Doctor Who_ Winner Takes All - Jacqueline Rayner [11]
The first man came out, a boxed‐up games console in hand. The door slid back decisively behind him. The second queuer, a woman, held up her ticket. The Doctor and Rose sidled close, and the woman frowned. ‘Excuse us,’ said the Doctor, giving her a charming smile, ‘we just wanna…’
But she’d nipped through the opening door, and it slammed shut behind her before the Doctor could even get a foot in the gap.
‘We’ll just wait here till she comes out,’ said the Doctor, poised ready to dive in.
‘And how are you going to explain this if they aren’t aliens?’ asked Rose.
‘Won’t have committed any crime,’ he said. ‘I’ll say I’ve got stuck on level six of Death to Mantodeans and I’m desperate for some gaming hints.’
Something caught Rose’s attention out of the corner of her eye. ‘Hey, isn’t that the woman who just went in?’ she said.
The Doctor looked up. ‘Yes!’ he said, staring at the woman, who was walking away from them, carrying a box. ‘I think it is.’
Rose was thinking hard. ‘Then this proves it!’ she said. ‘They must be aliens. They’re luring people into these little huts, then they’re duplicating them, robots or something. That’s why they’re so security conscious! They don’t want us to see the machinery!’
‘Or,’ said the Doctor, who had wandered round the other side of the booth and was beckoning to her, ‘they were worried we were trying to sneak in, so sent her out the back door.’
He took his sonic screwdriver from his pocket. ‘Let’s see what their defences are made of,’ he said.
Rose was darting anxious glances up and down the street. ‘We are being a bit obvious here,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t we just try to win something instead?’
The Doctor was holding the sonic screwdriver in front of the little panel. The screwdriver was buzzing away, but the light remained obstinately red.
‘Oh, all right,’ he said, putting it back in his leather jacket. ‘This doesn’t seem to want to open. Which hints at alien involvement, yeah,’ he added to her unspoken question.
It was easy to find a shop that carried the promotion: it’d have been harder to find one that didn’t. The Doctor bought a toothbrush. Rose bought a bar of chocolate. They rejoined forces to compare scratchcards.
‘“Sorry, you’ve not won this time! Please try again!”’ she said.
‘Yeah, me too,’ said the Doctor, taking the losing card from her and putting both of them in a coat pocket. ‘Shall we try again?’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘But can we go into another shop? It’s embarrassing if we keep buying bits. Everyone’ll know we just want to win something.’
‘Cos it’d be awful if we got a bit embarrassed while we were saving the world,’ he said. ‘Can put you right off doing good, that can.’
She accepted the criticism, but remained adamant. It was easier to do stuff like that on spaceships, or in the past, or whatever, because somehow you didn’t mind what people thought of you as much. Like how on holiday you’d wear the sombrero and the novelty T-shirt that you’d never be seen dead in down the youth club. So they went to the shop next door. The Doctor bought a pad of Post‐it notes. Rose bought a biro. Sorry, you’ve not won this time! Please try again!
In the next shop, Rose bought a can of drink. The Doctor, obviously tiring of the pursuit, rooted out a load of change and bought seventeen copies of the same newspaper, one at a time.
They stood outside the door, both scratching away at the silver covering on the cards, the Doctor occasionally handing out newspapers to passers‐by. Not a single card was a winner, and they were running low on cash.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Rose suddenly. ‘You know how these might be aliens, right?’
‘Uh‐huh.’
‘So, their technology’s going to be alien technology. If you got hold of one of those games consoles and took it apart…’
‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘It might give us an idea of what they’re up to an’ all.’
‘Back to Mickey’s then?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. You still got the teabags?’
She grinned. ‘Yeah. Have we got enough money for another pint of milk, though?’
There was just