Out of the Box (short story)

 was the eleventh short story in the anthology Out of the Shadows, published by Arcbeatle Press. It reintroduced Box, the Preternatural Research Bureau's sentient portable computer introduced in When to Die and broken at the end of that film, as an active presence in the series.

The story made use of numerous other preexisting elements from the Doctor Who universe, in minor roles or as background mentions.

Summary
One day, while attempting to strike up a conversation at P.R.O.B.E. HQ with Agamya, Maxie Masters find her eyes drawn to one item on Giles's ever-mysterious "Dr Smith shelf": Box, a broken computer in the shape of a small black box, which looks to Maxie more like technology from her own home than human engineering. The two glimpse a mysterious flash of green light coming from the box as they are looking at it, before it becomes inert again.

This flash, as yet unbeknownst to them, is a distress signal that Box, unable to communicate in other ways but still conscious, has been repeating once a day, every day, for the several years since she was damaged. Box, who used to be the personal computer of the previous P.R.O.B.E. director, spends her time scanning the objects around her on the shelf and trying to solve cases abstractly based on the evidence available to her. When Giles adds a new item to the shelf wrapped up in the day's newspaper, she latches on to a report about a pair of fatal "industrial accidents" at Bildbriain Dairies, not trusting C.E.O. Henry Bildbriain's claims of how these two deaths occurred. She begins to ponder what might really have produced the injuries depicted in the photographs.

Meanwhile, Maxie hesitantly tells Giles about what he saw. Though he is initially disapproving when she asks about "an item on the Dr Smith shelf" (discussing the Greater Key with her as evidence of how dangerous items on the shelf can be), he is relieved when she clarifies that she is talking about Box. He puts her up to trying to fix Box, something which none of the people he's asked over the last few years have been able to achieve. Maxie goes to her room with Box and stays up all night working on the device, figuring out that none of the non-time-sensitive humans who attempted to repair the computer failed because they did not realise an invisible time loop was an integral part of the system. More frighteningly, she realises Box was built not by a Gendar, but by a Sun Builder, one of the gods of her people — and not just any god, but the Gendar pantheon's Trickster God. When Giles visits her in the morning, bringing her a cup of cocoa, she's in such a nervous state that she knocks the cup over, spilling the hot chocolate on Box and cancelling out much of her progress.

Over the next few days, Maxie leaves Box behind to focus on field work, assistings the rest of the team investigate an electromagnetic ghost and help the Space Lords corral a herd of space barnacles back through a Space-Time Rift. When the team return to HQ, however, Agamya notices the gap on the Dr Smith shelf, and, unaware that it was agreed upon with Giles, angrily confronts Maxie about it in front of him. In the ensuing conversation, a rift forms between the two women as Giles clarifies that Box is in fact a sentient being, and Agamya unsuccessfully beseeches Maxie not to awaken this alien intelligence, which Agamya is convinced is probably malicious and untrustworthy.

Returning to her work, Maxie remains troubled by Agamya's worries about Box being something like an imprisoned djinn; although she originally thought of this as silly, superstitious thinking, her recent remembrance of the Gendar Song of Aten's Arsenal and what it says about the Greater Key, combined with some of the things she read on the human Internet about artificial intelligences being let "out of the box", combine to make her take those worries more seriously. She carries on with the work, however, bringing Box's screen back online, thinking there couldn't be any harm in simply allowing Box to communicate with her in brief written messages. Box, delighted to have a direct channel to Maxie, lapses into her old mischievous ways and starts to prank her, first by answering her in the wrong language.

Over the following weeks, Maxie spends all her time on Box, refusing to go on field missions anymore, but her work is cautious, with Maxie procrastinating on any real breakthrough in fear of Agamya's doomsaying coming true once she completes her work. Box also slows her down with her mischief, as she enjoys messing with Maxie in this private setting more than she expects to enjoy once more having to help P.R.O.B.E. on missions in damp places. Eventually, as December grows near, Giles browbeats Maxie into going on a field mission again: an undercover investigation of the very same alien conspiracy at Bildbriain Dairies whose existence Box earlier surmised. As he whisks her off, she keeps Box in her other hand, ending up taking the computer along on the mission.

