Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ DOCTOR WHO: APOUKALUPSIS (Revelations) ❯ POST.TRAUMATIC.SPACE.DISORDER ( Chapter 9 )

Episode9

POST.TRAUMATIC.SPACE.DISORDER

Reeling from the after-effects of the truth, the Tardis gets a sudden and despicable visitor. And then a second! Who tells them they all must work together for the survival of a race.

Scene 1:

The Doctor is in an empty room, with a misty vibe. He is seated on a podium at ground level, connected to wires. There are Tardis-like walls visible on each side, at the far end, visible through the mist. He is playing reruns of what he had found and what followed next, in his mind.

Ohima II: You should not come here, Doctor. Never!

Doctor: I keep hearing that today. A lot. Saw your hand in the cookie jar.

The Doctor settles up in his his open rocky bunk, half-dazed. The cavern is poorly lit. They are still somewhere in Korlan, but the room is big and empty except for them. Two doors at the far opposite end are visible, with reinforced rims running around the wooden frames.

Ohima II: If you are wondering, I have not revealed your presence to the others. This is a storage chamber behind my labs. Like it or not Doctor, I AM on your side.

Doctor: I was just watching a holo-movie like that! Where I had sisters on my side. It was horrible. In that movie I ha...well a handsome version of me had to let go of his promise and become a hardened warrior. Let's face it, this face has seen better days! So has my stories.

Ohima II: Stop it Doctor! For once stop playing the fool when you nearly well know even that isn't what you want right now. And we have no time for that-

Doctor: Time is all I have, Ohima! You sisters saw to it.

Ohima II: I am Ohima the 2nd.

Doctor: ...What?

Ohima II: I am Ohima the 2nd, daughter of the high house of Ohimous tellers of Korlan.

Doctor: You look very different from your mother.

Ohima II: No time to mock me Doctor. You are not the only one who faces the truth of the engines and their power. I, like all my other teller sisters, face it everyday. We wake up to dread our own reflections, seeing as how this is the image the house of each teller, each sister and someday, just...someday each daughter would hold, to look exactly like her mother, like a modified clone, just so we could keep up the pretense of living long lives.

Doctor: What did YOUR house do to receive this penalty.

Ohima II: We were the first house of tellers to foresee the time war. Your earliest versions of Time Lord spies sent mesmerized and turned or gagged enemies to poison the regeneration well of the tellers, so we cannot live long enough to predict the future of the war and keep saving our own skin, better than the Gallifreyans. Daleks you used to call them, I think. We called them mutated Kaleds seeing as what they truly are within. One such gagged and captured Kaled was reprogrammed from the Matrix chambers to be sent here, with poison lined in its casing, bound in deadlocked dwarf star binds riveted to its body case. It burst into the millions of pieces as soon as we entered the well. We were the first well to be hit and were denied the chance at regeneration, forever. While all our other sisters at Karn could live longer lives. The elders, who were already maintaining the change engine, thought it would be better if the kind of tellers could be put to good use in some new kind of engine. If the time engine could be changed to operate through the teller sisters and our capabilities. But to keep up appearances, each newborn child to the house of tellers were engineered to look like the previous form, within the change engine. That is the price we pay even now.

Doctor: I always heard the tellers were oracles, not the vestibules of modern warfare. Old warfare, by the looks of it actually. Seeing has how some of you have been witnessing and re-engineering time from so long ago. I made a promise once, a long time ago. Not just to somebody who was dying in my arms but to myself as well. The sisters made me break my promise. It was my choice to go to war, but I will never forget the parts the sister played in it. But that does not make me sad. Or even angry. No. What fills me with anger is their choice to change time itself. Gallifrey is no different, which is why I truly never take up my mantle of a 'Time Lord'. But despite what they did or why and how I choose to remember them, there have been places and times where they respected the reach of time itself. There have been wars where they have even fought and died to save time itself. The Guardians of Space and Time, the lower guardians of time field vortex, of forever fields of the upper cessas of time, even guardians of Warfare and peace had seen us fit to carry their errands to keep time and space intact. It does not bother me that 400 years of my life could have,...just might have been different without all the sisterly intrusion that probably prolonged a warfare. It BOTHERS me that nothing good came out of it for anybody. Not me. Not you.

