Code of the Krillitanes.

by Justin Richards.

Chapter One.

It was a lovely sunny day, and something was very wrong indeed.

The Doctor thrust his hands deep into his jacket pockets and sniffed the London air. It smelled just as he expected, so there was nothing wrong there. Well, there was nothing more wrong than usual.

He set off down the street, nodding a greeting to a curious cat. He smiled at an old lady carrying shopping bags.

She smiled back, then hurried on her way.

A few children were kicking a football about. The Doctor leaned against the end wall of a house and watched them for a while. The street ended in a small turning area where the ball bounced off the walls of houses. Two bundled sweatshirts marked out a goal.

The ball bounced off a wall and rolled up to the Doctor.

He picked it up and threw it back to a boy with spiky black hair, who ran after it. The boy was about 12 and had teeth that were still too big for his mouth.

'Training for the Olympics?' the Doctor asked.

'That's not for years yet,' the boy told him.

'Oh.' The Doctor was disappointed. 'I must be a bit early.'

He licked his index finger and held it up to test the breeze.

'2010, yes?'

The boy nodded. His friends had joined him and were watching the Doctor with interest.

'You're funny,' one of the other boys said.

'Very often,' the Doctor agreed.

The spiky-haired boy was eating crisps from a brightly coloured packet. He offered the Doctor one.

'No thanks. You have to be careful how much salt you eat, you know.'

The boy agreed. 'I know. Six grams is probably too much for an adult. Nearly half the people in Britain go over that.

The sodium is what does the damage. High blood pressure, risk of heart disease...'

The Doctor listened as the boy explained. He went into more and more detail about the dangers of eating too much salt. Then he paused to eat another crisp.

'Is he always like this?' the Doctor asked the other boys.

'He'll be explaining Einstein's Theory next.'

He had meant it as a joke, but the spiky-haired boy took this as an excuse to do exactly that. 'The "constant" that Einstein used was the speed of light,' the boy was saying as the Doctor stifled a yawn.

'Actually, I did know that,' he admitted.

The boy was talking faster and faster. Before long, he and the other boys had explained how to bypa.s.s Einstein.

They knew how to design s.p.a.ceships that could travel faster than light.

By this time, the Doctor had stopped yawning. 'Where do you go to school?' he asked.

Then he realised that the boys had gone back to their football. One of them loudly worked out the angle he would have to bounce the ball off one of the walls to get it in the goal. The Doctor frowned. The boy was exactly right.

A woman had come out of one of the houses and was watching the boys. The Doctor guessed that she was one of their mums.

'Clever kids,' he said, joining her.

The woman smiled. 'They're a good lot, really. At least they're playing footie, instead of bothering other people.'

'They bother me,' the Doctor said. 'Oh, not in a bad way.

But the things they say are a bit worrying.'

The woman had a bag of crisps. It was the same brand as the boy had been eating. It had the same bright packaging. She offered the bag to the Doctor, and this time he took one.

'They're good, aren't they? For crisps they're very, er, crisp.' The Doctor picked a bit of crisp from his teeth with his thumbnail. 'I was really looking for clues about the internet,'

he went on.

'Oh?'

'My TARDIS links up to the local networks when it lands.

It downloads news and weather and checks if I've won the lottery. That sort of thing.'

'That's useful.'

'Yes, very. Except, when I landed just now, it gave me a virus warning. For the whole internet. Everything. What's that all about?' He smiled and accepted another crisp. 'Sorry, ignore me.'

The woman smiled. 'So what's a TARDIS?'

'Time and Relative Dimension in s.p.a.ce. Don't worry about it.'

The Doctor watched the children kick their ball. One of them scored a goal, but another boy said he was offside.

'Which one's yours?' the Doctor asked.

The woman pointed to the spiky-haired boy. 'Spike,' she said.

'That makes sense. He was telling me how to build a s.p.a.ceship. How did he know all that?'

The woman popped another crisp into her mouth. 'I blame these new Brainy Crisps. He's been too clever by half since he started eating them. I can't decide if I should be pleased or worried.'

'Brainy Crisps?' The Doctor could see now that the name was printed, big and bright, on the packet. 'Brainy Crisps.'

'They make you more brainy,' the woman explained. 'No one knows how they work, but if you ask me it must be based on a special protein molecule. It must attach itself to the red blood cells and carry extra oxygen to the brain...'

'Yes,' the Doctor said slowly.' That would work.'

'Not that I'd know,' the woman went on. 'I left school after my GCSEs, and I failed all of those. I can't even work the oven timer.' She crumpled the packet and stuffed it in her coat pocket.

The Doctor nodded, deep in thought. 'So, where do these Brainy Crisps come from?'

'We get ours from the supermarket.'

'That makes sense.' The Doctor smiled. 'It was nice talking to you. Thanks for the crisps.'

'No problem. I hope you get your TARDIS problem sorted.'

'So do I.'

'Of course,' the woman said, turning to go back indoors.

,'the problem with Relative Dimensions is the s.p.a.ce-Time Gap. If you get that sorted, then you can time travel by simple Vortex-Jumping. Bye, then.'

The Doctor stared at the closed door for several minutes.

When things got this weird, he decided, it was time to go shopping.

Chapter Two.

It was a while since the Doctor had been to a supermarket.

He didn't generally need to go shopping. He had everything he needed in the TARDIS.

The supermarket was cool and bright with wide aisles. It wasn't too busy, and the Doctor wandered around, looking at the shelves. Supermarkets really did sell the strangest things, he thought.

There was even a whole display of televisions. They were hooked up to a camera that showed shoppers walking past. The Doctor paused to examine himself in widescreen.

He drew back his lips to check his teeth. He stuck out his tongue and was impressed with its colour and brightness.

Moving on through the pizza aisle, he had to step aside to let a youth barge his trolley through.

Reaching the bread, the Doctor found his way blocked. A lady was unloading French sticks from a large wheeled bin.

'Can I help you, love?' she asked.

'Oh yes. I'm looking for crisps.' He leaned forward.

'Brainy Crisps,' he told her in a hushed whisper.

The woman took a step back. 'Looks like you need them.'

'I do,' the Doctor confessed. 'You have no idea.'

The woman nodded like she thought she had every idea.

'Three aisles down.'

'Thank you. You're very helpful,' the Doctor told her.

'They should give you a badge. "Helpful", it should say. A helpful badge for helpful people.'

The woman nodded. 'They're between the ketchup and the sweets.'

The Brainy Crisps were just where the woman had said. The Doctor ignored the delights of lemon sherbets and wine gums. He glanced longingly at the jelly babies.

The crisp packets were the same as he had already seen. Their bright colours made them stand out on the shelf.

There were multi-packs and individual bags. They were all on special offer, with two for the price of one, and extra Super Points.

'Bargain,' the Doctor murmured, picking up a bag.

He studied the ingredients list. It told him they were made of potato and vegetable oil and salt and flavouring.

Which didn't really help.

'Made with actual ingredients,' it said below the list. That didn't help much, either.

The front of the packet said, 'Brainy Crisps The snack that makes you Brainy!' On the back it told how to go to the Brainy_Crisps website to test how much brainier you had got from eating the crisps. There was also, the Doctor noted, an address for comments or complaints.

So much for the sales pitch, he thought. Now to find out what was really going on. He stuck his sonic screwdriver between his teeth while he opened the bag of crisps.

The blue light from the sonic screwdriver lit up the inside of the packet. They certainly looked just like any other crisps.

The Doctor checked the screwdriver's readings as he scanned the contents of the bag.

'Excuse me, Sunshine,' a gruff voice said.