Prologue
Monroeville, Alabama, USA, 1932
It was recess and the children came storming out of Monroeville Elementary School, a number of them headed to the very popular sand pit in one corner of the schoolyard. However, their enthusiasm faded and their pace slowed to a walk when a group of the largest boys got there first, forming a human wall and chanting, “HOT GREASE IN THE KITCHEN, YOU GOTTA GO AROUND!” to the dismay of the rest of the children, who turned on their heels and left the wall of bullies behind.
They knew what would happen if they went any closer. But one child did not stop, turn back, or go around.
Truman Struckfus Persons, almost eight years old but looking six, kept on walking towards the wall as the other children watched in awe and the wall sniggered and chanted, “TRU-MAN, TRU-MAN, you really are a true BABY! TRU-MAN, TRU-MAN, TRU-BABY TRUMAN!”
Platinum-haired, slightly built, two heads shorter than the sixth-grade boys ahead of him, and clearly defiant, the boy who would become one of America’s great writers, Truman Capote, kept walking on, his brand new, multicolored shirt and neatly pressed short white trousers glowing in the morning sun (the clothes were the idea of his proudly over indulgent Monroeville aunt), setting him even further apart from the boys in the wall awaiting him, dressed in clean but well worn hand-me-downs a reflection of the economic struggles faced by almost everyone during the Great Depression.
Closer and closer he came to the taunting barricade, as everyone in the yard or nearby, watched silently. Some future biographers would speculate that this was probably the main reason young Truman was doing this: he was enjoying the attention, the chance to prove he was not a nobody, not a baby or mama’s boy, and perhaps was hoping he would be seen as a hero if he pulled this off.
Onlookers held their breath, waiting for what most certainly would be a brutal confrontation. Courtesy of the Doctor’s deployment of the TARDIS perception filter, three time-travellers watched unseen and filled with in a mix of fear, fascination and horror.
Jasmine grabbed Tommy’s arm. “They are going to kill him…we have to do something!” she pleaded and then looked fiercely at the Doctor. “I don’t care what ‘the rules’ are, Doctor, we have to stop this!”
The Doctor hesitated: his hearts wanted him to come to the child’s rescue, but his head said no, it could change the future. On the other hand, if Capote should die at age almost eight, that too would change the future…
The boy arrived at the barrier, pushed his way through, and was swallowed whole by a writhing mountain of kicking, punching and cursing boys, piling on top of him like self-propelled bags of cement.
“Doctor, please!” Jasmine hissed.
It was Tommy who took her hand and said, “No, Jasmine. Hang on, someone is coming.”
There was a streak of pale blue as a little girl in a too-large blue dress and all of one head shorter than Truman, came haring towards the boys shouting “YOU LET HIM GO… NOW!”
“What?!” said Jasmine. “She doesn’t look a day over six. This is crazy!”
“It’s her,” said Tommy, in awe of that little tornado who would become his favourite author. “It’s Nelle Harper Lee, future author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. The book that changed my life.”
“She won’t be a future anything if we don’t keep her from dying right here, right now!”
“Hang on, Jasmine. Keep watching.”
Nelle tore into the mound of boys while she shouted out a bully roll-call, “DONALD, HARRY, ALBERT, TOM, HORACE, PETE! GET OFF HIM NOW OR I SWEAR….!!”
The boys staggered back and stood in silence as their embarrassingly tiny female tormentor hurled threats and pulled and pushed them off of Truman. When they realized who she was, they withdrew in silence and very quickly, as the gathering crowd of school kids sniggered and cheered.
“Well… for heaven’s sake…” said Jasmine. “They’re scared of her!”
“They are indeed,” said Tommy, who briefed her on Lee’s history as the school’s fiercest fighter, and Truman’s friend and protector.
The Doctor watched in admiration: a six-year-old girl, not much taller than a fence post, and with short-cropped chestnut hair, glaring brown eyes and small but very effective fists, was fully in charge. She needed no rescuing at all.
Nelle was brushing the sand out of Truman’s hair as he shook his head to clear his vision and his thoughts. “What were you THINKING Truman…?”
“I was… ohh… I don’t know…I just thought someone had to do something.”
“Well look at you! You’re a mess.” She pulled out a white handkerchief and dabbed some blood from Truman’s lip and forehead.
And then… she looked past her friend and straight into the Doctor’s eyes.
The Doctor recoiled as if he had been punched in the stomach. What is she doing? She can SEE me. How is that possible? Nelle was not only seeing him, she was staring right into his eyes and smiling as if welcoming a friend; as if she could read his mind, knew who he was, what he was…and wasn’t even the least bit thrown by it!
The Doctor turned to Jasmine and Tommy and shouted, “RUN!”
“Run?” answered Jasmine. Are you serious?? Run from a six-year-old girl, even though she can’t see us?
“We have to leave, NOW.” He dragged them both towards the Tardis. “Get inside!!” The Doctor kept the rest of his thoughts to himself. She not only sees me but the TARDIS too!
“Nelle! What are you looking at?” asked Truman. “I don’t see anything over there, except bushes and a tree.”
Nelle patted Truman gently on his back and said, “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”
“But what were you looking at?” he persisted.
Nelle did not reply, so he walked quietly beside her, back towards the school. Truman had not seen what she had seen, or felt what she had felt. A bit dusty, smudged, and late for class, they walked through the school’s doors, alive.
The Doctor’s mind was racing. She saw me right through the perception filter and then she looked right into me, into my mind, my lives, my history.
It was recess and the children came storming out of Monroeville Elementary School, a number of them headed to the very popular sand pit in one corner of the schoolyard. However, their enthusiasm faded and their pace slowed to a walk when a group of the largest boys got there first, forming a human wall and chanting, “HOT GREASE IN THE KITCHEN, YOU GOTTA GO AROUND!” to the dismay of the rest of the children, who turned on their heels and left the wall of bullies behind.
They knew what would happen if they went any closer. But one child did not stop, turn back, or go around.
Truman Struckfus Persons, almost eight years old but looking six, kept on walking towards the wall as the other children watched in awe and the wall sniggered and chanted, “TRU-MAN, TRU-MAN, you really are a true BABY! TRU-MAN, TRU-MAN, TRU-BABY TRUMAN!”
Platinum-haired, slightly built, two heads shorter than the sixth-grade boys ahead of him, and clearly defiant, the boy who would become one of America’s great writers, Truman Capote, kept walking on, his brand new, multicolored shirt and neatly pressed short white trousers glowing in the morning sun (the clothes were the idea of his proudly over indulgent Monroeville aunt), setting him even further apart from the boys in the wall awaiting him, dressed in clean but well worn hand-me-downs a reflection of the economic struggles faced by almost everyone during the Great Depression.
Closer and closer he came to the taunting barricade, as everyone in the yard or nearby, watched silently. Some future biographers would speculate that this was probably the main reason young Truman was doing this: he was enjoying the attention, the chance to prove he was not a nobody, not a baby or mama’s boy, and perhaps was hoping he would be seen as a hero if he pulled this off.
Onlookers held their breath, waiting for what most certainly would be a brutal confrontation. Courtesy of the Doctor’s deployment of the TARDIS perception filter, three time-travellers watched unseen and filled with in a mix of fear, fascination and horror.
Jasmine grabbed Tommy’s arm. “They are going to kill him…we have to do something!” she pleaded and then looked fiercely at the Doctor. “I don’t care what ‘the rules’ are, Doctor, we have to stop this!”
The Doctor hesitated: his hearts wanted him to come to the child’s rescue, but his head said no, it could change the future. On the other hand, if Capote should die at age almost eight, that too would change the future…
The boy arrived at the barrier, pushed his way through, and was swallowed whole by a writhing mountain of kicking, punching and cursing boys, piling on top of him like self-propelled bags of cement.
“Doctor, please!” Jasmine hissed.
It was Tommy who took her hand and said, “No, Jasmine. Hang on, someone is coming.”
There was a streak of pale blue as a little girl in a too-large blue dress and all of one head shorter than Truman, came haring towards the boys shouting “YOU LET HIM GO… NOW!”
“What?!” said Jasmine. “She doesn’t look a day over six. This is crazy!”
“It’s her,” said Tommy, in awe of that little tornado who would become his favourite author. “It’s Nelle Harper Lee, future author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. The book that changed my life.”
“She won’t be a future anything if we don’t keep her from dying right here, right now!”
“Hang on, Jasmine. Keep watching.”
Nelle tore into the mound of boys while she shouted out a bully roll-call, “DONALD, HARRY, ALBERT, TOM, HORACE, PETE! GET OFF HIM NOW OR I SWEAR….!!”
The boys staggered back and stood in silence as their embarrassingly tiny female tormentor hurled threats and pulled and pushed them off of Truman. When they realized who she was, they withdrew in silence and very quickly, as the gathering crowd of school kids sniggered and cheered.
“Well… for heaven’s sake…” said Jasmine. “They’re scared of her!”
“They are indeed,” said Tommy, who briefed her on Lee’s history as the school’s fiercest fighter, and Truman’s friend and protector.
The Doctor watched in admiration: a six-year-old girl, not much taller than a fence post, and with short-cropped chestnut hair, glaring brown eyes and small but very effective fists, was fully in charge. She needed no rescuing at all.
Nelle was brushing the sand out of Truman’s hair as he shook his head to clear his vision and his thoughts. “What were you THINKING Truman…?”
“I was… ohh… I don’t know…I just thought someone had to do something.”
“Well look at you! You’re a mess.” She pulled out a white handkerchief and dabbed some blood from Truman’s lip and forehead.
And then… she looked past her friend and straight into the Doctor’s eyes.
The Doctor recoiled as if he had been punched in the stomach. What is she doing? She can SEE me. How is that possible? Nelle was not only seeing him, she was staring right into his eyes and smiling as if welcoming a friend; as if she could read his mind, knew who he was, what he was…and wasn’t even the least bit thrown by it!
The Doctor turned to Jasmine and Tommy and shouted, “RUN!”
“Run?” answered Jasmine. Are you serious?? Run from a six-year-old girl, even though she can’t see us?
“We have to leave, NOW.” He dragged them both towards the Tardis. “Get inside!!” The Doctor kept the rest of his thoughts to himself. She not only sees me but the TARDIS too!
“Nelle! What are you looking at?” asked Truman. “I don’t see anything over there, except bushes and a tree.”
Nelle patted Truman gently on his back and said, “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”
“But what were you looking at?” he persisted.
Nelle did not reply, so he walked quietly beside her, back towards the school. Truman had not seen what she had seen, or felt what she had felt. A bit dusty, smudged, and late for class, they walked through the school’s doors, alive.
The Doctor’s mind was racing. She saw me right through the perception filter and then she looked right into me, into my mind, my lives, my history.
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Series 4 - Episode 3
To Kill a Memorite
Written by Clara Laurinda
The TARDIS Control Room
The Doctor, Jasmine and Tommy pelted through the door in rapid succession. If the TARDIS would permit it, the Doctor would have slammed the door behind them, but instead he closed it firmly, quietly, and without stopping, he raced to the control console, set some random co-ordinates and the TARDIS was in flight within seconds.
