BROKEN GLASS
WRITTEN BY RICKY STAR
Part One
Helma looked at the man across the table through glassy eyes; already, she was no longer quite there. She was in a world of her own. This world that she found herself in was equally real and equally consuming, and she understood it far better than the world with the man and the table and the very gloomy room. This was the world of her childhood, and it suited her well. She knew every part of it, and she could see it more fully. Some people said that the real world was better, because it could be controlled, while the world of memory always ended in the same inevitable way, the way that you always knew it was going to end: by coming to the present. Helma knew that this was wrong. She had no control of the real world; the real world had control of her. But in her memories, she had control. Things that happened in this world happened because of her, and she was involved in them. And this was the world she understood, the world she knew to be true. The real world was complex and confusing, while the world of memory made sense and was concrete. That is why she always resided there, no matter what people said, and no matter how many times they tried to draw her attention back to the real world. She was happier here, in her head. She didn’t even have to stand up to get there.
This time was different, of course. There was a man who wanted her to enter the world of memory, which very rarely happened. Usually, her attention was supposed to be drawn to the dull monotony of food and medication and going to the toilet, but not this time. This man was different from the other endless streams of doctors and other people’s relatives, because he was encouraging her simply to remember. This was what she was best at, so she naturally obliged.
“I was a girl during the war,” Helma began, “and it all seemed to me to be a very strange thing. We were the right side, the side that ought to win, everybody knew that. But I wondered, sometimes. I wondered whether life was the same for the other side, whether they felt better or worse all the time. Did their government know everything about them, and decide whether or not they were to go somewhere or do something? I had two brothers, and I know that the government must have known all about them, because it told them what they needed done. My oldest brother was clever; he always did better than everyone else in the town at the exams, so they wouldn’t let him sign up for the army. He was off doing all sorts. I’m not sure what it was he was doing, but I know that it was terribly important, although he never really talked about it, either then or afterwards. My other brother was made to be a soldier. He had always wanted to be a pilot, I think, but he had to be a soldier. He never came back from the war. I think he was missing, but I never saw him again after he went off in his pristine new uniform. He was so proud, I hope he was still proud when he was in there, fighting.
“I was never very close to my brothers anyway. I hardly thought of them during the war, I must say. I was too busy with myself. Everyone was busy, all the time. I was stationed in a railway office, and after hours I did first aid with the people in the mental hospital. I remember that. One of them was always reciting these poems, and she got a black eye when she was closing the blinds one time. Of course, I had to fill out a good deal of paperwork about that, lest they thought it might have been somebody punching her! Bless them, they were mad, but they weren’t dangerous or violent. They were perfectly lovely, most of the time. I used to sort out their beds when they were wet, and clean them down and so forth. I didn’t get paid for that, of course, but we were all making do and we didn’t question it. I was just glad to be of use. They never really wanted us to be doing things, women, that is, but all of the boys were at war so they needed us to do things. And I remember after the war, too, when there were older gentlemen delivering papers in the morning because there were no young boys floating around any more. One of my brothers was a paperboy before the war, because he just wanted to make a bit of extra money. Everyone used to need money before the war, or so it seemed to me, though I was only a girl.
“I was never especially close to my brothers, though. Before the war began, I had some very close friends, although we weren’t together because of good circumstances. None of them really had anywhere to go, so I looked after them. I was the oldest, and there were six or seven of them, children who society didn’t want and who the government didn’t want. I wasn’t wanted myself at that time, although I didn’t really understand why. By the time that day came, though, there were only four of us left. I’m not always sure what happened to the others; I always remember it differently. Sometimes I think that they died, and other times, I think that they were taken in by these families. It’s all rather hazy in my mind. But I do remember that on that day, there was me, and there was Hertz, Axl and Claudia. They were all castaways, I suppose, because they had nowhere to go and no way of getting work. Well, we tried, I remember that, too. Hertz and I used to work together in a restaurant, so that we could get money to feed the others, just to feed them, but it wasn’t possible for very long. People didn’t want female waiters, or female anything, at that time, although I had known that for a long time- I was about fifteen or sixteen, I think, by the day that thing started to happen, so I knew enough not to push my luck. I used to dress as a boy, from a few years earlier than that, and nobody used to really notice that I was really a girl. People would be served by me without comment. I think my manager knew, but as nobody complained to him, he was happy to keep quiet. One day, of course, it seemed that people were beginning to notice. I can’t remember exactly when, but there was an air of unease, and after a time, I think somebody complained. The manager was a very reasonable man, but before long, more people were complaining, and there was nothing he could do but sack me. Hertz, of course, realised what was happening, and said that if I was to be sacked, so would he need to be, and I think he expected that to stop me being fired, but it didn’t work, so we were both out of a job after that.
“That was around the time when we stopped being able to feed everybody, and that was when our numbers grew less, until there was only the four of us. That was how many of us there were when it happened, and by then we were eating scraps and such like, the things that one wouldn’t touch, given the choice. It must have been 1938, I think, and there was a day when everything changed very suddenly. It started when this girl came out of nowhere, wearing hardly anything at all, asking us if we had seen a doctor…”
Helma took a deep sip of the drink that she had in front of her- some sort of yellow juice, probably squash, although she lost track nowadays- and looked hard at the man. He wasn’t one of her usual people; in fact, she didn’t think she’d seen him ever before in her life.
She put down her drink and looked him in the eye.
“What did you say your name was?” Helma asked.
The man responded very calmly, and slightly slowly. “I’m Doctor Gype, and I have been seeing you for weeks. Last week, we discussed your early upbringing, and your relationship with your mother. Do you not remember?”
Helma cast her mind back, but couldn’t remember anything much from the last few days or weeks or months. It all fell into a haze. She looked at the man blankly.
“Would you like me to carry on?” she asked, after a long pause. The man nodded, so she resumed her narrative.
“The thing I noticed about the girl most,” continued Helma, as though there had been no interruption, “was that she seemed somehow different. She wore very few clothes, as I said, although all of the obvious places seemed to be covered up. Not that I was looking. And her face seemed, though she might have been older than any of us, her face seemed so young, so innocent. For all her talk of violence, it seemed that she had not seen real war or terror or anger in all her life. I asked her where she was from, to wear so little, and whether perhaps she had come over from Africa or some such. She told me the name of her country, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. All I recall is that I had never heard of it. Perhaps it doesn’t exist any more, I don’t know. I do remember her name, though. She said it was Leela, and that was all she said about her name, so that was all we called her. She didn’t want to stay with us, initially, because she wanted so much to find her doctor. I wondered if perhaps she was on medication, in a mental hospital, and had escaped, although I must admit that it wasn’t long before I forgot about thinking that, because she seemed like a perfectly normal person at heart. Very caring. She wouldn’t let any of us out of her sight once she realised that there was danger about! Bless.
“Anyway, the first thing I said to her when she stumbled upon us was that she wasn’t going to do very well dressed like that. Hair everywhere, almost no clothes- as I said- and a knife sticking out of some sort of belt? The soldiers wouldn’t like that at all. She might be arrested, unless of course they took a fancy to her. Well, of course there were soldiers everywhere in those days. They hung around sometimes, or marched about. We all thought it was terribly normal. I know that it isn’t like that any longer, and most people seem to think that it was barbaric, and must have been scary, but I was there, and it was just normal. Of course we were scared of the soldiers. They had guns, and they used to take people away. But we tried not to have anything to do with them, or upset them, and they left us vaguely alone. I did have an encounter of sorts with one of them once, shortly before I was sacked from my job as a waiter, when one of them saw me heading away from work in my boy’s clothes, and seeing that I was a girl, he saw fit to tell me off about not wearing the right things. He was called away that time, I remember, but I was more careful after that.
