Frenck knew all about the Amulet of Araftaktik’s mysterious history. He knew full well how the priceless artefact had one day been stolen from where it had been on display, only to be discovered in a private collection two hundred years later. Frenck knew this, because he was the one who was going to steal it.
He licked his green tinged lips with his forked tongue, watching how the golden amulet glistened in the low light from the blue moon of Arkton. He’d read about this moment in countless accounts and history books, but it was quite another thing to experience it firsthand.
Raising the Space Time Diffusion Generator attached to his wrist, he aimed the thin barrel at the glass case housing the amulet and fired. It projected an orb of pure time energy, which when it made contact produced a perfect spherical hole in the glass. No damage had been done; rather the area inside the hole had been transported to a period of time where a glass case was not present. This allowed him to simply reach through and grab the amulet, without activating the alarms that would have been set off had he smashed it.
“Step away from the amulet and put your hands in the air,” a voice shouted from behind him.
‘Right on cue,’ Frenck thought, having memorized the details of this robbery in every detail. He knew that at this point two human security guards were stood behind him. Fortunately for him, but not for them, history dictated what would happen next.
“We have an intruder in the East Wing. Red skin, bald, reptilian skin, possibly Tiktorian,” the security guard spoke into his radio, aiming his plasma pistol directly at the intruder while at his side his colleague did the same
Frenck simply paused, before saying in a rasping voice, “You dare threaten me? How do you presume to fight the forces of time itself?” Then, not giving the guards a chance to reply, he whirled around, and using his species superior reflexes, fired two time diffusion beams. They hit the guards square in the chest, sending them to the floor with anguished cries. Frenck casually walked over and saw to his satisfaction both men had aged quite considerably, their skin now wrinkled and their hair white as snow.
Just as in all the history books.
“Be grateful that I showed you mercy,” Frenck hissed at the two moaning guards. “I only aged you by twenty years. In the past I’ve aged people well over a hundred.”
Then with a happy cackle, Frenck activated his time diffuser once again on its highest setting. This time it projected a beam of blue light that created a round portal hovering above the museum floor. It was a fold in the continuum of time and space, which when stepped through would allow him to walk from one moment in time to another. Making sure his co-ordinates were set he walked past the swiftly aged humans towards it, grasping the amulet tightly in his clawed left hand.
He was engulfed by a flash of blue, which was expected. What was unexpected was how, instead of being transported to his single bedroom apartment on the planet Teryar IV, he emerged on the bridge of a spaceship. It was a circular room with raised glass platforms leading to different sections of the ship. The largest glass platform encircled the central console, glowing a gentle blue. It stretched from the floor to the ceiling, and a glass staircase led up to this platform. And staring down at him from the top of this staircase were three humans, two males and a female, with stunned looks on their fleshy pink faces.
One of the males, with dark hair and a strange fabric wrapped around his neck in a bow shape, gazed at him intensely for a few seconds, before he loudly exclaimed, “And that, Pond, is why I never touch the wibbly lever.”
Frenck was almost overwhelmed by confusion. He stepped back in order to return through the portal, only to discover it had already sealed shut. He was trapped onboard a strange ship with three humans, a species he had always regarded as the enemy. Deciding that this was the time to show aggression he barked, “Who the Flaktarn are you three?”
“Now there’s no place for bad language on my ship, except in extreme circumstances, like when you stub your toe,” the dark haired man replied, seemingly left unfazed at the strange arrival on his ship.
His two companions were a lot more alarmed. “Doctor I don’t understand. Who is this?” asked the woman with flame red hair.
“Is this something to do with the time knot?” asked the man with short brown hair.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on here!” Frenck hissed with a flicker of his forked tongue. “I’m going to summon another time dispersion portal and get myself out of here. And I suggest you don’t get in my way.” With that he fired up his time disperser and created another portal. He just had time to hear the man the girl called ‘Doctor’ shout, “No don’t,” before he jumped through. Instantly he was falling through the air, thrashing his arms and legs before landing painfully on his back. He looked up at the ceiling to realise it was the same ceiling as before.
“Well if you listened to me then you’d have learnt that we can’t just warp our way out of this situation,” the Doctor explained, as his two companions helped Frenck to his feet. “We’ve ended up in a time knot. A part of the Time Vortex congested from the pressure of numerous timestreams pouring into a singularity.”
“Meaning what exactly?” the brown haired man asked.
“Well Rory, imagine a river filled with rubber ducks from every period of history. But there’s been a blockage and those poor ducks have nowhere to go. It’s up to us to clear the blockage and let those duckies float free.”
“What’s your obsession with rubber ducks?” asked Rory.
“Great companions. One’s never alone when they have a rubber duck,” the Doctor announced.
