Prologue
White. White everywhere. Not that the Doctor could move, of course – but he sensed that he was seeing in all directions.
The white started to become more defined – patches of gold and brown were emerging. And…
He could feel again. It was numb at first, and tingling, then like he was being lifted…
And he was running, down a corridor, like a hotel corridor; each patch of white glowing faintly, the room tilted almost diagonally, but gravity still working as normal; and the corridor itself willing him along, the running a decision that wasn’t even his.
Heading for what?
He couldn’t see the rest of the crew or the ship. It had…
That was it. It had been destroyed. Whatever that nebula was, it had taken him here.
Or this was a dream. Or a hallucination. Or an afterlife.
He reached a door at the end of the corridor and opened it. Room 1.
The room was an office, lined with wooden bookshelves. The Doctor’s boots clicked on a marble floor. The world around him suddenly felt more tangible, and the room had space – it was genuinely impressive. The kind of place the Doctor could imagine himself residing.
And last of all, but most importantly, there was a man at his desk; an old, bearded man with glasses and a fedora, buried deep in a book: The God Delusion. He shook his head disapprovingly and put the book down.
“Ah, hello!” he said. His presence was warm and welcoming. The Doctor felt drawn to him. More than that – he felt as if he knew him. “Forgive my manners.”
The man got up and walked up to the Doctor, giving him a firm handshake and a friendly grin.
“You must be the Doctor. It’s lovely to meet you. I’m God.”
The white started to become more defined – patches of gold and brown were emerging. And…
He could feel again. It was numb at first, and tingling, then like he was being lifted…
And he was running, down a corridor, like a hotel corridor; each patch of white glowing faintly, the room tilted almost diagonally, but gravity still working as normal; and the corridor itself willing him along, the running a decision that wasn’t even his.
Heading for what?
He couldn’t see the rest of the crew or the ship. It had…
That was it. It had been destroyed. Whatever that nebula was, it had taken him here.
Or this was a dream. Or a hallucination. Or an afterlife.
He reached a door at the end of the corridor and opened it. Room 1.
The room was an office, lined with wooden bookshelves. The Doctor’s boots clicked on a marble floor. The world around him suddenly felt more tangible, and the room had space – it was genuinely impressive. The kind of place the Doctor could imagine himself residing.
And last of all, but most importantly, there was a man at his desk; an old, bearded man with glasses and a fedora, buried deep in a book: The God Delusion. He shook his head disapprovingly and put the book down.
“Ah, hello!” he said. His presence was warm and welcoming. The Doctor felt drawn to him. More than that – he felt as if he knew him. “Forgive my manners.”
The man got up and walked up to the Doctor, giving him a firm handshake and a friendly grin.
“You must be the Doctor. It’s lovely to meet you. I’m God.”
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Series 2 - Episode 13
The Morning Fog
Written by Janine Rivers
“No…” the Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think you are.”
“Really?” God seemed genuinely surprised. “Because you’ve been on my tail for ages, I thought you were beginning to twig.”
“I… have?”
“Yes, of course!” God pulled a book off his shelf and opened it at a bookmarked page. “See? I kept it all written down here. There were the Enlightened Ones, do you remember them? They formed a perfect sphere with a random arrangement of atoms. I thought that might have been a good clue that there was a designer of this whole universe thing. No?”
The Doctor was too stunned to speak.
“And the Genesis Project! You were there for that. The EDEN Incubator. I shared the story with the humans in the past but their record-keeping is terrible. That’s oral tradition for you. I think some elements of the account survived, though.” He put the book back on the shelf. “And other than that, it was just the coincidence, really, that I expected you to pick up on. That, and Sister Elora’s account of my appearance to the masses – I mean, what did you think that was?”
“No.” The Doctor pulled a face trying to understand it all. “No, this doesn’t happen. This has got to be some kind of trick.”
“You were in an exploding spaceship. I pulled you out. Who else could have done that?”
“But this is all so…” the Doctor looked around, trying to find a word for it. He pulled a piece of paper off the door and read from it in the hope of inspiration.
“I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me… thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain…”
“Bathroom rules,” explained God.
“Storybook,” said the Doctor. “That’s the word I was looking for. You’re a storybook God, the old man with the beard and the collection of books.”
“Well, yes. That’s the point. You were never going to comprehend my four-dimensional existence, so I created this place.” God spread out his arms, admiring his office. “A three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional space, for the benefit of your own understanding.”
“I am God,” said God, starting to sound a little exasperated. “A God. The God. I created this universe and everything in it, and all the other universes too. I created time. I always have existed and always will. I am a necessary being. And I laid down rules, most of which you’ve broken.”
“You made this universe?” The Doctor looked around, wondering whether he was still inside it. “I’ve spent centuries in it. Believe me, that’s not a good first impression. You’ve killed more people than I have.” He sat down on the chair opposite God without being asked, and God filed the book away, sitting down behind his desk.
“Suffering is necessary. It’s a kind of… purification.”
“So if you created everything,” said the Doctor, still very much taking the prospect as a hypothesis rather than truth, “that means you created morality, too?”
“Yes.”
“So you could have made up a load of rules that are rubbish and no one would challenge you because you created them.”
“Not possible: I invented the very notions of good and bad. My rules have to be good.”
“This is…” the Doctor shook his head, laughing at how ridiculous this all seemed. “This is mental. Maybe the spaceship didn’t self-destruct, but just lulled us all to sleep. Or maybe the centre-point is a massive prank. If this ends up on YouTube…”
“Here’s what happened.” God took a file out of his drawer and opened it up. On the front were the pictures of the people on the Enlightenment Craft’s crew: Lady Xenawood, Professor Swinton and Sister Elora. “The ship blew up. The crew were returned to their homes, with vague recollections of the people they met but a perception filter in their minds around what it was they saw. I let them live. Is that not merciful?”
“It’s decent,” admitted the Doctor. “But you don’t reward decency, you expect it. You should know that.”
God ignored him and carried on. “Sister Elora will remember you, and will go on to meet the past version of you after you fought the Hunters of Andromeda. But as far as history will go, no one will know who was on the craft and it will be declared missing. No one will attempt the mission again and this place will remain intact. Moving swiftly on…” He flipped a few pages and reached another: a picture of Autumn Rivers. “I kept you because you came looking for me, specifically; you came with a request.”
“You don’t normally answer prayers.”
“You didn’t pray.” God returned to the file. “Autumn Rivers. Dead.”
“Not quite.”
“No – dead.” The Doctor shuddered, sensing that God knew something he didn’t. “Your old friend the Master…”
“Enemy,” corrected the Doctor.
“That’s not how he referred to you in his dying moments.”
“He’s-?”
“Dead too? Yes.” God waved it aside like it was nothing. “The Master broke into the Destiny Institute, turned Autumn’s dream into a nightmare, killed her and then killed that Andy chap who worked with her. Before passing out on the floor, being purified within his own confession dial, admitting everything that happened between the both of you since they day you met and being uploaded to the Matrix.”
The Doctor swallowed the facts. He was not used to having news delivered to him like this: it normally all happened first-hand. “It doesn’t change the nature of my request, ‘God’.”
“Autumn Rivers is dead.”
“The terms of my request were to save her,” uttered the Doctor. “I never specified what from.”
***
“HELP ME!” cried Autumn, as the fire engulfed her. She was beginning to burn, parts of her already turning into dust, as she leant against the door. “SOMEONE, PLEASE, H-“
The door clicked open and she fell through. The fire stayed behind it, and she rushed to close it. Her pain was gone, and she could see and feel her own body again. This new room was a continuation of the underpass, but in the distance there was a light. She felt drawn to it.
“Death is a door,” she recalled the hooded man saying. And someone had let her in.
Is this it? She began walking, failing to deduce anything about her surroundings. Is this what comes after?
***
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…”
In front of him, twelve aliens – short, reptilian, dressed in grey rags – were working away at the engines, turning them manually and creating the sounds that Tommy had become accustomed to for so long on this ship without even questioning them.
He understood instantly – there was something about them that told him what they were, and something about the Captain that made him put two and two together. He stared at them, all hope that the universe would have changed into a better, kinder place drained from him, and one word forming on his tongue.
Slaves.
***
“Whilst I may be an alien idea to you,” began God, leading the Doctor out of his office and down the corridor he had entered through, “the notion of a soul is not. The Time Lords discovered them and were able to extract them from the brain, though they gave them the far less inspired title of ‘mind’. Many other species’ have, too, and even you’ve always wondered – because when you look at people, you see souls. And when you know them, it’s not that you’ve got to know their bodies or chemical reactions or mental processes, it’s that you’ve familiarised yourself with their souls.”
“Your point being?”
“When does ensoulment occur?” God stopped in the middle of the corridor, next to another door, as he posed his question. “When does the soul enter the body? Is it created?”
“I never really gave it much thought. I suppose it develops.”
“What if I told you that your soul has always existed? That the soul is just as eternal as I am: something I created to last forever?” He opened the door and led the Doctor into a new room. It was a square room, about the size of the TARDIS console room, and with the same exquisite marble interior design as the rest. In the centre was a light, a sort of pulsating orb, summoning similar emotional responses to the one that the Enlightenment Craft had headed towards: awe, wonder, fear and fulfilment, simultaneously; all manner of opposites held in balance.
“All souls are together until they take form,” continued God, also focused on the light. “Imagine it like a sea. When a soul enters the body, it leaves that sea, emerges like a wave; lives its life until it reaches the tide, at which point it returns to the sea, the wider body of consciousness. Or death, for the more cynical. But a soul cannot be extinguished, even if all that’s left is an essence.”
“And what is it?” said the Doctor, regarding the light. “Why bring me here?”
“We call it the Prime Mover. I created it. Everyone is born with potential – you understand that. The future already exists, and so anybody in the past exists with a sort of potential energy; that’s how the Weeping Angels feed, stealing away that energy. The Prime Mover is what draws people towards their potential – their destiny, if you like. I created this to bring an order to the universe.”
“A random arrangement of particles forming a perfect sphere,” remarked the Doctor. “An intrinsic order determined by the Prime Mover. Clever.”
“And as for Autumn Rivers – well, you get the idea.”
“Yes.” The Doctor bowed his head. “She’s returned to the sea of souls, the wider body of consciousness. You could bring her back, but only as a new wave. All her memories of who she was would be lost, and she would live a new life unaware of the last. It would be like reincarnation.”
“Does your request still stand, Doctor?” pressed God, almost satisfied with what he had made the Doctor realise.
“I destroyed her life. She deserves a second chance.” The Doctor nodded. “Do it again?”
“But you can’t ask her. You don’t know whether she’d want to.”
“I do,” insisted the Doctor. “I know Autumn Rivers. She would always choose to survive, whatever the price is, and she would always expect me to make that possible. Bring her back, God.”
***
As Autumn made her way along the underpass, getting closer to the light, she noticed doors along the walls, every few metres, numbered. She approached 1, and tentatively pushed it open. The room was fully-lit: a hospital room. And there were others.
