Right, so I finally decided to go through with my Who fic idea starring the Professor. Think of it as a spin-off, different characters but same universe. So it's inevitable that we'll bump into some familiar faces along the ride. Feedback is allowed. This is my first run at science fiction so enjoy.
A man sat at his computer, pulling up the main page of Hulu. He put in a search for his favorite show that he missed on television and began watching instantly for free. His eyes are glued to the computer screen as soon as the show started playing. He laughed at the animated images before all of a sudden he was placed into a trance. His facial features like a mindless zombie as a narrowed beam of light shot out from the monitor and touched his forehead, causing the man to scream in agony as his own brainwaves were drained and the life inside his eyes went dead before his face fell onto his desk and the beam of light disappeared.
Wheels on the Bus
The sound of the school bell echoed across the halls of Wyandotte High School as the students rushed to class. Among them was a redheaded woman whose stood at five feet, seven inches with emerald green eyes and who's hair barely came down the back of her neck. She entered into history class with her books and cellphone in hand then found a seat around the middle row and sat down while the others continued to enter. Not long after the students had all gathered did the teacher walk into the room, dressed in a turquoise shirt with a black blazer over it and matching black pants and shoes. She possessed a strong brow and jawline, intense dark brown eyes and matching colored hair that fell down past her shoulders and to her back. The professor placed her things down on the desk and then began writing on the blackboard while addressing the class, “Good morning, class!” She turned around and stepped to the side in order to reveal the words, 'The Professor,' which she had written on the blackboard.
“I'm your new substitute, the Professor.”
Before she could say anything more she noticed most everyone in the class was on their cellphone texting to one another and not paying attention.
“All right then.”
The woman turned around and waited, and in the next couple of second the redhead and the rest of the class watched as the cellphones shut down. Any attempt to turn the phones back on was proven to be futile, and they now had no choice but to pay attention as the Professor turned back to face them again.
“Today we will be learning about the Ottoman Empire.”
The Professor grabbed the box full of outline maps she had placed on the desk and set it down on the far right student desk at the front row.
“Pass that on to the rest – and these.”
She added a sealed plastic bag of markers along with it to be passed down to the rest of the class.
“The Ottoman Empire was founded in 1299 in north-western Anatolia by Turkish tribes led by Osman Bey. The formation of the state would later be the foundation for an empire in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople. An empire at its greatest during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent. On your maps I have given each of you, I want you to draw the extent and details of the Ottoman Empire during the time of this Emperor.”
The students went to work, the redhead balancing a marker on her nose while the teacher wasn't looking before going about doing her assignment. When they were finished they all headed to the front desk to hand in their assignment so they could be excused. The last one to do it being the redhead, who noticed her cellphone turned back on the moment she handed in her assignment.
“That's weird,” said the redhead.
“Perhaps the universe is trying to tell you something,” said the Professor, grading her assignment.
“And what's that?”
“That you shouldn't have your cellphone on during class, Miss...”
The Professor looked down at the assignment to see it was signed “Tori Jacobs.”
“Jacobs.”
The Professor smiled and handed her now graded assignment back to her.
“I doubt the universe is that concerned with my paying attention,” said Tori as she took back her assignment.
“You'd be surprised,” replied the Professor.
The Professor looked at her watch and then stood up from her seat in a hurry.
“If you excuse me I have somewhere I need to be.”
She rushed out of the door, a bit too quickly as Tori noticed a black pen fall to the floor on her way out of the classroom. Tori went over to it and picked it up while calling to the Professor, “Professor, you dropped your–” Tori stopped as she looked over the sleek black pen, emerald green eyes coming to the blue light at the end of the pen, a quiet scanning noise coming from the pen as she held it away from her out of fear that it was going to explode or something. Tori was at a loss for words and upon seeing that the Professor hasn't come back she assumed she didn't hear her. That much was proven true as she entered out into the hallway and saw the Professor heading towards the main entrance of the school.
“Professor!”
Tori called out again, making her way through the crowd of students and heading out through the entrance. She spotted the Professor up ahead, heading straight for the school bus parking lot. Raising an eyebrow, Tori followed her to the parking lot and decided to stay quiet this time. To her knowledge there wasn't a field trip planned today, and there were no students accompanying her, so why was she here? Tori stood behind one of the other school buses, and peered around it to see the Professor standing in front of the door of the bus right next to it. The Professor engaged the manual override causing the door to open and then stepped up into the bus closing the door behind her. Tori moved in for a closer look, trying to see through the windows of the bus, but they were all foggy.