The Doctor keeps his glass of water and gradually gets up on his feet.

Doctor: I have seen many wars in my big life as it is. I have seen holy wars and global wars for planets. I have seen wars to end or make life and creation. I have fought battles to save time itself. I even had to fight good'ol versions of me here, sometimes. From Raang'Alook to Skaro, to Trenzalore, to Mars, to Earth, to Hathoria, to Akhat, Skull moon to Odinland, to right here in Karn. I have fought battles unthought of. I have had to carry the weight of battles and guilt even when I actually saved lives. I had to face the torment of death everyday even when I had nothing to do with it and only wanted to rescue everybody elsewhere. I had been called the destroyer, the storm, the harbinger of evil, the predator. But never a pariah, who gets to see the demolition caused by his own labor of hand. Never a pariah, who is bound to see his own seed he sowed taking forms that he never envisaged. Never one to start to participate in a war so foolishly, at the control of the helm of others, a war that he so desperately wanted to end. Never, EVER thought of breaking bonds of trust. A battle of basic informative necessitates. A right to live your own life, in your own time, without some institutional intrusion introducing a 'division' to the progress of life itself. These past few years, I have been incorporating the extent of damage of such intrusive measures that have bound me to unexpected fates. 

Ohima II: What are you going to do?

The Doctor steadies up and smiles a little.

Doctor: My job. I am the Doctor and unlike the sisters I remember my oath I took so very long ago. Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up. Never give in. Preserve the essence of living whenever and wherever you can;...and maybe have a little bit fun along the way. Seems to me you sisters are not very good at your job. All those years ago, you foresaw a chance to manipulate me to be someone else - a Warrior. But in doing so you created the truest Doctor ever! In a way I AM THE DOCTOR. Have been all my life, even before I chose my name to be so. My oath to do good, my will to help others who cannot help themselves-...all of it has been hypocritic.  Under your blessing I have had to cut through the wounds of war with a blade in my hand. But no more. It is time that I do my job better than you all did yours. Somebody wounds time, the Doctor treats up the wound. I am the Doctor of War and now I choose to be the Doctor of peace. and I do all the saving around this little universe, and there is nothing you or anyone can do about it. Its as if I-

CRASH! 

The thought is saved and the message reads logged. The wires have disconnected themselves from the Doctor.

Scene 2:

MEANWHILE:

While the Doctor is reeling from his revelations and rescue on Korlan, he isolates himself in the Tardis meditation room, near the new Zero room. Meanwhile, Layla and Daniel, baffled by this mood swing, pace around helplessly around the console room. Layla keeps herself rested on the rails of the console platform, while Daniel paces around with scuffled and bent brows over the state of his designated driver. Both of them are voicing their concerns to each other, while the Tardis replies to them in an untranslated and rather robot-like beeping, which they take hilariously enough take for some digital musings or mechanical process.

Suddenly a rapid alarm sounds out and everything comes to a halt after a thud!

Doctor: What did you touch?

Both: Nothing!

Doctor: I leave you two alone for five minutes and it's the end of the world already. Well...the end of flight stabilizers at least. NO, no, no, no, no! Oh, here goes something. The time fluid conduit seems good, brakes good. Stabillizers gone, Rotor scanners malfunctioning. Helmic regulator stopped. Emergency booster switches stopped. Interior door switches stopped! What IS happening to you today!

[Tardis beeping]

Doctor: Time fluids and temporal engines are active. But it's the interior that has gone bad. The radiation and inner atmosphere gauges are reading a second set of data. It keeps fluctuating between the two sets-

Daniel: Oi! proper English Doctor!

Doctor: I don't have the-

Layla: What do you mean by TWO sets!? It can flicker between readings.

Doctor: I KNOOOWWWWW!

Layla...it's not as if there's a second set of atmosphere around here-

A cutout of a portal flickers into existence into one corner of the Tardis, while a metal hand desperately reaches out to come out. Soon the portal gets bigger and somebody sweeps in, making everybody else stagger back.

Master: Well, that's a surprise!

Doctor: You!?

[He raises his sonic at him, ready to fire]

Master: Yes, me.[Crooked smile].

Master: How did you do this?

