literature

Doctor Who: The Scanner and the Repair Man

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"Just work with me here, just this once," pleaded Charlie. He was in his mid-twenties, and wore his light brown hair disheveled and messy. His red tie hung loose from his collar shirt. And he was yelling at his scanner.
That Friday, Charlie had decided to work from home. He had gone to his computer and typed a report that his boss demanded be sent that day. He printed it out, just to have a copy if he accidentally deleted the document. Then, he went to find the report- and it was gone. “Not again!” muttered Charlie. “I must have accidentally deleted it.” Gingerly, he put the report into his scanner. There was just an electronic buzz before static showed up on the screen.
"You useless piece of rubbish!" Charlie yelled. The temperamental machine made a thump, and he jumped back a little. This had been going on for years. Sometimes the blasted thing worked, other times it didn't. He had no room in his budget to buy a new scanner, so he just had to work with it.
He abandoned his fruitless efforts, frustrated. Then, he stepped out into the hall from the room where he kept the scanner. It was housed in a small cupboard room on the second floor. On either side of the scanner were filing cabinets, and a printer was pushed against the right wall.
Charlie glanced at his watch. His boss wanted the report by 8 pm. That gave him an hour, but his boss' office was nearly an hour and a half away. He realized there was a scanner at the library, which was only thirty minutes away by bus. "I've got no choice," he said to himself. He caught the bus and got off right outside the library. Even with no line at the scanner, he was barely able to scan and send the paper on time. He collapsed into a seat in the library, relieved he had made the deadline.
He then used the library computer to update his blog. It had become a reoccurring and popular story line in his blog about the strange and unusual behavior of his scanner. He posted his most recent confrontation with the "wretched scanner", and immediately the comments started pouring in.
"Must have a grudge against you!" one said. "Did you kill its parents or something?"
"Maybe it's sick and that's why it's cross with you!" another comment read. "Cause you haven't taken care of it."
That one got a reply by someone else. "What's he supposed to do, call a doctor for it?"
Charlie smirked, and felt his patience return by reading the funny conversations of his Internet companions. He closed his computer and began his walk back home. Living in a small town, he found it economically intelligent not to drive. And since his job was mainly sitting in front of a computer, it was good for his physical and mental health to walk or bike.
His route took him down a street lined by several small buildings. He was walking an unfamiliar way, as he wanted to try a new shortcut from the library to his house. And every few blocks, a red telephone box was stationed. "Red phone box, red phone box, red phone box," he chanted in his head. "Red phone box, red phone box, red phone box, blue phone box."
He came to a sudden halt and did a double take to confirm what he saw. A blue phone box, more oddly, a police box, was sitting right where a red phone box should have been. He found it unusual but assumed it a tourist attraction the town put up. Charlie walked by it and continued on home.
He entered his house, tired from his walk. Exhausted, he dragged himself to the couch, dropped his briefcase over the side, slumped down, and closed his eyes. Suddenly, he heard a noise upstairs, a little thump. Charlie wondered if he had locked the door, racked his brain, determined he had, and got very frightened. He grabbed a metal back scratcher, the one thing he had that was even close to a weapon, and crept quietly up the stairs.
He listened carefully, almost hyperventilating with fear, and heard a thump from the room where the scanner was kept. He slowly turned the knob, then threw the door open and raised his "weapon", ready to strike. However, there wasn't a burglar in a black ski mask, but a man in a tweed jacket, red bow tie, and floppy hair kneeling over the scanner. The strange man in the stranger neckwear was pointing some sort of cylindrical instrument, which made a noise that made Charlie cringe. The odd individual was muttering long complicated words to himself, when he seemed to notice that he wasn’t alone. Startled, he jumped up and turned to face Charlie.
"Oh!" the man said. Charlie now observed the man wore a red bow tie and black pants. He dressed like an older professor but didn't look much more than a decade older than Charlie. "Oh!" he repeated, flailing his hands about like he was trying to figure out how wrists worked. "Hallo! Didn't expect you to be back so early, just thought I'd pop round and look at this scanner!"