'What in the world could she be doing in there?' thought Tori.
Tori knocked on the school bus to see if the Professor would open them. After all she was out here to return a pen so surely she wouldn't get too angry at her for skipping class. But there was no answer on the other side, and she knew she would have heard it. It was a school bus, you could hear a knock on the door anywhere inside. Tori began to look around the school bus and knocked again, but the Professor still didn't answer. This caused suspicion to enter the redhead's mind as she took another look at the pen, namely the blue light at the end of the pen. It looked like a regular pen except for that one small detail. Curious, Tori pointed the blue light at the school bus' door to see if it would do anything and the door suddenly came open. Smoke drifted out of the door and continued on through the air, confusion settled in while her eyes came up to look through the doorway as the smoke settled and she saw...
An impossibility.
Tori stepped into a round control room with silver walls and floors, the pattern of the floors changed to black when closer to the hexagonal pedestal, also silver, with six control panels colored blue possessing buttons, unreadable symbols, knobs and levers. There were two binoculars on one side and a small scope on the other. Above that was a white moveable column that appeared to contain some kind of energy inside it. To the right-hand side of the room by the door was a big screen, currently blank, yet still no sign of the Professor. Tori turned around and started to head back to the door which closed shut by the time she could reach them. Startled, she tried to open them with her bare hands but they wouldn't budge. She then came to her senses from the initial shock and tried opening it as she did before, with the pen. But the door wasn't responding. She was trapped, on an alien spaceship that was–
“Bigger on the inside!”
Tori nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice, spinning around and aiming the end of the pen towards the Professor who seemed to have come out of nowhere.
“Well, not exactly. It's not that this room you see now is crammed inside of the “school bus” you see outside, but this room is actually a separate dimension entirely from the one you were in before. The outside is a gateway, transporting you from one dimension to the other with a single step.”
“W-who are you!?”
“I'm the Professor, and you have my pen so if I could just have that back–”
The Professor took a step forward, and Tori took a step back and aimed the pen at her threateningly.
“D-don't come any closer!”
“Put the pen down before you hurt yourself, Ms. Jacobs. I doubt your primitive little mind would even know how to operate it.”
“This primitive little mind had no problem opening the door, so stay back!”
“You didn't open anything,” explained the Professor, “the TARDIS recognized the pen as mine and allowed you in.”
“TARDIS?”
“Time And Relative Dimension In Space, preschooler stuff. Now give me the pen.”
“Not until you tell me who you are!”
“I told you, I'm the Professor, are you hard of hearing?”
“I don't know many professors who own spaceships!”
“Time And Relative Dimension In Space, it's a time machine.”
“You're from the future?”
“You could say that.”
The Professor turned a knob on the panel by her side and in the seconds to pass Tori watched as the school bus door vanished into thin air.
“W-what did you do? What did you do!?”
“I made the door disappear.”
“You can't do that!”
“It's my TARDIS and I'll do with it as I please. If you ever want to see the light of day again I suggest you give me back my pen.”
Tori was caught between a rock and a hard place, her only advantage seemed to be the pen that this “alien” had mistakenly left behind, but at the same time it did her little good if she didn't know how to use it. Not wanting to spend the rest of her life trapped inside a time machine, Tori slowly handed the pen over to its rightful owner.
“Very good,” said the Professor.
The Professor put the pen into her jacket pocket and this time made sure to secure it more tightly before turning back to her console and began punching in commands.
“Aren't you going to bring back the door?”
“Hm?”
“The door. You said you'd bring it back.”
“I lied. Rule one.”
“You can't keep me here forever, people will come looking.”
“They'll look, they'll hope, they'll pray, they'll presume you dead, grieve and move on. Such is life.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
The Professor pulled away from the console and brought out her pen once again.
“This is the Sonic Pen. It can lock, unlock, open and close doors. Perform scans, possess over two hundred different settings and is useful at shutting down annoying electronic devices so students in class will pay attention!”
