[The main hall]

(The Space-Time Manipulator activates. Starkey and Gryffen are buffeted by winds. K9 is nearby.)

STARKEY: What’s happening?
GRYFFEN: I don’t know! It seems to have started by itself!
STARKEY: But that’s impossible!
GRYFFEN: It won’t shut down!
STARKEY: Quick! Grab hold of something!
K9: Analysing power source. Power source unknown. Calculating optimal response.
GRYFFEN: If I can just shut down the plasma thrusters!

(K9 shoots his cannon several times at the controls. The Space-Time Manipulator deactivates.)

K9: Plasma thrusters locked off. Systems secure.
GRYFFEN: Well done, K9.
K9: I bypassed the impulse gyrator by realigning the micro-temporal signal inhibitor to reactivate the nano-capacitator which had become disengaged from the gravitational time dilator which temporarily released the quantum eraser, allowing me to secure the plasma thruster.
STARKEY: I’ll remember that for next time.

(Jorjie and Darius enter.)

JORJIE: Will someone tell me what just happened?
GRYFFEN: I would if I could. The Space-Time Manipulator cannot start by itself. If I find out someone has been touching something that they shouldn’t have…
DARIUS: I didn’t go near that thing.
JORJIE: Same.
GRYFFEN: Starkey?

(Starkey is scratching his arm.)

STARKEY: Oh, sorry. No, me too, I didn’t touch a thing.
GRYFFEN: Then someone or something has breached the vortex.
DARIUS: Oh, fan-scrubbing-tastic! Some horrible flatulent beastie is somewhere in the house.
GRYFFEN: K9, would you like to have a look?
K9: Affirmative. On my way.

(K9 flies away.)

STARKEY: I’ll help you clean up.
JORJIE: Yeah, I’ll give you a hand.
DARIUS: By the way, you still owe for me those whatsherface resistics I got you.
STARKEY: Interface resistors. And you gave me the wrong kind. They didn’t even work.
DARIUS: Well, next time be more specific. Now, hat’s 20 creds for the resistors and I’ll give you the life lesson for free. (Starkey and Darius hold their vidcoms next to each other. Starkey transfers money across.) Ta. Anytime.

(Darius leaves. Jorjie says something, but she warps and speaks backwards. She then returns to speaking normally.)

JORJIE: Rip-off merchant.

[The cellar]

(K9 enters and sees a shadow moving. He warps just like Jorjie.)

[The laboratory]

(K9 flies in. Gryffen is working at his bench.)

GRYFFEN: What did you find?
K9: Reviewing memory files. No presence detected.
GRYFFEN: Strange.

[Starkey’s bedroom]

(K9 is next to the sleeping Starkey, inactive. He activates.)

K9: Warning!

(There is another warp. The sleeping Starkey scratches his arm and wakes up. K9 is dormant again. Starkey goes back to sleep.)

[The laboratory]

(Gryffen is cooking. Starkey enters.)

STARKEY: Morning.

(Gryffen, surprised, drops and smashes an egg on the floor.)

GRYFFEN: There we are. Can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs, hm? (Starkey sneezes. There is another warp. The egg returns to Gryffen’s hand and he drops it again.) There we are. Can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs, hm?
STARKEY: Don’t give up your day job.

(Starkey sneezes.)

GRYFFEN: Are you allergic to something?
STARKEY: Not that I know of.
GRYFFEN: Perhaps it’s a cold. Let’s find out, shall we? (He uses a device on Starkey’s arm and notices a mark.) What is that?
STARKEY: I don’t know, I’ve always had it. It just suddenly got itchy. It never has before.

(Darius enters, carrying a bag.)

