DOCTOR WHO AND THE TOAST MONSTER

PART FOUR

“What is it ?” cried Adric.

“I AM THE TOAST MONSTER” bellowed the creature…

“That is stupid” said Smith. “It may be the most stupid thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Nevertheless, it’s really rather real” warned the Doctor. The Toast Monster stamped his new found legs and seemed pleased with the rumbling and shaking that the impact generated. He brought one foot crashing down on one of the few remaining tables. He left behind a pile of crumbs and debris. Smith was still treating the whole thing as a joke.

“Shall we butter him to death?” he asked. The Doctor failed to see the funny side.

“Everyone, back to the TARDIS” he called. The Toast Monster saw the fleeing group and showered them with, well, razor sharp crumbs. Crumbs the size of cricket balls. They tore through clothing as if it were nothing. Smith stopped laughing the moment his ‘Puppies In A Blender’ T-shirt was ripped.

“Ass clown” he shouted as he threw his portly body through the door.

“At least he won’t be able to follow us” said Tegan, pointing out that the door frame was, in every way, too small for a toast monster (or even The Toast Monster) to squeeze through. Sadly for our heroes, the Toast Monster didn’t know this and smashed his way through the wall. Imbued with a surprising intelligence, the Toast Monster aimed a shower of crumbs at the stair way which led to the TARDIS. The projectiles battered the old wooden stairs until only the brave would’ve dared try to climb them. The Doctor having stayed behind to look after the unconscious Romeo, Smith had appointed himself commander in chief and was nothing if not the opposite of brave.

“What have we got to fight with?” he asked. They nestled in handy nook and pooled their resources.

“I’ve got a cybergun” said Euan. Smith slapped him and asked why he hadn’t used it already.

“I forgot.”

“Cretin.” Euan dashed out of the nook and opened fire on the Toast Monster. Great chunks of blackened bread were blasted away. There was a huge hole in its torso, half it’s thigh was missing and he had rather less face than he would’ve liked. And it phased him not one bit. Euan kept on firing. He fired and fired until there was no oomph left in the gun. And very little of the Toast Monster remained. But then a little more of the Toast Monster appeared. And a little more. And a little more still. The holes were repairing themselves. Limbs were being regrown.

“Smashing” sighed Smith. He beckoned for the others to take this opportunity to join him in an escape from the nook. Regeneration, he reasoned, might be rather distracting. The group shuffled off in search of the TARDIS (each of them knowing exactly where it was and each of their exact locations being different from each of their colleagues’ exact locations). The Toast Monster, growing in strength as its body rebuilt itself, roared the roar of the hunter. Luckily for our heroes, Romeo’s dreams weren’t as detailed as his fantasies and the Toast Monster had no special hunting skills. It fell back on an old device – destroy everything and then destroy whatever you find after that.

The Doctor wafted smelling salts under Romeo’s nose. The dazed man stumbled back to life.

“What hit me?” he asked.

“Your so called ‘Proctor’” replied the Doctor.

“Then I can only assume he had good reason. Did he have good reason?”

“It led to your house being attacked by a monster made entirely of toast” said the Doctor sardonically.

“How bizarre – I just had a dream about… ah… I see.”

“Do you?”

“My dream rock picked up on my nightmares. I’m always careful never to sleep in the same room as it – the man we bought it from made that clear. He said it could lead to terrible dreams, I guess he was right.”

“And when those dreams are coming true…”

“All the more reason. Doctor, why has this happened now? And how do you and the Proctors happen to arrive just as it does?”

“Two excellent questions. I’m reluctant to believe in coincidence and yet there doesn’t appear to be a coordinating intelligence behind all this.”

“So...?”

“Let’s just say there are three possible chains of events – we are here because the person causing these manifestations wanted us to be, we are here independent of the manifestations or, thirdly, our arrival here caused the manifestations.”

“How? You didn’t seem to know anything about me or my rock.”

