Prologue
Sasha climbed out of bed, rubbing her eyes, and knocking the glass on her bedside table over just as she always did. She sighed, and when she looked back, the glass was gone and the floor was dry.
She stood up without difficulty; her form was weightless. A poet may have employed the expression ‘light as a feather’, though that somewhat poorly communicated Sasha’s experience. Weight, within this world, was so foreign a concept as to be inconceivable. Her senses picked up what they needed to, and her mind stifled their curiosity. She did not need to reach out and touch; the texture was built into her, and with one passing thought she could access it.
The floorboards creaked under her feet; each one at the same volume, the same pitch, the same duration and the same exact sound, like a sound effect repeated over and over again on a low-budget horror movie.
But there was no horror: this was her home. The floorboards creaked, but not as a structural threat; it was their way of greeting her. Only three years old, she admired the simplicity of their communication; related to their ability to express themselves only through way of speaking rather than what was being spoken. She assured herself, even in the absence of a solid idea of what assurance meant, that however bad things got, at least she would never be a floorboard.
She was in the hallway now. It was as it always was, but her mind was a slow artist, and there were patches, glitches, in the reality around her; block colours floating uneasily in the corner of her eye like melted wax in a lava lamp. In front of her, perfectly-formed, was another wooden staircase leading up to the next floor.
This was when Sasha always registered that she was in a dream. In real life, there was no staircase; just another room – an empty bedroom. Yet in her mind, however hard she tried to see through it, the staircase remained rooted to its spot, the one part of the illusion which did not seem to be floating or transient. She was compelled to climb it.
The staircase took her to an attic; an amalgamation of every attic she had ever seen half-watching television or staring fixatedly over the property pages of the newspaper, ignoring the meaningless numbers and letters below the pictures…
The pictures. All of them here. Everything she had ever loved, selected and organised into an ordered arrangement. Every toy she had ever hankered for, lined up against the walls, colours over-saturated. Her favourite song she had ever heard, echoing around the room. She looked up. The ceiling was just above her head; an impractical construction for an adult. This was a child’s room in a sense that no child’s room could ever quite commit to.
And at the end of the room, a door. Sasha came to the door, for the first time hesitantly. One small push and it would swing open; all of a sudden the world would become bigger than her. A new world, that was: she would fall out of the one she knew, into a distorted reflection.
Distortion carries beauty of its own. Sasha considered those words, surprisingly lucidly, as she returned to the door yet another time, now fifteen. Each encounter blended into the next, and the passage of time was untraceable whenever she entered the dream. Distortion is just a kind of whimsy. Our ordinary selves, reflected into something wondrous.
She puzzled over that sentiment. The words did not seem to be her own.
After some deliberation, she pushed the door open, and it disappeared to the touch, the room behind her also fading out of view. She was in a new place now: a world bigger than her own. Plants stretched tall and twisting; giant beanstalks indicating something stranger up above. The grass reached higher, drops of morning dew even touching her knees. The sky was cloudless and blue, and her mind generated an almost psychedelic soundscape of incomprehensible yet satisfying sounds, forming a rhythm within themselves.
“I just want to stay here.”
As she spoke, Sasha shuddered. The words leaving her mouth took form: she had made an imprint on this world. She was audible; tangible.
Vulnerable.
Ahead of her, another form shifted, but too directed to be a glitch. The absence of meaning took shape, like a silhouette. It was a man: taller than her; and symmetrical, perhaps. Or, at least, it was the shape of a man: the impression he cast over this world was nothing like the impression any man would ever be capable of making.
“Who are you?” asked Sasha.
The thing looked back at her.
“What do you want?”
In a hundred different times at once, and always in the same place, Sasha awoke, leaning over and spilling her glass of water. She sighed, and when she turned back, the glass had fallen on the floor, and a puddle of spilled water waited impatiently to be dealt with.
She stood up without difficulty; her form was weightless. A poet may have employed the expression ‘light as a feather’, though that somewhat poorly communicated Sasha’s experience. Weight, within this world, was so foreign a concept as to be inconceivable. Her senses picked up what they needed to, and her mind stifled their curiosity. She did not need to reach out and touch; the texture was built into her, and with one passing thought she could access it.
The floorboards creaked under her feet; each one at the same volume, the same pitch, the same duration and the same exact sound, like a sound effect repeated over and over again on a low-budget horror movie.
But there was no horror: this was her home. The floorboards creaked, but not as a structural threat; it was their way of greeting her. Only three years old, she admired the simplicity of their communication; related to their ability to express themselves only through way of speaking rather than what was being spoken. She assured herself, even in the absence of a solid idea of what assurance meant, that however bad things got, at least she would never be a floorboard.
She was in the hallway now. It was as it always was, but her mind was a slow artist, and there were patches, glitches, in the reality around her; block colours floating uneasily in the corner of her eye like melted wax in a lava lamp. In front of her, perfectly-formed, was another wooden staircase leading up to the next floor.
This was when Sasha always registered that she was in a dream. In real life, there was no staircase; just another room – an empty bedroom. Yet in her mind, however hard she tried to see through it, the staircase remained rooted to its spot, the one part of the illusion which did not seem to be floating or transient. She was compelled to climb it.
The staircase took her to an attic; an amalgamation of every attic she had ever seen half-watching television or staring fixatedly over the property pages of the newspaper, ignoring the meaningless numbers and letters below the pictures…
The pictures. All of them here. Everything she had ever loved, selected and organised into an ordered arrangement. Every toy she had ever hankered for, lined up against the walls, colours over-saturated. Her favourite song she had ever heard, echoing around the room. She looked up. The ceiling was just above her head; an impractical construction for an adult. This was a child’s room in a sense that no child’s room could ever quite commit to.
And at the end of the room, a door. Sasha came to the door, for the first time hesitantly. One small push and it would swing open; all of a sudden the world would become bigger than her. A new world, that was: she would fall out of the one she knew, into a distorted reflection.
Distortion carries beauty of its own. Sasha considered those words, surprisingly lucidly, as she returned to the door yet another time, now fifteen. Each encounter blended into the next, and the passage of time was untraceable whenever she entered the dream. Distortion is just a kind of whimsy. Our ordinary selves, reflected into something wondrous.
She puzzled over that sentiment. The words did not seem to be her own.
After some deliberation, she pushed the door open, and it disappeared to the touch, the room behind her also fading out of view. She was in a new place now: a world bigger than her own. Plants stretched tall and twisting; giant beanstalks indicating something stranger up above. The grass reached higher, drops of morning dew even touching her knees. The sky was cloudless and blue, and her mind generated an almost psychedelic soundscape of incomprehensible yet satisfying sounds, forming a rhythm within themselves.
“I just want to stay here.”
As she spoke, Sasha shuddered. The words leaving her mouth took form: she had made an imprint on this world. She was audible; tangible.
Vulnerable.
Ahead of her, another form shifted, but too directed to be a glitch. The absence of meaning took shape, like a silhouette. It was a man: taller than her; and symmetrical, perhaps. Or, at least, it was the shape of a man: the impression he cast over this world was nothing like the impression any man would ever be capable of making.
“Who are you?” asked Sasha.
The thing looked back at her.
“What do you want?”
In a hundred different times at once, and always in the same place, Sasha awoke, leaning over and spilling her glass of water. She sighed, and when she turned back, the glass had fallen on the floor, and a puddle of spilled water waited impatiently to be dealt with.
