1 - The Curious Visitors.

The curious visitors. We open today to find that for reasons that have yet to be explained, Doctor DickLogic and his beautiful assistant, Daisy Jones, are having a peaceful science in the greenhouse.

On the moon.

Quite why their greenhouse is on the moon will be revealed later, suffice it to say that they are stuck there until the doctor can fix the machine and for that he needs to re-combobulate it and properly wire up the lock nuts this time. Not a minor task at all. Celebrations are erupting as Queen Victoria has declared that the one hundred and twenty eighth year of her reign will me mildly amusing and Mister Wells' book predicting a nuclear war in ninteen sixty six was successful averted by the invention of The Beatles.

In a greenhouse, in Clavius Crater. On Wednesday, early afternoon. But it had been early afternoon for nearly three days now.

"Doctor DickLogic, there's someone at the door!" The beautiful assistant chimed cheerfully. She didn't feel like answering the door as there was a vacuum outside. Still outside, just like yesterday. Who could it be, this far from the British Empire's only town that had legitimized mad science. Grimley in Yorkshire, famous for its sheep you know. The ones with two heads.

Doctor DickLogic was engrossed in his latest invention, determined not to be outdone by those so called scientists! "You deal with it Jones." The therple whelper wasn't squeaky enough. That must be the cause of the regrodulations. "where's my five twoth's?"

"Metric twoths?" The beautiful assistant asked, reluctant to get her labcoat dirty, it was the second one of the day and she only had two more spares. "You told me to lock all the Imperial twoths away after that miscalculation with the trimble-plated blerfinator that got us in this fine mess in the first place."

"Yes, yes, Metric Jones."

"Daisy, Doctor. Daisy Jones. Metric is the cat." She looked around, climbing down the ladder to be level with the doctor and his latest contraption, "the five twoths is in your left pocket, Doctor."

"Excellent, now go dispose of that visitor. I'm too busy to be interrupted now. This time I will prove that Doctor Booby is a fraud who can't science her way out of a thaumatic chamber without a thaum!" He grunted manfully. That had been embarrassing, he'd also lost at cribbage again. Doctor DickLogic was not a sore loser, he never lost. This is why he never bought lotto tickets or followed the ancient pagan religion of football. Cricket was a much safer cult. They were so concerned about safety that more often than not bad weather stopped play and started drinking.

Daisy continued her descent and went across the primal lab space of the man cave, up the stairs and peered out of the airlock. "Doctor, it appears to be JWs."

"Here?"

"Indeed Doctor, here."

"On the moon?"

"Yes, we are indeed on the moon after that machine in the flashback we haven't had yet." Daisy quickly put on her hairband with the bunny-ears. They looked so natural, like the fluffy tail and the strange longing for carrots. She held up a card to the window, indicating they should use the intercom and conveniently forgetting that sound didn't travel too well in a vacuum and that pressurizing the intercom booth was not an option.

Daisy Jones struggled with her space suit for a minute, it was embarrassing being made of this new-fangled material called plastic and getting her bunny ears in the dome helmet was tricky. She put the lab coat back on over the top too, her space suit was clear plastic, then opened the door.

The lab doormat was looking a bit sad, but not half as sad as the now desicated and fronzen roses. The Earth was high in the sky as was the sun peeking over its shoulder so she remained in the shade of the entrance. "Boople beep?" She asked innocently. Since sound waves didn't travel too well in a vacuum, they had to butt heads and not breathe heavily.

The two strangers in long black space suits asked her if she believed in this imaginary being some jokers had created in a fan fiction over two thousand years ago. Well before the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria. "Beeple crotz? Wunga-wunga-blork?"

Even speaking complete gibberish it still took her ten minutes to get rid of them and not get a copy of their penny dreadful too. They headed down the road to the distant domed city of New Eboracum. Daisy Jones watched them go sadly. Then noticed they had secretly stuffed no less than one whole copy of The Moontower in the letterbox. That would never do. It wasn't even usable in the outhouse due to the minor vacuum problem and the fact that even without that, the print came off when you wiped your bottom. She tossed it at the hated roses, then noted with grim satisfaction that the roses, all of them, shattered on impact and turned into a cloud of dust that bounced off the shed and surrounded her. She tried to waft it away, ineffectually, then settled for waiting for the settling dust to settle, preferably away from her. The second time, she threw the remains of The Moontower much higher, clearing the shed and sailing away never to be seen again. She paused to calculate the velocity needed for it to leave the moon, secretly using metric. Then multiplying it to get around ninety-three thousand attoparsecs per microfortnight. No, she doubted she could throw it that far, not even close by a factor of a hundred. Did that mean it would go one hundredth of the way around the moon though?

