Prologue
The Palace of the Shavrak-Grinth, Cristelmoneth
“It’s a beautiful day,” said the Doctor, as two of the tribesmen tied him securely to the post of electrocution. Beyond them, and far beyond the majestic doors to the palace which currently stood open, sun set over the cliff-top civilisation.
“Hold on… wait for it.” Tommy struggled and failed to break the bonds tying him to his own post. “Queen?”
The Doctor nodded and grinned, straining to turn and look at Tommy, who rolled his eyes in response.
“It’s nice to know that while I’m being executed, I’ve got the company of a smug Time Lord who gets some sort of hit out of working his way through rock classic references.”
“It’s more fun when they don’t understand it,” whispered the Doctor. A tribesman glared at him. “Come on, admit it. I’m good company.”
“And I’m going slightly mad,” re-joined Tommy, unable to resist. “So what’s supposed to be happening?” He tried once more to wriggle free.
“Don’t try so hard,” said the Doctor. “And cut me some slack, I’m under pressure.” Even Tommy laughed at that one. “Remember that machine I set up? It’ll channel the current away from us. Just as long as that door stays open…”
The prince entered the room and closed the doors behind him.
“Ah.”
“Right, Doctor, at the risk of ruining your punchline, we both need to break free.”
“YOU ARE SENTENCED TO EXECUTION FOR THE CRIME OF SACRILEGE!” barked the priestess, as the prince nodded in approval. “May the Gods have mercy on you.”
“We didn’t know!” urged the Doctor, hoping their translator was a little more efficient at understanding them this time. “We thought it was for guests! We won’t do it again! We respect the Gods!”
“Doctor,” said Tommy, still trying to break free from the bonds. “If I get to make one last joke then let it be this one – you’re my best friend.”
The Doctor nodded and relaxed in his bonds. “I’m sorry…”
A ball of glowing light fell from the high ceilings of the palace and settled in the circle between the Doctor and Tommy.
“WHAT IS THIS?!” asked the priestess, and the Doctor frowned. The light intensified and became a ball of fire, sending the priestess and her altar across the room, and crumbling the columns of the palace. As the bonds loosened and then broke the Doctor pulled Tommy to the floor, shielding them both from the greatest blast.
Coughing, the Doctor stood up again, noticing the ceiling somehow holding itself up. That would fall down too in only a matter of time. “I suppose you could say we are the champions.”
“What the hell was that?” asked Tommy.
“A very advanced message,” deduced the Doctor, reaching for his psychic paper. “Sent by someone with very advanced technology. To us.” He flipped open the wallet.
“What does it say?”
“Coordinates.”
TARDIS, Console Room
“I know the coordinates, but I’m getting a bit rusty, don’t recognise things the way I used to.” The Doctor tapped the coordinates into the TARDIS and waited for the results, then slapped himself in the head for having forgotten as the alpha-numeric data and what it meant came back to him.
“Oh, you’ll like this one Tommy.” Tommy followed the Doctor to the console, intrigued. “You were solving that case with Autumn, weren’t you? That ship in the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, the…”
“Carrier 7.” Tommy wondered how the Doctor knew.
“That’s the one. On its way to the Capital, a place so impressive someone apparently covered up a murder to get there.”
“Well, we never found out.”
“Just trust me, Tommy. Most people would cover up murder to see it.”
“Autumn told me about the Capital. She only got to go when she reached fame.”
“In the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire,” explained the Doctor, wishing it had a shorter name, “there were two legendary planets. The first was Earth, reserved only for natives and preserved by the National Trust. Spoken of in legends; the template for the rest of the Empire. The second was the Capital – the cultural hub. The actual innovation of the Empire. A place for… not always the rich. The place for the lucky.” Tommy noted the Doctor’s choice of words. “Impressive, sophisticated, varied – a place with anything, everything. Imagine it in terms of your time. Take London, New York… take the Amazon Rainforest, and merge them all into one place, sealed off to the rest of the world. And it worked.” He smiled sombrely, piloting the TARDIS as smoothly as he could. “It gave them something to aim for.”
“So that’s where our message is from?”
“Yes. The rainforest, actually.”
“Please tell me I’m not going to be introduced to anthropomorphic creatures.”
“You might be.” The Doctor landed the TARDIS. “I don’t know much about this place. That’s exciting!” He gestured for the door, which Tommy approached more reticently than usual and opened, revealing a reception desk, open-air – a rainforest reception. A sharply-dressed woman with short blonde hair eyed the TARDIS with little more than mild annoyance, avoiding a parrot as it landed on a branch above her. It was day, though the thick canopy could have concealed anything above, and the ground was too far below to see. They were trapped in an organic purgatory, a world between worlds.
“The Doctor?” asked the woman, tapping at a screen so thin it could be missed from some angles.
“Yes,” answered Tommy, giving the Doctor a chance to survey the landscape.
“He’s arrived,” said the woman, holding her finger on the screen and releasing when she stopped speaking. She pressed a button on her desk and a holographic screen appeared in front of Tommy, turning her face a fuzzy blue behind it. “Sign here,” muttered the woman.
“What is it?” asked Tommy, dragging the Doctor over as he started wandering around the back.
“It’s the part where you agree that the Destiny Institute is not responsible for any personal grieving and that decisions made by individuals do not reflect the political views of the institute as a whole.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes and scanned over the agreement, signing off with his finger. The hologram shimmered away a moment after, and a young man in a white lab coat with large, thick-framed glasses ran across the bamboo bridge towards them. The Doctor recognised him as he came closer. “Andy?”
“Doctor.” Andy stopped, panting, and shook the Doctor’s hand. He was suddenly strangely calm, though the Doctor detected a deeper restlessness within. “I’m Andy,” he said, glancing Tommy up and down.
“Tommy,” said Tommy, shaking his hand. “You’ve met the Doctor before?”
“Briefly,” said the Doctor, half explaining to Tommy and half sharing a memory with Andy. “Together we saved V-3-Lime-Six. Well, not just us. Who can forget Autumn? And Rosie.” The Doctor and Andy laughed fondly at the memory.
“I was turned into a Krynoid that day,” recalled Andy, shivering. “It was terrifying but it gave me an… uh, interest. In biology, change and preservation. So shortly after I combined my skills, went to medical school, and qualified to the Destiny Institute, the one place in the Empire interested in merging the digital and the medical, studying preservation in all its forms.”
“Immortality?” queried the Doctor. “Autumn would have approved.”
“Oh,” agreed Andy, nodding. “She would’ve.”
***
Andy led the Doctor across the bamboo bridge and past various laboratories, balconies, conference rooms. Each were definitely rooms, but rather than ceilings they had canopies. Even supplies were delivered along streams, running along channels in the walls. After about five minutes – in which the Doctor learnt that the institute had been going at least five years by the condition of the storage units, and that it banned experimentation on animals (something else Autumn would have approved of) – Andy took the Doctor into his lab, a deck overlooking a gargantuan ceiba pentandra tree. His room was perhaps the busiest of the lot, all plugged in around one central unit, a long tainted glass box in the floor. The Doctor was drawn to it, crouching down and stroking his hand over it.
“When she came to us she refused to work with anyone else,” said Andy, adjusting some controls. “But it was my honour.” He held his hand over a button like the woman in the reception, turning to the Doctor. “I hope she was right about you. You said you were a doctor – now it’s time to put that to use.”
He pressed the button and the glass below the Doctor turned transparent, a light blue shining up and illuminating his face as he looked down at the frozen body of his loyal friend and companion, Autumn Rivers.
“It’s a beautiful day,” said the Doctor, as two of the tribesmen tied him securely to the post of electrocution. Beyond them, and far beyond the majestic doors to the palace which currently stood open, sun set over the cliff-top civilisation.
“Hold on… wait for it.” Tommy struggled and failed to break the bonds tying him to his own post. “Queen?”
The Doctor nodded and grinned, straining to turn and look at Tommy, who rolled his eyes in response.
“It’s nice to know that while I’m being executed, I’ve got the company of a smug Time Lord who gets some sort of hit out of working his way through rock classic references.”
“It’s more fun when they don’t understand it,” whispered the Doctor. A tribesman glared at him. “Come on, admit it. I’m good company.”
“And I’m going slightly mad,” re-joined Tommy, unable to resist. “So what’s supposed to be happening?” He tried once more to wriggle free.
“Don’t try so hard,” said the Doctor. “And cut me some slack, I’m under pressure.” Even Tommy laughed at that one. “Remember that machine I set up? It’ll channel the current away from us. Just as long as that door stays open…”
The prince entered the room and closed the doors behind him.
“Ah.”
“Right, Doctor, at the risk of ruining your punchline, we both need to break free.”
“YOU ARE SENTENCED TO EXECUTION FOR THE CRIME OF SACRILEGE!” barked the priestess, as the prince nodded in approval. “May the Gods have mercy on you.”
“We didn’t know!” urged the Doctor, hoping their translator was a little more efficient at understanding them this time. “We thought it was for guests! We won’t do it again! We respect the Gods!”
“Doctor,” said Tommy, still trying to break free from the bonds. “If I get to make one last joke then let it be this one – you’re my best friend.”
The Doctor nodded and relaxed in his bonds. “I’m sorry…”
A ball of glowing light fell from the high ceilings of the palace and settled in the circle between the Doctor and Tommy.
“WHAT IS THIS?!” asked the priestess, and the Doctor frowned. The light intensified and became a ball of fire, sending the priestess and her altar across the room, and crumbling the columns of the palace. As the bonds loosened and then broke the Doctor pulled Tommy to the floor, shielding them both from the greatest blast.
Coughing, the Doctor stood up again, noticing the ceiling somehow holding itself up. That would fall down too in only a matter of time. “I suppose you could say we are the champions.”
“What the hell was that?” asked Tommy.
“A very advanced message,” deduced the Doctor, reaching for his psychic paper. “Sent by someone with very advanced technology. To us.” He flipped open the wallet.
“What does it say?”
“Coordinates.”
TARDIS, Console Room
“I know the coordinates, but I’m getting a bit rusty, don’t recognise things the way I used to.” The Doctor tapped the coordinates into the TARDIS and waited for the results, then slapped himself in the head for having forgotten as the alpha-numeric data and what it meant came back to him.
“Oh, you’ll like this one Tommy.” Tommy followed the Doctor to the console, intrigued. “You were solving that case with Autumn, weren’t you? That ship in the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, the…”
“Carrier 7.” Tommy wondered how the Doctor knew.
“That’s the one. On its way to the Capital, a place so impressive someone apparently covered up a murder to get there.”
“Well, we never found out.”
“Just trust me, Tommy. Most people would cover up murder to see it.”
“Autumn told me about the Capital. She only got to go when she reached fame.”
“In the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire,” explained the Doctor, wishing it had a shorter name, “there were two legendary planets. The first was Earth, reserved only for natives and preserved by the National Trust. Spoken of in legends; the template for the rest of the Empire. The second was the Capital – the cultural hub. The actual innovation of the Empire. A place for… not always the rich. The place for the lucky.” Tommy noted the Doctor’s choice of words. “Impressive, sophisticated, varied – a place with anything, everything. Imagine it in terms of your time. Take London, New York… take the Amazon Rainforest, and merge them all into one place, sealed off to the rest of the world. And it worked.” He smiled sombrely, piloting the TARDIS as smoothly as he could. “It gave them something to aim for.”
