Dirk's Chronicles, Prologue

Dirk reminisces about his time with the Doctor

San Francisco, California, USA, October 15th, 1943, 5:30 pm

It's been ten years since I stopped traveling with the Doctor. It has been about four years since I stopped feeling his influence upon my actions; even in his absence, he can, seemingly, affect one's actions. Today I woke up feeling like a freeman, like a burden has been lifted, and I can start living my life again. I don't know why today I feel this way; perhaps there is a time limit on these things.

I do not want to seem ungrateful; I have learned much from my travels with him. I have seen things that my contemporaries would marvel at and things that would drive some of them insane. It's just 35 years of being someone's sidekick is enough. I am, initially, going to write about the beginning of my time with him. The end is too fresh and still disturbs me to write of it.

It started in the winter of 1888. I was a young man, three months before my 21st birthday. I had only a few months left at the University and I would be an engineer. It was an exciting time. Steam power was huge, and I was going to design steam-powered water pumps. That would have been my life, Dirk Van Heusan, Steam Engineer Extraordinaire, I was sure of it. I was ready for that life. My father, a tailor, would pass on the business to my older brother, Eric, and I would be free to follow my passion for Steam!

Alas, fate had a very different life planned for me.

The first day of winter break, I packed up and left the University in Amsterdam. I was going to ride my bicycle home to the village of Bosgebied. It's where my parents and younger sister lived. My older brother, Eric, was in the army at that time.

I made it as far as Amersfoort before a storm like no other hit me. Well, technically, it hit the whole area, but it felt like it was aimed at me. I was taking a shortcut through an area built up of brownstone houses, nestled cheek to jowl on either side of the street. Every three houses, there was a narrow alleyway leading to the back. I made it about halfway down this particular block when the storm hit.

It was not a slow build-up, just a deluge. Like someone dumped a lake on that street, in particular. I could make no headway, so I took shelter in a doorway. There was a small front porch that was raised above the street and deep enough that the rain did not directly hit me. I was already soaked to the bone and shivering, but I did not knock on the door; I figured that there was no need to disturb the residents, the storm would pass soon, and I would be home in another hour of peddling. A little shivering would not ruin me.

I stood there for perhaps fifteen minutes when the door opened behind me to reveal a tall, dark-haired man in a tan colored long coat. I don't think he saw me at first, intent on the weather. He spoke, and it took me several seconds to realize he was speaking English. (At that point, I spoke seven languages: Dutch, German, French, Spanish, English, Russian, and Turkish.)

"... weather for Madrid, I think," the tall man said. His eyes turned, and he was startled to see me.

"Hola, señor! ¿dónde estoy? [Hello, sir. Where am I?]," he asked.

"Usted está en Amersfoort, señor. [You are in Amersfoort, sir.]," I replied.

I remember thinking, 'How is it he does not know where he is? He is in the middle of Holland!'

"No hay Amersfoort en España! [There is no Amersfoort in Spain!]"

"Si, señor. Amersfoort es en Holanda, dónde estás ahora.[Yes, sir. Amersfoort is in Holland, where you are now.]," I told him.

I didn't mind the conversation as it kept the door open, warm air flowing to me.

"Holanda?!" he turned and yelled into the room beyond. "Kelly, we are in Holland, not Spain!"

From my place on the porch, I couldn't see any of the room beyond.

A female voice replied, dryly, "And I don't suppose it's nineteen twenty-one, either."

The man turned back to me and said, "Que … ah no ...."

I interrupted with, "It's 1888, December 20th."

"Oh, you speak British and Spanish, you are clever," he smiled at me, then he noticed that I had a bicycle and was soaked to the skin.

"Is that a bicycle? I love bicycles! Hey, you are wet. Oh, that will never do, bring your bicycle in and we'll get you dry."

Had I been a different sort, say my brother, who has a serious head on his shoulders, I would have hopped on my bicycle and left this madman behind me. After all, who is in a house in the middle of a town, in the middle of a country, and does not know where they are but a madman? The storm was, of course, still raging, and that warm air was inviting. I am not my brother, for better or worse. I was wet, intrigued, and he offered warmth and seemed harmless. So I rolled my bicycle through a Tardis doorway and my life changed forever.

I should clarify for those of you reading this who have heard of a Tardis or The Tardis. There is a lot of misinformation about a Tardis, and most of it is intentional, I think. To understand what Tardis means, you first have to understand that there are many parallel universes (some say an infinite number of them). Each is different from the other in some way. Some of you will have heard about this from studying Quantum Mechanics. It is a fundamental quality of the multiverse we live in. Some of these universes are far and away more advanced than we are; some are nearer and more or less advanced than our current universe. Distance is not the correct term. It is actually energy. It takes more energy to get to some universes than others. And, of course, that is a huge simplification. Anyway, this Tardis is from one of those universes.

The "Time Lords" (more on that term later) developed the technology to move between these universes within the multiverse and also to create personalized "nanouniverses".

Considering how absolutely enormous a universe is and how small the Time Lords' universes are, nano is probably not correct; heck, fempto is not even correct.

The name of the technology that allows people to pass from one universe to another is a very long phrase in the Time Lord's language. Over the ages, they got tired of training their companions to say it, so they shortened it to the two main words "Taar diss". Roughly "opening path". When we pronounce it, we run the two words together, and now so do the Time Lords. So, Tardis is the technology that allows Time Lords to travel between universes easily.

As one might expect, they are not the only group of people to have this sort of technology. In my travels, I have encountered a few others; most notably the belligerent Galaxats, who seem to hate just about everyone, and the Crioseans, who want everyone to be like them. They seemed to be active in the places we went to. My suspicion is that whatever acts as an authority for the Time Lords assigned The Doctor to deal with them.

Of course, I did not know any of this at the time I pushed my bicycle through that doorway. An inviting doorway that threw me into a life of adventure and excitement that few have ever known.