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Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity"
Dr. Gillian Petra raised a skeptical eyebrow at the individual whose police telephone box was currently taking up the majority of her small office. "Schrodinger's cat?" she said doubtfully.
"Schrodinger's cat," said the man who had only introduced himself as the Doctor. His Scottish accent did truly bizarre things to the German surname. "Or, rather, Schrodinger's history. Under normal circumstances this wouldn't be an issue. The story changes, the ending stays the same - it would be a matter so simple that the CIA wouldn't even get involved. Unfortunately, Jim Moriarty didn't know that his little time trip is occurring in an inherently unstable timezone."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning," the Doctor said, "that your little research project in the past has turned into something that both is and is not a paradox."
Gillian had never expected the indiscretions of her past to catch up with her. Her selfish choice to participate in the past at the whim of men with their own agendas, her dalliance with the Great Detective who no longer existed - none of it was supposed to matter, swept away in the tide of history. The only reason she'd ever even thought of those 6 months in the three decades that had passed for her was to regret that all that potential research had gone to waste.
"Fine," Gillian said. "So it's a paradox. I don't see how a historian could help you with - with all this." The Doctor cocked his head.
"Don't you?" he said with the terrible weight of Victorian London smog. Gillian pursed her lips.
"What do you think I can do?" she said. His strangely human-like hands fiddled with one of her expensive fountain pens, and she had to restrain herself from snapping at him.
"Once upon a time, there was a writer who was haunted by spirits and creatures under the bed," he said slowly. "People laughed at him, eventually, since the only bits they saw were the obvious forgeries. But all forgeries are imitations of a truth."
"What is the truth?" Gillian asked.
"Erasing Sherlock Holmes from history left the threads of time he touched hanging. Under normal circumstances they would anchor themselves, heal themselves. The War, well, it's made things infinitely more complicated. The loose ends of time have manifested themselves as a Shoggoth, a being that shifts its shapes and shapes history to fit its self into it. Fortunately, it has already chosen its anchor. We just need to tie off the ship."
"And how do we do that?" Gillian asked.
"The Shoggoth's chosen anchor is a writer. We should encourage him to reintroduce Sherlock Holmes to the timeline before he's driven completely insane by the things the Shoggoth permits him to see." The Doctor stood and gestured for her to follow him into the box.
"Jim Moriarty's time machine wasn't so cramped," Gillan says.
"I'd be very surprised if that was true," the Doctor said. Gillian raised an eyebrow skeptically, but she had to admit, after she went through the blue box's door, that he was right.
The writhing mass of bubbling cells and protoplasm, turning at this and that angle into something more and more resembling her former lover, was not what Gillian had expected to find when she stepped out of the Doctor's time machine and once again into the past. She didn't know what precisely she had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't that.
"Hello," the Doctor said, "I see you have been expecting us."
why are you here lord of time
"You were created from the frayed ends of unfulfilled timelines. I'm here to put Humpty Dumpty back together again."
why is the human here
"She is rope that will be tied to our anchor, the spine that will allow this chapter of the War to be closed."
the chosen anchor is in his study
"Thank you." The Doctor started up the stairs, then he turned, puzzled, when Gillian didn't move. "Come along."
"You look like him," Gillian told the mass that had to be the Shoggoth.
this human was needed
"Only a bit," the Doctor said. "Bad luck, really, that Time was too wounded to patch the whole Moriarty affair over."
"Is that what you are?" Gillian said. "Some kind of a - a temporal plaster?" Alien hands tapped a strange rhythm on the banister.
"I'm the Doctor," he said. "So a bit like a temporal plaster, yes, at least at the moment." Gillian shrugged.
"Fair enough," she said, and then she followed him up the stairs. He threw open the first door off the landing confidently, and when there was no one inside he continued down the hall without missing a beat. After three more doors he finally found one with a man inside, a very startled man with an enormous mustache.
"Who the devil are you?" said the man.
"The Doctor and Dr. Gillian Petra, at your service, Mr. Doyle," the Doctor said, waving a blank bit of paper in front of the man's nose. "We have a solution to your little Shoggoth issue."
"Shoggoth?"
"It's Sherlock," the Doctor said. "That's it, that's the solution. Not Sherringford or any other dreadful name you were going to come up with. In fact, strike Sherringford from the record altogether - if you allow him to exist he'll try to resurrect Azathoth, which is an even more frightening proposition in our current universe where the Great Old Ones exist."
"Azathoth?" Gillian said.
"I'll explain later," the Doctor said, sparing her barely a glance before turning his full attention back to Mr. Doyle. "Anyways, what you are going to do, Mr. Doyle, is get out a pen and paper and take down as much detail as Dr. Petra can give you about Sherlock Holmes."
"And why should I do that?" said Mr. Doyle.
"Because the fate of history depends on it," the Doctor said, "and because the success of these stories will make you a very wealthy man."
"The fate of history?" Mr. Doyle said, overwhelmed.
"Hence, the Shoggoth," the Doctor said.
"Hmm," said Mr. Doyle, but he obeyed the Doctor, taking out a journal and a fountain pen before turning to Gillian. "Now, my dear girl, what do you have to say about Sherlock Holmes?" Gillian took a deep breath and began to speak.