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Series 3 - Episode 1
The Night Staricase
Written by Janine Rivers
“So this lad comes into the office, whose name I obviously can’t tell you, though it might begin with R and end with –eece Beck. He says he’s had an ‘argument’ with his RE teacher. This is Mr Forde, by the way. I’d only just got out a snack, because I thought I’d have ten minutes uninterrupted to eat a bit of lunch while I was sifting through reports. Normally I get that, because after ten minutes, the troublemakers just can’t sit still any longer. But nope, not this time. Reece left the classroom and came to me after two minutes. I said, how on Earth could you argue with your teacher in that short a space of time? I assumed he’d planned it or something, just gone into the classroom angrily, like, planning to upset someone. He said no, it’s because Mr Forde is Catholic. I said you can’t have an argument because of someone’s religion and he agreed, really calmly actually, and said no, you can’t. So apparently, Mr Forde does a prayer at the start of every lesson, you know, bows his head, closes his eyes, puts his hands together and asks the rest of the class to do the same. Only Reece didn’t, he said he never does, but this time Mr Forde looks up while he’s praying and sees Reece sitting. He tells him to bow his head. Well, this sets Reece off. He says he was sitting there respectfully, he wasn’t distracting anyone, and he doesn’t believe in praying.”
“That’s a tricky one.” Chris poured some milk into his cereal, leaving just enough so that Robin could add some to her coffee, and jotted a note on the back of his hand to pick some up on the way home from work. “So is Reece… another religion?”
“Well here’s the thing.” Robin got up as Chris sat down, getting cups ready as the kettle reached its boil. They were out of teabags too. She walked back over to the table and jotted another note on the back of Chris’s hand, continuing to narrate, with effortless multitasking, as she did. “Mr Forde asked Reece what faith he was. Reece said he doesn’t believe in faith, he’s an atheist. So Forde then replies – and actually, this is what caught my attention – that if he’s an atheist, he doesn’t have any beliefs to be offended, and should bow his head anyway.” She brought the coffees over to the table and started to finish her own breakfast. “What do you think? To me that’s really off.”
“Mm.” Chris thought over that, showing up the shortcomings in his own multitasking abilities as a lump of Weetabix dropped off the spoon, causing some milk to splash onto his shirt. He stood up and ineffectively tried to sponge it out. “I think it is a bit off.”
“We’re not even a Christian school,” said Robin, trying to inspire a bit more than a murmur of agreement. “We shouldn’t even be praying, should we? There’s probably a rule against that. We definitely shouldn’t be forcing people.”
“Aye, there’s probably a rule.” Chris was suddenly horror-stricken, confronted briefly with the prospect of searching through government rules and guidelines. Still, Ofsted were as present a danger as a terror attack; it would hardly be a bad idea to refresh his memory. “I’ll look into it for you.”
“Thanks.” Robin finished her story, satisfied with the reaction, and, sitting back, was drawn to a large, sealed cardboard box on the dining-room table. “What’s that?”
“I’m not sure, it’s addressed to you.”
Robin read the label, and sure enough, it was. There was no mention of a supplier. Could they even send things like that?
“That arrived a bit early, didn’t it?”
“Aye, it did.” It occurred to Robin that having got up to sponge the mark off his shirt, Chris was now buttering a slice of toast to have with his cereal. It seemed like a lot, but it was fair enough; if he was to stand up in front of the school and give long, repetitive speeches about the importance of breakfast, he could at least exhibit his passion for the subject in real life. “Didn’t see who delivered it either.”
Robin was already cutting into the parcel using scissors left out from her preparation of the now-compulsory game, ‘Match the picture of the banned substance to its name’. Once upon a time, she was sure, schoolchildren played hangman. Once upon a time, she reflected more bitterly, form tutors were competent enough to deal with that sort of thing.
She got into the parcel, and nestled in polystyrene was a metal box, about fifteen inches wide, six inches long, and another five-and-a-half inches high. It was clean and polished, her face reflected untainted in it; clearly not a second-hand delivery. That was it – a heavy metal box with no markings or discernible parts other than capitalised letters, in Aharoni font, embossed across the top.
G.E.N.I.E.
“Weird,” murmured Robin, running her fingers over it. Chris sat back down and examined it curiously. He dropped his spoon as he felt the box with his other hand; several more splashes of milk hit his shirt. He sighed and stood up.
“I’m going to have to go and change this thing now.” As he walked up the stairs, undoing the buttons with more dexterity than he could hold a spoon, he called back down to Robin. “We’re got a new art teacher starting tomorrow! Sasha… Ramasomething.”
“Well, this is a big week then, starting today,” said Robin, realising Chris could not hear her. She responded to herself by checking the calendar to make sure she had the time right.
3:30 – Kate Priest.
She shuddered at the name. But rules were rules. As long as they acted in her favour, Kate may well just be the bearer, albeit reluctantly, of some good news.
Robin realised pondering on the subject was futile, and turned her mind to the new art teacher.
Sasha Ramasomething.
***
Sasha Ramachandran stepped back inside her old home, for the first time in seven years.
It was much as her memory had preserved it. The mahogany doors were as dark and heavy as she had remembered them; the stairs as long and winding, and the entrance hall as vast as it had always been; the only place in which she could still feel like a child. She enjoyed the world being bigger than her again.
The windows were still open – in truth, she was never sure whether they even closed – and a draught blew through the hall; the price to pay for breathing in and enjoying the fresh morning air. It was good to be out of the pollution of Glasgow, though no doubt London, the closer she got, would prove worse.
This place felt like a miracle. Picturesque, untouched by industrial developments, and only twenty minutes outside of Central London. She wondered why her father had never chosen to let it out, then was drawn to mark on the wall, and to the absence of the chandelier, and rephrased the question in her mind: she wondered if her father had chosen to let it out recently.
She began to climb the staircase; each step creaked in its own way, welcoming her back. At least I’m not dreaming. It startled her how quickly she was reminded of the dreams: she barely ever dreamt after she left the house, and never once dreamt of the house. She wondered if they would begin again.
There’s only one way to find out.
Exhausted from the journey, Sasha left her suitcase on the landing – the weight of which nearly collapsed the bannister – and sluggishly trudged into her room.
It was how she had left it. At the time, it would have been meaningless: the things she left behind were merely the things she did not deem valuable enough to take with her. Yet, over time, they gathered meaning as statically and naturally as they gathered dust, as it attached itself to them over the changing years. The things she had chosen to leave behind told her as much about herself as the things she had chosen to take.
A calendar of places to see hung up on the wall, but it had been used more introspectively and reflectively than it had been intended: she had left little marks next to places she believed she may have seen in a past life, attempting to plot a journey across something greater and stranger than mere geographical spaces.
Her speakers still rested on the shelf, back from when she found music a useful aid for concentration. An abandoned essay in now-unfamiliar handwriting sat in an unemptied bin along with an empty bottle of Highland Springs. The glass she had poured it into had been left on the windowsill. Under the bed, she noticed her phone case. She had been wondering where that was for the last seven years.
She collapsed on her unmade bed, drifting off in seconds.
***
Sasha awoke in a castle. Her mind told her it was a castle, at least: the grey, eroded bricks and glassless windows set about to make that impression. She was sure of it. Within seconds, she was sure she was in a dream. The blurred spots of inconsistency made no effort to hide themselves or divert her attention away from them. And anyway, what would I be doing in a castle?
