by Susan Calman
Lou was a beautiful girl who Bill used to give extra portions of chips to every time she served her lunch in the university canteen. There had always been a spark between them. Bill was hoping with all her heart that Lou would still feel that spark, even though Bill now wore a different face.
Lou said nothing, but simply stared, so Bill carried on talking, launching into the best explanation she could give. ‘This is going to sound really out there, but it’s the truth. The absolute truth.
‘Basically, I used to be Bill. I mean, I used to look like Bill. I still am Bill, but I don’t look like me any more. Somehow, an alien stole my face and my body, so now no one recognises me.’
Lou’s face did not move – not one millimetre.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
Lou shook her head.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I think the quickest way to get rid of you, whoever you are, is to listen to what you’ve got to say, and then politely ask you to leave.’
‘Fine. Well, I’m Bill. That’s who I am. I used to work here. Behind the counter, on chips.’
‘No you didn’t,’ Lou frowned. ‘I remember the girl who used to work on chips. She was lovely, and she looked nothing like you.’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Someone stole my face!’ Bill paused, because what she said next would be the only way to get Lou to help her. She lowered her voice and leant forwards. ‘I used to give you extra chips. You’d give me the nod, a little look – like you knew what I was doing. Extra chips. It was our thing.’
Lou’s eyes widened. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked. ‘I never told anyone.’
‘And neither did I!’ Bill replied. ‘Well, I told the Doctor, but he doesn’t count. I didn’t tell anyone else!’ Bill thought about it. ‘And really, who would I tell? It’s not exactly the most interesting thing – I gave a woman extra chips, because I liked her. No one’s going to want to hear that, or remember it for more than five minutes.’
Lou folded her arms and sat back, looking over Bill again. After a few long seconds she said: ‘What did you say had happened to you?’
Bill breathed a sigh of relief. Lou might just be starting to believe her. ‘I went into this shop, and there was this really nice assistant – except she wasn’t nice, because about an hour later, I fell asleep in a coffee shop and woke up looking like this. Like her. And then I went to see my friend, the Doctor, and she was there, looking like me. I know that sounds crazy and made up, but that’s what happened.’
Lou frowned, and then smiled. ‘You’re lucky that I read a lot of sci-fi,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’ Bill brightened up.
‘Don’t get me wrong. You still sound completely crazy. But I’ve read enough alien stories to know how body-snatching works.’ She waved the copy of the book she was reading, which Bill now saw featured a glowing spaceship on the cover.
‘So you kind of believe me?’
Lou shrugged. ‘Let’s just say I haven’t got any lectures this afternoon, and I’m interested enough to help you out, if you really need it.’ A bright smile suddenly lit up her round face. ‘I assume the first thing you want is to get your body back?’
‘Yeah!’ said Bill. ‘But it’s not just my appearance. She must’ve taken part of my personality too, otherwise the Doctor would never have been fooled. She took everything about me!’
‘Not your memories, though, if you remember giving me extra chips.’
‘No.’ Bill blinked. ‘You’re right. Not my memories.’
As she said this, the barrage of images from before – visions of things Bill had not experienced, people she didn’t know, being dragged away by guards – galloped through her mind. She swayed for a moment, but recovered quickly. These things she was seeing – they must have something to do with Ziggy, what she’d done and where she’d come from. Was she now seeing Ziggy’s memories, while Ziggy saw hers?
‘Talk me through exactly what happened in the shop,’ Lou said.
Shaking slightly, Bill concentrated on her explanation: about trying on the jackets, Ziggy insisting on taking photographs, how she started to feel woozy, about falling asleep, going to the Doctor and finding the other Bill had taken her place.
‘Could it be something to do with Ziggy’s camera?’ Bill said, feeling more exhausted than ever once she had finished her tale. ‘That’s the only thing I can think of.’
‘Hmmm,’ Lou said. ‘This shop, was it just off the high street? A sort of cool, boutique-type shop that you never really noticed – and then you suddenly saw it one day and decided to go in?’
