need my…  Oh.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Rory.
“It’s my sonic,” said The Doctor, “I had to take it to be mended after that… thing.  You know, with the big hairy aliens on Mars.  I haven’t picked it up yet.”
“That’s OK,” said a voice behind them, “I know someone with a sonic you can borrow!”
Everyone spun around, to see a small boy with dark hair stood on the grass behind them.  He was quite tall for his age, and was holding a Transformers toy.
“Hello,” said The Doctor, crouching down to talk to him, “I’m The Doctor.  What’s your name?”
“I’m Eddie,” said Eddie, “and my best friend has got a sonic screwdriver.  He’s always using it to fight the Peepoes in the trees on the way to nursery.  I’m sure he’d let you borrow it.  Come on!”
And Eddie ran off.
“Follow that small boy,” said The Doctor to Captain Jack, “and Rory, go with him!”
Captain Jack and Rory ran after Eddie, and they had to run very fast to catch him up.  Soon they were out of sight.
“So what do we do now?” asked Amy, once they were gone.
“We wait,” said The Doctor.  “Would you like an ice cream?”

On the other side of Royston, Eddie, Captain Jack and Rory reached the end of Green Drift, where Eddie ran straght up to one of the houses and knocked loudly on the door.
A lady answered it – she had brown hair and glasses and was very pretty.
“Hello,” said Captain Jack, smiling his best smile.
“Hello?” said the lady, “but you’re…  you’re Captain Jack Harkness!”
“My fame preceeds me, I see,” grinned Captain Jack.
Eddie interrupted them.
“Is Sam here?” he asked, “we need to borrow his sonic.”
Behind the lady another boy appeared.  He had brown hair too, which was sticking up because it had gel on it.  He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, with Lightning McQueen sunglasses, and he looked very cool.
“Hello Eddie,” he said.  “oh, hello Rory, hello Captain Jack!”
“Are you Sam?” asked Rory.
“Yes, I am,” said Sam.
“Great!” said Rory.  “We need your help.  Come with us, and bring your sonic with you!”
“OK,” said Sam, “I’ll come on my bike, I don’t like walking!”
“It’s OK,” said Eddie, “we’re not walking.  We’re helping The Doctor, so we’ve got to run!”
But Sam wasn’t listening anymore.  He was looking at something behind Eddie, Captain Jack and Rory.
“What is it?” asked Captain Jack, turning around.
And all of a sudden, he was face to face with a huge, metal robot man.  It was silver and very strong looking, and had funny handle things sticking out of its head.
“A Cyberman!” shouted Eddie.
The Cyberman took a step forward.
“Delete!” it said, menacingly.  “Delete.”

Part Two

“Delete,” said the Cyberman again, reaching out to grab Captain Jack.  “Delete.”
Eddie kicked the Cyberman in the leg and he fell over with a loud, clanking noise.
“Nice one, Eddie,” shouted Rory.  “Quick, everybody, into the house!”
“But where’s Sam?” asked Sam’s mummy, looking around.  Sam had vanished.
“Up here!” came a voice from above them.  They all looked up to see Sam leaning out of his mummy and daddy’s bedroom window, pointing his sonic screwdriver at the Cyberman, who was trying to get up off the floor.
“Stand back!” he shouted, and he fired his sonic at the Cyberman.
The sonic buzzed and all of the Cyberman’s arms and legs fell off.
“Yeah!” cried Captain Jack, as Eddie picked up the Cyberman’s arm and bashed him on the head with it.
The Cyberman fell back down, and the lights started to die in his eyes.
“I have been de-le-ted…” he moaned, and then the Cyberman was dead.
“That was close,” sighed Rory, “we’d better get back to The Doctor and tell him there’s Cybermen on the loose.”
“But what about my daddy?” asked Sam.  “He’s gone to Tesco with Alex and if there’s Cybermen in Royston, he might be in danger.”
“We’d better go and check he’s OK,” agreed Captain Jack.
“I’ll stay here in case he comes back,” said Sam’s mummy.
By this time Sam was back downstairs.
“Come on then,” he said, and he and Eddie started running, really really fast.
Rory and Captain Jack shrugged at each other, again, and started to run after them.