There were five others in the room with her. They were quite indistinct; she was able to focus on parts of them, but never register any of them as a coherent whole. Regardless, her rational mind was perplexed by them. The small details were not things she was capable of imagining independently: one man, the one in the leather jacket, had a satchel of the like she had not seen for years; another was not even a man at all, his face a strange, asymmetrical shape of the sort that would normally unease her. Here, now, the only thing that uneased her was the extent of her mind’s capabilities.
“You will come with us now.”
She registered a command, and was moving with the rest of the group. She was sure they ventured the same corridor four times; they would turn the corner and there it would be again, the doors in the same place as before, the light coming from the same direction.
They were now in another room, sitting up. She felt a strange sensation on her arm; a sort of pins and…
Needles. Someone was injecting her; she focused on the injection, and it was all she could see. Something red was moving into or out of her; it was impossible to tell, and everything around her was developing a quality of redness.
More patches were forming in this reality. It was beginning to close. She looked around the room, taking in as much detail as she could, and settled on one man, the one she had puzzled over, in the leather jacket and satchel, spending the last moment registering his face…
***
Sasha awoke with a jolt highly unusual for her, and sat up. The swift motion woke her. She felt droggy. Is that a word? Droggy?
It was still light outside. She never found napping to be productive – that was when the dreams were usually at their strangest.
A built-in response, she glanced to her bedside table. A glass rested there, full of water: she had managed not to knock it over, but was sure it had not been there when she entered the room. She stretched her hands out and examined the finer details of the room, conducting a quick dream check.
I know when I’m awake.
She made her way back down the stairs and ran her hands against the walls. Something felt different. There had been a larger draught; leaves had blown inside the hall through the window, but it did not seem to have been enough to wake her. She felt thirsty. As she reached for the door-handle to the kitchen, her arm throbbed and she examined it – a bruise had formed below the shoulder. Strange, she observed, how the injury, unbeknownst to her, had seemed to affect the content of the dream.
Ignoring the dull ache, she pushed the door open, and screamed, putting her hand to her chest. A man was stood in the kitchen, casually pouring two cups of tea, and was unstartled by Sasha’s arrival. He finished pouring just as Sasha was calculating whether or not she would be able to get out before he could start chasing her, and turned to her, putting the tea down lightly on the worktop. At one look of his face, Sasha’s thought processes changed completely.
“It’s… you.”
“Hello Sasha,” said the man in the leather jacket and satchel, taking a sip out of his tea. Even now, she struggled to register him as a whole. “It’s me.”
***
“Now…this isn’t going to be easy, Mrs McKnight, so I’m very sorry to have to tell you…” Kate Priest adjusted her oval-shaped glasses and flicked through the clipboard she had perched on her knee, one leg over the other, making herself more than at home in Robin and Chris’s house, yet somehow failing to interact in any meaningful way with the environment around her. “We’ve had a look over your case, and believe me, we’ve taken considerable time… but unfortunately, you don’t qualify for adoption.”
“What?” Chris sat forward, incensed. “How the hell did you reach that conclusion?”
“Mrs McKnight,” continued Kate, looking down at her notes, “your mental health history is not indicative of a stable caregiver. Obviously your mental health issues occurred for very understandable reasons, but it’s in the child’s best interest-“
“Losing a child was the reason it happened,” interrupted Robin. “Do you think it would happen again if I had a child to look after?”
“Potentially.” Robin scowled at Kate who continued flipping through paper, blatantly lying in her feigned day-work voice. “The alcoholism-“
“Alcoholism?” Robin scoffed. “I haven’t had a drink for months. I fell back on it when I found I couldn’t conceive because I thought I’d never have a child. That was a breakdown, it happened and I recovered. I’m not some drunk who’s going to endanger my child, it’s because I care more than anyone. Do you know what it’s like? To spend three whole years coming to terms with the fact that the thing you want most in the world, the thing you need, is something you can never have? All I want is a child, someone to look after. I wish I could just have a child.”
“Even so, Mrs McKnight, there are protocols.”
“Please,” urged Robin, teary-eyed. “Please just look again, I’m begging you. I’ve done everything this last few months, I’ve-“
“I’m dreadfully sorry to have had to deliver this news to you. We can recommend counselling servi-“
“I’ll tell you what you can do.” Chris put his arm around Robin and looked daggers at Kate. “You can f… you can leave, right now, out of my house, and go and ruin someone else’s life. Preferably your own.”
Kate nodded and stood up, holding her clipboard to her chest. As she made her way into the hall Chris made out her mutter: “There goes any chance you ever had”.
Enraged, Chris went to stand up, but hesitated. His wife was in tears. He sat back down and let her lean against his shoulder.
Kate closed the door behind her, and as she walked outside along the drive, she noticed a young man walking in, vaguely familiar from somewhere.
“Kate Priest,” he said, seeming to recognise her. There was a moment of silence, and he cocked his head, hearing Robin sobbing inside. “See you’re continuing to break families. Social services, license to kill.”
“Oh yes, I thought you were familiar.” She looked him up and down, unimpressed. “Tommy Lindsay. Everyone will have forgotten you within a few months. What was it my friend said? That’s it. No personality.”
“Wow.” Tommy made a shocked face.
“What?”
“Well… you’ve got friends.”
Kate smirked and continued across the road. Tommy knocked on the door and Chris answered straight away, keeping the door ajar to give his wife some privacy.
“Tommy?”
“Hi Chris.” Tommy smiled. Chris was reminded of what he had experienced now so many times: old students coming back to see him, as he registered that the people he once knew did not cease to exist when they left his life, but continued to change and grow. And Tommy had changed more than most – his skin was in far too good a condition for that of a man his age, his hair combed too neatly for – well, a man – and his eyes spoke of far more experience than could be possible from anyone, let alone someone who, Chris calculated, would have graduated just a couple of years ago. “I’ve come to see Robin.”
***
“What’s your name?” asked Sasha, wondering whether the right move at this stage would be to take her own tea off the table. The man was alarmingly calm.
“The Doctor.” He put his own tea down, making up Sasha’s mind for her. “Now when I say, duck. NOW!”
As more of a reflex than a conscious decision, Sasha ducked, and the Doctor lifted a strange device, sending sparks flying over Sasha’s head.
Sasha looked up as, for a moment, the room fell silent. The man with the leather jacket still held the device up. Turning the other way, Sasha saw what he was pointing at. On the wall in the hall, a creature was stood, seemingly out of place in the material world. Its figure shifted, but it was distinctly humanoid. It glowed a bright green and fizzled, like plasma, as its soft, indistinct shape seemed to paradoxically consume itself at every moment, redistributing continuously. She was glad the Doctor was here as witness: the creature, if it was a creature, would be impossible to describe.
“This is not your world,” warned the Doctor, and fired again.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
After the third beep, the device itself shot out of the Doctor’s hand, flying across the room and latching on to the creature. It started to shift more, but stopped redistributing; its shape changed to become unrecognisable from its original form, and it consumed itself, like an implosion playing out in slow-motion. Even the device disappeared, and when the process was complete, it was as if nothing had even happened. Sasha stood up.