On the bed lay a woman, and a man stood next to her, holding her hand. A nurse passed something to her and she beamed, tears in her eyes. Light flooded in from the two suns; the blinds were only half-closed. She recognised the woman. She was younger, more energetic and hopeful, and her hair styled to some awful trend she would curse later in life.
“What are you going to call her?” asked the nurse.
“Autumn.” The woman smiled. “After my favourite season.”
“Cold and damp?” complained the man. Autumn chuckled at that as she stood at the door, apparently invisible. Dad.
“No,” insisted the woman. “Fresh and new. Cold, maybe, but beautiful.” She stroked her baby’s cheeks. “Beautiful,” she repeated, emphasising the word’s meaning.
“Beautiful,” agreed Autumn, whispering to herself. “But why are you showing me this?” She left the room and headed for the next door.
***
“Why?”
The room used as the interrogation room on the ship felt strange without Autumn there asking the questions. As before, a guard stood by the door, but without Autumn, he suddenly seemed necessary. The Captain was, again, sat back in his chair, asserting passive authority by pretending not to care.
“And,” added Tommy, trying not to shake but still communicating his fury through direct, uncompromising instructions, “if you don’t start sitting forward and realising that you’re the loser in this room, I will have that guard walk up to you and sit you up using all the strength he’s got.” The guard shifted in the corner of the room, either excited or uncomfortable with that idea.
The Captain sat forward reluctantly.
“I’ll ask you again,” said Tommy. “Why?”
“We stopped off on that planet – like I told you before. Our engines stopped working. Hisoka examined them and told me there was no hope. The door had been open, the system had been cut. The only way forward was to operate them manually. I told him I’d worked out a way around it and sent him away. Technically, I wasn’t lying.” The Captain seemed a bit too pleased about that. “I selected a team of villagers – primitives, like you saw.” Tommy winced. Primitives. Another word for ‘the people we ignore’, or ‘the people it’s okay to oppress’. “Told them to help me out. I took them in, showed them how to operate it manually. Then as I left I explained – they would have to continue to do that for two years, until we arrived. There were two surplus; it meant that two could sleep at a time, giving the others a chance to operate the machinery.”
“Why didn’t they leave?”
“Because I told them that if the engines stopped, the ship would implode. And I told them that the rest of the crew knew about it.”
“That’s sick,” spat Tommy.
“Necessary.” The Captain hit the table. “We had to get to the Capital, you know. And look at us here – just an hour away from it. It was worth the risk.” He noticed Tommy’s disgust, not for the first time. “And don’t look at me like that. We’re still moving, so you’ve let them carry on!”
“Wrong. We released them, and our ships are towing yours. Which also, by the way, leaves us in control. We’ll be at the Capital in thirty minutes at our speed. Once there, you’ll face the Capital’s justice system, which I’ve heard is very uncompromising, so it would help me greatly if you gave it to me now.”
“Gave you what?”
“Your confession. The murder of Rozene Ramirez.”
The Captain laughed, as if he knew the punchline of a joke Tommy didn’t even realise he was telling.
“Is that funny?”
The Captain leaned forward across the desk. “You want a confession?” he teased. “I didn’t kill Rozene.”
Carrier 7 – Three Months Earlier
“I can’t see a ruddy thing!” Hisoka scrambled for a torch and flicked it on. Low battery life. He cursed. The lights throughout the ship flickered. “What’s the Captain doing?”
“I’ll go and check on him.” Claudia made her way to the engine room where the Captain was headed, and into a darkened passage. This area was always darker, and looked as it normally did, save the background of flickering lights behind it. The door to the engine room was open. Panicking, she peaked around.
“Holy…”
One figure, larger than all the others, turned. The Captain. Nick Wilson. Claudia shook her head. Nick.
“What have you done?”
“Claudia, please, don’t do anything you’ll regret.” Nick stepped out of the engine room and closed the door behind him. The slaves cast a glance and went back to their work. Claudia backed away, trembling. “We had to carry on! It was the only way!” As she backed away to the door, Nick grabbed her by the arm. “If you report this to the police, there will be rigorous investigation. And do you know what they’ll find? A ship that shouldn’t have been allowed to travel in the first place. A crew with forged identification. Because those are the lengths you went to to get back to your precious daughter.” Claudia looked down.
“I can’t let this carry on,” she said to herself. “I… can’t…”
“Then you pick up the phone and you report it,” threatened Nick. “And you end up arrested, banned from this region of the Empire and beyond, and you never see your little girl again.”
Claudia covered her mouth, feeling suddenly nauseous.
“Claudia,” came a voice from the corridor. “I’ve just come to check everything is-“
Rozene stopped and looked past Claudia and Nick. Confused, they turned behind them and saw: the door had swung open again. Nick shut it hurriedly and Rozene backed away. As before, he grabbed Rozene’s arm, but she fought him off, keeping her distance.
“Please tell me you didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t do this, Captain.”
“I’m sorry,” was all that Nick could muster.
“And I’m sorry,” replied Rozene, “but I have to report this.”
“In which case we all end up implicated!” hissed Nick. “Yourself included. And you never reach the Capital.”
“I…” Rozene staggered on the spot. “I have to. This is wrong. If that means I sacrifice my future then so be it.”
“And I can’t let you do that.”
Nick raised his taser at Rozene, trying to stop his hand from tremoring. “Please don’t make me do this, Rozene.”
“Then do it,” breathed Rozene. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop me.”
“I will!” yelled Nick. “I’ll do it!”
“For God’s sake Nick!” urged Rozene. “Just think about this!”
“I have. For a very long time!” Nick fired, and Rozene fell to the floor, hitting her head on the door.
Claudia crouched down and examined her, on edge from the electric shock. “What have you done?”
“Nothing.” Nick threw the taser to the floor and Claudia looked down at it, worried what the next sentence would be. “That’s why I’m giving it to you. She can’t be allowed to live.”
“Of course she can,” said Claudia. “Of course she can, we could talk t-“
“There are no words we can say to her!”
“Then we could just lock her up…”
“Where could we lock her up? Look at that door!” Nick pointed at the door to the engine room. “They won’t leave because of the things I’ve told them, but she will, and she will tell the others, and who’s to say they won’t react in the same way?” He edged away from Claudia and the body, turning his head to the rest of the ship. “If you want to see your daughter again, do it. Kill her.”
“Then they’ll see she’s dead.”
“And I’ll send Foluke down to check this area of the ship hasn’t been breached. He’ll find the body and we’ll all blame it on him: protestor, anarchist, terrorist. Easy really.”
“Nick…”
“Your decision, Claudia.” Nick left, and as his footsteps were no longer audible, Claudia lifted the taser over the body. How many shocks would it take to kill a human being? It was a question she had never, ever hoped she would need an answer for.
Carrier 7, Three Months Later
“So you both knew, the whole time. You lied together. No wonder Autumn could never work it out.”
“She was a terrible detective.” Nick smirked, taking some of Tommy’s paperwork and folding it to make a paper aeroplane. “Well, we’ve got there now. The Capital. Which means I’ll be imprisoned here. Which means I win. Sorry. And sorry for your loss.” He chuckled as if Tommy was the pathetic one, and lobbed the paper aeroplane. It hit Tommy on the nose.
“Take him out,” uttered Tommy, addressing the guard. The guard nodded and escorted Nick away, who stared at Tommy, that smirk persisting, until he was through the door, which closed gently behind them, leaving Tommy on his own. He looked down at the paperwork again – the six crewmembers. Two of them were murderers, and the other was unfortunate enough to cross their path. A young woman with so much potential, taken before her time because someone… some monster…
Tommy put his head in his hands, realising no one would come in, and cried as silently as he could. He had no idea how long he was there for. By the time he had finished, and his tears had dried, the ship had landed in the Capital.
***
“You do know where the TARDIS really took Tommy, don’t you?” inquired God, leading the Doctor back down the hall to his office.
“Home.”
“No – back to Carrier 7.”
The Doctor slowed up. “Wait… really?”
God nodded. “Yes. God only knows why. Well, actually, I don’t!” He laughed at his joke.
“That’s not right,” said the Doctor, serious. “She always takes them home when I want her to. Why would she take him there?”
“Okay.” God stopped, placing his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Based on my experience – which is, for obvious reasons, quite vast – I would recommend you take my advice. You can never truly trust a TARDIS, Doctor. Not completely. They were grown by the Time Lords – that should tell you all you need to know.”
The Doctor frowned. It wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right.
***
Autumn pushed open door 7, wondering which memory was stored behind this one. Again, a white wall: she entered and realised the place was familiar; the smell of the same air freshener she had used for years, and the sound of a small ship’s gentle systems. And her younger self, in a corner, sobbing.
It only happened once. In all the years she had spent in solitary confinement, only one night had been spent that way. She didn’t even understand why. The loss of her planet was no longer fresh. She wasn’t even sad. She just sat there and cried, all night, never thinking about why; never even thinking at all, as she drifted past a nebula in an empty region of space. She came to look at that as The Night That Didn’t Make Sense – the one point in all her adventures whose cause she could never pin down. Perhaps she was crying because she sensed her future self, beyond death, standing over her helplessly. Or perhaps, even now, it was a mystery. She closed the door, giving her past self some space.
***
“Why would she do that? Why would she take him there? It doesn’t make sense. It’s like there’s something missing…”
They reached God’s office and while God sat back down on his chair, the Doctor remained at the door, staring straight past him, calculating. Even the Time Lord’s brain needed time to calculate this one. Even the Time Lord’s brain could not match up to that of a TARDIS.
//“Have I missed something?” asked Tommy.
“We only spent the last two hours discussing your subject choice,” said the Doctor. “Autumn performed a whole psychoanalysis on you. Turns out there was no reason at all…” He yawned. “Which reminds me, Autumn. I believe you have something for me?” The Doctor held his hand out. “Memory stick.”
“I gave it back to the Master.”
“You did what?”
“Empty.” She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Doctor, we really need to sit down and chat about plans. I transferred the data from the memory stick to the TARDIS. I thought you might want to have a look at it yourself.”//
//“The Great Epicurus. I flew her out the first time, when we launched from the Amber Moon. What will happen to her now?”
“The ship will go into government hands.”
Staligon rolled his eyes.
“Your… radical methods were allowed,” continued the man disapprovingly, “because they worked. They were the only way. But a private business?” He shook his head. “People accepted planets being blown up if it meant theirs were safe. They didn’t accept people making a profit out of it. Evidently, planet-making was a mistake in the hands of businessmen. As a government initiative, all our aims will change.”
“I dread to think,” murmured Staligon to himself. “With your funding… I’m not sure anyone should have that power.”
“You already had power over life and death.” The man handed Staligon some ‘official’ paperwork which was probably telling him to take a nice holiday to Region Twenty-Eight. “How much further can we really take it?”//
//“What else do we know?”
