AN EXTRACT FROM AN AHK NEWS REPORT ON OURDAYS INC., 21 MAY 2316, 6:20PM
Interviewer – Greg West Interviewee – Donna Noble
WEST: Ms Noble, thank you for joining us this evening.
NOBLE: Always a pleasure to be here, Greg.
WEST: Can we just agree, to start with, that OurDays has – whether for the best, or for the worst – been one of the most contentious talking points of the last few months? And that’s no mean feat, considering today’s political landscape. Your short time as CEO has transformed not just the company, but our whole culture – some are even calling OurDays an ideological movement.
NOBLE: Well, you can make anything political if you try hard enough. But I’m just glad people are talking about OurDays. It’s exactly what the world needs right now.
WEST: But you, yourself, have said that OurDays’ innovation has caused society to adopt – in your words – a ‘looser’ concept of identity. So what is this concept of ‘identity’, if memory no longer matters to who we are?
NOBLE: I wouldn’t say that memory doesn’t matter, but think about your life – really think. So many of your memories are events that you didn’t even get a choice over. Why should chance get to decide what sort of person we are? We are defined by our memories, but OurDays gives us the choice to pick the memories that define us – and to share some of our own memories with others. Ordinary working people will be able to remember lives they could never have dreamed of, and they’ll become the most extraordinary characters because of it.
WEST: Can I put it to you, Ms Noble, that the first to benefit from your services won’t be ordinary working people at all, but those who can afford them. And can I also put it to you that the sellers will be the opposite? Those in desperate need of money, who have nonetheless led enjoyable lives, will be drawn to the prospect of trading their own memories for the considerable financial incentive you offer. Surely that’s apparent.
NOBLE: -In the long term, we’re hoping to make our services accessible to anyone who --
WEST: -- but I’d like to draw attention to –
NOBLE: -- look, Greg. People will have their doubts about this, ‘cause that’s the way people respond to this sort of change. This is a big, scary thing that seems to be happening, but so are all technological revolutions. Philosophers have been debating personal identity for years, I didn’t even realise until I took this job how much writing there was on the subject, and all of a sudden we, a fairly recent company, are claiming to hold the answer. That’s bound to attract a bit of cynicism. It’s like that ship, isn’t it? Where you replace all the planks over time and then it’s like, is it the same ship? I think the answer’s yes, and I think we can replace our memories in the same way and still be the same person.
WEST: Putting abstract metaphysical debates aside, one of the questions people are asking is this: how do we know our memories are safe? People aren’t as naïve when it comes to technology these days, Ms Noble: they know how memories are encoded, and indeed, they know that they could very easily be copied. Purportedly, OurDays only transfers memories to the parties consented to by the seller – but how do we know it isn’t storing copies of these memories to, if you’ll forgive the crude wording, flog at a later date?
NOBLE: There’d be nothing to gain from doing that, Greg, I can say that much. We’ve already traded in hundreds of thousands of memories, and we’re growing exponentially. Even if you did come up with some mad conspiracy, there’s no motive! We don’t need any copies when we’ve got new stuff coming through all the time.
WEST: So are you saying that OurDays doesn’t duplicate any of the memories which are traded within its premises?
NOBLE: We’d have no reason to, and to do it would go against company policy – which we really care about.
WEST: Just a yes or no, please, Ms Noble.
NOBLE: No, OurDays doesn’t duplicate memories. Absolutely not.
WEST: That was Donna Noble, CEO of OurDays Incorporated. Thank you, Ms Noble.
MEMORY SELLS
written by janine rivers
The boardroom was tidied to within an inch of its life. The floor was so clean you could lick crumbs off it, the table so smooth you might call it frictionless. Papers in perfect piles were stacked by each chair, a set of notes for everyone attending (and they would all be there). A fan was positioned in the optimum position for a healthy flow of cool air which didn’t risk sending papers fluttering likes leaves. The boss couldn’t tolerate air conditioning.
It was an impressive sight, an archetype of compulsive organisation and near-flawless symmetry, but the meeting’s attendants themselves aimed to provide tough competition. They too might have been described as clean, smooth, and well-positioned in the room. Ties were picked so as not to clash with walls, deodorants applied on double, just in case. Meetings could be intense.
The clock ticked away, and the time grew closer. On the twenty-third second of the fifty-ninth minute – and the six attendants (plus one secretary) had counted all of them – there was a bing!, to indicate lift doors opening. It had to be her.
“Alright everyone,” said the oldest, baldest man in the room, “gird your loins!”
The clicking of high-heels. Two clicks to every tick of the clock, getting closer like a knife working its way across a chopping board. The bald man suddenly knew what it felt like to be the back end of a carrot.
As Donna Noble, CEO of OurDays Inc. entered the room, even the clock fell silent.
“That. Was. The day from hell.” Donna passed her coat to the man on her left, even though her secretary was stood on her right. The man decided not to correct her, and searched for somewhere to hang it. Somewhere it wouldn’t touch anyone else’s coats, somewhere dust wasn’t allowed. “I’m starving. They don’t feed you at the AHK, any chance of a pastry or something? One of those cinnamon whirls? Probably not great for my figure, but I’m famished.”
Her secretary stood up, but Donna laid a hand gently but assertively on her arm.
“No – you stay here, Priya, I need someone for the minutes. Someone else. Oh, actually, just forget the cinnamon whirl, we should get down to business. What’s happening?”
At last, everyone in the room began to relax. They were on script now, and they’d all learnt their lines.
“Sales have tripled in the last week,” said the bald man. “And we’re expecting –“
“Well that’s not a surprise, is it?” Donna sounded far from impressed. “All the publicity we’re getting, obviously sales were gonna go up. Our media focus has probably tripled too – at least. What I want to know is whether, for each person who hears of the company, there’s a higher or lower chance of them using our services.” There was an awkward pause, three men on the brink of a reply. “Well? Has anyone looked into it?”
“It would be… challenging,” said the tallest and newest woman in the room. As soon as the words slipped out her mouth, she realised: she’d crossed a line. She could feel six pairs of eyes on her.
But Donna just smiled a terrible, corporate smile. “And you’re on a six-figure salary. Think you can manage challenging?”
“Yes, Ms Noble.”
“Lovely. So, what have we got in general terms on public opinion? And how did the interview go down?”
“People are buying into the ethos,” said a man who must have only been in his twenties. His hair was neatly-trimmed, and his voice spoke with a condescension it wasn’t even aware of. “The whole identity debate is coming down on our side, Ms Noble.”
“Just as I’d hoped. I said they would, didn’t I?”
No one in the room was quite sure that she had said that, but they all nodded anyway.
“They like the fact that staff have to donate a chunk of memory.”
“It’s a sum,” Donna corrected him. “A sum of memory. Chunk makes it sound like we’re lobbing bits off.”
“Yes, sorry. A sum. It makes them think we’re ‘ethics first’.”
“It makes them think we’re ethics first?” Donna raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, Ms Noble.”
“Makes them think we’re ethics first?” She fiddled with a pen, but didn’t look down. Her eyes were fixed on the young man. “Almost suggests we aren’t.”
“Well, I mean – officially we are, sorry, I should have been clearer.”
“Officially we are? And unofficially we’re profit first?”
There was no response. The young man was lost for words, and everyone else knew they’d regret interrupting the interrogation.
“Let me be clear about this – what’s your name?”
“Miles.”
“Let me be clear about this, Miles. We are ethics first. Compliance with ethical guidelines keeps staff healthy and customers safe. Healthy staff and safe customers brings you profit. Cutting corners puts that at risk, putting anything before ethics risks profit, ipso facto putting profit before ethics is irrational. So why don’t you stop pretending that it’s smart, and come to terms with the fact that you’re not interested in ethics because you’re not just neutral to people, but actively hostile to them? It’s industrial psychopathy, I’ve seen it plenty of times before.”
The young man was silent.
“Never forget the company values. Ever.” Donna stood up, her shadow creeping over the conference table like a storm-cloud moving in for the night. “I don’t know what sort of ship the last CEO ran before I came along, but now I’m here we do things my way. That means complying with ethical guidelines. That means considering human factors. That means reducing our carbon footprint, risk assessing every situation you could imagine, never contravening company policy, and always respecting company values. If you do those things, the shareholders will be happy. And since you all prattled on about our values in your job interviews, anyone who says they have an issue with them now is a liar, so if you even so much as think about suggesting a change to our mission statement, don’t bother coming into work tomorrow.” Donna picked up her pile of papers, and left, followed by her secretary. The door had the decency to slam itself on her behalf.
When Donna was out of earshot, the bald man glared across the room.
“You’re a pillock, Miles.”
***
The High Council Chamber was, for want of a better word, vacant. It was a place so empty that even the ghosts had found somewhere more interesting to haunt. But the vast nothingness only improved concentration – darkness had a way of focusing thoughts. This was good, because the High Council had to do a lot of thinking.