“You carried it back with you from the dream,” said the Doctor, picking up his tea again. “An entity from another plane of existence that didn’t belong here. To that creature, the dream you – the dream we – experienced, was the real world, and this existence, to the creature, was a dream.”
Sasha processed the concept. The man spoke convincingly; she was sure he believed every word, but the facts did not equate to anything more than an idea for a science-fiction series that would be disregarded from the first page of script. “It doesn’t work.”
“Not in your understanding of dreams, but that’s limited. Planet Earth.” He gazed out of the window, at Sasha’s garden. She felt compelled to tell him that she had just moved back in; she could hardly bear his first judgement to be that she was an appalling gardener. “What am I doing back here?”
“I’m Sasha Ramachandran,” said Sasha, answering instead a question which made sense to her.
“I know.”
Sasha remembered his greeting; how he had stood in the kitchen waiting for her, knowing her name, probably even knowing what all of her responses would be.
“How?”
“I traced you to this place. Well, I traced the creature, after defeating my own. You were the only other subject who carried one back with you.”
“Subject?”
“Yes, subject.” The Doctor finished his tea and took himself into the hall, pirouetting on the spot to get a good look of the house. “The place we were taken to was a virtual reality, playing out across a dream, created by none other than the Destiny Institute. I recognised the insignia when I arrived.” He stopped in his tracks, looking away from Sasha briefly. “The Destiny Institute was… where my friend died. And they’re up to something, something which should be very out-of-character for them, and if my friend knew, she would be disgusted.”
“I’m so confused right now.”
“Good.” The Doctor gave Sasha a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Me too. Nice house.”
“Thanks. I’ve only just moved back in.”
The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver, whizzing it around in the air. Particles of dust gathered around it, and he pocketed it again. “You’ve had vivid dreams here before, I take it?”
“All my life. Until I left.”
“Yes, of course. The house exists on a breach in time. Memories, bleeding through… a perfect gateway to worlds beyond our understanding.”
“Tell me,” started Sasha.
“Yes?”
“Have you always been this dramatic?”
The Doctor smiled. “Probably.”
“So let me get this straight. My house is built on some time-thing, that’s causing me to enter a virtual reality, through dreams, where I’m being… tested on? And taking something back with me?”
“Exactly!” The Doctor’s smile turned into a grin; a sort of ‘I’ve found an intelligent one!’ face. “A virtual reality is the perfect place to conduct medical trials. Upload the participants, and it plays out according to the rules which have been set out; to anything created in the virtual reality, that world is the real one. But when you wake up, all side-effects are gone. Or at least, theoretically.” He gestured to the wall where the creature had stood. “That’s clearly not always the case. But it doesn’t make sense. This is far too unethical for the Destiny Institute. They were always so good…”
“I understand the theory, but the whole thing still isn’t making much sense here, Doctor.”
“I’ll explain later,” said the Doctor, waving it off.
“Will you?”
“Probably not.” The Doctor perched on the stair and took off his satchel, looking up pensively at Sasha. “Tell me a bit about yourself.”
“You’re the one with the explaining to do.”
“Making you the considerably more interesting party, in my opinion. Please, just a few details, if only to put an end to my curiosity.”
“Well, I told you, my name is Sasha Ramachandran. I’m from India, and before you ask what everyone always asks, I’m a Buddhist. And no.” She pushed back her hair; black and wavy, more suited to a goddess than a human. “I’m not bald. And I’m not sitting and meditating. I’m just an ordinary young woman who happens to have a faith. I’ve moved back into the area after teaching in Glasgow.”
“Teaching,” remarked the Doctor. “I had a friend who was a teacher.” He looked around the room again, noticing a piano at the entrance to the living area. He pointed to it. “I had a friend who could play that thing too. I had lots of friends, once upon a time. What do you teach?”
“Art.”
“Very nice.” The Doctor nodded. “You’re still teaching here?”
“Yes. I’ve just got a job in a school in the local area – Coal Hill.”
The Doctor gathered his satchel and put it back over his shoulder, standing up as quickly as he could and rushing to the back door.
“What is it? Did I say something?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not looking back. “I made a mistake. I can’t do this, I can’t stay here.”
“Wait! Hold on!” Sasha ran out the back, now at full pace, but all that was to be seen as evidence of the Doctor now was a strong breeze, blowing leaves off the trees and into her eyes. It was as if his very leaving was a storm in itself.
***
The Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire
The suns began disappearing over their horizons of twisted dark towers on the surface of J-7-Fish-2, leaving behind them a trail of pink and purple streaking across the sky, as if the Devil had attempted to paint his conception for Hell and inadvertently made it beautiful. Out in a field, a safe seventy miles away from the city, a battled old yellow tour-bus with graffiti art fading from the sides and windows rattling with every jolt powered up its warp drive engines, preparing for a voyage across the universe.
Staligon watched as a few yards away, the TARDIS materialised, its own engines not sounding like they were in the healthiest state. He tried to recall the last time he had seen the Doctor: it must have been back on the V-3-Lime-6 mission, when Autumn Rivers was working for him, and before she destroyed his business and left him to sell…
“Tickets for one of the Empire’s only eco-tourist trips!”
The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS – Staligon hoped, at the promise of a trip to the remotest corners of the Empire – and slowly walked up to Staligon, making him aware of how much he had changed. Staligon first looked disapprovingly at his change of attire, preferring, naturally, the Victorian inventor; but then he looked to himself, to the beard he was now growing, and to his much gaudier velvet waistcoat, and realised the inherent hypocrisy in forming a judgement.
“The crystal caves of the Abirefrye belt! The floating mountains of Adusayudas! The pojikueva of the frozen suns!”
The Doctor seemed unimpressed, but got his wallet out of his satchel nonetheless, and handed Staligon the cash.
“Now I don’t mean to repel my own customers,” began Staligon, pocketing the cash, “but are you sure this is for you, Doctor? It’s a six-year round trip, and it’s a retreat. No communication allowed. And no interfering in any of the worlds we visit. I never had you down for a… a…” Staligon scanned the Doctor, looking for the right word. “A tourist.”
“I need to get away.”
“From?”
“Humanity.”
Staligon tried not to take that one personally.
“From Earth,” continued the Doctor. “From your culture and your civilisation. You get everywhere and I know now the rot at the heart of your society.”
“This ship was created by humans,” pointed out Staligon.
“To get away from them. That’s good enough for me.”
Staligon nodded. “You’ve taken the last seat. We’ll be leaving in four hours.”
“Okay. But I’m not boarding yet.” The Doctor turned back, heading towards his ship, and Staligon already knew what was coming.
“Four hours, Doctor!” he called back. “You need to be in your seat in four hours’ time, or the ship is leaving without you!”
***
Hyde Park, London
As Tommy walked with Robin along the path between the trees, he was reminded of that appalling joke his father always used to tell him every time they came this way: isn’t it amazing that all the trees grew in a straight line?
They appreciated the shade created by the trees; whilst a blessing to the rest of the world, summer was exhausting to a Londoner, a fruitless addition to the heat already generated excessively and relentlessly by a surplus of machines and the toils of everyday life, lulling one to sleep by the lunch-break, and turning office windows into slow-roasters.
“You didn’t come to see me after the wedding,” said Robin. “It was difficult.”
“I’m sorry.” Tommy put his hands in his pockets and they walked slower, approaching the end of the path, and letting what seemed to be a pensioner pigeon move past them and under a bench. “It wasn’t easy, after seeing the Doctor that last time.”
