"I have a Chronovore, Doctor, to distort Time," added the oddly familiar man, almost as if he were checking off items on a shopping list. The man flicked a few switches on the hexagonal console in the center of the large, high-ceilinged room.

 "That's somewhat apparent," scoffed the Doctor, noting that the dark roundels that so perfectly offset the ones in his own console room.

 The man raised his eyebrow, discounting the Time Lord's powers of perception. "Your Time, really...I've just been having fun bothering you with the Land of Fiction."

 The Doctor walked over to a open closet door and began thumbing through the clothes within. "Oh, were you behind that, then?" he said over his shoulder. He reached into the closet and removed a grey business suit with a skinny tie that was wrapped around the hanger.

 The chubby-faced man paused in his work over the console and chuckled, laughing at his own private joke. The Doctor hung the suit back in the closet.

 "And why are you here?" asked the Doctor abruptly, wheeling to confront his colleague. "What purposes do these people serve in your great scheme?"

 "If they continue along this path of influence, they will become very powerful." The man typed one final calculation into the keyboard, then strode confidently past the Doctor to the closet. "They'll overthrow countless civilizations...the Humans, the Daleks, the Time Lords."

 The Doctor snorted. "The Time Lords? Hah! Delusions of grandeur; nothing else."

 "I beg to differ, Doctor. I am an extremely level-headed man." He turned his smooth face to gaze into the Time Lord's eyes.

 A sneer came to Doctor's lips as recognition finally set in. "Always meddling."

 The man gave the Time Lord a broad jovial smile. "Why, yes, Doctor. That's what I do." He reached into the closet and took a brown linen habit from a hanger and put it on. "Life becomes tiring, otherwise, when you're a Monk." The Monk reached into the pocket of the habit, produced a revolver and pointed it at the Doctor.

 Avril was dead tired, but unable to sleep in that closet that the ship's builders decided to call the captain's quarters. He yawned, not even bothering to cover his mouth with his hand. Avril looked over at the science station and its accompanying vacant chair, thoroughly enjoying the absence of Mr. Kinti. Avril popped his fingers and listened to the echoes in the dark recesses of the ceiling.

 A comm light flashed on the situation console in front of the captain. Normally, an annoying beep would be accompanying the light, but Avril had placed several books on top of the tinny speaker. Avril grimaced and stared at the light for several seconds.

 "Maybe they'll call back in the morning," grumbled the captain, waiting for the light to quit blinking. After a few more moments, the indicator went dark, but began flashing once again almost immediately.

 Growling, the captain pushed the books to the floor with a loud bang. To his credit, the navigator merely shifted his position, then resumed snoring. Avril keyed the comm switch. "Yeah, what is it? And this better be good."

 "Captain, this is Mr. Kinti. I have some important information to relay to you." Avril glowered at the speaker box, irritated that the faulty speaker made the science officer's voice exponentially irritating.

 "Can't this wait until morning, Kinti? I'm very busy up here!" Avril scratched at the stubble on his chin and kicked the books under the engineer's empty chair.

 "No, captain!" Kinti's annoying voice sounded excited and urgent, and therefore uninteresting to Avril. "I've been studying the new propulsion systems all night long and I've made some fascinating discoveries."

 "You don't say?" Avril slumped in his uncomfortable chair, resting his head back against the top of the seat. "Mr. Kinti, do you ever sleep?" The captain yawned, and prepared himself to join the navigator in beautiful, peaceful slumber.

 "No, sir!" Avril could almost imagine the science officer saluting him over the comlink. "I require only three point two five hours of rest each night, allowing me twenty-one point seven five hours free for my schedule."

 "Uh-huh..." The captain yawned again. "Well, go ahead with your report then."

 "Captain, I am downloading all the pertinent data to your computer station right now." Lights and numbers scrolled across the flattop screen, but they were obscured from view by Avril propping his feet on the desk in front of the monitor. "The modifications that our 'friends' made to the engines is well beyond anything I have ever seen before, and I've seen a lot."

 Avril grimaced and closed his eyes. "Arrogant son-of..." he mumbled.

 "What was that, sir?"

 "Nothing, Kinti." The captain wanted desperately for Kinti to take himself to the nearest airlock and blow himself out of it. "Go on."

 "Anyway, the power levels of our engines have been increased by something like 600%! I don't even have the equipment to measure the output to exacting scientific standards. If we activated this new engine during warp, our Icarus Class Mining Vessel would outrun any of those new military prototype warp engines. We could have made three runs from Meridan to Earth in the time they could have made one!"

 Avril nodded and crossed his arms across his chest. "Uh-huh," he said, not really listening anymore.

 "Now our big worry is this. If you will look at graph 37 Alpha, that will explain our problem in a nutshell. If we activate this new modification during warp engine operation, we would get an incredible boost of speed, but our inertial buffering system would overload and we would all be killed instantly. So the modifications are pretty much useless."

