Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ DOCTOR WHO: APOUKALUPSIS (Revelations) ❯ WEB OF TRUTH ( Chapter 8 )

Episode8

WEB OF TRUTH

 An episode with very less presence of the companions. Recovering from the assault and all that has happened, the Doctor decides to go to Korlan, the second moon of Karn, for answers. But will the Web of truth around him sting more than he can possibly bear this time?

Scene 1 and 2:

The Doctor ponders over the truth about the Time Web in this episode. He reruns the Judoon's message in his mind, [Look to what and WHERE is left for more answers] and decides to go to Karn. He infiltrates an isolated sanctum on Korlan, the second moon of Karn, avoiding detection. After much struggle the sanctum AI recognizes his Time Lord physiology and opens up its secrets in her own voice, through strong and laboring forms of psychic communication:

AI: You should not be here, Time Lord.

Doctor: And you should? Hidden away from sight? From everyone’s knowledge?

AI: I was built to keep this away from the Time Lords of Gallifrey. And yet...and yet I sense something more in you. Something sistant yet so familiar.

Doctor: Tell me what I need to know and I will be on my way.

AI: What do you want to know?

Doctor: Thee Time Webs.

AI: I cannot do that.

Doctor: Why not?

AI: It is against my basic protocols. I cannot break protocol and tell a Time Lord.

Doctor: I am no ordinary Time Lord.

AI: I sense that. But still…

Doctor: You are essentially a library too, right?

AI: Yes. Why?

Doctor: Look me up. The Doctor. Time Lord renegade. Chosen and anointed President of the order of Gallifrey. A relic of the Time War.

AI: Your record is here.

Doctor: And yet so much isn’t.

AI: What do you mean. Elaborate.

Doctor: Look to section 21A through 22A of the empirical columns of the deep archive within the Matrix.

[Beeps]

AI: Redacted.

Doctor: Yes it is. And do you know why? May I? [gestures]

[He initiates contact with a conduit of data cables, covered in naturally occurring mineral deposits. A montage of all the revelations of the Time less Child plays back.]

Doctor: I don’t know who I am. What I am. Am I perfectly alien to that I know and perceive as home? Or am I something sent back in time? I could be mildly considered of Shobogan origins, or at least half-Shobogan. That evolved to the race of Time Lords. Or maybe I am neither.

[The AI beeps in deep re-calibration and consideration, for a long time]

Doctor: For all I know, I could be anything. But all I know for sure, all I know to be the absolute truth, that I can pass on to you, is my intent. Is my promise, that made me call myself the Doctor. And I can guarantee you, nobody is better suited than me to resolve this.

[Beeps]

Doctor: Open up your library. Do some research, would you? All of time and history. And I act as the best chance of righting it’s wrongs. Sorting out fair-play throughout the universe. Through all of its deepest and darkest corners. You may not be the Matrix, but by the looks of it your are substantially capable of transcending a multi-platform, multi-dimensional search. Look me up. All of Time and Space. And in all that have you ever found anyone who has survived prolonging injustice and not faced me? And what happens when they face me? The Doctor...the man who resolves. Be it the disease or the virus. You know I am the best chance of dishing out justice among the Sisterhood and Time Lords. To preserving the sought-out balance.

AI: Very well, Doctor. Proceed.

Doctor: What?

AI: Proceed to initiate contact. No...do not. Do not touch the data wires. Touch the psychic pads.

Scene 3:

[With after-images and scenery of told and unfolding events]

AI: The planet of Gallifrey has housed many species and sub-species over the years. The Time Lords of Gallifrey, called so because of their relation and exposure to the Time Vortex and its subsequent usage. The Outsiders, also called the Shobogans, dwelling outside the limits of the Citadel, sharing similar ancestral origins as the now Time Lords. The Dimensioneers. And the Sisterhood, a remnant of the Pythias who once ruled Gallifrey before being expelled by the High Triumvirate. They shared a specific and similar origin, under Gallifrey. But they were not equal. Not in species, nor in mindsets.

Doctor: This I already know.

AI: Try prohibiting from reacting verbally. It strains you physically, while in contact. Karn was originally a colony of the old Gallifreyan Empire in the days before Rassilon. The Sisterhood was relocated to Karn, at the saying of the last Pythia, who Rassilon viewed as opposition forces. Gradually, over the years, each house of the Sisterhood was rejected the wonders of regeneration. The Sisterhood in the formative years, were as well advanced as the Gallifreyans.