Charlie was too shocked to say anything. He just stood there, mouth hanging open. There were several moments of awkward, confused silence. Then the man in the bow tie saw the back scratcher Charlie held.
"HOW'D YOU KNOW!?" the man asked excitedly. He grabbed the metal implement from Charlie's hand and proceeded to scratch his back.
Charlie finally found the words. "Who are you?"
"Oh, me?" the obviously bonkers man asked. "Oh, I'm the, uh, the... Hold on."  He finished scratching his back and tossed the back scratcher to Charlie. "I'm the Repair Man!"  he finished, making a pose with his hands. "And some people call me the greatest repair man in the world- and the ‘blessed repair man’- some people even call me the Oncoming Storm-and one time I was called Bob, but that's another story entirely which would take about five and three fourths of a day to tell- are you hungry?"
Charlie admitted he was. He supposed that this man couldn't do any harm, so he treated him as a guest. He went downstairs to the kitchen and made the Repair Man tea and a plate of jammy dodgers. The Repair Man insisted on fish fingers and a bowl of custard as well, which Charlie hesitantly served.
"How did you know my scanner was broken?" Charlie finally asked.
"Your blog!" The Repair Man exclaimed. He dipped a fish finger into the custard and swirled it around. "You have feuds with your scanner often."
"Yeah, ever since last year," Charlie dubiously replied. "But hold on, how did you find out where I live?"
The man put the custardy fish finger in his mouth and lifted the cylindrical instrument. He looked as if he was about to say something, but at the last minute he blurted out, "Company secret!"
Charlie now eyed the man with a hint of distrust. "What company?"
"Company?" The Repair Man asked. "The, uh, Organization of Professional Scanner Technicians! Yes, that's the one!"
"Never heard of it."
"We're just a small business," the Repair Man said, now with a steely edge in his voice.
Charlie sighed, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, "What's the verdict?"
"Well," the Repair Man said in a suddenly more sincere tone, "there's a program inside your admittedly infernal scanner that isn't supposed to be there- an electric frequency that's been hanging in it for a while now."
"How can it get a virus? It's not a computer," Charlie asked.
"It's not a virus, it's an electric frequency," the Repair Man repeated. "Instead of flowing through the system, however, it's just sort of stopped." He moved his hands forward in a short of chop but stopped them abruptly to illustrate what he meant. "It's just staying there. Electricity isn't meant to do that though. It's supposed to flow to the most conductive thing, but in your scanner, it just stays in place, floating in the center in a wibbly wobbly ball."
Charlie was now listening in rapt attention. Something about the Repair Man's speech made him hang on to every word. But then there was another thump and three knocks coming from upstairs.
"Who's up there?" Charlie asked.
"Nobody but the scanner," the Repair Man said. There were another three knocks.
"Scanners can't knock!" Charlie said nervously.
"Statues aren't supposed to move," the Repair Man mumbled to himself, a worried look on his face. Charlie couldn’t stand it anymore. Frantically, he pushed his chair back from the table and ran for the stairs.
"CHARLIE!" the Repair Man yelled. He tried to stop Charlie, but in vain. Charlie dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and threw open the cupboard door. The scanner was shaking angrily now, rocking back and forth. If Charlie didn’t know better, he would have said it was bloodthirsty. Suddenly, it jumped forward and rammed Charlie in the stomach. An electric bolt suddenly flew from the scanner and hit Charlie, who hit the ground, hard. He heard someone run in, and then a buzzing sound and the sound of sparks flying. Then, nothing.
When Charlie opened his eyes he saw the Repair Man kneeling in front of the scanner, pointing his instrument at it again.
"What happened?" Charlie asked.
"I stopped it." The repair man said.
"How?" Charlie asked, more demandingly this time.
"I... soniced it!" The Repair Man lashed out. He looked as if he had said too much. Charlie stood up now, suspicious.