There had been talk of moving the chamber somewhere nicer. The war was over, the need to convene in shadowy regions now gone. The most radical suggestion had been a window. Maybe even one designed by a Prydonian architect; they, at least, were known for a somewhat Gothic flair. But the President had suggested leaving that one on the backburner. A clock might have ticked, had there been much need for clocks on Gallifrey. But the sentinels of time themselves would have been troubled by the irony of possessing such artefacts – those who controlled time couldn’t possibly be dictated by it. Time couldn’t pass on Gallifrey.
The President disagreed, of course. He thought that you couldn’t have a functioning society without time, reasoning something along the lines of: without time, no change; without change, no society. To govern history, the Time Lords had to have a history of their own. They had to hold stakes in the thing they controlled.
So without the ticking of a clock, there was silence, until the sound of approaching footsteps. Twenty-four heartbeats doubled in speed, as the twelve present realised who those steps belonged to.
“He is here,” whispered the Visionary, who immediately began scrawling furiously in Ancient Gallifreyan. The Doctor, President of the Time Lords of Gallifrey, entered the room.
“You would not believe the day I’m having.” He sat – though the verb ‘fell’ might have been more accurate – onto the chair at the head of the table, before proceeding to push the chair back and use the table as a footrest. Eyes rolled, but he continued, either oblivious or untroubled by the views of the council members. “The bureaucracy on this planet is astounding! For a planet situated at the end of the space-time continuum, you lot seem to just love sending emails.”
“An ‘email’ is not quite the correct term, Lord President.”
“Well, you know what I meant by it. I’ve spent so long sifting through messages and clearing red tape today that I’ve started to forget what’s going on.” He removed his feet from the table, as if to indicate that this part of the conversation was worth taking seriously, and sat forward. “There are dozens of children outside, just standing there.”
“Protesters,” said a military general, off-hand.
“Children,” the President repeated, emphasising each and every syllable. “And we’re not speaking decoratively here, these children haven’t been given placards and told to look sad, they’ve come here off their own backs. Eight, nine years old, and they’re organising protests.”
“A positive reflection of the Academy’s efforts to broaden their minds. Their spirits are, it seems, naturally inquisitive. They challenge authority.”
“A positive reflection of the Academy,” agreed the President, “but an abysmal reflection of us. If children that young are driven together by a disdain for their elders, then those elders should look to the floor in shame. This government is still a shambles.” He lowered his voice. “I know I haven’t been here long. I know there’s a lot of mess to clear up. But the inequality in this place is staggering – have you seen the way some of those children are dressed?”
“I agree with the President,” said another Time Lord, smug that he’d been the first to butter up Gallifrey’s greatest moraliser. “They’re dressed like Shabogans.”
“And this is the problem!” cried the President, raising his voice. “Even in that single assertion, you’ve written off a whole class of people – “
“ – I really don’t think it’s fair to argue that – “
“ – people,” the President asserted, “who you’re happy to put out of sight and leave to their own devices. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, is that what you’re saying? Is that what your great democracy has come to? All classes treated equally, except the underclass? You should be ashamed. Ashamed.”
The room fell silent, and to emphasise his point, the President stood up and left. The Shabogans had always been a sensitive issue for him. When he was out of earshot, the woman who’d indicated his arrival glared across the room at the Time Lord who’d spoken up.
“You’re a fool, Narvin.”
***
Donna used her shoulder to gently push open the door to her secretary’s office. Inside, Priya Kohli was diligently typing away, her eyes darting every few seconds to a set of notes in front of her. The minutes.
Donna smiled, reflectively, almost sadly. Those were the days, she thought. Happy memories of deciphering shorthand, touch-typing, unpaid overtime and deep-vein thrombosis.
After a few seconds, Priya looked up and stopped typing immediately. She was about to stand up, when Donna handed her a coffee.
“It’s okay, there’s no need to stand,” Donna assured her. “I just brought you a coffee.”
“You… brought me a coffee.” Priya examined the caffeinated beverage curiously. “Thank you, Ms Noble, you shouldn’t have, I really appreciate it…”
“Just Donna is fine.” Donna smiled. A real, human smile. “Mind if I sit?”
“Oh, please do!” Priya gestured to the chair, wondering whether she should leave her desk and pull it out for her boss. But Donna did this herself, and sat down, crossing her legs and taking a sip from her own coffee.
“I don’t wanna hold you up if you’re doing anything important.”
“It’s nothing,” said Priya. She would have said that if it had been the end of the world.
Donna gazed out of Priya’s office window. It was a small space, probably a converted pantry or cleaning cupboard, but its thin oval-shaped window boasted one of the best views in the building; a cloud of pink, swirling gas, like a faraway paradise of candy-floss and stars. Donna hesitated in referring to their workplace: sometimes they called it a building, other times they called it a ship. It seemed odd to think of a tower block floating through space, but that was exactly what it was.
“Nice view from here,” remarked Donna, realising as she said it that Priya had her back to the nebula. “We could do with changing the orientation of this space.”
“I’d get distracted,” admitted Priya, and fidgeted in her chair. Donna sighed. Her attempts at setting the woman at ease were not succeeding.
“Hey, y’know, back there,” she started, “I’m not… I mean, I wasn’t always like that. And I’m still not, not really. But with that lot, you’ve gotta put on a scary face. It’s the only way to deal with them.”
“It’s fine,” said Priya. “I understand.”
“No, but really – they’re piranhas. Corporate piranhas, snakes in suits, the whole lot of them, just waiting for you to trip up and make a mistake. Get a lawsuit against you or something. Waiting for their chance to usurp you, it’s Medieval.”
Priya looked up at last. “It must be very difficult sometimes.”
“This job? Oh, sometimes it’s a nightmare.” Donna swigged the rest of her coffee. Priya went to take a sip of hers, but it was still boiling hot. Perhaps her boss had become a machine, used to processing intense heats, toxic chemicals, industrial by-products…
“Seriously, it drives you mad,” Donna continued, chucking her cup in the recycle bin by the desk. “The constant repetition. Everything’s customer satisfaction, and risk assessment, and focus groups, and international comparisons, and conference IDs and “actionable” and – well, what does “actionable” even mean? But they love that word. They all seem to love it. But, sometimes I think…” she leaned forward over the desk conspiratorially, and Priya found herself mirroring the motion. “Sometimes I think they believe that every single consumer is the same.”
“What do you mean?” asked Priya.
“They have an idea in their head of a person. Let’s… let’s call her Tonya. Tonya’s thirty-something, not-too-recently married, one kid… she’s nice, got a circle of friends, but says “like” quite a lot and shares dog videos on Facebook, and wears denim jackets too late into the autumn. And they all hate her, everyone in that conference room. They think she’s dirt. And they think everyone is like her. They think everyone they’re selling to is like Tonya, and they think all the memories they’re selling are also Tonya’s, ‘cause Tonya went on a gap year after college and never ended up going to uni, but she saw some great things. So they’re trading in Tonya, and trading with Tonya. Tonya’s a magic money tree and a great big endless loop of profit. She’s a thing, and they laugh at her.”
“But…” Priya didn’t want to challenge her boss, but was finding herself enraptured by Donna’s words, wanting to challenge them and pick them apart. “Isn’t our target market… wider than that?”
“In some ways yes. We say they are, anyway. But think about it. You’ve gotta be middle-class at least to afford to buy memories, so we’re talking people who could afford a gap-yah but still need some sorta job, people who will probably end up settling down in a family, start to miss seeing new things but will have the money to indulge in a few fantasies. That narrows the target market a lot. But there’s still lots of people that could cover, and lots of different lives, but to them” – she gestured outside the office – “they’re all just Tonya. And they’re grossed out by it, because they think they’re cleaner and politer and smarter. But they’re not. Most those people in that conference room, the highlight of their day was the loo-break. Not because they popped out for a cheeky fag, but literally because they went to the loo.”
Priya found herself chuckling.
“That’s more like it,” encouraged Donna. “Oh, I dunno… I remember being you. A temp, I mean. Going from agency to agency, getting treated with less respect than the coffee machine. It consumes you. Have you got a family?”
“No – it’s just me. I think. Well…”
“Of course.” Donna nodded. “The donation.”
Priya nodded. All staff at OurDays had to make a compulsory donation before the contract was complete. A sum of memories, to show their commitment to the company ethos. But when the fake memories filled the empty space, it was often hard to tell what one had really donated.
“I worry about the lost memories sometimes,” admitted Priya. “I think, usually, I think that I donated them because it was a boring period of my life. But then I wonder… what if I donated something else? A sad memory, maybe? What if I had a boyfriend who left me and broke my heart, and I gave that away so that someone desperate for memories of a relationship could purchase it instead?”
“Think about whether it’s in-character. If that’s not the sorta thing you’d do, then you probably didn’t do it.”
“But I have no memory of any relationships. I don’t know how I would respond to a negative one.”
Donna thought about this, gazing again at the nebula outside. Her answer was, appropriately enough, nebulous. “I suppose, whatever happened, happened. Or rather it didn’t. Sorry, I’m useless.”