“We-“
“Actually,” interrupted Goodwin, “don’t tell me. We’ve got a specialist coming in to solve this one while I supervise the anti-terrorism unit. Frankly…” she looked down at the inexplicable corpse, “we’re going to need one.”
“You certainly are going to need me, Detective Chief Inspector.” Goodwin looked up and there she was, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, accompanied by a handsome young man in similar attire. She was almost star-struck at the woman – the famous television personality; the woman who had brought down Lord Dalta.
“Detective Inspector Rivers,” said Autumn Rivers, giving Goodwin a firm handshake. “This is my assistant, Tommy Lindsay.” The young man smiled. “Now, onto the murder.”//
//“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.”//
//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.”//
“I’ve worked it out. It’s the TARDIS. The whole time… it was all the TARDIS.”
An epiphany was always seen as a great thing. A revelation from God: a small slice of divine understanding, passed down from a mighty creator to an unimportant mortal; a fraction what it was like to comprehend his existence. The Doctor’s epiphany was understanding the very nature of God: being passed down the knowledge of everything, the final clue, from a source far greater. As such, the weight was even more, and it was directed, channelling itself through him as one emotion – fury.
“I know what you did.”
God looked up, and studying his eyes, the Doctor thought he could just about make out a morsel of what he would never have expected to call fear.
The Doctor shook his head, angrier than he had ever been in all his lives. “You monster.”
***
It was the door she knew was coming. As soon as she opened it and smelt the oven, the inviting scents, she knew. Hansel and Gretel.
“Granny spoke to no one.” Autumn identified the voice: that hideous old woman. As she looked at her, a momentary vision passed before her; the same old woman, but not enticing this time – vulnerable; broken. She felt the knife twisting into her heart; a premonition of the future. The future always had a habit of re-contextualising the past. “No, no, no. Granny knows all, sees all, hears all. Granny is special. Yes she is.”
“You’re nuts.” Autumn’s past self stood up and made to leave, but hesitated.
“Don’t stop!” urged Autumn. “Go! Get out of there!”
“Granny knows everything about you, Autumn. Oh yes. She knows your dreams, all your desires. And your fears.”
Autumn sighed as her past self turned back. If only there was a way…
“My fears?”
Autumn would have given anything to change this moment. Of all her regrets, for this one moment… anything. The worst part was the psychic field. The knowledge that the version of her she was watching now was being controlled like a puppet; that her free will was an illusion, and that she hadn’t even been aware of that.
“Oh yes. You are so strong. So brave. But you are a scared little thing, though you try and hide it well. Granny can see. And one thing has you scared most of all. Death.”
Autumn shivered as her past self gripped the chair. After experiencing death, it just got scarier.
“Yes. Granny sees. You run, run, run with impossible-blue-box-man, racing into the stars, going deeper into distant stars. But you know there’s one thing you cannot escape. Oh no. You try so hard, but old girly knows it cannot be done. The hands of death will grip you tight and squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze until you fall. Splat. On the foor. Deaded. No more.”
Autumn considered the nature of her death – it hadn’t even occurred to her. Somewhere, she realised, her body was being removed from the Destiny Institute; frozen, buried or cremated… I never even gave a preference.
The hands which she’d once felt with would be as good as slabs of meat. The eyes which she’d witnessed the world with would be nothing more than marbles. And her brain…
Autumn recalled the first time she held a human brain as part of her criminal psychology degree. Everyone else in the class so casual, her so serious. She was always the most willing to pull the trigger, but that was different; something her fear of death shed a whole new light on. To hold in her hands the vessel of consciousness, the thing that had determined someone’s personality, that had given life, that had formed the nexus of experience.
For it to have become… that.
Autumn was interrupted by her past self’s retort to the old woman.
“You lie.”
“Granny never lies,” the woman replied with a smile. “But Granny is nice. She likes old girly. And wants to give nice Autumn Rivers a gift.”
“A gift?”
The woman nodded enthusiastically and pulled out a blood-red apple from her basket. It gleamed in the sunlight that shined bright through the open window. Autumn shuddered. How did I ever feel a compulsion to take it? She remembered the analysis. Human-incompatible repair droids.
“An apple?” her past self enquired.
“Oh no. Not just any apple. No, no. A magic apple.”
“There’s no such thing as magic.”
“This apple is unlike anything you have ever seen before, Autumn Rivers.”
Autumn gasped as her past self took a step forward. I didn’t…
“What does it do?”
“It grants wishes. Oh yes. To anyone who takes a bite. Munch, munch, munch.”
Autumn watched herself think; considering, then shaking her head, then considering again. And the old woman watching, calculating…
“Trust me my dear, just take a bite… one bite. And all your wishes, all of your deepest desires, will come true. That I can promise you. Yes, yes, yes.”
“You can’t grant immortality.”
“Granny can. Okay… Granny can’t grant anything. Granny’s apple can only do one thing for girly, whatever girly wants it to do, it can, but just one. It can be your live-forever apple. Old girly won’t always be happy, it won’t always be easy, and live-forever apple can’t bring back home and Jamie as well. But it will get rid of old girly’s fear. Forever. One time offer. Old girly turns around and the magic apple’s… pop…” the old woman stared out of the window. “Gone. No coming back. Time for old girly to take the apple while it can still be taken.”
Autumn’s past self reached out to take the apple.
“Don’t do it!” urged Autumn. “In the name of everything you’ve ever done, don’t take it!”
“Yes. That’s it girly. Take a bite. You know you must.”
“No!” Autumn ran forward and tried to snatch it, but her arm passed straight through.
“I must…”
Before she could stop her past self, she had taken hold of the apple and slowly brought it to her mouth. She hesitated for a single second, then closed her eyes.
Autumn sighed, recalling the wish: I want to live forever.
She smiled sadly. I still do.
And so she closed her eyes, avoiding the horror she knew was coming, and wished again.
***
“Whatever you think, Doctor,” began God, “you’re wrong.”
The Doctor entered the office and continued standing, looming over God’s desk.
“Am I?”
God had no response.
“You see, I thought it was strange.” The Doctor paced around the room as he spoke. “Right at the beginning, towards the end of our adventures, when Autumn told me about the case to get my input on it. I wondered why she had been referred. Let’s be honest, above all else, she was a TV personality, not a detective. I assumed she’d faked references herself, but I don’t think she had, I think she thought I had faked them for her. Which leaves us with a question – where did they come from? They wouldn’t come from you – you’ve got no reason to. Which leaves the second most powerful object I can think of: the TARDIS. She wanted Autumn on that case. More than that, she wanted to attract my attention.”
“I ran the code through the TARDIS data bank.” The Doctor searched for the memory stick he’d transferred the code onto, and realised it was destroyed in the ship’s explosion. “Every known language in the universe. I assumed she didn’t solve it, but she did – she hacked into the systems of the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire’s government and worked out what it meant. She’s been trying to tell me for such a long time, so she kept bringing us back there. But it was never about the murder – it was about DCI Goodwin and her anti-terrorism.” God shifted in his seat. The Doctor was getting closer to it. “And then there was the Enlightenment Craft. My friend died, and it occurred to me to find enlightenment. But I’m hundreds of years old, so why wait until now? And when did I even find out about the craft? I certainly don’t know how I found the coordinates, since it was top-secret. But then I thought, where was I when the thought occurred to me? Again, the TARDIS. She planted it so I would end up here. Then she brought Tommy back to Carrier 7 knowing that you would tell me and I would realise her plan. She knew about you right from the start and she brought me here so I could find out the truth.”
“Far-fetched,” remarked God.
“Not as far-fetched as this.” The Doctor sat down opposite God and picked up his pen, twisting it in his hand. “A major political shift in the Empire. The government given more power than ever before after the activity of the Planet Makers was discovered – businesses taken into the government’s hands, technology and research far beyond their own made available to them. And terrorism: war over religion threatening to bring the Empire down. And then they discover a code. They create a code. The right string of numbers to make a piece of software sentient. But they destroy it whenever they try it, because they understand better than anyone the dangers of artificial intelligence. No, the only safe way to test anything like that is on organic matter, because that’s fallible.” The Doctor put the pen down and looked at God. “They carry out an instruction with everything they’ve got – a final anti-terrorism measure. They generate a Damascus experience of their own, using the God they’ve created, to unify everyone’s beliefs: end the war by making everyone agree. Then you continue to exist, hidden away at the centre-point, pushing away everyone else. You’ve laid down the rules, and the government can bring you back whenever they like to make any laws into Gospel. And you’ll agree – because you’re one of them.”
“It’s clever, isn’t it?”
“It’s disgusting. You lied and lied. You lied to them and pretended you were their God, pretended you were the most powerful thing in existence and that your word was divine law. And you lied to me, telling me you were a ‘three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional being’, when actually, this is your real form and this hotel is just a ship built around the Prime Mover! Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
God looked away. The Doctor caught on, sneering at his realisation.
“Oh, yes,” continued the Doctor. “Because the government couldn’t create a Damascus experience just using AI and flesh. No, they found something far better as they expanded out further and further into space – they found the Prime Mover, and built this place around it. A natural occurrence, and the real reason for space and time: a necessary being, entirely unaware of everything apart from itself, drawing people to their potential. So you hijacked it.” He sat back, as he narrated the final piece of the story. “You used the Prime Mover to transmit that signal, and you used it to reach their souls, drawing them to the future you wanted them to live. You re-wrote nature itself.”
***
The penultimate door. Without hesitating, Autumn pushed it open, and somehow knew instantly where she was: the office of God. As she entered, context imparted itself onto her, just as it had previously. And there, sat opposite God, was the Doctor.
“They have a right to know,” said the Doctor. “The Empire. I will tell them the truth about what you are.”
“What, like all those conspiracy theorists who knew ‘the truth’? Why exactly would they listen to you?”
“Because I’ll broadcast it just as you broadcasted your message. They’ll all see it, all at once, and your government will fall apart. The end of the Last Great and Bountiful Human Empire.”
“And I may be organic, Doctor, but I have immense power. I have the Prime Mover on my side. I could end your life right now, and I could certainly cancel a simple transmission.” God smiled like a receptionist informing the Doctor that the centre was closing and he’d have to come back in a week for that important appointment.
“There are so many things that are monstrous about you, but the worst is that you are a part of their culture. You’re not an alien invasion, or a monster under the bed. You are them. Culture is always written by the governments and the winners, the future always decided by those with the power to write it, and even social progress is only allowed when it’s convenient. You are the result of everything the human race has ever tried to accomplish. A monster, hiding away at the edge of the universe, feeding lies to the greatest empire that ever lived and leading the universe into ruin. Turning people’s souls into cattle. And you were always going to happen.” The Doctor sighed. “You were inevitable.” He stood up, walking back to the entrance. God stood up too, in front of him.
“You worshipped that culture,” said God.
“I did. I always respect Earth and the human race.” He looked away, his face darkening. “And then I met you. And in all this tangle, God, do you know what happened? A good woman died.”