“Anyway, we said that we could look after Leela, because she seemed very much like someone who could do with a little help. We were sort of hidden away in this alleyway, so we took her in there, and we introduced ourselves to her. Axl and Hertz were keen to say who they were- they introduced each other, in fact. That was funny, when they did that. They got on very well. Only Claudia, she didn’t want to introduce herself. She always used to be very shy. I can’t say that I was terribly surprised; she always had something about her that wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t exactly ugly, but there was something slightly off about the way she looked. Of course, we loved her very much because we had got to know her, but often, people would just turn away from her in repulsion. I always thought that it was a shame, because everyone looks different, so it shouldn’t be a problem, but everyone used to be judged for what they looked like back then. That’s something that’s very different now, that’s a good change. There was too much judgement of people back then. It used to matter what colour your hair was, I think, or your eyes. It was all terribly odd. Myself, I used to have brown hair, which wasn’t what people wanted. I think they liked their girls to have blonde hair, but I lost track. It didn’t bother me so much, so I didn’t pay any attention to it.
“Leela stayed with us for a while, and we sat and talked, but it was clear that she wanted to find this doctor of hers. We agreed that we would go with her to find him, even though it was coming to night time. She was very persistent. Thinking about it now, perhaps I ought not to have said yes to going to search for him at that moment- we should have waited until morning. But it seemed a very good idea at the time, especially when Hertz said he would protect everyone. I always had this sense that Hertz meant what he said, and I fully believed that he would be able to protect us. Of course, Leela said that she could protect herself, and that she was a skilled fighter so could get rid of anyone who gave us trouble, but I have no shame in admitting that it was Hertz that I was putting my faith into.
“We headed out, and Leela took us back the way that she said she had come. There was still some light at that time, although we had only about half an hour before night. She told us to look out for a blue box. It sounded very strange indeed, but she was strange herself, and all the world was strange, so we didn’t question it. I think it was me who suggested that we split up to find it- I said that I would go with Hertz, and Leela could take Axl and Claudia. Axl had a way with Claudia, to make her calm down when she went into her little fits that she had now and again. He meant the world to her, it seemed, but he only had eyes for Hertz. Anyone could see that. It wasn’t really allowed- men and men didn’t go together, everyone knew that. But they were only boys, so I suppose it didn’t matter. They were both sixteen, I think, so it didn’t really matter. They weren’t adults yet. Claudia was the youngest, she was only about twelve, so she probably didn’t even have those sorts of feelings yet, I shouldn’t think.
“Sorry. I think I’m coming off the subject, aren’t I? I do that a lot. There’s just a lot to it. There is always a lot more to it than just what happened. Things only happen because of other things, and if you could know all the other things, I should think that your mind wouldn’t cope. There are so many things to keep track of, aren’t there? Especially nowadays. It used to be very simple. You looked after yourself, and that’s all there was to it. And if you couldn’t do that, you’d be left behind.
“Where was I? I think I remember. We’d gone to search for the box, hadn’t we? Well, we decided not to split into groups, because none of us really wanted to be on our own. So we headed off, following Leela, but when we got to the place that she said she’d come from, there were all sorts of soldiers there, and they seemed to be trying to move what appeared to be exactly what she had described. And I must say, it was like nothing I had ever seen. Simple, wooden perhaps, and blue, it was a box of the sort that a man could walk into and stand up quite comfortably. It was marked with strange words, English words, although there was nothing obviously special about it. Yet… Yet it was special. It was bigger, somehow, than it looked, and stranger, and completely in the wrong place. I wondered if it was meant to be used to smuggle men into England. You might think that strange, but they did things like that, when the war started. It’s not like that any longer, but Germany used to be a very different place. I never heard about them moving people about in those boxes, but I don’t know. I might have done. Leela never explained why it was she wanted to get to it. Could she have been a spy? No. She couldn’t have been, that would have been-
“They were taking it away, and that was the main thing, and it must have upset Leela no end because she took out her knife and stepped forward, out of the alleyway that we were hidden in, but Claudia grabbed her and pulled her back. I remember that, definitely. Funny the things you remember, isn’t it? I remember her pulling Leela back like it was moments ago, but I can’t for the life of me recall what I ate for dinner last night. Leela cried out, and some of the soldiers heard, and they came towards us. Of course, we knew we didn’t want to meet them at that time, especially what with Leela wearing so little, that was bound to count against us, so we ran. I don’t remember the running at all, apart from the pain and the fear- it’s easy hearing it, I’m sure, but I can’t even begin to describe it. I just thought that there was nothing between me and them, except that my legs would keep going while theirs didn’t. And then- I had this thought, just to stop, just to stop my legs moving and to stand still and let them get me, and that seemed so much easier, I thought I would just die. But my legs didn’t stop, and my heart was beating- thump, thump, thump- in my neck, and I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t even see around me, I couldn’t see at the sides of my eyes but my legs were just going and going and there didn’t even seem to be anything else. I couldn’t even tell whether they were still following us, and somehow I didn’t even care. I just wanted to carry on, I think.
“And all at once, it was over, and I was sitting down, panting, and I could barely see, barely even breathe, but it very much seemed that we were alone. I had almost forgotten about why we had been running. I didn’t know where we were, I just knew that we were together. That was enough. That meant we were safe, safe together, all on the ground, Hertz and Axl and Claudia and Leela and me.
“But then it all started.”
Helma took another shaky sip of her drink, a very slow, prolonged, almost painful sip. Her hands trembled as she held the glass to her lips, and, as the man watched on, the hand tentatively clutching it relaxed and released it, so that it plummeted to the hard wooden floor, and fragmented into a thousand pieces.
She looked down at the shattered pieces of glass, patterned with occasional splatters of juice. Then, she looked into the eyes of the man sitting across the table from her, for a good few moments.
Silently, the man got up and walked out of the room. Helma sat in her chair for a few minutes, in total silence, wondering how to describe what had happened next.
In time, the man returned, with a new glass filled with a similar sort of juice, and placed it on the table before Helma. He sat down, and stared at her, until she resumed her narrative.
“Everybody was running about, here, there and everywhere. There was noise and pain and destruction, that was all there was. Glass shattering, fires burning, and all sorts. I still can’t get my head around it. The whole world was on fire, and I was in the middle, and I lost track of where everyone else was, and I lost track of where I was, even, and everything was strange, and I thought that there were people who wanted to hurt me. And people who wanted to kill me. But at the same time, I was alone, and nobody cared about me, and nobody would help me or kill me or anything.”
“This was the Night of Broken Glass, wasn’t it?”
This was the first time that the man had interrupted Helma, and it took her by surprise.
“Well, yes, I suppose.”
“Kristallnacht. Wasn’t that when the Nazis burned all the Mosques and shattered all the Jewish shopfronts?”
“You sound like an academic,” responded Helma, “but that wasn’t what it was to us. It wasn’t politics, and it wasn’t a fact, and it wasn’t an attack on other people. It was real. It hurt and burned and tore, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“You weren’t Jewish, though.”
“Is that important?”
“Well, it was an attack on Jews-”
“It was an attack on people.”
Helma stared, coldly, at the man for a minute, before continuing her story once more.
“I don’t remember all that much, aside from the sheer terror of it all, the terror I can’t even describe. I don’t know what to tell you. I must’ve escaped, or something, because soon enough, I was somewhere else. I don’t know where. It was all very strange, and I was all by myself, and it was like nowhere I had ever been. There were walls, so I expect it must have been a building, but at the same time it had none of the characteristics of a building. The walls were stark and white, and the whole place seemed unreal, somehow. I didn’t know what was real and what was not real. I lay there for a moment, but soon enough, a man came along and pulled me up and dragged me away. I didn’t see his face very well, but somehow he seemed strange, different. I wondered if he was from Africa or Asia perhaps. I had heard that people looked different there. I’m sure that sounds awful to you now- I’m not even allowed to call them ‘coloured’ any longer- but this was just how I was brought up. However, I have met people from Africa and India and so forth now, and I can safely say that they don’t look anything like what my memories of this man are. I don’t know, I might be misremembering, he might have been wearing a mask, or I might just have been imagining things. Who knows? I fell to the ground- thump!- in another place, or maybe the same place, it looked just the same, just as strange, and there on the ground beside me were Claudia and Hertz. Claudia had a great big injury on her head, and there was blood coming out, and Hertz was trying to calm her down, because she had got into a state again, hadn’t she? But she wouldn’t calm down, and she wouldn’t let him have a look at her injury, and she kept on calling for Axl. ‘Axl, Axl!’ she kept on saying, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Before long, Leela was being brought in, by just the same man who had brought me in, and she was kicking and screaming and biting him but it wouldn’t stop him until he wanted to let her go, which was when he was all the way into the room. Once he had brought her, he left, and the door shut behind him. He didn’t shut it himself, I was sure about that- it shut all by itself! A little like those automatic doors they have in supermarkets nowadays, only it didn’t open again when Leela rushed at it; it just stayed shut, whatever she did to it. Except it did open, yes, it did open, once she had given up for a few minutes, and when it did, she launched herself at it, only to collide with another man, a different man altogether, who was himself being pushed into the room. In the kerfuffle, the door shut behind them both and so the man was trapped in with us as well. It might have been funny if it hadn’t been so terribly claustrophobic, not least because none of us seemed to know where we were, and Claudia simply kept on screaming.