“Doctor”, gasped Jasmine, “What is going on? Where are we going?”
“Away…. as fast as we can. She saw us.”
“She did not, Doctor. She looked right through us or… past us. The filter was in place and Nelle and Truman were busy recovering….” Tommy had gasped all that out breathlessly, while holding back his bitter disappointment at the abrupt end to his promised birthday trip to the childhood of Harper Lee.
“She may have looked through you and Jasmine, but she looked me straight in the eye, right in the middle of cleaning up her friend. Her look was direct and…intrusive.”
“What’s the problem, Doctor?” asked a baffled Jasmine. “So she saw you. You weren’t dressed in a clown suit or an space suit. You blended in with the 1930s in your battered leather jacket. She’s a child. She won’t remember seeing you even if she did manage to penetrate the perception filter. What’s your point?”
“She saw me.”
“So you keep saying…over and over again,” added a baffled Tommy.
“But there was more to it. She knew I was … alien, even that I was a time traveller. What if her seeing me has altered her life in some way and To Kill a Mockingbird is never written? It was to become one of the most influential novels in the history of the United States, the Earth and even the universe…. AND SHE SAW ME.”
Jasmine sighed at what seemed like an wildly egocentric anxiety attack and remained silent. But when Tommy raced off to the TARDIS library, perhaps to prove that the book was safe, she followed close behind.
When Tommy returned a few moments later, he was ashen-faced and holding out an opened copy of To Kill a Mockingbird so the Doctor could see it clearly: it’s pages were blank and it’s title was slowly disappearing off the book’s spine as they watched.
“Oh my God!” said the Doctor.
“You don’t believe in God,” said Jasmine, wryly, as she came back into the room, carrying the library’s copy of the King James Version of the Bible. “Is that why this Bible’s pages are blank?”
***
The TARDIS Library
The Doctor was down the hall and through the library door within seconds, his companions not far behind. With even a cursory inspection, it was clear that the spines of all the books in the Earth section of his library were losing their titles and a glance through some of them showed that all of their pages were blank.
“What have I done….” The Doctor sank to his knees. But not in prayer.
Doctor, don’t be so dramatic. Pull yourself together. Get up off your knees and come to me now, please. We need to talk and my time is running out.
The Doctor rose slowly. He could hear Nelle’s voice as clearly as if she were standing behind him, which she wasn’t of course. She was still in his mind and just as stubborn and forceful as she had been in the schoolyard, but now her voice sounded much older.
Jasmine and Tommy watched the Doctor rise, his eyes glazed over as if he were hypnotised. He snapped out of it and asked a very specific question: “Tommy, when does Miss Lee die?”
“This year Doctor,” forgetting that “this year” could be any year for The Doctor.
“Could you be a bit more specific?”
“2016.”
“Even more specific, please. The day…” the Doctor said, as he got in position to chart a new course for the TARDIS.
“Friday, February 19th. But…”
“Don’t worry. I’ve set the Tardis time co-ordinates for January 8th, 2016. I have no intention of visiting her on the day she dies. Place?”.
“An assisted living healthcare facility in Monroeville, Alabama. There are five. I don’t know which one.”
“No need. The TARDIS has already set her course,” he had raised his voice to be heard over the wheezing/whooshing of the Tardis moving through time and space and landing. “But… Tommy…. you know the exact number of nursing homes in Monroeville?” added the Doctor with a bit of a smirk. “That’s interesting. Were you planning to request another visit or are you just interested in statistics?” He winked.
Jasmine cleared her throat. Heads turned. “I’m in the room, you know. What’s going on with you two? I thought this was an emergency and you two are just chattering away….”
“Yes, Doctor,” Tommy added. “What are we doing, exactly? Why are we headed…without my request, implied or actual, by the way … to see Miss Nelle Harper Lee at age 89, just weeks before she dies? Especially after you took off like a jack rabbit when she saw you just a few moments ago your time… eighty-three years earlier?” Tommy’s expression acknowledged his confusion. Jasmine was a little bit lost herself but wouldn’t admit it and smiled in support of what Tommy had asked.
***
A Healthcare Facility, Monroeville, Alabama, January 8th, 2016
The Doctor opened the TARDIS door and answered Tommy’s questions as they all stepped onto the grounds of the health care facility.
“She called me,” said the Doctor.
“Your phone didn’t ring, so what do you mean?” Tommy snapped back, without thinking, while Jasmine was thinking and thought she knew what the Doctor meant, but said nothing.
“I heard her voice in my head,” the Doctor replied, perhaps too calmly. “There seems to be some sort of a mind link between us. I felt it the moment she looked into my eyes even halfway across the schoolyard.”
“You mean like a Vulcan mind meld?” asked a bemused Jasmine.
“You know about that?” asked Tommy, looking at her with increased respect.
“Of course. I have the complete DVD collection of the original Star Trek television show, so why wouldn’t I?”
“I know so little about you Jasmine,” Tommy smiled. Jasmine smiled back.
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to get their focus back on track. “No, of course it’s not a typical, and might I add, fictional Vulcan mind meld. Miss Nelle established her link without hands, without touch, at a distance, and at 6 years of age. Quite remarkable. And before you say it, no she is not a Vulcan…”
“…because she doesn’t have the pointy ears!!” Jasmine blurted out just before she and Tommy exploded in laughter, much to the Doctor’s horror since they were approaching the front doors of the facility.
He lowered his voice. “Just so you know…the perception filter is only concealing the TARDIS right now. It’s invisible, but we are not, and we can be heard as well. Look. We are attracting attention.”
The receptionist was seated at her desk, watching quizzically, not far from the front doors that the three visitors now walked through in silence. The Doctor pulled out his psychic paper to identify himself but she waved it away.
“That’s fine, doctor, you can put that away. I don’t really need your I.D. Miss Lee told us to expect the three of you this morning, gave us a list of your names and described you to a T,” she said, pointing to a list in front of her that included three names: the doctor, Jasmine and Tommy.
With eyebrows raised, they signed in next to their names and Tommy said out loud, but quietly, almost under his breath, “Curiouser and curiouser.”
The Doctor leaned in and whispered, “That’s another book I spotted fading in my library”.
Jasmine added, “You mean Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? I love that book.”
A nurse came to guide them to Miss Lee’s room, briefing them on the way. “You probably know this already, doctor, but perhaps your assistants aren’t aware. Miss Lee’s vision is very poor now because of advanced macular degeneration and her hearing is equally weak, so communication might be difficult, although she’s still as sharp as a tack.”
The Doctor, Jasmine and Tommy pelted through the door in rapid succession. If the TARDIS would permit it, the Doctor would have slammed the door behind them, but instead he closed it firmly, quietly, and without stopping, he raced to the control console, set some random co-ordinates and the TARDIS was in flight within seconds.
“Doctor”, gasped Jasmine, “What is going on? Where are we going?”
“Away…. as fast as we can. She saw us.”
“She did not, Doctor. She looked right through us or… past us. The filter was in place and Nelle and Truman were busy recovering….” Tommy had gasped all that out breathlessly, while holding back his bitter disappointment at the abrupt end to his promised birthday trip to the childhood of Harper Lee.
“She may have looked through you and Jasmine, but she looked me straight in the eye, right in the middle of cleaning up her friend. Her look was direct and…intrusive.”
“What’s the problem, Doctor?” asked a baffled Jasmine. “So she saw you. You weren’t dressed in a clown suit or an space suit. You blended in with the 1930s in your battered leather jacket. She’s a child. She won’t remember seeing you even if she did manage to penetrate the perception filter. What’s your point?”
“She saw me.”
“So you keep saying…over and over again,” added a baffled Tommy.
“But there was more to it. She knew I was … alien, even that I was a time traveller. What if her seeing me has altered her life in some way and To Kill a Mockingbird is never written? It was to become one of the most influential novels in the history of the United States, the Earth and even the universe…. AND SHE SAW ME.”
Jasmine sighed at what seemed like an wildly egocentric anxiety attack and remained silent. But when Tommy raced off to the TARDIS library, perhaps to prove that the book was safe, she followed close behind.
When Tommy returned a few moments later, he was ashen-faced and holding out an opened copy of To Kill a Mockingbird so the Doctor could see it clearly: it’s pages were blank and it’s title was slowly disappearing off the book’s spine as they watched.
“Oh my God!” said the Doctor.
“You don’t believe in God,” said Jasmine, wryly, as she came back into the room, carrying the library’s copy of the King James Version of the Bible. “Is that why this Bible’s pages are blank?”
***
The TARDIS Library
The Doctor was down the hall and through the library door within seconds, his companions not far behind. With even a cursory inspection, it was clear that the spines of all the books in the Earth section of his library were losing their titles and a glance through some of them showed that all of their pages were blank.
“What have I done….” The Doctor sank to his knees. But not in prayer.
Doctor, don’t be so dramatic. Pull yourself together. Get up off your knees and come to me now, please. We need to talk and my time is running out.
The Doctor rose slowly. He could hear Nelle’s voice as clearly as if she were standing behind him, which she wasn’t of course. She was still in his mind and just as stubborn and forceful as she had been in the schoolyard, but now her voice sounded much older.
Jasmine and Tommy watched the Doctor rise, his eyes glazed over as if he were hypnotised. He snapped out of it and asked a very specific question: “Tommy, when does Miss Lee die?”
“This year Doctor,” forgetting that “this year” could be any year for The Doctor.
“Could you be a bit more specific?”
“2016.”
“Even more specific, please. The day…” the Doctor said, as he got in position to chart a new course for the TARDIS.
“Friday, February 19th. But…”
“Don’t worry. I’ve set the Tardis time co-ordinates for January 8th, 2016. I have no intention of visiting her on the day she dies. Place?”.
“An assisted living healthcare facility in Monroeville, Alabama. There are five. I don’t know which one.”
“No need. The TARDIS has already set her course,” he had raised his voice to be heard over the wheezing/whooshing of the Tardis moving through time and space and landing. “But… Tommy…. you know the exact number of nursing homes in Monroeville?” added the Doctor with a bit of a smirk. “That’s interesting. Were you planning to request another visit or are you just interested in statistics?” He winked.
Jasmine cleared her throat. Heads turned. “I’m in the room, you know. What’s going on with you two? I thought this was an emergency and you two are just chattering away….”
“Yes, Doctor,” Tommy added. “What are we doing, exactly? Why are we headed…without my request, implied or actual, by the way … to see Miss Nelle Harper Lee at age 89, just weeks before she dies? Especially after you took off like a jack rabbit when she saw you just a few moments ago your time… eighty-three years earlier?” Tommy’s expression acknowledged his confusion. Jasmine was a little bit lost herself but wouldn’t admit it and smiled in support of what Tommy had asked.