“What happened? You never told me, Tommy. What happened to Autumn? Why did the Doctor go away?”
“Well…” Tommy squinted as they reached the end of the path and the trees no longer protected them from the sunlight. “He didn’t tell me much. He was angry about something. Something to do with Earth and humanity; he gave me all his boxes full of junk. All the stuff he loved. And he just sent me away, didn’t really say much of a goodbye.”
“He normally hates endings. He tried so hard to make me stay.” Robin recalled their last spoken encounter; the fountains at Barcelona… how long he had tried to make it last.
“We found Autumn,” said Tommy, deciding it was finally time for her to know. “I mean, sorry, let me backtrack. Autumn had left the TARDIS ages ago. But it turned out she’d got ill. The Doctor found her frozen in the ice, trying to preserve herself, but couldn’t save her. Then we got back into the TARDIS and I told him not to give up. He went mad – not at me, I mean, he just went mad, started going on about some mission for enlightenment, and sent me home. I ended up half-way across the universe so God knows what happened to that. When he returned for me he was… different. Something had happened. He said Autumn was safe but a part of me has always doubted that. I wondered if maybe they’d had another argument.”
“And what about you?” Robin sat down on the bench, checking her phone. Half a dozen emails after only an hour’s early finish. That much never happened in an hour. She ignored it, forcing it back in her pocket. “What have you been up to since he dropped you off?”
“I finished my Classics course. Graduated. First.”
“Oh, well done!” Robin beamed, for the first time since he had seen her.
“I went back to uni though. Had a bit of a change of heart, after travelling with the Doctor. I never really knew what I wanted to do anyway – I was always just coasting it. So I took another degree, PPE – that’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics. I had the right A Levels, studied at King’s this time, and I’m in my last semester. I want to go into politics. I already write my own blog, it generates quite some hits. I’ve been recognised a couple of times.”
“Tommy Lindsay, Prime Minister… it works.”
“Well…” Tommy looked away coyly, inadvertently catching the attention of a young girl, who looked over for a second too long and tripped on a rock, not injuring herself but causing fatal embarrassment. Tommy chuckled, but Robin seemed distracted. “And yourself? Things haven’t been easy for you, I know. I saw Kate Priest outside your house earlier. Poor you.”
“You know her?”
Tommy nodded. “She used to work in a different department, dealt with Natalie’s family. Well, I say dealt. We know what Kate Priest is like.”
“Yeah, we do.” Robin sat back on her bench. Her back ached – it did quite a lot these days. She often got the symptoms of pregnancy; just a sign of fatigue for her. It seemed unduly cruel that her body would tease her with all the worst effects of the thing she most wanted. “Do you remember when I lost the baby? Back in that underwater dome?”
Tommy nodded, his face serious. He often looked back on that day; referred to it in passing when giving advice, detaching it from a calendar date or a cultural event and knowing it far more simply as The Worst Day Of My Life.
“I left the Doctor because I thought I could settle down with Chris, have another one. But I couldn’t. I underestimated the injuries.” She tried to close her eyes, but that did not contain the tears. They were as constant and fresh a stream as they had been on The Worst Day Of His Life, and even expecting them did not change the state they induced. “I’m infertile, Tommy. I can’t have kids. I can’t ever have them again. And my boy, my Tommy… he’s the only memory of that I’ll ever have.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” Tommy let Robin rest her head on his shoulder, giving her a comforting pat on the back as they hugged. “I know I’m a bit rubbish but you’ve got me. I’ll come and see you. I’m always getting into hiccups me, always needing someone to explain things to me or teach me how to cook properly. I’ll come over whenever you like, okay?”
“Okay.” Robin sniffed and wiped away the tears. No wonder her sinuses were always so blocked these days. “I’m sorry. I hate it when that happens. I’m not like this, you know, I swear, that’s not me. I just can’t always help it.”
“Everyone cries. Everyone. I bet someone’s cried on this bench before.” Tommy turned around to read the plaque on the bench. Josh Russell, 1938-2012. “I bet Someone Russell cried on this bench once. Now they’d have really gone for it, beaten you out of the park.”
Robin laughed. “Thanks Tommy. Let’s go back. I’ll show you how to cook cheap pasta.”
***
Autumn stood at the observation area in awe. The light from the sun lit her face up a vibrant orange, and in front of her two motionless, simple monoliths sung a song of inexpressible beauty for her. For everyone, in fact, and anyone who would listen, asking for nothing in return. What could a monolith really want anyway?
“They’re beautiful.”
“I think so,” agreed the Doctor. “And you, Robin?”
Robin was unable to even find words. Autumn stepped back, letting her take the universe in: it was still so much newer to Robin than it was to her. She missed those days of pure, unbridled wonder; of asking how something could be so beautiful, rather than questioning whether it could.
“This is one of my favourite places,” said the Doctor. “And I only take the people I care about. I care about both of you a lot – and you’ve both earnt this trip.”
“It’s…” Robin reached out. There was so much in front of her; all her fingers could touch were the edges of a butterfly’s tail. “It’s a lovely restaurant, too.” She laughed, and the Doctor and Autumn joined her.
“Let’s get a picture.” The Doctor took out his camera and the two posed on the deck for him. Autumn flipped her head back playfully, her hair swinging over to one side, and laughed for him. Robin smiled, still taking in the world behind her.
“I’ll have to put this up somewhere nice.”
“Excuse me!” interrupted Autumn. “No nostalgia. We’re going to come back to this place!”
The Doctor looked up again. There was no one: just an echo, generated by the towers, for the purpose of haunting him. It was an attraction that lasted a long time. People always liked to be haunted.
Beautiful things were only worthwhile the first time. Beauty is sustained, the Doctor realised, by being shared with others: by perspective. Seeing the universe anew. Watching the mayflies flying in the sunlight – that would always beat solitude on an empty field.
The entire restaurant was empty. Darillium was rarely visited these days – more people travelled alone; they only needed beauty the once. There were profits to companionship. The Doctor sat back in his chair, getting comfortable. There was still enough light to read; and besides, he always enjoyed reading with music. He opened his book on the next page, thoroughly engrossed, but still trying to remember where he had bought it.
“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream…”
He put it down. He remembered the end quote off by heart; he recalled hearing it many times before. Of course. Earth literature. He rolled his eyes – that explained the stinging xenophobia that cropped up every few pages.
Shame about the xenophobia. Could have been quite good otherwise.
He studied it again, and looked out at the towers. They definitely gave the book a certain atmosphere. One day, years after its publishing, humankind would learn this, incorporating the complex plot structures of a novel into an artistic and musical spectacle – a film. Xenophobia could be ironed out – a few tweaks and it would have been fine. It was frustrating to see it, so blatant within the text, but it was such a small problem. That was, in many ways, the most frustrating thing. How close Conrad came to perfection. How with one little nudge, the world could have been a different place.
It would barely take any effort…
***
“Hi Dad.” Sasha perched next to her father’s bed and took his hand, gazing out of the window. “I hate hospitals.”
The place was stuffy. Hospitals always were. They were suffocating. Good places, though. Sasha was always keen to remember that. However off-putting their façade was, however horribly claustrophobic it felt becoming lost in their corridors, their central concern was the relief of suffering. A noble concern.
