A Demystification: Eve

Day 10: Free Write

Word Count: 700

Lyn loved Doctor Who and lo mein nights. Also known as Saturdays with BBC America and Shanghai Tokyo Chinese and Japanese Cuisine. Occasionally, she ordered herself some General Tso to go with it, but those were usually the weeks that she had worked extra hours at the cafe and could afford such luxuries. A 2-liter of Diet Coke and a piece of Red Velvet cake finished out the night, usually well into the next program, but she never noticed.

It had never before occurred to her that Doctor Who might be real. After all, how many people tuned into it every week and let themselves believe, if only for an hour, that the Doctor and his companions were real. For her money, she'd bet on Matt Smith showing up. He was definitely dreamy in an odd sort of way, but so were most of the Doctors. But the difference was that he was the Doctor right now, and that shaped everything in the human mind. Maybe he'd regenerated just like the character.

But, then again, there were people around the world that refused to accept new actor as the Doctor. The backlash when Smith had taken over from David Tennant...well, one would have thought that Hitler had risen from the dead and claimed the throne of England from good ol' Lizzy 2. Well, Lyn wasn't a huge fan of him at the start, she had to admit, but she'd definitely gotten used to him over the...seasons. He was a lot like her, if she thought about it: intelligent, confident, and, above all, quirky. People didn't like him because he wasn't what they expected, and people never like things that aren't what they expect.

So...since so many people refused to believe in new Doctors as true Doctors, did that mean that every Doctor ever walked around all the time? Or did he come into existence at the beginning of every episode only to fade away an hour later, out of sight and out of memory? Or, even worse, did he always exist once people believed in him, feeding on that belief once a week?

These were the kinds of questions that had suddenly popped into Lyn's head after meeting Hermes for the first time. It was how she knew she wasn't completely crazy, too, that she could come up with such insane questions and sort them out quite reasonably. Lyn didn't particularly want to be insane, so that was really good, but that didn't really change that she had a Greek god popping into and out of her life every few hours, or so.

It seemed that Hermes quite liked spending time with Lyn. He just liked being around people. Spending all of his time in the Twilight was quite a bore, apparently, but humanity was quite exciting. Especially on Doctor Who and lo mein nights, apparently, though he'd only experienced one in the flesh, so to speak.

"Hermes, does Doctor Who really exist?"

Next to her, the god started, noodles slipping off of his fork and back into the box. "What? Of course not. It's a television program."

"But human belief, yeah? In order to watch this program, you have to be willing to suspend disbelief, yeah? So, in essence, you have to believe what you are watching. Millions of people watch this program every week, right? So millions of people believe in Doctor Who for an hour every week. Isn't that enough to bring him to life, so to speak?"

Hermes raised an eyebrow. "Is this the sort of question you think about on a daily basis?"

"No. Just since you got here."

"So...um...right. But I guess he could exist. He'd be in the Twilight, mostly, probably living almost wholly within his own reality. The one-hour belief frenzy would be enough to keep him and his world alive, but it probably wouldn't be enough to bring him into this world. So if you've got dreams of meeting him and or seducing him, it won't work."

Lyn looked over at Hermes, eyes shifting back and forth. "Damn." Looking up at the screen, she picked her lo mein up again and leaned back into the couch.

Next to her, Hermes laughed.