 Avril's jaw dropped open slightly and began to snore softly.

 "I'm glad you agree with me, captain." Kinti's voice was smug and self-assured and Avril began to have very nice dreams wrapping a cord around his neck and strangling him. "After I discovered this, I went down to the engine room and took some more readings. This device, about the size of a shoebox, was emitting some kind of strange radiation that was making my instruments do very unusual things. You know I hate making uninformed decisions, but I would have to take a educated guess and say that these modifications are behind the emotional problems that the crew has been suffering these past few weeks."

 Mr. Kinti paused. Avril continued to snore. "Captain, I see you are as much in shock as I was. Do you want me to remove the device? Captain?"

 The Monk shrugged. "I renounced my ties long ago, Doctor." With the gun, he motioned the Doctor to an high-backed chair in the corner of the room. "Now sit. I want you where I can see you."

 "Very well." With a flourish, the Doctor strode over and sat down, folding his hands into his lap. "So tell me, if you have a Chronovore, why are you trying to interfere with the evolution of such a primitive culture like the Meridans? I am assuming that's what you are doing here, or am I just being presumptuous?"

 "Meridans? That's what you think they're called?" The Monk laughed and walked over to the controls, putting the console of his TARDIS between himself and the Doctor. "That's only the name given to these noble people by those fools from Earth."

 "So you aren't in league with the Spinward Corporation or with the crew from the Galaxion?"

 "Not exactly. Let's just say that I've neatly inserted myself into their respective stories." The Monk pushed the left sleeve of his habit back, revealing a black digital watch. The Doctor scoffed.

 "I see that your taste for fashion accessories hasn't changed in the least." The Monk put the gun on the console within easy reach and began punching buttons on his watch.

 The Monk's pudgy cheeks broadened into a smile. "Oh this? This is a new model." His watch beeped once and the Monk tapped the control to the TARDIS scanners. A ebony roundel close to the Doctor's head slid back, revealing a viewscreen. "One side, please, I can't see."

 Leaning to one side, the Doctor twisted in his seat to watch the screen. The view showed a small cave with eight Meridans seated around a fire. The Doctor recognized one as the headsman Lin-Kai. "What, no sound? I thought you prided yourself on obtaining the best and most stylish equipment?"

 The Monk was still punching buttons. "One second, Doctor, this is a live transmission." Finally, the voices of the three eldest of the Meridans could be heard.

 "What is your decision, Lin-Kai?"

 "Yes, tell us. Will you agree with us?" The simple motions of their bodies belied the intensity of their whispered words.

 The Doctor turned his head back to the Monk. "Ah, I see you have translated their language."

 "Quiet," the Monk shushed, placing both hands on the TARDIS control panel and leaning forward intently.

 Lin-Kai stared into space, not meeting the gazes of the other elders. "I agree," he said, quite loudly. "Take the strangers to the tall hill that overlooks the village and tie them to the rocks there. Let the scavengers pick at their bones."

 Standing up, the Doctor turned back to his captor. "And he seemed such the civilized gent..." The Time Lord stopped short as he noticed the Monk's short pudgy fingers touching two thin metal plates set into his TARDIS's control panel. The Monk's eyes were slightly glazed, and his mouth moved to unheard words, but his eyes were still glued to the viewscreen.

 Carefully, the Doctor approached the Monk. Working slowly around the side of the console, the Time Lord reached for the gun, his eyes never leaving the Monk's face. The Monk blinked once, and the Doctor snatched his hand back and placed both of them behind his back.

 "Telepathic circuits, eh?" inquired the Doctor, who was craning his neck over the time rotor to get a better look. "And jury rigged to a high powered, low bandwidth transmitter too. Who were you talking to, or should I say, who were you talking for?"

 "A quick study as always, Doctor." The Monk broke contact with the telepathic contacts of the circuit and picked up his gun. "As you can well imagine, these Meridans, as you call them, are easy to manipulate and with the help of my TARDIS even easier to control. Do you know that these savages have latent telepathic abilities?"

 The Doctor shook his head. "I had my suspicions ever since I heard one of them give a very beautiful rendition of Blake; Songs of Experience I do believe."

 The Monk punched a few buttons with his free hand and then pulled a lever. The time rotor began to shake and convulse as grinding, rhythmic engines of the Monk's TARDIS started up.

 "Where are you taking me now?" the Doctor asked. "To exile me on some horrific desert planet with no life and no intelligent conversation?"

 "No, Doctor. Just a few hours ahead. I hate to be kept waiting." The Monk waved at the door mechanism. "Open the doors please, I want to show you something."

 Kinti took a quick reading. The box was emitting those strange particles again. "One part in a million, five, ten, one hundred, one thousand..." He staggered back, his eyes pounding. "By the solar winds!"