“I appreciate your concern anyway, Ms” – Priya corrected herself – “Donna. And thank you for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome.” Donna stood up to leave. “When I was a temp, this guy once…” she frowned, scratched her head. “No, sorry, thought I remembered something then. Dunno what that was all about.” She shrugged. “Seeya, yeah? And no staying overtime. They don’t pay you for it. Go out! Have a space party with all your mates, or whatever you lot get up to these days. You deserve a night off.”
***
"And so the little girl found herself a new life in the new world she had arrived in. Soon, she forgot all about the life she’d had before, about her friend and her adventures, and focused on her new friends and family, defending the Earth in her free time. And she was brilliant, and lived happily ever after, and that, children, was the story of Rose Tyler.” The Doctor shut the book and placed it on the pile. “What next…”
“Zagreus! Zagreus!” cried one boy at the front of the crowd. He always did. For some reason, he loved that rhyme. Occasionally, the Doctor would oblige him, and consequently terrify all the other children. This was one of those occasions.
The Doctor sat forward, and lowered his voice to a murmur. He knew the rhyme off-by-heart.
“Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed…” He left a gap.
“…and eats you when you’re sleeping!” replied a little girl at the front, at the top of her voice.
The Doctor continued. “Zagreus at the end of days, Zagreus lies all other ways, Zagreus comes when time’s a maze…” “…and tells you off for peeping!” shouted a boy at the back.
“Nice try, but the actual rhyme is ‘And all of history is weeping’.”
A Chancellery Guard approached the crowd with a disapproving look, catching the end of the Doctor’s perverse nursery-rhyme. He looked down at a notepad, and the Doctor sighed. This was a man sent with a specific task.
“I’m trying to read a story here.”
“Lord President, Sir, the General has advised that you return to your quarters after meetings. It is not safe here. There is a risk of… assassination.”
“Do you mind?” cried the Doctor. “There are children here, you might traumatise them! And here I was, reading them a gentle bedtime story about Zagreus, who waits at the end of the world and whose moment time’s undoing.”
The Guard frowned.
“It sounded better in my head. Okay, kids, how about another story?” The children cheered. “How about Temptation? Have I told you the one about Temptation and the woodcutter? I used to read that to my – ”
The Guard cut him off. “Lord President, please. This is for your own safety.”
“Oh, fine.” The Doctor sighed. “Come on then, take me home. Same time tomorrow, kids?”
The children scuttled back to their homes. The Doctor took another deep breath. “Little people. Small lives. I’ve come to care a lot about them…”
“Why?” the Chancellery Guard blurted out, then covered his mouth. “Sorry, Lord President, forgive me, I did not intend to –“
The Doctor waved it aside. “It’s not your fault. You’re raised to think that way. Conditioned by a society that’s only concerned with tidal waves, that ignores ripples, that sees history as a sequence of actions by great men. A view drilled into your head ever since your days at the Academy. If you went to the Academy, that is. If not… it was still probably drilled into your head somehow.” The Doctor gazed out at the sunsets on the horizon. It probably was time to head home. “Anyway, you asked why I care about them. The answer is that I had this friend, once. She challenged the way I’d been taught to think. Made me stop thinking in terms of major events and disasters, and start thinking in terms of saving one life at a time. She made me realise there was leeway there. Time is more malleable than you think. And saving one person, or one family, might be the most important thing you’ll ever do.”
***
AN EXTRACT FROM DONNA NOBLE’S ONLINE BIOGRAPHY, LAST UPDATED 1 JANUARY 2316
Donna Noble was born on 12 May 1968 in Chiswick, where she was raised. Her mother, Sylvia, worked in administration for the National Health Service. Her father, Geoffrey, worked in middle management. Noble attended Belmont Primary. She has said that, whilst her parents were “heavily involved” in her upbringing, she was most influenced by her grandfather, Wilfred Mott. As a child, Noble was “stubborn and opinionated”. In several interviews she referred to an incident when, at the age of six, she caught a bus to Strathclydeafter her mother cancelled the annual family holiday.
By the time she was a teenager, Noble had “lost interest” in her schooling, unsatisfied with the careers options available to her. She left school after taking her O-Levels. She recalled this period of her life in an interview with Orion Broadcasting: “I took a typing qualification. It doesn’t even exist now, and I wouldn’t need it, but it got me into temping. Working in the City of London, just a kid, was the most exciting thing I’d ever done. I worked for some really amazing firms.” Noble spent almost two decades of her life moving between temp jobs, including a library in Hounslow. In 2007, she took her final temping position at the security firm H.C. Clements. Little is known about this period of Noble’s life, except that she resigned and consequently gave up temping during the Christmas holidays, shortly before the company was closed down following a formal investigation. Noble claims that her own recollections of her time at the firm were also indistinct:
“I wanna say I remember what made me change, but I don’t. There were a lot of pressures at that time. I was sick of temping, I wanted something permanent. My mum insisted I took the job. I had a rough Christmas. […] It was around the time my dad got ill. He died in the New Year. Now it’s like there’s a cloud over that whole holiday. I don’t remember that Christmas at all, but it was enough to make me wanna leave. I travelled the world for a bit, and then I came home.”
Noble never specified what her travels entailed, but it is thought that, during 2008, she visited Egyptand possibly Singapore. She never returned to temping and spent several years unemployed, living with her mother and grandfather.
In January 2010, Noble’s life changed direction after she won a triple roll-over prize in the National Lottery. She was encouraged by her mother to invest in shares, and based her choices on the companies she had worked for in the past. By 2024, Noble was listed as one of the ten richest lottery winners in Britain [feature], but was diagnosed with a brain tumour and given six months to live. Her family encouraged her to use her savings to invest in posthumous cryogenicfreezing. Noble later recalled that “It was my grandfather who persuaded me… he was always going on about aliens and space and stuff. He said he thought they’d be helping us out in the future, and might be able to make me better. I didn’t believe it for a minute, but I knew it’d give him peace of mind, so I went with it anyway.” Noble was frozen on August 19, 2025, after exceeding her prognosis by several months, and was stored in a unit in San Franciscofor nearly three centuries.
With the discovery of new cognitive restorationtechniques in 2308, Noble was revived in a safe environment. “It was weird,” she recalled in a subsequent interview. “Like time travel. Waking up and seeing the whole world had changed. People were in space.” Noble discovered that her shares had left her with “billions” in the years she had spent frozen. She returned to work in 2313 after a reintegration course, and quickly progressed to senior management. By May 2315, Noble was the CEO of OurDays Incorporated, the role for which she is best recognised today.
***
The Doctor reclined in his armchair and flicked channels, settling on his evening viewing. The same as yesterday evening, and the evening before that. The evening before that evening had been spent at insufferable negotiations with the Monan Host, but on virtually all other evenings, the Lord President of Gallifrey sat in front of his Time-Space Visualiser and watched the same channel.
Was it invasive? Was it wrong? Those were questions he tried not to reflect too deeply on. The point was, he was doing it because he cared about her. He had to watch Donna’s life this closely, more so now than ever. But it couldn’t go on like this.
Today, Donna was in her secretary’s office. Priya Kohli. The Doctor made a mental note to have a look through her records, make sure everything was as it should be. He’d do that later. For now, he was obsessing over a particular moment. He rewound the scene again.
“…welcome. When I was a temp, this guy once…” The two-dimensional, black-and-white Donna Noble frowned and scratched her head. “No, sorry, thought I remembered something then. Dunno what that was all about. Seeya, yeah? And no staying overtime. They don’t – ”
He rewound another time.
“ – a temp, this guy once…” The same frown, the same scratch of the head. “No, sorry, thought I remembered something then. Dunno what that was all about. Seeya, yeah? And no s-” Again.
“No, sorry, thought I remembered something then – “
“ – thought I remembered something then – “
“ – remembered – “
“Something the matter, Lord President?”
The Doctor shot out of his chair like a bolt, then exhaled when he realised it was just the General.
“I apologise. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Yeah, well next time, knock!” The Doctor rolled his eyes and sat back down, pausing the screen on that same frown.
“I came here to discuss the recent tensions in the High Council meetings, but now I wonder if I can help with… other problems.” The General eyed the screen warily. The world outside, the one the Time Lords were allegedly so much bigger than, seemed to terrify them disproportionately. “Who is she?”
“Donna Noble,” said the Doctor, gazing at his old friend. “She was one of my companions. Well – she was the last of them. And the best. But… I… had to wipe her memories. Every trace of me, gone. It was the only way to keep her safe. So all I can do is watch.”
“She looks important. Assuming she’s the – ”
“Everyone’s important, but yes, she is that one. I’d say the ginger one, but that wouldn’t be much help in this situation. And she was brilliant, and probably still is, except I’m concerned about her. I never expected her to go this far. Normal life, I thought. She’ll settle down, get married, have kids, that’s what they all do isn’t it? But out from nowhere came this ambition, this… well, I don’t know what you’d call it, but now she’s CEO of one of the largest organisations in the galaxy, and she’s in space.”