New Eboracum glinted in the shade of the great Chutney ridge and it was only by the greatest of luck that the accident in the still as yet unrevealed flashback had not dumped them further out in the Clavius crater. On a good day they could even see Clavius Base, but they kept turning their lights out to save money for the war effort.

Daisy Jones was about to go back inside when the newspaper boy arrived on his moontrike. He handed her the newspaper, The Daily Lunatic and headed on down the road pedaling hard and picking up so much speed that when he hit the bump, he took off and soared several hundred meters into the distance. She went back inside and completely missed the paperboy landing on a pair of people wearing black space suits.

As soon as the airlock presurised, she took off her lab coat and shook the dust off it. Taking off her helmet, she sniffed it and sighed, her labcoat absolutely stank of roses. No way was Doctor DickLogic going to notice her oestrogen loaded antiperspirant. "Doctor, the newspaper has arrived. It is time for breakfast."

"Not now I'm busy doing manly engineering. Have you seen my five twoths? The metric one?" Doctor DickLogic's feet waved out of the green hatch on the machine. There were several such green hatches as it was quite a large machine. This particular green hatch was not as green as the one on the other side of the combined stabilising fin and heatsink.

"What a terrible shame, I'll have to eat all the pancakes myself."

"Coming!"

"Wash your hands too." Daisy Jones complained, one of her lab coats was covered with hand prints from just such an incident. They had been orange too, it totally clashed with her blue hair.

The Daily Lunatic was effectively their lifeline to the world above. The incident that still hasn't been fully explained had somehow blasted them into what they thought might be an alternative timeline. Yes, Queen Victoria was celebrating her hundred and twenty-eighth year of her reign. The second robot rebellion had been quashed due to a lack of actual robots and the fourth world war was imminent. Again, for real this time, we really have nuclear weapons and we are stupid enough to use them. But the front page headline was that after ten years trying, the Eurovision song contest was now deemed inhumane according to the Basingstoke Treaty, which also ruled out bagpipes and tartan south of the border.

Yesterday's Daily Lunatic headline had been "Is Queen Victoria a robot?" and had completely failed to prove said question. However, the palace corgis had been seen shooting down pigeons with laser beams from their eyes. The Sunday paper usually had the good headlines too.

A clean, chiseled Doctor DickLogic admired the kitchen corner and what his completely non-buxom but still very beautiful assistant had managed to make of it. Even if she did have blue hair and rabbit ears. "Something smells nice," he grunted manfully.

"That would be me," Daisy Jones purred, "is there any chance of getting the jalopy working soon? Only we are down to our last box of tea, three rolls of moon bogroll and less than three days of bacon. Less if the cat eats it. I'm hoping that either New Eboracum has a market or you can fix the as yet undisclosed thing that cause the event we still haven't had a flashback for and get us back to The Earth."

She fed the cat and refilled its water dish with heavy water and as a mark of gratitude the cat didn't attempt to gnaw her entire body off at the neck. But just this once and woe betide her if she stopped moving. She brandished a five twoths at it, a metric one since the cat was Metric.

"Good question." Doctor DickLogic grunted, furrowing his brow and wondering why he felt the need for a fleet to admire instead of his assistant's tail. "Perhaps if we adjusted the aphasic quantum limiters to factors of prime numbers instead?"

"Perhaps you should try that on the telescreen first," Daisy offered, serving him, "one lump or two?" She solicited. After the unplanned discombobulation of the machine that brought us here, I really think you should experiment with less powerful equipment and scale up if and only if it works." She had an idea, based on undisclosed events that might not actually happen, "I bet Doctor Booby tested her machine first. Likely on some hapless town in direct contravention of the treaty of Milton Keynes. Just think of all those lovely manly power phrases you could use."

"Such as?" Doctor DickLogic paused, mid-pancake.

"Works as designed?" Daisy promulgated, "or even more manly. How about just one word that would strike fear into the very ides of March."

"Documented." Doctor DickLogic ejaculated so manfully that Daisy swooned, accidentally falling on him and having to put her arms around his neck to prevent herself from falling in his pancake and being eaten alive. Not that she was averse to that, after a shower. "Jones, do your lab coat up." That most definitely was not a blue thong she wasn't wearing.

Daisy Jones turned bright red. Fortunately for her there was still some pancakes.

"Do we have any of those old research probes left?"

"Why?"

"For some reason I can't quite recall, I feel the need to launch something into the Imperial Vortex."

"I know the feeling," Daisy Jones mused. She couldn't quite place it though, "what about the sea of fire?"

"Oh, that too, but I think we need hairdressers for that. I should fix the jalopy and see if there are any in that town."

Did you spot the science error?