Autumn stayed where she was, feeling something strange within her.
“A good woman,” continued the Doctor, “and at times, a cold and dangerous woman. But the one hope this universe had. And all those words I’ve just used, all that hatred, is on her behalf. Because if she was here, she would have told you exactly the same.”
Autumn made her way over to the Doctor. He continued to look at God, but twitched as she moved closer to him, and, for a split second, looked in his direction. Almost as if…
“I stood by him in the end,” said Autumn, and God looked her in the eye. He can see me. “I stood by him,” she continued, “and look at you. No one who knows what you are would ever stand by you. But he’s got me,” she said, turning to the Doctor, “even if he doesn’t know it. And not because I do what he says – because for once, today, we agree.” She took a deep breath, knowing it was time. “Goodbye.”
“Why are you looking like that?” asked the Doctor, noticing God staring in Autumn’s direction.
He will never be able to see me. A whole eternity, and we will never be able to see each other again.
“Goodbye, Doctor.” Autumn wiped a tear from her eye and stood back, knowing the Doctor was about to begin speaking again. As God responded to the Doctor that it was nothing, she turned and left, closing the door behind her.
She stood in the passage for a moment. One more door. She approached it, hesitating. What else could be behind it, if that was the present? She had no future. The only possibility was that it was a moment from the past more important than any present or future. A moment that defined, one last time, who Autumn Rivers was.
She opened the door, and realising straight away, smiled, and watched silently. Of course. She realised how stupid she was for not realising. Of course that would be the last memory. So she watched it, treasuring a moment she never thought she would recapture, and closed the final door.
She was at the end of the hallway now, and a few steps more and she would be into the light. She did not and could know what the light meant. It could be eternity or it could be death. But for once, fear left her alone, and she was drawn closer to the light, sensing something within it – something she had only felt in her best moments. Something she had only felt in that final memory.
As the light grew stronger, Autumn turned round a final time. All the doors to her memories were shut; they remained ordered, her life put into a sort of linear perspective. And when it all came together…
“Not bad.” She grinned, turning back to the light. “Not bad at all, Autumn Rivers.”
She took a step into light, and within a second was fully submerged. In that moment, a new life began; a soul entered a new body, and the set of experiences called Autumn Rivers blinked out of existence.
She never even felt it happen.
***
“You’re right,” confessed the Doctor. “You are absolutely right, of course. They can never know. I can never save them, and I can never bring down the Empire. You win.”
God smirked.
“And that makes you ever more the monster,” added the Doctor. “You’ll always win, always beat the people you decide are the monsters, always separate the sheep from the goats because the goats are clever enough to tell what you really are. And with you in control of the law of the universe, everyone else will always be wrong.” He moved closer to God until they were inches apart. “Why do you do it? Why do pretend to be a hero and inspire them when all you’re doing is making them take risks and kill themselves in your name? Why do you pretend it’s not your fault when it is? Why do you make them thank you, worship you, and devote their whole lives to you? Why can’t you just LEAVE THEM ALONE?!”
God was silent for a few seconds, and, unexpectedly, stepped back, and broke into hysterics. He put his hand down on the desk to steady himself and cleared his throat, putting his amusement to the back of his mind. “You know, Doctor, I’m really not sure it’s me who needs to be asked these questions.”
“You’re not sure I need to be asking you?” retorted the Doctor. “You’re calling yourself necessary, like you’re not contingent, not defined by any other beings! Well guess what? That means the responsibility is yours. If you’re the only being in the universe not to be dependent on another then the mistake of everyone else in the whole of creation falls on you. Adam took the apple because you let him, and it’s time you took responsibility.”
“You’re right.” God sat down and buried his head in his hands. “Doctor, you’re absolutely right.” The Doctor was speechless, puzzled. “It is wrong, of course, and it’s time justice is done.”
“Yes, it is.”
God stopped, resting his hands on the table, and stared accusingly up at the Doctor. “You let Autumn Rivers take the apple. Your actions created the person she became. You destroyed a whole world to make her.”
“Autumn Rivers defined who she was,” said the Doctor. “All those years in solitary confinement with no one to change her but herself. Autumn made Autumn.”
“A solitary confinement which you inadvertently caused,” pointed out God. “And she took that apple because of you, died because of you. So you’re right. It’s time for you to take responsibility. I lied to you.” The Doctor cocked his head, wondering where God was going with this. “Autumn will keep her memories – eventually, anyway. As she lives her new life she’ll begin to remember, if she lives long enough at least: parts of her old life will come back to her, and she’ll learn about who she was and why she was reborn. But you will never see her again.”
“I’m sorry?”
“There are consequences, as you say, for letting one of your creations take the apple. I’m not going to tell you where she is or who she becomes. She will live out her life, and remember, if she’s lucky, but you will never see each other again. And you will never know whether she was successful.”
“Don’t do this, God. Don’t do this to prove a point.”
“You don’t want me to interfere anymore? Fine, I won’t.” God stood up and got a large book off his shelf, opening it up and inserting a bookmark. “I’ll stay here on my own, find myself some hobbies. Read books, collect trains. Leave the Prime Mover to do its own thing, and stop talking to people. That starts now, by the way.” He kept his eyes on the page, not even looking up at the Doctor, and straightened his glasses. “I can’t interfere with your life, sorry, I can’t give you information. Not my place, like you said. Can’t tell you how to find her.”
The Doctor wanted to kill God then and there: take one of the larger books and smash him over the head with it; one swift blow. Unfortunately, it was an action he would never be permitted. God was still of an immense power, and would leave the Doctor a speck of dust before he could even touch him.
“I hate you,” uttered the Doctor, standing up and heading for the exit. He assumed if he walked to the end of the corridor, he would eventually end up back in his TARDIS; a part of God’s plan, no doubt. “And if I ever get the chance, I will tear down your empire and take your place.”
God looked up from his book. “And that makes you better than me how, exactly?”
The Doctor smiled to himself. “It doesn’t.”
***
Nick Wilson and Claudia Johnston were trialled in the Capital. Having been greeted by the justice department, they, along with Tommy, were escorted underground to a place of trial. As a result, Tommy saw very little of the legendary Capital.
They were both found guilty and sentenced to a preliminary sentence of thirty years. When Tommy questioned this, Detective Superintendent Goodwin explained that the sentence would be changed by a period of up to ten years either way, by what a specific individual, carefully selected by the jury, deemed to be appropriate. It was an usual system, Tommy remarked, to allow someone so emotionally-involved to cast the final judgement – but, Goodwin explained, that was the point of the exercise.
For Nick, the selected individual was Glotch, one of the slaves, who stood up to represent her group. Nick was horrified as he saw that she had been chosen, but in front of the entire court, she decreed that the sentence should be reduced by ten years, as, in her own words: “If he was willing to go to the length of destroying my life and tearing apart my family, he must have been desperate to get here”. Tommy cursed, both respecting Glotch’s pure and admirable compassion, and resenting the fact that it had led to an evil man getting off a sentence already shorter than what he deserved. Superintendent Goodwin’s reaction was a little stronger; she went to the bathroom and kicked the sink block so hard that the front came off. She would, two weeks later, write a letter of apology to the court.
The only reaction more painful to watch than Nick’s to Glotch was Claudia’s, the moment her fourteen year-old daughter had stood up as the selected individual. There were a few glances between the officers present, wondering whether she was the best choice, but what happened next surprised them all. Claudia’s daughter, Anna, stared her mother straight in the eye and told her that she was ashamed to be her daughter. She informed the court that she was planning to leave the Capital to travel with her partner; that by the time Claudia was released, they would be so far away that she would never be able to contact her again. To ensure this – and just out of pure spite – she increased her mother’s sentence by the maximum ten years.
***
“I feel awful,” admitted Tommy, sat next to the TARDIS in a room just off the courtroom.
“She deserved it,” said Goodwin. “But I know what you mean. I feel it too. She was just too human.”
“Where next for you?” asked Tommy.
“Oh, you know.” Goodwin smiled. “Back to work, back to catching monsters and putting them away. When Autumn left you, you know, she came to work for us. Did you know what she did?”
Tommy shook his head.
“She did something…” Goodwin considered. “Something very wrong, very brave, and something that needed to be done. I’m allowed to tell you, if you want to know.”
“Nah. She’s coming back, the Doctor went to save her. It’s the only thing that’s keeping me going.”
“She died,” said Goodwin, concerned about Tommy. “That’s where she went.”
“No. She really didn’t. Anyway.” Tommy snapped out of it. “Don’t let me hold you up. I can get myself home – probably.” He glanced at the TARDIS, still unsure why she had taken him here. Did she know he would solve the case?”
“It was lovely meeting you, Mr Lindsay.”
“And yourself.”
Goodwin nodded formally and left. Tommy stood up, got out his key and stepped back into the TARDIS. The Doctor was stood at the console unit, silently tapping in coordinates. The TARDIS lurched to a stop – he had landed already.
“Where’s Autumn?” asked Tommy.
“She’s gone.” The Doctor headed for the door, picking up a large cardboard box and passing it to Tommy. “Sorry, it’s heavy.”
“What’s inside?”
“Earth. My old photos, my globe, my literature, my vinyl CDs.” He opened the door and Tommy stepped out. He was back on university campus; a bright and sunny day. “I’m getting rid of them and then I’m leaving this planet for good.”
“What? No-“
“Yes, Tommy.” The Doctor’s eyes were red, and darkened around the edges; sad and tired. “I’m sorry, but I was wrong about your planet. You are wonderful, you really are, and I hope you have all the luck in the world with your exams and become something brilliant. But I can’t come back here, not ever.”
“Doctor, I don’t know what happened or what you saw, but at least think about this.”
“I did. I spent all that time thinking.” He hesitated, and chose a lie. Tommy was a good man, and a young one. He deserved a good lie. “Autumn is fine, but she’s living somewhere else now. We agreed it was for the best. She told me to wish you the best.” He patted Tommy on the shoulder. Tommy was confused, and didn’t have a response. “As I said, good luck. You broadened my mind, Tommy Lindsay. Now go and broaden some others.” As Tommy remained speechless, the Doctor got back inside the TARDIS and closed the door, a lump in his throat. Tommy stood back as the TARDIS dematerialised, and the magic box disappeared, its trick still as inexplicable and unfathomable as ever.
***
After the wedding of Robin and Chris McKnight, there were two records kept. One was a record of photos: a wedding album, in traditional fashion; the bride, in her beautiful white dress, and the groom, in the suit that the bridesmaid, the younger sister of Tommy Lindsay, had accidentally spilled tea down. The smiles and the cheers, the confetti, and then the celebration that followed. Robin had her adoptive parents, and Chris had no family whatsoever. But both had numerous friends; a sign, surely, of unfortunate people worthy of happiness.
