Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Copyright
Code of the Krillitanes
Justin Richards
Chapter One
IT WAS A lovely sunny day, and something was very wrong indeed.
The Doctor thrust his hands deep into his jacket pockets and sniffed the London air. It smelled just as he expected, so there was nothing wrong there. Well, there was nothing more wrong than usual.
He set off down the street, nodding a greeting to a curious cat. He smiled at an old lady carrying shopping bags. She smiled back, then hurried on her way.
A few children were kicking a football about. The Doctor leaned against the end wall of a house and watched them for a while. The street ended in a small turning area where the ball bounced off the walls of houses. Two bundled sweatshirts marked out a goal.
The ball bounced off a wall and rolled up to the Doctor. He picked it up and threw it back to a boy with spiky black hair, who ran after it. The boy was about 12 and had teeth that were still too big for his mouth.
‘Training for the Olympics?’ the Doctor asked.
‘That’s not for years yet,’ the boy told him.
‘Oh.’ The Doctor was disappointed. ‘I must be a bit early.’ He licked his index finger and held it up to test the breeze. ‘2010, yes?’
The boy nodded. His friends had joined him and were watching the Doctor with interest.
‘You’re funny,’ one of the other boys said.
‘Very often,’ the Doctor agreed.
The spiky-haired boy was eating crisps from a brightly coloured packet. He offered the Doctor one.
‘No thanks. You have to be careful how much salt you eat, you know.’
The boy agreed. ‘I know. Six grams is probably too much for an adult. Nearly half the people in Britain go over that. The sodium is what does the damage. High blood pressure, risk of heart disease…’
The Doctor listened as the boy explained. He went into more and more detail about the dangers of eating too much salt. Then he paused to eat another crisp.
‘Is he always like this?’ the Doctor asked the other boys. ‘He’ll be explaining Einstein’s Theory next.’
He had meant it as a joke, but the spiky-haired boy took this as an excuse to do exactly that. ‘The “constant” that Einstein used was the speed of light,’ the boy was saying as the Doctor stifled a yawn.
‘Actually, I did know that,’ he admitted.
The boy was talking faster and faster. Before long, he and the other boys had explained how to bypass Einstein. They knew how to design spaceships that could travel faster than light.
By this time, the Doctor had stopped yawning. ‘Where do you go to school?’ he asked.
Then he realised that the boys had gone back to their football. One of them loudly worked out the angle he would have to bounce the ball off one of the walls to get it in the goal. The Doctor frowned. The boy was exactly right.
A woman had come out of one of the houses and was watching the boys. The Doctor guessed that she was one of their mums.
‘Clever kids,’ he said, joining her.
The woman smiled. ‘They’re a good lot, really. At least they’re playing footie, instead of bothering other people.’
‘They bother me,’ the Doctor said. ‘Oh, not in a bad way. But the things they say are a bit worrying.’
The woman had a bag of crisps. It was the same brand as the boy had been eating. It had the same bright packaging. She offered the bag to the Doctor, and this time he took one.
‘They’re good, aren’t they? For crisps they’re very, er, crisp.’ The Doctor picked a bit of crisp from his teeth with his thumbnail. ‘I was really looking for clues about the internet,’ he went on.
‘Oh?’
‘My TARDIS links up to the local networks when it lands. It downloads news and weather and checks if I’ve won the lottery. That sort of thing.’
‘That’s useful.’
‘Yes, very. Except, when I landed just now, it gave me a virus warning. For the whole internet. Everything. What’s that all about?’ He smiled and accepted another crisp. ‘Sorry, ignore me.’
The woman smiled. ‘So what’s a TARDIS?’
‘Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Don’t worry about it.’
The Doctor watched the children kick their ball. One of them scored a goal, but another boy said he was offside.
‘Which one’s yours?’ the Doctor asked.
The woman pointed to the spiky-haired boy. ‘Spike,’ she said.
‘That makes sense. He was telling me how to build a spaceship. How did he know all that?’
The woman popped another crisp into her mouth. ‘I blame these new Brainy Crisps. He’s been too clever by half since he started eating them. I can’t decide if I should be pleased or worried.’
‘Brainy Crisps?’ The Doctor could see now that the name was printed, big and bright, on the packet. ‘Brainy Crisps.’
‘They make you more brainy,’ the woman explained. ‘No one knows how they work, but if you ask me it must be based on a special protein molecule. It must attach itself to the red blood cells and carry extra oxygen to the brain…’
‘Yes,’ the Doctor said slowly. ‘That would work.’
‘Not that I’d know,’ the woman went on. ‘I left school after my GCSEs, and I failed all of those. I can’t even work the oven timer.’ She crumpled the packet and stuffed it in her coat pocket.
The Doctor nodded, deep in thought. ‘So, where do these Brainy Crisps come from?’
‘We get ours from the supermarket.’
‘That makes sense.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘It was nice talking to you. Thanks for the crisps.’
‘No problem. I hope you get your TARDIS problem sorted.’
‘So do I.’
‘Of course,’ the woman said, turning to go back indoors, ‘the problem with Relative Dimensions is the Space-Time Gap. If you get that sorted, then you can time travel by simple Vortex-Jumping. Bye, then.’