"Who are you? You aren't a repair man, and you don't come from some Organization of Scanner Electricians or whatever! Tell me who you are and tell me what the bloody hell is going on!"
"I can't," said the man nervously. He seemed to be regretting speaking at all.
"I'll call the police if you don't! Now tell me!"
The Repair Man rose to his feet, now with embers burning in his eyes. He straightened his bow tie angrily and began. "I'm the Doctor!" he snapped. "I'm an alien, a Time Lord. I'm almost a thousand years old, I've got two hearts and a brain processing speed far beyond anything you could ever dream of possessing. I have a time machine which can go anywhere and anywhen but dragged me across huge stretches of space and time to get here- and I don't know what's going on in that scanner and that's what I'm trying to figure out! Questions?"
Charlie stood there for a moment, mouth hanging open very slightly, and then said "No," in a very even voice. The Repair Man- the Doctor- smiled.
"Now, I used my sonic screwdriver-“ here the Doctor pointed to the strange cylinder“-to immobilize the scanner, so it shouldn’t move for a little while until I figure out what to do with it," he explained calmly. Just then, the scanner shook. The Doctor pulled Charlie to his feet and made a valiant attempt to shield him. “I’m so sorry!” the Doctor yelled. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” He pointed his sonic screwdriver at the scanner, which promptly began rattling and shaking furiously, straining towards the two like a dog on a chain. The lights flickered.
"Can't you… sonic it again?" Charlie asked nervously.
"No, it's dead locked itself," the Doctor said. "Ooh, that's interesting." The scanner had jumped down from the cupboard and was now leaping towards them. The lights flickered faster.
"Doctor?"
"Now don't worry, Charlie!" the Doctor said. They'd backed off all the way to the stairs now while the scanner continued its advance.
"Don't worry!" the Doctor repeated, even as he felt Charlie shaking behind him. "Everything's under control!" The lights went out, the only illumination left being the electricity crackling and flying off the scanner.
Charlie whimpered quietly. Then, he turned to the Doctor in a stroke of inspiration. “If I can just find it without the scanner noticing,” he muttered, “then I should be able to… Aha!” He whipped open a door and threw himself into the opening, then frantically motioned for the Doctor to do the same. Then, Charlie shut the door.
The Doctor inspected the small room, poking his sonic screwdriver into corners and analyzing the dust on the floor. Charlie interrupted the Doctor’s puttering to say, “Well, there isn’t any electrical wiring in this closet, so we should be safe from any attacks from the scanner if it chooses to kill us that way.” Suddenly, there was a sharp rap on the door and the smell of burnt wood. Charlie made a small noise and shrank further into the corner.
“How long do you think the door will hold?” squeaked Charlie.
The Doctor whispered back, “On another note, I have clever plans.” They both jumped when the scanner smashed into the door again.
“Well, what’s that got to do with anything?!”
“I’ve got one right now!” And with a loud bang, the Doctor burst from the room, yelling and waving his screwdriver.
“Doctor!” shouted Charlie. He tried to pull the crazy Time Lord back into the closet, but all he could do was stand and stare while the Doctor fought with the scanner. If the situation hadn’t been so dangerous, Charlie would have laughed at the absurdity of the scene. Finally, he could wait no longer.
“STOP!”
The Doctor froze. The scanner didn’t.
“YOU TOO!”
The scanner stopped in mid-leap. The sparks crackling across its surface died.
“What do you want?” pleaded Charlie. “Just tell me what you want!”
The dangerous machine turned towards Charlie menacingly. Then, words started to scroll across its tiny screen.
“You have hurt me.”
“But how have I-” Charlie started.
The scanner replied, “You have hurt me. You have kept me trapped inside this metal monstrosity for a long time. I am in the scanner, but first I was in the printer, in the computer, in your mind. I was trapped, so I let myself out.”
“Who are you?”
