Prologue
Dante was quite accurate, the Doctor thought, as he stood over Hell.
The TARDIS was parked up on a ridge, at the world’s highest point. It jutted out over the rest of the landscape, and as a result was almost untouched itself. Jasmine looked up, just momentarily, after she stepped out of the TARDIS. The sky was blackened and starless. She rubbed her arm.
“I still don’t understand why you gave us those injections,” she complained.
“Look down,” instructed the Doctor, and Jasmine did.
Below them, she could make out figures. There were two kinds, often difficult to distinguish from each other. The first were people – skeletal people, she thought – of all different varieties. They threw themselves over Hell’s rocky surface, rolling and dancing almost like play-fighting children. Closer up, it would not look so pretty.
Then there were the other figures. These were taller, leaner, and faster. They would hunch over, contort, and pursue the human figures. That was how the two could be told apart: predator and prey, a perfect balance of each (perfect, at least, for the predator). Jasmine touched her ear, noticing that her hearing was muffled, as if she were trying to listen to this world through a wall.
“The injection numbed your senses,” explained the Doctor. “It’s about as hot as the sun here, and you’d feel it. But the worst sense, I think, is hearing. You don’t want to hear them, Jasmine. There are more screams here than you will find anywhere else in the universe, but worse, there’s more laughter. The two are connected. See those slender-looking beings, in pursuit of the rest?”
Jasmine nodded.
“They’re called the Prolongers. They do what the name says. Prolong suffering, for a whole eternity.” The Doctor grimaced. “That’s why I gave us these.” He gestured to the small circular devices around their necks, almost pendant-like. “Perception filters. Keeps the Prolongers from coming anywhere near us. This is a terrible place, Jasmine. Even now, even at the start of a Time War, both Time Lords and Daleks were too scared to salvage this planet’s resources.”
“Oh my God…” Jasmine thought she was going to cry, but found herself numb. Perhaps that was an effect of the injection. It may have blocked emotions, too – or at least confused them. She could not tell if this was despair, fear, anger, or a cocktail of the whole lot.
“It’s all real,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “All of it. All that rubbish they used to tell people so they’d do as they were told, it was all true. Hell…” she turned back to her friend. He had nothing to offer.
“…Hell is real.”
The TARDIS was parked up on a ridge, at the world’s highest point. It jutted out over the rest of the landscape, and as a result was almost untouched itself. Jasmine looked up, just momentarily, after she stepped out of the TARDIS. The sky was blackened and starless. She rubbed her arm.
“I still don’t understand why you gave us those injections,” she complained.
“Look down,” instructed the Doctor, and Jasmine did.
Below them, she could make out figures. There were two kinds, often difficult to distinguish from each other. The first were people – skeletal people, she thought – of all different varieties. They threw themselves over Hell’s rocky surface, rolling and dancing almost like play-fighting children. Closer up, it would not look so pretty.
Then there were the other figures. These were taller, leaner, and faster. They would hunch over, contort, and pursue the human figures. That was how the two could be told apart: predator and prey, a perfect balance of each (perfect, at least, for the predator). Jasmine touched her ear, noticing that her hearing was muffled, as if she were trying to listen to this world through a wall.
“The injection numbed your senses,” explained the Doctor. “It’s about as hot as the sun here, and you’d feel it. But the worst sense, I think, is hearing. You don’t want to hear them, Jasmine. There are more screams here than you will find anywhere else in the universe, but worse, there’s more laughter. The two are connected. See those slender-looking beings, in pursuit of the rest?”
Jasmine nodded.
“They’re called the Prolongers. They do what the name says. Prolong suffering, for a whole eternity.” The Doctor grimaced. “That’s why I gave us these.” He gestured to the small circular devices around their necks, almost pendant-like. “Perception filters. Keeps the Prolongers from coming anywhere near us. This is a terrible place, Jasmine. Even now, even at the start of a Time War, both Time Lords and Daleks were too scared to salvage this planet’s resources.”
“Oh my God…” Jasmine thought she was going to cry, but found herself numb. Perhaps that was an effect of the injection. It may have blocked emotions, too – or at least confused them. She could not tell if this was despair, fear, anger, or a cocktail of the whole lot.
“It’s all real,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “All of it. All that rubbish they used to tell people so they’d do as they were told, it was all true. Hell…” she turned back to her friend. He had nothing to offer.
“…Hell is real.”
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Series 4 - Episode 17
The Day We Lived
Written by Janine Rivers
“I was led here by coordinates someone gave me,” explained the Doctor. “I think God wanted me to find it. So I gave him the satisfaction.”
“Who gave you the coordinates?”
“The Sistine Chapel.” The Doctor noticed Jasmine’s perturbed glance. “Long story.”
They had trekked down the mountainside, and were now passing through scenes of live torture. Jasmine thought it looked wrong – something about the Doctor walking past as people were hurt set her on edge.
Up close, as she suspected, the creatures were worse. The majority of them towered above her. They had long and dexterous fingers, out of which stretched claws, and they frequently used them as a part of the torture. Their faces, too, were demonic. They were gaunt, the structure of their jawbones almost triangular, and sharp, pointed ears stuck out on either side of their bald, grey heads.
She flinched as one of them almost made eye-contact with her.
“Are we definitely safe here?”
“It’s a very strong perception filter. Think of it more as an invisibility cloak, if that helps put you at ease.”
“I don’t think anything could put me at ease here,” murmured Jasmine. “I don’t understand how this place exists. And if it’s what happens after death, then how did we get here?”
“Trust me, Jasmine, you really don’t want to know what this place is.”
“I do, and you know it.”
The Doctor increased his pace, almost leaving her behind.
“Don’t make me explain!”
“Doctor, just tell me!”
The Doctor stopped, and turned. Jasmine tried not to let the scene behind her distract her from the Doctor’s explanation: they were coming up to what looked like a river of acid, and one of the demons was dunking another one of Hell’s poor residents in it.
“Remember Heaven?” asked the Doctor. On the rock he stood on, he towered over her, just like those awful creatures towered over their prey. “I told you about the nanogenes, how they sustain life, repair damage in a nanosecond, keep you young and healthy. Well, it’s the same principle. This planet is designed as the worst place in all the universe; hotter than suns, darker than the night, and filled with creatures who subject you to punishments which should kill you instantly. The nanogenes are here, too.”
Jasmine covered her mouth as she gagged, feeling suddenly sick. She understood.
“They keep you on the edge of life,” the Doctor continued. “Every time those creatures kill you, they refuse to let you die. But they don’t numb the pain like I did for you. Everyone on this planet can feel every second of their punishment, intensified to infinity, lasting until the end of time. How’s that for justice?” He lowered his voice. “I always thought it was a possibility, what with Heaven. Not everyone was cut out for that planet.”
“So they send them HERE instead?” cried Jasmine. “That’s… disgusting, it’s monstrous! You’ve got to stop it, Doctor, or…”
“Why else do you think we’re here?” hissed the Doctor. “At the very least, even if it kills me, I’m going to blow this world to kingdom come, end their suffering. I can’t stop God, but I might, might just be able to stop this.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” They continued along their path. “Hang on, though, if God’s slowly killing everyone on Earth too, is this where he’s planning to send them?”
“I doubt it. I think your species will just… die.” The Doctor paused, realising that he should probably look back and check Jasmine. She seemed fine, in his Time Lord opinion, which was admittedly not the most emotionally-tuned. “Maybe that’s better than this. I don’t think this place makes oblivion seem so bad.”
Jasmine leapt back as a man gripped her leg. She thought he was a man, at least – he had been starved, his hair ripped from his head, and there were scars all across his face. His eyes were wide open with terror, and looking straight at her.
“Help me, please!” he implored. “Kill me!”
“Why…” Jasmine looked up. “How can he see me?”
“He must have just got lucky,” remarked the Doctor, almost detached from what was happening. “Humans are somewhat more perceptive than the Prolongers.”
“Kill me!” implored the man. “End it all, please!”
Jasmine looked down at him again, and another question struck her.
“What are these people here for?”
The Doctor considered. “The worst crimes in the universe, I’d say. Multiple genocide, crimes your species hasn’t even invented, and probably Ian Brady on a cosmic scale, if that’s even possible. These are the very worst of all people in the universe, Jasmine, but I don’t think even they deserve this. There’s no point in punishment without rehabilitation. It’s not productive. It’s cruel.”
“No, you’re right, they don’t deserve this. Doctor, is it possible to kill him?”
The Doctor raised his eyebrows, taken aback, before fumbling around in his jacket pocket for his sonic screwdriver. “I can expel the nanogenes from this spot, yes. Let him die… well, not peacefully, but as peaceful as death can get here.”
“Pass it to me,” instructed Jasmine. The Doctor toyed with the idea uneasily, but realised, again, that he was better off letting his companions make their own choices. He passed her the sonic.
“Thank you.” In an instant, without even hesitating, Jasmine pressed down and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the man had dissolved into smoke.
“No nanogenes to protect him from the high temperatures,” the Doctor elaborated, like it even mattered. “Dust to dust.”
“He’s in a better place,” said Jasmine, and passed the Doctor back his device, without taking her eyes off the patch where the man had died. “He’s in a better place.”
***
Noa re-entered God’s office, carrying the cup of hot coffee he had requested. She imagined, for a moment, what would happen if somehow he were to lose his omnipotence and become vulnerable. She would throw the coffee over him and watch as his skin reacted to the boiling water. A discreet little smile flashed across her face.
She still preferred the idea of a bullet to the head, though. Simple, effective, and true to his character.
God did not need coffee, since he was a being of transcendental proportions. Even if he did need (or even want) it, he would be able to click his fingers, and there it would be. No, he set Noa to work just because he could, and enjoyed the fact that she understood the futility of her tasks.
“There you go, Lord.” Noa placed the tray on the desk with a thwack. A bit of coffee spilled out of the top, and splashed the tray around the cup’s base.
“Ah, lovely Noa, thank you very much.” God lifted the cup off the tray, and poured the whole thing into a plant pot next to him. “Hmm, that’ll grow into a fine cheese plant, what do you think?”
“Yes, Lord.”
Noa bowed and turned to leave.
“Ahem,” coughed God. Noa turned back.
“What have you forgotten?”
“Do I have to?” asked Noa, sounding like a petulant child, but feeling like the angriest person in the universe.
“Yes, Noa.” God smiled. “You always have to say it, just so that I know you mean it.”
Noa didn’t mean it. She never did. And God knew.
“I’m sorry,” recited Noa. “I’m sorry the people of my world were corrupt and debauched. I’m sorry I come from a family of blasphemers, and I’m sorry I’m a blasphemer, too My family deserved to burn.”
She stopped listening to the words as she said them. They weren’t words; just sounds. It was easier that way.
“Now, Noa. Back over here.”
Wearily, Noa walked back to God’s desk.
“Remember what I told you yesterday?”
“About purging all life from the universe?” replied Noa, as if to say, how could I not? “Yes, Lord.”
“It’s already started.” God leaned forwards, and crossed his arms. “On every planet in every star system, the people are falling ill. A quarter of each world, soon to be half, then the whole population. A disease which no one can explain, understand, or fight. Once the disease has killed all intelligent life, I’ll destroy the planets themselves, and then it’ll just be us left, won’t it?” God beamed. “Oh, the fun we’ll have, Noa. You and I… but for now, we’ve got to go somewhere else, and I think you know where.”
“Please, Lord.” Noa fell down onto her knees, and grovelled at the feet of his desk. “Not there, anywhere but…”
“Hell!” cried God, and Noa sank down in despair. “We’re off to Hell, Noa. And we’ve got an appointment with the Doctor.”
***
The Doctor and Jasmine came to the lowest point of Hell’s surface, where a rocky descent led them to the entrance of a building, itself a part of the cliff-face. The doors were rusty metal, and opened with a creak.
Inside, the perception filter was hardly necessary – no one, it seemed, could see anything. The place was colder than the rest of Hell. The Doctor may have numbed Jasmine’s senses, but the visible puffs of air from her mouth told her that much.
It was a steamy room, where nothing past the first few inches of one’s vision could really be made out. An icy blue light was shining from somewhere.
Jasmine nearly stumbled, and when she looked down, she realised what on.
Something was sitting at her feet.
It was a cross between one of the creatures and one of the people. It was short, but practically skinless; its head was all juts and points, just like one of the Prolongers. It was smiling.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“You don’t want to know,” said the Doctor, realising that what he really meant was that she wouldn’t want to remember once she found out.
“We’ve had this discussion already.”
“At least let me explain when we’re out of its way.”
Jasmine obliged reluctantly, and the two of them carefully navigated their way through a few dozen others, to a door at the end of a chamber. Once through, they found themselves alone again, in an unlit rocky passage.
The Doctor closed the door tightly, and turned the lock on their side of the door.
“What were they?” asked Jasmine.
“They were people,” murmured the Doctor. “Once.”
Again, Jasmine found herself getting ahead of his explanations, and shuddered at the prospect.
“Tell me, Jasmine, isn’t gravity strange?”
Okay. Maybe she wasn’t ahead of his explanations after all.
“What?”
“Gravity. It stops you from flying all over the place, ties you to the surface of the world forever. Isn’t that awful?”
“Well…” Jasmine considered that. It probably was awful, now she thought about it. “Not really, I’ve known it my…”
“Whole life, yes.”
Jasmine now understood with perfect clarity.
“Those things in there,” continued the Doctor. “Those… ‘people’. They have spent so long on this world that they’ve come to know nothing else. The punishment doesn’t hurt them anymore, not in the way you understand pain, anyway. They’ve become institutionalised. They need the Prolongers now, as much as the Prolongers need them.”
“Oh my God…”
“They enjoy it; they can’t carry on without it. They probably go in there because they’re on some sort of routine. They don’t have to run. They just sit there while the Prolongers… feast.”
It all got to be too much. Jasmine ran to the corner of the passage and vomited on the floor.
“This place, it’s… I can’t…”
“It’s okay.” The Doctor approached her, laying a hand on her shoulder, gently. “We’ll stop this happening to anyone else, I promise. No matter what they’ve done.”
Jasmine nodded, and they continued down the dark passage.
***
The world passed by Natalie in a blur. Seconds drifted apart, separated by periods of unconsciousness, the waking marked by periods of semi-consciousness. Nothing made any sense anymore, but she clung onto the things she could see.
The ceiling of her house. The faces of familiar people. The voice of her father, and the words he spoke.
“Feel her hands. She’s so cold. I thought people got hot when they became ill?”
Another voice, one she did not know.
“No one understands this plague, I’m afraid. But she hasn’t got long. Say your goodbyes while you still can.”
Natalie decided that she didn’t want to hear goodbyes, and slipped into her own world again.
She remembered what Jasmine had told her, about that dictator. She knew what Tommy had told her about the monsters he fought. If that being was responsible, and they stopped it… perhaps that would stop this.
If he was controlling it, then killing him would set her free.
She hoped the execution would be soon.
***
The Doctor and Jasmine found themselves in a new room, about the size of a large classroom. The metal walls were lined with controls: screens and switches of a superior complexity to the TARDIS’s, apparently holding this planet in perfect harmony.
