It came from the sky! // kinddetermination
Few worlds are quite like the Discworld. Most have the right idea, a nice spherical shape near a star. With maybe a moon or two. But the Discworld....ah but the Discworld, had chosen a different start in life. Driven by a turtle and situated on the top of four elephants, the Discworld was just that. A disc with all the mod-cons a planet could provide.
With a few extras of course.
The Discworld travels through space with new stars in the sky every year and sometimes...just sometimes, through things it shouldn’t or near things you wouldn’t. Falling debris from the space outside the world, i.e the universe, was an common and unknown occurrence. Except for those who’ve charged themselves with its capture. Those people being of course, wizards.
The Unseen University, the great hub of magic, towered over the twin cities of proud Ankh and pestilent Morpork. Deep within it’s recesses were the strange goings on of wizards to who, big dinners and restful sleep were unappealing. One such wizard was the Doctor.
Given the responsibility of locating and destroying intergalactic space debris, such a task is best kept as far away as possible from the public eye. And the eye of other wizards. It was long ago discovered that many of these artifacts from the sky, have unknown properties. And in the wrong hands could be decidedly deadly.
The Doctor, born Theta Sigma¹, wasn’t quite sure just how long he’d been at this job. At some point his body had decided to not bother with getting older and just halted its progress. His mind grew old but his body stayed young. This didn’t bother him beyond having to wear a false beard and eyebrows to be taken seriously by the staff. And to avoid unnecessary questions.
He estimated a few centuries could have passed, because when they spoke about his job, it always started with a long time ago... or something to that effect. But a young body had its uses, so he couldn’t complain. He still had all his hair and teeth and his body was the perfect vehicle for the energetic and highly dangerous job of cataloguing, collecting and destroying space debris. And not always in that order.
Because that was his other job. The study of space and time. But it did have a fancier name once, long ago on his office door. Now it just said SP IM E. He’d asked the students, who must have it on some sort of schedule, but he only ever saw them in class, if that and he’d ceased allowing him into his lab. Having two go insane and one fall into a vortex never to return would do that to you.
Currently, he’d been doing some study of his own as there had been a noticeable hiatus from unidentifiable objects for the past six months. When you’re living on the back of a disc, on the back of a turtle hurtling through space, this is just a breach in common sense.
Something big was going to happen. He could feel it in his toes. And when your toes know something you don’t, you can be sure there’s magic afoot.
¹Which just goes to show that you can’t trust your parents even if they’re a wizard.