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The Doctor tucked the walking-cane under his arm and reached out with his other hand, touching the surface of the TARDIS. Then he kept reaching. His hand sank into the exterior. The sides of the machine buckled as the split expanded, and the front opened up like a ripe peach.

Like a ripe peach?

Slowly, the Doctor raised his eyes to the heavens. Perhaps, up there in the night sky, he glimpsed the other kind of darkness, hiding behind the winter rainclouds. Or perhaps not.

‘Stop doing this!’ he shouted, but the sky refused to answer.

Chris Cwej cleared his throat, wondering how one should address a disembodied facial feature. ‘Listen,’ he tried. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking this or anything, but... look, are you supposed to be just a mouth?’

In response, yet another roundel opened, revealing a huge eye on the far side. It stared.

‘Oh, yuk,’ he said. ‘That’s gross.’

The eye closed obligingly.

‘Wait a minute,’ Chris said, suddenly realizing what he was talking to ‘Are you the TARDIS?’

‘Ah. I don’t believe it’s possible to communicate with the TARDIS, at least, not directly. Its thought processes are entirely alien to the organic psyche, and its mental capacity is beyond the comprehension of anything other than another TARDIS.’ The voice was cultured, metallic, male without being masculine. Almost mournful, but definitely not human.

‘In colloquial English, one might as well try talking to the whole of Birmingham. Not my own choice of metaphor, however. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’

‘My name’s Chris. Chris Cwej. So, who...?’

‘I serve as an interface. A piece of software, nothing more.

A ghost in the machine, perhaps. Created by one of the previous occupants of this craft.’ Was that really a wistful tone in its voice? ‘ He suffered a period of some confinement here, and spent that time attempting to cultivate his understanding of organic cultures. He learnt a great deal from the ship’s systems, using me as his... pardon me, I have to locate the appropriate term. Go-between? Yes. I was his go-between. I was also responsible for the customization of several core systems within the TARDIS, acting on his command.’

Confinement? Funny way of putting it. ‘This previous occupant. Was he, er, alien, at all?’

‘On occasion. His default form was cybernetic, however.’

The voice hesitated, as if wondering how much to tell. ‘It is possible that the Doctor is unaware of my continued existence.

When I was engineered, I believe it was assumed that I would cease to function once my original user had departed...’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Chris. ‘You said "customization".

You mean, you can shift the TARDIS around, any way I... er, any way the user wants it? All he has to do is say?’

‘I fear not. I may only report. Forge a link, as it were, between the user and the subconscious depths of the ship’s systems. Except for those protocols which determine my physical attributes –’ and the wall grew a temporary pair of nostrils, just to make a point ‘– alterations to the ship’s structure may only be made using the input terminal.’

Chris looked down at the keyboard of the computer, an antique QWERTY job that someone had spilt coffee over at some point in its existence. He nodded to himself. ‘So what happens if I do this, for instance?’

He tried tapping an alpha-numeric sequence into the keyboard. Nothing happened.

‘That was fortunate,’ said the mouth.

‘Fortunate?’

‘Fortunate that we weren’t having this discussion in the Eighth Door section. You appear to have turned it inside-out and pushed it into Hilbert-space.’

‘Oh.’ Chris blinked a couple of times. ‘I kind of assumed you’d stop something like that from happening.’

‘Not within my functional parameters, I regret to say.’

‘Oh. So, can I put it back?’

‘No. I would advise, however, that you reposition one of the corridors to close the gap your command has created. The ship is beginning to lose its aesthetic integrity.’

‘Got it.’ Cwej peered at the tiny LCD screen that had been connected to the keyboard, but it just seemed to be displaying a series of telephone