“So that’s where our message is from?”
“Yes. The rainforest, actually.”
“Please tell me I’m not going to be introduced to anthropomorphic creatures.”
“You might be.” The Doctor landed the TARDIS. “I don’t know much about this place. That’s exciting!” He gestured for the door, which Tommy approached more reticently than usual and opened, revealing a reception desk, open-air – a rainforest reception. A sharply-dressed woman with short blonde hair eyed the TARDIS with little more than mild annoyance, avoiding a parrot as it landed on a branch above her. It was day, though the thick canopy could have concealed anything above, and the ground was too far below to see. They were trapped in an organic purgatory, a world between worlds.
“The Doctor?” asked the woman, tapping at a screen so thin it could be missed from some angles.
“Yes,” answered Tommy, giving the Doctor a chance to survey the landscape.
“He’s arrived,” said the woman, holding her finger on the screen and releasing when she stopped speaking. She pressed a button on her desk and a holographic screen appeared in front of Tommy, turning her face a fuzzy blue behind it. “Sign here,” muttered the woman.
“What is it?” asked Tommy, dragging the Doctor over as he started wandering around the back.
“It’s the part where you agree that the Destiny Institute is not responsible for any personal grieving and that decisions made by individuals do not reflect the political views of the institute as a whole.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes and scanned over the agreement, signing off with his finger. The hologram shimmered away a moment after, and a young man in a white lab coat with large, thick-framed glasses ran across the bamboo bridge towards them. The Doctor recognised him as he came closer. “Andy?”
“Doctor.” Andy stopped, panting, and shook the Doctor’s hand. He was suddenly strangely calm, though the Doctor detected a deeper restlessness within. “I’m Andy,” he said, glancing Tommy up and down.
“Tommy,” said Tommy, shaking his hand. “You’ve met the Doctor before?”
“Briefly,” said the Doctor, half explaining to Tommy and half sharing a memory with Andy. “Together we saved V-3-Lime-Six. Well, not just us. Who can forget Autumn? And Rosie.” The Doctor and Andy laughed fondly at the memory.
“I was turned into a Krynoid that day,” recalled Andy, shivering. “It was terrifying but it gave me an… uh, interest. In biology, change and preservation. So shortly after I combined my skills, went to medical school, and qualified to the Destiny Institute, the one place in the Empire interested in merging the digital and the medical, studying preservation in all its forms.”
“Immortality?” queried the Doctor. “Autumn would have approved.”
“Oh,” agreed Andy, nodding. “She would’ve.”
***
Andy led the Doctor across the bamboo bridge and past various laboratories, balconies, conference rooms. Each were definitely rooms, but rather than ceilings they had canopies. Even supplies were delivered along streams, running along channels in the walls. After about five minutes – in which the Doctor learnt that the institute had been going at least five years by the condition of the storage units, and that it banned experimentation on animals (something else Autumn would have approved of) – Andy took the Doctor into his lab, a deck overlooking a gargantuan ceiba pentandra tree. His room was perhaps the busiest of the lot, all plugged in around one central unit, a long tainted glass box in the floor. The Doctor was drawn to it, crouching down and stroking his hand over it.
“When she came to us she refused to work with anyone else,” said Andy, adjusting some controls. “But it was my honour.” He held his hand over a button like the woman in the reception, turning to the Doctor. “I hope she was right about you. You said you were a doctor – now it’s time to put that to use.”
He pressed the button and the glass below the Doctor turned transparent, a light blue shining up and illuminating his face as he looked down at the frozen body of his loyal friend and companion, Autumn Rivers.
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Series 2 - Episode 11
Under Ice
Written by Janine Rivers
“Oh, Autumn, I’m so sorry…” The Doctor pressed his hand against the glass, which he noticed was freezing cold. “Dead?”
“If she was,” answered Andy, “she wouldn’t be here.” He joined the Doctor and Tommy crouching over the body. “Frozen. She was a day from death. We tried everything, and she asked for you. I know how things were left off, but…”
“…she did that deliberately?” asked the Doctor, working it out as he went along. “Obvious now I think about it; she argued with me to protect me from the truth. Didn’t want me to see. That explains everything that day.” He went slowly so that Tommy could work it out at the same pace. ”That was why she was so angry. The old woman must have done this to her.”
“She was okay with the idea of death – at first.” Andy pulled his screens around, flashing up animated genetic diagrams. “But after a while she became determined and terrified, and when she came to us just assumed we could save her. She’d been through a lot – she lived a life between the day she left you and the day she arrived here. I knew some of it. To the rest of the world, of course, she’s presumed dead. But in reality she really didn’t think she could die. And then she realised, well, she could.”
“So she asked for me.” The Doctor looked straight at Autumn, more talking to her than Andy. “She was willing to end our friendship to protect me from the knowledge of what had happened to her. Imagine how frightened she must have been when she asked for me to come back, if she knew what it was going to do to me and had gone to such lengths before.”
“I don’t have to,” replied Andy.
“I can’t guarantee I can manage, if you were unsuccessful.”
“We weren’t,” said Andy, almost offended. “In our aims, we were very successful.” He led the Doctor over to his screen, flicking up a new window; a jumble of some code the Doctor was vaguely familiar with, racing before his eyes at phenomenal speeds. “We did find immortality. We were able to link an external factor – this system – to Autumn’s frozen body, interacting not directly with her brain but with her consciousness.” Andy noticed the Doctor frowning. “Don’t expect me to explain it easily – but trust me, it worked. Right now, due to the specific programming and chemical balance, Autumn Rivers is dreaming the most perfect dream she’s ever dreamt, in a place she wants to be around people she loves. Blissfully unaware. It was a success – we saved Autumn’s mind, as long as the computer system’s life at least. But now our experiment is over, we need your help. It’s only fair that we bring her back, not least to get confirmed results of our experiment.”
“Oh, I see.” The Doctor nodded. “You want her back to make sure she really did dream what you wanted?”
“The organisation does,” corrected Andy. “I worked with Autumn in her final days. I want her back because… well, I don’t have to tell you why someone would want her back. And that’s why I called you here. If Autumn had died, if her mind was inactive and her body obsolete then no, we wouldn’t have summoned you to save her knowing what that might do to you. But the alternative is her living longer than possibly anyone has ever lived before, albeit in the state of an idyllic dream.”
“What you’re saying is,” figured the Doctor, “there’s less pressure on me to save her?”
Andy nodded.
“Well obviously you don’t know me,” retorted the Doctor. “If her mind was inactive and her body obsolete then I could just about live with this tragedy, but knowing that she’s still in there – my Autumn? A woman who lives for and loves every moment, who without complaint makes the decisions that no one else is willing to make, and whose potential will stay cruelly locked away if I fail to save her? It makes me all the more determined. You’ve accomplished a miracle here Andy; well done. But you’ve also left me with a problem – I don’t give up on miracles very easily.”
“Well then.” Andy gestured to the computer station, stepping out the way to let the Doctor take his place. “Let’s get to work.”
***
The Doctor worked away at the terminal for a few minutes, tapping at the keys constantly and furiously, keeping one eye on the dream window. Andy stood back next to Tommy, both feeling slightly useless.
“She was poisoned by the oil of the crashed spacecraft,” observed the Doctor, grimacing. “It had infested the apple she ate. The oil itself isn’t the problem – that’s not to say it’s healthy – but it’s infused with intelligent micro-organisms which carry out preservation tasks. But the tasks aren’t human-compatible. They’ve been working away inside Autumn. While they think they’re fixing a malfunctioning spaceship, they’re tearing a perfectly healthy woman’s internal organs apart.” He glanced again at Autumn. “Agony.”
“That’s why we froze her.”
“But too late.” The Doctor cursed. “You’ve achieved a balance here, and that’s incredible. You’ve achieved a frozen state of grace, but that is our problem. If I touch one switch, the whole thing will fall apart. A miracle is a perfect and impossible thing, and if you change one thing, it stops being perfect. The miracle ends.”
“How can you be sure?” challenged Andy. “Besides, it’s not a miracle, it’s science.”
“Whatever it is, it’s…” The Doctor looked for the words to explain, turning away from the computer station to address Andy and Tommy. “It’s like a glitch, like the whole thing’s… tripping. She’s fluctuating before death. Like a near-death experience, and you’ve preserved that experience. But that’s all you’ve managed – an experience. The second you end that experience, death takes over.”
“There’s got to be something,” persisted Andy. “Can’t you keep trying? We’ve been here minutes-“
“There is nothing!” insisted the Doctor. “Saving her would go against everything – every law of science I’ve ever learnt. There is no saving her. You can preserve that connection you’ve created between machine and consciousness – that essence of Autumn – but you try to bring her back to life and she won’t even live another day. Even in the ice, time’s been ticking away, albeit at a slower rate.”
“You’re saying you can’t save her?”
The realisation hit the Doctor, as if being said out loud suddenly made it real. “I…” He shuddered, and then slacked completely. “Yes,” he uttered, and indicated for Tommy to lead the way out. “We’re going. I’m sorry I couldn’t save her.”
As the Doctor and Tommy walked across the bamboo bridge, Andy looked down sadly at Autumn, cursing the ‘miracle’ he’d created. The greatest accomplishments seemed to have the greatest limitations.
“If she was,” answered Andy, “she wouldn’t be here.” He joined the Doctor and Tommy crouching over the body. “Frozen. She was a day from death. We tried everything, and she asked for you. I know how things were left off, but…”
“…she did that deliberately?” asked the Doctor, working it out as he went along. “Obvious now I think about it; she argued with me to protect me from the truth. Didn’t want me to see. That explains everything that day.” He went slowly so that Tommy could work it out at the same pace. ”That was why she was so angry. The old woman must have done this to her.”
“She was okay with the idea of death – at first.” Andy pulled his screens around, flashing up animated genetic diagrams. “But after a while she became determined and terrified, and when she came to us just assumed we could save her. She’d been through a lot – she lived a life between the day she left you and the day she arrived here. I knew some of it. To the rest of the world, of course, she’s presumed dead. But in reality she really didn’t think she could die. And then she realised, well, she could.”
“So she asked for me.” The Doctor looked straight at Autumn, more talking to her than Andy. “She was willing to end our friendship to protect me from the knowledge of what had happened to her. Imagine how frightened she must have been when she asked for me to come back, if she knew what it was going to do to me and had gone to such lengths before.”
“I don’t have to,” replied Andy.
“I can’t guarantee I can manage, if you were unsuccessful.”
“We weren’t,” said Andy, almost offended. “In our aims, we were very successful.” He led the Doctor over to his screen, flicking up a new window; a jumble of some code the Doctor was vaguely familiar with, racing before his eyes at phenomenal speeds. “We did find immortality. We were able to link an external factor – this system – to Autumn’s frozen body, interacting not directly with her brain but with her consciousness.” Andy noticed the Doctor frowning. “Don’t expect me to explain it easily – but trust me, it worked. Right now, due to the specific programming and chemical balance, Autumn Rivers is dreaming the most perfect dream she’s ever dreamt, in a place she wants to be around people she loves. Blissfully unaware. It was a success – we saved Autumn’s mind, as long as the computer system’s life at least. But now our experiment is over, we need your help. It’s only fair that we bring her back, not least to get confirmed results of our experiment.”