Doctor: Whaaat? [with a frown]

Master: So, you have redecorated. I like it. It suits you better. Brings out the dissocial renegade in you. The adamant conviction and seasonal Time Lord Victorious frill you indulge in. Definitely an improvement over the last few ones. Artron energy bars on the ceiling, Gallifreyan Home-Decors-R-Us! Missy did it better.

Doctor: Stop it! What are you doing here? What happened to the Auto-

Master: So, did you burn a hole through the temporal engine or buy temporal time displacements parts from a Akhiri black market of Mars? How did you bring me here?

Doctor: I did not.

Master: Oh, Doctor! What have you got yourself into this time? Did your poor little pets touch something?

Daniel: We WHAT?

Doctor: I DOOON'T KNOWW! [still with a 10th-ish frown]

Layla[nudges him hard]: Why did you have to response to pets for, Dumbo?

Xylok: Layla Robbins. Gradual energy signature build up detected, Unknown form of energ -

Layla: Ssh...not now, 1B.

Daniel: How do we know it wasn't you? You don't exactly act like the poster boy of 'do no harm'. You are a mass murderer.

Master: Trust me, if I did do you some harm, I would let you know it was me, even in the afterlife. I take my resume very seriously. The synopsis of all my evil.

Xylok: Layla Robbins. Massive energy signature build up detected -

Layla: Ssh.

Daniel: No offense, mate, but we do not exactly trust you.

Master: The feeling is mutual, you oafish man-child.

The Doctor eases his gaze.

Doctor: It's alright. It wasn't him. He is a lot of things but not a lia-...WELLLL, who am I kidding! He obviously lies. But he advertises too. If this was his, he would boast about it and show me the decency of giving a chance to solve it at the last minute.

Master has helped himself to console and is working the problem. He doesn't gaze up but replies.

Master: Over thousand years, a few hundred in limbo and quite a few spent in confession, and now you are learning. Cross my heart and call me a devil!

Scene 3:

A little later, as they agree to unwillingly work the problem together, they source the origin of the anomaly that created the portal between the two Tardis.

Doctor: No, but see! It's not your regular holo-shape.

Master: The trace leads to here no matter what interests your child-like enthusiasm. Bad enough you have a man-child on board who keeps staring.

Daniel: Oi!

Master: Such a buffoon! Like a Hoarox Boar!

Daniel: Yeah? Well..you. You! Evil, Sithlord!

Doctor: But look at it. It's-

Master: Yes I can see that reading. But which shape. Run the diagnosis again.

Doctor: I don't need to. It's a mobius with concentric pentagons. Level 3 or 4 atleast. The three corner points of the outermost and innermost pentagons triangulate averagely to these coordinates. It's an uncomprehelderon.

Master: NO! But that can't be...

Layla: What did we miss? What's an uncomprehedr-

Doctor: Uncomprehelderon. 13 levels of uncomprehended compound shapes in time and space curve diagnostics; well at least for mere beings. Begining from the mobius strip in level 1.

Layla: Uh, Doctor! Isn't it INComprehensible?

Doctor: Yes, I know. But the species that named them had the word uncomprehensible instead. Uncomprehelderon used to be the building block shapes they used to learn in the schools. Even we learned a few in the Time Academy at Gallifrey.

Daniel: What species?

[Staring blankly at the bar on the Console stem, hand and head rested on it]

Master: Logopolitans! But they were all gone!

Layla: What's a Logopolitan?

Doctor: They were a human-like species that dealt in block transfer computation and multi-dimensional architectures, devoid of the usage of any technologies. At some point during the early 20th century, they discovered that universe had reached its point of collapse due to advance of entropy. They dedicated there lives to the transference of entropical anomalies from N-Space universe to a smaller pocket one, until they could find a more permanent solution. But they were- Anyways! They are all gone.

Roarkuxs: Not all of them.

A white robed entity with bright fluorescence all around has appeared out of thin air within the Tardis.

Scene 4:

[With a punch-raised stance]

Daniel: WHOAHHHH! Doctor! What the hell is that?

Layla: Alien without boundaries!?

Doctor[mutters with a fixed and heightened gaze]: I don't know…

Xylok: Humanoid life form detected. Massive energy detection and allocation complete…

Daniel: Now you tell us, mate!

Xylok: If only I had physical capabilities such as frustration.