In no time at all they arrived at Tesco, and hid in the bushes to get a good look at what was going on,  All over the carpark there were maybe a hundred metal pods, where there should have been cars.
“Spaceships!” said Eddie.
“No,” said Captan Jack.  “They’re Silurian surface transporters.  The Silurians live under the ground, and those are how they get up to the surface.  They’re like super fast lifts…”
“So there are Silurians coming?” asked Sam.
“I think they’re already here,” said Rory, pointing.
Out of the transporters poured hundreds and thousands of Silurain warriors.  Every single one of them had a gun.  Suddenly they were everywhere, and they were moving towards the door of Tesco.
“Look,” said Eddie, “there’s your daddy, Sam.”
He pointed to the entrance to Tesco, where Sam’s daddy was standing with a trolley full of shopping, and Alex in his car seat.  He looked very scared as thousands of Silurians advanced towards him.
“He’s trapped!” said Captain Jack.  “We need The Doctor…”
Rory pulled out his phone and dialled a number.
“Don’t worry Sam, we’ll…” he started.
But Sam and Eddie were gone.  Rory and Captain Jack looked up, to see them both running across the carpark, pushing a trolley in front of them.  Because they were smaller, the Silurians didn’t see them coming, and as they ran the trolley bashed Silurian after Silurian out of the way.  Before you knew it, they were at the door to Tesco.
Rory’s phone connected.
“Hi, Amy,” he said, “we’re at Tesco, we need…”
There was a whooshing sound and the TARDIS appeared behind them.  Out stepped Amy, eating an ice cream.
“Come on then,” she said, impatiently, “are you getting in or what?”
Captain Jack and Rory ran into the TARDIS, just as Sam and Eddie slammed the door to Tesco shut, and Sam locked it with his sonic.  They were safe, but they were trapped.

Inside the TARDIS, The Doctor watched them on the scanner.
“We’ve got to get inside,” he said, pushing a wibbly lever, and a not so wibbly lever.
The TARDIS dematerialised, only to reappear a second later inside Tesco.  Everyone tumbled out.
“Right,” said The Doctor.  “What have I missed…  We’ve got the four of us, plus two boys,,,”
He paused and crouched down to talk to Sam.
“Hello,” he said, “I’m The Doctor.”
“I’m Sam,” said Sam, “pleased to meet you.”
“What a polite little boy,” said The Doctor,  “and that’s a very fine sonic you have there.”
“Thanks,” said Sam, “I hear you want to borrow it.”
“You hang onto it for now,” said The Doctor, standing up.  “So, four of us, two boys, a man with glasses…”
“That’s my daddy,” said Sam.
“OK, good, hello daddy,” said The Doctor.  “And a baby…  I like babies, but he’s not going to be much help against thousands of Silurians warriors.  Silurian warriors with guns.  I don’t like guns.”
“I do,” grinned Captain Jack, pulling three laser blasters from his pockets.  He gave one to Amy and one to Rory.
“OK, we might need some guns,” conceded The Doctor, “but there are still only seven and a half of us and there are thousands of them.  We need to neutralise their weapons.  We can do that with a sonic.”
“I’ve got a sonic!” said Sam.
“Yes you have,” agreed The Doctor.  “But again, one sonic, thousands of guns.  We need more sonics…”
And he ran off.  Sam and Eddie followed him, to the toy aisle.
“Sonics!” cried the Doctor.  “Lovely, lovely sonics.”
“But they’re just toys!” said Eddie.
“At the moment,” admitted The Doctor.  “But…  Sam, if I may.”
Sam gave The Doctor his sonic.  The Doctor stood back, and zapped all of the toy sonics.  Suddenly they all started to buzz and come to life.  The Doctor handed Sam’s sonic back to him.
“Thank you Sam,” he said.  “Sonics for everyone!  Only, this packaging is a bit tough.”
He struggled with the sonic box and then threw it on the floor, annoyed.
“Let me help,” said Sam’s daddy, who had followed them with Alex and the trolley.  And he unpacked all of the sonics.
“Great!” said The Doctor.  “One for you, Mr Oddy, one for you, Eddie…  I think Alex is a bit little to play with screwdrivers, Sam’s already got one, so then one for me.  And a spare, I think.  I’ve always wanted a spare”
He handed out the sonics, and put an extra one in his pocket.
“OK.  I’ve not said this for a while,” he said, “but…  allons-y!”
And with that they all ran out of Tesco.  Sam, his daddy, Eddie and The Doctor went first, waving their sonics and making all the Silurian guns explode.  Captain Jack, Amy and Rory came behind them, shooting at the Silurains with their zappers.
“Don’t kill any!” shouted The Doctor, over the noise of sonics and zappers and Silurian guns.  “You’ll only make them crosser!  We just want them to…”
Suddenly the car park was silent.
“…run away,” finished The Doctor.  And they had.  All of the Silurians had disappeared into their transporters and run away.
The Doctor dusted down his jacket and put his sonic away.
“Nice work, everyone,” he said.  “Glad that’s all over.”
“I’d better get home,” said Sam’s daddy.  “There’s ice cream in this trolley and I don’t want it to melt.”
“Can I stay with The Doctor?” asked Sam.
“OK,” said Sam’s daddy, “But be good and be back in time for tea.”
And with that he got into his car and drove back home.
As soon as he was gone, the sky turned dark.
“Looks like it’s going to rain,” said Rory.
There was a low rumbling sound.  The Doctor was shaking his head.
“Not rain,” he said loooking up.  Everyone else did the same.
But they didn’t see black clouds.  Instead, blocking out the sun, was a giant, grey, battleship, and it was going to land right over Royston.
“What is that thing?” asked Captain Jack.
“Bad news,” grimaced The Doctor.  “The Sontarans are coming…”