“Oh, I see.” The Doctor nodded. “You want her back to make sure she really did dream what you wanted?”
“The organisation does,” corrected Andy. “I worked with Autumn in her final days. I want her back because… well, I don’t have to tell you why someone would want her back. And that’s why I called you here. If Autumn had died, if her mind was inactive and her body obsolete then no, we wouldn’t have summoned you to save her knowing what that might do to you. But the alternative is her living longer than possibly anyone has ever lived before, albeit in the state of an idyllic dream.”
“What you’re saying is,” figured the Doctor, “there’s less pressure on me to save her?”
Andy nodded.
“Well obviously you don’t know me,” retorted the Doctor. “If her mind was inactive and her body obsolete then I could just about live with this tragedy, but knowing that she’s still in there – my Autumn? A woman who lives for and loves every moment, who without complaint makes the decisions that no one else is willing to make, and whose potential will stay cruelly locked away if I fail to save her? It makes me all the more determined. You’ve accomplished a miracle here Andy; well done. But you’ve also left me with a problem – I don’t give up on miracles very easily.”
“Well then.” Andy gestured to the computer station, stepping out the way to let the Doctor take his place. “Let’s get to work.”
***
The Doctor worked away at the terminal for a few minutes, tapping at the keys constantly and furiously, keeping one eye on the dream window. Andy stood back next to Tommy, both feeling slightly useless.
“She was poisoned by the oil of the crashed spacecraft,” observed the Doctor, grimacing. “It had infested the apple she ate. The oil itself isn’t the problem – that’s not to say it’s healthy – but it’s infused with intelligent micro-organisms which carry out preservation tasks. But the tasks aren’t human-compatible. They’ve been working away inside Autumn. While they think they’re fixing a malfunctioning spaceship, they’re tearing a perfectly healthy woman’s internal organs apart.” He glanced again at Autumn. “Agony.”
“That’s why we froze her.”
“But too late.” The Doctor cursed. “You’ve achieved a balance here, and that’s incredible. You’ve achieved a frozen state of grace, but that is our problem. If I touch one switch, the whole thing will fall apart. A miracle is a perfect and impossible thing, and if you change one thing, it stops being perfect. The miracle ends.”
“How can you be sure?” challenged Andy. “Besides, it’s not a miracle, it’s science.”
“Whatever it is, it’s…” The Doctor looked for the words to explain, turning away from the computer station to address Andy and Tommy. “It’s like a glitch, like the whole thing’s… tripping. She’s fluctuating before death. Like a near-death experience, and you’ve preserved that experience. But that’s all you’ve managed – an experience. The second you end that experience, death takes over.”
“There’s got to be something,” persisted Andy. “Can’t you keep trying? We’ve been here minutes-“
“There is nothing!” insisted the Doctor. “Saving her would go against everything – every law of science I’ve ever learnt. There is no saving her. You can preserve that connection you’ve created between machine and consciousness – that essence of Autumn – but you try to bring her back to life and she won’t even live another day. Even in the ice, time’s been ticking away, albeit at a slower rate.”
“You’re saying you can’t save her?”
The realisation hit the Doctor, as if being said out loud suddenly made it real. “I…” He shuddered, and then slacked completely. “Yes,” he uttered, and indicated for Tommy to lead the way out. “We’re going. I’m sorry I couldn’t save her.”
As the Doctor and Tommy walked across the bamboo bridge, Andy looked down sadly at Autumn, cursing the ‘miracle’ he’d created. The greatest accomplishments seemed to have the greatest limitations.
TARDIS, Console Room
The Doctor slammed the doors of the TARDIS and strode up to the console, dimming the lights slightly. As he piloted his ship, it jerked and jolted. Tommy gripped the rim of a roundel to stop himself from falling over.
“You can’t just leave her,” Tommy said, his voice now weak and desperate. He felt tears rolling down his cheeks. “You can’t…”
“I’m the Doctor, not the wizard.” The Doctor wrenched a lever and walked to the staircase, refusing to look back at Tommy as he put his foot on the first step.
“And I’m a human being, not a bloody idiot!” yelled Tommy. The Doctor froze, turning around involuntarily. He’d never seen Tommy like this before. He’d never even expected to see him like it before.
“I get that I’m still learning,” said Tommy, quieter, “but I am not a child. You’re sad? So am I. Get over it, if it’s what you expect me to do.”
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, realising how he’d been acting. He walked back towards Tommy. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” replied Tommy. “And if you just can’t save her I will understand. But you’ve been travelling for hundreds of years, that’s what you’ve said, and you’ve been doing this a few minutes. So calm down, take a deep breath, and think. Think about anything that’s seemed out of place, anything that’s gone against your understanding of the universe or that might help you. Relive every one of those days and then, when you are absolutely sure, tell me you can’t save her.” Tommy wiped the tears from his cheeks, noticing they’d stopped streaming.
“It’s not a case of remembering something easy,” said the Doctor. Tommy didn’t mind his dismissiveness this time – he felt like the Doctor was speaking to him as an adult to another adult. “That’s never going to happen. But there is something, something which I’ve never dared try before. If this means as much as I think it does to you then we can try it, but you have to accept the risk.”
“Which is?” Tommy had already accepted the risk, of course, even without knowing what it was.
“If this works, it will give us the answer to everything. All of space and time, anything we never understood everything that shouldn’t have been possible. Our whole understanding of the universe hinges on this, and we won’t be able to forget what we’ve discovered. Even if it makes us give up on everything.”
“That’s a risk worth taking,” said Tommy. “If we’re giving up on Autumn, we might as well give up on the universe itself. So.” He straightened his jacket. “What’s your plan?”
***
Autumn sat back on her deckchair, sinking into it, and looked across at the Doctor and Tommy. The Doctor was dressed in his usual attire, but Tommy had shorts and a t-shirt on, and was sipping from a cocktail.
Autumn loved this field. Her field. The field that had defined her childhood, and she was back on it – back home, watching the sunset with the grass between her feet. She’d got there at last. How… didn’t matter. She knew she’d done it. She was sure.
“What are you planning to do with that degree?” asked Autumn. “A first, that’s impressive.”
“They’ll recruit anyone these days,” said Tommy, so casually. “I was thinking of going into the police force. You know, solving crimes.”
“With me?”
Tommy turned to Autumn and smiled. “Yeah. Would that bother you?”
“Well…” Autumn tried to hide her smile. “I think I could live with it after a while.”
***
The Doctor got up an image of where he’d parked the TARDIS on the screen. It looked – based on this two-dimensional representation – like the hold of an aircraft; a low and symmetrical area of grey-walled space in which were scattered a few bags and boxes.
“I’ve always wanted to, but I’ve never willed myself,” said the Doctor. “There was a… point. A point in space-time which had an effect on the space and time around it. It pushed it. Temporal disturbances in that area around that time report whole civilisations being pushed back into their own past, and then there were the gravitational effects – nothing within a two-million mile radius of the point; everything that tried to hit it was pushed away. They scanned the area – nothing. Some said they saw a light, others saw nothing, and ultimately no one got close enough.”
Tommy was entranced, almost bewitched by the description of this unknowable element of the universe.
“So they sent a team out – the Enlightenment Team. A set of experts with differing philosophical and existential views, on-board the Enlightenment Craft, a vessel designed to travel through spatial and temporal disturbances, to hit that centre-point.”
“You call it a centre-point,” noticed Tommy. “What’s it the centre of?”
“Who knows? We found the centre of space and time, that was where the Enlightened Ones lived, and they discovered a secret to the universe – a structure in all things, where a truly random displacement results in the generation of a completely perfect circle. That suggests – design. A design at the heart of the universe. So maybe this, out in the middle of nowhere, is where the designer is hiding.”
“But you’re a time traveller. You could just go and see what they came back with.” Tommy inferred the rest as he went on. “…except they never came back.”
“Not even wreckage. Nothing was thrown back from that point for the rest of known history, and that point threw everything away from it. So what happened to the ship? That’s what I’m here to find out.”
“What we’re here to find out,” corrected Tommy.
The Doctor shook his head. “You’re still a student. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you. The TARDIS will take you home.”
“What? No-“
“I’ll step out onto that ship and she’ll return you to where you came from. If I come back from this, I’ll come back to Earth and get you. We can travel again.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then you’re safe. I’m not risking your life, Tommy.”
“It hasn’t stopped you before.”
“I’m not risking it deliberately. There will be no arguments. You’re staying.”
Tommy sighed but accepted it. They probably taught these protocols at Time Lord training.
“Good luck,” said Tommy.
The Doctor smiled and walked warily up to the door, stepping out slowly into the hold. “Have a fantastic life.”
The Doctor closed the TARDIS door behind him and stepped back, watching his ship dematerialise. As the sound grew quieter he expected it to blend in with the ship’s generator, but the ship was silent. Utterly silent. He suspected if there was nothing at the end of this journey, the silence alone would drive them insane.
“Who the hell are you?” asked a man in a dark green spacesuit behind the Doctor.
“I’m the Doctor,” said the Doctor, holding up his library card. “I’m a Time Lord and I’ve travelled across every corner of the universe. I’ve seen the primitive and the enlightened and walked away from the most advanced civilisation in the universe out of sheer boredom. You can lock me up and send me home or you can let me join your crew and trust – which, this far from home, is the best you can manage. How much more would you like to know?” The Doctor put on his best smile and straightened his jacket.
***
The Destiny Institute, The Capital
“Were you invited?” asked the receptionist, her finger hovering over the button on her desk.
“No,” answered the man, brushing dust off his long, black coat. “I’m here to see one of your patients on a personal visit.”
The receptionist rolled her eyes. “This is the Destiny Institute. There are no personal visits.”
“Actually, I beg to differ.” The man pulled some paperwork out of his pocket and slammed it on the desk, making the receptionist jump. He seemed on edge. “If you want little Jessica to live, I’d seriously suggest granting me a personal visit.”
“How did you find my family? The Institute has secure-”
“I find, when you’re that desperate, things come to you rather easily. Now, for the final time,” requested the man, “I would like to see Autumn Rivers.”
The woman's hand hovered over the panic button under the desk.
The man concentrated. "You will obey me..."
***
Tommy answered the phone. “Yup, sure, I’ll pass it on.”
“It’s your parents,” he said, walking out onto the patio. “They’re coming over at the weekend.”
“My mum…” murmured Autumn. “My dad.”
“Yeah. We see them every week. Remember?”
“Yes… I remember. It just feels like it’s been a while.” Autumn tried to work out when she’d seen them last, but her brain seemed to reject that idea.
“Another cocktail?” asked Tommy, looking towards Autumn and the Doctor.
“Yes please,” answered Autumn. “Look at the Doctor. I think he’s actually nodded off.”
“The sunset’s nearly over. We’ll have to make this one quick.”
“That won’t be a problem.” Autumn smiled at Tommy. She felt a warm, tugging sensation in her heart. It was probably the hot weather.