“We’re all in space.”
“Don’t be facetious.”
“I wasn’t.”
The Doctor considered. “Donna was from Earth. Twenty-first century. Space is out-of-the-ordinary for her. And here’s my concern – I think it’s starting to cause the memories to resurface. It was a raw memory wipe, I did it without any equipment. The situation was an emergency and it was the best I could manage. I think she needs… updating.” The General considered. “You mean a neural block?”
“It would make the memories totally inaccessible. Meaning that absolutely nothing could trigger them. There’d be no risk of her remembering me. You could tell her my life story and she wouldn’t be any the wiser.”
“But when she sees you – ”
“Yes, the memories will come back again. I’ll have to be quick. I should have a few minutes before the effect becomes fatal.”
“You’ve thought this through. There’s no stopping you, is there, Lord President?”
“Nope.” The Doctor stood up.
“Is there anything I can do, then?”
“I need to change out of these awful robes for starters. And get rid of the hat. I need some shoes, some proper shoes. Sneakers, converses – Earth shoes. And a suit, bluest you’ve got. And is there any hair gel on Gallifrey?”
***
AN EXTRACT FROM AN OURDAYS ADVERTISEMENT TRANSCRIPT, 2310
This transcript was recovered by a company insider, during Benedict Morris’s time as CEO. It is the script which was used for the advertisement broadcast on live television in six local systems, however it contains the annotations which were intended only for the marketing department. These have been marked in italics/parentheses. [white background, major chords on guitar]
MAN [white, young, happy-sounding, normal accent]: OurDays. [cut to:]
WOMAN [female equivalent of MAN, sexed up a bit, soft voice]: OurDays. [cut to:]
MAN: They were Your Days. Your memories. And you had to keep them all to yourself!
[MAN should sound upset by this, like he’s had a difficult life living this way] [cut to:]
WOMAN: Sometimes we feel trapped in our memories. They’re like cells. But not anymore. [cut to:] MAN: Not now the memory… sells! [grin] [cut to:]
WOMAN: Thanks to OurDays, memories belong to all of us, and you have the chance to share yours with the world. [cut to:]
MAN: Ever fancied travelling the world, but found that there’s never the time? Now you don’t need the time. [cut to:]
WOMAN: Now, you can just have the memories. [cut to:]
MAN: Because in the end, what do we do anything for? [cut to:]
WOMAN: So that we can make memories.
[MAN walks into shot and holds hands with woman.]
MAN: Together.
WOMAN: But you don’t have to take our word for it. [Change shot to living room. Well-dusted. Big window. View of a planet, surface-level? Maybe some hills. A sunny world, whatever budget will cover.] WOMAN #2: Making memories was never easy for me. [This woman should be visibly disabled. On a wheelchair. But make her attractive. We want the audience to feel sorry for her but still drawn to her and a bit envious. Get an able-bodied woman and put her in a wheelchair if that’s easier. Maybe we could go for someone with an ethnic background? Tick all the boxes in one go and fill the diversity quotas.] WOMAN #2 [cont’d]: OurDays has given me a new lease of life. I’ve seen more than I could ever have seen, do more than I could ever have done [Lion King isn’t copyrighted anymore, right?]. Being stuck in a chair means I’ll never get to climb a mountain or swim in the sea… but that doesn’t matter anymore. Because now, in a way, I’ve already done it. [smile] And it’s made me so happy. [cut to:]
MAN: And our prices start at £60, with a free taster memory lasting a week.
WOMAN: Or perhaps you have a memory of your own that you’d like to share? We’ll buy your days.
MAN: So that they can become…
MAN + WOMAN + WOMAN #2: …OurDays.
***
The Doctor smelled the office, even before he opened his eyes. The scent of sweat hidden amongst plants and air fresheners was, sadly, all too familiar to him. When he opened his eyes, and sat up, he realised exactly where he was: a smaller office inside a larger one, its own little glass room, clearly not immune to the stench of the office around it but at least, in some way, isolated. He felt like a goldfish. He looked ahead of him, now, and saw the mighty jaws of a shark.
And yet, this wasn’t a shark. Not exactly. It was, instead, his best friend, Donna Noble. But given the piercing look in her eyes, the sharpness of her suit, the fierier-than-usual colour of her hair and a whole assortment of other factors, it would have been an easy mistake to make.
But she merely smiled. “Hello,” she said, softly. “Don’t sit up too quickly – it can take a minute to adjust.”
“I’m…” the Doctor frowned, attempted to jog his memory. “This is… an office. How did I…”
“Take it slow. Here.” Donna reached out. There was a glass of water in her hand, and scratching his head, the Doctor was sure that it hadn’t been there the moment before. He took the offering and chugged it down in one gulp. The shock of ice-cold water on his throat somehow stimulated some memory, previously lodged at the back of his mind.
“Of course! I remember now! Donna Noble.” He patted his pockets, searching for the neural blocker he had taken with him. Instead, with the exception of his sonic screwdriver, they were empty. “Oh, no, no, no…”
“And you’re… ‘the Doctor’,” said Donna, reading from the file in front of her. “I’ve been reading all about you.”
“No, you can’t do that.” The Doctor tried to snatch the file from her, but her grip was firm.
“I think you’ll find I can. You consented. As I said, take a minute, take it easy.”
“Listen, you don’t understand. I brought a device with me, and I need to use it. You’re in danger if I don’t. You can’t remember…”
“Calm. Down.”
“I am calm!” cried the Doctor. “Well, no, I’m not, but I’ve got a very good reason not to be. I’ve come all the way from Gallifrey to do this, and I wasn’t expecting to lose the object I…”
“Gallifrey, eh?” Donna smirked. “You might want to think carefully about that.”
“Oh, Donna Noble… any minute now, the memory’s going to resurface, so I might as well prepare you. Maybe – I don’t know – maybe knowing will help you fight the effects. Right, brace yourself.” The Doctor took a deep breath, and spoke very quietly. “You and I used to travel together. I know it sounds mad, I know it sounds ridiculous, but we travelled through time and space together. I had to wipe your memories and drop you off on Earth, only now – what’s that look for?”
The smirk hadn’t left Donna’s face. The Doctor had expected an amount of incredulity, a little panic even – but something about Donna’s response was just wrong.
“Listen… Doctor. This is going to be difficult to take in. But none of that happened.”
“Okay, yes, I know that’s what you think, but – ”
“No, listen.” The Doctor shut up. “I am Donna Noble, the CEO of OurDays Incorporated.”
“Yes,” encouraged the Doctor. “Good.”
“And you’re the maintenance man.”
“What? No – ”
“To work at OurDays incorporated,” Donna continued, “members of staff are required to donate a sum of memories. You might, say… donate all memories over a particular timespan. Usually at least a year, if you want to be accepted. Or you might donate all memories of a particular individual, provided you can prove that they’re important in your life.”
“Yes, I know how the system works – ”
“Then you’ll also know that the memories are replaced. The extraction leaves a gap in your mind, which that memory originally occupied. So, to prevent neural overload, we place new recruits in a memory chamber, with their consent, for an extended period of time. In that time, a new memory is written into their synapses to replace the old one. The memory is constructed out of their imagination, a bit like a dream. But it can leave you…” Donna winced. “Just a bit confused. Only at first, though.”
“Okay. I understand.” The Doctor nodded. “You think my time on Gallifrey is a memory constructed by one of these chambers? I can see why you’d think that. But I came here for you. We travelled together! I wouldn’t make up something like that.”
“Really? And when did we start travelling together?”
“About…” the Doctor reflected. “About a year ago. We travelled together for about six months, and then I saved Gallifrey, and returned as President.”
“And you were placed inside a memory chamber…” Donna glanced at the Doctor’s file. “A year ago. Funny, that.”
“This stuff happened!” cried the Doctor. But now he, even he, was starting to doubt his memories. That was all they were: memories. Fleeting images, bundles of perceptions, associated emotions… they felt real, but he knew, as a rational man, that they could have been placed there mere seconds ago.
“I think you know it didn’t.” Donna gave the Doctor a sympathetic smile, and stood up, file under her arm. “When you’re ready to get started on maintenance, just head into that room over there” – she pointed at a door at the end of the room – “and Richard will get you started. I always like to greet new members of staff, but as of now, we probably won’t see each other again.” She started out of the office, but then turned back, reconsidering. “Unless my computer gets broken. Which it probably will, ‘cause they’re useless. So I’ll see you around, ‘Doctor’.” And with that, she left the office.
“Oh, Donna…” the Doctor shook his head, morosely, as if reflecting on some terrible secret. But was he? That was the question on his mind. As yet, he had no empirical proof that Donna wasn’t right about everything. The facts fit. And the more he thought about it, the less sense the last year of his life had made. Saving Gallifrey? That was unlikely. Becoming President? Nigh-on impossible. And travelling the stars with Donna Noble?
That, surely, was the brightest and most distant of dreams.