“Exactly. I’m sure an answer will turn up – in the mean time we’ve got to try and find a way of stopping any more of these manifestations. Pebelons and a monster made of toast may be inconvenient but the universe has bred some terrible creatures and a toast monster will seem like a… ah… cake walk compared with a drashig or squadron of Cybermen.”

“I’ve fought the Cybermen before…” began Romeo before shutting up with an apologetic gesture.

“Doctor,” he continued “could we use the rock to conjure up something to help us ?”

“Such as ?”

“A box of weapons or a shuttle to get us away from here ?”

“I think there’s been enough blood shed today” replied the Doctor with cold regret, “and we can’t simply run away – think of the damage that will be caused if we don’t stop that toast monster. Besides, I don’t think we should give the rock any more energy – it seems to have intelligence of a sort and might easily break through to a different part of your mind. No – we should concentrate on finding a way to destroy the rock.”

“It cannot be destroyed – that was one of the selling points.”

“Selling points ?”

“I remember seeing an infomercial for them – the man hit it with a hammer, dropped it in acid, strapped it to a firework, ran over it with a truck…”

“I take your point. But if it exists, it can be destroyed. Nothing is forever.”

“What if it tries to stop us ?”

“They always try to stop us. We must simply do our best not to let it.”

“That was almost worthy of The Proctor, Doctor.”

“Quite.”

“I bet Toastie can’t get up stairs” said Euan. “Monsters that can’t climb stairs are rubbish.”

“I’d imagine they wouldn’t need to if they’ve got the ability to destroy the floors below. You can’t support an entire building using only a tired old joke” snapped Tegan.

“Grumpy” muttered Euan.

“Fire hose” said Smith, stopping suddenly and causing the sort of pile up which only ever happens in silent movies.

“What ?” said Tegan, her patience being sorely tried.

“What is the worst thing to get at breakfast time ?” asked Smith.

“A letter saying that your parents have been kidnapped by animal rights activists and they’re going to be fed to a tiger unless you sponsor a gorilla ?” asked Stevo.

“That actually happened to me” said Euan.

“Me too” agreed Stevo.

“It was a joke” said Smith. His friends started punching him.

“Could we keep to the point ?” demanded Nyssa. “You said something about a fire hose ?”

“Ah yes – soggy toast is the ass clown of all breakfasts. The worm stroking slap monkey of snack foods. The Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards of sustenance. Let’s turn Toastie into Soggy Toastie and see how he likes it.”

“It’s not a bad idea” conceded Tegan. They uncoiled the nearby hose and dragged it its full length. They could feel the rumbling of the approaching monster. A blackened fist burst through the floor.

“NOW” yelled Smith. The water thrust out of the hose and rained down on the Toast Monster. “KEEP GOING” he shouted. The toast turned to mush and, try as it might, the regeneration came to nothing. Like the wicked witch, the Toast Monster was melting. Toasters began falling from out of nowhere and fresh toast began popping up. Smith turned the nozzle momentarily to these intrusive machines and they fizzled and exploded as wet toasters are forced to do. Turning the hose back on the spluttering pile of mushy toast, Smith tried to spread it across the floor to ensure thorough saturation. After ten minutes of deluge, they finally agreed that the Toast Monster was dead.

The rock seemed (if such a thing is possible) to pulsate with darkness. Inside it's crystalline brain, something was stirring. The Doctor's mind was grappling with a different problem. Then it hit him.

"Of course" he said with embarrassment, "the TARDIS. This rock is a mental parasite, the TARDIS is telepathic. When we arrived, it would have reached out and investigated it's surroundings - it must've connected with the rock. Imagine the effect of such a powerful mind on such a small dream rock."

"What do you mean ?" asked Romeo.

"The Rock taps your mind and uses the energy it finds. It stimulates your mind to create more energy. I'm guessing you don't get many visitors, correct ?"

"I suppose so."

"Then the TARDIS appears - it would be like feeding the output of an entire power station through a single plug - overload. The rock was able to create real matter instead of mere illusions."