The Doctor sniffed as he strolled over to them. “No nanogenes in here. Strange.”
Whilst the Doctor seemed fascinated by the controls, Jasmine was drawn to something else, in the centre of the room. There was a mirror, circular and about four metres in diameter, and framed within a concrete square.
She stared down into it. Her own reflection looked back at her, equally curious. She decided not to get trapped in that particular loop.
“The looking-glass.”
Both the Doctor and Jasmine turned toward the voice and the door on the other side of the room. God was standing there, underneath the arch, and a young black woman, her face absolutely devoid of meaningful emotion, stood next to him.
Devoid of emotion, at least, from the Doctor’s perspective. Jasmine thought she spotted something in the woman’s seemingly blank expression, something she was trying to hide, or maybe the opposite.
“This is the most important room in the universe,” God explained, and with more than a little curiosity, the Doctor began to circle the mirror. “People often talk about my omniscience, but you know, I don’t just know things. I use my creative power to generate what we may as well call ‘mirror universes’ – reflections of this reality, flimsily-constructed but mostly accurate, where I can watch an infinite number of scenarios play out. I use my observation of these scenarios to understand this reality.”
“It’s not just your omniscience that this room ensures,” quipped the Doctor, and God smirked. He could not help but admire the Time Lord’s intuition.
“You’re quite right, Doctor. Also contained within the core of this planet are a thousand possible universes in which beings superior to myself might have existed. I keep them here, to ensure they never come to fruition, and I remain all-powerful.”
“You know, Anselm would have said that even the thought of those beings is a challenge to your omnipotence.”
“Well.” God frowned. “Anselm was an idiot, and now he’s dead.”
“Bringing this back to something I can even begin to understand,” interjected Jasmine, “you’re saying that if someone broke this mirror, you’d lose your powers?”
“In layman’s terms, yes. But it’s not that simple, child. At every moment, even when I leave this room, I generate a protective field which covers this mirror, protecting it against anything, and I mean anything. Besides, if something I didn’t like the look of entered this room, I’d turn it into atoms.”
“You’ve really thought this through,” remarked the Doctor, as appalled as ever. He looked up again, distracted by the controls. “These interest me, though.”
“I don’t see why you’re so drawn to them.” God joined the Doctor in examining them. The woman he’d entered with glanced over at Jasmine, and they shared an awkward acknowledgement. Mutual suffering, or something like that.
“They’re protected, just like the looking-glass,” God clarified. “They’re fairly complex controls, but their role is simple. They connect me, the God created by the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, to the Prime Mover, the eternal source of energy. I live in a permanent state of actuality, ‘fulfilled potential’, if you like. That gives me power. Without the Prime Mover, I would be compromised. Powerful, but not all-powerful.”
The Doctor glanced over at Jasmine.
“The controls make him eternal ruler of every universe, basically,” he explained. “They link him up to the Prime Mover, a natural phenomenon that’s supposed to keep the universe in order.”
Jasmine was only half-listening, more drawn to the mirror than anything. She ran her fingers across it, investigatively.
“You’ve invested a lot in this room,” the Doctor observed, scanning the controls thoroughly with his sonic screwdriver. “You’d better hope it’s as well-protected as you think it is.”
“Even if it somehow wasn’t,” replied God, “do you know what would happen if you were to break the looking-glass?”
The Doctor shook his head.
“Anyone inside this room, including the person who broke it, would be killed instantly. Anyone else on the planet, including everyone in Hell, would be scattered through the universe at completely random points. Imagine being the person to do that, Doctor. To die, and release billions of monsters across space and time…”
“It would be worth it,” interrupted Jasmine. “To stop you.”
“Such a shame you’ll never be able to then, isn’t it?” snapped God. “In fact, just to reinforce that point… Noa.”
The woman God had entered with, stepped forward timidly.
“Kill Jasmine Sparks.”
“What?” The Doctor stopped what he was doing, pocketed his sonic screwdriver, and stood protectively in front of Jasmine. “You can’t!”
“Who gave you the coordinates?”
“The Sistine Chapel.” The Doctor noticed Jasmine’s perturbed glance. “Long story.”
They had trekked down the mountainside, and were now passing through scenes of live torture. Jasmine thought it looked wrong – something about the Doctor walking past as people were hurt set her on edge.
Up close, as she suspected, the creatures were worse. The majority of them towered above her. They had long and dexterous fingers, out of which stretched claws, and they frequently used them as a part of the torture. Their faces, too, were demonic. They were gaunt, the structure of their jawbones almost triangular, and sharp, pointed ears stuck out on either side of their bald, grey heads.
She flinched as one of them almost made eye-contact with her.
“Are we definitely safe here?”
“It’s a very strong perception filter. Think of it more as an invisibility cloak, if that helps put you at ease.”
“I don’t think anything could put me at ease here,” murmured Jasmine. “I don’t understand how this place exists. And if it’s what happens after death, then how did we get here?”
“Trust me, Jasmine, you really don’t want to know what this place is.”
“I do, and you know it.”
The Doctor increased his pace, almost leaving her behind.
“Don’t make me explain!”
“Doctor, just tell me!”
The Doctor stopped, and turned. Jasmine tried not to let the scene behind her distract her from the Doctor’s explanation: they were coming up to what looked like a river of acid, and one of the demons was dunking another one of Hell’s poor residents in it.
“Remember Heaven?” asked the Doctor. On the rock he stood on, he towered over her, just like those awful creatures towered over their prey. “I told you about the nanogenes, how they sustain life, repair damage in a nanosecond, keep you young and healthy. Well, it’s the same principle. This planet is designed as the worst place in all the universe; hotter than suns, darker than the night, and filled with creatures who subject you to punishments which should kill you instantly. The nanogenes are here, too.”
Jasmine covered her mouth as she gagged, feeling suddenly sick. She understood.
“They keep you on the edge of life,” the Doctor continued. “Every time those creatures kill you, they refuse to let you die. But they don’t numb the pain like I did for you. Everyone on this planet can feel every second of their punishment, intensified to infinity, lasting until the end of time. How’s that for justice?” He lowered his voice. “I always thought it was a possibility, what with Heaven. Not everyone was cut out for that planet.”
“So they send them HERE instead?” cried Jasmine. “That’s… disgusting, it’s monstrous! You’ve got to stop it, Doctor, or…”
“Why else do you think we’re here?” hissed the Doctor. “At the very least, even if it kills me, I’m going to blow this world to kingdom come, end their suffering. I can’t stop God, but I might, might just be able to stop this.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” They continued along their path. “Hang on, though, if God’s slowly killing everyone on Earth too, is this where he’s planning to send them?”
“I doubt it. I think your species will just… die.” The Doctor paused, realising that he should probably look back and check Jasmine. She seemed fine, in his Time Lord opinion, which was admittedly not the most emotionally-tuned. “Maybe that’s better than this. I don’t think this place makes oblivion seem so bad.”
Jasmine leapt back as a man gripped her leg. She thought he was a man, at least – he had been starved, his hair ripped from his head, and there were scars all across his face. His eyes were wide open with terror, and looking straight at her.
“Help me, please!” he implored. “Kill me!”
“Why…” Jasmine looked up. “How can he see me?”
“He must have just got lucky,” remarked the Doctor, almost detached from what was happening. “Humans are somewhat more perceptive than the Prolongers.”
“Kill me!” implored the man. “End it all, please!”
Jasmine looked down at him again, and another question struck her.
“What are these people here for?”
The Doctor considered. “The worst crimes in the universe, I’d say. Multiple genocide, crimes your species hasn’t even invented, and probably Ian Brady on a cosmic scale, if that’s even possible. These are the very worst of all people in the universe, Jasmine, but I don’t think even they deserve this. There’s no point in punishment without rehabilitation. It’s not productive. It’s cruel.”
“No, you’re right, they don’t deserve this. Doctor, is it possible to kill him?”
The Doctor raised his eyebrows, taken aback, before fumbling around in his jacket pocket for his sonic screwdriver. “I can expel the nanogenes from this spot, yes. Let him die… well, not peacefully, but as peaceful as death can get here.”
“Pass it to me,” instructed Jasmine. The Doctor toyed with the idea uneasily, but realised, again, that he was better off letting his companions make their own choices. He passed her the sonic.
“Thank you.” In an instant, without even hesitating, Jasmine pressed down and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the man had dissolved into smoke.
“No nanogenes to protect him from the high temperatures,” the Doctor elaborated, like it even mattered. “Dust to dust.”
“He’s in a better place,” said Jasmine, and passed the Doctor back his device, without taking her eyes off the patch where the man had died. “He’s in a better place.”
***
Noa re-entered God’s office, carrying the cup of hot coffee he had requested. She imagined, for a moment, what would happen if somehow he were to lose his omnipotence and become vulnerable. She would throw the coffee over him and watch as his skin reacted to the boiling water. A discreet little smile flashed across her face.
She still preferred the idea of a bullet to the head, though. Simple, effective, and true to his character.
God did not need coffee, since he was a being of transcendental proportions. Even if he did need (or even want) it, he would be able to click his fingers, and there it would be. No, he set Noa to work just because he could, and enjoyed the fact that she understood the futility of her tasks.
“There you go, Lord.” Noa placed the tray on the desk with a thwack. A bit of coffee spilled out of the top, and splashed the tray around the cup’s base.
“Ah, lovely Noa, thank you very much.” God lifted the cup off the tray, and poured the whole thing into a plant pot next to him. “Hmm, that’ll grow into a fine cheese plant, what do you think?”
“Yes, Lord.”
Noa bowed and turned to leave.
“Ahem,” coughed God. Noa turned back.
“What have you forgotten?”
“Do I have to?” asked Noa, sounding like a petulant child, but feeling like the angriest person in the universe.
“Yes, Noa.” God smiled. “You always have to say it, just so that I know you mean it.”
Noa didn’t mean it. She never did. And God knew.
“I’m sorry,” recited Noa. “I’m sorry the people of my world were corrupt and debauched. I’m sorry I come from a family of blasphemers, and I’m sorry I’m a blasphemer, too My family deserved to burn.”
She stopped listening to the words as she said them. They weren’t words; just sounds. It was easier that way.
“Now, Noa. Back over here.”
Wearily, Noa walked back to God’s desk.
“Remember what I told you yesterday?”
“About purging all life from the universe?” replied Noa, as if to say, how could I not? “Yes, Lord.”
“It’s already started.” God leaned forwards, and crossed his arms. “On every planet in every star system, the people are falling ill. A quarter of each world, soon to be half, then the whole population. A disease which no one can explain, understand, or fight. Once the disease has killed all intelligent life, I’ll destroy the planets themselves, and then it’ll just be us left, won’t it?” God beamed. “Oh, the fun we’ll have, Noa. You and I… but for now, we’ve got to go somewhere else, and I think you know where.”
“Please, Lord.” Noa fell down onto her knees, and grovelled at the feet of his desk. “Not there, anywhere but…”
“Hell!” cried God, and Noa sank down in despair. “We’re off to Hell, Noa. And we’ve got an appointment with the Doctor.”
***
The Doctor and Jasmine came to the lowest point of Hell’s surface, where a rocky descent led them to the entrance of a building, itself a part of the cliff-face. The doors were rusty metal, and opened with a creak.
Inside, the perception filter was hardly necessary – no one, it seemed, could see anything. The place was colder than the rest of Hell. The Doctor may have numbed Jasmine’s senses, but the visible puffs of air from her mouth told her that much.
It was a steamy room, where nothing past the first few inches of one’s vision could really be made out. An icy blue light was shining from somewhere.
Jasmine nearly stumbled, and when she looked down, she realised what on.
Something was sitting at her feet.
It was a cross between one of the creatures and one of the people. It was short, but practically skinless; its head was all juts and points, just like one of the Prolongers. It was smiling.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“You don’t want to know,” said the Doctor, realising that what he really meant was that she wouldn’t want to remember once she found out.
“We’ve had this discussion already.”
“At least let me explain when we’re out of its way.”
Jasmine obliged reluctantly, and the two of them carefully navigated their way through a few dozen others, to a door at the end of a chamber. Once through, they found themselves alone again, in an unlit rocky passage.
The Doctor closed the door tightly, and turned the lock on their side of the door.
“What were they?” asked Jasmine.
“They were people,” murmured the Doctor. “Once.”
Again, Jasmine found herself getting ahead of his explanations, and shuddered at the prospect.
“Tell me, Jasmine, isn’t gravity strange?”
Okay. Maybe she wasn’t ahead of his explanations after all.
“What?”
“Gravity. It stops you from flying all over the place, ties you to the surface of the world forever. Isn’t that awful?”
“Well…” Jasmine considered that. It probably was awful, now she thought about it. “Not really, I’ve known it my…”
“Whole life, yes.”
Jasmine now understood with perfect clarity.
“Those things in there,” continued the Doctor. “Those… ‘people’. They have spent so long on this world that they’ve come to know nothing else. The punishment doesn’t hurt them anymore, not in the way you understand pain, anyway. They’ve become institutionalised. They need the Prolongers now, as much as the Prolongers need them.”
“Oh my God…”
“They enjoy it; they can’t carry on without it. They probably go in there because they’re on some sort of routine. They don’t have to run. They just sit there while the Prolongers… feast.”
It all got to be too much. Jasmine ran to the corner of the passage and vomited on the floor.
“This place, it’s… I can’t…”
“It’s okay.” The Doctor approached her, laying a hand on her shoulder, gently. “We’ll stop this happening to anyone else, I promise. No matter what they’ve done.”
Jasmine nodded, and they continued down the dark passage.
***
The world passed by Natalie in a blur. Seconds drifted apart, separated by periods of unconsciousness, the waking marked by periods of semi-consciousness. Nothing made any sense anymore, but she clung onto the things she could see.
The ceiling of her house. The faces of familiar people. The voice of her father, and the words he spoke.
“Feel her hands. She’s so cold. I thought people got hot when they became ill?”
Another voice, one she did not know.
“No one understands this plague, I’m afraid. But she hasn’t got long. Say your goodbyes while you still can.”
Natalie decided that she didn’t want to hear goodbyes, and slipped into her own world again.
She remembered what Jasmine had told her, about that dictator. She knew what Tommy had told her about the monsters he fought. If that being was responsible, and they stopped it… perhaps that would stop this.
If he was controlling it, then killing him would set her free.
She hoped the execution would be soon.
***
The Doctor and Jasmine found themselves in a new room, about the size of a large classroom. The metal walls were lined with controls: screens and switches of a superior complexity to the TARDIS’s, apparently holding this planet in perfect harmony.
The Doctor sniffed as he strolled over to them. “No nanogenes in here. Strange.”
Whilst the Doctor seemed fascinated by the controls, Jasmine was drawn to something else, in the centre of the room. There was a mirror, circular and about four metres in diameter, and framed within a concrete square.
She stared down into it. Her own reflection looked back at her, equally curious. She decided not to get trapped in that particular loop.
“The looking-glass.”
