Doctor Who: Nothing O'Clock: Eleventh Doctor: 50th Anniversary

7

Amy could hear the Doctor running down the stairs. She heard a voice that sounded strangely familiar calling to him, and then she heard a sound that filled her chest with despair: the diminishing vworp vworp of a TARDIS as it dematerialises.

The door opened at that moment, and she walked out into the downstairs hall.

‘He’s run out on you,’ said a deep voice. ‘How does it feel to be abandoned?’

‘The Doctor doesn’t abandon his friends,’ said Amy to the thing in the shadows.

‘He does. He obviously did in this case. You can wait as long as you want to, he’ll never come back,’ said the thing, as it stepped out of the darkness and into the half-light.

It was huge. Its shape was humanoid, but also somehow animal. (Lupine, thought Amy Pond, as she took a step backwards, away from the thing.) It had a mask on, an unconvincing wooden mask, that seemed like it was meant to represent an angry dog, or perhaps a wolf.

‘He’s taking someone he believes to be you for a ride in the TARDIS. And in a few moments reality is going to rewrite. The Time Lords reduced the Kin to one lonely entity cut off from the rest of Creation. So it is fitting that a Time Lord restores us to our rightful place in the order of things: all other things will serve me, or will be me, or will be food for me. Ask me what time it is, Amy Pond.’

‘Why?’

There were more of them now: shadowy figures. A cat-faced woman on the stairs. A small girl in the corner. The rabbit-headed man standing behind her said, ‘Because it will be a clean way to die. An easy way to go. In a few moments you will never have existed anyway.’

‘Ask me,’ said the wolf-masked figure in front of her. ‘Say, “What’s the time, Mister Wolf?”’

In reply, Amy Pond reached up and pulled the wolf mask from the face of the huge thing, and she saw the Kin.

Human eyes were not meant to look at the Kin. The crawling, squirming, wriggling mess that was the face of the Kin was a frightful thing; the masks had been as much for its own protection as for everyone else’s.

Amy Pond stared at the face of the Kin. She said, ‘Kill me if you’re going to kill me. But I don’t believe that the Doctor has abandoned me. And I’m not going to ask you what time it is.’

‘Pity,’ said the Kin, through a face that was a nightmare. And it moved towards her.

The TARDIS engines groaned once, loudly, and then were silent.

‘We are here,’ said the Kin. Its Amy Pond mask was now just a flat scrawled drawing of a girl’s face.

‘We’re here at the beginning of it all,’ said the Doctor, ‘because that’s where you want to be. But I’m prepared to do this another way. I could find a solution for you. For all of you.’

‘Open the door,’ grunted the Kin.

The Doctor opened the door. The winds that swirled about the TARDIS pushed the Doctor backwards.

The Kin stood at the door of the TARDIS. ‘It’s so dark.’

‘We’re at the very start of it all. Before light.’

‘I will walk into the Void,’ said the Kin. ‘And you will ask me, “What time is it?” And I will tell myself, tell you, tell all Creation, Time for the Kin to rule, to occupy, to invade. Time for the Universe to become only me and mine and whatever I keep to devour. Time for the first and final reign of the Kin, world without end, through all of time.’

‘I wouldn’t do it,’ said the Doctor, ‘if I were you. You can still change your mind.’

The Kin dropped the Amy Pond mask on to the TARDIS floor.

It pushed itself out of the TARDIS door, into the Void.

‘Doctor,’ it called. Its face was a writhing mass of maggots. ‘Ask me what time it is.’

‘I can do better than that,’ said the Doctor. ‘I can tell you exactly what time it is. It’s no time. It’s Nothing O’Clock. It’s a microsecond before the Big Bang. We’re not at the Dawn of Time. We’re before the Dawn.

‘The Time Lords really didn’t like genocide. I’m not too keen on it myself. It’s the potential you’re killing off. What if, one day, there was a good Dalek? What if …’ He paused. ‘Space is big. Time is bigger. I would have helped you to find a place you could have lived. But there was a girl called Polly, and she left her diary behind. And you killed her. That was a mistake.’

‘You never even knew her,’ called the Kin from the Void.

‘She was a kid,’ said the Doctor. ‘Pure potential, like every kid everywhere. I know all I need.’ The squiggly whatsit attached to the TARDIS console was beginning to smoke and spark. ‘You’re out of time, literally. Because Time doesn’t start until the Big Bang. And if any part of a creature that inhabits time gets removed from time … well, you’re removing yourself from the whole picture.’

The Kin understood. It understood that, at that moment, all of Time and Space was one tiny particle, smaller than an atom, and that until a microsecond passed, and the particle exploded, nothing would happen. Nothing could happen. And the Kin was on the wrong side of the microsecond.

Cut off from Time, all the other parts of the Kin were ceasing to be. The It that was They felt the wash of non-existence sweeping over them.

In the beginning – before the beginning – was the word. And the word was ‘Doctor!’

But the door had been closed and the TARDIS vanished, implacably. The Kin was left alone, in the Void before Creation.

Alone, forever, in that moment, waiting for Time to begin.