Tristan Parkes: Day of the Dementors

When Tristan awoke the next morning, the first thing he did, after having a shower and exchanging his clothes for a light-green shirt and white cargo pants, was to check on Ashlee in the medical bay.

When he arrived there he found Ashlee gone, but a note left behind on a datapad.

Tristan,
It took me a while to figure out how to use these computer-tablets of yours, but I eventually managed it.
I had to go to work to cover for Matt. Meet me at my place at 1 PM. There's a spare key under the doormat so you can let yourself in.
Don't work too hard!
Ashlee

"'Don't work too hard' she says." Tristan gave a snort. "I never work myself too hard."

Seeing as he was already in the medical bay, Tristan decided to start running tests on the tissue sample he took from Ashlee the previous night. Tristan headed over to the analysis equipment and put a piece of tissue into the genetic profiler and another into the biochemical analyser. Full genetic sequencing and biochemical analysis of the samples would take several hours, even with the advanced medical equipment of the twenty-second century.

While waiting for the analysis of the tissue samples, Tristan decided to kill some time by repairing his damaged Pattern Buffer. As it turned out, when Matt knocked Tristan to the floor, the Pattern Buffer had hit the edge of a table and the circuitry for the keypad interface and the control circuits had been damaged. Fortunately, there was no damage to the memory circuits or the Zero Point Module. The Zero Point Module was the Pattern Buffer's power supply and was also used to store the energy generated when an object was stored in the device. Harnessing Zero Point Energy was one of Tristan's greatest discoveries, and it provided massive amounts of energy, which is exactly what a device like the Pattern Buffer required.

By the time Tristan had replaced the damaged circuitry, the analysis of the tissue samples was complete and it was almost time to head over to Ashlee's place. Tristan downloaded the results on the analysis to his handheld computer, left the TARDIS, locked it, and teleported over to Ashlee's place. Tristan completely forgot about the spare key Ashlee had left out for him and instead teleported directly into her apartment.

Seeing as he had more time to spare than he had thought, Tristan decided to cook lunch in defense of his cooking skills. Tristan did almost everything by hand, although he used some magic to automate some things, like making the pizza base, while he chopped the vegetables (after first scanning and replicating them with his Pattern Buffer). Tristan didn't know if Ashlee was vegetarian or not, so he decided to play it safe and made the pizza using just vegetables.

While waiting for the pizza to cook, Tristan looked over the results of the tissue analysis, and found out a few interesting facts about Ashlee in the process. After looking through the results, Tristan transmitted the patterns for the ingredients to the TARDIS computers to be later sorted into the Pattern Replicator database. All too soon, the timer for the pizza went off and Tristan got up to take it out of the oven. Tristan may have been from a technologically advanced age, but he still knew how to cook. Tristan had always felt cooking to be a necessary skill, especially if you were going to become a time-traveller, and even this trip back to the early twenty-first century was enough to prove him right.

Tristan was just taking the homemade pizza out of Ashlee's oven when Ashlee walked in and spotted him.

"Hey! You made it," exclaimed Ashlee, and collapsed onto the lounge. "God, I'm gonna kill Matt. Not only did he shoot me, I have to cover his shifts!"

Ashlee sniffed the air and asked: "Did you cook lunch?"

"I'm more of the mind that the Dementors will get Matt first," replied Tristan. "Yes, I did cook lunch. Homemade pizza. Wholemeal base, plenty of veggies and loads of cheese."

"Oh, yum. Need any help?"

"Nah. I'm just cutting it up right now."

"How was your morning?" inquired Ashlee.

"I spent it running tests on a tissue sample I took from you when I was getting that bullet out last night."

"Yeah? So what's the results?" asked Ashlee, obviously interested.

"I was right about one thing: you do have enough active magical genes present to possess a rudimentary magical ability," replied Tristan. "You have 53% active magical genes. The minimum required for rudimentary magic like that is 50%."

"Wow," said Ashlee. "So what does that mean?"

"It means that if you concentrate, you can see through anti-Muggle enchantments, and you'll be able to perform some sort of basic magical task, or you'll have some sort of stronger magical sense. If you had at least 55% active magical genes, you'd be classified as a Squib. Squibs have almost the full range of wizarding senses, but can't perform any spells. 60% is the minimum for a full wizard or witch. People like you are called 'Talented Muggles'."