***
A Healthcare Facility, Monroeville, Alabama, January 8th, 2016
The Doctor opened the TARDIS door and answered Tommy’s questions as they all stepped onto the grounds of the health care facility.
“She called me,” said the Doctor.
“Your phone didn’t ring, so what do you mean?” Tommy snapped back, without thinking, while Jasmine was thinking and thought she knew what the Doctor meant, but said nothing.
“I heard her voice in my head,” the Doctor replied, perhaps too calmly. “There seems to be some sort of a mind link between us. I felt it the moment she looked into my eyes even halfway across the schoolyard.”
“You mean like a Vulcan mind meld?” asked a bemused Jasmine.
“You know about that?” asked Tommy, looking at her with increased respect.
“Of course. I have the complete DVD collection of the original Star Trek television show, so why wouldn’t I?”
“I know so little about you Jasmine,” Tommy smiled. Jasmine smiled back.
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to get their focus back on track. “No, of course it’s not a typical, and might I add, fictional Vulcan mind meld. Miss Nelle established her link without hands, without touch, at a distance, and at 6 years of age. Quite remarkable. And before you say it, no she is not a Vulcan…”
“…because she doesn’t have the pointy ears!!” Jasmine blurted out just before she and Tommy exploded in laughter, much to the Doctor’s horror since they were approaching the front doors of the facility.
He lowered his voice. “Just so you know…the perception filter is only concealing the TARDIS right now. It’s invisible, but we are not, and we can be heard as well. Look. We are attracting attention.”
The receptionist was seated at her desk, watching quizzically, not far from the front doors that the three visitors now walked through in silence. The Doctor pulled out his psychic paper to identify himself but she waved it away.
“That’s fine, doctor, you can put that away. I don’t really need your I.D. Miss Lee told us to expect the three of you this morning, gave us a list of your names and described you to a T,” she said, pointing to a list in front of her that included three names: the doctor, Jasmine and Tommy.
With eyebrows raised, they signed in next to their names and Tommy said out loud, but quietly, almost under his breath, “Curiouser and curiouser.”
The Doctor leaned in and whispered, “That’s another book I spotted fading in my library”.
Jasmine added, “You mean Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? I love that book.”
A nurse came to guide them to Miss Lee’s room, briefing them on the way. “You probably know this already, doctor, but perhaps your assistants aren’t aware. Miss Lee’s vision is very poor now because of advanced macular degeneration and her hearing is equally weak, so communication might be difficult, although she’s still as sharp as a tack.”
They arrived at Miss Lee’s room: she was sitting in a wheelchair, her mobility having been affected by a stroke a few years back, something the nurse had assumed “the doctor” knew, so she hadn’t mentioned it in her briefing. Nelle was working at a computer on a small desk near the window, writing something in extremely large print, with her back to group.
“Your visitors are here, Miss Lee.”
“Addy, we’ve known each other for two years now and I’ve told you to call me Nelle. I don’t recognize myself when you call me Miss Lee,” she laughed. The nurse blushed and smiled and left the room. Nelle closed the document she’d been working on and turned her wheelchair around to greet her guests.
“Never thought I’d be using a computer, but I can see my words better this way because it magnifies them for me. Please come in Doctor. Sit down in this arm chair, here, so I can get a good look at you. It might be only a few minutes since you last saw me, but for me it’s been eighty-four years.” The Doctor sat down, fascinated. She indeed was sharp as a tack, as the nurse had said. Perhaps much sharper.
Nelle turned her head towards Tommy and Jasmine. “Good to meet you two. You must be Tommy, the birthday boy who brought the Doctor and his TARDIS to the schoolyard to see me as a rather scrappy six-year-old!” Tommy was uncharacteristically quiet; didn’t ask how she knew, since the Doctor had said she had been inside the Doctor’s head, so to speak.
Nelle looked next at Jasmine and extended her hand, which Jasmine shook gently. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jasmine! And no, I didn’t look through or past you and Tommy as you thought I had. I could see you both, but I was focussed on your ‘friend’,” she said with a nod towards the Doctor. “You are a beautiful young woman, dear, if you’ll permit me to call you dear. I love to see a woman with such a spark in her eyes. For me it means you have a wisdom beyond your years…. There’s something else I sense too, but… sorry, I am getting a bit sappy and a bit rude. Welcome, all of you. I don’t get to see many people lately, even close friends.”
Jasmine and Tommy seated themselves on a small quilt-covered bench. Absolutely mesmerized.
“Well now, let’s get down to business,” Nelle said, turning her eyes back to the Doctor, her voice suddenly very serious.
“I understand something very disturbing happened when you got back into the TARDIS after our first encounter. Your thoughts became scattered and hard to read, especially after Tommy showed you a blank copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and you went to your very impressive library and cried out, ‘What have I done!’ Your words echoed so loudly in my mind that I had to intervene because I am almost certain you have done nothing wrong. But I need to know exactly what is happening, because I too have been noticing things over the years, that I have told no one about, except Truman.”
The Doctor, Tommy and Jasmine, sat like a group of school children listening attentively to their teacher. They were also in awe of how little her sight and hearing problems were interfering with her ability to communicate.
“What things have been happening, Miss Lee?”
“Nelle, please, all of you, no Miss. Nelle with a silent ‘e’ at the end. I was named after my grandmother Ellen, only they reversed it to spell out Nelle. Problem is, I’ve spent the rest of my life correcting people when they pronounce it as Nellie!” She made a face as if she’d just eaten a bitter walnut. "Can you imagine? ‘Nellie Lee’”?
“So that’s why you used Harper Lee, as a pen name?” responded the Doctor.
“Yes but it wasn’t really a pen name like ‘Mark Twain’. My real name is Nelle Harper Lee, so I just dropped the Nelle. My sister Alice used to call me Nelle Harper most of her life,” she said softly as she bowed her head slightly. Her oldest sister had died only fourteen months earlier at age one-hundred-and-three, working as a respected Monroeville lawyer, almost to the end, just as their father A.C. Lee had done before her. Nelle had begun studying law herself but then altered her focus to writing, which she had loved since childhood.
The Doctor brought Nelle out of what had become a long silence; he did so, suddenly, with a somewhat ill-timed repeat of his own question, rather than answering hers. “What things have you been noticing for years?”
Nelle was startled out of her reverie. She hadn’t realized that her last thoughts were in her own mind, unspoken. And she’d been expecting the Doctor to answer her question first, not ask another one. But she did answer.
“Well, a week or two before you visited Truman and me, in… 1932, I believe…” The Doctor nodded. “…Truman and I had noticed that definitions were disappearing from the school’s Oxford Dictionary, just a few at a time, but since Truman was the victim of unceasing bullying and I was always being called out by our teacher for disrupting the flow of education in the classroom with what were seen as all-too-frequent interruptions by a ‘little Miss know-it-all,’ we said nothing. We also noticed it in all volumes of the school’s encyclopedia. This went on for all my years of elementary school and even into my college days. I don’t know if Truman encountered it on his own, later. We never spoke of it again. But it was so subtle that few people, if anyone else, noticed.”
“Well there it is. I am the cause of all this. It started the same time as my visit. I am so sorry. What can I do to help now?”
“Doctor. One thing you can do is work on your listening skills,” Nelle snapped, her sense of humour completely evaporating. “Your ego needs reining in, Doctor. I distinctly said that this started a week or two before you arrived. That’s why I smiled at you when you appeared that day. I thought you had come to help us.”
The Doctor realized, perhaps a bit slowly, that once again the TARDIS had taken him where he needed to go rather than where he had wanted to go. There were children to help.
“All I remember” he replied, “was your piercing brown eyes and how you saw right through the perception filter and into…”
“Is THAT what you call it? A perception filter. Clever. It keeps people from ‘perceiving’ you, your TARDIS and your friends. I could have used that myself most of my life, especially when Truman and I were in grade school together… By the way, he never knew you were there and I never told him since it wasn’t the most auspicious day of his life,” and she giggled like the six-year-old she had been only a half hour earlier, by the Doctor’s time.
“But,” the Doctor continued, “you saw through the filter and your mind seemed to enter right into to mine. I sensed that you were absorbing my memories, my lives, my travelling through time and space and that you even absorbed the knowledge that I am…”
“Not of this earth?”
“Yes.”
“That you are a… Time Lord from…”
“Gallifrey.”
“Doctor and Miss…I mean… Nelle…” interrupted Jasmine firmly. Amusing as it was to watch these two share memories and finish each other’s sentences, there was an emergency that needed tending to.
“Yes Jasmine, you’re right. Getting back on track, Doctor… what exactly caused you to cry out?”
“Well, I began to notice the titles of key works of Earth literature, history, law, philosophy, science, human rights of all kinds … disappearing off the spines of many of my library’s books. And when I looked inside of a number of them, the pages were blank, even though I had read them many times and some quite recently. And since we first noticed the problem with your two books, right after we’d left the playground, I was alarmed that either I had caused your books not to be written at all or I had caused them to be unwritten in some way and had triggered some sort of disastrous domino effect.”
“Well, I can assure you my books were written, Doctor.”
He nodded but continued his account. “I was horrified that the books had been removed from time and space and no longer existed, and that a loss that extensive would alter the Universe and profoundly impact Earth culture, and that I had caused it all.”
“What are some of the other works that have been affected?” asked Nelle.
“The King James Version….”
“…of the Bible? The KJV? What else?” asked Nelle as her face whitened. “No. Wait. Maybe I can tell you.” She moved her wheelchair over to a wall of easily-reached low-level shelves filled with some of her much read book collection, and one by one, opened them to find their pages blank, even though the titles were still visible on the spines.
Through her tears, she began calling out the names of books she’d appreciated, both past and present, as she took them from the bookshelf and opened them to see only blank pages, even in books she had just re-read or consulted a few days or hours before: “The KJV; all five volumes of Macaulay’s History of England; Malala Yousafzai’s I am Malala; Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing; Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Grey and Lady Windermere’s Fan; Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and A Child’s Story…”
As the number of affected books mounted, Jasmine and Tommy moved to the bookshelves to help Nelle with her dark inventory, joining in her roll call of the missing. Tommy went first: “The Quran; the Torah; Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Sun Tzu’s The Art of War; Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching; Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations; Plato’s Republic; Aristotle’s Poetics and Politics; Marx’s Das Kapital; Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment; Robert F. Kennedy’s Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
As the list continued to grow, the Doctor quietly left the room. No one noticed he was no longer there. Not even Nelle.
Jasmine continued where Tommy had left off: “The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More; all seven books of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia; the seven books in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series; J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy; James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain; Martin Luther King, Jr’s I Have a Dream; Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August; Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms; Margaret Macmillan’s Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World; copies of the Magna Carta and the United States Declaration of Independence; and a special binder containing the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Declaration on the Rights of the Child, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and Declaration on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities…”
Nelle continued: “Truman’s In Cold Blood and Other Voices, Other Rooms; Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life; Einstein’s The Special and General Theory; Hawking’s A Brief History of Time; Mother Teresa’s No Greater Love; James Blight’s The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara; …and…my father’s law books…” She stopped.