As soon as they arrive on the outskirts of the factory, Box notices, from her vantage point in Maxie's pocket, that nearly everything in the building seems to be covered in a fine layer of a mysterious organic substance, but none of the P.R.O.B.E. members realise this, and she is unable to convey her observation despite her certainty that it is connected to whatever is going on. They do, however, notice that the factory is oddly silent for an industrial building on a weekday. At the door, Giles speaks with Henry Bildbriain over the intercom, claiming to be "Mr Gilbert Slige", here with his team on behalf of "you-know-who" — counting on Bildbriain to come to his own conclusions about who might have sent discreet visitors. They are soon greeted by what appears to be the man himself, though Bildbriain appears to be in bad health, perpetually holding a handkerchief to his face.

Scanning him, Box realises that Bildbriain isn't who he pretends to be, and tries to warn her "owners" through text messages flashing on her screen. Maxie can't see them, since Box is in her back pocket, but Agamya can, being that she is walking behind Maxie as the group are led by Bildbriain through the building. Agamya notices the messages, but decides not to do about them, still believing that Box is most likely malicious and manipulative. Bildbriain leads the P.R.O.B.E. group to one of the great industrial halls of the factory, mysteriously locking himself in with them after they enter. There, they see that, instead of dairy products, the multitude of vats are filled with a liquid, shifting fungus. Giles realises that this is the substance that killed the workers, and asks "Bildbriain" for answers, whereupon the man they've been talking to drops Bildbriain's skin like a cloak, revealing an animate mass of talking, sentient fungus, the same alien substance as in the vats.

Tasha shoots the creature on instinct, but it absorbs the bullets into its body harm with no apparent harm. Not missing a beat, Tasha tries to shoot the lock to give herself and the other team-members an escape route, and begins to run towards it, but the creature grabs her by the ankle with a suddenly-forming tentacle and drags her back towards the rest of the group. It pressures the team to identify themselves, having figured out that they are not actually agents of its "patron" by the fact that they had reflections in the mirror of the break room they passed through. Giles persuades it to give them its own name instead, and it identifies itself as the Greth.

With a bit more prodding, the Greth ends up revealing its history. It became "Evolution's Champion", taking over its entire home planet as the singular, dominant life form, a single conscious fungus covering the entire surface. Wanting to grow more still, it ventured out into the wider universe in the forms of seed pods containing small pieces of itself, to infect the rest of the universe. It tried to conquer the Earth once before, a very long time ago, only to be defeated by a curious man with an umbrella and his cat. It also ended up on the planet Gallifraxion Four, which had been illegally taken over by the Clock-People. Though taking interested note of the way in which they had tricked out Galactic Heritage's protection of the planet by retconning themselves into its history since the very start and merging their biodata with the planet's native life-forms, the Greth did not manage to defeat them, instead being placed on trial for interference by the Clock-People's leader, Carvil the Resurrected. The Greth was sentenced to banishment into the Void Between Worlds, where it met "its patron", a being "from the days before History" who "took it under their wing" and taught it that the way to true supremacy was to taint and corrupt existing living beings, rather than simply to kill them and take over their homes.

As the Greth's story concludes, Giles and the rest of the team realise that the Greth's plan in taking over the cheese factory was to ship itself out in chunks, disguised as the fungus in some varieties of cheese, so that it could begin to possess large numbers of human beings from the inside. However, the Greth explains that while this is its ultimate purpose, it is still experimenting with possession, finding it difficult to control more than a handful of bodies at a time. Thus, it has kept the team alive this long because it is wondering which of them to pick out as one more body to try and merge with, while killing the rest. Box develops a plan and signals urgently at Agamya once again; realising that she is getting nowhere in trying to get Agamya to make the choice for herself, she begs Agamya in writing to simply show Maxie the messages, and let the other young woman make her choice for herself. This convinces Agamya, who decides that not taking such a weighty choice of Maxie's hands is something worth risking her life for. She quickly points Box out to Maxie, sparking a sudden inspiration in the Gendar girl.

After getting the Greth to safely put the other P.R.O.B.E. members to sleep (so as to preserver the secret of her own identity), she finally reveals her nature as a Gendar to it, emphasising the Gendar's mythical importance as the heirs of the Sun Builders. She holds Box aloft, describing it as a record of the Sun Builders' knowledge and pointing out that according to legend, the Sun Builders in their glory days knew the secret of ubiquity — how to split one entity into many different bodies — the very skill the Greth is trying to achieve. The Greth naturally tries to reach for Box, but Maxie tells it that Box is still broken, and that it needs to keep Maxie alive so that she can repair it.