"Then why did it only create the Pebelons and the Toast Monster - why not continually create things ?"

"Well, the TARDIS only reaches out with her mind when she lands - her first landing produced the energy for the Pebelons, I moved her once and that created the power needed for the Toast Monster."

"But the time delay..."

"Yes - the Pebelons seem to have arrived more or less at the same time that we did. The only thing I can think of is that there was no one around for the rock to use until later - it still needs imagination before it can create."

"Which means it can store that much energy for that long ?"

"It's obviously far more powerful than I thought."

"So might it have something else left up it's sleeve ?"

"We have to treat it with extreme caution - it could take any thought and turn it against us."

"We need someone with no imagination at all" said the Doctor, that description tugging at his mind. "I suppose I could ask him" he decided.

The two factions converged at the TARDIS, Tegan's exact location proving correct. The Doctor put his plan to Adric.

"I'm going to try and create a neutralizer - a miniature force field which will block all thoughts from reaching the dream rock. In it's present state - as absurd as it sounds, I'd go so far as to call it the mineral equivalent of insanity - it could hijack any creative thought and turn it against us. I need you, Adric, to carry the rock from its platform to the stasis zone."

"I don't see why I should be chosen" protested the boy.

"You're duller than Brisbane on Sunday afternoon" muttered Tegan.

"Of course, all this is hypothetical until I actually construct the device" added the Doctor. He faffed for a moment, trying to find way to let the others know that he was confident of success, before leaving the console room and heading for his workshop. "I wrote a poem once" protested Adric weakly. Everyone present shared the same though - 'please don't recite it' they preyed.

"I feel like the beach as the ocean laps my shore" began the Alzarian Lauriat. The others sighed.

The Doctor remembered an earlier adventure. His memories of the particular events seemed tinged with the fog of dreams and yet echoed round his mind as if he’d lived through them more than once. He pulled out a force field generator in need of repair. The pronged structure would create the perfect zone of stasis if only he could modify and repair, and do so with confidence for he felt that failure would be disastrous for all concerned. He had inadvertently given this small black rock the power to do as it pleased. He had created a mineral god and now he had to destroy it. There were worlds where the Doctor and his race were believed to be deities. Now it fell to him to be a god-killer. Damn him and his piloting skills – the worst that California would’ve thrown at him was rollerblading or poor quality sentence structures. But this was, like, so totally the end of the world, like, big.

The Doctor emerged from his work shop with the modified force field generator.

“Will it block everything?” asked Tegan, ever the pessimist.

“Three times… once… it was powerful enough to protect matter in an anti-matter reality. It should be powerful enough to block all forms of communication with the rock.” He sounded confident. “If it works” he added, puncturing his bubble of authority.

“It looks like a cheap prop from an episode of Star Trek” said Smith. “Couldn’t you knock up some kind of kryptonite hammer?”

“There is one small problem” said the Doctor, silencing the room with his gravity. “We are quite a distance from the main hall. Even Adric couldn’t carry the rock this distance without it finding something to latch on to. I’m going to have to take the TARDIS to the hall.”

“But that will send it another wave of energy” Nyssa warned.

“Can’t Missy take the force field thing with her ?” asked Smith. He pointed a podgy finger at Adric and the others realized who he was talking about.

“Alas it must remain connected to the TARDIS power supply – I didn’t have time to repair the storage pack. The best we can do it take it maybe twelve feet outside the console room.”

“Bug…” began Smith but the temporal grace swearing filter took care of the rest.

“I’m ready” said Adric. “Since you all think so little of me, I might as well get it over with.”

“It’s not that we think badly of you” began the Doctor. All eyes fell upon him and the boy. Suddenly aware of an air of self consciousness he took Adric to one side.