The Doctor was in the room again, taken aback by the number of books stacked near the half-empty bookcase in the few moments he had been gone. Jasmine, Tommy and Nelle turned towards him.
“I was right,” said Nelle. “We do need your help Doctor, much more than Truman and I ever did in 1932. Do you notice a pattern not only here but in your own library? Key works that deal with morality, justice, the human and civil rights of all peoples, the tactics of war, the struggle against oppression and between good and evil, the importance of creativity, imagination, and, especially, the need for compassion, understanding and respect for diversity and difference?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “And we will take action, but first may I help you to your bed? You look exhausted.” She said I am not responsible for what’s happened, yet she hasn’t said why, and if I push her too much, I could shorten her life and then I really would be responsible for that.
“That’s all right Doctor, I can still do that for myself.” She wheeled over to the bed and quite gracefully moved onto it.
“Nelle,” asked the Doctor, “That day you saw us and the TARDIS, I know you were focussed on me, but did you notice anything else? Near or around the TARDIS, perhaps?”
Nelle leaned back against the pillows Jasmine and Tommy had placed behind her back and head, and searched her memory. “Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. But I assumed it was a sort of mist or fog that clung to the box as a side effect of time travel.”
“It isn’t a side effect, but it is interesting. I know it’s been eighty-four years, but can you describe exactly what you saw?”
“Hmm. Let’s see.” She closed her eyes tightly. “When the mist wrapped itself around the TARDIS, the large white letters ‘Police Public Call Box’ became distorted, disappeared for a second, and then went back to normal.”
“Was the door open?”
“No, well, not at first, but as the mist hovered, the door opened just a crack for a moment but was closed before you re-entered and left.” There was a silence and then the Doctor and Nelle shouted in unison, “THAT’S IT!”
Tommy rolled his eyes. Hopeless. Joined at the hip. And Jasmine reminded them to speak one at a time.
Nelle spoke first. “Something entered the TARDIS while we weren’t paying attention to it, the something that had been interfering with the dictionary and encyclopedia! Could it have been some other form of, if you will pardon the expression, Doctor, alien life?”
“Yes, that something that was playing around with your school’s reference books in 1932…it was and still is very likely an alien life form.”
“Can it be stopped, Doctor? Can my books still be saved, or are they already gone forever? I don’t mean the two I wrote, but all these books that have been so important to me and to Earth culture. I wish I could go with you and help, but I would be a liability, the shape I am in.”
“You’ve already done more than enough,” said the Doctor.
“Doctor,” Tommy said softly. “Maybe there is one more thing we should check. Nelle, do you have any of your favourite books on your computer? Digital copies or access to digital libraries online?”
She opened her eyes and nodded, alert once again. “Yes! Please check if they are still there. I didn’t log out so you should have access.”
The Doctor looked pessimistic. “I just came back from the TARDIS… and my backup digital library is fading as well, but yes, do check Nelle’s computer, Tommy."
After no more than a few minutes, Tommy had the answer. “The titles of Nelle’s downloaded books are all still listed but all the files I opened are blank. And the main download sites are offline.” There was another silence in the room and then Nelle’s strong and clear voice returned.
“OK, Doctor, NOW I am getting angry. I may have major limitations right now, but I am a fighter and I have a plan. Tell me, can you do short time jumps in your TARDIS, say just an hour or so into the future but stay in the same place?” The Doctor nodded yes. “Could you do that, but leave Jasmine and Tommy with me?” she asked as she turned to them, “if that’s all right with you two? I need your assistance.” Jasmine, Tommy and the Doctor all nodded yes.
The Doctor returned ninety minutes later, and was handed a white envelope with a rather odd address: it: “Nelle Harper Lee, November 16th 1957, New York City, New York, USA. Specific co-ordinates to be set by TARDIS.”
“This is for my thirty-one year-old self,” Nelle directed, “explaining the problem and briefing her fully on what needs to be done and what it might involve. She’ll already know who you are, Doctor; after all, she met you in 1932, and she remembers. This letter will save you all a long time-consuming explanation so that she, or rather I, can join you in your efforts to stop this insidious invasion and perhaps even restore what has already been lost. It means you’ll all have a new companion for a bit, Doctor, one far more physically capable than I am now, but just as sharp and stubborn! Don’t worry. The letter says nothing of what happens in her future. Jasmine and Tommy briefed me on your rules, and some of them she’ll even follow (big smile). Now go, all of you and… bless you.”
Jasmine and Tommy watched as the Doctor did something rare for him: he took Nelle’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you Nelle. We’ll make a great team.”
***
Nelle’s Apartment, New York City, November 16th, 1957
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
A large blue Police Call Box landed noisily in Nelle’s small walk-up flat, not far from where she was seated at her writing desk improvised from a large wooden door, its surface covered with stacks of paper, a typewriter, notepads, a few pens and pencils, and a letter opener.
“What….!?” She controlled her startle reflex but did look up from her work, a third rewrite of her novel, saw the big blue box and laughed out loud. “Doctor…is that you?”
Out of the TARDIS he came, followed by Jasmine and then Tommy, who delivered the bulky letter-size envelope into her hands and said, “Special Delivery!”
“Special delivery indeed. All this just to deliver a letter?” Nelle was looking directly at the Doctor and smiling. “Might get some noise complaints from the neighbours, don’t you think?”
“Well…“said Tommy, glancing at the Doctor and then back at Nelle, “It is a very special letter.”
“Thank you, Tommy. Your name is Tommy?” He nodded. “And you’re Jasmine.” A nod from Jasmine. “Both of you were with the Doctor in, in the schoolyard that day. As you can see, I am in the midst of yet another rewrite of my first book…but welcome everyone! It’s been what? Fifty-nine years? How can I help you?”
“It’s all in the letter, Miss Lee,” Jasmine responded. “Please open it and we’ll fill in any cracks.”
“Thank you, Jasmine. Please call me Nelle.” She looked at the envelope in her hand, its eccentric address and its bulk. “My, my….”
With all eyes on her, she slit open the envelope and began to read in silence.
The Doctor, Tommy and Jasmine watched, wondering how long it would take her to read the eight-page letter an older Nelle had dictated, Jasmine had typed, and Tommy had printed out, proofread and inserted into its envelope, all in over an hour but fifty-nine years into the future.
She finished reading in under 4 minutes. “Speed reader from a way back,” she laughed.
A woman of many skills, thought the Doctor who took stock of the 31-year-old Nelle. She had the same short-cropped chestnut hair of her childhood but with a grey hair here and there. More significantly, she was now slightly taller than he was, athletic, strong, and even dressed for action in a loose white blouse, black slacks and white sneakers.
Nelle looked down at the last page of the letter and back up at the Doctor. “You do know what’s in this letter, right?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?” she asked, looking over at Jasmine and Tommy, who were pressing their lips shut as if they were… hiding something.
“Well…I thought I did,” he said, looking at Jasmine and Tommy. “All I need to know, anyway, I think. Is everything clear, Nelle? Any other questions? We do need to go now. I don’t even know if the TARDIS Library itself is still standing…”
“…. Well then, Into the Tardis!” It was Nelle shouting this, not the Doctor, who was disappointed as this was something he always said. But that’s okay, I know what she’s going to say next. And the four of them entered the TARDIS, one of them for the very first time.
***
The TARDIS Control Room
“It’s the Universe in a box!” Nelle exclaimed.
Okay, thought the Doctor. That’s new. What have I gotten myself into?
“Where’s ground zero?”
The Doctor hesitated at her question, and Tommy began to clarify, “Erm, Doctor” he whispered, “She means…"
“… the library, I know,” and off they went, the Doctor prepping them to be ready for anything, as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver for the first time in front of Nelle.
“Ahh…it looks more like a medical instrument instead of a manipulator of sound waves…” Nelle responded with delight.
The Doctor found her just a little unnerving. Having seen the titles of her books in her personal library, he wondered if she might respond less enthusiastically to his use of the sonic screwdriver, perhaps seeing him use it, as Tommy and Jasmine and past companions had said on more than one occasion, more like a weapon than a constructive tool.
***
The TARDIS Library
The library door swung open on cue, the TARDIS itself clearly ready for anything. But what the Doctor and his companions saw was indeed a major ANYTHING: the multi-story library was filled with a shimmering and pulsating white mist and a massive pile of untitled books on the floor and others floating in the air. The beings have expanded their assault to all sections of this library that we only just sorted out after the destruction and then fire caused by two previous invaders: the Daleks and that crazy crystalberry root. This is becoming a regular war zone. He sighed.
But he was startled when Nelle whipped her head around to face him as if she had just heard the name of his darkest of enemy, the Daleks. Unsettling. I’ll have to watch what I am thinking.
Who is this woman?
Nelle heard this question, but it wasn’t coming from the Doctor’s mind or from Jasmine or Tommy. In fact, they didn’t appear to hear it at all.
Who ARE you, woman?
Nelle grabbed her head. It was the aliens. They were talking through her mind. Very loudly. Frantically. Great, NOW what do I do? She answered her own unspoken question by turning back to the Doctor and calling out, “Doctor! I think I’ve made con…”
“RUN!” he yelled at Nelle seconds before an avalanche of books fell all around her, miraculously missing her. This was followed by four more bookslides, clearly directed at each companion and the Doctor. Each time the books fell with a terrible roar and in a dazzling fog, much thicker than before and now a deep red in colour, but still transparent. The library looked like it was being flooded with fire and blood that pulsed in the air all around them but didn’t touch anything, except for books that the cloud was launching with increasing aggression.
The next sound Nelle heard was like nothing she had ever heard before: a high pitched, ear-shattering whine. The Doctor was using his sonic instrument to move the beings to one side, to contain them. As the Doctor had predicted, Nelle was horrified at the violence of it because she could hear the beings screaming and not just in her head. The Doctor was wincing and so were Jasmine and Tommy, so they were hearing it too, over the shrieking of the sonic.
“Doctor! I was trying to tell you… I have made contact with them! The letter said you always talked with threatening beings before you took action against them… so why are you doing this?”
“I AM trying to talk to them… but for some reason the TARDIS’ translation circuit isn’t working for their language,” the Doctor shouted back, still working his sonic screwdriver.
“Well,” Nelle replied as loudly as she could muster, “I can understand every word they are saying…but surely even without translation, a scream is still a scream? They are screaming in pain, Doctor. It is not a battle cry. Your sonic waves are hurting them, maybe even killing them. All I know is, you must STOP… NOW! Turn off your sonic. Let me talk to them through my mind. Let ME be your translation circuit. Please!”
“Well then,” said the Doctor, still holding firmly to his shrieking sonic, his voice shaking with fury, “Ask them why they are destroying our books! Why they’ve sucked the words off all the pages and now… are using them like…like…"
“Like weapons, Doctor? Like you’re using your sonic? They are dropping the books in self defence. They have no other weapons.”
“Nelle, the sonic screwdriver is not a weapon.”
