Doctor Whom or ET Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication by Adam Roberts Page A

it some—’ He burped again.
    ‘Some?
    ‘Some difficulties. My body has changed , you see.’
    ‘Doctor what’s happened?’ I cried. ‘I was sure you’d died !’
    ‘No, no. Almost impossible to kill me. Instead of regular death, my body re- un -degenerates. What this means is that all the cells that make up my body change. Anything imprinted with my DNA becomes part of a different body.’
    ‘But your DNA . . . it’s not human . . .’ I said, trying to grasp the enormity of what I had witnessed.
    ‘Of course not,’ said the Dr. ‘It’s Time Gentlemen DNA. But it’s there, in every cell, and during the process of re-new-generation it undergoes a sort of shimmy, or cataleptic shudder, and it marks out a new form for the body. But, you see, not everything in my body contains my DNA. That’s just as true of me as it is of you.’
    ‘Really? You mean there are cells in my body that don’t even contain my DNA?’ asked Linn.
    ‘Of course,’ said the Dr, his skin acquiring a rather green tinge. ‘For instance, your gut flora. Now, you need your gut flora to digest your food. It’s a thoroughly necessary thing. But the bacteria out of which one’s gut flora are composed carry their own, independent DNA. They are fine-tuned to existing in the set up of their host’s body, and when that body radically changes they ... don’t like it. Stomach-upsets, diarrhoea and nausea are the least of the symptoms.’
    ‘What was the business with the “ey oop” and the “ ’appen” when you came round from your trance?’ I asked.
    ‘A momentary grammatical aberration,’ said the Dr, looking distinctly queasy. If you’ll excuse me, I must rush to the toilet.’ He hauled himself to his feet and ran from the control room, making a series of repeated bluuerCA’H ! noises as he went.
     
After a half hour or so in which Linn and I did nothing but idle around the control room, peering at the gleaming controls and trying to make small-talk, the Dr re-emerged from the toilet. The intervening period had been marked by the background noise of a grown man attempting, apparently, to force his spleen up through his throat and out into the toilet pan by using the muscles of his diaphragm alone. It was not a pretty sound.
    ‘There,’ said the Dr, looking pale. ‘I think that’s got that sorted out. Better out than in, I suppose. I do apologise for that. It’s the cerum aerobic bacteria in the lower gut that . . . mostly . . . oh no.’ He put his hand to his mouth and his cheeks ballooned out like a jazz trumpeter’s. ‘Excuse mee eurrkh ,’ he blurted.
    He rushed from the control room.
    Once again Linn and I sat in the control room, looking pointedly in other directions than one another’s faces. From time to time we made eye contact and smiled, weakly, at one another. ‘Well,’ I said, at one point. ‘This is all very interesting, isn’t it.’ And she replied, ‘yes, it is.’ I asked, ‘have you seen him do this before, then?’ and she replied, ‘no, actually, not,’ and I said, ‘ah!’ We sat in silence for a while. All the time, however, we were accompanied by a cacophonous soundtrack of what sounded like a pig trying to give birth to a much larger, and much more noisily unhappy, pig in the next room.
    Eventually the noises died away and the Dr emerged, even paler than before but wearing a brave smile.
    ‘Again I apologise,’ he said. ‘It is an unfortunate side-effect of the DNA mutation, the broad-spectrum change of cellular germ plasm impacts very sharply upon the gut flora, with concomitant isolation of the Lactobacillus plantarum and an anti-Candida emetic that involves certain projectile gut-spasm implications,’ said the Dr, in a sober voice. ‘Also I was puking like a dog.’
    ‘We heard,’ said Linn.
    ‘Anyway, anyway, anyway,’ said the Dr, trying to rally the situation by smacking his hands together and rubbing the palms up against one another. ‘It’s all behind me now. At