DARIUS: Hey, prof. I got your shopping.
GRYFFEN: Didn’t you get all that yesterday?
DARIUS: No offence, prof, but you are getting molto absent-minded.
STARKEY: Just watch out he doesn’t rip you off too.
DARIUS: Speaking of which, you still owe me for those whatsherface resistics that I got you.
STARKEY: You’re joking?
DARIUS: Nah, I never joke about money.
STARKEY: I paid you yesterday.
DARIUS: Don’t try and scam a scammer, mate.
STARKEY: I said paid you already.
GRYFFEN: What money? What are you two bickering about?
DARIUS: He won’t pay me for a job I did.
STARKEY: Because I’ve already paid you!
DARIUS: Not true.
STARKEY: Jorjie. She was there when I gave it to you. She’ll back me up. (Starkey gets out his vidcom.) Jorjie?

(Jorjie appears on a screen from her bedroom.)

JORJIE: It can’t be morning already.
STARKEY: You were here yesterday when I gave Darius creds for those dud interface resistors.
JORJIE: Uh… Yesterday he gave you resistors and said you owed him 20 creds.
STARKEY: Wake up, that was three days ago.
JORJIE: I know he’s a rip-off merchant but a deal’s a deal. Just give him the money, Starkey.
DARIUS: So, can I have my money, please?

(K9 enters.)

K9: Starkey.
STARKEY: K9. You weren’t there, but you know I wouldn’t lie.
K9: Analysing historical data. No history of lying by Starkey.
DARIUS: You need to update your memory banks, Fido. Stark Reality here is a known lawbreaker with a criminal history.
STARKEY: All right, that’s enough! I’ll pay you.
DARIUS: Good.
STARKEY: K9. (K9 watches as Starkey transfers money to Darius again. He gets a warning reading “TEMPORAL ERROR DETECTED”.) Did you get that?

(Time rewinds a few seconds.)

K9: Temporal error detected.

[Starkey’s bedroom]

(Starkey is lying on his bed. K9 is next to him.)

STARKEY: Why would Jorjie lie? Unless she wasn’t lying, of course. What if they’re right? What if I didn’t pay him the creds?
K9: Then we have both suffered a temporal error.
STARKEY: You mean I’m going crazy?
K9: Negative. Temporal loss indicated.

(Starkey searches on his vidcom.)

STARKEY: “Schizophrenia and associated disorders. Symptoms include aural and visual hallucinations.”
K9: I calculate I have lost seven seconds.
STARKEY: I used to hear voices, when I was little. I heard voices and I saw faces. I just hoped they were memories. (He scratches his arm.) I am going mad.
K9: Relax your mind, young master. I have similar moments.

[The main hall]

(Gryffen is working on the Space-Time Manipulator’s controls. Darius approaches.)

DARIUS: Hey. Have you worked out what happened to the Space-Time Thingamajig?
GRYFFEN: Not yet.
DARIUS: I was wondering, do you think it could have been sabotage?
GRYFFEN: Who would have sabotaged it? No one was here but us. Certainly wasn’t me. Wasn’t you, was it?
DARIUS: Of course not. But who else was here?

(Starkey arrives, sneezing.)

GRYFFEN: Starkey. Your blood results should be ready.

(Gryffen leaves.)

[The laboratory]

(Gryffen is looking at the results of Starkey’s blood test. Starkey, Darius and K9 are with him.)

GRYFFEN: Schrodinger’s cat and kittens!
STARKEY: Is something wrong?
GRYFFEN: Your blood plasma’s producing some very strange antibodies. I’ve never seen anything like them.
DARIUS: I always knew you were weird.
K9: Analysis complete. Origin: alien.
DARIUS: I knew it. He’s an alien mutant.
GRYFFEN: No, no, no, no. Your blood plasma is human, but… you have an immune response to alien pathogens.
DARIUS: Put it in English, prof. He’s an alien mutant.
K9: Negative. Starkey is fully human.
GRYFFEN: Alien immunology is beyond the limits of our science. Only two people have ever been insane enough to attempt experiments on it and they were…
STARKEY: What? Professor, this is my blood we’re talking about.
GRYFFEN: Starkey, some things are better left unanswered.
STARKEY: Who were they?
GRYFFEN: A couple. Husband and wife. They disappeared years ago, surrounded by accusation and rumour. Their work on alien immunology was radical but genius.
STARKEY: Could they have done this to me?
GRYFFEN: Starkey. It’s best not to speculate without evidence, but they experimented on themselves and on their child.
STARKEY: They had a child?
GRYFFEN: A boy. Starkey, I know this is hard, but you have to let this lie. To do that to a child is insane.

