Once upon a time, there was some bloke who met The Doctor while trapped in the cube. The Doctor rescued him from the cube, like he does. The bloke learned a valuable lesson about life and friendship, then went off and lived happily ever after. The end.

Smeg.

So I'm told that talking about the cube is supposed to help me. Well… I don't want to talk about it. I do, but I don't, you know? I get that there's a lot I need out of my system, and I'd like that out, frankly. But at the same time…

It hurts to think about it. It hurts to think of thinking about it. I visibly cringe, my blood runs cold and my bones turn to lead. I can't just let all this… this whatever it is, I can't just have it sit inside me and get worse. I wish this were easier. I wish a lot of things were different. Sometimes, on my worse days, I wish I'd never been born.

Which is why we're here, really. I should get started, then. And not with "once upon a time." Let's start with… with… ergh. I'm sorry. They're right, I need to do this. If not for me, then for them. My… hah, my friends. I have friends now. There's a silver lining. Haven't had a real friend in over three million years.

Let's start there, actually; Red Dwarf. That was this mining ship I worked on, and wound up stuck on. The quick story is I got into some trouble over my cat, Frankenstein. They put me into a stasis booth, so I'd stay out of trouble until we got back to earth. Instead of a few weeks, I wound up stuck in there for three million years. When I got out, my best mates had been dead for ages, and all I had was The Cat, Rimmer, and Holly.

And I'd thought that was hell.

I can't remember what happened on my last day there. I can't remember what I'd eaten, what I'd said to that smegheadded hologram, what I'd even done. I just remember Holly saying goodnight, like he always did. It's a weird thing to remember, I guess. Everything else is such a blur now, all the days mixed together, like every breakfast happened all at once instead of every morning. But I can still hear Holly's good night like he's still around now.

Then I woke up in blue, as in the color. That was all I could see and comprehend. It was bright and hurt my eyes, and I think I had a hangover, which didn't help much. I think I said something stupid like "Turn the light off, Holl," because I was so confused by it.

I figured out a minute later that this wasn't Red Dwarf. I was in a room, where all the walls looked the same, with four sets of ladders moving out from these black squares on the middle of the walls. One on each wall, one on the floor, even a square on the ceiling. It was weird, how symmetrical the room was.

"What's going on?" I said, and nobody replied to me. I half expected Holly to say something daft, or for The Cat to rush out screaming. But no one was here. I was alone.

I got on my feet, and looked around, getting really nervous. Something bad had happened, and I didn't know what it was or what to do. The only thing I could do was climb up a ladder and look at the squares. I thought they might be doors, but they had no handles—they just snapped open by themselves when I moved my hand over. I figured doors like that meant I was still on some sort of spaceship, or something. I wish I'd been right.

There was a tiny crawlspace, and I went straight through it without paying much attention, other than it was gray and small and I hurt my neck getting through it. I got to the other end, took a quick scan around. The next room was identical to the first, but red.

"Oh, no."

There wasn't much else to say. The more I thought about what was going on, the more smegging ridiculous it got. How many rooms were there? What was with the colors? Where was Red Dwarf?

Where was I?

I got inside the new, red room, and that was when I heard a weird buzzing noise. I got scared then, because on top of having no idea where I was or why, there was some stupid buzzing that could be anything. It was coming from one of the doors, and I didn't know whether to back away or move closer. I just stood there, like a dumb git, staring as the buzz got louder. It was a warped buzzing noise, kind of familiar, like a drill, or…

The door snapped open, and a man got out and clambered down the ladder. Well, not really. I thought he was human because he looked human; brown hair, browner eyes, even browner coat. His glasses almost slid off his face because of all the sweat on it. He squinted at me, as if the glasses weren't helping his sight enough.

"So there are people. You black out before you got here, too?"

Remember, I was still used to being the last human. I tried to think, but the scenario was throwing too much at me, and I drew a blank. "Um, I guess."

"Right, then," he said, and the buzzing noise started again as he stalked the room. He held a weird thing in his hand, a long gray thing with a blue tip. The tip lit up as it buzzed, a blue light hitting each of the doors. "Have you been here long? Run into any traps?"

"Um…" it took too long for me to come up with a response, my mind was moving too slowly. Nothing unusual there, that's just me.

The man turned around, and then smiled like nothing was wrong. "I'm sorry, I forgot. I'm The Doctor," he said, putting out a hand, "who're you?"

I took the hand. "Lister, Dave Lister."