***
Mr. Miles and Mr. Stewart sat and quivered, surrounded by empty chairs. It was just the two of them in the boardroom now, sat opposite the CEO and her secretary, who seemed to fade effortlessly into the backdrop. The lights were dimmed, giving the false impression of night, though every syllable uttered by Donna Noble jerked the two men awake.
“You both know why I’m here,” she said icily. “It came to my attention earlier today that a certain discovery had been… well, I don’t even have the words. Kept from me? Squirrelled away?”
Mr. Stewart felt beads of sweat forming on his bald head, and wished they’d evaporate. Each drop was like liquid guilt. Stewart didn’t consider himself a bad man at all. He’d once studied an optional module on Business Ethics in his second year at university, and always separated his recycling, and donated £10 a month to a charity he’d never bothered unregistering from, probably out of guilt, possibly out of sheer neglect. But for a not-at-all bad man, Stewart felt an awful lot of guilt.
“I thought about this meeting a lot,” Donna continued. “What I’d say. How I’d say it. And then I thought – why should I have to explain to you, when I’m the one who’s out of the loop? So I’d like you to explain to me. To explain this situation and how it started. Who wants to speak first?”
The fan whirred away in the corner of the room, angled so that it cooled Donna, and Donna alone. “Well?”
Stewart cleared his throat. “I…” He cursed himself. Why do I sound like a teenage boy? Stewart had always considered himself to have ‘panache’, whatever that meant. A certain calm, implacable flair. That was gone now. “I found out yesterday morning that a sum of memories had been duplicated. It was only because the checks on chamber processing were being carried out at the time the duplication happened – shortly after, all the records were wiped.”
“Well… putting aside that enormous bloody cock-up for a moment, you’re not being entirely truthful with me, are you, Stewart?” Donna raised an eyebrow. “I appreciate that you’re taking the blame here, taking one for the team, but I want the truth. That’s what I’m here for. And you weren’t actually the one who found out, were you?”
Stewart was silent.
Donna tapped the table with the tip of a blood-red nail. “Miles?”
“Ms Noble,” answered Miles, his voice shaking.
“You were the one who made the discovery, right?”
“Yes, Ms Noble.”
“You discovered that someone – maybe lots of someones – at OurDays had been duplicating memories, not just contravening company policy, not just contravening ethical guidelines, but also, Miles… contravening the law. And you didn’t report it.”
“With all due respect, Ms Noble, I did inform – ”
“If you’re about to tell me that you informed Stewart, then don’t. I know exactly what happened, because you were both overheard. Stewart made the discovery by sheer coincidence when going through the account browser history, raised it with you, and also failed to inform me, but at least that was only a few hours ago. You’ve kept this from me now for… nearly two days? Which forces me to one conclusion, Miles. That you weren’t going to tell me at all. And I thought to myself… why wouldn’t he tell me? Something so big that could topple this company, why wouldn’t he tell the CEO, and then I realised it was staring me in the face! Because it could topple this company. Because it could “upset the shareholders.” So you brushed it under the carpet.”
“I…” Miles was stammering, and Stewart felt like a grown-up again in the face of this trembling boy. “I took a call, based on – ”
“You ‘took a call’?” Donna waggled her fingers as she quoted the man. “It wasn’t your call to take.”
“I understand that. There’s no excuse, I had a bad day – ”
“Yes, you’re right. There is no excuse. I was going to ask you if anything else had come to light, but…” Donna shrugged, with a casual indifference which stung both the men sitting in front of her. “I don’t believe a word you say, Miles, now. I’m annoyed with myself for ever believing a word that left your mouth. Every time something comes up, it’s the same old story, you’re always blagging your way through meetings, climbing out of some hole you’ve dug for yourself, you’re the corporate equivalent of a racist uncle at a family wedding. I mean, do you have any shame at all? Are you embarrassed?” She raised her voice for the first time in the meeting, and Miles’ heart momentarily stopped beating altogether. “ARE YOU EMBARRASSED?”
“Yes, Ms Noble,” squeaked the little man.
Donna picked up on a whiff of amusement from Stewart like a bloodhound. “And don’t think you’re in the clear yet, either. This should have reached me the moment you left that office. The fact that you even had to think about how to respond to this says a lot about your character. And in your case, Stewart, I’m disappointed. That’s the thing. I always knew I could only trust Miles as far as I could throw him, but you? I actually, actually kinda liked you. And again, I’m annoyed with myself for ever seeing you as anything other than totally… irrelevant.”
Stewart felt bad. He really did feel bad, like that feeling of being eight years old and in trouble for snapping a pencil in half under the table. That feeling had never gone away. But he was also worried about Donna’s strange wording – that she could trust Miles as far as she could throw him. Stewart suspected that this wasn’t true, because she looked like she could throw Miles a long way, maybe out of an airlock, and she could probably do the same to Stewart straight after. More than that, the look on her face said she would.
“Well…” Donna looked down at the mess of papers on the table. “Everything from here is damage control. For now, we keep this between the four of us, but anything else goes through me. Understood?”
“Understood,” said Miles, though he didn’t quite understand why Donna had said ‘four’. Was she counting her secretary as an active participant in the meeting? “This won’t happen again.”
“You’re right, it won’t. You know… the more I think about this, Miles, the more I realise I’m sick of you. I’m just sick of you, of that smug look on your face, that bloody entitlement that follows you everywhere. What do you even do for this company? Like, what’s your job? What do you actually do?”
“Well…”
“Even you have to think about it! It’s ‘cause you just sit there all day. Stuff just passes through you. You relay stuff. I could get a computer to do that for me, and you know what, I think I will. Miles, you’re fired.”
“Ms Noble, I – ”
“Out. And don’t even think about going to the papers about this, because you’re implicated now. Live a quiet little life. Start gardening or something.”
Miles left the room in silence, contemplating the end of his career. Stewart realised that he was still holding his breath.
“And you’re lucky,” said Donna, once Miles was out of earshot. “Very lucky. I’m giving you a second chance because you’re not quite as repulsive as the rest of them. Now go on, Stewart, get out of my sight.”
Stewart, too, left the room, and Donna Noble, CEO of OuDays Incorporated, was left to wonder not just why someone would want duplicated memories, but also whether her company would stand for another day. It really was all damage control from here on out.
***
The Doctor eyed the perfectly ordinary computer up and down, as the man on the swivel chair – ‘Nigel, Sales Representative’, according to a frayed name badge – buried his head in his hands, merely for the effect.
“I’m sick of these stupid things never working, they’re always on the blink, in my day we just had – ”
The Doctor cut him off abruptly. “Is it plugged in?”
Nigel, Sales Representative rolled his eyes and replied with a sigh. “Yes, of course it’s flaming plugged in.”
The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. “Have you tried switching it off and on again?”
“Yes, of course – what – yes, I’ve – obviously, that’s just – ”
Already, the Time Lord was familiar with what that sort of response meant. He discreetly hit the off-switch with the tip of his left shoe, waited a moment, and switched it on again. The machine began to boot up with a triumphant fanfare.
“Oh, it hasn’t got that far before…”
“Amazing, isn’t it?” asked the Doctor, before wandering off. On his way to the next appointment – a person on the lower decks who’d jammed their cable in the wrong socket – he reflected over his lost memories.
All the places he’d been with Donna Noble, all the things he’d done… they weren’t just filling a gap in a timeline. That wasn’t how memory worked. He was aware that Donna, as CEO, knew this too, so he’d decided not to spell it out in front of her. Still, he felt, the science was important.
Memory, after all, wasn’t just a long sequence of ordered events. It was more like a tangled web of emotional responses and semantic connotations, procedural memories which hadn’t quite lost their association with specific events… memory wasn’t just recalling how to play the trombone (one of the Doctor’s secret talents), but remembering where one had first learnt to play it, what one had eaten for lunch that same day – and the other times one had eaten the very same lunch, and where one had been, and what music was playing, and what one was studying, and when one had first studied that, and what one had been thinking when that study was taking place…
It was, in other words, anything but a straight line: memories were retrieved with the right cues, the right reminders. The ‘fake memories’ filled in by the chamber weren’t filling gaps in a linear narrative at all. They were filling the roles, the jobs of particular memories in relation to other, associated memories. Without new memories to replace the old ones, the déjà vu would have been overwhelming and constant. Perhaps that was what Donna had meant by “neural overload”.
That, then, was the purpose of his new memories of Donna. Maybe he’d travelled with another friend – someone else after Martha. Maybe they’d fought the Sontarans together, and for whatever reason, he’d donated his memories of them to get into this place. The new memories of Donna ensured that, when he recalled the Sontarans and how he’d stopped them, he had an appropriate filler memory to explain the bruise on his arm.
And yet, Donna had changed him. Sometimes in small, unnoticeable ways, sometimes in larger ones. She’d narrowed his perspective in a positive way; reminded him of the little people, of the need for companionship. She’d made him reconsider his treatment of those who travelled with him. And now none of that was real, the Doctor felt cheated. Because even at the start, when they’d first met, Donna had –
When they’d first met.