“Look at yourself, Doctor! You are fighting without thinking. You are just reacting, exactly as THEY are. Please let us talk, let ME talk, with them.”
“How do you know they won’t wipe your mind like they wiped clean the pages of all these books?”
“I don’t know. They haven’t so far and they are already inside my mind. But what I do know for sure is that I see, hear and feel their pain and I am willing to listen. To trust, even!”
The Doctor’s eyes filled with alarm as an enormous wall of books fell from the top level of the library, completely entombing Jasmine and Tommy. The Doctor scrabbled over the book-covered floor, and launched into the rubble, tearing at the books and digging for his friends.
Then he paused, stood up for a moment, and adjusted the settings of his screwdriver to a decibel level inaudible to humans but certainly more than audible to the beings above, as their screaming grew louder and more desperate. And he didn’t care. The Doctor was yelling at them and at Nelle as he used his free hand to dig deeper into the pile of books covering his friends. Even one-handed, he found them and dragged Jasmine and Tommy out alive. Above and around them the high frequency of his sonic was causing the screaming mist-like beings to drop to the floor like soft rain as their red colour deepened.
“STOP IT NOW DOCTOR!” That was Nelle screaming, not the aliens, her voice so powerful it drowned out everything else and silence dropped like a curtain as Nelle stood there, equally silent, in a trancelike state. She was using her mind link to calm the invaders, who stopped screaming. The Doctor turned off his sonic and returned it to his pocket, like a sword to its sheath.
After a moment, Nelle exclaimed, “They have a name, Doctor! They are called Memorites.”
“I don’t give a damn what they are called Nelle! Intentionally or not, they are a destructive and dangerous force and they are in a time machine that can spread their destruction across the universe.”
“Doctor. You’ve just described yourself.”
Nelle returned to her silent conversation with the Memorites. Jasmine, Tommy and the Doctor watched her as she stood absolutely still, clearly communicating without sound, as the red of the shimmering fog altered from deep red to a soft violet and then went completely clear. Something was happening, something constructive.
The silence and the rapid evolution of the colours had calmed the Doctor, and his clouded mind opened itself again to what was happening around him. Jasmine walked over and whispered a suggestion in his ear, an impossible suggestion for such a young woman, but perhaps, not for Autumn, he thought. Jasmine was reminding him of something Autumn had told him about one of the sonic screwdriver’s capabilities that he had forgotten in the heat of battle. He pulled it from his pocket and changed its settings so that it acted like the TARDIS translation circuit.
The room filled with voices he now could hear and understand. He was struck by the softness of their voices. They had a lot to say, and now the Doctor, Jasmine and Tommy, joined Nelle in listening:
“We are sorry Doctor, so sorry. We did not know we were destroying the works that you and we love so much and admire and have been collecting to help rebuild our society, our world, after it was devastated by a long war. We thought we were copying the best thoughts, ideas and written works of the Earth, of your home planet, Gallifrey and many other worlds, so we could recreate our society, bring it back to life and make it stronger, guided by the best thoughts in all the Universe.”
“But… Miss Nelle Harper Lee has made us understand that our copying techniques are destructive and that as we harvested copies of the works, we were leaving nothing behind, all these decades, since we began in the early 1930s, Earth time. We did not know we were taking the works out of existence and that our acts were threatening the very existence and stability of the universe’s societies, especially those of Gallifrey and Earth, with the loss of their greatest thoughts and ideas across all fields of endeavour. We will rectify this immediately. We will work to restore the works as rapidly as we can.”
“Please understand us and forgive us. We meant no harm. We love the ideas that glitter on the pages of all these books and documents. And we apologize for attacking you with the heavy remains of the books just now. We did not understand what the Doctor was doing. We were frightened by his power over sound, a power that was hurting us, killing us. So we fought back. But when we noticed this woman, Nelle Harper, and realized that she alone could hear us and understand us and communicate with us, we listened and learned that she is a writer who values words and ideas so highly, that we didn’t have to fight, that we could to talk with you, Doctor, through her. Thank you, Miss Lee.”
Nelle nodded in acceptance, and the Memorites continued.
“Doctor. Nelle Harper has told us you meant no harm. Like us, you did not realize that your technology was hurting us, harming us. Like us, you only wanted to help, to save your books and not destroy us but to keep us away from what remained. We only wanted to exalt these works, to use them for something positive, not remove them from all time and space. We thank you for hearing us and we will go in peace once we have restored the works we have taken from here and throughout the Universe. We wish peace to you as well.”
Even as they listened, the TARDIS team could see many books being lifted gently back onto the shelves by the translucent fog. A fog of peace, not war thought Nelle and the Doctor, in unison.
***
Nelle’s New York Flat, New York City, November 16th, 1957
For hours now, Tommy and Nelle had been discussing civil rights, Truman’s first novel (Other Voices, Other Rooms, published in 1948), and her current rewrites of her own first novel while snacking on some of Robin’s homemade Jammie Dodgers and several cups of Earl Grey tea, with the Doctor and Jasmine monitoring Tommy intently and clearing their throats loudly whenever he skated close to mentioning key future events.
This thirty-one year-old Nelle must not know, especially at such a tender stage in her writing, that Go Set a Watchman, the first version of her future novel, would itself be published, unedited, only six months before she would pass away at age 89; that Atticus, the newly titled second rewrite of that manuscript, would become To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960; that this book would win the highly respected Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961; and that it would inspire and support generations of beings, humans and others involved in civil rights movements in the USA, planet Earth, and throughout the Universe.
As her conversation with Tommy wound down, Nelle turned to Jasmine and the Doctor, both seated nearby, nibbling Jammies, sipping tea and listening intently.
“I think now is as good a time as any to bring up the letter’s two postscripts, or should I say promises...”
The letter’s co-authors bowed their heads noticeably as the Doctor glared at them briefly. Tommy and Jasmine didn’t need a mind link or a Vulcan mind meld to know what the Doctor was thinking.
Nelle noticed this exchange and raised her eyebrows when she heard the Doctor’s unrepeatable thoughts. Ouch! I didn’t think Time Lords knew such words! She smiled wryly at the Doctor and continued, “A journey in the TARDIS to visit Sir Thomas More before he was beheaded under the manipulations of King Henry VIII, and…a chance for me to have a little chat with the Doctor about what he has against God.”
The Doctor looked like a deer in the headlights. He had no problem with giving her a well-earned journey with them to wherever and whenever she wanted to go, but sparring verbally with her about God …well…he went red. And he noticed that Jasmine and Tommy had quietly retreated to the other side of the room. Do I hear giggling? Then he realized it was Nelle. She’s got me.
“Well, Doctor? Do you have faith in God?”
The Doctor had suspected that one of the Nelles would bring this up sooner or later, but had not anticipated that Jasmine and Tommy and that seemingly benign eighty-nine-year-old Nelle, would be a part of a conspiracy to do ensure it would.
“No, I don’t. I have met God and I wasn’t much impressed. He’s a bully.”
Nelle set down her cup of tea and her dodger. “How do you know it was God that you met?”
He described in detail their several encounters.
“Did he say he was God?”
“Yes, he said he was the creator of the universe and all that was in it and showed evidence to support it, as I just described. He made it very clear that he was both Creator and God.”
“And you believe that this man was indeed God?”
“Yes.”
“I am not much of a Bible-thumper, quoting a passage from the Bible to support my every belief, a stereotype I am working hard to dispel. But humour me Doctor, for a moment. As much as I love the language of the King James version, I think the wording of a particular passage from the New International Version of the Bible gets the job done: ‘By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command. So that what is seen was formed out of what was not visible.’ I believe that the ‘God’ you met and who’s been haunting you and manipulating you and the universe, may be a self-important, sociopathic contractor who created the universe at God’s command and took all the credit for himself.”
“Clever” said the Doctor. “That is a very particular reading of verse three of Hebrews.”
“So you know your Bible, Doctor?”
“Not my Bible, but yes.”
“My point is, that perhaps God did not do the actual creation or even the actual overseeing of our lives, but that someone was commanded to do it on his or her behalf.” She winked again. She winks a lot he thought, and she did it again when she read his thought. She’s quick!
“And that’s the “God” I’ve met?”
“Yes. Someone who calls himself God and maybe even believes his is God and tries to act like an all-seeing, all-knowing God, but isn’t actually God.”
“Ahhh, Nelle Harper Lee! I love the way you think,” he laughed, took a long deep breath, exhaled slowly, and then abruptly changed the subject, much to the relief of Jasmine and Tommy who had returned from wherever they had been…cowering.
“Now, in reference to that other postscript.” he continued. “The three of us have one more promise to keep, another special visit to make, before we take you to meet Thomas More. I wonder if he’s ready for you, he thought and immediately heard Nelle’s unspoken response, He most certainly is, Doctor. “You can’t come with us on this one, sorry Nelle, but we will be back in a few minutes, your time, to take you with us to see Thomas More and wherever and whenever else you wish to go. Are there other people you would like to meet and places you would like to see?”
”Well,” she said, looking into his eyes in that penetrating way of hers, “I’d like to visit the world of the Memorites.”
“Of course,” said the Doctor. “I think we all saw that coming.” And everyone laughed.
***
“Your visitors are here, Miss Lee.”
“Addy, we’ve known each other for two years now and I’ve told you to call me Nelle. I don’t recognize myself when you call me Miss Lee,” she laughed. The nurse blushed and smiled and left the room. Nelle closed the document she’d been working on and turned her wheelchair around to greet her guests.
“Never thought I’d be using a computer, but I can see my words better this way because it magnifies them for me. Please come in Doctor. Sit down in this arm chair, here, so I can get a good look at you. It might be only a few minutes since you last saw me, but for me it’s been eighty-four years.” The Doctor sat down, fascinated. She indeed was sharp as a tack, as the nurse had said. Perhaps much sharper.
Nelle turned her head towards Tommy and Jasmine. “Good to meet you two. You must be Tommy, the birthday boy who brought the Doctor and his TARDIS to the schoolyard to see me as a rather scrappy six-year-old!” Tommy was uncharacteristically quiet; didn’t ask how she knew, since the Doctor had said she had been inside the Doctor’s head, so to speak.
Nelle looked next at Jasmine and extended her hand, which Jasmine shook gently. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jasmine! And no, I didn’t look through or past you and Tommy as you thought I had. I could see you both, but I was focussed on your ‘friend’,” she said with a nod towards the Doctor. “You are a beautiful young woman, dear, if you’ll permit me to call you dear. I love to see a woman with such a spark in her eyes. For me it means you have a wisdom beyond your years…. There’s something else I sense too, but… sorry, I am getting a bit sappy and a bit rude. Welcome, all of you. I don’t get to see many people lately, even close friends.”
Jasmine and Tommy seated themselves on a small quilt-covered bench. Absolutely mesmerized.
“Well now, let’s get down to business,” Nelle said, turning her eyes back to the Doctor, her voice suddenly very serious.