Part Three

“Sontarans!” laughed Sam, “They look like potato men!”
“hmmm,” agreed The Doctor.  “But they’re very grumpy potato men…”
“Like the grumpy Doctor?” asked Sam.
“Yes, like the…” The Doctor looked at him.  “Oi!  cheeky boy, I wasn’t THAT grumpy.”
“You were pretty grumpy,” said Sam, “I saw you on the telly.”
“Fair enough,” agreed The Doctor, “I was QUITE grumpy.  But Sontarans are grumpier, and they like to shoot people, so we’d better all get into the TARDIS.”
Everyone ran into the TARDIS and The Doctor slammed the door shut.  He pulled some levers and, with the usual whooshing sound, the TARDIS dematerialised.
“Right,” said The Doctor, to Amy, Rory, Captain Jack, Eddie and Sam, who were all waiting to see what he would do next.  “That should keep us safe for a while.  Anyone fancy a kickabout?”
“A what?” asked Captain Jack.
“A game of football,” said The Doctor, “just the thing for winding down after fighting off a carpark full of Silurain warriors with nothing more than our wits and some plastic sonic screwdrivers.”
“And some guns,” added Amy.
“Oh yes,” agreed The Doctor, “I forgot about the guns.  Anyway, game of football?”
“But shouldn’t we come up with a plan to deal with the Sontarans?” asked Rory.
“Probably,” shrugged The Doctor, “Why don’t you come up with a plan, and we’ll go and play football.”
And with that The Doctor, Sam and Eddie went up the stairs and off to the TARDIS football pitch.

“Does the TARDIS even have a football pitch?” asked Captain Jack, as they disappeared.
“Probably,” said Amy, “The TARDIS has most things.  Swimming Pool, Ice Cream Parlour, Bouncy Castle…”
“It’s even got another TARDIS inside this one,” added Rory.
“OK,” said Captain Jack, “so they really have gone to play football?”
“I guess so,” said Amy, “so we’d better come up with the plan.”
“Tricky,” said Captain Jack.  “We don’t know how many Sontarans are on that ship, and we don’t know if they’re armed…”
“They’re Sontarans,” Rory pointed out.  “Of course they’re armed.”
“OK,” said Jack, “let’s say five hundred Sontarans, all with guns.  How on earth are we going to deal with them?”
“We could try the sonic thing again,” suggested Rory.
“No,” said Captain Jack, “Sontaran guns are fitted with sonic shields.  They’re not vulnerable to sonic energy.  It won’t work.”
“Can’t you knock out a Sontaran by bashing him on the back of the head?” asked Amy.
“Yes!” cried Captain Jack, “They have a probic vent which, if you hit it right, makes them tumble over like a sack of potatoes.  Which is funny, cos that’s what they look like!”
He started to run around the TARDIS.
“The Doctor always used to keep a few hammers around here,” he explained, “for bashing the TARDIS controls with when he ran out of ideas…  ah, here we go.”
And he held up three big hammers, with long wooden handles.
“Great,” said Rory.  “So all we have to do is sneak up behind a Sontaran and bash him with the big hammer on the back of the head.  Five hundred times.”
“Well,” said Amy, “there’s three hammers and three of us so really it’s only about a hundred and sixty six times.
“That’s still a lot of sneaking,” said Rory.  “Don’t you think the other Sontarans would spot us as soon as we knocked out the first three, and, I don’t know, shoot at us?”
“Maybe,” agreed Captain Jack, “but I think we might be about to find out.”
He was right, the TARDIS was whooshing again, as it landed.
“We’ve landed?” asked Amy, looking at the TARDIS monitor.  “Great! Right back where we came from.  What was The Doctor doing when he set off?”
“We’re back in Tesco carpark?” asked Rory.  “With five hundred Sontarans about to bang on the door?”
“Yep,” said Amy, “we’re back in Tesco carpark.  Although, if you want the good news, there’s only about ten of them.”
“Must be an advance squad,” said Captain Jack, as the Sontarans started banging on the door.
“Great,” said Rory, “that door’s not going to hold for long.”
Now they could hear the Sontarans outside.
“Sontar-ha! Sontar-ha!” they chanted, getting louder and louder as they got closer and closer to breaking down the door.

On the football pitch, Sam, Eddie and The Doctor were still playing football.
“You’re rubbish at football,” said Sam to The Doctor.
“No I’m not,” replied The Doctor, upset.  “I’m very good at football.”
“But you’ve only got two goals!” said Eddie.
“Two goals is good,” said The Doctor, “two goals is cool.”
“No it’s not,” said Sam, “I’ve got ten and Eddie’s got eight.  We’re much better than you.”
Suddenly they could hear the noise of the TARDIS doors breaking down, and Sontarans entering the TARDIS console room.
“What’s that?” asked Eddie.
“If I’m not mistaken,” said The Doctor, “that’s the sound of an advance squad of Sontarans breaking into the TARDIS.  Just as I planned.”
“Just as you planned?” asked Sam, “you mean you wanted the Sontarans to break into the TARDIS?”
“Yes,” said The Doctor, “you see, there are footballs in here, and there weren’t any out there.”
“And what use will footballs be?” asked Sam.
“You’ll see,” said The Doctor.  “Come with me, and bring a ball each.”