“The new man went over to beside Claudia, and put his finger on her forehead. That seemed an awfully odd thing to do, and of course she resisted at first, but it seemed to make her quiet, for she did not even make a peep after that. Not a word. But we all wanted to ask lots of questions, me and Hertz, didn’t we, like where was Axl and what was this place, so we started asking them, but the man just put his finger to his lips and suddenly I didn’t want to talk any more. I felt as though all the words I had in me were just gone, that I had poured out everything. Hertz must have felt the same, because he didn’t say anything else either. And the man just sat down, on the floor, and closed his eyes. I don’t know how long he sat there for, but it seemed like an incredibly long time, before he suddenly opened them- I had been watching him intently- and began to speak.
“‘There’s something strange going on here,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to find out what it is.’ Well, I certainly didn’t know, so I was just hoping he wouldn’t blame me, but he didn’t even glance at me once. He licked the ground, sniffed the air and felt around the edges of the doorframe, before losing all of his energy very suddenly and sitting back down on the ground again. After another very long time- I was beginning to feel extremely tired by now- he looked unexpectedly at Leela, and declared her name. I wondered how he knew it, but she clearly recognised him, because she responded immediately. ‘Doctor’, she called him. That was all. Just ‘Doctor’. I never did hear his real name, or at least I don’t think so. Everything happened rather fast.
“‘Did you get a good look at them?’ was what he asked her. And she didn’t seem to know, and he didn’t know, so he slumped back onto the ground all over again. It was all terribly strange to say it, but I didn’t find it odd at the time, actually. He seemed very restless, though. He took to pacing, and then he got a little bag of sweets out of his pocket and ate one, two, three, four… Then suddenly he leapt up and bounded over to me. Me! And he said to me, ‘what’s your name?’ So I told him, ‘I’m Helma’, and he replied, ‘that’s a very nice name, Helma, and can I ask what time you’re from?’
This was not a question I had ever been asked before, or one I have ever been asked since, but it seemed not to be so weird at the time. It was as though I knew exactly what he meant by it. ‘1938’, I said, ‘Germany’. This seemed odd to him, though, and he spouted a load of gibberish. ‘That’s impossible, the barbish isn’t meant to go then, maybe the fwibbly-fwobbly is broken’, or something like that. But anyway, he did seem to gain a new lease of life, and he suddenly ran over to the door and shouting things at it. It seemed that he was shouting a good deal of things, mainly abuse, and after a long period of time, it opened, and I glimpsed the shadow of a figure through it, but the mysterious ‘Doctor’, followed by Leela, went back through the door and it was shut behind them.”
Helma stopped.
The man looked at her- she seemed to have fallen into some sort of doze or trance.
“Helma?”
She did not respond.
“Helma? Are you alright? Are you- alive?”
Helma continued not to react.
One of the nurses came in. “Best leave her alone,” he said, “and come back another time.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry. I won’t be coming back.”
And Axl left the retirement home without another word.
Part Two
“Yes, this is Hertz Arvin, no, I don’t want to talk to you. But if it is really important, leave a message after the beep.”
“Hello, Hertz, I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but I was an old friend of yours from before the war. Axl Brand. I wondered if maybe we could catch up? I’ll be waiting to hear from you!”
Axl hang up the phone, and returned to the control room of the spaceship. It was lit by blue light, although most of the controls were actually yellow. It made for a very stark and enjoyable contrast. So, Helma had been done. She would remember nothing. Credit where credit was due, she had started strongly- but it had not taken too long to wear her down. Memories were strong, but fatigue would always win out. And she didn’t even keep going for long enough to remember- that is, she didn’t keep going long enough to remember the most important things that had happened. If she had not digressed so much, then perhaps she would have done. Perhaps she would have had one final chance to relive the truth before it was taken from her. Well, that’s humans, isn’t it?
It was only a few minutes until the telephone rang again, as Axl had known it would.
“Hello?”
“Is that Axl? Axl Brand?”
“Yes, that is me. Is that you, Hertz?”
There was a huge, long noise on the other side of the line- a cry of delight, or of surprise, maybe- before Hertz spoke again.
“You need to come over.”
“Yes, when-”
“Now, come over now, Axl, and tell me where you have been all these years!”
It seemed that Hertz remembered him, then. Not senile, at least- Axl would not have to create a new identity for himself this time. And Hertz was simply revealing his location, even at that very moment! This seemed to be very easy indeed.
It was only twenty minutes before Axl arrived at the doorstep.
“Good afternoon,” began Axl, before he was embracing in an almighty, and admittedly unexpected, hug by the old man inside the doorframe.
“You don’t look a day older. Not a minute older!” declared Hertz, tears pouring down his face. He did not notice the years of fatigue that had entered Axl’s eyes since the last time they had met. After an extremely long time, it seemed, Hertz released Axl from the hug. It didn’t seem to matter that Axl was no longer a young man; Hertz was clearly so caught up in the dreams of a past reality that such a thing as age could no longer play a role. He saw only what he had seen so many years ago, what he had loved and what he had lost.
Soon, Axl was in the house, with a cup of tea. He didn’t like tea, but he drank it anyway.
“Your house is very small,” he noted. “Did you ever meet anyone?”
Hertz chuckled for a moment. “There was never anybody but you. You knew that, surely? And after the events of that day- Well, you were there, after all. You know exactly what happened!”
There were tears forming in Hertz’s eyes.
Axl needed Hertz to start from the beginning.
He didn’t take much prompting.
“Well, you were there, weren’t you? The day the world went wrong. The day it all ended. And Helma was there, and Claudia. You always had that way with Claudia, didn’t you, Axl? I never knew how you did it, but I always wanted to know. It was one of the things I loved about you. Well, there was also Leela, wasn’t there? And the Doctor. Ooh, he was a very strange man. He seemed elsewhere, didn’t he? Beyond. Yes. Not like those aliens at all. They seemed very much similar to us. What, why are you looking at me like that? They were aliens, and I mean from another world. It’s fairly obvious. And now we have all of these things, you know, Star Wars, and it’s just like that, isn’t it? There are rumours that there are aliens here still, you know. Like the Loch Ness Monster, did you hear about that? It was in the news, years back, that it had swum all the way up to London! And of course the Doctor was there. I’ve seen the pictures. I have the internet! Sorry, sorry, where was I? Oh yes. They have a name for that day. The Night of Broken Glass. I doubt that it was named that because of- well, you know. Nazis.
“Well, he was the one who knew everything, after all. The Doctor. It was Leela who we met first, do you remember? She was searching for the TARDIS. We didn’t know it was called the TARDIS yet, but we knew it was a blue box. We never found it, because that was when the world vanished, while we were looking. I remember there was a lot of screaming beforehand, but I might have imagined that. Goodness knows I’ve dreamt about it enough times. Anyway, that wasn’t nearly as interesting as what happened in the strange other world.