The Professor tossed the pen from her right to her left hand.
“Not a bad pen either.”
“That was you?” questioned Tori. “When our cellphones shut down. That was you?”
“The one and only,” answered the Professor as she put the pen away.
“What are you going to do me?”
“Haven't decided yet,” the Professor replied, going back to her console. “The easiest solution would be just to kill you and dispose of the body, but killing isn't exactly my style.”
“I-I won't tell anyone about this. I promise.”
“Oh, I don't believe that for a minute.”
“Then erase my memories! Like Men in Black.”
“If only it that was simple.”
“Please... I want to go home.”
“Be quiet. I'm working.”
Tori stood there trembling in fear, only being able to watch as the Professor went from one control panel to the next, operating something that appeared to have been made for six people. A grinding and whirring sound started and Tori looked up to the screen that now displayed a vortex blue in color. Tori wanted to ask what that was but was afraid to disturb her captor.
“It's the Time Vortex,” said the Professor, who seemed to know exactly what Tori was thinking. “A transdimensional spiral which connects to all points in space and time allowing you to travel everywhere and anywhere.”
“Who are you...?”
“Have you ever been in a time loop? It's where you experience the same event over, and over, and over from here to eternity and that's exactly how I feel with this conversation.”
“What are you? If you're going to keep me trapped in this...”
“Time And Relative Dimension In Space.”
“Right. If you're going to keep me trap here then I at least deserve to know what you are!”
“I'm a Time Lady. I'm three-hundred and thirteen years old, from the planet Gallifrey...”
The grinding and whirring sound returned, this time being accompanied by the sound of something hitting the ground. The screen now showing some random person's bedroom and a boy being attacked by a beam shooting out of his computer screen.
“And I have a job to do. You wait here.”
“What's going on? What am I supposed to do in here?”
“Whatever you like.”
The Professor brought back the door, which now looked like a closet door and then used her Sonic Pen to lock up the controls and smiled at Tori.
“Except that.”
The Professor went over to the closet door and opened it, stepping out into the bedroom as the door slid itself closed behind her. Tori attempted to escape but the door refused to open up for her. Instead, she was forced to watch the display screen as the Professor pulled back on the boy's computer chair and then pushed him out of the way of the beam as he rolled across the floor. She then brought out her Sonic Pen and proceeded to scan the beam until...
“Eureka!” the Professor exclaimed.
She went over to the side of the computer desk and unplugged it to make the light disappear. Dropping the cord and then turning around to look at a scared boy in shock.
“You're not going to want to turn that back on until at least an hour and a half has passed.”
Without another word spoken to the boy, the Professor headed back through the closet door and returned to her TARDIS where Tori was waiting.
“Oh, you're not going to kidnap him as well?” asked Tori sarcastically. “He might tell somebody about you.”
“He doesn't even believe what he saw himself. I won't have to worry.”
The Professor went back to her controls, unlocking them with her pen and began punching in more commands.
“Are you going to tell me what's going on?” asked Tori. “What brings a Time Lady to earth?”
“Hulu,” answered the Professor.
“Hulu?” repeated Tori.
“Hulu – you're worse than a time loop.”
“What? You mean to tell me Hulu really is an evil alien plot to take over the world?” said Tori sarcastically.
“Not sure. But at the very least it's being used to mask attacks on people who watch Hulu online. By invoking emotional responses from various television shows they're absorbing the electrical signals given off by the human brain when chemicals are released to stimulate an emotional response. The effects are like sucking a power from the battery, or over-taxing an electrical system. By draining these electrical impulses the victim falls into a deep coma from which they may never recover due to the decrease in brain activity. I've managed to finally track the source of the signal to...”
The earth's orbit appeared on the screen.
“There.”
“The earth? You tracked the source of the signal to the earth?”
“Are all humans as loud as you?”
“Only the ones who are held against their will in spaceships.”
“Time machine.”
“Whatever!”
“It's not the earth. It's the space next to it.”
“There's nothing there.”
“That's because they're cloaked.”
The Professor put in a course for the source of the signal and the TARDIS began to transport itself to the alien ship.
“Are you blindly landing this thing inside a ship you can't even see?” asked Tori.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” replied the Professor.