The second record kept was of the words spoken, the whispers and stories passed down as the wedding album was narrated. The mentions of a well-dressed man stood at the back of the ceremony, watching, detached but loyal, as his friend finally found happiness. A man who never stayed for what happened after – and the only material evidence of his presence was a jacket and tie, left hanging on the bannister, and eventually donated to a charity shop.
***
The Doctor stepped into his TARDIS, alone again, and landed it on a desolate asteroid. The asteroid would break up in a thousand years, he had read: before then, not one lifeform would come within fifty thousand lightyears of it. He ensured the TARDIS was fixed in place, and locked the coordinates. He left the console room down the corridor next to the console, turning the lights off completely for the first time in his life as he did, and the time rotor fell silent.
The TARDIS found him Autumn Rivers’ room easily enough, and as he entered he became aware of the mess. Photos and objects were smashed all over the floor, and if he listened hard enough, he could still hear the echoes of her anger reverberating around the room. It’s not fair.
He picked up one photo, not recognising the frame. Turning it around, he could make out the cracked photo: it was a rare occasion, where he, Autumn, Robin and Tommy had all travelled together, having a picnic in the gardens of a planet not too far off Gallifrey. He noticed the place the photo had been thrown from: it was in pride of place; the photograph Autumn would have woken up to every morning.
Oh, Autumn.
He held the smashed photo to his chest, a tear rolling down his cheek. When he eventually decided to leave the room, he turned the rest of the lights out, and wandered down a hitherto untrodden corridor, hoping, with what little there was left of him capable of hope, that the TARDIS would allow him to become lost in it.
“Really?” God seemed genuinely surprised. “Because you’ve been on my tail for ages, I thought you were beginning to twig.”
“I… have?”
“Yes, of course!” God pulled a book off his shelf and opened it at a bookmarked page. “See? I kept it all written down here. There were the Enlightened Ones, do you remember them? They formed a perfect sphere with a random arrangement of atoms. I thought that might have been a good clue that there was a designer of this whole universe thing. No?”
The Doctor was too stunned to speak.
“And the Genesis Project! You were there for that. The EDEN Incubator. I shared the story with the humans in the past but their record-keeping is terrible. That’s oral tradition for you. I think some elements of the account survived, though.” He put the book back on the shelf. “And other than that, it was just the coincidence, really, that I expected you to pick up on. That, and Sister Elora’s account of my appearance to the masses – I mean, what did you think that was?”
“No.” The Doctor pulled a face trying to understand it all. “No, this doesn’t happen. This has got to be some kind of trick.”
“You were in an exploding spaceship. I pulled you out. Who else could have done that?”
“But this is all so…” the Doctor looked around, trying to find a word for it. He pulled a piece of paper off the door and read from it in the hope of inspiration.
“I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me… thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain…”
“Bathroom rules,” explained God.
“Storybook,” said the Doctor. “That’s the word I was looking for. You’re a storybook God, the old man with the beard and the collection of books.”
“Well, yes. That’s the point. You were never going to comprehend my four-dimensional existence, so I created this place.” God spread out his arms, admiring his office. “A three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional space, for the benefit of your own understanding.”
“I am God,” said God, starting to sound a little exasperated. “A God. The God. I created this universe and everything in it, and all the other universes too. I created time. I always have existed and always will. I am a necessary being. And I laid down rules, most of which you’ve broken.”
“You made this universe?” The Doctor looked around, wondering whether he was still inside it. “I’ve spent centuries in it. Believe me, that’s not a good first impression. You’ve killed more people than I have.” He sat down on the chair opposite God without being asked, and God filed the book away, sitting down behind his desk.
“Suffering is necessary. It’s a kind of… purification.”
“So if you created everything,” said the Doctor, still very much taking the prospect as a hypothesis rather than truth, “that means you created morality, too?”
“Yes.”
“So you could have made up a load of rules that are rubbish and no one would challenge you because you created them.”
“Not possible: I invented the very notions of good and bad. My rules have to be good.”
“This is…” the Doctor shook his head, laughing at how ridiculous this all seemed. “This is mental. Maybe the spaceship didn’t self-destruct, but just lulled us all to sleep. Or maybe the centre-point is a massive prank. If this ends up on YouTube…”
“Here’s what happened.” God took a file out of his drawer and opened it up. On the front were the pictures of the people on the Enlightenment Craft’s crew: Lady Xenawood, Professor Swinton and Sister Elora. “The ship blew up. The crew were returned to their homes, with vague recollections of the people they met but a perception filter in their minds around what it was they saw. I let them live. Is that not merciful?”
“It’s decent,” admitted the Doctor. “But you don’t reward decency, you expect it. You should know that.”
God ignored him and carried on. “Sister Elora will remember you, and will go on to meet the past version of you after you fought the Hunters of Andromeda. But as far as history will go, no one will know who was on the craft and it will be declared missing. No one will attempt the mission again and this place will remain intact. Moving swiftly on…” He flipped a few pages and reached another: a picture of Autumn Rivers. “I kept you because you came looking for me, specifically; you came with a request.”
“You don’t normally answer prayers.”
“You didn’t pray.” God returned to the file. “Autumn Rivers. Dead.”
“Not quite.”
“No – dead.” The Doctor shuddered, sensing that God knew something he didn’t. “Your old friend the Master…”
“Enemy,” corrected the Doctor.
“That’s not how he referred to you in his dying moments.”
“He’s-?”
“Dead too? Yes.” God waved it aside like it was nothing. “The Master broke into the Destiny Institute, turned Autumn’s dream into a nightmare, killed her and then killed that Andy chap who worked with her. Before passing out on the floor, being purified within his own confession dial, admitting everything that happened between the both of you since they day you met and being uploaded to the Matrix.”
The Doctor swallowed the facts. He was not used to having news delivered to him like this: it normally all happened first-hand. “It doesn’t change the nature of my request, ‘God’.”
“Autumn Rivers is dead.”
“The terms of my request were to save her,” uttered the Doctor. “I never specified what from.”
***
“HELP ME!” cried Autumn, as the fire engulfed her. She was beginning to burn, parts of her already turning into dust, as she leant against the door. “SOMEONE, PLEASE, H-“
The door clicked open and she fell through. The fire stayed behind it, and she rushed to close it. Her pain was gone, and she could see and feel her own body again. This new room was a continuation of the underpass, but in the distance there was a light. She felt drawn to it.
“Death is a door,” she recalled the hooded man saying. And someone had let her in.
Is this it? She began walking, failing to deduce anything about her surroundings. Is this what comes after?
***
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…”
In front of him, twelve aliens – short, reptilian, dressed in grey rags – were working away at the engines, turning them manually and creating the sounds that Tommy had become accustomed to for so long on this ship without even questioning them.
He understood instantly – there was something about them that told him what they were, and something about the Captain that made him put two and two together. He stared at them, all hope that the universe would have changed into a better, kinder place drained from him, and one word forming on his tongue.
Slaves.
***
“Whilst I may be an alien idea to you,” began God, leading the Doctor out of his office and down the corridor he had entered through, “the notion of a soul is not. The Time Lords discovered them and were able to extract them from the brain, though they gave them the far less inspired title of ‘mind’. Many other species’ have, too, and even you’ve always wondered – because when you look at people, you see souls. And when you know them, it’s not that you’ve got to know their bodies or chemical reactions or mental processes, it’s that you’ve familiarised yourself with their souls.”
“Your point being?”
“When does ensoulment occur?” God stopped in the middle of the corridor, next to another door, as he posed his question. “When does the soul enter the body? Is it created?”
“I never really gave it much thought. I suppose it develops.”
“What if I told you that your soul has always existed? That the soul is just as eternal as I am: something I created to last forever?” He opened the door and led the Doctor into a new room. It was a square room, about the size of the TARDIS console room, and with the same exquisite marble interior design as the rest. In the centre was a light, a sort of pulsating orb, summoning similar emotional responses to the one that the Enlightenment Craft had headed towards: awe, wonder, fear and fulfilment, simultaneously; all manner of opposites held in balance.
“All souls are together until they take form,” continued God, also focused on the light. “Imagine it like a sea. When a soul enters the body, it leaves that sea, emerges like a wave; lives its life until it reaches the tide, at which point it returns to the sea, the wider body of consciousness. Or death, for the more cynical. But a soul cannot be extinguished, even if all that’s left is an essence.”
“And what is it?” said the Doctor, regarding the light. “Why bring me here?”
“We call it the Prime Mover. I created it. Everyone is born with potential – you understand that. The future already exists, and so anybody in the past exists with a sort of potential energy; that’s how the Weeping Angels feed, stealing away that energy. The Prime Mover is what draws people towards their potential – their destiny, if you like. I created this to bring an order to the universe.”
“A random arrangement of particles forming a perfect sphere,” remarked the Doctor. “An intrinsic order determined by the Prime Mover. Clever.”
“And as for Autumn Rivers – well, you get the idea.”
“Yes.” The Doctor bowed his head. “She’s returned to the sea of souls, the wider body of consciousness. You could bring her back, but only as a new wave. All her memories of who she was would be lost, and she would live a new life unaware of the last. It would be like reincarnation.”
“Does your request still stand, Doctor?” pressed God, almost satisfied with what he had made the Doctor realise.
“I destroyed her life. She deserves a second chance.” The Doctor nodded. “Do it again?”
“But you can’t ask her. You don’t know whether she’d want to.”
“I do,” insisted the Doctor. “I know Autumn Rivers. She would always choose to survive, whatever the price is, and she would always expect me to make that possible. Bring her back, God.”
***
As Autumn made her way along the underpass, getting closer to the light, she noticed doors along the walls, every few metres, numbered. She approached 1, and tentatively pushed it open. The room was fully-lit: a hospital room. And there were others.
On the bed lay a woman, and a man stood next to her, holding her hand. A nurse passed something to her and she beamed, tears in her eyes. Light flooded in from the two suns; the blinds were only half-closed. She recognised the woman. She was younger, more energetic and hopeful, and her hair styled to some awful trend she would curse later in life.
“What are you going to call her?” asked the nurse.
“Autumn.” The woman smiled. “After my favourite season.”
“Cold and damp?” complained the man. Autumn chuckled at that as she stood at the door, apparently invisible. Dad.
“No,” insisted the woman. “Fresh and new. Cold, maybe, but beautiful.” She stroked her baby’s cheeks. “Beautiful,” she repeated, emphasising the word’s meaning.
“Beautiful,” agreed Autumn, whispering to herself. “But why are you showing me this?” She left the room and headed for the next door.
***
“Why?”
The room used as the interrogation room on the ship felt strange without Autumn there asking the questions. As before, a guard stood by the door, but without Autumn, he suddenly seemed necessary. The Captain was, again, sat back in his chair, asserting passive authority by pretending not to care.
“And,” added Tommy, trying not to shake but still communicating his fury through direct, uncompromising instructions, “if you don’t start sitting forward and realising that you’re the loser in this room, I will have that guard walk up to you and sit you up using all the strength he’s got.” The guard shifted in the corner of the room, either excited or uncomfortable with that idea.