“It’s not that we think badly of you” he repeated, “it’s just that you have a scientific mind. You grew up in a very ordered society – your Deciders were wise men but they wouldn’t know an original thought if it bit them on the… flight deck. You have an excellent brain – years of hard work has given you an amazing mathematical ability. But at the same time you don’t use your imagination very often. Numbers are absolute, there is no grey – only black and white. Everyone else in this console room lives their lives in the grey area between logic and chaos. Only you stand a chance of doing what we need you to do. So don’t see this as a bad thing – we’re not teasing you – we need you.”

“Will I always be like this? Will I always be boring?” he asked with a tremble in his voice.

“When you snuck aboard the TARDIS you took the first step – travel broadens the mind and all that. It really does. Now – are you ready to save the day?” he asked.

“Yes” said Adric with just the hint of pride. The Doctor, forgetting himself for a moment, ruffled the boy’s hair.

“Right – another short hop, I’m getting…”

“Rather better at them” chorused his companions.

“Yes”

The rock appeared to have grown. Anyone looking at it would’ve sworn it was three times its former size. But it wasn’t. It was simply the black glow expanding around its mineral core. The dark corona seeped outwards as the TARDIS appeared in the main hall. The inquisitive ship gave the rock just a moment of her time but it was enough to engorge it. Like a leach that has drunk its share and more, the rock became fat and content. The aura around it pulsed like a heart, each beat expanding it a little. All it needed was a mind, a mind to plunder. A mind to inspire it toward the creation of further suffering. An investment which would yield it a feast of fear. The door of the strange craft swung open. This was it – Challenger or one of the other organisms would soon appear. The rock reached out and found…

The group were watching Adric on the TARDIS scanner screen. They were surprised to see the boy showered with a storm of… well… numbers. A digital downpour. Most unusual. Adric ignored the numerical raindrops and continued his determined walk to the rock and it’s platform. He was soaked to the skin. The last time he’d been this wet had been diving for marsh fruits just before… no, he stopped the thought in it’s tracks. The last thing he wanted was a hoard of marsh men. He ran some equations through his mind to stifle dangerous thoughts. Equations – like the Logopolitans used to do. What was it Monitor had said – something about the essence of structure being mathematics ? He’d liked that thought.

“Ahhhh” thought the rock, just not in a way we could understand thought. Adric had made his mistake. A new world of chaos had opened itself up to the rock. Matter, it knew, could be created by the manipulation of energy. But combine that with the manipulation of mathematics and nothing could be certain. Nothing could be solid. Belief, certainty and all those emotions which closed the living mind would be eliminated. The rock reached into Adric’s brain and used the knowledge he was trying to suppress to turn a wall into dust. It was so simple. The bodies of the slain Pebelons became solid silver. The broken remains of the Zygon armour became river fruits. Adric could feel the floor beneath him become soft and muddy. He was walking on wet grass. The field became larger and larger, the rock becoming further and further away. Adric began to run. The rock sensed (in so far as it could sense) the mind getting closer. Stronger, it thought, and easier to use. It had just discovered that it could amplify its powers by converting the cushion from duck feathers into the same crystal structure which formed its core. For a moment it was obsessed with the conversion and in that moment Adric grabbed the rock and dropped it into the force field. He pushed the activation button and the rock, enveloped for so long in blackness, became bathed in light. Adric bravely decided to test its efficiency by concentrating hard upon the Master but the bearded sadist failed to appear. He turned round and saw that his epic journey had only taken him perhaps ten feet from the TARDIS. The door of the craft opened and the Doctor’s young and beaming face appeared.

“Well done” he said warmly. Adric felt like a hero.

“How can that thing have caused all this?” asked Tegan.

“You’ll learn one day that anything is possible in this universe” replied the Doctor.

“But rocks can’t think” she protested.

“It wasn’t that long before your time that the people of Earth doubted whether women could think” the Doctor reminded her.

“Is it over now?” asked Nyssa.

“Sadly not – the force field is, um, a bit of a lash up. It could, technically speaking, go wrong and any time and if it did…”

“Disaster?”

“And the rest. We have to destroy it utterly.”