Frenck snorted, his purple eyes fixed on the Doctor. “Has anyone ever mentioned you talk utter rubbish.”
“Quite frequently. And sorry I didn’t catch your name?”
“Frenck.”
“If you’d allow me to guess, it’s Frenck of Tiktorians, resident of the planet Teyrar IV. I’m the Doctor, and this is Amy and Rory. Now I want to do something extremely clever and free us all from this situation, but to do that I need to know exactly how you ended up onboard my TARDIS?”
“As if your miniature human excuse for a brain could begin to understand the complexities of time travel,” Frenck scoffed, showering the TARDIS console with his purple coloured spittle.
“Well funny thing is...” Amy began, before this Doctor interrupted her with a wave of his hand.
“...Is that I’ve dabbled a bit in time travel in the past, or future, I forget which is which sometimes. But I‘m clearly not as experienced as you. I don’t suppose you could fill in any gaps in my knowledge?”
Frenck was sorely tempted to just blast this Doctor and his crew there and then, but the opportunity to show off his knowledge proved irresistible. Why not humour the ignorant humans for a few minutes more? He held up the golden amulet in his hand, and waggled it to ensure they noticed it. “Anyone recognise this?” he bragged.
The Doctor seemed to recognise it instantly, but tried to hide it. “Well this archaeologist friend of ours once told me about a relic that looked just like that. The Amulet of Araftaktik I think it was.”
“So you must be aware of how it disappeared for two hundred years,” Frenck hissed, building to a crescendo. “But what if I were to tell you that in reality, it was only ever stolen for a matter of minutes?”
There was a pause inside the ship, broken by Rory asking, “You mean you stole it?”
“Indeed,” Frenck bragged. “I stole it just moments ago, and in a few moments more I will have taken it to the future where I can pocket the reward money for recovering it. So you see, I’m just ensuring that history follows the correct course.”
“Wow, how can my poor little human brain take this?” Amy remarked, sounding very sarcastic.
“Time doesn’t work like that,” the Doctor said, suddenly sounding a lot sterner.
“Oh but it does Doctor,” Frenck exclaimed, his gaze flickering from human to human as he assessed what was the best course of action to take next. “This isn’t the first crime I have committed. Throughout history there are countless accounts of thefts and robberies that fit my MO. Once I’ve uncovered one, it’s simply a case of using my time disperser to travel to that time period, and then ensure time runs as planned.”
“And you’re telling us all this because...?” Rory asked.
Frenck gave a happy laugh. “So you understand what will happen to you if you get in my way.” Then he made his move. Darting forward he used his superior speed and agility to grab Amy by her waist. He hauled her into his body with her back to him, and before she could begin to struggle or put up a fight he pressed the barrel of his time disperser into her neck.
Both the Doctor and Rory leapt to Amy’s defence, but dared not move an inch closer once he had pulled his weapon on her. “Let her go now!” Rory bellowed, appearing desperate to save her.
“Oh fond of this female are we?” Frenck sneered, trying not to gag on the stench of whatever scent this girl had plastered herself in. “Pretty is she? I couldn’t tell; you all look like pink bags of flesh to me. Still, I wonder what she would look like if I were to age her by a couple of decades?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to do this,” the Doctor warned.
“Don’t I?” Frenck hissed over the sound of Amy’s panicked breathing. “See, what I want is to get off this ship and back to my own timestream. And you’d better find me a way home soon or my trigger finger might get itchy.”
“Time travel isn’t simply a case of entering a destination on a sat nav,” the Doctor insisted. “Besides, our biggest problem is escaping this time knot, because otherwise we’ll be stuck here in this single moment for all eternity.”
Frenck shrugged nonchalantly. “Better get cracking then.”
The Doctor stared at him, and Frenck eyeballed him back. For a second he thought the neckbow wearing human wasn’t going to back down. But after a few agonising seconds the Doctor began fiddling with the circular control console of his ship, looking for a way out of this situation.
“So how do we get out of a time knot?” asked Rory, one eye on the doctor and the other on Frenck and his hostage.
“We have to pull the plug,” replied the Doctor as if it were most natural answer in the world. When he became aware of three pairs of eyes staring blankly at him he elaborated, “Often timeknots are caused by the changing of events so momentous that time has difficulty in catching up.”
“Well what caused it then?”
“It could be anything Rory. Britain losing the battle of Waterloo, dinosaurs appearing in Stoke on Trent...” The Doctor trailed off as he took a good long look at the amulet which Frenck continued to hold incredibly tightly. “Or it could be the disappearance of a piece of jewellery regarded as a religious icon by the Araftaktikian Empire, which in turn led to a wave of persecution and bloodshed across five galaxies as the Empire sought to reclaim it.”