Reluctantly agreeing to the deal, the Greth wakes up the other P.R.O.B.E. team-members and takes all of them to Bildbriain Dairies' computer room, even promising that it will let them leave alive once Maxie gives it the repaired Box (as it expects to conquer the Earth very soon anyway once it has the secrets, and thus thinks he has little to gain by trying to kill them early). As part of allegedly "fixing" her, Maxie connects Box to the Internet. Immediately, Box's artificial intelligence leaves the Box casing to spread throughout the Internet, thinking inhumanly fast thanks to all this extra computing power, creating a number of data-spawn "children" to carry out different tasks and help her plan.

Six seconds later in real time, Box's consciousness returns to the original casing to announce that she and her children have "snuck a lot of timed reactions into a lot of computer systems, falsified a lot of people's schedules, hacked a GPS or two" — in short, within the coming minutes-to-hours, a variety of people, authority figures and emergency response teams are going to be barging into Bildbriain Dairies. With no ability to hold all of them off, the "lead" blob of Greth flees back to the great hall to dive into one of the vats, and the entire factory's worth of Greth-substance drains itself out and into the sewers to escape. (Box helpfully tells the P.R.O.B.E. members that she anticipated this and has also notified a team of sewage inspectors, who will boil any water coming out of this section of the city.)

The P.R.O.B.E. members are left to consider how this all went down, and Agamya and Maxie agree that they were wrong to quarrel and officially declare themselves friends. With this established, Maxie also asks Box herself why she returned nicely to her casing, instead of continuing to multiply and take over computer systems and beginning the Singularity. An amused Box explains that she has no interest in taking over the world and actually quite likes her usual physical form as a small black box — hence her having chosen to name herself "Box" in the first place.

Characters

 * The Greth
 * Box
 * Maxie Masters
 * Agamya Akhtar
 * Giles
 * Greater Key
 * Jacks
 * Bottaro
 * Restaurant manager
 * Tasha Williams
 * Azacca Dixon
 * Carvil
 * Man with an umbrella
 * The Greth's patron
 * 28-X-B
 * 89-C-∆
 * 67-T-W

Biology

 * Cats have a "fortitude" and "biodata stability" unexpected of an Earth animal.
 * Quails are a species of bird, properly known as Columba livia domestica.

Culture

 * Books on the Dr Smith shelf include Beyond a Boundary: The Incomplete History of Cricket in the British Isles by Robert L. C. James, A Memoir on the Martian Invasion of Earth by H. G. Wells, a collection of Noddy books, and a Compendium on Ghost Physics by B. S. Ghast.
 * Vampires spend their existence "seeking the Child-That-Was-Taken".
 * The Song of Aten's Arsenal is a Gendar legend, involving the device Giles knows as the "Greater Key", although the Song refers to it by a different name.
 * There existed Cultists of Urizen on Gendar, who were the closest approximation Maxie knew on her home planet to a truly monotheistic religion, although even they apparently didn't claim that Urizen was the only god to exist, flat-out.
 * The Ark of Merediah is a legendary item that must never be opened in Gendar mythology, thought of similarly to the Greater Key.
 * Aladdin features a blue genie, who is not evil.
 * Giles insisted that Maxie watch a movie at the end of which a "Wicked Witch of the West" was defeated by melting.
 * Maxie misquotes an old Gendar nationalistic pamphlet which declared Gendar-kind "the Hybrids, the Children of the Gods", as well as "the Chosen of Time, Heirs Apparent to the Firmament".
 * Prometheus was a legendary being who stole the secrets of the gods and offered them to humanity, a tale with which Henry Bildbriain was familiar.

Individuals

 * P.R.O.B.E. met Kady Williams during "the Baskerville case".
 * Tasha Williams has a "baby cousin", currently in school.
 * Box has taken note, among other strange events, that "a homeless woman on the banks of the Thames had just celebrated her one hundred and eighty-seventh birthday", something which went unnoticed by the authorities because she had no legal identification.
 * The Greth killed the real Henry Bildbriain, a "millionaire entrepreneur", but kept his skin to impersonate him.
 * Urizen the Architect, Epsilon the Watcher and Vala the Herborist are among the foremost Sun Builders in the religions of Gendar, those are viewed as the "capital-g Gods" and revered in temples. There is also a Trickster God, who apparently has many names.
 * When Giles incongruously puts on a suit, Maxie thinks that the appropriate Earth pop-culture reference is to describe this as "Tommy Wiseau Football Chic".
 * C.R.U.X. have two "team pets", a cat called Benny and a dog called Dusty.
 * A man with an umbrella and his own pet cat foiled the Greth's first attempt at invading Earth, years prior to this new attempt.