***
Tommy felt the TARDIS jolt. She wheezed as she landed. Perhaps she missed the Doctor already. Tommy knew he did.
Home. He checked the scanner, but it was reading blank. He wondered if the TARDIS would stay here now – on a street corner, for the rest of time, until people began to walk past it, accept it, and forget it.
He could stay. Explore it some more. Find Autumn’s room and all those photographs she kept. Swim some laps in the swimming pool, maybe.
He shook his head. It was time to go. His gap year was over. He took one last look as he opened the door and stepped out. He turned around and-
“DS Lindsay, wasn’t it?”
Not a street corner after all. More like a spaceship corridor. Or more specifically, Carrier 7. Autumn Rivers’ one and only unsolved case.
Why have you brought me here?
“I just wanted to say,” said Foluke Sall, “we heard about DCI Rivers.” There were no police on the scene; just the crew, it seemed. “News came through from the Capital. Sorry for your loss. You’re still in the department?”
“Um, yeah.” Tommy looked around the ship. “Obviously I am.”
***
The Enlightenment Craft
“This is our team,” said the man in the green spacesuit, leading the Doctor into the main area of the ship. It was a grey and bare room, with plastic chairs arranged in a circle as if for a group counselling session. No wires or safety hatches. Nothing like the Doctor had imagined. At one end of the room was an observation window, about twenty feet high. “Sister Elora,” he said, pointing to a nun in her fifties, garbed in a black dress and veil. The Doctor recognised her from the Church of St Ava, where she’d recognised him before, when he returned Lily-Rose Mavers after the Hunters of Andromeda had used her to trick them.
She got out of this. She remembered me. So why didn’t she tell anyone what she found? Why did no one question it? The more the Doctor learnt, the more questions he had.
“Lady Xenawood, representing the agnostic movement.” The Doctor nodded to a young woman with red hair, who seemed to be dressed like a 21st Century English teacher.
“And lastly me – Professor Swinton.” The man took off his spacesuit helmet, and the Doctor noticed that he was bald, and the oldest of the group, in his sixties at a guess.
“There’s three of you? I thought… I thought there were more.”
“There were many stories put out about this craft, and none of them got it right, luckily for us. No one back in the Empire would even recognise us – that’s how this mission works. Three different religious viewpoints: the theist, the atheist and the agnostic. The philosophies come as a part of our package. The ultimate balance – the oldest balance.”
“Where do I fit into this?” asked the Doctor.
“You tell us.”
***
The Destiny Institute, The Capital
The Master ran his fingers lightly over the controls, taking in notes of the chemical balances and the code configuration as he went. He admired it – it was perfect. But all things which were both perfect and unlikely could be knocked down twice as easily. A pin, made to stand perfectly on its head, could be knocked on its side with the slightest touch.
A dream, so perfect, could end with the slightest press of a…
The Master hit the button, interrupting the code, and began to type his own set of instructions through his pain.
“You’ve earnt this,” he hissed. “I had such high expectations of you when I read up on you after our first encounter, but you left that life behind. You helped the Doctor and you gave up on your mission to save your home and bring it back to its rightful place. You were more remarkable back then, and that got me thinking, Miss Rivers…”
He stopped typing and cocked his head, peering through the glass at Autumn’s unresponsive face.
“What if it was your suffering that made you so strong?” The Master crouched down and pressed his hand against the glass. “So now you’re going to suffer. For as long as it takes. Because I want you to, and I can say it’s good for you. But know, in all of it, how much I hate you.” The Master fell to the floor, and the button on his coat popped off. It split, opening up, and he felt his internal organs spilling out. He tried to contain them as best as possible. A human would be dead by now. For a Time Lord, this was only the beginning of a slow death.
“You did this to me,” he breathed. “You caused for me to ripped open. You’ve brought this upon yourself, Miss Rivers.” He glanced at the changing code on the screen. “All of it.”
***
Night had fallen already. The Doctor had gone up to bed. Tommy sat in the lounge with Autumn, one light left on in the corner of the room.
“I’m going to bed,” said Tommy. “Are you following?”
“In a minute…”
Autumn stared at the wall. Something felt wrong, almost as if…
As if it hadn’t happened yet. She didn’t recognise this sensation.
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
Tommy turned the light off and headed up the staircase, leaving Autumn in the dark room. The moons provided some light, as did the mirror, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at her reflection. At night, it always scared her.
Fear. Something she hadn’t felt in such a long time.
***
“Autumn came here recently?” asked Tommy.
“She revisited the case lots of times,” answered the Captain. “Never discovered an answer though. Think you’ve got anywhere?”
“I’m here to find something,” said Tommy ambiguously. “Or at least I think I am. What if this case means… something more?”
“Eh?”
“Ignore me.” Tommy crouched down and checked under a control panel for no reason whatsoever. There had to be something.
“Do you mind if I go for a walk around? See if I can take in anything new?”
“You’re the boss around here,” said the Captain. Tommy nodded, though sensed, deep down, that maybe he wasn’t.
***
The Enlightenment Craft
“What made you religious then, Sister Elora?”
The Doctor was sat with the group in the circle of chairs. They all faced inwards, concentrating in the silence of the ship, as the stars passed by outside. There were less and less now, as they neared the centre-point.
“You must know.”
“Lily-Rose Mavers mentioned something, when we travelled back in time to catch the Hunters of Andromeda,” recalled the Doctor. “She said that the Creator revealed himself to you. Conclusive evidence, apparently.”
“A Damascus experience felt by billions of people. We all felt God at one moment – all of us. Every religion and non-religion, we felt him in our hearts, minds and souls. And we felt his instructions clearly. Of course people began to deny it after a while…”
“It was hardly conclusive evidence,” muttered the Doctor.
“If you were there it was. If you felt it, you would have known. Have you ever known something you can’t prove? Have you ever just known?”
The Doctor gave the question some thought. “Nothing important enough for me to remember it.”
“There were wars. There was terrorism, for centuries. It all kicked off back in the early days, but as the Empire expanded it got worse. As technology developed, so did the most basic of weaponry. There were millions killed and we lived in fear, every mother and father, every child, of attacks that we couldn’t predict, that any of us could be victims of. Is it any surprise that God decreed enough? They were doing it all in his name.”
“And you’re planning to find him?”
“Society is starting to slip back again. He saved a lot of us for a long time but now the doubters have emerged, it’s time for him to come back. And I feel in my heart that he wants me to find him this time. I’ve been drawn to this mission all my life.”
“I was born after the experience,” added Lady Xenawood. “And my whole life it’s fascinated me. If I can capture that experience our here – well, how will I react? There’s no way of telling.”
“You must have felt it too, Professor,” said the Doctor. “You’re the oldest person here, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I felt it – and every rational bone in my body tells me that it was a scientific phenomenon of imaginable power. I’ve spent the rest of my life determined to search out that power.”
“But at the time – that moment you felt it – you believed?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting,” said the Doctor, more ideas and questions racing through his head. “Interesting.”
***
Autumn wasn’t sure when she felt it. But at one moment, as she sat back on her sofa, she realised she wasn’t alone in her dark living room.
Her heart raced. She stood up, and as she looked onwards she saw him. The man in the cloak.
“No,” whispered Autumn. “Not you. Anyone but you.” The man looked on silently. Autumn could have tried to peer under the hood, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t understand why – it wasn’t as if he could be hiding anything darker.
“What do you want?” she asked. No response. She tried to head to the stairs, to get upstairs to the Doctor and Tommy, but her feet refused to move. “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
“You have… a choice.”
He spoke again in that voice she couldn’t describe, couldn’t picture, despite hearing its words so clearly. The voice that tormented her night after night.
“Tonight is the night that you die.”
“No…” Autumn backed away but hit the wall. “No. I can’t die.”
“You have… a choice,” repeated the man. “Three options.”
Autumn went over the possibilities. Surely survival was one of them. Surely she could choose to survive. She could always choose to survive.
“Option one: asphyxiation.”
Autumn shuddered, and felt her clothes tightening around her, around her neck, as she tried to breathe… they continued to squeeze, harder and harder…
“Option two: drowning.”
The tightening stopped and the room filled with water. The water moved up and up, and it was thick, syrupy. Up and up and up….
“Option three: you burn.”
Suddenly Autumn felt warm. So warm…
“NO!”
It stopped. The man stood there, still refusing to move. Or was he a man at all?
“Make your choice, Autumn Rivers. You have ten seconds.”
“I won’t…” Autumn’s voice shook as she spoke. She could always control it, always. Except here. Except with him. “I won’t…”
“Ten… if you don’t make a choice, the consequences will be worse… nine… eight… you should really make a choice, you know, for your own good… seven… everyone dies one day, you can’t escape it, you never could escape it, and because you tried I had to come for you… six… option one, two, or three, you don’t have long… five…”
Autumn knew she had to make a choice. But saying it out loud secured it. That would be when she died – when she acknowledged that she could. It was too much. It would always be too much.
“Four… make your choice… three… you have to choose… two… final chance.”
Autumn wanted to speak. To say something that would make it right. But no words came out her mouth.
“One.”
Autumn looked around. She was still alive. Nothing had changed. That was… good.
“You should have made your choice, Autumn Rivers.” The man in the cloak faded away, and she was left looking at the mirror, still unnerved by her reflection in the moonlight. The man’s voice echoed back. “You should have made your choice.”
***
The Enlightenment Craft
“I need a man of science,” said the Doctor, turning to the Professor. “I need someone to tell me what to make of this.” The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out the microchip. “This code was delivered to Earth by the Master, albeit involuntarily. It’s important but I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve never seen the language before and my TARDIS recognises every language in the universe.
The Professor took the chip off the Doctor and studied it closely. “That’s because it’s manufactured by the government. I recognise it. The code itself sets out the conventions of the language in its early lines, which is what lets you execute it. No wonder you couldn’t make sense of it, that’s the point. You need one of our computers to create the language so it can be read.”
“So what is it? You said execute. That means it does something.”
“Only a few of these were made, for very specific and advanced purposes. Ever heard of the Planet Makers?”
The Doctor grimaced and nodded reluctantly.
“When their enterprise was handed over to the government, they used these chips to carry out instructions on how to build more advanced planets. That’s the kind of instruction you’re talking about – colossal. I’ve seen all of the chips before but never this one.”
“It happened to fall into my hands,” remarked the Doctor, “and I ended up on this ship, with you of all people, heading to discover the truth about the universe. That’s a little more than a coincidence, don’t you think? What if this code…” the Doctor stared suspiciously at the chip, “is the key to everything?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“No!” Sister Elora stood up. “You can’t, it could compromise the whole mission.”
“God is in the detail, Elora,” said the Professor. “Look at it.” He held the chip between his fingers. “We have the computer.” He clicked his fingers and a computer terminal – bulky and old-fashioned – emerged from the ground in the centre of the circle of chairs.
PLEASE INSERT MICROCHIP
“We haven’t got weapons of mass destruction on this ship. What harm can it do?”
Sister Elora reluctantly sat back down, as the Professor got up and inserted the microchip in the slot on the computer tower.
READING CODE
The Doctor sat forward, curious.
