NCJDDAS: Work In Progress

NCJDDAS: Work In Progress

Chapter One

The TARDIS landed in the blankness of eternity.

The White Void Was All Encompassing, stretching on, forever.

The Doctor stepped out. “Oh, god, it’s like Scherzo all over again.” She muttered.

“What?” said Danny, poking his head out of the TARDIS concernedly.

“Look, whatever happens, we are-” She screamed with excitement! 

“Look! Look over there!” she joyfully remarked. “It’s not a void of doom!”

As they looked in the opposite direction, a grassy field with a beautiful sky was apparent. Natural, Earth Like. Gorgeous. And In the opposite direction, an infinity of nothing.

“Oh, this is proper surreal.” said Danny, joyfully. “All your trips like this? Some Alice In Wonderland Stuff?” 

“No.” said The Doctor. “Usually only when Audio companies decide to be experimental. Look at this! This is so weird!” 

“You’re one to talk.” said Danny, sitting back on the grass. “Hey!” he said. “What’s this?”

The Doctor got down on her knees and examined the ground. 

“It’s a legal statement.” she said. Ground © Copyrighted by StarCorp Enterprises, One Of A Kind Dirt, Any Similarities to Dirt in other locations coincidental, All rights reserved.”

“Oh, What The Hell!?” said Danny joyously. “This is so cool!!!” 

“This is very concerning, Danny.” the Doctor said, getting out her sonic screwdriver. “Let’s look for more legal jargon.” The Doctor looked over on the void, and noticed 12 point Arial printed font in a section of it. 

WORK IN PROGRESS. 

“Oh,” said The Doctor. “Shit.” 

The Doctor walked back towards the TARDIS. “Danny, we’re leaving.” 

“Doctor! Come on! This is my first planet!” Danny moaned like a child who had his toy taken away. 

“This is hell.” The Doctor said dismissively, walking back towards the TARDIS. 

“Oh, it can’t be that bad!” Danny said.

“Your initial reaction was literally ‘what the hell’ so I’m making my judgement, let’s-a-go, alrighty?

“Five minutes?”

“I’ve had this kind of thing happen to me before, and nothing good comes out of ‘five minutes.’ Go back. Now.”

“What’s got you so riled up?” 

“This is Meta 9.” said The Doctor. “We’ve entered a reality that is going to initialize a basic day for us based on our brain scans.”

“What?”

“This is a meta planet. They’re designed for people who want boring, cookie cutter lives, and those lives are fabricated by computers based on what’s normal for them. If it recognizes the crap we go through as normal-”

“Bad?”

“Bad. Especially since this one isn’t finished booting yet.”

The Doctor got into the TARDIS. It was a very average TARDIS. As in all of the rooms it had ever had were overlaid on each other. Bookshelves, Roundrels, Swimming Pools, Backup TARDIS rooms. It was impossible.

The Doctor pushed herself out.

“The TARDIS is already infected. We have to split up, maybe that will tax the Meta planet’s circuits.”

“I don’t understand this!”

“Don’t worry!” The Doctor called back. “It’s the Holodeck from Star Trek trying to create us an ordinary day. That’s bad, because mine is a planetary invasion, how about you run like I asked!”

“Gotcha!” said Danny, still not understanding, but running in the opposite direction of The Doctor like a good boy who did what he was told. 

Danny ran into the green, gorgeous landscape.

The Doctor ran into the Void.

Chapter Two

Danny entered the Landscape, running. He ran up the rolling hills, and back down again, and so on, seemingly forever and ever. As he ran, things began to fall out of the Sky.

“Danny?” They asked.

As Danny ran, he passed every element of his life. The TARDIS, Danny Devito, Office Paperwork, Daleks, Pizza, Filing Cabinets, that girl named Cicily that always bugged him at office reception…

He was suddenly in an office reception room.

Cicily was standing in front of him, behind her desk, prim and perfect, and ever so proper, with her blonde beehive hair that reminded him of Miss Moneypenny from the Bond Movies. 

“Mr. Danny, sir. Welcome to your Starcorp Average Day Experience.” she chirped, in an annoying fashion. 

“I’d prefer not, actually, to be welcomed.” Danny stammered. “I need to tax these meta circuits, whatever that means.”

“I’d like you to proceed to your desk, Mr. Danny, sir. I’m sure you can forget about all of that without too much trouble.” Cicily said, in an insipid tone. 

“I want to leave.” said Danny, enunciating every word clearly, so Cicily couldnt be dumb enough to ignore him. Cicily’s red lipstick sneered back wickedly.

Danny was at his office desk, filling out paperwork on his laptop, entering all of the numbers. 

He couldn’t stop.

01010111 01101111 01110111 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101100 01101111 01100001 01100100 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101000 01100001 01101110 01100100 01110011…

The Doctor ran through the void, her cape billowing behind her like Princess Kaguya. 

She thought to herself. This’ll be safer, they can’t render anything here, yet. It’s a Work in Progress meta world, I-

The Doctor stopped, staggering with fear at a line that she saw in the distance.

Depth. That’s one thing a Work In Progress Area doesn’t have.

It wasn’t unfinished, it was just abandoned midway through! It would still be functional.

Oh no, oh no, oh no… 

It was a town. A fully rendered town, with no texture. All of the buildings, all of the shapes were there, but nothing material. Just white shapes of houses sticking out of an endless void of white nothing. 

And shapes moving around it.

People. 

The Doctor cautiously went forward, and by cautiously, I mean she ran like an idiot. 

She couldn’t stop herself. 

Just then something grabbed her arm, and stopped her.

“Doctor John Smith, we’re so glad you came!” 