“Oh!” The Doctor stopped in his tracks and hit himself in the forehead. “I’ve been thick! Thick-thickity-thick-thick-thick!” A cleaner gave him a troubled glance, and he started off down the corridor.
***
Donna knew that the end was coming. Her office had become a vision of a dark and sombre personal future, her very own post-apocalyptic nightmare. She could see it now. A layer of dust would coat her shelves. Her drawers would be emptied. Files would be shredded. Her plaque would be mercilessly torn from its rightful place. Another layer of dust would settle on an untouched keyboard, letters and symbols hidden under dead skin.
The dust. Donna shuddered. Dust got everywhere. It was a reminder of the woman she’d been before: a thinker rather than a doer; a procrastinator, a dreamer, a shop-window-browser. Back home, back in Chiswick, she’d let the dust into her life. It had gathered on bookshelves, reminding her that her travel brochures and recipe books were going untouched. It clung to the bedposts, the bannisters, the bare, barren backs of car-boots and –
The worst of the dust, of course, had been the mansion she’d returned to after being woken from cryogenic sleep. Her room, fit for a goddess, preserved like a shrine. Dust on the photos. On Mum, Dad… Gramps…
Maybe she’d get through it this time. Maybe, somehow, they’d keep this under wraps. Maybe she wouldn’t face court, maybe she wouldn’t resign. Or maybe this is really it. She cursed whoever was behind this, whoever wanted to flog cheap copies of human recollections. Why couldn’t things just be simple for a change?
Without knocking, the Doctor entered the room. Donna almost wanted to smile. The blue of his suit was like a summer’s sky, clear of clouds, predictable.
“Donna, I’ve worked it out. I was right. It’s – ”
“Oh, just go away,” said Donna, sounding tired. “I really don’t have time for this.”
“Just listen!” begged the Doctor, and lowered his voice. “Please. Just hear me out. One minute, that’s all I need. Not even a minute. Thirty seconds. Just thirty-ish seconds.”
“Well….” Donna stretched, felt her joints click. “You’re ten seconds in already, so you might wanna hurry up. Sit down if you want.”
The Doctor did as instructed, rushing to the chair. “Right,” he started, and reluctantly, Donna found herself listening to his every word. “You were correct about me spending a year in the chamber. Maybe – I dunno – maybe you were correct about my memories of our travels together being fake. But… they had to come from somewhere. Some impression I’d had of you, some memory of Donna Noble, strong enough that I could imagine you as my companion.”
“Yeah.” Donna nodded. “But I was always on TV. That’s probably all – ”
“Ahh,” continued the Doctor, clearly building up to something bigger, “but that’s not all. ‘Cause y’see, I don’t watch much TV anyway, but, also, I had another memory of you. A whole year earlier. Just after I lost my best friend, just before I met Martha Jones, I spent Christmas with you fighting the Racnoss.”
“The… whatnoss?”
“Giant spider, doesn’t matter, anyway, as I said, that was a year earlier. Meaning…”
“…the memory chamber couldn’t have fabricated it!” Donna heard surprise in her voice. She thought about that. Maybe the Doctor was lying… but if he wasn’t, if he was telling the truth… maybe there was something in this after all. “So we did meet! But then why wouldn’t I remember?”
“Well, that’s exactly what I thought. But then I realised – you’re CEO. You must have lost a chunk of your memories.”
“A sum,” corrected Donna.
“Whatever, a sum – you would have donated your own memories to attain this position. You could have donated a period of your life, but what would you have chosen? Not the last few years; that would have wiped your adjustment period, everything you’d learnt about Earth in this century. But how about your last few years with your family? Again, unlikely, you’d want to keep those for sentimental value. Any earlier and you’d be worried about cutting out something important by mistake. Or there’s the other option.”
“Deleting all memories of a particular individual.”
“Exactly. Like, say…” the Doctor swallowed. “Me.”
“Wait… hang on…” Donna made a face as she tried to piece the Doctor’s story together. “What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure. But I think we could do with having our memories jogged… Ms Noble. Whaddya say, hmm?” A solitary eyebrow was raised, one which not even the most resilient CEO could have resisted.
***
The memory banks were vast and almost endless; cold and metallic like a warehouse, but with a pulsating amber light providing some sort of ambiance. The place was warm and humid. Memories were stacked in canisters, better described as ‘flasks’. Donna knew that they just contained data, that they were lifeless lumps of hardware, but she liked to imagine that if you removed the seal, memories would flow out like fairy-dust.
“Impressive.” The Doctor’s voice bounced off the walls. “Aaaand, here’s mine.” Donna watched in surprise as he picked up one of the flasks – canisters, Donna corrected herself – and proceeded to throw it in the air and catch it with the same hand, as if it were a tennis ball.
“You wanna be careful with that.”
The Doctor ignored her. “Now, Donna – here’s the interesting thing about memories. You never really lose them. Well, not exactly. You don’t forget your long-term memories in the sense that you understand forgetting, it’s actually just a retrieval failure. Memories buried just a bit too deep. Usually, the right cues can pry them out of your subconscious, but you lot” – he gestured around the memory banks – “you lot have literally been stealing memories.”
“Buying,” Donna answered, unimpressed. “Buying memories. With consent.”
“Yeah, okay, but – here’s the thing. If you steal memories, there’s nothing left to recover. The only way to form new ones is by reliving them. Plugging yourself in for an amount of time, experiencing them in a simulation – just like we’ve all been doing with the replacement memories – and then waking up with a brand new memory. Or a brand old one.”
“Oh.” Donna didn’t terribly fancy the idea of being plugged in to a memory chamber for the next two years – particularly if the company would be falling apart around her. It would have been like sleeping through an earthquake.
“Except,” the Doctor added, wagging a finger, “if you’ve got a sonic screwdriver. In which case, I can transfer them as a psychic impulse from one the canister to the brain.” He shook the flask in his hand.
“Psychic impulse,” Donna repeated. “Gotcha. But, hang on – if we re-download our memories, we’re going back on our promise to the company. We won’t be eligible to work here anymore.”
“Yeah, but I checked your records, and there’s already a conspiracy going on, so very soon this company itself won’t be eligible to employ anyone. Look at it that way.”
“Thanks,” Donna said, meaning the exact opposite.
“Besides,” added the Doctor. “I can always get rid of the memory again if you need me to. I’m good with the mind.” “Yeah, I’m not having you rummage about in there, thanks.”
“Okay, got your cannister?”
Donna nodded, lifting it up. The thing was surprisingly light. Despite the apparent weight of memories to those experiencing them, they were, in reality, the weight of a small stack of papers.
“Quickest and safest way of doing this is to both do it at the same time.” The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out of an inside pocket, and Donna regarded it suspiciously. “Ready? You might experience flashbacks for the first minute or so, but it’ll adjust quickly.”
“Go on, then,” Donna sighed. “Let’s get this out the way.”
There was a high-pitched buzzing from the tip of the Doctor’s screwdriver, and then everything went –
***
TWO YEARS EARLIER
“How do I look?” asked Donna. As she held out her arms to show off her new business suit, the button on her blazer popped off and hit the console. Donna glared at the Doctor, largely because it would have been absurd to glare at a button.
“It’s…” the Doctor stifled a laugh. “Nice, if you like clothes that are slowly detaching themselves from you.”
“Oi, watch it spaceman!” Donna smiled anyway, and joined the Doctor at the console unit. He was observing something on the scanner – reading, she assumed, since he was wearing his ‘brainy specs’. “We ready yet?” she asked him. “Clear on the plan?”
“Well, more or less. But Donna, remember, this is important… this is the most difficult thing we’ve ever had to do.”
“Nah, no way! We’ve broken into loads of corporations. There’s no way this is worse than that Ood place.”
“Yes, but this time, we can’t even trust ourselves. Our own memories are going to be altered, and we’ll have no idea who we were or why we applied for the job.”
“Okay… now I think about it, that is a teensy bit worrying. Just go over that plan again?”
“Sure, okay.” The Doctor started on the hand gestures as he spoke. “Your bit is simple. Well, a bit simple. Well, simple in comparison to my bit, which is more or less the exact opposite of simple. You’ve been offered the job at OurDays already. All you have to do is enter the memory chamber and agree to erase all your memories of me. That’ll count as a substantial donation, and it’ll give you the perfect cover story – one that even you believe. No one will suspect you of industrial espionage.”
“And then I’m CEO?” Donna grinned, even if the prospect of ‘the memory chamber’ did terrify her. “That’s brilliant! When do I start?”
“After a year in the memory chamber. That year will rewrite all your memories, and it’ll make you believe a different story to explain how you got there. Considering it has to explain your evolution from Chiswick’s best temp in 2007 to the CEO of OurDays in 2316, it’ll probably be very whacky and very inventive.”
“Right. And what about you? You join later, right?”