"Right then, Dave. How many rooms have you been in?"

I started to calm down, think straight. "Just two, I came from that door over there."

"Ah, so you've just started. I've been through about eight now, and I think—"

But he got cut off when the floor started shaking. There was a weird shriek from the ceiling, like the metal was being pushed on too hard. I guess it was, because the ceiling started moving down.

The Doctor stared, like he was annoyed. "What? No. That's impossible."

The floor was shaking, and I staggered. "If it was impossible, it wouldn't be happening."

He rolled his eyes, and then bent over the door on the floor, buzzing that blue thing of his. A screwdriver, that's what it sounded like. Well, a warped one. It started flickering, the buzz pausing, groaning and dying the more he tried to use it. He smacked the thing, barking orders at it, "Don't do this to me now!"

The ceiling was peeling the ladders off the walls, and I panicked. "Just open the door!"

"I'm trying," he shot back.

I bent down, moving my hand over the black square, and it snapped open. The Doctor gave me a weird look, about to ask how, then shook his head and dove in, me diving afterward.

The drop was a good ten feet, maybe more. The fall didn't kill me, but it hurt well enough. I landed mostly on my arse, my ankle hitting a ladder rung really really hard. I yelled, clutched it, and just said "smeg" over and over, as if it would help the pain.

The room was blue, like the first room, but a much darker blue. Still bright enough to make my eyes cross. The Doctor had recovered, and was trying to buzz open another door, to the left, or the right, or something. "No, no no no, c'mon," he coaxed, but it just died again. He groaned, letting his head hit the door.

Ankle still throbbing, I got up and limped to the ladder, climbing up beside him. I held my hand out, and the door snapped back, like magic.

He glared, not really at me, but at the situation. "How can you do that?"

I shrugged. "Why can't you?"

He shrugged as well, then looked into the crawlspace. That's when I noticed what I hadn't before; the crawlspace had two lines of numbers written on each side. I think there was nine numbers in each line. Yeah, nine. He looked at them, nodded, then started back down the ladder.

"Open another door for me."

I followed him, no questions asked. He was on to something, and I didn't want to throw him off with stupid questions. He looked at the two new number lines, mumbling to himself, then looked at me.

"That's the number of this room, here. The room number's on the left, and the next room's number is on the right, so I didn't get that mixed up."

"Get what mixed up?"

He looked at the numbers again, leaning back, rubbing his chin with one hand as he held a ladder rung. "Well, I noticed that all the trap rooms I've been in had a prime number in them, so I thought I could avoid them by avoiding prime numbers. It worked, at first, but that room," he pointed up, "didn't have a prime number, and it was still trapped."

I'll be honest. All I remembered about prime numbers was that five was involved. That he could get this far made me feel rather daft. I knew I wasn't very clever, but I was clever enough, and I had my good moments. This wasn't one of them.

"Three trapped rooms with prime numbers," he muttered, pulling himself forward again, "that can't be a coincidence. Well, it probably isn't. This room appears safe, and there's no prime numbers. Prime numbers, prime numbers, what could it…"

He was quiet for a minute, then suddenly leaned back, clapped his hands and jumped off the ladder, all excited. It scared the smeg out of me. I was a little jumpy, to say the least.

"It's not just prime numbers," he said, stalking around the room again, "it's prime powers. Brilliant! That's consistent with all the trapped rooms we've been in. So we'll just avoid the prime power rooms."

He kept right on pacing, tapping the screwdriver against his leg. "So here's what we know; an unknown party is taking random victims—like you and myself—and throwing them into this maze, labyrinth, thing… let's call it a cube. This unknown party has their hands on some powerful technology to have taken me out of the TARDIS, and they're, er, creative with the traps they've built. The rooms are all fourteen by fourteen by fourteen feet, and they're exactly the same but the color, and there's at least five colors—orange, light blue, dark blue, red, and yellow. We might run into more, but—" he stopped. "Am I missing anything?"

I thought for a minute, then, "The doors. Why can't you open them?"

He shrugged, still pacing. "Could be any reason. Clearly not activated by motion sensor, unless something's trying to keep me from moving. Or maybe you're the only one who can move. We'll need to find others to figure that out. Maybe it's a sort of DNA sensor, and it only opens for humans."

I made a face. So he wasn't human, after all. "Why would they build it like that if there's only one human?"

He frowned at me. "What do you mean?"

He'd known what I was, but not about what I was? "I'm the last human alive."

