Guardian At The Gate (audio story)

Guardian At The Gate, was a P.R.O.B.E. audiobook released by BBV Productions. It was written by Chris McAuley and performed by Bill Baggs. It featured a crossover with the works of H. P. Lovecraft, as well as featuring an appearance by Lovecraft himself within the narrative.
== Publisher's summary ==
A glowing purple orb at Tower Bridge requires experts of the preternatural...
== Plot ==
On an ordinary Tuesday, a "rift", or "portal", appears in the middle of Tower Bridge. A few moments later, a luminescent purple orb crosses the portal, widening in diameter and scorching concrete and vehicles around it and then hovering in place, continuing to crackle with deadly energies. The police and MI5 keep civilians back from the heart of the scene, and, realising the preternatural nature of the incident, call in P.R.O.B.E..
When Giles arrives at the scene of the carnage, he finds himself overwhelmed by the smell of burning bodies and nearly throws up, being found by Sergeant Syre, who hands him a face mask before briefing on the situation. A scientific team tried to analyse the orb and portal, but was overcome with a strange "madness", smashing their equipment and then trying to injure themselves with the broken shards before they were stopped. Observing with the naked eye, since taking scientific equipment near the orb is felt to be too dangerous, Giles sees that it pulses with an inner energy which seems almost hypnotic, which he speculates may have been what sent the earlier researchers "mad". As he is relaying this guess to Croyer, an "agonised scream" is heard from within the orb. Moments after, the silhouette of a man in period clothing is seen within the orb, and walks unsteadily out of it.
Before long, a disbelieving Giles recognises his "strangely elongated face" as that of H. P. Lovecraft, and he rushes to meet him. Recognising from Giles's expression that he isn't hostile, Lovecraft unburdens himself of what he knows of the situation, which isn't much: he was working in his study when a "whirlwind" or "storm" mysteriously appeared from around him, or perhaps within him. Within the storm, he saw a variety of terrible sights, from "creatures from eldritch times" slavering for human corpses to tentacled maws calling out Lovecraft's own name, and most importantly "the whispering of an approaching darkness", an "evil" from an other world coming for "men's souls". When he finally pauses in his frantic account, and Giles presses him for details of his coming evil, Lovecraft hands him a red, hand-written book he was carrying.
The book is Lovecraft's manuscript draft of The Shadow Out of Time, illustrated with "arcane symbols" and hand-drawn depictions of half-vegetal, half-animal creatures with bulging eye-stalks. After giving the book to Giles, Lovecraft seems to instinctively relaxed, as if he had accomplished what he came here for, and then begs for assistance in returning to his own time. Fearing that simply going back through the rift would be dangerous, Giles instead calls Sir Simon, who calls in "a few favours" to acquire a device which had been stored in a military archive, a cobbled-together device allowing people to safely travel through rifts.
While waiting for the courier who'll bring the device, Lovecraft explains more of his background to Giles. He tells Giles that from a young age he had visions of "terrifying creatures" who reached out from the sea. His mother told him that he had "come from" these beings, and that he was "a Guardian of the Gates". She also encouraged his imagination, and Lovecraft gradually came to believe that his writing was subconsciously inspired by true visions, with him being a sort of prophet trying to warn humanity about eldritch threats. He is unsure that the portal was also a product of his status as a Guardian of the Gates, but does at least feel that some instinct or higher power was what compelled him to give Giles the book as soon as he laid eyes on him. He argues that, in his capacity as Director of P.R.O.B.E., Giles is also a kind of Guardian of the "Gate" between Earth and other worlds, making them kindred spirits.
Eventually, the wristwatch-like device arrives. As Lovecraft walks back through the portal, Giles notes that he seems much more at peace than when he arrived, having shared his burden with him. As soon as Lovecraft is done safely journeying through the portal, it collapses in on itself, finally disappearing without a trace. Returning to the office, Giles begins reading the manuscript in earnest, finding that it tales of a parasitic race of eternal beings who sought to "break through the barrier of time", being "constantly at war" and seeing "new dimensions and worlds" to propagate their spawn.
== Characters ==
* Giles
* Sergeant Syre
* Croyer
* H. P. Lovecraft
* Sir Simon
== Worldbuilding ==
* Giles shows the perimeter guards his P.R.O.B.E. badge to gain access to the scene of the carnage.
* The device was "cobbled together" by the Welsh institute when they had to "deal with a rogue time traveller who had created a machine which opened up unstable rifts".
* H. P. Lovecraft was "one of the most influential figures in science fiction literature of the last century".
== Story notes ==
* It is implied that the scientific team who were called in before P.R.O.B.E. only to succumb to Lovecraftian madness were part of UNIT, with Giles reflecting that P.R.O.B.E. had "a certain edge" over "other agencies" because "we weren't a military-based outfit, (…) and we had encountered phenomena other than the occasional alien invasion". There is also a mention of "an institute in Wales" which is clearly intended to be Torchwood Three, and the device taken from their archive appears to be a modified, partially-broken vortex manipulator.
* The beings H. P. Lovecraft has been sent through time to warn P.R.O.B.E. about are the Great Race of Yith, who appear in the real-world novella, first published in 1936, with their description being directly quoted from the real-world book when Giles reads from the manuscript. However, they are never named explicitly. The planet Yith was previously mentioned in the Doctor Who universe in the Cwej: The Series short story The V Cwejes, without explicit mention of the Great Race.
* The fictionalised H. P. Lovecraft believes himself to have been descended from terrifying underwater beings who call out to him in his dreams. This identifies him with the unnamed narrator of , often analysed as an authorial avatar of the writer's to some degree, who discovers he is a hybrid between humanity and the mysterious, abyssal "Deep Ones". The Deep Ones were, in a Doctor Who context, equated with the Sea Devils in several sources including All-Consuming Fire and Lost in Time.
== Continuity ==
to be added
== External links ==
Category:2023 audio stories
Category:BBV audio stories