The Doctor stared at the closed door for several minutes. When things got this weird, he decided, it was time to go shopping.
Chapter Two
IT WAS A while since the Doctor had been to a supermarket. He didn’t generally need to go shopping. He had everything he needed in the TARDIS.
The supermarket was cool and bright with wide aisles. It wasn’t too busy, and the Doctor wandered around, looking at the shelves. Supermarkets really did sell the strangest things, he thought.
There was even a whole display of televisions. They were hooked up to a camera that showed shoppers walking past. The Doctor paused to examine himself in widescreen. He drew back his lips to check his teeth. He stuck out his tongue, and was impressed with its colour and brightness. Moving on through the pizza aisle, he had to step aside to let a youth barge his trolley through.
Reaching the bread, the Doctor found his way blocked. A lady was unloading French sticks from a large wheeled bin.
‘Can I help you, love?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes. I’m looking for crisps.’ He leaned forward. ‘Brainy Crisps,’ he told her in a hushed whisper.
The woman took a step back. ‘Looks like you need them.’
‘I do,’ the Doctor confessed. ‘You have n
o idea.’
The woman nodded like she thought she had every idea. ‘Three aisles down.’
‘Thank you. You’re very helpful,’ the Doctor told her. ‘They should give you a badge. “Helpful”, it should say. A helpful badge for helpful people.’
The woman nodded. ‘They’re between the ketchup and the sweets.’
The Brainy Crisps were just where the woman had said. The Doctor ignored the delights of lemon sherbets and wine gums. He glanced longingly at the jelly babies.
The crisp packets were the same as he had already seen. Their bright colours made them stand out on the shelf. There were multi-packs and individual bags. They were all on special offer, with two for the price of one, and extra Super Points.
‘Bargain,’ the Doctor murmured, picking up a bag.
He studied the ingredients list. It told him they were made of potato and vegetable oil and salt and flavouring. Which didn’t really help.
‘Made with actual ingredients,’ it said below the list. That didn’t help much, either.
The front of the packet said, ‘Brainy Crisps – The snack that makes you Brainy!’ On the back it told you how to go to the Brainy_Crisps website to test how much brainier you had got from eating the crisps. There was also, the Doctor noted, an address for comments or complaints.
So much for the sales pitch, he thought. Now to find out what was really going on. He stuck his sonic screwdriver between his teeth while he opened the bag of crisps.
The blue light from the sonic screwdriver lit up the inside of the packet. They certainly looked just like any other crisps. The Doctor checked the screwdriver’s readings as he scanned the contents of the bag.
‘Excuse me, Sunshine,’ a gruff voice said.
The Doctor glanced up. He knew the voice wasn’t talking to him. No one would call the Doctor ‘Sunshine’.
A man in a blue suit was glaring at the Doctor from point-blank range. He was wearing a bright yellow badge. The badge said ‘Derek’, and under that it said ‘Helpful’.
‘I’m sorry, did you want to help me?’ the Doctor asked.
‘What do you think you’re doing, Sunshine?’ Derek demanded.
The Doctor stared at him. ‘I’m Sunshine? You wear a badge that yellow and call me Sunshine?’
Derek sighed like he got this a lot. ‘Have you paid for those crisps?’ he asked.
‘What crisps? Oh, these crisps? These crisps here?’ The Doctor frowned. ‘Er, not yet, actually. Not as such.’
‘So that’s a “no”, then.’
‘Yes. I mean, yes that’s a no. I don’t actually want to eat them,’ the Doctor added. ‘I’m just… looking.’
‘You opened the packet,’ Derek pointed out.
‘Well, strictly speaking that is true.’
‘So that’s a “yes”, then.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Excuse me, but is there a point to all this?’
‘You want the crisps, you pay for them. Whether you want to eat them or just look at them, you pay for them, OK?’
‘OK,’ the Doctor decided. ‘I’ll take them.’ He turned to survey the shelves of crisps. ‘All of them.’
‘Sorry?’
‘All of them,’ the Doctor said again. ‘Every bag.’
‘Every bag? Why?’
The Doctor grinned. ‘They’re on special offer. Now then, Helpful Derek, get us a trolley, would you?’
The Doctor needed two trolleys. He managed to get them to the checkout, pulling one and pushing the other. Each trolley was overflowing with Brainy Crisps.
‘I wouldn’t bother if it wasn’t for the kids,’ he told a man who was staring at him. The man’s own trolley was full of cans of beer. ‘What’s your excuse?’ the Doctor asked.
The Doctor chose the shortest queue. Even so, it seemed to take longer than all the others. That didn’t worry him. He knew there was a law that any queue you chose always moved slowest. It didn’t matter how long it was. He even knew the formula for working out exactly how long it would take.
There was an old lady in front of the Doctor. Her hair was so white it looked slightly blue. Maybe that was the idea? She leaned heavily on her own trolley, which was almost empty. It held just four tins of cat food, some instant soup, and a small bar of chocolate.
‘You sure you’ve got enough crisps?’ the old lady asked the Doctor. Her eyes sparkled with amusement.