‘Yes! That’s exactly what happened. I only noticed it today, when I needed a jacket for a date tonight.’
Lou frowned. ‘It sounds like the same shop I went to last time I was going on a date and I needed a new outfit. First time I noticed it too. The woman in there did look like you do now, come to think of it. But she told me she didn’t think they had anything for me. I asked her what she meant and she said they only had clothes for people “keen to make a good impression on a date”.’
‘Oh!’ said Bill. ‘She mentioned my date to me too, actually.’
‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but I wasn’t sure –’
‘How she knew you were going on a date?’ Bill finished. ‘I never told her about it.’
‘Exactly. Me neither.’
Bill knew that some alien species could read your emotions, even feed off them. Is that what Ziggy had done?
‘You know,’ said Lou, ‘a few other people told me that she wasn’t interested in them buying things from her shop too. Not just me.’
‘So why was I okay, when everyone else wasn’t?’
The pair of them fell silent. What had made Ziggy keep Bill and steal her identity, while rejecting Lou?
‘Were you nervous about your date?’ Bill asked.
‘Not really. I was there to buy an outfit for fun, really. I wasn’t nervous about the date. I just didn’t understand why she wouldn’t sell me anything!’
‘I was worried about looking perfect. Having the right jacket seemed important at the time.’
‘Maybe that’s it, then!’ Lou grinned. ‘I wasn’t stressed about how I looked. Sometimes clothes suit me and sometimes they don’t, but basically, I’m happy as I am.’
Bill looked at Lou. She remembered, embarrassed, that at one point she’d told the Doctor that she’d ‘fatted’ Lou. That she’d stopped her from being good-looking by giving her extra chips. But Lou didn’t see it that way. Lou liked the way she looked, and it was clear from the way she spoke that she didn’t mind what other people thought of her either.
She’s right, Bill thought. That’s the difference. Ziggy couldn’t steal the identity of someone who was happy in their own skin. Psychic energy, nervous and obvious, must be the thing that Ziggy could latch on to. Ziggy must have thought she’d won the lottery having Bill in the shop that day. She was overflowing with nervousness, with wanting to be perfect, and so she gave Ziggy the perfect body to steal. Not to mention giving her the added bonus of getting to travel in time and space with the Doctor …
Bill’s heart suddenly dropped. If Ziggy got to travel with the Doctor, to all those different places and times and worlds, all those bodies to snatch … There was no limit to the havoc she could cause.
‘We have to go,’ Bill said, standing up suddenly. ‘The Doctor needs me. The real me. And fast.’
Outside, the chill of a breeze moved across Bill’s skin as they ran from the canteen, which felt odd.
But everything felt odd. This body didn’t move in the same way hers had. The feet went out at a different angle – she wasn’t properly steady with each step. She was aware of every blink, every swallow, every breath that went in and out. She’d never noticed what it was like to be in a body before – how important it was to feel comfortable, to not be aware of every little thing your body did. Now, when she didn’t have the luxury of being her
self, she appreciated herself so much more. When I fix this, she decided silently, I am never ever going to complain about my brilliant old body again.
‘Where do you want to start looking?’ Lou panted, as they ran from the university grounds.
Bill spoke raggedly through hard breaths. ‘The shop. There might be clues there – clues about how she’s done this. How to stop her.’
As they neared the high street, Bill kept catching glimpses of herself in windows, shuddering as she was reminded what she looked like now. It wasn’t that Ziggy looked bad – she was beautiful – just that Bill had never so badly wanted to see her own face, and not someone else’s.
The shop was empty, of course – Ziggy must still be off with the Doctor in the TARDIS. As they looked around for an entry point, Bill gave Lou her theory.
‘When I went into the shop, I wasn’t completely happy with what I looked like. Maybe that’s what allowed Ziggy to do this to me,’ Bill said as she peered into the darkened shop.
