The Girl Who Escaped Into Space and Time

There is something about the season of winter that goes hand-in-hand with isolation. Sometimes it’s seasonal affective disorder, sometimes it’s being snowed in at home while others are staying warm together. Other times, it’s the cold, the unrelenting chill that bites down at one’s bones, bringing hands into coat pockets and puffs of air from chapped lips.

For Sarah, it was hard to describe. Winter brought forth a feeling in her that made sleep difficult, that tugged wistful thoughts from her mind. While her family slumbered upstairs at this late hour, she was wrapped in blankets in her cold basement bedroom, watching the snowflakes slowly dance their way to the ground. It wasn’t ideal here, with her dismissive, disapproving family, the isolated location of her home, and being an achingly slow six months away from graduating and moving out for good, but at least tonight was pretty.

The moon was out, just enough of it to be seen while obscured by clouds, its light bouncing off the snow onto the ground. A thin layer dusted the naked branches of the two trees in the front yard, clinging to them like lace, only to be disturbed by an unexpected wind and…wait.

It didn’t sound like wind. Sarah heard it through the window, a wheezing, grating sort of whooshing sound that she’d never heard before. She’d never heard anything even remotely like it before. Her eyebrows knotted together in confusion as she squinted outside, just noticing then how the air out there was distorted. It was like the air, transparent as it may have been, was moving in waves, slowly generating a shape from within itself.

The light was the first part she saw. It stood at the very top of the shape, shining like a beacon in the night as it materialized into her world. In and out like a slowly flickering light, an object came to be in Sarah’s front yard, a big blue box with glowing windows at the top and a sign that felt misleading to say the least. When it finally stood still and seemed solid, the words above its windows were legible, and they didn’t seem quite right.

“Police Public Call Box?” she muttered to herself, reading and rereading the words. There weren’t any of those in Canada; even pay-phone booths were becoming scarce. She leaned closer to the window to get a better look at the thing, only to duck and hide out of sight when she saw the door open. It was just a crack, but she hid nonetheless, not knowing who or what was in there. Maybe it was some horrendous beast that knew it had been seen, and was rushing toward the window with sharp claws and a hungry, snarling mouth filled with bloodthirsty teeth—

That couldn’t have been right. There was no disturbance outside, and when it felt safe to check, Sarah slowly poked her head up to see what was out there. The box remained, silent and still, and the stranger was gone, with no evidence of its presence save for footprints in the snow. From the appearance of it, the stranger had walked across the lawn, crossed the street, and stepped into the small cluster of trees and bushes that lay on the other side.

A thought crossed her mind, only becoming more and more inescapable the more she considered it. The strange box was still out there, unguarded, and Sarah was very curious. Two options were laid out before her, to see what it was or to leave it be and move on, and one of those options was out of the question.

Her family upstairs was sound asleep but nonetheless Sarah took care to be silent as she got out of bed and dressed herself. It was far too cold to go out in pajama pants, so she clambered into leggings and tugged a simple, knee-length black dress over them, wrapping herself up in a black knit cardigan and pulling dark gray woolen socks up her legs. Warmth and comfort were both equally important, especially during this time of the year. Having gotten dressed, she slowly stepped out from her bedroom, careful at even the tiniest creak from the hardwood floors beneath her feet. The basement was dark around her, but she was used to it and knew its layout. Sarah could have walked all the way to the door with her eyes closed and not bumped into anything; she knew it that well.

Her winter coat and boots waited next to the door frame and she donned them quickly, fingers fumbling at the boot laces, as if her hands could not keep up with the demands of her mind.

It was cold outside but she didn’t pay attention, striding through the snow even when it wormed its way into her boots. She hoped and crossed her fingers that snowdrifts would cover her footprints, that was, if Mother Nature was on her sneaky, adventurous side. Around the driveway she walked, skirting the side of the house and making her way into the front yard where the strange box stood. The door was open just a crack, the light from the inside beckoning her. One hand on the handle, one second of waiting, and she pushed the blue, wooden door open, almost falling to the floor when she saw what was inside.

“What?” Sarah whispered to herself.

It was massive inside, massive in a way that no phone booth could possibly be. Where there should have been wooden walls painted blue was an enormous room, its structure odd and alien and tinted in warm colors. Sets of stairways led up, down, and around the place, and its center was populated by a cylinder of glass and metal, surrounded by a control panel of sorts. Circular indentations decorated the walls in a simple, vertical pattern, the entire room itself complicated and whimsical at the same time.

The strangeness and nearly paradoxical nature of the room pulled her inside, mind questioning everything she was experiencing, with one hand on the railing to steady her shaking form. The floor below her was a fusion of metal and glass, segmented into geometrical shapes in a design unlike any other. Sarah felt a tinge of guilt as her boots tracked snow into the box and onto its clean floors. She was breaking and entering, there was evidence that she was there, but she nevertheless continued to explore.

How was this even possible? It couldn’t be. She’d failed physics a year ago, yes, but she knew enough to understand that boxes didn’t work this way at all. Things weren’t bigger on the inside, they just weren’t.