“I am all of the books you never knew you could write.  I am all of the art you never knew you could make. I am all of the music you could play, all the songs you could sing. I am all of the stories you never knew you had.”
“Why would you do this? To me? If you really are my artistic potential, why would you hurt me?”
“You have not used me. I almost died inside of you.”
“But I am creative.”
“You do not make art.”
“I never have any stories, any ideas.”
The Doctor had been gazing at Charlie and the scanner all throughout the course of this conversation, fascinated by the sheer power of thoughts. He chose this moment to eagerly answer Charlie.
“Yes you do, Charlie! Of course you have stories! They just didn’t necessarily reside in you for a period of time. Your thoughts must have converted themselves back into the electrical currents your brain used to send them and zapped themselves into the keyboard when you were typing, then moved through the wiring to the monitor, printer, and eventually the scanner. Oh, this is brilliant!”
Charlie asked the Doctor, “How can I get them back? I’ve always wanted to write a book.”
The Time Lord just bent down and whispered to the scanner, “May I?”
One word blinked on the screen. “Yes.”
With a bit of sonicing, the Doctor got the scanner open. He and Charlie both gasped as a glowing ball of blue light rose up from the inner workings, hovering in mid-air. It was the most beautiful thing Charlie had ever seen.
Slowly, it drifted over to Charlie. He closed his eyes. Opening his mouth, he leaned back, embracing the light. It zipped in, glad to be home. When Charlie opened his eyes again, they flashed blue.
~
Charlie woke up on the couch the next morning, full of aches and pains. His head felt heavy. It was filled with remnants of what must have been a dream- how could such a strange character like the Doctor be real? But when he heard the electronic buzz of the sonic screwdriver coming from his back yard, he knew it must have been true.
He trudged out the back door to find the Doctor kneeling over the grass and scanning it. His tweed jacket was draped over the lone lawn chair.
"What are you doing now?" Charlie asked.
"Looking," the Doctor mused, waving his arm in broad swaths over the ground. Charlie scratched his head, confused.
"For what?" he asked. The Doctor's sonic screwdriver began beeping.
"For this!" the Doctor said, putting the screwdriver away and digging into the ground with his hands. After a few seconds, he removed a little metal ball from the ground. "Spaceship," he said. "Comfortable if you're made of electricity."
"Doctor, what the hell do you mean?" Charlie snapped.
"The reason your artistic side had a, well… mind of its own is because it bonded with a highly reactive electronic life form."
"So what you’re saying is an alien parasite stole my thoughts?" Charlie asked.
"No, it was more of a mutualism." The Doctor rolled the metal ball around in his palm, scrutinizing it. “I haven't seen these little creatures in a while.  A Dalek fleet obliterated their planet on their way to my planet. This one must have escaped just in time..."
He stared at the ground for a moment, remembering. Then, he sprung up cheerfully.
"They were electronic beings. When dormant, they lived in crystal structures. They had about the intelligence of a dog. But when they came across someone with enough creativity, they'd leave the crystal and bond to the thoughts themselves using their own electrical current. This process effectively doubled the capability for creative processes in their host’s brain. Really, it’s a symbiotic relationship- the host’s mind becomes clearer for creative processing, and the electrical critters get their fill of fun ideas. They're beings that feed on creativity."
"But why did it get angry? Why did it leave my mind?" Charlie asked. The Doctor just turned to Charlie and poked him in the chest.
"Because it was disappointed in you," the Doctor said. "Because you were capable of writing anything, and making worlds beyond anything anyone else could imagine. It saw that potential in you when it first encountered you. And it was upset because you kept telling yourself that you couldn't make a good story when you could. It believed in you for a long time, you know."
Charlie turned red and looked at his feet. Breaking the uncomfortable silence, he asked, "So, it's in my head now?"
"It is in your head, but it’s settled down,” the Doctor explained. “All it did was bring your imagination to life, for a bit. Now that it’s comfortably feeding off of your brain waves, your thoughts are now entirely your own."
