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As Sam stepped out of the TARDIS she was greeted by humid air and the
smell of dust and old wood.
The Doctor followed close behind, briefly turning to close the TARDIS
door behind him.
Sam looked around to see that they had landed inside what seemed like
the hull of an old ship. The room was long, narrow and symmetrical, the
floor slightly slanted at the sides and the walls curved inwards
narrower at the centre.
The entire place was made of wood; the floor, the walls and the ceiling.
All of it the same aged beige colour that was broken only by the vibrant
blue boxy shape of the TARDIS at one end of the structure and the small
patch of dark velvet green topped with a brown mop of hair that was the
Doctor.
There seemed to be no way in or out, the only openings were two large
mirrored S shaped holes in the ceiling allowing beams of light into the
room and forming two bright silhouettes on the floor.
“It’s a violin” Sam called to the Doctor, “We’re inside a giant
violin”.
“A cello actually” replied the Doctor, making his way towards the
off-center round support beam in the middle of the room, examining it,
“It’s too big for a violin”.
Sam crossed her arms, “It’s too big for a double bass!” she
retorted.
The Doctor sighed. “Relatively speaking”, he clarified “the exact shape
and dimensions are that of a cello, albeit a scaled up one”.
The Doctor fished his sonic screwdriver out from his inside pocket
and began slowly scanning the beam, Sam strolled over to watch.
“It’s a good thing Fitz didn’t come with us” she said, “He’d have
dropped his cigarette and the whole place would have lit up like a roman
candle by now”.
The Doctor didn’t reply, his attention focused on scanning the
wood.
“What are you actually doing?” Sam asked.
“Trying to examine the structure of the wood.”
“Why?” Sam persisted.
“To figure out if we really are currently standing inside a giant cello
or if something has gone wrong with the TARDIS and we’ve been
miniaturised” he responded, “it’s happened before”.
Sam’s eyes widened “If so you can fix it, right?”.
The Doctor shrugged one shoulder, still trying to hold the sonic
screwdriver steady with the other arm, “Probably”.
Thanks Doctor, very comforting Sam thought.
“Huh” the Doctor finally stopped scanning the beam, putting the
screwdriver back in his jacket pocket. “Well the good news is we haven’t
shrunk” he said, grinning. “This is definitely a giant cello”.
“Well that’s good” Sam replied with a sigh of relief. She was beginning
to worry that any minute now, outside there’d be a giant who’d come
along and play the cello, sending her and the Doctor tumbling to the
tunes of Mozart or something.
“The question is why” the Doctor continued “and where for that
matter”.
Sam walked over to one of the S shaped openings in the ceiling and stood
on the tips of her toes, raising her head trying to peer out to see what
was outside. “Can’t see anything out there” she said “all I can see is
white”.
Abruptly the Doctor opened his mouth wide, stuck out his tongue for a
few seconds before retracting it and closing his mouth again, as if
trying to taste the air.
Sam looked at him, puzzled. He proceeded to inhale deeply through his
nose, before wiggling it a slightly. Then, after a brief pause he
remarked “It’s not earth”.
“Well that narrows it down a bit.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes, smiling. “Sam, the cello is a musical
instrument that was invented on Earth, so…”
Sam pondered, “So what aliens would decide to build a giant
cello?”.
“Exactly, which means this thing was probably created by human
colonists”.
Sam paced back towards the other end of the giant instrument, “Some kind
of art installation?”.
“Perhaps” the Doctor replied.
He jumped up and down on the spot a few times, his long brown hair
bobbing up and down over his face. He proceeded to dig a yellow yo-yo
out of his pocket, playing with it while watching it closely as it moved
up and down. “Artificial gravity” he concluded, putting the yo-yo back
in his pocket, “We’re not on a planet”.
“So we’re in a giant cello floating through space?”
The Doctor raised a finger over his mouth and then whispered “Do you
hear anything?”.