He stopped again. "What?"

"I'm… the last of the humans."

He stared, incredulous. "What?"

"I said I'm the last human," I pressed, "all the humans are dead." I felt like I was Holly, trying the break the news to myself the first time. I'd gone into denial, like he seemed to be in now.

His brow wrinkled at me. "No. You can't be. The last human—unless you're counting it all like Cassandra—they would be… You're not…"

Then he just stopped. I guess he saw the expression on my face, and knew I was telling the truth. Some blokes can tell that sort of thing. After a moment, he got this weird look on his face, one I rarely saw on Red Dwarf or anytime in my life. He looked right at me, like he absolutely knew me, and understood what I felt. It was eerie.

"I'm so sorry."

That look unnerved me, and I glanced away, getting down from the ladder.

He was quiet for a minute, then started pacing again. "You're right, Dave, it wouldn't be installed for humans if there was only one. Not if we're to have a fighting chance of getting out. The prime powers prove that out captors want us to get out, too—well, want us to survive the rooms, at least. If there are more humans, and that's why you can open the doors, then these kidnappers don't just drag you through space, but through time as well."

It wasn't easy to keep up with what he said. The Doctor could talk really fast, if you let him. I could tell some of his ideas were assumptions, but they were good assumptions, like the prime numbers. I felt like this guy could stay two steps ahead of Einstein. The cube was already very surreal for me, but this man, or whatever, he was even worse. Well, better. Just, weird.

"What are you?"

He gave me a hard stare. "I'm a time lord."

I didn't know what that meant, but the way he said it sent a shiver up my spine. He could've said he was a pink whale and I'd still shiver.

After that, we started travelling through the rooms, going in one direction, hoping to find… something. Whoever had kidnapped us might've had ways to keep us there forever, but that idea didn't phase The Doctor. He insisted that the kidnappers wanted us to escape, or else they wouldn't give us a means to survive. I guess that made sense, more sense than the prime powers, which The Doctor kept trying to explain to me. I never got past "five is a prime number."

"I'll never figure this out," I remember saying, at one point. "It's just too confusing."

But The Doctor just beamed at me. "You'll get it, Dave. Give it a chance."

It wasn't just that he was an alien. There was something weird about this guy. It wasn't bad, though. It made me think we might actually find a way out. I could tell he was meant for this sort of adventure, that he'd done this sort of thing in his sleep. I got hopeful, around him. I would need that hope on.

We went through a bunch of rooms, trying to move forward, but always having to go around trap rooms. We added three more colors to the list, green, purple, and hot pink. Most of the colors were ridiculous, but I hated the hot pink ones. I tried to count the rooms, but after a while, I left it to The Doctor. We'd run out of stuff to say about the cube, so we stopped talking and focused on escape.

I got tired, after a while. I wanted some curry. All I had was four cigarettes, a lighter, and some tweezers.

The Doctor started to feel it, too. "How long are we expected to be in here?" he asked after a while.

I opened a door, looked in, and almost laughed. "I dunno, but I just found a latrine."

The smell wrinkled The Doctor's nose. "Eww. Well, at least we know now that there's more people around. Let's try a different door."

We did, and wound up with a green room. My hangover still wasn't gone, and the bright green made me groan. I leaned into the crawlspace—

And suddenly I was against the side, and sliding out into the room, straight for the wall. The Doctor grabbed my arm, pulling me back, where things made sense again. Well, more sense.

"Smeg," I hissed, "what was that?"

"Gravity," he replied, "and don't swear." He got down from the ladder, then turned to the door across, heading for it. "What's it mean, gravity distortion? That's not really a trap, either, that room was safe. This better be a good room, or we'll have to go through the floor."

I followed after him, shrugging. "At least we have a lot of options."

This room was red, and it wasn't trapped. We went into it, and I headed across the room. The Doctor made me jump when he grabbed me and turned me to the right, or the left, or whatever. "We need to move in one direction," he reminded me.

"Sorry," I said, "I thought we were, I get confused."

"Focus, Dave. I don't know how much time we have here."

It was the first time he got cross. I didn't like it. I opened the door for him, and looked into it, and… and I saw the back of my head. The Doctor and I were standing on the ladders in the next room, in the same position, with the same smegging red.

"Uh-oh," The Doctor said.

"Uh-oh what?"

"The numbers, they're the same."

"So… this door leads into the same room?"

He leaned back on the ladder. The Doctor in the other/same room did exactly the same thing, like a mirror. Creepy.