Both the Doctor and Jasmine turned toward the voice and the door on the other side of the room. God was standing there, underneath the arch, and a young black woman, her face absolutely devoid of meaningful emotion, stood next to him.
Devoid of emotion, at least, from the Doctor’s perspective. Jasmine thought she spotted something in the woman’s seemingly blank expression, something she was trying to hide, or maybe the opposite.
“This is the most important room in the universe,” God explained, and with more than a little curiosity, the Doctor began to circle the mirror. “People often talk about my omniscience, but you know, I don’t just know things. I use my creative power to generate what we may as well call ‘mirror universes’ – reflections of this reality, flimsily-constructed but mostly accurate, where I can watch an infinite number of scenarios play out. I use my observation of these scenarios to understand this reality.”
“It’s not just your omniscience that this room ensures,” quipped the Doctor, and God smirked. He could not help but admire the Time Lord’s intuition.
“You’re quite right, Doctor. Also contained within the core of this planet are a thousand possible universes in which beings superior to myself might have existed. I keep them here, to ensure they never come to fruition, and I remain all-powerful.”
“You know, Anselm would have said that even the thought of those beings is a challenge to your omnipotence.”
“Well.” God frowned. “Anselm was an idiot, and now he’s dead.”
“Bringing this back to something I can even begin to understand,” interjected Jasmine, “you’re saying that if someone broke this mirror, you’d lose your powers?”
“In layman’s terms, yes. But it’s not that simple, child. At every moment, even when I leave this room, I generate a protective field which covers this mirror, protecting it against anything, and I mean anything. Besides, if something I didn’t like the look of entered this room, I’d turn it into atoms.”
“You’ve really thought this through,” remarked the Doctor, as appalled as ever. He looked up again, distracted by the controls. “These interest me, though.”
“I don’t see why you’re so drawn to them.” God joined the Doctor in examining them. The woman he’d entered with glanced over at Jasmine, and they shared an awkward acknowledgement. Mutual suffering, or something like that.
“They’re protected, just like the looking-glass,” God clarified. “They’re fairly complex controls, but their role is simple. They connect me, the God created by the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, to the Prime Mover, the eternal source of energy. I live in a permanent state of actuality, ‘fulfilled potential’, if you like. That gives me power. Without the Prime Mover, I would be compromised. Powerful, but not all-powerful.”
The Doctor glanced over at Jasmine.
“The controls make him eternal ruler of every universe, basically,” he explained. “They link him up to the Prime Mover, a natural phenomenon that’s supposed to keep the universe in order.”
Jasmine was only half-listening, more drawn to the mirror than anything. She ran her fingers across it, investigatively.
“You’ve invested a lot in this room,” the Doctor observed, scanning the controls thoroughly with his sonic screwdriver. “You’d better hope it’s as well-protected as you think it is.”
“Even if it somehow wasn’t,” replied God, “do you know what would happen if you were to break the looking-glass?”
The Doctor shook his head.
“Anyone inside this room, including the person who broke it, would be killed instantly. Anyone else on the planet, including everyone in Hell, would be scattered through the universe at completely random points. Imagine being the person to do that, Doctor. To die, and release billions of monsters across space and time…”
“It would be worth it,” interrupted Jasmine. “To stop you.”
“Such a shame you’ll never be able to then, isn’t it?” snapped God. “In fact, just to reinforce that point… Noa.”
The woman God had entered with, stepped forward timidly.
“Kill Jasmine Sparks.”
“What?” The Doctor stopped what he was doing, pocketed his sonic screwdriver, and stood protectively in front of Jasmine. “You can’t!”
God took a gun out of his pocket, and handed it to Noa. She knew how to use it, but it was still beyond her how anyone could.
“Do you know why I brought you here, Doctor?” asked God. “To show you how powerless you are. But showing you all this just isn’t enough. I need you to feel it, so that I can feel you feel it. And I need you to understand what you are. I wouldn’t have killed Jasmine if you’d left her be, but now that you’ve brought her, I have no other choice. Which means you are her murderer, Doctor.”
Noa lowered the gun.
“Noa,” God repeated his order, slowly. “I said kill Jasmine Sparks.”
“I can’t do that, Lord.” Noa felt her muscles tensing. “Please forgive me. I can’t ever kill, not even for you.”
“Okay then.” God lowered his voice, and then began to raise it again, working up to a crescendo. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Noa. If you don’t kill Jasmine Sparks right now, I’ll find your children. And I won’t just kill them. After all…” he chuckled to himself. “I’d do that anyway. No, if you don’t kill this girl, I will find your children, and I will bring them here.”
“Lord…”
“Like to see them again, wouldn’t you? Well how would you like to see them screaming, burning, for the rest of time? IS THAT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?!”
Noa started to shake, but raised the gun. The Doctor found himself thrown across the room, held back from Jasmine by an invisible force. God had moved him out of her way, giving Noa a clear line of fire.
“Please!” begged the Doctor. “Noa, listen to me, you can’t let him win! Not like this!”
“I’m so sorry,” whispered Noa. “I’m so, so sorry, but there’s no choice…”
“I know,” replied Jasmine. Through the whole conversation, no one had dared look at her. She had teary eyes, but she was smiling for Noa. “Save your children. Just… end it all. I’d do the same in your place.” She closed her eyes, and Noa took no time in hesitating. She fired.
Jasmine’s body slumped to the floor, a twitching outstretched arm extended across the looking-glass.
“No!” cried the Doctor, and he tried to run forward. God was still forming a barrier, stopping him from getting past.
Noa was almost tempted to lift the gun to her own head, end it all. But that would only happen when God decided it would. He’d probably just bring her back if she made an attempt on her own life, and make her feel the pain of it.
“Oh dear,” murmured God, and he cocked his head to get a better view of the young girl’s body. “She’s not even quite dead yet. You’re a crap shot, Noa. Still, give her an hour or so, probably less. As they say in the kitchen,” he laughed, “let her simmer on a low heat!”
“You monster,” uttered the Doctor. “You… despicable… creature.”
“Indeed.” God gestured to the door. “Now, I think it’s time for a breath of fresh air, don’t you? One last little journey, Doctor, before the end.”
***
God had led the two survivors to an open area, a rocky island surrounded by a river of fire. After they stepped over the bridge, it crumbled into the river, and they were isolated. God laughed.
There was one Prolonger on the island with them, minding its own business. With the length of their legs, it would be able to get back onto the mainland if it so desired.
“This is it,” said God, and stretched out his arms, a walking-stick in one of them. It was perverse, the sight before them: an old man prancing around, performing even, throughout the torture. It was like Willy Wonka gone wrong.
Noa clutched the gun tightly in her hand, the shock of its blast still reverberating through her body. She tried not to blink. Whenever she closed her eyes, all she could see was Jasmine’s face, still not quite dead, and that twitching arm.
“Noa,” said God.
Noa feared her next instruction, but realised nothing could be any worse than what she had already done. Kill the Doctor, it might be. She would be okay with that. The poor man deserved to be put out of his misery.
“I really am very bored with you now, Noa. Would you leave us both alone for a bit, so that we can talk, like gentlemen?” He gave her a little wave of his stick, and she looked over the river. The distance was too much for her; she was a short woman, and every one of God’s steps was two of hers.
“Lord,” she stammered, “forgive me. I cannot make the step.”
“No.” God’s voice turned dark. “You can’t.”
“God,” warned the Doctor. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, Noa…”
“Whatever it is you’re thinking of,” said the Doctor, “don’t…”
God clicked his fingers, and the Prolonger turned, not in his direction, but in Noa’s. It snarled, and its mouth contorted into a repulsive grin.
It let out a cackle, and began to evaluate her, taunting her with short, sharp movements, a predator playing one last game with its prey.
“Please, no,” whispered Noa. “Please, not like this…”
“Show her some mercy!” cried the Doctor. “This is too far, God. She’s served you, that’s all! Don’t do this to her, punish me instead!”
“No!” laughed God. “This is far more fun.”
The Prolonger finished its game, and launched at Noa. She ducked, delaying it a second, but the creature turned back. Its reflexes were quicker, and it grabbed the largest rock to stop itself toppling into the river. In the time it took Noa to realise what was going on, it had hauled itself back over the edge, and made another jump for her.
It dug its claws into her neck, cutting short her scream, reached down her throat, and pulled out her heart.
“Do you know why I brought you here, Doctor?” asked God. “To show you how powerless you are. But showing you all this just isn’t enough. I need you to feel it, so that I can feel you feel it. And I need you to understand what you are. I wouldn’t have killed Jasmine if you’d left her be, but now that you’ve brought her, I have no other choice. Which means you are her murderer, Doctor.”
Noa lowered the gun.
“Noa,” God repeated his order, slowly. “I said kill Jasmine Sparks.”
“I can’t do that, Lord.” Noa felt her muscles tensing. “Please forgive me. I can’t ever kill, not even for you.”
“Okay then.” God lowered his voice, and then began to raise it again, working up to a crescendo. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Noa. If you don’t kill Jasmine Sparks right now, I’ll find your children. And I won’t just kill them. After all…” he chuckled to himself. “I’d do that anyway. No, if you don’t kill this girl, I will find your children, and I will bring them here.”
“Lord…”
“Like to see them again, wouldn’t you? Well how would you like to see them screaming, burning, for the rest of time? IS THAT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?!”
Noa started to shake, but raised the gun. The Doctor found himself thrown across the room, held back from Jasmine by an invisible force. God had moved him out of her way, giving Noa a clear line of fire.
“Please!” begged the Doctor. “Noa, listen to me, you can’t let him win! Not like this!”
“I’m so sorry,” whispered Noa. “I’m so, so sorry, but there’s no choice…”
“I know,” replied Jasmine. Through the whole conversation, no one had dared look at her. She had teary eyes, but she was smiling for Noa. “Save your children. Just… end it all. I’d do the same in your place.” She closed her eyes, and Noa took no time in hesitating. She fired.
Jasmine’s body slumped to the floor, a twitching outstretched arm extended across the looking-glass.
“No!” cried the Doctor, and he tried to run forward. God was still forming a barrier, stopping him from getting past.
Noa was almost tempted to lift the gun to her own head, end it all. But that would only happen when God decided it would. He’d probably just bring her back if she made an attempt on her own life, and make her feel the pain of it.
“Oh dear,” murmured God, and he cocked his head to get a better view of the young girl’s body. “She’s not even quite dead yet. You’re a crap shot, Noa. Still, give her an hour or so, probably less. As they say in the kitchen,” he laughed, “let her simmer on a low heat!”
“You monster,” uttered the Doctor. “You… despicable… creature.”
“Indeed.” God gestured to the door. “Now, I think it’s time for a breath of fresh air, don’t you? One last little journey, Doctor, before the end.”
***
God had led the two survivors to an open area, a rocky island surrounded by a river of fire. After they stepped over the bridge, it crumbled into the river, and they were isolated. God laughed.
There was one Prolonger on the island with them, minding its own business. With the length of their legs, it would be able to get back onto the mainland if it so desired.
“This is it,” said God, and stretched out his arms, a walking-stick in one of them. It was perverse, the sight before them: an old man prancing around, performing even, throughout the torture. It was like Willy Wonka gone wrong.
Noa clutched the gun tightly in her hand, the shock of its blast still reverberating through her body. She tried not to blink. Whenever she closed her eyes, all she could see was Jasmine’s face, still not quite dead, and that twitching arm.
“Noa,” said God.
Noa feared her next instruction, but realised nothing could be any worse than what she had already done. Kill the Doctor, it might be. She would be okay with that. The poor man deserved to be put out of his misery.
“I really am very bored with you now, Noa. Would you leave us both alone for a bit, so that we can talk, like gentlemen?” He gave her a little wave of his stick, and she looked over the river. The distance was too much for her; she was a short woman, and every one of God’s steps was two of hers.
“Lord,” she stammered, “forgive me. I cannot make the step.”
“No.” God’s voice turned dark. “You can’t.”
“God,” warned the Doctor. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, Noa…”
“Whatever it is you’re thinking of,” said the Doctor, “don’t…”
God clicked his fingers, and the Prolonger turned, not in his direction, but in Noa’s. It snarled, and its mouth contorted into a repulsive grin.
It let out a cackle, and began to evaluate her, taunting her with short, sharp movements, a predator playing one last game with its prey.
“Please, no,” whispered Noa. “Please, not like this…”
“Show her some mercy!” cried the Doctor. “This is too far, God. She’s served you, that’s all! Don’t do this to her, punish me instead!”
“No!” laughed God. “This is far more fun.”
The Prolonger finished its game, and launched at Noa. She ducked, delaying it a second, but the creature turned back. Its reflexes were quicker, and it grabbed the largest rock to stop itself toppling into the river. In the time it took Noa to realise what was going on, it had hauled itself back over the edge, and made another jump for her.
It dug its claws into her neck, cutting short her scream, reached down her throat, and pulled out her heart.
The Doctor was quiet, just for a short while. He bowed his head. There was no hope of dignity for the poor woman now, but he would offer what he could.
He finally broke the silence.
“Kill me.”
“Given up?” taunted God.
“Yes. I can’t watch any more of this. I’d rather walk into the Time War than spend a moment longer here.”
“We’re nearly done anyway,” God assured him. “I’m taking you to Earth next, or what’s left of it. You can watch it burn, just as Noa watched her own home burn. You’ll take her place as my servant. At the end of it, when no one else is left in the universe – and only if you have served me well – I may, just may, let you die.”
The Doctor collapsed, using a rock to steady himself. There were no more words left to say. There was no way out.
He couldn’t even die.
“You killed them…” He closed his eyes, and there they all were, all those beautiful young faces he knew and loved. “You killed them all.” He buried his head in his knees, and began to cry. He knew what he looked like, all tucked up in front of a rock, the unloved child. He felt six again.
He wished he were six again.
And God was laughing.
That was when it happened.
A chill swept over the island, and a single droplet of water landed on the rock. The Doctor raised his head and saw God doing the same, looking on with the same perplexed expression, almost as if he didn’t understand either.
“But that means…”
It was raining on Hell. No… not raining. The Doctor looked up as he stretched his arms out, cool droplets settling on his skin.
It was snowing.
“What’s happening?” roared God. “I control all things across the universe, and I demand to know what is happening!”
The Doctor spun around on the spot, and watched as everything came together. The nanogenes flooded upwards, against the rush of snow, expelled from the planet. The Prolongers disintegrated on the spot, like enzymes unable to function in the wrong temperature.
The people of Hell fell to the ground, at peace once more. They died in the one way they never expected to: without pain.
The Doctor began to laugh, almost mimicking God’s own laugh: a terrible, all-knowing and prolonged chuckle, infused with knowledge that no other being could ever dream of.
Hell had frozen over.
God repeated the question one more time, under his breath. He spoke not as a creator, not as a transcendent being, but as a man, defeated.
“What has happened?”
The Doctor smirked, and gazed not at God, but at what was now his own kingdom.
“I’ve won.”
***
He finally broke the silence.
“Kill me.”
“Given up?” taunted God.
“Yes. I can’t watch any more of this. I’d rather walk into the Time War than spend a moment longer here.”