Doctor: I know this...why-

AI: Doctor! [Pauses]Their sense and use of technology was singular minded, aimed only at the betterment of the chances of survival, but that did not stop them from creating marvels. From healing pollen for augmented and cyber-converts, to the healing blue fire in the likeness of flame of Karn from the years to come. From torch tubes that could burn through most metals to Lentoxan barks that could withstand anything. From birthing and healing pods made of natural tree shells for the female Terraberserker of the Kodion belt, to long range hunt whistles for Lucanian sub-species and Lupars, they made every such technology. But they were bested over when the Gallifreyan Time Lords started linking pulsar energy core devices like the Eye of Harmony, to their travelling capsules. This enabled the pompous minds of Gallifrey to truly take on the mantle of a lord of time. They could retrieve and harness technology from both past and the future, although they could travel for only short spans of time. They understood and studied needs or demands and thus engineered the supply. Soon, a time came where Time Lords were fulfilling needs on Gallifrey and the outside better than the Sisterhood ever could.

AI: [Pauses] There existed an unspoken rivalry between the Sisterhood and the Gallifreyan Time Lords, that would endure for ages to come. While a faction was sent to Karn by the last Pythia, after the Great Schism, a faction remained behind for a while longer, planning means of reconnaissance. When the plot to destroy Rassilons' foundry by the House of Jade Dreamers had failed, the rest of the Sisterhood barring the gone but not forgotten Lady Cassandra and her immediate followers, entered into the Pact of Rassilon for protection under Gallifrey. Under the stipulated protection, the Sisterhood produced the Elixir of life, under production license and supervision. Soon guarding the flame became the life chosen for the Sisterhood. But they were beat down, not demolished.

Doctor: Huh...Wait is that -

Scene 4:

AI: The Sisterhood of Karn had many active measures to counter the 'Time Lord' way-of-life of the Gallifreyans. One of them was the High Sanctum of Korlan itself. Unlike Gallifrey, sisters on Karn did not solely rely on the modulation and assimilation of discovered technologies. They were one with their nature, which was the biggest technology in their arsenal. The High Sanctum held many secrets over the years, the biggest and oldest of which was the 'Engines'. The Sacred Flame, from which came the famed Elixir of Life, was no ordinal specimen that just one day happened to grow out of nowhere. While many stories have many of their own versions, in truth, the Flame, came from a fissure that was conjoined to the High Tree of life, at the base of the Engines. But the Sisterhood had to put on a show of deceit for years for the Time Lords, pretending to be susceptible to basic superstitions about the Flame, not knowing where it came from.

[Over a series of progressive memory montages (from both classic and New WHO), the Doctor learns that nothing was ever random with the Time Lord life they led.]

Scene 5:

AI: Now comes what you came here for...

- The Sisterhood of Karn had 'Change' engines that secretly documented every face a Time Lord ever saw and fed them to the data membranes of Korlan (video montages). While the earliest Time Wars saw the deployment of Battle Tardises on the field after the start of the New Doom Coalition, their experiences and memories of fallen Tardis pilots were uploaded to the Matrix. Those that did not feel relevant to the cause and provision of gathering proper intelligence in war-time scenarios, were sent to be archived from the Matrix. Unknown to most, the sisters stole the working Codex of the Matrix during the transfers into the archives and applied them on Korlan. While this began as an active measure of reconnaissance, it was soon discovered by the elders of Gallifrey, but never reported back to Rassilon. The Sisterhood then agreed to share dead strands of the data membranes with the Gallifreyans within the Citadel as a penalty, who extracted a biochemical mimic of response and triggered behaviorism, which allowed Time Lords to change into faces they had seen before more frequently and accurately, once this 'mimic' was grafted within them. This in part elevated their status quo of scientific acumen in the eyes of Rassilon and the High Scientific community. Even today, there still remains some impure generations of Time Lords who can change into anything they like, consciously. Soon, the data membranes of Korlan, powered by the principles of the working Codex of the Matrix, became powerful enough to hold more substantial information than most known sentient beings.

(Video montages of Romana regenerating, 5th and 10th meeting in time crash, War Doctor meeting the 10th and 11th and subconsciously remembering them, 9th kissing Rose to cure her and mind-melding with her, consequently seeing flashes of 10th who she met a few days ago[The End of Time], 12th remembering why he chose his face).

- The Change engine was preceded by another Engine on its' hind, unnoticeable to the naked eye. Between them, stood the base of the High Tree of life, again, hidden from view.

- The second engine was the Time Engine; an ancient travesty where sisters of the order would use their own mind as a thinking mechanism (an ode to The Long Game), often in a fatal way, to compute possibilities in time. They deviated from their own natural ways to rely on implants from the Granular and Slithering High Council of the Holy Hadrojassic community. The process was then upgraded to be less painful as time progressed. Instead of lying in circles with implants taking the load of work, the sisters shared their possibilities, that opened up miniscule instances of moments in time that were a part of more than one possibility chain, and could result in multiple possibilities. Throughout the years, a clandestine group of sisters would work on such webs of possibilities, thus dubbed 'Time Webs'.