When Sam, Eddie and The Doctor reached the console room, it was already full of Sontarans.  Three of them were lying on the ground, after Rory, Amy and Captain Jack has bashed them with their hammers, but six of the others were pointing their guns at them and so they’d stopped bashing Sontarans and were standing with their hands up instead.  The last Sontaran was stood at the console, pulling wibbly levers.
“Stop that!” cried The Doctor, running down the steps.
“We are taking this ship to Sontar,” roared the Sontaran, “for the glory of the Sontaran empire!”
“No you’re not,” said The Doctor as he reached the bottom of the steps, and then slipped on some ice cream that Amy had dropped on the floor earlier.  He slid all the way to the TARDIS console, and knocked the Sontaran out of the way.  Unfortunately, he also knocked wibbly lever number one, which sent the TARDIS shaking and lurching into the air.  They were flying, but the doors were still open!
As the TARDIS tilted, Sam lost his footing at the top of the stairs and flew through the air towards the open TARDIS door.  As he fell through, he just managed to grab hold of the floor, where he hung on tightly, dangling out of the TARDIS as it soared over Royston.  He could see his nursery, and his house, and the Heath, but he wasn’t looking at any of them, he was watching his sonic, which had fallen out of his pocket, tumbling down to the ground.
Suddenly Captain Jack grabbed his hand and pulled him back into the TARDIS, just as The Doctor regained control and closed the doors.
“That was close,” said Jack.
“Thank you,” said Sam, “but I’ve lost my sonic.”
“We’ll get you another,” said The Doctor, “but first of all we need to deal with these Sontarans.  Sam, Eddie…  kick!”
And at that moment The Doctor, Sam and Eddie kicked their footballs all at once.  They bounced off the wall and the ceiling, but each one hit a Sontaran on the back of the neck and they fell to the ground.  The three of them ran to get their balls back, and kicked again.  They bounced off the floor and the TARDIS console, but again each one found a Sontaran and knocked him out.  The last Sontaran was dealt with by Amy, who had retrieved her hammer from where she’d dropped it when she put her hands up.
“Nice skills, boys,” said The Doctor.  “Now, Amy, Rory, drag these clones to the Sontaran jail on level four.”
Amy and Rory started to drag the unconscious Sontarans away.
“Now,” said The Doctor, “what’s the matter with you?”
Sam was crying, just a little bit.
“I’ve lost my sonic,” he explained, tearfully.
“Don’t worry about that,” said The Doctor, “I said we’d get you another.  Here, have this one.”
And he gave Sam his own sonic screwdriver.
“But won’t you need it, for fighting aliens and locking doors and stuff?” asked Sam.
“I’ve got a spare!” replied The Doctor, taking it out of his pocket proudly.  “I’ve always wanted a spare.”
Sam grinned.
“Thank you!” he said.
“Now, don’t go too far,” said The Doctor, “you’re going to need that.”
The TARDIS landed, and The Doctor, Sam, Eddie and Captain Jack all got out.  They were in front of the silver box again.
“This thing…” said Captain Jack.
“Yes, said The Doctor,  “this thing.  And I’ve got a feeling it’s going to take more than a sonic screwdriver to open it.  Fortunately, we’ve got three!  Sam, Eddie, when I count to three, aim your sonic at the box.  One, Two, Three!”
And all three of them fired sonic energy at the box.  Slowly, smoothly, a door slid open in its side.
“Perfect!” shouted The Doctor.
Eddie peered inside.
“It goes down,” he said, “but there are no stairs…”
“Never mind that,” said The Doctor, excitedly.  And he jumped in. “Geronimooooooooooooooooo!”
And with that, The Doctor was gone.  Sam looked into the big hole.  He could hear clanking metal, like hundreds of feet stamping on the ground and, very faintly, a robot voice.
“I think there are Cybermen down there,” he said, looking scared.  “And… something else.”
The voice got louder, they could all hear it now.
“Exterminate!” it said.  “Exterminate!”