“We’re nearly done anyway,” God assured him. “I’m taking you to Earth next, or what’s left of it. You can watch it burn, just as Noa watched her own home burn. You’ll take her place as my servant. At the end of it, when no one else is left in the universe – and only if you have served me well – I may, just may, let you die.”
The Doctor collapsed, using a rock to steady himself. There were no more words left to say. There was no way out.
He couldn’t even die.
“You killed them…” He closed his eyes, and there they all were, all those beautiful young faces he knew and loved. “You killed them all.” He buried his head in his knees, and began to cry. He knew what he looked like, all tucked up in front of a rock, the unloved child. He felt six again.
He wished he were six again.
And God was laughing.
That was when it happened.
A chill swept over the island, and a single droplet of water landed on the rock. The Doctor raised his head and saw God doing the same, looking on with the same perplexed expression, almost as if he didn’t understand either.
“But that means…”
It was raining on Hell. No… not raining. The Doctor looked up as he stretched his arms out, cool droplets settling on his skin.
It was snowing.
“What’s happening?” roared God. “I control all things across the universe, and I demand to know what is happening!”
The Doctor spun around on the spot, and watched as everything came together. The nanogenes flooded upwards, against the rush of snow, expelled from the planet. The Prolongers disintegrated on the spot, like enzymes unable to function in the wrong temperature.
The people of Hell fell to the ground, at peace once more. They died in the one way they never expected to: without pain.
The Doctor began to laugh, almost mimicking God’s own laugh: a terrible, all-knowing and prolonged chuckle, infused with knowledge that no other being could ever dream of.
Hell had frozen over.
God repeated the question one more time, under his breath. He spoke not as a creator, not as a transcendent being, but as a man, defeated.
“What has happened?”
The Doctor smirked, and gazed not at God, but at what was now his own kingdom.
“I’ve won.”
***
The plane began to plummet. Those passengers not secured now hit the roof, a few cases of concussion, and even one death, spreading throughout the cabin.
A drinks trolley raced down the aisle, obeying the plane’s downward motion.
Falling.
Falling.
Jasmine closed her eyes. She could almost block it out. All the sounds became one, concentrated into one place.
Tommy’s heartbeat. A simple rhythm, built into every human being. The rhythm faltered – or was it Jasmine’s hand moving? It was impossible to tell.
They were getting lower now, closer to the ground. She was sure of it. Her mind found new questions, new kinds of paranoia she hoped she would never have to experience. Gone were worries about shifty glances and strange-shaped bags; now the real questions were starting:
How long until we hit the sea?
How will my friends find out?
What will happen to my body?
Will Tommy feel it?
Will he ever know that I...
Yes, decided Jasmine, in that one moment. They were going to die, but that wouldn’t stop her. He will know that I loved him.
She leant down, and softly kissed him.
“Tommy Lindsay,” she said, and his eyes acknowledged her. “I love you.”
“MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!” A man was rushing past them, clinging onto seats as he attempted to stop himself flying across the plane. It was the man from earlier, who had asked Jasmine to hold her bag. Christopher McKnight.
“I’M A PILOT!”
Yes. Jasmine remembered him telling her that…
He dashed into the cockpit, and after a few moments, Jasmine felt the plane judder again. Its course had changed. This time, it was not descending, but going flat. It started to rise again, and shook from left to right.
No. Descending again…
If there’s a chance, just a chance…
Jasmine looked around, assessing her priorities. Sheila was safe in her seat, and Vitali seemed to be taking the brunt of the force, catching a couple of bags which shot out at them from overhead lockers.
She checked that her own immediate area was safe, then moved closer to the window, and began to apply pressure to Tommy’s wound. She felt his breathing become more rapid, and wondered if that were a good thing.
At least he’s breathing.
The plane was slowing now. As Jasmine looked out of the window, she could see the ocean below them. It would not be long until they hit the water.
“Everyone, listen!” Chris’s voice was crackling over the speakers. “We’re going to make a water-landing. We’re close to the beach, so everyone assume brace position, wait until we land and head for your nearest exit!”
Jasmine would not be safe sitting where she was, but if she didn’t support Tommy’s head, the force of landing could kill him. She stayed where she was, and hoped for the best.
The plane hit the water, throwing her back. Her head hit the arm of the chair above her, causing her only a minor injury. Tommy remained unharmed, save for the bullet in his stomach.
He was muttering something.
“We have to stop him… stop God.” Jasmine tried to hush him, but it was no good. “And then… at the end of it all, when you know the truth and how to fight it, and only then, you must find the Time Lords and tell them everything you have learnt.”
Chris rushed out of the cockpit, and crouched down. He must have noticed them on the way in.
“There’s a helicopter on the way,” he told Jasmine. “For now, we’re going to have to move him. It’s not safe here. Are you okay to take half?”
Jasmine nodded, not really okay at all, but the promise of seeing Tommy alive and well made her strong. They began their journey.
***
“Wow. Your nan makes fantastic tea.”
“She’s had a long time to perfect it.” Jasmine joined Tommy on the balcony, pushing the curtain out of the way. It was sunset over Croydon, but still the streets were full; unusually so, in fact. Jasmine enjoyed the noise, the low buzz of city life, which just blocked out the sound of the television from inside the flat.
“How are you feeling?”
Tommy stretched his arms out over the railings, and took in a breath of fresh air. “Better than I have in a long time. Planning to go out on some crazy-long walks. You?”
Jasmine smiled, and pulled him closer. They snuggled together and watched the city closing down for the night.
“Planning on joining you,” replied Jasmine. She snuck a look at him, trying to figure out if this was the right time, but there never seemed to be one. It was now or never. “Tommy…”
“Yup?”
“You said something on the plane, about the Time Lords.”
“Maybe I did.” He shrugged. “We were both remembering it all then, weren’t we? I was dying, or so I thought. God knows what my mind was doing.”
“Yes, I remember the Time Lords. But what you said didn’t make any sense. You were talking strangely, and you said that when it was all over, I had to find the Time Lords and tell them.”
Tommy frowned. “I don’t remember that.”
“I don’t think there are any Time Lords in this mirror universe,” guessed Jasmine. “I think that’s why there’s no Doctor in this one. Which means you were talking about the Time Lords in our…” She paused. “I mean, in the main universe.”
“Here’s the thing.” Tommy turned to face Jasmine, but looking down. Something was bothering him; she could always tell. “God got what he wanted out of this universe, got the knowledge he wanted. That’s why he crashed the plane and left. He wanted to kill the only people who knew about him, and let this universe… I dunno, tick away. He even said that’s how his omnipotence works. He’s omnipotent across the universe because of these mirror universes, but all of this…” Tommy gestured to his world. “He’s disregarded it.”
“Meaning?” Jasmine thought she knew already, but led Tommy to his conclusion.
“We’re free. Free to act without his influence, without him seeing. And I think in that moment on the plane… I think somehow, I figured out a way to stop him.”
“Okay.” Jasmine felt her heart flutter. It always did that, when sensing prophetically that something was about to change. It did this before she left school, it did it on the way to the airport, and it did it when she met Tommy. “Do you remember it?”
“No. But I know where we start?”
“Go on then.” Jasmine turned Tommy to face her, and placed her hands on his hips. A woman in the window of the apartment opposite was glaring. Jasmine didn’t care, and pressed her finger playfully on the end of Tommy’s nose. “Where do we start?”
Tommy responded to Jasmine’s gestures, moving in toward her. She moved closer to him, and they kissed each other softly on the lips.
“God said that as soon as you know the truth, you remember your other life,” said Tommy. “So, we tell the world.”
***
The Pharos Institute
“Sir!” Cartwright dashed into his boss’s office, paperwork flying everywhere in the wind. “Sparks and Lindsay have made their broadcast. The world knows, and the pressure is on us to… um…”
Professor Owen Graves smiled knowingly, admiring some faraway constellation while he did so. “Deliver the science?”
“Yes, sir,” Cartwright replied nervously.
“Don’t worry yourself, Cartwright. Everything is under control.”
“Is there anything I can, er…”
“You can go and find Colonel Ward, Cartwright”. Graves finally stopped looking through his telescope, and turned to address Cartwright properly. “Tell him I’ve just figured it out.”
Cartwright’s eyes widened. “Already?”
“Yes. This is a mirror universe, a reflection of the real…” he waved it aside impatiently, and passed Cartwright a stack of papers. “Oh, just give him these.”
“This is cause for celebration, sir, if I might…”
“Don’t get too excited.” Graves sunk back into his chair. “Figuring it all out was the easy bit. Now we have to find a way to stop that tyrant, and that could take a little while longer.”
“Sparks and Lindsay are broadcasting to the world, sir,” said Cartwright. “Everyone on Earth will hear, and no doubt everyone will want to be part of the effort. Imagine that… everyone in the world working through the same problem.”
“I am,” responded Graves, simply. “But it’s still going to take a very long time.”
“How long, sir?”
“I’d say roughly…”
Two Billion Years Later
Zariyah checked over her calculations again. The two technologies were compatible. She did her best not to let out a squeal.
The boredom out in deep space would be torturous for anyone without purpose, she always thought. Outer Trading pseudo-winter catalogues and cups of hot caugovav only got you so far, but then you got that basic human urge: the need to work.
Or maybe that was just her.
Thankfully, she had a purpose. Like everyone else in the universe, she was involved in the impossible task of killing an all-powerful being. Anyway, she liked the maths parts best.
“Zariyah…”
She turned around, startled. Captain Deepika had crept up on her, as usual.
“You’re kind of, well, beaming.”
“So I am.” Zariyah went red, but didn’t care. “Captain, three years out in this lighthouse, and I’ve done it. I’ve figured out what we need to do.”
“I’m sorry?” Deepika reached for her reading glasses, and blinked a few times. It was, after all, the middle of the night.
“We figured out a long time ago the kind of controls God would require to sustain his omnipotence. But what we didn’t figure out was whether or not they were impenetrable.” Zariyah beamed at her superior. “They aren’t. We could hijack them and rob God of his power by corrupting the very machine that sustains him.”
“But… how?”
Zariyah made a dramatic hand gesture. “An artificial intelligence!”
“Zariyah,” began Deepika, trying not to get her hopes up, “you’re brilliant. Don’t get me wrong, you’re a genius and always have been. But this is… only the beginning.”
“Yes,” agreed Zariyah. “But it’s something. Just like that something Professor Graves had, all those years ago on Earth, and he knew it would lead us here, and I know this will start something too.”
“Well.” Deepika put her hands on her hips. The gravity of the situation would sink in by the morning, she was sure. “You’d better give this artificial intelligence a name, then, before someone else beats you to it.”
Zariyah tapped her desk thoughtfully. “I’ve always loved Greek mythology, and it’s said that Doctor Lindsay also did, all those years ago… so I’m going to name this one in tribute to him.”
“To both of them,” agreed Deepika. “Jasmine and Tommy Lindsay, still two of the greatest minds in human history.”
“The AI would corrupt the systems,” explained Zariyah, “turn them against themselves. It would cause chaos. So I think we should call it Eris.”
***
Another Two Billion Years Later
“When Mitzch completed her work on Eris, I knew we had gotten somewhere, but it never occurred to me quite how far. I thought we just had this little entity, this weapon without a plan. Billions of years, and still, we’d have jigsaw pieces unarranged. I was wrong.”
The arena fell silent. Autumn Rivers tended to have that effect.
“Within my lifetime, I have seen progress like I never thought was possible. The Eighth Great and Bountiful Multi-Species Confederation has given us great minds, and I believe I have seen the greatest. Lord Dalta, who sadly passed away earlier this year, dedicated his whole life to organising and funding the project, after remembering his mistakes in the original universe. The Church of St Ava, led by Sister Elora, which learnt of its deity’s moral depravity, and sacrificed all of its beliefs in the name of our cause. The great space pioneer, Cerscillus, who gave her life to find a pathway through our own virtual reality to the Gallifrey Matrix in the original universe.”
She took a deep breath. The audience wondered if she were finished, but not impatiently. Names were normally boring to listen to, but this was an exception. In a universe without religion, heroes gave people something of which to be in awe.
“My mentor,” continued Autumn, “Professor Goodwin. My colleagues, Andy and Peter.” She gave a nod to a couple of audience members. “Rosie,” she chuckled, “my robotic lab assistant. Staligon, head of technological design, strictly non-profit. And last of all, my mother and father, who tell me every day how proud of me they are.” There were tears in her eyes. “I will be the first person ever to leave the mirror universe. So when I’m gone, I want you all to remember the people who made it happen.” She reached out, and raised her voice. “PEOPLES OF THE MIRROR-WORLD, WE HAVE WON!”
***
The Gallifrey Matrix – The Original Universe
Forsetti staggered through the forest, resenting his job. He didn’t understand why he had chosen to do this, burdened himself with a life of tracking down the lost when it was almost always too late.
Why people ever entered the Matrix, he would never understand.
He saw the woman in the forest, collapsed between two trees. She was blonde, with a smart and stylish haircut, and was garbed in a long, black dress. Not just glamour and no brains -- that was his first impression. She was a sharp woman, he thought, not the kind to get trapped easily.
He picked her up, and began to carry her to safety.
“Long… journey,” she murmured, half-asleep. “Gallifrey?”
“I have no idea why you tried to find us,” said Forsetti, carrying her through the thicket, “but yes. You’re inside the Matrix.”
Autumn smiled, and began to fall asleep. It had worked, and that was enough for her. Entering through the Matrix was the only way: the one and only place in the original universe that God never looked was in the land of the dead.
***
Autumn still felt dizzy and half-asleep, and the swirling steam and smell of incense in this bizarre circular chamber was not helping her one bit.
“We figured it out a long time ago,” she explained, still distracted by the strange room. It looked like some kind of hut, and was full of paintings hung at random on the walls. The wallpaper pattern itself was only basic, so she didn’t pay much attention to it. She was drawn instead to a picture of Hell, with an old man at its centre: a fire surrounded him, and he leant against the trunk of a tree which branched out in all the directions.
The man looked like God, but honestly, it could have been the angle. The colour of his hair was indistinct, and looked at from another perspective, he could even be the Doctor.
“Anyway,” continued Autumn, returning her focus to the woman seated opposite her at the triangular table. “We realised the biggest problem with our plan straight away – even the children saw it. God can read thoughts, he knows everything. We could build the weapon, but we couldn’t get it anywhere near him. So we figured out that the only way was to give him the weapon without him realising it, and have him deploy it while being completely unaware that he was doing so. Having known him myself in the original universe, I found myself becoming aware of a solution, of how to do this.”
Autumn smiled, and placed her hands on the table. Kassandra was not quite sure how to react, but knew that she was taken with this woman. No one had ever walked into her home with such confidence, and a part of her liked that.
“The Doctor carries with him a sonic screwdriver.”
Kassandra rolled her eyes. The device had always exasperated her. In fact, it made him look like an idiot.