Master: Does everybody just waltz in the Tardis just like that? And you call me the villain!?...At least I have my manners and foreplay-! And is that a Xyloak…?

Roarkuxs: Do not be alarmed Time Lords. And fellow humans. This effervescence is nothing but the animate workings and vivacity of a temporal fix flight-suit. Underneath, we too are very much humanoid. Flesh and bones. Without the capability of natural flight or defensive measures.

[A sudden shot is fired. Everybody sees it’s the Master, with a screwdriver raised. The entity had dodged and the blast pattern has taken out one of the roundels]

Master: What? I thought he was dangerous. Well at least he could be.

[The Doctor shoots a mild energy shot at his legs. He tumbles down face-flat.]

Master: Ow!

Doctor: No more than you. Now if you hurt her ever again, if you so much as put a smudge on her, I’ll end you.

Master: So sentimental.

Daniel: Then..why ARE you flying?

Master: Temporal fix flight-suit. Oh, do keep up you oafy simpleton! They have to fly in through the Time Vortex.

Layla: We have a box-ship. They have a suit.

Daniel: Oh.

Doctor: You know us?

Roarkuxs: The one who aided us and the one who destroyed us.

Master: You mean-

Roarkuxs: I do mean.

Scene 5:

To the Masters' surprise, it turns out Logopolis had been destroyed, but not all Logopolitans. Like each species and sub-species have their own predator or prey species amongst each other, the Roarkuxs were in a sense rivals to Logopolitans. While Logopolitans of the mainland dealt in block transfer computations to cause transferences of entropical anomalies into pocket dimensions, or even whole new smaller universes sometimes; the Roarkuxs were not inhabitants of the mainland, hence they survived. They were a group of few thousands, who lived in pockets of their own within Logopolis and unknown to the elders of the mainland, they welcomed a few outside technologies. They aimed at the betterment of Logopolis itself and considered the mainland their intellectual rivals; preys even. Mainland specimens who lost tasks and chores were mind-wiped and converted to Roarkuxses. When they felt the core and transference mechanism imploding inside out, they had no time to come back outside their pocket dimensions and escape the planet. Luckily, they had a Class IV tribophysical waveform extrapolation race shuttle from the racing planet of Aurebillus, with small hyperdrive blocks. They shot out of the pocket dimension in the opposing way of the crumbling wave of implosion and rode the aftershock. But such an effort displaced them not only in space, but also in time. They only arrived in the current time and state of the universe a few decades ago, and have been rebuilding since. It took a little longer to find the Doctor, given they had to shield against the flux.

The Roarkuxs says it is here on the behest of the Time Sage.

Scene 6 and continued

Doctor [with a frown]: The WHO now?

Roarkuxs: The Time sage. We the Roarkuxses have been doing his collective bidding since he helped restart and sustain our people and saved our life from the flux. He has taken an authoritative and supervisory stance on us.

Doctor: But that's not possible. No single entity can outrun the flux and save a whole another race.

Master: Well except you, of course!

Doctor: I MEAN they wouldn't know where to start! The flux was not exactly subtle enough to pop up on your GPS, now was it.

Roarkuxs: He knew where to find us. The Time Sage knew where to find you too. He gave us this to bring you two together.

Master: Doctor, that's a Gallifreyan extravehicular temporal phase ball. Do you think that the Time Sage-?

Doctor: YEAH!

Layla: Phase ball? The thing that joined your Tardis?

Master: I like this one. She understands faster than your average pets. Definitely better than that one!

Doctor: It's a long-term dimensional and temporal shift and phasing apparatus. It can make matter conjoin, attach, phase and re-phase through one another, or even share a common membrane, opening a wall in between. Unlike a phase-bomb, which just deletes matter in between layers and weakens the hold of reality.

Daniel: Blimey! No wonder YOU Time Lords have created the Masters, All your toys sound like something out of a heist movie!

[Gets piercing eyes from both Time Lords present]

Master: 'Masters' isn't a race. It's a name I chose for myself; like he chose the Doctor.

Daniel: Oh.

Daniel[to the Doctor]: Wait...hold on, when we first met you told us the 'Doctor' WAS your name!

Layla: Hold on. So this sage guy is another Time Lord!?