“Yup. I wait in the TARDIS for a year – well, maybe not the TARDIS, I might travel about for a bit – and then I apply for a different position in maintenance. Just as you’re leaving the chamber and taking up your position as CEO, I’ll be entering the chamber, but I’ll only be sacrificing my memories of the last year, which I’ll have spent on my own. I’ll remember all this, and at that point, we’ll be able to start investigating. With you established as CEO, having hopefully gained the trust of everyone on the board, we’ll figure out what’s going on in no time at all.”
“That’s brilliant. But… bloody complicated. Why’ve we gotta do it like this? Why can’t we just land the TARDIS?”
“I’ve already told you, Donna – we just can’t. I’ve tried, believe me. For some reason, that ship is impenetrable. But we need to do this. Something is going on at OurDays. Their memory extraction technology is far in advance of its time, and if they really are duplicating memories… we can only imagine what they want them for.”
“But I’ll have to fend for myself for a year. While you’re in the chamber. As CEO, with no memory of you. That’s…”
“Daunting, I know.” The Doctor gave Donna an encouraging pat on the back. “But you’ll be fine. You’re a star, you.”
***
“And as it happens, you were.”
“Oh my God…” Donna stepped back, reeling from the flashback. “How did I… I’ve been… I’m…”
The Doctor waited as Donna regained her memories, put them together in some logical structure. It would be difficult. Traumatic. She would need his emotional support, his encouragement, his –
“I’m the CEO of a space company. Ha!” Donna’s raucous laughter echoed around the memory banks. “That’s hilarious! Me, Donna Noble, entrepreneur.” With that last word, she spread her arms out in front of her, putting up an imaginary banner. “And I believed it the whole time!”
Maybe not emotional support, then, thought the Doctor.
“I do confess to messing up my part of the plan a teensy bit,” he said. “I didn’t realise they were counting this as a leap-year, so I erased my memory of coming up with the plan. I was going around believing that I’d wiped your memories on some other totally unrelated adventure, and believing your cover story.”
“Oh yeah, my cover story,” Donna reflected. “What the heck was that all about? I mean, me, winning the lottery, come on!”
“Well, let’s have a look at your biography.” Donna passed the Doctor her mobile device, and he flicked open the page. “Orion Broadcasting, AHK News… everything they’ve got on you is from interviews you gave after having your memories replaced. Obviously, no one bothered fact-checking. If you’d stayed any longer, I bet one of the tabloids would have sussed you out.” He chucked Donna’s mobile device back over to her. “So, just to set the story straight – I didn’t save Gallifrey, that was just a lovely dream.”
“Sorry,” said Donna. It was the best she could offer.
“Oh, that’s alright!” The Doctor brushed it off. “We all have dreams of the impossible. Besides, I thought I’d wiped your memories, lost you. But we travel together! We still travel together! And that’s brilliant, isn’t that brilliant?” He grinned, rocking backwards and forwards as he lifted the backs of his converses.
A door was slammed at the end of the memory banks.
“Stop them!” cried a security guard, who was – somewhat inconveniently for the Doctor and Donna – armed.
“Oh, great!” huffed Donna.
“It’s good to be back.” The Doctor took her hand, and together, they ran.
***
“It’s ‘cause we were seen getting our memories back!” Donna explained, panting, as they ran through aisles of cannisters. “We’re now imposters! They’re gonna need a new CEO and everything!”
A bullet was fired. It ricocheted off a shelf, before planting itself in a canister, which sparked for a few seconds. Memories lost, corrupted, forever.
“RUN!” cried the Doctor, and they took off again at breakneck pace.
***
They rushed inside the nearest room, only about the size of a pantry, and slammed the door behind them. The guards were far enough back that they might just miss the room. It was unlikely, but the best hope they had.
Except they hadn’t looked. And, turning around to face what they had expected to be a few shelves full of boxes, the Doctor and Donna were surprised to see a large group of things. There was no obvious collective noun, so the Doctor considered a few: a gathering, a family, an infestation, a tangle, before deciding on:
“A whole nest.”
“Eurgh!” cried Donna. “What are those things?”
“Well…” The Doctor let their appearance do some of the talking. They were, for want of a better description, like giant starfish: six-foot invertebrates, each with eight arms (rather than the usual five) spanning from the central disc, which itself contained an opening. This opening wasn’t a jaw exactly, but a sort of chasm: rather than a mouth, there was just a vast, swirling, spiralling depth inside each. There must have been around fifteen to twenty of them packed into this one tiny room, overlapping each other along the walls and ceilings, forming what could only be described as a web. They made subtle movements; spasms of the arm, a sort of breathing motion from the central disc, and that endless, endless spiralling inside each chasm.
“They’re like starfish,” was all Donna could say.
“Asteroidea Ishtar,” breathed the Doctor, with not so much fear as fascination. “Ancient species. Utterly invasive. Whole colonies drift across space, waiting for a food source to arrive for millennia. They feed on memory. All they need is a body, and a mind… but it doesn’t make sense. The Ishtar are only semi-intelligent at best. They couldn’t have built this company all on their own. Unless… oh!” He cried out and stepped backwards, causing Donna to nearly jump out of her skin. “Of course!”
“Something you wanna share with the class?” mocked Donna.
“We’ve been approaching this whole situation from the wrong perspective. It’s not aliens utilising human technology, it’s humans utilising aliens! I wondered how they’d discovered such advanced technology… but it was never technology at all. OurDays were using the Ishtar feeding process to extract the memories. The Ishtar do the job of converting memory into a tangible form, and before they can consume it, wham! Along comes the corporation, raw memory freely provided. They then duplicate the memory and feed a weak copy to the Ishtar. Just enough to keep them alive, but totally lacking all the good, juicy nutrients that a healthy human memory contains. That’s the part they sell on”
“That’s… bad.” Donna paused, taking some time to think about why that was so intuitively the case. “They’re treating these things as a means to an end. But then… they’re only, like, half-beings, right? God, no, wait, that’s awful, did I just say that?”
“Trained to think like a businesswoman. Look what the system’s turned you into, Donna Noble.”
“Oi!” Donna elbowed the Doctor in the rib, and he winced. “You put me in here, spaceman, I only did this for you, so don’t start going all moral on me.”
“Point taken,” the Doctor mumbled.
“So… that’s what this has all been about? This big conspiracy was just a few opportunists getting lucky?”
“Very lucky,” added the Doctor. “You don’t see many of these things in this part of the galaxy. They must have strayed from their natural habitat. We should let them find their way back.”
“But don’t they feed on humans? Human memories and stuff?”
“Only while you’re sleeping. You don’t even notice that they’ve been. They don’t take your memories, that’s the thing. I think OurDays added that part of the process.” “Why?”
“Why do you think? If humans knew they could sell off their memories an infinite amount of times, they might start handing them out all over the place. The company was pre-emptively fighting their inevitable competitors. Making themselves the definitive memory market this side of the universe.”
“And robbing people of their memories. Robbing the vulnerable, because they wanted to make a bit of cash. That’s so wrong…” Donna shook her head. I was wrong. I was… part of this. She stayed quiet. In this situation, she suspected, none of the Doctor’s words would be able to soothe her.
“This breaks so many laws. But now we’re inside, we can bypass the shields. Summon the TARDIS…”
Just as gunfire started up outside, the Doctor raised his sonic into the air. Soon, a familiar wheezing, groaning sound filled the room, and the Doctor and Donna Noble were home.
***
“The Asteroidea Ishtar are released back into space, drifting across the other side of the galaxy. No more memories for the corporation. No more exploitation.” The Doctor set the TARDIS off in flight, satisfied with his work, and watched the calming motions of the time rotor.
“So the company folds?” asked Donna. Exhausted, she was sat on the chair to the side of the console.
“Well… theoretically. They can’t extract new memories, and they’ve lost their CEO. But…” the Doctor gave it some thought, hands in pockets, brainy specs back on. “I suppose they could find a way to persist. In fact, they almost definitely will. CEOs are eminently replaceable – sorry to break it to you – and they’ve got a bank of duplicated memories which they could make endless copies of and flog until kingdom come.”
“Great,” sighed Donna. “Y’know, after the last few revolutions, this really feels unfinished. The company stays.” “Companies always stay. If it wasn’t this one causing trouble, it’d be another…”
“But why can’t one of them ‘buck the trend’? Set the standard? Don’t all revolutions start that way?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Maybe. Now, where do you wanna go? I was thinking maybe we could visit someone famous. How about David Hume? We could play him at backgammon. Or Olaudah Equiano. Or Mary Anne Evans. Or – ”
“Doctor.” Donna stood up, and the Doctor stopped in his tracks. His companions sometimes responded this way to his travelling suggestions when they were unhappy with something. Particularly Martha: in fact, Donna was wearing the exact face Martha had when she had decided to leave. He braced himself for the worst.
“Yeah?”
“Back there, that year I spent as CEO… I really did become someone else. Like, I dunno - like losing my memory of you, it… changed me. I didn’t think I could be that ruthless, I guess I didn’t think I had it in me, but I… I cared more about them shareholders than I did about ordinary people. I chased profit like it was the only good in the world. I fired people all over the place without even asking if – ”
The Doctor cut her off. “Donna, you weren’t that bad. Really. You did a lot of good.”
