In the Beginning... In Game 3

The Master glowered. Unsurprisingly, he wasn't at all happy about this. "Look at this," he said. "There's a note on the TARDIS console." He picked it up. "It says, 'I've already set the destination. Just get the TARDIS and you'll be on your way. Don't even try to change the coordinates, or you'll be sorry--Scott."

The Doctor grabbed the note and looked at it. "Yes, it's exactly as the Master said it is. Well, here goes nothing," he said, and pulled the lever.

Observing the TARDISes with his mind, Scott laughed. This game was going to be very fun. Very fun indeed.

He deliberated over where to send this TARDIS. He decided he'd send one of the TARDISes to Game 2, one to Game 3, and one to somewhere else in this multiverse. After sending the 8th Doctor's TARDIS to Game 2, he would send the 4th Doctor's TARDIS to Game 3. He would very much enjoy giving Betty a taste of the agony she had inflicted on him...

With the archetypal wheezing and groaning sound, the TARDIS materialized in the equally archetypal Staircase Room. The Master looked quite confused, while the Doctor seemed almost at home here somehow. Betty just felt... odd. This was the same staircase room she'd read about many times while writing Addventure episodes, but never expected she'd actually see. Every detail was just as she'd imagined it--the comfortable teal sofas, the boxed food in the corner, the strangely inaccessible spiral staircase plunging through the ceiling and floor. "Where is this place?" asked the Master.

Much to her surprise, the Doctor answered before she did. "I'm quite familiar with this room, in fact. This staircase room is the starting point of an odd little interactive story called Addventure Game 3--Endless Perspectives. Romana and I saw a virtual reality version of both Addventure and Extend-A-Story in the Matricca Scorpio Exhibition of 3203, dedicated to the great cultural achievements of humankind. Really, it was rather dull apart from that. This room is fascinating, isn't it?"

"I guess," said Betty, a bit puzzled

"This room," continued the Doctor, "is a representation of the eternal dilemma of all sentient life in the universe. The confines of this room represent the order of our normal lives. It's perfectly fine to live in, if you like teal sofas, but there are so many questions unanswered, so many horizons unexplored. The staircase going up and down represent the choices of ways to change our lives, which we want to take but are afraid because there are different alternatives and we don't know them the way we know our lives. And of course, there are other ways too if you look for them. Eventually, you have to leave the room, and begin your journey for answers. But the journey degenerates into meaningless chaos, and you have to find some way to bring back meaning to it." He grinned widely. "That was rather good, wasn't it? Of course, I never got a chance to tell it to Romana because I only thought of it after she'd left the TARDIS. L'esprit d'escalier, as it were. I miss Romana, she was a fascinating woman. Still, loneliness can't be all bad..."

"What's the point of this?" said the Master, clearly very irritated. "This has no bearing whatsoever on what we do next!"

"You always were over-literal, Master. This is not merely another reality. This is both a story and a game, so we must be on alert for the hidden clues, the thematic resonances, the..."

"Vert well then, I understand. But are we going up or down?"

"Right," said the Doctor decisively. "Let's go..." He pointed up. Then down. Then up.

1. So up they went.
2. Then down. So down they went.
3. "No, on second thought we should explore this room some more."

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