Entry Twenty-eight- Bolomo (3)

I never really thought that I'd ever get to the point my life where I had to go back to work at Henrick's Department Store. I mean, it wasn't so bad, at a time. Mum even thought it was a bit posh, but I'm a different person now, and going back to work in a shop after travelling and helping people and saving things and all that stuff that I'd done with the Doctor... it was the worst thing that I could imagine.


But I didn't have any other choice. I could have grieved for myself but I had much more important grieving to do. And I missed time and space, obviously, it'd become my life. and I missed every minuted of it. But I missed the Doctor more. Some nights I'd go back to the TARDIS and with a torch, the lights were never on anymore. I couldn't really stay away. I'd wander the halls, exploring rooms I'd never seen before, play dress up in the wardrobe, just like we'd done sometimes, when I begged. I slept in my bed sometimes. I never moved anything, it was all the way it had been when we'd been travelling.

I spent the majority of my time in the console room. It was bleak, depressing really. After Christmas, with the Sycorax, when the TARDIS hadn't been able to translate the language into my head, I'd asked the Doctor what the TARDIS would ever do without him. I knew they were connected, I don't know... physically or something. He said that she probably wouldn't. Time Lords are connected with their TARDISes and if the Time Lord dies the TARDIS has no purpose anymore, and will just... die of grief. Now, standing in the console room, I believed it.


Sometimes I would run my hand over her controls or against the coral columns and sometimes I'd feel a faint hum in my head that was either very faint or wishful thinking, but most of the time I felt nothing. She might've been even more hollow than me.

And life went on. As it must.

I wasn't happy, I wasn't content, I wasn't even myself anymore. And I could tell that people were concerned. Mum could hardly concentrate on anything else and Shareen would come by to watch EastEnders and Hollyoaks, but I couldn't figure out what was going on anymore. They were just actors doing... acting things on a screen. It wasn't important. We'd go out for drinks with Keisha, and they'd try on flirting with boys, but I couldn't react.

I knew that I had to snap out of it, and I tried. I didn't know when would be too long, when everyone would get tired to feeling sorry for me and start feeling annoyed. I didn't think it could be much longer. And I tried I really did, but I couldn't... I just couldn't move on.

And then one night, not any different than any other night, I was tucked up into my bed sleeping and I heard my name. Just once, and not loudly, not alarming, not anything except that it was obviously his voice.

I figured that I had to have been dreaming. But then the next night it was the same. He was calling me again, only this time slightly more urgently. And when I awoke from it, I forced myself back into sleep. He never said anything besides my name, and I knew that it was just my imagination, my mind hearing what it wanted to hear, but I started spending as much time as possible asleep. I called into work sick, I told mum I had a headache one day, a stomach ache the next. I knew that she was concerned, but I didn't care because as long as I was asleep, he'd be talking to me.

And then it wasn't just when I was asleep. One night when Shareen was over for EastEnders I was sitting on the couch eating chips when I heard my name again, clear as day. I stopped mid-chip.

"You okay?" Shareen asked me, and I just nodded. What was I supposed to say. 'My best friend, the most important person in the entire universe, you know the dead one? He was just talking to me in my head'? Hardly.

And then it wasn't just my name. It was "Rose, can you hear me?" or "You can do this, Rose, just..." or "Come on, Rose".

And then really weird things started happening. One day I walked into my bedroom in the Powell Estate and it was my bedroom in the TARDIS. I stared for a moment then went out and went back in again. It was my Powell Estate bedroom again. For an hour another day mum's hair was curly like it had been at day I'd saved and then lost Dad. Another the manager of Henrick's was the one that'd been manager when it'd been blown up rather than the one I had now.

And then Mickey came over. Mickey who'd been living in a parallel universe just the day before. And he acted like I was the mental one, like I was confused, didn't know what was going on. Which... I was starting to think was true.