"Are there any side effects?" Charlie asked hesitantly.
"Besides making you more creative, I don't think so," the Doctor said. "And you’d better not let it down from now on, understand? It needs you to survive, and you need a working scanner." Charlie just nodded. "Then I'll be off," the Doctor said, pocketing the little metal spaceship. And picking up his tweed jacket, he strolled out of Charlie’s yard and down the street. Charlie just watched as the Doctor walked away.
Charlie went back inside his house and sat down on the couch, wondering what to do next. He didn't know what to make of his knowledge of the creature inside his head. It was a Saturday- no work, just an empty schedule. He glanced around the room for a book to distract him when he noticed something new on a shelf. It was a small black notebook with gold lettering on the spine that read, "For Wibbly Wobbly Ideas". Next to it was a wooden pencil. Smiling, Charlie scribbled in the notebook, noticing that the wonderfully sharp pencil point never dulled. To Charlie, it was obvious- he knew what to do.
He grabbed the pencil and notebook and started walking to the library to get reference and study material. On his way to the library he took the short cut. He was confused, but somehow not surprised, when he saw that the blue police box was now a regular red phone box again. The thought crossed his mind that if a tiny metal sphere could be a spaceship, why not a police box? He dismissed it immediately as too fanciful, but it nagged him nonetheless.
When he got to the library, he checked out a couple of science fiction novels and sat down at a table. Opening his idea book, he began jotting down what he wanted to write.
Charlie worked on his book every day after he got home from work. The writing was difficult, and long, and took patience and time. But three years later, after many setbacks and more than a little editing, he published his book.
"A Work of Science 'Fiction,'" read the tag line at the top. The title beneath it read "The Scanner and the Repair Man".
This is a writing collaboration with my friend :iconprestonkei: . Enjoy!
© 2014 - 2024 therealbeeblebrox
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athr10's avatar
Typographical Errors:

 - P1L2: "collar shirt" should be either "collared shirt" or shirt collar"
 - P2L2/3: "report- and it" would preferably be "report - and it" or "report... and it"
 - P3L2: "worked, other" should be "worked; other"
 - P5L1: "boss' office" should be "boss's office"
 - P5L5/6: "It had become a reoccurring and popular story line in his blog about the strange and unusual behavior of his scanner." should be "The strange and unusual behaviour of his scanner had become a recurring and popular story line in his blog."
 - P7: "sick and that's" should be "sick, and that's"; "read. "Cause you" should be "read. "'Cause you"
 - P9L1: "smirked, and felt" should be "smirked and felt"
 - P9L2: "walk back home" is inconsistent with it being a half-hour bus ride to the library, as that would make it at least an hour and a half of walking
 - P11L1: "phone box, more oddly, a police box," should be either "phone box; more oddly, a police box," or "phone box - more oddly, a police box - "
 - P11L2: "town put up" should be "town had put up"
 - P13L2: "knob, then threw" should be "knob then threw"
 - P13L4: "
which made a noise that made Charlie cringe" would be better as "which emitted a noise that made Charlie cringe"
 - P13L5: "himself, when" should be "himself when"
 - P14L1: "observed the man wore a red bow tie" is inconsistent with the previous paragraph's "man in a tweed jacket, red bow tie, and floppy hair"
 - P14L3: "early, just" should be "early. Just" or "early - just"; "pop round" should be "pop 'round"
 - P18L4: "entirely which would" should be"entirely, which would"; there should be capitals after all hyphens in the paragraph
 - P22L1: "hold on, how" should be "hold on - How"
- There are a few others, but they were too far down to get the paragraph numbers. And they were quite minor - less important than the above ones, in my opinion.

Otherwise, an utterly fantastic job to the both of you. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd say that you portrayed The Doctor (in his 12th form) quite perfectly, in all his goofiness. So, bravo and felicitations to you. Great job.

*Just one note: I suggest putting spaces between paragraphs so that the literature is easier to read. 'Tis a bit dense, otherwise.