‘I hope so,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Though to be honest, I’m not sure.’
‘Those special offers are dangerous,’ the old lady said. ‘You always come away with something you didn’t really want, and you always forget something that was on your list.’
The Doctor showed the old lady his psychic paper. It showed other people what the Doctor wanted them to see. ‘I think I got everything on my list,’ he said.
The old lady peered at the paper. ‘It just says crisps.’
‘Phew, that’s all right then.’ The Doctor made a point of looking into the old lady’s trolley. ‘You’ve not done so badly though. No impulse buys there.’
The old lady sniffed. ‘Two for one, it’s dangerous, I tell you. I mean, I don’t even have a cat.’
They edged forward as a customer finished paying and left. The Doctor caught a rogue crisp bag as it fell. He stuffed it back into the trolley.
‘If you ask me, they’re a con,’ the old lady said in a loud whisper.
‘Two-for-one deals?’
‘Those Brainy Crisps. A real con. I tried a bag yesterday,’ she went on. ‘No difference at all.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Now, if you’ve got a Super Card,’ the old lady went on, ‘that lot will earn you 548 points. Which is worth £2.74, the same as if they’d knocked 2p off every bag of crisps.’
‘I wish I had a card, then.’
The old lady wasn’t listening. ‘It’s all to do with getting cash moving. A discount doesn’t keep the money in circulation, though it does get you to spend. A store card does both, so it’s good for the economy. And of course every 2p you spend adds up to more. It goes into a bank which lends a part of it out to people who spend it again.’
Before the Doctor could interrupt, the old lady told him the formula for the speed of money moving round the economy. Then she explained the effects on the world stock markets – in detail, with numbers.
‘And you don’t even have a cat,’ the Doctor murmured as the old lady hunted through her purse for enough money to pay. She smiled a goodbye to the Doctor as she left.
‘Do you have a Super Card?’ the teenage girl on the checkout asked the Doctor when it was his turn.
‘Sorry,’ the Doctor said. ‘Can you put it all on hers?’ He pointed to the old lady as she trolleyed away.
The girl smiled, showing off metal braces on her teeth. ‘I don’t think the till will do that.’
The Doctor gave it a quick blast with his sonic screwdriver. ‘It will now.’
‘OK then.’ She watched the Doctor unload his trolleys onto the checkout belt. ‘You sure you need all those crisps?’
The Doctor could see the old lady leaving through the sliding doors at the other end of the shop. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Quite sure.’
Chapter Three
TWO EMPTY SUPERMARKET trolleys stood inside the TARDIS doors. Their contents – 137 bags of crisps – were heaped up next to the main control console. The Doctor sat cross-legged on the floor beside the pile of crisp bags.
He took a bag from the pile. Other bags slid down the side, but he ignored them. He opened the bag of crisps and peered inside. He weighed it in his hand. He shone the light from his sonic screwdriver into the bag. He checked the chemical make-up of the crisps. He even ate one.
It was not an easy job working out what was special about the crisps. There were lots of tests the Doctor had to do. Some he could use the sonic screwdriver for, others he could not. Before long, the TARDIS floor was strewn with bits of equipment. There were read-outs and dials and handsets and detect
ors. There were lots and lots of empty crisp packets.
After about an hour, the Doctor had the information he needed. It had taken fifty-four bags of crisps, which meant he had a large pile left over. He would worry about what to do with them later. For now he had something else to worry about.
He had discovered two things. The first, to be honest, he could have found out without opening a single bag. It was the name and address of the firm that made the crisps. The address was printed on the back of every packet.
The other thing he had discovered was what the crisps were fried in. It was Krillitane Oil. He tapped the end of the sonic screwdriver gently against his teeth as he thought about this. The more he thought about it, the more it worried him.
Last time he had met the Krillitanes in this time period, they were frying school chips in their oil. It certainly made the human brain work harder and faster, but it was hardly safe. The oil itself was highly inflammable and could even explode. The Krillitanes themselves were allergic to their own oil. If it touched their leathery skin, they burned or blew up.
As an alien race, the Krillitanes were interesting. They were not very nice, but they were interesting. They could make themselves look like ordinary people. Their true form changed over the years as they absorbed the qualities and traits of the races they conquered. At the moment, at this stage of their evolution, they were like giant walking bats, with wings and claws and very sharp teeth.
The Doctor sucked air through his own teeth. What were the Krillitanes up to this time? Before, they had taken over just one school and fed the children brainy chips. Back then they were trying to find the formula that controlled the universe.
How much more dangerous could things be now if they were feeding Krillitane Oil to everyone in the country? Did it even stop at Britain – what if the firm was exporting its crisps all over the world? The scale of the plan meant it was hugely dangerous.
There were lots of questions, the Doctor thought to himself. But at least the crisp bags had told him where to start looking for the answers.
The crisp firm occupied a large office block on the outskirts of London. Miss Sark always told Maddie on the front desk if a new person was expected to arrive to start work. So Maddie was a bit surprised by the words of the tall, thin man with unruly dark hair. He grinned at her and said he was here to start work.
Doctor Who: Code of the Krillitanes Page 1