"Now we've got space distortion on the list. That's no good." He paused, then shook his head, climbing back down. "We'll try another door."

The door we came through led into the same room, too. When I turned around, I thought I'd see myself in the door behind us, but I didn't. I stuck my hand through the crawlspace, and saw my fingertips floating in front of the black square. Like I said, creepy. All five nearby doors were like that, even the one on the floor.

"So much for options," I muttered.

The Doctor looked up. "Well, there is one more."

That option wasn't fun, let me tell you. We climbed the ladders right up to the ceiling, then climbed the ceiling rungs like monkeybars. My ankle was still sore from the earlier fall, and I didn't want to fall again. Things would only get worse if I broke something. The Doctor was sweating again, and waited for me to try the door open. Looping my elbow into the nearest rung, I moved my free hand up.

The next room was orange.

"Yes," I said, "we're out!"

The Doctor scanned the crawlspace, then shook his head. "No we're not. This room is trapped."

I almost said smeg, but gulped instead. This was unfair. Going into a room that you can only get out of through a trap room was just the same as a trap room, to me, and I felt like the kidnappers were cheating. Maybe they were, on purpose, because The Doctor got a handle on things so quickly. That idea had me real spooked.

I moved into the crawlspace, which wasn't easy; there weren't any more ladder rungs to grab onto, and I had to rely on shifting my weight around, one foot on one wall of the crawlspace and my arm against the other. Once I was inside the crawlspace, though, gravity shifted again and I could sit normally. I helped the Doctor inside, gravity switched for him too, and we looked into the trapped room.

"I don't see anything," The Doctor said, "do you?"

I shrugged. "Maybe it's like that first trap. We could reach another door in time, if it is."

The Doctor lifted the end of his coat, singed black. "Not all the traps are so easy."

I took out one of my cigarettes, thinking I could use a smoke right about now. Instead, I had an idea, and flicked the cigarette into the room. It hadn't even hit the floor when a laser incinerated it. I gulped again, and I saw something waving in the air, like how you can see heat off a hot road. It was some sort of sphere, not made invisible, but sort of transparent.

"Ah, there we are. A sneaky trap, that one." The Doctor sounded confident, and yet also awed and cheery. He found a lot of things in the cube interesting, especially once he understood them. I didn't share that appreciation, especially since all the neat gizmos were trying to kill us.

"I can't break it," he said, "but I bet I can disarm it with my screwdriver. We'll have to move fast, before the screwdriver dies on us."

I took in a breath. I wanted a better idea. Still, it didn't feel impossible to escape. "Which door?"

He paused, glancing at the room we left. He was still trying to move in one direction, the git. "The one on the right," he said, "and let's hope that one's not trapped, either."

I nodded, moving to the end of the crawlspace, The Doctor at my side. He paused for a minute, then pulled out the screwdriver, aiming it at what we could see of the thing.

"I'll count down to three," he said, "and then you start moving."

Sometimes I wonder what would've happened, if we'd tried this a few minutes sooner, or later. The screwdriver held the thing in the air, and I bolted, jumping to the floor and running to the ladders. I had the door open by the time The Doctor was at the end of the ladder. We were doing great, but it wasn't our plan that got us out of the trap.

I heard another door open, the one on the ceiling. At the same time, The Doctor's screwdriver went on the frits, blinking on and off, the buzz dying, stopping. I reached down for him, as if I could grab him by the scruff of his coat and pull him out of there, but I couldn't. By moving for him, instead of moving for the crawlspace, I technically would've died with him.

But just as the screwdriver stopped, a dark figure fell in front of the trap sphere. The sphere showered laser beams at us, but we weren't hit by any of them. A blue blur was moving now, knocking the beams back, and I realized the bloke who'd jumped in was swinging a sword thing around, so fast that it was unbelievable.

"Go!" he yelled.

"Go!" The Doctor yelled.

I moved through the crawlspace, into a yellow room. Lucky enough, this room wasn't trapped. The Doctor followed, and a while after, so did the new bloke who'd saved our lives. He had short brown hair with a long twist of it dangling down the side, and dark robes that made me think of monks. The sword thing was sort of gone, except he was still holding the handle of it. The way he walked up to us, the way he stood, it seemed to say he knew how to use that weapon. Or that he was a cocky arse. Turned out it was kind of both.

"Thanks for that," The Doctor said, slightly out of breath, "who're you?"