Doctor: But...but that’s -

AI: It wasn't illegal to build a Quantum Resonator or supplementary detectors, that allowed to glimpse into possibilities of time 'that might have been'. While a continuity bomb has the effects to break a quantum resonator and bring you very near to it, like a phasing 'time ghost', the oldest of the Time Lords had mandated that the Quantum Resonator was a lower and much harmless class of equipment. However, the Sisterhood has decided to use the raw natural power of a planetoid to carry out millions of projections of quantum resonations and compare it with relative real-time, once it happened. This was gravely illegal and dangerous. So much that it had to be hidden. Even from some of their own. Specially from Gallifrey.

Scene 6:

Away from everyone's view, the clandestine group would try to bring about change as they saw fit. Not all their predictions were good and had long lasting results, but they could engineer events as they unfolded. Over time , they knew which places to avoid with certainty to escape the wrath of the Last Great Time War. They knew which places would provide them advantages over other entities. They knew which of the Time Lords they needed to convince, reinforce or even strengthen in order to ensure their own long lasting survival. While they had the cover of innocent superstition and simplistic urge of survival on their side, they could put on a façade good enough to fool Rassilon himself, who was too busy to consolidate his own rule. They even had basins and natural holes of change engines that were repurposed to cause a regeneration however they saw fit, physically and emotionally (video montage of 8th being persuaded to choose to be a Warrior).

[The Doctor learns that while the whole world, and as later he himself thought, the Sisterhood had not provided him just a potion of lemonade and dry ice and hid it from him to instigate the thought of a controlled and much needed regeneration. Instead, the regenerative process was all too real. When his earlier version had crashed on Karn, he did not die. The Sisterhood recovered his body and used multiple potions along with the Elixir, to treat the severity of his injuries, but keep his self-healing and tissue regeneration process at a suspended state. While Cass was given a whole-hearted funeral with deserved respect, his injuries were never allowed to fully heal. While he thought he could choose a warrior with the Sisterhoods' help, his next incarnation was preprogrammed all along. When his next version chose to stay with the Sisterhood to recover from his wounds, being guided through the wreckage of the Time War by Sister Lithea, it was never his choice at all. It was a preprogrammed and psychically induced response, which allowed the Sisters to keep an eye on this new 'Warrior'.]

While on the trip to steal the heart of Karn, When Cardinal Rasmus and Commander Sanmars' visit ended with Sister Lithea being killed, it so happened that a few within the Clandestine group of the Sisterhood , along with Ohila, knew that this was a possibility but never intervened, switching off the Time Web, because they wanted to test the Warriors' response.

Scene 7:

Doctor: But why? Why go to such extreme measures? Why do this at all? And how is all of this even possible? Surely somebody would have noticed.

AI: You of all know quite well the effects of interfering with the natural progression and occurrences of events.

Doctor: What? What do you mean?

AI: As you know, The Web of Time, or the Spiral Politic that Gallifrey was situated on, was built when anchoring the thread, to substantially facilitate the usage of Pulsar energy bodies. Like the one called Eye of Harmony, as used by Rassilon himself. Rather than being a proper fundamental aspect of this universe, corresponding to its linear progression of events, or linear timeline, as you know it to be, the Web of Time was a tool, a prolific meta-structure imposed to the inner-workings of the universe to take into account all of the recorded and defined set of history and sets of physical laws permitted in-universe. With the ‘Homeworld’ established at its center. Like with any other Noopsphere, there were a set of extra-terrestrial temporal trenches, planetary outposts with its own sky trenches and an established edge of the Spiral Politic, to protect from outside variables and up-surge of entropy elements.

Doctor: So what?

AI: When Gallifrey was moved in time and space, to a pocket universe of it’s own, frozen, time standing still and unaffected, the fabric of reality was disturbed. The hold it had over the Web of Time, was perturbed out of bounds. Unimaginable things could have happened. But what did happen was life itself. The Change engine exponentially increases and amplifies the factor of living. So, when the hold on the Web of Time was disturbed, with Gallifrey transported elsewhere, a surge of energy was sent out from the engines. This created similar Time fields around everywhere. Psychic and truth spectrum opened up at unimaginable spaces. Many civilizations have tried to harness and utilize that, in the past few years. While others have failed. The effects of which are resurfacing and only revealing themselves now.

As the Doctor is being told and shown holo-records of these, there is a sub-directory that is marked prime order. He reaches for the hard-light directory and with some effort, opens it up. Most of it is Coded alien gibberish for viewers, with redacted parts. However, the lower parts show that the usage and advancement of naturally occurring technologies, electrical synapses and biochemical marvels in the High Sanctum of Korlan were actually suggested by a whole other entity, that the Sisterhood complied to or accepted. As he is about to reach for a very familiar but yet unknown seal at the end, he his hit by a sharp pain of psychic touch that strains him out even more, the same he felt before. He wiggles and recoils in pain, before doubling over and passing out on the stone floor.

Through the corner of his eyes, in a mist of cloud and delusional uncertainty, he sees a sister rushing towards him and tending to him.

Ohima II: You should not have come here, Doctor!