 The short, unloved, unappreciated man sat down hard and held his hands over his temples. Blood dripped slowly from his eyes and ears as his head began to throb mercilessly. His mind was racing, and he could see multitudes of formulae and hypothesis thunder into his consciousness like a herd of stampeding horses. Kinti felt the unused portions of his brain come alive and burn like fire. He wondered how much of his brain he was using now, but then the answer came to him: 65.34%.

 Kinti stood up. He would show them how useful he could be. His greatest asset had just been augmented one hundred fold, and he would never take another man's superior attitude again, especially Captain Avril's. He staggered to the bulkhead, and worked his way to the exit, intent on showing Avril just who was the superior one on this ship.

 Avril attempted to stand up, but the floor of the bridge was shaking hard, and the captain fell to his knees. Avril pulled himself up to the computer station and punched a few buttons.

 "We've entered the atmosphere!" he yelled. Avril staggered over to the navigator's station. "We're in the atmosphere, damn you!" he repeated, this time directed at the sleeping ensign. "Get us out of here!"

 The ensign did not budge and the captain's headache was pounding even worse. Pushing the navigator, the captain shouted, "You incompetent fool! You've set our orbit too low, we're burning up! Either slow us down or get us some altitude!" Avril pushed the ensign's shoulder hard.

 The navigator fell to the floor hard. His eyes and ears were dripping blood and a large amount of blood had been pooling on his control panel, settling down between the keys and buttons.

 Avril flew into a murderous rage, kicking the ensign's body repeatedly. The ship gave a violent shudder, throwing the captain off his feet. Avril could feel something wet running from his ears. He regained his footing, only to find Mr. Kinti standing next to him, holding on to a railing and covered in blood. Avril could see Kinti's temples and skull visibly throbbing and pulsing.

 "This is all your fault! I'm going to rip your throat out!" Screaming, the captain launched himself at Mr. Kinti.

 The Monk pushed the Doctor forward and stepped out of the TARDIS, which had taken the shape of yet another large boulder. "What you are about to witness is the sudden evolution of an entire culture."

 The Doctor's eyes searched over the landscape, looking for a clue, or anything at all. Squinting against the morning light, the Doctor spied a large rock nearly one hundred meters down the hill. A great many vines were looped around the boulder, and the Time Lord could make out Carrington, Adrian, and Chernev tied spread eagled across the top of the rock.

 The Monk, still standing behind the Doctor continued his rant. "I have helped set into motion a series of events that will cause the downfall of many great empires, including your precious Earth's, Doctor."

 "What, the ritualistic execution of a few members of a first contact survey team?" the Doctor scoffed. Then, he saw it. At first, it was no more than a flash of light on metal high in the deep blue of the sky. The Doctor reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of macrobinoculars and brought them up to his eyes.

 It was a ship, moving entirely too fast for atmospheric travel. The ship seemed to be trailing fiery metal fragments from the underneath side, which was glowing white hot from the friction of reentry. The metal fragments seemed to be spreading out like a fine metallic mist behind the ship. The Doctor did some quick mental arithmetic.

 "My word! It's coming straight for us, for the village!" The Doctor looked down into the valley, looking for any signs that they might have seen the impending danger and evacuated.

 "No, Doctor, the village is quite safe," the Monk replied easily. "In fact, the point of impact will be...mmmm, about one hundred meters that way." He pointed directly at the large boulder where the trio from the Galaxion were immobilized.

 "What?!" The Doctor took a few steps forward and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Carrington!" he shouted. "Try to get free! I'll be right there."

 The Monk stepped up behind the Time Lord. "Sorry, Doctor, but this is entirely too tempting." With the grunt of someone unaccustomed to manual labor, the Monk brought the butt of his gun down on the back of the Time Lord's neck, sending the Doctor sprawling.

 The Doctor, dazed by the blow, tried to get up but couldn't. He could hear the roar of the doomed spacecraft getting louder and louder. Finally, the Doctor slumped to the ground, unconscious.

 The Monk picked up the Doctor's binoculars and looked through them. He chuckled to himself. "In less than five minutes, a new race of people will be born on this planet." The Monk tossed the binoculars onto the Time Lord's body.

 "You will be getting a first hand look at this new race of beings. The powers granted to them by this 'accident' will make them Masters of All, myself excluded of course."

 The Monk smiled and walked back to his TARDIS, pushing the door open. "I've seen your future incarnation, Doctor, so I know you'll survive," he called back. "It will be curious to find out how you get out of this one. When you finally wake up, tell the Vardans I said hello."

 With a cheery grin, the Monk stepped into his TARDIS. Moments later, the large rock faded from view, leaving the unconscious Time Lord to his fate.

 TO BE CONTINUED