“We were trapped in a cell for a bit, you and me and Claudia and Helma and Leela and the Doctor. I can’t really remember how we met the Doctor, perhaps because I felt as though I had known him for my entire life. That’s how I feel now. I think of him every day. I will never forget the face he had when he realised what was going on. In those eyes, within those creases of skin, was a thousand years of pain and horror. And he could feel it. He could feel everything that he had realised was true. He knew it all, and he understood it. And that’s staggering. If I could understand something like that, I think I would burst from the pain. But he just worked it out, and got on with trying to sort it all out.
“I wasn’t sure what was going on, truth be told. The memories flicker and fade. I know there were aliens. I know that they wanted to- Well, you know what they wanted with Earth. And if you don’t, I won’t say it. Because it wasn’t right. It- no. And there was the fury, the absolute fury, of the Doctor, which is what I really remember. He was furious because- well, you know why he was furious, you know, you do, and I’m not going to explain it.
“Yes, there were all sorts. All sorts. You know, it was all, yes, wasn’t it? Yes. It was. You know. That. And more. More. There was more, more than I could tell you but I’m not going to because. Yes. That’s why I won’t tell you. I could, but I won’t. Now, where was I? Do you want cake? Do I know you?”
“I’m sorry, Hertz. I’m so sorry...”
“Who’s Hertz? What are you doing in my house?”
Axl smiled, sadly. His mission was very nearly complete; there was only one person left.
Claudia, however, was hard to locate. Very hard to locate.
Which meant that she was very surprised to find Axl at her doorstep. She even had a gun, and brandished it like a mad person.
“Get away from my house!” she declared, without even looking at the visitor. The gun moved around dangerously and unpredictably, as Claudia waved it around. She had changed, since Axl had known her. Her hair was long and unkempt, her clothes torn and battered, but it was her eyes that held the terrible truth. It was clear to see, in her eyes, that something was wrong. They fizzed with insanity, looking this way and that, unable to focus. It was rather terrifying, even for Axl.
“Claudia? Is that you?”
Claudia’s face twisted and morphed into a semblance of recognition, before losing itself again.
“I am not Claudia! Not for many, many years! Who are you, to call me that? Why are you here? Leave me!”
“I am Axl. Do you not remember me?”
Claudia staggered backwards, then came forwards again, pushing the gun towards Axl’s face.
“I know what you are. I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE! And they do not believe me. But you know what you are, don’t you? I know. YOU’RE AN ALIEN!”
And then Claudia fell into fits of laughter, unable to stop herself.
Axl stared at her, aghast. “Are you alright?”, he asked. But she did not relent. Instead, she cocked the gun. “Woah, woah!” declared Axl, stepping backwards. “Calm down! I’m a friend!”
“You are no friend of mine. You did this! YOU DID THIS ALL TO ME! And I will not forgive you. I will never forgive you for what you did.”
“I don’t ask for forgiveness,” conceded Axl, “I only ask that you hear me out. Hear what I have to say. You might find that it isn’t all my fault. I mean, I didn’t have so much of a choice. It was the only way-”
“I don’t care. I DON’T CARE! You are scum, and you have wrecked my life. There isn’t anything more to it!”
“I’m really, truly sorry,” apologised Axl, “for everything. If I could make things better- if I could even try- I would-”
“It’s too late. It’s too late. There is nothing you can do to save me now. I’m too far gone, you can see that. YOU CAN SEE THAT.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Oh, you want to hear about it now, do you? My suffering? You want to know?”
“Well, yes-”
“Nobody wants to know. Nobody ever wants to know. They never have. They don’t listen to me. They don’t listen to us.”
“Well- would you like me to talk? Would they listen to me? I can, you know-”
Claudia, the mad old woman in the doorway, cackled. “You don’t feel remorse. You can’t. You can’t do it. We all know you’re from the superior species,” she intoned mockingly, “and you don’t feel such petty things as remorse. They don’t all see it as I do, but I just want you to go. Go. Before I do something you’ll regret. Before I shoot you in the face, how about that?”
“Don’t shoot me, Claudia-”
But the gun was too close for comfort, and Axl took the hint to leave. He was no fool. He knew when he was defeated. This old woman, who felt such pain, would kill him for her fury at that which finished so many years ago.
Freed from the presence of the ghost from her past, Claudia retreated into the house and bolted the door by its many locks. Safe, she settled into an armchair and just remembered. There was so much there, in the past, hidden away…
“Go away, Anna!”
“No. I’m going to follow you. I’m going to follow you all the way, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
“Anna, this isn’t funny any more. I don’t want you to come with me. You know you’re- well, you’re-”
“I’m what? Claudia, tell me what I am!”
“Well, you’re one of them, aren’t you? One of the bad ones!”
“Bad ones? Because I like Adolf Hitler? Oh, don’t be so silly, Claudia. My dad says that we’re the good ones and that the Jews are the bad ones. And the feeble ones, they’re bad too. You know, they don’t really like it that I have a friend who’s one of the feeble ones, but I don’t hurt you, do I? I’m very reasonable. Now why don’t you show me where you live?”
“I don’t want to show you! Hey! Let go of me, Anna!”
“Why? Are you worried I’ll find secrets that I wouldn’t like? Worried that I’ll grass on you?”
“Stop it, you’re hurting me!”
“Tell me where you-”
But that hadn’t happened; it hadn’t been real. It was all- there wasn’t anything, Before, there was- was there? Had it been about Hitler? Or had it been-
And the images shifted and swirled, until they were recognisably That Night, all over again, as though it was the first time.
“Hello, I’m Helma. What’s your name?”
“Leela. Where is the Old Man? Take me to him!”
“No, no, Leela, don’t go there! That’s where the soldiers are!”
“But I need to get back to the TARDIS. I have to get there, it is important. We need to get to the TARDIS!”
“There’s nothing there.”
“Who are you? Reveal yourselves!”
“I’m Axl. This is Hertz. And that’s Claudia. You should be careful with her, she’s a little bit-”
The pictures moved about until they were in another place.
“Lock them in here. We don’t want them to cause trouble. Anyway, they’ll be insurance- we know that one of them is his assistant. He never travels without an assistant, if the stories are to be believed...”
“No! You will let us out of here at once, or I shall destroy your kindred!”
“Oh, leave it, Leela.”
“Why should I? They are planning to keep us here, locked away! Perhaps they mean to enact a dark and evil plot! I have seen this happen before. They mean to kill people, I am sure of it!”
“Just relax, I’m sure they won’t- Claudia! Are you-”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this. I can make her calm down.”
“Are you sure, Axl?”
But- the memories were hazy- had Axl been there? It was mixed up. Had it been Hertz who had gone to her? But Hertz was all the way on the other side of the room… Or had someone been dying? Or was someone dead? Someone was dead, yes, and the crazy man, the man in the scarf, had been so, so cross about it… But what had it been? Had it been anything? Or had it just been fine, and good, and lovely? No, no, there had been something wrong… Something different… And it could never be forgiven, not ever, that was really, really important… But what had it been…
It didn’t really matter. None of it really mattered. And it was all just fading away. Everything faded away, forever…
Part Three
“Get to the TARDIS! Leela, run! Run! RUN!”
“Destroy! Destroy!”
“I have this suspicion that it wants to destroy me!”
“Destroy! Destroy!”
“All I did was threaten to expose it to the world, which, now I think of it, may have been a bad move. RUN!”
The killer robot prepared to deploy its death ray, while Leela fled to the safety of the blue box, and shut herself inside.
“Now, let’s see what you- Woah! Careful where you point that thing! You could take someone’s eye out with that.”
“You are an enemy. You will be destroyed. The plan will succeed.”
“What, the plan to take over the world? I’ve seen it a hundred times before. It won’t work! Trust me! Nobody ever manages to take over the world, and most of them have tried much harder than you! After all, you only have the one death ray-”
“This is sufficient firepower. Humanity will bow to my will. When humanity attempts to resist, humanity will be slaughtered, until surrender is reached. The world will be under my total control.”