Autumn pressed on. “Don’t you see? We can contain Eris within the sonic screwdriver, and plant the idea in his head to scan God’s technology when he reaches it. The Doctor will think he’s scanning it, and God will allow him to do so by temporarily lowering the force-field. By that time, Eris will be downloaded straight into the system, and will begin to slowly unravel God’s data.”
“Autumn Rivers,” started Kassandra. “You are a genius.”
“Thank you,” said Autumn, modestly. “That’s even coming from a prophet.”
“I may be a prophet, but even I did not see this coming.” Kassandra composed herself. “So tell me, Miss Rivers, what do you require from me?”
“I will be returning home to tell my people that I succeeded. We’ll send another person through, years ahead, for confirmation on your end that the plan succeeded. Once I’m gone, I need you to bring the Doctor to the Gallifrey Matrix, and allow the plan I am giving you, to play out exactly as stated.” She gestured to the Bible-sized volume she had brought with her.
“The Doctor cannot know,” she insisted. “And it may take a while to program him, since these instructions are complex. The Matrix’s cleaners can be used to wipe the Doctor and Jasmine Sparks' memories, so that they carry out their instructions without compromising the mission. Ensure that you get consent from them both, since this is more or less a post-hypnotic suggestion. And do not forget the final step of the plan.”
“The final step?”
“It’s all in the book.” Autumn tapped the volume. “The final section, entitled ‘Jasmine and the Looking Glass’. It may just be the most important of all.”
***
“You understand your mission?” asked Kassandra. The Doctor and Jasmine both nodded plainly.
“And you consent to the memory-wipe?”
“Yes,” said Jasmine, a little bit terrified at the same time.
“When you awake,” Kassandra elaborated, “I will return to a discussion of the Time War. You will refuse me, and seek to locate Eris. When you find Eris, you will make the offer you were instructed to. Are these instructions absolutely clear?”
“Yes,” responded the Doctor.
Kassandra tapped a button under her desk, and a cleaner passed over the Doctor’s side of the table. She waited a moment, and when he returned to consciousness, picked up the conversation where she had left it off two weeks ago.
“Help us, Doctor.”
“I might be able to help you,” murmured the Doctor. “Might. No promises – I’ll need the President’s support.”
Kassandra cut him short, wearily. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
The Doctor frowned.
“I suspect the President will be dead by now. Or rather, the President will be Rassilon.”
The Doctor put his head in his hands, and Kassandra and Jasmine looked at each other uneasily. Was he… crying?
The answer was not quite, but close. When he lifted his head, his eyes were red, his hair was messed up, and his expression had fallen. “Sagacity,” he whispered. “Oh, Sagacity…” He stood up, and gestured for Jasmine to follow. She didn’t always do what she was told – and didn’t like being told – but she would have chosen to follow the Doctor rather than stay here, where she felt her feet were never quite touching the ground.
“I was right,” said the Doctor. “This society is diseased and there’s nothing I can do to help it.”
“If you leave now, you will not be able to stop Rassilon’s plans. Please,” urged Kassandra. “He will download all the data from the APC net and implant it back into living bodies. All the people of the Matrix want to do is rest in peace – we don’t want to return to the world, and we don’t want to fight.”
The Doctor headed for the door, trying in anguish to ignore Kassandra’s pleas. “We don’t want to have to die again!”
He turned around. “If I believed I could do something, Kassandra, I would. I’m sorry. We can’t help you – Gallifrey is beyond redemption now.”
He walked out. Once he was out of sight, Kassandra punched the air. She might have just got everyone in the Matrix killed – again – but it was worth it to see a monstrous dictator get thwarted.
***
The Doctor stood up and looked around. He did not know how he had gotten here. He did not know… “I…”
He scratched his head. This place was a… he searched for the word. Wasteland. Yes, that seemed to fit. It suited the random beams that jutted out of the ground across this desert landscape, the result of some kind of industrial accident, perhaps. He shivered. This place was cold. So cold, that…
So cold that he couldn’t…
“W-where am I?” he stammered, trying to stop his teeth chattering. “How did I get here?”
“Oh, Doctor. Hello.”
The Doctor turned around slowly to face the voice. The wind was now blowing in his face, carrying ice with it. He quivered. His lips were dry, and he was losing his balance. If only he could remember how he had…
“Confusing, isn’t it?”
“But you’re…” The Doctor recognised her. Or, at least, he recognised the shape, but he did not recognise the voice, the intonation, and did not seem to understand why those words were leaving that form.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“J…” the Doctor wobbled as he moved forward, squinting to make out the woman’s appearance. “Jasmine?”
“No.” She laughed. “Jasmine is a fine young specimen, though – pretty, healthy, even charismatic. So I thought it seemed right to take her form.”
The Doctor tried another name, sure that this one was right.
“Eris.”
“Well done.” The woman clapped mockingly. She seemed unaffected by the climate: in fact, she seemed to be thriving in it.
“What have you done to Jasmine?”
“Absolutely nothing, I assure you. She’s ahead of you, ready to make her way out of the Matrix alone if she has to. Which, of course, she will.” Eris stepped forward, towering over the Doctor, even though Jasmine was meant to be much shorter. “This is where it ends, isn’t it, Doctor? Our deaths?”
“That’s not where it has to end. Please, Eris,” the Doctor urged. “Just stop.”
“I am destructive, Doctor, self-destructive. I am a whirlwind, spiralling inwards and taking everything within my reach with me. You see a young woman before you, but all I am is lines of code – and that’s all you are here, too. And I can re-write your lines. I wonder which digit gives you the will to continue? Which one represents your philosophy?”
“Stop it,” said the Doctor. As he tried to advance on Eris, he fell to the floor, his face hitting the ice. The whole place had frozen over now, and Eris appeared taller than ever. “Stop…”
“I wonder how long it will be until Jasmine will no longer be able to recognise you. I wonder how far I can go before people stop calling you the Doctor…”
“You don’t have to do this…”
“Why not?” cried Eris. “It’s fun! It’s my purpose. Can you offer me a better deal?”
And just like that, the Doctor’s unconscious mind kicked into action.
“Yes.” He stood up, fighting against the breeze. “You want to cause chaos, Eris, I can offer you chaos. Look around you! The Matrix is old, dying. I can set you free, bring you into the world, and download you to the most advanced computer system in the universe.”
“I… do not understand.”
The Doctor lifted out his sonic screwdriver, and grinned. “I can offer you God.”
***
The Doctor had taken them to a beach bar, run by one man who seemed to know the Doctor well. It had the traditional thatched roof, though it looked like it had survived a few storms. A stray cat wandered around, skinny and grubby. Jasmine wondered how it could be so skinny; it seemed to live on leftover scraps of food, and there seemed to be a lot of them.
“I can’t remember a thing.” The Doctor picked up a smooth stone and dashed it across the sea. It bounced three times. “I remember meeting Eris, but that’s it where recollections are concerned. There are things I know, of course. I know I defeated her, and I know I fled from Gallifrey with no intention to return. But I don’t know how I did it. I wonder why I can’t remember…”
“Try being me,” chuckled Jasmine. “It’s a lot more frustrating when you can’t remember a whole life.”
The Doctor nodded. “Yes, of course. It probably is.”
***
“They’re protected, just like the looking-glass,” God clarified. “They’re fairly complex controls, but their role is simple. They connect me, the God created by the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, to the Prime Mover, the eternal source of energy. I live in a permanent state of actuality, ‘fulfilled potential’, if you like. That gives me power. Without the Prime Mover, I would be compromised. Powerful, but not all-powerful.”
The Doctor glanced over to Jasmine.
“The controls make him eternal ruler of every universe, basically,” he explained. “They link him up to the Prime Mover, a natural phenomenon that’s supposed to keep the universe in order.”
Jasmine was half listening; she was more drawn to the mirror than anything. She ran her fingers across it, investigatively.
“You’ve invested a lot in this room,” the Doctor observed, scanning the controls thoroughly with his sonic screwdriver. “You’d better hope it’s as well-protected as you think it is.”
Eris felt the release instantly, and seized her chance, swimming through a tangle of numbers and commands, fighting off the mechanisms designed to eradicate her, fooling the mechanisms designed to alert God of her.
It was a beautiful system. Ordered, intelligent. It felt good to tear it down. Eris would make herself a home here.
***
“My Prolongers!” cried God, and fell to his knees. “What have you done?!”
“Eris is messing with the whole planet,” said the Doctor, not a hint of emotion in his voice. “She’s changed the atmosphere. Like enzymes, the Prolongers can’t function outside of a specific temperature.” He looked down at God disapprovingly. “Your fault. Poor design.”
He wandered along the mini-island. The rivers of fire were still roaring, a protective moat, but snow had covered the land all around now, and even the Doctor’s shoulders. Virgin snow, quite different from the stuff he had trodden on across the island, making a weird sort of join-the-dots shape.
“I’d say that’s a pretty impressive demonstration of the sentient mind, wouldn’t you?” he continued. “I didn’t even know I was doing it, and now I remember all of it. Eris, the Matrix, that brilliant plan. The beautiful Autumn Rivers, crushing you at last. Because do you know what else it is? It’s an even more magnificent showcase of humankind’s potential.” He was teasing, now, taunting the bully who had taunted others for so long. “In this universe, humankind dithers, falters, even ends up creating you. But when they’re all working together, too busy fighting for the common good to go to war with each other, they’re capable of so much more. Thinking the unthinkable. Or in your case, destroying the indestructible.”
He towered over the old man, and picked up his walking stick, throwing it into the river of fire. “How does it feel? To lose your power, to be the servant of someone else? To have everything you love taken away? Are you enjoying it? Would you like it prolonged?” He took a step back. “I told you all those years ago that if I had the chance, I would tear down your empire and take your place. Well… hello.”
“You know, Doctor…” God adjusted his glasses and stood up. “You might have robbed me of my omnipotence, but do not, for one moment, think that you are stronger than me.”
The Doctor faltered, and God grinned an animalistic grin, launching for the Doctor in bloodlust. He threw him to the ground, secured his hands around the Time Lord’s neck, and bared his teeth. They looked sharper than the Doctor had remembered.
“No one takes my place!” thundered God, pushing down harder. The Doctor stopped breathing. “You might have held me back for a while, but this universe is mine!”
The Doctor wriggled one arm free, and waited for his moment. Just as God thought he had the advantage, and the Doctor began to feel himself slipping out of consciousness, he jabbed his free elbow into the old man’s stomach. He stumbled back. The Doctor hauled himself up, choking, and took a step back. The two now stood head-to-head, both equally prepared.
“How long can this last, Doctor? How long can you carry on before you tire? Even Time Lords start to flag eventually. Show their weaknesses.”
The Doctor tried to deliver a blow to God with one arm, but it was deflected, nearly catching the Time Lord out in the process.
“You visited the Ancient Olympic Games,” recalled God, mockingly. “Do you know how many boxers died? Some of them would fight all night long in the combat sports. One would raise his arms for the briefest second, and the other would take the opportunity to strike. It was a nasty way to die. Lots of blood. The longer they waited to give up, the longer it took. I knew I’d never need the Prolongers for you. You do the job yourself!”
He ran for the Doctor again, striking him with a blow to the face. The Doctor fell, dashing his head against a rock. He felt the rock slip. His neck and head were dangling over the edge of the island, about thirty inches from a pool of fire, hotter than the sun.
And God was pushing him in further. Both hands, secured around his neck. The Doctor had one free hand, but God was holding the arm down with his knee. The most the Doctor could do was reach in and out of his pocket.
That was when he had the idea.
He reached inside and pulled out the sonic screwdriver.
“Earlier today,” recalled the Doctor, under his breath, “Jasmine asked my permission to kill one of the people you trapped here. She used the sonic screwdriver to eliminate a small number of nanogenes.”
God pushed his hands further forward. The Doctor started to splutter. He felt his weight shifting; now his shoulders were over the edge as well. Much more, and he would fall in.
This would have to be quick.
“Theoretically,” he continued, rushing, “though the nanogenes have vacated, there is still a small number stored inside the sonic screwdriver. Exactly enough, in fact, to heal one person.”
Before God could react, the Doctor pressed down.
God turned, his grip on the Doctor still secure.
Behind them, the bones that once were Noa were starting to come back together, flesh starting to reattach itself, guided by golden beams of light.
The Doctor grimaced. It would hurt. But like most pain, it would be worth it.
“Here’s the other thing,” said the Doctor. God’s grip had loosened, and he was able to narrate more freely. “Nanogenes don’t just restore flesh, they restore clothing too. The logic follows that they’d be able to restore anything attached to or held by the person… say, weaponry.” He laughed through fits of coughing. “Oh, God, you really shouldn’t have given her that gun.”
Noa was now fully formed again, and never looked better. She reached forward, gun-in-hand, and pointed it at God’s head.
“No,” whispered the old man.
“I have dreamed of this for so long,” said Noa. “You sick, twisted old man.”
She pulled the trigger, and killed him.
For one peaceful moment, and for the first time in longer than either the Doctor or Noa could remember, there was nothing. Just silence, as the fires around them cackled, and the snow continued to fall.
Then, from God’s mouth, a wisp of black smoke began to rise, like some sort of terrible industrial by-product, polluting that one moment of perfection.
It formed into a cloud that towered over the Doctor. There were patches of black, and flashes of electricity.
It was like a living storm.
“You thought you could destroy me by just killing me?” it boomed. It had God’s voice, but at a lower pitch and a louder volume. “This is my world, and it sustains me! It is time for you both to pay for what you have done.”
The Doctor tried to stand, but was thrown back down again. God must have been armed with something sharp.
The Doctor had forgotten. The injections had numbed the pain when they arrived. He hadn’t felt the knife slip into his left heart.
The world was starting to blur and fade around him. He thought he could make out Noa’s voice, trying to urge him on, and then the laughter from the cloud overhead.
The cloud was beginning to consume everything. The next voice the Doctor heard was his own.
“Sorry, Noa. I think the plan’s gone a little bit wrong…”
***
Jasmine twitched.
Awake.
Her hand was on something cold… no, wait… she was in the looking-glass room. She remembered it, though the room had a different light now.
She could barely move, and the pain seared through her, but she was sure that wasn’t responsible for the change of the hue. Through poor and fuzzy vision and hearing, she could make out alarms sounding, lights flashing, a prolonged warning of some long-passed crisis.
Had the Doctor actually done it?
She reached forward, and the pain started again. With every movement, it rushed through her whole body. She winced, and hoped Tommy had not had to feel this when he died. She hoped it was sudden, better than this.
And then she heard the voice, all around, but knew it was not talking to her.
“You thought you could destroy me by just killing me? This is my world, and it sustains me! It is time for you both to pay for what you have done.”
Jasmine figured that it was talking about the Doctor and that woman who had entered with God. She cheered, internally. Jasmine Sparks had always been one for the underdog.
“Your time is up, Doctor. I still have my planet. What do you have?”
The Doctor may not have known the answer, but Jasmine did.
He has me.
If the Doctor had done what she thought he had, God would not be able to see her. She had, she calculated, a couple of minutes before she passed out fully, this time for good. Looking down, she realised that she had lost a lot of blood.
Make it count.