“But still – I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, have done all that as the person you know me as. Don’t you see what I’m saying? I wasn’t Donna Noble. I was like… Donna-point-two. My time with you has changed me that much. I know identity isn’t all your memories, but I reckon it’s a fair few of them.”
“A good chunk.”
“Sum,” Donna corrected him. “But listen. I want you to promise me something, spaceman, alright? And look me in the eye so I know you’re not havin’ me on.”
The Doctor did as instructed, looking away from his beloved ship, and focusing all his attention on his best friend.
“I want you to promise me that you’ll never wipe my memories of you, of us, of our time together. Ever. Have you got that?”
“Donna, it – ”
“I mean it. I don’t care if it’s some Time Law or whatever, or if it’s to keep me safe from people tryin’ to find out stuff about our adventures, or if it’s to stop me gobbing off about space to Gramps, promise me you won’t ever do that to me. Because this stuff is precious. It makes me who I am.”
“Okay,” agreed the Doctor, and looked Donna in the eye. “I promise.”
“Thanks. Oh, and I guess I should say…” Donna lowered her voice. She hated this sort of conversation, so laden with doom and misfortune, but sometimes it was necessary. “There is one exception. Right? Just one, though.”
“Okay.” The Doctor nodded.
“If my life depends on it, if it’s literally the one and only way to save me, then I understand. I mean, I dunno if that’s something that could even happen, but if it is one of those weird space things that happens to people who get really unlucky, I understand if you have to. And I don’t wanna lose those memories, but – like I said, that’s the exception. ‘Cause I’d never, ever force you to watch me die while knowing there’s a way to save me.”
“Okay.”
“And remember that, you. Because if it ever happens, and I really hope it doesn’t, then I’m not gonna be very happy. And I’m gonna be scared, and I’m probably gonna beg you not to, so I’m giving you my consent now. If you absolutely have to, spacem” - she stopped herself - “Doctor. If you’ve gotta do it, if it’s the only way to save me, then I’m sayin’... you can. But please, just… if you can, find another way.”
“I understand,” said the Doctor, and bowed his head. A moment of silent understanding passed between them, and then the Doctor was back to his usual dynamic self. “Now! Let’s have a look at – ”
He swung the monitor round and froze when he saw the screen. Donna tried to analyse that face. It might have been his Something Terrible Is About To Happen face, but it might have been something else, too. There was a raised eyebrow. Not terrible, then. Intrigue.
“Well, well,” the Doctor remarked. “Would you look at that? I think I might have settled some of your anxieties about the company. Seems the whole thing’s come to a pretty neat conclusion.”
“Eh? What’s happened?”
“Take a look.”
The Doctor was reading a newspaper article. Donna read the headline, and beamed.
“Oh – oh, that is brilliant.”
***
AN EXTRACT FROM PRIYA KOHLI’S ONLINE BIOGRAPHY, LAST UPDATED 17 FEBRUARY 2317
Priya Kohli was born on 3 October 2289 in Jammu, where she was raised single-handedly by her mother, a teacher. Kohli moved to Keralafollowing her mother’s death, where she attended college. By the time she started her first job as a secretary, Kohli was pregnant with her only son, Jivika. His father, whose name was never disclosed, was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly after Jivika’s second birthday. Kohli recalled how her perception of her mother changed during this period of her life, in an interview with The News At 24: “Raising a child on your own isn’t easy, not for anyone. It never has been and I wonder if it ever will be. I had always thought that my mother was normal, average, good. But now I realise that she was more than that. She was extraordinary. I wish I could tell her that.”
Kohli faced financial pressure as a single mother, and once Jivika reached school age, she sent him to boarding school so that she could focus on earning a living. “My plan was to work for three years at the company, which would give me enough to put him through college.” [source] Kohli chose to work at OurDays Incorporatedand as such was forced to donate a sum of memories. The only memories which the company would accept were her recollections of her son. As Kohli had already set up a direct debitfrom her account to his college fund, she decided to take the risk of forgetting him in order to secure his future. These details only became public knowledge following the OurDays Incorporated scandal, the timing of which meant that Kohli only served one year at OurDays, after which her memories were returned and she was reunited with her son. Kohli’s role in the trialwas instrumental to the prosecution of the company’s board.
***
AN EXTRACT FROM AN AHK NEWS REPORT ON OURDAYS INC., 19 MAY 2317, 7:30PM
Interviewer – Greg Wes Interviewee – Priya Kohli
WEST: Priya Kohli, thank you for joining us this evening.
KOHLI: It’s a pleasure to be back.
WEST: The last time you spoke to us, Priya, was during the height of the OurDays scandal. Six months later, with the trial far behind us, how satisfied are you with the outcome?
KOHLI: Very satisfied. There is still a long way to come, and I hope it is clear to many that the multinational and interplanetary corporations have been given too much power. But this is a strong start which is uniting people. I think there is a common feeling that something must be done.
WEST: I’d definitely agree with you there, as I’m sure would many of our viewers. But this wasn’t the first time that a company has faced trial for unethical conduct. What was so unique about this case, in your opinion, that made it stick out?
KOHLI: I think… I think that memory is a very delicate and very human thing. It is not given with ease, and to exploit something so natural to our lives is… wrong in a very… very fundamental way.
WEST: Now, Miss Kohli: unfortunately, with the way the world is today, whistleblowing is still frowned upon within large corporations, and is still, many would argue, a very dangerous thing to do, in terms of compromising personal safety. It’s not a decision taken lightly, we’ll say that much, Priya.
KOHLI: I absolutely agree.
WEST: So if I may – what was it that made you chose to compromise your own safety, to put yourself on the line, in order to expose the company’s activities?
KOHLI: I was in a unique position to do so. I had attended every meeting with the board and had taken the minutes every time the CEO was present. Very little with Ms Noble went “off the record”. I had sufficient evidence. I was there when a member of staff dismissed the company’s ethical duties and I was there when the duplication of memories first came to light.
WEST: Yes, of course, but – let’s be honest here – the company’s activities were going to come to light eventually. You must have known that it was only a matter of time. I suppose what I’m asking is this: what made you decide to take it upon yourself? Why did you personally feel an obligation to carry that burden?
KOHLI: I think… I would say… that it was the way they treated me. I wanted to be the person who brought the company to justice because the company had treated me unjustly. I was a spare part. I was just a carrier of messages, a buyer of sandwiches. They treated the products they were selling with more worth than me.
WEST: That’s very understandable. You thought it would be appropriate, almost poetic, for someone OurDays saw as a “nobody” to expose their activities.
KOHLI: They thought that we were all the same. Everyone who wasn’t one of them. People they could take and stash away and rip the memories from.
WEST: The way you put it, I think viewers will agree, this case certainly evokes rather macabre imagery.
KOHLI: But also – there was something else. I would not have had the courage to do this without support. The moment I knew I had to do something was when the new CEO took over. He treated me like dirt. When we went to the printing room, he used to say things to me. He would talk about the way I dressed and how young I was, and that I was “ripe” to be a mother. He liked the word “ripe”.
WEST: That must have been a very difficult experience.
KOHLI: It was, but it made me think of the last CEO.
WEST: Donna Noble, for the benefit of viewers – who disappeared entirely from the public eye before the scandal took place. And you, I believe, defended Noble during the trials? [Kohli thinks very carefully about her answer, pausing for the first time in the interview.]
KOHLI: She made me coffee. I think that must seem like such a small thing to everyone else, but for me it was… something so new. To be treated as a person, with tastes and needs and who sometimes needs to relax myself. She sat with me while we drank coffee and she talked to me as one person to another. I know that Donna Noble was not perfect, but she was caught up in the system just like me. I believe to this day that she was not one of the people responsible for our suffering, that she was not a greedy billionaire like the rest. She was forced into her role just like I was. And because of that, I think, she respected me. And I kept asking myself after she left… who makes the secretary coffee? Who would ever do that? That told me a lot about her. And to know that there were people out there, people like her, gave me the strength to speak up. I knew that someone would listen.
WEST: Remarkable sentiments, remarkable sentiments indeed. The actual fate of Donna Noble is, of course, unknown, and remains under investigation by the authorities. But if you had the chance to speak to her again, what would you say to her?
KOHLI: I think she is alive, and I hope that she is hearing this. I would say to her, thank you, Ms Noble. Thank you for the coffee and for the talk. I can’t speak for Tonya, but I think she would say thank you as well. And… if there’s one thing you can do for me, Ms Noble, after everything, it is this. Remember me. Remember all the good you did. Never forget how important you are to the people around you, and never forget that you are loved.
WEST: That was Priya Kohli. Priya, thank you. I’m sure Donna Noble, if she really is out there, will never forget you.
writer - JANINE RIVERS cover art - JANINE RIVERS story editor - JANINE RIVERS producers - JANINE RIVERS, ED GOUNDREY-SMITH & SAMUEL MALESKI