Liz Shaw's Inferno

Liz was almost too distracted by Amy’s shriek as she was moved over the other women, before being left back on the bench, to realise as the light started to coalesce around her.

It tingled slightly against her skin, and lifted her up into the air. Liz Shaw blushed furiously, and managed to get her arms almost halfway to covering her tits before they were coaxed back to her sides by the insistent pressure of the field.

“Elizabeth Shaw,” the Judge said. “Tell us-”

“Alright, I get it!” Liz said.

“I suppose talking about my second encounter with the creatures we called the Silurians would be treading over the same ground. So instead…

It wasn’t long before I left UNIT. Honestly, I think it was part of why I left UNIT, I always knew what the main risks were, but I never imagined it would involve so much humiliation. Of course, UNIT was new back then, it wasn’t so well known how often that happened to women when aliens were involved.

I was expecting danger, ****, high stakes… it sounds silly to say nudity was the final straw, but I was prepared for the rest.

It wasn’t long after the Doctor had dealt with the Inferno project. I barely believed the things he told me. He’d removed the central console from his blue box to try and see if he could get it working, but rather than restoring its supposed time-and-space travelling capabilities, he said it moved him sideways, to a parallel universe. The same things were happening, only UNIT was meant to be something else. Something crueller.

He’d seen our future too. In that world, it was a few days ahead, he saw what went wrong.

But that’s not what matters. Sorry, I’m trying to distract myself, but I guess your truth field won’t let me delay it indefinitely will it? Fine then…”

(Liz’s cheeks start to colour)

“I touched the console, before he rematerialized it inside his machine. It was just curiosity. I didn’t think it would do anything. It didn’t even look like a switch, but one moment I was in the boring old lab, and the next… Everything was whirling, shaking, the air around me surged and shone like some kind of aurora. It was a miracle I managed to grab on to the console.

I held on for all I was worth. It tried to shake me off, but I held onto the console, not sure what I’d done but knowing I at least wanted the chance to undo it.

When everything was still again, I wasn’t certain I’d moved. The desks had a few different instruments on, but I hadn’t memorised all that, I just knew the tables and chairs were all there, it at least looked like the same room.

I took an unsteady step back. Honestly I should have gone right back to the console and tried to remember what I did to end up here, but curiosity has always been one of my flaws. I went to the door to the lab and looked outside.

I could barely believe what I saw, But worse, they saw me back, and they saw I didn’t belong.

It was rather obvious. You see… oh, I’m sure you can guess. The mostly familiar UNIT logo was on the walls, the acronym spelled out beneath it, and I saw men in very similar military uniforms. The women, though… ok, I know it was the seventies, or eighties I can’t quite remember, it wasn’t perfect, but even at its worst I don’t think the boys’ club of UNIT had ever expected the women to go to work naked.

I was standing in the doorway, my red dress and the blue jacket I wore over it for warmth very visible and very obviously alien to the people of this world. I barely had time to blink, to lift my jaw up from the floor from the sight that greeted me, before the ones that were actually dressed were charging at me.

All in all, I suppose the way they acted was logical. I was plainly new to their world, and if their UNIT was anything like mine, people like that were often threats. They caught me, locked me up in a well-guarded cell-

And, alright, yes, they stripped me despite my objections and protests. It was normal to them. I was no stranger to miniskirts, but even I’d blanch at showing off that much leg.

They gave me a stool to sit on, and I crossed my legs, though I knew how much of them had to be visible. My thighs, my… derriere, I squirmed to try and keep most of it facing down on the stool but it never quite seemed to be enough. The more I leaned back, the more the rest…

My arms were crossed, and I waited for something to happen, anything. At best I wanted to get back to the TARDIS console.

Until then I was sat in the middle of a rather dingy room, with half a dozen men around the outside keeping watch, in case I turned out to be more alien than I looked. Though what I could possibly have been hiding, I don’t know.

It must have been half an hour before someone finally came to talk to me. I tried to talk to them, get their attention as much as I really didn’t want it, to get it over with, but they just stood there.

A woman came in. She had brown, curly hair, um, both places, had a holster strapped around one of her hips, and a lanyard around her neck and, well, nothing else. I could see all of her.

(Liz fidgets, reddening, rubbing her legs together)

It wasn’t that the sight was unpleasant. She was… that’s not the point. I wondered if that was how I’d looked; I hadn’t been able to cover up when they’d taken their clothes off, so many strangers must have seen those parts of me. I remember my cheeks felt so hot as she sat opposite me, no shame on her face.

Her lanyard identified her as ‘Patricia Haggard. ‘ She rested a notepad on the back of her leg, looking me up and down.

“Hello,” she said. “Do you have a name?”

“Liz Shaw,” I said. “I… do I have to be like this?”

“Like what?” she said.

I couldn’t say it. I just blushed. Patricia made a note and kept going.

“The… device you appeared with has been cordoned off,” she said. “If it’s dangerous, I suspect you’re close enough to feel any ill-effects, so don’t try anything.”

“It’s not,” I said. “At least, I don’t think it is. I didn’t mean to come here, if it’s all the same to you I’d rather just leave.”

She ignored that. I fidgeted further.

“You look human,” Patricia said.

“I am,” I said. “I think…. Do you know about parallel universes?”

I tried to explain it to her then. I talked about what little I knew of the Doctor’s theory, that the console didn’t belong to me, and that this had all been just a mistake. It was when I mentioned I worked for a parallel version of UNIT that she looked at me strangely.

“You? A moment of the United Nudist Intelligence Taskforce? I don’t think so,” she said.

I just stared. I suppose anything was possibility with an infinity of Earths, and it did explain my situation somewhat, but I still could barely believe it.

“Nations,” I said awkwardly. “United Nations.”

“Who?” Patricia said.

So that was that. I was whisked up by some alternate version of UNIT where women were expected to be nudists, subject to a brief barrage of tests that confirmed I did seem to be who I said I was and, well…

They let me approach the console again, albeit under armed guard. I couldn’t work out what to do. Any button I pressed was non-responsive. Then there was some business with the Nimons, and I helped them, and I kind of got recruited. For eight months I was the scientific advisor to a very different version of UNIT, and I never wore a stitch for a single second of that time.

Please don’t ask for details. It was embarrassing enough to just live once.

I saw the posters of their Supreme Nudist, I got assigned an apartment, I had to commute, and the more I whimpered and tried to cover up, the more I blushed, the more attention I got.

There was nothing I could do. And… it was dumb luck, honestly, the Supreme Nudist paid a visit to the United Nudists, a bizarrely bubbly blonde with a Yorkie accent, and somehow the console sparked to life when she went near it. I hurried closer and…

According to official UNIT records, I was only gone a day. It was a time machine after all. I left, uh, a number of details out from my debriefing, even if I did have to explain why I was suddenly materialising naked in front of the Brigadier and the Doctor.

At least it was over.

I mean, I do miss it sometimes. I was there for a while after all; I made friends, but the nudity? That part I could really do without. And the fact it was just dumb luck that prevented me from having to spend my entire life nude…

Yes. I left UNIT, my UNIT, not long after that incident.”

Liz blushed furiously. She could feel the eyes of the courtroom on her, human and machine.

“Eight months?” the Judge said.

“Yes,” Liz said. She squeaked. “It’s personal!”