“Oh really? Well, now that I’ve got you talking, do enlighten me- what is it that you want? What’s the point? Why do you even want to take over the Earth? Billions of humans- what do you want from them? Slavery? Death? What?”
“Humanity will be purified. The pure will be under my command.”
“Why? What are you going to do? Attack the universe? Because let me warn you, a few billion humans will make a very small army-”
“I do not want an army. I want to control humanity.”
“But why? What’s in it for you? Why are you doing this?”
“The power. The unimaginable, glorious POWER, Doctor! Imagine it! I would have four billion people who would obey my every command. And it would be WONDERFUL!”
“Well, I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”
“Then you must be destroyed! Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!”
“Woah, the laser death ray again! Calm down, I only wanted to- hang on, why have you stopped? Have you run out of power or something-?”
“No, Doctor,” came a voice from above. “I have paused time.”
The Doctor looked up to where the voice was coming from, but saw nobody. The voice encompassed him, surrounded him, taking absolute power over him.
“So, where are you? Going to show yourself? Or do I have to talk to thin air? Because I really could, you know-”
“Quite the tin pot dictator, don’t you think?”
“Who is?”
“Your robot friend. Angry sort of fellow, isn’t he? He wants to take over the world, or so I hear.”
“Do I know you?” asked the Doctor, of thin air.
“Yes. But you won’t for long. Because I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh really? And who’s to say I’ll take it?”
“I have the power to pause time and talk to you from thin air. Trust me, you’ll take it. Now, I can solve your robot problem. I can stop your robot from ever having existed. Or I can give it a weapons arsenal the likes of which the universe has never seen. All I want of you… All I want of you is to tell me everything you can remember about the Night of Broken Glass.”
“It’s not a robot.”
“Is this important?”
“It’s not a robot. It’s a sentient life form, and I don’t know whether I want you to erase it from existence. After all, is anything beyond forgiveness?”
The Voice in the Sky paused and thought about this for a moment, before responding in anger.
“We haven’t the time for small talk! I will deal with your robot problem, and that’s all you need to worry about! Now, tell me. The Night of Broken Glass. Talk me through it.”
The Doctor thought for a moment, tracking down the memory in his head. Things could get terribly confused in there, and sometimes he forgot whole swathes of his-
Ah, there it was. There it was. Plain as day. How could he forget something like that? The fury that he had felt was tangible, still; he could taste it on his tongue. The absolute anger and the pain. The pain that the Doctor had felt when he understood, when he felt what they had felt…
And his absolute, complete, all-consuming fury at it all.
“There were bodies-”
“Could you start from the beginning, please? I’d like a full account.”
“What for?”
“Just do it, please, and don’t ask questions, Doctor.”
“Alright, well, I don’t remember that much, to be fair. We arrived in the TARDIS- I was aiming for 2016, there were a couple of major things that I needed to sort out- but we ended up in 1938. In Germany. I didn’t know at the time, because the TARDIS is set against landing at that time and place, so I wasn’t wary. I just went outside and investigated. I presume that Leela followed me out, because she was there later, but she must have left after me.
“Anyway, I was just poking about a bit, when I bumped into some soldiers, and they kept saying that I was Jewish. Well, I told them that I wasn’t, because I wasn’t religious- I believe in physics, thank you very much- but if I had been Jewish, that really wouldn’t have been a problem. They didn’t like it when I said that, so they got out a ruler and measured the distance between my eyes. I must admit, nobody’s ever done that to me before. I thought it was a bit exciting, but then they decided my eyes were too close together- which they’re not, you know, they’re perfect- and they took me away! I think I might have been knocked out then, because the next thing I knew, I was in some… prison. I was sitting on a cold floor. It was very cold. And white. And there were people. They were strange. They were- I can’t quite remember what they looked like, but I know that-
“Hold on! I know what you’re doing! You’re wiping my memories!”
The Voice did not respond.
“You’re taking my memories from me as I remember them! I can’t even remember how it started! Where did the TARDIS land? I don’t even remember that now!”
“You were on a cold, white floor, and there were people.”
“Were there? Oh yes, so there were! But I haven’t the first idea what they actually looked like. The Holocaust! That’s what it was! That was their plan! I remember it now! They were going to- they were going to- No, I do remember. This is important. You can’t take these memories. You won’t take them, they’re too important. They’re too important, do you hear me?”
The Doctor thrust his hands into his pockets, and threw out all manner of odds-and-sods, including a pair of old socks, a yoyo, a dimensional destabilizer, a slice of carrot cake baked by Aristotle and a learner’s guide to infra-Latin, before pulling from one a manky piece of notepaper and rotting pen. He began to quickly scrawl words on it, haphazardly.
“What are you doing? Doctor? What are you doing?”
“I’m writing down everything I remember, before you take it from me!”
The Voice faltered.
“Stop! Stop it! Stop it now!”
“I really don’t think I will.”
“Stop it or I’ll- I’ll unfreeze time and you’ll be slaughtered by a killer robot!”
“Oh, we both know that I won’t. I will stop the robot and go on- but you want these memories wiped, don’t you? You want me to forget. Well, I’m going to work out why. And then I’m going to find you. So you’d best keep time frozen, and I might be kinder to you when I’m done.”
There was a moment of silence before the Voice replied.
“Doctor, you must stop. You must not remember. You do not want to remember.”
“Oh, it really isn’t a matter of what I-”
“We are erasing your memories as a kindness, Doctor. We do not wish to take an alternative, unpleasant measure.”
“You mean, you don’t want to kill me?”
“That is correct.”
“Well,” said the Doctor, increasing in stature slightly as he spoke to the sky, “you were happy to kill all of those people, weren’t you? Happy to cause suffering? What makes me so special?”
“We do not… wish to harm life.”
“Ah! So, you’ve developed a guilt complex. How remarkably unusual for a murderer of your calibre.” As he said this, the Doctor returned to scrawling quickly on the paper.
“You must not write anything down. You must keep talking. You must forget, or we will use force!”
The Doctor looked up abruptly. “Who’s ‘we’?”
There was a silence; the Voice in the sky did not respond. The Doctor stared around him for a short while, and, deciding that the coast was clear, returned to desperately writing his notes.
“Destroy!”
He had forgotten about the robot.
“Alright, calm down!” declared the Doctor, concocting a plan as he went. “Now, tell me, my robot fellow, about your clever plan about taking over the world.”
The robot paused, in order to reveal everything it intended to do.
“I will take over the world. It will be glorious. All will obey me or die!”
“Ah,” interjected the Doctor, “but how? Won’t the world’s governments have something to say about that? They really might not like it, you know. And they do happen to have weapons, most of the time.”
“I am more powerful. I am the mightiest force that this world has yet seen. You will not stand in my way! I will succeed! The world will be mine! It will be glorious! Do not doubt me, Doctor!”
“You’ll never succeed, you know. You haven’t got a single chance.”
“I will succeed! There is no hope for humanity!”
“Well, not really. I mean, humanity’s got nuclear weapons now, at any rate! They could hit you with a force so huge that not a single part of circuitry will survive, and you’ll be completely obliterated! Why would anyone do as you say, anyway? It makes no sense and you can’t threaten everyone at once.”
The robot contemplated this for a moment, before coming up with an idea.
“I will inspire them.”
The Doctor hadn’t thought of this.
“You’ll- what? Sorry?”
“I will inspire the people of the world.”
With that, the Robot departed the scene, its subordinate mission of destroying the Doctor already forgotten. It would inspire the people of the Earth, and they would obey it.
“Well, that was very underwhelming,” noted the Voice in the sky. “I expected it to come up with something better than that.”
“No,” responded the Doctor, a defeated look in his eye, as he slumped down to the ground. “This is a good plan. It’s the best plan. It always works.”
“Does it?”
“It did for you.”
The Doctor suddenly lept up once again, a new sparkle in his eye.
“It worked for you!”
The Voice in the sky didn’t seem to know what to say to this, so opted for some general questioning sounds, consisting mainly of mumbling.
