Another Dimension: a story

Barry had been a fan of Doctor Who ever since the character’s original incarnation in the colourless guise of William Hartnell. He had suffered severe withdrawal symptoms in 1989, when the Doctor had presumably departed to right wrongs in a parallel Universe, and was delighted to the point of ecstasy when the Time Lord came back, in glorious technicolour, in 2005. Barry now felt safe. With the Doctor in charge, surely everyone would be protected from any monster or machine with which alien worlds could threaten Planet Earth.

Barry was particularly troubled by the crack in Amy Pond’s bedroom wall. The Doctor first met Amy when she was seven years old and she pointed out to him that a large crack had appeared just above her bed. The Doctor had to return to the Tardis, promising to return in five minutes but actually doing so twelve years later, when Amy, aged 19, was working as a kissogram girl. She became his companion and off they went.

However, the crack in the wall turned out to be a lot more than the result of building subsidence or drying-out plaster. It seemed to follow Amy and the Doctor and turn up in all sorts of places. It was always the same shape – generally horizontal but turning up at both ends. The Doctor eventually worked out what it was, namely a crack in the Universe through which space and time were leaking and with the ability to erase memories. In one episode, Amy’s fiancé Rory was sucked through it and lost to Amy’s memory, and the Doctor realised that it was caused by the Tardis exploding, which of course had not yet happened!

Barry had to admit to himself that he did not understand exactly what the crack was, but he knew that it was extremely important and that it could appear at any time and any place. The shape of the crack impinged itself on his mind. Given his general inability to distinguish fact from fiction, his subconscious self was now, years later, always on the lookout in case that particular shape came into view. Fortunately, before today that is, it never had.

On the day that he went to the cashpoint he did not have cracks in a wall in mind, at least not consciously. His sole intention had been to use this particular hole in the wall of his bank to get £50 out of his account to cover that part of the week’s general expenses for which folding money was most appropriate. The notes had just been pushed from the machine when he felt something poking him in the back.

A voice spoke, teenaged and menacing.

“I’ll have that cash if you don’t mind”, said the voice in his left ear. “And the card too, of course. I saw you punch in your number so it shouldn’t take me long to help myself to rest of what’s in your bank account. Oh, and to save you the bother of asking me if this is a particularly sharp knife pointing at your spine, the answer is Yes – it is”.

One of Barry’s problems, apart from believing that Dr Who was a documentary series, was an equally futile belief in his abilities as a practitioner of the martial arts – all of them. He was quite convinced that, should the need arise, he would be able to defend himself by exercising his skills in judo, karate, taekwondo, kendo and – quite probably – sudoku, should the need arise. The fact that he had no skills in any of these, apart from the last one on the list, was neither here nor there.

His self-deception extended to the conviction that his assailant was lying when he said he was armed with a sharp knife. It was probably nothing more lethal than a stick that the youth had just picked up from the ground. In fact, Barry remembered there had been just such a stick a foot or two from where he was standing. The would-be thief had clearly acted on a whim on seeing Barry at the cashpoint – he had picked up the stick, watched Barry tap in his PIN and was ready to strike.

In that case, thought Barry, so was he. He decided that his best course of action was to whip round with cobra-like speed, knock the stick out of the young man’s grip with one hand and rain down a few karate blows with the other. One, two, three … Go!

Unfortunately for Barry he was incorrect in one very important particular. The young man did indeed have a sharp-bladed knife in his hand, and as Barry’s intended karate hand came across it was the knife with which it made contact and not the assailant’s head. Barry therefore sustained a deep cut across one of his fingers and was lucky not to have been injured much more severely.

Give Barry his due, he did then switch to Plan B, the aim of which was to grab hold of the thief and display a bit of judo technique on him, even though this had been learned more from watching the Olympics on TV than from any practice in the gym. Despite the searing pain in his finger, Barry at least made the effort, and he might have been successful had he not tripped over a large stick that was lying on the pavement and which Barry had fondly imagined was playing the role of large knife.

As it was, the thief got clean away, complete with Barry’s cash and card. At least Barry was able to report the loss to the bank, although the cashiers complained bitterly about the trail of blood that he left across the floor on his way to the counter.

That was six weeks ago. Barry had had a bit of first aid from the people at the bank and someone very kindly took him down the road to A&E where his finger was deftly stitched. He had to report to his local medical centre every week after that to have the dressing changed, and now the moment had arrived when the final bandage could be removed and he could see just badly his finger was scarred.

He got the shock of his life.

He had expected a scar on his finger. What he did not expect to see was a scar that was the exact shape of the crack in Amy Pond’s bedroom wall. The crack in the Universe, the link to another, unknown, dimension, was there on his own finger. The whole future of time and space now depended on him. Should that scar ever open again, who knew what might happen? 

It was quite a responsibility.

© John Welford