Languages

 * Box successively speaks to Maxie in French, German and Old High Fractallaxian, with the latter "really spooking" Maxie.

Locations

 * The telepathic quail had been making its nest in Hyde Park, drawing a lot of other quails to its vicinity.
 * Maxie Masters briefly, irrationally considers running away to Alpha Centauri.
 * Auteur's Babbling Bibliothèque is a landmark on Gendar, of which Maxie used to give guided tours, including, on some occasions, to "electromagnetic barnacles".
 * Bildbriain Dairies is located in Woolwich.
 * After leaving the Void, the Greth arrived on Earth in "the Infernal Depths" beneath the sea, and reached the land on the shores of Le Touquet in France.

Organisations

 * The Greth describes itself as "the Scourge of the Wizards of Ertshea".
 * "C.R.U.X.", or the Conservatory for Research on the Unusual and Xenogenic, are the Preternatural Research Bureau's French rivals.
 * P.R.O.B.E. are familiar with the Starcorp Corporation, which they cite as particularly ruthless.

Physics

 * Upon consulting the human Internet, Maxie was amused by the "laughably incorrect" dimensional physics of humanity, for example deriding the fact that "multiverse theory" was considered "fringe".

Technology

 * Box has a built-in sonic detection module.
 * One of the alien devices on the Dr Smith shelf is a "Gonzie data-masticator" which "transmits prophecies of doom on a loop".
 * As befitting the technology of the "Gods", Box's circuits contain a "non-linear" element in the form of a "synchronised reversal loop", made of "thin strands of artificially-woven biodata". It is a form of engineered, miniature time loop.
 * Box also contains a chronomium memory core.
 * Maxie believes that the human Internet "hadn't been invented yet" when Box was first gifted to P.R.O.B.E..
 * Maxie Masters claims to the Greth that Box is a data-cube of the Shadow People.

Other

 * The events of the story take place in late 2019, beginning in early November and creeping near to December.
 * The newer members of P.R.O.B.E. are baffled by the name of the Dr Smith shelf because P.R.O.B.E. has never, to their knowledge, employed anyone named Smith.
 * One of the items dropped off in P.R.O.B.E.'s custody by time travellers in expectation that they would become useful in the future is a jar full of wax, whose purpose will apparently become apparent in 2076.
 * Protocol states that items must not be taken off the Dr Smith shelf except in a triple-Z-class emergency.
 * In addition to being "the Scourge of the Wizards of Ertshea", the Greth claims the titles of "Supreme Ruler of the Greth-Sphere" and "Evolution's Champion".
 * The Greth believes that, if he could absorb Azacca Dixon's psychic powers for himself, he could combine psychoactive extraction and mental transmogrification.

Story notes

 * Among the items on the Dr Smith shelf is a collection of Noddy books with a post-it note attached, claiming that they are "very important". In 2009, the blog Teatime Brutality jokingly asserted that, based on the Tenth Doctor's lines about Noddy in The Unicorn and the Wasp, Enid Blyton's Noddy books were the only work of fiction which could resolutely be stated to be non-canonical relative to Doctor Who, complete with a tongue-in-cheek "diagram" to this effect. This claim was later echoed in Elizabeth Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum.
 * Although in no real sense a crossover story, the story featured references to elements which originated outside the Doctor Who universe, licensed from their owners and mentioned as such on Out of the Shadows 's copyright page:
 * The Living Flesh Supercomputer, owned by Stuart Hardy, is a recurring element of Hardy's horror animated webseries Class.
 * Chronon Fleas and the eldritch god Thymon are elements of worldbuilding from The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, created by Aristide Twain and Lupan Evezan. Thymon was previously also featured in Auteur's Abecedarium by Jacob Black, which was a crossover between this series and the DWU.
 * Beauregard Ghast and his Compendium on Ghost Physics were created by Myrriah Hopkins.
 * The story also included a reference to the Starcorp Corporation, credited to P. Pudding. The Corporation is a recurring element of the N.C.J.D.D.A.S., or "Non-Canon Judi Dench Doctor Adventures", a series of parodical Doctor Who fanfictions published online, starring an imaginary incarnation of the Doctor putatively played by actress.
 * When fearing that she's in trouble for having glimpsed "forbidden information" on the Dr Smith shelf, Maxie Masters irrationally considers "faking her death and packing her bags for Alpha Centauri". In the miniseries Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman, David Tennant's character Crowley also considered running away to Alpha Centauri to evade his own authorities, a plan likewise left unfuifilled.