The TARDIS landed and this time when the door reappeared it was a dark beige colored automatic ship door. The Professor walked out, this time allowing Tori to follow suit. Through the TARDIS doors there was a male humanoid on a chair at the center of a large, beige colored bridge with computers all around him, hooked up to tubes carrying the electrical currents from others into his brain. The humanoid alien looked like a man if their skin was completely removed and the only thing that remained was muscle and bone. Round black eyes glared holes into the Professor and Tori as he let out a growl at their presence. He would have stood up had he not already been in the middle of feeding. He was completely vulnerable.
“I should have known,” said the Professor.
“Should have known what?” asked Tori.
“It's a Phanophor. A parasite who goes from planet, to planet, feeding off emotional energy of entire species all to sustain its own wretched life. If you can call this a life...”
“Where's it skin?”
“That is its skin. It just looks like a human with his skin torn off but it's the farthest thing from human that can exist. Aren't you?”
“Lies,” said the Phanophor weakly.
“You deny it?” asked the Professor.
“Lies...”
“Deny it all you want your days of feeding off of people's emotions are over. Say goodbye.”
“LIES!”
The Professor ran over to one of the controls to the left of the room. Tori remained close, afraid of what would happen if that thing got up and attacked. Once again Tori could only watch in utter confusion as she punched in commands and suddenly the electrical current reversed, and even more came pouring out of the creature's mind as he cried out terrible anguish until there was nothing left...
But a corpse.
“D-did you kill it?” asked Tori.
“I hacked into the ship's computer network and reversed the draining process to return all the emotional energy the Phanophor had drained until there was nothing left. As I said before, it feeds off the energy to sustain its life. No more energy, no more life.”
“I thought killing wasn't your style? Or was that another lie?”
“Killing innocent civilians isn't my style. Alien parasites are another story.”
The Professor punched in more commands into the alien's ship computer.
“Now what are you doing?” asked Tori.
“Plotting a course out of this system and then rigging it to explode once it makes it there. That way it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.”
The course was plotted and the ship began to make its way out of the solar system.
“And that's our cue to leave,” said the Professor.
The Professor led Tori back through the TARDIS door, sending it to a random spot in space itself where it would drift there, the stars around them showing on the display screen while the Professor walked around the console, glancing at Tori who was being the most quiet she had been since leaving the alien ship.
“What to do with you,” the Professor said, more to herself than anything.
“You can take me home,” suggested Tori.
“And let you talk about what you've seen here? I don't think so.”
“Who would believe me?”
“A lot more people than you would think.”
“What must I do to get you to trust me?” asked Tori, and then an idea came to the redhead. Like a lightbulb coming on. “I know... Take me with you.”
“What?”
“Look, you're not going to kill me and you're not going to let me go. So instead of just being left to rot in some brig, or whatever you use to hold prisoners, let me help you. I travel with you through time as an assistant, and if I gain your trust you let me go. What do you have to lose?”
The Professor said nothing right away, she only looked at Tori in silence. Thinking over her proposal, those intense brown eyes coming back to stare into Tori, who tried her best to be brave through it all. Until finally the Professor turned back around to her console.
“All right, Ms. Jacobs. Let's see if you can earn my trust.”
Tori sighed in relief, glad that the Professor had accepted her proposal and watched as the Time Lady once again took off for some unknown part in time, seeing the screen show the Time Vortex that was red this time instead of blue as she asked, “Where are we heading?”
The Professor looked up from the controls at Tori and smiled, “To the future.”
Next Time: “Welcome to the Twenty-Third century!” exclaimed the Professor.
--------------------------------------
Tori stepped out of the TARDIS to see the interior of an underground water base.
--------------------------------------
“Thanks to the effects of global warming, three-quarters of the earth's surface is drowned in water – leading some underwater.”
--------------------------------------
“What's that?” asked Tori, motioning to the mechanical drone nearby.
“That's an assistant drone,” answered the crewman, “they help with the day-to-day operations of the base. Don't worry, they're harmless.”
--------------------------------------
The assistant drone fired on one of the crewmen.
--------------------------------------
“No one is getting on or off this base until those machines are shut down,” said the captain.
--------------------------------------
Armed guards blocked the Professor and Tori's access to the TARDIS.
Subject: The Professor and the TARDIS 
11th April 2013, 11:03 pm