FORMING LANGUAGE DATABASE
“What are you?” whispered the Doctor. “And why did you end up in my hands?”
DATABASE COMPLETE
TAP SCREEN TO PROCEED
The Doctor looked around the room. Everyone nodded, secretly terrified. The Doctor leant forward and tapped the screen.
EXECUTING…
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The Professor frowned, not recognising the glitch.
-
-
-
-
I DON’T UNDERSTAND
“What?” The Doctor read over the sentence again. “Does it mean it couldn’t read the code?”
“No,” breathed the Professor, looking like he was witnessing a spectre, not a computer code. “No, it doesn’t.”
WHERE AM I?
“Oh my God.” Lady Xenawood covered her mouth. “It’s sentient.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” cried Sister Elora. “It’s just an illusion. It’s been programmed to say that. It’s a cheap trick.”
“By the government?” argued the Professor.
WHAT AM I?
The Doctor stood up and placed his hand on the computer.
“What can you see?”
Sister Elora huffed. “No you’re just being ridic-“
I CAN SEE YOU
“How many fingers am I holding up?” The Doctor held up three fingers.
THREE
“That’s impossible,” gasped Sister Elora.
“Tell me…” pressed the Doctor. “What do you feel?”
I…
-
-
I… FEEL
I FEEL.
“It’s alive,” murmured the Doctor. “That’s what your government are hiding from you. They’ve got the code to life itself.”
HELP ME
HELP ME
HELP ME
***
Autumn was outside, in her garden. She couldn’t remember how she got there. It was still night, the sky pitch black, and no lights beyond her garden.
She felt that shiver up her spine. He was there again. This time she didn’t dare get a full glimpse, and instead caught the man out the corner of her eye. As calmly as she could, she approached the door and tried to push it open, but it was jammed. Locked from the inside.
“You should have chosen,” said the man. Autumn desperately wrestled with the door handle to get it open. “Now you will pay the price.”
The door swung open, knocking Autumn to the ground. She got up again and ran inside, heading up the staircase as quickly as she could, and up the next staircase, to find the Doctor and Tommy.
When she reached the top of the stairs she knew something was wrong. Tommy’s door was wide open and his room was empty, and a bedside light was on in the Doctor’s room, his door ajar. It could have meant anything, but somehow Autumn knew: this was her fault.
Slowly, trembling, Autumn wandered into the Doctor’s room. He was shaking on the bed, his skin paler than the bedsheets, and Tommy was holding him up as much as possible.
“A-Autumn…” trembled the Doctor.
“What happened?”
“It was the price,” said Tommy. “The hooded man said one of us had to die because you wouldn’t. The Doctor agreed. He knew it would save you.”
“Oh my God…”
Autumn stood over the bed as the Doctor looked up at her, trying but failing to force a smile as he writhed and jerked in agony.
“It won’t be easy for him,” continued Tommy. “He had to take a poison to stop him regenerating. Now he’s dying like this.”
Autumn sat on the edge of the bed and held the Doctor in her arms, keeping him still. His eyes looked up at her, pleading.
“I’m sorry,” uttered Autumn. “I’m so sorry.”
And the Doctor died, still looking up at Autumn, his sad and desperate eyes becoming an accusation.
“Autumn, I’m sorry,” said Tommy. “But I can’t go on. Not after this.”
“What do you mean?” Autumn laid the Doctor’s body on the bed.
Tommy walked up to the window and opened it. “It’s my fault.”
“No, don’t say that. It’s my fault-“
“Yes. That’s what I mean, and because of that, it’s my fault.” Tommy pushed the window open wide. “I wish I was a better person, because… I can’t forgive you for this.”
“I-“
“Ever,” interjected Tommy. “I’m sorry, but I’ll never be able to forgive you. And I can’t go on living like that.”
“Tommy, please-“
Tommy put his foot up on the radiator to ease him up onto the windowsill.
“Oh God, no-“
Autumn ran up to the window and tried to get Tommy down, pulling at his leg, but Tommy pushed her away. Autumn reached out her hand again as she stood up, but it hid the windowsill. Tommy had already jumped, from the third floor.
Autumn left the room instantly, launching herself down the stairs as quickly as she could. The front door opened straight away and she ran onto the street. The air was cold and biting, and Tommy’s body was strewn across the pavement.
“No, Tommy!” cried Autumn, running up and clutching the body. She tried to hold him in her arms as she had the Doctor, but his neck was broken, and his head hung loosely from his body. “Tommy, please…”
And there he was again. The man in the cloak, standing over her, now so much taller, and silent. Silent and still, the spectre in the street – the accuser.
“Help me,” begged Autumn. “Please help me.”
But he just stood there, not moving an inch, staring down at Autumn from far beneath his hood. No one was coming for her now, and she began to understand.
This was what she got for fighting death.
***
The Destiny Institute
The Master smiled as he watched his actions play out on the screen, Autumn’s thoughts translated into occasionally-comprehensible lines of emotion.
“What are you doing?” Andy walked into the lab with a cup of coffee and put it down on the table, glancing at the code window and recognising the change straight away.
“You know, hypothetically, with what you’ve done, you can suspend someone in a dream state for eternity – only hypothetically of course.” The Master covered his intestines with his coat and forced himself up. “But if you were to kill them, it’s possible that by some freak of nature, their consciousness would remain trapped in the point between nature and technology, even after both wear out. That’s the abstract for you.” As Andy stepped closer, the Master pulled out a gun. “The thing is, with dreams, when they turn into nightmares you wake up as they reach their peak. But no one’s ever gone on dreaming after a nightmare. If she’s having nightmares and were to die in that state, she could be trapped there for eternity. Perhaps that’s where our understanding of hell came from.”
“You’re insane.”
“Exactly. So you’d better do as I say.”
Andy considered, then leapt forward, reaching for the Master’s gun. Predicting this, he used all his strength to jump aside and fired a shot at the computer terminal, and another at the generator next to Autumn. It exploded next to Andy and he tripped, falling on the floor next to Autumn’s glass box.
“Whoops.” The Master grimaced. “Well try to think about it like this – at least you’re not her.”
He lifted his gun again and fired one last shot into Andy’s head. Andy dropped dead onto the floor.
“Oh dear.” The Master felt dizzy. He was losing consciousness, a little sooner than he had expected. The fall must have taken it out of him. “Oh, no. Not now. I’m not ready…”
***
The Enlightenment Craft
“We’re further than anyone’s ever been before.” The Professor stood at the observation window looking out at the dark, starless space. In the distance was what looked like a cluster – a swirling blue-green cloud in which was enclosed a bright white light. The cameras hadn’t shown this, but here it was.
“A miracle,” said Sister Elora. “He’s showing us the way.”
The Doctor left the computer for a second and joined them at the edge of the craft.
“I wanted this more than anything. Now I’m beginning to feel like it was all a big mistake.”
“You’re not the only one,” murmured Lady Xenawood.
“Doctor,” began the Professor, “I think you were always headed here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you turn up on my ship carrying the code to basic life, out of sheer coincidence. I don’t know why this is happening, but I’m sure of it now. I was wrong this whole time. This isn’t about our empire, or even science – for some reason, this all has something to do with you.”
***
Tommy scanned the spaceship corridors again and coughed as a cloud of gas from a pipe in the wall wafted past him. He was willing to bet by now that this place hadn’t been safety-checked.
He stopped, taken up to the door he’d reached before. Just the engines on the other side. That’s what he’d remembered being told. The system was automatic: once the door was opened, the ship stopped moving. The ship was still moving, therefore the door had never been opened. But this time, he was drawn to it.
Why?
The urge to push was itching his mind, as if someone was telling him from afar, commanding that he just gave the door one little push.
I’m the boss around here. What harm can it do?
He pushed it, expecting nothing to happen.
The door clicked open to his touch. Someone wants me to see this.
He swung the door open and stared in at what he thought was the engine room and covered his mouth, feeling sick.
There was one terrible thought which had never occurred to him throughout all his travels with the Doctor and it should have done.
It should have done.
“Oh, no…”
***
Autumn was running. She didn’t know how long she’d been running, or where she was running to, but the compulsion was overwhelming.
She was in a corridor, rather like an underpass; concrete walls and floor, lit by some distant light. As she continued running, she hit a wall – but not a dead end. On the wall was a door, clean and white, like a hotel-room door. She tried the doorknob but it refused to open.
Turning around, she sensed it again, for the final time. Her fears were first confirmed by his shadow from around the corner, large and dark, cast against the wall. Autumn tried the door again, and pushed it, but it refused to budge. She knew it would refuse to budge as long as he willed it to. As the cloaked man stopped at a distance, Autumn gave up and slumped against the door.
“Have you ever heard it said,” began the hooded man, “that death is a door? Well it’s true. Everyone knows. That fact was written into your souls from the day you were born. Would you like to know the big secret?”
Autumn simply looked on at the hooded man.
“You don’t have the key,” he said. “None of you will ever make it to the door. You were never meant for eternity. Your lives aren’t just fleeting… they’re insignificant.” His voice was becoming a roar. Autumn could begin to make it out, describe it. “You mean nothing, Autumn Rivers. You are so tiny to the universe. Now it’s time it swallows you up.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Autumn, finally starting to acknowledge her fate.
“Option three.”
Option three… Autumn cast her mind back – and remembered.
“No,” panted Autumn. “No, please, don’t!”
The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of matches. He struck a match and held it out.
“No…”
The match dropped out of his hand and hit the floor.
“NO!”
The fire started instantly, building up so high that the hooded man was now blocked out entirely. As well as moving up it moved forwards, getting closer to Autumn, as she turned and used the last of her strength to bang furiously on the door.
“HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP ME! OH MY GOD, SOMEONE-“
The fire was moving closer now, rising up in height as it went, only a few inches from Autumn-
“THERE’S A FIRE, I’M GOING TO – AARRGHH!”
***
The Enlightenment Craft
The cluster was closer now, and the space around it blurred and twisted. As the Doctor and the others tried to make it out, they found themselves unable to describe it. Yet they saw it, and almost understood it.
“What are you, universe?” asked the Doctor. “What do you want with me?”
HELP ME
HELP ME
HELP ME
-
-
SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED
The Doctor turned around to check he’d heard that correctly.
“Please tell me it just means the computer terminal,” murmured Lady Xenawood.
“Everything in this vessel is connected to the mainframe?” checked the Doctor.
“Yes,” answered the Professor.
“Then I think it means the ship.”
VESSEL DESTRUCTING IN 10
“How far are we from the centre-point?” asked the Doctor.
“At our speed, twenty minutes.”
“I don’t care how much fuel you’ve got. I’m using it all. Captain?”
The Professor nodded and clicked his fingers. Just as the computer tower had emerged from the floor, this time a steering wheel and a panel of switches were raised.
9
“Everyone,” warned the Doctor, “hold on tight.”
The Doctor pulled out his sonic and buzzed it over the controls. Sparks flew off, and the ship suddenly started making a sound of its own; the furious whirling and roaring of the best engines in the empire, at full blast.
“I’ve been saving this universe for hundreds of years, and never once have I asked for an explanation,” said the Doctor, getting angrier. “Well now, I’ve had enough. You take my best friend from me and expect me to roll over and accept it? If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to find out the truth!”