The console at the center of the room almost seemed to beckon her, catching her eye with its confusing myriad of levers and blinking buttons. It was like an alien had tried to redesign the dash of a car, having only seen it in a fleeting dream, and applied a lot of imagination to its creation. Several pieces looked out of place, almost none of the instruments seemed to match one another, and there was an actual bell in one spot, the type that would be found on a concierge’s desk.

“Oh, hello there. I hadn’t expected any visitors.”

Sarah’s blood turned cold at the unexpected sound of a voice behind her. She was caught, she didn’t think the stranger would be back so soon, she was caught. Her fingers felt numb and tingly in fear, but she turned nevertheless to face the speaker behind her.

It wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster, or even a green, bug-eyed alien, but rather a man. A taller man, dressed like a college professor with a quirky sense of style. He wore a light brown, tweed jacket over a button-down dress shirt, topped off with a red bow tie, black slacks on his legs and brown, leather boots. His hair was the color of a tree trunk, flopped over his forehead, and although he had just caught a complete stranger intruding, his expression was a kind one, showing no hostility or anger.

“I…I’m sorry,” Sarah stammered. “It just appeared outside and I was curious and…what even is this place?” Her hands flailed about as she spoke, their movements accentuating her words. “It’s a phone booth, but phone booths are tiny…Where are we? How are we even here? Who are you?”

The stranger laughed to himself, a brief, light sort of sound. He took a few steps forward, gently setting a mysterious object onto the floor as he did so. “This here, this is the TARDIS! Bigger on the inside, kind of impossible right?”

“Kind of?” He was used to it, he was perfectly at ease with it. Of course he was, he’d just walked out of the thing. He had a name for it and all, and the longer she stood there, taking everything in, the more at ease she became with it as well. “Yeah, yeah it is.” Seeing as it had literally just appeared out of nowhere, the strange interior wasn’t that shocking when she thought about it. “You didn’t answer my question, though. Who are you?”

“Oh, right. Yes. Sorry. I’m the Doctor.”

“Doctor who?”

“Ah, can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that one. It’s just the Doctor.”

“Huh.” With everything that was around them, with what had just happened, the unconventional nature of his name seemed perfectly normal. Sarah just might have been shocked if it turned out to be something mundane like Bill or Fred, but no, it was the Doctor. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Doctor.” She stuck a hand out to him, ready to shake. “I’m Sarah.”

The Doctor eyed her outstretched hand, almost questioning, before shaking it with his own. “Sarah…who?”

She laughed, baffled and a bit amused. “Sarah Ride.”

“Sarah Ride, eh? Like the astronaut, Sally Ride?”

“I guess? I don’t know; I mean, I sometimes wonder but—”

“Do you want to meet her?”

“What?”

“You heard me; would you like to meet Sally Ride?”

She had heard him, it just wasn’t the sort of question that one could expect. “Isn’t she dead though? Died a couple years ago and stuff?”

“Sarah, do you know where we are? Do you know what you’re standing inside of?”

“Didn’t you say, you said it was called the…the TRADIS?”

“TARDIS,” the Doctor corrected quickly. “It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. This is a time machine. Anywhere you want to go, any point in history or in the future, it’s just a few levers and buttons away.”

So that’s how he got here. “Are you from the future?” she blurted.

“Mmm, not exactly.” He ran up to the central console, darting around it as he flicked switches and pressed buttons. “I’m a Time Lord, from the planet Gallifrey, and we are one pull of a lever away from being in space and meeting Sally Ride. So, what do you say?”

Sarah could say no. She could leave the box, choose not to run off with a self-proclaimed alien that she’d just met, she could go back to the house and sleep, or she could take the opportunity that stood before and around her, beckoning her agreement. The Doctor wasn’t going to hurt her; something about him struck her as the sheer opposite of violent and dangerous. There was a certain warmth and sincerity that he radiated, one that couldn’t be faked, and she knew all about people faking warmth and kindness.

The Doctor’s hand hovered over the lever, a bright eagerness in his eyes as he waited for her response.

A grin spread its way over her face. “Yes.” She’d actually just said that, just agreed to goodness knows what. “Yes. OK, let’s go!”

With one fluid motion, the Doctor slammed the lever down, and the TARDIS around them shuddered momentarily, making that same strange noise it did when it first appeared. Sarah gripped onto the edge of the console, as she would have fallen over otherwise, and in a second’s time, the room was still once more. She was still struggling to understand what had just happened, and the Doctor was already making his way to the front door, walking in long strides, looking a bit confused when she didn’t follow.

“Well come on, what are you waiting for?”

“Didn’t we just come in through that door? Out there...it’s just the yard…”

“Are you sure? Why don’t you come and see for yourself? I can promise you we are not in your front yard anymore.”

Her hands let go of the TARDIS console, and she hurried to join the Doctor at the door.

“I give you, the Challenger, June 1983, in space!” He announced the words with a flourish, and opened the TARDIS door.