Alice was having a wonderful time in the magic cabinet of fun.
She had all the sticky toffee pudding she could eat, all the terrific cartons she could watch and also terrific conversations
about them with her best friends Doctor and Mickey. Doctor was very nice; she always wore pretty clothes
and knew where the aluminium snack bars were hidden. Mickey was always letting her win on the play station,
they would often play for hours at a time and it was always great fun. Currently she was standing in the
main room with the up and down thing. She like the ship, she was like a kind aunt to her. They
never spoke but they didn’t need to, they could sense each others feelings and emotions. Alice
had four whole emotions all of her own. She was happy when she was watching cartons. She
was sad when the cartoons stopped. She worried that the cartoons may never come back and she lonely when
Doctor and Mickey were sleeping. Everyone had their own room too, which was puzzling, why waste all that
space? She’d asked Doctor about it many times but she just said that she wasn’t going to make
the first move and Mickey said that he wouldn’t mind, as long as someone else tidied the place up. Alice
had tried tidying the place up once, but they had to delete her memory files of what happened afterwards, apparently they
found her traumatised and babbling about evil from the dawn of time.
Grundaldran swore
revenge on that dim-witted droid, for the fifteenth time that morning. So far he’d spent ten hellish
hours in a maximum comfort cell. They gave him food and company and a small picture box with sound to watch.
They hadn’t tortured him once, although he was prepared for it. Unlike on his own planet this
world treated its scum with dignity and respect. He swore to escape and conquer the planet and show them
the real meaning of suffering. He switched off Trisha and picked up the quasi-religious text about the
Cult of Gideon.
The Doctor was busy
doing her hair when Alice popped into her room for a chat. “Hi
Alice, could you pass me that second can of hairspray?”
Alice
passed the tasty looking metal can over. “You have very pretty hair. I just have
this frizzy mop of plastic fibres.”
“Maybe we
can brush them into a nice neat style?” The Doctor suggested and passed one of her non-metal brushes
to her new friend.
Alice
experimentally tried the brush through her ‘hair’ and to her surprise found that it did indeed make the tangle
much less tangled and much prettier. “Hey, the magic brush device really works.”
“It’s
not magic, Alice, just good grooming skills. Maybe you should
keep the brush and brush your hair every morning?”
“I’ve
never had things before.” Alice replied.
“Except my dress and my bunny slippers. I must be really rich now, owning things.
I must be the richest robot in the whole of this room.”
UNIT was put on
maximum alert following the escape of the alien captive known as Grundaldran.
Mickey was pacing
around the console room, looking at the screens, trying to figure out how to set the ship to land back in London
in May 2006, so he could see the results of the FA Cup final and make a fortune. However the Doctor and
her friendly robot stalker entered. “How do you make this thing work then Doctor?”
“Oh it’s
just a simple case of inputting the 26 dimensional co-ordinates of the target planet, then finding a way to avoid known dimensional
anomalies between us and the target world and then setting the relative speed densifier to compress or expand time within
the ship relative to the outside. After all the ship does have a minimum travel time and we don’t
want to exhaust the power supply again. We might not make it to Cardiff
in time.”
“I liked that
big metal all you can eat buffet.” Alice said to the
others.
“They nearly
arrested us for vandalism.” Mickey tried to explain things to Alice.
“It was a monument, not a meal.”
“Oh.
Maybe I should take some food with me next time. It’s so hard on a world with such limited
resources for robots. I can’t even change my oil in peace without someone complaining.”
Above, below and
around Earth a fleet of saucers appeared, as the had travelled at thousands of times the speed of light, which all scientists
on Earth stated was totally impossible – which goes to show how much they know!
The TARDIS materialised
in the middle of an empty Trafalgar square. “Looks like we missed New Year’s Eve.” The
Doctor pouted. “I was so looking forward to a splash around too.”
“It’s
illegal, they arrest you.” Mickey wondered if the Doctor was even half as intelligent as she said
she was.
“I don’t
like water.” Alice said to Mickey. “It
makes me scared and it rusts my insides.”
“Don’t
worry, yeah? We’ll keep well away from it.” Mickey felt protective towards
Alice, as she had the IQ of a banana sandwich.
Alice
took hold of Mickey’s hand. “I’m sacred. I think Grundaldran has come
to take me away.”
“I’ll
protect you.” Mickey replied.
“Will you
now?” Grundaldran shouted.
“Run!”
The Doctor shouted, and then remembered she was wearing four inch heels, really expensive ones too. She
paused to undo the straps so she could take them off.
“You shall
suffer, Doctor!” Grundaldran yelled and grappled the flame-haired woman.
“Help!”
The Doctor screamed and tried to set off her rape alarm. “Mickey, Alice,
get UNIT here!”
Mickey looked at
Alice. “We have to save the Doctor.”
“I’m
frightened.” Alice started to cry. “I’m
so confused. I think I might be developing a new emotion.”
“That’s
probably fear.” Mickey replied. “The thing about fear is you have to confront
it sooner or later. You have to control it or it will control you.”
Alice
picked up a metal park bench and wrenched off a large piece of metal. “I want to hit him with this.”
“I’ll
take that.” Mickey took hold of the weapon and dropped it because it was very heavy.
“Oh my foot!” He hopped about on his other foot. “I think I’ve
broken it.”
“Oh dear.”
Alice said to herself. “If I help Mickey then
the Doctor will get hurt, but if I help the Doctor then Mickey will still be in pain.”
“Help the
Doctor!” Mickey shouted. “She’s more important than me.”
“Are you in
love?” Alice asked Mickey.
“Never mind
that now, go and help the Doctor. She can fix my foot.”
“Ah.”
Alice saw the logic in Mickey’s words. “Of
course.” She hugged him briefly to cheer him up. Then she skipped over to help
the Doctor.
“Get this
loony off of me.” The Doctor shouted.
Alice
grabbed Grundaldran’s arm and he let go of the Doctor and lay on the ground screaming in pain. “I’ve
got him off you.” Alice smiled.
“You’ve
broken my bloody arm!” Grundaldran yelled.
“Well we obviously
have to help him.” The Doctor said to Alice.
“However Mickey’s in pain too. I’ll see to Mickey while you pick Grundaldran up
and dust him down.”
Alice
picked Grundaldran up and wondered why he started to cry even more, now he was just whimpering and mewling instead of screaming.
“Now to dust you down.”
“Keep away
from me!” Grundaldran begged for mercy.
Alice
went into the TARDIS and emerged a few moments later with the feather duster. “We’ll soon have
you nice and clean.” She smiled and set about cleaning Grundaldran up.
Grundaldran now
realised the true meaning of the word suffering and promised any passing deity who rescued him that he would devote his life
to helping the disadvantaged.
The saucers watched
the humiliating defeat of their most decorated war leader and knew that they wouldn’t stand a chance against Earth and
its army of killer robot maids. They left, quickly.
Mickey was in hospital,
recovering from his broken foot and crushed ribs. Luckily the Doctor had a handy gizmo for resetting bones
properly and he was almost ready to leave. However Alice had
found a banjo somewhere and she was playing it loudly to cheer him up. Mickey was all but ready to plead
with the hospital to let him go right now. The Doctor was no better either, she was singing along to the
tune, some bland pop nonsense about spicing up your life. How he wished either of them knew just one half-decent
rap song.