The Captain sat forward reluctantly.
“I’ll ask you again,” said Tommy. “Why?”
“We stopped off on that planet – like I told you before. Our engines stopped working. Hisoka examined them and told me there was no hope. The door had been open, the system had been cut. The only way forward was to operate them manually. I told him I’d worked out a way around it and sent him away. Technically, I wasn’t lying.” The Captain seemed a bit too pleased about that. “I selected a team of villagers – primitives, like you saw.” Tommy winced. Primitives. Another word for ‘the people we ignore’, or ‘the people it’s okay to oppress’. “Told them to help me out. I took them in, showed them how to operate it manually. Then as I left I explained – they would have to continue to do that for two years, until we arrived. There were two surplus; it meant that two could sleep at a time, giving the others a chance to operate the machinery.”
“Why didn’t they leave?”
“Because I told them that if the engines stopped, the ship would implode. And I told them that the rest of the crew knew about it.”
“That’s sick,” spat Tommy.
“Necessary.” The Captain hit the table. “We had to get to the Capital, you know. And look at us here – just an hour away from it. It was worth the risk.” He noticed Tommy’s disgust, not for the first time. “And don’t look at me like that. We’re still moving, so you’ve let them carry on!”
“Wrong. We released them, and our ships are towing yours. Which also, by the way, leaves us in control. We’ll be at the Capital in thirty minutes at our speed. Once there, you’ll face the Capital’s justice system, which I’ve heard is very uncompromising, so it would help me greatly if you gave it to me now.”
“Gave you what?”
“Your confession. The murder of Rozene Ramirez.”
The Captain laughed, as if he knew the punchline of a joke Tommy didn’t even realise he was telling.
“Is that funny?”
The Captain leaned forward across the desk. “You want a confession?” he teased. “I didn’t kill Rozene.”
Carrier 7 – Three Months Earlier
“I can’t see a ruddy thing!” Hisoka scrambled for a torch and flicked it on. Low battery life. He cursed. The lights throughout the ship flickered. “What’s the Captain doing?”
“I’ll go and check on him.” Claudia made her way to the engine room where the Captain was headed, and into a darkened passage. This area was always darker, and looked as it normally did, save the background of flickering lights behind it. The door to the engine room was open. Panicking, she peaked around.
“Holy…”
One figure, larger than all the others, turned. The Captain. Nick Wilson. Claudia shook her head. Nick.
“What have you done?”
“Claudia, please, don’t do anything you’ll regret.” Nick stepped out of the engine room and closed the door behind him. The slaves cast a glance and went back to their work. Claudia backed away, trembling. “We had to carry on! It was the only way!” As she backed away to the door, Nick grabbed her by the arm. “If you report this to the police, there will be rigorous investigation. And do you know what they’ll find? A ship that shouldn’t have been allowed to travel in the first place. A crew with forged identification. Because those are the lengths you went to to get back to your precious daughter.” Claudia looked down.
“I can’t let this carry on,” she said to herself. “I… can’t…”
“Then you pick up the phone and you report it,” threatened Nick. “And you end up arrested, banned from this region of the Empire and beyond, and you never see your little girl again.”
Claudia covered her mouth, feeling suddenly nauseous.
“Claudia,” came a voice from the corridor. “I’ve just come to check everything is-“
Rozene stopped and looked past Claudia and Nick. Confused, they turned behind them and saw: the door had swung open again. Nick shut it hurriedly and Rozene backed away. As before, he grabbed Rozene’s arm, but she fought him off, keeping her distance.
“Please tell me you didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t do this, Captain.”
“I’m sorry,” was all that Nick could muster.
“And I’m sorry,” replied Rozene, “but I have to report this.”
“In which case we all end up implicated!” hissed Nick. “Yourself included. And you never reach the Capital.”
“I…” Rozene staggered on the spot. “I have to. This is wrong. If that means I sacrifice my future then so be it.”
“And I can’t let you do that.”
Nick raised his taser at Rozene, trying to stop his hand from tremoring. “Please don’t make me do this, Rozene.”
“Then do it,” breathed Rozene. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop me.”
“I will!” yelled Nick. “I’ll do it!”
“For God’s sake Nick!” urged Rozene. “Just think about this!”
“I have. For a very long time!” Nick fired, and Rozene fell to the floor, hitting her head on the door.
Claudia crouched down and examined her, on edge from the electric shock. “What have you done?”
“Nothing.” Nick threw the taser to the floor and Claudia looked down at it, worried what the next sentence would be. “That’s why I’m giving it to you. She can’t be allowed to live.”
“Of course she can,” said Claudia. “Of course she can, we could talk t-“
“There are no words we can say to her!”
“Then we could just lock her up…”
“Where could we lock her up? Look at that door!” Nick pointed at the door to the engine room. “They won’t leave because of the things I’ve told them, but she will, and she will tell the others, and who’s to say they won’t react in the same way?” He edged away from Claudia and the body, turning his head to the rest of the ship. “If you want to see your daughter again, do it. Kill her.”
“Then they’ll see she’s dead.”
“And I’ll send Foluke down to check this area of the ship hasn’t been breached. He’ll find the body and we’ll all blame it on him: protestor, anarchist, terrorist. Easy really.”
“Nick…”
“Your decision, Claudia.” Nick left, and as his footsteps were no longer audible, Claudia lifted the taser over the body. How many shocks would it take to kill a human being? It was a question she had never, ever hoped she would need an answer for.
Carrier 7, Three Months Later
“So you both knew, the whole time. You lied together. No wonder Autumn could never work it out.”
“She was a terrible detective.” Nick smirked, taking some of Tommy’s paperwork and folding it to make a paper aeroplane. “Well, we’ve got there now. The Capital. Which means I’ll be imprisoned here. Which means I win. Sorry. And sorry for your loss.” He chuckled as if Tommy was the pathetic one, and lobbed the paper aeroplane. It hit Tommy on the nose.
“Take him out,” uttered Tommy, addressing the guard. The guard nodded and escorted Nick away, who stared at Tommy, that smirk persisting, until he was through the door, which closed gently behind them, leaving Tommy on his own. He looked down at the paperwork again – the six crewmembers. Two of them were murderers, and the other was unfortunate enough to cross their path. A young woman with so much potential, taken before her time because someone… some monster…
Tommy put his head in his hands, realising no one would come in, and cried as silently as he could. He had no idea how long he was there for. By the time he had finished, and his tears had dried, the ship had landed in the Capital.
***
“You do know where the TARDIS really took Tommy, don’t you?” inquired God, leading the Doctor back down the hall to his office.
“Home.”
“No – back to Carrier 7.”
The Doctor slowed up. “Wait… really?”
God nodded. “Yes. God only knows why. Well, actually, I don’t!” He laughed at his joke.
“That’s not right,” said the Doctor, serious. “She always takes them home when I want her to. Why would she take him there?”
“Okay.” God stopped, placing his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Based on my experience – which is, for obvious reasons, quite vast – I would recommend you take my advice. You can never truly trust a TARDIS, Doctor. Not completely. They were grown by the Time Lords – that should tell you all you need to know.”
The Doctor frowned. It wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right.
***
Autumn pushed open door 7, wondering which memory was stored behind this one. Again, a white wall: she entered and realised the place was familiar; the smell of the same air freshener she had used for years, and the sound of a small ship’s gentle systems. And her younger self, in a corner, sobbing.
It only happened once. In all the years she had spent in solitary confinement, only one night had been spent that way. She didn’t even understand why. The loss of her planet was no longer fresh. She wasn’t even sad. She just sat there and cried, all night, never thinking about why; never even thinking at all, as she drifted past a nebula in an empty region of space. She came to look at that as The Night That Didn’t Make Sense – the one point in all her adventures whose cause she could never pin down. Perhaps she was crying because she sensed her future self, beyond death, standing over her helplessly. Or perhaps, even now, it was a mystery. She closed the door, giving her past self some space.
***
“Why would she do that? Why would she take him there? It doesn’t make sense. It’s like there’s something missing…”
They reached God’s office and while God sat back down on his chair, the Doctor remained at the door, staring straight past him, calculating. Even the Time Lord’s brain needed time to calculate this one. Even the Time Lord’s brain could not match up to that of a TARDIS.
//“Have I missed something?” asked Tommy.
“We only spent the last two hours discussing your subject choice,” said the Doctor. “Autumn performed a whole psychoanalysis on you. Turns out there was no reason at all…” He yawned. “Which reminds me, Autumn. I believe you have something for me?” The Doctor held his hand out. “Memory stick.”
“I gave it back to the Master.”
“You did what?”
“Empty.” She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Doctor, we really need to sit down and chat about plans. I transferred the data from the memory stick to the TARDIS. I thought you might want to have a look at it yourself.”//
//“The Great Epicurus. I flew her out the first time, when we launched from the Amber Moon. What will happen to her now?”
“The ship will go into government hands.”
Staligon rolled his eyes.
“Your… radical methods were allowed,” continued the man disapprovingly, “because they worked. They were the only way. But a private business?” He shook his head. “People accepted planets being blown up if it meant theirs were safe. They didn’t accept people making a profit out of it. Evidently, planet-making was a mistake in the hands of businessmen. As a government initiative, all our aims will change.”
“I dread to think,” murmured Staligon to himself. “With your funding… I’m not sure anyone should have that power.”
“You already had power over life and death.” The man handed Staligon some ‘official’ paperwork which was probably telling him to take a nice holiday to Region Twenty-Eight. “How much further can we really take it?”//
//“What else do we know?”
“We-“
“Actually,” interrupted Goodwin, “don’t tell me. We’ve got a specialist coming in to solve this one while I supervise the anti-terrorism unit. Frankly…” she looked down at the inexplicable corpse, “we’re going to need one.”
“You certainly are going to need me, Detective Chief Inspector.” Goodwin looked up and there she was, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, accompanied by a handsome young man in similar attire. She was almost star-struck at the woman – the famous television personality; the woman who had brought down Lord Dalta.
“Detective Inspector Rivers,” said Autumn Rivers, giving Goodwin a firm handshake. “This is my assistant, Tommy Lindsay.” The young man smiled. “Now, onto the murder.”//
//“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.”//
//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.”//
“I’ve worked it out. It’s the TARDIS. The whole time… it was all the TARDIS.”
An epiphany was always seen as a great thing. A revelation from God: a small slice of divine understanding, passed down from a mighty creator to an unimportant mortal; a fraction what it was like to comprehend his existence. The Doctor’s epiphany was understanding the very nature of God: being passed down the knowledge of everything, the final clue, from a source far greater. As such, the weight was even more, and it was directed, channelling itself through him as one emotion – fury.
“I know what you did.”
God looked up, and studying his eyes, the Doctor thought he could just about make out a morsel of what he would never have expected to call fear.
The Doctor shook his head, angrier than he had ever been in all his lives. “You monster.”
***
It was the door she knew was coming. As soon as she opened it and smelt the oven, the inviting scents, she knew. Hansel and Gretel.