[Starkey’s bedroom]

(Starkey is sat on his bed, scratching his arm and reading a book. He gets out his vidcom and looks at the results of his blood test.)

[The main hall]

(The Space-Time Manipulator powers up.)

[Starkey’s bedroom]

(Starkey coughs and scratches. He hears the Space-Time Manipulator.)

[The main hall]

(Starkey hurries to the Space-Time Manipulator’s controls. K9 is nearby.)

STARKEY: What do I do? K9! Now you’re recalibrating? K9, wake up! He told me what he did… K9! I don’t know what… (He starts operating the controls.) He bypassed the impulse gyrator by realigning the micro-temporal signal inhibitor… which reactivated the nano-capacitor… which had become disengaged from the gravitational time dilator… which temporarily released the quantum eraser which should allow me to secure the plasma thrusters. (The Space-Time Manipulator deactivates.) Brilliant!

(Gryffen enters.)

GRYFFEN: Starkey!
STARKEY: I stopped it, prof!
GRYFFEN: Let me see.
STARKEY: It’s like someone’s got power over this thing. K9 was busy recalibrating his time clock. I couldn’t remember, I… I was going crazy.
GRYFFEN: Someone’s been trying to access time.
STARKEY: That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s like déjà vu. It’s happening all over again, exactly like yesterday.
GRYFFEN: What happened yesterday?
STARKEY: The Space-Time Manipulator started on its own. It almost sucked us all into oblivion.
GRYFFEN: Starkey, that didn’t happen.
K9: Yes. Affirmative.
STARKEY: You think I switched it on?

(K9 scans Gryffen and detects that his mood is “accusational”.)

K9: Affirmative.

(Starkey leaves.)

[Starkey’s bedroom]

(Starkey packs his things into a bag. K9 joins him.)

K9: Can I come?
STARKEY: Why? I’m either a liar or a psycho, like my parents.
K9: Perhaps they weren’t mad. Perhaps you have lost the memory files containing the explanation.
STARKEY: Lost memory files… You’ve been losing memory files. Gryffen, Darius and Jorjie have all lost memories. K9, you scouted the house after the first breach. What did you find?
K9: Nothing unusual.
STARKEY: And are all the memory files for every room intact?
K9: Temporal loss has corrupted one file.
STARKEY: Which room?
K9: The cellar.

[The cellar]

(Starkey enters with a torch.)

STARKEY: Come on, K9. (He affixes a camera to the pocket of his jacket.) Okay.

(K9 follows.)

K9: Affirmative.
STARKEY: No, I mean, okay, let’s look around.
K9: Okay.
STARKEY: Now you’re getting it.
K9: Stop!
STARKEY: What? (K9 analyses marks on the ground.) Any idea what it is?
K9: Negative.

[The laboratory]

(Gryffen is at his workbench. Darius enters.)

DARIUS: Where’s Fido and the Dorkster? What’s happened?
GRYFFEN: Unfortunately, I think he’s been tampering with time.
DARIUS: So, that alien mutant blood is taking over at last.
GRYFFEN: Sadly, the cause is much more human. Starkey is trying to find his parents.

[The cellar]

K9: Are you coming?

(Starkey catches up. They hear a growl.)

STARKEY: What is that?
K9: I am searching database for…

(Time rewinds.)

STARKEY: So, are you going to give me a hint? Does it spit acid? Does it come from some weirdo planet I’ve never heard of? (K9 shuts down.) K9?

[The laboratory]

(Jorjie enters.)