“No, no, you understand perfectly, don’t you?” asserted the Doctor. “It worked for you! Otherwise none of this would have happened, if you hadn’t been inspired! And I know what defeated you!”
“We are not defeated!” complained the Voice in the sky. “We are merely irritated.”
“Really? You seem pretty defeated to me. Anyone faced with a choice of either having to kill someone or having to talk to them for ages who chooses the talking has clearly backed themselves into a corner. Because you won’t kill me, will you? You’re bluffing! Power is built on threats and bluffing. You can’t threaten a population, there’s no point. Because you can’t threaten everyone. You have to PACIFY them!”
“I do not understand.”
“Well, of course not, you’re an idiot! But there’s only one way to pacify everyone effectively. You have to inspire them. That’s what it worked out. All the logic circuits of the Seven Galaxies refined into one free-thinking robot, and it decided to inspire humanity! Except I know exactly how to stop it. And it’s easy. Because it is so much easier to breed hatred than it is to breed reverence!”
“Your words are meaningless.”
“No, my words are extremely clever. You just can’t keep up. Now, tell me: how is it you’re doing that?”
“Me?” asked the Voice in the sky, now completely caught up in what the Doctor was saying. “What is it I’m doing?”
“You’re talking to me from the sky! How? Where are you talking from?”
The Voice did not respond immediately, and when it did, it was with restraint. “We do not reveal our methods or location.”
“No, you haven’t been listening at all, have you? The easiest thing to spread is hatred. And I have a time machine. Not to mention, I know all of your history. In trying to make me forget about what I know, all you’ve done is remind me. Funny that. But I’m not interested in you right now- there’s a robot about to claim to be the Messiah, or something like that, I’m sure of it. All I want from you is to be able to broadcast to the world. The world! So tell me your location right now, and let me do some broadcasting, or I will have no choice but to head to the dawn of time and spread stories of you until you have no hope of existing in this universe without being instantly murdered!”
The Voice waited a moment before speaking, and when it did, it was in coordinates.
“Thank you!” proclaimed the Doctor, before rushing back to the TARDIS.
Leela was waiting for him when he closed the door.
“Where have you been, Doctor?”
“Oh, here and there. We have an appointment on a spaceship in order to stop an insane robot and possibly also coin a myth about an alien government. It’s all very complicated, but don’t worry, I’ll explain everything later.”
The Doctor rushed out of the TARDIS the moment that it landed at its destination, leaving a bemused Leela alone once again.
On the spaceship were people of the alien species that the Doctor vaguely recollected from some hazy memories. He moved through them to his destination without thought or comment, however; he wanted to find whoever it was that had been addressing him from the sky. It was mere moments before he found the room.
“Hello there!” said the Doctor, entering.
The alien looked slightly bemused, but stepped aside to permit the Doctor to speak into the futuristic-looking microphone which he was standing beside.
“Your plan,” began the alien, “is to remove the threat of the robot by broadcasting negative information about it to Planet Earth. Correct?”
“Correct,” affirmed the Doctor, moving towards the microphone. “And you’ll let me go ahead, won’t you?”
“Certainly,” replied the alien, “if you will then talk.”
“Then it’s a deal,” confirmed the Doctor, and he began to speak into the device. He spoke at length about the dangers posed by the robot, and the lies it would inevitably tell, and the false promises, until there was no more to be said to convince any reasonable person that the robot was not something to worship, but rather something to fear.
Content with his work, the Doctor turned to the alien. “Alright,” he began, “I am ready. Let’s fix your guilt complex.”
The Doctor and the alien proceeded, at the Doctor’s insistence, to a room with comfy sofas, and sat down.
“I remember the room with the white floor, and I remember what you had- oh no! I remember!” The Doctor rose from the sofa in some degree of anger. “You were there! You arrived back in time, at the Holocaust, and you watched! Like it was some kind of public execution, and you stood by and let it happen! I refuse to accept this any longer. I refuse to stand by. Because innocent people suffered at your hand. Innocent lives! You would have had him take over the world!”
“Calm down-”
“No,” declared the Doctor, in a rage of fury. “No, I will not calm down. I will absolutely not calm down, I will never calm down again because of what you did! This is the greatest atrocity in human history, and you walked by on the other side of the road, because you… you wanted to analyse it! For your own means...”
“You behave as if it were us behind it, Doctor. It was the humans. They created this. They did it to themselves! We observed, to see if such techniques could be employed in our war.”
“Oh, you were complacent! You helped by standing idly by and letting this happen. And I refuse to help you. In fact, I refuse to appease you at all! Because for as long as I stand by, I might as well be condoning your actions! But no more. No more.”
And the Doctor fled to the TARDIS, to find Leela sitting and waiting.
“Leela, we’re going. I have a vendetta to settle and a very clear method in mind for doing so. I will explain everything later, this is important!”
“Open this vessel at once!”
“Doctor-” began Leela.
“Be quiet, Leela, I haven’t the time!”
“Doctor, are you in there?” cried Axl, banging on the doors of the TARDIS among other aliens. “Leela?”
“Doctor, be quiet,” shouted Leela, cutting through all the noise. “You might not realise this-”
“Realise what?”
“-But the world has just voted a robot in as ‘King Eternal’.”
Part Four
“Open up!”
“Don’t do it. Peter, don’t open the door!”
Peter moved towards the door, ignoring his wife. “It’s fine. They probably just want to check our stocks. We’re honest traders, they wouldn’t do anything to us!”
“No, I mean it. We had a cable from the Joneses a few minutes ago- they’re cracking down, Peter! It’s everywhere. They’re just decided to finally do something!”
“No, you’re just being paranoid. I know that Hitler doesn’t like the Jews, but he can’t do anything to us. He can’t! I mean, he can’t just order violence. There is absolutely nothing out there that can hurt us, apart from getting done for evading our taxes! So I really had better let him in to check. I know it’s a bit unusual, but it’ll be fine.”
Peter opened the door to the block warden, and was immediately knocked unconscious.
“Oh my god, oh my god-”
“Edith? Is that you in there?”
Edith gulped loudly, and fled into the kitchen through a door behind the counter. Frantically, she searched for somewhere to hide, and thought of the wardrobe in the bedroom that she shared with her husband above the shop. In order to get there, she would have to make it to the other side of the kitchen, but to do so, she would have no choice but to be momentarily visible through the door behind the counter, and potentially give away her position. She hoped against hope that the block warden would believe her to be out, but he would certainly enter the kitchen eventually.
With her heart pounding in her chest, Edith prepared herself for the leap of faith. She had no choice. She had to make it across the room as quickly and as quietly as possible, in order to avoid being seen-
“Edith? You must be here…”
She had to act. Now or never. She had no choice. She had to rush across past the doorway to the staircase, otherwise she would remain, trying to hide behind a wall from the room that the block warden was in, but as soon as he entered the kitchen, she would be completely visible. Against her better judgement, she slumped to the ground, pushed herself up against the wall, and closed her eyes. It would all be over. Everything would go away. There wouldn’t be a problem, and everything would go back to normal. He wouldn’t find her, slumped against the wall, she would be fine…
“Ah, Edith. There you are.”
Everything did not go back to normal.
“Of course I regret what I did. How could I not? Nobody would be able to live with that sort of pain,” admitted Axl. “But I had no choice. None of us did. It was the only option left open to us. And of course, of course, it would have been different if there had been options! But there weren’t any. We had to salvage what we could. We had to survive, and this was the only way to do it!”
“You have time travel,” countered the Doctor. “You could have escaped. You could have gone to another planet, and lived there! You didn’t need to do anything at all!”
“We thought of that. Well, of course we did! Up and leave, it sounds very easy, but it really isn’t practical. Of course, some left. Those who could afford it. Those with investments, savings in other currencies- they fled years back without a flicker of remorse. But this wasn’t possible for the rest of us. Travel is expensive, time travel even more so. It would have taken more resources than the government had just to get itself out! We had nothing. Nothing! This was the last resort, the absolute final chance for our entire species. We had nothing else!”
“That is hard to believe.”
“Why? What’s so impossible to understand?”