“I understand something very disturbing happened when you got back into the TARDIS after our first encounter. Your thoughts became scattered and hard to read, especially after Tommy showed you a blank copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and you went to your very impressive library and cried out, ‘What have I done!’ Your words echoed so loudly in my mind that I had to intervene because I am almost certain you have done nothing wrong. But I need to know exactly what is happening, because I too have been noticing things over the years, that I have told no one about, except Truman.”
The Doctor, Tommy and Jasmine, sat like a group of school children listening attentively to their teacher. They were also in awe of how little her sight and hearing problems were interfering with her ability to communicate.
“What things have been happening, Miss Lee?”
“Nelle, please, all of you, no Miss. Nelle with a silent ‘e’ at the end. I was named after my grandmother Ellen, only they reversed it to spell out Nelle. Problem is, I’ve spent the rest of my life correcting people when they pronounce it as Nellie!” She made a face as if she’d just eaten a bitter walnut. "Can you imagine? ‘Nellie Lee’”?
“So that’s why you used Harper Lee, as a pen name?” responded the Doctor.
“Yes but it wasn’t really a pen name like ‘Mark Twain’. My real name is Nelle Harper Lee, so I just dropped the Nelle. My sister Alice used to call me Nelle Harper most of her life,” she said softly as she bowed her head slightly. Her oldest sister had died only fourteen months earlier at age one-hundred-and-three, working as a respected Monroeville lawyer, almost to the end, just as their father A.C. Lee had done before her. Nelle had begun studying law herself but then altered her focus to writing, which she had loved since childhood.
The Doctor brought Nelle out of what had become a long silence; he did so, suddenly, with a somewhat ill-timed repeat of his own question, rather than answering hers. “What things have you been noticing for years?”
Nelle was startled out of her reverie. She hadn’t realized that her last thoughts were in her own mind, unspoken. And she’d been expecting the Doctor to answer her question first, not ask another one. But she did answer.
“Well, a week or two before you visited Truman and me, in… 1932, I believe…” The Doctor nodded. “…Truman and I had noticed that definitions were disappearing from the school’s Oxford Dictionary, just a few at a time, but since Truman was the victim of unceasing bullying and I was always being called out by our teacher for disrupting the flow of education in the classroom with what were seen as all-too-frequent interruptions by a ‘little Miss know-it-all,’ we said nothing. We also noticed it in all volumes of the school’s encyclopedia. This went on for all my years of elementary school and even into my college days. I don’t know if Truman encountered it on his own, later. We never spoke of it again. But it was so subtle that few people, if anyone else, noticed.”
“Well there it is. I am the cause of all this. It started the same time as my visit. I am so sorry. What can I do to help now?”
“Doctor. One thing you can do is work on your listening skills,” Nelle snapped, her sense of humour completely evaporating. “Your ego needs reining in, Doctor. I distinctly said that this started a week or two before you arrived. That’s why I smiled at you when you appeared that day. I thought you had come to help us.”
The Doctor realized, perhaps a bit slowly, that once again the TARDIS had taken him where he needed to go rather than where he had wanted to go. There were children to help.
“All I remember” he replied, “was your piercing brown eyes and how you saw right through the perception filter and into…”
“Is THAT what you call it? A perception filter. Clever. It keeps people from ‘perceiving’ you, your TARDIS and your friends. I could have used that myself most of my life, especially when Truman and I were in grade school together… By the way, he never knew you were there and I never told him since it wasn’t the most auspicious day of his life,” and she giggled like the six-year-old she had been only a half hour earlier, by the Doctor’s time.
“But,” the Doctor continued, “you saw through the filter and your mind seemed to enter right into to mine. I sensed that you were absorbing my memories, my lives, my travelling through time and space and that you even absorbed the knowledge that I am…”
“Not of this earth?”
“Yes.”
“That you are a… Time Lord from…”
“Gallifrey.”
“Doctor and Miss…I mean… Nelle…” interrupted Jasmine firmly. Amusing as it was to watch these two share memories and finish each other’s sentences, there was an emergency that needed tending to.
“Yes Jasmine, you’re right. Getting back on track, Doctor… what exactly caused you to cry out?”
“Well, I began to notice the titles of key works of Earth literature, history, law, philosophy, science, human rights of all kinds … disappearing off the spines of many of my library’s books. And when I looked inside of a number of them, the pages were blank, even though I had read them many times and some quite recently. And since we first noticed the problem with your two books, right after we’d left the playground, I was alarmed that either I had caused your books not to be written at all or I had caused them to be unwritten in some way and had triggered some sort of disastrous domino effect.”
“Well, I can assure you my books were written, Doctor.”
He nodded but continued his account. “I was horrified that the books had been removed from time and space and no longer existed, and that a loss that extensive would alter the Universe and profoundly impact Earth culture, and that I had caused it all.”
“What are some of the other works that have been affected?” asked Nelle.
“The King James Version….”
“…of the Bible? The KJV? What else?” asked Nelle as her face whitened. “No. Wait. Maybe I can tell you.” She moved her wheelchair over to a wall of easily-reached low-level shelves filled with some of her much read book collection, and one by one, opened them to find their pages blank, even though the titles were still visible on the spines.
Through her tears, she began calling out the names of books she’d appreciated, both past and present, as she took them from the bookshelf and opened them to see only blank pages, even in books she had just re-read or consulted a few days or hours before: “The KJV; all five volumes of Macaulay’s History of England; Malala Yousafzai’s I am Malala; Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing; Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Grey and Lady Windermere’s Fan; Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and A Child’s Story…”
As the number of affected books mounted, Jasmine and Tommy moved to the bookshelves to help Nelle with her dark inventory, joining in her roll call of the missing. Tommy went first: “The Quran; the Torah; Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Sun Tzu’s The Art of War; Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching; Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations; Plato’s Republic; Aristotle’s Poetics and Politics; Marx’s Das Kapital; Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment; Robert F. Kennedy’s Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
As the list continued to grow, the Doctor quietly left the room. No one noticed he was no longer there. Not even Nelle.
Jasmine continued where Tommy had left off: “The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More; all seven books of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia; the seven books in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series; J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy; James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain; Martin Luther King, Jr’s I Have a Dream; Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August; Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms; Margaret Macmillan’s Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World; copies of the Magna Carta and the United States Declaration of Independence; and a special binder containing the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Declaration on the Rights of the Child, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and Declaration on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities…”
Nelle continued: “Truman’s In Cold Blood and Other Voices, Other Rooms; Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life; Einstein’s The Special and General Theory; Hawking’s A Brief History of Time; Mother Teresa’s No Greater Love; James Blight’s The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara; …and…my father’s law books…” She stopped.
The Doctor was in the room again, taken aback by the number of books stacked near the half-empty bookcase in the few moments he had been gone. Jasmine, Tommy and Nelle turned towards him.
“I was right,” said Nelle. “We do need your help Doctor, much more than Truman and I ever did in 1932. Do you notice a pattern not only here but in your own library? Key works that deal with morality, justice, the human and civil rights of all peoples, the tactics of war, the struggle against oppression and between good and evil, the importance of creativity, imagination, and, especially, the need for compassion, understanding and respect for diversity and difference?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “And we will take action, but first may I help you to your bed? You look exhausted.” She said I am not responsible for what’s happened, yet she hasn’t said why, and if I push her too much, I could shorten her life and then I really would be responsible for that.
“That’s all right Doctor, I can still do that for myself.” She wheeled over to the bed and quite gracefully moved onto it.
“Nelle,” asked the Doctor, “That day you saw us and the TARDIS, I know you were focussed on me, but did you notice anything else? Near or around the TARDIS, perhaps?”
Nelle leaned back against the pillows Jasmine and Tommy had placed behind her back and head, and searched her memory. “Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. But I assumed it was a sort of mist or fog that clung to the box as a side effect of time travel.”
“It isn’t a side effect, but it is interesting. I know it’s been eighty-four years, but can you describe exactly what you saw?”
“Hmm. Let’s see.” She closed her eyes tightly. “When the mist wrapped itself around the TARDIS, the large white letters ‘Police Public Call Box’ became distorted, disappeared for a second, and then went back to normal.”
“Was the door open?”
“No, well, not at first, but as the mist hovered, the door opened just a crack for a moment but was closed before you re-entered and left.” There was a silence and then the Doctor and Nelle shouted in unison, “THAT’S IT!”
Tommy rolled his eyes. Hopeless. Joined at the hip. And Jasmine reminded them to speak one at a time.
Nelle spoke first. “Something entered the TARDIS while we weren’t paying attention to it, the something that had been interfering with the dictionary and encyclopedia! Could it have been some other form of, if you will pardon the expression, Doctor, alien life?”
“Yes, that something that was playing around with your school’s reference books in 1932…it was and still is very likely an alien life form.”
“Can it be stopped, Doctor? Can my books still be saved, or are they already gone forever? I don’t mean the two I wrote, but all these books that have been so important to me and to Earth culture. I wish I could go with you and help, but I would be a liability, the shape I am in.”
“You’ve already done more than enough,” said the Doctor.
“Doctor,” Tommy said softly. “Maybe there is one more thing we should check. Nelle, do you have any of your favourite books on your computer? Digital copies or access to digital libraries online?”
She opened her eyes and nodded, alert once again. “Yes! Please check if they are still there. I didn’t log out so you should have access.”
The Doctor looked pessimistic. “I just came back from the TARDIS… and my backup digital library is fading as well, but yes, do check Nelle’s computer, Tommy."
After no more than a few minutes, Tommy had the answer. “The titles of Nelle’s downloaded books are all still listed but all the files I opened are blank. And the main download sites are offline.” There was another silence in the room and then Nelle’s strong and clear voice returned.
“OK, Doctor, NOW I am getting angry. I may have major limitations right now, but I am a fighter and I have a plan. Tell me, can you do short time jumps in your TARDIS, say just an hour or so into the future but stay in the same place?” The Doctor nodded yes. “Could you do that, but leave Jasmine and Tommy with me?” she asked as she turned to them, “if that’s all right with you two? I need your assistance.” Jasmine, Tommy and the Doctor all nodded yes.
The Doctor returned ninety minutes later, and was handed a white envelope with a rather odd address: it: “Nelle Harper Lee, November 16th 1957, New York City, New York, USA. Specific co-ordinates to be set by TARDIS.”
“This is for my thirty-one year-old self,” Nelle directed, “explaining the problem and briefing her fully on what needs to be done and what it might involve. She’ll already know who you are, Doctor; after all, she met you in 1932, and she remembers. This letter will save you all a long time-consuming explanation so that she, or rather I, can join you in your efforts to stop this insidious invasion and perhaps even restore what has already been lost. It means you’ll all have a new companion for a bit, Doctor, one far more physically capable than I am now, but just as sharp and stubborn! Don’t worry. The letter says nothing of what happens in her future. Jasmine and Tommy briefed me on your rules, and some of them she’ll even follow (big smile). Now go, all of you and… bless you.”
Jasmine and Tommy watched as the Doctor did something rare for him: he took Nelle’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you Nelle. We’ll make a great team.”