‘No one’s happy with themselves all the time,’ Lou said, looking up at a window on the first floor of the building.
‘But this was different. When I walked in, I was thinking about being perfect,’ Bill said. She hadn’t admitted this to anyone before, but desperate times called for full honesty. ‘And for just a second, I wanted to change who I was – I wanted to be someone else.’
‘Welcome to being human,’ Lou said sympathetically. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, Bill. It’s just bad luck that Ziggy ran into you at an anxious moment.’ She sighed, looking over the building. ‘We might have to smash the window. Unless … Hang on – have you tried the door?’ She reached for the handle, and the door swung open.
In partial darkness, the shop had an even stranger feel to it. Bill noticed that the three jackets she’d tried on were missing from the rail. She went to the counter and ducked down behind it, searching for the camera. It was there, on a shelf – but the photos were nowhere to be seen. Bill had guessed right, then – somehow the camera and the photos were connected to how Ziggy had stolen her body.
And now she’s taken them with her, Bill thought. So the photos must still be important somehow …
‘There’s something else I should mention,’ Lou said. ‘The other girls came back from the shop and said they’d felt funny after trying on one or two things, before Ziggy had made them leave.’
‘Really?’
Lou nodded. ‘That wasn’t the weird thing. Thinking about it now, one girl was ill for quite a while afterwards. She said she didn’t feel like herself. Like, after that day, she couldn’t stack playing cards any more – and that was her party trick. It was like someone had reached into her head and plucked it out. She put it down to a virus. But maybe it was a milder version of what happened to you.’
Bill nodded. ‘Spot on, I reckon.’
If the Doctor was here, Bill realised, he’d have a neat theory all worked out by now. He would say: ‘Ziggy is from a noble and ancient alien race, Bill! And the jackets are visually cloaked devices that can siphon away a person’s energy and emotional qualities! And the camera is either a necessary part of the siphoning process – OR a clever way of keeping people in the jackets long enough to make sure the process completes!’
Hang on, Bill thought. That’s a pretty good theory!
Bill didn’t need to wait to speak to the Doctor – she’d come up with this theory on her own! And if she’d learned anything from the Doctor, it was that a theory led straight to a plan.
‘How about we play Ziggy at her own game?’ Bill said, grabbing Lou by the arm. ‘We get the jackets, get the camera and then I take a picture of HER in the jackets to get my body back?’
‘Could work!’ Lou replied. ‘You’ll need to be careful, though. It seems like a pretty unstable process. She got your looks and bits of your personality – but you still know you’re you. You still have your memories. Don’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Bill replied. ‘But I kept getting these flashes of things – things I know I haven’t experienced. Ziggy’s memories, not mine. Maybe the longer I have this body and this face, the more I’ll become Ziggy until there’s nothing of me left and I’m just … her.’
‘Okay. It’s important that we don’t panic …’ Lou said, looking around the room. ‘We just need to find Ziggy, fast. How are we going to track her down?’
Bill took a deep breath. ‘I have an idea,’ she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her mobile phone. ‘I just need to make a call.’
‘How did you get this number?’ the Doctor asked when he answered the TARDIS phone.
‘You’re going to have to come and meet me to find out,’ Bill said. That’s when she heard it: her voice, which had remained her own, suddenly broke and sounded exactly like Ziggy’s. She was becoming more and more like Ziggy by the moment. Soon, there’d be nothing of Bill left. She glanced at Lou who looked worried too.
‘I don’t have time for games,’ the Doctor replied.
‘That’s not true, is it, Doctor?’ Bill said, grasping for facts that would convince the Doctor of her true identity. ‘You always have time for fun stuff. Like playing your electric guitar!’
