“What do you think this place was?” Clara asked as she walked down the hallway beside the Author. The only light was coming from the end of the Author’s sonic screwdriver, “I mean before all of this.”

“There’s no telling,” the Author shrugged, glancing over at Clara for only a moment, “The perception filter makes it impossible to guess. I think that the hikers probably saw what they wanted to see. They probably saw seventeenth century Spanish architecture. You’ve been traveling with the Doctor for long enough that you can kind of see through it.”

“You don’t have any guesses?” Clara asked and the Author cracked a smile.

“I have loads of guesses, but I want to know what it really is,” the Author replied, “When I first saw this city I ran through a thousand scenarios of what it could be.”

“Is that why you call yourself the Author?” Clara asked and the Author contemplated it for a moment, “Because you can think of so many stories off the top of your head.”

“Not exactly,” the Time Lord shook his head as they rounded a corner, “The Doctor is a word that you have for a healer. The Author is a word that you have for story tellers. So the Doctor is someone who makes things better. I make things more interesting.”

“What do you mean?” Clara wondered.

“I mean I’ve been following the Doctor for a long time,” the Author replied as the two came to another intersection. He checked his sonic screwdriver and they turned to the left, “I kind of pushed events to make them a little more interesting. Whenever the Doctor needed a change or whenever I felt that the situation could use a little more flair.”

“How?” Clara asked and the Author looked her over for a moment before she continued, “Give me an example.”

“Well…,” The Author said when they stopped in front of a door. It loomed over them and had doorknobs shaped like the heads of animals. The door seemed to be radiating the impulse to flee, “Should we go in?”

“A big, scary door at the end of a maze,” Clara raised an eyebrow at the Author and smiled mischievously, “Of course.”
The Author and Clara each grabbed a doorknob and pulled. “Whoa,” they said in unison.

                                       [}{]

“What could possibly cause an acceleration of time?” the Doctor asked himself almost as soon as he had left the Author and Clara alone at the entrance. It would be good for them to get a little time to know each other. Plus he was tired of listening to the Author’s incessant babble. If anyone could keep him in line it was Clara, though the Doctor would never actually tell her that, “There are plenty of things but I can’t think of one of them that’s good.”

The only thing he knew for sure was that this building had not existed before the time distortion. Whatever they were walking through was a ship and it was obviously of alien origins. Alien even to the Doctor.

“What are you?” the Doctor ran his hand along the wall and then scanned it with his sonic screwdriver. It came back with a reading he didn’t recognize and so he scowled at it, “I’ve been to thousands of planets. Every time I come here I seem to run into something new.”

“Why aren’t you aging?” he asked the ship as he scanned it again. The deeper he went inside the building the newer it seemed to get. The walls, which had once been as ancient as the rest of the city looked, were now shiny, polished, and new. His sonic screwdriver told him that the ship was less than a week old but that was impossible, “What am I missing?”

He came to the end of the hallway and stood before a nondescript gray door. There was a panel to the side. He pointed his sonic screwdriver at the panel and pushed a button. The door slid open and revealed a brightly lit study. It took the Doctor a moment to realize that there weren’t bookshelves up against the walls, the walls were bookshelves. Every wall was full and there were even more books piled up on the floor. There was a table in the middle of the room but it was covered in books. There were couches beside the table but books took up all the space to sit. The only thing that wasn’t covered in books was a desk to the Doctor’s left. One open book lay with a pen set between its pages.

The Doctor walked over to the book and picked it up. There were no margins to the book any longer. They were all filled with notes about content and grammar and style. The Doctor wasn’t sure even he would have noticed some of the things the reader had noted.

“Excuse me,” The Doctor spun around toward the voice. Climbing down from a ladder that seemed to reach up into oblivion was a frail-looking old woman. The Doctor could only decide two things about her: she was a woman and she was old. She looked vaguely humanoid but she almost seemed to share traits with a hundred different species. Her skin was a strange gray. It didn’t seem colorless but instead like it had been infused with so many colors that it lost its hue, “How did you get in here?”

“Through the front door,” the Doctor watched the woman cautiously. He knew better than to underestimate her.
She walked around the Doctor and set a large book on the table before her. It looked brand new but the TARDIS wasn’t able to translate the words on the cover. The language was ancient but the book was modern.

“I have a great deal of work to do,” the little old woman sat down at her desk and opened the book, “I don’t have time for distractions. Please, give me my book back and leave.”

“What is this place?” The Doctor asked, setting the book back on the desk in front of the woman.

“This is my vessel,” the woman replied shortly.

“And who are you?"

“I’m…,” she trailed off and then stared into the distance, like she couldn’t remember her own name, “Well, names aren’t that important are they? Besides it’s been so long since someone’s used it. Maybe I never had a name.”

“Why are you here?” the Doctor inquired.

“I’m not entirely sure where here is to be perfectly honest,” the woman began staring into her book again, “I don’t have time to pay attention to that. The ship pilots itself whenever I need to move somewhere else.”

“Oh, I see,” The Doctor nodded and started walking around the room, lost in thought for a moment before turning back to the old woman, “You’re not accelerating time, you’re stealing it. That’s why the ship registers as just being built, because it’s de-aging. You are somehow taking the time and pumping it into your ship, and yourself too if I would happen to guess. But Why?

“Ohhhh, yes, no, yes, shut up!” The Doctor got in close to the old woman’s face and stared into her eyes, “All of the books. You’re trying to learn everything that can be learned, but you don’t have time so you’ve been stealing it from everyone else.”

“Please, you are in my light,” the old woman shooed the Doctor away and tried to return to her work.

“But you can’t, the universe will move on and as soon as you think you’ve caught up there will be thousands of years of new material to learn,” the Doctor scowled at the woman in front of him, “Unless…unless you steal the time of every planet in the universe until all that remains is you. But why, what point is the knowledge if there aren’t people to share it with?”

“You are a clever one aren’t you, Doctor?” the woman smiled up at the Time Lord and pushed back her chair, “Maybe too clever for your own good.”

“How do you know who I am?” the Doctor asked as the old woman stood up and walked past him.

“I have been learning the history of the universe for millennia,” the woman laughed, “You were bound to come up at some point, and you did again and again and again.”

The woman returned to her desk with another book and began working again. The Doctor stood, watching her in silence. She seemed to have forgotten his existence.

“You are destroying planets,” the Doctor furrowed his eyebrows, “You are killing people.”

“And are any of them worth the knowledge in my head?” the woman shook her head at the Doctor.

“Yes, every one of them is worth more,” the Doctor replied and the woman was appalled.

“Get off of my ship and leave me alone,” the woman ordered and went back to reading her book.

“I can’t let you do this.”

“You can’t stop me Doctor,” the woman laughed, “I have been alive for longer even than you. Do you think I am not prepared for a day like this? I knew one day I would come to Earth and draw the attention of the Doctor.”

“I am giving you one chance,” the Doctor glared at the old woman, “Leave Earth, go live out however many years you have left and die peacefully. If you do not, I will stop you.”

“Good luck Doctor,” the woman had a glint in her eye, “I look forward to the challenge.”

The Doctor took a step toward her and something grabbed onto him from behind. He turned to look at whatever it was and something hit him heavily across the face. The world turned black around him and he fell from consciousness.