Then finally, the inevitable. The sky filled with ships. Harriet Jones was Prime Minister again. Mickey had a gigantic gun I'd never seen him with before. Shareen had a baby she'd never given birth to. The Jagrafess was living in my ceiling, I screamed as a Gelth took over mum's body, Mickey was deleted and Keisha turned into a gold statue golem type thing. My head felt like it was going to explode.

So when the door to the flat burst open with choruses of "ex-ter-min-ate" I was hardly surprised. In fact, when they started speaking to me, I was annoyed. I didn't want to hear the ultimatums, I didn't care. Everything had been taken, and it was time.

"Daleks!" I yelled and they all stopped their chorus. "Remember your emperor? You wanna know how he died? That was me. Some stupid little human girl took all of the Time Vortex and turned him into dust! Now what do you have to say about that?"

Predictably, what they had to say was exterminate. Which had been the goal afterall. Because this wasn't right, there was something wrong, and if there was anything that could fix it I had a fairly good idea that this was it. I am not sure how many of them took aim at me. I closed my eyes, bracing myself for pain, cause I was fairly sure that it hurt like hell anyway. It did. My whole body seared and boiled and just before I hit the floor in a heap my eyes flew open.

I was lying in that room full of mirrors back on that planet with the factory and the Doctor was hovering over me, and he grinned when he saw my eyes open and said, "Bout time!"

My mouth fell open and I tried to sit but there was something around my head preventing me. The Doctor soniced it off and I flew into his arms. I couldn't quite believe that he was here, and he was fine and just... not dead. But he was there sort of laughing at me because I was sobbing into his lapel.


"Oh, Rose... it's okay now. All the equipment's off now and look you're back!"

I knew I must look a wreck, but I mean... I was well happy! It was only then that I sort of looked around and said, "What. the. Hell?"

"This," he said waving his arms around the room, "was the Dream Factory on the planet Bolomo. It was built so that people could come here for holidays or whatever and they'd go into dreams which the neurological enhancer would propigate into well... the best thing they could dream up. Cheaper than a real holiday and takes about .2 percent the time it would be if all that was acted out in real time. Bet it felt like months, nah, was just about ten minutes.
"
I shook my head, "That was no dream." I said, hooking a thumb at the equipment I'd just been attached to.

"No, it wouldn't be," the Doctor said, nodding, "no cause it all went wrong, didn't it. Like it always goes wrong when you try to take the easy way of things. They realised there was no way to block out the nightmares. People'd pay good money to come for a lovely holiday and they'd end up in their worst fears. Pretty soon the whole thing was overrun with nightmares, there was no stopping it. They tried to cut back on costs by using robotic workers who'd hone in on live humanoid creatures and hook them into the machines, there's feeding tubes and of course the neuroplastic helmet."

"Of course."

"Yeah. But eventually the corporation was given a red card and every living thing moved out, everyone knows now to go to Bolomo now. Well, there's nothing here but the Dream Factory, and that's what you're keen to avoid. Bit of bad lucky for us, I'd say. I thought for awhile you were going to be in there for hours and hours. I might've gotten awfully bored."

I rolled my eyes and then got indignant, "Well why didn't they take you?"

"Don't be silly, course they did. Hooked me in same as you, just got myself out sooner. All you've got to do is die. Of course... you have to realise you're in a dream first, I suppose. That's the trick really. But then again, I'm very clever."

"What did you see?" I asked him.

"Oh, you know, but what about you? Did the world end? Earth, I mean, Earth."

I shook my head, "The Earth was there. It was- well anyway, can we get out of here first. Please?"

He nodded, used his sonic on the helmety thing again, zapping it so that smoke rose. I figured he'd just knackered it. I supposed the whole place was safe now. Then he stood, took my hand and off we trundled to the TARDIS.

"Probably best," he said, "battling your head does work up an appetite and I've just remember the most fantastic nut sugar loaf you can only get at this tiny stop on this tiny planet in the Zolgi System. What do you say?"

I nodded, fiddling with my hoop earring and pretending to think about. "Yeah, nut sugar loaf sounds about right."

Until next time.