“So you do know of the amulet’s history,” Frenck remarked.
“I know that by stealing it you will have set off a chain of events resulting in the deaths of countless innocent people,” the Doctor explained coldly. “And the worst part is that you knew that as well, and yet you stole it anyway.”
“It was always meant to be that way,” Frenck snarled.
“Does it honestly look that way to you? Time is rushing to catch up with your actions and we’ve got caught in the middle. You weren’t drawn into the TARDIS, the TARDIS was drawn to what you stole. The Amulet of Araftaktik is the plug blocking the flow of time, and until we return it to its proper timewindow we’ll remain stuck here.”
“You’re wrong Doctor,” Frenck spat, angered by how this mad human was daring to challenge him. “Time follows rules that can be exploited. I am the time thief, and its laws are mine to command.”
“Yeah, well command this,” Amy barked, giving him a powerful kick to his shin. Frenck exhaled loudly from her surprise attack, and dropped his guard enough for her to break free and wrestle the amulet from his hand. She ran forward while Frenck, snarling with rage, aimed at her with his time disperser. But the Doctor pushed her out the way at the same moment that he fired, the blue orb of time energy hitting him square in the chest. He gave a pained cry as the force of the impact pushed him onto his back.
“Doctor!” Amy cried, as she and Rory ran over to his inert form. But before they could reach him, Frenck grabbed them both by their necks, throwing them back against the railing surrounding the ship’s console. Winded, both humans gasped for air as they slunk to the floor, while Frenck stood over them changing the settings on his time disperser.
“Consider your Doctor the lucky one. I only aged him by twenty years,” Frenck remarked with an air of triumph. Then, with the barrel of his weapon pointed towards Rory, he told Amy, “Now if you don’t want to see what your friend looks like when aged by two hundred years, I suggest you hand over the amulet.”
But before either of them could make a move, an arm suddenly wrapped itself around Frenck’s neck. “Nice trick, but best not to use it on species with a long lifespan,” the Doctor said in his ear, his appearance unchanged by Frenck’s attack.
Frenck concentrated so hard on trying to wrench the Doctor’s arm that he only saw the metal stick with a green light at the tip when it was too late. The Doctor pressed it against the time disperser causing it to spark and fizz wildly. Frenck howled as these sparks burnt his red, scaly skin, and with a surge of strength he threw the Doctor away from his back. He whirled around to face this interfering human, with the intent on blasting him with the highest setting his time disperser could be set to.
But the Doctor’s attack had irreparably damaged it, and when Frenck fired he instead was engulfed by a fierce blue light. Dazzled by the brightness and surrounded by silence, he watched as the Doctor, Amy, Rory and the ship’s interior all phased into the shining light. He felt like he was falling through an endless void, down and down and down.
He landed on his back with another loud thump. Growling in frustration Frenck hauled himself to his feet, and the first thing he saw was a window covered by iron bars, outside of which a fearsome storm raged. He whirled about and saw he had materialised in a prison cell, with thick bars keeping him trapped inside. Feeling sick to his stomach, he realised he’d been transported to the Stormcage. Panicking slightly, he tried reactivating his time diffuser, but it wouldn’t even beep. It was completely dead.
Frenck froze when he heard footsteps echoing down the stone-walled corridor outside his cell. He poked his head through the bars and saw a human soldier on patrol, whose slow paced march changed into a run when he saw the alien inhabiting a previously empty cell. “Pssst, can you help me human, I’m not supposed to be here. I believe there’s been some kind of mistake,” Frenck asked politely.
The human stared at him inquisitively, before activating the list of inmates attached to a communicator strapped to his wrist. Then, with a satisfied smile creeping across the guard’s face he replied, “Actually, Frenck of the Tiktorians, you’re just in time for your trial when it begins in five hours.”
“What does that mean?” Frenck roared, sounding flabbergasted.
“The Doctor said you’d turn up round about now. He said he rewired your time diffuser to transport you to this exact position and time. He’s provided enough evidence for us to prosecute you for your crimes.”
“But, but this is impossible!” Frenck bellowed, rattling the bars of his cell. “I’m the time thief, the laws of time bend to my will. It isn’t supposed to be like this.”
The guard simply shrugged, before withdrawing a crumpled letter from his back pocket. “He left you this. Said it would explain everything,” he explained casually.
Frenck eyeballed the guard angrily for a few seconds, before snatching it from his hands. He violently ripped it open with his clawed fingers, and from the envelope pulled a newspaper cutting. The headline read, “Amulet of Araftaktik mysteriously reappears after a two day disappearance.”
And attached to this article was a green post it note, on which was scrawled in very untidy handwriting, “Time can be rewritten :)”
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