The Doctor gripped the wheel and the vessel jerked downwards towards the centre-point. The crew were thrown backwards, and kept a tight hold of the railings they were gripping on to.
8
“Come on, come on…” urged the Doctor.
7
The Doctor got the unsettling sense that the countdown was accelerating.
***
“HELP ME!” cried Autumn as the fire reached her. It was like no pain she’d ever felt before – a splitting, searing agony that ripped through her whole body. As she looked down, her whole form was disintegrating.
She screamed.
***
6
The centre-point was closer, and the whole of space around them now was bending and blurring.
5
The crew covered their eyes and the Doctor looked onwards, almost blinded by the light.
4
The hum of the engines got louder, and a warning siren sounded.
3
“I’m sorry Charlotte…” murmured the Professor.
2
Sister Elora clasped her hands together in prayer.
1
The light touched the ship, and darkness of space was finally away from them. They were in with it – the clouds, the blur, and the light.
That light. The Doctor began to realise. There’s something in the light.
SELF-DESTRUCT
The Enlightenment Ship went up in a ball of fire, leaving no wreckage larger than a loose button from the control panel.
***
The Destiny Institute
The Master tried his best to stay awake, but he was slipping away, like some force was dragging him to the floor. He knew that the second he slumped, he would close his eyes and die.
He stared down at the smashed glass, at Autumn’s bloody, dead face, and at Andy’s next to him. Strangely poetic. He imagined both of them had been fond of each other, as colleagues, so it was fitting that he gave them this moment.
Suspended in air, a hologram of the code was ticking over, about to flick off, but cataloguing, just by following its protocols, the final moments of Autumn Rivers’ life – or the beginning of an eternity. It was impossible to tell. Either way, this would be the last thing Autumn Rivers would ever know. This was what agony looked like, translated and shortened into simple sentences.
Agh.
No.
Argh.
Argh.
Help me.
-
-
The Doctor slammed the doors of the TARDIS and strode up to the console, dimming the lights slightly. As he piloted his ship, it jerked and jolted. Tommy gripped the rim of a roundel to stop himself from falling over.
“You can’t just leave her,” Tommy said, his voice now weak and desperate. He felt tears rolling down his cheeks. “You can’t…”
“I’m the Doctor, not the wizard.” The Doctor wrenched a lever and walked to the staircase, refusing to look back at Tommy as he put his foot on the first step.
“And I’m a human being, not a bloody idiot!” yelled Tommy. The Doctor froze, turning around involuntarily. He’d never seen Tommy like this before. He’d never even expected to see him like it before.
“I get that I’m still learning,” said Tommy, quieter, “but I am not a child. You’re sad? So am I. Get over it, if it’s what you expect me to do.”
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, realising how he’d been acting. He walked back towards Tommy. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” replied Tommy. “And if you just can’t save her I will understand. But you’ve been travelling for hundreds of years, that’s what you’ve said, and you’ve been doing this a few minutes. So calm down, take a deep breath, and think. Think about anything that’s seemed out of place, anything that’s gone against your understanding of the universe or that might help you. Relive every one of those days and then, when you are absolutely sure, tell me you can’t save her.” Tommy wiped the tears from his cheeks, noticing they’d stopped streaming.
“It’s not a case of remembering something easy,” said the Doctor. Tommy didn’t mind his dismissiveness this time – he felt like the Doctor was speaking to him as an adult to another adult. “That’s never going to happen. But there is something, something which I’ve never dared try before. If this means as much as I think it does to you then we can try it, but you have to accept the risk.”
“Which is?” Tommy had already accepted the risk, of course, even without knowing what it was.
“If this works, it will give us the answer to everything. All of space and time, anything we never understood everything that shouldn’t have been possible. Our whole understanding of the universe hinges on this, and we won’t be able to forget what we’ve discovered. Even if it makes us give up on everything.”
“That’s a risk worth taking,” said Tommy. “If we’re giving up on Autumn, we might as well give up on the universe itself. So.” He straightened his jacket. “What’s your plan?”
***
Autumn sat back on her deckchair, sinking into it, and looked across at the Doctor and Tommy. The Doctor was dressed in his usual attire, but Tommy had shorts and a t-shirt on, and was sipping from a cocktail.
Autumn loved this field. Her field. The field that had defined her childhood, and she was back on it – back home, watching the sunset with the grass between her feet. She’d got there at last. How… didn’t matter. She knew she’d done it. She was sure.
“What are you planning to do with that degree?” asked Autumn. “A first, that’s impressive.”
“They’ll recruit anyone these days,” said Tommy, so casually. “I was thinking of going into the police force. You know, solving crimes.”
“With me?”
Tommy turned to Autumn and smiled. “Yeah. Would that bother you?”
“Well…” Autumn tried to hide her smile. “I think I could live with it after a while.”
***
The Doctor got up an image of where he’d parked the TARDIS on the screen. It looked – based on this two-dimensional representation – like the hold of an aircraft; a low and symmetrical area of grey-walled space in which were scattered a few bags and boxes.
“I’ve always wanted to, but I’ve never willed myself,” said the Doctor. “There was a… point. A point in space-time which had an effect on the space and time around it. It pushed it. Temporal disturbances in that area around that time report whole civilisations being pushed back into their own past, and then there were the gravitational effects – nothing within a two-million mile radius of the point; everything that tried to hit it was pushed away. They scanned the area – nothing. Some said they saw a light, others saw nothing, and ultimately no one got close enough.”
Tommy was entranced, almost bewitched by the description of this unknowable element of the universe.
“So they sent a team out – the Enlightenment Team. A set of experts with differing philosophical and existential views, on-board the Enlightenment Craft, a vessel designed to travel through spatial and temporal disturbances, to hit that centre-point.”
“You call it a centre-point,” noticed Tommy. “What’s it the centre of?”
“Who knows? We found the centre of space and time, that was where the Enlightened Ones lived, and they discovered a secret to the universe – a structure in all things, where a truly random displacement results in the generation of a completely perfect circle. That suggests – design. A design at the heart of the universe. So maybe this, out in the middle of nowhere, is where the designer is hiding.”
“But you’re a time traveller. You could just go and see what they came back with.” Tommy inferred the rest as he went on. “…except they never came back.”
“Not even wreckage. Nothing was thrown back from that point for the rest of known history, and that point threw everything away from it. So what happened to the ship? That’s what I’m here to find out.”
“What we’re here to find out,” corrected Tommy.
The Doctor shook his head. “You’re still a student. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you. The TARDIS will take you home.”
“What? No-“
“I’ll step out onto that ship and she’ll return you to where you came from. If I come back from this, I’ll come back to Earth and get you. We can travel again.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then you’re safe. I’m not risking your life, Tommy.”
“It hasn’t stopped you before.”
“I’m not risking it deliberately. There will be no arguments. You’re staying.”
Tommy sighed but accepted it. They probably taught these protocols at Time Lord training.
“Good luck,” said Tommy.
The Doctor smiled and walked warily up to the door, stepping out slowly into the hold. “Have a fantastic life.”
The Doctor closed the TARDIS door behind him and stepped back, watching his ship dematerialise. As the sound grew quieter he expected it to blend in with the ship’s generator, but the ship was silent. Utterly silent. He suspected if there was nothing at the end of this journey, the silence alone would drive them insane.
“Who the hell are you?” asked a man in a dark green spacesuit behind the Doctor.
“I’m the Doctor,” said the Doctor, holding up his library card. “I’m a Time Lord and I’ve travelled across every corner of the universe. I’ve seen the primitive and the enlightened and walked away from the most advanced civilisation in the universe out of sheer boredom. You can lock me up and send me home or you can let me join your crew and trust – which, this far from home, is the best you can manage. How much more would you like to know?” The Doctor put on his best smile and straightened his jacket.
***
The Destiny Institute, The Capital
“Were you invited?” asked the receptionist, her finger hovering over the button on her desk.
“No,” answered the man, brushing dust off his long, black coat. “I’m here to see one of your patients on a personal visit.”
The receptionist rolled her eyes. “This is the Destiny Institute. There are no personal visits.”
“Actually, I beg to differ.” The man pulled some paperwork out of his pocket and slammed it on the desk, making the receptionist jump. He seemed on edge. “If you want little Jessica to live, I’d seriously suggest granting me a personal visit.”
“How did you find my family? The Institute has secure-”
“I find, when you’re that desperate, things come to you rather easily. Now, for the final time,” requested the man, “I would like to see Autumn Rivers.”
The woman's hand hovered over the panic button under the desk.
The man concentrated. "You will obey me..."
***
Tommy answered the phone. “Yup, sure, I’ll pass it on.”
“It’s your parents,” he said, walking out onto the patio. “They’re coming over at the weekend.”
“My mum…” murmured Autumn. “My dad.”
“Yeah. We see them every week. Remember?”
“Yes… I remember. It just feels like it’s been a while.” Autumn tried to work out when she’d seen them last, but her brain seemed to reject that idea.
“Another cocktail?” asked Tommy, looking towards Autumn and the Doctor.
“Yes please,” answered Autumn. “Look at the Doctor. I think he’s actually nodded off.”
“The sunset’s nearly over. We’ll have to make this one quick.”
“That won’t be a problem.” Autumn smiled at Tommy. She felt a warm, tugging sensation in her heart. It was probably the hot weather.
***
Tommy felt the TARDIS jolt. She wheezed as she landed. Perhaps she missed the Doctor already. Tommy knew he did.
Home. He checked the scanner, but it was reading blank. He wondered if the TARDIS would stay here now – on a street corner, for the rest of time, until people began to walk past it, accept it, and forget it.
He could stay. Explore it some more. Find Autumn’s room and all those photographs she kept. Swim some laps in the swimming pool, maybe.
He shook his head. It was time to go. His gap year was over. He took one last look as he opened the door and stepped out. He turned around and-
“DS Lindsay, wasn’t it?”
Not a street corner after all. More like a spaceship corridor. Or more specifically, Carrier 7. Autumn Rivers’ one and only unsolved case.
Why have you brought me here?
“I just wanted to say,” said Foluke Sall, “we heard about DCI Rivers.” There were no police on the scene; just the crew, it seemed. “News came through from the Capital. Sorry for your loss. You’re still in the department?”
“Um, yeah.” Tommy looked around the ship. “Obviously I am.”
***
The Enlightenment Craft
“This is our team,” said the man in the green spacesuit, leading the Doctor into the main area of the ship. It was a grey and bare room, with plastic chairs arranged in a circle as if for a group counselling session. No wires or safety hatches. Nothing like the Doctor had imagined. At one end of the room was an observation window, about twenty feet high. “Sister Elora,” he said, pointing to a nun in her fifties, garbed in a black dress and veil. The Doctor recognised her from the Church of St Ava, where she’d recognised him before, when he returned Lily-Rose Mavers after the Hunters of Andromeda had used her to trick them.
She got out of this. She remembered me. So why didn’t she tell anyone what she found? Why did no one question it? The more the Doctor learnt, the more questions he had.
“Lady Xenawood, representing the agnostic movement.” The Doctor nodded to a young woman with red hair, who seemed to be dressed like a 21st Century English teacher.