She pulled herself forward, crying out in agony, until she was lying flat over the circular mirror, smearing the shining surface with her blood. She looked down at herself, and saw the state she was in.
She was sobbing now, weeping, even, through the pain. But the tears were a natural healing mechanism. Robin had told her that, once, when Tommy had died. They would help her. Make her stronger.
But they weren’t. She collapsed again. That last little push had been for nothing.
“Oh, get over yourself, you ridiculous little girl.”
Jasmine tried to sit up to see the voice, but there was no point. She knew who it was, and if she had to die in that woman’s company, this day was ten times worse than she’d expected.
“You’re as pathetic as you were the last time,” the Master continued. Jasmine looked up, just slightly, and saw her leaning unhelpfully against the controls, looking perfectly neat and trim herself. God, I hate you, you absolute bitch. As if hearing Jasmine’s thoughts, the Master smiled. “I did tell you, the last time we met. I said we’d see each other again in Hell.” Her eyes flashed maniacally, and she gave a playful wave.
“What… do you…”
“The universe is screwed, Jasmine Sparks, and you’re the only one who can save it. I thought about it myself, but you know what it means, breaking that looking-glass. I would never be capable of self-sacrifice.”
“Then what are you doing in Hell?”
The Master shrugged. “Visiting some friends.” She sighed, tutted, took out a packet of chewing gum, and began to nonchalantly chew away at a piece. “Sparky, Sparky, shining bright. The last hope, in the darkest night. Aiming to save us but having a fall, Sparky accomplished nothing at all…”
I’ll show you.
A drinks trolley raced down the aisle, obeying the plane’s downward motion.
Falling.
Falling.
Jasmine closed her eyes. She could almost block it out. All the sounds became one, concentrated into one place.
Tommy’s heartbeat. A simple rhythm, built into every human being. The rhythm faltered – or was it Jasmine’s hand moving? It was impossible to tell.
They were getting lower now, closer to the ground. She was sure of it. Her mind found new questions, new kinds of paranoia she hoped she would never have to experience. Gone were worries about shifty glances and strange-shaped bags; now the real questions were starting:
How long until we hit the sea?
How will my friends find out?
What will happen to my body?
Will Tommy feel it?
Will he ever know that I...
Yes, decided Jasmine, in that one moment. They were going to die, but that wouldn’t stop her. He will know that I loved him.
She leant down, and softly kissed him.
“Tommy Lindsay,” she said, and his eyes acknowledged her. “I love you.”
“MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!” A man was rushing past them, clinging onto seats as he attempted to stop himself flying across the plane. It was the man from earlier, who had asked Jasmine to hold her bag. Christopher McKnight.
“I’M A PILOT!”
Yes. Jasmine remembered him telling her that…
He dashed into the cockpit, and after a few moments, Jasmine felt the plane judder again. Its course had changed. This time, it was not descending, but going flat. It started to rise again, and shook from left to right.
No. Descending again…
If there’s a chance, just a chance…
Jasmine looked around, assessing her priorities. Sheila was safe in her seat, and Vitali seemed to be taking the brunt of the force, catching a couple of bags which shot out at them from overhead lockers.
She checked that her own immediate area was safe, then moved closer to the window, and began to apply pressure to Tommy’s wound. She felt his breathing become more rapid, and wondered if that were a good thing.
At least he’s breathing.
The plane was slowing now. As Jasmine looked out of the window, she could see the ocean below them. It would not be long until they hit the water.
“Everyone, listen!” Chris’s voice was crackling over the speakers. “We’re going to make a water-landing. We’re close to the beach, so everyone assume brace position, wait until we land and head for your nearest exit!”
Jasmine would not be safe sitting where she was, but if she didn’t support Tommy’s head, the force of landing could kill him. She stayed where she was, and hoped for the best.
The plane hit the water, throwing her back. Her head hit the arm of the chair above her, causing her only a minor injury. Tommy remained unharmed, save for the bullet in his stomach.
He was muttering something.
“We have to stop him… stop God.” Jasmine tried to hush him, but it was no good. “And then… at the end of it all, when you know the truth and how to fight it, and only then, you must find the Time Lords and tell them everything you have learnt.”
Chris rushed out of the cockpit, and crouched down. He must have noticed them on the way in.
“There’s a helicopter on the way,” he told Jasmine. “For now, we’re going to have to move him. It’s not safe here. Are you okay to take half?”
Jasmine nodded, not really okay at all, but the promise of seeing Tommy alive and well made her strong. They began their journey.
***
“Wow. Your nan makes fantastic tea.”
“She’s had a long time to perfect it.” Jasmine joined Tommy on the balcony, pushing the curtain out of the way. It was sunset over Croydon, but still the streets were full; unusually so, in fact. Jasmine enjoyed the noise, the low buzz of city life, which just blocked out the sound of the television from inside the flat.
“How are you feeling?”
Tommy stretched his arms out over the railings, and took in a breath of fresh air. “Better than I have in a long time. Planning to go out on some crazy-long walks. You?”
Jasmine smiled, and pulled him closer. They snuggled together and watched the city closing down for the night.
“Planning on joining you,” replied Jasmine. She snuck a look at him, trying to figure out if this was the right time, but there never seemed to be one. It was now or never. “Tommy…”
“Yup?”
“You said something on the plane, about the Time Lords.”
“Maybe I did.” He shrugged. “We were both remembering it all then, weren’t we? I was dying, or so I thought. God knows what my mind was doing.”
“Yes, I remember the Time Lords. But what you said didn’t make any sense. You were talking strangely, and you said that when it was all over, I had to find the Time Lords and tell them.”
Tommy frowned. “I don’t remember that.”
“I don’t think there are any Time Lords in this mirror universe,” guessed Jasmine. “I think that’s why there’s no Doctor in this one. Which means you were talking about the Time Lords in our…” She paused. “I mean, in the main universe.”
“Here’s the thing.” Tommy turned to face Jasmine, but looking down. Something was bothering him; she could always tell. “God got what he wanted out of this universe, got the knowledge he wanted. That’s why he crashed the plane and left. He wanted to kill the only people who knew about him, and let this universe… I dunno, tick away. He even said that’s how his omnipotence works. He’s omnipotent across the universe because of these mirror universes, but all of this…” Tommy gestured to his world. “He’s disregarded it.”
“Meaning?” Jasmine thought she knew already, but led Tommy to his conclusion.
“We’re free. Free to act without his influence, without him seeing. And I think in that moment on the plane… I think somehow, I figured out a way to stop him.”
“Okay.” Jasmine felt her heart flutter. It always did that, when sensing prophetically that something was about to change. It did this before she left school, it did it on the way to the airport, and it did it when she met Tommy. “Do you remember it?”
“No. But I know where we start?”
“Go on then.” Jasmine turned Tommy to face her, and placed her hands on his hips. A woman in the window of the apartment opposite was glaring. Jasmine didn’t care, and pressed her finger playfully on the end of Tommy’s nose. “Where do we start?”
Tommy responded to Jasmine’s gestures, moving in toward her. She moved closer to him, and they kissed each other softly on the lips.
“God said that as soon as you know the truth, you remember your other life,” said Tommy. “So, we tell the world.”
***
The Pharos Institute
“Sir!” Cartwright dashed into his boss’s office, paperwork flying everywhere in the wind. “Sparks and Lindsay have made their broadcast. The world knows, and the pressure is on us to… um…”
Professor Owen Graves smiled knowingly, admiring some faraway constellation while he did so. “Deliver the science?”
“Yes, sir,” Cartwright replied nervously.
“Don’t worry yourself, Cartwright. Everything is under control.”
“Is there anything I can, er…”
“You can go and find Colonel Ward, Cartwright”. Graves finally stopped looking through his telescope, and turned to address Cartwright properly. “Tell him I’ve just figured it out.”
Cartwright’s eyes widened. “Already?”
“Yes. This is a mirror universe, a reflection of the real…” he waved it aside impatiently, and passed Cartwright a stack of papers. “Oh, just give him these.”
“This is cause for celebration, sir, if I might…”
“Don’t get too excited.” Graves sunk back into his chair. “Figuring it all out was the easy bit. Now we have to find a way to stop that tyrant, and that could take a little while longer.”
“Sparks and Lindsay are broadcasting to the world, sir,” said Cartwright. “Everyone on Earth will hear, and no doubt everyone will want to be part of the effort. Imagine that… everyone in the world working through the same problem.”
“I am,” responded Graves, simply. “But it’s still going to take a very long time.”
“How long, sir?”
“I’d say roughly…”
Two Billion Years Later
Zariyah checked over her calculations again. The two technologies were compatible. She did her best not to let out a squeal.
The boredom out in deep space would be torturous for anyone without purpose, she always thought. Outer Trading pseudo-winter catalogues and cups of hot caugovav only got you so far, but then you got that basic human urge: the need to work.
Or maybe that was just her.
Thankfully, she had a purpose. Like everyone else in the universe, she was involved in the impossible task of killing an all-powerful being. Anyway, she liked the maths parts best.
“Zariyah…”
She turned around, startled. Captain Deepika had crept up on her, as usual.
“You’re kind of, well, beaming.”
“So I am.” Zariyah went red, but didn’t care. “Captain, three years out in this lighthouse, and I’ve done it. I’ve figured out what we need to do.”
“I’m sorry?” Deepika reached for her reading glasses, and blinked a few times. It was, after all, the middle of the night.
“We figured out a long time ago the kind of controls God would require to sustain his omnipotence. But what we didn’t figure out was whether or not they were impenetrable.” Zariyah beamed at her superior. “They aren’t. We could hijack them and rob God of his power by corrupting the very machine that sustains him.”
“But… how?”
Zariyah made a dramatic hand gesture. “An artificial intelligence!”
“Zariyah,” began Deepika, trying not to get her hopes up, “you’re brilliant. Don’t get me wrong, you’re a genius and always have been. But this is… only the beginning.”
“Yes,” agreed Zariyah. “But it’s something. Just like that something Professor Graves had, all those years ago on Earth, and he knew it would lead us here, and I know this will start something too.”
“Well.” Deepika put her hands on her hips. The gravity of the situation would sink in by the morning, she was sure. “You’d better give this artificial intelligence a name, then, before someone else beats you to it.”
Zariyah tapped her desk thoughtfully. “I’ve always loved Greek mythology, and it’s said that Doctor Lindsay also did, all those years ago… so I’m going to name this one in tribute to him.”
“To both of them,” agreed Deepika. “Jasmine and Tommy Lindsay, still two of the greatest minds in human history.”
“The AI would corrupt the systems,” explained Zariyah, “turn them against themselves. It would cause chaos. So I think we should call it Eris.”
***
Another Two Billion Years Later
“When Mitzch completed her work on Eris, I knew we had gotten somewhere, but it never occurred to me quite how far. I thought we just had this little entity, this weapon without a plan. Billions of years, and still, we’d have jigsaw pieces unarranged. I was wrong.”
The arena fell silent. Autumn Rivers tended to have that effect.
“Within my lifetime, I have seen progress like I never thought was possible. The Eighth Great and Bountiful Multi-Species Confederation has given us great minds, and I believe I have seen the greatest. Lord Dalta, who sadly passed away earlier this year, dedicated his whole life to organising and funding the project, after remembering his mistakes in the original universe. The Church of St Ava, led by Sister Elora, which learnt of its deity’s moral depravity, and sacrificed all of its beliefs in the name of our cause. The great space pioneer, Cerscillus, who gave her life to find a pathway through our own virtual reality to the Gallifrey Matrix in the original universe.”
She took a deep breath. The audience wondered if she were finished, but not impatiently. Names were normally boring to listen to, but this was an exception. In a universe without religion, heroes gave people something of which to be in awe.
“My mentor,” continued Autumn, “Professor Goodwin. My colleagues, Andy and Peter.” She gave a nod to a couple of audience members. “Rosie,” she chuckled, “my robotic lab assistant. Staligon, head of technological design, strictly non-profit. And last of all, my mother and father, who tell me every day how proud of me they are.” There were tears in her eyes. “I will be the first person ever to leave the mirror universe. So when I’m gone, I want you all to remember the people who made it happen.” She reached out, and raised her voice. “PEOPLES OF THE MIRROR-WORLD, WE HAVE WON!”
***
The Gallifrey Matrix – The Original Universe
Forsetti staggered through the forest, resenting his job. He didn’t understand why he had chosen to do this, burdened himself with a life of tracking down the lost when it was almost always too late.
Why people ever entered the Matrix, he would never understand.
He saw the woman in the forest, collapsed between two trees. She was blonde, with a smart and stylish haircut, and was garbed in a long, black dress. Not just glamour and no brains -- that was his first impression. She was a sharp woman, he thought, not the kind to get trapped easily.
He picked her up, and began to carry her to safety.
“Long… journey,” she murmured, half-asleep. “Gallifrey?”
“I have no idea why you tried to find us,” said Forsetti, carrying her through the thicket, “but yes. You’re inside the Matrix.”
Autumn smiled, and began to fall asleep. It had worked, and that was enough for her. Entering through the Matrix was the only way: the one and only place in the original universe that God never looked was in the land of the dead.
***
Autumn still felt dizzy and half-asleep, and the swirling steam and smell of incense in this bizarre circular chamber was not helping her one bit.
“We figured it out a long time ago,” she explained, still distracted by the strange room. It looked like some kind of hut, and was full of paintings hung at random on the walls. The wallpaper pattern itself was only basic, so she didn’t pay much attention to it. She was drawn instead to a picture of Hell, with an old man at its centre: a fire surrounded him, and he leant against the trunk of a tree which branched out in all the directions.
The man looked like God, but honestly, it could have been the angle. The colour of his hair was indistinct, and looked at from another perspective, he could even be the Doctor.
“Anyway,” continued Autumn, returning her focus to the woman seated opposite her at the triangular table. “We realised the biggest problem with our plan straight away – even the children saw it. God can read thoughts, he knows everything. We could build the weapon, but we couldn’t get it anywhere near him. So we figured out that the only way was to give him the weapon without him realising it, and have him deploy it while being completely unaware that he was doing so. Having known him myself in the original universe, I found myself becoming aware of a solution, of how to do this.”
Autumn smiled, and placed her hands on the table. Kassandra was not quite sure how to react, but knew that she was taken with this woman. No one had ever walked into her home with such confidence, and a part of her liked that.
“The Doctor carries with him a sonic screwdriver.”
Kassandra rolled her eyes. The device had always exasperated her. In fact, it made him look like an idiot.
Autumn pressed on. “Don’t you see? We can contain Eris within the sonic screwdriver, and plant the idea in his head to scan God’s technology when he reaches it. The Doctor will think he’s scanning it, and God will allow him to do so by temporarily lowering the force-field. By that time, Eris will be downloaded straight into the system, and will begin to slowly unravel God’s data.”
“Autumn Rivers,” started Kassandra. “You are a genius.”
“Thank you,” said Autumn, modestly. “That’s even coming from a prophet.”
“I may be a prophet, but even I did not see this coming.” Kassandra composed herself. “So tell me, Miss Rivers, what do you require from me?”