Sam stopped and listened for a few seconds. Nothing but silence. She
shook her head.
“Me neither” the Doctor replied, “no engines, no ambient noise of any
kind. But it has to be contained within something” he insisted, looking
at the floor, “what’s supplying the oxygen, the gravity, the light?”
flailing an arm towards the shapes in the ceiling.
Sam shrugged, puzzled.
The Doctor sighed and then sat on the floor with his legs crossed.
“Seems harmless enough” he mumbled as he fished around in his pockets
again, this time producing a grey battered notebook. Sam looked at the
cover, there was a white sticky label which had written on it in red
biro pen: ‘Odds and Sods’. Someone with distinctly different handwriting
had crossed out the word ‘sods’ with blue biro and just underneath
written: ‘Bobs’.
The Doctor flicked through the book.
“What’re you looking for?” Sam asked.
“I remember something about the human colonists of- Ah! Here it is!” The
Doctor jumped to his feet again. “The human colonists of Vivaldi Nine”
the Doctor read, “Music was the basis of their culture and religion”.
Wide eyed with the occasional glance up at Sam he continued to read
enthusiastically, “They believed that had a person sufficiently honored
the art of music in life, upon death their soul would inhabit a musical
instrument so that their spirit would create music forevermore”.
The Doctor stared at Sam, his mouth in a wide toothy grin, as if
awaiting a response.
“So you’re saying we’ve died and gone to musician heaven?” Sam responded
flatly.
The Doctor’s smile turned into a confused frown and he quickly buried
his head in his notebook again.
“Ah-ha, yes!” he shouted, his smile quickly returned as he excitedly
began to read out loud again “To symbolise this they built music tombs:
space satellites that resembled large musical instruments, inside which
the cremated remains of the dead would be spread!”
“Are you saying that the dust I’ve been breathing in while I’ve been
stood here used to be a person?” Sam complained, fanning in-front of her
face.
The Doctor stuck his tongue out to taste the air again. “Yes”.
“Ugh!”, Sam spluttered, brushed herself down and ran her hands through
her short blonde hair, trying to get rid of any possible traces of
dead-musician-dust from her person.
“So why does this place support life?” Sam coughed, “It’s not like
the dead need to breathe or see”.
“No but presumably visiting relatives do” the Doctor responded, still
looking at the book. “Apparently on the anniversary of their loved ones
death, family members would teleport on board and play music to pay
their respects. For this reason these scaled-up replica instruments were
contained within a life support bubble that supplied gravity, oxygen and
light!”
“Playing a tune while breathing in your dead uncle sounds like a grand
old time” Sam remarked.
The Doctor, slightly agitated, snapped the book shut and stuffed it back
in his pocket. “Well a lot of your earth customs would probably seem
very strange to them as well.”
Sam could tell that the Doctor thought she was being disrespectful.
It was easy to forget sometimes, that the alien cultures and strange
worlds she came across with the Doctor were in fact real and not just
part of some giant amusement park ride. Perhaps it was her brain’s way
of dealing with the strangeness and scale of everything she’d seen on
her travels with this alien Doctor and his magic box. The giant musical
instrument that she and the Doctor were stood inside was made to honor
and remember a real human being, someone who had a story, who was
probably loved and missed by their family and friends. “Sorry, you’re
right” Sam said sheepishly.
The Doctor sighed and smiled slightly, “Well we got to the bottom of it
anyway” he whispered as he started to fish around for the TARDIS key,
“Come on then Sam, back to the TARDIS. We better go back and get Fitz
before he goes and gets himself in trouble.”
Sam smiled and the two of them strolled back to the other end of the
cello’s interior. The Doctor opened the wooden police box door and
stepped inside as Sam glanced one last look at the giant cello room.
“Rest in piece” she whispered and stepped inside the TARDIS, closing the
door behind her.
The sound of metal grinding filled the air as the TARDIS faded away. The
dusty air slowly settled.