It was an artists’ outline. All circles and lines across the face and chest, a slightly detailed stick figure. The Doctor would have commented that she was a woman, and not John Smith, but she was averagely stuck with male regenerations. The Meta wouldn’t have been able to cope. Of course, this was the meta. Whatever the stick figure of doom was.

“I’m NPC, Doctor. There’s something in the sewers that is eating all of the cities people. You must help us!”

The Doctor edged away from NPC, but another entered from behind a building outline.

“Doctor, the Pirate King is exploiting the poor! You must help us!” 

And another.

“Doctor, the Daleks have invaded!”

And another.

“Doctor, a famous historical figure needs your help!” 

“Doctor!

Doctor!

Doctor!” 

The Doctor turned away from the NPCs, but they surrounded her. 

Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Nicola Tesla, Winston Churchill, Rory Williams, Nardole, Clara Oswald, River Song, Ace, Susan, Liv, The Monk, Missy, Cybermen, Autons, Clive Cooper, Cassandra, Leela, Romana, Adric-

They wouldn’t stop rambling. The Doctor’s average was too much for it to handle in the normal environment, but in this Null void- 

Danny tapped the K key, repeatedly. Office Job’s were so boring. What a boring day at work.

How long had he been here?

Cicily stared at him intently. 

An average day… Why was he here? Wasn’t his average day now with the Doctor? Or was this the only average thing possible. Nothing out of his outstanding adventures with the Doctor? He didn’t have average days anymore. Wait, who was the Doctor? 

Cicily pointed at a spelling error on his laptop. He got up. This wasn’t right.

“I demand to be let out of this!’ he said, trying as hard as he could to be the boisterous macho guy. It was a bit of a failure. 

“Return to your seat.” Said Cicily, angrily. 

Danny turned and ran. 

Ran through the office doors and into the greenery outside, but then he was inside again, standing right next to Cicily.

“If you won’t do your work…” Cicily said… “We’ll just have to replace you.” 

Two white boxes of cardboard go up from the floor. 

Two behemoths, that kept rising, getting taller and taller, until they were five times his height.

On their chest, in arial 12 print, was

INSERT MONSTER HERE

Chapter Three

The monsters fell from the sky.

INSERT MONSTER HERE, they said, landing next to the Doctor. 

“Save us from the Monster’s, Doctor!” the NPC’s screamed. 

The Doctor looked at the monsters with the enthusiasm of a Koala on Sleeping Pills. 

“Oh. No.” she said. “I’ll just have to stop them!”

I Am The Doctor By Murray Gold plays from somewhere within the void. 

“With my trusty TARDIS and Sonic Screwdriver-” the Doctor said, “I can beat the bad guys! Yay, I’m a super great monster stopper, woo, hoo!” She continued in a blatant monotone. 

“I am the Doctor!” she stumbled forward, seemingly half asleep. “And, Im.. really… important… I think… So you just try and stop me!” 

OH NO IT IS THE DOCTOR! KILL THE DOCTOR! Screamed the INSERT MONSTER HERE’S. 

“According to the um, tachyon particles, I can release artron energy to destroy you, in a, um, technobabble format! 

OH NO said INSERT MONSTER HERE and the other INSERT MONSTER HERE’S as they fell over.

“I win!” said the Doctor squeaking like a six year old child and walking away, bored with her life. 

“Now,” said Cicily, “In the name of the office clerk female villains, I shall destroy you! Felicia, ready the laser blaster that is incredibly imprecise that we will use for a cliffhanger!”

Felicia took out the laser blaster of imprecision. Danny was pretty sure he had known Felicia at some point, but he couldn’t really place her.

“You interfere with the development of a StarCorp Meta planet, and you die!” Cicily cackled, before The Doctor entered and roundhouse kicked her to the ground.

“Let me guess,” said The Doctor. “Office workers?” 

“Yeah, I think they’re a part of the planet or something. Felecia turned towards the Doctor with her impractical alien gun.

“Your guns facing the wrong way.” said The Doctor.

“Oh, thank you.” said Felicia, “It’s such a strange design.”

Felecia unintentionally turned the gun towards herself and blasted herself over.

Danny shrieked. “You shot her!”

“She did!” The Doctor said. “We’re leaving this place. It’s very stupid.” 

The Doctor and Danny turned and walked back towards the TARDIS. 

As they reached close to the ship, Danny muttered. “For my first alien planet it was just so-”

“Dull, made up, cliche, derivative?” Suggested the Doctor. 

“Normal.” Said Danny. “Cicily and Felicia, they were some office workers I knew, and they had me fill out paperwork, and it was so boring, and-”

The Doctor looked at him severely.

“This place,” she began, “is one of the strangest planets I’ve ever encountered. Your boring, is my wonder. How could someone have devised such a place? And why was it unfinished, and abandoned? We never met one person here that was actually real, all holograms and flesh avatars and mind shells…And you say it’s boring. I say, this is magnificent!” 

She rapped on the TARDIS doors. “If you wanna keep on getting bored, I can send you home, right now, and it’ll be like you never left. You can go back to your office, and hit the letter K repeatedly. But I know you don’t want that. On the other hand, you can come with me, and we can see how deep the rabbit hole goes.” 

“That lines from the Matrix.” 

“Never seen it.” Said the Doctor, wandering inside the TARDIS.

“Unless you’re talking about the gallifreyan high command files, woah, boy, those were something…”

As the Doctor and Danny got back into the TARDIS, chimes tinkled in the endless void. And Voices whispered, darkness flowing out of the word STARCORP, embroidered on the endless wall.

The End?

This Story Hypothetically Starred
Dame Judi Dench as The Doctor
Danny Devito as Danny
Evanna Lynch as Cicily
Daisy Ridley as Felicia
Anthony Daniels as NPC
with Nicholas Briggs as INSERT MONSTER HERE