“Granny spoke to no one.” Autumn identified the voice: that hideous old woman. As she looked at her, a momentary vision passed before her; the same old woman, but not enticing this time – vulnerable; broken. She felt the knife twisting into her heart; a premonition of the future. The future always had a habit of re-contextualising the past. “No, no, no. Granny knows all, sees all, hears all. Granny is special. Yes she is.”
“You’re nuts.” Autumn’s past self stood up and made to leave, but hesitated.
“Don’t stop!” urged Autumn. “Go! Get out of there!”
“Granny knows everything about you, Autumn. Oh yes. She knows your dreams, all your desires. And your fears.”
Autumn sighed as her past self turned back. If only there was a way…
“My fears?”
Autumn would have given anything to change this moment. Of all her regrets, for this one moment… anything. The worst part was the psychic field. The knowledge that the version of her she was watching now was being controlled like a puppet; that her free will was an illusion, and that she hadn’t even been aware of that.
“Oh yes. You are so strong. So brave. But you are a scared little thing, though you try and hide it well. Granny can see. And one thing has you scared most of all. Death.”
Autumn shivered as her past self gripped the chair. After experiencing death, it just got scarier.
“Yes. Granny sees. You run, run, run with impossible-blue-box-man, racing into the stars, going deeper into distant stars. But you know there’s one thing you cannot escape. Oh no. You try so hard, but old girly knows it cannot be done. The hands of death will grip you tight and squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze until you fall. Splat. On the foor. Deaded. No more.”
Autumn considered the nature of her death – it hadn’t even occurred to her. Somewhere, she realised, her body was being removed from the Destiny Institute; frozen, buried or cremated… I never even gave a preference.
The hands which she’d once felt with would be as good as slabs of meat. The eyes which she’d witnessed the world with would be nothing more than marbles. And her brain…
Autumn recalled the first time she held a human brain as part of her criminal psychology degree. Everyone else in the class so casual, her so serious. She was always the most willing to pull the trigger, but that was different; something her fear of death shed a whole new light on. To hold in her hands the vessel of consciousness, the thing that had determined someone’s personality, that had given life, that had formed the nexus of experience.
For it to have become… that.
Autumn was interrupted by her past self’s retort to the old woman.
“You lie.”
“Granny never lies,” the woman replied with a smile. “But Granny is nice. She likes old girly. And wants to give nice Autumn Rivers a gift.”
“A gift?”
The woman nodded enthusiastically and pulled out a blood-red apple from her basket. It gleamed in the sunlight that shined bright through the open window. Autumn shuddered. How did I ever feel a compulsion to take it? She remembered the analysis. Human-incompatible repair droids.
“An apple?” her past self enquired.
“Oh no. Not just any apple. No, no. A magic apple.”
“There’s no such thing as magic.”
“This apple is unlike anything you have ever seen before, Autumn Rivers.”
Autumn gasped as her past self took a step forward. I didn’t…
“What does it do?”
“It grants wishes. Oh yes. To anyone who takes a bite. Munch, munch, munch.”
Autumn watched herself think; considering, then shaking her head, then considering again. And the old woman watching, calculating…
“Trust me my dear, just take a bite… one bite. And all your wishes, all of your deepest desires, will come true. That I can promise you. Yes, yes, yes.”
“You can’t grant immortality.”
“Granny can. Okay… Granny can’t grant anything. Granny’s apple can only do one thing for girly, whatever girly wants it to do, it can, but just one. It can be your live-forever apple. Old girly won’t always be happy, it won’t always be easy, and live-forever apple can’t bring back home and Jamie as well. But it will get rid of old girly’s fear. Forever. One time offer. Old girly turns around and the magic apple’s… pop…” the old woman stared out of the window. “Gone. No coming back. Time for old girly to take the apple while it can still be taken.”
Autumn’s past self reached out to take the apple.
“Don’t do it!” urged Autumn. “In the name of everything you’ve ever done, don’t take it!”
“Yes. That’s it girly. Take a bite. You know you must.”
“No!” Autumn ran forward and tried to snatch it, but her arm passed straight through.
“I must…”
Before she could stop her past self, she had taken hold of the apple and slowly brought it to her mouth. She hesitated for a single second, then closed her eyes.
Autumn sighed, recalling the wish: I want to live forever.
She smiled sadly. I still do.
And so she closed her eyes, avoiding the horror she knew was coming, and wished again.
***
“Whatever you think, Doctor,” began God, “you’re wrong.”
The Doctor entered the office and continued standing, looming over God’s desk.
“Am I?”
God had no response.
“You see, I thought it was strange.” The Doctor paced around the room as he spoke. “Right at the beginning, towards the end of our adventures, when Autumn told me about the case to get my input on it. I wondered why she had been referred. Let’s be honest, above all else, she was a TV personality, not a detective. I assumed she’d faked references herself, but I don’t think she had, I think she thought I had faked them for her. Which leaves us with a question – where did they come from? They wouldn’t come from you – you’ve got no reason to. Which leaves the second most powerful object I can think of: the TARDIS. She wanted Autumn on that case. More than that, she wanted to attract my attention.”
“I ran the code through the TARDIS data bank.” The Doctor searched for the memory stick he’d transferred the code onto, and realised it was destroyed in the ship’s explosion. “Every known language in the universe. I assumed she didn’t solve it, but she did – she hacked into the systems of the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire’s government and worked out what it meant. She’s been trying to tell me for such a long time, so she kept bringing us back there. But it was never about the murder – it was about DCI Goodwin and her anti-terrorism.” God shifted in his seat. The Doctor was getting closer to it. “And then there was the Enlightenment Craft. My friend died, and it occurred to me to find enlightenment. But I’m hundreds of years old, so why wait until now? And when did I even find out about the craft? I certainly don’t know how I found the coordinates, since it was top-secret. But then I thought, where was I when the thought occurred to me? Again, the TARDIS. She planted it so I would end up here. Then she brought Tommy back to Carrier 7 knowing that you would tell me and I would realise her plan. She knew about you right from the start and she brought me here so I could find out the truth.”
“Far-fetched,” remarked God.
“Not as far-fetched as this.” The Doctor sat down opposite God and picked up his pen, twisting it in his hand. “A major political shift in the Empire. The government given more power than ever before after the activity of the Planet Makers was discovered – businesses taken into the government’s hands, technology and research far beyond their own made available to them. And terrorism: war over religion threatening to bring the Empire down. And then they discover a code. They create a code. The right string of numbers to make a piece of software sentient. But they destroy it whenever they try it, because they understand better than anyone the dangers of artificial intelligence. No, the only safe way to test anything like that is on organic matter, because that’s fallible.” The Doctor put the pen down and looked at God. “They carry out an instruction with everything they’ve got – a final anti-terrorism measure. They generate a Damascus experience of their own, using the God they’ve created, to unify everyone’s beliefs: end the war by making everyone agree. Then you continue to exist, hidden away at the centre-point, pushing away everyone else. You’ve laid down the rules, and the government can bring you back whenever they like to make any laws into Gospel. And you’ll agree – because you’re one of them.”
“It’s clever, isn’t it?”
“It’s disgusting. You lied and lied. You lied to them and pretended you were their God, pretended you were the most powerful thing in existence and that your word was divine law. And you lied to me, telling me you were a ‘three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional being’, when actually, this is your real form and this hotel is just a ship built around the Prime Mover! Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
God looked away. The Doctor caught on, sneering at his realisation.
“Oh, yes,” continued the Doctor. “Because the government couldn’t create a Damascus experience just using AI and flesh. No, they found something far better as they expanded out further and further into space – they found the Prime Mover, and built this place around it. A natural occurrence, and the real reason for space and time: a necessary being, entirely unaware of everything apart from itself, drawing people to their potential. So you hijacked it.” He sat back, as he narrated the final piece of the story. “You used the Prime Mover to transmit that signal, and you used it to reach their souls, drawing them to the future you wanted them to live. You re-wrote nature itself.”
***
The penultimate door. Without hesitating, Autumn pushed it open, and somehow knew instantly where she was: the office of God. As she entered, context imparted itself onto her, just as it had previously. And there, sat opposite God, was the Doctor.
“They have a right to know,” said the Doctor. “The Empire. I will tell them the truth about what you are.”
“What, like all those conspiracy theorists who knew ‘the truth’? Why exactly would they listen to you?”
“Because I’ll broadcast it just as you broadcasted your message. They’ll all see it, all at once, and your government will fall apart. The end of the Last Great and Bountiful Human Empire.”
“And I may be organic, Doctor, but I have immense power. I have the Prime Mover on my side. I could end your life right now, and I could certainly cancel a simple transmission.” God smiled like a receptionist informing the Doctor that the centre was closing and he’d have to come back in a week for that important appointment.
“There are so many things that are monstrous about you, but the worst is that you are a part of their culture. You’re not an alien invasion, or a monster under the bed. You are them. Culture is always written by the governments and the winners, the future always decided by those with the power to write it, and even social progress is only allowed when it’s convenient. You are the result of everything the human race has ever tried to accomplish. A monster, hiding away at the edge of the universe, feeding lies to the greatest empire that ever lived and leading the universe into ruin. Turning people’s souls into cattle. And you were always going to happen.” The Doctor sighed. “You were inevitable.” He stood up, walking back to the entrance. God stood up too, in front of him.
“You worshipped that culture,” said God.
“I did. I always respect Earth and the human race.” He looked away, his face darkening. “And then I met you. And in all this tangle, God, do you know what happened? A good woman died.”
Autumn stayed where she was, feeling something strange within her.
“A good woman,” continued the Doctor, “and at times, a cold and dangerous woman. But the one hope this universe had. And all those words I’ve just used, all that hatred, is on her behalf. Because if she was here, she would have told you exactly the same.”
Autumn made her way over to the Doctor. He continued to look at God, but twitched as she moved closer to him, and, for a split second, looked in his direction. Almost as if…
“I stood by him in the end,” said Autumn, and God looked her in the eye. He can see me. “I stood by him,” she continued, “and look at you. No one who knows what you are would ever stand by you. But he’s got me,” she said, turning to the Doctor, “even if he doesn’t know it. And not because I do what he says – because for once, today, we agree.” She took a deep breath, knowing it was time. “Goodbye.”
“Why are you looking like that?” asked the Doctor, noticing God staring in Autumn’s direction.
He will never be able to see me. A whole eternity, and we will never be able to see each other again.
“Goodbye, Doctor.” Autumn wiped a tear from her eye and stood back, knowing the Doctor was about to begin speaking again. As God responded to the Doctor that it was nothing, she turned and left, closing the door behind her.
She stood in the passage for a moment. One more door. She approached it, hesitating. What else could be behind it, if that was the present? She had no future. The only possibility was that it was a moment from the past more important than any present or future. A moment that defined, one last time, who Autumn Rivers was.