Part Four

Sam, Eddie and Captain Jack stared down into the hole where The Doctor had jumped.
“Doctor?” shouted Captain Jack.
“I’m fine,” shouted back The Doctor.  “There’s a big… bouncy thing down here.  It cushioned my fall.  Come on down…”
“Are you sure?” asked Sam, “we heard a Dalek.”
“oh, yes,” said The Doctor, “there’s definitely a Dalek down here, and probably some Cybermen too.  You’ll have to be careful.  But I can’t see them yet, so come on down.  You’ll be fine.  Probably…”
Sam, Eddie and Captain Jack looked very unsure, but if The Doctor said that it was OK then that was good enough for them, so one by one they jumped in.  Eddie went first, then Sam, then Captain Jack.
“wheeeee!” shouted Sam as he tumbled into the darkness.
When they all landed they found that The Doctor was right, there was a big bouncy thing, a bit like a bed, at the bottom of the hole.  It also wasn’t so dark down there, as there were lights set into the floor, that led in both directions down a long corridor.
“Who put that there?” asked Captain Jack, pointing at the bed.
“Good question,” agreed The Doctor.  “Probably someone, or something, that wanted people to get in here safely, but wasn’t too worried about whether they could get out again.”
“But who?” asked Sam.
“Another good question,” agreed The Doctor.  “I would think there’s a fair chance that it was those Cybermen that I can hear stamping down the corridor in our direction.”
He was right, the clanking noise of a hundred Cybermen marching was getting closer and closer.
“We should hide,” suggested Eddie.
“Excellent suggestion,” said The Doctor.  “Everyone! Under the bed!”
They all hid under the bed, and watched two hundred Cybermen feet clank past the bed.  It was odd, because from where Sam was watching they all looked like they were chained together.
When they were sure that they had all gone, they got back out again and dusted themselves off.
“Interesting,” said The Doctor.  “Did you see?”
“They were all chained together?” asked Sam.
“Yes!” cried The Doctor, “Well spotted, Sam.  And that can only mean that they’re prisoners.  Ignore all my previous theories.  I don’t think this place belongs to the Cybermen, I think it’s a Cyberman jail!”
“But what about that Cyberman we killed at your house, Sam?” asked Eddie.
“Maybe it escaped,” suggested Sam.
“You killed a Cyberman?” asked The Doctor, “impressive.  And maybe it did.  Or maybe it came to rescue the others.  The only way to find out is to find out who’s holding them here.  Any ideas?”
Then they heard the voice again.
“Exterminate!” it said.
“I think it’s that Dalek,” said Sam.
“And I think you’re right,” said The Doctor.  “So I think we should try to find it…”

Back in the TARDIS, Amy and Rory had finished putting all of the unconscious Silurians into the TARDIS jail, and went outside to look for everyone else.
“That’s odd,” said Amy, “all there is here is that big silver box.”
“Only now it’s got a door in it,” pointed out Rory.
“hmm,” mused Amy, “and if I know The Doctor, that’s where he’s gone.”
“So, should we go after him?” asked Rory.
“Definitely,” said Amy.
“Really?” asked Rory.  He didn’t seem keen.
“Excuse me?” said a voice behind him.
Amy and Rory turned around and saw a group of boys standing behind them.
“Have you seen our friends?” asked one of them.
“What are their names?” asked Amy.
“Sam and Eddie,” said the first boy.
“I thought so,” said Amy.  “They’re with The Doctor, and I think that means they’ve gone down there.”
She pointed down the hole.  The boy went to look.
“My name’s Freddie,” said the boy.  “And this is Samuel, and James, and Anthony, and Joel.  They didn’t come to nursery so we thought something might be wrong.”
“You weren’t wrong there,” said Rory.  “I’m Rory, and this is Amy.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Freddie.  “Do you think we should try to get them our of there?  There aren’t any steps.”
“But how?” asked Amy.
“I have an idea,” said Freddie.

Inside the Cyberman jail, things were going from bad to worse.
“Ignore all my previous theories,” said The Doctor.  “This isn’t just a Cyberman jail after all.  Look, in that cell there’s some Silurians, and in that one we’ve got Sontarans.”
“And so the Silurians and Sontarans we had to fight must have been coming to rescue their friends, too,” said Sam.
“Correct,” said The Doctor.  “The question is, why would the Daleks want to catch lots of aliens and put them in jail.”
“In Royston,” added Captain Jack.
“In Royston,” agreed The Doctor.
“Maybe they were naughty?” suggested Eddie.
“But Sontarans and Silurians and Cybermen are always being naughty,” said The Doctor.  “So are the Daleks, for that matter.  Why would they want to lock them up?”
“I don’t think it was the Daleks,” said Captain Jack, “come and look at this.”
They all went to where Captain Jack was standing.  Inside another jail cell was a Dalek, chained to the wall.
“Exterminate!” said The Dalek.
“Shut up,” said The Doctor, rudely, “you can’t exterminate anything.  You’ve got a sock on your laser.”
It was true, the Dalek did have a sock on its laser, and so couldn’t shoot any of them, which was a relief.
“But,” continued The Doctor, “that means we have another problem, because it looks like we’re going to have to ignore all of my previous previous theories.  And if it’s not the Daleks locking up these aliens then who..?”
There was a rustling noise behind them, and everyone turned around to see a new alien.  This one had ten eyes and spiky hands, and curly hair all over its head.
“What on earth is that?” asked The Doctor.
“I know,” said Sam.  “That’s a Peepoe.  Basically, run!”
And they all ran back up the corridor, the way they had come.  They got close to the bed where they had all landed, and were just about to worry about how they were going to get back up to the surface, when they noticed Freddie hanging upside down in the air.  Samuel was holding onto his ankles, and Joel was holding onto his ankles, and James was hanging onto his and Anthony onto his, then it was Rory and finally Amy was standing on the ground above, holding onto everyone and waiting to pull them back up.
“Grab on!” cried Freddie.
“Won’t we all be too heavy?” asked Eddie.
“I’m very very strong,” replied Amy at the top.  “Grab on!”
So they all grabbed on, and Amy pulled, and then Rory pulled and then everyone else pulled and eventually they all tumbled out onto the ground – Amy and Rory and Anthony and James and Joel and Samuel and Eddie and Freddie and Sam and Captain Jack and The Doctor.
“An escape plan!” cried The Doctor.  “Always good to have one of those!  And it worked because now we’ve escaped!”
“erm, Doctor,” said Rory.  “Look up in the trees.”
So The Doctor, and everyone else, looked up into the trees and saw, to their horror, that they were filled with Peepoes.  Ten eyed, spiky handed, hairy Peepoes, and they looked very very annoyed.
“ah,” said The Doctor.  “Does anyone have another plan?”