"Anakin Skywalker," he replied, "and you are?" he didn't have a British accent, so hearing him talk felt weird. Reminded me of the old Red Dwarf captain.

"I'm The Doctor," The Doctor said, holding out a hand, "and this's Dave."

Anakin didn't take The Doctor's hand right away. He studied him for a minute first, like he wasn't sure if they should just be friends all of a sudden. I was never much for introductions, so I just waved, and he just nodded, and The Doctor gave him the same interrogation he'd given me.

"How long have you been here?"

"A day, at least. It's hard to keep track of time, here."

The Doctor frowned. "A whole day. Have you found any rooms that're different, more unusual than most?"

Anakin shook his head. "Not any that aren't trapped."

That didn't sound good. I was starving, and my definition of "starving" could change if we stayed too long.

"Right, then… this isn't looking good." I hated when The Doctor said that.
"You're a human."

Anakin nodded.

The Doctor glanced at me. "They can pull people through time, then."

I stopped him from adding how good it didn't look. "That laser sword of yours, how'd you get it?"

Anakin raised an eyebrow. "I'm a Jedi." He said it like the word was supposed to explain something.

The Doctor shrugged. "What's a Jedi?"

Anakin frowned. "You should know what it is."

"Can I see that sword of yours?" The Doctor asked.

"It's called a lightsaber," Anakin said, looking grumpy about the whole thing. Still, after brief hesitation, he handed it over.

It was just a handle, at first, sort of like the sonic screwdriver, but thicker. The Doctor turned it on, and a blue blade slid out, but it wasn't exactly a blade. It was made of a laser beam, or electricity, or something. The Doctor turned it off, then looked into where the beam had disappeared, and I almost warned him about poking his eye out. He turned it over and over in his hands, turned it on, then off again.

"I have no understanding of this technology, at all."

Anakin didn't say anything.

"I've also never heard of a Jedi," he added, "and I'm nine-hundred and three years old. I've travelled from one end of time to the next, and I've never heard of anything like this. All of this," he finished, "means you're from a different dimension."

It was a lot for me to process. I can only imagine what was going on in Anakin's head. He didn't let a lot show, just stood there, all stoic as he listened. He'd just saved our lives, but I already didn't like him.

"What does this mean," The Doctor asked us, starting to pace again, "can they pull us from all ends of the universe? Are we really dragged through time to this one spot, or are we all just from different dimensions? Could it be both? How are they even accomplishing this, whatever it is, without time lord technology?"

Anakin finally spoke. "Time lord technology?"

"I'm a time lord," The Doctor said, without the shivering tone. "They're the only ones I know of who can travel through time so extensively, let alone dimensions."

I shrugged. "Maybe some time lords did it, then."

"That couldn't be it."

"Why not? Maybe one of the blokes involved doesn't like you, and that's why you're here and everyone else is hu—"

"It's not another time lord." The Doctor looked at me. "It can't be, because I'm the last of them."

If The Doctor still needed to win me over, that would've done it. Now I knew why he understood me, that eerie look I got. He knew what it was like to be alone in the universe. Then again, if you count the whole universe, dimensions and all, I guess neither of us really was alone.

"You're saying that Anakin's from a different dimension, which makes me not the last human. Maybe there are some time lords left in other dimensions, and they're the ones doing this."

The Doctor seemed to consider that, then shook his head. "The Time War destroyed them all. Even if…" he stopped again, considered again. "Well… in the smallest way… it's possible. Just not likely."

I left it at that. The Doctor had run with the assumption that I wasn't the only human, and he'd been right. Maybe there was a reason he wouldn't run with this one, and even if it was just a personal reason, it was better to let go.

The Doctor straightened his coat. "Right, we should get going."

Anakin shrugged, walking to the nearest door. "I'm feeling this one will be safe."

"Hang on, I know how to check that…"

And as The Doctor started filling Anakin in on everything we'd figured out, he got all talkative again, almost cheerful. It was like the time lords had never been brought up, and even Anakin seemed to forget they'd been mentioned.

But I didn't. I thought about all I'd been through that had had to do with time—the future echoes, the stasis booth, everything. Just the idea that someone could control all of that, that someone could be so old and have seen so much, to the point that he even felt that time had an end to it—that was incredible. I was lucky to have The Doctor, because he was everyone's best chance at understanding the cube, at escaping it.

I smirked. If I got back to Red Dwaf, I was going to gloat and gloat in Rimmer's face about my first encounter with this crazy alien.