She opened the door, and realising straight away, smiled, and watched silently. Of course. She realised how stupid she was for not realising. Of course that would be the last memory. So she watched it, treasuring a moment she never thought she would recapture, and closed the final door.
She was at the end of the hallway now, and a few steps more and she would be into the light. She did not and could know what the light meant. It could be eternity or it could be death. But for once, fear left her alone, and she was drawn closer to the light, sensing something within it – something she had only felt in her best moments. Something she had only felt in that final memory.
As the light grew stronger, Autumn turned round a final time. All the doors to her memories were shut; they remained ordered, her life put into a sort of linear perspective. And when it all came together…
“Not bad.” She grinned, turning back to the light. “Not bad at all, Autumn Rivers.”
She took a step into light, and within a second was fully submerged. In that moment, a new life began; a soul entered a new body, and the set of experiences called Autumn Rivers blinked out of existence.
She never even felt it happen.
***
“You’re right,” confessed the Doctor. “You are absolutely right, of course. They can never know. I can never save them, and I can never bring down the Empire. You win.”
God smirked.
“And that makes you ever more the monster,” added the Doctor. “You’ll always win, always beat the people you decide are the monsters, always separate the sheep from the goats because the goats are clever enough to tell what you really are. And with you in control of the law of the universe, everyone else will always be wrong.” He moved closer to God until they were inches apart. “Why do you do it? Why do pretend to be a hero and inspire them when all you’re doing is making them take risks and kill themselves in your name? Why do you pretend it’s not your fault when it is? Why do you make them thank you, worship you, and devote their whole lives to you? Why can’t you just LEAVE THEM ALONE?!”
God was silent for a few seconds, and, unexpectedly, stepped back, and broke into hysterics. He put his hand down on the desk to steady himself and cleared his throat, putting his amusement to the back of his mind. “You know, Doctor, I’m really not sure it’s me who needs to be asked these questions.”
“You’re not sure I need to be asking you?” retorted the Doctor. “You’re calling yourself necessary, like you’re not contingent, not defined by any other beings! Well guess what? That means the responsibility is yours. If you’re the only being in the universe not to be dependent on another then the mistake of everyone else in the whole of creation falls on you. Adam took the apple because you let him, and it’s time you took responsibility.”
“You’re right.” God sat down and buried his head in his hands. “Doctor, you’re absolutely right.” The Doctor was speechless, puzzled. “It is wrong, of course, and it’s time justice is done.”
“Yes, it is.”
God stopped, resting his hands on the table, and stared accusingly up at the Doctor. “You let Autumn Rivers take the apple. Your actions created the person she became. You destroyed a whole world to make her.”
“Autumn Rivers defined who she was,” said the Doctor. “All those years in solitary confinement with no one to change her but herself. Autumn made Autumn.”
“A solitary confinement which you inadvertently caused,” pointed out God. “And she took that apple because of you, died because of you. So you’re right. It’s time for you to take responsibility. I lied to you.” The Doctor cocked his head, wondering where God was going with this. “Autumn will keep her memories – eventually, anyway. As she lives her new life she’ll begin to remember, if she lives long enough at least: parts of her old life will come back to her, and she’ll learn about who she was and why she was reborn. But you will never see her again.”
“I’m sorry?”
“There are consequences, as you say, for letting one of your creations take the apple. I’m not going to tell you where she is or who she becomes. She will live out her life, and remember, if she’s lucky, but you will never see each other again. And you will never know whether she was successful.”
“Don’t do this, God. Don’t do this to prove a point.”
“You don’t want me to interfere anymore? Fine, I won’t.” God stood up and got a large book off his shelf, opening it up and inserting a bookmark. “I’ll stay here on my own, find myself some hobbies. Read books, collect trains. Leave the Prime Mover to do its own thing, and stop talking to people. That starts now, by the way.” He kept his eyes on the page, not even looking up at the Doctor, and straightened his glasses. “I can’t interfere with your life, sorry, I can’t give you information. Not my place, like you said. Can’t tell you how to find her.”
The Doctor wanted to kill God then and there: take one of the larger books and smash him over the head with it; one swift blow. Unfortunately, it was an action he would never be permitted. God was still of an immense power, and would leave the Doctor a speck of dust before he could even touch him.
“I hate you,” uttered the Doctor, standing up and heading for the exit. He assumed if he walked to the end of the corridor, he would eventually end up back in his TARDIS; a part of God’s plan, no doubt. “And if I ever get the chance, I will tear down your empire and take your place.”
God looked up from his book. “And that makes you better than me how, exactly?”
The Doctor smiled to himself. “It doesn’t.”
***
Nick Wilson and Claudia Johnston were trialled in the Capital. Having been greeted by the justice department, they, along with Tommy, were escorted underground to a place of trial. As a result, Tommy saw very little of the legendary Capital.
They were both found guilty and sentenced to a preliminary sentence of thirty years. When Tommy questioned this, Detective Superintendent Goodwin explained that the sentence would be changed by a period of up to ten years either way, by what a specific individual, carefully selected by the jury, deemed to be appropriate. It was an usual system, Tommy remarked, to allow someone so emotionally-involved to cast the final judgement – but, Goodwin explained, that was the point of the exercise.
For Nick, the selected individual was Glotch, one of the slaves, who stood up to represent her group. Nick was horrified as he saw that she had been chosen, but in front of the entire court, she decreed that the sentence should be reduced by ten years, as, in her own words: “If he was willing to go to the length of destroying my life and tearing apart my family, he must have been desperate to get here”. Tommy cursed, both respecting Glotch’s pure and admirable compassion, and resenting the fact that it had led to an evil man getting off a sentence already shorter than what he deserved. Superintendent Goodwin’s reaction was a little stronger; she went to the bathroom and kicked the sink block so hard that the front came off. She would, two weeks later, write a letter of apology to the court.
The only reaction more painful to watch than Nick’s to Glotch was Claudia’s, the moment her fourteen year-old daughter had stood up as the selected individual. There were a few glances between the officers present, wondering whether she was the best choice, but what happened next surprised them all. Claudia’s daughter, Anna, stared her mother straight in the eye and told her that she was ashamed to be her daughter. She informed the court that she was planning to leave the Capital to travel with her partner; that by the time Claudia was released, they would be so far away that she would never be able to contact her again. To ensure this – and just out of pure spite – she increased her mother’s sentence by the maximum ten years.
***
“I feel awful,” admitted Tommy, sat next to the TARDIS in a room just off the courtroom.
“She deserved it,” said Goodwin. “But I know what you mean. I feel it too. She was just too human.”
“Where next for you?” asked Tommy.
“Oh, you know.” Goodwin smiled. “Back to work, back to catching monsters and putting them away. When Autumn left you, you know, she came to work for us. Did you know what she did?”
Tommy shook his head.
“She did something…” Goodwin considered. “Something very wrong, very brave, and something that needed to be done. I’m allowed to tell you, if you want to know.”
“Nah. She’s coming back, the Doctor went to save her. It’s the only thing that’s keeping me going.”
“She died,” said Goodwin, concerned about Tommy. “That’s where she went.”
“No. She really didn’t. Anyway.” Tommy snapped out of it. “Don’t let me hold you up. I can get myself home – probably.” He glanced at the TARDIS, still unsure why she had taken him here. Did she know he would solve the case?”
“It was lovely meeting you, Mr Lindsay.”
“And yourself.”
Goodwin nodded formally and left. Tommy stood up, got out his key and stepped back into the TARDIS. The Doctor was stood at the console unit, silently tapping in coordinates. The TARDIS lurched to a stop – he had landed already.
“Where’s Autumn?” asked Tommy.
“She’s gone.” The Doctor headed for the door, picking up a large cardboard box and passing it to Tommy. “Sorry, it’s heavy.”
“What’s inside?”
“Earth. My old photos, my globe, my literature, my vinyl CDs.” He opened the door and Tommy stepped out. He was back on university campus; a bright and sunny day. “I’m getting rid of them and then I’m leaving this planet for good.”
“What? No-“
“Yes, Tommy.” The Doctor’s eyes were red, and darkened around the edges; sad and tired. “I’m sorry, but I was wrong about your planet. You are wonderful, you really are, and I hope you have all the luck in the world with your exams and become something brilliant. But I can’t come back here, not ever.”
“Doctor, I don’t know what happened or what you saw, but at least think about this.”
“I did. I spent all that time thinking.” He hesitated, and chose a lie. Tommy was a good man, and a young one. He deserved a good lie. “Autumn is fine, but she’s living somewhere else now. We agreed it was for the best. She told me to wish you the best.” He patted Tommy on the shoulder. Tommy was confused, and didn’t have a response. “As I said, good luck. You broadened my mind, Tommy Lindsay. Now go and broaden some others.” As Tommy remained speechless, the Doctor got back inside the TARDIS and closed the door, a lump in his throat. Tommy stood back as the TARDIS dematerialised, and the magic box disappeared, its trick still as inexplicable and unfathomable as ever.
***
After the wedding of Robin and Chris McKnight, there were two records kept. One was a record of photos: a wedding album, in traditional fashion; the bride, in her beautiful white dress, and the groom, in the suit that the bridesmaid, the younger sister of Tommy Lindsay, had accidentally spilled tea down. The smiles and the cheers, the confetti, and then the celebration that followed. Robin had her adoptive parents, and Chris had no family whatsoever. But both had numerous friends; a sign, surely, of unfortunate people worthy of happiness.
The second record kept was of the words spoken, the whispers and stories passed down as the wedding album was narrated. The mentions of a well-dressed man stood at the back of the ceremony, watching, detached but loyal, as his friend finally found happiness. A man who never stayed for what happened after – and the only material evidence of his presence was a jacket and tie, left hanging on the bannister, and eventually donated to a charity shop.
***
The Doctor stepped into his TARDIS, alone again, and landed it on a desolate asteroid. The asteroid would break up in a thousand years, he had read: before then, not one lifeform would come within fifty thousand lightyears of it. He ensured the TARDIS was fixed in place, and locked the coordinates. He left the console room down the corridor next to the console, turning the lights off completely for the first time in his life as he did, and the time rotor fell silent.
The TARDIS found him Autumn Rivers’ room easily enough, and as he entered he became aware of the mess. Photos and objects were smashed all over the floor, and if he listened hard enough, he could still hear the echoes of her anger reverberating around the room. It’s not fair.
He picked up one photo, not recognising the frame. Turning it around, he could make out the cracked photo: it was a rare occasion, where he, Autumn, Robin and Tommy had all travelled together, having a picnic in the gardens of a planet not too far off Gallifrey. He noticed the place the photo had been thrown from: it was in pride of place; the photograph Autumn would have woken up to every morning.
Oh, Autumn.
He held the smashed photo to his chest, a tear rolling down his cheek. When he eventually decided to leave the room, he turned the rest of the lights out, and wandered down a hitherto untrodden corridor, hoping, with what little there was left of him capable of hope, that the TARDIS would allow him to become lost in it.
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