travelling

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’sface.‘We’re here at the beginning of it all,’ said the Doctor, ‘because that’s where you want to be. ButI’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 tellmyself, tell you, tell all Creation,
Time for the Kin to rule, to occupy, to invade.
Time for theUniverse 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’rekilling 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 calledPolly, 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 outof time, literally. Because Time doesn’t start until the Big Bang. And if any part of a creature thatinhabits 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, nothingould 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 theash 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 theVoid before Creation.Alone, forever, in that moment, waiting for Time to begin.

Nothing O'Clock