Continuity

 * Box has been out of commission since "that regrettable Reynish business, five years earlier". (HOMEVID: When to Die)
 * H. G. Wells wrote a memoir on the Martian invasion of Earth. (COMIC: War of the Worlds)
 * One of the items on the Dr Smith shelf is a longsword, "balanced on top of the uneven books on the highest row". PROSE: Preternatural Nights revealed this to be Bedevere's own sword, which Giles confiscated from him shortly after he arrived in the 21st century, when Giles returned the sword to Bedevere so that he could use it to help defend London against the threat of Perihelion.
 * Giles mentions that his team have crossed paths with Kady Williams, whom he asked, unsuccessfully, to take a shot at repairing Box prior to the events of the story. (PROSE: Ring Theory)
 * According to "the archives", P.R.O.B.E. dealt with a Perihelion event once before. (HOMEVID: The Zero Imperative)
 * Box is aware of the existence of a sizable "shapeshifter community" on Earth. (TV: The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion)
 * Box is aware of the fact that "the P.M." is a plastic duplicate, although she is "in no hurry to investigate" because "this had no discernible effect on his morality compared to the average politician". (PROSE: Revenge of the Nestene)
 * One of the items on the Dr Smith shelf is the Greater Key, which Maxie Masters recognises as an artefact built by the "Gods of Gendar". (PROSE: A Farewell to Arms)
 * Box's memory core is made of lime-green chronomium. (PROSE: Anachrophobia)
 * The "Gods of Gendar" are also referred to as the Sun Builders (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice, AUDIO: Sabbath and the King) and as "the Shadow People", with their base sometimes being known as simply "the Base of Operations". (PROSE: A Bright White Crack) Their leader held the title of Supreme Being. (PROSE: From Whildthyme with Love)
 * The Gendar religion where the Sun Builders are cast as benevolent gods also include "bogeymen" who are "furred, fell things of tusks and fangs and antlers". (PROSE: A Bloody (And Public) Domaine, Cobweb and Ivory)
 * P.R.O.B.E. deal with space barnacles who ended up on Earth due to a space-time rift and need to be corralled back into the rift.
 * P.R.O.B.E investigate mine shafts in Bedfordshire, which Box realises are temporal echoes of a future digging operation, rather than remains of a past one. (PROSE: A Bloody (And Public) Domaine, TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
 * The Greth recognises that some of the human members of P.R.O.B.E., especially Az, possess "a little witch-blood". (PROSE: The Book of the War, AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
 * The Greth recalls how the Clock-People were banished from the universe in "a great war", (PROSE: Anachrophobia) a phrase also used by Dalek Sec to refer to the Time War. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan) After escaping the Void, they resettled on Gallifraxion Four, a planet which was supposed to be protected by Galactic Heritage. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) By then, Carvil had become their leader, and inspired them to evade G.H. detection by retconning themselves into Gallifraxion's history all throughout its length. (AUDIO: The Lords of Terror)
 * The Greth refers to the universe as "the Totality of the Cosmos". (PROSE: A Bright White Crack, Collective Unconscious, etc.)
 * Maxie tells the Greth that the Sun Builders were "Masters of Ubiquity", knowing the secret of how to multiply a single living being into an army. She speaks of "the Hosts of the Kah-we-jeen (PROSE: The Book of the War, etc.) Meanwhiles. (TV: The End of Time)
 * Maxie swears "for Thymon's sake". (PROSE: Auteur's Abecedarium)
 * P.R.O.B.E. are left wondering what the ancient entity the Greth met in the Void Between Worlds actually was. They would eventually discover that the corruptive entity trapped in "the space between dimensions" since the dawn of time, who had been manipulating events around them behind the scenes, was the Yssgaroth. (PROSE: Preternatural Nights)