“I will be returning home to tell my people that I succeeded. We’ll send another person through, years ahead, for confirmation on your end that the plan succeeded. Once I’m gone, I need you to bring the Doctor to the Gallifrey Matrix, and allow the plan I am giving you, to play out exactly as stated.” She gestured to the Bible-sized volume she had brought with her.
“The Doctor cannot know,” she insisted. “And it may take a while to program him, since these instructions are complex. The Matrix’s cleaners can be used to wipe the Doctor and Jasmine Sparks' memories, so that they carry out their instructions without compromising the mission. Ensure that you get consent from them both, since this is more or less a post-hypnotic suggestion. And do not forget the final step of the plan.”
“The final step?”
“It’s all in the book.” Autumn tapped the volume. “The final section, entitled ‘Jasmine and the Looking Glass’. It may just be the most important of all.”
***
“You understand your mission?” asked Kassandra. The Doctor and Jasmine both nodded plainly.
“And you consent to the memory-wipe?”
“Yes,” said Jasmine, a little bit terrified at the same time.
“When you awake,” Kassandra elaborated, “I will return to a discussion of the Time War. You will refuse me, and seek to locate Eris. When you find Eris, you will make the offer you were instructed to. Are these instructions absolutely clear?”
“Yes,” responded the Doctor.
Kassandra tapped a button under her desk, and a cleaner passed over the Doctor’s side of the table. She waited a moment, and when he returned to consciousness, picked up the conversation where she had left it off two weeks ago.
“Help us, Doctor.”
“I might be able to help you,” murmured the Doctor. “Might. No promises – I’ll need the President’s support.”
Kassandra cut him short, wearily. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
The Doctor frowned.
“I suspect the President will be dead by now. Or rather, the President will be Rassilon.”
The Doctor put his head in his hands, and Kassandra and Jasmine looked at each other uneasily. Was he… crying?
The answer was not quite, but close. When he lifted his head, his eyes were red, his hair was messed up, and his expression had fallen. “Sagacity,” he whispered. “Oh, Sagacity…” He stood up, and gestured for Jasmine to follow. She didn’t always do what she was told – and didn’t like being told – but she would have chosen to follow the Doctor rather than stay here, where she felt her feet were never quite touching the ground.
“I was right,” said the Doctor. “This society is diseased and there’s nothing I can do to help it.”
“If you leave now, you will not be able to stop Rassilon’s plans. Please,” urged Kassandra. “He will download all the data from the APC net and implant it back into living bodies. All the people of the Matrix want to do is rest in peace – we don’t want to return to the world, and we don’t want to fight.”
The Doctor headed for the door, trying in anguish to ignore Kassandra’s pleas. “We don’t want to have to die again!”
He turned around. “If I believed I could do something, Kassandra, I would. I’m sorry. We can’t help you – Gallifrey is beyond redemption now.”
He walked out. Once he was out of sight, Kassandra punched the air. She might have just got everyone in the Matrix killed – again – but it was worth it to see a monstrous dictator get thwarted.
***
The Doctor stood up and looked around. He did not know how he had gotten here. He did not know… “I…”
He scratched his head. This place was a… he searched for the word. Wasteland. Yes, that seemed to fit. It suited the random beams that jutted out of the ground across this desert landscape, the result of some kind of industrial accident, perhaps. He shivered. This place was cold. So cold, that…
So cold that he couldn’t…
“W-where am I?” he stammered, trying to stop his teeth chattering. “How did I get here?”
“Oh, Doctor. Hello.”
The Doctor turned around slowly to face the voice. The wind was now blowing in his face, carrying ice with it. He quivered. His lips were dry, and he was losing his balance. If only he could remember how he had…
“Confusing, isn’t it?”
“But you’re…” The Doctor recognised her. Or, at least, he recognised the shape, but he did not recognise the voice, the intonation, and did not seem to understand why those words were leaving that form.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“J…” the Doctor wobbled as he moved forward, squinting to make out the woman’s appearance. “Jasmine?”
“No.” She laughed. “Jasmine is a fine young specimen, though – pretty, healthy, even charismatic. So I thought it seemed right to take her form.”
The Doctor tried another name, sure that this one was right.
“Eris.”
“Well done.” The woman clapped mockingly. She seemed unaffected by the climate: in fact, she seemed to be thriving in it.
“What have you done to Jasmine?”
“Absolutely nothing, I assure you. She’s ahead of you, ready to make her way out of the Matrix alone if she has to. Which, of course, she will.” Eris stepped forward, towering over the Doctor, even though Jasmine was meant to be much shorter. “This is where it ends, isn’t it, Doctor? Our deaths?”
“That’s not where it has to end. Please, Eris,” the Doctor urged. “Just stop.”
“I am destructive, Doctor, self-destructive. I am a whirlwind, spiralling inwards and taking everything within my reach with me. You see a young woman before you, but all I am is lines of code – and that’s all you are here, too. And I can re-write your lines. I wonder which digit gives you the will to continue? Which one represents your philosophy?”
“Stop it,” said the Doctor. As he tried to advance on Eris, he fell to the floor, his face hitting the ice. The whole place had frozen over now, and Eris appeared taller than ever. “Stop…”
“I wonder how long it will be until Jasmine will no longer be able to recognise you. I wonder how far I can go before people stop calling you the Doctor…”
“You don’t have to do this…”
“Why not?” cried Eris. “It’s fun! It’s my purpose. Can you offer me a better deal?”
And just like that, the Doctor’s unconscious mind kicked into action.
“Yes.” He stood up, fighting against the breeze. “You want to cause chaos, Eris, I can offer you chaos. Look around you! The Matrix is old, dying. I can set you free, bring you into the world, and download you to the most advanced computer system in the universe.”
“I… do not understand.”
The Doctor lifted out his sonic screwdriver, and grinned. “I can offer you God.”
***
The Doctor had taken them to a beach bar, run by one man who seemed to know the Doctor well. It had the traditional thatched roof, though it looked like it had survived a few storms. A stray cat wandered around, skinny and grubby. Jasmine wondered how it could be so skinny; it seemed to live on leftover scraps of food, and there seemed to be a lot of them.
“I can’t remember a thing.” The Doctor picked up a smooth stone and dashed it across the sea. It bounced three times. “I remember meeting Eris, but that’s it where recollections are concerned. There are things I know, of course. I know I defeated her, and I know I fled from Gallifrey with no intention to return. But I don’t know how I did it. I wonder why I can’t remember…”
“Try being me,” chuckled Jasmine. “It’s a lot more frustrating when you can’t remember a whole life.”
The Doctor nodded. “Yes, of course. It probably is.”
***
“They’re protected, just like the looking-glass,” God clarified. “They’re fairly complex controls, but their role is simple. They connect me, the God created by the Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, to the Prime Mover, the eternal source of energy. I live in a permanent state of actuality, ‘fulfilled potential’, if you like. That gives me power. Without the Prime Mover, I would be compromised. Powerful, but not all-powerful.”
The Doctor glanced over to Jasmine.
“The controls make him eternal ruler of every universe, basically,” he explained. “They link him up to the Prime Mover, a natural phenomenon that’s supposed to keep the universe in order.”
Jasmine was half listening; she was more drawn to the mirror than anything. She ran her fingers across it, investigatively.
“You’ve invested a lot in this room,” the Doctor observed, scanning the controls thoroughly with his sonic screwdriver. “You’d better hope it’s as well-protected as you think it is.”
Eris felt the release instantly, and seized her chance, swimming through a tangle of numbers and commands, fighting off the mechanisms designed to eradicate her, fooling the mechanisms designed to alert God of her.
It was a beautiful system. Ordered, intelligent. It felt good to tear it down. Eris would make herself a home here.
***
“My Prolongers!” cried God, and fell to his knees. “What have you done?!”
“Eris is messing with the whole planet,” said the Doctor, not a hint of emotion in his voice. “She’s changed the atmosphere. Like enzymes, the Prolongers can’t function outside of a specific temperature.” He looked down at God disapprovingly. “Your fault. Poor design.”
He wandered along the mini-island. The rivers of fire were still roaring, a protective moat, but snow had covered the land all around now, and even the Doctor’s shoulders. Virgin snow, quite different from the stuff he had trodden on across the island, making a weird sort of join-the-dots shape.
“I’d say that’s a pretty impressive demonstration of the sentient mind, wouldn’t you?” he continued. “I didn’t even know I was doing it, and now I remember all of it. Eris, the Matrix, that brilliant plan. The beautiful Autumn Rivers, crushing you at last. Because do you know what else it is? It’s an even more magnificent showcase of humankind’s potential.” He was teasing, now, taunting the bully who had taunted others for so long. “In this universe, humankind dithers, falters, even ends up creating you. But when they’re all working together, too busy fighting for the common good to go to war with each other, they’re capable of so much more. Thinking the unthinkable. Or in your case, destroying the indestructible.”
He towered over the old man, and picked up his walking stick, throwing it into the river of fire. “How does it feel? To lose your power, to be the servant of someone else? To have everything you love taken away? Are you enjoying it? Would you like it prolonged?” He took a step back. “I told you all those years ago that if I had the chance, I would tear down your empire and take your place. Well… hello.”
“You know, Doctor…” God adjusted his glasses and stood up. “You might have robbed me of my omnipotence, but do not, for one moment, think that you are stronger than me.”
The Doctor faltered, and God grinned an animalistic grin, launching for the Doctor in bloodlust. He threw him to the ground, secured his hands around the Time Lord’s neck, and bared his teeth. They looked sharper than the Doctor had remembered.
“No one takes my place!” thundered God, pushing down harder. The Doctor stopped breathing. “You might have held me back for a while, but this universe is mine!”
The Doctor wriggled one arm free, and waited for his moment. Just as God thought he had the advantage, and the Doctor began to feel himself slipping out of consciousness, he jabbed his free elbow into the old man’s stomach. He stumbled back. The Doctor hauled himself up, choking, and took a step back. The two now stood head-to-head, both equally prepared.
“How long can this last, Doctor? How long can you carry on before you tire? Even Time Lords start to flag eventually. Show their weaknesses.”
The Doctor tried to deliver a blow to God with one arm, but it was deflected, nearly catching the Time Lord out in the process.
“You visited the Ancient Olympic Games,” recalled God, mockingly. “Do you know how many boxers died? Some of them would fight all night long in the combat sports. One would raise his arms for the briefest second, and the other would take the opportunity to strike. It was a nasty way to die. Lots of blood. The longer they waited to give up, the longer it took. I knew I’d never need the Prolongers for you. You do the job yourself!”
He ran for the Doctor again, striking him with a blow to the face. The Doctor fell, dashing his head against a rock. He felt the rock slip. His neck and head were dangling over the edge of the island, about thirty inches from a pool of fire, hotter than the sun.
And God was pushing him in further. Both hands, secured around his neck. The Doctor had one free hand, but God was holding the arm down with his knee. The most the Doctor could do was reach in and out of his pocket.
That was when he had the idea.
He reached inside and pulled out the sonic screwdriver.
“Earlier today,” recalled the Doctor, under his breath, “Jasmine asked my permission to kill one of the people you trapped here. She used the sonic screwdriver to eliminate a small number of nanogenes.”
God pushed his hands further forward. The Doctor started to splutter. He felt his weight shifting; now his shoulders were over the edge as well. Much more, and he would fall in.
This would have to be quick.
“Theoretically,” he continued, rushing, “though the nanogenes have vacated, there is still a small number stored inside the sonic screwdriver. Exactly enough, in fact, to heal one person.”
Before God could react, the Doctor pressed down.
God turned, his grip on the Doctor still secure.
Behind them, the bones that once were Noa were starting to come back together, flesh starting to reattach itself, guided by golden beams of light.
The Doctor grimaced. It would hurt. But like most pain, it would be worth it.
“Here’s the other thing,” said the Doctor. God’s grip had loosened, and he was able to narrate more freely. “Nanogenes don’t just restore flesh, they restore clothing too. The logic follows that they’d be able to restore anything attached to or held by the person… say, weaponry.” He laughed through fits of coughing. “Oh, God, you really shouldn’t have given her that gun.”
Noa was now fully formed again, and never looked better. She reached forward, gun-in-hand, and pointed it at God’s head.
“No,” whispered the old man.
“I have dreamed of this for so long,” said Noa. “You sick, twisted old man.”
She pulled the trigger, and killed him.
For one peaceful moment, and for the first time in longer than either the Doctor or Noa could remember, there was nothing. Just silence, as the fires around them cackled, and the snow continued to fall.
Then, from God’s mouth, a wisp of black smoke began to rise, like some sort of terrible industrial by-product, polluting that one moment of perfection.
It formed into a cloud that towered over the Doctor. There were patches of black, and flashes of electricity.
It was like a living storm.
“You thought you could destroy me by just killing me?” it boomed. It had God’s voice, but at a lower pitch and a louder volume. “This is my world, and it sustains me! It is time for you both to pay for what you have done.”
The Doctor tried to stand, but was thrown back down again. God must have been armed with something sharp.
The Doctor had forgotten. The injections had numbed the pain when they arrived. He hadn’t felt the knife slip into his left heart.
The world was starting to blur and fade around him. He thought he could make out Noa’s voice, trying to urge him on, and then the laughter from the cloud overhead.
The cloud was beginning to consume everything. The next voice the Doctor heard was his own.
“Sorry, Noa. I think the plan’s gone a little bit wrong…”
***
Jasmine twitched.
Awake.
Her hand was on something cold… no, wait… she was in the looking-glass room. She remembered it, though the room had a different light now.
She could barely move, and the pain seared through her, but she was sure that wasn’t responsible for the change of the hue. Through poor and fuzzy vision and hearing, she could make out alarms sounding, lights flashing, a prolonged warning of some long-passed crisis.
Had the Doctor actually done it?
She reached forward, and the pain started again. With every movement, it rushed through her whole body. She winced, and hoped Tommy had not had to feel this when he died. She hoped it was sudden, better than this.
And then she heard the voice, all around, but knew it was not talking to her.
“You thought you could destroy me by just killing me? This is my world, and it sustains me! It is time for you both to pay for what you have done.”
Jasmine figured that it was talking about the Doctor and that woman who had entered with God. She cheered, internally. Jasmine Sparks had always been one for the underdog.
“Your time is up, Doctor. I still have my planet. What do you have?”
The Doctor may not have known the answer, but Jasmine did.
He has me.
If the Doctor had done what she thought he had, God would not be able to see her. She had, she calculated, a couple of minutes before she passed out fully, this time for good. Looking down, she realised that she had lost a lot of blood.
Make it count.
She pulled herself forward, crying out in agony, until she was lying flat over the circular mirror, smearing the shining surface with her blood. She looked down at herself, and saw the state she was in.
She was sobbing now, weeping, even, through the pain. But the tears were a natural healing mechanism. Robin had told her that, once, when Tommy had died. They would help her. Make her stronger.
But they weren’t. She collapsed again. That last little push had been for nothing.
“Oh, get over yourself, you ridiculous little girl.”