Part Five

There were Peepoes in every single tree in Royston.  They stood up in the branches, waving their spiky hands at all the people stood in front of the TARDIS and the big metal box.
“So I guess they’re responsible for the prison down there?” asked Captain Jack.
“Looks that way,” replied The Doctor.
“I really don’t think we should be standing here, in the middle of them all,” said Rory.
“Good point,” said The Doctor, “Look, there’s a door over there, everyone run!”
So everyone – The Doctor, Amy and Rory, Captain Jack, Sam and Eddie and all of Sam and Eddie’s friends ran towards the door that The Doctor was pointing at.  Once they were all through, James slammed the door shut.
They were in a big room – just like a normal room in a house with a sofa and a telly and a table…  but all the walls were made of wood.
“Brilliant,” said The Doctor, “Now, ooh look, we seem to be inside a tree.”
“No!” cried Sam.  “That’s not brilliant at all.  We’re inside a tree, and Peepoes live in trees.  This is a Peepoe house!”
“Well it’s a good job there aren’t any Peepoes here,” said The Doctor.
“But they can climb up and down INSIDE the tree,” said Sam.  “They’ve got stairs.”
“ah, so you mean…” said The Doctor.
“If there’s a Peepoe on top of this tree, he could come down the tree and get us.” said Sam.
“Bad,” said The Doctor, “definitely bad.  Rory, shut that other door.”
So Rory shut the other door, that led to the stairs, and leant on it hard so that no-one could open it.
“Better,” said The Doctor, “but now we’re trapped.  Need to think.  Sam – you said the Peepoes would get us.  How would they do that?”
“They’ll throw their hair at us,” said Sam.  Amy giggled.
“urgh,” said The Doctor.  “That doesn’t sound like something I want to happen.  So the hair has to touch you?”
“Yes,” said Sam.  “It has to touch your skin.”
“aha!” said The Doctor, “so if we didn’t have any skin, we’d be OK?”
“Yes,” said Sam, “although I don’t know how that…”
“What’s this?” asked Eddie.  On the table was a small machine.  It was buzzing and whirring and glowing, and in the middle was something that looked a bit like a watch.
“That’s my vortex manipulator!” cried Captain Jack.
“It is,” agreed The Doctor.  “These Peepoes seem to have used it to rig up some kind of primitive temporo-spacial riftimajiggit.  Wow, clever Peepoes, that thing could rip holes in the fabric of time and space!”
“Like the one I fell through?” asked Captain Jack,
“Now you come to mention it,” said The Doctor, “yes.  Aha! That must be how they got all the aliens here.  Holes in time and space!  They couldn’t have done the hair throwing thing.  That would have killed the aliens.  Well, except for the Cybermen and the Daleks, as they haven’t got any skin.  Now, I wonder if I can take this apart.”
The Doctor reached out his hand, carefully.  Then he sneezed, and the whole temporo-spacial riftimajiggit fell to pieces.
“Oh,” said The Doctor.  “Not so clever Peepoes.  Oh well.”
“What you just said,” said Sam, “about Cybermen and Daleks.  Do you mean that they can’t be hurt by Peepoes because they’re made of metal?”
“Exactly right,” said The Doctor.  “You’re a very clever boy, Sam…”
“Then I have an idea,” said Sam, and with that he grabbed the vortex manipulator from the table, strapped it to his wrist, tapped a few buttons and vanished!