***
Nelle’s Apartment, New York City, November 16th, 1957
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
A large blue Police Call Box landed noisily in Nelle’s small walk-up flat, not far from where she was seated at her writing desk improvised from a large wooden door, its surface covered with stacks of paper, a typewriter, notepads, a few pens and pencils, and a letter opener.
“What….!?” She controlled her startle reflex but did look up from her work, a third rewrite of her novel, saw the big blue box and laughed out loud. “Doctor…is that you?”
Out of the TARDIS he came, followed by Jasmine and then Tommy, who delivered the bulky letter-size envelope into her hands and said, “Special Delivery!”
“Special delivery indeed. All this just to deliver a letter?” Nelle was looking directly at the Doctor and smiling. “Might get some noise complaints from the neighbours, don’t you think?”
“Well…“said Tommy, glancing at the Doctor and then back at Nelle, “It is a very special letter.”
“Thank you, Tommy. Your name is Tommy?” He nodded. “And you’re Jasmine.” A nod from Jasmine. “Both of you were with the Doctor in, in the schoolyard that day. As you can see, I am in the midst of yet another rewrite of my first book…but welcome everyone! It’s been what? Fifty-nine years? How can I help you?”
“It’s all in the letter, Miss Lee,” Jasmine responded. “Please open it and we’ll fill in any cracks.”
“Thank you, Jasmine. Please call me Nelle.” She looked at the envelope in her hand, its eccentric address and its bulk. “My, my….”
With all eyes on her, she slit open the envelope and began to read in silence.
The Doctor, Tommy and Jasmine watched, wondering how long it would take her to read the eight-page letter an older Nelle had dictated, Jasmine had typed, and Tommy had printed out, proofread and inserted into its envelope, all in over an hour but fifty-nine years into the future.
She finished reading in under 4 minutes. “Speed reader from a way back,” she laughed.
A woman of many skills, thought the Doctor who took stock of the 31-year-old Nelle. She had the same short-cropped chestnut hair of her childhood but with a grey hair here and there. More significantly, she was now slightly taller than he was, athletic, strong, and even dressed for action in a loose white blouse, black slacks and white sneakers.
Nelle looked down at the last page of the letter and back up at the Doctor. “You do know what’s in this letter, right?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?” she asked, looking over at Jasmine and Tommy, who were pressing their lips shut as if they were… hiding something.
“Well…I thought I did,” he said, looking at Jasmine and Tommy. “All I need to know, anyway, I think. Is everything clear, Nelle? Any other questions? We do need to go now. I don’t even know if the TARDIS Library itself is still standing…”
“…. Well then, Into the Tardis!” It was Nelle shouting this, not the Doctor, who was disappointed as this was something he always said. But that’s okay, I know what she’s going to say next. And the four of them entered the TARDIS, one of them for the very first time.
***
The TARDIS Control Room
“It’s the Universe in a box!” Nelle exclaimed.
Okay, thought the Doctor. That’s new. What have I gotten myself into?
“Where’s ground zero?”
The Doctor hesitated at her question, and Tommy began to clarify, “Erm, Doctor” he whispered, “She means…"
“… the library, I know,” and off they went, the Doctor prepping them to be ready for anything, as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver for the first time in front of Nelle.
“Ahh…it looks more like a medical instrument instead of a manipulator of sound waves…” Nelle responded with delight.
The Doctor found her just a little unnerving. Having seen the titles of her books in her personal library, he wondered if she might respond less enthusiastically to his use of the sonic screwdriver, perhaps seeing him use it, as Tommy and Jasmine and past companions had said on more than one occasion, more like a weapon than a constructive tool.
***
The TARDIS Library
The library door swung open on cue, the TARDIS itself clearly ready for anything. But what the Doctor and his companions saw was indeed a major ANYTHING: the multi-story library was filled with a shimmering and pulsating white mist and a massive pile of untitled books on the floor and others floating in the air. The beings have expanded their assault to all sections of this library that we only just sorted out after the destruction and then fire caused by two previous invaders: the Daleks and that crazy crystalberry root. This is becoming a regular war zone. He sighed.
But he was startled when Nelle whipped her head around to face him as if she had just heard the name of his darkest of enemy, the Daleks. Unsettling. I’ll have to watch what I am thinking.
Who is this woman?
Nelle heard this question, but it wasn’t coming from the Doctor’s mind or from Jasmine or Tommy. In fact, they didn’t appear to hear it at all.
Who ARE you, woman?
Nelle grabbed her head. It was the aliens. They were talking through her mind. Very loudly. Frantically. Great, NOW what do I do? She answered her own unspoken question by turning back to the Doctor and calling out, “Doctor! I think I’ve made con…”
“RUN!” he yelled at Nelle seconds before an avalanche of books fell all around her, miraculously missing her. This was followed by four more bookslides, clearly directed at each companion and the Doctor. Each time the books fell with a terrible roar and in a dazzling fog, much thicker than before and now a deep red in colour, but still transparent. The library looked like it was being flooded with fire and blood that pulsed in the air all around them but didn’t touch anything, except for books that the cloud was launching with increasing aggression.
The next sound Nelle heard was like nothing she had ever heard before: a high pitched, ear-shattering whine. The Doctor was using his sonic instrument to move the beings to one side, to contain them. As the Doctor had predicted, Nelle was horrified at the violence of it because she could hear the beings screaming and not just in her head. The Doctor was wincing and so were Jasmine and Tommy, so they were hearing it too, over the shrieking of the sonic.
“Doctor! I was trying to tell you… I have made contact with them! The letter said you always talked with threatening beings before you took action against them… so why are you doing this?”
“I AM trying to talk to them… but for some reason the TARDIS’ translation circuit isn’t working for their language,” the Doctor shouted back, still working his sonic screwdriver.
“Well,” Nelle replied as loudly as she could muster, “I can understand every word they are saying…but surely even without translation, a scream is still a scream? They are screaming in pain, Doctor. It is not a battle cry. Your sonic waves are hurting them, maybe even killing them. All I know is, you must STOP… NOW! Turn off your sonic. Let me talk to them through my mind. Let ME be your translation circuit. Please!”
“Well then,” said the Doctor, still holding firmly to his shrieking sonic, his voice shaking with fury, “Ask them why they are destroying our books! Why they’ve sucked the words off all the pages and now… are using them like…like…"
“Like weapons, Doctor? Like you’re using your sonic? They are dropping the books in self defence. They have no other weapons.”
“Nelle, the sonic screwdriver is not a weapon.”
“Look at yourself, Doctor! You are fighting without thinking. You are just reacting, exactly as THEY are. Please let us talk, let ME talk, with them.”
“How do you know they won’t wipe your mind like they wiped clean the pages of all these books?”
“I don’t know. They haven’t so far and they are already inside my mind. But what I do know for sure is that I see, hear and feel their pain and I am willing to listen. To trust, even!”
The Doctor’s eyes filled with alarm as an enormous wall of books fell from the top level of the library, completely entombing Jasmine and Tommy. The Doctor scrabbled over the book-covered floor, and launched into the rubble, tearing at the books and digging for his friends.
Then he paused, stood up for a moment, and adjusted the settings of his screwdriver to a decibel level inaudible to humans but certainly more than audible to the beings above, as their screaming grew louder and more desperate. And he didn’t care. The Doctor was yelling at them and at Nelle as he used his free hand to dig deeper into the pile of books covering his friends. Even one-handed, he found them and dragged Jasmine and Tommy out alive. Above and around them the high frequency of his sonic was causing the screaming mist-like beings to drop to the floor like soft rain as their red colour deepened.
“STOP IT NOW DOCTOR!” That was Nelle screaming, not the aliens, her voice so powerful it drowned out everything else and silence dropped like a curtain as Nelle stood there, equally silent, in a trancelike state. She was using her mind link to calm the invaders, who stopped screaming. The Doctor turned off his sonic and returned it to his pocket, like a sword to its sheath.
After a moment, Nelle exclaimed, “They have a name, Doctor! They are called Memorites.”
“I don’t give a damn what they are called Nelle! Intentionally or not, they are a destructive and dangerous force and they are in a time machine that can spread their destruction across the universe.”
“Doctor. You’ve just described yourself.”
Nelle returned to her silent conversation with the Memorites. Jasmine, Tommy and the Doctor watched her as she stood absolutely still, clearly communicating without sound, as the red of the shimmering fog altered from deep red to a soft violet and then went completely clear. Something was happening, something constructive.
The silence and the rapid evolution of the colours had calmed the Doctor, and his clouded mind opened itself again to what was happening around him. Jasmine walked over and whispered a suggestion in his ear, an impossible suggestion for such a young woman, but perhaps, not for Autumn, he thought. Jasmine was reminding him of something Autumn had told him about one of the sonic screwdriver’s capabilities that he had forgotten in the heat of battle. He pulled it from his pocket and changed its settings so that it acted like the TARDIS translation circuit.
The room filled with voices he now could hear and understand. He was struck by the softness of their voices. They had a lot to say, and now the Doctor, Jasmine and Tommy, joined Nelle in listening:
“We are sorry Doctor, so sorry. We did not know we were destroying the works that you and we love so much and admire and have been collecting to help rebuild our society, our world, after it was devastated by a long war. We thought we were copying the best thoughts, ideas and written works of the Earth, of your home planet, Gallifrey and many other worlds, so we could recreate our society, bring it back to life and make it stronger, guided by the best thoughts in all the Universe.”
“But… Miss Nelle Harper Lee has made us understand that our copying techniques are destructive and that as we harvested copies of the works, we were leaving nothing behind, all these decades, since we began in the early 1930s, Earth time. We did not know we were taking the works out of existence and that our acts were threatening the very existence and stability of the universe’s societies, especially those of Gallifrey and Earth, with the loss of their greatest thoughts and ideas across all fields of endeavour. We will rectify this immediately. We will work to restore the works as rapidly as we can.”
“Please understand us and forgive us. We meant no harm. We love the ideas that glitter on the pages of all these books and documents. And we apologize for attacking you with the heavy remains of the books just now. We did not understand what the Doctor was doing. We were frightened by his power over sound, a power that was hurting us, killing us. So we fought back. But when we noticed this woman, Nelle Harper, and realized that she alone could hear us and understand us and communicate with us, we listened and learned that she is a writer who values words and ideas so highly, that we didn’t have to fight, that we could to talk with you, Doctor, through her. Thank you, Miss Lee.”
Nelle nodded in acceptance, and the Memorites continued.
“Doctor. Nelle Harper has told us you meant no harm. Like us, you did not realize that your technology was hurting us, harming us. Like us, you only wanted to help, to save your books and not destroy us but to keep us away from what remained. We only wanted to exalt these works, to use them for something positive, not remove them from all time and space. We thank you for hearing us and we will go in peace once we have restored the works we have taken from here and throughout the Universe. We wish peace to you as well.”