Jasmine tried to sit up to see the voice, but there was no point. She knew who it was, and if she had to die in that woman’s company, this day was ten times worse than she’d expected.
“You’re as pathetic as you were the last time,” the Master continued. Jasmine looked up, just slightly, and saw her leaning unhelpfully against the controls, looking perfectly neat and trim herself. God, I hate you, you absolute bitch. As if hearing Jasmine’s thoughts, the Master smiled. “I did tell you, the last time we met. I said we’d see each other again in Hell.” Her eyes flashed maniacally, and she gave a playful wave.
“What… do you…”
“The universe is screwed, Jasmine Sparks, and you’re the only one who can save it. I thought about it myself, but you know what it means, breaking that looking-glass. I would never be capable of self-sacrifice.”
“Then what are you doing in Hell?”
The Master shrugged. “Visiting some friends.” She sighed, tutted, took out a packet of chewing gum, and began to nonchalantly chew away at a piece. “Sparky, Sparky, shining bright. The last hope, in the darkest night. Aiming to save us but having a fall, Sparky accomplished nothing at all…”
I’ll show you.
Jasmine reached up an arm, and began to pound at the glass, with more strength each time. The pain, amazingly, was going away if anything. Her body was redirecting its priorities elsewhere. When she looked up, the Master was, unsurprisingly, gone.
“Come on,” she urged herself, and pounded it again. Her fists were bloodied from the impact, but she tried another one, and found herself near to collapsing again. “No,” she bawled. “You won’t beat me now. You will not!”
She remembered what God had said. Anyone else on the planet’s surface would be transported across the universe, to a random point. Anyone in this room would be killed instantly.
Well, at least the Doctor stood a chance. That was enough.
The young woman lifted her hand even higher, and brought it down with increased velocity. This time, the glass cracked.
“Yes!”
She screamed as she brought down another blow, and the cracks grew wider apart. Light was shining out from between the cracks, as if a whole sun was buried beneath the planet’s surface.
“Come on!” She pulled herself forward a bit more, and brought up her other arm, continuing the job now with both fists. “This one’s for Tommy.”
Jasmine Sparks gave one last downward motion, and the looking-glass smashed.
***
Falling.
Falling.
No. It took her some time to realise it, but Jasmine was not falling. She was ascending.
They were similar sensations. They may have been opposites, headed in diametrically opposed directions, but in many ways they weren’t so different after all. Rising, falling. It was all part of the same cycle, and the cycle went on forever.
But then, cycles did that.
There was the Light, the light from the centre of Hell, the light that had broken through the looking-glass and set the universe free. Now it was everywhere, and the young girl used it to take flight.
A voice spoke to her, whispering from afar.
“Let me take you home.”
It was her own voice, but they were not her own words. Not yet. She held onto the voice, and followed it.
And then, there she was. She had not expected the voice to be quite so literal.
Jasmine was back in Sheila’s kitchen. It had been given a polish since she was last there. Light spilled in through the blinds, a day brighter than any Croydon had ever known, so bright that Croydon was nowhere to be seen.
It was the same light as the one that had taken her here.
A blonde woman sat at the table, facing away from her. Jasmine made her out by her wavy blonde hair, covering the back of the chair. The woman turned around to face her, and Jasmine gasped, still surprised, even though she had guessed it.
“Autumn.”
“Jasmine.”
Autumn was wearing a white tunic, like the one that the Doctor had lent…
That was the question. Jasmine tried to remember who the Doctor had lent it to. Her, or Autumn? Did it even matter?
So many questions. Autumn put a finger to her lips, silencing them all.
Jasmine sat down at the table. Autumn stood up.
“What happened?” asked Jasmine. A cup of tea had been left out for her, still hot. One of Sheila’s cups.
“You died,” said Autumn, her back to Jasmine. “Or to be more precise, you’re still dying. God lied. If you break the looking-glass, you aren’t killed instantly. There’s some time to look back. After all, what else is a looking-glass for?”
“There was another Autumn,” Jasmine recalled. “From the mirror universe. Are you…?”
Autumn shook her head. “Without meaning to discriminate, Jasmine, I’m the original.” She walked over to the kitchen units, and scanned the counter. “I’ve been buried away inside that head of yours for a very long time.”
“But you… you died.”
“Not yet.” Autumn turned around and smiled, for the first time. “Of course, you don’t remember yet, do you? There was a corridor, as I was dying. A set of rooms, each containing scenes from my life.”
“I remember that much,” said Jasmine.
“This is the last room!” Autumn’s eyes sparkled, almost on fire. They had always done that. “Did you really think I could face death without meeting you first? I have to be sure.”
She turned back to the worktop, and found what she was looking for. The biscuit tin. She prized it open, and frowned when she saw it was empty.
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, I…” Jasmine took a sip of tea as she considered her next words carefully. The tea tasted like something else, this time. Nectar, maybe. “I’m not you, Autumn. I’m nothing like you. I just have your memories, that’s all. I’m sorry.”
“Nonsense.” Autumn opened the larder, and ran her eyes over its contents. She beamed when she saw him again.
The love of her life.
Mr Kipling.
She pulled out the pack of Viennese whirls, and took them back to the table with her.
“You know your problem?” asked Autumn, opening the pack and taking one out. “Well, it’s not really your problem, it’s mine.” She took a bite of the whirl, and closed her eyes, taking in her own idea of divine perfection. She continued to speak, with her mouth full. “I lived so long like this, and I let all my losses consume me. I forgot the life I’d lived before.”
She finished her mouthful, and pushed the pack towards Jasmine.
She took one, unfamiliar with the brand. Not bad, she thought, taking a bite. I could get used to this.
“I had a life before I lost everything, you know,” continued Autumn. “Though everyone forgets that, I think. After all, I did. You think we’re nothing alike because you’re not cold and manipulative and broken. But in truth, we are.”
Jasmine was just starting to take in how blue the woman’s eyes were. Talking to her was like watching the ocean and seeing how far you could peer until you lost track; admitting, in the end, that it simply went on forever.
“You’re me,” said Autumn. “Me before it all went wrong, before the mistakes of others, and before the mistakes of my own. And when it all went wrong for you, you didn’t let it change you. You stayed true to who you were, up until the end.”
“I sought revenge,” argued Jasmine. “I felt all the same things as you.”
Autumn tapped her nose. “Well, I have a little secret. After all, I am your subconscious.”
Jasmine gave up trying to understand.
“You didn’t do any of it for those reasons, at all. You didn’t do it for personal gain or to give in. And you absolutely didn’t do it out of revenge, so don’t listen to a word God said. You did it for Natalie.”
Jasmine sat up, completely shocked and a little out of her comfort zone.
“You saw a young woman dying,” said Autumn, “and you decided to put an end to it. You went to Hell itself for someone you didn’t even know, because you couldn’t bear to see her suffer. So before you go… and I’m sorry, Jasmine, because there’s no way back from this… I may as well tell you. It worked. You saved her. And she was very, very happy.”
Jasmine beamed. She thought she would cry, but nothing happened. Emotions were expressed differently on this existential plane, it seemed – or something along those lines.
“Now, Miss Sparks.” Autumn stood up, and offered her sister a hand. “I think I’m ready to move on. How about you?”
Jasmine took a deep breath, and nodded. She took Autumn’s hand, and they headed for the door.
“You did well by me, Jasmine. You’ve done me proud. You lived my life, and did it all a thousand times better. Thank you.”
“Thank you for letting me,” whispered Jasmine. She pushed open the door, and they stepped out together, hand-in-hand. The door closed behind them, and when Jasmine looked to her right, Autumn was gone.
The next part, she had to do alone.
She took a deep breath. The final door, at the end of the passage. It was wide open, and a bright light shone from it. The same light, again, but brighter and beckoning.
“I’m not ready,” cried Jasmine. “How did Autumn do this? In her memories it was easy, but I’m not ready.”
She took one step closer. It was pulling her in. Or was she pulling herself? Or was someone pushing her?
Not even the questions made sense any more.
She looked back. The rest of the corridor was disappearing.
There was no other choice. In the end, everyone ran out of places to run, unless they agreed to carry on going forwards.
“Keeping moving on,” she agreed. “That’s what makes the world go round.”
Jasmine Sparks stepped over the threshold of this life, and entered the next.
“Come on,” she urged herself, and pounded it again. Her fists were bloodied from the impact, but she tried another one, and found herself near to collapsing again. “No,” she bawled. “You won’t beat me now. You will not!”
She remembered what God had said. Anyone else on the planet’s surface would be transported across the universe, to a random point. Anyone in this room would be killed instantly.
Well, at least the Doctor stood a chance. That was enough.
The young woman lifted her hand even higher, and brought it down with increased velocity. This time, the glass cracked.
“Yes!”
She screamed as she brought down another blow, and the cracks grew wider apart. Light was shining out from between the cracks, as if a whole sun was buried beneath the planet’s surface.
“Come on!” She pulled herself forward a bit more, and brought up her other arm, continuing the job now with both fists. “This one’s for Tommy.”
Jasmine Sparks gave one last downward motion, and the looking-glass smashed.
***
Falling.
Falling.
No. It took her some time to realise it, but Jasmine was not falling. She was ascending.
They were similar sensations. They may have been opposites, headed in diametrically opposed directions, but in many ways they weren’t so different after all. Rising, falling. It was all part of the same cycle, and the cycle went on forever.
But then, cycles did that.
There was the Light, the light from the centre of Hell, the light that had broken through the looking-glass and set the universe free. Now it was everywhere, and the young girl used it to take flight.
A voice spoke to her, whispering from afar.
“Let me take you home.”
It was her own voice, but they were not her own words. Not yet. She held onto the voice, and followed it.
And then, there she was. She had not expected the voice to be quite so literal.
Jasmine was back in Sheila’s kitchen. It had been given a polish since she was last there. Light spilled in through the blinds, a day brighter than any Croydon had ever known, so bright that Croydon was nowhere to be seen.
It was the same light as the one that had taken her here.
A blonde woman sat at the table, facing away from her. Jasmine made her out by her wavy blonde hair, covering the back of the chair. The woman turned around to face her, and Jasmine gasped, still surprised, even though she had guessed it.
“Autumn.”
“Jasmine.”
Autumn was wearing a white tunic, like the one that the Doctor had lent…
That was the question. Jasmine tried to remember who the Doctor had lent it to. Her, or Autumn? Did it even matter?
So many questions. Autumn put a finger to her lips, silencing them all.
Jasmine sat down at the table. Autumn stood up.
“What happened?” asked Jasmine. A cup of tea had been left out for her, still hot. One of Sheila’s cups.
“You died,” said Autumn, her back to Jasmine. “Or to be more precise, you’re still dying. God lied. If you break the looking-glass, you aren’t killed instantly. There’s some time to look back. After all, what else is a looking-glass for?”
“There was another Autumn,” Jasmine recalled. “From the mirror universe. Are you…?”
Autumn shook her head. “Without meaning to discriminate, Jasmine, I’m the original.” She walked over to the kitchen units, and scanned the counter. “I’ve been buried away inside that head of yours for a very long time.”
“But you… you died.”
“Not yet.” Autumn turned around and smiled, for the first time. “Of course, you don’t remember yet, do you? There was a corridor, as I was dying. A set of rooms, each containing scenes from my life.”
“I remember that much,” said Jasmine.
“This is the last room!” Autumn’s eyes sparkled, almost on fire. They had always done that. “Did you really think I could face death without meeting you first? I have to be sure.”
She turned back to the worktop, and found what she was looking for. The biscuit tin. She prized it open, and frowned when she saw it was empty.
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, I…” Jasmine took a sip of tea as she considered her next words carefully. The tea tasted like something else, this time. Nectar, maybe. “I’m not you, Autumn. I’m nothing like you. I just have your memories, that’s all. I’m sorry.”
“Nonsense.” Autumn opened the larder, and ran her eyes over its contents. She beamed when she saw him again.
The love of her life.
Mr Kipling.
She pulled out the pack of Viennese whirls, and took them back to the table with her.
“You know your problem?” asked Autumn, opening the pack and taking one out. “Well, it’s not really your problem, it’s mine.” She took a bite of the whirl, and closed her eyes, taking in her own idea of divine perfection. She continued to speak, with her mouth full. “I lived so long like this, and I let all my losses consume me. I forgot the life I’d lived before.”
She finished her mouthful, and pushed the pack towards Jasmine.
She took one, unfamiliar with the brand. Not bad, she thought, taking a bite. I could get used to this.
“I had a life before I lost everything, you know,” continued Autumn. “Though everyone forgets that, I think. After all, I did. You think we’re nothing alike because you’re not cold and manipulative and broken. But in truth, we are.”
Jasmine was just starting to take in how blue the woman’s eyes were. Talking to her was like watching the ocean and seeing how far you could peer until you lost track; admitting, in the end, that it simply went on forever.
“You’re me,” said Autumn. “Me before it all went wrong, before the mistakes of others, and before the mistakes of my own. And when it all went wrong for you, you didn’t let it change you. You stayed true to who you were, up until the end.”
“I sought revenge,” argued Jasmine. “I felt all the same things as you.”
Autumn tapped her nose. “Well, I have a little secret. After all, I am your subconscious.”
Jasmine gave up trying to understand.
“You didn’t do any of it for those reasons, at all. You didn’t do it for personal gain or to give in. And you absolutely didn’t do it out of revenge, so don’t listen to a word God said. You did it for Natalie.”
Jasmine sat up, completely shocked and a little out of her comfort zone.
“You saw a young woman dying,” said Autumn, “and you decided to put an end to it. You went to Hell itself for someone you didn’t even know, because you couldn’t bear to see her suffer. So before you go… and I’m sorry, Jasmine, because there’s no way back from this… I may as well tell you. It worked. You saved her. And she was very, very happy.”
Jasmine beamed. She thought she would cry, but nothing happened. Emotions were expressed differently on this existential plane, it seemed – or something along those lines.
“Now, Miss Sparks.” Autumn stood up, and offered her sister a hand. “I think I’m ready to move on. How about you?”
Jasmine took a deep breath, and nodded. She took Autumn’s hand, and they headed for the door.
“You did well by me, Jasmine. You’ve done me proud. You lived my life, and did it all a thousand times better. Thank you.”
“Thank you for letting me,” whispered Jasmine. She pushed open the door, and they stepped out together, hand-in-hand. The door closed behind them, and when Jasmine looked to her right, Autumn was gone.
The next part, she had to do alone.
She took a deep breath. The final door, at the end of the passage. It was wide open, and a bright light shone from it. The same light, again, but brighter and beckoning.
“I’m not ready,” cried Jasmine. “How did Autumn do this? In her memories it was easy, but I’m not ready.”
She took one step closer. It was pulling her in. Or was she pulling herself? Or was someone pushing her?
Not even the questions made sense any more.
She looked back. The rest of the corridor was disappearing.
There was no other choice. In the end, everyone ran out of places to run, unless they agreed to carry on going forwards.
“Keeping moving on,” she agreed. “That’s what makes the world go round.”
Jasmine Sparks stepped over the threshold of this life, and entered the next.
THE DOCTOR WILL RETURN
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