“We are on a spaceship above Planet Earth, which is where you managed to track us down to in order to wipe our mind without pain! This sounds very impressive for a species without even the ability to escape. And your plan failed, did it not? So, how come you’re even standing here today?”
Axl sighed. “Alright, fine,” he conceded. “I’ll tell you the whole story.
“It began many aeons ago. Nobody really remembers. Historians argued for years as to why; it merely became a fact of life. We, the Rebus, were at war with the humans. And for a long time, it was a fair fight. We had guns, they had guns. We had tanks, they had tanks. They had nukes, we had nukes. So, it was just life. Soldiers would be chosen randomly and without choice, en mass, to go and fight. Mothers hoped for daughters, because only daughters could be relied upon not to go to war. Very few men survived, and those who did had no choice but to raise a family. There wasn’t enough food, there wasn’t enough money, and there wasn’t enough healthcare. It was hard, in other words, but it was life. We accepted it. There was still aspiration- the clever boys could hope to become generals, or civil servants, or politicians. The girls could hope to lay claim to one of the men, hope to survive reality. Nobody complained, nobody minded, they just got on with it. One day the war would end, and everything would be alright. Things just stayed the same, for a very long time.
“But then, one day, they didn’t. Things changed. Because the humans had created a new secret weapon, and they used it to relentlessly slaughter the outer parts of our Empire, while we could hardly touch theirs. Our scientists tried to work out what it was, tried to replicate it or destroy it, but it was not possible. There were not enough scientists, not enough money, not enough time. And we tried, we really did. We redoubled our efforts. We sent every man we had in a single bunch of attacks- the greatest we had ever attempted. We even conscripted female soldiers- imagine! But it no longer seemed to have an effect. And then we didn’t have any more soldiers. We had the feeble, and the intellectual, and nothing else at all. We were without any sort of remotely useful defense. What remained would be taken out within days, and then the Dome would be breached.
“The Dome ‒ it was the mighty temple and the final refuge. An impenetrable fortress, it houses our government and our scientists and our strategists. The super-rich could afford to live there, and the wiliest of scroungers would beg there. But all around the Dome was destruction. The planet that the Dome was on was the one from which the Rebus originated, and it was, by this point, all we had left. The scene of the final battle, it seemed, except we had no chance of winning. Continents were being annihilated, and the government had no choice but to offer unconditional surrender.
“The humans did not accept surrender. Perhaps they had had a noble reason, once, for fighting us, but it was clear, at that moment, that it had been lost. They were enjoying it. They would enjoy burning the last remnants of the Rebus without remorse. That is what the war had come to. And I know- this, I know- that, had we been the ones in their place, had the humans surrendered, we would have done just the same thing. We would have burned them, burned their children. And we would have smiled.
“Total evacuation was all that seemed possible now. We had to try, that’s what the government said. It declared that we absolutely had to try to escape, because otherwise we would be slaughtered within days. So calculations were made, whether all of the intellectuals could be got out alive, and the results came in: no. It was not possible. The time travel was pioneering, so it simply wasn’t possible to use it for everyone- or, at least, everyone that the government cared about. They didn’t care about the people on the streets or in their homes. They issued a public statement that basically told everyone to hide, because they couldn’t do anything. Then the government reviewed the calculations, in order to work out whether they could escape. Could the six hundred-odd people who governed the country in their debating chamber escape? The answer was no. The resources were more limited than even they had realised. They could time-travel perhaps twenty, at most. Of course, there was no way of deciding who, and everyone claimed that they had a greater right to do so than others, so a new idea surfaced: the idea of using these twenty time-travels. Use them to save everyone.
“A plan was concocted. We had to stop the humans, but our own weapons were no match for their own. War drives innovation, you see. But the plan of design was this - what if the Rebus took what humanity did to themselves and used it against them? To fight fire with fire?
“So the historians were brought in, the ones who knew of the history of humanity. And they told of the very darkest moment in their long history. They spoke of a man so horribly insane that he would murder millions of people for his own pleasure. A man with both total insanity and pleasure. Of course, humanity had many of these throughout its long history- there was one other in particular that we looked at, from the same couple of centuries as this one- but there seemed to be nobody quite as abominable as Adolf Hitler.”
“And they chose you for this mission?” the Doctor asked.
“Of course. We were scientists. And we began to observe his ideas. To observe his own deluded beliefs - we saw how he targeted the people he didn’t like in large numbers. The way he targeted these Jews and- and killed them. Well, we didn’t think it was unethical. After all, either he would go on some sort of rampage where he killed everyone there was to kill, or there would be a mighty war declared by his enemies. We saw how humanity looked set to be destroyed. And from this, we realised we could use similar methods against them. We analysed him, and his men, and everything he did. And we plotted how so many years in the future, we could enact the same plans. To create fear, to breed hatred, all against humanity, on a scale vaster than anything seen before.
“I, meanwhile, had made a remarkable discovery. Do you remember Claudia, the girl you met when you were there? Well, she had been giving off readings. We were monitoring all sorts of things from our own makeshift base of operations, and one day she just appeared from nowhere and started to give off these readings, unlike any of the humans on the planet! It was identified that she had come to this world from another, just like we had, and we wondered whether she might be able to help us. So I adopted this name- Axl Brand, two names, like a human- in order to go undercover. We, the Rebus, looked identical to humans- we could even be mistaken for being the same species. Nobody batted an eyelid.
“When I met Axl, there was a group of them. Helma and Hertz, you met, and they were probably the leaders, really- they had taken Claudia, as she revealed she was called, from the streets, and had helped her and adopted her, in a way. There were more of them, then, and so I joined their group. They were sceptical of me at first, but soon took me in. Hertz had insisted, I believe, to Helma, that I be ‘rescued’. Well, it transpired that Claudia remembered nothing before appearing on a street, and appeared somehow traumatised- she was prone to fits. I never did find out why. But I decided to stay with the group all the same. The mission was growing less important to all of us, and it very much seemed that we were finding lives on Earth. It seemed decreasingly likely that humanity would actually be wiped out- after all, life finds a way, doesn’t it? And it seemed wise to be on Hitler’s side. He had a powerful aura, like one who would inevitably win in the end.
“So it seemed that living alongside these humans was a good idea. An excuse, perhaps, for me to grow distant from the mission. It had all got too much. Perhaps, after a time, I began to like it. Yes. I did like it. I liked them. They were my friends. And soon, Adolf Hitler and his Nazis seemed no longer to be useful allies, but a threat. Because we were always trying to hide from them, to escape, so they suddenly seemed dangerous to us.
“We were together. Us against the world! And, slowly but surely, things started to happen. They started to drift away. There were less of them. Lisa, Alfred, Ursula…I don’t really remember what happened to them. It ended up being just Helma, Claudia, Hertz and me. But that was fine, because we were family. I had stopped giving such regular updates to the mission crew, and that was fine. So had they. None of us really believed in it any longer. There were often people still in our command centre, vaguely monitoring things, but we’d all begun carving lives for ourselves in this Germany that we were in. And things seemed alright. You might think that living on the streets, scrounging, would have been hard, or unpleasant, but it wasn’t. It was different to anything I’d ever known, and the fear that had resided in me since birth had eased off. I wasn’t afraid of anything. It seemed as though nothing could touch us. Nothing, ever.
“Then Leela came along, on that fateful day, and started talking about her blue box. Well, I had heard legends of the Doctor of Gallifrey, but never really considered that it could be- well, true. So I did inform the mission control, of course I did, but I didn’t expect them to- well, they shouldn’t have done that, really.
“My understanding is that the Nazis found the Doctor first. We were in this area, where most ‘enemies’ were kept. The Doctor, along with me and my three friends, were all rounded up together. Leela was grabbed, too..”
“Ah, yes,” interrupted the Doctor, “That’s where I came into the story. But, there is one thing that’s been playing on my mind, if you don’t mind. No, I didn’t think you would. Now, you came around to each of us, each of the people the Nazis brought into custody that day - to wipe our memories of you? So it wouldn’t be known that the Rebus were present prior to the Holocaust?”