“I came back to see you.” She looked back to her father, but it made no difference. His face or the window, the effect was the same: gazing on without response. The part of her father that communicated, that understood and reciprocated, was buried away somewhere inaccessible.
But that didn’t matter.
“I had to come back, you see. Mum can’t come over, not from India. She’s too busy. You remember what she was like, don’t you? But she gave me messages and she wants me to read them to you. She says…” Sasha pulled the piece of paper out of her pocket and unscrunched it. She squinted to see her own writing. “Blimey, I’m an artist dad but my craft’s definitely in pictures rather than words. Hang on. Er, yes, here it is. She says she wishes she was over here with you, because she would rather sit in silence with her husband than talking to her sister.” Sasha laughed at her mother’s reluctance to be sentimental about anything. “She says you’ve slept in again, I told you that alarm clock of yours was knackered.” She scrunched up the paper and put it back in her pocket.
“I also realise I’m saying all this in English, but I have a habit of translating everything she sends me these days. Have you heard my accent? I speak better English than most the Brits I know. Sometimes I open my mouth and people look at me like someone’s throwing their voice.” Sasha laughed to herself. “They’re lovely people here. Well… there are lovely people everywhere; everywhere I’ve been, anyway. I haven’t painted anything for a while. If you grow a beard while you’re in hospital, I’ll paint that, just to wind you up. Do they shave you? Do you even grow hair when you’re like this? I’m not actually sure. I need to get used to this whole hospital thing. This week’s been crazy and I think I’m going a bit mad. There’s some stuff that’s happened… but you’d never believe it. I don’t even believe it myself. I am starting a new job tomorrow, though, as I’m up here to see you. It’s a short vacancy. Art teacher at Coal Hill School. Young, bright, smarty-pantses like I used to be. Oh, I was full of arguments… I’ve really calmed down. Not that that means you can stop me talking.” She patted her father on the hand gently. “Not long now, dad. You’re doing just fine. I’ll be here with you.”
***
Chris tried to improve his multi-tasking skills this morning, making both his toast and his cereal at the same time. So far, this had gone well… except for the final act, where he had dunked the marmalade-covered knife, rather than the clean spoon, straight in his cereal bowl.
“Come on love!” he called up to Robin. “I’ve made you coffee.” He smelt the fresh coffee, murmuring to himself in pride. “Frothy coffee.”
As he turned around, he nearly threw the froth across the room; Robin had crept up on him, and was stood at the doorway.
In married life, you become used to the most mundane of your partner’s habits. You know the way they walk into the room; the first thing they go for in the morning, even the speed at which they shower and dry. Such intricate understanding can, in most cases, lead to an enhanced level of perception, when particular inferences, at particular times, can be made.
There’s something wrong.
“What is it, Robin? What’s happened?”
Robin instinctively took Chris’s hands, a tear in her eye. All of his sensors were picking up on the abnormality: not only was she just stood at the door, but she had not even showered or changed yet.
“I…”
Robin stammered to get the words out. After rehearsing them so many times, she had relegated them, considering them out-of-bounds.
“I’m pregnant.”
***
Staligon walked along the aisle and over to the Doctor’s seat, wondering if the man in front was hiding him from view. But where the Doctor had booked to sit was an empty seat; not even a note in its place. It had not even been touched. Staligon sighed.
“Leaving in two minutes,” narrated the ship. Some of the passengers fastened their seatbelts.
“Do you know where he is?” asked one of the passengers, gesturing to the Doctor’s seat.
“Oh, I know exactly where he is,” confessed Staligon. “That stupid, stupid old fool – he’s gone home.”
“His home?”
“No, no… ours.”
***
The Destiny Institute
“Boss, the results have just come in for today’s subjects.”
“Thank you.” The boss took the files off her assistant, who breathed in her perfume. Astonishing, for a few lines of code. He considered also complimenting the purple streaks in her hair, but thought this might not be the time. The boss shut the door behind her and took a seat, leaving her assistant to stand. Usually, that would make him look in charge, but a desk and a hierarchy made all the difference to basic psychology.
The boss scanned her eyes over the subjects, about to put the paper down when one caught her eye.
“Who is this man? Why don’t we have a name?”
“Well, we’re not sure; he’s not on the Empire’s records.”
“That’s not possible. The Empire has records of everyone who ever lived, and we pluck subjects only from times we have recorded. Did he give a name?”
“Sort of, boss. He called himself the Doctor.”
This time the boss did put the papers down, and moved back, feeling the wheels on her chair propelling her against the wall, as if a bullet had been fired at her. It was like a bullet – a bullet into a dying woman, perhaps. A short, sharp relief from years of torment.
“We need to bring him back.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes. He was… well, he was my friend. In the end, that is; after all the conflict. But we never got to properly say goodbye.”
“Oh,” said the assistant, realising that there were no longer any scripted responses for him to turn to. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Tell someone to work on it.”
“Of course, boss. Though… it’s been a bit difficult, recently. People keep trying to leave.”
“And what are you doing about that, hmm?”
“Killing them, boss, as you instructed.”
“Good.” The boss smiled, and considered her assistant. He was young, and quite nervous; and though this virtual representation was not entirely accurate, could be assumed to be well-groomed, and wore glasses. Quite a handsome young man – not her type, but he probably fancied her. He reminded her of another man who worked at the Destiny Institute once – such a long time ago.
He’s a bit useless, this one, but I won’t kill him. Not just yet, anyway.
“Would it be possible to get some music playing across the Institute, too? We’re in a virtual-reality-slash-dream-state here, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find something on your extensive records, and I like music. Pick something old for me, if you can. I like a bit of pop. Something from early 2000s Earth culture. Bit of Maroon 5, maybe, or Britney Spears, or The Scissor Sisters, or, oh… even Steps. I used to rather like dancing to that stuff, when no one was watching. But we’ll keep that between ourselves, won’t we?”
“Or you’ll kill me?”
“That’s right!” The boss beamed and gave her assistant a sinister thumbs-up. “Actually, I know exactly what artist I’d like – get me some Mika! Mika was such a love, wasn’t he?”
“I’m… sure he was, boss.” The assistant was getting uncomfortable, which amused the boss. She pressed on, taking him further out of his comfort zone.
“Did you know I’ve spent my whole life here?” The assistant raised his eyebrows at that fact, which surprised the boss. Had he really expected her to have had a normal life before? “I’ve made this my life’s work; to turn the institute into what it is today.”
“Why? If you don’t mind my asking, boss, I’m just very interested.”
“It wouldn’t do any harm to tell you, I suppose. Well you see, I died in the Destiny Institute.” The words sent a shiver up the assistant’s spine. The boss was known for deception, but he knew within seconds of hearing the words that they were truer than anything ever spoken: a fact that could not be changed. “I died here years ago. And then I was reborn. That’s why it means so much to me. I understand so much more about our universe this time, about our Empire. The Empire means a lot to me; it always did. And now I’m going to play a part in the biggest change it has ever experienced.”
“Thank you for trusting me with this information” was the assistant’s inadequate response, and he bowed to the boss, questioning straight after whether that was even protocol, or whether it might come under the Breach of Sexual Boundaries rulebook. “There is one thing I need to know, if you’ll forgive me, boss… well, the thing is, I’m in charge of logging things on the system, and at the moment the old boss is still registered, because we haven’t been able to update your file… we need a name for you, boss, and, well, none of us know your name.”