Bill wanted to tell him more about himself – the real things that only the real Bill would know about the Doctor – but the words wouldn’t come. Her mind was a fuzz, a blur, and she found herself unable to explain how much she knew about the Doctor, the things they’d done together, the places they’d been. They’d done amazing things. They’d seen so much. But at that moment, all Bill could remember was that he travelled in a big blue box and played an electric guitar. Everything else was slipping away. Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy. And more of those other images, the barrages of a life she hadn’t lived, came rushing through her head.
‘Lots of people play electric guitar.’
‘But do they know about the Daleks, and Nardole and … and …?’ Panic exploded in Bill’s chest – she couldn’t remember anything. ‘And the girl with the star in her eye,’ Bill blurted out.
The Doctor said nothing on the other end of the phone, but Bill could tell she’d said the right thing. He was puzzled, curious even. That was how the Doctor’s mind worked, how her mind worked too: neither of them usually took things at face value. She remembered that about herself at least.
‘Aren’t you even a little bit curious about how I know all these things?’ Bill said. ‘Don’t you want to know how I know that you travel through time and to different planets? In a big blue box?’ She spoke quickly, the words rushing out of her mouth before they were forgotten, lost into the soup of Ziggy that was becoming her mind. ‘If you meet me, I’ll tell you the answer. The park near the university – you know which one. As soon as you can get there.’
Lou tried her hardest to steady her nerves, as she hid behind the tree close to where Bill stood waiting for the Doctor.
She was scared by how quickly Bill seemed to be slipping away – she was losing that thing, the essence that made her who she was. Even though Bill had looked different that morning, Lou had still felt the connection between them. She’d first felt it a long time ago – Lou liked the extra chips, but more than that, she liked to see Bill behind the chip counter. She’d been a comforting sight – a face that was welcoming and kind, friendly and caring, no matter what. And even when Lou had put on weight, and other people had started to give her sideways looks, Bill had still given her extra chips and a smile.
Lou didn’t understand how it could be possible, but Bill was clearly in danger. And Lou was going to stick with her, even though she looked nothing like the Bill she used to know.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered loudly to Bill. ‘The Doctor will be here soon.’
Bill turned unsteadily towards the tree. ‘What will we do when the Doctor gets here?’ she asked loudly. And then, after a moment, ‘What’s wrong with me? Am I ill?’
Lou was alarmed, but forced herself to stay calm. ‘We need to get the jackets. Remember? The jack
ets will turn you back into Bill. You’ll be Bill again! Bill who served me extra chips? Remember?’
Bill blinked a couple of times, and the fog cleared. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I remember.’
Across the park, Bill saw the Doctor walking towards her. Followed by the fake Bill. The person wearing the body that used to be and was still rightfully hers.
‘I can’t see the photos,’ Bill whispered loudly enough for Lou to hear. ‘But she’s still wearing one of the jackets. That’s going to have to be enough. I’ll try to talk to her, and somehow convince the Doctor to help me try it on.’
‘Good plan.’
Bill started waving, to make sure the Doctor remembered who he was meeting. He frowned deeper than Bill had ever seen him frown before as he approached her – this person who, to him, looked like a total stranger.
‘I don’t have much time, so tell me how you know all those things, sharpish, and we can all carry on with our lives,’ the Doctor snapped, before Bill had a chance to say hello.
‘Liar,’ she said instead, gathering her strength and clinging to her memories. ‘You know time doesn’t run out. You know time isn’t set. Everything happens at the same time, and one thing after the other. You know that time is everything and time is nothing. Time and relative dimension in space. Means life. You taught me that.’
‘I did not,’ the Doctor replied. ‘I mean, it’s technically, partially true, but incredibly simplistic.’ The Doctor frowned. ‘Do I know you?’
He recognises me, Bill thought. Not the body I’m in, but the real me, inside.
‘Come on, Doctor, we haven’t got time for this,’ the fake Bill said, stepping forward.
‘She’s not me!’ Bill cried. ‘She’s a fake. Come on, Doctor, deep down you must know that.’ Bill stared right at the Doctor. ‘This morning – you told me the perfect date doesn’t exist!’