JORJIE: Starkey? There is something seriously anticlockwise going on. What?
DARIUS: Starkey’s been fiddling with time. Gryffen caught him at the STM.
JORJIE: Could the STM be causing time shifts all over London?
GRYFFEN: Impossible. It’s completely localised.
JORJIE: Then it isn’t Starkey fiddling. It’s something much bigger.

(She switches on the news. An interviewer is presenting Channel 8 News.)

INTERIEWER: Apologies to all of those who complained about missing the broadcast of the King’s birthday message and to those unhappy about seeing it twice. Our next guest is spokesperson for TubeCorp, Brook Thomas.
THOMAS: Pleasure to be here.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. Miss Thomas, wild reports are coming in from all over London that Tube after Tube is arriving on time.
THOMAS: That’s right. We are proud to announce 100% on-time running, even for trains running several hours late.
INTERVIEWER: Surely that’s impossible.
THOMAS: Oh, no. No, no, no, no. According to the Tube timetable, some trains are arriving before they leave. The timetable is much more reliable than the trains.
INTERVIEWER: Our next guest is spokesperson for TubeCorp, Brook…
MAN: (OC) You’ve already said that.
INTERVIEWER: No, I haven’t.
THOMAS: According to the TubeCorp timetable, some trains are arriving before they leave.
INTERVIEWER: Welcome to the show. I’ll be speaking with…
MAN: (OC) Are you starting again?
INTERVIEWER: No.

(Jorjie switches the news off.)

JORJIE: Time itself is unreliable, everywhere.

[The cellar]

STARKEY: Are you all right, K9?

(K9 reactivates.)

K9: Temporal error detected.
STARKEY: How much time did you lose?
K9: Three seconds, possibly more. My memory files have been corrupted.

(Starkey notices and picks up a scaly sheet.)

Whoa. What’s this?
K9: It’s some sort of reptilian skin.
STARKEY: Let’s get this to the analyser. (Starkey sneezes and scratches his arm. There is a sudden gust of wind.) What was that?
K9: Unknown.

[The laboratory]

GRYFFEN: Why didn’t I believe him? I as good as accused him of sabotage.
JORJIE: He was telling the truth. It’s our memories that have been stolen.
DARIUS: I’m keeping that money.

(Starkey comes up from the cellar.)

STARKEY: Guys. There’s something down there and it’s doing really weird things to K9.
GRYFFEN: My boy, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.
STARKEY: Can we do this later? I’m really worried about K9. (K9 arrives.) He keeps having a log dysfunction. He’s lost at least ten seconds. Whatever’s down there is stealing time.
JORJIE: It’s happening to everyone, Starkey. People are losing hours. Some have lost days.
K9: Show them what you’ve found, Starkey.

(Starkey presents the skin.)

STARKEY: We picked this up down there.
GRYFFEN: It’s snakeskin, isn’t it?
JORJIE: That’s what it looks like.
DARIUS: Why is it never anything fluffy or friendly?
K9: We need to do a full analysis.
DARIUS: So, what does shedding its skin mean?
JORJIE: Snakes shed their skin when they grow. Means it’s getting bigger.
STARKEY: Which means it’s getting hungrier.

(Gryffen analyses a sample of the skin.)