“I’ll get to that-”
“But,” continued the Doctor, “I didn’t really remember it anyway. In fact, from what I gather, we each remembered it slightly differently- Leela says that what she recalls doesn’t tally up with what I hastily scribbled down earlier. So- what happened? Were we all under the influence of some sort of hallucinogenic?”
“That’s interesting,” responded Axl, “because I assumed that was you. I have listened to the same events from three different people, and they disagreed on key details. Well, we haven’t intervened at all until now in the memory, so- how did it happen, if not by your hand?”
“You mean,” clarified the Doctor, “we all remember the same things differently, for no particular reason?”
“It seems that way. I mean, it has been years, but these- these were very important, fundamental details!”
“Interesting. Anyway, do continue, please.”
“Well,” began Axl, as though he had not stopped speaking at all, “we had Leela, Helma, Claudia and Hertz locked in a room. We needed you, Doctor. So we told you about our problem.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, we did. Perhaps not in a huge deal of depth, but certainly, you understood our plight. I think you sympathised. But then we told you about how we were… taking notes. And that upset you tremendously. You were outraged! You just couldn’t see that we weren’t trying to destroy humanity for dark or twisted reasons. We just wanted to save ourselves, so many years in the future. But you said that it was unfathomably terrible, and you went on an absolute rampage. You ranted and raved about how wrong it all was, and how you were going to stop us! Then you ran off, and unlocked the room the humans were in, while all the while declaring things about death and evil and all sorts.
“Well, obviously we had to stop you. If we weren’t to have your help, we needed to destroy you. It was the only way. So we got out our ray-guns, and held them at the heads of the humans, threatening to shoot if you didn’t help us.”
“What did I do? I didn’t- I didn’t help you, surely?”
“Oh, you did. You very much did. You had absolutely no choice, and you need to understand that. We left you no choice - because otherwise we could stay. We could keep understanding. We knew that you had your TARDIS, so we insisted that you use it, to take us away, to collect the people dying at the end of time and give them a new home. The evacuation would take place after all, we decided. And it did. You brought us a new home. You saw the war, and everything that was destroying our world. You saw the Dome shatter, as the glass exploded in a million directions and the humans entered, entered in order to burn a thousand thousand alive. And they were burning, and the glass was shattering, everywhere. There was no escape. No way to get away. Except in your TARDIS. So you opened the doors, and you saved everyone you possibly could. ‘Bigger on the inside’, indeed. You brought us to another world, and we set up there, began again, began anew. Saved by distance and time.”
“What happened then?” the Doctor asked.
“We joined up with another, peaceful, civilisation on that world. They had some technology, and we had our scientists- the ones who understood time travel- help them. It was a good coalition, and it serves us well. The exit strategy turned out to be perfect, without any genocide at all. If only you had turned up earlier, Doctor…
“It was ultimately decided that the time travel had been perfected sufficiently to enact a mission long talked of on the new world: to wipe the memories of the ones who had seen the Rebus, back in 1930s Germany. To protect our reputation. It would not do to allow these stories to live on. I went to track down those who I had known so long ago and forced them to recount everything they recall. We use a strange and fascinating new technology, whereby everything said is a thing erased: as a person remembers, it is their last time remembering, but also the most real. It blurs towards the end, of course, and the things that are not yet even uttered can be forgotten. It takes a great effort of willpower to make it to the end at all. The ending being, of course, that you, Doctor, were tracked to Earth, at this time, with this robot that apparently has been declared king. What a strange turn of events, indeed. Well, this recollection was to be collected remotely, using pioneering time-pausing, from a spaceship in orbit. The spaceship that we are on now. It didn’t go entirely to plan, of course, did it? No. It didn’t. Because here you are, in control. Your memories are gone, but you will remember it all from me, because I have told you everything. Everything I know.
“I didn’t want to remember it again. I said I would collect the three recollections, and be done. It was another who collected yours, Doctor. Because I can’t face it. I can’t face it any longer.” Axl put his hands to his face, and shut his eyes in desperation. “It has hurt me every day of my life - witnessing the Holocaust. I wish I hadn’t. I don’t want it. I don’t want to know the war. I don’t want to know what we tried to do. I don’t want to know the people who were traumatised, or killed, because of what we did. I don’t want it. I don’t want to remember it and I don’t want to live with it.”
“But you don’t have a choice,” the Doctor said. “You can’t bury your head in the sand, Axl. That’s how conflicts like this begin.”
“Thank you for listening so carefully and attentively. Because it’s yours, now, not mine. It’s all yours. And- I can feel it- It’s already floating away…I think I can let it go now…”
“No, Axl. No, no, no,” the Doctor reached out, as if he were trying to stop Axl.
However. It was too late.
Axl stopped speaking, and simply breathed for a few moments, before opening his eyes and looking about him with a bemused awe.
“I’m- sorry, what’s going on? Who are you? What am I doing here?”
On Earth, a robot had assumed a position as king of humanity.
“Um, sir?”
“What is it?”
“Well, they’re wondering if you have any, er, decrees, or plans? Or whether you intend this to be a solely ceremonial position?”
“Be quiet! Go and bash your head against that wall fifteen times! Hard!”
“Er, ok…” the squire did as he was told.
“Difficult, isn’t it?”
“Who are you?”
“Trying to rule a planet when you didn’t expect to become ruler in the first place?”
“Identify yourself!”
“We met, do you not remember? Or were you too busy staring at my companion to notice me?”
“Explain your presence here! Why are you here? Who are you?”
“You expected to like power, but now you find that it is no different from what you had before. It is frustrating, isn’t it?”
“Leave this chamber!”
“You never really had a plan. Only an ambition. You have achieved your ambition, so what do you do now?”
“Leave! At once!”
“A lesser man than you, a man who wanted to make things better and enact change, would have done something by now. But you did not crave the opportunities of power. You merely craved power itself. And now you are without purpose, like all other dictators. You don’t care about the people whose lives you control- you only care that they respect you. You like that you could do something if you wanted to, but you do not choose to. You have a shell of ornament and words of power, but you are hollow. You have nothing inside of you.
“I have seen things beyond what you understand. I have seen a world of burning people and burning buildings, where all that there was was the sounds of breaking glass. And I know why it happened. It happened because of people like you. People who wanted power, but didn’t care about the consequences or the responsibilities. People who did things without reason or logic. People who ignored what their people truly needed in favour of whatever fleeting thought they had at that time. People who did not care of the suffering of others, and people who would not pause to contemplate before making a decision. And fundamentally, people who did nothing to stop it.
“You have two choices, now. You can relinquish this position, and allow humankind to forget that you ever came to power, and to choose their next leaders in a democracy. Or, you can cling to this position, forever, and allow things to fall far out of your control, until only carnage, devastation and pain remain.
“Now, let me tell you about what happened to me- what I saw. Because I remember everything…”
Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor turned to Leela.
“How was the conversation with the robot? Did it work?”
“Yes, Doctor. It has given up its position.”
“Good, good, all in a day’s work, then.” The Doctor moved the controls about a bit, wiggling them in no particular order, and the console whirred.
The Doctor and Leela headed off, to save people, thinking stubbornly of the future. After all, what else was there?
“Hold on,” said the Doctor, realising at long last what he had been missing for a long time, “what about you? You surely remember everything, they never used their memory thing on you, did they? You ought to know everything that happened, and you ought to know perfectly- why did you not mention it before?”
“Sorry, Doctor,” admitted Leela, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
They had returned to the TARDIS. The ship purred as it took off, aiming for a new destination. The Doctor never knew where the time machine would take him, or why, or indeed how. He just knew that there would be new adventures to have, new civilisations to save.
And that is how it was to go, once again.
writer - RICKY STARR
cover art - JANINE RIVERS
story editors - ZOE LANCE & JANINE RIVERS
producer - JANINE RIVERS
cover art - JANINE RIVERS
story editors - ZOE LANCE & JANINE RIVERS
producer - JANINE RIVERS