Regenerating the TARDIS at Lobos!

Dear Juliet

Three themes for today: regeneration, the TARDIS and Point Lobos.

So:

Okay, that was odd. Apparently, the pills were a marathon which I miraculously cruised through apart from this momentary snap at the end. Two pills to go and then I am done.

And it actually feels like I just regenerated...

It was subtle, but a bit like everything just sharpened up a bit and my perceptions cleared...

I guess that thirty-five year-old blood of mine did the trick, brought me back.

And you're still reading about Point Lobos?

Well, I once did the first five chapters of an unpublished novel called "I'm In Marsport Without...", included time travel and set it at the Point. Nobody bit, but here's an extract:

"The sky was stone cold blue, and it didn’t look friendly because it wasn’t. California Highway 1 looked like the usual flat black ribbon of tarmac, which it was; and there was I, stoned out of my mind, sitting on a petrified tree log just south of Point Lobos, wondering just how I’d got to fifty in such a stereotypical state.

Isaac Asimov once wrote a surprisingly poignant sci-fi short story called I’m in Marsport Without Hilda, and I knew how he felt. Trouble was, I was stuck in a metaphorical Marsport and Hilda wasn’t coming…

Around and about me, the world whirled crazily on its way. A resurgent Russia mounting Ukraine’s barricades with fanatical zeal while the Zaporizhzhya nuclear reactor, powered by a frayed extension cable, hung on in there promising not to explode and leave a radioactive cloud hanging over Europe. A West seemingly unable to understand Hamas was terrorists dedicated to the destruction of an Israel which, in kind, was determined, come hell or high water, to turn Gaza into a car park and shortly thereafter probably start selling its shattered seafront as real estate. An illiterate and unbalanced British and American youth so stupid, self-righteous and stuffed with social media they thought sex was fluid or interchangeable or something, and that governments riven with dispute and incompetence were actually smoothly-run vehicles for seamlessly-operated conspiracies operated over decades sans one single leak…

The first generation in history, I’d heard, which was more stupid than its predecessor. And I could see the evidence all around me.

I felt glad I’d got that old Glock from an illegal US vendor who’d been selling them at a roadside stand with strawberries. I’d got back out to California from downtown Cleethorpes with one thought in what remained of my mind: go back to a place which had good memories for me, have a birthday lunch consisting of chocolate milk and a pastrami and rye sandwich, then blow my brains onto the right-hand lane of the highway and expire, giving the middle finger to a sick and stupid society as my body spasmed into the road.

I might even get hit by a Mack truck as a final flourish. They’d missed me a few times before, but it was time for fate to square the slate.

And I was going to let them.

It had felt a fair bit different fifteen years before.

I’d said the Pacific was as blue as her eyes, but they were closed now.

... And we were happy for a while.

Then she had a stroke and died.

I remembered seeing her body at the mortuary and trying not to cry.

I remembered her voice, stilled.

I remembered a thousand little things which made my day, every day.

I remembered I’d never see her again, now she’d gone away.

So I walked a lot by the sea, which didn’t help any. I watched the world go to hell in a mess of Brexit, pandemic, Trump, Ukraine and Israeli chaos; and I bought a ticket for California.

Return, of course. I didn’t want to make it look too obvious.

I started my pastrami and rye sandwich. Not bad for a last meal on a nice day.

But then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a voice saying, strangely:

'Would you mind not dying right now?'

The speaker looked like Doctor Strange on steroids, and he did actually have a long light brown cloak. Thankfully no moustache, though. I’d have died of laughter if he’d had one and tried to twirl it.

Great, two ways in which I’d decided to die this day, and it wasn’t even noon.

Not having any reason left to feel fear, I considered my reply carefully:

'Would you mind giving me a good reason I shouldn’t?'

Doctor Strange (for that’s what I called him) began to gesture grandiosely, but his gesture ended abruptly when I gave him my best I-just-don’t-give-a-shit look and said:

'And cut out the beauty of nature pyrotechnics and stuff. We’re stuck on the edge of the world surrounded by seagull shit, dead celebrities and overpriced real estate. And if you don’t give me a good reason not to go real fast, the seagulls will be feasting on my blown away brains before you can say Betty White.'

Strange stood back, seriously surprised (as I later learned) for the first time in 5,000 years and looked at me, long and carefully.

'Man, you are one seriously fucked up dude,' he finally said.

'That’s the best thing anyone’s ever said to me,' I replied, and it was. I’d heard so many crocked old clichés the day they’d put my wife away I’d seriously considered beating half the mourners to death with a spade. No one had ever just straight up said the whole thing was a mess, that I looked like shit and it was all just goddamned awful.

And oh, how I wish they had.

There was a long moment of silence, with only the sound of breakers in the distance.

'There’s only one thing in the world that’d make any difference to me, and I think you know what it is. Maybe that’s why you’re here and it’s now. So state your case and be done with it.'

He shrugged, and looked past me at the sea.

'There’s only six degrees of separation between all of you lot, and it doesn’t take much to bring you together. Right now, the world’s even more seriously fucked up than you are, and that’s saying something. But there’s a symmetry to things, and it seems you’ve been in the right place at the right time more readily and more often than you knew.'

'So what’re you going to do, Strange? Stick me in your TARDIS and change history or sit around here like something out of the Seventh Seal playing chess for my soul?'

Strange smiled and looked across the road. A picturesque market was there, and on its forecourt a couple of transplanted British telephone boxes were to be seen.

'Not quite the TARDIS,' he said. 'We’ve upgraded.' ”

I think you can guess where I got most of my inspiration.

Well, I hope this gives you some food for creative thought.

Hmm. If you get to Gibson beach, why not bring a chess set?

Love,

James