A Plague In Camelot

So I decided to do this writing exercise where you turn one of your dreams into a short story. My dreams are pretty crazy... so enjoy it. This one is from last night, it's got a pretty cool (though slightly incomplete) storyline to it.

-=X=-

Camelot. I'd always wanted to visit this place, and now I finally have. The medieval towers sitting on top of modern houses and knights communicating through their phones are just some of the things that give this city it's name: The Past of the Future.

Although, judging by the events of my visit, the city is too much in the past and their medical procedures leave much to be desired. As I sit in the zooming taxi with the planet fading away, I can only hope that what we found will help the UCDC (The Universal Centre of Disease Control) to stop the deadly plague.

By we I mean my travelling companion and guardian, a man who's name no one knows. I call him The Doctor. He's from the planet Gallifrey and wears a tight suit with his hair spiked up. I originally didn't think that he was going to accompany me at Camelot. I was surprised to find him waiting for me at the city entrance.

"Ah... Camelot." He'd grinned at me. "The futuristic middle ages, ruled by the stylish Arthur MMMCMLIX!" He'd grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards the tourist desk before I could begin talking.

Then we heard the crying. It came from a little cottage behind the tourist desk. "Should we go see what's happened?" I'd asked, that's what we usually did.

"Just once I'd like to go somewhere and actually relax." The Doctor sighed. But we entered the cottage anyway.

The interior was anything but medieval. There were electrical appliances everywhere, computers mounted on the walls, even a floating bed with a spa beneath it. The only remotely old looking piece of furniture was a wooden rocking chair. And there was a dead body sitting on it.

I clearly remember the Doctor running towards the body, sonic screwdriver out. Then the woman responsible for the crying ran into the room and shouted at him to freeze. "Don't go too close, it's contagious, it is." She'd explained, pausing every now and then to sniff. "We all got it, we're all dead."

We tried talking to her, but it was obvious that she had no idea what had caused the fatal disease. She only knew that whoever touched the infected got infected.

There was nothing we could do for her, so we tried her next door neighbour. This house was much larger and looked like one those eco-homes from the twenty first century. The inside was the same as the last, except there was a wooden table amidst all the modern funiture. Another body was leaning against the table leg.

"What do ya want?" An old man had approached us from behind, he was holding a wooden baseball bat, the price tag was still dangling from the end.

The Doctor pulled out his psychic paper and held it up for the man, "We're health inspectors, here under order of the king."

Right then the Doctor figured it all out. Well, he had an idea at least. The man had dropped the baseball bat and bowed down as if we were royals ourselves. But the interesting thing was that he'd started coughing up phlegm. As the mucous dripped onto the ground, the grass turned an awful brown colour.

"Ooh!" My companion slapped his hands on top of his head, realisation flooding over his face. "I've got it!" We walked away from the man and the Doctor explained his sudden outburst. "It's in the wood. That house had a wooden rocking chair, this one a table... and the man! He was holding a wooden bat!"

"So the disease is in the wood?" My face had lit up with excitement. Of course, I wasn't excited about people dying, I was excited that we (or at least, the Doctor) had figured it out.

"Yes! And I bet you we can find out more at the shop that baseball bat came from."

So we approached the still coughing man and the Doctor grabbed the bat. He wouldn't let me touch it incase I caught the disease, but the Doctor wasn't human. Not being human is the best flu injection you can have.

The shop was called Vintage Wood Supplies and was sitauted just outside of the castle. It was full to the brim of wooden furniture, tools, toys and, of course, baseball bats. The Doctor had started scanning a wooden chest with his screwdriver when the shopkeeper approached us. He didn't look anything like a human. At the time I would have described him as a giant mushroom with legs.

"Can I help you, or are you just browsing?" He smiled at us. Little round things flew out of his mouth as he spoke. When the Doctor saw this, he threw his free hand over my mouth and nose.

"It's you!" He said, squeezing my face slightly. I had no idea what he was doing, but now I know that his hand was acting as a mask. "You're poisoning the whole population!"

Th shopkeeper didn't speak after that, he'd just stared at us in confusement. The Doctor whispered into my ear. "He's a trader, changes planets every few decades. This time he's decided to sell wooden products to humans. But it's not the wood that's killing them, it's the spores that he's breathing onto them. Poisonous to your species." The Doctor turned back to the man and spoke louder, "You need to pack up and leave so that this place can be cleansed."

"But... but... how can I be posioning them?" The shopkeeper looked back and forth between myself and my guardian.

The Doctor held up the pshycic paper again. "By order of the king, you are banished from this planet. You have one hour to empty this building and leave, or you'll be executed."

The mushroom person had not wasted any time, he'd run out the back of the shop, probably to power up his spacecraft. We ran out the front and it wasn't until we were far away from the store that the Doctor took his hand off my mouth.

"What happens now?" I wiped my face with my shirt.

"We get the professionals over here."

I raised my eyebrows. "You mean you can't do anything? What about the sonic? That always works."

The Doctor shook his head. "Not this time. It can't cleanse the atmosphere of a whole planet, not without the right equipment, which we won't find in Camelot. Even though they're in the future, they're still in the past."

He had already begun walking towards the entrance of the city. "So we're leaving?" I asked, following him.

"Yes. We're getting a taxi to the UCDC, they'll be able to fix this." He whistled for a taxi and by the time we got to the boarding platform, there was one waiting for us.

And now as I sit in the zooming taxi with the planet fading away, I can only hope that what we found will help the UCDC to stop the deadly plague. Otherwise, the medieval towers sitting on top of modern houses and knights communicating through their phones that give Camelot it's name will cease to exist. The planet will be engulfed by mushrooms, the fungii feeding on the dead bodies. Camelot, The Past of the Future, will have no future.