Chapter 1: Thursday

On a Thursday morning, Rose Tyler was annoyed by a troop of purple aliens stomping into her office demanding scones. They also wanted some crickets, but she suspected they were confused.

For some twenty minutes, she tried to explain that Cricket was in fact a game and not something you could eat, but she gave up, rummaged through her desk drawer, pulled out her phone and a small white bag and called Mickey to get her some crickets from wherever you went to get live bait in north London. Then she offered the bag across the desk to them, explaining it was a sugar and starch product and they should only eat it if they could metabolize such a thing.

"Bloody hell!" the taller of the two exclaimed. "This is really good!"

She wasn't surprised to hear such words from an alien anymore. She had perfected the Universal Translator some time six months ago, even though no one knew how she'd pulled such a thing off. Rose would be damned if she told them they needed to include her on the list of people who couldn't figure that one out.

"Now what can I do for you folks today?" she asked. She'd refrained from using "ladies" or "gentlemen" after the confusion this question had caused to the asexual Horridens, who'd stood in her office and debated for six hours before deciding they'd be gentlemen unless it was raining.

"We are Navareenos. We demand 1950."

"Do I look like a bleeding Time Lord to you?" she demanded crossly. She expected them to simply look as sheepish as their physiology allowed and go find a Time Travel Agent or something.

Instead they took her at her word and studied her eyes. Then, the color leeched out of them (which turned them a pasty lavender color) and they started apologizing profusely.

Rose had no idea what they were on about, but they seemed in a huge hurry to leave all of the sudden, so she gave them her Buddy Holly and the Crickets CD and sent them on their way.

"That was weird," she told Mickey, when he arrived with a small cage full of tiny, chirping insects.