“And lastly me – Professor Swinton.” The man took off his spacesuit helmet, and the Doctor noticed that he was bald, and the oldest of the group, in his sixties at a guess.
“There’s three of you? I thought… I thought there were more.”
“There were many stories put out about this craft, and none of them got it right, luckily for us. No one back in the Empire would even recognise us – that’s how this mission works. Three different religious viewpoints: the theist, the atheist and the agnostic. The philosophies come as a part of our package. The ultimate balance – the oldest balance.”
“Where do I fit into this?” asked the Doctor.
“You tell us.”
***
The Destiny Institute, The Capital
The Master ran his fingers lightly over the controls, taking in notes of the chemical balances and the code configuration as he went. He admired it – it was perfect. But all things which were both perfect and unlikely could be knocked down twice as easily. A pin, made to stand perfectly on its head, could be knocked on its side with the slightest touch.
A dream, so perfect, could end with the slightest press of a…
The Master hit the button, interrupting the code, and began to type his own set of instructions through his pain.
“You’ve earnt this,” he hissed. “I had such high expectations of you when I read up on you after our first encounter, but you left that life behind. You helped the Doctor and you gave up on your mission to save your home and bring it back to its rightful place. You were more remarkable back then, and that got me thinking, Miss Rivers…”
He stopped typing and cocked his head, peering through the glass at Autumn’s unresponsive face.
“What if it was your suffering that made you so strong?” The Master crouched down and pressed his hand against the glass. “So now you’re going to suffer. For as long as it takes. Because I want you to, and I can say it’s good for you. But know, in all of it, how much I hate you.” The Master fell to the floor, and the button on his coat popped off. It split, opening up, and he felt his internal organs spilling out. He tried to contain them as best as possible. A human would be dead by now. For a Time Lord, this was only the beginning of a slow death.
“You did this to me,” he breathed. “You caused for me to ripped open. You’ve brought this upon yourself, Miss Rivers.” He glanced at the changing code on the screen. “All of it.”
***
Night had fallen already. The Doctor had gone up to bed. Tommy sat in the lounge with Autumn, one light left on in the corner of the room.
“I’m going to bed,” said Tommy. “Are you following?”
“In a minute…”
Autumn stared at the wall. Something felt wrong, almost as if…
As if it hadn’t happened yet. She didn’t recognise this sensation.
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
Tommy turned the light off and headed up the staircase, leaving Autumn in the dark room. The moons provided some light, as did the mirror, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at her reflection. At night, it always scared her.
Fear. Something she hadn’t felt in such a long time.
***
“Autumn came here recently?” asked Tommy.
“She revisited the case lots of times,” answered the Captain. “Never discovered an answer though. Think you’ve got anywhere?”
“I’m here to find something,” said Tommy ambiguously. “Or at least I think I am. What if this case means… something more?”
“Eh?”
“Ignore me.” Tommy crouched down and checked under a control panel for no reason whatsoever. There had to be something.
“Do you mind if I go for a walk around? See if I can take in anything new?”
“You’re the boss around here,” said the Captain. Tommy nodded, though sensed, deep down, that maybe he wasn’t.
***
The Enlightenment Craft
“What made you religious then, Sister Elora?”
The Doctor was sat with the group in the circle of chairs. They all faced inwards, concentrating in the silence of the ship, as the stars passed by outside. There were less and less now, as they neared the centre-point.
“You must know.”
“Lily-Rose Mavers mentioned something, when we travelled back in time to catch the Hunters of Andromeda,” recalled the Doctor. “She said that the Creator revealed himself to you. Conclusive evidence, apparently.”
“A Damascus experience felt by billions of people. We all felt God at one moment – all of us. Every religion and non-religion, we felt him in our hearts, minds and souls. And we felt his instructions clearly. Of course people began to deny it after a while…”
“It was hardly conclusive evidence,” muttered the Doctor.
“If you were there it was. If you felt it, you would have known. Have you ever known something you can’t prove? Have you ever just known?”
The Doctor gave the question some thought. “Nothing important enough for me to remember it.”
“There were wars. There was terrorism, for centuries. It all kicked off back in the early days, but as the Empire expanded it got worse. As technology developed, so did the most basic of weaponry. There were millions killed and we lived in fear, every mother and father, every child, of attacks that we couldn’t predict, that any of us could be victims of. Is it any surprise that God decreed enough? They were doing it all in his name.”
“And you’re planning to find him?”
“Society is starting to slip back again. He saved a lot of us for a long time but now the doubters have emerged, it’s time for him to come back. And I feel in my heart that he wants me to find him this time. I’ve been drawn to this mission all my life.”
“I was born after the experience,” added Lady Xenawood. “And my whole life it’s fascinated me. If I can capture that experience our here – well, how will I react? There’s no way of telling.”
“You must have felt it too, Professor,” said the Doctor. “You’re the oldest person here, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I felt it – and every rational bone in my body tells me that it was a scientific phenomenon of imaginable power. I’ve spent the rest of my life determined to search out that power.”
“But at the time – that moment you felt it – you believed?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting,” said the Doctor, more ideas and questions racing through his head. “Interesting.”
***
Autumn wasn’t sure when she felt it. But at one moment, as she sat back on her sofa, she realised she wasn’t alone in her dark living room.
Her heart raced. She stood up, and as she looked onwards she saw him. The man in the cloak.
“No,” whispered Autumn. “Not you. Anyone but you.” The man looked on silently. Autumn could have tried to peer under the hood, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t understand why – it wasn’t as if he could be hiding anything darker.
“What do you want?” she asked. No response. She tried to head to the stairs, to get upstairs to the Doctor and Tommy, but her feet refused to move. “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
“You have… a choice.”
He spoke again in that voice she couldn’t describe, couldn’t picture, despite hearing its words so clearly. The voice that tormented her night after night.
“Tonight is the night that you die.”
“No…” Autumn backed away but hit the wall. “No. I can’t die.”
“You have… a choice,” repeated the man. “Three options.”
Autumn went over the possibilities. Surely survival was one of them. Surely she could choose to survive. She could always choose to survive.
“Option one: asphyxiation.”
Autumn shuddered, and felt her clothes tightening around her, around her neck, as she tried to breathe… they continued to squeeze, harder and harder…
“Option two: drowning.”
The tightening stopped and the room filled with water. The water moved up and up, and it was thick, syrupy. Up and up and up….
“Option three: you burn.”
Suddenly Autumn felt warm. So warm…
“NO!”
It stopped. The man stood there, still refusing to move. Or was he a man at all?
“Make your choice, Autumn Rivers. You have ten seconds.”
“I won’t…” Autumn’s voice shook as she spoke. She could always control it, always. Except here. Except with him. “I won’t…”
“Ten… if you don’t make a choice, the consequences will be worse… nine… eight… you should really make a choice, you know, for your own good… seven… everyone dies one day, you can’t escape it, you never could escape it, and because you tried I had to come for you… six… option one, two, or three, you don’t have long… five…”
Autumn knew she had to make a choice. But saying it out loud secured it. That would be when she died – when she acknowledged that she could. It was too much. It would always be too much.
“Four… make your choice… three… you have to choose… two… final chance.”
Autumn wanted to speak. To say something that would make it right. But no words came out her mouth.
“One.”
Autumn looked around. She was still alive. Nothing had changed. That was… good.
“You should have made your choice, Autumn Rivers.” The man in the cloak faded away, and she was left looking at the mirror, still unnerved by her reflection in the moonlight. The man’s voice echoed back. “You should have made your choice.”
***
The Enlightenment Craft
“I need a man of science,” said the Doctor, turning to the Professor. “I need someone to tell me what to make of this.” The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out the microchip. “This code was delivered to Earth by the Master, albeit involuntarily. It’s important but I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve never seen the language before and my TARDIS recognises every language in the universe.
The Professor took the chip off the Doctor and studied it closely. “That’s because it’s manufactured by the government. I recognise it. The code itself sets out the conventions of the language in its early lines, which is what lets you execute it. No wonder you couldn’t make sense of it, that’s the point. You need one of our computers to create the language so it can be read.”
“So what is it? You said execute. That means it does something.”
“Only a few of these were made, for very specific and advanced purposes. Ever heard of the Planet Makers?”
The Doctor grimaced and nodded reluctantly.
“When their enterprise was handed over to the government, they used these chips to carry out instructions on how to build more advanced planets. That’s the kind of instruction you’re talking about – colossal. I’ve seen all of the chips before but never this one.”
“It happened to fall into my hands,” remarked the Doctor, “and I ended up on this ship, with you of all people, heading to discover the truth about the universe. That’s a little more than a coincidence, don’t you think? What if this code…” the Doctor stared suspiciously at the chip, “is the key to everything?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“No!” Sister Elora stood up. “You can’t, it could compromise the whole mission.”
“God is in the detail, Elora,” said the Professor. “Look at it.” He held the chip between his fingers. “We have the computer.” He clicked his fingers and a computer terminal – bulky and old-fashioned – emerged from the ground in the centre of the circle of chairs.
PLEASE INSERT MICROCHIP
“We haven’t got weapons of mass destruction on this ship. What harm can it do?”
Sister Elora reluctantly sat back down, as the Professor got up and inserted the microchip in the slot on the computer tower.
READING CODE
The Doctor sat forward, curious.
FORMING LANGUAGE DATABASE
“What are you?” whispered the Doctor. “And why did you end up in my hands?”
DATABASE COMPLETE
TAP SCREEN TO PROCEED
The Doctor looked around the room. Everyone nodded, secretly terrified. The Doctor leant forward and tapped the screen.
EXECUTING…
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The Professor frowned, not recognising the glitch.
-
-
-
-
I DON’T UNDERSTAND
“What?” The Doctor read over the sentence again. “Does it mean it couldn’t read the code?”
“No,” breathed the Professor, looking like he was witnessing a spectre, not a computer code. “No, it doesn’t.”
WHERE AM I?
“Oh my God.” Lady Xenawood covered her mouth. “It’s sentient.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” cried Sister Elora. “It’s just an illusion. It’s been programmed to say that. It’s a cheap trick.”
“By the government?” argued the Professor.
WHAT AM I?
The Doctor stood up and placed his hand on the computer.
“What can you see?”
Sister Elora huffed. “No you’re just being ridic-“
I CAN SEE YOU
“How many fingers am I holding up?” The Doctor held up three fingers.
THREE
“That’s impossible,” gasped Sister Elora.
“Tell me…” pressed the Doctor. “What do you feel?”
I…
-
-
I… FEEL
I FEEL.
“It’s alive,” murmured the Doctor. “That’s what your government are hiding from you. They’ve got the code to life itself.”
HELP ME
HELP ME
HELP ME
***
Autumn was outside, in her garden. She couldn’t remember how she got there. It was still night, the sky pitch black, and no lights beyond her garden.
She felt that shiver up her spine. He was there again. This time she didn’t dare get a full glimpse, and instead caught the man out the corner of her eye. As calmly as she could, she approached the door and tried to push it open, but it was jammed. Locked from the inside.
“You should have chosen,” said the man. Autumn desperately wrestled with the door handle to get it open. “Now you will pay the price.”