The boss considered for a moment, twisting her pen between her fingers.
The assistant considered something, too. Is she going to kill me?
Without saying a word, the boss took out a piece of paper and jotted something down, then folded it up and handed it to the assistant.
“My name’s on there. Try not to share this information with anyone. The database may recognise my name, but you are not to look at any of my files. Is that understood?”
“Yes, boss.”
“I do understand curiosity. So I need to trust you that, if you do decide to look at my files – which is understandable – you will kill yourself straight after.”
“Well yes, boss, of course I will.”
“Which would be a dreadful shame,” added the boss. “You’re not exactly important, but you’re not quite worthless, either. You have made a mistake, though. I was checking the employment data – we’ve got too many people working on vaccines. Can we kill some?”
“Boss,” protested the assistant, “they’re volunteers. Most of them worked in hospices!”
“I know. But can we kill some?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Correct answer – please don’t question me again, because my input in your life gives you the only value you’ve got. Now I want two things from you when you return in case you’ve forgotten, primitive. First, I want some music to brighten this place up, so bring me Mika. Second, I want to finally be reunited with my friend, and to show him what ‘seeing’ the universe really means when you’ve lived long enough to understand it… so bring me the Doctor.”
The assistant nodded and, on the boss’s signal, left.
He moved quickly down the corridor, in total terror. After that last conversation and now the rate at which he travelled, he realised that in the real world, he would have probably sweated enough to melt his shirt. As it was, he was safe, but he was sure the boss was able to deduce something from his every inflection. She was, after all, so terribly, terribly good at psychology.
Turning a corner and making sure he was a long way away from her, he took the piece of paper she had given him in his hand, and read the name. It perplexed him at first. The computer would accept it, but it was surely a pseudonym. Not only was it strange – strangeness could be understood in this part of the Empire; a last attempt to make a lasting impact – it was a strange kind of strange. Strange in that it was not what he would ever imagine calling a little girl.
He threw the paper as he carried on. There was no need for it any longer; the virtual reality would swallow it up so that no one could find it, and it would not be a name he would forget in a hurry. He was sure he remembered it from somewhere already.
He hummed it lightly under his breath as he went along, repeating it as quietly as he could until it found some meaning.
The Master.
The… Master….
“The Master.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“I think so,” agreed the Doctor. “And you, Robin?”
Robin was unable to even find words. Autumn stepped back, letting her take the universe in: it was still so much newer to Robin than it was to her. She missed those days of pure, unbridled wonder; of asking how something could be so beautiful, rather than questioning whether it could.
“This is one of my favourite places,” said the Doctor. “And I only take the people I care about. I care about both of you a lot – and you’ve both earnt this trip.”
“It’s…” Robin reached out. There was so much in front of her; all her fingers could touch were the edges of a butterfly’s tail. “It’s a lovely restaurant, too.” She laughed, and the Doctor and Autumn joined her.
“Let’s get a picture.” The Doctor took out his camera and the two posed on the deck for him. Autumn flipped her head back playfully, her hair swinging over to one side, and laughed for him. Robin smiled, still taking in the world behind her.
“I’ll have to put this up somewhere nice.”
“Excuse me!” interrupted Autumn. “No nostalgia. We’re going to come back to this place!”
The Doctor looked up again. There was no one: just an echo, generated by the towers, for the purpose of haunting him. It was an attraction that lasted a long time. People always liked to be haunted.
Beautiful things were only worthwhile the first time. Beauty is sustained, the Doctor realised, by being shared with others: by perspective. Seeing the universe anew. Watching the mayflies flying in the sunlight – that would always beat solitude on an empty field.
The entire restaurant was empty. Darillium was rarely visited these days – more people travelled alone; they only needed beauty the once. There were profits to companionship. The Doctor sat back in his chair, getting comfortable. There was still enough light to read; and besides, he always enjoyed reading with music. He opened his book on the next page, thoroughly engrossed, but still trying to remember where he had bought it.
“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream…”
He put it down. He remembered the end quote off by heart; he recalled hearing it many times before. Of course. Earth literature. He rolled his eyes – that explained the stinging xenophobia that cropped up every few pages.
Shame about the xenophobia. Could have been quite good otherwise.
He studied it again, and looked out at the towers. They definitely gave the book a certain atmosphere. One day, years after its publishing, humankind would learn this, incorporating the complex plot structures of a novel into an artistic and musical spectacle – a film. Xenophobia could be ironed out – a few tweaks and it would have been fine. It was frustrating to see it, so blatant within the text, but it was such a small problem. That was, in many ways, the most frustrating thing. How close Conrad came to perfection. How with one little nudge, the world could have been a different place.
It would barely take any effort…
***
“Hi Dad.” Sasha perched next to her father’s bed and took his hand, gazing out of the window. “I hate hospitals.”
The place was stuffy. Hospitals always were. They were suffocating. Good places, though. Sasha was always keen to remember that. However off-putting their façade was, however horribly claustrophobic it felt becoming lost in their corridors, their central concern was the relief of suffering. A noble concern.
“I came back to see you.” She looked back to her father, but it made no difference. His face or the window, the effect was the same: gazing on without response. The part of her father that communicated, that understood and reciprocated, was buried away somewhere inaccessible.
But that didn’t matter.
“I had to come back, you see. Mum can’t come over, not from India. She’s too busy. You remember what she was like, don’t you? But she gave me messages and she wants me to read them to you. She says…” Sasha pulled the piece of paper out of her pocket and unscrunched it. She squinted to see her own writing. “Blimey, I’m an artist dad but my craft’s definitely in pictures rather than words. Hang on. Er, yes, here it is. She says she wishes she was over here with you, because she would rather sit in silence with her husband than talking to her sister.” Sasha laughed at her mother’s reluctance to be sentimental about anything. “She says you’ve slept in again, I told you that alarm clock of yours was knackered.” She scrunched up the paper and put it back in her pocket.
“I also realise I’m saying all this in English, but I have a habit of translating everything she sends me these days. Have you heard my accent? I speak better English than most the Brits I know. Sometimes I open my mouth and people look at me like someone’s throwing their voice.” Sasha laughed to herself. “They’re lovely people here. Well… there are lovely people everywhere; everywhere I’ve been, anyway. I haven’t painted anything for a while. If you grow a beard while you’re in hospital, I’ll paint that, just to wind you up. Do they shave you? Do you even grow hair when you’re like this? I’m not actually sure. I need to get used to this whole hospital thing. This week’s been crazy and I think I’m going a bit mad. There’s some stuff that’s happened… but you’d never believe it. I don’t even believe it myself. I am starting a new job tomorrow, though, as I’m up here to see you. It’s a short vacancy. Art teacher at Coal Hill School. Young, bright, smarty-pantses like I used to be. Oh, I was full of arguments… I’ve really calmed down. Not that that means you can stop me talking.” She patted her father on the hand gently. “Not long now, dad. You’re doing just fine. I’ll be here with you.”
***
Chris tried to improve his multi-tasking skills this morning, making both his toast and his cereal at the same time. So far, this had gone well… except for the final act, where he had dunked the marmalade-covered knife, rather than the clean spoon, straight in his cereal bowl.
“Come on love!” he called up to Robin. “I’ve made you coffee.” He smelt the fresh coffee, murmuring to himself in pride. “Frothy coffee.”