“But how? We can’t get to it without turning off the force field and we can’t turn off the force field without unleashing its full powers” warned Smith.

“Especially since we don’t know how to destroy it anyway” reminded Euan. “I could shoot it, just for fun like.”

“I’ve got an idea of how we can destroy it” murmured the Doctor. “It just needs a little thought…”

The TARDIS faded into existence in the middle of a wide, scorched desert.

“If the cacti can think, we’re going to be in trouble” he joked. Adric was clutching the force field generator, his part of the plan understood. The Doctor flipped the door control and the boy stepped out into the sun. He screwed up his eyes and carried the subdued cargo as far from the ship as he could. He put it down and raced back into the police box. The Doctor closed the doors and addressed the others.

“Now, I’m going to have to lower the TARDIS defences for a moment. In this time, anything could happen. The TARDIS is a tough old girl but it could get unpleasant. Forces may be unleashed which could alter the very fabric of reality.”

“Sounds like Saturday night” said Smith.

“And Friday night” added Euan.

“And the whole of Tuesday” mumbled Stevo.

“Right – I’m turning off the force field generator.” He flipped a switch on the console and the white glow around the rock passed into nothing. The Doctor was frantically adjusting controls, taking advantage of the brief period of grace while the rock regained some of its strength.

“Brace yourselves” he shouted and pushed the final button. The TARDIS lights dimmed and the rock began to grow. Literally. The aura extended as the rock absorbed whatever energy the Doctor was pouring into it.

“You’re making it stronger” shouted Nyssa.

“You blonde you” cursed Smith.

“It’s absorbing everything we’ve got” shouted the Doctor, a note of worry in his voice. He checked a couple of read outs. They told him the same thing – the rock was absorbing everything the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits could be coaxed into giving.

“What were you hoping would happen ?” asked Romeo.

“The rock is finite – it shouldn’t be able to cope with so much energy – it should burn itself out” explained the Doctor.

“But it isn’t ?”

“No.”

“What if it tries that trick it tried in the hall – turning matter into itself – it could expand itself to absorb any amount of energy you can fire at it” reasoned Smith, adding “You berk.”

“We need some kind of trigger” continued the Doctor, giving voice to his train of thought. “We’re blowing into its balloon – we need a pin with which to prick it.”

“The telepathic circuits” began Nyssa, “you said the TARDIS had a mind”

“Yes” agreed the Doctor.

“And the TARDIS can think?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Can the TARDIS imagine?”

“Not as far as I’m aware.”

“But it can remember?”

“Oh yes – often much more reliably than me.”

“Then why not download the TARDIS’s memory banks into it at the same time?”

“It might work.” The Doctor raced round the console once more before pushing a ridiculously large button and slamming a thousand years of adventures into the rock at once. Telepathic feedback, possibly random, possibly emanating from the dream rock itself, filled the console room with screams. The desert became filled with images from the Doctor’s past. Fleeting glimpses, as if the rock couldn’t concentrate on anything. Like a small child at Christmas, it wanted to open all its gifts at once.

“Is it working?” asked Adric.

“According to the scanner, the rock is still in tact. I was hoping it would disintegrate under the pressure of all this mental energy. If this fails…” but he never had a chance to complete his sentence. A thought had struck Romeo. He pushed past the others and pulled what he’d seen was the door control.

“What are you doing ?” demanded the Doctor.

“I think I know how to destroy it.”

“Don’t be fool – if the TARDIS can’t control that thing, your human brain wouldn’t last a second.”

“With luck I won’t need a whole second.” Romeo closed his eyes, concentrating on what turned out to be the all important thought. He stepped out into the boiling mass of fleeting existences. Romeo became engulfed by the dark cloud as the rock began to feed on him too. The Doctor, fearing for his other companions, reluctantly closed the door of the TARDIS and turned back to the screen. He saw Romeo become lost in the dark aura.