On the other side of Royston, half way down Green Drift, Sam reappeared in front of a smallish green box.  He smiled to himself.  He had a great plan.  If the Peepoes couldn’t kill something made of metal, then in order to escape they needed a robot.  And Sam had a robot of his very own.  A robot dog, in fact, that used to belong to The Doctor.  He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.
“K9!” he shouted.
The box opened up and a load of steam came out.  But no K9.  Sam was confused.  He looked inside the green box, and saw K9 just sitting there, not moving.
“Oh no!” said Sam, “He’s run out of batteries!”
Sam ran further down Green Drift and into his house.  In the living room, his daddy was playing with Alex.
“Daddy! Quick, I need batteries!”
“I think we’ve run out,” said daddy, “I’ll have to go back to Tesco.”
“There’s no time!” said Sam, “the Peepoes will take over all of Royston and then the whole world!”
“Oh dear, that’s no good,” agreed Sam’s daddy.  “Let’s see what we can find.”
And he took some batteries out of the remote control.
“Is that enough?” he asked.
“For a whole robot dog?” said Sam.  “No!”
“OK then,” said his daddy, and he took the batteries out of all of the remote controls, and the Wii remotes, and all of Sam’s toys and Alex’s toys.  Soon they had a great big pile of batteries.
“That should do it,” said Sam, and he scooped them all up and ran back down to where K9 was waiting.  He put all of the batteries in, and then waited.
K9 suddenly sprang to life.
“Mas-ter,” he said, slowly, “How can I help you?”
“K9, come with me!” said Sam, holding onto his lead.  “We need you to zap some Peepoes!”

The Doctor and the gang were still waiting in the Peepoe house when Sam reappeared in a flash of light.
“K9!” cried The Doctor.
“Hello, Master Doctor,” said K9.  “Master Sam tells me that there are Peepoes surrounding you.”
“Yes,” said The Doctor, “what I think I need you to do is…”
“I am familiar with fighting Peepoes,” said K9.
“Really?” asked The Doctor, “so you and Sam fight Peepoes all the time?”
“Affirmative,” agreed K9.  “Please open the door.”
So Sam opened the door to outside, and K9 trundled outside.  Instantly he was covered in Peepoe hair that they all threw at once, but it didn’t kill him as he was made of metal.  With one laser blast he destroyed all of the hair, and then started shooting at the Peepoes one by one.  As each one was hit, it disappeared in a puff of smoke, and although it took a long time, because there were a lot of them, K9 kept going until every single Peepoe was defeated.
“Hooray!” shouted everyone as K9 trundled back in.
“We’d better get back to nursery, then, if all the trouble’s over,” said Freddie.  “Are you coming, Eddie?”
Eddie said he was, and that he would see Sam later, so all of the boys went back to nursery, leaving just The Doctor, Rory, Amy, Captain Jack, Sam and K9 behind.
“All’s well that ends…” began The Doctor.
“erm, Doctor,” said Rory.  “I think you’ve all forgotten about the Peepoe that’s left behind this door!”
It was true, they had forgotten, and Rory was still holding the door to the stairs shut so that the Peepoe couldn’t get in.
“Stand aside, Master Rory,” said K9.
Rory counted to three and then jumped out of the way.  The door flew open and the Peepoe burst out, throwing hair this way and that.  K9 got him right between the eyes with a laser blast and the Peepoe vanished, just as the others had, in a puff of smoke.
“Good dog,” said Sam, with a grin.
“Affirmative,” said K9.
“But something’s wrong with The Doctor,” said Amy, worried.
The Doctor was holding one of his hands in a fist, and making a face that suggested he was in pain.  He opened his hand and in his palm was…  Peepoe hair!
“Oh no,” said Sam, “The Peepoe got you!”
“Don’t die, Doctor,” cried Amy.
“I won’t die,” said The Doctor.  “Only, I think I’m going to change.  Never been got by Peepoe hair before.  Never even knew what a Peepoe was…”
Suddenly his hands and face started to glow, and then he threw his head back with a massive burst of golden energy.  He was regenerating!
“Feels…  a… bit… strange…” was all he managed to say before the regeneration took over and he fell to the ground in a heap.
“Is he OK?” asked Rory.
“He will be,” said Captain Jack, “although we’re not going to recognise him.”
“I don’t know about that,” said The Doctor, straightening himself up.  “I’m not sure what happened, but… I’m back.”
And he grinned.  Something strange had definitely happened, because he had the Tenth Doctors face again!
“It’s… you!” said Captain Jack.
“Most definitely,” said The Doctor, “Not so much a re-generation as a de-generation but that’s OK.  Always up to try new things.  Except.  Why am I wearing a bow tie?”
“Bow ties are cool,” explained Amy.
“Are they?” asked The Doctor.  “OK, if you say so.  Right!  Jack – you’d better get back and sort out those Silurians.  Amy, Rory, guess you’re coming with me.  You’ll soon get used to it.  K9?”
“Yes, Master Doctor?”
“Are you back on board?” asked The Doctor.
“Affirmative,” replied K9.  And he, Amy and Rory left the Peepoe house to go back into the TARDIS.
“And how about you?” asked The Doctor, crouching down to talk to Sam.  “You’ve been very useful, and very clever, and very brave, young Sam.  And if there’s one thing I like it’s useful and clever and brave.  What do you say?  Fancy a spin in the TARDIS?”
“Come with you?” asked Sam.  “But my daddy says I’ve got be home for tea.”
The Doctor laughed.
“I’ve got a time machine,” he said.  “I can always get you back home for tea.”
“OK,” said Sam.
“In that case, welcome aboard!” said The Doctor.  “We’re going to have great adventures, you and me.”
And with that, Sam and the Tenth Doctor left the Peepoe house, got on board the TARDIS and set off on another amazing adventure.