As he turned around, he nearly threw the froth across the room; Robin had crept up on him, and was stood at the doorway.
In married life, you become used to the most mundane of your partner’s habits. You know the way they walk into the room; the first thing they go for in the morning, even the speed at which they shower and dry. Such intricate understanding can, in most cases, lead to an enhanced level of perception, when particular inferences, at particular times, can be made.
There’s something wrong.
“What is it, Robin? What’s happened?”
Robin instinctively took Chris’s hands, a tear in her eye. All of his sensors were picking up on the abnormality: not only was she just stood at the door, but she had not even showered or changed yet.
“I…”
Robin stammered to get the words out. After rehearsing them so many times, she had relegated them, considering them out-of-bounds.
“I’m pregnant.”
***
Staligon walked along the aisle and over to the Doctor’s seat, wondering if the man in front was hiding him from view. But where the Doctor had booked to sit was an empty seat; not even a note in its place. It had not even been touched. Staligon sighed.
“Leaving in two minutes,” narrated the ship. Some of the passengers fastened their seatbelts.
“Do you know where he is?” asked one of the passengers, gesturing to the Doctor’s seat.
“Oh, I know exactly where he is,” confessed Staligon. “That stupid, stupid old fool – he’s gone home.”
“His home?”
“No, no… ours.”
***
The Destiny Institute
“Boss, the results have just come in for today’s subjects.”
“Thank you.” The boss took the files off her assistant, who breathed in her perfume. Astonishing, for a few lines of code. He considered also complimenting the purple streaks in her hair, but thought this might not be the time. The boss shut the door behind her and took a seat, leaving her assistant to stand. Usually, that would make him look in charge, but a desk and a hierarchy made all the difference to basic psychology.
The boss scanned her eyes over the subjects, about to put the paper down when one caught her eye.
“Who is this man? Why don’t we have a name?”
“Well, we’re not sure; he’s not on the Empire’s records.”
“That’s not possible. The Empire has records of everyone who ever lived, and we pluck subjects only from times we have recorded. Did he give a name?”
“Sort of, boss. He called himself the Doctor.”
This time the boss did put the papers down, and moved back, feeling the wheels on her chair propelling her against the wall, as if a bullet had been fired at her. It was like a bullet – a bullet into a dying woman, perhaps. A short, sharp relief from years of torment.
“We need to bring him back.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes. He was… well, he was my friend. In the end, that is; after all the conflict. But we never got to properly say goodbye.”
“Oh,” said the assistant, realising that there were no longer any scripted responses for him to turn to. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Tell someone to work on it.”
“Of course, boss. Though… it’s been a bit difficult, recently. People keep trying to leave.”
“And what are you doing about that, hmm?”
“Killing them, boss, as you instructed.”
“Good.” The boss smiled, and considered her assistant. He was young, and quite nervous; and though this virtual representation was not entirely accurate, could be assumed to be well-groomed, and wore glasses. Quite a handsome young man – not her type, but he probably fancied her. He reminded her of another man who worked at the Destiny Institute once – such a long time ago.
He’s a bit useless, this one, but I won’t kill him. Not just yet, anyway.
“Would it be possible to get some music playing across the Institute, too? We’re in a virtual-reality-slash-dream-state here, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find something on your extensive records, and I like music. Pick something old for me, if you can. I like a bit of pop. Something from early 2000s Earth culture. Bit of Maroon 5, maybe, or Britney Spears, or The Scissor Sisters, or, oh… even Steps. I used to rather like dancing to that stuff, when no one was watching. But we’ll keep that between ourselves, won’t we?”
“Or you’ll kill me?”
“That’s right!” The boss beamed and gave her assistant a sinister thumbs-up. “Actually, I know exactly what artist I’d like – get me some Mika! Mika was such a love, wasn’t he?”
“I’m… sure he was, boss.” The assistant was getting uncomfortable, which amused the boss. She pressed on, taking him further out of his comfort zone.
“Did you know I’ve spent my whole life here?” The assistant raised his eyebrows at that fact, which surprised the boss. Had he really expected her to have had a normal life before? “I’ve made this my life’s work; to turn the institute into what it is today.”
“Why? If you don’t mind my asking, boss, I’m just very interested.”
“It wouldn’t do any harm to tell you, I suppose. Well you see, I died in the Destiny Institute.” The words sent a shiver up the assistant’s spine. The boss was known for deception, but he knew within seconds of hearing the words that they were truer than anything ever spoken: a fact that could not be changed. “I died here years ago. And then I was reborn. That’s why it means so much to me. I understand so much more about our universe this time, about our Empire. The Empire means a lot to me; it always did. And now I’m going to play a part in the biggest change it has ever experienced.”
“Thank you for trusting me with this information” was the assistant’s inadequate response, and he bowed to the boss, questioning straight after whether that was even protocol, or whether it might come under the Breach of Sexual Boundaries rulebook. “There is one thing I need to know, if you’ll forgive me, boss… well, the thing is, I’m in charge of logging things on the system, and at the moment the old boss is still registered, because we haven’t been able to update your file… we need a name for you, boss, and, well, none of us know your name.”
The boss considered for a moment, twisting her pen between her fingers.
The assistant considered something, too. Is she going to kill me?
Without saying a word, the boss took out a piece of paper and jotted something down, then folded it up and handed it to the assistant.
“My name’s on there. Try not to share this information with anyone. The database may recognise my name, but you are not to look at any of my files. Is that understood?”
“Yes, boss.”
“I do understand curiosity. So I need to trust you that, if you do decide to look at my files – which is understandable – you will kill yourself straight after.”
“Well yes, boss, of course I will.”
“Which would be a dreadful shame,” added the boss. “You’re not exactly important, but you’re not quite worthless, either. You have made a mistake, though. I was checking the employment data – we’ve got too many people working on vaccines. Can we kill some?”
“Boss,” protested the assistant, “they’re volunteers. Most of them worked in hospices!”
“I know. But can we kill some?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Correct answer – please don’t question me again, because my input in your life gives you the only value you’ve got. Now I want two things from you when you return in case you’ve forgotten, primitive. First, I want some music to brighten this place up, so bring me Mika. Second, I want to finally be reunited with my friend, and to show him what ‘seeing’ the universe really means when you’ve lived long enough to understand it… so bring me the Doctor.”
The assistant nodded and, on the boss’s signal, left.
He moved quickly down the corridor, in total terror. After that last conversation and now the rate at which he travelled, he realised that in the real world, he would have probably sweated enough to melt his shirt. As it was, he was safe, but he was sure the boss was able to deduce something from his every inflection. She was, after all, so terribly, terribly good at psychology.
Turning a corner and making sure he was a long way away from her, he took the piece of paper she had given him in his hand, and read the name. It perplexed him at first. The computer would accept it, but it was surely a pseudonym. Not only was it strange – strangeness could be understood in this part of the Empire; a last attempt to make a lasting impact – it was a strange kind of strange. Strange in that it was not what he would ever imagine calling a little girl.
He threw the paper as he carried on. There was no need for it any longer; the virtual reality would swallow it up so that no one could find it, and it would not be a name he would forget in a hurry. He was sure he remembered it from somewhere already.
He hummed it lightly under his breath as he went along, repeating it as quietly as he could until it found some meaning.
The Master.
The… Master….
“The Master.”
NEXT TIME
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