“How horrible” moaned Tegan. But, just as they had lost hope for their friend, the mist cleared. Not just from around Romeo but from the entire scope of the screen. The images – phantoms of gods and monsters – disappeared as smoothly as they had arrived. Peace had fallen. The Doctor used the joystick to manoeuvre the image on the screen. He was looking for the rock but couldn’t find it.

“What about Romeo” demanded Tegan. The Doctor moved the camera back on the young man who had, as Tegan had feared, collapsed. They rushed out of the TARDIS to minister to their fallen colleague.

“What did you do?” asked the Doctor.

“I simply imagined the rock exploding. I concentrated so hard that it couldn’t help but pick up the thought.”

“It wouldn’t have been filtering what it received – it got greedy and absorbed any mental energy it detected. It ripped the thought from your mind and destroyed itself before it knew what was happening.”

“Is it really destroyed?” asked Tegan.

“Oh yes – Romeo’s image was the pin pricking the balloon – it’s well and truly gone now” concluded the Doctor.

“Doctor – where have those three strange men gone?” asked Nyssa. The Three had vanished as soon as the rock destroyed itself.

“They were merely projections – like the Pebelons. I recognised them as characters from an old Earth movie.”

“It was called ‘Slack to the Future’” murmured Romeo, “But why did the rock animate them ?”

“We’ll never know – the best I can think of is that the rock fed off chaos and destruction with them representing chaos and the Pebelons brought the destruction. But it’s just a guess.”

“So they never existed?”

“It depends what you mean by existed” said the Doctor. “They believed they existed, some would say that was enough."

“Will I be okay?” asked Romeo, suddenly aware that he felt as if his body had been filled with cement.

“You’ve had a terrible shock to your system” consoled the Doctor. “You need rest and plenty of it – and that’s what the Doctor orders.” He smiled at his pun and his companions, trembling with relief, laughed nervously.

“Will I ever see you again Doctor?” asked Romeo.

“Time is relative and all that but, in all honesty, no. Not unless I get desperate in later life and start trying to relive past glories!” More nervous laughter. The Doctor fished around in his pockets and pulled out a cricket ball. “A little something to help you rebuild your collection.”

“Er… thank you” said Romeo without much excitement. “With respect, I collect things connected to The Proctor…”

“Oh don’t be such a half wit…” began the Doctor, calming quickly down and adding “Haven’t you worked out that I am The Proctor – Proctor, Doctor…”

“You mean..?”

“This” he said, picking up a pipe from Romeo’s bedside table, “accompanied me to the stone age of Earth – got me into a lot of trouble.”

“I feel rather silly now – I had my hero in my midst and I didn’t realise it” grinned Challenger. “I’ve got a million questions for you. And hundreds of things that I wish you’d autograph.”

“Ah… quite… my autograph pens are all in the TARDIS…” said the Doctor hastily. Before Romeo could offer to lend the Doctor some of his pens, the Time Lord and his companions were half way back to the TARDIS.

“That was mean” said Tegan.

“Power mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans and Cybermen I can deal with but heaven save me from an adoring fan” he replied. He stopped, briefly, and scribbled his name on a couple of pictures which hung on the wall. “They were very good likenesses” he explained.

Romeo sat up in bed and pondered on events. His dream rock was gone – no more fantasies. He would have to find some other way of amusing himself. He could write a first hand account of life with the Aztecs – after all, he’d spent some time amongst them. Wait, no he hadn’t. He’d never heard of these Aztecs. His mind was leaking memories that weren’t his. The French Revolution, a base on Earth’s solitary moon, wars with no end. What was happening? The memories were too vivid to be mere figments of his unaided imagination.

“I was there” he insisted. “What is happening to me? I’ve been everywhere and done everything…” His vision began to cloud, dark swirls appearing before his eyes. “I can control everything… I can destroy at will… I can even move my body now… and speak… I can speak like my memories speak…” A dark aura surrounded what used to be Romeo Challenger and his bedroom melted away with the merest twitch of his mind. “I am ALIVE…”

The End