Prologue
Paris, France. Current Day.
A young boy sits at his chair, typing away at his computer. Though ordinary in appearance, with his small frame, light skin, short blond hair, and round black glasses, he, and his computer for that matter, are nothing short of extraordinary. His fingers dance across the keys at a rate unmatched even by most professionals, and the complexity of his coding is unparalleled.
The boy squints his eyes expectantly and adjusts his glasses as he stares at the screen. With his right hand, he fiddles a moment with an earpiece before speaking into the attached microphone.
"Alright guys, the tower should be just up ahead. We're almost done here, and good thing too. Jim's almost broken down the door." He speaks with a somewhat low-pitched, slightly nasally voice and glances back behind his seat. A large metal door is closed just a few meters away, but it is severely dented. The metal continues to bend, punctuated by a pounding noise. Whatever is on the other side of that door, it's big.
Meanwhile, another event takes place. Though it is within the same building as the young computer genius, it might as well have been thousands of miles away. The land is a strange forest, floating high above a sea of ones and zeros. Trees, all identical, dot the landscape and extend from the sea to high above the forest ground. Four figures stand below a large, white tower, which is glowing an ominous red aura. Four youths, much like the young man at the computer, only far stranger.
"Don't sweat it, Einstein," spoke the first youth, a young man with a lithe body, paws, a tail, and cat ears. "We already made it. Those monsters were a piece of cake! Mmm, that reminds me, we haven't had lunch today yet!"
"Odd, you already ate two helpings of breakfast, and you grabbed a to-go box of Chinese on the way to the factory. Can't you think about food after we've deactivated the tower and saved Jeremie?" complained the second youth, a Japanese girl a little older than the rest. She wore a dark purple outfit, brandishing two handheld fans, while her shoulder length black hair was parted by two clips.
"I'm with Odd on this one, Yumi," chimed in the second boy. He wore a tan samurai's robe with a matching headband. He held a sword in each hand, and sheathed them on his back as he spoke. "The door will hold just fine, as long as Aelita gets in that tower and deactivates it."
The final youth, a girl with pink hair, a matching pink outfit, and elven-like ears, smiled, nodded, and ran forward toward the tower. Rather than crashing into the solid wall, she seemed to melt right through it. Inside, the tower was bigger than it looked on the outside. Aelita ran across the thin walkway to the central platform, then began to levitate straight upward. With a little grace, she landed atop another platform, nearly identical to the first, but much higher up. A screen was floating in the air, waiting for her to access it. She placed her hand on the screen, which scanned her palm, identifying her. A second later, two words flashed across the screen: CODE LYOKO.
"Tower deactivated," the girl said, with a sly smile. Immediately the outside of the tower changed. The red aura vanished, replaced by a white one instead.
Back in the computer room, Jeremie alternated his gaze between the computer monitor and the continually weakening door. Finally, what he had feared came to pass. The metal tore open and the figure of a large, slightly overweight man stepped forward. He wore gym shorts, a red shirt, and a white headband just below the line of his short brown hair. The man growled in an unearthly tone as Jeremie's eyes focused on his. Instead of pupils, he had a strange insignia of an eye with three lines on the bottom and one on top.
Then nothing. The insignia faded from the man's eyes and he looked around, confused, exhausted, before falling over into a big flump. Jeremie wiped the sweat from his brow with a heavy sigh, and then turned back to his keyboard.
"That was a close one. Unfortunately, Jim caused quite a ruckus in town, so you know what that means." Jeremie went typing away at the speed of light, before resting his index finger on the enter key.
"Return to the past now." Click. A white light began to well up inside of the large computer. A second later, it erupted and spread out across the landscape, engulfing everything. First the computer chamber, then the old factory housing it. The light swept across the suburb, then Paris, France, Europe, the earth, and finally into space…
Deep in space floated a most unusual object: an old English police phone box. Inside it was even more unusual, as though it contained the space of a mansion, which in truth, it did, if that is how much space the owner wanted it to have at the time.
The first chamber contained what looked like some sort of piston or engine, held within a glass case and surrounded by a circular console absolutely saturated with strange buttons, knobs, dials, and levers. Standing around this chamber were three individuals, two men and a woman.
"So where are we headed to next?" asked the woman with a Scottish accent. Her hair was long and red, and she had full lips that complimented her eyes well. The second man, the one she hadn't spoken to, just sat off to the side and let his wife ask their companion.
"Oh, marvelous question, Pond!" chimed the third member of the ensemble, as he clapped his hands together as though he were a professor excited to be giving a lecture to his students. In many ways, he would have resembled an old professor, had he not looked to be such a young man. His face was long with a pronounced chin, his brown hair kept tidy with a bit of fringe, and he wore a tweed jacket he insisted on calling stylish. Of course, he could never go anywhere without his special bowtie. Bowties, after all, are cool.
"We'll be heading to the Polaranya system next, circa 1846 your time. They have an absolutely splendid natural goldfall, ah, that'd be like a waterfall but with molten gold, you see, that I've just been dying to view with my own eyes!" The man looked quite proud of himself with his charming smile as he began fiddling with the instruments across the console.
"So where are we headed to next?" asked the woman with a Scottish accent. Her hair was long and red, and she had full lips that complimented her eyes well. The second man, the one she hadn't spoken to, just sat off to the side and let his wife ask their companion.
"I've just told you, Pond. I swear, do all humans have such terrible memories? Wait… Wait a moment." The man stood up with a quizzical look upon his face. His two companions just looked from him to one another, obviously quite confused. The man in the bowtie licked his right index finger and held it up, as though feeling some strange sensation in the air.
"Oh. Oh now that is interesting." He went to work on the console again, twisting knobs and pressing buttons.
"What's interesting?" asked the second man, a bloke with a pronounced nose and an English accent. He observed his companion's hands practically crawl over the various instruments. He was pretty sure half of them didn't actually do anything, but he made no further comment.
"Ask me again, Amy," the man in the bowtie said to the woman.
"Ok. Doctor, where are we going next?" She blinked awkwardly.
"Third time is the charm!" the Doctor shouted, spinning around to face his companions. "Amy, Rory, we're heading for France. Your time."
And so ends the teaser for the first chapter of this new series. What exciting adventures await us? Prepare for the Digital Doctor!
If you would like to see more of this series, please give feedback. I have a lot of big plans, but I don't know if this will pan out just yet, hence only a teaser instead of a full chapter.