The door swung open, knocking Autumn to the ground. She got up again and ran inside, heading up the staircase as quickly as she could, and up the next staircase, to find the Doctor and Tommy.
When she reached the top of the stairs she knew something was wrong. Tommy’s door was wide open and his room was empty, and a bedside light was on in the Doctor’s room, his door ajar. It could have meant anything, but somehow Autumn knew: this was her fault.
Slowly, trembling, Autumn wandered into the Doctor’s room. He was shaking on the bed, his skin paler than the bedsheets, and Tommy was holding him up as much as possible.
“A-Autumn…” trembled the Doctor.
“What happened?”
“It was the price,” said Tommy. “The hooded man said one of us had to die because you wouldn’t. The Doctor agreed. He knew it would save you.”
“Oh my God…”
Autumn stood over the bed as the Doctor looked up at her, trying but failing to force a smile as he writhed and jerked in agony.
“It won’t be easy for him,” continued Tommy. “He had to take a poison to stop him regenerating. Now he’s dying like this.”
Autumn sat on the edge of the bed and held the Doctor in her arms, keeping him still. His eyes looked up at her, pleading.
“I’m sorry,” uttered Autumn. “I’m so sorry.”
And the Doctor died, still looking up at Autumn, his sad and desperate eyes becoming an accusation.
“Autumn, I’m sorry,” said Tommy. “But I can’t go on. Not after this.”
“What do you mean?” Autumn laid the Doctor’s body on the bed.
Tommy walked up to the window and opened it. “It’s my fault.”
“No, don’t say that. It’s my fault-“
“Yes. That’s what I mean, and because of that, it’s my fault.” Tommy pushed the window open wide. “I wish I was a better person, because… I can’t forgive you for this.”
“I-“
“Ever,” interjected Tommy. “I’m sorry, but I’ll never be able to forgive you. And I can’t go on living like that.”
“Tommy, please-“
Tommy put his foot up on the radiator to ease him up onto the windowsill.
“Oh God, no-“
Autumn ran up to the window and tried to get Tommy down, pulling at his leg, but Tommy pushed her away. Autumn reached out her hand again as she stood up, but it hid the windowsill. Tommy had already jumped, from the third floor.
Autumn left the room instantly, launching herself down the stairs as quickly as she could. The front door opened straight away and she ran onto the street. The air was cold and biting, and Tommy’s body was strewn across the pavement.
“No, Tommy!” cried Autumn, running up and clutching the body. She tried to hold him in her arms as she had the Doctor, but his neck was broken, and his head hung loosely from his body. “Tommy, please…”
And there he was again. The man in the cloak, standing over her, now so much taller, and silent. Silent and still, the spectre in the street – the accuser.
“Help me,” begged Autumn. “Please help me.”
But he just stood there, not moving an inch, staring down at Autumn from far beneath his hood. No one was coming for her now, and she began to understand.
This was what she got for fighting death.
***
The Destiny Institute
The Master smiled as he watched his actions play out on the screen, Autumn’s thoughts translated into occasionally-comprehensible lines of emotion.
“What are you doing?” Andy walked into the lab with a cup of coffee and put it down on the table, glancing at the code window and recognising the change straight away.
“You know, hypothetically, with what you’ve done, you can suspend someone in a dream state for eternity – only hypothetically of course.” The Master covered his intestines with his coat and forced himself up. “But if you were to kill them, it’s possible that by some freak of nature, their consciousness would remain trapped in the point between nature and technology, even after both wear out. That’s the abstract for you.” As Andy stepped closer, the Master pulled out a gun. “The thing is, with dreams, when they turn into nightmares you wake up as they reach their peak. But no one’s ever gone on dreaming after a nightmare. If she’s having nightmares and were to die in that state, she could be trapped there for eternity. Perhaps that’s where our understanding of hell came from.”
“You’re insane.”
“Exactly. So you’d better do as I say.”
Andy considered, then leapt forward, reaching for the Master’s gun. Predicting this, he used all his strength to jump aside and fired a shot at the computer terminal, and another at the generator next to Autumn. It exploded next to Andy and he tripped, falling on the floor next to Autumn’s glass box.
“Whoops.” The Master grimaced. “Well try to think about it like this – at least you’re not her.”
He lifted his gun again and fired one last shot into Andy’s head. Andy dropped dead onto the floor.
“Oh dear.” The Master felt dizzy. He was losing consciousness, a little sooner than he had expected. The fall must have taken it out of him. “Oh, no. Not now. I’m not ready…”
***
The Enlightenment Craft
“We’re further than anyone’s ever been before.” The Professor stood at the observation window looking out at the dark, starless space. In the distance was what looked like a cluster – a swirling blue-green cloud in which was enclosed a bright white light. The cameras hadn’t shown this, but here it was.
“A miracle,” said Sister Elora. “He’s showing us the way.”
The Doctor left the computer for a second and joined them at the edge of the craft.
“I wanted this more than anything. Now I’m beginning to feel like it was all a big mistake.”
“You’re not the only one,” murmured Lady Xenawood.
“Doctor,” began the Professor, “I think you were always headed here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you turn up on my ship carrying the code to basic life, out of sheer coincidence. I don’t know why this is happening, but I’m sure of it now. I was wrong this whole time. This isn’t about our empire, or even science – for some reason, this all has something to do with you.”
***
Tommy scanned the spaceship corridors again and coughed as a cloud of gas from a pipe in the wall wafted past him. He was willing to bet by now that this place hadn’t been safety-checked.
He stopped, taken up to the door he’d reached before. Just the engines on the other side. That’s what he’d remembered being told. The system was automatic: once the door was opened, the ship stopped moving. The ship was still moving, therefore the door had never been opened. But this time, he was drawn to it.
Why?
The urge to push was itching his mind, as if someone was telling him from afar, commanding that he just gave the door one little push.
I’m the boss around here. What harm can it do?
He pushed it, expecting nothing to happen.
The door clicked open to his touch. Someone wants me to see this.
He swung the door open and stared in at what he thought was the engine room and covered his mouth, feeling sick.
There was one terrible thought which had never occurred to him throughout all his travels with the Doctor and it should have done.
It should have done.
“Oh, no…”
***
Autumn was running. She didn’t know how long she’d been running, or where she was running to, but the compulsion was overwhelming.
She was in a corridor, rather like an underpass; concrete walls and floor, lit by some distant light. As she continued running, she hit a wall – but not a dead end. On the wall was a door, clean and white, like a hotel-room door. She tried the doorknob but it refused to open.
Turning around, she sensed it again, for the final time. Her fears were first confirmed by his shadow from around the corner, large and dark, cast against the wall. Autumn tried the door again, and pushed it, but it refused to budge. She knew it would refuse to budge as long as he willed it to. As the cloaked man stopped at a distance, Autumn gave up and slumped against the door.
“Have you ever heard it said,” began the hooded man, “that death is a door? Well it’s true. Everyone knows. That fact was written into your souls from the day you were born. Would you like to know the big secret?”
Autumn simply looked on at the hooded man.
“You don’t have the key,” he said. “None of you will ever make it to the door. You were never meant for eternity. Your lives aren’t just fleeting… they’re insignificant.” His voice was becoming a roar. Autumn could begin to make it out, describe it. “You mean nothing, Autumn Rivers. You are so tiny to the universe. Now it’s time it swallows you up.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Autumn, finally starting to acknowledge her fate.
“Option three.”
Option three… Autumn cast her mind back – and remembered.
“No,” panted Autumn. “No, please, don’t!”
The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of matches. He struck a match and held it out.
“No…”
The match dropped out of his hand and hit the floor.
“NO!”
The fire started instantly, building up so high that the hooded man was now blocked out entirely. As well as moving up it moved forwards, getting closer to Autumn, as she turned and used the last of her strength to bang furiously on the door.
“HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP ME! OH MY GOD, SOMEONE-“
The fire was moving closer now, rising up in height as it went, only a few inches from Autumn-
“THERE’S A FIRE, I’M GOING TO – AARRGHH!”
***
The Enlightenment Craft
The cluster was closer now, and the space around it blurred and twisted. As the Doctor and the others tried to make it out, they found themselves unable to describe it. Yet they saw it, and almost understood it.
“What are you, universe?” asked the Doctor. “What do you want with me?”
HELP ME
HELP ME
HELP ME
-
-
SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED
The Doctor turned around to check he’d heard that correctly.
“Please tell me it just means the computer terminal,” murmured Lady Xenawood.
“Everything in this vessel is connected to the mainframe?” checked the Doctor.
“Yes,” answered the Professor.
“Then I think it means the ship.”
VESSEL DESTRUCTING IN 10
“How far are we from the centre-point?” asked the Doctor.
“At our speed, twenty minutes.”
“I don’t care how much fuel you’ve got. I’m using it all. Captain?”
The Professor nodded and clicked his fingers. Just as the computer tower had emerged from the floor, this time a steering wheel and a panel of switches were raised.
9
“Everyone,” warned the Doctor, “hold on tight.”
The Doctor pulled out his sonic and buzzed it over the controls. Sparks flew off, and the ship suddenly started making a sound of its own; the furious whirling and roaring of the best engines in the empire, at full blast.
“I’ve been saving this universe for hundreds of years, and never once have I asked for an explanation,” said the Doctor, getting angrier. “Well now, I’ve had enough. You take my best friend from me and expect me to roll over and accept it? If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to find out the truth!”
The Doctor gripped the wheel and the vessel jerked downwards towards the centre-point. The crew were thrown backwards, and kept a tight hold of the railings they were gripping on to.
8
“Come on, come on…” urged the Doctor.
7
The Doctor got the unsettling sense that the countdown was accelerating.
***
“HELP ME!” cried Autumn as the fire reached her. It was like no pain she’d ever felt before – a splitting, searing agony that ripped through her whole body. As she looked down, her whole form was disintegrating.
She screamed.
***
6
The centre-point was closer, and the whole of space around them now was bending and blurring.
5
The crew covered their eyes and the Doctor looked onwards, almost blinded by the light.
4
The hum of the engines got louder, and a warning siren sounded.
3
“I’m sorry Charlotte…” murmured the Professor.
2
Sister Elora clasped her hands together in prayer.
1
The light touched the ship, and darkness of space was finally away from them. They were in with it – the clouds, the blur, and the light.
That light. The Doctor began to realise. There’s something in the light.
SELF-DESTRUCT
The Enlightenment Ship went up in a ball of fire, leaving no wreckage larger than a loose button from the control panel.
***
The Destiny Institute
The Master tried his best to stay awake, but he was slipping away, like some force was dragging him to the floor. He knew that the second he slumped, he would close his eyes and die.
He stared down at the smashed glass, at Autumn’s bloody, dead face, and at Andy’s next to him. Strangely poetic. He imagined both of them had been fond of each other, as colleagues, so it was fitting that he gave them this moment.
Suspended in air, a hologram of the code was ticking over, about to flick off, but cataloguing, just by following its protocols, the final moments of Autumn Rivers’ life – or the beginning of an eternity. It was impossible to tell. Either way, this would be the last thing Autumn Rivers would ever know. This was what agony looked like, translated and shortened into simple sentences.
Agh.
No.
Argh.
Argh.
Help me.
-
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NEXT TIME
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