"Reminds me of an old bumper sticker: 'I'm not weird; I'm gifted!'" replied Ashlee, with a grin.

"You might put it like that. Anyway, one quality that Talented Muggles seem to have is that either their kids or grandkids will be full-blown wizards or witches. My father did a fair bit of statistical analysis, and found that if a Talented Muggle's kids were not wizards, then their kids would be wizards. Referencing my own family, my great-grandfather's father, uncle, and grandfather were Talented Muggles."

"Cool! So, what do you reckon my special abilities are?"

"What the ability happens to be is partly genetic and partly upbringing. The Talented Muggles in my family had the ability to fade into the background and not be noticed unless you were specifically looking for them. Interestingly, both my great-grandfather and I have that ability, too," explained Tristan, as he set a couple of plates with pizza on them on the table.

Ashlee took a bite out of the pizza. "Oh, yum. You're a bloody good cook."

"Thanks for the compliment. See, I told you it was just the ingredients in the TARDIS at fault," said Tristan, smiling. "Anyway, I noticed that you had a particularly bad reaction to the Dementors yesterday, and I've been trying to figure out why. You seemed to freeze up, and started crying. Does being around them cause you pain? It does for some people."

"Um, no. No pain."

"Hmmm... What else could cause that to happen?" pondered Tristan. "Does their presence somehow paralyze your muscles?"

Ashlee looked nervous and replied, "Uh, no. I can move ok."

"Okay, how about scrambled senses? I've read that's fairly common among Dementor encounters."

Ashlee looked around the room like a frightened rabbit. "No, not really."

Tristan was rapidly running out of ideas by now and asked: "Their presence isn't just triggering the crying reaction while making you feel miserable, is it? I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here with this question."

Ashlee's voice was trembling by now, as she replied, "No."

"Well, I don't know. Maybe it's something mental?" said Tristan, running his fingers through his curly brown hair. Suddenly his eyes lit up. "Hey... That could be it," he said slowly. Going into high-speed talking mode, Tristan quickly asked: "What is your worst memory? I'd bet almost anything that you are forced to relive it every time the Dementors are around."

"GET OUT!" Ashlee suddenly shouted, giving Tristan quite a fright.

"Have I said something wrong?" asked Tristan, looking very worried.

Ashlee threw her plate to the floor and yelled: "I said get out! You don't belong here!"

"I don't belong here? What are you talking about? As far as history is concerned, I might be supposed to be here in this time," replied Tristan, very confused by Ashlee's behaviour.

Ashlee picked Tristan up by the back of his shirt and headed for the door. "What's in the past stays in the past. Now, get out of my house and out of my life!" Ashlee proceeded to literally throw Tristan out the door and slammed it shut with a loud bang.

"Not when there are Dementors around, it doesn't!" Tristan shouted back through the door.

Suddenly, Tristan could hear Ashlee crying and teleported back inside to find her sitting on the lounge, sobbing. Tristan went over to her, sat down next to her, and asked, "What is it? What have I done wrong? I know I'm a stranger to this time, but I can't have said anything that bad, can I?"

"Just go away. Please?" pleaded Ashlee, sobbing and clutching a cushion to her chest.

"That's not going to help and you know it," replied Tristan, firmly.

Ashlee only proceeded to sob harder. "I don't wanna think about it. I don't wanna think about them. And Mel," she started crying harder, "I couldn't stop them! Why couldn't I stop them?"

"The Dementors will only make you think about it every time you encounter them. Now, I can program a special device to block access to certain memories, but I need the full details in order to do it," replied Tristan, gently.

"If I tell you, you'll make it go away?" whispered Ashlee.

"I won't be getting rid of it, just blocking the Dementors' access to it," replied Tristan. "Actually, I'll be blocking any subconscious access to it."

Ashlee just continued to cry.

"I can program this device to block subconscious memory-access, but I'll need you back at the TARDIS to do it. The equipment for programming the device is not exactly portable."

Ashlee nodded through her tears.

"Come on, stand up. We'll go via teleporter," said Tristan.

Ashlee managed to stand, but her knees wobbled and she grabbed onto the lounge for support.

"Easy," said Tristan. "Take this teleporter. I've linked it to mine. When I hit the button, we'll both go."

Ashlee took the device from Tristan. He then hit the 'Teleport' button on his device and they both reappeared inside the hologram around the TARDIS.