THE END

Read it here: http://www.everydayfiction.com/the-dark-by-phil-oddy/

Phil,

Thanks for submitting and sorry for the long wait in getting back to
you. I’m going to pass on this one, but please do try me again.

Best,
[redacted]

On Thursday, February 10, 2011, Phil Oddy wrote:
> Submission from Phil Oddy (@philoddy):
>
>
>
> ==
>
> Story:
>
> As the beat faded I found I was dancing alone on the hillside. Everyone had vanished. I threw out my arms and proclaimed my love to the sky.
>
> ==
>
> Bio:
> Phil Oddy lives near Cambridge, UK and doesn’t get to go dancing much anymore.
>
> ===
>
>

Well, today I got this:

Dear Phil Oddy,

Congratulations! We are happy to tell you that we have decided to publish your story “The Dark” in Every Day Fiction.

…

Here is what our editorial team had to say about “The Dark”:

Chills. Yes.
– [redacted]

Wow. That definitely kicks the ending up a notch.
– [redacted]

Please let us know as soon as possible if you’d like to make any adjustments to your story based on these comments.

erm… Nope. That sounds pretty good to me.

Your story will most likely be scheduled for publication either next month or the following month; watch for our Table of Contents (published on the last day of each month) to see when your story will run, and we will also send you a reminder email shortly before your story is published.

For now, we look forward to publishing “The Dark”, and we hope to see more of your work in the future.

And then the narcissistic Google search I have set up on my name in Google Reader found this:

http://www.everydayfiction.com/junes-table-of-contents-2011/

So, June 15th it is. I’m going to be in Seoul that week…

(The story concerned is a 1,000 word version of http://philoddy.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/rejection-2/)

Dear Phil Oddy,

Your story “The Dark” was very close to an acceptance, but there were some slight problems, so we’d like to invite you to take another crack at it.

Oh I did enjoy this. It starts so simply, subtly painting a picture of [spoilers!] and the tension builds…You know something bad is going to happen when[spoilers!], but nobody could have forseen THAT coming! Excellent. Nice tight writing too. I think this will be a five star story if accepted.
– [redacted]

This is like [spoilers!]. I liked the open-endedness of [spoilers!], and very much enjoyed [spoilers!]. The difference between this and something like “The Mist” or IofBS, though, is that it didn’t really have much of a middle plot arc, and the ending stayed entirely TOO open. I wanted to latch onto a few more facts about what is going on so that, even if the main character does still [spoilers!], I have a feel for what is happening. Otherwise, this is mainly just an eerie portrait of abject loss, a wholly-downside-based vignette. Editorial nitpicks: The second sentence ends with a modifier phrase placed such that it sounds like they are going upstairs, far off in the distance. When you introduce Sam, we have no idea who he is or that he is a child. Just label him as “son” or “boy” to make his introduction smoother.
–[redacted]

This story has a nice creepy feel to it. The reader is curious and keeps going. Well done.

The word “was” is used quite a bit- some of them can be taken out to give more active sentences
– [redacted]

This one had me on the edge of my seat and I liked that. I agree with some of [redacted]‘s nitpicks and end felt a little too open for me too. But the tension was great and I got a good snapshot of the characters as well.
– [redacted]

Top notch suspense building and I always love my horror with a dash of humor. (The constant worry of [spoilers!] was chuckle-worthy).

I did want some kind of explanation and a bit stronger ending. I think having [spoilers!] rarely works and this piece is Exhibit A on why we take a hard look at stories that go that route. While the writing is very good, it is frankly a simple trick to paint your characters into a seemingly inescapable corner and then [spoilers!].

I’d really like to see this one published, but before we do it I think there are kinks that need to be worked out.
– [redacted]

Nicely built tension and a good creepy flavour. I really like the opening, and the idea [spoilers!] — very clever! I was tempted to just say yes to this as it stands, but then I realized that would do the story a disservice when a revision could take it to the next level; it’s good now, but could be excellent. I would really like to see a revised version of this piece, just tightened up a tiny bit and with a hint more of a resolution at the end — [spoilers!].
– [redacted]

We’d love to publish this piece, but we feel these issues need to be tackled.

I’d better get cracking, then.

Phil,

Thanks for submitting. I’m going to pass on this one, but please do
try me again.

Best,
[redacted]

On Thursday, February 17, 2011, Phil Oddy wrote:
Submission from Phil Oddy (@philoddy):

==

Story:

He returned to the cave at dusk, the fruits of his labour carved into the chalk hillside. Humanity was saved. That night, the rains came.

==

Bio:
Phil Oddy lives near Cambridge, UK, and regularly writes little things in the hope that they will turn into big things.

===