Even as they listened, the TARDIS team could see many books being lifted gently back onto the shelves by the translucent fog. A fog of peace, not war thought Nelle and the Doctor, in unison.
***
Nelle’s New York Flat, New York City, November 16th, 1957
For hours now, Tommy and Nelle had been discussing civil rights, Truman’s first novel (Other Voices, Other Rooms, published in 1948), and her current rewrites of her own first novel while snacking on some of Robin’s homemade Jammie Dodgers and several cups of Earl Grey tea, with the Doctor and Jasmine monitoring Tommy intently and clearing their throats loudly whenever he skated close to mentioning key future events.
This thirty-one year-old Nelle must not know, especially at such a tender stage in her writing, that Go Set a Watchman, the first version of her future novel, would itself be published, unedited, only six months before she would pass away at age 89; that Atticus, the newly titled second rewrite of that manuscript, would become To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960; that this book would win the highly respected Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961; and that it would inspire and support generations of beings, humans and others involved in civil rights movements in the USA, planet Earth, and throughout the Universe.
As her conversation with Tommy wound down, Nelle turned to Jasmine and the Doctor, both seated nearby, nibbling Jammies, sipping tea and listening intently.
“I think now is as good a time as any to bring up the letter’s two postscripts, or should I say promises...”
The letter’s co-authors bowed their heads noticeably as the Doctor glared at them briefly. Tommy and Jasmine didn’t need a mind link or a Vulcan mind meld to know what the Doctor was thinking.
Nelle noticed this exchange and raised her eyebrows when she heard the Doctor’s unrepeatable thoughts. Ouch! I didn’t think Time Lords knew such words! She smiled wryly at the Doctor and continued, “A journey in the TARDIS to visit Sir Thomas More before he was beheaded under the manipulations of King Henry VIII, and…a chance for me to have a little chat with the Doctor about what he has against God.”
The Doctor looked like a deer in the headlights. He had no problem with giving her a well-earned journey with them to wherever and whenever she wanted to go, but sparring verbally with her about God …well…he went red. And he noticed that Jasmine and Tommy had quietly retreated to the other side of the room. Do I hear giggling? Then he realized it was Nelle. She’s got me.
“Well, Doctor? Do you have faith in God?”
The Doctor had suspected that one of the Nelles would bring this up sooner or later, but had not anticipated that Jasmine and Tommy and that seemingly benign eighty-nine-year-old Nelle, would be a part of a conspiracy to do ensure it would.
“No, I don’t. I have met God and I wasn’t much impressed. He’s a bully.”
Nelle set down her cup of tea and her dodger. “How do you know it was God that you met?”
He described in detail their several encounters.
“Did he say he was God?”
“Yes, he said he was the creator of the universe and all that was in it and showed evidence to support it, as I just described. He made it very clear that he was both Creator and God.”
“And you believe that this man was indeed God?”
“Yes.”
“I am not much of a Bible-thumper, quoting a passage from the Bible to support my every belief, a stereotype I am working hard to dispel. But humour me Doctor, for a moment. As much as I love the language of the King James version, I think the wording of a particular passage from the New International Version of the Bible gets the job done: ‘By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command. So that what is seen was formed out of what was not visible.’ I believe that the ‘God’ you met and who’s been haunting you and manipulating you and the universe, may be a self-important, sociopathic contractor who created the universe at God’s command and took all the credit for himself.”
“Clever” said the Doctor. “That is a very particular reading of verse three of Hebrews.”
“So you know your Bible, Doctor?”
“Not my Bible, but yes.”
“My point is, that perhaps God did not do the actual creation or even the actual overseeing of our lives, but that someone was commanded to do it on his or her behalf.” She winked again. She winks a lot he thought, and she did it again when she read his thought. She’s quick!
“And that’s the “God” I’ve met?”
“Yes. Someone who calls himself God and maybe even believes his is God and tries to act like an all-seeing, all-knowing God, but isn’t actually God.”
“Ahhh, Nelle Harper Lee! I love the way you think,” he laughed, took a long deep breath, exhaled slowly, and then abruptly changed the subject, much to the relief of Jasmine and Tommy who had returned from wherever they had been…cowering.
“Now, in reference to that other postscript.” he continued. “The three of us have one more promise to keep, another special visit to make, before we take you to meet Thomas More. I wonder if he’s ready for you, he thought and immediately heard Nelle’s unspoken response, He most certainly is, Doctor. “You can’t come with us on this one, sorry Nelle, but we will be back in a few minutes, your time, to take you with us to see Thomas More and wherever and whenever else you wish to go. Are there other people you would like to meet and places you would like to see?”
”Well,” she said, looking into his eyes in that penetrating way of hers, “I’d like to visit the world of the Memorites.”
“Of course,” said the Doctor. “I think we all saw that coming.” And everyone laughed.
***
A Healthcare Facility, Monroeville, Alabama, February 16, 2016
Nelle’s death was less than three days away, now. Yet despite her weakened condition and her usually much-protected privacy, the Doctor, Tommy and Jasmine had no trouble seeing their friend again, so close to death: as before, the receptionist and Nurse Addy were expecting them, and ushered them quietly into her room.
Nelle was propped up by the pillows Jasmine and Tommy had helped her with once before…when? Days ago or years? Their Nelle-related time and space hopping in the last little while had left Tommy and Jasmine a little uncertain about how long all of this had taken in “real time,” if indeed there was such a thing.
“Are all my books safe now? Most of my collection here is back to normal, but what about on the TARDIS and in the world outside this room?
“Yes Nelle, they are safe, and so are the Memorites,” the Doctor spoke softly as he once again took her hand and kissed it. “Thanks to you.”
“And to you too, Doctor, and Tommy and Jasmine. I was pretty impressive at thirty-one, wasn’t I? Have you taken me to see Thomas More yet? I don’t seem to have any memories of that so far.”
“Not yet,” said Tommy. “You’re waiting at your New York flat right now for your first flight in time and space. We’re going there right after we leave here. Don’t worry, your travel will take place in a way that it won’t disrupt your rewrites of To Kill a Mockingbird, and will allow you to enjoy the adventure through your memories before you… pass…”
“Before I die, you mean, son. Don’t be afraid of words. Or death. Both are important parts of life. But you remind me: I have a gift for each of you. Now don’t object. They are books that I can’t take with me but need a regular reading…. by my three good friends.”
Nelle nodded towards the table next to her bed and Tommy helped her distribute them. “Jasmine and Tommy, I wrote a note for each of you in large print on my computer several weeks ago. They’re tucked into your books. Doctor, you don’t need a note. You can still read my thoughts, can’t you?”
“Always, Nelle.”
She smiled at the Doctor, patted Tommy’s hand and whispered, “Look after the Doctor, son. But make sure you have a good life of your own as well. Come here Jasmine,” and she whispered in Jasmine’s ear and winked. “Goodbye to you all, and see you in New York in one minute.” She laughed and closed her eyes. Just for a few moments, perhaps until those past-and-future memories arrive.
The Doctor tucked Nelle’s gift, her first edition copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, under his arm and headed out the door, followed by Jasmine with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Tommy with Nelle’s KJV.
***
The TARDIS Control Room
Tommy’s gift lay open on the console, with Nelle’s note sitting on top. He and Jasmine were now in their rooms, asleep. And just as Nelle had predicted, the Doctor couldn’t resist a peek at what he was in fact meant to see:
“Dear Tommy, I leave you my copy of the KJV, the most beautiful translation of the Bible, and a favourite quote from John Wesley, founder of Methodism, the religion I followed all my life, and my father before me:
Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”
A few moments later, the Doctor sat down in his comfy chair, not far from the console, and began reading To Kill a Mockingbird. It was his 1256th reading, so far in his lives. This was his tenth copy, but by far the most precious. Like Tommy, it was his favourite Earth book; he just hadn’t mentioned that to anyone. No one had asked. Especially not Nelle. She already knew.
“Bless you, Nelle Harper. And thank you.”
***
Nelle’s death was less than three days away, now. Yet despite her weakened condition and her usually much-protected privacy, the Doctor, Tommy and Jasmine had no trouble seeing their friend again, so close to death: as before, the receptionist and Nurse Addy were expecting them, and ushered them quietly into her room.
Nelle was propped up by the pillows Jasmine and Tommy had helped her with once before…when? Days ago or years? Their Nelle-related time and space hopping in the last little while had left Tommy and Jasmine a little uncertain about how long all of this had taken in “real time,” if indeed there was such a thing.
“Are all my books safe now? Most of my collection here is back to normal, but what about on the TARDIS and in the world outside this room?
“Yes Nelle, they are safe, and so are the Memorites,” the Doctor spoke softly as he once again took her hand and kissed it. “Thanks to you.”
“And to you too, Doctor, and Tommy and Jasmine. I was pretty impressive at thirty-one, wasn’t I? Have you taken me to see Thomas More yet? I don’t seem to have any memories of that so far.”
“Not yet,” said Tommy. “You’re waiting at your New York flat right now for your first flight in time and space. We’re going there right after we leave here. Don’t worry, your travel will take place in a way that it won’t disrupt your rewrites of To Kill a Mockingbird, and will allow you to enjoy the adventure through your memories before you… pass…”
“Before I die, you mean, son. Don’t be afraid of words. Or death. Both are important parts of life. But you remind me: I have a gift for each of you. Now don’t object. They are books that I can’t take with me but need a regular reading…. by my three good friends.”
Nelle nodded towards the table next to her bed and Tommy helped her distribute them. “Jasmine and Tommy, I wrote a note for each of you in large print on my computer several weeks ago. They’re tucked into your books. Doctor, you don’t need a note. You can still read my thoughts, can’t you?”
“Always, Nelle.”
She smiled at the Doctor, patted Tommy’s hand and whispered, “Look after the Doctor, son. But make sure you have a good life of your own as well. Come here Jasmine,” and she whispered in Jasmine’s ear and winked. “Goodbye to you all, and see you in New York in one minute.” She laughed and closed her eyes. Just for a few moments, perhaps until those past-and-future memories arrive.
The Doctor tucked Nelle’s gift, her first edition copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, under his arm and headed out the door, followed by Jasmine with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Tommy with Nelle’s KJV.
***
The TARDIS Control Room
Tommy’s gift lay open on the console, with Nelle’s note sitting on top. He and Jasmine were now in their rooms, asleep. And just as Nelle had predicted, the Doctor couldn’t resist a peek at what he was in fact meant to see:
“Dear Tommy, I leave you my copy of the KJV, the most beautiful translation of the Bible, and a favourite quote from John Wesley, founder of Methodism, the religion I followed all my life, and my father before me:
Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”
A few moments later, the Doctor sat down in his comfy chair, not far from the console, and began reading To Kill a Mockingbird. It was his 1256th reading, so far in his lives. This was his tenth copy, but by far the most precious. Like Tommy, it was his favourite Earth book; he just hadn’t mentioned that to anyone. No one had asked. Especially not Nelle. She already knew.
“Bless you, Nelle Harper. And thank you.”
***