Doctor[again, mutters with a 10ish fixed gaze]: Seems so, yeah.

Master: But only few beings exist that can know and sense exactly where another Time lord is. 

Doctor: Yeah. In my experience, the both aspects of the Guardians or somebody's own phased out or astral projection, trying to reconnect back with them. Lord knows I have had by share of those both. Made me go all wobbly.

Layla: Do you mean the Watcher?

Daniel: The Watcher. What is that, Doctor? You mentioned it the first time we met.

Master: He just told -

Doctor: Somebody's own phased out or astral projection, or living essence resonating at a different range of frequency than the usual, trying to reconnect back with them. When a regeneration goes wrong or hurried or incomplete or we are thrown out of bound, beyond the limits of our own universe which causes physical ailment, and hence a subsequent regeneration. An intermediate form keeps us going. The Watcher.

Layla: So, when we met you…

Doctor: Yes. I was a watcher.

Master: You were a Watcher form? Again? Wardrobe malfunction much?

Doctor: [Turning his attention to the Master] I was in a battle. At Xontar.

Master: What were you doing that far?

Doctor: It was a pocket universe, where the 23rd Proto-human Mordee expedition was made to facilitate the formation of Xoanon, again.

Master: Facilitated by who?

Doctor: Renegade Daleks. They tricked the humans to form the Xontarian tribe of the Red Moon. Who inadvertently worshiped the Xoanon as a God and me as the evil of all. The renegade Daleks were a group inspired by the cult of Skaro, to research into my enemies. They chose to research human kinds as their first target and a bait to draw me in. Turns out they have been doing it for 37 years.

Master: Huh? And where did Daleks grow the balls for such direct approaches? To follow in the footsteps in the Cult of Skaro?

Doctor: I do not know...must have thought I was still in vacation at the Singing Towers. More to the point...how did we get tracked?

Roarkuxs: He has not been sensing you. He has been tracking you, Doctor. At all times. And he only recently got wind of the Master.

Doctor: WHAT? But how?

Roarkuxs: That, I do not know of. All I know for sure is that he sent me for you both, and he wants you two to work together. He NEEDS you to work together.

Master: Towards WHAT!? Peace and reforestation efforts in burning Gallifrey!?

[Piercing eyes shot at]

Turns out he wants them to save the Gamma forests. The Neutral plains of the Gamma are collapsing on each other. The Time web broadcasts of plains of Acolyeia and Kornal from the past, before it was all shut down [we know better now that it was not] predicted it psychically out for a few thousand light years, that the forest will crumble. But nobody paid any attention, because everybody was engulfed in a much bigger time war, and it never came to pass. And the Time Sage is one of the only few beings capable enough to decipher such a long psychic transmission, or even get them at all. He was there, one of the Time Lords that did not participate in the time war. The Time Sage has instructed out that “whatever it is that ails the Doctor's thoughts, could also be of help to him now. It's a part of him and his travels. It always has been”.

At the urging and gesture of the Roarkuxs, the group in the Tardis is hurdled through the Time Vortex towards a predestined Gamma forest, without any warning. To the surprise of everybody, the ride is extremely bumpy and unusual. Time moves in and seeps through in waves. Specially for the companions. Some sentences come fast, while others come as answers even before the question is asked.

Turns out, they have been hurdled through the Time Vortex, at hyperspace speeds, without disengaging the breaks or readjusting the internal environments. The phase ball has kept both the vehicles attached. This causes major discomfort and dizziness. Everything is disorderly and paiful. However, the Time Lords manage to cope up.

While the two time lords on board manage to barely steer the bumpy ride through the time vortex, the Master inquires as to what the Time Sage meant. Hesitant to answer at first, while trying to barely steer themselves, the Doctor bursts out emotionally, trapping the companions in a stasis bubble with a gesture like a pause button, stating the ordeals he had faced the past few days. In a very long banter, he says he knows what ails him and how it is a part of him, but not how any of it can help him, or them to save the Gamma. The MASTER counters by saying what makes him think he would help and that the Doctor should have told him about everything sooner. The time web concerns his fate too. Both have shifted their focus on to the talking matter at hand, and-

Layla: DOCCCTOOOORRRRR! WE ARE HEREEEE!

CRASH! Into the Gamma forest.