GRYFFEN: Have a look at this.
K9: Skin cells are from an Oroborus.
GRYFFEN: The cosmic serpent! Hoyle’s boils!
DARIUS: Slow down. What’s an Oroborus?
K9: It is a predator which leeches time from other dimensions.
GRYFFEN: It turned Centauri into a black hole by siphoning off its future.
STARKEY: So, the Oroborus came here to suck up our time. That’s why everyone’s been losing their memories.
DARIUS: Except Starkey.
GRYFFEN: Because he’s been vaccinated.
STARKEY: That’s why I’m the only one that can go back down there. I have to stop it and I have to do it alone.
JORJIE: Starkey, there’s no point going down there without a plan.
STARKEY: It’s eating time all over London. It must be moving through the sewers.
GRYFFEN: But, once you get there, what are you going to do with it?
K9: It came through the STM, so that’s the way we should get rid of it.
JORJIE: But how do we get the snake into the machine?
GRYFFEN: The vortex of the STM goes about three or four metres down into the cellar.
STARKEY: Okay. So, I lead the Oroborus to the cellar, straight under the STM. Gryffen turns it on and vacuums it back to infinity.
GRYFFEN: The obvious gap in that logic is…
STARKEY: Is how do I lead an alien snake anywhere.
K9: I hesitate to suggest it… but if Starkey showed himself to the Oroborus, he would appear as a tasty morsel to be wolfed down on the spot.
DARIUS: Tasty morsel of what?
GRYFFEN: One lifetime. Starkey’s entire future.
DARIUS: This is so mad. So, Starkey will be the bait because the snake will see him as a time snack.
GRYFFEN: But, if for any reason the vaccination isn’t completely effective…
K9: Unfortunately, the young master’s life would be consumed.

(Jorjie hugs Starkey.)

JORJIE: Be careful down there, Starkey.

(Starkey heads back into the cellar.)

[The main hall]

(Gryffen, Jorjie, Darius and K9 are watching Starkey on a screen.)

JORJIE: Indian snake charmers use very slow hypnotic movements to send the snake into a trance.
GRYFFEN: No, they don’t. They sew the cobra’s lips together.

[Sewers]

STARKEY: I can hear what you’re saying.

[The main hall]

GRYFFEN: Any sign of it?

[Sewers]

STARKEY: Negative. Wait (unclear).

[The main hall]

JORJIE: Oh, I can’t bear to watch.

[Sewers]

(The Oroborus appears and hisses at Starkey.)

[The main hall]

DARIUS: I can see it.
JORJIE: That’s it. Let him see you.

[Sewers] STARKEY: That’s the way. Slow and steady.

(He runs back the way he came. The Oroborus follows.)

[The main hall]

GRYFFEN: Starkey, get out of there!

[The cellar]

STARKEY: The Oroborus is blocking the doorway. I have to hold on.

[The main hall]

GRYFFEN: It’s too dangerous! We’ll abort the mission!

[The cellar]

STARKEY: He’s underneath now. He’s big and hungry and coming straight for me. Go, go, go!

[The main hall]

GRYFFEN: Now.

(He and Darius activate the Space-Time Manipulator.)

[The cellar]

(The Oroborus is sucked up by the vortex.)

[The main hall]

JORJIE: The snake. It’s gone.

(Gryffen switches off the Space-Time Manipulator. Darius laughs, then realises he cannot see Starkey.)

DARIUS: Where’s Starkey?

[The cellar]

(K9 finds Starkey.)

K9: Starkey! Young master!
STARKEY: It might have been easier to sew his lips together!

(K9 laughs.)

[The main hall]

(Starkey joins the others.)

JORJIE: Starkey!
GRYFFEN: Well done, Starkey!
K9: Starkey did it!
DARIUS: I thought you were a goner!
GRYFFEN: Well done, K9!
K9: You’re welcome.
GRYFFEN: We defeated the Oroborus!

[Starkey’s bedroom]

(Starkey is reading in bed. Gryffen knocks on the door.)

STARKEY: Come in.

(Gryffen enters.)

GRYFFEN: I’m sorry I doubted you.
STARKEY: That’s cool.
GRYFFEN: No. No, that was foolish of me. I found something. I was searching an old database and I found this. (He shows Starkey a small screen with a picture of a man and a woman.) That’s Charles and Marie Sobol. They’re the couple I was telling you about. I think they’re your parents. Goodnight, Starkey.

(Gryffen leaves. Starkey looks at the picture.)

Transcript originally provided by Chrissie. Adapted by TARDIS.guide. The transcripts are for educational and entertainment purposes only. All other copyrights property of their respective holders.