“Farrah! Farrah!” Dex yelled while running upstairs. He then stupidly shifted his glasses so they were on top of his head, and as expected tripped over one of Farrah’s shoes. “Ow! My face!”
Farrah giggled. “What is it Dex?”
He stood right back up again, apparently not bothered by falling over. Well, it’s not like Dex isn’t used to falling over anyway. “You remember that song I played for you after I fixed your facelift? You know, when I was on my break and wanted to both visit your room and play my guitar but couldn’t decide? I played it for Elvis and he wants me to join him on stage!”
“Dex that’s wonderful!” she said, and hugged him. Shakira and Ursula were taking care of Farrah that day, restoring her immunity and other things against somebody’s odds, when they decided to have some fun with her SpaceTube/YouTube account. This led to all of Farrah’s doctors, except Lawrence, who was spending time with his mother, coming over to Ursula’s house and filming themselves/Farrah filming them performing ‘dramatic readings’ of various pro-Big Pharma blog posts. A couple of hours later, there was a new video online consisting of five people taking turns acting like retards.
Their evening of being themselves in front of a camera was then interrupted by Shakira’s phone ringing, as Lawrence was calling. “Salaam aleikum?”
“Hey Shakira!”
“How is your mother?” she asked, knowing that she should care about her future in-laws.
“Great….but there’s one problem….your parents are here!” he said, looking over his shoulder at the pair of stalkers future parents-in-law.
“LAWRENCE HOW DO THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE?” Shakira yelled. Morality seemed to come second to their child getting married, and since she didn’t live with them, their lack of nagging power or whatever meant that they had to get ‘creative’.
“Your mother said she searched my name to find out where I work, and then both of them followed me home.” In this situation, ‘creative’ means ‘stalking… and possible hostage’.
“I cannot believe this…why did they follow you?”
“Something about how we apparently have to get married right now”, he sighed.
“They want grandchildren from me, and a Theran woman’s eggs run out once she turns 100….but don’t worry, we don’t go through menopause, there are no changing for you to worry about.” Shakira set her TARDIS translator to Spanish, so she could use Pashtun to talk privately, but her Spanish grammar was not always perfect.
“That’s right, you’re 99”, he remembered. “And because of all the death threats against me for not turning Farrah in but instead helping her threaten the drug company’s power.”
“We are not leaving until you agree to marry him!” Shakira’s father yelled in the hope she could hear it, which she did.
“Okay Lawrence I am coming over to try to reason with them, so bye for now”, she said, hanging up once he responded. “Everyone I have to go and attempt to reason with my crazy parents.”
“Oh I know what that is like! Good luck Shakira!” Ursula called out.
“Good luck!” Farrah added.
“Thankyou!” Shakira said as she stepped into her TARDIS, which disappeared along with her in a few seconds.
Shakira and her TARDIS materialised into the living room of Lawrence’s house, a spacious, open-plan place with big windows. She opened the doors, then locked them, only to be greeted by Lawrence, his mother and her own parents.
“Salaam aleikum…..mother, father, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“We are here because you must marry this man now!” her mother demanded.
“Why? We haven’t been seeing each other for long and you know I would wait until marriage!”
“Because his life is in danger and it is your duty to protect him! Also we want grandchildren from you!” Her mother spoke the first sentence, but both said the second.
“I told you dozens of times that I do not want children and you already have them!” Shakira reminded them.
“And my life isn’t in danger as much as you think; no one’s tried to kill me when I’m working there on my-“Lawrence was interrupted as someone fired a machine gun into his house, shattering a window. “Own. There was only hitmen once…aaaand now they’ve come for me. Shakira don’t you think maybe they have a point?”
Her eyes still hadn’t recovered from almost jumping out of her head. “Ithinktheymight.”
“I don’t want my baby to be murdered! You marry him now so he can move in with you!” his tiny mother ordered, hugging him tight.
Shakira’s parents grinned smugly. “Now you see our point?”
“Alright then I will marry him! But weddings are expensive!”
“We learnt that in America there are places that will marry people at a moment’s notice and it is quite cheap”, her father stated. “There is no excuse.”
“But what will I wear?” Shakira asked.
“My wedding dress”, her mother added, and continued, “Lawrence seems to own many suits so he can wear one of those. You two can have a proper wedding in the future but now we must get this over with so he can be safe with you.”
“Where is it then?” Shakira asked, wanting to get it over with too.
“In our TARDIS…Lawrence and Mrs Piro, let us go now, and please tell us how to get to Utah!” her mother demanded.
“Strawberry! Look at this!” Farrah sat at her computer, connected to Earth’s internet of four years in the past.
“What is it?” the ginger asked, throwing herself onto the couch like a ragdoll.
“The tabloids are saying I’m in hospital again and that I’m dying! They’re saying nothing about my videos or how I saved Earth!”
“Wow…it’s like they don’t want anyone to know the truth…” Strawberry said, confused at Earth’s strange customs of government/corporate censorship.
“The view counts on my videos are slowly climbing, and it’s only the conspiracy theorists that listen to me”, Farrah sighed. She still wasn’t giving up, no, she would never consider that. She looked at another article’s title. “I’M PLANNING MY FUNERAL? HOW DO THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS?”
Strawberry shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“What is going on?” Thomas asked curiously, his head sticking out from around the corner.
“Your news is stupid” stated Strawberry.
“That I know”, he agreed. Once he saw what Farrah was talking about, he added, “These people disgust me! I don’t want to know how low the pharmaceutical companies will go to stop you!”
Dr Vogl was about to find out. As he skimmed the article, Shakira’s TARDIS materialised in a corner of the room, the ‘new’ Victorian closet not looking out of place.
“Salaam aleikum everyone”, she announced, with Lawrence following her. “We just got married so Lawrence can live with me and be safe from hitmen.”
Dr Vogl spun around. “What?”
alteredhistories 